Friendly Fire (53 page)

Cameron, unknown to Polk, was standing right there. The company commander picked up the grenade launcher and shoved it at the private's chest. “Now pick up that mortar round, put on your ruck, and
move out!
”

“No, sir,” Polk said. “I ain't in the mortar platoon, and I ain't carrying no mortar round! You can have this fuckin' rucksack and the whole fuckin' works! I ain't carrying none of it!”

“Polk, I'm giving you a direct order,” the captain warned. “Pick up that round and your equipment, and move out!”

“Sir, I can't. It's too heavy.”

Private Willie Johnson, another black from the 1st Platoon, picked up the mortar round and handed it to Polk. Polk let it drop again.

“I'll see you get an Article Fifteen.”
*
Cameron told Polk. “Pick up your equipment, and move out. That's an order!”

“Sir, I'll carry it,” Willie Johnson said. He lifted Polk's mortar round a second time.

“No, Polk's going to carry it,” Cameron said. “Everybody else in his platoon is carrying their rounds.”

“I can't help that, sir,” Polk said. “Every time I walk or step on a rock or something I keep falling down. It's too heavy.”

At that moment Staff Sergeant Wetsel reached the hard ground. “I'll take care of this, sir,” he told Captain Cameron. “Polk's in my platoon.”

Cameron, eager to complete his head count of the men and to get them in position to board the helicopters, was relieved to see the new platoon sergeant take command. As Cameron turned away, he saw Michael Mullen join Wetsel. The two of them spoke to Polk and calmed him down. Willie Johnson kept Polk's mortar round. “Here,” Johnson said, “you take my Claymore. It's lighter.”

At the pickup zone there was time for one final head count. Squad leaders passed among their men, checking and readjusting the men's equipment. Platoon sergeants positioned the squads according to where they would board their lift. The rising sun silhouetted the distant ridge line upon which Bayonet stood, and, for the first time, the deep, resonant beating of the approaching helicopters could be heard.

Ten camouflaged helicopters appeared above the mist in a staggered formation. Each helicopter was capable of carrying from six to eight men in addition to its crew. The thirty men of Echo Company's reconnaissance platoon would be loaded into the first five helicopters. Captain Cameron, his headquarters section and a portion of the 2nd and 3rd platoons would fill the rest.

Michael Mullen, Gary Samuels, Willard Polk, the other members of the 1st Platoon and those remaining of the 2nd and 3rd platoons would be in the second lift.

“Hey, Prince,” someone yelled to Samuels, “here comes your royal chariot!”

The whole “Prince” business had started when Gary Samuels and Don Montuori, Jr., were waiting together their last day at Fort Lewis, Washington, to be shipped to Vietnam. Samuels had been in a strange mood that day—not really down, but certainly not up either. He had been sitting on his bunk, quietly thinking about Vietnam. Suddenly he had wrapped his poncho about himself like a cape and announced, “Montuori? I've got divine powers. I'm Prince Lovely. That's my new name.”

“You must be kidding.” Montuori smiled.

“The Prince does not kid,” Samuels replied.

From that moment on, Montuori called Samuels the Prince.

When they arrived in Vietnam and were both assigned to Charlie Company—Samuels went to Mullen's squad in the 1st Platoon, Montuori to the Mortar Platoon—the nickname stuck. Even Captain Cameron called Samuels the Prince and, like the rest, would smile good-naturedly when Samuels would announce, “The Prince does not patrol.” Eventually, as replacements arrived and others rotated home, fewer and fewer men in Charlie Company remembered the Prince's real name.

The approaching helicopters' engines changed pitch as each lift ship hovered over the pickup zone and set down. The men ran forward, ducking beneath the swishing rotor blades to board. The last man on each ship would barely be inside before the engines would increase speed, the pitch would again change, the nose would dip into the mushrooming dust, and the helicopter was off.

While the first lift headed down the Song Trau river valley to the mountain pass, the artillery preparation of Charlie Company's landing zone was continued. A light helicopter carrying Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf with his artillery liaison officer and helicopter flight commander was hovering east of the landing zone. They were radioing any corrections necessary to ensure that the artillery fire was striking the proper place. Through his helicopter flight commander Schwarzkopf was also in touch with the lift ships, and as the first helicopter carrying men from Echo's reconnaissance platoon appeared, Schwarzkopf's artillery liaison officer called for the artillery fire to cease. Two white phosphorous rounds were exploded over the landing zone to mark the “all clear,” and Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf's pilot swooped down, made a low, flat pass over the LZ, and Schwarzkopf dropped a colored smoke grenade to mark where the lead lift ship was to touch down. Schwarzkopf wanted to designate exactly where the first helicopter was to land to avoid mistakes. There was no point in having a sustained artillery preparation devastate the area if the helicopters were then to unload their men in the wrong spot. The pilot of the lead helicopter acknowledged that he had the smoke in view, and Schwarzkopf's helicopter flared up and out of the way. The lift ship door gunners opened fire.

The flight from the pickup zone at the base of Hill 76 to the landing zone took about fifteen minutes. The helicopters flew at a few thousand feet, and Cameron, looking out of the open doors at the sunrise, watching the fog lift from the rice paddies, felt uncomfortably warm. Still, there he was with thirty-five pounds of gear on his back about to lead his rifle company into an area where North Vietnamese regulars were presumably operating, and it could have been twenty below zero and Cameron knew he would feel the heat.

Abraham Aikins, the senior medic attached to Cameron's headquarters section, was in the same helicopter with the captain, Cameron's radio operators, and Lieutenant Rocamora's artillery forward observer team. Aikins didn't even notice the sound of the engines or the coolness of the morning air. He was worrying how he would react if Charlie Company became involved in a fire fight. He had treated injured men before, but he had never been in a situation where men had suffered massive injuries. What if a lot of guys got badly hurt and he really had to run around? “You'll be okay,” he told himself. “You won't choke up. You'll be okay.” But what if—“Don't sweat it. You'll be fine.”

Cameron heard rather than felt the helicopter change direction. They had crossed the mountain pass and were heading up the valley to the LZ. The door gunners suddenly opened fire, raking the tall grasses on either side of the landing zone with M-60 machine-gun fire. Martin Culpepper, in a helicopter at the rear of the lift, wore close to 300 rounds of machine-gun ammunition crisscrossed over his shoulders and chest like a Mexican bandit's bandoliers. He also carried a Claymore mine, a machete, fifteen magazines of ammunition for his M-16 rifle, his canteens and his rucksack loaded with C rations and supplies. All that weight was pushing him down; the straps were cutting into his shoulders. He wanted only for the flight to end so he could get comfortable. He could hear the lead pilots talking back and forth over the intercom. Were they drawing any fire? No, not yet. No contact. The wash of the rotor blades sucked the engine and gun noises into the helicopter.

Ahead, Cameron was covering his ears. Suddenly the noise let up, and Cameron saw the left outboard door gunner struggling to clear his machine gun. Cameron could lip-read the gunner's “It's jammed!”

“Use your rifle!” Cameron shouted back.

The gunner grinned, grabbed his rifle, put it on full automatic and sprayed shots all around. Cameron didn't like being in a partially unarmed helicopter. It made too good a target, and the VC loved shooting down helicopters. The helicopter swiftly dropped, and Cameron, watching the hills and rice paddies rush up at him, had the sensation of being in a glass elevator. Seemingly at the last moment, the helicopter leveled, and the door gunner was slapping Cameron's men on their shoulders, “Go! Go! Go!”

The pilot had misjudged the height of the grass. Aikins leaped and kept falling, wondering where the ground was. He dropped eight feet before his boots sank into the mud.

Men were jumping from both doors of the helicopters, ducking down then scrambling for cover at the sides of the landing zone. Immediately, the helicopters lifted off and darted back down the valley to the mountain pass on their way to pick up the second lift. Schwarzkopf's helicopter now moved off, too. He would need to supervise the artillery preparation over Delta Company's landing zone at the west end of the valley. Two Cobra gunships, fast and sleek, darted in and began spraying the hillsides off Charlie Company's flanks.

Charlie Company's landing zone was flat, not very wide, thirty by eighty yards at the most. The grass was six feet tall where Aikins and Cameron's helicopter had landed; twenty yards north of their LZ there was no grass at all, just small bushes and trees. The LZ was a river valley among what had been a system of rice paddies long ago. The paddies now were overgrown.

Echo's recon platoon moved forward and secured the forward edge of the LZ. The first lift's men from the 2nd and 3rd platoons fanned out to cover the edges. There was a creek bank which would provide some safety and concealment in case of contact. It would also be possible to cover the second lift from that creek bank when it landed. Cameron was telling his platoon leaders where to move their men. The only sound was the Cobra gunships racing back and forth. The sky was overcast, humid still from the fog. The cool humidity, however, would become hot humidity as soon as the fog burned off. It was about seven fifteen in the morning. Cameron and his command group had taken a position at the southeastern edge of the egg-shaped LZ. He was huddled next to one of his radio operators and was trying to contact Schwarzkopf. “Black Smoke One, this is Black Smoke Six,” Cameron said, giving his own and Schwarzkopf's call signs. “Do you read me? Over.”

“—ack Smoke Six, this is Black Smoke One,” Schwarzkopf replied.

“Black Smoke One, this is Black Smoke Six. We have no contact. Repeat, no contact. Our LZ is cold.”

“Uh, roger, Black Smoke Six. This is Black Smoke One. Out.”

Schwarzkopf now knew Charlie Company had landed without resistance. He ordered the second lift in.

There was a sudden burst of rifle fire to Culpepper's left, and he burrowed into the creek bank.

“Jesus Christ!” someone yelled. “Did you see the
size
of that deer?”

“Yeah, he took off across the paddy right in front of me,” another answered. “I got off a couple of shots at him.”

Culpepper sat up again. The surge of panic was replaced by relief, then anger. Finally, like the others, he laughed.

Willard Polk, in the second lift with Michael Mullen and the Prince, was too cold and wet and angry to be scared. He sat huddled up on the metal deck of the helicopter daydreaming about John Wayne. He liked to think of himself as John Wayne: tough, flinty-eyed, tight-lipped, strong, quick to fight. Somehow it helped make the situation into which he was flying seem less threatening and real.

The Prince wasn't worried either. He knew the first lift had not made contact. The LZ was quiet. He had been on other combat assaults and knew what to expect. He found himself thinking about the patrol he had been on the week before. They had passed a hootch in front of which two small boys had been carving statues. “Hey, GI!” one of the boys had called out. “You giva me some money, I show you where VC put booby trap.” The boy took them to one side of the trail where the Vietcong had rigged a dud 155mm artillery round to explode when the patrol passed by. The men attached a five-minute fuse to it, cleared the area and detonated the shell. The explosion dug a crater six feet across and five feet deep. When Samuels returned to look, he saw jagged chunks of white hot shrapnel still steaming on the ground.
Jesus
, he thought to himself,
what would it feel like to be hit by that?
Now, sitting in the helicopter with the weight pushing him down, he decided it would feel like whatever his Delta Company friend had suffered when the booby trap on Hill 76 had torn apart his legs.

The helicopter door gunners commenced firing again as soon as the second lift approached the LZ. Culpepper, hearing the shooting, couldn't tell where the firing was coming from. He crouched low and looked around to see if anyone was hit. The helicopters came in fast and in trail, flared, then hovered. The second lift jumped out and ran for cover. Culpepper could hear the platoon sergeants calling back and forth: “Second Platoon this way!” “First Platoon over here!” “Everybody all right?” “Platoon leaders to the CP!” “It ain't no CP, it's just a hole in the mud.”

Hank Webb, the platoon sergeant of the 3rd Platoon, told Culpepper and the others of the machine-gun team to move forward. Culpepper pushed himself up. He could hear Webb continuing down the line, “You guys, Razzle-Dazzle, Cocoanut, more to your left. The rest of you guys spread out to the right.”

Captain Cameron was waiting for his platoon leaders to complete their head counts. He wanted to be sure no one had been left behind on the pickup zone or had fallen out of a helicopter on the way. When his platoon leaders assembled, he compared their maps with the LZ and discussed the best route up the hill. Culpepper had been in position fifteen minutes before he noticed the leeches. The ground was damp, the grass still wet. Everywhere Culpepper looked he saw leeches oozing along the ground.

“All right,” Cameron shouted, “move out!”

At that moment the lift ships carrying Delta Company passed overhead on their way to the west end of the valley. The door gunners were firing at the hillsides, and their hot brass expended cartridges fell on Charlie Company below. The men moved cautiously forward. Mullen placed himself directly behind Willard Polk so he could keep an eye on him going up the hill.