Friendly Fire (55 page)

“You've put a listening post somewhere out there, haven't you?”

“Right here,” Cameron said, pointing to his map.

“And how close do you want those DTs?”

“Another two hundred meters out from that LP max,” Cameron said. “If someone comes at me and I hit back, they'll have to stop and face me or take their chances escaping through our DTs.”

Cameron and Rocamora agreed upon the need for two additional DTs to be placed on either side of the hill, and Rocamora left to radio their coordinates in. His forward observer post was being dug behind the 2nd Platoon, but the radio link between himself and the artillery on top of Hill 410 was already established. A few minutes later he walked back to Cameron and said, “Your number one DT is too close. They won't fire them two hundred meters out. For safety reasons, they said, the DT has to be at least four hundred meters away.”

“That won't do us much good if someone's firing at us from fifty meters,” Cameron complained. “Oh, well, tell them four hundred meters is okay. We can always adjust if we need to. Get them to drop.” He followed Rocamora back to his radio. A few minutes later Rocamora told him, “They'll fire them at four hundred meters. They said to tell you, ‘No sweat.'”

By twilight Charlie Company's defensive perimeter was set. The men's foxholes and sleeping positions had been dug, the machine-gun emplacements finished. The men were able to relax, eat their C rations, talk and move quietly around. Over on the north side of the hill in the 3rd Platoon's area, Culpepper had waited for the light to fade, then strung his hammock five inches above the ground. He could not sleep where the leeches could reach him. He would rather take his chances on waking up if trouble arose and having time to get into his foxhole. He stood now looking from his machine-gun pit out over the cliff. Abe Aikins wandered over and, looking down, said, “Jesus, Pep, you'd better not do any walking in the middle of the night. That must be a hundred feet straight down!”

“Straight up, too.” Culpepper smiled. “Nobody's climbing that. Tonight I'm gonna get me some sleep!”

Willard Polk was sitting with Michael Mullen on the lip of the foxhole they had dug. Michael had finished the fruit in his C ration can of peaches and, with great pleasure, was drinking the syrup. Polk liked Michael, called him Mulligan. Mullen never hassled him. He was like a chaplain in some ways, Polk felt, because he was always so concerned with other people's problems. Polk had been telling Michael about the trouble he had been in in Detroit. “I'd been locked up for misdemeanors, trespassing on Ford property, simple larceny, things like that. I was with some dudes who knocked out a store window and got busted for carrying a concealed weapon, assault on a police officer.…”

Michael looked at him with surprise.

“I was drunk at the time,” Polk explained. “And besides, he was hassling me. I got drafted just after I got out of jail. I'd been in for sixty days on account of violation of parole, you know. And the only reason why my mother paid to get me out was because I had this draft notice waiting, see. She knew they'd put me in the Army—she didn't know they'd send me here, though. But I'll tell you, Mulligan, I'm gonna get me outta here. One way or another I'll get out.” Polk slapped at some mosquitoes. “Hey, you got a cigarette?”

“Don't smoke,” Michael said.

Polk shrugged and took a pack of Salems from his fatigue shirt pocket and lit one. “What're you gonna do when you get out?”

“I'll have to see. There's a girl I like. I've been thinking I'd like to get me something like a VW bus and drive around the country, see all the different states. Just take it easy for a while.”

“You're getting ‘short,' aren't you?”

“If I get my early drop, it'll be about a hundred days.”

Polk picked up his can of bug spray and sprayed his fatigue pants. “Fuckin' mosquitoes, fuckin' leeches, there ain't
nothing
good about this place.”

“Sergeant Mullen?”

Polk and Michael looked up. It was their platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Joslin. Michael rose to his feet. “Sir?”

“Tell your squad to put on their steel pots and to get in their foxholes. The artillery is going to fire the DTs.”

“All right, sir.” Michael went to the members of his squad but could not find the Prince. He knew Samuels shared a foxhole with Leroy Hamilton, so Michael asked Hamilton if he'd seen the Prince.

“He was talking to the chaplain,” Hamilton said.

“Where's he?”

“By the CP, I think,” Hamilton said.

Michael met the Prince walking back to his foxhole. “They're going to fire the DTs,” Michael warned him.

“I heard,” Samuels said. “You know what the chaplain's name is? It's Do-Good, can you believe it? It's spelled D-U-I-good.”

“What's he doing here?” Michael asked.

The Prince shrugged. “Don't know. He just said he thought he ought to be here.” He slipped into the foxhole and squatted down. Mullen's foxhole was just to the right.

Over in the 3rd Platoon area, Sergeant Webb was telling Martin Culpepper and Russell Schumacher to put their helmets on.

“What good do they do?” Schumacher asked.

“Won't stop nothing,” Culpepper grumbled.

“Put 'em on,” Webb said wearily. “Lieutenant Rocamora said they were going to fire the DTs now.”

It was eight thirty and almost dark. The men sat in their foxholes, talking quietly. They were all tired after having had to chop their way up the hill, dig their foxholes and carry the extra heavy load the five-day operation required. After an hour had passed and the DTs had still not been fired, some of the men left their foxholes, stretched out in their sleeping positions and dozed off.

Two other men shared the foxhole with Michael Mullen and Willard Polk. Their nicknames were Cactus and Dead-Eye. Cactus had guard duty first, Polk second, Michael third and Dead-Eye last. Polk, however, wanted to switch with Michael, and Michael said, “Okay, I'll pull guard next after Cactus.”

Later on that night, when Cactus came off duty, Michael moved forward to take his place. Michael sat at the edge of the foxhole, his M-16 across his knees, and swatted the mosquitoes away from his face. He tried wrapping himself in his poncho—as much for protection against the bugs as the heavy dew. The fog, which had descended at dusk into the valley, was now rolling back up the hill. There was a noise to his left, and Michael's hand dropped to the M-16's trigger guard. It was only Leroy Hamilton, shifting in his sleep.

Everybody like Leroy Hamilton. He was a big, strong blond-haired country boy. The men had come to realize he was very brave. Cameron himself on several occasions had watched Hamilton search through dense jungle growths that he knew he would have hesitated entering. Hamilton did it without being asked and did it thoroughly, uncomplainingly and seemingly unmindful of the risks.

When it was time to change guard again, Michael reached back to the sleeping position and awoke Polk. Polk had been sleeping on the right side of the position, so Michael simply took his place. He knelt down in the space vacated by Polk, stretched his poncho beneath him on the ground and lay down. Polk was settling himself into the foxhole when Michael looked over at him and whispered, “Stay awake!”

“Don't you worry none about that,” Polk replied. “Ol' John Wayne's on duty now. Nothing can go wrong.” There was a cruh-
whump!
cruh-
whump!
in the distance, and Polk, startled, whispered, “Hey, Mulligan, what's that?”

“The arty on Four Ten. They must be firing over Delta's position.”

“You think they're under attack?”

“No, probably just their DTs.” Michael yawned. “Maybe it's H&I, harassment and interdiction fire. I don't know.” He yawned again. “It's going to feel good to get some sleep.”

Over to the left someone whispered, “Hey, Prince, it's after midnight! How come they got you pulling guard?”

“The Prince does not pull guard,” Samuels answered. “The Prince protects his friends.”

Polk sat on the edge of the foxhole, straining to see into the darkness. He tried to remember what was out in front of him, the exact location of the nearest bushes and trees. He'd been told to memorize the layout because at night the bushes would seem to move. New men would empty their magazines at nothing whatsoever, and the noise and muzzle flash would give their positions away. Polk sat in the dark wishing to God his guard duty would end.

Culpepper, too, was on guard. He could hear the artillery on Hill 410 firing and was trying to judge its distance by the sound. Rocamora, Culpepper knew, was the best at that. The young artillery officer could tell where the round had impacted within fifty feet. In the jungle, in double and triple canopy cover, that was very, very good. Still, Culpepper told himself, Rocamora had been trained for it.

Culpepper and Polk came off guard a little after two-thirty, just about the same time that Rocamora's radio operator shook Abe Aikins.

Aikins came awake immediately. “Yeah? What is it?”

“Your radio watch.”

“Right,” Aikins said. “Thanks.” He relieved the headquarters section radio operator and climbed into the foxhole. Rocamora's radio operator was in his foxhole a few yards away.

Samuels, hearing Aikins move, saw that it was time for him to be relieved, too. He woke up Leroy Hamilton, who stretched, yawned and said, “Okay, I'm awake.” Hamilton picked up his helmet and M-16, then reached behind himself for his flak jacket. He moved to the foxhole, placed his flak jacket as a cushion beneath him and sat on the rear lip of the foxhole with his legs dangling down into the pit.

Polk had already awakened Dead-Eye. He now squeezed himself between Cactus and Michael Mullen in the sleeping position and stretched out in Dead-Eye's former place.

Culpepper laid his rifle beneath his hammock, watched Schumacher settle into the foxhole and fell asleep.

Samuels, like Culpepper, could not stand the leeches. He had filled sandbags and spread them out as a mattress so he wouldn't touch the ground. He began wrapping himself in his poncho. Starting with his legs, he wound the poncho about them like a mummy's covering and continued up his body to his shoulders. He straightened himself out, lay back and pulled the final bit of poncho over his head so nothing could crawl over his face.

The artillery radio crackled, and the reconnaissance sergeant leaned closer to it. Aikins, in the nearby foxhole, could barely hear what was said. The recon sergeant woke Lieutenant Rocamora. “Sir? They're going to fire our DTs now. Do you want me to wake the men?”

Rocamora looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was a quarter to three. There had already been one false alarm. The DTs were being fired 400 meters out, more than 1,300 feet from the closest man. “Let them sleep,” Rocamora told his sergeant. “You'd better inform the captain, though.”

“I'll do it,” Aikins said.

Captain Cameron, asleep in his flak jacket, wearing both his helmet and glasses, awoke quickly. Aikins explained that the DTs were to be fired. Cameron waved his hand to show he had heard and lay back, still half asleep. “Roger. W.P. Airburst. Fifty meters,” the recon sergeant was saying.

Moments later Cameron heard the white phosphorous marking round chuff overhead. There was a loud, hollow,
Whaing!
and the shell exploded 400 meters southwest of their position 50 feet in the air. The recon sergeant looked over at Rocamora. Rocamora nodded back. The round had exploded exactly where they wanted it. No corrections were needed.

The next round would automatically be the high explosive, the HE.

Lying there in the dark, Cameron heard the HE round coming and for some reason he just
knew
. He could tell. His brain clicked,
That sonuvabitch isn't going to make it!

The pitch was different. It was a strange, flat rumbling noise, the sound of a shell pushing the air in front of it rather than away and over his head. Cameron heard the shell coming, there was an instantaneous awareness. He didn't have time to speak, to shout any warning, to take any evasive action. There was nothing Cameron could do but listen to that terrible, low, flat, terrifying rumbling coming closer and closer and closer until it hit.

There was a sudden blinding light, the bright incandescence of thousands of flashbulbs popping all about, then a sharp, immediate, echoless, explosive CRACK! followed by a hurricane of shrapnel, dirt, stones, tree limbs, loose equipment. Small limbs hit Cameron's head and shoulders, the explosion pushed him into the ground, and he couldn't see. His first thought was,
God, stop them before they fire again!
He knew it had been one of their own rounds. There was no question in his mind whatsoever. “CEASE FIRE!” he shouted to the radio operators. “CEASE FIRE!”

Cameron could hear Rocamora shouting over the artillery radio, and he yelled at Rocamora, “TELL THEM NOT TO FIRE AGAIN!”

Cameron heard people running, could smell the cordite in the air. His eyes began to clear, and he was able to see wisps of smoke in the trees and dust drifting down to the ground.

Aikins heard Cameron and Rocamora shouting and then silence. He didn't feel any pain, but he was dazed and unsure of what had happened, Instinctively he put his hands up to his face and brought them back down to look for blood. His head hurt, but he could not see any blood. He shook his head to clear it.

Samuels, too, had been dazed by the explosion. He felt it had happened directly overhead. Specialist Fourth Class Rodriguez ran by shouting, “Prince! Grab your rifle! We're being overrun!” Samuels sat up, reached for his rifle and instantly knew something was wrong. His hand, brushing his leg to grasp his rifle had come up wet, covered with blood. There was blood all over his fatigue pants, but he couldn't feel any pain. He couldn't feel a thing! Cautiously, Samuels looked down and saw that his left leg was flipped crazily to one side midway down from the knee. There was no way his leg could be lying like that and still be … and still be attached! Rodriguez, too, had stopped suddenly, turned back in midstride to stare in horror at the Prince's leg. And Samuels, seeing confirmed in Rodriguez' expression what he himself had dared not believe, let out a high, keening, animal cry of terrible bewilderment and pain.