Run Between the Raindrops (18 page)

It’s that yellow plastic flower that Steve stuck in my helmet. A round finally clipped the stalk and robbed Gook Gunner of his target designator. He’s been watching that flower bobbing along behind the wall like a little duck in a shooting gallery. A giggling fit takes me for a few seconds while I dig this guy’s determination. He tracked me all the way and actually hit a quarter-inch piece of plastic tubing with a half-inch slug from a heavy machinegun at God knows what range. That’s one happy accident. Another is that I survived it.
Code of the Grunt
: Give the gook his due. He’s good at what he does. Either you understand that and never forget it or you deserve to die.

Sector Sweeps

There’s frenzied activity everywhere along the streets that cut through the previously populated neighborhoods inside the Citadel walls. Platoons are advancing toward what a lieutenant tells us is Phase Line Green. It’s the morning objective for Delta Company, a toehold—a purchase to begin the assault on the NVA scattered before us in structures and surrounding us on two sides by bunkered positions atop the walls. Senior officers running the show are squinting up at those walls. The expression on their faces tells me they don’t think much of the situation. Staring at the Citadel from across the river was one thing. It’s a whole other thing standing in the shadows of those looming walls. There’s some planning, plotting, and a lot of head-shaking, but in the end it will be climb the walls and kill the gooks. Nothing more subtle or sophisticated will do.

Delta’s Company Gunnery Sergeant has been tub-thumping all morning; trying to inject some warrior spirit—or at least a little enthusiasm—into his grunts. This ain’t so bad, Marines. We get paid to do this shit. Keep the pace. Haul ass up there. Don’t lose your momentum. The grunts don’t seem to be buying it as they begin to probe cautiously forward through blocks of houses in the direction of a gate tower midway along the eastern wall of the Citadel. It’s a long way between here and there through blocks of buildings, most of which are likely occupied by enemy shooters who have been playing us like a banjo as we push in one direction and then in another. My sympathies lie with the over-cautious riflemen, but the Gunny’s got a point. No use trying to avoid the bottom line. The noose is tightening. The NVA will have to make a determined stand somewhere and it hardly matters whether it’s sooner or later.

We make a hard right turn and pause behind first platoon’s point squad to take cover in a ramshackle house on one corner of an intersection. Lead fireteams are moving in four directions along the streets probing for resistance. From a ground floor window, I can see a long stretch of stone wall and a barricaded gate. Up on those walls, 75-meters wide in some places, the NVA have bunkers dug deep into the earthen fill between the interior and exterior faces. Gunny crouches next to me and sweeps the walls with field glasses. “I've seen some shit in seventeen years, but this here is different. In Korea we mostly took the high ground and the gooks were always trying to take it back. Looks like it’s gonna be vicey-versy this time.” He looks at me with a grim expression that asks what I think.

“Looks like something out of a low-budget sword and sandal movie, Gunny.” As we stare, a Navy F-8 Crusader makes a low strafing pass parallel to the wall up ahead. We can see expended shell casings falling in a twinkling shower as the jet powers off into the low cloud cover. “Maybe the air strikes will take ’em all out.”

The Gunny sniffs and stuffs a wad of Redman into his cheek. “Don’t hold yer breath on that score. Air strikes hurt ’em but they don’t kill ’em all. You can bet yer ass we’re gonna be up there clearing bunkers most ricky-tick.” He grips my shoulder and then trundles off shouting for a radio and reports from the point.

Watching more air strikes go in over stretches of the southern and eastern walls, I’m contemplating weirdness like scaling ladders, boiling oil, and arbalests when the word comes for Delta to move. No surprises here: Spread out on line, orient toward the tower gate up ahead, and sweep through until we get where we’re going. Two helicopters clatter overhead as we start the push and it occurs to me that there will be a few of them landing back at the ARVN compound before long. A smart guy might be able to wangle a way out of this—but that’s just a fleeting thought. Do something chickenshit like that on any pretext, justifiable or not, and I might live but for the rest of my life I’d regret it. If there has ever been a defining moment in my short and undistinguished existence, this is probably it. Best take the inevitable chances; at least roll the dice before you crap out.

Steve is in an alley shrugging into a new flak jacket. His old one is crumpled on a pile of bricks and full of shrapnel holes. He nods and points toward the gate at the end of the street. “We go as soon as the Navy takes a few shots.” We hear the first rounds roaring overhead with the odd Doppler shuffle of passing naval gunfire. Rounds crack into the walls up ahead and there are some desultory cheers as the objective is obscured by deceptive showers of raw earth and rock shards. Bombers and big guns are just tickets to this game. Serious play begins when you let the grunts out of the locker room.

Delta squads are clearing houses to the right and left of the main boulevard leading up to the wall in this sector. Short, sharp firefights crackle and spit as the grunts encounter gooks in screening positions. The assault grinds steadily on toward that gate and a couple of rubble-strewn access ramps provided by the heavy stuff that precedes our advance. So far there has been only desultory fire from the walls. The main impediment has been NVA firing and falling back from buildings on the flanks.

The grunts on the approach keep eyeing those wall sections every time they get a chance to see down the street that guides their advance. Those walls will be the tough nut and no one seems to have a good handle on how many NVA we are facing along this axis of advance. The math is both simple and uncomfortable. In the combat game, attacker needs three to one—better five to one—in manpower advantage. Play those numbers out and you see the problem facing Delta Company and the rest of the battalion. Percentages say three to five attacking grunts will die for every defending gook they kill. And the gooks dug in along those walls are playing it smart, waiting for targets to enter clear fields of fire as the Marines inevitably must.

A serious fight develops on Delta Company’s left flank where tanks have been moving in support of the advance. The CO orders a halt while he goes over to assess the situation. Steve lopes off in that direction while I reach for a smoke and then pass the pack among a clutch of grunts carrying 3.5-inch rocket launchers. The Delta Skipper has been keeping these guys in reserve and close at hand for bunker-busting duties once we get closer to the walls. Rocket Gunner wants to know what I know. Sorry, pal, but I’m a little out of touch with higher headquarters. No fucking idea when we will go, where we will go, or what will happen when we do. Don’t let this correspondent thing mislead you. I’m along for the ride just like you are on this one.

Rocket Gunner gives up on me and watches Patriot, one of his ammo humpers, produce a small American flag he intends to raise somewhere up on those walls. Patriot says he’ll need some help when the time comes as he wants to recreate the celebrated flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Buddy Grunt promises to muster a crew if I promise to shoot a picture of it. He asks about my camera and I jerk a thumb at the pack on my pack. No problem. You get that flag up and I’ll make you famous. He seems dubious and wants to know if AP Reporter and Esquire Dude will be there.

Delta Company Gunny bursts their bubble with a bigger American flag he’s been carrying around stuffed inside his flak jacket. When the flag goes up over those walls, he says, it’s going to be this one. Delta Gunny lost a bet with his buddy Hotel Gunny but he stands to recoup if he gets his own flag up over the Citadel. He launches into a description of the first flag-raising on the southside of Hue that caused such a shit-storm among the brass-hats in Saigon who thought the appropriate thing for the Hotel 2/5 Marines to do once they captured the Thua Thien Provincial Headquarters was raise the South Vietnamese flag. Hotel Gunny was having no part of any such cheap shit and he said so for the record. If the brass wanted a South Vietnamese flag raised then, by God, they could round up some of the chicken-shit ARVN to take the Provincial Headquarters.

Delta Gunny gets some of the story wrong but who cares? Its old news by now and some of the Marines we saw raising that first flag are probably already dead anyway. It happened relatively early in the southside fighting just about the time the first batch of civilian correspondents were turned loose in the city. We escorted a couple of them into the action and the resulting front-page photo appeared in nearly all the stateside dailies showing the Horrible Hogs of Hotel Company—led by their cigar-chewing Gunny—hauling an American flag up a bullet-riddled flagpole. There were accompanying shots of the Gunny and his guys holding up a ratty, bullet-riddled NLF flag that they’d pulled down in the midst of the battle. Naturally, the stories all made some reference to the iconic Iwo Jima incident and the Hotel 2/5 flag-raisers became celebrities throughout the fighting 1
^st
Marine Division.

There it is. Twenty years between Iwo Jima and Hue City. Twenty years waiting for another shot at an immortal moment and another flag-raising over another enemy bastion. That’s a lot of tradition but not much progress. Lots of people die on the way to those immortal moments. That aspect never changes and never seems to dampen enthusiasm for being part of it. If you’ve got nothing better to do—and we didn’t at that moment waiting for word to attack—go figure.

Patriot tucks the upstaged flag into his pack and pulls out a ratty copy of the Fairhope, Alabama weekly paper. His boot camp graduation photo is on page two. The fresh-faced kid in dress blues, smiling grimly with a determined jut to his jaw, is proclaimed by the photo caption to be the very same rumpled, unshaven, bleary-eyed infantryman holding the newspaper for me to examine. A three-paragraph blurb in the bottom right corner of the page catches my eye. It’s a little feel-good piece about a grunt rescuing a puppy from a burning ville, a vignette Steve wrote when we were operating up on the DMZ. It carries his byline so I borrow the paper to let him bask in the glory of being published in the Fairhope Fish Wrapper. We meet halfway between the Delta CP and the fight on the left flank which has been decided in Delta’s favor by a light section of tanks. The CO is holding where he is while he sends his first platoon on an alternate mission. This one will delay the inevitable push against the walls so we decide to tag along with them.

Patrols have spotted a company-sized NVA unit to the east of us and bunkered up inside an electrical power generating station. The gooks have cut off all power to the area and the GVN wants that fixed in a hurry. The priority, given the empty houses and lack of civilian residents we’ve encountered so far escapes me, but there it is. Maybe the ARVN trapped inside the Citadel lodged a complaint about cold tea and rice cakes. Who knows? Who cares at this point? Delta Company has the mission to clear that power station so someone who knows how can get the juice flowing.

Squatty Staff Sergeant is briefing three squads of grunts set to embark on the mission. A couple of worried-looking Vietnamese civilians are smoking nervously in the background. Staff Sergeant identifies them as technicians who will re-start the generating equipment if the NVA haven’t fucked it up beyond salvage. He spreads a sketch showing the interior of the Citadel and jabs at it with a grimy finger.

“We move parallel to the river in this direction until we get to the generating station. We got one tank that will follow in trace. One Alpha is base of fire all along here on this little knoll. They got the M-60. Anything moving around that building, you blow it away. One Bravo, you guys are the assault element. When Alpha opens up, you go straight in through the gate and pop CS into the windows. Gunny’s got the gas grenades for you. One Charlie, you’re back here around the rear entrance. The gas ought to drive ’em right into your fire when they boogie out of the compound. Squad Leaders make sure everybody’s got a mask. Check ’em personally.” He jerks a thumb in the direction of the Vietnamese. “Once we got control, we bring in these two dudes and stand by while they get the power back on. Anybody got questions? We move in one-five mikes.”

Squatty Staff Sergeant has no problem with a couple of strap-hangers as he eyes my newly acquired rifle and Steve’s carbine. He’ll take all the firepower he can get and a little publicity for his platoon wouldn’t hurt either. We fall in with his unit heading away from the walls and perpendicular to Delta’s axis of advance. It feels like a reprieve, a change for the better; like what I felt yesterday when I pitched the macho Thompson sub-gun into the Perfume River and picked up a medevac’s rifle. Change in conditions, any change no matter how small—a new flak jacket, a fresh uniform or a different weapon—seemed welcome and reassuring. As long as things could change you might survive, at least until the next change.

The power generating station is a long, low blockhouse affair about three blocks away from where we started and situated near a corner of the Citadel walls. The tank creaks and clanks into a hull-down overwatch position as Staff Sergeant confers with Corporal Tank Commander. No fire from the 90mm unless he designates a target. The tank will add machinegun support to the base of fire. Three rifle squads scramble to their designated areas as we eye the power station about 75 meters to our direct front. It looks deserted, but the recon guys said there was a bunch of gooks in there spread out between the fence and the main generator building. The gate to the compound hangs open on its hinges and Staff Sergeant doesn’t like the look of that. He changes orders for the assault squad and sends them around to the back with the cut-off squad.

When the radio squawks to let Staff Sergeant know his guys at the rear of the power station are in place, he signals for the base of fire. The tank opens up followed immediately by the riflemen and machinegunners in One Alpha. We add our fire from a position next to a handy Blooper Man who is pumping HE rounds over the fence at a rapid rate. The assault squad must be moving, but we can’t see them yet. We can see a bunch of muzzle flash winking back at us from the windows on this side of the main generator building. Heavy machinegun atop the tank sweeps rounds across the face of the building and some of the muzzle flashes disappear just about the time we see white smoke roiling out the facing windows. There’s the gas. Squatty yells for everyone to don and clear as we jam the cloying rubber gas masks over our heads.