Run Between the Raindrops (9 page)

Code of The Grunt
. Don’t expect anything because you aren’t going to get it. The only ration that won’t be short is the ration of shit. Like the buttplate of a rifle, you are fairly insignificant and will get banged around at every turn.

Watching Steve follow the bitching grunts up the stairs, I retrieve the cash bundles, carry them to the window and toss them out into the drizzle. Once the Company Gunny finishes his search, they’ll be easy to retrieve and tuck away in my pack.

Topside, I clear the pat-down and wander outside the building while Steve compiles names and notes for a story about brave Marines rescuing GVN resources from the clutches of the greedy communist enemy. By the time I get back inside with a significantly heavier pack, he’s bitching about fortunes lost and the down payment he could have made on that little colonial in Tacoma.

“My man, you have once again underestimated my cunning and guile. While that lieutenant was brow-beating his grunts, did you happen to notice the tall, skinny guy standing quietly at the back of the vault? That fuckin’ guy was a looter. He’ll probably be court-martialed and shot. Hopefully, not before he’s able to split a significant bundle of cash with his best buddy.”

There are questions and quibbles but they’ll have to wait. Hotel Company is ordered to clear an avenue running parallel to the Perfume River which divides the city north and south. Hotel Six is going to lead the assault personally despite the sound advice of his Company Gunny. The CO is a tall, good-looking, tow-headed captain and very popular with his grunts. In a briefing in the courtyard of the Treasury Building, Hotel Six indicates a company of ARVN is holding against an NVA assault on an armory near the center of the city around the Le Lai Military Camp. MACV is anxious to reinforce them before the NVA get their hands on a large stockpile of weapons and ammo in the camp’s armory. The captain says it’s a necessary mission. The armory contains mostly surplus U.S. weapons of the WW II and Korean eras, but he isn’t about to let them fall into enemy hands. AKs and B-40s are bad enough and he doesn’t want his Marines facing M-1 rifles, BARs, and Thompson submachine guns to boot.

Le Lai Military Camp

Hotel fans out rapidly on both sides of the street, moving swiftly toward the objective. Six says it isn’t more than three blocks away to the east. Right flank platoon runs as company guide using a parallel back street as a reference to keep everyone headed in the right direction. It’s a dicey move and Hotel Six doesn’t like having most of his troops out of his sight most of the time as he trudges along like a gypsy chieftain leading only a small caravan of radio operators and gun guards.

Steve argues for sticking close to the center so we’ll be available to move in the direction of any contact, but I want to go with the grunts wandering through the houses on the left. You could tell the residents had split in a hurry and I want a look at whatever they left behind. There’s a ghoulish attraction about roaming unfettered and uninvited around someone else’s house and when it’s a Vietnamese house full of alien artifacts, the pull is irresistible. Who knows? We might something to take an edge off the after-action jitters pulsing in my belly.

Third platoon slashes and crashes through a high-tone neighborhood, in the front door and out the back, keeping an eye on Hotel Six and trying to maintain direction. We dodge along behind them, taking a little time to search cabinets and cupboards. In less than a block, I’ve got a bottle of Johnny Walker in my pack padded by the purloined cash plus and an ornate flask of some local busthead in my pocket.

Steve is on my right as we emerge from one house onto a breezy-looking veranda that rambles into a lush garden. The evil crack of a near miss drives both us to ground as the platoon on our right commences a fierce firefight. The shooter to our front sends two more close rounds our way and I speculate he’s using an SKS carbine. We need to move or get blown away, simple as that and not much choice about direction.

Four Marines are crouched behind a fence at the end of the garden and burning ammo in four different directions. A lanky corporal with tattoos over practically every inch of exposed skin jumps up from behind the fence and points at the ground floor window of a building across the street. He’s screaming for fire on that point when his head explodes like a water balloon full of blood. His buddies freeze, brushing at gore on their flak-jackets and ducking incoming rounds from the shooter across the street.

Ricochets scream off the wall at our rear and something smacks me hard on the bridge of my nose. My eyes are watering and there is the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. Steve is swabbing at my nose with a towel and pressing me down behind the fence out of the line of fire. .

“How bad is it?”

“Looks like a piece of rock or something hit you in the nose. Might be broken but you’re definitely gonna live.”

“Feels like somebody smacked me in the snot-locker with a fucking crowbar.”

“Might improve your looks. Meanwhile, we’re gonna have to do something about that asshole across the street.” He points at the grunts now huddled around their dead squad leader. “Those guys don’t seem to be highly motivated.”

“Maybe we can get over there and pop a frag in his ass—like we did that time out on Go Noi Island.”

“It’s either that or lay chilly and hope for help to come.” Steve points toward the sound of the firefight on our right flank. “That ain’t gonna be anytime soon.”

“Let’s try it. It won’t be long before he calls up some buddies to shoot fish in a barrel.”

A Corpsman is dragging the tattooed corpse to the rear as we snake up toward the leaderless grunts and borrow two frag grenades. “Listen…” I grab the nearest man by the shoulder and shake him. “We’re gonna go get that bastard across the street. He’s in the window down low to the left of that doorway. See it?”

The grunt follows my pointing finger with his eyes and nods. Two more riflemen peek over the fence to scope the target. “You dudes need to fire cover for us when we move. Just pour it on that window and when you see us in position, shift your fire. You understand that?”

“Who the fuck are you guys?” A grunt on the firing line stares open-mouthed at my bloody nose. “Don’t matter. You just need to do what I told you. We’ll take care of the rest. Got it?” The grunts just shrug. It’s our funeral.

When they cut loose, we make a looping left, cross the street and head for the shooter’s building. Steve has one of the grenades and I’m carrying the other as we charge with our heads down and close rounds snapping by our ears. We reach the side of the building and slither along until we’re on both sides of the sniper’s window. Every once in a while he sticks the muzzle through it and fires a few rounds. Steve waves desperately for the grunts to shift their fire and then leans his rifle up against the wall of the building to straighten the pin on his grenade. I’ve already done mine. It’s a familiar drill that requires precise timing and he’s got the best position.

He nods, pulls the pin on his grenade and lets the safety lever fly. He counts to three and then heaves the frag into the window. Immediately after he throws the first one, I’ve got the second one cooking and I pass it to him with an easy underhanded toss. He snatches it and the second frag detonates almost immediately after the first one. No telling what happened for sure but the little drill insures no gook will be able to run down a grenade and toss it back at us.

Inside the building, following our rifle muzzles, we sprint down a corridor and duck into the room where we judge the sniper must be. Near the window overlooking the street is a folding screen that’s perforated like a sieve by grenade shrapnel. The gook sniper is crumpled behind the screen. The back of his dark green uniform is shredded and stained black with blood.

“Damn, that was slick!” An admiring clutch of grunts has moved in behind us and Steve is grinning at them. I am nerve-jangled and in no mood for after-action kudos. “Please don’t let this become a habit, people. We are just along for the ride.”

A short while later, we are huddled in another building near the ARVN compound waiting for the officers to decide how to attack it. More precisely, they are trying to decide how to attack the NVA who are attacking the Le Lai Military Camp. Gunfire from the other end of the street is deafening, hasn’t slacked for the past ten minutes, so somebody is in the fight. It sounds like the ARVN must be firing every weapon they have stacked in that armory. The old World War II Garands and BARs are clearly audible above the crack of AKs and the spang of M-16s.

Through a window we can see the compound in the near distance. The NVA have laid siege to the place, shooting from various covered positions at the ARVN who are firing back from behind high walls and a big iron gate. I can’t see any approach route except one leading right up the center of a street fronting our look-out. This will not be pretty.

“Ah think the ARVN have just vacated their mothahfuckin’ position.” A black Marine near my shoulder points toward the armory gate where an M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier roars into the street, tracks clattering and throwing cobblestones. South Vietnamese soldiers are falling off the vehicle as it grinds away from the camp and turns in our direction with NVA rounds pinging off the armor.

The APC churns past careening from one side of the street to the other and shedding topside riders like a rodeo bronc. We see the flash of frightened eyes beneath helmets as tiny ARVN soldiers hang on like desperate leeches. We are left with no friendlies inside the camp as the vehicle disappears leaving a cloud of pungent diesel exhaust in its wake.

Squad leaders yell for their Marines to move up both sides of the street. We pass Hotel Six and his radio operators crouched in a doorway waving the hustling infantry forward and yelling for speed. “Did you see the fucking ARVN?” The CO is shouting at his Company Gunny. “We need to get some of our people in there before the NVA turn the place into The Alamo.”

There is a crescendo of firing on the left in a short block of houses. One of the Hotel Company platoons is already in contact with the NVA. If they hold them, the rest of us might have time to make the gate. It’s a footrace.

As sporadic fire pings off the walls near the front gate, a squad of Marines on the right finds a second, sandbagged and barricaded entrance and rips open a passageway. Grunts pour through it to take firing positions along the inside of the walls. There is very little return fire from inside the compound. Wherever the NVA are, they have not managed to breech the Le Lai compound.

Hotel Six is getting a radio update from battalion as he and his CP group move up and into the camp complex. He nods at me and says he’s had some good news. As I fumble for a notebook, the captain says he’s just heard reinforcements are pouring into the city from Phu Bai. All of 2/5 is now in Hue along with two companies from 1
^st
Marines. The Great Big Battle of Hue City is morphing into a major engagement and the Six says we can expect a gaggle of civilian correspondents any time now.

There is a clear view across the Perfume River from the walls of the camp. The NVA flag is still flying over the Citadel on the north side and it doesn’t look like anyone but the bad guys is moving over there. As we watch that irritating blue, red, and yellow North Vietnamese flag snapping above the walls in the afternoon breeze, it begins to rain hard.

We climb down from a guard tower and find Hotel Six in a talkative mood. Between his serious briefing and snide comments from the Company Gunny, we get a feel for what’s happening elsewhere in Hue. The Marine command group, now firmly ensconced in Army territory behind the walls of the MACV Compound, is pleased that Hotel Company kept the NVA at bay in this sector. Hotel is due to attack westward before nightfall. There are scattered reports of 1
^st
ARVN Division units regrouping and beginning to move into the city. There are also reportedly Vietnamese Rangers and Marines inbound and ready to make the assault on the northside as soon as we get the south side cleaned up to everyone’s satisfaction. There is still a policy in place that precludes air strikes, artillery, or naval gunfire into the city, but Hotel Six thinks that might be modified now that some South Vietnamese blood is bound to be spilled.

Elsewhere in the Le Lai camp, Hotel Marines are rearming themselves from the huge weapons inventory in the ARVN armory, turning themselves into John Wayne clones. Grinning Marines are sporting vintage Thompson submachine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles, and M-2 carbines. This is the good shit, cool pillage, and macho weaponry of movie fame. It’s all so much more dashing than the Matty Mattel, jam-prone, plastic-banana M-16s the Army foisted off on the Marines who resisted giving up their reliable, high-power M-14s kicking and screaming. Thompsons are a particular prize. Most of the kids in Hotel grew up on movies in which celluloid Marines used the venerable Tommy Gun to blast Japs in the South Pacific.

I am not immune and pick up one of the last Thompson’s left inside the armory along with three 30-round magazines and as much .45 ammo as I can stuff in my pockets. When I find Steve, he grins at my macho firepower but doesn’t have much to say. What keeps him from giving me the needle is probably the M-2 carbine slung over shoulder and a pouch full of 30-round banana magazines hooked to his gear. It’s an image thing, and we wordlessly trade cameras to snap each other’s picture posing with the salty weapons cocked on a hip.

Later we sit in a corner under the eaves of a roof, watching the rain puddle in the armory compound and observing Hotel Company grunts getting ready to move at dusk. They are raggedy-assed Marines in baggy rain suits, shredded flak jackets and dented helmets. Many of the recently rearmed look like World War II Leathernecks just back from assaulting some coral island. Their cheeks and chins are covered with three-day stubble. Most have battle dressings wrapped around one minor wound or another. They are dead beat from almost no sleep in the past three days, but there’s enough energy left to bitch. There always is and always will be.