The Village (20 page)

As Jarvis had predicted, the RDs felt better about themselves for having stood up to the Marines, who hadn't shown much respect for them since the night Trung was killed and his two companions ran away. Because the RDs had been willing to take the Marines on in a gunfight despite the disparity in fighting skills, the Marines modified their harsh opinion. For the few remaining weeks the RDs were in the village, the Marines worked more closely with them.

When the RDs departed in mid-April, claiming they had once again pacified the Binh Yen Noi hamlet complex, they left behind little evidence of their stay. They had organized no village militia, and if they had infused the villagers with a hatred of the Viet Cong, it did not manifest itself in actions, or even in words spoken publicly. The RDs did leave behind two physical memorials. One was a truck garden, on the edge of which they had solemnly erected a plaque reading: “Anti-Communist Vegetable Garden.” Unfortunately, the garden had not grown, and the pompous sign presided over a bunch of weeds.

The other memorial was the rickety bamboo fence they had insisted the villagers build around the My Hué hamlets. Shortly after the RDs left the village, a dozen Viet Cong paddled across the river, entered My Hué, rousted several villagers out of bed and had them tear down a section of the fence. Through the village gossip system, the PFs at the fort heard of the VC presence, but when a reaction force arrived, the VC had already gone, leaving behind a gap in the bamboo fence.

The PFs gathered some villagers and rebuilt the fence.

A week later the VC gathered some villagers and tore it down.

The PFs rebuilt it.

The Americans thought the struggle over the fence, which had little tactical value, was silly. Trao, who had opposed the original construction of the fence, recognized the absurdity of the contest yet insisted the PFs could not afford to lose since the Viet Cong had decided to make an issue out of it. The PFs had to fight back.

So late one night Trao and Suong slipped into My Hué and pulled up several sections of the fence. In the post holes they placed grenades with the spoon flush to the wood; by repacking the post with dirt, they made sure the grenades would not go off so long as the fence remained standing. But ripping up the fence would be Russian roulette. At dawn they gathered the residents of My Hué and told them what they had done. The message naturally got to the Viet Cong, who were then faced with the choice of forcing some villagers to commit suicide or of leaving the fence alone.

The RD fence received no more attention.

The newcomers of the U.S. Army had their own way of doing things, and the Marines at Fort Page were delighted to see the emphasis which was placed on expanding and improving facilities at nearby Chulai airfield. The Non-Commissioned Officers' Club was soon air-conditioned and stocked with an inexhaustible supply of chilled beer. By April six of the twelve Marines at the fort held the grade of sergeant. The rank did not affect the workings of the unit. Each man knew his job, and the dirty chores, like clearing out the two-holer, were rotated among all. Promotion basically meant more pay and cold drinks at the NCO Club. On slow and stifling afternoons, the sergeants liked to hitchhike dusty rides to the air base.

One evening Colucci and Sergeant Norwood returned to the village to report between burps that the Army had a new weapon, the XM-1332A, an M-16 underslung with a grenade launcher. Aggressive and quick-moving, Norwood was particularly keen to fire the weapon.

“My God,” he said, “with one of those things, I'd be a walking tank. And would you believe it, they carry them in bags to keep the dust out—I kid you not. I don't think they've ever fired. Even chopper guards have them.”

“What do the bags look like?” McGowan asked. “We might make a trade.”

Based on Norwood's description, Missy Top sewed four bags in four days. The following Sunday Norwood and three other sergeants from Fort Page, their battered M-16s in the fresh new bags, strolled up to the large Chulai messhall a little late for the weekly steak dinner. Like skis at a mountain resort, hundreds of rifles rested against the messhall wall. Many were bagged. The sergeants split up and individually peeked and poked around until each found a bag containing one of the new weapons. Then each made his swap, one battered M-16 for one brand-new XM-1332A.

McGowan hoped to use the weapons to find the enemy and to keep a fine tactical edge on the combined unit. The pace of the fighting had slackened. No longer would one out of every two or three patrols engage the enemy; it was becoming more like one out of every thirty or forty.

Some of the older Marines, who had been in the village with Sullivan, were not adapting well to the slower pace of combat. For some, the shooting had made up for the sweat and the danger for the boredom. Flirting with death held an almost sexual excitement: the guerrilla grenade answered by the rifle, the lurking “Hello, Marine!” shouted from the darkness around the fort answered by a “Fuck you, Charlie!,” the nightly blind man's game of hide-and-go-kill played against a skilled enemy whom they felt they knew, the villagers' open awe when they kept going out with prices on their heads and the P31st District Force Company trying for them and the North Vietnamese having come in.

But it was slowly changing. Even without the Americans, the PFs were patrolling frequently in small groups. The enemy did not choose to fight as often. The Marines weren't so special any more. Without a daily dose of danger, some resented the daily toil and drudgery, the night patrol passing through full paddies, then lying sopping wet in rough dirt at four in the morning, the stinging empty wait with the mosquitoes and ants, the diarrhea, the daily clean-up at the fort, filling sandbags, burning waste, standing guard. It was becoming too routine, the pay-off in a shootout occurring less and less. Suong and Thanh admitted the enemy was beginning to avoid the village, but they insisted some Viet Cong were still moving in and out, only they weren't as anxious to fight any more. Suong claimed that the combined patrols of six men were too big and too noisy and that the Marines smelled and so the Viet Cong could avoid them.

McGowan felt that action would pick up due to the new weapons. Their firepower meant that the size of patrols could safely be cut down. With less noise, the chances of encountering the enemy would be better. He decided to test the theory right away.

The evening after they had stolen the new weapons, Norwood and Colucci set out for My Hué as a two-man patrol. In addition to the over-and-under rifles, Colucci was packing two LAWs in case he saw some sampans, while Norwood carried a night-seeing Starlite scope.

“After all this, man,” Norwood said, “we better get something.”

They left at dusk and those at the fort settled down to wait and to monitor the radio. The hours went by dully. Two close-in patrols went out, sniffed around the marketplace and the school yard, and came back in by different routes, having seen or heard nothing unusual. Only the guards and radio operators were up at three when Norwood's excited call came in.

“We see them. We see them,” he whispered. “Ten or twelve of them digging a trench line.”

The Marines and PFs scrambled awake and clustered around the radio, jabbering among themselves.

“Knock it off. Will you guys shut up, dung noi—dung noi,” McGowan shouted. “I can't hear a word he's saying.”

Norwood was trying to describe his location.

“Out the back gate of My Hué 1. On the dunes. You know, near the place where the people take a crap.”

“Norwood, people shit all over the place. You have to do better than that.”

“I can't. What do you want me to do? Get out my map and turn on a light? Come out the back gate and I'll pick you up.”

“O.K. We're on our way. Don't take them on alone.”

Fifteen heavily armed Marines and PFs quickly left the fort, half-striding, half-trotting in their haste. Luong took point and coursed up the main trail. By the time he reached the front of My Hué Number 1, those behind him were strung out and breathing hard. Without slowing down, he jogged toward the back gate, the others coming on fast lest they miss out on the firefight. Fearing an ambush as the patrol was funneled through the gate, Luong veered off the trail and struck out across a paddy dike which connected with the dunes about three hundred yards away from the gate. This was a mix-up in Norwood's instructions, and McGowan, well back in the column, broke from the dike and splashed through the rice shoots in an effort to catch and stop Luong.

He was too late. Crouched behind a scrub-topped dune, Norwood and Colucci heard the splashing and turned to see a line of dark figures running at them. Norwood raised up, yelled “Look out!,” jerked an off-balance burst in the direction of the line and followed Colucci over the top of the dune.

Directly in front of him, Luong had seen a man pop up and was already diving face first off the bank into the water when the rounds zipped by him. At the same time, with the instinct of practiced reaction, rifles all along the line were throwing full magazines against the empty dune. Colucci and Norwood thought they would soon be killed. Then they heard McGowan shouting orders.

“Hey, you dumb bastards, it's us. It's us,” Norwood yelled.

The two forces met at the top of the dune.

“Are they still there?” McGowan asked.

Norwood was scoping out the trench.

“Yeh. Your burst must have pinned them down, too. They're staying in the trench. Let me try a LAW. Then we can mop them up.”

Luong was opposed. So was Suong. They wanted to pinch in on the trench from two sides and not fire until the enemy did so. McGowan agreed, so they split the force and moved on the trench by bounds. Luong, as usual, was out in front and first to reach the trench.

Even then he did not fire. Instead, he stood erect and started screaming at the occupants of the trench. Under his threats seven men and three women slowly climbed out and cowered together. Not one had a weapon. They were villagers, not Viet Cong.

They stammered out their story. Around dusk that evening a squad of Viet Cong had crossed the river and entered My Hué Number 1. They had come straight to the houses of these people at the rear of the hamlet and told them to take their picks and shovels and come with them. They had herded them out into the dunes and pointed to where they wanted the trench dug. They did not say why. Two guards had stayed with them. They had almost finished when suddenly firing started. The guards had run away and they had hidden in the trench.

Suong told the villagers to go home. The CAP force headed back to the fort, Luong and Norwood kidding each other, McGowan and Suong smiling in bemused relief.

 

Weapons and violence were part of these young men. Their hardened attitudes toward physical danger and death were reflected in their humor, sometimes tastelessly. To them, comedy could be tragedy avoided; it could also be danger faked.

One day a Marine took a grenade, removed the firing mechanism and screwed back on the pull pin and release lever. For a while he horsed around with the other Marines in the fort, throwing the defanged grenade back and forth like a baseball. McGowan watched them and said nothing.

Then the Marine saw Luong approaching. After winking at the others, he staggered out of the fort as if drunk. Weaving along, he threw his arms askew and Luong, grinning tolerantly, held him up. Then the Marine dangled the grenade. When Luong reached to take it away from him, he pulled the pin and threw it straight up in the air.

In an instant, Luong had dropped his rifle, thrown the Marine flat, spun around, caught the grenade and in the same motion flipped it underhand into the paddies while going flat himself. Five seconds went by and nothing happened. Then the Marine started laughing, followed tentatively by the Americans and the PFs in the fort. Luong stood up, looked at the Marine and hit him full in the mouth. The American went down and Luong stormed into a silent fort. He strode up to McGowan and just stood there looking at him as if to say: How can you call yourself a leader and let one of your men do something that stupid?

McGowan apologized.

But it might be that bad luck and bad judgment run in streaks, for McGowan shortly compounded his embarrassment by a more serious error. Frequently the unit did not report weapons captured during a firefight, a dodge started by O'Rourke in an effort to ensure that the men could keep deserved war trophies. Subsequently a change in regulations permitted soldiers to keep bolt-action rifles but not automatic weapons. Having captured several of the latter, the unit kept them hidden at the fort as backup weapons. A few days after the grenade incident, McGowan was sitting at the sturdy wooden dinner table cleaning an unloaded enemy submachine gun. Alfano was standing in front of the sergeant, chatting. In answer to a question, McGowan raised his head and brought up the barrel of the gun. As he did so, the bolt slammed home and the weapon fired.

The bullet just missed Alfano's right eye.

For a few seconds neither man moved. Then McGowan handed Alfano the gun.

“Here,” he said, “you shoot me.”

Short of an earthquake, McGowan did not think things could go any worse than they had for the past few weeks, so he allowed the two-man rover patrolling with the special rifles to continue, although only the best tacticians could participate. The patrol rotated among five Americans and five Vietnamese. Without action the novelty soon wore off and the rovers became just another type of patrol.

About two weeks after the rovers' initial misadventure, Norwood again drew the duty, with a PF named Nguyen Thi Tri as his partner. Again Norwood headed for the dunes behind My Hué, leaving the fort after midnight amid the kidding of the guard and radio operator. It took Norwood and Tri over two hours to cover two map kilometers, Norwood being edgy about the route and moving slowly. The back stretch of the village seemed quiet enough, however, and after lying in a likely ambush spot for an hour, the two headed home. They were stiff from the wait and their sweaty clothes were chilly, so coming in they moved along at a brisk pace, Norwood's uneasiness having been dispelled by the dull, familiar routine of another patrol without contact.

Despite their haste, the sand absorbed their footfalls, so they were midway across the dunes when a figure loomed up right in front of Norwood. Norwood fired in a frenzy. The figure fell, Norwood leaping on top of him with Tri a step behind. Five other men were lying in a row. Norwood pivoted to gun them.

“No shoot, no shoot,” Tri yelled.

He had had a second to look while Norwood was moving. The ambushers were Americans.

“Man, you almost killed me,” yelled the man whom Norwood had shot. “Look what you done to my rifle.”

The man, an Army staff sergeant in charge of an ambush team from a nearby rifle company, held out an M-16 with a stock smashed by bullets. His team had been assigned an ambush position two miles to the north, but he had not felt like walking that far. When the patrol was halfway across the dunes, the sergeant had radioed his company that he was in the assigned position. Then he had his men flop down in the soft, empty sand, set out claymore mines to their front and rear, and go to sleep, rotating one man awake. At three, it was the sergeant's turn to guard the ambush and, to fight off drowsiness, he had stood up to stretch just as Norwood walked by.

On two rover patrols in less than a month Norwood had almost killed or been killed by his own, and he was too shaken to talk coherently. Tri used the ambushers' radio to call the fort. McGowan and Suong were awakened and ran to the spot, guided in by Tri's hand flare.

Upon seeing McGowan, the Army sergeant started to scream at Norwood, who was still in a state of shock.

“That asshole almost blew me away,” he yelled. “What sort of kooks do you have in your outfit anyway?”