The Village (9 page)

“I don't believe it,” O'Rourke said. “How dumb does he think we are? He likes to sleep in the rain and he can't hear me standing right above him, right? Garcia, talk to him.”

“What'll I say?”

“Ask him what he's doing here.”

“He'll say he's sleeping.”

Fielder and Sullivan chuckled.

“Every time we pick up some villager by ourselves we screw up, Lieutenant,” Sullivan said. “The PFs or Thanh can do it, but we just end up pissing off some innocent farmer.”

So they left the supposedly sleeping man and turned to watching the river, setting a simple ambush, with O'Rourke and Sullivan sitting under the tree peering at the water, Riley on one flank and Garcia on the other. Having the watch to the rear, Fielder looked for a spot from which to cover the ambush and noticed that in the center of the clearing lay a large log. Against this he snuggled, lying on his stomach in the mud, his body hidden in the log's shadow, his automatic rifle on its bipod pointing across the clearing at the trail they had just come down.

For an hour the five held their positions without stirring. A slight wind came up, just enough to push wavelets against the bank and smack spray on Sullivan and O'Rourke, just enough to rustle the bushes and blow odd smatterings of water off the leaves, just enough to push the wet clothes coldly against the bodies of the patrollers and keep them shivering, just enough to blow away the mosquitoes and gnats, and for that the Marines were grateful. They would rather be chilled than eaten. The cold also drove off sleep, and O'Rourke sensed they could hold the ambush until dawn if their shivering did not become too acute.

At a little past one in the morning, all the patrollers became aware of a shift in the night sounds. Since the rain, the frogs in the paddies had been contentedly croaking, here and there, off and on, following no set pattern. Then the croaking changed to complaining, in a swelling chorus of indignation that started from the south and, to the listeners, seemed to travel up the main trail to the marketplace, where it petered out.

Hearing the frogs, Fielder listened harder, knowing O'Rourke was counting on him to give first alarm from the rear. For several minutes nothing untoward entered his straining consciousness. Then he heard a sound unmistakably human.

Slurp.

His safety was off and his cheek along the rifle stock and he waited. The others could not move. Riley tried and came the closest to swiveling around, but he couldn't pull his rifle barrel through the foliage without telltale scratching sounds. Garcia was too far distant on the other flank to hear the footfall. Sullivan and O'Rourke heard it, and in their exposed position all they could do was slide slowly down the trunk of the tree and leave it to Fielder to take the shot.

Fielder was trying, but several minutes had passed since he had heard the foot in the mud. The noise had not been repeated. The enemy scout seemed to have stopped moving. Fielder knew better than to let himself believe that. So he reasoned the man had left the trail for firmer ground and was working his way forward among the houses. Directly in front of Fielder, on the side of the clearing, stood a thatched house whose small front yard was paved with flat flint rocks and enclosed by a patch of brambles trimmed like a hedge. If the scout was from the area, Fielder felt he would make for that yard, since from there he could scan potential ambush points along the river without making noise each time he shifted his position.

A few minutes later Fielder thought he heard branches rustling along the side of the house. He could not be sure it was not the wind. But he was sure of what he no longer heard, and that was voices from the house. Peering up at the brambles from across twenty feet, he thought he saw for a second a blob against the skyline. He waited, unsure, unwilling to fire prematurely and give away his position. He heard a twig break. Still, he hesitated. But he was primed, his body taut, ears attuned, finger resting lightly on the trigger, waiting, waiting for the next sound to fix the scout. A bush rustled as its branches were slightly parted.

Fielder fired, the strong recoil pounding the butt into his shoulder while he kept squeezing the trigger, trying to pick up the line of tracers and bring the bullets on target.

“There he goes!” yelled Riley.

A blur of black by the corner of the house, a brief, frenzied snapping and bending of bushes, and the enemy scout was gone.

“Damnit all to hell,” yelled Fielder.

He had fired twenty bullets in one excited burst, yet missed because he had used a magazine which contained no tracers. Unable to see his fire, he had failed to lead properly when the scout ducked around the corner of the house.

“You had good position, too,” O'Rourke chided him. “Now they know exactly where we are. Rainstorm or not, they followed us here. That means they think they can take us. So it's not just a few guerrillas out there.”

“What'll we do?” Garcia asked.

“Nothing. Let them make the first move,” O'Rourke replied. “If we don't try to bug out of here, they have to come in after us. We'll play it by ear when they do. In the meantime, hold tight and listen up.”

The Marines lay down in a small semicircle with their backs to the river and waited. Fifteen minutes, twenty, thirty, forty. One hour.

“Listen,” Riley hissed, “the frogs.”

The frogs were croaking that a force was walking south along the main trail. At a distance of about two hundred yards, the croaking drew abreast of the patrollers' position, then drifted by to the left before petering out. Several minutes later, two carbine shots rang out on their left, followed by two answering shots from the market off to their right. Then, simultaneously, from both directions the frogs started complaining.

“They've got us boxed and now they're moving in,” Sullivan said.

Without a radio, the patrol was to use a red hand flare to signal for help. But in the heavy overcast it would not be seen by the fort. And once heavy firing broke out, illumination flares would be a mixed blessing if the patrollers were caught on the open river bank.

“We better get the hell out of here,” O'Rourke said. “We'll go up the middle.”

“Huh?”

“They're moving in from our flanks. The one place that scout has told them to avoid is the trail right out in front, because that's where he almost got blasted. As they come in, we go out that trail.”

“What if that's what they're trying to get us to do?”

“Look, we're going across open paddies. If you were a Cong commander, would you figure us for the paddy route, or that we'd try to stay in this cover along the bank? And let me tell you, if they have enough troops to cover the left, the right and the front, we've had it anyways.”

O'Rourke stood up and started down the dark trail they had come in, the others following. Slurp, slurp. Only now the frog cries were getting closer and the noise of their mud passage did not sound as acute. They moved swiftly back to Missy Top's house and in a tight bunch crouched together in its shadow. Between them and the main trail back to the fort stretched the open paddy. They waited until the croaking was behind them, the noise drifting steadily closer to their old position at the coconut tree.

“O.K.,” O'Rourke whispered. “Let's get across. Riley and I will go first. Once we're off the dike, the rest of you follow. Get your ass in gear going across. There's no place you can hide out there if we're spotted.”

O'Rourke went first. He started from a runner's crouch, hit the dike at a fast clip, and scampered across with the jerky motions of a drunk trying to walk a straight line. Riley tried to follow the act at the same pace and midway over slipped in the slickness of the mud and splashed bottom first into the paddy. The unmistakable sound made the waiting patrollers wince, but Riley was already scrambling up the dike and running on. Then Garcia, Fielder and Sullivan were crouching and running, each expecting at any moment the bullets to snap at them, none quite believing it when one after another they tumbled safely off the dike and into the ditch by the main trail.

“We did it,” gasped Fielder. “You called it right, Lieutenant.”

A few moments later rain started falling again, and in the downpour the patrollers walked back to the fort unmolested, leaving the enemy force to beat the bushes.

Early the next day Thanh and his police were at the marketplace trying to gather information on the enemy force which had prowled the hamlet the previous night. At the fort, Sullivan woke O'Rourke and asked him if he wished to go back to the spot where they had seen the man supposedly sleeping in the wet hay. Sullivan had something to show the lieutenant.

When they arrived, the old lady who owned the house where they had seen the sleeping man came out to meet them, followed by several shy children. She greeted Sullivan warmly but laughed off his questions about the sleeper. After a while he gave up asking.

“Maybe she just locked her old man out for drinking too much. Damned if I can get a straight answer out of her,” Sullivan said. “Well, it's time for some refreshment anyways.”

He pointed up the tree. She smiled and spoke to one of the barefoot boys, who half-shinnied, half-walked a full forty feet up the thick tree trunk to its crowned top, where he hacked loose and pitched down a light-brown coconut, then slid easily back to earth.

“Not bad climbing for a ten-year-old, huh?” Sullivan asked.

“Fantastic,” O'Rourke said. “Does he do that often?”

“I come by here about once a week. You know, just to get away from the fort. The old mama-san and I get along. You might say that's my special tree. I pay a hundred piasters a coconut, and mama-san saves them all for me. You ever have coconut milk?”

“No.”

“You'll like it. Come on.”

The old lady was inviting them inside, and they stepped from the heat into the coolness of her front room, with a hard-packed, clean-swept dirt floor, a simple table, four rickety chairs and a large wooden altar decorated with faded family pictures, cupfuls of thin, charred prayer sticks and a Chinese calendar. To the left was the kitchen, with a stove hearth, a large kettle and several pots, and a sturdy chopping table. To the right was the bedroom, consisting of a clothes closet and a large bed with tight-fitted wooden slats for a mattress. The two men sat down at the table and the boy handed Sullivan the coconut, into the side of which he had chopped a drinking hole. Sullivan drank deeply of the cool, sweet liquid and handed the fruit to O'Rourke, who sipped cautiously at first.

“Hey, that's good,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” Sullivan replied. “You know, this isn't such a bad life. It's kind of peaceful sitting here, not sweating, looking at the river, knowing no Cong's sneaking up on you. I kind of like it.”

The two leaders remained at the house for several hours, passing the time in tranquil talk. Neighbors dropped by to say hello, with the old lady acting as beaming hostess, and omnipresent children gathered to sit on the door stoop and peer at the Americans. Sullivan had brought his camera and offered to take a picture of the entire family. No less than eight children gathered around the woman for the photograph. Then she insisted that Sullivan join them, which he did, with the neighbors joking that he was the father, and O'Rourke took the picture. The Marines declined an invitation to stay for dinner, but did give a boy money to buy two large beers, which they leisurely consumed before thanking the old lady for her hospitality and walking back to the fort.

 

That evening Suong decided to send out four close-in patrols to warn if any enemy forces were massing near the fort. Brannon hooted at the PFs as they left the fort, several of whom laughed and yelled back and gave him the finger as they walked out.

“Four patrols in Binh Yen Noi,” Brannon kidded Suong. “Never happen. Maybe they go boom-boom, huh?”

Suong had to laugh. He knew the PFs would check with their friends in the hamlet, and if the villagers had not heard Viet Cong passing by, there was a good chance one patrol would be left on guard, while the others visited their girl friends. Phuoc had told the Marines that in 1963 on the nearby island of Binh Thuy the PF platoon commander had gone over to the Viet Cong and in three years had killed fourteen of his former comrades. He knew who was sleeping with whom, and his favorite technique was to hide in a house which he suspected a PF would soon be visiting, catch his man at a disadvantage and kill him with a knife. No such incidents had occurred in Binh Nghia, although Phuoc conceded that even if they had, it would probably not have stopped each individual PF from believing it would never happen to him.

But on this night there was strict attendance to business, for the patrols had not been gone twenty minutes when the crumping sound of a grenade exploding somewhere in the hamlet carried back to the fort.

“Now that's what I call a big boom-boom, Suong,” Brannon called out.

Suong grinned and nodded. Whatever the prior intentions of the PFs on patrol had been, both knew that now no patroller would sneak off alone to a lovers' tryst.

No shots followed the grenade, and the listeners at the fort concluded that a patrol must have brushed near a startled guerrilla, who had thrown and run. The next two hours passed uneventfully, but shortly after ten in the evening from the direction of the marketplace drifted the muffled staccato of several weapons. One burst of firing, then another, then a few stray shots, then silence again. Another brush encounter.

By midnight all patrols were back in, none having observed or heard from the villagers any evidence of main-force activity, but two reporting that some small enemy groups were definitely within the hamlet.

“Let's wait a couple of hours for those guerrillas to settle down,” O'Rourke said, “and then go out after them.”

 

According to the PFs, there were about thirty armed and active guerrillas operating in the village. Some had secret hiding places there, but most had moved across to the Phu Longs and came back only at night. Almost every one of them could be recognized on sight by the PFs, with whom they had grown up. Over a period of time the police had pieced together a thick book listing Viet Cong known to be working in or near the village. When translated, the book provided close-up portraits of the enemy soldiers.

The enemy was well organized. Across the river, a man named Pham Van Hoi, alias Lien, was responsible for providing food and shelter for the guerrillas who could no longer stay in Binh Nghia twenty-four hours a day. Hoi, forty-two years old and with a ninth-grade education, had joined the Viet Minh in 1945 and had risen to village chief by 1953. But the next year he was expelled from the Communist Party for getting a girl pregnant and went back to work in his home hamlet as a farmer. Fear of arrest by Diem's police soon drove him to regroup to North Vietnam, where he received finance training and worked as a tax collector before infiltrating back to Binh Son district in 1962. Hoi managed the logistics in the Phu Longs, supplying both displaced guerrillas and itinerant main forces.

Although Hoi set the rice tax to be collected in Binh Nghia, it was doubtful if he would ever risk setting foot in that village while the combined unit was there. The combat tasks were left to the guerrillas and local force company, commanded by Nguyen Thi Son, described in government files as “about 45 years old, widower, no children, atheist, poor farmer, has a primary education. He is tall, large build, strong, active…is in habit of speaking quickly and after each sentence he clears his throat, lack of high serving spirit, quick-tempered, used to thunder out against people, local residents don't like him.” Son attended to military matters, while Nguyen Suyen was “responsible for the Political Section” and for relations with the villagers. Prisoners questioned by government interrogators had described Suyen as “about 35 years old, married and has one child…is a poor farmer and an atheist. He is thin, slope-shouldered, looks down when walking. He is quiet, high-spirited, self-possessed and polite. All local residents like him. He has been a member of the Communist Party since 1950 and was arrested for a year in 1957. He can suffer all hardships and difficulties.”

In his intelligence file, Thanh also had listed nonfighting members of the Viet Cong organization who still resided in the village, former members of front committees who were temporarily inactive, but who still might occasionally help the Viet Cong either because of threats or promises of reward, or out of loyalty. These were the little fish Thanh frequently arrested, beat and sent to short jail terms at district.

In contrast, the village also harbored a few true, dedicated, dangerous stay-behind agents, members of the Viet Cong Security Section. No one in the village, including the guerrillas, knew who they were. They would not be found participating in a random firefight; that was the chancy job of the guerrillas, whose persistent presence was a constant reminder to the people that the struggle for the village was still undecided.

 

At two in the morning a rover patrol set out to seek the guerrillas. O'Rourke thought enough time had elapsed to lull the enemy into a feeling of safety. If there was no action in Binh Yen Noi, he planned to strike out for the My Hués. So it was a large patrol which left the gate—six Marines in all, including Sullivan. As the Marines filed out, Luong, the ex–Viet Minh, rolled off the sandbags where he had been dozing and fell into line behind his friend Brannon. He didn't say anything, just grinned meanly and strutted along, his M-1 rifle, overly long for him, slung upside down beneath his right armpit. His presence changed the tone of the group. He only went on those patrols which he thought would make contact. With Luong in their midst, the Marines tried harder to make less noise.

Riley had point, and O'Rourke gave him his head, the patrol having no set route or destination. For two hours they roamed at a slow, slow pace, avoiding the main trails, using children's paths, slipping through backyards, Luong stopping by houses where low lights still burned to listen to the talk from inside. There was no wind and the patrollers kept moving to avoid the mosquitoes. In the warm air all soon were thoroughly soaked with their own sweat. First the point took them north toward the sand dunes, then east toward the market and the river, then south toward the cemetery, and northeast toward the dunes again.

“Rile,” O'Rourke whispered, “head outside. We'll take a break on the dunes.”

To go out on the dunes, or to come from the dunes into the hamlet, one had to pass through a large, groaning gate, one of seven official entrances in the mile of bamboo fence the Revolutionary Development workers had insisted the villagers build around the hamlets. Theoretically, it kept out the Viet Cong, who in reality could cut their way in at almost any point. Phuoc wasn't exactly sure why his RDs had to erect that fence; but it was one of the ninety-eight tasks his men had to complete according to Saigon regulations before the Binh Yen Noi area could be labeled pacified, and Phuoc, running hard for election to the National Assembly, was not about to cross some higher-ranking officials over something as trivial as a fence. Yet he was a shrewd enough politician to promise the people that he would, if elected, speak to the Ministry of Rural Reconstruction in Saigon about their silly fence-building project which took time away from planting rice and catching fish.

The PFs argued that there was some military value in the fence, for often the Viet Cong were too pressed for time or just too lazy to break down part of the fence, which was a noisy operation in any case, and so instead they would come through the gates. Even if the gate beaters did not sound the alarm at such times, sooner or later the information would drift back in rumor form to the fort.

This was not the hamlet's first experience with a fence. Once before, in 1962, a fence had gone up, after Binh Yen Noi had been designated a Strategic Hamlet. Then the PFs had learned to approach fence gates with caution, since twice they had lost men in the procedure. Once the Viet Cong were waiting in ambush on the other side of the gate and riddled the point man when he walked through; the other time two guerrillas hid beneath the platform where the beaters sat and silently garroted the rear guard of a PF patrol, the sounds of his death being blotted out by the creak of the gate being shut by the beaters.

As Riley approached the gate to the dunes, Luong cut out of line and overtook him, grasping him by the shoulder and gesturing to the Marine to stay put while he went ahead. The beaters' all-clear signal—the wooden tap-tap-tapping—was a familiar background noise which followed the Marines through the hamlet on every patrol. It was so familiar that Luong had disappeared into the darkness before Riley realized he had heard no tapping from the post to their front.

The patrollers waited for Luong to make his stalk. Several minutes passed with only the usual night sounds: a dog somewhere yapping, a few crickets chirping, the slight scuffing of the restive Marines, a hacking night cough from a nearby house, a water buffalo with the patrollers' scent in his nostrils stamping and snorting. Then the Marines were jarred by Luong's deep-voiced roar, followed by panicked, breathless gasps and a thrashing in the underbrush. As one man, the six Americans charged forward, covering the thirty yards to the gate in a few seconds, coming with muzzles leveled, only to see three beaters cowering on their low bamboo platform and Luong furiously chopping with his machete at a thick bamboo plant. “Asleep” was all he said in explanation as he shoved past the dumbfounded Americans and began whacking at the beaters with his heavy switch. He stopped only when his arm grew tired, then shouted at one of the bruised beaters, who scrambled off his perch and swiftly pulled open the gate. Next Luong took and shoved him out the gate, so that he would draw first fire in case an ambush waited. Satisfied all was clear, Luong walked out onto the desert.