“You picked a hell of a time to come back,” Sharkey said.
Kahn squinted toward the little firefight on the knoll, and searched his pockets for a pack of cigarettes.
“Now you tell me,” he said dejectedly.
Still they waited, and still the order to move out was not received. Trunk, sitting on an ammunition crate, tried to interview the three replacements and at least make sure they had their essential equipment before he decided what to do with them. One of them, a freckled-faced boy with darting eyes and a mischievous smile, was a former jeep driver who had wrecked a major’s jeep after loading up on too much beer. The other two were black cooks in the noncom mess whom the Brigade Sergeant Major had banished after they served a disagreeable meal. The Sergeant Major kept a motto above his desk:
HE WHO TRIFLES HERE SHALL GO TO THE FARTHEST RIFLE PLATOON, IN THE FARTHEST RIFLE COMPANY . . . NEVER AGAIN TO SEE BASE CAMP.
The Sergeant Major was true to his word, and these three frightened men now shifted nervously on their feet as they contemplated the reality of their fate. The jeep driver gingerly fingered a newly issued grenade on his belt as Trunk ran down the checklist of gear he was supposed to have. When he was asked if anything was missing, the driver managed a half-grin and stated that the only thing he had not been supplied with was his own body bag.
Trunk looked up from the checklist and regarded the man ruefully.
“Soldier,” he said, “we don’t joke about death out here.”
Half an hour later they were moving up the first of the knolls, following a dusty trail worn down with the footsteps of men who had gone ahead. As they reached the top, they saw ahead and above the long file of Alpha and Charlie companies making their way to the top of the second knoll, where the fighting was. The upward slope, which they had not been able to see until now, was a desolate rubble of brown earth and shattered trees. On an embankment to their left, just below the crest of the first knoll, the mortar platoons of Alpha and Charlie companies were setting up. Although they still could not see any actual fighting ahead, the sounds of battle wafted back, puncturing the morning stillness along the route of march. The plan was that Alpha and Charlie companies were to relieve the beleaguered Airborne company at the top of the second knoll, then press forward as far as they could. Bravo Company was to remain on top of the second knoll and wait for further instructions.
It took nearly an hour to negotiate the downward slope of the first knoll. The trail was slippery, and such short trees as remained kept pulling out at the roots as the men grabbed them for support. As they neared the bottom, the mortars of Alpha and Charlie companies began to fire from behind them. Also as they reached the bottom, the first of the Airborne company began to stumble down toward them. It came as a confused and aimless mob.
All along the ravine between the two knolls the Airborne company streamed past them, cursing, weeping, helping others wearing bloody bandages. Some had no shirts or helmets, and a few even had no weapons. The Commander, a stocky captain with thick Army glasses, was bellowing in rage, trying to pull what was left of his men together. He ran here and there grabbing bewildered, zombielike soldiers, shoving them into a loose line. There were tears in his eyes, and his face was a mask of anger. “Get down here—Get over there with those men—Where’s your platoon?—Don’t look at me like that, soldier—Move!” he roared.
Bravo Company was stupefied by this spectacle. They had never seen anything approaching it, even in the Boo Hoo Forest, and they wondered what was going on up there so horrible it could throw the paratroopers into such disarray.
Kahn stopped alongside the trail to study his map as the first elements of Bravo Company began to trudge up the slope of the second knoll. A helmetless man with a blackened lieutenant’s bar on his fatigues lurched down toward him, dragging his rifle behind by the sling. His face was beet red, and his tongue was lolling out. He looked like a man who had survived a hanging. Because of the narrowness of the trail he could not get by Kahn and stopped short of him, breathing slowly, waiting for him to move.
Kahn stepped back. “What’s it like up there?” he asked tentatively.
“Go to hell,” the lieutenant said, brushing Kahn with his shoulder as he stumbled past.
A few feet down the trail, the lieutenant stopped and turned. He raised the rifle and slung it on his shoulder.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled. Kahn watched him grope down the path, then stepped back into the line uphill.
As they neared the top of the knoll, the ground was littered with the residue of fighting. Ammunition crates, C rations, clothing, bandages, empty cartridge casings, entrenching tools were strewn upon the scorched ground between the splintered trees. The earth had been churned into a soft, dry loam. Below, on the far side of the slope, the corpses of four North Vietnamese soldiers lay baking in the sun where they had fallen. There was a lurid smell in the air.
Alpha Company had already moved out and was at the bottom of the second ravine. Bravo Company could see them walking through the sparse trees. Charlie Company was far to the right still negotiating the downward slope of the second knoll. Every so often there was a burst of small-arms fire.
Already weary from the climb, Bravo Company waited and watched Alpha start up the third knoll. They saw them get as far as midway when a yellowish sheet of gunfire rose in a line above them. Seconds later, a continuous popping of small arms rattled back to Bravo Company. Several Alpha Company men toppled over and lay still; the rest flattened. Explosions burst around them, and the sheet of gunfire continued.
In less than a minute, Alpha was scrambling down the hill to the safety of a line of trees that was somehow untouched by the artillery. The explosions and the sheet of flame ceased. Bravo Company could hear a faint hollering from the treeline. They also saw that Charlie Company had reached the bottom of the ravine and was again moving far to the right, apparently in order to assault the flank of the knoll. Moments later, Bravo Company received new instructions.
The mortars of Alpha and Charlie companies were to be brought up to the second knoll. Bravo Company was to move far to the left, set up its mortars there and work down into the ravine for a left-flank assault on the third knoll. Colonel Patch, who was conducting the operation from the staging area they had left earlier, assured them that artillery had neutralized resistance in the ravine itself and would soon do the same to the third knoll. As Bravo Company walked along the ridgeline, a huge barrage of artillery landed near the top of the crest where the yellowish sheet of gunfire had been seen. It continued for nearly ten minutes, until it appeared to everyone’s satisfaction that no living thing could possibly remain there.
Bravo Company was stumbling down into the ravine when Alpha Company again moved out of the line of trees and up the third knoll. They watched disheartenedly as the sheet of gunfire rose up again. In minutes, they too came under fire; machine guns opened up, and everyone dashed for cover in the ravine. As soon as they reached the bottom, mortar shells began falling on them.
Kahn and his Company Headquarters—Trunk; Bateson, the radio operator, and Hepplewhite, the Company Clerk—fell panting into a dry streambed, machine-gun bullets whizzing overhead. On the radio, Patch was involved in a heated conversation with the Alpha Company Commander and Kahn could not break through to him. In the meantime, he called for support from his own mortars, and soon the whistle and crash thundered over the North Vietnamese positions. Momentarily, the whizzing of bullets overhead stopped.
Somehow, Kahn realized, they had to flank those guns and knock them out. He had no idea how many there were or how they were situated. What he did know was that Patch had been full of shit when he said the ravine was neutralized. It was a ridiculous word, anyway, he thought. In any event, they could not stay here forever, so Kahn took his little three-man cadre down the streambed, crouching against its walls so as to expose only the smallest portions of their bodies. The mortars began to fall around them again.
About fifty yards down, the
y ran into most of Brill’s platoon huddled in the dry clay. Not a single man was firing his rifle, and Brill was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is Lieutenant Brill?” Kahn demanded.
A rifleman, cringing against the wall of the streambed, stammered and pointed ahead.
“I dunno—I think he’s up there with some of the second squad,” the man said.
Kahn left Brill’s men where they were and headed in the direction the rifleman had indicated until the streambed flattened and afforded no further protection. Then they stepped up onto the soft ground and thrashed through some flattened elephant grass. Brill and half a dozen other men were lying behind a broken tree trunk. Kahn and his followers dived in behind them.
“Your men are hiding back there; why aren’t you with them?” he asked.
Brill looked at him, amazed. “We’re pinned down here; we can’t move . . . we . . .”
“Go back and bring them around to the edge of the slope,” Kahn said, pointing to the bottom of the slope they had just come down. “I’m sending Sharkey the other way—we’ve got to get those machine guns. I’ll give you all the support I can. Get back to me when you’re to their left—understand?”
Brill nodded his head.
“And try to stay with them this time—they’re not even firing their weapons,” Kahn said.
Brill looked at him darkly and crawled off with his squad. Bateson handed Kahn the handset. It was Sharkey.
“I think I see them just ahead of me—they’ve only got two guns,” Sharkey said. “I’m going to take up two squads and try to knock them out.”
“Negative,” Kahn replied. “I’m sending the Two Element around to the left. I want to hit them with everything we have at once. Go right as far as you can, then pinch in—got it?”
“Roger, can do,” Sharkey said.
Good old Sharkey. Good old West Point. Be careful. Kahn wiped sweat from his eyes.
They waited. The firing had died to an occasional burst. Kahn thought he heard voices from the direction of the North Vietnamese positions. Yes, it was definitely voices—a high-pitched, unintelligible chatter. God, they were that close!
He instructed Third Platoon to lay down covering fire and was about to call in Inge’s mortars again when fierce shooting began to the right. Thirty seconds later, the radio crackled with the desperate voice of Sergeant Dreyfuss.
“We’re ambushed, sir,” Dreyfuss shouted, “pinned flat on both sides. Lieutenant Sharkey and three other men are hit bad—I think we gotta pull back.”
Kahn stared into the denseness of the ravine.
“Where are you now?” he said.
“We’re behind some kind of bunker about ten meters from that clump of trees. We’re all right for a minute, but they got us covered,” Dreyfuss panted.
“Wait one—hang on,” Kahn said. He put the handset down.
I’ve got to do something now, he thought. Oh, Lord—Sharkey . . . His mind was cluttered with irrelevant thoughts. He knew he had to sort them out quickly. Everything was happening at once. The whole world was crazy. He could have gone to sleep right there. Slept for hours in the warm, peaceful sun. The radio barked again. It was Dreyfuss.
“Sir, we gotta pull back—we’re getting murdered here,” he cried.
Kahn had to make his decision. “No, no, you’re not pulling back. You stay put and I’m coming over there with part of Third Platoon. We have to get those guns.”
Kahn commandeered two squads from Third Platoon and they went in leaps and bounds toward Dreyfuss’s position, where there was a slow but steady firing of small arms. They crawled the final thirty yards through broken tree stumps and burned foliage, bullets kicking dust around them, past the bodies of two Second Platoon men badly mutilated by mortars. It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach Dreyfuss and his little band.
They had holed up behind a wrecked North Vietnamese fortification. Four wounded men lay on the ground. One boy, shot in the stomach, groaned with clenched fists as a medic attended him. Another, hit in the thigh, stared vacantly in shock. A third was unconscious and looked dead. His face was pale gray. Sharkey lay propped against a splintered log.
The bullet had entered just beneath the right armpit, apparently in an instant when his arm was raised. If it had hit him a split second sooner, or later, while his arm was down, it would probably have been absorbed by his flak jacket. Such were the uncertainties of war.
He was still conscious when Kahn got to him, but breathing with difficulty because the bullet had entered his lung and also his kidney. At first, Kahn did not see the ragged hole in his left side where it had come out, spilling part of his insides onto his fatigues and the ground.
Two of Dreyfuss’s men suddenly stood up and heaved grenades over the top of the fortification. They exploded somewhere ahead with a dull, heavy thud. Dreyfuss and the radio operator clung to the ground.
Sharkey managed a weak smile when he saw Kahn. His face was filthy, and he was having great trouble breathing. The medic, a frail, dark-complexioned boy named Conway who had been tending the man with the stomach wound, looked at Kahn and shook his head. He pointed to an empty syringe of morphine lying near Sharkey’s hand. “I done what I could, sir,” Conway said. From somewhere in front, a machine gun blapped nastily, and things zinged above them. Wood from the stump flew into the air.
“Fuck me, Billy,” Sharkey said halfheartedly. “This ain’t no place for a sanitary man.”
“You’re out of this,” Kahn said. “We’re all going back together—hear?”
Sharkey took another labored breath. His tongue was covered with blood, and Kahn noticed blood on his sleeve; he had evidently been wiping it off his mouth whenever it came out.
“Who you kidding, man?” Sharkey said painfully. “My insides are shot out. Just don’t move me for a while, all right?”
“Sure, buddy; hang tight, okay?—You want more morphine?”
Sharkey placed a thick, grimy hand on Kahn’s knee and sucked hopelessly at the air through the big gap where his teeth used to be.
“Do me a favor,” he sighed softly, his big bug eyes cloudy and unseeing. “If them new teeth ever get here, give ’em to the Old Man. Tell him to cram ’em up his ass . . .”
Mortar rounds continued to fall around them with maddening regularity. It was clear they could not remain exposed here for long. Kahn spun around to Trunk.
“We have to bust this up,” he said. “There’s maybe one, two machine guns up there. You go bring up two of those squads from First Platoon and take them around to the left. Send everybody else up here. If there’s an extra machine gun, send it up too.” Trunk crawled away toward the rear.
“Dreyfuss, you take what’s left of these men and move to the right and close in as quick as you can. Use grenades.”
Dreyfuss collected his half-dozen men and disappeared into a tangle of downed trees.
Kahn looked over at Sharkey. His eyes were closed, and his face had turned a sallow white. Conway’s ear was at Sharkey’s chest.
The medic raised his head.
“He’s gone, sir,” Conway said.
“Cover him,” Kahn said weakly. A Second Platoon radioman turned over and slowly began removing his poncho from its roll on the back of his belt.
The first of the two squads Kahn had told Trunk to send up began to arrive, collapsing behind the fortification, eyes wild and bulging.
“Who’s senior man here?” Kahn said. A buck sergeant named Corpusteli raised his hand. “I guess I am,” he said faintly.
Kahn looked him in the eye. “I want you to spread these men out in a line on both sides of this bunker and be ready to lay down fire on those machine guns ahead of us. Take off.” Corpusteli frowned and then departed on his hands and knees.
“You two, with the M-sixty,” Kahn said. “Set up over there where you have a clear field of fire. Keep their heads down.” Spudhead Miter and Madman Muntz exchanged furtive glances and slithered off into the brush.
The
re was really nothing to do now but wait. Brill should be coming up on the far left anytime. A stray bullet whined in the air. At least, it can’t last forever, Kahn thought exhaustedly; that was what the captain in the hospital had told him, and he was glad to remember it now.
It can’t last forever . . .
The captain had been in the bed next to his the day he came in to have his hand attended to. He was a cheery guy whose company had been overrun somewhere to the south, and he had been shot and left for a corpse. Somehow he had revived himself, plugged a sock into the hole in his chest, wrapped it tight with a binocular strap and walked out of the jungle. He’d been in the hospital for three weeks with a tube running into his nose. After a while Kahn had asked when they were going to take the tube out.
“They say it looks good on me,” the captain replied happily. “They say they’re going to leave it in.”
Later that same day, Kahn had gone looking for Sergeant Jelkes. He left his bed on the pretense of going to the latrine and found a nurse who said Jelkes was probably in the intensive-care ward. Kahn went in unannounced and walked from bed to bed. It was like walking through a nightmare. People moaned and screamed. The first bed he came to was a plastic device filled with air. It contained a wad of bandages, inside which was a man burned black as coal. It really didn’t look like a man at all. It looked like a blob of protoplasm struggling to organize itself back into human form. Other beds held other horrors, but Jelkes was not among them. Finally he found a medic who checked a list.
“Yes, he came in here this morning, Lieutenant, but we sent him straight to the morgue. Sorry,” the medic said.