On October 22 a news magazine ran a boldly optimistic cover story about how things were coming along in Vietnam. The magazine came out while Len and I were in Saigon. Everybody read it. The article summarized for us and the folks back home just how well things in Vietnam were going. Three months before, the Viet Cong had been ready to move in for the kill, and South Vietnam was ready to quit.
But now, South Vietnam was brimming over with confidence, nearly giddy with pride and power, an incredible change from the summer before. The reason for this remarkable turnabout was one of the fastest and largest military expansions in the history of warfare. Once again I read about how we had chopped the brush and stumps with machetes so that our choppers would not cause dust storms on the heliport. So that we wouldn’t get the feeling that we were training for jobs with the South Vietnam Parks Department, they mentioned that 2500 of us were fighting in Happy Valley.
The article closed with the reproval that it was the Communists who picked South Vietnam as the first domino in the string that was Southeast Asia. Now, it claimed, they were having second thoughts. The United States had met the challenge, and not just South Vietnam but all of Southeast Asia would eventually be strengthened by the remarkable and still-growing presence of American know-how, hardware, and lives. Even the mundane act of troops unloading at Qui Nhon was transformed in the article into waves of tough, scrappy GIs pouring ashore from fleets of troopships.
The article did not say a word about our effectiveness. With all our mobility, the VC still called the shots. We fought on their terms.
The slant of the article created an impression, and the impression was hard to forget. Even I believed that it must be only the Cav that was having problems, that things in general were looking up.
At about the same time the article was published, Pleime, a tiny fort sixty miles to the west of us, in la Drang valley, was under a siege that had begun on October 19. Although the attack seemed relatively insignificant at the time, it would be the event that would soon bring the Cav and the North Vietnamese regulars together for the biggest battle yet.
John Hall spent most of his evenings getting drunk with Jim Storter. But, unlike Jim, John was never found sleeping it off in a wall locker or a cardboard box in the supply tent. They drank for different reasons. Storter took solace in sauce because his wife was screwing around in the States while the VC were trying to kill him here. John’s problems were all in Vietnam. He believed that the Cav was taking unnecessary chances with his life to prove that air-assault techniques really worked. He had decided after the first few missions that if the VC didn’t kill him, the Cav would.
“We shouldn’t be landing in hot LZs, Mason.” John sat against the tent pole one night at my end of the tent. “In the Eleventh Air Assault, we were taught to move troops and supplies from one secured LZ to the next. We’re landing in places so hot now that you’d think we were flying armored fortresses or something. Hell, we don’t even have chest protectors.”
“How do we avoid the hot LZs?” I asked.
“By landing the troops near the fight, not in the middle of it. It’s no better for them to land in the thick of it than it is for us.”
“They already seem to know where we will land,” I said. “Did you see the size of those stakes in the last LZ?” We had landed in an LZ that had hundreds of ten-foot stakes in it. The same clearing had been empty the day before. “How can we be sure they don’t pick up on our decision to land farther away?”
John took a slug of Scotch from his canteen and offered me some. I declined. “The way I see it, the VC are at spot X. Now, while they’re there, they know the Americans can land all around them at any minute. So the VC commander, while at spot X, has some of his men stand guard at all the nearby clearings where he thinks we can land. He can even start a fight to draw us into a trap. It’s a good strategy. If we attack him, he gets a chance to ambush us when we’re the most vulnerable, in the helicopter.”
“Okay,” I said. “But, like I said before, if he knows where we’ll be landing, as they obviously did yesterday, we’ll always be landing in hot LZs unless we find the source of their information.”
“Spies?”
“Sure,” I said. “Did you ever ask one of those smiling interpreters you see running around sometimes to show you his South Vietnamese Good Guy card? I mean, all our plans have to be coordinated with the Vietnamese. That means they have to be translated and passed on to the gooks. So where do you think the leak is? The Pentagon? ”
John took another belt of whiskey. “It seems hopeless. If we aren’t able, with all our might, to get into landing zones without the VC knowing about it beforehand, what can we do? We should be out there marching, taking real estate and keeping it. Fuck taking little landing zones over and over again.” He stood up suddenly. “Fuck it!” His anger and disappointment showed on his face.
“It’s not that bad, John. Things are looking up. This war could end on our tour.” I tried joking to cheer him up. “The press says we’re going to win. When the gooks get that last issue, they’ll roll over and quit. Nobody fucks with the press.”
He smiled, darkly. My best lines were wasted. “Well, Mason, I’m going now.” He turned to leave, but stopped. “Listen, if you ever want to sell your derringer, I’ll buy it.”
Even John started smiling the next day. We flew a lift to Happy Valley without even sniper fire. Charlie was not responding, almost as though he had read that article. We decided that we had won in Happy Valley.
As the threat of death seemed to subside, we got cocky. We flew around the division, Route 19, and most of Happy Valley without getting shot at. The VC had been outclassed by our power, seen the light, and would soon be giving up. I was feeling good. I was right-seat qualified, and battle-tested (I thought), and the VC were giving up. I felt my confidence soaring because I was a member of the team and the team was winning.
I was so happy about maybe living through this war that when we had to scramble just before dinner that night, it didn’t bother me. In fact, when I got back from the screwed-up mission, I wrote Patience an exuberant letter. I submit it here as a record of my last happy letter from Vietnam.
[October 23]
We had an alert to pick up some troops as soon as possible at about two minutes before evening chow. We all ran out to the aircraft thrashing through the mud screaming, “Where’s my aircraft? Where are we going? What’s the freqs? Gosh, I’m getting all muddy!” and other confused remarks because somebody screamed fly and didn’t say why.
With the thought in mind that the first one airborne is the leader, we hurtled into the air like a swarm of blind bugs and flew off into the sunset.
The leader called for an aircraft to guide him to the area and followed the wrong one. After we landed in the wrong LZ, the leader discovered his mistake and zipped off to find the right place. Since he didn’t bother to say not to on the radio, all the rest of us zipped off with him. It’s rather hard to appreciate the sight of seven helicopters trying to fly formation on a leader who thinks he’s alone unless you’ve done it!
Hooray! We found the right place! Naturally since it was an emergency, we sat on the ground for half an hour waiting for the “eager, waiting” troops.
While waiting, the happy, boisterous company pilots all gathered together and sang:
(The Fuckee’s Hymn)