“Do something,” he said, glaring at us.
“What?” We shrugged. He bent over and dodged back toward his tent.
It was quiet at last. At twelve-thirty or so, the battle of Hong Kong Hill stopped. Planes that had had to orbit since the beginning of the melee could now land. The shooting had stopped, and the men had put the guns away. It was still New Year‘s, but it was now very quiet.
“Some people were killed at the maintenance depot,” said Connors.
We all sat quietly on our cots, lights on, as if nothing had happened.
“How many?” somebody asked.
“Seven, I think. There’s some wounded, too.” He spoke without emphasis and stared at the floor. “Hell of a party, huh?”
They shouldn’t allow holidays in a war.
7. The Rifle Range
The verdict on the First Cavalry concept was in last week. Stepping out of an olive-drab tent at An Khe, after an hour-long briefing on the division, Secretary McNamara was brimming over with praise. The division, he said, was “unique in the history of the American Army…. There is no other division in the world like it.”
January 1966
Not long after Resler and I talked of disappearing with a Huey, a ship from the Snakes, tail number 808, took off on a foggy morning to go out to Lima with C rations and supplies, and never arrived.
The pilots called once before crossing the pass to say that the visibility was almost zero, but they could make it. By 0900 I was involved in the search. By dusk they had not been found, not even a clue.
“Do you think they did it?” Resler asked.
“Nah. It was a stupid idea.”
The next day, half a dozen ships from the battalion combed the jungles for miles around the pass looking for signs. Nothing.
The First Cav—the helicopter division—lost one of their own Hueys in their own back yard. It was bad for pilot morale.
Meanwhile, supply sergeants throughout the battalion were keeping their fingers crossed. This was a rare opportunity to balance the property books—once and for all.
Let me explain. In the army, specific amounts of military equipment were allocated to the company supply sections. Once or twice a year, the inspectors general, agents from the brass, came through to check that all property was in the supply depot or properly accounted for. If it wasn‘t, mountains of paperwork had to be done, including explanations by the commander and the supply officer. Searches were made. That was the formal army system.
The informal army supply system worked around such rules. The supply officers simply traded excesses back and forth to cover their asses, and the IGs never knew. Unless, of course, they had once been supply officers. The informal system made the books look good and protected the supply people, but we still had no jungle boots or chest protectors. Certain things you had to get for yourself. I was able to trade a grunt supply sergeant some whiskey for a pair of jungle boots. The chest protectors, though, were still not available. There were only a handful of them in the battalion.
All supply people dreamed of a way to balance the books—once and for all—without all that trading and shuffling. Flight 808 looked like the answer.
After two more days of searching, a Huey was found. It was the wreckage of a courier ship that had disappeared on its way to Pleiku a year before. The search was abandoned, and flight 808 was declared lost.
Declaring the ship missing started paper gears working all over the battalion. One of the questions the supply people loved to hear was “Did you have anything aboard the missing helicopter?”
“Well, now that you mention it, I did have six entrenching tools on that ship. Plus some web belts—seven web belts, to be exact—three insulated food containers, four first-aid kits, twenty-four flashlights,” and so on.
When all the reports were tallied, I was told by Captain Gillette, it came to a total of five tons of assorted army gear—about five times what we normally carried.
“One hell of a helicopter, don‘cha think?” said Gillette.
“Maybe that’s why it went down,” Gary said. “Slightly overloaded. By eight thousand pounds, I’d say.”
“Yep. We’ll never see another like that one.”
The action in Happy Valley slowed to nothing again. The brass took this to mean that we had won. Won what? A higher body count score, for one thing. And we did dominate the skies. Wendall believed that the Communists had decided to stop fighting temporarily, like they’d often done with the French. Instead of picking up a gun that morning, Charlie went out into the rice paddies and worked. We didn’t believe this. We thought the murderous hordes were beaten and whimpering out in the jungles, licking their wounds. But Wendall said they were with the villagers. Because they were the villagers.
Back around Christmas, a group of Montagnard mercenaries had revolted and killed more than twenty ARVN officers at the Mang Yang pass. After that the Cav guarded Mang Yang pass and the bridges on Route 19 going to Pleiku. The American patrols had their HQs next to the road. We delivered hot food, clothing, mail, and ammunition to them every day. Four or five ships from our company did the resupplying. Resler and I flew one of those ships, logging six and eight hours daily.
It was difficult to adjust to peaceful times. The deaths, the close calls, and the generally hectic pace of the past few weeks had established a combative mind-set and an expectation of continued action. Just going out to resupply some patrols on a secure road was so bland that we played games to make it interesting. Resler and I took turns flying low level down the road, seeing who could hold the ship in the turns. We also buzzed a convoy. MPs in the convoy thought we were maniacs and radioed our battalion. Farris was waiting for us when we got back that night. He said we had really scared the MPs.
“If I hear of any more cowboy stuff by you guys, I‘ll—” He had to stop and think for a minute. What could he do? Ground us? Send us home? What could he do that we wouldn’t like? “Tomorrow is your day off. You two have just volunteered to work on the club.”
Perfect.
Rumor came first, then the news. The 229th was scheduled to go to Bong Son valley. Every recon ship sent to this coastal valley fifty miles north of Qui Nhon had been hit by ground fire. The VC called it their own. A huge joint operation was planned involving the Cav, the marines, the navy, and the ARVNs. The navy would bombard the LZs with heavy guns. The marines would land on the beach north of the valley. The Cav would go into the middle of it and take the place. The ARVNs would mill around somewhere.
One of the recon-ship pilots, a warrant officer from another platoon, walked into the company’s HQ tent and turned in his wings, silver wings he had earned before the Second World War. He put them on the table and said, “Enough.”
“God! What will they do to him?” said Resler.
“I don’t know. Is it legal to just quit?” I asked Connors.
“Got me,” said Connors. “Probably they’ll shoot him or cut off his balls or maybe even make him work on the club.”
The quitter was whisked away. Several weeks later we learned that he was operating an in-country R&R center in Saigon.