“Might be,” said the lieutenant. “At least we know we own Dak To.”
“We have a guy in our company, named Wendall, says that that’s what they did with the French,” I said.
“Did what?” said the lieutenant.
“Made them think they’re winning, let them set up camps and stuff, and then bam!”
“Totally different war now.” The lieutenant flipped his cigarette out to the dew-covered ground. “The French couldn’t get around like we can.” He patted the Huey’s deck. “Machines like this make all the difference. How’d you like to be a guerrilla trying to fight an army that can be anywhere, anytime?”
“You got a point there, all right,” I said. “Wendall’s a flake anyway.”
“Sounds like it,” the lieutenant said.
“Yep,” said Riker, “I can see it now. Get home early, get laid, and then put the baggage down.”
“Well, I’m back to work. Take it easy.” The lieutenant smiled and walked back over to his men. “Phillips. Get some men to load those food boxes on the Huey.”
“What’s next?” I asked Riker.
“We’re supposed to go back and drop this shit off and then we fly some refugees somewhere.”
Black pajamas, conical hats, pigs trussed in baskets, chickens that watched with upright heads on upside-down bodies, wide-eyed kids, crying babies, rolled-up rice mats, staffs, bundled firewood, and warped metal-clad boxes that stayed together by faith alone were packed into the Huey.
“What a menagerie,” grumbled Riker. A pig squealed as the turbine whined. I turned around and saw a young mother with a baby’s face pressed to her breast as she watched us with saucer eyes. I nodded to her and smiled. She nodded quickly and smiled back. God, they are scared, I thought. How would I feel if foreigners made me and my family get on a strange contraption to fly me from my home to who knows where?
“Winning their hearts and minds,” I said.
“Ain’t that a crock,” said Riker.
We flew north, past Dak To and the border junction of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The mountains were the tallest I had ever seen. Misty clouds blanketed this wet, green world.
We were in our slot, one of ten ships, as the flight followed valleys to stay out of the clouds. Past a dark peak that lost its top in the whiteness, a red, freshly cut airstrip appeared in the valley below. New huts with tin roofs were clustered defensively within a sandbagged, wire-topped compound wall. Welcome home, I thought. Eyes in the back watched intently as the flight drifted out of the misty sky to land on the red earth.
Little ARVN soldiers with slung rifles urged them out of the ship. A frightened mother looked back inside to two small kids. A soldier grabbed a pig and tossed it to a pile of rope-trussed belongings. It screamed noiselessly in our hissing, and squirmed like a living sausage. One of the kids screamed tearfully. His frantic mom snatched him quickly off the deck to sit on her hip. He grabbed her blouse tightly as she ducked our rotors and stumbled to her things.
I watched her as we left. She grew smaller as we climbed. Soon she was only a memory, confused and frightened, alone and far away from her family’s ancient home. At that moment I hated Communists and was ashamed to be an American. But then I had often been accused of being too sensitive.
We continued relocating refugees all the next day. We were supposed to finish our sweep at this end of the Ia Drang valley and then go home to the Golf Course. By dusk, though, we were landing the last load of people at one of the new villages. The old man decided to stay out and head back in the morning.
Twenty ships landed on a grassy ridge in the gathering dark. The ridge was the site of a temporary ARVN camp. Two large tents were set up for us.
Riker and I carried our sleeping gear over to the tents. We blew up air mattresses in the light of army flashlights.
Dinner was C’s eaten down by the ships. Riker and Resler sat on the deck eating from cans while I twisted the opener around a tin of chicken. I was pulling the ragged lid away from the chicken meat when the silence was shattered. Whomp! and then ringing. The ringing came from my ears. Nobody announced the obvious: mortars. Cans clanked on the deck and shadows scattered. I dropped my can and ran toward a shallow hole I had seen when we landed. It was only twenty feet away. Whoomm! I saw the bright flash of the round as it exploded a hundred yards away. Dropping to the grass, I low-crawled the rest of the way to the hole. Whoomml It was occupied by two crew members from the ship in front of us. Whoom-whoom! Goddamn! Where am I supposed to go? Whoom! Damn! Real close! I got up and ran back to the ship. The ship was my security. It always got me out of trouble. Whoommm! My shadow flashed against the black u.s. ARMY on the tail boom. I dropped and rolled under the deck. My shoulder caught on the fuel drain spigot and I tore it loose. My mind had long since left, and I was blindly scrambling toward the front of the ship away from the fuel bladder. Whoom! I reached the cross tube up front and stopped. “Goddamn it!” I screamed “Mother fuckers!” Then I realized that the Huey was just thin aluminum and magnesium and Plexiglas and jet fuel, and that if a round hit, I would go up in smoke with it. “Get away from the ship, you stupid shit!” I yelled to myself. I crawled in the foot-deep grass, pressing my nose in the dampness, my nose the runner, my head the sled. Ten feet away I stopped. Whoom! Off to the right. No hard hat. No weapon. I cursed my stupidity and swallowed sobs. Silence! A bug crawled on my cheek. I heard a muffled whoompf and a pop. A flare dazzled and swung in the sky. Whoompf, pop, whoompf, pop. Huey shadows intersected and swayed wildly across the grass. A flare dimmed, then disappeared as it dropped below the ridge. Gray smoke made lazy trails in the light of the flares above. Silence. They stopped? After ten more minutes of lying in the grass, I heard voices. “All over.”
“Jesus H. Christ! How lucky can you get!” I got up. My shoulder hurt where I had hit the drain valve. I believe in God. Really. I walked back to my ship, dropped to my knees, and searched the grass for an already opened can of boned chicken.
The mist was so thick I could barely see the Huey from the tent. The distant mountains from the day before had disappeared. Resler had got up before me, and I could see a friendly orange flicker from his tin-can stove next to our ship. I shivered. It had been a cold and sleepless night.
Nobody had been hurt during the attack. No one could understand why the VC or the NVA or whoever they were had stopped when they did. Certainly it had not been because of any counterattack on our part. They probably just ran out of ammunition. Thank God for VC shortages. We had been sitting ducks.
“Wanna use the stove?” Resler smiled from his hunker. He stirred in sugar from a paper packet. The coffee smelled like life.
“Yeah, thanks.” I leaned in against the edge of the deck and dragged the C-ration case over.
“Let me guess. Scrambled eggs and bacon?”
“Of course. It’s breakfast time, isn’t it?”
“I think you’re the only one in the company who eats that shit.”
“All the more for me.” I got a can from the box and a coffee packet. I poured some water into Resler’s cookie can and set it on his stove. While the flame seared the wetness on the outside of the can, I opened the eggs. Inside was the familiar yellow-green egg loaf with small bits of brownish bacon. I spooned it out cold. Resler made an expression of revulsion as I munched. I spooned another chunk out and held it toward him. “Want some?”