Things seemed to be going well with the Prospectors. Joviality reigned among them while the action lulled. But something was different about us when compared to the outside world, as we demonstrated the next day.
Most people were in camp when a Chinook landed from Saigon. Ringknocker went out to greet four Red Cross girls as they stepped out of the back of the ship. Deacon joined Ringknocker, and the two of them escorted the girls back toward the camp. I was sitting on my cot, watching the party coming our way. Looking down the tent row, I noticed that everybody had disappeared. The place had suddenly become a ghost town. Gary peered out at the women and announced, “Doughnut Dollies,” but stayed inside. As Ringknocker walked the girls down the company street, obviously looking for someone to introduce them to, he could find no one. The girls began to look nervous as they peered into the dark tents, occasionally seeing a shadowed face peering silently back. They walked down the line of tents and back. Ringknocker and Deacon escorted them back to the Chinook. Meanwhile, the crew of the Chinook had deposited a pile of cardboard boxes on the airstrip. We watched Ringknocker nodding as someone explained them. The worried girls shook Ringknocker’s hand, looked quizzically around the deserted camp, and boarded their ship. Minutes later they were gone. When the ship was safely away, the Prospectors reappeared as if nothing had happened.
“Why did they do that?” I asked Gary.
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t go out and meet them. We all must be nuttier than we think. I mean, round-eyes. Everybody talks about seeing round-eyes again, and here they were five minutes ago, and we all hid?”
“Gratuitous issue.” Deacon pointed to the boxes.
“What’s that?” asked Gary.
“Free stuff from the Red Cross.”
We walked over and drew gifts of soap, combs, toothpaste, and cartons of cigarettes. And everyone looked guilty. They came bearing gifts and we shunned them. Sky King ran out to the airstrip and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Come back!” he yelled. “Come back!”
I watched the sagging top of my mosquito bar from inside. Resler kept a light on and wrote letters. Lying on my back, I noticed that I would have to find another place to put my electric shaver and assorted junk that I kept on top of the mosquito netting. It sagged too much.
Stoopy was buried under his blankets, asleep. One nice thing about the highlands, it was cool at night. Gary turned off his flashlight and for a while I heard him wrestling with his cot and blankets as he tucked in the mosquito netting. Then it was quiet. From far away, I could hear the occasional noises of battle. The 101st was getting more action every day.
I could not sleep. I stared into the darkness and thought about how it would feel to be out of the combat assaults. Gary and I had requested leave to start in two weeks. If all went as planned, we would both be into our last thirty days when we got back. A barrage of artillery sounded in the distance. I felt tense. After nearly a year of unconscious listening I could instantly tell incoming rounds from outgoing, even if I was sleeping next to the artillery or mortar positions. There was something ominous about the noise from the north end of the valley.
The electric razor above me sparked. My throat tightened in fear. The booby trap? The sparks grew to a white blaze. From the intensity of a Fourth of July sparkler, it suddenly blazed to a blinding white flame. I rolled out of the cot onto the ground and stood up. Flickering shadows were cast by the intense blaze. The inside of the tent was brighter than daylight. “Gary! Fire!” I shouted as I backed into a tent rope. The dazzling light flickered green through the canvas of the tent. When Gary said, “What’s the matter?” the light flicked off. I stood out in the cool night, in my underwear, sweating and shivering. Gary was beside me.
“What’s the matter?” His voice was calm.
“You didn’t see a fire?”
“What fire?”
“In the tent. My razor blew up. You didn’t see it?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Come on, I’ll show you.” I walked cautiously back into the tent. Stoddard was still asleep. I used Gary’s flashlight and shined it on the top of the mosquito bar. My razor gleamed in the light—intact. I touched it cautiously, then picked it up. It was cold.
“How can that be? It was burning, as bright as a magnesium flare. I saw it!”
“Bob, nothing burned.”
“Look, I’ve got spots from looking at it in my eyes right now.”
“No one can see another person’s spots.”
“They’re the proof. That razor burned.” I stopped when I understood the words that I spoke. I had never seen anything more clearly in my life, but here I stood with Gary, in the tent, holding the razor. The razor had not burned and blazed and blinded me, at least not so that anybody else could see.
I walked over to DaVinci, who stood by our bunker. I told him exactly what I had seen, in detail. He nodded as I explained.
“Here.” He handed me a small pill.
“What’s this?”
“It’ll help you sleep. I’ll give you another one tomorrow night, too. Try to relax.”
“I am relaxed—or I was.”
“Try harder.”
The next night we watched the sky over the north end of the valley fill with tracer tongues of fire from Puff. The NVA were overrunning the artillery position. Four ships from Daring’s gun platoon were in the middle of it, flying back and forth in front of the artillery piece under attack. Of the four cannon there, that one was now separated from the others as the NVA concentrated on it. Puff, the DC-3 with the Gattlings, blasted unbroken tongues of fire from the black sky. Flares popped white, dazzling and swinging over the battle. The NVA kept closing in. The tube was depressed for point-blank fire. One of the gunship pilots told us that when the NVA swarmed into the gun position the men were so mixed that they had to stop firing. The gun was taken.
We were on alert all night. By three in the morning, when we still hadn’t been called to do a night assault, I went to bed. Another little magic pill and I slept.
By dawn the next morning, the tube had been recaptured by the 101st, with the considerable help of our gunships.
Capt. John Niven came by early and said that he and I were going out. We were going to try to get some ammo to a trapped company.
Niven said in a friendly way that I was a better pilot than he. As the aircraft commander, he chose to handle the radios and let me do the flying. Our first stop was the trapped company’s HQ area at the 101st’s camp. We landed there to get the exact coordinates and to wait. The company was under fire, too heavy for us to get in. We shut down next to a small rifle range, inside the wire-strewn, mined perimeter, and waited.
At noon, we were still waiting. We could hear the company commander, Delta Six, calling on the radio in a nearby tent. He had seven fighting men left; thirty-eight more were either dead or wounded. He sounded bad, kept telling his HQ the names of the people he knew were dead, and also kept saying, “It’s still too hot for that ship. We may have to wait till dark.”
As I listened to this and waited, I wandered into the tent and got a case of .45-caliber ammunition from a sergeant. I took the five hundred rounds back out to the rifle range and proceeded to kill the rest of the afternoon by firing hundreds of rounds at beer cans. By three o‘clock, even I was impressed by my accuracy. I was regularly hitting beer cans at a hundred yards. By four o’clock, some grunts had joined me, and I borrowed an M-16 and shot a few clips with it. Another grunt let me try my luck with an M-79 grenade launcher. As I shot, I became calmer. I realized how much I needed to shoot. Shoot something, anything.