Captain Stewart was coming over toward us. Beyond him I saw guys moving out across the open space. We were getting the hell away from the hill, but I didn’t know where we were going. Stewart had blood on his face, but I couldn’t see if he was hit or not.
Gearhart waved me over. He told me to keep an eye on Jamal. I said I would.
“This is too hot for a dust-off area,” Stewart was saying to Gearhart. “There’s a little village down this road. The VC must have it, but their main force is on the hill. The squad the ARVNs chased went back to the mountain.”
“That the Second?”
“I guess so,” Stewart said. “But we can’t sit out here. We need to get to the village and get picked up from there. We can’t hold these positions much longer.”
Stewart told Charlie Company to move out first, but when he saw what was left of it he had us all move out together. Jamal had hurt his hand, maybe even broken it, but he was okay except for being winded.
We went on a forced march for ten minutes toward the village. We knew when we reached it as the first men started to fall.
The ARVN troops, still not reorganized, caught up with us as we formed a perimeter and tried to get into the village. Some of them ran past us. We watched them get hit and start running back. I was afraid they would start firing on us. Then I saw that many of them had even dropped their weapons.
I saw the area that Captain Stewart had been talking about. It would make an iffy dust-off area at best. Choppers could get in and out fairly quickly, but it would be easy for the Cong guns on the hill to hit. Maybe our artillery could keep them quiet. But there was no way the choppers could move in if we didn’t take the village.
Colonel Hai finally got what was left of his outfit together and attacked the village. They went on what looked like a suicide charge into the village. As they ran they began to fall. They fell according to how they were hit. If they were hit in the head they bent backward or whirled around. Sometimes a man hit in the head would go several more stumbling steps before falling.
If they were hit in the body they would just lean forward, as if they were reaching for the ground, and then collapse.
“Let’s go!”
We moved out. Johnson and Monaco were behind us covering us with the sixty. They had given the other sixty to an ARVN squad.
We ran forward, desperately searching for something to get behind as the bullets whined about us, kicking up dirt and snapping branches. A fresh company of ARVNs had swung around the flank. We were closing in on the village.
I was on the ground. I was hurting. My arms and shoulders ached. I loaded another clip, and started firing. It was a hamlet, the same thatched roofs, the same smell of burnt bamboo. We fired into the village, trying to chop down anything we could see.
Johnson moved the sixty up and got it into place. Monaco loaded again. It was time for the rest of us to get up, to charge again.
I was tired, so tired. There was nothing to do but to go on. It came to me that we had the hamlet surrounded, so there was nothing for the Congs to do but to defend the village. We were here, and they were here, and the only thing to take care of was the dying.
I ran on. I saw Peewee throwing a grenade. A good idea. I snatched a grenade from my belt and threw it through the window of a hut. Shit. I had forgotten to take the damn pin out. I started firing through the window when I saw the grenade come out. I jumped away, twisting my body as I saw it bounce. It bounced toward me. My hands went up. I tried to turn my chest away. I didn’t want to see it, but I couldn’t turn away. I looked. It still wasn’t armed.
I grabbed it and pulled the pin out, arming it. I threw it again. It went through the same window. This time it exploded.
I was on my feet. Running toward the hut, firing at nothing, at everything.
So tired. I couldn’t get my arms up. We went from hut to hut. I wanted to rest. Just for a moment. I saw two ARVNs and a GI go into a hut, their pieces ready. Another GI was outside; he tossed a grenade through the window. The explosion ripped away a side of the hut.
It happened in an instant. A split moment of pain and confusion. A guy had just nailed the two ARVNs and the GI who had walked in the door of the hut. In another instant I swung my rifle toward the soldier who had thrown the grenade. He turned right and moved toward another hut as I lowered my weapon and turned left.
A cart, one wheel blasted off, sat in front of a low building that could have been made out of concrete. A soldier sat on the ground, leaning against the wheel. There was an irregular circle of blood spreading over his T-shirt. He seemed to be trying to wipe it away with his hand.
We reached the far end of the hamlet. Monaco was in front when we reached the last hut. I caught up with him. Johnson was lugging the sixty. We flattened ourselves against the sides of the hut, and then Johnson peppered one side of it with the sixty. Monaco took out a cigarette lighter and lit the roof.
“Damn!” Peewee.
I spun around and looked. Peewee was at the far end of the hut toward the wood line trying to get his sixteen to work. It had jammed. Me and Monaco went around the side of the hut and saw two Cong soldiers trying to pull an American into the bushes. Even when we started firing they kept pulling him.
We went after them. Monaco shot one of them and the other stood up and threw his arms into the air.
At his feet the soldier, still alive, was moaning in pain. I looked and saw that they had cut his finger off I looked up into the face of the Cong soldier. He was young, no more than a teenager. He looked scared and tired, the same as me. I squeezed the trigger of the sixteen and watched him hurtle backward.
Then I sat down on the ground to rest.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Get the perimeter!” Lieutenant Gearhart.
“We need a medic,” Peewee said, pointing to the wounded soldier.
“Okay. The medevac’s on its way.”
Somehow I managed to get up. Gearhart went around trying to place guys on the perimeter. It was too much effort to talk. My lips were dry and I was getting cold. I looked over at Monaco. He was sweating.
We waited. It was 1342. I couldn’t believe that so little time had passed.
The ARVNs set up a perimeter, and we were told that we could rest. Gearhart said that Sergeant Don-gan had been hit. Me and Peewee went over to the medical tent. We found Dongan. They had laid his leg next to him. The other leg was barely attached. But it didn’t matter now. His mouth was slightly open and the lower jaw twisted.
“One of you guys got a poncho?” A black spec five asked.
I looked to see if I still had my poncho. I did and gave it to the spec five. He picked up the leg and put it on Sergeant Dongan’s chest, then wrapped him in the poncho.
Ten minutes later two gunships came in and cleared everything from around the village. Above them I could see the stack of medevac choppers.
It was 1400 hours.
Chapter 19
The ARVNs were the first to start to move out. Word had come that a second North Vietnamese battalion was moving toward the area. We had to get out and get out quickly. We made as many litters as we could to carry out the wounded. The question came up as to what to do with the dead.
Somebody said we should bury them.
“They’ll just dig them up,” Gearhart said. “We got to strip them and bum them.”
Hell. Bodies still warm, limbs that fell as the bodies were moved. Some guys couldn’t do it. Some of us had to. We began stripping the Americans. We took their tags, their gear, and took them to a hut. How many were there? There were too many. Everybody took care of their own. We got Dongan and put him in the hut. Some of the bodies were wrapped in ponchos, some weren’t.
Guys from Charlie Company saw what we were doing and they got their people in. It was better than having the Congs get them, maybe mutilating the bodies.