I said, “So, now it’s April 1968, and the American army wants the valley back. So we air-assault into here, and I’m sitting in a Huey with six other infantry guys, not happy about any of this, when all of a sudden flak starts to burst around the chopper. We’d never been shot at with Triple A — anti-aircraft artillery — and this was absolutely terrifying… these big black air bursts, like in a World War II flick, are filling the sky, and huge chunks of shrapnel are whizzing through the air around us. The chopper in front of me got hit in the tail rotor and the whole aircraft spun around, throwing infantry guys out the door, then the chopper fell like a rock and exploded on the ground. Then another chopper gets hit, and by now our pilot is in a rapid vertical descent, trying to get below the flak. So there’re two choppers down that I could see, each carrying seven infantry and four crew, so that’s twenty-two killed before we even hit the ground. We lost ten more choppers on the initial air assault. Meanwhile, we’re drawing machine gun fire from all these hills around the valley as we’re descending, and our chopper takes a round right through the plexiglass windshield, but we’re okay, and the pilot gets us about ten feet off the ground, we jump, and he gets the hell out of there.”
“Good lord. You must have been—”
“Scared shitless. So, now we’re on the ground, and it’s what’s called a hot landing zone, meaning, we’re drawing fire. The bad guys are in the hills all around us, and they’re lobbing in mortar rounds, rockets, and machine gun fire. We’re landing thousands of men by helicopter into this killing zone, and we start to spread out to engage the enemy in the hills. Meanwhile, the air force is dropping napalm and cluster bombs on the hills, and the army Cobra gunships are firing rockets and Gatling guns to try to suppress the enemy fire. It was a total fucking mess, sort of like the Normandy Beach landings, but by air instead of boat. By the end of the day, the situation was under control, we’d secured the A Luoi airstrip, and we were fanning out into the hills, searching for Chuck.”
I looked in the rearview mirror and said to Mr. Loc, “We beat the pants off the People’s Liberation Army that day, Mr. Loc.”
He didn’t reply.
“Paul. Don’t.”
“Fuck him. His mommie was a Commie.”
“Paul.”
I got myself calmed down a bit and saw that we were entering A Luoi, a muddy village of wooden structures. There was one stucco building with a flag that was obviously the government building. The only vehicles I could see were scooters, a farm truck, and two yellow police jeeps. There were electric wires overhead, so the place had electricity, which was an improvement over the last time I’d been here.
Mr. Loc stopped in the village square. There were no parking meters.
Susan and I got out, and I looked around, trying to orient myself. The hills hadn’t changed, but the valley floor had.
I said, “So, this is the shithole we fought for in three weeks of bloody combat.”
I said to Mr. Loc, in English, “We’re going to take a walk. You can report to your bosses.” I jerked my thumb toward the government building.
Susan and I walked through the small square and down a narrow path that ended in a field west of the village. Running through the farm fields was the old airstrip, a mile-long stretch of PSP — perforated steel planking — overgrown now with weeds, but still usable.
I said to Susan, “Here’s the airstrip, and at the far north end of it over there was the ruins of the Special Forces camp that the First Cav used as the command post when we landed. The engineers threw up sandbag bunkers all around the strip, and within two days, we had barbed wire and claymore mines encircling the whole runway. My company spent three days in the hills pushing the bad guys farther back, away from the airstrip. Then, we got a two-day break by manning the bunkers. My bunker was about over there, at the foot of that hill.”
I looked out over the farmland to where the hills rose, about five hundred meters away. I said to Susan, “One day, we’re sitting on top of the bunker, six guys playing poker, and Charlie starts dropping mortar rounds in from those hills farther back. And here’s what’s totally nuts — we barely looked up at the impacting rounds because we’re old pros by now, and we knew Chuck was trying to hit the command bunkers over there or the ammo dumps or the airstrip itself. So we kept on playing cards. And then — here’s the funny thing — some Commie son of a bitch up there in the hills — obviously the mortar spotter with field glasses — must have noticed us and got pissed off that we weren’t paying any attention to his mortar fire. So, he gets personal and starts directing the mortar fire toward our miserable little bunker. The rounds started walking in on us, and we realized they were getting too close when dirt and stones started falling on us. Well, I’m sitting there with three aces and about thirty bucks in the pot, and everyone drops their cards, grabs a handful of money, and jumps off the roof of the bunker and dives inside. I jumped in just as a mortar round exploded outside and shook the bunker. I’d kept my cards, and I’m showing these idiots my three aces as the bunker is starting to come apart, and we’re arguing if I won, or if it should be called a misdeal. We laughed about that for weeks afterward.”
Susan said, “I guess you had to be there.”
“I was.”
I walked on a path between two cultivated fields, and Susan followed. The path ended in a treeline, and we went through the trees to where the small river flowed. It was a shallow, rocky river, and I recalled crossing it at a rock ford somewhere upstream. I went down to the river’s edge and stood on a flat rock. Susan stood beside me.
“One day, we crossed this river a little upstream, over there. We had only about a hundred men in the company that used to number about a hundred and sixty. We’d lost a lot of people during the Tet Offensive in January and February, then at Khe Sanh in early April. So, now it’s around April 30, and we’ve already lost a few guys here in the A Shau, and the meat grinder needs fresh meat, but no replacements are arriving, and we’re also getting low on C rations and purified water…”
I looked at the water and said, “This is a clean mountain river, so we took a chance and filled our canteens here and drank directly out of the river.”
I walked along the rocky bank until I reached the natural rock ford I remembered. Susan followed, and we stepped into the river on the first rock. The water came up to our ankles, and it was as cold as I remembered it. We crossed the river and scrambled up the opposite bank.
I said, “So we crossed here, and what do we see? About ten dead enemy soldiers lying on the riverbank here, some of them half in the water. They were decomposing into the river, all green and bloated, and one guy’s jaw was just hanging by a piece of muscle and it was resting on his shoulder, with a full set of teeth… it was very weird.” I added, “Everyone emptied their canteens. One guy vomited.” I knelt down and scooped some water in my hands and stared at it, but didn’t drink.
Susan was quiet.
I stood and turned away from the river. I could see where the trail began through the thick vegetation, and I climbed the bank onto the trail.
Susan followed, but said, “Paul, this is the kind of place where there could still be land mines.”
“I don’t think so. This is probably a well-used ford, and this trail is also well traveled. But we’ll be careful.” I started up the trail and Susan followed. “We’ll do a leech check later.”
She didn’t reply.
“So, we’re moving up this trail, and something moves in the bush. But it’s not Chuck, it’s a deer. I’m near the front of the lead platoon, and like idiots, we all fire at the deer. We miss, and we start chasing it through this bush while the rest of the platoon is jogging up the trail to keep up with us.”