Death in the Jungle Page 26

  After a minute, I abandoned my admiration for the heavens and turned my eyes upstream. I spotted three wild pigs crossing the water about seventy-five meters away. The stream was only twenty-five meters wide, and the pigs swam across quickly, climbed the opposite bank and disappeared in the brush. They reminded me of the children’s story, “The Three Little Pigs,” and I thought about how far I’d come since I had first heard the tale. I guess I’d turned into the Big Bad Wolf, there in the jungles of Vietnam.

  Farther upstream I saw hundreds of birds, gathered in flocks, in trees along the bank. I took out my binoculars and glassed the creatures. They were large parakeets, and that was the first time I’d seen these birds in Vietnam. I assumed they were in migration. I decided to keep a close eye on them until it was too dark to see them any longer; if a human being came anywhere near those birds, whether on land or in a sampan, they would show alarm and erupt from their perches in the trees.

  I continued glassing for about forty minutes as the sky gradually darkened, enjoying my bird-watching. I even located four large cranes in an old, dead tree about three hundred meters beyond the parakeets. None of the birds showed anything but placidity until it was too black to see them anymore.

  During the next few hours, the stillness remained. The moon didn’t show itself, but many stars did. Since I wasn’t sitting in water, I found myself enjoying the serenity of the evening, although the drop in temperature was enough to chill me.

  At 2300 hours, I thought I heard the sound of gunfire far away to my right. I gazed in that direction, fully aware that Foxtrot 2nd Squad was set up at the other end of the same little stream on which I was positioned, about three klicks away. I watched the skyline, and sure enough, I saw tracers arcing into the sky. Obviously, some of the fire team’s bullets were ricocheting upward. As the bullets rose, the red phosphorous in the core of each bullet burned. They looked like falling stars in reverse.

  I admired the show for several minutes, reminding myself a few times that I was sitting on an ambush site myself and I couldn’t afford to fall into a hypnotic trance while observing the fireworks. I forced my eyes to survey my piece of the stream every few seconds, looking for any signs of movement on the water. Spotting nothing, I glanced back to where movement then reigned, which was in the night air. There I saw more tracers, and finally there was a bigger glow, which I knew was a para flare.

  After a few more minutes, I heard .50s firing. This told me the PBR was arriving to extract the team. The guns continued blasting for a couple of minutes, then all was quiet. Very quiet.

  I started looking around more intensely, especially upstream to my right in the direction of Second Squad’s clash. I could only guess from all the shooting that they had encountered more than just one sampan or a couple of VC. In the event that they had met with a few sampans and several enemy, one or two crews may have escaped the SEAL ambush. If so, and if they stayed on the water, they’d be approaching our ambush site soon. I slowly swung Bad Girl’s double barrels in half a circle to my right, as a gut feeling was speaking to me loud and clear. I just knew the enemy was coming. He will come, he will come, I repeated over and over.

  An hour slowly drifted by, and the only thing that came was the tide. The water rose and crested over the bank of the stream, but only a few inches. The peak hit at 0100 hours, and I sat in half a foot of water. It was enough to wet me down, and along with a sudden strong breeze, it was enough to make my teeth chatter. I sang a couple of old country-and-western songs under my breath to the syncopated rhythm.

  An hour later, the water began receding rapidly the way it always did when there was a ten-to-twelve-foot difference between high tide and low. Water rushing and gurgling everywhere made it difficult to hear any other noises in the night. I did, however, pick up the sounds of amphibious lung fish flopping in the mud and splashing into the water. Every now and then I heard the clicking noises of nearby crabs. During one short stretch, several crabs joined together in what sounded like a group of percussionists testing their castanets for speed. Thereafter, however, things began to quiet down. Even the wind backed off until an eerie silence encompassed the area.

  The silence lasted almost an hour, then like all silent times, it was overcome and broken. The culprit this time was a slightly errant paddle striking against the side of a sampan to my right. I turned my eyes toward the noise. About seventy-five feet away, I vaguely saw a sampan on the starlit water with a man seated forward and another aft. My heartbeat instantly did double-time and my hands took a firmer grip on the M-16/XM-148, which was resting on my lap with its barrels pointing downstream—in the wrong direction.

  Damn it all, I swore inside myself, angry that I had moved my weapon to this position only ten minutes earlier. Now I had to swing it back around with two VC right on top of me. In the starlight, there was a chance they’d see me. Maybe they’d even shoot first before they moved into our kill zone. Hell, they were going to pass by me at a distance of fifteen bloody feet or less.

  I slowly pivoted Bad Girl toward the oncoming enemy, but before I got her fully turned around, the sampan turned toward the bank of the stream and the bow ran up on the beach just ten yards from my bugged-out eyeballs. The occupants remained in the grounded boat and whispered frantically to one another. Believing that they’d seen me and were plotting to shoot at me in a moment, I clicked my M-16 from semi- to full automatic. I seized the moment out from under the gooks and squeezed the M-16’s trigger. Spraying the sampan from end to end, I fired the entire 30-round magazine.

  In the midst of my firing, the two men tumbled out of the sampan and into the water. I moved my finger forward to the XM-148 trigger and fired a 40mm HE round to the outboard side of the sampan. It blew, visibly rocking the sampan and setting it free from the shore.

  I fell to my left side on the muddy bank, keeping a low profile as I inserted another 30-round magazine in the M-16 and loaded a second 40mm canister round in the grenade launcher. Before I finished, Ty opened up with his M-16 and shot up the sampan some more as it floated past him.

  As I sat up from reloading, someone down the line sent up a para flare, which brought artificial daylight to the situation. I looked downstream about forty feet and saw a human head pop up in the water. I instantly fired a 40mm round to within a foot of the head; simultaneously, McCollum shot a 40mm round into the stream on the opposite side of the head. The two grenades exploded together, and when the water settled down, there was no trace of humanity left to be seen.

  A few seconds later, a package of some sort surfaced about forty meters downstream. Muck and I again fired 40mm rounds beside it and blew it sky-high. This time when the water calmed, I could see a few pieces of the bundle drifting away in the current.

  Twenty seconds later, as the para flare petered out, word was passed from Mr. Meston that Ty and I were to swim out and retrieve the sampan. I hustled to slip on my fins while Ty stood over me just watching. He had no fins, which would be a big detriment in the swift stream if we had to swim some against the current.

  “Let’s go,” I said as I climbed to my feet with my knife in my right hand. Just then, a second flare ignited high above the stream. Ty and I wasted no time in dropping down into the water and beginning our swim, Ty with his rifle in one hand.

  At the start, I couldn’t see the sampan ahead of us. It had drifted beyond the range of the overhead floodlight. I glanced to my left; Ty was sidestroking easily beside me, as we were going with the flow of the current.

  As we progressed, McCollum placed M-79 rounds on the banks around us to keep the enemy from sticking his nose in too close. I welcomed this assistance; it made me feel secure even though I was up to my neck in an insecure position. That was what teammates were for, I thought, to lend each other the courage to attain the unattainable.

  Ty and I quickly left the small stream and entered the main river, where the current was stronger. Taking advantage of the flow, we swam hard and moved along rapidly. I kept my eyes peeled for
the sampan, hoping it would show up on the glittering water.

  After a hundred or more yards, just when I was considering turning back, I spied a dark object floating on the water about ten yards ahead of me. I swam closer, made sure it was the sampan, then went all-out to catch it. Ty was several yards behind me as I reached out of the water and grabbed the boat. Immediately I began stroking against the current, getting nowhere until Ty laid his weapon in the sampan and helped me. We towed the boat crosscurrent toward the black shoreline, and the going was extremely tough.

  Surprisingly, Ty hung in there and lasted most of the distance, finally giving out with less than thirty meters to go. I told him to hang onto the sampan until I beached it. Gathering up all my strength, I kicked furiously for the shore. I made it, but the last ten meters took a lot out of me. When the sampan struck land, I heaved it onto the muddy riverbank and uttered a sigh of relief. Then I crawled up the bank along one side of the sampan while Ty made his way along the other.

  At this point I would have loved to have sat down and rested for a few minutes, but there was no way I was going to hang out a hundred yards away from my teammates with just a K-bar knife and an M-16 rifle in a totally compromised area. Instead, I jumped to my feet and grabbed the bow of the sampan. Ty took a grip beside me and we began dragging the sampan back to the ambush site through the mud.

  Just before we made it back, a couple of Seawolves arrived and strafed the opposite bank for security measures. As planned, Mr. Meston and the Seawolves knew exactly where Ty and I were since I had turned on my strobe light with a blue lens cover when Ty and I had started our swim. Also, I knew Mr. Meston had been watching us through his starlight scope. As always, I was happy to see the air support, and I was now fully confident that my platoon, once again, would get back to the naval base alive and well after one more successful mission.

  As Ty and I approached the others, I yelled to alert them so we wouldn’t get shot accidentally. A few seconds later, I heard the PBRs coming to extract us, so Ty and I hurried our task. We pulled the sampan the last several meters and dropped it down on the riverbank where the minor stream entered the main river. Mr. Meston instructed us to gather our gear quickly so as to waste no time in departure. We retrieved our belongings as our teammates loaded the sampan onto one of the PBRs, then we joined them in boarding the boats.

  Moments later, we were cruising down the Tac Ong Nghia, and I was feeling fine. Mr. Meston didn’t seem so fine as he sat down beside me in the boat.

  “Smitty, you initiated the ambush prematurely,” he said. “Why didn’t you wait until the sampan entered the kill zone?”

  I explained to the lieutenant that the VC had beached the sampan next to me and I had no choice. With that information, Meston grinned at me.

  “I understand,” he said, nodding his head. “When you let loose on the right flank like that, it scared the pants off the rest of us.”

  McCollum, sitting on my opposite side and hearing us, added, “It scared my pants off and my shit right out of me.”

  I chuckled. “Better your shit than my life.”

  Muck was grinning in the darkness. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  Once we got back to the base, we found out from Second Squad that they had seen four sampans at 2300 hours, which was when I’d heard and seen their gunfire. They had allowed the lead sampan, a scout boat, to move through and out of the kill zone before opening up on the trailing sampans. All of the VC had either fallen or jumped overboard during the outburst, and only one body had been found and confirmed dead. The others had sunk or gotten away. The two men I had shot must have been the occupants of the scout boat that Second Squad had let pass.

  As it happened, that was the first time in which both fire teams in a platoon had gotten hits in the same area on the same night. That was good for our morale and bad for Charlie’s. We’d done our job, which was to harass and destroy. Charlie had done his job, too, which from our point of view was to die. And Foxtrot Platoon lived to see another day and another mission.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mission Thirty-four

  “War is an unmitigated evil. But it certainly does one good thing. It drives away fear and brings bravery to the surface.”

  Mohandas K. Gandhi,

  Non-Violence in Peace and War

  DATE: 26 January 1968

  TIME: 1330H TO 1630H

  COORDINATES: XR698247, XR700242

  UNITS INVOLVED: PBRs, MST-2, SEAL 1, SEAL 2

  TASK: Recon patrol for VC hospital and prisoner-of-war camp

  METHOD OF INSERTION: PBR

  METHOD OF EXTRACTION: PBR

  TERRAIN: Thick brush on river edge, palm groves, hootches

  WEATHER: Clear

  SEAL TEAM PERSONNEL: 1st Squad:

  Lt. (jg) Van Heertum, Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16

  CM3 Scott, Point/Rifleman, M-16

  GMG2 Jewett, Automatic Weapons/Stoner

  ENFN Hyatt, Ordnance/Grenadier, M-79

  RMSN McHugh, Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

  HMC Blackburn, Corpsman/Rifleman, M-16

  2nd Squad:

  WO1 Casey, Asst. Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16

  EM2 DiCroce, Asst. Squad Leader/Grenadier, M-79

  MM1 Martin, Automatic Weapons/Stoner

  RM2 Smith, Point/Rifleman, M-16/XM-148

  RM2 Luksik, Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

  AO3 Clann, Automatic Weapons/Stoner

  AZIMUTHS: Parallel stream

  ESCAPE: 225 degrees

  CODE WORDS: None

  Foxtrot Platoon hung together for another seventeen days. On January 15, 1968, we mustered at 0800 hours, anxious to celebrate our going away on the base at the EM club later in the day. Everyone was heading back to the States in a few days, with the exception of Mr. Meston, who was leaving today, and me. I was to hook up with Bravo Platoon for another month of operations around Dung Island, which was located about eighty miles southwest of Nha Be as the crow flies.

  Mr. Meston had us gather in order to say good-bye. He said a few words, commending us for a job well done, then took the time to shake each person’s hand.

  I approached the lieutenant with my right hand outstretched, and he looked me in the eye as he grasped my hand firmly. We shook, and I quickly tried to come out with the right words to say to him, even though words did not exist that expressed my admiration for his leadership abilities, and for the man himself.

  “Thanks for everything, Mr. Meston,” I blurted, doing my best. “I sure enjoyed serving under you and I learned a lot under your command.” As I turned loose of his hand, I added, “If I ever have the opportunity, I’d consider it a privilege to work for you again.”

  With a half grin, he said, “Thank you, Smitty. You can work point for me anytime.” He looked at me, acting as if he wanted to say more, but something stopped him. Probably the wall that sort of naturally stands between an officer and his men, I thought. But he need not have said another word to me; his eyes had conveyed the rest of his message.

  As I walked back to the barracks, I couldn’t help but remember my first mission with Lieutenant Meston and how I had thought he was somewhat nervous and that he’d have to prove himself to me. Well, damned if he hadn’t done that and a whole lot more. The man was a fine leader, in my opinion, and I hated to see him go. But as it stood, he went alone, shouldering responsibility for one terribly unfortunate accident: Katsma’s death. I just knew the remembrance of that day, October 6, tormented him regularly. I knew, because I endured the same agonies 101 days later. But I was confident that Mr. Meston would go on to have a splendid naval career, and I was hoping to do the same. We then went our separate ways in life, yet we were forever unified in spirit by one comrade’s passing and thirty life-and-death missions.

  I entered my cubicle and slid Bolivar’s cage from beneath my bunk, intent upon seeing how the snake was doing after having gotten stepped on the previous day by Flynn in the latrine. Once again, Bolivar had escaped from his box, and
as Flynn had tried to catch him, he had accidentally stomped a foot on the snake. Unlike last time when Flynn had gotten bit by the snake on the finger, this time the snake had gotten mashed by the SEAL, and his chances of surviving the sustained injuries were questionable.

  One look at Bolivar lying limp in his cage answered all questions: my pet was stone-cold dead. A cocky-assed beetle paraded right across Bolivar’s nose. I thought for a moment about killing the arrogant one, but then I had a better idea: I’d turn him over to the guy who owned Dracula, the nine-foot python.

  After snatching the aforementioned beetle from the cage and depositing it in a glass jar, I picked up my deceased snake and carried it outside. Borrowing a small folding shovel along the way, I walked to a place on the western edge of the compound. I found a nice patch of grassy ground beside a nipa palm tree and began digging a small grave.

  When I ended up with a two-foot-deep hole, I laid Bolivar in it, took one last look at him, and covered him with dirt. After refilling the hole, I dropped the shovel to the side, deciding to say a few words. I glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then I addressed the grave.

  “Well, Bolivar,” I muttered in a quiet voice, “I guess I’ve gotta say good-bye to you, too.” I looked around again before continuing. “Ah, you were a pretty good snake, and I’m sad that you didn’t have a longer run at living. But, on the optimistic side of things, at least I don’t have to try to smuggle you back through Hawaii.”

  I kicked a clump of ground onto the top of the grave, then tromped it down with my foot. I bent over and grabbed the shovel and whacked the turned soil with the back of the blade.

  “So long, Bolivar,” I said over my shoulder as I stood up, pivoted, and walked away. Again I surveyed the surrounding area, hoping no one had witnessed my snake’s funeral; after all, there were some things over which you knew your teammates would torture and tease you, and presiding over a funeral for a snake was one of those things. Fortunately, I saw no living creature watching me but a brown pigeon perched on a tree branch.