Run Between the Raindrops Read online

  Curriculum at the Campus of The Corps was simple and direct, geared to a lowest common denominator, and aimed for heart over head in the early going. The school colors were black and blue long before they morphed into scarlet and gold. No middle ground, no sniveling; just do or die trying. Learn to love your fellow Marines and hate everyone else. You are the best there is. You are the elite. You can do much more than you ever thought you could do. Is that clear, ladies?

  And if not, just commence bends and thrusts until the Drill Instructor gets tired. See, it’s like this: Marines love and respect each other. They depend on each other like family members. No Marine is ever alone if there is another Marine in sight. No Marine ever needs to worry about having to stand alone once he becomes a member of the club. Is that clear, maggots? Yes, sir! Kill ’em and eat ’em.

  Feeling good came hard but I felt better than I ever had about myself. Here was a place where polite social intercourse was about as vital to your existence as social disease. And here was a place where mavericks were in the mainstream. Pay your dues and pack your load, that’s all the Marines will ask but there are some interesting twists available. After a tour in the infantry learning that 81mm mortars are very heavy and hard on hearing, it was full focus on wangling my way into a slot in military journalism. The Corps had a swivet of keen observers but not many of them could write jaunty, laudatory prose about what they saw.

  Occasionally, some fellow writer or photographer who admired my work or some senior NCO who thought I was an iron-ass potential lifer, made overtures. But the book says a Marine on Duty Has No Friends, and I always seemed to be on duty. It was my position and I chose to defend it alone. If life taught me anything tangible at that point it was that if you get too close to assholes you are bound to be shit on. By the time orders to Vietnam arrived, I could count my close friends on one hand and ignore three fingers. Steve was a solo exception and it was likely a case of opposite attraction.

  He was an educated, clean-cut, all-American type with conservative viewpoints and a loving young wife who wrote homey letters about pots that boiled over and commodes that didn’t flush. He had a great set of parents who bragged about their Marine son engaged in the defense of freedom in Southeast Asia. Steve had strong feelings about patriotism and the righteous nature of American policy in Southeast Asia. I was none of those things and held a skeptical view of any national policy on personal principle.

  But Steve stuck with me. There was something about his ability to listen with a sly understanding grin on his lean face. And there was something about the way he seemed to care—really care—about other people’s opinions. There was something about the way he did things for people without waiting around for congratulations or accolades. He would even give assholes an even break despite my warnings. Steve was an exception that proved a lot of rules.

  And one of my rules was that I needed a guy like Steve with me if this deal in Hue City was going to get any worse.

  Week One

  It’s late in the day, but something is brewing. Everyone is expecting orders and no one thinks they’re going to be pleasant. A lieutenant arrives to let us know there will be no artillery support. Whatever we’re going to do, we’ll do it with nothing heavier than our own mortars. He spreads a ratty tourist map of Hue that he found in a local gas station. All the attractions where visitors can take memorable photos are marked with little green dragons.

  “We’re headed across this next series of canals…” He draws a line east-west with a dirty fingernail. “Eighty-ones will prep ahead of us and then we move. Once we start, I don’t want anybody to stop unless the order is passed to hold. We clear all the way to this street here by the river. Right flank should sweep right by the MACV Compound. Skipper wants us there for noon chow. Any questions?”

  Between Steve and I there’s about ten questions beginning with how we get out of this chickenshit deal, but this is not the time. There’s a rumble of snide remarks from the assembled squad leaders. A black Marine with a nickel-plated magnum revolver in a shoulder holster sums it up for everyone. “Another fucking dollar job on a dime budget. There it is.”

  We snap a few photos of an engineer detachment working to bridge the wide, deep canals that we’ll have to cross to commence the assault. In about 20 minutes they’ve cobbled together a rickety-looking tinker-toy footbridge from two-by-fours nailed together and suspended at water level. An engineer is bouncing up and down on it to test durability. He is ankle deep in water but the bridge seems to bear his weight. The pistol-packing squad leader is dubious.

  “Will that fucking thing hold?”

  “What the fuck you want, the Golden Gate?” The bouncing engineer is in no mood for quibbles from a sidewalk superintendent. “You're lucky I don't set up a goddamn tollbooth.”

  We cross the canal clinging to hand-lines rigged to steady the heavily loaded grunts. Remaining upright requires a peculiar sideways shuffle. When a man makes it to the other side, he turns to help the next man up onto the far side of the canal and then scrambles to disappear. It won’t take the gooks long to spot this encroachment, and there is no available cover nearby.

  Steve goes before me on the shaky suspension system, looking like a circus performer doing a high-wire act. As I follow and reach for his hand up onto the opposite bank, there is a mad clatter of helicopter blades that catches everyone’s attention and freezes the parade. Two Huey choppers are roaring up the canal at extremely low altitude. They are only about 30 feet off the deck, snouts pointed down in a menacing posture. We can plainly see the marking on the nose, a yellow oval with a black cat in the center. These guys are from an outfit supporting Army units in I Corps. Some of the grunts are waving when the door gunners suddenly open up and concrete begins to shatter under the impact of incoming rounds. The stupid bastards are strafing us.

  “Friendlies, you assholes! Friendlies down here!”

  The lieutenant stands in plain sight on the far bank screaming at the choppers with close rounds smacking into the pavement at his feet. I weather the attack pressed flat against the far bank. A Marine behind me screams and grabs at my legs to lever himself up off the bridge as the second chopper makes its gun run and sends more rounds screaming off the concrete.

  It’s over in minutes and trembling with close-call adrenaline, we watch the choppers soar out over the Perfume River to our left flank. They are jinking from side to side as the pilots walk on the rudder pedals and the door gunners lean out triumphantly like rodeo riders who just made it to the buzzer. Most of the grunts are aiming in on the helicopters when the Company Gunny passes the word to hold fire and get the fuck across the bridge. It isn’t that the Gunny doesn’t want to shoot the choppers right out of the air, but it’s hard to justify since nobody is killed by “them sorry-ass, ignorant doggie cocksuckers.” And there are more pressing matters at hand.

  The chopper incident is our first hint that Hue is rapidly becoming a confusing sort of combat carnival with clowns on both sides declaring their own personal free-fire zones. These guys walk on but no one is going forget being strafed by friendly choppers. Code of the Grunt: Payback is a medevac. If Army Black Cat choppers show up again in the skies over Hue City they will most definitely be met with some intense antiaircraft fire. And the shooters won’t be gooks.

  With mortars impacting a block to our front, the company crawls along a broad thoroughfare. Fireteams flow in and out of buildings and houses along the road like a snake winding its way through a maze. There’s no future in strolling up the center of this promenade so we join a squad tasked with clearing a two-story structure that must have been some sort of official city building. We recognize the Vietnam Cong Hoa seal that marks government facilities as we duck inside and follow Marines advancing cautiously up a central staircase. Somewhere up above, we can hear the distinctive rattle of an RPD machinegun.

  It’s a classic gig from the films we’ve all seen about fighting in the towns and cities of Europe during W
orld War II and, since none of us have had any training in this business, we model our actions on the movies. First man kicks open a door and sprays a burst of M-16 fire inside. Second man, hugging the other side of the door, arms a grenade and heaves it inside as hard as he can throw. The idea is to bounce the live grenade off the walls and make it tough for any gooks inside to chase it down and toss it out a window.

  In between events, everyone is still bitching long and loud about the incident with the Army choppers. Steve wants me to imagine what a tour in The Nam would be like if gaggles of MIGs appeared south of the DMZ every day flying air cover for the NVA. I’d rather not imagine that, so I busy myself with cleaning concrete dust off my camera and trying to keep up with the grunts. One thing is for damn sure. No need to write up a story about the friendly fire incident at the canal crossing. That’s not the sort of vignette the MACV Information Office expects to see from Combat Correspondents in the field.

  Deeper into the city now and we make a turn toward the big vehicular bridge that spans the Perfume River where Golf Company 2/5 is supposed to be making an attempt to cross over to the northside of Hue. Trucks and a couple of tanks rumble by headed in our direction. We’re just beginning to feel some of the ancillary injuries involved in street fighting. Uniforms are shredded and everyone is showing bloody knees, elbows, and hands. It’s a result of flinging our bodies down on hard concrete or the ripping action of rock shards that fly everywhere in a city firefight.

  A halt is called and the acting Alpha Company Six tells us we’re to wait here while Golf Company tries to cross the bridge and rescue some ARVN trapped inside the Citadel across the river. So the walls didn’t work to keep the NVA at bay. If they got in, Golf Company can too—or so the thinking goes. I’m thinking they better get their collective asses in gear. If the gooks dig in over there on the other side of the bridge, we are in for a siege and that won’t be pretty.

  Steve has his notebook out and is trying to question the CO over the squawk of radio transmissions. At this point, as far as the CO knows, Alpha 1/1 and Golf 2/5 are the only Marine units in Hue. He’s got no idea what the hell the ARVN are doing over on the other side of the river, but gooks are definitely inside the Citadel. There are reports of a big NVA flag flying over the walls. He’s been told by someone at the MACV Compound that Hotel and Foxtrot Companies from 2/5 are headed for the city on the double. Meanwhile, he’s supposed to clear one block left and right of our current position and be sure no gooks hit Golf Company in the back as they try the river crossing. And that is apparently being made under protest by Marine commanders who want to wait for reinforcements to arrive so they can get something more than a very tenuous toehold on the south side of the city.

  Very suddenly, shit starts flying on two flanks and radios reveal that we are in a nasty bind. Golf Company is getting hammered by NVA dug in on the northside of the river. Apparently the lead squad only made it about halfway across before the gooks opened up and drove them back to the south end of the bridge. Meanwhile on our right flank, 2nd Platoon of Alpha Company has hit major resistance to their clearing efforts and is screaming for support. We head off in that direction.

  Alpha Two is busily clearing houses when they run into stiff resistance from NVA in a Buddhist temple. As we approach the sounds of the firefight become clear and instructive. It’s a grenade duel at this point with the ringing bark of American frags competing with the shallow pop of the Chicom equivalent. When we reach the platoon commander, he is sending a sitrep over the rattle of rifle fire from his advancing squads.

  “Six, Two Alpha Actual, We're holding in a two story building on the left side of the street just across from that fucking temple. Request you send some more bodies over here to help dig ’em out, over.”

  Two Corpsmen arrive to assist with casualties. The platoon suffered one Marine killed and two wounded in the fight. While the Corpsmen deal with the wounded and wrap the dead man for evacuation, Two Alpha is ordered to push on and clear the remainder of this block. Golf Company is pulling back toward the MACV Compound after the failed bridge crossing and the trucks will pass right through this area.

  We follow a squad into an alley running east and west, parallel to the Perfume River flowing somewhere to our left. Buildings on either side of this sinuous alley are reinforced with heavy doors and iron grillwork over the windows. There is no cover here beyond sprawling flat on the wet pavement and hoping for the best. A gate-mouthed grunt grins at the cameras slung around our necks. He poses with his M-16 perched on a hip and points at his buddy slamming a fresh magazine into his weapon.

  “Me and Sandy nailed three of them fuckers just a while ago. Where was you dudes then?” Steve shoots the obligatory photo. “You know how it goes, man. War is hell.” What can you say when a grunt pauses in mid-fight to show his best side for the camera?

  Buddy Sandy chambers the first round from a fresh magazine and then, realizing instinctively that it will make a better picture, he snaps a bayonet onto the muzzle of his rifle. “You got that right, my man. War is hell—but this here combat is a stone motherfucker.” We all chuckle at the familiar observation. There’s a very thin line between bravado and bull-goose lunacy that bends and twists under pressure.

  We push on down that alley, inhaling pungent odors from camphor-wood smoke and fish sauce. As in most big city back alleys, many of the doors on our left and right lead directly to kitchens. So far no one is taking pot-shots at us, but we can hear other squads operating on our flanks and having a tougher time inside the buildings. These guys have learned to frag first, ask questions later, and every crack or crump sends us cringing or sprawling. No way of knowing which explosion is a friendly frag and which is a Chicom until the shrapnel hits.

  Passing below an open ground-floor window, buddy Sandy is just ahead of me when his helmet is blown off by a detonation. He demonstrates his indignation by cranking half a magazine on full-auto through the window.

  “Hold your fire, goddammit!” The people on the receiving end of Sandy’s ire are not happy with the response. “We got friendlies in here!”

  Sandy doesn’t much give a shit. “You motherfuckers better start giving us a fire-in-the-hole before you pitch them frags or I'll blow your stupid fucking asses away.” House clearing is a tense, scratchy deal and we have yet to learn the rules. Up ahead, Gatemouth Dude is rearing back to pitch a grenade into a window. I’ve got him framed in my lens when the arm holding the frag suddenly detaches from his body. It tumbles end over end as if the arm is independently winding up for a pitch. The grenade detonates in mid-air and I’m so focused on that frame that I don’t duck. The RPG round that blew an arm from Gatemouth’s body roars close by as Steve knocks me down out of the shrapnel fan. A Corpsman splashes by heading for Gatemouth, but the man lies dead in a pool of gore with most of his chest missing. Gatemouth will never see The World and neither will the picture I took of him getting shredded by a rocket round in this shitty little alley.

  At the open end of the alley, past where Gatemouth lies dead, there’s a street fight developing and everyone is rushing to either get in on it or get away from it. It’s hard to tell in the confusion, but we press forward which seems as good a direction as any at this point. NVA rocket gunners are sending rounds up both sides of the street at knee-level. A squad leader on the other side of the street is crouched behind a low stone wall signaling that he’s got one of the gook gunners spotted. He’s joined by a fireteam and they rush the position, covered by an M-60 gunner putting out long strings of covering fire. Code of the Grunt: Charge the fire. You may shock the trigger-man so badly he'll forget to reload and you'll certainly get yourself clear of the impact area.

  It’s chaos out on that street but here at the end of the alley there’s time for professional introspection. Broad-backed Marine with a drooping mustache is covering his mouth and leaning against a wall laughing at another man crouched and peeking cautiously at the action on the street. He elbows Steve and points
to his buddy. “Hey, man, did you see that motherfucker Albritton? That cracker shitheel pissed his pants when that rocket went over.”

  Now he’s got everyone’s attention and a seriously evil look from the pants-pissing Albritton. “Did you dudes see fuckin' Albritton? Hey, Albritton, you a loose motherfucker, man.” Corpsman to our rear is hauling Gate-mouth Dude’s body back down the alley, but nobody’s looking in that direction. In the midst of a firefight, dead men are better out of sight so they can be kept out of mind.

  We’re out of the alley now, following Albritton and his damp crotch up the street in the direction of those rocket gunners. Wherever the bastards are in the buildings at the end of this street, they’ve laid in an ample supply of B-40 rounds. It seems like one of them roars over our heads or just past our knees every few seconds. And the gook riflemen firing cover for them are having a field day sweeping us with wicked plunging fire from high positions on the left and right sides of the avenue. There’s nothing for it but to keep moving, ducking in and out of doorways, sucking everything into the tightest possible package, trying to imagine you are invisible.

  Somewhere to the rear, back where the rockets are detonating, there’s the snort and roar of a small gasoline engine. From around a bend in the street we see a 106mm recoilless rifle mounted on a Mule, a small, four-wheeled platform designed to move infantry equipment over rough terrain. The crew is clinging to the speeding vehicle trying to scrunch up and disappear beneath their helmets. Apparently, this is what passes for fire support while the people in the rear argue about the potential for collateral damage that might be done by anything heavier.

  The driver is wearing goggles and chewing maliciously on the filter of an unlit cigarette. He looks like a lunatic teenager going for broke in a soapbox derby as he wheels his mount into the mouth of an alley and signals frantically for the crew to begin breaking rounds out of their cardboard containers. The grunts are happy to be cheerleaders.