The Village (18 page)

“——'s on the gun! He's drunk out of his mind! Get down! Get down!”

Scattered in the paddies were a dozen women and several buffalo boys, and the PFs were calling to them.

“Nam xuong! Nam xuong! Get down! Get down!”

The drunken soldier was set now, having leaned his body over the rear of the gun and swung the heavy barrel upward. It wavered around the fort and then slowly swung out toward the paddies, like a compass needle coming to rest. There came the solid, belting jackhammer sound of the weapon firing and the thick incendiary slugs, big as cigars, burned over the paddies. In red arcs the shells lazed out, almost casually reaching for the people who lay among the rice stalks, as if shells designed to stop planes and armor thought it humdrum to squash mere skin and bones.

Before Thanh could decide to use his unholstered pistol, while Colucci was agonizingly lifting his M-16, McGowan broke from the village hall. In a few strides he was across the tiny courtyard and up over the sandbag parapet, his fist hitting the drunk behind the ear, once, twice and a third time.

No one had been struck by the twenty or thirty wild shells which had been fired, and Trao called a quick meeting to instruct all in the fort to tell their families and neighbors that the shooting was the result of a runaway gun being test-fired. But, of course, the story did not hold up.

They kept the man under guard at the fort until the next day, when McGowan told him to pack his seabag. He was through. He was sent back to Charlie Company, where he was immediately made a squad leader because of his tactical knowledge and hard reputation.

Had the incident happened in June of 1966, it might have been brushed over, for the Marine was an able tactician. But nine months later the Americans at Fort Page were unwilling to excuse a man who tried to murder a villager. None of the Marines asked McGowan to reconsider. The man was finished. They no longer wanted him with them and the PFs in the village.

The Americans were beginning to feel at home in the village, with its guerrillas and PFs, fishermen and farmers, women and children. Many of the Marines let months go by without writing a letter or reading a newspaper. The radius of their world was two miles.

At least, that was how it was for most of them. Their corpsman was their most diligent letter writer, a fact attributed to his being married. The man had served in the unit for four months, performing his chores well and getting along without friction with both the villagers and the Marines. He was a Navy enlisted man, for all Marines must qualify as riflemen and rely upon the Navy for non-combatant support, such as chaplains, doctors and nurses. He liked the village.

But one afternoon McGowan entered the squad tent to find him alone at his cot in the corner, crying. McGowan backed out and told the other Marines and PFs to stay away for a while. Still, in such close quarters, a man cannot hide his distress for long and by evening all the Marines knew that his wife was living with a sailor and had written to ask for a divorce. Then, in confusion, she had written a second letter saying she did not want to leave him and what should she do?

The advice of young bachelors was predictably unsettling. Most blithely urged that he divorce her and celebrate his freedom by going to Taiwan or Hong Kong, where, if he worked at it, he could sleep with a dozen girls during a week's pass, and return refreshed and content. This struck everyone but the corpsman as a splendid idea, and several offered to go with him. A few suggested they could write some friends in San Diego who owed them favors for help in past firefights. These returned veterans could work over the wife's boyfriend. The corpsman perked up at that, but became glum again when McGowan suggested it would probably ensure a divorce.

Next, the corpsman sought the advice of Lieutenant Carlson, a district adviser. Carlson was a mustang, a first sergeant who had been commissioned to the officer ranks at the age of forty. Salty and understanding, he offered simple advice to the corpsman: go home, see his wife, talk to her and to his parents or a priest or someone with a level, older head, make a decision, stick to it and come back. The corpsman agreed.

The personnel department at headquarters did not. In comparison with the justifications for emergency leaves usually granted, such as the death of a parent or terminal illness at home, the love life of one corpsman seemed insignificant. His request refused, the man could not concentrate on his work. The PF corpsman, Bac Si Khoi, filled in, taking care of the Americans, the PFs and the villagers. Since he had saved Theilepape's life, the Marines had complete trust in him.

McGowan told the corpsman to take a week off. He could go anywhere in the province he pleased. Military police treated Marines from combined units as they did Army Special Forces and Navy Seal commandos: with a mixture of respect and wariness. It was better to stay out of their way, and if they were drunk, just return them to their units. Arresting them did no corrective good; and there was always that awkward moment of seizure when they might choose not to be arrested.

The corpsman took the time off but didn't leave the village. McGowan kept four quarts of whiskey under his cot so that anyone could take a drink, provided others knew. A private bottle or a pouch of pot spelled automatic expulsion from the CAP since slack reflexes on patrol could not be tolerated. Drinking steadily, the corpsman consumed all four quarts in six days. He rarely spoke, rarely ate, just sat on top of the trench line sipping at his bottle, broiling in the sun, and frequently vomiting into the stagnant moat.

McGowan knew something was coming, and when the man did flip out, he did so with flair, ensuring that even bored processing clerks would read his case twice. By the seventh day of his drunk he was dehydrated, beet-colored, scrub-bearded, stinking and red-eyed. He lolled around the fort until ten in the morning. By then the market was full, the PFs had gone home and most of the Marines were napping or sitting in some cool thatched house teasing the girls or whiling away the time somewhere with the PFs and the old men.

No one was watching the corpsman. He walked slowly out of the fort and took a side trail into a treeline. A few moments later he emerged onto the main trail, and ran full tilt into the marketplace, shrieking at the top of his lungs, stark-naked.

Three days later, on orders signed by a doctor who examined psychiatric cases, he flew to San Diego on emergency leave. He stayed married to the girl and returned to Vietnam one month later. There he had to join a rifle company. The bureaucracy was not about to send him back to Binh Nghia. Besides, Binh Nghia had been sent a new corpsman, named John Blunk.

Faced with the draft after scholastic difficulties in his junior year of college, Blunk had chosen to enlist in the Navy as a corpsman in order to further his premedical training. Bright and bouncy, he strode into Binh Nghia with the attitude of a young doctor hanging out his shingle for the first time. Like a conscientious doctor with a wealthy clientele, Blunk looked upon the chronic ailments of the Marines as trivial. Although he was assigned to the fort in order to be available for emergencies, Blunk decided his day-to-day patients should be the villagers.

In the past, CAP corpsmen had attended the villagers on a Band-Aid and penicillin level and had called helicopter medevacs for serious cases. With a higher level of skill and dedication, Blunk went beyond those rudiments. He spent long hours with Khoi, who also said he wanted to be a doctor, a claim some thought was influenced by his admiration for Blunk. From Khoi the corpsman learned of the sicknesses and hurts which went unreported, because it took the fear of death to drive a villager to the province hospital, what with the expense, the distance, the strangeness, the crowded sick and the harried doctors. Most of the villagers who fell ill preferred to stay at home and suffer steadily. So Blunk did not lack for real patients. He started with those he could treat with the tools and drugs the United States Navy provides each combat corpsman: Terramycin, malaria pills, aspirin, stitches and bandages. Both the local needs and his own skill exceeded those basics, and Blunk dipped into the medical slush fund Marine headquarters had set up for village care. There, too, he quickly exceeded his quota, since patients were starting to come from Binh Thuy Island and from the Phu Longs. Blunk told McGowan he had to have more and better supplies. He had pulled several teeth lately and infection was spreading in one farmer's jaw. Some of his minor-surgery cases needed similar follow-up attention and he did not have the proper drugs. If he got a bad reputation, so would the combined unit.

McGowan got the message. He sought out Lieutenant Carlson, who could only suggest sending any relapse cases to the Vietnamese hospital. The medication Blunk wanted required forms in triplicate and a doctor's signature.

“Oh hell,” McGowan said. “If I have to go through the paper mill, we'll all be dead and buried before that stuff arrives.”

He knew of a faster way. The head corpsman for a nearby rifle company, a chief petty officer who had been in the Navy for twenty years, was notorious for his thirst. Under General Walt's order, no bottles of hard liquor were officially sold anywhere in I Corps. The rifle companies received a weekly ration of beer, scarcely an acceptable substitute to the chief's discriminating tongue. McGowan's stockpile included a quart of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch whisky. In return for the liquor, Blunk got his shopping list filled, including a credit voucher for drugs which needed refrigeration.

Although the Americans were gradually becoming involved in nonmilitary matters in the village, their primary effort and the focus of their attentions remained tactical. But after nine months of some of the hardest village fighting in Vietnam, Binh Nghia was still intact. There was never an air strike called in the war for that village. It was a battle fought with rifles and grenades at such close quarters that both sides used their senses of smell and hearing as much as their eyesight. The villagers did not stroll around at night, and in the firing at sounds, flashes and shadows, it was usually the participants on both sides, not the villagers, who died. There were exceptions, but they were exceptions.

March brought the warm sun back and, as the waters subsided and the muddy trails dried out, both the villagers and the Viet Cong moved about more frequently. One night McGowan was at point on an evening patrol moving slowly through the far reaches of Binh Yen Noi. It was a little after ten, a time when patrols rarely made contact, and the sergeant was not especially alert. But by habit he stopped every hundred yards or so to listen. It was during such a break that he heard someone moving rapidly toward him up the hard-packed trail. McGowan fired from the hip, spraying the trail from right to left.

A man went down groaning, then lay still. The patrol waited for two minutes before moving. They heard nothing further. Advancing cautiously, they switched on a flashlight and in its beam picked up the face of the dead man, whom a PF identified as one of his neighbors. He was not carrying a weapon or anything else which associated him with the Viet Cong.

The next day the PFs found out the story. The man had been having an affair with his wife's sister. Several evenings a week, on one pretext or another, he would visit her just before dark, then run back home shortly after curfew. Since he never was gone overnight, his wife suspected nothing. The evening of his death, he had stayed too long. The sister begged him to wait until dawn and give some excuse to his wife, but he said he could dash home safely and so not risk arousing suspicion. He was almost home when he was killed.

A few nights later another villager died as a result of poor judgment. On that night, a three-man patrol was prowling the outskirts of My Hué when the point man saw a group of men digging in the sand dunes. The patroller returned to the fort to gather a reaction squad, but when they arrived at the scene, the men were gone, having dug and camouflaged a trench line near the main trail for ambush purposes. The reaction force destroyed the trench line and the next night McGowan took a patrol back to the scene. He was at point nearing the edge of the hamlet when his head bumped a board. Without hesitation he dove flat, yelling “Grenade!” The other patrol members jumped off the trail and the booby trap exploded harmlessly.

Something about the setup bothered McGowan. Not quite sure what it was, he led another patrol the next night back to the same spot. As he moved through My Hué with his safety off, three rounds from a carbine cracked by his head. Their sound was still hanging in the air when he returned fire, hitting his assailant in the chest and killing him instantly.

The patrollers dragged the body from the bushes and turned on a flashlight. McGowan recognized the man immediately. Several times he had eaten at his house and once, on a week's stakeout in the hamlet, he had slept there. The man had been friends with several of the PFs.

The PFs roughly questioned the man's wife, who admitted that her husband had been a secret, in-place Viet Cong agent. A few nights earlier, some guerrillas had rowed across from the Phu Longs and set to work digging a fighting trench with the intention of ambushing a PF patrol. After the PFs destroyed the trench, a Viet Cong who knew her husband had sneaked back to talk. Her husband had laughed at the guerrilla for his poor plan and the guerrilla had replied that at least he had the courage to fight and not just hide. His pride stung, her husband had rigged a grenade as a booby trap, a safe, clever response which McGowan had sensed was the work of a local resident. When it failed, rather than lose face, her husband chose to use the carbine, despite her pleas to leave the patrols alone.

Although he thought the man foolish for allowing pride to goad him into a senseless act of defiance, Thanh was chagrined that in his dossiers there was nothing which had associated the man with the Viet Cong. He guessed that there were no more than a dozen secret enemy cadres in the seven hamlets, but he had little hope of finding them. This left the first move up to them, and it was only by a quirk that one such valuable agent had been exposed and eliminated.

For their part, the enemy appeared to have modified their strategy toward Binh Son district in general and toward Binh Nghia in particular. Where some months earlier they had eagerly sought contact, the guerrilla and small Viet Cong units were avoiding the patrols. Vietnamese military intelligence reported that in late January three hundred VC political cadres from the five lowland districts of Quang Ngai province had attended a conference in southern Binh Son, where it had been decided not to fight the spreading pacification efforts on a daily guerrilla basis. Instead, the guerrillas were to gather intelligence and act as guides and reinforcements for the main forces who would come down from the hills for strong attacks. The primary targets were to be the RD teams and combined units, of which there were then five in Binh Son.

Shortly afterward district informed Thanh that a commander of the 409th NVA Battalion, which had participated in the September attack upon the fort, had visited the village and stayed overnight. Then a farmer told the PFs that five VC had held him prisoner in My Hué for five days, seeking information about Fort Page. The warnings about enemy observers from the main forces coupled with McGowan's clash with the secret guerrilla disturbed Suong. He suggested that the nightly patrol to that hamlet take the PF radio, and the PFs at the fort would double up on the Marine radio. This sensible precaution was followed for several days without incident.

Then in the early morning of March 25, the My Hué patrol received a call from battalion ordering them to cross over to the Phu Longs. When an attempt was made to raise the fort for confirmation of the dangerous order, the caller from battalion cut in on the frequency and repeated the battalion commander's orders. The radio procedure was correct and the English unaccented, but the radio operators at the fort could not identify the voice, and they knew the battalion operators on a first-name basis. McGowan told the caller to go to hell, assuming the man was an American at one of the many Chulai bases. In response to McGowan's curses, the voice signed off by saying: “Auf Wiedersehen, Marines.” The incident was reported to counterintelligence, who confirmed the next day that the enemy had moved a powerful radio onto the peninsula across the river, along with an English-speaking operator, whom they believed to be European.

The combined unit was warned that the main forces would not be monitoring their net without reason. Special reconnaissance teams were dispatched by Marine headquarters to scout the Binh Son peninsula. They sighted numerous enemy bands dressed not in the black garb of guerrillas but in the green and khaki utilities characteristic of main-force units. The pilots of spotter planes brought back similar observations. There was gossip about a large enemy band seeping into the Phu Longs. The women who went downriver to the district market were buzzing about it, and Mr. Lee, the district census taker and top intelligence agent, insisted it was true.

Then at ten in the warm morning of March 26 a combined unit on the other side of the Phu Longs sent out a patrol with rudimentary medical assistance to a hamlet with a reputation like that of My Hué: influenced by, but not fully organized or fanatically dedicated to, the Viet Cong. There were sixteen men in the patrol, and they walked straight into a main-force bivouac position. Within a half-hour ten Marines and five PFs were dead. One PF survived by hiding in some underbrush while the Viet Cong shot in the head each of the fifteen bodies. The news raced through the district, with the Viet Cong reinforcing their victory by declaring they would strike again. The question was where.

Intelligence indicated that at the Viet Cong district committee meeting in late January the Binh Nghia combined unit had been denounced more bitterly than any other U.S. or GVN program. The unit was a military impediment; its patrols and ambushes prevented easy use of the Tra Bong River and blocked one route toward the Chulai air base. Its presence also impeded rice collections, taxation, proselytizing and recruitment. Worse still, after destroying the fort in September, the district committee had expected to regain the Binh Yen Noi area and reestablish suzerainty over the entire village, an expectation calculated on the belief that fear rather than revenge would dictate the actions of the survivors. Six months later, rather than having gained Binh Yen Noi, the Viet Cong faced the loss of My Hué.

Three days later, the intelligence came in hard and specific. Charlie Company received from headquarters a report that “120 VC dressed in green utilities with unidentified patch, were at Phu Long Hamlet Number 5 and armed with 60mm mortar, one 30 caliber machinegun, nine BARs and small arms. VC to attack Fort Page from the south.” That same day, Captain Dang called Suong with information from other sources, confirming that Fort Page was the target.

By midafternoon the people were leaving, first a trickle, then a steady flow of families heading to district or to spend the night with friends in other hamlets. By four o'clock the river was boatless and the trails empty. At the fort, Suong for once did not have to wait until it was dark before he knew how many PFs were going to show up for guard duty. All his men had come in early. So had Trao and Thanh and some of the other officials. Not all. Many had gone to Binh Son, rather than die like Mr. Phuoc. They were not fighters. The RDs stayed, their leader telling Suong that he had pulled his men back to Binh Yen Noi. While it was still light, the leaders of the PFs, RDs and Marines made up their common battle plan, liberally helped in their patrol decisions by the kibitzing of their men.

The plan was simple. If the attack came from the south, the scout patrols were to let the VC pass without firing, the hope being to draw the enemy into the open paddies. The 1st Marine Division had artillery illumination and helicopter gunships on alert. If the enemy entered the open, they were to finish him. If the attack came through the hamlet from the north, the VC could remain concealed and still slip up to within twenty meters of the wire. Trao and Suong insisted it would have to be a rifle fight. They did not want to destroy their own homes, and there were some families huddled in their household bunkers. The RDs were deployed along the northern edge of the hamlet, facing the sand dunes, to prevent the enemy unit from getting in among the houses. While limiting damage to the hamlet, this deployment might deprive the unit of the opportunity of delivering a hard blow, since the enemy would be unlikely to persist if discovered before they were in their assault position.

Each group was thoroughly briefed. Six of the Marines and eight PFs were to go out on two patrols to warn the fort when the enemy approached and to ambush the VC when they pulled back. Colucci was leading one patrol; Luong the other. The perimeter of the fort was manned from inside the trench, so Suong and McGowan could shift their forces as needed. By dusk they were ready. The Marines and PFs gathered in the courtyard for a final weapon check.

“All right,” McGowan said, “I want—”

“Sarge,” Gallagher yelled, “you got a call from company.”

While the Marines and the PFs waited and listened, McGowan moved to the radio and picked it up.

“Lima Six Actual, this is Charlie Six,” the radio crackled. “We have almost proof positive that you are going to be hit by a battalion. Repeat, by a battalion. You are to fall back to this position immediately. Over.”

The Marines heard. So did the PFs, and those who knew enough English to understand were whispering the news to the others even as McGowan was replying.

“Ah, Charlie Six, you told us that already today. So did Captain Dang. I'm afraid I don't understand. Everything is set down here. We'll stay. Over.”

“Lima Six Actual, this is Charlie Six Actual. This is an order from Serpent Six Actual, repeat, Serpent Six Actual.”

The commander of Charlie Company had his orders from the battalion commander, who had to bear the final career responsibility for what happened at the fort. Fort Page had gone under once. The entire patrol from another combined unit had just been wiped out. If Page fell a second time, the lieutenant colonel would almost certainly be relieved and passed over for any future promotion.

“Charlie Six, this is Lima Six Actual,” McGowan replied. “We're O.K. here. Over.”

“Lima Six, hold on while I check with Serpent Six Actual.”

McGowan changed the radio frequency and picked up the battalion net. The Charlie Company commander was catching hell from the battalion commander: either McGowan left the fort or faced a court-martial. McGowan turned the radio off.

“All Marines into the mess deck,” he said.

He turned toward the waiting Vietnamese.

“The Marines must talk alone, Suong.”

The twelve Americans gathered in the small room and sat on the floor and benches to hear McGowan.

“You all heard the man,” the sergeant said. “We could get hit by three hundred Cong. Yet if we leave now, it's all over. We could never come back. At least I'd never come back. I can't order you to stay, and you have been ordered to leave. It's our choice: go or stay. So let's take a vote. Is anyone in favor of leaving?”