The Village (5 page)

Lam knew the man who could find out such information. He was Tran Quoc Phuoc, the district leader for the government pacification program. A natural politician, he was just the sort of man to hear and catalogue every rumor floating around the district. Phuoc wanted to run in the August election for representatives to the National Assembly in Saigon and was making a determined effort to get around the district and drum up support for his candidacy in the rural hamlets. But his travels were hampered by a lack of security.

Lam suggested to Phuoc that Binh Nghia, with its five thousand inhabitants, would make a better political base than the district town. Phuoc's wife and daughter lived in Binh Yen Noi and he could see them every day. He would have Marine or police protection if he wanted to visit dangerous hamlets like My Hué. In return, Lam was interested only in what Phuoc might learn about the Viet Cong.

Attracted by the prospect of votes, Phuoc agreed to come. He brought with him twenty RDs, or Revolutionary Development workers. According to a government theory, the RDs were to help the villagers in their daily work tasks while convincing them that they should be openly loyal to the GVN and uncooperative with the VC. Although the RDs carried weapons, their task was not to beat the enemy by force. They were supposed to show the villagers that the Saigon government cared for them and that the Viet Cong were to be shunned. The theory called for the PFs to protect the RDs.

Within a few days it was apparent that the RDs were of little use. Few of them were from the village, many were in their teens and none was married. In trying to direct their efforts, Phuoc frequently looked like an exasperated Boy Scout master with a high-spirited troop. Send the RDs to work in the fields, and he would find them trying to coax the girls into the bushes. Set them on their knees in the hamlet to plant small vegetable gardens, and they would sneak off to an abandoned hut to drink beer. Scatter them at night in four-man teams among the houses of Binh Yen Noi to trap VC, and, if they felt it safe, they would cluster together, light a lantern and play cards. If they heard a suspicious noise, they would blow out the light and remain huddled together, inviting a grenade. Good-natured young men by day; frightened children by night.

Their leader was different. Phuoc was in his thirties, a pleasant, intelligent man who knew the people and the Viet Cong. Tactics and fighting did not interest him. The second day he was in the village, he suggested that his men be combined with the PFs under the leadership of the Marines. Phuoc's talents lay in talking and listening, a business to which he devoted most of each day. He believed he could outthink the Viet Cong, and that the people would warn him of their approach. So, like Lam, he would stroll around the hamlet in the early morning, talking with the farmers on their way to the fields and stopping by the market to gossip among hundreds of women who congregated there. Unlike Lam, he carried no weapon.

The night patrols remained the responsibility of the Marines and PFs, and Beebe usually let the patrol leader choose his own men. It was generally agreed that Brannon's patrol group was the best, because it had Luong. Nguyen Van Luong did not look impressive. He had a flat face, slightly protruding teeth and a squat body scarcely taller than his M-1 rifle. He was middle-aged and had fought for the Viet Minh against both the Japanese and the French. He drank too much and hated to farm or fish. But he could worm his way through a dry thicket without breaking a twig and he could spot a Viet Cong on nights so dark other patrollers could not see the man in front of them. Luong loved to play jokes, and that was what attracted him to Brannon. In turn, Luong's reputation attracted followers among the PFs. In particular, the younger of two brothers named Khoi attached himself to Luong. Khoi was a pleasant, unobtrusive youth and Luong didn't mind his company.

About four nights after the arrival of Phuoc and the RDs, Brannon's group was slated for a short patrol through Binh Yen Noi. Beebe had decided to go with them. While waiting to get started, Brannon was, as usual, clowning with Luong. This annoyed Beebe, who was phoning in the patrol route to company headquarters.

“Brannon,” Beebe yelled, “why don't you and Luong get out of here? Go play in a paddy or something.”

Unfazed, Brannon replied, “O.K., we'll start heading toward the ville. You and the others can catch up. Let's di-di, Luong.”

The two best shots in the combined unit left, and Beebe leisurely finished sending in his list of map coordinates. Brannon and Luong had been gone fully five minutes before Beebe took Khoi and started out after them.

Wanting to overtake Brannon before he reached the shadows of the hamlet treeline, Beebe moved at a fast clip, with Khoi lagging behind. It was cloudy, but there was enough light to see about fifty yards out into the paddies. Beebe was not worrying about security, since Brannon was somewhere on the road out in front.

Brannon and Luong had walked away from the fort side by side, wisecracking and goosing each other with their rifle barrels. Both came alert as they neared the dark treeline. To their left were paddies, the trees were in front of them, and the cemetery marked by grass lumps and white tombs lay to their right.

“Dung lai,” Luong said.

Brannon stopped. Luong was backing up. No lights and no sounds were coming from the hamlet. It was too early for such quiet. Luong saw movement behind a gravestone.

Squatting, he fired. Brannon flopped down on the trail beside him, and brought his automatic rifle in line to follow Luong's tracers. The rounds pinged off the tombstones and clattered skyward. Panicking, a man left the shelter of a tombstone and stood erect to run. The bullets drove him down dead. A weak return fire rattled harmlessly back from among the graves. They heard Beebe coming up behind them at a run.

“Let's move in,” Brannon yelled. “There are only a couple of them.”

The three patrollers started into the cemetery, alternately dashing forward, flopping down and firing. Fire from the graveyard had stopped. Concentrating on where they had last seen the flash of a weapon, they ran right by an enemy soldier lying flat in the weeds.

Khoi was late coming up, and he didn't know what to do. He stood there, all alone in the road, listening to the bursts of fire and the shouting of his companions. Unintentionally, he was blocking the escape route of the enemy soldier. So the soldier shot him three times in the back.

At the same time, the sentries at the fort started firing at shadows and Brannon and Luong spent several minutes shouting in their respective languages back to the fort for a cease-fire. During that time Khoi's ambusher slipped off. He made a run of it straight across the paddies, and despite the barking of several weapons he got safely away. It was not until the firing had ended that Luong found Khoi sprawled on the road.

 

Marine headquarters was concerned about the incident because the division's intelligence section had translated some enemy documents which singled out the combined unit in Binh Nghia as the principal target for attack by VC district forces. In addition, the village guerrillas were ordered to seek contact against the Marine night patrols. This order went contrary to established Viet Cong doctrine, which was to avoid fights with strong forces and not to use guerrillas in steady combat. The enemy documents thus explained why the Marine night patrols were shooting or being shot at every night; they also indicated that the combined unit was weak, and could be destroyed piecemeal outside the fort.

Phuoc had more information. He had listened to what the villagers were saying after the death of Khoi and, putting that together with what Lam had picked up, concluded that the Viet Cong had marked Binh Nghia for a special effort. The reasons, he told the Marines, were personal as well as military. Binh Nghia bordered the Tra Bong River, which the enemy used regularly to transport rice and other materials. The Marine patrols were threatening this supply route. Perhaps more importantly, the presence of Lam and the Americans had enraged the Viet Cong district committee. In May, Lam had to sneak into the village. In June, he could casually stroll through the central marketplace. And all he had for backing was a ragtag outfit which included a handful of Americans. The entire force scarcely outnumbered the Binh Nghia guerrillas, and directly across the river the Viet Cong kept a main-force battalion. The situation was intolerable. A dozen Americans could not just move in and live among thousands of Vietnamese and call a village pacified. The district committee had to defeat the attempt and disprove the theory that a few Americans could work among many Vietnamese. They had to strike at the fledgling government effort in Binh Nghia lest it become the first in a series. The Americans had to be forced out. The combined unit had to be destroyed.

Phuoc said the local Viet Cong were tough and well led. The VC district chief was Le Quan Viet, a curt, hard man with one arm who for a decade had ruled an area across the river called the Phu Longs. In 1964, Quan Viet's name had become known throughout the district when he captured the final five government-supporting hamlet chiefs on his side of the river. For a week he displayed his captives in a series of hamlets, and then one noon in the main marketplace of the Phu Longs he beheaded all five. In Phuoc's opinion, if Quan Viet and his council were determined not to lose control of Binh Nghia, then the death of Khoi was but the first of many. Phuoc was to be proven correct.

On June 20, Lummis drew the early-evening patrol. With him, he took two PFs, plus Combat Culver and Larry Page, who usually patrolled under Beebe's personal guidance. It was to be a short patrol, due back before midnight. At dusk, the patrol crossed the moat at the front of the courtyard (the fort's only entrance and exit), and cut back along a narrow paddy dike to enter the treeline immediately behind the fort. Taking a side trail, the five men moved slowly until they reached a spot where two paths crossed. There they spread out in a semicircle and settled down to wait. To see better, most sat up. Page was considered luckier than the others; he had a coconut tree against which he could prop his back.

It was a quiet evening and they were close to the fort. The hours passed dully. Lummis dozed off a few times, each time jerking himself awake, aware that if he were slipping off to sleep, the others were too.

Perhaps they were asleep, or perhaps those awake could not hear the bare feet in the hard-packed dirt of the trail. None saw the enemy soldiers. Yet suddenly they were there in the midst of the patrollers. Lummis came alive first, giving a startled grunt and swinging his rifle upward at a figure standing next to him. The enemy leaped backward with a yelp, and for a few seconds the chaos was total as a dozen rifles exploded in a circle not twenty feet wide, with the patrollers firing up and the Viet Cong shooting down and some enemy soldier screaming at his men and Lummis yelling, “Stay down! Stay down and fire high!”

It was over in seven seconds. No more firing, just the quick fading of running feet, and silence.

“Sing out,” Lummis said quietly. “Is everybody O.K.?”

The responses came back from the dark amidst the metal whackings of magazines being changed.

“I didn't hear Page. Page. Page? Page, answer up.”

Nothing.

Lummis crawled over to the coconut tree. Page was still sitting upright. Lummis' order to get down had come too late for him. The youngest of the Marines was the first of them to die.

The Marines named the fort after him.

For a while after Page was killed, the night patrols did not venture farther from the fort than half a kilometer. This upset Lam, who insisted that it was up to the Marines and the PFs to dominate the night. If they could not, the village would remain under Viet Cong control. No police work, no RD promises, no political popularity of Phuoc, could compensate for the lack of military superiority within the seven hamlets.

Beebe agreed to push the patrols, but privately he doubted if the patrols could move as far as the My Hué area at night, let alone ever see the PFs fulfill Lam's expectation of controlling those three hamlets. Although they had been patrolling with the Marines for a few weeks, the PFs still hung back, a sure sign of how they rated the Marines in comparison to the VC. Far from inspiring confidence, the Marines seemed to be acting as a magnet for increased and more effective enemy violence. The RDs and the PFs and the police had seen no proof that they were safer for the presence of the Marines. And the people in the village had scarcely been affected by the Americans. A few villagers were richer for selling beer. That was all. The PFs, lacking any sort of military training, did not know how to move or shoot. What they did know, they had learned by trial and error, and many of their tactics minimized the short-term risks of death while ensuring an eventual total defeat. By coughing and kicking their feet on patrol, they hoped the VC would hear them coming, and, fearing a larger force, let them pass unmolested. By bunching closely together, each had a chance, if the VC did fire, that the bullets would hit someone else. In return, the VC faced little danger that the PFs would hit them, a fact demonstrated when the Marines lined up the PFs for target practice and watched slack-jawed as they missed a mud dike five feet high at fifty yards. Not only had they never been taught how to shoot; they had not been issued any ammunition for practice. Thus those with experience, such as Luong, the ex–Viet Minh, were frustrated in their attempts to help the others. And above all, fear of the Viet Cong was close to paralytic.

Lam was relying on the Marines to provide the antidote to that fear, while the Marines were relying on Lam for leadership. Beebe was due for rotation, having been in Vietnam for thirteen months. He did not want to leave at such a time but was forced to choose between an extension and his marriage. He chose his marriage and expected to be leaving within a few days. Lam promised to help his successor in whatever way he could.