The Village (6 page)

The police chief had undertaken a propaganda campaign to convince both the villagers and the PFs that the deaths of a PF and an American had not weakened the resolve of the combined unit. The government forces had come to stay. Although Lam gave his pitch at the village marketplace and in the hamlets, many villagers expressed skepticism, since government forces rarely patrolled farther than the hamlet nearest the fort. So Lam called a meeting of the hamlet chiefs, most of whom he had recently appointed, to discuss better patrol schedules and other means of protection. To demonstrate the degree of his confidence, he invited the officials to come not to the fort, but to his mother's house, where they could discuss the matter over morning tea.

The night before the meeting, Beebe sent patrols through the hamlets of Binh Yen Noi every two hours. None made contact. The next morning the villagers went about their routine chores in a routine manner, a nearly infallible sign that no Viet Cong were lying in ambush near the meeting house. Still, Beebe offered part of his squad for bodyguard duty, but Lam refused, saying that since there was no danger it made no sense to show fear of the Viet Cong. Those hamlet chiefs who had not stayed overnight in the fort would have to travel unescorted from the district town. Lam said the least he could do was walk alone from the fort to his own house. After all, every morning he made his rounds alone. Beebe complained that every morning the police chief did not tell people which house he would be visiting the next day, as he had in this case, and still the Viet Cong had nearly succeeded in killing him.

Lam went alone and nothing happened. It seemed Beebe had worried for nothing. Lam's mother had risen early to reclean her spotless house, set out cups and biscuits, and prepare a thick, tasty soup for her son's guests. The officials arrived early and by nine o'clock Lam and his eight guests were engrossed in a spirited conversation, while Lam's mother puttered about in a back room.

Next door, a four-man VC assassination cell from the district Security Section was hiding. By different paths they had pedaled to that house the previous day, all posing as farmers. They had remained there overnight, the homeowner later pleading that they would have killed his entire family had he betrayed their presence.

At nine in the morning, the four men left that house and swiftly approached Lam's back door. Each carried a pistol. Lam's mother saw them coming and shrieked an alarm. At her yell, the men sprinted forward.

Lam was the only armed man in the house. As his guests leaped toward the windows and front door, he drew his revolver and crouched to fire. He just wasn't fast enough. The Viet Cong came through the door too quickly and all were firing as they came, while Lam had waited for a clear target rather than risk shooting his mother. There were other men still in the room, clawing to get out the windows, but the Viet Cong paid them no heed. Every weapon was firing at Lam, and even after he went down the four Viet Cong converged over his body and stood shooting the corpse. Then, for good measure, they dropped two grenades next to Lam's body and ran out the back door. The blasts knocked out one wall and collapsed part of the roof. Lam's body was totally mangled.

When the police and Marines arrived, neighbors had already dragged Lam's stunned mother from the wreckage. In deep shock and grief, she could tell them nothing. But the villagers said the killers had bicycled toward My Hué. It took an hour to gather a large enough force to enter that hamlet, and when the angry police did push in, hoping that someone would fire at them, all they met were frightened villagers who claimed the four men had crossed the river to the safety of the VC stronghold called the Phu Longs.

 

The next day, in an impressive ceremony, the villagers buried Lam in the cemetery near the fort. Beebe missed the funeral. He was flying home. With Lam dead and Beebe gone, only Phuoc remained as the symbol of leadership within the combined unit, and he had no interest in military matters. The district chief was considering withdrawing the unit before more men were killed and the villagers who attended Lam's funeral were plainly frightened. The Viet Cong were claiming victory. Within a week they had killed three times. They had butchered the strongest man in the combined unit in his own house. It was obvious who held the initiative.

Before he left for the airport, Corporal Beebe had given his commanding officer an end-of-tour report. It read in part:

The Viet Cong had a problem. In a war in which events were rarely significant in and of themselves, what counted were the perceptions of people about those events. The villagers and the PFs who knew the history of Binh Nghia could clearly see the power of the Viet Cong manifested in the deaths of Khoi, Page and Lam.

Not so the Marines. Ignorant of that history and of the nature of the war, volunteers for the Marine Corps and for Vietnam, veterans of dozens of firefights, volunteers for the village, it never occurred to them to view the blows as the brink of defeat. They were saddened and shaken by their losses, but, not knowing the past, they did not view the events as a prelude to the future. There is no evidence that at the end of June the Marines shared the Vietnamese view of the situation in the village.

Sergeant Joseph Sullivan replaced Beebe as squad leader. A tall, proud man who had been promised a promotion if he performed well in the village, Sullivan fitted the stereotype image of the Marine NCO. He was strict, single-minded and dauntless. He was sure of himself and of his duties.

“The reason,” he said, “most of the Marines volunteered to come down here—well, not most of them—all of them—is the excitement. And you have a sense of independence down here. There's no harassment and no paperwork. You're always in contact with the Viet Cong. You know you have a job to do. You go out at night and you do it.”

Sullivan attributed the troubles at the fort to a lack of tactical aggressiveness and insisted that the unit carry the fight to the enemy. Instead of trying to defend the Binh Yen Noi complex of hamlets, the PFs and Marines had to launch patrols into the My Hué hamlets at the far northern end of the village and they had to ambush the river night after night. The Viet Cong had to learn fear and they had to learn they could not row supplies past the village. Then, Sullivan believed, they would leave Binh Nghia alone.

His first night in the village, Sullivan led a patrol to ambush at a river crossing. He weighted the patrol heavily with Americans—two PFs and six Marines. It was to mark Sullivan's style in the village. He did not like to rely on the PFs, and he found communications with them particularly hard.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it is difficult to get the PFs to open fire on the VC. So we use the PFs as our eyes and ears. It is the Marines who do the actual fighting. You cannot always depend on the PFs to advance with the Marines.”

Still, Sullivan put a PF at point in the belief that a Vietnamese soldier could spot a Viet Cong at night before an American could. At dusk, the patrol filed out of the fort, passing across the stagnant moat studded with bamboo stakes and through the tall bamboo fence.

The PF at point turned left and walked twenty yards to an outer fence. Three unarmed villagers, serving as gate openers and sentries, looked at them blankly for a moment. Then one noisily pushed open the gate; another lifted a wooden mallet and began tapping against a bamboo pole: tap—tap—tap—tap—tap—tap—tap. Supposedly, this was the villagers' signal that there were no Viet Cong nearby. If there were, the first beater to see them was supposed to change the tempo of his signal, and all other listening posts would repeat the warning. The Marines did not like the system and looked at each other uneasily, bothered by the racket of their exit. The beaters, from Viet Cong families, were impressed into service. Why they should risk their lives to warn a GVN patrol was beyond the understanding of the Marines.

In column, the patrollers moved east across the rice paddies and entered the main street of Binh Yen Noi. The street was a straight, narrow dirt path leading northeast, overshadowed by palm trees and thick brush and lined with thatched huts. The villagers were still awake and the Marines heard chatter from many houses. Lights shone from some doorways and fell across the street. The Marines hurried across these lighted patches.

The villagers knew a patrol was passing. It seemed to the Marines that some warned the Viet Cong by signals. In one house, a man coughed loudly and falsely. Farther on, an old lady shifted her lantern from one room to another as the patrol neared, then shifted it again after the patrol passed. The PF at point hurried on.

“That really bugs me,” PFC Sidney Fleming whispered to Brannon. “We should go in there and shove that lantern down her throat.”

“The PFs must know what they're doing,” Brannon replied.

“Bullshit. They're scared.”

“So am I. You should be too. Some PF's liable to shoot you for a Cong.”

A skinny, impressionable young man with a wispy mustache and jaunty air, Fleming believed the Viet Cong were invisible at night because they wore black pajamas. So on patrol he insisted upon wearing a black beret, black chinos and a gaudy black shirt with a button-down collar.

About two hundred yards past the marketplace, the path veered close to the river and the underbrush had been uprooted to shape a mud landing for sampans. As the patrol drew abreast of the tiny cove, they noticed a large boat beached bow first and lighted by lanterns which glowed dully. Three or four men, busy tossing sacks of grain onto its deck, did not stop their work or even look up as the patrollers filed by within thirty feet of them. The PF at point paid the scene no attention and hurried on into the darkness. The Marines did likewise, some shielding their eyes so as not to lose their night vision to the lanterns.

The patrol reached the far end of the town and for a quarter of a mile followed the dikes between open rice paddies, before turning right and walking about fifty yards to the river. The villagers used the area as an outdoor commode, and the bank was carpeted with human waste.

The patrollers settled down to wait. Droves of mosquitoes descended on them. They did not dare slap them away. A few unfortunates disturbed some red ants. They crept to other positions, cursing under their breaths and praying the ambush would soon be sprung.

The Viet Cong tried to accommodate the wish. No sooner were the Marines in position than firing broke out from the hamlet they had just passed. Green and white tracers streaked high over the Marines' heads. Sullivan identified the weapons.

“Automatic carbine. Two Russian blowbacks, an M-1. Lie still. Don't return fire. They're trying to get us to give away our position,” he whispered.

The Viet Cong fired three bursts in the general direction of the patrol, then stopped.

One hour passed. The Marines heard a few splashes near the far bank but saw no movement. Downriver in midstream a light flashed on and off, on and off, in a slow, steady pattern.

“I'm going to nail that boat,” Faircloth whispered.

“Save it,” Sullivan whispered. “We want to get more than just a boat.”

A second hour went by. More scattered probing fire came from the Viet Cong in the hamlet. Sullivan suspected the patrol might have passed an enemy outpost, which was now trying to locate the Marine position so their main force could avoid it.

“We'll hold here and hit the main body when they cross,” he whispered. “We got a pretty good position here. It would take a couple of companies to get at us and I don't think they could do it even then.”

During the next hour the Marines heard a few splashes downriver and saw a dull light bobbing along the far bank. By midnight, when the patrol still had not fired, the enemy lost caution and started to move freely. Frequent splashes and the mutter of low voices carried clearly to the Marines. There came the distinct clunk of a heavy bundle striking the bottom of a boat.

Corporal Riley, who had the sharpest eyes of the patrollers, whispered, “I see them. Two—three boats and a bunch of them on the bank—right across from us.”

“Yeh, LAWs up,” Sullivan whispered.

Faircloth slowly extended two rocket tubes.

“See them?”

“No,” whispered Faircloth. “Wait—now I do.”

“Fire when ready.”

In rapid succession, Faircloth fired his rockets, the explosions slapping the ears of the patrollers and carrying across the water with a flat, plunking sound like someone striking an off-tune guitar string. Then came the chatter of the automatic rifles, as all six Marines started firing, placing their shot groups where they thought they saw or heard the enemy. Hundreds of red tracers skimmed across the river and swept the opposite bank.

Water splashed some Marines in the face.

“What the hell?” yelled Brannon. “Hey, we're getting some incoming.”

But the return fire was too low to cause concern to the patrollers.

“Cease fire! Shut up and listen up,” Sullivan shouted.

Silence. A few seconds went by. Then a distinct splashing was heard near the other bank. Someone was wading out of the water, trying to climb the bank. Riley and Brannon fired, their tracers converged, then swept back and forth. Again there was silence.

Next came a sound like paper ripping, followed by a loud pop. A flare burst over the river, and began its squeaking, dangling descent beneath a small parachute. Having heard the firing, a sentry at the fort had called for artillery illumination from a Marine company outpost a mile west of the village. With the light, the Marines could see the other river bank clearly. Nothing was moving. The tall saw grass was still.

“Check those boats,” Riley said.

Pulled up on the bank were two dark, canoelike shapes.

“Check them, hell. Blast them,” Sullivan replied.

The other two LAWs were quickly opened and fired. The first hit to the left, but the second one exploded dead on. Short bursts from the automatic rifles further splintered the hulls.

The last flare died out. It was twenty minutes past midnight.

“We put a hurting on some of them,” Brannon said.

“Let's head back in,” Sullivan said.

Upon the patrol's return, a dozen men were waiting in the courtyard to listen to the debriefing. Most wanted to know about the firefight, and it was only in a passing comment that Fleming mentioned the boat.

“Man,” he said, “I never seen a tracer like that warning shot that VC sentry fired off. It was sort of a light, eerie green and it just seemed to float over our heads, like a flying saucer.”

“Where was the sentry?” someone asked.

“At the market. Near where a big boat was being loaded.”

Nguyen Thang Thanh, who had taken over the police after Lam's death, had been slouching at the edge of the crowd, only half-listening. At the word “boat,” he straightened up and seized one of the PFs, speaking fast and excitedly. The PF answered nervously and Thanh bore in, drilling him with question after question.

The next morning Thanh left the fort with a strong force of PFs and police. They returned near noon, driving in their midst two men and three women, their faces bruised and their arms bound behind them. Throughout the afternoon Thanh methodically beat and slapped the captives.

It was the first time the Marines had seen Thanh in action. His arrival the previous day had created a stir among the glum police, who had nudged each other, giggled nervously and hastily straightened their uniforms. Thanh had spoken less than three sentences the entire day and had ignored the Americans. Over six feet tall, he was thin as a reed and wore black pajamas with sleeves too short, revealing knobby wrists and skinny forearms. His eyes were hidden behind glasses tinted smoke-gray and his walk held a slight mince. To the Marines, he did not compare favorably against their memory of the respected and courteous Lam. On his chest Thanh had tattooed the words “Sat Cong”—“Kill Communists.” The PFs claimed the Viet Cong had slain his wife and all his children except one, a four-year-old boy whom he had brought with him to the fort and who knew how to shoot a pistol.

The Marines watched as Thanh beat his prisoners. When one woman refused to talk, he rubbed a wet cloth with lye soap and pressed it against her face. The woman struggled to breathe and sucked into her throat the stinging lye. He drew back the cloth before she suffocated, let her gasp for air once, then slapped the rag back against her face. Eventually, the gagging woman started to speak in sobs and Thanh extracted the information he sought.

He then explained to the Marines that the boat they had passed the previous night near the market belonged to the Viet Cong. When the patrol walked by, the enemy had been loading it with rice for their main forces in the mountains. The chore was particularly pressing since the Viet Cong had the 3rd NVA Division to feed as well as their own. Thanh explained that members of VC committees had either bought and hoarded the rice themselves or taxed it away from the other villagers. Although the boat the Marines had walked by had drifted downstream unscathed, Thanh said the Marines' fire had destroyed two sampans and caused a third to overturn.

Of his five prisoners, Thanh believed none was valuable. They were only workers doing as they were told. The PFs knew them all. They came from two separate families, both of which had relatives in either the district or main-force Viet Cong units. The only formal political ties to the Viet Cong to which any would admit was membership in 1964 in the Farmers' Liberation Committee. That was a totally harmless admission, since in 1964 the Viet Cong controlled the entire village and had organized the populace into a myriad of committees.

Satisfied he would learn nothing of further value from the five, Thanh put them in two sampans and sent them downriver to Binh Son with only one guard. There was no reason for them to try to escape. If they were successful, they could never return to their village and their families. The district chief, on the other hand, would lecture them for ten days at his indoctrination center and then let them go home. Once back in the village, they would thereafter be carefully watched by the PFs and their families. If there was among them a secret party member, he would continue to aid his cause. But as for the others—the peripheral helpers of the revolution—their usefulness to the Viet Cong was finished. None of them would want to be brought before Thanh a second time.