13th Valley (5 page)

“Pass it this way, Man,” Chelini said. “Hey, where you from?”

“You mean in the World? Here,” he threw Chelini the can. “California, what about yerself?”

“Connecticut,” Chelini said. He sprayed the back of his shirt then down the front. “What time's it getting to be?”

“Nine-thirty. You better pick up some Zs. You got it eleven to one.”

“Um,” Chelini groaned. He lay back down and shut his eyes.

“Hey, Man. Get up. It's ten-past.” Chelini woke to Ralston shaking his boot. “Come on, Man. It's yer turn.”

“Okay. Okay.” He shook the sleep from his face and sat up. “Everything quiet?”

“Shit. It's so dark out there Mister Charlie could come slip right up here, tap you on the shoulder, give you an engraved invitation to your own funeral and you still wouldn't ee-ven know where he was.”

Chelini slid to the foxhole and checked the box of fragmentation grenades, the M-60 machine gun, the claymore wires and the firing clackers. He checked it all by feel. He put his face very close to the 60, trying to make sure the belt was in right, but he could see nothing. “Okay, Man,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

It was very dark now. There was no way to distinguish the ground from the sky. In the field before him several spots seemed darker than the surrounding blackness. Chelini picked up his M-16 and aimed it on one of the spots. It did not move. Will Ralston had lain down and was already snoring lightly when Chelini turned around and looked at him. He was a spot only a little darker than the ground. Chelini turned and looked back at the dark spot which now seemed to be in the perimeter concertina wire. The spot changed shape. Very slowly Chelini moved forward. Noiselessly he picked up his rifle and clicked the safety lever from safe to semi-automatic to automatic. He shouldered the weapon again, sighted in on one dense spot and froze on it for what seemed like an hour. Then he switched his aim to another spot. The darkness crept slowly in an amoebic flow. There was no way to distinguish a target. Chelini could feel his pulse beating heavily in his neck and wrists. What the hell am I supposed to do? he asked, frustrated, frightened, furious that the army had not lighted the perimeter. Somebody could come up here and drop a frag right here in this stinkin hole with me and I'd never know it. Maybe I ought to check with the tower. Goddamn. I hope there's nobody out there. Blow a claymore first. No. Throw a frag first or pump out a round from the M-79. No, throw a frag. That won't give away my position. He stood waist-deep in the hole, the protective earth surrounding him. His hands searched the ground before him for a fragmentation grenade. He found one and lifted it, hefted it to get the feel of its weight. He fondled it to find the pin. Then he just held it and stared into the darkness slowly sweeping his gaze back and forth in a 180° arc like he'd been taught in basic training, sweeping from right to left and then farther out from left to right and still farther out and back again. Then he started the sweep again, not aiming his weapon but his eyes and ears and always fondling the grenade and feeling the butt of the M-60 against his shirt front though he did not touch it with his hands and feeling the butt of his M-16 against his side as it lay pointing forward and ready.

A few minutes past one he woke Ralston for the one-to-three shift. He climbed out of the hole and sat on the poncho behind it and then lay back with his M-16 across his legs. He thought it would be impossible to sleep. His body was taut with tension and his mind was very alert and awake and his eyes were open, staring up now into the misty blackness seeing no more than if they were shut.

The night passed without incident.

On 5 August a marathon of classes began with emphasis on airmobile tactics, basic weaponry, the official view of the war effort, the tactical situation and Vietnamese culture. Despite grunts and groans and whispered “bullshits” by many students Chelini would come away convinced of the sincerity and competency of the instructors.

The first training period was the round robin. Chelini had never fired any of the round-robin weapons and the power of each enthralled him, changed him, made him desire to fire them again. He volunteered for every demonstration; he constantly asked questions. First he fired an M-67 ninety-millimeter recoilless rifle. He lay beside the weapon and sighted in on a fifty-five gallon drum across a ravine in the firing range. His assistant gunner loaded an HE, high-explosive, rocket into the tube. “Gentle-men,” the instructor said in metered syllables. “This pro-jec-tile is ca-pa-ble of pier-cing seven-teen inches of the tough-est steel known to man-kind or three feet of re-in-forced con-crete or six thick-ness-es of sand-bags. Gen-tle-men, you do not want to be on the ra-ceiv-ing end of this in-stru-ment.” Chelini wriggled in closer to the weapons. He laid his head on the sighting pad and re-aimed. He squeezed the trigger device. The rocket exploded. Flames shot back ten feet. The noise stung his ears. He clamped his eyes shut. The projectile sailed wide of target and blew a crater into the soft dirt of the opposing hill. Chelini's heart pounded.

The second round-robin weapon was a LAW, a light anti-tank weapon. Somehow, Chelini thought, the army managed to issue every one of its instructors the same voice. “Gen-tle-men,” they all start out, “da-dot da-dot da-dot da-da”.” They all keep cadence with their speech. Chelini volunteered again.

“This wea-pon, Gen-tle-men,” the second in-structor was saying, “is ca-pa-ble of pier-cing e-lev-en inches of the toughest steel known to man. Gen-tlemen, you do not …” The M-79 grenade launcher or thumper was next. It looked like a sawed-off shotgun with an inch-and-a-half bore. It fired forty-millimeter shells either directly at a target or lobbed in an arc like an artillery piece. Chelini stepped forward. “What's your MOS?” the instructor asked.

“I'm a wireman,” Chelini answered.

“Let some of the infantry guys fire this,” the instructor said and motioned him back. “You can fire the next one.”

The last round-robin weapon was the M-60 machine gun. “Gen-tle-men … this fires seven-point-six-two mil-li-me-ter bul-lets at a rate of five-five-oh …” Chelini slid to the front of the line at the last moment and behind one of the practice weapons. To him this was the most ferocious weapon of all. He came away beaming, imagining himself holding a hill alone, a hero.

Next, Chelini's group was marched to a rifle range for M-16 battle-site zeroing, then to the Cobra show.

The Cobra is a narrow assault helicopter which carries its pilot and gunner in tandem. The class began with the instructor radioing in a fictitious request for close-in tactical support.

“Holy Christ,” Chelini screeched when the helicopter dove from above the group and unleashed rockets, grenades and mini-gunfire against simulated targets. “Holy Christ,” he repeated. The class exploded in applause as the helicopter raked the target range.

“Gen-tle-men,” the instructor shouted. “Gen-tle-men.” He yelled again as the bird pulled from its dive and circled above them. “In the 101st, Cobras come in two basic configurations: ARA and Gunship. The Aerial Rocket Artillery Cobra carries seventy-six 2.75-inch rockets …” The instructor catalogued the aircrafts weaponry, each syllable of his speech in cadence. “Gen-tle-men, you use ARA against bunkers. You use gunships against enemy soldiers and mixed targets. This bird,” the instructor pointed up without taking his eyes from the class, “is a gunship. You treat it with respect. You activate it as follows.” The instructor brought a radio handset up before his face. He depressed the transmit bar. “Tomahawk Six Six, this is Trainer Five, fire mission. Over.”

An artillery act followed the air show. The students watched the receiving end of a barrage against the same scarred hillside. They called-in adjustments to the fire direction control center (FDC), raising and lowering the impactions, moving them left and right simply by speaking into a radio handset.

Still more weaponry classes followed. M-16 practice on a quick-fire reaction course was followed by a class on the M-33 fragmentation grenade and finally a class on claymore mines. At night they had a night-fire exercise under the illumination of artillery flares. Exhausted, Chelini and Ralston and the others marched back to their hootches. Temperatures during the day reached 109 degrees and the humidity hovered at 85 percent. On the morning march to the first range Chelini's hands swelled, his arms turned white and his joints became stiff. He had been sure the heat would make him collapse. “We got a saying up here, Duke,” one cadre sneered when he protested moving. “Take two salt tablets and drive on.”

The second and third days classes dealt with the history and culture of Vietnam. The culture lecture was given by a chicano sergeant. “Gen'lemen. The priorities of Mister Nguyen are: one, family and food—that mama-san an tacos; two, village an hamlet—es su casa; tree, district an province. Country don count. Gen'le-men, Nguyen don care too much for 'is country. Papa-san, he like tree things; 'is Buddha, 'is rice and 'is water buff'lo. He give you mama-san and he give you baby-san daughter, but don you go fuck 'is water buff'lo and stay off 'is fuckin dikes. You gotta walk in the paddies then walk in the paddies. You gonna do that for two reason, Gen'le-men. One, you walk on the dikes an you break the dikes and papa-san get screaming pissed if you break 'is dikes; and two, if somebody gonna put a booby trap in your AO it gonna be on papa-san's fuckin dikes cause everybody know that GI don like ta get 'is feet wet and he gonna walk on the dikes no matter what.”

Ralston elbowed Chelini and mumbled, “You oughta write home about this. The Americanization of Gookland.”

“Gentlemen,” another instructor informed them later that day, “due to the push into Cambodia and the strict controls inside the Republic, the NVA soldier is hurting for food. The rice-denial program has received wide support from all the villages in our AO, and the troops from the North have very little rice. The unofficial word is to expect a massive NVA drive into the coastal areas for food. Also, Gentlemen, the South Vietnamese are having a national election at the end of this month. We can expect the NVA to attempt to disrupt the peace of the populated areas.”

“This aint the army,” Ralston cracked to Chelini. “This is all yer dream and I wish to hell you'd wake up and let me out.”

“Sssh, Man,” Chelini hissed. “This is important.”

“Oh, Man, don't give me that shit,” Ralston said. “Don't let em get hold of your mind.”

On the fourth day of SERTS there was a class on rappelling. It was during this class that Chelini's feelings about himself as a soldier in Vietnam finally solidified. The school had erected a fifty-foot tower with a simulated cliff face on one side and a helicopter skid hanging over the air at the top of the other. “Rappelling in the field, Gentlemen,” the instructor for this block of classes said, “is accomplished from helicopters and is used to insert troops where the jungle is too dense for a landing. This tactic has been borrowed from mountaineers and by the end of this class, Gentlemen, you will be qualified to jump out of a helicopter with nothing between you and the ground but the tail end of the rope you will be sliding down.…”

First you believe it, Chelini thought, then you don't. Then you do again. First you think we should be here and then you think this is crazy and we're ruining the country and then you think about the kids you've seen and how we keep the NVA out of the lowlands. He shook his head, cleared his mind, approached the tower and climbed the ladder to the small platform at the top. Ralston snapped more cynical comments but Chelini did not respond. As he stood on the helicopter skid fifty feet above the sandpit his heart pounded. The rappelling rope went through a Dring at his waist, around his side and over his shoulder. For one long second Chelini paused. Then slowly he leaned backward, feeling the rope take more and more of his weight, trying not to think of the long drop. As his body reached a 45° angle he closed his eyes and leaped backward, releasing twenty feet of line. He snapped the rope taut about him; the jute burned his gloved hands. His weight stretched the line but the system worked. He stopped ten feet off the ground, allowed more slack and descended.

“You snap the line on a bird like that, Troop,” the instructor cautioned him, “and you'll flip the bird on top of you. You gotta be gentle.” His voice was tempered with approval.

“Wow, Dude,” Ralston quipped. “You gettin ta be a real gung-ho airborne-all-the-way-Sir soldier.” Chelini said nothing but smiled and turned from Ralston to take a second turn on the tower. “Dude,” Ralston called. “They gonna make a screaming bird out a you yet—a screaming yellow buzzard.”

Classes on the last day were concerned with NVA tactics and the Chieu Hoi or open arms program. For Chelini the very last class of SERTS was scary and sobering.

“The Hoi Chanhs, Gen-tle-men,” a senior instructor said, “are trained as scouts and interpreters. They work with platoons operating in areas from which they defected. In these areas they know the trails and cache sites. They know the booby-trap markers. They know the ambush sites. Gen-tle-men, a platoon with a Hoi Chanh or Kit Carson Scout is less vulnerable than it would be if it were out there on its own.

“We have with us today,” the instructor raised his voice and announced, “the Senior Kit Carson Scout of the 101st Airborne Division, Colonel Phan Trinh. Gen-tle-men, for twelve years prior to becoming a Hoi Chanh, Colonel Phan commanded a successful NVA sapper company.”

“Jesus!” Ralston snapped. “Look at that. A defective dink.”

Chelini listened intently as the instructor told Colonel Phan's story. Phan Trinh's father, who lived in a small village near Hanoi, was actively opposed to the war in the South. Allegedly he was incarcerated and then shot. The colonel's sister and a brother were also killed, for according to tradition they came from corrupted blood and thus were or would be infected with the same thoughts as their father. Phan Trinh was warned by a close friend in a staff position that he was to be recalled to North Vietnam to be interrogated—to see if his blood contained the obsessions of his father. Instead of facing charges of being the son of a radical, Colonel Phan, with a heavy heart, knowing he would never again see his homeland, defected to the south by simply slipping through the wires at Camp Eagle at night and walking up to the Division Tactical Operations Center. There he waited for daylight then defected to the Assistant Division Commander.