Pham Long moved ahead of their unit to an outcropping that afforded a view of the valley. The distant explosion and sounds of American helicopters had drawn their attention and sent the other men with them to ground. Pham climbed to a higher vantage point, Nguyen’s binoculars swinging precariously from his neck. Nguyen had threatened to make Pham’s life very difficult if he allowed any harm to come to them. Pham concentrated on his hand- and footholds, blocking out his leader’s voice. From the ledge he could see over the jungle canopy in the valley, and he trained the binoculars on the smoke rising in the distance. “May bay truc thang, hai,” he said, indicating that there were helicopters in the valley, two of them.
“Boa xa?” Nguyen asked. How far?
Pham watched one of the helicopters make lazy circles in the distance. “Hai kilometers,” he said, rocking his hand back and forth to indicate the distance was only a rough estimate. He watched until the second helicopter rose from the jungle and continued watching as the two flew east until their sound faded to nothing. “Thuy quan luc chien my,” he said, looking down into Nguyen’s upturned face. Nguyen shrugged and waved him down. So the American Marines were in the valley. It was no concern of his. He had his orders. He was to avoid contact with enemy units and deliver his cargo to cadres in the Quang Nams before the Lunar New Year for the Tet celebration.
Pham climbed down and returned the binoculars to Nguyen, who inspected them thoroughly before replacing them in the canvas case hanging around his neck. Hanoi had made it sound like his new assignment was a promotion to unit commander, but Nguyen felt like he’d been demoted to laborer. He was being sent down Uncle Ho’s trail again, but this time as a coolie.
Before starting south, Nguyen’s men exchanged their North Vietnamese Army uniforms for the oa baba that U.S. troops described as black pajamas. Some wore sandals made from old tire treads, and soft, wide-brimmed hats took the place of their usual pith helmets.
Nguyen and Pham backtracked to where they had dropped their equipment. Pack boards strapped with RPGs and mortar rounds lay next to a recoilless rifle and a Chinese 24 machine gun. Stretched out along the mountainside, the members of the NVA unit were already getting to their feet and hauling the heavy weapons up onto their backs. Co Chien and Sau Thao lifted the bulky machine gun strapped to two long bamboo poles that flexed under its weight. Truong Nghi, another student volunteer like Pham, followed with the gun’s tripod balanced on his shoulders.
Pham helped Nguyen with his pack board of mortar rounds before swinging a mortar tube onto his own shoulder. “Couldn’t we move faster if we went down to level ground?” he asked.
Nguyen ran a belt through his shoulder straps and cinched it tight across his chest. “The valley is heavily mined. We could move faster, but at what cost? I will not take the chance without a local guide. Even this high we are not safe, so step with care. And as you saw, the Americans are inside the trees, and we must move away from them.” Nguyen leaned into his load and started off.
They had come more than forty kilometers from the Laotian border in the last five days, and their burdens were wearing them down. Their backs felt broken and their shoulders were rubbed raw. Each day they appreciated the time spent resting more than the day before. They originally pushed on through the rain, but their progress was so slow and the falls so frequent that it was decided that waiting out the downpours was wiser than losing a man to injury. Anyway, they had time.
“It’s good to know our leader is concerned for our safety,” Truong said, coming alongside Pham.
“Don’t be a fool, Truong. His concern is for the cargo.”
Truong moved close to Sau so he could speak unheard. “Is it true that the Americans call this area Arizona?”
Sau turned his head, trying to keep pace with Co so he wouldn’t push or be pulled. “I’ve heard Nguyen say so.”
“Why would they do that? I’ve read about their Arizona. How could this place remind them of it?”
Sau tried to shrug. “I don’t know, Truong. The Americans think they are cowboys, so maybe they also think there are Indians here.”
Truong dropped back a few paces, giving the concept some consideration. “I think they’re right about that,” he said. “There are Indians here. And we are the Indians.” As an avid reader of western novels published in America, he felt happy somehow to be saying that. He suddenly experienced a surge of pride. In all his readings, he had never identified with the cowboys in the stories he loved so much, even though they were the main characters and obviously the intended heroes. He always thought of himself as one of the Indians.
The H-34 lowered gently onto the interlocking metal panels that Seabees had sledge-hammered together to make the runway at An Hoa combat base. On a rise overlooking the runway, a Marine air controller in a tower watched from behind a ring of sandbags as Strader jumped from the cargo door, the panels banging under his boots. The door gunner sat in the door with his legs dangling. He handed Strader his backpack. “Where are you headed now?” he said.
Strader swung the pack over one shoulder. “Pennsylvania.”
The door gunner laughed. “That’s a little outside our range. I think you’ll have to find another means of transportation.”
“That sounds like good advice.” Strader waved and headed for the main road leading up to the 2nd Battalion command area.
The road continued on through the base and out the gate and in twenty-six hard-fought miles reached Da Nang. Heavy vehicles had ground the dirt into fine talc that rose in clouds with every footfall and turned into a muddy soup after a few minutes of rain. In the administration area the road was lined with plywood buildings raised up on blocks and topped with corrugated steel roofs. Each was screened all the way around and had a door at each end. A sidewalk of shipping pallets made a feeble attempt to keep boots out of the muck in the monsoon season, but during the rains the whole base was mud, the road was slop, and the bunkers on the perimeter filled with brown water. If you had the rank to travel by vehicle, you could step onto the sidewalk without tarnishing your shine. But if you walked, you waded through mud, and when you reached the sidewalk, every step you took left a lumpy boot print. Unfortunately, officers did not like a dirty sidewalk. In wet weather, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, and Hotel commanders kept the office personnel busy scraping the muddy footprints back into the road.
The office pogues hated it when grunts were summoned to the company hooches; it always meant dirty work for them. The two groups seldom mixed on the base. The grunts resented the pogues because of the relative safety and comfort of their jobs, and the pogues resented the grunts because being in the land of elephants and seeing the elephants were not the same thing.
Strader dropped his pack and helmet by the steps in front of one of the buildings and went in. Panels on the side of the building blocked the sun and kept the interior in shade while an oscillating fan on top of a file cabinet bathed the room in a sweeping breeze. The room was populated with desks and files and a large table next to a wall that divided the length of the building in half. A large map detailed 2/5’s tactical area of responsibility. From where he stood Strader could see the green spot in the Arizona marking the TAOR where 1st Platoon was now sweating. Since there was no one else in the room, he went up close to the fan and let the rush of air wash over him.
Before long a door in the partitioning wall opened and Cpl. Donald Pusic stepped into the office. His clean, starched jungle utilities had been tailored to fit, and his canvas-sided jungle boots were coated with Kiwi black. He smelled of soap and aftershave.
