An LA Cop. John Bowermaster
water, Charlie couldn’t dig a Punji pit in a water-filled rice paddy.
Charlie watched the US Military. He knew the soldiers tried to avoid walking through water-filled rice paddies by walking on top of the berms that separated the paddies. Charlie adapted; he dug Punji pits on top of the berms and camouflaged them. He knew the soldiers would walk the dry ground. Punji pits injured two men during the last month.
Today, Cecil was the point man for First Squad. For a couple hours, through several patches of jungle. It was common practice to relieve the point man with someone else, giving him a break from swinging his machete, chopping his way through the jungle.
The heat and humidity coupled with the stress of walking point watching for ambushes, snakes, and trip wires wears a man out. After stopping for a break, everybody saddled up to continue back into the jungle.
Before Sergeant Waters gave the order to move out, he sent word to the rear of the column for the new replacement to come forward and relieve Cecil on point. The new man arrived on the morning chopper like Ed did in time to join First Platoon on patrol. Cecil handed the man his machete, telling him, “Have fun!”
He walked twenty yards ahead of the platoon toward the jungle as he stepped out of the rice paddy into the jungle; there was a tremendous blast where the point man had been standing.
He stepped on the wire attached to a mortar round buried in the ground. The explosion blew his body into the triple canopy foliage above. The overhanging branches of the taller trees blocked his ascent further into the air. He fell back to the ground. Both his legs were missing up to his groin. The blast blew off part of his skull. He never knew what hit him!
Ed turned around looking at Cecil, his face was pale with no expression as he stood looking at the scene. The man’s first day in the country, he was dead. Ed learned in Vietnam life could change in a heartbeat. One minute, someone was there; the next minute, they were dead or wounded.
Ed understood why Sergeant Johnson was callous when he assigned him Cliff’s machine gun and equipment that first morning at Crockett. Incidents occurred, people died, and life continued. The platoon received a new radio telephone operator named Freddie. He replaced another operator that served his tour and returned to the States.
Sergeant Waters called the new RTO over to him. Freddie made his way over to the sergeant, carrying a radio that seemed half Freddie’s size. Sergeant Waters was standing by the man’s body. Sergeant Waters requested a chopper for the dead soldier. Freddie seemed a little high-strung.
Ed wasn’t sure if it was the situation with the dead soldier or just his nature. He seemed capable of handling the radio traffic as he communicated with the firebase and the inbound chopper with no confusion.
Ed figured Freddie would be fine, considering he was a new RTO handling the situation. A week earlier, First Squad had a day off from patrol. Relaxing in the firebase with a little free time to catch up on writing letters home.
The news traveled fast through Crockett that the Second Platoon was returning with a casualty. Bad news always came from the command bunker to the troops via the RTO. Freddie was new, but he kept up the tradition of keeping the men informed. When Freddie received news, he told the men somebody was killed.
Another platoon had been on a sweep, checking villages when their point man tripped an artillery shell booby-trap. Returning through the barbed wire, a man was carrying a soldier’s leg in a poncho liner, a lightweight green plastic raincoat everyone carried during rainy season.
They tied the liner like a sling, carrying the severed leg. One of the guys asked the man with the leg why they didn’t send it back in the chopper with the man’s body. The man carrying the leg answered, “This is all that’s left of him.” He continued walking, carrying the leg to the command bunker.
December 1968, Arlie had left Vietnam to go on R&R to be with his wife in Hawaii for a week. A chance to get out of that hell hole, relax, and forget about the war for a week.
At 1:00 p.m. on December 11, it was another endless day on patrol searching villages for VC.
First Platoon walked out of the jungle into an open clearing. The military had carpet bombed the area. Craters covered the entire area. The platoon finished taking a break for lunch in the jungle at the edge of the clearing.
Robert and Ed were laughing, talking about their relatives in Florida. Ed pulled a can of Vienna sausage from his pack and opened it. Robert’s eyes lit up, asking, “Where did you get those?”
Ed explained his parents sent them all the time. “They know I like them. You want some? Heck yeah! Hand some of them over here!” Ed emptied half of the sausages in his hand, handing the can over to Robert. They sat there in silence finishing their sausages.
Robert told Ed, “I guess by now, Arlie’s with his wife in Hawaii. I’ll bet he’s glad to be with her and out of this place for a while!” Sergeant Waters told the men to saddle up. Ten men including Ed, and Robert exited the jungle into the dry open rice paddy. The VC opened fire from their ambush position along the tree line on the far side of the rice paddy.
Everyone dived for cover. Ed was five feet from a bomb crater just ahead of him. He was getting ready to walk around it when the rapid cracking from AK-47s started. Robert was fifteen feet ahead of him.
Ed dived into the crater in front of him. Robert leaped to his left toward the nearest crater to him. It was too late, a VC hiding in a small camouflaged fox hole across the clearing in front of them fired at Robert as he was diving into the crater.
Rounds struck Robert. He was dead before his body landed in the crater. He fell facedown. His feet were sticking up motionless from the rim of the crater. Everyone started returning fire on the VC.
The commanding officer, Captain Sharp grabbed the hand set from Freddie’s radio while pulling his map out of the leg pocket of his fatigue’s. Everyone pulled back from the clearing into the jungle.
Captain Sharp gave their coordinates over the radio. He ordered gunships to respond to the location. Sergeant Waters and Everett, another friend of Robert, told Ed they were going back out to recover Robert’s body. Ed told Everett, “I’m going with you guys!”
Everett looked at him telling him, “You might not come back! You guys need cover fire, I’m going with you!” The three men crawled out into the open rice paddy to retrieve Robert’s body. Ed set the gun up on a dirt berm and started laying cover fire with his M-60 at the hedgerow across the clearing.
Sergeant Waters and Everett continued to crawl toward the bomb crater where Robert was lying.
Ed covered both men with machinegun fire, forcing the VC to keep their heads down, unable to return fire on the men. Ed heard a gunship approaching from behind him, firing his machine gun.
He rolled onto his side to look back at the chopper.
The gunship tore up the ground coming up behind Ed in the open rice paddy. He mistaken the soldier’s cover fire for an enemy soldier laying in the rice paddy, firing at the two US soldiers crawling toward Robert.
Ed rolled over on his back, facing the gunship, waving the ship off, letting the gunner know he was an American soldier, not VC. The gun ship shut his machine gun off seconds before reaching Ed.
Ed rolled back over and continued firing toward the VC’s foxhole and the hedgerow. Everett and Waters reached Robert. Tying a rope to Robert, they dragged him back to the edge of the jungle.
Cecil along with three other men came out of the jungle, grabbed Robert’s body, and carried him from the clearing into the jungle.
The four soldiers went back into the jungle. Ed followed them out of the clearing. He looked at Robert’s face as Cecil and the others carried him. His eyes were open. The expressionless stare of death had replaced his ever-present smile. Minutes had passed from sitting in the jungle laughing and sharing food with a friend, to recovering his body from a rice paddy.
A week passed, Arlie returned to Crockett, just before nightfall from his R&R leave with his