My War - Installment 34

*** I nodded to GW and he dropped the smoke canister into the brush below. I hovered back a little to keep clear of the column of smoke. We looked below to the clay ware when, slowly from the brush and bodies, a man in the uniform of a North Vietnamese Officer emerged and raised his arms up in the air in a gesture of surrender. Now this was an interesting development.

"Granite Rock six-five - Apache one-six."

"Go one-six, six-five."

"We have an NVA Officer here at this location in a posture of surrender."

"You what one-six?"

"When we marked our location with smoke a man in NVA Officer's uniform got out for among the dead bodies and surrendered to us. We will remain on station until your ground unit arrives. We will have to leave within the hour. What is your squad's position?"

"Roger one-six, we copy on the NVA Officer. The squad should arrive in plenty of time one-six."

"Roger six-five. One-six copies. Over.

I remained hovering over the NVA Officer until the ground unit arrived and took custody of the man. I checked out with the ground unit and Granite Rock and took out for LZ Pony and some needed fuel.

I reported my capture to our CO. He made arrangements for one of our ships to pick up the NVA Officer and take him to Division for questioning. It would be interesting to see if we would learn anything from this man that had given himself up to me.

GW and I headed for home after refueling. Ken had called me earlier; we met just south of Pony. I was proud of our accomplishments of the afternoon. I didn't know whether we would learn much if anything, but just nabbing the guy was more than we had done in some time.

By OPs meeting time all that we knew was that my prisoner was at Division being interrogated by our intelligence section. So far all they seemed to know for sure was that he was a Captain from the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regiment. From Granite Rock's ground unit we learned that there had been a large number of dead NVA throughout the area, in addition to where the Captain had come out. GW and I already knew that, we had seen the man crawl out from among the bodies. We would continue working the same areas, for the next few days, especially around Granite Rock's AO. We didn't need another incident like LZ Bird. The capture of this NVA officer seemed to confirm that the enemy was still in the area and hopefully he was still broken up and disorganized.

After three days of interrogation we heard that there had been twenty odd pages of report extracted from my little yellow Captain. He had been questioned by our intelligence people for one day, but had not spilled the beans. He had then been turned over to the South Vietnamese ARVN for questioning and had apparently been questioned using a different modality. He still did not talk. He was then returned to U.S. intelligence and questioned for another half day; still no results. Finally he was told that he would be returned to the ARVN if he refused to talk. He started to spill his guts.

He was the training officer of the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regiment. He had been hiding for six days in a pile of dead bodies, until GW and I through much perseverance accidentally found him and he surrendered to us. He had bullet wounds through both of his calves, but luckily, for him, his condition was not serious.

They had been in the 506 Valley because they had planned to over run LZ Pony right before the Christmas Truce, which we managed to break up. LZ Bird had been planned for immediately after the Christmas Truce, which they were able to accomplish. They had planned well digging tunnels and emplacements completely around Bird, had communication set up, had sneaked inside the perimeter during the truce and booby-trapped the artillery pieces. That was the most interesting part of his story. There had been lots of other information which we learned in generalities and occasionally specifics. We learned where they came from in North Vietnam; where their supplies were stored; where their supplies came from and the routes over which the supplies had come.

There had to have been other information to have filled over twenty pages of report. I wished that I could have seen it all, especially since I caught the guy. All this information from the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regimental Training Officer and it turned out that GW and I got absolutely no credit. I had personally thought that we deserved something and we were not even mentioned by name as having taken part in any of the whole operation. I was pissed to say the least!! If it had not been for GW and I there would not have been anyone to interrogate. One of the ranking officers in the Cav. probably got all of the credit. I kept my mouth shut.

We were back at it for the next few days without much luck. It had been well over two weeks since the Bird incident. Every time we flew past Bird we were reminded of the massacre by the bodies. Bodies of NVA soldiers were still lying around the fields. Stomachs swollen, stretching the material of their shirts against the buttons. Lips were eaten away by insects, swollen tongues in swollen faces grotesquely smiling at us. Eyelids were also eaten away leaving dead, dehydrated, unseeing eyes exposed to stare up at us as we hovered by. With each day's passing they lay there and with each day their condition worsened. It was all quite a gruesome reminder of the loss of life at LZ Bird that happened on both sides.

We were beginning to work some of the mountains and valleys to the southwest of Granite Rock, still looking for the remnants of the NVA Regiment. The information we had gained through the NVA Captain had, and was being used to plan air strikes on supply lines and depots, outside our AO. We were working some of the leads from other information received from him at that time.

Ken and I were each working different sides of a small valley when George and I happened upon a number of make-shift buildings, in a compound, enveloped by the dense jungle below. We came to a complete hover over the trees and then began working the area more closely. There was no one present in the compound, which I felt may have been a hospital or infirmary type set up. It did look as if the huts had seen recent use.

"Apache one-one - Apache one-six."

"Roger One-six. Go."

"We have some sort of compound here. I'm going to call in some artillery and mix it up some; we have a defensive concentration very close by."

"Roger, one-six. One-one copies, over."

I called Granite Rock and gave them the defensive concentration number. Within a few minutes I had rounds on the way which hit dead on the defensive location. Once the huts were zeroed in I called for a change of rounds to high explosive and literally wiped out the entire compound. There wasn’t one building left usable on the mountainside. I had used one of the concentrations that we had set up and it made me feel good to be able to put it to use.

That was the first time that I had actually had a volley hit directly on the defensive concentration on the first try. It had been a simple matter to adjust then, far easier than adjusting while under heavy enemy fire.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A F

That evening, when I got back, I heard that Jack had been on the ground all day. I wondered what the problem had been. Had something happened? Had he been wounded earlier in the day? I went to look for him so that I could find out what was wrong. I had to keep an eye on my hootch mate.

As I walked from the heliport toward our hut Jack ran by without stopping or speaking.

"Hey Jack. What's wrong?"

He didn't stop or answer. He just kept running. Had I done something to upset him? Then I noticed that he seemed to be running toward the "Shitter". Surely he didn't have to take a dump so badly that he had reached the point or rudeness. He probably just had a case of the runs, which was a common occurrence with the daily use of malaria pills. I dropped my concern knowing he was moving about unfettered, so I started off again for the hut.

I lay down on my rocket boxes enjoying the absence of the air mattress, the bare wood covered only with my old mummy bag felt glorious. I dropped the mosquito net over the bunk, closed my eyes and day dreamed about my car of the future.

Jack came in through the door a few minutes later. I opened my eyes and glanced up at him. He was as white as a lily.

"How's it going Jack? What's wrong? You look like death warmed over."

"I've got the shits."

"Pretty bad, eh? It looks like you've about crapped yourself away."

"Ohhh...my ass-hole is as sore as a boil. I can't even sit any more. I've shit thirty-eight times so far today and when I'm not shitin' I'm fartin'."

"Did you go to sick call?"

"Yes, they said I've either had a bad reaction to all the daily malaria pills or I've got Amoebic dysentery. Which ever it is, it feels like I've shit away about three quarters of my insides. I can hardly stand it, the pain that is, to touch my ass to wipe it, is excruciating.

"That's really terrible Jack, I wish there waaa..."

Jack ran out the door for number thirty-nine. I closed my eyes again, thankful that my luck was better than Jack's. I had had some brief bouts with the runs because of the pills, but no more than ten or fifteen dumps at the most, which made me sore enough. I couldn't imagine how it would feel to crap almost forty times in one day!

Jack came back groaning and tried to sit on the edge of his bunk. He was unsuccessful in sitting, so he tried to lie down. His behind was so sore that he could not even lie on his back, so he rolled over onto his stomach, all the while continuing to moan. Jack's moaning reminded me of some moaning of his from a month earlier. I leaned back on my bunk and started to remember that instance a month earlier.

Jack and I had made a quick trip to Phu Cat one afternoon, when we couldn't fly. The weather was lousy and we were due to have a day off any how. We had jumped a ride into Phu Cat with Ramirez. He had dropped us off on the north end of, what he referred to as, the business district of the town. We strolled down the main, dirt road and browsed at the shops and ever present throngs of conical hatted villagers. Everyone was out selling everything and anything you could think of. It certainly wasn't like WW II in Europe where you could trade cigarettes and Hershey bars for almost anything. Here the Vietnamese were the ones with the cigarettes and Hershey bars, and everything else that we couldn't get through our supply lines. I bought some film for my camera and had a Coke, something else we couldn't get at LZ Hammond. It seemed that the Black Market was working well for the Vietnamese. We flew in all the supplies, personal and military and they ended up with them in their Black Market to sell back to us.

As we continued down the street I noted where I would be able to buy some deodorant and other necessary items, before heading for home. Since bathing was such a luxury, being so hard to come by and such a pain in the butt to acquire, we decided to go to a massage parlor. Oriental massage parlors, at least the ones I had been to in Saigon and those in Japan that I had read about, would start the massage process by bathing and then a trip to the steam room and then a massage and then another bath. The idea of a real bath lured us into the first massage parlor that we happened upon.

It certainly was not the greatest facility, but the call of the bath was irresistible. Perhaps I was fooled by the sign on the building, it should have read "public bath". There was one large room which we partitioned along the sides by a grid of wires. Curtains hung from the wires forming small cubicles. Each cubicle contained a padded table to lay down on for the massage. Jack and I were joined by two young women in shorts and halter tops, not bad lookers either. We were then led away to our little room.

"Youa takee croths offa, Di wee, yes."

"Yes."

"Why not," I said to myself. I folded my clothes and put them where I could keep an eye on them.

"Youa wate Di wee be light bak, yes."

She left the room but quickly returned with soap, towels, and a large basin of warm water. She pulled a small stool from under the massage table and motioned for me to sit down. Embarrassed somewhat, I jumped down, naked as a jay bird and sheepishly, sat on the stool, covering myself with my hands. The girl dipped her sponge into the water, grabbed some soap and began to lather me all over. I just sort of leaned back a little and concentrated on enjoying the attention that I was getting, and the bath. Bathing too often would cause the mosquitoes to swarm all over you. It was as if removing the dirt was like putting up signs which read, "Mosquitoes welcome, bite at will.”

She had started at my head and moved down across my body, titillating every part of me from head to toe. She then scooped up some of the water, using an old aluminum sauce pan and rinsed off the soap. There was no steam bath, but I could live without one. She then motioned for me to crawl back up on the table face down.

"Di wee, youa on tabr, ray down face, yes?"