Our truck left the security of Cu Chi and turned west on highway TL8A, a
major paved road. We passed clumps of mud and thatch houses, and went through a
larger village. Then we turned onto a gravel road and continued onward to the south
and west. Before we realized it we were there.
I climbed to the ground and looked at my new surroundings. Fire support base
Keene was built on a slight mound, with a ragged line of dirt walls and sandbag bunkers
circling the base. A single stucco building dominated the center, the remnant of
some former wealthy landowner's estate. The ground was lumpy, uneven. It was
carpeted with a well-trampled layer of grass and weeds, with generous patches of ruddy
charcoal dirt showing through. The bunkers had a weathered, lived-in look.
Soldiers wearing nothing but trousers sat or lounged beside most of them. Three 105
mm howitzers were strategically placed in a triangle on one side of the rise. Beyond
the walls lay stacked coils of concertina wire to help keep out the riffraff.
A sergeant came over to greet us and guide us to our
squads. One by one he dropped us off at the bunkers, until it was my turn.
With another man, I was assigned to Second Platoon, Alpha Company, Third Squad. My
new family. Well, I guess its the same in the Army as in real life, you don't get to
choose your relatives. The squad was a mixture of new men and veterans, big men and
little, educated and high school dropouts. For the next couple of months we would
eat and sleep together, bathe together, go everywhere together, and occasionally fight and
die together.
And "home"? Home was a sandbag bunker. The main enclosure was
five-feet high and about eight-feet square. There was room inside for perhaps five
or six men to sleep. Our squad contained eleven. Attached to the right side
were two additional storage structures, each about three-feet high. These were
stuffed full of packs and ammo boxes - no room there for a six-foot-four body to squeeze
in. So where was I supposed to sleep? I had never before slept under the open
sky. Oh, sure, I had been on boy scout camping trips as a teenager, but at least
then we had tents! Here, there was nothing! They hadn't told us about this
back in Basic.
We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to the veterans tell their "war
stories", the highlights of their months in the field. There's nothing like
newcomers to set the old hands to talking. It's a chance to pull out the tired,
worn-out tales one more time. I was to hear many of them again and again. The
ground attack on Keene a month before, when the squad was on night patrol and an enemy
force walked right past them twice - once going and once returning. The daily rocket
attacks from "Rocket City" over toward the Cambodian border, which came
regularly about dinner time. And the night the VC had crawled through the wire in
the wee hours and knifed two of the sleeping guards, before another GI spotted them and
opened up.
That evening, as I ate my first meal in the field, the company commander climbed the
steps of the old building to address us. He informed us that recently our
sister-company, Delta Company, had walked into an ambush. The point man and the two
men immediately behind him in line were hit. The company was under heavy fire.
Their captain called forward to ask if the men were still alive. Since they were not
moving and no one could get to them, the reply came back that they were dead. The
company was ordered to pull back, and air strikes were called in. After the jets
exhausted their bombs, they made several napalm runs. When the planes were finished,
the company faced about and returned to their base. Early the next morning, at the
fire base, a sentry spotted movement outside the wire. One of the three men left for
dead, now wounded and badly burned by the napalm, had crawled and stumbled all the way
back. The captain reminded us, that no matter how tight the situation, no matter how
thick the bullets, we were to remove our dead and wounded if at all possible.
[There's more to this story - see the firsthand account below]
As night approached, I beheld the first of many glorious sunsets. The Vietnamese
sky turned a blazing pink and orange in the west. For nearly half an hour we were
treated to a celestial light show, and then darkness dropped suddenly upon us. Time
for bed. We would be up and moving early the next morning. I wrapped myself in
a thin blanket and slid under the canopy of one of the low-lying bunkers. Within
minutes I was dripping wet. The confinement of the narrow quarters and the lack of a
breeze made the bunker a sauna. I finally decided to sleep on the open ground, hard
and lumpy as it was. Before many weeks passed, I "inherited" an air
mattress, and from then on slept well.
But those first few nights cost me quite a bit of sleep. I still remember the
sight of the large Vietnamese rat climbing over the face of a sleeping buddy. And
the feel of occasional hungry mosquitoes, rousing me from a deep slumber. And
ever-present was the worry about what I would do if we were rocketed or attacked.
