One Klick Over the Border

It was May 1970 and I'd been in Vietnam for over six months.  I hadn't heard much enemy fire since I arrived in country, but I had heard plenty of rumors.  This rumor had been whispered around the firebase for about a week or two, but nobody believed it.  I had been here long enough to know rumors were ten percent fact and 100 percent imagination.  But when word came from above that our unit was going to be going into Cambodia to help shut down the Ho-Chi-Minh trail, we all acted like we knew it wasn't a rumor all along.

We hopped on the Huey and made the jump to our landing zone, or LZ.  We were going to be dropped one klick over the border into Cambodia.  In the world all distance was measured in miles.  Here in Vietnam, or in country, we measured everything in kilometers, which we called klicks.  This chopper ride was a bit longer than we were used to, but not too bad.  We hopped off the Huey just as it landed, and scanned the perimeter of the LZ as the chopper took off again, not more than a second after the last of our feet hit the jungle turf.    Today was a bit of a treat for us, it wasn't raining.  Once the monsoon season had hit, it was rain almost everyday.  It had rained most days for the last three months.  At least it looked like that part of the year was over. 

I looked down my boots.  I had just gotten over a bad case of jungle rot on my feet, and Sully our medic had promised to keep an extra pair of socks or two tucked away for me to change into.  If I could keep my feet dry, at least at night, I had a better chance of a full recovery.  Sully always looked out for us in the platoon.  He was a short, stocky, red headed, leprechaun looking Irish kid that you could picture getting in a brawl in a pub easier than tending to gunshot wounds and comforting grown men crying for their mothers.  He was tough on the outside, but a medic on the inside.  It didn't fit his looks, but we were all glad he was our medic. 

I watched the huey disappear over the jungle and marveled that such a truly crappy place could be so beautiful.  Bright green jungle so green it almost hurt your eyes.  The sound of birds came at me from all directions.  It really was an assault on the senses, and made you forget for that fleeting second why you were there.  Then that annoying feeling of my shirt and pants sticking to my sweat soaked body came back to me.  How could air suddenly get so heavy?

My squad was designated to go in front of the rest of the platoon for our patrol.  As squad leader I got to choose which of my guys would be the front of the front and take point.  We had been told that the Ho Chi Mihn trail came out of Cambodia and into Vietnam somewhere near our insertion point.  Our job was to find the trail and eliminate any supplies or Vietcong or other bad guys we found on our two-week patrol.  It could be a quiet two weeks of hiking through the jungle, or it could be exciting.  As always we had no real intelligence on what was around, it was our job to find that out for them. 

I chose Brian Dvorak, or Divvo, to take point and lead the way into the jungle.  It sucked picking the guy to take point, but everyone took their turn, and it was his.  Actually point wasn't the worst place to be in the patrol, it was just the most stressful.  You tried to split your time evenly looking into the jungle for any enemy soldiers that might be lurking, and at the trail trying to make sure not to trip a booby trap.  If there was an ambush, you were at the right spot, they always hit the middle of the patrol for most effect.  At least on point you could take care of yourself a little bit.  Divvo started walking, and I prayed for a quiet hike and a safe trip for my guys back to the firebase. 

Things stayed quiet for most of the day.  We walked north for about three hours, stopping occasionally to catch our bearings and make sure the rest of the platoon was together.  Shortly after one of our stops Divvo shouted from the front and started shooting.  We all dropped and fired into the jungle.  The firefight lasted for about five minutes, and then the shooting slowly stopped. 

"There were three of them just off the trail about ten meters ahead," Divvo called back to me.

"V.C. or NVA?"  I asked.  VC was short for Vietcong and NVA for North Vietnamese Army.

"They weren't wearing pajamas, so I'd say N.V.A," he replied.  Vietcong normally were identifiable by their black outfits that looked like pajamas.  If they were in uniforms chances were they were NVA.  I was surprised because they were not supposed to be here, but then again neither were we.

We walked ahead and sure enough the bodies of two N.V.A. soldiers were lying just off the trail.  I quietly called together my squad and told them to be sharp; we might have stumbled onto something.  Divvo got up and resumed his walk and we all followed.  Not more than five minutes later my worries were confirmed.  As Divvo walked through a sparse section of jungle gunfire erupted from a million starbursts in front of us.  Tracers whizzed over our heads and amongst us.  It was the Fourth of July directed right into our faces.  Everyone dove behind trees or one of the thirty or so five-foot tall anthills around us.  Divvo was lifted off his feet and fell in the middle of the trail. 
         
"Medic!" I yelled, looking around franticly for Sully.
         
I pulled the trigger and shot off three shot bursts from my M-16 from behind a tree, I wasn't aiming at anything in particular, just trying to put out one of the starbursts that was winking and popping at me from the jungle.  I was reloading when Sully slid to a stop next to me.  He took a quick look at the trail from around the tree and looked back at me.
         
"If you can get me some cover, I can drag him behind that ant hill about two meters to his right," he yelled over the gunfire.  Then he yelled, "Just don't leave me sitting there to long, or I might forget where I left your socks." He winked then ran to the next tree to my right and gave me a thumbs up. 
         
I yelled back to my squad, "Ready to cover Sully, he's going for Divvo."  I made sure I had a full clip then yelled, "NOW!"  Gunfire erupted from all around me as Sully sprinted from behind the tree.  He weaved as he ran in an S pattern between trees and anthills.  He covered the fifteen to twenty meters or so to Divvo in about five seconds.  He grabbed Divvo by the collar and started pulling him to the anthill.  He pulled him a meter closer to the anthill before he was spun to the ground.  I stood up screaming in rage, too angry to understand anymore where I was.  I yelled to my guys to not let up and ran forward shooting blindly in front of me as I ran.  I threw my rifle behind the anthill and grabbed Sully and pulled him to cover. 
         
"Forget about me Dahlman, get Divvo.  He's worse than I am," Sully grimaced holding his hip where he got hit.  I looked at Divvo and saw he was looking at me holding a hole in his left side.  He wasn't yelling, or moving, just looking.  I was hoping he wasn't in shock or dead, just staying still.  If he moved they would pour more fire on him until he stopped. 
         
"Any day now Dahlman." he said hoarsely.  Thank God he was still in good enough shape to talk.  Maybe Sully was right. 
         
"Cover me while I get Divvo," I yelled as I handed Sully my rifle.
         
I shot out from behind the anthill and pulled Divvo onto my shoulders in one quick motion.  I ran as best as I could making sure to have a tree or anthill at my back as I went.  I collapsed behind one of those anthills about half way back trying to catch my breath.  I sat for a few seconds letting the burn in my legs die down a little, and felt the burn of a hundred fire ant bites.  I shook the ants off my shoulders, feeling most of them just roll into my shirt, and looked down at the others.  There were thousands of them on the ground and on me.  I noticed bursts of sand flying in the air at me.
         
"Look at those ants throwing sand at me," I thought to myself.  Then I realized that it wasn't thousands of ants, but thousands of bullets throwing sand in the air.  Tired or not I had to get moving or we were dead.
         
I made it back behind our lines and dropped Divvo to the ground.
         
"Find a medic now!"  I yelled at the nearest soldier.  I shook as many of the fire ants out of my shirt as I could and ran back to get Sully and my rifle.
         
I managed to zig zag my way back to Sully.  The anthill he was behind was not as big as before, the enemy fire was starting to wear away our cover.  Sully looked extremely pale and was not shooting back anymore.  He had ants crawling all over him too, but the biting wasn't affecting him.  These fire ants hurt like hell when they bit, and if he wasn't feeling it then there was only one answer.  He was going into shock, and I needed to get him help fast.
         
"Take it back, I can't hold it up anymore," he said handing my gun back to me.
         
"Hang on Sully, I'm going to need those socks when this is done."
         
I slung my rifle over my back and did the same with Sully.  The tracers flashed by my ears and the jungle was coming down around me as we ran back to our guys.  We collapsed after coming to a tree next to our guy manning the M-60 machine gun. 
         
"Thank God you were a full back in college," Sully said as he laid his back to the tree. 
         
"We can't stay here," I grunted as I picked him back up again and headed toward the rear where I saw a medic working on Divvo.  I dropped off Sully and made my way back to my guys.  The firefight continued for another three hours.  Turns out our platoon had run into a battalion of NVA regulars.  We had been outnumbered at least five to one.  They were guarding the large supply depot that was just a klick away from our first contact with the original three soldiers we ran into.  American reinforcements found their way up to us eventually and the enemy ran off.  The quiet rang in my ears as we tallied up the score.  We had killed 36 enemy soldiers by our count.  We couldn't say how many more were carried off when the enemy retreated.  We suffered seven casualties, four dead and three wounded.  It wasn't until I made it back to our firebase that I learned Sully and Divvo were two of the four guys killed that day.  My commanding officer was the one that told me.  Shortly after the news about Sully and Divvo he told me I was getting the Medal of Valor for my part in what he called "our victory". 
         
"Too bad those guys didn't make it or it might have been a bronze star," he said patting me on the shoulder.
         
By the numbers the army used in the attempt to keep the people at home happy we had won.  We killed more than we lost.  But the boys that they sent over to Vietnam were not returning as boys.  If they were making it back they were men.  I became a man that day I guess.  I made that step to manhood one klick over the border into Cambodia, but I was still over three thousand klicks from the world.