Grace: Crow's Foot

Photo courtesy of  South East Asia - Hidden Riches of a Colonial Past

37

We master archers say: with the upper end of the bow the archer pierces the sky, on the lower end, as though attached by a thread, hangs the earth. If the shot is loosed with a jerk there is danger of the thread snapping. For purposeful and violent people the rift becomes final, and they are left in the awful center between heaven and earth.

Eugene Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

1969

The Crow’s Foot was southeast of Pleiku. It was called the Crow’s Foot because on a map three blue lines representing streams in three valleys merged into a single blue stream, all of them running to the south. That is, on a map it looked like the footprint of a bird. It was just the local American name for the area, and not the only place like it in the country. Even the name was used elsewhere, so that when I told my stories in later days I had to say, “This Crow’s Foot was southeast of Pleiku,” and my listeners would get a rough idea of where it was.

The operation was sort of an experiment. Regular U.S. Forces were given a sector. Regular Vietnamese forces had a sector. And on one flank the local militia units, Regional Forces/Popular Forces or “Ruff-Puffs”, were cobbled together into a battalion and given a sector. At the level of the colonels and the generals it had all the common elements of any decent-size operation: estimates of who and where the enemy might be; lists of units participating; assignments of sectors and objectives drawn on maps; timetables and routes of movement; bound booklets of radio frequency assignments and call signs; and all the rest. At every level and within each level this was expressed in the same five paragraph format, even when it was in different languages. The higher the level, the more pieces of the plan that were put in writing, typed on paper or mimeograph stencils, and drawn on semi-transparent sheets of paper. At the lowest level it was a group of soldiers standing around a sergeant who drew the plan in the dirt and told each man where he was to go and what was expected of him.

The plan was much, much more than just the infantrymen who were out on the points of the arrows spread across the maps. First, and most important, were the schemes for the entire array of indirect fire weapons. Those plans began with the infantry units’ own mortars that we carried with us and would set up and move and set up again as we made our way into the Crow’s Foot. Positioned behind all the infantry units at distances appropriate to their caliber and range were the artillery pieces. These were towed or driven into position. They would be “surveyed in” so that they knew exactly where they were on the ground and in relationship to each other. And, more importantly, where they were in relationship to us infantrymen. The artillerymen would unload some of their ammunition and sort it by type and then, sweating in the heat, drinking water from their canteens and Lister bags, wait. Near them were the mathematicians and geometers, the men who plotted on maps and computed from tables the angle and direction of fire and amounts of propellant needed to launch an explosive shell that would land at the right time and place.

Back near the main road was a small group of M-48 tanks. Almost never in all the years we were in Vietnam was there a time when the terrain, the roads, and the enemy location were right for the use of these monsters, these war chariots, but maybe this time. So the tankers tested their radios and their engines, their main guns and their machine guns, and waited.

Flying orbits overhead were FAC’s in their quiet little airplanes. They were looking down at the ground and talking to Air Force command posts and aircraft waiting on airstrips much further back. They were working together to make educated guesses about what kinds of weapons might be the most useful.

Whistling very high in the sky, and very far away, en route from an island in the Pacific Ocean was a flight of B-52 bombers scheduled to deliver an ARCLIGHT into the center of a rectangle drawn near the Crow’s Foot. That was to be the overture, so to speak, of the concerto. Cynics, that is to say the infantrymen in the process of getting off of helicopters or jumping down from the backs of trucks and some of the more jaded staff officers still back in Pleiku, would make the allegation that the Air Force must have been the low bidder on an Army contract to dig a bunch of swimming pools out in the middle of nowhere.

Also in the sky were command and control helicopters. These were filled with radios and the superior officers of the men on the ground. Their place in the sky gave them something of a God’s eye view of the operation. Best case, they had the ability to shift artillery fires and air strikes to exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Worst case, they had a deceptive illusion of control, of being in absolute charge of the men on the ground.

Even further back, near the base camps of the units involved and not very far from the Air Force units, were caches of ammunition, water, fuel, and food for the men in the field. Their orders gave them timetables of when they would move what supplies to which places. In the nearby tented hospitals ward space was cleared out, supplies of blood and bandages checked, procedures and routines checked.

On the ground, on the far right flank of all the thousands of men was one binh-si, one little man about 5’2” tall and weighing maybe 110 pounds. He was walking down a footpath that ran southeast along the edge of orderly rows of tea bushes. To his left and continuing along in a wide, kilometers-long arc were dozens of men just like him, the point men of their respective platoons and companies. He didn’t know about them, nor did he much care. He was focused on what was directly in front of him. His only concern was making it through the day, sorting out the light and the shadows, the natural from the unnatural, the friendly from the hostile.

Behind him was his squad. Behind his squad was his platoon. Behind his platoon was his company commander and with the commander were the only Americans on this flank of the operation — they were my sergeant and me. Each company had three platoons and they were advanced with two platoons forward and one back. That meant that leading the other forward platoon somewhere off to binh-si's left, probably out in the middle of the tea plantation, was another binh-si like him, just as scared, just as hopeful that there was nothing in front of him.

The battalion had three companies and it was advancing with two companies forward and one in reserve. Each company had a pair of Americans who walked near the Vietnamese company commander. At battalion level was another American team, this one with a larger group of four men.

The complexity was extraordinary. Every leader had at least one radio, most had two or three. The Americans could talk to each other. The Vietnamese could talk to each other. The Americans could talk to the Vietnamese. The commanders flying in their helicopters could talk to their units on the ground and the ones back at the base. The artillery and the mortar units could be reached and the Air Force could be called.

In the middle of the morning a grumbling sound came out of the east and the earth began to tremble. The ARCLIGHT had arrived. Thousands of pounds of steel and explosive were falling from aircraft so high they could not be seen. Somewhere to the east the bombs were crashing into the ground, flashing into life, and stirring the earth.

As I said, I was with the company on the far right flank with the binh-si out on point in front of me. The only other American with me was a staff sergeant with a couple of months in country. Our job was to help the captain, the đại-úy in command, bring in fire support and give him advice on how to use his company in battle. It struck me that it was as if we were on a hunt like those once staged for noblemen in Europe. The ARCLIGHT was like the beaters who swarmed through the woods and flushed game to run in panic towards the hunters. The only problem was that in this case the game was armed. Also, there was a good chance, a very good chance, that the ARCLIGHT had hit nothing at all. In any case, any NVA or VC unit in that general direction knew for sure that something was coming. They would be ready.

What was most memorable about the day was the heat, the steam room oppressiveness of the air. The straps of my rucksack began to chafe almost as soon as I put it on. Itching flared in my crotch within minutes. I wrapped an olive drab bandanna around my neck to soak up some of the sweat and before the day was done I would ring it out a dozen times.

Soon we were past the tea plantation and moving into the hills. We walked through a mixed kind of cover. In some places the grass reached up past our knees and the few trees that stood had black burn marks on their trunks. That meant that at some point the Montagnards had cleared the area with fire and had perhaps grown manioc and other food. Now the grass was back and soon the jungle would return.

We went under the canopy and the air was even more still. When we waded through a stream that hadn’t been on our maps I rinsed out the bandanna and tied it back around my neck. For a moment it felt so cool that a shiver ran down my spine. We broke out of the jungle at the base of a hill that was oddly clear of trees and brush. The point man, the binh-si, was well ahead of us, about halfway up the hill, his squad spread out behind him. The point man stopped, seeing something not quite right in front of him. Then he fell. He was so far away that it seemed to take minutes for the sound of the rifle shot to reach the command group. And then that was mixed with the small clatter of noise coming down the hill and up the hill.

The ruff-puffs went to ground. That was the wrong thing to do, but ill-trained soldiers will not do what seems so insanely counter-intuitive as run up a hill into fire. Nothing I could do, nothing my sergeant could do, would get them up and moving forward. After a few moments cajoling the đại-úy, I got on my radio and began bringing in artillery on the hillside.

I ended up behind a tree trunk checking coordinates on my map and watching the gray puffs of the incoming artillery march up the hill. As always I was struck by how benign it looked from a distance. Even the sound was a soft crump, crump, crump. But I knew it was only because I wasn’t near.

“You must go now,” I told the đại-úy after the last rounds had landed. Suddenly, for no reason I could see or understand, the ruff-puffs shook themselves into a decent unit. Small groups rushed forward, covered by their mates and machine guns. Bit by bit they worked their way up the hill.

I scrambled up the hill with my sergeant trying to listen to my radio, keep my rifle ready, and watch everything all the way up. We rushed from one small fold in the ground to another, keeping watch over each other, but there was nothing coming our way. I saw a still Vietnamese in an odd green uniform sprawled in the bottom of a shallow hole, but that was all I saw of the enemy.

We reached the top of the hill and flopped on the ground. Below us was an abandoned Montagnard village. Of the buildings only the structural posts of the long houses remained. Grass was already growing into the edges of the fire pits. On the far side of the village I could see the first of the streams of the Crow’s Foot running between steep banks. Except for the dead soldier I’d passed on the way up, there was no sign of an enemy. The soldiers were scattered about and seemed confused and disorganized.

“We’ve got to get this sorted out,” I told my sergeant. “You take the platoon over there. I’ll try to get the đại-úy on track.”

I spoke with the đại-úy and listened to him shout his orders to his lieutenants. In ten minutes or so the men were set into a perimeter and linked up with the company on our left. A medevac came in for the point man’s body and took the sniper’s body with it. I put together a report and called it in. From my team leader I got a summary of the rest of the action so far. Across the front it was much like their encounter — a few snipers, but no real concentration of force.

We stayed in a hasty defense long enough to open a couple of cans of C-rations, but what I wanted more than anything else was water. I drained one canteen and started on a second. From the radio chatter I could tell that some of the artillery was displacing so that they would stay in range. I heard, then saw, one of the FAC birds fly over. The troops began to move out, cautiously wading through the stream and up the mottled hillside beyond. They generally followed the edges of the fields that had once been cleared, not quite in the open, but not in the jungle either. Drops of sweat ran off my forehead and into my eyes, blurring my vision and stinging. When I crossed the stream I stopped for a minute, filled my canteen, dropped in a couple of iodine tablets, and shook it a few times before putting it back in its carrier.

By mid-afternoon we were on the top of the second of the ridges that defined the Crow’s Foot and looking down into a part of the box that had been struck by the ARCLIGHT. In the last hundred meters the smell of the wood smoke told us we were near. From the ridge it was a landscape of potholes and shattered trees marked by wisps of black and gray smoke. I was pleased that, according to the plan, it would not be my company sweeping through. Instead, we would turn to the south and establish a position at the place where the map showed the three streams meeting.

As I moved I could sense the units in the operation condensing together. They were gathering as they approached their objectives. My company followed the middle stream bed. The reserve company was swinging out to my right and the other company was coming up on my left. As the afternoon waned we found our objective, an odd little hillock overlooking the confluence of the streams. The company spread out on the forward slope and began to dig in. The chatter among the soldiers began to increase in volume. I went off to find the company on my right and found them close to where they were supposed to be. Talking with their American advisors we adjusted the two foxholes that were on their respective flanks and gave quick lessons on emplacing Claymore mines to the squad leaders.

As far as I could tell, if there had ever been anyone there, they were gone. If that sniper we’d encountered in the early morning had been part of a larger unit, that larger unit had long since abandoned him.

I took my helmet off and wiped the soaked sweatband with my bandanna. “What do you think?” I asked my sergeant when he came up.

“Not bad.” He pointed to a location down the slope to his right. “That’s about the only place they can get close. If we get an outpost out there we’ll have some warning.”

It wasn’t going to get any better. This was going to be our place for the night. There was plenty of daylight for the company to work on their holes, clear their fields of fire, plot mortar and artillery fires, plant more Claymores, and plan their night patrols. Nearly smokeless cooking fires were lit and the smell of rice boiling drifted over the positions. I and my sergeant ate cold C-rations and settled in for the night. We then endured the black hours of mosquitoes humming. We scratched the salt residue on our skin. Our hearts raced at sudden clanks and clicks out beyond the perimeter. We heard soft pops and saw brilliant white lights in the distance. At odd moments we heard the sound of water moving through the stream below us.

More cooking fires were lit as soon as the morning light filtered down through the mist. Two cigarettes, a malaria pill, and a cup of coffee made from water boiled over a chunk of C-4 explosive opened the day. Then I got a call telling me the units were staying in place, at least for a while. I was told to report to the battalion command post for a meeting. The message ended with a cryptic line: “Bring soap.”

I gave đại-úy a little pep talk about staying alert and went with my sergeant back down the path we’d walked the day before.

We found the CP on the back side of the ridge. The Battalion Advisor, a Major from our province team, looked as scruffy as all the rest of us. He waited for the rest of the teams to show up.

“We’ve got too many advisors out here,” he said, “but I was overruled on that at the beginning. We need to give them a chance to run their own units for a while. They’ve changed the plan anyhow. The ruffs-puffs are going to stay in place for the rest of the morning and then we’re all pulling out.”

He drew some arrows on his map and showed us. “The rest of the task force is going to continue to swing around to the south and will simply sweep past where we are at about the same time that we pull out.”

He looked at his sergeant with a grin. “In the meantime, the we’ve got something to show you guys.”

He led us up into the valley and then along the side of the stream. A squad of Vietnamese was off to our flank as security. The path took a sharp turn and then the jungle opened out and revealed a glade, a glen, a copse, or whatever word rightly describes something out of a Tarzan movie. A gentle, graceful waterfall spilled from a ledge about 15 feet high into a still pool beneath the jungle’s trees and vines. The banks of the pool were lined with feathery ferns, pale green moss, and small blossoming plants. The Vietnamese soldiers kept on going up the path until they were above the waterfall. I saw them settle on rocks and light cigarettes, American cigarettes, and turn to watch the jungle upstream.

I crouched beside the pool and drew water into my hands. It felt cool and it was very clear, if tea-colored.

“Take turns,” the Major said. He indicated his sergeant. “We’ll take the first watch.”

With a few mumbled, appreciative obscenities the rest of us dropped our gear, stripped to our skins, grabbed our soap, and waded out into the pool.

My first step was tentative and I realized that for a very long time, since the morning of the day before, my senses had been cranked up to an extra level of alertness. They had been tuned for specific kinds of sights and smells and sounds, tuned to wrongness. I’d walked through an Edenesque countryside, but all that I saw, all that I looked for, was something out of place, something not quite right. I had not listened for the gurgle of water or the call of a songbird. I had listened for the sound of metal on metal or the crack of a branch. The smells that mattered were raw tobacco, sweat, and human shit, not the perfume of flowers or the dampness of watered earth.

Now I watched the sunlight dance on the splashing water, felt the coolness sluice over my bare skin, smelled the pungent soap I lathered on. I got my turn to stand in the waterfall to rinse off and I just stood there, eyes closed, feeling the water drum on the top of my head, hearing the childish laughter of my fellow soldiers. When I stepped out from under the waterfall and opened my eyes the first thing I saw was a huge iridescent dragonfly hovering and flitting and then dashing away.

Later in the morning, back with my ruff-puffs, feeling clean and refreshed, I walked the perimeter with my sergeant. It was a sound defense. They owned this small piece of ground. I used my rudimentary Vietnamese to congratulate the đại-úy and his soldiers because they had done a good thing. They had done what infantrymen do. They had staked this claim and would defend it, or, as it turned out, simply move on to another place. Did it make any difference in the long run? Probably not. Nevertheless, at that moment, at that time and place, things were exactly as they should be.