Sound of a Shot (eBook)

2
Ton Son Nhut, October 1969

A Boeing 707 bounced hard on the runway and floated, obstinately refusing to land. In the threadbare seats of the Braniff charter, 180 men sat silently, with no cheers, no expressions of relief that a long flight was ending. The plane taxied past F-4 Phantoms nested in revetments like brooding hens. A Huey “slick” taxied on an adjacent runway, gathered speed, dropped its nose, and climbed away. The big aircraft came to a stop near a makeshift terminal in what might have been an old storage building.

The flight had left the airbase in Sacramento twenty-four hours earlier, arriving in Vietnam after a stop in Japan for refueling and repair of a jammed cargo door. The passengers, most of them junior officers, stood and stretched. They were hungry, jet-lagged, and anxious. Only a year and a half separated most of them the day they checked into a basic training company at some dreary fort in the States. They had voluntarily traded safe and secure lives for one that just might get them killed. Crazy, but best not to dwell on that. A flight attendant threw open the cabin door to a blast of hot air.

The whistles, jeers, and epithets that greeted the new arrivals gave them no comfort. Nearly two hundred soldiers sat on benches outside the terminal, waiting for the “Freedom Bird” that would take them back to the States, and it was late.

“Glad you could make it, cherry boys,” one of them yelled as the new men descended the stairs to the tarmac.

“Yeah, Charlie expecting y’all,” chimed in another.

“Three-sixty-five and a wake-up,” jibed someone to uproarious laughter.

The lean, bronze-faced veterans appeared perfectly cool under a blistering sun. They had turned in their green jungle fatigues for khakis. Combat Infantry Badges and rows of ribbons told each one’s story of survival in “the Green Monster,” the grunt’s honorific for the jungle. Hoffman averted his eyes; the year that separated him from a plane ride home seemed an eternity.

Inside the terminal, each man searched through a mountain of duffel bags for the one with his name stenciled on the side. An NCO in charge of transport to the army post at Long Binh urged them to “make it snappy; we ain’t got all fuckin’ day.” Hoffman decided the prudent course was to wait for the pile to melt. He spotted his bag, threw it over his shoulder, and climbed aboard the last bus in a line of six idling outside. The heavy wire mesh that covered the windows didn’t escape his notice.

The little convoy jounced and, where possible, sped on a road choked with bicycles, pedicabs, and motorcycles. Lambrettas loaded with cargo and clinging passengers sputtered along, spewing clouds of purple smoke. The bus drivers leaned on their horns, parting the noisy throng like a flock of sheep. Shanties constructed of salvaged war materials lined the route. Anything salvageable from the detritus of the American occupier was put to use: sides of ammo boxes used for walls, discarded sheet metal for roofs, flattened beer and soda cans for shingles.

Everywhere, pedestrians carried goods on their heads or on shoulder poles. Naked children with swollen bellies played in the dust at the roadside, while grandparents watched lethargically from open doorways. Men and women in conical straw hats and ao ba ba, the loose-fitting shirt and pants common in the south of the country, crowded the shops, while women of means sped by on motor scooters, their faces covered against the sun and colorful ao dais sailing behind.

The bus was a sauna. Hoffman’s shirt adhered to him like a second clammy skin. Then, the saturated air outside could hold no more and turned liquid with a thunder clap. A cloudburst drove the roadside folk to shelter, all except the children who gleefully splashed in muddy pools. Mothers seized the opportunity to soap and rinse their toddlers in the torrent. To Hoffman, it was a scene in a movie, one in which he never dreamed he would be an actor.

The buses arrived at the heavily guarded gates of Long Binh post where they stopped at the headquarters of the 90th Replacement Battalion. The hopscotch passage to Vietnam took Hoffman from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Seattle on leave, to San Francisco for a flight to Panama for two weeks of Jungle Operations School, and back to Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento for the flight to Southeast Asia. At Long Binh, he would be issued the tropical combat uniform of jungle fatigues and canvass-topped boots. He would receive orders to report to an infantry unit somewhere in Vietnam.

At last, he could begin counting down the days until he returned home, though it was like emptying a swimming pool with a teacup.

By the time he checked in at the replacement center, it was 1800 hours, and he was hungry. The transients ate in a large mess hall, silently bolting down chow and running to see if their assignments were posted at the headquarters building. A gaggle of men milled around a bulletin board, killing time until a clerk appeared with a new set of orders. No predicting when an individual’s orders might appear on a list, thus the Army’s usual “hurry up and wait.”

In the last forty-eight hours, Hoffman managed only a snooze on the plane, but he was too wired now to sleep. He hung around the headquarters building. Hours passed, several postings occurred, night fell, and still no Hoffman on the list of assignees. At 0200, with the next posting three hours away, he went to the transient barracks to get off his feet. The building was as dark and humid as a cave. He groped between rows of iron bunks, looking for a vacancy. Mosquito nets made it difficult. Feeling his way, he found one, but no: “Hey, asshole, occupied.”

Finally, an empty upper bunk. He climbed in, lay on his back, and closed his eyes. Sour breath and body odor fouled the air. Who in his right mind would choose this? And yet, he had. He had walked away from decisions about a career, graduate school, marriage, and family, all the issues that seemed so important just a short time ago. Now his future was uncertain, his very survival at stake. Oddly, the powerlessness of his position brought him a certain peace.

Men shuffled in and out of the barrack in the darkness. Indignant shouts and curses greeted some fool who made the mistake of turning on the lights. His nerves taut as guitar strings, and despairing of getting any rest, he rejoined the troops wandering in the transient area. He lit a cigarette and headed for the combination latrine and bath house to relieve himself.

In the steamy shower room, a dozen naked men bathed, while nearby, soldiers stood at urinals. Several Vietnamese women mopped floors and replenished the supply of soap and towels. Two more sat on their haunches in a corner, polishing the leather portion of jungle boots. The presence of women struck Hoffman as strange, but they seemed cool with what was going on around them.

As dawn broke, the smell of bacon and eggs drifted from the mess hall. Hoffman’s stomach was queasy and he wasn’t hungry, but he poured himself a cup of coffee. Word came that another set of assignments just went up, and he rushed out to the bulletin board. From the midst of the gaggle, someone yowled, “MACV Headquarters in Saigon. Lady Luck smilin’ on me.” Others ambled off grimly to collect their gear. Finally, Hoffman saw his name: “01 Jack Hoffman, 24th Infantry Division, Camp Farrell, Pleiku. Report for transport 0630 hours.”

The Twenty-fourth? Responsible for patrolling the mountainous wilderness of II Corps, which was the largest of the four tactical zones of Vietnam. Now his training at the jungle school in Panama made sense. For two weeks, he had slogged through the rainforests, rafted the Chagres River, rappelled waterfalls, practiced escape and evasion, and ate monkey meat. Gigantic rusting steam shovels abandoned by Ferdinand de Lesseps demonstrated the jungle’s capacity to reject foreign objects.

With ten other replacements, he boarded a C-123 for the half-hour flight to Pleiku. The plane climbed steeply and headed up the coast: on the right, the cerulean South China Sea, and on the left, a sparkling green quilt of flooded paddies. Here and there, the neat thatched roofs of hamlets, water buffaloes grazing along dikes, and peasants planting rice belied the fact that, somewhere down there, a war was going on.

The plane wasn’t airborne long when it banked west, leaving the sea behind and climbing over mountains rising abruptly from the coastal plain. Jungle lay like a thick blanket of green wool over undulating mountains and ridges. Rivers fell through steep canyons to falls. He saw small patches of cleared forest, but otherwise, nothing to suggest human presence, no roads, no villages, no plantations, just a vast trackless wilderness stretching to the hazy horizons.

The drone of the engines and the vibration of the plane had a narcotic effect on the passengers sitting in slings along the walls of the cabin. Their heads drooped and swayed with the rocking of the plane. Hoffman closed his eyes and thought about Clara. They had met in high school, gone steady, and never seriously dated anyone else. He missed her terribly.

A change in the engine tempo and the sensation of descent woke Hoffman from a light sleep. He turned and peered through a window behind him. The...