Battle Ready Part 8

Life in the base camp during Pacifier 1 was relaxed when we weren't training or on alert. Each squad had its own SEA hut; the lieutenants' hut, called "the Silver Bar," was where we officers spent most of our time planning . . . but also playing cards. I wanted the company to fight and train hard and well, but I also wanted them to know there was a right time to take a break. We tried to find one day during the week to barbecue the noon meal and play team sports between units. Though these days were rare, they were appreciated.

Since the Pacifier alert could come out of the blue, we had to be constantly prepared. Though it could begin with an immediate launch (as in the case of a downed aircraft), more often I'd get a call to come to the battalion combat operations center for a brief. I liked the op center briefs; they gave us time to plan. If I was to be the guy going in, I wanted to know what I was facing, and what I had to do. I never wanted to have to wondered what the h.e.l.l it was like out there or whether I could do it. That meant, for instance, that I tried to stay abreast of ongoing operations nearby, since they were the most likely triggers for our commitment. The morning ops and intel briefs were also obviously important for us.

THOUGH I didn't know it then, my last and most dramatic operation in Vietnam had already started. Over a month earlier, one of the companies on Pacifier 1 had reacted to an intelligence report of a VC cadre meeting in a small village. Soon after landing nearby, the company had engaged fleeing enemy. During the short firefight, one of the Marines took matters in his own hands and ran out to tackle one of the VC. He ended up capturing Nguyen Dac Loi, the VC intelligence chief for the Quang Da Special Zone, and reputedly the highest-ranking enemy intelligence officer captured during the war. didn't know it then, my last and most dramatic operation in Vietnam had already started. Over a month earlier, one of the companies on Pacifier 1 had reacted to an intelligence report of a VC cadre meeting in a small village. Soon after landing nearby, the company had engaged fleeing enemy. During the short firefight, one of the Marines took matters in his own hands and ran out to tackle one of the VC. He ended up capturing Nguyen Dac Loi, the VC intelligence chief for the Quang Da Special Zone, and reputedly the highest-ranking enemy intelligence officer captured during the war.

The significance of our catch was not evident to anybody in our battalion until the first days in November, when we were notified to prepare for a very special mission. Loi had agreed to lead us to his headquarters in the Que Son Mountains.

While I was at the op center for a brief on the mission, my company got ready to move. According to the briefer, Loi had offered our intel guys a wealth of information, much of it implicating senior South Vietnamese government officials in the region as VC collaborators.22 This made things difficult: Though the South Vietnamese had gotten wind of a major capture, they didn't yet know who we had or how important he was. The U.S. command wanted to keep them in the dark as long as they could, so we could fully take advantage of Loi's cooperation before the South Vietnamese became involved. Once that happened, they'd almost certainly compromise any further operations. This made things difficult: Though the South Vietnamese had gotten wind of a major capture, they didn't yet know who we had or how important he was. The U.S. command wanted to keep them in the dark as long as they could, so we could fully take advantage of Loi's cooperation before the South Vietnamese became involved. Once that happened, they'd almost certainly compromise any further operations.

The plan was for Loi (escorted by a Marine Interrogator-Translator Team-ITT) to lead my company to his headquarters-a ma.s.sive cave complex in a deep draw. Because he was unclear about its exact location, Marine Recon teams would cordon the general area, while Company B, along with our battalion command post, took and occupied a dominating piece of high ground.

When all this was briefed, the number of "heavies" there was a pretty good indication of the importance they were giving to this operation.

I met Loi in the landing zone before the birds arrived. He was studying a map. He was obviously intelligent and educated, but also nervous. "Can you point out your headquarters on it?" I asked him.

"I can't be sure," he told me, pointing to a general location. "Our maps differ from yours. But I'm sure I can spot it if I fly around the area."

I didn't like flying around without a definite, preplanned landing zone; but it was obvious we had to go along with Loi.

When all units for the a.s.sault were ready, we took off. Loi, sitting next to me, tried to orient the map to the ground below; but got even more confused and uncertain when we reached the area he identified. We circled-a bad idea; it gave away surprise.

I kept pressing him, but that didn't do much good.

"I've never been in a helicopter," he said. "It's hard to pick out landmarks from above."

At last, he seemed to recognize something. "There," he pointed down. "I know that place."

We radioed the other helos and set up for an a.s.sault into the zone he'd indicated. The landing was uneventful. We set down into a large muddy, gra.s.sy area. Though Loi a.s.sured us that he could pick up the trail into his headquarters from there, the terrain didn't look right to me: We were some distance from any deep draws.

As Loi and his ITT went off to look for his trail, I directed my platoons to spread out and search the area.

A short while later, a platoon commander called me to his position. When I got there, he showed me a wide muddy patch of ground covered with fresh boot prints-lots of sneaker-tread NVA boots. A big NVA unit had recently moved through.

I immediately reported our discovery to the battalion and then called my other platoon commanders and organized the company into a hasty defense. It was a good but unnecessary precaution; there was no enemy contact.

Meanwhile, another platoon had found a dud five-hundred-pound bomb. After my engineer officer, Lieutenant Bill Ward, looked at it, we debated what to do with it. After some discussion, we figured we had already lost any tactical surprise; and no one wanted to leave this potential b.o.o.by trap behind. So Bill's engineers rigged up the explosive charges and we blew the bomb.

Loi returned during this diversion-empty-handed. He hadn't found anything recognizable. All we could do was bring in the helos and start the search again.

After a few minutes in the air, he gave a shout and pointed toward trails at the base of a large hill. "Those trails lead to my headquarters," he announced.

This was more like it. The trails led up a huge mountain combed with deep draws. One draw in particular looked capable of holding the vast cave complexes Loi had described.

When we set down, the zone was again quiet; but the trail network nearby looked well used. "There haven't been U.S. or South Vietnamese troops in this area for years," Loi told us. "The VC and NVA use it freely."

"That's great," I thought, remembering my experience with the Vietnamese Marines. "That means they'll be ready for us." I badly wanted to attack Loi's headquarters, but I didn't want to try to get there on those trails.

I then formed the company in a column, with the first platoon in the lead, and my scouts and our Kit Carson Scouts moving out ahead. I had Loi with me at the head of the first platoon. Because of the possibility of b.o.o.by traps, I told my scouts to take it slow and careful.

Loi still could not make up his mind where he was. He'd start us up one trail, back up, and off we'd go on another. This tended to make my company bunch up like an accordion; it was hard to keep the troops properly s.p.a.ced. My scouts were meanwhile reporting hasty b.o.o.by traps strung across the trails, as well as recently abandoned outposts in the rocks, with cooking fires still burning. After I'd gone forward to check them out, I made an appeal to get off the trails; but I knew the answer before I asked: Loi's confusion had already wasted half a day; and the VC were well aware of our presence by now. We needed to get on them before they could destroy what we were after and slip out. Moving off the trail would be safer, but take more time. We stayed on the track. I knew that was a difficult call for my boss; but I had to agree that it was correct.

In order to keep a handle on Loi's direction changes, I moved him up to the head of the company, with only the scouts and the point team in front of us. I was determined to get on his a.s.s and stop his confusion. And, in fact, things started to move more smoothly as soon as I started pressing him hard.

My scouts (led by Corporal James, a black Marine from Washington, D.C., with an uncanny ability to read tracks and detect b.o.o.by traps) were doing a magnificent job. This was very rough terrain-high mountains with flanking ridges.

In time, we approached a prominent ridge. On its other side, I was certain, lay the draw containing Loi's headquarters. It was clear we were pushing against security forces for something important. We could see little cuts down in the rocks, which were obviously listening posts and sentinel posts. In one case, we found a little cup of rice, still warm, left there when they ran out ahead of us. My scouts were also coming across hastily strung b.o.o.by traps-wires with grenades and the like.

I wanted to get to that high ground as quickly as possible, since it was only a matter of time before we made contact with the enemy. I expected first contact would come from some security outpost firing at us to hold us up or perhaps from one we'd overrun before the enemy troops could fall back.

I was wrong. About two hundred meters from the top of the ridge, Loi stopped and looked at me, "They won't let you go any farther," he said, then shifted his gaze again toward the trail to the top.

"What are you talking about?" I asked him.

"A VC and an NVA company are defending this ridge," he said. "They will not let you get within 150 meters of the crest."

That was information we had to check out. I called up a pair of scout Cobra helos we had up above the ridge to get their view. I was talking to them when the enemy opened up.

I had turned sideways to give the handset back to my radio operator, Lance Corporal Franky, when I was. .h.i.t. Three AK-47 rounds at fairly close range, close enough to easily pa.s.s through my flak jacket. It felt like I'd been whipped across the side and back with a burning hot, wet towel. I went down. As I rolled into a shallow erosion ditch, I tried to get a sense of what was happening. Moments later, Lieutenant Bob Myers, my 1st Platoon commander, and Lieutenant Pete Metzger, our battalion intelligence officer, who was with our company, both rushed over to me.

I was still conscious. . . . I never actually lost consciousness until I was medevaced out. Neither did I feel overwhelming pain. But I could feel the energy draining out of me, and I could tell I'd been badly hurt.

This couldn't have come at a worse time. My company was under heavy fire. I knew they'd need me as long as I could stay lucid.

"Get the platoon spread out and return fire," I told Bob Myers. The enemy was well hidden; the Marines were having a hard time picking out targets, but I just wanted to get the enemy's heads down as we moved troops around. A Marine with a multishot flamethrower was nearby. When I told him to fire, he asked, "At what?"

"I don't give a d.a.m.n," I told him. "Just fire."

He did, and it slowed down the enemy's shooting.

Bob then helped me get my flak jacket off. I hated these heavy things; but it was the policy to wear them. The Vietnamese Marines never wore them, nor did our advisers with them; and I was convinced the added weight and discomfort worked to wear down the troops and make them less alert.

"Great," I thought, "now that I'm shot." The flak jacket had been useless in stopping the rounds.

As he peeled off the jacket, a b.l.o.o.d.y piece of flesh fell out. Not encouraging. Bob then started to apply a battle dressing; the look on his face told me the wound was bad. While he was doing that, I called Colonel Trainor to give him a situation report. By then, one of our corpsmen, Doc Miller, was working on me. I was now feeling so weak I was afraid I would pa.s.s out.

"You'll have to take over the company if I lose consciousness," I told Bob. "Or worse," I added. Bob was a good man, and capable. The officer who would normally have taken over for me, my company XO, Dan Hughes, was at the battalion command post on some coordination task. He'd try to get out to us as soon as he could, but I knew that until he came, it would be up to Bob to run the company.

All the while, I still had a company to run. I'd been on my stomach while they had dressed my wound. Now I raised myself up a little so I could see what was going on. I noticed a rise of high ground off to our left, and sensed the enemy was trying to get up to it. From there, they could fire down our flank with devastating effect. At the same moment, it dawned on me that we could do the same to him if we got there first.

"Get a squad with a machine gun on the hill," I told Bob. He immediately tasked one of his squad leaders, Sergeant Bamber, to take the rise. The squad rapidly moved out and took it in a quick fight.

Meanwhile, calls of "Corpsman up!" were coming from the point team in front of us. They were taking hits.

At that point, Doc Miller gave me a rundown of what was wrong with me. "Your back is a mess," he told me, "I can see your spine. I don't know whether or not that's been injured. If it was, then we've got to be worried about paralysis. Keep pinching your legs to be sure you have feeling. You've also lost a lot of blood, so there's a good chance you won't stay conscious." And finally: "I don't know how bad your pain is. I can give you morphine, but you're better off without it unless you absolutely need it."

The pain wasn't actually excruciating. And besides, I really didn't want to use the morphine, because once I did I knew I was no good to Bob Myers or anybody else.

The calls for a corpsman were growing more insistent. I looked into Doc's eyes and said, "Doc, they need you." The area between us and the point team was being raked with fire.

He looked up from me, stood up, and yelled "f.u.c.k!," then charged off toward the wounded.

"We have to get the point team and the wounded back," I told Bob. "Send a squad to get them." Corporal Rocky Slawinski, the squad leader whose team was on point, had heard me. He came over to us. "I'll get them. They're my Marines," he said. He and the remainder of his squad then ran up under fire and carried back the wounded.

It looked like we had several wounded, including my Kit Carson Scout, who was shot in the shoulder.

During the excitement, Loi had somehow grabbed a rifle (which really p.i.s.sed me off), worked his way forward toward the enemy, and then crouched down in no-man's-land, looking desperate. His former comrades had obviously seen and recognized him, and this had brought on a crisis of conscience. "They are calling my name," he kept saying, over and over. It looked to me like he was about to make a crucial decision about which team he was going to play for.

"Take the rifle from him," I told the ITT and Bob's platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Lambert. Though he was initially reluctant to give up the weapon, his hesitation died when Staff Sergeant Lambert jacked a round into his shotgun. His "crisis of conscience" over, he gave up the rifle and moved back in our direction.

We had another serious problem.

There was no way we could get medevac helos in. There were no landing zones, and the enemy was tightly mixed in with us in the thick brush.

Just as this was sinking in, two Marine CH-46 helos came up and identified themselves as our medevac birds.

"We didn't call for you," I told them, "and we can't take you now."

The pilot said, "I know. I just want you guys to know we're here, and we'll come in whenever or wherever you ask."

By then, a couple of hours had pa.s.sed since I'd been hit, and I was feeling weaker than ever, and cold from the loss of blood.

Bob, who had done a great job of consolidating our position, had also found a possible LZ for the medevac helos farther down the slope. There was a rocky outcrop b.u.t.ting out over a cliff (the drop was several hundred feet). The pilots thought they could back up the helos against it and lower the helos' end ramps. The wounded could be loaded while they hovered. It might be a sphincter tightener for some guys, but it should work.

I was determined to walk down to the helos in front of my Marines; I didn't want to be carried. Though I knew I wasn't going to last much longer, I managed to march/stagger, with help, down the trail to where the other wounded were gathered. Before I moved up the ramp, I gazed out at my troops. The looks of comfort, rea.s.surance, and concern for what lay ahead from those grim faces will always stay with me.

As the helos hovered next to the cliff, a VC raised up to take a shot at them with his RPG (rifle-propelled grenade) launcher, but a Marine spotted him and opened fire, and the VC had to duck down before he could take the shot.

The helo crew chief strapping us into the stretchers noticed that I was shivering on the bare canvas. He took off his white, fleece-lined flight jacket to wrap around me.

"Don't do that," I told him. "It looks new. The blood will ruin it."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t about that," he said, and laid it over me.

Before I got on the chopper, the excitement and my adrenaline kept the pain manageable. But by the time it lifted out, it was coming on full force. I felt worse than I ever had in my life-in body, mind, and spirit.

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, I received a letter in the hospital from Colonel Trainor. It read: I received a letter in the hospital from Colonel Trainor. It read: "I don't know if Lt. Hughes [Dan Hughes, my XO] or any of the others have written you about the events subsequent to your evac. At any rate let me fill you in. Dan and I went down to Red's pos [my first platoon's position] and Dan took command of the company. We shifted Becket [my second platoon] to the low ground. You trained your team well, Tony, they performed magnificently. We stayed on the operation for two weeks and had a real war going. Alpha [my company] had most of the action. The VC tried to prevent us from penetrating, but when Bravo [Company B] came down on them from above, they skied [ran]. After that they kept firing at us from outside the cordon. Obviously they were trying to draw us away from the area. In this they failed. It was a grand war for a while."

He went on to add that we had suffered three killed and nine wounded during the operation, and we had killed forty-one VC of the enemy's C-111 Company.

The day after I was. .h.i.t, my company found Loi's cave complex and eighteen thousand pages of doc.u.ments: dossiers, pay rosters for agents, and agent lists with names and photos of senior South Vietnamese officials. Weapons and food caches were also discovered. The intel find was the largest and most important of the war.

"It was a pleasure having you in my command," Trainor added. "I have put you in for the Bronze Star."

Though Trainor liked to give medals to the troops, he didn't easily give them to officers. This endeared him to all of us, and made a medal he'd recommended a special privilege. It was a great honor to receive it.

MEDEVAC II.

The medevac helo took the wounded to the 85th Evacuation Hospital, a U.S. Army field hospital south of Danang.

Zinni's wounds were serious enough for an immediate operation. After the pre-op X ray (rounds were still in his back), he was cleaned up and prepped, and IVs were inserted. As he lay there on his stomach after the prep, he noticed an unexpected flurry of whispers and huddling among the doctors and nurses. Something was up.

After a time, the huddles broke up, and a nurse pulled a chair up to his gurney, turned it around, and sat down backward, with her face almost touching Zinni's.

"I'm the senior nurse," she said. "Can you clearly understand me?"

"Yeah," Zinni said.

"We have recently received an experimental drug called ketamine," she continued, "and we'd like to use it on you. An officer like you can give us good feedback on its effectiveness."

Zinni gave her a tentative nod. These were medical people. He trusted them to know what they were doing.

"The drug is experimental," she added. "We'll need your permission before we can use it. You should know that you'll remain conscious throughout the operation and won't have tubes jammed down your throat, the way you normally might in an operation of this kind."

"That sounds good," Zinni said. "But how can I be conscious?"

"It's a hallucinogen," she said, "but it's an effective anesthetic without the ill effects of normal anesthesia."

"I guess that's okay," Zinni answered, "and not having tubes jammed down my throat is appealing. So let's do it."

"That's a good decision," she said. "I'm sure you won't regret it. And you'll be helping us."

THE KETAMINE turned out to be living h.e.l.l. Though there was no physical pain, he had nightmares so vivid that he actually felt he was living through them: One was like an out-of-body experience-floating above his body as the surgeons were cutting into it. In another, he horribly relived the chaos, carnage, and deaths of the battle where he had taken his wounds. In another, he was dead and in a box, returning to his wife and family back in the States. The nightmares were so present, powerful, and turned out to be living h.e.l.l. Though there was no physical pain, he had nightmares so vivid that he actually felt he was living through them: One was like an out-of-body experience-floating above his body as the surgeons were cutting into it. In another, he horribly relived the chaos, carnage, and deaths of the battle where he had taken his wounds. In another, he was dead and in a box, returning to his wife and family back in the States. The nightmares were so present, powerful, and fierce fierce that he started thrashing around wildly during the operation, and had to be tied down and heavily sedated. that he started thrashing around wildly during the operation, and had to be tied down and heavily sedated.

He woke up in a sweat, strapped to a bed in the intensive care unit.

With him was his first sergeant, Alls, with tears in his eyes, grasping Zinni's hand. He'd been holding Zinni's hand since he'd arrived in intensive care (Zinni had been vaguely aware of the squeeze; it had been a small and welcome comfort). After giving Zinni a heads-up about his company-who had been hit and evaced-he left.

"You went through a really rough trip," the nurse told him after he had gone.

"I know," Zinni told her. "I still remember it."

At that moment, he tried to move. And that was when he began to realize something was wrong. Not much above his waist worked right-like his arms.

Later, the surgeon explained why. "As we removed the rounds from your back," he said, "we couldn't just clean the wound and put you back together. The injury had wrecked too much. What we had to do, in order to prevent infection, was to debride the wound. That is, cut away about a third of the muscle tissue on your back and side. You've got a pretty big crater back there," he added sympathetically.

"What's going to happen," the surgeon went on, "is we'll keep you here for about a week, then we'll send you to Guam for extensive physical therapy. There they'll also take skin grafts taken from your legs and b.u.t.t to cover the hole in your back.

"I have to be honest with you," he concluded. "I doubt if you'll regain full use of your arms and back."

This was a shock. "What will this mean for my family and my future?" Zinni asked himself.

On his way out, the surgeon gave Zinni one of the rounds he'd dug out of his back.