It was an awesome sight even for seasoned chopper patrols: over two hundred helos carrying two thousand of Second Army’s Assault Helicopter Battalion and Airborne into battle, fifty miles north of Phu Lang Thuong to the edges of the valley southwest of Loc Binh. From a distance to the fighters and bombers already plastering the scrubby ridges around Loc Binh with H.E. and napalm, the choppers made it look as if the sky was full of gnats.
Marte Price had wrangled a ride on one of the helos. General Jorgensen, she discovered, was a much easier obstacle to work around than Freeman. Jorgensen, at pains to be politically correct, had also allowed several other reporters, including LaSalle, to be in the first wave. Marte Price now wished Jorgensen had refused permission. The noise of over two hundred helicopter engines and rotors chopping the thick, humid air, and the distant thunder of heavy ordnance being dropped to clear the ridges of the PLA, combined to fill her with a fear she had never felt so intensely.
The members of the nine-man squad she was with were mostly silent, all but two sitting on their bulletproof Kevlar vests instead of wearing them, fearing shots from below that could easily penetrate the skin of the chopper and hit their genitals. The minutes before deplaning were filled with apprehension, each man knowing that the PLA might well be ready to spring a trap around the landing zones, holding their fire till the helo’s soldiers were spilling out on the flats between the ridges and then opening up in a murderous ambush.
As the First Battalion of Airborne went in led by Colonel Smythe, Freeman was in the control chopper high above the swarm of helos below, with F-14 Tomcats from the Enterprise riding shotgun, making sure that the helos were properly dispersed to ensure the perimeter about a half mile across.
Normally a colonel or a one-star brigadier general would have been directing the local deployment, but this had been Freeman’s plan, and if he was going to take responsibility for it, — he wanted to personally direct it. Besides, like Patton, he was known as a front-line general, no matter whose plan it was. Furthermore, Second Army was his until told otherwise by Washington.
Then it happened. Bravo Company of the First Battalion were deplaning close to a dike running along the edge of a rice paddy when the field seemed to erupt in fire, the fusillade of bullets coming from a scrubby and partially treed ridge that sloped down to the valley floor of green fields. Even as a star, or six-point 105mm howitzer, gun position was being set on the ridges south of the landing zone, with 105mms slung under the bellies of an equal number of heavy-load Chinook choppers, the PLA infantry were laying down a murderous fire on the Americans.
How did the PLA know there would be a major force attempt to secure the valley as a hub from which to “spoke out” attacks against the PLA’s supply line between Lang Son and Loc Binh and the road between Loc Binh and Lang Duong? In fact they didn’t know. The PLA had guessed that Freeman, a general known for his “keep-moving” tactics, wouldn’t be satisfied waiting for a set-piece battle about Phu Lang Thuong. He wouldn’t wait for his enemy to come to him, but would probably try to leapfrog, overflying the PLA’s spearhead on the Lang Son-Phu Lang Thuong road, to hit Wang’s and Wei’s forces deep in their own territory. That would stop the Chinese supply line, splitting their forces and allowing two divisions from Second Army’s I Corps to close in from Phu Lang Thuong.
Wang and Wei, while having made spectacularly impressive gains so far, had not managed to take Hanoi. The U.S. artillery was too formidable. The Chinese generals now had to decide whether to recall those PLA elements to the south now wheeling before Phu Lang Thuong for the attack on Haiphong on the USVUN eastern flank. If these PLA regiments were able to reach the allied port of Haiphong, then the winding, seventy-mile-long Haiphong-Hanoi road, the allies’ vital supply artery, would be cut, and with that would come a bonanza of allied supplies for the PLA. And whatever the PLA couldn’t find dockside at Haiphong could be supplied along the southeast coast from the Chinese city of Mong Cai.
On the other hand, if the PLA regiments did not pivot before Phu Lang Thuong toward the Red River delta, but stood their ground to prevent the other units of Second Army’s I Corps from pressing north toward Ban Re and Lang Son, the oncoming Americans would soon meet up with Freeman’s Airborne, allowing the Americans in the north, now reinforced, to split into two spearheads, one swinging west to take Lang Son, the other right to Loc Binh.
The two Chinese generals knew they had the numbers, but also knew that if their supply line could be cut this far north, then Freeman’s Second Army I Corps would not only advance but would be constantly reinforced by Haiphong. Wei was still ready to go along with the two political officers and make an all-out assault on Hanoi.
“Imagine,” Wei said, “if Washington fell — the terrible effect on American morale.”
Wang arrogantly waved his comrade’s comment aside. “Washington did fall, comrade. The British burned it to the ground, and look at it today. If anything, its fall hardened American resolve to counterattack.”
“This is another time,” Wei responded.
“Exactly!” Wang retorted. “In any case, it was our agreement that if we did not take Hanoi by the tenth day, we would turn to Haiphong.”
“Yes, Comrade General, but we have been held up on the highway to Hanoi by American and Vietnamese saboteurs. We’ve not really begun our attack on Hanoi.”
“Enough of this wrangling,” Wang said. “I demand a vote.” It was two for going on to attack Hanoi, two for Haiphong.
“Very well,” Wang said. “Beijing must decide.”
“What do we do meantime?” one of the political commissars asked.
Wang’s knuckles rapped the map, his regiments red-flagged, the enemy’s blue. “I suggest we crush Freeman’s helicopter assault at Loc Binh.”
One of the political commissars had the temerity to point out that it would not be correct to report that the Americans were attacking with helicopters. This would give Beijing the impression that the assault was a gunship attack by American Comanche and Apache helicopters when in fact it was an infantry attack, albeit airborne.
Wang said nothing that would injure his career, but merely smiled at the commissar. The other three took this to be a sign of acquiescence. In fact it was a well-camouflaged expression of contempt for the tendentiousness of the political officers. B «t clearly, neither commissar detected his true feelings about them. He was glad they were deceived and was hopeful that Freeman’s forces were about to be equally deceived by his camouflage at Loc Binh.
Apache gunships came to the fore as those who had deplaned their troops flew westward of what were now being called the Loc Binh fields, the Apaches spraying machine-gun fire into the scrub and bamboo that came down to the edges of the fields. In a confusion of communications, some choppers got the order to withdraw with their full complement of troops so TACAIR could be brought to bear, while others still a few feet above the field, their blade wash flattening the elephant grass along the edge of the field/ridge interface, deplaned their troops into a maelstrom of small-arms fire directed at the troops just landing, their most vulnerable moment, the helos also drawing heavy fire.
Up on a ridge held by the Chinese, a battery of 12.7mm machine-gun-cum AA fired had already downed three choppers: one after its troops had alighted, the other two while fully loaded, approaching hovering position. Two Tomcats came in low, dropped napalm on the batteries, and rose quickly as an enormous, roiling orange-black ball of flame engulfed what just seconds before had been enemy positions.
But meanwhile the PLA were “walking” 82mm heavy mortar rounds across the fields, telling Freeman that the PLA crews must have had time to angle — prepare their trap. Then the walking would stop, the rounds hitting the Americans with “unison” rounds in which up to ten mortar rounds landed together, shrapnel whizzing through air, immediately followed by the screams of men being hit.
Freeman, seeing he was between a rock and a hard place, had to decide to cut and run or drop more men into the maelstrom of fire. There seemed to him a better than fifty-fifty chance that he could hold position with a stream of troop-carrying helos keeping up the supply of men and materiel into the LZ while its perimeter was being established. “We keep going,” he ordered. “Hold the perimeter.” Already more helos were taking off from Phu Lang Thuong.
Meanwhile Wang was on the phone with his Loc Binh field commanders, ordering them to commit several reserve battalions from the Chengdu military region — over four hundred men — down the ridge and into the fields, by which his commanders understood that he meant them to penetrate the perimeter. Wang put the phone down and yelled, “Weather report?”
“Clouding over, sir, but clear for helos below two thousand feet.”
“Then,” said Wang grimly, “he will keep pouring troops into the area until he pushes the perimeter uphill. It must have been a terrible shock for him to find us waiting, to have forecasted this probable landing site, but now that shock is over—” Wang was pacing anxiously. “—I think he will stay, at least so long as the cloud ceiling makes it possible to call in air support.” Wang ordered another battalion, another eight hundred, down the ridge into the fields to where PLA mortars had cratered an area of about fifty yards across, through which platoon-sized elements of Wang’s Chengdu army were penetrating.
By now several hastily emplaced U.S. 105mm batteries were opening fire, and Freeman’s men saw several volcanolike explosions of scrub bush and red earth. Still, the PLA’s mortars were proving the more deadly fire, screams of “incoming” causing the Americans to scramble to what cover they could find in the detritus of war, from empty ammo boxes to the dead.
Now it was hand-to-hand where the mortars had broken the Americans’ defensive ring, and D’Lupo, Rhin, and Martinez found themselves in a firefight through clouds of smoke grenades they’d tossed into the breach. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to slow down the PLA regulars rushing through the clouds of dense white smoke, their shadowy figures cut down by the U.S. infantrymen’s best friend, the “pig,” the M-60 machine gun.
“Two o’clock! Two o’clock!” Martinez yelled. D’Lupo’s M-16 fired and the figure fell. In a rush of three PLA soldiers through the smoke, one was unlucky enough to run across the field of fire of Private First Class Walter B. Sloane. Sloane had a twelve-gauge pump action shotgun and fired twice, the Chinese soldier’s head gone, his blood-splattered torso still running around. “Sit down, ya silly prick!” some GI yelled out, and that was it — Martinez, D’Lupo, and even a harried radio operator Rhin couldn’t contain their fear-bred laughter, Martinez laughing so hard he could hardly change magazines. Rhin could barely be understood by one of the following air cavalry companies coming in with priority landing status.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, soldier?” a major bellowed.
“We jus’—man, Sloane just blew his head off—”
“Now you listen to me, goddamn it. Get a grip on yourself, fella!”
Rhin told Martinez they were to get a grip on themselves, and Martinez, having just fired off a three-round burst, said, “What parta me would he like me to grip? Shit, man, can’t—”
Rhin only got under control when a mortar shell landed yards away. Miraculously, he wasn’t hit by any shrapnel, but the concussion knocked him to the ground, a large, ocher-colored sod of earth from the dike along the edge of the field hitting him in the stomach, completely winding him. He was gasping for air, unable to speak, so Martinez had to take the field phone.
“Identify your Lima,” a voice yelled. “Identify your Lima. Over.”
“Far as I can tell,” Martinez answered, “we’re at the northern edge of these fields. Lot of white smoke. Over.”
“There’s white smoke everywhere. Mark the LZ with purple smoke. Can you do that? Over.”
“Roger. Can do. Over.”
“Out.”
It was a terrible mistake for Martinez not to know that day’s prearranged signal for an LZ. As the Americans had the enemy wavelength and were using Vietnamese/Chinese interpreters, so too did the Chinese have the American wavelength and Vietnamese/Chinese/English interpreters. Within seconds of the transmission between the air cavalry major and Martinez, the helo pilot saw a purple column of smoke curling up from the swirling hell of shrapnel-infested white smoke and ground fire. He started to descend and saw purple smoke rising, this time in the northern sector somewhere farther east.
“Jesus Christ,” the air cav major said, “which fucker is ours?”
“I say we go in on the first one, Major,” the pilot said. “If it’s a PLA dupe, we gotta assume our boys were the first to lay purple.”
“Guess you’re right, Lieutenant. Take us in.”
“Yessir.”
The blades of dozens of choppers above them, the neverending cracks of small-arms fire and roaring machine guns around them, D’Lupo’s platoon was in a cacophony of sound and confusion. Farther east, unseen by their fellow soldiers on the ground, the helo with the cavalry major descended into purple, the purple smoke now buffeted away by the downwash, the helo no more than ten feet from the ground.
“Jesus!” the pilot yelled, recognizing two or three PLA regulars below him, rifles raised. It was too late. An 85mm Soviet-made RPG7 round exploded into the guts of the chopper. Aflame, it fell like a brick, its blades broken and spinning like a scythe through the field, the explosion of its gas tanks an enormous saffron cloud, the bodies of its crew and squad of air cavalry curling grotesquely into wizened black fetal positions. The small-arms ammo inside the fiercely burning shell of the helo was popping off, the smell of cooked flesh, oil, and burning gasoline wafting across the battlefield.
From this point on, no LZ identification procedures were to be given in plain language over the field phones, only prearranged phrases or strips of cloth that would confuse the enemy.
The men pouring out of following choppers were now doing so in the center of the field and running out to relieve and/or reinforce the troops on the perimeter. Freeman kept pouring men in. “Don’t let ‘em bear-hug you!” he ordered his commanders as he landed in some tall elephant grass growing along part of the dike.
“What’d he mean?” Marte Price asked a private who was busy seeing whether it was possible for a human being to melt into elephant grass by will alone.
“What’s he mean, bear-hug?” she repeated, only now noticing that the recorder in her hand was shaking uncontrollably. She dared not ask Freeman, his aide Cline, or even his somewhat — ironically — timid press officer Boyd.
“Bear-huggin’, ma’am,” someone with a southern accent explained, “is when tha enemy gets in so close to ya ya can’t use arty — that’s artillery, ma’am — as covering fire for your men, ‘cause if you do, you’ll kill as many of your own guys as the enemy — maybe more.”
Marte Price spun around and crashed into a soldier’s M-16 rifle, a hole and a large splotch of blood on her left breast.
“Medic!” a soldier near her shouted. “Medic! Reporter’s been hit!”
Freeman moved her as gently as speed would allow, the pain of it making her gasp, a medic barely out of a chopper by her side. He slit open her blouse, cut her bra off, and gave her a shot of morphine, then taped her with a thick wad of field dressing. Then, with Freeman’s help, the medic carried her to one of the relay choppers about to take off back to Phu Lang Thuong.
“I’m sorry,” she told Freeman, who merely patted her on the other shoulder, shouting, “You’ll be all right — a million-dollar wound!” She had heard him clearly despite the terrible confusion of the battle, and she vowed then that her wound would not be a ticket out of the war. She would get well and she would cover this war as she had first intended — at the front.
At the northern edge of the perimeter the fighting was hand-to-hand with rifle, knife, and bayonet, and the American artillery couldn’t help. But the perimeter was bulging here and there, no longer the circle of Freeman’s plan but larger in area, if only the bulges could hold and not be squeezed by the PLA. Here the American ability to reinforce and resupply with a speed unmatched by any other army proved the decisive factor, along with the fact that Freeman’s troops knew he was there. They also knew Marte Price was there, a woman whose very presence not only commanded their protection, but also meant that their performance would be reported that day.
But if, as well as the bravery and training of the Airborne troops, there was one weapon that turned the tide at approximately 1500 hours, it was the U.S. flamethrower, which not only arced toward the PLA it could see, but set a deep “pie slice” of underbrush afire, and soon the high canopy of forest on the hill and its ridges were ablaze, forcing the PLA infantry back, where they simultaneously became visible to Freeman’s Forward Air Controller, who, in his Cessna Bird Dog spotter plane, was now directing the heavy ordnance from three F-14 Tomcats from Enterprise right on top of the retreating PLA. On the next bomb run, however, the Tomcats couldn’t see any more targets for the fire’s smoke, and neither could the FAC. Freeman ordered the First Battalion into the burned-out pie slice that had now become a charred three-acre patch on the southern side of the ridge that slanted up from the wet, muddy fields, over which thick, white smoke was now pooling, having been blown away from the PLA positions. But neither the advancing U.S. infantry battalion nor the FAC or Tomcat pilots could see any Chinese on the far side of the ridge.
Freeman grasped the field phone and coughed roughly to rid his throat of “smoke scrape.”
“Now listen, Colonel, I want your boys to do two things simultaneously. First I want Alpha Company to get up to the ridgeline facing Loc Binh — watch for booby traps and dig in. Then I want rats from Bravo Company to go down after the PLA, and Charlie Company to stay in reserve so when those tunnel maggots come up for air after we smoke ‘em out, we’ll have reception for them. You got that? Over.”
“Roger. Alpha top of the ridge, Bravo farther down, and Charlie covers the rear. Over.”
“How many tunnelers you got there, Colonel? Over.”
“Half a dozen trained, General. Over.”
“Not enough. You grab anyone — Vietnamese or U.S. — under five-four and weighing under 145 and send ‘em down. Over.”
“I’ll do my best, General. Over.”
“No you won’t. You’ll flush those chinks outta there for us to shoot or I’ll have your ass. Out!”
LaSalle had made a special note of Freeman’s use of the word “chinks.” Mon dieu! If he could get that pic he’d heard about of Freeman finishing off one of his own wounded, along with this “chink” gaffe, he’d probably get the lead story for Paris Match. Then it suddenly hit him. What in Hades was he doing up here at the front while Marte Price was back at the first available field hospital, a first-rate opportunity for him to really search her tent?
He waited till he heard the next Medevac chopper come in, its prop wash dispersing the smoke as several medics loaded two badly wounded men on its side litters. The sergeant told the Frenchman he couldn’t ride this one out. They had several walking wounded with serious enough “bleeds” that he’d have to wait.
“No sweat,” he answered loudly as Alpha Company’s mortars pounded the top of the Loc Binh ridge. LaSalle waited. He didn’t care if they thought him a coward, bolting from the battle. Not if he could get time to really do a cinema verité, as it were, of the great American general, Freeman. LaSalle didn’t like Americans, never had. If the French were too proud, the Yankees were much too cocky. He planned to take them down a peg or two. He could see his prizewinning article now: “Pierre LaSalle at the Front! Exclusive!” LaSalle had never forgotten Freeman’s comments about the French unwillingness to let the USAF overfly French airspace during the bombing attack on Khadafy in Libya. “The frogs only care about the frogs. Their idea of collective security is to have a multinational force protect France, and to hell with quid pro quo!” The only American LaSalle liked was Jerry Lewis.
Battalion leader Colonel Melbaine had Alpha Company atop the ridge, as Freeman had ordered, and Charlie Company was spread west to east at the base of the slope, forming a backup line about three hundred yards long.
Several of the tunnel rats from Bravo Company, stripped to the waist, were preparing themselves with field-phone transmitting throat mikes and transmitter packs that nowadays obviated the need of spool wire trailing behind. In addition to the mike and 7-shaped flashlight, each rat went down with a .45, spare clips in side pockets.
Colonel Melbaine said he had only five qualified rats ready to go. He needed more to go down, but guys he’d thought were around five feet four and around 145 pounds had suddenly grown fatter — said they’d “love” to go down but, fuck it, they were too wide.
General Freeman turned to Major Cline. “Bob, get me a kit I’m going down.”
“General, Jesus, sir — pardon me — but you’ll get stuck down there.”
“Don’t be so goddamn rude. I’m in top physical shape.”
“But sir—”
“C’mon, Bob, don’t give me dance. Get me a flashlight, a .45, and a mike/transmitter unit.”
With the five other rats ready, he signaled the six of them to go down. A second later each man was down a hole in the fire-ravaged earth.
In the darkness, Freeman found the arched runnel, dug by the PLA for the PLA, as much a squeeze as Bob Cline had predicted, his heart thumping so hard that he felt sure the whole of Bravo Company must now be privy to his fear. He felt carefully in front of him, using his knuckles to rap the damp, cool earth, the PLA known to set punji sticks, razor-sharp angled bamboo that would go right through a man’s boot, the earthen top of such traps often built to support the lighter PLA troops but not the generally heavier-built Americans.
His flashlight fell on a Z-shaped corner, constructed to prevent grenade shrapnel or concussion from wiping out a whole length of tunnel rather than just a portion of it. “Twenty feet in,” came Freeman’s subdued voice, “passed a Z, going toward a U bend.” Like a bomb squad member or test pilot, he was recording everything for them. Should he get killed, the next rat down would know how far to go before he could expect anything new. He heard a crack like a stick breaking. One of his tunnel rats had made a contact, the shot echoing through the tunnel complex, but whether left or right of him, he couldn’t say. He was halfway around the U bend when he came across something he had never seen or heard about in the tunnels before — a saloonlike bamboo door.
Breathing hard, sweat breaking out on his neck, he took a moment to compose himself. Then he noticed another tunnel veering off to the right, so that he had a choice, either straight ahead into the tunnel or to veer off to the right. He heard a noise, the scurrying of some animal, and felt the wet rush of a huge gray rat along his side that caused his whole body to shiver. “Am at a bamboo door,” he reported to those topside. “Have probably gone in eighty feet. Another section of tunnel goes off to the right.”
Which way to go? Bamboo door looked fishy, as if it was inviting him to come in. Perhaps it was a PLA sign that beyond lay a dead-end storage area. Was that where the rat or whatever had scurried past him had come from? He turned the flashlight on and off just long enough for him to see that below the door there was some spilled rice. “Huh,” Freeman said gruffly, desperately fighting a growing sense of claustrophobia and the stench of rotten air. “Door definitely looks wrong. Ten to one you touch it and you trip a grenade.”
His throat was bone dry, despite the cool dampness of the fetid tunnel. “Will use white smoke to make vertical shafts visible if I find any. Am resting awhile before I move. Out.” It also gave Freeman time to listen for a few minutes to hear, despite the steady thunder and staccato of battle overhead, if there was any movement coming his way.
The door drew him toward it, but he resisted the temptation — it was a sucker’s trap if ever there was one. He took the right tunnel instead.