Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You…
Chapter One: First Strike
0710 hours, May 10th, 1969: Zero Hour, Operation Apache Snow
What the fuck am I doing here?
Sergeant David Whitecloud, the young man who would later become known as Forge, looked up at the towering crag that he had been informed was called Dong Ap Bia by the locals, but which had been designated by MACV as Hill 937. He knew that he and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division's 1/506th battalion, Charlie Company, were here to clear out a nest of the NVA's finest, but he didn't exactly feel confident of their chances of doing that. For one thing, the double and triple-canopy jungle was so thick in places that even the massive daisy-cutter bombs the air support used to clear LZs had a hard time cutting through them, and for another, this was a frontal assault, and David knew from bitter experience that frontal assaults usually yielded two things: jack and shit. He still carried the scars from numerous skirmishes with guerrillas and NVA regulars across his torso, including a dozen widely-spaced dents in his chest where a frag grenade had exploded only a dozen metres away from him while he'd been attacking a spider-hole filled with NVA soldiers and piles of ammunition. Fortunately, he'd still been able to throw a frag of his own and blow those little bastards to messy chunks of flesh, sending ammunition cooking off in every direction, but he'd learned then that throwing yourself in front of the enemy's guns was tantamount to tying a noose around your neck and throwing yourself off a bridge. Now, he was sat in a troop helicopter and waiting to be dropped off in one of the five designated LZs that the five companies of the 1/506th would be using to begin their deployment, and trying desperately not to think about what awaited him when he got there. The orders that he and his buddies had been given had told them to interdict Highway 923 from the Laotian border to its juncture with 548, but he didn't exactly like the odds for that.
The helicopter slowed to a hover, and the grizzled lifer sergeant began ordering his men out onto the ground in a swift, professional fashion. David flipped off the safety on his M16 and switched it to "rock and roll" (in other words, full automatic) almost by reflex – he had no desire to leave alive anything that might put a bullet in the front of his head. Months ago he'd have objected to that on general principle, but after so long ducking claymores, avoiding booby-traps and punji pits filled with shit-covered wooden stakes, he'd decided that enough was most definitely enough. Fuck 'em, he'd thought sourly. They want to mess with me, they're going to regret it.
As soon as his feet hit the spongy mud of the LZ, David began scanning the surrounding area for any signs that the NVA were nearby – flashes of light off equipment, movement in the brush, and so on. Finding none, he allowed himself a deep breath of relief. Apparently Charlie was going to let them live for the moment. He'd heard stories of grunts being chopped to pieces en masse almost as soon as they left their helicopter, and then having to be loaded right back onto the copters in body bags. It wasn't a pleasant thought, and David was glad that that hadn't happened here. He had no desire to be shipped back home with a tag on his toe and half of his face missing.
Just then, another young draftee, an 18-year-old kid just in from New Jersey, PFC John Bradley, came up next to David, interrupting his train of thought. The kid was a cherry – a new guy – and so hadn't managed to earn his stripes with the rest of the platoon yet, but David liked him – he was always ready with a smile and a quick joke, even in the worst kind of situation. "Hey, Sarge," Bradley said, watching the jungle with wide eyes. "How's it going?"
"Fucking terrible," David muttered, checking his webbing to make sure he'd remembered the right amount of frag and smoke grenades. "You?"
"Same," Bradley replied. "You really think Command's gonna send us up that thing just to weed out some gooks? Why don't we just bomb the fuck out of the damn thing and leave it to rot?"
"Don't ask me," David said, dejectedly. "I don't have a goddamned clue. Not one fucking clue."
On the evening of the 11th, the 506th finished up their riffs along the northern A Shau. They had been operating just north of an abandoned Pacoh village, which David saw on his map had been called Bou Aie Ha, and just east of the Trung Pham, running reconnaissance in force missions towards the Laotian border and into the A Shau's valley floor. Now, though, they were getting ready to dig in for the night. Looking around him, David could see that most of the other men were being far too complacent about what their defensive arrangements were going to be – only a few of them had even bothered to dig fighting holes, and most of those were too shallow. He wasn't exactly keen on the idea of spending two nights in a row in the same place, either – that, to him, was practically painting a huge red cross on the ground and inviting the gooks to hurl artillery at it. Even the mortarmen hadn't dug their guns in – he'd seen Lieutenant Shumaker berating them earlier, and he'd heard them claim they were too busy with fire missions to have time. Goddamn numbnuts mortarmen, he thought. They're gonna get cut to bits like that. Assholes.
"Keep your head down, kid," he said to Bradley. "This place is going to light up like a fucking Christmas tree sooner or later."
"Your dead ancestors tell you that, or something?" Bradley joked, before adding an awkward "Um, Sarge." David ignored it, since he'd heard almost every variation on the theme since he'd joined up – not being a WASP was probably a disadvantage in the military, given that Indians weren't exactly high up on the respect ladder; he'd discovered that even to the most open-minded grunt, Indians only came just above blacks on that particular scale, and even then weren't exactly given much leeway.
"No, my common sense did," David snapped. "Look at this place. There's no defensive perimeter, we don't have enough cover, and the fucking trip flares and claymores aren't up. You think Charlie's going to be nice and polite and wait until we can defend ourselves?"
"I guess not," Bradley conceded, before he nodded over to where a fat, long-haired reporter from Stars and Stripes was getting shouted at by Lieutenant Shumaker for not having dug a hole of his own, and laughing it off like a typical jackass civilian. "Hey, check it out – we're famous! You think we should go over there and ask him to take our picture?"
"You want some advice, kid?" David said, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly. "Pray you never make the news. The only way you do that is if you die."
The kid gulped, the colour draining out of his face in the space of a few seconds. "Really?"
"Ask the guys who bought it at Ia Drang or Dak To," David said simply. "They'll tell you exactly the same thing. You get your name in the news and if you're lucky a few people cry over what a great guy you were, but that's about it. Trust me, it's better to be anonymous and alive."
The mortar attack came just before nightfall, huge explosions tearing through the makeshift base camp like a searing razor-edged wind. David saw the unprotected mortar men thrown around like rag-dolls, their bodies twisted just as easily as the guns that they were manning. In less than a minute, more than half of the thirty men who'd initially been manning the guns were either dead or wounded, and the position itself looked dangerously exposed.
"Medic!" somebody screamed through a throat that sounded as if it had been chopped in half. David winced as he risked a glance over the edge of his hole, and saw the grisly, flesh-flecked remains of two of the guns. They had been thrown off their feet by the explosions and their muzzles and barrels were totally wrecked, with chunks of what had once been men splattered on the ground around them. Towards the edge of the position, David could see the man who'd shouted out crawling away from the artillery position, his face a mask of blood and one leg a mass of shrapnel fragments and ripped muscle. "Medic!" he screamed again, to no avail. As David watched the man helplessly, another explosion ripped through the gun behind him and silenced the mangled soldier for good, as a single shard of razor-sharp metal drove itself through the back of his skull with an awful cracking of bone. David fought the urge to puke, and just about managed to overcome it - although Bradley wasn't so lucky, and began bringing up his C-rations on the floor of the hole.
David ignored his companion and concentrated on waiting for a possible ground assault – he knew that the NVA were likely to want to follow up something of this nature with a focused, deadly movement of troops on whatever had survived the artillery burst, and he didn't want to survive the shell barrage just to be shot in the face by some lucky gook.
Just then, he saw the Stars & Stripes reporter, who looked badly burned and ragged around the edges, trying futilely to dig a hole with an obviously-borrowed entrenching tool. He wondered if he should have been amused by that, but the thought was brief. Nothing about this whole mess was even remotely funny any more. It was a huge relief, then, when a C-47 Spooky gunship appeared on the skyline and, after having obviously been given the estimated co-ordinates for the NVA mortar position, opened up with his six miniguns. David shuddered as the platoon's avenging angel raked the jungle mercilessly with thousands of rounds of ammunition, feeling very glad that the monster doing that was on his side. Twenty seconds after it had begun, David saw a massive secondary explosion bloom in the jungle like a fiery flower, and felt a huge weight lifting off his shoulders as the mortar barrage ended. He didn't feel all that safe, though - and he wondered if this was just a taste of things to come.
Reaching down, he offered his hand to Bradley, who was still spitting the last few traces of bitter bile from his lips. "On your feet, soldier," he said with a slightly strained smile. "We're in the clear."
It wasn't even close to the truth, but David felt like lying. Maybe if he said it enough, he'd start believing it himself. And the next day, David's fatalistic mood didn't lift when he heard the orders handed down from Colonel Bowers – the 1/506th was to launch another attack on the mountain from the south.
May 14th, 1427 hours: Operation Apache Snow, day four
David watched the jungle cautiously, his eyes flitting from one spot to another almost continuously. One of his squad had been killed by an NVA sniper earlier in the day, and he had no desire for the feat to be repeated. Every time he thought there might be a sniper hiding in the treetops, he ordered his men to fire into the canopy in order to make sure they couldn't do his platoon any harm. Concentrated M16 fire had torn large holes in the lower levels of the thick tangle of vines and tree branches, but it had meant that no more casualties had been taken. Of course, whether that was because they had killed all the snipers, or because there had been no snipers to kill, was still open to question, but David was in no mood for debate.
That mood wasn't helped when he heard gunfire coming from the position of Alpha Company, the point company in the Currahees' assault on the mountain – both the snapping, fizzling crack of AK-47 fire, along with the more reassuring sounds of M16 and recoilless rifles, and the drill-like screeching and throaty coughs of several Cobra gunships' rockets and grenades.
"Shit, sounds like they're really laying it to 'em up there," exclaimed PFC Bradley in an apprehensive tone, as he toyed with the scrap of an NVA soldier's uniform that he'd taken as a trophy a day beforehand. He hadn't killed the guy, David knew, but had stumbled across the man's decaying dead body while on the march, and had torn off the man's bloodstained unit badge as a way of proving himself to the rest of the platoon.
"Yeah," David muttered as he glanced carefully at a suspicious tangle of jungle vines. "Be glad you're not up there with them." At this rate of advancing, he knew, the 1/506th weren't going to get to where Command wanted them to be, wherever that was, in time for them to help out the 1/387th – who, by all accounts, were taking a pounding elsewhere on the mountain's slopes. In the distance, David could also hear gunfire coming from the position of the 1/516th's Bravo Company, who were advancing on the northeast slope of Hill 916. The RTO's radio crackled with Bravo's desperate requests for a medevac – and before long, artillery was shrieking overhead in support of the besieged company. This is crazy, David thought, grimacing as a snake slithered over the top of his boot, blithely ignoring the sounds and smells of battle. What the fuck is wrong with just bombing those bastards to pieces? Not like they give a shit about sacrificing their lives for Uncle Ho, after all…
May 17th, 1023 hours: Operation Apache Snow, day six
David fired his M16 without bothering to aim specifically, blazing away at a nest of NVA soldiers who were ensconced in a sandbag-protected bunker – he could see enough movement inside the bunker to know that he'd be more likely to hit something than not. Unhooking a grenade from his webbing, he yanked out the pin and hurled it towards the narrow aperture. It rolled in and there was a muffled explosion, before the NVA soldiers resumed their relentless fire. Frustrated, David realised that the bunker must have had a grenade sump inside it somewhere, which meant that isolated grenades were useless. They'd have to use something a little more… persuasive. Scurrying through cover, he found PFC Collins, who was carrying the platoon's grenade launcher on his back – something that was sure to put a crimp in the NVA's plans. Collins' face was flecked with tiny spots of blood where wooden splinters had impacted against his cheeks, and his dark brown hair was sticking out in angry tufts underneath his helmet, which was almost too big for him (like most army gear, helmets came in two sizes: "too big" or "too small"). "Give me your launcher, son," he said urgently. "I need to try something." He was confident in the kid's marksmanship, no question, but he needed to do this himself. Hefting the launcher, he gazed towards the bunker, gauging the distance and pitch of the shot purely by eye as he did so, and then squeezed the trigger with a feather-light touch of his right hand's index finger. A single fletchette round hissed from the weapon's barrel and sliced its way through the bunker's aperture, hacking to pieces those soldiers defending it and spraying their blood and pieces of their flesh in all directions as it detonated. David heard loud whoops of excitement as the bunker's first line of defence exploded, and then handed the launcher back to PFC Collins without a word. Looking about him quickly, he saw that PFC Frost had gone down with a bullet lodged in his abdomen, blood soaking through the hole in his flak jacket and coating his fingers in scarlet gloves. His head lolled as consciousness began to fade, and David knew that without proper medical treatment, he'd be dead sooner rather than later – especially with the NVA's finest troops out there, just waiting for a single mistake. Next to him, the closest medic, Private Anderson, was desperately trying to staunch the bleeding, with little success.
"We need to evac this guy," he said as he pressed some gauze to the man's wound. "He ain't going anywhere without proper medical treatment. We got about three or four others who can't go on, too. Better get them out of here sooner rather than later."
"I'm all right, Sarge," Frost mumbled through white lips. David grasped his shoulder and shook his head.
"No, soldier, you're not. I'm gonna call a chopper to get you out of here, all right? Got yourself a million-dollar wound there, buddy – you ain't going anywhere but right back to Hawaii when you're out of here, okay?" Looking back up at the medic, he said "Call a chopper. I'm going to clean out the rest of the gooks from that bunker." Then, he turned to the rest of his squad – Harper, an eager black kid from Mississippi, Golding, a Bostonian biker with heavily-tattooed arms and peace buttons paradoxically adorning his flak armour, who was carrying the squad's Big Gun, and Jericho, a Californian man-child just out of college, who bore a nasty scar along the length of his jaw line. Padding cautiously close to the bunker, David nodded to Golding to take point, which the big man did without complaint. He levelled his M60 machine gun at the opening to the bunker, but before he went anywhere near the doorway, he threw a couple of CS grenades into it in order to weed out any NVA soldiers who might have been lurking nearby. Encouraged by the lack of activity, Golding moved forwards stealthily, keeping watch for any tripwires or claymores, or other kinds of booby traps. David doubted there would be any inside the bunker, but it never hurt to check anyway. Creeping closer to the bunker's entrance, he readied his M16 and ducked his head below the timber-lined opening, blinking away the last traces of CS gas that were hanging around in the almost nonexistent breeze.
It wasn't until he got inside that he realised how deep the bunker went. The tunnel in front of him stretched almost as far as the eye could see, and spider-webbed into several different passages along the way. Suddenly, as if to confirm his deepest fears, a mangled shriek of Vietnamese sounded from one of the side passages, and a grenade clattered to the floor somewhere around his squad's position. Luckily it wasn't too dark, so David could get a good view of where it had been thrown to. Scooping the grenade up in his right hand, David drew his fist back to throw the grenade back down the passageway it had come from –
– when all of a sudden his world erupted into fire and light, and he collapsed to the floor of the bunker. Strange, he thought absently, I thought I had two legs. There was no pain, only an intense feeling of detachment from the world. David observed the bleeding stump on his right wrist as if he were looking at it through a pane of glass, as if it were not his hand, nor his body that had been disintegrated by the faulty Chicom grenade. Somewhere to his right he heard a voice that sounded like Jericho, saying "Easy, Sarge, easy. We're gonna get you outta here, man. You're gonna be fine, man, you'll see…"