The Princess and the Wizard
By
UCSbdad
Disclaimer: There are Castles and castles in this, but I own neither. Rating: K Time: 1967 and elsewhen.
Author's note: To get a look at what Castle's unit looks like, go to http colon back slash back slash ctrp dash 3d dash 4thcav dot com backslash troop dot html Click on org chart.
Specialist Borden dropped down from the commander's cupola. In spite of the two ponchos covering the opening, water poured into the vehicle.
"LT, it's not just raining out there. It's being like under Niagara Falls or something. Can't we just button up?"
Lt. Rick Castle looked up at him.
"Even if we were under Niagara Falls, and the falls were full of piranha fish, and the ground was covered with starving alligators, Charlie would still come after us if he finds us. Now get back up there and keep an eye out. You'll be relieved in another ten minutes."
Borden said something under his breath that Castle decided not to hear.
"LT." said Sergeant Esposito, the platoon sergeant. "We've got another two feet of water in the track. We need to drop the rear ramp and let the water out."
All of the men in the vehicle were sitting with their feet up. Castle looked down.
"At least two feet. Okay, cover the back and drop the ramp."
As the ramp was dropped, the men inside covered the outside with their weapons. Nothing happened.
"Jesus." Said Esposito. "I can't even see Kaos out there. It is like being under Niagara Falls."
Kaos was one of the three tanks assigned to Castle's armored cavalry platoon, the other two being Killer and Kandy.
Unknown to Castle and his platoon, they had been found by the VC. A patrol of three village militiamen had seen the large American armored force driving down the narrow road near their village. They had seen one of the smaller vehicles slip off the road just as the rain began pouring down. The three men had agreed that they had never seen rain anything like this before.
The Americans had stopped and used two vehicles to pull the third back onto the road. The rest of the convoy had gone on for a bit before stopping. By the time the American armored vehicle had been pulled back onto the road and checked over, the small stream that the rest of the convoy had merely splashed through was now a raging torrent. The Americans stopped but it was obvious that the smaller ten vehicle unit could not now cross. The larger unit left for their base camp which was only a few kilometers away and the now separated American unit arranged themselves in a circle with their weapons pointed outwards.
The militiamen were armed with two Russian bolt action carbines and one very battered French submachine gun. They agreed to send one person back to their village. From there they could contact a main force battalion and overwhelm the Americans. However, the scout couldn't get to the village. He found the small stream that was between him and the village was now too wide and swift to cross. He returned and the three men huddled together in the rain, barely able to see the Americans through the deluge from above.
Then the lightning began.
"Can you get anything on the radio?" Castle asked his RTO, Specialist Kemper.
"Just static, sir. It's the lightning."
"Keep trying." Castle said.
Esposito liked Lieutenant Castle, as much as he liked any officer. He wondered if Castle remembered him from Schofield Barracks. Castle had been drafted right out of high school in 1962, After basic, infantry school and airborne school, he'd been assigned to the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
Esposito was a squad leader in another company in the same battalion as Castle, but everyone knew Rick Castle. He was tall, muscular, good looking and definitely had a way with the women.
In 1962, the helicopter units in Vietnam had no organic door gunners. Airmobile operations were a new concept to the Army and to the Transportation Corps, that ran helicopters. At first, they used volunteers from the helicopter units, but that didn't work so well. Your door gunner might be a wonderful radio mechanic, but he probably hadn't fired a machine gun since basic training. And if your radio mechanic was spending his days being a door gunner, he wasn't repairing any radios. The solution had been to ask for volunteers from infantry units in the 25th Infantry Division and train them as door gunners. Castle had volunteered and had three ninety-day temporary duty trips to Vietnam. He even got a Purple Heart, although Castle said the only reason he had been sent to the hospital was because none of the doctors had ever seen an actual, wounded American. He hadn't gotten a Combat Infantry badge, since the Army was not in combat in Vietnam. Or so they said.
Castle had gotten out after two years and went to college. He dropped out of college after two years, re-enlisted and then went through OCS. Now he commanded an armored cavalry platoon in Vietnam. All Castle had said about why he'd dropped out of college was that it wasn't for him.
Castle himself was happy with his platoon. According to rumor, and Army rumors are not always 100% reliable, the general commanding the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam had a soft spot for the armored cavalry squadron, since he'd once commanded it back in the day. For whatever reason, Castle thought he had better people than the general run of grunts in the line companies. The only person he'd been worried about was Kemper, his radio operator. Kemper was a hillbilly from West Virginia whose parents thought schooling was a waste of time that their son could better use on their hard scrabble farm. Accordingly, Kemper was functionally illiterate, but he was big and strong and was actually of at least average intelligence. Kemper spent his spare time slowly reading the newspapers other soldiers' families sent them. He even thought about going to some kind of school after the army.
The division commander's interest, assuming he had any, could be a good thing or a bad thing. To the good, he was only five men short of his assigned strength. Most line units in Vietnam were worse off. But, he'd been assigned a squad of seven Kit Carson Scouts, former VC or NVA who'd changed sides. So, he had more men on hand than he was actually authorized for his platoon.
The Kit Carson Scouts usually were armed and equipped like US troops. However, Sergeant Tranh, the Kit Carson squad leader, had his men also armed with Soviet made weapons, AK 47s, an RPD light machine gun and a rocket propelled grenade launcher. They also had a full NVA uniforms complete with pith helmets, ChiCom chest rigs for spare ammo and a couple of grenades and even cloth tubes filled with rice. Castle had tried some once and compared them to US ham and lima beans C rats in foulness. Since any AK 47s could be explained as belonging to the Scouts, Castle knew that some US soldiers also carried them, against orders. Officially, this was because US troops would shoot at the sound of an AK, causing friendly fire casualties. Castle felt that the brass just didn't like the idea that Americans would prefer a Communist made weapon.
One of the general's ideas that Castle did like was the mounting of an M 134 minigun from a downed gunship on one of the scout section's ACAVs. Two thousand rounds a minute could break up an ambush in record time. Mowing the lawn they called it.
One idea he didn't agree with was the outfitting of the cavalry squadron's troops in tiger stripe camouflage fatigues. They might help out Tranh's Kit Carson Scouts, or even the infantry squad Castle had, but you couldn't hide a nearly fifty-ton tank by putting the crew in cammies.
There was a blast that shook the track. Then another, another and soon it sounded like there was one continuous blast.
"What was that?" Esposito asked.
Castle popped open the roof hatch and looked out. Water poured into the track, but he could see flashes of lightning and feel the blasts of the thunder. He could also see his platoon in the more or less continuous lightning flashes.
"It's lightning." Castle yelled. "It's all around us and it looks like it's damned near continuous. I've never seen anything like this." He slammed the hatch closed and dropped back into the track.
"Kemper, can you get anything on the radio? Any of the platoon?"
Kemper shook his head.
"All I get is static, sir. And it's about deafening me it's so loud."
Castle could hear the howling of the static himself.
"Shit." He said, angrily. "I'm going to have to go check on the rest of the platoon."
They dropped the rear ramp and Castle ran out into the deluge. Every one of the vehicles in his platoon had a miserable lookout, drenched in water and nearly deafened by the thunder. But, everyone was okay. Castle made it back to his own track safely.
The rain, thunder and lightning continued full blast for several hours after sunrise, not that anyone could see the sun. Then, as if by magic, the rain and the thunder and lightning stopped.
Castle waited for a few seconds, then opened up the roof hatch to look around. He looked, closed his eyes and rubbed them, and looked again. It was still there.
"Shit!' He said.
"What is it, sir." Esposito asked.
"Something's wrong. Very wrong."
Espo stuck his head up next to Castle.
"Shit. That can't be right."
But, instead of the jungle they'd been in just hours ago, they were now in a forest of fir trees. The narrow road they'd been on had disappeared, and in its place was an open field that ran for several hundred yards before giving way to more fir trees.
More and more people looked out of their vehicles and asked themselves, and anyone else, what the hell was this? Soon the radio frequency was jammed with people asking the same thing to everyone.
Castle grabbed a mic.
"This is Charlie 10. Everyone get the hell off the air." He turned to his RTO, "Kemper, can you raise troop or squadron?"
"I've been trying, sir. I can't raise anyone."
"Sir," Doc Mellon, their medic said, holding up his transistor radio. "I can't get anything either. Not Armed Forces Network, not Vietnamese stations, not even Radio Hanoi. Nothing."
"We have another problem, sir." That was the driver, Borden.
"Now what?" Castle demanded.
"When we stopped yesterday, we had maybe sixty gallons of diesel left, but now we have a full tank."
"Dammit." Castle said. "The damned fuel tank cap must have come loose last night and filled the rest of the tank up with rain water."
But, when he tested the cap, he found it was secure. It hadn't moved.
"LT?" Called Kemper. "I'm getting calls from everyone. They all have full fuel tanks."
Castle shook his head.
"What the fuck is happening?"
"Sir, this doesn't make any sense." Esposito said. "It can't have rained diesel fuel and gotten into all of the fuel supplies."
"I have no idea, Espo. But we aren't going to get anyplace sitting here talking about it." He turned to the driver. "Borden, crank her up and see if she'll start. Kemper, tell the rest of the platoon to do nothing until we see if Charlie will start up."
Castle's command track was named Charlie. It wasn't named after the Viet Cong, AKA, Victor Charlie, but after a woman. The crew that had previously had Charlie had painted a very sexy portrait of a very hot blonde named Charlotte "Charlie" Breunig on the side of the track. No one in the platoon had wanted to paint over Charlie and so the name had stuck.
Borden said a quick prayer and started the engine. It caught at once.
Castle breathed a sigh of relief, then grabbed the radio mic. "This is Charlie 10. We'll start up one vehicle at a time. Start with Charlie 11. Do you copy, Charlie 11? Over."
One at a time the vehicles all started.
TBC