Ian Slater - South China Sea

“ ‘Bout time, you fucker. We were gonna see how far you’d go!”

“Very funny.”

“Turn right, my man, and go straight ahead.”

In three minutes he was out on the trail. God, it felt good! “Where’re all the chinks?” he asked.

“Just north of us, Ranger man.” It was the Delta scout who’d been keeping parallel with him.

“How far north?” Kacey asked, his breathing short and fast.

“Not far enough,” the scout said as he passed his canteen to Kacey, “but they’re just probing now. Won’t do any major stuff till they get arty in around us — which they’re doing now.”

“Where’s our TACAIR?” Kacey asked.

“In this pea soup? Home, where you’d be. Back in Hanoi, waiting for it to lift. Only do so much with infrared, man.”

“Scout tells me,” said Delta’s CO., Roscoe, “that you ran into Salt and Pepper.”

“Yeah,” Kacey said.

“They’re probably headed north of us for PLA sanctuary. You get a good look at them?”

“Pepper, but not her.”

“A woman?”

“Yeah,” Kacey said. “Made a real nice couple. Moving dope.”

“A woman!” Roscoe repeated, as if it were an offense against nature. “All right,” he said. “I want you and Jonson to stay here on the perimeter where the trail exits the canopy — make a damn nuisance of yourselves against any chinks who try setting up mortar positions or whatever—’specially since you know, Kacey, what this Salt and Pepper look like. They might just come our way. I’ll send a squad out here with you and—”

Suddenly there was a horrendous rattle of machine-gun fire, both M-60 and Chinese-type 67 LMGs. Then more mortar rounds, but for the experienced men of Delta like Kacey, Roscoe, and Jonson, it all had the sound and feel of probing, no one really sure yet of exactly where the other side was.

“Wish we could get out of this fucking marsh,” Jonson said.

“I agree,” Roscoe said. “Trouble is, if we do that, we no longer have an LZ when the choppers arrive.”

“They’re not going to come in this weather,” Jonson said.

“They’ll come in any weather. But clear weather’d help.”

Jonson shrugged mischievously. “Then maybe we should let the old man to pray for a typhoon!”

“Yeah — incoming!”

They hit the marshy ground as a PLA 82mm mortar exploded twenty-five yards away, earth and water erupting in a high, dirty column. For Delta’s Roscoe there was something wrong — he felt it in his bones. Something peculiarly disconcerting about the almost laissez-faire way in which the PLA mortar squads were lobbing their mortar rounds, an almost lackadaisical attack, filling in time. But for what, to sucker Delta’s British and American forces into wasting precious ammunition in return fire? But return fire where?

Roscoe concluded it could mean only one thing — that the PLA paratroopers, having landed farther north near Dien Bien Phu, had not yet connected up with the PLA ground troops on the way to the valley. Once they connected, they’d no doubt ring the whole valley, sealing the Americans and their allies in the marsh, where they could cut them up piecemeal as Giap had done to the French in the very same valley in ‘54.

In fact it wasn’t as organized as that. Few battle plans are, the hand of chance always in play. Due to the unusually heavy rains, the PLA infantry columns — over a thousand strong — had round it much more difficult, much more time-consuming in the wet, to manhandle the bits and pieces of their heavy artillery south from Mengzi to Dien Bien Phu.

It was now 0230 hours, and the day before, Wang had ordered the elimination of Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta forces. But the weather and the apparent failure of Echo and Foxtrot to yet join Delta had fouled up the timetable. Colonel Cheng, the PLA military officer in charge of the destruction of Freeman’s Special Forces, had wanted to attack at 0230 hours, while Delta Force was still only thirty strong. The political officer, however, argued forcefully that it would be better to wait till all three Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta columns had rendezvoused in the valley, so that they might be wiped out to a man. Such a victory, he argued — the annihilation of an entire U.S.-led force — would be infinitely better from a political and international point of view than a piecemeal attack on only one section of it.

In fact, the new battle of Dien Bien Phu would not begin with all of Freeman’s Special Forces in an LZ position and the Chinese in position around the valley, but would start in earnest around 1630 with the sixty Echo and Foxtrot troops making their way back to Delta, and the Chinese having only half their artillery set up. In short, the situation was what Echo’s Leigh-Hastings would refer to as your usual run-of-the-mill cockup.

Two hundred fifty miles to the northeast, the winding summit of Disney Hill was still in American hands, due to the bravery of Vinh’s USVUN contingent. In hand-to-hand fighting they had finished off many of the Chinese troops forced to vacate their warrens because of flash flooding. It wasn’t that the Americans were backward in going forward with a bayonet, but most were equipped with the 203 rifle with grenade launcher tube underneath the barrel to which a bayonet could not be attached.

Though it was a battle where each side was looking for a knockout blow, both knew it would be a seesaw fight, depending as much on the reliability of supplies to the men at the front as on fighting ability. The mist had only partially cleared, and hung low in the valleys, stretching back north into China, where a two-engine train over a mile long could be seen, safe from U.S. TACAIR, bringing guns, food, and ammunition to the PLA battalions in the smaller hills and revetments cloistered about the base of Disney.

Now, more U.S. air cavalry troops and supplies were being unloaded at the southern base of Disney. It wouldn’t make up for the awesome tonnage being hauled by what Doolittle, Martinez, and D’Lupo were already calling Von Wei’s Express, but Freeman was trying to get “bananas”—Chinook choppers with slings — to ferry 105mm howitzers, made lighter than the usual field 105mms because of aluminum parts — in behind the southern side of the hill, in order to try knocking out the PLA storage areas beyond Disney. But all there was behind Disney now was an inland sea, following Freeman’s prayer for good weather, a prayer he was asked about at a quick but intensive news conference later that evening.

“Weather prayer?” he said, face perplexed, feigning ignorance. “I don’t petition the good Lord for good weather to kill my fellow man! The United States Army—” Cline whispered in his ear. “—ah,” began the general again, “the USVUN forces do battle no matter what the weather.”

After the conference it was Cline’s turn to be perplexed. “Ah, sir, General?”

“Yes.”

“Man-to-man, General.”

“All right, man-to-man.”

“Sir, why did you — lie about the weather prayer?”

“Well, in the interests of press accuracy, the padre gave the prayer. I merely requested it.”

There was a long pause as they walked back to the operations room. “You’re right, Bob. I lied. Tell you the truth, I don’t know why. Guess I’ve been getting some pretty lousy press lately, and I thought — well, hell, I shouldnt’ve done it. I’m sorry. I’ll correct it in my memoirs if I don’t get killed here. By God, how do they expect me to fight without TACAIR over Chinese territory?”

“Chinese haven’t got TACAIR over us, General.”

“No, because our boys’d knock ‘em out of the sky, that’s why.”