Robert Mason - Chickenhawk

At the river’s edge, some grunts were playing with basket boats: woven boats six feet in diameter. The men kicked and splashed like kids. The villagers had used the boats for fishing. Now, of course, there were no villagers.

Across the river a giant waterwheel still turned. It was about twenty-five feet in diameter, five feet wide, and built entirely of bamboo. Around the edge of the wheel, arranged so that they were always horizontal, long tubes of bamboo, closed at one end, filled with water at the bottom of the wheel and emptied at the top into a trough that carried the water to the fields. The total rise of the water was over twenty feet, and it splashed steadily into the trough, oblivious of the fate of its builders. A grunt in the river grabbed it, trying to stop it. It pulled him out of the water. He let go ten feet up. Immediately, another grunt grabbed the wheel and hung on tight. He was carried slowly up and over the top and back to the river. Two grunts tried it simultaneously, and the wheel slowed, almost stopped, but carried them up and over. When three guys tried it, the wheel pulled them all out of the water before it stopped. They cheered. Victory!

I examined one of the basket boats. The weave was so tight and precise that it stopped water. There was no calking between the flat strands, yet the boat did not leak. Both basket and wheel were built from material found growing around the village. I wondered how our technology was going to help the Vietnamese. Maybe after we had killed off the people—like these villagers, who knew how to live so elegantly in this country—the survivors would have to have our technology. That waterwheel was as efficient as any device our engineers could produce. The knowledge that built it was being systematically destroyed.

We stayed at Bird for an hour. I stared at the wheel and the men playing with it, wondering who the barbarians were.

When we left, I could see where the water was being pumped. No humans walked the field that it irrigated. No crops grew. The water was filling bomb craters.

Instead of going out on the assaults the next day, Gary and I were assigned to fly a special team of radio-intelligence people to track down the VC who were still broadcasting over our frequencies. Intelligence had determined that an NVA general was radioing messages to his men, uninhibited by our presence. The brass was determined to get this general. Special teams of troopers were on standby.

The four men in the team got in the back with their huge tracking antenna. We flew courses up and down the valleys at their direction. One of the men slapped another on the shoulder and called me on the intercom. “Okay, turn to course one-eight-zero. We’ve got the little fucker.”

Troopers were launched, encircling the triangulated location. They found burning campfires, some miscellaneous equipment and food, but no radio, no VC, and no general.

“Okay, come back to course two-seven-zero,” said the head of the radio-tracking team. Gary was flying, so I turned back around to watch them.

They looked pissed. “What’s up?” I asked.

“That gook general is broadcasting again, and he’s laughing.”

They swung the cross-shaped antenna back and forth. We changed course a number of times before they once again had the general’s location. While we went back for fuel, another team of troopers was sent in.

Back in the air, we learned that once again the site was found empty except for evidence of a hasty departure. The men in the back were shaking their heads. One of them said to me, “That’s fucking amazing. That gook is a fox.”

After another two hours of crisscrossing the valleys, the general allowed himself to be discovered again. What in hell was he doing it for? Again a team was sent in. Again it discovered a hastily abandoned campsite. The mission was canceled at dusk and rescheduled for the next morning.

The general played this game for two more days until it no longer mattered. A Cav infantry company captured an NVA colonel. He talked, revealing the location of the headquarters the general had been trying to save. The spot, called the Iron Triangle, was in the opposite direction. The general had been leading us away from the nest. He was never heard again. The Iron Triangle was taken after two days of fierce battles. Everyone thought that was it for Charlie in Bong Son valley. But the fighting continued.

Soon afterward, Gary and I heard the familiar sing-song message from our old friend: “FuckyouGIfuckyouGI …” It was like trying to eradicate crabgrass.

Kaiser stared ahead, his shoulders sagging. He could’ve been a player on a losing football team, but he was a tired pilot flying a helicopter.

I smoked a Pall Mall and leaned against the door to rest my aching back. We had been flying assaults for more than eight hours, no breaks, and were headed back to the Rifle Range.

“Yellow Two, Preacher Six.”

“Roger, Preacher Six. Go ahead.”

“Roger. Come up on two-six-niner and do whatever you can for the man.”

“Roger,” I replied. Kaiser shook his head while I tuned in the grunts.

“Yellow Two, Wolverine One-Six. We’re under heavy mortar attack and we’ve got some serious wounded to get out.”

“Roger, we’ll be there soon. What’re the coordinates?” The lieutenant read off six digits, and I plotted him on my map. He was only two miles away. I pointed to the map, and Kaiser changed course without saying a word. I leaned against the door and flipped my cigarette out the window. Maybe it would clear the jungle.

It was easy to find the guy for all the smoke that filled his clearing. Other than the smoke, I couldn’t see any action.

“Yellow Two, we are clear. I repeat, we are clear. The mortars have stopped.”

“Roger, we’re coming in.”

Just like that. Neither of us thought about the fact that the unit was trapped, encircled. The mortars could start again any time. Neither of us cared.

We approached the clearing in the shadows and pall, with the setting sun ahead of us. Even while Kaiser brought us over the tall trees, I felt no adrenaline. I sat up and squared my shoulders, put my hands on the controls, but I felt no anxiety.

Rubenski fired suddenly into the trees to our right.

“Get him?” I asked.

“I don’t know for sure.”

“That’s nice.”

Kaiser brought us to the ground with scarcely a bounce. The clearing was a miniature meadow surrounded by tall trees. The grass was short—like it had been mowed. I stared out the canopy. Across the lawn, ten men lay dead in a neat line. One man’s abdominal cavity was emptied around him, his remaining arm buried under his own guts. Another man seemed to be sleeping unscathed in the shady meadow. I stared at him while the grunts scurried toward us carrying five men. Ah, I thought, as I noticed the pale gore behind his head. Not sleeping. Brains blown out.

Two torn men were loaded on the back before the mortars returned. As the mortars struck, the grunts hit the dirt, carrying their wounded with them. Aw shit, I thought, another delay.

I noticed that there was a lot of orange light inside the explosions, silhouetting clumps of black dirt at the bottom of the funnel of expanding gases and shrapnel as mortars exploded a hundred feet away.

The grunts must have been as tired as we were. After the first few rounds, they got up and loaded the three other wounded while the mortars continued bursting ahead of us.

I looked back as the last man was lifted onto the deck. He was missing a leg below his knee. A tourniquet kept the blood mostly stanched. Rubenski blasted the tree line on our right flank. How long had he been doing that?

“That’s it, Yellow Two. Watch out for a machine gun ahead of you.”