Tim O’Brien - If I Die in a Combat Zone

‘Don’t know,’ Barney said. ‘Maybe we’ll surprise him.’

‘Who?’

‘Charlie. Maybe we’ll surprise him this time.’

‘Are you kidding me, Barney?’

He shrugged and chuckled. ‘I don’t know. I’m getting tired myself. Maybe we’ll surprise Charlie because he’s getting tired, too.’

‘Tired,’ I muttered. Wear the yellow bastards down, right?

‘Actually, this trail seems pretty good. Don’t you think? Been on it all day and not a single mine, not a sign of one.’

‘Good reason to get the hell off it,’ I said.

‘What’s the matter, you want to be the one to find a mine?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that.’

‘Well, it’s a damn good trail around here if you don’t hit a mine.’

‘It means we’ll find one sooner or later. Especially with Charlie all over the place.’

The company stopped moving. The captain walked to the front of the column, talked with a lieutenant and moved back. He asked for the radio handset, and I listened while he called battalion headquarters and told them we’d found the village and were about to cordon and search it. Then the platoons separated into their own little columns and walked into the brush.

‘What’s the name of this goddamn place?’ Barney asked.

‘I don’t know. I never thought of that. Nobody thinks of the names for these places.’

‘I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? Somebody’s gonna ask me someday where the hell I was over here, where the bad fighting was, and, shit, what will I say?’

‘Tell them St Vith,’ I said.

‘What? That’s the name of this fucking place?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s the name of it. It’s here on the map. Do you want to look at it?’

He grinned. ‘What’s the difference, huh? You say St Vith, I guess that’s it. I’ll never remember. How long’s it gonna take me to forget your name?’

The captain walked over and sat down with us, and we smoked and waited for the platoons to fan out around the village.

‘This gonna take long, sir?’ Barney asked.

Captain Johansen said he didn’t think so.

‘Don’t expect to find anything – right, sir?’ Barney said.

Johansen grinned. ‘I doubt it.’

‘That’s what O’Brien was saying. But like I told him, there’s always the chance we can surprise the gooks.’

‘My God, Barney, they were shooting at us all day. How the hell are you going to surprise them?’ I was indignant. Searching the ville, the whole hot day, was utterly and certainly futile.

The platoon finished the cordon, tied it up neatly, then we joined the first platoon and carefully tiptoed through the little hamlet, nudging over a jug of rice here and there, watching where we walked, careful of mines, hoping to find nothing. But we did find some tunnels, three openings behind three different huts.

‘Well, should we search them?’ a lieutenant asked.

‘Not me, sir. I been shot at too much today, no more luck left in me,’ Chip said.

‘Nobody asked you to go down.’

‘Well, don’t ask me either, sir,’ another soldier said.

Everyone moved quietly away from the lieutenant, leaving him standing alone by the cluster of tunnels. He peered at them, kicked a little dirt into them and turned away.

‘Getting too dark to go around searching tunnels,’ he said. ‘Somebody throw a grenade into each of the holes. Make sure they cave in all the way.’ He walked over to the captain and they had a short conference together. The sun was setting. Already it was impossible to make out the colour in their faces and uniforms. The two officers stood together, heads down, planning.

‘Blow the goddamn tunnels up,’ someone said. ‘Christ, let’s blow them up before somebody decides to search the damn things.’

‘Fire-in-the-hole!’ Three explosions, dulled by dirt and sand, and the tunnels were blocked, ‘Fire-in-the-hole!’ Three more explosions, even duller. Two grenades to each tunnel.

‘Nobody’s gonna be searching those tunnels now.’

Everyone laughed.

‘Wouldn’t find anything, anyway. A bag of rice, maybe a few rounds of ammo.’

‘And maybe a goddamn mine. Right?’

‘Not worth it. Not worth my ass, damn sure.’

‘Well, no worry now. Nothing to worry about. No way anybody’s going to go into those three tunnels.’

‘Ex-tunnels.’

Another explosion, fifty yards away.

‘Jesus, goddamn you guys,’ the captain shouted. ‘Cut all the damn grenade action.’

Then a succession of explosions, tearing apart huts; then yellow flashes, white spears of sound, came out of the hedgerows around the village. Automatic rifle fire, short and incredibly close rifle cracks.

‘See,’ Barney said, lying beside me, ‘we did find them.’

‘Surprised them,’ I said. ‘Faked them right out of their shoes.’

‘Incoming!’

‘Incoming!’

‘Jesus,’ Barney said. ‘As if we didn’t know. Incoming, my ass.’ He looked over at me. ‘INCOMING!’

‘Nice hollering.’

Thanks. You hurt? I guess not.’

‘No. But I’d guess someone is hurt. That was a lot of shit.’

The company, the men on the perimeter of the village, returned fire for several minutes, spraying M-16 and M-70 and M-14 and M-60 fire down the trail, in the direction of the enemy fire, in the direction from which we’d just come.

‘Why don’t they stop shooting?’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for God’s sake, they aren’t going to hit anything.’

‘CEASE FIRE,’ Captain Johansen shouted. ‘Cease fire, what’s wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!’

‘Cease fire,’ the lieutenants hollered.

‘Cease fire,’ the platoon sergeants hollered.

‘Cease the goddamn fire,’ shouted the squad leaders.

‘That,’ I told Barney, ‘is the chain of command.’

Bates, one of our buddies, ran over and asked how we were. ‘Somebody had to get messed up during all that,’ he said. He peered down at us. He held his helmet in his hands.

‘We better look over there,’ I said. ‘That’s where the grenades came in.’

‘Grenades?’ Bates looked at me. ‘You sure you’re not a sailor?’

‘Not altogether.’

‘Not altogether, what?’

‘Not altogether sure I’m not a sailor, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Damn straight, not altogether,’ Bates said. ‘Those were mortar rounds coming down on us. Eighty-two-millimetre mortar rounds.’

‘You sure?’ Barney always asked people that question.

‘Well, pretty sure,’ Bates said. ‘I mean, I was a mortar man before they made me a grunt. Those were mortar rounds.’

‘It’s gonna be a nice night,’ Barney muttered, smiling like a child. His face had the smooth complexion of a baby brother. ‘Just as I was saying before. We aren’t gonna get much sleep.’

We walked to where the mortar rounds had exploded. Some soldiers from the third platoon were standing there, in the wreckage of huts and torn-down trees, looking at four holes in the dirt. ‘Nobody’s hurt over here,’ one of them said. ‘Lucky thing. We were all sitting down, resting. Anybody standing when that stuff came in would be dead. I mean really dead.’ The soldier sat on his pack and opened a can of peaches.

The captain ran over to us and asked for casualties, and the same soldier told him there were none. ‘We were all sitting down, sir. Resting. Pretty lucky for us. We should rest more – right, sir?’

‘Okay, that’s good,’ Captain Johansen said. He told me to call battalion headquarters. ‘Just inform them that we’re heading off for our night position, not a word about the little fight just now. I don’t want to spend time playing with gunships, and that’s what they’ll make us do.’