Silent Night - Part Two

30 January 1970: Another gray day. A Chinook helicopter (also known as a “flying boxcar” or “shit-hook”) ferried our Company to Ðai Lôc and the other Company to Stinson. Even though “C” Company had been there for about a week, little defensive construction had taken place. Perhaps they’d been too busy shooting chickens.

We were all on edge. Tet was not far off now. Given the likelihood of an attack by the VC or NVA around that time, we felt pressure to get bunkers built and wire strung.

We set to work almost immediately. The Company was placed around the perimeter of the village, except for one section on the north side. This area was defended by local forces.

Aside from the ARVN, there were two other types of military units operating in the countryside: Regional Forces (RF) and Popular Forces (PF). We joined the acronyms (RF/PF) and referred to them collectively as “Rough Puffs”. The name tells you what we thought of their usefulness as a military force.

The RF/PF’s guarding part of the perimeter at Ðai Lôc were fairly typical. They often acted like they were on a group outing. Laughing and cooking, eating and sleeping – they seemed less a military unit, than a group of Boy Scouts, earning Merit Badges in woodcraft and camping. At night, they built huge fires and sat close, warming themselves, smoking cigarettes and chatting.

We, of course, were hunkered down in the darkness. If we wanted a cigarette, it was lit in a foxhole and cupped in your hands while smoking. The red glow of a cigarette is visible from quite a distance at night. The RF/PF’s did not share our concerns.

When we were assigned positions on the perimeter, I drew a new guy as my “roommate”. Charles Cue had only been in-country about two weeks and had just joined us on LZ Stinson. We set to work digging a hole for a bunker in which we could both sleep and fight. The work was slow and difficult. The earth had joined the Viet Cong in fighting us. We stopped digging when the excavation was 20 or 24 inches deep and somewhat larger than a queen-sized bed. The width was governed by some building material we’d salvaged: railroad ties.

Earlier that day, a small group of us had gone over to the old French railroad line, about ¾ of a kilometer away (a little less than half a mile). The rails had long since been scavenged, but the ties were still mostly in place. Since wood, even saturated in creosote, would not last long in the tropics, the ties were made of heavy gauge steel. The ends flared out, giving them a bit of a dog bone shape. We pulled several of them out of the ground, taking turns digging and keeping guard.

Hauling them back across the fields was the next challenge. Once we got them lifted up, they could be carried by two men. Getting them up, though, took several of us. Sweat filled our eyes, ran down our backs, soaked our olive drab tee shirts. Taking turns carrying these beasts, we were very exposed. It’s a wonder we weren’t shot. We weren’t though. Not then, anyway.

Returning finally to the Company, we dragged and heaved, and eventually got six or seven of the steel ties set across the narrow dimension of our hole. Because of their shape, there were gaps between them, which Cue and I filled with green bamboo poles. On top of this, we placed two or three layers of sandbags. The whole thing presented a very low profile, which was part of the point, of course. It was just high enough inside to sit up (with a helmet on). The hole extended towards the wire a couple of feet beyond the roof, and the rear was covered with a rain poncho. Two hard days of work, but we felt safer. In so far as you could feel safe out in the countryside, exposed to probable attack and potential death.

Late in the day, the Platoon Sergeant had come around and assigned guard shifts. Every other bunker would be on guard from dark until around midnight, after which the other bunkers would take over. We drew the first shift.

There was no moon. Neither was there rain nor wind, which was a blessing. The night was very still and the watch passed quietly.

1 February 1970: We went to sleep a little after midnight, insulated from the ground by Army-issue air mattresses. As was my habit, my feet were facing the perimeter when I went to sleep, and my helmet and weapon were always in exactly the same place. In that way, I could put my hands on them without having to think about it, and I’d already be facing outward.

Around 1 a.m. the moonless night was split apart. We awoke to explosions, flames, gunfire all around. Someone fired an RPG[1] into the village house right behind our bunker, and it burned madly. Shadows passed over the front of the bunker, Cue was in shock, and I could hear the sound of mortars firing from a tree line several hundred meters in front of us. They were not our mortars.

VC or NVA sappers[2] had cut the wire between our bunker and the one to the north of us. They entered the perimeter and ran about firing weapons and throwing satchel charges[3]. Noise and confusion filled the night. Death was reaching out for us.

I told Cue to watch at the back of the bunker and shoot anyone who wasn’t a GI, while I did the same at the front. There was no one to shoot at, though – at least, no one we could see. There were some concussion grenades in the bunker. I tossed two or three of them out the front in various directions.

On my stomach, I slid forward on the air mattress with my weapon, trying to fire a few rounds off. I was using an M-79 Grenade Launcher, not an ideal weapon in close conditions. Near the front opening, I raised my head a bit to see better. As I did so, I was aware of something landing on the ground eight or nine feet in front of me.

In the same instant that I saw it, without really seeing it, the hand grenade exploded. Disintegrating metal was blown into my face and neck. Recoiling from the shock of the wound and the force of the explosion, I slid backwards on the air mattress, legs angled up. Blood ran down over my face and shirt from several small wounds. The red bandanna around my neck became redder.

As I moved back in unconscious, physical reaction, a tremendous explosion slammed the roof of our bunker. It was deafening – jarring – terrifying. The force pushed me into the ground and held me there. For a brief moment, I thought my legs had been blown off. A satchel charge or mortar round had hit directly on top of us!

If Angels there be, they floated above us that night. Two chances to die, seconds apart, and we were spared. Others were not so fortunate.

Another minute or two – it could have been three or it could have been an hour - and I heard jets coming in from Chu Lai. A sweet sound, when you’re being battered by gunfire.

Our Platoon Sergeant came around, checking the bunkers. Cue came through physically unharmed. I was bleeding from lacerations to my face. The Sergeant thought I looked ok, and moved on to the next bunker. The Company medic came along shortly after that, making the rounds, assessing casualties. He looked at my face and told me I was going be dusted off[4] - sent back to the 27th Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai. I left my weapon with Cue and stumbled around the perimeter, walking towards the sound of a heavy motor, quickly idling.

As I came near, the helicopter was washed by the light of burning houses and flares. It hovered a foot or so above the ground. The scene was surreal – bizarre. I jumped in just before the medevac chopper took off, and was sitting in the doorway as we floated up. Rifle shots cut the air near the chopper. One of the Viet Cong was hiding on the side of the hill, in the center of the village. He stayed there into the early morning, hiding in the brush, carefully firing off a shot from time to time, until he was killed.

We rose up, disappearing into the darkness, headed for Chu Lai.

Ðai Lôc was a burning ember in the wide night of Viet Nam.

[1] Rocket-Propelled Grenade: a deadly weapon used by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
[2] Experts in the use of explosives
[3] An explosive charge the shape and size of a satchel
[4] Dusted off: taken by helicopter to an Army hospital

"Silent Night" - Part One

Christmas Eve, 1969: Our Company was picked up at LZ Stinson and taken back to Chu Lai for stand down. We couldn’t believe our good luck – stand down for Christmas!

Two of the infantry Companies in our Battalion were in the field this night, and they would be tomorrow. No holiday cheer out there. Then as now, the Army tried to bring a little Christmas to everyone, even those sitting in the pitch black night of war. Still, it was a crappy place to spend Christmas Day.

And the war went on. “A” Company found a booby-trapped artillery round and blew it up. Artillery fire was called in on a suspected group of Viet Cong. The Division Commanding General dropped into LZ Stinson for a quick visit.

In Chu Lai we were informed that our Company was one of the units allowed to go to the Christmas Day USO show. Bob Hope was there. Bob Hope! It was a strange, almost anachronistic, experience. Sitting far at the back, drinking beers we had snuck in, the show went on under cloudy, rain-threatening skies. It was not very entertaining, but it beat celebrating Christmas out in the countryside.

For absolute entertainment value, it was hard to beat the acts booked onto the stage in our stand down area. Bands, dancers and hoochie-koo acts. Some were American, but most were Australian and Filipino, with the occasional Korean group in the mix.

The artistic quality was sometimes dubious, but they were all enthusiastic. So were we. Of course, it was more or less an open bar during stand down, whether the Army wanted it that way or not, so our enthusiasm level was pretty easy to lift up. A little skin, a little rock and roll, a couple of beers, and everyone was pretty happy. I’m not saying we were easily amused. But then, I guess I’m not saying we weren’t either.

After three days of this – hung over, steam blown off – we were ferried back out to LZ Stinson. More good luck; we were staying on the Hill for a few days.

Word was sent around by someone at Division Headquarters, prohibiting celebratory shooting at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Waste of ammunition, scares the local populace, might give the VC cover to stage an attack. None of these caveats made much of an impression on us.

As 1969 came to a close, first one firebase, then another, started filling the sky with small weapons fire. To the south of us was another mountaintop post, OP-1, which had a quad-50 machine gun.[1] Promptly at midnight, they started firing it, loaded up with tracer rounds[2]. Whoever was at the trigger was moving it up and down, side to side, firing .50 caliber bullets in the night.

The eruption of tracers was a flowing, graceful fountain – rivers of fire and lead.

It was death – ecstasy - deafening madness.

It was incredibly beautiful.



And then it was 1970.

After ten days on Stinson, we walked north through the fields, moving in an arc towards the northwest. One of our tasks was so-called “rice interdiction”. Simply put, we looked for stashes of rice and confiscated them. We searched villages as we went along. In one place, we found 1,500 pounds of rice in clay pots, 55 gallon drums and other containers. It was all hauled off by helicopter, to be distributed to someone else, somewhere else.

Sometimes we found rice hidden in double walls of houses. Army logic deduced that hidden rice was being stored for use by the VC and NVA. The reality, I think, was a bit more complicated. From time to time, the Viet Cong came through villages, levying a tax to be paid in rice. They employed this tactic because they had little other sources of food supply. Sometimes they took the rice away with them, other times it was hidden.

The local people would also hide rice. However, they were hiding it from the Viet Cong, to ensure the village would have enough to eat. At the same time, they were hiding it from us, since we would confiscate any rice we found hidden. The peasants working in the fields, living in the villages, were caught in the middle of this circular Catch-22.

A day or two later, we moved into what we called Vinh Tuy Valley, after the village that occupied the center of it. We and the rest of the Battalion went through there frequently, since it was known as an area very friendly to the VC.

It was also what was known as a “free fire zone”. If anyone ran when you shouted “dừng lại” (“stop now”), you were free to fire on them. Guilty until proven innocent. We found several tunnels, some documents, and more rice. The tunnels were blown up, the papers sent to Chu Lai, and the rice taken away to a warehouse.

The valley itself was quite beautiful. It was shadier than most of our AO and was drained by a couple of small rivers that eventually flowed into the Sông Trà Bong (Tra Bong River). One day, we were moving through the valley and crossed a little stream on what looked like a log. As I approached the stream, I realized the log was actually a mid-to-early nineteenth century cannon barrel, set into the ground untold years ago, to serve as a convenient way of crossing the water.

How had this ended up here, in a small valley in central Viet Nam? Who had brought it here, and how long had the people of the valley trod that barrel, walking to and from their rice fields, going about their daily lives? There was no time to search for answers to these questions. We walked on. Caught on the anvil of immediate history, we were oblivious to the history that lay beneath our feet.

A day or so later, we were once again picked up by helicopters and dropped in another valley – the completely misnamed “Happy Valley”. We had been here almost a month before, on the same mission: look for VC, confiscate rice.

The next few days were fairly uneventful, until we got out of the valley and moved back through the rice fields, towards LZ Stinson. The lack of activity (read, “shooting”) in Happy Valley was replaced by a couple of days of run-ins with Viet Cong or North Vietnamese. One night we were hit with forty or fifty rounds of small arms fire, just about dusk. Thankfully, no one was injured.

The month wore on. We walked back north, crossing the path we’d walked earlier in the month, moving around into the northeast section of our AO. Although things were fairly quiet, two men were wounded during an exchange of gunfire with a small group of Viet Cong.

It was now late January, and talk was starting to circulate about Tet, the Chinese and Vietnamese New Year, which fell on February 6th that year. In 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had launched a huge offensive all across South Viet Nam, in hopes of striking such a strong blow, it would bring the war to an end. That didn’t happen, but the fighting was bloody and protracted, and some places (such as Hue) were devastated. As a result, the American military had since been much more on edge when the Vietnamese New Year approached.

On January 23rd we were sent up to LZ Stinson, to provide security during Tet. Our delight at drawing this assignment, at this time, did not last long. Six days later, word came down that we were being pulled out of Stinson and sent to the village of Ðai Lôc. The Company that had been assigned there had created problems by shooting some of the villagers’ chickens. To us, it seemed like their bad behavior was being rewarded, and we had to take their place.

[1] Four .50 caliber machine guns: a very powerful weapon by itself, four mounted together, to fire simultaneously, was fearsome beyond description.
[2] Tracer rounds were generally every tenth round or so. They glowed in the dark – usually red – so you could see where you were shooting. However, this also tipped off the guys on the other side as to your location. Consequently, they were almost never used at night.

“Find the Cost of Freedom”

5 December 1969:

LZ Stinson (also called The Hill) sat atop a small mountain, more or less in the center of our area of operations. The mountaintop had been bulldozed and stripped of any vegetation. The Battalion commander was there, along with support staff, a communications facility, artillery, heavy mortars and a mess hall. All of this was protected by a ring of bunkers, which, in turn, were protected by concertina wire, mines and a lot of lights. The Battalion’s infantry companies took turn defending Stinson, just as we took turns defending Ðai Lôc.



We spent eight days pulling guard duty at night and attending to chores during the days. Our time was occupied by cleaning weapons, replacing worn equipment and, of course, filling sand bags. We also had hot food once or twice a day and saw a couple of movies. Because we were a bit less likely to get shot at on the Hill, we were able to relax a little.

When another company was brought in by helicopter, we left Stinson, walking down the east side of the mountain. Now, for the first time, I was going out into the countryside … in the field … walking around, exposed, with nothing to protect me but thin air (and a steel helmet). Sure, we’d been at Ðai Lôc, and carried out a couple of patrols in the vicinity of the village. Mostly, though, we had been in the perimeter, guarding the local citizenry (who may or may not have wanted to be guarded by us).

This was different, though. Ninety or a hundred men were walking single file down the mountain, across the fields and rice paddies. Our platoon was at the rear of the column. It was mid-afternoon of another cloud-filled day – warm and humid, undisturbed by wind. The rain that came in torrents in November had lessened some, but not by much.

When we were moving across the land like this, whether as a company or smaller units on patrol, everyone walked well apart from each other. If the person in front of you hit a booby trap, it lessened the danger to you, at least a little. If you walked into an ambush, staying farther apart made it more difficult for the Viet Cong or NVA to hit several people quickly. Twelve feet was not an unusual distance. You developed a sense for this pretty quickly. If you didn’t, somebody would let you know. On this day, coming down off Stinson, walking through open country, we were probably strung out 800 to 1,000 feet.

Rarely did we know more than a day in advance where we were headed in the coming 24-48 hours. What we knew today was that we were walking east, towards the old railroad line and then, well, we’d see. Our platoon was hardly off the shoulder of the mountain when a rapid burst of rifle fire split the hot afternoon. One of the rounds went right over my head, 30 feet in the air. Immediately, there was return fire from the front of the Company. It was a sniper. He probably just fired a burst and ducked into a tunnel … or ran like hell.

That single bullet, made in Russia or China, sent speeding above my head by some poor Vietnamese peasant, fixed me with excitement and fear. It began the defensive tightening up inside that grew and burrowed deeper over following weeks and months.

The gunfire over, a cigarette or two smoked, we started moving eastward again. Near the end of the day we set up a night defense position two or three kilometers from LZ Stinson.

Morning came. Moving east again, we headed towards the village of Trà Binh Dông. The day was quiet, threatening rain. A villager came up to us with a sick child. He looked to be about ten years old. The company medic examined him and determined that the kid was suffering from what looked like malaria. A medevac[1] helicopter took the boy and his mother to a hospital in Quảng Ngãi city.

Three or four hours later, as we moved through some trees, a booby trap went off, killing one man and wounding three. The same medevac that had taken the sick Vietnamese boy to a hospital for treatment was now taking four American boys to a different hospital. The booby trap had been a hand grenade, hanging in a tree and set off by some sort of pressure device.

We set up a new night defense position. Around 11pm, the sky was lit by rifle fire coming out of the night, ripping into us - Viet Cong assaulting our position. We returned fire, but against whom, and where? All we could do was shoot in the direction we thought their firing had come from. This was the dark uncertainty that defined the war for us. Here, we were vulnerable, conspicuous, rarely knowing who our assailants were, or where they were.

In the morning, a patrol went out to check the area where the gunfire had come from. They found four dead Viet Cong, one who was wounded, some weapons, and a packet of documents.

According to the Battalion Daily Staff Journal[2] for that day, the documents included “1x award to Nguyen Thao for service, 1x travel pass to Troung Toh Nha in Binh Son, several propaganda leaflets, 1x notebook with an entry containing roster of VC and the number of Americans and ARVN’s[3] killed by each man, 1x notebook of songs and propaganda.”

Songs and propaganda. To keep spirits and morale up while they waited in rain-washed mountain forests, hiding among the people, hoping to strike a blow against the Occupiers and their Vietnamese allies … for that is how they saw it. And what became of Nguyen Thao and Troung Toh Nha? Were they local men, from Quảng Ngãi, motivated to join a guerilla movement? Or had they come from up north, leaving wives or girl friends or children hundreds of kilometers away? Did they survive the American War, and go back to their families, like all of us yearned to do?

A couple of days later, December 9th, the reality of our war was made very clear. Around noon, we were suddenly fired on. Thirty or forty rounds of rifle fire and a couple of M-79[4] grenade rounds.

One man in our company was killed. He was going home, two weeks before Christmas. It was not the way anyone wanted to go home. Not him, not me, and not Nguyen Thao, either.

In the days following, the mood in the company was cold. We could go for two weeks and not be shot at. Just walk, search a village and walk some more. Now, though, two men had been killed and three others wounded, within two days of each other. The fear that no one talked about, that we all pushed inside to keep from thinking about, to keep from confronting as we walked from village to village, wound itself a little tighter and was pushed a little deeper.

We were being marched north, toward the Sông Trà Bong. Each day, for two days, we walked and ran into Viet Cong. We fired on them, called in artillery on them, and then found nothing except small craters in the ground where the artillery shells had landed. Blasted trees, destroyed rice paddies; hot empty days, searching for phantoms.

Near the river, we joined a Company of Army Engineers – bulldozers and tanks were their weapons. Our new task was to protect these guys while they ran their bulldozers over the Vietnamese countryside, on either side of the road that paralleled the Trà Bong River. The idea seemed to be that, by scrapping the land bare for two or three hundred yards out from the road, it would be easier to protect the road and defend the villages along it. The people who lived there, alongside the Trà Bong road, would probably have preferred to keep their homes and fields, rather than sacrifice them to the greater good.

The statistics from the Daily Staff Journal dryly tell the story. 13 Dec 69: “B Co. reports clearing 28,500 square meters of land”. 14 Dec 69: “B Co. reports clearing 30,000 square meters of land.” 15 Dec 69: “B Co. reports clearing 26,000 square meters of land.” And so on, for another two days. Over 100,000 square meters of land was scraped, laid bare - almost 1.3 million square feet. Who measured this? An area the size of seven or eight city blocks was flattened. We were destroying the country, in order to save it. Except, we didn’t save it.

Christmas was less than a week away. Everyone became a lot more cautious. We found a tunnel one day, and just blew it up, without looking inside. That day and the next, we also found two American artillery rounds that had hit but not exploded. We blew both of those up, too. When the VC found unexploded ordnance like these, they were turned into very deadly booby traps, capable of killing many people at once.

Five days before Christmas, just before dark, we ran into a large group of Viet Cong or NVA. They fired and ran, and we ran after them. In the end, twelve North Vietnamese lay dead. One of our men ran into a booby trap during the pursuit, was wounded and had to be medevaced out. Fear of dying just before Christmas was swamped by adrenaline.

Later that day, we were picked up by helicopters (the Hueys that ferried troops all over Viet Nam) and taken to the head of a valley in the far south-west corner of our AO[5]. For two days we worked our way down the valley. Few people lived there. It was a route for the VC and NVA to filter down from the mountains and fade into the dozens of villages set among the hills and rice paddies of northern Quảng Ngãi Province. Our task was to keep them from doing that, at least for a little while.

The day after being dropped off, moving down the valley, we suddenly came under heavy small arms fire. We returned fire, and then gave chase. Once again, one of our men ran into a booby trap during the pursuit. While we waited for the medevac chopper to take him back to a hospital in Chu Lai, one platoon searched the area of the firefight. They found several dead Viet Cong and some weapons. Their war ended in American graves, unidentified. Their families had only unanswered questions. We moved on down the valley.

24 December 1969:

Christmas Eve. We got lucky. Our turn for stand down coincided with Christmas. We walked back up to Stinson, were picked up by choppers, and ferried back to Chu Lai.

Trucks brought us from the Chu Lai helicopter pad to our stand down area along the beach. We were back where I had first met these guys, barely two months ago. It seemed much, much longer. Two or three men – replacements – were waiting there, to join the Company. A hot shower and a cold beer sounded really good.


[1] Medical Evacuation
[2] These were summaries of the daily activities and engagements of each unit in the battalion, kept by a Staff Duty Officer. These are now publically available through the Freedom of Information act.
[3] Army of the Republic of Viet Nam: the army of the South Vietnamese government.
[4] This was a short weapon that fired a large round. The projectile exploded like a hand grenade. Like an old shotgun, you flipped a lever and opened the weapon at the rear. It could also be used like a hand-held mortar, to fire over trees or buildings.
[5] AO: Area of Operations