I was never in
The battle in the vicinity of the Courtenay Rubber Plantation,
Charlie Company was originally on a search and destroy mission. That’s not what it ended up as. It quickly became a fight for survival. Alone and surrounded by the Viet Cong, the men depended upon each other. They depended upon brotherhood.
Dusk approached as the men treaded through the sloppy mud. The company marched northward and crossed the river on a patrol to find and kill the major Viet Cong forces in the area. The entire move had been through dense undergrowth restricting movement and visibility. It was this same thick jungle that would later act as the real killer against the American forces.
The next day, all the men lined up and prepared to move out at first light. Early in the morning, the men humped down the hill to discover a heavily used trail running east to west. The men filed in a horseshoe formation and headed down the pathway. The enemy knew right where they lay, and they got a hell of a shellacking too. The Viet Cong started shooting point blank 88’s into the area. Then the shells came. Whole fucking trees were twirling and spinning in the air. Hell’s paradise. One of the sergeants got hit. Poor old bastard was alone. His body got mixed up real bad. Lying flat on the ground, he gazed into the sky above. His legs now danced above with the trees. Underneath him, a pool of his own blood soaked up the ground. The guy tried to push himself to cover, but he couldn’t. Too damn weak.
His good buddy heard his screams for help and scrambled out to save him. Hell of a friend that guy, but God struck with an iron fist and bongo he got hit too. Now the two of them lay side by side, dead quiet.
Then something unbelievable happened. God must have been smiling down upon the men that day because shit like this never actually goes well. A lone soldier burst out and ran straight into open fire towards the wounded men. He weaved in and out of the exploding shells like he knew exactly where they would hit next. Every step he took was the right move. Finally when he did run into a shell, he just kept going. He blew right through it. That guy must have been made of steel for Christ-sake; one fuckin’ superman. He looked for them and then stood frozen, his pulse racing. Below a trunk of a tree, spread-eagled on the ground, lay the men.
For a minute, he just looked down. He opened his mouth wide and breathed slowly in and out to release the tension. Softly he wiped his sweating palms down his pants. He dropped slowly to his hands and knees and stared forward, his eyes widened like camera lenses. Their broken bodies were sprawled across the leaves. Both their feet were gone. Their left over bones split apart like snapped tree branches. Blood pulsed out of their bodies with every breath. But that’s not what set him off. It was their faces. Their fearless soldier expressions had disappeared and exposed two scared young boys underneath. They were only children. It seemed like he was going to cry. He didn’t. He just went nuts. He grabbed both of them and ran like a mad man. Nothing could have stopped him then. Bullets chased after him, but they weren’t fast enough. From behind the lines, the other soldiers watched him in awe. Some even say his feet lifted off the ground for a moment. He flew that day. He really did. Yet he wasn’t running for his life, he ran for theirs. Nobody knew who he was, but that didn’t matter. The men loved him anyway. Unbelievably, this guy came back with both men alive and he still had his own two pair of feet glued to his body. Whether the guy was a hero or just a damn fool, nobody will ever know. But he did bring hope in a time of desperation.
Night fell and the men were stuck in a standstill with no way out. They had tried to radio in their position to headquarters, although they were too deep in the woods. The dense jungle camouflaged them from even their own American choppers. They were low on provisions. They had lost fifteen men. But Charlie Company did have one thing: they had each other.
For a while, everything stood still. The birds no longer chirped and the wind wouldn’t blow. It was so dark that the men couldn’t see shit. Every man just kind of stumbled around: drunk as a skunk. An eerie silence inundated the woods. Then the sky exploded with a brilliant yellow color and a devastating volley of fire from the Viet Cong hit the American lines. Charlie Company tried to gain fire superiority and flanked from the right. Using tear gas and small arms, a wall of smoke and fire was erected to prevent the tide from moving into the crippled American safe zone. But it didn’t hold. The trees surrounding the perimeter came alive with firepower from automatic weapons. The Americans fell back.
Outnumbered, Charlie Company lay scattered everywhere around the tire yard. Men hid together in small groups among the trees. It quickly became a fight to survive, not to kill. The Vietnamese constantly ambushed the Americans. One guy got his brains blown out. It wasn’t pretty. Another got his arm sliced off. It was one hell of a bloody war.
Just as an Asian man cocked his arm back to shoot an unsuspecting American soldier, a Private came to the rescue. He had measured the distance, planned each stride—the trajectory of his final spring, left hand to the man’s neck, right to the gun. Then he jumped!
The Private’s chest skidded over the hump of the buttocks and thudded into the small of the Asian’s back. The impact emptied the breath out of him with a soft grunt. The fingers of Private’s left hand flew to the throat and found the carotid artery. His right hand was on the waist of the gun’s stock. He pried the fingers away, felt that the safety catch was on and reached the gun far to one side.
The Private eased the weight of his chest on the man’s back and moved his fingers away from his neck. He closed them over the man’s mouth. Beneath him, he felt the body heave, the lungs laboring for breath. He was still out. Carefully the Private gathered the two hands behind his back and held them with his right. Beneath him the buttocks began to squirm. The legs jerked. He pinned the legs to the ground with his stomach and thighs, noting the strong muscles bunched under him. Now the breath was rasping through his fingers. Teeth gnawed at his hand. With a back handed blow that had all his shoulders behind it, he lashed the butt of the revolver into the centre of the Asian’s head. There was only a sharp smack from the blow, but the man’s face plowed into the soft dirt, his glistening shaven head bowing down. A loud crack came from the Private’s gun and then there was silence.
Everyman counted. The man that the Private saved that day would go on to save five other men from a deadly grenade eruption. Each of those soldiers would later take care of the numerous wounded men on the battlefield. The act of rescuing one man’s life could ultimately save the company altogether. Everyone made a difference.
By morning, Charlie Company had fifty men left. The lone medic went around and wrapped the wounded men. One man he picked up was no longer recognizable. A victim of the blazing fire, the guy was nearly gone. Half suffocated. Whole face puffed with burns. Ghastly sight. All that remained to identify him were the dangling metal dog tags from around his neck. The medic picked them up and uncovered the marks with the brush of his thumb. The name read: Private Chuck Boone-Charlie Company-Second Division. He was carefully carried inside the American perimeter to be treated. If the helicopters had not come at that moment, he along with many others would have died that day.
As the sun rose, the Americans sent a flare into the sky to signal their position to the hovering choppers above. Every minute counted for the men. The sooner they left; the better chance for survival. The noise of the engine which Charlie Company had waited for so long had finally arrived. A powerful black shape came fast towards the men, and for a moment the sunlight glinted on whirling rotor blades. The sun’s warmth shined down. The helicopter moved slowly downwards, not more than a hundred feet from the ground, the big rotor blades idling. It paused, pitching slightly, directly overhead the men. An arm came out of the cockpit and waved them in. The pitch of the rotor blades flattened imperceptibly and the chopper settled roughly into the open area.
Immediately the men piled the wounded into the helicopter. Although they were all injured, everyone tried to find a man in a condition worse than he to ride the chopper first. They cared for one another. They were all brothers.
As the last helicopter pulled off the ground, the Sergeant pointed his gun down towards the bloodied ground and pulled the trigger. A shot banged, and there was silence except for the howling wind and the noise of the water trickling down the stream.
I don’t really know. Maybe there was no Private Chuck Boone. Maybe a lone soldier never did run out and rescue those two dying men on the battlefield. Maybe none of that ever happened. But it’s the goddamn truth. It’s real. That’s what could be waitin’ for me outside my window. I’m breakin’ the bubble now and I’m gonna get up and find out.
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