If I Die in a Combat Zone

‘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.’

We hefted our packs and guns and straggled in a long line out of the village. It was only a two-hundred-metre walk to the little wooded hill where we made our night position, but by the time the foxholes were dug and we’d eaten cold C rations, it had been dark for a long time. The night was not as frightening as other nights. Sometimes there was the awful feeling in the air that people would die at their foxholes or in their sleep, but that night everyone talked softly and bravely. No one doubted that we would be hit, yet in the certainty of a fight to come there was no real terror. We hadn’t lost anyone that day, even after eight hours of sniping and harassment, and the presence of the enemy and his failure during the day made the night hours easier. We simply waited. Taking turns at guard, being careful not to light cigarettes, we waited until nearly daybreak. And then only a half-dozen mortar rounds came down, none of them inside our circle of foxholes.

When it was light Bates and Barney and I cooked C rations together.

‘You need a shave,’ Bates told Barney.