The Beat Goes On
Sgt. Terry Foote
Company C, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 12th Cavalry
I didn't really get a lot of sleep the first night I spent in the bush set up in
a defensive perimeter on the top of a mountain in the central highlands of Viet
Nam somewhere in the area between Pleiku and An Khe. I would lay there
attempting to close my eyes and the minute I was about to drift off the wind
would blow through the trees and I would hear something that wasn't there. When
it was my shift on guard I can remember seeing all kinds of things down the side
of the mountain that weren't there. That morning I could see the knowing looks
on the veterans as they would look at me and smile. They knew what I was
thinking my first real night out in the bush especially since we had suffered
two causalities to the booby trap the day before. They understood exactly what I
was thinking because they had been there also.
It's times like that when even a new guy begins to bond with the squad and
platoon. I didn't panic, I didn't show the horrid fear in my eyes. I was of
course surprised when the booby trap went off but I had already been told by
numerous people that booby traps were the largest source of causalities in the
bush. Almost each man in the platoon stopped at each of the new guys (we had 6
replacements) and had a couple of words of encouragement. What was funny about
it was these guys knew who was going to stand the pressure and who might be a
liability in the field after one day. Here I was, 5'4" tall, 115#, probably the
smallest man in the unit yet they all had something good to me simply because I
did not panic when the booby trap went off. I had moved down the hill to set out
our night defenses as I had been told to do with no hesitation. I didn't fall
asleep on guard. That was a cardinal sin although everyone did it at one time or
another due to pure exhaustion (most of the time it happened when guarding
artillery LZ's, but not in the bush). I could tell they knew they could count on
me to hold my own and you could see a couple of troops they didn't really trust
to watch their back.
That honestly made me feel much better. It made
me feel as if I was already becoming a part of the unit when they walked by,
patted me on the back and told me to pack up my rucksack and get ready to move
out.
The platoon sergeant was a huge Hispanic guy. An E-7 with a lot of experience.
He stopped by to have a word with me just to make sure I was ready to move on.
He told me it was going to get a lot worse and never get better. This was the
bush and we were "boonie rats".
We moved out for the day with another platoon taking the lead that day. We
switched point platoons and squads as much as possible so one person or squad
wouldn't get the duty all the time. We moved down the ridge line of the
mountain. I will say, being the last platoon in the column of three platoons had
advantages and disadvantages. One advantage was the rest of the company in front
of you had already beaten down a pretty good trail for you to walk down. The
really bad part was something you would never think of. When you have between
80-100 men in front of you in a column tends to get stretched out. When they sit
down to take a break up front it takes 10-15 minutes for the tail of the column
to catch up to the main force. About the time you get set down and light up a
smoke the rest of the column is getting up to move out again.
This is the way most of the morning went without much of any kind of break for
us. We followed a draw down the side of he mountain and crossed a small valley
with rice paddies covering every inch that could be planted. That's when you
knew you were in "Indian Country". The company commander chose to cross the rice
paddies rather than go around to get to the next mountain we had to go up before
we set up for the night. To be honest, I would much rather have gone around but
my squad members told me this was the best way. If the NVA wanted to fight they
would have started one already. I was still a little uncomfortable walking
across the rice paddy dyke out in the open but it went as smooth as it should
have. No shooting, no booby traps. That was a good thing. We climbed the next
mountain. By this time it was raining and we were soaked to the bone but we got
up the hill and set up for the night following our normal routine.
The only bad part of this night was I was chosen to go out on the ambush/patrol.
We did this every night. Someone had to go so I put on web gear only and a
poncho hanging from my web belt and started down the mountain with the rest of
the patrol. I did find out one good thing. We set the patrol up far from the
rice paddies and any trails. We had a 5 man ambush and if we had fired on the
lead elements of a sizeable force we were dead so we set the patrol as ordered
but just a little further from the coordinates on the map. The night was
uneventful and at first light we made our way back up to the company.
This mundane routine continued for another 3 days before we had 2 more booby
trap causalities. I found this to be "routine" in an infantry unit if you can
define a man getting his balls blown off as routine. When these things happened
the medic and one or two others attended to the wounded. The rest of us kind of
turned our backs and set security for a medevac extraction. Nobody said anything
but everyone knew what everyone else was thinking, "damn I'm glad that wasn't
me, hate that it happened but if it is going to happen I don't want it happening
to me". Just kind of an unwritten rule. This was actually only my fourth day in
the bush and I was already beginning to understand the men. I was beginning to
make friends. Yes, friends. In close company you make friends even if you don't
want to.
I remember Askew, a big old boy from North Carolina, he was the M-60 gunner and
Mex, the assistant. Those two were great guys and both were highly decorated
before they left. If you needed someone to depend on those two were the people.
They became friends of mine for some unknown reason. They seemed to pay more
attention to me than the other FNG's for unknown reason. When their gun humped
with my squad they wanted me in front of them directly behind point. I honestly
believe they trusted me.
We would patrol a certain area time after time never using the same trail just
looking for trouble. We were on what they called search and destroy missions in
a free fire zone. This went on for a month or so before I ran into my first real
fire fight. During the month before the fire fight we must have lost another
half dozen men to booby traps and had 3 replacements choppered out to us.
I was beginning to understand why we were called boonie rats. Same clothes,
nasty from sweat, mud, rain, then more sweat, mud, and rain. We would stop at a
stream when we could to clean a little but it wasn't much. Choppers would bring
out hot chow in merimite containers when possible along with mail and resupplies
we needed. Then we would watch the chopper fly back to base camp, ruck up and
move out again. No, we didn't burn every village we went through. If we ran into
a couple of hooches under the cover of the jungle on the side of the rice
paddies we would use our Zippo on them. They were enemy hooches.
Another unwritten rule in a free fire zone was if he's running when we are
moving up he is running away for a reason and he got fired up. That's just the
way war is.