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The rest of the world doesn't know it, but it gets cold out
here, Sergeant First Class Ralph Eberle thought, as he made his way back to
his Jeep after checking guard post Alpha-4. The folks back home thought it was
always hot in Southeast Asia, and most of the time it was—hot and sticky. But
in the middle of the night this time of year, it got downright chilly. He blew
into his hands and checked the luminous hand on his watch, 0320, before grasping
the steering wheel and turning toward Bravo-3.
The random sequence of guard post checks was supposed to make it
safer for the Sergeant of the Guard and for the guards on those posts. The
theory was that if the enemy couldn't project your movements, he couldn't
anticipate them and couldn't set up an ambush or penetrate the post as easily.
Even so, SFC Eberle didn't feel all that secure out here in the middle of
nowhere in the middle of the night. Instead he felt very vulnerable, one man
alone against an enemy force of who-knew-how-many. Not only did they not know
how many Viet Cong soldiers were in the area, they didn't know exactly where
the Viet Cong soldiers were. They also didn't know how many of the local
residents were Viet Cong sympathizers or even Viet Cong soldiers who pulled off
hit-and-run harassing probes at night and returned to their huts before dawn. He
felt like he was being watched all the time by an enemy that just didn't think
it was the right time to take him out—yet.
He didn't question the strategy out loud; but on these dark,
chilly nights, he wondered how smart it was to put a 12-man detachment of
American soldiers out in the boonies with an ARVN company trying to establish a
government presence among people who didn't naturally identify with either
side in the war. The official line was that the professional US soldiers would
add focus, stability, and discipline to the young, inexperienced ARVN recruits.
Having the Americans serve as Sergeant of the Guard supposedly advanced that
strategy as the US noncommissioned officers in theory brought confidence and
direction to the anxious young Vietnamese guards. SFC Eberle's biggest fear
was that these nervous young ARVN troops would shoot him instead of the Viet
Cong infiltrators.
This was his second tour in Nam. The first time he'd been just a
young guy, a grunt in an infantry battalion. He'd volunteered for that tour.
He wanted the action and the excitement. The tour cured him of that desire. He
got enough action and excitement to last him a lifetime. The problem with that
kind of action and excitement was that too often a lifetime wasn't all that
long. His battalion had seen a lot of action in the highlands. Half his company
had been killed or wounded during his tour; but he'd been lucky, just a flesh
wound on one of their recon patrols. That got him a Purple Heart, but it
didn't get him off patrol. He watched a couple of guys, one younger than him,
die on a jungle trail when they'd been caught in an ambush by North Vietnamese
Army Regulars. If it hadn't been for the Huey gunships, his whole squad would
have been wiped out. He left Nam shortly after that feeling lucky to be alive
and feeling the need for some stability in his life.
By the time his name came up again, he had no need to validate
himself or confirm his masculinity. But he'd also been in the Army long enough
to have accepted its mission as a cause of his own. He no longer needed the
action, but he needed to serve a higher purpose. Not only had his focus changed,
his entire life had changed. Between his two combat tours, he'd married his
high school sweetheart. Cheryl gave him the stability that his experiences on
his first tour had made so urgent. Their first child, a little girl they named
Amanda Jane after their two mothers, was born barely a month before he had to
leave for the second tour. So he came to this assignment with a lot more to lose
than he'd ever had in his life before and landed in a situation that made him
feel more vulnerable than he ever had in his life before.
That reality overwhelmed him on his rounds now. He missed Cheryl
and Amanda so terribly and feared that he would never see them again. Even on
the most routine of nights, every time he neared a guard post, he felt
apprehensive. He stopped his Jeep on the side of the dirt trail and eased into
the brush that concealed the Bravo-3 bunker. He didn't want to be so quiet
that he alarmed the ARVN guards and ran the risk of having one of them shoot
him. On the other hand, he didn't want to be so loud that he revealed his
position and that of the guard post to any enemy troops in the area. “Sergeant
of the Guard,” he said softly as he approached Bravo-3.
“Password?” came from the darkness in front of him in the
clipped accent with the broad “a” of a Vietnamese national.
“Second base,” said Eberle.
“Double play,” came the whispered response from the Vietnamese
guard as he rose from behind the bunker. He was young, not much more than a boy.
He seemed relieved, even happy that Eberle was there and everything had gone
well so far with the check.
Eberle was preparing to question the young soldier about the
whereabouts of his partner in the two-man team and to ask him a couple of low
key procedural questions to complete the process. Before he could do that, he
heard a rustling sound from in front of him and behind the young guard. He
quickly brought his index finger to his lips in a shushing motion and then
lowered his hands palms down in a crouching signal.
He bent over as low to the ground as he could get and eased
forward soundlessly till he was beside the young Vietnamese soldier. They faced
the direction from which the sound had come and peered into the darkness. As
they stared, a lone figure emerged from the jungle and moved slowly toward them.
Eberle drew his M-16 from his shoulder and leveled it on the shadowy image. The
ARVN guard followed suit. Then Eberle motioned for the guard to challenge the
intruder. “Halt,” said the young soldier.
The shadowy figure spun toward them and a short burst of gunfire
came from his direction. The ARVN soldier squeezed off a single round as he had
been taught by his American trainers, and the figure at the edge of the jungle
sank into the darkness. Eberle and the young soldier crouched quietly listening
for sounds of other intruders. After a short wait, they heard muffled commands
in Vietnamese and then rustling in the underbrush. The sounds receded into the
jungle, and it was quiet again. They waited a while longer, listening intently
to the jungle. Finally, from off to their left, a quiet voice whispered,
“Second base.”
The young soldier nodded to Eberle. It was his reconnaissance
partner. “Double play,” he said, and the other ARVN soldier moved silently
to join them.
“Cover us,” Eberle said to him and motioned for the first
soldier to follow him. They moved stealthily toward the spot where they'd last
seen the enemy infiltrator. They found his body just where they'd seen it
fall. Eberle's flashlight revealed a black pajama clad Viet Cong soldier with
a single bullet wound in his chest and an AK-47 by his side. Eberle felt for a
pulse and found none. “He's dead,” he said to the ARVN soldier, who looked
back at him with an “of course” expression on his face. Eberle directed his
flashlight to the infiltrator's face. “I'll be damned,” he said.
“What is it?” asked the young ARVN soldier.
“This guy gave me a haircut at the compound barber shop a couple
of days ago,” said Eberle. “I almost let him shave me.” The idea of the
dead Viet Cong with a razor at his throat ran a shiver down Eberle's spine.
He turned his flashlight to the dead man's pockets. The only
thing he found was a single folded sheet of paper in a shirt pocket. He unfolded
it and examined it under his flashlight. It was a hand drawn map with the
compound at its center. Surrounding the compound were all the guard posts,
indicated by crude drawings of gun emplacements. Eberle's eyes scanned the
positions that he inspected every other night. They were all there, every
position that guarded the government base, that provided security for the ARVN
company and the American detachment. They were all there—all that is except
the one at which the Viet Cong infiltrator lay dead—all except Bravo-3.
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