Excerpt from Chapter Nine of

Dance Beneath a Diamond Sky

by Byron Grush

Hey, Joe, Where Ya Goin’

With That Gun in Your Hand?

The air temperature in Southeast Asia hovers near body temperature: 36 degrees Celsius. This is not unusual for January of 1967. It is the humidity that is unusually high. Under the triple-canopy of leaves and vines the enemy is well hidden. Hueys zip along close to the treetops on a sniffer mission; ammonium detector sensors are attached to their skids to seek out urine left by the VC.

The chemical defoliants supplied by Dow and Monsanto have made little headway in the Iron Triangle. Stocks of agents, Pink, Purple and Orange are running low. Napalm hasn’t been used—as yet—because of the high population of innocent civilians in the Triangle. But it is known to be an enemy stronghold and soon that will be an option.

General William C. Westmoreland wants a strategy bolder than simply sending in the slaughter ships—assault helicopters armed with grenade launchers and rockets. The Vietcong have honeycombed the Triangle with underground tunnels and tunnel complexes for their headquarters and supply depots. They have located these near population centers; small villages of civilians that act unwittingly as human shields for the National Liberation Front. Westmoreland will send ground troops intending to eradicate the enemy into its stronghold, even if it means the deportation of the civilian population and the destruction of their homes. If our troops have difficulty telling the enemy soldiers from the innocent civilians, well, that’s just too bad.

Charlie Morgan is waiting to be deployed in Operation Cedar Falls, an attack against the VC in the Iron Triangle. His thoughts are with his friends back in the states: Pete Chapman and Bernie Martinetti. How lucky they are not to have been drafted! Of course, they aren’t Black men like he is. He looks around base camp and notices how few enlisted men are white; and how few of the officers are Black. Rabbits, the Brothers call the white soldiers. Scared like rabbits.

At least, he thinks, the troops are no longer segregated as they were in the last two wars. He remembers a story his uncle once told him about World War II. How near the end of that war his uncle’s all Negro platoon was ushered into a restaurant through the back door while a group of German prisoners entered through the front of the building.

A chopper lands. The machine gunner, a man Charlie knows is called Willie “Boomer” Donovan, has been killed by a sniper’s bullet. Dangerous job, being the gunner, hanging out the open door of a helicopter. Charlie is glad he is merely a boonie rat: a lowly infantry soldier. At least in the boonies you can hide behind a tree, or behind the hard-stripe sergeant. Someone yells, “Get ready to rock and roll.” They are about to be deployed.

Operation Cedar Falls will be an anvil and hammer operation. The Iron Triangle is an area of 155 square kilometers bounded by the Saigon River, the Than Dien Forest and the Thi Tinh River. The term anvil refers to blocking forces, essentially surrounding the enemy from the west along the Saigon River and the east along the Thi Tinh. The hammer is the forces that will push the VC up against the anvil, destroying the enemy and clearing out civilians. The Triangle has, however, been declared a free fire zone, meaning that anyone they encounter may be considered the enemy.

Charlie’s company is transported by what is called an Eagle Flight: a large airborne assault force, in this case, sixty troop-carrier helicopters called slicks, and ten gunship helicopters flying in veeformation like large ugly carrion birds. Charlie and his platoon are in one of the leading slicks as the choppers fly south from Dau Tieng over the Boi Loi jungle and veer east near Suoi Cau, dropping to just above tree level. The choppers set down at several landing areas which have been cleared on either side of the village of Ben Suc. Within minutes, the infantry battalion, 420 strong, is scampering out of the troop carriers.

Charlie’s company runs clear of the landing area but they have inadvertently stepped into a minefield set up by the VC. Two claymore mines explode. Two of the company are no longer standing. Someone runs for a medic while Charlie and another soldier lift and carry the wounded men out of harm’s way. Sniper fire comes from the surrounding woods.

This first phase of the operation is taking place as the anvil forces are moving into position. American forces have now sealed off this key Vietcong village called Ben Suc while South Vietnam soldiers search for the enemy and interrogate the villagers. Interrogation sometimes involves the cutting off of certain body parts—the Americans look the other way. The underground tunnels are discovered. VC pop out of the tunnels, fire at the allies, then disappear from view. Demolition charges are dropped into the tunnel system and the entrances, those that can be found, are sealed. Acetylene is pumped into the tunnels. When the charges are detonated the acetylene burns with a heat that should incinerate anything, anyone still in the tunnel. But there are so many, many tunnels!

Only a few Vietcong were actually identified and arrested. None are of high rank. One hundred or so villagers are detained while the rest of the inhabitants of Ben Suc and the surrounding villages are removed to relocation camps with whatever belongings they can carry. Men, women, children (nearly 6,000 in all) and chickens, pigs, water buffalo, and barrels of rice are loaded onto trucks or into helicopters and evacuated to Phu Loi, an already overcrowded town.

The village is burned to the ground, then bulldozers level what was left. The tunnels are too numerous to be totally destroyed by demolition so an air strike is called in and the village is repeatedly bombed. Many of the enemy apparently had fled before the Americans arrived and crossed over the border into Cambodia where it is theoretically illegal for US forces to follow. Theoretically. Many still remain secure in their underground bunkers and must be ferreted out by the infantry’s tunnel rats.

Meet Charlie Morgan, tunnel rat. He holds a flashlight in one hand and a revolver in the other. He is slithering down into the narrow passageway they have discovered under the cook shed in a neighboring village that has yet to be bulldozed. He knows the tunnel, even if uninhabited, will be booby-trapped with trip wires that may set off explosives or release a box of poisonous insects or snakes. In some of the tunnels they have found trapdoors leading to hidden chambers where the enemy may lie in wait to ambush intruders. Hidden vents are barely adequate to supply fresh air and the stench of humans, dead or alive, is overwhelming.

The tunnels are narrow and low, built for the smaller stature of the Asians who inhabit them for weeks and months at a time. Charlie brushes against the walls and must stoop because of the low ceiling. So far he has encountered nothing: no hidden enemies, no trip wires, no stores of food or ammunition. His flashlight beam reveals finger marks on the walls where the tunnel has been excavated without the use of tools. It must be a minor tunnel, constructed in haste when the VC of that village learned that the South Vietnamese and their American allies were coming. Charlie comes to a dead end and decides the tunnel is secure. He turns to go back.

But there is a soft noise in front of him; a rustling like…perhaps it is rats? There is a turning in the corridor just ahead. His vision is blocked. Did he miss a trapdoor? Is there a dink waiting to disembowel him with a knife? He snaps off the flashlight, places it on the ground before him. His free hand goes to his clutch belt, unhooks the grenade that dangles there. He could roll it around the turn of the tunnel and the blast of shrapnel might not reach him. Might not.

He can hear the roar of some F-4 Phantoms in the air above the village, even from this underground location. Maybe another bombing run? What to do? The only way out is forward. He decides and pulls the pin from the grenade, waits for the count and then rolls it around the turn in the tunnel. He scampers as fast as he can back down the tunnel as the grenade goes off. He has escaped injury but the dirt is falling from the ceiling. Has he trapped himself in an impromptu grave?

“Morgan! What the hell are you trying to do…blow yourself up?” someone yells at him when he emerges from the tunnel.

“There was a dink down there. I got a little carried away and wasted him. Tossed him a pineapple.”

Charlie’s ears are ringing. There is a small trickle of blood coming from his nose. He is unsteady on his feet.

“We’d better get you on the medevac. Get you checked out.”

“This ain’t no million dollar wound, is it? Get me sent home?”

“No such luck, soldier. Shoot yourself in the foot around here and they just give you a new boot.”

“Hey, I didn’t…”

“I know. Just a minor bummer. But let the medics look at you just in case.”

Charlie has never gotten use to riding in helicopters. The term, “chopper,” doesn’t just refer to the sound it makes. Every jostle and bump sends a sharp pain up his spine. His head aches and he is dizzy.

In the base hospital he waits as wounded soldiers are hurried past him on gurneys. These men have charred skin, black with red and purple splotches. Hair and eyebrows have been burned away. Medics hover around them, sticking them with needles and holding bags of whole blood above them as that life-giving fluid races down plastic tubes. It will be a long wait.

A man in wheelchair is rolled up next to the bench Charlie is sitting on. His legs have been amputated. “Going home?” Charlie asks. He nods. Charlie tries to strike up a conversation. He starts to talk about Operation Cedar Falls, telling him humorous stories involving chasing the villagers’ hogs and trying to coax a water buffalo into a helicopter, but the man just stares into space.

“I heard some scuttlebutt on the medevac,” says Charlie, “that moving all those civilians out of the fire zone was so costly and time-consuming…and unappreciated…that command wants us to destroy villages without bothering to evacuate them. Can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys anyway, they say. I don’t know if I could do that.”

A medic holding a clipboard approaches, shines a small flashlight into Charlie’s eyes. Takes his pulse. “What’s this man doing here,” he says to two enlisted men standing behind him. “Get him back in the field.”

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