The Ambush

The hours passed slowly. Nightfall didn't so much creep in as descend abruptly this close to the equator. One minute it was a murky daylight, as it had been all day, and the next it was dark. It became even noisier after dark. All the night creatures stirred, the hunters stalked and killed the hunted, the hunted tried desperately to survive, and life went on, ignoring the men as if they were just a nuisance to be tolerated.

As their eyes adjusted to the loss of light the men began to see the trail, just by the difference in landscape from the forest around. Then a three quarter moon rose and the trail lit up quite well for eyes now adjusted to the dark.

It was approaching 2300 hours by his luminous watch dial when the Sergeant heard faint noises. It was hard to tell direction in the forest, where sounds bounce rather than travel in a straight line. But he was sure that here, at this time of night, they could only be from one source. Men moving down the trail in one direction or the other. It didn't matter to him which way they were moving. They were the enemy, and that's all he cared about. He took two silent steps forward and patted the closest man on the back of the leg to ensure he knew something was about to change, and the man nodded his understanding. Then Roche moved down the line to the left and did the same to each man. His radioman did the same on the right side of the line. Then they quietly made their way back to the reserve position, three meters to the rear of the middle of the line.

The trail noises got louder. The NVA soldiers weren't nearly as disciplined as his squad. They thought they had the trail to themselves, so far from any known American base. Besides, these guys weren't really soldiers, they were porters. Their job was to transport everything the real soldiers needed from Hanoi to the jungle, on their backs or on bicycles. And they moved everything! Small arms, Ammo, food, medicine, artillery pieces. If they were coming from the north they would be hauling these things. If they were coming from the south they were probably moving wounded, or just headed north to get their next load. Even though they were not what Roche considered real soldiers, they were not to be taken lightly. Whatever their mission, every man was armed and trained,

Now a figure came into view through the Sergeants infra-red view finder. Then another and another, until the trail was literally packed with North Vietnamese, dressed in the ubiquitous khaki uniform and helmet, some carrying stretchers loaded with wounded, some walking beside bicycles, some just walking, all with AK-47s at sling arms. That many people made a lot of noise, even when they were trying to be quiet, which wasn't the case with this mob.

The Sergeant took aim at what looked like an officer and waited until he was sure all his men had targets directly to their front, then pulled the trigger. The mans head literally exploded from the pressure of the high velocity .223 round. Immediately his men double clicked their detonators and claymores exploded up and down the line, each firing a hundred  double-ought sized shotgun pellets at the enemy. A dozen or more went down immediately. As soon as they could, each of his men discarded the detonators and unleashed his individual weapon. The machine guns chattered, the '16s burped in two and three round bursts, the 40MM grenade launchers thumped, and more men to their front went down. 

After what seemed like an eternity the survivors reacted, moving off the trail into the brush on the other side of the road. Rounds were coming his way now, raggedly at first and then with more intensity, and the Sergeant heard one of his men groan, and then scream. He moved to the sound, saw that it was Lance Corporal Johnson, 2nd team leader. Johnson was holding his left side, and Roche could see blood leaking between the man's fingers. On his belly, the Sergeant ripped Johnson's shirt out of his trousers and looked at the wound. It was a through and through, bleeding profusely, and while Johnson was in pain he was moving and had his wits about him, so Roche thought he might live. Roche opened Johnson's first aid pack and slapped a large torso bandage onto the wound, wrapped the strings around his body and tied it off tightly. Johnson grunted.

"How you feeling?" the Sergeant asked, speaking for the first time in hours.

"Hurts like hell sarge," replied the Lance Corporal.

Roche looked him in the eye and asked, "Are you going to be able to move kid?"

"Just watch me!" said Johnson with a grimace.

 Meanwhile the battle went on. Roche could hear officers on the other side of the road beginning to shout at their men. He knew that meant they were getting their shit together over there.. It was time to move before the enemy, who outnumbered his squad at least ten to one, could mount a counter-attack. He motioned for the radioman, who was at his side in a moment.

"Tango 6 this is Ranger 6." he called on the Firebase wavelength, and repeated it.

"Ranger 6, Tango 6", the answer came.

"Fire mission, known coordinates," and he gave those. "Fire for effect!"

"Roger, fire for effect," the answer came, after a repeat of the coordinates.

"Time to go," the Sergeant thought, and he yelled "Move!".

His men immediately began to move backward, toward and then past him, further into the jungle. One man was helping Johnson. It looked like he was still bleeding a little, but that would have to wait. He was moving with help, but mostly under his own power, and Roche was sure the wound wasn't mortal. It's a Hollywood fiction that if a soldier is hit, he dies. Only about one, perhaps as high as two out of ten wounded men die, especially in this age of modern warfare, where the wounded reach medical facilities much faster than in past times. That's what the Sergeant thought as he began to work uphill, rounds ripping past like the buzzing of a bee.

The Sergeant knew that if they could make it a couple of hundred meters into the jungle the enemy wouldn't follow. Not at night, with no idea where the Americans might be. Whatever they were, they weren't stupid. So he moved quickly, and soon outdistanced the enemy bullets. The sound masked their movement, but the NVA would soon realize they were no longer being fired at and mount a charge across the trail.

Roche began to hear whistling noises overhead, first one, and then several. There were five large guns at the firebase, and they had all fired within a few seconds of each other. The whistles became loud 'karumphs' as the 105MM rounds exploded about 25 meters in the air, sending death into any human or animal bodies beneath. He knew that would delay any attack the gooks might be planning, and with any luck they had been caught in the open by the artillery rounds, which were still incoming.

A few minutes and the squad had reached the rendezvous point. The Sergeant immediately asked for a head count. When he was sure everyone was present he set up a two man blocking force. They would wait five minutes and then follow while he led the squad up the trail. They moved quickly for a half hour, making a little more noise than they normally would, but at this point speed was much more important than stealth. Then he stopped to have a look at Johnson. He was in pain, which was relieved with an ampule of morphine, injected into the wound as a local anesthetic. The wound was through and through, in the left side but above the kidney, There had been a good bit of blood loss, but the bandage had helped the wound coagulate.

"How you doin'?" he asked.

"I'm ok sarge," Johnson replied.

"Can you keep up?"

"I'm ok I tell ya."

"I'll carry his weapon," another man said.

"Okay, let's keep going," the Sergeant said. "We'll move fast and be back at the firebase for extraction in an hour with any luck. It was a good patrol, Marines.