Eagle Days: A Marine Legal/Infantry Officer in Vietnam

22. Keeping the Pressure On

22 / Keeping the Pressure On 21 March 1969 We have survived two intelligence reports of impending doom at FLC and are awaiting the future cheerfully. Twice we received word that two NVA regiments were ready to start the last phase of their offensive, but nothing has happened. On the fifteenth, we conducted a cordon and search of Xom Long, and after the initial confusion of surrounding a village in the dark with a group of 120 men, we closed the cordon and sat down to await the dawn. At daylight, the National Police arrived and summoned the people into a collection center for interrogation while we probed for bunkers. The processing of the people was our best bet for obtaining information. We had launched the operation on the tip of Fifth Counterintelligence that VC were moving into the village in small groups to gather taxes and propagandize the people. There was a new blacklist, and we hoped to catch some of the local Mafia unawares. By 11:00 am we had wrapped the whole thing up. The Chieu Hoi who had been seated at the interrogation table with the interpreters kicked them each time we brought up a Vietnamese who was a VC. We netted three hard-core VC from the operation, one of whom had been fighting as a guerilla since 1965. They were taken into a nearby building by the Vietnamese police for “questioning” about bunkers and caches in the area. There was no noise from the shack, but occasionally a policeman would walk out quickly, grab a length of rope, test it, and stalk back in. Or with their queer sense of humor, some of the young-looking police would come 140 Chapter 22 out laughing and point inside, making motions like cutting a throat or hanging someone. Fifteen minutes later, the prisoners reappeared, all with swollen eyes and faces, but otherwise unharmed. The next day, one of them led us to two bunkers, one of which had medical supplies and hand grenades. We destroyed the bunkers. Fifth Counterintelligence has compiled a progress report on our company that makes me proud of their efforts. Since 1 December 1968, our patrols have detained more than two hundred suspects for interrogation. Out of these two hundred, the names of approximately fifty were on blacklists of known and confirmed VC. We have killed or captured another ten to fifteen in action, thus accounting for more than sixty VC out of our area. Of the sixty, about thirty-five were infrastructure members who propagandized, collected rice and taxes, and attempted assassinations. The rest were fighters or supply carriers. There are other ramifications that we rarely hear of. From the two VC who were captured from the bunker when Gatz was wounded, information was obtained on the location of the sapper company’s base camp in the mountains, and Phantom jets were called in for an air strike. The next day, after the strike, Marine patrols swept the area and found six enemy bodies. Last week, one of our patrols was probing Hill 12 behind Ap Trung Son Jack Provine and I at the cordon and search of Xom Long, March 1969. John Reilly talking to children after the cordon and search of Xom Long. 142 Chapter 22 and uncovered the body of a woman. She was buried in a remote area, without a tombstone or a casket. Fifth Counterintelligence believes she was a guerilla whom the Americans had killed and the VC buried. How many others have we accounted for that we do not know about? The other night I went on a typical patrol, a long walk out over slippery, muddy, tottering rice paddy dikes while we sweated and waded in leech-filled streams. When we finally set in at our ambush site, the flies and mosquitoes tried to make a meal of us, and then the wind came up and froze our shirts to our skins. We lay in the mud, waiting for dawn or the enemy. Tired, cold, and hungry, I found my mind was mostly one thousand miles away and years off as I thought of the happy days of my boyhood. We thought we spotted a figure creeping off in the paddies and fired three M-79 rounds at it, but a sweep of the area brought negative results. Finally, the sky slowly began to brighten, roosters crowed, birds broke into...