13th Valley by John M Del Vecchio

Author:John M Del Vecchio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Warriors Publishing Group

CHAPTER 22

16 AUGUST 1970

Egan and Whiteboy cussed bitterly when the ground collapsed. Brooks and El Paso shrugged their shoulders dejectedly and walked away. They had argued their best. Cherry did not fully understand. Generally, 1st Plt believed it was a mistake, felt they were victimized into committing an error. The entire day had been erroneous and demoralizing. It had been the kind of day champions lose to cellar dwellers and honor students fail easy exams. When the 1st Plt of Alpha blew the tunnel at 1300 hours and all that ground caved in the situation seemed perfectly normal—all fucked up.

No one had fallen asleep before first light. After the Numbnuts-initiated mad minute, the perimeter went on 100 percent alert. Cherry and Egan crawled outward and reinforced Whiteboy’s squad. The night became colder. Ground mist rising, flooding the dark crevices between already black jungle, drained heat from boonierat bodies and dampened clothes and poncho liners. All pairs cuddled, side-to-side, back-to-back, shivering, awake, miserable, exhausted.

Throughout the night the mity-mite and distant omnipresent artillery bursts rumbled and echoed. Black mist changed to gray. The jungle remained dark. The leaf-vine canopy silhouetted menacingly against the dull sky. First light dispelled the night. Half of 1st Plt fell asleep. They slept past sunrise at 0639 and they slept through a spectacular show as the sun broke over the east ridges and peaks and splashed and refracted in the sky turning the clouds red and the sky purple. “Only in Nam,” Egan smiled at the sky. Half the platoon slept on through routine morning activities, slept until the sun burned away the mist and clouds.

The other half did not sleep. Egan rose at the earliest sign of light and silently prepared his web gear for morning patrols. There was a feeling of relief and happiness amongst the waking, relief that day had arrived. During Nam nights boonierats often feared someone somehow would devise a method of eliminating daylight and daytime would never again arrive. It was always a relief when the sky changed and a boonierat could see his brothers still there.

Doc Johnson and El Paso moved silently through the dispersed squads checking and accounting for the L-T. “How’d the night go?” Doc asked here and there. A thumbs-up sign or a nod were the only responses. Doc McCarthy delivered a daily-daily pill to every soldier, a tiny white pill designed to inhibit falicipreum and volvax malaria. Everyone accepted a pill but half the pills found their way, with a wish, over shoulders. It would be better to be medevacked out with malaria than to get wasted in the valley.

Egan gathered a small team for a first light check. They disassembled the down-trail mechanical ambush, then patrolled west, uphill. The higher MA had blown. Artillery rounds had smashed small craters into the jungle. There were no bodies, no blood trails, no signs. It was as if no one had been there last night. The patrol returned.

“Oh, Man,” Hoover chuckled to Jax and Silvers. “You shoulda seen Numbnuts last night.

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