Blood Trails by Christopher Ronnau

Author:Christopher Ronnau [Ronnau, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49419-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

By 0800 hours, the following day the sky was bright and the air already warm. We milled around, fully equipped and ready to go, for about an hour while the company officers and platoon leaders conferred with the battalion brass. After much radio chatter and comparison of maps, the order of march—a determination of which companies and platoons would lead the way and which would walk on the flanks or take up the rear—was finalized. Radio frequencies were assigned and coordination of activities with supporting artillery and helicopter units was completed.

Someone asked Fairman what was up for the day. He gave a flippant answer but didn’t spill the beans. He then told Captain Burke that he was going to move the platoon across the NDP to wait for our marching orders. He didn’t seem to have a solid reason for doing this when the captain asked, but was given permission nonetheless.

We ended up standing next to an ammo point, three feet deep and thirty feet in diameter, full of every type of ordnance a grunt would ever dream of carrying. We didn’t give it more than a passing glance until Fairman began speaking. He said that we were going to march eight kilometers to a large NVA camp on the Cambodian border. If no one was defending it, we would move in and take over, then destroy it. Someone asked what would happen if the NVA were defending it. Fairman calmly repeated that even if Ho Chi Minh and the entire North Vietnamese Army were there, we were still going to move in, take over the camp, and destroy it. We would attack. He then said in a disinterested monotone that if any of us weren’t carrying enough munitions or just decided that we wanted to carry a little more, the ammo pit was open for business. We could load up with whatever we wanted. It wasn’t until later that I realized that psychologically, Fairman had played us like a fine violin.

Soon the pit looked like a department store sale on the day after Thanksgiving. Troops dug through containers in earnest, searching for the particular type of grenade or bullets they wanted. A number of guys put on extra belts of machine-gun ammo. With an NVA base camp in our immediate future, I also decided to increase my load. This was accomplished by putting on two more hundred-round belts of ammo. My torso was now crisscrossed by eight belts hanging from my shoulders. They were heavy, cumbersome, and made it easy to understand why chain-mail armor disappeared in the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, I carried eight belts every day for the rest of my tour. The thought crossed my mind that if I took a slug or possibly even a piece of shrapnel in the torso, it might actually set off one or more rounds. Fortunately, the most comfortable way to loop on the belts was with the business end of the cartridges pointed away from my head.

After rooting through the ammo pit, we still had a few minutes to kill before heading out for the day.

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