The Village by Bing West

Author:Bing West
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2000-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

“I felt good about that,” White said later. “It had taken us a long time to work back and we had lost Lummis along the way. But we kept hanging in there and finally the village officials had enough trust in what we and the PFs could do to stay overnight. I had to move in some extra cots, but it was worth it. It was sort of like a Christmas present and a good-bye present all wrapped up as one.”

White was due for relief in December, but he did not want to leave until the unit had a new leader. He had chosen nobody from within it. The men had lived together too long to accept the sudden elevation of one of their own to the position of final authority. They could all fight well; what was needed was someone who could think in a crisis without giving way to gang consensus. White had discussed the situation at length with Charlie Company’s new commander, Captain Dave Walker, a veteran leader with a scar across his neck from a 30-caliber bullet.

Walker said he was watching a twenty-year-old sergeant named McGowan. In November he had sent the sergeant to the besieged Special Forces camp at Ba To to take over a squad. The sergeant had fought in the hills for a month. He had made dozens of patrols and lost nobody from his squad. Unlike many other NCOs, he had not sold the weapons his squad captured to the Vietnamese for personal profit, despite pressure from some salty squad members.

White went back to the fort and discussed the candidate with his men. Two of the Marines, Swinford and Corporal Ed Gallagher, had served with McGowan a year earlier on board a Navy cruiser. Gallagher, a new replacement at the fort, liked him. Swinford, a rugged youth who had been in the combined unit for several months, did not. Before they were corporals, McGowan had became a sergeant. Both agreed he deserved his promotions but differed on whether he was right for the unit.

“He won’t screw you,” Gallagher said. “He’s a tough bastard. He’d throw hands with you, but he wouldn’t go running to the CO.”

“Man, he just got over here,” Swinford objected. “They were fighting by regiments at Ba To. What good is that going to do him here? He’s green. We don’t need a green man in charge.”

A tall, husky, black-headed Irishman, Vincent McGowan had fought in the Golden Gloves and tended bar in his father’s tavern in New York City. Calm under pressure and confidently self-reliant, he had an easy smile and an outgoing manner. Since Christmas, Captain Walker had been sending him out on patrols to gain familiarity with the terrain and the style of small-unit fighting in Binh Son district. Knowing he was competing for command of a unit with a large reputation, McGowan had been trying unsuccessfully for a solid night contact to impress Walker. On the night of January 7 he took an eight-man patrol

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