365 Days by Ronald J. Glasser Read Free Book Online Page A

afford to give the gooks a better target than they already had. The mortar might have been luck; but it also might not have been. He stayed on the horn, directing them in. The first Dust Off came in, heard the 51 open up. The pilot ignored the bullets and took his chopper right through the stream of tracers. At the last moment, just as he was settling it in, the machine wavered and then, stricken, twisted over on its side and rotating slowly about its center cartwheeled gracefully out over the paddy. The tip of its main rotor hit the mud. A second later it exploded, burning up in a bright flash of igniting magnesium. Two gunships on the perimeter moved in and hit the area of the 51 with machine-gun fire, racking it apart. Another Dust Off bore in, this time at a steeper angle. Mayfield worked the horn, keeping the gunships close so that the Dust Off could get in. He could see more slicks crossing the horizon. The fighting seemed to be moving off to the east.
    The second med evac made it in, and they loaded on the bodies. A loach circled protectively overhead and, higher up, a cobra circled in the opposite direction. While they were loading, Mayfield plotted out artillery targets—just in case—and sent in the coordinates. He didn’t have enough men standing to stop anything. If anything happened, he would have to plaster the area with artillery and he wouldn’t have time to call in the coordinates while he was doing it. He ordered the batteries to stand ready to fire on his command. Meanwhile, the company was sorting itself out. The air strikes had settled things down, and now only an occasional sniper round came through.
    “Hey, Sarge.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Better take care of that arm.”
    Mayfield looked down at his shoulder. His fatigues were ripped, and his skin was caked black with dirt and blood. Testing his arm, he found he could still move it a bit. He waited by the horn until he was sure they’d be OK—they’d pull out. Getting up, he walked through the mud to what had been the aid station. The dead, partially covered with muddy ponchos, were again stacked in piles. The wounded, filthy and dirty, were laid out next to them, with blank, empty looks on their faces.
    A trooper kneeling next to one of the wounded was trying to start an IV. The medic, the only corpsman alive, flack vest open, moved from patient to patient. Two soldiers, their weapons cradled exhaustedly in their arms, were just sitting near the wounded. Mayfield, dragging himself, plodded up through the mud that was strewn with broken bits of albumin cans.
    “Sarge!”
    A trooper, walking up to him, slipped and barely kept his balance, splattering mud all over him. “Sorry,” he said apologetically. “The RTO from 3rd Platoon says the choppers are coming.”
    “I know,” Mayfield said. He looked around him. As dirty as it was and as hot, he didn’t want to go. Sweating and exhausted, he didn’t want to leave—not right away, anyway. They’d fought for this mud, his men had died for it; he wanted something to show for it all. He didn’t want to have to keep bringing them back to it again and again. He wanted to stay; they’d won it.
    “Sarge.”
    “Yeah.”
    “The Old Man says to get ready; as soon as the wounded and dead are out, we’re moving back to the boats.”

“When I get there I’m gonna ask to fly
    med evacs. I mean, I know they need
    pilots to fly guns, but I’d just rather not.”
    Chopper pilot
    En route Vietnam
    Travis Air Force Base, California

3
Medics

A T ZAMA WE READ in the stateside papers that America was going to hell, that it was almost impossible to get an American teenager to act responsibly, listen to an adult, or, for that matter, even to care. You’d think, then, that it would be impossible to get them to kill themselves for something as vague as duty or run through claymores for anything as subtle as concern. But during the first five hours of Hamburger Hill, fifteen medics were hit, ten were killed.