Another Place Episode 21

Another Place Another Time

Book One

Jake and Whispers

Episode Twenty-One

I was over half way through my second tour and considering signing up for a third since Riley, The First Sergeant, and Captain Petty had just done so. Betty Ann was also considering a third tour.

For over a year, I had been saving up for the time when Whispers and I would get out of Vietnam together. Money wasn’t the issue, cash was. It was against regulations for U.S. military personnel to have U.S. dollars, but I was going to need cash when it came time for us to leave. Every month I would give Riley $500 of my pay and the First Sergeant, somehow, had it converted from military script to U.S. currency. Riley kept exact records and insisted on giving me a receipt even though I trusted him implicitly. A couple of days after I gave him the military script, the First Sergeant would call me to the orderly room where he handed me five hundred dollars, in cash. Riley would then take a sealed envelope, containing my stockpiled cash, from the safe, and hand it to me. I opened the envelope, counted the money, added the five hundred, and placed all the cash in a new envelope. After I sealed it, I recorded the new total on the back, signed it, and gave it to Riley who returned it to the safe. Currently, the figure scrawled on the back of the envelope was $8,500. It was an easy way to convert script to dollars, and it didn’t cost me anything. I didn’t think much about it beyond knowing that I had more than enough cash to get Whispers and me home when we were ready to leave.

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In our twenty months in Vietnam, Whispers and I had been on more than fifty missions with the LURPs, and we hadn’t had a single serious incident since the first one. The monsoon season, which slowed the war down for about four months every year, had been over for a month and the war had shifted back to its normal high-level of activity. We had just come in from a three-day patrol the previous afternoon, and I expected at least a five-day stand down. I was outside the kennel cleaning my gear with water and a stiff scrub brush. Whispers was being a general nuisance, pulling the newly cleaned, wet gear off the worktable and dragging it through the mud. As I was recovering some of the items from him, Riley came running up.

“Sarge,” he said, “Get your gear together. I’ll get your ammo and rations from Ferguson. Division needs a tracker and handler right now.”

In our year and a half in country, we had not done any tracker work, which suited me fine, because trackers ran the risk of snipers — a danger scout dogs and handlers seldom faced.

Ten minutes later, we were in the ¾-ton with Riley, headed for the staging area. As Riley intently watched the road and drove three times faster than the posted speed limit, he explained what was going on.

“The two infantry companies inserted after your last patrol engaged a large group of Viet Cong. The VC out-manned and in open country, broke contact and went into full retreat. Now the infantry can’t find them and neither can the choppers. They want you and Whispers to track them down.”

I had a bad feeling about the mission, but there was nothing we could do except to go and do the best we could. I felt Whispers looking at me and I looked down at him. Our gazes locked, and I knew he had the same feeling.

The LURPS, led by Lieutenant Williams, was the same team we’d been with earlier in the week. When Whispers and I approached, the Lieutenant said, “There’s just no rest for the weary, Jake.”

“That’s for sure,” I agreed.

“Did anyone tell you what was going on?”

“Yes, Sir. Riley briefed us.”

At that moment three Greyhound Slicks and two Mad Dog gunships settled into the staging area making further conversation impossible.

We loaded up on the lead Mad Dog gunship and in less than twenty minutes we flew over the Landing Zone used for the troop insertion. Minutes later we flew over a large group of 9th Division Infantry moving slowly southward through the thick grass on the edge of a sparse jungle. The Lieutenant pointed at the men on the ground and shouted above the noise of the rotor blades, “That’s the company that routed the VC. We’re going to land a quarter of a mile in front of them. You and Whispers pick up the trail of the VC and track them. We’ll guide the infantry as we go.”

I nodded that I understood.

We landed, unloaded, and the Greyhounds took off, leaving us alone in the stillness that always follows the departure of a flight of helicopters.

Immediately Lieutenant Williams was on the radio to the commander of the ground troops. When he finished talking, he turned to me.

“Jake, they think the VC stayed in the cover of the grass and continued moving south. It’s up to you and Whispers to find them. Keep moving as fast as possible, but I’d just as soon not walk into a trap.”

I laughed and said, “You can be sure that’s not high on our list of things to do either, Lieutenant.”

Williams told Corporal Owens, the point man, that we would be leading the way, something that only happens in a tracking situation. He positioned the Corporal five feet to my left and I looked at Whispers and said, “OK, let’s go, Boy.” Whispers whined softly, then set off at a pace much faster than normal. My feeling of unease grew by the minute, and I knew that Whispers felt the same.

It’s hard to describe, but the feeling I had wasn’t fear. It was more like a feeling that something was going to happen and nothing could change it. The only respite in our pace came when Whispers found three hastily set up traps in the first mile. We easily avoided them, but I knew from their sloppy construction, the VC were in full-out retreat, and that we were close and gaining. I also knew, at the first opportunity, they would leave one or more snipers to protect their withdrawal. Fear would have been a normal response, I suppose, but frankly there was no time for it. I felt the tension in the air, and I sensed that every one of the LURPs felt it. Whispers probably felt it more than any of us.

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