Another night with the Cat 'O Death.

[DemoTex]

The first mortar round left the tube with a resonant, baritone “THWUNK.” Two more tubes fired, slightly out of tune with the first, sounding like quick mallet strikes to out-of-tune B-flat tympani. The attack came shortly after midnight as I lay awake in a restless, desultory dread. I rolled out of my rack, donned my steel pot and grabbed my M-16. I had worn my flak vest to bed, anticipating another night of rocket and mortar harassment by the Viet Cong. I knew that it would take me about forty-five seconds to make it to the bunker. This was the thirteenth night straight of rocket and mortar attacks. Thirteen; that excessive, wanton number associated with bad luck from the time of the Last Supper (thirteen dined) to the thirteen days of John F. Kennedy’s crucible, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Oh, shit!” I thought. “We are going to get it tonight. Three tubes firing.” I figured it was an augmented weapons platoon, since a Viet Cong infantry company typically carried only one mortar. Either that, or there were three VC companies maneuvering against us. “Oh, man,” I shuttered at the thought.
The first three rounds came whistling in and exploded just outside our concertina- wire perimeter in three quick, deafening blasts. The post-blast silence rang in my ears as I ran through the flooded courtyard of the old French villa, in the driving, icy rain of the northeast monsoon. It had been raining for a month now and everything was wet or flooded. My clothes were wet, by bed was wet, the sand bag bunker where I sought refuge from the incoming mortar shells was flooded.
“THWUNK-THWUNK-THWUNK”. The mortar tubes sounded close. They had to be close for me to hear the rounds come out of the tubes over the roar of the rain and the ringing in my ears. I reached the bunker just before the second volley of rounds impacted inside the perimeter, dangerously close now. One round almost hit an archery target that we had set up as an aiming aid for the VC. The gallows humor of that stunt wasn’t funny tonight. “THWUNK-THWUNK-THWUNK”.
I sat in the sandbag bunker, chest deep in icy water, as mortar rounds rained in. It wasn’t long before we heard the inevitable, hideous screech of the incoming Soviet-built 122 millimeter rockets. Although the mortars were firing at us from a range of less than 100 meters, the rocket artillery battery was probably several miles away in the mountains to the west of Nha Trang. We were jarred by the concussions of the rockets’ 50-pound warheads. Each explosive blast brought rats, some as large as small cats, scurrying from their hidey-holes. I flinched when a rat swam by, inches from my body, exposed by the flickering light of our illumination flares that floated down on tiny parachutes from the apogee of their parabolic trajectories.
My heart felt like it stopped when six “THWUNKS” sounded, in rapid succession. The enemy mortar teams were firing a barrage. Shrill whistles – police whistles – pierced the cacophony as these mortar rounds impacted. I remembered that the NVA and VC used police whistle signals as they over-ran Landing Zone Bird on Christmas Day four years earlier. At LZ Bird, over 800 VC and NVA fought from bunker to bunker chanting, in English, “Hey, G-I! Tonight you die!” We all knew that sad story. The crescendo of the artillery stonk suddenly died, but the small arms fire sounded like bacon frying in a skillet.
“They are coming through the wire!” someone yelled. “Lock and load!” My little world went into freeze-frame. A bazooka-like B-40 rocket wobbled over my head and impacted against a guard tower, set high on wooden pilings at a salient point of our defensive line. I drifted to a fighting position - mind out of body - contemplating the inevitable. Dust-to-dust and ash-to-ash, I prepared to enter the mouth of the cat of death.

[oneighty]

1. Nice writing Demo tex

You are on a roll.

I met Westmoreland a few times in Charleston. He seemed a fairly decent guy as a civilian. It was during his period with the CBS dispute.

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