Eyes Behind the Lines

Eyes Behind the Lines Prologue I had to smile at the irony of it all as the C-130 slammed onto the runway at the Phu Bai airstrip near the imperial city of Hue. Only seven months ago, another C-130 had delivered me to this same hot, sticky, strip of tarmac situated on the coastal plain in the northern part of the Republic of Vietnam. Back then, I had been a green twenty-one-year-old, sold on the idea that I was one of American's finest, answering my country's call. I was full of piss and vinegar and ready to take on Uncle Ho and his whole Asian horde. I had volunteered for airborne infantry, advanced individual training, and Jump School in an attempt to get into Officer Candidate School; my two years of college and ROTC had not impressed the army enough to select me as a candidate for the program. However, it did impress them enough to send me halfway around the world to attend a one-year seminar in combat survival. I had been lucky enough to be assigned to the famous "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st Airborne Division and had opted for "fraternity life" by volunteering for special operations duty with F Company, 58th Infantry (Long Range Patrol). The army had done an excellent job of pumping all of us full of massive doses of self-confidence. Back in the States at Fort Gordon and Fort Benning, the care had hot-wired my buddies and me into believing that we were indeed "the baddest motherfuckers in the valley." We developed a heightened sense of immortality and esprit that caused many of us to say a prayer each night that the war would go on long enough for us to get over there. Some of our instructors threatened us with stories about how tough "Charlie" was and warned us that he would blow us away in a minute if he caught us "half stepping'. " They promised that if we fell asleep on guard, we}d wake up wearing an extra smileone cut from ear to ear. After all, we were Airborne, and the baddest motherfuckers in the valley. Airborne didn't half step, and we sure as hell didn't sleep on guard. Mr. Charles had better watch his ass when we got to the Nam. My first seven months in country had exposed the lie. The cadre hadn't been bullshitting us, and we weren't the baddest motherfuckers in the valley, either. The damn valley was full of bad motherfuckers. Upon our arrival, we quickly discovered that we were as green as the stiff, chafing new jungle fatigues they issued us. The months of training back in the States had been woefully inadequate for what we would experience in the Nam. The first few weeks proved to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week cram course, "How to Stay Alive in a Hostile Environment." And no training, in any amount, could truly have prepared us for the actual trials and tribulations of combat. Combat was its own finishing school. But we learned! Slowly but surely, we became jungle-hardened LRPs. We developed the ability to perform under adverse conditions and in situations that would have destroyed lesser men. Those who couldn't cut it were quickly and quietly weeded out of the program and sent to other units. There was no place in the Long Range Patrol for the weak, the timid, the unmotivated. In time, our "greenness" had faded, just as the color had bleached from our uniforms and the rest of our gear. The dense, mountainous jungles and the constant sun/heat, sun/rain, sun/sweat, sun/dust cycle that was Vietnam had leached the parade-ground perfection out of each of us. Humping the steep mountains of the Annamese Cordilla with hundred-pound rucksacks had increased our endurance. We learned to stalk the thick vegetation flanking the enemy's high-speed trails with the stealth of a panther. We learned how to waitLinderer, Gary A. is the author of 'Eyes Behind the Lines' with ISBN 9780804108195 and ISBN 0804108196.