(3 of 3)
Charlie Company's commander. Captain Thomas D. Smith, was a young lawyer about to open an office in Omaha when he was drafted in 1966. Since then Smith, who is about to turn 30, has seen a number of "Line Ones." In the first two weeks of the new year, the 3rd Brigade suffered two killed and 34 wounded in skirmishes with its chief opponent, the 33rd NVA regiment, which prowls the jungles east of Saigon. The only way to stay alive in the jungle. Smith believes, is to keep moving. "You stop pushing and they'll walk all over you," he says.
At 10 a.m. on the third day, we are crouched over a small stream refilling canteens when the radio crackles: we are going to be dropped by copter into the area where the G.I.s had been ambushed yesterday. We move to the nearest landing zone —and wait. Finally, at 1 p.m. the helicopters show up to ferry us in a flotilla of six-man groups to the assault landing zone. I ride in the third chopper (the fourth or fifth is thought to be the most desirable) with Sergeant Henry R. Campbell of Newington, Conn., who won a Bronze Star in a firefight last October. Campbell is modest about his star ("Hell, all I did was put out all the firepower I could"), but he is also wryly amused by the Stateside impression of the nature of the war.
"My mother can't believe I'm in danger," he says as he sits in the door of the chopper with a machine gun across his knees. "She says the President says it's all defensive now, so how could it be dangerous?"
We land in elephant grass in a clearing. The only thing to be heard besides the rotor blades is the feeble stutter of the door gunner's machine gun. The landing zone is "cold" —meaning that there are no enemy about—but the troops find fresh tracks almost immediately. We follow the trail until shortly after 5. when another night position is set up. The forward artillery observer calls in artillery strikes on an area that he thinks the enemy might have moved into. He orders the strikes for 10 p.m. —like booking a telephone call—and waits up for them. Everyone else sleeps.
Too Much Rain. At dawn we set off again. When we finally reach the ambush site, we find only some rice left behind by the NVA, a pair of bloody trousers, a B40 North Vietnamese rocket case and a document nobody can read.
It is four days since we walked off Fire Base Hall. There has been no contact but several scares, a lot of heat, a surfeit of leeches, too much rain for the dry season, and a wearying round of days that begin at 7 and end twelve hours later, when the light fails. Charlie Company is one-third of the way through its patrol. Ten more days exactly like the four before, and Charlie will be taken back to a fire base, to stand in reserve in case another unit needs assistance. Three days on the base, and ten more in the field. When I get a helicopter to leave, I am handed letters to mail from more than half of the company. "If we're not here," asks Sergeant James Wiggins, "how come they're getting these?"