Under siege battleground.., p.1
Under Siege (Battleground Vietnam Book 1), page 1
UNDER SIEGE
A FICTIONAL STORY SET DURING THE SIEGE OF KHE SANH
By Eric Meyer
Copyright 2019 by Eric Meyer
Published by Swordworks Books
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Preface
Khe Sanh was the setting for a major siege that took place during the Vietnam war. South of the DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam, it was a Combat Base defended by six thousand United States Marines. Under attack by an unknown number of People’s Army of North Vietnam regulars, some said as many as thirty thousand soldiers.
This fictional tale is not about the battle, but one man’s fight for justice and for his sanity. For the lives of his friends and fellow soldiers. A fight he must win, even if it costs him his life.
I salute those brave Marines who fought so desperately during that terrible time and apologize for the many factual errors that will have crept into the story. Ultimately, this story is about one man, some would say an ordinary man, and others would say a hero. A man who like so many others had suffered a terrible loss as a result of the war.
Like the heroes of so many pieces of fiction, in real life he never existed. Just like many of the events that take place during this narrative. However, the Siege of Khe Sanh was a fact, written indelibly into the annals of war. As is the incredible victory of the United States Marines who suffered 274 men killed and almost 3000 wounded during the battle.
This is just a story that I set in the place and time of that battle and hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed the writing and research.
With best wishes to all who remember, those who may have been there, and those who lost loved ones during that epic fight.
Eric Meyer
Foreword
It was a night like so many others in this shithole of a country. Shithole may not have been enough to describe the place, but a man would’ve needed a vivid imagination and a strong command of the intricacies of the English language to think of another word to describe it. Khe Sanh Combat Base was in a strategic position in the hills of Northwest Vietnam, a few klicks south of the DMZ, and close to the Laotian border. Route of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main source of supplies and troop reinforcements for the Vietcong and their pals in the People's Army of Vietnam.
The night was especially dark, as if the heavens had frowned on this jungle nightmare. Thick cloud all but blotted out the stars, but they weren’t enough to hide this place. Nothing could hide the noise of aircraft and helicopters flying overhead, fighter-bombers and Hueys. Their familiar ‘whump, whump’ as much a part of Vietnam as the black-clad VCs. For some men as familiar as the whores in the brothels and bars of Saigon. If that wasn’t enough, the dark jungle was alive with frequent automatic fire as well as single rifle shots. These would be snipers working to weaken the resolve of the Marine defenders of Khe Sanh.
There were occasional screams, but they weren’t animals hunting for prey. They were men, hunting a different prey. Man. Night patrols, Marine patrols flushing out incoming units of North Vietnamese soldiers and hitting them before they reached the base. Most were NVA, and the trick was to hit them hard and fast before they hit you. Especially before they got too close. The jungle was alive. With the dead.
Inside the base two men walked through the darkness, an officer displaying captain’s bars, and a sergeant. They headed along the long airstrip walking purposefully toward a C-130. The ramp was down, and the cavernous cargo hold loaded ready to fly out the next morning. The two men veered off the strip to inspect a pile of military stores, mainly wooden cases, newly arrived from a previous supply mission. Intended to support the defenders at Khe Sanh Combat Base, they had other ideas.
Working in the darkness, they selected several cases, and grunting with the effort, carried the heavy wooden crates up the ramp and into the aircraft. The consignment was destined for Tan Son Nhut, where they had made arrangements for their disposal. A sale of weapons and ordnance to the highest bidder, and money had been paid in advance. This would be the fulfilment of the order, the delivery of the goods. They chuckled to each other as they carried the crates up into the aircraft, covering them with broken equipment and machinery on its way back to Saigon for repair and maintenance. The good stuff was well hidden, and it would stay that way until other men waiting at Tan Son Nhut unloaded the crates and delivered them to waiting customers.
They'd no idea who the customers were, and neither did they care. As long as the money flowed in, and there were always eager buyers waiting to take delivery of the stolen consignments. They may have been Vietnamese warlords, for there were many who roamed and terrorized the countryside. The many armed gangs, men who robbed and pillaged, profiting so much from the war. They could have been VC, the enemy. But heck, who cared, if the money rolled in? The enemy would get the weapons they needed one way or the other, so why shouldn't they make a profit from supplying a ready market?
They’d almost finished, and the ten crates were well hidden amongst the jumble of assorted crates and broken machinery. They were pulling a tarpaulin over the load when a flashlight came on and a voice called out, "Who's there?"
The captain recognized the voice at once. Air Force Major Gary Watson and he cursed. The guy was a stickler for rules and regulations, and they should have anticipated him making an unscheduled inspection to check on the aircraft. The captain walked back toward the ramp, holding up his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, and he stopped a meter from the officer.
"Major, we were doing some final checks to make sure the load is secure. The aircraft is flying out at dawn tomorrow, and we didn’t want any last-minute snags like loose cargo."
The Major didn't look satisfied with the answer. "I checked it out earlier to make sure the crew had secured the load, and it was fine. I don't understand why you needed to do anything. Who’s back there with you?"
“Just my sergeant, he's checking everything down and making doubly sure. You can't be too careful."
Watson played his torch over the stack of crates and grunted. "Maybe I'll look myself, in case there's a problem. Tell me, Captain, what made you think there may be something wrong? If there’s a problem, I need to know about it first."
“We were just being careful, Sir, that’s all."
"Is that so? Let’s see what we have.”
He strolled along the fuselage and reached the pile of wooden crates. He pulled at a rope securing them down and at the same time played a torch over the stack. The sergeant suddenly stood up before him, like a genie appeared out of nowhere, and he stepped back, startled. "Sergeant, why are you are hiding back there? What's going on?"
The non-com didn't bother with an answer. He'd overheard the conversation and knew the game was up. No way would this interfering bastard let it go, and he held a heavy wrench in his hand. He slammed it over the side of the Major’s head and hit him twice more. The officer fell to the floor, groaning in pain, but still alive. The sergeant dragged out his Colt Commander with a rapid movement, cocked the action, and squeezed the trigger. The shot rang out, and Major Watson jerked on the aluminum deck of the cargo hold and was still. The captain rushed up and looked down at the body. "Jesus Christ, he’s dead! Why the hell did you do that?"
"He knew, Captain. There's no way he'd let it go."
"Fuck, they’ll have heard that gunshot all over the base."
He shook his head. "I don't think so. Listen."
They listened, and he had a point. Shots punctuated the night, from inside the base, nervous sentries firing outward, and from outside the base, VCs or North Vietnamese regulars firing inward. Few of them in any hope of hitting anything, but it sure kept the Marines from getting a good night’s sleep.
"You could be right," the captain murmured. He made a nervous chuckle, “What's one gunshot amongst a hundred others?"
“Like I said, there won’t be a problem.”
They waited a while longer, but when nothing happened, they grinned at each other. "We're in the clear."
“No sweat, Captain. At least, we will be when we get rid of the body."
He nodded. "We’ll drag it outside the aircraft and hide it somewh
"I know the exact place."
“Good, let’s do it.” They dragged the body down the ramp and carried it across to a shallow slit trench at the side of the runway. Part of the preparations for the attack everyone knew was coming, and they had a good reason for knowing. The base at Khe Sanh was a calculated challenge to the North Vietnamese.
‘If you think you're man enough, come and get us. We'll be waiting for you.'
A plan to draw out the People’s Army of Vietnam, and all the signs were it had worked. They were coming, everyone knew, there’d been signs for several months of huge troop movements coming down from the North. The Ho Chi Minh Trail had never been busier. Every Marine had worked non-stop to prepare the defenses, and the shallow slit trench was part of those preparations. It also made a suitable grave, and they dropped the body into the bottom, covering it with earth and stones.
When they’d finished, the captain had second thoughts. "When they start digging deeper, they’ll find it."
The sergeant shook his head. "That ain’t gonna happen. Somebody decided it was too close to the runway, so they moved it fifty meters further out. They were due to fill it in tomorrow, so we've done them a favor."
The captain smiled with relief, and they finished smoothing down the covering of earth and stones and walked away. Back to the C-130 to check the load, and then to return to their tents.
Both men ducked when a longer burst of machine gun fire stitched no more than several meters over their heads.
The sergeant looked thoughtful. "Captain, why don’t we leave on that aircraft? I’m sure you can change the orders and get us a seat out of here. I want to live to spend the money we’ve made.”
The captain paused before he replied. “I don’t know, it may not be that easy. People could accuse us of running away.”
“Who gives a shit? I reckon we've done enough; we made a heap of money and sooner or later our luck will run out. Find a good reason to get us on that plane, and with luck we’ll never come back to this place."
The captain looked up at the sky, and incoming traces were making intricate patterns in the sky. "I reckon you’re right. It’s time to get out of Khe Sanh. I can think of a hundred reasons to be out of here, and not even one to stay behind. If they want to fight for it, it’s up to them. Fuck ‘em I say."
“That’s right, Sir. Fuck ‘em.”
* * *
The time was 05.30 when the first salvo of artillery screamed overhead and exploded with a loud series of crashes next to the airstrip. Plumes of smoke and dust hung over the ground when mortar fire added to the chaos, and shells began creeping toward the C-130. They exploded a few meters away, and for several minutes it seemed as if the aircraft would have a miraculous escape.
Until the first mortar shell struck just behind the ramp, followed by a salvo of a half-dozen shells that scored a direct hit on the fuselage. One moment the cargo plane was intact, loaded, fueled up and ready to take-off. The next it was a heap of scrap, a mass of twisted metal that would never fly again. Around the base troops poured from their tents and sleeping quarters, ready to defend against attack. When it came, it was a storm of North Vietnamese regulars who charged the wire with fanatical fury. Screams and shouts echoed through the early dawn, the jackhammer noise of machine guns playing their terrible symphony, punctuated by the bellow of AK-47s and the sharper crack of M-16s as they returned fire. The M-60s opened up; spitting out streams of bullets that competed with the enemy fire to crisscross the base, and explosions echoed around the hills.
Because of the poor light men were unaware of their targets, most shooting blind, and so they aimed at the gun flashes. The shells continued to fall over the base, and if anyone had been in any doubt the North Vietnamese had taken the bait, their doubts had ended abruptly. Ended in a hailstorm of gunfire, destruction, and blood. Everywhere was chaos, men sheltering behind whatever cover they could find and returning fire at shadows, fighting off the waves of the faceless enemy charging toward them shouting their war cries. Rushing the perimeter wire and some made it, only for their bodies to be ripped into shreds by sheets of outgoing fire from the defenders. Soon, the wire was festooned with the bodies of enemy soldiers, hanging there like ghastly decorations.
Still more artillery crashed down on the base, and their intention was obvious. They planned to make the airstrip unusable, and shell holes appeared along the runway. Some hit the slit trench where the body of Major Watson lay buried. Earth and stones spouted into the air, and when the barrage moved on, the body was now uncovered, easy to spot by anyone who cared to pass. Eventually, the salvos of shells eased, and in the early dawn men ran to survey and repair the damage to their lifeline, the airstrip. The C-130 was beyond salvage, but engineers brought in heavy equipment to shove it off the tarmac so other aircraft could use the strip. Corporal Eddie Carpenter decided he’d pushed the wreckage far enough to allow other aircraft to take-off and land, so he switched off his engine and climbed out from the cab to check he hadn’t missed anything. Smoke was everywhere, mixed in with clouds of dust, and he didn’t want to leave any debris to burst the tire of an incoming or outgoing aircraft. He walked past the chewed up slit trench, reflecting they’d made a mess of it and they’d have a deal more dirt to shovel to fill in the hole.
That’s when he saw the body. Initially, he wasn't surprised to find a body lying there. After the shit that’d descended on the base, this wouldn’t be the last corpse he came across. Out of respect for the soldier, who he recognized as one of theirs, he called for help to pull it out of the partially collapsed trench and lay it on the ground. Ready for the medics to carry it away to the makeshift mortuary and stack it with the other fatalities.
He was about to return to the excavator when he did a double take. “Hey, what’s this? Someone bashed his head in. This isn’t enemy fire. It looks like murder.”
The solider looked around, as if the killer was still close. Looking for another victim. “You sure, Corporal?”
“Damn right, I’m sure,” Carpenter snarled, "Fucking ARVN, that’s who it was. I’ll bet they’ve been snooping around stealing our gear again, and this officer happened along at the wrong time. They already caught one guy running a racket ripping off Army supplies and selling them to the locals. Now they’ve made it murder. When they catch up with this bastard, I'll blow his fucking head off."
The private nodded his agreement. "None of our guys would have done this, not on a fellow Marine. What puzzles me is that this aircraft was scheduled to return to Tan Son Nhut with broken equipment for repair. There was nothing much worth stealing." He scratched his head, "Unless the thief was taking it to a junkyard."
"You know the Vietnamese. They'd sell their own mothers to the enemy. Charlie ain’t stupid, and it wouldn't surprise me if they got this stuff back into action. We’d better report this to the command bunker, and they ain’t gonna be happy.”
The second-in-command of the Marine contingent at Khe Sanh walked at a fast pace to inspect the body, not believing what he was hearing, but he'd have to check it out anyway. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other things to do. Lieutenant Colonel Elliston McArthur was fighting a battle, and the shelling was sure to restart at any moment. After that would come the ground attack, under cover of the barrage. He’d no doubt they'd send in more troops, and unless they were ready, they could swamp them. Intelligence had suggested upward of twenty thousand hostiles were closing around Khe Sanh, and other estimates put the numbers closer to thirty thousand. That was a shitload of enemy soldiers, and he didn't have time for this. The shelling had been bad, and they’d taken casualties. He didn't see why one more demanded his attention. If they didn’t do something fast, he’d need to send a request to Saigon for fresh supplies. Of body bags.
"Where is it?" he said irritably.
