A Warm Beer
by Harvey "Sully" Sullivan
I
t was another hot, stinking, miserable, boring day in the Nam and my ass
was really dragging. The only ray of light at the end of this long day
of heat & humping was the warm beer riding safe and secure, deep in Eds'
ruck. Ed had been hording the beer for the past 3 days. This morning,
over coffee, he had told me that tonight we drink the beer! It had been
on my mind ever since.
Second platoon moved into its NDP at dusk. Our squads' position was in
a dry field behind a small dyke. There was a large, flooded rice paddy
to our left. We were covering a trail, which entered the field through a
hedgerow 20 feet in front of us.
Our squad leader, Wally Turner, went to talk something over with Lt.
Herschelman and left me to square away the squads' position. While the
guys were setting up I sat down on the dyke to watch the trail. Ed soon
joined me, with the beer of course. Ed downed his half of the beer in
one long gulp. I followed suit, draining every drop from the can. It
was the best beer I ever tasted. As I lowered the can, I made eye
contact with a VC who had at that very moment walked out of the hedgerow
on the trail. He was wearing black PJs and carried an AK casually in his
hand.
The gook screamed! I screamed! Ed opened up! I had to dive under Eds'
fire to get my M-16, which was leaning on my ruck. I came up shooting.
Eds' initial burst caught the VC in the right shoulder, spinning him
around. Still on his feet, he ran back down the trail. I emptied a
magazine at his back as he disappeared into the darkening vegetation.
Ed & I reloaded & took off after him. About 30 feet into the vegetation
we heard a lot of splashing in the rice paddy to our left but couldn't
see shit because of the darkness. We fired up the area the sound was
coming from & moved back to the NDP. We hurriedly advised the Lt. of the
VC on the trail & the movement in the rice paddy, tactfully leaving out
the part about the beer! The Lt was none too happy about the idea of
gooks within his perimeter. We fired up a few flares & tried to sweep
out into the rice paddy but the water was too deep & we needed more
light.
Lt. John contacted Arty on the horn and had them illuminate the night sky,
which was great until the casings started falling into the NDP. One
smashed into the ground right next to me! One guy was hunkering next to
his ruck when it was hit by one of the casings. The casing set off a
trip flare & a purple smoke grenade, which were hanging on his ruck. He
was lucky, he was only slightly burned on his arms (although he was
stained purple from the goofy grape!)
Later that night Wally asked how I managed to let a gook get that close
to me. I told him how I had fucked up. He rolled his eyes at me in
disgust & told me "...the Lt doesn't know you fucked up so keep your
stupid mouth shut!!"
The next day we heard that one of our sister companies had pulled 2
bullet-ridden bodies from the other side of the rice paddy. They claimed
the count.
(This happened around March of 1969)
by Harvey Sullivan
Delta Dog, 1st
501st