Frenchy's Whore (eBook)

A teenage paratrooper goes from high school to the point of the spear.

Vernon Brewer II (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-8217-9 (ISBN)

Infos

I couldn't and didn't know everyone in a company of over a hundred men. Some that I did know have passed on, or died in battle in Vietnam. In other cases I could not find the individuals in order to ask their permission, and have assigned them pseudonyms. This book is just a fragment of a huge tapestry of diverse experiences lived by millions of young men and women. It might be very similar to or different from the reader's own experiences in that nasty little war, or those in other accounts. I mean no one any harm or defamation. I have nothing but the utmost admiration for all who served there. I will always love and honor my unit, the 173d Airborne Brigade (SEP). The young fighters of Alpha Company were the very cream of America's crop. I am thinking I probably will owe a thanks to my old XO in this revision, as he is privy to good info on some of the names, dates and AOs of the revision of this book. Those after-action reports have been invaluable. Thank you, COL Henry Persons...Sir. I realize that the use of objectionable racial slurs in the dialogue will be very uncomfortable for some readers, and for valid reasons. That said, this was how the men talked in Vietnam. My first duty to the men who served is to tell the truth, not a sanitized version of it. Combat situations and environments do strange and often harsh things to people. I report the words as best I remember them, and ask the reader to understand that including them should not in any way be taken as a modern endorsement of such language. It just happened, and I present the reality rather than try to pretend it was otherwise. I consider that my highest duty--to my old comrades, and even adversaries, of all heritages. This is a true story. I try to paint what was seen and felt. The dates and details are fact. This will close that chapter of my life for me, I hope; having sought out others who were there with me, and accepted their counsel in correcting errors in the original manuscript, I seek now only

---

A textured semi-autobiographical look at Vietnam day-by-day with one foot in the summer of love and the other in a jungle combat boot. Brewer's story describes the path of a young man from a Northeastern high school to combat with an elite airborne brigade in Vietnam. There are quite a few books on Vietnam, so it takes some effort to make one stand out. Brewer has succeeded because he answers a very good question with considerable descriptive talent. It's quite clear that Brewer is just about there as a wartime novelist. This is some of the most vividly descriptive word use I have yet seen, avoiding overstatement and creating instead texture: the environment, the weather, the noise, the fear, the mess, the dope smoke. I'm not normally patient with typos, and to keep me reading in spite of them, the underlying tale has to be a very good one with much to say for it. Have you ever wondered why the Vietnam vets "e;can't just let it go and move on?"e; I'm pretty sure Brewer has fielded it quite a few times, and eventually got sick of it and decided to answer it in novel form. Remember how Depression-era parents and grandparents, to the end of their days, played economics close to the vest no matter how greatly they prospered? What the author conveys is this: some experiences, and for many Vietnam was one such, impact one so much that they don't and won't just go away. They create fundamental shifts in mentality that will last one's lifetime, including some aspects that are very difficult to manage. I won't spoil them for you, but if you ever wanted to know why Uncle Bill defines himself as a Vietnam veteran above other descriptors, to this day forty years hence, Brewer can answer that question for you. Highly recommended.

Textauszug

Late summer, 1968

Somewhere in the rugged Central Highlands of South Vietnam

 

Alpha Company’s Lima and Mike Platoons1 dug in just before dusk. Their commanding officer had chosen a hill strewn with giant black boulders to set up defensively for the night.

Just before dark, a flood of purple shadows spilled into the valleys as a gentle rain began to fall. The sprinkle quickly became a downpour as their hastily dug positions filled with runoff. In less than an hour the temperature plummeted fifty degrees from a daytime high of a muggy hundred and ten. Around midnight the clouds departed, pulled westward like a giant curtain revealing a black-velvet sky swirling with stars.

Dewey was whispering to Ingland of a girl he loved back in The World when a series of heavy explosions erupted beyond a nearby hill, followed instantly by a crescendo of small-arms fire. Before the volume of automatic fire died down, he raised Third (i.e. November) Platoon’s commanding officer on the radio.

Captain Wilson took the handset.

Dewey lay in the mud, listening, as the firing ebbed to a few random shots before ceasing altogether. In the stillness, as rain murmured in the dark, the young lieutenant’s voice quivered with excitement over the handset. Wilson’s voice was low, calm, reassuring. An NVA patrol had tripped Third Platoon’s ambush, freezing the intruders in the eerie, green-white light of trip-flares. The Americans had blown several claymore mines and returned heavy automatic weapons fire. The encounter was over in minutes. Casualties among Third Platoon were superficial; among the NVA, at least four dead.

Captain Wilson ordered the lieutenant to hold the position, to stay alert, to radio situation reports every fifteen minutes. Immediately after stand-to in the morning, they were to sweep the area for bodies, and if possible to reinstate contact with the hostile force. After first light, the two platoons under Wilson’s command would move toward the third in a pincer.

Darkness belonged to Charlie. Daylight would bring effective air support and lessen the odds of an ambush. The young American paratroopers huddled in their rain-soaked poncho liners. Staying dry was not an option. Sleep came as hard as the rocks in the mud.

 

At dawn the men of Wilson’s two platoons moved silently off the summit, passing pillars of mist drifting near the trail like ghosts of other wars. Halfway down the hill they entered a fog so thick it reduced visibility to just a few feet. From each man’s perspective, the man ahead vanished, reappeared and vanished again amid the stench of rotting vegetation. They moved through dripping foliage single file, at fifteen-foot intervals, pushing toward their brothers in Third Platoon.

Often, they skirted small bunkers dug along the trail; spider holes, they called them. Some were fresh, the dirt around them still red, not sun-dried to the dull brown all disturbed earth turned within hours of being disturbed in this area of Vietnam. Most were rotted, crumbling, dating back to the French conflict. All warned that death could strike suddenly—unseen from inches away. Just too close, Dewey thought, staring into an empty spider hole as he passed. Too freakin’ close.

The sun, almost unseen beneath triple-canopy jungle, began burning the mist off by 0800, turning the rainforest into a sweltering mire of mud, vines and lush vegetation that could conceal an ambush at any given point.

Men cursed softly to themselves as razor grass sliced deep into forearms, leaving thin cuts that bled profusely. A startled troop of monkeys screamed from the treetops, their harsh cries fading as they fled.

One thousand meters away, on high alert, Third Platoon followed blood trails left by the enemy they’d ambushed during the night. They moved stealthily, muscles coiled with adrenalin.

While they pursued, the hunters were becoming the hunted.

 

Dewey staggered under the weight of his rucksack. Sweat stung the razor grass cuts on his arms as he struggled to keep up with the shadow of his CO. Vines and vegetation snagged his radio, tugged at his legs, sapping energy the way leeches sucked his blood.

Through the exertion, his eyes constantly flicked over the trail while his ears filtered the interwoven music of deep jungle. He had learned the habit of listening for wrong notes. Blood dripped onto the black stock of his weapon and each breath came harder than the last as he slipped through foliage crowding the mud trail.

With absurd abruptness, so close the small force momentarily froze, a firefight erupted: an overwhelmingly loud roar of many automatic weapons firing simultaneously with heavy explosions mixed in. It sounded as if a giant machine were chewing huge metallic gears to pieces. Wilson’s Third Platoon had walked into an ambush set up by the same NVA force they themselves had ambushed the night before.

Wilson turned to grab the radio handset from Dewey’s hands, establishing contact with the Third Platoon leader while ordering his men to quicken their pace. The nearby firefight escalated into a prolonged skirmish, sending a flock of white birds flickering through thick stands of bamboo and troops of monkeys screeching away through treetops.

Dewey was gasping for breath as the platoon burst into a clearing of flood-flattened elephant grass and splashed into a wide creek, swollen from last night’s rain. He thought the grass resembled mermaid hair as it waved gently under swift, crystal-clear water. Fatigue overcame adrenalin as they splashed across the clearing in a near run and re-entered the jungle at the mouth of a shallow ravine. He caught a faint whiff of cooking fish.

As they entered the creek’s narrow gully, Dewey glanced down at the bright crimson blood glistening on his arms. He hurried after Wilson, who had left the creek and was back on the winding trail, pulling Dewey along by the handset that was wired to the PRC-25 strapped to his pack. Sweat-soaked curls dripped from under his camouflaged helmet, framing a deeply tanned baby face from which hazel eyes continuously swept both sides of the trail.

The smell of fish grew suddenly strong.

He had no recollection of shrugging off his rucksack before hitting the ground in a bone-jarring belly flop, firing. The two platoons of young paratroopers fought back like a well-oiled military machine, simultaneously opening fire on the left bank as they dropped into what cover could be found. Dewey worked his M-16 like a hose, spraying magazine after magazine of .223 rounds into the lush fabric of the jungle-covered slope. The firing was coming down at them from the top of the bank.

The heavy thumps of a ChiCom .51-caliber heavy machine gun sounded over the high-pitched crackling of AK-47s and SKS carbines raking the line of young paratroopers laying prone in the ravine. A thin sapling exploded a foot over Dewey’s head, showering him with moist white splinters. The young troopers spewed a formidable barrage of fire up and down the bank. The enemy was unseen, so no one was aiming. The young paratroopers lay down a continuous field of fire that literally chewed up the upper part of the offending gully bank.

If Ma could see me now she’d have a heart attack, thought Dewey with detached clarity.

A wiry bantam rooster of a staff sergeant scurried down the line, man to man, swatting helmets, ordering troopers to cease fire, to conserve ammunition. Dewey was in the midst of emptying his seventh magazine when the sergeant slapped his helmet. He ceased fire, feeling his legs quiver, his heart pounding into the moist loam. For the moment the communist weapons seemed to have been silenced. The dreamlike spell vanished as he focused on empty M-16 magazines strewn around him.

Dewey stretched out, grabbed hold of his rucksack, and dragged it close. He kept his weapon trained up the gully bank with one hand while fumbling inside the ruck for fresh ammo. There was no more firing from the troopers under Wilson’s command, though he could hear Third Platoon still heavily engaged in their own firefight a few klicks away. He refilled empty magazines with one hand using stripper clips, the other resting his weapon over his ruck aimed at the top of the gully bank. His eyes felt telescopic, desperately seeking a target amid the tangled vegetation on the slope above.

His radio crackled with traffic. At least no one called for a medic.

Captain Wilson decided to send out two five-man probes, one from each end of the line, to investigate the top of the ravine. No one seemed eager to take point, so Dewey detached the main bulk of his rucksack so only his radio remained on the frame, then turned to start the climb up the steep bank. A tall sergeant from Texas named Emery fell in behind him, followed quickly by an M-60 gunner between two riflemen. Dewey’s senses had never seemed so acute as he crept up the hillside…nor had he ever felt so vulnerable. Spider holes were everywhere. He took his time, checking each hole for movement. A calmness enveloped him as he crept up the steep slope, his M-16 at the ready. This was what he had waited for, had dreamed of: to be the point of the spear. His ascent had no plan other than to advance; to engage the NVA, or to discover that they had already left.

Fifty meters up the slope, the hidden NVA opened fire point-blank on the probe. Dewey hit the ground rolling. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the M-60 gunner and the two riflemen, hunched over their weapons, do an abrupt about-face and scurry back down the slope. The sergeant lay ten feet from him. A meeting of the eyes told each other that neither was hit. Dewey lay in the open, not exactly...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.6.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-8217-X / 109838217X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-8217-9 / 9781098382179