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Lieutenant Wilson was near the front of Charlie Company’s column. By the time the re-act had arrived, he was out of grenades and into his second and last M16 bandolier. He also carried 250 spare rounds in his rucksack, but he’d fired all that and passed out the rest to the grunts around him in the ditch. The dog handler from Bravo Company met them along the path and led them back to where Bravo had reorganized. Every fifty feet, the German shepherd would alert to things in the tree lines, and the handler would have to break him from his point and keep moving. The NVA are there all right, Wilson thought, but if we don’t mess with them, they don’t look like they’re going to mess with us anymore tonight.

The columns were getting strung out.

By the time Captain King and Lieutenant Baird’s platoon had linked up with the rest of Bravo Company, it was dark. They reorganized along a path in the pitch-black. Private Tam and a buddy named Steve Larado were the last men in their platoon file. They whispered with the point men of the next platoon about what had gone on, until one of them suddenly said, “Hey, man, I think your platoon just took off.”

Tam turned around. No one was in sight.

They started down the trail, Tam in front, Larado a bit behind, growing more and more apprehensive when they realized their platoon was not just a few steps ahead. It was dark and the brush was higher than their heads on both sides of the path. Tam’s heart was beating furiously, hands clenched around his M16, expecting the worst. They walked slowly and softly, whispering into the black void, “Hey, hey, 2d Platoon.” There was no answer. About eighty yards into their terrified march, the trail forked. For no real reason, they took the left fork. They had crept about forty more yards when the path entered a clearing. They crouched in the bushes at the edge, ears straining until, hearing nothing, they decided to double back.

A squad leader stood invisible back at the fork, hissing in the dark, “Tam. Larado. Where are you guys?”

“Yeah, we’re right here.”

The squad leader whispered harshly, “What the hell’s the matter with you? You want to die or something?”

He led them about fifty yards up the right fork to where Bravo 1–46 had collected the dead of Charlie 4–31; they were wrapped in ponchos and tied with GI bootlaces to bamboo poles. All you could see were the jungle boots. Chilling. The men were scared, weary, depressed, their emotions amplified when Charlie Company linked up with them. Actually, they simply straggled past them on the trail to take the lead, and Bravo Company became the tail. A touch of panic was beginning to affect each of them. American soldiers were not trained to operate at night. The darkness belonged to the enemy, and the GIs were scared shitless.

Bravo and Charlie Companies were humping for Million Dollar Hill which, because the battalion was spread so thinly in two valleys, was defended only by Major Lee and three young soldiers. Two of the GIs were from Charlie Company; the third was an anonymous enlisted guy who Lee had grabbed at LZ West. The GI was not very inspired by the mission and sat down on the helipad, mumbling, “I’m not going out there.” Major Lee had to drag him physically onto the C&C Huey.

They were all alone on that hill in the middle of the night. Lee had them sitting at the four compass points, and he counselled them: “Don’t yell, don’t even talk, don’t fire at the boogyman, only shoot if you’ve got something in your sights.” As the night dragged on, though, he became nervous about his partners. He was afraid they might fire at nothing and give away their position or, worse yet, gun down the point men of Charlie Company as they approached. He finally took their M16s away, laid them in a pile with his own rifle, and sat down with the radio to lead Charlie Company to the hill.

They finally appeared out of the darkness.

Rocky Bleier, riding on the shoulders of the black soldier, must have thought the night was never going to end. He was in his own private torture. Each time his torn legs