Loon - Jack McLean [42]
That evening, we ate cold, wet C rations and tried to find a dry spot to sleep. Most of us had ponchos, but they were of little use. The water running below us made the water from above bearable by comparison. The fighting holes quickly filled with rain. Our first priority was to keep our weapons and ammo dry, clean, and serviceable. Our personal comfort was a far distant second.
Enemy mortars found us early and stayed all night. None of us slept. The previous day had been spent humping up and down hills, through rice paddies, across the Trace, and into the far northern stretches of the DMZ. We had nothing left to give, but we kept on giving. There would be three more days of this—humping, digging in, setting perimeters, and lying in the rain until the sun finally came out and ever so slowly began to dehydrate our clammy bodies, clothes, and equipment.
The DMZ looked like the surface of the moon. There were huge craters from the B-52S and artillery strikes. A horrible stench of cordite from the bombs hung over the landscape. However, despite our location, despite the occasional incoming mortars, we were in fact fortunate to have neither made contact with the enemy nor taken any casualties.
We changed positions with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment on December 4. Holes had already been dug and lines of fire were well established, so the transfer was not difficult. That night was quiet. We sent out ambushes and listening posts, set out claymore mines and booby traps, and adhered to a normal watch schedule.
The following night, several squads from Alpha Company went out on ambushes, so we manned their lines as well. There was some movement outside the lines, several grenades were thrown by us, and we sent up the occasional illumination flare to see if we could see anything out of the ordinary. Alpha sprang both of their ambushes to little avail and, after igniting a green pop-up flare, safely reentered the lines around midnight.
The following morning, given the activity, we were put on full alert—my first since arriving in country. I carefully looked for anything that I could see outside the line and studied each of my fellow marines inside for guidance on how to react. This wasn’t infantry training. This was the real deal. Here, as we had been told over and over and over again, mistakes cost lives.
Delta Company went out on a company-size patrol to the west and we stood their lines on the east side of the perimeter. All was quiet. We wrote letters home and cleaned our weapons. We could hear Delta Company, perhaps a thousand meters out, giving and getting small-arms fire and mortars. They returned several hours later. Near the end of the column, we noticed several marines carrying a body in a loosely wrapped poncho.
A rigid hand protruded from one side.
He was one of us.
He was dead.
My stomach turned and my heart began to race. Hours before he had been one of many heading off on a routine patrol, and now he was dead. I felt lonely, frightened, and very vulnerable. It could have been any one of them or any one of us.
Dead.
I redoubled my concentration to be certain that I was not missing any movement outside of the lines or an order within. All that I could do was rely on my training and those marines around me. That raised my confidence slightly, but had little impact on the unbridled fear that I felt.
Later in the afternoon, resupply choppers came in bringing mail and chow. I got a letter from my mother—my first from home—and devoured it. I read it over and over trying to extract every ounce of love and support that she could transmit.
The weather was chilly and damp, but it wasn’t raining.
Suddenly came the cry of “Incoming!” We could hear the now distinctive sounds of the mortar tubing in the background. We scrambled for cover in any available hole, pulling as many fellow marines in with us as we could. After the first barrage, we scattered to our own holes to secure the lines