The Fog Of War

However, the past cannot be changed.  I fought alongside Major Anthony many times.  I was at the ceremonies when he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and then to Colonel.  His missions were almost always devastatingly successful.  According to the rumors told to us by locals, the Viet Cong placed a bounty on him.  Eddie was famous.

 

Because of our friendship, I became a student of American culture.  He taught me how to shoot pool at the officer’s club.  An odd game, but an interesting exercise in geometry.  We became regulars at the base theater.  After the movies, I would have a list of questions for Eddie.  America is a strange and wonderful place.  I did not understand much of what I saw.

 

I particularly enjoyed the westerns.  My favorite was A Fistful Of Dollars.  I began to associate Major Anthony with the kind of characters Clint Eastwood portrayed.  The gunslinger no one could defeat, yet a man who clearly had his own issues to deal with.  I thought about the nickname he had given me, and decided to return the favor.  He would be known as Eastwood someday.  I just needed a good reason.

 

Another movie we watched together was Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer.  A few months later, in April, 1967, Major Anthony and I were in the first wave of Operation Daniel Boone.

 

For those of you who are too young to remember, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a series of roads and trails between North and South Vietnam.  The various routes ran along the western border of the two countries, and included branches that ran through neighboring Laos and Cambodia.  It was a means for enemy soldiers to infiltrate from the north, as well as a route to transport supplies. 

 

The Trail would prove to be a thorn in the side of the American and South Vietnamese forces throughout the war.  The Americans had been bombing the trail, even in supposedly neutral Laos and Cambodia, for more than two years.  While many people were killed by the bombs, they were replaceable.  It doesn’t take a lot of training to carry things on your back.  The bombing impeded the flow of goods and soldiers, but never for very long.

 

Operation Daniel Boone was a reconnaissance effort.  Not only was the Ho Chi Minh Trail used as a road, we knew the North had actually set up bases in some of the villages along the Trail in Laos and Cambodia.  They went to great lengths to blend in and match their activities to those of the locals.  From a satellite photo, or cameras mounted on the airplanes, we would not be able to tell.  A hut where enemy soldiers are hiding does not look different from one occupied with Cambodian farmers.  That was where people like me and Major Anthony earned our pay.

 

The bulk of the mission went flawlessly.  We gathered quite a bit of intelligence and were on the march out.  The only thing that had gone wrong was that Major Anthony had come down with a cold.  He had a fever and his sinuses were draining.  He was miserable.  When you are in the field, there is no time for rest.  We were retracing our steps to the extraction point.  Then all hell broke loose.

 

Sometimes, a battle will announce itself in advance.  If Alexander the Great’s army is on the way to your village, you’ll know before they get there.  Sometimes, you don’t see it coming.  A quiet walk through the dense jungle of Southeast Asia can turn into a desperate firefight in an instant.

 

If you say “fog of war” to me, I will immediately think of that battle.  We were halfway between the Cambodian town of Krong Kracheh and the South Vietnamese border.  One moment, we are moving as quietly and quickly as we can.  Then, bullets are coming at us from multiple directions.  Men are screaming as they are shot.  We had walked into a group of well-hidden soldiers.  Those of us who escaped the initial volley dispersed in every direction.  Men took up firing positions wherever there was a protected spot. 

 

I found a fallen log to hide behind, then began killing my enemy. 

 

Our soldiers were better trained and better armed.  After the initial advantage of surprise had expired, the battle began to shift our way.  The jungle got quieter as enemy soldiers fell and their guns went silent.  After 20 minutes of intense combat, it was over.  The surviving enemy had retreated.

 

Then I realized, Major Anthony was not at my side.  My first assumption was that he was dead or wounded.  We administered first aid to those who were bleeding, and collected the dog tags of the dead.  My friend was nowhere to be found.  Somehow, he had gotten separated from us during the battle.  I spent an hour searching the area.  I found nothing.  I discussed options with the CO.

 

My immediate reaction was to spend the rest of my life searching the jungles of Cambodia for Major Anthony, if that was what it would take.  But I knew that was not practical.  We had wounded men who needed assistance.  We had a long day’s march ahead of us before we reached the extraction point.  We were down to the last of our supplies.  And the enemy knew our location.  They would regroup and come looking for us, probably in much greater numbers.  We had to keep moving.

 

I decided, when I got back to the base, I would lobby for a rescue mission.  If that was not approved, I would steal whatever supplies I needed, go AWOL, and return to Cambodia by myself.  I would find my friend, or perish in the effort.