Jade Cross Book 2: Before the Adventure

By Harold Weist

Master Gunnery Sergeant Travis Tolbane, USMC (Ret.) has been enjoying his retirement, not knowing he is about to embark on his most dangerous journey. He found a place to live in Mount Juliet and a desirable job as a mall security manager in Nashville, Tennessee, after leaving his beloved Corps. He finds what he believes will be the love of his life. He's not aware that her life is in serious danger due to his catching a thief while serving in Vietnam. The thief eventually becomes the leader of all snatch-and-grab gangs in Middle Tennessee. His obsession of hate for Tolbane drives his life to fulfill his obsession of cutting Tolbane to death, luring him through Tolbane's love for the lovely Kaila Al Noor. Will this be Tolbane's demise or something else?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885052955

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Before the Adventure

~JADE CROSS TRILOGY~

BOOK 2

H

AROLD

W

EIST

Copyright © 2022 Harold Weist

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 979-8-88505-293-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88505-295-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

The Passion for Self-Sacrifice

1965

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

The Jade Cross

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I dedicate books 2 and 3 to all of my Marine acquaintances and to all who have served in the service of our country, especially during my service time. The Vietnam Recreation Center especially. I’m sure many of you can relate to some of the chapters in the next two books. Where would we be without memories past?

None of the character names or situations in the books reflect any one I served with. Am I reflected in the books? I’ll never tell!

JADE CROSS BOOK 1

Trek for the Cross

At the end of the sixteenth century in Dai Viet, what was recently known as North Vietnam, a devotee to the secret No Name Society began an assignment to receive what would take him to China for the No Name Society. The devotee, Truong Van Ba, began the perilous trek to receive a Jade Cross from a Chinese master cutter, a Mr. Hu, along with a secret document related to the Chinese intentions for Dai Viet, to invade or not to. Along the way, there were sub hamlets where he would receive an update on the safety issues along his route. At one, he was assigned a young and beautiful sixteen-year-old guide, Tran Thi Mot. Both took an immediate dislike for each other. She was assigned to Van Ba as the route had been changed, and he would never choose to work with a woman. It was a Vietnamese man thing.

In addition to enduring many hardships during the trek, robbers, murderers, and anti-No Name enemies wanting the icon for themselves were encountered, and battles were fought. Once the Jade Cross was obtained, they were joined along the way by two allies. Many hardships were encountered until the icon was placed into the hand of the No Name leader, Nguyen Hai. During the trek, love evolved between the two protagonists. Van Ba and Mot could not have known that their trek and acquiring the Jade Cross would spur an adventure in the twentieth century, beginning and ending in Vietnam.

JADE CROSS BOOK 2

Before the Adventure

Master Gunnery Sergeant Travis Tolbane USMC (Ret.) had served in Vietnam twice during the conflict. He and his interpreter, Nguyen Ba, had been on several operations during his first tour. He was lucky to have had Ba assigned to him on his second tour also. They became fast friends, bonded for life because of several incidents during military operations.

After one miserable operation during cold and driving monsoon rains, Tolbane caught a thief, a rouge Marine private, attempting to steal merchandise from a mini PX situated in a Conex box at a military enclave on the combat base at Chu Lai, Republic of Vietnam. The thief cursed Tolbane, swearing revenge on him for pushing his face into mud. Tolbane had not the least idea that this thief would be his bane after military life, even costing him his first true love.

Tolbane had settled in a small town called Mount Juliet in Tennessee. He found a house there and a job as a mall security manager in Nashville. The thief had become the overall boss of several smash-and-grab gangs in Middle Tennessee area and was headquartered in Nashville. The thief found out that his sworn enemy, Travis Tolbane, was the mall security manager. Along with his secretary and lover, Soapy, he engineered havoc that affected Tolbane; his friend Detective Parnell, who had served with Tolbane in Vietnam on a couple of patrols; and mall employees from a blotched fake shooting to kidnaping and murder and taking the life of Tolbane’s love.

Neither Travis Tolbane nor his friend Sergeant Parnell could know that after the thief was taken down, their friendship would later lead to an adventure that began on a patrol in Vietnam in mid-1966 near Hoi An City and end with the taking down of a vicious Vietnamese piquerist, who had formed a bogus No Name cult in the States and believed he was the reincarnation of an ancient adored Vietnamese general. He had a hatred for Tolbane and his live-in Vietnamese lover, the beautiful Mai, and the whole incident would climax in Vietnam.

JADE CROSS BOOK 3

The Jade Cross

Going home from his job as the mall security manager at Perkins mall in Nashville, Tennessee, for the day, Travis Tolbane, retired master gunnery sergeant, USMC, was ambushed by Vietnamese thugs. It was a close call, and he was lucky that Metro Police was close at hand. Then shortly after that, on the same night, he discovered his friend and former interpreter, Ba, had been murdered by a horrendous method known as death from a thousand cuts and was staked out like a cross on his kitchen floor.

Various information and incidents led the group, now four, to a Vietnamese priest who had been targeted also. He joined them in believing the attacks stemmed from a Marine patrol in 1966 in which Tolbane and Parnell were a part, where a bejeweled Jade Cross was found and then reburied. They also realized the incidents were for a mad Masked Man’s cause, who thought he was the reincarnation of Tran Hung Dao, a famous Vietnamese general from the end of the thirteenth century and still revered. It was a drive to recover an iconic jeweled Jade Cross, take the beautiful Mai for his lover, kill her love and friends that he hated with a passion, and reunite all of Vietnam under his power, with Mai ruling beside him, along with his bogus No Name Society doing the dirty work.

Tolbane’s friend Sergeant Parnell of the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department (MNPD) and Tolbane’s Vietnamese lover, Mai, half sister to Ba, received several threats and attempts on their physical well-being over a several-day period. They then learned another previous nonactive-duty Marine acquaintance was brutalized in the same manner as Ba.

After a friend of Mai’s was brutally beaten and raped, the four tracked and followed the mad Masked Man to Hawaii and Hong Kong, where he had left a trail of blood, and finally to Hoi An City in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, where he continued to spill blood.

Their quest for the Jade Cross and putting an end to the murderous piquerist, Masked Man, would be aided by a powerful Vietnamese ally who was once Tolbane’s prisoner during the Vietnamese conflict. Will the four friends find the real No Name Society and, along with their ally, succeed in stopping the Masked Man’s cause and finding the precious jeweled Jade Cross, or will Vietnam be their ultimate fate?

THE PASSION FOR SELF-SACRIFICE

The Warriors

Any fighting unit must have a limited and specific objective, and the more defined and bound it is, the greater the willingness as a rule, on the part of the soldiers to abandon their natural desire for self-preservation.

—H. Lehman Carlyle

1965

Republic of South Vietnam

It was late November of 1965. SSgt Travis Tolbane was uncomfortable on the fold-down bench, pipe frame seats, and backs with cloth strips crisscrossed and stretched between the pipes as the aircraft hit a small area of light turbulence, causing minor vibrating of the craft. He was turned slightly to his right with his knees against a huge packing crate, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean between Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma, Okinawa, and Da Nang, Quang Nam Provence, Republic of Vietnam. The whole center of the C-130 cargo plane was loaded with huge crates piled a little higher than his head and extended nearly to the seating area on each side of them. They were bound for the war zone in the Republic of Vietnam. He was not alone in this discomfort.

Marines he didn’t know were seated along both sides of the interior of the craft and were as cramped up as he. The thing that puzzled him was that most troops were being transported by jet passenger aircraft or by the sea for whole units to the conflict zone. Why not him? He was feeling it strange, too, that this craft left from MCAS Futenma. He had been with Marine Air Group 16, First Marine Air Wing, a helicopter unit, when it moved from the old WWII-era hospital Camp Mercy to the newly constructed Air Station in 1960. He had flown in choppers many times, but never in a prop-driven C-130 transport loaded to its capacity droning along. He wondered how in the hell he ended up in this cramped situation in what seemed to be a lumbering airplane, half scaring the crap out of him.

After he graduated from boot camp, he went through advanced combat training at the First Infantry Training Regiment (ITR) at Camp Geiger, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He served thirty days of mess duty to start then a training cycle. When the training cycle was complete, the newly promoted PFC found himself sitting in front of a gunny sergeant in the Regimental Headquarters. The gunny informed him his MOS had been changed from infantry to clerical as two clerks had been transferred out and they were in need of fresh blood. While clerking at ITR, he learned to type and the ins and outs of Marine Corps procedure manuals, the Landing Party Manual, NAV MCs, and others. He developed various methods of helping fellow Marines with their administrative problems. He excelled in his tasks and received two meritorious promotions before his transfer to Okinawa.

When he rotated back to the States, he was now an E-5 sergeant. He was tired of clerical work and took a Foreign Language Aptitude Test and scored higher than the average individual. When informed of his passing the test, he was required to fill out a form indicating what three languages he preferred to study. He found himself attending the US Army Language School, which later became the Defense Language Institute, West Coast Branch, in the Middle Eastern Language Division, studying the Arabic language. So much for wanting to learn German, Spanish, or French.

A year later, he was on the Second Composite Interrogation Team at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, which later became the Second, Fourth, and Sixth ITTs. Until he received orders to Vietnam, he had kept himself immersed in Middle Eastern history and present affairs and even had a temporary assignment in Morocco. He made staff sergeant the first time he was eligible.

Nearly six hours after takeoff, they were on the final approach to the Da Nang airstrip. Over the intercom, they were informed by the pilot to fasten their seat belts as well as of a possibility of sniper fire hitting the plane on the approach and landing. On touchdown, they were to grab their gear and, when the ramp was lowered by a crewman, to get off the plane as quickly as possible and run hell-bent to the terminal building if they wanted to keep from getting dinged with a lucky shot from some Victor Charley (VC)¹ sniping at them from afar. They were to line up at the Marine New Arrivals counter, have a copy of their orders in hand to check in, and get their unit assignments and transportation instructions.

This made Tolbane wonder even more about what he had gotten into. It wasn’t the run to the building or the carrying of gear that got to him. It was the godawful heat and mugginess that hit him and the others when the ramp came down. He did feel better though when he felt he was safe in the terminal building even though it was hot and muggy in there too. There was some confusion with the Marines digging out a copy of their orders they had stashed in their gear to start with, and then they were in line to hurry up and wait behind an empty counter, and to wait was the Marine Corps standard procedure.

After checking in those going to units outside of the Da Nang area, were told where to wait for pickups outside of the terminal. The rest, including Tolbane, were sent to a tent area, a few GP tents (general purpose) with folding cots where they would receive their in-country orientation and briefings to prepare them for their tour. It became basically classes on what not to do, how not to get your butt kicked out of country, and how it would affect their military careers. This was on his second day there, and after the orientation, he sat around in the tent, sweating to the extreme even though the tent sides were rolled up, except when he went to chow, until midday of the third day. Then a jeep pulled up to the tent, and Tolbane met one of his future teammates. He was told to grab his gear and climb aboard, and he was transported to his team’s command post.

He had a little problem in the beginning of his tour adjusting to the questioning of prisoners as he had no knowledge at all of not only Vietnamese language and culture, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, popular forces and the Vietcong, exactly what was really happening in the skirmishes the troops were having, the terrain, the location of the various hamlets, sub hamlets, the actual way the people lived, worked, and how they were caught up between the two sides of the conflict. The fact that the military maps weren’t dependable didn’t help any either. He worked hard to ply his trade working with various Vietnamese Army (ARVN) interpreters assigned to his team. He learned a lot about Vietnamese history and their traditions. The one thing he was really surprised at was the fact that they were testing the use of a polygraph operator on certain VCS/VCC (Vietcong confirmed / Vietcong suspects).

Soon he found himself feeling confident in his ability, especially when working with an interpreter named Ba. A month and a half after arriving in Da Nang, he was assigned to one of the sub-teams assigned to the Seventh Marine Regiment at the Chu Lai Combat Base. Ba was sent with him. The sub-team’s CP was a tent at the military police’s (MP) captive collection point just off the end of the runway, and they lived in hardback tents on top of what seemed to be a sand dune. It was their billeting area overlooking the China Sea coastline and parts of the combat base.

He and Ba had great success in their endeavors there. He worked well with the Regimental S2 Shop while being on several operations with the Seventh Marines down in Quang Ngai Province, close to Quang Ngai City. It wasn’t long until the intelligence officer was asking for Tolbane and Ba rather than one of the other interrogators. They depended on Tolbane and Ba’s extraction of vital information on the operations from Vietcong suspects and those confirmed as Vietcong as well as interviewing the local people.

It had been a few months since he had wondered what the hell he was doing there. Having a work ethic was not a problem with him. He had always dedicated himself to his work since boot camp where they were immersed from before dawn as in zero dark thirty hours to taps at 2200 hours. His major concern was when being transported to and from Quang Ngai Province in two-and-a-half-ton trucks and whether or not they would be ambushed by the enemy. So far, only a couple of trucks had hit land mines. As fortune would have it, the vehicles were empty of troops, and the drivers and their assistant drivers only received minor wounds because a rear tire had hit the mine. For the first time, he saw UH-1 Huey helicopter gunships. His only experiences with helicopters was the UH-34s of MAG 16. The UH-1s were buzzing around overhead for their protection while the convoy was held up. He had had no idea they were even there before the rear of the truck hit the mine.

When the next staff NCO promotion list came out, Tolbane found he was promoted to gunnery sergeant. All of his team except himself, Ba, a corporal, and his interpreter had returned to their Da Nang CP, leaving them alone in their compound. Sometime in late, May he and Ba returned to Da Nang. Their temporary assigned duty (TAD) had been terminated as the First Marine Division Headquarters had arrived in March and now had their own interrogation translation team, which Tolbane had helped orient and train in the art of interrogation as well as the current situation, including sociological makeup of the people and the geography of the area. The new team was fresh out of a six-month Vietnamese course at language school and had no prior intelligence training. They knew as much about Vietnam as he had known on his arrival in country.

His promotion warrant was waiting for him on his arrival at Da Nang. After receiving it, he and the other team staff NCOs grabbed the team’s jeeps and went to the Army’s Take Ten Club in Da Nang for his wetting down party. Of course, he had to foot the bill as the celeb of the party, and he received the tacking on of his new rank by senior staff NCOs, which consisted of being punched on each upper arm by the others as hard as they could, leaving one with sore biceps and bruises for a day or two or three. Such was another great Marine Corps tradition. He was taken into one of the jeeps when the wetting down was over and taken back to the team CP and tossed onto his cot.

PROLOGUE

Vietnam, early 1966, before the Jade Cross adventure

Reminisced! That’s exactly what retired Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant Travis Tolbane and his former ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) interpreter and friend, Nguyen Ba, had done before Ba left Tolbane’s security manager’s office at Perkins Mall in Nashville, Tennessee. They had only been reunited by accident one day when Ba was shopping at the mall a couple weeks before. This had been Ba’s second visit to his office since they found each other, and they were maudlin for a few minutes before talking about the times they had during the Vietnam conflict. Good times and bad ones.

They briefly mentioned a few incidents they were involved in, except for the time Tolbane saved Ba’s half sister, Nguyen Thi Mai, from being raped at age ten in Saigon. For some reason or another, that situation was not mentioned. When Ba brought up a certain night, which was nasty, rainy, cold, and miserable, they both felt a little chill go up their spine just remembering it.

Tolbane replied that he remembered it too well and quipped to Ba, It’s like the beginning of Charles Shultz’s Snoopy Dog’s novel when Snoopy writes his beginning of it, which is about it being a dark and stormy night.

Ba laughed and answered, You got that right, Sarge! It was a dark and stormy night and raining like it was pounding on a gator’s back.

The sub-team they belonged to was on temporary assignment to the Seventh Marine Regiment at Chu Lai, Vietnam, and the sub-team was located at the captive collection point along with the military police unit, just off the south end of the airstrip. It was monsoon season. There was nothing but everlasting pouring and drenching rains. Besides, the problem of trying to get dry and staying dry was most important. Everything around their quarters had a pungent smell of dampness and mildew. Nothing ever seemed to dry out. The seasonal rains also brought a chilling effect opposite to the subtropic heat of the dry months. One day, during the late afternoon, they received word from their sub-team commander to pack up what gear they needed as they would be set up in Bình Sơn District headquarters building, again, on an operation and to report to the Seventh Marines Regimental S-2/S-3 Shop, ASAP!

They gathered their weapons, packs, flak jackets, ponchos, and gear, which consisted of extra ammo, flashlights, pencils, clipboards, report forms, field message books, rubber ladies,² some extra C rations, matches, and heat tabs in a waterproof bag with drawstrings. One of their sub-teammates drove them in their open-air jeep over some paved and some muddy roads in a driving rain. Their sub-team was one of the only Marine units still using jeeps as opposed to the jeep substitute, the Mighty Mite, which the Corps had adapted, in the drenching rain to their destination. They arrived and grabbed their soaking wet gear and moved quickly into the S-2/S-3 hardback tent. Once inside, they were given a semi-hot cup of stale coffee and received an up-to-date briefing on the operation. They would be a part of, named appropriately, Operation Mud Flats, and they would be supporting the Regimental S-2.³ Three companies of the Seventh Regiment’s First Battalion were in contact with a large Vietcong Main Force unit supported by a reinforced local village guerrilla force a little west of the Bình Sơn District headquarters building. The regiment brought one company from each of the Second and Third Battalions and would set up its headquarters a ways to the left of the district headquarters.

Two hours later, Tolbane and Ba were riding in the regimental headquarters convoy in an uncovered six-by-six truck, the sides up, only protected from the rain by their helmets, flak jackets, and ponchos. It was going to be a long, boring, bumpy, wet ride. They would be shivering and drenched until they reached the warm, dry comfort of the Bình Sơn District headquarters.

The Bình Sơn District headquarters was a large stucco building with offices, jail cells, and interrogation rooms. Tolbane and Ba figured they would sleep in one of the interrogation rooms as they had done on other occasions. It was nearly nightfall when they arrived, and the regimental CP (command post) would be set up in large GP⁴ tents about seven hundred yards to the west on the peak of a rise with a mild slope down to the district building. As Tolbane and Ba were being dropped off at the building, they could barely see the tents going up west of them in the heavy downpour and troops being posted as guards. They were glad they would be inside the building and be somewhat warm and dry. Taking their gear inside, they were in for a disappointment of the worst kind for that moment in time. They were greeted by a district ARVN⁵ sergeant, who pointed out to them that there wouldn’t be any interrogation rooms available for them as an ARVN unit filled the building.

Alas, alack, a reinforced platoon of ARVN soldiers had taken refuge from the rain for the night until they received word on their mission. They would pack up and move out the next morning when transportation arrived. The two could see the troops were crashed out all around the place, on floors, desks, gear spread all around, you name it. The ARVN sergeant offered his humblest apology and informed them they could use the bunker facing the west as it wasn’t manned that night because of the Marines setting up their CP and having guards posted on a slope in that direction. Both Tolbane and Ba knew of the defensive bunker, having been at the district building a few times before. They were not impressed. They grudgingly grabbed their gear and headed through the torrential rain, sloshing to the bunker to make themselves at home for the night.

The bunker was about twenty-five yards from the building. Its pit was about four feet deep, ten feet by six feet. It was sandbagged another three feet high around three sides with firing ports, leaving the side toward the building open for entry. Logs had been placed on the top and then covered with sandbags and dirt on top of the bags to protect from grenades. Because of the monsoon rains, the ARVN had put a kind of eve around the top to help keep as much water out as possible. When the two entered it, the ground was damp. At least it was not a muddy mess, but it had a sour smell to it. As usual, its previous occupants had not been really tidy, and they threw out a few pieces of garbage and trash. They dropped their and then climbed in, Ba almost sliding into it because of the mud around it.

Their first task was blowing up their rubber ladies.⁶ Their lungs were the duty air compressors. It was a little harder to blow them up than normal since they were wet, chilled, and shaking. They finally got them inflated, laid out their extra ammo just in case, then arranged their gear where it would, they hoped, stay the driest. Then they discussed whether or not to take turns standing guard during the night. They decided since the regimental headquarters had a Marine platoon placed on guard close by, they decided it was safe enough to get what sleep they could under the miserable conditions. because they had no idea how long they might be up the next day. They lay down on the rubber ladies, wrapped up in their ponchos, which were already wet inside because of the condensation from their body heat and their flak jackets. There would be no warmth that night. They shivered and talked for a while then drifted off to sleep.

For a few hours, they had slept fitfully, waking up, shivering, turning over, listening to the pouring rain, then falling back to sleep again. Such was the misery any army’s troops would face in in the field during that kind of weather. It was about three thirty in the morning when all hell broke loose. In addition to his issue Colt 45 cal. APC, Model 1911 A1 semiautomatic, Tolbane carried an M-14 rifle he had scrounged up, and Ba had an M2 30 cal. carbine with the automatic selector switch. They woke with a start at the sounds of M-60 machine guns and M-14 fire from the Marines, some unidentified weapons shooting at the Marines, and some grenades exploding. The sounds of small arm weapons were nearly muted by the sound of the monsoon rains consistently pounding the earth. It was one hell of a night for anyone to have a firefight.

The two grabbed their weapons and manned the gunports, awed at the light show of the tracer rounds from both sides on their flights. Almost immediately, two ARVNs with an old US 30 cal. machine gun and two boxes of ammo jumped into the pit, pushed them aside, and set up their gun. Needless to say, it was overcrowded as hell. Other ARVNs had manned the building perimeter in the prone position and driving rain. This chaos went on for about an hour before there was a ceasefire order given to the Marines. The VC had withdrawn. All the deployed ARVNs went back into the building, and Tolbane and Ba continued their fitful sleep for a couple of hours more.

Around 0630 hrs., Tolbane woke and told Ba to remain in the bunker and get some more sleep. He left the bunker and trudged up the slope in mud and rain to the S-2/S-3 GP tent to find out what had happened during the night and what the plan of the day was. He found out about the attack by reading a sit rep⁷ lying on a field desk there. He learned that an undetermined size Vietcong force had tried to attack the regimental CP, not knowing that side of the perimeter had been reinforced by a returning scouting patrol during the night. The attacking force was of undetermined size but believed to be more than thirty attackers. Ten VC bodies with arms were found. And thank goodness, only three Marines were slightly wounded during the melee.

A second lieutenant named Hobbs, the assistant S-2 officer, was on duty along with a couple of S-2 clerks. He apologized to Tolbane about his and Ba’s situation at the district building, stating he hadn’t known about the ARVN platoon taking over the building for the night.

Tolbane replied, That’s okay, sir. Forget about to do or die. Ours is only to do and shake and shiver in the rain.

The lieutenant smiled. He was familiar with Tolbane’s witless quips on occasion. He asked Tolbane, still a staff sergeant, if he’d like to make a cup of C ration coffee while he was there. Tolbane declined as he hadn’t relieved his bladder yet. He realized he should have done that first. Now he needed to keep his legs crossed for good measure.

He was about to dash out of the back of the tent to relieve the situation for God and country, not counting his own comfort. He learned from Lt. Hobbs that one platoon from B 1/7 Company had two captives, but it would probably be around 0900 hrs. before they would arrive at the district headquarters. The lieutenant then briefed him on what the operation was about.

The First Battalion only had three companies operating on the sweep of an area. One company, Charley, was guarding the battalion’s enclave back in the Chu Lai area. The battalion was conducting a sweep of an area with two companies up and one in reserve. There had been reports of a large reinforced VC main force unit operating in that area and forcing the people in various sub-hamlets to cook and feed them, support them as ordered, pay rice tax, and whatever else was needed.

To begin with, two platoons, each of Able and Bravo Companies, had been ambushed with several casualties, nothing serious, no KIAs, and the reserve company had been snipped at. Then suddenly, most of the Bn. was engaged under fire by the large unit. Two more companies, Fox Trot and Lima, were being transported in from the Second and Third battalions at Chu Lai to reinforce the besieged Bn., either as a blocking force or as double envelopment maneuver, not sure which one at this time.

Later in the morning, the ARVN platoon, reinforced by one M60 machine gun squad, a thirty-caliber machine gun team, and two extra M79 grenadiers, would try to get in position to provide security on one flank and help evacuate some of their wounded to a zone where the medivac helicopters could land. Everything was quiet in the contact area during the miserable night. The only action happening during the night had been the failed haphazard try at overrunning their regimental CP by a VC force of unknown size. That was the gist of the update for time being.

It’s really quiet out there right now, but I guess it’ll start up again pretty soon as usual, the second lieutenant opined. Tolbane agreed.

After the briefing, Tolbane quickly left out the rear of the tent and took care of his much-needed bladder business for god and country in the rain. Emitting a huge sigh and feeling greatly relieved, he hurried back to their bunker to brief Ba on what had happened during the night’s melee and when to expect their first captive’s arrival at the district headquarters.

Approaching the bunker, he saw the ARVN unit saddling up in front of the district building, loading their gear on trucks and preparing to move out in the still driving and torrential rain. After seeing how these troops had respond to the firefight during the night, he wasn’t nearly as pissed as he had been about their taking up the whole district building. Now he thought about what those poor devils might be going into. Who knows when they’d finally get out of the rains again? And for that matter, how many of them would make it back from the operation safe and sound today?

Very seldom had Tolbane ever felt so maudlin about the ARVN deployments. Seeing them respond to the situation during the night in the rain gave him a little more respect for those troops. Tolbane suddenly snapped back to reality. Their current situation had to be paramount in