chapter five
The various outcomes of the so-called Tet Offensive of January 1968 will be debated by historians for as long as students gather and talk about that pivotal year in America History. What had been an at-best tepid anti-war movement in America blossomed, after Tet, into the raging inferno of anti-establishment riots that shredded American society for the next three years. North Vietnam's coordinated assaults on more than one hundred US bases, as well as command and control facilities throughout Vietnam, terrified the military and galvanized the anti-war movement into taking increasingly bold acts of civil-disobedience, and in the immediate aftermath LBJ decided not to seek reelection. Like the forks on a bolt of lightning, repercussions then spread throughout American society and, indeed, around the world. You can think of RFKs assassination as just one of those forks, and the gunning down of protestors at Kent State University another, but it takes very careful study indeed to follow all the trails to their many unhappy conclusions. Looking back on those times now, most people still around might see Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's walk on the moon as the only bright spot in the nighttime worth remembering.
On the third day of the Tet Offensive, military planners gathered at the the White House and the Pentagon gave the go ahead to activate a desperate plan to decapitate the North's leadership with a very limited strike on a small leadership enclave northwest of Hanoi. Operation Headless Horseman would be carried out by a very specially modified Martin B-57G, one that had been modified to fly in the so-called 'night intruder' role, and it would carry a very small, very low-yield tactical nuclear device to it's intended target: a very secretive leadership compound located about fifty miles from Hanoi. Reconnaissance aircraft and radio intercepts were being used to closely monitor political movements, and the mission's timing was considered crucial to it's success.
The assigned aircraft took-off from Danang and turned to the west and then, once out of Vietnamese airspace, turned again to the north. The intended track would see the aircraft make it's attack run from the northwest and, hopefully, surprising the North's formidable air defenses, but before that could happen LBJ recalled the flight and thereby aborted the mission. While en route back to Danang, however, the aircraft encountered a SAM battery and sustained heavy damage, and before the aircraft could make it back to Vietnamese airspace it went down in the mountainous jungles of Laos, and on this event a singular part of our tale turns.
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Picture if you will a shallow valley, tree-lined for the most part, and along the valley floor a small river running through low, swampy brush. To the west of the valley a more rugged landscape of foothills gives way to serious coastal mountains, while to the southeast lay the city of Hué. Located in a clearing on the valley floor, during the war, was a small facility that looked somewhat like an old fort from the days of Cowboys and Indians, and in this fort were several US Army 'Green Berets' and a few hundred infantrymen from the South Vietnamese Army. These troops were positioned to guard a forward medical facility operated by the US Army, and this little fortification went by the name of C-Med. C-Med was one of the facilities targeted during the Tet Offensive because the doctors and medics stationed there were located very close to North Vietnam, and as a result serious casualties from the 'DMZ' operating area were often carried to C-Med to be stabilized. Many of the wounded had to be treated on the spot and then transported, usually to Danang but often to an aircraft carrier offshore, and many never left C-Med alive.
Surgeons plucked out of their residencies landed at C-Med if they were considered troublemakers or rebels, because C-Med was routinely attacked by Charlie -- as the Viet Cong operating in the region were derisively called, though the origins of the name have been somewhat obscured by time and distance. As a result many physicians based at C-Med were either killed outright or went out of their minds due to the unrelenting workload -- and the insane working conditions -- but more about that in due time.
But keep in mind this unrelenting workload was the norm before the Tet Offensive began, and continued long after. C-Med was considered a true trial-by-fire, and was considered the most dangerous forward medical facility in the Southeast Asian theater of operations.
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Harry Callahan's first operational assignment, after arriving at Phu Bai on 28 January 1968, was to fly a Medevac up to C-Med. Onboard with the medics was Doug Parish, MD, who Callahan had met the day before. Parish had been considered a talented young surgeon during his training; he was from Coos Bay, Oregon who now literally despised anything in green, most especially the Army's olive drab. And he hated most of all army officers wearing their own peculiar varieties of green; he variously called these creatures festering turds or rattlesnakes, depending on the current state of his inebriation -- to which he dated to his arrival in Vietnam. Parish had quickly been, as you might expect, posted to C-Med, and he had hoped to hop a ride out to C-Med that morning -- after failing to get arrested for calling a colonel a douche-bag, well, a fucking douche-bug, to his face. He had called the colonel that, and more, when the colonel had had the temerity to relieve Parish of a just-opened bottle of Johnny Walker Red -- at eight in the morning -- and when Parish spotted Callahan on the flight line he thought he might have some more fun... He climbed in Callahan's Huey and settled in behind the cockpit, and he didn't say a word until they were well on their way out to C-Med.
"Fingers still smell like Cat?" was the first thing Parish said to Callahan, and Harry turned, looked at Parish, then replied by dropping the collective and plastering Parish to the Huey's ceiling.
"I take that to be a resounding yes," Parish sighed as he pulled a flask filled with Bacardi 151 and took a long pull. "Want some more, Callahan, or is that best you got?"
Callahan dropped the collective and Parish barely grabbed a seatback in time to avoid the worst impact as he slammed into the floor.
Parish decided to drink in silence after that, though he looked past the door gunners at the passing treetops now just a few meters away. C-Med came into view above the trees a few minutes later, and Callahan circled the base once before coming in for a hard touchdown. The medics pushed Parish out the door and ran with him to one of the bunkers by the pad; the medics returned with several kids on stretchers and hung IV bottles on overhead trees while the gunners lashed the stretchers down, then one of the medics told Harry to get airborne as quickly as possible -- or words to that effect -- and by then Harry Callahan had completely forgotten about Doug Parish, MD.
He made three more flights to C-Med that first day on the flight line, and one more around midnight. Parish had his fingers in some kid's neck almost the entire trip to Danang, and he disappeared into an ambulance without saying so much as one 'fuck you' the entire trip.
And yet, when Callahan woke up and made his first flight back out to C-Med the next morning, there was Parish waiting on the flight line, waiting to catch a ride back out to the trenches.
"Hey Callahan," Parish called out as Harry walked up to his Huey, "eaten any good Cat lately?"
Harry stopped and felt for the 45 strapped to his hip; he pulled it out and walked over to Parish -- whose eyes went wide when Callahan unholstered the Colt. "You know what punk? How'd you like to eat some of this?"
"So? You headed up valley?" Parish said, quickly changing the subject as he sized up Callahan once again.
"Yeah, Meathead, I am."
"Mind if I grab a ride with you?"
"Well yes, Meathead, as a matter of fact I do."
"Okay, Callahan, you win. No more jokes."
"Get in," Harry rolled his eyes before he turned and walked out to his flutterbug, though Callahan ignored him as he and his co-pilot went through the pre-start checklist.
After they lifted-off Parish slid up close to the 'pit, his eyes scanning the countryside beyond the Huey, looking at all the foot traffic headed into the city. "Never seen so many people out here, Callahan. You hear anything yet?"
"No? Why?"
"I dunno, man. My nut sack is itching, and it usually only does that when Charlie is up to no fuckin' good..."
"Your nut sack...?" Callahan had just started to say when a volley of small arms fire slammed into the left side of the Huey, raking it from the cockpit to the tail; he heard one of the medics in back scream and saw his co-pilot slump over the controls. Parish got the other pilot out of his harness and dragged him back onto the floor while the other medic helped; the door gunners leaned out and began shooting at anything that moved. Callahan put the Huey down in the weeds, racing between trees for C-Med. He knew the approach well enough by now to slide in hard on his first attempt, which just happened to be when mortar rounds began landing inside the perimeter. A small herd of ambulatory wounded jumped in the back of the Huey and the gunners screamed "Go-go-go!" in unison; Harry lifted off and decided to head back to Phu Bai by another route -- but it was the same everywhere he tried. Streams of 'farmers' carrying AK-47s and RPGs lined all the roads and trails leading to Hué City, and many took potshots at the Huey so Callahan had his hands full all the way back to base.
Parish looked at the wounded medic while orderlies carried away his deceased co-pilot; another team hosed blood from the interior of the Huey while he looked over the damage to the 'bug with his crew chief. No engine damage, no rotor damage, so Callahan was good to go as soon as he could round up another co-pilot and get refueled.
Parish got back to the flight line just as Callahan and a new pilot, a green kid from West Texas named Don McCall, walked around the messed-up Huey.
"That don't look so good," McCall sighed after looking at the fifty or so bullet holes sprayed down the left side of the aircraft -- many through the co-pilot's blood-splattered door.
"Pretty fucked up morning all around," Parish said as he walked up to Callahan. "Can you get me up to C-Med without all the bullshit this time?"
"How's the kid," Harry asked, referring to the medic wounded earlier.
"Well, he won't be beatin' off with his right hand for a while," Parish said while beating the air, "but other than that he'll be fine."
"Jesus H Christ, Parish. Where'd you grow up? In a goddamn whorehouse?"
Parish grinned as he climbed back into the Huey, and he sat and watched as Callahan and the new kid worked the checklist and got the 'bug back in the air -- only now he observed there was literally almost no one out on the trails leading into or out of Hué City. Even the normal ebb and flow of real farmers was nowhere to be seen, and Parish started scratching between his legs the closer they got to C-Med.
The assault there had suddenly stopped too, just like somebody had decided to turn off a spigot and stop the flow of water. Parish hopped out of the flutterbug and ran off to surgery while Callahan help unload dozens of crates of supplies for the hospital, then orderlies loaded several body bags into the main cabin. Harry looked at the black bags like they were an accusation, but of what, or against who? Only a week in-country and he'd picked up on enough talk to have his doubts about what was going on over here, but this was war and war ain't too popular with men on the front lines.
He turned around and looked at the buzzing hive of activity, Vietnamese and Americans working side-by-side, but what were they fighting for? To keep the South free? If that was true why did northerners fight with such passion to unify their country? Why did the locals around the base look at all the round eyes with so much suspicion in their own? So, things just weren't adding up.
But in truth, about all Harry thought about was a little girl down in Saigon, and now, after just a few days away he positively ached to see her, and to hold her again. Yet even so another little girl was never far from mind.
But like walking inside a giant trap, the coiled spring of the Tet Offensive had gathered around Harry Callahan and his little Cat, and the trap was then just a few hours from slamming shut.
