The Trail

“For the times they are a-changin'”—Bob Dylan

That a dog could undo something that had withstood the draft riots of the Civil War and the resistance to Korea, Vietnam and two World Wars is patently ridiculous. Yet that’s what began to be felt in Charlie Company after Bob took point at 0745 on April 6, 1970, a few miles from the Cambodian border.

Circling overhead in his tiny scout helicopter, Battalion Lt. Col. Trobaugh thought he had the ideal LZ (landing zone) for the lift ships (helicopters) to pluck us out of an area real bushy and heavy.

After a short while, Bob walked across an old Armored Personnel Carrier track and emerged onto a single-lane dirt road lined by thick vegetation on both sides. Footprints in the mud jumped up and hit him between the eyes. “Fresh NVA (North Vietnamese Army) slicks!”

He was standing smack dab on the Ho Chi Minh Trail! The squad stopped. The platoon stopped. Bob ushered us back into the safety of the bush.

Of all things, we had a new CO, Capt. Al Rice, 24, ranger and gungho martinet. We were suspicious of our new boss. He had a reckless air and been acting odd—not stoppin’ soon enough to set up an adequate night defensive position and makin’ map reading mistakes—friendly artillery might rain down any minute! Why didn’t he tell us that we were about to encounter one of the most dangerous and challenging passages anywhere in the world, where there's no God?

We were used to Capt. Jackson, 29, and his wise old ways. SP4 John Schultz’s feelings were typical. “Our old captain was like a father to our big family. I don't know—you get used to the ways of one man and then you have to change all over again. I dunno, it's sorta like moving from one house to the other and having a different father. This doesn't work right for a long time.”

Capt. Jackson had formulated his rules of war from a crafty ol’ South Vietnamese colonel: how the enemy thinks, how to keep your people safe, how to fight the enemy on your terms. Scrupulous, time-tested methods which had served us so well the last five months.

Here he is in his own words: “We’ve taken casualties. The people in the company, I’m sure, realize that we take a lot less casualties than other people and they see reasons. Like, we don't use trails. We try to do things with logic. If you want to find gooks, there's no problem finding ‘em. You can just walk right down a trail and you'll eventually find him but it'll be on his terms. So it's just the way we operate. People in this company, I think they realize they have an appreciation for me. But, like I say, I’m super cautious when the time comes to be cautious.”

And wouldn’t you know it, a three-man CBS crew was in bed with us, too. Kay and Clevenger got the camera rolling and John Lawrence knew five will get you ten. He put a mike on Killer (Sgt. Dunnuck) who had moved up to observe the road for himself. “Any number of enemy could be lurking behind the thick foliage and trees. The road is ten feet wide, too tight for birds but plenty wide for NVA. Tracks everywhere. Plain as daylight.”

While the company awaited further developments, our platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Eggleston, took our concerns to Rice. Rice merely copied Trobaugh. “Go to the LEFT and walk the company down the road twelve hundred meters to a possible LZ.”

Killer went ballistic. “A fuck’n road!! Any NVA would be invisible five feet from the road, on either side. We'd never know it. Wipe us all out. Booby traps. We don't take trails, let alone a fuck’n road. It's suicide. Not gonna walk down it. No!” “That's it,” he scoffed, and went back into the bush.

To be fair, nobody, including Rice, knew that B-52s were already airborne and that the clock was ticking on a massive Arc-Light bombing mission. One side of the target box was three hundred meters from Trobaugh’s LZ. Two miles was the safety margin for an Arc-Light.

Rice came up for a look and told Eggleston, “We're gonna move out on the road. Or I'm gonna take point if I have to. We've got a job to do and we're gonna do it. It's not half as dangerous as some of the crap we've done in the boonies a while ago. At least we can see what we're doin'.”

Bull. Everyone listened to Killer; Rice we had for all of two days. For all the praise he lavished on Capt. Jackson, Rice obviously hadn’t absorbed his lessons and he wasn't listening to us, either. Trobaugh, Rice and Eggleston—the whole battalion chain of command—were rookies; our company was a walking poison pill. Capt. Jackson isn't here anymore, but his spirit is. We weren’t gonna be killed by a bunch of FNGs (fucking new guys) about to sacrifice us to curry favor with the chiefs.

Rice tried a new tactic. “Either move out or I'll move out and they can sit on their butt right here. It's that simple. All right. Let's move out. Make up their mind. Or I'll send some people back for 'em, which won't go over big. What we have here is extremely safe.”

We stayed our ground in the bush.

Kay and Clevenger went up and down the column with their camera. Eggleston made a last-ditch attempt to talk sense, but Rice would have none of it; he was in his own head. He summoned the dog team and the radio operator.

The dog refused to move!

And so it came to pass that only the poor radio operator—no doubt wondering if this was his last hour—accompanied Rice down the road in a baffling buffet of futility. John Laurence of CBS again put the mike on Killer’s flaming anger. “What do you think of this operation?”

“It's crazy. It's senseless, walkin' down the road.”

“What's the problem?”

I don't wanna walk down the road. This is one of the things I told ya about when we were wondering what a new CO was going to be like. This is one of those things you don't want him to be like. Ducks in a shooting gallery. Tracks all up and down this morning. Bad!”

Rice returned after only a few yards. Was he throwing in the towel? No. He made one last try with his elongated southern vowels. “The longer we sit here, the worse it gets.”

We still refused to move—Charlie Company had spit the bit. In no time, a cautionary note from Bob had become Mutiny on the Bounty, and CBS had their goldmine, a disastrous quarrel.

The Big Bellies were closing. We were stuck in limbo and had to be gone before things fell from the sky and the jungle erupted all around us. Enter Trobaugh through the magic of radio. He was desperate. “Go a hundred meters to the RIGHT to a notch on the side of the road. Cut an LZ. Get out ASAP.”

As far as Killer was concerned, the interview was over. “Might as well go in and see what happens.”

We spread out and edged down the road single-file toward the new objective. The men found the notch on the side of the road and set about hacking out a tight hover hole from the small trees and brush. As soon it was wide enough, a Huey squeezed in, took the first six GIs and reared straight up.

Trobaugh was having a fit between Charlie Co. and Arc-Light, and we weren’t having a great time either, waiting for choppers on the flaky trail. With two minutes until the bombay doors opened, only half the troops had been lifted to safety at Firebase Wood:

“Abort Arc-Light!”

“Did you say abort, Colonel?”

“Roger.”

“Mission aborted.”

News travels fast, too fast for Lt. Tuck at the battalion information desk. He waited until the next morning to brief Brigade. That kicked off a sloppy weekend for the army. Brigade CO Col. Ochs summoned CBS for a noon meeting in the air-conditioned VIP lounge at Tan Sun Nhut, Saigon. Ochs wouldn't let it alone; he forced Laurence to read his script aloud. Every word. He pleaded with Laurence not to release the film. He twisted arms and words, spun and threatened. The atmosphere was murderous and CBS was outnumbered five to three, but Laurence was unbowed—his story was already on its way to New York. Maj. J. D. Coleman, Battalion Public Information Officer warned Laurence, “You better goddamn well keep your heads down.”

CBS brass were ecstatic. Walter Cronkite ran the six-minute-and-forty-second bombshell on Monday's edition of The CBS Evening News.

Army brass panicked; politics took over. Trobaugh cleaned house Gambino-style. Tuck was banished to a rifle platoon in the field. Rice—who had become infamous the same day, one-hundred-and-eight years earlier, that Grant had become famous at Shiloh—requested reassignment. Eggleston would drive a water truck. Killer never got the supply job he coveted. Ochs was relieved of command, a death warrant for his career. They were trying to make up for the snafu by reshuffling within the military command, creating appearances for their internal audiences that they’re still in control. We’ve seen these reshuffles in the past. They have not stopped us and won’t stop us now. For us, it doesn’t matter who’s in command. Whaever happens, we’re relying on our own determination to get us home, safe and sound.

CBS was expelled from Charlie Company and reassigned elsewhere within the battalion, bugged and encumbered by minders. They got the hint and relocated to Cambodia, where we ran in to them again during the U.S. invasion in May. A month later, Laurence was back at Tan Son Nhut, hospitalized for fever, dehydration and exhaustion. At the end of June, he was home in Manhattan, frantically editing a one-hour documentary, The World of Charlie Company, which ran July 14 opposite the NBC All-Star game. He would win an Emmy.

The mutiny ended without any killed or wounded, and thanks to CBS, none in the stockade. The collective knowledge of the vets—real people solving real problems in real ways—had kept us safe. But the film told more. This was downright refusal by a crack company of disciplined vets, not by a rear echelon bunch of druggies with poor morale! The old army of compliant conscripts was dead. The draft ended three years later, giving rise to our present all-volunteer army.

“Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”—Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Long live Charlie Company!