Armed Forces: Democracy in the Foxhole

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ARMED FORCES

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Deep in "Indian country," the Viet Cong's jungled heartland, a lone U.S. helicopter flapped furiously down on an abandoned dirt roadway. Even before the Huey hit the ground, its six passengers were out and running. Their faces streaked with camouflage paint, their black and green "tiger suits" blending into the foliage, their black-stocked M-16 automatic rifles at the ready, they faded swiftly into the perennial twilight of 80-ft. trees, impenetrable bamboo thickets, and tangles of thorn and "wait a minute" vines. This was "Lurp Team Two," a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, sent to seek out two Viet Cong regiments that their outfit was itching to locate, engage and destroy. Within moments, Team Two was itself in imminent danger of destruction.

It did not take long for the patrol to discover that it had landed smack in the midst of a Viet Cong concentration. As skilled as Victor Charlie in the deadly blindman's buff of jungle warfare, Team Two soon realized that the enemy was following its every move. Each time Staff Sergeant Glide Brown Jr. halted his men, they could hear a couple of footfalls close behind—and then a bristling silence. As the jungle dusk deepened into blackness, Brown set up a defense perimeter and listened more closely. Above the keening of insects, geckos and night birds, he heard the snap of two fingers and the snick of a rifle bolt not 30 yards away. "We're getting out of here," he whispered. "They're just behind us."

Linked up head and tail like circus elephants by their "escape ropes," each humping half a hundredweight of gear,* the muzzles of their rifles still taped to keep out gunk, the scouts took advantage of distant artillery salvos to mask their footfalls on the way back to a prearranged retrieval zone. Brown, in the lead, groped his way back through the blackness by memorizing the map and counting his own steps; each time his left foot hit the ground 67 times, he calculated the team had covered 100 meters. Back at the landing zone, Brown's whispered message filtered into the PRC transceiver: "Four seven, this is Papa Two. I'm in trouble. This is Papa Two . . ." No reply. The triple-tiered jungle canopy drowned his call to the pickup helicopter. Brown moved his men soundlessly across the clearing and set up a radial defense—each man flat on his back, head to the center of the circle, his M-16 ready—behind a tangle of fallen trees.

Hanging Tough. Team Two measured the passage of the night in careful inhalations, silent exhalations, and the clack of bamboo signal sticks used by the Viet Cong patrols that passed within 50 feet of its hideout. Then, at 2 a.m., a single shot blasted the night: Brown's radio man, shifting his M16, had accidentally triggered a tracer round —almost certainly disclosing the team's position. Brown hung tough, hoping that the cross-wave of jungle echoes would confuse the enemy searchers. It did, and at dawn the team moved back in to hunt out the Viet Cong base camp.

Only after Brown had spotted a concentration of black pajamas did Team Two withdraw. As enemy sniper bullets stitched around and between them, the scouts blasted back with fragmentation grenades and bursts of automatic fire that chopped