DOWNS
Just after first light, we were flown out to the southern edge of the Dam Tra’o Lake. We got our Cordon around the village quickly, without incident, and I established my Command Post (CP) on the edge of the hamlet in a clearing the size of a large living room rug. The National Police Field Force Platoon flew in and deployed. Soon, they’d assembled the villagers in a holding area a stone’s throw from my CP.
The Police had started their Search when a radio call sign I didn’t recognize asked me to secure and mark a one-ship landing zone for my “inbound visitors.” I hadn’t been told about any visitors, but the call could only have come from one of our helicopters, so I chose a harvested rice paddy nearby, and popped a smoke grenade on the stubble. Soon a shiny, V.I.P.-type HUEY touched down, and out clambered four or five starched-fatigue field-grade officers from the First Cavalry Division Staff. As the HUEY took off, they gathered in a small cluster, looking nervously around, as if expecting the hedgerows to erupt in fire at any moment. Then a Major made a bee-line for a machinegun position on the cordon, to chat with the crew. When I saw him take up the prone position behind the machinegun, I imagined the chaos if all the others fanned out to wander around my perimeter doing the same. Desperate to limit the distraction, I invited them to my Command Post and started a quick briefing about what we were doing.
One helicopter-load was bad enough, but within minutes another unknown call sign asked for smoke on a secured Landing Zone, and soon I found myself with a dozen spiffy Field Grade officers from Division cluttering up my little command post.
A gregarious overweight guy from Logistics peppered me with questions about rations, while an Intelligence Major pumped me for information on where I thought the Fifth North Vietnamese Army Division had gotten to. A few ambled over to corner the radio operators. Of course the Pfc.’s -- awed by all the rank -- were too polite to insist on being left alone so they could devote their full attention to the radio. I felt a surge of resentment. My job was taking care of Company B, not hosting visitors.
I had to find a way to get this crew of wanna-be combatants out of there. To change the subject I decided I’d call the S-3 back at UPLIFT. I looked for my radio operator -- who was supposed to be no more than a few feet from me at all times – and saw that the brass had crowded him out of the clearing. Frustrated and cross, I barked:
"Downs!"
Before me, a synchronized field-grade swim team, in perfect unison, plunged face down into the dirt, hugging whatever cover they could find. When the fifty or so villagers in the holding area witnessed that, they too hit the deck. At this point, Pfc. Tom Downs, radio handset in his outstretched hand, dutifully picked his way around the prostrated forms and hustled towards me. When he smirked, I got laughing so hard I nearly fell off the paddy dike. Composing myself, I made my call to Battalion. Minutes after that, the muddied visitors must have figured it was time to move on, and they left the way they’d come.
We never again got surprise visitors from Division. I always suspected the first group of staff warriors passed the word around headquarters: “Don’t visit B Company, 1/50th Infantry! That wise-ass Captain makes fun of visitors from ‘higher.’”
"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness." -- James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues."
