Into The Treeline A Men Of Valor Novel

Chapter I Special Forces Lieutenant Jim Carmichael was moving through the elephant grass, getting cut to pieces. God, he hated the stuff. The leaves cut like tiny razors. Every exposed part of his body was covered by slashes. The individual cuts leaked only a little blood, but there were so many of them it looked as if he was sweating red. He wore sleeves rolled down and gloves stolen from an Air Force pilot but for all the good it did he might as well have been naked.He was moving far faster than he liked. No time to scout an area for danger before moving the bulk of the company into it. The best he could do was keep a point man ahead fifty meters. It was impossible to send out flankers in the dense grass; too much chance of loss of contact, and loss of contact carried with it the probability of getting into a firefight with your own people.Still, he had little choice. The brass had decreed that his company be on the day's objective by a certain time, and the artillery had the nasty habit of shelling every place except where you were supposed to be. He'd had the unpleasant experience of being on the receiving end of "friendly fire" before. Friendly fire, isn't.The handset clipped to his harness hissed. "Skipjack one, this is Sharkfin six, over." Shit! he thought. What now? He answered the call."What's your situation, Skipjack?""Continuing to move on Objective Sigma. Expect to reach it in approximately three-zero, over.""You were supposed to be there by now. You'd better move your ass if you expect to get there before dark. Out."Carmichael wished helicopters had never been invented. Sure they were great for Medevacs; he'd been glad enough for them when he'd been wounded. Sometimes, when used properly, they provided good fire support. But they also allowed field grade officers who should have been sitting far in the rear to fly overhead and harass the troops. Most of them had never had to walk this particular terrain, had no idea how long it took to move, tactically, from one point to another, and so made arbitrary decisions and expected the troops to carry them out. This was the first war in which tactical decisions were not being made by the junior leaders on the ground, and the results showed. He was damned if he'd try to move any faster. He cursed the fool who had dreamed up this operation in the first place. The lightly armed Montagnards, the hill people recruited, trained, and led by the Special Forces, were no match for the numerically superior North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces who occupied the area. The only way to survive was to hide, beat the NVA at his own game, hit him when he wasn't expecting it. That couldn't be done if you constantly advertised your position with a chopper flying overhead.The first night after insertion he'd heard over the radio the results of whatcould happen when the NVA found you. The area the task force was supposedly surrounding had been divided into four equal sectors. Four companies had been inserted, his in the northwest sector. The company in the southeast had been hit shortly after insertion and within two hours had been effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Forty Montagnards and two Americans were killed and almost everyone else wounded. One of the Americans had been an old friend, one with whom he had served in the first tour. He listened on the radio as his friend died, bleeding to death as the high command apologetically told the surviving American that they couldn't get anyone out, the LZ was just too hot.His company had, on the other hand, been very lucky. Apparently most of the NVA had been concentrated in the southern sectors. They only came across trail watchers, who they promptly killed, and the occasional courier. The couriers they attempted to capture, with a notable lack of success. The Montagnards really couldn't understand why the Americans were so eager to take a Vietnamese alive and haMullins, John F. is the author of 'Into The Treeline A Men Of Valor Novel', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743477680 and ISBN 0743477685.