Chapter Ten
23 August 1969. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon had four companies of Task Force 3–21 in position for the final assault on Hill 102 itself. An initial move up the west slope was met by heavy fire; most of the NVA had suddenly disappeared from the bunker maze around the knoll, but at least a few were still in place. The infantrymen were pulled back and another barrage of air, arty, and napalm was turned on. Sometime after noon, a second advance was attempted, this time up the northern slope. The only resistance was four mortar rounds dropped in from another position, wounding six; then Hill 102 was captured.
Alpha 4–31 were among the last up the hill. When they got into position for the advance, it was not altogether clear that the hill was deserted by the enemy. Specialist 4 Parsons, for one, was on edge. He hadn’t had a cigarette in days and was almost shaking with a nicotine fit. No one had any smokes left, but a pair of Texas infantrymen did offer him a chaw of Red Man tobacco. Parsons took a big helping. He was a city kid, and the boys from Texas forgot to tell him not to swallow. As Alpha Company rucked up and started trudging uphill through the upturned earth and shattered trees, Parsons barely limped along. The sun was scorching on the denuded hill and he was reeling, vomitting tobacco every few steps. For the rest, it was a rather pleasant hike. No crossfires materialized and the grunts started carrying their M16s like tramp sticks and joking with relief.
The crest was a hot, barren dustbowl. Alpha Company secured an LZ for the resupply ships and the GIs, now helmetless and stripped to the waist, took turns guiding in the Hueys. Parsons took his turn at dusk. He directed one ship to a low hover, a couple feet over broken tree stumps, and an entourage of war correspondents disembarked from the skids. They had Asian cameramen and were suited up in a mixture of green fatigues and khaki safari gear; he heard one or two grousing that they could have twisted their ankles jumping like that. Parsons didn’t know whether to get mad or laugh.
The capture of Hill 102 was the unglamorous end to a dirty, little fight which had not shown the best the U.S. Army had to offer. All the men found were empty bunkers and some foxholes still intact from when GIs had encamped on this hill during the June fight. No body count, no captured gear. Just a hill of dirt.
The 3d NVA Regiment had vanished during the night.
Alpha Company dug in atop Hill 102; it was sometime after dark that Parsons saw a senior officer—he thought it was Bacon—and several other officers talking with the reporters about the next day’s plans to recover the bodies at the helo crash site. Several of the correspondents were smoking, as was Parsons’s company commander, the red ember tips a beacon to the enemy. The captain was considered an intolerable lifer and there was some bitter talk of him catching a bullet in the back the next time they made contact. It was with some relish that Parsons strode up and plucked the cigarettes away, snapping, “If you’re going to smoke on this hill, you’re either going to do it in a hole or not smoke at all.” The reporters looked angry and the captain was burning. Parsons thought he probably would have been court-martialled if the colonel had not been a nonsmoker. The colonel said, “Soldier, you’re right. We’re sorry. They didn’t realize what they were doing.”
The morning sun brought a surprise. When they’d dug in at dusk, Shorty had struck his shovel against a rock which, it turned out, was really a dud U.S. artillery round. Parsons and his M60 crew sat in the upturned earth, sweating under the scant shade of a rigged poncho hootch. The rest of the platoon humped downhill on a recon patrol. Someone on the hill had a radio and they passed the hot afternoon listening to the Cubs and Astros ball game.
Besides unloading food and water, the morning resupply bird on 24 August—Black Sunday—also dropped SP4 John Curtis into Alpha Company’s perimeter atop Nui Lon. Curtis, a wiry nineteen year old with Peace printed across his helmet cover, was returning from R and R. The first he heard about the battle was when he was checking in with the 3–21 Rear in Chu Lai. A couple of guys there knew he was a short-timer and a point man and encouraged him to ghost around Chu Lai until things cooled down. One buddy told him point-blank, “If you go out, you’ll die.”
Curtis caught the flight to LZ Center because he felt he had to. It was not because he had any love for the Green Machine or because he really cared who won the latest fight in AK Valley, but because his squad was family.
And they needed help.
Alpha Company could have used Curtis, who was a squad leader in 3d Platoon. He came in-country in November 68; in March 69, when his platoon was ambushed, he had dragged two wounded men back to where the medics could get up to them, then had crawled forward with a radio and directed artillery into the enemy tree line. Shortly thereafter, a Silver Star was pinned to his weathered fatigues.
Curtis had basically been running the platoon in the long interim between the departure of their last lieutenant and the arrival of Lieutenant Tynan. He led because he had a strong personality, not because his background was in any way uncommon. His father was a construction worker in Tennessee. Curtis had enlisted right after high school since “… I knew I was going to get nailed anyway.” In the bush, he knew what he was doing; in the rear, he smoked and drank his brains out. Almost everyone in his platoon at least tried grass on stand downs. Curtis knew of no other way to escape, if just for awhile. To him, it was all a waste. He’d come to the military apolitical, but had become increasingly frustrated with the way things were in the field. He always felt they could have won if they’d really tried, but with the restrictions and walking-in-circles operations, the only real goal was to survive, and to take care of your buddies.
Those were abstract thoughts. When Curtis disembarked from the Huey, the only thing that registered was shock. Tom Goodwin, whom Curtis considered a nice, mellow guy, was gone; in fact, his entire squad was gone. In his own squad, only Jay Curtis and Steve Niebuhr, plus a couple green seeds, were left.
Alpha Company, which had come to AK Valley with ninety-five men, had fifty-two left. Eight GIs had been killed.
They didn’t know if they’d killed a single NVA.
They hadn’t seen any.
Curtis rejoined his squad the same time their platoon was ordered to take point for the next attack against the bunkers at the base of the ridge. Intelligence suspected the bunkers were empty; the primary mission was to recover the bodies of Lieutenant Kirchgesler and Sergeant Pitts. As the order was passed, Jay and Steve were talking frantically with Curtis. They said they couldn’t go back without reinforcements, that it was suicide.
Those guys are done, Curtis thought.
Jay and Steve said they’d been talking it over and thought it best to stick together and demand to see the inspector general. They wanted Curtis to tell the company commander. He balked—he didn’t even know Lieutenant Shurtz—but they pressed it and he agreed on faith in their judgment of the situation.
They did not move out as directed, and Lieutenant Shurtz finally walked up to ask what the delay was. Curtis detailed their complaints; he was backed up by Jay, Steve, and Doc Sanders. They wanted a helicopter to explain their need for reinforcements to the IG before any more attacks were made. Shurtz tried to persuade them to get moving. Curtis thought the lieutenant was stunned by what was going on, and he was right; the man had not commanded the company long enough to understand his grunts or to earn their total allegiance. In officer training, it was understood that the men would simply obey orders. But in real life, his men were hassling and questioning. Shurtz was unsure how to proceed; his two platoon lieutenants were only repeating the complaints of their grunts and saying they couldn’t see ordering their men back into those bunkers.
Shurtz finally radioed the colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon was on the ground with Bravo Company—evacuating the bodies from the burnt Huey to Graves Registration on Hawk Hill—when Lieutenant Shurtz came over the receiver. “I am sorry, sir, but my men refused to go. We cannot move out.”
“Repeat that please,” Bacon said calmly. He was an icy West Pointer from a family of career militarymen. “Have you told them what it means to disobey orders under fire?”
“I think they understood. But some of them simply had enough—they are broken. There are boys here who have only ninety days left in Vietnam. They want to go home in one piece. The situation is psychic.”
“Are you talking about enlisted men, or are the NCOs also involved?”
“That’s the difficulty here. We’ve got a leadership problem. Most of our squad and platoon leaders have been killed or wounded.”
“Go talk to them again,” Bacon counselled, “and tell them that to the best of our knowledge the bunkers are empty. The enemy has withdrawn. The mission of A Company today is to recover their dead. They have no reason to be afraid. Please take a handcount of how many really do not want to go.”
“They won’t go, colonel, and I did not ask for the handcount because I am afraid that they will all stick together even though some might prefer to go.”
The picture was that only a handful of short-timers was actually refusing, but the rest of the company had more confidence in their combat experience than that of the new lieutenant. They were frozen, waiting to see which way it would go. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon, if not angry, was at least frustrated. Rational discussions do not always get the job done; before getting on the radio and making the refusal official, the company commander should have simply told the dissidents that they would be taken out for court-martial, then turned to the rest of the men and led them into action. But Lieutenant Shurtz did not have that type of leadership experience; he’d been in the bush only seventeen days. Bacon finally radioed his TOC on LZ Center and instructed Major Waite, BnXO, and SFC Okey Blankenship, BSM, to helicopter down to A Company and get them moving again with “… a pep talk and a kick in the butt.”
That might have been unnecessary; before the arrival of the 3–21 C&C, Lieutenant Shurtz had gone to Specialist Curtis one more time. He made it a direct order and, as far as Curtis was concerned, that was the end of it. He did not consider himself a mutineer, so when the man with the silver bar finally gave him no other choice, he—and the rest of Alpha Company—reluctantly, angrily started moving. Then the C&C landed on the sun-bleached hill, and the grunts sat back in the elephant grass as Waite and Blankenship disembarked. One of the men was crying, and the balking started all over again. Major Waite went to Curtis and asked what the problem was. He sketched out the horrors the company had been through and Waite, considered to be a very good officer, listened patiently. That was one approach. Sergeant First Class Blankenship, meanwhile, was proceeding along a different track. He was sarcastic and ridiculed the men. He made up a story that another company was still on the move with only fifteen men left.
“Why did they do it,” Jay asked, unmoved.
Blankenship sneered, “Maybe they’ve got something a little more than what you’ve got.”
“Don’t call us cowards, we are not cowards,” Jay exploded, running up with balled fists. Who is this turd, Curtis thought; he’d never seen the sergeant before and thought he must be some pompous REMF lifer just arrived in-country.
In fact, Sergeant First Class Blankenship was on his third tour and held a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. He hailed from the coalmining country of Panther, West Virginia, the eldest of eight children to Mose and Wadie Blankenship. He was a hot-tempered, high school dropout, divorced three times. He was a big man, over six feet and two hundred pounds, a hard-core soldier. He’d been made the battalion sergeant major after the command ship was shot down; before that, he’d been serving as battalion operations sergeant. That was a TOC job and he was not as lean as when he’d been in the bush. In fact, when he was rucking up on LZ Center to go out to Alpha Company, Captain Carrier jokingly gave him some salt tablets for the heat. Blankenship laughed back, “You know, I might need these!”
But the men of the Gimlets were especially resentful of their superiors, and bitter that they were chronically short of new weapons and supplies. Platoons were rarely, if ever, at full strength. Many men saw themselves as pawns for someone else to make full-bull colonel. It was this lack of trust which fostered the hostility towards Sergeant Major Blankenship. It also helped spark the refusal to begin with. Perhaps what the leadership lacked was not tactical competence but personality, noted a company commander in the 196th Brigade:
Mostly the problem of command was a lack of understanding on the part of field grade officers of the changes that had come in the civilian world which the troops brought with them when they entered the Army. The new breed of enlisted men demanded a more personal approach from all levels of command. Captains were no longer the remote company commanders they had been in some other wars. In Vietnam the company commander’s headquarters were what he could carry on his back and the radios of the men around him. Orders from battalion and brigade came over the radio and were overheard by many of the troops. The captain could no longer pretend that it was his order that the hill be assaulted, the men had already heard the colonel tell the captain to “take the hill.” Problem was, as the men saw it, the colonel wasn’t out there to lead the charge. He was safely back on the firebase issuing orders from the heavily protected TOC bunker. Most of these enlisted guys were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. They were totally unschooled in the military arts regarding the proper locations of various headquarters in order to maintain the optimum tactical coordination. All they knew was that the man ordering them to their deaths wasn’t out there taking the same chances with them. Nor was he there to explain why such and such a hill was worth taking—especially when they’d already taken it twice before and walked away from it as soon as the battle was over.
Major Waite lent a sympathetic ear and Sergeant Blankenship pricked at the grunts’ manhood; then they both said it was time to move out. By then, the rest of Alpha Company had rucked up again and gotten back in file formation; the cluster on the LZ broke up and Curtis’s group rejoined them. They began humping downhill towards the bunkers. The NVA really had pulled out, and the only things to be found were the bodies of Lieutenant Kirchgesler and Sergeant Pitts. The sun had done horrible things to them. They pushed them into body bags—those rubberized, green, canvas sacks with a long zipper and carrying handles—then carried them to a clearing and called a medevac.
The next morning, Lieutenant Colonel Bacon took his C&C over to Alpha’s position with Capt Bernhard F. Wolpers aboard. There were no charges to be made against anyone involved, but Bacon relieved Shurtz; Captain Wolpers—a tough soldier with a thick, German accent—was placed in command. Bacon was a real pro and this was one of his steps to get a worn-out battalion back on its feet.
Lieutenant Shurtz was shattered. When Bacon took over the Gimlets, Shurtz had thought, finally here’s someone who’s calm and rational that I can work with—and the first thing he does is fire me!
There were tears in his eyes.
Shurtz was removed on 25 August and Alpha Company stayed in AK Valley making no contact until 31 August. They humped back to LZ Center for their turn on bunker watch. A throng of journalists was waiting for them; it was the first time the grunts knew that the conversation between Bacon and Shurtz had been taken down by some reporters who happened to overhear it at LZ Center, and it was making headlines around the world as the first recorded combat refusal of the war. Many of the stories on Alpha Company referred to the “grunt revolt,” with unsettling connotations of a militant underground. Never mind that similar incidents had occurred numerous times during glory days of WWII and Korea. Only a few understood that the young men in Alpha were simply soldiers in a company that had seen one battle too many. One of the reporters was James Sterba; after noting that Army policy was that a man who reenlisted would be taken out of the infantry, and that the Americal sent a reenlistment NCO to every fire base every two weeks, he commented:
On a sizzling hot day in August, it was less than ironic, then, when a helicopter touched down on Landing Zone Center … and dropped off a reenlistment sergeant. That was the day that a ragged, demoralized, exhausted company—Alpha, Third Battalion, 21st Infantry, Americal Division—trudged up the hill from a week of hell in the valley below with only half the men it had started with. World-famous Company A, the one that had refused, for an hour, to go to war, was being given the opportunity by the United States Army to re-enlist, to serve for three more years, but not “out there.” By the end of the day, the re-enlistment sergeant’s results, remarked one officer, had been “outstanding.”
Lieutenant Shurtz, meanwhile, was being shuffled away. Most agreed his downfall had been born of inexperience, not a lack of courage, and that he’d been made a scapegoat. To his superiors, he had waffled when he should have charged—and he had embarrassed the division in front of a hostile press. For this, he was reassigned as assistant brigade personnel administrative officer on LZ Baldy, then promoted to captain and sent to Chu Lai to complete his tour as the brigade stand down officer.
Two days after securing Hill 102, Alpha 4–31 abandoned it, just as they had done when they took it the first time in July. Two days after that, they got word that they were moving back to LZ West, from where they would CA into Hiep Duc. The action on that side of the ridge was still fierce and SP4 Parsons jotted in his pocket diary, “We’re going over to Hiep Duc Valley tomorrow. Looks like Ass kicking Alpha has too go clean up there own AO now. Boo Coo Dinks over there.”
First Lieutenant Raymond A. Hord, commander of C/1/7 Marines, poses with a captured enemy flag, pith helmet, hand grenade, and 9mm pistol. (Courtesy Col. Raymond A. Hord, USMC, Ret)
Lieutenant Hord (left) with Lt. Col. John A. “Jack” Dowd (right), commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division. (Courtesy Barbara Dowd)
Lieutenant Colonel Dowd (left) with a U.S. Army advisor and staff officers of the 7th Marine Regiment. (Courtesy Barbara Dowd)
Lieutenant Hord (right) and Capt. Brian J. Fagan, commander of D/1/7 Marines, at LZ Baldy in late-August 1969. (Courtesy Col. Raymond A. Hord, USMC, Ret)
Lieutenant Colonel Dowd and Capt. James W. Huffman, a company commander in 1/7, are decorated with the Silver Star for their part in the destruction of two NVA companies in April 1969. On 13 August 1969 Dowd was killed during a major battle in the Arizona Territory and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. (Courtesy Barbara Dowd)
First Lieutenant William G. Peters, a platoon leader in D/1/7 Marines. (Courtesy Maj. William G. Peters, USMC, Ret)
Lance Corporal Don Wells, a radioman in 1/7 Marines, relaxing at Stack Arms, an in-country R&R center on China Beach. (Courtesy Don Wells)
Lance Corporal John G. Bradley, a rifleman in C/1/7 Marines. (Courtesy Master Sgt. John G. Bradley, USMC, Ret)
Corporal Nicholas Cominos, a squad leader in D/1/7 Marines, in the Arizona Territory in July or August 1969. (Courtesy Nicholas Cominos)
Vietnamese children tag along with a Marine patrol. (Courtesy Carson C. Bartels)
An 81mm mortar crew from the 1/7 Marines. (Courtesy Don Wells)
Lieutenant Colonel Cecil M. “Hank” Henry, commanding officer of the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, Americal Division. (Courtesy Col. Cecil M. Henry, USA, Ret)
Major Roger C. Lee, operations officer, 4–31st Infantry. (Courtesy William P. Wilson)
Lieutenant Colonel Henry (center), Major Lee (right), and Capt. Gabriel Akiona, intelligence officer of the 4–31st Infantry (left), with a captured enemy soldier. (Courtesy Col. Cecil M. Henry, USA, Ret)
Lieutenant Colonel Henry, Capt. Phillip Kinman, and Sgt. Maj. “Hoss” Gutterez (left to right) view captured enemy weapons after the NVA assault on Firebase West in August 1969. (Courtesy Col. Cecil M. Henry, USA, Ret)
Captain John A. Whittecar earned his third Silver Star while commanding D/4–31st Infantry in the Song Chang Valley fighting of August 1969. (Courtesy Kay Whittecar)
Captain Whittecar (holding map) confers with another officer. (Courtesy Kay Whittecar)
Captain William H. Gayler and 1st Lt. Doug Monroe (with camera) of B/4–31st Infantry during a standdown at Chu Lai. (Courtesy Col. William H. Gayler, AUS, Ret)
Second Lieutenant William P. Wilson, artillery forward observer of C/4–31st Infantry, eating a “Lurp” meal. (Courtesy William P. Wilson)
Privite First Class Eric R. “Rick” Shimer was the first man shot when B/3–21st Infantry, Americal Division, walked into an NVA bunker complex in the Song Chang Valley on 20August 1969. (Courtesy Eric R. Shimer)
John Curtis, Tom Goodwin, Jay Curtis, and Dan Lipetzky (left to right) of A/3–21st Infantry. Lipetzky was killed by a sniper two months before the battle in the Song Chang Valley. (Courtesy Thomas G. Goodwin)
Specialist 5th Class Joseph Kralich, senior medic of 4–31st Infantry, on Firebase West. (Courtesy Col. Cecil M. Henry, USA, Ret)
D/4–31st Infantry moves off Firebase West into the Hiep Duc Valley. (Courtesy Kay Whittecar)
Second Lieutenant William J. Schuler and Lance Cpl. Ruben Rivera (bareheaded) of E/2/7 Marines, which was sent into the Hiep Duc Valley to reinforce the Americal. Schuler was wounded and Rivera killed by the same mortar round on 26 August 1969. (Courtesy William J. Schuler)
Lieutenant Schuler (with cigar and beer) and 1st Lt. Paul T. Lindsay, commander of E/2/7, before the move to the Hiep Duc Valley. (Courtesy William J. Schuler)
Second Lieutenant William T. Brennon, a platoon leader in H/2/7 Marines. (Courtesy Ralph B. Sirianni)
Lance Corporal Ralph B. Sirianni (kneeling center) of H/2/7 Marines. (Courtesy Ralph B. Sirianni)
Corporal Beckler (with cigarette), a squad leader in H/2/7 Marines. (Courtesy Ralph B. Sirianni)
The 3d Battalion, 7th Marines begins moving off Firebase West to relieve 2/7 on August 27, 1969. (Courtesy Col. Ray G. Kummerow, USMC, Ret)
Marines in the Hiep Duc Valley. (Courtesy Col. Ray G. Kummerow, USMC, Ret)
Lance Corporal William S. Monahan (foreground), a radioman with the 3/7 Marines command group, in the Hiep Duc Valley. (Courtesy Col. Ray G. Kummerow, USMC, Ret)