PART
Chapter Eleven
Charlie 4–31, which had gone into the Hiep Duc Valley to support Bravo 4–31, was itself supported on the afternoon of 19 August 1969 by the arrival of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry (recently assigned to the 196th Brigade after having come in-country with the 198th Brigade). They normally operated to the south out of LZ Professional, but had deployed to an ARVN compound outside Tam Ky five days earlier. When Bravo Company was opconned to the Polar Bears this afternoon, word at the grunt level was sparse; all they knew was that another company in another battalion of the Americal had been ambushed and they were going in to recover the dead.
Bravo had about two hours to ruck up before a single Chinook arrived to ferry them, a platoon at a time, to ARVN LZ Karen. The airlift was completed by 1300 and the grunts spent another hour sitting in the direct boil atop the dusty, bald LZ. It was then, after the company commander got maps of the new AO and tuned his radio to the 4–31 frequencies, that they moved out. They were to hump northeast off the LZ and link up with Charlie 4–31 below Million Dollar Hill. The company commander, Capt Alva R. King, assigned the lead to the platoon under 2dLt James T. Baird and Sgt Charles E. Brown, who in turn gave the point to Sgt Greg Lynch’s squad.
Which is how PFC Calvin Tam ended up walking point.
Tam was the son of Chinese immigrants who’d settled in San Francisco, but that was about the only thing that distinguished him from his comrades. Like them, he even referred to the NVA and VC as “gooks,” it being a matter of good guys-bad guys, not a racial issue. He was a typical GI in a typical company of the Americal Division and, like almost all of them, he was a draftee. He was twenty-one years old.
The draft notice had come when he was floundering in junior college and feeling pressure from his father, a successful chiropractor, to do something with his life. He felt naive and mixed up, not ready to cement his future to a job; since he was vaguely supportive of the war, the Army seemed to offer a break, a chance to reorient himself. If anything, though, the Army and Vietnam only added to Tam’s adolescent confusion. He expected some sense of mission to be stressed, but the mentality in basic and advanced infantry training was much different. There was no talk of victory. Everything was geared to staying alive. Do your 365, survive, then put it behind you. No goals, no causes, no reasons. It was not very inspiring.
The attitude was magnified with each step closer to Vietnam. On his first day with Bravo Company in June of 69, Tam hopped off a resupply chopper with fourteen other green seeds in the middle of nowhere, and saw his platoon-to-be coming in from patrol. The grunts were talking about having spotted two VC in a valley and watching them walk off; the gist of the conversation was that it was too hot to be shot at. The next morning, Tam went on his first combat patrol. His squad humped off the company hill, walked several hundred yards into the brush, then flaked out under two, big, shade trees. Most took naps. This is weird, he thought, not sure what to say or do, not sure if he should relax or be paranoid. He heard his squad leader radio in phoney patrol positions; then, after two hours of rest, they hiked back to the company, mission accomplished.
It was a fragmented company, Tam thought. Comradeship seemed to extend only among certain groups—blacks, hispanics, or GIs who’d come in-country together. Just a bunch of guys thrown together. They weren’t good, but they weren’t bad; Tam could never completely decipher it. Considering that they were citizen-soldiers with only a few months of experience, they held their own against hardened peasants who’d been fighting for years. Each platoon had a few grunts who did more than their share. But others could be counted on to do no more than duck into a ditch if anything bad happened. Most seemed to sway in the middle, their performance gauged by the mood of the moment or how sharp the lieutenant was that day.
Lieutenant Baird should have been great. He was a West Point Airborne Ranger, an intellect with glasses and an urbane manner (he even subscribed to National Geographic in the bush). He seemed out to prove himself, and on some days he was a pro. Other days were different. During Baird’s first week in the bush, which would have been Tam’s third, an M60 gunner stepped on a booby trap which killed him and wounded the soldiers ahead and behind him. Talk was that the lieutenant was stunned into inaction, and several old-timers had to step in and get security out and the medevac in. Tam had been rattled too, and he thought, maybe I’m expecting too much of this man just because he has a bar on his collar. He just didn’t know. Tam was so pissed off about having been sent to Vietnam, while most of his buddies were still in college having a good time, that rational thought shut down. Baird had chewed his ass out the few times he walked point, so he was mad. But when he thought about it, he probably did deserve what he got and he was embarrassed that he could act like such a young smart ass.
He didn’t like Lieutenant Baird, but the man was only doing his best to keep them alive. Tam never felt that charitable in the middle of a hot rice paddy and—like most grunts—his selfish anger also picked on the common, human frailties of his platoon sergeant and squad leader. Sergeant Brown was a little guy—five-five—who kidded Tam, who was five-four, that he was glad someone shorter than he had finally come in. Brown was an old-timer who did his job well, but sometimes it looked like he was just guessing. They were all young draftees, trying to rise to the occasion and wishing they were back home the whole time. Amateurs.
By 1969, there were few professionals left to form the group backbone in the rifle companies.
Most were dead or had already done their time.
Whatever core of professionalism there was in Bravo Company came from Captain King. He was considered competent, concerned, and, to all the draftees’ relief, not overly aggressive. He knew his job and, in a low-key manner, he simply did it. The old-timers told Tam that the previous CO had been an incompetent, and the first sergeant such an intolerable lifer that someone had taken a shot at him during a firefight. Now King was in charge, and a staff sergeant had been assigned as the field first. All of which was good for Bravo Company, considering the situation in Hiep Duc Valley. But things were never perfect; the company had not made a solid contact since May, and many of the men were new and untested.
Hiep Duc was to be their first taste of combat.
The day was hotter than most, well over 100 degrees, as Tam discovered as he walked point. There were no clouds, little shade, and everyone was quickly soaked under full packs and ammunition. Tam walked lead through the Resettlement Village—its tin roofs shimmering among the trees—then the squad leader rotated points. They seemed to walk forever through the sweltering paddies.
Finally, Captain King called a rest break, then another. They were saddling up from the second stop, putting helmets and rucks back on, when the radio crackled. The platoon RTO had a squawk box secured to the back of his radio and Tam stood close enough to listen. A lieutenant from another platoon was reporting a heat casualty to Captain King and requesting a medevac. King asked who it was. The lieutenant mentioned the GI’s name and everyone instantly recognized it. He was a shammer, considered a sorry case by most of the grunts. He’d been in the hospital when Tam joined the company: on a patrol, his M16 had suddenly discharged, putting a round between his toes. There was no way to prove he’d done it on purpose and, although the wound was minor, it won the GI a vacation in the rear.
Captain King paused for a moment when he heard the name, then said, “We can’t wait for a medevac. Put this guy in the shade, make sure he’s got salt tablets and water, and leave him.”
Tam walked behind the RTO as they got moving again and, fifteen minutes into the hump, the lieutenant came on the net again. He reported that the heat-stroke victim had made a miraculous recovery and had rejoined the platoon. There was a spatter of weary, spiteful laughter among the grunts. It had been fairly easy for the malingerer to catch up with the company because they were taking it slowly. A dog handler and his German shepherd had joined Bravo on LZ Karen, and they led the way. The dog alerted several times to things unseen in the brush, but nothing came of it. The heat was draining the dog too and more than once the column had to stop while the handler gave him water and rested him in the shade.
There was no sign of the NVA.
Charlie 4–31, after helping in the evacuation of Bravo 4–31 that morning, shoved off that afternoon to link up with Bravo 1–46. They humped single file through the thigh-high mud of a paddy; they suddenly froze when the point man spotted a lone hootch at the far end of the field. The men fanned out on line, a company’s worth of weapons sighted on the hut; then the platoon leaders coordinated over the radio, “… three, two, one. Fire!”
The sudden eruption reminded Private Bleier of the firepower show staged to bolster the men on the last day of AIT. The hootch shuddered, pieces of it cartwheeled off, the thatch roof caught on fire. The tree beside it was splintered and fell over. After several minutes, the firing petered out and a shrill scream could be heard from within the smoking rubble. A woman climbed out of the family bunker. Behind her came another woman, two men, and several children. Charlie Company hiked forward; the villagers screamed and cried at them at the top of their lungs. One woman stood toe-to-toe with a platoon leader, shrieking up at him as the lieutenant tried to apologize in stumbling Vietnamese. The grunts sort of looked at their feet. We’re still too jumpy from last night’s ambush, Bleier thought.
Charlie Company kept moving. Civilians who got caught in the crossfire were on their own after the damage was done.
Charlie 4–31 finally linked up with Bravo 1–46 on a hillside, and they set up for the night. Bravo had gotten there first and the grunts of Charlie were bitching, as grunts always do, that “them damn dudes took all the good sleeping positions.” Bleier wrote, “Only a section of jungle, briars and elephant grass, was left for us, so our platoon walked shoulder to shoulder, trampling it into a makeshift mattress. I fell asleep next to a tree, with one of its roots jabbing me in the back.” Morning was not much better when Bleier found the tree—and himself—crawling with ants. “… They were little red ants, the ones we called ‘piss ants.’ They were acrobats. Just before biting, they’d stick their hind legs in the air, balancing on their front legs and head. They barely pinched the skin, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to piss you off.… I was plenty pissed off.”
It was the morning of 20 August 1969.
Charlie 4–31 and Bravo 1–46, the only U.S. units in Hiep Duc Valley, had spent the night near Million Dollar Hill. Their mission at daylight was to recover and evacuate the dead left behind by Bravo 4–31.
Captain King’s company began moving into position around 0700, moving forward along the general path on which Captain Murphy’s company had retired the day before. Which is why they came across the hootch that had been used as nervous target practice. The villagers had learned their lesson, and this time they stood before the remains of their home in full view of the passing column. Private Tam noticed that the old people were glaring at them with unbridled anger. Way out, he thought; a whole company of grunts armed to the teeth and these old gooks aren’t afraid to let us know they’re pissed. He reckoned they were Viet Cong sympathizers. They probably were but he didn’t know about yesterday’s case of mistaken identity.
B and C Companies were humping through an area that the official report would later designate as the Center of Mass of the 1st NVA Regiment. At the time, the size of the enemy force was not known. If it had been, B and C Companies would not have separated into platoons. Captain Murphy travelled with Charlie One, which was assigned to recover the bodies and take them to a field landing zone for extraction. Charlie Two was to drop back in reserve to Million Dollar Hill, and Charlie Three was to assist Bravo Company in securing the LZ. Captain King stayed with Bravo Two atop a small hill, while his other two platoons moved into the paddied flatlands.
It was Lieutenant Baird’s platoon which was deployed in a circle around King and his radios and all the company’s rucksacks. Intelligence may not have yet confirmed the presence of a North Vietnamese regiment, but the grunts felt it. The men were tense, especially the old-timers. Tam, a nervous new guy, could hear the mumbles. “This is it, we’re gonna get hit. The gooks know we’re gonna come back for the bodies. For sure we’re gonna get ambushed.”
Captain Murphy’s group was moving northeast towards Hill 381 and was about halfway there from Million Dollar Hill when they stopped for a five-minute break. They’d been humping through the paddies along a raised path hemmed in by thick brush, and they rested in a shady grove the path entered. A deep drainage ditch ran along the trail and the trees made it appear like an oasis in the dead paddies.
Charlie One got moving again down the berm. Murphy counselled them, “Be careful. We’ll be in open territory. Stay about eight yards apart.”
There were twenty-five GIs in the platoon.
Private Bleier was eighth man back in the platoon file. It was another raging hot day; sweat stung down his face from under his helmet, and he looked and felt like a pack horse. He toted an M79 grenade launcher, which hung from a strap around his neck with an o.d. green towel tucked under it. His rucksack weighed about fifty pounds and that weight was doubled by the sixty M79 grenades he humped. Half were in a bag secured at the top of his ruck; the rest were in another bag hung across his chest. Five canteens hung beneath the ruck. Many of the grunts also tied cloth bands around their legs, just below the knee, to keep leeches from slinking up to their crotches.
A GI named Dave was behind Bleier. Behind Dave were his best buddies—Doc, the platoon medic, and Hawaii, a new guy. Hawaii was nineteen, drafted, and had only six months left in the Green Machine when they sent him to Vietnam. Nevertheless, he was a bright kid. His fiancee wrote him daily, and he beamed at the letters. That’s probably why Bleier liked him; too many others in the company were overly sullen about their fate.
The platoon had hiked into an open paddy when the point man suddenly shouted, “Gook, gook!” He triggered a couple of hasty shots, then began jogging down the path after the figure. The platoon followed.
Then came the cracking report of an RPD machine gun.
Bleier instantly jumped to his left, off the berm and into the dry paddy. He rolled onto his back to release his pack suspenders, but the easy-snaps wouldn’t budge. He finally slid his arms out, then shoved forward on his stomach, cradling his grenade launcher and ammunition. It was twenty yards to the next dike. He peeked over. Twenty yards farther ahead, the four men in the lead were pressed flat behind a dike. It was only two feet high, and twenty yards beyond it was a wooded knoll. The NVA were firing from within its thickets.
Bleier could see the brush twitch when the RPD fired.
He rolled onto his side, snapped the M79 open, and dropped a fat round in. Just as he propped himself up to fire, he heard Dave shout his name and felt a dull thud against his left thigh. He thought Dave had tossed a pebble to get his attention, but then it stung. Blood was soaking his fatigue trousers from two neat holes, one in front and one in the rear. The round had sheared four inches across his thigh, leaving an inch-deep furrow that gushed red.
“Dave, I’m hit!”
Bleier had moved away from his pack, so Dave dug into his own and tossed him a bandage. Bleier wrapped it around his leg, then looked around; almost everyone else had jumped to the right side of the pathway berm. In a fright, he punched a few grenades at the knoll, then scooted back to his pack. To his left was a hedgerow ten feet high, and he crawled for it. From the cover, he saw an RPD burst splatter across his rucksack ten feet back. Dave was behind a boulder fifteen yards behind him. “Rock, you okay, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay!”
“I’ll tell Hawaii to send word that you’ve been hit!”
“Okay, okay, get a medic up here!”
Dave hollered for Hawaii over the automatic weapons fire. No answer, no movement. He looked back. Hawaii was face down in the paddy. “Rock, I think Hawaii’s been hit!”
Bleier was frantic, “Hawaii, Hawaii!”
Doc crawled to the slumped man, then shouted, “Hawaii got it, he’s dead!” Bleier could only look down and ask the Lord to take care of him.
What was agonizing and chaotic up front channelized back to Captain Murphy in the tree line. There it was calm. Murphy stood in the ditch with his RTOs, on the blue-leg net to the lieutenant commanding Charlie One. He got the coordinates, then hollered to his FO, 2dLt William P. Wilson, to crank up the artillery. Wilson sat along the edge of the ravine with his recon sergeant and radioman, and pulled his map and phonetic code book from his trouser side pocket. He got on the red-leg net and, in short order, the 105mm artillery pieces on LZ Siberia were raising dust around the enemy knoll. The platoon leader radioed back adjustments, which Wilson relayed.
The NVA must have had solid spider holes, because the arty did not diminish their fire. Charlie One was pinned down in the open with casualties, their response broken down into private, little wars.
Doc was calling to Bleier, “How do you feel?”
“I think I’m okay.”
“You think you’ll be able to walk?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never been shot before.”
Bleier lay immobile behind the visual cover of his tangly brush line. He was parched, exhausted, his mind working slowly. Should I get my pack? No, I don’t know how fast I can move. They’ll probably see me. This hedgerow isn’t much protection. That was a terrifying thought. Only Dave and Doc were near him; the rest had worked their way to the right of the path. They had to keep the NVA down long enough to get the point men and their wounded, and the lieutenant was hollering for the grenade launcher.
Dave answered, “Bleier’s got it, but he’s hit!”
“Well, you get it from him!”
“I can’t, I can’t reach him. There’s too much open space!”
“Well, we gotta get some grenades on that machine gun, until we can get our own machine gun set up!”
Bleier could not see the knoll from his position, but Dave to his right-rear could see just past the edge of the hedgerow. Bleier lobbed rounds over the brush, Dave hollered directions, and the fourth M79 grenade exploded in the general vicinity. He kept blasting rounds up and over, emptying his bags, but it had little effect. The NVA kept scything the torrid air. Bleier sank to the ground, the M79 empty beside him. The sun withered him; his leg wound burned under the bandage. He could hear Vietnamese chattering in the brush; over the squawk box of an abandoned radio he could hear the lieutenant calling the captain, “Christ, they’re all around us. There’s no place to hide. There’s no cover over here. They’re everywhere.”
A GI was raging on the other side of the path. His buddy had just taken a burst in the stomach. Up ahead, the four point men were clawing into the sunbaked paddy, trying to get lower under the machine gun fire. One was screaming, “Jesus, they’re moving, I see ’em! Get that fucking machine gun set up!”
Oh God, Bleier thought, they’re gonna overrun us.
He gripped a wooden cross that his counsellor at Notre Dame, a priest who’d been in WWII, had given him. Bleier was from Appleton, Wisconsin, the son of a salt-of-the-earth Irish Catholic tavern keeper. He stared at the cloudless sky, the sun like a blowtorch against his face, and he prayed. He prayed more fervently than he ever had. “Dear Lord, get me out of here if You can. I’m not going to bullshit You. I’d like to say that if You get me out of here alive, I’ll dedicate my life to You and become a priest. I can’t do that.…” What he did promise was to take life as it came if he survived.
Five minutes later, Bleier got his answer. Doc had bellied up to the boulder with Dave, then shouted to the hedgerow, “Rock, you and I are getting out of here!” Doc stepped out from behind the rock—and instantly screamed and doubled up. A bullet had split his thumb open, but he tried again. This time he made it. Bleier bandaged his hand, then Doc insisted, “Let’s get out of here.” The medic did not have a weapon—many of the medics in the brigade were conscientious objectors, and he may have been one—and Bleier left his empty M79 in the paddy. They were helpless as they crawled down the hedgerow to the left edge of the paddy. They made a beeline for the CP, pushing straight through thickets and elephant grass up to the last clearing. The medic went first, Bleier hobbled after him, and in the trees they found Captain Murphy and the company headquarters.
“How you feeling, Rock,” the captain asked.
“Fine, sir.”
“Do you think you can hang on for a while?”
Bleier nodded.
“Well, good. I think you’re lucky. It looks like you’ve got a million dollar wound there. It’ll get you out of the field for a month or so, then you might have to come back.” That sounded great. Bleier drained a quart canteen in twenty seconds, then bummed a cigarette to celebrate. He’d never felt so relieved; he was back with the captain which was like, he figured, being back in the womb.
Twenty minutes later, the rest of the platoon made it back in a low-crawling row. By the time they got out, the NVA were firing on them from three sides and Blue Ghost Cobras provided cover. They brought out their five wounded, but left their three dead. Most also left their rucksacks and the LAW rockets secured to them. The rucks must have been like little treasure chests to the NVA emerging from the brush. If they opened Bleier’s rucksack, they would have found a hammock, air mattress, poncho liner, mosquito netting, socks, sandals, cans of fruit and soda, dehydrated LRRP rations, iodine pills, calamine lotion, and a camera.
According to the battalion journal, Charlie One had been ambushed at 1020 and had pulled back to the CP by 1344.
At 1510, the firing resumed.
The NVA had followed the platoon’s retreat and crawled into the fringes of the tree line. There was a smattering of AK47 fire across the path where the platoon was hunkered down. Then came the Chicom grenades. The NVA were that close, although invisible. Lieutenant Wilson was crouched at the edge of the ravine when he saw the grenade come out of nowhere. It landed at the edge of the ditch and he instantly shoved his face into the dirt. An ear-popping explosion left his RTO temporarily rattled; Wilson shoved his M16 up and squeezed the trigger.
He flashed to the training NCO at Chu Lai. They had laughed when he said that many a time they would shove their faces down, raise their M16s over their heads, and fire blind. That’s just what he was doing now on terrified instinct.
When the attack began, Captain Murphy was on his stomach, three radios around him. He was working all three at the same time, propped on his elbows and peering over the brush with his binoculars. Rocky Bleier sat on the pathway six feet to his right. Tommy Brown was sitting right behind him. Then came a pop!—the sound of a detonation string being pulled from the stick handle of a Chicom. Murphy bellowed, “Grenade!” and ducked his head into his arms. Bleier rolled flat on the trail as Brown hurdled over him trying to escape the grenade which had almost landed in his lap. Boom! Bleier woke up, ears ringing. He looked around. A two-foot hole was blown into the dirt where he’d been sitting. Brown was sprawled a few yards away, his trouser legs shredded with shrapnel, moaning loudly. Bleier’s fuzziness wore off; he realized he was unscathed. He could also hear the AK fire snapping over his head. He had no weapon, no idea what was going on, and could only squeeze into the dirt, head down under the cacophony.
It was five minutes before he could look up; when he did he glanced up at another Chicom coming right down on them. It landed on Murphy’s back, bounced off, deflected towards Bleier. It was top-heavy on its stick handle, bouncing crazily, and it landed at his feet. It was an instantaneous decision, jump back or jump over it, and he crouched to spring forward just as it exploded. The next thing he knew, Murphy was pushing him off, rolling him onto his back with a shove. Bleier stared uncomprehending at Murphy, who was barely out of his daze, groaning, the inside of his legs saturated with red-hot shrapnel.
Bleier looked at his own legs. The right one was quivering uncontrollably. It scared him and he grabbed at it, suddenly feeling his blood-soaked trousers and the stab of pain in his right foot. His trousers were ripped from dozens of fragment holes, but it was his foot that was throbbing. One toe was shattered, the skin ripped open.
The platoon medic was wounded so Doc Smith, the headquarters medic, had his hands full. He crouched beside Bleier and used his long surgical scissors to cut off his jungle boot; he tied gauze around his foot and said, “That’s all I can do for you right now.” Others dragged a dazed Captain Murphy into the safety of the ditch. Bleier lay where he’d been wounded and watched as Doc Smith “… low crawled away like an alligator down the pathway.”
The unwounded returned fire as fast as they could.
2d Platoon of Charlie 4–31 humped off Million Dollar Hill to reach Captain Murphy’s besieged group. As soon as they reached a clearing at the base of the hill, the NVA dropped mortars on them. They fell back to medevac their casualties. 3d Platoon also tried to move in, but were caught in a firefight of their own. Lieutenant Simms, the platoon leader, was considered the best one in the company. (During a later fight on Banana Tree Hill, Lieutenant Wilson saw Lieutenant Simms walk up to a hole where two replacements had thrown themselves when the bullets started flying. Under fire, Simms stood at the rim of the hole, pointed his AR15 at the trembling kids, and said, “You either come out on your own, or we’ll have somebody drag you out.” They scrambled out and joined the firing line.)
Today, even 3d Platoon couldn’t break through.
A pair of Blue Ghost Cobras did, however, get above 1st Platoon. Bleier was lying among the three abandoned radios of the company headquarters when a pilot came on, “Pop smoke, pop smoke, mark your position.” No one had any smoke grenades; they’d been on their rucks which the NVA now had.
“Well, what are your coordinates?”
From above the tree line, neither U.S. nor NVA soldiers were visible. Bleier concentrated through his pain; had he heard the captain mention the map coordinates? He couldn’t remember. The situation seemed hopeless!
A GI finally calculated their azimuth with a compass and range finder; it was relayed to the pilots along with instructions to strafe the open paddy to destroy the packs and LAWs, and to strafe only ten yards into the edge of the woods. That’s where the NVA had crawled. The grunts were deeper into the tree line island. The first Cobra probably did some damage to the NVA, but he also fired a 2.75-inch rocket into the platoon’s farthest hole. Lieutenant Wilson was crouched along the ravine when a skinny, red-headed Tennessean ran back. He was miraculously unscathed, but the M60 in his hands was totalled, and he was screaming bloody murder about gunship pilots. The friendly fire had killed one rifleman and gravely wounded the platoon’s last grenadier with shrapnel.
This mess of a firefight was Lieutenant Wilson’s first. In the weeks before, he’d seemed to be the caricature of the green second lieutenant: skinny as a rail, thick glasses, his fingers and arms bandaged by Doc Smith from all his elephant grass cuts. He was walking on glass his first operation; if a leaf dropped from a banana tree, he nervously pumped an M16 burst into it.
Wilson was a pleasant North Carolina Baptist who simply did not have the warrior’s streak in him. He had enlisted for Artillery OCS after college to avoid the potluck of the draft, and had landed at the 90th Replacement Battalion, Bien Hoa, in the third week of June 1969. He toted his duffel bag through in-processing, rolling sweat, miserable and excited, amazed that such a place really existed. What am I doing here? he wondered. At the O Club, he ran into one of his OCS instructors, a gung ho captain also just arrived for his first tour. He was insisting on duty with the 1st Air Cavalry Division and wanted Wilson to join him.
Wilson begged off. He wasn’t looking for such trouble. So it was, on his second morning, he was put on a transport plane to Chu Lai. He and the others were driven in jeeps from the airfield to the Americal Division Combat Center. It was a beautiful area; blinding white sand and an inviting ocean view. Wilson hated the concertina wire and guard towers dotting the beach. It was like a ruined paradise. Introduction classes were conducted on bleachers built into the sandy hills with awnings over them. One class was on marijuana. The instructor NCO said it was very prevalent and he passed a lit butt through the circle of officers, telling them to smell it and sample it if they wished, so they would recognize when one of their men was stoned. It was the first and last time Wilson saw marijuana and he wanted nothing to do with it. The mine and booby trap class was the most interesting. The sergeant started it off in a colorful manner, tossing a defused grenade into the bleachers, then laughing as everyone ate sand. He took them down a path in a jungled training compound. An E-tool was stuck in the middle of it, and the sergeant sounded as though he were counting cadence. “Okay, gentlemen, now it’s decision time. What do you do? Go around it, move it …?” Smoke grenades were rigged as booby traps and it was scary and fun.
After the two-week course, Wilson was sent to Fat City, the Division Artillery compound in Chu Lai. It was indeed fat living. The next day, he reported with three others to the air-conditioned office of the DivArty commander, a bird colonel. He gave them their marching orders alphabetically and Wilson fretted; the last one’s always the worst. The first two officers were assigned to batteries in Chu Lai; the third got an aerial observer job; and Lieutenant Wilson—oh no, he thought, the shit’s going to hit the fan—you’re going to Charlie Battery, 3d Battalion, 82d Field Artillery. The next morning, Wilson caught a Loach to LZ Baldy. He wasn’t really aware of the change in atmosphere until he noticed the Cobra escorting them. He took a photo of it through the window. They landed on the base camp LZ and he hopped from the Loach, feeling like a duck out of water—helmet cover and fatigues unsoiled, jungle boots shiny black and green, his bag in one hand, an unloaded M16 in the other.
Wilson spent two nights at the 3–82 Rear on Baldy, then hitched a ride aboard the 4–31 C&C Huey to LZ Siberia. The hill was very spartan. Wilson met the battery commander, executive officer, and first sergeant, and got a slap on the back, a welcome to Vietnam, and a walking tour of the hill. Within a day, he was choppered over to LZ West where Charlie 4–31 was pulling its week of palace guard. Wilson was their new forward observer. In the TOC bunker, he met Captain Murphy. They shook hands, then Murphy hefted a radio and said, “Let’s do some shooting.” From the bunker line, Wilson could just make out the intended practice target—an abandoned, demolished collection of hootches. He checked his map and read the coordinates to his battery on Siberia; the first round landed halfway up the slope of West. Murphy said nothing for a moment, then very calmly, “Lieutenant, you gotta remember. The French made this map. We didn’t. It’s not accurate. What you see and the coordinates they appear to be on are not where it really is.” Wilson adjusted the fire by sight and hit the huts. Murphy said, “Cancel the fire mission. Let’s go get some chow.”
That’s how Wilson thought of Murphy: friendly, businesslike, intense. He was on his second tour, which gave Wilson much confidence. He needed that because when Charlie Company finally took to the bush off LZ West, Wilson was a walking bundle of nerves. They patrolled Banana Tree Hill and, although the grunts seemed casual about the place, Wilson envisioned snipers behind every tree. He nervously vomitted his meals at night. Murphy was not a pal to anybody, but he was an officer who took care of his men. He talked with Wilson in their poncho hootch at night; he mixed him a canteen of Kool Aid to calm his stomach.
After a while, Wilson’s trauma wore off. In his six weeks with the company, he’d made one contact—a couple of snipers who took off as soon as he called in the arty. His knees were weak, but he’d done his job. After a while, it didn’t seem so bad. The days were long and hot, but the evening resupply bird brought in heated food in mermite cans and Cokes and beers on ice. They had the Arsenal of Democracy backing them up, and the enemy wanted only to avoid them.
It was confidence born of ignorance.
They had walked into this, but what it was he had no idea. The NVA were all around them. They were standing up to gunships and artillery, and Captain Murphy—the heart and soul of the company—was semiconscious in a ditch. He was groaning loudly. It annoyed Wilson, chilled him, unnerved him, made him wonder what the hell was going on.
Wilson felt very alone. No one seemed to be in control. Men just hunkered down behind some cover, glancing around between bursts to make sure there was still another GI on either side of them. Wilson and crew were on their stomachs in the drainage ditch. The raised path ran across their front, and they could see beyond it about six feet into the brush. The wall of vegetation extended perhaps another fifteen yards to the paddies. That’s where the NVA were, behind the last dike and crawling into the trees. They stayed low, pinning the grunts with AK47 fire. Lots of it.
Wilson could see the brushy wall flicker.
He’d drop down and, as soon as the enemy stopped firing, he’d raise his M16 over his helmet and pull the trigger.
He and his RTO were glued to each other, the line open to LZ Siberia to bring the 105mm shells within thirty meters of their perimeter. It was hairy; Wilson would scream, “Danger Close, Danger Close!” and concussions slammed under their chests as they ducked. Shrapnel oscillated overhead. Tree branches and clods of dirt crashed down. The Cobras darted in between artillery salvos. The North Vietnamese kept firing; they survived because they were daring, crawling into that insulation space around the U.S. perimeter. They were hidden there among the trees.
The company Kit Carson Scout scrambled to Wilson’s group. His name was Nguyen Van Ly, but he was better known as Twenty, and he had a good reputation. He had been an NVA and he knew of their low-crawling tactics. He rushed from side to side in the loose circle, firing his M16 and throwing grenades. He pitched one a mere fifteen feet in front of them, and everyone ducked as the explosion kicked their brains and sent frags whizzing through the brush around them. As soon as it went off, Twenty jumped up, emptying his rifle at what to an untrained eye was nothing. During a lull, Wilson tried to raise B-TOC on LZ West. The NVA were jamming the primary frequency. He switched to the secondary and, when the TOC answered, he burst into an excited, profane dialogue to let the world know they were still out there and needed help right now!
Lieutenant Colonel Henry came on the line, “This is Cave Man One. Calm down. What exactly is Captain Murphy’s status?”
“Murphy’s been hit in the legs. I can’t get to him, I’m too busy where I am. When are we going to get some help!”
“Help is all around you. It’s just a matter of time before it gets to you. So relax and take care of your situation.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean!
Captain Murphy’s first tour was cut short when he was wounded. He thought he was going to end his second tour by getting killed. The company had started this patrol with thirty-three men; now six were dead and twenty-one wounded. That left six unscathed and, judging from the amount of fire their little circle was taking, there were no fewer than a hundred NVA around them. He looked at his grunts and thought he was seeing men about to die. There was no stopping it. Murphy called Twenty to his side. He gave him the headquarters PRC77 radio and said, “If they make an assault, we won’t be able to hold them. When that happens, I want you to get away. Take this radio and put it in the hands of an American officer. Do not give it to anyone else. If it looks like you’re in danger of being killed, destroy it.”
When Wilson crawled down into the ditch to check on the captain during a lull, he found Murphy propped up, legs bandaged. Murphy took his radio code book from his baggy trouser pocket and began tearing each page from its staples and burning them one at a time with his cigarette lighter. He looked at Wilson, “You might as well burn yours too.” Wilson didn’t.
He didn’t want to accept what was happening.
Bleier saw Murphy call over the platoon lieutenant. “Make sure each man has his weapon and all his ammo within reach. I want you to take every man who’s able to hold a rifle, and prop him up against a rock or tree stump. We’re going to need everything we’ve got.”