Chapter Thirteen
In the late morning of 21 August 1969, LtCol Marvin H. Lugger, CO, 2/7 Marines, met with Colonel Codispoti at the new regimental headquarters on LZ Baldy. Codispoti informed Lugger that the Army was in heavy contact in the Hiep Duc Valley and had requested a Marine element to move in and relieve some of the pressure. He himself seemed indifferent to the request and told Lugger to handle the situation as he saw fit. Lugger jumped at the opportunity. With almost four months in command and a new post waiting in two weeks, he had yet to take his battalion to the field for a full-fledged combat operation. Prior to this, they’d been in the Da Nang Rocket Belt.
Lugger was briefed by the S-3, 196th InfBde, who said that they needed any troops the Marines could spare and they needed them right away. Lugger decided to march south past the eastern tip of Nui Chom from his battalion base camp on LZ Ross. Once in the valley, the Marine block would face west, separated by three or four kilometers from the Army units moving towards them. The tip of Nui Chom rose to form Hill 441, and just west of that was Hill 381; the Army said the command posts of the NVA units they were engaging in the flatlands were probably dug in around those peaks.
Lugger radioed his CP to have F Company (1stLt D. C. Ehrsam) and G Company (1stLt J. P. Larrison) put on standby at LZ Ross. Golf Company was still coming in from patrol, and Fox was just starting down the road to take their place. Lugger helicoptered back; organized a jump CP including his S-3, Maj Mel Horowitz, and his BSM, SgtMaj Henry Black; and by 1400 the column was moving. They followed Route 535 for seven kilometers with Fox in the lead, the CP in the center, and Golf bringing up the rear. It was well over 100 degrees and the road south was dotted with heat casualties: Marines lay naked on ponchos in the roadside weeds, unconscious and pale, corpsmen and buddies pouring canteens over them. To hide their intent, the column left the road and marched near OP Lion in Happy Valley; by dusk, they had set up night positions due east of Hill 441.
In the morning, Fox humped up the northeast slope. From the crest was a sweeping view of the valley’s terraced rice paddies blanketed by bright green elephant grass. Golf and the CP came around the other way into the valley itself. Major Lee, S-3, 4–31 Infantry, helicoptered into the 2/7 CP to confer with Lugger. The new mission was to push one kilometer west from Hill 441 to the paddies below 381; hopefully, this would exert enough pressure on the NVA rear to force them to lessen their attacks on the Polar Bears.
Helicopter resupply came in, including precious water blivets from the Army, and by dusk, 2/7 Marines had advanced to their new blocking positions. Golf was on the right flank in the shadow of Hill 381. The CP was in the center, along the Song Lau River, which cut the valley lengthwise. F Company was deployed around the CP. There had been no contact, but the sun could kill, and there were numerous priority and emergency medevacs for heat exhaustion patients. Some Marines began shit-canning their gear.
That night, the Marines made their first contact in the Hiep Duc Valley. Around 2100, an ambush team opened fire on an NVA party which appeared to be scouting their lines; the team found two dead North Vietnamese.
The next afternoon, Colonel Codispoti helicoptered into the 2/7 Command Post. Lugger had assumed command of his battalion on 28 April, Codispoti his regiment on 9 July, and in the following weeks their relationship had deteriorated. It was almost inevitable. Codispoti was a New York City Italian. Lugger was a short, slightly built man, very intelligent, but also sensitive and pensive. His parents were both Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. He had originally been impressed by Codispoti’s dynamic and down-to-earth style, but he became increasingly infuriated by his loudly overbearing manner. Codispoti was something of a legend as “a crazy son of a bitch,” a phrase both his admirers and detractors used with different inflections. Lugger thought him a tyrant whose decisions were ruled by emotionalism—if he didn’t like you, you could do nothing right. The colonel’s dislike of Lugger seemed to affect his attitude towards the entire battalion; while Codispoti was seen by 1/7 as a positive leader, at the grunt level in 2/7 he was a remote hard-ass who didn’t care about them.
Codispoti thought Lugger indecisive, thus ineffective.
Their uneasy alliance contributed to what occurred during the battle and to Codispoti’s eventual decision to relieve Lugger. Lugger, defending himself against what he considered to be an undeserved attack, noted in his watered-down rebuttal:
… he was hostile, impatient, and provocative without cause. On two occasions, at my request, we had confidential and honest conversations at which I addressed the question of his attitude toward me, and his evaluation of my performance. At the end of these meetings I had the feeling that there was a better understanding between senior and subordinate. My feelings of confidence were reinforced when on 21 August he gave me his authority to conduct such operations as I deemed appropriate in support of the adjacent Army unit. I felt I had rewarded his confidence when on 23 August he visited my CP in the field. At that time he was filled with praise for my Battalion. I remember with vividness him saying, “You’re doing a wonderful job! The Army is delighted over the way you’ve moved so swiftly. You’ve taken a lot of pressure off of them.”
Just prior to Codispoti’s visit, Lugger had been radioed by Colonel Tackaberry, CO, 196th Brigade; he wanted 2/7 to push west. Since this was contrary to his previous blocking mission, Lugger waited until Codispoti’s arrival to confirm it. Lugger was to advance the next morning but, in the meantime, G Company was to continue reconning the flanks to gauge the extent of the NVA infiltration.
1stLt Jack Larrison—a stocky, hard-drinking, level-headed young man—had taken command of Golf Company on LZ Ross the day of the move into Hiep Duc. Lugger liked him and, when Golf’s captain rotated that day, Lugger moved Larrison in from his slot as the S-5 civil affairs officer. On his third day in command, 23 August, Larrison was directed to recon a thickly vegetated knoll near the base of Hill 381.
2dLt John Pickett, Golf Two, was given the job.
Pickett moved up one side with Sgt William Adams’s squad. The platoon sergeant, SSgt Alfred Clements, went up another way with Cpl Randall Black’s squad. It was windless and blisteringly hot under helmets and flak jackets; the elephant grass was above their heads at times and it was slow going, the razored edges cutting hands and arms, sweat stinging in the slices and pouring down faces. It was impossible to see more than a few yards into the tangle.
Then the NVA hit them.
There was little to do but squeeze down into the grass as RPDs and AK47s jackhammered from some invisible spider holes.
Lieutenant Pickett radioed Staff Sergeant Clements to bring his squad across, and they got moving with Corporal Black on point. They pushed uphill through the thick brush, then shouldered their way into a small clearing near the crest. Another NVA opened fire. Black reacted before he could think, rolling away, but the man behind him was a second slower. His name was Gerald and the AK burst across his chest killed him instantly. Corporal Black lobbed three grenades towards the invisible sniper; behind him, the rest of the squad huddled low in the grass, gripped by the terror of being impotent in a sourceless crossfire. It was so hot and they were so tired, the grunts seemed almost willing to lie down and accept death rather than move anymore.
Lieutenant Pickett, immobile under his own crossfire, radioed the squad to inch back down the hill.
Black responded that he had a dead Marine up front.
It seemed impossible to retrieve the body without getting someone else killed, and Pickett was adamant about pulling back.
The platoon reorganized at the base of the hill, and Sergeant Adams and Corporal Black volunteered to take a fire team back to recover their dead. Halfway up the slope, the assault began all over again. Two AKs starting firing and, in a mad moment, Adams dropped his helmet and flak jacket and dashed within yards of the spider holes. He pumped his M16 into the brush at point-blank range until one AK was silenced, then scrambled to a boulder five feet from the second hole. He emptied his rifle at it. The AK47 stopped shooting. Adams moved forward and a North Vietnamese fired from the spider hole, killing Sergeant Adams at four feet.
The hill was covered with snipers, at least eight of them, and 2d Platoon retreated again, leaving Gerald and Adams where they fell.
For four hours, company commander Larrison called in air and arty, doing it personally because his air radioman had passed out from the heat. While bombs and napalm scorched the knoll and the grunts nervously waited, the corpsmen treated the casualties at the base of the ridge. Many men had severe heat exhaustion brought on by the 120 degree temperature and the lack of food and water (they had left LZ Ross with only a two-day supply of C rats). And three men had been carried down from the firefight in shock; Golf had not seen solid contact in a long time.
By the time the bombardment ended, the knoll was an ugly brown scar on the lush ridge line. It seemed no one could have survived, and 1st Platoon, under 2dLt Bob Page, moved out. One squad under Sergeant Ferguson was to secure a shattered tree line overlooking the bodies, then provide cover fire while a second squad under Cpl Travis Skaggs retrieved the dead. The platoon moved out as soon as the firing lifted, sweeping uphill through the ash of napalmed elephant grass. Ferguson’s squad secured the trees and—unbelievably—the snipers opened fire again. Two men went down with bullets in their legs. Sergeant Ferguson kept his squad firing, and Corporal Skaggs and his squad moved towards the bodies on the crest. More sniper fire erupted, the first burst killing Private Cunningham and a blistering crossfire sending the rest down, faces in the ash dust, coughing, pressing down under the scythe, baking under the sun. Some men returned fire and an M79 grenadier was able to slam a round into one of the dugouts, silencing one North Vietnamese.
The rest of the NVA were dug in and invisible.
Lieutenant Larrison ordered the men back down, and Golf Company humped up to a second ridge line foothill eighty meters from their target. Larrison stayed on the one-four net, calling in the firepower. Artillery pounded the backside of the knoll as a block to any retreat, while jets shrieked across the slope facing Golf, tumbling more bombs and napalm canisters into what little greenery remained. Medevacs added to the noise. Lieutenant Page’s platoon sergeant went out with ash in his lungs. Corporal Skaggs saw the corpsmen frantically giving mouth to mouth and heart massage to a kid in shock who stopped breathing. They kept him alive and, as they hustled him up the back ramp of the Sea Knight, he was like a piece of lumber in their hands.
Even those not in shock or unconscious from the heat were ready to throw in the towel. They were almost out of ammunition, food, and water. The heat was unbearable. The snipers seemed invincible. Men found a spot in the grass and just lay there. Staff Sergeant Clements, an Old Corps lifer with a southern drawl, surveyed his platoon. He was not pleased; the men looked like they couldn’t move, like they’d be glad to sit this one out. Hotel Company was humping past then, having come in as the re-act to retrieve the bodies. Some of the Hotel grunts nonchalantly shouted that old Golf could go back now and guard “the pilots,” meaning the battalion command post. As Golf watched Hotel heading towards the knoll, they couldn’t help but think, almost vindictively: you’ll find out.
From his CP along the valley stream, Lieutenant Colonel Lugger had watched Golf Company’s aborted efforts to secure the knoll. He radioed regiment to have another company released from the LZ Ross AO; permission was received and, at 1300, 1stLt P. E. Vannoy, CO, H/2/7, was alerted to prepare for a helo lift. By no means was Lugger’s opinion unanimous, but he himself did not trust Vannoy; he thought him too unaggressive.
Hotel Company was spread out around LZ Ross in platoon observation posts when the Sea Knights began shuttling them into a bush LZ secured by F/2/7 in the Hiep Duc Valley. The air strikes were still pounding Nui Chom as Lugger quickly briefed Vannoy about recovering the casualties, then finally seizing and holding the knoll. Vannoy huddled with his platoon leaders and asked for a volunteer to get the bodies.
2dLt William T. Brennon, Hotel Three, spoke up.
By 1700, three hours after the first wave of Hotel had been airlifted in, they had humped north and linked up with Golf. Lieutenant Brennon—who was considered a good head by his grunts—asked for volunteers to go up with him.
LCpl Ralph Bruno Sirianni said he’d go.
What prompted him was a subtle sense of duty. Sirianni wasn’t a believer, but his street buddies had always trusted him to cover their backs when something went down. He’d grown up in the Italian section of Buffalo, New York, the son of immigrants. His father died when Ralph was two and his mother, who barely spoke English, worked three jobs to support him and his older brother. Sirianni grew up in the streets and, by the time he was fourteen, he ran with a gang that crossed paths with the police. He ended up in reform school for eighteen months; afterwards, he forced himself through high school. But he didn’t stay out of trouble and the judge finally gave him the choice of jail or the service. He checked with the Army, Navy, and Air Force but they all turned him down because of his juvenile record. The Marine Corps was much more amiable and he was glad; he wanted to be with the best.
In June 1969, Sirianni joined Hotel Company in their Dai La cantonment. It was a whole different Marine Corps out there. The first thing the guys in his squad told him was to forget boot camp, that they weren’t fighting to take some objective but to survive. In that larger sense, Sirianni thought, morale was a disaster. The people back home don’t want us here, he figured, we don’t want to be here, and the Vietnamese don’t care. To him, the grunts were just cannon fodder for the lifers to build their paper records and the arms manufacturers to build their fortunes. He couldn’t believe they were considered so expendable as to be sent through the rice paddies like bait. Sirianni regarded the NVA much like the cavalryman did the Apaches: ruthless and skilled, always watching, always waiting for the opportunity to hit and run. One rare occasion, Sirianni’s platoon captured a North Vietnamese regular, a lean, tough kid with modern gear and weapons. He wore a green rain jacket. Sirianni stood toe to toe with him, staring with hate and fear and satisfaction; and the NVA glared right back at him.
Sometimes, Sirianni’s squad would sandbag their patrols. They could find no reason to tread through booby-trapped paddies in the dead of night, looking for people who probably weren’t there. So they’d leave the perimeter, find a spot of cover, and radio in fake checkpoints. In the battalion compound, they dropped out. Lots of rock, some marijuana. But, like it or not, Sirianni mostly had to keep in step with the way things were programmed. In that smaller sense, morale was high. The grunts took care of each other. It was a matter of honor. When he was in high school, Sirianni was always in trouble with one particular teacher, a former Marine; when he enlisted, the man had told him, “When you get under fire for the first time, you’re going to freeze.” In his first firefight, two or three snipers temporarily pinned down his squad and Sirianni ducked behind a small boulder. His foot slipped out, a round kicked up dirt near it, and he yanked it back, terrified. Then his mind flashed to that insult and he thought, I can’t go through my life giving him the satisfaction. He forced himself up to return fire. Before his tour was over, Sirianni made sergeant and was decorated for valor.
Lance Corporal Sirianni, who was twenty and known as Tripper, volunteered to retrieve the bodies—he’d known Cunningham from ITR. Sirianni’s squad leader, Corporal Beckler—skinny, blond, and quiet—looked at him, then to T. J., a taciturn Mexican. They said they’d go too. Two frazzled looking guys from Golf Company led them up, pointed towards the bodies, then slinked back down the hill. The three volunteers crept up to the crest of the knoll while Lieutenant Brennon and his radioman crouched on the slope directing the automatic cover fire. Sirianni glanced over the crest. He could see one of the dead Marines sprawled in the ash a few yards away, mangled by the prep bombardment.
He started over but an AK47 suddenly opened fire, sending him back. Someone yelled, “Chicom!” and, being new, he hesitated a second. Beckler or T. J. shoved him down from behind and his face was in the dirt when the grenade exploded. Sirianni caught a fragment across the knee, a bloodless scratch, and the other two were similarly nicked. They shoved up their M16s to return fire while Lieutenant Brennon urgently shouted into the radio trying to shift Golf Company’s cover fire. It was almost hitting them. There was no response. More Chicoms bounced in.
Brennon finally hollered to pull back.
The retreat left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth—the Marine Corps does not abandon their dead—but what remained of Adams, Gerald, and Cunningham lay with the North Vietnamese all night.
Colonel Codispoti was with Lieutenant Colonel Lugger when the decision was made to break contact and blast the hill again with air power. The jets tumbled more bombs onto the knoll and, as the vibrations rolled back under their feet, Lugger glanced at Codispoti. Lugger was suddenly aware that his regimental commander was viewing these proceedings with a disapproving grimace. But Codispoti said nothing. Lugger was silently frustrated, thinking, well, what does he suggest I do; if we keep running up the hill without supporting arms, we’ll just take more casualties! Codispoti was probably thinking of Dowd, for whom he had approved a posthumous Navy Cross, and his battalion’s classic use of fire and maneuver. In comparison, Lugger did not measure up. When Codispoti reviewed Lugger’s performance in the current action and that which would quickly follow, his words were damning, “As a matter of practice during this battle period, elements of his battalion pulled back immediately upon being hit with enemy small arms fire.… Guidance, direction, exhortation and positive orders were given over the radio and at daily personal visits by me to this officer to have his units press forward with fire and maneuver on being subjected to enemy small arms fire, but to no avail.”*
Golf and Hotel Companies set their night perimeters along the terraced dikes at the base of the enemy knoll. Sirianni nestled against a berm. NVA on the knoll screamed down, “Marines, tomorrow you die!”
Grunts screamed back, “Fuck off!”
Sirianni, a tough-looking kid with glasses, a tattoo, and thick muscles, was shaking. He didn’t smoke but finally got a Pall Mall from his buddy, cupped it in his hands in the dark, and smoked the hell out of it. It calmed him down. He finally fell asleep.
He awoke the next morning to the rumble of Phantoms flashing in on the knoll ahead. Dirt clods flew back at them. He lay there, miserably hot and hungry, then he stopped sweating and things got foggy. The next thing he knew he was waking up in a dark, vibrating helicopter. The crew chief was bending down to talk with him. It was heat exhaustion and Sirianni ended up at 1st Med. The place was already abuzz with casualties and he stared stunned at one Marine; the man himself was staring with numb horror at his shredded leg, which had been blown off six inches above the knee.
At 0500 on 24 August, NVA crept up to Golf Company’s perimeter. They tossed Chicom stick grenades over the dikes, then quickly faded back into the dark brush as the grunts responded with M79 and fragmentation grenades. One Marine was killed in the brief, blind melee.
With daylight, the company prepared to attack the knoll again.
The firepower was turned back on for several hours to strip away the last of the vegetation concealing the snipers. H Battery, 3/11 Marines on LZ Ross sent 155mm artillery shells whistling in; Phantoms and Cobras finished the show. Then the grunts began their uphill sweep. The scorching sun was made even more unbearable now that the knoll was bald. They led their attack with M79 CS rounds, but the NVA had pulled out, leaving only one or two men as a rear guard. Corporal Skaggs’s squad took some fire but his point man—a young grunt with an Italian name—lobbed a frag into the spider hole. An NVA with an SKS carbine scrambled out, and the point man cut him down. Along the denuded slope, Golf Company found results of their firepower: two NVA roasted to death from napalm in a spider hole, still clutching their AK47s, and pieces of bodies scattered in the upturned earth. They also found the remains of the three Marines who’d died for this hunk of dirt, and carried them down to be evacuated.
Meanwhile, Hotel Company was also assaulting but from a different angle. It was their job to secure the top of the knoll, and Lieutenant Brennon led his platoon up in a basic on-line assault. Cobra gunships pumped in their ordnance ten meters ahead of the platoon while AK fire cracked from farther up the ridge. The grunts ran up as fast as they could under their gear, propelled by adrenaline and fear; when they’d secured the top—without casualties—many simply passed out under the noonday sun. The rest of Hotel hiked up after them, unopposed, and dug in on the bald crest.
Resupply helicopters began coming in, but the NVA opened fire on them from the tree lines in the lowland paddies to the west. Air strikes were called in, but the NVA were dug in deeply and a spotter pilot from the 1st Marine Air Wing was wounded in his cockpit seat.
Meanwhile, 2/7 remained in place and rested.
That night, it was back to business. At dusk, LCpl Rolf Parr, a squad leader in Fox Company, took out two men as the platoon listening post. The battalion had a lot of problem children, but Parr was not one of them; he was a twenty-year-old Indiana farm boy who soldiered along, rather uncomplaining, even though he had an NVA bullet lodged in a bone in his foot. It was a souvenir from Operation Oklahoma Hills. Parr’s LP team walked two hundred yards outside their perimeter, set a claymore along a dike, then dropped back fifty yards to set in for the night behind another dike. It was around midnight when the new guy on the team whispered he had movement. He pointed and Parr stared at what appeared to be four posts on the dike a hundred yards ahead. Parr figured the foggy night was playing tricks on the kid’s imagination, but then one of the posts moved. An M60 on the perimeter suddenly opened fire and red tracers snapped past the LP. The silhouettes on the dike instantly disappeared. Parr was more surprised than angry with the jumpy machine gunner: he’s not supposed to do that with us out here! One of the NVA suddenly reappeared, running in a crouch along the dike towards the team’s claymore. Parr tossed the firing handle to the third grunt. They let the NVA get within thirty meters of the mine, then Parr opened fire with his M16. The new guy cut loose too, and Parr shouted at the third Marine to blow the claymore. The figure disappeared in the blast and tracers.
The firing had given away their position and Parr radioed for permission to return to the lines. For reasons not explained to him, permission was denied; it was one long, sleepless night, which turned out to be without further incident. At sunrise, the team heard a single shot from the paddies. Parr’s squad found the dead NVA where the claymore had levelled him. The man’s legs were shattered, bloody tourniquets around them, and his AK47 was locked in his hands, barrel under the chin. He had—it appeared—killed himself at dawn when he realized no one was coming to rescue him. Hard-core. Documents on the body indicated he had been a lieutenant.
* A copy of this fitness report was provided to the author by Lugger himself, despite the negative light he knew it would cast upon him.