Chapter Fourteen
On 22 August 1969, in Hiep Duc, PFC Michael Kosteczko of B Company, 2d Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, came under enemy fire for the first time. This was not his baptism of fire; that had been provided some days earlier courtesy of a U.S. cavalry troop.
Kosteczko had been with the company a week.
He had been born in France, the son of Ukrainian immigrants who continued their migration to Chicago when he was twelve. They were factory workers intent on keeping their only child out of the mills, and they made sure he got to college. He graduated in 1968 with a business degree and, almost immediately, a draft ticket to Vietnam. His mother cried, and he wrote their senator and petitioned his draft board. It did no good, but it was the only legal option he could accept. His girl friend wanted to go to Canada and get married. It was tempting, but he couldn’t. When his family first came to this country, they had nothing; now they owned their own home. Kosteczko always remembered that.
Vietnam meant nothing to him, but America did.
He didn’t tell his parents when he was ordered to Vietnam, and they didn’t know until he got back. Because they barely understood English and because the acronyms of the Army APO mailing system were vague, it was easy to make them believe he was in Korea.
Kosteczko lasted five months in the bush. On 13 December his best buddy, Soupy Campbell, took his place on the trail. Soupy carried an M79; the lieutenant wanted him behind the point, and Frenchy Kosteczko next with an M16 in case of ambush. A few minutes after trading places, a booby trap cleaned Soupy off the path. KIA. Kosteczko became fatalistic to the point of being careless. On Christmas Eve, the company commander sent him to Hawk Hill to finish his tour working in the ammunition dump. Kosteczko finally came home with his Bronze Star, but in the same funk. The nightmares were the worst part; he tried to forget by locking himself in his bedroom in his parent’s home, lights out, shades down. Every day was the same: he got drunk alone in the dark and tried to forget as the rock music screamed.
When Kosteczko had first joined Bravo Company on Hawk Hill, he was just like all the other new guys—nervous and green. He rolled through the gate in the back of a truck with Soupy Campbell, fresh from the Americal Combat Center, their new fatigues covered with road dust. That was right after the sapper attack on Hawk Hill and everyone was talking about it; they said the NVA had gotten through the wire, past the bunkers, and weren’t stopped until they crossed the camp road and the cav tanks and tracks chopped them down. Dawn had brought the Cobra gunships that hosed their miniguns into the retreating enemy. North Vietnamese bodies were still being policed up. Chicom stick grenades littered the perimeter road.
Kosteczko had spent his first week with Bravo on Hawk Hill. They filled sandbags and strung new wire. They smoked grass and paid the high-class whores five dollars a lay; the local girls would do it for a pack of cigarettes or a bar of soap. They tossed C rations to Vietnamese who begged along the perimeter wire. Some GIs threw the cans hard and aimed for their heads. They finally humped to the bush and by dusk were spread along a hillside. Kosteczko was asleep on his air mattress when he suddenly awoke to the whine of ricochets and the blipping of tracers, and he squeezed down, eyes tight, scared shitless. It turned out the strafing had been courtesy of F Troop, 17th Armored Cavalry, Americal, and the Mad Minute from their night defensive perimeter.
On 20 August, Bravo 2–1 was flown to ARVN LZ Karen.
On the 21st, they humped to Million Dollar Hill and secured it while the survivors of Charlie 4–31 and Bravo 1–46 staggered in.
On the 22d, Bravo 2–1, commanded by Capt Dwight D. Sypolt, led the first counterattack from Million Dollar Hill. Artillery rolled ahead of them as they pushed east, forming the sweep to 2/7 Marines’ blocking positions.
By noon, Private Kosteczko’s platoon took a break from the heat of the paddy beneath the trees of a little knoll. Several GIs set out to find water and were at the base of another hillock fifty yards ahead when a fierce eruption of AK47 fire suddenly cut loose from it. Kosteczko made a panicked scramble for cover, finally tumbling into a natural trench facing the hillock where the others had rushed. No one was firing back: the water detail was somewhere in the bushes from which the NVA were shooting. The GIs finally crawled back, minus one. They said the NVA had ambushed them from the top of the hill, and one GI had made a run for it. An AK round had hit the LAW hanging across his back, and they’d left his body. GIs were firing back, rising up to squeeze off full auto bursts, flopping back to reload. Kosteczko was not firing. He hugged dirt, confused, bug-eyed with fear.
Someone was asking for volunteers to get the body, and Kosteczko saw two black GIs run up. It surprised him; in base camp, the blacks looked out only for their own. The volunteers clambered forward into the brush. They came back without the body, but one black was dragging the other brother. He’d been shot in the stomach. Another GI sat in the ravine, shot in the knee. Kosteczko felt sick. A medevac landed for the twelve wounded men; then Bravo Company broke contact and pulled back to Million Dollar Hill. By the time Kosteczko’s squad pulled back, the scene was getting chaotic. The GIs scrambled from the ravine and hit the trail at a jog, firing into the underbrush to discourage pursuit. Kosteczko was the last in line, panting hard on the run, his M16 locked and loaded, full auto, his finger on the trigger. He was so scared he might get left behind, he kept running into the guy ahead of him—his buddy Foxhole—who was saying, “Watch it, man, before you trip and shoot me in the ass!”
“Hiep Duc village is one of those strange little nowhere places that suddenly finds itself in the limelight of the war,” wrote an Army correspondent in Stars and Stripes.
The village doesn’t even rate a dot on most maps. It has dirt streets, houses with tin roofs, and about 4,000 inhabitants. But Hiep Duc, important mostly as a symbol, has become one of the year’s bloodiest battles. To the allies, who have promised to protect it, Hiep Duc is a test of the seriousness of their intent. To the North Vietnamese, who have promised to destroy it, Hiep Duc is a measure of their ability to discredit the critical pacification program.
The correspondent’s comments explained why Task Force 4–31 and 2/7 Marines were fighting on the valley floor. How they were fighting was something else.
On 20 August, Major Lee had helicoptered to Million Dollar Hill to establish a forward command post. On the 21st, he had flown briefly to LZ Baldy to request the commander of the 7th Marines to send in reinforcements; then he had briefed the battalion commander given that mission. On the 22d, after two sleepless nights and after having been on the receiving end of a good amount of sniper fire, Lee helicoptered back to LZ West. Disembarking, he met LtCol Cecil Henry, BnCO, who was going in to take his place at the Forward CP. At the same time, one of the assistant division commanders, a brigadier general, helicoptered in. He wanted a briefing complete with pins on a map, but Henry tried to beg off. “Major Lee’s been out for three days, and I’m going out now. We haven’t got time for formality, only a quick run down.” The ADC was insistent, so they retired to the TOC bunker. Major Lee, giving the briefing, suddenly started crying. He did not know why. He felt nothing but a numb void; the emotions and frustrations were buried deeply. Henry interrupted, “General, I’d appreciate it if you could leave for a bit. We’ll brief you when we have time.” The ADC refused, and Colonel Henry exploded, “General, get off this hill now! And if you don’t like that, relieve me!”
As the ADC climbed back into his helicopter, he spat, “I’ll get you!” There were no repercussions from this ugly incident, which was obviously a personality clash in a highly charged situation. The brigadier’s lethargy, however exaggerated, nonetheless stemmed from the mood at division. Henry, who thought they were up against two regiments and perhaps a division in the Hiep Duc Valley, could not convince Major General Ramsey or Colonel Tackaberry of his hunch. At least not initially. He based his estimate on the numerous contacts and the number of crew-served weapons the enemy had, especially 12.7mm guns and 120mm mortars, which were usually reserved for NVA regiments. Also, a note in the battalion journal for 22 August read, “Monitored enemy radio transmissions indicated that a large amount of supplies were being shipped from the north to support two regimental size units.”
Although this was the only major action in the Americal TAOR at the time, General Ramsey was not willing to commit full force to it. The general, who had been wounded five times as a young officer in Europe, could be seen on a daily basis at the forward fire bases of his battalions wearing a green baseball cap with two black stars on the front; even the Americal Division’s most mean-spirited critic, Seymour Hersh, described Ramsey as “an honest, forthright officer … a believer in the system and the soldier.” Manpower played a key factor in Ramsey’s cautious approach to Hiep Duc. It was always a myth of the Vietnam War that U.S. infantrymen outnumbered NVA infantrymen in actual ground battles. Although the U.S. had a half-million men in the war zone, there were only approximately 80,000 infantrymen in the bush. It was the NVA who could hide in the wilderness, then mass and strike as it benefitted them. A diversionary attack in one area, which drew U.S. reinforcements like a magnet, could leave vulnerable gaps elsewhere.
That was General Ramsey’s very real worry.
Major Lee got into shouting matches with brigade staff officers over this lack of support. Colonel Henry kept his bitterness in check because he could appreciate those concerns, but he still thought it was a hell of a way to fight a battle. He requested from a visiting ADC that a troop of tanks from 1–1 Cav be dispatched to help his infantrymen blast out the entrenched enemy. His request was denied on the spot. He wanted another battalion rushed in, but his requests for reinforcements were met piecemeal, one company at a time. No units were committed to destroy, or at least harass, the NVA rear in the Nui Chom ridge line.
Both LZ West and LZ Siberia were subjected to shellings (casualties included Captain Kinman, battalion surgeon on West, hit by mortar shrapnel; and Capt Joel Thomason, artillery commander on Siberia, hit by recoilless rifle shrapnel). Resupply was precarious due to AAA fire, so Henry put LZ West on the bottom of the priority list to ensure that the field companies got the most. From 18 to 28 August, there was no shaving or bathing on the LZ. The mess hall was closed and the support personnel made due with C rations. Medical supplies were low. Those with minor wounds or heat stroke were flown to the battalion aid station; the rest were medevacked directly to LZ Baldy (23d Medical Company) and from there to Chu Lai (27th Surgical Hospital) or Da Nang (95th Evacuation Hospital).
In the valley, 4–31 was spread thinly—of twelve medics in the first three companies committed, one was killed and seven were wounded—and worn out—in three days.
The U.S. Command never completely deciphered the intentions of the NVA in Hiep Duc Valley. One North Vietnamese prisoner provided an explanation which seemed plausible in its simplicity: the NVA had originally intended to destroy the Resettlement Village, but when that plan was blocked, their new directive was to inflict as many casualties as possible until ordered to withdraw.
The terrain suited such a scheme. From their positions on Nui Chom, the NVA commanders and forward observers kept the Army and Marine units under constant visual observation. The NVA troops in the valley were dug in, too. They were not attacking anymore; they sat invisible in the shade of the tree lines in squad- and platoon-sized groups, and watched their enemy come searching for them across the open paddies.
When the Americans came close enough, the NVA killed them.
During this battle, 4–31 still had to commit two companies to the defense of LZs West and Siberia, plus the Resettlement Village, leaving a mixed bag of attached companies to shoulder much of the combat. These troops were generally inexperienced and unfamiliar with the terrain. The battalion journal commented:
Training in the small unit tactics of fire and maneuver, and fire and movement needs to be stressed. Even though this battalion has consistently stressed these basics, it was learned from this action, that units cannot be over-trained; and not until the basics become automatic reactions, do units even begin to be proficient. Individual soldiers seem to believe that this war is drastically different from past conflicts. This is true in some technical aspects, but the small unit tactics have not changed in the slightest.
23 August. At 0640, B/2–1 and B/1–46 moved east again from their spot of poncho shelters around Million Dollar Hill, while Colonel Henry remained at his Forward CP with C/4–31 as reserve and the Echo Mortar Platoon 4–31 (2dLt Charles Allen) dug in near his radios. At 0715, thirty rounds of 82mm mortar fire thumped into the CP; Henry scooted into an old shell crater, but not before fragments burned into his hand and the left side of his face. Echo Mortars pumped 81mm fire in return as a Huey took Henry and three other slightly wounded GIs to LZ West (Henry was back on Million Dollar Hill before dusk). At 1400, Bravo 1–46 made contact with what appeared to be a platoon of NVA; their barrage of AK47 and RPG fire halted Bravo, and they broke contact before dusk in order to evacuate their two wounded and make it back to the CP before nightfall.
Bravo 2d of the 1st Infantry ran into a similar situation. Kosteczko was huddled in the same area as the day before and, once again, the NVA on the knoll had the GIs pinned. A sergeant, also flat behind the berm, called to Kosteczko, “Take a look up there and see what they’re doing!” Being a new guy, Kosteczko started to get up, but an old-timer stopped him with snarled words of advice, “Let him look up there! What the hell, you going to look up there and get your head blown off!”
Spirits were draining quickly.
Bravo pulled back too before dusk. It was hot as hell, so before hiking up the trail on Million Dollar Hill, the men flaked out under the trees at the base. About ten minutes later, NVA mortars began exploding along the trail where they should have been. The shelling walked up the path, then blasted a few new holes out of the hilltop. Unreal, Kosteczko thought, shaking inside: the dinks are always watching!
24 August. The ten men killed when Bravo 4–31 started the battle had lain in the bush for six days. They were recovered that afternoon by 2d Platoon of Charlie 4–31 under 2dLt William R. Robinson and SFC Marshall E. Robertson, who’d been in the bush two days and ten months, respectively.
Lieutenant Robinson had been sucked up by the draft from his post-college government job and, neither knowing nor caring, did not really even think about Vietnam until the final hitchhike chopper ride deposited him on LZ West on 22 August. Robinson had completed the combat course at Chu Lai three days earlier and had spent the previous two nights in the unoccupied, air-conditioned trailer of the brigade commander. Things seemed ordered and controlled, although Robinson was shocked by his new, real environment. He’d originally been slotted for Alpha Company, but they were in the middle of a firefight in AK Valley, so he was put on a chopper for Charlie Company on Million Dollar Hill. He joined them two hours after touching ground at West; two hours after that, he got his baptism of fire. Mortar and sniper fire sent the platoon scrambling for foxholes and boulders. Robinson noticed those around him were wide-eyed, mumbling that they were surrounded; they looked like they’d already been through too much. The shooting petered out. It was just harassing fire.
Lieutenant Robinson’s platoon found the dead of Bravo Company on 24 August and dragged them back to Million Dollar Hill to be medevacked to Graves Registration on LZ Baldy. Robinson wrote to his parents:
… Tempers were high & moral was low. The area where the bodies were, was in an area that had been previously unreachable; right about in the middle of an enemy stronghold. The company had been out in the field for about a week getting very little sleep and had been hit pretty hard, as the 1st platoon was down to 12 men. The bodies were left behind by a company that was nearly slaughtered there & had to leave their dead behind. We were lucky and didn’t get any contact—But we picked up 2 bodies and a large firefight broke behind us in between us and the hill, so we took the long way around in the process we picked ten more bodies. Without going into details I can’t possibly tell how bad it was to have to pick up those decomposed bodies. It took six hours to get back. It started raining (1st since Ive been here) and the body bags started breaking open. We finally made it back—but you can’t imagine how something like that can kill the morale. The bodies were heavy and the smell sickening. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
The firing Charlie 4–31 heard was the third attempt by Bravo 2–1 to recover their dead man. Another crossfire of mortars and snipers killed one GI and wounded eight. Countermortar fire from Million Dollar Hill crashed around the enemy knoll. The grunts were pinned down in the sunbaked ravine, some taking the chance to raise up and return fire, most just comatose in the heat. Word was finally passed to pull back.
Oh shit, Kosteczko gulped, here we go again.
Kosteczko’s squad ran back down the path on the edge of panic, firing and tossing grenades into the underbrush—the dinks are everywhere! The resupply birds had been unable to land due to ground fire, and could only toss supplies out the cabin doors as they buzzed past. The grunts were out of water and the sun was eating up their brains. They crashed down a buffalo trail where they’d previously seen a slimy, green pond. They found it and collapsed to their knees at the rim, pushing helmets under the algae on the surface. The lieutenant was shouting to use purification pills and to give them time to dissolve. Fuck the lieutenant, Kosteczko was thinking. He unhooked his steel pot, spread his sweaty sweat towel over it as a filter, and used the plastic helmet liner to scoop up the water. He threw in a pill; waited a pathetic second; then gulped down the stinking, green-brown liquid. It tasted great. All we’ve got left, he thought, are animal instincts. The squad set up in a field thick with elephant grass, hacked out spots with machetes, and sacked out atop mats of C ration cardboard, three or four men on each mat huddled against the evening cool. The night moved around them and nervous sentries pitched grenades outside the circle. Artillery rumbled in the distance. In the morning, moving like zombies, they got up to attack again.
PFC Ralph Brantley and PFC Charles Jandecka, who were both twenty-one, arrived on the same day as replacements to 3d Platoon, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry. Both originally were draftees but, in their own ways, they represented the very different types who made up the Americal Division.
They originally met at the 4–31 Rear on LZ Baldy before the campaign began. Brantley was being reassigned from a unit in Qui Nhon, and Jandecka had just finished the Combat Center training at Americal Division Headquarters. By then, Brantley had the combat infantryman badge stitched over his left pocket and a 4th Infantry Division patch on his right shoulder, denoting a previous combat tour with them. He was lean, tanned, and long-haired. He’d been ghosting around Baldy for two weeks, not at all anxious to return to the bush. Jandecka was new—so green that when news of the Bravo Company ambush reached them, he commented in false bravado that the streets back home were pretty rough too. Bravo was deep in the bowels of Chu Lai by then, having been trucked in to help renovate some old hootches. The Marines were taking over Landing Zone Baldy, and the 4–31 Rear was moving south to Chu Lai.
Within twenty-four hours of the news, the company top sergeant had rounded up every 11 Bravo he could find. They were herded onto the chopper pad at Chu Lai, about a dozen of them, to catch a Chinook to LZ West. Jandecka was surprised—not shocked, because he’d been to Chu Lai before—to see Brantley lean back on his rucksack and light up a joint.
A couple of other replacements joined in.
The Chinook landed soon after, and it was a thirty-mile hop up to West. The fire base was abuzz with activity, and the replacements were immediately directed aboard several Hueys departing for LZ Siberia. They were hustling across the landing pad when Hoss Gutterez caught sight of Brantley’s necklace and bracelet. The sergeant major—a big no-neck lifer—bellowed out, “Get that off, there’s no room in this battalion for weirdos or hippies!”
Brantley quickly complied.
Jandecka and Brantley were not best friends, but they were buddies. Jandecka recalled his comrade with a certain fondness: “He never became a driving force within the platoon. Brantley became identified with the Army’s subculture instead. Those men in this group gravitated together by the sheer force of kindred interests. They adorned themselves with beads and bracelets, they gathered together to listen to very loud music, proclaim their toughness, and smoke grass. And they did their best to avoid work of any kind, especially the bush. But he was a scrappy little fellow who would fight if so inclined.”
As a matter of record, Brantley was wounded by mortar shrapnel on LZ West in September and hit again in December; he was thus nicknamed Cold Steel.
Brantley had grown up poor and fatherless in Jacksonville, Florida. His father was killed with the Marines in Korea and his mother, a child bride, remarried a man the family barely tolerated. Brantley ended up with his grandmother. He dropped out of high school and became a hard-drinking, restless kid who welcomed his draft notice. He was nineteen in September of 67 when he first arrived in Vietnam, joining the 35th Infantry Regiment of Task Force Oregon. They operated near the Batangan Peninsula in a phantom war of snipers and booby traps. By the time Brantley took his R and R three months later, his platoon had been whittled nearly in half without having even seen the enemy. In a fatigued panic after R and R, Brantley reenlisted to get off the line. He ended up as a clerk in the rear, rotated on schedule; but, bored with stateside duty, he volunteered for a second tour. He was assigned to a security guard platoon in Qui Nhon, an area so calm the GIs needed permission to chamber a round when on guard. He lasted four months, until he and a buddy were caught passed-out drunk on post. They were busted in rank and there was talk of a court-martial.
To avoid that, Brantley volunteered for the infantry.
Jandecka, a bespectacled, intelligent kid, did not have a history as colorful, nor was it as unhappy. He came from a close-knit, working family in Berea, Ohio, and left home for the first time to go to college. His grades were mediocre and, after his second year, he came home and got a job in the local steel mill. He also got his draft call. Jandecka accepted it without protest. He was conservative; the war seemed just; and, where he came from, the Army was just part of life. He never abandoned those views, and he became typical of the citizen-soldiers of America who’ve always formed the bulk of the combat infantry. When his squad leader decided to fake a patrol, Jandecka didn’t mind, but if the man said move out, he moved out. He did not smoke pot; he did not throw away his malaria pill. At the same time, he killed no one and did nothing madly courageous. He followed orders, he did his job, and he endured.
Through no fault of his own, he rotated home unscathed. Because of his outlook, Jandecka survived mentally unscarred as well.
Not so with Brantley.
Jandecka, Brantley, and their fellow replacements joined Bravo Company on Landing Zone Siberia. The company had been pulled to the fire base after the ambush in a state of shock. Since then, though, the old-timers had had some fun with the naive new guys. They’d gotten some hot food and cold drink; and they’d cleaned their weapons, rezeroed them in, and test-fired their new magazines. Most of all, they’d had a chance to sit and clear their minds, and when the word came to saddle up again, it was met with only the normal GI bitching. Bravo 4th of the 31st Infantry CA’d into a cold LZ in the Hiep Duc Valley on 25 August.
25 August. As the sun burned away the valley’s morning mist, Kosteczko really didn’t know what day it was. He was numb in body and spirit. He felt like a machine—trapped, programmed. Every day was the same. The morning resupply bird brought the same breakfast: powdered eggs swimming in water, toast turned to mush from the steam trapped inside the mermite cans, good bacon. They boiled C ration cocoa over heat tablets or chunks of C4 explosives. The medics passed out the malaria pills, standing in front of some GIs to make sure they didn’t spit it out. Stupid fucking hill, guys were mumbling. What are they trying to prove! Kosteczko heard some grunts say they’d waved their hands around during mortarings on Million Dollar Hill, trying to catch a ticket home. He heard one guy shot his finger off.
You had to have a relief from the insanity and pressure, and every morning he was in Vietnam, Kosteczko prayed. He asked the same question every time: will I make it through the day? It gave him some solace, but this morning he felt no answer and it unnerved him. Grunts by circumstance are a superstitious lot.
Sometimes, though, there is reason for odd beliefs.
Bravo Company was weary, but when the order was passed to attack again, they attacked; one more time they fell back to medevac their casualties. This time, a platoon from Charlie 4–31 ducked a few snipers to secure an LZ for them. Kosteczko’s squad sat to wait in a tree grove along a path, and he and Foxhole collapsed beside a dilapidated hootch in the tangle. Two Cobras thumped past. No one paid them any attention. They suddenly banked around and dove. Foxhole leaped into the crumbling family bunker and Kosteczko, with no idea what was going on, instinctively jumped right on top of him just as he heard the foghorn wail of a minigun erupt. He felt a flash of heat over his back, then the explosion of the gunship’s rocket against a paddy berm.
I’m in hell!
The trigger-happy Cobra pilots were quickly straightened out, but not before Bravo 2–1 suffered three wounded and Charlie 4–31 a fourth. That GI, hit by shrapnel in both legs, was from Lieutenant Robinson’s platoon, which was securing the medevac landing zone. It was the first casualty Robinson had. Robinson had no idea what went wrong. He could see no excuse for it.
Meanwhile, B/1–46 continued forward to try to outflank an NVA 60mm mortar position below Hill 381 which was shelling the battalion sweep. Lieutenant Baird and his RTO were with the lead squad while the platoon sergeant, Sergeant Brown, brought up the rear. Baird and Brown were a study in contrasts, the lieutenant an urbane West Pointer new to the platoon, the sergeant a black country boy raised on a cotton farm in Mississippi and drafted away from his construction job. Brown had been in the bush ten months, but did not resent his new second lieutenant; the man was learning fast.
AK47 fire greeted their flanking maneuver.
Brown and his squad dropped among the trees, boulders, and high grass of a hillside. North Vietnamese were firing from a tree line across the paddy to their front. Before long, the squad could also hear the brush moving below their slight hillock. They chopped M16 bursts at the sounds. Chicom grenades were flung back at them. The NVA had crept that close. GIs ducked, then heaved frags downhill. It was sporadic, off and on. Sergeant Brown sat low, trying to peer through the grass. An AK would cut a burst at them and they’d raise a racket firing back. Then there was silence as both sides changed magazines. The NVA mortar crew was firing again, lobbing rounds over the squad’s heads into the rest of the company. Brown could hear Baird over the RTO’s squawk box: the lieutenant, pinned down with the lead squad, was calmly directing artillery into the tree line from which the ambush had been sprung, and onto NVA who were trying to surround the platoon. Someone near Brown hollered that he saw two NVA running through the trees. A grunt fired a LAW after them. The rest hunkered along the hillside behind spots of cover, trading bursts with the underbrush as the sun beat down.
They too were halted.
As the NVA mortarmen adjusted their fires onto Bravo 1–46 (better known as the Ridgerunners), their sister company, Delta 1–46 (the Vikings), moved to outflank the tube position. Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry, commanded by a black captain named Jesse Sellers, had been airlifted from LZ Professional to LZ Karen the day before.
They had humped to Million Dollar Hill that morning.
SP4 Billy McWhirter, squad leader in the lead platoon, could feel the vibrations when the mortar fired some four hundred yards ahead. He could also hear the flare-ups of automatic weapons fire on the flanks. This was his first big action, but he trusted his platoon and he trusted his officers. That’s what kept him moving forward. He thought his platoon was rare it was so good. Yet Delta Company fared no better than any other Americal unit in the valley; what really seemed rare was McWhirter’s attitude. He’d been working at Caterpillar Tractor when the draft came, nineteen then and supporting a new bride; that would have made a good sob story, but he was from an Illinois farming community and he knew his duty when he saw it. His patriotism was unshakable, and his only gripe was that the Vietnamese didn’t appreciate what the GIs were sacrificing for them. Damn it, he thought, you come in from patrol and here’s some gook at the wire peddling Pepsis at five dollars a bottle! He believed in what he was fighting about, but he never trusted the people he was fighting for.
Delta Company’s advance across Hiep Duc Valley was covered by the rumble of artillery. They reached a muddy paddy boxed in by tree lines, and halted long enough to recon the far side by fire. There was no response, so the point squad hiked into the field, single file atop a berm with twenty feet between each man. SP4 Victor Silvis went next with the M60; then SP4 McWhirter and his squad joined the file into the open.
The staccato reports of AK47s signalled the ambush.
McWhirter was instantly off the berm, splashing into the paddy, pressing into the dike. Everyone was down in the water and mud and, after the initial shock wore off enough for them to get their bearings, they shoved M16s over their helmets and fired back into the tree line facing them. Artillery impacted into the woods, but it had little effect on the entrenched North Vietnamese. It sounded like there was a company of them.
The firefight dragged on inconclusively all afternoon; the final act was spurred when the NVA shifted their mortar fire into the paddy. The order was given to pull back, and the company retreated in a frantic leapfrog. One man at a time jumped over the dike behind him and crawled to the next as others fired cover. Cobras screamed in. McWhirter was hunkered behind a dike with several others when he suddenly noticed movement in the tree line to his right. With ten months in-country and a Purple Heart to his name, this was the first time he’d really seen the enemy. They had pith helmets and web gear and AK47s, and they were up and moving through the trees, trying to outflank the withdrawing GIs.
McWhirter sighted his M16 on one figure moving behind the screen of trees; he squeezed the trigger, saw the man collapse. The GIs with him were firing too, shouting, spraying the trees. Silvis was hunched sweaty over his M60, firing, expended brass ejecting from his weapon.
The North Vietnamese fell back.
It was time for Delta Company to get out. The men crawled quickly on all fours, splattered with mud. A Hawaiian sergeant was near them, trying to push along with a bleeding leg. McWhirter was an unassuming, down-home kid who wanted to get back to his wife, but his buddies noted he was up front whenever the shooting started. In an unthinking lunge, McWhirter hefted the wounded sergeant over his shoulder and ran as fast as he could, aware of little else but the splashes of AK rounds hitting the brown paddy water. He jogged into the tree line behind the paddy, laid the sergeant down, then ran back to his squad. The last men were coming into the woods, running. One was limping; he was about fifty feet out and, again, McWhirter didn’t think as he ran out and helped the grunt hop back into the cover of the trees.
The mortaring and firing petered out as soon as Delta Company disappeared back into the wood line. The retreat had become ragged at the end; weapons that casualties dropped lay where they fell, helmets and ammunition bandoliers sat in the mud.
The NVA recovered much of it—again.
Captain Sellers—slightly wounded by mortar shrapnel—was on the radio getting in the medevacs. As the first Huey settled onto the field behind them, the chilling crack-crack-crack of AK47 automatic rifles burst again. The grunts, hunkered among the trees, pumped fire back into the underbrush as the medevac pulled out of the sun-blasted paddy with the wounded crammed aboard.
Colonel Henry, hunched over his radios on Million Dollar Hill, proceeded with caution in what was his first, large action. He had five companies in the field, four of them in contact, and at the same time his Forward CP was taking sporadic automatic weapons and mortar fire. In the face of the crossfires of the entrenched NVA, Henry was consistently heavy on firepower and short on decisive, frontal assaults. During the course of the campaign, his battalion employed 18,224 artillery and mortar rounds, 191 tons of napalm and bombs, and 24,000 rounds of 20mm air cannons. When his companies couldn’t outflank the NVA trenches, he called in his massive fire support. It kept the enemy’s head down so his men could break contact with enough time to dig in for the night and to evacuate their casualties. On 25 August, his casualties were:
Bravo 2–1 with seventeen wounded.
Bravo 1–46 with twelve wounded.
Delta 1–46 with twenty wounded.
Charlie 4–31 with one wounded by friendly fire.
The combined companies claimed a body count of seventy-four NVA KIA, a figure which seemed exaggerated when compared to 2/7 Marines’ count for the same day. The 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, engaged in heavy combat three kilometers to the east, had suffered thirteen Marines killed and sixty wounded, but the battalion log recorded no NVA deaths (some obviously had been killed, but no bodies had been recovered).
25 August had been a long day for the Marines also, their worst in the valley, and combat photographer Hodierne recounted one of their many problems:
The Army medevacs were flying Hueys, but the Marine missions were being flown by Sea Knights, a larger chopper that required a larger landing zone. And they didn’t have enough choppers. Their operations tents were about 200 meters apart [probably at LZ Baldy]. The Army guys, who could monitor the Marine radios, regularly offered to fly missions for them. The Marines never accepted. Bad form to admit that the Marines couldn’t handle it alone. And that meant wounded guys lay out in the field longer than they needed to. I remember one scene where the Army air ops guy just absolutely lost it, throwing things around, cursing, furious at the Marines. It was interservice rivalry at its worst.
The Army was very grateful to the Marines for their quick deployment to the valley; some were convinced that it saved 4–31 Infantry from being completely overrun. But all was not cozy. For example, two days later—the size of the NVA finally confirmed—another Marine battalion was helicoptered wholesale from LZ Baldy to LZ West. Almost immediately, the Marines began their hump down the mountainside with full packs. It was over 100 degrees and windless and Major Lee had suggested they leave their flak jackets on the LZ. His advice was ignored and, in short order, the Marines were clogging the medevac chain with dozens of sun victims. It was a common problem. Captain Downey—who admired the Marine Corps—noted, “I’ll never forget the silly sight of a Marine unit on the march in full field gear as well as the old heavy flak jackets, having more men fall out as heat casualties then ever hurt by enemy fire. I’m sure even today there are some jackass officers somewhere who can deliver a ringing defense of the flak jacket policy. I doubt if any of them ever humped one in the Que Sons, though.”
26 August. The grunts of Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry saddled up with all the enthusiasm of survivors being sent back into the meatgrinder. After the original ambushing, they’d dug in around Million Dollar Hill. Nerves were still taut, and the men were filthy, unshaven, numbed from lack of sleep. They knew the NVA were still dug in and waiting; but with the loss of their original company commander, their leadership was untested and, thus, untrusted.
Capt John R. Thomas had been in command five days.
Capt Spencer Wolfe, liaison officer, 3–82 FA, was the FO, temporarily replacing Lieutenant Wilson, who’d been medevacked with immersion foot to LZ West on 21 August. Lieutenant Robinson, commanding the point platoon, was now on day four in the bush.
This was to be their first firefight.
As Charlie Company rucked up, Captain Thomas briefed Lieutenant Robinson. The gravity of the situation did not really click with Robinson until he showed his map to the Kit Carson Scout. Twenty exclaimed, “No go, beaucoup NVA!” It was advice, not a refusal. The grunts respected Twenty’s experience, and his comment rattled them. When the squad leader picked a man to walk point, the GI said with resignation, “What are you trying to do, kill me?”
But the men followed orders, mostly because of SFC Marshall Robertson, the platoon cornerstone. He was a thin, white-haired veteran with a Virginia accent. He carried an AR15 Shorty, and was aggressive but calmly prudent. He was a thoroughly professional soldier, and most of the company just liked the hell out of him. He had been slotted for R and R but, with a new second lieutenant on hand, had postponed it.
Sergeant Robertson accompanied the rear squad of the platoon while Lieutenant Robinson went with the lead squad. Robinson was fifth man back from the point. The platoon filed atop a paddy berm paralleling a tree line to their left, approaching another tree line that intersected their path. The point man stepped onto the last dike before the trees.
An RPD machine gun abruptly knocked him down.
Lieutenant Robinson instantly dove to the right and scrambled forward to the next dike. He flopped beside the cover man. The RPD was in the trees ahead, joined by several AK47 and RPG gunners and an NVA with an M79 who lobbed rounds into the paddy. The sudden fusillade had fragmented the platoon. Robinson was flat behind a dike with fifteen men near him. The rest had taken cover in the tree line to the rear. The NVA barrage had petered out, firing only when a GI tried to raise up to return fire. The point man was face-down on the berm ahead, unmoving. He did not answer their shouts. Robinson wasn’t sure what to do.
He saw Sergeant Robertson appear from a dike behind them. The paddy was wide open between them, but Robertson and the medic made a frantic dash across. Robertson huddled beside Robinson, heads below the dike, and started shouting to the M60 crew to keep the NVA down long enough to drag the point man back. Robertson bellowed out encouragement and direction, taking charge of the platoon. He rolled two feet to the right, just past the dike to get a better look, and waved from the prone, shouting, “Get the pig up here!” In the next second, the RPD levelled a burst into Sergeant Robertson. Pieces of skull and brains splattered onto Lieutenant Robinson and the grunt beside him.
The platoon saw it and froze.
No one tried to raise up to fire their M16s; instead, they fired M79 rounds and hurled frag grenades from behind the berm. Lieutenant Robinson threw several grenades, then took the handset from his RTO. Captain Thomas’s calm voice crackled through; he said he had moved up with the reserve platoon and had linked up with Robinson’s platoon, meaning those who’d ducked into the tree line.
“Listen,” said Robinson, “you haven’t really linked up with us!”
Robinson never trusted Thomas, considered him a ticket puncher who hung far to the rear of any action. That was not a unanimous opinion, but it explains Robinson’s thoughts as Thomas began giving him orders straight from Fort Benning: get your people up and outflank that machine gun with fire and maneuver. Robinson was incredulous. If we raise our heads, we’ll die, he thought. Why can’t I make the captain understand what’s going on! No one moved. Then the NVA did the logical thing, which was to mortar the fish in their barrel. Lieutenant Robinson screamed to pull back, as Cobras flashed in low, pumping rockets into the tree line. The grunts scooted back at each pass, dragging their wounded. They left their platoon sergeant and point man where they lay. Between gunship runs, the NVA RPD gunner fired across the paddy as other NVA moved into the trees on the left flank and took the retreating platoon under even more fire. They sighted their AK47s on the last berm the GIs had to vault to reach the trees.
A grunt clambered over and was nailed.
Robinson and two grunts tumbled over right on his heels. They grabbed the GI’s arms to drag him into the bushes, and the two grunts beside Robinson were instantly shot down. The air was thick with an invisible swarm. Robinson rolled against the dike. His RTO lay there dead. He grabbed the handmike but it was out, the radio shot full of holes. The last man coming out, the squad leader, tried to clear the dike. He was dead before he hit the ground.
In seconds, five GIs had been killed.
Robinson crawled into the bushes, confused and frightened and sweat-soaked. The rest of the company was reorganizing among the trees, but the NVA followed them across the paddy and opened fire again. As the Cobras surged in—excited pilots shouting over the radio that the trees were swarming with dinks—Charlie Company shouldered their wounded. Then they ran, and they did not stop until they were well out of harm’s way—in another tree line, where they fell in spiritless clumps. In Robinson’s platoon, seven were dead, eleven were wounded, and four were in shock. Only fifteen of his men were unscathed, including himself, although his escape had been close: he discovered a bullet hole through the baggy side pocket of his jungle trousers. Twenty, the Kit Carson Scout, had shrapnel wounds.
After nine days of combat, the company mustered forty-eight men. The following day, they were pulled back to LZ West.
The action of 26 August continued.
Bravo 4th of the 31st Infantry was dispatched from its positions between Million Dollar Hill and Wedding Cake Hill; they lugged their recently delivered resupply, including unmanageable five-gallon, plastic water containers. The day was a scorcher and the load heavy. PFC Charles Jandecka, a week with the company and on his first combat operation, described it in irreverent terms:
B Company had been choppered to the outskirts of the Hiep Duc Province Center. From there, we trekked to a barren and flat hill to set up a day laager. I hastily erected a poncho liner shelter to seek relief from the blazing sun; others also erected shelters of liners, banana leaves or whatever. GI camps were easily recognizable to any gook within a reasonable distance. Either they could hear the tent stakes, bamboo or some other piece of vegetation, being pounded into the ground, or if they missed that racket, they had only to look for a spotty collection of poncho liners waving in the breeze. At this present camp, some of the shelters were placed along the side of the hill which made them virtually undefensible from incoming small arms fire that could have been brought to bear from a distant tree line. We stayed there overnight. As we were lolling about camp the next day, we heard the clatter of automatic weapons off to the east. Some company had made contact with a bunch of gooks. Within the hour they called for help so we left our day laager under the guard of a squad and set out for the yonder woods. We soon found them resting in a wooded area along a natural trench. To a man they were scared and thirsty. I recognized a black fellow I hadn’t seen since AIT at Fort Dix. He spoke of his wife and children back home. Several weeks later I bumped into him back in the rear where he then had a rear job—a position he was rewarded for reupping.
These battered grunts were Delta 1st of the 46th Infantry, which had pulled back to the ditches along the trail after being ambushed the day before. They were pinned down by snipers and had quickly run out of water. Bravo Company reached them around noon; Captain Gayler moved up the trail until he found Captain Sellers, but was unhappy that the commander seemed as bewildered and fatigued as his men in the ditches. As for himself, Gayler was a confident man and—after a week of rest on Siberia—he at least looked the part of the professional company commander. His hair was close-cropped under his helmet, and he was a handsome man with a full mustache and some bush-time whiskers. He wore leather gun gloves, carried an AR15 automatic rifle, and two bandoliers of magazines were held in place across his chest by the snaps on his web gear shoulder straps. Captain bars and armor insignia were stitched in black on his collar; the Americal patch was on his shoulder.
Gayler’s first question to Sellers was, “Where are your security elements? I’ll relieve your security elements on your front, right, and left.”
All he got was a blank stare.
Gayler quickly moved aside with his RTO, and radioed Lieutenant Monroe to get out security posthaste. Monroe moved one squad to the front while the other two platoons took up the right and left flanks off the pathway. The NVA still held the hill ahead—from where they had originally halted Delta Company—and they responded to the new movement by casually lobbing in a few mortar rounds.
Bravo Company lost one man killed, five wounded.
Delta secured an LZ for the medevac, and other helicopters brought in more resupply. By that time, Bravo had taken over the area and policed up some of the gear Delta had left behind in the open space between the tree grove and the enemy hill; it included more than a few ammunition bandoliers, a PRC25 radio, an M60 machine gun, and five M16 rifles. Noting, in addition, that Delta had not deployed adequate security, Captain Gayler radioed Colonel Henry that the company was no longer battle-effective due to fatigue or morale problems and should be withdrawn.
Gayler had just arrived on the scene, so perhaps his negative observations were not completely justified. Nevertheless, later in the afternoon, Delta Company was ordered out of the area; they humped back to Hiep Duc where Maj Lawrence Remener, S-3, 1–46 Infantry, had been dispatched to handle village security. Meanwhile, B/1–46 moved up to reinforce B/4–31, which moved to a new position—hopefully, one the NVA had not registered their mortars on—before setting up for the night (within days, B and D/1–46 were airlifted back to LZ Professional where Captains King and Sellers, like almost all company commanders in this battle, were immediately awarded Silver Stars).
The day had been a series of snafus, at least for Private Jandecka. Bravo Company had handed over their resupply to the more depleted grunts of Delta Company, which was proper, except that Jandecka was hungry too. He managed to scrounge up a can of ham and eggs, not a charlie rat favorite. The next day, 27 August, was not much better as he moved along with a growling stomach. Bravo’s rucksacks, which had been left near Million Dollar Hill, were choppered in and dumped helter-skelter in the brush. GIs rummaged through them, most unable to find their own and forced to take one at random. That was a real blow to morale. Jandecka, for one, took a pack with the necessary military gear, but in turn lost his letters, camera, film, New Testament, harmonica, sunglasses, notebook, extra food, and Kool Aid.
The rest of the afternoon was spent quietly humping to a new position near the Old French Road. Battalion was realigning its companies for what they hoped would be a final push to the Marine side of the line at dawn. The grunts knew as much about these plans as pawns on a chess board. They did not know why they were sweating from one chunk of elephant grass to the next; they just did what the platoon sergeant said and hoped no North Vietnamese would materialize en route. During the early evening, one of their perimeter trip flares went off and Captain Gayler bellowed to put the damn thing out before the dinks pinpointed their position. Three men quickly scrambled to it—Jandecka the only one quick enough to pick up an M16 first—and they used a helmet to smother it. Actually, their fall extinguished the light: in the blinding, white glare, they all fell over the road embankment, the helmet and flare bouncing with them. They scrambled back to their lines but, Jandecka noted, “it was a couple hours before I could shake that unmistakable feeling of being watched by an unknown set of eyes as we were at the bottom of that bank.”