PART
Chapter Six
SP4 Ray Keefer was feeling good. He was shooting the shit with his buddies, a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. They were a dusty, coarse, loud crew. Their unit, A Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st Armored Cavalry, Americal Division, was preparing positions at Chu Lai in preparation for the arrival of the rest of the unit from Hawk Hill. Chu Lai was a quieter area and for Keefer—a nineteen year old who’d been wounded four times—this was cause enough to get loaded. Which is exactly what he and his buddies were doing in the warm evening air—until the radios in their vehicles came alive.
It was the night of 11–12 August 1969.
C Troop reported incoming fire; they were still on Hawk Hill (on Highway One between Tam Ky and LZ Baldy), providing security for an Americal infantry battalion that was assuming their old squadron base camp. Then they reported NVA in the wire. A second call for help came in; two tanks from A Troop were providing security on a hill outpost, and the commander of tank two-nine reported RPG fire.
The 1st Regiment of Dragoons had the reputation not only of being professional heads, but professional killers; in response to these calls, the men at Chu Lai scrambled to their vehicles. Keefer had heard no order to do so, but they pulled up to the post gate. Men were standing on the decks of their tanks and tracks, flak jackets over bare chests, frag grenades and smokes hanging across gun shields, and they broke out the ammunition for the machine guns as they argued with the MPs on duty to open the fucking gate! The adrenaline was pumping, but an officer appeared and simmered them down. The only way to Hawk Hill, he explained, was up Highway One. The NVA were attacking throughout the area and they most likely had set up along the road to ambush the re-act; plus, the highway was hemmed in by rice paddies and their vehicles couldn’t maneuver well in them. The men returned to their bunkers, pissed off, and frustrated. They could only sit and monitor the jumbled conversations coming over the radio. NVA inside the wire at Hawk Hill. Artillerymen firing their 105-point blank. A GI from tank two-nine shouting that they’d taken two RPG hits and needed a medevac for two men seriously wounded with shrapnel in the chest and face. Medevacs kept away by the ground fog and ground fire. Automatic fire and explosions came through the buzz of the radio.
Little else had been as painful to Keefer as listening to buddies dying and not being able to do a damn thing to help.
That night was the beginning of the 1969 Summer Offensive. More than a hundred locations, both military and civilian, including hospitals, were shelled or attacked by the communists; most attacks were ended or repulsed by dawn. One assault, however, was to be the start of something bigger. The target was Landing Zone West, base camp of the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, overlooking the Hiep Duc Valley. Sappers and infantrymen of the 3d Regiment, 2d NVA Division crept up this jungled mountainside under the cover of darkness, toting satchel charges and automatic weapons, their skin blackened with charcoal. In addition, three Soviet-manufactured 12.7mm antiaircraft guns had already been dug in at the base of LZ West to hamper medevacs and gunships.
Thus, 12 August was the official beginning of the battle for Hiep Duc Valley; but it was really on 8 August that the troubles began for the Polar Bear battalion.
Delta 4th of the 31st Infantry had made that contact.
Delta Company was commanded by Capt Norman B. Mekkelsen, a soft-spoken West Pointer. The company’s premature contact with the NVA occurred in Happy Valley. This populated rice bowl—named because it was sniper-infested and everyone was damn happy when they left it—was north of LZ West and south of LZ Ross. It sat at the eastern tip of Nui Chom, the rugged ridge line defining the northern frontier of Hiep Duc Valley. C and D Companies had been sent in to screen for the USMC’s Operation Durham Peak.
On 8 August, a platoon from Delta under a new lieutenant surprised five NVA at a lowland stream. They gunned down four, then hastily chased the survivor as he disappeared up a brushy slope of Nui Chom. It was rough going and one of the platoon’s best soldiers was near the front of the uphill chase. As he climbed over a huge boulder, an AK47 suddenly opened fire from only yards away, nailing the grunt in the chest. He fell dead as heavy NVA fire erupted. At the time, Captain Mekkelsen was about two kilometers away with 1st Lt Juan Gonzalez’s platoon. Mekkelsen tried to raise the platoon in contact, but no one answered. The RTO finally responded, then gave the mike to his lieutenant. This was his first firefight and—with AK rounds snapping just overhead and Chicom stick handle grenades bouncing down at them—he reported he was pinned down. The NVA were above them on the mountainside, concealed in spider holes burrowed under boulder outcroppings.
Mekkelsen radioed back that he’d better get his platoon organized and moving, or they’d die in place.
The new lieutenant said they couldn’t move.
Exasperated, Mekkelsen told Gonzalez to be ready to move immediately if needed. He then gathered his weapon and ammunition, took his FO and RTO, and told Gonzalez to get his two M60 teams and come with them. Gonzalez was one of their more able platoon leaders, and Mekkelsen wanted him up front so he would know the score if they had to call for the entire platoon.
This small group jogged towards the pinned-down platoon and, via radio, got the general location of the GIs and NVA. They decided to hike up the mountainside some four hundred meters to the right of the NVA dugouts, then hit them from that flank. Going uphill, they passed an area of flat boulders that had recently been used as an NVA latrine. Most of the shit was in loose piles—Mekkelsen wasn’t unhappy to note the enemy was suffering from diarrhea—but there was too much of it, indicating that, as was later estimated, Delta had run into an NVA company.
They were close to the sound of shooting when they were faced with the choice of exposing themselves by climbing over more boulders or continuing along a crevice in the rocks with their backs against one side, their feet against the other, and a ten-foot drop below them. They opted for the latter alternative and, after getting an M60 positioned to cover them, Captain Mekkelsen led the way down the crevice with Lieutenant Gonzalez coming next. An NVA suddenly fired down the channel. Mekkelsen felt something slam into his left knee, the one facing the enemy, and in the next moment the M60 gunner was returning fire and the rest were throwing grenades. It was over quickly but Mekkelsen noticed that Gonzalez was leaning forward. He said he thought he’d been hit in the back, but there were no apparent marks when Mekkelsen pushed up his sweaty undershirt. “Well,” said Gonzalez, “I guess I’m not hit.”
“If you’re not,” Mekkelsen answered, “I am!” The M60 gunners hauled them up, and they got a bandage around his seriously damaged knee. Mekkelsen did not report his wound to battalion—it was his company and he’d handle this mess. He leaned against his radioman as they continued up. At their advance, the NVA disappeared. They linked up with the ambushed platoon, recovered the dead GI, and arranged to medevac the one or two wounded men. The RTO also finally reported their wounded captain.
That’s when the 4–31 Command & Control Huey came in. Aboard were LtCol Cecil M. Henry, BnCO; Maj Roger C. Lee, BnS-3; and Capt Phillip Kinman, Bn-Surgeon (he was exceptional for a draftee doctor, practically fighting his way onto the command ship whenever there was a report of wounded GIs in the field). They launched from LZ West and were orbiting Nui Chom in minutes. The platoon was near a ravine formed by the erosion of a long-dried-up waterfall. This looked to be the best LZ on the forested ridge, so the grunts popped smoke and the pilot homed in. The Huey glided to a hover along the eroded hole, one skid against a rock ledge, and Major Lee stood on the other skid to give Mekkelsen a hand up. The North Vietnamese opened fire again as they pulled up. Lieutenant Colonel Henry was crammed behind the pilot’s seat with headphones on as the pilot shouted to his copilot, “Slump down in your armored seat ’cause we’re taking beaucoup fire!” The NVA were shooting down on the rising chopper from their mountain perches. The Huey was only yards from the slope. A Chicom was flipped in the open cabin door and, just as quickly, Major Lee reflexively kicked it out the opposite door. The grenade exploded beneath them. The pilot finally got them over the peak—actually it took only seconds—then banked the Huey around and got the hell out.
As they headed for the medical station on Hawk Hill, Henry radioed Delta Company to pull back from their untenable position and regroup on the valley floor. He then switched frequencies to get air and arty support for them. It was a five-minute flight to Hawk Hill, and they just had the chance to wish Mekkelsen well before the medics carted him off. Then the C&C hopped back over to where Delta had regrouped. The platoon leader was a senior first lieutenant, so Henry passed command to him.
The C&C also picked up Lieutenant Gonzalez; three AK47 rounds had punched into the M16 bandolier around his waist, smashing the ammunition magazines, but only bruising him. Gonzalez handed Lee some wild peppers he’d picked, while Doc Kinman plucked out fragmented metal slivers that had pierced his skin. Lee put the peppers in his pocket, and they raised a welt on his thigh through the cloth. Gonzalez had been eating those monsters. He hailed from Durango, Mexico, and he was a tough hombre.
He joked about his good luck in the ambush.
All in all, Delta Company was in a foul mood. Besides losing Captain Mekkelsen, they’d lost their first KIA since November 1968. This was significant since Delta was rated the best in the battalion, a fact due to their fine company commanders. Capt John A. Whittecar, a hard-core professional on his second tour, had taken over Delta after the November battle along Nui Chom. Before rotating to a staff position on LZ West, he had shaped his listless draftees into a proud company. Captain Mekkelsen, the son of a sergeant major, took over the reins in June after serving as a platoon leader under Whittecar.
Bravo Company, under Capt William H. Gayler, and Charlie Company, under Capt Thomas L. Murphy, were a notch below. They were colorless companies whose performances ranged from mediocre to workmanlike depending upon conditions; they were typical of the Americal Division. Then there was Alpha Company, which was especially short of experienced NCOs (the battalion was lucky if it could muster one or two Regular Army NCOs per company; most were “shake ‘n’ bakes” going from private to sergeant after a ninety-day course). In addition, Alpha’s cautious and popular commander, Capt Stanley Yates, had recently rotated; the new CO, Capt James G. Mantell, and an unhealthy number of troopers were FNGs, or Fucking New Guys. One indicator of the low morale in Alpha Company was that, by Doc Kinman’s count, the company harbored a disproportionate number of malingerers.
This is, of course, all subjective.
So is a discussion of the battalion staff, whose members were as diverse as the companies they led. Lieutenant Colonel Henry and Major Lee both had previous tours as ARVN advisors under their belts and were professionally respected. Despite very different personal backgrounds, they meshed well and they drove their battalion hard in what was generally a complacent, quiet time. Henry—a man with a big, bald dome and a friendly face—was a product of the hardscrabble farms and two-room schoolhouses of Rome, Georgia. He had enlisted soon after his eighteenth birthday, served in the rear during the Korean War, then earned an OCS commission. He was almost a fatherly figure, hard when he had to be, consoling at times, a man who did not take the deaths of his troopers lightly. He had come to LZ West in July and was considered a rock under pressure.
Major Lee was not as well liked. A high school wrestler from Omaha, Nebraska, he had graduated from West Point only after some academic difficulties. He was an Airborne Ranger who stood stern-faced and crewcut in his fatigues. Many considered him a ticket-puncher, too harsh and spit-shined; but he was a fighter. In June, when sappers penetrated LZ Baldy and raised hell, Lee had been serving as battalion executive officer. He saw one NVA crawl down a drainage ditch and duck under a culvert, and GIs screamed that another had gone under a hootch. Major Lee shot them both to death, and caught some light shrapnel in the stomach when the satchel charge of the one under the culvert detonated. He and a captain then ran to the part of the perimeter manned by the brigade LRRPs, and reorganized those men who’d been stunned into inaction when one of the first RPGs demolished a bunker and killed the two men inside. For that, Lee won a Bronze Star recommendation. He was aggressive, but he was not unyielding. Early in his tenure on LZ West, he assigned the line companies a fierce schedule of humping six klicks a day and then patrolling. Captain Gayler, a Texas volunteer, finally told him, “What you should do is grab your rucksack and come out in the bush, because you’ve lost touch with the realities out here.” Major Lee maintained a hard stare in return and Captain Gayler gulped, but then Lee grinned, “Maybe you’re right.”
Battalion SgtMaj Hoss Gutterez, a Mexican-American, was big, crass, boastful, and an all-around gutsy soldier.
Comments on these men came chiefly from the commanders above them and the company commanders below them. Most of the grunts in the 4th of the 31st Infantry didn’t really know who the staff members were and either routinely saluted them or routinely dismissed them as chicken shit lifers. Such feelings are not hard to understand. A young grunt living in the mud was bound to be less than charitable to those who saw the war mostly from helicopters. Such feelings are common in any war, but it is important to note that there were no fraggings during Henry’s command. Most of the grunts just reluctantly resigned themselves and kept humping. As far as Gayler was concerned, the men were lucky that under Henry and Lee, battalion headquarters was not as far removed from the bush as it was under some other officers.
9 August saw the second contact in two days.
The Polar Bear’s part in the screening operation was terminated and Lieutenant Colonel Henry and Sergeant Major Gutterez dropped into Charlie Company’s perimeter to supervise their airlift from Happy Valley to LZ Siberia. The men planned to go out with the last squad; that was all they had left on the ground when a higher priority mission arose elsewhere and division yanked their helicopter support. The stranded group decided to hump to LZ West, and they were on the trail below the camp when firing erupted. Everyone dropped in the bushes. Gutterez led several men around the flank and fired towards the NVA, who immediately broke contact and disappeared into the vegetation. The fight lasted perhaps five minutes, but the squad stayed put another thirty until a detachment from Bravo Company humped down from West.
It wasn’t until 2000 that the squad finally got to LZ Siberia. They were pissed off and shaken. One of them launched into a fabulous story for his comrades who’d missed the skirmish, which reflected the knee-jerk cynicism of the grunts.
… Our point man came face to face with three NVA. I’m telling you, he could see the dinks’ faces. They were twenty-five yards away. Our guy raised his gun and—click—nothing. The round didn’t chamber. So our second guy came up to support, and we were in a damn firefight. Bullets were flying everywhere. I don’t know how we missed each other. Most of us took cover behind stumps and trees. The colonel tried to dig himself a hole, he was so scared. But the sergeant major was a big dude, maybe six-three, two hundred and fifty pounds. Everybody’s sergeant—toughass, part Indian, World War II hero, and probably hadn’t been in one of these things for thirty years. He was so excited, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He pulled his handgun, a forty-five—a forty-five, mind you—and started hollering, ‘Come on, you guys, let’s go get those bastards. Fuckin’ gooks. This is what we’re here for. You on the right, when I say charge, you charge. On the left, when I say pin ’em down, you open fire.’ The son of a bitch almost got us killed. What’s worse, we missed dinner, so that’s two nights in a row without anything to eat.
On 9, 10, and 11 August, LZ Siberia was mortared.
When Alpha Company 4–31 was choppered to LZ West on the morning of 11 August, they had a collective case of the ass. The new colonel was stressing aggressive patrols and night ambushes, but the new captain didn’t seem to have the experience required. Among those pissed off grunts, Specialist Parsons was probably dragging the most. He’d been out of the bush for twenty days—extending his R and R by shamming with some buddies in the rear—and the last six days back in the field had been grueling. His load of M60 machine gun, ammunition, and rucksack had been kicking his ass like a new guy again. He was mighty glad this morning as Alpha Company replaced Bravo Company on the LZ West bunker line for their week of palace guard. The Bravo GIs weren’t enthusiastic about returning to the bush; when Parsons’s gun team took over one of their bunkers, they found a lot of machine gun ammo and grenades stashed under the cots. That much less to hump on patrol.
LZ West was no different from hundreds of fire bases dotting the Vietnamese wilderness. It rambled for several hundred yards across the humps of the ridge. Thirty bunkers, constructed of metal culvert halves, timber, and sandbags, ringed the LZ; each looked like a miniature sandbag castle. Chain-link fence circled most of the post, and in the brush creeping downhill was concertina and tangle foot wire. In the center of the perimeter, the 4–31 Tactical Operations Center was bunkered in under heavy layers of sandbags. More barbed wire twisted around it. Several radio aerials were stiff above these bunkers, and an American flag hung from one. A PP55 ground radar unit was installed beside the TOC. Dug in at the south end of the LZ were three 155mm pieces (C Battery, 3–16 Artillery), and an M55 truck mounted with .50–caliber machine guns (G Battery, 55th Artillery) sat at the northeast and southwest sides of the mountain base.
The LZ was hot, dusty, and boring—very boring. The big diversion was killing rats or, if you were so inclined, finally breaking out the marijuana stashed at the bottom of your ruck. Mostly, the LZ offered the line grunt a place to relax.
Which is just what Barry Parsons wanted. Along with Tom, Bubba, and Shorty from the weapons squad, Parsons was assigned to Bunker 30, the point position on the western side of the line. The men were sitting around when their platoon leader, 1stSgt James F. Price, and their platoon sergeant, Sgt O. J. Causey, came in to pass the word. They were to be on alert that night because of the recent contacts, and in the morning they would be making a sweep of the LZ mountainside. Tom and Shorty were FNGs so they didn’t bitch as loud as Parsons and Bubba; nevertheless, they pulled their watches. Parsons had the second shift, from 2230 to 0030. He woke up Tom to take his place, rolled onto a cot, and the next thing he knew Sergeant Causey was waking them up.
Causey, a shake ‘n’ baker, was worked up and, as he usually did when he was excited, he stammered hard, “Th-th-there are d-dinks in front of y-your bunker!”
Parsons sat up on his cot. “Sure, O. J. Don’t feed us this shit, I want to get some sleep.”
“I’m n-not kidding!”
Parsons got up and peered into the black. Their artillery was firing and, in the flashes, he suddenly saw the silhouettes. A figure was visible a hundred yards downhill; he was standing and pointing. Six figures crouched behind him, carrying what looked like Bangalore torpedoes—wide bamboo poles packed with explosives.
“Holy shit, there they are!”
Parsons was rattled. The day before in the bush, the platoon had reconned by fire and a bullet had sheared apart in the barrel of his M60. The barrel had been taken to the battalion maintenance hootch. He was without his pig gun and quickly cranked the internal land line to the company command bunker. First Sergeant Price answered. Top Price was an older man, called to active duty from the national guard, and he was something of a father figure to the platoon. He was also respected, especially in comparison to the inexperienced young guys with the instant stripes who populated the battalion. Typically, Top Price told Parsons not to get excited.
“Excited hell! I have dinks in front of my position with Bangalore torpedoes and God knows what else, and I need some firepower!”
Top Price said wait one, and cut to B-TOC.
The officer who answered said to calm down.
Parsons was instantly pissed. Fucking lifers! He shouted to Top Price, “Tell him to come look for himself!”
More than one officer had, in fact, come to look for himself. Earlier, the GI manning the radar had picked up movement at three thousand meters. Lieutenant Colonel Henry, falling asleep on his cot in a room adjacent to the TOC command bunker, quickly pulled his clothes back on; in response to the warning, he put the base on 100 percent alert and got the artillery and mortar crews to their pieces. Artillery began thundering into the pitch-black. This had been going on for some time with no response to indicate anyone was really out there. Henry and Lee joked, “For all the rounds we’re expending, there better be at least one dead dink in the wire!” Major Lee casually strolled down to the bunker line—wearing a T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and shower sandals, and carrying no weapon—and peered through one of the Starlite Scope mounts. Flares were fired and, in the yellow glow, nothing was visible; then the flare burned out and the sea of elephant grass around the hill seemed to move in his night scope. Lee peered at one of the fingers coming off the hilltop, he could see figures darting from boulder to boulder.
At the same time, Captain Whittecar (recently rotated from D Company to serve as air operations officer) had trotted down to one of the quad-fifty gun positions. He too saw nothing at first, until a vague impression of movement prompted him to tell the gun crew to recon by fire. They ripped off a burst and a Bangalore torpedo suddenly shrieked up like a deflating balloon with a rooster tail of fire trailing it. Whittecar shouted to fire a flare and, in the sudden glare, they caught some NVA in midstride, slithering through the high grass and shoving torpedoes under the wire to blow pathways. The gun crew started sending a stream of red tracers at them.
Doc Kinman was in the TOC when the .50-calibers suddenly erupted; someone joked, “Aw bullshit, nothing’s out there. He’s always smoking marijuana.”
That’s when Lee and Whittecar jogged back.
And that’s when the defense of Landing Zone West really began. Within a minute, a nervous GI ran down to Bunker 30. He handed Parsons an M60 machine gun, then ran back towards the TOC. From the bunkers, Alpha Company and Echo Recon sent M16 and M60 tracers into every noise or movement; M79 grenadiers fired dozens of rounds. From the center of the perimeter, the 81mm and 4.2-inch crews of the Echo Mortar Platoon had their tubes angled almost straight up, pumping out illumination rounds. Artillery was being fired from LZ West itself, and from LZ Siberia, LZ Center, and LZ Ross.
The hill was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Parsons was on the M60, while Tom, Shorty, and Bubba fired their M16s from the bunker and tossed grenades downhill. The ammo stash left by Bravo Company was coming in very handy. The quad-fifty fired tracers like red cigars across the clearing, and Parsons could see NVA flop like rag dolls. Six panicked under the fusillade and took off downhill. Parsons saw them on the main trail, heads bobbing above the brush, headed towards a slight open rise on the path. He quickly sighted his M60 on the spot and cut loose when they ran into view. They all appeared to collapse amid the tracers.
The North Vietnamese were trapped on the slope between the firing from the bunker line and the howitzer fire from Siberia, which blocked their escape routes. The result was chaos. Some NVA tried to hide; others tried to run away. They did not return any fire; at least the only NVA fire that could be heard above the racket was a single mortar round. Realizing that everything was clicking into place and that the battle had turned into a turkey shoot, Lieutenant Colonel Henry and Major Lee ambled out to the bunker line. They spent the remainder of the night atop a bunker, watching the show. GIs were out of their bunkers too, laughing, shouting to one another.
By 0630 it was over. There were no U.S. casualties.
That’s when Parsons noticed that his M60 barrel was red-hot and the floor of the bunker was covered with expended brass and links.
With dawn, reinforcements were choppered atop LZ West and gun-ships homed in on the NVA parties moving away from the base of the hill. Delta Company had been in the bush when the attack began; they conducted a forced march, found a clearing, and Chinooks lifted them to the base at first light. Delta swept out from the bunker line Alpha was still holding, M16s anxious in their hands, looking over the NVA bodies and equipment strewn in the grass with fear, surprise, and excitement. Eventually, SP4 Robert Ferris and SP4 Barry Harper lit up cigarettes and took a break, sitting back-to-back on a boulder. Right in front of Ferris, a North Vietnamese sat up in the tall grass as if waking from a concussion.
Their eyes locked for a second; then, simultaneously, the NVA reached for a basket of Chicoms as Ferris snapped his M16 to his shoulder. It jammed. In the time it took Harper to twist around and fire, Ferris rapped the butt of his M16 against the boulder, thus sliding the bolt back, ejecting the jammed round, and chambering the next one. He opened fire too.
The NVA was blown full of holes where he sat.
When Alpha Company made its sweep, Parsons was unnerved by what they found. Some of their claymores had been turned around to aim at them, and their trip flares had been secured with string. Split bamboo poles, white side up, had been laid uphill through the grass as guides to the infantrymen following the sappers. Directly in front of their bunker, maybe seventy yards down, two NVA were hunkered dead with an RPG. We were the point bunker, he thought—that was meant for us!
Besides the piles of weapons and equipment, there were bodies—fifty-nine that they could find. The sweep also came up with six prisoners, all wounded and left behind in the chaotic morning retreat. They were quickly interrogated; why had they not returned fire or retired when it was still dark? They said they were under strict orders not to attack until twilight, when they thought the Americans would be changing guards and be least prepared. When the firing began in the dark, some of their officers were killed; others disappeared. No new orders were received. Such inflexible discipline was not uncommon in the North Vietnamese Army.
The NVA dead were buried in shell craters as helicopters arrived, bearing General Ramsey, Colonel Tackaberry, and a cabinful of reporters.
The lull was definitely over for the Polar Bears.
That evening, Lieutenant Colonel Henry and Major Lee requested the brigade aviation officer to take them on a night recon flight. From LZ West they flew north to Nui Chom, from where Henry thought the sappers had come. As they cleared the crest of the mountain, they saw campfires on the northern slope some distance away. Henry radioed the artillery battery on West and, in short order, white phosphorus rounds were bursting around the dots of light. They were quickly extinguished. The men flew back to the mountain pass between LZ West and Center. There were more lights and these too were hastily doused as the noise of the helicopter echoed down to the enemy bivouac area. These sightings prompted Henry to send Bravo Company north into the Hiep Duc Valley, and Delta Company south into the Song Chang Valley. Search & Destroy. But, once again, the enemy was choosing to evade them.
On the morning of 11 August, the Marines began their move south into the AO of the Americal Division. The advance group was a team of liaison and communications personnel from 2d Battalion, 7th Marines off the Da Nang line. It was a routine move and 1stLt John H. Pidgeon, XO, C Company, 11th Motor Transport Battalion, 1st Marine Division, was assigned as convoy commander.
Pidgeon was just getting off his truck after an An Hoa run when he was told to report to the BnS-4; the supply officer didn’t know what was up, but lent him a jeep to report in to Division. Pidgeon was briefed at 1st MarDiv HQ. A lieutenant from 2/7, whose rifle platoon would perform convoy security, provided most of the details. It was not complicated. Pidgeon would have thirty-five trucks (every fourth one with a cab-mounted .50-cal.) plus a wrecker to tow any damaged vehicles; they’d be carrying mostly ammunition. An aerial observer would be on station in case fire support was needed. There was also a briefer from the Americal Division, a lieutenant colonel from LZ Baldy, who painted a rosy picture. The roads were swept every day without incident, he said; the area was a model pacification zone. No sweat, Pidgeon thought, straight down Highway One, unload, then head for home.
It was a quiet trip. The only thing unusual he noticed on the way to Baldy was that the Vietnamese along the road didn’t wave. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Were they being watched? Their final destination was LZ Ross, a small outpost northeast of Nui Chom; it was fifteen klicks west of Baldy down an old colonial road named Route 535. The convoy was cutting through a large, flat expanse of sand and brush when the truck ahead of Pidgeon with a grunt squad aboard rounded a curve in the road. There was an explosion, a geyser of sand on the shoulder. Then silence. Everyone kept rolling, per procedure, and Pidgeon looked at the crater as they passed. No truck treads were near it. It had been a command-detonated mine.
The enemy was out there all right.
Their mine had done no damage because the Marine truck driver had remembered his training. The VC planted their mines in the shoulder of the roads to take advantage of lazy drivers who cut the corners at curves. Pidgeon credited his four, hard-nosed sergeants with drilling those lessons into the young Marines. They proudly called themselves the 11th Mothers.
Landing Zone Ross was a small, lonely-looking place, Pidgeon thought. There were two, low knolls off the road separated by a hard-packed saddle—ARVN on one knoll; a small detachment from 2–1 Infantry, Americal, on the other. The Marines ended up in the saddle. They circled their trucks for the night, fifties outboard, men on watch in the ring mounts and under the vehicles. Lieutenant Pidgeon didn’t have to replace the infantry platoon leader on watch until 0200. He climbed into his truck and fell asleep on a stretcher. Suddenly he was wide awake—not aware he’d heard the incoming mortars—and scrambling under his truck. The first round had hit five yards away, splattering his truck with shrapnel, but the only damage was Pidgeon’s ringing ears. More rounds impacted around the LZ, and a Marine in a gun mount hollered he’d seen the tube flashes about five hundred meters out. It was a populated area, and they could not get permission from the Army to return fire with their fifties.
It was a frustrating night for the Marines; by daybreak, they were all ready to go home. The truckers were waiting for the Army to sweep the road when one of the sergeants hollered from his truck, “Lieutenant, look at this shit!” Pidgeon climbed up with him. The sweep team—which should have consisted of at least four men with minesweepers and an infantry squad on the flanks—was only an old truck being backed slowly down the road. It was loaded with sandbags to set off any mine that had been planted during the night. Christ, he thought, these guys are crazy!*
The grunts from 2/7 were staying on Ross, but the truckers were heading back for Baldy right after the sweep. Pidgeon huddled with his sergeants. It was quick. “We’re going out of here fast, gents. Fifteen second intervals at no less than thirty-five mph. If there is a gook out there holding two wires, we’ll make it tough on him. If you must abandon your truck, get under the rear duals. Stay on the road. Lock and load your M16s and good luck.” They hauled ass all the way to LZ Baldy, trucks empty, infantry security gone. A command-detonated mine boomed and a couple of AK47s sniped from within the roadside brush. No damage, no casualties.
They didn’t even slow down to return fire.
At Baldy, they received word from 1st MarDiv to remain overnight: a bridge on Highway One north of Hoi An had been dropped. They headed north the next morning and stopped at the juncture of Highway One and Route 4, which ran west into Dodge City. They were to meet a sweep team. The eastern leg of Route 4 had been closed for months due to heavy losses; this latest sweep was hours late. Lieutenant Pidgeon waited under the broiling sun, thinking that once you’ve seen one group of a hundred Vietnamese villagers, you’ve seen them all! They crowded the halted convoy. The Marines bought soda from the villagers, who were friendly until a sale was rejected; then a sarcastic, “Number ten!” The kid Marines told them to fuck off. Some children were selling marijuana, and their older sisters were selling themselves. The girls were friendly, pouting and acting hurt if turned down. After the sergeants made sure the villagers stayed away from the rigs, it was rather relaxing to talk with the children. Pidgeon wasn’t totally at ease, though; this was always too vulnerable a situation.
The sweep finally came on the radio: ETA of twenty mikes. The southern voice was familiar, and Pidgeon recognized the face when the sweep came trudging in. It was a classmate from Basic School. There were no smiles or handshakes. Roads are cleared by technique or accident, Pidgeon thought; this was a case of the latter. An engineer had missed a mine in the road, which totalled the truck following them. A medevac was called.
Two days later, on 15 August, they headed back to LZ Baldy, trucking in the remainder of 2/7 Marines from the Da Nang Rocket Belt. It was a large convoy, more than two hundred trucks, and Lieutenant Pidgeon was dual convoy commander with 1stLt Al Fabizak. Pidgeon rode up front; Fabizak brought up the rear; and it was a typical, quiet, hot, dust-caked run to LZ Baldy. The night was different, though. The Marines were on the airstrip, truckers and grunts sleeping in the vehicles and under them, when the mortars began coming in and the sapper teams were spotted in the wire. The Marines squeezed under the trucks, weapons trained on the airstrip. Ahead of them, the GIs in the perimeter bunkers were on their M60s, slicing the black night with red tracers low to the ground. Flares popped over the base, their parachutes eerily floating down to drape themselves over hootches and wire. Pidgeon crouched beside his truck watching a couple of gutsy Huey gunship crews lift their birds off the strip amid the sporadic fire. They buzzed the wire, then made strafing passes behind a mass of huge boulders to the south. The boulders faced the arty section of the perimeter, and an NVA mortar crew was lobbing shells from the cover. Sappers were moving forward in the wire and an artillery crew dropped their tube to ground level. Then came the weird rush of a beehive flechette round screaming into the night.
At first light, GIs and Marines stood on the perimeter photographing the NVA bodies in the wire. Lieutenant Pidgeon thought back to that briefing from the Americal colonel. Model pacification? He thought it smelled more like peaceful coexistence. The attitude of the Americal Division, or at least of the GIs he talked to, was: what you don’t find can’t hurt you. Which was all well and good, considering the confused and confusing politics of the war. But you can’t sit out a war when the other side is still out to kick your ass.
Pidgeon was glad his duties took him back to Da Nang. He was glad to be done with the Americal.
* They or their commanders were indeed crazy. WO Ken Fritz, who flew medevacs that summer with the 176th Helicopter Company, Americal, commented, “That was a real bad road. I can recall picking up people who had been blown up as a result of numerous mines. Guys sweeping the road for mines with a deuce-and-a-half loaded full of sandbags, and it didn’t quite turn it over but it just about wasted all the guys on the deuce-and-a-half.”