Abandoned in Hell : The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate (9780698144262) (24 page)

I still shudder to think what would have happened if the point man had followed my original plan. Had we gone to the west side of Ambush Hill, our column would have presented itself head-on to that gun. The gunners could have fired down the length or our line, which then would have been stretched almost back to the gap. A single bullet from a 12.7 mm can tear a man's arm from his body. It can punch through the torsos of four or five adults standing one behind the next. With the PAVN assault force coming down behind us from the south, we would have been caught in a crossfire. I doubt that any of us would have survived.

But that was not to be our fate.

Despite the ineffectiveness of their fire, those frightening green tracers caused the men in our column to panic. Men began crashing pell-mell through the brush. I raced ahead to take the lead of the main body, yelling for them to continue northward along the tree line. As I had a little earlier, I grabbed every trooper I could find and pushed him in the direction of the column. Behind me, Pierelli was doing the same.

I had supposed that his security squad was covering our back side, but at that point in our hegira, it was all that he could do to round up our guys and get them moving in the right direction. For those few minutes of half-panicked confusion as we came off Ambush Hill, we had no rear guard.

“We withdrew from the edge of the grassy slope about 20 meters or so into the jungle and got ourselves organized,” recalls Bob Johnson. “The captain said that we wouldn't be able to see each other in the darkness, but it was very important that we stay together, be soundless, no whispering or talking. We had to walk as quietly as we could possibly walk. He told us to check our gear to make sure that nothing was rattling. Then he said that we
should keep one hand on the shoulder of the man in front of us. But first, he told us to get down on your knees and brush aside the litter on the jungle floor. ‘Dig deep down into the rotted leaves. They're phosphorescent. Put some of them on the back of the person in front of you so that if your hand slips off, you'll be able to see them.'

“And that worked like a charm,” Johnson added.

Koon was having his own problems in the dark, repeatedly stumbling over unexploded mortar rounds and rockets, well aware that stepping on one in the wrong place might cause it to explode. “Once we hit the tree line, I think the B-52s must have been along in here because we were falling into bomb craters. You couldn't see very well because it was pitch-dark and then we looked at the ground and a lot of the tree leaves were glowing, and I thought, my God, what if it was some kind of chemical from the bombs? We put it on the back of our helmets and then the guy behind us could see where we were. It was pretty good for that.”

•   •   •

ONCE
I found the head of the column, I moved forward as quickly as the darkness and terrain would allow. After several minutes, I stopped to regroup and reassess the situation. Smith and Zollner took a head count of their artillerymen; two were missing. My striker leaders said that when the automatic fire began, several of their troops had separated from the main body. There was no way to look for them in the thick jungle blackness without endangering everyone else. I could only hope that the missing GIs had joined company with the missing strikers and that they would all find their way back to Bu Prang safely. Frankly, that was an awful lot to hope for.

I still expected to link up with Mike Force, but I was no longer sure where
we
were or even where they were. Spooky was finally on station, however, so I told Alabama where the PAVN heavy machine gun was sited, a location he knew well from previous missions, and that there were no more friendlies on Kate. Almost immediately, Spooky's miniguns began ripping up the terrain on Ambush Hill and then on Kate itself. I received word by radio that more aircraft were en route to pound Kate.

We took advantage of the noise from Spooky's engines and miniguns to mask the sounds of our passage through thick jungle as we put space between us and Ambush Hill. When I thought that we were far enough north—more a feeling than any sense of the actual distance—I turned, and we began moving westward. I had a vague sense of where the rescue force was dug in—little more than a hunch, my guess of about where I saw the helicopters touch down, and a look at my map—but based on what I was told before leaving Kate, I still expected to find a Mike Force element in the immediate vicinity of our abandoned hilltop.

I know that the enemy was all around us; when I could no longer hear Spooky, I halted the column to listen. After several seconds, an almost infinitesimal change in air pressure, the suggestion of a phantom breeze, brushed my face. The tiniest of vibrations nudged the soles of my feet. Then came the faint, softly rhythmic scrape of feet treading hard earth.

I signaled DOWN! and we all fell forward, a row of dominos collapsing front to back. The sound grew louder. As I pressed my body into the earth, the vibration was more intense, but still barely discernible.

To our left, through the foliage, was a darker darkness, movement where there should be none.

Men rushed by in the jungle only about ten meters away, moving eastward in a closely bunched column stretching several hundred yards and parallel to our column, following some hidden path cut, tunnellike, through the foliage.

The Mike Force?

Whispering, I radioed and said that if they are on the move, we were now on their immediate left.

The Mike Force replied: “We are dug in.” Definitely
not
moving.

Then the men marching past us, close enough that we could smell the sour odor of their unwashed bodies, must be PAVN.

All we could do was lie prone on the jungle floor, listening to the sound of our own breathing and feeling the drum beating in our chest as we waited for all those troops—hundreds, I believe—to pass—a long and very scary time.

When they had disappeared into the night, I waited a few minutes more, against the surprise of a rear guard trailing the main body.

Finally, I signaled everyone to get to their feet. That simple act generated enough noise to make me wait another few minutes, to wait until it was completely quiet except for the normal sounds of a jungle at night: insects engaging in six-legged social networking, the high-pitched twitters and haunting calls of night birds, the faint croak of tree frogs. In the distance, some creature—perhaps a wild pig, or maybe even a tiger or a leopard— made an odd sound, something between a grunt and a cough.

Humans, of course, both grunt and cough.

I waited another few minutes, then called Mike Force again. This time they sent coded grid coordinates of their position.

I could only hope that they were as good at map reading as I thought I was.

At my signal, the column resumed its slow, stealthy trek through the jungle. I navigated by compass, stopping from time to time to check the azimuth, and keeping a rough count of my paces to give me some idea of how much ground we had covered. Except for an occasional glimpse of the starry sky, we were in almost total darkness. Each step I took was slow and deliberate. My boot-shod toes felt for the ground, trying to avoid a root that I might trip over, or making noise by crushing a twig.

I also hoped that I wouldn't step on a cobra, a tree viper, a krait—any of the thirty poisonous snake species living in this jungle. Or that some twenty-foot-long Burmese python wouldn't drop from a tree to wrap itself around my chest and crush the life out of me.

“There was no sign or sound of any humans as we continued up and over hills, and through streams,” recalls Bob Johnson. “We climbed a hilltop and there was an open field with an old, French colonial–style house. Even though we were in triple-canopied jungle, we could look past the trees and see the plantation buildings.”

Moving even a small group with stealth in such terrain is agonizingly slow and difficult—and, as I now learned with a large group, virtually impossible. Nevertheless, we continued our slow progress, each step made
with purpose, at all times knowing that we risked not only our own fate but the lives of our buddies.

Forty miles away, at Camp Coryell, the northern of BMT's airfields, Les Davison was in the 155th AHC operations center. “I'd just returned from flying some mission,” he recalls. “Somebody told me that Kate had been evacuated and the guys were walking out, through the jungle. My first thought was that we'd be lucky if we saw any of those guys
alive.”

There's a Legion that never was 'listed,

That carries no colours or crest,

But, split in a thousand detachments,

Is breaking the road for the rest.

Our fathers they left us their blessing—

They taught us, and groomed us, and crammed;

But we've shaken the Clubs and the Messes

To go and find out and be damned

(Dear boys!),

To go and get shot and be damned.

—Rudyard Kipling, “The Lost Legion”

A
fter walking for what felt like an hour or so, I called a pause to our march. I had not seen or heard further sign of friend or foe. Nor was I very sure where we were. I called for Smith, Zollner, and Pierelli to make their way to the head of the column, and in whispers told them that I wanted to go out ahead of the group, alone. I wanted to try to pinpoint our exact location on my map by using terrain features as reference points. I had to do this myself because, from all the information I had, the only other man with us who I could trust to read a map and match it to the surrounding terrain was Pierelli. I had to believe that I knew more about maps than he did. So it would be me.

When I returned, I told the others, I would probably make just enough noise to be challenged. My reply to this challenge would be two short flashes from the red-filtered flashlight I carried.

White light can be seen for miles in the darkness. Red light won't carry as far.

We had to assume that the enemy was still combing the jungle for us; that presented the distinct possibility that I could be captured. My final instruction to Dan, Maurice, and Mike was that if I approached and did not
flash red twice, they were to assume that I had been compromised and start shooting.

I went out about a hundred meters, moving quietly, but looking around as I moved. I came to the edge of a jungle clearing, hoping to find a height or some other landmark that would help me get a fix on our position. But even in the clearing, only starlight battled the darkness.

Scanning for terrain features, I didn't watch where I put my feet. I tripped over a tree root and fell flat on my face, brushing against tree limbs and underbrush as I toppled.

Slowly, I climbed back to my feet, then systematically checked myself over.

My red-filtered flashlight had been clipped to my suspenders. It was gone. I dropped to my knees and searched the ground all around with my hands.

No flashlight.

Still on my knees, I crawled in gradually expanding circles from the base of the tree.

Still no flashlight.

By my own order, I would not be allowed to return to the column without that flashlight. There was no fail-safe. No backup plan.

Fighting the stirrings of panic, I returned to the base of the tree, and then slowly felt my way up to its limbs. Then outward until my hands touched . . . plastic. My fingers found a ribbed cylinder. Snagged on a small branch by its carry clip was my precious light.

I had failed to locate us on the map, but it was apparent that I had exceeded my nightly quotient for solo reconnaissance.

I eased back the way I came, used the flashlight to signal as promised, and got my troops moving again. As before, we proceeded by dead reckoning: I knew where we had started from, and now I knew the coordinates of the Mike Force's position. But without the ability to locate ourselves on a map, I couldn't do more than move toward what I hoped was their approximate location.

The bug in my beer bottle: The enemy was also looking for the Mike Force. The good guys might have been forced to move.

•   •   •

ABOUT
three hours after leaving Kate, a gibbous moon rose, pouring cold, bright light on the jungle clearings, enough to allow me to view terrain features and get a better feeling for our approximate location. We seemed to be close to where I had supposed we were; I altered course slightly and we moved out again, still exercising the greatest caution: Bright as the occasional clearing and small openings in the jungle canopy were, beneath the thick rain forest vegetation it was like wearing sunglasses in a coal mine.

About 0230, or more than six hours after leaving Kate, we reached a point on my map that I judged to be close to the Mike Force perimeter. We were in thick jungle at the edge of a large open field; I put several of my men in concealed positions along the tree line. Across the field, fifty to sixty meters away, a large clump of tall trees rose above thick underbrush.

Concealed beneath those trees, a man could see anyone approaching across the open field in the moonlight. It was exactly the kind of location where a small infantry unit could dig in and defend against a larger force.

And that, I believed, was where the two Mike Force rifle companies sent to rescue us were waiting. While I was deciding how best to approach their position, I heard a soft but unmistakably metallic clank coming from that distant wood line.

Somebody was there. It might be our rescuers. It might as easily be a PAVN unit.

I just couldn't know.

I got back on the radio and asked the Mike Force to send a man into the clearing so we could confirm that we were in the right place.

The Mike Force replied that
we
would have to send a man forward into the field.

I could have sent Pierelli, of course, or even Smith or Zollner. Any one of them would have gone if I'd asked them. As would almost any of my strikers. But this was my job, I decided. I couldn't risk another man's life if I wouldn't risk my own. I told Pierelli, Smith, and Zollner to remain with Tex and our radio while I attempted to make physical contact.

Before I left the tree line, I radioed the Mike Force, whispering into the microphone that in a few minutes I would attempt to make contact. They
rogered their understanding. I was nevertheless reluctant to step into the field, because I was still not certain that we were in the right spot. Many terrain features look similar in moonlight; we might be miles from where I thought we were. And even if my navigation was spot-on, I couldn't be sure that the Mike Force was across that field.

We could be right in the middle of a PAVN bivouac: If that grove was a good location for a couple of hundred Mike Force strikers to dig in and hole up at night, it was an equally good place for a PAVN unit.

My final words to Pierelli, Smith, and Zollner were that if I walked into a PAVN position instead of the Mike Force, the enemy might not realize that I had others with me. If I was killed or captured, they were to forget about me, melt back into the jungle, and, as soon as it was safe, lead the troops quietly and quickly northwest to Bu Prang.

Feeling naked in the moonlight, my weapon slung over my shoulder, I stepped into the field, realizing as I did so that even if I was walking straight toward the Mike Force, there could also be a thousand guns pointing at me from the jungle on either flank. I took a step forward, then another, calling as I went, in a parade-ground voice, “I am an American; are you the Mike Force?” I repeated this several times as I moved across the field.

There was no answer.

I kept calling and I kept walking. Finally I reached the tree line and there, to my left, a Mike Force striker stared back at me from a foxhole.

Sergeant First Class Lowell Stevens, the Mike Force ground commander, appeared from nowhere to grab my arm.

“Go back and get the rest of your men,” he whispered. “And keep your voice down. There's all kinds of fucking pith helmets and AKs around here. Get your guys, and then let's get the hell out of here.”

Feeling more naked than ever, I ran back across the open field. I got my troops moving across the field, and I'm pretty sure that at first they didn't understand that we had found the Mike Force.

Koon: “We were halted for a while. Then we started forward, but nobody ever told me we were linking up, and all of a sudden I slipped and fell into a hole. First thing I thought was that I'd fallen into a
punji
pit. It's
pretty dark, so I looked and there's a gook on my left and a gook on my right and I was sitting there with my M16 and I said, ‘Are you guys friendly?' And they smiled at me, and then somebody said that we'd linked up with the friendlies.

“When I told Albracht this story, he wanted to know what I would've done if they said, ‘No, not friendly.' I guess we would've had a shoot-out right there in that hole.”

Bob Johnson: “We waited until the captain came back and told us that it was safe to move forward. We crossed a field and into a tree line. Then somebody grabbed my boot, pushed it back, and said, ‘Don't step on me.' And that's when I knew that we had linked up with the relief force.”

Warren Geromin: “All of a sudden somebody's hand came up and grabbed my foot. They said, ‘Don't shoot! Don't shoot!' They were the good guys; the Mike Force, down in their foxholes.”

As soon as I had everyone inside the new perimeter, SFC Stevens told me that he had ordered his men not to acknowledge me when I approached them, because he couldn't tell if I had been captured and compromised. And, he explained, there was a vastly superior enemy force in the area, in at least two groups. Earlier that night, he and his men had heard them moving outside their hidden perimeter. He believed—I don't know why—that the enemy was primarily looking for my group.

We were not yet safe. It would be daylight in a few hours; we must leave the area before we were discovered. Even our combined force would not match that of our pursuers. We realigned our formation, with a Mike Force company at either end of our column and my Kate evacuees between them.

We assumed that the PAVN commander would know that we wanted to reach Bu Prang. It followed that they would try to intercept and ambush us. We therefore took evasive action, swinging miles out of our way, sticking to the jungle and moving at a slow and cautious pace.

After daylight, during a break, mail was distributed to some of the Kate artillerymen.

“Somebody had brought some mail off Kate that had come in with the last chopper,” says Koon. “I got one letter, from my sister, and in it there
were three pieces of Wrigley's Spearmint gum. I was dying of thirst, but we didn't have any water. That chewing gum quenched my thirst until we got to Bu Prang; to this day, I still thank my sister.”

Once we resumed our march, my exhausted mind slid into autopilot. I left everything to the Special Forces noncoms that led each Mike Force company: Sergeant First Class Stevens and Sergeant First Class Don Simmons, both ten-year Army veterans. Most of the remainder of the march is a blur in memory; the only thing I recall from after the linkup and our subsequent departure was that we came out of the jungle and took a dirt road for a short distance to Camp Bu Prang, arriving there about 1130 hours on November 2.

When the camp came into sight, I was jolted into full consciousness and then infused with a fleeting moment of pride.

One of the artillery sergeants—one that I had seen very little of during the fight—called out, “Hold your heads high, men; be proud. We just walked off Firebase Kate!”

We had moved through enemy territory for over sixteen hours to evade a powerful and determined enemy force. Considering all that we had been forced to overcome on this journey, it must be marked as a minor miracle.

I am confident that Kate could not have survived, nor could our escape have been successful, without Dan Pierelli as my right hand, calm, focused, and a consummate professional. I knew that he would handle whatever came up. He thus enabled me to concentrate on whatever was in front of me at the moment, without needlessly worrying about anything else.

Lieutenants Smith, Kerr, and Zollner, artillery officers completely out of their element when forced to serve as infantry, were individually and collectively magnificent during the siege no less than during our escape and evasion.

Koon, Hopkins, Tiranti, and Geromin—a generator operator!—and a few other artillerymen who overcame their understandable fear of flying explosives to leave shelter and fight alongside our CIDG strikers were critical to the defense of Kate. I don't know that any of us would have survived without their efforts as a roving infantry reserve force.

Sergeant Tex Rogers, who volunteered to serve as my RTO during our
escape, never faltered, never wavered, never lost his cool—was simply magnificent. Through our entire ordeal we were separated only twice, each time by necessity. Afterward, Tex confessed that he suffered from night blindness!

Nor would any of us have lived to tell Kate's tale without the pilots and crews in Spooky and Shadow, with Al Dykes, the Alabama boy, foremost among them. Likewise, their Air Force brethren flying the fast movers that had broken up one assault after another. All of us are eternally indebted to Army Captain John Strange and Air Force Major George Lattin, forward air controllers and pilots extraordinaire.

The courage and skill displayed by countless Army aviators and crew were all that barred the door to our deaths. I commend in that particularly Major Dean Owens and his entire 155th AHC, and especially pilots John Ahearn, Les Davison, and Ken Donovan. Also, Ben Gay of the 48th AHC and Jim Matlock of the 189th AHC.

Nolan Black, Maury Hearne, Clyde Canada, and Douglas Lott, the pilots and crew of Joker 85, gave their lives that we might live. We never met, but I will never forget you.

•   •   •

INSIDE
the camp, I learned that one of the two missing artillerymen had indeed joined with a few Montagnard strikers who were separated from the group. It was so dark, he said, that at first he couldn't tell whether he'd found a group of North Vietnamese or the CIDG! They had all hiked straight back to Bu Prang, avoided enemy contact, and arrived safely about the same time that my group was linking up with the Mike Force.

That left only one man unaccounted for: PFC Michael R. Norton, a gunner from the 105 section from Charlie Battery, 5/27 Artillery. He was said to have departed Kate with us, but had disappeared before the linkup. An aerial search was launched around Kate and the route that we followed to the linkup.

A chopper pilot that I met several days after we walked out told me that another chopper pilot told him that search pilots made passes over the area between Kate and Bu Prang for three days in an attempt to locate Norton.

On one of these forays, the pilot said, a hunter-killer team saw a man
waving his hands frantically in an open field. He wore green Army jungle fatigues with a boonie hat pulled low on his head. The pilot made a cautious landing approach, but as they were about to hover in for a landing, the door gunner yelled, “Gook!” As the pilot pulled up hard and fast, the surrounding jungle erupted with small-arms fire. As the chopper flew off, the man in the field ran toward the place where the fire came from.