Death Valley (14 page)

Only 1st and 2d Platoons entered the open paddy.

Halfway across, a pair of explosions burst near them, a harmless shower of shrapnel and dirt clogs. Everyone instantly dropped flat, looked around, then got moving again when nothing else developed. No one had seen the source of fire or heard anything except the explosions. Beeler figured it had been mortars, until he looked at the tree line facing them. RPGs? He didn’t like the way things were shaping up and requested 1/7 to shell the woods again. Forty meters from the trees, he could feel the NVA. The paddy rolled up a three-foot berm to the tree line island; a thick cluster of bamboo sat along the edge of the embankment. 1st Platoon was right in front of the bamboo screen, having just crossed the final paddy dike. Beeler suddenly ran to that dike, hollering to open fire.

Two grunts looked back at him quizzically, then the platoon line triggered a few bursts into the brush.

The next second, the NVA opened fire.

It was an instantaneous eruption, an RPD machine gun jackhammering from within the bamboo clump, a dozen AK47s joining the scythe. The eruption murdered 1st Platoon. The point man, LCpl James Norris, charged the bamboo but was shot dead in his tracks. The new lieutenant dropped with a round in his shoulder, and the squad leader was killed. A dozen others fell wounded, and the survivors squeezed into the ash. Rounds cracked the air inches above their backs. Only a few could or
would raise their M16s to fire back. The platoon sergeant, Sgt John Valdez, had saved the day in a similar situation when India Company was in the Que Sons. Pitching smoke grenades to form a screen, he had been able to drag their casualties back under fire and won a Silver Star recommendation. He tried to repeat the success.

Valdez was shot to death as soon as he moved.

Sergeant Valdez had been on his second combat tour, but reportedly had not told his family. He wanted to spare them the worry. His completely unexpected notification of death was followed by posthumous awards of the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart.

In seconds, 1st Platoon had been decimated. 2d Platoon, however, had been out of the line of fire and had jogged into the tree line. Captain Beeler, huddled behind the last dike, radioed the staff sergeant in command to hit the machine gun position from the flanks. As far as he was concerned, all he got from the tired sergeant was a token effort. When the platoon got up to attack, a new man was killed and several were wounded, and the platoon hunkered back among the trees. That is where they sat the rest of the battle.

1st Platoon was pinned down, 2d Platoon was paralyzed, and 3d Platoon was far back in the last tree line. Typical, Beeler thought: the NVA can hide in the trees, but the Marines have to expose themselves in the paddies between the wooded islands. Then the NVA ambush you when you’re too close to them to call in supporting arms. Beeler reckoned there was only one NVA platoon in the tree line, a delaying party centered around the machine gun. They had excellent fields of fire, were willing to die in place, and they were accomplishing just what they had intended.

When the ambush began, Captain Fagan was very glad to be on the left side of the skirmish line. There was a tree line there leading to the enemy woods and narrow, shimmering Snake Lake. This lake formed the western boundary of the sweep and gave Delta Company a protected flank.

Delta was in the middle of the paddy when the shooting started, and they caught some stray rounds. Their response was to double-time down the dikes and into the trees, which was done without casualties. They were hastily securing in the wood line when Codispoti approached Fagan. The gruff, old colonel was a bit winded and excited from their
run under fire and, not being very formal anyway, he asked for a report. “Holy cow, what’s going on?” Fagan was not at all sure, but with all the company commanders on the radio, they pieced it together.

D/1/7 had secured the left flank of the enemy tree line.

L/3/7 had done likewise on the right flank.

I/3/5 was pinned down in the middle.

C/1/7 had pulled back to the woods from which they’d left, joining B/1/7 and H&S/1/7.

Meanwhile, the battalion command post was pinned down in the paddies behind Delta Company. A couple of snipers fired on them from the trees on their left, and stray rounds from the hornet’s nest on the right also cracked past. It was the second time that day that the CP had come under fire; saddling up that morning, the NVA had dropped a few mortar rounds on them and SgtMaj Charles C. Awkerman narrowly escaped injury. He’d just finished a C ration breakfast in his foxhole and had moved away when the mortars hit; his pack left beside his hole had been punched through with shrapnel. Now, Sergeant Major Awkerman was down along a dike with Lieutenant Colonel Dowd. Word came on the radio that the CO of India Company had been hit. Dowd told Awkerman to get the CP into Delta Company’s position in the woods; then the colonel tagged his radioman and they scrambled over the dike on the right flank. Dowd had never even met the India CO, but such was his professionalism.

The bamboo clump in front of India Company had quieted down: the NVA let go only a burst when a Marine moved. Captain Beeler, still crouched behind the dike, saw a black-haired head pop from a spider hole within the bamboo. He appeared to be spotting for the machine gun. Beeler took an M14 rifle from a sniper—a Scout-Sniper team from 5th Marine Regiment had been travelling with his CP group—and sighted in on the spot. When the head popped up again, he opened fire but the NVA kept dropping back into his hole.

The exchange was going nowhere. The sun was blazing and wounded men were dying in the paddy. Beeler finally decided they’d have to rush the embankment, duck against it out of sight of the bamboo, and toss fragmentation grenades up into the machine gun pit. It was insanely simple: Captain Beeler and his radiomen, Corporal Valley and Lance Corporal Ray, dropped their backpacks and went over the dike, shouting,
shooting, running as fast as they could. The RPD suddenly opened fire and Beeler dove to the bank, rolling flat against it. The burst had grazed him—a tear across his left hand, another across the side of his neck which permanently lodged a piece of his flak jacket collar into the wound. Beeler glanced to his right. Corporal Valley and a few others had made it with him and also hugged against the berm; Lance Corporal Ray was clutching his wounded hand. Beeler started lobbing grenades up into the bamboo; the response was a Chicom tossed down at him. It landed beside him and in a reflexive lunge from the prone position, he sprang five feet, then curled with his back to the grenade. The explosion kicked him in the butt—where he had an asspack full of C rations—but there was no pain and he rolled back.

The exchange continued. It was taking forever, and a grunt named Williams was going crazy. Top point man with Spanky Norris, who lay dead in front of the bamboo, he raged with grief and anger. Beeler could see two grunts holding him down to keep him from charging.

The Marines and North Vietnamese were within yards of each other, which is why there was no madhouse of firing. In fact, from a distance, little appeared to be happening. Lieutenant Colonel Dowd and his radioman hiked across the paddy right up to the shooting, until an India Marine hollered to get down because the machine gun hadn’t been knocked out yet. Dowd paused, but everything was quiet, so they popped over the next dike. A burst from the machine gun instantly knocked them back down. Lieutenant Colonel Dowd was shot in the head and chest.

He never knew what hit him.

With the battalion commander suddenly vanished from the radio waves, there were a lot of confused calls. Fagan finally got Major Alexander, S-3, 1/7, on the horn. Alexander said, “This is the Six.”

“Where’s the Actual?”

“He’s a Kilo. I’m the Six.”

That’s how the company commanders were informed that the colonel was dead. Lieutenant Peters, XO, D/1/7, was not very surprised when he heard the news. He’d always thought Dowd was too gungy for his own good. One of the first things Peters learned as a combat officer was to try to look like an enlisted man in the bush. He packed away his gold bars, wore simply an o.d. undershirt under his flak jacket, and traded his .45 pistol for an M16 rifle. One day in July, Peters’s platoon had been on an isolated hillock when, from out of nowhere, Lieutenant Colonel Dowd and Sergeant Major Awkerman had come walking towards
his perimeter with two riflemen. Not only had the been walking through the Arizona with such a small party, but there had been Dowd in all his glory, cigar jutting from his jaw, walking stick in his hand, and a silver oak leaf on his cover. It had shone in the sun. As far as Peters was concerned, Dowd had been begging for a sniper to hit him. He wondered, with little sympathy, if the colonel had let his macho streak kill him.

Lima Company on the right flank was trying to push through the tree line to assist India Company. When the ambush was first sprung, Lima had been in the paddy with two platoons up and their attached platoon from Kilo back. Lieutenant Colonel Dowd had instantly come over the battalion command net to tell Captain Rider to press the attack into the tree line. Rider gave the order to his two lead lieutenants.

They made an assault right out of the book.

The forward observer crouched behind a burial mound with Rider, calling in more artillery, while the M60 teams jogged to the far right flank and pumped grazing fire across the company’s front. The reserve platoon was moved to refuse the right flank, while grunts in the paddy fired cover for fire team and individual rushes. From dike to dike, they edged towards the invisible snipers in the tree line. Everything was going so smoothly that Rider felt more like an observer than a participant, and he found himself standing atop the burial mound more closely to watch his Marines attack; he was beaming.

To understand why the company commanders in this battle were so proud of their riflemen, some background is necessary. In 1965, Rider was a platoon leader in the 7th Marines when they deployed to Vietnam from Camp Pendleton. At that time, most of the senior officers and sergeants had experience ranging from Gaudalcanal to Inchon. Almost all the staff NCOs were veterans of the Korean War, and most of the new corporals and sergeants had at least four years in the Corps. When Rider returned to the regiment in 1969, his company was a body of teenagers. The grunts were mostly new graduates or dropouts from high school, and most of his NCOs had been promoted early due to the manpower drain of Vietnam. He had sergeants who weren’t old enough to drink beer legally. His platoon leaders were all Rice Paddy Lieutenants, rushed through a shortened version of Basic School for only one use.

But now these young lieutenants and grunts—with bullets snapping
over their heads, but with a tangible enemy finally materializing in this sweaty hell—were charging right at the North Vietnamese.

They were Marines.

Captain Rider was finally chased off that burial mound when his new gunnery sergeant, Gunny Martinez, shouted at him, “Goddammit, skipper, you better get off there or we’re going to bury your ass in that bloody mound!” Lima Company got into the trees without casualties, but then took several wounded as they cautiously advanced towards India and Delta Companies: the NVA were firing from spider holes and, with the arty turned off now, snipers had clambered up into the trees.

It was about then that Dowd was killed.

Soon after, Captain Beeler finally got a grenade into the machine-gun pit. The RPD was silenced and he brought 3d Platoon across the paddy to secure the area. They found a dozen dead NVA in the bamboo. The rest were retreating into a cane field behind the tree line, exchanging a few more grenades and rifle shots with Lima Company as they pressed right to left through the trees. Lima tied in with Delta and the firing evaporated. The battalion line consolidated in the woods and medevacs were called in. Captain Rider noticed in particular one wounded man. He couldn’t even remember the kid’s name because he was a cook at the battalion rear on Hill 10; whenever a company rotated to the base camp, he pestered its CO about going to the bush with them. Rider finally went to the BnXO and got permission to take him on one operation. This was the one and the happy cook accompanied the assault platoons; once in the bush, though, an NVA in a tree dropped a grenade which hit the cook’s helmet and exploded. Blood leaked from his ears and nose. When Rider saw the Marine heading for the medevacs, he was deaf, stunned, and looking rather pleased with himself.

Lance Corporal Wells usually carried the primary radio for Dowd. This morning, though, he’d been made the spare operator and a wireman from the comm section went with Dowd. The sweep had been easy going at first; the sun was warm, spirits were up, and a thudding of artillery led the way. Wells was feeling excited and he and a buddy humped along, laughing and humming the latest Beatles’ tune: “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” Things began slowing down when India Company tripped two booby traps. They paused while a Sea Knight dropped in;
when they resumed the march, everyone closed into a file trying to walk in the footsteps of the man ahead. The rifle companies were moving too fast to collect all the NVA gear in their path, so Wells and a Marine from H&S supply were sent down a footpath to police up what they could carry. The CP kept moving as they ambled down the trail into some thick brush, getting a little lost but not too worried since the NVA were on the run. The small forest seemed deserted by the time they found the NVA 82mm mortar rounds; there were twelve of them, three tied to each end of two sticks to be carried over the shoulder. The men didn’t have any explosives to destroy the rounds and the water in the paddy was too shallow to sink them. Reluctantly, they shouldered the enemy ammunition and continued their casual, disoriented stroll.

They finally got to the edge of the woods and rested on a dike. Ahead of them, the grunts were already far into the paddies. That’s when the machine gun opened fire.

Wells and his buddy quickly rolled behind the dike as high rounds clipped the woods behind them. The noise was incredible as they watched the fight. Finally, they saw figures run into the trees. Wells was amazed at such bravery. It was the Marine Corps discipline, he reckoned, instilled from boot camp—don’t think, just do it! The firing petered out soon after; that’s when he noticed the NVA mortar rounds. They’d dumped them atop the dike when they first sat down and they’d laid there during the entire fight; one round could have disintegrated the two spectators.