Death Valley (21 page)

The kid was propped against the hootch, his wound still gruesome to look at despite the bloody bandages over it. He looked pale and weak, but in good spirits. Whittecar knelt beside the soldier. “Do you think you can hold on?”

“Hell yes. We’re gonna kick their ass like before.”

“You got that right.”

His face suddenly drained and he mumbled, “I’m not feeling too good.” Whittecar reached to his shoulder to balance him, but the GI fell forward onto him. “Medic!” Diliberto was beside him in seconds, but the man was already dead. Whittecar stood there shocked as they put him in a body bag and laid him with the others.

They were outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded. Whittecar had never been in such a situation before, had never felt such dread before.

He always remembered this as his moment of truth.

Whittecar was standing beside the crumbling front porch, talking with Diliberto and several others, when the cracking reports of AK47s suddenly blasted from the edges of their grassy perimeter. Everyone dove to the ground or disappeared into foxholes as Whittecar quickly jumped back up and sprinted into the hootch to join his FO and RTOs. The North Vietnamese were attacking. The GIs returned fire, flattening the grass with M16 and M60 bursts and M79 grenades, while Whittecar and his FO brought in 105mm artillery as close as they dared. At the same time, Whittecar cut to the frequency of his platoon leaders and ordered a counterattack. He didn’t want his men sitting in holes dying, perhaps even panicking in their helplessness. Some probably couldn’t face that order and stayed in the womb of their foxholes, but other grunts attacked like the NVA, individuals crawling through the elephant grass on their stomachs, M16s in front of them, tossing hand frags up and over the high grass. Few, if any, of the GIs even saw an NVA in
the tangle, even though they were within yards of each other at times. But the maneuver shocked or confused the NVA enough that they withdrew to the paddies and surrounding wood lines.

It was only as the firing slacked off that Whittecar noticed Diliberto. He was sprawled outside the French Hootch where they’d been talking, a bullet hole in his temple. He’d been killed instantly in the first burst.

The FO kept the artillery thundering around them, close enough so that U.S. shrapnel whizzed over the heads of the men in the foxholes and bounced inside the perimeter. At the same time, Whittecar talked in the gunship pilots. He described the location of one 12.7mm position in the bamboo grove, and the Huey bore down on it. The gun crew did not fire—perhaps not seeing the gunship, perhaps afraid to pinpoint themselves—but other 12.7mm guns began snapping tracers at it from hundreds of yards away. The pilot punched off a cluster of rockets, then pulled up, the bamboo erupting, shattering in his wake. Whittecar thought he saw an arm spinning up from the explosions.

As the Huey banked around, Whittecar radioed the pilot to clear out for the antiaircraft fire. The gunships cleared the airspace, and he talked in the Phantoms who laid nape in the tree line across the paddy and on suspected mortar locations. The NVA barely fired now, trying to become invisible in the thick greenery. The Phantoms came in Danger Close over the canopy, close enough for the grunts to read the aircraft markings, to see bombs disengaging, to hear the drag fins snap out, to feel the whump of bursting silver napalm canisters. The FO kept up the arty bombardment too, ceasing fire only long enough to allow the gunship and jet passes. Whittecar would line up a Phantom with a target, tell the FO to cease the arty, the napalm would burst, the jet would pull up, and the arty would be turned on again until the next strafing run.

The grunts of Bravo Company meanwhile had formed a tight ring around the hootches of the ville. They hunkered behind boulders or stubby trees in the tall grass and dug foxholes. They M16’d or flung grenades at every noise or rustle in front of them. Few, if any, NVA offered themselves to rifle sights, but they kept crawling closer along the dikes and hedgerows. Chicom stick grenades suddenly bounced next to GIs from out of nowhere. A bush stirred and M79 grenades were pounded into it. RPGs slammed back.

The NVA fired their mortar again. It was close enough for the grunts
to hear the pop of the outgoing round and to flatten even more in the dirt. Every round landed inside the ville, jarring the earth under their chests.

There were lulls and two heavy flare-ups.

Captain Gayler was in the center of the perimeter, set up in a tapioca field. The garden had eighteen-inch-deep furrows, and he was pressed flat into one, facing Lieutenant Shortround—his arty observer who earned the nickname because of his short, stocky build—who was also stretched out in the ditch. A map was spread between them. The arty recon sergeant was down in the furrow to one side of them; their RTOs were in the furrow to the other side. Gayler had never been so scared and, most likely, neither had Lieutenant Shortround. But the young FO was a cool head; he tapped the map as if he were discussing the weather, “Now, if I was the dink commander, I’d put my mortar over there.…” He was on the radio to the artillery batteries on LZ West and LZ Siberia, walking their bombardment through the trees across the Song Lau.

It silenced the mortar for then.

Cobra gunships of F Troop, 8th Air Cavalry, Americal Division had been scrambled and Gayler directed their fire. Their call sign was Blue Ghosts. The pilots sounded skeptical that hundreds of NVA were around Bravo Company in the broad daylight. They could see none in the thick vegetation, but Gayler wanted their fires within twenty meters of his perimeter. The grunts were pitching smoke grenades to mark themselves.

“Ah, we’re sure getting pretty close to you.”

“That’s affirmative,” was Gayler’s taciturn reply.

One Cobra made a low run parallel to the line, shattering the hedgerow in front of the grunts with his 40mm chin-turret grenade launcher. His wingman, zipping in next, shouted excitedly, “Four NVA just broke from that bush! You got dinks all over you!”

“Tell me about it!”

It was about then that the Cobras started receiving 12.7mm fire. At 1840, Marine Phantoms began dumping napalm across the river. They also reported antiaircraft fire. Also in the air was Colonel Tackaberry, orbiting in the 196th InfBde C&C; during one of the heavy flare-ups, he cut into Captain Gayler’s company net to demand a situation report. Before Gayler could answer the brigade commander—who was considered a spit ‘n’ polish glory hound by the Polar Bear battalion—Lieutenant
Colonel Henry cut in from his CP, “This unit’s in contact. If you want a status report, you call me on my push. Out.”

Gayler always had the highest respect for Henry.

The villagers had disappeared into their family bunkers at the first shot. The Vietnamese police hustled their chieu hoi into a bunker also. The ARVN interpreter joined them. The Kit Carson Scout, however, stayed near the company headquarters. For his devotion, he fell dead with an AK47 round through the neck. Another Vietnamese died inside the perimeter. During a lull, a little village girl wandered up to Gayler’s group, crying and pointing to her head with bloody hands. The medic pulled her down. She had shrapnel in the base of her skull and died in minutes.

At twilight, a medevac was attempted inside Bravo Company’s perimeter. The medics had the most seriously wounded gathered in the garden, and Gayler stood in the middle of it watching the Huey come in while Cobras orbited the ville, pumping out cover fire. He shouted to pop smoke and Sergeant Allison tossed a smoke grenade out. The Huey descended and slowed to a hover. There was the sudden cracking of a machine gun, a blur of green tracers as everyone ducked, the sledgehammer pounding of the chopper taking hits. The cables controlling the rear rotor were severed. Gayler looked up horrified to see the Huey in a wobbly hover ten feet above his head, spinning on its axis. The pilot expertly fought to regain control, eased the ship up over the trees around the garden, then flew away sideways. An hour later, at 1930, a second medevac was attempted. In the dark, Gayler tucked a strobe light into a furrow, then scooted out of the way as the Huey landed right on top of it. He tensed, expecting mortars. The wounded were quickly loaded on; the pilot did a torque check and radioed he could carry one more. An eighth GI was put aboard and the ship pulled out without drawing a shot.

At about 2200, 2dLt James Simms of 3d Platoon, Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry linked up with Captain Gayler and Bravo Company.

By then, Bravo had ten men dead, twenty wounded.

Charlie Three had been in the bush near the Resettlement Village
when the ambush began. Their sister platoons and company commander Murphy helicoptered down from LZ Siberia. They all linked up and NDP’d near Hill 118, popularly known as Million Dollar Hill (denoting the cost of helicopters shot down on the knoll in one day during the campaign to reclaim the valley). From there, under Lieutenant Colonel Henry’s direction, Captain Murphy sent Lieutenant Simms’s platoon to link up with Bravo and lead them back to their haven. He was reinforced with a squad from Charlie One under a GI named Williams.

It was about a four-kilometer hump to the east, an increasingly nervous march in the dead of a moonless night. The only sound was the scrape of dry grass as they moved, then the muffled exchanges from Bravo’s besieged perimeter. When they got close, shell casings from strafing Cobras fell among them, and they noticed they were walking through patches of bloody grass. They filed into Bravo’s perimeter during a lull.

Both groups were very glad to see each other.

Captain Gayler and Lieutenant Simms hashed over plans for getting out. Simms’s group had crossed the Song Lau and walked up the trail unopposed, which relieved Gayler: the back door might be open! Everyone was in need of rest, but he wanted to get out as soon as possible. His position was untenable, zeroed in. He told Simms that his platoon would be carrying the bodies out. Some of the GIs standing there muttered, “Aw shit, carry your own bodies.” Gayler was in no mood for it. “I know your people are tired, lieutenant, but we’ve been fighting all day, and either your people are going to carry them or
you’re
going to have to deal with me in the morning.”

It took an hour of confusion in the dark to chop down bamboo poles. The dead were wrapped in ponchos, tied to the poles with GI bootlaces, and shouldered between two to four soldiers. The rucksacks and gear of the casualties were also distributed. PFC Rocky Bleier, an M79 grenadier who had come with the attached squad, saw one corpse laying unnoticed in a ditch. He turned to one of the other GIs from Charlie Company, “C’mon, let’s take this guy.”

“Hell no, our platoon’s got rear security.”

“But there’s nobody left to take him.”

“I don’t give a shit. Let him lay there.”

Another grunt, however, said he’d help and they lashed the KIA to a bamboo pole. Bleier handed his M79 to another GI. They had just started into the paddy when Bleier’s partner slipped off the dike, splashing
into the water, the dead man yanked down onto him. He instantly scrambled out from under the stiff corpse and jumped on the berm, looking at Bleier with horror. It was the first time Bleier had seen a dead American, and probably the same for his buddy.

The column moved across the open paddies from the village to the tree lines along the Song Lau. Monroe’s platoon was on point, followed by Gayler’s headquarters; Maurel’s platoon; Allison’s platoon; Simms’s platoon with the bodies; and, finally, Williams’s squad covering the rear. The point squad was cautiously approaching the stream when a USAF prop plane droned to the south on the other side of LZ West, above where Delta Company was also fighting for its life. The plane suddenly started dropping basketball flares, which turned the paddies into shimmering stadiums for miles around. Everyone jumped behind the berms and Captain Gayler radioed Captain Whittecar, asking if he could hold the illumination until he’d crossed the paddy.

“Okay, Hank. Make it fast, though.”

The stream was only ankle deep and they moved across it quickly. The last of Maurel’s platoon and the point of Allison’s were crossing when the thickets to the left abruptly exploded with AK47 fire. Chicoms were flung in. Sergeant Allison instantly dropped flat, triggering his M16 into the black. He could see nothing. Up ahead, everyone had rolled into the brush at the first shot. Gayler nervously noticed a rise about thirty meters off the trail, and could just imagine NVA popping over the crest to fire down on them. GIs around him prepared grenades, but nothing happened. All the firing was at the stream; occasional bursts, shouts, and grenades were tossed back and forth. The firing had halted the entire column. Gayler radioed Allison: “What the hell is going on?”

Allison said they were pinned down and needed ilium.

Gayler said no. His men were strung out on the trail with only some brush for concealment, and flares would be like turning spotlights on fish in a barrel. He was anxious to escape the battalion or regiment around them, and told Allison to get his damn platoon across.

Allison said his men were hesitant to cross the open river.

Gayler’s reply was a harsh Texas bark, “Sergeant, if I have to come back there myself, I’m going to whip your ass.”

Allison did not like officers in general, and Gayler in particular. In a fit of courage born of anger, he unslung his ammunition bandoliers and dropped them and his grenades in front of him. Then he cut loose into the black tangle to his left, screaming at his men to move it. Which
they did, jumping five feet down the bank, splashing across, then scrambling up the ten-foot berm on the other side. Allison emptied his M16, pitched a frag, crammed in a fresh mag, kept firing. He suddenly felt a strong thud against his chest—then the Chicom bounced to the ground, rolled over the embankment, and exploded. If he had not been so close to the edge, the grenade would have gone off at his feet. He’d already been wounded once that day; during the mortaring, a piece of shrapnel had pierced two packets of Kool Aid in his pocket and stuck in his chest. It burned but barely bled, and Allison did not report it.