Death Valley (28 page)

“What’s your company nickname, lieutenant?”

“Alpha Annihilators, sir,” Shurtz answered.

“Do you know the definition of Annihilator? It’s not going to do any good to send these people in for interrogation, so they can come right back out here and shoot at you again.” The colonel raised his voice. He didn’t want any prisoners. He wanted body count!

Shurtz couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

The battalion commander promised the men hot pizza for kills and, getting none, it was as if they made the colonel’s shit list. Their resupply became sporadic, as if they were being punished.

It was all flaky.

Then came the battle in AK Valley when Alpha Company’s only experienced officer, Lieutenant Kirchgesler, was killed. That left Lieutenants Shurtz, Tynan, and Teeple as the untested leaders of a company with too many untested soldiers. Forty percent were green seeds, and they were simply not prepared for this battle.

On 22 August, it was Lieutenant Teeple’s turn to lead the way back to the bunkers, where they were promptly hit in the crossfire again. Sgt Derwin Pitts—a tall, thin country boy and a good squad leader—was killed going for Kirchgesler’s body. PFC Ray Barker—a married kid who’d been drafted after college and who wanted nothing to do with Vietnam—was shot in the head going for Pitts’s body.

The crossfire was withering, and the platoon fell back towards the potato patch, dragging Barker’s body and four wounded.

Pitts was left near Kirchgesler.

PFC Kruch, for one, was sitting in a dazed heap, unable and unwilling to move again. From the day he’d arrived, things had stopped making sense. He was one of the new draftees and all he knew were the ragged, last three weeks of Alpha Company’s history. The grunts were mostly new guys, not sure if they were doing anything right, unbonded yet; they were just targets for an experienced enemy. The only resolution
Kruch made was that he wasn’t going to die for some stupid officer sitting in the TOC bunker. So, when one of the new lieutenants ran up and said they were going back again for the bodies, he argued that it was suicide. The lieutenant looked scared too, but orders were orders and he pointed his .45 pistol at him; Kruch brought his M16 to the lieutenant’s chest and said he wasn’t going anywhere. The squad was not budging and no one really was going to shoot the other; the lieutenant finally holstered his weapon.

Word was passed to pull back to Nui Lon, and what ammunition they could not carry was buried in the potato patch. The grunts were punch-drunk from the sun and their march fell apart into disorganized bands; Kruch was terrified they might get separated from the rest of the company. The North Vietnamese were following them on the trail, keeping their distance but watching the entire time. Kruch could hear them talking.

Delta 4–31—which had the best reputation in the battalion—had pulled out the previous morning and by that afternoon Alpha 4–31—which had the worst reputation—had humped down from LZ West to assume their positions. Alpha Company had been pulling LZ security since the battle began. They snaked down the trail in a heavily burdened column, with full rucks and full loads of ammunition, and finally married up with Charlie 2–1 in the late afternoon. The brush around the French Hootch had absorbed most of the shell and smoke of the last four days; the only sign to the newcomers of the ferociousness of the battle were the treetops.

Many were splintered from RPGs. Everyone made a point of digging deep foxholes. That night, the NVA dropped in fifteen mortar rounds.

The morning of 22 August, Alpha Company moved out.

Alpha 4–31 and Charlie 2–1 hiked towards Hill 102 through shimmering, hot paddies; muffled explosions drifted back to them as air and arty once again clawed at the trees on the targeted hill. Alpha Two, under 2dLt Stephen Moore, was on point. About a hundred meters into the hump, a tree line intersected their dike. Lieutenant Moore sent one squad around one side of it, while he and his platoon sergeant went around the other with SP4 Al Holtzman’s squad. The point man, SP4 Robert Jeans, hiked the last berm into the woods. Lieutenant Moore was up near him when the North Vietnamese killed him at perhaps ten
feet with an M79 to the chest. An RPD and several AK47s opened fire too. Prune Jeans dove for cover and ended up in a shallow depression only yards from the NVA holes; he couldn’t even lift his head in the crossfire.

Behind him, the rest of the squad was scattering behind dikes, all except one big, dumb kid who spun around and started running back.

The NVA shot him off the dike.

In moments, the North Vietnamese had killed four men from the lead platoon and wounded four more. The rest were pinned down. Specialist Holtzman figured there was only an NVA squad dug in among those trees; the difference, he thought, was that they had their shit together and we didn’t. The NVA were between the two squads, so they couldn’t fire indiscriminately into the trees. Most of his squad had picked a piece of dike anyway, and were pressed firmly against it, heads down. Holtzman hollered at a GI near him to get his ass up and return fire. “No way,” he screamed back. “I’m not stickin’ my head up to get blown away!”

Assholes! It was an inexperienced company, Holtzman reckoned, with only a handful you could really count on; the rest wanted to go home alive any way they could.

The platoon sergeant shouted to him to fire cover for Prune to get back. From where Holtzman was, Prune was about a hundred feet ahead, only ten yards from the berm from which the NVA were firing. He hollered to him; Prune called back that he was okay but could not move. Holtzman stuck his head up long enough to blast a LAW rocket into the trees and fire his M16 over Prune’s head. It produced a lot of noise and dust, but the NVA were still invisible and still firing; Prune was simply stuck.

Coming up from behind, Captain Mantell placed the other two platoons so that their firepower would allow Alpha Two to pull back. As the company separated, more NVA emerged from the tree lines. The lead squad of Alpha One almost immediately came under fire and radioed their platoon leader, First Sergeant Price, that they were pinned down. At the same time, Price received another call from Sergeant Causey, the platoon sergeant, who was with their rear squad: he had seen two NVA walk into the French Hootch area they’d just vacated. Top Price called back the point squad and sent back an M60 team to cover their rear. He also got on the horn to the artillery battery on LZ West; the barrage to their front allowed the platoon to move undetected from their paddy up onto a brushy finger of land that overlooked the ambushed
paddy. From there, they could see 3d Platoon moving into position along the dikes to help 2d Platoon get back. Top Price, crouched on the forested finger with binoculars, was on the radio with Captain Mantell; both agreed that an assault would be suicide. Therefore, their concern was to get back the stranded men. Under 3d Platoon’s cover fire, 2d had been able to crawl back, dragging three of their wounded and two bodies. Two KIAs were still in the paddy.

So were Prune and a medic shot in the jaw.

It was a hot, dangerous day and the grunts were glad to slump among the trees on the ridge, out of harm’s way. Top Price asked for a volunteer; he needed someone to fire LAWs down onto the bunkers so the two men could get back to their lines.

Specialist Parsons stepped forward. He was a draftee who’d been introduced to marijuana in Vietnam and who was just doing his time; but he couldn’t stomach the thought of another grunt lying out there.

Price asked how many times he’d fired a LAW.

“Once,” Parsons answered, “back in basic.”

That was not very inspiring, but Price thought the kid looked sincere, so they collected all the rockets in the platoon and moved to the edge of the woods. Tom and Shorty accompanied them with the M60, as did a 2d Platoon GI who’d been sent to point out the exact locations of the NVA bunkers. The GI looked scared and pissed, Parsons thought, but also anxious to help out his buddies.

Parsons and his guide positioned themselves behind a banana tree at the edge of the high ground. It was a clear shot down, maybe fifty yards from the bunkers, but Parsons was extremely anxious: he could see a GI huddled in a depression only yards from the North Vietnamese. The man seemed to be moving, but Parsons found it hard to tell through the shimmering heat and the sweat pouring down his face. There seemed to be invisible steam in the brush around them. Parsons prepared the first LAW, then remembered about back-blast from basic training and glanced behind himself. Two grunts were standing there. He hollered at them to get out of the way. He shouldered the rocket, sighted in on where his partner was pointing, and squeezed off the shot. It exploded near the earthen berm. Parsons could barely make out an NVA squeezing from a spider hole; he scrambled on all fours through some elephant grass and seemed to disappear when he reached the berm. Was it a tunnel? Parsons wondered. He fired another LAW at where the man had vanished and it blew up from within the berm, sending debris
whizzing. He was feeling more confident, and his guide was excited. “Blow ’em out! See that red banana leaf, that’s where they are!”

Shorty was firing the M60 across the paddy, but the red tracers snapped about ten feet above the embankment. Parsons thought Shorty was a cocky bastard, and screamed at him to bring his fire down. At the same time, a medevac descended behind them. Two Huey gunships bore in ahead of it, door gunners firing cover with their sixties. They managed to strafe both the finger and the bunkers, luckily hitting no GIs and probably no NVA either. Top Price hollered in his radio at them.

Behind them, the medevac clattered in under fire.

The platoon had passed up numerous LAWs and Parsons stayed in place, slamming them down. With each explosion, pieces of the earthen spider holes and bunkers were ruptured, exposing their form. The NVA were dug in among the roots of bamboo trees, with a tunnel dug to the berm behind them. A couple of NVA were still firing from undiscovered holes; at least Parsons could hear the reports of their AKs, although he could see no one and heard no passing rounds. Both M60s were firing by now, raising dust around the berm. Others fired M79s into the elephant grass around it.

But Prune and the medic were still pinned.

Captain Mantell finally passed the word to retire to the tree line behind them. The two men were still stuck in the paddy, but it would be unwise for the rest of the platoon to spend the night in this maze of NVA bunkers. So they broke faith with two of their own and began digging in amid the trees, expecting a ground assault. They were still digging when Prune Jeans stumbled into their perimeter. He said the NVA had picked up and left with the darkness, and he had just walked out of the paddy. The wounded medic followed him out. They’d been pinned down half the day and looked it, but Parsons almost cried with relief when he saw them. In a letter of recommendation for Parsons, First Sergeant Price described it this way: “… the last 2 men were recovered alive and well. The first thing they asked was who fired the L.A.W.’s. I called Spec 4 Parsons over and they both hugged and slapped him on the back for saving their lives. They were both the happiest people I have ever seen. They had lain under the guns of the N.V.A. for 12 hours in an open paddie in the blistering sun with tracers and rockets passing over their heads. A few days later, upon our return to
LZ West, I recommended Spec 4 Parsons for the Bronze Star with ‘V’ for valor.”

As Alpha 3–21 humped up the bald, cratered knoll on Nui Lon, which was secured by a platoon from Charlie 3–21, they suffered several heat casualties. Guides from Charlie Company led Alpha Company through their trip flares and claymore mines, then set them into position on the perimeter. It was taking forever and men were bunching up; as Private Kruch’s squad finally straggled into the lines at dusk, he noticed Lieutenant Shurtz standing there with a glazed look, as though he couldn’t believe what was going on. Kruch did not dislike the company commander; he just thought Shurtz seemed to be swallowed up by events.

Kruch screamed at the GIs to spread out. The sun was beating down and he was boiling mad over the resupply and the every-man-for-himself attitude gripping the survivors. He picked up an empty canteen cup laying in the dirt, then threw it down, cursing, “This is the stupidest goddamn place to be!” He bent down to pick it up again when the first mortar round hit. It all happened in a sudden burst of noise and motion, but Kruch saw it in freeze-framed clarity. He was bent over. Then came a sudden, slow-motion eruption of rocks and dirt, bowling over a GI in his squad who was opening a can of charlie rats. The GI standing beside Kruch, who’d joined the squad ten days earlier, was blown onto him, the explosion engulfing Kruch in that instant like a baseball bat against his head.

Kruch was blasted into an old crater, the new kid landing on him. Kruch couldn’t breath, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t get the kid off him. He felt two more rounds exploding. GIs were screaming. Then it was quiet and Kruch realized he was numb. No pain. Grunts clambered down into the hole and hauled him up. He reached back and his hand slipped into a hole the size of a grapefruit blown out of his lower back. That chunk of shrapnel had destroyed his kidney. He’d also been ripped by fragments in his butt, lower back, and legs.