Death Valley (33 page)

C
harlie 4–31, which had gone into the Hiep Duc Valley to support Bravo 4–31, was itself supported on the afternoon of 19 August 1969 by the arrival of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry (recently assigned to the 196th Brigade after having come in-country with the 198th Brigade). They normally operated to the south out of LZ Professional, but had deployed to an ARVN compound outside Tam Ky five days earlier. When Bravo Company was opconned to the Polar Bears this afternoon, word at the grunt level was sparse; all they knew was that another company in another battalion of the Americal had been ambushed and they were going in to recover the dead.

Bravo had about two hours to ruck up before a single Chinook arrived to ferry them, a platoon at a time, to ARVN LZ Karen. The airlift was completed by 1300 and the grunts spent another hour sitting in the direct boil atop the dusty, bald LZ. It was then, after the company commander got maps of the new AO and tuned his radio to the 4–31 frequencies, that they moved out. They were to hump northeast off the LZ and link up with Charlie 4–31 below Million Dollar Hill. The company commander, Capt Alva R. King, assigned the lead to the platoon under 2dLt James T. Baird and Sgt Charles E. Brown, who in turn gave the point to Sgt Greg Lynch’s squad.

Which is how PFC Calvin Tam ended up walking point.

Tam was the son of Chinese immigrants who’d settled in San Francisco, but that was about the only thing that distinguished him from his comrades. Like them, he even referred to the NVA and VC as “gooks,” it being a matter of good guys-bad guys, not a racial issue.
He was a typical GI in a typical company of the Americal Division and, like almost all of them, he was a draftee. He was twenty-one years old.

The draft notice had come when he was floundering in junior college and feeling pressure from his father, a successful chiropractor, to do something with his life. He felt naive and mixed up, not ready to cement his future to a job; since he was vaguely supportive of the war, the Army seemed to offer a break, a chance to reorient himself. If anything, though, the Army and Vietnam only added to Tam’s adolescent confusion. He expected some sense of mission to be stressed, but the mentality in basic and advanced infantry training was much different. There was no talk of victory. Everything was geared to staying alive. Do your 365, survive, then put it behind you. No goals, no causes, no reasons. It was not very inspiring.

The attitude was magnified with each step closer to Vietnam. On his first day with Bravo Company in June of 69, Tam hopped off a resupply chopper with fourteen other green seeds in the middle of nowhere, and saw his platoon-to-be coming in from patrol. The grunts were talking about having spotted two VC in a valley and watching them walk off; the gist of the conversation was that it was too hot to be shot at. The next morning, Tam went on his first combat patrol. His squad humped off the company hill, walked several hundred yards into the brush, then flaked out under two, big, shade trees. Most took naps. This is weird, he thought, not sure what to say or do, not sure if he should relax or be paranoid. He heard his squad leader radio in phoney patrol positions; then, after two hours of rest, they hiked back to the company, mission accomplished.

It was a fragmented company, Tam thought. Comradeship seemed to extend only among certain groups—blacks, hispanics, or GIs who’d come in-country together. Just a bunch of guys thrown together. They weren’t good, but they weren’t bad; Tam could never completely decipher it. Considering that they were citizen-soldiers with only a few months of experience, they held their own against hardened peasants who’d been fighting for years. Each platoon had a few grunts who did more than their share. But others could be counted on to do no more than duck into a ditch if anything bad happened. Most seemed to sway in the middle, their performance gauged by the mood of the moment or how sharp the lieutenant was that day.

Lieutenant Baird should have been great. He was a West Point Airborne Ranger, an intellect with glasses and an urbane manner (he even
subscribed to
National Geographic
in the bush). He seemed out to prove himself, and on some days he was a pro. Other days were different. During Baird’s first week in the bush, which would have been Tam’s third, an M60 gunner stepped on a booby trap which killed him and wounded the soldiers ahead and behind him. Talk was that the lieutenant was stunned into inaction, and several old-timers had to step in and get security out and the medevac in. Tam had been rattled too, and he thought, maybe I’m expecting too much of this man just because he has a bar on his collar. He just didn’t know. Tam was so pissed off about having been sent to Vietnam, while most of his buddies were still in college having a good time, that rational thought shut down. Baird had chewed his ass out the few times he walked point, so he was mad. But when he thought about it, he probably did deserve what he got and he was embarrassed that he could act like such a young smart ass.

He didn’t like Lieutenant Baird, but the man was only doing his best to keep them alive. Tam never felt that charitable in the middle of a hot rice paddy and—like most grunts—his selfish anger also picked on the common, human frailties of his platoon sergeant and squad leader. Sergeant Brown was a little guy—five-five—who kidded Tam, who was five-four, that he was glad someone shorter than he had finally come in. Brown was an old-timer who did his job well, but sometimes it looked like he was just guessing. They were all young draftees, trying to rise to the occasion and wishing they were back home the whole time. Amateurs.

By 1969, there were few professionals left to form the group backbone in the rifle companies.

Most were dead or had already done their time.

Whatever core of professionalism there was in Bravo Company came from Captain King. He was considered competent, concerned, and, to all the draftees’ relief, not overly aggressive. He knew his job and, in a low-key manner, he simply did it. The old-timers told Tam that the previous CO had been an incompetent, and the first sergeant such an intolerable lifer that someone had taken a shot at him during a firefight. Now King was in charge, and a staff sergeant had been assigned as the field first. All of which was good for Bravo Company, considering the situation in Hiep Duc Valley. But things were never perfect; the company had not made a solid contact since May, and many of the men were new and untested.

Hiep Duc was to be their first taste of combat.

The day was hotter than most, well over 100 degrees, as Tam discovered as he walked point. There were no clouds, little shade, and everyone was quickly soaked under full packs and ammunition. Tam walked lead through the Resettlement Village—its tin roofs shimmering among the trees—then the squad leader rotated points. They seemed to walk forever through the sweltering paddies.

Finally, Captain King called a rest break, then another. They were saddling up from the second stop, putting helmets and rucks back on, when the radio crackled. The platoon RTO had a squawk box secured to the back of his radio and Tam stood close enough to listen. A lieutenant from another platoon was reporting a heat casualty to Captain King and requesting a medevac. King asked who it was. The lieutenant mentioned the GI’s name and everyone instantly recognized it. He was a shammer, considered a sorry case by most of the grunts. He’d been in the hospital when Tam joined the company: on a patrol, his M16 had suddenly discharged, putting a round between his toes. There was no way to prove he’d done it on purpose and, although the wound was minor, it won the GI a vacation in the rear.

Captain King paused for a moment when he heard the name, then said, “We can’t wait for a medevac. Put this guy in the shade, make sure he’s got salt tablets and water, and leave him.”

Tam walked behind the RTO as they got moving again and, fifteen minutes into the hump, the lieutenant came on the net again. He reported that the heat-stroke victim had made a miraculous recovery and had rejoined the platoon. There was a spatter of weary, spiteful laughter among the grunts. It had been fairly easy for the malingerer to catch up with the company because they were taking it slowly. A dog handler and his German shepherd had joined Bravo on LZ Karen, and they led the way. The dog alerted several times to things unseen in the brush, but nothing came of it. The heat was draining the dog too and more than once the column had to stop while the handler gave him water and rested him in the shade.

There was no sign of the NVA.

Charlie 4–31, after helping in the evacuation of Bravo 4–31 that morning, shoved off that afternoon to link up with Bravo 1–46. They humped single file through the thigh-high mud of a paddy; they suddenly froze when the point man spotted a lone hootch at the far end of the field. The men fanned out on line, a company’s worth of weapons sighted on the hut; then the platoon leaders coordinated over the radio, “… three, two, one. Fire!”

The sudden eruption reminded Private Bleier of the firepower show staged to bolster the men on the last day of AIT. The hootch shuddered, pieces of it cartwheeled off, the thatch roof caught on fire. The tree beside it was splintered and fell over. After several minutes, the firing petered out and a shrill scream could be heard from within the smoking rubble. A woman climbed out of the family bunker. Behind her came another woman, two men, and several children. Charlie Company hiked forward; the villagers screamed and cried at them at the top of their lungs. One woman stood toe-to-toe with a platoon leader, shrieking up at him as the lieutenant tried to apologize in stumbling Vietnamese. The grunts sort of looked at their feet. We’re still too jumpy from last night’s ambush, Bleier thought.

Charlie Company kept moving. Civilians who got caught in the crossfire were on their own after the damage was done.

Charlie 4–31 finally linked up with Bravo 1–46 on a hillside, and they set up for the night. Bravo had gotten there first and the grunts of Charlie were bitching, as grunts always do, that “them damn dudes took all the good sleeping positions.” Bleier wrote, “Only a section of jungle, briars and elephant grass, was left for us, so our platoon walked shoulder to shoulder, trampling it into a makeshift mattress. I fell asleep next to a tree, with one of its roots jabbing me in the back.” Morning was not much better when Bleier found the tree—and himself—crawling with ants. “… They were little red ants, the ones we called ‘piss ants.’ They were acrobats. Just before biting, they’d stick their hind legs in the air, balancing on their front legs and head. They barely pinched the skin, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to piss you off.… I was plenty pissed off.”

It was the morning of 20 August 1969.

Charlie 4–31 and Bravo 1–46, the only U.S. units in Hiep Duc Valley, had spent the night near Million Dollar Hill. Their mission at daylight was to recover and evacuate the dead left behind by Bravo 4–31.

Captain King’s company began moving into position around 0700, moving forward along the general path on which Captain Murphy’s company had retired the day before. Which is why they came across the hootch that had been used as nervous target practice. The villagers had learned their lesson, and this time they stood before the remains of their home in full view of the passing column. Private Tam noticed that the old people were glaring at them with unbridled anger. Way out, he thought; a whole company of grunts armed to the teeth and
these old gooks aren’t afraid to let us know they’re pissed. He reckoned they were Viet Cong sympathizers. They probably were but he didn’t know about yesterday’s case of mistaken identity.

B and C Companies were humping through an area that the official report would later designate as the Center of Mass of the
1st NVA Regiment
. At the time, the size of the enemy force was not known. If it had been, B and C Companies would not have separated into platoons. Captain Murphy travelled with Charlie One, which was assigned to recover the bodies and take them to a field landing zone for extraction. Charlie Two was to drop back in reserve to Million Dollar Hill, and Charlie Three was to assist Bravo Company in securing the LZ. Captain King stayed with Bravo Two atop a small hill, while his other two platoons moved into the paddied flatlands.

It was Lieutenant Baird’s platoon which was deployed in a circle around King and his radios and all the company’s rucksacks. Intelligence may not have yet confirmed the presence of a North Vietnamese regiment, but the grunts felt it. The men were tense, especially the old-timers. Tam, a nervous new guy, could hear the mumbles. “This is it, we’re gonna get hit. The gooks know we’re gonna come back for the bodies. For sure we’re gonna get ambushed.”

Captain Murphy’s group was moving northeast towards Hill 381 and was about halfway there from Million Dollar Hill when they stopped for a five-minute break. They’d been humping through the paddies along a raised path hemmed in by thick brush, and they rested in a shady grove the path entered. A deep drainage ditch ran along the trail and the trees made it appear like an oasis in the dead paddies.

Charlie One got moving again down the berm. Murphy counselled them, “Be careful. We’ll be in open territory. Stay about eight yards apart.”

There were twenty-five GIs in the platoon.

Private Bleier was eighth man back in the platoon file. It was another raging hot day; sweat stung down his face from under his helmet, and he looked and felt like a pack horse. He toted an M79 grenade launcher, which hung from a strap around his neck with an o.d. green towel tucked under it. His rucksack weighed about fifty pounds and that weight was doubled by the sixty M79 grenades he humped. Half were in a bag secured at the top of his ruck; the rest were in another bag hung
across his chest. Five canteens hung beneath the ruck. Many of the grunts also tied cloth bands around their legs, just below the knee, to keep leeches from slinking up to their crotches.

A GI named Dave was behind Bleier. Behind Dave were his best buddies—Doc, the platoon medic, and Hawaii, a new guy. Hawaii was nineteen, drafted, and had only six months left in the Green Machine when they sent him to Vietnam. Nevertheless, he was a bright kid. His fiancee wrote him daily, and he beamed at the letters. That’s probably why Bleier liked him; too many others in the company were overly sullen about their fate.