Death Valley (41 page)

Bravo 2–1 with seventeen wounded.

Bravo 1–46 with twelve wounded.

Delta 1–46 with twenty wounded.

Charlie 4–31 with one wounded by friendly fire.

The combined companies claimed a body count of seventy-four NVA KIA, a figure which seemed exaggerated when compared to 2/7 Marines’ count for the same day. The 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, engaged in heavy combat three kilometers to the east, had suffered thirteen Marines killed and sixty wounded, but the battalion log recorded no NVA deaths (some obviously had been killed, but no bodies had been recovered).

25 August had been a long day for the Marines also, their worst in the valley, and combat photographer Hodierne recounted one of their many problems:

The Army was very grateful to the Marines for their quick deployment to the valley; some were convinced that it saved 4–31 Infantry from being completely overrun. But all was not cozy. For example, two days later—the size of the NVA finally confirmed—another Marine battalion was helicoptered wholesale from LZ Baldy to LZ West. Almost immediately, the Marines began their hump down the mountainside with full packs. It was over 100 degrees and windless and Major Lee had suggested they leave their flak jackets on the LZ. His advice was ignored and, in short order, the Marines were clogging the medevac chain with dozens of sun victims. It was a common problem. Captain Downey—who admired the Marine Corps—noted, “I’ll never forget the silly sight of a Marine unit on the march in full field gear as well as the old heavy flak jackets, having more men fall out as heat casualties then ever hurt by enemy fire. I’m sure even today there are some jackass officers somewhere who can deliver a ringing defense of the flak jacket policy. I doubt if any of them ever humped one in the Que Sons, though.”

26 August. The grunts of Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry saddled up with all the enthusiasm of survivors being sent back into the meatgrinder. After the original ambushing, they’d dug in around Million Dollar Hill. Nerves were still taut, and the men were filthy, unshaven, numbed from lack of sleep. They knew the NVA were still dug in and waiting; but with the loss of their original company commander, their leadership was untested and, thus, untrusted.

Capt John R. Thomas had been in command five days.

Capt Spencer Wolfe, liaison officer, 3–82 FA, was the FO, temporarily replacing Lieutenant Wilson, who’d been medevacked with immersion
foot to LZ West on 21 August. Lieutenant Robinson, commanding the point platoon, was now on day four in the bush.

This was to be their first firefight.

As Charlie Company rucked up, Captain Thomas briefed Lieutenant Robinson. The gravity of the situation did not really click with Robinson until he showed his map to the Kit Carson Scout. Twenty exclaimed, “No go, beaucoup NVA!” It was advice, not a refusal. The grunts respected Twenty’s experience, and his comment rattled them. When the squad leader picked a man to walk point, the GI said with resignation, “What are you trying to do, kill me?”

But the men followed orders, mostly because of SFC Marshall Robertson, the platoon cornerstone. He was a thin, white-haired veteran with a Virginia accent. He carried an AR15 Shorty, and was aggressive but calmly prudent. He was a thoroughly professional soldier, and most of the company just liked the hell out of him. He had been slotted for R and R but, with a new second lieutenant on hand, had postponed it.

Sergeant Robertson accompanied the rear squad of the platoon while Lieutenant Robinson went with the lead squad. Robinson was fifth man back from the point. The platoon filed atop a paddy berm paralleling a tree line to their left, approaching another tree line that intersected their path. The point man stepped onto the last dike before the trees.

An RPD machine gun abruptly knocked him down.

Lieutenant Robinson instantly dove to the right and scrambled forward to the next dike. He flopped beside the cover man. The RPD was in the trees ahead, joined by several AK47 and RPG gunners and an NVA with an M79 who lobbed rounds into the paddy. The sudden fusillade had fragmented the platoon. Robinson was flat behind a dike with fifteen men near him. The rest had taken cover in the tree line to the rear. The NVA barrage had petered out, firing only when a GI tried to raise up to return fire. The point man was face-down on the berm ahead, unmoving. He did not answer their shouts. Robinson wasn’t sure what to do.

He saw Sergeant Robertson appear from a dike behind them. The paddy was wide open between them, but Robertson and the medic made a frantic dash across. Robertson huddled beside Robinson, heads below the dike, and started shouting to the M60 crew to keep the NVA down long enough to drag the point man back. Robertson bellowed out encouragement and direction, taking charge of the platoon. He rolled two feet to the right, just past the dike to get a better look, and waved from the
prone, shouting, “Get the pig up here!” In the next second, the RPD levelled a burst into Sergeant Robertson. Pieces of skull and brains splattered onto Lieutenant Robinson and the grunt beside him.

The platoon saw it and froze.

No one tried to raise up to fire their M16s; instead, they fired M79 rounds and hurled frag grenades from behind the berm. Lieutenant Robinson threw several grenades, then took the handset from his RTO. Captain Thomas’s calm voice crackled through; he said he had moved up with the reserve platoon and had linked up with Robinson’s platoon, meaning those who’d ducked into the tree line.

“Listen,” said Robinson, “you haven’t really linked up with
us!
”

Robinson never trusted Thomas, considered him a ticket puncher who hung far to the rear of any action. That was not a unanimous opinion, but it explains Robinson’s thoughts as Thomas began giving him orders straight from Fort Benning: get your people up and outflank that machine gun with fire and maneuver. Robinson was incredulous. If we raise our heads, we’ll die, he thought. Why can’t I make the captain understand what’s going on! No one moved. Then the NVA did the logical thing, which was to mortar the fish in their barrel. Lieutenant Robinson screamed to pull back, as Cobras flashed in low, pumping rockets into the tree line. The grunts scooted back at each pass, dragging their wounded. They left their platoon sergeant and point man where they lay. Between gunship runs, the NVA RPD gunner fired across the paddy as other NVA moved into the trees on the left flank and took the retreating platoon under even more fire. They sighted their AK47s on the last berm the GIs had to vault to reach the trees.

A grunt clambered over and was nailed.

Robinson and two grunts tumbled over right on his heels. They grabbed the GI’s arms to drag him into the bushes, and the two grunts beside Robinson were instantly shot down. The air was thick with an invisible swarm. Robinson rolled against the dike. His RTO lay there dead. He grabbed the handmike but it was out, the radio shot full of holes. The last man coming out, the squad leader, tried to clear the dike. He was dead before he hit the ground.

In seconds, five GIs had been killed.

Robinson crawled into the bushes, confused and frightened and sweat-soaked. The rest of the company was reorganizing among the trees, but the NVA followed them across the paddy and opened fire again. As the Cobras surged in—excited pilots shouting over the radio that the trees were swarming with dinks—Charlie Company shouldered their
wounded. Then they ran, and they did not stop until they were well out of harm’s way—in another tree line, where they fell in spiritless clumps. In Robinson’s platoon, seven were dead, eleven were wounded, and four were in shock. Only fifteen of his men were unscathed, including himself, although his escape had been close: he discovered a bullet hole through the baggy side pocket of his jungle trousers. Twenty, the Kit Carson Scout, had shrapnel wounds.

After nine days of combat, the company mustered forty-eight men. The following day, they were pulled back to LZ West.

The action of 26 August continued.

Bravo 4th of the 31st Infantry was dispatched from its positions between Million Dollar Hill and Wedding Cake Hill; they lugged their recently delivered resupply, including unmanageable five-gallon, plastic water containers. The day was a scorcher and the load heavy. PFC Charles Jandecka, a week with the company and on his first combat operation, described it in irreverent terms:

These battered grunts were Delta 1st of the 46th Infantry, which had pulled back to the ditches along the trail after being ambushed the
day before. They were pinned down by snipers and had quickly run out of water. Bravo Company reached them around noon; Captain Gayler moved up the trail until he found Captain Sellers, but was unhappy that the commander seemed as bewildered and fatigued as his men in the ditches. As for himself, Gayler was a confident man and—after a week of rest on Siberia—he at least looked the part of the professional company commander. His hair was close-cropped under his helmet, and he was a handsome man with a full mustache and some bush-time whiskers. He wore leather gun gloves, carried an AR15 automatic rifle, and two bandoliers of magazines were held in place across his chest by the snaps on his web gear shoulder straps. Captain bars and armor insignia were stitched in black on his collar; the Americal patch was on his shoulder.

Gayler’s first question to Sellers was, “Where are your security elements? I’ll relieve your security elements on your front, right, and left.”

All he got was a blank stare.

Gayler quickly moved aside with his RTO, and radioed Lieutenant Monroe to get out security posthaste. Monroe moved one squad to the front while the other two platoons took up the right and left flanks off the pathway. The NVA still held the hill ahead—from where they had originally halted Delta Company—and they responded to the new movement by casually lobbing in a few mortar rounds.

Bravo Company lost one man killed, five wounded.

Delta secured an LZ for the medevac, and other helicopters brought in more resupply. By that time, Bravo had taken over the area and policed up some of the gear Delta had left behind in the open space between the tree grove and the enemy hill; it included more than a few ammunition bandoliers, a PRC25 radio, an M60 machine gun, and five M16 rifles. Noting, in addition, that Delta had not deployed adequate security, Captain Gayler radioed Colonel Henry that the company was no longer battle-effective due to fatigue or morale problems and should be withdrawn.

Gayler had just arrived on the scene, so perhaps his negative observations were not completely justified. Nevertheless, later in the afternoon, Delta Company was ordered out of the area; they humped back to Hiep Duc where Maj Lawrence Remener, S-3, 1–46 Infantry, had been dispatched to handle village security. Meanwhile, B/1–46 moved up to reinforce B/4–31, which moved to a new position—hopefully, one the
NVA had not registered their mortars on—before setting up for the night (within days, B and D/1–46 were airlifted back to LZ Professional where Captains King and Sellers, like almost all company commanders in this battle, were immediately awarded Silver Stars).

The day had been a series of snafus, at least for Private Jandecka. Bravo Company had handed over their resupply to the more depleted grunts of Delta Company, which was proper, except that Jandecka was hungry too. He managed to scrounge up a can of ham and eggs, not a charlie rat favorite. The next day, 27 August, was not much better as he moved along with a growling stomach. Bravo’s rucksacks, which had been left near Million Dollar Hill, were choppered in and dumped helter-skelter in the brush. GIs rummaged through them, most unable to find their own and forced to take one at random. That was a real blow to morale. Jandecka, for one, took a pack with the necessary military gear, but in turn lost his letters, camera, film, New Testament, harmonica, sunglasses, notebook, extra food, and Kool Aid.

The rest of the afternoon was spent quietly humping to a new position near the Old French Road. Battalion was realigning its companies for what they hoped would be a final push to the Marine side of the line at dawn. The grunts knew as much about these plans as pawns on a chess board. They did not know why they were sweating from one chunk of elephant grass to the next; they just did what the platoon sergeant said and hoped no North Vietnamese would materialize en route. During the early evening, one of their perimeter trip flares went off and Captain Gayler bellowed to put the damn thing out before the dinks pinpointed their position. Three men quickly scrambled to it—Jandecka the only one quick enough to pick up an M16 first—and they used a helmet to smother it. Actually, their fall extinguished the light: in the blinding, white glare, they all fell over the road embankment, the helmet and flare bouncing with them. They scrambled back to their lines but, Jandecka noted, “it was a couple hours before I could shake that unmistakable feeling of being watched by an unknown set of eyes as we were at the bottom of that bank.”