The Magnificent Bastards Part 11

"Sadness," recalled Doc Pittman, one of the fatigued corps-men on the scene. "There was nothing but humble sadness. There was quiet. There was not a lot of talk."

The medical team in the amtrac worked on one body at a time. They started with G Company. Each body bag was unzipped on the vehicle's floor. Pittman was stationed to one side of the body, and another corpsman was on the other side. They filled out casualty tags, one to attach to the body bag and the other to the body itself. Up front were two majors from division, and another corpsman who had a log in which he recorded the name, rank, service number, unit, and cause of death of each KIA. A fourth corpsman was present to determine the cause of death. "Sometimes it was very apparent," said Pittman. "Sometimes we had to search and turn the bodies over. It was professionally done with no talking unless absolutely necessary."

Doc Pittman had seen worse-the enemy had not mutilated these dead, nor had the elements had time to. But he had never seen so many, and by the time they got through Golf and then Hotel Company he had reached his limit. Foxtrot, with which he had served, was next. "I could not do it. I could not stay there." When they stopped for a short break, Pittman, who was twenty-two years old, stepped out into the darkness. He found another corpsman to relieve him inside the vehicle. "I couldn't take any more. It was going to be real bad when it came to Fox Company. I didn't want the memories."

Pittman was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and he lay down on a stretcher near the amtrac. He realized just before he fell asleep that he was enraged. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he thought. That gung-ho, hard-charging b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He's after his bird at any cost.

Although Pittman at first blamed Weise, he later realized that the battalion commander, a remote figure, had been a convenient scapegoat for his anger and frustration. But even when he cooled down, Pittman would never understand the logic of frontal a.s.saults or why, having paid the price, they then moved on as soon as the bodies had been counted. "It was absolutely-absolutely-ridiculous, and I always felt that somebody ought to have been hung. I lost so many friends. I was starting to grasp the picture of Vietnam by then, and I realized at that time that it was going to come down to just surviving. There was no purpose in that war, and there was no purpose in dying for those villages."

The bullet in Lieutenant Colonel Weise's back was removed aboard the Iwo Jima Iwo Jima. The damage to his spine was not permanent, but he was still in a wheelchair when most of his officers came to the ship one or two at a time to say good-bye to the finest battalion commander any of them had ever served under. Weise also had a last farewell to make, and he asked Lieutenant Muter to push his wheelchair down to the ship's morgue. The morgue had been vacated for the colonel's visit. The body of Big John Malnar was lying on a cold steel table, around which was a curtain. Muter wheeled Weise into the part.i.tioned area and left him there until called.

On 4 May 1968, the Marines at the BLT CP could see black smoke rising from the air strikes the Army battalion was calling in on Nhi Ha. The battle was three klicks away. It did not concern them. Because of the heavy casualties, the BLT 2/4 TAOR had been reduced to the two square kilometers around Mai Xa Chanh West to give the battalion the breathing room needed to reorganize. For the survivors, there was steak and potatoes and grape juice. Beer soon followed. "Division sent us 10 cans per man for our show at Dai Do," wrote Captain Murphy to a battalion veteran who had rotated out before the battle. "Judd Hilton B.S.'Ed and we ended up with about 15 cases. The bunker is completely full of beer-there are 'priorities' you know."

Shedding helmets, flak jackets, and worn, torn utilities, Marines went swimming in the Cua Viet River along the southern edge of the perimeter. A lieutenant cracked a grin for a reporter and said, "Looks like a d.a.m.n nudist colony."

"Despite losses, the battalion still had a strong nucleus of officers and senior sergeants," the reporter wrote. "And it still had confidence." The reporter had been a Marine in Korea. The spirit in the battered command had not been stamped out, and it made him proud. "According to both officers and men, the battalion's heavy losses at least did not result from tactical errors or plain carelessness." Trophies brought back from Dai Do were on display near the river. They included a Chinese-made mortar, a recoil less rifle, an antiaircraft gun, and a pair of 12.7mm machine guns, each on its own tripod. There were also two Chinese field telephones, plus piles of mortar rounds and other types of ammo, and some seventy AK-47s, SKSs, RPDs, and RPG launchers. A lot more enemy weapons had been captured, but the troops still had them.

One of the heroes of the battle was the tall, slender ex-VC who was Golf Company's Kit Carson scout. Corporal Schlesiona wrote afterward of "the admiration this man had gained for himself. Everyone I spoke to was quite aware that he could easily have deserted. It would not have been difficult for him to get into an NVA uniform and slip away." Schlesiona was in the river that morning when there was "an uproar about fifteen feet away. The Kit Carson was being attacked by a number of Marines misdirecting their desire for revenge. Before I could get to his aid, any number of other Marines had already pulled those guys off and were giving them quite an earful about how stupid they were. I have always believed that those Marines could not have known what a brave man they were attacking."

There was an uproar in Hotel Company, too, but only because Lieutenant Prescott-who everyone thought had been shot in the spine the day before-suddenly appeared with nothing worse than a bruised back. Prescott was grinning from ear to ear as he walked into the company area. His men went nuts, and amid the laughter and welcome-back shouts, Prescott and Taylor joked about who was in command of the company. Major Knapp gathered everyone at the Buddhist temple that served as the CP to read them a note from Weise praising the men. There was also a minute of silent prayer for the dead. Then, wrote the reporter who had also worn the uniform, "the Marines looked up and one by one, in matter-of-fact tones, discussed the mechanics of getting ready for combat again-replacements, supply, equipment..."

1. Major Warren got the LMv for the Battle of Dai Do, as well as a BSMv for Lam Xuan East/Vinh Quan Thuong and a second BSMv as an end-of-tour award. Major Warren got the LMv for the Battle of Dai Do, as well as a BSMv for Lam Xuan East/Vinh Quan Thuong and a second BSMv as an end-of-tour award.2. The 52d Regiment, 320th NVA Division, had retired from Dinh To and Thuong Do during the night to make for the DMZ. On 5 May, while in pursuit, 1/3 was ambushed by the NVA rear guard in Som Soi, one kilometer north of Thuong Do. Pinned down, 1/3 lost 15 KIA and 64 WIA (they claimed 151 NVA kills) before the enemy broke contact at dusk. The 52d Regiment, 320th NVA Division, had retired from Dinh To and Thuong Do during the night to make for the DMZ. On 5 May, while in pursuit, 1/3 was ambushed by the NVA rear guard in Som Soi, one kilometer north of Thuong Do. Pinned down, 1/3 lost 15 KIA and 64 WIA (they claimed 151 NVA kills) before the enemy broke contact at dusk.

Nhi Ha

SERGEANT J JIMMIE L LEE C COULTHARD, C/3-21ST I INFANTRY, 196th LIB, Americal Division: "There sure wasn't any glory in being in Charlie Company other than it was a regular line company which would do what the h.e.l.l they were told. We didn't do as good a job as we could have if we'd had better training and more experience, but they were a good bunch of guys and I was real proud to be in the company."

Opcon to the 3d Marines, the mission of Lieutenant Colonel Snyder's 3-21st Infantry was to seize and hold Nhi Ha and Lam Xuan West in order to check NVA infiltration down Jones Creek and prevent NVA action against logistical traffic on the Cua Viet River. Lam Xuan West had been easy to secure. Nhi Ha had not. Forced back with heavy casualties on 2 May 1968, the attack resumed the next day, although Lieutenant Colonel Snyder antic.i.p.ated that the NVA had retired during the night. They had not. Elements of the 4th Battalion, 270th Independent NVA Regiment, had entrenched themselves in Nhi Ha and intended to fight it out. Lieutenant Colonel Snyder obliged them, though with a prudent, cautious approach that would have seemed heresy to the Marines and with a smothering abundance of firepower that had not been available in the first overtaxed days of the enemy offensive.

Private First Cla.s.s Gregory B. Harp, C/3-21st Infantry, 196th LIB, Americal Division: "All my observations of the battle were through the peepsight of a rifle, and that is an extremely narrow view. I never saw a map. I was confused the whole time, and half-crazed from thirst and fatigue. My world consisted of a fire team, squad, platoon, and, once in a while, the whole company."

Black Death and Charlie Tiger

THE NVA NVA ATTEMPTED TO REINFORCE THEIR POSITIONS IN ATTEMPTED TO REINFORCE THEIR POSITIONS IN nhi ha. At 0028 on Friday, 3 May 1968, the personnel at Alpha 1 spotted the NVA through their night observation devices. Having marched south from the DMZ, the NVA were, when detected, in the vicinity of Nhi Trung-less than a kilometer south of Alpha 1 and two klicks above Nhi Ha. The firepower brought to bear on these NVA was locked, c.o.c.ked, and ready to go in part because of an argument that 1st Lt. Travis P. Kirkland, an adviser with the ARVN battalion at Alpha 1, had had the night before with a major from the 40th Field Artillery at the DHCB. Kirkland had been calling in fire missions on smaller groups of NVA when the major, short of ammo from the afternoon battles, challenged the priority of these particular missions: "Lieutenant, you're lying-you don't have that many targets." nhi ha. At 0028 on Friday, 3 May 1968, the personnel at Alpha 1 spotted the NVA through their night observation devices. Having marched south from the DMZ, the NVA were, when detected, in the vicinity of Nhi Trung-less than a kilometer south of Alpha 1 and two klicks above Nhi Ha. The firepower brought to bear on these NVA was locked, c.o.c.ked, and ready to go in part because of an argument that 1st Lt. Travis P. Kirkland, an adviser with the ARVN battalion at Alpha 1, had had the night before with a major from the 40th Field Artillery at the DHCB. Kirkland had been calling in fire missions on smaller groups of NVA when the major, short of ammo from the afternoon battles, challenged the priority of these particular missions: "Lieutenant, you're lying-you don't have that many targets."

"Well, bounce your b.u.t.t up here if you think I'm a liar, and I'll show you all the d.i.n.ks you can handle," replied Kirkland.

The major arrived the following afternoon by helicopter, and Kirkland suggested he sack out because he probably wouldn't get any sleep that night. The NVA heading for Nhi Ha proved Kirkland right. A Marine with the naval gunfire liaison team at Alpha 1 was the first to alert Kirkland, who was in his own bunker. "Hey, LT, we've got people out here in the open." Kirkland asked how many there were. The answer was sixty-seven, but the doubting major grabbed the field phone and asked the Marine how he knew. "I counted the motherf.u.c.kers," the young Marine shot back.

At that point the major zipped up to the bunker line and looked through a night scope of his own. Suitably impressed, he told the FO lieutenant who was present from his own 40th Field Artillery to "get these people everything that's in range."

Additional artillery was fired into Nhi Ha itself. Lieutenant Colonel Snyder, located at Mai Xa Chanh East, planned to resume the attack with Captain Osborn's A/3-21 and Captain Humphries's D/3-21, which were in a night defensive position in the rice paddies six hundred meters east of Nhi Ha with Lieutenant Kohl's C/3-21. South of Nhi Ha on the other side of Jones Creek, Captain Corrigan's B/3-21 was dug in near Lam Xuan West, where it could support the attack by fire. The attack was to come in from the east and sweep west down the length of Nhi Ha, with Alpha Company on the north flank and Delta Company to the south. This was the same approach taken the day before by Charlie Company.

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder had available to him a forward air controller in an O-IE Birddog from the Air Force's 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron (call sign Helix). At 0815 on 3 May, Helix 1-5 came on station and established contact with Black Death 6-Captain Humphries of D/3-21-who was the most experienced company commander the Gimlets had on the ground. Humphries briefed the FAC, who had Marine and Air Force fighter-bombers plaster Nhi Ha at 0910, 0945, and 1040. There was a mishap during the second air strike, however. The FAC warned the company commanders to make sure that all their people were down each time he brought in a strike. Captain Corrigan and the Bravo Company FO, who were the closest to Nhi Ha in Lam Xuan West, could get only so far down as they helped adjust the strikes. The two were kneeling behind several banana trees at the edge of the hill that served as the company command post while watching an Air Force Phantom drop 250-pound high-drag bombs. "It was amazing," Corrigan recalled. "The bombs went off, and then right where the cloud of smoke was there was something small that got bigger and bigger and bigger-and then, wham, my forward observer got hit right beside me. It looked like it was coming in slow motion at us, but the whole thing couldn't have taken more than half a second. My brain couldn't have told my body to duck in time."

The white-hot chunk of metal was the size of a golf ball. It hit Pfc. Rod "Rocky" Bublitz, the Barracuda FO, in the shoulder with such force as to almost rip off his arm. While Captain Corrigan requested an emergency medevac for Bublitz and another injured GI, the FAC came up on the battalion net and shouted, "I told told you guys to stay down!" you guys to stay down!"

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder also had available to him a command-and-control UH-1D Huey from the 174th a.s.sault Helicopter Company (the Dolphins) of the 14th Combat Aviation Battalion, 1st Aviation Brigade. Since Snyder commanded by radio from Mai Xa Chanh East, his C&C Huey was used for resupply and medevac missions. The wounded were quickly lifted out of Lam Xuan West, but within two hours the C&C bird had to conduct another medevac when Barracuda was again on the receiving end of friendly fire. This time three men were hit by the artillery propping Nhi Ha as the a.s.sault companies began moving in. One soldier's kneecap was shattered. He sat upright on the floor of the Huey and smoked a cigaret that one of the crewmen had given him. He stared at his mangled leg in numb, painless shock-the morphine was. .h.i.tting him-and although he appeared to realize that his leg would have to be amputated, he had a relieved, I'm-on-the-helicopter-I'm-outta-here expression. He didn't say a word during the entire flight back to the DHCB. When they landed, a Navy corpsman who didn't realize the severity of the man's wounds grabbed him to put him on a stretcher. "Hold on, G.o.dd.a.m.nit-take it easy," the GI shouted. "I want to keep my G.o.dd.a.m.n leg as long as I can!"

The a.s.sault got rolling at 1100. Captain Osborn had Lieutenant Smith's Alpha Two on the right flank, and Alpha One, under 2d Lt. James Simpson, abreast on the left flank alongside D/3-21. Lieutenant Kimball and Alpha Three followed in reserve. The a.s.sault line was closing on the first hedgerow at the eastern edge of Nhi Ha when Sgt. Bernard J. Bulte, a squad leader in Alpha Two, saw three NVA pop up to his front and dash toward that wall of brush. Two of them were carrying AK-47s, and the third had an SKS. The hedgerow slowed them down, and they bunched up as they pushed through it, almost scrambling over each other's backs. Bulte put his entire Ml6 magazine into them. All three enemy soldiers went down as other troopers to his left and right began blasting away into the brush. They moved cautiously to the hedgerow then, and Bulte saw that he'd hit one of the NVA in the head. The man had pitched forward and the top of his head lay inside his pith helmet like a chunk of melon.

The squad deployed along the hedgerow and the bodies were checked. One of the dead soldiers carried medical gear, and one had what appeared to be the insignia of an NVA lieutenant pinned to his gray fatigue shirt. One of the new men was unsettled by the scene, so to toughen him up, a team leader told him to search the body with the head blown open. As the replacement removed the pistol belt and then turned out the dead soldier's pockets as instructed, he kept his face half-turned from the body.

"They got scared and they panicked," Sergeant Bulte later said, explaining why the three NVA had been such easy targets in his rifle sights. Bulte had been in Vietnam for more than five months, but this was the first time he'd had a clear target. As he realized that he had just killed the three, he was numb for a moment, then he had a sense of absolute power. It felt good-but it lasted only a few moments. Bulte did not hate the enemy. He could not. He had seen them suffer too much. He had seen Kit Carson scouts, who seemed to be the most brutal soldiers on either side, use their boots on the faces of prisoners who had already talked, as well as place an M16 muzzle in the mouth of a man whose arms were tied. Once, while their Kit Carson worked over another prisoner, Bulte had searched the NVA's wallet and found a photograph of the soldier back home with his children. "You know, that guy was just like the rest of us," Bulte said. "We were all there because we had to be. It's one thing to fight a faceless enemy, but to see them as individuals-to see their faces and the fear in their eyes-that's a different thing. Killing them was part of the game, and you really had to detach yourself to remain effective and do your job."

The a.s.sault continued. Captain Humphries moved forward with Delta Two, under 2d Lt. Erich J. Weidner, on the right flank, and Lieutenant Skrzysowski's Delta One on the left. Delta Three, whose lieutenant had been killed four days before, was being led by its platoon sergeant, SSgt. Robert E. Gruber, and brought up the rear of the company's two-up-one-back formation. The a.s.sault platoons, operating slowly and cautiously in the blown-away, wide-open hamlet, used hand grenades on the entrenchments they pa.s.sed over-all were empty-as they worked their way through Nhi Ha hedgerow by hedgerow. The NVA-in the tree line that divided the village-waited until the a.s.sault line was within fifty meters before their mortar crews began pumping out rounds. On hearing that signal, the foot soldiers in the spiderholes commenced firing with automatic weapons, light machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades.

The first casualty was Pfc. Paul L. Barker, an ammo bearer with the machine-gun squad in Delta Three, who fell in the blast of a mortar explosion before he had time to take cover.

Barker, hit badly in the chest, had been in-country just three weeks. He was a twenty-year-old draftee, and he hated the Army. A funny, well-built farm boy, he had run with some small-town toughs before dropping out of high school in South Paris, Maine. He became a father at sixteen, and finally married the mother of his daughter three years later between Basic and AIT. Barker had been befriended by an M79 man in another squad during his short time in Vietnam, and his buddy crawled to him to give him mouth-to-mouth, while shouting at the top of his lungs for a medic. The platoon medic got to them, but Barker was already dead. His buddy, crying freely and nearly hysterical, refused to listen and kept trying to breathe life into Barker as fire snapped overhead.

The contact began at 1222. The NVA were entrenched across the narrow waist of Nhi Ha, in the tree line along the western edge of the rice paddies in the middle of the hamlet. Lieutenants Skrzysowski and Weidner deployed their platoons in the irrigation ditch that ran behind the hedgerow on the eastern side, and-earning Silver Stars in the process-they moved along the ditch firing themselves as they made sure their men kept their heads up and fired in the right direction. The NVA were impossible to see. Whenever smoke or dust rose from one of their positions, though, the target was engaged by M60s and M79s, as well as with LAWs.

Artillery worked the enemy side of the clearing and, between fire missions, the FAC in the Birddog rolled in to punch off WP marking rockets. The FAC brought the jets in one at a time. The Phantoms and Crusaders came in low and slow with wings tilting left, right, left, right, as each pilot lined up on the target in turn. The jets came in from behind the grunts, and the pilots released their 250-pound high drags just as they flashed over the row of upturned faces in the irrigation ditch. Fins popped from each bomb to r.e.t.a.r.d the rate of descent as it dove toward the target, giving the pilot time to escape the blast radius. It was an incredible show. The bombs seemed to float as they went over the heads of the grunts in the same instant that the pilot hit the afterburners and pulled straight up. The multiple explosions were thunderous, with smoke mushrooming up thick and charcoal black above the flames. Smoking hot bomb fragments thudded down on both sides of the battlefield.

The napalm canisters burst like fireb.a.l.l.s in the tree line. The NVA kept firing. Captain Humphries, a small-statured Texan who packed a CAR 15 and a 9mm Browning in a shoulder holster, had his trademark corncob pipe clenched sideways in his mouth as he lay behind a berm with his FO and RTOs and helped adjust the air and arty. He was a former enlisted man-an OCS graduate-and he was Airborne and Ranger qualified. He was also a natural leader and a veteran of more than six months with the Gimlets. Black Death 6, as he was best known, used his reserve platoon, Delta Three, to establish an LZ in the eastern end of Nhi Ha-into which the C&C Huey landed to kick out ammo resupply and take aboard the four men wounded in the opening moments of the engagement. Humphries's company suffered few additional casualties during the prolonged fight. He was an aggressive commander, but he never took reckless chances with the lives of his troops. He loved them too much. Humphries, exacting and hard-nosed, was also a personable, gregarious man who ruled with an informal hand. He knew his troops by name and would talk with each man as a patrol moved out. He joked easily with them, but he made it clear that each was an important part of the team. He told them that they were his family and mat he was going to write a book about them when he got home.

Delta Company was knocked for a serious loop when Black Death 6 was. .h.i.t the following month after a tough, two-day action to secure an NVA hill in the FSB Center TAOR. Humphries was not wounded by enemy fire but by a "dud" U.S. hand grenade that sat unnoticed in the battle litter until a new man accidentally stepped on it. The explosion killed the GI. Humphries's shoulder was torn up, and he lost his right eye. With a black eye patch in place, he soldiered through the rest of his career-including a 1970-71 Vietnam tour as operations officer of his old 3-21st Infantry.

Captain Humphries got his second Silver Star for Nhi Ha. His effect on morale was such that the recon sergeant with his FO team, Sp4 Terrance Farrand, who did not have to be in the battle, made sure he got there. Farrand, fresh from a Bangkok R and R, had rejoined the artillery liaison officer at the Mai Xa Chanh East CP only after the battle had been joined. When he asked about getting back to his company, the liaison officer said, "Listen, the situation's hot. The only thing we've got going in is ammunition and radio batteries. We can try and get you in tomorrow."

Farrand wouldn't take no for an answer. The idea of giving Captain Humphries less than 100 percent was unfathomable, and he pressed the liaison officer. "Well, I've got to get there, that's all there is to it."

Specialist Farrand went in with the next ammo drop. The C&C Huey landed in Delta Three's LZ, and, after helping unload the ammo under fire, Farrand ran, crawled, and ducked his way forward. He slid in beside a p.r.o.ne and very busy Captain Humphries, who said, "What in the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" Farrand replied, "I heard you people got yourself in a mess, and I thought I'd better show up." As he began working with the FO lieutenant, Farrand cracked one last grin and said, "Hey, Cap, can you believe that two short days ago I was lying up in a bed with sheets? And I I had lobster!" had lobster!"

On Black Death's right flank, Lieutenant Smith of Alpha Two radioed his platoon sergeant, Sfc. Alan d.i.c.kerson, who was in another crater. Smith had told Doc Fennewald to stick with d.i.c.kerson, and he asked to speak with the medic. "He's dead," d.i.c.kerson said.

"What? He can't be!" exclaimed Smith. He can't be!" exclaimed Smith.

"He's dead."

"I never did see his body," recalled Lieutenant Smith, who thought the world of Doc Fennewald. "I probably wouldn't have looked at it anyway." Fennewald had been shot in the forehead while moving in a fast crouch toward a soldier shouting for a medic. "It was a senseless death," added Smith. "Whoever was wounded wasn't badly hurt, but Fennewald probably perceived that he was."

Specialist Four Daniel F. Fennewald, twenty-four, of Spanish Lake, Missouri, was awarded a posthumous BSMv and Purple Heart (as were all KJAs in the Gimlets, regardless of the circ.u.mstances of their death). Fennewald was the kind of genuine, sincere guy whom anyone would want to have as a friend for life. He was stocky and sandy-haired, with an articulate, quiet, and gentle manner. He never cursed. He never complained. He also never carried a weapon. He was a conscientious objector, and although he would hump a ton of medical gear and water for the casualties, reserving only one canteen for himself, he would not join in the killing.

Lieutenant Smith commented that Fennewald was "a wonderful doc and a prince of a fella. He knew about every sore on every man in that platoon. He was that conscientious and helpful."

The volume of fire rose and fell as the battle dragged on. During one of the lulls, Sp4 Neil E. Hannan of Alpha Two crawled out of his squad's big bomb crater and worked his way back to the LZ to get more ammo. Hannan, a wiry, brown-haired kid, was an intelligent, intense, and typically insecure nineteen year old from blue-collar Versailles, Ohio. He was determined to be a good soldier, and he was. He had been in Vietnam for two months. Hannan was dragging a crate of grenades in one hand and a crate of small-arms ammunition in the other on his way back to the crater when a mortar fragment caught him in the right thigh. It went through his trouser leg and left a red slash up near his groin. Hannan clambered back into the crater. The rope-handled ammo crates were cracked open. Everyone was firing like crazy. Hannan himself went through thirty magazines, and had to repeatedly use his squeeze bottle of gun oil on his smoking M16. The squad grenadier lobbed so many M79 rounds across the clearing while sitting cross-legged at the edge of the crater that he finally said in a bored voice, "h.e.l.l, give me that .45 for a while." They fired everything they had, including LAWs, and they heaved grenades when they saw NVA advancing among the trees on their right flank. "You know, it's not easy to stick your head up and fire at those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds when they have machine guns firing back at you," Hannan wrote in a letter home the next day. "h.e.l.l, I was throwing grenades like a maniac too. I was in a bomb crater digging with my d.a.m.ned hands and I was scared as h.e.l.l. I was just hoping that a mortar wouldn't land in my hole. And to think that I used to pity the Marines."

In position near the LZ, Sergeant See, who ran the machine-gun squad in Delta Three, was to the rear of an earthen berm. He had unshouldered his ruck-which had fragments in it from the sh.e.l.l that killed his ammo bearer, Barker-and he was on his knees, alert, with his M16 in his hands. He expected the NVA to try to flank them. There was a lull in the fire up front, and See was able to hear a mortar round leaving its tube. He started shouting, "Incoming!" but he was still on his knees when the first round exploded before his eyes on the other side of the berm and knocked him down. It felt as though someone had hit him in the right shoulder with a baseball bat. He was afraid to look at his arm for fear that it had been ripped off. It felt that way. When he finally did look, he saw a chunk of metal the size of a silver dollar sticking from the shoulder. He pulled it out and flipped it away.

The grenadier attached to See's machine-gun team, Pfc. Ronald L. Edwards, had been hit in the same explosion. He'd been leaning against his ruck on the forward side of the berm. Sprawled out now, he emitted the low moan of the seriously wounded as he called for help: "Uh-uhhh-uh-uh ... Seeee ... Seeee..."

Mortars were still exploding around the LZ, and no one was moving.

Edwards kept calling for help. Oh G.o.d, I can't leave him out there, thought See, a rich kid from Beverly Hills, California, who'd gotten his draft notice immediately after earning a degree in business administration. He had instant sergeant stripes from the NCO Academy at Fort Benning. See crawled over the berm to reach Edwards, who had thick blood coming out of one ear, in addition to multiple fragment wounds in his head and legs. Man, this guy's in bad shape, See thought, but what he said was, "Edwards, you're okay, you're okay. What hurts worst?"

"My legs ... my legs," Edwards mumbled.

See wrapped battle dressings around the wounds. The mortaring had ceased. See helped Edwards to his feet with one arm over his shoulder so he could get him back over the berm, where a medic took over. The medic also tied a battle dressing around See's shoulder. As See put the b.l.o.o.d.y, ripped shirt back on, the medic asked him if he wanted to be medevacked. See declined. It was no time to leave.

The action in Nhi Ha lasted six hours. A and D/3-21 lost two KIA and had twenty-two WIA. Officially, sixty-seven NVA were killed, but Lieutenant Colonel Snyder, unable to crack the enemy line with firepower, finally ordered his a.s.sault elements to disengage and retire to their night laager east of the hamlet. All of their seriously wounded had already been medevacked on the spot by the C&C Huey on loan from the 174th AHC Dolphins. The aircraft commander was WOl Kenneth W. Johnson, a tough former Airborne sergeant. Johnson and his copilot, WOl Martin H. Wifholm, were plugged into the fire control nets so they could get the trajectories of the arty, tac air, and naval guns firing counterbattery missions against the NVA artillery in the DMZ, and thus work up the safest flight path into the LZ in eastern Nhi Ha. It was real hairy stuff. Since the tac air got most of the enemy's attention, they went in repeatedly right under the high-drag bombs that the Phantoms had just released.

During one low, fast approach, the door gunner spotted NVA in a bunker about seventy-five meters out on the flank. He could see one NVA's face through the aperture, and he exclaimed, "Jesus Christ, there they are! I'm going to take 'Em under fire!"

"Don't shoot!" Johnson shouted back on the intercom. "For some reason they ain't Marines' at us, so we don't shoot at them. Let's just do our job, get the wounded, and get out of here!"

Five more air strikes. .h.i.t the western side of Nhi Ha to cover the withdrawal of the two companies. The strikes were conducted in the face of heavy ground fire. Although the NVA had not brought antiaircraft weapons to the village, they did use their AK-47s in ma.s.s, producing a screen of fire that the jets had to fly through. It was an effective tactic. During the final strike, a Marine Crusader making its third pa.s.s took hits and never pulled up. It went in about twenty-five hundred meters northwest of Nhi Ha on the other side of Jones Creek. The Crusader bounced when it hit, then turned into a ball of fire as it pitched nose first into the ground. The explosion was clearly visible to a lot of grunts, who were stunned and horrified-and incredulous at the bravery of those NVA foot soldiers who had blasted a jet out of the sky.

"Did you see a chute, did you see a chute?" battalion asked urgently on the radio.

"s.h.i.t, no, I didn't see a chute," answered one dumbstruck officer. "We lost that guy."

Maybe not. Almost an hour later, the U.S. personnel at Alpha 1, who had binoculars and a commanding view of the battlefield, spotted a lone figure east of the crash site on their side of Jones Creek. They reported on the radio that "he appears to be dazed, he's kind of wandering around." There was hope that the pilot had managed a low-alt.i.tude ejection. When the FAC diverted to the scene and confirmed the sighting, the C&C Huey immediately contacted the FAC. "We're comin' in low and hot, so direct us up." Using the orbiting Birddog as a beacon, the Huey headed north ten to fifteen feet off the deck. The chopper rose up only to hop over tree lines. Johnson, the pilot, spotted the olive-drab figure in a rice paddy, and he could see that the man was bareheaded and wore no web gear. He did not appear to have a weapon. The figure stopped and looked at the approaching helicopter, and Johnson said on the radio, "We've got the pilot in sight. We're going in to pick him up."

Approaching, Warrant Officer Johnson had his Huey in a hard deceleration with the nose high before he was close enough to see the man's black hair and the baggy cut of his fatigues. "That's a d.i.n.k, that's a G.o.dd.a.m.ned d.i.n.k!" Johnson exclaimed as he pulled up and around. "It's not the pilot, it's an NVA. It's a hard-core NVA and we're going to engage him."

The 3d Marines' headquarters, monitoring the 3-21st Infantry's command net, broke in, "Don't shoot him. We're going to want to take him prisoner."

"Just what in the h.e.l.l do you guys expect us to do out here? We've got our b.u.t.ts hanging out. We're going to kill him."

The Marines responded with a direct order not to shoot the NVA on the grounds that he could have intelligence value. They planned to mount a patrol from Alpha 1 to capture the man. Johnson brought his Huey into a low, tight, clockwise orbit that put the enemy soldier on the door gunner's side of the ship. The door gunner, Sp4 Wallace H. Nunn, sat behind a mounted M60D equipped with twin, D-handled grips and a b.u.t.terfly trigger. Nunn, who thought that the NVA was probably a lure to an ambush, spoke to Johnson on the intercom, "They've got to be f.u.c.king crazy. I can have an accident here, you know."

"Hold your fire," replied Johnson.

The ARVN patrol was visible as dots about a klick away as it moved out from Alpha 1. Johnson, also concerned that the NVA was bait, did not want to wait the twenty to thirty minutes it would take the ARVN to reach the scene. That was all the time an NVA unit would need to set up in the hedgerows around the paddy. "Look him over real G.o.dd.a.m.n close for weapons," Johnson finally said on the intercom. "We're gonna go in and get him."

"This is comin' nuts!" shouted Nunn.

"No s.h.i.t."

Specialist Nunn kept his M60 on the NVA until they landed behind the man, at which point he popped the radio cord on his flight helmet and jumped out with the M16 he usually kept behind his seat. The soldier turned to face them with his hands up, and Nunn screamed, "Get the f.u.c.k on!" He intended to kill the guy at the first sign of resistance, but the NVA, who looked terrified, obediently trotted toward him and clambered aboard the Huey.

Meanwhile, the search for the pilot of the Crusader had been aborted. Captain Stephen W. Clark of Marine All-Weather Fighter Squadron 235 had been killed in the crash, and was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. The man whom Johnson and his crew picked up was an NVA medic, a deserter who had simply walked south from his unit in the DMZ to find somebody to surrender to. He was in his early thirties and, when questioned in the rear, said that he had been a schoolteacher before being conscripted. He could identify his unit only as the "fourth battalion," and he was officially pa.s.sed off as having "no information of tactical value." Nunn held a .38 against the prisoner's head during the flight back, but it was an unnecessary precaution. The enemy soldier, squatting on the helicopter floor, was so scared to be airborne that all he could do was stare at the terrain sweeping under them. When the Huey shut down at the 3-21st Infantry CP, the NVA, who was still holding on for dear life, was jerked out roughly and led to Captain Householder, the intelligence officer, who waited beside a dwelling. The NVA pulled North Vietnamese currency from his wallet and tried to press it on Householder. To further prove his sincerity, he reached into a baggy thigh pocket and produced a stick-handled grenade. "I just held that thing up, looked at the helicopter pilot, and smiled," Householder said later. "He had his dark visor down, so I couldn't see his eyes, but his mouth dropped open when he realized that the prisoner had been in his chopper with a grenade."

Captain Leach arrived at Lieutenant Colonel Snyder's CP in Mai Xa Chanh East during the Nhi Ha engagement. Leach, who had been with Charlie Tiger for more than five months, had managed to miss his company's first nose-to-nose encounter with the NVA because of the timing of his R and R. In his absence, Charlie Tiger had been shot to pieces. Furious and anxious to rejoin his command, Leach, who was a fiery individual, spoke urgently with Snyder. "Those are my my guys. We're gettin' in trouble here. This is what it's all about, and I want to be with 'Em. I trained 'Em. They know me, they work well for me, and I'm responsible for 'Em!" guys. We're gettin' in trouble here. This is what it's all about, and I want to be with 'Em. I trained 'Em. They know me, they work well for me, and I'm responsible for 'Em!"

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder, who had greeted Leach with, "My G.o.d, am I glad to see you!" briefed him then from his map. Snyder wanted Leach, who was his most experienced company commander, not only to resume command of Charlie Tiger, but also to act as a task force commander with authority over A and D/3-21 until Nhi Ha had been taken. Snyder, meanwhile, would remain at Mai Xa Chanh East to organize its defenses and ensure that no kinks developed in their lifeline with the 3d Marines. "Okay, Leach, you run that show up there. I've got enough problems back here," he concluded.

Major Yurchak, the operations officer, joked with Leach as he got ready to move out. "I'm going to get out of your way 'cause you love this stuff. This is going to be fun for you!"

Captain Leach, age twenty-nine, had dark hair and intense green eyes and was muscular and animal-like. He was, in fact, the closest thing the battalion had to a war lover. Tattooed on his right shoulder was a Ranger tab over Airborne wings. He walked point on patrols, and carried death cards that congratulated enemy soldiers for having been dispatched by Charlie Tiger.

When the C&C Huey took Leach from Mai Xa Chanh East up to the laager east of Nhi Ha, it landed amid 152mm artillery fire that had begun crashing in from the DMZ. The Huey barely touched its skids to the dirt when Leach clambered out fast and flung himself p.r.o.ne. Everyone was relieved to see him, especially Lieutenant Jaquez, the company FO. Leach joined Jaquez after the sh.e.l.ling ceased and asked to be brought up to date. Jaquez, depressed by the raw brutality of the previous day's action, was especially disenchanted with Kohl, the acting company commander, although he tried to be circ.u.mspect when he told Leach that indecision during the fight may have contributed to the disaster.

Leach got the idea. He found Lieutenant Kohl hunkered down in a bomb crater, and asked him what had happened. "We really got the s.h.i.t kicked out of us," Kohl answered.

"Hey, Gerry, listen-we've got to get you out of here. You've had enough. C'mon, we're going to get you on a helicopter."

"Yeah, sir, I think you're right."

Leach had not been sure of Kohl's condition until he gave his defeated answer. "If Kohl had said, 'Hey, sir, you can't do that, I gotta stay here,' I would have said, 'Fine.'" Leach did not normally reward burnout cases with a chopper ride to the rear, but he knew of Kohl's decorated service as a platoon leader. "That kid had been shot at and shot at and shot at, and demonstrated his bravery over and over-and when somebody like that looks at you like a whipped dog and doesn't know what to say, then you get him the h.e.l.l outta there."

They didn't do it smart, Captain Leach thought as he went over the lessons of the ambush with his remaining lieutenants. They should have reconned by fire. They should have had tac air available. The men of Charlie Tiger, who believed themselves to be in the best company in the best battalion in the best brigade (in what was generally acknowledged, however, to be the worst division in Vietnam), were convinced that Nhi Ha would not have been such a black eye had Leach been there. They had absolute faith in him. Leach was from little Fairmont, Minnesota, the son of a laborer. With no immediate interest in college, he went from high school to the U.S. Navy, where he was a boxer and earned appointments to both Annapolis and West Point. He chose the latter and graduated with the USMA Cla.s.s of 1963. Following jump school and Ranger training, he served as a platoon leader at Fort Lewis before volunteering for Vietnamese language school and a combat a.s.signment. His 1965-66 tour was split between duty as an a.s.sistant adviser to the 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion in Quang Ngai Province, and the staff of the ARVN corps headquarters in Da Nang. a.s.signed next as a company commander at Fort Benning, he immediately volunteered for a second Vietnam tour so he could command a rifle company in combat, which he considered the ultimate experience of any infantry officer.

Captain Leach returned to Vietnam in October 1967 as the a.s.sistant S3 of the 3-21st Infantry and took command of Charlie Tiger the following month, after the battalion moved from Chu Lai to FSB Center. He earned his reputation with the troops on one of his first patrols when Sergeant Skinner, the point squad leader, was shot in the head while crossing a footbridge in pursuit of a fleeing VC. The lone VC had been a lure. The trap was a VC squad dug in across the footbridge. Their fire pinned down the lead squad, and Skinner, who was either unconscious or dead, lay out of reach in a pool of blood. Leach's solution, after deploying the company to provide a base of fire, was to personally run to Skinner across an open paddy, heft the man into a fireman's carry, and sprint back with bullets kicking up all around him. Skinner was not dead. The round had hit near one ear, followed the curve of the back of his skull, and exited near his other ear. He recovered with nothing worse than hearing damage in one ear.

"From that time on, Captain Leach could do no wrong by me," said Sergeant Coulthard. Such confidence in his abilities was more valuable to Leach than the BSMv he got for rescuing Skinner, because he intended to reshape Charlie Tiger. The grunts were mostly draftees and the product of soft, unrealistic training. Leach told them that he would be proud to lead NVA soldiers; in comparison to the average GI, they were masters of jungle fighting. "Captain Leach made you do what the d.i.n.ks did as far as camouflage, stealth, things like that," recalled Coulthard. "He liked to operate at night. We had to hump, too, and if you were moving in daytime you had to have fresh camouflage on your helmet, your pack, all over. After a couple of hours you'd put on new camouflage made of the vegetation you were in. If you didn't, he got hot." The grunts responded. They did not want to be in Vietnam, but they wanted to survive-and superaggressive, superprofessional Captain Leach seemed to be one of the few officers around who knew how to react in tight situations. Leach was personable enough, but he was too hard, intense, and businesslike to have been loved. He was, however, admired. "If Captain Leach told you to march to h.e.l.l, you would," said Private Harp. "First, because if he said you could, you knew you could. Secondly, he would be on point, and, finally, if you did not obey his orders he would kick your a.s.s so hard it would make h.e.l.l look like a cakewalk."

By 1830 on 3 May, A and D/3-21 had begun to withdraw from Nhi Ha. Specialist Hannan of Alpha Two was moving back beside a machine gunner who carried his M60 across his shoulders in an exhausted pose, when the NVA said good-bye with a burst of AK-47 fire. Exasperated, the machine gunner shouted, "You sonsofb.i.t.c.hes!" as he turned on his heel to fire back into the hamlet.

In the night laager, Charlie deployed along the perimeter from twelve to four o'clock, Delta took four to seven, and Alpha occupied seven to twelve. At 1922 and 2035, the NVA sh.e.l.led the laager-again without producing casualties-with 152mm field guns located in the DMZ. Between sh.e.l.lings, the grunts, occupying the same holes as the night before, ate C rations, reloaded their magazines, removed the safety tape from grenades they had ready in their positions, rearranged trip flares, and wired in claymore antipersonnel mines.

Just before dark, Specialist Hannan watched a silhouette walk into their lines, kneel beside the GIs three holes down-and begin speaking in Vietnamese. The thoroughly disoriented NVA, who was wearing green fatigues and carrying an AK-47, immediately realized his mistake and made a run for it. Though stunned himself, Hannan quickly shouldered his M16 and pulled the trigger on the man at thirty paces. There was a flash of sparks as his shot hit the magazine or metal parts of the man's weapon, but Hannan lost sight of the figure in the dark. The NVA got away.

At 2120, before the flareship arrived to give the Gimlets some illuminated security, another NVA came out of the dark where B/3-21 was positioned near Lam Xuan West. He was a deserter unconnected with the fight in Nhi Ha. Captain Corrigan, who described the NVA soldier as "young, skinny, and scared," had the prisoner blindfolded and tied with his arms behind his back until a helicopter came to get him in the morning. He was sent on to the 3d Marines, where it was determined that he "belonged to the 126th Independent Regt, whose mission was to send elements south from the DMZ to mine the Cua Viet River. Intelligence gained from the rallier included infiltration routes, unit base areas, and mining tactics."

"Our morale was at its lowest and not one man wanted to go back in there," wrote nineteen-year-old Pfc. Charles C. c.o.x of D/3-21 in a letter home regarding the third attack on Nhi Ha. The attack commenced at 0936, Sat.u.r.day, 4 May 1968, after two air strikes and the usual arty prep. "Dad, I was scared to death...."

Captains Leach and Humphries, who were great friends, had worked up the attack plan during the night, placing Delta on the left flank and Charlie Company on the right. Moving through Nhi Ha, Black Death 6 again had Lieutenant Skrzysowski on the left with Delta One, and Lieutenant Weidner's Delta Two on the right. Delta Three was in reserve. Something is not right, thought Skrzysowski, surprised that they had received comparatively little fire during their cautious approach to the hedgerow where the attack had bogged down the day before. Did the d.i.n.ks pull out during the night, or are they going to suck us in the next time we move? Humphries instructed Skrzysowski to advance with his platoon across the clearing and into the tree line on the other side that the enemy had held the day before. Skrzysowski started out of the irrigation ditch running behind the battered hedgerow, then realized that no one else was moving. The grunts could feel that something was wrong, too, but when the lieutenant continued through the hedgerow they reluctantly came along.

The ambush began at 1020.

Lieutenant Skrzysowski was halfway across the clearing with the lead squad in a skirmish line when automatic weapons suddenly erupted from the tree line ahead. One of Skrzysowski's sergeants was shot, and the grunt to his left, who was coming out of a crater when the shooting started, was knocked back in with a shattering shoulder wound.

Jumping into another sh.e.l.l crater with his radioman and a rifleman, Lieutenant Skrzysowski opened up with his M16 and threw all his grenades. To his rights his M60 gunner had also managed to find cover, and he too opened fire at targets heard but not seen. Most of the NVA seemed to be in a bomb crater at the southern end of the north-south tree line. At least one other enemy soldier was well ensconced among the burial mounds on the platoon's left flank. The sniper was actually on the other side of the shredded east-west tree line that ran along that edge of the hamlet, and with an automatic weapon and great fields of fire he banged away at anything that moved.

The NVA also lobbed mortar fire on Delta Company.

Thirty minutes into the contact, the FAC ran in a flight of Phantoms on the NVA. Neither the air nor the arty seemed to have much effect on the entrenched enemy, however. Lieutenant Skrzysowski, his ammunition almost exhausted, finally shouted to his platoon, "We can't sit here! We've got wounded! Let's move!"

It was 1120. Leading the way, an act that earned him a BSMv, Lieutenant Skrzysowski-a blunt, patriotic, twenty-five-year-old college grad from Manchester, New Hampshire-clambered out of his crater after calling for covering fire. He planned to run to the tree line on the left flank, then work his way forward to the NVA tree line to their front. Unfortunately, as soon as Skrzysowski cleared his cover, an AK-47 opened up on him with a burst that seemed to go on forever and blew him into another bomb crater, shredding his rucksack in the process. He was by himself and in excruciating pain. He had taken a round through his upper right thigh and b.u.t.tocks, and the sight of the meat hanging from his leg made him think he had lost his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. His other leg, although not b.l.o.o.d.y, was paralyzed and numb, and he thought he had also been shot in the spine. He felt as though he'd been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer, but that was actually the least of his injuries: A bullet had hit one of the last magazines left in his bandolier and peppered his chest with metal fragments.

Lieutenant Skrzysowski's M16 had been hit and rendered inoperable, but he thanked G.o.d that he still had his .45-caliber pistol. Groggy with shock, he suddenly realized that his medic was in the crater with him, administering morphine and wrapping his wounds with battle dressings. "s.h.i.t, we gotta get you out of here," the medic said urgently.

"How in the h.e.l.l did you did you get out here?" asked Skrzysowski. get out here?" asked Skrzysowski.

"Let's go," the medic answered, taking charge.

Crawling out of the crater with rounds cracking over their heads, the medic led the way. Skrzysowski was right behind him, barely able to use his legs to push but able to pull himself along with his hands. Exhausted, he made it back through the hedgerow and into the cover of his platoon's trench, where he checked his wounds. They were bad, but not as bad as he'd first thought. His t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were still there, and his back was not hit: The pain in his unwounded left leg was actually from a spinal disc damaged by the weight of his pack when he'd bounced into the crater.