The Magnificent Bastards Part 13

"I don't know," answered Sergeant Stone. "For all I know, they're all dead. They give the word to pull back, and when they said pull back, Sergeant Dale and them up and took off!"2 Captain Osborn was finally able to get Lieutenant Kimball on the radio. Kimball was still up on the right flank. He was trying to call for artillery when his transmission was cut off. Lieutenant Kimball and his RTO, Sp4 Curtis E. Bandy, had just been killed. Bill Kimball, a tall, handsome blond, had been in Vietnam for three months and had been wounded in the Que Son action. He was another OCS citizen-soldier-he had a wife waiting for him back in New Jersey-and a fun-loving extrovert who had been well thought of in his platoon. He had learned fast. He always listened to his grunts. Posthumous awards, especially for officers, seem to take on a life of their own, so Kimball's Silver Star citation may or may not be an accurate reconstruction of his last moments: "... Lieutenant Kimball courageously charged an enemy bunker, killing five enemy soldiers. He then proceeded to another position when he became wounded in the right arm....While his men were maneuvering back, he courageously remained in an exposed position, placing accurate devastating fire on the enemy.... While performing this unselfish act, Lieutenant Kimball was mortally wounded..."

Alpha Three, completely disorganized, still had men pinned down on the right flank, including Sp4 Bill Eakins, who, al though wounded in the back, had tackled a panicked soldier and calmed him down in a crater. Also stranded was Sp4 Thomas E. Hemphill, a grenadier who had jumped in another crater with one of the replacements. The enemy fire was ringing right over their heads. The new man, who was petrified, kept asking what he should do. Hemphill, a country boy with a Georgia accent, told him to keep his head down, adding, "but if anybody comes over that hole, you shoot the sorry thang!" Hemphill, keeping his own head down, lobbed about fifteen M79 rounds toward the tree line on the right. There was a lull then, and he heard movement in the next crater over. He hollered to ask who it was. Luckily, it it was some of his buddies, so Hemphill and his greenseed scrambled into the position with them. One of Hemphill's best friends, David Betebenner, was among those in the crater. His steel pot had a hole in it. He'd been shot in the head and was unconscious and barely breathing. Betebenner, a soft-spoken, deeply religious man, had been up firing his M16 when he'd been hit. "It upset me real bad," Hemphill remembered. "I cried for a minute-I did. He was a good friend of mine. He was a good old fella. He had a little girl...." was some of his buddies, so Hemphill and his greenseed scrambled into the position with them. One of Hemphill's best friends, David Betebenner, was among those in the crater. His steel pot had a hole in it. He'd been shot in the head and was unconscious and barely breathing. Betebenner, a soft-spoken, deeply religious man, had been up firing his M16 when he'd been hit. "It upset me real bad," Hemphill remembered. "I cried for a minute-I did. He was a good friend of mine. He was a good old fella. He had a little girl...."

No one knew what had happened to the rest of the platoon. They decided they had to pull back to the left. After throwing a smoke grenade in that direction, they ran through the colored smoke as cover and made it back to the black machine gunner on the mound. David Betebenner was dead when they moved out. They left his body in the crater. "I closed myself out to any new people that come in then," said Hemphill. "You were friendly to 'Em and helped 'Em out, but I never got close to 'Em. You didn't want to get close to somebody who could get killed. It was like losing a brother."

Staff Sergeant Dale was shot in the back during the retreat. He went down with a gaping exit wound in his chest, and two grunts dragged him to safety. The NVA swarming through Alpha Three came on toward Sergeant Bulte and his squad on Alpha Two's right flank. The enemy soldiers screamed and popped up to fire AK-47 bursts to cover one another as they advanced from crater to crater. Bulte's squad was not returning fire. The grunts were as low as they could get behind their own paddy dike. The air was electric with enemy fire. They didn't know what to do. Bulte shouted at his men to pull back to the raised footpath on the left flank, and by the time he himself made it to the safer side of the footpath he had lost touch with everyone in his squad except his radioman and one of his riflemen.

"My guys were absolutely scared to death," Bulte recalled. "They were just running for their lives. It was complete havoc. It was out of control."

Clambering over the footpath, Sergeant Bulte swung his M16 back the way he had come-and was horrified to see Doc Richards of Alpha Three lying out there near a group of enemy soldiers. One leg was almost completely blown off below the knee, and he was waving an arm and shrieking, "Please, please help me ... save me ... help me ..." Sergeant Bulte, a quiet, intelligent twenty-three year old, dropped all his gear except his M16 and a bandolier of ammunition and; when there was a lull in the fire, he rushed back over the footpath, weaving his way toward Doc Richards in a low crouch. Bulte dropped beside Richards just as the NVA began firing at him. When the roar eased off, he grabbed the medic by the back of his pistol belt and carried him like a suitcase. He'd made it only ten to fifteen meters before they started taking more fire. Bulte was too tired to move Richards any farther. He needed help. He told the medic that he was going to run back and get some of the men who were covering them.

Sergeant Bulte didn't believe he could make it back again. Doc Richards saw the doubt in his eyes. "Don't leave me!" he pleaded. "Don't leave me! Will you come back for me?" Bulte felt guilty as he promised Richards that, yes, he would come back. Bulte ran to the raised footpath. He didn't know most of the GIs there-they weren't in his squad-but when he argued, "C'mon, we can get this guy out of there," two of them-Sp4 W. R. May and Pfc. J. W. Bell-agreed to give it a try. When there was another lull in the NVA fire, they made their move. On the way back, Bell brought up the rear, providing covering fire while Bulte and May dragged Richards by his arms and legs. They were moving fast and as the medic's mangled leg bounced on the ground he screamed in agony. "Oh my G.o.d, it was a bloodcurdling scream," recalled Bulte. "It was horrible."

Doc Richards survived the ordeal.

Piling back over the footpath, Sergeant Bulte-who got the Silver Star for his part in the rescue-made radio contact with Lieutenant Stull in the command group. Stull couldn't see the NVA from where he was, but Bulte could. He relayed adjustments so the FO could call for smoke rounds on Alpha Three's former pos to cover their withdrawal, and HE rounds on almost the same ground to slow down the NVA. The enemy troops were forced to seek cover, but Stull and Bulte would always wonder if their fires might have hit some of their comrades stranded out there. The NVA, meanwhile, were working the area over with 82mm fire. Lieutenant Stull-who was also awarded a Silver Star for his actions that day-happened to look up and see two sh.e.l.ls descending on the small crater his team occupied. He dropped down, and seconds later one sh.e.l.l hit the near edge of the crater and the other the far edge. Stull had his helmet and flak jacket on, but some metal fragments the size of shotgun pellets dinged him in the groin and under one arm. A bigger piece slashed across an ankle, ripping the canvas jungle boot and drawing blood. It felt like a sprain.

At 1540, the NVA attempted to envelop the pinned-down company on its left, where Sgt. Larry Haddock of Alpha Two had his squad deployed along Jones Creek. Haddock, a stocky, blond-haired twenty-three year old, was one of sixteen children to an Oklahoma oil-field worker. He was a taciturn, fieldwise soldier. Haddock had directed his men into the streambed, and they were returning fire over the shallow embankment when he noticed movement to their rear. Turning, Haddock saw a line of hunched-over figures approaching through the tall brush on the other side of Jones Creek. For a split second he thought they were friendlies. The point man of the column was tentatively waving to him-apparently the NVA were also confused as to who was where-when Haddock recognized the NVA-issue camouflage nets on the pith helmets the soldiers wore. Haddock shouted a warning, and his grenadier and good friend Sp4 Larry R. McFaddin-a Kentuckian who took everything in stride-wheeled around and fired his M79. The round scored a direct hit on the pith helmet of one of the enemy soldiers, blowing him away. The rest of the squad, which actually had no cover to the rear in the sandy creek bed, desperately mowed the gra.s.s across the stream with automatic-weapons fire.

The NVA disappeared.

Other enemy soldiers, meanwhile, gave a wide berth to Sergeant Haddock's squad as they worked their way down Jones Creek to a position opposite Captain Osborn's command group. Specialist Bill Karp, the senior medic, was sitting with his back against the raised footpath when he saw two figures coming their way across the stream. The figures, in a low-to-the-ground crouch, were moving with some purpose. Karp shouldered his M16, sighted in, and pumped off half a magazine.

The two figures fell, either hit or seeking cover.

Thinking that the Barracuda platoon securing the flank on the other side of Jones Creek was farther north than it actually was, Captain Osborn shouted at Karp, "Stop, don't fire over there-B Company is over there!"

Awww s.h.i.t, Karp thought, I just got two of our guys. He had not. As Alpha Company's wounded straggled back, Karp, who was half-deaf and had a ringing headache from his own close encounter with a mortar sh.e.l.l-as well as a superficial fragment wound in his right arm-treated them with battle dressings and words of encouragement. Karp, a quiet twenty-three-year-old college dropout and draftee, was from Alice, Texas. One of the grunts he treated had lost an ear-presumably to a tracer round, because the wound was cauterized and barely bled. Karp secured a big bandage around the man's head, and would have left it at that had the man's buddy not said, "Doc, you think you ought to check him for anything else?" Karp had not because he had seen neither blood nor tears on the man's fatigues. He felt pretty stupid when he lifted up the back of the casualty's shirt and saw that the round that had removed his ear had traveled down his back just under the skin. There was a bullet hole in the muscle at the top of his shoulder, and the exit wound was down at his waist. As Karp tied more bandages and tried to maintain a conversation that would not betray to the man how badly injured he was, the one-eared, semishocked grunt kept trying to get up to see what was going on. Karp, working from his hands and knees, kept pushing the man back down and saying gently, "Just hold still now."

While a Helix FAC helped adjust artillery to cover their move, a completely traumatized Captain Osborn-who was, ironically, awarded another Silver Star for his supposed leadership during this fiasco-instructed Alpha Annihilator to withdraw to Force Tiger. The word was pa.s.sed by radio and by shouts.

With exceptions such as Specialist Karp, who moved his casualties back as a group,3 the withdrawal was a strung-out, every-man-for-himself affair. Some GIs dropped their weapons and gear to run faster, and were crying hysterically by the time they made it back. Sergeant Haddock was another exception. His squad along the streambed was the last to pull back, and Haddock sent his men rearward one, two, or three at a time while the rest provided covering fire. Haddock went with the last group, his M16 in one hand and a radio in the other. They had to jump up and down as the mortars kept crashing in, and Haddock, exhausted, finally let go of the twenty-five pound radio. One of the sh.e.l.ls exploded within a half-dozen meters of Specialist Hannan, and although it did not even scratch him, it did bowl him over. When Hannan regained his senses, he saw Haddock kneeling beside him and firing his M16 at the burial mounds. Haddock looked at him. "You okay, kid?" he asked. the withdrawal was a strung-out, every-man-for-himself affair. Some GIs dropped their weapons and gear to run faster, and were crying hysterically by the time they made it back. Sergeant Haddock was another exception. His squad along the streambed was the last to pull back, and Haddock sent his men rearward one, two, or three at a time while the rest provided covering fire. Haddock went with the last group, his M16 in one hand and a radio in the other. They had to jump up and down as the mortars kept crashing in, and Haddock, exhausted, finally let go of the twenty-five pound radio. One of the sh.e.l.ls exploded within a half-dozen meters of Specialist Hannan, and although it did not even scratch him, it did bowl him over. When Hannan regained his senses, he saw Haddock kneeling beside him and firing his M16 at the burial mounds. Haddock looked at him. "You okay, kid?" he asked.

"I think so," Hannan answered as he sat up and shook off the shock.

"Okay," Haddock said. "Let's get outta here...."

The NVA, bursting with victorious enthusiasm, were on top of their bunkers, shouting and shooting and not caring who saw them. Officially, fifty NVA had been killed, but no grunt bought that. Alpha Annihilator had twelve KIA. "I can't believe those great guys are dead," Specialist Hannan wrote in a letter home. "Somehow I'm still alive. I'll never know how in G.o.d's name I made it out. Men were left on the battlefield wounded and crying...."4 At 1650, two fighters finally began running air strikes on the enemy positions. Meanwhile, the C&C Huey was bouncing in and out of Force Tiger to evacuate the wounded-nineteen altogether-to the 3d Medical Battalion, 3d Marine Division, at the Dong Ha Combat Base. One of the casualties was mortally wounded Staff Sergeant Dale of Alpha Three, who had a piece of plastic secured over his sucking chest wound. Lieutenant Smith and another wounded GI, loaded aboard on either side of Dale, took turns administering mouth-to-mouth during the flight. Carried off the chopper pad on stretchers, Smith and Dale ended up side by side in the triage facility, and Smith screamed frantically at the corpsmen, "Give him mouth-to-mouth, give him mouth-to-mouth!" A Navy doctor bent over Dale with his stethoscope, then quickly moved to the next casualty. Smith, in shock, thought the doctor was abandoning Dale as hopeless. He screamed b.l.o.o.d.y murder as he tried to get up from his stretcher. Corpsmen held Smith down as they used long, blunt-tipped scissors to cut off his b.l.o.o.d.y fatigues and jungle boots. "I was mad as h.e.l.l," said Smith. "I don't know if they gave me anything to quiet me down. They probably did. Your mind is going in a million different directions at a million miles an hour. Everything's coming to a head-it's like a fuse blowing."

Pinned down in a crater, Sgt. Charles F. Desmond and Sp4 Bill A. Baird of Alpha Two were among those left behind. Both were greenseeds. Baird had been wounded in the opening moments of the engagement, presumably by an enemy-issue claymore set up at the edge of the burial mounds. The explosion had shattered his tailbone-he could neither move nor feel his legs-and shredded his jungle boots, blowing off four of his toes. Both legs were b.l.o.o.d.y and mangled. Not understanding what had happened to him, Baird, who had lost his helmet, kept firing his M16 even as he faded in and out of consciousness. He expended almost all of his ammo. When his weapon finally jammed, he started pitching hand grenades, determined to survive.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Desmond was beginning to understand that the company had pulled back without them. He shouted at two GIs with steel pots and green fatigues who were half-concealed in the tall rice to his left-but when they turned toward him, he realized that they were actually NVA.

Terrified, Desmond dropped them both with his M16.

It was dusk by then, and no one else was firing. When it got completely dark, Desmond could see the silhouettes of NVA moving across the paddies, checking bodies and recovering weapons. Desmond removed all of his gear, keeping only his Ml6 and two magazines. He whispered to the semidelirious Baird that he was going to try to get some help. With that, Desmond, a black NCO, climbed out of the crater and, presumably hoping that his dark skin would cause him to be mistaken for another NVA, he started walking toward the stream he knew was on the left flank. The NVA were so close he could hear them talking, but he made it to the stream without being noticed despite the illumination rounds going up. Desmond slid into the concealing water and hugged the bank. He was so scared that he was shaking all over, rippling the water around him. He thought the shimmering movement would give him away, so he kept telling himself, "If you want to live, stop shaking."

Sergeant Desmond had been in Vietnam all of two weeks.

Specialist Baird never forgave Desmond for leaving him, which was understandable but unfair. If Desmond had tried to carry Baird, they would have been an obvious target. The eighteen-year-old Baird was an unschooled country boy from Holmsville, Ohio, best known for his good humor and un-motivated approach to soldiering during his two months in the 'nam. Immobilized and alone, Baird groggily hoped that the shadows moving and stopping around him were friendlies looking for survivors. Then he heard their singsong Vietnamese voices, and four or five NVA almost tripped over him in the dark. The closest one let out a surprised shout as he swung his AK-47 around and squeezed off a quick shot. The round hit Baird's left ear and exited cleanly through his neck just below the hairline. His head was ringing as he desperately screamed, "Chieu hoi!" "Chieu hoi!"

The NVA rushed up to Baird. When they saw that he was grievously wounded and posed no threat, one of them secured a bandage around his head while explaining in English that the reason they had shot him was because "you Americans are tricky, and we thought you might get away." The NVA took his dog tags, web gear, and jammed M16, then lifted him onto a poncho. They worked with speed and urgency. They wanted to get out of the flarelight and back to their positions. The NVA litter team stopped in a hamlet-probably Xom Phuong-where other enemy soldiers crowded around Baird. "Jesus Christ," he muttered to himself. "You mean all these sons of b.i.t.c.hes was out there?" The NVA gave him a few puffs on a cigaret, a sip of hot water, and a mouthful or two of rice. He started to black out again, but they poked and prodded him, all the while jabbering, "My, my, my" my, my"-which he was later told was Vietnamese for American. A fresh team of NVA picked up his poncho litter and moved off toward the DMZ. As the NVA carried him through the night, Baird-who was destined to spend the next five years in prison camps known as the Plantation, the Portholes, and the Hanoi Hilton-found himself thinking back to his first week at the Americal Division base camp in Chu Lai. Everything had seemed so secure then. He had lain on an air mattress feeling a mellow buzz from a combination of warm beer and his first joint, and had looked at the beautiful beach and thought, s.h.i.t, there ain't no G.o.dd.a.m.n war....

During the night, between enemy mortar and artillery attacks, the LPs deployed by C/3-21 in Nhi Ha and D/3-21 in Lam Xuan East made at least seven sightings of squad- and platoon-sized groups of NVA. One enemy soldier wearing a gas mask darted close enough to Charlie Tiger's perimeter to heave in a tear-gas grenade. Captain Leach called his LPs on an hourly basis, and at 0518 on Tuesday, 7 May 1968, the LP leader on the right flank rendered his sitrep in what began as a fatigued monotone, "Well, we've been observing maybe fifteen, twenty gooks for the past half-hour, runnin' around in the paddies-hey, wait a minute-there's a mothercomin' tank!"

"A what? A what? A what?" Leach shot back.

"A mothercomin' tank!" the LP leader answered with awe in his voice. He reported that the tank was headed southwest at a range of about two hundred meters before it disappeared behind a tree line. Then he said, "Can we come in? We want to come in. We want to come in." Captain Leach denied permission-"Keep observing, see where he goes and what he does"-then contacted battalion, which contacted the 3d Marines to determine if any USMC tanks or amtracs were in the area. None were. Leach knew that the NVA had used Soviet PT-76 light amphibious tanks with 76mm main guns near Khe Sanh during the Tet Offensive. He was persuaded that an NVA tank really was out there, especially when the ARVN advisers at Alpha 1 reported shortly thereafter that they too could hear what might be, a tank. Artillery and air strikes were called in, although the USAF flareship and USMC aerial observer overhead never could see a definite target. Regardless, it was an unnerving episode. "We could hear the tread going clank-clank-clank," clank-clank-clank," said Sergeant Coulthard, "and everybody was panicking because we'd already fired all our LAWs." Coulthard, however, could not hear a tank engine, and when he investigated with his M16-mounted night scope he, for one, concluded that the whole incident was the result of strained nerves and overactive imaginations. "With the starlight, we could see that the wind had come up and was dragging flare canisters across the dry paddies by their attached parachutes," he explained. "You could hear them going said Sergeant Coulthard, "and everybody was panicking because we'd already fired all our LAWs." Coulthard, however, could not hear a tank engine, and when he investigated with his M16-mounted night scope he, for one, concluded that the whole incident was the result of strained nerves and overactive imaginations. "With the starlight, we could see that the wind had come up and was dragging flare canisters across the dry paddies by their attached parachutes," he explained. "You could hear them going clank-clank-clank clank-clank-clank. The sound really carried at night. We laughed about it-we was just kind of relieved-but other guys said, 'No, it sure the h.e.l.l ain't flares, there's some tanks out there,' so who knows. But I never could see it."

Informed of the disaster that Alpha Annihilator had walked into, the company exec, 1st Lt. Robert V. Gibbs, helicoptered up from Chu Lai in the morning. Gibbs, a blunt, no-nonsense character, questioned Sergeant Stone, whom he knew to be one of the company's best squad leaders. Gibbs wanted to know the status of their missing. When Stone said that the men were still out there, Gibbs shouted, "Whaddya mean they're still out there? What the f.u.c.k are you talking about, you sonofab.i.t.c.h?" Stone was in tears. Gibbs stomped over to Captain Osborn's position and barked, "How the f.u.c.k could you leave our guys out there?"

Osborn shouted back, "Look, I'm the company commander-and we had to!"

"Christ," replied Gibbs. "Well, when the h.e.l.l are we going back out to get 'Em? They could still be alive out there."

Inexplicably, no recovery mission was launched that day. Instead, the Gimlets improved their positions at Force Tiger and prepped Xom Phuong with artillery. Two missing men who were able to stumble back did so on their own, including Sergeant Desmond of Alpha Two, who came across the rice paddies waving his arms and hollering, "Alpha Gimlets!" Grunts crowded happily around him, and Desmond, relieved beyond words, could not suppress an ear-to-ear grin. Desmond was awarded the Silver Star. The greenseed sergeant also got out of the field after his traumatic experience. The battalion surgeon said that he had combat fatigue-"He did well until he got back, then he kind of fell apart"

The enemy sh.e.l.led them during the day, then in the late afternoon an NVA column of approximately two hundred soldiers was spotted moving south along Jones Creek at a point some sixteen hundred meters northwest of Force Tiger. "The dumbs.h.i.ts were coming down in the open in broad daylight," said Captain Leach, who instructed the 106mm recoilless rifles and the three USMC tanks attached to his task force to open fire. The tanks cut loose with .50-caliber machine guns and 90mm main guns, and the NVA disappeared into the tree lines along Jones Creek. Four artillery batteries fired into the area while Leach made contact with one of the cruisers offsh.o.r.e, which then provided eight-inch fire. "Naval gunfire was blowing the s.h.i.t out of that area," remarked Leach. "They just put it right on top of 'Em, so I'm talking to the ship and I'm really gettin' 'Em fired up. I'm saying, 'Jesus Christ, you're killin killin 'Em! Keep going, keep going!' and they're going crazy out there on the ship. This was right down their alley. They loved it." 'Em! Keep going, keep going!' and they're going crazy out there on the ship. This was right down their alley. They loved it."

Seventy NVA were reported killed in the turkey shoot.

During the night, four more enemy tanks were reported in the area. At about 1300 on Wednesday, 8 May, following another prep by air and arty, Alpha Annihilator, reinforced by a platoon from Charlie Tiger, finally advanced on Xom Phuong to recover the casualties left behind two days before. The three Marine tanks accompanied the a.s.sault line to neutralize the tree line on the right flank, while a Barracuda platoon advanced on the other side of Jones Creek screening the left. The arty was lifted at the last possible moment, then the lead platoon, on line between the tanks, reconned by fire when they were halfway to the burial mounds.

"Still got AK-47 fire with all the firepower we dished out," an incredulous grunt wrote in his diary.

Lieutenant Gibbs, seeing that some of the company's uptight survivors were ready to bolt, screamed at them to hold their ground. While the rest of Alpha Annihilator provided covering fire, Alpha Two carried out the sorry task of loading the dead aboard the two USMC Otters that had come forward with them. The grunts in the platoon were nervous because they could not hear over the engine noise, and everyone worked fast so the NVA would have little time to get their range and sh.e.l.l them. They found their dead where they had left them, although the bodies were barely recognizable after two days in the baking sun-with the exception of one body, which was still white, indicating that the man had only recently died of his wounds. All the rest of the corpses were bloated, black, and maggot-filled. The bodies with the worst wounds were literally falling apart. The fluid under their skin made them look watery. The stench was gagging. It was unbearable work. When GIs pulled at the bodies, the skin came away in their hands like blistering paint. Sergeant Bulte found his buddy, Sydney Klemmer, lying facedown. He recognized Klemmer's strawberry blond hair. Bulte felt that he had to be the one who brought his friend back, but he was afraid to turn him over. When he did he saw Klemmer's distorted face-half of it was swollen and purple-and the multiple wounds. "Those casualties were so unnecessary," Bulte said. "It was such a waste." For Bulte, the good soldier, the war that he had always kept at an emotional distance suddenly became very personal. He lost his enthusiasm. He was just going to get through this and go home. "It was pointless-stupid-what we did. It was such a dumb move. There was a bad undercurrent in the whole company."

When they returned to Force Tiger, Sergeant Bulte, traumatized and distraught, walked past Lieutenant Colonel Snyder, who seemed to him to be blank-faced with shock. Not because Bulte held Snyder solely to blame-he didn't-but because he was so angry and he felt he owed it to Klemmer, Bulte looked the colonel in the eye and shouted, "We were f.u.c.king guinea pigs out there! What was the point of sending us out there? A lot of good people died for nothing!"

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder offered no response. The Otters parked outside Alpha's side of the Force Tiger perimeter and dropped their ramps. The hot stench inside the vehicles was thick for those men who climbed in to pull out the bodies so that they could be identified and medevac tags tied to them. Two gas masks were made available. Men had to be ordered to handle the bodies. "We just flopped 'Em out," said Specialist Hannan. He grabbed a hold of one corpse by the hair and the seat of the pants, but the maggot-eaten scalp pulled off as he lifted up. "I almost cracked," said Hannan. Captain Leach, furious at whoever had ordered the dead to be unloaded where all the shaken survivors could see them, instructed the detail to load the bodies back aboard and told the Otter drivers to get back to battalion with their cargo. "I looked in the Otters and blood was dripping out of them, and here are these dead American kids just stacked up inside," sighed Leach. "It was just terrible. You talk about morale going down...."

1. Sergeant Starr was awarded the Silver Star, BSMv, and two Purple Hearts for Nhi Ha, in addition to an end-of-tour BSM. Sergeant Starr was awarded the Silver Star, BSMv, and two Purple Hearts for Nhi Ha, in addition to an end-of-tour BSM.2. Sergeant Stone received the BSMv for Nhi Ha. He also got an Army Commendation Medal for Valor (ARCOMv) for Hiep Due (January 1968), and another BSMv and the Purple Heart for the Que Sons (March 1968). Sergeant Stone received the BSMv for Nhi Ha. He also got an Army Commendation Medal for Valor (ARCOMv) for Hiep Due (January 1968), and another BSMv and the Purple Heart for the Que Sons (March 1968).3. Specialist Karp was awarded a BSMv for the Hiep Due ambush, another BSMv and the Purple Heart for Nhi Ha, and an end-of-tour ARCOM. Specialist Karp was awarded a BSMv for the Hiep Due ambush, another BSMv and the Purple Heart for Nhi Ha, and an end-of-tour ARCOM.4. Several of Alpha's KIAs were not killed instantly. They died alone after dark, abandoned in the rice paddies with immobilizing wounds. "It was really a spooky, sad, terrible moment," said Sergeant Bulte. "There were guys willing to go back out there that night to look for our missing. We had guys actually volunteer, but somebody at the company or battalion level decided it was too dangerous. Why get any more men killed to try and get maybe one or two men back? They had a point, but if that was me out there and I was begging for help and no one would come out and get me-how would I feel?" Several of Alpha's KIAs were not killed instantly. They died alone after dark, abandoned in the rice paddies with immobilizing wounds. "It was really a spooky, sad, terrible moment," said Sergeant Bulte. "There were guys willing to go back out there that night to look for our missing. We had guys actually volunteer, but somebody at the company or battalion level decided it was too dangerous. Why get any more men killed to try and get maybe one or two men back? They had a point, but if that was me out there and I was begging for help and no one would come out and get me-how would I feel?"

Turning the Tables

WHEN THE NVA NVA WORKED OVER WORKED OVER N NHI H HA WITH 152 152MM FIRE, as they did several times a day in nine-gun salvos, Alpha 1 provided early warning by radio to the 3-21st Infantry. From Alpha 1, the muzzle flashes could be seen along the the ridgelines on the North Vietnamese side of the DMZ. In addition, radar able to lock onto the enemy firing positions ensured that counter battery bombardments, usually from the cruisers offsh.o.r.e, were almost immediate. The NVA, although too well entrenched to be put out of action by anything less than a direct hit, refused to pinpoint themselves further with a second salvo, so the counterbattery fires bought time for the men on the ground. Friendly casualties were few. One of the wounded, however, was no less than Captain Leach, commander of the two-company task force in the village. Leach was up doing something when one of his RTOs began yelling that Alpha 1 had reported incoming. As Leach ran for cover, one of the rounds exploded behind him. The concussion picked Leach up and sent him headfirst into the rubble of a demolished house. Because the sh.e.l.l had sunk perhaps a foot into the soft soil before detonating, Leach's only injuries were cuts on the top of his head.

The sh.e.l.lings, which jangled nerves and kept everybody with one ear c.o.c.ked to the north, also produced some memorable near misses. Lieutenant Hieb of Charlie One had to chew out his RTO because the man didn't want to wear his flak jacket. When he did wear it, he left it hanging open because it was so hot. "I want it on and I want it zipped," Hieb finally told him. After some moaning and groaning, the radioman did as he was told. Shortly thereafter, during another barrage, Hieb and his RTO jumped into the same foxhole. As they talked, Hieb noticed a big sh.e.l.l fragment lodged in the zipper of the GI's zipped-up flak jacket. When Hieb pointed it out, the RTO managed a weak grin. Hieb later remarked that "after that I never had to tell him to put his flak vest on. It was the only thing that saved him."

With Force Tiger situated astride the NVA infiltration routes along Jones Creek, Captain Leach said, "I knew G.o.dd.a.m.n well we were going to be hit. It was just a matter of time." Because Lieutenant Colonel Snyder felt that the situation "was perfectly within Leach's capabilities as a very able and tough-minded infantryman," he did not move his battalion command post forward to Nhi Ha. The decision to remain back at Mai Xa Chanh East was, Snyder said, "a matter of personal debate for me," but such a rearward location gave him the freest access to the 3d Marines, upon whom they depended for support. In this instance, Snyder needed bunker material, extra ammunition, and firepower. He got what he needed, thanks to Colonel Hull. As Snyder put it, Hull "raised holy h.e.l.l" whenever his attached Army battalion did not get what it requested through the Marines' support system. "Colonel Hull was a rough cob in some ways, but he was a gentleman of the old school. Since I was now his guy, he was determined that I was going to get my fair share of what resources they had," said Snyder.

The 3d Marines provided the three tanks, as well as four 3.5-inch rocket-launcher teams from BLT 2/4, which would be lethal in the event of an enemy armor attack. The rocket launchers were also effective against ground troops. One team went to Alpha Company and two to Charlie; the fourth was attached to Bravo in Lam Xuan West. The Marines were stunned by how well equipped their Army counterparts were. Each soldier had at least thirty loaded magazines in his defensive position. One Marine joked with the GIs that "a good Marine doesn't need more than seven magazines, at least that's what they say." After the Army grunts shared what they had, the Marine offered to buy some of their claymore mines. Specialist Hannan answered, "I'm not going to sell a Marine a claymore. I'll give it to you. How many do you want?" The Marine grinned and said, "You guys do things right right. If I ever get out of here, I'm going to talk to my congressman!"

The Marines and GIs went into action together after dark on Thursday, 9 May 1968, when elements of the 76th Regiment, 304th NVA Division, crossed the DMZ with the mission of overrunning Force Tiger. The NVA, moving south along Jones Creek, first had to run the gauntlet of firepower brought to bear by Alpha 1. This was the tenth night in a row that the NVA had attempted to slip past Alpha 1, and one of the ARVN advisers at the outpost, 1st Lt. Travis Kirkland, wrote in his diary, "No sleep is the order of the day." By then, the personnel at Alpha 1 had developed a routine with which they orchestrated the ma.s.sive amount of firepower available to them. They used a new type of artillery ammunition that the GIs called Popcorn to start the show, usually with a six-gun salvo. Each round contained approximately 150 golfball-sized bomblets that showered down when a charge split the sh.e.l.l casing in midair. The bomblets, equipped with stabilizer fins to ensure that each landed on its detonator, would bounce up several feet before exploding. The night observation devices at Alpha 1 provided a clear enough view for spotters to see which NVA had packs on. When the first Popcorn sh.e.l.l popped overhead and released its bomblets, the spotters could see the NVA pause in midstep at what must have sounded to them like an illumination round. Instead of a burst of light, however, the enemy was in for a lethal surprise. The nine hundred bomblets in a six-gun salvo, exploding a few at a time at first, quickly reached a shattering crescendo. The screams of the wounded and dying NVA could be heard on Alpha 1.

When the NVA sought cover in the tree lines along Jones Creek, the artillery fire ceased and a USAF AC-47 Spooky gunship lit up the area with multiple flares, then hosed down the woods with six-thousand-round-a-minute miniguns that drove the NVA back into the open paddies where the artillery could harvest them. Killing in such ways and at such distances turned the NVA into dehumanized targets. Once, after a particularly effective pa.s.s by Spooky, Lieutenant Kirkland shouted into his radio, "Do it again, do it again! I can hear 'Em yellin'!" and got in response, "Do it again-that's what my wife told me when I went to Honolulu on R and R."

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder, incredulous that the NVA commanders would subject their units to this firepower night after night, remarked that the result was "absolute slaughter." Once the NVA had been forced out of the tree lines, Spooky would orbit over the ocean to allow the artillery a free hand. The artillery shot as if without counting, although it sometimes had to cease fire because in the hot, humid night air the smoke from parachute flares and white phosphorus sh.e.l.ls became so dense that it concealed the enemy. Lieutenant Kirkland commented that the awesome volume of firepower "would literally light up the sky. I'm told that during this period we controlled more artillery from Alpha 1 than was being fired in the rest of South Vietnam."

The courage of the NVA running this gauntlet was stunning. Most of them made it somehow on 9 May, and at 2108 a Charlie Company LP reported seeing ten to fifteen NVA coming across the paddies toward Force Tiger. The uptight GIs on LP duty were little more than a stone's throw beyond the perimeter. The NVA were two hundred meters away to the northeast. Other NVA appeared to the north. Artillery was fired and the enemy ran northwest. At 2156, another Charlie Tiger LP engaged a squad of NVA with M79 fire as it moved in from the northwest. Two NVA were seen to fall. The enemy had yet to open fire. Their movements appeared to cease as Charlie Company continued placing M79 fire on them, along with the arty. Flares popped overhead, one after the other, to reveal in harsh, black-and-white relief an empty, cratered landscape of burial mounds and fallow rice paddies.

The sightings began again at 2337. This time there were a hundred NVA in view as they maneuvered in from the north, northeast, and northwest, darting from burial mound to burial mound with artillery blasting them.

The movement, whether a probe or the preparation for a major attack, ceased at this point. It began again at 0016 on Friday, 10 May, when another hundred NVA were spotted within 150 meters of Force Tiger. This is it, Captain Leach thought. She's going down tonight. The NVA began lobbing RPGs toward the perimeter. Leach requested gunships and flareships, and instructed his LPs to return as the rate of artillery-delivered HE and ilium increased. By then, Captain Osborn's Alpha Company GIs, deployed along the southern half of the perimeter, could see more NVA crossing the footbridge that spanned Jones Creek and connected Lam Xuan West and Nhi Ha. Leach had not expected an attack from that direction because of Bravo's presence in Lam Xuan West. Because he had no faith in Osborn, Leach positioned him to the south where he would be out of the way. The NVA, however, were coming from both directions. Osborn's LPs soon reported the movement of fire-team-sized groups of NVA, then requested to pull back to the perimeter. When Osborn denied them permission to withdraw, the whispered radio messages from the listening posts grew desperate. "There's gooks all over out here in front of us They're right in front of us They're beside beside us-they're going to get us! Request permission to return to the perimeter!" us-they're going to get us! Request permission to return to the perimeter!"

"Permission denied. Stay out and observe."

"We need to pull back!"

"You stay out there," Captain Osborn said in his best unthinking, I'm-the-boss voice. "If you come in, I'll shoot you myself."

Lieutenant Gibbs, who was the most experienced officer in the company-he had taken charge of Alpha Two-came up on the net and shouted, "What the f.u.c.k? You think the LPs should all get killed? This is it it, they're comin'! Let 'Em come back! What the f.u.c.k's the difference-the NVA are here!"

Shouting himself, Captain Osborn said they could not be sure that it was not merely a probe. Gibbs moved from his bunker to confront Osborn. After a heated, face-to-face exchange, Osborn finally relented. Lieutenant Stull, the company's forward observer, who had been working arty on the NVA at the direction of the terrified LPs, came up with a plan to help them slip back. Stull pa.s.sed the word that on the signal of a star-cl.u.s.ter flare, an eight-inch WP artillery round fused to detonate at two hundred meters above the ground would be fired. Everyone on the perimeter was to close their eyes, duck their heads, and count to fifteen when the flare went up. The idea was that the blazing white phosphorus airburst that was to follow the flare would momentarily rob the NVA of their night vision and allow the LPs to run back in. The plan mostly worked. Except for the men from two LPs, who were shot at when they made their move, the rest were able to sprint to safety. One of the LPs that drew fire, under Specialist Hannan of Alpha Two, scrambled into a crater and, undetected, sweated out the night there as fire from both sides crisscrossed in the darkness right above their heads.

The other unlucky LP was from Alpha One. Its leader, Sp4 Carl F. Green, twenty, of Shady, New York, was killed by an RPG while up and moving. Two of his men, wounded by fragments, were able to crawl in.

Meanwhile, two GIs with the LP from Charlie Two were wounded as they came in, while the leader of another LP reported to Captain Leach that they could not move because there were NVA between themselves and their lines. Leach responded, "Well, okay, then get yourself in a f.u.c.king hole." When radio communications with the LP were lost shortly thereafter, Leach suspected that either the NVA had stumbled across their hiding place or friendly fire had taken them out. At 0103, Spooky 1-2 came on station to add the ripping roar of its miniguns to the cacophony of mortar and artillery fire. The amount of illumination over the battlefield was ma.s.sive. The NVA, who were mostly behind burial mounds, got bogged down, although they continued to fire RPGs and throw Chicoms. The enemy did not expose themselves by firing their AK-47s. Leach had his troops hold off with M16s and M60s and return fire with only mortars, LAWs, and M79s. The lull in visible enemy movement lasted four hours. Presumably, the NVA were using the time to bring additional units into preat-tack positions as each cleared the Alpha 1 gauntlet. Leach, dug in behind his central platoon, Charlie One, was on the horn without pause, placing arty on enemy avenues of approach while maintaining fire on the troops already hunkered down in front of them. "We don't know where the main attack's going to come, so don't give your positions away," Leach told his platoon leaders. "Don't fire from your bunkers. Move out in the trenches. Fire your M79s and LAWs and then move to a new position."

The noisy lull ended at 0535 when the NVA initiated an intense mortar and artillery bombardment of Force Tiger. Lam Xuan West and Mai Xa Chanh East were also sh.e.l.led. Captain Leach was still awake. Except for two hours of sleep each day before sundown, he had been on his feet for almost four days. Leach was kept going not only by adrenaline, but by a bottle of military-issue amphetamines delivered by Snyder and the battalion surgeon, Captain Hildebrand, when they helicoptered forward for a visit soon after Nhi Ha had been secured. The amphetamines were for Leach and his platoon leaders. They gave Leach's voice a quick, irritable edge as, in response to the enemy barrage, he keyed his handset to speak with Cedar Mountain 6. "As soon as this s.h.i.t lifts, you know what's going to happen," Leach said. "You better get Delta Company moving right now. You better get 'Em up here because we've got a battalion of d.i.n.ks out there who are getting ready to hit us."

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder told Delta, his reserve company in Lam Xuan East, to be prepared to move north to Force Tiger on order. Meanwhile, Leach's artillery spotter, Lieutenant Jaquez, realized that their 81mm mortar section was not returning fire. During the afternoon, Jaquez had preregistered their fires on a brushy little island in the paddies that seemed a natural rallying point for the enemy should they try to organize a ground attack. Dodging sh.e.l.l fire, Jaquez ran to the mortar pit and, yelling and screaming, physically dragged the crewmen from their bunker. He had them start firing on that registration point-where, after the battle, an NVA flamethrower was found, its operator killed before he could put the weapon to use.

The enemy sh.e.l.ling lasted twenty minutes. When it lifted, there was a sudden eruption of muzzle flashes and green tracers as the NVA fired their AK-47s for the first time. A 12.7mm machine gun, positioned to the northeast, also opened up. The NVA foot soldiers started darting forward. "The NVA were not reckless," said Lieutenant Hieb of Charlie One, whose platoon manned the center of the line and was under the most fire. "Those guys were good, and they were cunning, and they stayed low. You had a very difficult time picking up their movement." Hieb watched as an RPG scored a direct and disabling hit on the Marine tank a.s.signed to his sector. The tank had not had a chance to fire a single round. Amid all the flashes and shadows, Hieb finally saw the head and shoulder movements of an NVA lying p.r.o.ne while attempting to slide a bangalore torpedo under the perimeter wire. Hieb and his RTO were in a small dugout behind the main line, and the enemy soldier was directly to their front. Hieb did not have any positions in front of him, so he opened up on the man with his CAR 15. Others blazed away at the sapper, and at some point in the confusion Hieb realized that the NVA was lying quite still. He was dead. There were plenty of others to go around, and Hieb's M60 team, positioned to his left front, fired like madmen at the movements. "The barrel got so hot that I could see it glowing red in the night," Hieb remembered. "Somebody burned his hands pretty severely trying to get that barrel off and replace it with a new one. The volume of fire was very, very intense. We just kept firing and firing and firing to keep them away from the wire."

The bunkers at Force Tiger, most of which were large enough for a fire team, were half-submerged and moundlike in appearance. Each had a firing port to the front and an exit to the rear leading into the slit trench that connected each position. Private Harp of Charlie One was asleep in his team's bunker when the ground attack began. He had not meant to go to sleep. Exhausted, he had simply leaned up against the back wall to rest, but had drifted off as soon as the weight was off his feet. Harp never heard the RPG that hit the top of his bunker explode; he simply found himself sprawled on the bunker floor with an egg-sized knot on the back of his head. The pain was throbbing. Dirt fell on his face from the broken sandbags of the overhead cover. No one else was in the bunker. "I could not get my eyes to focus. I was coughing up sand and trying to get sand out of my eyes. I thought we were being overrun." Totally disoriented, Harp climbed out into the slit trench and headed toward where he thought his squad leader, Burns, was firing from. "s.h.i.t was going off all around, ours and theirs." Harp had yet to reach Burns when he saw two NVA coming in fast. They were about fifty feet away. One was carrying a satchel charge, the other an AK-47. "I think I saw light reflecting off a bayonet at the end of it." It was too dark to aim through the peep sight, so Harp looked over the front sight the way one would with a shotgun. "I put the 16 on 'crowd'-automatic-and fired a magazine at them in six-round bursts. Caught the guy with the satchel charge in the chest. He fell back in a hole, and about three seconds later one h.e.l.l of a firecracker went off. The other guy fell just in front of the crater. I think I got him, but I'm not sure. At any rate, he was not coming my way anymore."

Two Marine gunships arrived an hour into the attack and made strafing runs in front of Charlie One and Charlie Three, which was under fire on the right flank. At about the same time, the NVA launched a supporting attack on the left flank. Staff Sergeant Goad, the acting platoon leader in Charlie Two, juggled radios as he tried to shift their fires where needed when not personally handling an M79 grenade launcher. He also fired several LAWs, and mashed down the detonator hooked up to his claymore mines. Goad had prepared his defenses well. He had used an E-tool during the afternoon to dig the claymores into the forward slopes of the burial mounds, then arranged vegetation over the holes as camouflage. When he ran out of claymores, he scooped out additional holes the size of large coffee cans, placed C-4 explosive at the bottom of each with a blasting cap wired to a claymore detonator embedded in the plastique, and then packed the holes with captured enemy munitions and handfuls of metal links and casings from their own expended machine-gun ammunition.

Enemy soldiers were shredded by the explosions.

The NVA set up a recoilless rifle to blast Charlie Two, but the amount of fire it drew prevented its crew from punching off a single sh.e.l.l.

Private Fulcher, in position with two new men, fired his M16 through his bunker aperture-and saw an RPG screaming toward him trailing a rooster tail of sparks that made him think of a giant bottle rocket. Luckily, the RPG hit the sandbags just three inches below the aperture. Meanwhile, the Marine tank with Charlie Two rolled into a firing position that put its 90mm main gun directly over Fulcher's bunker. When the tank fired its first earsplitting, earthshaking round, Fulcher and the two replacements thought they'd been hit by the enemy artillery.

They dropped to their guts so fast that their helmets bounced off. Shaking off the shock, Fulcher realized what had happened and stuck his head out of the dugout. "Back up," he screamed at the tank commander. "You're going to blow us up before you blow up the gooks!" Fulcher grabbed the detonator for his own half-dozen camouflaged mines. He had memorized which cord ran to which claymore, but when he squeezed the detonator he got no response. Furious that he had a dud, he plugged in the next wire and mashed down the detonator again. Nothing. Fulcher frantically tried every wire, but not a single claymore detonated. He couldn't figure out what was wrong. After the battle, he discovered that the tank's first shot, a canister round, had chewed up all his claymore wires.

On Charlie Three's side, where there were the fewest enemy, Sergeant Coulthard spotted an NVA about twenty meters away. The man just barely broke the natural outline of things, and he moved forward only when each flare died as it hit the ground. Lieutenant Musser couldn't see what Coulthard was pointing at, so Coulthard finally took aim in the flarelight with his M16, and started squeezing off shots at the man. Musser told him he was giving away their position, and to throw hand grenades instead. Coulthard, throwing frags, didn't know it yet, but he'd already killed the NVA with a round through the top of his collarbone. The body lay in the shadows, wearing an ammo vest, its grip loosened on its folding-stock AK-47.

Captain Leach had requested a backhoe with which to construct tank emplacements, but no engineer support had been made available. Without parapets, the tanks were sitting ducks. The tank parked beside Leach's CP had already been disabled by a rocket-propelled grenade. Leach was talking with his other tank commander, the one supporting Charlie Two, when the Marine suddenly exclaimed, "I'm starting to take fire-"

The tank was. .h.i.t by an RPG at that instant.

The bruised and concussed crews of both knocked-out tanks popped their hatches and jumped down in the slit trench between the bunkers. Leach was certain that a lone NVA was going to sprint through their lines to reach the abandoned tank beside his CP, so while he kept busy with a radio in each hand he told his RTOs, "Some sonofab.i.t.c.h is going to climb up on that tank and start hosin' us down with the .50-cal. Don't you let anybody get up there!"

Captain Leach was also concerned about the fireworks to his rear where Alpha was dug in, but he could not raise Captain Osborn on the radio. "Not once did Osborn get on the radio, so I had no idea what was going on over there," recalled Leach. What was happening along Alpha's side of the perimeter was the same as on Charlie Tiger's, only with fewer NVA involved. One of the guys in Sergeant Stone's bunker fired his M16 on automatic at the bobbing figures before them, only to have an RPG explode nearby. Stone shouted at the rifleman, "Jesus, don't shoot on automatic-they think we're a machine-gun position!" Everyone had ducked down in antic.i.p.ation of the next RPG, except for Pfc. Jesse Alston, who kept raising his head to look out the firing aperture. "Jesse, stay down, stay down!" Stone shouted. But the man put his head up again just as the next RPG exploded directly in front of the bunker. Alston cried out as he fell back. Stone hunted around in the darkened bunker for a battle dressing, and as he bandaged the wound on the side of Alston's head he realized that it was not too serious. It was bad enough, though, that the shook-up Alston volunteered to stay down and reload ammo magazines for the rest of the fight.

Surprisingly, the NVA continued pressing their attack even after the sun rose. At 0700, a Helix FAC came on station, followed in about twenty minutes by two A-4 Skyhawks from Marine Attack Squadron 121. Captain Leach told the FAC to bring in the air strikes immediately. When the FAC asked, "Well, how close do you want 'Em?" Leach answered, "I want 'Em about thirty meters from the perimeter. Do you see this tank here? I want you to use this tank as a reference point...."

One of the Skyhawks executed a nonfiring pa.s.s over the target area and took AK-47 fire and one hit.

"That was perfect," Leach told the FAC.

The next low-level pa.s.s was to deliver the five-hundred-pound snake-eye bombs. "Get everyone down in their holes," Leach said when he got his platoon leaders on the horn. "Get under the overhead cover. Don't worry about what's on the G.o.dd.a.m.ned perimeter-we got it comin' in!" Leach stunned his command group when he said with deadly seriousness, "Guys, I'm going to say a little prayer right now," and then dropped to his knees on the bunker floor. "It's time to ask for help from above."

The first Skyhawk, taking hits, pulled out of its pa.s.s in a skyward roar as the high-drag bombs seemed to float toward the NVA behind the burial mounds. The strike was bunker-shaking perfection. "They put 'Em right on the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Leach said. "It was beautiful. It was just death. The s.h.i.t was flying right over us!" There was a definite lull in the NVA fire as the two Skyhawks continued to place their ordnance on target. Then, at 0740, some of the enemy began to pull back to the north. The medic in Leach's bunker suddenly shouted, "Jesus Christ, look at 'Em run!" Private Harp was able to sight his M16 on three NVA who had their backs to where he stood in the slit trench. "The first one was running about a hundred meters from me. I fired once. He fell and never got up." The other two realized they'd been spotted and started zigzagging as they ran on. "I dropped the second one with two shots. I fired five times at the third guy. He fell, holding his arm, but got up again and threw or dropped his weapon as he got behind a grave. He got away."

Captain Leach was so excited that he put down his radio for the first time since the attack started and raised his captured AK-47. He got off only a few bursts before some shook-up troops, who thought at first that an NVA had gotten inside the lines, shouted at him to knock it off.

On Alpha's side, Sergeant Stone joined a grenadier who was lobbing sh.e.l.ls at the retreating NVA from the slit trench. Stone opened up with his M16, but he was so tired that he kept nodding off between bursts. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Gibbs, the de facto company commander, instructed Specialist Hannan to bring his stranded LP in from the crater where they had been cut off during the battle. Hannan caught a bullet in the radio on his back while running in.

The LP from Charlie Tiger with which contact had been lost and that Leach feared had been overrun also made it back at about the same time. "I was awestruck," remembered Leach. "I don't know how those kids survived, but I was never so G.o.dd.a.m.ned happy in my life as I was when I saw those three come marching back in." The LP leader still had a grip around the hand grenade he had intended to throw when he'd first heard the NVA coming eight hours before. He had pulled the pin at the sound of movement, but when he saw how many NVA were out there he'd realized it would be suicide to give away his position by lobbing the frag. Unfortunately, he had dropped the pin and could not find it. "He had to hold the spoon down on the frag all f.u.c.king night," one trooper explained. "That morning, when they finally came back in, his hand had locked around the frag so he could not let go. It took two men to pry his fingers loose and throw the d.a.m.n thing."

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder considered the NVA attack to be "poorly planned," an appraisal confirmed at 0742 when, in the middle of the retreat from Nhi Ha, the NVA launched a two-platoon effort against Captain Corrigan's Bravo Company in Lam Xuan West. Barracuda destroyed the attack at a range of thirty meters with automatic rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, rockets, claymores, a recoilless rifle, mortars, artillery, and a helicopter gunship. Attacking an entrenched and fully alerted position after sunrise was madness. Snyder believed that the NVA units had been committed behind schedule because of the delay in getting past Alpha 1. The enemy depended on well-rehea.r.s.ed battle plans. Because they lacked a sophisticated communications system, Snyder said, "Once anything went wrong, there was no way they could control what was happening, other than shouting at one another. So people would come in and charge, and once you disrupted the attack they didn't know what to do. They would just lay there right around the perimeter and we'd flush them out in the morning."

The NVA completed their retreat under the cover of mortar fire. At 1055, the medevacs began landing for The Gimlets' one KIA and thirty WIA. Captain Leach saw a black grunt heading for the dust-off with a big bandage on the side of his face. Before Leach could give the man a few words of encouragement, the GI approached him and asked, "Are you okay, sir?" Leach, feeling humble and almost overwhelmed with emotion, grabbed the man's arm and said, "We're going to get you out of here right away."1 Amid sh.e.l.l fire, Captain Humphries and Delta Company humped into Force Tiger before noon, policing up two NVA from spiderholes along the way. Apparently relieved to be alive, the two enemy soldiers were laughing as they were led into the perimeter. Leach made sure that they were helicoptered out quickly because he knew there were troops who would have summarily executed them. That was the angry mood of the moment. Leach had ice water in his veins when it came to the bushwhacking guerrillas they chased down south, but he put his foot down when it came to mistreating NVA regulars who had fought the way these had. "These guys are soldiers, and they're going to be treated like soldiers," he told his men. "They're G.o.dd.a.m.n good soldiers."

While the perimeter sweep was being organized, Leach stormed over to Captain Osborn's command post. "I was taking Benzedrine," Leach remembered. "That s.h.i.t works on you. I was a little crazy by then." Leach confronted Osborn in a low, angry whisper. "Why weren't you on the comin' radio?" Then he exploded in a booming rage. "What the f.u.c.k, you sonofab.i.t.c.h-you weren't on the radio all night! What the f.u.c.k's the matter with you?"

Osborn just gave Leach a blank stare.

The perimeter sweep commenced at 1300. Killing NVA stragglers along the way, the grunts had pushed out two hundred meters in two hours when the NVA rear guard opened fire from the tree lines to the northwest along Jones Creek. Air strikes were called in. Enemy sh.e.l.ling began at dusk, resulting in three injuries and the last medevacs of the day.

During the night, Lieutenant Stull, the Alpha Company FO, overheard some angry conversations about the trooper killed the night before on LP. "That was the ball-buster," said Stull. "That was the one that made everybody crazy." The grunts could not fathom why the LP had not been immediately pulled back when it had NVA crawling all over it. Stull, who enjoyed a pretty good rapport with the men, interrupted one group to ask, "What's the problem?" The answer: "Well, we got somebody that needs to be taken out."

"Whaddya mean 'taken out'?" Stull asked.

"Well, you know..."

Lieutenant Stull immediately approached Sergeant d.i.c.kerson of Alpha Two. "What the h.e.l.l's going on? They're talking about fragging somebody! Is it me?"

"Nan, nan, nan, you're okay. You're cool," said d.i.c.kerson.

"h.e.l.l, if it's me, I'll start walking home right now. You guys don't have to frag my a.s.s!"

Sergeant d.i.c.kerson repeated that Stull was not the target. It was Captain Osborn. d.i.c.kerson, a career man with seven years in uniform, was as angry and burned out as his grunts, and he told Stull that the company headquarters and each platoon were going to provide a GI armed with a grenade. One of the four grenades was going to be defused and the pile jumbled so that the men would not know which one was inactive when they picked the frags back up. All four were to roll their grenades into the company commander's bunker. If one of them had pangs of guilt afterward, he could rationalize that he had tossed the defused grenade.

"Hey, that's not where it's at," Stull protested. "Being stupid like the captain is one thing. Being vindictive is another. Maybe we should try to cool the guys down."

Sergeant d.i.c.kerson disagreed. "Well, how many motherf.u.c.kers is he going to kill before his number comes up?"

The idea of using a captured AK-47 on Captain Osborn was also discussed. Some of the grunts went directly to Lieutenant Gibbs, who was the most respected officer in the company. Gibbs, who had no doubt that they meant what they said, told them to cool it, that he would handle it. Gibbs called Lieutenant Colonel Snyder and reported that Osborn was "not going to live very long," and added that "if his men don't kill him, I think I will." Snyder cut him off. "Lieutenant, stop talking that way," he snapped.

The battle with the NVA was not over yet. Artillery had been fired all night long as enemy platoons, throwing grenades, had moved around the perimeter to recover casualties from the night before. On the morning of Sunday, 11 May 1968, the sweep around Force Tiger commenced again. Staff Sergeant Goad of Charlie Two bent over to pull an AK-47 from a hole in which he had found several apparently dead enemy soldiers. The weapon discharged when he pulled on it. Goad had been holding the barrel with his right hand. His arm jerked violently away as the shot tore t