The Magnificent Bastards Part 9

Privates Fulcher and Fletcher of Charlie Two were best friends. They were redheaded country boys who could have pa.s.sed for brothers. Fulcher was from Iowa, and Fletcher from Arkansas. They were both draftees, and both were awarded the BSMv for their actions at Nhi Ha. When the word was pa.s.sed to pull back with their wounded, Fulcher looked at his buddy and said, "Doug, I'm not leaving Rich out there."

Private First Cla.s.s Richard M. Gallery was dead, but Fletcher knew just what his buddy was feeling. "Let's go get him," he replied.

Rich Gallery was lying about twenty-five meters from the cover of their three-sided hootch. He had apparently been hit in the opening moments of the ambush. He was lying on his back, propped up by his rucksack. His helmet had been knocked off and his right arm was flung across his chest. Fulcher and Fletcher squatted down to cover themselves with a couple of M16 bursts, then they rushed to Gallery. Fletcher handed his M16 to Fulcher and knelt down to unstrap Gallery's pack so they wouldn't have to carry that, too. Gallery had been shot right below the hollow in his throat.

Just as Fletcher got the dead man's pack off, the NVA opened fire on them. Both of the M16s in Fulcher's hands were set on automatic and, firing them at the same time, he squeezed off both magazines. He then reached down to grab Gallery's right arm and help Fletcher hustle him back-and was shocked to realize how stiff the arm was. It was frozen in position across Gallery's chest. It was Fulcher's first experience with rigor mortis, and he thought with horrified wonderment that if he'd had the strength he could carry Gallery's body like a bucket, using the arm as a handle.

When the crater full of Charlie Two survivors finally made it to safety, it was time for everyone to pull out. The level of NVA fire had decreased, but Staff Sergeant Goad and Sergeant Starr of Charlie Three kept blasting away to cover the men around them who were moving back one at a time. Johnny Miller and George Cruse were sprawled in the open in front of the mound, and Sergeant Coulthard argued with Goad. "We can't go-John and George are still out there!" Coulthard felt like a coward for not trying to get them. Goad said they were dead, and when Coulthard asked if he was sure, Goad glared at him and snapped, "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, they are are dead-and we're pullin' out! Move out!" dead-and we're pullin' out! Move out!"

In case everyone had not gotten the word, Goad, the de facto platoon leader, bellowed one more time that they were pulling back. The senior NCO who was the platoon leader on paper suddenly appeared, jumping over some bushes with several other grunts. They were lucky they did not get shot in the confusion. No one at the mound had heard any fire all afternoon from the position on the left where it turned out the sergeant had gone to ground. Goad had a.s.sumed he was dead. The platoon was unexcited about his resurrection, given that the sergeant was an overweight, disagreeable, pa.s.sed-over lifer who was always talking about how much tougher Korea had been than this little war. The sergeant seemed to be just going through the motions until he could retire, and the grunts never forgot that during an earlier supply shortage in the bush he had refused to share his rations.

After taking cover in the depression behind the mound, the sergeant barked at Sp4 Thomas J. Bradford, one of the men who'd come back with him, "Where the h.e.l.l's your rucksack?"

"I left it when we pulled back," said Bradford.

"Well, G.o.dd.a.m.nit, go back and get it!"

The NVA had ceased firing, but when Bradford got up, they cut loose, hitting him in the chest. Killed instantly, he fell backward almost atop the men in the depression. "It was so sad," recalled Coulthard. "It was so stupid, so stupid Bradford getting killed." Coulthard was dumbstruck and enraged that the sergeant had ordered the kid on such a fool's errand. "What the h.e.l.l? He didn't give a s.h.i.t about the ruck or anything else. He just said it to act like he was in charge again, like there was some semblance of something going on."

Private First Cla.s.s Wayne Crist moved out with Bradford's body, and Goad shouldered Pierre Sullivan's body as they leapfrogged back toward Charlie One. Starr was the last to pull back from the mound after covering Goad with his M60. Starr got out of there at a run. Joining the tail end of the Charlie Tiger column, Lieutenant Jaquez requested max artillery fire on Nhi Ha when they cleared the ville. The FO was worried about an NY A counterattack as they straggled away. Enemy artillery was firing again, but no one was. .h.i.t as they loaded the wounded and dead into the Otters that had come up behind them.

Alpha Two and Three pulled back on the right flank.

Charlie Tiger conducted a tense, under-fire retrograde through Delta One and Three, which had come up behind them, then the Otters rolled back to the battalion aid station in Mai Xa Chanh East. Medevacs landed there, their blades kicking up sandstorms. In addition to Barracuda's one dead and six wounded, Charlie Tiger had eleven dead and eight wounded. It had been a bad day, made no better by the official claim of only fifteen enemy kills. What really hurt was that the bodies of Guthrie, Cruse, and Miller had been left behind.

Meanwhile, Delta One had secured a laager site approximately six hundred meters east of Nhi Ha in what had once been a hamlet. The site was elevated two to three feet above the surrounding rice paddies, so the fields of fire were excellent. By 1800, Alpha Annihilator and the remnants of Charlie Tiger joined up there to form a joint perimeter with Black Death. Barracuda consolidated in the vicinity of Lam Xuan West. Artillery continued to pound Nhi Ha, and Lieutenant Smith of Alpha Two commented that everyone dug deep holes because "they figured it was going to be a wild night. The guys were very much on their toes. They knew exactly where the next hole was, and they knew where their lines of fire were because we went over them three times. I strategically placed my M60 and interlocked our fires, and I paced off our positions. If I had to crawl somewhere in the pitch black I wanted to know exactly where it was."

"We couldn't believe what had happened," recalled Sergeant Coulthard. "We were worn out, just flat worn out. Scared to death. I wanted Captain Leach there bad. The feeling among us was that if he had been there, this wouldn't have happened."

Captain Leach, on his way to Australia on R and R, was back at the battalion rear in the main Americal Division base camp at Chu Lai. He was in a transient barracks when a trooper came from the orderly room to wake him. The trooper said that Charlie Tiger had been in heavy contact at a place called Nhi Ha.

"What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?" Leach exclaimed as he sprang up.

"Sir, they just got the s.h.i.t kicked out of them."

Captain Leach found the battalion's acting sergeant major, who was his former first sergeant. "Jesus Christ, what happened?" he asked. When the former Charlie Tiger topkick told Leach about Lieutenant Guthrie, which was a real blow, the two of them went off and had four or five beers together. Then Leach got his gear organized and radioed ahead to inform the battalion commander that he was canceling his R and R and would come out on the first available helicopter in the morning.

Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds

LIEUTENANT C COLONEL W WEISE, CO, BLT 2/4: "AT NO TIME during the period 30 April through 2 May was the 320th NVA Division blocked from the north. BLT 2/4 was not reinforced during the battle, but the enemy continued to reinforce his units and to replace his casualties. Thus, the enemy became stronger while BLT 2/4 became weaker from casualties and exhaustion." during the period 30 April through 2 May was the 320th NVA Division blocked from the north. BLT 2/4 was not reinforced during the battle, but the enemy continued to reinforce his units and to replace his casualties. Thus, the enemy became stronger while BLT 2/4 became weaker from casualties and exhaustion."

Less than ninety minutes after E and H BLT 2/4 had been forced back from Dinh To with heavy casualties on 2 May 1968, F and G BLT 2/4 were advancing from Dai Do for the next a.s.sault. The order had come from Colonel Hull, CO, 3d Marines, who was himself responding to instructions from division. BLT 2/4 was to seize Dinh To and then Thuong Do, which sat on the eastern bank of the tributary that drained into the Bo Dieu River. An ARVN mechanized infantry battalion in position near Dong Lai, opposite Dai Do, was to simultaneously advance up the western bank of the creek to seize Thuong Nghia, which was opposite Thuong Do. The tributary was to serve as the boundary between BLT 2/4 and the ARVN. It was a simple, straightforward plan, but an unrealistic one. The number of NVA on the battlefield was simply overwhelming.

Lieutenant Colonel Weise, CO, BLT 2/4: "We were in no condition for another a.s.sault, and I had so informed Colonel Hull. When the a.s.sault commenced, I moved close to the forward elements to let my exhausted Marines know I would be with them when the bullets started to fly. I tried to encourage them and talk to them. I told them I was very proud of what they were doing."

Disaster

AT 1538 1538 ON ON 2 M 2 MAY 1968, 1968, AN AERIAL OBSERVER IN A LIGHT AN AERIAL OBSERVER IN A LIGHT-weight, single-engine Birddog reported movement in the clearing between Dinh To and Thuong Do. The aerial observer spoke with Lieutenant Hilton, the forward air controller on the ground with BLT 2/4. Hilton confirmed that there were no Marine elements that far north ("... anything running across that clearing is fair game"). As the aerial observer marked targets for air strikes with white phosphorus rockets, his adrenaline was up. "We got lots of 'Em in there," the observer shouted excitedly. "There's a beaucoup bunch of people moving out of Dinh To. They're moving across to the north and northeast. There's maybe hundreds of 'Em!"

The aerial observer also reported seeing litter teams with casualties. Lieutenant Hilton relayed the information to Weise. The battalion commander was excited, too: "Okay, okay, we got 'Em on the run! We got 'Em on the run!"

Colonel Weise smells blood, thought Hilton. Weise and his command group were at the forward edge of Dai Do with Golf Company. Weise, in fact, had just been briefing Captain Vargas, the company commander, about their upcoming a.s.sault when the aerial observer came up on the net. They too could see figures in the open fields, as well as the Phantoms and Skyhawks dropping napalm and bombs onto them. The aerial observer reported that those NVA not being chopped up in the open were cut off in the northwestern edge of Dinh To. Artillery blocked their escape routes. Some of the NVA coming out of Dinh To were within range of Golf Company in Dai Do. Weise later wrote that the most forward Marines "had the morale boosting experience of squeezing off carefully aimed shots and watching the enemy drop. I bet the reenlistment rate in the 320th NVA Division dropped after Dai Do."

Weise instructed Major Warren, his S3, to remain in Dai Do and take charge of the perimeter manned by the remnants of E and H Companies. Their other decimated company, B/1/ 3, was to remain in An Lac to secure the medevac and resupply points on the Bo Dieu River. The only elements still capable of mounting the a.s.sault were F and G Companies, and Weise planned to use both. Weise planned to accompany Golf Company. There were fifty-four Marines left in Golf, and as Weise saddled up with them he noted that, with the exception of grenadiers and machine gunners, almost all were carrying AK-47s. Weise saw only one M16; it was carried by Captain Vargas. The only other functioning M16 was carried by Weise himself. Nevertheless, Weise later wrote that this undermanned, badly equipped company went into the a.s.sault as "a viable, spirited fighting outfit despite its two-day ordeal. Captain Vargas knew his men well, and they knew and respected him for his outstanding competence as a combat leader and his compa.s.sion. I knew that I could depend on him and Golf Company."

Weise did not place the same trust in Captain Butler, whose Foxtrot Company, with about eighty men, was the most able-bodied in the battalion. Foxtrot had been rejoined about thirty minutes before the air strikes by its executive officer, weapons platoon, and one of its three rifle platoons. These elements had previously been outposted to My Loc on the Cua Viet River. Finally released from regimental control, they had been brought forward by amtracs to the company position in Dong Huan, at which time Foxtrot moved out for Dai Do. Upon reaching the hamlet, Foxtrot joined Golf for the a.s.sault on Dinh To.

The a.s.sault was a complete and b.l.o.o.d.y failure. Weise blamed both higher headquarters and Butler for the debacle. Golf Company, Weise explained, was to have led the attack and Foxtrot was to follow closely behind in reserve. When Golf ran up against the NVA who the aerial observer said were still in Dinh To, the stronger Foxtrot was to move forward, pa.s.s through Golf, and press the attack. Weise wrote that he chose to place his command group directly behind Vargas and ahead of Foxtrot "because I wanted to be in position to decide exactly when to commit Foxtrot, and because my presence up front seemed to boost the morale of my exhausted battalion."

In actuality, when the a.s.sault made contact with the NVA, Foxtrot was not behind Golf in Dinh To, but in the open fields east of the hamlet. A map that Weise later prepared to explain the situation shows Foxtrot straying out of Dinh To and into the open, and then bogging down there under fire while Golf continued forward unaware that it had no reserve and no rear security. The map shows Golf encountering the NVA far in advance of Foxtrot. But the map is inaccurate. Foxtrot never strayed out of position behind Golf because Foxtrot was never behind Golf to begin with. Golf and Foxtrot went into the a.s.sault on line, with Golf in the hamlet and Foxtrot in the open, and they were still side by side when the shooting started. Foxtrot was abreast of Golf and not in reserve, as Weise said it should have been, because that was what Foxtrot understood its mission to be. Lieutenant McAdams of Foxtrot One later wrote that before the attack: Captain Butler called the platoon commanders together to issue his order. Butler said that Foxtrot was to move parallel with Golf in a line formation. We were to keep just outside the village and when Golf made contact Foxtrot was to wheel in a counterclockwise motion just beyond Golf's point of contact and envelop the enemy. We did not move in trace of Golf and the orders I received did not hint of that maneuver being part of Foxtrot's role. After we were through Dai Do and somewhere along Dinh To or Thuong Do, and very much out in the open on Golf's right flank, the NVA opened up with very heavy fire. The ground seemed to be dancing with bullets and explosions.

Captain Butler, whose military career did not survive this incident, later contended (without visible bitterness) that he was following Weise's orders when he advanced with Foxtrot through the fields east of Dinh To. Such an explanation suggests that Weise wanted Foxtrot to prevent Golf from being outflanked in Dinh To (as E and H Companies had been in the previous attack), or that Weise had overestimated the damage done to the NVA in the preattack turkey shoot, and had spread his companies out so as to roll up as many of the supposedly disorganized foe as possible. As Hilton said, Weise was smelling blood.

Weise rejected Butler's explanation. The scheme of maneuver suggested by Butler's version of his orders would have left Weise no reserve and thus no flexibility. He said he would never have placed any Marines east of Dinh To because they had already learned the hard way that the area was under enemy observation and subject to preplanned machine-gun, mortar, and artillery fire. Weise explained instead that Butler had completely misunderstood his orders.1 Furthermore, Weise wrote, "I had lost confidence in Butler's ability to control his company in a firefight because of his previous performance." After Dinh To, Weise said he concluded that no matter how intelligent and motivated Butler was, the amiable young captain ultimately lacked self-confidence and was "overawed-by difficult a.s.signments. Close combat is a terrible, shocking experience. No one knows how he will react until it happens, and I fully expected to have to command Butler's company myself when the s.h.i.t hit the fan in Dinh To." Furthermore, Weise wrote, "I had lost confidence in Butler's ability to control his company in a firefight because of his previous performance." After Dinh To, Weise said he concluded that no matter how intelligent and motivated Butler was, the amiable young captain ultimately lacked self-confidence and was "overawed-by difficult a.s.signments. Close combat is a terrible, shocking experience. No one knows how he will react until it happens, and I fully expected to have to command Butler's company myself when the s.h.i.t hit the fan in Dinh To."

The attack kicked off at 1550. The hedgerows and surviving vegetation in Dinh To were thicker and more concealing than was thoroughly blown-away, wide-open Dai Do. As Golf Company started across the clearing between the two hamlets, the Marines reconned by fire with automatic weapons and M79s. Foxtrot did the same as it advanced on the burial mounds in the open fields on Golf's right flank. Both companies were moving fast, and Lieutenant Hilton commented that, to psyche themselves up, they went in "yelling and screaming, like, 'Go, go, go! Get 'Em! Uh-rah!' I mean it sounded like a football stadium. It was ma.s.sive. It rumbled. We knew we'd got 'Em. We were going to finish 'Em off. We were going to roll 'Em up. But it was a trap. They set a trap and they let us get into it."

The gra.s.s that the Foxtrot Company Marines advanced through was above their knees, and dead NVA lay in it. One of the first to see the live NVA was HM2 Roger D. Pittman, a corpsman, who noticed them as they moved off a little elevated island in the fields about two hundred meters ahead on the right flank. There was a paG.o.da on the island, which was dense with vegetation and trees. For an instant Pittman thought that the figures were Marines, but he quickly realized that they wore neither helmets nor flak jackets. Their fatigues were khaki-colored. The seven or eight NVA were running east along a dike at the base of the island. Pittman stopped in his tracks and shouted, "What is that? Look at that, look at that! Get 'Em, get 'Em!" get 'Em!"

The a.s.sault was moving fast, and no one paid attention to him. Doc Pittman, suited up in helmet and flak jacket, humped a lot of canteens and medical gear, but his only weapon was an Ml carbine, and he carried only a few straight clips and three or four more banana clips with tracers. The NVA were moving out of the carbine's range, so he backed up into the tree line at the edge of Dai Do and pa.s.sed the word that a sniper team was needed. In a few moments a sniper came up and Pittman pointed out the NVA, who by then had reached an elevated trail and were running north on it, away from the Marines. They were totally exposed.

As the sniper took aim, they were shocked by a sudden and sustained blaze of NVA fire from the little island and the burial mounds in the gra.s.s. Doc Pittman scrambled into a bombed-out house that had no roof, no south wall, and only remnants of the other walls. There was a broken-up table on the floor with him. There was a doorway in the east wall, and a Marine charged through it, desperately looking for cover. "His eyes were as big as eggs," recalled Pittman. The Marine accidentally discharged his M16 as he ran in, and a long burst kicked up dirt across the floor. The last round impacted with a blur right in front of Pittman's face. The Marine threw himself down behind the south foundation of the house. Orders were being shouted to keep the a.s.sault going, and Pittman rose up just as five Marines rushed into the field from the tree line directly in front of him. His eyes stayed on those men. "There were five, then there were two-then there were none. They fell like rag dolls. I didn't want to believe what I'd seen. I was near panic. The cracking noise of AK-47s was constant and deafening, and dirt, stucco, and dust filled the air around me. I hugged the floor, holding my breath and waiting to die."

Moving forward with his M79 at the ready, Pfc. Doug "Digger" Light of Foxtrot Two also spotted NVA a moment before the shooting began. There were maybe fifteen of them standing in the tall gra.s.s, and in the instant that the a.s.sault line got close enough for the Marines and NVA to recognize each other, Light could have sworn that one of them smiled at them. He wondered if the NVA were sh.e.l.l-shocked or on opium. The enemy troops dropped down in the gra.s.s, and AK-47 fire seemed to erupt from every direction. The Marines fired back even as they sought cover, and Light got off his first grenade round before jumping behind a burial mound. The enemy were only forty meters away.

The firefight began at 1600, and in the initial shock wave what sounded like a round from a captured M79 landed directly to the right of Lieutenant McAdams of Foxtrot One. His platoon was forward on the left flank, with Foxtrot Two on the right. Foxtrot Three was in reserve. McAdams accidentally dropped his .45 as he ducked behind a burial mound on his left. The enemy soldier had him in his sights. There was another explosion almost on top of where McAdams had gone down, and when he rolled left to another spot of cover, he heard yet another explosion to his right. He moved left again. McAdams didn't realize it yet, but he'd been superficially wounded in his right shoulder, right shin, and left elbow.

Lieutenant McAdams's radioman, Mongoose Tyrell, was also wounded immediately by either RPG fragments or the same captured M79 that got the lieutenant. Tyrell never knew exactly what happened. He never heard the explosion that nailed him. One moment he'd been walking forward, and the next thing he knew he was drifting back from a warm, floating euphoria. He realized then that he was on the ground and that the whole world seemed to be firing at them. He was not in any pain, although he was wounded in his legs, arms, and face. He was simply numb. He couldn't open his right eye, and blood was rushing out as if from bad razor cuts. The corpsman who crawled up to bandage his worst wound, which was in his right calf, told him to get back to the medevac point. Tyrell unshouldered his radio and gave it to a Marine named Bing-ham with instructions to stick with the lieutenant. Tyrell started back without a weapon: A good-sized chunk of metal had hit the b.u.t.t of his M16 and caused it to jam.

The acting platoon sergeant, LCpl. Ronald J. Dean-who had thumbed a ride to the front in an Otter the day before despite the jungle rot on his feet that had gotten him a light-duty vacation in the battalion rear-was also dropped in the opening volley. Dean was. .h.i.t so hard that it felt as though he did a backward flip. It was as though a sledgehammer had been swung between his legs. He had, in fact, caught sh.e.l.l fragments in his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and across his stomach. When he caught his breath, Dean turned to the grunt lying beside him and said, "I got a little peter anyway-what's it look like now?" The Marine just shook his head, and Dean's stomach dropped.

Lance Corporal Dean, age twenty-two, was from Newnan, Georgia, where his father worked in a cotton mill. Having served with C/1/3 near Da Nang in 1965-66, he volunteered for a second tour because he was tinkering with the idea of a military career. He was a natural-born rifleman, but he was still only a lance corporal because of numerous reductions in rank. He drank too much in the rear, and was a hothead who loved to fight.

"We got into a big fistfight when he first got there," recalled Tyrell. "Dean was a wild man, but a wonderful guy."

Dean was bleeding badly, but there was no time to bandage his wounds. Adrenaline masked the pain. He got to his feet. The only way to survive was to close with the NVA and kill them. Dean began firing his M14 toward the burial mounds ahead of them and to their left. He grabbed Marines who were lying p.r.o.ne behind cover and shouted, "Let's go! If we sit out in the open, h.e.l.l, everybody's going to die!"

Lance Corporal Dean was running forward when another explosion knocked him down, peppering his legs with fragments. Dean got back up and kept moving forward. Lieutenant McAdams was also back on his feet, directing the platoon's wheeling maneuver into the tree line running along the left flank. Golf Company was on the other side of the trees. McAdams and Dean reached the cover there with about fifteen other Marines, including a machine gunner and grenadier, and they took up firing positions that faced the open field they had just left. At a range of about a hundred meters, they could see NVA bobbing up from behind burial mounds to fire on Foxtrot Two on the far right flank. They opened up on those NVA, but when they fired a LAW the backblast marked them, and still more enemy soldiers blazed away at them from the left flank.

Golf Two advanced through Dinh To on the right and Golf One on the left. Golf Three was in reserve. By the time Foxtrot became engaged, Lieutenant Morgan of Golf Two had experienced four jams with his M16 as they reconned by fire through the thickly vegetated hamlet. He had discarded his fouled-up M16 and was going forward with .45 pistol in hand when Foxtrot One, on the other side of the trees to his right, began hollering for help with recovering casualties.

The momentum of Golf Company's a.s.sault died then and there as Lieutenant Morgan sent his machine-gun team and several riflemen to help Foxtrot. One of the riflemen was Lance Corporal Parkins, who had picked up an M16, a weapon he hated, to replace the M14 for which he had run out of ammo. Parkins was moving when several NVA with AK-47s popped into view in the brush in front of him. They were not looking in Parkins's direction, and he fired at them from the hip. The M16 jammed after the first shot. When Parkins looked down to pull back the bolt, he was knocked off his feet as at least one of the enemy soldiers turned toward him and returned the fire. It felt as though a red-hot poker had been rammed into his left shin. The bone was shattered. Parkins, lying p.r.o.ne, quickly pulled out the .45 he had scrounged up that morning along with two clips, and screamed for a corpsman.

The Marines in the machine-gun team were also wounded, and as the casualties were dragged rearward, things got chaotic. The NVA opened fire from the hedgerows to the front, and when Marines with AK-47s returned the fire, other Marines who couldn't see who was doing the shooting got pretty shook up. It sounded as though the enemy was right there in the bushes with them. Lieutenant Morgan ushered the ten survivors from his platoon into a crater on the left. It was a big crater, probably the result of a five-hundred-pound bomb. They were joined there by Staff Sergeant Wade and Golf One, which had pulled in from the left flank. The NVA fire got heavier, and the Marines expended a great volume of M60 and M79 ammunition in return, without visible effect, while those men who still had M16s kept their heads down and tried to clear jams.

When an enemy soldier stood up about fifteen meters in front of Captain Butler, it was his one and only look at the NVA who had his command group pinned down. The man had an RPG over his shoulder. He had totally disregarded cover, so focused was he on finding a target, but he was. .h.i.t before he could fire. When the NVA fell backward, Butler's senior corpsman, who like Butler had his eyes a fraction of an inch higher than their paddy dike, managed a grin and said, "You know, Skipper, these guys are getting real personal."

Having found cover behind a burial mound, SSgt. Richard L. Bartlow, the commander of Foxtrot Two-which was pinned down in the high gra.s.s on the right flank of the battlefield-put his M79 into action. Bartlow was a cold, stern, and inflexible NCO, respected but disliked by his grunts. Bartlow was joined by Digger Light, who also carried a grenade launcher, and by a pair of tough Mexican-American Marines from California-Ernesto Tanabe and Tom Alvarado. Bartlow kept rising up to fire from the same spot, and while Light was down reloading, fell back with a neat little hole between his eyes. He died instantly. Alvarado was. .h.i.t next. He was coming up to fire his M16 when a shot slammed into his helmet, dropping him like a stone. He was only unconscious, though. The bullet had gone in the front of his helmet and skidded around the inside of the steel pot to punch out the back without even scratching him. Alvarado picked his M16 back up as soon as he came around, but when he started shooting again a round hit the weapon's hand guard, knocking it from his grip. The M16 was rendered inoperable, so Light, who was steadily pumping out M79 rounds, handed Alvarado his .45-caliber pistol.

At that instant, Tanabe, rising up to fire, went down with a terrible backward snap of his head. It looked as though the whole front of his head had been blown away, but although his forehead was laid open and he was temporarily blinded by the concussion and the blood in his eyes, he was very much alive. Tanabe and Alvarado, in fact, got into an argument. Alvarado's M16 was damaged and he figured Tanabe didn't need his anymore, but Tanabe held tight. "You ain't getting my rifle," he shouted.

"You can't see anything to shoot!" exclaimed Alvarado.

"I'll shoot at the noise!"

An NVA jumped up and tried to get around their right flank. Alvarado shouted a warning to Light, but Light had already seen the soldier and in the same instant had squeezed the trigger on his M79 grenade launcher. The NVA was only twenty meters away, and the 40mm round took his head off. The body continued to run a few more steps before it fell into the tall gra.s.s.

Private First Cla.s.s Light, who was nineteen, was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for Dai Do. He was from Hurley, Virginia, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains, and he joined the Marines because he'd never seen anything or been anywhere. His people were coal miners, and he had himself worked in the mines during his summer vacations. Light was in Vietnam what he'd been back home: a hardworking, squared-away kid (although the marijuana they smoked in the rear was something new for him), who never reported any of the three superficial wounds he picked up. He was given a job in the company mail room near the end of his tour, but the "maybe-if-I'd-been-there" syndrome pulled him back to the bush. On his first mail run he'd brought all his combat gear along with the mail sacks. When the helicopter dropped him off he approached the company commander with his problem. "Captain, the first sergeant wanted me to be a mail clerk, but I don't want to be no mail clerk," he explained. The skipper asked if he'd go back to the rear if ordered, and Light said, "No, sir." The captain's solution was simple: "Well, Digger, then get back to your platoon."

The bag that Light had slung over his shoulder at Dai Do held about ninety rounds for his M79. He shot more than half of them during the fight, especially while firing cover for their wounded, who crawled toward the hasty position Foxtrot One had secured in Dinh To. The trees there provided good protection from the constant NVA fire. One of the casualties, a big guy named Johnny Corey, who'd been hit in the stomach, crawled to Light's burial mound from the right. Light's squad leader, Corporal Favourite, had gotten separated from them somewhere over on the right, so Light asked Johnny, "Where's Fave?"

"Fave's dead, and Devine's dead, and the new guy, d.i.c.k, he's dead, too."

"Are you sure sure Fave's dead?" Fave's dead?"

"He's dead, man. I know." know."

Corporal Favourite had been a much-beloved squad leader, and Alvarado impulsively got up to rush to him. Light had to grab Alvarado and hold him down as he tried to calm him. "Johnny said it wasn't no use, man. There's no use gettin' yourself killed."

Corporal Ronald L. Favourite, twenty-one, of Bryan, Ohio, had been a great guy in Digger's opinion-despite the fact that he was a Yankee. He was a stocky man with a sunken chest and a funny walk, but he had a big heart and a subtle sense of humor. He didn't let anyone get over on his squad. He was a pack mule on patrol, and if one of his guys was fading under the load, he'd help carry the man's gear without complaint. He would stand extra watches at night. He was a gourmet chef with C rations in an upturned helmet. When they finally recovered Favourite's body it didn't have a mark on it. He had apparently been killed by a concussion grenade.

Lieutenant McAdams of Foxtrot One, who'd already been wounded by sh.e.l.l fragments, was shot while in the cover of the wood line on the eastern edge of Dinh To. He was up on one knee trying to figure out where Golf Company and the NVA were in the vegetation when a bullet hit the ground beside him and ricocheted into his left leg near the groin. It ended up lodged in his b.u.t.tocks. McAdams fell forward when he was. .h.i.t. When he tried to stand he found that he could not. After a corpsman bandaged him, McAdams told his platoon sergeant, Lance Corporal Dean, to take command of the squad-sized group they had in the tree line while he went to round up some help from Golf. He had yet to find a weapon to replace the .45 he'd dropped, so McAdams was alone and unarmed as he snaked his way down a ditch in Golf's direction. Some forty meters later he b.u.mped into Sergeant Major Malnar, who was in a trench with his pump-action shotgun, talking with another Marine in the command group. Enemy fire snapped overhead. McAdams was in pain and he excitedly told the sergeant major that he had a lot of wounded men, a lot of jammed weapons, and that they badly needed help on the right flank. Malnar told him that they were doing everything they could and that he should get to the rear. McAdams obliged him, although at his crawling pace it seemed he would never escape the roar of automatic weapons and explosions enveloping the hamlet.2 Meanwhile, McAdams's radioman, Corporal Tyrell-who'd been hit in the first volley-crawled out of the killing zone with bullets zinging over his head. When he didn't hear them anymore, he got up to run but stumbled hard and decided to stay down. He was heading toward a paG.o.da that was among the burial mounds in the field. When he got close to it, he saw an AK-47 trained on him from around one wall of the paG.o.da. Tyrell never found out what happened next. He was so scared that his brain turned off. He saw the rifle and the next thing he knew he was on the other side of the paG.o.da lying beside the body of the NVA who had been holding it. He wondered if the man was already dead, or if he had killed him. He was not carrying his M16 because it had been damaged, but he still had fragmentation grenades clipped to his flak jacket. He kept moving even though he was completely lost. When Tyrell saw a Marine he recognized behind a burial mound he thanked G.o.d. The Marine was lying there shouting at him to come on over. Tyrell ran to his position, and the man explained that when he'd first seen the short, wiry Tyrell crawling through the tall gra.s.s he'd almost shot him.

"I thought you were a comin' gook!" the grunt said excitedly.

The man directed Tyrell toward the medevac point. When he got there, a corpsman exclaimed, "Your right shoulder's a mess!" Only then did Tyrell realize that he had not tripped when he'd gotten up to run-he'd been shot. The round had skimmed across the top of his shoulder, opening up a large gash. The doctor who checked the wound back aboard ship said, "Whoa, you were lucky-this sonofab.i.t.c.h must have been a twelve-point-seven!"

Other Foxtrot casualties were being treated on the spot by Doc Pittman, who had crawled along the tree line in which the reserve platoon was pinned down and established a hasty treatment area at the southeastern edge of Dinh To. The fire was so heavy that as Pittman had crawled through the shadows of the thick foliage, bullet-clipped banana leaves fell around him. He moved on through an old, overgrown garden on his belly, and was feeling more than a little lost when he finally saw the USMC-issue jungle boot of a man lying in the bushes. He looked around then and saw Marines he recognized from the company mortar section. They were in firing positions around a large bomb crater, and a very relieved Pittman crawled into it to set up shop. Most of the Marines returning fire from the crater's north lip were struggling with fouled M16s, and one who saw Pittman's hot little carbine called to him only half in jest, "Hey, Doc, how much you want for that?" Keeping his carbine slung and his pistol on his hip, Pittman replied, "No way!"

The mortarmen around the crater directed the wounded into it as they came back singly or in pairs. "They walked, crawled, and stumbled," Doc Pittman remembered. "Some didn't realize they were wounded and had only retreated because they had run out of ammunition, or a limb had stopped functioning, or both. All had that special look about them that said they had just been to h.e.l.l." Teaming the badly wounded with the lesser wounded, Pittman sent all the casualties rearward as soon as he got a battle dressing on them, stopped the bleeding, and made sure they were well oriented enough to know which way was south. "Safety was relative, but sending them south seemed like the only thing to do," he explained. The fight was just north of their crater. Smoke and dust rose from the bushes there, and the able-bodied Marines at the crater's edge looked increasingly nervous. Many of the wounded were in shock, and none complained of pain, so Pittman administered no morphine. "The war wasn't over for those Marines," he said later. "They could still have had to fight for their lives, and being doped on morphine wouldn't help."

Almost all the M16s in Foxtrot were jammed, and Captain Butler saw that one of his Marines who'd picked up an AK-47 was having trouble with that weapon, too. The operating rod was bent, so it would fire only one round at a time. The Marine had to manually force the mechanism back each time to chamber the next round. Butler pa.s.sed his still-working M16 to the Marine and took the AK in return. Behind the firing line, the wounded Tyrell, meanwhile, had reached an amtrac in Dai Do, which moved its load of casualties to the splash point on the Bo Dieu River in An Lac. There they boarded skimmers. When they reached the aid station on the beach at Mai Xa Chanh West, one of the casualties with Tyrell, a little machine gunner named Miller, became incensed at the sight of television crews filming the dead and wounded. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he shouted. "We kick a.s.s and they don't do nothin'-but when we're gettin' our a.s.ses whipped up here, they show up like a bunch of vultures. If they want blood, I'll show 'Em blood!"

Miller tore away the battle dressing wrapped around his wrist to expose a hand that seemed to be hanging as though on a hinge. He thrust the red, wrist-shattered mess at the nearest lens and screamed at the cameraman, "You motherf.u.c.kers want some blood? Here's some blood!"

Medevacked to the hospital ship Repose Repose, Corporal Tyrell, whose wounds were not critical compared to those of Marines being immediately prepared for surgery, was instead escorted to a ward where a female U.S. Navy nurse a.s.signed him a bed and then said cheerfully, "You'd probably like to take a shower, huh?" Yes, yes, he would, he replied. Tyrell walked to the shower room. There was no one else there. He had stripped to his utility trousers, exposing the battle dressing over his right shoulder. Another dressing was wrapped around his right calf where the trouser leg was torn open. He spotted a mirror to his right as he came in "and when I saw my reflection I didn't recognize it as me at first. It was dirt and blood and everything but the person I knew."

1. Questioned later, Captain Vargas said that he could not recall whether Foxtrot was supposed to be in reserve or on his flank. Questioned later, Captain Vargas said that he could not recall whether Foxtrot was supposed to be in reserve or on his flank.2. Lieutenant McAdams, in-country only eight days, was awarded a BSMv and Purple Heart. Upon recuperation, he was rotated back for a 1969-70 tour as a company commander with the 7th and 26th Marines, which resulted in an end-of-tour BSMv. Lieutenant McAdams, in-country only eight days, was awarded a BSMv and Purple Heart. Upon recuperation, he was rotated back for a 1969-70 tour as a company commander with the 7th and 26th Marines, which resulted in an end-of-tour BSMv.

G.o.d, Get Us Out of Here

CAPTAIN V VARGAS, CONCERNED THAT HIS FORWARD PLATOONS might be outflanked and cut off, instructed Lieutenant Morgan and Staff Sergeant Wade to abandon their crater in the middle of Dinh To. Vargas wanted them to move with the remnants of their platoons to the left flank and set up a perimeter there with their backs to the creek. This was accomplished without casualties. Morgan then radioed Vargas to report that because of thick vegetation the fields of fire around their new position weren't very good, and that he and Wade didn't have enough men to hold if the enemy attacked. might be outflanked and cut off, instructed Lieutenant Morgan and Staff Sergeant Wade to abandon their crater in the middle of Dinh To. Vargas wanted them to move with the remnants of their platoons to the left flank and set up a perimeter there with their backs to the creek. This was accomplished without casualties. Morgan then radioed Vargas to report that because of thick vegetation the fields of fire around their new position weren't very good, and that he and Wade didn't have enough men to hold if the enemy attacked.

Captain Vargas was about fifty meters to their rear in a natural irrigation trench that his company headquarters shared with Lieutenant Colonel Weise and his command group. Vargas told Morgan and Wade to move back to that pos. When they arrived with their radiomen, Weise said to them, "Let's get our people together. We'll put up a three-sixty and hold what we've got. How many men do you have left?"

Captain Vargas had twenty men in his headquarters, to include the mortar section. Morgan and Wade, however, had only nine men apiece, and Sergeant Colasanti of the reserve platoon was down to eight. In the last two days, Golf Company had lost three-fourths of its Marines but none of its guts. After Morgan gave the colonel his single-digit head count, he added, "but we're all good under fire."

Two days before, Vargas had considered Morgan a typical greenhorn second lieutenant. Now he saw him as one of their stalwarts. The last two days had been a crucible for all of them. Vargas told Morgan and Wade to take the company mortarmen with them to reinforce their beleaguered two-platoon position. He said he would soon follow with the reserve platoon. As the meeting was breaking up, Morgan stood up in the trench just as the sharp report of a sniper's shot rang out; he saw dust smack off the trouser leg of the Marine in front of him. Blood jetted from that spot in the next instant. The wounded man was the colonel's regimental tac operator, and he was so flushed with excitement that it took a moment before he realized he'd been hit. He was quickly bandaged and directed rearward.

Lieutenant Morgan, meanwhile, started back for his platoon with the mortarmen-turned-riflemen in tow. As he approached the perimeter, he saw several Marines making a frantic run across the stream on their left flank. His immediate reaction was to shout at them to come back-but then he saw a dozen NVA coming out of the bushes in a frontal a.s.sault on their position.

It was 1645, and the NVA were counterattacking north to south down the length of Dinh To. Marines were screaming at Lieutenant Morgan to run because the NVA were right on top of them. Morgan and his radioman, who'd yet to be spotted by the enemy, quickly dropped into the cover of a ditch. Morgan got on the horn with Captain Vargas, who shouted that they should "pull back, pull back, pull back!" Morgan and Wade did just that. The two platoon commanders had completely lost contact with the Marines on the other side of the stream, but they were able to hastily organize those men still around them and get them back down a trench that paralleled the tributary.1 That they made it out of there was due in large part to Lieutenant Deichman, their hard-charging exec, and Sergeant Colasanti of Golf Three, who had been moving the reserve platoon toward the blueline. Including the exec's radioman, there were eleven Marines in this line, which was oriented in and along an abandoned enemy trench. Their orders were to provide a base of fire along with those in the command trench until all the forward elements had made it through and were well on the way back to Dai Do, where they would make their stand. The thin line produced a firestorm. "Grenades were being exchanged freely," wrote Deichman, who was wounded in the process. "I remember how fanatical the NVA appeared to be, openly and unhesitatingly charging us with reckless abandon." That they made it out of there was due in large part to Lieutenant Deichman, their hard-charging exec, and Sergeant Colasanti of Golf Three, who had been moving the reserve platoon toward the blueline. Including the exec's radioman, there were eleven Marines in this line, which was oriented in and along an abandoned enemy trench. Their orders were to provide a base of fire along with those in the command trench until all the forward elements had made it through and were well on the way back to Dai Do, where they would make their stand. The thin line produced a firestorm. "Grenades were being exchanged freely," wrote Deichman, who was wounded in the process. "I remember how fanatical the NVA appeared to be, openly and unhesitatingly charging us with reckless abandon."

Lieutenant Deichman was awarded the Silver Star. Sergeant Colasanti, who also won the Silver Star-and his fifth Purple Heart-during the holding action, wrote that "at one point we were involved in hand-to-hand combat. I got a couple with my K-Bar."

Lieutenant Morgan didn't know it then, but his platoon sergeant, Sgt. Richard F. Abshire, twenty-three, of Abbeville, Louisiana, had bought some of the time that the Marines splashing across the creek needed to escape. Morgan had left Abshire to honcho the men manning the perimeter when he'd moved back for the captain's meeting. Sergeant Abshire died on position and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Abshire, a good, low-key NCO with a shock of dark hair and a ruddy, pockmarked face, had, according to his citation, thrown several grenades at the attacking NVA before ordering the retreat across the tributary. He remained behind and "resolutely provided covering fire, which enabled his men to reach positions of relative safety. After expending his ammunition, he was attempting to rejoin his unit when he was mortally wounded."

Corporal Yealock of Golf One was one of those who escaped across the chest-deep stream. He had been firing his M16 from a crater along with two machine gunners whose M60s were doing the most damage to the NVA, when he was. .h.i.t in the left leg; one of the gunners was. .h.i.t in the hand. Someone who seemed to be in charge told them to pull back across the tributary. It seemed the only way out. Yealock's wounded leg hurt so badly that it almost buckled under him as they rushed down the bank, but he made it to the water and started wading across with his M16 in one hand and a bayonet in the other. He could see rounds. .h.i.tting the water. As they crawled up the opposite bank, the Marine to Yealock's right was. .h.i.t in the arm. They crashed through a hedgerow and tried to figure out where they were. By that time Yealock had lost his rifle and had only two grenades left. They started down the stream to find the rest of the company.

The NVA seemed to be everywhere. They were-including on the left flank, where individual enemy soldiers and squad-sized groups moved into position to place RPG and AK-47 fire across the narrow creek. An ARVN mechanized battalion was supposed to have moved up on that side of the blueline in conjunction with BLT 2/4's attack through Dinh To. But the ARVN were not there. Coordinating and communicating with ARVN units was difficult at best, and it had been made worse in this instance because BLT 2/4 had neither the time nor the officers available to place a liaison team with the ARVN, as it normally did on joint operations. There had been no face-to-face meeting between the battalion commanders, only a series of quick radio conversations in which the U.S. Army adviser with the ARVN unit had said that his counterpart understood and agreed to the plan of attack.

Weise considered the ARVN vital to the operation's success. "Were it not for a.s.surance from Colonel Hull of the ARVN support, I would not have agreed to another attack," Weise later wrote, although it remains unclear why Dixie Diner 6 would place the fate of his battered battalion in the hands of so untrustworthy an ally. "The a.s.surance that I had was that if we got into something we couldn't handle, the ARVN, with their 90mm tank guns and .50-caliber machine guns, would move ahead of us on our left and blow the h.e.l.l out of the enemy facing us."

The ARVN, however, were opcon to neither BLT 2/4 nor the 3d Marines, and when the joint maneuver encountered heavy resistance, the ARVN commander, either on his own initiative or on order from his superiors, withdrew his unit in the direction of Dong Ha. The U.S. Army adviser came up on the BLT 2/4 net to apologetically report that his battalion was peeling away from the Marines' flank, and with that the ARVN vanished from the battlefield. The Marines never forgave them.

There were dead Marines in the part of the trench that Lieutenant Acly, the Golf Company FO, reached with his radioman, Lance Corporal Prill, before the NVA counterattack. Acly moved up to the trench on his hands and knees, rushing from cover to cover. It was almost impossible to force himself forward through the hail of fire. He felt too heavy to move. He felt as though he was on a ladder that was too high, but on which he had to keep going up. The trench was sanctuary. There were four or five live Marines in his part of it. A thick, concealing hedgerow ran along its northern edge, and bamboo grew up along both sides.

Captain Vargas, who was down to the right, shouted at Acly to get some arty going, but Prill's radio malfunctioned. They couldn't raise anybody.

Panicked, one of the Marines in the trench bolted rearward-and immediately dropped with the loud, distinctive smack smack of a bullet hitting meat. The Marine had been shot in the upper thigh. Acly leaned out of the trench, grabbed the man's feet, and pulled him back in, then used his K-Bar to cut away the trouser leg so he could apply a battle dressing and get the bleeding stopped. of a bullet hitting meat. The Marine had been shot in the upper thigh. Acly leaned out of the trench, grabbed the man's feet, and pulled him back in, then used his K-Bar to cut away the trouser leg so he could apply a battle dressing and get the bleeding stopped.

The NVA fire suddenly became more intense. Lieutenant Acly could see puffs of dust coming off a nearby hootch; the bamboo above their trench bucked back and forth from explosions and automatic weapons fire. Acly was cut up by splintered bamboo. The hedgerow along the forward edge of the trench kept grenades from bouncing in with them, but the explosions were so close that the concussion was like being punched in the stomach. The bamboo to the rear of the trench caught fire, and smoke filled the air around them. Prill, remaining in a crouch, lifted his M16 above the forward edge of the trench to spray anything that might be rushing them, but the hand guard was knocked off the weapon by enemy fire. When Acly shoved his M14 through the hedgerow to open fire, it too was. .h.i.t almost immediately. He pulled the rifle back and was astonished to see that the barrel had been bent at a forty-five-degree angle behind the flash suppressor. He threw down the M14 and took up one of the abandoned M16s lying in the trench. A Marine was shot in the arm and began whimpering and raving. He tugged on Acly's arm as Acly tried to shoot, and mumbled that they were all going to die. The wound in the man's upper right arm barely bled, but it appeared as though the muscle had been turned inside out. It was bright red and jiggled-like Jell-O, Acly thought. Acly was becoming more and more unnerved by the man's keening. When the wounded Marine started to climb from the trench, Acly stopped him by barking, "Just stay down and keep your mouth shut and you'll be all right!"

After a terrible two to three minutes the enemy fire slackened. It seemed that they had survived. But then Prill suddenly started pounding Lieutenant Acly on the back. "Sir, everybody's takin' off!" he shouted. Acly could barely make out through the smoke the figures of Marines running to the rear. He and Prill grabbed the sh.e.l.l-shocked Marine, hauled him out of the trench, and pushed him ahead of them as they joined the retreat. Acly had lost his helmet, and his secondhand M16 was out of ammunition. They immediately hit some old barbed wire in the flaming, chest-high bamboo at the rear of the trench, and they tore their hands and arms as they forced their way through it at a run. n.o.body cared. They didn't feel a thing. "It didn't look like a fighting withdrawal," Acly said. His group had caught up with other Marines as they crashed through a hedgerow. "There wasn't a lot of firing and maneuvering going on. People were just trying to get the h.e.l.l outta there."

Lance Corporal Ron Dean, the acting commander of Foxtrot One at the right edge of the hamlet, had expended all his M14 ammunition on the NVA behind the burial mounds out in the fields. Now other NVA were charging out of the bushes and trees. Dean already had out his .45. He was at the p.r.o.ne, and the enemy soldier he saw most clearly was rushing right at him with his AK-47 held out in front of him. By the time Dean could aim his .45, the man was five feet away.

Dean shot him in the face.

Twice-wounded Lieutenant McAdams, late of Foxtrot One, had escaped the sudden crescendo of fire behind him by crawling down into the creek bed with another wounded Marine. They could see two Golf Marines trying to get back by swimming from the opposite sh.o.r.e. They were about twenty meters from McAdams when a burst of automatic fire splashed around the two heads. Only one head remained visible. That Marine made it to sh.o.r.e and disappeared into the brush. The NVA had not seen McAdams and his partner. They were in the shallows near the bank, where they could remain p.r.o.ne and keep their heads up as they crawled along the muddy bottom. The water gave them bouyancy, making crawling easier. McAdams was too numb to realize how narrow his escape had been.

Lieutenant Colonel Weise shouldered his M16 and Sergeant Major Malnar swung his twelve-gauge pump into action. Every man in the command trench was firing at the NVA who darted at them or rushed past in frenzied pursuit of Golf One and Two. They dropped several enemy soldiers within a few steps of their position. It was impossible to tell who was. .h.i.tting whom. Everything was happening so fast as to be a blur of sound and motion. An NVA soldier on the right flank turned an automatic weapon down the length of the trench. The burst missed Vargas, who was firing his M16 to the front, but it killed his senior radioman and the 81mm mortar section spotter, who were on either side of Vargas. The mortar spotter lay in the trench, his mouth shot open.

Lance Corporal Pendelton, who was the captain's backup radioman, was. .h.i.t by the same burst. While Sergeant Bollinger secured a battle dressing around Pendelton's wounded arm, Vargas used his K-Bar to cut the radio shoulder straps, then pushed Pendelton over the back of the trench and told him to crawl to the rear. Vargas then grabbed one of the radio handsets and began coordinating artillery support. Vargas shouted at everyone to get down in their four-foot trench just before the salvo slammed in some forty meters to their front. The concussion was stunning, and sh.e.l.l fragments ripped down tree limbs above their heads.

There was a definite pause in the enemy fire.