Death Valley (11 page)

These actions constituted the dangerous periphery of what had become a focused attack on Bravo Company and, more specifically, Lieutenant Schirmerhorn’s platoon. He and his acting platoon sergeant, a black corporal, had their men on a hundred-yard line at the base of the hill.

From atop the hill, all Lieutenant Weh could see of their fight was tracers and flashes from fragmentation grenades. Weh reckoned that the LP had broken the momentum of the attack before being swallowed up, and that the quick artillery barrage had shattered the following waves of troops. But the first wave was sizable and Schirmerhorn was glued on the radio to Weh; Schirmerhorn said it was a free-for-all, gooks all around. As long as the young lieutenant was on the radio, Weh felt secure that the line was holding. But things were tense. For one thing, the 105mm battery supporting them from An Hoa reported running low on ammunition. To deplete an artillery battery’s stock and still have NVA coming at you meant many bad guys, and Weh was praying for daylight.

With the sun came the Phantoms and the rest of the battalion. Weh was thankful that the NVA hadn’t launched their assault just one hour earlier. It was 0600 by then; given an extra hour, he thought the NVA could have forced their way all the way up to his CP before dawn. They seemed to have the numbers for it.

Weh radioed Albers to send one of his squads up to the CP. He was also on the horn with Fagan; Dowd had directed Delta to come to Bravo’s aid. They decided that at first light, one platoon from Delta would physically tie in with Schirmerhorn’s besieged platoon, thus containing the NVA and allowing the jump CP and Charlie to sweep in. From there, they could retake the finger where the listening post had disappeared.

With dawn, the NVA were ebbing away.

There were still stragglers in the line, and Lieutenant Weh wanted to get down to 3d Platoon with the attached squad. Time, he thought, to let them know they were not all alone.

A fire team went down the hill first, followed by Weh and his two radiomen, then the rest of the squad. The sight of a Marine carrying only a .45 and flanked by two waving radio aerials was an irresistible target. As soon as they reached the base of the hill, Weh could see in the gray twilight the North Vietnamese soldier getting up from behind a paddy dike twenty feet ahead. It was like slow motion to Weh as he instantly dove to his right, the AK47 emptying the thirty-round banana
clip in one burst, Weh able to see green tracers snapping past his left leg. He crashed to the ground at the same time that two grunts ahead of him sprang to their feet; they suddenly realized there was an NVA only feet from them, and they shot him down.

Weh’s senior radioman, Cpl John Constien, was sprawled facedown just behind him. He was moaning and Weh turned him over. His eyes rolled back, blood spilled from his mouth; he was gut shot. Weh bellowed, “Corpsman, corpsman up!” then used his K-Bar to cut Constien’s pack suspenders. He pulled the pack and radio off, trying to make the kid comfortable. A corpsman jogged over, and Weh jumped back up. He told the squad leader to report to Lieutenant Schirmerhorn, then grabbed one of the grunts rushing past. “You’re my radio operator!”

Corporal Constien died in the minute that took.

Weh helped his new radioman get the PRC25 on his back. Schirmerhorn was shoring up his ruptured line and, in the dawn haze, they could see the re-act platoon from Delta Company coming across the paddy. With that, Weh wanted to get over to Lieutenant Campbell’s side of the line, where the gun battle was continuing. They clambered back up the hillock, the new radioman, bewildered and excited, following. As soon as they cleared the crest, the antennas drew another burst of AK fire, but they made it down unscathed. Campbell told Weh that most of the NVA had skyed out; there were only two left, stuck behind a dike and still firing.

They finally silenced those two.

It was 0700 by then, and the last shots were heard within the next thirty minutes. The Delta platoon tied in with Schirmerhorn’s platoon and they moved onto the wooded finger. Anxious to find out what happened to the LP, Weh joined the sweep. There were wounded Marines, dead Marines, dead North Vietnamese. Navy corpsmen followed the skirmish line, attending to the casualties. They’d advanced only some fifty feet when Weh came across a doc bandaging a young, wounded NVA. Weh exploded, “Get the hell away from him, we’ve got Marines who need help!”

The sweep found the lost listening post. Except for a couple of wounded, the entire squad was KIA. Killed In Action. The squad leader had survived; he later told Weh that he had had no idea what was happening. When the NVA finally swarmed over their position, he had taken cover and sweated out the night convinced he was going to be discovered and killed any minute.

Bravo and Delta Companies shored up the battered perimeter while the jump CP and Charlie Company marched in from the west. Lieutenant Colonel Dowd was so explosive that he outdistanced his infantry escort and arrived at the Hot Dog first. The area was being policed up then. Among other things, one LP from Bravo, which had stayed low during the battle, trotted back to their lines, scared shitless and overjoyed to still be living.

Bravo had eight dead, twenty-four wounded.

Delta had one dead, seven wounded.

Charlie and H&S had a handful of wounded.

There were more than fifty dead North Vietnamese littered around Bravo Company’s perimeter; there were also mounds of equipment and weapons left behind, most of it of recent Chinese Communist make. There were pith helmets, web gear, automatic rifles, carbines, machine guns, grenades. Marines held up empty RPD machine gun ammo drums and half-fired ammo belts. It was only then that they realized how many NVA had been involved; they estimated that two infantry battalions had hammered into Bravo Company. Black communications wire was also found around Bravo’s perimeter. It had been unreeled during the night as guides so the NVA infantrymen leaving their tree line could navigate forward in the dark. Some strands ran straight from the NVA position to the Marine position. Other strands were laid across those lines to indicate staging points for the various NVA units; a final strand marked the line of departure.

These Marines were part of the best-educated and informed army in history. They knew about the withdrawal plan and the discussion it had caused. They were also hearing on the radio that their hill was only one of many places the NVA had hit. As his men policed up that morning, Lieutenant Weh wrote a letter to his wife of one year on some 1st MarDiv stationery:

Lance Corporal Zotter stood along the crest of the hill, watching other Marines stack up the captured gear and lay the dead NVA in a line. One grunt stood over the dike where the last two had gone down fighting, and hollered up, “Hey, this one’s still alive!”

Dowd answered from the hill, “Where’s he hit?”

“He’s shot right in the ass!”

The Marines along the hillock burst into rough laugher and shouts. Dowd hollered to bring the prisoner up, and the grunts reached down and effortlessly hefted the little NVA like an empty sack of oats. Three others helped carry him up by his arms and legs, and they tossed him down almost at Zotter’s feet. The NVA had a battle dressing placed on his buttocks and tied around his leg, and he was stiff, frightened, and in a lot of pain. Two Vietnamese scouts crouched beside him and began firing off questions. The NVA gritted his teeth in a grimace of pain, and shook his head no, no, no. One of the scouts slid his knife up the prisoner’s anus, then twisted. The man’s eyes almost popped from his head. He talked.

Lance Corporal Wells did not see this torture. He did, however, notice more than one grunt veer from his path across the hill to give the NVA prisoner an angry kick.

Zotter thought Dowd was a scrappy old bird, and decided to sit near where the colonel was conducting his business. Dowd was on the radio and it sounded like he was arguing with someone who didn’t quite believe him. “… But I’ve got fifty dead gooks out here!” Zotter got the impression Dowd was trying to convince some rear staff officer when he ordered the dead NVA piled up on a cargo net. They folded the edges up, hooked them to a ring at the top, then secured the net to the underside of another Sea Knight. The chopper took off with the stuffed cargo net swaying below it, arms and legs sticking through the rope weave. It wasn’t much later that Zotter witnessed another example of the colonel’s grit. Dowd was resting, leaning back, when a Vietnamese voice suddenly shouted over the radio. Dowd grabbed the handset and answered his foe’s cocky shout with, “Come and get me, motherfucker!”

In accord with standard operating procedure, the initials and last four numbers of each dead man’s serial number were radioed to battalion rear on Hill 55. Lieutenant Peters, XO, D/1/7, choked when he deciphered their KIA report. Cashman had been in his platoon for three months.
He was tall and handsome, blond hair, blue eyes, with a little teenage grunt mustache. A good guy, a damn good Marine. His body had been found where he’d been firing from, and was choppered to Graves Registration in Da Nang. Peters and an enlisted man who’d known the deceased were detailed to formally identify the body.

Cashman lay in a drawer at the 1st Med morgue, naked, hands stiffly crossed against his chest from their position in the poncho litter. His eyes were open, eyebrows arched, mouth in a circle of astonishment. There was only one mark on him, a single bullet hole right below his navel. Six inches of intestine hung from the hole.

Peters went through his gear. There was a high school graduation photo of Cashman’s girl friend and her last letter to him, talking marriage. Oh, this sucks, Peters thought, feeling ill. No one else’s death—and he’d lost four men as a platoon leader—had affected him like this. His mind was churning. Cashman was a handsome, smart, squared-away Marine. He’s dead. He was going to get married. He volunteered. He’s dead. His parents were immigrants; it’s not even their war. He’s dead. He’s an only son and he could have gotten out of going to Vietnam. And he’s fucking dead.

For what!?

The company clerk typed up the formal condolence letter to Cashman’s parents for the company commander to sign. Peters also wrote. He received a reply from the father, a sad letter with one message. Why
my
son? Peters wrote back that Cornelius Cashman was a Marine fighting for his country, which is how Peters always saw things. He didn’t hear from the father again until Christmas; there was ten dollars in the envelope and a note to buy some booze for his son’s platoon. Peters sent the bottle out to them in a mailbag. It wasn’t until ten years later that he worked up the courage to fulfill a promise he had made to himself. Mrs. Cashman answered the phone; he was very nervous, had no idea what to say, but she was a kind woman who remembered his letters. She made it very easy to talk.

That was all for later. When Peters returned to the company area, he told First Sergeant Headley, “Top, I can not hack this. Anymore IDs, you got it. I can’t hack this stuff.”

I
t took Charlie Company and the Battalion CP two hours to reach Bravo Company’s hillock, after having moved out at first light on 12 August. In the rising heat spreading across the dead paddies, Lieutenant Hord saw the most startling sight of his year in Vietnam. It was the black communications wire that the NVA had strung, the guides for the NVA infantrymen as they crept in the dark towards the Marines. Bodies were clustered stiffly along the guides, some of the dead NVA still clutching the wire. Lieutenant Hord examined the dead as the company filed past. He could see thirty of them. They had new green fatigues, pith helmets, full web gear, two canteens, AK47 automatic rifles, and a few SKS carbines. Some had whistles and pistols. But what hit Hord hardest was how diminutive and young they looked. He would have sworn some couldn’t have been more than thirteen years of age.

Hord glanced at his own men. They were looking at the bodies too, their faces filled with looks of surprise, fear, retribution, anticipation. Hord could feel it. It was electric. They all knew what was waiting.

This is finally it, he thought.

Atop the low knoll, Hord joined the huddle of commanders and radiomen. Lieutenant Colonel Dowd quickly sketched out a counterattack scheme. B Company was to secure the Hot Dog and the Battalion CP. C Company was to sweep the several hundred meters south into that tree line island; it was dense with thickets of bamboo and elephant grass, beaten-down hootches, and old trails, and it seemed the likeliest place for the NVA to have retreated to. D Company was to stand by to reinforce C Company.

By 0900, Charlie 1/7 stepped off in the attack.

The men moved with two platoons on line, one platoon back, and with Lieutenant Hord’s command group twenty meters back in the seam between the two lead platoons. They had barely reached the paddy when the far tree line erupted into an absolute roar of sustained, concentrated fire. At first, most of it was too high or too low, and the Marines pressed on. Then the whole tempo increased as the air cracked with close AK rounds and dust kicked up in the paddy. Grunts collapsed as they ran for cover. Hord was on the horn, his radiomen trotting alongside, urging on the platoons fifty more yards to the cover of a large dike.

Hord too was jogging for it in a crouch—seconds seeming like hours—when his company radioman abruptly collapsed. He was dragged up to the high dike, an AK round in his chest. Lieutenant Hord crouched beside him, helping get the radio off and shouldering it himself. The radioman was scared but composed, talking with Hord as a corpsman taped a compress bandage over the sucking hole. He was an Irish kid from New York and he mumbled, “I guess I just bought my ticket home.”