Death Valley (40 page)

They originally met at the 4–31 Rear on LZ Baldy before the campaign began. Brantley was being reassigned from a unit in Qui Nhon, and Jandecka had just finished the Combat Center training at Americal Division Headquarters. By then, Brantley had the combat infantryman badge stitched over his left pocket and a 4th Infantry Division patch on his right shoulder, denoting a previous combat tour with them. He was lean, tanned, and long-haired. He’d been ghosting around Baldy for two weeks, not at all anxious to return to the bush. Jandecka was new—so green that when news of the Bravo Company ambush reached them, he commented in false bravado that the streets back home were pretty rough too. Bravo was deep in the bowels of Chu Lai by then, having been trucked in to help renovate some old hootches. The Marines were taking over Landing Zone Baldy, and the 4–31 Rear was moving south to Chu Lai.

Within twenty-four hours of the news, the company top sergeant had rounded up every 11 Bravo he could find. They were herded onto the chopper pad at Chu Lai, about a dozen of them, to catch a Chinook to LZ West. Jandecka was surprised—not shocked, because he’d been to Chu Lai before—to see Brantley lean back on his rucksack and light up a joint.

A couple of other replacements joined in.

The Chinook landed soon after, and it was a thirty-mile hop up to West. The fire base was abuzz with activity, and the replacements were
immediately directed aboard several Hueys departing for LZ Siberia. They were hustling across the landing pad when Hoss Gutterez caught sight of Brantley’s necklace and bracelet. The sergeant major—a big no-neck lifer—bellowed out, “Get that off, there’s no room in this battalion for weirdos or hippies!”

Brantley quickly complied.

Jandecka and Brantley were not best friends, but they were buddies. Jandecka recalled his comrade with a certain fondness: “He never became a driving force within the platoon. Brantley became identified with the Army’s subculture instead. Those men in this group gravitated together by the sheer force of kindred interests. They adorned themselves with beads and bracelets, they gathered together to listen to very loud music, proclaim their toughness, and smoke grass. And they did their best to avoid work of any kind, especially the bush. But he was a scrappy little fellow who would fight if so inclined.”

As a matter of record, Brantley was wounded by mortar shrapnel on LZ West in September and hit again in December; he was thus nicknamed Cold Steel.

Brantley had grown up poor and fatherless in Jacksonville, Florida. His father was killed with the Marines in Korea and his mother, a child bride, remarried a man the family barely tolerated. Brantley ended up with his grandmother. He dropped out of high school and became a hard-drinking, restless kid who welcomed his draft notice. He was nineteen in September of 67 when he first arrived in Vietnam, joining the 35th Infantry Regiment of Task Force Oregon. They operated near the Batangan Peninsula in a phantom war of snipers and booby traps. By the time Brantley took his R and R three months later, his platoon had been whittled nearly in half without having even seen the enemy. In a fatigued panic after R and R, Brantley reenlisted to get off the line. He ended up as a clerk in the rear, rotated on schedule; but, bored with stateside duty, he volunteered for a second tour. He was assigned to a security guard platoon in Qui Nhon, an area so calm the GIs needed permission to chamber a round when on guard. He lasted four months, until he and a buddy were caught passed-out drunk on post. They were busted in rank and there was talk of a court-martial.

To avoid that, Brantley volunteered for the infantry.

Jandecka, a bespectacled, intelligent kid, did not have a history as colorful, nor was it as unhappy. He came from a close-knit, working family in Berea, Ohio, and left home for the first time to go to college.
His grades were mediocre and, after his second year, he came home and got a job in the local steel mill. He also got his draft call. Jandecka accepted it without protest. He was conservative; the war seemed just; and, where he came from, the Army was just part of life. He never abandoned those views, and he became typical of the citizen-soldiers of America who’ve always formed the bulk of the combat infantry. When his squad leader decided to fake a patrol, Jandecka didn’t mind, but if the man said move out, he moved out. He did not smoke pot; he did not throw away his malaria pill. At the same time, he killed no one and did nothing madly courageous. He followed orders, he did his job, and he endured.

Through no fault of his own, he rotated home unscathed. Because of his outlook, Jandecka survived mentally unscarred as well.

Not so with Brantley.

Jandecka, Brantley, and their fellow replacements joined Bravo Company on Landing Zone Siberia. The company had been pulled to the fire base after the ambush in a state of shock. Since then, though, the old-timers had had some fun with the naive new guys. They’d gotten some hot food and cold drink; and they’d cleaned their weapons, rezeroed them in, and test-fired their new magazines. Most of all, they’d had a chance to sit and clear their minds, and when the word came to saddle up again, it was met with only the normal GI bitching. Bravo 4th of the 31st Infantry CA’d into a cold LZ in the Hiep Duc Valley on 25 August.

25 August. As the sun burned away the valley’s morning mist, Kosteczko really didn’t know what day it was. He was numb in body and spirit. He felt like a machine—trapped, programmed. Every day was the same. The morning resupply bird brought the same breakfast: powdered eggs swimming in water, toast turned to mush from the steam trapped inside the mermite cans, good bacon. They boiled C ration cocoa over heat tablets or chunks of C4 explosives. The medics passed out the malaria pills, standing in front of some GIs to make sure they didn’t spit it out. Stupid fucking hill, guys were mumbling. What are they trying to prove! Kosteczko heard some grunts say they’d waved their hands around during mortarings on Million Dollar Hill, trying to catch a ticket home. He heard one guy shot his finger off.

You had to have a relief from the insanity and pressure, and every
morning he was in Vietnam, Kosteczko prayed. He asked the same question every time: will I make it through the day? It gave him some solace, but this morning he felt no answer and it unnerved him. Grunts by circumstance are a superstitious lot.

Sometimes, though, there is reason for odd beliefs.

Bravo Company was weary, but when the order was passed to attack again, they attacked; one more time they fell back to medevac their casualties. This time, a platoon from Charlie 4–31 ducked a few snipers to secure an LZ for them. Kosteczko’s squad sat to wait in a tree grove along a path, and he and Foxhole collapsed beside a dilapidated hootch in the tangle. Two Cobras thumped past. No one paid them any attention. They suddenly banked around and dove. Foxhole leaped into the crumbling family bunker and Kosteczko, with no idea what was going on, instinctively jumped right on top of him just as he heard the foghorn wail of a minigun erupt. He felt a flash of heat over his back, then the explosion of the gunship’s rocket against a paddy berm.

I’m in hell!

The trigger-happy Cobra pilots were quickly straightened out, but not before Bravo 2–1 suffered three wounded and Charlie 4–31 a fourth. That GI, hit by shrapnel in both legs, was from Lieutenant Robinson’s platoon, which was securing the medevac landing zone. It was the first casualty Robinson had. Robinson had no idea what went wrong. He could see no excuse for it.

Meanwhile, B/1–46 continued forward to try to outflank an NVA 60mm mortar position below Hill 381 which was shelling the battalion sweep. Lieutenant Baird and his RTO were with the lead squad while the platoon sergeant, Sergeant Brown, brought up the rear. Baird and Brown were a study in contrasts, the lieutenant an urbane West Pointer new to the platoon, the sergeant a black country boy raised on a cotton farm in Mississippi and drafted away from his construction job. Brown had been in the bush ten months, but did not resent his new second lieutenant; the man was learning fast.

AK47 fire greeted their flanking maneuver.

Brown and his squad dropped among the trees, boulders, and high grass of a hillside. North Vietnamese were firing from a tree line across the paddy to their front. Before long, the squad could also hear the brush moving below their slight hillock. They chopped M16 bursts at the sounds. Chicom grenades were flung back at them. The NVA had crept that close. GIs ducked, then heaved frags downhill. It was sporadic,
off and on. Sergeant Brown sat low, trying to peer through the grass. An AK would cut a burst at them and they’d raise a racket firing back. Then there was silence as both sides changed magazines. The NVA mortar crew was firing again, lobbing rounds over the squad’s heads into the rest of the company. Brown could hear Baird over the RTO’s squawk box: the lieutenant, pinned down with the lead squad, was calmly directing artillery into the tree line from which the ambush had been sprung, and onto NVA who were trying to surround the platoon. Someone near Brown hollered that he saw two NVA running through the trees. A grunt fired a LAW after them. The rest hunkered along the hillside behind spots of cover, trading bursts with the underbrush as the sun beat down.

They too were halted.

As the NVA mortarmen adjusted their fires onto Bravo 1–46 (better known as the Ridgerunners), their sister company, Delta 1–46 (the Vikings), moved to outflank the tube position. Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry, commanded by a black captain named Jesse Sellers, had been airlifted from LZ Professional to LZ Karen the day before.

They had humped to Million Dollar Hill that morning.

SP4 Billy McWhirter, squad leader in the lead platoon, could feel the vibrations when the mortar fired some four hundred yards ahead. He could also hear the flare-ups of automatic weapons fire on the flanks. This was his first big action, but he trusted his platoon and he trusted his officers. That’s what kept him moving forward. He thought his platoon was rare it was so good. Yet Delta Company fared no better than any other Americal unit in the valley; what really seemed rare was McWhirter’s attitude. He’d been working at Caterpillar Tractor when the draft came, nineteen then and supporting a new bride; that would have made a good sob story, but he was from an Illinois farming community and he knew his duty when he saw it. His patriotism was unshakable, and his only gripe was that the Vietnamese didn’t appreciate what the GIs were sacrificing for them. Damn it, he thought, you come in from patrol and here’s some gook at the wire peddling Pepsis at five dollars a bottle! He believed in what he was fighting about, but he never trusted the people he was fighting for.

Delta Company’s advance across Hiep Duc Valley was covered by the rumble of artillery. They reached a muddy paddy boxed in by tree lines, and halted long enough to recon the far side by fire. There was no response, so the point squad hiked into the field, single file atop a
berm with twenty feet between each man. SP4 Victor Silvis went next with the M60; then SP4 McWhirter and his squad joined the file into the open.

The staccato reports of AK47s signalled the ambush.

McWhirter was instantly off the berm, splashing into the paddy, pressing into the dike. Everyone was down in the water and mud and, after the initial shock wore off enough for them to get their bearings, they shoved M16s over their helmets and fired back into the tree line facing them. Artillery impacted into the woods, but it had little effect on the entrenched North Vietnamese. It sounded like there was a company of them.

The firefight dragged on inconclusively all afternoon; the final act was spurred when the NVA shifted their mortar fire into the paddy. The order was given to pull back, and the company retreated in a frantic leapfrog. One man at a time jumped over the dike behind him and crawled to the next as others fired cover. Cobras screamed in. McWhirter was hunkered behind a dike with several others when he suddenly noticed movement in the tree line to his right. With ten months in-country and a Purple Heart to his name, this was the first time he’d really seen the enemy. They had pith helmets and web gear and AK47s, and they were up and moving through the trees, trying to outflank the withdrawing GIs.

McWhirter sighted his M16 on one figure moving behind the screen of trees; he squeezed the trigger, saw the man collapse. The GIs with him were firing too, shouting, spraying the trees. Silvis was hunched sweaty over his M60, firing, expended brass ejecting from his weapon.

The North Vietnamese fell back.

It was time for Delta Company to get out. The men crawled quickly on all fours, splattered with mud. A Hawaiian sergeant was near them, trying to push along with a bleeding leg. McWhirter was an unassuming, down-home kid who wanted to get back to his wife, but his buddies noted he was up front whenever the shooting started. In an unthinking lunge, McWhirter hefted the wounded sergeant over his shoulder and ran as fast as he could, aware of little else but the splashes of AK rounds hitting the brown paddy water. He jogged into the tree line behind the paddy, laid the sergeant down, then ran back to his squad. The last men were coming into the woods, running. One was limping; he was about fifty feet out and, again, McWhirter didn’t think as he ran out and helped the grunt hop back into the cover of the trees.

The mortaring and firing petered out as soon as Delta Company disappeared back into the wood line. The retreat had become ragged at the end; weapons that casualties dropped lay where they fell, helmets and ammunition bandoliers sat in the mud.

The NVA recovered much of it—again.

Captain Sellers—slightly wounded by mortar shrapnel—was on the radio getting in the medevacs. As the first Huey settled onto the field behind them, the chilling crack-crack-crack of AK47 automatic rifles burst again. The grunts, hunkered among the trees, pumped fire back into the underbrush as the medevac pulled out of the sun-blasted paddy with the wounded crammed aboard.

Colonel Henry, hunched over his radios on Million Dollar Hill, proceeded with caution in what was his first, large action. He had five companies in the field, four of them in contact, and at the same time his Forward CP was taking sporadic automatic weapons and mortar fire. In the face of the crossfires of the entrenched NVA, Henry was consistently heavy on firepower and short on decisive, frontal assaults. During the course of the campaign, his battalion employed 18,224 artillery and mortar rounds, 191 tons of napalm and bombs, and 24,000 rounds of 20mm air cannons. When his companies couldn’t outflank the NVA trenches, he called in his massive fire support. It kept the enemy’s head down so his men could break contact with enough time to dig in for the night and to evacuate their casualties. On 25 August, his casualties were: