Death Valley (42 page)

T
he dawn of 25 August 1969 spread across the paddies with all the serenity of the inside of a steel mill. Lieutenant Larrison of Golf Company and Lieutenant Vannoy of Hotel Company, 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, brought Phantoms and artillery fire into the tree lines in front of their perimeter.

The battalion was preparing to push west.

Hotel Company, on the right flank, moved out first. They’d been detailed to run a squad recon up the southern slope of Hill 381. Considering the events of the past two days, Lieutenant Vannoy thought two platoons would be safer; Colonel Lugger approved the modification. Lieutenant Vannoy and his command group stayed in place with 2d Platoon while 1st Platoon (1stLt Charles Vallance) moved out on the right flank and 3d Platoon (2dLt William Brennon) moved out on the left. Farther to the left, Lieutenant Larrison of Golf was still bringing the firepower down on the tree lines facing them.

A senior officer cut into the net: “Golf Six, do you realize you’re holding up two infantry companies!” Brennon was stunned. Don’t they realize what’s down here? he wondered.

The situation got worse. Hotel One and Hotel Three began advancing after the airstrikes were stopped, filtering into the trees on the northern half of the battered wood line. A Sea Knight descended behind them, either on a resupply or medevac run, and a 12.7mm machine gun opened fire from the southern half of the tree line they occupied. Brennon could see Vallance and his platoon sergeant moving on his right, and he shouted to them, “I ain’t believin’ this!” They shook their heads back as if to say, yes, this is suicide.

The two platoons emerged from the trees into rice paddies that stretched two hundred yards across and five hundred yards to the next tree line. It was a little rice bowl right at the base of Hill 381, and jungled fingers rippled through the area and across the platoons’ front. Vallance’s platoon advanced through napalmed elephant grass at the base of the ridge line into the paddies themselves. They were rough to negotiate—overgrown and terraced, dotted with wild brush and boulders. Point men and flank men were out. Vallance was only a quarter way into the field when Brennon reached the halfway mark. They too were spaced out, ten men in the lead:

Point man

M79 grenadier

Rifleman

Squad leader

Brennon, his radioman and corpsman

M60 team

The North Vietnamese ambushed them halfway into the open paddy, the first burst a jolting thunderclap of at least five AK47s, five RPGs, an RPD, and two 60mm mortar rounds. The M79 man was killed instantly. The corpsman was seriously wounded with shrapnel in his back. The M60 team quickly started returning fire, but the gunner was shot dead and his two assistant gunners passed out with shock or heat exhaustion. The rest of the platoon quickly took up positions behind them; under the direction of the platoon sergeant—who’d been wounded in the sudden fusillade—they sounded like a small army. The point man, rifleman, and squad leader managed to crawl back under the cover fire; together with Lieutenant Brennon, his radioman, and the wounded corpsman, they crammed behind a boulder in the field.

They were completely pinned down. It was 1300.

On the right flank, Lieutenant Vallance had also ducked behind a boulder at the initial shots. But his platoon was out of the most blistering part of the crossfire and he was able to get his bearings more quickly. The NVA, about a platoon of them, were firing from the bouldered slope of Hill 381 up ahead, and from the tree lines on the left flank. More NVA were popping up from behind, in the tree line through which they had just walked. Fire seemed to snap at the Marines from every direction. The NVA were invisible in the vegetation, solidly emplaced with spider holes and trenches. Vallance’s men could make out only one muzzle flash and, although they exposed themselves to put M60 and M79 fire into it, it was impossible to tell if they did any damage.

Vallance had men pinned down behind boulders ahead. When they tried to crawl back, rounds chopped the grass above their heads. When the platoon fired to cover them, the NVA rained down AKs and RPGs. But when the Marines stopped shooting and stopped moving, the NVA were content to cease fire and just watch.

Fish in a barrel, fucking fish in a barrel.

Lieutenant Vannoy moved forward with 2d Platoon, and radioed Brennon and Vallance to stay put. Air support had been scrambled again. Brennon, still stuck behind his boulder, got in radio contact with the aerial observer orbiting the battlefield. The Phantoms laid napalm plus 250- and 500-pound bombs, first into the trees 150 meters forward, then—at Brennon’s insistence—the reluctant AO brought the fires in 75 meters closer. Brennon and his five grunts crammed tightly against the boulder as shrapnel chunks whizzed overhead.

Vallance, farther away from ground zero, was able to keep his head up. He could see tracers snapping skyward from the jungle canopy even as the Phantoms screamed right at them, letting loose their napalm and bombs. The grunts could see the tracers, too, and their spirits sank even lower. They were sewed up, the air strikes weren’t doing much, and the NVA even had the guts to take on jets.

Bullets cracked over their heads and from the rear.

The Phantoms ran eight or nine missions; then Cobras made two more gun runs. The NVA fire slackened a bit, and Brennon told two men to crawl forward and drag back the dead M79 man. It was thirty meters from the boulder to the body, and the two grunts went the entire way on their stomachs, tucked in tightly along a dike, NVA fire nipping overhead. They reached the body, but the dead Marine was a big man—more than two hundred pounds plus all his gear—and they’d have to at least rise to their knees to drag him. They crawled back to Brennon and told him it was impossible.

By then it was 1700.

Before the ambush was sprung on Hotel Company, Golf Company had also been moving west. Lieutenant Larrison was proceeding with extreme caution: he had the platoons of Lieutenants Page and Pickett raise a shattering cacophony of cover fire as 3d Platoon rushed the first tree line facing them. They secured it without contact, and the rest of the company swept in. They prepared to repeat the process on the next wood line facing them.

Then Hotel was hit and Golf was sent in.

Urgency dampened caution as they moved to their right, filing along a stand of trees. The point man was three feet from the first spider hole before the NVA signalled his presence by emptying his AK47. He killed the point man instantly and wounded the next man in line. The wounded Marine squeezed flat behind his dead buddy as a crossfire suddenly electrified the air above him, but he kept his head. He reached over the body to set in his claymore mine, then unreeled the firing wire as he scooted back. When the NVA raised from his hole to fire a fresh magazine, the grunt detonated the claymore. Its one-pound charge of C4 plastic explosive sent out six hundred steel balls like a shotgun blast. Man and brush were shredded.

A squad of entrenched NVA were still firing from the trees, and Lieutenant Page and his radioman ran towards the pinned-down grunts. They made it through a hundred yards of paddy before they too had to hit the deck. Lieutenant Larrison moved his other two platoons into position to provide cover fire; the Marines saw no one to line up in rifle sights, but any suspected firing position was battered with M79 grenades and teargas. The NVA fire did not lessen; Hotel was screaming on the radio that Golf’s stray fire was hitting around them. Golf was screaming the same thing back. It was boiling chaos.

Two North Vietnamese soldiers materialized in one of the tree lines and the Marines—almost dead from the heat in the open paddy—poured fire at them. The NVA appeared to go down in the hail of rounds. Or did they only duck into their trenches? The tree lines were honeycombed with slit trenches and spider holes, and the NVA moved along them—below the Marine rifle fire—until they were firing on Golf Company from three sides. The firefight had lasted two hours, and Lieutenant Larrison finally ordered everyone back. They were forced to leave their dead point man.

Hotel Company was still pinned down.

Meanwhile, Colonel Lugger was glued to his radios; his command post was in a tree grove on the northern bank of the Song Lau River, near a crumbling, concrete pagoda which sat incongruously in the high weeds. Lugger had yet to get G and H Companies out of harm’s way when F Company—which was providing CP security—was ordered on another mission. Colonel Codispoti (operating from his Forward CP in the 4–31 TOC on LZ West) wanted one platoon from Fox to conduct a reconnaissance a kilometer-and-a-half to the west. The mission was to link up physically with Task Force 4–31, a goal which Lugger could
not understand. It seemed to play into the hands of the enemy. There were officers who thought he should have quietly ignored the directive from a distant headquarters. But Lugger did not have the advantage of hindsight, nor was he aware of the tactical situation on the Army side of the line.

So the Fox platoon advanced as ordered. They had gone a thousand yards when a sudden ring of mortar, rocket-propelled grenade, and automatic weapons fire slammed down around them, inflicting heavy casualties.

1st Platoon was surrounded.

At the same time, the 2/7 CP came under heavy fire from an estimated seventy-five NVA just across the Song Lau. Fifty meters separated Marines and North Vietnamese, and Lugger and crew hugged earth as RPGs and AK47s screamed in. Mortars began whistling down on their postage-stamp perimeter. Battalion staff officers and radiomen shouldered M16s and returned fire while Lugger worked his radios, trying to control four fights at one time.

Lieutenant Ehrsam, CO, F/2/7, was a former enlisted man with a handlebar mustache and a fighter’s nature. As soon as 1st Platoon was encircled, he ordered 3d Platoon to break through and bring them back. They moved out along the northern bank of the stream.

They too were ambushed.

RPD machine guns, dug in on the opposite bank, signalled the killing. The fusillade was unexpected so close to their lines, and the Marines in the lead fell dead in the shattered elephant grass. AKs joined the RPDs. Everyone tried to hide in the grass. There was no real cover if they were spotted. From behind the immediate crossfire, Lance Corporal Parr pushed forward through the razor-sharp grass with Cpl George Stickman’s fire team. They could see a machine gun position across the stream or, at least, the muzzle flash and smoke when it fired. Parr lay flat, pumping his M16 at it. His buddy, PFC Eddie Grusczynski, unstrapped a LAW and pulled out the safeties. He sat up in the tall grass—the LAW on his shoulder—and was instantly shot. Stickman yelled. He rolled through the grass to Ski’s body and tugged the rocket from his frozen fingers. He quickly rolled back to his original position, then bobbed up for a quick moment, the LAW flashing from over his shoulder, back-blast whipping the brush, the warhead screaming to impact. The
RPD kept firing, and Stickman flung two grenades across the stream. The NVA machine gun was suddenly silent.

PFC Charles W. Norton was in the part of the platoon line farthest from the river, but when the ambush started, he ran towards his pinned-down buddies. You couldn’t even hear shouts over the din of automatic weapons fire; Norton thought they were going to be overrun any second. He ducked from tree to tree, lobbing M79 rounds in the direction of the AK47 fire, then he finally bellied up to a low dike. The platoon’s new lieutenant—who would be seen crying with frustration and grief that night—was pressed behind the berm with several men. Norton continued forward on his stomach through the elephant grass. The enemy fire had tapered off, but rounds still nipped overhead. He wasn’t wearing his flak jacket, but he had his helmet on. He crawled up to Ski. Ski was the most popular guy in the platoon—probably because he was so naive and bookwormish—and Norton grabbed him to pull him back. Ski’s head flopped. There was a blue bruise the size of a silver dollar at his temple, a bullet hole in the center of it. KIA. Herbie Heintz lay nearby and Norton reached out and shook his boot. No response. KIA.

Robert Ryan was still alive. He’d taken a round in the shoulder joint in the first burst—his arm just hung there—and he lay exhausted in the grass, propped up by the radio strapped to his back. Norton edged back to him. So did Stickman. They got the radio off and started pulling him back. Norton was on his stomach, Stickman on his back, and they both had a grip on Ryan’s belt, tugging, pushing with their feet against the sunbaked ground. Norton suddenly felt something snap past his wrist. A round punched through Ryan’s lungs and slammed into Stickman’s leg.

Ryan belched pink blood. KIA.

Parr scrambled over and helped Norton and Stickman drag Ryan’s body over a one-foot dike. A grunt named Danny Shields was there, but the rest of the platoon was along a seven-foot embankment to their rear. One of the Marines scrambled down to help drag the casualties up; a sniper nailed him in the legs as he ran.

Marine Air finally rolled in. The four survivors behind the tiny dike tossed smoke grenades, then hugged earth. Norton looked up—right at a Phantom screaming in off the deck, releasing its napalm canister behind them, the silver canister tumbling past and exploding dead ahead. Wump! The snap sucked the air from his lungs, singed the hair on his arms. Bombs were dropped and the concussion bounced him off the
ground. He was terrified. He knew he was going to die. But the pilots knew what they were doing, and when they were finished only an occasional sniper round cracked at the knot of Marines behind that dike.

Norton blasted back with his grenade launcher, even as dirt kicked up at the impact of incoming bullets. He’d fire, roll to a new position along the dike, drop another round in the M79, pop up to fire again. He carried about sixty rounds and had fired half when the firing pin was jarred loose and fell out. He tossed down the M79. His holster was empty—he’d lost his .45 pistol somewhere when he was crawling—and he picked up an M16 rifle laying in the dirt.

It was over 100 degrees and he could barely move.