Death Valley (44 page)

The 2/7 Marines had one of the highest crime rates in the division.

Colonel Lugger had indeed inherited a mess, and he busted his ass trying to pump up morale, decipher the troops’ discontent, and punish those who refused to reform. His methods would never have won him a popularity contest; he never had a positive word for anyone, only red-faced screaming over the problems he found.

Lugger thought things were improving slowly. Perhaps they were. Others thought the mutiny had only been shoved beneath the surface. There was talk of military justice being meted out by throwing Marines in barbed wire cages or beating them with rifle butts. “The steps Lugger took to help morale just didn’t work,” said a staff officer. “He used strictness to the point of harassment. This was applied arbitrarily in such a manner as to appear irrational. The troops responded by retaliation. There was a reward on him before we ever went to LZ Ross.”

If any one man ould take credit for being the battalion’s rock as it sat rotting on the Da Nang line, it was Major Steele, who was on his third tour. Unfortunately for all concerned, Steele was rotated to the Division Surveillance Reconnaissance Center the day 2/7 trucked into LZ Baldy.

The battalion was not a cohesive fighting force.

The men had sat stagnant too long. Too many of their officers were brand new, and too many were considered “crap” by the enlisted men. LZ Baldy was their first real operation in months, and the Hiep Duc Valley was no place to clean off the rust they’d accumulated. They were not prepared for the hornets’ nest they’d walked into and, despite the heroism of many of the players, all in all, the battalion was getting its ass kicked. There was no maneuvering, for no matter in which direction a unit moved, it was pinned down. Each platoon of each company—and sometimes each individual—was literally on its own.

1stLt Lloyd L. Lindsey, Battalion Intelligence officer, summed it up when he said they fought the entire battle in a state of shock.

At 1800 on 25 August, Lieutenant Vannoy radioed Lieutenant Brennon to pull out of the paddy. It was getting dark and the Phantoms were coming in one more time to cover their retreat. Lieutenant Vallance’s platoon on the right flank would also be firing cover, then coming out after them.

The men crawled away from the protection of the boulder one at a time, and the NVA on the high ground opened fire with a renewed fury. The point man and rifleman went first, then the wounded corpsman, the squad leader, and finally Brennon and his radioman. They rolled over the first dike under heavy fire, then crawled through a wet paddy to the next dike. The point man jumped quickly over it, then reached back to help the rifleman hoist the seriously wounded corpsman over the berm.

In seconds, NVA snipers killed the first three men.

They collapsed in the mud, shot through their heads and throats. Brennon, his radioman, and the squad leader crawled back to the cover of the boulder. They crouched, exhausted and dirty, and called in more air strikes. The Phantoms came in low and put their ordnance right on the NVA, but it didn’t stop their fire. In the bushes to their left, only fifty meters away, they could hear men moving towards their rear. The NVA were trying to surround them in the dark. Brennon had only two men with him. They’d used M16s, M60s, M79s, Cobras, Phantoms. Well, he thought with a combination of irony and terror, I’m all out of tricks.

There was, however, one more ploy. Brennon radioed the jet pilots to scream in as low as possible, but not drop any bombs. Hopefully, the NVA would duck long enough for the three Marines to jump a dike at each pass. It was slow and scary and some of the snipers continued fighting—one shot the magazine right out of Brennon’s M16.

When the last Phantom made its last pass, the pilot radioed Brennon, “Hey, buddy, today it looks like you’re just SOL.” Shit Outta Luck.

But the maneuver worked; once out of the worst of the crossfire, the three grunts low-crawled the last hundred yards along the dikes into the sanctuary of the tree line behind them that had been secured by the CP and 2d Platoon. They lost the platoon leader lieutenant in the process; he took a bullet in his shoulder. Lieutenant Vallance and his platoon were able to pull back without drawing a shot. Perhaps it was getting too dark for the NVA to see them.

The fight had lasted more than eight hours. Five dead men were left in the field; one man was missing. In Hotel Company, both ammunition and spirits were very low.

The men headed back to link up with Golf Company.

Golf had also pulled back with a dead point man left lying in the dirt. They’d finally consolidated on the main trail and secured the area
for Hotel’s withdrawal. While they were waiting, there was movement in the roadside brush, then a shout for help. Golf Two’s corpsman was about to run towards the call, but Staff Sergeant Clements stopped him, “No, stop doc. Think a minute. Might be some turncoats out there.” Clements shouted for the men to show themselves. Two grunts stumbled onto the trail, one shot in the leg and leaning against his buddy. They were pissed. “Those sonsuvbitches! They run off and left us!” The doc bandaged the man’s leg in an abandoned hootch, then directed them down the road to where the Golf CP was set up in another dilapidated hootch. It was doubtful that the two Marines were actually left behind. It was more probable that they were separated in the confusing night move, because the main body of Hotel did not pass through Golf for another thirty minutes. The company filed past in the dark, casualties carried in sagging ponchos between bent figures.

At least one thing went right on 25 August: at two hours before midnight, while Cobras buzz-sawed around their ragged perimeter, Sea Knights touched down with Fox Company’s surrounded platoon. The survivors, almost out of ammunition, quickly dragged their dead and wounded aboard (leaving only one dead man behind in the darkness); the helos departed with lights off before the NVA could coordinate their fires.

The rest of Fox was still on the firing line.

Lorne Collinson and Ron McCoy were dug into a two-man hole on the battalion perimeter. A hedgerow ran across their front and the ground fell away to the stream. The Battalion CP was behind them in the trees, across a paddy which seemed especially open and wide in the dark. Other Marines were dug in at ten-meter intervals down the line. Collinson and McCoy had their M16 rifles resting on the edge of the hole, ammo magazines and frags spread out within easy reach, knives stuck into the dirt before them.

They were sure they would be overrun.

Collinson was twenty years old; he was a Canadian immigrant who believed very strongly in the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War. McCoy was a rich kid who gave the impression he’d signed up on a lark, and was enjoying the hell out of the experience.

But that night, none of that mattered. It was obvious that the NVA had enough men to attempt an assault, which is exactly what Collinson
thought they were going to do—with him sitting in a little hole in the front row. McCoy felt it too and mumbled, “We’re not going to see the sun again.” In the dark they exchanged glances which did not need words: we’re dead so forget it and just kill as many of them as you can when they come through that hedgerow. Their whispered conversation drifted to other things. Collinson was surprised at their calm. The situation was beyond their control, so they might as well just relax.

O
nly hours before Echo Company was alerted to move into Hiep Duc, 2dLt William Schuler of 1st Platoon was sitting on their hilltop, watching a Sea Knight trying to land in the river valley. He counted tracers from six 12.7mm positions snapping up at it. Schuler’s platoon was north in the LZ Ross AO, picking through the back door of the NVA battalions fighting in the valley. Their order to airlift into Hiep Duc was abrupt.

The company choppered in at dusk, landing a bit east of the 2/7 CP to avoid the antiaircraft guns. As Lieutenant Schuler and his platoon humped towards the battalion perimeter, Lieutenant Lindsey of Battalion Intelligence met them and led them in. Schuler liked Lindsey—an easygoing, humorous guy who’d spent seven months as a platoon leader. Now, though, his voice was edged with fear. He described the events of the day, and said Echo Company had been rushed in because Intelligence was afraid the CP might be overrun during the night.

Schuler had never seen Lindsey rattled before.

As for himself, Lieutenant Schuler had five months in-country; he had killed two men and been recommended for a Silver Star. He was a stocky, pugnacious man, at twenty-two the oldest in his platoon. He had an unauthorized red handlebar mustache, toted an M79 grenade launcher, and was not hesitant to sandbag “unwise” patrols radioed from above. He did not court-martial his men; if someone faked heat exhaustion or was caught sleeping on guard, he allowed the platoon sergeant and squad leader to take care of whatever punishment was required. Schuler thought he did a damn good job and his grunts agreed.
He fit in well with the other officers of Echo Company; they led their grunts through comradeship, not by hard-assing them, and all took their turn on point. Like most of the men, however, although Schuler was proud to be a Marine and proud of the unlettered but gutsy kids in his platoon, he was not particularly motivated by the Vietnam cause.

Schuler had enlisted because the other alternatives his privileged upbringing allowed he saw to be ignoble. He wanted to do his duty, but he had no career intentions. At Basic School, most of the new lieutenants shared his outlook. They became known as the Zoo Platoon because of their unruliness; he lost count of how many times men answered the platoon leader with, “What are you going to do if I don’t clean my room? Shave my head and send me to Vietnam?”

Schuler did not lose count, though, of those men who became casualties in their very personal, forgotten war. During the flight into Da Nang with two Basic School classmates destined for the 5th Marines, they joked that, statistically, one would be killed, one wounded, and one would rotate home unscathed. As it turned out, Schuler, who took a blast of shrapnel in the face, was luckiest. Ted, one of the few professionals and a compassionate man, took an RPG in the head in the Arizona. Ken, who also led a platoon in the Arizona, was the one who didn’t make the casualty list. Mental wounds weren’t tabulated. One friend dead, the other an alcoholic; each name was like a drop of acid in the face of withdrawals. One of Schuler’s instructors at PLC, Karl Taylor, was killed charging a machine gun bunker on Go Noi Island. The honor man of his PLC platoon, Bobby Muller, was shot through the chest and paralyzed for life. The distinguished graduate of his Basic School platoon, James Webb, was wounded twice in the Arizona and medically retired. There were more names in Schuler’s history.

At first Schuler seemed to lead a charmed life. After several months with various weapons platoons during Oklahoma Hills, he joined Echo Company in June when they were on Hill 22 at the far edge of the Da Nang Rocket Belt. It was an area of villages, cultivated rice fields, rivers, and crumbling French forts; and it was one of the main infiltration routes to Division Ridge. The numerous contacts they made kept Echo one of the sharpest companies in the battalion; as far as Schuler’s platoon was concerned, they were kicking ass. They called themselves Schuler’s Slayers; their night ambushes and claymores often caught NVA rocket teams trying to slip down the trails. They found a few bodies, lots of blood trails, and bits of flesh. During that period, Schuler lost only
two men: a corpsman knocked unconscious when a bullet hit his helmet, and a grunt injured when a claymore blasting cap detonated in his hand. The platoon tripped no booby traps and morale was high.

It unravelled on 15 August when the company convoyed from Dai La to LZ Baldy. During the mortar and sapper attack that night, Schuler and his men had taken refuge under a truck on the airstrip. It was stacked with 105mm artillery rounds; very hairy, he thought. He lost one man wounded that night. At dawn, they stuck chieu hoi passes in the hands of the naked, dead sappers in the wire and posed for photographs. They were trucked to LZ Ross that afternoon—toting liberated U.S. Army gear—then humped to OP Tiger atop a hillock in Happy Valley. Each man had a helmet, flak jacket, full pack, four canteens, thirty magazines of ammunition, six frags, and three mortar rounds.

The company had six heat medevacs in two hours.

The situation was changing for the worse. While the rest of the battalion was piecemealed into Hiep Duc Valley, Schuler’s platoon worked Happy Valley. The heat and humidity were ungodly, and their patrols were not as efficient as before. Their successful ambushing around Hill 22 had come about due to the intelligent plotting of Major Steele. He was aggressive, but prudent. His replacement, whom they quickly dubbed Cement Head, was aggressive, but incompetent. At least Schuler thought so and, for the first time, he began quietly sandbagging orders. They still made almost daily contact with the skeleton garrisons guarding the base camps of the NVA battalions fighting in Hiep Duc. Schuler had never seen anything like it—enemy supply trails wide enough for trucks, more rice caches than they could destroy. Even battalion rear on Ross took casualties from shellings.