Death Valley (52 page)

“No, I’ll walk the point.”

Lieutenant Ronald led the way, Private Besardi walked slack, and they worked their way into a tree line about forty yards back from where they’d been mauled. They set into some dugouts that appeared to be abandoned NVA positions. The grunts in the reserve squad asked questions while the survivors of the first two squads sat shocked and silent. The sun was orange along the ridge line as more Phantoms crashed their bombs and napalm into the crest. Artillery rounds slammed against the bouldered slope. Between salvos, the men could see NVA moving along the face in groups of six or eight, toting AK47s and RPGs, leaves secured to their pith helmets. Oh shit, Besardi thought, don’t tell me they’re going to assault. But they didn’t.

In fact, the
1st NVA Regiment
was pulling out.

B
y the time the men of Bravo 4th of the 31st Infantry straggled back to where they’d dropped their rucks, the valley was dark. Fearing an ambush or booby trap, Captain Gayler had the company set in thirty meters east of their campsite; only with daylight would they retrieve their gear. As a perimeter was being organized along the terraced dikes, Private Jandecka noticed a dark clump in some bushes. He walked over, stuck the barrel of his M16 into the cushy object, and made sure to note its location. It was one of their rucksacks and, by morning, the canteens on it would be refreshingly chilled by the night air.

At daybreak, Jandecka walked over to get his drink. The ruck was gone, which was not too startling, until a sentry said he’d seen something crawl away from that bush during the night. Jandecka suddenly realized the thing he’d prodded with his M16 was probably an NVA straggler doing his best to hide from the American company setting up around him.

At first light on 29 August, Bravo 4–31 prepared to retrieve their four missing men. Before they moved out, Colonel Henry radioed Captain Gayler to delay his sweep until the arrival of Alpha 4–31. Alpha Company came up the road shortly, and Gayler was amazed to see two USMC M48 main battle tanks from the 1st Tank Battalion raising dust with them. Captain Mantell was grinning to him as he came in the perimeter, “Well, I knew an old tanker like yourself would be interested in these iron monsters.” They advanced on the hill from another angle; Gayler stood on the tank deck and the Marine section leader asked if he minded if they reconned by fire. Gayler replied, “Sergeant, I think you’d be
foolish if you didn’t.” He had just jumped from the deck and had not yet passed word that the tanks were going to fire when both let loose with a shrieking canister round. He looked around and realized he was the only one still standing; everyone else thought it had been incoming and they were down behind the tanks, the dikes, or the trees. As the tankers put .50-caliber fire into the hill, Gayler jokingly chided his men to their feet and they advanced.

Jandecka had been sick at heart with worry. His first firefight the day before had been like nothing he’d expected. He wasn’t sure he could take a repeat. The sight of the tanks was comforting, but more reassuring was the mail brought in by the morning resupply bird. He got a letter from his father which made reference to Psalm 4.8. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, do make me to dwell in safety.” It brought tears to his eyes and he did his best to swallow his fear and hump along with his comrades.

There was no NVA fire.

A cautious sweep of the knoll turned up numerous spider holes, four reinforced bunkers, a 60mm mortar base plate, seventeen 60mm shells, two NVA packs, and an old carbine. There were blood stains in some of the spider holes, but the only bodies were those Bravo Company had left behind.

It took awhile to find the two men who’d been killed in the second attack, mostly because one may not have been dead when they’d retreated. He’d taken a head wound but apparently woke up in the night and crawled deep into some bushes. He died alone sometime before the sweep arrived; at least, that’s what it looked like. Gayler noticed that, when a helicopter arrived to drop off body bags and take the dead back out, a few GIs shied away from the body detail; they’d shared C rations with those men, but in death they were some kind of bad omen.

The bodies weren’t the only passengers on the medevac. Brantley’s squad leader, one of only two sergeants in the platoon, complained he’d cracked a rib during the fight. He left on the Huey and managed to swing a job in the rear.

Brantley himself went out with torn back muscles. He returned to the company, but not before he and a couple of Bravo walking wounded left the hospital for a week’s siesta in a Da Nang whorehouse. What are the lifers going to do, send us to Nam? they speculated. As it was, they were reduced in rank. So what?

PFC Marion Feaster soon reupped to get out of the bush.

So did two of the FNGs.

After the medevac, the sweep turned around and returned to their night laager. There was much bickering when they discovered that the Marines guarding their rucksacks had fingered through them. One GI was relieved of a prized bottle of whiskey and he wanted blood. They did not get their satisfaction; the Marine tanks and infantry soon headed east to rejoin their battalion. Bravo Company moved out at dusk too, humping west to assume security outside the Resettlement Village. Jandecka’s squad had the drag position. Eates was walking last. He was sick with fever, stumbling, barely keeping up. He toughed it out, though, only asking Jandecka, who was just ahead of him in the line, to look back occasionally and make sure he hadn’t passed out on the trail. Jandecka did so gladly, remembering the rucksack incident. There was something claustrophobic about the valley, as if the NVA were everywhere, ready to ambush two straggling GIs. If imagination could kill, Jandecka would have been a victim that night.

On 28 August, A/4–31 Infantry and I/3/7 Marines had made the linkup without contact. On 29 August, the Battle of Hiep Duc Valley was essentially over. That morning, the grunts of Lima Company 3/7 slumped sluggishly in their holes as eight mortar rounds exploded among them. That was a departing volley from the NVA pulling out of Nui Chom; medevacs took out fifteen wounded men. Word was passed to move onto Hill 381. Lieutenant Ronald had been medevacked—finally ordered out by Colonel Kummerow—and the orphans he left behind were on edge. Spencer was bitching to Besardi that he was a corporal, while Besardi was only a private first class, and he shouldn’t make them go back up that hill.

“Hey, listen,” Besardi snapped, “if you wanna be the fucking squad leader, you go right ahead. I’ll give it to you right fucking now, if you want the responsibilities!”

“No, no, no.”

“Okay, then shut the fuck up.”

He turned to Johnson. “Joe, I need a point man.”

“What the fuck, Charly, I’m …”

“Yeah, man, I understand where you’re coming from. But I still need a fucking point man.”

“All right, I’ll walk it for ya.”

With Johnson on point and Besardi walking slack, the platoon finally
hiked up the bouldered slope. The NVA were gone. They humped most of the afternoon, searching the abandoned dugouts, until the acting platoon leader called a break near a stream. Besardi was loaded under extra M60 ammo he had scrounged from the medevacs, and a U.S. Army flak jacket one of the casualties had previously liberated from Baldy or West and left lying in the dirt. He was really dragging and his good buddy Dean took his canteens to fill them up.

They set up atop Hill 381 for the night, then hacked through some thick brush to rejoin the rest of the company. They found them on one of the knolls of the ridge line, and from there they eventually were choppered to LZ Ross for a rest. A lot of replacements were milling on the LZ. Besardi noticed one of them and thought shocked, oh my God, this can’t be. It was a hometown buddy.

He grabbed him. “Pizza Paul, what you doing!”

Paul stared at Besardi for a long second. He finally recognized him and blurted, “Charly, you look fucking terrible.”

“Don’t worry about that, pal, you’ll look the same way in a few months too.”

Lima 3/7 had disembarked at Ross in the late afternoon, then erected tents in the rain. The monsoon was beginning. Around 2100, word came to saddle up. The battalion was taking to the bush again in order to thin out the congestion atop LZ Ross in case of a rocket attack, and to investigate a sighting of North Vietnamese in nearby foothills. Besardi trudged bleary-eyed through the mud, his helmet cover soaked, his uniform soaked, his gear soaked, his skin shrivelled from the constant dampness. He rounded up his squad; they were bitching as they reshouldered packs and bandoliers, too tired to accept any rationale of why they were moving again. The acting platoon leader finally addressed them, “Listen, people, this is a W-A-R and we got fucking things to do. So, let’s go do it.”

They filed out of the fire base gate and down the muddy slope in the rainstorm, humping from ten at night until five in the morning in the direction of LZ Baldy. When they stopped, Besardi wrapped himself in a poncho liner, put his helmet over his face to shield the rain, and slept in the wet grass for two hours. Then they were up again, shivering and soaked, back on patrol.

T
o cap the victory, Colonel Codispoti presented Colonel Henry with a silver bugle. According to MACV’s very subjective distillation of prisoner statements, Hanoi did not consider their campaign in Hiep Duc a success. Some said that the commander and executive officer of the
1st NVA Regiment
were relieved after pulling back into the mountains. Others said that a B52 arc light along Nui Chom had found the
2d NVA Division
Headquarters and pursuing units killed dozens of North Vietnamese. It was impossible to verify the prisoners’ statements. Scores of NVA stragglers were picked off by the pursuing units. An NVA battalion commander was captured by M/3/7 Marines; he was found in a cave with three soldiers, all of whom surrendered after the Marines fired in a few rounds. The enemy colonel would not budge, so they tossed in tear gas and had to drag him out physically.

An ARVN battalion was brought in to help with the mop-up, and they spotted a withdrawing NVA column. U.S. artillery was brought to bear and by some accounts a hundred bodies were found.

The NVA were hurt more severely in retreat than in battle.

In the spring of 1970, when Colonel Henry was senior advisor, 5th Regiment, 2d ARVN Division, the ARVN troops overran an NVA hospital south of LZ West. The hospital records were translated and, according to Henry’s memory, they indicated 1,500 NVA casualties between 11 and 31 August 1969. Thus, if the campaign was honed to a simple matter of debits and credits, it was another American victory. The enemy had retired from the battlefield before they could put the torch to the Hiep Duc Resettlement Village, and General Ramsey called it “a successful
pre-emptive battle … one of the greatest battles and victories my men have fought.”

Records are not comprehensive regarding U.S. casualties in the Hiep Duc and Song Chang Valleys, but it appears that the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry was bled the most. In twelve days, 17–28 August 1969, the battalion suffered 39 KIA and 204 WIA. They claimed 406 NVA KIA, 8 prisoners, and the capture or destruction of 36 individual and 11 crew-served weapons. For this defense of Hiep Duc, the Polar Bears won a U.S. Presidential Unit Citation and an RVN Cross of Gallantry.

The lulls and peaks continued.

On 12 September, an NVA attack on LZ Siberia was repelled by B/4–31 and C/3–82. The battle signalled a week of heavy fighting in both the 4–31 AO and 3–21 AO; casualties were heavy. Two months later, the 7th Marines rooted out numerous base camps and caches in the Que Sons; the NVA decided to slug it out and both sides were bloodied. They were bloodied again on 6 January 1970, when fifty NVA sappers penetrated 1/7’s perimeter on LZ Ross; thirty-eight of them were killed and three captured, but thirteen Marines died.

The Americal did not see prolonged action in the area until 30 April 1970, when NVA sappers slipped the wire on LZ Siberia two hours after midnight. The attack was repulsed by D/4–31 but, meanwhile, other NVA units rampaged through a section of the Resettlement Village. Fifty homes were burned and twelve civilians killed; most fled to LZ Karen. In fighting which continued into the first week of May, the 5th ARVN Regiment with Americal gunship support retook the village; 4–31 with reinforcements regained the valley. Two reasons were suggested for the NVA attacks: to confiscate the rice then being harvested and, as an Army officer commented, “… just to demonstrate they could do it.”

On 6 May, 2/7 Marines repelled a ground attack on Que Son District Headquarters. There was another series of mortarings and ground attacks in the area in June, then another lull, then another flurry of attacks in July, most of them weathered by B and C/1–46 Infantry.

The next lull for the 196th Brigade lasted until 28 March 1971, at which time Charlie 1st of the 46th Infantry was overrun by NVA sappers. They were on stand down atop LZ Mary Ann, a remote mountain south of the Song Chang Valley. Although the company commander had an outstanding reputation, a couple of bunker guards could not resist getting stoned; even sentries doing their duty could see practically nothing because
of thick ground fog. The NVA sappers were able to wiggle through the wire under the fog. When a mortar barrage sent the GIs ducking, the North Vietnamese sprinted the last few meters into the perimeter. The sappers destroyed the B-TOC bunker (wounding the BnCO), cut communication lines, and tossed satchel charges into as many bunkers as they could before running down the opposite side of the hill.