Death Valley (6 page)

On 23 February 1969, the NVA staged a midnight sapper attack on the 1st MarDiv HQ and 26th Marines CP on Division Ridge. They breached the wire and captured several bunkers, but were driven off after a night of close combat. At the same time, NVA and VC units attempting to sever Highway One were beaten back by the 1st Marines and the 1st Military Police Battalion. Other NVA units approaching Da Nang under cover of these attacks were intercepted by the 7th Marines and routed after a brutal, three-day battle which included hand-to-hand combat.

On 19 March, NVA sappers and infantry breached the wire at Liberty Bridge, manned by a company of 1/5 and an artillery battery of 2/11,
and gutted three bunkers with flamethrowers before a heroic, hasty counterattack plugged the gap and artillery fire was brought to bear at point-blank range.

On 31 March, the 7th Marines began Operation Oklahoma Hills, an eight-week foray into and around Charlie Ridge. At the same time, on 29 April, B and D Companies of the regiment conducted a bloody foray into the Arizona.

On 9 May, the 5th Marines executed an expert deployment around a large NVA unit moving through the Arizona, then devastated them with air and arty. (“We caught them with their pants down,” said 2dLt James Webb, platoon leader with D/1/5. “Our FO was calling for artillery on four hundred NVA and he was sixth on the priority list!” After recovering, the NVA struck back at the isolated companies; this was later immortalized in Webb’s novel,
Fields of Fire
, and it was the day his Marine called Snake posthumously won the Navy Cross for dragging wounded men through a withering crossfire.) The battle lasted three days.

On 7 June, the
90th NVA Regiment
attacked 1/5 Marines in the Arizona, sparking a week-long battle. The NVA retreated to Charlie Ridge.

What followed those four months of sustained activity was called the Summer Lull. It was during this time that the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, under the command of LtCol John A. Dowd, crossed the Song Vu Gia into the Arizona Territory. Their operation continued through the last six weeks of the lull; then the 1969 Summer Offensive almost buried them.

I
t was almost twilight when Delta Company moved down a weathered railroad trestle without tracks. Nicholas Cominos looked back over his shoulder. It was another hot night in the Arizona flatlands, and in the fading light the company was moving to a new night position to disorient enemy mortarmen. The column was perfectly spaced, everyone silhouetted, faces hidden in the shadows of helmet brims. This is really beautiful, Cominos thought; this is what the poet sees sometimes.

It became his lasting mental portrait of the operation.

The 1st Battalion, 7th Marines entered the Arizona Territory on 1 July 1969 as part of Operation Forsythe Grove. The op had been hastily organized after reports of an impending attack on Hill 65 by six hundred NVA believed to be massing in northern Arizona. To preempt this, 2/5 Marines took up blocking positions in western Arizona, 1/5 Marines in eastern Arizona, and 1/7 Marines were to sweep south between this cordon. Alpha 1/7 (Capt Edward T. Clark III) was helicoptered into southern Arizona at first light to form the final block for the sweep. They took some fire, but gunships quieted it. The assault companies staged on the banks of the Song Vu Gia below Hill 65: Bravo 1/7 (1stLt Allen E. Weh), Delta 1/7 (Capt Brian J. Fagan), and attached Lima 3/7 (Capt Jon K. Rider). Charlie 1/7 (1stLt Raymond A. Hord) was the reserve on Hill 65.

The river crossing commenced at 0600 in a rolling barrage of two thousand tank and artillery rounds. The tanks were firing from atop Hill 65, over the heads of the troops in the river, devastating the tree lines hundreds of yards inland with high-explosive and white phosphorus
shells. The arty worked across terrain features which offered good firing vantages and into likely avenues of enemy retreat. Amphibious tractors ferried Bravo and Lima Companies across the Vu Gia; however, loose sand, variations in water depth, and mechanical difficulties left most of the amtracs stuck at midstream. Cables were attached to tow them out. Bravo and Lima fanned out from the opposite beach line, securing it, while Major General Simpson helicoptered to the starting point to confer with Lieutenant Colonel Dowd. Dowd approved of the contingency plan to use helicopters and, within thirty minutes, the remainder of the battalion assault force was across the river. Ahead of them and on their flanks, Phantom jets plastered the countryside with bombs and napalm. The artillery continued to pound in. There was virtually no return fire. The sun was the enemy this day. Alpha Company, the southern block, had deployed on a small ridge called the Hot Dog and it was an eight-klick hump from the Vu Gia to link up with them.

The following day, Operation Forsythe Grove was terminated. Intelligence had been faulty. No large NVA force was detected and “only” five men had been killed: a man from L/3/7 hit by a short U.S. 8–inch howitzer round, and four NVA who were caught in the sweep. At this point, 1/7 Marines withdrew to the corridor between Charlie Ridge and the Arizona; they secured Route 4 as combat engineers reopened it all the way to the Thuong Duc Special Forces outpost deep in the mountains. Then, on 17 July, the battalion conducted a second river crossing. The 5th Marines were leaving An Hoa for Operation Durham Peak in the Que Sons, and 1/7 was left virtually alone to police the Arizona. Their continued operation had no name, but it lasted four more weeks. The Battalion CP set up on the Hot Dog, and the four rifle companies scoured the Arizona flatlands, constantly hunting, moving at least every two days, repeatedly crisscrossing the area. Chasing phantoms.

It was no different from the dozens of continuing Search & Destroy missions being conducted throughout South Vietnam on any given day, all of which could be described with one word: miserable. Every day—every single day—the companies broke up into platoon patrol bases from which the squads went out hunting. The thermometer hovered above 100 degrees, the dust from the paddies covered everything, and the men moved listlessly under eighty pounds of gear: helmet, flak jacket, frag grenades, CS tear gas grenades, M16 bandoliers, extra M60 ammunition, claymore mines, trip flares, an M72 LAW rocket, pack, rifle. At night, they went on ambush patrols. There was little rest from the heat
and the humping and, while men looked fit and tanned, their eyes were sunken, their faces drawn. The U.S. Army prided itself in getting a hot meal to the troops every day, even in the field. The U.S. Marine Corps did not have the helicopters or the troops for such a logistical luxury. They got helicopter resupply only every fourth day, usually enough C rations for two or three days, and enough water to drink only sparingly, none to shave. The water was shipped to the field in 155mm artillery canisters and reeked of chlorine. Guys wrote home for Kool Aid just to kill the taste. Bomb crater water was even worse.

Miserable, just fucking miserable.

For Corporal Cominos, a squad leader in Delta Company, the worst thing about the days were the fields of shoulder-high, razor-sharp elephant grass. The men emerged from those briars with their arms and hands bleeding and the leather of their jungle boots peeling. The worst thing about the nights were the mosquitoes. They rose in swarms in the hot night air, and Cominos always slept with his poncho wrapped around him like a cocoon.

One had to find ways to endure. Morale in the battalion was never such that Cominos ever seriously considered bagging a patrol, but he did discard his shirt and T-shirt. He wore his flak jacket over a bare chest, and he shit-canned most of the vest’s fiberglass plates; he left only four—one over his heart, his chest, and two in back over his kidneys. He also threw away his Marine-issue pack and used a captured NVA rucksack; it was more comfortable and utilitarian. The most-used piece of gear was his green towel, tucked between neck and flak jacket collar, to wipe the sweat from his face every couple minutes.

It was a brutalizing existence, made even worse by stagnation. During its weeks in the Arizona, 1/7 Marines made no solid contacts with the enemy. Their prize kept eluding them; mostly what they found were booby traps and stolid, unanswering villagers who populated the few hamlets still left in this free-fire zone. Frustrations simmered in the grunts, but they did not become murderers. Sergeant Lowery noted:

Still, the psychological pressures of Search & Destroy could be intense. There were too many gray areas. On his first tour, Lowery had taken out a night ambush near a ville. He set his M60 team in atop a small hill, then was placing the ambush below the mound when he noticed the girl—a Vietnamese woman was squatting in the brush, peering intently at the machine gun pos. Lowery ran towards her, shouting, “Halt!
Dung lai, dung lai!”
The woman bolted and he triggered a hurried burst; her arm jerked, but she kept running. Lowery crammed a fresh mag into his M16, braced, and emptied it into her back. They gathered around the mamasan. She was a pretty girl, they all commented, clean, her teeth unstained by betel nut. And she was still alive, breathing in labored gasps. Their new corpsman looked at her in horror, mumbling, “What do I do?” “Fuck it,” Lowery said, “put her out of her misery.” The corpsman pulled out his .45 automatic and started shooting. He kept pulling the trigger until the slide locked back, and he kept mumbling, “What do I do, what do I do!”

Was that an atrocity? No, it was necessary.

But you gotta understand, Lowery continued, the new corpsman didn’t give a shit what happened to these worthless gooks; and in that, he spoke for a certain percentage of all grunts.

Most did what they had to do to survive in an alien, hostile environment.

Most men didn’t have time for much thinking. Cominos, from a solid Greek Orthodox family, had joined the Marines after college graduation, a rarity in the grunts. What was also rare was that he volunteered for the bush not only because he wanted to prove something—but because he believed. Deep down, though, the only thing that seemed pertinent were the men in his squad. The only questions he asked were how many klicks we going today, which squad’s got point, who’s taking out the ambush tonight? The most lasting impression Corporal Cominos had of the operation in the Arizona was not the daily pain or the occasional cruelties, but the quiet courage of the grunts. They endured and they endured and they endured, he thought. Everyone bitched and cursed, but they had a job to do and they did it. He always remembered his
M79 man, “Carbo” Carbahal from California. The man was in intense pain for days, but only when he could barely walk did he report his injuries. He was medevacked and it turned out he had stress fractures in his shins. He had kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to let his buddies down.

On 16 July, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines walked from Hill 37 to the vicinity of Hill 65, from which they would cross the Vu Gia back into the Arizona. It was a dreary, hot, dusty day as the grunts walked down Route 4, one column on either side of the dirt road. Lieutenant Peters of Delta Company plodded along with his platoon. He had his M16 in the normal bush position: sling over shoulder, weapon hanging at the waist pointed left, left hand gripping the plastic stock, right hand on the trigger guard, thumb on the safety catch ready to push it to semi.

Peters was in the righthand column as they passed a hootch. He turned to his left to tell something to the man behind him just as a figure ran to the gateway in front of the hootch and threw something. In one movement, Peters whipped around into a squat, left hand thrusting the barrel in the direction of the movement, and he found himself a second from firing with his M16 in the face of a four-year-old boy. The kid had run out to throw a rock at the Americans. He stared terrified at the rifle. Embarrassed, Peters walked on.