We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam (13 page)

None of us knew then that the morning light would bring a two-battalion enemy attack against Charlie Company’s thin line—600 or more of the enemy against 106 American officers and men. In just two and a half hours Charlie Company’s five officers would all be either dead or wounded and only 49 of the 106 soldiers would survive unhurt. Even though two of the company’s platoons were overrun by the attacking North Vietnamese, still they held the line against a formidable enemy in hand-to-hand combat. I was so proud of them. Now, again, I grieved for the brave young American soldiers who gave their lives for their buddies on this spot. I thought of the Charlie Company commander, Capt. Bob Edwards, radioing me that he was hit bad and directly under the sights of an enemy machine gunner but his men were still fighting. Bob had asked me for reinforcements but I knew they would only be shot up trying to move to his position. I had to tell him no; to just hang on and keep fighting. Then there was that bright young lieutenant, Jack Geoghegan, who had plans after the war to return to Africa, where he and his young wife, Barbara, had been missionary aid workers. Jack died here going to the rescue of one of his wounded soldiers, PFC Willie Godboldt. We found their bodies together where they had fallen. I had carried Geoghegan’s lifeless body off this field in my own arms, thinking of his wife and their baby daughter, Camille, born just before we left Fort Benning. Their names, Geoghegan and Godboldt, are side by side, carved in the black granite of Panel 3-East of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., among the 305 names of all the men who died in the Ia Drang. They are there together for as long as granite endures, a white officer and a black soldier joined in death by a bond that knows no prejudice, no artificial barriers. I thought of those words from the Bible that echo so strongly in the hearts of soldiers: Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for the sake of another.

Then I turned and walked through the night to the termite hill where my command post, medical aid station, and ammunition and rations stockpiles had been located in a small copse of trees. Vivid memories of the combat that had raged all around, day and night, washed over me. Once again I sat down and leaned back against that old termite hill where my small command group had taken shelter from the enemy fire. It was here, on the second morning, that I looked up and saw two U.S. Air Force F-100 fighters diving right on us. The lead plane had already released two long cylindrical napalm canisters that were loblollying end over end directly toward us. I screamed at Lt. Charlie Hastings, the air forward observer, to call off that second plane before he dropped his napalm, too. Charlie screamed into his radio in the nick of time. In my mind I can still see those two cans of napalm pass just over our heads and explode, pouring flaming jellied gasoline over two of my engineer demolition troops in their foxholes twenty yards away. It set fire to some of our ammunition crates as well. Joe was sitting back against the termite hill with us that morning and I saw him jump to his feet and run out into that bullet-whipped clearing and into the burning grass to help rescue the horribly burned soldiers. That was the moment I knew in my heart that he was just as much a soldier as any man here.

What did all of this mean? Was all this suffering and dying worth it? Even then, in the dawn of this war that would drag on for ten long years and cost the lives of 58,256 Americans and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians, our political leadership could not explain coherently why we were fighting halfway around the world against these people. It wasn’t our place to question. We were soldiers and we followed their orders. In times and places like this, where the reasons for war are lacking, soldiers fight and die for each other. For the men on their right and left. Long after the war was over one president, Ronald Reagan, called it a “noble” effort. He was wrong. There’s never been a noble war except in the history books and propaganda movies. It’s a bloody, dirty, cruel, costly mistake in almost every case, as it was in this war that would end so badly. But the young soldiers can be and often are noble, selfless, and honorable. They don’t fight for a flag or a president or mom and apple pie. When it comes down to it they fight and die for each other, and that is reason enough for them, and for me.

The strongest memory, and saddest, came back when I looked at a bare stretch of ground close by where the bodies of my men had been collected for the first leg of a long journey home to their loved ones. Each had been lovingly rolled into his own green rubber poncho by his buddies and then carried here. Only their worn black leather combat boots were visible, sticking out unnaturally from the covering poncho, the laces tied one last time a morning or two ago by their own hands. When I saw them so long ago I grieved silently, knowing a terrible truth that in a day or two or three telegrams would arrive at front doors all across America that would shatter the hearts and lives of their loved ones back home. I had no time to weep for them then but I have many times since. Here, on this ground, I wept one more time for seventy-nine men of my battalion who fell fighting in this place and would be forever young in my memory and those of their comrades and their families. I thought that the shower of meteors we had witnessed this evening was a gift to us, a heavenly tribute to the memory of all who died in this place.

I got up and slowly walked back to the fire. Gwin awoke and joined me, asking, “How’re you doing?” I answered: “Fine. I’m just guarding the dead.” As the hours wore on I would troop the lines around that clearing several more times. Joe later told me he woke up several times, raised his head, and saw me walking guard duty around the perimeter. He was comforted by the sight and would drift back to sleep. Sometime after three a.m. I heard a voice shouting from the jungle, echoing off the mountain slope. Two or three times that shout came: “Binh!” “Binh!” Everyone sat up, listening intently and wondering who was coming. Beck pulled his stone-age spear close. Our government interpreter, Vu Binh, yelled back, and into our clearing marched Major Hao and the platoon of Vietnamese soldiers who had stood guard over us the day before.

We learned from Hao that General An had been extremely concerned for our safety when the helicopter pilots refused to fly through the rainstorm and darkness to get us. He had tried to order the civilian pilots to make the dangerous flight and they flatly refused. The general then phoned the Defense Ministry in Hanoi in an attempt to force the issue. The alarm spread. An American general, two American journalists, two TV film crews, some American veterans, and a lone Vietnamese government translator had been stranded without protection in the jungle just five miles from the Cambodian border. Orders flowed downhill: If the helicopter can’t safely do a night rescue then someone has to go overland to get them. Major Hao drove the thirty-plus miles from Pleiku to Duc Co town, on the other side of the river, commandeered an old Russian-made farm tractor, forded the river, and drove on to the border fort, where he collected the soldiers and began the march through a dark jungle toward X-Ray. Back in Pleiku our old enemy commander walked the floor all night long, worried about us.

We welcomed the rescue party and shared our food, water, and insect repellent with them. Then, one by one, we lay back down on the ground and drifted off to sleep. This time I joined them. I awoke at dawn to clear skies and walked the perimeter and visited my old CP alone, one last time, saying my good-byes to all the brave men who had perished here. Over by the fire George Forrest awoke, opened one eye, and there, standing over him, was a Vietnamese soldier in uniform and pith helmet, his AK-47 held at the ready across his chest. George told us later that in that moment he had a flashback to 1965 and feared he was about to be killed or taken prisoner. He measured the distance and calculated his chances of jumping and disabling or killing the “enemy” soldier and taking his rifle. Then reality sank in and he heaved a huge sigh of relief. This time the enemy was there to keep him from harm.

Not long afterward that Russian helicopter clattered in over the trees and dropped in to X-Ray. General An and his colonels and the rest of our party, including Plumley—who had done some worrying of his own over our situation during that long night—streamed off and greeted us warmly. General An wanted to call off the expedition then and there, canceling our plans to spend this day exploring Landing Zone Albany nearby. We argued strongly that we had come this far, without harm, and the mission should be completed. An reluctantly agreed.

As we gathered our packs and put out the fire I thought about the magical night we had spent here and what it meant. I was convinced that all who had died in this place were finally at peace and this place the Vietnamese now called the Forest of the Screaming Souls could at last be blessed with silence and we could go home with our own measure of peace as well.

EIGHT

Back to the Hell That Was Albany

A
lthough the North Vietnamese commander, General An, had been up all night worrying about our safety and was very reluctant to continue this adventure, he finally gave the green light and we loaded back aboard the Russian helicopter for the short, two-minute flight from X-Ray to Landing Zone Albany. In our party there were three American veterans who had fought in that battle—Forrest, who as a captain commanded A Company 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry; Gwin, who as a first lieutenant was executive officer of A Company 2nd Battalion 7th Cavalry; and Jack Smith, a specialist four and company clerk of C Company 2nd Battalion 7th Cavalry.

The two and a half miles of terrain we had covered in a couple of minutes by helicopter had taken the long, strung-out column of weary American soldiers some four hours when they marched out of LZ X-Ray on the morning of November 17, 1965. They had not slept in three or four days and on their backs they carried the usual infantryman’s load of sixty to seventy pounds of weapons, grenades, ammunition, three or four canteens of water, cans of C rations, personal belongings, and whatever “extras” they had been handed in the way of radio batteries, mortar shells, or spare ammo for the machine guns. The heat and humidity closed in on them, as did the scrub brush, tall elephant grass, and jungle through which they marched.

When the Recon Platoon at the head of the column reported the capture of two North Vietnamese soldiers—and the escape of a third who ran into the dense jungle—the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Robert McDade, moved up to personally interrogate the prisoners. He also, by radio, summoned all the company commanders forward to the head of the column to tell them how they were to deploy when their troops reached the big clearing dubbed Landing Zone Albany. The company commanders brought with them their first sergeants and radio operators.

The troops in that 600-yard-long column, now in triple canopy jungle, fell to the ground exhausted and took a welcome break. Some smoked, some ate, some leaned back on their packs and drifted off to sleep. At 1:20 p.m. the North Vietnamese, who had used the break to quietly maneuver a fresh battalion of the 66th Regiment plus elements of the 33rd NVA Regiment into position all down one side of the American column, launched their attack with a mortar barrage and then charged through the jungle into the Americans. Over the next eighteen hours there would be a ferocious gun battle, often at point-blank range, all along that column strung out over a third of a mile. The enemy had snipers up in the trees and machine gunners atop the termite hills. Before it was done and the surviving North Vietnamese withdrew the next morning, 151 Americans had died in the tall elephant grass, another 130 had been wounded, and 4 were missing in action.

Of such combat nightmares are born.

Because of the dense jungle it was not possible for our party to walk the full length of the Albany column. We were limited in our explorations to the clearing and the area that Larry Gwin identified as the battalion command post and aid station—yet another termite hill in a small copse of stunted trees whose trunks still wore the scars of bullets and shrapnel and napalm. The terrain in Albany, much closer to the Ia Drang River, was wetter and swampier than X-Ray had been. Whether because of the nature of the soil or the wetter conditions we weren’t sure, but the foxholes and fighting positions we inspected at Albany were quite different from those at X-Ray. They had not eroded to the same extent and were easily recognizable for what they were. The corners were still square and the dirt on the parapets had not been overgrown. It was as if these old fighting holes at Albany had been dug a week ago or a month ago.

As Forrest Sawyer and his crews interviewed George Forrest and Larry Gwin, Jack Smith was shooting his own film with a small handheld camera for a half-hour personal program that would be aired on the
Nightline
program. All three of the Albany veterans were occasionally overcome by their emotions at this journey back to the scene of so much suffering and death.

On November 8, 2003, at one of our annual Ia Drang reunions in Washington, D.C., Jack—who had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer—was the featured speaker, and he talked of both the battle and his return with us to walk that field:

At one point in the awful afternoon at Albany as my battalion was being cut to pieces, a small group of enemy came upon me and, thinking I had been killed (I was covered in other people’s blood), proceeded to use me as a sandbag for their machine gun. I pretended to be dead. I remember that the gunner had bony knees that pressed against my side. He didn’t discover that I was alive because he was trembling more than I was. He was, like me, just a teenager.

The gunner began firing into the remnants of my company. My buddies began firing back with rifle grenades—M79s to those of you who know about them. I remember thinking: Oh, my God, if I stand up the North Vietnamese will kill me, and if I stay lying down my buddies will get me. Before I went completely mad, a volley of grenades exploded on top of me, killing the enemy boy and injuring me. It went on like this all day and much of the night. I was wounded twice and thought myself dead. My company suffered ninety-three percent casualties…ninety-three percent!