We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (21 page)

Bill Beck, firing a burst from his M-60 machine gun to his right front, was transfixed by what he saw just forward: "Sergeant [John] Rangel bayoneting a North Vietnamese in the chest. It was just like practice against the straw dummies: Forward, thrust, pull out, move on. One, two, three."

Beck kept moving and firing when suddenly a swarm of wasps or hornets--real ones this time--got inside his helmet. This courageous soldier, who had withstood everything the North Vietnamese could throw at him, was momentarily defeated by a swarm of angry, stinging insects.

Says Beck, "For a moment I dropped my machine gun and knocked my helmet off. My head was full of welts. I could not believe anything could make me forget the enemy, but I was in such instant pain."

Specialist 4 Bill Kreischer recalls, "We started to come out of the creekbed when we began receiving heavy fire from out front. About this time I was hit on my left side, just below my shoulder. At first it knocked me back, but I got up and started to fire again when I fell back into the creekbed. The pain was intense. My fatigue jacket was turning a dark brownish color from the blood. I tried to get up; I didn't want to be left behind. I fell again and someone helped bandage my shoulder.

Before long someone half-carried, half-dragged me to the aid station. I remember being asked if I wanted a cigarette and I took one, even though I had never smoked before. I guess it was what you were supposed to do; in the war movies when someone was shot they always smoked a cigarette.

I smoked that cigarette and three others while I lay there on the ground."

Captain Tony Nadal had four men in his command group as he charged into the brush: his two radio operators-- Sergeant Jack Gell, a twenty-five-year-old native New Yorker, and Specialist 4 John Clark of Michigan--plus the company's artillery forward observer, Lieutenant Timothy M. Blake, twenty-four, from Charleston, West Virginia; and Blake's recon sergeant, Sergeant Floyd L. Reed, Jr., twenty seven years old, of Heth, Arkansas. As they moved up Nadal had the radio handset to his ear. A burst of enemy machinegun fire swept across the group.

Sergeant Cell was hit and dropped without a sound. Nadal kept moving until the long black cord pulled back on him. He looked around to see what was wrong. The same burst that killed Sergeant Gell had also killed Lieutenant Blake and struck Sergeant Reed, who died shortly afterward.

Sergeant Sam Hollman, Jr., a native Pennsylvanian, knelt beside his mortally wounded buddy Jack Gell and heard him gasp, "Tell my wife I love her."

Tony Nadal had no time to mourn Jack Gell, a man he greatly respected.

Too many other lives were in his hands. He swung back into action: "I removed the radio from his back, had some soldiers near me take Gell back to the aid station, and told another soldier to put on the radio."

That soldier was Specialist 4 Ray Tanner, a twenty-twoyear-old trooper from Codes, South Carolina. Tanner was normally Sergeant Steve Hansen's radio operator, but they had gotten separated and Tanner was tagging along with the 1st Platoon.

On the right flank of the Bravo line, Lieutenant Deal was now rolling around on the ground desperately trying to dodge a volley of machine-gun slugs cutting through the grass all around him. Suddenly, twenty-five yards away, Deal saw an American get up and charge forward while everyone around him was flat on his belly. Says Deal, "I saw him throw a grenade behind an anthill and empty his weapon into it. Then he fell to his knees. I said to myself: ', get up, don't be hurt.' I didn't know who it was; I couldn't make out the form. There was so much battlefield haze, dust, smoke."

It was Lieutenant Joe Marm. He had spotted an enemy machine gun dug into a big termite hill; it was chewing up both the Bravo Company platoons.

After failing to knock it out with a LAW rocket and a thrown grenade, he decided to deal with it directly. He charged through the fire, tossed a hand grenade behind the hill, and then cleaned up the survivors with his M-16 rifle. The following day, Lieutenant Al Devney found a dead North Vietnamese officer and eleven enemy soldiers sprawled behind that termite mound. Says Deal, "Joe Marm saved my life and the lives of many others."

Lieutenant Marm suffered a bullet wound to his neck and jaw. Staff Sergeant Les Staley, thirty-eight, of Pike County, Kentucky, ran out and, with a private, got the wounded lieutenant to his feet. Supporting him, they joined a growing stream of walking wounded flowing back toward the battalion aid station. Sergeant Keeton treated Marm's wound, and one of Bruce Crandalfs Hueys evacuated him to the rear. Within days, Lieutenant Joe Marm was recuperating at Valley Forge Army Hospital near his home in Pennsylvania. In December of 1966, Joe Marm reported to the Pentagon where the Secretary of the Army, acting on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson, presented him with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor.

Here's how Lieutenant Joe Marm himself modestly describes what happened: "I was located at the right flank of my platoon, with SFC George Mcculley on the left flank. On the right of me was Lieutenant Al Devney's platoon. So I was in the center of the action. That bunker was holding up the line and I first shot a LAW into it. There were no apertures in the anthill and the fire was coming from the sides of the bunker. There was heavy tree covering around it which prevented hand grenades from landing effectively. I thought it would be a simple matter to run up to the bunker and toss a grenade over the top. I tried to motion what I wanted done to one of the troops. The noise of battle was very high and the sergeant nearby thought I meant to throw it from our position. It landed short. In order to save time and get the job done as quickly as possible, I told both companies to watch their firing because I was going to rush the anthill. I was wounded immediately after silencing the bunker."

Joe Marm's heroic action unfortunately failed to open the door to the cut-off platoon. Bravo Company had progressed only about seventy-five yards, Alpha Company a bit further. All three of Nadal's platoon leaders were now either dead or wounded, as were many of his noncoms. Worse yet, Alpha Company's 1 st Platoon had gotten out ahead of the other two and was heavily engaged with perhaps a hundred enemy. Some of the Alpha troopers bypassed the enemy in dense brush, and those North Vietnamese had opened up on them. Not only were we unable to punch through to rescue Herrick's platoon, we were now in danger of having another platoon cut off.

It was the 1st Platoon's turn. Platoon Sergeant Larry Gilreath recalls that moment: "They must have captured one of our M-60s from the cut-off platoon and turned it on us. We were behind a fallen tree and we were flat pinned down by machine-gun fire and couldn't move. I remember saying that Sergeant Hurdle must be mad at us ' he's shooting at us. That was because of the difference in the sound of that particular machine-gun fire and the other automatic weapons fire we had been receiving."

Sergeant Gilreath and his men weren't really on the receiving end of friendly fire. Sergeant Paul Hurdle had been killed covering the withdrawal of his buddies in Herrick's platoon. But Sergeant Gilreath's sharp ears did not deceive him: The weapon he heard was, in fact, Paul Hurdle's M-60. After Hurdle and his gunners were killed, the enemy first used that gun on the cut-off platoon and then turned it against the troopers trying to fight their way through to rescue Lieutenant Herrick's men.

It was now near five p.m. and Crandall was bringing thirteen Hueys in on final approach to X-Ray, with the reinforcements from Captain Myron Diduryk's Bravo Company 2nd Battalion. Specialist Jon Wallenius was aboard the first helicopter. "There was so much dust and smoke it was difficult to see very far off the LZ, but we could see tracers ahead of us on Chu Pong and hear the sounds of small arms. Then we were on the ground and running away from the chopper. I headed for the anthill area because it was the only cover I

could see and it was close. Captain Diduryk ran up and saluted the officer in charge."

Sergeant John Setelin, a slender twenty-twoyear-old South Carolinian, led the 2nd Squad of the 2nd Platoon on the third Huey coming into the landing zone. "The crew chief hollered: ' are going into a hot LZ and hover; get your men out fast and head to the right!' Then from the air I saw what appeared to be soldiers in khaki. I thought we must really be desperate if we're bringing in guys just back from R and R without giving them time to change into their fatigue uniforms. Then I realized their rifles were pointed at us; that was the enemy! When we jumped out, people were firing down on us. The gooks were up in the trees!" Captain Diduryk ran up to me and shouted: "Garry Owen, sir! Captain Diduryk and Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, a hundred and twenty men strong, reporting for duty!" His eyes sparkled with excitement and the challenge of the situation. I told Diduryk to assemble his men in a clump of trees thirty yards northwest of the command post to act as battalion reserve for the time being. Another unit came into X-Ray about that same time, unasked, unheralded, and, in fact, unnoticed by me. It was a Department of the Army Special Photographic Office (DASPO) team of two sergeants, Jack Yamaguchi and Thomas Schiro, armed with their 16mm silent movie cameras. It would be a quarter century before we unearthed their film from military archives and saw the eerie color images of ourselves in battle.

Up in the scrub brush, in the thick of the fight to reach Herrick's cut-off platoon, the Alpha Company commander, Captain Tony Nadal, had come to a decision. He had one platoon pinned down in a hail of enemy fire and he knew that the longer this went on the harder it would be to get them out. It was 5:10 p.m. Nadal ordered his reserve, the 3rd Platoon, to move up on his left in an attempt to circle the enemy forces. It didn't work. They ran into the same buzz saw that was chewing up all the other platoons.

Over on the right, Sergeant Larry Gilreath of Bravo Company wasn't finding the going any easier. Captain John Her ren asked Sergeant Gilreath if he knew of any other way that they had not tried. Says Gilreath, "My answer was ' sir.' Even without all our dead and wounded that had to be taken care of, the time of day was against us." Captain Nadal says, "The fight continued for another twenty or thirty minutes with neither side making headway. It was getting dark and as the casualties mounted I decided we were not going to be able to break through. I called Colonel Moore and asked for permission to pull back."

John Herren, who was monitoring the battalion net, heard Nadal's request and quickly concurred. It was now 5:40 p. m.; I ordered both companies to withdraw to the creekbed under cover of heavy supporting artillery fires.

With night approaching there was no real choice. I did not want to go into the hours of darkness with my battalion fragmented, with the companies incapable of mutual support, and subject to defeat in detail.

The cut-off platoon would have to hang onto their little knoll tonight.

We had to pull back, get our wounded and dead out, and resupply ammo and water. Then we had to get all units on line, tied in tight, with artillery and mortar fires registered for the long night ahead.

For Nadal and Herren, the hardest part would be breaking contact with the enemy and pulling back. Disengagement is always one of the most difficult military maneuvers to accomplish successfully. Doctrine calls for a deception plan, covering elements, fire support, security, mapped routes, a precise schedule, and the use of smoke. We had fire support and we could call down smoke, but we had neither the troops nor the time to work out a school solution.

Captain Nadal, with his artillery observer and artillery radio operator both dead, was now calling and adjusting fire support over the battalion command net. He recalls: "I told all platoon leaders that no one was pulling back until everyone, dead or alive, came back. In order to cover my withdrawal, I called Colonel Moore and asked him to give me a smoke mission and to drop the range about a hundred meters closer to us than the high-explosive fire missions. This would put the smoke almost directly on top of us."

Nadal's request went to the battalion command post and was relayed to the command helicopter overhead, where Captain Jerry Whiteside called it back to the fire direction center at LZ Falcon. In seconds the reply came back: "No smoke available." Drawing on my Korean War experience, I asked if they had white phosphorus (WP) shells. They said yes. I told them to fire the mission using Willy Peter.

The bursting WP shells release thick clouds of brilliant white smoke and spew out fragments of phosphorus, which ignites on contact with air. I reckoned that if the North Vietnamese had never made the acquaintance of Willy Peter it would be a real eye-opener for them. Within a minute the shells whistled in, low over my head. The explosions were instantly effective in breaking up the NVA and silencing their guns.

Specialist Ray Tanner, pressed into service as Nadal's replacement radio operator, says: "We started to pull back carrying out dead and wounded.

We were under heavy fire that made it hard to move. Captain Nadal called for some smoke rounds for cover. Colonel Moore informed artillery to use WP. We got down as low as possible when the shells came in. The noise and bright light was shocking. No one was injured and we managed to make our withdrawal. The WP rounds were landing within yards of our positions. I still remember how bright they lit up when they exploded."

Captain Nadal reacted to the Willy Peter with anger, surprise, and gratitude, in roughly that order. He recalls, "When this WP burst in the middle of us I got rather upset. Miraculously, not a single Alpha Company soldier was hit by any WP. It was very effective. All the firing died down and we started to recover our dead and wounded. The success of this volley now led me to ask for it to be fired again. Once again it fell among us and no one was hurt. I believe it was that WP that enabled us to pull our forces back to the creekbed with out taking any more casualties in the process. I remained behind with my radio operators to provide covering fire for the withdrawal and was the last person back to the creekbed." Seeing how well the white phosphorus worked in front of Alpha, we also dropped it in front of Bravo Company. It gave us the edge at precisely the moment we needed it.