We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (24 page)

They were determined to survive to catch their plane home, and were shooting up the bushes with the grenade launcher just in case anyone was out there. They wanted no North Vietnamese sneaking up on them and ruining their travel plans.

Out in the bomb-blasted scrub, 125 yards due west of the dry creekbed and our perimeter, the Lost Platoon had drained the last drops of water from their canteens and the juice from C-ration tins, and the riflemen, wounded and unwounded, faced the long night with thirst, courage, and trepidation. The men were spread out in two groups inside an oblong east-west perimeter. Ranger Mac Mchenry controlled a group of about six men in the western part. Sergeant Savage had a dozen other survivors with him in the eastern part.

It was purely by chance that Savage, a three-stripe buck sergeant and junior to Sergeant First Class Mchenry, ended up controlling the fight to save Herrick's platoon: He had been closest to the radio when Sergeant Stokes was killed. Although he was only thirty yards away, Savage's boss, SFC Mchenry, was completely out of reach.

As darkness fell, Savage was on the radio with Lieutenant Bill Riddle, Herren's artillery forward observer, walking the high-explosive barrages all around the cut-off platoon. "All of us were lifted off the ground by the impact and covered with dirt and branches," Galen Bungum recalls.

"Savage told them on the radio: "That's right where we want them.' We hollered that was too close. But I looked back where those first rounds hit and saw three men running toward us. We opened up. They must have been crawling up on our position when that artillery came in. They would sneak in as close as ten yards or less, and many times just stand up and laugh at us. We would mow them down. It begins to work on your mind: What are they laughing at? I couldn't believe it."

Anytime Savage heard the enemy moving in the brush he brought artillery down on them, and often had the satisfaction of hearing their shouts and screams after the explosions.

The sniper fire faded away at sunset and the enemy attacks lessened once the artillery ring was drawn around the platoon. John Herren, Matt Dillon, Sergeant Larry Gilreath, and others kept in close radio contact with Savage throughout the night. "I took my turn talking with him," says Gilreath. "We both got pretty choked up, but I told him to hang on and we would see him tomorrow." Dillon had previously commanded Bravo Company for eighteen months and he knew most of the men in Herrick's platoon personally. He talked with Savage often during the night.

More than five miles northeast of X-Ray, at Landing Zone Falcon, my battalion's rear-area headquarters detachment monitored and logged every radio transmission on the battalion net. My executive officer, Major Herman L. Wirth, a Pennsylvanian, commanded there. It was standard operating procedure for a battalion in the field to set up a small rear area headquarters, commanded by the battalion executive officer. This rear headquarters was responsible for keeping the battalion supplied with everything it needed and for keeping track of communications, casualties evacuated, and the hundred other little, but very important, details that an infantry battalion commander has no time to deal with during a shootout.

In the operations tent, Lieutenant Richard Merchant of Pontiac, Michigan, was in charge, assisted by Master Sergeant Raymond L. Wills of the intelligence section, and Master Sergeant Noel Blackwell of the operations section. Merchant had spent more than a year with Bravo Company under both Dillon and Herren. "My emotions welled high. I had been leader of 2nd Platoon, B Company, during the entire airmobile test phase and knew all but the very new replacements. The sergeants in the cutoff platoon were like family to me. We had soldiered together. Major Wirth, sensing my distress, suggested that I take a break from the radio."

The North Vietnamese launched three separate attacks to keep the pressure on the trapped 2nd Platoon during that long night, each time sending about fifty men against the Americans and each time being beaten back by artillery and rifle fire. Savage had seven men unhurt and thirteen wounded. Nine others were dead. Some of the Lost Platoon's wounded continued to fight, including Sergeant Ruben Thompson, who had been shot through the chest.

"Savage would call us and say: ' hear them forming up below me and I am sure they are going to attack in a matter of minutes.' The men in the platoon later told me they were sure the enemy had run all the way through their positions during the night attacks," says Captain Herren.

"They were such a small group, it was dark, and the enemy had to contend with so much artillery, I don't think they were sure of the platoon's exact location."

The first attack, before midnight, came just as Savage's men heard troops heading for the landing zone on two large trails, one to the Americans' south and one to their north. This attack was beaten off by the riflemen and by Savage's employment of the artillery barrages.

At around 3:15 a.m. a series of bugle calls sounded, first faintly, then loudly, up on the mountain and around Savage's platoon. The forward air controller, Charlie Hastings, immediately called for Air Force flare illumination and called down air strikes on the slopes above Savage. The flares and air strikes all arrived within twenty minutes, just before and during the second attack on the Lost Platoon, and helped break up the attack. Savage, though grateful for the assistance, asked John Herren to call off the flares because the trapped men were afraid the bright light would expose their precariously held positions. But in the light of the last flares dropped that night they saw North Vietnamese scurrying around the rough clearing, dragging their dead and wounded into the trees.

The platoon later heard still another large enemy force noisily moving down the northern trail toward X-Ray, and once again brought artillery fire down on them. This was followed by a flurry of hand grenades back and forth at about

4:30 a.m. Within an hour the first light in the eastern sky revealed dozens of khaki-clad enemy dead scattered all around the little knoll.

The trapped platoon had survived the longest night any of them would ever know. They checked their ammunition and prepared to receive a dawn attack.

A DAWN ATTACK A brave Captain is as a root, out of which as branches the courage of his soldiers cloth spring.

--Sir Phillip Sidney It was 6:20 a. m., Monday, November 15, and in the half light before dawn, the battalion operations officer, Captain Matt Dillon, knelt rummaging through his field pack for the makings of C-ration hot chocolate. An uneasy feeling nagged at me as I stood nearby peering into the calm dimness around the clearing. It had nothing to do with Sergeant Savage and the Lost Platoon. They had survived the night without further casualties, and Dillon and I had worked out a new plan for their rescue.

No. It was something else that bothered me. It was too quiet. Too still.

Turning to Dillon, I told him to order all companies to immediately send out reconnaissance patrols forward of their positions to check for enemy activity. Dillon put out that order while his radioman, Specialist 4 Robert Mccollums, fired up a heat tab under a canteen cup of water for their hot chocolate.

While the patrols were preparing to ease out of the perimeter to check for enemy infiltrators, I told Dillon to radio all the company commanders to meet us at Bob Edwards's command post just behind the Charlie Company lines to discuss the best attack route out to Savage. I had decided we would try to break through using three companies-- John Herren's Bravo, Tony Nadal's Alpha, and Bob Edwards's Charlie--deployed in a wedge formation. I would be with Bravo, leaving Dillon in charge of the LZ. We would jump off from the dry creekbed after heavy, close-in air and artillery prep fires and keep the artillery walking just ahead of us as we moved west toward Savage's platoon. Diduryk and Litton's companies would remain behind in reserve to protect the small landing area. It was a good plan, but it never happened.

Captain Bob Edwards remembers: "At first light Colonel Moore was planning to attack to reach the cut-off platoon. The company commanders were to meet at my command post to discuss this. He also directed us to patrol out from our positions for possible snipers or infiltrators that had closed in on the perimeter during the night. I passed this on to my platoon leaders and told them to send a squad from each of the four platoons out about two hundred yards. The patrols from 2nd Platoon, Lieutenant Geoghegan, and 1st Platoon, Lieutenant Kroger, had moved about a hundred and fifty yards in the search when they began receiving heavy small-arms fire. They returned fire and started back."

Geoghegan's platoon sergeant, Robert Jemison, recalls that just before daybreak he and Lieutenant Geoghegan shared the last few drops of water in a canteen; their other three canteens were bone-dry. "At first light we sent out a patrol. Staff Sergeant Sidney Cohen, Specialist 4 Arthur L. Bronson, and three other men were picked to go," says Jemison. "They saved us from being surprised. They spotted the enemy on their way in to attack our position. They came running back, with Bronson screaming: "They're coming, Sarge! A lot of '. Get ready!' I told the machine gunners to hold their fire until they were close."

At the battalion command post the attack shattered the early-morning stillness like a huge explosion. The intense heavy firing told us with jolting clarity that the south and southeast sections of the X-Ray perimeter were under extremely heavy attack. I yelled to Dillon to call in all the firepower he could get.

Fire swept across the landing zone and into my command post. It was 6:50 a.m. Then-Lieutenant Colonel Hoang Phuong, who was present in the Ia Drang and wrote the North Vietnamese after action report on the fight, says, "We had planned to launch our attack at two a. m., but because of air strikes and part of the battalion getting lost, it was delayed until 6:30 a.m. The attack was carried out by the 7th Battalion of the 66th Regiment. The H-15 Main Force Battalion, a local-force Viet Cong unit, was also in that attack."

Bob Edwards was on the radio desperately trying to get information from his four platoons. The heaviest firing was in the vicinity of his 1st and 2nd platoons, who were holding down the left side of the lines. He could not get either Lieutenant Kroger or Lieutenant Geoghegan on the radio. Only Lieutenant Franklin and Lieutenant Lane, whose platoons held the right side, responded; they were in good shape. Captain Edwards and the five men sharing the command post foxhole began shooting at the onrushing enemy.

Moments later, there was a desperate radio call from Edwards: "I need help!" I told him no; he would have to hold with his own resources and firepower for the time being. It would be tactically unsound, even suicidal, to commit my small reserve force so quickly, before we got a feel for what the enemy was doing elsewhere around the perimeter.

Charlie Company was obviously in a heavy fight but they had not been penetrated.

Bob Edwards estimated that his men were being attacked by two or three companies and, to make things worse, a large number of the enemy had closed with Geoghegan and Kroger's two platoons before the artillery and air could be brought to bear. The North Vietnamese were now safely inside the ring of steel.

My command post and Alpha and Bravo companies, directly across the flat, open ground behind Edwards's fox holes, were now catching the enemy grazing fire, which passed through an dover the Charlie Company lines.

The Bravo Company commander, John Herren, says: "I alerted my men to be ready to swing around and defend in the opposite direction if the enemy broke through into the perimeter behind us." In Alpha Company, Captain Nadal's radio operator, Specialist Tanner, remembers: "When morning broke it all started over again. I remember using a big log for cover.

Every once in awhile I would see muzzle flashes in the trees. We would fire at any muzzle blast seen."

Bob Edwards could not raise Lieutenant Kroger or Lieutenant Geoghegan on his radio because the two platoon leaders and their men were fighting for their lives, blazing away at the onrushing enemy. Sergeant Jemison says Geoghegan's troops were in two-man, foot-deep holes spaced about ten yards apart, in which they could lie prone. Jemison says, "The enemy was wearing helmets with nets on them and grass stuck in the netting.

They looked like little trees. There were over a hundred of them, hitting our right flank hard an dover in the 1st Platoon. Geoghegan's foxhole and mine were in about the center of our position. They hit us once, then fell back; then they split into two groups. One began trying to flank us on the left but [Specialist 4 James] Comer's machine gun stopped them. The other kept hitting the right. One of the first men to get hit was Sergeant Cohen to my right; then other people got wounded."

PFC Willie F. Godboldt, twenty-four, of Jacksonville, Florida, was hit while firing from his position twenty yards to Sergeant Jemison's right.

Jemison remembers, "Godboldt was hollering: ' help me!' I yelled, I'll go get him.' Lieutenant Geoghegan yelled back: ', I will!' Geoghegan moved out of his position in the foxhole to help Godboldt and was shot. This was ten minutes or so from the time the firing first broke out." Struck in the back and the head, Lieutenant John Lance (Jack) Geoghegan was killed instantly. The man he was trying to save, PFC Godboldt, died of his wounds shortly afterward.

The enemy now closed to within seventy-five yards of Edwards's line.

They were firing furiously, some crouched low and at times crawling on their hands and knees. Others, no taller than the elephant grass they were passing through, came on standing up and shooting. They advanced, screaming at each other and at Edwards's men. Leaders were blowing whistles and using hand and arm signals. A few were even carrying 82mm mortar tubes and base plates. This was clearly no hit-and-run affair.

They had come to stay.

Specialist 4 Arthur Viera, Jr., twenty-two, of Riverside, Rhode Island, was armed with an M-79 grenade launcher and a .45-caliber pistol. "Once the firing started, out with the patrol, it all happened fast. They were into us in about ten minutes. I remember one guy hollering: ' at ' all! Look at ' all!' There were at least two hundred of them coming at us fast. I yelled at him to start firing and shoved him in a foxhole. I kept firing with my M-79.,Our medic was shot in both legs and going crazy, trying to push himself up from the ground with his arms." Sergeant Jemison says, "We had one man run into our position from the 1st Platoon. He was shot in the head and hollered to me: ', Sergeant, they are messing us up!' " Jemison says one of his squads--under Sergeant Reginald A. Watkins, twenty-five, of Charlotte, North Carolina--was on the far right, next to Kroger's 1st Platoon, and was virtually wiped out when Kroger's platoon was hit so hard. Sergeant Watkins was among the dead.