We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (29 page)

Even so, it was not a quick trip out. Bob Tully was an experienced battlefield commander and he saw no need to make it a race against time.

His operations officer was Captain Ronald W. Crooks. Crooks says, "Fire support consisted mostly of marking rounds to confirm the location if we needed artillery quickly. We were not trying to surprise the enemy. He knew where we were and I am pretty sure he knew what our mission was. We fired additional rounds as Harassment and Interdiction fires to the south along the mountain to help secure Alpha 2/5's left flank, and also forward of their advance."

There was nothing there. No snipers. No ambushes. Nothing but dead North Vietnamese soldiers and their weapons. I was puzzled but delighted at the radio reports. While Tully was advancing, I passed orders to all companies on the X-Ray perimeter to screen forward three hundred yards and police up the battlefield. Sergeant Major Plumley and I again went forward of Bob Edwards's Charlie Company positions.

In my after-action report I described the scene as follows: "Dead PAVN, PAVN body fragments and PAVN weapons and equipment were littered in profusion around the edge and forward of the perimeter. Numerous body fragments were seen. There was massive evidence, blood trails, bandages, etc., of many other PAVN being dragged away from the area. Some of the enemy dead were found stacked behind anthills. We found some of his dead with ropes tied around the ankles and a short, running end free. I saw two of our dead with similar ropes around their ankles. Possibly they had been captured alive and were being dragged off when killed. We found some of our dead's wallets and dog tags on dead PAVN. Artillery and Tac air was placed on all wooded areas nearby into which trails disappeared.

Numerous enemy weapons were collected along with other armament. Two prisoners were taken and evacuated. Friendly dead and wounded were collected. Some friendly were killed and wounded in this screening."

Over on the right flank of the Charlie Company sector, Sergeant John Setelin had so far survived the carnage. "We were ordered to sweep out two hundred yards. We had gone maybe fifty yards on line when we could see the enemy right out in front of us. We fired. They returned it. Then we heard somebody on the right flank: ''re coming down the mountain!' Sergeant Charlie Mcmanus, PFC Larry Stacey, Lamothe, and I went west toward a creekbed. Then we saw these people behind us like they were trying to encircle us. The rest of the platoon came through and about that time Sergeant Mcmanus shoved Stacey and myself out of the way. Then we heard an explosion and looked down and there was Charlie Mcmanus laying there, dead. He had jumped on a grenade to save our lives. The grenade had come from the creekbed. The enemy had evidently tunneled into the side of it. It didn't take Stacey long to put some M-79 rounds into the hole and eliminate him." Staff Sergeant Charles V.

Mcmanus of Woodland, Alabama, was thirty-one years old when he gave his own life to save those of his friends.

Over on the northern side of the perimeter, Specialist Jon Wallenius was about to solve the mystery of the Y-shaped tree trunk and the pop-up shooting-range target: "A sweep was made forward from our positions by a unit who reported that they found seven dead North Vietnamese behind the tree, all shot in the head. I didn't go look."

During this lull the saddest, most painful, and hardest duty to endure was collecting our dead and loading them aboard the helicopters. There were so many that the brigade ordered in the big choppers, the CH-47 Chinooks. One such helicopter lifted out all forty-two of the dead from Charlie Company. They came in together, died together, and now they left together, wrapped in their green rubber ponchos.

Specialist 4 Vincent Cantu says: "We were picking up our dead and placing them in the choppers. Some of these guys I had known for two years, yet I could recognize them only by their name tags. Their faces were blown off. It was hard not to get sick. We would look at each other and without saying a word just continue putting our dead on the choppers."

Mid-morning, before Tully arrived, Colonel Tim Brown flew in for a visit. Plumley recalls: "Lieutenant Colonel Moore saluted Brown and said, ' told you not to come in here. It's not safe.' Brown picked up his right collar lapel and waggled his full colonel's eagle at Moore and said, ' about that!' " Dillon and I gave him a situation report.

Brown asked whether he should stay in X-Ray, establish a small brigade command post, and run the show. We recommended against that. I knew the area, and Bob Tully and I got along just fine. Brown agreed. Lieutenant Dick Merchant says: "Colonel Brown had trust and confidence in his commanders. I'm aware that some felt he should have landed in X-Ray and established a command post. I've never accepted that. The 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry was probably the finest battalion in Vietnam, well trained, superbly led, with outstanding officers and NCOs throughout the unit.

Brown would have been out of place in X-Ray. Besides there was no room for a Brigade CP. I recall it being rather crowded behind that anthill."

Just before he departed, Colonel Brown told us that we had done a great job but now that Tully's fresh battalion was coming in, along with two rifle companies of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav, he would likely pull us out of X-Ray the following day. As we walked past the growing heaps of North Vietnamese equipment, Brown turned and asked if I would bring him a North Vietnamese pith helmet when I came out. He got his helmet.

As the lull lengthened and Tully continued to report no opposition to his movements, Dillon and I tried to puzzle out what the North Vietnamese were up to. Where were the survivors of those enemy battalions? Where had they taken their wounded? They had to have water for drinking, cooking, and taking care of those wounded. There may have been streams and springs in the ravines on the Chu Pong above us, but to carry wounded up those steep slopes would be a slow, difficult process.

The nearest flowing stream on our map was the Ia Drang two miles north.

To us that seemed a more likely field-hospital site than the slopes of the mountain. Add to that the fact that shortly after noon on November 15 the Air Force's high-flying B-52 bombers out of Guam placed the first of six days of

"ARC LIGHT" strikes on the Chu Pong massif. For the first time ever, the B-52 strategic bombers were being employed in a tactical role in support of American ground troops.

The personality of this battle was changing dramatically, and the enemy commander cannot have been a happy man this noon. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Huu An was standing in one of the communications trenches up on the slopes of the Chu Pong massif. He remembers seeing and counting, high above him, eighteen B-52 bombers before he dove back in his deep bunker. Minutes later, the first of the five hundred-pound bombs struck no more than six hundred yards from his bunker, but the huge explosions walked away from Colonel An, not toward him. He would live to fight on, but always with an appreciation of just how close a call he had on Chu Pong this day.

Up on the Lost Platoon's little knoll, Sergeant Ernie Savage had passed the news that help was on the way. That raised the men's spirits but it did not lessen their vulnerability. Savage says, "We got some firing right after daylight. We stayed down. Anytime they saw us they'd fire on us." It's not clear what the North Vietnamese had in mind for the surrounded Americans. Wait them out? Starve them out? Pick them off one by one with sniper fire?

Whatever they had planned, just before three P.M. Her ren's and Bennett's companies reached the shallow ditch and immediately came under enemy rifle fire. It was rapidly suppressed by long bursts of machine-gun fire. Savage was following the rescuers' progress: "There was some fighting just before the relief got to us. They ran into something, not much. I could hear talk on the radio about killing some snipers."

The rescuers crossed the ditch, just as Lieutenant Henry Toro Herrick's men had the day before. From the ditch westward, visibility was good as the ground rose to the small knoll on the far northwest side of the clearing. For the rescue to be carried out, the clearing had to be secured. Says Bob Tully: "We secured the platoon by simply surrounding them after we reached their position." Captain Bennett says: "On arrival at the clearing I was told to secure the eastern half of it. It was egg-shaped, maybe two hundred and fifty yards by seventy-five yards, with high grass and tree stumps throughout."

John Herren recalls: "We picked our way through blown down trees, anthills, and scrub brush until we reached the platoon." By then some of Bennett's troopers had seen the small band of surviving Americans and hollered to them. Sergeant Zallen, up on the knoll with Savage, knew that the long ordeal was coming to a close, but his heart was heavy: "I couldn't bear to look at Sergeant Palmer."

Now the lead elements of John Herren's company approached the clearing, with Herren well forward and anxious to be reunited with what was left of his missing 2nd Platoon. Herren says, "It was a scene I will never forget. First we found the remains of Sergeant Hurdle and his weapons squad, who had been overrun. There were dead North Vietnamese sprawled nearby. Next, the small groups of Savage's and Mchenry's men, some heavily bandaged, all of them covered with dirt and tired, but excited at seeing us." Sergeant William Roland of Bravo Company's 1st Platoon says the distance between where Hurdle and his machine gunners fought and died and the rest of Herrick's platoon, sixty to seventy yards, made it plain that the brave machine-gun crews had given their lives buying time so their buddies could withdraw to higher ground.

In that tiny perimeter every man who could fire a weapon still had ammunition left, even after twenty-six hours of combat. There were twenty-nine men in the 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1 st Battalion, 7th Cavalry when the fight started. Twenty-nine men were brought out: Nine dead, thirteen wounded, and seven unscratched. All the casualties had been suffered in the first ninety minutes of combat.

Captain Herren said it was a miracle that more of the wounded did not die, and that miracle was named Doc Lose. Herren says, "I am convinced that one of the major reasons that the platoon came through as well as it did was due to the actions of Specialist 5 Charles Lose, the medic.

Every man I talked with in the platoon unanimously credited Doc Lose with saving the men who were badly wounded."

Lieutenant Dennis Deal was one of the first to reach the platoon. "We couldn't see each other. I yelled: ' you guys still there?' The answer came back: ', we're here!' I walked over to where my friend Henry Herrick was laying dead and I stood looking down at him. It was so hot, so horribly hot that his body had already begun to smell. I did not want to remember him that way, so I turned away and occupied myself with other duties. But I have." Sergeant Savage says the first men who walked into his perimeter couldn't see him or his men. "All that artillery had blown dirt and dust on us and we looked like part of the ground," Savage says.

"It was curious," Deal says. "The men who had survived didn't stand up.

They just lay there in the shallow body holes they had scratched in the ground. They were still in a state of shock because of what they had been through." Specialist Galen Bungum: "The first man I saw was Lieutenant [Ken] Duncan, the B Company executive officer. I hollered at him to get down. He said, ''s OK, come on, let's go!' Then he threw me one of his canteens. More troops were standing around and I thought they were nuts. We couldn't believe it. None of us would get up. After some coaxing, we got up slow."

Lieutenant Deal saw a lot of dead North Vietnamese soldiers literally within feet of the Americans and one still

alive. "One North Vietnamese was sitting against a tree, shot up terribly. But he continued to try to pull a grenade from his pouch. He still wanted, before he died, to get that grenade off. I was very impressed by that total dedication. He tried, until he finally died, to get that grenade out of his pouch, and we stood there and watched him.

He couldn't lift it more than a couple of inches and then it would fall back and he would start trying all over again."

Platoon Sergeant Larry Gilreath says, "The thing I remember most was the peaceful way that Sergeant Palmer looked, laying on his back with his hands folded on his chest. We had gotten pretty close, and I almost lost it when I saw him. Then there was the way that each of them asked for water. And here I was with only about half a canteen to give them. That went fast. I was helping one of them, Sergeant Thompson I think. He was wounded, could hardly walk, and he asked me for a drink of water. I don't think at that time there was a gallon of water in the whole battalion. Such a small thing like that, and I couldn't give him a drink of water."

One of the troopers called Lieutenant Deal's attention to something lying on the ground. "The man said, ', there's something red and I don't know what it is.' It was a book that a North Vietnamese soldier had dropped. It was filled with beautiful writing, beautiful script." It was the jottings of a homesick young soldier--poetry, notes, letters. A sample: "Oh, my dear. My young wife. When the troops come home after the victory, and you do not see me, please look at the proud colors. You will see me there, and you will feel warm under the shadow of the bamboo tree."

As Dennis Deal helped prepare the men and weapons for evacuation, he vividly remembers one other scene: "It was the final act of a North Vietnamese soldier who was killed. Before he died he took a hand grenade and held it against the stock of his weapon. Then he had gotten on his knees and bent over double. If anybody tried to get his weapon they were going to activate that hand grenade. When I saw the dedication of those two Vietnamese with their hand grenades, I said to myself: We are up against an enemy who is going to make this a very long year."

Although the relief force had gotten in without major incident, they now began taking more small-arms fire from unseen marksmen. Captain Bennett, securing the eastern half of the clearing, got new orders to spread his platoons out and cover the entire perimeter. In the process of doing that Bennett and two of his men were shot by snipers.