We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (30 page)

The sudden outbreak of enemy firing lent new urgency to the mission. Bob Tully and I had agreed that the priority task was to collect Savage and his men and their weapons. No body counting; no searching for enemy equipment. No hanging around. Just get the hell out of there. We didn't want to press our luck. It was now 3:30 p.m. and there was plenty of work to be done before dark: Evacuation of our dead and wounded.

Resupply flights of ammo and water. Patrols out of the perimeter.

Integrating Tully's battalion into the American lines. Clearing fields of fire. Registering defensive fires. Setting out trip flares--flares set off by trip wires close to the ground.

Says Tully: "Our next concern was the actual movement of the personnel of the isolated platoon back to X-Ray. Many of them needed to be carried. Strange as it may seem, evacuating their casualties, plus a few of our own, took the greater part of two companies. Carrying wounded and dead men in the jungle in makeshift litters is no easy job when you have some distance to travel. And trying to maintain a good tactical posture under those circumstances is difficult. Troops are milling around; litter bearers become tired and need to be replaced. I concentrated on moving the casualties out as quickly as possible and securing the movement back to X-Ray in an organized fashion."

Up on the knoll final preparations for the move were under way. Says Sergeant Larry Gilreath: "After we policed up the area, making sure that everyone was accounted for and that all their weapons were picked up, I asked Sergeant Saw age if I could help carry Sergeant Palmer. He told me that would be fine." Lieutenant Deal says, "I remember somebody saying, ' we have them all.' I turned around. Just at that point the litter bearers who were carrying Henry Herrick's body set his litter down and I looked back and saw Henry's face in the red dirt. His head was hanging over the end of that litter. I don't know why those kind of memories remain with you so long after the event. It seemed so unnatural for my friend to be laying stomach-down with his face in that red dirt. I recalled as I was looking at him that Colonel Moore had permitted a small number of troops to leave the ship when it docked in Long Beach, California, on the way to Vietnam. Lieutenant Herrick was one of the few people who had family in that area and was given a pass to go visit his mother and father. As I looked at him I remembered that and I was glad he had that last chance to see them. I have since been to Henry Herrick's grave in Arlington.

It's right near the Tomb of the Unknowns on a beautiful hillside. A tree grows above it shading the headstone. On the other side of the Tomb of the Unknowns is Captain Tom Metsker's grave."

Lieutenant Colonel Bob Tully took one last look around, then gave the order to head east for X-Ray. Specialist Galen Bungum, his ordeal nearly at an end, had one last unsettling experience as he staggered down toward X-Ray: "I remember stumbling and falling down, ending up face to face with a dead enemy with his eyes wide open. I will never forget that."

Just before four p.m. Matt Dillon got the radio call from Tully's operations officer advising that the relief force was now an estimated fifteen minutes away from X-Ray. Dillon told Lieutenant Tifft to start calling in the helicopters. Then Tully's force began closing on the perimeter. It was a bittersweet moment. Happy, relieved, and grateful to get that platoon back, I walked over to Tully and thanked him and his men. I shook hands with Ernie Savage and told him that he and his men had done a great job in the worst sort of situation. Then there was the sobering, grim sight of the dead and wounded of Herrick's platoon. The dead lay on their poncho litters. Two or three of the wounded came in on their own feet, half-walking, half-carried on the shoulders of their friends. Some of those who had survived without a scratch were so drained that they also required help.

Captain Carrara, Sergeant Keeton, and Sergeant Keith quickly set to work tending the wounded. The dead were gently laid at the edge of the clearing, their booted feet awry and unmoving and somehow so terribly sad. My eyes passed over Sergeant Carl Palmer and, like Larry Gilreath, I was stopped by the peaceful expression, that half-smile, on his face.

Sergeant Gilreath helped cover the faces of the dead with their ponchos and then walked over to Sergeant Major Plumley: "Somewhere along the way I had picked up a .45 caliber pistol and didn't realize I had it until we got to the CP. Plumley asked me if I knew that it was fully cocked, hammer back, and fully loaded. We decided that I would sit down and safe it"

The helicopters began coming in. Lieutenant Dick Merchant was now in charge of the landing zone: "I still remember loading Sergeant Palmer and Sergeant Hurdle. I broke away to see John Herren and Bravo Company.

He described the magnificent performance by the 2nd Platoon. His first words were, ', we almost lost your platoon.' He was exhausted but still the same solid, thinking John Herren I had known as my company commander."

As Savage, Bungiun, and the others came into the command post, Joe Galloway talked briefly to each of them: "They were like men who had come back from the dead. We were all filthy, but they were beyond filthy. Their fatigue uniforms were ripped and torn; their eyes were bloodshot holes in the red dirt that was ground into their faces. I asked each man his name and hometown and wrote them down carefully in my notebook, along with something of what they had gone through. The headline writers dubbed them ' Lost Platoon' when my story moved on the wire."

Somehow, Galen Bungum, Joe F. Mackey, and Sergeant 4 Wayne M. Anderson, who had not been wounded, were put on an outbound helicopter and ended up back at base camp in An Khe. The four other unhurt members of the 2nd Platoon were sent back to duty on the X-Ray perimeter. Says Savage: "We got back on line in the creekbed not far from the anthill. PFC Russell P. Hicks had brought the machine gun back. There was a lot of firing going on that afternoon-- no major attack, but a lot of snipers to deal with."

Within half an hour after the Tully task force had returned to X-Ray, Brigadier General Richard Knowles came up on the radio asking permission to land. He says, "We came in fast. I jumped out and my chopper departed. Morale was high and the 1st Battalion, 7th Cav was doing a great job. I gave Hal a cigar and he quickly briefed me on the situation. Lieutenant Colonel John Stoner, our Air Force liaison officer, had accompanied me. I had been riding Stoner to get the air support in close. As Hal finished his briefing an air strike hit a target adjacent to the command post. The ground trembled and a bomb fragment flew into the CP area, ten or fifteen feet away from where we were standing. John Stoner walked over and gingerly picked up the smoking shrapnel, came back and handed it to me: ', is this close enough?' " Before leaving, General Knowles told us that he would direct Tim Brown to pull my battalion and the attached units out of X-Ray the next day and fly us back to Camp Holloway for two days of rest and rehabilitation. But for now we faced the prospect of another long night defending this perimeter.

Dillon and I worked out a way to integrate Tully's battalion into the lines. We tightened our own lines and placed Tully's men on the eastern and northern parts of the perimeter, generally facing away from the mountain toward the valley. I kept my own battalion plus the two attached rifle companies from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry where they were, covering narrower segments of the line but still controlling the areas where most of the fighting had occurred. The officers and men knew that ground well by now and this was not the time to undertake major shifts in the disposition of our forces.

Tully set up his battalion command post in a grove of trees about forty yards north of mine. Ammunition, water, and rations were distributed, with the primary focus again on getting plenty of ammunition down to every rifleman, every machine gun, and every mortar tube.

The four line companies of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cav were now down to a total of eight officers and 260 men. Charlie Company this morning had lost forty-two men killed--two lieutenants, sixteen sergeants, and twenty-four troopers. They had also suffered twenty wounded--their captain, two other lieutenants, two sergeants, and fifteen troopers.

Charlie Company was no longer combat-effective as a rifle company. But we had a fresh battalion plus those two rifle companies from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav. With only light probes of the perimeter during the afternoon, the line companies had ample time to reorganize for the night ahead.

NIGHT FIGHTERS There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.

--William Tecumseh Sherman Captain Myron F. Diduryk, commander of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, had a strong hunch that he and his men, now occupying the old Charlie Company positions, would be attacked in strength this night, and he lost no time convincing his men that the enemy were coming and they had best get ready for a fight. In Myron Diduryk and Lieutenant Rick Rescorla, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion had two foreign-born officers whose accents and gung-ho attitudes lent a touch of Foreign Legion flair. The Ukrainian Diduryk and the Englishman Rescorla were destined, over the next seventy-two hours, to become battlefield legends in the 7th Cavalry--as much for their style as for their fearless leadership under fire.

Having spent the afternoon preparing his platoon positions, Rick Rescorla walked back to Diduryk's command post-- Bob Ed wards's old foxhole--just about dusk. "Are your men up for this?" asked Diduryk. "Do you feel they can hold?"

Rescorla replied: "We're as ready as we'll ever be. But if they break through us, sir, you'll be the first to know. This

CP is less than fifty yards behind us." The Mad Cossack had no patience now for Rescorla's usual banter. "Dammit, Hard Corps, cut the shit," Diduryk snapped. "Stay alert. We're counting on you."

Diduryk, then twenty-seven, had commanded this company since May. He was eager and aggressive yet totally professional; over the next three days and nights he would emerge as the finest battlefield company commander I had ever seen, bar none. He operated on the basic principle of maximum damage with minimum loss.

Diduryk's men had had three or four quiet hours of daylight to prepare for what was coming, and they made the most of it. His company, with the 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav attached, now held the same 140 yards of perimeter that Bob Edwards's men had secured.

Lieutenant William Sisson's platoon of the same company was on the left; PFC John C. Martin, twenty-five, of Wichita, Kansas, among them.

Martin says, "We set up our perimeter and started digging our two-man fighting positions. I remember Platoon Sergeant Charles L. Eschbach came around to each position: ' it deeper and build a bigger and higher parapet. Set up fields of fire. Stay alert!' We were all scared out of our wits, but we put being scared in the back of our minds and concentrated on what we were told. We continued to improve our positions even though the ground was hard. It was like digging through concrete. I remember, I'll always remember, First Sergeant Frank Miller standing there, no helmet on, his bald head shining, smoking a cigar."

Myron Diduryk and his soldiers had not yet been sorely tested, but soon they would be. During that lull Diduryk made certain that fields of fire and observation were. cleared out to beyond two hundred yards; that good fighting positions were dug; that machine guns were placed in positions that assured flanking, interlocking fire; that trip flares and anti-intrusion devices were installed as far as three hundred yards out; that every man was loaded down with ammunition and that ammo-resupply points were designated; that all radios were checked and double-checked. Then Diduryk worked very carefully with the artillery forward observer registering pre-planned fires all across his front. The officer, Lieutenant William Lund, had four batteries, twenty-four howitzers, registered and adjusted and on call.

Bill Lund, a twenty-three-year-old native of Edina, Minnesota, was an ROTC graduate of the University of Minnesota. He spent his first night in Landing Zone X-Ray learning the real world of close-in fire support.

Artillery school solutions in those days considered four hundred yards dangerously close. Lund discovered that in X-Ray the big shells had to be brought down to within forty to fifty yards if you wanted to stay alive. Says Lund, "Myron Diduryk and I were side by side all the time, so I had an infantryman's knowledge of what was happening."

Rick Rescorla, 1st Platoon leader, was six months out of OCS at the Infantry School at Fort Benning. But he had arrived there with a wealth of good training already under his belt. He had served in the British army in Cyprus and with the Colonial Police in Rhodesia, and he knew what soldiering was all about. What he did to prepare his position and his men speaks for his professionalism:

"I met with Lieutenant Bill Sisson, A/2/7, who would be on my left flank. Sisson, a personal friend from OCS class of April 1965, looked around at the dead NVA soldiers and wrinkled his nose. They were starting to get ripe. ' you were back in submarines?' I asked.

Sisson wore twin dolphins on his chest from Navy Reserve duty in Rhode Island. Convinced that the NVA would come back that night, we vowed to tie in our sectors tight as a duck's ass. No weak links."

Rescorla walked the terrain and tried to see it from the enemy's point of view. Scrub trees, elephant grass, anthills, and some ground cover stretched to the front. The ground was not as flat as it first appeared, but had seams and thick ruts stretching off to the south, with a slight incline away from his positions. The hasty prone shelters dug by Charlie Company, 1st Battalion had been dug after nightfall under enemy pressure. Rescorla moved his men back fifty yards, which not only shortened the sector but meant the enemy would now have to leave the trees and cross forty yards of mostly open area to reach the Bravo Company foxholes.

Rescorla recalls, "Because of our shortened lines, I decreased the number of foxholes. Three-man holes were constructed. The M-60 machine guns were set on principal directions of fire from which they could switch to final protective grazing fire, interlocking with each other and with the machine guns on our flanks. Foxholes and parapets were built in detail. I tested the holes. Some were so deep the occupants could not even see over the parapet. In these cases firing steps were built back up. Two hours before dusk Sergeant Eschbach, A/2/7, and Sergeant Thompson organized a booby-trap detail. Carefully they rigged grenades and trip flares far out on the main avenues of approach.