We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (35 page)

Mcdade had done a good job as personnel chief for the division commander, Major General Harry W.O. Kinnard, and Kinnard had rewarded him with a battalion command. But not without some reservations. He assigned his own personal aide, Major Frank Henry, to go down to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry as Mcdade's executive officer "to keep things going until Mcdade could get his feet wet."

The 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was the same mix of draftees, good NCOs, green lieutenants, and good company commanders that were found in its sister 1st Battalion, 7th Cav. But it had not had the same intense airmobile training that we had gotten in the 11th Air Assault Test. When the 1st Cavalry Division got orders to Vietnam the Army handed two additional infantry battalions to General Kinnard in July of 1965 to fill up the ranks. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav was one of those battalions.

Colonel Tim Brown recalls: "When they joined us they were scattered all over the country, some units at Bragg, some at Fort Jackson, just scattered. I asked the battalion commander, [Lieutenant Colonel] John White, how many men he had. He said he had a hundred men for the whole battalion. So the Army started filling that battalion with people from the 101st, the 82nd Airborne, some from Fort Lewis. They were just a bunch of strangers to each other. Hell, I rounded up some helicopters and had them take the 2/7 troops up for a ride just so they would know what it was like in a helicopter. That was all the airmobile training we had time to give them at Benning." The battalion sergeant major, James Scott, says: "We got a lot of replacements in, filled up our battalion, prior to joining the cavalry.

Airmobile training? We had precisely one helicopter ride at Fort Benning and that was our airmobile training. No more than two percent of the whole battalion had any combat experience. Frightening to think of. We were definitely new and not trained as a unit in airmobile operations."

First Lieutenant J.L. (Bud) Alley, Jr., a native of South Carolina, had joined the 2nd Infantry Division in August 1964, directly out of ROTC at Furman University under an experimental program the Army called U2. It took a new ROTC graduate and put him directly on active duty in command of troops without first sending him through the officers' basic infantry course. "I spent three months directly in the field in Air Assault II. I was in the 1 st Battalion, 9th Infantry and we were a mech infantry unit. They were practicing air assault against us. We came back in from the field at Thanksgiving, then on 15 February 1965 I was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to communications officer school. That took three months. When I came back we were moved to Fort Bragg to take over training duties because the 82nd Airborne Division was in the Dominican Republic and they had a bunch of new people turning up and nobody at Bragg to deal with them. I was there at Bragg in July when President Johnson went on television and said the Air Cavalry Division would be deployed to Vietnam.

"Next day we got called back to Benning. I was immediately assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, on the day that it was redesignated the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. It was a remnants outfit, with new people turning up every day. Nobody knew anything, and nobody knew anybody. It was a blur of disposing of POVs [privately owned vehicles] and POE [preparation for overseas embarkation] and packing up. Airmobile training? Hell, I had my first helicopter ride in my life from the beach in Qui Nhon to division headquarters at An Khe in Vietnam."

Lieutenant Alley says he thought the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav was a pretty decent unit, no better and no worse than most of the rest. "The NCOs and staff people were good. Captain Jim Spires [battalion operations officer] was top drawer, and I can't say enough good about Major Frank Henry. He was a first-rate guy, a real cool head under fire. The company commanders seemed to know their jobs, especially Skip Fesmire and Myron Diduryk. We had one or two units that had a bit of light contact out in the field. Headquarters Company was a different unit than a regular line company. We were staff people--supplies, communications, and medical people. Non-combatant administrators and support people."

Lieutenant Colonel Edward C. (Shy) Meyer, who later would become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, was Tim Brown's executive officer in the 3rd Brigade that fall. He recollects, "A deliberate decision was made in those first operations in Vietnam and later up in Pleiku to put 2/7 in areas where it was clear they would have the opportunity to work on the fundamentals, orchestrating their movement through jungle, so they at least had some time to work together where there were not a lot of enemy. Mcdade was a very new battalion commander, but I should say that he had very strong company commanders and very strong NCOs with combat experience in Korea and even World War II. I knew some of those people from Korea and they were good. Frank Henry, the executive officer, always knew what was going on; he had a good feel for getting patrols out and taking care of logistics. I thought he was a good adjunct and prop for Mcdade during his learning period."

One of the strengths of the 2nd Battalion was Sergeant Major James Scott. He had made the landing at Normandy and was wounded in combat three times between June and December of 1944. He served thirteen months in combat in Korea and had been with the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Benning for six years. "I had twenty-four years' service in 1965; I could have retired, but that was no time to quit, when you know you are going to be needed and you have some experience.

Colonel White, the battalion commander that summer, was a World War II veteran. We talked a lot about obtaining experienced personnel."

Scott had his eye on Sergeant First Class Charles Bass, who was in a 2nd Division unit but had not been ordered to Vietnam because he had just returned from a tour there as an adviser to the South Vietnamese army.

"He had plenty of experience. I met him on the street in Columbus, Georgia, and he said: ' me a promotion and I'll volunteer to go with you.' I told him he knew there was no way I could guarantee a promotion but I'd see that he was on top of the list. So he came to us as our operations sergeant. He and I shared a tent in Vietnam. The other senior NCOs would come and pick his brain. Charles could talk for hours about how you navigate by artillery fire; never underestimate this enemy-- they have patience; be alert to their AK-47s, a good weapon.

Watch those anthills. Fire into the trees and anthills when you arrive and when you depart. This Vietnamese enemy is good; he is dedicated to his cause. That was frightening to hear, but it was all truth."

Lieutenant S. Lawrence Gwin was young, blond, six feet two inches tall; he was one of those who heard John F. Kennedy's clarion call and answered it. He was commissioned regular army out of Yale University ROTC in June 1963. Not only was he Ranger and parachute qualified, but he also had two months' schooling in the Vietnamese language. In September 1965 he was advising a South Vietnamese battalion in the Mekong Delta when he was suddenly transferred north and assigned to 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry as the executive officer of Alpha Company, under Captain Joel Sugdinis.

Gwin says, "Mcdade took over and for several weeks he quietly observed, giving only what I would call sotto voce orders. There was a clean sweep in the battalion command structure. Major Frank Henry replaced Pete Mallet. The S-3 was replaced by Captain Jim Spires, whom I liked because he had also been an adviser. The S-2 was Lieutenant Mike Kalla, fairly new at the game. So we went up to Pleiku with a fairly unfamiliar command structure. Basically this battalion was a terrific group of soldiers with solid NCOs. The shortcomings: They were from the 2nd Division, not a cavalry outfit. They were untrained in airmobile operations. Luckily, Captain Sugdinis had transferred in from Delta Company 1/7; he was a West Point graduate, well trained and an outstanding officer."

The one person who lives in a commander's back pocket is his radio operator, connected by that six-foot-long black plastic-covered electrical umbilical cord. Jim Epperson, then twenty-six, a native of Oakland, California, had been John White's radio operator; now he was Bob Mcdade's. "White was a leader-type person," Epperson recalls.

"Perhaps a bit more nitpicky. He ran us more like we were a stateside unit. Mcdade was more laid-back. He had come to us from a staff position, hadn't been with troops for a long time. I got along with both of them, but Mcdade was a little more personable. I liked Mcdade because I used to get double C-rations, mine and his. All he would eat was pound cake and fruit. Regular C-rats tore his stomach up bad, so he just didn't eat. He was tall [and] slender, and wore a gold bracelet."

Lieutenant Colonel Mcdade has this to say about his battalion: "Until I took command of 2/7 I had no real dealings with the organization. My impression was that everybody seemed competent. I don't think they had had much experience at the time, but then again not many other outfits had either. It was an outfit that hadn't been tested. General Kin nard sent Major Frank Henry down to be with me because he had heavy airmobile and helicopter experience, having worked very closely with Kinnard as his aide. That was to give us the helicopter expertise Frank Henry had; my experience was purely as an infantryman."

Back at Holloway this Wednesday, November 17, we spent the morning finishing the cleanup of men, weapons, and gear, issuing clothing, reorganizing our depleted ranks, and beginning to process the paperwork for men due to return to the United States for discharge from service within the next week or ten days. Now the men were relaxing. Some slept. Some wrote letters. Some drank beer.

Some did a bit of all those things.

Rick Rescorla says, "Bravo 2/7 spent a comfortable night rolled up in poncho liners, sleeping in platoon formations alongside the road near the Holloway landing zone. Awakening on the morning of 17 November, relaxed by the promise that we would be heading back to An Khe, the mood was ''ve done our bit; it's home to beautiful An Khe. Meanwhile, hang loose and wait for the rest of 2/7 battalion, clean weapons, wolf down hot rations. No sweat.' By midafternoon, weapons under guard, men were swilling beer at the NCO and EM [enlisted men's] clubs or gulping candy bars and soda at the store."

Thirty-one miles southwest of Camp Holloway, in the Ia Drang Valley, the column of American troops pulled out of X-Ray at nine a.m. as directed.

The word among Bob Me Dade's troopers was that it was going to be a walk in the sun, a stroll over to another landing zone, where the helicopters would come in and extract them, the first leg of the journey home to An Khe base camp. The word was wrong.

ALBANY

A WALK IN THE SUN I will tell you one thing that sticks in my mind: This was the least airmobile operation that occurred probably in the entire Vietnam War. It was right back to 1950 Korea or 1944 Europe. All we got were verbal orders: Go here. Finger on map. And we just marched off like we were in Korea.

--Colonel Robert A. Mcdade Call it fate. Call it Custer's luck. Whatever it was, it sure as hell had nothing to do with airmobility. The two battalions that had inherited Landing Zone X-Ray were about to abandon it, and they were leaving the same way they had arrived: on foot. Whatever the 1st Cavalry Division's 435 helicopters were doing this sunny Wednesday morning, November 17, 1965, they were not available to move Lieutenant Colonel Bob Tully's 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry to LZ Columbus or Lieutenant Colonel Robert Mcdade's 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry to the spot on the map that was designated LZ Albany. Grumbling and groaning, the men of both battalions loaded their packs. The word had come down: The big Air Force B-52 bombers were already airborne out of Guam, and their target was the near slopes of Chu Pong mountain. Friendly forces had to be well outside a two-mile safety zone by midmorning when upward of two hundred tons of five-hundred-pound bombs would begin raining down from thirty-six thousand feet. At nine a.m. Bob Tully's men moved out, heading northeast.

Says Tully: "We spent the night there with Mcdade's battalion. I was told to go to Columbus. We were the lead out of LZ X-Ray and moved out the same way we came in--two companies up, one back. We used artillery to plunk a round out four hundred yards or so every half-hour so we could have a concentration plotted. That way, if we ran into problems we could immediately call for fire."

Ten minutes later Bob Mcdade's soldiers moved out. The 3rd Brigade's commanding officer, Tim Brown, was on the ground in X-Ray at the time, watching the movement. Brown's instructions to Mcdade were to follow Tully's battalion. A little more than halfway to LZ Columbus, Mcdade's battalion would head northwest for LZ Albany. This clearing, at map coordinates YA 945043, was 625 yards south of the Ia Drang.

Chief Warrant Officer Hank Ainsworth, a twenty-eightyear-old native of Weatherford, Oklahoma, had ten years in the Army, the last year and a half as a Huey pilot in the 11th Air Assault Division and the 1st Cavalry Division. Hank was pilot of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry command helicopter this day: "I was assigned the mission to take the 2/7 command chopper on a recon flight. We flew an area north of X-Ray the morning of 17 November. People on board were looking at two or three different LZs for potential use. They picked Albany, the smallest of those we overflew, really a one-ship LZ. We flew low-level, three or four hundred feet above the trees, checking the route they would take going in there. I saw absolutely nothing to indicate there was enemy on the ground. We drew no fire."

As 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav headed out of X-Ray that morning, what was its mission? The operations journals of the 3rd Brigade and the 1 st and 2nd battalions, 7th Cavalry are not available in the National Archives and have not been located despite an ongoing search by the Center for Military History that dates back to September 1967. Why these crucial documents disappeared remains a mystery. The division after-action report of March 1966 states that the 2nd Battalion "was to sweep to the west and northwest toward a map location that appeared it would make a possible landing zone. The map location YA 945043 was named albany."

Colonel Tim Brown, the 3rd Brigade's commander, remembers: "My intentions were that Albany was just an intermediate thing, that Mcdade was to go on through to LZ Crooks. I wanted to move 2/7 on to Crooks rather than have them all [2/5 and 2/7 and 1/5] congregate on Columbus.