We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (37 page)

Lots of felled trees and higher grass. Loads were becoming excruciatingly heavy. We drove on, saw some hooches on the left, and Captain Sugdinis held up the company while Lieutenant [Gordon] Grove's men searched them, finding some Montagnard crossbows. Grove was directed to burn the hooches. We continued west. After about four hundred yards we crossed a stream where each man filled his canteens. Now the elephant grass was chest high, the vegetation greener and thicker, and the trees higher. We were getting really tired. We went another three hundred yards when the word came down stopping the battalion column so that elements to our rear could fill their canteens at the stream."

Captain Thorpe and his Delta Company troops were trailing the Alpha Company troops. "As we were moving along there was a small grass hut, and somebody up the column had set it on fire. Anyone in the valley would know we were coming now," Thorpe says. "We crossed a little stream; beyond that they stopped the column. I told my guys to eat, take a break, smoke ' if you got '. Everyone just crashed right there. We hadn't slept in two days and all were pretty tired."

PFC James H. Shadden, twenty-three, of Etowah, Tennessee, was in Thorpe's mortar platoon: "My squad leader, Sergeant Osvaldo Amodias from Miami, asked me to carry the base plate for the 81 mm mortar. He said for me to carry it as far as I could; he would then trade me the sights and carry the base plate. We were in three columns spaced twenty to thirty yards apart, which varied as we advanced. The farther we went the greater the weight we were carrying seemed to feel. If anyone fell they had to be helped up. I had the base plate, three 81mm rounds, plus all the items men in the rifle platoon carried. It was awesome. All the men in the mortar platoon were loaded this way. We came to a branch, stopped long enough to fill our canteens, then moved on."

Specialist 4 Robert L. Towles, an Ohioan, was also in Thorpe's Delta Company, assigned to the antitank platoon. These platoons shipped over with jeep-mounted 106mm recoilless rifles and .50-caliber machine guns.

Since there were no enemy tanks in Vietnam in 1965, most of these platoons had changed over to machine-gun platoons. But Delta Company's antitank platoon had not. They were carrying their M-16s plus two or three LAWs each. Towles says his platoon had flankers out thirty to fifty yards on either side. Thorpe's headquarters group was in front of him. Shadden and the mortarmen were behind Towles, more with Charlie Company than with Delta Company, as the troopers moved through the jungle.

Towles says: "After we crossed a low hill the jungle closed in, double, then triple canopy. The trees towered above us. It became hard to maneuver across the downed trees and ruts. We took a short break and ate our C-rations in the semidark, not yet noon. We gathered our gear and moved slowly on and the jungle opened up. Visibility greatly improved and we approached a streambed. The water was welcome. As we moved on through trees standing several feet apart, two deer broke out of the heavy wood line about thirty yards off to our right. At that time I thought the flankers had spooked them."

The division forward command post at Pleiku logged Bob Tully's battalion into its objective, Landing Zone Columbus, at 11:38 a.m. "We got into Columbus; somebody there had a good hot meal for us. Hamburgers, mashed potatoes and string beans," Tully says. "Sitting there eating, I heard Me Dade trying to get hold of somebody on the radio; he couldn't reach them, so I answered and offered to relay anything he had. We relayed his information to Tim Brown. After a while, I think Mcdade was able to get through directly."

While Bob Tully and his 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry troopers were digging into platters of hot chow in the security of LZ Columbus, Bob Mcdade and his 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry troopers were humping and sweating through the tall grass straight into an area saturated with enemy soldiers from the 8th Battalion, 66th Regiment; the 1st Battalion, 33rd Regiment; and the headquarters of the 3rd Battalion, 33rd Regiment.

According to General An, while the 33rd Regiment's battalions were severely understrength because of the casualties they had suffered around Plei Me camp and during their retreat west into the valley, the 8th Battalion, 66th Regiment was his reserve battalion, newly arrived off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The 8th Battalion's only exposure to combat thus far had been the ambush of its heavy-weapons company by Lieutenant Colonel John B. Stockton's 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry troopers just after the 8th crossed into Vietnam two weeks earlier. They were fresh, rested, and spoiling for a fight with the Americans.

Lieutenant Larry Gwin of Alpha Company says: "The jungle around us got heavier and heavier. That's when things got a little scary. There was a sudden absence of any air cover, the guys were silent, and I wondered where our helos, our aerial rocket artillery ships, were. We had not changed our formation tactically, but physically we had to move in much tighter to maintain visual contact because of the undergrowth. The terrain forced our flankers in."

Having turned the head of the column north northwest, Captain Joel Sugdinis suddenly heard the rolling sound of distant explosions to his left rear: The B-52s were making their run on the Chu Pong. At the same time he also felt a twinge of concern that he still had not seen the Albany clearing, which ought to have been close now. Some 150 yards to Sugdinis's front was Lieutenant D.P. (Pat) Payne, the new leader of the recon platoon. A native of Waco, Texas, and an ROTC graduate of Texas A&M College, Pat had served for fourteen months in the 2nd Battalion. "I was at the very front edge of the platoon," says Payne. "As we were walking around these six-foot-tall termite hills, all of a sudden right by my side was a North Vietnamese soldier, laying down resting. I jumped on top of him, grabbed him, and shouted an alarm. My radio operator grabbed one of his arms. Simultaneously, about ten yards to my left, the platoon sergeant found a second enemy soldier and jumped on him as well.

There was quite a bit of shouting and commotion."

Payne reported the capture back down the line, and Captain Sugdinis was quickly on the scene. He says: "I immediately directed Lieutenant Payne to put out observation posts. I remember that one of our men in the immediate vicinity of the North Vietnamese called out that he saw movement on the high ground to our north. I looked and thought I saw something, too, but was not sure."

The men had seen something--and what they had seen was another member of the North Vietnamese reconnaissance team escaping to sound a warning of the Americans' approach. Says then-Lieutenant Colonel Hoang Phuong: "Another recon soldier came back to the headquarters of 1 st Battalion, 33rd Regiment, reported to the commander, and we organized the battle here." Gwin says Alpha Company's column order and integrity had been good until the two prisoners were captured and everything came to a sudden halt. "When I arrived Sugdinis was interrogating the two. They were in mint condition: new weapons, grenades, new gear, but both were feverish, terrified, and shaking. None of us in company headquarters had seen a live North Vietnamese up close.

These were not the last we would see this day. We gave them water and advised battalion headquarters." Joel Sugdinis looked at one of the POWs, who seemed to be quaking with malaria. He offered the prisoner one of his malaria tablets, but the frightened North Vietnamese refused it.

Sugdinis popped one in his mouth and drank it down with a slug from his canteen. Then the prisoner accepted a pill, and the water, gratefully.

Gwin adds that Lieutenant Colonel Mcdade radioed orders to hold in place and advised that he was coming forward to interrogate the prisoners personally. "The colonel and his S-2 and their radio operators, an interpreter, and the entourage all arrived at the point of our unit. I was getting nervous standing around with all that brass. I backed off to have a cigarette and make sure Alpha Company was OK. It was very still.

While the interrogation went on, Alpha Company rested in place. I was surprised to see [that] Lieutenant Don Cornett, the executive officer of Charlie Company and my best friend, had come forward to see what was going on. He was tired but in good spirits, and we commented on how disorganized the march had become. We told each other where our troops were. We parted. It was the last time I spoke to him."

The Charlie Company commander, Skip Fesmire, says, "I sent Cornett up to find out what was happening, why we'd been stopped for so long. Also, I felt that Delta Company was spread out too far and I wanted to know how much."

At 11:57 a.m. the report on the capture of the two enemy prisoners reached division forward at Pleiku and was relayed on to the division headquarters at An Khe, where it was logged into the division journal at 12:40 p.m. The message said that the POWs were policed up at map coordinates YA 943043, a hundred yards from the southwestern edge of the clearing designated Albany.

Captain Jim Spires had come forward with Colonel Me Dade. The' NVA prisoners tried to tell them that they were deserters, Spires says, "but I noticed they had rifles and equipment. We halted there for about half an hour while we questioned these two. They gave the impression they were scared half to death. Our interpreter's English wasn't very good so it was hard to make sense of what they were saying. I spoke a little Vietnamese and I tried to ask some questions myself," Spires says.

Sergeant Major Scott and Sergeant Charlie Bass shared Spire's skepticism: "Bass and the translator were talking to those prisoners. By then their hands were bound behind their backs. Bass told me: ' say they are deserters and they are hungry.' We looked at each other and I said: ', they are too well fed. They appear to be an outpost.' "

Jim Epperson, Mcdade's radio operator: "We had an interpreter: Sergeant Vo Van On. On was an intellectual, college student, spoke good English compared to some of them. His father was a merchant in Saigon. He came to us when we got to Vietnam; he was our first interpreter. We sat down, took a break, while the officers did the questioning. Then Mcdade called the company commanders up to him."

Specialist 4 Bob Towles of Delta Company tells what happened farther back down the column: "Everyone dropped to the ground. I unslung the LAW rockets I carried, because their weight cut deep. I sat leaning against a tree facing the rear of the column. When the command group closed up, a gap of thirty to forty yards opened in the line of march. We lounged around smoking and bullshitting, just taking it easy. Then the mortar-platoon sergeant came up. He went directly to First Lieutenant James Lawrence, Delta's new executive officer, to learn the situation.

The sergeant left his gear behind when he walked over. He wore his web belt and packed a pistol, but carried no rifle and didn't wear his steel pot. Lawrence put out the information that the head of the column took two prisoners. Others could be in the area. We lolled around."

PFC James Shadden, who was in Delta's mortar platoon: "In the column to my left I noticed Sergeant [Loransia D.] Bowen and Captain Thorpe peel off, headed up front. Everyone dropped in a small swag, and lit a cigarette. I believe this to be the time the so-called deserters were captured." Radio operator Specialist 4 John C. Bratland also went forward with Thorpe for the company commanders' meeting called by Mcdade.

Captain George Forrest, commander of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, was more than five hundred yards to the rear. "Mcdade asked all company commanders to come forward. Lieutenant Adams, my executive officer, had come in on a resupply bird; he was really not supposed to be in there. I told him: Tm going forward; you take over and deploy the troops in a herringbone formation, and spread them out good.' I went forward with my two radio operators. As we were going up the column, everyone was just stopped, sitting on their packs. It was just a Sunday walk, and now we're taking a break. I went up that trail, through fairly dense jungle."

Captain Fesmire, the Charlie Company commander, was also moving up the column toward Mcdade's position. With him were his two radio operators, his artillery forward observer, Lieutenant Sidney Smith, and his radioman, as well as First Sergeant Franklin Hance. Fesmire left First Lieutenant Donald C. Cornett, twenty-four, a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and a graduate of Mcneese State College, in charge of Charlie Company. Fesmire says that when the column first halted, he sent flank security out on both sides of his company and personally checked it.

At this precise moment, on the brink of disaster, this is what was happening: Sugdinis's Alpha Company was moving forward toward the Albany clearing. Colonel Mcdade and his battalion-command group were with Alpha Company. The other company commanders had left their companies, under orders, and were moving up to join Mcdade for a conference. The battalion was strung out along the line of march for a distance of at least 550 yards. The men of Delta Company were lolling around on the ground. Charlie Company had flankers off to each side but most were taking a break, sitting or lying down. George Forrest's men, at the tail of the column, were in a wedge formation and also had flank security posted. The men of the battalion were worn out after nearly sixty hours without sleep and four hours of marching through difficult terrain. Visibility in the chest high elephant grass was very limited.

Lieutenant Larry Gwin, who was up front: "We picked up again. This time the battalion headquarters group was right with us and Mcdade was guiding us to a clearing. We broke into an area that looked like it might be Albany. A fairly open area, about the size of a football field, sloping up to a wooded, anthill-studded area. The grass was waist-deep.

We'd made it. It was still very quiet. Just about then I was flabbergasted to see Mcdade and his entourage striding past me heading toward the clearing, moving very quickly.

"I moved forward and Joel Sugdinis was on his knee at the edge of the clearing. He said: ' sent the 1st Platoon around to the right, 2nd Platoon around to the left, and recon platoon forward to recon the far end of the LZ.' Mcdade's entourage had walked past us, across the grass, and into a clump of trees. It was swampy to the left, and on the right grassy. I didn't know there was another clearing on the other side of those trees."