We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (44 page)

The Air Force made it! The voices ceased and the noise of battle resumed, only now it was concentrated off to my right. An air strike with all the trimmings. We had won. It was all over. Only a matter of time before our troops could get to us; an hour or so. I drifted off to sleep. But the battle raged. Really intense firefights; my platoon in deep shit."

Specialist Jack Smith's ordeal with Charlie Company, on the other hand, only grew worse: "The NVA were roaming at will shooting people, hurling hand grenades, and if they weren't doing it we were shooting each other.

I moved away, napalm falling so close it was making the grass curl over my head. I went to another area and again I was the only man there who wasn't wounded. It terrified me. I was bandaging up a sergeant when all of a sudden some NVA jumped on top of us. I pretended to be dead; it was easy to do since I was covered with those people's blood. The North Vietnamese gunner started using me as a sandbag for his machine gun.

"The only reason he didn't discover I was alive was that he was shaking more than I was. He couldn't have been much older than me, nineteen at the time. He started firing into our mortar platoon; our mortar platoon started firing grenades at him and his gun. I lay there thinking, If I stand up and say, ', don't shoot me,' the NVA will shoot me. And if I lay still like this my own men will kill me. Grenades started exploding all around; I was wounded, the North Vietnamese on top of me was killed, that sergeant was killed. I moved to yet another position and this went on all afternoon. Everywhere I went I got wounded, but I didn't get killed. All the men around me were dead."

Although the air strikes had broken the back of the assault against the command-post perimeter, there was no shortage of North Vietnamese along the column. The 2nd Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Mcdade, was isolated in the Albany perimeter and the setting was hardly conducive to clean, clear, and factual radio reports from the embattled companies to the battalion commander, nor from Mcdade up the line to Colonel Tim Brown, the 3rd Brigade commander. Mcdade could see what was going on in his little perimeter, but he was dependent on radios for word of what was happening in the ranks of Charlie, Delta, and Headquarters companies, and there was only silence.

Help was on the way, but it would not arrive in time nor in the right place to be of much use to the Americans still trapped and alive in the column. The division journal notes that at 2:30 p.m. the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry on Landing Zone Columbus was "alerted to assist" Mcdade's column. Captain Buse Tully's Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry was assigned the mission of attacking "to relieve the pressure and attempt to link up with the beleaguered battalion."

At 2:55 p. m., the 120 men and officers of Bravo Company began marching overland from the artillery base at LZ Columbus toward the rear of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav column approximately two miles away. By four p.m. Captain Tully's company was within six hundred yards of Captain George Forrest's Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry perimeter. Tully held up there until the Air Force completed its strikes on the North Vietnamese; he then resumed the march. By 4:30 p.m. his company sighted American troops, "remnants of our Company A who had broken out of the death trap."

In an account of the operation written for Armor magazine, an Army publication, the following year, Tully said: "Along with them were elements of Headquarters and Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. Company A had taken many casualties and was missing one whole platoon. You cannot imagine how happy Captain George Forrest was to see friendly faces. I got a great big bear hug from him."

Tully's reinforcements deployed to secure a one-helicopter landing zone at the tail of the column to bring in medical evacuation helicopters. The time was five p.m. "When the majority of the wounded had been evacuated," Tully wrote, I gave the order to move out toward where I thought the remainder of 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was located. Our Company A was to follow in column as soon as the remaining wounded were evacuated. We had not moved 400 yards when the very earth seemed to erupt with mortar and small arms fire. The company was deployed in a wedge and had just passed over a small ridge line. To our front was a densely thicketed wood line. All three platoons came under fire simultaneously.

The NVA were in the wood line. Two men were killed and three wounded in the initial volley. One of the wounded was my 3rd Platoon leader Lieutenant Emil Satkowsky. Another was PFC Martin, who had only 14 days left in the Army and who the night before had burned his hands so badly on a trip flare that he had been evacuated. Before leaving he swore to his buddies he would be back the next day. Sure enough, on the first supply ship into Columbus on the 17th, there he was. He had talked the doctor into just bandaging his hands and letting him come back. He was the point man in the first platoon when we got hit and had his hip torn open. At this point there was no alternative except to press the attack and hope that by taking the wood line the fire could be stopped.

By now Tully's people were beginning to spot the enemy soldiers.

The M-79 grenade launchers proved extremely effective for blowing a man out of a tree. By the time we reached the wood

PFC Roger Martin of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was the man who disobeyed doctors' orders and returned to join his buddies on the march to Albany.

His left hip was shattered by an enemy bullet.

line we had killed enough enemy and driven the remainder far enough into the jungle that the firing subsided to an occasional sniper round. About the same time, Captain Forrest radioed that more wounded had come into the clearing from the west and requested that I hold up so he could medevac them. This process repeated itself as stragglers continued to filter in. Battalion headquarters had been advised and at 6:25 p.m. orders were received to wrap up in a two-company perimeter and prepare to sweep north to link up with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry at daybreak. At nightfall, we still had twenty-two wounded in our perimeter. They were made as comfortable as possible for the long wait until morning.

Reinforcements were also on the way for the battalion command perimeter at the head of the column. During the afternoon, Captain Myron Diduryk's battle-weary veterans of the fight at Landing Zone X-Ray, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, got a warning to prepare for a night air assault into a hot landing zone. The Bravo Company troopers, delighted to have survived the hellish fighting on X-Ray and enjoying a well-deserved rest and a lot of cold beer back at Camp Holloway, were stunned when told that they were being thrown back into a desperate situation so suddenly.

Specialist Jon Wallenius, Bravo Company mortar observer, was doing some serious celebrating. He had not only survived X-Ray without a scratch, but this day, November 17, was his birthday. "I was twenty-two years old. We were fed and showered and new clothes were available. I spent the afternoon at the Enlisted Men's Club drinking beer with the platoon, exchanging stories and celebrating my birthday. Around four p.m. Diduryk came in and told us to ' up.' We were going to rescue the battalion."

"At about 1600 hours," Lieutenant Rick Rescorla recalls, "Captain Diduryk walked up. ' the Company together. Battalion's catching hell.

We may have to go in. You're the only platoon leader left in the Company. Help all the platoons get their shit together.' Men spilled out of the Clubs and double-timed to their equipment. They worked quickly, throwing on their harnesses. No protests, but their eyes filled with disbelief. Again? Diduryk then issued the shortest frag order in Bravo Company history: ''ll be landing from the southeast. Open fire at anything on your left. Run to your right.' A hostile landing with one side of the landing zone held by the North Vietnamese. Sitrep [situation report] from the ground: Grim. Expect to be sandwiched between friendly and enemy fires."

At about 5:45 p. m., Rescorla gathered the platoons. "They pressed in close, listening intently for the word. [SFC John A.] Uselton, the mortar-platoon sergeant, [Staff Sergeant William F.] Martin, [Specialist 4 Andrew] Vincent, [Specialist Jon] Wallenius, the towering [Sergeant Larry L.] Melton. Eighty or more. Young faces, old hollow eyes. ' know the battalion is in the shit,' I said. ' have been selected to jump into that shit and pull them out. If you fight like you did at X-Ray you'll come through it. Stay together. Come out of those choppers ready to get it on."

"Across the field the first lift ships were sweeping in. ' ' up," Captain Diduryk growled. I turned and walked ahead, Fantino trailing with the PRC-25. The road stretched out past the permanent hooches of the rear echelon at Holloway. Word spread that we were on a suicide flight. Tumbling out of cozy bunks, Holloway's finest lined the road to watch us depart. Hawaiian shirts, aviator shades, jeans, beer cans in hands. Cooks and bottle washers, the shit-burners, projectionists, club runners. Same Army, different species. The Company picked up pace, a tight, dirty brown column."

A few of the men carried AKs, trophies from X-Ray. "No one had shaved," noted Rescorla, "but our weapons sparkled. ' outfit are you?' one spectator asked. "The Hard Corps of Bravo Company, 2nd of the 7th."

"Where are you headed?' ' kick ass,' I yelled back. A deep rumble ran through the ranks, men yelling, cursing. Not a man among us would swap places with these lard asses. As we passed I asked Fantino: ' we looking back there?' His reply: ' stragglers, Sir.

Every swinging dick is with us.' As we made a column-right to the pickup point, I looked back at our crew. No outfit in the Army had ever rendered a route step any better than these men at this moment. We piled onto the Hueys without the usual loading instructions and skidded away into the fading gray light."

At 6:45 p.m. the first lift ships roared into the small Albany clearing and Captain Myron Diduryk's troopers bailed out into the tall grass. The cavalry had ridden to the rescue. But the killing and dying and terror continued unabated outside the American perimeter as the long night began.

ESCAPE AND EVADE One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

--Francois, Due de Ia Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 1665

In the confusion of a battle as fast-paced, fluid, and disorganized as this one along the trail to the Albany clearing-- with leaders killed, wounded, or separated from their men, and unit integrity disintegrating in the tall grass and the storm of enemy fire--soldiers drift away or are forced to move away. This is, perhaps, the ultimate terror: to be lost and alone in a hostile land where the next man you meet wants only to kill you.

The Army solution to the problem calls for the soldier to conceal himself until sure of his ground, and then move as stealthily as possible toward friendly lines. The Army term for this difficult and dangerous pursuit is "escape and evasion" or

"E and E." Getting back inside friendly lines in the middle of a firefight is problematic: You are just as likely to be shot and killed by your friends as you are by the enemy.

Late in the afternoon of November 17, E and E was definitely on the minds of many American survivors crawling through the elephant grass in the killing zone along the route of march toward the Albany clearing. Most of them would not make it back alive into the American perimeters at the head and tail of the column.

But, against all odds, at least a dozen American officers and soldiers, all of them wounded, stumbled through circuitous routes that took them back to Landing Zone Columbus. Their stories, especially those of James Young and Toby Braveboy, stand as testimony to courage, tenacity, and a tremendous will to live.

Although Lieutenant Colonel Bob Mcdade and his executive officer, Major Frank Henry, tried to bring in the air strikes close to the head of the column, some strikes hit as far down the line of march as Headquarters Company, where Lieutenant John Howard, a wounded sergeant, and four other Americans were fighting off the enemy from behind an anthill.

Howard says, "The A-les made a pass and dropped napalm approximately fifty yards to our left. Although they killed some of the NVA, I'm sure they also hit some of our own troops because we were all mixed together, friendly and enemy, at that point. It was utter chaos. The A-les made a wide sweep and started to come back around for a second pass."

Lieutenant Howard quickly saw that this next pass might come directly over them, and they had to get out of the way of the napalm. "We decided that we would run down a hill toward a dry streambed to get away from the path of the next strike. The six of us jumped up and ran, crossing the streambed about a hundred yards away, and jumped into a large hole about fifteen feet across that looked like an artillery crater. As we were running down the hill the Ales were making their second pass and the North Vietnamese were firing at the planes above, not paying any attention to us.

"After getting into the hole we realized that we were now in no-man's-land on the outside of the enemy and far away from any friendly troops. Intense firefights were still going on a few hundred yards away, but after staying there for maybe an hour, we did not see any more enemy in that area."

Not far away, another desperate little band of Americans was forming and trying to find a way out of the death trap. That group was led by Lieutenant Howard's friend Lieutenant Bud Alley, the communications-platoon leader. Alley had collected five other wounded men, including his platoon sergeant; the assistant operations sergeant, James Gooden; and one soldier from Captain George Forrest's Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry.

Alley says, "One of the clerks was pretty bad shot up and he was panicked. We tried to carry him but he was too big; we couldn't handle him. One other guy with me had one of his eyes shot out; had it patched but said he could see. A young enlisted man. We made our way to a ditch.

There were other guys in that ditch when I got there.

"I remember one of them said: ', how about saying a prayer?" We did; then we took off up the ditch to the left, again trying to find a senior person, somebody who could tell us what to do. There was the guy with the eye shot out; Gooden shot in the chest; another guy shot in the arm and leg. We continued to crawl and we realized that we can't go back into that shit; the best thing we can do is go to the artillery if we can make it back."