The Magnificent Bastards Part 8

Jesus Christ, thought Captain Leach. Here we go again.

Leach could not have been more wrong, however, as he himself soon recognized. "Colonel Snyder turned out to be just a prince of a guy and a good commander," Leach said later. "He didn't come in with a big ego, and he learned fast." Thoughtful, intelligent Bill Snyder, age thirty-nine, may have been in combat for the first time, but he'd been around the Army since he was an eighteen-year-old private. The son of a railroad man, he'd grown up poor on a farm outside Xenia, Ohio, and had enlisted primarily to qualify for the GI Bill so he could go to college after his two years in uniform. Snyder began basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, in September 1946, and was a.s.signed as an orderly room clerk with Headquarters, Atlantic Section, at Fort Davis, Panama. A year and a half later he had three stripes and was selected to attend the U.S. Military Academy prep school.

Snyder graduated in the top 15 percent of the USMA Cla.s.s of 1952 and wound up as a platoon leader in I Company, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne Division, at Fort Bragg. A year later, he joined the 5th Regimental Combat Team in postwar Korea for a 1953-54 tour as a platoon leader and battalion adjutant. He redeployed with the regiment to Fort Lewis, Was.h.i.+ngton, where he spent a year as a company commander and another as a platoon leader with the regimental tank company. From 1956 to 1958, Snyder was aide to the commandant of cadets at West Point, and he spent the next year at the Infantry Officers' Advanced Course at Fort Benning. After being promoted to captain, Snyder was a semicivilian from 1959 to 1962 as he pursued his doctorate in political science at Princeton University. He finished his dissertation in 1963, and it was published as a book, The Politics of British Defense Policy, 1945-1962 The Politics of British Defense Policy, 1945-1962, by the Ohio State University Press. He started his next book, Case Studies in Military Systems a.n.a.lysis Case Studies in Military Systems a.n.a.lysis, during a 1962-66 tour as an economics and political science instructor at West Point. By then he was a major, and he finished that book while at the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth in 1966-67. The book was published by the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, as was a chapter-length contribution he made to another book, Issues of National Security in the 1970s Issues of National Security in the 1970s, during his year in Vietnam.

Upon graduation from CGSC, the freshly minted Lieutenant Colonel Snyder began his Vietnam tour in July 1967 with the G3 section at Headquarters, U.S. Army Vietnam (USARV). Snyder spent six months with USARV in Bien Hoa near Saigon, then six months with the Gimlets. That was his last a.s.signment with a maneuver unit. After Vietnam, he went to the Pentagon, then graduated from the War College, where he remained as an instructor. He rounded out his career heading the ROTC unit at Princeton. Snyder had sandwiched in those six months with the infantry in Vietnam during this mostly academic career because "if you're a Regular Army officer and you don't command something, you're out of luck. This was my chance. This was something I had to do and wanted to do. I was green in the sense that there were a lot of new weapons and radios I didn't know anything about, but everybody pitched in. If you told people you didn't know, they were glad to explain it to you."

Most considered the 196th LIB, known as the "Chargers," to be head and shoulders above the other two brigades, the 11th and 198th, with which the 196th had been melded to form the Americal Division. The Gimlets saw themselves as the best battalion in the best brigade, so when Snyder showed up from USARV with his transparent career intentions, no one had been much impressed at first glance-to include Major Yurchak, the S3, who served an incredible five tours in the war zone. "The guy he took over from was a rompin', stompin' mean-a.s.s, and here comes smiling Bill Snyder-and the guy was fantastic," said Yurchak. "He was sort of a nice guy, and he smiled a lot and laughed a lot, but he was a wonderful, strong-willed combat commander. He knew what the h.e.l.l was going on, and he never, never lost his cool."

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder came to be regarded as a breath of fresh air. His predecessor had been known by the call sign Steel Gimlet, and though Yurchak had considered him a "very strict, very good battalion commander," he added that "it was almost impossible to deal with the guy because he was always angry."

Steel Gimlet's command style had been dictatorial and verbally demeaning. He had also been relentless in his career-building determination to bring home the bodies, especially after the 3-21st Infantry moved out of Chu Lai (where the pickings had been slim) and up to FSB Center. Center was situated atop a ridgeline northwest of Tam Ky that overlooked NVA infiltration routes and populated valleys known for guerrilla activity.1 Contact, however, was infrequent. To catch up with this enemy that seemed to be everywhere but nowhere, Steel Gimlet, who was under pressure himself from brigade and division, began taking enormous chances. Captain Leach had just moved Charlie Company into a night laager, and was in the process of establis.h.i.+ng his listening posts and night ambushes, when the battalion commander called him. Steel Gimlet had a "hot intel report" indicating that an enemy unit would be moving into a certain location at dawn. That location was ten klicks from Leach's current position, and Steel Gimlet wanted Charlie Tiger to conduct a night march so as to be in place by 0500 to ambush the enemy. Such a schedule did not allow for proper planning or a cautious, cross-country approach, but demanded that Charlie Tiger make use of the trails that the enemy often b.o.o.by trapped or ambushed. Leach later commented: Contact, however, was infrequent. To catch up with this enemy that seemed to be everywhere but nowhere, Steel Gimlet, who was under pressure himself from brigade and division, began taking enormous chances. Captain Leach had just moved Charlie Company into a night laager, and was in the process of establis.h.i.+ng his listening posts and night ambushes, when the battalion commander called him. Steel Gimlet had a "hot intel report" indicating that an enemy unit would be moving into a certain location at dawn. That location was ten klicks from Leach's current position, and Steel Gimlet wanted Charlie Tiger to conduct a night march so as to be in place by 0500 to ambush the enemy. Such a schedule did not allow for proper planning or a cautious, cross-country approach, but demanded that Charlie Tiger make use of the trails that the enemy often b.o.o.by trapped or ambushed. Leach later commented: I used to beat up on the platoon leaders not to use trails, and I told the battalion commander, "Hey, I can't get there by oh-five-hundred unless I sacrifice security." There was only one trail, I'm talking about two feet wide, that went down into this area. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you!" "G.o.dd.a.m.n you!" Steel Gimlet said. "You're going to do what I say!" "Roger, I want to talk to the TOC duty officer." I had been in command of my company about a month. I was starting to feel good, I was getting my feet on the ground, so I got the TOC duty officer and said, "I want it put in the record that I'm sacrificing the principle of security to go on this wild goose chase." I was so G.o.dd.a.m.n angry I got on point and we moved down that trail. We got there, put out our security element, set up our fire support element, and attacked the location with our a.s.sault team. n.o.body had been there in ten years. Steel Gimlet said. "You're going to do what I say!" "Roger, I want to talk to the TOC duty officer." I had been in command of my company about a month. I was starting to feel good, I was getting my feet on the ground, so I got the TOC duty officer and said, "I want it put in the record that I'm sacrificing the principle of security to go on this wild goose chase." I was so G.o.dd.a.m.n angry I got on point and we moved down that trail. We got there, put out our security element, set up our fire support element, and attacked the location with our a.s.sault team. n.o.body had been there in ten years.

Steel Gimlet rewarded GIs who got a confirmed kill with a three-day pa.s.s to the division rear in Chu Lai, where the beach was beautiful. When positive reinforcement did not work, however, he applied the stick. First Lieutenant Roger D. Hieb, whom Leach rated as his best platoon leader, described how Steel Gimlet refused to promote him to first lieutenant with the battalion's other second lieutenants who shared the same date of rank "because my platoon didn't have a high enough body count. I will never forget because then lo and behold-and it was not something we went out looking for-but we had contact and we killed some VC, and he flew out and promoted me and it was disgusting. It was really disgusting."

Such pressures had their consequences. "We didn't cut no slack on any of 'Em. There were no civilians," explained one Charlie Tiger NCO. "If there was any doubt-shoot, fire it up. If they didn't run, we didn't fire 'Em up. If they ran, they was going to get fired up. I'm sure more than one innocent person died." While moving down a well-vegetated hill, Charlie Company's point element spotted movement in the brush and fired. One Vietnamese male of military age was killed outright, and three men in their twenties were captured. They had neither weapons nor military equipment. They could have been farmers. The officer in charge decided they were probably local guerrillas, and an M60 machine gunner and a squad of grunts formed up in front of the three prisoners, who were in a squatting position. The grunts opened fire on order. The body count was thus four instead of one.

"We had one of our guys step on a mine, wounding him and two others," remembered Sp4 William W. Karp, a platoon medic in Alpha Annihilator. The Steel Gimlet's helicopter diverted toward the platoon to conduct the medevac. The only clearing in the area was a waist-deep rice paddy. As the Huey hovered inches above the water, Karp tried to carry the soldier who had tripped the mine to the chopper. The man was the most seriously wounded of the three. "I carried him as far as I could. I thought I was going to pa.s.s out, but just then a sergeant took the man from me and struggled the rest of the way to the chopper. The wounded kid was white and the sergeant was black, but that didn't matter." The Huey banked off with the casualty. The man did not survive. As the patrol continued, they caught a Vietnamese male in a free-fire zone-a place where he should not have been. "The black sergeant-who was later killed himself-went into a rage and started beating the s.h.i.+t out of him, hollering that he was probably the d.i.n.k that planted the mine the kid stepped on. We all got caught up in the rage and almost killed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. We finally let him go, beat up but still alive."

"We all had borderline incidents," stated Capt. Hal Bell, who commanded A/3-21 after the Gimlets returned to FSB Center from the DMZ. "You never knew if the 'civilians' were friends, foes, or neutrals. It would depend on what kind of day or week we'd had as to how we would treat civilians. It really was awful, but that was the case."

The Gimlets' nomadic patrolling around FSB Center neither secured nor protected the villages of the Hiep Due and Song Chang valleys, for that was not the stated mission. The Gimlets' only goal was to kill d.i.n.ks. That was what the grunts called the enemy. It was also what they called most Vietnamese. The Gimlets killed a lot of d.i.n.ks. The production of bodies was a demeaning mission and, given the virtually inexhaustible manpower available to the Communists, an unintelligent one. Success, as noted earlier, lay within the hearts and minds of the villagers, and their allegiance was won only through the protection offered by a permanent presence with an emphasis on civic action. As it was, one squad leader could observe only that it was "heart wrenching" to see the civilians killed and wounded by their arty preps of suspected enemy hamlets. "Terrible, terrible..."

The villagers had no reason to s.h.i.+ft their allegiance away from the VC, who were that permanent presence (and who offered more than Saigon and the ARVN did). The Gimlets, with no connection to the people or the land, came to hate those they thought they had come to save. Charlie Tiger was approaching a lone hootch when a VC suddenly emerged from it. The VC cut loose with his AK-47 before turning to run away through the monsoon rain that was cras.h.i.+ng down. Private First Cla.s.s Gregory B. Harp recounted: The point squad and the lieutenant hauled a.s.s after him, and caught him and killed him. In their haste, however, they and everybody else had forgotten to check the hootch the d.i.n.k had come out of. When our squad got up there, I and another guy immediately went in to check it out. There were two draft-age males, two women, and three or four children-another bunch of peace-loving Vietnamese who just happened to be in a free-fire zone and liked having people over for tea who carried AK-47s.

Harp lined up the Vietnamese and demanded to see their government identification cards. As they produced them, Harp heard something move inside the family bunker under the hard-packed earthen floor. He readied a fragmentation grenade while the GI with him trained his M16 on the entrance. Harp continued: Any VC who was armed would have opened up by now for all the noise he was making, so I took a chance and yelled, "Lai day, lai day, lai day "Lai day, lai day, lai day, you dumb motherf.u.c.ker, or I'll blow your a.s.s off!" At that point, one of the women screamed something in Vietnamese down the hole, and suddenly this old guy stuck his head out of the hole. I reached down and grabbed him by his pajama s.h.i.+rt and s.n.a.t.c.hed him out of the hole. I said, "Can cuoc "Can cuoc, motherf.u.c.ker!" He babbled something in gook, but he had no I.D. There was so much adrenaline flowing I had to do something, so I made them all go squat in the mud outside where it was raining like h.e.l.l. The fifteen year old pointed to a s.h.i.+rt in the hootch he wanted because he was cold, so I threw it in the mud and hit him in the face with it. Stupid thing to do, but I was p.i.s.sed, scared, and relieved all at the same time. I just lost it for a minute, but the lieutenant grabbed my arm and said, "That's enough, Harp."

Another day, Charlie Tiger was moving down a trail when Private Harp saw movement to the right of their column. A Vietnamese was sliding down an embankment, and he saw Harp at the same time Harp saw him. The Vietnamese took off like a jackrabbit down another trail, and Harp, concerned that the man was a VC scout, tapped his team leader on the shoulder and pointed. The two moved out in hot pursuit. Harp, well in the lead, caught up with the Vietnamese as he crawled away through a tapioca field, and stopped him with his M16. Harp ran up and rolled the body over. The dead man had no weapon and no military gear. Harp rejoined his team leader "and when we made it back, the company called in one VC body count. Of course, he could also have been an enemy deserter, or a civilian, or your great Aunt Sally."

The Gimlets' first major encounter with enemy regulars occurred when Alpha and Delta Companies were placed opcon to the 4-31st Infantry in response to an offensive by the 2d NVA Division. The battle took place in the misty, monsoon-soaked Hiep Due Valley, and it was a real shock to the system. The action began during the night of 5-6 January 1968 when another attached company was partially overrun in its night defensive position. In the morning, Captain Belcher's Delta Company was airlifted into the valley, where it worked in tandem with B/4-31 during a battalionwide sweep of the battle area. The NVA had melted away and it was not until 8 January, when Delta was north of the stream that cut the valley, that B/4-31 regained contact on the south side. Captain Belcher, a reckless, superaggressive black company commander, immediately joined Delta's lead platoon with his forward observer, first sergeant, and two radiomen, and they started across the shallow stream. They were mortared when they reached the opposite bank. Then, as the platoon hastily advanced across an open paddy toward the cover of a wood line, it was ambushed. Captain Belcher was one of the first to be killed. He was shot in the back as he ran toward the stream to rejoin the main body of his company. The two platoons on the other side were unable to push forward and join the pinned-down platoon. Meanwhile, the NVA, who were camouflaged to resemble walking bushes, began maneuvering across the paddy toward that platoon. It was the company's first real firefight, and one grunt who had been with the outfit less than a week described the panic of the moment: A soldier with an M79 grenade launcher was lying beside me. We knocked off an AK position. He and I yelled for the others to shoot back. No one was firing except us. They were crying and hollering. The VC started flanking us, moving around to our right. I could hear them yelling to each other. Me and the M79er were keeping our heads down, shooting back when we could. Suddenly three VC stood over us. Before we could fire they shot and killed my buddy-I never knew his name-and one of them jumped down on me. They tied me with commo wire, my hands bound behind my back to my feet. Then they tied some wire around my neck and started dragging. I said my last prayers. Blood spurted from my mouth-I was strangling to death. When we reached the woods they untied my feet and pushed me into a bunker.

Black Death suffered fourteen KIA in the debacle in the pouring rain, and had four men taken prisoner. Among the captured GIs was the company first sergeant, who had killed one NVA with his M79 before having his hand shattered by enemy fire. The first sergeant, who did not survive captivity, was trying to keep the grenade launcher in operation one-handed when the enemy overran his position.

The next afternoon, 9 January, Captain Yurchak and Alpha Company started across the same terraced, water-filled rice paddies. American bodies lay where they had fallen. The day was hot and muggy, and a misty rain was falling. The NVA were still in position, and they ambushed Alpha Annihilator. "A GI near me stood up and fired his M16 to cover men retreating from exposed positions," recounted a grunt who did not fire his own weapon. "I could see bullets kicking puffs of dust from his clothes as he was. .h.i.t. He crumpled slowly to the ground, firing till he died. A general panic took over. We seemed to be without leaders.h.i.+p. I didn't know whether to run or stay hidden behind the paddy dike."

This confused grunt was captured, as were two other Alpha Company GIs. Thirteen were killed. One of those who barely escaped was Private Karp, who sought cover behind a dike when the ambush began. One of his good friends, a machine gunner, was shot in the legs on the other side. Karp fired his M16, then crawled out to his buddy. He was lying beside him, trying to figure out what to do next, when the machine gunner tried to push himself up. He was instantly shot in the chest, and red bubbles came out of his mouth. Karp asked G.o.d to bless and keep his friend, then heaved the dead man's M60 to the ammo bearer behind the dike and shouted for covering fire.

The ammo bearer froze. He said the weapon was jammed. He would not raise up to fire. Feeling naked, Karp rolled back over the dike and flattened himself behind the ammo bearer. Karp heaved two grenades to cover their retreat, but as they crawled back, bullets smacked into the mud around them. When hit, the mud looked as if an invisible finger had been drawn through it. An M79 man silenced an NVA machine gun, and Karp and the ammo bearer made it to the cover of a muddy pool. The platoon leader was there, but instead of giving orders, the panic-stricken lieutenant simply blurted that they had to get out, grabbed his radioman's harness, and disappeared with him over the edge of the pool. Karp spotted an enemy soldier crawling toward them and flung his last grenade in that direction. It fell short because the medic's water-soaked flak jacket had sapped his energy. It was a lucky thing, because the man crawling toward them was actually a light-skinned black trooper. Unscathed by the friendly fire, he made it into the muddy pool.

They were also joined by their black platoon sergeant, Sfc. Alan d.i.c.kerson, who had become separated from his weapon, helmet, pack, and web gear. All he had left was a bayonet. In fact, most of the grunts abandoned weapons and equipment while crawling to cover, and Karp had already given his .45 to another unarmed man. d.i.c.kerson decided that their best chance was to crawl rearward in small groups down a snaky little drainage ditch that ran from their pool. d.i.c.kerson had just shoved off with a wounded man and several others when an NVA jumped into the ditch with his AK-47. He put a killing burst into one GI just as the M79 man beside Karp fired at him. The round missed, but Karp had shouldered his Ml6 in that instant and he dropped the NVA with a head shot. Convinced that they were about to be overrun, the dozen men still in the pool crawled through the chest-deep water in the ditch to the point where it emptied into the rice paddy they would have to cross to reach the tree line the company had retreated to.

One of their guys lay dead in the paddy. Sergeant First Cla.s.s d.i.c.kerson hollered for covering fire as his group ran toward the trees. Another man went down, hit in the head. Karp aimed his M16 at two NVA moving on their right and squeezed the trigger. The weapon blew up in his hands. The barrel was clogged with mud. The dozen grunts in the ditch decided to wait until dusk before crossing that open, fireswept paddy. It had just gotten dark when Karp heard voices. He looked up from the ditch and was astonished to see several NVA in position a stone's throw away. The battle was over and the NVA were talking amongst themselves. Karp silently watched one of them pull on a sweater to ward off the evening's misty chill. The NVA disappeared when U.S. artillery began landing, but after the barrage more Vietnamese appeared in the flare-illuminated night. Two with ponchos and conical hats walked along the edge of the ditch and right past the terrified, un-moving soldiers lying in it before disappearing back into the darkness.

The grunts in the ditch crawled back the way they had come to reach the cover of a closer tree line. There they decided to pair up to make it back any way they could. It was nerve-racking for Karp and his partner as they walked along the edge of the trees. It was raining, and the flares, swinging as they came down, made everything appear to move. They had reached the previous night's laager site when an M60 machine gun suddenly opened up from fifty meters away. They realized then that the company had pulled back to the same location. Karp wanted to wait until dawn before they crossed those last fifty meters, but his partner wanted to keep going and said he would go first. When they got moving again, Karp was glad that his partner was a head-bobbing, lanky-limbed country boy. No GI on watch, no matter how uptight, could mistake that distinctive lope.

The 196th Chargers lost 66 men but claimed 429 NVA kills in the Hiep Due Valley. Three weeks after the battle, Steel Gimlet's reign ended at the stroke of six months, and Lieutenant Colonel Snyder rotated in for his shot of career-building command duty with the 3-21st Infantry.

Being a history professor, Bill Snyder selected the call sign Cedar Mountain 6. Cedar Mountain was the site of a Civil War battle that was the first in the regiment's lineage. Some of Snyder's officers, comparing him to his predecessor, nicknamed him the Gentle Gimlet.

Snyder lost his first four men when the battalion deployed to FSB Colt during the Tet Offensive. The next major action began on 4 March 1968 when Alpha Company, by then commanded by Captain Osborn (Yurchak having been promoted and a.s.signed to serve as Snyder's S3), was attached to the division cavalry squadron and partic.i.p.ated in the destruction of the 3d Regiment, 3d NVA Division, in the foothills near Tarn Ky. It was a three-day action. Wounds from enemy mortars and rocket-propelled grenades were numerous, and the cav unit had men killed, but Alpha Annihilator survived the battle without a fatality. The enemy, subjected to maximum arty, guns.h.i.+ps, and tac air, as well as the cannons and machine guns of the cav's tanks and armored personnel carriers, left behind more than four hundred bodies, according to the official after-action reports.

Two days later, Alpha Company lost a man in a minor skirmish. Two days after that, on 11 March, Lieutenant Colonel Snyder was involved in his first major contact when Bravo Company b.u.mped into an NVA battalion in the Que Son Valley. Maximum use was again made of supporting arms, but, caught in the open, muddy paddies as they were, six Barracuda GIs were killed. It was Captain Corrigan's baptism of fire as a company commander. When Corrigan reported that he was running out of ammunition, Snyder had his command-and-control (C&C) s.h.i.+p divert to FSB Center to take aboard an emergency resupply. Barracuda was under fire from the east, so Snyder's plan was to have the chopper fly in from the west, kick out the ammo from a hover, and then spin around and zip out the way it had come.

The plan ran afoul of an NVA in a tree. The C&C Huey was just coming into its hover and was about twenty feet above the LZ when the undetected NVA emptied his AK-47 down the length of the helicopter from nose to tail boom. He put twenty holes in the chopper. The door gunner was shot in the foot, and Snyder was cut across the forehead by a piece of flying metal from one of the holes punched in the floor. The wound was minor but a terrific bleeder. A crate of ammunition had also been hit, and Snyder shoved the smoking time bomb out the side door along with the rest of the packaged ammo. The shot-up Huey made it back to Center, where it died just as the pilot was setting it down.2 Meanwhile, Corrigan's company recovered all its casualties and withdrew to the hill where the mortar platoon had been left to provide support. The mortars were still there, but the crews were not. All but three of the crewmen eventually returned, explaining that an intense enemy mortar barrage had driven them from the position, and that they had become separated from one another while rus.h.i.+ng down the jungle-covered slope. The three missing men were not recovered: They had been ambushed and captured. Meanwhile, Corrigan's company recovered all its casualties and withdrew to the hill where the mortar platoon had been left to provide support. The mortars were still there, but the crews were not. All but three of the crewmen eventually returned, explaining that an intense enemy mortar barrage had driven them from the position, and that they had become separated from one another while rus.h.i.+ng down the jungle-covered slope. The three missing men were not recovered: They had been ambushed and captured.

The Gimlets' next big contact-their last major one before the DMZ mission-began on 9 April when Captain Osborn's Alpha Company killed four VC they caught running across a rice paddy in a little, horseshoe-shaped valley. The VC had been following them, sniping at the company ever since it had begun patrolling there. On the morning of 11 April, an Alpha GI tripped a b.o.o.by trap, which blew off his hand and foot. During the day, the company killed three more VC who had been trailing it. To fully screen this active valley, the company spread out and established platoon patrol bases. Alpha One was joined in its position by Echo Recon, and they set up around a number of deserted hootches concealed in thick bamboo. Shortly before midnight on 13 April, the NVA a.s.saulted this joint perimeter. Less than two hours earlier a ridgetop observation post from Delta Company had spotted NVA signaling each other with flashlights from one side of the valley to the other. The observation post had alerted the Alpha and Echo elements in the valley, but the joint perimeter was caught off guard nonetheless. In fact, neither the Echo Recon commander, who was seriously wounded, nor the Alpha One lieutenant, who was killed along with his platoon sergeant, had had their men dig in. Nor had they put out claymore mines or trip flares. Most of the grunts had gotten out of the elements by setting up inside the hootches. Away from the supervision of their company commanders, the platoons had basically taken a siesta from the war.

The NVA ran right through them. Their mortar crews and machine gunners opened up first to keep the grunts' heads down, then the NVA a.s.sault element let loose a shower of grenades before charging through one side of the perimeter and out the other. The attack was over in moments. Thirteen Gimlets were killed, and almost everyone else was wounded. Six of the dead were from Alpha One, seven from Echo Recon. The NVA left four bodies. The rest of Alpha conducted a night march to reinforce the position while illumination rounds flooded the valley with light, and guns.h.i.+ps worked out with miniguns and rockets until dawn. The medevacs began at first light. One stunned grunt wrote home that "it sure was a sorry sight. Dead and wounded GIs lying all over the place. I had to help wrap 'Em in ponchos for extraction/The whole inside of the perimeter was blown to shreds. Rifles, rucksacks, web gear, and everything else was blown to bits. Everything was full of blood. Most of the guys didn't even have time to fire a shot. Some men were sleeping inside huts when the NVA hit. We pulled what was left of them out of the ashes."

1. The 196th LIB operated in III Corps from its arrival in Vietnam in August 1966 until airlifted to I Corps in April 1967. Tasked with securing the Chu Lai airfield, the 3-21st Infantry established a firebase astride Route 1 immediately south of Chu Lai. In late November 1967, the 196th was relieved by the newly arrived 198th, and the 3-21st Infantry was airlifted to FSB Center while other 196th elements moved into FSB East and West on the same commanding ridgeline. The 196th LIB operated in III Corps from its arrival in Vietnam in August 1966 until airlifted to I Corps in April 1967. Tasked with securing the Chu Lai airfield, the 3-21st Infantry established a firebase astride Route 1 immediately south of Chu Lai. In late November 1967, the 196th was relieved by the newly arrived 198th, and the 3-21st Infantry was airlifted to FSB Center while other 196th elements moved into FSB East and West on the same commanding ridgeline.2. In addition to the Silver Star and Purple Heart he got for this action, Lieutenant Colonel Snyder was awarded a Legion of Merit (LM), a BSM for meritorious service, and an Air Medal (AM) with oak leaf cl.u.s.ter for making more than fifty helicopter flights in a combat zone. In addition to the Silver Star and Purple Heart he got for this action, Lieutenant Colonel Snyder was awarded a Legion of Merit (LM), a BSM for meritorious service, and an Air Medal (AM) with oak leaf cl.u.s.ter for making more than fifty helicopter flights in a combat zone.

The End of the Line

THE ARTILLERY PREP ON LAM X XUAN E EAST AND L LAM X XUAN West commenced at 0755 on 2 May 1968 as the 3-21st Infantry's rifle companies moved toward their lines of departure. Colonel Gelling, the 196th LIB commander, helicoptered to Lieutenant Colonel Snyder's Mai Xa Chanh East CP at the junction of Jones Creek and the Cua Viet River. Gelling, a hard, old-school commander, did not actually retain operational control of the Gimlets, but he was on the scene because he was concerned that the Marines might not adequately support their attached Army battalion. Gelling a.s.sured Snyder that the brigade would provide him with a command-and-control helicopter and a forward air controller "unless the brigade has contingency missions elsewhere that necessitate me pulling one or both back from you." West commenced at 0755 on 2 May 1968 as the 3-21st Infantry's rifle companies moved toward their lines of departure. Colonel Gelling, the 196th LIB commander, helicoptered to Lieutenant Colonel Snyder's Mai Xa Chanh East CP at the junction of Jones Creek and the Cua Viet River. Gelling, a hard, old-school commander, did not actually retain operational control of the Gimlets, but he was on the scene because he was concerned that the Marines might not adequately support their attached Army battalion. Gelling a.s.sured Snyder that the brigade would provide him with a command-and-control helicopter and a forward air controller "unless the brigade has contingency missions elsewhere that necessitate me pulling one or both back from you."

Colonel Gelling, a short, feisty, hawk-nosed man, was chewing a cigar as he told Snyder, "Anything you need-if you're not satisfied with the way things are going up here-call me."

Gelling climbed back into his Huey. His next stop was Camp Kistler for a meeting with Colonel Hull, who was responsible for providing most of the 3-21st Infantry's supplies and supporting fires. Gelling was, as Snyder put it, "openly lobbying to make sure that I got a fair shake in Marine resources. He was more concerned about it than I was, and I was concerned."

The prep fires lasted twenty minutes. Because The Gimlets' own artillery battery had yet to be slingloaded up by Chinook, the rounds were delivered by the Marines' 4.2-inch mortars at Mai Xa Chanh West, and four artillery batteries firing out of Camp Kistler and the DHCB. Lieutenant Colonel Snyder's plan called for an attack on two axes, with Jones Creek serving as both a guide and dividing line. Captain Corrigan's B/3-21 was to advance north from Mai Xa Chanh West to a graveyard west of Jones Creek and immediately opposite Lam Xuan East. From the graveyard, Bravo could support by fire the attack on Lam Xuan East by Lieutenant Kohl and C/3-21, which was to move up the opposite side of Jones Creek from Mai Xa Chanh East. Following another artillery prep, Charlie would move on to seize Nhi Ha, with Captain Osborn's A/3-21 following behind. Keeping abreast, Bravo was to simultaneously secure Lam Xuan West, which was connected to Nhi Ha by a footbridge that spanned Jones Creek. Captain Humphries was to remain in reserve with D/3-21.

The first shot of what promised to be a long day was fired by Barracuda before moving out of its night laager for the line of departure. The first shot was an accidental discharge. Captain Corrigan heard the distinct thump of an M79 going off, then saw a grenadier who was kneeling with the b.u.t.t of his weapon against the ground and the barrel pointed up. The grenadier, who'd been cleaning a loaded weapon, was staring straight up. "So the whole hundred of us just kind of looked straight up, too," Corrigan remembered. "And we looked at each other, because you really didn't know whether you were better off just standing where you were, or running around in circles, depending on where the sh.e.l.l was going to come down. About twenty seconds later, the thing came down in the company area. It exploded, but luckily it didn't hit anybody."

The attack kicked off at 0808 with Bravo and Charlie Companies simultaneously crossing their lines of departure. Snyder's C&C Huey dipped low to their front, reconning the flattened hamlets that were their objectives. The guerrilla-chasing Gimlets had never partic.i.p.ated in an operation of this size before, and Lieutenant Smith of Alpha Company told his men that "this must be a battalion commander's dream to have his whole battalion down on the ground while he's up in a chopper maneuvering 'Em."

Lieutenant Colonel Snyder encountered no fire and saw no enemy during his aerial reconnaissance. Thus advised, Captain Corrigan was able to move his company quickly into position. With Barracuda anchoring the left flank, Kohl's men a.s.saulted Lam Xuan East, a collection of blasted hootches and hedgerows halfway between Mai Xa Chanh East and Nhi Ha. The a.s.sault was a walk-through for Charlie Tiger. The grunts re-conned by fire and, drawing none in return, moved in and methodically grenaded the bunkers and spiderholes they found in the rubble.

At 1055, Lieutenant Kohl reported that Lam Xuan East had been swept and seized without contact, and the two companies resumed the attack. The prep fires were s.h.i.+fted onto Nhi Ha and Lam Xuan West as the a.s.sault companies covered the last two klicks in a two-up-and-one-back formation. Corrigan reached his objective at 1155 and reported it secured fifteen minutes later-again without contact. Barracuda's march had taken it over the same ground that G BLT 2/4 had crossed in the opposite direction two nights before during its under-fire withdrawal. Along the way, some GIs had picked up Marine-issue flak jackets. The Army troops did not normally wear flak jackets, but the threat of enemy artillery fire caused them to be more cautious. Barracuda also recovered a 3.5-inch rocket launcher that the Marines had abandoned. Corrigan kept the weapon, using it to mark targets with white phosphorus sh.e.l.ls. There were so many abandoned Marine and NVA weapons along the way that Corrigan later observed, "Back where we'd been, h.e.l.l, if you found two or three rifles, you'd had a real successful day-and here you were d.a.m.n near tripping over stuff. It impressed my people. It gave them the idea that this was serious."

This place has about as much cover as a f.u.c.king parking lot, thought Private Harp of Charlie One, which was moving with twenty meters between each man. The flat terrain between Lam Xuan East and Nhi Ha was nothing like the jungle-busting, ridge-running Charlie Tiger troopers had ever operated in. The fields of fire seemed to go on forever, broken only by dunes and low-lying hedgerows and tree lines. Spent LAWs lay on the ground, along with expended M16 bra.s.s and the sh.e.l.l casings and links from M60 machine guns. There were also Marine steel pots lying around, along with Russian-issue helmets and NVA footgear. Harp didn't notice one boot until he'd stepped on it; flies exploded from it. Harp looked down as he pa.s.sed by and saw a black, rotten, maggoty foot encased in the mangled canvas and leather.

Heat waves radiated off the ground as if off asphalt.

Charlie One, having gone into Lam Xuan East on point, was in the drag position on the way to Nhi Ha. Lieutenant Hieb, the platoon leader, had gotten the call from Lieutenant Kohl, the acting company commander, to hold up as they had begun to move out of Lam Xuan East so that Charlie Two, under 1st Lt. Edward F. Guthrie, could take their place up front. The platoons were always rotated on a share-the-risk principle. What was unusual was that when Charlie Two humped past, Lieutenant Guthrie was the lead man, helmet and pack on, his CAR 15 Colt Commando slung around his neck and held ready at the waist. "Hey, Ed, what the h.e.l.l are you doing walking point?" Hieb called to him. "You're not supposed to be walking point!"

"These guys are draggin' a.s.s, and I'm going to show 'Em how to do it," answered Lieutenant Guthrie with an Oklahoma tw.a.n.g.

The problem was not only the foreign, forbidding terrain, but the fact that Captain Leach, who was nearly a living legend in Charlie Tiger, had departed two days earlier on R and R. Lieutenant Kohl, the company exec, had taken command in his absence. Although Kohl had been awarded both the Silver Star and the Bronze Star Medal for Valor (BSMv) while a platoon leader in Black Death, the grunts still didn't think he had the savvy to replace Leach.

Jones Creek, on the company's left flank, was generally oriented from the southeast to the northwest, but it curved due west above Lam Xuan East so that Nhi Ha actually sat on the northern bank. Lam Xuan West was due south across the bend. Charlie Tiger, having approached from the southeast, had to swing around to a.s.sault the brushy island of Nhi Ha from the east. Again there was no enemy fire, and the two platoons up front did not waste ammunition reconning by fire.

The company stepped up about three feet from the paddies onto the slight high ground of Nhi Ha proper with Lieutenant Guthrie's Charlie Two on the right and Charlie Three, under the acting command of a sergeant first cla.s.s, moving abreast on the left. Lieutenant Kohl followed with his command group. The a.s.sault line, with a point team forward of each platoon, closed up to about five meters between men as they pushed through the first thicket of bamboo and brush at the hamlet's edge. The terrain opened up on the other side, and by the time Lieutenant Hieb and Charlie One, bringing up the rear, were inside, the rest of Charlie Tiger had already swept nearly halfway through Nhi Ha. The hamlet, defined by an outer wall of vegetation, was narrow in width but long on its east-west axis. The sweep was from east to west. There were two-walled and three-walled hootches, which were checked as they were pa.s.sed, and hootches so badly shot up that only the cement foundations remained. There were also old entrenchments, both friendly and enemy, but the village appeared to be deserted.

As the two platoons drew to within fifty meters of the brush line that cut the hamlet in half at its narrow waist, Sgt. Paul L. Yost and Sp4 William J. Morse, now on point, stopped to alert Lieutenant Guthrie that there was movement ahead. They could see at least one man wearing a helmet. Guthrie, concerned about an intramural firelight, shouted a warning down the a.s.sault line that there were still Marines in position. But the men they'd seen were not Marines. They were NVA regulars with helmets, fatigues, and web gear, and they opened fire at that moment from their entrenchments in the heavy brush, killing the entire point team before the GIs knew what hit them. Guthrie caught a round in the back of the head that blew open his forehead on the way out. Yost took at least three rounds through his chest, and Morse was shot above the bridge of the nose. The bullet mushroomed and splattered out the back of his skull.

Private Harp of Charlie One was a small, wiry GI. Jolted by the sudden firing, he fell into a low spot of sand, ending up like a turtle on its back because of his rucksack. The ruck weighed almost as much as he did. The fire seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, and when he moved, bullets chewed up the sand beside him. Harp finally slipped free of the rucksack and rolled it over to get the machine-gun ammo off, along with a couple of hand grenades and his spare bandolier of M16 ammunition. He noticed then that the two-quart water bladder that he kept secured on the ruck had taken a round through it and was deflated.

The ambush, which was initiated at 1250, included rocket-propelled grenades. As Sgt. Jimmie Lee "Red" Coulthard, a machine-gun team leader in Charlie Three, dropped toward the mound to his front, he was eye to eye with an RPG that seemed h.e.l.l-bent on taking his head off. The projectile was slow enough to see, and it whooshed over him just as he slid p.r.o.ne behind the mound. It exploded somewhere behind him. The air above him seemed electrified with death.

Over the cacophony of explosions and automatic fire, the pinned-down grunts tried to make sense of what was happening.

"Get some return fire going!"

"Who's been hit?"

It turned out that while Charlie Two's point team was being shot to pieces on the right flank, the point man for Charlie Three on the left-a private named Adams, who was to pick up three superficial wounds during the battle-had been able to clamber to cover in a gully. Specialist Derryl D. Odom, the backup man, was cut down, but the third man in line, Sp4 Eugene J. McDonald, was also able to find safety behind a brushy mound. Odom lay facedown and unmoving nearby. McDonald thought he was dead, but Odom, out in the open with a bullet-shattered arm, was playing 'possum where he had fallen. He knew that the enemy still had him in their sights, even if he couldn't see them through the brush.

The fourth man in the point team was Sp4 Johnny Miller, who made a dash around McDonald's mound to reach Odom. Miller made it two or three steps before he was. .h.i.t in the head. McDonald heard him moan, and could see him sprawled out just beyond the mound. McDonald saw a second bullet thump into his back.

Johnny Miller was dead. Private First Cla.s.s George L. Cruse, who had gone for the same mound as Sergeant Coulthard, let out an anguished cry-"They got Johnny!"-then shrugged off his rucksack and, acting on impulse and without coordinating covering fire, leapt up to make a run for Miller. It was the bravest, most stupid thing Coulthard ever saw. Cruse was blown away as soon as he exposed himself. The twenty-year-old Cruse had been a shy, quiet, kind of clumsy country boy from Liberal, Kansas. He was white. The man he sought to save was black. Both of them had been drafted. Miller, older than most grunts at age twenty-five, had been appalled by the poverty in the villages they usually operated in, and had written to his mother in North Carolina, asking that her church group send clothes over for the children. "They were just good, simple guys," said Coulthard.

Charlie Tiger was spread across the open ground in scattered bunches wherever the men could find cover. Staff Sergeant James M. Goad, the acting platoon sergeant-and the most respected career NCO in Charlie Three-earned the Silver Star for taking control of the fight in the absence of their platoon sergeant and acting platoon leader, who they a.s.sumed had been killed. "When the going got really tough, Goad was a good man," recalled the company's artillery lieutenant. "He had innate leaders.h.i.+p abilities. When he said something, he said it with such a positive att.i.tude that the men were willing to do it."

Staff Sergeant Goad wormed his way up to Coulthard's mound, and they returned M16 fire over it on full automatic.

"Get the machine gun up here!" Goad shouted.

Sergeant Roger W. Starr, the platoon's machine-gun squad leader, was behind a berm about forty meters to the rear of Goad and Coulthard. He got a BSMv for his response to their shouts. Starr, an amiable, twenty-one-year-old draftee from a dairy farm outside Sand Lake, Michigan, gave his M16 to one of his gunners, and, taking the man's M60 machine gun in return, rushed forward and clattered in unscathed beside Goad and Coulthard. The mound was too narrow for all of them, so Coulthard slid back into the shallow depression behind it to make way for Starr and his M60. They had to come up to their knees to fire over the shallow slope of the mound, so they took turns, Goad with his M16 and Starr with the machine gun. Starr directed most of his quick, jack-in-the-box bursts at an NVA machine-gun position that he could hear but not see in the hedgerow. Trying to keep low, he ended up shooting the top of their own mound with each burst before getting the weapon all the way up in the enemy's direction. Return fire also kicked up dirt across the mound, and at one point Stan-felt something strike hot and sharp across the upper part of his left arm. He immediately dropped back down and saw that his sleeve had been torn and was b.l.o.o.d.y. He didn't know if the graze had been caused by a bullet or a shard from a bullet-shattered rock.

Staff Sergeant Goad and Roger Starr were about the only men in the platoon seriously engaging the enemy. While Coulthard crawled back to Charlie One to get more ammo for them, Starr and his impromptu a.s.sistant gunner, Sp4 Ray Elsworth-having no time to wait-yelled to Charlie Two on their right that they needed ammunition right away! In response, Sp4 Pierre L. Sullivan, a grunt from the other platoon, ran to their mound and began firing his M16 from a p.r.o.ne position several meters to their right. The position around the edge of the mound was so vulnerable that Coulthard had avoided it when he'd been up there. Sullivan had always been willing to take chances-a trait that earned the nineteen year old the nickname Tunnel Rat because he frequently climbed head first into enemy tunnels with only a .45 and a flashlight. One of his buddies suggested that Sullivan was always going first because he was self-conscious about his small stature. Sullivan was not a draftee; he had enlisted. He wanted to prove himself. He was, however, a short-timer, and some weeks earlier, during a mountain-climbing patrol in the highlands, he had tried to sham his way out of the field by claiming that his eyes were bad. Captain Leach, who was death on malingering, ordered Sullivan to walk point. When he successfully navigated the dangerous crevices of the jungled mountain, the captain, who had been behind him the whole time, grabbed him and barked, "Don't you ever pull that s.h.i.+t again!"

Specialist Sullivan had been acting like his old self when he made his dash to join Starr and Elsworth. When Sullivan's M16 jammed, he sat up with his back to the enemy, began disa.s.sembling the weapon-and was shot in the head within seconds. He slumped forward and shook for several minutes before he died.

Starr, unable to reach Sullivan because of the fire, muttered, "I'm going to get sick."

Elsworth swallowed hard and answered, "So am I."

Sergeant Coulthard snaked his way forward again, having gone from man to man back to Charlie One, imploring each for grenades and ammunition. Tall, chunky Red Coulthard-a hard-drinking but level-headed and likeable farm boy from Mount Ayr, Iowa-left the ammo he had gathered with Goad and Starr, then moved to the left with another NCO toward an NVA machine-gun position. Coulthard had been in the Army since enlisting six years earlier at age seventeen. Coulthard and his buddy slid into a gully about fifty meters away from the enemy gun. After heaving grenades at it without effect, Coulthard decided to use a LAW on the bunker, which they could just see at an angle through the vegetation. The other NCO covered him with his M16. On cue, they both popped up, but the instant Coulthard fired the LAW an enemy grenade exploded between them in a shower of debris. They knew that more grenades would be coming, and they almost climbed over each other as they hustled down the ditch. There were no more explosions. They realized then that the first explosion had actually been the LAW's backblast hitting the back of the gully, which was higher than the edge they were shooting over. They started laughing like crazy.

Pinned down on the left flank, Specialist McDonald of Charlie Three squeezed off single shots into the hedgerow ahead. He couldn't see anything, but the point man, Adams, was still down in his gully directing fire. Adams kept shouting for him to aim higher. Adams also hollered at McDonald to toss him some grenades since he was closer to the enemy. McDonald never had the chance. As he rose up to fire his M16 again, a round caught him in his left arm and flipped him over onto his back. His gla.s.ses and M16 were gone. Shocked and in pain, he did not look for either. A small bit of his thumb was missing, and blood bubbled up from where the round had lodged in his arm. McDonald yelled that he was. .h.i.t, and a GI crawled up to pull the bandage from his medical pouch, wrap the wound, and then start back with him. They were eventually able to move in a running crouch, and McDonald joined a number of other walking wounded near the village well, where the company command group was in position.

The initial eruption of fire that killed Lieutenant Guthrie of Charlie Two also dropped his platoon sergeant, Sfc. Eugene Franklin, with a round in the thigh. Pinned down, the thirty-year-old Franklin-a black career soldier-bled to death. Nearby, Pfc. Thomas M. Walker, age eighteen, also lay dead in the brush. Another man in Charlie Two hit right off the bat was Sp4 Larry C. Schwebke. He was shot in the stomach just as he reached a little stucco-type hootch that the rest of his fire team had already pa.s.sed, all of them moving upright in those last seconds before the ambush was sprung.

Schwebke cried out, "Oh, my guts!" as he fell.

Under fire, Pfc. John C. Fulcher spun around and dragged Schwebke up to the cover of the hootch, then pulled him as far down as he could into a small crater in the floor. Fulcher's best friend and fellow team member, Pfc. Douglas D. Fletcher, joined them inside. The roof of the little, twelve-by-twelve structure had long since been blown off, and the wall to the left was also missing. Fulcher and Fletcher, pressed against the inside of the hootch's front wall, slid to its left edge to return M16 fire-then ducked back as AK-47 rounds thudded into the stucco on the other side of the wall. Their buddy Schwebke held his b.l.o.o.d.y stomach, but apparently because of damage to his spine he moaned that it was his legs that hurt. Lying in an awkward position in the crater, he asked the other two to drag him back out and lay him in such a way that his legs would not hurt so much.

"Larry, they're Marines' at us," Fulcher answered. "They're goin' to shoot you again if I move ya."

Schwebke mumbled, "Okay, okay ..."

Their squad leader, Sgt. Donald G. Pozil, made it to the rear wall of the hootch. A draftee, he had taken command of the platoon in the absence of Guthrie and Franklin-for which he would receive the Silver Star. His concern was to get his casualties to the rear. There was no door or window to pa.s.s Schwebke through, and moving him around the exposed edge of the wall seemed suicidal. Pozil had the GIs with him use their E-tools to chop a hole through the stucco. When the hole was big enough, Schwebke stretched out his arms so that the men on the other side could reach him and pull him through. He cried out in pain as he extended his arms. It seemed an eternity since he'd been shot.

Larry Schwebke, a farmer's son with a young wife in Iowa, died sometime between being dragged back by Sergeant Pozil's group and finally being lifted onto a medevac Huey. He was twenty-two years old and a draftee. Meanwhile, Fulcher and Fletcher, feeling very much alone, resumed their fire-until Fletcher's M16 jammed. Fletcher did not get shook. He simply sat back against the hootch wall and methodically disa.s.sembled the weapon, cleaned it, and slapped it back together. He thumped in another magazine, recharged the weapon, and rolled back into his firing position in the rubble.

Charlie Tiger received neither tac air nor guns.h.i.+p support-nor any direction from the company command group. Lieutenant Kohl, who was near the village well when the ambush began, stayed there for the duration of the fight. Crawling forward under heavy fire, Lieutenant Jaquez, the artillery spotter, found Kohl sitting up against the cement well on the side opposite the enemy. He had his helmet and flak jacket on, and both of his radios were on the ground beside him. No one else was there, and Jaquez realized that Lieutenant Kohl was physically shaking. Kohl was not giving orders on the radio. He was simply listening to the company net with a handset held to one ear, numbly relaying to battalion on his other radio that they were pinned down and needed help.

Lieutenant Kohl had seen a lot of action as a platoon leader, and had breathed a sigh of relief when his six months were up and he got a rear-echelon a.s.signment. Now he was back in action and it was proving to be one firefight too many for him.

Jaquez screamed at Kohl to "get up and lead!"

Kohl yelled back incoherently, and Jaquez, with his radioman in tow, finally crawled forward and away from the immobilized company commander. Operating on his belly, Lieutenant Jaquez-a Mexican-American from Los Angeles-got Charlie Tiger some artillery support from three Marine artillery batteries. He worked their fires in as close as he dared in coordination with grunts up front who answered his radio calls, then he and his RTO crawled forward themselves to the point where they could hear enemy soldiers yelling back and forth in Vietnamese. Jaquez could see some of them hustling past several hootches on the left flank. After adjusting fire onto that area, he shouldered his own M16 in the excitement. Between radio transmissions, he used the ammo magazine already in the weapon and the six others in the bandolier hanging down from his shoulder.

Lieutenant Jaquez was awarded the BSMv. So was Charlie One's Lieutenant Hieb, a slim, bespectacled draftee commissioned from officer candidate school (OCS), and a twenty-four-year-old native of Twin Falls, Idaho. Hieb, holding open Nhi Ha's back door with his platoon, also moved from position to position under fire to organize individual and fire-team efforts to drag the casualties back from up front. His RTO was right behind him. When Hieb got up to run, his RTO got up to run. The RTO was such an obvious target that Hieb finally took the radio from him, slipped his arms through the shoulder straps, and told the GI to grab some cover. One of Hieb's better squad leaders, Sp4 John H. Burns, anch.o.r.ed their right flank with his troops behind an earthen berm that was some three feet high. Along with Burns, there was Brooks, Hobi, Harp, and a guy named Meister. When the NVA tried to move in on that side, their M16 fire was overwhelming. Their machine gunner, Pope, who had set up beside Burns, burned out his barrel with sustained fire. The NVA went to the ground. Burns's people kept pouring out rounds, and Harp ended up making three trips back to get ammo from the other squads. He got lost each time on his way back. The situation was that confusing.

The GIs in Charlie One could not fire to their front for fear of hitting Charlie Two and Three. Most of the survivors in Charlie Two had made it to a large crater and were pinned at the bottom of it. One soldier near the crater began digging a shallow trench toward it. When he got close enough, he heaved another E-tool to the men inside so they could dig from their direction, link up, and get out under cover. The digging seemed to take forever.

During the wait, Specialist Burns asked for a volunteer to help him drag back Sergeant Yost's body. Harp said he'd go. Their maneuver required them to crawl past a certain NVA position, and although high gra.s.s offered some concealment and the NVA appeared to be firing in a different direction, it was a risky prospect. The medic said to be careful, adding that he didn't want to lose anyone "trying to recover guys who are already dead."

"There's gotta be a better way to do this," Harp chimed in.

Burns exploded. "Harp, you chickens.h.i.+t!"

Harp was always in trouble with Burns, mostly because he was so afraid he would screw up that he usually did. Burns tagged him as the squad dud, and in this instance he took Brooks with him to drag Yost's body back. There was a hole in Yost's chest and back that a fist could pa.s.s through, and he was blue around his lips and eyes and fingernails. It was a devastating, infuriating sight, and when an NVA on the right kicked up dirt around them with a sudden burst, Harp had to shoot back. He had seen the smoke rise from where the NVA had fired on full automatic, and he ran over to Pope, whose machine-gun position afforded a clear line of fire.

Harp jumped down beside Pope and shouldered his M16, exclaiming, "This little motherf.u.c.ker is mine!"

Harp pumped two magazines into the spot-silencing the NVA, maybe temporarily, maybe for good-then rushed back to where Burns and the medic were getting Yost's body on a stretcher. Burns cranked up again, "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Harp, if I need you to shoot, I'll tell you to shoot. Right now I need you to lift, so get on the G.o.dd.a.m.n stretcher and leave the Marines' to Pope!" A Marine Otter had moved up behind the village well to evacuate casualties. With Burns and Brooks up front and Harp and the medic in back, they moved out with Yost's stretcher in a running crouch, only to get hung up on a tree stump. By then they were all moving sluggishly, but in the heat of the moment Burns snapped around to scream at Harp again, "Harp, pick your f.u.c.king end up ..."

At the same time that Charlie Tiger was ambushed, Captain Corrigan and Barracuda, across the stream in Lam Xuan West, also began taking AK-47 and M79 fire from Nhi Ha. Corrigan remained in position to provide suppressive fires into the left flank of Kohl's fight. It was Corrigan's second big action. The son of a West Pointer, twenty-six-year-old Corrigan was an ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate. He was a low-key, highly intelligent man and he ran a good company, although Snyder did not think he had the battlefield instincts of Leach or Humphries. Nevertheless, the battalion commander noted that Barracuda 6, however green, was a cool customer on the radio despite the bullets snapping over his head. Corrigan, lying p.r.o.ne, had called several of his lieutenants and platoon sergeants to his position beside the stream. There were no trees or bushes there, but the crown of the bank, which was three feet above the creek, provided some cover. The Barracuda GIs deployed along the southern bank could not see the NVA blasting away from the other side. The brush in Nhi Ha was too thick. Nor could they see Charlie Tiger. Until they determined who was where in the vegetation, Corrigan instructed them to return fire only with M16s, adding, "Don't use your machine guns, and no LAWs or M79s. We don't want to be killing our own people over there."

Barracuda began taking casualties at that point. The first to be hit was SSgt. William F. Ochs, a twenty-year-old career soldier a.s.signed as the platoon sergeant of Bravo One. Ochs, who had been with the platoon for almost nine months and was a highly respected NCO, should have crawled when he returned from Corrigan's meeting and started pa.s.sing the word. Instead, he ran along the bank in a crouch, shouting at his men not to fire their M60s and LAWs. Almost immediately he was blown off his feet by a round that caught him high up on his right leg. The bullet tore a four-inch-long gash where it went in, shattered the bone, and then exited just below his b.u.t.tocks, taking a grapefruit-sized chunk of muscle and flesh with it. Ochs, in excruciating pain, screamed obscenities until a medic crawled over and thumped a morphine Syrette into his leg. The whole leg went numb. Ochs was still shook up because his leg, which seemed held together by only a few strands of muscle, was bent crazily so that his foot was up by his ear. One of Ochs's squad leaders and good friends, Bob Waite, who had also crawled to him, placed a helmet under his head to make him comfortable and spoke encouragingly to him, doing for Ochs what Ochs had done previously for so many of their casualties. Hoping to distract Ochs, Waite got a can of beer out of Ochs's rucksack and opened it for him. Ochs managed a few sips. Meanwhile, Ochs could hear someone trying to organize a medevac on the radio: "The guy's bleedin' like a stuck pig. He's not going to last long. We can't stop the bleedin'!"

The helicopter pilot's response came in broken over the radio: "Get him ... wood line behind you ... we'll pick him up." As gently as he could, Waite straightened Ochs's leg so it would fit in the poncho they lifted him on, and then several other grunts carried Ochs toward the wood line. It was a hundred-meter trip. Under fire the whole way across, the litter team had to tug and drag Ochs along as they struggled on their hands and knees. They made it, though, and Ochs was medevacked within fifteen minutes of getting hit-quickly enough to save his leg.

At about the same time, approximately 1400, a rifleman in Bravo One, Pfc. Robert A. Romo, a twenty-year-old draftee from Rialto, California, caught another of the bullets snapping at them from across the creek. It hit him in the neck and killed him. Afterward, Romo's body was escorted home by his uncle, an OCS graduate serving as a platoon leader in the Americal Division. They were the same age and had been raised as brothers. Romo's death was a deciding factor in his uncle's decision to join the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and to throw away his Bronze Stars during the organization's 1971 protest on the Capitol steps. One of Romo's Barracuda buddies wrote home that he couldn't understand "why G.o.d would take his life. He never cussed, drinked, or smoked. The guy was twenty and never had s.e.x with a girl... everyone else would seem like a devil compared to him."

At 1410, Captain Corrigan requested another dust-off for another wounded man, and the C&C C&C Huey was dispatched without the colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Snyder, coordinating