The Magnificent Bastards (45 page)

At 1740 on 2 May, Major Knapp, XO of BLT 2/4, heard the first report that Dixie Diner 6 was a casualty and that F and G Companies were withdrawing to the perimeter held by E and H Companies in Dai Do. Knapp relayed the news to Fire Raider 6 and to the SLF commander aboard the
Iwo Jima
, adding that he was leaving Mai Xa Chanh West to get a handle on the situation. Within one minute, Knapp caught a skimmer at the boat landing near the medevac beach and proceeded at top speed for An Lac to take command of the battalion if necessary. Knapp had no information on how badly Weise had been wounded.

Meanwhile, Major Warren, the de facto, on-the-spot battalion commander, was running around bareheaded in Dai Do getting different people to do different things. Warren did not shout directions in the typical hey-Marine-get-your-ass-over-here fashion, but rather with an encouraging, “Hey, buddy, help us out with this,” or “We need you over here, buddy.” He never lost his cool. Warren had artillery and naval gunfire pounding into Dinh To in coordination with their suddenly available close air support. Huey gunships added to the racket, as did the Navy Monitor positioned where the westernmost tributary emptied into the Bo Dieu. Lieutenant Hilton was back on the air net and in contact with the Huey pilots, who indicated that they could see the bright air panels that Hilton had instructed the Marines at the front to put out once he’d determined that they had a front. When the Hueys began their strafing runs, a lieutenant on the ground net reported to Hilton that his men were taking friendly fire. Hilton immediately keyed the handset linking him to the pilots. “Hey, our guys say
you’re shooting at them!” he shouted. “You gotta go farther north! Do you see the air panels?”

The pilots answered in the affirmative. After the next strafing run, however, the lieutenant on the ground net screamed, “If they shoot at us one more time we’re going to shoot ’Em down!”

Lieutenant Hilton ran forward to ensure that confused Marines had not accidentally positioned the air panels to their south. They had not. It was the pilots who were confused, and Hilton was still up front when the next strafing run commenced. Hilton bellowed into his handset, “You’re aiming right at me! My guys are going to shoot you down if you do that one more time!”

“Well, goddamnit—” the pilot began, but Hilton cut him off: “Do not shoot if you’re not sure, because our guys
will
shoot you down!”

When corrected, the Huey’s fire added to the devastating, overwhelming volume of ordnance that was churning Dinh To and preventing the NVA from continuing their assault into Dai Do. Meanwhile, the battalion moved into a small pocket in the eastern corner of Dai Do, still taking some fire as the Marines established vulnerable, barely concealed positions amid the skeletonized trees. “Tactically, it was a terrible place to be,” Warren later commented. “If the NVA had had the numbers to keep coming, there was no way we could have stood our ground. We should have gone back to An Lac so as to have that open field in front of us. We didn’t because to try to have people move and establish some other defensive perimeter would have been just a nightmare operation given that there was so little control and so few people left.”

It was dusk when Major Knapp’s skimmer landed in An Lac. Knapp contacted Warren and asked for a situation report before setting out across the paddies on foot to join Warren up in Dai Do and take command of BLT 2/4. As the perimeter was battened down in Dai Do, Knapp called his company commanders back to the hole that served as his CP. Using a piece of cardboard from a C-ration box, which he would take home as a souvenir, Knapp wrote the status of the personnel and
equipment in each unit. The numbers did not reflect the total trauma of the battle because they included a lot of walking wounded.

Golf Company, still under the command of the thrice-wounded Captain Vargas, was incredibly weak, with only three lieutenants—Acly, Morgan, and Deichman—two Staff NCOs, three corpsmen, and twenty-nine enlisted men present for duty. The company had three radios and three machine guns, but no grenade launchers, no rocket launchers, and no tubes left in the mortar section.

Echo Company, commanded by its only remaining officer, Lieutenant Cecil, was not doing much better, with only two Staff NCOs, three corpsmen, and thirty-nine enlisted men. There were no machine guns and no rocket launchers, but they still had a grenade launcher, two mortar tubes, and six radios.

Hotel Company, led by lip-shot Lieutenant Taylor, had one other lieutenant left, Boyle, plus six corpsmen and fifty-six enlisted men. The Marines in the company had managed to hang on to six radios, two machine guns, three grenade launchers, and two mortar tubes.

Captain Butler’s F Company was in the best overall shape, with two lieutenants, Basel and Wainwright, plus one Staff NCO, six corpsmen, and forty-two enlisted men. They had three machine guns and seven grenade launchers, plus two mortars and ten radios. Behind them in An Lac, Captain Murphy had one officer and thirty-two enlisted men with four tubes from the 81 mm mortar platoon (which was presently firing into Dinh To), plus Lieutenant Muter and his eighteen-man recon platoon. In addition, three officers and sixty-eight enlisted men had just arrived at the splash point from Mai Xa Chanh West. Knapp had directed the headquarters commandant to round up all nonessential personnel at the BLT CP to reinforce the rifle companies, but, since it was already dark, Knapp elected to have them remain in An Lac. Also in An Lac was B/l/3, which had three officers and eighty-six enlisted men on hand. Knapp later told the division historical team, “We tightened in our defense, redistributed our people, and checked all radio nets to see that we had active FO teams, air teams, and so forth.
We continued preparations by posting listening posts and firing close night defensive fires—we put them in very close. Requested illumination throughout the night from a flareship, and our request was approved and provided for.”

During the madhouse retreat, Pfc. Otis E. Boss, who served as the radioman for the 81mm FO attached to Foxtrot, was left behind. Boss and his FO, a lance corporal, were at the tail end of the retreat when a squad of NVA suddenly appeared behind them. Boss shouted at the FO to make a run for it while he covered him. When Boss swung around to fire his M16, he was amazed to see the NVA turn tail for the protection of a tree line. By that time, though, the FO and everyone else was out of sight. Boss crawled to a pagoda among the burial mounds and lay exhausted in its cover while he searched the airwaves for an active frequency.

Lieutenant Hilton heard a terrified, whispering voice break in on the air net, repeating, “They’re all around me, they’re all around me.”

“Where are you exactly?” asked Hilton.

“I don’t know. They’re all around…”

Hilton put Boss in contact with the aerial observer in the Birddog, and Boss said that he would identify his position by waving his helmet. The aerial observer saw the helmet immediately. So did the NVA. Huey gunships strafed the NVA soldiers firing at the pagoda, and Boss took advantage of the distraction by crawling away. He hadn’t gone thirty meters toward what he thought was Dai Do—it had gotten totally dark—when the NVA saw or heard him again. They tossed Chicoms at him, but the Hueys rolled in again with machine guns blazing.

Boss made it to new cover. The decision was made to extract him by helicopter. The word was passed for everyone, including the mortar crews, to fire on signal into the western side of Dinh To so as to suppress NVA movement and allow Boss to crawl east to a clearing that would accommodate a Sea Horse. When the Marines opened fire, Boss immediately reported over the radio that they were shooting at him. The
fire was shifted on his order. The aerial observer in the Bird-dog, meanwhile, had asked Boss to mark his position in the dark. The young radioman struck a match and held it inside his upturned helmet. The aerial observer spotted the brief flame and directed Boss toward the clearing. Boss got there on his hands and knees, but when the Sea Horse started to land the NVA opened fire from several directions and the helo had to break its hover and clear the area.

The suppressive fires cranked up again, and the Hueys strafed with rockets and machine guns. When they finished, the Sea Horse went back in while Boss, who was at the end of his tether emotionally and physically, guided the pilot by radio. “Come left, come left… no, no, come right, come
right
… ah, straight ahead, straight ahead … okay, stop,
stop
… back up,
back up
… come left—”

“How far am I from you?” the pilot interrupted.

“You’re fifty feet.”

“I’m settin’ down—you run to me. Run to me!”

Private Boss clambered aboard the Sea Horse—the whole battalion cheered when the pilot reported that the rescue was a success—and returned to duty the next day. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during the three-hour ordeal.

At least one other Foxtrot grunt, LCpl. David R. Bingham, a skinny, scared-to-death young Marine, was left behind in Dinh To. Bingham, who was really nice but a little slow, was both the company screwup and the company pet. When the battle was over, his body was found in the rubble of a demolished, tile-roofed house three hundred meters farther north in Dinh To than the battalion had advanced. He was lying on his back with one hand on his stomach, and with NVA-type bandages around the wounds that had prevented him from keeping up with his comrades during the retreat. He had another NVA bandage tied around his head covering his eyes. The NVA who had taken him prisoner, and who had treated his injuries before deciding that he was too much of a burden to take with them, had blindfolded the eighteen-year-old Marine before shooting him in the head.

It was a long night in Dai Do. At 2045, there were exchanges of grenades and automatic-weapons fire between a platoon-sized group of NVA and Foxtrot Company, which covered the northeastern side of the perimeter. The NVA were probing, not attacking, and the Marines lobbed M79 rounds wherever they saw a shadow in the flarelight. The Marines could hear the NVA shouting to each other. The NVA also shrieked such things as, “You die tonight, Marine!”

One enemy soldier tried to get into the perimeter, although sniper O’neill didn’t believe it at first when the Marine beside him said he heard movement. The enemy had been lobbing in an occasional round with a captured M79, and O’neill answered, “Nan, you probably hear the bloop gun firing.”

“No, no, I hear
movement
—I really hear something!”

“Well, hey, you go wanderin’ out there and somebody’s going to shoot you.”

“I hear something!”

Lance Corporal Cornwell of Echo Company, who was asleep in his nearby position, heard the same movement and snapped awake with a start. It took a moment before he realized that there was an NVA about ten meters ahead of them. The NVA was walking slowly and deliberately toward them, scanning the area ahead of him before each step. When Corn-well woke the two Marines with him, the NVA disappeared in the brush. They kept their eyes open; then the Marine on Cornwell’s left suddenly tapped him on the arm. The NVA was crouched about six feet away. Cornwell fired his .45 at the same time his buddy did, then crawled toward the enemy soldier and found him lying perfectly still on his back, his brand-new AK-47 beside him. The man, a gurgling noise coming from his throat, was beyond using his weapon. Cornwell finished him with a bullet in the head.

At 2130, the NVA fired a recoilless rifle from a pagoda on the far side of the creek. The shells exploded near the rear of the Marine perimeter, where an amtrac had been parked to serve as an aid station. One shell landed in or near Hotel Company’s mortar position. Eight Marines were seriously wounded. “You could hear ’Em scream through the night,”
commented a sergeant when interviewed by the division historical section. Another said, “Our men on the Otter got up with a .50-caliber—they just totaled out the pagoda where the recoilless rifle was.” A Navy patrol boat also poured .50-caliber tracers into the little cement structure, and Major Knapp shifted artillery fire onto the area. Knapp said that although “we had previously requested and received permission through Fire Raider, 3d Marines, to have blanket clearance to fire on the other side of the stream, because it was 2d ARVN Regiment territory, it took twenty minutes to get the fire mission cleared on this particular problem.”

The wounded were treated in the amtrac, and a helicopter medevac was requested rather than running the risk of moving the wounded downriver in the dark. Major Warren guided the Sea Horse into the cemetery on the southeastern edge of Dai Do while standing on a grave mound with a flashlight. The pilot, flying blind, set down his helicopter right on the light. As Warren backed up, he tripped and fell in the dark. He had to roll to one side to avoid the Sea Horse’s front tire as it settled down where he had been. There was no enemy fire.
¹

The next medevac was for Sergeant Pace, the battalion interpreter. He was lying on his back against a dike between two other Marines when he heard the crack of an RPG being fired. Hell, he thought, secure behind his cover, let ’Em shoot—I’m going to sleep. He never heard the explosion, but he suddenly realized that something was wrong with his legs. They were numb; they wouldn’t work. Pace reached down to squeeze them awake and came up with a handful of blood. Damn, they got me! he thought. The RPG had riddled his legs with seventy-two metal fragments. Pace tied off a battle dressing around one thigh as he hollered for a corpsman. Lieutenant Hilton recognized his voice and came to get him. Hilton helped Pace to the landing zone and assisted him aboard the Sea Horse, shouting over the roar of the blades, “I’ll see you again someday, Sergeant!” It was a promise he kept.