Death Valley (2 page)

Modern infantry combat is inherently brutalizing. The enemy is naturally dehumanized. It was worse in Vietnam where the grunts, knowing they were expendable, forgotten, and doing what they did to no good end, had only their buddies to depend on and believe in. Everyone else was the enemy. “At times, the comradeship that was the war’s only redeeming quality caused some of its worst crimes—acts of retribution for friends who had been killed,” writes Philip Caputo in
A Rumor of War
. The Americal Division had My Lai. The Marines had Son Thang, a hamlet in which night ambush team from the same 1st Battalion, 7th Marines that had performed so well during the 1969 Summer Offensive went on a revenge-minded killing spree that left sixteen dead women and children in its wake. Gary Solis tells the story in meticulous and excruciating detail in
Song Thang, An American War Crime
. The massacre took place six months after the Summer Offensive and Solis notes that the heavy combat of that campaign had not only “molded the battalion” into a “well-oiled war machine,” but had also “imparted a cold and efficient aggressiveness” in which small scale atrocities “were not unusual. Generals will deny it, colonels and majors may doubt it, but any captain or lieutenant and any enlisted infantryman who was there will confirm it. That’s just the way it was.”

More insidiously, the drug, race, and generational problems tearing the country apart back home, problems which had begun creeping into the war zone after Tet of ’68 and the assassination of Martin Luther King, were firmly entrenched in the larger base areas like those at Da Nang and Chu Lai by the time of the 1969 Summer Offensive. A new word came into common usage that year—fragging—and there were more fatal attacks on U.S. officers by U.S. troops in 1969 than in any other year of the Vietnam War. Fragging was generally a rear-echelon phenomenon, a way for drug users and Black Power militants to carve out some space for themselves inside the Green Machine.

Morale was always higher in the field than in the rear, and in
Death Valley
there are many heart-breaking examples of young grunts, kids really, as their barely-older lieutenants called them, tearing themselves apart to reach a wounded man or go after a machine gun that had their squad pinned down. When they had every reason to tuck themselves behind a paddy dike and play turtle, there were still soldiers who gave it their all. Too bad it was all for nothing. Too bad they were fighting on ground of the enemy’s choosing. “
Death Valley
quickly slips into tragedy as units repeatedly get shredded by NVA troops and more men are killed trying to recover the bodies of their buddies,” wrote one reviewer. “Don’t expect to get a sense of the well-won battle after reading this book.
Death Valley
is a punishing tragic tale that leaves the reader wondering about the futility of what was later hailed by the brass as a victory.”

Keith W. Nolan

P
ART
The Grunts

O
n the afternoon of 17 June 1969, LCpl Roger T. LaRue, of D Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, sat against the canvas seat of his helicopter. The interior of the CH46 Sea Knight was vibrating. LaRue’s seven partners sat facing each other. They wore camouflaged fatigues and bush hats; their hands and faces were streaked with green and black paint. K-Bar knives were taped upside down on shoulder harnesses for easy reach. Weapons were locked and loaded.

No one was saying much.

They had lifted off from Camp Reasoner, Da Nang, and they touched down—briefly—on the long spine of Charlie Ridge. The Recon Marines disembarked quickly, then crouched in the deep brush as the Sea Knight pulled out. The noise faded, the ship disappeared, and the silence and heat of the jungle took over. Sweat was already beginning to stain LaRue’s fatigues. He kneeled with the others, eyes flicking into the hillside of trees, hands tight around his stocky M79 grenade launcher.

Any North Vietnamese in eyeshot would have seen their hovering chopper, so the recon team moved out quickly. Their job was not to fight the enemy on this canopied mountain, but to find them and call in the firepower. This ridge line belonged to the North Vietnamese Army. That’s why the Marines travelled small and light. There was no room for slack, and the battalion had a catch phrase: If you can’t pack the gear, don’t ask for the job. LaRue fit in well. He was nineteen and dedicated. Most importantly, he was able to tune out most of his fear until the chopper set them back down at Camp Reasoner. There he would chain smoke; there he would drink himself numb.

On the third day of this patrol, they found it.

The point man led them down a two-hundred-foot escarpment. LaRue was the third one to the bottom. A thin stream cut through a ravine choked with vegetation. The point started towards the sound of running water and suddenly froze, silently raised his shotgun, and glanced back. LaRue caught the look in his eyes. He signalled the fourth man in line, the team radioman, to freeze. Then LaRue edged forward and crouched with the point and deuce among some creekside boulders. He peered through the overhanging foliage. Jesus! There were five North Vietnamese soldiers downstream, talking and laughing as they sunned themselves on a large, flat stone. Beyond them, the Marines could hear the singsong chatter of more Vietnamese. LaRue’s heart was pumping furiously. We’ve just stumbled into a goddamned base camp! The NVA on the rocks, casting a few glances in our direction, must think we’re some of their buddies coming back to camp, LaRue reckoned.

There was no way to climb back atop the ridge without being recognized, and little chance that the others could come down to help. Then LaRue noticed that the radioman was trying to do just that. The radioman—a quiet guy due to rotate home soon—carefully picked his way into the trap, propelled by some unspoken loyalty. He crouched behind their boulders, then calmly whispered into his handset, giving the NVA’s location and requesting immediate air support. The radioman’s name was Kiev Zoller, and LaRue had nothing but admiration for that Marine.

The radio hissed its answer: air on the way.

Minutes crawled by. The NVA sunning themselves kept looking in the Marines’ direction. Finally one picked up his AK47 automatic rifle and disappeared in the direction of the base camp. He came back accompanied by an NVA officer in gray fatigues and polished leather gear; the two strode directly towards the boulders, the officer in front drawing a 9mm Soviet pistol from its holster. The four Marines sucked air. The point gripped his shotgun, the deuce his M14 rifle; LaRue sighted down the stub barrel of his M79. Corporal Zoller held the radio mike with his left hand, his right hand sweaty around the pistol grip of his M16 rifle.

When the North Vietnamese were thirty feet away, the point man suddenly sprang into view, blasting off four incredibly quick shots from his pump gun before the NVA even realized what was happening. The NVA officer bounced off his feet and crashed back down into the brush six feet away, his chest and head pulverized. In the same instant, LaRue
squeezed the trigger, felt the grenade launcher buck hard against his shoulder, saw the other North Vietnamese collapse.

The jungle erupted with return fire. LaRue tried to break open the M79 to reload, but his mind choked with panic. He could hear NVA moving at them. Oh God, no, we’re going to die. No way out. His hands shook uncontrollably; the breech wouldn’t budge. The point and deuce were firing furiously. LaRue finally slammed the weapon against his knee, pulled out the spent casing, dropped in another round, and snapped it shut. The safety stuck. He dropped the M79 in a panic and grabbed at his Colt .45, but the pistol holster was twisted around behind him. He couldn’t reach it. He grabbed the stock of Zoller’s M16, but Zoller refused to give it up. LaRue picked up the grenade launcher again, forced the safety off, aimed at the noises, and fired. The round spun from the barrel, but exploded short and blasted shrapnel back over the Marines’ heads. He reached into his ammunition bag and pumped off two more rounds. His terror began to evaporate as he got the M79 working. He became resigned to the fact that they were going to be overrun and killed, that there was no reason to fear the inevitable. All they could do was make themselves expensive; so, while the radioman calmly maintained his vigil calling for air support, the other three laid down enough fire to sound like a small army. LaRue pounded two rounds into a thick tree trunk above a gulley; the NVA who’d been sunning themselves had ducked there when the shooting started, and they did not reappear.

Over the cacophony, they distinguished the propeller buzz of two OV10 Bronco observation planes. Then the cool, reassuring drawl of a pilot came over the radio, “Coffee Time, Coffee Time, this is Cowpoke Three. I hear you got some problems with the little brown people. Well, just mark your pos with an airpanel and we’ll throw around some shit.” The Broncos came in under Zoller’s direction, strafing across the creek with 40mm automatic cannons and 7.62mm machine guns. On their last pass, they laid a grouping of white phosphorus rockets into the NVA camp. Behind them, a flight of F4 Phantom jets rolled in on the hot, white smoke curling up through the green canopy. The Marines hugged earth, palms tight against their ears, under the supersonic scream of dives and the convulsion and concussion of hundreds of pounds of exploding bombs.

In the confusion, the Marines who’d been atop the ridge during the firefight slipped down and they all headed down a trail away from the
exploding chaos of the camp. They moved for five hours without rest, exhausted bodies spurred on by the knowledge of what would happen if they stopped. They paused once to fill canteens from a creek. They finally stopped when it was too dark to see. Every hour throughout the night they could hear the NVA firing single shots as signals between the hunting parties. When the first fuzz of daylight appeared, the team moved out again. From a field of green elephant grass, razor-sharp and reaching above their heads, they could see the sky become dotted with helicopters. A Sea Knight descended into the waving blades with its back cargo ramp down, door gunners tight behind their fifties. In moments, the recon team was aboard. Then they were up and out.

From December 1968 to December 1969, MajGen Ormond R. Simpson was commanding general, 1st Marine Division, headquartered on Hill 327 three kilometers west of the coastal city of Da Nang, Republic of Vietnam. General Simpson was described by one of his battalion commanders as “… a tall, rawboned Texan who loved his Marines, passionately. He loved to shake their hands, talk to them, find out where they were from and how they were getting along. His warmth was very real. I know he took the casualties hard, and he chose to sign off personally on a letter to every Purple Heart awardee. Some of his nights were very long.”