Death Valley (20 page)

Around the French Hootch, there was the semicontrolled chaos of medics rushing among the wounded and grunts rushing into place on the perimeter. The NVA fire had ceased and Whittecar stood beside the cement hootch with his radiomen, requesting fire support and an emergency resupply of ammunition and water. As the first Huey started its approach, a 12.7mm machine gun began pounding, and green tracers burned up from the canopy of the tree line. Then another opened fire, and another, until Whittecar had counted seven separate twelve-seven positions in a circle around his company. He screamed at the Huey pilot to get out, then cut to the 4–31 TOC frequency. He reported his estimate that Delta Company was surrounded by a regiment of 1,200 NVA. At that time, Whittecar had 109 troopers, and that included the 5 KIA and the 21 WIA.

There was, indeed, a regiment around Whittecar and his men. The first two days of the battle were the bleakest for 4–31 Infantry as far as their being greatly outnumbered and not knowing what was going on. As the scenario was later pieced together, the NVA attack plan had two parts. The
3d Main Force Regiment, 2d NVA Division
was dug in around Hill 102 in the Song Chang Valley; their mission was to attack LZ West and LZ Center. At the same time, the
1st Main Force Regiment, 2d NVA Division
was dug in around Hills 381 and 441 (of the Nui Chom ridge line). While the base camps were being hit, part of the regiment would destroy the Resettlement Village while the rest formed a block across Route 534. This hard-packed dirt road (called the Old French Road) originated at Highway One on the coast and ran all the way to the Resettlement Village, slicing the Hiep Duc Valley horizontally. This would be a likely avenue of approach for any relief force. Supporting these efforts, U.S. Intelligence also placed various headquarters, sapper, mortar, antiaircraft, signal, and transportation detachments; they estimated a total of 3,000–5,000 NVA troops. It was thought that when D/4–31 bumped into the 3d Regiment on 17 August, and B/4–31 the 1st Regiment on 18 August, they accidentally preempted the NVA attack. All that had not become focused on the second morning of the battle. It was figured that D/4–31 had found the main NVA concentration that had
hit LZ West a week before. In Hiep Duc Valley, therefore, it was business as usual.

At daybreak on 18 August, Captain Gayler, CO, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, had his men ruck up and begin their march across Hiep Duc Valley towards the mountainous spur, Nui Chom, which formed the valley’s northern frontier. Bravo had been in the bush since rotating off LZ security a week before, conducting a generally fruitless search for the NVA battalion which had assaulted their base camp. In that respect, it was similar to Gayler’s previous experiences in the war. He’d come in-country in January as the air operations officer and took over the company in April; he held a Bronze Star for the June fight in AK Valley, but most of the company patrols were merely what they called Hot Walks in the Sun.

This did not suit Gayler at all. He’d grown up in the rural town of Mineral Wells, Texas, where his parents owned a mom ‘n’ pop grocery store. He joined the national guard at seventeen, then joined the fire department after a few disastrous, beer-blasted semesters in college. When Vietnam began heating up, he volunteered for OCS and the Regular Army. Captain Gayler was thirty years old, had thirteen years in the military, and wanted his piece of the Vietnam War.

The evening before, Lieutenant Colonel Henry had radioed him with an impromptu mission: a
chieu hoi
, accompanied by two Vietnamese National policemen, would be choppered to his company to lead them to an NVA rice cache. Supposedly, the cache held enough rice to feed an NVA company for a month. The defector said it was tucked near Hill 381 of Nui Chom. By 1000, when Bravo Company was halfway to the ridge line, battalion radioed them to secure a bush landing zone for the arrival of the chieu hoi. As the Huey banked north after dropping off its passengers, a spot of AK47s snapped at it. They were too far away to go after and Gayler really didn’t give it a second thought; there was always a sniper or two scampering around.

The day seemed a repeat of so many others.

The temperature hovered well above 100 degrees and the grunts humped as listlessly as always. A berm cut through the desiccated, rock-hard paddies and they moved single file along it, five yards between each man. They humped full rucks, ammo bandoliers hung from shoulders
and around waists, and faces and arms were slick with sweat. Fatigue shirts were stained darkly. Each man’s view was the same—a sun-bleached helmet bobbing along above the backpack of the grunt ahead.

The zapper squad was on point, followed by Bravo Two under 1stLt Doug Monroe. Gayler considered Monroe his steadiest platoon leader, who knew his tactics, was firmly in command, and at the same time enjoyed an easygoing rapport with his men.

Company headquarters was behind them. With Captain Gayler were his battalion RTO, company RTO, and senior medic. There was also a forward observer team from 3–82 Artillery—an FO lieutenant, his recon sergeant, and their RTO. Gayler had five Vietnamese with his CP, including his ARVN interpreter whom he did not trust, and his Kit Carson Scout who’d traded his AK47 for an M16 and had outgrown Gayler’s initial suspicions. The two National policemen had fatigues, bush hats, and M16 rifles, but no packs; they didn’t expect to be staying long. The NVA soldier turned defector walked with them. He looked about thirty, was not tied, and wore some anonymous old fatigues.

Gayler had placed Bravo Three, under Lieutenant Maurel, behind them in the middle of the column. That was mostly to keep them out of trouble. Gayler did not like Maurel; as far as he was concerned, he was an immature young man who harassed his troops, much to the detriment of morale, and who simply did not take the time to do things right, much to the detriment of performance. However, their platoon sergeant, SSgt Walter Sheppard, was sharp. He was a young black man who, like almost every NCO in the company, was a shake ‘n’ bake who had earned instant stripes at the crash course known as the Fort Benning NCO Academy. Such were the manpower requirements of Vietnam. Sheppard was a draftee but had graduated at the top of his class and was sent to the war as an infantry staff sergeant. He more than measured up, but there was sympathetic talk in the platoon that Sheppard was yet another victim of a young marriage straining hard due to separation.

Bringing up the rear was Bravo One, under Sgt Richard S. Allison, and his platoon sergeant, Sergeant Beaureguard. Allison was a city boy, Beaureguard a country boy; both were solid under fire. Allison was a twenty-year-old, blue-collar hawk. His last year in high school, he’d had horrendous arguments about Vietnam with one of his teachers, a young woman just out of college. He’d ended the debate by enlisting in the U.S. Army and volunteering for the infantry; he’d come in-country
in November 68 as one of the replacements after the last battle on Nui Chom. Since then, he’d volunteered for the zapper squad, had been promoted to platoon sergeant, and had just been made acting platoon leader when his lieutenant rotated.

Bravo Company was undermanned, down to seventy-five men.

As they moved through the tree lines near a miniature hamlet below Nui Chom, a little Vietnamese boy ran up to Sergeant Allison’s platoon. Their Kit Carson talked to him at length, then caught up with the platoon several hundred meters down the road. The boy had told the scout a large NVA force was up ahead, and Allison immediately grabbed the phone from his RTO. Captain Gayler was not swayed by the information. Negative, he radioed back, we’ve got a mission. The captain received generally favorable reviews from his grunts, but Allison was a dissenter.

This lifer, Allison thought, is too damn reckless.

The platoon crossed the shallows of the Song Lau River and was moving across the several hundred yards of open paddies to the ville when an AK suddenly cut loose, sending everyone to the ground. Gayler, down the trail with his RTOs, radioed the buck sergeant in charge of the zapper squad, “Sick ’em!” The men were all volunteers and it didn’t take long; they spotted the sniper, pinned him down with M16 fire, then crept close enough to pitch a few frags at him. Then the stocky sergeant sauntered back to report a body count of one.

He held up the AK47 for Gayler’s inspection.

The company halted in the small ville, which was about a hundred meters square and raised several feet from the surrounding paddies like a brushy island. There was a handful of Vietnamese around the hootches—an old man, some women, a few children. As reward for the kill, Gayler told the zapper squad to secure an LZ in the ville for their evening hot meal and to haul out the rice cache. For totally different reasons, he also told Lieutenant Maurel’s platoon to stay behind to secure the area and guard their rucksacks, which everyone was gladly unshouldering.

The company continued along the path up to the foothills, approaching another tiny hamlet. Lieutenant Monroe’s point squad spotted two men with AK47s across the paddies and opened fire. The NVA disappeared among the hootches. By the time Gayler moved up, Monroe was down along a dike with one of his squads; they were firing cover for another squad as it maneuvered toward the ville through a tree line. One hootch was already afire from an M79 grenade. In the middle of this firefight, Captain Gayler suddenly received a frantic call from Lieutenant Maurel.
His voice was two octaves higher than normal: he was taking fire from all sides, including automatic weapons, rocket grenades, and mortars, and had heavy casualties.

Gayler had Monroe rein in his attacking squad and, with Sergeant Allison’s platoon turned around to be point, they made a fast walk back down the trail. The NVA attack had ebbed back—all the time invisible in the trees and dikes leading up to the hamlet—and Bravo Company was able to reenter without drawing a shot.

Lieutenant Maurel’s report was not good.

After Gayler had moved on with Monroe and Allison, the zapper squad set up on one side of the ville. To escape the heat, they strung their poncho liners from bamboo and clustered under this pathetic shade. Some rested; some toyed with their captured AK. All in all, no one was paying attention when expertly camouflaged NVA moved right up to their perimeter. One of the survivors later told of seeing moving bushes a second before the NVA signalled their attack by sending an RPG through their poncho shelter. Two men were killed instantly and two others were wounded as the rest scrambled for weapons, or cover, or both. Then came the Chicoms and a complete ring of AK47 fire. A mortar tube was also employed, dropping accurate preregistered fire on the ville. Maurel and Sheppard kept their heads, got their platoon into a tight three-sixty, and raked the surrounding brush with fire. It was enough to keep the invisible enemy temporarily at bay.

Seven GIs had been killed in the initial assault.

The rest of Bravo Company was taking up positions on the ragged perimeter—and dragging in the bodies from the zapper squad—when the mortar began firing. Then the AKs and Chicoms began all over again. They were coming from all sides and, from what Gayler could discern in the cacophony as he pressed into the dirt, it sounded like an NVA battalion was around them. How had they been able to walk through this circle? The NVA would have been wiser to keep the platoons separated and overrun them in detail; but they had not, so Bravo Company was able to mass its fire. Gayler also got on the horn to request what he later reckoned saved his company from annihilation—Cobra gunship support. Henry answered, “Roger, it’s already in route.”

The French Hootch became the center of Delta Company’s defense. It had a twenty- by thirty-foot cement foundation, four feet of crumbling
walls all the way around, no roof, and a battered front porch still overhanging a doorless door frame. The FO and RTOs set up their radios in it and the grunts dug foxholes in a thirty-meter circle around it. The medics treated the casualties there, the wounded lay in a row along an outer wall, the dead were beside them in body bags. After checking the miniature perimeter, Captain Whittecar talked with SP5 Kim Diliberto, his senior medic. He said one of the GIs would die from loss of blood if he were not immediately medevacked; during the ambush in the tree line, a Chicom had nearly blown off his arm at the shoulder. Whittecar was very hesitant to call in a medevac considering the circle of 12.7mm guns, and he walked over to see the man for himself.