Death Valley (25 page)

“Get ready, we’re going back in!”

The four were up now, three of them tight-lipped, one arguing back until he decided it was best to shut the hell up. Howard looked to be on the verge of unholstering his .45 and shooting the coward.

Meanwhile, Howard’s RTO edged over to Captain Carrier. He’d just recently been sent to battalion from Charlie Company, and he hoped to find some consolation with his former commander. He was a stocky, sharp kid named Richard Doria, and he was horror stricken. “My God, we can’t go back in there! This colonel thinks he’s King Kong, but the dinks got a ring of .51-cals. Ask the helicopter crew …”

“I ain’t asking the pilots nothing!”

Carrier was Airborne Ranger and he did not like that kind of talk, but Doria was not going to let it die. “If they weren’t black,” he pressed, “we wouldn’t be going back in. He just doesn’t want the guys to think he lets the blacks welch.”

“If you don’t go, there’s no doubt you’re going to jail,” threatened Carrier.

Doria had been Carrier’s RTO during the nightmare in May; he had served ably and, after much time in the bush, everyone was glad when he was selected as battalion radioman. It got him out of the grunts. Carrier finally relented and went to the colonel. But Howard was adamant: he was going to put those shirkers where they belonged! Carrier put his arm over Doria’s shoulder, “You’ve done this before. We’ve been on CAs under fire. You can do it again. I’ve been scared, I’ve been so afraid I’ve cried on the radio. But you gotta do the job.” Doria said nothing. He just resigned himself and climbed back aboard the command helo, but his face was a mask Carrier had seen before. The man was seeing his own death. The Huey rose from the helo pad and dipped into the valley. From the bunker line on LZ Center, Captain Carrier saw what happened next.

As the 3–21 C&C bore in towards Alpha Company, Colonel Tacka-berry was in the 196th InfBde C&C, orbiting one aerial tier above battalion’s airspace. Tackaberry monitored the radio and heard Shurtz request Howard to take out their civilian photographer because he did not want to spend the night in the valley. Tackaberry broke in on the transmission and said he could pick up the man since he was returning to LZ Baldy for the nightly briefing. Howard said no problem, he was going in anyway.

Howard radioed Shurtz and his RTO, SP4 Chuck Hurley, “Zulu Alpha Niner, I’m inbound into your position with replacements.”

Shurtz and Hurley guided in the battalion commander. The NVA were coming out of the woodwork all over the valley, but seemed mostly concentrated to the west near Hill 102 and south along the Song Chang. The C&C should come in from the east, from along Nui Lon ridge; land in the paddy adjacent to the tree grove; then pivot one-eighty and go back the way they’d come. That’s exactly what the pilot did, pausing long enough to kick out the four malingerers and take Noonan aboard.

Then the C&C hopped over to Bravo Company; they were set up in a thick plot of elephant grass and trees south of Alpha Company and closer to the river. Captain Cooper and his RTO, SP4 Robert Munson, were with their FO, Sgt Bass, and his RTO, PFC Roland Lasso. Howard came on the radio to request landing directions. Things were chaotic now and—as Private Lasso recounted it—the first landing attempt was waved off as enemy fire suddenly cracked at the descending helicopter. Howard said he was going to give it another try. Cooper argued with him on the radio, “This area is too hot! I’m not going to have one of my men shot off a paddy dike trying to guide you in! If you’re still coming in, you’re on your own!”

A second attempt was aborted under fire.

The C&C finally banked away, but then darted towards Hill 102. It buzzed low, and Howard and his sergeant major were knocked out the open cabin doors as the chopper was hit by 12.7mm fire or an RPG. The Huey nosed towards the valley floor as the fuel tanks ignited, and it was a ball of fire and coming apart even before impact. Howard did not seem the kind of man who believed in premonitions, but something odd was remembered later by his battalion staff. A young ocelot had been caught on LZ Center; it was nicknamed Skates Two, which was Howard’s radio call sign. The night before the colonel’s death, the ocelot had escaped from its cage and been killed by the pet dogs of the headquarters company.

Colonel Tackaberry, flying back to LZ Baldy as dusk approached, had been monitoring the battalion net. Howard was talking, but he suddenly blurted, “Oh!” as though he’d been punched in the chest. An excited voice came through the static hiss, “Looks like they’ve been hit!” Tackaberry told his pilot to turn around and, in ten minutes, they were over the crash site. There was a smoky imprint on the vegetation, the tail section was still intact, parts were strewn about, the rest was melted magnesium. There were no signs of survivors. Until the bodies
were recovered, the U.S. Army would carry those aboard as Missing In Action:

LtCol Eli P. Howard

WO1 Johns D. Plummer

WO1 Gerald L. Silverstein

SgtMaj Franklin D. Rowell

SP4 Richard A. Doria

PFC Stephen L. Martino

PFC Stewart J. Lavigne

Mr. Oliver E. Noonan

Lieutenant Shurtz did not see the crash. He had watched the Huey crest the hill, wondering why the colonel was going the wrong way. Then he walked over to his platoon leaders. 2dLt David Teeple, Alpha One, was new. 1stLt Dan Kirchgesler, Alpha Two, was the most experienced officer there. 2dLt Bob Tynan, Alpha Three, was also new but learning fast. They’d been monitoring the battalion net, and one of them commented to Shurtz, “The C&C is down.”

“Yeah, I know, he just dropped off four guys.”

“No, they’ve been shot down.”

“What!”

“The colonel apparently spotted a .51 on the ridge and went down to take a look.”

The 3d of the 21st Infantry had gone in expecting to clear up a spot of trouble, but had walked into a regiment. The confusion started there and was capped when the battalion commander was suddenly blasted out of the sky. That night in the Song Chang Valley was a mess, hard to piece together; but a picture—probably flawed in parts—emerged. Bravo Company had been ordered to secure the crash site. The order was issued either by Maj Richard Waite, BnXO, or Maj Richard Smith, BnS-3, but they should not be labelled incompetent. Their place was properly in the TOC bunker on LZ Center, but with the command ship gone so were their eyes. They could not gauge the true field picture, which was that the wreck was well inside enemy lines.

Captain Cooper gave the mission to 3d Platoon.

Lieutenant Turpin, Bravo Three, resisted the order. Turpin was no timid college draftee but an OCS mustang lifer considered a bit crazy by his grunts because he loved the bush. He’d previously been a sergeant first class in the special forces. He was aggressive but also realistic, and he argued that, with darkness falling, it was useless to risk ambush to recover a cabinful of corpses.

Cooper agreed and radioed LZ Center to respectfully decline the mission; to listen to another version, the order was pressed and Cooper snapped, “If you want it so bad, major, you walk point!”

Captain Cooper may have said that; he was a hard man to define. The captain he replaced was a stocky supply type who loved his creature comforts, hated to hump, and didn’t seem to be looking for a fight. When Cooper, who was tall and lean, took over after the June bunker fight, he kept resupply to a minimum and kept the company moving hard. He was looking for the enemy. He was respected throughout the Gimlets. Even Captain Carrier noted, “… He was the best thing to hit the battalion since me. He looked out for his men and showed a lot of command presence.” But he was no lifer. He was a young man who was easy to talk to, and who flashed the peace sign and seemed very plugged into the bitterness of his grunts. Sometimes at night, after hacking out a spot in the bush, some guys would pass a joint to mellow down from the day’s hump. Captain Cooper seemed the kind who would, in a moment of weary comradeship, say fuck it, and take a hit. There was talk to that effect; others thought that was bullshit.

A journalist who joined Bravo Company in the bush two weeks later caught the flavor when he recounted conversations in the company headquarters at dusk:

Bravo Company did not move from their night defensive position, but it was not a quiet night. The North Vietnamese were up and moving
with the darkness and, from within the center of the company, the Bravo CP worked with B/3–82 Artillery on LZ Center. The shells slammed into suspected targets around the grunts; most of them simply ignored it. Claymores and trip flares were in place. PFC Shimer noted, “I discovered I could sleep through any commotion as long as it did not affect me or my defensive sector. But as soon as anything happened on my part of the line, I was instantly awake and taking appropriate action. This honing of the nervous system took over ten years to wear off.”

It was almost midnight before the North Vietnamese attacked again the French Hootch and the joint perimeter of Delta 4–31 and Charlie 2–1. Movement was heard all around the circle. Then came the crashing of RPGs and AK47s, the eruption of return fire, and the lull to sporadic shooting. Fifteen men were wounded, most of them from Charlie Company. Several grunts from Charlie carried one of their wounded buddies to the medics in the French Hootch. When they checked on him, one grunt mumbled, “Aw hell, he’s dead.” Captain Whittecar couldn’t believe it. There wasn’t a mark on the kid. He started mouth to mouth, then banged the man’s chest until he could hear a heartbeat. In a couple of minutes it stopped again, and Whittecar put his hand under the GI’s head to give him artificial respiration again. The back of his skull was mashed, blown away. Whittecar let him drop. Only later would he reflect on how cruel his reaction had been: Goddammit, I haven’t got time to waste on a dead man!

Spooky was on station again, miniguns funnelling thousands of rounds a minute around the perimeter. Whittecar’s only strobe light had been damaged by an RPG, so he had to constantly hold the on-switch. The French Hootch was in the center of the perimeter, and Whittecar lay on his back in the center of the floor. He held the strobe across his chest, had the radio beside him, and told the gunship pilot to hit everything thirty yards outside the light. RPGs slammed against trees and branches, raining down shrapnel. More than one RPG sprayed inside the hootch, kicking up gravel and dust, while the GIs pressed against the inside walls, hands over their faces. Whittecar, stretched across the floor with his strobe and radio, was amazed that he was only scratched in the explosions.

They went on all night.

Alpha Company 3–21 was probed. For Private Kruch it was a long night of blacking out, then coming to an adrenaline high at every noise in the dark. His squad was on the side of the line facing the paddies. In the far tree line, things seemed to be moving, but when flares popped there was only stillness in the harsh shadows. The man with the M60 fired—giving away his position just as the NVA probers wanted—but the antique weapon kept jamming.

On Private Goodwin’s side of the line, the men had dug shallow holes among the banana trees. A hootch sat in a clearing and the shrill screams of an arguing Vietnamese woman echoed from it. The voices of her antagonists could not be heard, but Goodwin instinctively thought he knew what was happening: the NVA were forcing her boy to walk at them to trip a flare or claymore. An AK shot suddenly rang out and the woman stopped shouting. A few minutes later, the men heard footsteps approaching. Randy Grove pulled a hand frag from his web gear, and Goodwin whispered not to pop the spoon before throwing it. That way the kid would hear the midair pop and beat it. That’s what they did, and the figure scampered away.