Death Valley (36 page)

They were all alone on that hill in the middle of the night. Lee had them sitting at the four compass points, and he counselled them: “Don’t yell, don’t even talk, don’t fire at the boogyman, only shoot if you’ve got something in your sights.” As the night dragged on, though, he became nervous about his partners. He was afraid they might fire at nothing and give away their position or, worse yet, gun down the point men of Charlie Company as they approached. He finally took their M16s away, laid them in a pile with his own rifle, and sat down with the radio to lead Charlie Company to the hill.

They finally appeared out of the darkness.

Rocky Bleier, riding on the shoulders of the black soldier, must have thought the night was never going to end. He was in his own private torture. Each time his torn legs caught on bushes and vines, he jerked like a cattle prod had been jammed into his wounds, and the GI carrying him was knocked off balance. It was a struggle for him, too, lugging Bleier’s big frame, and Bleier, pressing on his back to relieve the pressure on his stomach, pushing into the rescuer’s shoulder. Every thirty yards they had to stop while the grunt laid Bleier in the grass and tried to catch his breath. Every time they stopped, two or three GIs in the column passed them in the dark. They kept pushing, but fell farther and farther behind, until Bleier collapsed onto the side of the road. He was completely drained; his eyes were brimming with tears. He looked up at his rescuer, mumbling, “I can’t go this way anymore. Get me a stretcher. It’s not that much farther.”

The GI stopped a 3d Platoon RTO and the man radioed ahead to the medevacs coming in. Then he continued on. He was the last man in their column.

The pain became too much for Bleier to bear, each heartbeat thumping
through his right foot. He lay there, crying and gritting his teeth, ripping up clumps of grass with his hands. His buddy held onto him, and Bleier squeezed him tighter with each surge of pain. He held Bleier’s hand, soothing him, “It’s all right. You’re okay. We’re going to get there.”

Bleier was sobbing. “We are so
alone
.”

Time was meaningless, so he didn’t know how long it took for the four men to stumble down with a poncho liner. They were exhausted too, and couldn’t muster the strength to lift him. So they dragged him the last several hundred yards, bouncing over rocks and debris, Bleier’s legs crashing together inside the poncho. The medevac landed atop the hill, and a narrow rocky path led up to it. They shouldered their way through the brush hemming in the path, stumbling, losing their grip, Bleier rolling down the hill and screaming into the night sky. They finally got him to the crest and sank to their knees. Bleier looked up at the helicopter blades thumping above him. “Thank you, Lord.”

The Huey lifted off without him; it was already full. It had taken Bleier six hours to reach the bush LZ, but now he had to wait another two hours for the next medevac. A medic gave him a shot of morphine, but it did no good. The drug was washed from his system by shock, confusion, pain, and fear. “I gotta get another shot!”

“No, I can’t do that,” the medic said.

Bleier raged with all the patience of a man whose foot was being held in a fire. “Why not? I’m in pain. Do something!”

“It might knock you out, or disguise the seriousness of your wounds. The doctors at the aid station will want to know where it hurts.”

“I don’t give a shit. Now give me another fucking shot!”

“No.”

“Well, then get the fuck out of here!”

Bravo 1st of the 46th Infantry got moving again after Charlie 4th of the 31st Infantry passed through. There were four men to a body, carrying and dragging the bamboo litters across the ground. The bodies were heavy and the exhausted men traded every fifteen minutes. After his turn, PFC Calvin Tam walked along, feeling very alone in the moonless night. He was slung with six M16s for men hefting the litters. His mind was blurred with weariness, numbed with fear. When are the gooks going to sneak up and hit us? Where are they? He pictured them lying in the brush, eating rice and sleeping, satisfied with the day’s catch. Lucky us. Maybe they’re out of ammunition. Tam kept plodding.

The column started getting strung out along the trail. Tam noticed
exhausted grunts sprawled in the thickets along the side, trying to get a few minutes rest before resuming the march. One GI had cracked, or was at least putting on a good show to get out. Tam passed him on the trail. He was a short, fat guy who, during his two weeks with the company, had complained constantly and loudly that since he was an 11 Charlie mortarman he should not have been assigned as an 11 Bravo infantryman. His grousing had won him the promise that the first opening among the mortar crews on LZ Professional would go to him.

The man was wide-eyed and babbling. A squad leader told him to shut up and, when that didn’t work, began slapping him.

Tam forced himself on, concentrating on the pack bobbing ahead of him in the dark. He’d never been so tired and scared. Keep going, don’t panic. Be a good soldier, don’t feel sorry for yourself.

Keep going!

They caught up with Charlie Company near Million Dollar Hill. Tam sank into the elephant grass, his brain whirling unfocussed. He was dimly aware of a prop plane buzzing overhead. A flare was dropped from it and night was suddenly day. Tam and everyone around him instantly jumped off the trail, rolling into the underbrush to escape the exposure of the glare. Twenty minutes later, they heard a single Huey bore in. It landed about a hundred yards away, on the crest of the hill.

It was 0200; this was the third and last medevac of the night. It was handled quickly, frantically before the NVA had a chance to open fire on the thumping rotors. Private Bleier was lifted inside the cabin and Captain Murphy came on next, the last one on. Bleier described the evacuation:

Bleier’s agony was overwhelming too. He could not believe the pain, the fire ripping at a million raw nerve endings, pulsing, consuming
him. He faded in and out, thinking who
am
I, who is this happening to? It was a ten-minute flight to the 23d Medical Company, Americal, on LZ Baldy. The medics gave him the once-over in the med bunker, which meant clean bandages and, finally, a second shot of morphine. That did the trick. When they hefted his litter into the next chopper, he was feeling calm and drowsy, marvelling at the brilliance of the moon and stars from the cabin door.

By 0500, Bleier was being rolled into the 95th Evacuation Hospital, Da Nang. After he was admitted, a man approached him and said he was to store his personal belongings. All Bleier had was the wooden cross given to him by the priest; it had gotten him through WWII and, as far as Bleier was concerned, it had gotten him through Vietnam. Ten minutes later, a female Red Cross volunteer came to collect his things. She sighed at his story of having given the man his wooden cross; happened all the time, she said. Simply put, unknown persons were robbing wounded soldiers coming into the hospital. The combat infantrymen in Vietnam had a harsh acronym for support soldiers, too widely applied, but sometimes very appropriate: REMF. Rear Echelon Mother Fucker.

Bleier’s gurney was wheeled into a waiting room. Captain Murphy and the wounded survivors of his platoon were there. An orderly shaved his stubble but agreed to leave his handlebar mustache, the symbol of the draftee grunt. By 0600, Bleier was in surgery. He was put under and the Army doctors used scalpels to scrape away the skin burned by the sulfur-coated shrapnel. Then they removed the fragments from his feet and legs—there were more than a hundred pieces.

Fifteen minutes after the last medevac off Million Dollar Hill, Bravo Company was moving again. They walked back into the paddies atop a dike. It was dark. Private Tam fell, tumbling four feet down into the dry paddy. Not a bad fall, but when he stood up, pain shot through his right leg. He crawled back up under his pack and gear, figuring it was just a bad sprain, and kept humping, actually limping down the trail. The pain got worse. Tam faded into numb exhaustion, then sharp pain; each step was a jolt of electricity. They seemed to go forever. Tam didn’t know what to do but keep walking. It wasn’t until after 0400 that word was passed to drop the bodies. They moved on to a clearing beside the trail, where they collapsed into a loose perimeter with part of Charlie Company. Tam took off his pack and helmet, lay in the grass, and fell instantly asleep, no idea if anybody was on guard, no idea what was going on.

He slept three hours. At 0700 on 21 August, Tam groggily awoke. He noticed the closest GI was thirty feet away. “Hey, where’s 2d Platoon!” A guy from another platoon said the CO had sent them back down the trail to see if they’d been followed. Tam noticed a GI from Charlie Company. The man sat in the grass, knees pulled up, head on them; he was mumbling to himself, “I can’t take this shit anymore, I just can’t take this shit anymore.”

It made Tam suddenly very grateful that he’d missed the ambush and, at the same time, uneasy with guilt that he hadn’t done his part.

The Bravo recon had not been out long; Tam was just getting his spoon into the C ration breakfast he’d heated up when there was a smattering of shots down the trail. It sounded about a hundred yards away; everyone scrambled for rifles and gear. Within minutes, the platoon ran back down the path, hollering, “Gooks, gooks, get out of here!” No one seemed to be giving orders, and they were swept up in the rush. Tam quickly shouldered his ruck and limped along with them, confused and still starving, wondering if this was how they were supposed to behave. It made sense to get away from such an overpowering enemy force, but this was some kind of mob scene. We’re just asking to get ambushed!

Around noon, rumors rippled down the column that they were heading back to Million Dollar Hill, where they would stop. At least they had an objective. Bravo Company was unfamiliar with the local nicknames, and a grunt near Tam mumbled, “Why do they call it Million Dollar Mountain?”

“It’s worth a million dollars when you get there,” someone ventured. “It’s like a safe place.”

By the time Tam limped up to the base of the hill, there were already knots of GIs sprawled in the shade of the trees. He thankfully plopped down under a patch of shade too, and noticed a grunt leaning-sitting on the hillside several yards away. He had glasses, lieutenant bars, a bandolier of M60 ammunition over his shoulder; he was gone, drenched in sweat and staring like a zombie. Tam finally forced himself to stand and started climbing the wide trail that wound up the gradual incline of Million Dollar Hill. He couldn’t make it. A buddy named Johnny Reno came by and put an arm around his shoulder. Tam was a small guy and Johnny wasn’t much taller, but he kept tugging him along. Tam, at the end of his physical and emotional strength, gritted his teeth and started crying, “Hey, thanks, John, thanks, man, I’ll pay ya back.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it.”

It took thirty minutes to struggle to the crest. The grunts were moving like zombies, rigging ponchos in the brush to escape the pounding sun, collapsing in catatonic sleep, mumbling desperate rumors that they were going to be choppered out. Tam noticed one GI at Captain King’s elbow saying he had to get back to LZ Professional to see the reenlistment NCO about getting out of the bush. Down in the valley, they could see Marine Phantoms coming in.

Tam sat down, staring off into space. He vaguely noticed Captain King and a medic standing in front of him. The medic was talking, “… Tam’s been limping all day and night. I think we better get him out of here.…” He suddenly realized they were talking about him. King said, “All right, let’s do it,” and continued on his business. The medic knelt beside Tam, filled out a medevac slip, tied it to his buttonhole, and told him to get aboard the medevac coming in. Tam was stunned, feeling almost like a deserter. The Huey dropped them off at an LZ and, an hour later, Tam was put on a ship for Chu Lai. He ended up in a large tent equipped with operating tables. Medics cut off his boot, took X rays, and much to his surprise, declared he’d suffered a simple break of the fibula bone. He was fixed with a plastic splint and helo’d to Da Nang, where a cast was put on his leg. The next day, he was helo’d out, this time to the 6th Convalescent Hospital, Cam Ranh Bay. Tam’s bizarre odyssey from a battle he had missed did not end there. As part of the Summer Offensive, the NVA had begun launching terrorist rocket attacks on hospitals. Tam lasted two weeks and one raid before the decision was made to further evacuate patients who couldn’t run quickly to the bunkers. He ended up in Japan, from where he expected eventually to rejoin his platoon. Instead, his ward was cleared out to make room for a surge of casualties and he was flown to an Army hospital in the United States. When he was discharged from there, Tam was cut orders for duty in the Panama Canal Zone.

I
n the late morning of 21 August 1969, LtCol Marvin H. Lugger, CO, 2/7 Marines, met with Colonel Codispoti at the new regimental headquarters on LZ Baldy. Codispoti informed Lugger that the Army was in heavy contact in the Hiep Duc Valley and had requested a Marine element to move in and relieve some of the pressure. He himself seemed indifferent to the request and told Lugger to handle the situation as he saw fit. Lugger jumped at the opportunity. With almost four months in command and a new post waiting in two weeks, he had yet to take his battalion to the field for a full-fledged combat operation. Prior to this, they’d been in the Da Nang Rocket Belt.