Death Valley (50 page)

One GI fell dead. Everyone else scrambled for cover. Private Jandecka, under fire for the first time, blindly followed several GIs as they rushed forward and flopped along a bank at the base of the hill, only to find themselves directly under the machine gun which put bursts over them as they pressed against the berm. A second NVA joined in from somewhere on the hill, using a captured M79 to lob grenades across the paddy and into the tree line. Another one of the new guys caught it, a splatter of red-hot shrapnel ripping open his back.

Jandecka had never heard such screams.

The dike that shielded the forward elements of the command group in the trees was about four feet high. Hodierne pressed against it as the M79 rounds began crashing through the branches; he thought, well, at least I don’t
have
to be here. That always made him feel better. The North Vietnamese were so close that he could hear the man snapping open the grenade launcher to eject spent casings and load fresh rounds. He sensed that the NVA were playing for time, that they did not plan to counterattack. The GIs around him felt it too. Many tucked themselves behind a piece of cover, heads down, and that was that. Hodierne commiserated with them: it’s a bad war; this battle has no point; and why get killed for one more dried out, useless rice paddy?

Other grunts were carrying the fight to the enemy. Brave, he thought, just plain brave.

Jandecka was one of those doing more than sitting it out, although his actions were mostly the result of inexperience and nerves. Pinned down under the NVA gun, he imagined some of the men slipping around the flank. He crawled down the berm to their left to keep it covered, then pushed up to get a good look. Almost as soon as he did, he saw the brush stir ahead of him. In that instant, an AK47 cut loose. Jandecka tumbled backwards as the rounds slammed squarely into his chest; then he quickly swept his hand over his shirt and realized there was no blood. The NVA had fired low and he’d caught only a spray of ricocheting pebbles and rock-hard dirt. GIs beside him were returning the fire; they couldn’t see the M60 position for all the brush, but men across the paddy could see the smoke and muzzle flash and hollered directions as the men along the berm blindly pitched grenades. Jandecka threw a few at the spider hole. It seemed futile.

Captain Gayler personally fired two LAWs into the machine gun position, but they had no effect. It was a boiling day and the artillery recon sergeant, crouched with the company headquarters, finally muttered angrily, “I’m tired of this.” With that, he scooped up two hand grenades and clambered over the berm. He began easing up to the spider hole along the cover of the dikes. At the same time, Private Brantley—the soldier who’d been chased into the infantry for fear of a court-martial—was also moving forward. Along with his squad leader sergeant, he pushed through the hedgerow and, sweaty and scratchy, pulled the pin on a frag. He could hear the expended brass ejecting from the M60, but when he rose up, another hidden NVA pumped off a burst from his AK47. Brantley flung himself down as his squad leader emptied his M16 at the sound, either killing or cowing the NVA; then Brantley got up again. He was looking right at the North Vietnamese in the spider hole. The NVA was hefting the M60 towards him. In that instant of silence, the recon sergeant made his break; he dashed across the last clearing amid shouts of, “Get your ass down!,” then jumped the berm where Jandecka’s group was crouched. Brantley lobbed his frag into the spider hole and ducked, just as the sergeant pitched in his and spun around, diving back behind the berm.

There was a muffled explosion. Brantley didn’t even waste time to look; he was convinced he’d killed the sniper. Jandecka, however, heard GIs shout that they saw the NVA leap from the hole right after the
grenades went off and run bleeding into the thicket behind him. As the grunts discovered later, the spider hole had a slanted floor that led to a small hole in the corner. The grenades had rolled into this angled chamber.

It was maddening.

The NVA may or may not have received a fatal wound. He stopped shooting, which was the break Jandecka’s group needed. Jandecka ran with his heart in his throat across the paddy, then jumped the four-foot berm. To everyone’s surprise, there was not a shot fired at them.

As Brantley and his squad leader shimmied back through the hedgerow, the NVA with the M79 opened fire again. Brantley crouched with Staff Sergeant Sheppard, returning a little fire, until he suddenly realized they were all alone. He sputtered out, “Shep, the motherfuckers’ve left us!” to which Sheppard calmly replied, “Yeah, man, it’s time we got out of here too.” Which is just what they did.

Bravo Company collected itself back in the tree grove; Sergeant Allison of 1st Platoon took a small party back down the footpath to secure an LZ in the elephant grass. The dead man had been left in the open, but thirteen others had shrapnel wounds or heat exhaustion. The LZ was a slight basin behind the trees; the GIs popped smoke, and a couple Hueys were able to come in quickly, take the casualties aboard, and kick out a resupply of ammo. Lieutenant Maurel of 3d Platoon was among those medevacked with light shrapnel wounds, and Staff Sergeant Sheppard took over.

No one was firing, so while the rest of Bravo Company flaked out under what passed for shade, Lieutenant Monroe and the platoon sergeants joined Captain Gayler; they were the only two officers left. They sat amid the trees, helmets off, soaked with sweat. They were going to hit the knoll again, but this time from another angle. The squad that was guarding their rucksacks at their camp was called up to reinforce. No Cobra gunships were available, and air and arty could not be employed because the Marines were only a few hundred meters away and their position was not clearly known.

It had been three hours since the fight began.

Bravo Company moved out again, treading cautiously. They came under fire from the hill as soon as they tried to outflank it. Staff Sergeant Sheppard’s platoon had the rear this time, with little to do except wait. Jandecka dragged himself under a small plant with large leaves to escape the sun’s blaze; he sipped water from his canteen top, sloshed it around his parched mouth, then spit it back in the canteen. Finally, word was passed to move forward and join the line facing the hill.

Another GI had been killed getting into position.

But the NVA had been quieted, and the lead platoon began its move up the brushy hillside of terraced dikes. The NVA let them get strung out, then laid down a withering fire which knocked down two GIs in their tracks and pinned down the fifteen men in the lead. The platoon sergeant was up front with them; he found himself pressed against a dike as the NVA with the M79 fired grenades down at him. M79 rounds spin-arm after fifteen meters of flight; the NVA was so close that his grenades were slamming against the dike above the sergeant’s head and ricocheting off without exploding. The sergeant threw grenades back at the thumping blast of the grenade launcher, but the NVA was crouched invisibly among some vines and the frags did not reach him. The sergeant hollered for more grenades.

Sergeant Allison collected frags by going from man to man in his platoon, which was watching the flanks. He carried the frags up a small rise; the crest was too exposed to get over, but he was able to toss the grenades to a GI on the other side. Allison did not see what happened next. Hodierne did. The GI nearest the stranded group was told to crawl to them with the grenades. He refused and moved back to where the medics had dragged the newly wounded. He was moaning to a medic about his nerves when an NVA M79 exploded nearby and he went down with a piece of shrapnel, a Purple Heart, and a ticket out. Nothing’s fair.

In the tree line, Brantley lay with his squad RTO as Captain Gayler polled his platoon leaders on the radio. Their consensus was that it was time to get out; there were probably only a dozen NVA, but they were dug in and held good fields of fire. Gayler wanted men from each platoon to flank the hill and provide cover fire so the stranded men could crawl back. Brantley got off the radio and called to the GI nearest him, Private Doughty, to join that group. “Keep your ass down and if you guys can’t do the job, get the hell back!”

Doughty was a steady dude. “Fuck it,” he shouted back, referring to the NVA fire, “it don’t mean nothin’!”

Doughty tagged Jandecka and they decided to crawl forward to the right of the point platoon. There was an old French hootch, with a sniper in the rafters. Doughty borrowed a grenade launcher and pumped two rounds into the hootch; then came the distinct clatter of a weapon hitting the hard-packed floor. They pushed off, Doughty in the lead as they crawled along a hedgerow that led up the hill. They reached a clearing. Jandecka slinked into a spider hole, feeling too exposed for
comfort, but Doughty kept going and disappeared into the brush. A minute later, there was a burst of automatic fire, then the terrible racket of fire being exchanged. Then it was quiet again. Jandecka had squeezed a couple of bursts at the sound of the NVA weapons, then sat tight, weapon ready in his hands, glancing nervously into the thick vegetation around him.

Suddenly, Doughty dragged himself out of the bushes, yelling, “Charley, I’m hit, Charley, I’m hit!” He collapsed in front of the hole. Jandecka hollered back for help and Frank Eates ran up with two GIs; they grabbed Doughty and dragged him back, running in a fast crouch, while Jandecka came out last covering the rear.

Doughty had about eight rounds in him.

They were still trading M16 for AK47 bursts in the tree line when Brantley hustled back to where Doughty lay. He was on his back in the brittle grass, stripped of all gear except an M16 bandolier around his waist, breathing shallowly, eyes open but unfocused. He should have died on the spot; Brantley wondered if he’d forced himself to crawl back so he could die among his friends. A buddy knelt beside him, shirt off, cigarette jammed in his mouth, face streaked with sweat; with one hand, he clasped Doughty’s hand, with the other he held a piece of C-rat cardboard over Doughty’s face to shield him from the sun. There was little the medics could do. Hodierne kneeled there, photographing the scene.

Brantley said he was sorry. Doughty’s eyes were open, but there was no way to tell if he heard.

No medevac was immediately available.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Doughty was dead within minutes. He just stopped breathing, his eyes still open, and Brantley slumped into the grass, eyes brimming with tears. He was awash in hurt and guilt, and anger.

In the big picture, Private Doughty might have died in vain; but he and the few others who’d moved forward had put out enough fire to allow the fifteen men pinned on the hillside to crawl back. They had left the two who’d been shot, and no one had been able to check on them. Captain Gayler didn’t want to pull back until he knew for-sure there was nothing else for them to do. Several troopers donned gas masks, heaved CS grenades at the knoll, and rushed forward into the cloud. They ran back within minutes to tell the captain that both men were definitely dead.

Gayler passed the word to withdraw.

The medics rolled Doughty into a body bag, zipped it up, and a strung-out Brantley helped carry it as they straggled back down the trail.

PFC Tom Bailey stepped atop the berm and instantly collapsed in the sudden torrent of AK47 fire from the facing hill. In the next moment, his squad leader, Cpl John Reevs, bounded forward to pull him back. He too was blown down. Their corpsman, Doc Johnson, scrambled up next and helped get the two Marines to cover behind the berm. He hunched low and wrapped bandages: Bailey had an AK round through his neck, Reevs had two in his gut.

The rest of the two squads frantically ran from the open paddy as dust kicked up around them. The bouldered slope ahead seemed to be blazing with a thousand rifles. More rounds cracked through the air from the tree line to their left. They threw themselves down along the grassy green dike.

They were pinned.

Besardi and his buddy Sterling found themselves to the left of the mound—where the worst of the crossfire was hitting—trying to practically burrow into the berm. The air above them was electrified. RPGs slam-banged in, shrapnel whizzing in all directions, and Besardi thought simply and horribly: Jesus fucking Christ. Marines along the berm returned fire, shoving M16s and, maybe, helmet and eyes over the dike; they’d squeeze off a second’s worth of fire, then tuck back down as the AK rounds cracked back. Besardi and Sterling emptied magazines in two or three bursts, getting quick glimpses of the NVA among the boulders, but having no time to aim at them. The sun was hard over them.

Besardi was hunched back down when a terrific explosion suddenly bounced him and Sterling back into the paddy. Besardi lay there, out of touch with his senses, ears ringing, eyes closed, his entire body numb. Only his mind was clear. Am I dead? His buddy Joe Johnson was screaming and it cut through the fog, “You guys all right, you guys all right!”

Besardi realized he was alive.

He also realized he was uninjured, and made a dash on all fours back to the protection of the dike. Chico was firing his M60, and Turner and P. K. Smith were firing theirs; Besardi noticed several men trying
to bring back the wounded Bailey and Reevs. They were to the right of the mound, shielded somewhat from the crossfire.

Ball, Dean, and a third Marine were laboring with Reevs in a poncho, and they were hollering to Besardi, “C’mon, Charly, we gotta get John back!” To reach them, Besardi would have to scramble away from the cover of the dike and rush around the knoll. He froze. His buddies were stooped with their comrade, shouting for help; their faces were a mixture of anger and pleading. Well, fuck it, Besardi thought, here I go; and he jumped into the paddy, landed painfully, and scrambled up.

It should have been a five-minute walk back to the tree line with the village well, but it turned into a death march. Even with four men dragging the poncho, it was a load, and the paddy mud slowed each step. The sun soaked them. Reevs grimaced from within the poncho, his voice a strained mumble against the pain, “Leave me alone, leave me alone, I’m gonna die, go back and help those guys out.” They answered in labored gasps, “Naw, John, man, you’re gonna be all right.… We’re gonna getcha back, we’re gonna getcha back.”