Grunts (43 page)

He and his grunts knew the NVA were close. They had skirmished with them several times in the last few days. Moreover, as the troopers of Task Force Black had silently patrolled this jungle, they had found blood trails, empty bunkers, fresh feces, discarded equipment, artificial stairs cut into hill-sides, and, most alarming of all, live enemy communication wire. Beyond all of these visual indicators, the paratroopers could just
feel
the presence of the enemy, particularly the spooky sensation of having eyes upon them. A few of the Americans could even smell the NVA. The mood among the grunts was tinged with the ambivalence of an impending fight. On the one hand, as aggressive combat soldiers, the men were excited at the prospect of a chance to destroy their elusive enemies. On the other hand, everyone understood that, no matter the outcome of the looming battle, death and wounds awaited many of them. “No one knew exactly what to expect, but we expected it would be something big,” McElwain said.

November 10 was a tense but quiet night. In the morning, Captain McElwain received orders from Lieutenant Colonel David Schumacher, the battalion commander, to follow the enemy communication wire and hook up with Task Force Blue, a similar-sized element consisting of the battalion’s Alpha Company and the other platoon from Dog Company. Unspoken was the expectation that the two task forces would draw the enemy into a sizable battle that would produce a big body count to fulfill the strategic expectations of General Westmoreland and his White House superiors.

Captain McElwain’s plan was to send part of his Third Platoon, under Lieutenant Charles Brown, down the hill several meters to recon the laager site, as well as Task Force Black’s anticipated route of advance, to make sure the enemy was not waiting in ambush. McElwain understood, and appreciated, that moving along trails was dangerous and to be avoided under most circumstances. But the vegetation in this part of Vietnam was so thick that his unit simply had to move along trails or any other small openings the jungle might occasionally offer. When Brown’s patrol was finished, the captain planned to move his company along a narrow ridgeline while the two Dog Company platoons, under the control of their commander, Captain Abe Hardy, moved along a parallel ridgeline.
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At 0800, Brown and his men hoisted their weapons, spread out into a suitable patrol formation, and negotiated their way down the hill. They had not even gone fifty meters when the point man spotted an NVA soldier just down the trail. Intrepid North Vietnamese trail watchers such as this soldier often hid along obvious movement routes, watching, gathering information on the Americans, even shadowing them as they moved. The point man opened fire and wounded the enemy soldier, who then took off. Lieutenant Brown wanted to pursue the man’s blood trail and radioed that request to Captain McElwain, but the captain told him to stay put. For all McElwain knew, the enemy soldier was luring Brown’s platoon away from the company, into an ambush. At Dak To, American commanders constantly had to beware of these tactics, which, after all, were the product of the enemy’s superior initiative and strategic position in the Central Highlands. Since they controlled most of the ground, they could usually do battle at the time and place of their choosing, for maximum advantage. The Americans knew the enemy’s goal was to separate and annihilate a platoon- or company-sized unit. To foil this menacing possibility, good commanders like McElwain were intent on keeping their units together, albeit at the expense of mobility and flexibility. What’s more, on this morning he was mindful of his orders to link up with Task Force Blue, something he could not do if his unit was absorbed in a rescue operation for a cutoff platoon.

McElwain’s most experienced platoon leader was First Lieutenant Jerry Cecil, a member of the West Point class of 1966, a group made famous by a
Newsweek
article (and subsequent book) on them. Twenty-four years old, Cecil hailed from a rural Kentucky family with a long tradition of military service. For him, West Point offered a free college education, a chance to serve the country, and an exciting career as a soldier. He had thrived there and, like many of his infantry officer classmates, he was a graduate of Ranger School, one of the most formidable combat training courses in existence. He had been in command of the 2nd Platoon since June. Knowing Cecil’s background, his experience, his knowledge of this terrain, and his quality as a small-unit leader, McElwain decided to put his platoon on point after Brown’s encounter with the trail watcher. This decision reflected Cecil’s excellence more than any deficiency on Brown’s part. Brown was a fine officer, just not as experienced as Cecil.

Lieutenant Cecil and the nineteen other men who comprised his platoon slowly walked down the trail, passed Brown’s group, and moved on. Like most of the other men in Task Force Black, the 2nd Platoon had trained and fought together for several weeks. They were as close as brothers, and they had developed a strong sense of teamwork in combat. The jungle they traversed grew progressively thicker as they descended the hill, the trees taller, the shadows longer. Cecil had several men deployed on either side of the trail in a cloverleaf formation to guard against ambush from the flanks. For several more meters, the soldiers followed the communication wire. Then the point man, Private First Class John Rolfe, spotted another trail watcher. Rolfe raised his arm to signal for a halt and turned his head slightly back with a finger against his lips to call for quiet. He turned back again to the front, took aim on the NVA soldier, and fired one shot. The soldier went down.

The Americans moved a few more meters down the trail to look at the dead man. Cecil radioed back a report to Captain McElwain and he came up to have a look, too. Immediately the two officers and everyone else noticed how well equipped and fresh the dead NVA appeared to be. Lieutenant Cecil noticed that his AK-47 rifle had Cosmoline on it, indicating a brand-new weapon, and speculated that he had probably just come south. Captain McElwain knew that this probably meant that a new, reinforced enemy regiment was somewhere nearby. A chill ran down his spine. “They’re out there, Jerry,” he told Lieutenant Cecil. “This really is looking bad. I can feel ’em. We’re gonna have to be really careful going down this ridge.” Cecil readily agreed.

His platoon resumed its steady advance, in the same manner as before. The ridge narrowed. The sides of the trail grew steeper, making the footing tricky for Cecil’s flankers. They covered several dozen more meters, to a saddle of low ground that formed at the bottom of the ridge, before the ground sloped upward into the next ridge. All around them were tree trunks, bamboo groves, and tangled green foliage. The sun could hardly penetrate this canopy. The air was moist and sodden. An eerie, unnatural silence hung over the jungle. “All the sights and sounds of the jungle just ceased,” Cecil recalled, “you’d normally hear monkeys . . . walking through the jungle . . . you’d hear birds flying.” Instead, now, there was nothing, as if the animals were hushed into an awed or frightened silence by something, or someone. The quiet was so alien it was almost earsplitting.

Every member of the 2nd Platoon knew that the silence meant big trouble, none more so than Cecil. He had learned much about ambushes at Ranger School, and had even taught ambush techniques at Fort Hood. He knew, with a powerful certainty, that danger was imminent. He thrust his clenched fist in the air, signaling his men to stop, and then twirled his index finger, ordering them to fall back into a mutually supporting semicircle. The lieutenant whispered: “Guys, I think we’re in it. The gooks are here. When I give the signal, start . . . spraying at your feet like a garden hose.” He figured this would kill any potential ambushers with grazing fire.

Lieutenant Cecil raised his CAR-15 rifle and opened fire, as did several others. At that exact moment, a host of hidden NVA soldiers began shooting, too. “You’ve never seen a Fourth of July display like this one—the noise was like ten million firecrackers,” Spec-4 Ken Cox, a mortar forward observer who was standing a few paces away from Cecil, later commented. “They literally stood up in front of us,” Cecil said. “It was like walking into a dark room, turning on a light, and seeing someone there. They literally stood up within arm’s reach.” The adrenaline rush was profound, almost like a narcotic, as the body’s natural self-preservation mechanisms kicked in. Enemy soldiers popped out of holes and materialized out of the bushes. Everyone on both sides poured out as much fire as he could. Many of the platoon members were already on the ground when the shooting began. Those who were still standing flung themselves onto the trail and blazed away with their M16s. Quite a few of the NVA went down. Others tried to press forward, crawling or hurling themselves at the Americans. Intense enemy machine-gun, rifle, and rocket fire swept up and down the column. The AK-47 fire was so thick that the distinctive cracking sound of the enemy rifles sounded, to some men, like bullwhips snapping. Some of the fire hit home, wounding or killing grunts. One trooper caught a round in the face, instantly blowing out the back of his head in a red spray.

Spec-4 Jerry Kelley, one of Cecil’s machine gunners, was with the point element, right in the worst of the kill zone. Most platoon leaders preferred to place their machine gunners in the middle of their formation for the sake of protection and flexibility, but on this day Cecil had fortuitously put Kelley’s team up front where they were in a position to do major damage to the attacking NVA. The machine gunner was leaning on his trigger, pouring deadly fire into the shapes of enemy soldiers. “Oh my God, they’re everywhere!” he roared. “Here they come!” He alternately stood and squatted along the trail, firing long bursts.
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In the meantime, Lieutenant Cecil was keeping his platoon together as best he could. With his RTO in tow, he lunged around, telling his men where to position themselves and what to do. In his recollection, he was attempting “to get some kind of perimeter that straddles the trail and hugs over to the right and left as it drops off. It’s obviously pandemonium, chaos, shooting.” Spec-4 Cox saw him repeatedly expose himself to enemy fire as he directed the battle. “This is when Lieutenant Cecil becomes the hero that he is, as far as I’m concerned,” Cox later commented. “That guy stood up and placed everybody. He walked. He didn’t run, but he walked fast and he placed everybody. He . . . made sure somebody was covering the wounded. He put that small perimeter in place, the whole time talking on the radio with the company commander.” When it came to combat, infantry officers like Cecil were taught to guard against inertia, to do something—maybe even anything—no matter the circumstances. In this perilous situation, that philosophy proved appropriate. With his flurry of activity, the young West Pointer penetrated through the inherent confusion of this horrendous firefight and held the platoon together as a cohesive fighting entity. He also personally shot several enemy soldiers who were charging his position.

Lieutenant Cecil and his men did not yet know it, but they were at the open end of an NVA horseshoe-shaped ambush. The enemy had deployed the better part of a battalion along either side and in front of the trail where the saddle morphed into the higher ground. “Had we gone another thirty or forty yards, we would have been completely surrounded,” Cox said. This would have put them right into the NVA kill zone. Few, if any, would have survived. Instead they had stopped short before the enemy could bait them into this trap. This was not the result of luck. These troopers were experienced, well led, and wise to the ways of the NVA. Because of deduction, prior experiences, and pure intuition, they stopped short of the kill zone, forcing the enemy to spring their ambush in the thicker foliage around the trail, where the Americans had a chance to fight back on something approaching even terms.

Even as the fighting raged, Lieutenant Cecil was on the radio, hollering over the din, reporting what was happening to Captain McElwain, who was about one hundred yards away, back up on the hill. At first, Cecil thought he was up against a squad, then a platoon, and then some sort of undetermined larger unit. When the enemy fire showed no signs of abating, McElwain grew concerned. He called Lieutenant Brown and ordered him to reinforce Cecil, but enemy opposition was so formidable that Brown and his people could only get within shouting distance of Cecil’s platoon. Moreover, enemy rifle, machine-gun, rocket, and mortar fire was now coming from the front and both sides. This meant that the NVA was enveloping Task Force Black, attempting to surround and destroy the unit. “It was difficult to see the enemy,” an after action report explained. “The jungle was closing in on the troopers as the enemy, completely covered with natural foliage, moved forward.” Copying a tactic from their brethren at Hill 724, some of the NVA even tied themselves into the trees and poured intense fire down on Task Force Black. One of them dropped a grenade between Cecil and his RTO, Preston Prince, wounding both of them. Cecil got hit in the left hip, Prince in the right. They looked up and shot the NVA. His dead body tumbled out of the tree and hung several feet above the trail.

About half an hour after the battle erupted, Captain McElwain and his command group moved from the hill to link up with Brown’s platoon. The captain could now see firsthand how desperate the fighting had become. He sensed that, somewhere out there in the trees, the enemy was moving along adjacent ridges, trying to get between the various American platoons to destroy each one of them in detail. This was exactly what they had done at the disastrous Battle of the Slopes in June. He understood that Task Force Black was now in serious danger of experiencing the same fate. To forestall such a bloodbath, McElwain knew that he had to get the entire task force together, into one continuous, defensible perimeter.

He actually found this to be a bit frustrating. McElwain, like many other combat arms officers of his generation, was taught to fight aggressively—close with the enemy and destroy them through fire and maneuver. “I was eager to . . . fight in battles instead of going into defensive positions. That’s the way I had learned in all my experiences, was to fix the enemy, maneuver against him, and destroy him.” In Vietnam’s Central Highlands, though, that was not the name of the game. Here such aggressive tactics invited massacre because they made it easier for the NVA to surround units, fight them at close enough range to neutralize American firepower, and then inflict horrendous casualties on the GIs. Instead, the Americans, especially after the Slopes, learned, upon making contact, to peel back into a perimeter, hold it, and unleash their firepower at the communists, in hopes of keeping them at bay and inflicting a large body count. These tactics, effective though they undeniably were, reflected the unhappy reality that, in the Highlands, the enemy held the strategic initiative. By and large, the communists chose where they wanted to fight and they controlled most of the terrain. The Americans controlled only enclaves. Only in this sort of environment could such defensive tactics make sense.
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