Grunts (44 page)

Be that as it may, Captain McElwain knew, on the morning of November 11, that Task Force Black’s survival depended on forging and holding a strong perimeter. Knowing that time was short, he radioed Captain Hardy and had him move his two platoons back to Charlie Company’s position. McElwain’s Weapons Platoon, under Lieutenant Ray Flynn, and his 1st Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Ed Kelley, were both still on the hill. He radioed Flynn and Kelley and told them to come off the hill and join up with everyone else at the base of the hill, where the perimeter was forming roughly around Brown’s platoon. Ordinarily, Flynn’s mortar crews would have had their tubes set up and firing. So far, though, they had remained inactive because the trees on the hill were so dense that the crews had no fields of fire. The situation was now so serious that Flynn’s people buried their mortars, picked up their rifles, and dashed down the hill. They had to fight their way to the rest of the company. Most of the soldiers even left behind their rucksacks, taking only weapons and ammo with them.

The same was true for Kelley’s riflemen and machine gunners. Knowing the company’s predicament, they moved with great haste, in rushes, down the hill through the bamboo-riddled foliage. “We were in a . . . line going down,” Private Lambertson remembered. “We’d stop and then move on a little bit. We could hear all the firing down below.” Lieutenant Kelley constantly prodded his men to keep moving. The group was hunched over, pushing through the brambles, adrenaline coursing through their veins. “We literally fought our way down to where the rest of the company was,” Kelley later said. “It was like a hundred damned Harley motorcycles all revving up. That’s the only way I can explain the noise. It was absolute bedlam.”

The volume of enemy fire was considerable. One of Kelley’s most experienced men, Staff Sergeant Jerry Curry, caught some mortar shrapnel on the way down the hill. “Twenty-two months I never got a scratch until I got to that damned hill,” he said. Curry was a prime example of a born infantryman. He’d been with the unit in combat almost continuously for that two-year period. A natural outdoorsman who had dropped out of high school and joined the Army in 1964, Curry had few equals when it came to combat savvy. He was so at ease in the jungle that he often led small groups of handpicked soldiers on recon patrols hundreds of meters away from Charlie Company, almost like a modified LRRP team. He liked combat so much that his greatest fear was being plucked from the unit and forced to go home. His admiring men referred to him as “Sergeant Rock” after the cartoon character. On this morning the shrapnel tore into one of his legs. “I just felt my leg kick up and it was numb the rest of the fight.” Blood steadily trickled down into his sock but, true to form, the cigar-chomping NCO hardly paid any attention to his wound.

As the platoon moved and shot, some of the grunts even caught glimpses out of their peripheral vision of the enemy. At one point, Private Lambertson actually came face-to-face with two NVA soldiers. “We just looked at each other and kept going,” he said. The odd moment passed quickly, as Lambertson hastened to keep up with his buddies. Why did the enemies refrain from shooting at each other? Perhaps they could not bring themselves to kill face-to-face. Or maybe the opportunity was so fleeting, and so instantaneous, that they scarcely had the chance to open fire.

Kelley was in such a hurry to reinforce the company that he bypassed an NVA machine gun. It was so close that the lieutenant could see “the grass in front of [it] parting” as the enemy gunner fired. “In retrospect, I should have gone ahead and taken care of that then because it was a thorn in our side the rest of the fight.” The gun poured continuous and distressingly accurate fire on Task Force Black. In spite of this fire, Kelley and his people made it to the company, having fought there every step of the way. In the view of Sergeant David Watson, a fire team leader, it was like forcing the NVA to “open a door and then shut it.”
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By about 1045, with the addition of Kelley’s platoon, the mortarmen, and Hardy’s Dog Company troopers, the Americans had established a makeshift perimeter about one hundred meters long and forty meters wide. Bamboo, tree trunks, and bushes offered the only cover. Lieutenant Richard Elrod, the company’s artillery forward observer, and Captain McElwain both called down accurate artillery fire that played a major role in keeping the enemy at bay. Elrod, in particular, was all over the place, crawling and sprinting from one position to another. His RTO was killed and Elrod was wounded several times but, knowing the vital importance of the fire support to Task Force Black’s survival, he kept at it. Many of his shells detonated within twenty-five meters of the American lines, even wounding some of the Sky Soldiers. Air strikes, coming in at greater range, only added to the devastation.

By now, Captain McElwain had ordered Lieutenant Cecil to fight his way back up the trail to the task force position. To cover the withdrawal, Cecil ordered his men to place claymore mines in front of themselves, crawl back as far as the detonation cord would go, and prepare to hit the clackers that detonated the mines. Each mine weighed about a pound and contained dozens of BB-sized steel balls. Many rifle platoons did not carry them on patrol, but Cecil’s did. Against the objections of many in his platoon, he had forced his men to carry the mines. He himself carried two.

Here, in the middle of this fight to the death, the unpopular order paid off. When the soldiers detonated their mines, steel balls filled the air, shredding many NVA attackers. One enemy soldier was even in the process of trying to sneak up and turn a mine in the direction of its American owner when it exploded. The young North Vietnamese soldier literally disintegrated into nothingness, as if he had never existed. This and the other explosions staggered the NVA, giving many of the soldiers in Cecil’s platoon some time to fall back. “I’m convinced, to this day, that me insisting on every man packing a claymore . . . saved us,” Cecil later commented. “The claymores gave us some breathing room. When you hear that thing go off in the jungle and then smell the cordite, that’s a deal breaker if you’re the attacker.”

This hardly guaranteed the 2nd Platoon’s escape, though. The most difficult aspect of the withdrawal was moving the wounded and the dead, an awkward, dangerous, and physically exhausting task. Spec-4 Kelley, the machine gunner, bought his comrades precious time to drag away several wounded men who could not walk on their own. In the process, according to one eyewitness, “Kelley was suddenly wounded himself. He was out in front of the perimeter and moved back [twenty] meters, firing his machine gun as he moved. The enemy shifted their attention to Kelley, who was raising havoc with his weapon. He fired away with long, sweeping bursts.” Other grunts laid down cover fire with their rifles for Kelley. The M60 gunner seemed oblivious to everything. With a look of intense concentration, he focused on shooting at a seemingly endless stream of NVA soldiers who were moving through the trees, trying to get him. “Kelley stayed with his weapon, cutting down one North Vietnamese after another as they charged him.” They finally succeeded in cutting him off and killing him.

Lieutenant Cecil saw two of his men lying badly wounded several meters away, in what was now NVA territory, almost in the spot where the battle had originally begun. Two separate times, he made himself a prime target by crawling out to grab them by the armpits and drag them to safety. As he did so, he felt groggy from the concussion of several nearby rocket explosions and he flinched under the weight of more near-miss bullets than he could ever truly appreciate. “It’s the typical adrenaline story,” he said. “In normal times I couldn’t have carried those guys from here to the door.” After retrieving the first man, he was nearly overwhelmed with fear and wondered if he could bring himself to go back into the kill zone for the second man. “Of course there was . . . only one answer to that. You’ve gotta go ’cos you’re the lieutenant.” He did exactly that. Most of the 2nd Platoon soldiers made it back to McElwain’s defensive position. Cecil had lost four killed. Everyone else, except for one man, was wounded.
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Within the perimeter, the remnants of Cecil’s platoon were in the middle (most of his wounded men simply kept fighting). Brown was on the right and Kelley on the left. Task Force Black was surrounded but intact. Nearly everyone was hugging the ground, getting as low as possible. Much of the time, if they rose up even a foot or two, they risked getting blown away. The NVA attacked from nearly every direction. In the recollection of one soldier, these attacks “were characterized by an intense, concentrated barrage of rockets, mortar and rifle grenade fire immediately followed by a relentless infantry attack. The attackers surged through the bamboo toward [the] perimeter.” The Americans unloaded on them with rifles, machine guns, and grenades in the direction of the movement. The troopers had to be very careful to make sure the grenades did not bounce off trees and roll back in their own direction. “An AK fired at me and four rounds . . . [went] in the ground along my leg,” Sergeant Watson recalled. “We were fighting pretty heavily. Everybody [was], like, laying in a certain position, moving back and forth, trying to get lower. The leaves were covering us, which was probably a good thing.”

Not far away, Watson’s platoon leader, Ed Kelley, was imploring his machine gunners to fire short bursts and then displace before the enemy could pinpoint their location. Kelley’s mouth was dry from fright or adrenaline, he was not sure which. Behind him, wounded and dying men were screaming in terror (the memory of their desperate shrieks haunted him for many decades). Now, he was humbled by the responsibility of command. “What do we do now, L-T?” many of his young soldiers kept asking. This was the essence of combat leadership. In life-or-death situations, soldiers follow an officer or NCO, not always out of military discipline but because they have confidence in their judgment. Lieutenant Kelley was frightened out of his wits but, like any good leader, he knew he could not show that face of fear to his soldiers. “I was just as concerned about how we were gonna get out of there as they were. But they were looking to me. I was moving about pretty much all the time, shifting people here, shifting people there.”

His machine gunners were not following his orders quickly enough, and this allowed the NVA to zero in on them with B40 rockets. One of the rockets scored a direct hit on a team, vaporizing two men. “B40 rockets, you wouldn’t believe the power in them,” Staff Sergeant Curry said. “You get a direct hit, you’re gone, ain’t nothing left. They got hit and they just disintegrated.” A mortar round came in and exploded close to Private Lambertson’s head, bursting his eardrums, temporarily deafening him. Blood streamed from his damaged ears. The same round, plus an RPG, wounded Sergeant Watson, who had fragments in his jaw and an eye swollen shut. Sergeant Curry stayed close to the deafened Lambertson, pointing out where and when to shoot.

Most of the time, the NVA remained unseen, in the trees, like menacing apparitions. “The North Vietnamese presented an eerie picture as they moved ever so slowly,” an after action report stated. “The enemy would spread apart branches, fire one round, and then freeze.” Some of them even got into the American lines. One of them was running right past a shotgun-toting soldier. The American pointed and fired, cutting the NVA in half. Spec-4 Cox was lying on his back, against a log, looking for targets, when he saw two of them materialize right in front of his spot. In that instant, he was sure he would die. He only hoped the pain would not be too great when they shot him. “One of ’em looked right at me and I looked right back at him. We just sort of made eye contact. He was no more than . . . ten feet away.” Before Cox could aim and shoot his rifle, the man and his partner took off into the trees.

Not long after this, Cox saw Captain Hardy walking toward him. The Dog Company CO was everywhere that day, braving the intense enemy fire, inspiring—and worrying—his soldiers with his courage. Tall and lanky, Hardy was the sort of person whose strides were so long that, when he walked fast, he almost appeared to be running. Several times that morning, his men and his fellow officers begged him to get down. As he loped up to Cox, the young mortarman could hardly believe that the angry enemy bullets and fragments missed the upright captain. The officer peered down at Cox and a nearby soldier: “How are you jaybirds doing down here?”

“We’re doing fine, sir,” Cox replied.

“That’s good to know,” he said breezily and resumed his odyssey, moving from one spot to another to make sure the line was intact. Captain McElwain later saw him running, shooting his rifle, and hollering obscenities at the enemy. When Hardy rested for a moment next to a spot where McElwain was lying, the West Virginian said to him: “Slow down, Abe. You can’t beat them yourself.” Hardy just smiled and took off in the direction of Lieutenant Kelley’s platoon. One of the men was standing up, yelling at the NVA. Another was badly wounded, wandering around in shock, babbling. Kelley tackled both of them and tried to calm them.

Nearby, a gravely wounded man was sobbing and screaming: “I don’t wanna die!” Lieutenant Kelley watched as Hardy stood up, trotted over to where Sergeant Watson was lying wounded and half dazed, and knelt beside the NCO. Watson greatly admired the young captain for his courage and his military bearing. He gazed up at Hardy. The captain yelled some instructions to a group of men, glanced down at Sergeant Watson, and stood up. As he did so, an NVA tree sniper, probably no more than a couple dozen meters away, noticed the movement, aimed at Captain Hardy, and squeezed off several shots. “He took three rounds,” Watson remembered, “one in the head, the throat and the chest and he died on top of me and I couldn’t move him with my arms.” Somebody had to manhandle the captain’s lifeless body off Watson. His dead eyes stared vacantly at Watson, whose trauma over the horrible incident never went away.
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