The Magnificent Bastards (22 page)

“We fixed bayonets and went for it,” Captain Livingston said of Echo Company’s assault on Dai Do. Echo Company did not advance from An Lac behind a smoke screen, nor did it enjoy a rolling barrage to keep NVA heads down. Once again, there were problems with the artillery. Echo’s new FO, GySgt. James Eggleston, who was serving his second of four combat tours, noted that “all I was able to get out of Dong Ha before the assault was just a half-assed prep, maybe thirty rounds for effect from a one-oh-five battery. Hell, that was it.” During the fight itself, Eggleston spotted NVA on the west side of the tributary about a thousand meters away. “I got one round of Willie Peter on them, then a fire support coordinator, a lieutenant in Dong Ha, cease-fired the goddamn mission because he said they were ARVN up there. Those weren’t ARVN, I’ll guarantee you that. Me and that lieutenant had some hard words over the phone.”

Coordination with the ARVN, which did have units on the other side of the creek, was always difficult. Captain Anthony C. Conlon, commander of H/3/12, a 105mm battery at the DHCB, wrote of another problem: “The magnitude of the artillery support [was such that] Hotel Battery expended all ammunition on several occasions during the battle. Needless to say, when calls for fire from BLT 2/4 were corning in and we could not fire due to the paucity of ammunition, I cannot express how helpless we felt.”

Nothing could replace the value of constant, coordinated artillery to an infantry assault, but there was some compensation in this instance: BLT 2/4 had finally been given priority for CAS. The Phantoms and Sky hawks had practically been stacked above Dai Do before this fourth frontal assault commenced on the fortified hamlet. “We were piling in on there,” wrote Livingston, “and, meanwhile, we were using weapons organic to the company, i.e., the M79s, LAWs, rocket launchers, mortars—the whole bag. We were using anything we could find that would shoot, and then it was high-diddle-diddle-right-up-the-middle right across that same paddy again.”

When the NVA in Dai Do opened fire at 0715 on 2 May, Captain Livingston and the company gunny, GySgt. Roscoe Chandler, dropped behind one of the burial mounds dotting the five hundred open meters between An Lac and Dai Do. The lead elements of Echo Company were within two hundred meters of Dai Do. The NVA entrenched in the hedgerows at the hamlet’s edge had waited until the Marines were that close before commencing fire. The first volley included RPGs aimed at the numerous radio antennas in the company command group. Livingston and Chandler kept their heads down momentarily as one explosion after another, about eighteen altogether, virtually disintegrated the burial mound they were hunkered behind.

Captain Livingston had Lieutenant Sims’s Echo Two forward on the left flank, and Lieutenant Jones’s Echo Three on the right. Lieutenant Cecil and Echo One were in reserve. The Marines in the assault platoons could hear bullets thumping into the burial mounds behind which they dove for cover as they ran, crawled, and ducked their way toward Dai Do. Everything was happening in a blur of confusion. At one point, an Echo Two Marine who had gotten ahead of the line was accidentally shot in the back. His flak jacket saved him, but the bullet tore open a magazine in a bandolier slung over his shoulder. The rounds inside began to cook off, and the Marine dropped his M16 as he frantically ripped off his bandoliers
and extra machine-gun ammo, knocking off his helmet in the process.

Corporal Nicolas R. Cardona, the wounded man’s incredulous squad leader, screamed at the Marine who had shot him to cease fire. The Marine could not hear him over the din, so Cardona finally ran over, took a hard swing with his helmet, and hit the man on top of his own steel pot.

“Stop firing!” Cardona screamed.

Meanwhile, the wounded Marine stood for a second and gave a visible sigh of relief after ripping away his last bandolier. The NVA shot him in the stomach in that unguarded instant. It was only a flesh wound, but the Marine, understandably shook up, raced rearward, scared out his mind.

Lance Corporal Cornwell’s machine-gun team was advancing with Cardona’s squad. Corn well and his best friend, Danny Wilson—a Boston Irishman with an eagle, globe, and anchor tattoo—were both humping M60s and were both loaded down with ammo. They had just jumped up to run to the next piece of cover when Wilson let out a scream. Corn well spun back and threw himself prone beside him. Wilson had a serious stomach wound, and Cornwell got a battle dressing over the bullet hole as he told his buddy to hang on.

Danny Wilson was taking it well; as soon as a corpsman got to them, Cornwell bounded forward again with his other gunner and the team’s ammo bearer. The trio dropped behind cover that was a fraction of an inch higher than their prone bodies, and started blasting the hedgerow with machine-gun fire. They heaved grenades over the bushes between bursts. Chicoms came back at them, and Cornwell was grazed by a fragment across his right hand as he blazed away. The NVA were right on top of them but impossible to see. In an act of desperate, inexperienced bravery, Cornwell’s gunner jumped up without warning and charged. He fired as he ran, sweeping the hedgerow, but as soon as he crashed through it the enemy dropped him with three rounds in the leg. The gunner started screaming in pain.

When Echo Company began to bog down on the southeastern side of Dai Do, Captain Vargas’s Golf Company attempted to relieve the pressure by sweeping into the hamlet from its previously cutoff position in the eastern corner. Golf Company, whose forty-six members had come through the long night unscathed, went into the assault high in spirits but low in supplies. Lieutenant Acly, for example, had dug in the previous night with a few smokes, no food, and a canteen of muddy water he’d gotten from the bottom of his foxhole after hitting the water table. The Otters that had delivered ammunition had also brought rations, which were distributed to the lowest-ranking men first. There were not enough meals for the officers and noncoms. Acly’s preattack breakfast consisted of a handful of crackers that one of his radiomen shared with him. One grunt later wrote that he was “so thirsty that I was licking the dew off the leaves.”

Staff Sergeant Del Rio, wounded twice in two days and weak from loss of blood, had spent a semisleepless night leaning against some ammo crates with his pistol in hand. He was sick and exhausted, and his whole body ached. When two Otters pulled up, Vargas directed him to get aboard with the other wounded men who had ridden out the night with them.

“Well, Skipper, I’m not that bad.”

“Go on, get on the Otter,” said Vargas.

“Okay.” Deep down, Del Rio didn’t want to argue with the captain. “I was scared, I wanted out,” he said later.
²

Captain Vargas no longer had a gunny, but he still had Lieutenant Hilton, the battalion air liaison officer, who had accidentally been swept up in Golf’s initial assault on Dai Do. Hilton had started the morning with a call from Vargas that Dixie Diner 6 was on the battalion net and wanted to talk to him. Weise told Hilton he’d thought he was dead and was glad he was not, then added, “What the hell are you doing with Vargas?”

“Well, sir, I—”

An angry Weise cut him off. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Lieutenant Hilton may have been lost, but it didn’t bother Vargas, who used him as a platoon commander. Hilton had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and an M79 grenade launcher in hand. As Golf Company’s attack stepped off with a roar of fire, Hilton shouted to the Marines he’d been given temporary command of, “Everybody ready? Okay—fire! Let’s go!”

Hilton started toward the trees his men had just unloaded into. He’d gone maybe a hundred feet before it registered that they were hollering at him, “Lieutenant, Lieutenant—stop!
Stop!”

Hilton looked back. No one was with him. They were still at the start line. “Stop, Lieutenant, stop—we gotta reload!”

Hilton hit the deck and called back over his shoulder, “Okay, everybody reload then, goddamnit!”

Things got very serious very quickly. Although the advancing Marines blasted everything ahead of them, they began receiving
sporadic return fire about the same time that Echo Company reached the fringes of Dai Do. Lieutenant Ferland of Golf Three sent one fire team after an enemy soldier detected while firing on Echo Company from a camouflaged spi-derhole. The fire team discovered more NVA in a deep trench, which was expertly constructed and camouflaged; the Marines could hear a 60mm mortar pumping out rounds from inside it. Ferland later told the division historical section that when his fire-team leader went after the mortar tube with a hand grenade, “he was shot at several times from an enemy who was no more than about five feet in front of him—yet my fire-team leader could not see him. This is how well they were concealed and dug in. We were unable to secure this mortar tube as far as we know. We did fire M79 rounds and throw hand grenades into that area, not knowing the effect as we were not able to get close enough.”

At one point, Lieutenant Ferland and his radioman, LCpl. Jerry Hester, dropped into an NVA communications trench. Hester had his M16 up as they slowly slid along the trench wall toward a sharp, L-shaped turn. They were about five feet from the turn when an NVA with an AK-47 suddenly sprang from around the corner, fired three or four rounds, and then jumped back. The enemy soldier had taken them completely by surprise, and Ferland had to keep his terrified and enraged radioman from charging recklessly after the man. He told Hester to get against the wall and not move. Ferland himself, moving so fast as to fumble, unholstered his .45-caliber pistol, unwrapped it from its protective plastic bag, and frantically pulled the slide back to chamber a round. He was pressed firmly against the trench wall, and the NVA missed when he jumped out to fire another burst. When the man pulled back, Ferland reached around the corner and blindly squeezed off a few shots of his own. The enemy soldier lunged out again, fired, missed, and disappeared. Ferland played ’possum. He wanted the NVA to think he’d gotten him. Ferland readied himself, and when the soldier made his next move around the corner, the lieutenant shot him squarely in the chest, killing
him instantly. Ferland, who’d been acting on adrenaline and instinct, began to shake like a leaf.

Lieutenant David Jones of Echo Three was a hard-charger from Silver Spring, Maryland, who led by example. “If you made a mistake, he wasn’t down on your case,” noted Sergeant Rogers. “He was there showing you how to do it better.” When the squad in the center of Jones’s formation was pinned down by 12.7mm machine-gun fire at the edge of Dai Do, Jones shouted over the din to Rogers, who had the squad on the right flank. Jones wanted Rogers to send two men to help suppress the fire on the center squad.

Sergeant Rogers, a twenty-three-year-old career Marine, told his assistant squad leader to take over, then he moved out with Lance Corporal Frank. Bullets kicked up around the pair as they found a good firing position. When they opened up they saw an NVA jump up to run farther back into the thick vegetation. There was a lull in the enemy fire, but as Lieutenant Jones started pushing everyone forward again Frank suddenly went down, clutching his side in agony. Rogers had to get back to his squad, which was moving into the first hedgerow, but he also needed to get Frank to where a corpsman could assist him.

“Can you walk?” asked Rogers.

“Yeah.”

“Can you run?”

“Yeah.”

Sergeant Rogers covered Frank’s withdrawal with his M16 in his right hand and the wounded man’s rifle in his left. When Rogers caught up with his squad, he found his assistant squad leader, Cpl. Joseph C. Pickett, twenty-two, of Chicago, dead with a bullet in his neck. Pickett, a black Marine, had not been the senior corporal in the squad. Rogers had selected him as assistant squad leader, though, by dint of his cheerful, fearless enthusiasm. Private Jerry Fields, a nineteen-year-old black from Lexington, Kentucky, was also dead. He’d been shot in the head.

The squad’s senior corporal was nowhere to be found, however.
The word Rogers got was that the noncom, who’d always been a self-centered whiner, had latched onto a wounded man as an excuse to head back across the paddies. He never came back. In fact, Rogers never saw the man again—even after the battle.