We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (22 page)

Over on the left, Lieutenant Dennis Deal got the word to stop and withdraw to the dry creek--"which we did at a run. The executive officer, Lieutenant Ken Duncan, who was handling casualties, looked up and said: ' you guys being chased?' I said no. We had recovered all our radios, but that M-16 was still out there on that anthill, and I knew exactly where it was. One of my sergeants and I took off. No web gear and we both ran fast. He was covering me. We ran out there about a hundred yards. I went right to the anthill, got the missing weapon, and we ran back to the perimeter--straight at two hundred Americans who had their weapons aimed at us. Only then did I realize that I had forgotten to coordinate what I was doing with anybody, and it was almost dark.

Thank God they held their fire. Otherwise there would have been a dumb lieutenant and a brave sergeant, both dead."

While the costly effort to reach the remnants of Lieutenant Herrick's platoon was playing out in the brush a hundred yards away, Sergeant Ernie Savage and his surrounded buddies were clinging desperately to their little patch of ground. Savage had walked the artillery in tight around them and each time he heard voices or saw any movement he called in the heavy stuff. "It seemed like they didn't care how many of them were killed. Some of them were stumbling, walking right into us. Some had their guns slung and were charging bare-handed. I didn't run out of ammo--had about thirty magazines in my pack. And no problems with the M-16. An hour before dark three men walked up on the perimeter. I killed all three of them fifteen feet away. They had AKs. At first I thought they were South Vietnamese. They had camouflage uniforms. Sergeant Mchenry killed three more of them on the west side."

Captain Herren was on the radio keeping Savage informed of the attempts to break through. Finally Herren told Savage they couldn't make it before dark and were withdrawing. Herren told Savage, "Don't worry.

You've won this fight already." Savage and Sergeant Mchenry seemed confident they would survive if they could hold out through the night.

Specialist Galen Bungum and others had their doubts: "Word came over the radio that we would have to hang on till morning. I could not believe what I heard. I thought there was no way we would be able to do that.

Others thought the same thing. PFC Clark kept asking me: ' you think we'll make it?' I didn't know, but I said we have to pray and pray hard.

It was a big question mark in all our minds. We all had to keep our cool and bear down."

As Bravo Company pulled back toward the creekbed, Sergeant Gilreath was getting the word on who had been killed. "Sergeant Roland told me that Chief Curry had been killed. I went with Roland and helped carry him back. He wasn't going to get left behind. I owed him that much. I had a special feeling for Curry. He was a squad leader in my platoon before he was transferred to the 3rd Platoon. I had known Curry well at Kelly Hill [Fort Benning]. He had never talked much about his family or relatives.

He wasn't married. He was known as a barracks soldier."

The Bravo Company commander, Captain Herren, was making dispositions for the night. "I ordered my company to dig in, in front of the creekbed where we could tie in better with Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion on the right and Nadal's Alpha Company on the left. We kept that artillery going around Sergeant Savage." I had thought the situation over in the interim and decided to strengthen our thin lines by deploying Diduryk's Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion and continuing to hold my recon platoon in battalion reserve.

I ordered Diduryk to position two of his platoons between John Herren's Bravo Company and Litton's Delta Company on the northeastern side of the perimeter. I also told Diduryk to turn his two 81mm mortars and crews over to the Delta Company centralized fire-direction center.

I also ordered Diduryk to send his 2nd Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant James L. Lane, to reinforce Bob Edwards's Charlie Company, which was thinly spread over 120 yards of the perimeter on the south and southeast sides. Says Edwards: "The attachment of the 2nd Platoon was greatly appreciated. I placed it on my right flank, where it filled that critical gap between Alpha Company and my 3rd Platoon. Our ability to trade off platoons with other companies and work with them was important."

As Lieutenant Lane's platoon began settling in, a shocking event occurred. Sergeant John Setelin had moved his men into some of the foxholes vacated by Charlie Company men when they shifted left. "I got everybody down and started scouting to my left to hook in with Charlie Company. As I started out I heard one round sizzle over my head. I heard the crack of the rifle and the sizzle. I had never seen anybody or been that close to anybody who was hit before. The round struck Glenn Willard, our machine gunner, in the left side of his chest. I rushed to him; I thought a lot of Willard. He was a small man but he never let anybody help him carry his M-60 or the ammo. He was gurgling and his eyes rolled back in his head. It was almost like he was having a stroke."

Setelin rolled Willard over and started pulling his web gear and his clothing off. "He had a sucking chest wound and I remembered training to treat that. I must have done it right, protected his wound, but when I tried to pick him up my hands sort of disappeared in the lower portion of his back where the bullet came out. Lamothe ran over to help. Tears were running down my face. I was yelh'ng: ''s about to die on me!" Willard was my first casualty and I felt like I wasn't doing my job. A tall guy came over and picked Willard up in his arms and carried him to the medics at the battalion CP." The gravely wounded Willard survived.

With the pall of smoke and dust choking the valley, twilight would be brief. We had only a little time to set up the nighttime perimeter around X-Ray. In positioning the five infantry companies I took several things into account: the fighting strength of each company; the need to defend the small, two-chopper landing zone; enemy routes of attack; and placing the Delta Company machine-gun platoon with its six M-60s where they could do the most good and the most damage. I wanted those machine guns in the more open, flat terrain on the eastern edge of the clearing.

I now considered the toll this day's fighting had taken. Tony Nadal's Alpha Company had lost three officers and thirty-one enlisted men killed and wounded, and now reported effective strength of two officers and eighty-four enlisted. John Herren's Bravo Company had lost one officer and forty-six enlisted men killed or wounded, and was down to four officers and sixty-eight enlisted men with one platoon, Herrick's, trapped outside the perimeter. Those two companies were given smaller sectors than Bob Edwards's Charlie Company, which had lost only four casualties and was reporting a strength of five officers and 102 enlisted. Even so, I beefed up Charlie Company with Lieutenant Lane's platoon from Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion. Myron Diduryk and his other two platoons were assigned to the sector northeast of the small landing zone to help protect the clearing, the eight mortars, and the aid station-command post-supply dump near the termite hill. The battalion recon platoon was held back in a reserve assembly area close to my command post. I made certain the machine-gun platoon was tightly tied in to Bob Edwards's left flank in the southeast sector.

At about 6:50 p.m. I radioed Matt Dillon to come into X-Ray as soon as possible, bringing Hastings and White side, two more radio operators, and as much ammo and water as they could carry on two Hueys. We now had good, direct communications with brigade headquarters and no longer needed the command ship overhead relaying our radio traffic. This was thanks to First Sergeant Warren Adams of Delta Company, who brought in a RC-292 field antenna. Installed in a tall tree, the long antenna gave us the range to talk to brigade at the tea plantation, more than twenty-five miles away. Besides, this battle was far from over, and I now needed Dillon at my right hand to help me control the fight. With the fire support coordinators on the ground we would also cut our response time in the fluid, fast-paced situation.

For almost eight hours I had been involved in the minute to-minute direction of the battle. Now I wanted to personally walk the perimeter and check the preparations for what promised to be a tough night and another tough day tomorrow. Just before dark, Sergeant Major Plumley and I broke away from the command post and set out to check the perimeter, talking with the troopers and getting a feel for the situation on the ground. What concerned me most was the morale of the men, how well the companies were tied in, their defensive fire plans, and the situation with ammunition and water supplies.

Morale among the men was high, although there was understandable grief over the friends we had lost. The men I talked with realized that we were facing a fierce, determined enemy, but he had failed to break through our lines. They knew the fight wasn't over. I heard weary soldiers say things like: "We'll get ', sir" and "They won't get through us, sir." Their fighting spirit had not dimmed, and they made me proud and humble. In every one of my companies that had landed in this place this morning there were fifteen to twenty soldiers who had less than two weeks left to go in the Army. Some of those men now lay dead, wrapped in ponchos, near my command post. The rest of them were on that perimeter, standing shoulder to shoulder with their buddies, ready to continue the fight.

With the coming of full darkness, around 7:15 p. m., Plum ley and I moved back to the termite-hill command post. When we got back I checked on Sergeant Ernie Savage and his band of survivors in Herrick's cut-off platoon. The report came back by radio that they had taken no additional casualties and were hanging tough. I mulled over possible options for their rescue: a night attack; night infiltration to reinforce the platoon; or a fresh attempt to fight through to them early the next morning. They would be on all our minds this night, that brave handful of men surrounded and alone in a sea of enemies.

NIGHT FALLS If we are marked to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

--Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

The raging battle of the afternoon had faded to sporadic firing. The landing zone was set up for night operations, and the artillery and mortars had registered all around the perimeter. In the aid station Sergeant Keeton and Sergeant Keith jury-rigged a small, blacked-out tent of ponchos so they could safely use a light while working on the wounded. They were now well stocked with morphine and bandages. "About five p.m. we ran out of morphine and Colonel Moore called back to brigade for additional supplies. By dark we had received a hundred and twenty-five or a hundred and thirty styrettes of morphine," says Keeton.

"Seems like every American unit in Vietnam heard our request and sent it to us. I had enough morphine when we got back to base camp to do us for the rest of the Vietnam War."

UPI reporter Joe Galloway had spent the afternoon desperately trying to finagle his way into LZ X-Ray, without success. Galloway had been aboard Colonel Tim Brown's command chopper when I waved Brown off shortly after noon. At brigade headquarters Galloway had lined up with the troopers of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion and boarded a lift helicopter--but only briefly. Lieutenant Rick Rescorla says: "As we boarded the Hueys, a stocky journalist in a sand-colored beret with an M-16 and camera jumped on one of our choppers. Major Pete Mallet came over and pulled him off.

We needed the spot for a company medic." Galloway shifted to LZ Falcon and there spotted Matt Dillon loading up the two resupply helicopters.

He pleaded for a ride. Dillon said he couldn't make that decision but agreed to put it to me over the radio. I told Dillon that if Galloway was that crazy and there was room, he could bring him on in.

During those walks in the sun around Plei Me I had gotten acquainted with Galloway. He was different from most of the other reporters who flocked to the 1st Cavalry in those early days. He stuck with a battalion through good and bad, rolling up in a poncho on the ground and staying the night instead of scrambling on a supply Huey and heading back to a warm bunk and a hot meal in the rear. During my time in Vietnam I met only two other reporters who displayed the same grit: Bob Poos of the Associated Press and Charlie Black of the Columbus (Georgia) Ledger-Enquirer.

There was one other thing: I had concluded that the American people had a right to know what their sons were doing in this war, on the ground, in the field. I welcomed visiting reporters to my battalion and, later, to my brigade. I told them they could go anywhere they wanted with my troopers, with only two restrictions: Don't put out any information that will endanger us, and don't interfere with operations. I never had cause to regret that openness.

Shortly after nine p.m. Bruce Crandall came up on the Pathfinders radio. His message to me, via Lieutenant Dick Tifft, a vigorous young Californian who had brought in a team to run the helicopter landings, was that he and Big Ed Freeman were five minutes out, two slicks escorted by two

Pathfinders served as combat air-traffic controllers.

gunships, bringing in Dillon and party plus more ammo and water.

As the helicopters dropped in on the final approach, Matt Dillon looked out toward Chu Pong. Plainly visible along the mountain slopes were hundreds of small lights winking in the dark forests. He also spotted a blinking light just below the top of the mountain directly above X-Ray, and a second blinking light on the northern slope of a 1,312foot peak one mile due south. "I am convinced that the blinking lights I saw were signal lights. From where they were located on the mountains they could not be seen in X-Ray," Dillon says.

But it was that other light show that mesmerized Dillon, Galloway, and the others aboard the choppers: an elliptical northwest-southeast stream of tiny, twinkling lights over half a mile long and three hundred yards wide moving down the face of the massif. The moving lights were no more than half a mile from our foxholes on the perimeter facing the mountain.

Galloway, sitting atop a pile of grenade and ammunition crates, was frozen by the twinkling lights. For one heart-stopping moment he thought he was seeing the muzzle flashes of rifles firing at the two helicopters.