The Magnificent Bastards (46 page)

Lieutenant Hilton spent most of the night in radio contact with the flareship that orbited above them, although he could not see the aircraft because of the slight overcast. The pilots could not see through the clouds either, so Hilton adjusted their flight path as they blindly jettisoned their parachute-borne flares. Hilton lay on his back with his radio and extra batteries and, without knowing it, slid into a quick, numb sleep. He jerked awake and grabbed the handset he had dropped. “Are you guys still there?” he asked.

“Yeah, you must’ve dozed off—we thought we’d lost you.”

“No, no, I’m okay. I just fell asleep.”

“Okay, hang in there. Get some coffee or something.”

Hilton brought in several more flares—it was well after midnight—and the next thing he knew someone was shaking him. “Wake up, wake up—they’re trying to get a hold of you!” Major Knapp had a radioman relieve Hilton. He managed to catch a few hours of sleep before waking up to help with the last hour of flares, which, like the nonstop artillery on Dinh To, carried them to daybreak.

Meanwhile, Colonel Hull decided to land the 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, in An Lac the next afternoon to continue the assault through Dinh To and Thuong Do. With an Army battalion in position along Jones Creek, Fire Raider 6 finally felt secure enough to commit his only remaining maneuver battalion. Fire Raider 3, Major Murphy, relayed this information to the BLT 2/4 CP in Mai Xa Chanh West via the secure net at approximately 2230, but it was not until 0100 that the combat situation had quieted down enough to allow this very welcome message to be radioed to Knapp and Warren in Dai Do. Assuming that the battalion net was being monitored by the enemy, the watch officer, Captain Mastrion (who had just flown back from the
Iwo Jima
despite his injured back), came up with a message that would frustrate NVA efforts to decipher it. Bearing in mind that 1/3’s call sign was Candy Tuft, and that the fresh battalion would pass through BLT 2/4 in order to continue the northward attack, the message that Mastrion
crafted read: “Sweetheart Boy will step on your back on his way to Santa Claus’s home.”

At first light on 3 May, the seventy-one H&S Company fillers who’d been shuttled to An Lac the evening before hiked up to Dai Do. They were distributed by grade to each of the skeletonized rifle companies. Other reinforcements had joined the support activities at An Lac and Mai Xa Chanh West, and these men were a mixed bag. A request had been sent to the
Iwo Jima
the evening before for “every able-bodied man on ARG shipping,” and within forty-five minutes Sea Horses had brought to the BLT CP a platoon’s worth of volunteers, which included two majors and three captains from the SLF staff. There were also a number of walking wounded from the ship’s hospital. It was suspected that even a few gung-ho sailors had donned Marine gear, picked up weapons from the casualty receiving area, and gone ashore with or without permission. Lieutenant Hilton saw men in helmets and flak jackets who were wearing blue Navy work jeans. Corporal Schlesiona, aboard a skimmer, was convinced that some of the personnel at the splash point were sailors because “on at least two occasions when we landed with resupply materials, I ran across people who just didn’t look right. Perhaps they were too clean or too raw looking, or just too generally uncomfortable in their attitude. They seemed not to know what to do, where to go, or even what questions to ask.”

There was no enemy action in the morning. At 0815, Colonel Hull choppered into Dai Do. Major Knapp’s report to Hull was reflected in his later conversation with the division historical section, in which he said that, “except for numbers, we had an efficient, effective fighting force.” He added that “it was extremely gratifying” to observe how well organized the companies remained despite the loss of key personnel. “The number threes and fours stepped right up, took over, and did an excellent job with what they had. There was no loss of control. Command and control remained in effect. Communications were sustained throughout.” Knapp’s primary recommendation, at least for the historical branch, was “don’t send
bits and pieces. Send a whole battalion to do a battalion’s job.”

The Marines in BLT 2/4 were disgruntled with how Fire Raider 6 had piecemealed them into Dai Do. “If we could have had the entire battalion from the beginning,” said Knapp, “it would have been an entirely different story.” But they were angrier still with the ARVN, who had disappeared in the Marines’ hour of need, and whose earlier negligence set the stage for the entire debacle. Prior to the engagement, the Dai Do complex had been in the TAOR of the two battalions from the 2d Regiment, 1st ARVN Division, withdrawn to defend Dong Ha. “It is inconceivable to me that the 320th NVA Division troops could have been so well dug in with mutually supporting bunkers, communications lines, and infrastructure without having done so over a period of days and probably weeks,” wrote Major Warren. He was convinced that the ARVN had turned a blind eye to the buildup rather than tangle with an NVA force that would have eaten them alive. “It would have been nigh impossible for the ARVN not to have gotten wind of this activity, as these areas were occupied by ARVN family members and other camp followers.”

At 1100, correspondents were finally allowed to visit the battlefield. The Marine casualties in Dai Do itself had already been evacuated, but dead NVA lay everywhere in the rubble, leaving the impression that the NVA had been butchered in a one-sided display of overwhelming firepower. One young correspondent, aghast at the human carnage, turned on Lieutenant Hilton, whom he’d been interviewing. “You guys are unmerciful! Why are you so cruel?” Hilton said he “grabbed the reporter by the seat of his trousers and the nape of his neck and escorted him headfirst into a bomb crater. I was going to beat the shit out of him, but somebody said, ‘Get Hilton and get him outta here,’ and three or four enlisted guys grabbed me and pulled me away.”

At 1200, a light but hot meal was delivered to the field. Air strikes were being run the entire time on the north end of Dinh To and on Thuong Do. At 1445, two companies from the 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, began landing in An Lac aboard amtraes.
They passed through Dai Do to continue the assault. The scene shocked them. The place looked like Tarawa in its own torn-down, churned-up way, and the stench of death was overwhelming in the hot, windless air of the wrecked hamlet. There were pith helmets and canteens, bloody battle dressings, and smashed weapons. There were dead NVA who had been killed when napalm sucked the oxygen from their lungs and who had not a mark on them, and there were dead NVA who’d been shot in the forehead, the backs of their heads blown away.

There were also dismembered bodies teeming with maggots strewn about the area. Lance Corporal Ross E. Osbom of
AJ
1/3 paused to look at two NVA who still clutched their weapons in death, and whose “eyes were wide and staring at the sun, their faces contorted in horrid death grimaces. Their intestines protruded from their khaki shirts like purple balloons. You felt sorry for the bastards. You were glad they were dead, but they were soldiers, too. I remember everyone being very quiet.”

After the battle it was estimated that BLT 2/4 had engaged more than 2,000 enemy troops, and that the battalion had “accounted for 537 known enemy dead as a result of ground action alone.” The battalion had also taken four prisoners. An additional 268 NVA kills were credited to supporting arms (“For once,” a correspondent wrote, “these estimates were probably not too far from reality.”), which included twenty-seven air strikes during the three-day battle in addition to 1,147 81mm mortar, 2,383 naval gunfire, and 5,272 artillery rounds. This tabulation did not include counterbattery fire against NVA artillery in the DMZ, which had been massive in its expenditure of shells.

As 1/3 moved through Dai Do, BLT 2/4 was policing its immediate surroundings by dragging dead NVA to a central location and shoveling dirt atop them. Hospitalman Carmen J. Maiocco, a corpsman in D/l/3, wrote in his journal that the covering was “very shallow and you could see the shapes of the bodies just beneath the freshly turned dirt. I’ll guess and say there were maybe 50 or 60 bodies. An image that stands vividly in my mind is of a human arm sticking up straight
from the dirt. A few of our men walked by and shook the dead hand and even had their photograph taken in this grisly pose.”

Battalion Landing Team 2/4 was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation (NUC). The opcon B/l/3 was included in a separate NUC given to the entire regiment for its successful defense of the supply routes on the Bo Dieu and Cua Viet rivers. However, 81 Marines had been killed during the three-day battle, and another 297 Marines in the five companies involved had been seriously wounded and medevacked. An additional 100 Marines had been wounded but treated in the field. Half the casualties occurred on the final day of the battle, and 41 dead Marines were left behind in Dinh To. While 1/3 passed through Dai Do and launched its assault on Dinh To, Major Knapp walked back to An Lac with Echo and Foxtrot Companies, where they loaded aboard Mike boats for the trip downriver to Mai Xa Chanh West. Knapp’s orders to Major Warren, who remained in Dai Do, were to follow behind 1/3 with Golf and Hotel and recover the dead.

By 1730, the sweep through Dinh To was in full swing. The bags of rags that had been NVA soldiers were everywhere, too, and 1/3’s Marines were stunned to see dead grunts lying with them amidst the battlefield debris. Marines did not leave bodies. Marines did not leave weapons and ammo and ammo boxes, nor packs, canteens, helmets, entrenching tools, or flak jackets. But they had. The impossible had happened here. “Dig this,” said one numb Marine to another. “The NVA did some wounded grunts from Two-Four a job, man. Shot ’Em skeleton dead in the back of the head.”

“Wow,” said his stunned companion.

“You want to go see ’Em? They’re over there by the river.”

“No way, man.”

“We found their empty rifles, man. It’s for real. Five or six dudes lyin’ facedown in a ditch.…”

Much of the ground was burned and black. When 1/3 reached the trench that had served as BLT 2/4’s hasty command post, they found twenty dead Marines in it. Hospitalman Maiocco wrote in his journal that they were “piled in on top
of each other, covered with flies, arms and legs all twisted. We couldn’t speak. When we did speak it was in whispers.”
²

A haystack situated on the right flank of the trench was determined to have actually been a camouflaged gun position that afforded its occupants a straight line of fire down the trench. Thousands of spent cartridges were found inside the hollow haystack. The scene in the trench was all the more appalling to the recovery parties from BLT 2/4 coming up from the rear, because those who had been slaughtered were not only fellow Marines but friends. Lieutenant Acly of Golf Company looked down at Sergeant Snodgrass, whose intense blue eyes were still brilliant in his dead face, and he thought of how the noncom had shared his last cigaret with him the day before. Big John Malnar was also in the trench, along with the spotter from the mortar section, whose face was waxy and who had black ants crawling into his shot-open mouth. The senior company radioman’s PRC-25 was still strapped on and functioning. Voices from the battalion net came out of the speaker on the dead man’s back.

Lieutenant Morgan, also of Golf Company, stood beside the trench. Some of the dead Marines in it had been in his platoon. He had come to Dai Do with thirty-eight men. Including his radiomen, he had only three left. He could not fathom the victory in that.

The dead Marines were pulled from the trench with difficulty. Several were stuck to the ground by dried blood. Rigor mortis had set in, so it was tough to straighten out the bodies so that they could be zipped into body bags. They were then carried to amtracs and skimmers, which had come up the creek to take them back. Discarded and inoperative weapons were thrown onto a pile aboard one skimmer, along with armfuls of web gear and other bloody equipment. The Marines left more
than they recovered. It was dusk by the time the forty dead Marines in the area had been bagged like yesterday’s garbage. While 1/3 began setting up for the night, to include positions in that bloody irrigation trench, the Marines of BLT 2/4 climbed aboard amtracs, skimmers, and Otters for the ride back to Mai Xa Chanh West. They were satisfied that they had recovered all their comrades. Actually, the last man would not be discovered until the next day when 1/3 pushed beyond the irrigation trench and found the body of David Bingham, the radioman who had been captured and executed.

It was 2100 when the last element off the Dai Do battlefield—the recon platoon at An Lac—secured inside the BLT CP. An amtrac near the medevac beach was pointed toward the DMZ so that when its back ramp was lowered the interior lights would not be visible to the enemy artillery spotters to the north. The battalion’s KIAs were gathered outside the vehicle. Marines with flashlights unzipped the body bags and lined up the dead men by company.

“Sadness,” recalled Doc Pittman, one of the fatigued corps-men on the scene. “There was nothing but humble sadness. There was quiet. There was not a lot of talk.”

The medical team in the amtrac worked on one body at a time. They started with G Company. Each body bag was unzipped on the vehicle’s floor. Pittman was stationed to one side of the body, and another corpsman was on the other side. They filled out casualty tags, one to attach to the body bag and the other to the body itself. Up front were two majors from division, and another corpsman who had a log in which he recorded the name, rank, service number, unit, and cause of death of each KIA. A fourth corpsman was present to determine the cause of death. “Sometimes it was very apparent,” said Pittman. “Sometimes we had to search and turn the bodies over. It was professionally done with no talking unless absolutely necessary.”

Doc Pittman had seen worse—the enemy had not mutilated these dead, nor had the elements had time to. But he had never seen so many, and by the time they got through Golf and then Hotel Company he had reached his limit. Foxtrot, with which
he had served, was next. “I could not do it. I could not stay there.” When they stopped for a short break, Pittman, who was twenty-two years old, stepped out into the darkness. He found another corpsman to relieve him inside the vehicle. “I couldn’t take any more. It was going to be real bad when it came to Fox Company. I didn’t want the memories.”