The Magnificent Bastards (52 page)

By 1040, two of Alpha’s platoons, expending ammunition freely as they reconned by fire, had low-crawled across the clearing without contact. Joined shortly by Charlie, both companies proceeded to sweep the western half of Nhi Ha. The troops were alert and cautious as they walked through the rubble. When an NVA soldier in a spiderhole tried to raise his AK-47 through his overhead cover, a sergeant in Charlie Tiger reached down and jerked the weapon out of the man’s hands before dispatching him with a burst from his M16. There were no other live NVA visible. At 1132, after a lot of grenades had been wasted on a lot of empty entrenchments, Leach reported to Snyder that Nhi Ha had been secured. Along the way, the three bodies that Charlie Tiger had left behind three days earlier were recovered. “They were totally destroyed,” recalled Lieutenant Smith of Alpha Annihilator. “It was one of those times that you swallow real hard because if you don’t you’re going to throw up. Some people did.” The bodies had swollen and turned black, and the stench was terrible. Their bloated faces were unrecognizable. Their mouths were frozen open in death. Flies covered them, and their wounds were alive
with maggots. “God, I hate fucking maggots,” said Private Harp, who helped to gingerly place the torn-up remains into body bags. “Somebody grabbed one by his pistol belt, and the body broke in half. The bones in his rib cage popped out. I didn’t know whether to puke, cry, or hide, so instead I just went back to work. You just kind of disconnect and do what you have to do. It wasn’t really me picking up that mangled mess, it was me watching me. I was just an observer to someone else’s nightmare.”

Thanks to tac air and the blockbusters, Nhi Ha looked like Hiroshima. Lieutenant Colonel Snyder instructed Captain Leach to hold the village with Charlie Tiger and Captain Os-born’s Alpha Annihilator, which would remain in his task force and under his command. Captain Humphries’s Delta Company was detached and ordered to occupy Lam Xuan East as the battalion reserve. Captain Corrigan’s Bravo Company, never part of the task force, reoccupied Lam Xuan West. Sections of 81mm mortars from HHC/3-21 were attached to both Leach and Corrigan, and resupply was carried out during the afternoon. Water, always in short supply, was obtained from bomb craters. Nhi Ha smelled of death, and there were plenty of small, stiff enemy corpses to be seen as the troops began selecting their positions and digging in. There were NVA who’d been burned black by napalm, and NVA whose heads had been removed standing up in caved-in, chest-deep trenches. A grunt described one of the more memorable corpses, which was found “down in a bomb crater about thirty feet deep. He was floating in the water and had turned the same putrid green color as the water. The body was swollen to about twice normal size. Looked like something from a Hollywood horror movie—I mean the guy did not look real.”

The official body count was forty-four. To celebrate the victory, Major Yurchak, the S3, had the bell removed from the village’s Catholic church in the western half of Nhi Ha. “That’ll be our war booty—whenever the Third of the Twenty-first has a reunion, we’ll ring the bell!”

The bell, which bore the raised inscription NHI-HA-1925,
made it back to FSB Center but was subsequently donated to an orphanage in Tarn Ky. Meanwhile, Captain Leach christened his patrol base in Nhi Ha “Force Tiger.” Leach set Charlie Company in along the northern half of the perimeter and gave Alpha the southern half. As the men dug in they were subjected to sniper fire, which slowed the process as GIs knelt to use their E-tools instead of standing up to dig. Although many of the NVA entrenchments were still intact, the GIs did not use them because, as one grunt put it, “the little man would have known exactly where to put his incoming.” Because of the threat of enemy artillery fire, timber and masonry from the hamlet’s blown-down buildings were used to reinforce foxholes and provide overhead cover. One trooper joked to the new guys in his platoon, who were taking turns digging in, “No shift for me—give me that shovel! I’ve been here longer than some of you guys, and I know enough that I like my hole in the ground real well. One of my favorite things when I’m getting shot at is a hole!”

The NVA did not shell Nhi Ha during Force Tiger’s first night there, but it was a long, hairy night nonetheless—especially for the fire-team-sized listening posts that the two companies established after dark for early warning. The LPs were set up in bomb craters. Each had a starlight scope, as well as a sack of hand grenades and an M79 to cover their withdrawal if detected by the NVA. At 2205 on 5 May, the first sighting was made east of Nhi Ha: seventeen NVA moving south across the paddies and sand dunes two klicks away. Artillery fire was worked along their route. Thirty minutes later, a company of NVA, two hundred strong, was spotted two klicks to the west on the other side of Jones Creek, and another fire mission was initiated.

Artillery fire echoed through the pitch-black night.

At 0050 on 6 May, a Charlie Tiger LP spotted five NVA moving toward Force Tiger in a slow, cautious fashion. An hour later, two more NVA with AK-47s were seen walking right at the LP. The GI with the M79 waited until they were within fifteen feet before he fired them up with a canister
round. One NVA was blown away, and the grunts in the LP returned to the perimeter. There was an uneasy lull punctuated by an enemy soldier with a captured M79 who fired on Charlie Tiger.

At 0425, contact was made where Sergeant Stone, a squad leader in Alpha Three, had established an LP in a big crater in the dark, unfamiliar lunarscape. The LP was within a hundred meters of their line. Stone had been instructed to go out farther, but as he told his grunts, “No way, you know, we’ll never make it back.” Stone, awakened by Private King, whom he was to replace on watch, had just edged up to the lip of their crater when he saw two NVA with AK-47s and khaki fatigues coming in their direction. One had halted, and the other was catching up with him. They were only twenty meters away. Stone could see them clearly in the eerie white light of the latest illumination round, but he had not asked King where the detonators were for the two claymore mines they had set up in front of the crater.

Sergeant Stone woke his four men one at a time, whispering to each as he began to stir, “Be quiet—don’t move—we got gooks right in front of us.” He bent over King and asked, “Where’re the detonators?” King said they were by the tree limb lying in front of their crater. Stone, feeling around with one hand while he kept his head down, could not find them. Jesus, they’re gonna be in the hole with us pretty quick, Stone thought as he broke squelch on his radio handset to indicate that they were in trouble. He tried to whisper in response to the CP’s questions about how many NVA there were, how far away they were, et cetera, but he finally signed off with a hushed, “They’re too close, I can’t talk,” and placed the handset aside as he went back up with a fragmentation grenade. He lobbed the grenade toward the two NVA he had seen—he could sense others out there—then opened fire with his M16 on automatic. He slid back down, ejected the empty magazine, and fumbled for a fresh one in his bandolier. He was so scared that he put the magazine in upside down. He finally thumped it in correctly, then realized that his four charges—all new replacements—were still lying where he had awakened them,
doing nothing more than looking up at him. He had told them not to move, and they were following orders. Stone screamed at them, “Get up and shoot, get up and shoot!”

Specialist Four Allan G. Barnes did most of the shooting as he lobbed M79 rounds toward a muzzle flash behind a tree stump. Reloading, Barnes turned to Stone, “How’s that?”

“Closer, Barnes,
closerl”
Stone answered.

Each time Stone rose up to fire his M16, the NVA behind the stump would also pop up with his AK-47 on full auto. They were firing right at each other, but they kept missing. Barnes found the claymore detonators and blew one of the mines, but it had no visible effect. Stone decided they’d better pull back before it was too late. Wasting no time with a radio call to the CP to request permission to withdraw, Stone simply shouted at his team, “Okay, you guys take off. Go for the perimeter. Me and Barnes will cover for you, then we’re comin’!”

Sergeant Stone squeezed off another M16 magazine and Barnes another M79 round as the three replacements clambered over the back side of the crater, then they dropped, reloaded, and started after them. They were scared and moving fast, and they left their radio and grenades. Clearing the crater, they were stunned to see the three greenseeds lying prone on the other side. Stone shouted at them to get moving. Running for the perimeter, they hollered their catchall password—“ALPHA GIMLETS!”—and screamed at the men on the line not to open fire. This was a real concern as RPGs had begun flashing past them. No one was hurt, though, and no one fired. As soon as the men from the LP were safely inside the perimeter, their platoon leader, Lieutenant Kimball, hustled over to Stone and asked, “What’s out there, what’s out there?”

“There’s gooks
all over
out there!”

Referring to Captain Osborn by his call sign, Lieutenant Kimball said, “Cherokee says he might send you back out, so keep your squad together.”

“Shit, we ain’t going
back out,”
exclaimed Stone. “There is gooks
all over
out there!”

“Oh, no problem, no problem—”

“Well, don’t tell me to go back out. We ain’t going back out. We’re a
listening post
, and I already toldja: They’re out there!”

The LP was not reestablished. Later, when it was light, a patrol sent out to retrieve the radio from the LP’s crater discovered a slit trench behind the tree stump. The three badly wounded, barely moving NVA in the trench were finished off at point-blank range, and two AK-47s and an RPG launcher were recovered, along with a blood-spattered machine gun found in the open paddy behind the trench.

Meanwhile, at about 0500 on Charlie Tiger’s side of the perimeter, Private Harp of Charlie One, occupying the center of the line, spotted several NVA on the left flank directly ahead of Charlie Two, which at that moment was reporting movement somewhere to the front. The NVA were close, and Harp could see their silhouettes—they were wearing Russian steel helmets—as they started to set up a machine gun at the lip of a crater. Harp’s squad leader, Specialist Burns, was in position with him but could make out nothing where Harp pointed. Burns whispered to Harp that he was “full of shit, as usual,” but Harp pressed his squad leader to let him “fire a ’79 round on their position to pinpoint them for the other platoon.”

Burns considered Harp a punk and a screwup, and his response was, “You stupid shit, if you fire the ’79 it’ll give our position away.”

“They’re pointing a machine gun at us, Burns—they have some idea where we are. Besides, a ’79 gives away a lot less than a ’16 would, and I can’t reach them with a frag.” Somebody in the dugout suggested that Burns call the CP to advise them of the situation and let them decide. When Burns did, Captain Leach told him to recon by fire with an M79. Before letting Harp shoot the grenade launcher, Burns barked in a low, angry whisper, “If the captain wants to use a ’79, it’s smart. If you do, it’s stupid. Fuck you, Harp.”

The M79 round exploded within ten meters of the NVA machine gun, which opened fire in response. Charlie Two actually had about twenty-five NVA to its front, as did Charlie Three on the right flank. As illum and HE were delivered by
artillery—the NVA could be heard screaming as the shells exploded—individual GIs engaged individual NVA with M16s, M60s, and M79s. Hey, we can finally see the sons of bitches, thought Sgt. Roger Starr of Charlie Three, who was too excited to be scared as he pumped M16 bursts at NVA maneuvering forward from burial mound to burial mound. They were fully exposed in the flarelight. Starr saw several bareheaded NVA, who were swinging AK-47s and wearing shorts, go down in his rifle sights, and when he couldn’t make out any live ones, he shot the dead ones again. Some were less than fifty meters away. There were, however, a lot of muzzle flashes and RPG sparks in return. Sergeant Starr’s shooting gallery ended abruptly when a small, buckshot-sized piece of metal from an explosion he wasn’t even aware of pierced his right eye like a hot needle. The pain was sudden and intense, and it immediately rendered him completely blind as his uninjured left eye watered up, too. Starr, clutching his face, dropped to the bottom of his machine-gun team’s dugout and screamed for a medic. There was little bleeding as the medic taped pads over both of Starr’s eyes. Starr, who had been in the company for ten months, figured that his right eye would heal up fine—he was wrong, the eye was permanently blind—and as he was led back to the company CP all he could think was, This is the trip back home!

The NVA, crawling in the shadows, pulled back at 0530 but, apparently reinforced, they came back for more thirty minutes later. The final cost was two Americans and one Kit Carson scout wounded; the NVA lost thirty-four soldiers and sixteen weapons. Trapped behind burial mounds, the last NVA were killed after the sun came up. “It was a goddamn turkey shoot,” said Captain Leach, who moved elements of Charlie Two out into the paddies on the flanks to keep the NVA pinned down while Charlie One and Three picked them off from the front. “We were just killin’ ’Em—we were Marines’ the shit out of ’Em—but they fought to the last man. That took a lot
of guts.” The fight finally boiled down to one NVA behind a burial mound, and two more in a bomb crater. At that point, Specialist Burns earned the Silver Star when he muttered something to the effect of “Fuck this shit,” and launched an impatient charge on the NVA in the crater. “Burns ran straight at them,” said Private Harp. “He caught the first NVA with a single shot from his M16. Apparently he thought the other one was already dead, because he just started walking toward their crater.” A Chicom came flying out of the hole and Burns backpedaled a few steps before falling backward into another crater. “Now Burns was really pissed. He jumped in the hole with the dink and shot him or stuck him, or both. I’m not sure. Burns was so pissed off by then he was liable to have ate him.”
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