We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (13 page)

This cannonade was awesome to see, and its thunder was a symphony to our ears. The artillery rounds hissed over our heads with the characteristic sound of incoming, followed by visible detonations nearby. The ARA helicopters wheeled in over X-Ray and with a whoosh unleashed their 2.75inch rockets, which detonated with shattering blasts. The Air Force fighter-bombers roared across the sky dropping 250and 500-pound bombs and fearsome napalm canisters.

Throughout, there was the constant close-in noise of rifles, machine guns, and exploding grenades and mortar shells.

It was now becoming clear that the large open area, south of the termite-hill command post, where the helicopters had been landing was especially vulnerable. This was the biggest open area, but it was also closest to where the enemy was attacking. I had been eyeing a smaller clearing just east of my command post that could take two helicopters at a time if some trees were removed. This would be our supply and evacuation link to the rear if the landing zone got much hotter.

I turned to my demolition-team leader, Sergeant George Nye of the 8th Engineer Battalion, and told him to get those trees down. Nye, a twenty-five-year-old native of Bangor, Maine, had led six men into X-Ray: Specialist 5 James Clark, Specialist 5 Scott O. Henry, Specialist 4 Robert Deursch, PFC Jimmy D. Nakayama, PFC Melvin Allen, and PFC David Wilson. "All of a sudden the fire became heavier and heavier and the perimeter just seemed to erupt into a melee of constant fire," Nye recalls. "You could see the enemy, and suddenly we were part of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry. It's tough to try to be an infantryman and a demolitions specialist at the same time, but we did it. We blew those trees; no sawing. The intensity of fire made working with a saw tough, working without a weapon. By blowing the trees we could spend more time fighting. I heard that one of our people had got killed, a kid named Henry, Specialist Henry of Columbus, Georgia. As the day drew on, I found out we did lose Henry."

During the few minutes I had been involved with Charlie Company's move to the south, and on the radio bringing in fire support, and talking to George Nye about clearing that little landing zone, Captain Tony Nadal had begun moving his Alpha Company troopers southwest across the open ground toward the dry creekbed.

CLOSING WITH THE ENEMY If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white, Remember it's ruin to run from a fight; So take open order, lie down, and sit tight, An' wait for supports like a soldier.

--Rudyard Kipling, "The Young British Soldier"

Lieutenant Robert E. Tail was leading the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company at a lope toward the sound of battle. He had gotten orders to move from the company commander, Captain Tony Nadal, and he was carrying them out.

Lean, boyish, just twenty-three years old, Bob Tail of Highland Park, Illinois, was setting a pace toward the tree line at the edge of the clearing that his heavily laden radio operator, Specialist 4 Robert Hazen, also twenty-three and a Chicagoan, had trouble matching. Hazen was carrying his M-16 rifle, a bundle of ammunition, and the big PRC-25 field radio strapped to his back.

Captain Nadal was moving two of his platoons toward the dry creekbed in order to secure that critical piece of terrain, as well as to protect the left flank of Bravo Company, as I had ordered. Nadal says, "I was just east of the creekbed, walking through elephant grass, when suddenly there's my West Point classmate, John Herren, laying on the ground with his radio operators. He looked up and told me: ' of VC up there!' " Herren also remembers that chance meeting. "I told him to get down or get his ass shot off. Nadal got down."

Farther out in the scrub brush, John Herren's 1st and 3rd platoons were linking up and moving out to try to reach Lieutenant Henry Herrick's embattled platoon. Nadal had loaned his 2nd Platoon, led by Lieutenant Walter J. (Joe) Marm, to Herren for this attack. There had been a delay in getting Marm's men on line and oriented, and Deal and Devney had already kicked off their attack. Marm was about a hundred yards behind Herren's two platoons.

Lieutenant Deal recalls what happened next: "I'm on the left and Devney on the right, out of physical contact with company headquarters. Both platoons advanced toward Her rick and were met with automatic-weapons and small-arms fire, causing light to moderate casualties in both platoons. Intense fire caused a withdrawal to a position where we could evaluate the situation."

At that moment, Lieutenant Bob Tail and his 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company collided head-on with an enemy force of about 150 men charging down and along both sides of the dry creek. A savage fight now broke out over ownership of the creekbed. Captain Nadal, who had spent a year in South Vietnam with the Special Forces, looked out across the creekbed at the enemy boiling out of the trees and knew these were not Viet Cong guerrillas but North Vietnamese regulars. He got on the battalion net radio and yelled: "They're PAVN! They're PAVN!"

Specialist 4 Carmen Miceli, a native of North Bergen, New Jersey, remembers, "We were told to drop our packs. We got on line and moved forward in the attack. I saw Specialist 4 Bill Beck on an M-60 machine gun out to my left. Captain Nadal was right there with us. We took fire, and guys started going down. We could see the enemy very plainly. We were assaulting. A lot of our guys were hit right away."

Sergeant Steve Hansen was behind and to the right of Lieutenant Tail. He says, "We moved at a trot across the open grass toward the tree line and heard fire up on the finger to the west where we were headed. My radio operator friend, Specialist 4 Ray Tanner, and I crossed the streambed.

Captain Nadal's party and the two other platoons were off to the right.

Lieutenant Tail was well forward as we crossed over into the trees. SFC Lorenzo Nathan, Ray Tanner, and I were close, maybe ten yards behind. We were moving fast. Specialist 4 Pete Winter was near me.

"We ran into a wall of lead. Every man in the lead squad was shot. From the time we got the order to move, to the time where men were dying, was only five minutes. The enemy were very close to us and overran some of our dead. The firing was heavy. Sergeant Nathan pulled us back out of the woods to the streambed."

Bob Hazen, Bob Taft's radio operator, recalls: "Lieutenant Tail got out in front of me. I was off to his left. He had the radio handset in his left hand, connected to the radio on my back with that flexible rubber wire. It got tight and I pulled back on the lieutenant and hollered: "We're getting off line.' He glanced back at me, turned back to his front, and took four more steps. Then he fired two shots at something. I couldn't see what.

"Then he dropped facedown on the ground. Lieutenant Tail was hit. I didn't realize how bad till I rolled him over. He was shot in the throat and the round had richocheted down and came out his left side. He was dead and it was difficult to roll him over, even though he was a slightly built man." Captain Nadal says, "The enemy on the mountain started, moving down rapidly in somewhat uncoordinated attacks. They streamed down the hill and down the creekbed. The enemy knew the area. They came down the best-covered route. The 3rd Platoon was heavily engaged and the volume of firing reached a crescendo on my left. At this time I lost radio contact with Taft's platoon."

In the center of that fury, Bob Hazen struggled and rolled his dead platoon leader over. "He was gone and there was nothing we could do. The first thing I thought of was what they taught me: Never let the enemy get his hands on a map or the signals code book. I got those from Lieutenant Tail and was kneeling over to try to pull his body back.

That's when my radio was hit and the shrapnel from the radio hit me in the back of the head. It didn't really hurt; all of a sudden I was just laying facedown on the ground next to Lieutenant Tail . I felt something running down my neck, reached back, and came out with a handful of blood." Carmen Miceli was on Hazen's right: "We knew what had happened.

The word passed fast: ' got Lieutenant Taili' "

Lieutenant Wayne O. Johnson's 1st Platoon of Alpha Company was just to the right of Taft's men. Johnson's platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Troy Miller, recalls: "We could see the enemy go after the 3rd Platoon like crazy. It was a more exposed area than we were in and the North Vietnamese had a better-covered and [better-]concealed route into them. The enemy was well camouflaged and you could barely see them because their khaki uniform and hats of the same color blended in well with the brownish-yellow grass. They all seemed very well disciplined and did not seem to have any fear of dying at all."

Specialist 4 William A. Kreischer, twenty-one, of Hauppauge, New York, was a rifleman in Lieutenant Taft's platoon. Says Kreischer: "We assaulted on line; then all hell broke loose. It seemed like we were getting hit from behind, in the area of the creekbed."

Like every other unit in the battalion, the 3rd Platoon's weapons squad was understrength. It had two M-60 machinegun teams, each authorized a gunner, an assistant gunner, and two ammunition bearers. In reality, one team was down to three men, the other to only two. One team consisted of the gunner, Specialist 4 Russell E. Adams, twenty-three, of Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania; assistant gunner Specialist 4 Bill Beck, twenty-two, of Steelton, Pennsylvania; and ammunition carrier PFC John Wunderly. Russell Adams was exactly fourteen days short of completing his Army obligation when he landed in X-Ray. At five feet eight inches tall and 145 pounds, Adams was small but wiry; he handled the heavy M-60 machine gun with ease. Beck was six foot two, lean and hard. The other M-60 crew was made up of Specialist 4 Theron Ladner, twenty-two, a tall, thin native of Biloxi, Mississippi, and his assistant gunner, PFC Rodriguez E. Rivera.

Bill Beck says Russell Adams was his best buddy, a calm, soft-spoken man with big hands. "He didn't talk much, never bitched--just oiled his M-60," Beck says, adding: "We moved toward the creekbed after chow.

Suddenly fire was everywhere and Jerry Kirsch, three yards directly in front of me, got hit with machine-gun fire and dropped screaming, rolling on his back, yelling for his mother. That scared the shit out of me and I jumped to the left for cover, beside a soldier on the ground.

He was in a firing position and looking at me. It was Sergeant Alexander Williams. He had a small hole in his forehead and he was dead."

Williams, twenty-four, was from Jacksonville, Florida.

Beck says: "I jumped up as fast as I jumped down and ran forward toward Adams, who had gone past Kirsch. We were in the open about thirty yards left of the creekbed, moving parallel to it toward Chu Pong. Nobody had told us how far to go, so we kept moving. I heard Bob Hazen yelling about Lieutenant Tail getting hit. I saw him leaning over Tail when an NVA blasted him and his radio exploded into pieces. His back was to the creekbed. That all happened at once, you know, thirty seconds. We kept moving. Adams, firing from the hip, blew away an NVA aiming his AK at us through the fork of a tree."

Over on the east side of the creek Bob Hazen lay, briefly unconscious, beside his dead lieutenant. When he came to, he helped drag Taft's body back to the creekbed. "We were under fire. I looked over to our right and behind us was an NVA leaning up against a tree facing it [the tree]. We had bypassed him. The medic and I saw him up tight against that tree, pith helmet on, tan uniform, pistol belt, and a weapon. I didn't have a weapon. He looked over at us. Then somebody on my left shot him. He slammed into that tree real hard and then just crumpled."

Specialist Bill Kreischer, stunned at the volume of enemy fire, says, "Specialist Jerry Kirsch was hit in the stomach about the same time Lieutenant Tail and his radio operator, Bob Hazen, were hit. Sergeant Travis Poss, Specialist 4 Albert Witcher, and Sergeant [Alexander] Williams were all hit then. We pulled back to the creekbed. Kirsch was screaming with his stomach wound--it was really bad."

Although they had been hit hard and had suffered several casualties, Taft's platoon, now led by Korean War veteran Sergeant Lorenzo Nathan, stood firm and stopped the momentum of the attack. The enemy recoiled and slowly drifted off to their left still trying to find a way to flank Bravo Company. This brought them directly in front of Joe Marm's troopers, who had been moving up to join Bravo. About eighty North Vietnamese soldiers were caught by surprise as Marm's troopers opened up with volley after volley of grazing, point-blank machine-gun and rifle fire and heaved hand grenades into their packed ranks on their exposed right flank. Marm's men mowed them down. Two enemy were taken prisoner.

Several of the men still remember the curious behavior of the North Vietnamese who came under this murderous fire. Captain Tony Nadal says, "It wasn't much of a fight; the 2nd Platoon just mowed them down." Staff Sergeant Les Staley recalls, "Fifty NVA came right across my front and were cut down almost immediately and they did not turn and try to return our fire." The enemy survivors fell back to their right rear, toward the creekbed. That brought them back in front of Tony Nadal's 1st and 3rd platoons, which were now in the four-foot-deep cover of the creekbed. Again the enemy were cut down by close-range flanking fire from their right. They just kept walking into the field of fire.

Sergeant Troy Miller of the 1st Platoon was in the thick of it: "I saw one NVA in the creekbed hit in the upper part of his body, killed by a sergeant from 3rd Platoon and a team leader from my platoon. He was no more than ten feet away. We searched his body later and found he had taken Lieutenant Taft's dog tags."

Captain Nadal, out of radio contact with Taft's platoon, moved toward the furious firing on his left flank to find out what was happening.

Nadal says, "My radio operator, Sergeant Jack E. Gell, the company communications chief who had volunteered to carry one of my two radios, ran with me out of the creekbed into the open area toward Taft's position. We ran into Sergeant Nathan and I asked him what was happening. He said the platoon had been attacked on the left flank; the left squad had taken a number of casualties and had pulled back out of the creekbed, refusing their left flank to the enemy. Nathan said Tail had been hit and was left in the creekbed.