Part 1 (1/2)

The Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

The Joint Army-Marine Defense of Dong Ha, 1968.

by Keith William Nolan.

Preface

It was one of the most prolonged and costly campaigns of the war, but, inexplicably, it never gained the immortality of Hue or Khe Sanh or Con Thien. It should have. It began on the last day of April 1968 when a Marine battalion landing team, reinforced with a company from a regular rifle battalion, locked horns with major elements of a North Vietnamese Army division in the village complex of Dai Do. The enemy infantrymen, entrenched among the hootches and hedgerows, were fully equipped with light and heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and were backed up by rocket and artillery batteries across the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The Marines, outnumbered but superbly led and already battle hardened, dug them out spiderhole by spiderhole. The battle lasted three days, and was Tarawa-like in its intensity. Although the Marine battalion was gutted by casualties, the enemy units were practically obliterated, and their smashed entrenchments were filled with their dead as the survivors retreated back to the DMZ.Presumably, the enemy regiments blocked at Dai Do had been marching toward the 3d Marine Division headquarters at Dong Ha. To secure the various approaches to Dong Ha, a grunt battalion from the U.S. Army's Americal Division was attached to the 3d Marine Division and positioned on the right flank of the Marine battalion landing team engaged in Dai Do. The North Vietnamese had indeed moved fresh units into the area, and on the last day of the Dai Do action, the Army battalion ran into a hornet's nest in the village of Nhi Ha. It took four days to clear Nhi Ha, after which the Army battalion, in its first conventional battle, dug in amid the rubble and repelled several nights' worth of counterattacks from across the DMZ. The enemy also sh.e.l.led Nhi Ha, but they never took it, and in the end they left heaps of their own dead around that perimeter, too. By then, Nhi Ha looked like Verdun.In Vietnam, that was victory.The reconstruction of this campaign began with archival research, but the reality between the dry lines of official prose was fleshed out by those who survived and were willing to tell their tale. I'm indebted to all of them. Those who were interviewed (or who reviewed the rough draft) from the 3d Marine Division, 3d Marine Regiment, and various supporting units include Maj. Gen. Dennis J. Murphy (Ret.); Cols. William H. Dabney and Bruce M. McLaren (Ret.); Lt. Col. Walter H. Shauer (Ret.); and ex-BM2 Jerry Anderson, USN.From Battalion Landing Team 2/4 (3d Marine Division): Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston; Brig. Gen. William Weise (Ret.); Cols. James T. Ferland (USMCR), Robert J. Mastrion, J. R. Vargas, and James L. Williams (Ret.); Lt. Cols. Judson D. Hilton (Ret.), Bayard V. Taylor (Ret.), and George F. Warren (Ret.); Maj. James L. O'neill (Ret.); Capt. Edward S. Dawson (Ret.); ex-Capts. Peter A. Acly, James H. Butler, and Lorraine L. Forehand; ex-1st Lts. David R. Jones, David K. McAdams, Frederick H. Morgan, C. William Muter, and Alexander F. Prescott; ex-Lt. Frederick P. Lillis, MC, USN; CWO2 Donald J. Gregg (USMCR); WO1 John J. Kachmar (USANG); 1st Sgts. Reymundo Del Rio (Ret.) and Ronald W. Taylor (Ret.); MGySgt. James W. Rogers (Ret.); GySgts. Pedro P. Balignasay (Ret.), Percy E. Brandon (Ret.), James Eggleston (Ret.), and Ernest L. Pace (Ret.); SSgts. Tom Alvarado (Ret.) and Robert J. Ward (Ret.); ex-SSgts. Dennis F. Harter and Richard J. Tyrell; ex-Sgts. Dan Bokemeyer, Charles M. Bollinger, Nicolas R. Cardona, Phil Donaghy, Van A. Hahner, Doug Light, and Peter W. Schlesiona; ex-Cpls. Dale R. Barnes, Ronald J. Dean, John Hanna, E. Michael Helms, Kenneth G. Johnson, James R. Lashley, and Jim Parkins; ex-LCpl. Philip L. Cornwell; ex-Pfc. Marshall J. Serna; and ex-HM2 Roger D. Pittman, USN.From the 1st Battalion, 3d Marines (3d Marine Division): Majs. Kim E. Fox (Ret.) and Ralph C. McCormick (Ret.); MSgt. Robert G. Robinson (Ret.); GySgt. Norman J. Doucette (Ret.); ex-Sgts. Ronald E. Lawrence and Robert Rohner; ex-Cpls. Michael R. Conroy, Ross E. Osborn, Doug Urban, and Craig Walden; ex-LCpls. James Dudula and Paul F. Roughan; and ex-HM2 Carmen J. Maiocco, USN.From the 3d Battalion, 21st Infantry (Americal Division), and supporting units: Brig. Gen. Dennis H. Leach (Ret.); Cols. Robert E. Corrigan (Ret.) and William P. Snyder (Ret.); Lt. Cols. Roger D. Hieb (Ret.), Travis P. Kirkland (Ret.), Richard J. Skrzysowski (USAR, Ret.), and Paul N. Yurchak (Ret.); Majs. John M. Householder (Ret.), Kenneth W. Johnson (Ret.), and William A. Stull (USANG); ex-Capts. Hal Bell, Jan S. Hildebrand, and Laurence V. McNamara; ex-1st Lts. Robert V. Gibbs, John R. Jaquez, Terry D. Smith, and John D. Spencer; ex-Sfc. William F. Ochs; ex-SSgts. Bill A. Baird, Bernard J. Bulte, Don DeLano, James M. Goad, and James L. Stone; ex-Sgts. Jimmie Lee Coulthard, Terrance Farrand, Larry Haddock, Gregory B. Harp, Thomas E. Hemphill, Michael L. Matalik, Laurance H. See, and Roger W. Starr; ex-Sp5s Neil E. Hannan, William W. Karp, and Wallace H. Nunn; and ex-Sp4s Charles C. c.o.x, Dan d.i.n.klage, Bill Eakins, John C. Fulcher, Ronald F. Imoe, Bill Kuziara, Tony May, Eugene J. McDonald, Don Miller, and Terry Moore.Many thanks also to ex-1st Lt. Barry Romo, who lost his nephew, Robert, in Nhi Ha, and Dennis L. Barker, who lost his brother, Paul. Great a.s.sistance was also provided by Benis M. Frank, Joyce Bonnett, and Joyce Conyers of the Marine Corps Historical Center (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.); Decorations & Medals Branch, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.); James E. Crum and Tony May of the 196th Locate-A-Brother (P.O. Box 531, Phoenix, Oregon 97535); William H. Knight, President, 196th LIB a.s.sociation; Ron Ward, Vietnam editor of the Americal Division Veterans a.s.sociation newsletter; John H. Claggett, Military Reference, National Archives (Suitland, Maryland); CWO3 James Garrett, Military Awards Branch, Department of the Army (Alexandria, Virginia); Col. Morris J. Herbert (Ret.), a.s.sociation of Graduates, U.S. Military Academy (West Point, New York); John J. Slonaker, Chief, Historical Reference Branch, U.S. Army Military History Inst.i.tute (Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania); and Lt. Col. Tip A. Horsley and Dorothy M. Flowers, Information Support Division, U.S. Army Reserve Personnel Center (St. Louis, Missouri).Keith William Nolan Maplewood, Missouri

Prologue:

Wild Bill Weise”Look, I'm telling you guys-they're lined up twelve deep here waiting to get infantry battalions,” the 3d Marine Division personnel officer (G1) told the three recently arrived light colonels who stood before the field desk in his tent. It was 12 October 1967, and they were in the division rear at Phu Bai, Republic of Vietnam.”You're just going to have to wait your turn.”Lieutenant Colonel William Weise, one of the three, was not hearing what he wanted to hear. As he had just told the G1, he had come to Vietnam to do nothing but command an infantry battalion in combat.The silver oak leaf on Weise's cover was seven days old. His last a.s.signment as a major had been a thirteen-month tour as an adviser to the Republic of Korea Marine Corps. He had waived rea.s.signment to the United States so he could get to Vietnam before the war ended. When he got orders sending him to the 3d Marine Division, Weise wrote ahead to the commanding general, asking to serve as the operations officer of either an infantry battalion or a regiment. Arriving not as a major but as a freshly minted lieutenant colonel, Bill Weise, an intelligent, forceful man, sorely wanted an infantry command. His career demanded it (Weise was very ambitious), as did his sense of duty. He listened, heartsick, as the G1 continued, ”... there's only three slots open in this outfit: the division special services officer, the division embarkation officer, and the a.s.sistant base defense coordinator at Dong Ha Combat Base.”s.h.i.+t, here I go, Weise thought. Risk my marriage with two overseas tours in a row, and I'm going to wind up as a division office pogue. Weise knew the G1 and implored him, ”You can't do this to me!” But the G1's hands were tied; the division commander, Maj. Gen. Bruno A. Hochmuth, personally a.s.signed all field-grade officers. The general would soon welcome these three aboard, but it would be another two days before he would meet with them again to discuss their a.s.signments. Weise and his two hard-charging, like-minded compatriots, Edward LaMontagne and George Meyers, thus had time to talk to officers they knew on the division staff about getting battalions.Their meeting with General Hochmuth was in his command bunker. The 3d Marine Division was an overtaxed organization, and the general, sitting at his field desk, was too busy to ask them to sit or to offer the customary cup of coffee. There was no small talk: ”Well, okay, Meyers, you're going up to Dong Ha to help coordinate the defenses up there.””Yes, sir.””LaMontagne, you're going to be my embarkation officer.””Yes, sir.”G.o.d, thought Weise, he's going to make me me the special services officer. But Hochmuth surprised him: ”Weise, I see that you've had a lot of experience in reconnaissance. I'm not happy with the way my recon battalion is being deployed, so I want you to take over. We've got a good young major in there by the name of Bell. He's going to be transferred in three weeks. Meanwhile, I want you to see as much of the AO as you can. See how we're deployed. Go around the area. You'll take over when Bell leaves. Now, does anybody have any questions?” the special services officer. But Hochmuth surprised him: ”Weise, I see that you've had a lot of experience in reconnaissance. I'm not happy with the way my recon battalion is being deployed, so I want you to take over. We've got a good young major in there by the name of Bell. He's going to be transferred in three weeks. Meanwhile, I want you to see as much of the AO as you can. See how we're deployed. Go around the area. You'll take over when Bell leaves. Now, does anybody have any questions?””No, sir,” said LaMontagne.”No, sir,” replied Meyers.”Sir, I don't have any questions,” Weise blurted out, ”but I want the general to know personally that I really want an infantry battalion.”Weise had been expressly warned during his two days of politicking that it would be unwise to do anything but click his heels when the general made his decision. Weise, however, had picked up the nickname Wild Bill during his sixteen years in the Marine Corps, and he had sometimes gotten his way by being audacious: ”... whatever job you give me, I'm going to do, sir-but I don't want to sit back there with a recon battalion and just send those kids out on patrol. I want an infantry battalion.””Weise,” Hochmuth snapped, ”you get the h.e.l.l outta here. When I want your advice on how to run my division, I'll ask for it. Meanwhile, you get out there and do your job.”There was a lot of ground for the disappointed Lieutenant Colonel Weise to cover before he took over the 3d Reconnaissance Battalion. The 3d Marine Division's four infantry regiments (the 3d, 4th, 9th, and 26th Marines) and its artillery (the 12th Marines) were positioned throughout Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces, the two northernmost provinces of the five that defined the I Corps Tactical Zone. The division main command post at Phu Bai was in the Viet Cong (VC) guerrilla badlands of Thua Thien Province. The division forward command post at Dong Ha, in Quang Tri Province, was just below the DMZ, which divided North and South Vietnam. The war on the Z was with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Dong Ha controlled an eighty-kilometer frontage of combat bases that faced the DMZ from the beachhead at Cua Viet, west to the jungled mountains of Khe Sanh. The Ben Hai River and the DMZ, which for political reasons the Marines could not cross, afforded the enemy a sanctuary for their artillery batteries and a staging area for battalion- and regimental-sized a.s.saults.Lieutenant Colonel Weise visited every battalion in the division. With a few days to spare before he was to take over 3d Recon, he went to visit a good friend of his who was a battalion executive officer with the 7th Marines in the 1st Marine Division, the only other Marine division in Vietnam. They were dug in along the Hai Van Pa.s.s above Da Nang, and at approximately 0300 on 26 October 1967, while sleeping near the battalion command post (CP), Weise was awakened and directed to the covered-circuit radio. The division chief of staff was on the other end.”Hey, Weise, get your a.s.s back up here,” said the colonel. ”You know Two-Four?” Two-Four is shorthand for the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, which was under the operational control of the 9th Marines and partic.i.p.ating in Operation Kingfisher below the DMZ. Weise answered that he had visited 2/4, and mentioned the battalion commander by name. ”He's been hit,” the chief of staff said. ”You got it. They're in a firelight.”Jesus, Weise thought, expecting to be helicoptered directly into 2/4's night action. Instead, it took him two days to make his way back north by chopper. By then, 2/4 had been pulled back to the Dong Ha Combat Base. What a sorry sight, Weise thought. The battalion he found really looked wanting in terms of numbers and esprit. They were, however, Marines-and he knew how to breathe fire into Marines. Beat up or not, the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, was his his, and Bill Weise was exactly where he wanted to be.

Scrub Brush and Sand Dunes

THE 2 2D B BATTALION, 4TH M MARINES, HAD BEEN KNOWN AS the ”Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds” since its first major operation in Vietnam, Starlite, in which it helped take apart a VC regiment. That had been more than two years before its keelhauling on Operation Kingfisher, at which time the men in 2/4 no longer felt as their motto proclaimed: Second to None. Upon a.s.suming command of 2/4 on 28 October 1967, Lt. Col. William Weise saw as his primary task resurrecting the spirit of the original Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. This he stressed to his staff officers and company commanders, along with his two favorite maxims: the ”Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds” since its first major operation in Vietnam, Starlite, in which it helped take apart a VC regiment. That had been more than two years before its keelhauling on Operation Kingfisher, at which time the men in 2/4 no longer felt as their motto proclaimed: Second to None. Upon a.s.suming command of 2/4 on 28 October 1967, Lt. Col. William Weise saw as his primary task resurrecting the spirit of the original Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. This he stressed to his staff officers and company commanders, along with his two favorite maxims: Good guys kill Marines. I am not going to be a murderer.Marines will do exactly what you expect them to do. If you expect them to do nothing, they'll do nothing. If you expect them to do great things, they'll do great things.

Special Landing Forces (SLF) A and B of the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade (MAB) in Okinawa provided the 3d Marine Division an opportunity to remove two of its battalions from the war zone on a rotating basis and have them return refreshed and reinforced. Not surprisingly, Weise's punched-out battalion was selected for this duty. The newly christened Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 2/4 became the infantry fist of SLF Alpha, 9th MAB, with its rear aboard the USS Iwo Jima Iwo Jima. As the end of Weise's standard six-month command tour approached, BLT 2/4 was again operating on the DMZ under the operational control of the 3d Marines, 3d Marine Division. But it was a different 2/4; it was a battalion that had been reshaped in Weise's Spartan, aggressive, by-the-book image.

Night Owls

SAt.u.r.dAY, 27 APRIL 1968. F 1968. FIFTEEN HUNDRED. THE ENEMY artillery was walking inexorably toward the sandy-soiled, waist-deep crater where Capt. Robert J. Mastrion, commander of Golf Company, BLT 2/4, had sprinted when the kettledrumming to the north began, and where he presently crouched with his company gunnery sergeant. The next round is going to kill us, he thought. We have to move. Gunnery Sergeant Billy R. Armer made his move first, sprinting out of the crater in one direction. He was followed in the next heartbeat by Captain Mastrion, who leapt to the lip of the crater in the opposite direction. Mastrion hit the edge and leaned forward to run. Before he could step off, however, the next round crashed through the soft soil under his feet. He could feel the impact. artillery was walking inexorably toward the sandy-soiled, waist-deep crater where Capt. Robert J. Mastrion, commander of Golf Company, BLT 2/4, had sprinted when the kettledrumming to the north began, and where he presently crouched with his company gunnery sergeant. The next round is going to kill us, he thought. We have to move. Gunnery Sergeant Billy R. Armer made his move first, sprinting out of the crater in one direction. He was followed in the next heartbeat by Captain Mastrion, who leapt to the lip of the crater in the opposite direction. Mastrion hit the edge and leaned forward to run. Before he could step off, however, the next round crashed through the soft soil under his feet. He could feel the impact.

The sh.e.l.l exploded inside the crater. Captain Mastrion was enveloped in a roar of sand as the concussion lifted him off his feet. He went spinning like a rag doll, and actually saw the heel of his jungle boot smack his nose. Mastrion crash-landed on his back. The wind had been knocked out of him and he hurt all over, but he couldn't find any wounds. The area's soft soil had saved him, allowing the artillery sh.e.l.l to sink in before detonating, and absorbing most of the deadly metal fragments. As it was, the back of Mastrion's flak jacket looked as though it had been sandblasted, and the knapsack secured to his web belt and hanging over his b.u.t.tocks was shredded. One of his cargo pockets, those baggy thigh pockets on jungle utilities, was also torn open, and a C-ration can containing turkey loaf had been mangled by a single large chunk of steel.

Gunny Armer had also been lucky, suffering only a welt between his upper lip and nose. Nineteen rounds had thunder-clapped in. When no more incoming shrieks filled the air, Mastrion jumped up and shouted to his artillery forward observer, ”Lay some smoke in here to cover us, and let's get the h.e.l.l outta here!”

The forward observer, 2d Lt. Peter A. Acly, was on his first patrol but was wired into its details. In fact, when Golf Company's Marines had saddled up that morning in their semipermanent patrol base at Lam Xuan West, Mastrion had made Acly responsible for land navigation because he had a high-quality artillery compa.s.s. Lam Xuan West sat on the western bank of twisting, turning, but generally north-south Jones Creek, about eight kilometers below the DMZ. The hamlet was deserted and bombed out, as were all the villages in the battalion AO, and the terrain was a flat, heat-s.h.i.+mmering expanse of brush-dotted, sh.e.l.l-pocked rice paddies and sand dunes. Hedgerows and tree lines divided the land into squares. The ocean was only seven kilometers to the east. Golf Company's mission that morning had been to patrol about twenty-seven hundred meters northwest from Lam Xuan West so as to reconnoiter the rubbled remnants of Lai An. Weise had informed Mastrion that Golf was to move into Lai An after dark as part of a three-company night operation, and Mastrion had wanted a daylight look at the place to reacquaint himself with its subtleties.

Golf Company had just been approaching the raised, east-west trail at the southern edge of Lai An when the sh.e.l.ling began. The m.u.f.fled booming of enemy artillery was an everyday event. Since the target was usually someone else, it had not been until the first salvo was actually screaming down for an imminent and very personal impact that humping, sweating, spread-out Golf Company had dropped to its collective gut. Lieutenant Acly thought he had heard an NVA mortar firing from An My, located thirty-five hundred meters to the northeast, across Jones Creek. With the aid of his radioman, Acly organized his first real fire mission on that pos. A 105mm battery firing out of Camp Kistler on the coast to the southeast responded to the call by plastering An My with high-explosive sh.e.l.ls, while Acly called for white phosphorus sh.e.l.ls on Lai An to form a smoke screen that would allow Golf Company to back up without again drawing the attention of the enemy's artillery spotters.

The company withdrew to Pho Con, which was situated about midway between Lam Xuan West and Lai An. There Golf Company dug in and waited for the cover of darkness, when it would again move north into Lai An in coordination with the battalion's sweep on the other side of Jones Creek. In the meantime, a medevac chopper touched down briefly to take aboard two casualties from the sh.e.l.ling.

Captain Mastrion, who was in increasingly severe pain, was not medevacked. He had not even reported his back injury to battalion. ”I was hurting,” he later said, ”but I wasn't about to start feeling sorry for myself at that point.” Mastrion could not bring himself to leave, knowing that a hairy, one-of-a-kind night operation was only a few hours away. ”When you're the company commander, you've got to gut it out.”

Lieutenant Colonel Weise had outlined the night maneuver the day before at the BLT 2/4 command post in Mai Xa Chanh West. It was code-named Operation Night Owl. The colonel's map board was propped up against one of the inside walls of the bullet-pocked Buddhist temple that they had converted into a headquarters. The roof had been blown off, except for a few beams and s.h.i.+ngles. Weise's staff officers and company commanders, flak jackets on and helmets at their feet, sat on scrounged up Vietnamese chairs and benches, which were comparatively low and small. The Marines appeared to be sitting on children's furniture.

Weise and his handpicked operations officer, Maj. George F. ”Fritz” Warren, explained that the 3d Marines had provided intelligence indicating that an NVA battalion had a.s.sumed bivouac positions above Alpha 1, an Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) combat outpost situated one kilometer east of Jones Creek and almost seven klicks northwest of Mai Xa Chanh West. Alpha 1, located just three kilometers south of the DMZ, was the most forward allied position in the sector. The poorly led and poorly supported ARVN troops were not, however, known for aggressive operations. According to intel from the 3d Marines, the NVA battalion in question had moved into the deserted hamlet of An My, which was only eighteen hundred meters northwest of Alpha 1. Weise and Warren had secured permission from regiment to slip through the ARVN Tactical Area of Responsibility (TAOR) and initiate a nighttime spoiling attack on the NVA in An My.

Operation Night Owl, to commence the following evening, was part of Operation Napoleon/Saline, the code name for all 3d Marine Regiment activities below the eastern DMZ. The maneuver was to be led by Echo Company, commanded by Capt. James E. Livingston, which was currently headquartered in an old, shot-to-h.e.l.l concrete schoolhouse in Nhi Ha. This otherwise deserted village was on the east bank of Jones Creek, three kilometers north of the battalion command post at Mai Xa Chanh West, which was on the west bank. Mai Xa Chanh West sat at the corner where Jones Creek, a tributary that averages thirty meters in width, empties into the slow-moving, greenish brown Cua Viet River, which runs generally east-west and empties into the South China Sea just seven kilometers to the northeast. The 3d Marines' CP (Camp Kistler) was situated on the south bank of the Cua Viet, with one side bordering the ocean. This waterway defined BLT 2/4's reason for being where it was. The Cua Viet has a branch, the Bo Dieu River, which originates three kilometers farther inland from Mai Xa Chanh West. Four kilometers upstream, the Bo Dieu flowed past the new 3d Marine Division CP in the Dong Ha Combat Base (DHCB), located on its south bank. The bulk of all division supplies were moved by the Navy's Task Force (TF) Clearwater from Camp Kistler to the DHCB along the Cua Viet and Bo Dieu rivers, so this link with the ocean had to be kept open.

Lieutenant Colonel Weise explained that Livingston's Echo Company was to lead the battalion's northward movement during the hours of darkness. They were to go in blacked-out and stripped-down, with camouflage paint covering exposed skin, and c.u.mbersome helmets and flak jackets left behind. They would move in single file, a standard formation for nighttime tactical moves. The single-file column facilitated control but made ma.s.sing fires to the front more difficult in case of ambush. Given this risk, they would have to rely on noise and light discipline so as not to become targets themselves. Radio silence was to be maintained among the maneuver elements, while those radiomen who remained at Mai Xa Chanh West were to simulate routine radio traffic on the battalion tactical net. If the NVA managed to find the BLT's frequencies, their eavesdropping would be of no help.

Nor, Weise continued, would BLT 2/4 signal its punch with the customary prep fires. To ensure coordination with the ARVN at Alpha 1, Weise planned to helicopter up that afternoon to brief their U.S. Army advisers. Four tubes from the battalion's 81mm mortar platoon and seven hundred rounds of ammunition were also to be choppered up to Alpha 1, so as to avoid the red tape involved in getting artillery from regiment at Camp Kistler and division at the DHCB. Weise's forward air controller was also to be placed at Alpha 1 in case air support was required. Naval gunfire from destroyers steaming offsh.o.r.e could also be brought to bear. The NVA in An My, however, were to experience none of this fire until after the attack had commenced on their hopefully unsuspecting positions.

Following Echo Company's lead in the night march, Lieutenant Colonel Weise, Major Warren, and the other members of their dozen-man mini-CP would fall in with Foxtrot Company, commanded by Capt. James H. Butler, which was in Mai Xa Chanh East, directly across Jones Creek from the CP. Foxtrot's own CP was in a Catholic church, whose cross-topped steeple still survived intact. The two-company column would silently guide on preselected checkpoints past Alpha 1, until it drew near the southern fringe of An My. At that point, a slim, shallow branch of Jones Creek running northeast would serve as the line of departure. Echo Company was to break east and then north, bypa.s.s An My, and a.s.sume positions on the far side. The company's a.s.sault would then come from the unexpected northern side. Meanwhile, Foxtrot was to establish a base of fire in the scrubby sand dunes east of An My. Foxtrot was not to fire a shot until Echo had launched its a.s.sault, and then only at figures moving south of An My.

Those NVA able to escape Echo's a.s.sault and Foxtrot's grazing fire would run into Captain Mastrion and Golf Company's blocking positions in Lai An.

The battalion's last rifle company, Hotel, commanded by Capt. James L. Williams, would not partic.i.p.ate in Night Owl. Hotel Company occupied a two-platoon patrol base (Objective Delta) in a small, unnamed hamlet twenty-five hundred meters southwest of Mai Xa Chanh West. Hotel also manned a separate platoon patrol base (Objective Charlie), which was another four hundred meters to the southwest, and only a kilometer east of a Bo Dieu tributary that divided BLT 2/4's TAOR from that of the 1st ARVN Infantry Division.

Lieutenant Colonel Weise, who placed a premium on thorough, detailed operations orders (inadequate briefings had been one of the problems in 2/4 when he first got the battalion), finally began to wrap up the chalk talk. In a war where the hours of darkness generally belonged to the enemy, a night attack made sense precisely because it was the response the NVA would least expect. Nevertheless, Major Warren could sense-and he knew that Weise could, too-a certain apprehension among their officers that was too subtle to have been detected by an outsider. The uncertainty was shared to a degree even by Warren. The battalion had never before conducted a full-fledged night attack (given the difficulty involved, few battalions had), and a lot of things could go wrong out there in the dark-to include Marines accidentally shooting other Marines. Warren's doubts were short-lived, however. Weise had gradually prepared them for just such a sophisticated scheme of maneuver, and Warren and the rest knew that Weise would be out there, too, with his own blackened face, and with his jingling rifle sling secured with olive-drab tape. It made a difference.

When Operation Night Owl got rolling after dark on 27 April 1968, 1st Lt. David R. Jones's Echo Company platoon was in the lead, and Jones himself walked point. The column skirted the eastern side of Alpha 1, where the ARVN troops had marked a safe path through their perimeter minefield. Jones looked at Alpha 1 through his starlight scope, which gave the world a fuzzy green cast, and saw ARVN soldiers looking back at him through their own night observation devices. He figured that if the ARVN knew where they were, so did the NVA. He did not expect to find much in An My.

Farther back, Lieutenant Colonel Weise was just another bareheaded, blacked-out silhouette in the column. Along with Major Warren, the mini-CP included Sgt. Maj. John M. ”Big John” Malnar, the battalion sergeant major, and Sgt. Charles W. Bollinger, who humped a PRC-25 radio and served as the battalion tactical net radio operator. Weise never went anywhere without Malnar, Bollinger, and his runner, Cpl. Greg R. Kraus.

After Echo Company moved north of An My and Foxtrot slipped to the east, the mini-CP settled in with Echo. At that point, the command group was just one more group of Marines in the dunes. ”You lack control,” said Warren. ”A night operation runs its course and all you can do is sort it out when it's over.” It was time to stay close to the ground-until 0400, when Echo was scheduled to launch the attack on An My. The 0400 kickoff time was typical for a night attack. ”The dog hours of the early morning,” Warren explained, ”when the enemy's sure the night's over and nothing's going to take place, and half the sentries are asleep.”

Some of the Marines were asleep, too. Captain Butler of Foxtrot came awake with a start in the sh.e.l.l crater where he had set up his command post. He had not known he was asleep. His radioman was asleep, too, and Butler realized why he had awakened: Weise's voice was a whisper on the radio. The battalion commander wanted to make sure that Butler was in position. Weise would chew Butler out the next morning for falling asleep, but Butler was not surprised that he had. His company had spent the previous night on a trial run with the handheld infrared scopes issued for Night Owl.

”There we were, up for the second straight night,” Butler recalled later. ”As much as we tried to stay awake, as dark as it was out there, you thought your eyes were open but they weren't.”

Captain Butler's crater was atop a low sand dune, and he presently sat up at its edge with his infrared scope. Its range was short and he could not actually see An My, which was about a klick to the northwest. Butler knew that Echo was up there somewhere with Weise, ready to drive the NVA into Foxtrot's fires. He also knew that Golf Company was about two klicks to the southwest, setting up their blocking position in Lai An. Suddenly, the m.u.f.fled report of automatic weapons shattered the silence. It was too early for the a.s.sault on An My. Butler turned to see that the night was alive with red and green tracers where the map in his head indicated Lai An was.

This is nuts, thought LCpl. James R. Lashley, a machine-gun team leader in 1st Platoon, G BLT 2/4. Unable to leave helmets and flak jackets behind in their temporary position at Pho Con, the troops, who were already humping a lot of ammo, had to wear them, and Lashley thought they sounded like a herd of water buffalo with tin cans on their backs! Lashley was both angry and scared, but mostly he was exhausted. He had been in the bush for eight months. He was a short, wiry guy, blondish and bespectacled, and a proud, able Marine. He was also a bright young man-and a realist. It seemed to him that the powers that be were not. His platoon had been operating above the Cua Viet for eight weeks and had seen a lot of action. Given the heat, the humidity, their heavy combat load, and the soft, unstable texture of the terrain that made even a short patrol a real a.s.s-kicker, their unrelenting schedule of daylight sweeps and night ambushes, listening posts, and foxhole watch had taken a brutal physical and mental toll.

”At times we were really sharp,” Lashley recalled, ”but I could see the difference.” He had not blacked out his face, neck, hands, or arms before saddling up for the night maneuver, nor had he soundproofed his gear with tape. ”We were losing the edge you need to survive in combat. We were becoming ambivalent and disinterested about the most elementary rules of combat discipline. We were just going through the motions.”

Moving out from Pho Con, Golf Company closed on Lai An at Captain Mastrion's direction in two separate maneuver elements. Golf Three, led by 1st Lt. James T. Ferland, had the point and the mission of securing the burial mounds that dotted the approach to Lai An, from which the platoon could cover the movement of the rest of the company into their blocking positions. The company's executive officer, 1st Lt. Jack E. Deichman, accompanied Golf Three, as did the 60mm mortar section from the weapons platoon.

Captain Mastrion moved with the lead platoon of the follow-up element, SSgt. Reymundo Del Rio's Golf One, along with a composite machine-gun and rocket section from the weapons platoon. Golf Two, commanded by 2d Lt. Frederick H. ”Rick” Morgan, brought up the rear. Their slow, cautious columns moved across the flatlands and through a wet rice paddy that seemed to be an unending, splas.h.i.+ng obstacle in the otherwise still and silent darkness. When they finally closed on the east-west trail running along the bottom of Lai An, no one was more relieved than Captain Mastrion. No one had had a harder time on the move. Because of his injured back, it had become painful for Mastrion just to stand, and a numb sensation was creeping into his legs.

When Mastrion's back finally gave out completely after Night Owl and he was medevacked, a rumor spread that he had been relieved of command. More fantastically, there was talk that the captain's injuries had actually been the work of a grunt ”doing him a job” with a hand grenade. Untrue on both counts, but widely believed. Mastrion had been with Golf Company for only a month, and there were Marines who had come to some ugly judgments about their new skipper. One thrice-wounded grunt commented: The troops considered Captain Mastrion to be a gung-ho cowboy with a foolhardy disregard for the company's safety. We were worn out, but here's this p.r.i.c.k who wanted to ”get some.” Well, we weren't ready to hear that at that point in time. It was that zeal. The sixty mike-mike mortar section had Mastrion's CP at Lam Xuan West bracketed. I was pretty close to some of those guys and they said, ”If we get hit, he's going to be the first to go.” We were too tired to be angry. Being angry took energy, and we were out of energy. We were just trying to survive, and we were going to take him out. It was real.

Captain Mastrion, a small, dark man with eyegla.s.ses and a black handlebar mustache, was a jocular, straightforward product of Brooklyn, New York, and a Marine of much experience. Twenty-eight years old at the time, he had enlisted at seventeen and was later commissioned from the ranks. He served several short a.s.signments in Vietnam between 1964 and 1967 before joining 2/4 as an a.s.sistant operations officer in late 1967. Mastrion had replaced a paternalistic and soft-spoken captain as commander of Golf Company. That, Weise commented, was the root of the problem. ”Mastrion was a terrific company commander, but he was a completely different kind of personality from his predecessor, who was the kind of guy people did things for because they wanted to please him. People who worked for Mastrion were a little scared of him. He was a demanding, no-nonsense, you-do-it-this-way autocrat. He was a fighter, and he suffered no fools.”

Weise, who suffered no fools himself, added that Mastrion ”handled his company extremely well when the s.h.i.+t hit the fan.” In fact, Mastrion earned the Silver Star on only his eighth day with Golf Company-after leading a twelve-hour-long a.s.sault on Nhi Ha in which he received two flesh wounds, and had his radio handset shot from his hand at one point.

Captain Mastrion soldiered through Operation Night Owl in stoic fas.h.i.+on despite his wrenched back. As Golf Company began a.s.suming blocking positions south of Lai An's raised trail, the battalion intelligence officer called Mastrion to report that he had an unconfirmed report that ”two thousand NVA are coming down the west bank of Jones Creek at twenty-two hundred.” Mastrion looked at the luminescent dial on his watch. It was 2206, and Golf Company was precisely where the S2 had said the NVA would be moving. Mastrion was about to make a wisea.s.s comment to their usually reliable S2 when there was a sudden commotion about fifteen meters ahead of him in the dark. Gunny Armer was up there, helping Staff Sergeant Del Rio of Golf One place one squad at a time into position. As best as it could be pieced together afterward, the commotion began when a Marine heard Vietnamese voices in the dark. Wondering if it was one of their scout interpreters, the Marine called out, ”Hey, Gunny ... hey, Gunny....”

Gunny Armer said, ”Who's that?” just as an NVA potato-masher grenade came out of nowhere to bounce off his chest and explode at his feet. Someone screamed, ”Jesus, gooks!” and in the first crazy, confused seconds, Cpl. Vernal J. Yealock's squad took devastating AK-47 fire at virtually point-blank range. Only Yealock and his grenadier were not hit. The other eight men in the squad were dropped, and one who'd been hit in the head began an incoherent keening. Del Rio ran to his men and flung himself beside Armer, who'd taken a lot of small sh.e.l.l fragments in his face and chest. The gunny kept mumbling, ”Son of a b.i.t.c.h, I'm hit... son of a b.i.t.c.h, I'm hit...!”