Part 4 (1/2)

It was 1625. On Captain Vargas's order, Golf Company began pulling back, but Staff Sergeant Del Rio, only a few steps into the retreat, was sent reeling by an explosion. He came to lying on his back in a shallow trench. He felt as though he'd been knocked out for only a few seconds. It was hard to tell. He realized that his helmet was gone and that he had blood running down his face from a wound on his forehead. He was also bleeding from his left knee. His M16 was gone. Del Rio unholstered his .45 pistol, chambered a round, and was lying there trying to get his brain unscrambled when two NVA suddenly jumped over him. They kept on running. They had looked right at him, but with one b.l.o.o.d.y leg stretched out in front of him and the other bent underneath, and with blood smeared on his face, the NVA had probably a.s.sumed he was dead, despite his open eyes. Del Rio got to his knees and shot one of them in the back. The other NVA darted around a hedgerow and disappeared.

s.h.i.+t, I'm going to die here! thought Del Rio. In pain and confused about where to go, he joined two wounded and equally disoriented Marines. They helped each other stay on their feet as they moved out. They hoped they were going in the right direction. Another NVA sprang into view to one side of them, running in the same direction but paying them no attention. Del Rio knocked him down with a few shots from his pistol.

Meanwhile, Captain Vargas was standing up to direct his Marines past his command group and rearward some fifty meters more to a drainage ditch that would make a good defensive position. When no more Marines could be seen coming, the rear guard began pulling back. The NVA were right on top of them. Lieutenant Hilton, the misplaced air officer, threw his heavy, reliable M14 rifle to his shoulder and started banging away at those enemy troops he could see as they darted from one spot of cover to the next. The young sergeant walking backward beside Hilton had an M16 in each hand and was firing the weapons simultaneously on full automatic. Vargas was squeezing off his own M16 bursts. Although the NVA exposed themselves for only a few seconds at a time, some of them were going down in the cross fire. Vargas noticed that some of the enemy soldiers didn't even have weapons in their hands. They were apparently hapless survivors of the original defenders of Dai Do who had been swept up in the counterattack.

Staff Sergeant Del Rio had made it to the edge of the brushy-banked drainage ditch when several NVA, in full, reckless pursuit, came through the bushes where he and a number of Marines were starting to set up. The Marines and NVA collided. Del Rio saw a Marine swing an empty or jammed M16 like a baseball bat. He saw another Marine jump atop an enemy soldier, smas.h.i.+ng the man's head again and again with an entrenching tool. The other NVA ran right through them, as a shocked Del Rio turned to fire his pistol at them.

1. After recuperating from his wound, Balignasay rejoined the battalion and was promoted to gunnery sergeant. Balignasay was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during a highly successful sapper attack on Firebase Russell in February 1969; despite grenade fragments in his face and a bullet wound through his arm, the gunny used his twelve-inch bolo knife from his days as a Huk to dispatch five sappers in hand-to-hand combat. After recuperating from his wound, Balignasay rejoined the battalion and was promoted to gunnery sergeant. Balignasay was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during a highly successful sapper attack on Firebase Russell in February 1969; despite grenade fragments in his face and a bullet wound through his arm, the gunny used his twelve-inch bolo knife from his days as a Huk to dispatch five sappers in hand-to-hand combat.

Surrounded

THE NORTH-SOUTH DRAINAGE DITCH THAT BECAME G GOLF Company's rallying point, and from behind which the Marines rose to fire, had bushes growing thickly along both banks. They had to shoot blindly through the vegetation, and lob their hand grenades and M79 fire at the unseen foe. The volume of their barrage compensated for what it lacked in accuracy, and the NVA were forced to seek cover. The enemy counterattack lost its momentum. Company's rallying point, and from behind which the Marines rose to fire, had bushes growing thickly along both banks. They had to shoot blindly through the vegetation, and lob their hand grenades and M79 fire at the unseen foe. The volume of their barrage compensated for what it lacked in accuracy, and the NVA were forced to seek cover. The enemy counterattack lost its momentum.

Captain Vargas had forty-five men with him along the ditch. He had a dozen or so other men, the survivors of the two squads on the left flank, pinned down in their own little last-stand position. Golf Company had started toward Dai Do with more than 150 Marines.

The NVA, having regrouped, tried to outflank the Marines at a point where Lieutenant Morgan and Golf Two had formed a line facing north above the drainage ditch. When fifteen to twenty NVA moved down a trench flinging Chicom grenades ahead of them, what was left of Golf Two began pulling back. They had no choice. They had expended almost all their ammunition repelling the first counterattack, and many a grunt's M16 had failed so often that he had broken the weapon down, thrown away the bolt, and picked up an AK-47 instead.

Fortunately, the check-fire on artillery support had finally been lifted, so Lieutenant Acly quickly worked up a fire mission to put HE on the NVA trying to outflank them-an act for which he later got a Bronze Star. It took five minutes to go through the fire support bureaucracy, then two 105mm howitzers began firing from Camp Kistler. Golf was on the gun-target line, so each round roared in over their heads. Acly, who was behind a burial mound with his radioman and could not actually see the enemy, started the barrage long and then worked it back to within fifty meters of their position. The two tubes fired one round every thirty seconds, maintaining that pace-one sh.e.l.l cras.h.i.+ng right after the other, for fifteen minutes until the enemy fire petered out.

”I was really worried about Golf Company,” Lieutenant Colonel Weise later wrote. At the same time the NVA launched their ground a.s.sault on G BLT 2/4, they also sh.e.l.led Weise's CP and B/1/3 in An Lac, and F and H BLT 2/4 in Dong Huan. When the NVA initiated their flanking maneuver some thirty-five minutes later, at about 1700 on 1 May, Weise had Golf's perimeter boxed in with naval gunfire, artillery, and 81mm and 4.2-inch mortar fire. ”But something more was needed to take the pressure off Vargas and give the enemy something else to worry about,” wrote Weise. That something was B/1/3, and Weise's account noted that, ”from its location in An Lac, Bravo Company, mounted on amtracs, would move quickly north (about 500 meters) into the southern edge of Dai Do, dismount, and fight its way to link up with Golf.”

As Bravo moved out of An Lac, Captain Livingston's Echo Company began moving in. Livingston, who was super gungho, had monitored the battalion tac net since the battle began the previous morning, and had chafed at his role as guardian of the Dong Ha bridge under the opcon of the 3d Marine Division. Weise had sorely missed the presence of Captain Jim, as he called his longest-serving company commander, and had made repeated requests through regiment for Echo Company's return. When Golf ran into serious resistance in the opening moves of its a.s.sault on Dai Do, Weise's requests became more desperate.

Division headquarters, which had its own concerns about an NVA drive down Route 1, finally relented, and Weise wrote, ”My morale went up several notches when I learned that Echo Company had been released by 3d Marine Division and was en route to my position in An Lac.”1 It was a two-kilometer hump from E Company's bridge position northeast to the stream it would have to cross to reach An Lac. Captain Livingston put his best officer, Lieutenant Jones, on point with Echo Three, and they started down a footpath that sliced through deserted hamlets and fallow farmland. The trail took them to the brushy bank of the creek, where it ran past Dai Do. Here, the point squad, led by Sgt. James W. Rogers, spotted an NVA squad on the other side. The enemy wore pith helmets and fatigues, and they were swinging AK-47s as they moved at a fast trot through the high gra.s.s in the hamlet. In seconds they would be gone. Jones couldn't afford to wait to get permission from the captain to engage them, so he told Rogers to open fire. There were about a dozen ammo-heavy Marines in the point squad. They all cut loose, creating a terrific roar with their automatic weapons and grenade launchers.

The NVA disappeared into the brush without returning a single shot. Lieutenant Jones wanted to pursue, but Livingston pulled in the reins. ”No way!” he shouted over the radio. ”Our job is to get across the creek and hook up with battalion.”

Captain Livingston, following behind with 2d Lt. Michael L. Cecil's Echo One and 1st Lt. James Sims's Echo Two, began taking fire from Dong Lai, which was due north of them. A hundred open meters lay between the hamlet and the gra.s.sy burial mounds behind which Echo One and Two dropped to begin lobbing M79 rounds and firing M60s in return. There were only a handful of NVA in Dong Lai, and the Marines could not see any of them through the cover of hedgerows and banana trees in the village.

The NVA could see them, though. Sergeant Elbert E. c.o.x, Jr., a machine-gun section leader, was shot in the back of the head. c.o.x was a big man, age twenty-five, from Chesapeake, Virginia. He was a veteran of Operation Kingfisher, but though a competent and experienced NCO, his men considered him abrasive and he was immensely unpopular. Sergeant c.o.x lay in the gra.s.s now, gasping for air and crying out, ”Oh, mom, I'm hit!” The cry sent chills down the backs of the grunts who had run up to wrap useless bandages around c.o.x's shattered head, and console this man they disliked. ”Don't worry, Sarge, you'll be all right.... Corpsman, up!” Corpsman, up!”

Sergeant c.o.x died. Lance Corporal Anthony Taylor, a rifleman in Echo Two, was also hit by a sniper from Dong Lai. He died, too. Taylor had been an easygoing, twenty-one-year-old black from Newark, New Jersey.

Hey, this ain't my war, right? thought LCpl. Van A. Hahner. The enemy fire had gotten heavy, and Hahner, who'd only recently been attached to Echo Company with a two-man regimental sniper team, had his head down and a cigaret lit. Hahner had been in-country nine months. He didn't see any use in shooting at what he couldn't see. This was a job for arty. The team sniper, for whom Hahner acted as cover man, was similarly uninvolved. An angry lieutenant shouted at them, ”Throw some sniper fire back!” The sniper went first. He rose up from behind their mound with his Remington Model 700, but before he could focus the scope he had to drop back down to avoid the rounds suddenly cracking past his head. It was Hahner's turn. He shouldered his heavy, hard-kicking M14 as he came up and fired into the hamlet about six feet over the heads of the Marines pinned down in front of him. Having killed a bush or two, he dropped back behind the mound. There, he thought. I've done my duty.

”Hey, you're Marines' right by us!”

”He's not hitting you, so don't worry about it!” the lieutenant shouted at the Marines caught in the middle. He then turned his attention back to the sniper team. ”I thought I told you to return fire!” he shouted.

Hahner got off several more quick shots before two bullets from the other side smacked into the headstone atop his burial mound. The rounds. .h.i.t with dusty blasts about an inch below his eyes, and he went down quickly. Man, I've had enough of this, Hahner thought. The lieutenant kept bugging him, so he decided he was going to be cool. He wasn't going to go over the top again. But as soon as Hahner put his left knee out, before he could even fire from around the side of the mound in a crouched position, the NVA marksman shot him. The round went through his leg in a straight line from s.h.i.+n to thigh, and zipped on out to graze his rib cage. Hahner let out a scream as he was knocked down. Two Marines, under fire themselves, quickly pulled him back behind the mound. The pain was immediate, but so was Hahner's relief that he had not been shot in the stomach. It was his first thought. He knew he would live.

Hahner had the presence of mind to hand the shoulder rig for his .357 Colt Python to his partner and ask him to get the pistol back to one of the men in their sniper section. It was a commercial handgun, and Hahner had not finished paying the man for it. A corpsman tore open the b.l.o.o.d.y trouser leg and gave him an encouraging grin. ”Hey, you got a million-dollar wound, baby-you're goin' home. You're okay....”

The sniper made one more go of it with his long-barreled, bolt-action rifle, but was dropped by a round that went through his arm. Unable to get artillery support, Captain Livingston had his 60mm mortar section pump a barrage of white phosphorus (WP) and HE on Dong Lai. While the NVAs' heads were down, Echo One and Two pushed past the fortified hamlet and joined Echo Three along the creek, which ran southeast another five hundred meters to the Bo Dieu River. Echo Company followed it down, using the four-foot bank as cover. When the Marines were opposite An Lac, Sergeant Rogers's point squad forded the sluggish, muddy, hundred-foot-wide obstacle. Lieutenant Jones dropped his helmet and unshouldered his flak jacket and pack in the hasty perimeter that Jones established, then waded back into the water. Livingston followed him and, joined by a half-dozen other tall Marines planted at intervals across the neck-deep tributary, helped the rest of the company across. Everyone felt terribly exposed out there. The line moved fast.

”I don't think we were really keeping anything too dry,” recalled Lieutenant Jones. ”We were just moving 'Em across, shoving 'Em across-and keeping 'Em from going under.” The NVA fired an occasional sniper round at them without effect. At one point Jones, who was facing north in midstream, saw a slow-moving RPG coming right down the creek at them. He ducked under the water. ”I think I counted to a thousand.”

At 1745, when B/1/3 was still three hundred meters short of its linkup with Golf Company, the amtracs atop which the Marines rode became the targets of AK-47 and RPG fire from NVA entrenched in Dai Do's southern corner. The effect was immediate. The Marines dismounted and sought shelter behind the burial mounds in the high gra.s.s of the open field. Bravo Company's new commander, 1st Lt. T. A. Brown, who had transferred from D/1/3 only that morning, tried to organize an a.s.sault on the hamlet. When he realized that no one but his radioman was following him, he started back-only to have a rocket-propelled grenade explode behind him. Brown was seriously wounded in the shoulder.

Lieutenant Keppen, the greenhorn platoon commander, was again the only officer left in Bravo Company. He was losing people very quickly to the devastating NVA fire, and he screamed hysterically on the radio, ”You gotta help me! We're surrounded out here! They're all over the place! They're going to kill us all!”

Captain Vargas came up on the net. ”Now listen to me, Bravo, take it easy. I'm right over here. You're okay. Just pull your line in and talk to your people and stop yelling. Stop yelling and calm down and you'll be all right....” Vargas explained to Keppen that if he pulled Bravo Company back to An Lac, as he was shouting that he was going to do, outnumbered Golf might be overrun. Keppen came around as Vargas kept talking. He was confused and inexperienced, but he was no coward. Given some direction, he did the best he could in a desperate situation. Vargas could offer Keppen no more than moral support at the time, though, because as noted in the battalion journal, ”The CO of Company G reported that NVA troops had moved between Company B and his position, making it difficult for either Company B or Company G to take the enemy under fire without endangering friendly troops.”

One of the Bravo Company corpsmen was screaming for help. Crawling as low as a snake, Pfc. Paul F. ”Birds.h.i.+t” Roughan, ammo bearer for a machine-gun team-and a tough, rough-edged eighteen year old from Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts-worked his way up to the corpsman's burial mound from the cover of his own. Roughan was not with his team because their M60 had been disabled by a direct hit. He left his own weapon and ammo with his team so he could get closer to the earth. There was a paddy dike to the left of the corpsman's mound, and the corpsman-barely able to get his head up for all the fire-pointed out the casualties he had spotted on the other side, the side facing the invisible enemy in the hedgerows. Roughan could see both casualties. One of them, a black Marine, was obviously dead. The other, a white Marine named Blakesley, was sprawled across the dead grunt. Blakesley had multiple wounds and was moaning deliriously, ”Corpsman ... corpsman ...”

What an eerie, unG.o.dly call, Roughan thought. He and the corpsman spent several minutes behind the mound, trying to figure out how to get to Blakesley. The corpsman, completely unnerved, handed his medical bag to Roughan. ”It's impossible, we can't get to him! Don't even try it, it's crazy!”

The corpsman bounded rearward. You skinny little s.h.i.+t! Roughan thought, enraged. The sonofab.i.t.c.h asks for a volunteer, and then didi maus didi maus when the s.h.i.+t gets too hot! Blakesley was still moaning for a corpsman. Oh s.h.i.+t, how am I going to do this? Roughan figured the only way to get Blakesley was in an unburdened fireman's carry. He kept his helmet on, but shrugged out of his hot and heavy flak jacket. He also left the corpsman's bag as he shoved off on his belly toward the dike that separated him from the wounded man. He had covered about fifty feet when something exploded a few meters to his left. When he came back to reality, he felt no pain. He was just numb, except for the warm sensation of blood running down his neck. He'd been hit on the left side of the back of the neck, and he felt along the painless edge of the pockmark, trying to determine the extent of his injuries. He did not discover the exit wound on the other side. when the s.h.i.+t gets too hot! Blakesley was still moaning for a corpsman. Oh s.h.i.+t, how am I going to do this? Roughan figured the only way to get Blakesley was in an unburdened fireman's carry. He kept his helmet on, but shrugged out of his hot and heavy flak jacket. He also left the corpsman's bag as he shoved off on his belly toward the dike that separated him from the wounded man. He had covered about fifty feet when something exploded a few meters to his left. When he came back to reality, he felt no pain. He was just numb, except for the warm sensation of blood running down his neck. He'd been hit on the left side of the back of the neck, and he felt along the painless edge of the pockmark, trying to determine the extent of his injuries. He did not discover the exit wound on the other side.

Roughan bellowed for a corpsman. He could still hear Blakesley's delirious groaning. When he realized that no one was coming for them, he crawled back to the mound. Too tired to keep pus.h.i.+ng along on his belly, he continued rearward in a stumbling crouch with his head tilted to the right, cradled in his right hand, to staunch the flow of blood. His team leader's helmeted head popped up from behind another mound. ”Hey, Birdie, whataya doin' comin' back here? I thought you volunteered to help the doc?”

”I've been hit, I've been hit!” Roughan shouted.

After pulling Roughan behind the mound, the gunner secured a battle dressing around his ammo bearer's neck. The last thing Roughan said to the four-man M60 team with which he had spent the four best and worst months of his life seemed very important at the time: ”Any more pogey bait packages I might get while I'm doing time in the hospital, just open 'Em up and share 'Em.”

Crawling again until that became too tiring, Roughan completed his under-fire maneuver to An Lac in an exhausted, zigzagging stagger. He was placed aboard a skimmer-the driver had one hand on the throttle, and a .45 in the other-and taken downriver to Mai Xa Chanh West. The beach there was crowded with casualties. Roughan, numb and spent, lay on his back and called to a corpsman, ”Can I have some water?”

”Sure you can,” came the reply.

”Can I have a smoke?”

”Sure, no problem.”

Oh s.h.i.+t, he thought. This is not a good sign. Roughan had been taught that casualties should not even ask for these things because they could adversely affect them. He was afraid that he was so far gone that the corpsmen weren't even observing the usual precautions. Mustering his best John Wayne drawl for the corpsman, Roughan said, ”Well, Doc, whaddya think my chances are?”

”Hey, where there's life, there's hope.”

A Sea Horse landed and two Marines lifted Roughan's litter. He did not know that other Marines had pulled Blakesley to safety. All he knew was that he had failed. He thought he had left the man to die. He felt guilty and angry-and sad, too. He knew that the camaraderie of Bravo Company was something he would miss forever. As they lifted his stretcher into the chopper, he realized he was crying.

By the afternoon of the second day of the Battle of Dai Do, the beachfront hamlet of An Lac had become a going concern. Lieutenant Colonel Weise had established the antenna farm of his Alpha Command Group in the village, and he had brought forward his hard-charging S2, Capt. Richard J. Murphy (call sign Dixie Deuce), to take charge of the various elements gathered there. These included the 60mm mortar sections from B/ 1/3 and Golf Company, as well as BLT 2/4's 81mm mortar platoon, the amtrac platoon, the reconnaissance platoon, and various medical and communications personnel. The BLT's forward supply point had also been established in An Lac. Newly arrived Echo Company a.s.sumed security positions around the hamlet as B/1/3 struggled under fire to reach Dai Do.

An Lac was the first step in the medevac chain. Navy corps-men performed initial triage there before the wounded were evacuated by skimmer to Mai Xa Chanh West Further emergency treatment was rendered by the Navy surgeons and corps-men at the battalion aid station on the beach. Sea Horses from HMM-362 then flew the casualties to either the USS Iwo Jima Iwo Jima or the hospital s.h.i.+p or the hospital s.h.i.+p Repose Repose.

This extended medevac chain was the result of lessons learned. During BLT 2/4's initial operations above the Cua Viet, company commanders requested emergency medevacs whenever a man was seriously wounded. Although Marine pilots would brave enemy fire, the overly protective rules under which they operated did not allow them to fly through the artillery and naval gunfire being employed by the ground unit in need. A request for an emergency medevac thus resulted in a check-fire. Major Warren commented in his postbattle dialogue with the division historical section: Invariably, we may save the life of one Marine and lose the life of three or four more because of not having the fire. It took us a while to learn this lesson, but once we did learn it, then we always established a forward triage station to which we would bring the wounded people regardless of the severity of the wound, knowing full well that we might lose some in the evacuation process. From the forward triage station, we would take immediate first-aid, life saving action and then move them back to the Charlie Papa, which could be as much as two or three miles from the forward triage station.

Helicopters could land at the CP at Mai Xa Chanh West without a check-fire being imposed on the engaged units in Dai Do. Warren added that because the medevac system allowed continual artillery fires it became ”one of the things that allowed us to even exist in this particular battle where the enemy were so numerically superior.”

Colonel Hull, meanwhile, was not satisfied with the support provided by Marine chopper units. The issue was not courage but rather inst.i.tutions. Hull had seen U.S. Army helicopters in action in the 3d Marine Division TAOR and had been much impressed. The emphasis of the Army aviation units had been on providing maximum support to the ground unit in need, and their flexible, mission-oriented doctrine allowed their dust-off pilots to make the most of their guts, initiative, and flying skills. The Army pilots flew in bad weather and landed in hot LZs that Marine pilots were usually not permitted near. The Army pilots did not require artillery check-fires when conducting medevac missions, and could thus perform the lifesaving function without disrupting the conduct of ground operations.

”These people do more with helicopters than we do,” Colonel Hull stated during his end-of-tour debriefing in July 1968. He added that Marine aviation units were overly interested in husbanding their a.s.sets. During the Battle of Dai Do, Capt. L. L. Forehand, BLT 2/4's S4, used his Helicopter Support Team (HST) to establish an LZ opposite An Lac on the south sh.o.r.e of the Bo Dieu. This LZ was, Forehand wrote later, in close proximity to the rear fringe of the battle area but not under either direct or indirect enemy fire. This was done on my order to shorten the distance for transporting casualties [but] at no time would any USMC helicopter touch down near the battle area. One aircraft did eventually land, refused casualties, and departed. When questioned via radio by both myself and the HST Team Leader, the pilot replied he was afraid of drawing fire. At that point he did, and I missed.

Captain Forehand recounted later that he delivered the friendly fire with an M16, and that he ”put a magazine after the sonofab.i.t.c.h.”

It is unknown how many seriously wounded Marines died on the Dai Do battlefield because of the lack of helicopter medevacs. Major Warren stated that of the 287 casualties who were medevacked from Mai Xa Chanh West, ”there were only four [who] died of wounds in the process of the evacuation or the treatment back aboard the s.h.i.+p.”