Part 10 (2/2)

Golf Company, still under the command of the thrice-wounded Captain Vargas, was incredibly weak, with only three lieutenants-Acly, Morgan, and Deichman-two Staff NCOs, three corpsmen, and twenty-nine enlisted men present for duty. The company had three radios and three machine guns, but no grenade launchers, no rocket launchers, and no tubes left in the mortar section.

Echo Company, commanded by its only remaining officer, Lieutenant Cecil, was not doing much better, with only two Staff NCOs, three corpsmen, and thirty-nine enlisted men. There were no machine guns and no rocket launchers, but they still had a grenade launcher, two mortar tubes, and six radios.

Hotel Company, led by lip-shot Lieutenant Taylor, had one other lieutenant left, Boyle, plus six corpsmen and fifty-six enlisted men. The Marines in the company had managed to hang on to six radios, two machine guns, three grenade launchers, and two mortar tubes.

Captain Butler's F Company was in the best overall shape, with two lieutenants, Basel and Wainwright, plus one Staff NCO, six corpsmen, and forty-two enlisted men. They had three machine guns and seven grenade launchers, plus two mortars and ten radios. Behind them in An Lac, Captain Murphy had one officer and thirty-two enlisted men with four tubes from the 81 mm mortar platoon (which was presently firing into Dinh To), plus Lieutenant Muter and his eighteen-man recon platoon. In addition, three officers and sixty-eight enlisted men had just arrived at the splash point from Mai Xa Chanh West. Knapp had directed the headquarters commandant to round up all nonessential personnel at the BLT CP to reinforce the rifle companies, but, since it was already dark, Knapp elected to have them remain in An Lac. Also in An Lac was B/l/3, which had three officers and eighty-six enlisted men on hand. Knapp later told the division historical team, ”We tightened in our defense, redistributed our people, and checked all radio nets to see that we had active FO teams, air teams, and so forth. We continued preparations by posting listening posts and firing close night defensive fires-we put them in very close. Requested illumination throughout the night from a flares.h.i.+p, and our request was approved and provided for.”

During the madhouse retreat, Pfc. Otis E. Boss, who served as the radioman for the 81mm FO attached to Foxtrot, was left behind. Boss and his FO, a lance corporal, were at the tail end of the retreat when a squad of NVA suddenly appeared behind them. Boss shouted at the FO to make a run for it while he covered him. When Boss swung around to fire his M16, he was amazed to see the NVA turn tail for the protection of a tree line. By that time, though, the FO and everyone else was out of sight. Boss crawled to a paG.o.da among the burial mounds and lay exhausted in its cover while he searched the airwaves for an active frequency.

Lieutenant Hilton heard a terrified, whispering voice break in on the air net, repeating, ”They're all around me, they're all around me.”

”Where are you exactly?” asked Hilton.

”I don't know. They're all around...”

Hilton put Boss in contact with the aerial observer in the Birddog, and Boss said that he would identify his position by waving his helmet. The aerial observer saw the helmet immediately. So did the NVA. Huey guns.h.i.+ps strafed the NVA soldiers firing at the paG.o.da, and Boss took advantage of the distraction by crawling away. He hadn't gone thirty meters toward what he thought was Dai Do-it had gotten totally dark-when the NVA saw or heard him again. They tossed Chicoms at him, but the Hueys rolled in again with machine guns blazing.

Boss made it to new cover. The decision was made to extract him by helicopter. The word was pa.s.sed for everyone, including the mortar crews, to fire on signal into the western side of Dinh To so as to suppress NVA movement and allow Boss to crawl east to a clearing that would accommodate a Sea Horse. When the Marines opened fire, Boss immediately reported over the radio that they were shooting at him. The fire was s.h.i.+fted on his order. The aerial observer in the Bird-dog, meanwhile, had asked Boss to mark his position in the dark. The young radioman struck a match and held it inside his upturned helmet. The aerial observer spotted the brief flame and directed Boss toward the clearing. Boss got there on his hands and knees, but when the Sea Horse started to land the NVA opened fire from several directions and the helo had to break its hover and clear the area.

The suppressive fires cranked up again, and the Hueys strafed with rockets and machine guns. When they finished, the Sea Horse went back in while Boss, who was at the end of his tether emotionally and physically, guided the pilot by radio. ”Come left, come left... no, no, come right, come right right ... ah, straight ahead, straight ahead ... okay, stop, ... ah, straight ahead, straight ahead ... okay, stop, stop stop ... back up, ... back up, back up back up ... come left-” ... come left-”

”How far am I from you?” the pilot interrupted.

”You're fifty feet.”

”I'm settin' down-you run to me. Run to me!”

Private Boss clambered aboard the Sea Horse-the whole battalion cheered when the pilot reported that the rescue was a success-and returned to duty the next day. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during the three-hour ordeal.

At least one other Foxtrot grunt, LCpl. David R. Bingham, a skinny, scared-to-death young Marine, was left behind in Dinh To. Bingham, who was really nice but a little slow, was both the company screwup and the company pet. When the battle was over, his body was found in the rubble of a demolished, tile-roofed house three hundred meters farther north in Dinh To than the battalion had advanced. He was lying on his back with one hand on his stomach, and with NVA-type bandages around the wounds that had prevented him from keeping up with his comrades during the retreat. He had another NVA bandage tied around his head covering his eyes. The NVA who had taken him prisoner, and who had treated his injuries before deciding that he was too much of a burden to take with them, had blindfolded the eighteen-year-old Marine before shooting him in the head.

It was a long night in Dai Do. At 2045, there were exchanges of grenades and automatic-weapons fire between a platoon-sized group of NVA and Foxtrot Company, which covered the northeastern side of the perimeter. The NVA were probing, not attacking, and the Marines lobbed M79 rounds wherever they saw a shadow in the flarelight. The Marines could hear the NVA shouting to each other. The NVA also shrieked such things as, ”You die tonight, Marine!”

One enemy soldier tried to get into the perimeter, although sniper O'neill didn't believe it at first when the Marine beside him said he heard movement. The enemy had been lobbing in an occasional round with a captured M79, and O'neill answered, ”Nan, you probably hear the bloop gun firing.”

”No, no, I hear movement movement-I really hear something!”

”Well, hey, you go wanderin' out there and somebody's going to shoot you.”

”I hear something!”

Lance Corporal Cornwell of Echo Company, who was asleep in his nearby position, heard the same movement and snapped awake with a start. It took a moment before he realized that there was an NVA about ten meters ahead of them. The NVA was walking slowly and deliberately toward them, scanning the area ahead of him before each step. When Corn-well woke the two Marines with him, the NVA disappeared in the brush. They kept their eyes open; then the Marine on Cornwell's left suddenly tapped him on the arm. The NVA was crouched about six feet away. Cornwell fired his .45 at the same time his buddy did, then crawled toward the enemy soldier and found him lying perfectly still on his back, his brand-new AK-47 beside him. The man, a gurgling noise coming from his throat, was beyond using his weapon. Cornwell finished him with a bullet in the head.

At 2130, the NVA fired a recoilless rifle from a paG.o.da on the far side of the creek. The sh.e.l.ls exploded near the rear of the Marine perimeter, where an amtrac had been parked to serve as an aid station. One sh.e.l.l landed in or near Hotel Company's mortar position. Eight Marines were seriously wounded. ”You could hear 'Em scream through the night,” commented a sergeant when interviewed by the division historical section. Another said, ”Our men on the Otter got up with a .50-caliber-they just totaled out the paG.o.da where the recoilless rifle was.” A Navy patrol boat also poured .50-caliber tracers into the little cement structure, and Major Knapp s.h.i.+fted artillery fire onto the area. Knapp said that although ”we had previously requested and received permission through Fire Raider, 3d Marines, to have blanket clearance to fire on the other side of the stream, because it was 2d ARVN Regiment territory, it took twenty minutes to get the fire mission cleared on this particular problem.”

The wounded were treated in the amtrac, and a helicopter medevac was requested rather than running the risk of moving the wounded downriver in the dark. Major Warren guided the Sea Horse into the cemetery on the southeastern edge of Dai Do while standing on a grave mound with a flashlight. The pilot, flying blind, set down his helicopter right on the light. As Warren backed up, he tripped and fell in the dark. He had to roll to one side to avoid the Sea Horse's front tire as it settled down where he had been. There was no enemy fire.1 The next medevac was for Sergeant Pace, the battalion interpreter. He was lying on his back against a dike between two other Marines when he heard the crack of an RPG being fired. h.e.l.l, he thought, secure behind his cover, let 'Em shoot-I'm going to sleep. He never heard the explosion, but he suddenly realized that something was wrong with his legs. They were numb; they wouldn't work. Pace reached down to squeeze them awake and came up with a handful of blood. d.a.m.n, they got me! he thought. The RPG had riddled his legs with seventy-two metal fragments. Pace tied off a battle dressing around one thigh as he hollered for a corpsman. Lieutenant Hilton recognized his voice and came to get him. Hilton helped Pace to the landing zone and a.s.sisted him aboard the Sea Horse, shouting over the roar of the blades, ”I'll see you again someday, Sergeant!” It was a promise he kept.

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

”Yeah, you must've dozed off-we thought we'd lost you.”

”No, no, I'm okay. I just fell asleep.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

At 1100, correspondents were finally allowed to visit the battlefield. The Marine casualties in Dai Do itself had already been evacuated, but dead NVA lay everywhere in the rubble, leaving the impression that the NVA had been butchered in a one-sided display of overwhelming firepower. One young correspondent, aghast at the human carnage, turned on Lieutenant Hilton, whom he'd been interviewing. ”You guys are unmerciful! Why are you so cruel?” Hilton said he ”grabbed the reporter by the seat of his trousers and the nape of his neck and escorted him headfirst into a bomb crater. I was going to beat the s.h.i.+t out of him, but somebody said, 'Get Hilton and get him outta here,' and three or four enlisted guys grabbed me and pulled me away.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

”Wow,” said his stunned companion.

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

”No way, man.”

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

Much of the ground was burned and black. When 1/3 reached the trench that had served as BLT 2/4's hasty command post, they found twenty dead Marines in it. Hospitalman Maiocco wrote in his journal that they were ”piled in on top of each other, covered with flies, arms and legs all twisted. We couldn't speak. When we did speak it was in whispers.”2 A haystack situated on the right flank of the trench was determined to have actually been a camouflaged gun position that afforded its occupants a straight line of fire down the trench. Thousands of spent cartridges were found inside the hollow haystack. The scene in the trench was all the more appalling to the recovery parties from BLT 2/4 coming up from the rear, because those who had been slaughtered were not only fellow Marines but friends. Lieutenant Acly of Golf Company looked down at Sergeant Snodgra.s.s, whose intense blue eyes were still brilliant in his dead face, and he thought of how the noncom had shared his last cigaret with him the day before. Big John Malnar was also in the trench, along with the spotter from the mortar section, whose face was waxy and who had black ants crawling into his shot-open mouth. The senior company radioman's PRC-25 was still strapped on and functioning. Voices from the battalion net came out of the speaker on the dead man's back.

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

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

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

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