Death Valley (29 page)

Four men had been hit, and they were dragged to a level spot on the ridge as medevacs were called.

Kruch lay flat on his back in the dirt. He could see another man from his squad sitting there with light shrapnel wounds. The kid had taken the brunt of the explosion, inadvertently saving Kruch. He was
dead. The fourth GI, the man kneeling with the C rations, lay beside him. His face was hamburger, but air gurgled in his throat and he seemed coherent. A grunt crouched beside the man, trying to keep him out of shock. “You’re going to be okay, just hang in there.”

A medevac was orbiting the peak in twenty minutes.

A smoke grenade was tossed out and the Huey began descending. Then came the whine of incoming mortar rounds. The GIs around the wounded dove for cover. Kruch was lying in the open, unable to move as the second salvo crashed in, but he was not worried. All he felt was a wonderful release of tension that it was all over, that he was getting out. He couldn’t even imagine that he could be hurt again or killed.

Cobras came in, clearing their guns around the hill, and the Huey darted in. Grunts grabbed Kruch by his arms and legs and hefted him into the cabin. The GI with the mashed face was shoved in beside him and, in seconds, they were lifting off, the metal floor vibrating fiercely under their backs. Then the pain began, and the medevac medic gave Kruch a shot of morphine. The GI beside him stopped his gurgling, labored breathing. Kruch watched as the medic quickly moved to his side and slid a plastic trachea tube down his throat.

In the joint perimeter of A and C/3–21 atop Nui Lon, Lieutenant Shurtz sat with his artillery lieutenant and his two surviving platoon lieutenants. The platoon leaders were frustrated, and commented that what they were doing was stupid and suicidal. The conversation drifted into an angry search for reasons why any of them were even in Vietnam. Shurtz couldn’t believe what he was hearing; it was like some leftist bullshit on a college campus. By the standards of 1969, Shurtz was either a superpatriot or a cornball; they had to follow orders, he countered, and don’t you think you owe it to the nation to serve here, perhaps even die here?

“That would be the biggest waste,” one of the platoon leaders said bitterly; Shurtz finally understood how culturally isolated he was from his young grunts and officers.

He was alone in many ways.

Sometime during the hours of darkness, an NVA 60mm mortar tube began lobbing rounds onto their hilltop. Chicoms and M79 grenades started exploding too. Lieutenant Shurtz had not had time to dig a foxhole and had not ordered anyone to do it for him; he ended up on his back
in a one-foot sleeping trench with a radio to each ear. One was to his platoon leaders, who had their men returning fire; the other was to battalion, which got a Spooky on station. Most of the Chicoms thrown into their circle were duds, but the captured M79 rounds exploded against boulders and sent fragments whizzing through the darkness. Two GIs were wounded, but when the miniguns started screaming from above, the NVA fell back downhill. Alpha Company found their blood trails at dawn.

On 22 August, Private First Class Shimer awoke in a hospital in Da Nang and watched the Armed Forces Vietnam News on television. He recounted later: “There was this clean, well-trimmed, well-fed SP5 in a freshly starched uniform, looking square at the camera and, with a straight face, saying, ‘… and there was light contact reported throughout the Eye Corps area.’ ”

23 August 1969. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon had four companies of Task Force 3–21 in position for the final assault on Hill 102 itself. An initial move up the west slope was met by heavy fire; most of the NVA had suddenly disappeared from the bunker maze around the knoll, but at least a few were still in place. The infantrymen were pulled back and another barrage of air, arty, and napalm was turned on. Sometime after noon, a second advance was attempted, this time up the northern slope. The only resistance was four mortar rounds dropped in from another position, wounding six; then Hill 102 was captured.

Alpha 4–31 were among the last up the hill. When they got into position for the advance, it was not altogether clear that the hill was deserted by the enemy. Specialist 4 Parsons, for one, was on edge. He hadn’t had a cigarette in days and was almost shaking with a nicotine fit. No one had any smokes left, but a pair of Texas infantrymen did offer him a chaw of Red Man tobacco. Parsons took a big helping. He was a city kid, and the boys from Texas forgot to tell him not to swallow. As Alpha Company rucked up and started trudging uphill through the upturned earth and shattered trees, Parsons barely limped along. The sun was scorching on the denuded hill and he was reeling, vomitting tobacco every few steps. For the rest, it was a rather pleasant hike. No crossfires materialized and the grunts started carrying their M16s like tramp sticks and joking with relief.

The crest was a hot, barren dustbowl. Alpha Company secured an LZ for the resupply ships and the GIs, now helmetless and stripped to the waist, took turns guiding in the Hueys. Parsons took his turn at
dusk. He directed one ship to a low hover, a couple feet over broken tree stumps, and an entourage of war correspondents disembarked from the skids. They had Asian cameramen and were suited up in a mixture of green fatigues and khaki safari gear; he heard one or two grousing that they could have twisted their ankles jumping like that. Parsons didn’t know whether to get mad or laugh.

The capture of Hill 102 was the unglamorous end to a dirty, little fight which had not shown the best the U.S. Army had to offer. All the men found were empty bunkers and some foxholes still intact from when GIs had encamped on this hill during the June fight. No body count, no captured gear. Just a hill of dirt.

The
3d NVA Regiment
had vanished during the night.

Alpha Company dug in atop Hill 102; it was sometime after dark that Parsons saw a senior officer—he thought it was Bacon—and several other officers talking with the reporters about the next day’s plans to recover the bodies at the helo crash site. Several of the correspondents were smoking, as was Parsons’s company commander, the red ember tips a beacon to the enemy. The captain was considered an intolerable lifer and there was some bitter talk of him catching a bullet in the back the next time they made contact. It was with some relish that Parsons strode up and plucked the cigarettes away, snapping, “If you’re going to smoke on this hill, you’re either going to do it in a hole or not smoke at all.” The reporters looked angry and the captain was burning. Parsons thought he probably would have been court-martialled if the colonel had not been a nonsmoker. The colonel said, “Soldier, you’re right. We’re sorry. They didn’t realize what they were doing.”

The morning sun brought a surprise. When they’d dug in at dusk, Shorty had struck his shovel against a rock which, it turned out, was really a dud U.S. artillery round. Parsons and his M60 crew sat in the upturned earth, sweating under the scant shade of a rigged poncho hootch. The rest of the platoon humped downhill on a recon patrol. Someone on the hill had a radio and they passed the hot afternoon listening to the Cubs and Astros ball game.

Besides unloading food and water, the morning resupply bird on 24 August—Black Sunday—also dropped SP4 John Curtis into Alpha Company’s perimeter atop Nui Lon. Curtis, a wiry nineteen year old with
Peace
printed across his helmet cover, was returning from R
and R. The first he heard about the battle was when he was checking in with the 3–21 Rear in Chu Lai. A couple of guys there knew he was a short-timer and a point man and encouraged him to ghost around Chu Lai until things cooled down. One buddy told him point-blank, “If you go out, you’ll die.”

Curtis caught the flight to LZ Center because he felt he had to. It was not because he had any love for the Green Machine or because he really cared who won the latest fight in AK Valley, but because his squad was family.

And they needed help.

Alpha Company could have used Curtis, who was a squad leader in 3d Platoon. He came in-country in November 68; in March 69, when his platoon was ambushed, he had dragged two wounded men back to where the medics could get up to them, then had crawled forward with a radio and directed artillery into the enemy tree line. Shortly thereafter, a Silver Star was pinned to his weathered fatigues.

Curtis had basically been running the platoon in the long interim between the departure of their last lieutenant and the arrival of Lieutenant Tynan. He led because he had a strong personality, not because his background was in any way uncommon. His father was a construction worker in Tennessee. Curtis had enlisted right after high school since “… I knew I was going to get nailed anyway.” In the bush, he knew what he was doing; in the rear, he smoked and drank his brains out. Almost everyone in his platoon at least tried grass on stand downs. Curtis knew of no other way to escape, if just for awhile. To him, it was all a waste. He’d come to the military apolitical, but had become increasingly frustrated with the way things were in the field. He always felt they could have won if they’d really tried, but with the restrictions and walking-in-circles operations, the only real goal was to survive, and to take care of your buddies.

Those were abstract thoughts. When Curtis disembarked from the Huey, the only thing that registered was shock. Tom Goodwin, whom Curtis considered a nice, mellow guy, was gone; in fact, his entire squad was gone. In his own squad, only Jay Curtis and Steve Niebuhr, plus a couple green seeds, were left.

Alpha Company, which had come to AK Valley with ninety-five men, had fifty-two left. Eight GIs had been killed.

They didn’t know if they’d killed a single NVA.

They hadn’t seen any.

Curtis rejoined his squad the same time their platoon was ordered
to take point for the next attack against the bunkers at the base of the ridge. Intelligence suspected the bunkers were empty; the primary mission was to recover the bodies of Lieutenant Kirchgesler and Sergeant Pitts. As the order was passed, Jay and Steve were talking frantically with Curtis. They said they
couldn’t
go back without reinforcements, that it was suicide.

Those guys are
done
, Curtis thought.

Jay and Steve said they’d been talking it over and thought it best to stick together and demand to see the inspector general. They wanted Curtis to tell the company commander. He balked—he didn’t even know Lieutenant Shurtz—but they pressed it and he agreed on faith in their judgment of the situation.

They did not move out as directed, and Lieutenant Shurtz finally walked up to ask what the delay was. Curtis detailed their complaints; he was backed up by Jay, Steve, and Doc Sanders. They wanted a helicopter to explain their need for reinforcements to the IG before any more attacks were made. Shurtz tried to persuade them to get moving. Curtis thought the lieutenant was stunned by what was going on, and he was right; the man had not commanded the company long enough to understand his grunts or to earn their total allegiance. In officer training, it was understood that the men would simply obey orders. But in real life, his men were hassling and questioning. Shurtz was unsure how to proceed; his two platoon lieutenants were only repeating the complaints of their grunts and saying they couldn’t see ordering their men back into those bunkers.

Shurtz finally radioed the colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon was on the ground with Bravo Company—evacuating the bodies from the burnt Huey to Graves Registration on Hawk Hill—when Lieutenant Shurtz came over the receiver. “I am sorry, sir, but my men refused to go. We cannot move out.”

“Repeat that please,” Bacon said calmly. He was an icy West Pointer from a family of career militarymen. “Have you told them what it means to disobey orders under fire?”

“I think they understood. But some of them simply had enough—they are broken. There are boys here who have only ninety days left in Vietnam. They want to go home in one piece. The situation is psychic.”

“Are you talking about enlisted men, or are the NCOs also involved?”

“That’s the difficulty here. We’ve got a leadership problem. Most of our squad and platoon leaders have been killed or wounded.”

“Go talk to them again,” Bacon counselled, “and tell them that
to the best of our knowledge the bunkers are empty. The enemy has withdrawn. The mission of A Company today is to recover their dead. They have no reason to be afraid. Please take a handcount of how many really do not want to go.”

“They won’t go, colonel, and I did not ask for the handcount because I am afraid that they will all stick together even though some might prefer to go.”

The picture was that only a handful of short-timers was actually refusing, but the rest of the company had more confidence in their combat experience than that of the new lieutenant. They were frozen, waiting to see which way it would go. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon, if not angry, was at least frustrated. Rational discussions do not always get the job done; before getting on the radio and making the refusal official, the company commander should have simply told the dissidents that they would be taken out for court-martial, then turned to the rest of the men and led them into action. But Lieutenant Shurtz did not have that type of leadership experience; he’d been in the bush only seventeen days. Bacon finally radioed his TOC on LZ Center and instructed Major Waite, BnXO, and SFC Okey Blankenship, BSM, to helicopter down to A Company and get them moving again with “… a pep talk and a kick in the butt.”