Life Endangered by Angry Outburst
(EDITOR’S NOTE:
Charles Black,
Enquirer military writer, has returned home after four months in Viet
Nam. He was with men of the 1st Cavalry
Division
during many of their recent engagements with Communist guerrillas, and
his
articles on the war as he saw it will continue in The Enquirer daily.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
The platoon led by Capt.
John Oliver, trying to get from the bank of the Ia Drang into its own
lines in
the thick of a horribly intense firefight between 110 Americans and an
estimated 400 PAVN soliders surrounding them, was shot at and shot back
three more
times in the course of the next hour.
Each time we had a little
edge, some of the luck which seemed to touch everything that night. We had cover in trees once and simply backed
away, beating down the Communist fire with bursts from our M-16s until
we could
make yet another detour.
Another time we crouched
behind trees which grew thick in just that one place.
Their trunks stopped bullets and fragments and they shaded the
moon which kept betraying our movements.
The last time we simply
fired into the positions which opened on us, and moved on toward the
perimeter
in a crouching run when the Communist fire lifted.
This time a sudden burst of fire from a machine gun. M-79 grenade explosions and a sheet of M-16
bullets laced a lattice of tracers into the ground around us and we had
to quit
firing and simply run for the shelter of the trees again.
“If we get through those
Communists, we are going to get it worse than ever.
Our guys can’t tell who it is coming in on them.
We are just going to have to quit firing and
hope they let us in,” Sgt. Gray whispered to me.
Capt. Oliver was on the
radio and I heard him say something about “a red flashlight.”
We went around to the other
side of the ring of muzzle blasts and explosions that marked the patrol
base
and then another flight of four ALE Skyraiders came sweeping down and
their
rockets and bombs lit up a great swath of woods almost in front of us.
We lay prone again, sweating
it out. When the furor of that attack
was finished we got up and walked in a crouch along a little sunken
path.
Somehow there seemed to be a
dead space here. Firing sparkled in an
arc all around us and the little path led into it.
I could see the shape of two helicopters in the clearing when a
heavy burst of firing to our rear came.
The Communists had let us
get almost to our perimeter, between them and the American defenders,
and when
we were spotlighted in the open, they fired.
American fire swept back in a furious, demoralizing storm which
had a
worse effect on me than any fire I ever experienced.
The M-16 makes a flat,
vicious line. There is no arc to the
bullet. It seems impossible for fire to
be that flat and make such discordant sounds as it ricochets and kicks
up dirt.
If any combat study is made
of its effectiveness, I would recommend interviewing any member of the
rifle
platoon of Troop B, First Squadron Ninth Cavalry, who spent from 3:05
a.m.
until 3:20 a.m. Nov. 4 studying it from the receiving end.
We were safe enough from the
American fire, actually. A fold of
ground gave us enough cover so that it zipped by a foot over our heads
when
pressed hard into the ground. It was
simply so flat and deadly, with the flicker of tracers making its
intensity so
visible, that it was terrifying.
The PAVNs shooting from
behind us were joined by a line of automatic weapons shooting from the
reverse
side of a little slope, then. I could
see their weapons flaring quite easily.
We had no cover from that fire.
The ricochets and whine of
bullets and the dirt scattering on us made me become very detached and
able to
assess my feelings about all of this.
I noticed that the original
PAVN fire had suddenly stopped, either because it had been between down
by the
American fire or because the men had shifted to the little slope where
the
present fire came from.
I also carefully counted 18
different firing positions about 100 feet from us, stretching in a line
parallel with us. We couldn’t move
because of the hail of fire from the perimeter and we seemed doomed to
simply stay
there while the PAVNs systematically beat out the ground and killed us.
I felt a great, chilling
fear at first, I knew this was impossible, really.
I felt that destiny had made an administrative error and that
this situation simply could not exist.
Then when I realized that it did exist, I had a bitter, cold
fear of
dying.
Then I decided I was being
made the victim of a brutal situation which I would not tolerate. I had a snarling surge of anger which
dictated that I get up and smash back at the men tormenting me from the
dark.
I remember choking out a
yell to anyone who could hear me. . . “let’s get up and put some fire
on those
people! Let’s move! Let’s get them!”
There is a limit of
endurance, and I had reached mine. I
was actually scrambling up when I felt a sharp tug at my equipment and
then
somebody grabbing my shoulder. It was
the man I had been close to all night.
“Come on, Charlie! Get down,
boy! You can’t make it, get down! Don’t shoot, just sweat it out and we’ll
make it fine. If you fire, you’ll draw
that perimeter into it. Capt. Oliver
can get us in, just settle down,” I heard him saying as he kept hold of
my
shoulder.
I still was ragingly angry
but I got down. I remembered the tug at
my belt then and though perhaps I had been hit. I
could not feel anything but later found that a bullet had punched
a hole in a leather case I was wearing to carry cigarettes and such
items.
My outburst of hysterical
anger had missed getting me a bullet in my spine by exactly 1¼
inches, I found
out later.
The boy who had kept so cool
when I gave way to bad temper suddenly shuddered and seemed to shift
his
position. I heard him say something in a
choked whisper and he half rolled against me.
We lay there, shoulder to shoulder, and I knew he was dead.
For some reason the
Communist fire lifted.
We were only a short crawl
from the perimeter then and we made it without another shot being
fired, Capt.
Oliver taking his life in the one hand which held a red flashlight to
identify
us to our own gunners.
Three of our group had died.
ã Columbus Ledger-Enquirer