(EDITOR'S NOTE: After being out in the “brush” with troops of the 1st Cavalry Division, Enquirer military writer Charles Black continues his reports of action in Viet Nam. The article was written Oct. 18.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
HOI SON, Viet Nam - Charlie
Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry, started its walk up to the
hamlet of Hoi
Son 1 early on a grim, grey morning
following a fight there between Bravo Company (and a platoon of Alpha
Company)
and a dug-in force of Viet Cong.
Capt. Robert Lindquist led
his company in a long, single file up the edge of a paddy which runs
north and
south, flanked on one side by the hedges and groves of Hoi Son hamlets
and on
the other by the jungle slope of a mountain which had been heavily
patrolled
for four days.
I walked with 1st Sgt.
William Staten and Sgt. William McKelvin in a line of men from Lt.
Wayne
Simone’s platoon. The big bulk of
S-Sgt. Ernest Gregory was leading the third squad of the first platoon
across
the paddy to comb the brush on the mountainside.
I remembered when I had run
into Gregory the day of the assault. It
was an odd thing to think about, but it was an odd coincidence.
I had crouched and run
across a yard beside a blazing hootch which was getting an occasional
sniper
bullet. Gregory was bent over, looking
attentively at an area ahead, his M-16 held like a hunter’s rifle,
trying to
see the sniper. I took his picture,
then mentioned that I knew his name but couldn’t think of how I knew it.
Met At Benning
“Charlie, you won’t believe
it and I almost don’t, but the last time you and I met was back at Fort
Benning
last spring, I think,” Gregory said.
“You were out covering the company when it went through the
Asian Village
training problem there, and you stopped and talked to me when I was
doing just
what I’m doing now, looking at a thatched-roof hut trying to figure out
a way
to tell if it had a sniper in it, except this is for real.”
I hoped the Asian Village
training had been thorough as I watched him take the squad over,
because he was
our life insurance on that flank. He is
the kind of an NCO you like to have out there at such times - big,
dependable
and unshakable.
I remembered that Lt. Col.
Robert Shoemaker had mentioned the NCOs of Bravo Company time and again
as he
told me about the action up ahead during the night, describing the way
they had
handled their duties and how great their influence had been in the
fight. An ambush had been transformed into
a
firefight where the company had held its ground and forced the Viet
Cong to
break contact.
The paddy widened after a
slow-paced, tense 30 minutes of walking and the flanking squad was
motioned
in. It was too exposed over there now
in the brush of the mountain foot and we had to worry about the
impenetrable
mass of cover on our left from here on.
We were stopped right after
this by sniper fire up front and, as we waited, Shoemaker came walking
up
through the line, stepping out into the calf-deep paddy mud to go
around the
crouched infantrymen where the paddy wall was narrow.
‘Bull of Woods’
“Let the old Bull of the
Woods through, boys,” he said once when the men had gathered close to a
spot of
cover.
He was simply walking along
there, grinning and confident looking, while we crouched in the tense
postures
caused by the sound of small arms fire.
It is the kind of thing you
expect out of a senior commander in such situations if military
tradition is to
be served, of course, but the physical courage that kind of demeanor
require is
always a fantastic thing to watch.
I’d seen it when Brig. Gen.
William Knowles strolled around the CP area after a sniper had shot
holes in
the gunship which followed his chopper and the sound of the VC’s
carbine was
still coming from 50 yards away.
Col. Thomas E. Brown, the
3rd Brigade commander, seemingly had been unaware of any difference
between the
same area and brigade headquarters at Fort Benning in the old days.
Wave of Confidence
It is always a mystery to me
how these commanders manage it so superbly.
It leaves a wave of confidence behind and things get into an
easier
perspective. It made the walk much
easier when the column started moving again.
We came to the final lap of
the journey, and the battalion commander had already cleared this point
and
headed across the paddy to the scene of the fight with Bravo Company
and Alpha
Company taking over the ground for which they had so stubbornly fought.
There were pools of Viet
Cong blood and the body of one VC regular who had been shot as he
attempted to
flee. We turned to the right to cross
the creek and go into the village and then to get on over into the area
ahead.
A single carbine shot came
just 50 yards away from a wooded finger of land which jutted into the
paddy.
Personal Interest
I didn’t mention it to
anybody just then, but this particular sniper is one I have an intense
personal
interest in now, and not where his welfare is concerned.
The single shot put a hole
into the front of a baggy, loose-fitting camouflage jacket I was
wearing. It was soaked with rain and
sweat, and I had
a can of C rations in the side pocket.
I was walking in an
unabashed crouch (I figured I didn’t have to worry about prestige) and
the
front of the jacket drooped down like an apron. The
slug made a round hold on the left, tore out the lower three
inches of a zipper which secured the front and then cut a swatch out of
the
bulge in the right pocket.
I felt a tug and made a jump
into the mud behind a paddy wall. I
found the tear in the zipper and pocket first.
I didn’t find the little round bullet hole until I had left here
to go
to another operation later in the day, and immediately discounted any
theory
that a bullet had actually come that close to me.
Various Theories
I lay there thinking of
various theories concerning the ripped jacket front and settled on
thorns in a
paddy where thorns didn’t grow.
I kept looking at the brush
in front and I saw it move just enough to make a deer hunter come alert. Somebody whanged an M-79 grenade too far to
the right of the movement and I got a glimpse of what looked like a
patch of
leaves suddenly disappearing back into the thick tangle of vines, grass
and
trees.
I called to Lt. Simone and
he looked carefully at the place I indicated, but the movement was gone.
From down the valley, the
noise of the helicopter came, then a Huey swept right by us, swinging
around
the knoll. The carbine rattled out a
burst of automatic fire then. (We heard
that the chopper took a hit from it but not a bad one.)
A hail of fire rippled out from the men able
to see the crest of the ridge.
Cross Creek
Simone motioned us back out
of the paddy into the village. We
crossed the creek at a place where it was knee deep, then took cover in
the
trees.
“There are snipers all
around us,” Simone said. “Keep your
heads down and don’t fire. We are
sending our people out to get them now, if you see somebody don’t shoot. It may be our boys.”
There was firing again over
around the little spit of land and word came that the men over there
had found
a heavy trail of blood leading into the jungle from the brush where I
had
spotted the movement. There wasn’t any
sense in pushing that any further.
About 30 minutes later,
Shoemaker came into the village and walked over to me.
“Charlie, if you had been
over there with me you would have seen that Viet Cong body, those blood
trails
and pools and the weapons the boys picked up which they left behind,”
he
said. “It makes me feel better to know
we came out ahead of them when they had our boys cold turkey over
there.”
150 Killed
I heard then that there was
word out that the VC had about 150 killed in the entire sweep. Questioning of prisoners and refugees had
established this. The battalion had
counted eight bodies left behind and a helicopter had spotted the VC
carrying
25 bodies up the trail to the northwest that morning.
A refugee had told us about
more than 25 badly wounded VC who had been treated in a pagoda in a
little
hamlet on up the valley. I had seen
about 30 wounded in the paratrooper battalion and three soldiers who
had died
in this action.
The 1st Battalion, 12th
Infantry, the old 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry, which had been the
original
outfit in the airmobile concept, had taken almost every one of the
“light”
casualties from the four-day operation and had handed the Viet Cong a
blood
bill which extracted three or four-to-one payment.
The owned the ground; the
Viet Cong ran off and left it. They had
secured their objective and were in solid contact with the Vietnamese
marine
battalion across the paddy from us.
Operation Finished
Word came a couple of hours
later to head back to the command post because the operation was
finished and
the battalion would go home in the morning.
There was some growling and some comments from the men that they
“ought
to go on up the trail and finish them” but they came out cocky, proud
and
tough, and they had a right to.
They were too tired and
muddy to swagger - and paddy mud doesn’t allow any such shenanigans
when you
walk through it - but they had grins and the look of men who had tried
out this
business and found out they knew how to operate it.
They had become professionals.
When we came in, a line of
newsmen was on the paddy wall. They
came in during the afternoon, and I was glad to see the national press
on hand
to give the battalion its due.
I was even more glad to see
Lt. Col. Harlow Clark, its former commander who had moved up to deputy
commander of the First Brigade. He
walked through the mud to talk to Shoemaker, then walked around talking
to the
men of the outfits who came walking into the CP area.
Receives Offer
I saw Capt. John Colson, a
pilot of great renown, and Sgt. “Whitey” Phillips, the big NCO who is
always
close to Clark’s side, and went over to talk to them.
Clark came and offered me a ride “back to An Khe for a shower, a
meal and about four hours sleep before we go over and assault Mang Yang
Pass.”
I was so tired and dirty it
didn’t seem to make any difference, so I agreed. Ever
since I had heard about this Indo-Chinese and Vietnamese
fighting area I had heard of Mang Yang Pass, where French Group Mobile
100 had
died wearing its Second Infantry Division patch from Korean service
with the
Indianhead.
“We are going to assault
from helicopters right on top of the
mountain where those thousands of French graves
are,” Clark said. “We are going to
clear that pass from there right down to the monument which marks the
spot
where the big ambush was sprung.
“They are going to run 500
trucks up Highway 19 to Pleiku,” he continued.
“It is going to be a tremendous operation. The
Vietnamese are going to open the road from Pleiku to where we
tie in with them, and those are going to roll by the Viet Cong until
every last
load of supplies is delivered over at Pleiku.”
Knee Injury
Col. E. L. Roberts, the
commander of the 1st Brigade, has had an operation to straighten out an
old
knee injury, and during his absence Clark was in command of the brigade. He was completely at home later that night
in the briefing tent when the operation was laid out by the staff
officers, and
command sat quite easily on him.
I had a shower. I
didn’t have a razor with me so the
whiskers stayed. I didn’t have a chance
to get over to my gear at the press tent, where I hadn’t been for about
12
days, and the paddy mud was thick on my tiger suit and the thing
smelled of
jungle, sweat and paddy water, but I felt very fresh at 4 a.m. with two
meals
in a row.
I joined up with Capt. Rotar
McReynolds and his Company A, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry, commanded by
Lt.
Col. John White, for the helicopter assault.
The plan was beautifully
conceived, even to a nonmilitary observer.
The helicopters would sweep into a grassy plain on the reverse
side of
the mountain ridge. The infantrymen
would assault over the ridge and down to the road, completely reversing
the traditional
(and possibly shop-worn) technique of landing in a flat valley and
sweeping
uphill.
Chinooks would come in
behind them and land 105mm howitzers which would frown down from the
ridgetops. Eagle flights of CIDG troops
and bombers would secure additional landing zones all around.
Out in Brush
Lt. Col. Kenneth D. Mertel’s
1st Battalion, Eighth Infantry (my personal unit, incidentally, as I am
on the
Mustang’s Bravo Company roll call), was already out in the brush on the
other
side of the road, clearing out VC from that area.
It was just as beautiful in
the morning when the big fleet of choppers landed and the lines of
infantrymen
moving across the ridge in front of the long rows of French graves
(there are
uncounted thousands of them on the mountain above Mang Yang Pass).
An asphalt drive winds up
from Route 19, like a drive into a park in the U.S. A CIDG fortress,
actually a
barbed-wire-enclosed camp, sits astride the road down at the bottom of
the
mountain, a mile or so down the asphalt drive.
When we landed up there it
was sunny, the wind was cool, the view was beautiful.
I walked over the crest of the ridge and saw a concrete
structure
which turned out to be a big water tank which was mysteriously built on
top of
the ridge.
Watches Assault
I climbed up the steps to
the tank’s top and watched the assault waves come down the slopes,
moving by
the French graves and down into the place where the last hopes of
France had
been ground into the elephant grass in Viet Minh ambushes a decade ago.
The assault went over the
asphalt drive and disappeared into the jungle and elephant grass which
was
thick below the beautiful short grass of the ridge crest.
I thought about the days I had spent
crawling and sweating in that grass and jungle and mud.
Probably because I was tired
and still shocked from things out in the paddies around Hoi Son, I just
didn’t
want to walk down into Mang Yang Pass through the elephant grass and
thorns. I am a little worried over giving
in to the whim now, but it is something
I can always say I did - even if it was foolish.
I walked down the asphalt
drive alone, following its pleasant loops through the jungle of grass
and
brush, not particularly caring who I met or anything except that it was
a nice
morning to walk.
It had been a long time
since I had walked on a paved road, and it had been a long time since I
had
walked without being in a line of armed and edgy men.
The walk took 30 minutes, I
suppose, and ended at the barbed-wire fence of the CIDG fort. The last 100 yards were the ones which made
me the most nervous. I saw Capt. John
Colson standing out by Clark’s helicopter, an M-16 rifle held very
alertly,
watching me.
“Charlie, what are you doing
walking down that road by yourself?” he asked.
“I thought you were a French survivor who decided to come in.”
He opened a barbed-wire gate
and let me through and we talked a while; then I walked on around the
path to
the highway. I met Lt. Col. Clark
coming up the path and he looked surprised.
He said he thought I was with the assault wave, which was a long
way
from here.
I told him I had walked down
the trail to the CIDG camp, and he shook his head and told me that he
thought
that constituted a simple-minded action.
He hurried on up the path to the CIDG post and his helicopter to
get on
with the business of securing Mang Yang Pass for the truck column which
was
heading out from An Khe.
There seemed to be only one
other thing to do to make the episode complete. That
would be for me to hitchhike from the Mang Yang Pass to
Pleiku. If I could do that, it would be
proof enough for anybody that when the 1st Cavalry Division secured an
area
which a regimental combat team with tanks and aircraft couldn’t
survive, the
area was properly secured!
I stuck up a thumb and a
jeep stopped and I got in it.
Three jeep rides later I
wound up at the gate to Camp Holloway in Pleiku, asking directions to
the 17th
Aviation Company, which had brought some Caribous over to support the
division,
flying the Pacific Ocean in the process.
I felt somewhat the same kind
of accomplishment when I got out of the last jeep, and the trip from
the pass
was, as are all things in this country, a completely engrossing series
of
events.