First Battle Part 8

CHAPTER 10.

THE CALL FOR REINFORCEMENTS.

3/7 LANDS. 1500.

At about 1500, Colonel Peatross decided he needed more Marines on the ground, so he ordered the landing of the Special Landing Force, the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines (3/7), under the command of LtCol Charles H. Bodley. BLT 3/7 had been ash.o.r.e in the Philippines when the call came on August 16, for it to steam toward the operations area. The troops were to remain aboard their s.h.i.+ps unless needed in the fight, and now their time had come. One company, Lima, was trained as the battalion's heliborne a.s.sault company, and it was aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a helicopter-landing carrier, as was India Company. The fastest of the s.h.i.+ps in its group, the Iwo arrived on the scene hours ahead of the slower troops.h.i.+ps bearing the rest of BLT 3/7.

BLT 3/7 had had some brief experience in Vietnam. Supported by helicopters from LtCol Norman Ewers's HMM-163, the battalion had landed earlier at Qui Non to provide security for U.S. Army units that were being transferred into the country as part of the American buildup.

En route up the coast toward the Starlite area on August 18, the 3/7 Marines figured that something important was about to happen. Although the junior men weren't told much, the officers had an unusual number of meetings at night. And as they approached Vietnam, the food got better. The oldtimers in the group thought this was a sure sign of impending combat. s.h.i.+pboard life was a lot softer than life ash.o.r.e. Exercise room was limited, some of the troop s.p.a.ces were air-conditioned, and the food was relatively good. All throughout the Vietnam War units that spent any considerable time aboard s.h.i.+p as the Special Landing Force came ash.o.r.e a little softer than when they went aboard. BLT 3/7 was no exception.

The coastline of Vietnam came into view on the afternoon of August 18. The Marines aboard the Iwo Jima described the sight as like going to a war movie. Before their very eyes, aircraft were dropping bombs and napalm, and s.h.i.+ps were firing naval gunfire support. Most of the troops had been through the landing drill dozens of times, but this time it would be for real.

The call came over the intercom for all Marines to report to their compartments. Captain Ron Clark, the Lima Company commander, came into his company's berthing s.p.a.ces looking grim. He told the gathered Marines that the units ash.o.r.e had really stepped in it and needed help. The Lima, 3/7, Marines formed into their helo teams and moved to the hangar deck, where they lined up to draw stuff that they were never allowed to touch except on the firing range: fragmentation and smoke grenades, and extra magazines that they loaded with live ammo.

Corporal Bob Collins, a fire team leader, was standing with his helo team when Cpl C. C. Pearch walked up, gave him a hug, and said, "G.o.d bless you, boy." Pearch was a veteran with eighteen years' service. He had been in the famed Chosin Reservoir march in Korea in 1950, but he was a corporal now because he had been courtmartialed and reduced in rank while serving as a drill instructor. He had two Purple Heart Medals for wounds received in Korea. Pearch's attempt to comfort Collins had the opposite effect. Collins didn't have to be there. His enlistment had been due to expire the previous June, before 3/7 had deployed for Vietnam. He had not wanted to miss out on the excitement, so he voluntarily extended his enlistment to go to war. On August 18, 1965, he was beginning to question the wisdom of his decision.

As the Marines finished their preparations, the call came for stretcher bearers to lay up to the flight deck to receive casualties. When the elevator came back down to the hangar deck, it was crammed with wounded. One was a South Vietnamese Popular Forces soldier. As his stretcher pa.s.sed Collins, the man's boot fell off onto the deck. When Collins picked up the boot, he discovered there was a foot inside it. The Vietnamese grimaced and said, "It's okay, Joe, it's okay," as they bore him off to the operating room.

The 3/7 helicopter teams were cut down in size because the heat and humidity reduced lift, and the Marines were lightly burdened. Although the troops wore helmets, they did not wear flak jackets, and each carried only a light marching pack with no blanket roll.

As a helo team commander, Corporal Collins's job was to count off his men as they boarded, and to be the last one on. He would ride in the door of the chopper and be the first one off, showing his men where to fan out and secure the landing zone. This exercise had been practiced many times. Lima Company's 2d Platoon, to which Collins belonged, was always the first one in to secure the zone. His team would secure the twelve o'clock sector of the zone while the second and third teams secured the four- and eight-o'clock positions.

Lima, 3/7, landed without incident at 1543 in the vicinity of Colonel Peatross's command post and was immediately attached to 3/3 with the mission of advancing to the area in which India Company, 3/3, was still engaged with the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Joe Muir ordered Lima, 3/7, to help India Company, 3/3, find the missing supply column.

The company moved out in the direction of An Cuong 2 and almost immediately received sporadic sniper fire. As the Marines returned fire tracers from their machine guns set some of the hedgerows on fire, adding smoke, confusion, and more heat to the chaotic situation. A flame tank parked near the command post rolled over and sprayed the area with its .50-caliber cupola gun. The VC fired again and were rewarded by a burst of napalm from the tank's main gun.

Once the entire company was ash.o.r.e, the 2d and 3d platoons moved out in the direction from which the VC fire had come while the 1st Platoon remained behind for security.

The Marines had just started forward when Cpl Bob Collins pa.s.sed what he thought was a black glove. When he picked it up bones fell out; he realized he had just picked up a human hand.

Private First Cla.s.s Jim "Guts" Guterba was amazed that for all the dangerous activity around him, the flies and dragonflies carried on as if there was no war at all. When he felt the first enemy rifle bullet go by his ear his legs went numb and he dropped to his knees and hyperventilated. Someone tugged at his belt and a voice said, "Get up, kid, you're not hit yet." It was Sergeant Stone, another of Lima, 3/7's, Korean War vets. Guterba noticed that when the advance was halted by enemy fire some of the more experienced old hands rolled over on their backs and ate a C-ration. "Hey, you gotta eat 'em when you can," was the explanation. This was not only practical advice, it had a calming effect on the younger Marines.

Evidence of previous fighting was everywhere. They came across a place where marks of tracked vehicles were clearly impressed into the ground. A blackened, swollen body, split open like a hot dog ruined on the grill, lay nearby. Maggots had already claimed it, and the stench was powerful. This was quite a shock to those Marines of Lima Company whose only a.s.sociation with death was a body in peaceful repose in a funeral home.

Water ran short early on, but the Lima, 3/7, Marines were warned to not drink from the village wells or rice paddies. The men in 2/4 and 3/3 had learned that halizone tablets caused the water to taste terrible, but at least it made the water safe to drink. The Marines carried their water, moreover, in the old-style metal canteens that heated it up to the point where it was barely palatable in a tropic climate. The Marines from 3/7 paid the tariff for their softer life aboard s.h.i.+p as they began taking heat casualties.

As Lima, 3/7, advanced, the troops collected prisoners and VC suspects. Some of the enemy gave up readily, but others tried to give the impression that they were villagers. In due course, all men of military age were rounded up, tied together with communications wire, and marched to the rear. Jim Guterba was escorting one VC and a Marine ahead of him was escorting another when they took fire from their right flank. Dirt flew as bullets. .h.i.t the deck, and both Marines leaped over a paddy dike. A prisoner went down and Guterba ran back to find the man lying in the hot dirt, gasping. He had a gaping thigh wound. The thighbone glistened brightly in the sunlight through the torn muscle. Guterba jammed his own battle dressing into the man's wound, only to be admonished by one of the older vets: "Better keep that for yourself, son." Guterba hoisted the man to his shoulder and continued on to the prisoner collection point. When the VC gestured that he wanted to be let down. Guterba lowered him to the ground. The man stuck one leg out and, while crying, s.h.i.+vering, and weeping in pain, defecated. When the man finished, Guterba once more hoisted him up and finished the journey to the collection point.

When Lima Company, 3/7, arrived at its objective area at about 1845, it was immediately welcomed by VC mortars, automatic weapons, and small arms. A Marine flame tank silenced some of the resistance when it spat napalm in the direction of the fire, but the stench of corpses rotting in the intense tropical heat and burned flesh became nearly unbearable.

Enemy mortars burst among the Marines with terrible effect. As they hugged a paddy dike, word was pa.s.sed down the line. Wilson was dead, Long was dead, Firth was dead. Lieutenant Dale Shambaugh, the 3d Platoon commander, had been shot and killed by a sniper. Lance Corporal Gregorio Valdez, Cpl Bob Collins's automatic rifleman, took a hit through the ankle. Collins, kept yelling for him to move up to the dike and fire his weapon at a machine gun that was giving them a lot of trouble. "Get moving!" Collins shouted. "You can't be scared at a time like this." "I'm hit, not scared," came the reply. Wondering why Valdez hadn't said so in the first place, Collins and another Marine, LCpl Robert Parker, scrunched forward to retrieve him. They were able to do so safely because the enemy gunner could not depress his gun far enough to hit them without exposing his own position. Greg Valdez was rescued and survived Operation Starlite, but he died in another battle five months later.

The Marines discovered that some of the most macho among them in peacetime became very careful when real bullets were being fired, and that some of those most reticent around the barracks were tigers in combat. One man in the latter category charged over a dike alone and opened fire with his automatic rifle. By the time his comrades caught up with him there were four VC bodies lying in front of him. The fire had disemboweled one of the Viet Cong, whose intestines glittered in the sunlight.

A mortar round practically landed on Pfc C. B. Hitt, an a.s.sistant automatic rifleman, and tossed him into the air. Hitt was physically uninjured, but he lay stiff as a board until the shock wore off.

Private First Cla.s.s L. M. Grant, an M79 man, was. .h.i.t. Lance Corporal Don Parker was wounded in the arm and couldn't hold his rifle, so as he crawled past Grant he took the latter's .45 pistol and continued to move toward the enemy with that.

It was getting dark, but VMO-2 Hueys continued to pour fire into the bank ahead of the Marines.

Bob Collins felt a sting in his side and thought he must have been hit. A hurried investigation revealed that he was laying on one of his own grenades, which was digging painfully into his side. He realized the grenade might be the solution to the machine gun that was firing at them. As Collins approached the machine gun bunker, one of the VC jumped up and emptied a magazine in his direction, reloaded, and continued to fire. Collins hesitated as he had yet to kill a man in combat. Lance Corporal Larry Falls, an automatic rifleman, came up from behind Collins and cut the enemy soldier in half with a full magazine of bullets. Collins finally threw the grenade. After the explosion the enemy scattered, some of them in the direction of the Marines, who killed them as they ran by. An estimated sixteen VC were killed in this exchange of fire, but only five bodies were actually counted.

Another VC shot a carbine at one of the Marine lieutenants. A machine gunner, LCpl Charlie Davis, tried to kill him, but his gun jammed. Reacting quickly, Davis dropped the gun, pulled out his .45, and shot the man with that. He was later awarded the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Davis's weapon was not the only one to misfire that day. Guterba's did, too, when he tried to fire on some VC who were running away. By the time he got the weapon cleared, the VC were gone.

Corporal Collins rolled over to a corner of a field and found a trench and dike. As he and other Marines moved up the trench they encountered a VC about twenty feet away. As the enemy soldier turned to run, Collins pumped three shots into him.

Collins and a Marine named Clark paused in the gathering darkness to watch an amtrac burn in a field to their left front. As they hugged the deck and peered down a trail a voice asked them, "What are you doing, pressing your b.u.t.tons?" It was LtCol Joe Muir, the 3/3 CO, who was checking on the situation. Collins replied, "Yes, sir, I'm getting as close to Mother Nature as I can." The colonel laughed and moved on.

Joe Muir was a leader who repeatedly exposed himself to danger with the a.s.sault companies and personally supervised as much of the battle as he could. General Walt gently chided him for repeatedly positioning himself at the scene of the most violent action, and during Starlite he went without sleep for nearly three entire days. He was a hero on Starlite, but he died when he stepped on a b.o.o.by-trapped 155mm sh.e.l.l just three weeks after this action, the first Marine battalion commander killed action in Vietnam. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross Medal for Starlite.

On his last flight of the day, HMM-361's Maj Al Bloom responded to yet another colored smoke grenade signaling a medevac. Bloom picked up the severely wounded casualty and was lifting out of the LZ when Master Sergeant Hooven informed him that the H-34 had been hit in the tail rotor drive shaft. The shaft was a thin, hollow tube that ran the interior length of the helicopter and was open and visible in the cargo compartment. Without the shaft, the tail rotor would be lost and the bird would spin uncontrollably and violently around its vertical axis until it crashed. As he checked his controls and saw that he still had command of the aircraft, Bloom was told by Hooven that the tube was still rotating and not vibrating in its brackets, Bloom made the decision to take the helicopter home.

After shutting down in Danang, Bloom's fighter-pilot second seat, Maj Homer Jones, p.r.o.nounced all helicopter pilots crazy and vowed never to fly with them again.

With wide-eyed wonder, and a great deal of appreciation for Sikorsky, the manufacturer of the H-34, the crew inspected the damage to their bird. There were at least a dozen unauthorized holes in the skin of the s.h.i.+p in addition to the one that had carried away about a third of the circ.u.mference of the tail rotor drive shaft. Master Sergeant Hooven later told Bloom that he heard no more criticism about "airedales" from 1st Sergeant Dorsett, who was undoubtedly regaling his comrades in the infantry community about his aerial combat experience.

Back at Danang the number of flyable HMM-361 helicopters continued to drop. By late afternoon the squadron had eight that could not fly at all despite the heroic efforts of ground crews to get them back in the air. One on the beach was so badly damaged that it was declared unrepairable and an air strike was called on it to keep its guns and ammunition from falling into enemy hands. To HMM-361's great relief, LtCol Norm Ewers's HMM-163 H-34s took over some of the medevacs business and other critical duties after it had dropped Lima, 3/7, ash.o.r.e. HMM-163 had served ash.o.r.e in Vietnam for more than four months before it was a.s.signed to the Special Landing Force. It was, by the standards of the day, very experienced in Vietnam operations. The squadron flew 232 sorties on August 18, and a total of nearly three thousand sorties over the next week, during which it medevaced 197 Marines.

As the afternoon lengthened, Lt Dave Steel needed to get to Lieutenant Colonel Muir's position. He ran into Colonel Peatross, who offered Steel a ride on his helicopter. He went along and hopped off the bird with Peatross when the colonel stopped to check with 2/4. Peatross walked up to Fisher and said, "Hey, Bull, how are you doing?" The ever-expressive Bull Fisher turned to face Peatross and said something like, "G.o.ddammit! f.u.c.k! I need water! Water! You understand me? I put in for f.u.c.kin' water for my people and I need f.u.c.kin' water!" The unflappable Peatross reached around to remove his canteen from its case and handed it to Fisher. Fisher flung it to the ground and yelled, "I don't mean for me, G.o.ddammit. I want f.u.c.kin' water for my f.u.c.kin' troops. I want water, and I want it now!" Pausing for breath for a moment, Fisher noticed Lieutenant Steel and said, "Oh, hi, Dave," and then returned to his tirade about water. Peatross immediately got on the radio to do what he could to get water to the troops.

As darkness fell enemy fire prevented the lead elements of 3/7 from getting to the disabled amtracs, but they thought they might be able to close on a knocked-out tank. A lieutenant came up to ask Cpl Bob Collins to select two volunteers to go across a field to check the tank for survivors. Neither Collins nor the lieutenant wanted to pick anyone else, so the two scurried across to have a look. The crew had been evacuated, but there were body parts and several rifles lying about.

While Collins was still up on the tank, some firing close by startled him. Sergeant Bill Stone loomed out of the dark and explained that he had shot a dog that was pulling on a body. Stone was another oldtimer-he had sixteen years in the Corps-who went over the wall at Inchon during the Korean War. When Collins got down from the disabled vehicle, he gathered up the rifles, removed their ammunition, put their bolts in his pack, and bent the barrels in the tank tracks to render them useless. After they returned to their position someone approached from behind them. A challenge was issued but the apparition did not answer so the Marines opened up.

Lima Company, 3/7, saddled up for a scary night march that took it back to the 3/3 perimeter. The only way the troops could stay together was to hold onto the belt of the men in front of them. An ambush by the enemy would have had terrible effect.

HOTEL, 2/4. 1630.

The remainder of Hotel, 2/4, had completed its movement back to LZ Blue at 1630. Another air strike was made on Hill 43 to insure that no VC were still up there. Hotel Company was instructed by Bull Fisher to set in at LZ Blue in a night defensive position. These weary Marines were still getting sporadic small arms fire from Nam Yen 3, so the Ontos and tanks proceeded to level all the houses that remained standing, which helped eliminate the small-arms threat.

Exhausted from a long day of combat, Lt Mike Jenkins told his twenty-four infantry Marines, three tank crews, and three Ontos crews that they needed to dig in for the night in the strongest possible defense. When Lieutenant Jack Sullivan asked Jenkins what John Wayne would have done in a situation like this, Jenkins immediately replied, "Circle the wagons." And that they did. The tracked vehicles formed a circle, the operational ones towing the disabled ones, and the infantry Marines dug in around and beneath them. At 1800 these Marines were resupplied with food, water, and ammo. They requested fuel for the Ontos, which were down to one-eighth tank each and thus unable to travel any distance. They also were reinforced with an 81mm mortar section. Private First Cla.s.s Jim Mazy, who had the only working radio, was pretty busy receiving and sending messages to Colonel Fisher's CP throughout the long night. The enemy left them alone and they spent a fairly quiet but extremely nervous night. The jittery Marines fired whenever they thought they saw something in the spooky light of the illumination flares.

CHAPTER 11.

THE SITUATION AT LATE AFTERNOON.

By late afternoon the Marines had effectively encircled the objective area. The coastline (see map) runs from northwest to southeast. The northwest was blocked by Mike Company, 3/3, and Golf Company, 2/4. Echo Company, 2/4 stood fast in the west; Hotel Company, 2/4, was struggling to control its sector in the southwest; and India and Kilo companies, 3/3 and Lima Company, 3/7, were sweepng the area from the southeast. The fiercest fighting of the day had taken place in a few thousand square meters around the villages of An Cuong 2 and Nam Yen 3 and the ambushed supply column that lay between the two.

A DOG NAMED COMBAT.

Toward the end of the day, during a lull in the fighting, a Kilo, 3/3, Marine found a tiny emaciated puppy in one of the villages. As would many American boys, he scooped the little guy up and carried him along. Later that night when he went out on a listening post he gave the pup to LCpl Ed Nicholls, who cared for him for months afterward. Combat, as he was called, became a real Marine's dog, growing fat on C-rations and generally behaving as friendly dogs do. Articles about Combat appeared in newspapers throughout the United States, and he frequently received fan mail from school children. Combat went through several masters as they rotated out of country at the end of their tours and, eventually, he died a Marine's death; he was killed by a b.o.o.by trap placed by the enemy.

INDIA COMPANY, 3/3. LATE AFTERNOON.

India Company, 3/3, continued its search for the supply column. As it approached An Cuong 2, the company halted when it was fired on and called in an air strike. Marine jets dropped several 250-pound bombs on the target area. The VC in the village were either killed, or had fled, and there was no more firing. West of the village were fields bordered with the ubiquitous hedgerows. They were not the usual rice fields; potatoes or something else was growing in them.

Except for the platoon that was still back with Major Comer, India Company was 2,000 to 2,500 meters from the rest of the battalion. It still had not located the supply column.

India Company pushed eight hundred meters or more past An Cuong 2 village as it got dark. When Lt Richard Purnell radioed back a request for instructions, he was told to return to the battalion position. India Company, 3/3, never did find out where the supply train was that night.

The Marines decided to light up the area with illumination rounds from artillery and naval gunfire throughout the night. While this would make it more difficult for the VC to withdraw and easier for the supply column to defend itself, it also made it hard on India Company, 3/3. On its return to the 3/3 CP area the troops had to hit the deck every few steps and wait for the parachutes from which the illumination rounds were suspended to sway slowly to earth. Otherwise they would have become well-lighted targets for the VC still active in the area.

India Company, 3/3, was about halfway back when once again it took fire, now from five or six VC in a hedgerow. The VC were just twenty-five or thirty meters away, but the India Marines were on the deck, avoiding the light from illumination rounds. One Marine was killed and another was wounded. The Marines moved reflexively into a flanking movement and poured a flood of return fire at the enemy. When the firing ceased, one platoon checked out the hedgerow but found nothing.

At another pause along the long march, Purnell's rear-guard machine gunner spotted five VC with weapons who were carrying one of their wounded. The Marine lay alongside the trail, well concealed by the bushes, and the VC would step on him if he did not act. He got them in his sights, opened fire, and killed them all. A little after that the Marine point man, who was moving down a trenchline, came around a bend and ran face-to-face with a VC, whom he killed.

Lieutenant Purnell asked for an emergency medevac for the wounded and dead. Major Comer got in contact with a helicopter whose pilot said he would come down if it was a real emergency. It was. The pilot then asked if there was any way India Company could show him where it was. The only night signal devices available were flashlights. When the Marines on the ground said they would turn one on, the pilot reported seeing flashlights all over the place. The Marines were certain that the VC were monitoring their radio transmissions.

They finally got a blanket, covered up the flashlight, pointed it up, and blinked it on and off. The helicopter came right down. It was a much admired bit of flying; the pilot came right in with no lights at all and dropped right into the zone. The H-34 was quickly loaded and lifted off with the wounded, a dead Marine, and a man with severe asthma.

Between the fire fights, the helicopter evacuation, and the dangerous illumination, it took India Company just about all night to reach its objective. The unit got back to the battalion at approximately 0430.

3/3 AT DUSK.

Colonel Peatross visited the 3/3 commander, LtCol Joe Muir, around sundown. After he left, Muir turned his two remaining companies a bit further north to a good night defensive position. He found a hill that he wanted to set in on but was determined to make sure it was free of VC before he moved on it. As Muir looked up at the hill, he said," I'm not going to lose another Marine unnecessarily," and put on one of the finest exhibitions of calling in combat arms that Lt Dave Steel ever saw. Muir continuously raked the hill with artillery, air, naval gunfire, and his mortars. Steel simply marveled at what Muir could do with supporting arms, either simultaneously or in sequence.

The 3/3 main body had just started its advance when Lima Company, 3/7, called to request water and advise Muir that it couldn't move. Muir turned to Capt Dave Ramsey, the 3/3 S3, and said, "I am going over there". By the time he got to Lima, 3/7, too many heat-casualty medevacs, including that of the company commander, were taking place.

In the struggle to get up the hill, Dave Steel lost his college ring when it slipped off his finger. He saw it roll down the hill, paused for a moment, looked up at the top of the hill, said, "f.u.c.k it," and continued on up the hill.

When 3/3 reached the top and set in, Lima Company, 3/7, was still at the bottom of the hill. It was nearly dark, so the leader of the platoon of India Company that was not with Purnell, SSgt Bill Wright, went down and guided the 3/7 company to the top of the hill.

Just as it got dark, an amtrac appeared out of nowhere. It was Staff Sergeant Bradley, who had simply boarded a supply amtrac on the beach and wandered around until he found the battalion. He had plenty of food, water, and ammunition. Joe Muir walked over to Bradley and said, "Well, I can't get mad. But you can't leave until tomorrow." That was okay with Bradley. He was a supply sergeant, but he wanted to be with the front-line troops.

NIGHT FALLS ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

Just at dusk, Kilo Company, 3/3, called in air and naval gunfire on enemy troops moving about two hundred meters to its front. One air strike resulted in several secondary explosions.

MIKE COMPANY, 3/7. MIDNIGHT.

During the night Colonel Peatross brought the remainder of BLT 3/7 ash.o.r.e. India, 3/7, arrived at the regimental CP at 1800 and remained there to provide additional security for the CP. Lieutenant Colonel Bodley and his command group followed shortly.

Just before midnight, Mike Company, 3/7, arrived off the coast aboard the slow USS Talladega. Although most of the day's fighting was over by that time, there was nevertheless a live sound and light show that was daunting to the Marines aboard s.h.i.+p. They lined the rails and said things like, "Man, oh man, I'm glad we're not involved in that mess." They only enjoyed their spectator role for a few minutes before their skipper got a call from Lieutenant Colonel Bodley to prepare to land by boat at midnight. Scuttleb.u.t.t said that the enemy was escaping the battlefield in small boats and someone needed to block off their escape route. So Mike, 3/7, offloaded from the Talladega, down the nets just like in the movies, on its way to make the first night amphibious landing of the Vietnam War. The s.h.i.+p's captain did not want to put his LCVPs into the water at night. He had inadequate charts and, having been told to land the boats where the "rounds were coming together," he thought it best to go with larger craft. The entire company, about two hundred-strong, climbed down into LCMs for its trip into the beach. The LCMs ran afoul of the same sandbar that had bedeviled the 3/3 command groups the previous morning and got hung up.

When one of the platoon commanders, Lt John Covert, jumped over the side of his LCM to see how deep it was, all but his momentarily floating helmet immediately disappeared from sight. Covert ditched enough of his gear to struggle to the surface and was pulled out of the water. After getting a bit closer to the beach, the boats managed to get their ramps down, and the Marines waded in.

Mike, 3/7, moved only a short distance inland before a sergeant named Tiger stepped on some soft ground that gave way under his weight and collapsed a tunnel through which several Viet Cong were trying to escape. Tiger reached down and pulled one of them out, giving the newly landed Marines their first close-hand view of a living, breathing VC.

With the arrival of his third battalion, Colonel Peatross was able to complete his plans for the next day's action. The regimental commander's concept of action remained basically the same: Squeeze the vise around the VC and drive them toward the sea. As a result of the first day's action against the VC, he readjusted the battalions' boundaries.

Echo Company, 2/4, about three thousand meters north of Hotel, 2/4, set out an ambush after dark and killed a VC whom, from his armament and equipment, the troops figured to be a mortar forward observer. Some ineffective incoming fire was directed at Echo Company, but other than that, all was quiet.