Grunts_ Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II Through Iraq Part 6

Later that day, just as Bravo Company was approaching the perimeter on Hill 724, the NVA attacked. "B40s were fired en ma.s.se, striking trees and showering positions with fragments," an officer later wrote. "Enemy mortar positions had been carefully prepared to fire from at least three directions. They continued to fire even under repeated air attack and counter battery." Some of the NVA soldiers had tied themselves into the trees, from which they could rain down withering accurate rifle fire upon the Ivy Dragoons. Others were pus.h.i.+ng up the hill, a.s.saulting, as usual, at close quarters. The grunts dropped their heavy rucksacks, fanned out into bomb craters, behind logs, in fighting holes or any other cover they could find and returned fire. From the vantage point of their perches in the trees, NVA snipers could clearly see some of the Americans, even if they were crouching behind trees or logs. This sniper fire was frighteningly accurate, ripping through the heads of several unsuspecting grunts. The Americans learned to spray the trees with automatic fire even if they did not see anything to shoot at.

Charlie and Delta Companies had already carved some semblance of a perimeter with holes and fields of fire from which to fight the NVA attackers. But the Bravo soldiers quickly realized that the NVA had gotten between them and their comrades in the makes.h.i.+ft perimeter. This put them in the desperate circ.u.mstance of taking fire, at close range, from all sides. With a flurry of AK-47 fire, the NVA overran several Bravo soldiers who were manning observation posts (OPs) to protect the company's flanks. The OP soldiers were in a hopeless position but they fought back with everything they had, especially Privates First Cla.s.s Nathaniel Thompson and William Muir, who both were mortally wounded but remained in place, pouring out fire until the end. The NVA wiped out the OPs.

Several dozen meters from the OPs, Spec-4 Bob Walkowiak, one of the company commander's radio telephone operators (RTO), heard the shooting but did not know what was going on. He was helping the company medic attend to a badly wounded soldier. As the deafening sounds of shooting, explosions, and hollering raged around them, they came to the sad realization that the man was beyond hope. The medic moved on and Walkowiak tried to talk to the dying soldier and comfort him. "As I apologized for our inability to save him, the fight for his life ended. Hopefully, someday I'll know if he forgave us for failing." As the soldier expired, Walkowiak rolled over and looked at the clear blue sky above. The air was so thick with bullets and shrapnel that it was "like having stars or streaks in your eyes."

Medics were braving the worst of the fire, scurrying all over, treating and retrieving wounded men. They dealt with the horrible consequences of combat-the torn flesh, the jagged holes, the broken bones, the gus.h.i.+ng blood, the internal bleeding, the crying and screaming of grievously wounded soldiers. With bullets zinging around and explosions cooking off, the medics could only hope to administer some first aid-keep the airways open, apply pressure bandages, stop the bleeding, give morphine shots to those who needed them-and hope for the best. One medic, Spec-4 John Kind, came under enemy attack as he was crouching over a badly wounded man, trying to save him. Kind grabbed the man's rifle and, according to one account, "began placing accurate fire at the advancing enemy." When the enemy attack failed, Kind resumed treating the wounded soldier. Another medic from Charlie Company, Private First Cla.s.s John Trahan, was so busy that he personally treated eighteen wounded men in the first several minutes of the firefight. When he realized Bravo Company's predicament, he crossed a patch of open ground under intense fire to get to them, even though he himself was wounded, too. At that point, according to one witness, he took the lead in "caring for the wounded and evacuating them to safer positions."

Spec-4 Walkowiak, the RTO, found a bit of cover with two other men behind a small log. He cautiously peered down the incline of the hill at the foliage beyond and saw that the NVA was overrunning one of the platoons. "On the right, one man raised up to fire as he withdrew and was promptly shot dead. On the left a fellow with a pump shotgun retreated up the hill. He stood tall as he walked backwards, firing every few steps. No panic, just grudgingly giving up ground in that hail of bullets. As he raised his weapon to fire, a bullet went through his jaw." Enemy grenades soon followed, showering shrapnel in every direction. Employing M72 Light Ant.i.tank Weapon (LAW) rocket fire, machine guns, grenades of their own, and accurate rifle fire, Walkowiak's group managed to slow the NVA into a tense standoff.4 At about this time, an enemy B40 rocket exploded among Bravo's command group, killing twenty-eight-year-old Captain John Falcone, the commanding officer, who had been rus.h.i.+ng all over the place, positioning his men, hollering orders, and trying to keep his soldiers as calm as possible. The well-liked former Marine and Army Ranger left behind a wife and three children. Lieutenant William Gauff, one of the platoon leaders, somehow made his way through deadly fire to reorganize the survivors around Falcone and a.s.sume command of the company, even though he was wounded himself. Another key leader, Staff Sergeant Raymond Ortiz, a.s.sumed command of his platoon when his platoon sergeant got killed. Ortiz manned a machine gun and poured belt after belt of 7.62-millimeter ammunition into attacking NVA soldiers. As was so often the case in this kind of desperate combat, the example of a tenacious NCO motivated other surviving members of the platoon to stay and fight. They laced the NVA with heavy fire until they ran out of small-arms ammunition and began hurling grenades at the enemy, finally forcing them away from that spot for good.

The Ivy Dragoon grunts were fighting tenaciously, but without some serious fire support the entire perimeter was in real danger of being overrun by the NVA. Mortarmen set up makes.h.i.+ft gun pits, pointed their tubes straight up, and fired their sh.e.l.ls (NVA crews responded in kind). Aided by forward air controllers, jets screamed in to drop 500- and 750-pound bombs as close to the hill as they dared. In some cases, they dropped their ordnance within five hundred meters of the grunts. "They really lit the area up," Walkowiak later wrote. "The pilots put napalm and CBUs [cl.u.s.ter bomb units] directly on both sides of the perimeter of the hill behind my location." In one instance, he and several other grunts popped smoke grenades to mark their position for strafing planes. The fighter pilots swooped in and unleashed a stream of 20-millimeter cannon sh.e.l.ls on a woodpile that was sheltering several NVA, leaving behind little besides boiling plumes of smoke, dust, and traumatized flesh. Walkowiak estimated that enemy fire diminished by one-third. Another soldier watched the planes drop cl.u.s.ter bombs full of 3-millimeter-long flechettes or darts. "They'd come down through the trees and, holy cow, were they effective." Hundreds of tiny darts tore holes into any NVA soldiers who were unfortunate enough to find themselves in the kill zone of the cl.u.s.ter bombs. They died, literally, a death by a thousand cuts. In the recollection of one American, he and several others later found, in just one sector, "over a hundred bodies . . . with just little pinp.r.i.c.ks over 'em . . . looking like a very fine shot from shotguns."

The aircraft were hardly impervious to enemy fire. Helicopter crews found it nearly impossible to even approach the hill, much less get close enough to unload supplies and remove the wounded. Enemy rifle, machine-gun, and rocket fire was just too intense. In the recollection of one man, the air was full of so many B40 rockets that "you could almost reach up and catch 'em." In one instance, Sergeant Steve Edmunds, a squad leader in Charlie Company, saw "a chopper, in an attempt to provide us with food, water, and ammunition was blown out of the sky by an enemy rocket, as it attempted to drop our supplies. The chopper exploded into flames and all the ammunition which was on board continued to explode." The enemy even shot down a CIA Air America T28 Trojan propeller plane that was operating as a forward air controller. The grunts were able to rescue the two pilots.

Artillery observers were constantly on their radios calling in fire missions. Several miles away, at various firebases the Americans had constructed, artillerymen hunched over their guns, in the synchronized ch.o.r.eography so necessary for well-trained crewmen to do their jobs properly, loading and firing their pieces. Everything from large-caliber eight-inch and 155-millimeter sh.e.l.ls to the more common 105-millimeter howitzer rounds crashed into NVA-held portions of Hill 724 (and on some of the American positions, too). One of the observers, First Lieutenant Larry Skogler, was roaming around with his RTO and reconnaissance sergeant in tow, looking for good places to call down fire. From the lip of one bomb crater, he called in so many fire missions he lost track of how many. The low-key Minnesotan had once attended the state university in Minneapolis, but had gotten drafted in 1965 when he lost his student deferment. Well trained and experienced, he possessed the keen forward observer's feel for terrain, distance, angles, and the capability of the guns. At Hill 724, he had one battery of four guns at his disposal. "The trees were so tall, we couldn't get good artillery coverage on the ground," he said. "The one-oh-five rounds would burst in the trees and scatter all over creation. Ninety percent of it would be stuck in the trees." Even so, it was effective enough to wound and kill many NVA soldiers, if only because of the sheer volume of the American fire.

The more time that pa.s.sed, the less chance the NVA had to overrun the battalion. Steadily, the Bravo survivors formed a continuous perimeter with hard-pressed Charlie and Delta Companies. With the NVA positions well known, the Americans could unleash a constant barrage of artillery, napalm, and bombs upon the enemy, at a minimum negating their movement. After dark, planes dropped flares to illuminate the area. C47 guns.h.i.+ps (nicknamed "Puff the Magic Dragon") circled overhead, spewing forth laser-beam-like streams of Gatling gun rounds on the NVA. Farther away, B-52 heavy bombers unloaded many tons of explosives on suspected NVA strongholds.

During lulls, amid the dancing half shadows, the Americans heard NVA sergeants blowing whistles, organizing their men for new a.s.saults on the perimeter. Over the course of the evening, they attacked several times. Those who could get close enough to the Americans fought it out in confusing, intimate firefights, with muzzle flashes winking like camera flashbulbs. The fighting was ghastly and brutal, sometimes even hand to hand. Because of the ma.s.sive amount of American firepower that was raking every approach to the hill, the communists could not reinforce any of their attacks well enough to succeed in their goal of annihilating the hard-pressed American battalion. Gradually, the Americans fended them off and, by daylight, the battle evolved into a stalemate, with the NVA besieging the hill and the Americans keeping them at bay with firepower plus the sheer tenacity of their grunts.

The still-burning wreckage of the downed chopper blocked the small LZ that the soldiers had hacked out. Resupply helicopters could only swoop in and hover precariously several feet off the ground, all the while under enemy fire. The crewmen hastily threw out crates of ammunition, food, and water cans. If possible, grunts loaded the most seriously wounded aboard. Then the choppers took off. The whole process usually took less than a minute or two. The helicopters made operations in this remote area possible, but in such a heavy battle, they were a tenuous supply link at best. Control of all the ground around Dak To and the establishment of a secure land-based supply line was an impossibility under the circ.u.mstances (and a major reason why officers like Krulak thought it was folly to fight in the Central Highlands).

So the helicopter supply runs were only a temporary solution to this problem. In the words of one after action account, "Further support was impossible until the enemy could be driven far enough from the landing zone to deny observed fire." Captain John Mirus, the commander of Charlie Company, and Captain Terry Bell, Delta's commander, were the two highest-ranking officers left on the hill. Both of them understood that they must expand their perimeter to provide necessary breathing s.p.a.ce for the choppers. If they did not, wounded men would die, and supplies of vital ammo and water would dwindle to dangerously low levels. They ordered their men to push the NVA back, away from the hill. "It took another two days of fighting out from the base to secure the area sufficiently to resume operations," a unit citation later stated.

In that time, the NVA gradually disengaged and faded away. The Americans later learned that they had destroyed the better part of two NVA battalions. They counted 300 North Vietnamese bodies. A prisoner told interrogators that his regimental commander had been killed. American losses were grim, too. When Bravo Company first went up Hill 724, it had 165 soldiers. When the fighting finally ended there, 19 of the men were dead and another 68 were wounded badly enough to require evacuation. Losses in the other two companies added several dozen more soldiers to the casualty rolls. As the survivors boarded helicopters and left the torn, pockmarked hill behind, their young filthy faces were tinged with the glazed, dazed, exhausted mask of heavy combat. Their bravery, combined with lethal fire support, had won a tactical victory at Hill 724, albeit one that did nothing to enhance American strategic aims in Vietnam. The Americans left the hard-won hill and resumed their pursuit of the NVA. The Dak To pattern was set.5 "I just knew that n.o.body was gonna get out of there alive": Task Force Black on Veterans Day.

Most of them were volunteers. The 173rd Airborne Brigade was comprised of young men who had chosen to become airborne infantrymen. To achieve this status, they had endured rugged training. A few of them were draftees, but the vast majority had elected to join the Army, usually out of patriotism, machismo, or a thirst for adventure. Their nickname was "the Sky Soldiers," but in Vietnam they only made one combat jump. Instead, they functioned as the ultimate light infantrymen, grunts to the core. Their unit was arguably the hardest working in Vietnam. Since arriving in 1965, the 173rd had spent almost all of its time in the field, operating as a veritable fire brigade for Westy. Wherever the action was thickest, wherever the terrain was the most challenging, the Sky Soldiers were there. "We lived like animals," Private Ken Lambertson said. "We didn't go back to the rear. We didn't go back and party and drink and get high and all that." Sky Soldiers like Lambertson lived "in the elements, [with] the snakes, the critters . . . the leeches." In this unit, luxuries were unheard of. Troopers subsisted on C rations, coffee, and Kool-Aid. In a one-year tour of duty, a typical Sky Soldier spent all but a few weeks in the field, humping a sixty-pound rucksack, dealing with the heat, digging fighting holes, going without adequate sleep, facing danger day and night. "Such a rifleman was faced with so many hazards and hards.h.i.+ps that the cards were completely stacked against him to ever make it out of that jungle without becoming a casualty to some degree or other," one of the unit's senior NCOs later wrote.

The paratroopers had fought around Dak To during the summer of 1967, so they knew the place was the NVA's backyard and that going back there would mean heavy fighting. Many of them had premonitions that they were getting into something terrible. "When we were told we were going back to Dak To, it got really serious," Sergeant David Watson later said. "We knew it was gonna be serious again." Now, in November, they were back to this foreboding, unhappy place, on the trail of their old NVA adversaries.

Like their comrades in the Ivy Dragoons, they had little trouble finding their quarry. On the windy evening of November 10, a company and a half of paratroopers laagered atop a hill ma.s.s close to Cambodia, over twenty miles west of Hill 724. Like the area that surrounded it, the hill was thick with bamboo trees, vines, and the moldy detritus of the jungle. This Sky Soldier group consisted of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry, along with two platoons of the battalion's Dog Company. Collectively this force of just under two hundred paratroopers was known as Task Force Black. They were under the command of Captain Thomas McElwain, Charlie's CO, a self-made former enlisted man from West Virginia who had been in the Army for ten years but was still two weeks shy of his twenty-seventh birthday. Honest, fair, and professional, McElwain had been in command only a couple months but had already built up a strong loyalty among his men, who affectionately called him "Captain Mac."

He and his grunts knew the NVA were close. They had skirmished with them several times in the last few days. Moreover, as the troopers of Task Force Black had silently patrolled this jungle, they had found blood trails, empty bunkers, fresh feces, discarded equipment, artificial stairs cut into hill-sides, and, most alarming of all, live enemy communication wire. Beyond all of these visual indicators, the paratroopers could just feel feel the presence of the enemy, particularly the spooky sensation of having eyes upon them. A few of the Americans could even smell the NVA. The mood among the grunts was tinged with the ambivalence of an impending fight. On the one hand, as aggressive combat soldiers, the men were excited at the prospect of a chance to destroy their elusive enemies. On the other hand, everyone understood that, no matter the outcome of the looming battle, death and wounds awaited many of them. "No one knew exactly what to expect, but we expected it would be something big," McElwain said. the presence of the enemy, particularly the spooky sensation of having eyes upon them. A few of the Americans could even smell the NVA. The mood among the grunts was tinged with the ambivalence of an impending fight. On the one hand, as aggressive combat soldiers, the men were excited at the prospect of a chance to destroy their elusive enemies. On the other hand, everyone understood that, no matter the outcome of the looming battle, death and wounds awaited many of them. "No one knew exactly what to expect, but we expected it would be something big," McElwain said.

November 10 was a tense but quiet night. In the morning, Captain McElwain received orders from Lieutenant Colonel David Schumacher, the battalion commander, to follow the enemy communication wire and hook up with Task Force Blue, a similar-sized element consisting of the battalion's Alpha Company and the other platoon from Dog Company. Unspoken was the expectation that the two task forces would draw the enemy into a sizable battle that would produce a big body count to fulfill the strategic expectations of General Westmoreland and his White House superiors.

Captain McElwain's plan was to send part of his Third Platoon, under Lieutenant Charles Brown, down the hill several meters to recon the laager site, as well as Task Force Black's antic.i.p.ated route of advance, to make sure the enemy was not waiting in ambush. McElwain understood, and appreciated, that moving along trails was dangerous and to be avoided under most circ.u.mstances. But the vegetation in this part of Vietnam was so thick that his unit simply had to move along trails or any other small openings the jungle might occasionally offer. When Brown's patrol was finished, the captain planned to move his company along a narrow ridgeline while the two Dog Company platoons, under the control of their commander, Captain Abe Hardy, moved along a parallel ridgeline.6 At 0800, Brown and his men hoisted their weapons, spread out into a suitable patrol formation, and negotiated their way down the hill. They had not even gone fifty meters when the point man spotted an NVA soldier just down the trail. Intrepid North Vietnamese trail watchers such as this soldier often hid along obvious movement routes, watching, gathering information on the Americans, even shadowing them as they moved. The point man opened fire and wounded the enemy soldier, who then took off. Lieutenant Brown wanted to pursue the man's blood trail and radioed that request to Captain McElwain, but the captain told him to stay put. For all McElwain knew, the enemy soldier was luring Brown's platoon away from the company, into an ambush. At Dak To, American commanders constantly had to beware of these tactics, which, after all, were the product of the enemy's superior initiative and strategic position in the Central Highlands. Since they controlled most of the ground, they could usually do battle at the time and place of their choosing, for maximum advantage. The Americans knew the enemy's goal was to separate and annihilate a platoon- or company-sized unit. To foil this menacing possibility, good commanders like McElwain were intent on keeping their units together, albeit at the expense of mobility and flexibility. What's more, on this morning he was mindful of his orders to link up with Task Force Blue, something he could not do if his unit was absorbed in a rescue operation for a cutoff platoon.

McElwain's most experienced platoon leader was First Lieutenant Jerry Cecil, a member of the West Point cla.s.s of 1966, a group made famous by a Newsweek Newsweek article (and subsequent book) on them. Twenty-four years old, Cecil hailed from a rural Kentucky family with a long tradition of military service. For him, West Point offered a free college education, a chance to serve the country, and an exciting career as a soldier. He had thrived there and, like many of his infantry officer cla.s.smates, he was a graduate of Ranger School, one of the most formidable combat training courses in existence. He had been in command of the 2nd Platoon since June. Knowing Cecil's background, his experience, his knowledge of this terrain, and his quality as a small-unit leader, McElwain decided to put his platoon on point after Brown's encounter with the trail watcher. This decision reflected Cecil's excellence more than any deficiency on Brown's part. Brown was a fine officer, just not as experienced as Cecil. article (and subsequent book) on them. Twenty-four years old, Cecil hailed from a rural Kentucky family with a long tradition of military service. For him, West Point offered a free college education, a chance to serve the country, and an exciting career as a soldier. He had thrived there and, like many of his infantry officer cla.s.smates, he was a graduate of Ranger School, one of the most formidable combat training courses in existence. He had been in command of the 2nd Platoon since June. Knowing Cecil's background, his experience, his knowledge of this terrain, and his quality as a small-unit leader, McElwain decided to put his platoon on point after Brown's encounter with the trail watcher. This decision reflected Cecil's excellence more than any deficiency on Brown's part. Brown was a fine officer, just not as experienced as Cecil.

Lieutenant Cecil and the nineteen other men who comprised his platoon slowly walked down the trail, pa.s.sed Brown's group, and moved on. Like most of the other men in Task Force Black, the 2nd Platoon had trained and fought together for several weeks. They were as close as brothers, and they had developed a strong sense of teamwork in combat. The jungle they traversed grew progressively thicker as they descended the hill, the trees taller, the shadows longer. Cecil had several men deployed on either side of the trail in a cloverleaf formation to guard against ambush from the flanks. For several more meters, the soldiers followed the communication wire. Then the point man, Private First Cla.s.s John Rolfe, spotted another trail watcher. Rolfe raised his arm to signal for a halt and turned his head slightly back with a finger against his lips to call for quiet. He turned back again to the front, took aim on the NVA soldier, and fired one shot. The soldier went down.

The Americans moved a few more meters down the trail to look at the dead man. Cecil radioed back a report to Captain McElwain and he came up to have a look, too. Immediately the two officers and everyone else noticed how well equipped and fresh the dead NVA appeared to be. Lieutenant Cecil noticed that his AK-47 rifle had Cosmoline on it, indicating a brand-new weapon, and speculated that he had probably just come south. Captain McElwain knew that this probably meant that a new, reinforced enemy regiment was somewhere nearby. A chill ran down his spine. "They're out there, Jerry," he told Lieutenant Cecil. "This really is looking bad. I can feel 'em. We're gonna have to be really careful going down this ridge." Cecil readily agreed.

His platoon resumed its steady advance, in the same manner as before. The ridge narrowed. The sides of the trail grew steeper, making the footing tricky for Cecil's flankers. They covered several dozen more meters, to a saddle of low ground that formed at the bottom of the ridge, before the ground sloped upward into the next ridge. All around them were tree trunks, bamboo groves, and tangled green foliage. The sun could hardly penetrate this canopy. The air was moist and sodden. An eerie, unnatural silence hung over the jungle. "All the sights and sounds of the jungle just ceased," Cecil recalled, "you'd normally hear monkeys . . . walking through the jungle . . . you'd hear birds flying." Instead, now, there was nothing, as if the animals were hushed into an awed or frightened silence by something, or someone. The quiet was so alien it was almost earsplitting.

Every member of the 2nd Platoon knew that the silence meant big trouble, none more so than Cecil. He had learned much about ambushes at Ranger School, and had even taught ambush techniques at Fort Hood. He knew, with a powerful certainty, that danger was imminent. He thrust his clenched fist in the air, signaling his men to stop, and then twirled his index finger, ordering them to fall back into a mutually supporting semicircle. The lieutenant whispered: "Guys, I think we're in it. The gooks are here. When I give the signal, start . . . spraying at your feet like a garden hose." He figured this would kill any potential ambushers with grazing fire.

Lieutenant Cecil raised his CAR-15 rifle and opened fire, as did several others. At that exact moment, a host of hidden NVA soldiers began shooting, too. "You've never seen a Fourth of July display like this one-the noise was like ten million firecrackers," Spec-4 Ken c.o.x, a mortar forward observer who was standing a few paces away from Cecil, later commented. "They literally stood up in front of us," Cecil said. "It was like walking into a dark room, turning on a light, and seeing someone there. They literally stood up within arm's reach." The adrenaline rush was profound, almost like a narcotic, as the body's natural self-preservation mechanisms kicked in. Enemy soldiers popped out of holes and materialized out of the bushes. Everyone on both sides poured out as much fire as he could. Many of the platoon members were already on the ground when the shooting began. Those who were still standing flung themselves onto the trail and blazed away with their M16s. Quite a few of the NVA went down. Others tried to press forward, crawling or hurling themselves at the Americans. Intense enemy machine-gun, rifle, and rocket fire swept up and down the column. The AK-47 fire was so thick that the distinctive cracking sound of the enemy rifles sounded, to some men, like bullwhips snapping. Some of the fire hit home, wounding or killing grunts. One trooper caught a round in the face, instantly blowing out the back of his head in a red spray.

Spec-4 Jerry Kelley, one of Cecil's machine gunners, was with the point element, right in the worst of the kill zone. Most platoon leaders preferred to place their machine gunners in the middle of their formation for the sake of protection and flexibility, but on this day Cecil had fortuitously put Kelley's team up front where they were in a position to do major damage to the attacking NVA. The machine gunner was leaning on his trigger, pouring deadly fire into the shapes of enemy soldiers. "Oh my G.o.d, they're everywhere!" he roared. "Here they come!" He alternately stood and squatted along the trail, firing long bursts.7 In the meantime, Lieutenant Cecil was keeping his platoon together as best he could. With his RTO in tow, he lunged around, telling his men where to position themselves and what to do. In his recollection, he was attempting "to get some kind of perimeter that straddles the trail and hugs over to the right and left as it drops off. It's obviously pandemonium, chaos, shooting." Spec-4 c.o.x saw him repeatedly expose himself to enemy fire as he directed the battle. "This is when Lieutenant Cecil becomes the hero that he is, as far as I'm concerned," c.o.x later commented. "That guy stood up and placed everybody. He walked. He didn't run, but he walked fast and he placed everybody. He . . . made sure somebody was covering the wounded. He put that small perimeter in place, the whole time talking on the radio with the company commander." When it came to combat, infantry officers like Cecil were taught to guard against inertia, to do something-maybe even anything-no matter the circ.u.mstances. In this perilous situation, that philosophy proved appropriate. With his flurry of activity, the young West Pointer penetrated through the inherent confusion of this horrendous firefight and held the platoon together as a cohesive fighting ent.i.ty. He also personally shot several enemy soldiers who were charging his position.

Lieutenant Cecil and his men did not yet know it, but they were at the open end of an NVA horseshoe-shaped ambush. The enemy had deployed the better part of a battalion along either side and in front of the trail where the saddle morphed into the higher ground. "Had we gone another thirty or forty yards, we would have been completely surrounded," c.o.x said. This would have put them right into the NVA kill zone. Few, if any, would have survived. Instead they had stopped short before the enemy could bait them into this trap. This was not the result of luck. These troopers were experienced, well led, and wise to the ways of the NVA. Because of deduction, prior experiences, and pure intuition, they stopped short of the kill zone, forcing the enemy to spring their ambush in the thicker foliage around the trail, where the Americans had a chance to fight back on something approaching even terms.

Even as the fighting raged, Lieutenant Cecil was on the radio, hollering over the din, reporting what was happening to Captain McElwain, who was about one hundred yards away, back up on the hill. At first, Cecil thought he was up against a squad, then a platoon, and then some sort of undetermined larger unit. When the enemy fire showed no signs of abating, McElwain grew concerned. He called Lieutenant Brown and ordered him to reinforce Cecil, but enemy opposition was so formidable that Brown and his people could only get within shouting distance of Cecil's platoon. Moreover, enemy rifle, machine-gun, rocket, and mortar fire was now coming from the front and both sides. This meant that the NVA was enveloping Task Force Black, attempting to surround and destroy the unit. "It was difficult to see the enemy," an after action report explained. "The jungle was closing in on the troopers as the enemy, completely covered with natural foliage, moved forward." Copying a tactic from their brethren at Hill 724, some of the NVA even tied themselves into the trees and poured intense fire down on Task Force Black. One of them dropped a grenade between Cecil and his RTO, Preston Prince, wounding both of them. Cecil got hit in the left hip, Prince in the right. They looked up and shot the NVA. His dead body tumbled out of the tree and hung several feet above the trail.

About half an hour after the battle erupted, Captain McElwain and his command group moved from the hill to link up with Brown's platoon. The captain could now see firsthand how desperate the fighting had become. He sensed that, somewhere out there in the trees, the enemy was moving along adjacent ridges, trying to get between the various American platoons to destroy each one of them in detail. This was exactly what they had done at the disastrous Battle of the Slopes in June. He understood that Task Force Black was now in serious danger of experiencing the same fate. To forestall such a bloodbath, McElwain knew that he had to get the entire task force together, into one continuous, defensible perimeter.

He actually found this to be a bit frustrating. McElwain, like many other combat arms officers of his generation, was taught to fight aggressively-close with the enemy and destroy them through fire and maneuver. "I was eager to . . . fight in battles instead of going into defensive positions. That's the way I had learned in all my experiences, was to fix the enemy, maneuver against him, and destroy him." In Vietnam's Central Highlands, though, that was not the name of the game. Here such aggressive tactics invited ma.s.sacre because they made it easier for the NVA to surround units, fight them at close enough range to neutralize American firepower, and then inflict horrendous casualties on the GIs. Instead, the Americans, especially after the Slopes, learned, upon making contact, to peel back into a perimeter, hold it, and unleash their firepower at the communists, in hopes of keeping them at bay and inflicting a large body count. These tactics, effective though they undeniably were, reflected the unhappy reality that, in the Highlands, the enemy held the strategic initiative. By and large, the communists chose where they wanted to fight and they controlled most of the terrain. The Americans controlled only enclaves. Only in this sort of environment could such defensive tactics make sense.8 Be that as it may, Captain McElwain knew, on the morning of November 11, that Task Force Black's survival depended on forging and holding a strong perimeter. Knowing that time was short, he radioed Captain Hardy and had him move his two platoons back to Charlie Company's position. McElwain's Weapons Platoon, under Lieutenant Ray Flynn, and his 1st Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Ed Kelley, were both still on the hill. He radioed Flynn and Kelley and told them to come off the hill and join up with everyone else at the base of the hill, where the perimeter was forming roughly around Brown's platoon. Ordinarily, Flynn's mortar crews would have had their tubes set up and firing. So far, though, they had remained inactive because the trees on the hill were so dense that the crews had no fields of fire. The situation was now so serious that Flynn's people buried their mortars, picked up their rifles, and dashed down the hill. They had to fight their way to the rest of the company. Most of the soldiers even left behind their rucksacks, taking only weapons and ammo with them.

The same was true for Kelley's riflemen and machine gunners. Knowing the company's predicament, they moved with great haste, in rushes, down the hill through the bamboo-riddled foliage. "We were in a . . . line going down," Private Lambertson remembered. "We'd stop and then move on a little bit. We could hear all the firing down below." Lieutenant Kelley constantly prodded his men to keep moving. The group was hunched over, pus.h.i.+ng through the brambles, adrenaline coursing through their veins. "We literally fought our way down to where the rest of the company was," Kelley later said. "It was like a hundred d.a.m.ned Harley motorcycles all revving up. That's the only way I can explain the noise. It was absolute bedlam."

The volume of enemy fire was considerable. One of Kelley's most experienced men, Staff Sergeant Jerry Curry, caught some mortar shrapnel on the way down the hill. "Twenty-two months I never got a scratch until I got to that d.a.m.ned hill," he said. Curry was a prime example of a born infantryman. He'd been with the unit in combat almost continuously for that two-year period. A natural outdoorsman who had dropped out of high school and joined the Army in 1964, Curry had few equals when it came to combat savvy. He was so at ease in the jungle that he often led small groups of handpicked soldiers on recon patrols hundreds of meters away from Charlie Company, almost like a modified LRRP team. He liked combat so much that his greatest fear was being plucked from the unit and forced to go home. His admiring men referred to him as "Sergeant Rock" after the cartoon character. On this morning the shrapnel tore into one of his legs. "I just felt my leg kick up and it was numb the rest of the fight." Blood steadily trickled down into his sock but, true to form, the cigar-chomping NCO hardly paid any attention to his wound.

As the platoon moved and shot, some of the grunts even caught glimpses out of their peripheral vision of the enemy. At one point, Private Lambertson actually came face-to-face with two NVA soldiers. "We just looked at each other and kept going," he said. The odd moment pa.s.sed quickly, as Lambertson hastened to keep up with his buddies. Why did the enemies refrain from shooting at each other? Perhaps they could not bring themselves to kill face-to-face. Or maybe the opportunity was so fleeting, and so instantaneous, that they scarcely had the chance to open fire.

Kelley was in such a hurry to reinforce the company that he bypa.s.sed an NVA machine gun. It was so close that the lieutenant could see "the gra.s.s in front of [it] parting" as the enemy gunner fired. "In retrospect, I should have gone ahead and taken care of that then because it was a thorn in our side the rest of the fight." The gun poured continuous and distressingly accurate fire on Task Force Black. In spite of this fire, Kelley and his people made it to the company, having fought there every step of the way. In the view of Sergeant David Watson, a fire team leader, it was like forcing the NVA to "open a door and then shut it."9 By about 1045, with the addition of Kelley's platoon, the mortarmen, and Hardy's Dog Company troopers, the Americans had established a makes.h.i.+ft perimeter about one hundred meters long and forty meters wide. Bamboo, tree trunks, and bushes offered the only cover. Lieutenant Richard Elrod, the company's artillery forward observer, and Captain McElwain both called down accurate artillery fire that played a major role in keeping the enemy at bay. Elrod, in particular, was all over the place, crawling and sprinting from one position to another. His RTO was killed and Elrod was wounded several times but, knowing the vital importance of the fire support to Task Force Black's survival, he kept at it. Many of his sh.e.l.ls detonated within twenty-five meters of the American lines, even wounding some of the Sky Soldiers. Air strikes, coming in at greater range, only added to the devastation.

By now, Captain McElwain had ordered Lieutenant Cecil to fight his way back up the trail to the task force position. To cover the withdrawal, Cecil ordered his men to place claymore mines in front of themselves, crawl back as far as the detonation cord would go, and prepare to hit the clackers that detonated the mines. Each mine weighed about a pound and contained dozens of BB-sized steel b.a.l.l.s. Many rifle platoons did not carry them on patrol, but Cecil's did. Against the objections of many in his platoon, he had forced his men to carry the mines. He himself carried two.

Here, in the middle of this fight to the death, the unpopular order paid off. When the soldiers detonated their mines, steel b.a.l.l.s filled the air, shredding many NVA attackers. One enemy soldier was even in the process of trying to sneak up and turn a mine in the direction of its American owner when it exploded. The young North Vietnamese soldier literally disintegrated into nothingness, as if he had never existed. This and the other explosions staggered the NVA, giving many of the soldiers in Cecil's platoon some time to fall back. "I'm convinced, to this day, that me insisting on every man packing a claymore . . . saved us," Cecil later commented. "The claymores gave us some breathing room. When you hear that thing go off in the jungle and then smell the cordite, that's a deal breaker if you're the attacker."

This hardly guaranteed the 2nd Platoon's escape, though. The most difficult aspect of the withdrawal was moving the wounded and the dead, an awkward, dangerous, and physically exhausting task. Spec-4 Kelley, the machine gunner, bought his comrades precious time to drag away several wounded men who could not walk on their own. In the process, according to one eyewitness, "Kelley was suddenly wounded himself. He was out in front of the perimeter and moved back [twenty] meters, firing his machine gun as he moved. The enemy s.h.i.+fted their attention to Kelley, who was raising havoc with his weapon. He fired away with long, sweeping bursts." Other grunts laid down cover fire with their rifles for Kelley. The M60 gunner seemed oblivious to everything. With a look of intense concentration, he focused on shooting at a seemingly endless stream of NVA soldiers who were moving through the trees, trying to get him. "Kelley stayed with his weapon, cutting down one North Vietnamese after another as they charged him." They finally succeeded in cutting him off and killing him.

Lieutenant Cecil saw two of his men lying badly wounded several meters away, in what was now NVA territory, almost in the spot where the battle had originally begun. Two separate times, he made himself a prime target by crawling out to grab them by the armpits and drag them to safety. As he did so, he felt groggy from the concussion of several nearby rocket explosions and he flinched under the weight of more near-miss bullets than he could ever truly appreciate. "It's the typical adrenaline story," he said. "In normal times I couldn't have carried those guys from here to the door." After retrieving the first man, he was nearly overwhelmed with fear and wondered if he could bring himself to go back into the kill zone for the second man. "Of course there was . . . only one answer to that. You've gotta go 'cos you're the lieutenant." He did exactly that. Most of the 2nd Platoon soldiers made it back to McElwain's defensive position. Cecil had lost four killed. Everyone else, except for one man, was wounded.10 Within the perimeter, the remnants of Cecil's platoon were in the middle (most of his wounded men simply kept fighting). Brown was on the right and Kelley on the left. Task Force Black was surrounded but intact. Nearly everyone was hugging the ground, getting as low as possible. Much of the time, if they rose up even a foot or two, they risked getting blown away. The NVA attacked from nearly every direction. In the recollection of one soldier, these attacks "were characterized by an intense, concentrated barrage of rockets, mortar and rifle grenade fire immediately followed by a relentless infantry attack. The attackers surged through the bamboo toward [the] perimeter." The Americans unloaded on them with rifles, machine guns, and grenades in the direction of the movement. The troopers had to be very careful to make sure the grenades did not bounce off trees and roll back in their own direction. "An AK fired at me and four rounds . . . [went] in the ground along my leg," Sergeant Watson recalled. "We were fighting pretty heavily. Everybody [was], like, laying in a certain position, moving back and forth, trying to get lower. The leaves were covering us, which was probably a good thing."

Not far away, Watson's platoon leader, Ed Kelley, was imploring his machine gunners to fire short bursts and then displace before the enemy could pinpoint their location. Kelley's mouth was dry from fright or adrenaline, he was not sure which. Behind him, wounded and dying men were screaming in terror (the memory of their desperate shrieks haunted him for many decades). Now, he was humbled by the responsibility of command. "What do we do now, L-T?" many of his young soldiers kept asking. This was the essence of combat leaders.h.i.+p. In life-or-death situations, soldiers follow an officer or NCO, not always out of military discipline but because they have confidence in their judgment. Lieutenant Kelley was frightened out of his wits but, like any good leader, he knew he could not show that face of fear to his soldiers. "I was just as concerned about how we were gonna get out of there as they were. But they were looking to me. I was moving about pretty much all the time, s.h.i.+fting people here, s.h.i.+fting people there."

His machine gunners were not following his orders quickly enough, and this allowed the NVA to zero in on them with B40 rockets. One of the rockets scored a direct hit on a team, vaporizing two men. "B40 rockets, you wouldn't believe the power in them," Staff Sergeant Curry said. "You get a direct hit, you're gone, ain't nothing left. They got hit and they just disintegrated." A mortar round came in and exploded close to Private Lambertson's head, bursting his eardrums, temporarily deafening him. Blood streamed from his damaged ears. The same round, plus an RPG, wounded Sergeant Watson, who had fragments in his jaw and an eye swollen shut. Sergeant Curry stayed close to the deafened Lambertson, pointing out where and when to shoot.

Most of the time, the NVA remained unseen, in the trees, like menacing apparitions. "The North Vietnamese presented an eerie picture as they moved ever so slowly," an after action report stated. "The enemy would spread apart branches, fire one round, and then freeze." Some of them even got into the American lines. One of them was running right past a shotgun-toting soldier. The American pointed and fired, cutting the NVA in half. Spec-4 c.o.x was lying on his back, against a log, looking for targets, when he saw two of them materialize right in front of his spot. In that instant, he was sure he would die. He only hoped the pain would not be too great when they shot him. "One of 'em looked right at me and I looked right back at him. We just sort of made eye contact. He was no more than . . . ten feet away." Before c.o.x could aim and shoot his rifle, the man and his partner took off into the trees.

Not long after this, c.o.x saw Captain Hardy walking toward him. The Dog Company CO was everywhere that day, braving the intense enemy fire, inspiring-and worrying-his soldiers with his courage. Tall and lanky, Hardy was the sort of person whose strides were so long that, when he walked fast, he almost appeared to be running. Several times that morning, his men and his fellow officers begged him to get down. As he loped up to c.o.x, the young mortarman could hardly believe that the angry enemy bullets and fragments missed the upright captain. The officer peered down at c.o.x and a nearby soldier: "How are you jaybirds doing down here?"

"We're doing fine, sir," c.o.x replied.

"That's good to know," he said breezily and resumed his odyssey, moving from one spot to another to make sure the line was intact. Captain McElwain later saw him running, shooting his rifle, and hollering obscenities at the enemy. When Hardy rested for a moment next to a spot where McElwain was lying, the West Virginian said to him: "Slow down, Abe. You can't beat them yourself." Hardy just smiled and took off in the direction of Lieutenant Kelley's platoon. One of the men was standing up, yelling at the NVA. Another was badly wounded, wandering around in shock, babbling. Kelley tackled both of them and tried to calm them.

Nearby, a gravely wounded man was sobbing and screaming: "I don't wanna die!" Lieutenant Kelley watched as Hardy stood up, trotted over to where Sergeant Watson was lying wounded and half dazed, and knelt beside the NCO. Watson greatly admired the young captain for his courage and his military bearing. He gazed up at Hardy. The captain yelled some instructions to a group of men, glanced down at Sergeant Watson, and stood up. As he did so, an NVA tree sniper, probably no more than a couple dozen meters away, noticed the movement, aimed at Captain Hardy, and squeezed off several shots. "He took three rounds," Watson remembered, "one in the head, the throat and the chest and he died on top of me and I couldn't move him with my arms." Somebody had to manhandle the captain's lifeless body off Watson. His dead eyes stared vacantly at Watson, whose trauma over the horrible incident never went away.11 The intensity of the battle ran in cycles. The North Vietnamese kept up a steady volume of rocket and mortar fire. They would attack one part of the perimeter, get repulsed, regroup, and then hit somewhere else. "Sometimes it was really, really intense," Private Lambertson explained. "Sometimes it wasn't that bad. When it wasn't that bad, you were moving around, collecting ammunition . . . getting guys to the middle of the perimeter where the aid station was. There was always something to do." Some soldiers tried to dig in, using their helmets, bayonets, or even their fingernails. Officers and sergeants were constantly reorganizing and shoring up the firing line. Men were packed close together, facing outward toward the mostly unseen enemy, waiting for bona fide targets before opening fire so as not to waste their dwindling stocks of ammunition.

As Lambertson indicated, medics had collected the wounded in the center of the perimeter only a few meters behind the main lines. Many on the firing line were wounded but could still fight. Those who were lying in the middle of the perimeter were only the most badly wounded. Some of the medics, like Spec-4 Ennis Elliott, who was lugging around a shattered forearm from an AK bullet, along with several other debilitating wounds, were themselves casualties. "When you see somebody else hit, it doesn't bother you," he said. "But when you look at your own arm and see the bone and blood, it's a shock."

The company's senior medic, Spec-4 Jim Stanzak, was a highly experienced soldier on his second tour with the 173rd in Vietnam. In that time, he had saved many lives. He had also seen quite a few soldiers die in his arms, their faces full of grief, shock, and sadness. Now he was dealing with more patients than he could handle. For him, the day was a whirlwind of responding to cries of "Doc!" or "Medic!" dragging wounded men to the middle of the perimeter and trying to save their lives. "I was getting guys. .h.i.t one after another . . . and there was no way in h.e.l.l that I could stay with [them] personally." He moved from patient to patient, fighting his own personal battle with death. He was also in extreme danger himself. In one instance, a man next to him took two machine-gun rounds to the head, exploding his skull and brains over Stanzak's s.h.i.+rt. "Of course, his head was pretty much gone."

Nearby, when a machine-gun team got killed, Private First Cla.s.s John Barnes braved withering enemy fire to leap over to the gun and man it himself. The Dedham, Ma.s.sachusetts, native was on his second tour. He was anything but a recruiting poster soldier, though. He was eager and affable, but he had a permanent slovenliness to him and he always seemed to be the last man ready to move out each morning. He was the type of person who would look dirty three minutes after he took a shower. His buddies liked to call him Pig-pen. "[He] was a sad sack," one soldier recalled. "I mean, he was never shaven. He had no noise discipline. Lieutenant Brown had to put a man in charge of his rucksack just to keep it quiet."

What he lacked in field craft he made up for in courage. Several meters in front of Barnes's gun, NVA attackers were surging ahead, trying to overrun this part of the line. "He was inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy as they made one human wave a.s.sault after another," one nearby soldier recalled. In the recollection of Sergeant Robert Lampkin, his fire "turned back several enemy a.s.saults, preventing that portion of the perimeter from being overrun." His accurate M60 fire killed between six and nine enemy soldiers (estimates vary). This fire was the only thing that kept the enemy from breaching the line and killing Doc Stanzak and the helpless wounded who were all just a few meters behind Barnes.

Suddenly, a well-camouflaged enemy soldier snuck to within a few yards and hurled a grenade through the dense bamboo. In one surreal moment the grenade somehow sailed through several stands of bamboo, over the machine gunner's head, and landed a few yards behind, right among the wounded. Spec-4 James Townsend, lying only a few feet away, saw the menacing grenade and noticed a flurry of motion from Barnes's direction. "[He] leaped from his position and threw himself on the grenade." Doc Stanzak had actually talked one time with Barnes about just such a situation as this. Barnes had a.s.sured the medic that he had too much to live for and would never hurl himself on a grenade. But, now, amid this anonymous stand of Vietnamese jungle and bamboo, when there was little time to mull over choices, Barnes made the ultimate sacrifice. Stanzak was only a few feet away. In the instant before the grenade detonated, the young New Englander happened to turn and look right at the medic. Stanzak saw "fright and fear" all over Barnes's face, but his expression also seemed to convey a question: "Doc, didn't I say I wasn't gonna do this?"

The grenade exploded, lifting Barnes's body about a foot off the ground, shredding his abdomen, almost cutting him in half. In a matter of seconds, he bled to death. Stanzak caught some shrapnel from the grenade, as did Sergeant Watson and a couple other men, but none of these wounds were life-threatening. Barnes had saved the lives of an untold number of his friends (one soldier estimated the number at ten). Why did he sacrifice himself to save the others? Perhaps out of love, perhaps out of obligation, perhaps just in the heat of the moment. His friends could never know for sure, but they were forever grateful to him. Glancing over at the brave man's body, Lieutenant Kelley was struck by how frail he looked. "The grenade had blown a huge hole in his torso and penetrated different parts of his equipment. His face was completely intact." For his heroism, Barnes earned a well-deserved Medal of Honor.12 Captain McElwain knew that, even though his men were fighting well, holding off powerful enemy attacks, time was not necessarily on their side. After all, they were surrounded, cut off from resupply, with many casualties, separated even from their rucksacks. Minute by minute, their stocks of water, medical supplies, and ammunition dwindled. Eventually, if Task Force Black did not get some serious help, the NVA would overrun the perimeter and probably kill everyone. Some of the men were down to only a few magazines of ammo, and were even saving their last bullet for themselves. "I just knew that n.o.body was gonna get out of there alive," one of them later said. Lieutenant Kelley, like many, believed he would certainly die and found a strange sort of peace in accepting that sad reality. "A calmness . . . came over me. I guess it goes along with pure acceptance of the fact that this is gonna happen."

McElwain was moving around frenetically, constantly on the radio, imploring higher command for help. On several occasions he had to personally fight for his life. "Each time the enemy carried the attack to the perimeter, CPT McElwain moved to the critical area killing the enemy when they started to break through and urging his men to hold the position," a post-battle report chronicled. "He personally killed six or seven North Vietnamese that day." In one such instance, several NVA soldiers came within fifteen feet of him but probably could not see him because of the dense bamboo. He raised his CAR-15 rifle and opened fire. "[The bamboo] was so thick in there that you could almost walk on top of somebody and not even see 'em," he said. "I hit four of them."

As McElwain's RTO, Sergeant Chuck Clutter's job was to stick close to him, no matter the danger. "I just never understood how anyone could pa.s.s through all that flying lead and . . . come out . . . unscathed," he said. "He was just living right that day, I guess. There's no answer to that." Clutter himself took an AK round to the leg, breaking a bone, and it felt like "a thousand volts of electricity . . . attached to a baseball bat." As medics tended to Clutter, Sergeant Jacques "Jack" deRemer, another member of the command group, took the radio from Clutter and gave it to another man. The wounded Clutter remembered that the fire around them was so thick that, as he lay bleeding, water from bamboo stalks kept splas.h.i.+ng on him as bullets struck the stalks a couple feet overhead.

Employing the new RTO, McElwain remained in constant contact with Captain Ed Sills, the battalion operations officer, and Lieutenant Colonel Schumacher. By late morning, after pa.s.sing along many conflicting reports on the size of the enemy force, McElwain was practically begging for help. Flying distantly in a helicopter thousands of feet overhead, and thus with no appreciation of the battle's ferocity, Schumacher thought that McElwain was overreacting. "First you report a squad, then a platoon, then a company," he said. "Now it's a battalion. Get up and go after those people."

McElwain was not a fan of Schumacher. In McElwain's opinion, the colonel was the type of spit-s.h.i.+ned commander who was content to buzz around in his command chopper, rarely ever getting on the ground with his troops. The captain thought of him as a careerist who cared much more about his next promotion than the welfare of his soldiers. In McElwain's estimation, few things were so detestable as that. "He really didn't have any interest in anybody other than himself," McElwain said. This resentment, and the stress of the fight, boiled over into an argument. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Six [radio lingo for the battalion commander]," he howled, "if you don't get us some f.u.c.king help down here, you won't have a Charlie Company! Listen to me, get us some help!"

Schumacher told McElwain to calm down and watch his language. The colonel still refused to send any substantial help. Fortunately, General Schweiter, the brigade commander, was listening to their radio communications. "You'd better listen to your man on the ground, Colonel," he told Schumacher. "If he says he's facing a battalion, he's facing a battalion." Only with that prodding from a superior did the battalion commander take action. He found that his options were limited. The logical force to relieve Task Force Black was Task Force Blue, since they came from the same battalion and were only a couple miles away. But they had run into an apparent enemy bunker complex and, according to Captain Jesmer, the outfit was pinned down by sniper fire. Schumacher told him to press through the complex and relieve Task Force Black. But Jesmer and his people remained pinned down by the snipers (actually this was just an enemy rear guard designed to hold off Task Force Blue while the main group finished off Task Force Black). Such was the intensity of the fighting going on all over the Dak To area that the only other unit available for an immediate rescue was Charlie Company of the brigade's 4th Battalion, several kilometers away at Ben Het. Just after noon, General Schweiter ordered Lieutenant Colonel James Johnson, the battalion commander, to get the company ready for a helicopter a.s.sault. Captain Sills found a small LZ for them about eight hundred meters north of Task Force Black's position.13 At 1300, even as McElwain and his people desperately hung on, Captain William Connolly and 120 of his Charlie Company troopers boarded their helicopters. After a short flight, the choppers dropped them off, one s.h.i.+pload at a time, in the LZ. "The company moved south, using trails and double-timing where possible to reach the embattled troopers of the First Battalion," a unit report later said. "The men carried a full basic load of ammunition for themselves and another basic load for [Task Force Black]." They moved as fast as they could but they had to be constantly wary of an enemy ambush. Most of Connolly's men knew that fellow paratroopers were in real trouble, so maintaining such a deliberate pace was frustrating for them. Sergeant Mike Tanner, a mortar forward observer with a radio strapped to his back, was especially impatient because he knew that his best friend from stateside training, Ben Warnic, was with McElwain's surrounded group. "So I was pus.h.i.+ng the point team really hard," Tanner recalled. "I kept complaining that we were not going fast enough."

The point team's squad leader finally turned to Tanner and offered him point if he thought he could move so much faster. Tanner handed someone his radio and took the lead. He moved quickly and "recklessly not looking for b.o.o.by traps or enemy ambushes." Several minutes after a.s.suming the lead, he was delicately stepping across basketball-sized rocks to traverse a dry streambed. He happened to look down and saw "that the streambed was crawling with . . . hundreds or thousands of bamboo viper snakes. They were little hatchlings with . . . twenty or thirty adult snakes." The adults were a foot long and the babies about six inches. Hundreds of them slithered around the bottom of the rocks, a few inches from his boots. He kept going and the company followed him, but he soon yielded point back to the original group.

Before long, they could hear the distant sounds of Task Force Black's battle. Captain Connolly was in constant radio contact with Captain McElwain, informing him of his company's progress. Connolly's point elements made it to Task Force Black's original hilltop laager site and began to trade shots with groups of NVA. They also surprised and captured a couple enemy soldiers who were rifling through the rucksacks McElwain's men had left behind. The NVA had pilfered many packs for food and medical supplies and had even tried to employ the Americans' 81-millimeter mortars against them.

As Connolly's outfit began pus.h.i.+ng down the hill, directly toward the Task Force Black perimeter, they ran into strong enemy opposition. After all, they were fighting through enemy lines to get to McElwain's position. Periodic firefights broke out as Connolly's men b.u.mped into the NVA and fought it out. The captain was a West Pointer and a Ranger School alum who was totally dedicated to his soldiers. He was also highly experienced, having been in Vietnam for a year and a half. At just twenty-four years old, he was young for company command. He had trained his men to hit the dirt upon making contact, flip off their rucksacks, and use them as cover. Some would return fire. Some would dig in. During the rescue of Task Force Black, these tactics proved highly effective, partially because Charlie Company was dealing with quite a few tree snipers. The rucks provided a modic.u.m of cover. The captain himself noticed a bullet in his ruck, looked up, and saw an NVA in a tree. "Sergeant [Ja.n.u.s] Shalovan, one of my platoon sergeants, was pretty close behind. I turned around and pointed to him and, next thing I know, that guy was falling out of the tree." In another instance, an NVA suddenly materialized a few feet away from the command group. Spec-5 Lynn Morse, the senior medic, blasted him with a shotgun. In Connolly's recollection, the flechettes from the shotgun sh.e.l.l "actually stuck him to a tree. The NVA guy's toes were dangling."

NVA opposition was formidable, though, and several times Connolly's company had to retreat and regroup as they tried to make a last push to the perimeter. Part of the problem was that they were also taking fire from Task Force Black. "They'd tell their guys don't shoot . . . somebody's coming in," Connolly said, "then the enemy would shoot and somebody would return fire." Finally, he arranged with McElwain to have his guys completely cease fire for about a minute while Connolly's company charged through the NVA, into the perimeter. At Connolly's signal, they got up and sprinted down the ridge straight at Task Force Black's lines. "Bullets were flying everywhere and the men began yelling and shouting the running pa.s.sword to identify themselves in the confusion," one post