"Modern infantry combat is inherently brutalizing. The enemy is naturally dehumanized. It was worse in Vietnam where the grunts, knowing they were expendable, forgotten, and doing what they did to no good end, had only their buddies to depend on and believe in. Everyone else was the enemy."
Keith W. Nolan, "Death Valley: The Summer Offensive , I Corps, August 1969"
On the 26th of August, Mike Company was flown by chopper to another old Army outpost, LZ West, where we joined up with our sister companies to pursue a mission against a dug-in regiment of NVA regulars in the Que Son Mountains. We sat around for most of the afternoon, bitching and moaning about how hard we had been pushed and about the friendly fire incident on Barrier Island. We were tired, demoralized and very pissed off.
We were briefed by our platoon commanders regarding the operation, which would involve the entire battalion. Sometime later, we discovered that we would have to "hump" out to the site of the conflict because a landing zone for choppers could not be secured. We knew that if the LZ was that hot, we were surely going to hit "the shit."
On the morning of the 27th, 3/7 walked off of LZ West, pushing through elephant grass in 120 degree heat. The fact that there were no trails leading off the hill spoke volumes to us, once again, about how little patrolling was done by the elements of the Americal Division that had preceeded us at this location. We headed down the steep slope toward a linkup point with an Army unit, relieving the 2/7 Marines. We reached our first objective, near an old French Road, at dusk. We were already somewhat depleted as a number of Marines succumbed to heat exhaustion on the way down the hill. Included in this group was my good friend and fellow machine gunner, Nat. Losing him meant that we did not have another gunner and Fregosa, a mortarman, volunteered to man Nat's gun. It would prove to be a fateful decision.
At 0500 on the morning of the 28th, we moved toward the objective, our line passing the withdraw of 2/7. We were freaked out by the comments they were making about how dug in the NVA were and how the fighting was going. Mike Company moved parallel with Lima in the rear of a box formation, fronted by Kilo and India Companies. We hadn't gone a kilometer when the firing began. Kilo overran a bunker and captured an anti-aircraft gun that was being used against us, and Mike Company was ordered to continue the momentum of the attack.
We entered the terraced paddies in front of the woods from which the entrenched NVA were firing. We hooked up with Kilo at about the same time the NVA snipers began shooting at us. Mortar fire began landing in the paddies around us, the steepness of the slope providing some protection. I was able to set up my machine gun atop a paddie dike and began to lay down traversing fire into the treeline. There were no visible targets, but we hosed down some muzzle flashes. Within seconds, it became clear that the NVA mortars were determined to silence the gun, and our platoon commander ordered us to take another position higher up the hill.
While this was happening, Fregosa, manning the second gun, and located on the left flank, stood up to fire bursts into the treeline and was immediately cut down by AK-47 fire. We later found three spent rounds in the stock of the weapon, an indication of how much fire the NVA could bring down on us. On the right flank, my good buddy Chard, was sniped as he fired his M-79 grenade launcher into the woods. When I found out about Chard's death, it hit me hard. We developed a relationship based on the fact that he was from Millville, NJ and I had spent my time before getting drafted living with my brother in Hammonton. We knew a lot of the same teenage haunts. Only this morning we had exchanged nods in the mist as we prepared to move out.
As we got hammered by mortars, snipers and AK fire, our CO, Captain Stanat, ordered a withdraw to the woods at our rear, so that he could call for air support without further loss of life. This was an unusual, and particularly courageous act, as it eventually cost him a transfer to the regimental rear. Before we could pull back, we had to gather our dead and wounded to bring them with us. I helped bring Chard's body down the slope in a poncho liner. He had been shot by a round that entered his left shoulder, traversed his torso, and exited at his waist on his right side. I saw the round slip out of his body as we jostled down the hillside, still ducking enemy fire. Weirdly, I also remember two-packs of Chiclets coming out of his pockets. Chard was well known for trading C Ration cigarettes for the gum he favored.
All together, Mike Company lost eight men in the first ten minutes of the firefight, which would ultimately last three hours. One of the casualties was a scout dog, and two of us were ordered to retrieve its body. As we raced to the location, my partner was shot through the wrist, leaving a smoking wound and a tangle of blood vessels, bone and nerves. As I recall this, it happened in slow motion. He continued to move forward, screaming about his "million dollar wound" and we recovered the dog's body. Marines don't leave their dead on the battlefield.
Once we pulled back across the paddies, F-4 Phantom jets arrived on the scene, dropping 500 pound bombs and huge cannisters of napalm in the area of the NVA positons. We were close enough to this action to have the air sucked out of our lungs by the explosions, and the earth around us seemed to be shattering. After the airstrikes, the NVA activity stopped, and we were ordered to set up defensive positions in our area. By nightfall, some of the heat casualties, including Nat, were returned to us on the choppers that picked up our dead. Nat was devastated by missing the action, thinking that he had let us down, and feeling guilty about Fregosa. In an act of contrition, he dug the holes for our entire squad, working furiously and cursing as he did so.
Eventually we were removed by chopper and taken back to LZ Ross, a small outpost located about ten miles from LZ Baldy. Realizing that there were too many Marines on Ross, we were ordered on a night march toward Baldy, moving out at about the time the season's first monsoons began. After marching all night, we set up near a bombed out building and feel asleep under our ponchos. We were completely and numbingly exhausted. No one bothered to set up a watch rotation.