Abandoned in Hell : The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate (9780698144262) (12 page)

LESS
than twenty minutes after the barrage stopped, I assembled about two dozen strikers armed with M16 rifles, grenade launchers, and a couple of M60 machine guns. We left the circle of foxholes, threaded our way through the gap, and moved across the grassy saddle and up Ambush Hill.

“I brought an M79 grenade launcher, carried a radio, and brought up the rear,” recalls Dan Pierelli. “Bill was up front, and he had another radio. Special Forces standard operating procedure: Anytime an American went on an operation, a patrol, anything where he might make enemy contact, he carried a radio.”

Ambush Hill was about the same elevation as Kate, or perhaps a few
meters less. Unlike Kate, it offered a somewhat gentler slope in three directions down to the jungle below. The summit was much smaller than Kate's, maybe thirty meters across, and topped by a copse of tall trees surrounded by a veil of thick brush offering good concealment.

We reached the hilltop without drama. In the tall grass we found a PAVN pith helmet and numerous blood trails—evidence of last night's firefight. I realized that we were fighting the big boys: PAVN regulars, not Viet Cong guerrillas.

Aside from that, I had no sense of the game board. All I knew was that our outpost was probed the previous night, followed by this morning's mortar, rocket, and recoilless rifle greetings. Obviously, there must be more bad guys in the neighborhood; I thought that it would be much better to find them before they found us.

I sent a point man down Ambush Hill toward the jungle. The rest of us followed, single file, through waist-high grass down a slope that grew steeper as we descended.

About thirty meters from the tree line, the jungle turned into the Fourth of July and Bastille Day: at least one machine gun, and several AK-47s.

We went prone and returned fire, and a shit storm of flying lead came right back over our heads. The grass was high enough to hide us, but offered no protection. I called to Dan and he blooped a few M79 grenades into the tree line. That quieted them down until we could pull back to a sort of berm, a long knee-high mound of soil covered with grass, that offered, at least for a few minutes, both cover and concealment. Three of my men were wounded but still ambulatory.

For just a second or two, I was back in OCS. One of our tactical officers is speaking.
Gentlemen,
goes his voice in my head—a hundred times faster than in real life—
a lot of you are new to the Army. You're young guys with no experience. We're training you to be infantry officers, leaders of men. When you become a new second lieutenant, you
will
be tested. You'll be the butt of jokes about being green and inexperienced. But when your men hear their first shots fired at them, they're all going to look to you. Your privates, corporals, and sergeants, even your senior platoon sergeants, they will
all
look
to
you
—that's how the Army works. They're going to look to you, and you'd better goddamn well be ready to make the right decisions
.

Sure as shit, soon as the shooting starts, my strikers said, “What do we do?”

I'd been an officer for two years. Special Forces trained, I'd been around many senior noncoms, and they had taught, tutored, and mentored me. I wasn't afraid. I knew what to do—and I was pissed about being ambushed. I couldn't tell whether it was a squad down there or a regiment, but if they wanted to dance, Arthur Murray was my middle name, and I was ready to rumba. I laced up my dancing shoes and called for air support music.

Ordinarily, my first move would have been to have half my men lay down a base of fire while the rest maneuvered into position, and then switch off. That's Infantry 101: Fire and maneuver. But we were very close to the tree line, and the grass was so high that from the prone position we couldn't see anything. The berm was covered with the same tall grass; the only way to see what we were shooting at was to stand up.

If we must be targets, best be
moving
targets.

So I pulled my troops into a staggered skirmish line, two-deep, and we swept down the hill, firing as we went. Soon we were in thick jungle; as we started our sweep on what I thought was their flank, an OH-6 Cayuse, a light observation and cargo helicopter known as a LOACH, appeared overhead. He was from the 7th Battalion, 17th Cavalry. Normally, they're part of a hunter-killer team: The LOACH hunts for the enemy, and an AH-1 Cobra, bristling with guns and rockets, kills them. But this LOACH was alone. Unarmed.

The pilot called on our tactical frequency to say that he was in the neighborhood, heard my call, and here he was. “Let me see what's going on there for you,” he said, hovering just off the treetops. He rose to maybe twice treetop level and called back, “Get out of there, man! I see you, I see where you're going, and they're mounting a force to flank you, a whole shitload of guys coming—a lot more than you've got.”

I told everybody to pull back up to the berm; as we moved, I heard the LOACH pilot flying over the enemy, meanwhile hollering on the tactical
frequency for more help. This was one crazy dude; it takes two hands and two feet to fly a helicopter, but while he slid sideways, an eyeblink off the trees and talking on the radio, he was also shooting out the window with his .45 sidearm, and the enemy, of course, was shooting back with automatic weapons. He ran out of ammo, put in his second, and last, magazine—an act that required two hands!—and resumed firing.

He called to anyone listening that he was almost out of ammo, and then Pterodactyl 10, also known as Captain John Strange of the 185th Recon Company at Gia Nghıia, slid in overhead in his tiny O-1 Bird Dog. Strange saw what was going on, saw the PAVN massing for attack.

“Hey, you got to get out of there!” he called.

By then we were moving back toward the berm as rapidly as possible up that very steep slope. At the berm, I checked around—I had three wounded but still walking. Then my strikers said that a man was missing. I called Strange and asked him to fly over the grassy area below us and see if anybody was there.

Half a minute later he was back on the air: “You've got one down in the tall grass.”

It was the point man. I wouldn't leave him, dead or alive. I took three men and we charged downhill—catching the enemy by surprise—and fortunately we didn't have far to go. He was hit in the head, barely alive. Then it was Rice Krispies time, all snap, crackle, and pop as the PAVN opened up with dozens of rifles. My strikers fired back.

I reached down, picked the wounded striker up, put him across my shoulders in a fireman's carry, and grabbed his weapon. Just like in the movies. Then I discovered that this is a lot effing harder in real life. We moved as fast as we could back up the hill, steel-jacketed hornets buzzing and whining all around us, and somehow got back behind the berm unscathed.

Later, when I had time to think about it, I realized that as the only infantry officer on Kate, I probably should have sent a couple of men to get the wounded man. Covered them with fire instead of going myself. What if I'd been killed? That would have imperiled everyone else on Kate. In truth,
however, that's not in my nature. I would never ask my men to do something that I hadn't done or wouldn't do. I lived by that, then and now.

It's wonderful that God takes care of fools and drunks. Usually.

A couple of strikers took the wounded man, and I paused ten seconds to think. Strange had said that we had to get out of there because they were closing in on us; as we were moving back uphill, he had added,
They're going to cut you off at the gap.

That meant that they were moving southward, using the jungle to mask their progress, and were planning to take us off as we came toward the narrow passageway leading into the firebase. The one and only thing to do was beat them to it—hi-diddle-diddle, right up the middle, the most direct route: straight across that grassy saddle—and hope to hell that we got there first. We took off, moving as fast as we could, two guys carrying the head-shot man, and others helping our ambulatory wounded, and we ran like the devil was on our heels.

Safely back at Kate, I learned that the striker I rescued, the one with the head wound, had died.

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,

And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,

And the flowers that grow between.

“Shall I have naught that is fair?” saith he;

“Have naught but the bearded grain?

Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,

I will give them all back again.”

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Reaper and the Flowers”

E
veryone on Kate heard the shooting; there were plenty of questions about what was going on. I told them that I wasn't completely certain, but apparently the new neighbors were a sizable PAVN unit. They'll probably want to visit, I added, so we should prepare a suitable welcome.

Around 1000 hours, almost before my strikers were back in their foxholes, PAVN 82 mm mortars, B-40 rockets, recoilless rifles, machine guns, and small arms slammed Kate with a typhoon of steel and fire. Most of this, but not all, came from those easterly heights. The 105 mm howitzer guarding our northern and most vulnerable quarter was knocked out, its tires flattened so that it couldn't be aimed. Nevertheless, its crew disregarded the mortars and rocks to remain at their gun. They manhandled it around to where they could fire at the ridge, and started shooting.

The previously damaged 155 mm howitzer was hit again.

The only bright spot was that Air Force Major George Lattin, a forward air controller based in Gia Nghia, was now circling high overhead in his Bird Dog to serve as our primary aircraft traffic manager. He was our lifeline, the only thing that could save everyone on Kate from certain death. Lattin, call sign “Walt 20,” was on his way to becoming a legend in his own
time—but, like me, this was the first engagement of his first day of combat in Vietnam.

Outnumbered and outgunned, effectively surrounded by a vastly superior PAVN force later estimated at between 4,000 and 6,000, we would have been overrun that very day had not Lattin vectored fast-mover help to our tiny outpost. First in were the burly but surprisingly agile F-4 Phantoms from the 559th Tactical Fighter Squadron, call sign “Boxers,” out of Cam Ranh Bay. Lattin then brought us swift and deadly F-100 Super Sabres from the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing, call sign “Blades.”

We heard them coming before we saw them, but the Phantoms' banshee shriek bounced off so many hills that it was impossible to gauge the direction of their approach. I stood in the open with John Kerr and Kenn Hopkins, watching them swoop in, one or two at a time, barely off the jungle treetops, pale curlicues of water vapor dancing off their wingtip vortices, great metallic darts traveling at impossible speeds, the unearthly howl of their engines battering our ears, the wild wake of their passage bending and snapping the foliage—and then the elongated silver teardrops of napalm canisters tumbling end over end into the ravine below us. At once the fighter's nose rose and his afterburner boomed to life, shooting him skyward and battering us with earsplitting sound.

The tumbling napalm canisters exploded, spilling liquid fire to boil across the dark green jungle. The heat warmed our exposed skin and the wind wafted the sharp, metallic taste of charred petroleum to bite deep in our throats.

When the Phantoms were done, the Super Sabres appeared, low and fast, flitting seemingly almost close enough to touch, sweeping across the ridge to our east. Black tail-finned bombs seemed to break loose of their own volition, slanting downward. The blasts, perhaps a rifle shot distant, hurled a concussion wave that seemed to bend the air before staggering us with invisible force.

It was great theater, truly an unforgettable performance.

After a few bomb runs, however, it seemed like someone higher in the Air Force food chain needed help with their paperwork. “Bill and I were on the east slope of the firebase,” recalls Kerr. “I stood right next to him while
he was on his little handheld radio talking to these fast-moving jets that were dropping 750-pound bombs up and down this ridgeline—and the whole side of this hillside just blew up.

“Then the [pilots of the] jets demanded that Bill give them a body count. ‘We can't stay on station without a body count,' they said.

“Bill said, ‘This is extremely steep terrain going down into this gully, triple-canopy jungle—we're not going to go down and count noses.'”

Undaunted, the Air Force pilot insisted on his body count. The Pentagon needed numbers to keep score in what they viewed as a war of attrition. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara held an almost religious view of systems analysis, which demanded that every action be quantified; numbers from the battlefield convinced him that if we killed enough of their troops, the North Vietnamese would back off and end the war. There was, therefore, constant pressure from the top to get bomb damage assessments after every air strike. Decades later I would learn from one of the FACs who flew in support of Kate that while they were responsible for filing a BDA after every strike, they were rarely, if ever, able to get anything approaching a reliable body count. So they usually omitted it completely. If forced, they merely made something up.

“Bill kept saying, ‘I can't give you a body count. We're not going down there to count bodies—it's too dangerous,'” adds Kerr.

Meanwhile, the enemy was still shooting at us.

Then and now, I presumed that it wasn't actually the pilots who needed the body count. Evidently their higher-ups wanted a number that would justify so many aircraft remaining on station to help a very small firebase. Despite my inability to furnish the Air Force with quantitative evidence of effectiveness by inventing a number of dead bodies, Lattin, flying low and slow with a bird's-eye view of the situation, interceded for us. He elevated our air support priority to first among all US forces in Vietnam. After half an hour or so, the Boxers and Blades were out of ordnance and their tanks were running dry. After a final strafing pass, they climbed away and disappeared into the midday sky.

It was about 1100 hours; I called for medevac choppers to take out our wounded. This proved to be a dangerous procedure, not only for the pilots
and crew who flew through fire to land on Kate, but also for the man who was obliged to stand in the open while directing the chopper to a safe landing on our small, crowded hilltop.

That was me. As the medevac slowly hovered in, both pilots had their eyes riveted on me. Seconds from touchdown, from the corner of my eye I saw a B-40 rocket's fiery launch from the hillside to our east. I was poised to dive behind something—but the pilots didn't see the rocket. Frantically milling my arms, I waved them off, but the bird kept coming. In my mind's eye I saw rocket and helicopter arriving simultaneously. Finally, the pilot realized what was happening, and started to peel off.

The rocket landed with a fiery explosion.

Something red-hot slammed into my upper left arm, staggering me.

Jagged holes appeared in the medevac Huey's underside as it shuddered upward. It dipped from sight into the valley below, and then climbed back into the safety of the clouds.

My arm was on fire—the worst pain I'd ever felt. Dark blood soaked my fatigue jacket as I ran to Kate's makeshift aid station. Doc cleaned the entrance and exit wounds—it seemed that the shrapnel went all the way through. He wrapped my arm in a big bandage, what we had dubbed an elephant Kotex. The red-hot steel and prompt disinfectant ensured that there would be no infection.

Doc told me that I was very lucky.

Then he said another medevac chopper was inbound and asked if I wanted to get on it. Until then, I hadn't even thought about leaving. I shook my head. I wasn't going anywhere.

Meanwhile Huey and Cobra gunships had peppered the jungle around Kate's flanks with their 7.62 mm miniguns and rockets. Then a second Dustoff chopper came to take our wounded out, including a few strikers, gunner Rudy Childs, and the blond gunner who thought that he'd lost his legs. I don't know if he still believed that, but he had to be carried to the aircraft. After everyone else was loaded, Mike Smith, his head wrapped in a bloody field dressing, climbed on the chopper.

Watching him go, Kerr was of two minds—he empathized with Smith
for what appeared to be a serious wound, but also struggled against feelings of apprehension and anxiety. “I had only been in Vietnam for about two months,” he says. “I was still green—and now all of a sudden I'm an artillery firebase commander? I was scared—I didn't have much experience on the guns. I'd been in the FDC, mostly handling the radio and fire direction for the battery. I knew how to do that, but with Smith gone, that left just me and Albracht, and I didn't know if I could handle it.”

Spoiler alert: John Kerr handled everything that came his way over the next few days, and he did so about as well as anyone could ask of any man, and always with dignity, good humor, and courage. He was a rock.

•   •   •

BY
early afternoon, Lattin's little Bird Dog needed more smoke rockets and puppy chow; he headed back to base. His departure was celebrated almost immediately with a hard rain of yet more mortars and rockets. From the shelter of my bunker, I tried to establish radio contact with Lattin's temporary replacement. I heard a new voice and a new call sign on the FAC frequency. An FAC, call sign “Mike 82,” was attempting to contact call sign “Chicken Hawk.” The FAC called again and again, but there was no answer. My call sign was “Chicken
Wolf
,” and after a few minutes, it came to me that it was odd, not to mention confusing, that two similar call signs were being used in the same area of operation.

The incoming lessened slightly, which is to say that the interval between explosions lengthened. I waited for Mike 82 to contact Chicken Hawk, but he couldn't seem to raise him. Slowly it dawned on my befuddled mind that the FAC might be trying to contact
me
. So I called and asked if he was trying to contact Chicken
Wolf
.

“Sorry, I thought your call sign was ‘Chicken
Hawk
,'” replied Mike 82.

Like today's best computer passwords, Army call signs of that era were always two words, compiled from lists of nouns and adjectives that when selected at random and put together produced a nonsense phrase, something that would be difficult for anyone to guess. I've heard such phrases as “Splashy Tiger,” “Splendid Anvil,” “Angry Elbow,” and “Juicy Marble.” “Chicken Wolf” didn't make sense, but that was the Army's intent.

But none of that interested me just then.

“You can call me Chicken Hawk, Chicken Wolf, or Chicken Shit,” I growled into my microphone. “Just get some air support in here
now
!”

Despite our signal operating instructions, from that moment, my call sign became “Chicken Hawk.” After a while I dropped the “Chicken”; I was known as Hawk for the rest of my Army career; to this day, I still answer to that.

Mike 82 was Air Force First Lieutenant Will Platt, 25, a Michigander attached to Company D, Fifth Special Forces, flying his Bird Dog, on this occasion, out of Gia Nghia. He was one of six forward air controllers assigned to the Mike Force. Working almost nonstop, these aviators were now focused on supporting the six firebases around Bu Prang and Duc Lap. Without direct supervision, Platt managed himself, relying on intelligence from Special Forces camps and Army airfields to learn where he was most needed. And on that day, he knew exactly what was going down around Kate. “The men on Kate had every asset in the Air Force pulling for them,” recalls Platt.

From the duration and intensity of enemy shelling just then, I began to suspect that our PAVN pals' activities schedule included a ground attack. The bombing, I hoped, would delay that, but for how long I couldn't predict. I judged our defensive posture difficult, but not impossible. On three sides, our foxholes, most getting a little deeper by the hour, were about fifty meters above the surrounding treetops, and the slope below I estimated as very difficult to climb while remaining erect; it might take both hands and feet to reach the summit. To the east, however, the slope was less extreme and the jungle closer. I had only about 120 able-bodied strikers—too few, I thought, to defend the perimeter against a determined attack. I sent a coded message to Camp Bu Prang, asking for reinforcements and resupply of ammunition and water. My requests were passed to B-23 headquarters, and I was promised another CIDG company of 120 men from A-234 at An Lac.

•   •   •

LATE
that afternoon, SP4 Warren Geromin left the safety of the FDC bunker to refuel the generators. “All of a sudden the NVA decided to try and knock out the 155,” he recalls. “I heard some whooshing sounds and about ten
RPG rounds landed in and around the gun bunker. One of the gun crew said, ‘Shit, let's get them before they get us.'”

McFarlane, Hopkins, Koon, Tiranti, and some of the other gunners had decided that they would no longer put up with being targets. “We said, ‘This is a bunch of BS—we've got to get going,'” Hopkins recalls. “
My
gun got hit in the tube, so there's no way that we're going to fire that thing. The other gun had been hit, but not in its tube. So we went over to the other gun, set it up to fire, loaded it with a regular H-E shell, and fused it to explode on contact.”

They aimed the piece by peering up the barrel from the open breech, a procedure known as bore sighting. Fearing that their gun might blow up when fired, the gunners improvised a twelve-foot lanyard and attached it to the firing lever. Then they crouched behind the parapet's sandbag wall. “So we pulled the lanyard, the gun fired—and we got a secondary off that,
BOOM
,
BOOM
, a huge explosion, twice or three times the flash of a regular 155 going off,” Hopkins says, still proud and surprised. “We picked a spot randomly and just happened to hit an ammo dump. Talk about luck being on our side!”

Not
all
the luck. “I heard the gun being loaded and turned,” adds Geromin. “They fired one round that exploded, but then there were a whole bunch of incoming RPG rounds that went towards the gun.” The RPGs further damaged but did not knock that 155 out. With a little ingenuity and a crew willing to brave plunging fire, the gun could still be fired at the source of most of Kate's incoming—the ridge across the ravine to our east. As was virtually every M-114 howitzer in the Army inventory, that gun was built by my neighbors and friends at the Rock Island Arsenal. I come from a tough town, a place where people build the best for the best.