The Magnificent Bastards (19 page)

By the afternoon of the second day of the Battle of Dai Do, the beachfront hamlet of An Lac had become a going concern. Lieutenant Colonel Weise had established the antenna farm of his Alpha Command Group in the village, and he had brought forward his hard-charging S2, Capt. Richard J. Murphy (call sign Dixie Deuce), to take charge of the various elements gathered there. These included the 60mm mortar sections from B/ 1/3 and Golf Company, as well as BLT 2/4’s 81mm mortar platoon, the amtrac platoon, the reconnaissance platoon, and various medical and communications personnel. The BLT’s forward supply point had also been established in An Lac. Newly arrived Echo Company assumed security positions around the hamlet as B/1/3 struggled under fire to reach Dai Do.

An Lac was the first step in the medevac chain. Navy corps-men performed initial triage there before the wounded were evacuated by skimmer to Mai Xa Chanh West Further emergency treatment was rendered by the Navy surgeons and corps-men at the battalion aid station on the beach. Sea Horses from HMM-362 then flew the casualties to either the USS
Iwo Jima
or the hospital ship
Repose
.

This extended medevac chain was the result of lessons learned. During BLT 2/4’s initial operations above the Cua Viet, company commanders requested emergency medevacs whenever a man was seriously wounded. Although Marine pilots would brave enemy fire, the overly protective rules under which they operated did not allow them to fly through the artillery and naval gunfire being employed by the ground unit in need. A request for an emergency medevac thus resulted in a check-fire. Major Warren commented in his postbattle dialogue with the division historical section:

Helicopters could land at the CP at Mai Xa Chanh West without a check-fire being imposed on the engaged units in Dai Do. Warren added that because the medevac system allowed continual artillery fires it became “one of the things that allowed us to even exist in this particular battle where the enemy were so numerically superior.”

Colonel Hull, meanwhile, was not satisfied with the support provided by Marine chopper units. The issue was not courage but rather institutions. Hull had seen U.S. Army helicopters in action in the 3d Marine Division TAOR and had been much impressed. The emphasis of the Army aviation units had been on providing maximum support to the ground unit in need, and their flexible, mission-oriented doctrine allowed their dust-off pilots to make the most of their guts, initiative, and flying skills. The Army pilots flew in bad weather and landed in hot LZs that Marine pilots were usually not permitted near. The Army pilots did not require artillery check-fires when conducting medevac missions, and could thus perform the lifesaving function without disrupting the conduct of ground operations.

“These people do more with helicopters than we do,” Colonel Hull stated during his end-of-tour debriefing in July 1968. He added that Marine aviation units were overly interested in husbanding their assets. During the Battle of Dai Do, Capt. L. L. Forehand, BLT 2/4’s S4, used his Helicopter Support Team (HST) to establish an LZ opposite An Lac on the south shore of the Bo Dieu. This LZ was, Forehand wrote later,

Captain Forehand recounted later that he delivered the friendly fire with an M16, and that he “put a magazine after the sonofabitch.”

It is unknown how many seriously wounded Marines died on the Dai Do battlefield because of the lack of helicopter medevacs. Major Warren stated that of the 287 casualties who were medevacked from Mai Xa Chanh West, “there were only four [who] died of wounds in the process of the evacuation or the treatment back aboard the ship.”

Those numbers were so low because of the tremendous care the wounded received on the beach at Mai Xa Chanh West from the first doctors they saw, Lieutenants Frederick P. Lillis and Runas Powers of the Navy Medical Corps. “Our battalion surgeons and their team worked wonders by saving numerous lives, limbs, and organs,” said Warren, who was a witness to their work on boatload after boatload of maimed young Marines. “You splint it, clean it, patch it, put an IV in, and the helicopters are right there to take ’Em back to the ship,” explained Lillis. Everyone did their tireless part. “Somebody on the ship even sent us X-ray film and developer. Well, of course, we were ten miles from any electrical plug—but someone was trying to help.”

When the Battle of Dai Do was over, Dr. Powers was recommended for a Bronze Star Medal with Combat V. Dr. Lillis was not. Both were draftees who had no intention of serving beyond their two-year obligations. Neither had volunteered to serve with a grunt battalion. Lillis made no bones about his desire to be reassigned to shipboard hospital duty. Powers, a thin, soft-spoken, and self-deprecating black doctor, adapted to the situation and earned the admiration of all who knew him. Lillis, on the other hand, had no interest in the staff responsibilities of a battalion surgeon, and conducted himself in
a casual, irreverent manner that rubbed Weise and others the wrong way. There were those who liked Lillis, however, including one of his corpsmen, Roger Pittman, who described the doctor as “tall, gangly, and friendly. He was a free-thinker and a neat guy. He was not military, and his nonmilitary personal conduct did not lend itself well to the hardcore. He liked to mix in with the troops.”

“I didn’t answer the colonel as briskly and as professionally as the rest of his officers did,” Lillis reflected. “I probably should have.” It was not that the longer-haired, laid-back Lillis was antimilitary. It was more that he was amilitary. “The military was unnatural for me, and since I was Navy and since I was medical, I felt I didn’t have to put up with all that regimentation stuff.” Captain Butler, who also liked Lillis, was in the CP when an F Company corpsman called with a medical question. “I remember somebody explaining to Lillis how to use the radio, to say, ‘Fox Six, this is Dixie Diner Med,’ et cetera,” said Butler. “They went through a real long explanation, and then Lillis picks up the handset and says, ‘Hello?’ It just had everybody in stitches, but that’s the way he was.”

Another real character who played a support role in the Battle of Dai Do was Lang Forehand, the battalion logistics officer. Although irreverent, his otherwise forceful, rough-and-ready persona was one that Weise approved of enthusiastically. He was a crazy bastard and a fighter, and he was smart. During the engagement, Forehand constantly shuttled by skimmer between Mai Xa Chanh West and his forward supply point at An Lac. Weise later wrote that this up-front and exceptionally well-organized logistics officer “performed miracles with his Otter drivers and supply personnel.…These unsung heroes kept our assault units resupplied and evacuated the wounded, often exposing themselves to direct enemy fire.”

Captain Forehand had been the S4 of 2/4 since October 1967, and he loved Bill Weise. He was a graduate of North Georgia College, a military school, and had been a Marine for thirteen years. He was the product of a distinguished and fairly wealthy Southern family whose roots in Jesup, Georgia, predated
the Revolutionary War, and whose male members were mostly doctors, lawyers, and military officers. His uncle was a general, and his father an admiral. Lang Forehand, however, was a black sheep. He had been married and divorced once before going to Vietnam, and passed over twice for promotion. He did things his way, and he stepped on toes. He never did make major. “Although he had a Southern accent, he looked more like a tough guy from the streets of Brooklyn,” said Weise. “He was a former boxer, and he was known to punch a few guys out in bars. Anybody pushed him hard enough, you had a fight on your hands.”

Whatever Captain Forehand’s sins were, they were not related to the battlefield. He had served a brief orientation tour with the ARVN in 1964, and had landed in Santo Domingo as the commander of an antitank company during the Dominican Republic expedition of 1965. Since his assignment to 2/4, he had done nothing but impress Weise:

Captain Forehand, who was thirty-seven years old at the time of Dai Do, very much wanted to command a rifle company in combat. He never did get a company, but his seven-month tour as S4 got him Bronze Star and Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V. His BSMv was for the battalion’s assault on Vinh Quan Thuong, and the citation
read in part: “When the triage area came under a heavy volume of small-arms fire, Captain Forehand unhesitatingly manned the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on his vehicle, and as it advanced toward an enemy position, he killed three soldiers and caused several others to flee.”

Captain Forehand’s role at Dai Do was pivotal, although essentially routine. The systems that worked were already in place, to include using skimmers to transport supplies from the BLT CP to the scene of combat, and to evacuate casualties. It was a nonstop round-robin, and no trip was made, either way, with an empty boat. The Otter crews also earned their pay in the resupply effort. Forehand wrote that even though the M76 Otter “was always broke,” the boxy, open-topped, tracked vehicle “did more than it was ever designed to do.” The Otter was able to negotiate water obstacles by floating. “The vehicle was totally devoid of armor,” Forehand continued, “had a high profile on land, and was mounted with a .50-cal MG that invited RPGs. It was slow and ungainly in water, but could and did perform in places that would not support an LVT. These craft were invaluable and those who manned them were completely without fear.”

Incredibly, BLT 2/4’s Logistical Support Group suffered only one casualty during the Dai Do debacle. This was Forehand’s own radioman, who was shot in the arm while he and the captain were up one of the tributaries in their skimmer. The casualties would have been worse except that on the second day of the battle, Weise assigned Lieutenant Muter’s recon platoon to the logistical lifeline. Forehand used it to secure the forward triage station at An Lac, as well as to control the skimmer evacuations. Come nightfall, Forehand and Muter would personally accompany a small recon detachment to place strobe lights at certain points along the river to guide the skimmers and Otters in the round-the-clock resupply effort.

“Charlie was doing what he was paid to do, which was more than I can say for Division and Regimental staff,” wrote Captain Forehand. Their lack of support capstoned his bitter opinion that the Weise breed of warrior was the exception to senior officers who were generally unable “to force themselves
to leave their underground bunkers long enough to see that there was a shooting war in progress.”

With no help coming from higher headquarters, BLT 2/4 survived the Dai Do engagement, logistically speaking, thanks to the five-day supply level that Forehand maintained at the CP at all times. Major Warren noted that he’d “never been in a battalion that had as much in the way of ammunition and supplies,” and this prestocked surplus, unreplenished by the powers that be, was just enough to carry the battalion through the battle. BLT 2/4 had those supplies going into the fight because Forehand had a behind-the-scenes network of logistical personnel in place at strategic points along the Da Nang-to-Dong Ha supply chain. “Best thieves I ever had,” Forehand remarked. Forehand also worked behind the lines. He found the junior officers in charge of supporting activities at the DHCB eager to help, unlike their superiors. When several overused 4.2-inch mortars malfunctioned during the battle, Forehand went directly to the captain who controlled the ordnance technicians at the DHCB. He traded the captain several captured AK-47s for the immediate, no-red-tape use of one of his teams. The technicians accompanied Forehand back to the BLT CP aboard his skimmer, and in short order the mortars were firing again.