The Magnificent Bastards (5 page)

On Monday, 29 April 1968, BLT 2/4 became involved in the opening act of a major, across-the-DMZ offensive by the 320th NVA Division that would be met at a number of far-flung locations and be known collectively as the Battle of Dong Ha. The NVA objective was probably the Dong Ha Combat Base, which was a kilometer south of the town of the same name. The DHCB was the major logistics base and headquarters location of the 3d Marine Division. “The establishment of these functions at Dong Ha was logical,” wrote one of the division’s assistant operations officers, “since it was situated at the junction of the only major north-south (National Route QL 1) and east-west (National Route QL 9) land lines of communications in the area of operations, as well as being accessible to shallow-draft cargo craft from the Gulf of Tonkin via the Cua Viet River and its tributary, the Bo Dieu.”

The first contact of the offensive occurred in the afternoon of 29 April when two NVA battalions were engaged on Route 1 as they marched south from the DMZ. The NVA were met
only seven klicks above Dong Ha by two battalions of the 2d Regiment, 1st ARVN Infantry Division, whose TAOR extended to both sides of Route 1 and included Dong Ha and the DHCB. The NVA offensive had been anticipated to some degree. Task Force Clearwater, colocated with the 3d Marines at Camp Kistler, had advised division two days earlier that a number of incidents, “each in itself relatively insignificant,” led to the conclusion “when taken as a whole that the enemy might be preparing to interdict the waterway.” These incidents included knowledge of a VC platoon that had been detailed to diagram the waterway between Camp Kistler and the DHCB, and to collect data on the number of boats plying the rivers. There had also been, noted the report prepared by the assistant ops officer, “a substantial increase during the last week of April in attacks by fire, generally by rockets from the local area and by tube artillery located north of the DMZ, against both the port facilities at the mouth of the Cua Viet and the offloading ramp at Dong Ha.”

The first of May was considered a likely candidate for the timing of any spectacular Communist maneuver. The division-level report continued: “Given the intelligence available and the approach of Mayday, the contact of the 2d ARVN on the 29th was not a great surprise.”

With the ARVN and NVA engaged above Dong Ha, Maj. Gen. Rathvon M. Tompkins, who had been in command of the 3d Marine Division since November 1967, when Major General Hochmuth was killed in a chopper crash, committed part of the division reserve. Task Force Robbie, as the reserve was designated, was at Cam Lo, ten klicks west of Dong Ha in the 9th Marines’ TAOR. A light force consisting of a rifle company from 1/9 and a tank company from the 3d Tank Battalion was organized, and together they moved out posthaste on Route 8B, a provincial road running east from Cam Lo to intersect Route 1 about two klicks north of Dong Ha. It was the most direct route to the battle. It was also the most predictable, and the reaction force, while traveling in column through Thon Cam Vu three kilometers out of Cam Lo, encountered mines and entrenched NVA with rocket-propelled
grenades. Although claiming twenty-six NVA killed, the Marines had four tanks damaged and were forced to extricate themselves from the hamlet with four dead and twenty-nine wounded. In addition, seven Marines were reported missing after the fighting withdrawal. Their bodies were subsequently recovered.

In response to the disaster in Thon Cam Vu, Major General Tompkins instructed 3/9 to reduce the NVA positions there. The attack was to commence the next day, with tank support. In the meantime, the unreinforced ARVN battalions were still heavily engaged on Route 1. If uncontained, the NVA could push on to Dong Ha. To prevent this, division alerted the 3d Marines, who were relatively unengaged on the east flank, to release a rifle company to protect the bridge on Route 1 above Dong Ha.

Colonel Milton A. Hull, commander of the 3d Marines, placed Captain Livingston’s E BLT 2/4 opcon to division, and Sea Horses lifted the company from Nhi Ha to the north end of the bridge, where it dug in beside a populated hamlet. Propeller-driven Skyraiders were bombing and napalming farther up the highway, and Livingston took a quick jeep ride just as the battle was petering out. The ARVN had held, and they showed Livingston a number of freshly killed NVA who had new uniforms, web gear, and weapons. Livingston was impressed: “It was clear to me we had some fresh troops moving down against us. I knew it was for real.”

“With everything else that was going on, Colonel Hull had me ‘spread the regiment out along the Cua Viet,’” wrote Maj. Dennis J. Murphy, the regimental S3 at Camp Kistler. “Hull was looking days ahead.” Hull had operational control of three battalions. BLT 2/4 was deployed north of the Cua Viet, and his other rifle battalion, 1/3, was to the south. Hull’s third element, the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, was tied down in strongpoints along the coastal side of the regimental TAOR. Hull realigned all of these units before nightfall, a move that led Murphy to comment, “I was concerned, as was 2/4, 1/3, and the Amtracs, that we were getting too thin, and we’d have some trouble massing force. When I started to resist the
‘spreading,’ Hull said, The bastards are going to try to take Dong Ha, and we’ve got to be able to keep them from getting across the river.’”

Major Murphy added that “by the time Colonel Hull was satisfied that we had all the potential routes covered, the Marine units—especially Bill Weise—were calling me the ‘fastest grease pencil in the East.’”

Weise was very concerned about regiment’s instructions. To the north of the BLT CP in Mai Xa Chanh West, Vargas’s G Company had to expand the Lam Xuan West perimeter to include E Company’s vacated positions across Jones Creek in Nhi Ha. To the east, Butler’s F Company remained in Mai Xa Chanh East as the BLT reserve, but placed a platoon in My Loc, which was also on the northern shore of the Cua Viet but two klicks farther downriver. Weise could not move F or G Companies without regiment’s approval. His only remaining maneuver element was Williams’s H Company, which was screening the western flank from Objective Charlie and Objective Delta.

From the roof of his farmhouse CP, Captain Williams had a clear view of the tributary that divided BLT 2/4 from the ARVN TAOR. The area was particularly vulnerable, because the two ARVN battalions previously in position there were the ones that had been moved west to meet the NVA coming down Route 1. The 320th NVA Division would, in fact, exploit this weak seam the next morning, and BLT 2/4 would thus be committed.

Captain Mastrion, medevacked two days before the battle, was still an immobile patient aboard the USS
Iwo Jima
when a Marine from the battalion rear addressed the sickbay. The Marine said that the battalion was in trouble, and had taken terrible casualties. He said that any of the wounded who could still function should return to the field. The situation was that bad. Several young Marines on the ward, including some with gauze-packed bullet wounds who had just been medevacked from the same battle, got up to go back ashore. Mastrion joined them. He figured that the very least he could do was stand radio watch, from a prone position, at the command amtrac in
Mai Xa Chanh West. Mastrion had a corpsman tightly wrap his aching back with an elastic bandage so he could stand, then asked the corpsman to find him some crutches so he could get around. The corpsman produced two canes of uneven length. Mastrion had someone go to the ship’s armory to draw a .45-caliber pistol for him, while he hobbled down to the below-deck hangar where the medevac choppers were lowered by elevator. The hangar deck was heaped with bloody gear.

Mastrion rummaged through the discarded equipment in search of jungle utilities with which to replace his blue hospital pajamas. He also found the jungle boots that had been cut off his feet when he’d arrived. One of his dog tags was still secured to the cut laces of the left boot.

The other walking wounded soon gathered in the hangar, along with shipboard support personnel who had volunteered to serve as riflemen, “and when the birds came in we just got on them and went ashore,” said Mastrion. “It wasn’t anything dramatic. Nobody was whistling the Marine Corps hymn or anything. We just went. What were you going to do? Your friends are in trouble, so you just got up and did it.”

Forged in Fire

W
HEN
B
ILL
W
EISE WAS A THIRTY-YEAR-OLD CAPTAIN, HE
was greeted by his new battalion commander with the unwelcome news that the colonel planned to use him as his logistics officer. Weise replied that he was more interested in the battalion’s vacant rifle company commander billet. “Colonel,” he said, “I can out run, fight, fuck, or fart anybody that you have in mind for that job.”

Wild Bill Weise got the job. Weise was from a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia, where his father, who had been a doughboy in France, was a coppersmith at the Navy Yard. Weise attended college on an academic scholarship, and graduated in 1951 with a degree in political science. His plans for law school were put on hold by the Korean War, however. Where Weise came from, service to the nation was expected; it wasn’t an issue. His older brother had been in the Navy in World War II, and his younger brother, who later became an Episcopal priest, was an Army infantryman headed for Korea himself.

Weise allowed himself to be drafted. When volunteers for the Marines were sought at the induction center, he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to do his two years with the best. The next stop for Private Weise, in October 1951, was the
Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina, where he was selected for officer training. Weise was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1952, and upon graduation from The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, in 1953, was assigned to the 3d Marine Division at Camp Pendelton, California. Because he finished in the top 10 percent of his Basic class, he was awarded a regular commission.

Lieutenant Weise began his twelve-month Korea tour in July 1953 with the weapons platoon of G/3/5, 1st Marine Division.
His baptism of fire came during the last three weeks of the war. There were daily shellings on the battalion line, and numerous Chinese attacks against their outposts in which Weise helped direct supporting arms. Weise’s Wild Bill nickname originated in Korea: He loved demolitions, and used TNT instead of an entrenching tool. He also found that he loved being out with the troops. By the time he rotated stateside after serving as a mortar section leader, rifle platoon commander, and company executive officer, he knew he was in for the long haul.

After the Korean War, Weise married and had two daughters and a son, who became a doctor. Weise served three years at The Basic School and Education Center at Quantico, during which time he was promoted to captain and underwent Army Ranger training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and attended the supply officer course at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was then sidetracked into several supply billets at Camp Pendelton—until 1959, when he got out of more logistics duty with his run-fight-fuck-or-fart proclamation. The battalion commander instead gave him command of F/2/1, 1st Marine Division. Weise truly earned the Wild Bill sobriquet with Foxtrot Company. He ran the men hard every morning, and, taking his cue from the Army Rangers, he emphasized night operations, long marches, and the desirability of taking unconventional approaches through rough terrain that the enemy was unlikely to strongly defend. One night, during a regimental field exercise, Weise used what had been considered an impassable deer trail to move his entire company into the opposing force’s rear. Their surprise was total.

After the battalion rotated to Okinawa, Weise finished his tour with it as an assistant operations officer. From there, the play-hard, drink-hard, train-hard Captain Weise moved to the super gung-ho world of Marine Recon. He served with the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company at Camp Pendelton in 1960-62, a tour that included airborne and scuba training and attendance at the Special Warfare Officers’ School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Wild Bill was part of the team that developed a method for submarines to recover recon teams from hostile
shorelines without having to expose themselves by surfacing. The procedure involved swimming out five thousand meters from shore at night, signaling the sub with an aquahorn, then using a scuba bottle to run a line down from the periscope to the forward escape drop, which each man would then swim down to lock into the sub. It was exciting and risky stuff, as was Weise’s participation in the first night carrier launch of recon parachutists in the Navy’s largest twin-engined bomber, and his team’s free-fall parachute jump through the bomb-bay doors.