The Magnificent Bastards (8 page)

“Take a look again.”

Lance Corporal O’neill, a sniper, brought his scope-mounted, bolt-action rifle back to his shoulder. He was sitting at the edge of a paddy east of the two standing structures of what was marked as Bac Vong on their maps. He looked at the lieutenant again. “Hey, I’m watchin’ a lot of movement out there. I don’t know if it’s ours or theirs. All I see is movement.”

“Shoot one of ’Em.”

“Sir, what if it’s one of
ours?”

“We don’t have anybody out there. Just shoot one.”

O’neill had reason to hesitate: The other side of the tributary belonged to the ARVN. Hotel One’s patrol had departed the company patrol base, Objective Delta, early that morning,
Tuesday, 30 April 1968, with the mission of investigating the NVA positions that had fired on a routine, predawn patrol by river patrol craft of TF Clearwater. From Objective Delta, Hotel Company could hear the NVA automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, and see the red .50-caliber tracers streaming back from the patrol boat. The NVA seemed to have been in the vicinity of Dong Huan, which was on the south bank of a Bo Dieu tributary that sliced east to west before curving north. Lieutenant Boyle’s orders had been to move south the thirteen hundred meters between Objective Delta and Bac Vong, which sat on the north side of the tributary five hundred meters above Dong Huan. The thin, head-high tributary between Bac Vong defined the western edge of BLT 2/4’s TAOR. However, the ARVN forces responsible for the opposite side had been committed the afternoon before to the Route 1 battle.

Screw it, O’neill thought as he assumed his prone firing position. If it is the ARVN, I’ll just swear up and down somebody else did it.…

Lance Corporal O’neill, twenty, had chambered a 7.62mm match round in his Remington Model 700, and now, helmet off, he focused through the scope on a shirtless soldier who was unknowingly facing the cross hairs as he walked down a trail. There were too many trees for a clean shot. O’neill waited until the man sat down in a waistdeep spiderhole. He fired. The recoil took his eye off the target, as did the well-oiled maneuver of bringing the bolt back and chambering a new round. O’neill snapped his focus back to the trail and scanned down it until he found the hole just off to the left of it. The man was leaning back in the hole. It was unclear if he’d been hit, so O’neill squeezed off a second shot. When he reacquired the target, there was no doubt about his marksmanship: The man was missing half of his head.

It was approximately 0810. Lieutenant Boyle, a capable, ruddy-faced young man who’d had Hotel One for three weeks, called up his squad leaders. He and his platoon sergeant, SSgt. Richard A. Kelleher, explained that they were to lay down a base of fire from their position east of Bac Vong while Cpl.
James A. Summey’s squad maneuvered to a small footbridge that crossed the blueline into Dong Huan. Summey’s squad made it to the creek’s edge before surprising five soldiers wearing green fatigues and pith helmets, and carrying AK-47s. They were clearly North Vietnamese regulars. The NVA were on the opposite bank and were rushing for cover, but the squad dropped three of them. The NVA returned fire and Boyle pulled the squad back, then requested that their artillery spotter call for supporting fire as the exchange of automatic weapons fire intensified.

Hotel Company had established an observation post on the roof of a battle-scarred, two-story concrete farmhouse in the deserted hamlet designated Objective Delta. Captain Williams was up top with a pair of binoculars, watching Hotel One’s progress. He could also see the routine river traffic to the south on the Bo Dieu River. A pair of Navy utility landing craft (LCUs) proceeded downriver with several patrol boats. The patrol boats, which answered to the call sign Traffic Cop, placed .30-and .50-caliber machine-gun fire into Dong Huan, already shuddering under the barrage of 105mm artillery fire being brought to bear. The patrol boats added their 81mm mortars to the onslaught.

The NVA, who were well entrenched, opened up on Traffic Cop and the passing LCUs. Captain Williams was still watching through his binos when a Soviet-made 57mm recoilless rifle suddenly opened fire from Dong Huan—it was a five-hundred-meter shot to the Bo Dieu River—and one of the LCUs shook as it took two or three broadside hits. As the LCUs U-turned and headed for Dong Ha with casualties aboard, Williams dropped down the ladder from the tarp-shaded observation post (OP) and radioed battalion. The word from Dixie Diner 6 was exactly what Williams expected: Hotel Company was to attack and seize Dong Huan.
¹

It was supposed to be Captain Williams’s last operation with Hotel Company. He had only a week remaining on his twelve-and-twenty, the twelve months and twenty days of a Marine’s tour in Vietnam. Williams had built a fine reputation. “The skipper was a by-the-book officer of exacting standards,” said a lieutenant of this thirty-year-old family man from Winona, Minnesota, “and he was also a gentleman, a sensitive man, a man who was capable of doing what was necessary to accomplish the mission, but not without a good deal of feeling and concern for his troops.”

Captain Williams was also incredibly brave. He and Captain Livingston of Echo Company had led the way during the assault on Vinh Quan Thuong and became battalion legends because of it. Bogged down under artillery and rocket fire, Williams jumped up with his entrenching tool still in hand and, along with the grease-gun-toting Livingston, personally led the final, reenergized charge into the enemy ville. They overran an NVA artillery spotter who was dying at his radio. The radio was still squawking. Williams’s Vietnamese scout said that the NVA at the other end was asking for a status report. Williams thought back to their recent arrival at Mai Xa Chanh West when Hanoi Hannah had welcomed the battalion and its commander by name, and had mocked the so-called Magnificent Bastards. Williams instructed his scout, “Get on that radio; I’ve got a message for the other end: ‘You have just been overrun by Hotel Company of the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines. Lieutenant Colonel Weise sends his regards.’”

Captain Williams’s assault on Dong Huan was going to be rough. An aerial observer was on station above the battlefield, and had already ordered one air strike on the hamlet. It was followed by firing runs from three helicopter gunships, and then another bomb run that claimed to have knocked out two 12.7mm machine guns. The Soviet-built 12.7mm was effective against both ground troops and aircraft, and the presence of such a weapon in Dong Huan was one of the factors that led Weise to later write:

The enemy had chosen their position well. Given the enemy’s talent for engineering situations in which they were dug in and their opponents were in the open—the Marine response to the NVA recoilless rifle fire was obvious—Weise also had to be concerned with nearby Dai Do. The largest ville in the area, it was situated five hundred very, open meters west and southwest of Dong Huan. No NVA had been spotted in Dai Do, but if they were there they could bring long-range sniper and machine-gun fire to bear on any assault of Dong Huan.

Lieutenant Colonel Weise explained to Williams over the radio that he had secured permission from regiment to commit Foxtrot Company, the battalion reserve, to cover Dai Do. Foxtrot was to move out immediately aboard amtracs from Mai Xa Chanh East. The battalion’s attached tank platoon, which could muster just two M48 tanks, was also on the way. Weise explained that he, too, was going to be battlefield bound shortly (he would arrive about 1005) aboard a Navy LCM-6 Monitor gunboat, which would pick him up at Mai Xa Chanh West and bring him up the Bo Dieu with his command group. Weise later wrote:

From Objective Delta, Williams retraced Hotel One’s route to the vicinity of Bac Vong with his headquarters and mortar section, plus Hotel Three under SSgt. Ronald W. Taylor. Hotel Two, led by SSgt. Robert J. Ward, moved down from Objective Charlie to join Williams, as did SSgt. T. Garvin, who commanded the two tanks from A Company, 3d Tank Battalion, which presently arrived from the BLT CP. In addition, 1st Lt. C. W. Muter, commander of the BLT’s attached platoon from D Company, 3d Reconnaissance Battalion, also showed up. Muter and four of his recon Marines had been in the area on a relatively routine patrol unrelated to the fray they now joined.

The first order of business was to secure Bac Vong, which afforded a direct, vegetation-covered line of fire into Dong Huan. Since the blueline was a real tank obstacle, Captain Williams planned to deploy Garvin’s two tanks in Bac Vong and use their 90mm main guns and .50-caliber machine guns as a base of fire. Muter’s recon team would secure the tanks.

They reached Bac Vong, which proved empty, at about 1115. As the tanks and recon team deployed along the brushy bank, Williams instructed Staff Sergeant Ward to move upstream with Hotel Two to find a place to ford the stream. They reconned along seven hundred meters of the tributary before finding a relatively narrow and shallow spot across which a bamboo fishing screen had been rigged. A step in the wrong, muddy place would sink a combat-loaded Marine to his chin, but by leaning against the screen they were able to get across with weapons, ammunition, and radios held high.

Captain Williams fed Hotel Three across the stream behind Hotel Two, with Hotel One bringing up the rear. This channelized, single-file crossing (completed by about 1300) drew only sporadic fire from Dong Huan. The tanks and recon team in Bac Vong, however, were under heavy fire, and they responded in kind. Lieutenant Muter, talking on the radio, caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he looked
up from his map just as an NVA ran out of Dong Huan to the edge of the creek. The NVA had an RPG over his shoulder and took aim at the tank beside which Muter was kneeling. In the same instant, Muter saw Bergmann, one of his recon troops, carefully aiming his M16 at the NVA. Unlike most grunts, Bergmann avoided the temptation to start shooting from the hip, and instead stood in the classic Marine Corps firing stance with one elbow up and the other tucked under his weapon. Bergmann squeezed off his one, make-it-count shot in the same millisecond that the 90mm cannon on the tank roared its disapproval at the RPG-toting enemy soldier. The NVA disappeared from the face of the earth. Bergmann had been concentrating so hard that he had not heard the tank gun. All he knew was that his target had evaporated with one well-aimed squeeze of the trigger, and he held his M16 in front of him as he exclaimed in awe: “Jee-sus Christ!”

A pair of USMC F-4 Phantoms prepped Dong Huan as Hotel Company crossed the creek, and 1st Lt. Alexander F. “Scotty” Prescott IV, the company exec, helped spot for the aerial observer, who was up in an O-IE Birddog. It was a real aerial show, with the two low-flying pilots putting their bombs and napalm, better known as snake ’n* nape, right into the hamlet. How can anyone be alive in there? Prescott wondered. They’re getting plastered with napalm and five hundred pounders, man. They’re just getting the shit pounded out of them. Over the roar of the jets’ fire, Prescott could hear the sharp popping of AK-47s from within the village. Ballsy, he thought. These aren’t rice farmers. These are professional soldiers.

As one of the Phantoms pulled out of a run, a big napalm fireball spread over the ville even as the aerial observer called excitedly on the radio, “You’re takin’ fire! You’re takin’ fire!”

The pilot’s voice was strained by the g’s he was pulling as he skyrocketed up from his treetop-level bombing run, but he was sporting nonetheless: “Uhhh, uhhhh … I think that’s only fair.…”

Captain Williams left Lieutenant Prescott at the fording site
with their gunnery sergeant, mortar section, and reserve platoon, while he moved to their line of departure and set up some four hundred meters north of Dong Huan with Staff Sergeants Ward (Hotel Two) and Taylor (Hotel Three) facing south. Taylor was on the left flank and Ward on the right, where Foxtrot Company was presently approaching. Foxtrot had just crossed over on amtracs, and was to take Dai Do under fire after deploying along its own LD,

Meanwhile, Williams had his 60mm mortars and M60 machine guns take Dong Huan under fire to keep the NVAs’ heads down. Between that barrage and the tree-shaking tank fire from across the creek, the NVA got off only a shot or two in return. In fact, some of the grunts catnapped behind the paddy dikes as the prep fires poured in. With the jets no longer on station, Williams put his artillery spotter, 2d Lt. Carl R. Gibson, from H/3/12, to good use. This was Gibson’s baptism of fire, but he did a well-trained job of raining 105mm and 155mm fire on Dong Huan, with a mix of high explosive (HE),
white phosphorus, and smoke rounds. In addition, the Traffic Cop patrol boats and the Monitor command boat on the Bo Dieu fired thousands of .30-and .50-caliber machine-gun rounds, and 81mm mortar rounds by the dozen. The Monitor also pumped 20mm cannon fire into the increasingly smoky battlefield.