The enemy had probed our perimeter in the wee hours of the morning on the first day of the Chinese lunar new year. Referred to by the Vietnamese as Tet, it was the most celebrated of the year’s holidays—Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. In 1968, the Year of the Monkey, it was also the first day of Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap’s Tet offensive.
During the next ten days, the pace of Charlie Company’s operations would be frantic—always moving, always fighting, sometimes conducting two and three combat air assaults a day. In the morning we might find ourselves searching for remnants of the evading enemy in the dense, triple-canopied jungles of Binh Dinh’s mountains, then fighting him in the province’s coastal areas that afternoon, only to move again that night to some desolate hilltop and begin digging the residue of the general’s retreating army out of its rocks.
There was no C&D that morning. Shortly after first light, as most of us were downing a charlie rat, Blair passed me his handset, saying,
“Three’s on the horn, sir.”
“Comanche, this is Arizona Three. The truce is terminated in your Alpha Oscar. I say again, the truce is terminated! Take appropriate defensive precautions… break. Comanche, stand by for mission orders. Acknowledge. Over.”
“This is Comanche Six. Roger, acknowledge truce terminated. Standing by for orders.”
Within twenty minutes or so he radioed us again. “This is Arizona Three inbound in one five with a zero, plus three, plus zero. LZ secure. I’ll be talking to you on the ground!”
Plus three. No slicks, no gunships, all hooks. Well, at least we won’t be fighting our way onto a landing zone. The three large troop-carrying helicopters ferried us fifteen klicks or so southeast, landing adjacent to a small cluster of villages astride Highway One. Major Byson met us on the LZ. As he did so, I noticed an ARVN contingent maneuvering through one of the villages on the eastern (coastal) side of the highway.
“Hey, Jim, gotta get out of here, so let me give this to you quick and dirty. NVA attacked throughout the province last night, actually all across the central part of the country. Looks like a coordinated offensive. ‘Though info’s still real sketchy, seems to be confined mainly to the populated areas, places that haven’t heard a round fired in anger in a long time.”
“Yeah, understand they even hit battalion last night.”
Oh, shit! Wrong thing to say.
He looked at me sternly, but not unkindly, and said, “Listen up, Captain. I’ve heard my share of rounds fired in anger.”
“lib… yes, sir. That’s not what I meant, really.”
Then, smiling, he said, “But yeah, Chuck did throw us a couple rounds last night. Nothing serious. In fact, he seems to be pretty much leaving our folk alone. Concentrating on villages and cities, shit, in some cases district and maybe even provincial capitals.”
I nodded, making notes as he spoke.
“But our concern right now is Binh Dinh,” he continued. “NVA went through these supposedly secure villages last night. ARVN’s now in the process of digging out those still in the area. Want you and your folk to do the same. Highway’s your boundary, little people on the left… coastal side, you on the right. I brought along a Kit Carson who may be of some help to you.” He grinned, “Doesn’t speak much English, but he’s really fluent in Vietnamese. “Jim, everything’s up in the air right now. Don’t know if you’ll be staying ‘round here tonight, or moving on, or what. But I’ll promise you one thing; you’ll go wherever we find Charlie. So hang loose, or as we say in the military venacular, stay flexible!”
We wished each other well, and he departed aboard the battalion’s C&C ship.
Minutes later we began our sweep of the villages with One Six tying into Highway One on the left, Two Six on the right, and Three Six, followed by Four Six and headquarters, in the center. We found no enemy. We found only scared and crying children and their shocked elders wailing over their dead as only the Vietnamese can wail over their dead. Most of the demised were village officials, and most had been executed with a single shot to the base of their skull. We would later learn that such atrocities were the norm throughout Vietnam on the nights of 30 and 31 January and 1 February 1968; and for a longer period in the city of Hue.
Within two hours of his departure, Byson called with a change in our orders. “This is Arizona Three. Want you to move to the red line and prepare for attachment to Prairie Schooner in two zero. You’ll be conducting combined arms sweep of an area… oh, say, seven klicks to your north. Prairie Schooner’s in command; however, if you have any problem with that just give me a call. How copy? Over.”
“This is Comanche Six. Solid copy. Where on the red line do we marry up with Schooner?”
“This is Arizona Three. Just assemble your element on the big red. Schooner has your push. He can’t miss you.”
Turning quickly to Blair, I asked, “Who the fuck’s Prairie Schooner?”
He was already thumbing through his CEOI codes and within moments said,
“Prairie Schooner’s… hot damn! It’s the mech folk; looks like we ride for a while.”
Thirty minutes later, we were barreling north on Highway One atop Prairie Schooner’s M-113 APCs (armored personnel carriers).
Captain Rogers, commander of the mech company to which we were attached, and I had agreed that my men would ride on top of the carriers, while his soldiers occupied their normal positions inside the vehicles. A mechanized rifle company is organized very similarly to an airmobile rifle company (the main difference between the two being that they sometimes walked but usually rode, while we sometimes flew but usually walked), so crossattachment of our two commands proved relatively simple. One Six merely joined forces with Schooner’s One Six, Two Six with their Two Six, and so on.
Our objective was a large lowlying hill mass on the right, eastern, side of the highway about six klicks from our pickup point. According to some of the villagers in the area, remnants of an NVA force were now hiding in the hill’s vegetation.
The carriers slowed and then, each suddenly braking on its right track, turned sharply ninety degrees to the right—and stopped. We were now facing the hill, with a distance of ten to fifteen meters separating each of the fourteen carriers on line at its base. Riding with Rogers atop his track, I asked what our plan of attack was.
“Plan?” he replied. “We’re gonna recon by fire with the fifties. IE (referring to his .50 caliber machine guns, one of which was mounted on each of the APCS) and then roll forward.”
“Fine,” I replied. “You want my people to dismount and follow, or what?”
“Naw, that’d just slow us up. ‘Sides, we don’t really know if Charlie’s up there or not. Why don’t you keep your folk mounted, and then if we run into something, you can dismount at that time.”
“Sounds good to me,” I responded, being anything but an expert on mechanized warfare.
He talked briefly into the mike attached to his helmet, and then fourteen .50caliber machine guns instantaneously began firing into the hill mass before us, their third-round tracers plunging brilliantly into the lush, emerald green elephant grass covering the hillside and then ricocheting crazily upward.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
It was an incredible earsplitting display of firepower. We of Charlie Company, having never seen so many .50-calibers firing simultaneously, watched in fascination as the tracers swept the hillside, back and forth, from its base to its crest.
Finally Rogers gave the signal to cease fire. The tracks began moving forward, slowly at first as they negotiated the highway’s embankment, which jutted downward at a steep angle, and then gaining speed as they started up the hill, crushing the dense foliage before them.