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The sudden eruption reminded Private Bleier of the firepower show staged to bolster the men on the last day of AIT. The hootch shuddered, pieces of it cartwheeled off, the thatch roof caught on fire. The tree beside it was splintered and fell over. After several minutes, the firing petered out and a shrill scream could be heard from within the smoking rubble. A woman climbed out of the family bunker. Behind her came another woman, two men, and several children. Charlie Company hiked forward; the villagers screamed and cried at them at the top of their lungs. One woman stood toe-to-toe with a platoon leader, shrieking up at him as the lieutenant tried to apologize in stumbling Vietnamese. The grunts sort of looked at their feet. We’re still too jumpy from last night’s ambush, Bleier thought.

Charlie Company kept moving. Civilians who got caught in the crossfire were on their own after the damage was done.

Charlie 4–31 finally linked up with Bravo 1–46 on a hillside, and they set up for the night. Bravo had gotten there first and the grunts of Charlie were bitching, as grunts always do, that “them damn dudes took all the good sleeping positions.” Bleier wrote, “Only a section of jungle, briars and elephant grass, was left for us, so our platoon walked shoulder to shoulder, trampling it into a makeshift mattress. I fell asleep next to a tree, with one of its roots jabbing me in the back.” Morning was not much better when Bleier found the tree—and himself—crawling with ants. “… They were little red ants, the ones we called ‘piss ants.’ They were acrobats. Just before biting, they’d stick their hind legs in the air, balancing on their front legs and head. They barely pinched the skin, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to piss you off.… I was plenty pissed off.”

It was the morning of 20 August 1969.

Charlie 4–31 and Bravo 1–46, the only U.S. units in Hiep Duc Valley, had spent the night near Million Dollar Hill. Their mission at daylight was to recover and evacuate the dead left behind by Bravo 4–31.

Captain King’s company began moving into position around 0700, moving forward along the general path on which Captain Murphy’s company had retired the day before. Which is why they came across the hootch that had been used as nervous target practice. The villagers had learned their lesson, and this time they stood before the remains of their home in full view of the passing column. Private Tam noticed that the old people were glaring at them with unbridled anger. Way out, he thought; a whole company of grunts armed to the teeth and these old gooks aren’t afraid to let us know they’re pissed. He reckoned they were Viet Cong sympathizers. They probably were but he didn’t know about yesterday’s case of mistaken identity.

B and C Companies were humping through an area that the official report would later designate as the Center of Mass of the 1st NVA Regiment. At the time, the size of the enemy force was not known. If it had been, B and C Companies would not have separated into platoons. Captain Murphy travelled with Charlie One, which was assigned to recover the bodies and take them to a field landing zone for extraction. Charlie Two was to drop back in reserve to Million Dollar Hill, and Charlie Three was to assist Bravo Company in securing the LZ. Captain King stayed with Bravo Two atop a small hill, while his other two platoons moved into the paddied flatlands.

It was Lieutenant Baird’s platoon which was deployed in a circle around King and his radios and all the company’s rucksacks. Intelligence may not have yet confirmed the presence of a North Vietnamese regiment, but the grunts felt it. The men were tense, especially the old-timers. Tam, a nervous new guy, could hear the mumbles. “This is it, we’re gonna get hit. The gooks know we’re gonna come back for the bodies. For sure we’re gonna get ambushed.”

Captain Murphy’s group was moving northeast towards Hill 381 and was about halfway there from