Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [116]
Lieutenant Pickett, immobile under his own crossfire, radioed the squad to inch back down the hill.
Black responded that he had a dead Marine up front.
It seemed impossible to retrieve the body without getting someone else killed, and Pickett was adamant about pulling back.
The platoon reorganized at the base of the hill, and Sergeant Adams and Corporal Black volunteered to take a fire team back to recover their dead. Halfway up the slope, the assault began all over again. Two AKs starting firing and, in a mad moment, Adams dropped his helmet and flak jacket and dashed within yards of the spider holes. He pumped his M16 into the brush at point-blank range until one AK was silenced, then scrambled to a boulder five feet from the second hole. He emptied his rifle at it. The AK47 stopped shooting. Adams moved forward and a North Vietnamese fired from the spider hole, killing Sergeant Adams at four feet.
The hill was covered with snipers, at least eight of them, and 2d Platoon retreated again, leaving Gerald and Adams where they fell.
For four hours, company commander Larrison called in air and arty, doing it personally because his air radioman had passed out from the heat. While bombs and napalm scorched the knoll and the grunts nervously waited, the corpsmen treated the casualties at the base of the ridge. Many men had severe heat exhaustion brought on by the 120 degree temperature and the lack of food and water (they had left LZ Ross with only a two-day supply of C rats). And three men had been carried down from the firefight in shock; Golf had not seen solid contact in a long time.
By the time the bombardment ended, the knoll was an ugly brown scar on the lush ridge line. It seemed no one could have survived, and 1st Platoon, under 2dLt Bob Page, moved out. One squad under Sergeant Ferguson was to secure a shattered tree line overlooking the bodies, then provide cover fire while a second squad under Cpl Travis Skaggs retrieved the dead. The platoon moved out as soon as the firing lifted, sweeping uphill through the ash of napalmed elephant grass. Ferguson’s squad secured the trees and—unbelievably—the snipers opened fire again. Two men went down with bullets in their legs. Sergeant Ferguson kept his squad firing, and Corporal Skaggs and his squad moved towards the bodies on the crest. More sniper fire erupted, the first burst killing Private Cunningham and a blistering crossfire sending the rest down, faces in the ash dust, coughing, pressing down under the scythe, baking under the sun. Some men returned fire and an M79 grenadier was able to slam a round into one of the dugouts, silencing one North Vietnamese.
The rest of the NVA were dug in and invisible.
Lieutenant Larrison ordered the men back down, and Golf Company humped up to a second ridge line foothill eighty meters from their target. Larrison stayed on the one-four net, calling in the firepower. Artillery pounded the backside of the knoll as a block to any retreat, while jets shrieked across the slope facing Golf, tumbling more bombs and napalm canisters into what little greenery remained. Medevacs added to the noise. Lieutenant Page’s platoon sergeant went out with ash in his lungs. Corporal Skaggs saw the corpsmen frantically giving mouth to mouth and heart massage to a kid in shock who stopped breathing. They kept him alive and, as they hustled him up the back ramp of the Sea Knight, he was like a piece of lumber in their hands.
Even those not in shock or unconscious from the heat were ready to throw in the towel. They were almost out of ammunition, food, and water. The