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By Root 739 0

they dropped out. Lots of rock, some marijuana. But, like it or not, Sirianni mostly had to keep in step with the way things were programmed. In that smaller sense, morale was high. The grunts took care of each other. It was a matter of honor. When he was in high school, Sirianni was always in trouble with one particular teacher, a former Marine; when he enlisted, the man had told him, “When you get under fire for the first time, you’re going to freeze.” In his first firefight, two or three snipers temporarily pinned down his squad and Sirianni ducked behind a small boulder. His foot slipped out, a round kicked up dirt near it, and he yanked it back, terrified. Then his mind flashed to that insult and he thought, I can’t go through my life giving him the satisfaction. He forced himself up to return fire. Before his tour was over, Sirianni made sergeant and was decorated for valor.

Lance Corporal Sirianni, who was twenty and known as Tripper, volunteered to retrieve the bodies—he’d known Cunningham from ITR. Sirianni’s squad leader, Corporal Beckler—skinny, blond, and quiet—looked at him, then to T. J., a taciturn Mexican. They said they’d go too. Two frazzled looking guys from Golf Company led them up, pointed towards the bodies, then slinked back down the hill. The three volunteers crept up to the crest of the knoll while Lieutenant Brennon and his radioman crouched on the slope directing the automatic cover fire. Sirianni glanced over the crest. He could see one of the dead Marines sprawled in the ash a few yards away, mangled by the prep bombardment.

He started over but an AK47 suddenly opened fire, sending him back. Someone yelled, “Chicom!” and, being new, he hesitated a second. Beckler or T. J. shoved him down from behind and his face was in the dirt when the grenade exploded. Sirianni caught a fragment across the knee, a bloodless scratch, and the other two were similarly nicked. They shoved up their M16s to return fire while Lieutenant Brennon urgently shouted into the radio trying to shift Golf Company’s cover fire. It was almost hitting them. There was no response. More Chicoms bounced in.

Brennon finally hollered to pull back.

The retreat left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth—the Marine Corps does not abandon their dead—but what remained of Adams, Gerald, and Cunningham lay with the North Vietnamese all night.

Colonel Codispoti was with Lieutenant Colonel Lugger when the decision was made to break contact and blast the hill again with air power. The jets tumbled more bombs onto the knoll and, as the vibrations rolled back under their feet, Lugger glanced at Codispoti. Lugger was suddenly aware that his regimental commander was viewing these proceedings with a disapproving grimace. But Codispoti said nothing. Lugger was silently frustrated, thinking, well, what does he suggest I do; if we keep running up the hill without supporting arms, we’ll just take more casualties! Codispoti was probably thinking of Dowd, for whom he had approved a posthumous Navy Cross, and his battalion’s classic use of fire and maneuver. In comparison, Lugger did not measure up. When Codispoti reviewed Lugger’s performance in the current action and that which would quickly follow, his words were damning, “As a matter of practice during this battle period, elements of his battalion pulled back immediately upon being hit with enemy small arms fire.… Guidance, direction, exhortation and positive orders were given over the radio and at daily personal visits by me to this officer to have his units press forward with fire and maneuver on being subjected to enemy small arms fire, but to no avail.”*

Golf and Hotel Companies set their night perimeters along the terraced dikes at the base of the enemy knoll. Sirianni nestled against a berm. NVA on the knoll screamed down, “Marines, tomorrow you die!”

Grunts screamed back, “Fuck off!”

Sirianni, a tough-looking kid with glasses, a tattoo, and thick muscles, was shaking. He didn’t smoke but finally got a Pall Mall from his buddy, cupped it in his hands in the dark, and smoked the hell out