Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [13]
My Lai tainted the entire division.
By 1969, the Americal Division was improved, but not shining. It now received its replacements like any other unit, and an effort was made to infuse better leadership; still, first impressions are lasting and the division’s initial reputation turned away many of the Army’s most ambitious and talented men. And, turning specifically to 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th Infantry Brigade, to the men out on LZ West and LZ Siberia who would bear the brunt of the 1969 Summer Offensive in Hiep Duc Valley, there was another dilemma—stagnation. Since reclaiming the valley in November 1968, the Polar Bears, as the battalion called itself, had encountered little resistance. June of 69 had seen sappers in the wire at the 4–31 Rear on LZ Baldy, and the line companies had made a ten-day foray into the adjacent Song Chang Valley. That had been about it, though. Their patrols were generally quiet and, thus, routine; and routines are very dangerous in war.
They were to bleed for their rustiness.
PFC Charles Jandecka, who joined Bravo Company 4–31 in August 1969, began his tour at the Americal Division Combat Center on the beach at Chu Lai. He hated it. Their hootches were overcrowded and scurrying with rats. The days were occupied with introduction classes, but the nights were hot, loud with rock music, depressing, and menacing. Throngs of GIs roamed about looking for diversions; some were stoned, some drunk; troublemakers hunted for other troublemakers or for scared kids. Fistfights broke out. Grunts called these men REMFs. Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
But there was camaraderie out on LZ West and LZ Siberia. There were also men who arrived with a sense of duty. PFC Robert Bleier, who came to Charlie 4–31 in May 1969, was one of them. A Notre Dame football star and a professional with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he hadn’t joined the reserves fast enough to beat his draft notice. Mouthing the right cliches, he could have resisted it fashionably, but he didn’t. Instead he thought, how could I explain shirking out to a son I may someday have? The battalion surgeon on LZ West remembered him for what he did not do. Of all the GIs lining up at his medical bunker looking for a way out of the field, Rocky Bleier, who had good reason to bitch, was never one of them. Such devotion could be tempered. The first afternoon Bleier arrived at LZ West as a replacement on a resupply bird, several GIs took him aside. They asked if he was a head or a juicer. Bewildered, he answered, “Well, I like to have an occasional martini, you know, on the rocks with an olive.” They laughed. They said marijuana was on the decline, although at a recent pot party in the perimeter bunkers interrupted by NVA sappers, several American soldiers had died because they let their boring surroundings override their common sense.
The NVA regulars were trying to avoid a fight and Charlie Company’s sweeps found little action. The men looked at patrolling as hot, trudging, and useless. Bleier saw more than one GI drop his rucksack during a rest break and kick it, screaming helplessly, “You goddamn green monkey! You sonuvabitch, you’ve been kicking my ass all day, now I’m going to kick yours!”
That was good for a laugh, good for morale. Other forms of catharsis were not. Bleier’s platoon chased a running figure into a tree line. There they found several hootches and some people—one of the little groups that lived free of the wire-enclosed Resettlement Village—who probably supported the local NVA and VC with rice and places to hide. The GIs exploded. They fragged the family bunkers, then started burning the thatch hootches; the women wailed hysterically as their few belongings were consumed in the fire. Bleier could only think, this is absurd. One of the GIs grabbed an old papasan, kneed him in the crotch, then bashed him on the head with the butt of his M16. The man dropped to his knees in agony, and