Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [131]
B Company had been choppered to the outskirts of the Hiep Duc Province Center. From there, we trekked to a barren and flat hill to set up a day laager. I hastily erected a poncho liner shelter to seek relief from the blazing sun; others also erected shelters of liners, banana leaves or whatever. GI camps were easily recognizable to any gook within a reasonable distance. Either they could hear the tent stakes, bamboo or some other piece of vegetation, being pounded into the ground, or if they missed that racket, they had only to look for a spotty collection of poncho liners waving in the breeze. At this present camp, some of the shelters were placed along the side of the hill which made them virtually undefensible from incoming small arms fire that could have been brought to bear from a distant tree line. We stayed there overnight. As we were lolling about camp the next day, we heard the clatter of automatic weapons off to the east. Some company had made contact with a bunch of gooks. Within the hour they called for help so we left our day laager under the guard of a squad and set out for the yonder woods. We soon found them resting in a wooded area along a natural trench. To a man they were scared and thirsty. I recognized a black fellow I hadn’t seen since AIT at Fort Dix. He spoke of his wife and children back home. Several weeks later I bumped into him back in the rear where he then had a rear job—a position he was rewarded for reupping.
These battered grunts were Delta 1st of the 46th Infantry, which had pulled back to the ditches along the trail after being ambushed the day before. They were pinned down by snipers and had quickly run out of water. Bravo Company reached them around noon; Captain Gayler moved up the trail until he found Captain Sellers, but was unhappy that the commander seemed as bewildered and fatigued as his men in the ditches. As for himself, Gayler was a confident man and—after a week of rest on Siberia—he at least looked the part of the professional company commander. His hair was close-cropped under his helmet, and he was a handsome man with a full mustache and some bush-time whiskers. He wore leather gun gloves, carried an AR15 automatic rifle, and two bandoliers of magazines were held in place across his chest by the snaps on his web gear shoulder straps. Captain bars and armor insignia were stitched in black on his collar; the Americal patch was on his shoulder.
Gayler’s first question to Sellers was, “Where are your security elements? I’ll relieve your security elements on your front, right, and left.”
All he got was a blank stare.
Gayler quickly moved aside with his RTO, and radioed Lieutenant Monroe to get out security posthaste. Monroe moved one squad to the front while the other two platoons took up the right and left flanks off the pathway. The NVA still held the hill ahead—from where they had originally halted Delta Company—and they responded to the new movement by casually lobbing in a few mortar rounds.
Bravo Company lost one man killed, five wounded.
Delta secured an LZ for the medevac, and other helicopters brought in more resupply. By that time, Bravo had taken over the area and policed up some of the gear Delta had left behind in the open space between the tree grove and the enemy hill; it included more than a few ammunition bandoliers, a PRC25 radio, an M60 machine gun, and five M16 rifles. Noting, in addition, that Delta had not deployed adequate security, Captain Gayler radioed Colonel Henry that the company was no longer battle-effective due to fatigue or morale problems and should be withdrawn.
Gayler had just arrived on the scene, so perhaps his negative observations were not completely justified. Nevertheless, later in the afternoon, Delta Company was ordered out of the area; they humped back to Hiep Duc where Maj