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By Root 683 0

from the trees into rice paddies that stretched two hundred yards across and five hundred yards to the next tree line. It was a little rice bowl right at the base of Hill 381, and jungled fingers rippled through the area and across the platoons’ front. Vallance’s platoon advanced through napalmed elephant grass at the base of the ridge line into the paddies themselves. They were rough to negotiate—overgrown and terraced, dotted with wild brush and boulders. Point men and flank men were out. Vallance was only a quarter way into the field when Brennon reached the halfway mark. They too were spaced out, ten men in the lead:

Point man

M79 grenadier

Rifleman

Squad leader

Brennon, his radioman and corpsman

M60 team

The North Vietnamese ambushed them halfway into the open paddy, the first burst a jolting thunderclap of at least five AK47s, five RPGs, an RPD, and two 60mm mortar rounds. The M79 man was killed instantly. The corpsman was seriously wounded with shrapnel in his back. The M60 team quickly started returning fire, but the gunner was shot dead and his two assistant gunners passed out with shock or heat exhaustion. The rest of the platoon quickly took up positions behind them; under the direction of the platoon sergeant—who’d been wounded in the sudden fusillade—they sounded like a small army. The point man, rifleman, and squad leader managed to crawl back under the cover fire; together with Lieutenant Brennon, his radioman, and the wounded corpsman, they crammed behind a boulder in the field.

They were completely pinned down. It was 1300.

On the right flank, Lieutenant Vallance had also ducked behind a boulder at the initial shots. But his platoon was out of the most blistering part of the crossfire and he was able to get his bearings more quickly. The NVA, about a platoon of them, were firing from the bouldered slope of Hill 381 up ahead, and from the tree lines on the left flank. More NVA were popping up from behind, in the tree line through which they had just walked. Fire seemed to snap at the Marines from every direction. The NVA were invisible in the vegetation, solidly emplaced with spider holes and trenches. Vallance’s men could make out only one muzzle flash and, although they exposed themselves to put M60 and M79 fire into it, it was impossible to tell if they did any damage.

Vallance had men pinned down behind boulders ahead. When they tried to crawl back, rounds chopped the grass above their heads. When the platoon fired to cover them, the NVA rained down AKs and RPGs. But when the Marines stopped shooting and stopped moving, the NVA were content to cease fire and just watch.

Fish in a barrel, fucking fish in a barrel.

Lieutenant Vannoy moved forward with 2d Platoon, and radioed Brennon and Vallance to stay put. Air support had been scrambled again. Brennon, still stuck behind his boulder, got in radio contact with the aerial observer orbiting the battlefield. The Phantoms laid napalm plus 250- and 500-pound bombs, first into the trees 150 meters forward, then—at Brennon’s insistence—the reluctant AO brought the fires in 75 meters closer. Brennon and his five grunts crammed tightly against the boulder as shrapnel chunks whizzed overhead.

Vallance, farther away from ground zero, was able to keep his head up. He could see tracers snapping skyward from the jungle canopy even as the Phantoms screamed right at them, letting loose their napalm and bombs. The grunts could see the tracers, too, and their spirits sank even lower. They were sewed up, the air strikes weren’t doing much, and the NVA even had the guts to take on jets.

Bullets cracked over their heads and from the rear.

The Phantoms ran eight or nine missions; then Cobras made two more gun runs. The NVA fire slackened a bit, and Brennon told two men to crawl forward and drag back the dead M79 man. It was thirty meters from the boulder to the body, and the two grunts went the entire way on their stomachs, tucked in tightly along a dike, NVA fire nipping overhead. They reached the body, but the dead Marine was a big man—more than two hundred