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Norton blasted back with his grenade launcher, even as dirt kicked up at the impact of incoming bullets. He’d fire, roll to a new position along the dike, drop another round in the M79, pop up to fire again. He carried about sixty rounds and had fired half when the firing pin was jarred loose and fell out. He tossed down the M79. His holster was empty—he’d lost his .45 pistol somewhere when he was crawling—and he picked up an M16 rifle laying in the dirt.

It was over 100 degrees and he could barely move.

But Norton kept firing. He was raising up with the M16 to fire another burst from the same spot when an AK47 round hit the front of his helmet. The steel pot was blown off and he bounced back, unconscious, blood running from his nose and right ear. Norton awakened only very dimly. When they finally made a break for the high embankment, he didn’t know who dragged him to safety.

As 3d Platoon made its ill-fated rush towards 1st Platoon, the rest of Fox Company shouldered their gear and followed closely behind. PFC Lorne J. Collinson, of the company mortar squad, jogged blindly through the elephant grass. There were empty spider holes in the vegetation. The noise ahead was incredible. Collinson suddenly heard a sharp whiz in the air and instinctively threw himself to the ground.

A ragged chunk of made-in-the-USA shrapnel thudded into the dirt behind him. He was instantly back on his feet and moving towards the fire.

Corporal Bass, chief of the 60mm mortar section, was setting up his tubes in a small clearing. Collinson jogged over, dumped his mortar rounds from his pack, then ran to their hasty perimeter. He and his best friend, Ron McCoy, were about the only security the mortars had out there. The rest of the squad set up the two tubes, prepared the ammunition, then waited for firing directions. None came out of the chaos ahead.

A lieutenant appeared from the brush, jogging back with a wounded man leaning against him. The man’s trouser leg was stained red.

The lieutenant was shouting to get the casualties back.

Collinson left his pack with McCoy, started running forward, and in short order was forced to low-crawl through the grass as AK rounds whizzed past. He bellied up to the embankment where 3d Platoon had been pushed. Marines were spread along it, firing toward the stream. One grunt lay behind the dike as if asleep. But there was a hole in the back of his flak jacket and Collinson hefted the body into a fireman’s hold and took off for all he was worth. He made it back to the trees around the command post. It was a semicontrolled madhouse. Radiomen shouted into handsets, calling for more air, more arty, trying to maintain contact with the pinned-down platoons. Officers and radiomen were clustered near the dilapidated pagoda, a short, older man gesturing instructions and mouthing words that were lost to Collinson in the din. The air was clogged with the whine of jets. Corpsmen rushed among the wounded being dragged in. They had a dozen KIAs and WIAs in a row and Collinson laid his man with them, numbly noticing that blood was smeared on his T-shirt where his flak jacket hung unzipped.

He took off again. Corporal Bass shouted at him as he ran past the trees, “Get your ass back here! Your job’s with the mortars!”

“Yeah, I know, but the lieutenant said to help with the wounded!”

LCpl Craig Russel, a battalion sniper, found himself belly down in the high elephant grass. Right across the blue line, NVA were screaming fire over his head. He pumped his M14 into the brush, firing frantically and blindly like everyone around him, then popped up to fling a frag at a muzzle flash. The grenade was tossed right back at him from within the tangle and exploded in midair.

That was right outside the 2/7 CP.

In the middle of the fire, a U.S. Army Huey pilot came on their radio. He was responding to their requests for ammunition, “I’m coming in. Pop a smoke, and get this shit off my bird!”

The helicopter barrelled into a bare patch behind the platoon. Corpsmen had a couple of the seriously