Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [138]
The 2/7 Marines had relocated to Dai La Pass; there they worked with the 26th Marines in the Da Nang Rocket Belt to stem infiltration towards the city and the ridge line housing division headquarters. This was the other type of extreme; it was a quiet time, the battalion was stationary—thus, stagnant—and it was only a ten-minute drive to notorious Dog Patch. The more Lugger looked, the less he liked what he saw. The previous hectic pace of operations had left 2/7 in an administrative shambles, and he had to have his CP reorganized and physically cleaned up. He also had to have the drifters rounded up. Dog Patch offered plenty of diversions, from prostitution to a flourishing black market and drug trade, plus Division Ridge had the Freedom Hill PX and other assorted service clubs. It was a real struggle for Lugger to sort out all the Marines wandering around his CP who had no real jobs and get their asses back in the grass.
The battalion’s line companies were spread out in independent, wire-enclosed perimeters, running routine patrols and ambushes in the local villes. Virtually all the company commanders and platoon leaders were young lieutenants. Isolated as they were, as far as Lugger could discern, on little hillocks for what became months on end, most fought the war according to their personal interpretation. This meant a certain number were looking for no trouble. That mood trickled down to the grunts. There were some men any unit would have been proud to claim, and a few wild men who took ears from their kills and prodded villagers in front of them during minesweeps. But most were just counting the days until they could get out of the Nam and the Crotch. They were stale and unenthusiastic, fighting a war of “surprise firing devices”—booby traps—in the mind set of withdrawal.
There was another reason for Lugger’s bitterness. One of the men’s jobs was security for Division Ridge, where the living was quite comfortable. Only a few hundred meters away, the grunts were sweating out night ambushes.
Lugger sensed that his orders were often sandbagged.
He repeatedly requested regiment and division to send his battalion on a defined combat operation. That would have increased casualties, but it made sense. The average Marine in a dangerous situation, where his skills must be sharp and where buddies are depending on him, can be a warrior. That same Marine, when hot, bored, and idle, when exposed constantly to the corruptions of the rear, can respond with the restless immaturity of most nineteen year olds.
So it was in 2/7 Marines. The most volatile problem was race relations. If the blacks’ anger could be honed down to one immediate concern, it was that they were being used as cannon fodder in a war that was of no concern to them.
PFC Norton had originally served in the Fox Company mortar squad; he gave up that skating job and volunteered for one of the company’s rifle platoons because the racial situation at battalion rear was intolerable. As far as Norton was concerned, the white corporal was the leader only on paper. He had finally acquiesced to the black bullies in the mortar squad; and their only aim was to “get over.”
Maj Jim Steele, operations officer at Dai La and one of the most respected officers in the battalion, commented on one of the racial outbursts:
It was just before 2300 and there were rifle shots fired within the camp. I called the CP Security Officer to see if sappers were inside the wire with us. I was advised that the shots had been fired by one of our people—a black soldier—at his platoon sergeant but that he had missed. Shortly after I heard more shots. The next report said that the man was shooting at lights