Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [14]
Some of the Polar Bears were getting flaky. Patrols were faked. GIs assigned to listening posts off the LZs often just holed up in an empty perimeter bunker. Men fell asleep on guard duty in the bush even though sometimes when they moved out the next morning, they found their claymore mines turned around to face them and the trip handles of flares secured with string. Ammunition was quietly tossed into the brush on patrols to lighten the load. Shamming became popular because it was mildly punished at best; GIs could stretch out R and Rs for days by hanging with buddies in the rear. So could men who dreamed up any excuse to get out of the bush for awhile.
“It was a ludicrous way to run a war,” Bleier wrote.
SP4 Barry Parsons rotated to Alpha 4–31 in April 1969, after three months as a security guard in Chu Lai. He described ten of their hard, drab days in and around Landing Zone West in his pocket diary:
Beginning to hate Jim Dean more everyday. Matt is a pain in the ass too. If he doesn’t watch him he’ll be walking around with a busted mouth.… They sure do like to hassel you up here on LZ West. The CO jumped in Sticks shit & mine. Told us both to shave off our side burns. They finally had memorial services for those two fellows who were killed.… We’re walking a little over 6 klicks one way. Down Nui Liet. What an ass kicking walk it was. All of us are burning up from the sun. When we were at the top of Nui Liet the CO told us to go back down the hill again to the same place. 3 Dinks were spotted there. Boy was everyone mad about it. A lot of us didn’t want to go at all, and LT Rice almost had a mutiny on his hands. CO wouldn’t even drop us in water or food either. That really gave everybody the ass. Walked down and everybody is either sick or getting there. Got almost to our position when guys started falling out left and right.… Our squad almost got caught not going out on LP last night by LT Rice and Top Price. They walked right pass Sticks and didn’t see him. I thought it was all over for us.… Pat and I are taking out the LP tonight. Probably go to Bunker 29 too. We waited for Pat to show up but at 9:00 we went down to B-29 without him. Finally he came down all fucked up on pot. Rayborn crashed on guard twice last night which gave me the ass. He could have gotten us all in trouble.… By the way they act you’d think it was stateside up on a LZ.… Today is just another detail like always, and we’re still working on wire laying.… Sometimes a fellow can get real depressed over here in Nam. It’s the same routine every day.
These men were draftees, but they were not antiwar. They saw problems in their units but did not consider them on the verge of collapse. Sure, we smoke Mary Jane on the LZs, Parsons reckoned, but there’s a time and place for everything. He saw only one man in his platoon smoke grass in the bush; some GIs caught him and punched him around.
SP5 Joseph Kralich, a conscientious objector and senior battalion medic, noted that once the battle started, malingering stopped. He saw only one patient on LZ West who was not physically injured: the man’s best friend had been killed with him in one of the first, violent contacts, and he was in a trance. As for the rest, Kralich commented, “Most were tired and in physical and emotional pain, but still resolved to survive. Out of water, ammo, and medical supplies, they were forced to survive on instinct and training, but with solid leadership being there when called upon.”
Combat finally turned many of them into real soldiers.
“Considering the conditions and horrendous odds,” Private Jandecka wrote after the summer battles, “the men of 4–31 performed markedly well. In spite of their battle weary condition, the men followed orders faithfully. Oh yes, often with much grumbling but always as ordered.”
On 23 February 1969, the NVA staged a midnight sapper attack on the 1st MarDiv HQ and 26th Marines CP on Division Ridge. They breached the wire and captured several bunkers,