Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [151]
Other men were made of sterner stuff. Golf One made a quick head count and realized that two men—the Italian point and Lance Corporal Conway—had been left in the paddy. Sergeant Ferguson got together several volunteers and they crept down a dike to where the point man had last been seen. They looked and hollered but, with darkness falling, finally had to crawl back empty-handed.
At first light, the platoon cautiously moved back down the trail. Lance Corporal Conway sat up in the grass; he had passed out either from heat stroke or shock during the mortaring and sweated out the night alone. The point man was dead. He had been hit by shrapnel and crawled back as far as he could before succumbing; a trail of flattened elephant grass marked his torture. Both men were carried back in ponchos and medevacked. Golf One, which had entered the valley with forty-six men, was down to sixteen.
Echo and Fox Companies pulled together near the Old French Road, a dirt trail with a strip of weeds down the middle. That night, NVA crept up and tossed Chicoms into the perimeter, wounding several men. An M60 gunner spotted the NVA’s silhouettes, and pumped a burst into them. In the morning, they found a body in the weeds—a healthy Vietnamese kid in khaki fatigues.
It was the only NVA that Echo Company had seen since getting to the valley; it wasn’t enough and Gunnery Sergeant Yohe left the perimeter with several volunteers. No order had been given to do so, but they went tramping around for a little revenge. They found a cave opening and one of the young grunts discovered a small hole in the floor. He hollered that he’d found something and tugged at the bush concealing the hole. It suddenly exploded in his face. From what he reckoned was a Chicom grenade rigged to guard the entrance, the Marine got burns and shrapnel from the chest up. The grunts carried the man back to the perimeter, then kept looking.
Another grunt stumbled upon a second hole about fifteen yards away; both led into the same man-made tunnel.
Gunny Yohe said he was going in. He was thirty-three years old, and it wasn’t often that an old gunny elected to wiggle into an enemy tunnel. Tunnel rats were usually nineteen and crazy. Then again, Yohe was regarded as a little nuts—and very good. He crouched beside the tunnel opening, took off his helmet and flak jacket, and popped five fragmentation grenades into the black hole. Then he shimmied in head first. It was narrow, but he was a little guy. He crawled in with a .45 in one hand and an unlit flashlight in the other. Almost immediately, he heard a groan in the tunnel. He waited a bit to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then moved towards the sound as quietly as he could. The North Vietnamese was moaning in what seemed to be an unconscious delirium. Yohe could just make out his silhouette. He decided to drag him back out as a prisoner, but as he reached for the man’s ankles he suddenly became aware of a sensation. Whatever it was he never knew, but as soon as he felt it, he aimed his Colt .45 and instantly, instinctively opened fire.
Then he flipped on the flashlight. Just feet from him, two NVA were slammed against the side of the tunnel, shot dead.
A rope was brought down and the dead men and the wounded prisoner were hauled up. Yohe also brought out two AK47s, a rocket launcher, and some documents which the men’s Vietnamese scout said described NVA unit locations, supply points, etc. The grunts demolished the tunnel after dragging out the prizes; it measured seventy-five yards and had been unaffected by the previous air and arty strikes. Lieutenant Lindsay chewed out Yohe a bit for his recklessness, then put him in for the Silver Star.
The evening before, Codispoti had given a new mission to Lugger: retain the ground gained, recover and evacuate casualties at first light, then march