Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [155]
I Company (1stLt R. W. Ramage) was lifted out from a sweep of Barrier Island east of LZ Baldy.
K Company (1stLt T. B. Edwards) was fifteen klicks from Baldy when word came to return. It was midnight; they had destroyed a two-ton rice cache they’d uncovered, then made a forced march. They had walked in the Baldy perimeter at 0800, dropped their gear, and had just sat down in the mess hall when the company gunny said they were saddling up again in one hour.
L Company (1stLt J. F. Bender) was flown in from the field.
M Company (Capt C. W. J. Stanat) had been trucked to LZ Baldy from the bush,* then flown to LZ West.
The Marines gathering on Landing Zone West had been humping hard for weeks on end, and they had no time to rest before being committed to the latest action. They wearily sat in clumps around the Army bunkers, weighted under flak jackets, packs, and ammunition, helmets replaced with battered fatigue covers; they barely moved, but the noontime glare drenched them with sweat and the sheets of dust from the LZ coated them. They had no idea why they were being pushed so hard, and they were pissed off and nervous. Mostly, the grunts were bone-weary.
Because of the 12.7mm AAA fire covering the valley, Codispoti and Kummerow decided 3/7 would have to hump off the mountain rather than risk it in choppers. The hill was 445 meters high; Henry and Lee noted there were good trails down to the valley floor, and lent the Marines their Echo Recon Platoon. They pushed off at noon, but no trails were visible; instead, the point became immersed in high elephant grass. The Army platoon apparently had not been briefed on their specific mission, so Kummerow finally had them pulled back to West; his column, following compass azimuths, kept pushing downhill through the tangle. It was brutal going. Marines who fell out from the heat or who tripped and bruised themselves sat in the brush to recuperate, then tagged along at the rear of their company files. Corpsmen hooked IVs to the heat casualties who could not be revived, and medevacked them aboard the resupply helicopters that landed in clearings along the mountainside. The birds dropped off water blivets, plus helmets and flak jackets for those platoons who’d been on light patrol when scrambled.
It was probably close to 120 degrees under the canopy.
The column, which stretched for almost a mile, was like an accordion and Lima Company was at the end. More specifically, Third Herd was the last one off LZ West. Previously, Lieutenant Ronald and Sergeant Fuller had gotten the men lined up off to the side of the dusty LZ, making sure the ammunition and water resupply were broken down and passed out evenly. While the men saddled up, Lieutenant Ronald spoke to them. He repeated what they’d been hearing, that the valley was going to be bad. He said he knew Brown and Turner were due to rotate home soon and they now had the opportunity not to go. There would be no hard feelings. The grunts mumbled in agreement; a man owed it to himself not to get killed so close to going home. Decent.
Brown said he wanted to stay on the landing zone.
Turner was P. K. Smith’s partner on the sixty. He was a black man from the South who’d already been wounded once, and who talked with hostility about the white man’s war. But then he said, “Fuck it, I’m going.”
There is a special bond only grunts know.
Third Herd finally got moving through the breaks in the perimeter wire. Ten minutes out, the GIs on the LZ detonated some old crates of small arms ammunition, and rounds cooked off in hundreds of streamers over the men’s heads. Besardi sweated his way down beside Vaughn, the squad M79 man, mumbling that this valley was going to be the baddest of the bad. Someone started singing the “Fixin’ to Die Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish, and the platoon took it up … “What are we fighting for, don’t ask me I don