Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [160]
He’d never seen a more miserable place.
Captain Gayler knew his men were wrung out; he knew they wanted only to sit there in the shade. But that’s not the way the game’s played. He put his helmet back on, and the company began a cautious hump. They stopped eventually in one part of a tree line facing a hillside of elephant grass dotted with overgrown hootches; that was where Gayler thought Delta 1st of the 46th had been halted three days before. With Lieutenant Maurel’s platoon on point, Bravo Company began moving into the sun-blasted paddy between their tree grove and the hill. The North Vietnamese—who were still in place—let them get halfway into the clearing. Then an NVA with a captured M60, tucked in one of the hedgerows at the base of the hill, opened fire.
One GI fell dead. Everyone else scrambled for cover. Private Jandecka, under fire for the first time, blindly followed several GIs as they rushed forward and flopped along a bank at the base of the hill, only to find themselves directly under the machine gun which put bursts over them as they pressed against the berm. A second NVA joined in from somewhere on the hill, using a captured M79 to lob grenades across the paddy and into the tree line. Another one of the new guys caught it, a splatter of red-hot shrapnel ripping open his back.
Jandecka had never heard such screams.
The dike that shielded the forward elements of the command group in the trees was about four feet high. Hodierne pressed against it as the M79 rounds began crashing through the branches; he thought, well, at least I don’t have to be here. That always made him feel better. The North Vietnamese were so close that he could hear the man snapping open the grenade launcher to eject spent casings and load fresh rounds. He sensed that the NVA were playing for time, that they did not plan to counterattack. The GIs around him felt it too. Many tucked themselves behind a piece of cover, heads down, and that was that. Hodierne commiserated with them: it’s a bad war; this battle has no point; and why get killed for one more dried out, useless rice paddy?
Other grunts were carrying the fight to the enemy. Brave, he thought, just plain brave.
Jandecka was one of those doing more than sitting it out, although his actions were mostly the result of inexperience and nerves. Pinned down under the NVA gun, he imagined some of the men slipping around the flank. He crawled down the berm to their left to keep it covered, then pushed up to get a good look. Almost as soon as he did, he saw the brush stir ahead of him. In that instant, an AK47 cut loose. Jandecka tumbled backwards as the rounds slammed squarely into his chest; then he quickly swept his hand over his shirt and realized there was no blood. The NVA had fired low and he’d caught only a spray of ricocheting pebbles and rock-hard dirt. GIs beside him were returning the fire; they couldn’t see the M60 position for all the brush, but men across the paddy could see the smoke and muzzle flash and hollered directions as the men along the berm blindly pitched grenades. Jandecka threw a few at the spider hole. It seemed futile.
Captain Gayler personally fired two LAWs into the machine gun position, but they had no effect. It was a boiling day and the artillery recon sergeant, crouched with the company headquarters, finally muttered angrily, “I’m tired of this.” With that, he scooped up two hand grenades and clambered over the berm. He began easing up to the spider hole along the cover of the dikes. At the same time, Private Brantley—the soldier who’d been chased into the infantry for fear of a court-martial—was also moving forward. Along with his squad leader sergeant, he pushed through the hedgerow