Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [163]
Gayler passed the word to withdraw.
The medics rolled Doughty into a body bag, zipped it up, and a strung-out Brantley helped carry it as they straggled back down the trail.
PFC Tom Bailey stepped atop the berm and instantly collapsed in the sudden torrent of AK47 fire from the facing hill. In the next moment, his squad leader, Cpl John Reevs, bounded forward to pull him back. He too was blown down. Their corpsman, Doc Johnson, scrambled up next and helped get the two Marines to cover behind the berm. He hunched low and wrapped bandages: Bailey had an AK round through his neck, Reevs had two in his gut.
The rest of the two squads frantically ran from the open paddy as dust kicked up around them. The bouldered slope ahead seemed to be blazing with a thousand rifles. More rounds cracked through the air from the tree line to their left. They threw themselves down along the grassy green dike.
They were pinned.
Besardi and his buddy Sterling found themselves to the left of the mound—where the worst of the crossfire was hitting—trying to practically burrow into the berm. The air above them was electrified. RPGs slam-banged in, shrapnel whizzing in all directions, and Besardi thought simply and horribly: Jesus fucking Christ. Marines along the berm returned fire, shoving M16s and, maybe, helmet and eyes over the dike; they’d squeeze off a second’s worth of fire, then tuck back down as the AK rounds cracked back. Besardi and Sterling emptied magazines in two or three bursts, getting quick glimpses of the NVA among the boulders, but having no time to aim at them. The sun was hard over them.
Besardi was hunched back down when a terrific explosion suddenly bounced him and Sterling back into the paddy. Besardi lay there, out of touch with his senses, ears ringing, eyes closed, his entire body numb. Only his mind was clear. Am I dead? His buddy Joe Johnson was screaming and it cut through the fog, “You guys all right, you guys all right!”
Besardi realized he was alive.
He also realized he was uninjured, and made a dash on all fours back to the protection of the dike. Chico was firing his M60, and Turner and P. K. Smith were firing theirs; Besardi noticed several men trying to bring back the wounded Bailey and Reevs. They were to the right of the mound, shielded somewhat from the crossfire.
Ball, Dean, and a third Marine were laboring with Reevs in a poncho, and they were hollering to Besardi, “C’mon, Charly, we gotta get John back!” To reach them, Besardi would have to scramble away from the cover of the dike and rush around the knoll. He froze. His buddies were stooped with their comrade, shouting for help; their faces were a mixture of anger and pleading. Well, fuck it, Besardi thought, here I go; and he jumped into the paddy, landed painfully, and scrambled up.
It should have been a five-minute walk back to the tree line with the village well, but it turned into a death march. Even with four men dragging the poncho, it was a load, and the paddy mud slowed each step. The sun soaked them. Reevs grimaced from within the poncho, his voice a strained mumble against the pain, “Leave me alone, leave me alone, I’m gonna die, go back and help those guys out.” They answered in labored gasps, “Naw, John, man, you’re gonna be all right.… We’re gonna getcha back, we’re gonna getcha back.”
They had just reached the trees when Reevs looked up and said calmly, “It was really nice knowing you guys.”
The tree line had been secured by other elements of Lima Company, and the corpsmen had set up a hasty collection point among the trees and terraced paddies. They hustled Reevs to a corpsman and set down the poncho; the man quickly went to work. He ripped off the bloody shirt, exposing the two small entry holes in