Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [164]
“I’m sorry, but your buddy’s dead.”
Besardi couldn’t accept it. He just stood there in a daze until one of them mumbled, “C’mon, let’s go back up and help out the rest of the guys.” They started plodding back towards the dike. The first person they saw was Turner, the machine gunner who didn’t have to be there. He was stumbling back between two grunts, arms over their shoulders, blood running from shrapnel wounds in his eye and throat. The entire line was falling back with them.
By the time Besardi got back to the tree line, the casualties of Lima and Mike Companies had been dragged there and the corpsmen were working frantically. Besardi slumped into an exhausted stupor by the well. Four Marines were coming back, carrying the body of a fifth Marine by his arms and legs, chest up, head hanging and flopping grotesquely as they walked. There was a gaping hole in his chest. Naw, it can’t be, Besardi thought. He looked closer. Aw, no. It was Big Red Davis of Alabama, a buddy from boot camp and infantry training. Besardi had just talked to him the day before on LZ West: he was with Mike Company and in good spirits because he was under the impression that his company was to be the reserve. Besardi wandered back among the casualties. One of the corpsmen, a kid, leaned in a crouch against a berm. He was sobbing hysterically. There weren’t enough corpsmen to help all the wounded, and for a second Besardi had the evil impulse to shoot the bastard. Instead, he tried to coax the kid back to reality. The corpsman couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t respond.
Two NVA 12.7mm AAA positions were firing from the vicinity of Hill 381, mostly at the Phantoms flashing past. The grunts of 2d Platoon, Kilo Company, 3d Battalion, 7th Marines—resting at the base of the ridge line after their bout with snipers that morning—had the misfortune of hearing one of the gun positions. The platoon leader, 2dLt Arnold C. Nyulassy, radioed the company commander and the report followed the chain of command, until it came right back to the platoon.
They were to find and destroy the gun position.
The grunts were fatigued to the bone, murdered by the heat. But when Lieutenant Nyulassy said to saddle up, they pushed themselves one more time with a courage born of pride, discipline, and numbness. They advanced towards the ridge, then slumped into the underbrush as Phantoms ran another mission against Nui Chom and the suspected location of the gun. The grunts didn’t know it but their attack was visible from Landing Zone West, and the command staff of the 7th Marines Regiment trained their binoculars northward. Colonel Codispoti, the ever-present cigar jutting from his jaw, was one observer; so was the reporter, Sterba, who’d hitched to West on the 196th InfBde C&C and who described the air strike:
Let me tell you a little about Marine pilots. They supported their grunts. I had never seen fighter pilots come in so low and stare down the .51s like these guys. The Air Force seemed to have a rule about not going below 2,000 feet to drop their napalm and bombs. These guys came in right on the deck. Or they’d dive straight into the .51 fire coming from the side of the ridge and unload their napalm at the last second. But each time, when they made another pass, at least one NVA would start shooting his .51 at them again. It must really have been dug in.
The last jet screamed over by 1400—the 12.7mm delivering a parting volley—then 2d Platoon of K/3/7 got moving again, trudging uphill through the thick vegetation of the ridge line. Fifty meters up, the AK47s commenced firing and everyone flopped in place as the bullets chopped the high brush above them. The fire seemed to be coming from one spot straight ahead. Lieutenant Nyulassy, who could have been no less tired than his men, was up shouting encouragement and directions, and the grunts fell into a ragged line again. They fired and threw grenades, and scrambled uphill. The NVA fire