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By Root 741 0

would be interested in these iron monsters.” They advanced on the hill from another angle; Gayler stood on the tank deck and the Marine section leader asked if he minded if they reconned by fire. Gayler replied, “Sergeant, I think you’d be foolish if you didn’t.” He had just jumped from the deck and had not yet passed word that the tanks were going to fire when both let loose with a shrieking canister round. He looked around and realized he was the only one still standing; everyone else thought it had been incoming and they were down behind the tanks, the dikes, or the trees. As the tankers put .50-caliber fire into the hill, Gayler jokingly chided his men to their feet and they advanced.

Jandecka had been sick at heart with worry. His first firefight the day before had been like nothing he’d expected. He wasn’t sure he could take a repeat. The sight of the tanks was comforting, but more reassuring was the mail brought in by the morning resupply bird. He got a letter from his father which made reference to Psalm 4.8. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, do make me to dwell in safety.” It brought tears to his eyes and he did his best to swallow his fear and hump along with his comrades.

There was no NVA fire.

A cautious sweep of the knoll turned up numerous spider holes, four reinforced bunkers, a 60mm mortar base plate, seventeen 60mm shells, two NVA packs, and an old carbine. There were blood stains in some of the spider holes, but the only bodies were those Bravo Company had left behind.

It took awhile to find the two men who’d been killed in the second attack, mostly because one may not have been dead when they’d retreated. He’d taken a head wound but apparently woke up in the night and crawled deep into some bushes. He died alone sometime before the sweep arrived; at least, that’s what it looked like. Gayler noticed that, when a helicopter arrived to drop off body bags and take the dead back out, a few GIs shied away from the body detail; they’d shared C rations with those men, but in death they were some kind of bad omen.

The bodies weren’t the only passengers on the medevac. Brantley’s squad leader, one of only two sergeants in the platoon, complained he’d cracked a rib during the fight. He left on the Huey and managed to swing a job in the rear.

Brantley himself went out with torn back muscles. He returned to the company, but not before he and a couple of Bravo walking wounded left the hospital for a week’s siesta in a Da Nang whorehouse. What are the lifers going to do, send us to Nam? they speculated. As it was, they were reduced in rank. So what?

PFC Marion Feaster soon reupped to get out of the bush.

So did two of the FNGs.

After the medevac, the sweep turned around and returned to their night laager. There was much bickering when they discovered that the Marines guarding their rucksacks had fingered through them. One GI was relieved of a prized bottle of whiskey and he wanted blood. They did not get their satisfaction; the Marine tanks and infantry soon headed east to rejoin their battalion. Bravo Company moved out at dusk too, humping west to assume security outside the Resettlement Village. Jandecka’s squad had the drag position. Eates was walking last. He was sick with fever, stumbling, barely keeping up. He toughed it out, though, only asking Jandecka, who was just ahead of him in the line, to look back occasionally and make sure he hadn’t passed out on the trail. Jandecka did so gladly, remembering the rucksack incident. There was something claustrophobic about the valley, as if the NVA were everywhere, ready to ambush two straggling GIs. If imagination could kill, Jandecka would have been a victim that night.

On 28 August, A/4–31 Infantry and I/3/7 Marines had made the linkup without contact. On 29 August, the Battle of Hiep Duc Valley was essentially over. That morning, the grunts of Lima Company 3/7 slumped sluggishly in their holes as eight mortar rounds exploded among them. That was a departing volley from the NVA pulling out of Nui Chom; medevacs took out fifteen