Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [19]
There were no NVA, only more blood trails.
Meanwhile, the battalion command group was being lifted into the area aboard Sea Knights. Air strikes were run to suppress enemy fire and the door gunners pulled long bursts into the dried out tree lines. Still, more than a few AK47 rounds slashed through the elephant grass and thudded into the dirt around the CP Marines as they unassed the birds and organized. No one dove for cover—there really was no place to hide. The platoon finally moved out as the fire petered out. Once again, the sweep’s objective was the Hot Dog and the battalion pushed through the initial, evaporating resistance only to be rubbed raw by the sun and the distance. Lieutenant Peters, for one, had to reach into himself to keep going. The firefight had exhausted them, and they stumbled like drunks under their packs. They bunched up. When the column halted, they could only stand in a sweaty daze; they were supposed to drop to one knee and watch the flanks. Peters and his platoon sergeant walked the line, yelling themselves hoarse.
The CP column was moving slowly too. They were burdened under radios and mortars, and some men wished they would take fire just so they could lie down. As it was, they paused only to put the torch to any hootches in their path. Guys heaved rice baskets and work benches into the fires, and took photographs. The CP finally set up on the Hot Dog before nightfall, and Alpha Company dug in around them. The Hot Dog became the CP’s home for the remainder of the operation. They moved every two days from knoll to knoll so the NVA could not zero in on them, until by the end of the op they had humped up and down the Hot Dog three times. Even in the bush, it was mostly a routine.
Every day was the same, but a little different.
On their sixth day back on the Hot Dog, General Simpson helicoptered in for a brief visit. That night, LCpl Donald R. Wells, the new battalion radioman, saw his first North Vietnamese regulars. He and a buddy were sitting on a boulder on the perimeter, checking out the lowlands with a GreenEye night scope. About four hundred meters away they spotted six figures crossing a paddy, hunkered under packs, AKs, and B40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They quickly radioed the CP but it took fifteen minutes to get the 81mm mortars ready. Their first shot was way off, and Wells watched disgusted as the NVA ran and disappeared into a tree line. A few more rounds impacted into the paddy and finally the battalion liaison officer, a mustang lieutenant, got an M14 rifle with a night scope and opened up. It was impossible to tell if he hit anything.
They moved out the next night in a drizzle. Wells humped the PRC25 radio behind Lieutenant Colonel Dowd, M16 muzzle down over his shoulder, the radio handset wrapped in plastic to keep out the rain. They left a crew with their 106mm recoilless rifle on the hill, dug in and hidden by brush; Dowd planned to double back and catch any NVA who might move into the area after their apparent departure. As soon as they began hiking downhill, villagers—mostly women and kids who’d been congregating from the moment the Marines began saddling up—swarmed into the perimeter. The Marines burned their trash pits so the enemy couldn’t use anything, but a few C ration cans always survived. The CP humped a thousand meters through the paddies, and it was pitch black when a call came over Wells’s radio: the group on the hill had twenty NVA moving near them. Dowd grinned widely and told Wells to pass the word that they were turning around and heading back. A second call came: the NVA had disappeared before they could sight the