Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [21]
Bravo and Delta Companies usually worked in unison, so it was on 25 July that Lieutenant Peters made a mildly horrified note in his own diary concerning Bravo. Three NVA had been killed in one of Bravo’s ambushes; the grunts ripped one’s shirt off and carved “B 1/7” in his back. The head was hacked off another corpse. Peters had never seen anything like it. The rumor was that the NVA had treated some of Bravo’s dead in a like manner, and the frustrated grunts were taking their payback. That was how the Marines put it: Payback is a Mother Fucker.
Morale among the grunts could not have been described as enthusiastic. The sweat and dust of the Arizona did not allow for that. But the men of 1/7 were remarkably untouched by the problems beginning to plague other units and they performed the mean task at hand professionally and, on occasion, with elan. They were one of the best battalions in the division.
The character of a unit begins at the top, and that was most clear with John Aloysius Dowd. He looked like a football tackle and was the father of six; he’d put in two years with the Merchant Marines and at age twenty joined the Corps; he was commissioned via OCS after enlisted boot camp. Vietnam was his first war and one of his company commanders, Weh, described him as a “hound straining at the leash.” Dowd took over the battalion after seven months on the staff at 1st MarDiv HQ, and he literally revelled like a Patton in his first combat command: toting a grease gun, unflappable under fire, a shamrock drawn on his flak jacket. He led from the front.
That was one side of Dowd, the tough-guy image. To his company commanders, he was known as Uncle Jack and they appreciated his style of delegating and supervising. He did not ram orders down his captains’ throats, but assigned a mission, offered a positive attitude and motivation, and let them run their own shows. Dowd appreciated the stress the men were under and he made an effort to appear relaxed and to keep everyone informed and involved. He spent a good portion of his time with the line companies, talking with the captains and lieutenants, but mostly with the grunts, just shooting the breeze and quietly trying to get a feel for morale.
He appeared a happy man.
Lieutenant Colonel Dowd took over in March, and on 21 April 1969, he won a Silver Star. When a night listening post spotted two hundred NVA preparing to cross the Vu Gia in sampans, Dowd joined the small group and helped direct the subsequent barrage. The NVA unit disintegrated in confusion and by morning light, the Marines counted seventy-one bodies in the streambed weeds. One Marine had been slightly wounded. Eight days later, Dowd took B Company into the Arizona. Captain Fagan’s D Company had led that first foray, conducting a quiet night crossing of the Vu Gia and securing the shore for the arrival of Dowd and B Company the next morning. B Company immediately kicked off towards a suspected NVA concentration. Intelligence was right this time and, in short order, Bravo was bogged down under automatic weapons and mortar fire with heavy casualties. Fagan led Delta on a flanking attack which overran the mortar site and an NVA battalion camp. They consolidated for the night and weathered a mortar raid. At dawn, the NVA were still around them. The air and arty were brought in Danger Close and drove off the enemy.
The April operation had solidified Dowd’s standing in the battalion. It had much the same result for Captain Fagan of Delta Company. He had taken over only weeks earlier from a steely and effective commander, but by the time D Company walked out of the Arizona,