Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [3]
When the North Vietnamese were thirty feet away, the point man suddenly sprang into view, blasting off four incredibly quick shots from his pump gun before the NVA even realized what was happening. The NVA officer bounced off his feet and crashed back down into the brush six feet away, his chest and head pulverized. In the same instant, LaRue squeezed the trigger, felt the grenade launcher buck hard against his shoulder, saw the other North Vietnamese collapse.
The jungle erupted with return fire. LaRue tried to break open the M79 to reload, but his mind choked with panic. He could hear NVA moving at them. Oh God, no, we’re going to die. No way out. His hands shook uncontrollably; the breech wouldn’t budge. The point and deuce were firing furiously. LaRue finally slammed the weapon against his knee, pulled out the spent casing, dropped in another round, and snapped it shut. The safety stuck. He dropped the M79 in a panic and grabbed at his Colt .45, but the pistol holster was twisted around behind him. He couldn’t reach it. He grabbed the stock of Zoller’s M16, but Zoller refused to give it up. LaRue picked up the grenade launcher again, forced the safety off, aimed at the noises, and fired. The round spun from the barrel, but exploded short and blasted shrapnel back over the Marines’ heads. He reached into his ammunition bag and pumped off two more rounds. His terror began to evaporate as he got the M79 working. He became resigned to the fact that they were going to be overrun and killed, that there was no reason to fear the inevitable. All they could do was make themselves expensive; so, while the radioman calmly maintained his vigil calling for air support, the other three laid down enough fire to sound like a small army. LaRue pounded two rounds into a thick tree trunk above a gulley; the NVA who’d been sunning themselves had ducked there when the shooting started, and they did not reappear.
Over the cacophony, they distinguished the propeller buzz of two OV10 Bronco observation planes. Then the cool, reassuring drawl of a pilot came over the radio, “Coffee Time, Coffee Time, this is Cowpoke Three. I hear you got some problems with the little brown people. Well, just mark your pos with an airpanel and we’ll throw around some shit.” The Broncos came in under Zoller’s direction, strafing across the creek with 40mm automatic cannons and 7.62mm machine guns. On their last pass, they laid a grouping of white phosphorus rockets into the NVA camp. Behind them, a flight of F4 Phantom jets rolled in on the hot, white smoke curling up through the green canopy. The Marines hugged earth, palms tight against their ears, under the supersonic scream of dives and the convulsion and concussion of hundreds of pounds of exploding bombs.
In the confusion, the Marines who’d been atop the ridge during the firefight slipped down and they all headed down a trail away from the exploding chaos of the camp. They moved for five hours without rest, exhausted bodies spurred on by the knowledge of what would happen if they stopped. They paused once to fill canteens from a creek. They finally stopped when it was too dark to see. Every hour throughout the night they could hear the NVA firing single shots as signals between the hunting parties. When the first fuzz of daylight appeared, the team moved out again. From a field of green elephant grass, razor-sharp and reaching above their heads, they could see the sky become dotted with helicopters. A Sea Knight descended into the waving blades with its back cargo ramp down, door gunners tight behind their fifties. In moments, the recon team was aboard. Then they were up and out.
From December 1968 to December 1969, MajGen Ormond R. Simpson was commanding general, 1st Marine Division, headquartered on Hill 327 three kilometers west of the coastal city of Da Nang, Republic of Vietnam. General Simpson was described by one of