Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [34]
They came at us from two sides and we had gooks in the open, gooks in the trees, and gooks everywhere.… By the time you read this the enemy offensive will be old news, but they really hit everyone today, everywhere! Rockets, ground attacks, mortars, you name it. I can’t figure those God Damn dinks out. If they wanted Nixon to pull out troops they’re sure not making it easy for him. To hell with them all they can keep coming down and we’ll keep killing the stupid, indoctrinated SOBs.
Lance Corporal Zotter stood along the crest of the hill, watching other Marines stack up the captured gear and lay the dead NVA in a line. One grunt stood over the dike where the last two had gone down fighting, and hollered up, “Hey, this one’s still alive!”
Dowd answered from the hill, “Where’s he hit?”
“He’s shot right in the ass!”
The Marines along the hillock burst into rough laugher and shouts. Dowd hollered to bring the prisoner up, and the grunts reached down and effortlessly hefted the little NVA like an empty sack of oats. Three others helped carry him up by his arms and legs, and they tossed him down almost at Zotter’s feet. The NVA had a battle dressing placed on his buttocks and tied around his leg, and he was stiff, frightened, and in a lot of pain. Two Vietnamese scouts crouched beside him and began firing off questions. The NVA gritted his teeth in a grimace of pain, and shook his head no, no, no. One of the scouts slid his knife up the prisoner’s anus, then twisted. The man’s eyes almost popped from his head. He talked.
Lance Corporal Wells did not see this torture. He did, however, notice more than one grunt veer from his path across the hill to give the NVA prisoner an angry kick.
Zotter thought Dowd was a scrappy old bird, and decided to sit near where the colonel was conducting his business. Dowd was on the radio and it sounded like he was arguing with someone who didn’t quite believe him. “… But I’ve got fifty dead gooks out here!” Zotter got the impression Dowd was trying to convince some rear staff officer when he ordered the dead NVA piled up on a cargo net. They folded the edges up, hooked them to a ring at the top, then secured the net to the underside of another Sea Knight. The chopper took off with the stuffed cargo net swaying below it, arms and legs sticking through the rope weave. It wasn’t much later that Zotter witnessed another example of the colonel’s grit. Dowd was resting, leaning back, when a Vietnamese voice suddenly shouted over the radio. Dowd grabbed the handset and answered his foe’s cocky shout with, “Come and get me, motherfucker!”
In accord with standard operating procedure, the initials and last four numbers of each dead man’s serial number were radioed to battalion rear on Hill 55. Lieutenant Peters, XO, D/1/7, choked when he deciphered their KIA report. Cashman had been in his platoon for three months. He was tall and handsome, blond hair, blue eyes, with a little teenage grunt mustache. A good guy, a damn good Marine. His body had been found where he’d been firing from, and was choppered to Graves Registration in Da Nang. Peters and an enlisted man who’d known the deceased were detailed to formally identify the body.
Cashman lay in a drawer at the 1st Med morgue, naked, hands stiffly crossed against his chest from their position in the poncho litter. His eyes were open, eyebrows arched, mouth in a circle of astonishment. There was only one mark on him, a single bullet hole right below his navel. Six inches of intestine hung from the hole.
Peters went through his gear. There was a high school graduation photo of Cashman’s girl friend and her last letter to him, talking marriage. Oh, this sucks, Peters thought, feeling ill. No one else’s death—and he’d lost four men as a platoon leader—had affected him like this. His mind was churning. Cashman was a handsome, smart, squared-away Marine. He’s dead. He was going to get married. He volunteered. He’s dead. His parents were immigrants; it