Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [39]
Fagan lay in the brush, quickly sizing up the situation. The company had to renew the momentum of the assault, and quickly. LAW rockets and M79 grenades were not knocking out the family bunkers dug near the hootches. Fagan radioed his platoon leaders to set up their E8 gas launchers and to fire the CS over their heads into the ville area. He did not pass the order to don gas masks; the wind was behind them, and the men looked too hot and tired to fight in them.
If all went well, they’d follow the gas in.
The CS exploded in white clouds, then dissipated in invisible gusts. A bit off-target, Fagan noted, but a gentle, steady breeze carried it like a carpet over the hootches and bunkers. It must have been incredibly hot and stuffy in the bunkers. The NVA fire became disorganized, and Fagan shouted into his radio to his lieutenants.
Someone near Corporal Cominos began screaming, “Stand up, get on line!” The men charged automatically, simple and straight ahead. They were up and in the open for thirty yards. The air snapped and cracked around Cominos’s head.
God, oh God, go, go, go!
Dirt kicked up around them. The air itself was screaming.
Faster, shit, move, move!
Cominos burst into the thicket ahead, almost tripping over several North Vietnamese slumped in and around their spider holes. The fire from ahead was still fierce, but he hurried on, M16 up from the waist, pouring sweat. He passed a dilapidated, old hootch, then an awful sensation suddenly hit him. Something was wrong. The hootch! In his haste, he hadn’t fragged it. He jogged back, just as two grunts following him popped grenades into the family bunker. One cranked his M16 into the hole, then peered in. He shouted that two dead NVA were inside. Oh Lord, Cominos thought, they could have wasted me so easily when I went past. He joined the two Marines, suddenly laughing, “Oh boy, I gotta get my act together!”
Cominos rushed into the next brush line. There was Captain Fagan, standing in the fire and casually turning as Cominos’s squad staggered in hollow-eyed and sweating. Fagan pointed. “Take your Marines and put them over there.” Cominos was incredulous; how’d the Skipper get here so fast! Cominos would follow that man anywhere.
The squad hit the dirt, and an NVA cut loose on them from a spider hole twenty yards ahead. A Marine instantly charged past Cominos.
He emptied his M16 into the hole.
All along the Delta line, men were charging wildly. Captain Fagan could see the backs of NVA as they ran, could see Marines storming after them, firing on the run, screaming, rolling grenades into bunkers and spider holes. Fagan’s heart was pumping wildly. He saw one NVA hop from a hole seventy-five meters ahead. He already had his .45 out and he fired a couple of rounds at the man, laughing with relief. He thought, when you can finally see the NVA, you know they’re losing. Gunny Richards fired his .45 also, laughing with the release of tension, then laughing with Fagan because they couldn’t hit a thing.
They calmed down and returned to their radios to get the grunts back under control before they completely overran the battalion line.
To their left, C Company was still fighting for its life.
Sergeant Lowery—acting platoon sergeant and already scratched up from a close RPG back at the burial mounds—was firing his M16 at the second NVA trench. His lieutenant hollered at him to link up with Delta Company, and he took off to the right in a running crouch, holding his helmet down. Something exploded beside him and shrapnel stung his legs. He could feel nothing, kept moving. He stumbled upon what he thought was Delta Company’s flank—a lieutenant and some grunts crouched amid a tree grove. An AK47 was cracking from a family bunker ahead. The lieutenant looked at him incredulously and shouted that he’d just run through the NVA. It didn’t mean a thing, didn’t even click with Lowery. He was