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By Root 689 0

to these calls, the men at Chu Lai scrambled to their vehicles. Keefer had heard no order to do so, but they pulled up to the post gate. Men were standing on the decks of their tanks and tracks, flak jackets over bare chests, frag grenades and smokes hanging across gun shields, and they broke out the ammunition for the machine guns as they argued with the MPs on duty to open the fucking gate! The adrenaline was pumping, but an officer appeared and simmered them down. The only way to Hawk Hill, he explained, was up Highway One. The NVA were attacking throughout the area and they most likely had set up along the road to ambush the re-act; plus, the highway was hemmed in by rice paddies and their vehicles couldn’t maneuver well in them. The men returned to their bunkers, pissed off, and frustrated. They could only sit and monitor the jumbled conversations coming over the radio. NVA inside the wire at Hawk Hill. Artillerymen firing their 105-point blank. A GI from tank two-nine shouting that they’d taken two RPG hits and needed a medevac for two men seriously wounded with shrapnel in the chest and face. Medevacs kept away by the ground fog and ground fire. Automatic fire and explosions came through the buzz of the radio.

Little else had been as painful to Keefer as listening to buddies dying and not being able to do a damn thing to help.

That night was the beginning of the 1969 Summer Offensive. More than a hundred locations, both military and civilian, including hospitals, were shelled or attacked by the communists; most attacks were ended or repulsed by dawn. One assault, however, was to be the start of something bigger. The target was Landing Zone West, base camp of the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, overlooking the Hiep Duc Valley. Sappers and infantrymen of the 3d Regiment, 2d NVA Division crept up this jungled mountainside under the cover of darkness, toting satchel charges and automatic weapons, their skin blackened with charcoal. In addition, three Soviet-manufactured 12.7mm antiaircraft guns had already been dug in at the base of LZ West to hamper medevacs and gunships.

Thus, 12 August was the official beginning of the battle for Hiep Duc Valley; but it was really on 8 August that the troubles began for the Polar Bear battalion.

Delta 4th of the 31st Infantry had made that contact.

Delta Company was commanded by Capt Norman B. Mekkelsen, a soft-spoken West Pointer. The company’s premature contact with the NVA occurred in Happy Valley. This populated rice bowl—named because it was sniper-infested and everyone was damn happy when they left it—was north of LZ West and south of LZ Ross. It sat at the eastern tip of Nui Chom, the rugged ridge line defining the northern frontier of Hiep Duc Valley. C and D Companies had been sent in to screen for the USMC’s Operation Durham Peak.

On 8 August, a platoon from Delta under a new lieutenant surprised five NVA at a lowland stream. They gunned down four, then hastily chased the survivor as he disappeared up a brushy slope of Nui Chom. It was rough going and one of the platoon’s best soldiers was near the front of the uphill chase. As he climbed over a huge boulder, an AK47 suddenly opened fire from only yards away, nailing the grunt in the chest. He fell dead as heavy NVA fire erupted. At the time, Captain Mekkelsen was about two kilometers away with 1st Lt Juan Gonzalez’s platoon. Mekkelsen tried to raise the platoon in contact, but no one answered. The RTO finally responded, then gave the mike to his lieutenant. This was his first firefight and—with AK rounds snapping just overhead and Chicom stick handle grenades bouncing down at them—he reported he was pinned down. The NVA were above them on the mountainside, concealed in spider holes burrowed under boulder outcroppings.

Mekkelsen radioed back that he’d better get his platoon organized and moving, or they’d die in place.

The new lieutenant said they couldn’t move.

Exasperated, Mekkelsen told Gonzalez to be ready to move immediately if needed. He then gathered his weapon and ammunition, took his FO and RTO, and told Gonzalez