Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [62]
He screamed, cajoled, consoled, and after awhile it began to pay off. The young grunts seemed proud to realize how good they really could be.
Delta Company became the best.
Whittecar knew his maps, his tactics, and his soldiers. He was respected by his grunts, and the mutual feeling was the cornerstone to their new spirit. He was not a buddy to his men. He loved them like a father, but it was a restrained feeling. He allowed himself to become close to only a very few. To know their personal stories and hopes would have drained him of the ability to push his young draftees into the aggressive mind set needed to prevail against an aggressive enemy. Whittecar was a promoted grunt. His loyalty channelled down to the GIs and he could bullshit easily with them. He could also be icy tough on them. He was brave. He won his second Silver Star during a routine patrol in Hiep Duc. The point man had spotted a hootch in a clearing and Whittecar lay with him in the tall grass along a path, discussing the best way to get to the hut without being spotted. Just then, two Viet Cong appeared on the trail. The point man hollered and sprang up in front of Whittecar. His M16 jammed. Whittecar instantly shoved him down, stepped forward with his AR15 automatic rifle, and chopped down both Vietnamese.
In June, he turned over the company to platoon leader Mekkelsen. In the seven months that Whittecar had commanded Delta Company, they had the highest body count and the lowest casualty rate in the battalion.
Not a single man had been killed.
The first order of business on 18 August was to retrieve Hurst’s body. Whittecar huddled with his senior RTO, SP4 Jerry Faraci, and his platoon leaders. He decided to leave a group in position at the French Hootch while two platoons swept into the tree line, the company headquarters in trace behind them with the last platoon. It was hot and unnerving crossing that field, but there was no firing and the GIs fanned out along the last berm, facing the woods. They found Hurst and zipped him into a body bag. It was then that Whittecar saw the movement: where a sixty-foot field of parched grass rolled into the tree line, he saw something move behind a screen of bamboo. He shouted a warning to his men, then heaved two grenades into the bamboo. There was no response, so he tapped a GI and they pushed forward on their stomachs. Twenty feet from the bamboo, a single shot cracked at them. The grunt took it in the leg, and Whittecar triggered a quick M16 burst into the bamboo. Again, there was only silence.
Whittecar helped the wounded man crawl back behind the berm. Then he deployed Delta Company for the counterattack; one platoon was to remain in place with the CP along the dikes while the other two moved around the tree line from two sides. The maneuver was to be like a horseshoe around the bamboo grove, the open end pointing to their paddy. Whittecar reckoned that whatever the company had bumped into the day before had pulled out, leaving only a delaying force; he hoped to sweep them into that open field in front of his berm. He kept in contact with the two platoon leaders as they slowly pushed through the thick underbrush of the woods. They had nearly closed the horseshoe when heavy automatic weapons fire suddenly erupted.
The platoon leaders screamed on the radio that NVA were suddenly materializing from spider holes amid the vegetation. Casualties were heavy.
It was 1210.
The firing was enough for a battalion, and Whittecar quickly ordered the platoons to pull out. They leapfrogged back through the trees, some firing and some running crouched and dragging the casualties, those dropping behind trees to fire cover for the others.