Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [71]
There had been no NVA fire. Why not? Whittecar reckoned that the NVA were maneuvering into new positions for a renewed assault and didn’t want to expose themselves. Which didn’t mean, however, that he didn’t think those chopper crewmen were among the bravest men on earth.
It started all over again, AKs and RPGs.
Whittecar was too aware of the desperation welling in his chest. There was no doubt in his mind they were going to be overrun and killed. He decided to break up the company, every man on his own to get back to LZ West any way he could find. He almost passed that order, but the wounded gnawed at him. There were still casualties around the hootch who couldn’t walk. He couldn’t abandon them. Hell with it, he finally resigned himself; we’re going to die, but they’re going to pay too. It was no small solace to him that he thought his men would fight to the last man.
All night, Whittecar was on the radio to Lee; this was his umbilical cord. Inside the TOC bunker, under fluorescent lights, Lee was urgently working several radios to bring their firepower to bear. He had gotten the USAF Spooky gunship over Delta Company only after much arguing with brigade operations to convince them he was not exaggerating. Once the Spooky came on station, Whittecar took over and brought the minigun fire in a circle around his perimeter, thirty meters out. He joked over the radio to Major Lee as calmly as he could, “I finally got the sonsabitches where I want ’em. They’re all around me and they’re not going to get away this time!” Lee laughed, as did the CP GIs in the hootch. Which is exactly what Whittecar wanted; keep their spirits up, because it’s not going to do these men any good to know they’re going to die tonight.
Bravo Company linked up with Charlie Company around three in the morning. Captain Murphy told Captain Gayler to get his exhausted GIs inside the perimeter; his men would handle all the security watches. The grunts spread out in the elephant grass and fell into a comatose sleep. Before passing out himself, Gayler called up his platoon leaders to check that everyone had been accounted for after their long, confused march. Everyone had been.
In the morning, however, Lieutenant Maurel said there’d been a mistake. One of the RTOs, PFC Marion Feaster, a black kid from Florida, was missing. An angry Gayler radioed Lieutenant Colonel Henry to alter his initial report. He’d just gotten off the horn when AK47s cracked from outside the perimeter, and a lone GI came crashing and hollering through the brush, diving into the perimeter as others returned fire.
It was Private Feaster himself.
He reported to Gayler. As it turned out, he’d been coming up the stream bank when the ambush was sprung. He spun back to seek cover in the water, dropping his M16, and the GI ahead of him thought he was dead and grabbed the rifle. Feaster hugged the bank during the fight, finally slipping into an exhausted sleep as the cat ‘n’ mouse dragged on. He was jolted awake by the mortaring. Armed with only two fragmentation grenades, his ruck, and a radio ruined by shrapnel, he waded down the Song Lau in the general western direction the column had been moving. He came upon two NVA chattering on the bank. Feaster tossed a frag in their laps as he scurried up to the trail. He was walking down the path when AKs suddenly cut loose from behind; apparently, the NVA had let him pass through an ambush, realizing too late that he was not the point man for a bigger catch. Feaster paused long enough to hurl his last grenade at a party of NVA coming after him, then ran back to the stream and moved quietly along it until dawn. Then he returned to the trail and had almost made it back to his unit when he saw a couple of NVA about the same time they saw him.