Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [73]
Chapter Eight
Hot CA Into AK Valley
The battle which B/4–31 began in Hiep Duc, better known as Death Valley, became the responsibility of 4–31 Infantry. The battle which D/4–31 began in Song Chang, better known as AK Valley, became the responsibility of 3–21 Infantry. The 3d Battalion, 21st Infantry, its command standard recently passed to LtCol Eli P. Howard, was headquartered on LZ Center (seven kilometers east of LZ West) and was also responsible for LZ East.
The 3d of the 21st Infantry had been making contact since May.
The recent history of the Gimlets, as the battalion called itself, could be traced most actively through C Company. Its commander, Capt Ernie Carrier, was a hard-core Cajun who won his third Silver Star and third Purple Heart during Operation Frederick Hill. The operation began on 12 May 1969, when an NVA regiment overran a South Vietnamese militia outpost in the coastal plains of Tam Ky. The 3d of the 21st Infantry was committed, and Carrier—who’d come in-country as a second lieutenant in November of 67—had not seen worse. On 14 May, Charlie Company was moving across an open rice field toward a tree line pounded by Marine Air when they found themselves in the middle of an NVA battalion. They took withering fire from all sides, including mortar and recoilless rifle rounds; an assault sent them scrambling back. Carrier got the survivors into a hasty perimeter, and there they halted the attack. A medic named Shea ran out four times to drag wounded into their little island; crawling towards a fifth man, he was wounded, then finally shot and killed as he continued his efforts. A GI who was separated from his platoon in the paddy was dragged off as a prisoner. Helicopters carrying ammunition resupply were almost shot out of the sky above Charlie Company; they were driven away. With darkness, artillery and gunship fire shook around the miniature perimeter. Illumination splashed above the company but, in the seconds of darkness between each flare, the NVA scrambled closer with RPGs and grenades. North Vietnamese were gunned down within yards of the perimeter. They pulled out only when the dawn brought reinforcements; they left more than thirty bodies behind.
Charlie Company survived that night because the men had guts; but of the eighty-nine men who started the fight, only thirty-six were unscathed.
PFC Daniel John Shea won the Medal of Honor.
“A few days like this,” Carrier wrote home, “and it’s looney bin time.” But the action had routed the NVA around Tam Ky, and 3–21 rotated its bloodied companies through Chu Lai stand down. By mid-June, they were back in action again, this time closer to home—in and around AK Valley. Bravo 3–21 (Capt Arthur Ballin) took casualties in a bunker complex—from which the NVA evaporated during the night—and the battalion reconnaissance platoon also pulled out of a bunkered area with several wounded. Delta 3–21 (Capt Steve Sendobry) was CA’d in to relieve Echo Recon. Delta called itself Black Death, and Sendobry was a strong commander on his second tour, but they fared no better; when the Gladiator Platoon, under 1stLt Steve Maness, took point, they came under heavy fire. The point was shot in the head and the platoon sergeant at the rear of the column was shot in the leg. Lieutenant Maness crawled forward with two men and managed to throw grenades into several bunkers; Maness got a hand on the point man, but could not pull him back under the fire. The next day, Maness and a squad got the body, but took more casualties in an ambush.
That night, 10–11 June, Delta humped toward LZ East to reinforce for an expected ground assault; the company was still three hours away when the flares began popping above East. The men could see NVA flamethrowers arching through the black. On LZ East, 1st Platoon of Alpha 3–21 and a detachment of artillerymen from B/3–82 were fighting for