Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [75]
A Company, 3d Battalion, 21st Infantry, 196th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, under 1stLt Eugene Shurtz, Jr., was to lead the Gimlets into AK Valley. They were on a hill called the Birthday Cake, so named because it terraced to its low peak, the handiwork of rice farmers long gone. Alpha Company had humped up it the previous day with PFC Thomas G. Goodwin walking point. Halfway along, Lieutenant Shurtz had halted him to show him his map and confirm where they were.
Shurtz was brand new and trying hard.
Goodwin, on the other hand, was twenty-one years old and had been in the bush ten months. He was never exactly clear why he was there, but his father had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and his older brother had also done his time. He was from a solid, patriotic family, and when the government asked, he did not think to resist. Actually, Goodwin was a grunt because of a fluke. He dropped a class in junior college, knowing that cancelled his student deferment, but figuring he could slip by to the next semester when he’d resume a full load. Think again. After the draft finally deposited him in Vietnam, he decided what the hell, it was time to see what he was made of. He refused an assignment as the platoon RTO and instead volunteered to walk point. Because of heavy casualties in the recent heavy fighting, he’d even served as acting platoon leader. On the Birthday Cake, Private Goodwin was acting squad leader, first squad, 3d Platoon; of those men, he’d written his parents recently that he had, “… a good squad. In fact, it’s so good it makes the other squads look sick.”
Before Alpha Company departed for AK Valley, the 3–21 C&C landed on their hill. Lieutenant Colonel Howard was there to see Lieutenant Shurtz; A Company was to conduct an airmobile combat assault into the paddies between Hill 102 and the Nui Lon ridge line. The men would be going in with as much ammo as they could carry, but no rucksacks and only two canteens per man; there was no reason to carry C rations. Howard obviously was not expecting a prolonged fight; but as things developed, the Gimlets’s piecemeal response to the NVA attack was unwise. The cadre of leadership in their foe, the 3d NVA Regiment, was most likely unchanged from the battle in June, and their bunker tactics were the same as they had been then and many other times in the past. But it was extremely difficult for the U.S. Army to take advantage of this repetition because the leaders at battalion and company level changed so often.
The C&C also dropped off Ollie Noonan of the Associated Press; he had been covering the 11th Brigade at Duc Pho and had just returned to the Da Nang press center when the action broke. He and his partner, Richard Pyle, were the first reporters on the scene, having choppered up only that morning. Pyle went to LZ West while Noonan went to LZ Center and thumbed a ride aboard the C&C to get to the bush. He was a tall guy with a handlebar mustache and a Boston clip, who was affable to the curious grunts. Men were shouldering ammunition bandoliers and checking rifles as they talked, getting ready. Hueys began orbiting their green hill. Smoke grenades were tossed out.
Alpha Company left the Birthday Cake in intervals.
The first lift was greeted by AK47 fire from the trees as the Huey settled into a sun-blasted paddy in AK Valley. Lieutenant Shurtz disembarked from the second lift. One of the birds was coming out when an RPG shrieked past it; the pilot veered to avoid a possible second shot, the tail rotor smacked into a palm tree, and the Huey did an uncontrolled spin at fifteen feet before crashing to the ground. The crew grabbed their M16s and scrambled aboard another Huey