Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [77]
Goodwin suddenly noticed that everyone, including the officers, was looking at him from behind the trees. He barked at them, “Yeah, we got some real bad shit up there! They ambushed us!”
Alpha 3–21 combat assaulted into AK Valley, and Bravo 3–21 was close behind on foot. They’d started out from Hill 352 after a platoon from Charlie 3–21 was brought in to pick up their rucks—Bravo Company was being sent in fast and light. At least one man kept his rucksack, though. PFC Eric R. Shimer, a grenadier in third squad, 3d Platoon, dumped the paraphernalia from it and reshouldered it with only his last can of warm beer, a can of charlie rats, and thirty rounds of ammunition.
Private Shimer was one of the new breed of grunt that came when the rules governing student deferments were changed. He was drafted out of law school at Villanova University. On his helmet cover, he had opted for something “ethnic, esoteric, and double entendre,” namely a penned-in Iron Cross with the words Gott Mit Uns. Shimer was a conservative, but also a sardonic realist. It was perhaps cynically appropriate that his Purple Heart was the result of what was euphemistically called “friendly fire.” A Marine Phantom had accidentally toggled a 750-pound bomb within twenty meters of his squad during the June bunker fight, and Shimer caught a two-centimeter piece of steel in his leg.
Shimer had been in-country five months.
Shimer’s platoon, under 1stLt Gordon J. Turpin, had the drag position as they humped down the jungled ridge line and then toward AK Valley to the west. The platoon used the main trail not by choice—it was easily ambushable—but for speed. It was more than five kilometers as the crow flies. No one really knew what was going on, the men were hungry and fatigued, and the sunbake practically finished them. By the time they approached Alpha Company’s noisy perimeter, Shimer thought they were a bunch of zombies.
They’d been pushed too hard, too long.
Bravo Company had not had a respite from the field since right after the May battle. Finally, on 6 August, they had been lifted to LZ Center via Hueys, then were loaded on Chinooks bound for Charger Hotel, the brigade’s stand-down billets in Chu Lai. They turned in their gear, were issued fresh fatigues, then straggled off in little groups to the Americal PX and the USO. Bad rumors were afloat, all of which the company commander, Capt Ronald V. Cooper, confirmed that night. Most of the company had gathered, some stoned, some drunk, for the floor show. Captain Cooper came on first, looking very distraught. “I hate to tell you this, but …” Stand down was cancelled. Bravo was going back to the bush in the morning.
The grunts burst into shouts and obscenities.
On 7 August, Bravo Three was lifted to LZ East, the rest of Bravo to LZ Center. More wire had been strung since the sapper attacks, and the nightly artillery barrages around the perimeter were close enough to send everyone ducking their own shrapnel. Nerves were clicking.
On the 9th, Bravo airlifted to abandoned LZ Prep.
On the 11th, the men conducted a predawn patrol which found nothing, then spent the rest of the day dismantling the LZ prior to abandoning it again.
On the 12th, the artillery was lifted off by Hooks and the infantry in Hueys. LZ Center had just been mortared and Bravo Company was sent to augment Delta Company on the bunker line. That night they watched flashes light up AK Valley; the concussions came ten seconds later. Marine Air was clearing the way for a group of planes spraying Agent Orange. The fire base mortar crews fired parachute flares all night and, in the light of one, Shimer and his buddy Ski suddenly noticed an NVA strolling through the wire below