Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [82]
A journalist who joined Bravo Company in the bush two weeks later caught the flavor when he recounted conversations in the company headquarters at dusk:
“Someday we’re going to get together and all of us are going to say we aren’t going. The only thing that is stopping us now is Long Binh Jail, but if we all stick together, they can’t lock us all up.”
“Right on,” said another.…
Captain Cooper came over and joined the circle. “Hiya Coop,” said one of the men. Munson, the radio man, took a boxing stance and pretended to hit the captain, “You wanna take a picture of us kicking the shit out of the captain?”
Cooper sat down and we continued talking. “He knows what it’s like out here, not those generals and colonels with their grid maps and grease pencils,” said Munson. “There are no lifers out here.”
Like them, Cooper was in the Army because he had no choice, and like them he had no love for the war. He didn’t care about “body count” or about “making major.” All he wanted was to get as many people out alive as he could.
Bravo Company did not move from their night defensive position, but it was not a quiet night. The North Vietnamese were up and moving with the darkness and, from within the center of the company, the Bravo CP worked with B/3–82 Artillery on LZ Center. The shells slammed into suspected targets around the grunts; most of them simply ignored it. Claymores and trip flares were in place. PFC Shimer noted, “I discovered I could sleep through any commotion as long as it did not affect me or my defensive sector. But as soon as anything happened on my part of the line, I was instantly awake and taking appropriate action. This honing of the nervous system took over ten years to wear off.”
It was almost midnight before the North Vietnamese attacked again the French Hootch and the joint perimeter of Delta 4–31 and Charlie 2–1. Movement was heard all around the circle. Then came the crashing of RPGs and AK47s, the eruption of return fire, and the lull to sporadic shooting. Fifteen men were wounded, most of them from Charlie Company. Several grunts from Charlie carried one of their wounded buddies to the medics in the French Hootch. When they checked on him, one grunt mumbled, “Aw hell, he’s dead.” Captain Whittecar couldn’t believe it. There wasn’t a mark on the kid. He started mouth to mouth, then banged the man’s chest until he could hear a heartbeat. In a couple of minutes it stopped again, and Whittecar put his hand under the GI’s head to give him artificial respiration again. The back of his skull was mashed, blown away. Whittecar let him drop. Only later would he reflect on how cruel his reaction had been: Goddammit, I haven’t got time to waste on a dead man!
Spooky was on station again, miniguns funnelling thousands of rounds a minute around the perimeter. Whittecar’s only strobe light had been damaged by an RPG, so he had to constantly hold the on-switch. The French Hootch was in the center of the perimeter, and Whittecar lay on his back in the center of the floor. He held the strobe across his chest, had the radio beside him, and told the gunship pilot to hit everything thirty yards outside the light. RPGs slammed against trees and branches, raining down shrapnel. More than one RPG sprayed inside the hootch, kicking up gravel and dust, while the GIs pressed against the inside walls, hands over their faces. Whittecar, stretched across the floor with his strobe and radio, was amazed that he was only scratched in the explosions.
They went on all night.
Alpha Company 3–21 was probed. For Private Kruch it was a long night of blacking out, then coming to an adrenaline high at every noise in the dark. His squad was on the side of the line facing the paddies. In the far tree line, things seemed to be moving, but when flares popped