Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [83]
On Private Goodwin’s side of the line, the men had dug shallow holes among the banana trees. A hootch sat in a clearing and the shrill screams of an arguing Vietnamese woman echoed from it. The voices of her antagonists could not be heard, but Goodwin instinctively thought he knew what was happening: the NVA were forcing her boy to walk at them to trip a flare or claymore. An AK shot suddenly rang out and the woman stopped shouting. A few minutes later, the men heard footsteps approaching. Randy Grove pulled a hand frag from his web gear, and Goodwin whispered not to pop the spoon before throwing it. That way the kid would hear the midair pop and beat it. That’s what they did, and the figure scampered away.
Thirty minutes later, there was a sudden, earsplitting crash outside the perimeter. A grunt bellowed, “Incoming, incoming, incoming!” Goodwin thought it was really a damaged tree that the NVA had shoved down to snap trip-flare and claymore wires, and he hollered, “No, man, that’s an incoming tree!” The tension was released in a burst of laughter down the line. Someone threw a frag towards the shadows.
Two hours later, the NVA dropped mortars around them, and at daylight, they discovered the downed Huey had been stripped of all salvageable gear.
Chapter Nine
Body Bags
Lieutenant Turpin of Bravo Company 3d of the 21st Infantry had the point on 20 August. At 0700 he passed word to his men to stay in their holes since artillery fire began pounding to the west. Hill 102 was in the process of turning from green to brown. Mild vibrations rolled back under the grunts. The arty stopped. Marine Phantoms rolled in.
Then Third Herd moved out with third squad on point.
Turpin trusted the third squad. Three weeks earlier, several Vietnamese had been spotted on a patrol and Turpin had radioed Cooper to volunteer his platoon to investigate. The men had crawled along terraced dikes to within thirty meters of a hootch in a lower section; a GI spotted two armed dinks. Turpin positioned Shimer and another grenadier on the trail to cover their attack, then he crept forward with Bob Boyd and Ray Wilcox. The two grunts rushed the hootch, flushing three NVA, and Lieutenant Turpin squared his M16 sights on them. He killed one Vietnamese and wounded another who managed to limp away with the third man. Shimer came up with the rest of the platoon and fired his M79 into suspected escape routes, but it was all over. Turpin summed up the action by recommending Boyd for a Bronze Star and commenting, “He’s the ballsiest guy I’ve ever known.”
In AK Valley, the NVA were ready. That’s why the grunts were spitting out bitter comments the second morning of the battle. Bravo Company had a strict policy of rotating platoons, squads, and even individuals on point. Third Herd had been in the drag position during the previous day’s hump, which meant they had at least another day before they were supposed to be moved to the front. They’re screwing us, Shimer thought. It was because they were reliable. A lot of guys wouldn’t even raise their heads to return fire, but that was not a problem in his squad. The men were not at all happy with their jobs, but they accepted the reality of what they had to do to survive. When Shimer had first joined them, they had said they had only two rules. They never left a wounded man behind and, if someone got killed because you decided to get stoned in the bush, well, you’d get a body bag too.
Lieutenant Turpin went to another squad first to take the point. They refused. It was not their turn.
Turpin walked up to Sgt Lowry Cuthbert, third squad leader, who argued and complained but then told his men to saddle up. They too argued and complained, but followed orders and moved out single file through brush. They were spaced out with a point man, cover man, Shimer with the M79, and Cuthbert leading the other three GIs of the squad. The rest of Bravo Company