Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [86]
Then came Delta’s first quiet night. At 0500, however, a trip flare burst outside the perimeter and M16s chopped at the grass until 81mm mortar fire was directed in. At 0630, several RPGs were fired, but they exploded short of the ring of foxholes. Five minutes later, Charlie Company’s side of the perimeter came under heavy fire. It was returned. At 0700, the Blue Ghost Cobras came on station, pumping rockets and miniguns around the perimeter amid a crossfire of 12.7mm and AK47 tracers. It was enough to quiet the NVA, and at 0800 on 21 August, Delta Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, left the Song Chang Valley. The Cobras fired cover as the Hueys shuttled the GIs up to LZ West.
Whittecar and his command group were on the last chopper out; it was no less than a great relief. It was also the end of Whittecar’s command; within days, he was medevacked to Chu Lai with infected wounds.
In the aid station on West, Doc Kinman probed Whittecar’s leg for more shrapnel, but there was none and he began to bandage it. Whittecar sat there, trying to define his emotions. GIs from Delta, also in the aid station, looked at Whittecar and he looked at them. The pride and relief were palpable. They’ve given their all, and so have I, thought Whittecar. He was proud, sad, exhausted from three sleepless nights, almost overcome by his emotions. There was talk of a Distinguished Service Cross and he thought, goddamn, I did it. The next moment he doubted himself. The two GIs closest to him were gone—the medic with a bullet in his head, the radioman with a mangled foot. Seven of his men were dead; almost everyone was wounded. Could I have done something differently? he asked himself. One grunt came to him privately, “I wanted to thank you for coming down. I know you didn’t have to, but I wouldn’t be alive now if you hadn’t.” That meant a great deal to Whittecar, but it did not erase all of his hauntings.
The night of 20–21 August was a long one for Alpha Company. Some men with minor wounds had not been evacuated, and their occasional groans during the night were bad for morale; everyone realized there was no guaranty of a medevac if they were hit. Lieutenant Shurtz and Doc Peterson sat bleary-eyed in the grass, filling out medevac slips for the casualties and radioing them in on a secure net with scrambler. Battalion radioed back that one of the men reported evacuated with wounds could not be found in any hospital. As they pieced it together, the missing man had been hit while helping get Bravo’s wounded and, although this was reported to Shurtz who then filled out a medevac slip, in the noise and confusion of the fight, the man had not been dragged back. His body was recovered in the morning; reportedly, he had an old bullet wound in his leg and a fresh one in his head. His body and the body of the dead lieutenant were zipped into body bags, and Lieutenant Tynan detailed Private Goodwin’s squad to carry them as they saddled up that morning. Goodwin objected that they needed to maintain twenty paces between each man on the march, and a six-man cluster dragging a body bag was too dangerous. The platoon leader reconsidered in their favor and they left the two bodies hidden among some trees in the LZ, to be recovered after the battle.
The previous day, LtCol Robert C. Bacon, who had served as an ARVN advisor his first tour, was helicoptered from his new staff position at Chu Lai to assume command of the Gimlets. The battle between the 3d Battalion, 21st Infantry and the 3d NVA Regiment centered on pushing through to the C&C crash site to recover the bodies. Few grunts appreciated such reasoning—dying for the dead—and morale was sagging.
On 21 August, A Company