Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [87]
Machine gun teams moved across the paddy and secured the tree line without incident; then the rest of Alpha Company advanced from the banana grove. From there, they humped over one of the Nui Lon fingers with 2d Platoon leading the way; its commander, Lieutenant Kirchgesler, had told Lieutenant Shurtz that, as the most experienced officer there, he did not resent taking point consistently.
Lieutenant Teeple was in the middle.
Lieutenant Tynan brought up the rear of the column.
At the grunt level, these maneuvers were not seen in ordered terms. There was no rationale. The platoon had not been resupplied in two days, and had to function on a few sips of hot canteen water a day and the few C rations they’d had the foresight to jam into their claymore pouches before being CA’d in. Ammunition was precariously low. Captain Carrier noted what was beating them the most:
I remember standing on LZ Center thinking that this had to be the hottest I have ever seen it up this high. The windsock moved only when a bird flew in. I wish I could convey just how miserably hot it was. Ever stood in the thick woods in the summer and had your cigarette smoke float straight upward. Couple that with swinging a machete in briars and brush that take you thirty minutes to move thirty feet.
The elements had gotten the best of Private Kruch, for one, and he trudged along under bandoliers of M16 and M60 ammunition, hands wrapped around a battered and unreliable M16 rifle. He was half-delirious from an empty stomach and the heavy, stale air trapped amid the vinery of the windless valley floor; and he was completely terrified by the invisible enemy. Oh God, what a mess, we know there’s another ambush waiting! What are we doing! he kept thinking. The platoon crested a low hill. All Kruch could hear was a ringing in his ears, and the hair on the back of his neck seemed to stand up. NVA fire erupted from nowhere. The platoon was in a network of spider holes and bunkers covered with banana leaves and indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape. The return fire seemed only to chop weeds. Several men had been hit—one was screaming bloody murder that he was shot in the hip, couldn’t move, the dinks were right next to him!—and, as always, Lieutenant Kirchgesler started towards the hottest spot.
The lieutenant was shot dead.
Kruch and his squad had scrambled into a furrow off the path and were returning fire. AK47 rounds suddenly snapped from the rear. Kruch froze as dirt kicked up a yard away; then he dropped into the ditch and shoved his M16 back up, madly squeezing the trigger. The NVA seemed to be everywhere!
Lieutenant Shurtz was down in the crossfire with Specialist Hurley, his senior RTO; it seemed impossible to get Kirchgesler’s body back without sacrificing more lives. Shurtz radioed the point platoon to leave the body and pull back under cover of air strikes and artillery, an order for which he never quite forgave himself but he could think of no other alternative. The rest of Alpha Company was strung out behind the point of contact, having flopped into the vegetation along the trail. They lay there unmoving, unable to fire, ducking even lower as stray bursts clipped foliage overhead. Lieutenant Tynan and Private Goodwin lay beside one another, trying to figure out what was going on. They could hear two NVA machine guns and sporadic AK47 fire. Word came to send men back to secure an LZ for the medevacs, so Goodwin and Grove, the last men in their squad, set out with several others. They found a burnt-out clearing about fifty meters back; it was an old potato field on the opposite side of the terraced hill from the NVA bunkers. Goodwin commented that they’d found their landing zone, and at that moment the first mortar round crashed into them. Over the noise of the firefight, Goodwin hadn’t heard the whistling descent, but the sudden explosion sent him into a frantic run for boulders forty yards away. Several more rounds thumped in, but Goodwin and Grove made it safely to cover. Then Goodwin realized that, although he was