Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [90]
On 22 August, it was Lieutenant Teeple’s turn to lead the way back to the bunkers, where they were promptly hit in the crossfire again. Sgt Derwin Pitts—a tall, thin country boy and a good squad leader—was killed going for Kirchgesler’s body. PFC Ray Barker—a married kid who’d been drafted after college and who wanted nothing to do with Vietnam—was shot in the head going for Pitts’s body.
The crossfire was withering, and the platoon fell back towards the potato patch, dragging Barker’s body and four wounded.
Pitts was left near Kirchgesler.
PFC Kruch, for one, was sitting in a dazed heap, unable and unwilling to move again. From the day he’d arrived, things had stopped making sense. He was one of the new draftees and all he knew were the ragged, last three weeks of Alpha Company’s history. The grunts were mostly new guys, not sure if they were doing anything right, unbonded yet; they were just targets for an experienced enemy. The only resolution Kruch made was that he wasn’t going to die for some stupid officer sitting in the TOC bunker. So, when one of the new lieutenants ran up and said they were going back again for the bodies, he argued that it was suicide. The lieutenant looked scared too, but orders were orders and he pointed his .45 pistol at him; Kruch brought his M16 to the lieutenant’s chest and said he wasn’t going anywhere. The squad was not budging and no one really was going to shoot the other; the lieutenant finally holstered his weapon.
Word was passed to pull back to Nui Lon, and what ammunition they could not carry was buried in the potato patch. The grunts were punch-drunk from the sun and their march fell apart into disorganized bands; Kruch was terrified they might get separated from the rest of the company. The North Vietnamese were following them on the trail, keeping their distance but watching the entire time. Kruch could hear them talking.
Delta 4–31—which had the best reputation in the battalion—had pulled out the previous morning and by that afternoon Alpha 4–31—which had the worst reputation—had humped down from LZ West to assume their positions. Alpha Company had been pulling LZ security since the battle began. They snaked down the trail in a heavily burdened column, with full rucks and full loads of ammunition, and finally married up with Charlie 2–1 in the late afternoon. The brush around the French Hootch had absorbed most of the shell and smoke of the last four days; the only sign to the newcomers of the ferociousness of the battle were the treetops.
Many were splintered from RPGs. Everyone made a point of digging deep foxholes. That night, the NVA dropped in fifteen mortar rounds.
The morning of 22 August, Alpha Company moved out.
Alpha 4–31 and Charlie 2–1 hiked towards Hill 102 through shimmering, hot paddies; muffled explosions drifted back to them as air and arty once again clawed at the trees on the targeted hill. Alpha Two, under 2dLt Stephen Moore, was on point. About a hundred meters into the hump, a tree line intersected their dike. Lieutenant Moore sent one squad around one side of it, while he and his platoon sergeant went around the other with SP4 Al Holtzman’s squad. The point man, SP4 Robert Jeans, hiked the last berm into the woods. Lieutenant Moore was up near him when the North Vietnamese killed him at perhaps ten feet with an M79 to the chest. An RPD and several AK47s opened fire too. Prune Jeans dove for cover and ended up in a shallow depression only yards from the NVA holes; he couldn’t even lift his head in the crossfire.
Behind him, the rest of the squad was scattering behind dikes, all except one big, dumb kid who spun around and started running back.
The NVA shot him off the dike.
In moments, the North Vietnamese had killed four men from the lead platoon and