Death Valley_ The Summer Offensive, I Corps, August 1969 - Keith Nolan [96]
Shurtz finally radioed the colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon was on the ground with Bravo Company—evacuating the bodies from the burnt Huey to Graves Registration on Hawk Hill—when Lieutenant Shurtz came over the receiver. “I am sorry, sir, but my men refused to go. We cannot move out.”
“Repeat that please,” Bacon said calmly. He was an icy West Pointer from a family of career militarymen. “Have you told them what it means to disobey orders under fire?”
“I think they understood. But some of them simply had enough—they are broken. There are boys here who have only ninety days left in Vietnam. They want to go home in one piece. The situation is psychic.”
“Are you talking about enlisted men, or are the NCOs also involved?”
“That’s the difficulty here. We’ve got a leadership problem. Most of our squad and platoon leaders have been killed or wounded.”
“Go talk to them again,” Bacon counselled, “and tell them that to the best of our knowledge the bunkers are empty. The enemy has withdrawn. The mission of A Company today is to recover their dead. They have no reason to be afraid. Please take a handcount of how many really do not want to go.”
“They won’t go, colonel, and I did not ask for the handcount because I am afraid that they will all stick together even though some might prefer to go.”
The picture was that only a handful of short-timers was actually refusing, but the rest of the company had more confidence in their combat experience than that of the new lieutenant. They were frozen, waiting to see which way it would go. Lieutenant Colonel Bacon, if not angry, was at least frustrated. Rational discussions do not always get the job done; before getting on the radio and making the refusal official, the company commander should have simply told the dissidents that they would be taken out for court-martial, then turned to the rest of the men and led them into action. But Lieutenant Shurtz did not have that type of leadership experience; he’d been in the bush only seventeen days. Bacon finally radioed his TOC on LZ Center and instructed Major Waite, BnXO, and SFC Okey Blankenship, BSM, to helicopter down to A Company and get them moving again with “… a pep talk and a kick in the butt.”
That might have been unnecessary; before the arrival of the 3–21 C&C, Lieutenant Shurtz had gone to Specialist Curtis one more time. He made it a direct order and, as far as Curtis was concerned, that was the end of it. He did not consider himself a mutineer, so when the man with the silver bar finally gave him no other choice, he—and the rest of Alpha Company—reluctantly, angrily started moving. Then the C&C landed on the sun-bleached hill, and the grunts sat back in the elephant grass as Waite and Blankenship disembarked. One of the men was crying, and the balking started all over again. Major Waite went to Curtis and asked what the problem was. He sketched out the horrors the company had been through and Waite, considered to be a very good officer, listened patiently. That was one approach. Sergeant First Class Blankenship, meanwhile, was proceeding along a different track. He was sarcastic and ridiculed the men. He made up a story that another company was still on the move with only fifteen men left.
“Why did they do it,” Jay asked, unmoved.
Blankenship sneered, “Maybe they’ve got something a little more than what you’ve got.”
“Don’t call us cowards, we are not cowards,” Jay exploded, running up with balled fists. Who is this turd, Curtis thought; he’d never seen the sergeant before and thought he must be some pompous REMF lifer just arrived in-country.
In fact, Sergeant First Class Blankenship was on his third tour and held a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. He hailed from the coalmining country of Panther, West Virginia, the eldest of eight children to Mose and