Blood in the Hills

by Charles W. Sasser

  From what we heard, the first indication of a large enemy force assembling in the hills came when a Marine patrol encountered the enemy and killed nine NVA regulars in early 1967. Among the bodies was that of an enemy officer whose satchel contained hand-drawn maps showing in remarkable detail Marine defensive positions at the airfield. Obviously, the North was preparing to launch a major offensive against Khe Sanh.

  General Lew Walt, commander of III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF) and thus all Marines in-country, refused to believe reports of an enemy buildup. He flew into Khe Sanh.

  “I want every Marine in the Recon Unit to come down here and tell me in person if he has seen an NVA soldier.”

  To his astonishment, the entire Reconnaissance Platoon showed up at his field headquarters.

  “What the hell is this all about?” he demanded.

  The platoon leader snapped to attention and saluted. “Sir, you said you wanted to talk to everybody who had personally seen an NVA. Well, sir, this is them.”

  “How do you know they were NVA and not VC?” the general asked.

  “We shot and killed some of them, sir. I saw their rank epaulets, recovered information off the bodies that provided regiment and division. All the ones we’ve seen or killed up in the hills were wearing standard NVA tennis shoes, pith helmets, and camouflage or khaki uniforms. They were armed with AK-47 rifles, and there wasn’t a VC cone hat among them.”

  Each Marine told a similar story. General Walt left Khe Sanh a believer—but his conversion may have been a little too little and a little too late. On 24 April 1967, while BLT 2/3 was slogging around the countryside in Operation Beacon Star raiding villages for VC contraband, a large NVA force ambushed Marine Bravo Company 1/9 on Hill 861, thereby prematurely triggering General Giap’s offensive aimed at taking the high ground from which to lay siege to the combat outpost at Khe Sanh. Although Bravo was all but wiped out, survivors remained up on the hill fighting to hold on until relief arrived. This was the beginning of what became known as the Hill Fights.

  General Walt pulled in 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 3rd Marines to push the NVA off Hills 861, 881N, and 881S. And now 2/3 grunts consumed cold cuts and swigged hot Cokes at the airfield while we waited for something to happen. We didn’t have to wait long.

  The thunder of aircraft and jet engines jerked my chin toward the sky and lifted the short hair on the back of my neck as dozens of fast-movers streaked over the Combat Base in loud, alarming waves. Tony dropped a half-eaten sandwich, his mouth flew open, and crumbs dribbled off his chin as US airpower began a campaign of softening up 861.

  “Holy shit!”

  Echelons in Vs by type—AD Skyraiders, Phantoms, A-4s—pounded the hill raw with napalm and bombs that made the ground tremble and the air vibrate, turning 861 into an erupting volcano. As one sortie swooped in and over, silver wings glinting back the midday sun, shedding ordnance like dandruff, a second wave dived into the melee of red-white explosions and boiling black smoke. The terrifying assault seemed to go on and on, filling the air with soot, smoke, and noise.

  “It won’t be 861 by the time they’re through knocking twenty or thirty feet off the top,” I observed, awed by the air show. “It’ll be Hill 840.”

  Big Ed gave me a somber look. “They’re bombing the gooks that almost wiped out 1/9 of the Walking Dead—and that’s where we’re heading.”

  It was one thing rooting out booby traps and taking occasional sniper fire from the scroungy little VC rice paddy villages, quite another to contemplate throwing ourselves into a volcanic cauldron on top of a hill that had previously all but consumed a company of Marines. Lieutenant Mac long-legged it among Third Herd and Weapons Platoon, carrying his M-16 with a pack on his back and his helmet strapped down.

  “Ten minutes!” he announced. “Get ready to saddle up, people. We’re going to war.”

  Response from the ranks sounded quite a bit more reserved than usual.

  Nervous and frankly scared, I squatted and, to occupy my thoughts, doodled the first thing that came to mind on the top of an empty C-ration box. I had no idea where the phrase came from, only that it appeared in my mind: For those who fight for life, it has a special flavor the protected shall never know. In the opposite corner of the box I sketched a likeness of Tony reclining. My Mom always figured I might be an artist. She never figured on my being a Marine.

  Later, I discovered that Navy Chaplain Ray Stubbe tore off the box lid and kept it as a souvenir of Khe Sanh. It eventually ended up in the US Marine Corps Museum at Quantico.

  One of the other grunts, watching airpower work over 861, noted hopefully, “Man, there won’t be anybody left up there by the time they’re finished with it.”

  Sergeant Crawford glanced up and said with an ominous undertone, “That’s what Marines thought about Iwo Jima.”

  Chapter Five

  The “Big Picture”

  For more than two thousand years of their early history, the Vietnamese suffered under Chinese domination while struggling to obtain independence or to maintain it once it was won. On at least five separate occasions since the beginning of Vietnamese recorded history in 111 B.C., China either directly or by proxy ruled Vietnam, the two sides batting the nation’s independence back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Each period ended in rebellion and civil war.

  The 16th century produced an internecine struggle between two opposing factions who each sought to rule Vietnam. The long brawl between the Nguyens and the Trinhs resulted in their establishing a precedence for partitioning the nation North and South. The Nguyens created a government-in-exile south of the 17th parallel while the Trinhs ruled north of the line. After fifty years of bloody and inconclusive fighting, the two sides agreed upon a truce that for the first time officially divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel into two separate entities. They would not reunite again until 1802, at which time they adopted Viet Nam as the nation’s new name. It previously existed under such names as Nam Viet, Annam, and Tonkin.

  Vietnam would remain thus reunited until the end of World War II.

  By this time, the dominant influence in the region had transferred from China to Europe. As early as the 1500s, European traders were making inroads all over Asia, leading to the establishment of colonial empires in India, Burma, Malaysia, the East Indies, and even China. By 1883, France had conquered Vietnam and made the nation its “Cochin China” colony. During the French colonization that endured, more or less, for well over a half-century, Vietnam relinquished much of its Chinese influence and began adopting Western-type culture, particularly in the cities where many turned to speaking French, dressing like Europeans, designing “modern” buildings, modifying the country’s political structure, and accepting Catholicism.

  The Russian Revolution of 1917 generated waves of communism that spread across parts of Europe and much of Asia, especially into China. Vietnamese seeking self-determination and freedom from French rule fell to the allure of the Marxist model. A young firebrand named Ho Chi Minh brought communism to Vietnam and pushed for revolution. France successfully contained his movement until World War II.

  In June 1940, Hitler’s Nazis rampaged through France, occupied Paris, and set up a French Vichy government loyal to Germany. The Vichy subsequently assumed power in Vietnam in alliance with Germany and Japan, but soon acceded to Axis demands and turned control of the entire French Indochina Peninsula over to Japan. Ho Chi Minh’s resistance movement surfaced refreshed and intent on ousting both the Vichy French and the Japanese in order to import Chinese-style communism to Vietnam. Ironically enough, considering later developments, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner of the CIA and US Special Forces, provided guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh with matériel aid starting in early 1945.

  In retrospect, what with all the chaos, Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai chose the wrong path in declaring Vietnamese independence under the protectorate of the Ja
panese, a proclamation that was to last only a few months before the Japanese surrendered following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During that short period, the Viet Minh Nationalist Movement in Hanoi formed its Committee for the Liberation of the Vietnamese Republic with Ho Chi Minh as president. As soon as Japan capitulated and Bao Dai went on the ropes, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

  Britain accepted the Japanese surrender south of the 16th parallel in Vietnam while China was quick to perform the same function north of the 16th. In spite of Ho Chi Minh’s having declared Vietnamese independence, England, concerned about preserving its own Asian colonial empire, permitted Free French troops to come back ashore and assisted France in regaining its previous status over Vietnam.

  In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh signed an agreement with France in which the French recognized the “free state” of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam within the Indochina Federation. This pact, which more or less divided the peninsula into a north and a south, endured for less than a year. On 19 December 1946, the Viet Minh launched its first guerrilla attack against French occupation. The “First Indochina War” would rage on for the next eight years.

  Communist China began supplying Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnam in early 1950. In September 1951, the United States, which had supported Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese and the Vichy French during the World War, turned against him to provide economic assistance to South Vietnam, thus setting the stage for a proxy war between China and the United States.

  The shock of France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu to General Vo Nguyen Giap in May 1954 bolstered French public opposition to the war. The First Indochina War ended when the French High Command and the Viet Minh’s People’s Army High Command signed a truce on 20 July 1954. While the Geneva Conference granted independence to Vietnam, it also officially partitioned the nation along the 17th parallel into a North Vietnam under the auspices of communism and a Democratic Republic of South Vietnam, much as Korea had been divided. The Chinese refused to gracefully accept the peace accords and partitioning; they continued pushing Hanoi to keep fighting in hopes that a final victory would reunite Vietnam under communism.

  Despite the truce and partitioning, Ho Chi Minh left a well-organized network behind in the South to continue his campaign for a united Vietnam. As it became apparent that he could not gain control of the entire nation through political means, he opted with Chinese encouragement for a new radical method. In January 1959, North Vietnam’s Communist Central Executive Committee issued Resolution 15, changing its strategy toward South Vietnam from “political struggle” to “armed struggle.” Six months later, the first American servicemen were killed in South Vietnam when Major Dale Buis and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnard died in a communist attack on their Bien Hoa billets.

  The CIA had attempted to provide a special forces role in Vietnam after the French left. It was mostly a low-level, low-budget covert effort that concentrated on stay-behind programs like the ones set up in Europe during WWII to seed resistance should the communists prevail. It was largely ineffective.

  With John F. Kennedy’s assumption of the US presidency, he became the nation’s foremost advocate of combatting communism through counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare. He referred to the Cold War that evolved out of the World War as a “long twilight struggle leading to a new kind of war—revolution, people’s wars, subterranean wars, multidimensional wars, slow-burn wars, war in the shadows [that required] a new kind of fighting force.”

  On its own, he believed, South Vietnam had no chance to ward off Ho Chi Minh’s communists. The little nation’s only hope of becoming a democracy free of communist domination lay in special warfare strategies and tactics in countering the North’s guerrilla incursions.

  US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, followed the CIA into South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese troops in resisting Ho Chi Minh’s insurgency. The US commitment to South Vietnam expanded from about seven hundred military “advisors” in 1961 to more than sixteen thousand in mid-1963. This “Second Indochina War” became a quagmire that incrementally drew the United States toward 1965 and its first deployment of US combat forces, the 9th Marines, for offensive operations.

  That was the “Big Picture” of Vietnam; it was above my pay grade. About all I knew at Khe Sanh in the spring of 1967 was that the United States had somewhere around a half-million troops in-country, that a few thousand of us so far had been KIA, and that we were fighting at Khe Sanh because President Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his assassination, didn’t want the Combat Base to become another Dien Bien Phu. He subscribed to the “domino effect,” which dictated we either stopped the commies here and now—or the next thing we knew, we would be fighting them in Tulsa and Indianapolis and Chicago.

  Chapter Six

  Take No Prisoners

  The company gunnery sergeant, Gunny Janzen, told us that our aircraft had hit the enemy on Hill 861 with nearly a half-million pounds of bombs and napalm, that jelly-gas that burned like fires from the depths of hell and turned human beings into crispy critters within a matter of seconds. In addition, artillery batteries from the Combat Base contributed a thousand rounds of 105mm and 155mm to the pounding. It was like a tag team match. Arty roared and coughed and smoked. When it stopped, the fast movers thundered in to continue the devastation. On top of all this, B-52 bombers worked out with “Arc Light” strikes between the hills and Laos on any enemy NVA they could find trying to move in for the next curtain call.

  The ground trembled. We ate our sandwiches. The prep assault against the hill went on and on. I kept thinking nobody could live through such a display of awesome and hellish power. Perhaps I was only wishing they couldn’t. Tony even lost his Buddy Hackett and looked utterly scared. I doubted John Wayne was ever as terrified as we looked.

  Finally, “Move out in ten minutes!” rippled through the ranks. We geared up, one eye on what we were doing—cinching packs and checking weapons, tightening helmets—the other eye on the erupting volcano still being worked over by aircraft buzzing around it like angry bees around a smoke pot. We’re really going up there!

  Hey, Jarhead, taunted this little bastard demon crouched on my shoulder, you ain’t seen shit yet.

  “I sure do pray, I really do, that they’re all dead by the time we get there,” Tony worried.

  Under normal circumstances, a good Catholic boy would never have wished ill on another person.

  “We knew this was going to happen when we enlisted,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe. But not like this. Maras, we could get killed up there.”

  I put on my best cavalier boot camp air. “No shit, Dick Tracy. What gave you your first clue?”

  “You’re not afraid, Maras?”

  “Why, hell yeah, I’m scared. What do you take me for, a damned fool?”

  Lieutenant Mac’s thin face appeared more sunken and hard-edged than usual. “Leave your flak jackets behind,” he ordered. “In this heat, you’ll never make it up the hill wearing ’em.”

  It was shortly after noon. Temperature and humidity were both approaching triple digits. Sweat dripped from our every pore. Each Marine was packed-muled down with gear. I carried the 7.62 Pig on a strap with cans of ammo stuffed into my pack along with cans of C-rats, a spare canteen of water, an extra pair of socks, and miscellaneous other items such as a picture of my new wife, Linda. From my battle harness hung a .45 pistol in a holster, my K-bar field knife, pouches containing grenades, more ammo, emergency field dressings, compass, . . .

  Tony was likewise encumbered, except instead of the machine gun he humped more ammo for the Pig, an M-16 Mattie Mattel, and a pack board containing rounds for Weapons Platoon’s 3.5 rocket launcher. Kilgore or PFC Taylor or somebody else lugged the launcher.

  Just before the battalion moved out in order by companies, Lieutenant Mac had
one more thing to say: “Whatever you do, you’re not to talk to the Marines you come in contact with who are coming down the hill. Roger that?”

  That didn’t make sense. Gene Kilgore provided a credible explanation. “They don’t want us talking to them,” he surmised, “because it’ll scare the shit out of us if we know what’s in store for us up there.”

  “Maybe I’ll go take a dump now,” Tony said, struggling to channel his inner Buddy Hackett.

  Rough and colorful language was part of the camaraderie, the flavor of fighting men together, a rite of passage among men of arms.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Tony exhaled forcefully. “There’s going to be a party—and all the gooks are invited.”

  The party had begun two days before, on 24 April, when patrols from the 9th climbed 861 and walked directly into what appeared to be elements of an enemy regiment or division. Hard-core, well-trained, and well-disciplined NVA regulars supported by mortars and heavy artillery from bases in Laos and north of the DMZ and hardened to operating in rugged, jungle-clad mountainous terrain. They owned the turf and were precisely what Marine Recons had been trying to warn General Walt about for the past several weeks.

  The war seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. There had been several other set-piece battles in Vietnam before now, such as Colonel Hal Moore’s fight in the Ia Drang Valley, but primarily it had been like Nancy Sinatra singing, These boots are made for walking—and they’re gonna walk all over you. American outfits were accustomed to splashing through rice paddies and walking right over ragtag bunches of Viet Cong guerrillas. They were not accustomed to being walked over themselves.

  Now, the Marines of Bravo 1/9, what was left of them, were on their way back down 861 carrying their dead and wounded with them.

  In classic infantry tactical formation, with Echo and Golf up front, Hotel trailing, and Foxtrot left behind in reserve, BLT 2/3 resembling a giant green caterpillar clawed its way up the steep eastern slope of 861 through jungle not nearly as postcard appealing as it had appeared from the air. Razor-edged elephant grass in the “clearings” nicked at exposed skin. Jungle growth snagged out packs and helmets. In some places, point men had to hack a path through the foliage with machetes, switching off to relieve each other every five minutes or so.