Blood in the Hills

by Charles W. Sasser

  In all the noise and confusion, Crawford and Handy approached within fifteen meters of the enemy gun imbedded inside a thick embankment of logs, red dirt, and brush. The two men went to ground without being observed.

  Captain Madonna was fast losing his company in this damnable draw. “Pull back! Pull back!”

  Marines going into combat were customarily issued four frag grenades. Crawford always carried eight. “Boys,” he said to us during train-up in Okinawa, “I learned the hard way in Korea how useful these things can be.”

  He demonstrated that now. He shifted on the ground to free his throwing arm and tossed the first grenade. It arced high in the air and plunged over the machine gun’s defenses and directly into the nest. One of the gooks screamed a warning. Too late. A second grenade followed the first. They detonated on target one after the other in a red-white flash bright enough to sear unprotected retinas. Smoke curled out through the logs. The gun fell silent. What was left of two Vietnamese soldiers lay torn apart over their disabled weapon.

  “Withdraw! Pull back!”

  Only then did Crawford heed the order. Relieved from the pressure of the deadly 50-cal, the ambush’s primary weapon now out of commission, Marines lunged to their feet and broke contact, scurrying back through the draw toward where the rest of the battalion held high ground on the ridge. Some of the Marines were shooting over their shoulders as they fled. Others assisted, dragged, or carried injured comrades.

  With the ambush broken and space cleared between friendlies and foes, mortar, artillery, and automatic weapons support kicked in. Howitzer 105s and 155s from Khe Sanh were surprisingly accurate with a forward observer (FO) calling shots from the scene. Bursting shells and walls of flame engulfed the forward slope and the incline behind, which led on up toward the summit of 881N.

  I laid on the Pig’s trigger, pumping rounds into the conflagration, reveling in screams of pain and terror. Other Marines were now free to join in. Our ridgeline sparkled and rattled with discharging weaponry covering Hotel’s retreat.

  What was left of the battered company returned to the ridge. For many of those in Hotel, for all of us who joined up with the battalion in Okinawa, it was a cherry-breaking event, our first make-or-break combat with a determined and professional enemy. Nine Hotel Marines died and forty-three suffered wounds in that brief, vicious battle in the draw. There would have been much more damage except for the courage of Big Ed Crawford and Bob Handy, whose efforts shut down the NVA machine gun and allowed Hotel to escape the kill zone.

  Chapter Ten

  Rescue

  The NVA had done their damage and were retreating up the slope toward 881N to avoid further clobbering by mortars, artillery, and machine guns. In all the confusion, it was unavoidable that some of our wounded and dead were left behind in the draw. Captain Sheehan assigned Golf Company to cut down off the ridge and police up casualties while Echo remained behind to cover for us and hold off any NVA counterattack, though unlikely. The captain led the rescue operation himself. Although he was 2/3’s commander in the field, he was not a man to stay behind while his men took the risks.

  I slung the Pig on a shoulder strap ready for action as the company went on line to sweep the draw for our downed men, Tony covering me with his untrusty M-16. I had witnessed the carnage down there from our balcony seats on the ridgeline and still couldn’t be sure all the enemy had fled. Every nerve in my body tingled with apprehension as the elephant grass closed around me like a cocoon, isolating me from the rest of the unit. I caught glimpses of Tony on my left through the grass and PFC Taylor, a 3rd Platoon squad leader, on my right, but other than them I could have been alone in a jungle of grass. I was no Sergeant Crawford, but nonetheless I was trained a Marine and a Marine did his duty.

  Trails, many of which were blood-stained, wove through the grass at all angles where desperate and frightened men had fought, fled, cursed and died. Urgent shouts and screams of pain from the wounded rose above even the banging thunder of artillery and mortar fire that continued to chase the retreating NVA.

  “Corpsman! Help me! Help!”

  “Over here! We have a man down!”

  Golf Company’s three Navy corpsmen with their Unit-1 medical aid bags dashed around the draw, emergency-patching the wounded and calling on stretcher bearers to carry out the lifeless and those who could not walk. One stretcher bearer team hurried past me carrying a Hotel Marine whose shrieks of agony seemed to pierce the earth’s core. One of his legs had been almost ripped off. Only sinews and skin kept him from losing his foot.

  I glanced down in time to avoid stepping on a dead Marine who apparently expired where he fell, cut almost in two parts by the enemy 50-cal before Sergeant Crawford took it out. His body lay in a puddle of blood, torn-apart flesh, and leaking innards. I stared in horror. I had been to funerals before and seen dead people, but they were cleaned up and in caskets and looked more like mannequins than the people they once had been.

  But now, within a matter of the past few days, I had witnessed what no human being should ever have to endure: Lieutenant Sauer with his head hacked off; now this Hotel Marine, whoever he was, exposed like fresh road kill. . . . I dropped my chin to my chest and closed my eyes for a moment against the grisly picture. Like maybe if I shut it out and tapped the heels of my magic red slippers together three times I’d be back in Kansas or Oklahoma with Aunty Em.

  Captain Sheehan’s voice boomed across the draw: “Get ’em and get ’em out of here.”

  Medevac choppers were flying into a clearing on the protected side of our ridge to evacuate casualties and bodies. Sergeant Crawford was already on his way back to the Princeton’s sick bay and surgery by the time Golf finished its policing and returned to our previous position overlooking the draw. Tony and I missed the chance to say so long to him. Returning safely was almost like that old kids’ game of hide-and-seek. Whoever was “It” had the discretion of calling in the game with “All outs in free!” Tony made a show of dropping to kiss the ground.

  “I ain’t going up there on that hill,” he vowed, pointing to 881N looming above us.

  Yeah. Right.

  The air show was about to start. Captain Sheehan got on the radio with Pappy Delong at the airstrip. “Colonel, sir, I’m not sending my guys blind into an unknown area again when we know they’re out there. We need artillery first, gunships, all kinds of stuff.”

  Heavy weapons men of 2/3 continued to lob mortar rounds across the draw into where the NVA had been. Clumps of smoke puffed out of the grass and brush where they impacted. They ceased only when the real show opened on Broadway and “all kinds of stuff” began working over not only 881N and the ridge leading up to it but also 881S.

  It seemed every American firebase in the area, from Khe Sanh to Camp Carroll and the other bases of Leatherneck Square, opened up with 105s, 155s, and 175s to concentrate on the two enemy-occupied hills. Incoming shells looked and sounded like freight cars hurled through the air. Mountains trembled when they exploded. It felt like I was back in Tornado Alley, Oklahoma, with twisters blasting through.

  The bombardment continued for the rest of the day and intermittently throughout the night while awed Marines hunkered on our little piece of ridgeline real estate as spectators to a drama relatively few people ever witness.

  As night fell, Puff the Magic Dragon showed up during intermissions with his Gatling guns. Illumination flares lit up the terrain, flickering their weird shadows across draws and valleys to expose possible NVA massing for an attack. It was one hell of a night. None of us got much sleep, if any. Although only a few days had passed since colored pins jerked BLT 2/3 out of Beacon Star and deposited us here, it seemed we had been up in these heights for a lifetime already.

  “Maras,” Tony sighed fatalistically, “it was only this morning when we left 861, right? We didn’t think there’d be any gooks left. We were wrong.”

  I nodded
toward the erupting hills. “We’re gonna be wrong again,” I predicted.

  The 9th Marines had paid a heavy price taking and holding 861. Hotel Company down in the draw had paid a similar price, losing 52 KIA or WIA out of a 110-man force; Captain Sheehan with Pappy’s authorization sent Hotel back to 861 in reserve until it could be refitted and replacements brought in.

  Gunny Janzen was the type of leader who never seemed to sleep even when he had the opportunity. He was always out circulating in Golf Company, checking on his men, encouraging us, asking us if we needed anything.

  “How about a transfer out of this chicken shit outfit?” Tony asked, knowing it was not going to happen, just playing his Buddy Hackett.

  Gunny flapped a hand toward the erupting volcanos lighting up the night sky with a strobe-like effect.

  “We bombed the shit out of them gooks before,” he said, “and they’re still with us. They’ve dug in like rats. That means we’re going to have to go up there and blast ’em out ourselves. It has to be done, boys, so get ready for it. We can’t keep the gooks waiting.”

  Gunny moved on along the perimeter.

  “Why can’t we keep ’em waiting?” Tony wondered. “Just keep blasting ’em until these hills are flatter than the Sahara Desert.”

  I was starting to change my attitude about our being the baddest motherfuckers in the valley, the John Waynes who came here to kick ass and be home by Christmas.

  “Maras,” Tony said, “I got a feeling we’ll all be the Walking Dead by the time we’re sitting on those other hills.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Cherry Pie

  What I was discovering was that human beings could be surprisingly adaptable, and resilient. The Vietnamese, for example. They took everything we threw at them—and they were still very much in the fight. BLT 2/3 dug in on that ridgeline, consolidated, and prepared to battle for the two hills. We adapted as well as they did and grew accustomed to the growl of war with a mixture of apprehension, high youthful hijinks, and boredom.

  Boredom resulted from cowering in our holes waiting hours day after day for something to happen other than exchanging mortar rounds and artillery with the bad guys, broken by tense periods at night when we anticipated an attack. It all made for “The Longest Day,” every day.

  “We should have brought a deck of cards,” I lamented.

  “We had cards, I’d probably own your boots, love letters, and your children’s grandchildren by the time we get out of here,” Tony responded.

  So, lacking anything constructive to keep us occupied, we hunkered on our ridge and watched the show—big guns and jets raining fire and brimstone on the hills and suspected NVA assembly areas. Bombardment of Hill 861 had not wiped out the NVA, nor apparently discouraged them. I doubted the incessant pounding of 881N and 881S would accomplish anything more than eradicating foliage and further pissing off the NVA.

  On our ridge below 861 we dug holes and trenches and set out defensive Claymore mines. A Claymore was an evil slab of antipersonnel C-4 explosive packed with ball bearings that, when detonated, sprayed the forward area with a lethal fan-shaped pattern. These, plus grenades, rifles, and machine guns composed the extent of our defenses.

  In the meantime, 861 to our rear was being transformed into a veritable fortress as Marines tasked with defending that key piece of terrain worked off former enemy positions to make it their “home.” They filled sandbags to shore up collapsed bunkers and even established “shitters” from barrels cut in half; we on the ridge used cat holes. An outer barrier included rows of triple concertina wire anchored to a regular barbed wire fence and a swath of tanglefoot, a tautly stretched barbed wire laid out in a grid a few inches off the ground. Mixed into this maze were antipersonnel “toe poppers” to break hostile feet; “Bouncing Betty” booby traps that sprang up waist high when triggered before they exploded to shoot steel balls in all directions; powerful antitank mines; barrels of fougasse that, when set off, turned troops into crispy critters; improvised explosives fashioned out of 25-pound rolls of barbed wire packed with C-4.

  Men could be devious when it came to killing each other.

  Security and conveniences for Tony and me on the ridge consisted of our sandbagging the Pig into position to have it ready in the event of an attack while we carved out shelves in the walls of our hole to store extra ammo, grenades, and our rations. We arranged stakes at the four corners of the pit between which to stretch a poncho against threatening monsoon rains. Fortunately, as machine gunners Tony and I were exempt from dreaded OP/LP duty. Machine guns anchored strategic points in the perimeter. The hole Tony and I homesteaded overlooked a valley and a creek that ran between 881N and 881S.

  “If they hit us,” Gunny Janzen warned, “this is where they’ll be coming through.”

  “A target rich environment,” I acknowledged with more enthusiasm than I actually felt.

  Nights as dusk approached, Rainey or Kilgore or Hill or whoever else drew the dreaded duty crept into the bush a hundred yards or so out front of the perimeter to hunker through the night in observation/listening posts ready to sound the alarm should we experience an NVA attack. Poor bastards out there in the night virtually alone. Gave me the shivers every time I saw them sneaking out into the dark, their only link back to us through the radio watch in the command bunker and clicks of the mike.

  “If there ain’t no jive, give me five [clicks]. Give me three [clicks] if you see.”

  Day or night, the enemy wasn’t just sitting on his ass out there doing nothing. Random mortar barrages slammed us periodically and kept us close to our rat holes. Air or artillery was the best way to knock out the tubes, since they were ensconced on the military crest of an opposing ridgeline. For every enemy mortar destroyed, two more seemed to take its place. Which meant a lot of enemy soldiers were out there biding their time. An unsettling thought.

  “Incoming!”

  That clarion call initiated a desperate scramble for cover. First, you heard the distant Whoosh! Whoosh! Rounds leaving their tubes. You saw little black dots like flies on steroids climbing into the sky and then buzzing back down toward us. Most of the time, watching, listening, you could tell where they would hit. But you were a fool to depend totally on your senses. You had about ten seconds from Whoosh! Whoosh! to find a hole if you weren’t already in one. I saw a guy in Foxtrot Company hesitate and as a consequence take a direct hit. All that remained of him for identification was his foot inside a boot, and that identifiable only because he had his metal dog tag laced into the boot.

  More terrifying than mortars were Russian-made 130mm artillery. You heard the shells coming in like they were shredding the air. They made you dig deeper in your hole and catch your breath and hold it as though it might be your last and you wanted to keep it as long as you could. When the shells exploded, they seemed to blast a hole in the universe through which you caught a glimpse of eternity.

  The arbitrariness of it all, who survived and who got hit, scared the shit out of you. Dig deeper, wear your helmet, run for cover, keep your head down—and you could still be wasted by a lucky shot or a piece of shrapnel. Indirect firepower made little distinction between the fool in the open and the good Marine with his head down. Luck was a major player.

  Smoke and fire hung in the air during a shelling as corpsmen dashed from hole to hole in response to cries for help or merely to check on us. Golf’s three corpsmen had more guts than a gut wagon at a slaughter plant. They might be Navy, but they were as much Marines as the rest of us.

  Immediately following a barrage of three explosions, Corpsman Vernon “Magilla Gorilla” Wike dived into our hole on top of Tony and me.

  “Everything okay?” he asked as we unscrambled ourselves.

  “Yeah. How about the other guys?”

  “A-Okay. Shells missed everybody.”

  Tony assumed a long face. “Doc, you need to send me h
ome. I got fallen arches, a headache, cancer of the vagina, a bad case of the shits, and a racing heartbeat. . . .”

  Wike’s face lit up. “Great. Always wanted to do open heart surgery. I’ll schedule it for this afternoon.”

  Tony, Magilla, and I had become fast friends, beginning at Camp Schwab. On Okinawa, the entire 1,300-man battalion lined up for gamma globulin inoculations prior to deployment. Made from human blood plasma, gamma globulin contained antibiotics that protected the body from diseases. It was a painful injection, like having motor oil shot into your veins. Tough Marines sometimes fainted with the needle stuck in their asses.

  Three corpsmen in three different lines administered the serum in an assembly-line process. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Tony and I managed to get into Wike’s line.

  “Doc, please don’t kill me?” I pleaded.

  “Just be quiet. Don’t worry.”

  He called back to the supplies table for “more serum,” a delay that provided him the opportunity to gently administer my dose while he waited. He did the same for Tony.

  Wike was big, thick-chested, and redheaded. His muscles had muscles. Since he looked like the cartoon character Magilla Gorilla, Tony and I began to refer to him as such. He cornered us one day in the chow hall.

  “What’s this I hear you two are calling me?” he challenged.

  I explained.

  “Hmmm,” he said, then grinned. “I like it.”

  He even began signing medical chits with his new nickname. It spread until every grunt in Golf Company used his adopted moniker.

  Now, with mortar smoke still smudging the air, Magilla vaulted from our hole and headed off to check on Taylor and Rainey in the next position, calling back over his shoulder, “I’m offering a Magilla Gorilla special this week and this week only on ingrown toenails and hemorrhoids. Get in line early.”