by Eric Hammel
Like Golf/2/5 before it, Fox/2/5 was going to Hue without its packs. The troops had grounded their personal possessions before going into the attack at Troi Bridge, and there had not been time to retrieve them when the call came to report to Phu Bai. All they had was ammunition, weapons, web gear, and whatever they had had the foresight to cram into their pockets.
The troops received a hot meal that evening, and everyone slept under canvas that night. On the morning of February 1, the troops learned through unofficial channels that they were bound for Hue. None of them had ever spent any time in Hue, but virtually all of them were glad to be going. Fox/2/5 had been months in the bush, had taken casualties, and had very little besides its corporate bitterness to show for the experience. Word had it that the NVA was standing and fighting in Hue—something neither the NVA nor its VC allies had ever done in the bush Fox/2/5 had tromped. Word was, Hue was the place to "get some," the ideal venue in which to exact payback for all the unavenged casualties Fox/2/5 had sustained in the bush.
Reinforced with a pair of 81mm mortars and two 106mm recoilless rifles, Fox/2/5 began lifting out of Phu Bai at 1458, February 1, aboard a small number of CH-46 transport helicopters. They were bound for the Doc Lao Park LZ. In addition to lifting out Fox/2/5, the Marine helicopters were charged with carrying a significant resupply of ammunition and other goods for 1/1 and the two Marine companies already in Hue.
The Fox/2/5 Marines and their officers were unprepared for the sporadic fire that greeted most of the helicopters as they set down on the Doc Lao Park LZ. In a few cases, the helicopters were struck by small-arms fire, which penetrated the thin metal skin and terrorized the unwitting troops inside. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the Marines charged off the helicopters' rear ramps with serious intent, certain the LZ itself was under ground assault.
Among the many terrorized by the incoming fire was a load of American news reporters who had hitched a ride into Hue aboard Mike Downs's CH-46. Shortly after landing, the company commander could account for only two of the reporters, a United Press International team. Downs surmised that the other news-people had returned to Phu Bai, without ever leaving the helicopter.
There were not enough helicopters to fly the reinforced company the short distance to Hue in one lift, so the last squads did not arrive until 1705. By then, the leading elements of Fox/ 2/5 were already in a bloody fight.
*
Lieutenant Mike McNeil's platoon of Golf/2/5 had been battling the entire day in an effort to relieve the GVN force in the Provincial Prison, six long blocks southwest of MACV. A dogged effort had carried Captain Meadows's tired troops across the highway and about fifteen meters up the first block of Tran Cao Van Street, but the NVA's resistance had steadily stiffened. The attack had ground to a standstill. As the hours wore on, the mission was scaled back. All Meadows's and McNeil's platoon had to do was reach a small compound housing a U.S. Air Force communications contingent. The hostel was only a few blocks southwest of Highway 1, half the distance to the prison. Three blocks or six blocks, it didn't matter: Golf/2/5 remained bogged down less than a half block from its line of departure.
The eye-opener of the day for Chuck Meadows and his Marines was how many men it took to secure a row of buildings. In order to achieve this, Golf/2/5 was learning, a unit had to secure every room in every one of the structures; it had to fight a war in three dimensions rather than the usual two.
As soon as two platoons of Fox/2/5 were assembled at MACV, Lieutenant Colonel Gravel decided to send them to restore some momentum to the drive on the Air Force hostel. Captain Downs had hardly reported to Mark Gravel's CP, at MACV, before an Air Force sergeant who had lived in the hostel was attached to the company as a guide. Then Captain Downs's company marched one block southeast on Highway 1 and turned right—southwest—up Tran Cao Van, the first cross street. The entire route looked like a cyclone—or a war—had hit it.
Just before reaching Tran Cao Van, Mike Downs had met Chuck Meadows and Captain Jim Gallagher, 1/1's new operations officer. Gallagher, a communicator by trade, had recently extended his tour of duty in Vietnam to take a crack at commanding an infantry company. He had barely taken over Delta/1/1 when news of Major Walt Murphy's death had reached him. As 1/1's senior captain, he had felt obliged, despite his lack of hard infantry experience, to fly to Hue to assume Murphy's duties until a more suitable replacement could be found. Captain Gallagher had arrived aboard one of the night medevac choppers and had assumed his new duties as soon as he reached MACV. He had been up front with Chuck Meadows all day, learning on the run.
Learning on the run was Fox/2/5's operative mode, just as it had been Golf/2/5's from the beginning of duty in Hue. Learning to deal with defended urban terrain had cost Golf/ 2/5 two killed and five wounded on February 1—that made a total of seven killed and fifty-seven wounded in twenty-four hours. Now it was Fox/2/ 5's turn to pay the price of experience.
*
Corporal Chris Brown's squad of 2nd Lieutenant Rich Horner's 2nd Platoon took the Fox/2/5 point as soon as Chuck Meadows and Mike Downs had completed the formal turnover. At word from Lieutenant Horner, Brown's squad was to turn the corner from Highway 1 onto Tran Cao Van and attack down the right sidewalk. Another squad from Horner's platoon would follow and then peel off to attack up the left side of the treelined residential thoroughfare. The officers had already told everyone that every building on both sides of the street had to be completely secured from bottom to top before anyone could go on to the next building and that units on both sides of the street had to advance apace to avoid NVA flanking fire from second-story windows.
The Air Force sergeant-guide joined Brown's squad a few moments before the Marines were to turn the corner. The first thing he told Chris Brown was that Golf/2/5 had been trying to fight its way up the street since around sunup and that the men had had their "butts beat every time." He went on to render his opinion that the mission was "suicidal." Corporal Brown went over to Lieutenant Horner to convey the Air Force sergeant's sentiments, but Horner just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Let's move out."
Horner's platoon advanced about fifteen meters up Tran Cao Van with two squads abreast and one in reserve, a classic infantry formation. After passing through Golf/2/5, the two Marines constituting the lead fire team of Corporal Brown's squad set up behind a shoulder-high masonry wall to provide cover. This was another classic infantry maneuver, strictly by the book. Though Fox/2/5 had never fought in a town and the junior troops had never been adequately trained to undertake house-to-house combat, the troop leaders knew very well how to feel their way into hostile terrain. It was about then, however, that Corporal Brown, Lieutenant Horner, and Captain Downs went beyond the knowledge that had been keeping them and large numbers of Marines like them alive in the bush. It was then that Fox/2/5 learned what the term mean streets really signifies.
Private First Class Louis Gasbarrini moved out first. He stepped from behind the wall and scuttled down the sidewalk to the nearest tree. Lance Corporal Charles Campbell went next, up and over the wall. Before Campbell had hit the ground, Gasbarrini had been seriously wounded in the arm by a burst of AK-47 fire that could have come from anywhere. Someone yelled, "Corpsman, up!" and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James Gosselin, a twenty-six-year-old former Green Beret, charged into the open from behind the wall. He was halfway to Gasbarrini when he was shot dead in his tracks, Fox/2/5's first fatality in Hue.
No sooner had Doc Gosselin fallen than the NVA trained their fire on Corporal Brown; the Air Force sergeant; and Private Stanley Murdock, Brown's radioman. No doubt the NVA were drawn to the whip antenna on Murdock's squad radio. Lance Corporal Carnell Poole was a few steps behind the three men when the automatic-weapons fire reached out at them. Poole distinctly saw the stream of bullets pin Murdock to a wall at his back; the sheer force of the bullets held the radioman on his feet. The firing stopped, but Murdock just stood there, holding his M-16 loosely at his side, gasping for air ever
y few seconds. In extreme slow motion, before Lance Corporal Poole or any of the other shocked onlookers could act, Private Murdock's eyes glazed over and the gasping stopped. Fox/2/5 had sustained its second death in a matter of seconds. The Air Force sergeant was seriously wounded by the same burst.
Despite the gunfire spraying the back side of the wall—or because of it—several members of Brown's squad streaked into the street, intent upon reaching the apparently safer left side. Most of the men made it to cover, but Corporal David Collins, Private First Class William Henschel, and Private First Class Cristobal Figueroa-Perez were shot off their feet. When the dust settled, none of them was moving.
As Chris Brown shrugged off the shock of near sudden death, Lieutenant Homer's piercing yell reached him: "Move it out!" Brown looked up, but there was no one around him. For a second, the squad leader didn't know what to do. Then he went into automatic overdrive—he moved on training and instinct. Brown whipped out from behind the wall and zigzagged down the sidewalk. When it seemed the right time to dive in, he landed next to Lance Corporal Campbell, who told Brown that, every time he tried to fire back at the NVA in the buildings, bullets kicked cement dust into his face.
Corporal Brown yelled to Private First Class Gasbarrini, who was in front of everyone. Gasbarrini yelled back that he had been hit in the arm and that he was playing dead because he was afraid to move behind the nearest cover.
Corporal Brown's squad was stymied. If anyone made a move, NVA soldiers in the buildings overlooking the street fired into Tran Cao Van. Brown sent word back to Lieutenant Horner that Gasbarrini was wounded and beyond reach. Horner sent word forward to Brown that he was trying to get a tank up to cover a rescue effort. Brown ordered everyone who could to withdraw back behind the wall. Then Fox/2/5 settled in to wait. There wasn't anything else anyone could do. Minutes later, Lieutenant Colonel Gravel ordered Fox/2/5 to call it a day and return to MACV as soon as the company could police up its casualties.
It seemed to Chris Brown that hours passed before two Marine M-48 tanks turned into Tran Cao Van and chugged toward Private First Class Gasbarrini. When the lead tank pulled up even with the wall Brown was using as a sanctuary, he gingerly stepped out behind the armored vehicle and followed it warily down the right side of the street. The tank passed Gasbarrini and stopped, a steel wall to protect the evacuation. When Chris Brown leaned down to help the wounded man, a stream of bullets reached out toward them. Brown felt warm fluid streak over his outstretched hands; he was certain Gasbarrini had been wounded again, but it was only water. A round had gone through Gasbarrini's canteen. Brown pulled the wounded man behind the tank, and other members of the squad helped Gasbarrini toward the rear.
As the lead tank stood guard and probed the surrounding buildings with fire from its .50-caliber cupola machine gun, members of Brown's squad warily convened in the street to lift their wounded and dead comrades onto the flat rear deck of the second tank. Four of the men—Doc Gosselin, Private Murdock, Corporal Collins, and Private First Class Henschel—appeared to be dead. A fifth, Private First Class Figueroa-Perez, appeared to be seriously injured.
As the rear tank, which was also firing its .50-caliber machine gun, pulled back, a B-40 rocket streaked out from a second-story window and struck it squarely on the side of the engine compartment. Two of the bodies on the rear deck, which was over the engine, were thrown to the street. Immediately, piercing screams erupted from one of the bodies. Several Marines ventured back to the tank to see who it was and why.
The screaming man was Private First Class William Henschel. He had been shot in the head in his bid to cross Tran Cao Van, and knocked unconscious. It was no wonder his spooked comrades had mistaken him for dead; his gruesome head wound had looked fatal, and there had been no time to conduct an adequate check in the middle of bullet-swept Tran Cao Van. When the B-40 blew Henschel off the tank, the shock of the blast apparently roused him. A closer inspection revealed that Henschel's left leg was missing below the knee. No one could tell if it had been blown off by the B-40 or if the tank had backed over it. It didn't matter; the leg was gone. Henschel was known in Fox/ 2/5 as the "Marine Doc." Though he had no formal first-aid training, he carried a Unit One aid pack, just like the Navy corpsmen. He still had it when his shocked and dazed comrades peeled him off the surface of Tran Cao Van. Its contents were used to affix a tourniquet and control the bleeding of his leg. The head wound turned out to be superficial.
After the tanks pulled back around the corner to Highway 1, one more absolutely motionless Marine still lay in an exposed position about twenty meters down Tran Cao Van. A nose count revealed that he was Private Roberto de la Riva-Vara. Every effort had been made to reach de la Riva-Vara's body, but the tanks had been unable to shield the rescuers, and the NVA had staked it out, certain they could kill any rescuers who ventured out after it. Lieutenant Horner had had enough. With nothing to show for it, Fox/2/5's 2nd Platoon had suffered fifteen casualties, of whom three were known dead, one (Figueroa-Perez) was expected to die, and one (de la Riva-Vara) was presumed dead. The lieutenant asked Captain Downs to please call it a day; there was no sense losing more men to rescue de la Riva-Vara's body.
Mike Downs was not going to leave anyone behind. After the wounded and dead were unloaded from the tank and sent on their way to M ACV, Downs ordered both tanks back up Tran Cao Van to cover Lieutenant Horner's recovery of de la Riva-Vara's body. Firing their machine guns as they went, the tanks advanced cautiously past the spot at which one of them had already been hit by a B-40. Nothing much happened. The NVA fired their AK-47s at the tanks, but no more B-40s were fired. The tanks moved forward, and the infantrymen followed them. As they reached de la Riva-Vara, he waved his arms a little. He had been shot in both legs and had been cannily playing dead. On the way back, Lieutenant Horner was wounded.
The Fox/2/5 casualties were taken back to MACV without further incident. Later that night, all the serious casualties of the day, including Lieutenant Horner, were medevacked off the LZ in Doc Lao Park. Unlike the bloody medevac effort of the previous night, the convoy to the LZ was led by one of the M-48 tanks, which simply drove through houses and courtyards along a path the NVA snipers could never have staked out in advance.
Before dawn, news arrived that Private First Class Cristobal Figueroa-Perez had died of his wounds in Phu Bai's triage center. This good and popular Marine's death was keenly felt, but the part that really set everyone on edge was knowing that his wife was going to get the proceeds of his $10,000 life-insurance policy. A week earlier Figueroa-Perez had received a Dear John letter from her; she had moved in with another man.
*
Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham was still at Troi Bridge with the 2/5 CP group and two infantry companies when, late in the afternoon of February 1, Task Force X-Ray ordered him to lead his CP group and Hotel/2/5 to Phu Bai for eventual duty in Hue. With enormous reluctance Cheatham turned operational control of Echo/2/5 over to 5th Marines and left it alone to guard Troi Bridge. He could only hope that the NVA battalion that 2/5 had chased off the day before did not tumble to the fact that the tables had been turned and that the Troi Bridge's twin highway and railroad spans were again ripe for the plucking.
Upon his arrival at Phu Bai, Cheatham was appalled by the level of confusion and panic he found. Internal guard posts had been set out throughout the sprawling camp, and it seemed to the battalion commander that he was challenged by panicky sentries every five to ten meters. Though damage from rocket detonations was apparent here and there throughout the camp, Cheatham did not feel the level of danger at Phu Bai was much higher than normal.
Ernie Cheatham had assumed that he was going to accompany Hotel/2/5 to Hue in the morning, but he discovered, to his chagrin, that the infantry company had been assigned to 1st Marines for service with 1/1. There was no word as to what Cheatham or his headquarters elements were to do. Cheatham couldn't believe what was going on. Unfortunately, he didn't know the half of it.
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After Fox/2/5 bedded down for the night in an ARVN compound adjacent to MACV, Captain Mike Downs was summoned to the 1/1 CP and told that Task Force X-Ray wanted 1/1 to launch a night attack to relieve the Thua Thien Provincial Prison. Since Fox/2/5 was in better shape than Alpha/1/1 or Golf/2/5, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Gravel wanted Fox/2/5 to carry out the order. Downs had no idea that Golf/2/5 had tried and failed to reach the prison during the day, so he asked where the objective was and how he could reach it. As soon as Lieutenant Colonel Gravel pointed it out on his map, Downs commented that the folks at Task Force X-Ray were absolutely crazy. Gravel replied that orders were orders, so the company commander asked the battalion staff officers what they thought lay between MACV and the prison. On reflection, it was agreed that Fox/2/5 would attack directly down Le Loi Street, the broad boulevard fronting the Perfume River. To do the job, Gravel was willing to attach two of his Marine M-48 tanks to Fox/2/5. However, under orders from very high authority, Fox/2/5 would not be permitted to call for indirect fire from organic 60mm or 81mm mortars, and certainly not from any friendly artillery batteries in range of Hue. The more Downs heard, the worse things looked.
The maps were vague and there were no aerial photos of the prison—no way to plan a break-in. When Captain Downs asked what the best approach was, someone said he should break in by way of the adjacent Provincial Administration complex. When Downs naively asked if anyone had contacted the province chief for advice, a MACV advisor revealed there were NVA .51-caliber machine guns on the roof and an NLF flag flying in front of the building. Downs's temper erupted, but he nonetheless called the Fox/2/5 CP and told his company gunny to get the troops saddled up.
