Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  Instantly the gunner yelled, "Fire the one-owe-six!" The assistant gunner responded, "Fire the one-owe-six!" And ... ba-ROOM! The round roared down Ly Thuong Kiet Street toward the school. Meanwhile, a huge billow of debris and dust spread across the front of the university. As it did, the 106 gunners hauled ass back into the courtyard, and Staff Sergeant Miller's 2nd Platoon of Hotel/2/5 once again charged toward the low buildings fronting the Public Health Complex. The 106 round destroyed the NVA .51-caliber machine-gun position.

  Two Hotel/2/5 Marines were wounded during the rush across Ly Thuong Kiet, but Miller's platoon once again estab­lished a strong toehold inside the Public Health Complex. The low buildings fronting the Public Health Building itself were cleared in a matter of minutes.

  *

  The main difference between the stalemated, bloody action of February 3 and the renewed assault on the morning of Febru­ary 4 was the breadth of the Marine front. Unlike the day before, Fox/2/ 5's left flank was to be partially screened and secured on February 4 by Lieutenant Colonel Mark Gravel's two-company 1/1.

  Gravel's thin battalion had left MACV at dawn and begun working its way through the buildings on the city block from Highway 1 between Truong Dinh and Tran Cao Van streets. The 1/1 Marines had to blast their way from building to building to avoid attacking across open streets and other obvious avenues of approach. Near Highway 1, a Marine tank did the blasting with its 90mm main gun. Farther in, the job had to be done with 3.5-inch rocket launchers. Invariably, if the room on the other side of the blasted wall was occupied, NVA survivors picked up their gear and ran for safety, and alert Marines lying in wait outside the blast zone tried to pick off a few after each detonation. Slowly, very slowly, the main body of 2nd Lieutenant Ray Smith's Al­pha/1/1 and 1st Lieutenant Gordon Matthews's Bravo/1/1 eased forward.

  Corporal Herbert Watkins, who spent most of his time in the forefront of the Alpha/1/1 attack, popped up after one 3.5-inch detonation, just in time to shoot at three NVA he caught in the open. Two of the three ducked down behind a low wall. When Watkins stood up again to fire at them, hoping they would be in the open again, he found that one was waiting for him. The NVA soldier had a B-40 pointed right at Watkins. The Marine squad leader was still dropping to the ground when the wall he was using for cover exploded and fell back on him. When the dust settled, Corporal Watkins found that he was unable to move. Corporal Richard Pettit and another Marine cleared the rubble off Watkins's back, but Watkins was still unable to move. He told Pettit that he thought his back was broken, so he was gingerly carried back to MACV, full of shrapnel and masonry shards and racked by intense pain. As Watkins lay on a stretcher in the 1/1 battalion aid station, he watched the docs wrap Corporal Pettit's many wounds, until Pettit looked like a mummy. Watkins was sure Pettit was tagged for medevac, but when Watkins was loaded on a truck for medevac to Phu Bai later that morning, Pettit said good-bye and returned to the company.

  Halfway through the block, 1/1 ran into a major NVA defensive sector centered on the huge square compound occupied by the Jeanne d'Arc Private Girls' High School. The Marines managed to enter the long building on the northeast side of the complex, but they were unable to advance across the huge ex­posed quadrangle or through the northwest and southeast wings. By 0900 the Marine advance was stopped, and both sides were exchanging small-arms fire, 3.5-inch rockets, LAAWs, and B-40s.

  Sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez, the platoon sergeant of the 2nd Platoon of Alpha/1/1, was a young man who reveled in close combat. He was a fearless, ferocious fighter, more than willing to take responsibility for leading direct assaults on the enemy. Usu­ally, when facing the enemy, the twenty-one-year-old Texan showed a huge, toothy grin. At about 0900, February 4, Sergeant Gonzalez collected an armload of LAAW rockets and climbed to the second floor of the Marine-held building in the Jeanne d'Arc complex. In an attempt to get NVA soldiers to reveal their posi­tions and perhaps bolt into the open, Gonzalez moved from window to window, firing LAAWs into the enemy-held rooms facing the quadrangle. He was especially intent upon engaging RPG teams. While the NVA had their heads down, several of the Marines Gonzalez was supporting tried to attack across the open area, but the NVA recovered and threw the Marines back with intense fire. Sergeant Gonzalez went back to work on the NVA positions with his collections of LAAWs, but the NVA finally figured out what the Marine platoon sergeant had in mind. At 0905, a patient NVA RPG team caught him in one of the win­dows and fired a B-40 right at him. Sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez was struck squarely in the midriff and mortally wounded. In time, Sergeant Gonzalez would be awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor in recognition of all his singular acts of heroism on the way to and inside Hue.

  Minutes after Sergeant Gonzalez was wounded, a handful of Alpha/1/1 Marines broke into an open area on the ground floor in the northwest of the building. The NVA caught the Marines in the open and poured in every bit of fire they could bring to bear. The Marines retreated, but the last of them went down with two AK-47 rounds in his back. Corporal Bill Stubbs and another Marine dropped back to drag the wounded man to safety. As they did, a B-40 detonated a few feet from them. Stubbs, who had weathered all but a few days of his one-year tour of duty in Vietnam, was painfully struck by glass and B-40 shrapnel in both legs. Though barely able to retain his stance, Bill Stubbs never­theless helped drag the first wounded Marine to safety before he himself collapsed. Stubbs and the other Marine were helped back to MACV for treatment and eventual medevac. And so it went.

  *

  Once across Ly Thuong Kiet Street and back in possession of the main building in the Public Health Complex, Staff Sergeant Johnny Miller's 2nd Platoon of Hotel/2/5 advanced into the buildings on the northeast side of Le Dinh Duong Street. There, as before, NVA soldiers in facing buildings were ready and wait­ing for the Marines to come out into the open.

  The lead squad was Corporal Robert Elliott's, which had entered an abandoned private home immediately behind the Pub­lic Health Building. The squad settled in to await further orders. At about 1130 Corporal Elliott received word that they would move into the unsecured dwelling about seventy-five meters to the southeast and on the same side of Le Dinh Duong. To help the squad through the masonry wall surrounding the first house, an engineer demolitions team had set a satchel charge, filled with twenty pounds of C4 explosive, against the obstruction. The charge went off at 1141.

  As had become their custom after only two days in Hue, Corporal Elliott and his Marines charged through the hole in the wall before the dust and rubble had settled. Plenty of fire came from the right, from across Le Dinh Duong, but the squad's momentum carried it into the next house. The NVA who had been occupying the structure evaporated as the Marines hit the door and fanned out to conduct their explosive house-clearing routine. As soon as the house had been scoured, the squad set in.

  Corporal Robert Hedger's rocket squad was ordered to fol­low the same path and join Elliott's squad. Just before leaving, Corporal Hedger found two small crucifixes in the rubble of the first house. He placed one in the wide elastic band around his helmet and offered the second to Corporal Lyndol Wilson. Then Hedger told his men to prepare to move out.

  Corporal Hedger took the lead, a custom he would not break despite the heavy load of extra 3.5-inch rockets he insisted on humping to the new forward position. He crossed the first court­yard, ducked through the hole in the wall the engineers had blown, and started across the courtyard surrounding Corporal Elliott's house. As Hedger was ducking through the wall, NVA soldiers emplaced in buildings on the other side of Le Dinh Duong opened fire on him. Hedger was halfway across the open space when Corporal Lyndol Wilson saw him go down beside a pile of rubble. Wilson could not tell if Hedger had been hit or if he had simply taken cover, so he ran into the open and flopped down beside the rocket-squad leader.

  "Are you hit?" Wilson asked. When Hedger replied that he was, Wilson dragged him behind a higher pile of rubble and yelled, "Corpsman, up!" However, as Wilson looked Hedger over, he saw neck and ch
est wounds he was sure would be mortal.

  For all the 3.5-inch rockets Hedger and Wilson were carry­ing, neither corporal had the launcher. Hedger—a stable, devout, soft-spoken twenty-four-year-old—was the rocket squad's father figure, one of the best-beloved Marines in Hotel/2/5. Wilson was so enraged by the thought of Hedger's imminent death that he stood up and emptied his M-16 at the NVA across the street, even though he could not actually see any targets. When he used up the first magazine, he popped it out, rammed in another, and fired on full automatic. At length, Corporal Wilson fired all the 5.56mm rounds he was carrying, so he looted the magazines Corporal Hedger was carrying.

  As Lyndol Wilson stood in full view of the NVA and fired his M-16 on full automatic, the rest of the rocket squad and Elliott's squad fired all their weapons—including a dozen 3.5-inch rockets—at the NVA-held buildings across Le Dinh Duong Street. When Corporal Wilson ran out of M-16 ammunition, he unholstered his .45-caliber pistol and emptied it at the NVA.

  While the Marine infantrymen and rocketmen were firing, the pair of 106mm recoilless rifles attached to Hotel/2/5 reached one of the buildings fronting Le Dinh Duong. The 106 gunners slammed a total of eighteen of their highly lethal rounds into the NVA buildings across the street.

  The 106s did the trick. As they were firing, the NVA had to keep their heads down, and that gave Corporal A. R. Briseno an opportunity to dash out from Elliott's house to help rescue Corporal Hedger. Briseno's arrival in the courtyard snapped Corporal Wilson back to Hedger's plight, and he helped Briseno carry the inert rocket-squad leader to the doorway of Elliott's house. There Briseno was shot through the leg.

  As Elliott's squad and the 106s continued to pour fire across Le Dinh Duong, the remainder of the rocket squad charged through the hole in the wall and crossed the courtyard into Elliott's house. There Corporal Wilson assumed leadership of the rocket squad and began planning the evacuation of Corporal Hedger and Corporal Briseno. As expected, James Robert Hedger succumbed to his wounds that afternoon. Corporal Briseno was evacuated to Phu Bai. Corporal Lyndol Wilson was awarded a Silver Star for his stand in the courtyard.

  ***

  Chapter 19

  The ferocity of the NVA resistance facing 1/1 in the Jeanne d'Arc complex ruined what had been conceived as a coordinated regi­mental assault by two Marine battalions. The attack quickly degenerated into two distinctly uncoordinated battalion assaults. However, the mere presence of Mark Gravel's thin battalion alleviated some of the pressure on 2/5, particularly Fox/2/5. Nevertheless, as long as the NVA prevented Gravel's companies from reaching Ly Thuong Kiet Street, Fox/2/5 was unable to advance.

  Even after the machine-gun nest in the basement of Le Loi Primary was destroyed, Fox/2/5 got nowhere. The immensely strong treasury structure remained impervious to all the weapons the Marines could bring to bear, and Fox/2/5's lead platoon remained thwarted behind the facing courtyard wall, exchanging fire and sustaining more casualties for no discernible gains.

  Corporal Forrest Towe, a fire-team leader with Fox/2/5's 3rd Platoon, had been firing his M-16 through a hole in the wall—without actually peeking out to look at the treasury. Around mid-morning Towe was leaning with his back to the wall, changing magazines and watching two Marines in the large first-story window fronting the house at the rear of the courtyard. Someone yelled, "B-Forty!" and Towe naturally jerked his eyes up. He saw the RPG as it came in over the wall, right over his head. It was so close, he thought he could reach up and touch it. But it passed him by in what felt like slow motion. Inscribing a smoky trail across the courtyard, it curved down into the window and detonated.

  Corporal Towe was certain the two men in the window had been blown to bits, but he could not be sure. Marines were hurtling out a side door, through billowing dust and debris. There was nothing Towe could do to help. When he tried to move, he discovered that his right leg was twisted up behind his back and over his left shoulder. Towe straightened out the twisted leg and tried to pull out a long piece of shrapnel that was sticking out of the middle of his right shin, but it would not budge. The wound burned like hell, but there was no blood. The shrapnel had cauterized its own wound. At that moment, Sergeant Willard Scott, the 3rd Platoon guide, passed by. "Sergeant Scott," Towe called, "I've been wounded." Scott looked at Towe and said, "Ain't nothing we can do for you here," so Towe braced his back against the wall and stood up on one foot. As he tried to hop across the courtyard, enemy bullets from the treasury struck the ground around him. Dislocated leg and all, Towe ran into the building and right on through to the company aid station. From there, he was sent with several other walking wounded to Doc Lao Park for any available medevac.

  And so it went, right through the morning.

  *

  The final collapse of the treasury compound began with an inauspicious event: the arrival in Hue of Major John Salvati, the 2/5 exec.

  John Salvati was an especially aggressive type who, by virtue of his rank and bad fortune, had spent the first half of his tour in Vietnam without ever closing on the enemy. Just before 2/5 was transferred north to Thua Thien Province a week before Tet, Salvati had been alerted that he was being routinely reassigned as 1st Marine Division headquarters commandant. That move, Sal­vati knew, would ensure his completing his tour without ever seeing combat. Extremely distraught, Major Salvati had ap­proached his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham, to beg that he be taken along when Cheatham mounted out for Hue on February 3. Both knew well that the province of the battalion executive officer was "in the rear with the gear," and Cheatham knew that he would need a man of Salvati's character and drive at Phu Bai to push supplies and replacements forward against the tide of senior rear-area bureaucracies. But, in the end, Cheatham relented. A few days in Hue really would be John Salvati's last chance to see some action.

  Major Salvati had been ready to mount out to Hue with Cheatham on February 3, but unfinished errands requiring the presence of a field-grade officer prevented him from going along. On the battalion commander's sworn promise of duty in Hue, Salvati agreed to remain in Phu Bai for one more day. By the morning of February 4, his tasks in Phu Bai had been completed. On radioed orders from Ernie Cheatham, Salvati gathered up every rear-area 2/5 Marine who could be spared and joined a convoy that left for Hue at 0910. He arrived at MACV at 1005. The only action on the way had been some desultory sniper fire along Highway 1 between the An Cuu Bridge across the Phu Cam Canal and a point about two blocks south of MACV.

  Following directions he picked up at MACV, Major Salvati arrived at the 2/5's CP, in the university, at about the time the 106mm recoilless rifle was taking out the NVA .51-caliber ma­chine gun in Le Loi Primary School. As soon as Salvati arrived, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham detailed him to supervise the em­placement of another 106 in a top-floor window of the university. The 106 was to take out an NVA machine gun that could not be reached from the street.

  The immensely heavy recoilless rifle had to be manhandled up a spiral staircase before it could be emplaced. Then the gunner adjusted his sights and fired a .50-caliber marking round at the target. During the time it took to fire several marking rounds, conversation in the crowded room naturally turned to the subject of the 106's deadly backblast. When the sights were correctly aligned, the platoon commander, Staff Sergeant James Long, rigged a remote firing device, and everyone evacuated the room. The 106 fired one round, and the room in which it was emplaced was demolished. Major Salvati, Staff Sergeant Long, the gun team, and sundry observers were covered in plaster dust, and the 106's tripod was severely damaged by falling masonry. The enemy machine gun had also been destroyed.

  There wasn't much for a battalion executive officer to do in Hue without a staff armed with typewriters. So, after the 106 incident in the university, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham invited Major Salvati to "check on the companies and see what they need." There is no telling how that open-ended assignment might have been undertaken by a less aggressive major. John Salvati took it to mean that he had carte bl
anche to mix it up with the enemy.

  In very short order Major Salvati learned of Fox/2/5's thwarted attempts to cross Ly Thuong Kiet Street to the treasury. He decided to head to the Fox/2/5 CP to see what Captain Mike Downs was doing and to find out if he could be of any help. When Salvati first saw Downs, the major was reminded of a joke about a one-legged man in an ice-skating race. The NVA in the treasury were laying extremely heavy fire on Fox/2/5's positions, preventing Downs's Marines from jumping off. Downs was alter­nating conversations on the company radio with all three of his platoon commanders, trying to direct the company 60mm mortars against feasible targets, and yelling for ammunition.

  When Major Salvati asked if there was anything he could do, Captain Downs asked him how he felt about training a 3.5-inch rocket team. Salvati agreed and took the two young Marines to a secure area behind several buildings. To his amazement, neither member of the rocket team had ever fired a rocket. Salvati ran them through the drill and asked them to expend a round on a three-story building just fifty meters away. The tyro rocketmen missed the massive structure entirely. There wasn't time to deal with it—Mike Downs was yelling for rocket fire—so John Salvati entered the fray as a rocket gunner. He got into a good position across from the treasury; placed the launcher on his shoulder; instructed one of the rocketmen on the intricacies of loading a rocket; and fired directly at a window on the treasury's second floor, from which he was certain the NVA were firing down on Fox/2/5.

  Having provided his inexperienced gunners with brief but effective on-the-job training, Major Salvati returned to the Fox/ 2/5 CP. There he found Mike Downs as busy as ever; Fox/2/5 was still stalled on its side of Ly Thuong Kiet Street. Unencum­bered by the responsibilities of command, John Salvati let his mind wander in search of a viable solution to Fox/2/5's bloody problem. He thought of using CS tear gas against the enemy position, but he knew the company would need a lot of it if its assault through the gas was to be effective.