Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  Salvati's mind settled on the E-8 gas launcher, a pack-mounted device that was capable of firing sixty-four 35mm CS tear-gas projectiles in four five-second bursts of sixteen projec­tiles each. The E-8 was an area-saturation weapon, perfect for the situation Fox/2/5 was facing. Fortunately, Salvati knew, Lieuten­ant Colonel Cheatham had had the foresight to make certain that every member of 2/5 had or had access to a gas mask. So the only problem was locating one or more E-8s. By lucky coincidence, Salvati had seen several E-8s stacked against the wall of an ARVN compound adjacent to MACV. Without further ado, the battalion exec hopped into his jeep and ordered his driver to head straight for the E-8 cache.

  It took much pointing and gesturing—and some serious threatening—to get the ARVN troops to go along, but Major Salvati and his driver managed to load four E-8 launchers into the jeep's trailer and head /back to the battalion CP. There Salvati explained his idea to Ernie Cheatham, and the battalion com­mander readily assented. With that, Salvati drove down to the Fox/2/5 CP and laid out his plan for Mike Downs. Captain Downs jumped on the idea. He asked Major Salvati to set up the E-8 launchers in a nearby courtyard while Downs got his com­pany ready to leap through the gas cloud and across Ly Thuong Kiet Street.

  Second Lieutenant Donald Hausrath's 3rd Platoon of Fox/ 2/5 was still in the chemistry building and courtyard directly across Ly Thuong Kiet from the treasury, still assigned the lead-off position in the company assault on the objective. On the morning of February 4, Sergeant Chuck Ekker's squad moved to the courtyard wall, into the lead-off position. When Major Salvati launched the gas, Ekker's squad was to attack, with Corporal Arkie Allbritton's fire team in the vanguard.

  Everything was set. Almost exactly at noon, the word came to Major John Salvati that Fox/2/5 was ready for him to activate the first E-8 gas launcher. Salvati personally pulled the lanyard— and nothing happened. The cord was rotted through, and it broke off in Salvati's hand. Fortunately, the E-8 could be fired with an electrical impulse. Second Lieutenant Dick Squires, a Marine engineer whose platoon of the 1st Engineer Battalion was at­tached to 2/5, somehow produced an old crank-operated field telephone. The phone was then rigged to the E-8 gas launcher. All Major Salvati had to do to produce an adequate electrical current was crank the phone vigorously. This he did. The first wave of sixteen gas projectiles was ejected from the launcher, followed in five seconds by sixteen more projectiles, and so forth, until sixty-four had been fired. The northeastern facade of the treasury building blossomed in detonations, which did little or no good. But several pellets fell through open windows,- and that was the charm.

  Unfortunately, in addition to causing the NVA no end of grief, the CS tear gas drifted southeast with the breeze off the Perfume River and caused much gagging and puking among dozens of unprepared 1/1 Marines. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Gravel gasped a protest direct to Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham, but there was nothing Cheatham could do except apologize.

  *

  As soon as the tear-gas canisters were launched, the treas­ury's wrought-iron front gate was blasted open by the 106mm recoilless rifle team that had earlier destroyed the NVA machine gun in the basement of Le Loi Primary School. Once again, the 106 gunners ran their mule-mounted 106 down the university steps, right out onto Ly Thuong Kiet. And, as before, they painstakingly aimed in on their target by firing the .50-caliber spotting rifle until the tracer rounds were perfectly placed.

  As soon as the gas cloud started to spread across the front of the treasury building, Corporal Arkie Allbritton ducked through the hole in the courtyard wall and raced across Ly Thuong Kiet, straight for the treasury compound's blown gate. Right behind Allbritton were Lance Corporal Ray Stewart, Lance Corporal Ken Crysel, and Private First Class Hastings Rigollet. Behind Rigollet was the M-60 machine-gun team led by Lance Corporal Roger Warren. Behind the M-60 team were Sergeant Chuck Ekker and the rest of Ekker's squad. Staff Sergeant Jim McCoy, the 3rd Platoon's platoon sergeant, was with Ekker's squad and detailed with leading the fire team assigned to clear the treasury attic.

  After passing through the front gate, Corporal Allbritton charged across the open courtyard—about twelve meters—and made it to the front door of the treasury building. The massive front door had been blown in moments before by a Marine tank, which was still firing its machine guns and 90mm main gun at windows all across the front of the building. Allbritton leaned against the door frame and chucked in a CS tear-gas grenade. Then Corporal Stewart tossed in an M-26 fragmentation gre­nade. When the M-26 went off, Arkie Allbritton stepped around the edge of the doorway, blindly spraying the foyer with his M-16.

  Corporal Allbritton's orders were to seize the high ground— in this case, to find a way to the second story. In front of Allbrit­ton, and to his left, was a counter topped by steel bars that ran to the ceiling. Clearly these were tellers' cages. To the right was the only doorway Allbritton could see, so he peered through it and saw that a long, narrow corridor stretched away to his left, toward the rear of the building. Directly across the hallway was an open door through which Allbritton could see a roomful of safes. To his left, back along the hallway, were three doors. The door farther back on the same side of the hallway as Allbritton's door was open. It seemed to lead behind the tellers' cages. A door directly opposite that door was closed, as was a door at the far rear of the hallway.

  Allbritton reasoned that one of the closed doors led to the stairway, so he stepped into the hallway and began working his way to the nearest one. As Allbritton's fire team and the one behind it rapidly moved up the hallway, Staff Sergeant McCoy and the last of Sergeant Ekker's fire teams entered the smoke-filled foyer and immediately turned left. McCoy had been told that the stairway to the second floor was to the left, but he literally collided with the left-hand teller's cage when he went that way. Staff Sergeant McCoy collected the fire team he was leading and followed the rest of Sergeant Ekker's squad back through the doorway to the right of the main entrance.

  Before Corporal Allbritton could consider opening either of the closed doors along the hallway, he heard Vietnamese voices behind the near one, coming from above. Apparently, several NVA were trying to evacuate the second floor.

  Certain he had located the stairwell, Allbritton fired at the door, hoping he would kill or scare the men behind it. At the moment Allbritton opened fire, Lance Corporal Roger Warren arrived with his M-60 machine gun, and he also fired at the door.

  When the firing ceased, Corporal Allbritton tried to open the door. It would not budge. It seemed to Allbritton that a body or some rubble was wedged in behind it. Corporal Ray Stewart and Lance Corporal Ken Crysel placed M-26 hand grenades at the base of the door, and everyone stepped into the rooms to the right and left. The grenades blew the door off its hinges. As Stewart and Crysel kicked the door out of the way, Allbritton passed between them, stepped over a pile of masonry rubble, and found himself confronted by a tightly enclosed stairwell. Oppo­site the door the Marines had just blown down was another door, which the NVA had clearly used to escape the M-16 and M-60 fire.

  Hardly taking the time to let all the details sink in, Allbrit­ton chucked the fragmentation grenade in his hand up to the landing to his right. Everyone flattened against the walls until it blew. With that, Corporal Stewart and Lance Corporal Crysel led the way up the stairs, through two turns. On the second floor, Allbritton's fire team and Lance Corporal Warren's gun team rushed to secure all the rooms. They were joined moments later by Staff Sergeant McCoy and another fire team from Ser­geant Ekker's squad. Ekker and the last fire team were sweeping through the ground floor.

  There was more tear gas on the second floor than there had been below, and the Marines' vision and hearing were restricted by their gas masks. The clearing operation, which would have been tense under any circumstances, was therefore especially scary because the Marines' two most important senses were handicapped. For all the terror, however, Allbritton's and Warren's teams found only one laggard NVA soldier. He turned up severely wo
unded after Corporal Stewart blindly tossed a grenade into a closet during routine clearing operations. The NVA soldier's wounds were treated on the spot by his captors, and he was later evacuated to MACV, the only prisoner to emerge from the treasury.

  While searching for a way up to the half-story attic above the second story, Corporal Allbritton chanced to look through a steel-barred window facing back the way he had come, back across Ly Thuong Kiet. To his surprise, for he had heard no sounds of fighting below, Marines were dragging casualties back across the treasury courtyard.

  At length, someone found a trapdoor leading to the attic. A ladder built into the wall was the only way up. The trapdoor was thrown back and fragmentation grenades were lofted through the opening before anyone attempted to climb up.

  The deserted attic area was just one large open space. Venti­lation holes the builders had cut into the foot-thick walls made perfect firing ports, and there were what amounted to individual bunkers built from masonry rubble around each aperture. While searching through the bunkers, Corporal Allbritton found just one 35mm tear-gas projectile. Apparently, it had been enough to force the NVA out of the attic. When Allbritton peered out through one of the firing ports, his heart nearly stopped. The NVA soldiers who had occupied the bunkers had enjoyed a flaw­less view of the courtyard in which Fox/2/5's 3rd Platoon had been bottled up for nearly a day and a half. The NVA fields of fire had been perfect.

  *

  Lance Corporal Bernie Burnham's squad was right behind Sergeant Ekker's. Just before jumping off through the hole in the courtyard wall, Burnham's Marines gripped hands. "Okay," Burnham said, "here we go." And they went.

  After passing through the front door of the treasury build­ing and into the foyer, Burnham's squad followed Ekker's and went to the right, into the hallway first penetrated by Corporal Allbritton's fire team. By the time Lance Corporal Burnham entered the hallway, the noise of gunfire and exploding grenades was deafening. The dark interior of the building, tear-gas fumes, thick billows of gun smoke, and the narrow vistas afforded by gas-mask goggles combined to make it virtually impossible for Burnham to see where he was going, but he knew that he had to forge ahead—no matter what.

  Ekker's squad had rushed ahead, chasing the fleeing NVA, but Burnham's squad had to go slowly, carefully searching the building for stragglers or intentional stay-behinds. Feeling their way through the smoky gloom, two-man teams from Burnham's squad cleared one room at a time in the by-then classic mode—a grenade through the doorway followed by both Marines entering simultaneously, hosing their M-16s around on full automatic.

  *

  Behind Burnham's squad was the last of the 3rd Platoon's three squads, Corporal Dave Theriault's. Lance Corporal Ernie Weiss saw the tellers' cages ahead and to his left as soon as he entered the treasury building through the front door. This had not quite registered when, through all the accumulated haze, Weiss saw the muzzle of an AK-47 appear over the top of the counter. He flung his body into reverse and came to rest outside the front door just as the NVA soldier, whom Weiss had not actually seen, opened fire.

  No one was hit by the burst, and the NVA soldier ceased firing. Lance Corporal Weiss reentered the foyer on his hands and knees, crawled up to the counter, and pushed a fragmentation grenade between the bars of the teller's cage. When the grenade went off, Weiss stood up and opened fire. There was nothing behind the counter except a roomful of desks, so Weiss turned to his right and followed the rest of Corporal Theriault's squad through the door and down the hallway.

  Somehow, Ernie Weiss found himself at the head of The­riault's squad as it moved rapidly toward a doorway at the end of the hallway. Burnham's squad had grenaded and blasted its way up the hallway already, so no one in Theriault's squad was check­ing the rooms on either side. Suddenly, a Chinese (Chicom) "potato masher" hand grenade was lofted into the hallway from a doorway at Weiss's left front. The Chicom bounced against the wall to Weiss's right and started rolling down the hall.

  Weiss was transfixed. A live Chicom grenade was rolling down the hallway toward him, and he just stood there, staring. The only thing he could think of to say was, "Oh, shit!" With that, he jumped to the right, through another doorway. Corporal Dave Theriault yelled, "Grenade," but he was too late. The Chi­com detonated, wounding about half the Marines in Theriault's squad, including Theriault himself. The wounded men had to be evacuated from the building with the help of all but two of their uninjured comrades.

  While the wounded were being treated, Lance Corporal Weiss and Private First Class Mike Sowards charged into the room from which the Chicom had been thrown. The NVA sol­dier—probably the same man who had fired at Weiss from over the teller's counter—was long gone, but he or one of his comrades had left behind a radio pack. Weiss rifled through the pack and found an NVA battle flag, which he kept. From there, the two Marines eased through the door in back of the room and found themselves on a covered porch running the full width of the back of the treasury building. They worked to the left, down the covered porch, checking each room they encountered along the way. At the far end of each room was a teller's cage facing the front foyer of the building.

  A few minutes later, Weiss and Sowards found themselves in a small side courtyard. When they entered the enclosed space, they discovered a wounded NVA soldier who was crawling very slowly on his belly. Weiss turned to Sowards and said, "Holy shit, it's a gook." It was the first enemy soldier he had ever seen up close, and he was not sure what he was supposed to do. Weiss looked around for a superior and saw a more experienced Marine passing only a few yards away. "Hey," Lance Corporal Weiss called, "we got a wounded gook over here."

  The newcomer took one look at the wounded, pathetic NVA soldier. He felt no spark of human kindness. All he saw in his mind's eye were the bloody bodies of Private First Class William Barnes, who had been shot dead in the middle of Ly Thuong Kiet the previous afternoon, and Lance Corporal Wayne Washburn, who had been carried to safety but had died nonetheless. The Marine wordlessly lowered the muzzle of his M-16 and fired several rounds into the crawling man. He knew he had done something wrong, but he could not make himself feel any re­morse.

  *

  The rear section of the walled treasury compound was a broad, shallow courtyard containing several small outbuildings. As teams of Marines stepped into the open from the rear of the treasury building, an NVA soldier in one of the outbuildings opened fire on them. One Marine fell, wounded and unable to fend for himself.

  Lance Corporal Roger Warren, the M-60 team leader, was also in the open. Rather than hit the dirt, Warren fired the M-60 from his hip and advanced to the side of the wounded Marine. The NVA soldier was still firing at the wounded man—and Lance Corporal Warren, who was also hit—but Warren continued to return the fire, using up two entire belts of M-60 ammunition before he and others quelled the NVA soldier's fire. The Marine Warren had been aiding was evacuated, but Warren ignored his own injuries. He had already been awarded two Purple Heart medals, and the rule was that he would be sent home to the States if he earned a third. There was no way Roger Warren was going home if he could still move under his own power.

  *

  Staff Sergeant Jim McCoy was checking through the build­ing, making sure it was secure, when about thirty civilians emerged from nowhere. They all were well dressed in American-style clothing. McCoy radioed the 3rd Platoon commander, Lieu­tenant Donald Hausrath, to tell him about the civilians; Hausrath sent word that McCoy was to "handle it." McCoy found that one of the civilians spoke good English, so he told the man that the treasury compound was secure and that the danger had passed. With that, the civilians left. McCoy never found out who they were, where they had come from, or where they went.

  While Staff Sergeant McCoy was tied up with the civilians, Lance Corporal Bernie Burnham radioed the Fox/2/5 CP and told Captain Mike Downs that the treasury building was secure. Downs said that he was coming right over with his CP group, but Burnham told him that it wasn't safe. This was not tru
e, and Burnham knew it, but he had a plan to blow one of the safes. He knew he had erred as soon as he had told Downs the building was in Marine hands; Downs's quick arrival obviated the safe-blowing job. Burnham collected no booty, but, overnight, scores of Ma­rines from Fox/2/5 and Hotel/2/5 helped themselves to cur­rency and even thin leaves of gold they found in safes and vaults throughout the building.

  In all, on February 4, eighteen Fox/2/5 Marines had been wounded trying to cross Ly Thuong Kiet Street or securing the treasury compound. About half were evacuated from Hue; several were treated and returned to duty; and several, like Lance Cor­poral Roger Warren, never bothered to turn themselves in for fear of being awarded a third Purple Heart and shipped home.

  ***

  Chapter 20

  Altogether, February 4 was a pivotal day in the battle for Hue, for it marked the beginning of a regimental effort by U.S. Ma­rines to recapture the southern portion of the city—a signal to the NVA that the Americans had placed Hue near the top of their list of nationwide priorities. For the Marines, the fall of the NVA strongpoint in the treasury building was of immense signifi­cance, for it served notice to the 4th NVA Regiment that in a matter of days the Americans had mastered the art of city combat. The Marines had captured the treasury with an improvised attack using available weapons—tear gas, tanks, 106mm recoilless ri­fles, mortars, and 3.5-inch rocket launchers—combined with tough infantry clearing tactics. That success demonstrated that they could probably seize any NVA strongpoint in the city.

  Also of significance that afternoon was the arrival of the U.S. Navy's guided-missile destroyer Lynda McCormick. From around 1700 on, 1st Marine Regiment and 1st ARVN Division units in need of direct fire support would be able to receive on-call assistance from McCormick’s 5-inch guns or from other U.S. Navy warships that were eventually deployed in the South China Sea east of the city.