Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  But Walsh's combat debut in the Citadel was far from over. His squad emerged intact at the end of the first city block southeast of Mai Thuc Loan Street, but there was more ground to take ahead, and plenty more time to try.

  As Delta/l/5's 2nd Platoon paused to reorganize, Staff Sergeant Robert Thorns arrived following a quick confab with Captain Harrington. It was the 2nd Platoon's turn to advance up on the wall.

  Thorns led Jim Walsh's squad up a pile of rubble, right up to the top of the wall. The first twenty-five meters fell without a fight. Then the NVA recovered their wits, and all hell broke loose.

  Jim Walsh found himself hugging a pile of rubble, out near the point of the squad. Staff Sergeant Thorns was right beside him. The rest of the squad was spread to their right, hard at work burrowing into the rubble for all they were worth. Walsh heard the air over his head singing with the cry of passing bullets. It was a colorful sight, as the red tracer from M-16s and M-60s crisscrossed with the green tracer from AK-47s and RPDs. See­ing so many green tracers coming from so many directions scared Walsh more than anything he had yet endured in Vietnam.

  During a brief lull, Walsh peeked and saw that NVA soldiers were burrowed into the rubble less than ten meters to his front. Among the pieces of broken masonry, he could clearly see the smooth curve of the tops of their pith helmets. In no time, the Marines behind Walsh started lobbing hand grenades into the NVA position. At first, the canny NVA soldiers tossed back the armed M-26s, which detonated in the Marine line, but the Ma­rines caught on and held onto their grenades longer before loft­ing them. After that, the NVA soldiers responded with a hail of their own Chicoms. Several of the weaker Chinese-made grenades detonated at once and lifted Jim Walsh into the air, leaving him momentarily stunned. When he glanced back to see how the rest of the squad was doing, he saw that several Marines were bleed­ing from their noses and ears—from concussion. By then, every­one in the squad had been wounded by grenade shrapnel or brick shards.

  As Walsh later described it, "The NVA had our asses pinned royally." When that became evident, Staff Sergeant Thorns turned to Walsh and ordered him to climb the mound they were using for cover, and fire down into the NVA position.

  Keeping as low as he could, Walsh had barely started scrab­bling up the pile of loose brick rubble when his right leg was knocked out from beneath him. He lost his balance and rolled to the bottom of the mound.

  At first Walsh could feel no pain. It took long seconds for him to figure out that he had been shot. As he lay at the foot of the rubble mound, intense pain overtook him. Walsh had seen many wounded men go into shock at the first sight of their wounds, so he kept his eyes averted and hoped that one of his buddies would move him if he had fallen into the line of fire. He had landed on top of his wounded leg—it was twisted up under­neath his body—but he could not bring himself to touch the limb. He just lay back on it. Unexpectedly, the pain melted away to a dull, bearable throb.

  Staff Sergeant Thorns had been looking right at Walsh when the bullet struck the fire-team leader just above the right knee. He knew Walsh's leg was broken. He asked Walsh if he was okay, and Walsh replied that he would be fine as long as he didn't have to look at the injury. Thorns nodded and told Walsh to just lie back; he would get him out of there as soon as possible.

  Walsh had had one really close call that day, and now he had been shot. If the progression continued, he felt, he would be shot again, only worse. With every passing second, the feeling of gloom and doom deepened. His hands gripped the loose rubble beneath him in a spasmodic attempt to hold onto reality. He fished a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, then he began loading empty M-16 magazines from his spare bandoleers, trying to keep his mind off his fears.

  Every once in a while he could hear someone call "Corps-man, up," but his squad was really cut off atop the wall. There was no way for a corpsman or reinforcements to get up there to help.

  Hours passed. The Marines were getting low on ammuni­tion, and the NVA appeared to be in similar straits. The firing continued, but with less intensity, at less frequent intervals.

  Staff Sergeant Thoms's M-16 jammed, so Jim Walsh traded with the platoon commander and then occupied himself by trying to fix the jammed weapon. While he was working, Walsh saw an Asian-looking man in civilian clothing dart in and out of his line of sight. It turned out the man was Kyoichi Sawada, a United Press International photographer, intent upon recording the standoff. (Walsh later saw himself spread across a page of Life magazine.)

  At long last, a corpsman and a Marine helper arrived atop the wall. They rushed straight up a pile of rubble during a lull and dropped in beside Jim Walsh. Immediately, one of them grabbed him under his arms while the other grabbed his legs. Everyone fired into the NVA position. Walsh's broken leg was badly jostled on the way down the wall, but he landed in a safe spot from which he could be carried farther to the rear. The doc examined the leg and told Walsh that he had acquired a million-dollar wound, a certain ticket home. Walsh took the news with mixed feelings. He had no problem with getting home, but he did not really want to leave his squad in the thick of battle, particularly a battle he felt the good guys were winning.

  The doc cleaned the wound, applied a battle dressing, and gave Walsh a shot of morphine. The morphine conked him right out. When he came to—only a minute later—it was because the NVA were trying to finish the job on him with mortars. They were firing a preparation for an attack on Staff Sergeant Thorns and the rest of the squad.

  Someone brought a stretcher for Walsh, and he was carried to the rear in lurching leaps between mortar salvos. Up on the wall, his fellow Marines fought for their lives against a direct assault that came very close to sweeping them away.

  Private First Class Jim Walsh was flown to Phu Bai that night. Two weeks later, in a hospital in Japan, he ran into his friend, Lance Corporal Tom Zwetow. Unknown to Walsh, Zwetow had been the squad point when the February 16 fight on the wall erupted. He had taken cover in a makeshift bunker built by the NVA in the rubble, but the bunker had collapsed on top of him when a grenade rolled in and detonated. Zwetow was wounded and buried alive. He could not dig himself out. Fortu­nately, one Marine had seen him dive into the bunker, and that Marine survived the hours-long struggle. Zwetow was pulled from the collapsed bunker at dusk, treated, and evacuated.

  *

  On February 16, 1/5 lost twelve Marines killed, forty-five Marines wounded and evacuated, and fifteen Marines wounded and returned to duty. In return, the battalion turned in a claim for twenty-six NVA confirmed killed, fourteen assorted weapons taken, and the recapture of a Marine field radio.

  *

  Late in the morning on February 16, the 4th VNMC Battal­ion had arrived at the Hue LCU ramp. While the Vietnamese Marines waited to be ferried across the Perfume River, Major Bill Eshelman, the senior U.S. Marine advisor, made his way to MACV in the hope of getting some reliable information from fellow U.S. Marines. At MACV he found two trusted friends, Major Frank Breth and Major Wayne Swenson, respectively the 3rd Marine Division and 1st Marine Division liaison officers to the 1st ARVN Division. Breth and Swenson had been back and forth between MACV and the 1st ARVN Division CP several times, and they knew the score inside the Citadel. They wasted no time telling Major Eshelman all they knew.

  The trip across the river was painless, but not without a scare or two from NVA or VC snipers on the island east of the Citadel. The battalion mustered at the quay and marched straight into the 1st ARVN Division CP compound. No sooner had the battalion arrived than it was sent into the attack to relieve pressure on the 1st Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment, which a superior NVA force had pinned to positions around the Chanh Tay Gate for two days. In effect, the 4th VNMC Battalion was being called upon to clear a significant force of NVA from the 3rd ARVN Regiment zone, which was northwest—in the rear—of the 1st and 5th VNMC battalions.

  Jumping off fairly late in the afternoon, the 4th VNMC Battalion advanced cautiously, with its right-flank elements atop the
Citadel's northwest wall. The battalion had been in intense city combat in Saigon for most of the preceding two weeks, but the Citadel's close masonry structures in no way resembled Sai­gon's relatively open sprawl of less formidable buildings.

  But it was not simple caution or unfamiliarity that slowed the 4th VNMC Battalion. The NVA were out in force, sniping from the top of the wall and firing from within multistory buildings. The NVA were using small arms, B-40s, and .51-caliber heavy machine guns. One of the few weapons the Vietnamese Marines had that could punch through masonry walls was a few captured B-40s, so the only way for them to advance was to move up the streets. That, in the face of expertly sited .51-caliber fire, took guts.

  At day's end, the 4th VNMC Battalion still had not reached the Citadel's western corner. Overnight, however, the NVA force defending the Chanh Tay Gate melted away. No doubt the pres­sure represented by a fresh 700-man VNMC battalion was enough to convince the Communist troops to leave the shattered 1st Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment, in peace.

  *

  At 2150, the 1/5 command group received mixed news from enemy sources. A message from the 1st Marines CP stated:

  Message, intercepted from . .. the commander of the enemy force inside Hue to his superior, states that original commander of the force inside Hue had been killed and that many others had either been killed or wounded. He recommended to withdraw. Senior offi­cer ordered new commander of the force in Hue to remain in position and fight.

  *

  It was heartening to the Marines to learn that the enemy commander had been killed, but the fact that the new command­er's request to withdraw had been denied was not good news at all. It smacked of a fanatical desire on the part of the Tri-Thien-Hue Front commander, for there was no doubt that the Commu­nist forces would be driven from Hue. The only unknown factors were how long it would take and how many needless deaths it would cost. All this so the NLF flag could fly over the Citadel wall for a few days longer.

  ***

  Chapter 33

  For 1/5, the February 17 action began at 0430, when Delta/1/5 was struck by a mortar barrage from an NVA-occupied but un-contested sector east of the Citadel, across the Perfume River. As the mortar barrage was lifting, NVA soldiers, dug in along the company's immediate front, opened fire with B-40 rockets and small arms. The Marines responded with M-16s, M-60s, M-79s, and LAAWs, and finally called an 8-inch howitzer mission for good measure. As the 8-inch shells were landing, the NVA broke contact. The result of the two-step wake-up call was one Marine killed, four Marines wounded and evacuated, and two NVA soldiers known dead.

  The U.S. Marine battalion waded into the NVA defensive zone at 0700. The advance was slow but steady. As they had during 2/5's final sweep between the Perfume River and the Phu Cam Canal, the NVA were resorting to delaying tactics consist­ing of the unyielding defense of strongly fortified, mutually supporting strongpoints. Initially, this offered the ever-diminish­ing Marine companies, platoons, and squads more latitude for maneuver. Each strongpoint was reduced in turn, albeit at great expense in time and manpower. But, as the battalion advanced, it came under fire from NVA automatic weapons atop the northeast wall of the Imperial Palace. The Marines returned fire with their M-60s and M-16s, but they were not allowed to use explosive ordnance. ARVN and VNMC artillery fire against the Imperial Palace wall was limited in strength and duration; thus, such fire was of limited value.

  By the middle of the afternoon, Charlie/1/5 was obliged to tie up one of its small platoons to cordon off the Imperial Palace wall. Meanwhile, the remainder of the battalion side-slipped a block away and bypassed the most active strongpoints along the top of the wall. The decision to use even eighteen or twenty Marines to man static positions nearly overtaxed 1/5's dwindling manpower. Nevertheless, by 1630, when 1/5 stopped for the day, its three front-line companies were arrayed along Han Thuyen Street, halfway down the Imperial Palace's northeastern wall and only three blocks from the Thuong Tu Gate, Golf/2/5's January 31 objective.

  In response to 1/5's pleas for reinforcements, sixty-two replacements were helilifted into the Citadel between 1617 and 1640, February 17. The replacements hardly made a dent in the battalion's manpower shortage. In fact, the new men did not even make good that one day's losses. The cumulative results of the February 17 fighting alone amounted to twelve Marines killed and fifty-five Marines wounded and evacuated. Against this, 1/5 counted twenty-eight NVA soldiers confirmed killed.

  *

  Also on February 17, the 4th VNMC Battalion reached the Citadel's western corner against sporadic rearguard resistance-just enough to slow the clearing operation. After clearing the area around the Chanh Tay Gate, the VNMC battalion relieved the cut-up ARVN battalions that had been fighting there for several weeks. The battalion's orders were to continue mopping up around the Chanh Tay Gate on February 18. Then, if everything went well, it was to rejoin Battle Group Alpha on February 19 for the final assault toward the south corner of the Citadel.

  *

  Bob Thompson's U.S. Marine battalion could not continue its attack on February 18. Hampered by extremely cold and wet weather, 1/5 had run low on ammunition of all types. Moreover, each of its four infantry companies mustered fewer than 100 men. The battalion had been in contact with enemy forces for most of the past forty-five days, and it was badly disorganized. So critical was the shortage of supplies that the troops had not been fed adequately for the past two days; some of the men had not been fed at all. Compounding all those problems, the battalion's front line was only a few blocks from the Citadel's southeast wall—it was no longer possible to call on artillery or mortar support without seriously endangering the troops.

  On February 18, the 1st ARVN Division's Brigadier General Truong partially alleviated 1/5's manpower shortage by dispatch­ing the battle-weakened but formidable Hoc Bao Company and the 1st ARVN Division Reconnaissance Company to the U.S. Marine battalion's right flank, along the Imperial Palace wall. But Truong's gift was a two-edged sword. As soon as the tiger-suited Hoc Bao troopers reached the 1/5 CP, the company commander, Captain Tran Ngoc Hue, asked Major Bob Thompson to blow a hole in the palace's northeast gate so his soldiers could assault the citadel within the Citadel. Thompson admired the ARVN captain's courage, but he refused the request. Not even the elite Hoc Bao Company could survive such an attack, much less prevail. When Captain Hue insisted that he was under direct orders from General Truong to carry out the assault, Thompson radioed the 1st ARVN Division commander and begged him to rescind the order. Truong readily acceded to Thompson's request, but Truong decided then and there that the Hoc Bao Company would indeed liberate the Imperial Palace when the time was right.

  On February 18, 1/5 remained rooted to its line along the northwest side of Han Thuyen. A day of small but intense fire-fights produced no significant gains but resulted in thirty-five NYA dead at a cost of four Marines killed, ten Marines wounded and evacuated, and another four Marines wounded and returned to duty.

  A week earlier, as Major Bob Thompson had been preparing to leave MACV for the Citadel, Major Aloysius McGonigal, a forty-six-year-old Jesuit priest serving as a U.S. Army chaplain, had volunteered to accompany 1/5. From the moment 1/5 had jumped off into the attack, the diminutive, owlishly bespectacled Jesuit had stubbornly clung to the units at the forefront of the action. Whenever a Marine fell, there was a good chance that Father McGonigal would soon be at his side, administering last rites or words of consolation or just helping to carry him to safety. When there were no wounded Marines to console, Father McGonigal simply cheered the fire teams on to victory. To Major Bob Thompson, he seemed like a man possessed. Though Thompson considered the priest to be reckless and maybe even subconsciously suicidal, he was nevertheless inspired by Father McGonigal's many heroic acts. Many admiring Marines warned McGonigal to take care, but the priest never avoided a dangerous situation. Indeed, he seemed intent upon seeking out the hottest spots, eager to go wherever the danger was greatest.

  McGonigal was presen
t each evening for Major Thompson's command briefing, but he had failed to show up on February 17. It became evident that he was missing. In the morning, the Marines began an all-out search of the rubble through which 1/5 had fought. At 1430, the bad news reached the battalion CP: Father McGonigal's body had been found in the rubble of a house two blocks behind the front line. No doubt, while on one of his countless errands of mercy, the priest had been caught in one of the mortar barrages the NVA fired into 1/5's rear every evening. Searching for Marines to tend and comfort, Father Aloysius McGonigal had died—alone and untended—killed by shrapnel that entered the back of his head. Marines and corpsmen of all faiths openly mourned their loss.

  That day 1/5 had lost another brave and devoted man. From the beginning of the battalion's ordeal in the Citadel, the 106mm Recoilless Rifle Platoon's Mechanical Mule drivers had been at the forefront of the evacuation and resupply efforts. No evacua­tion mission was refused as being too dangerous. Tragically, at 1730, on February 18, one of the bravest of the drivers had missed Charlie/1/5's front line—everyone was hunkered down out of sight—and he was well into a contested but momentarily quiescent intersection before anyone could stop him. The NVA shot the driver right out of his seat. The Marines opened heavy suppressive fire, and the driver's helper was able to scramble back across Han Thuyen Street. But in the face of overwhelming NVA fire, it proved impossible to rescue the driver or recover the Mechanical Mule. Finally, long after dark, a few Marines crept out into the intersection and recovered the body.