We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young

by Harold G. Moore

  Now Bob Edwards’s 3rd Platoon, led by Lieutenant Franklin, came under attack, but fortunately with nothing like the numbers or ferocity of the assault against Kroger’s and Geoghegan’s platoons. A heavy firelight developed on Franklin’s right, involving Lieutenant Lane’s reinforcing platoon from Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion. Sergeant John Setelin was in that scrap: “It seemed like half a battalion hit us all at once. He hit us headlong and he hit us strong. I thought we were going to be overrun. When Charlie hit us, he had this strange grazing fire. He shot right at ground level trying to cut your legs off, or, if you weren’t deep enough in your foxhole, he shot your head off. When he started firing at us, it came like torrents of rain. You couldn’t get your head up long enough to shoot back. You just stuck your weapon up, pulled the trigger, and emptied the magazine.”

  Back at the battalion command post, I had my ear glued to the radio handset when Captain Bob Edwards’s voice broke in with a quick, curt “I’m hit!” I asked him how bad it was and whether he could still function. He replied that he was down and his left arm was useless, but he would do his best to carry on. Specialist 4 Ernie Paolone, sharing the foxhole with his boss, says Edwards was bleeding badly from the back of his left shoulder and left armpit.

  Edwards’s commo sergeant, Sergeant Hermon R. Hostuttler, was hit in the neck and went down, bleeding heavily. Edwards then saw two or three enemy “right in front of us. I stood, threw a grenade, and immediately felt a tremendous, hard slap on my back. I found myself on the ground inside the foxhole. I had lost the ability to move my left arm but otherwise was conscious. I called Colonel Moore and told him what happened and asked that he send my executive officer up to take command.”

  Edwards’s executive officer was Lieutenant John W. Arrington, twenty-three, a native of North Carolina and a graduate of West Point, class of 1964. I called him over from the ammo storage area, briefed him, and told him to move out and take over Charlie Company. Arlington headed out at a low, crouching run across fifty yards of open ground toward the company command post.

  Now Edwards was on the radio to Matt Dillon, telling him he was very worried about the enemy exploiting their penetration. “When I saw those enemy right in front of my position, I knew I needed at least another platoon to assist me. I needed somebody up there to plug the gap. I tried to convince Dillon that my need was as great as anyone’s, because I was stretched thin. I pushed the other two platoons over to try and plug this gap. They tried, but were under too much fire to do it effectively.”

  The penetration Edwards was talking about was in Lieutenant Neil Kroger’s 1st Platoon position directly in front of Bob Edwards’s command-post foxhole. The enemy had obviously burst through at that point.

  Edwards’s artillery forward observer was pinned down in the command-post foxhole, unable to adjust the fires. The battalion fire support coordinator, Captain Jerry Whiteside, calmly stood up, peered over the termite hill in the face of enemy fire, and adjusted the artillery and aerial rocket gunship fire forward of Charlie Company.

  Lieutenant Charlie Hastings, our forward air controller, had already swung into action. Sensing disaster, Hastings made an immediate, instinctive decision: “I used the code-word ‘Broken Arrow,’ which meant American unit in contact and in danger of being overrun—and we received all available aircraft in South Vietnam for close air support. We had aircraft stacked at 1,000-foot intervals from 7,000 feet to 35,000 feet, each waiting to receive a target and deliver their ordnance.”

  Now it was 7:15 A.M., and suddenly fighting broke out in front of the Delta Company machine guns and mortar positions. It was a separate, heavy assault on a section of the perimeter immediately to the left of Edwards’s Charlie Company. Initial reports estimated two companies of enemy, many dressed in black uniforms. It was a Viet Cong battalion, the H-15 Main Force Battalion, making its first appearance on the battlefield.

  Delta Company’s first sergeant, Warren Adams, a three-war veteran, was dug in on the perimeter. He remembers, “There were enemies who sneaked up and hit us. My radio operator and I kept getting fragments from hand grenades popping all around us. One of them hit our fire-direction center foxhole and Sergeant Walter Niemeyer’s leg was blown off. My radio operator and I decided to clean up a termite hill where the grenades were coming from. We each pulled the pins on two grenades, one in each hand, and packed off through the trees and brush, got on the back side of the hill, and tossed them over. Sure enough, two or three bodies, clothing, a couple of AK-47s were back there when we looked. One must have been an officer; we picked up his pistol.”

  Specialist 4 George McDonald, a Charlie Company mortar-man, was beside his mortar near Sergeant Adams’s position. “When our perimeter was attacked it was so close that we weren’t able to use the mortars. I was told to use my M-79 and hand grenades and was pleased with the results. I remember talking to a new trooper who had just joined the Army. He told me that he was only 17 years old. A short time later a rocket round hit a tree close by and riddled his back with shrapnel. He had on a white T-shirt and I bet that it was the only white shirt in the 1st Cav Division. [All the cavalry troopers had dyed their underwear Army green, on orders, before they sailed for Vietnam.] The last I heard was that he had been evacuated.”

  Across the clearing, hugging the ground under the hail of fire snapping through the battalion command post, was reporter Joe Galloway. “I was down flat, clutching my rifle, expecting at any moment to see the enemy break through into the clearing. I could see blips of dust where rounds hit and an occasional rocket grenade or small mortar explosion. In the middle of all that a kid wearing a white T-shirt stumbled out of the trees, lurching toward us. We all started yelling and waving to him to go back to cover. He kept coming, but finally saw us. When he turned around we could see his back was shredded, the red blood a startling sight against the white shirt. He later made it to the battalion aid station.”

  By now I was convinced that the enemy was making a primary effort to overrun us from the south and southeast, and I alerted the reserve platoon for probable commitment into the Charlie or Delta Company sectors. The noise of battle was unbelievable. Never before or since, in two wars, have I heard anything to equal it. I wanted to get help to Bob Edwards, but decided it was still too early in the game to commit the reserve force. Instead, I told Dillon to direct Captain Tony Nadal of Alpha Company to quickly move a platoon across the clearing to reinforce Charlie Company.

  Not wanting to weaken his critical left flank, which was closest to Charlie Company and was holding that sharp left turn in the line just east of the creekbed, Nadal chose to pull out his right-flank 2nd Platoon—Joe Marm’s unit, now led by Platoon Sergeant George McCulley—and send them over to help Edwards. Nadal then ordered his 3rd Platoon leader, Sergeant Lorenzo Nathan, to stretch his men out to fill the gap left by the departure of McCulley’s men. McCulley and his sixteen men, all that were left of Lieutenant Marm’s platoon, came through the battalion command post. I briefed the sergeant and pointed out where Edwards’s command post was located.

  McCulley and his men headed out at a low crouch, moving fast in short bounds across the open ground under heavy enemy automatic-weapons fire. They lost two killed and two wounded—including Sergeant McCulley, who was wounded in the neck—during the dangerous move but finally made it to the right center of the Charlie Company sector, about fifteen yards behind their lines. There, taking up positions that gave them good fields of fire, the remnants of the 2nd Platoon men provided some measure of defense in depth to Charlie Company. But the loss of four men crossing the clearing convinced me that further internal movements were inadvisable until we reduced the enemy grazing fire.

  Unnoticed at my command post because of the deafening uproar from the Charlie and Delta Company sectors was a stiff little firefight taking place forty yards north, involving Specialist Wallenius and his fellow Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion mortar-men. “About 6:50 A.M. I observed a soldier in a khaki uniform with helmet and web gear
stand up to our front, and pump his arm up and down. He was in waist-high grass and obviously signaling. I alerted Sergeant Uselton in time for us to see four more helmeted troops rise from the grass to our left and cross right, carrying a light machine gun. We were convinced we were behind friendly troops and assumed that these strange, well-disciplined soldiers must be Australians. We radioed back and learned that there were no Aussies with us—and our front was not protected. About then, the North Vietnamese machine gun opened up on us.

  “There was a small tree that formed a ‘Y’ four feet from the ground about thirty yards to the left. It was from there that the machine-gun squad had slipped from cover and ran across our front. I saw a man’s head peer out between the Y, and snapped off a quick shot. A second or two later the head reappeared and I took a more careful single shot at it. I was surprised when the head showed again in the same spot. I am a good shot and this was close. I took a shooting-range stance and fired again. Again the head disappeared, then reappeared. I stood there and kept shooting this pop-up target. I fired ten more times, methodical single shots until the pop-up target range closed down.”

  Wallenius’s attention now shifted toward the right, where the mortar pits had come under direct fire from the enemy machine gun. “All three mortar pits knocked over their tubes so that the machine gun wouldn’t have a direct fix on their positions in the tall grass. The enemy gun team was placed between Sergeant Alvarez-Buzo and Sergeant James Gother’s 2nd Squad mortar pits. Sergeant James Ratledge and his 1st Squad crew, along with Gother and the 2nd Squad, had managed to withdraw their men and guns right under the nose of a firing machine gun. That left Alvarez-Buzo and two men still in position. We were afraid to lay down fire for fear of hitting them. Ratledge made an attempt to put M-79 fire on the machine gun. This distraction allowed PFC Fred S. Bush to make a run for it and he headed toward our regrouped positions followed by PFC Jose Gonzalez. Bush made it but Gonzalez was hit several times. Ratledge and several others were wounded from grenade shrapnel that seemed to be buzzing all over.

  “We got to Bush and Gonzalez; Bush said that Alvarez-Buzo was still in the mortar pit, wounded. Without hesitation, Virgie Hibbler dropped his web gear and started to crawl toward the 3rd Squad mortar pit. I followed him. We got about halfway, fifteen yards, and the machine gun started firing at the moving grass over our heads. We reached the mortar pit, a shallow two-yard circle not more than ten feet from the machine gun. He was still firing too high. Alvarez-Buzo looked dead. I didn’t see any obvious wound but he wasn’t breathing and we couldn’t feel a pulse.”

  Hibbler and Wallenius weren’t done yet. Wallenius says, “We crawled back and reported Alvarez was dead. When asked where he had been hit, we had no answer. Some doubt surfaced as to whether he was dead, or maybe that we hadn’t actually been there. This was our platoon’s first casualty and no one wanted to believe it. Somebody said you could put a mirror under their nostrils and it would fog and prove he was alive. Sure enough, somebody had a mirror. Virgie led again and we crawled back out to Alvarez-Buzo to make sure. The mirror didn’t fog up, but still we weren’t sure. The machine gun had ignored us this time, so we decided to take Alvarez-Buzo back. He weighed about two hundred pounds; the machine gun immediately got our range again. Just when they figured out exactly where we were, our guys saw us and opened up on them. Everyone now agreed that Sergeant Alvarez-Buzo was, indeed, dead. With no friendlies around the machine gun, we decided to dispatch it with hand grenades. After the second grenade, the fire stopped.” Sergeant Elias Alvarez-Buzo, from Ponce, Puerto Rico, was twenty-five years old when he was killed.

  The enemy commander was getting better at this. His attacks on Charlie and Delta companies were well planned and came close to achieving complete surprise. And, unlike the first day when he committed his forces piecemeal, today he threw perhaps as many as a thousand men against us in a twenty-five-minute span. Then, too, I had spent too much time worrying about Herrick’s platoon and how to rescue them. I should have paid more attention to the enemy’s capabilities. If I had, I would have gotten the H-13 scout helicopters up at first light, sweeping the approaches at low level and looking for the enemy.

  Clearly the enemy commander had moved his troops and reinforcements all night to get them in position. His objective was to position his assault force right under our noses, so close that our artillery could not be effectively used, and then smash through Charlie Company’s lines and on out into the open clearing. With that, he could then roll right into the battalion command post and attack into the rear of Alpha and Bravo companies. Only the re-con patrols at first light averted complete disaster.

  The enemy troops had Geoghegan’s and Kroger’s under-strength platoons in a deadly bear hug. Americans and North Vietnamese were dying by the dozens in the storm of fire.

  The bloody hole in the ground that was Bob Edwards’s command post was crowded with men. Sergeant Hermon Hostuttler lay crumpled in the dirt, now dead. Specialist 4 Ernie Paolone crouched low, bleeding from a shrapnel wound in his left arm. Sergeant James P. Castleberry, the artillery forward observer, Castleberry’s radio operator, PFC Ervin L. Brown, Jr., the only unwounded men in the hole, hunched down beside Paolone. Bob Edwards, shot through the left shoulder and armpit, slumped, unable to move, in a contorted sitting position with his radio handset held to his right ear. “I continued to command as best I could,” Edwards says. “An automatic weapon had the CP foxhole zeroed in and we lay there watching bullets kick dirt off the small parapet around the edge of the hole.”

  Edwards didn’t know how badly he had been hurt, only that he couldn’t stand up. The two platoons he had radio contact with continued to report that they were under fire but had not been penetrated. No one answered the captain’s calls in the two worst-hit platoons, and the enemy had penetrated to within hand-grenade range of Edwards’s foxhole. All this had taken place in only ten to fifteen minutes.

  Lieutenant Neil Kroger’s platoon had taken the brunt of the enemy attack. Although artillery and air strikes were taking a toll on the follow-up forces, a large group of North Vietnamese soldiers had reached Kroger’s lines and the killing was hand-to-hand.

  Specialist Arthur Viera was crouched in a small foxhole firing his M-79. “The gunfire was very loud. We were getting overrun on the right side. The lieutenant [Kroger] came up out into the open in all this. I thought that was pretty good. He yelled at me. I got up to hear him. He hollered at me to help cover the left sector. I ran over to him and by the time I got there he was dead. He had lasted a half-hour. I knelt beside him, took off his dog tags, and put them in my shirt pocket. I went back to firing my M-79 and got shot in my right elbow. The M-79 went flying and I was knocked over and fell back over the lieutenant.”

  Viera now grabbed his .45 pistol and began firing it left-handed. “Then I got hit in the neck and the bullet went right through. I couldn’t talk or make a sound. I got up and tried to take charge, and was shot with a third round. That one blew up my right leg and put me down. It went in my leg above the ankle, traveled up, came back out, then went into my groin and ended up in my back close to my spine. Just then two stick grenades blew up right over me and tore up both of my legs. I reached down with my left hand and touched grenade fragments on my left leg and it felt like I had touched a red-hot poker. My hand just sizzled.”

  Sergeant Jemison was over in Lieutenant Geoghegan’s 2nd Platoon lines. “My machine guns just kept cutting them down. The enemy drifted to our right front. At least a battalion was out there.”

  Some thirty-five yards to Jemison’s right rear, Lieutenant John Arrington had safely negotiated the open clearing and made it to the Charlie Company foxhole to take over from the badly wounded Captain Edwards. “Arrington made it to my command post and, after a few moments of talking to me while lying down at the edge of the foxhole, was wounded. He was worried that he had been hurt pretty bad and told me to be sure and tell his wife that he loved her.

  “I thought: ‘Doesn�
��t he know that I am wounded, too?’ Arrington was hit in the arm, and the bullet passed into his chest and grazed a lung. He was in pain, suffering silently. He also caught some shrapnel from an M-79 that the enemy had apparently captured and were firing into the trees above us.”

  The enemy were now closing in on Lieutenant Geoghegan’s platoon. They were already intermingled with Kroger’s surviving men and were pushing on toward Edwards’s foxhole.

  At 7:45 A.M. the enemy struck at the left flank of Tony Nadal’s Alpha Company, at that critical elbow where Alpha and Charlie Companies were tied in. We were now under attack from three directions. Grazing fire from rifles and heavy machine guns shredded the elephant grass and swept over the battalion command post and aid station. Leaves, bark, and small branches fluttered down on us. Several troopers were wounded in the command post and at least one was killed. My radio operator, Specialist 4 Robert P. Ouellette, twenty-three years old, a bespectacled six-footer from Madawaska, Maine, was hit and slumped over in a sprawl, unmoving and seemingly dead. I kept the handset to my ear. The situation was now so critical that there was no time to deal with Ouellette.

  At about this time fifteen or more mortar and rocket rounds exploded all around the termite-hill command post. We were locked into a fight to the death, taking heavy casualties in the Charlie Company area, and there was no question that we were going to need help. I radioed Colonel Tim Brown to ask him to prepare another company of reinforcements for movement as soon as it could be accomplished without undue risk. Brown, with typical foresight, had already alerted Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion and had it assembled with the helicopters to fly in on call.