by Phil Ball
It seemed like everyone on our line was firing a hell of a lot of M-16 rounds, but I had yet to fire one round. The longer I could go on with the grenades, the better. I still had two claymores, which I planned on using before resorting to my rifle. When I observed an NVA squad maneuvering toward me I prepared one of them. I quickly realized I did not remember which detonator went to which claymore, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. Lampkins had fired one earlier that had been the furthest from our position; these two remaining were both closer to my hole, but one was tied in the tree about six feet off the ground and aiming slightly to the right.
We had heard stories of the NVA sneaking up in the middle of the night and turning claymores around. There was a front and a back to these things, and the front was clearly marked. Made sort of like a half-moon, the one pound slab of C-4 plastic explosive was designed so it would blast 700 steel ball bearings out in a fan pattern. We often put the mines in trees, which not only prevented them from being turned around, but also created a more deadly effect, since the bulk of the blast was aimed at the head instead of the legs.
I saw a line of NVA soldiers running full-speed from right to left. Every M-16 on our line seemed to open fire, yet the NVA kept on running. They came around and angled up toward my position, directly toward that lone tree with the claymore. With both hands wrapped around the detonator mechanism I began squeezing frantically with rapid pumping motions. My head barely above the rim of the hole, I looked directly at my target. I saw the pistol-waving leader of the bunch stop and step to one side. He was yelling encouragement and tapping or shoving each of his men on the shoulder as they raced past him. Suddenly, there was a bright flash and an explosion like nothing I had witnessed in the battle so far. Although the front of the mine must have been aimed well enough to take out a large portion of the enemy column, the devastating back blast hit me with all its force. I felt like I was smacked in the face with a wooden plank. All that brush we had piled up for camouflage was blown back. If my helmet hadn’t been strapped down as tight as it was, I’m sure I would have lost it. My first thought was that the gooks had indeed turned the claymore around on me, but I quickly realized that was not the case at all. It was simply the normal back blast these powerful mines created, and I should not have been standing up watching.
The claymore was a tremendous success. After Sal and the guys on both sides of me finished bitching about me scaring them and telling me to next time yell “fire in the hole,” they congratulated me, making me feel like I had finally made the grade and overcome the FNG syndrome. I had single-handedly killed enemy soldiers in a spectacular fashion. I felt good, really good—but it was short-lived when something exploded next to my head and nearly killed me.
I’m not sure what I was doing or exactly what took place. All I remember is this tremendous explosion to my right, and feeling like my head was blown off my shoulders. My helmet, strap and all, disappeared and I was thrown violently against the far side of the hole. I ended up lying on my back, with both arms twisted behind me. The weight of my body and the way my shoulders were tightly wedged between the front and the back of the narrow walls prevented me from moving anything except my legs. I was dazed and confused; at first I didn’t even know where I was. I could barely see the dim, smoky glow in the sky overhead and I couldn’t hear anything except the loud, persistent ringing in my ears and the beating of my own heart.
I really thought this was the end for me, but as some of my senses slowly began to return, I realized that I did not want to die out here like this, alone and far from home. A vision of my mother’s face flashed before my eyes and gave me the willpower and strength to go on. Some say your entire life flashes before your eyes when you are near death. In my case it was only one warm summer’s evening when I was a very small boy. I saw myself as clear as life, perhaps just three or four years old, astride a new red tricycle. My mom was standing at the front door of my childhood home, calling me in for supper. She was a happy, young mother, with a song in her voice, and I knew at that semiconscious moment that my dying like this would break her heart. I absolutely would not put her through the pain of losing her oldest son.
I started kicking my legs, overcome with the fear of NVA soldiers jumping in on top of me. I began to panic. I believe that my excellent physical condition combined with adrenaline and hysteria enabled me to wake up and get going again quickly after the blast. I finally managed to free my left arm and instinctively reached across my heaving chest, where I found that I had miraculously managed to hang on to my M-16. I don’t know how, but the index finger of my left hand went straight to the trigger and immediately fired.
I didn’t even aim, it all happened so fast and entirely on impulse. If I would have hesitated to think about it, I probably would have been blown away. I wasn’t sure if I actually saw something or if it was a terrifying figure of my imagination. Even after I shot, I still wasn’t sure if it was a gook or my squad leader. The moment my M-16 ripped off a long burst of fire, I saw the shadowy head and shoulders of a man standing over me. My face and eyes were full of dirt and debris and I couldn’t see very well. My own muzzle flash verified that it was a mean-looking, sweaty, distorted human face, but friend or foe was not interpreted in the split-second encounter. I felt certain that whoever it was, was now dead. My weapon fired until it was empty, at least 10 rounds and nearly half of them seemed to have struck the figure in the face and neck area.
With newfound strength and determination, I used my weapon like a crutch and began to get upright, twisting to one side and moving my knees underneath me. I hurried to reload. I had the frightening image in my mind of enemy soldiers swarming up the hill, jumping into my hole. I knew they were out there and would be getting very close by now. I might have been getting a little gun-shy by this time, feeling like I had narrowly escaped being killed several times and still not fully recovered from that blow to the head just a couple of moments earlier, but I knew I had to get up and at least die fighting.
There were no grenades left in Alabama’s cubbyhole, so I quickly gave the entire hole a thorough search. None showed up, not even the third claymore detonator. So I double-checked my weapon and prepared to fire. The moment I stood up and swung my M-16 over the front, something hard and very heavy came crashing down on me from behind. My first thought was that a gook had landed on my head and he was seeking revenge for what I had just done to one of his comrades. I guess I was still woozy from my previous encounter and I don’t think I stayed conscious very long. I was driven face-first back to the bottom of the hole, and that is where I stayed, unconscious. At one point I woke up long enough to feel someone stepping on my leg, a heavy foot pinched my flesh to the ground, and then clumsily stumbled off of me.
I almost gave up at this point, feeling completely helpless and altogether hopeless and disappointed in myself, too. In my mind this battle was equal to, or perhaps even greater than, any battle in world history. I was 18 years old, I flunked history in high school. What did I know? I certainly wanted to be able to tell my children and grandchildren someday that I was here. I felt that I had probably survived the worst of it, although I certainly did not feel that it was over by a long shot. I knew that the sun would be coming up shortly; as a rule, the NVA usually disappeared at daybreak, hoping to avoid the wrath of our jets and helicopters who flew mostly during daylight hours. If I could just hang on until sunup this thing would be over and we would all go on a little R&R. That became my motivation. The next thing I remember is sitting up in the hole—the sun was up and the jets were dropping bombs.
* Pseudonym.
Chapter 8
The Battle Continues
Just prior to daybreak, Rocketman got the call to blow away the handful of NVA in a crater on the northwest side of the Crow’s Nest. They had been tossing grenades into the small perimeter on the high ground and Hillbilly couldn’t get anything on them. Rocketman’s position was almost directly across the saddle in 2nd Platoon’s sector. He h
ad a straight shot at the crater. It may have looked like an easy shot, but with the Marines so close on the Crow’s Nest, and his own 2nd Platoon guys just off to the left, the slightest miscalculation could cause serious harm to our own men. The shoulder-fired 3.5 packed a hell of a wallop, but sometimes the round did not go exactly where you wanted it to, combined with the fact the weapon created a tremendous muzzle flash and immediate enemy retaliation on his position could be expected. Rocketman took careful aim and fired. The rocket-powered warhead whooshed across the saddle and exploded with all its glory right on target. Hillbilly and the Crow’s Nest Marines cheered the direct hit as enemy body parts rained down on them. Something bounced off Hillbilly’s helmet with a thud. When he looked to see what it was, it was the burnt, smoldering hand of an NVA who had thrown grenades at him all night long.
As anticipated, the enemy hit Rocketman’s position with everything they had, but the NVA in the immediate area for the most part tried to blow the rocket man and his weapon off the face of the earth. Hillbilly had a clear view of Rocketman’s position from his elevated vantage point and was more than happy to return the favor Rocketman had just done for him. He saw the NVA running out of the tree line, up the hill toward 2nd Platoon’s positions, and he directed his blazing machine gun fire accordingly.
At around 0600 Hillbilly’s M-60 had been fired nearly continuously now for four straight hours. Hillbilly’s rhythm prevented the barrel from overheating and distorting; he carried a spare barrel for that very reason. What he did not anticipate was the entire firing mechanism blowing to pieces on him; the guts of the machine gun broke apart and jammed the weapon beyond repair. Hillbilly began cursing and threatening the armory personnel in the rear area for giving him the old, worn-out M-60 in the first place, remembering all those beautiful, brand-new weapons he saw chained together strictly for inspection purposes only.
Without the machine gun fire from the high ground, even during the last moments before daybreak, I wasn’t sure if we could continue to hold our ground. Hillbilly had been firing not only on the NVA attacking his eastern section, but also over the top of our heads at the enemy attacking our western flank.
Some gun teams in Vietnam still carried the heavier, somewhat antiquated M-14 instead of the M-16s for their secondary weapons. The M-14 used the same ammo as the M-60 and the two weapons sounded very similar when fired on full auto. The lighter M-14 could not be fired in the long, sustained bursts without having a failure.
Hillbilly and Mouse had fired the M-14 earlier until the 10 magazines they had were empty. Now it was time to recall the old stand-by back into action. Everybody pitched in, breaking apart the belted machine gun ammo, cramming each bullet into the 18-round clips. Hillbilly and the automatic fire were going again in no time.
Nobody told us that the Marines on the Crow’s Nest would be shooting over our heads, but they were obviously the ones with the clearest shots to the western finger area. Not only was Hillbilly’s M-14 being used, but some of the grunts who had experienced M-16 failures or had run out of ammo were using the enemy’s AK-47s lying around all over the place. When I first heard the terrifying popping sound that I had learned to recognize as the enemy’s weapons, it scared the shit out of me. I thought for sure that the NVA had overrun the fragile Crow’s Nest positions and were now shooting down at us like fish in a barrel.
As the first hint of sunlight filtered through the smoke and fog around 0630 the enemy RPG barrage began to let up some as expected, but the ground attack with the heavy small arms fire did not seem to diminish a bit. Chico and Alabama were back in the hole where they belonged, on either side of me, taking turns popping up and down, warding off what appeared to be the NVA’s last-ditch effort. I could hear the welcome sound of heavy rotor blades slapping the morning air in the distance and I knew the gun ships were coming. I felt a tremendous sense of relief knowing Chico and Alabama had come back. The camaraderie and brotherhood was very strong in that hole again.
Chico squatted down and tightened the chin strap on the helmet he had placed on my head when I was out cold. He told me that he thought I was a goner and was sorry for kicking me in the head so hard. It was he and ’Bama who had come crashing in on me after I killed the NVA soldier. Alabama asked me if I was all right, and actually showed something that resembled compassion to me.
’Bama had not only resupplied the Crow’s Nest with gun ammo and grenades, but also helped rescue several wounded grunts from underneath the NVA’s nose in 1st Platoon’s sector. He had been very busy indeed, all around the company perimeter from one end to the other, doing whatever needed to be done.
Corporal Joe Quinn was a salty squad leader in 1st Platoon who, at the last moment on the eve of the battle, was ordered to take over for the medevaced 2nd Platoon commanding officer. Quinn had a lot of combat experience and had proven many times that he was a good leader. As he maneuvered up and down 2nd Platoon’s lines, distributing ammo and organizing his defenses, he was not fully aware of the devastating impact the battle had had on his buddies in 1st Platoon. He knew they had been overrun, but there was no way he could have known that nearly the entire squad was either killed or wounded. His good friend and right-hand man PFC Bill Grist was KIA, as were his two fire team leaders PFC Mike Smith and Lance Corporal Gary Kestler.
The morning sun began to warm the damp, chilly air and spread its golden rays of hope all through our position. I began to feel more and more alive, and then actually grateful to have lived to see the sun one more time. The first time I poked my head up and saw the unbelievable devastation created overnight, I just wanted to crawl back into the hole and bury my head in the dirt. There were dead bodies everywhere; some were close enough to my hole to reach out and touch them. I found myself in a strange predicament I was not prepared for. The lifeless faces of my enemy, their eyes and mouths opened wide in various states of torment, awakened a powerful interest inside me. I experienced a certain morbid sense of dominance over them the longer I stared into those cold, dark eyes. It was a real feeling of power transmitted to me, superiority over a fallen foe. I struggled with my conscience and my Christian upbringing, but soon the reality of war won over. These corpses were not human to me; they were gooks. To believe any other way would have made me go insane. A soldier at war cannot afford the luxury of a conscience.
There must have been a half-dozen UH-1 Iroquois (helicopter gunships) that arrived at once. They swooped down on the enemy like giant birds of prey. I loved to watch the hueys work, especially when they fired the big rocket pods mounted on either side of the landing skid. Dual clusters of six, they fired two at a time by aiming the entire helicopter at the target and diving toward it. Over and over again, the hueys destroyed their targets, never seeming to run out of ammo. I looked up and saw one of the big, olive drab choppers speed past, the door gunner hanging out in a precarious position, firing his machine gun nearly straight down at the NVA underneath him.
We cheered and waved to the airmen as they criss-crossed the battlefield and laid down some very heavy supporting fire, allowing us to relax a little. Some of the NVA were pulling out to more secure positions away from our ridge, but many of them continued to attack. This was not a good sign. Their normal strategy was usually to break contact and flee when the sun came up and our air support arrived. Perhaps they knew that if they could get enough troops on top with us, our air support and artillery would be useless because we weren’t about to hit our own positions. They already had 20 to 30 men on top in 1st Platoon’s old positions and in the big bomb crater. They were working hard to get as many men as possible up as fast as they could. They knew what was coming next.
A pair of jet aircraft came screaming over the mountains from the east. When they reached our vicinity they went into a steep, vertical climb, wingtip to wingtip at 500 mph. They climbed a few thousand feet and broke formation, circling in opposite directions as far as I could tell. They were probably F-4 Phantoms carrying a payload of 3,000 pounds. Six 500-pound bom
bs or twelve 250-pounders, they were a gift from God to Marines on the ground. Our USMC pilots were the best in the world. They could place the “dumb bombs” on a small target simply by diving at it and mechanically releasing one at a time. The NVA were clearly on the run now, escaping to the south and southeast for the most part, yet the die-hard NVA in 1st Platoon’s sector wouldn’t leave, no matter what.
We watched as one of the F-4s dropped a 250-pound bomb directly on top of an NVA squad running through a clearing about 500 meters out. The powerful blast seemed to completely vaporize them. I heard a bunch of our guys cheering down from 2nd Platoon and I had to laugh when one of them yelled, “Ho Chi Minh sucks bookoo cocky-doo.”
The F-4s continued to work on the fleeing NVA, dropping an estimated 94,000 pounds of ordnance in 26 sorties. That means those two jets returned to Dong Ha 13 times each to get refitted. Close air support like this was our saving grace in Vietnam; had it not been for our superiority in the air, God only knows what would have happened to us. I could not imagine being on the other side of those bombs when the force of those blasts would send entire trees hurling high into the air, raining dirt and debris back down over everything. The ear-splitting, mind-numbing concussion of the explosions was nearly enough to kill you on its own, not to mention the huge pieces of shrapnel and flying debris.
