Days of Valor

by Robert L. Tonsetic

  Medics Bohrer and Whitton evacuated Noel and the other casualties to the LZ, and made their way back to battle area where they went their separate ways. After providing medical assistance to several soldiers, Whitton spotted another ACAV with wounded men on board. Whitton had less than two weeks to go on his 12-month tour. Since he had risked his life on numerous occasions, the Bravo Company Commander, Captain Eaton, directed him earlier in the day to remain at FSB Nashua. Eaton wanted to insure that Whitton made it home for Christmas. Ignoring Eaton’s instructions, Whitton had moved out with the Cav and Bravo platoons to support Alpha Company. Whitton knew that medics were badly needed on that day.

  Having done all he could for the wounded soldiers he was treating on the ground, Whitton picked up his aid bag and sprinted toward the ACAV. He climbed aboard and began to treat a severely wounded cavalryman. Moments later, yet another large explosive device, probably a command-detonated mine, exploded near the ACAV. The blast mortally wounded Specialist Whitton who was standing upright in the open crew hatch as he treated a wounded trooper. William Hill from Jim Pius’ platoon was nearby, and recalled that another five men were killed by the blast. Whitton’s friend and fellow medic, Albert Bohrer, rushed to the scene when he heard Whitton was down and tried to resuscitate his friend, but was unsuccessful. Teddy Whitton was the third medic to die that day.

  Lieutenant Philip Baynum’s Bravo Company platoon, once it got moving forward, also ran into stubborn resistance. Phil Tolvin described the action. “We began to move laterally in reference to the enemy encampment, with the Lt. at the point. He then stopped and directed those behind me, Reid, Dr. Bopp, and Browley, directly into the bunker complex, with me at the point, the Lt. and his radio man now at the rear…. As I began to move forward again, all hell broke loose. We were opened up upon with automatic weapon fire. My steel pot was ripped from my head, as I hit the dirt with all my strength.”

  Tolvin thought he was headshot, but was only stunned by the concussion shock of an explosion. He lost most of his hearing and had a persistent ringing in his ears. The two men behind him, Reid and Bopp, were not as lucky. Reid caught one in the arm and Bopp was hit from debris from a booby trap explosion. Tolvin and the two wounded men crawled back to several anthills where Lt. Baynum, his RTO and another man, Browley, took cover. Tolvin picked up several M16s dropped by wounded men earlier in the day along the way. The six men were now about 15 meters from the enemy fortifications and 30 meters to the front of the rest of their platoon. Tolvin wrote, “All we could do was to keep at a low angle to the earth, to prevent ourselves from being riddled by the hail of lead traversing our position from the two forces that straddled us.”

  Seconds later, Lieutenant Baynum took a round in the back, probably from friendly fire. Realizing their untenable position, Tolvin grabbed the lieutenant shoulder to shoulder and shouted to the other four men to start falling back, hoping all the while not to be mistaken for a group of enemy soldiers. As the men fell back through the thick foliage, Tolvin shouted, “We’re coming in, we’re coming in!” Upon reaching the friendly lines under intense enemy fire, Tolvin and his party took cover in a bomb crater. Somehow Tolvin, in addition to carrying his wounded platoon leader to safety, managed to carry his own M16 and two he had recovered from the battlefield. After catching his breath, Tolvin felt a stinging in his thigh. He’d landed right on a bunch of large ants. Brushing them off, Tolvin again grabbed hold of the lieutenant, and directed the other two wounded men, Reid and Dr. Bopp, to follow him to the LZ where they were dusted off. With sunset fast approaching and their platoon leader evacuated, the Bravo platoon was spent.

  On the right, the firestorm erupted again as Lieutenant Morris and his men pushed forward stubbornly in a renewed assault on the enemy bunker line. Morris was now practically deaf from the concussion of several grenade and mine blasts, and his RTO sustained additional shrapnel wounds. As sunset approached, Morris had only 17 men left in the fight. Those 17 of the original 78 were all that remained from the two Alpha Company platoons. PFC R.D. Jones was acting platoon sergeant. He was the highest ranking enlisted soldier left in Alpha Company who could still function. With Bravo Company’s attack stalled on his left and his own men exhausted, Morris knew there was no possibility that his meager force could overrun the enemy base camp. He began the evacuation of his casualties to the LZ. For his extraordinary heroism that day, Lieutenant Morris was awarded the Army’s Distinguished Service Cross.

  Alpha Company, 3/7th Infantry, under Captain Smaldone’s command, jumped off on the attack a few minutes after the joint Alpha and Bravo Company, 4/12th attack. His two platoons that had landed on the second lift had yet to make it to the scene. With less than two hours of daylight remaining, Smaldone and his platoon leaders had no time to conduct a reconnaissance, or wait on his other platoons. His men moved forward through the unfamiliar terrain, not knowing the precise location or layout of the VC fortified base camp. It was risky business, but Smaldone was an aggressive commander and master tactician, and he wanted to close with the enemy as quickly as possible.

  Alerted by the airmobile assault, the enemy knew that another US unit was moving toward their fortifications from the north. The defenders prepared to meet Smaldone’s attack by rushing men to the bunkers and trenches on the base camp’s northern side. The VC could hear the Americans moving through the thick jungle, but held their fire waiting until Smaldone’s men were only a few meters away.

  Second Lieutenants John Sognier, of Savannah, Georgia, and Gary Clark, from San Francisco, led Smaldone’s two platoons in the attack. Both men were “gung ho” infantry platoon leaders. Tony Smaldone accepted no less from his lieutenants. However, both men were relative newcomers, and this was their first experience with the terrain of War Zone D. Nevertheless, the lieutenants pushed their men hard toward the Communist fortifications.

  Sognier’s and Clark’s platoons made contact with the enemy’s outer perimeter before they were deployed in attack formation. The enemy blasted the two platoons with homemade Claymores filled with pieces of cement, nails, rocks, and anything else they could find that would be lethal projectiles. Then they opened up with machine guns, AK-47s, and grenades at near pointblank range. Among those hit were PFC Jerald Payton and PFC Chris Kimbel. Payton was hit in the face by shrapnel from a grenade, and was also wounded in the leg. The shrapnel broke his nose and blurred his vision. Kimbel took a round in the ankle. He was in intense pain and could barely walk. The two wounded grunts helped each other back to safety. They were more fortunate than most. Dozens of men in the lead platoons were killed or mortally wounded in the fusillade, but the survivors managed to hold their ground and return fire.

  As dusk approached, the firestorm increased in intensity as Captain Smaldone pushed more men forward to reinforce his lead elements. Twenty-two year old Lt. Sognier rallied a group of soldiers nearest him and moved to overrun an enemy bunker. He was struck by a burst of automatic weapons fire and fell mortally wounded.

  Lieutenant Clark was hit in the leg in the initial encounter but remained in the fight, guiding the forward movement of his men while his platoon sergeant, Guy Finley, rendered first aid to his platoon’s seriously wounded and directed their evacuation to his company’s reserve position. Several of Smaldone’s men who were wounded in the initial exchange stayed in the fight until they were killed in the follow-on fighting. Among these were Specialist Mario Moreu-Leon, and PFCs Thomas Harper, Robert Bawal, Daniel Puhi, Solomon Dehart, and Douglas McCloud.

  After evacuating his most seriously wounded, Lieutenant Clark launched another attack on the enemy perimeter. He managed to penetrate the outer defenses with a group of his men, but when the VC detonated another Claymore from the inner perimeter, he suffered more wounds to the leg and thigh. More of Clark’s men fell in the same blast, but he pressed on with the survivors, tossing hand grenades into bunkers as they fought their way deeper into the enemy complex. As the small group reached the center of the enemy base camp, Clark was
struck by a burst of fire and mortally wounded. Incapacitated and in deep pain he urged his men to leave him behind and fight their way out of the camp. Lieutenant Clark’s platoon sergeant, Guy Finley, and his radio operator, Robert Pretty, refused to leave their dying platoon leader. The pair died at his side. All three men were found the following day lying shoulder to shoulder near the middle of the enemy base camp. More US bodies were found the next day, strewn from where they first broke through the northern perimeter all the way to the center of the base camp where the lieutenant, his platoon sergeant, and radio operator were killed.

  Darkness fell before Smaldone ordered his men to withdraw with as many of their casualties as they could carry. Nine men who fell inside the enemy base camp were not retrieved until the following morning. The enemy battalion still held their camp as night fell, and they quickly set about organizing an evacuation on preplanned escape routes, carrying their wounded and as many of their dead as possible with them. Before they left, however, they took time to finish off several wounded Alpha Company soldiers who lay inside their perimeter, a senseless act of cruelty that the Americans would not soon forget.

  While the battle raged for control of the enemy base camp, Captain Stan McLaughlin’s Echo Company caught up with a group of NVA soldiers that they had stalked most of the afternoon. In a short but bloody firefight, Echo Company killed two enemy soldiers and wounded several others. It was, however, a costly fight for the grunts. Echo Company lost two soldiers killed and seven wounded in the fight. McLaughlin began a pursuit of the fleeing NVA until he received an order to return to FSB Nashua. Colonel Fred Davison, the brigade deputy commander, radioed LTC Schroeder, and directed him to extract McLaughlin’s company and return them to Firebase Nashua. Davison wanted the 4/12th to launch an all out attack on the enemy base camp with all available forces the following morning.

  The only airmobile asset available to extract Echo Company was an Australian Navy helicopter company, nicknamed the Emu’s. LTC Schroeder and the Aussie commander, Commander Ralph, rendezvoused at Nashua, and took-off to find an LZ to extract Echo Company. As darkness fell, their C&C ship flew at low level over the jungle, scouring the terrain for an LZ. The only LZ in the immediate area was in a dry streambed, and it would accommodate only four ships. Schroeder directed Mclaughlin to move his company to the LZ, and the dangerous night extraction began.

  The desperate battle for control of the enemy base camp subsided as darkness descended, but sporadic firing continued into the night. The 4/12th and 3/7th LZs were set up for night operations, and the dustoffs of the wounded continued well into the hours of darkness.

  A flare ship arrived shortly after 1900 hours to illuminate the area, and gunships and artillery continued to pound the enemy base camp. At 1915 hours, one of the “Rat Pack” gunships piloted by Warrant Officer William Britt began to experience engine problems. Britt tried to make it back to Bien Hoa, but the gunship experienced a complete engine failure and he had to auto-rotate his ship into an unsecured area about two kilometers north of the Dong Nai River. Britt and his crew plus equipment were picked up almost immediately, leaving the downed aircraft in place. A platoon from Echo Company 3/7th Infantry conducted a night insertion into a narrow LZ to secure the downed gunship overnight. The platoon was inserted at 2130 hours, and immediately set up a defensive perimeter around the disabled aircraft. Defensive artillery fires were called for when the enemy began to probe the platoon’s perimeter, but no ground attack was initiated by the enemy.

  Captains Drees and Smaldone anticipated an enemy counterattack against their positions during the hours of darkness, so they ordered their men to dig in. The grunts, many of whom were wounded, scraped out fighting positions in the dirt. A few still had their entrenching tools, but most had to use their steel pots and bayonets. No one seemed to panic, but everyone knew it was going to be a long night.

  Lieutenant Morris recalled settling into his foxhole, prepared to fight off a night attack, when he received an unexpected visitor. King, the attack dog, which had first alerted on the enemy that day, suddenly pounced into Morris’ foxhole, landing on top of him. The shock was too much for the lieutenant’s digestive system. He tried to leave the hole to relieve himself, but the dog thought otherwise, and the lieutenant had a “very distasteful accident” with the dog lying on top of him. According to Morris, the dog soon “decided to move in with someone else.” Morris was later told by his men that they saw King during the battle charging enemy positions and being driven off by enemy bullets. The dog did, in fact, receive multiple wounds during the battle and died very soon after December 6th.

  Lieutenant McKirdy, the Alpha Company FO, who had sustained shrapnel wounds early in the fight, refused medical evacuation that night, and stayed on as a member of Captain Drees’ command group. He wrote that the company command post (CP) was set up in an old bomb crater. “I think I have ever been so scared in all my life…especially when about 0200 hours we heard a great crashing through the jungle. Somebody said they thought we were surrounded. The crashing kept getting closer until all of a sudden, a deer came loping through the crater, in one side and out the other. We had been surrounded by a deer. Needless to say, everyone became unglued, but not for long. Because we still didn’t know what to expect, no one slept that night…one very long night.”

  As the night wore on, the commanders and their first sergeants began to tally up their losses. It had been the bloodiest single day in the history of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. Captain Smaldone’s Company, Alpha 3/7th, lost 11 killed and 21 wounded. Captain Drees’ Company, Alpha 4/12th lost nine dead and 36 wounded. Captain Eaton’s, Bravo 4/12th lost one dead and 19 wounded, and Troop D, 17th Cav suffered three dead and nine wounded. Captain McLaughlin’s Echo Company, 4/12th lost two dead and seven WIA in its separate firefights north of Fire Base Nashua.

  After Echo Company’s night extraction, Lieutenant Colonel Schroeder returned to Fire Base Nashua determined to continue the attack the following morning. There were still nine men missing that had to be accounted for, and he wanted his battalion to finish the job. Brigadier General Forbes flew into Nashua shortly after Schroeder’s arrival. The two commanders conferred at the Warrior TOC. It was clear to Schroeder and Brigadier General Forbes that the VC and NVA were not ready to relinquish control of this area of War Zone D. Schroeder told the general that it would take more than just his battalion to establish control of the area. Forbes had already asked the II Field Force Commander for more troops, and a battle-hardened Vietnamese Marine battalion was ordered to reinforce the Warrior battalion at Nashua on the following morning along with the 2/27th Infantry from the 25th Infantry Division. Schroeder began to outline his plan for a continuation of the attack for the next day while the general lit his trademark meerschaum pipe.

  Charlie and Echo Companies of the battalion would move to reinforce Alpha and Bravo Companies on the morning of 7 December. After preparatory air strikes on the enemy positions, LTC Schroeder planned to lead a ground attack to overrun the enemy position. He decided to lead the attack himself from the ground. Schroeder’s intent was to fly into the Alpha Company night defensive position as soon as his meeting with Forbes was concluded. General Forbes discouraged Schroeder from returning to the scene of the battle that night. He thought it was too risky for the battalion commander to be on the ground. A night counterattack on the thinly manned US perimeter was still considered a possibility, and Forbes did not want to lose a battalion commander unnecessarily. The two reached a compromise. Schroeder would spend the night at Nashua, and fly in to lead the attack on the following morning.

  The Aftermath—7 December 1967

  On the morning of December 7, 1967, the enemy base camp was targeted with two separate air strikes. Air Force fighter-bombers roared across the sky, dropping their bombs on the enemy positions. The enemy camp was hit by numerous M117, 750-pound bombs that blasted the enemy fortifications and surrounding jungle. It was early afternoon before the bombardment lift
ed. LTC Schroeder then moved forward on foot with Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Echo Companies toward the enemy base camp.

  Lieutenant Morris of Alpha Company led his men toward the bunker line. He recalled that “Most of the saplings and other vegetation that had a diameter of around 2" or less were sheared off clean at about chest height.” He was also surprised to see many of the hundreds of 40mm M79 rounds that his men had fired “laying all over the ground unexploded.” The M79 grenade launcher, often referred to by the grunts as the “blooper,” was fired from the shoulder and launched a single 40-millimeter high explosive round that spiraled in an arc toward its intended target. At its maximum range it could reach a target at 400 meters, but it was most often employed at much shorter ranges. The weapon covered the gap between the distance a hand grenade could be tossed, and the safe distance that mortars and artillery fire could be fired near friendly troops. There was, however, one problem when the weapon was fired in dense jungle. The spiral rotation of the 40-millimeter round causes it to arm, but only after it travels a minimum of 30 meters. It was apparent to Lieutenant Morris that during most of the battle he and his men were less than 30 meters from the enemy fortifications.

  As Schroeder’s rifle companies entered the enemy base camp, Captain Smaldone leading Alpha 3/7th moved in from the opposite side, and the two forces linked up in the center of the base camp. There was no enemy resistance. The survivors of the enemy battalion had faded away with the night shadows.

  The air was acrid, and the smell of death permeated the area. The whole place was like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. Nothing moved among the caved-in bunkers and hootches. Bomb craters were still smoking and reeked of cordite. Trees were toppled or scarred by shrapnel, their once leafy branches pruned by withering small arms fire and explosions. Enemy rucksacks and equipment lay scattered about the camp.