Our Year of War Read online

  Specialist 4 Tom Hagel also received orders to go to the Reliable NCO Academy, and was supposed to be on duty at Bear Cat, too. To allow him to prepare, Tom had been temporarily assigned to the battalion headquarters as an “information specialist,” a nebulous position that envisioned him hanging around inside the wire taking photographs and talking to visiting Vietnamese villagers. But with a big portion of the 2-47th chasing Charlie through the Long An wetlands, Tom redefined his new role. He didn’t have any intention of staying inside the fence line back at Bear Cat. On the busy morning of July 3, Tom made his way to the base pickup zone intending to snap pictures of the troops preparing for the combat assault. But when he recognized riflemen he’d served with during the last few tough weeks, Tom reinterpreted his duties. After Mini-Tet, Tom Hagel had no illusions about the misbegotten nature of the U.S. war effort, dismissing much of the official line as “propaganda.” But for a Specialist 4 and acting NCO, policy and strategy mattered not one whit. “My sole commitment was to my people,” he recalled.34 And although on temporary detached duty, Tom Hagel saw those men as his guys, if only for this day.

  He lined up at the tail end of one of the rows of riflemen awaiting the Hueys. Tom carried a cheap camera and a .45 automatic pistol, not exactly the right load-out for a combat assault into a hot LZ.35 At about 8:30 a.m., he went anyway.

  THE HUEYS DESCENDED swiftly to the open rice paddy surface, throwing a light spray of dirty water as the birds flared to land. The left-door gunner pounded away with his M60 machine gun; the right guy held fire, as a ragged rank of prone American troops huddled off to that side, using the shelter of a paddy dike. Beyond them to the east stood the ville. Smoke from rocket fire rose in the bright-green trees on either side of the huts of Hoang Hon Tren. If there were Vietnamese civilians still in there, they’d better get into their little scrape-outs and start praying. Charlie wasn’t backing off today.

  The UH-1D’s skids barely touched and Tom Hagel and the other men tumbled out into the wet brown mud. Tom described the scene as “absolute chaos.”36 Enemy fire raised spouts in the paddy puddles. The VC popped bullets into the thin-skinned Hueys, even as the choppers barely touched and then sprang up. At least one lift helicopter looked to be in bad shape, but it got out somehow. Americans on the ground fired back, red tracers versus green tracers, the usual sound and light show. Naturally, nobody saw Mr. Charles. But he sure seemed to see all the Americans. And the VC had no shortage of ammunition.

  Hagel and the rest of the platoon, heads down, helmets bobbing, sprinted and sloshed to the paddy dike. There they intermixed with the unit already there. Nobody went forward. Most of the riflemen shot back, especially the M60 pig gunners. Some Americans did not fire at all. One panicked guy even stuck up his M16 rifle and pulled the trigger, a futile gesture at best. Whatever nifty Fort Benning scheme of maneuver had been devised back at Bear Cat went right out the window. “It never seems to happen the way it’s supposed to,” Tom Hagel said.37 Pinned along the west flank of the dirt berm, the U.S. troops counted on the armed choppers to suppress Charlie.

  A UH-1C Hog gunship came in, mini-guns roaring like berserk chainsaws. A VC machine gunner went right back at the aircraft, green tracers spearing into the Hog’s hull. The aviator on the stick pitched violently to shake off the guerrilla shooter. But he didn’t let up on the mini-gun. The stream of 7.62mm bullets raked through the paddy dike. The soldier next to Tom Hagel had his rear end blown open, no laughing matter. A sidelong glance showed white pelvic bone in the oozing red gash.38 Good God.

  The gunship’s run quelled the VC some. A platoon sergeant urged the Americans to their feet, setting the example. He went down. But the lieutenant, the rah-rah Joe College type leading Hagel’s adopted platoon, kept the men going.39 The Americans slipped past an enemy bunker and reached the edge of the hamlet.

  Veteran Hagel, with many firefights as an acting NCO, immediately saw the rookie mistake. That VC bunker hadn’t been cleared. It was, Hagel observed, a “cardinal rule” that if you see an enemy position, “you never pass it.”40 In all the confusion, the inexperienced lieutenant did so.

  Mr. Charles provided the standard dose of education. From behind the upright U.S. infantrymen, an RPD machine gun rasped, and then an RPG rocket whooshed out of the nearby trees. You could see those coming at you. The thing barely armed before it blew. Hot fragments cut into Tom Hagel’s neck, back, and leg. The savvy nineteen-year-old dropped into the corner of a dike to get out of the line of VC fire. He had three rounds left in his pistol. The other Americans had to get shooting.

  Except they weren’t there.

  Tom Hagel watched as the surprised U.S. riflemen ran away. What the hell. In prior firefights, Hagel had sometimes been compelled to make his own guys fire back, to “literally yell and kick at people—start shooting.” But these soldiers just skedaddled. Tom had never seen such a thing.41 Holding only a pistol, all Hagel could do was fold himself into his covered chunk of ground and hope the VC didn’t notice him.

  Somebody rallied the gun-shy Americans. The continued pounding by the armed helicopters helped, as did the arrival of more troops, more from Company B and more from Company A, too. Charlie had enough. Leaving his dead, the opposing force pulled back to the riverbank. The strengthened U.S. ground force again entered the village. Tom found the men he knew and went with them in among the hovels.42

  With the shooting over, the Americans set out a security perimeter. Sergeants started redistributing ammunition—they’d gone through a lot. Wounded Americans were moved to the LZ for pickup. A few soldiers began to drag over individual NVA bodies. That’s how you usually saw them, dead or captured. But live and shooting—not likely. During all of this, the villagers of Hoang Hon Tren, those few still in town, wisely stayed inside.

  In one humble shack, movement flashed in the doorway, a person coming out. Joe College, the lieutenant Hagel labeled “shaky,” shot immediately, quick kill, right out of the infantry training course. Shoot at movement. Shoot at a ripple of clothing, the black pajamas. Shoot first. He did, from a few feet away.

  The jumpy lieutenant killed a young woman, about twenty years old. To add to the misery, she was pregnant. She held no weapon and wore no web gear. Although Tom Hagel and the other experienced infantrymen had seen more than one female guerrilla, this one wasn’t VC. It was a horrible screw-up, face to face. That officer would have to live with it for the rest of his life. Some callous Americans didn’t care about Vietnamese casualties, friendly, neutral, or enemy. Not so Tom Hagel. “I could not separate myself from that,” he said, “and if I had, I’d really worry.”43

  Hagel and the rest of the platoon finished searching the village. Beyond the one dead civilian, a few enemy corpses—VC, NVA, NVA acting as VC, whatever—and some damaged enemy rifles, gear, and affiliated ammunition, nothing else turned up. By midafternoon, about three o’clock, Tom Hagel and his fellow riflemen made it to the edge of the Vam Co Dong River. The adrenaline rush of the morning clash had long since dissipated. With the searing tropical sun high in the sky, heat left the men “dazed” and “exhausted,” as Hagel recalled. The Americans panted, out of water. Although they’d shared their bullets to ensure everybody had some, ammunition had run short.44 A resupply would be useful.

  At about that time, Company A’s commander, Captain Richard K. Holoday, reported losing radio communication with one of his rifle platoons. That could mean a battery problem, a failed radio, or VC trouble. A burst of automatic fire to the north indicated that Charlie hadn’t left the area yet.

  That brought Lieutenant Colonel Van Deusen to the ground. The 2-47th commander had landed his UH-1D C&C chopper a few times during the morning firefight, mostly to place arriving units, but also to assess the situation. Now with Holoday’s platoon off the net, Van Deusen touched down. After spending some time with Company A as they traded shots with Mr. Charles, the lieutenant colonel took off again. Holoday and his two radiomen joined the battalion commander inside the aircraft.<
br />
  Van Deusen told the aviators to circle slowly as Holoday and his two NCOs scanned the rice paddy dikes for the separated platoon. The C&C ship orbited at low level above the river.45 Numerous radio calls brought no replies. The rifle platoon had seemingly vanished without a trace. That was unlikely, but such friction predominates in combat. Maybe the captain wasn’t as sure as he thought of where that platoon really had ended up.

  An alert Viet Cong guerrilla took advantage of the low-flying Huey. The enemy had been paying close attention to previous U.S. jitterbug operations. In an order sent to all units in Long An Province, the VC Military Region 2 headquarters directed countertactics. Ideally, communist forces had to avoid getting trapped near obvious landing zones. If found and attacked by a U.S. jitterbug element, a portion of the unit must furiously fire back, tearing up the American aircraft and buying time for the guerrillas to escape. Finally, the VC commander told each of his regiments to select and train several helicopter ambush squads. “The function of the sniping cell will be to shoot down the CP [command post] chopper.”46 In other words, take out the brain of the jitterbug.

  Van Deusen probably didn’t mean to do it. But by swinging low over the open waterway, trying to locate Company A’s orphan platoon, the 2-47th commander made it easy for the enemy. A single marksman with an AK-47 opened up, burping out a series of high-velocity 7.62mm rounds.

  The bad guy was right near Tom Hagel and his enervated platoon mates. The AK cracked away, “a very distinct sound,” well known to Hagel and the other veterans.47 A dense wall of greenery hid the busy hostile gunman. The VC quickly ran through a full thirty-round magazine, but not just yanking the trigger. This one was aiming his shots.

  From Tom Hagel’s vantage point, the Huey suddenly “stopped dead in the air over the river.” It almost appeared the helicopter hit an invisible wall in the sky. Then it “fell like a rock,” straight down into the river. It belly-flopped into the water and broke apart, a shattered mess. Several misshapen olive-drab pieces sank swiftly. Twenty seconds later, three struggling figures bobbed to the surface. The VC kept methodically banging away, determined to administer the finishing touches of a fatal dose of the river blindness.

  Hagel had “never seen anything like it.” He described the event as “stunning,” which it was, and “incredible” in the absolute sense—not able to be believed. Yet there it was, right in front of him. The gaping troops around Hagel, eyes wide, did nothing. The guerrilla shot again.48 The Americans in the water, ducking from the AK bullets, had nowhere to go but down.

  Yes, there was a lot of undergrowth between that sharp-shooting VC and Hagel’s men. Nobody could tell if there were friendlies over on the other side, especially with a platoon from Company A out there somewhere. Tossing grenades or blazing away through the bush might work, but both techniques threatened to rip up any Americans stuck in the line of fire. And unlike on television, real bullets from modern military weapons move with nearly irresistible force. The slugs keep going and going, even after punching holes in men or foliage. So firing blindly wouldn’t work. Meanwhile, the AK guy gave no indication of quitting. “Somebody had to do something.”49

  That somebody was Tom Hagel.

  The Specialist 4 picked up a battered Viet Cong M1 carbine, a U.S. World War II surplus weapon taken from the ARVN, used by Charlie, and then repossessed that morning by the Americans. The weapon had a weathered wooden stock and, more importantly, a thirty-round magazine inserted. How many bullets did it still have? Hagel couldn’t tell. Hefting it up, the carbine felt like it had some rounds left. It would have to do.

  In seconds, although it seemed to unfold in an unreal slow-motion tableau, Hagel plunged through a narrow gap in the lush bushes. The opponent had his back turned. He was still engaging the floaters. Crack. Crack.

  The leaves rustled. The VC turned, his powder-smudged AK barrel coming up. He looked right at Tom Hagel, ten feet away. The American squeezed the trigger once. “And I just shot him right in the forehead.”50

  Six other soldiers, two from the 2-47th Infantry battalion headquarters, the pair of radiomen from Company A, and both crew chief/gunners from the 240th Aviation Company, died in the Vam Co Dong River with Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Van Deusen. The two pilots and Captain Holoday survived. When they pulled out the next morning, the Americans claimed a body count of twenty-four VC.51 Tom Hagel for sure knew of one. Any way you did the arithmetic, it sure didn’t feel like a victory.

  THERE WAS MORE. It seemed like there was always more misery in Vietnam, especially now, with the war going slowly sour, the homeland in an uproar, and the likes of Julian J. Ewell pressing one and all to stack up more Cong. Thus Charlie had been well and truly slain on July 3. And with Westmoreland’s brother-in-law and six more souls fallen into a watery grave, staff officers from the 9th Infantry Division headquarters came down from the clouds like gods to grub among the yeomen. Apparently, they flew out at Ewell’s direction to determine what happened. The major general expected plenty of queries from Washington and MACV. As always, Ewell’s instincts served him well.

  Sweat-stained, bloodied by the RPG blast, thirsty and forlorn, Tom Hagel described what unfolded next. Three Hueys fluttered into the clearing just west of the village. The riflemen watched as “all these sucky-faced colonels with all their shiny shoes and shit got off.”52 Having just been in a big two-way firefight that killed a good number of hostile soldiers and left several Americans dead and badly wounded, seen a village woman cut down by accident, witnessed a horrific helicopter shoot-down, and then drilled a man eye-to-eye, Tom Hagel was in no mood to entertain visitors from on high. Wisely, he stepped aside and kept his mouth shut. A smart specialist 4 knows when to do that.

  The staff officers, lieutenant colonels and majors, examined the uneven lineup of dead communists. The headquarters people noticed the relatively fresh khaki uniforms, the new web gear, and the well-maintained AKs, RPDs, and RPG launcher. It all suggested that NVA regulars really were filling in the depleted VC units, just as the division G-2 analysts forecasted. Did these fallen foes come from the 294th Battalion?53 Nobody could really tell. Such considerations occupied minds up at division.

  A few officers stripped watches off the guerrilla corpses. In an odd action, “the only atrocity I ever witnessed,” Tom Hagel saw a major tell an ARVN soldier to slice a ring finger off one of the lifeless Cong. The body was already swelling in the heat, and the ring could no longer be yanked free. It’s possible these officers needed these items to try to confirm the unit of those killed. But to Hagel and his jaded comrades, it sure appeared to be souvenir hunting.54

  Of course, no one in authority explained anything to the riflemen. Their interests satisfied, the well-scrubbed staff officers departed in a flurry of Huey rotor blades. Soon afterward, those on the ground also boarded helicopters, but not to leave. Instead, they executed another jitterbug move. The aircraft moved the soldiers across the river, near where the C&C Huey splashed down. The riflemen spent the night in an ambush position. Fortunately, Charlie wasn’t interested. Although sore and smarting from embedded RPG fragments, Tom Hagel stayed with his adopted platoon. At long last, he’d gotten something that put him ahead of his high-achieving brother Chuck: a third Purple Heart. When the lift birds came in the next morning, Tom Hagel went out the way he’d gone in—with his guys.55 He’d seen some things Chuck had not. And it stuck with him, a stain that never washed out.

  VAN DEUSEN’S DEATH made the papers. For William C. Westmoreland and his wife, Katherine Van Deusen Westmoreland, July 3 had been set aside for the general’s swearing in as U.S. Army chief of staff. The ceremony happened as an afterthought as the devastated Westmoreland household absorbed the tragic message from Vietnam.56 Six other American families received that same dreaded news. You could leave the war, but it followed you home.

  The 9th Infantry Division kept right on jitterbugging, even as Charlie wised up. The division’s canny adversaries took down thirty-one helicopters in July an
d August of 1968; seventy-four other aircraft sustained substantial damage from hostile gunfire. Put another way, jitterbugging pretty much erased an entire army aviation battalion. Mr. Charles killed another battalion commander on the ground and on August 26 nearly finished off Colonel Emerson himself in another successful Huey shoot-down. The division recorded a body count of 563 NVA/VC, plus 37 captured. The Americans secured only 166 rifles and 14 crew-served weapons, generating some concern among those inclined to take an interest in such details. (Exactly how many actual guerrillas, rather than unlucky civilians, had been killed in Long An Province?) In any event, chest-thumping 10:1 kill ratio aside, it all cost way too many Americans: 58 killed and 263 wounded, effectively the field strength of a U.S. infantry battalion.57 That kind of trade-off might have been acceptable in the trench-line abattoir of World War I. But in post-Tet Vietnam, on the ground and at home, it led to only one question, the one without an answer: Why?

  In Fritz Van Deusen’s brief tenure (June 15 to July 3), 2-47th registered eighteen U.S. killed. Even by generous accounting, during that period the battalion got credit for fifty-seven dead opponents, two dozen of them in the extended July 3 firefight. For his bravery, the fallen commander earned the Distinguished Service Cross, America’s second-highest award for valor. 58 It was something. But no award, not matter how prestigious, could ameliorate the sorrow in the Van Deusen home. Just because he was a long-serving professional didn’t make his passing any easier.

  Lieutenant Colonel James L. Scovel took over 2-47th Infantry not long after Van Deusen died.59 The army didn’t like to leave a major in command of a battalion, especially in the high-energy 9th Infantry Division. Scovel became the fourth 2-47th Infantry commander in a bit more than fourteen months. Two—Van Deusen and William B. Cronin in late April of 1967—fell by the enemy’s hand. Add that to the turnover at the company level, such as the six commanders (one killed, one badly wounded) in Company B since January, not to mention the revolving door of lieutenants and the steady churn of killed and wounded NCOs, and it’s no wonder young men like Tom Hagel grew up fast out in the bush.