9

The Dismal Strand
of Acheron

THE FIGHTING SLOWED at nightfall. In the ruins of the chapel, Smith’s men found two priests, one Belgian and the other French, who were unhurt. They were livid that their church had been destroyed. Gravel was amazed they were alive, particularly because both were cloaked in black, a color his men associated with the VC.70 They calmed down enough to pose with the apologetic colonel for pictures inside the chapel’s remains.

Once Smith’s men had taken the school and chapel, they moved up and occupied the elementary school where Cheatham’s 106 had already silenced the machine gun. Alpha Company settled in for the night. Its advance that day was supposed to have been the easiest, but it had proved the most difficult. Smith had started his assault with one hundred and forty-seven men. He had lost more than half. After another day of fighting he would have just seven—one hundred and twenty-three wounded, seventeen killed.

Sunday had been a pivotal day, although it was not recognized as such at first. The advance had been small, and it had come at great cost, but the effort had turned the momentum of the battle in the triangle.

Roberts, in the story he dictated over the phone for Monday’s New York Times, noted the marines’ paltry gains: “At nightfall, the marines held eight blocks of the city, a gain of five from yesterday,” he reported. “They suffered more than 20 casualties, bringing the total for five days to about 150. Enemy losses were described as heavy.”71 The commanders Roberts spoke with still vastly underestimated the enemy’s size and strength. He said, “Fresh intelligence reports showed that the enemy held 10 strategic positions and scattered sniper posts in Hue.” One officer was confident that the battle would end swiftly once the weather cleared and they could conduct air strikes. The number of enemy troops in the city was estimated “by several officers” to be two thousand. Despite such gross underestimates, five days after the surprise attacks the MACV was coming closer to understanding the extent of the challenge. Roberts reported, “Some officers said that the stiff resistance by the enemy meant that the battle for Hue could drag on for days, perhaps even weeks.”

The ground gained that day—Cheatham had crossed one street and Smith had taken two blocks—didn’t seem like much on a map, but it was the first time the marines had actually prevailed. They had pushed the Front back. Cheatham had teamed weapons and tactics that worked. Every block between the treasury and the canal would be bitterly contested but now seemed achievable. The only questions now were how long it would take and how much it would cost.

Miles to the north, Colonel James Vaught had arrived at PK-17 with his battalion, the 5/7, which would begin marching south toward La Chu with what Sweet had lacked: artillery. Out in the South China Sea, ten miles or so east, the navy had moved a cruiser and a destroyer72 into position, and had already begun using its big guns on positions to the north of the city. That fight to cut off enemy supply lines in the countryside, the second major front in the effort to retake Hue, would soon be joined.

Inside the Citadel, the third major front, General Truong had also made progress. His men had recaptured the Chanh Tay Gate at the northwest corner. He now controlled the less populated north side of the two-square-mile enclosure, and his men had pushed south about six blocks from Mang Ca. Truong now had an impressive lineup of units on paper,73 but all had been badly depleted. One of his battalions was down to just forty men.74 They were still overmatched by the enemy, and they were low on food and ammunition. Dug in before them were four reinforced battalions of the disciplined and experienced enemy.

That evening Captain Jim Coolican, who had helped steady the defense of the compound on the first morning, left with several other advisers on a very hairy flight across the river to Mang Ca to rejoin their Vietnamese units. And that same evening, south of the city, Front sappers finally blew up the An Cuu Bridge. This severed Highway 1, which meant the steady train of convoys back and forth to Phu Bai was halted. In the coming weeks, through the worst of the fighting, the main avenue of resupply and evacuation for the marines would be the boat ramp and LZ in Doc Lao Park.

The navy lieutenant Terry Charbonneau was on the last convoy to make it over the bridge. He had even stopped his vehicle to climb down and inspect its underside for explosives before they drove across. He had seen nothing.

Charbonneau had been stuck at Camp Evans for several days since he had traveled through Hue on Tet Eve. He’d hitched a chopper ride back to Phu Bai, and had then persuaded the marine captain in charge of the convoy to take him along.

“You know,” the captain told him, “there’s fighting up there.”

Which was precisely why Charbonneau wanted to go. He craved the experience. What he saw next probably should have given him pause. At the same time he was volunteering, Nolan Lala was refusing to go. It had been Lala, days earlier, who had plunged bravely into battle on the Truong Tien Bridge after Captain Meadows’s company had turned back from its futile attack on the Citadel. Lala, a private, had driven a truck out to the north side of the bridge and personally manned a machine gun to cover Meadows’s withdrawal. There were men who owed their lives to him. He had been evacuated two days later with a relatively minor wound, and now he was refusing to board the convoy back. He was a tough kid, Lala, a roughneck from Colorado who was a difficult man to handle. He’d been a hero in Hue days before but he’d had enough.75

Charbonneau wanted to go.

“Fine, you’ll be my trail officer,” the captain said.

The naval officer set off for the last vehicle. In one of the trucks were marine reinforcements, newly arrived. They were still wearing cleanly pressed stateside fatigues, and none of them had helmets.

“Why are you men not wearing helmets!” Charbonneau demanded.

Turns out there were none. The supply officer had told them that with the steady stream of dead and wounded they would find plenty of discarded helmets at the compound.

Charbonneau boarded a “wrecker,” a tow truck, that brought up the convoy’s rear. At first the drive was quiet. After the convoy crossed the An Cuu Bridge, an explosion, either a grenade or a mine, destroyed the captain’s Jeep, wounding him and nearly severing his driver’s foot—hours later a doctor at the compound would remove it with one snip of his surgical scissors.76 Charbonneau was now in command of the convoy. They limped into Hue late that afternoon, planning to unload the recruits, ammo, and supplies and then return immediately to Phu Bai. When word came that the bridge had been destroyed, Charbonneau settled in for a longer stay.

Even after Sunday’s success, it was still dangerous to be on the street near the treasury and post office. Ernie Weiss was crouched against a wall outside the university building, exchanging shots with enemy positions across the street. When he turned to reach for more ammo a rocket exploded on the wall behind him. At first he thought it had missed him, but then his left arm and left leg suddenly felt as if they were on fire. He was bleeding from both. He crawled inside to warn his sergeant, Willard Scott, and the rest of the platoon.

“Scotty, they have a rocket team out there,” he said. “They have us zeroed in.”

“Ho, Hoss,” Scott replied. “We’ll take care of it.”

As the sergeant turned to leave, Weiss added, “Do you think if I don’t get to a corpsman I won’t bleed to death?”

Scott came back and inspected him, and then he called for a corpsman. Weiss was helped out to a Jeep that was taking other wounded back to the compound.

The doctors there cut away his fatigues and inspected the damage. There were nearly fifty puncture wounds up and down his left side, shrapnel but also chips of stone from the building. Most of the wounds had been cauterized, so there wasn’t much bleeding.

“We can’t cut all this stuff out of you here,” the doctor told him. “We’ll have to send you back to Phu Bai.”

They cleaned him up as best they could and wrapped him in bandages from neck to toe. He was given something for the pain, but over the next few hours his body began to swell and throb. He could no longer bend his left elbow and he could only drag his left leg.

This eighteen-year-old mummy waited by the Huong River at the LZ that night with all of the other wounded, dead, and dying. Men were crying out in pain and groaning. Some wailed. It was like the dismal strand of Acheron,77 with the departing souls stretched along the riverbank, waiting for transport. Stretcher cases went out on the first Huey. When the second and last one for that night touched down it, too, quickly filled with stretcher cases. Weiss, who had been waiting patiently with the walking wounded, shrugged and turned to limp back to the compound, but then one of the door gunners shouted, “Hey, you! We’ve got room for you.”

“Where?” Weiss asked. The interior was jammed.

“Right here, next to me,” the gunner said, standing in the doorway.

“I’ll fall out!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll hold on to you.”

Weiss figured it was either that or wait for the next chopper, and how bad could it be? So he climbed on. It was bad. The door gunner had a firm hold of his flak jacket, but his legs were hanging out the door as they took off. Then the pilot began evasive maneuvers, and Weiss found himself staring straight down at the dark river, hanging by his flak jacket, his body bouncing with the aircraft’s quick turns, breathless. The bandaging around his leg began to unravel and flapped in the wind like a kite’s tail. His leg and arm throbbed. Finally the chopper leveled off. As they passed over villages he heard the pop! pop! of people shooting at them.

A few hours later at Phu Bai, after a long wait while the doctors methodically worked their way down from the most survivable cases to the worst, with his wounds oozing and throbbing unbearably, Weiss at last found himself unwrapped on the surgeon’s table.

“This is an abortion,” the doc said.

Which did not sound good. The private had been given a local anesthetic, but he felt it sharply when the first scalpel went to work. The blade made a grinding sound against the metal in his body and he nearly shot off the table. He screamed, and cried, and carried on, trying to get away. He couldn’t stop himself. He had reached the absolute limit of his tolerance.

He was given an injection of Demerol then, and the pain eased, and for the first time in days he relaxed. He felt himself happily floating away.