7	CHARLIE TRANSFORMED, BATTLEFIELD CODA, AND THE FREEDOM BIRD

Sept. 24, 1967

Dear Mom, Dad, and Kids,

We got back from a mission yesterday. Everyone was so damn tired cuz we walked around 14,000 meters in three days in this area that was so thick at times you couldn’t see ten feet in front of you. We had to use machetes all the way, and we ran into booby traps, punji traps, and sniper fire all the way also…

How is everyone at home? I pray this letter finds all of you in the best of health. I wonder about all of you so much. Sometimes I just sit and wonder if everyone looks the same as they did when I left. Over here, though, a guy thinks about almost anything.

Well I wonder when I’ll be home. I don’t know if I’ll be home for Christmas or not. I really hope I am. I heard we’d rotate the 22nd of December, but that was just a rumor… God I hope all of us make it home for Christmas. That’s all anybody ever talks about.

Mom and Dad, you know we only have around 30 guys left in our company that came over here the same time I did. We came over with 160 or something like that, and we only have 30 left… I think if I hear about much more fighting I’ll lose my mind. I’m so sick and tired of hunting and being hunted. All I want is to come home and lead a normal life…

Well, it’s about closing time I guess so tell everyone I said, “Hi.”

Your loving Son in Viet Nam,

Steve [Hopper]

The Charlie Company that returned to Dong Tam in August 1967 had seen over two months of almost constant combat since its initial battle of May 15 – sometimes in great waves of destruction, as on June 19 or July 11, but more often than not it had been a slow soul-wrenching grind of death, maiming, and killing. It seemed like a lifetime to the bone-weary men who unloaded their gear from the ATCs and trudged, in ones and twos, across the sea of mud to their barracks. Some of their conversations centered on how good it was to be back at Dong Tam. They knew that there would be mud and tedium, but working in the Dong Tam Area of Operations (AO) was gravy. Nobody would die. Instead of looking forward, though, many of the battle-hardened veterans of Charlie Company looked back – back at what they had lost. Back at who they had once been.

So many good men were dead – Lieutenant Black, Ron Schworer, Don Peterson, Kenny Frakes, Robert Cara, Hubert Fink, Robert Jindra, Cameron Rice, David Robin, George Smith, John Winters, Lieutenant Schulman, Bill Geier, Forrest Ramos, Tim Johnson, Phil Ferro, Butch Eakins, Harold King, Fred Kenney, and Benny Bridges. Then there were the men – too many for most to remember – who had been lost to brutal, ghastly wounds. It hurt too badly to try to remember them all. Medic Elijah Taylor had to go and sit alone for a few moments to gather himself amid the foreign silence – a calm without battle seemed so odd. He tried to remember the faces of his buddies, men he had held as they breathed their last. His memories of men who had once been so vibrant and happy, playing jokes and speaking of their loved ones, all seemed to end in blood and despair. It all seemed so wrong. Turning inward, Taylor realized that for everyone who had died, everyone who had been badly injured – a little bit of his soul had died as well. He was hollow.

The commonly held pain of losing friends, of the final brutalized moments of young lives, bound the men of Charlie Company together. Across the unit men like Ben Acevedo, John Sclimenti, Bill Reynolds, Clarence Shires, and Tim Fischer agreed that the mission, some nebulous idea of freedom for South Vietnam, no longer mattered. Their draft-day motivations no longer mattered. Who they had once been no longer mattered. Caring about and for each other – their few surviving friends – is what mattered. Being good soldiers, preparing for missions, and paying scrupulous attention to detail mattered, because by doing those things the men of Charlie Company would make it through the next patrol, the next day.

Many of the men refused to think about the fact that they still had four months left in country. Surviving for that long seemed impossible. Looking forward to the freedom bird home was a fool’s game that could get you killed. It was better not to look beyond the next tripwire, the next tree line, the next sniper. Vietnam was alive with death, and the men of Charlie Company would have to pull together more closely than ever to cheat their fate. James Nall, who had come to the army from Fairfield, Alabama, was a changed man. Everything that had happened – charging the bunkers and killing so many VC on June 19, standing there while John Young held a dying Benny Bridges on July 29 – it all weighed him down. He played some James Brown on the record player, but it didn’t help. So many of the guys he had known, the guys he had trained with, were gone – some with terrible wounds and others dead. The unit just wasn’t the same any more. He wasn’t the same anymore. All he wanted to do was to survive, to go home.

In a military sense, the unit’s shared sense of professionalism and cohesion meant that Charlie Company had grown up, was an experienced and lethal military force. That maturity was due in part to resignation. Richard Rubio, who had watched helplessly as his buddy Forrest Ramos had fallen from the dustoff helicopter on June 19, sat alone for a few minutes on the edge of his bunk lost in thought. He knew that he was going to die. Having seen the dangers, having seen so many of his friends broken and lost, he knew he was going to die. But with that realization came liberation. He was close to death – it was not frightening or shocking. It was just there. Death was no longer anything to be feared. For that reason, he no longer would be nervous in battle. He wouldn’t make any mistakes. Resigning himself to death was his best chance for living.

Many also had to wrestle with the darker parts of their beings, especially among the members of 2nd and 3rd platoons. The loss of friends was one thing, but, in looting Fred Kenney’s body and shooting two of the wounded left out on the battlefield on the night of July 11, the Viet Cong had crossed an invisible line. As the months and the battles had passed, many of the men of Charlie Company had developed a grudging respect for their resilient foes, but, for several, July 11 was the date on which that respect transformed into a primal hatred and desire for revenge. For Terry McBride, who had once sported a Viet Cong ponytail, the change was simple in its brutal elegance. Unable to find sleep as the events of the past month replayed on a continuous loop in his memory, McBride embraced the violence of the visions and decided: “After this I am going to make sure that any Viet Cong I meet are going to be dead.” There would be no prisoners, no mercy, only death. Only a few bunks away lay Ron Vidovic, the divorced father of two from Tacoma, Washington, who had watched Fred Kenney fall on July 11. Kenney had been such a good guy, a good friend, and had so much to live for. Now some damn Viet Cong was out there with his wedding ring, having taken it from his lifeless hand. Vidovic felt his sorrow change to a quaking rage. Someone was going to pay. But then Vidovic came up short. What had happened to him? He had gone into the army hoping to find a better opportunity in life. He had gone to Vietnam to fight for a cause – to defend freedom in a faraway land. All of that was gone, and he felt himself becoming some sort of animal. What could he do? What kind of person had he become?

John Young, the enlistee from Minnesota, had always known why he was in Vietnam. He had chosen war, chosen the infantry, in an effort to honor the spirit of John F. Kennedy’s generational call to service. Young had always pushed himself to be perfect, to do everything right – to lead. He had believed in the cause and had understood his responsibility as part of the military machine. Winning battles and defending the freedom of South Vietnam was the cause; the responsibility was to ensure the survival of the men under his care. As battles came and went, and the war shifted from an intellectual notion to a bloody reality, Young’s understanding of his role in the conflict had subtly changed. With more old friends being killed or maimed every day, ephemeral notions of victory or freedom had faded into the background. The survival of his men had become everything for John Young. On July 4 Young had even decided that a Vietnamese prisoner had to die to avoid risking the lives of his own men. The decision had clashed with a lifetime of civilization, a lifetime of shared morals. The decision had hurt Young deeply. But it had been worth it. His men had survived. But with a single shot followed by a short burst of automatic fire from a sniper’s rifle on July 29, John Young’s world had come to ruin. Nearly half of his squad had been shot down in a matter of seconds. Those men had been his responsibility – he was supposed to bring them home safely to their loved ones and friends. He had failed. The cause that he had once believed in was gone, and the responsibility he had shouldered was now a crushing weight. Sitting outside the barracks in Dong Tam, while the cigarette dangling from his lips slowly turned to ash, John Young realized that he had nothing left to hang on to. Like so many within Charlie Company, John Young was adrift. He tried to put his feelings into words for his parents:

 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Girls,

My radioman died of the head wound he got on the 29th of July (he was shot by a sniper as I stood about 18 inches from him), another friend of mine lost one leg below the knee to a booby trap, and one of my men, who is from Minneapolis, lost an eye. Every time one of our men gets hurt or killed I wonder a little more whether or not this country is worth it. Being in the infantry is the best way to become a pacifist. I suppose that if I were not so close, so personally involved in the war, I would have no doubts about it all; but from where I stand the view is a little different. Men I have lived with for a year and a quarter are not easy to lose. It is difficult to keep working when a friend dies.

I’ve been on the line since 18 January, and I’ve seen enough… I guess I’ve never told you, but being a combat leader is enough to drive anybody crazy. The responsibility, the pressure, and the necessity to lead 10 men, to make them get up and move when you yourself have trouble making your legs move because there are bullets flying all around you; well it’s a damn hard job, and I’ve had the course. If I can get off the line, I’ll sure do it…

Well, that’s about it for now. Hope everybody is OK.

Love, John

Gary Maibach, Charlie Company’s conscientious objector medic, had witnessed several soul-wrenching scenes in Vietnam. He had prayed with dying men and tried to comfort men who, at 20, would never walk again. But the scene he witnessed as the men of Charlie Company returned to Dong Tam hurt and frustrated him worse than any other he had yet encountered. So many of his friends, who such a short time ago had been carefree youths, had been spiritually wounded, morally battered and broken. Maibach, buoyed by his own deep faith, did what he could, which often meant just listening as his friends poured out their stories of sorrow, loss, and killing. Carefully, like a doctor gingerly probing the fresh wound of a trauma patient, Maibach offered what spiritual help he could. The violence and destruction had been more than some of the men could bear, leaving behind what Maibach thought to be a “God-shaped hole” in their lives. For the devout Maibach, it was the most crushing blow of all. The war had left these boys, and they were just boys after all, with a void where faith should have been. In the worst cases the souls of the men had become spiritually fallow fields. Beauty, hope, and godliness had been replaced by darkness and fear. It broke Maibach’s heart to see these men – men who asked him to pray for them because they were too far gone to pray for themselves.

Charlie Company needed downtime – time to draw a deep collective breath after the exertions of war. The Dong Tam to which the company returned had changed a great deal since May and seemed to be the ideal place for Charlie Company to regroup. There were clubs for the officers, the NCOs, and the men, perfect for having a few drinks without being too worried about military discipline. The food was good. Heck, there were even cookouts with real steaks. There were volleyball courts, a place to play football, a rudimentary miniature golf course, and even a USO show starring Barbara Mandrell. But what everyone looked forward to most was the pool. On the day of its opening the soldiers of Charlie Company stripped down, sweaty and dirty, and gathered for an impromptu swimming party. Waiting at the gate, though, was a REMF (rear echelon motherfucker) of the highest quality. With feet splayed out to his sides he announced that the Charlie Company soldiers were not going to be allowed in the pool because they had ringworm. As his men grumbled and began to leave, Captain Lind got on the horn with the Dong Tam base commander who quickly made his way poolside and informed the REMF in question that the pool was for the benefit of combat soldiers. It was not his pool. It was their pool, and, ringworm or no, they were going for a swim. With the gates thrown open, the men of Charlie Company rushed the pool, in a flurry of cannonballs and belly flops. For a few happy minutes the teenagers within the warriors emerged. Splashing, diving – having fun. The water accepted them, didn’t care about their sins. They were back on Pismo Beach, the banks of Lake Michigan, the local pond.

While the pool remained open to Charlie Company during the remainder of its stay at Dong Tam, the idyll of those first few golden moments soon passed. There was still a war out there. Lurking. A war to which Charlie Company would soon return. But for now there was Dong Tam. Sure there were patrols outside the berm. Sure a few mortar shells fell from time to time, forcing men to run for the bunkers. There were even a few brave snipers who risked taking pot shots at the berm or the upper stories of the larger buildings. There was both work and danger aplenty at Dong Tam. The military indeed seemed to specialize in inventing useless jobs to take up the men’s time. Digging, building, guarding. But for the veterans of Charlie Company, the hard physical work at Dong Tam and the operations in the local AO seemed so easy as to be somehow relaxing. They weren’t in mud up to their necks. They weren’t waiting for an ambush from the next tree line. They weren’t putting friends into body bags.

Each day a small human avalanche struck the soldiers manning the berm at Dong Tam: Vietnamese entrepreneurs selling everything from cold Cokes, to girls, to packs of cigarettes. More specialized vendors peddled cigarettes that looked perfectly normal, they even came in a real pack, but the tobacco had been removed and replaced with marijuana. Everything was for sale, and – determined to enjoy their relative freedom – many of the boys of Charlie Company were buying. Gary Maibach could certainly understand why his friends had to let go, had to forget. They were young, and they were lost. But he feared that some would become so badly lost that they might never find their way back. He realized that pushing them too hard would only push them further away, so he prodded gently by trying to set an example. He also used curmudgeonly good humor, often throwing his hands in the air and telling the malefactors in feigned indignation that “cats and dogs at home have better morals than you!”

While the men of Charlie Company still enjoyed the illicit pleasures of youth, there was no denying that they had been changed by their months in the field. Combat and fear had engendered a new and more somber outlook on life among the men. One task that most men in Charlie Company loathed was garbage detail. Every day men gathered the flotsam and jetsam of American life – spoiled food, old newspapers, discarded letters from home, tattered clothing – and hauled the resulting small mountain of refuse away downriver. As soon as each boat had dumped its load into the landfill and pulled away, hundreds of Vietnamese would emerge from the nearby tree line – old men, mothers, and children – to clamber over the steaming, rotting pile in search of something to eat. It was the children, filthy and clothed in little more than rags, that broke the men’s hearts. After a few trips to the dump these hardened warriors, who were so closely acquainted with death, decided that they had to do something for those kids and chose to adopt a local orphanage. They brought the children rice, C Rations, and candy. They brought school supplies, and even managed to build the children a real swing set. The orphans and the warriors needed each other. Amid all the violence of their lives, several men in Charlie Company were brought to tears at that tiny orphanage. Especially for the parents who had left young ones behind in the States, while they were standing and pushing swings for laughing children, they felt – human.

As during their first stay at Dong Tam, the closest interactions between the GIs and the local population took place at the small bunker complex guarding the river entrance to the Dong Tam basin. The men reached the isolated positions by boat and remained there, near a small Vietnamese hamlet, for at least three days. One woman had turned her hooch into a bar, and children swarmed the bunkers to welcome the soldiers back. For Ron Vidovic, returning for a stint of guard duty at the bunker complex was like a tonic. The local children, one of whom Vidovic had dubbed “loudmouth,” ran down to meet them as they emerged from the landing craft. Amazingly the children remembered each of the men from their last stay in the bunkers in May. They remembered what the men liked, and even what kind of candy they usually had to give away. Feeling some of the pain of the last two months ease, Vidovic stood there with his best friend Tim Fischer and talked with the children in pidgin English while the squad got settled. The proprietor of the local hooch bar soon turned up with warm beer and freshly peeled pineapples, and the group sat down and spent a wonderful day in peace. Tim Fischer added to the feast by shooting coconuts out of a nearby tree, and then trained his rifle on a passing rat. The children screamed at him not to shoot. They wanted to catch the rat for dinner. Even Terry McBride, who had always stood out as one of the toughest men in the platoon, couldn’t help laughing.

In a bunker nearby, John Bradfield sat chatting with his buddy James “Smitty” Smith. The two had been close friends since Fort Riley. Both of the young black men were from the Cleveland area, they liked the same music, and were good soldiers. Their individual experiences over the past two months, Smith having been wounded in the fighting on May 15 and Bradfield having lost his close friend and running buddy Forrest Ramos in the fighting on June 19, had somehow brought them even closer. Whether absent-mindedly giving bits of their C Rations to the local children or just walking in file down a rice paddy dike, Bradfield and Smith hung together. Alone in their bunker, Bradfield told Smitty that he felt down; couldn’t shake the idea that he was somehow responsible for his buddies dying or getting “mangled up.” There was one particular vision he couldn’t get out of his head – a horrible image that haunted the edge of his consciousness. He knew that it was there, waiting. Waiting for him to close his eyes, and then he would see it. The body of one of the mortar crew who had been lost on the PABs on that horrible day of June 19. A body floating in the water, without a shirt – staring vacantly at the sky in death. A body that mocked Bradfield. It was the body of someone he should have saved. Smitty cracked open one of the mamasan’s warm beers, handed it to Bradfield, and said, “Don’t worry man, it wasn’t your fault. Ain’t nothin’ but a thing. One day you’re gonna close your eyes and that body won’t be there no more.” Bradfield took a swig, grimaced a bit, and said, “Sure hope you’re right.”

During those few days in the bunkers near the tiny Vietnamese hamlet, the veterans of 3rd Platoon became an even more closely knit group. Vidovic and Fischer. Bradfield and Smitty. Terry McBride. They were closest to each other, but together they formed something of an exclusive group of friends. There were replacements around who were mostly good soldiers. But somehow they didn’t count. Only the originals could remember the good times at Fort Riley, or the stop at Okinawa while on the John Pope, or Fred Kenney bragging on his beautiful wife. Only they could truly share the pain – losing Tim Johnson, Fred Kenney, Forrest Ramos. The originals were family. They kept to themselves, hung together – shared hopes of returning home and fears of never leaving Vietnam.

After nearly a week in the bunker complex, Vidovic, Fischer, Bradfield, Smitty, and the remainder of their squad got their gear together to leave. It was their turn to run a local patrol in the Dong Tam AO. As Vidovic and the others climbed aboard the ATC, John Young led his squad off the vessel. After all of the events of the past few months, Young looked forward to the normalcy, the peace, of spending time at the bunkers. There would be rest and time to reflect on things with a few of the remaining veterans of 1st Platoon. But most of all, there would be the children. Somehow he needed them, their innocence. They were an unmitigated good in a world that had been so bad. Maybe they could help him forget. Maybe they could help him dull the pain. Then the moment came. The children came running up and mobbed the men. While others were hugging soldiers or begging for candy, one little girl seemed a bit lost. She looked around at them all again and again. Finally she walked over to Young and said, “Where Benny?” The breath caught in Young’s throat. It was the little girl who had become so close to Benny Bridges during their last stay in the bunker complex in May. Stooping over, Young placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry honey. Benny’s dead.” The little girl broke into tears and ran back to her home in the small hamlet. As Young watched her run he realized that even here, where everything seemed so peaceful, there was no escaping the war.

While at Dong Tam, the component units of the 4th of the 47th were responsible for patrols meant to flush Viet Cong from the area and deter mortar attacks on the base. Such patrols hardly ever netted meaningful contact with enemy forces, which, especially in the run-up to the Tet Offensive of 1968, chose to steer clear of major engagements. However, local guerrillas often set mines and booby traps along the trails and paddy dikes that the US patrols travelled most heavily. Even if it was a “safe” area, nobody could let down their guard. On August 16, Jimmie Salazar was walking point as 2nd Platoon filed down a rice paddy toward a scattering of Vietnamese hooches. Somehow it didn’t seem quite fair, walking point. He was doing a perfect job, watching closely for everything, but knew that his mind could wander at any moment. Only days before he had received a letter from home. Aurora, Salazar’s young wife, had given birth to the couple’s first child, a boy named Richard. The delivery had been complicated, but both mother and baby seemed to be doing well. He didn’t have any pictures yet, but had celebrated his good fortune with the 2nd Platoon originals, complete with beer and a few cigars. It comforted Salazar greatly that day to see that the local farmers were hard at work. When civilians were around everything was likely to be OK. It was when they left, scurrying off into their bunkers and hiding places, that every GI in Charlie Company knew that something was wrong. Searching hooches for contraband in the relatively peaceful Dong Tam AO was gravy, Salazar thought to himself, but he was still happy when his squad rotated off point duty and Ronnie Reynolds, nicknamed “the Penguin,” took his turn at the lead of the file.

Ronnie Reynolds was from Malvern, Arkansas, where his father worked for a local shoe company. After high school Ronnie had spent a few adventurous months working in California, conveniently living next door to a tavern that he often frequented. Reynolds had just returned home to Arkansas in an effort to land a better job when he was drafted in the spring of 1966. One of the dwindling number of Charlie Company originals, Reynolds had been through it all; he had just made it across the stream in the Rung Sat when the helicopter had made its attack run and 2nd Platoon lost Ron Schworer. He had been returning fire across the canal on June 19 and had watched as Bill Geier was hit by enemy fire. He, along with the other men of 2nd Platoon, had not been able to get to the men lost on July 11. He had walked point countless times in Vietnam, on days that had been far more foreboding than August 16. He was on alert, but all was calm. It all seemed so routine, leading the platoon from one nondescript hooch to another. The next was, what, the 20th hooch they were going to search that day? As he drew near he saw a woman and her children sitting outside smiling at him. Nothing to hide. Then he felt the tripwire tighten and heard a short FIZZ of a fuse, and the world went black. Reynolds’ body jerked above the first booby trap, a smallish device known as a “toe popper,” and fell on top of a larger mine. The two detonations peppered Reynolds with hundreds of shell fragments, shattered one of his legs, and tore a chunk of meat out of the thigh of the other.

Bill Reynolds, the California draftee who had labored in vain to staunch Bill Geier’s bleeding on June 19, took Ronnie Reynolds’ hand and tried to remain upbeat. “Hey, buddy! You’ve got the million dollar wound. You’re going home!” The medic was on the scene quickly and began to bandage the worst of Ronnie’s wounds while waiting for the medevac. Following a path blazed by so many Charlie Company unfortunates before him, Ronnie Reynolds first went to a hospital in Saigon before making his way to Camp Zama, Japan, for extensive surgery. For days Ronnie couldn’t bring himself to write to his parents to tell them that he had been wounded. He knew that they would be so worried. He was shipped home in November, in a wheelchair, and remained in a cast until the following March. For Ronnie Reynolds, August 16 had heralded the start of a painful recovery process. For the veterans of Charlie Company, August 16 was just another day – a day like so many in Vietnam – a day when another friend was lost.

Back at Dong Tam, 3rd Platoon made ready to move out on its own sweep of the Dong Tam AO. But Lieutenant Hoskins was still recovering from wounds he had received on July 11 and Sergeant Marr was away on leave. Since it was going to be just a walk in the sun, Tim Fischer, a squad leader, volunteered to take the platoon out on its mission. But Fischer was overruled, and 3rd Platoon got a fill-in commander – Lieutenant Sam Thompson. The same officer who had sent Dave Jarczewski’s squad too far out into the rice paddies on May 15. The same officer who had put his pistol to Lance Morgan’s head and ordered him forward on May 15. Thompson had been moving from job to job in the divisional base area back at Bear Cat since that difficult day in May, and now he was supposed to lead another platoon of Charlie Company into the field. Fischer knew Lieutenant Thompson’s reputation for deadly inefficiency, and protested that he was better suited to lead 3rd Platoon on what was, after all, going to be a milk run. But there was nothing Fischer could do.

Thompson was in a hurry. In a hurry to fight the VC. Fischer knew that there were no VC out there, not in the Dong Tam AO anyway, but let the lieutenant have his way. After an uneventful day of walking through the heat, 3rd Platoon settled down in a night defensive position around a cluster of small hooches. The next morning much of the platoon stayed put, while a few fire teams scoured the surrounding area. The teams reported in on a regular rotation, and by late morning one got on the radio and told Fischer, who was acting as platoon sergeant, that the local farmers had begun disappearing. Fischer knew that meant land mines and radioed back for the team to be on the lookout for tripwires. Thompson excitedly jumped up from the ground saying, “The farmers are leaving? That means there are VC out there! Get the platoon together and ready to go!” Fischer couldn’t believe how naïve and green one lieutenant could be. He tried to calm Thompson down and told him that there weren’t any VC to get out there. They were too close to Dong Tam. The area was too open. There were no VC, just mines and booby traps waiting to kill unwary soldiers who went rushing into places they didn’t need to go. The two men began to argue, but Thompson was adamant. As he gathered his gear Fischer thought helplessly to himself, “Christ. Someone is going to get hurt – and bad.”

Ron Vidovic had been resting alone in the heat near where John Bradfield and Smitty were munching on bits and pieces they had taken from their C Rations – just another nearly inedible lunch on a hot day in the delta. There were a few water buffalo grazing nearby, and some local mamasans were having an animated discussion in their singsong language as they worked in the rice fields. As Vidovic absently wondered whether he should join Bradfield and Smitty, he couldn’t help thinking that the scene was almost peaceful. Lieutenant Thompson, with Fischer walking closely behind, emerged from the hooch and yelled, “Get ready to move out!” With a few obligatory complaints, the members of 3rd Platoon got to their feet and began to slog through what seemed to be an unending series of paddies, dotted with dikes and a few raised grave mounds.

Thompson and Fischer, who was still fuming about the situation, watched from near the back of the file as 3rd Platoon inched across the paddies toward where Thompson hoped to find VC. After searching in vain for bunkers and other signs of enemy activity, the lead elements of the platoon were on their way back to report negative contact when, near the middle of the platoon’s formation, a thunderous roar lifted Ron Vidovic skyward. Coming to after the explosion, Vidovic felt a pain in his chest. Was he about to die? No, the fall back to earth had only knocked the wind out of him. But then he looked at his legs, because, even though they didn’t hurt, he knew something was wrong. They just didn’t feel right. Then, for just a few seconds, Vidovic was unable to breathe. The lower part of one of his legs was gone, while the other was little more than a black, oozing mess. All he could do was sit and stare at where his leg used to be.

Tim Fischer couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched his best friend Ron Vidovic go flying through the air. That goddamn lieutenant had ordered 3rd Platoon out on a wild goose chase, and now Vidovic might be dead. Cursing, Fischer took off through the rice paddy to reach his fallen friend. Thompson followed a little way behind, as many from the platoon moved in the direction of the action. Bradfield and Smitty, together as usual, had witnessed the explosion from a nearby rice paddy dike and had taken only a few steps toward Vidovic when there was a second explosion. Fragments from the grenade booby trap tossed Bradfield in one direction and Lieutenant Thompson in the other. After briefly blacking out, Bradfield looked around for his weapon, only to find out that it was still clutched in his hand. Somehow comforted that he had not lost his weapon, Bradfield sank into unconsciousness again. The last thing he heard was someone yelling, “Vidovic’s leg is gone!”

Fischer had just reached Vidovic when he heard the second explosion. Looking around he saw Bradfield, Smitty, and Lieutenant Thompson all sprawled out and obviously wounded as the last of the smoke from the detonation drifted away on a slight breeze. The medic was busy with Vidovic, so there was little that Fischer could do but pat his buddy on the shoulder and assure him that everything was going to be all right. Certainly Fischer felt sorrow for his wounded comrade – they had shared so much and become so close – something they both knew to be dangerous in Vietnam where friends could disappear so quickly and painfully. What Fischer felt most, though, was rage. There was no way in hell that they should have been out there. There were no VC in this area. He had known it; all the veterans had known it. There were only mines. That idiot lieutenant had ordered them out. It was his fault. Fischer walked over to where Thompson lay. He had a few fragment wounds in his legs, and was kicking and wriggling an awful lot – but he would be fine. Fischer locked his gaze on Thompson and softly said, “I hope you’re happy now, you son-of-a-bitch. You got what you deserved. I told you we didn’t need to be out here.” Thompson made no reply and instead struggled to break away from Fischer’s accusing stare.

Ron Vidovic was joking around; he had to do anything he could to keep his mind off being a cripple – or worse. Terry McBride was there, tough-as-nails McBride. He wore a wry smile, no doubt in an effort to keep Vidovic’s flagging hopes up. McBride leaned in saying, “Here Vidovic, take a smoke. In the John Wayne movies wounded guys always want smokes.” Vidovic refused and glanced towards his crotch. McBride picked up on the meaning of that glance. He leaned in again and whispered in a stage voice, “Don’t worry. Your little fella is still there.” Some of the worry was gone. Vidovic knew that he was still a man. But he still couldn’t bear to look at his legs again. Instead he chatted with the medic. Poor guy. It was his first operation with 3rd Platoon. Here he was, green as grass; no doubt expecting an easy mission with no casualties. Now he was dealing with a traumatic amputation, another leg that might be lost, and three other casualties as well. Vidovic said to the medic: “Doc, it’s OK if you want to puke.” The medic just chuckled and informed Vidovic that the medevac was on the way before asking him if there was anything else he wanted. Vidovic replied that he could use another shot. The medic obliged and Vidovic drifted off to sleep.

Bradfield and Smitty had received mostly minor wounds and were back to normal service in a matter of days. Lieutenant Thompson’s wounds were more serious, but nobody ever went to the hospital to check on him. He got on the chopper and was gone and, like a bad dream, became a memory that most of the members of Charlie Company simply tried to forget. Ron Vidovic, though, was another matter. He woke up in a hospital in Saigon, where a nurse told him that the surgeons had been able to save his right leg, but it was going to hurt like hell. It did hurt like hell. But, with the help of a prosthesis, he was going to be able to walk again. Several of Vidovic’s friends dropped by to wish him well. Lieutenant Hoskins, who was still recovering from his own wounds, brought an entire carton of cigarettes. Tim Fischer, who couldn’t quite hide the fact that he partly blamed himself for Vidovic’s condition, visited for a long talk. It was Terry McBride, though, who was there in Vidovic’s hour of greatest need. McBride noticed that something was wrong. Vidovic was shaking. He asked if there was anything he could do. Get the nurse maybe? Vidovic didn’t want the nurse – he was too embarrassed. He had to shit and didn’t know how to do it. McBride did what he could to help, but the two succeeded in making a stinking mess of the whole procedure – just in time for the visiting USO showgirls to pop their heads in the door. The girls put on their bravest smiles, apologized for the interruption, and hurried away, leaving McBride and Vidovic laughing uncontrollably.

After being stabilized, and after writing a letter home to tell his mother the bad news, Vidovic was taken to Japan, where he found himself in a bunk only a few feet away from Bill Riley – who was still in a full body cast after nearly losing his own leg on June 19. The two swapped stories for a few hours, with Riley wanting to find out all he could about his old buddies of Charlie Company, before Vidovic left aboard a medical flight first to California and then to Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Washington – only 6 miles from his home. Placed in a ward with other amputees, Vidovic quickly realized how good he had it. Many others had lost more than one limb. He had just lost one leg below his knee. His mother had a very hard time seeing the bright side of his injury, but he knew that he was going to make it just fine. As the months crawled by, though, Vidovic began to feel a bit trapped and finally asked his doctors when he would be going home. They responded by telling him he could leave just as soon as he could get up and walk. He didn’t have a prosthesis yet, and was weak due to weight loss, but Vidovic thought to himself, “What the hell. I can walk now.” So when everyone had left the room, Vidovic threw his good leg, which itself was still pretty badly damaged, over the side of the bed, grabbed his crutches and tried to walk. It was too much, too fast, and Vidovic nearly blacked out from the exertion. He crashed to the floor and splintered the bone on the end of his leg stump.

The doctors rushed Vidovic back into surgery, where he lost another 3 inches of his leg. When he awoke, his surgeon was standing there staring at him and yelled, “If you ever try that again I will cut your other leg off!” After the surgery, Vidovic got with the program. He was just going to have to wait to walk again until the doctors said it was all right. It really wasn’t all that bad in the hospital. The nurses were cute and his buddies from the Tacoma area often came to visit, always sneaking him some beer. First his good leg had to heal. Then he had to go through physical therapy to build up his muscles and endurance. Only then would he receive his prosthesis. By the spring of 1968 he was ready. His mother was there for the big day when he took his first few, halting steps. She mentioned that it was like teaching him how to walk the first time, all those years ago. Ron Vidovic finally walked out of the hospital in May 1968 – exactly two years after he had received his draft notice.

As the summer of 1967 wore on, and Charlie Company went about its business of Dong Tam base security, a significant concern arose in the halls of MACV in Saigon and at the 9th Division’s headquarters at Bear Cat. Since many of the units within the 9th Infantry Division had arrived in Vietnam on the same day in January 1967, the originals of those units would all rotate home on the same day in January 1968, effectively gutting whole battalions of their veteran cadre. Such a massive turnover of experienced troops threatened the effectiveness of the entire division. After numerous attempts to devise a plan to deal with the problem, MACV staffers developed the infusion program, which involved shifting men around within the 9th Division so that no one unit contained too many men who shared the same DEROS (Date Eligible to Return from Overseas Service) date. For Charlie Company infusion meant that, at random, many of the Fort Riley originals received orders to transfer to other battalions within the division. For each soldier lost in that manner, Charlie Company received a soldier in return who had a different DEROS. All across the unit, men packed up their things to leave – James Nall, Jim Dennison, Terry McBride, Elijah Taylor, Larry Lukes, Willie McTear, Richard Rubio, Idoluis Casares, James Smith, John Bradfield, Jim Stephens, and so many more were suddenly just gone. Friends who had trained, lived, bled, and suffered with their brothers in Charlie Company just were not there anymore. There were new guys from other battalions in their bunks and walking point.

To the command elements of Charlie Company, infusion was a necessary evil. For Company First Sergeant Crockett, who referred to the whole process as “confusion,” the constant coming and going of soldiers necessitated an administrative nightmare of papers to be filed and soldiers to be assigned. Some of the new soldiers were veterans, while others were as green as the grass, but Crockett and Captain Lind had no choice – they had to fit the new men as best they could into the existing structure of the unit. Lynn Hunt and the other platoon leaders quickly became frustrated with the process. While Charlie Company had lost many of its best men, its long-service veterans, it seemed to them that other units saw infusion as a chance to empty their manpower cupboards of their least effective soldiers – their malcontents and malingerers. Even many of the best men infused into Charlie Company proved difficult to absorb into the unit’s culture. They were already trained and part of a team, meaning that they all had preconceived notions of how things should be done. All too often they grumbled or questioned their new leaders. While working in Dong Tam to rebuild his platoon around these new men, Hunt could not help thinking that he actually preferred replacements fresh from training in the States; at least they were blank slates.

For the soldiers who left Charlie Company for new units, infusion was a jolting process. They had been members of a family and suddenly found themselves as the new guys in strange surroundings. Infusion usually began with hope – with the thought of maybe being assigned to a noncombat position. All too often, though, the reality was that the Charlie Company draftees found themselves isolated in their new units, serving among men and for officers who did not measure up to the exacting standards of Charlie Company. Jim Dennison, the Chicago native who had once tackled a Viet Cong during a night ambush, at first wrote home regarding infusion with enthusiasm:

 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Fran,

I’ve been with my new unit about 3 days now, and things aren’t too much different… It would have been nice if I could have gotten a different job when I was transferred, but such is life. I miss the old gang too, but I’ll make new friends here… Since I’m in a recon platoon we work independently of the regular infantry companies and pull more security jobs than they do… The terrain down here is 100% better than in the delta, very little mud, no rice paddies, mostly rubber plantations. Some of the guys complain because they think they’ve got it rough. But this is almost heaven compared to where I came from… I’ll keep in touch with my old buddies… I just hope that they get a lucky break pretty soon.

Love, Jim

Within days, though, Dennison’s opinion of infusion had changed. In its first firefight since his arrival, the new unit did “everything wrong,” and his new sergeant seemed to be an “idiot” who could not control his troops in battle. Dennison decided that it was going to take all of the effort that he could muster simply to survive the remainder of his tour.

Dennison was not alone in his dissatisfaction. Richard Rubio found himself appointed squad leader in his new unit, which was bad enough. Worse, though, his platoon leader was an untested newbie, while his platoon sergeant was a long-service REMF who was going to see combat for the first time in his military life. Since neither man seemed to know his ass from a hole in the ground, it was up to Rubio to lead the platoon from behind the scenes if he wanted to live. As a combat veteran, Idoluis Casares, whom Bill Geier had known simply as “Bear,” also became a squad leader in his own new unit. Casares figured that he could adapt and deal with the situation, until several men in his squad flatly refused to go out into the field on operations. After a mix of cajoling and threats, Casares got the men up and started, but the tension only worsened as his first day as squad leader went on. The worst of his new men refused to walk point when his turn came. He just stood there, looked Casares in the face, and said, “Hell no, man. I ain’t movin’.” The platoon leader flew into a rage and threatened to blow the man’s head off with his shotgun. Casares watched the standoff and wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.

Willie McTear was one of the lucky ones. Having developed a debilitating foot infection, McTear first went to the hospital before being infused. When his orders finally came it seemed he had hit the jackpot. No more combat for him. He was going to be a truck dispatcher. A real, honest-to-goodness REMF. At first the new assignment was a dream come true – nice food, air-conditioning, plenty to drink, and even Vietnamese to make the bunks and clean the barracks. Even though he was safe, McTear found himself missing Charlie Company, even missing combat. These new guys around him were worse than REMFs; they weren’t even soldiers. They were worried about the polish on their shoes, the precise length of their hair. What the hell was he doing here with a battalion of pencil pushers while the real soldiers, his buddies, were out in the field fighting? How was it fair that these guys had the easy life, while Charlie Company slogged the rice paddies? Amid the drinking, polishing, and pencil pushing Willie McTear isolated himself. He didn’t want to get to know any of these paper soldiers. He would just do what he had to do to get home.

Back in Charlie Company everything had changed. The few remaining original draftees, now old veterans, hung together now more than ever before. All around them were new guys. Whether replacements from the States or veterans from other units – they were new guys. Some of the veterans did their best to ignore them, others tried to show them the ropes, but hardly anyone tried to get close to them. Friendships in Vietnam were just too hard to make, and too easy and painful to lose. Sure the veterans worked with the new guys – their survival depended on it. But the old closeness – the old camaraderie – while it was there in an even stronger measure for those originals who remained, was gone from the unit. Charlie Company was strong and experienced. It was battle-tested, but it was different. It was no longer the band of brothers that had emerged from Fort Riley. It was now, in many ways, just another American unit in Vietnam. A hodgepodge of soldiers from everywhere and nowhere, of soldiers with little in common other than a violent job.

Dave Jarczewski had nearly been killed on May 15 in the same battle in which Don Peterson had died. A Viet Cong bullet had left him with a sucking chest wound, after narrowly missing his heart. In August, after two months of painful recuperation in the military hospital in Camp Zama, Japan, Jarczewski received some unwelcome news. His recovery was so far ahead of schedule that he was going to be sent back to Vietnam instead of to the States. Jarczewski wasn’t happy with the situation, but he knew one thing: if he was going back to Vietnam he sure as hell didn’t want to go to any other unit. He wanted to go back to Charlie Company. A quick call to Company First Sergeant Crockett was all that it took, and the orders were cut. In mid-August Jarczewski climbed out of the chopper in Dong Tam. The place looked so different than it had the first day he had arrived there in May. Then it was one vast, open field of mud. Now there were buildings everywhere and something that even looked like a swimming pool. Still walking somewhat gingerly, and only approved for light duty, Jarczewski found First Sergeant Crockett, who smiled and welcomed him back, and then made his way to his new barracks. It was going to be so good to see the guys again, to shoot the breeze and get caught up. He located the barracks and went inside to see if he could find an empty bunk. Only then did he realize his mistake. He had wandered into the wrong barracks. As politely as he knew how Jarczewski asked one of the guys in the room where he could find the 1st Platoon of Charlie Company. Almost absentmindedly one of the soldiers looked up from a book he was reading and informed Jarczewski that he was in the right place. They were the 1st Platoon of Charlie Company. Jarczewski looked around again at all the faces in amazement. There was nobody there whom he knew.

There wasn’t much ceremony, certainly no pomp and circumstance, but on August 20, 1967, the normal command rotation in Vietnam hit the 4th of the 47th with a vengeance. After serving a standard stint in the field with a battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Tutwiler moved on and was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel R.M. Rhotenberry. Everyone knew that Tutwiler was going to be a tough act to follow. He had been there since Fort Riley and during that time had developed a strong relationship with his company commanders and platoon leaders. The younger officers uniformly looked up to and admired Tutwiler, who was something of a father figure to the entire unit. Tutwiler had also been there for all of the battles, large and small, and had proven his competence. Even before Rhotenberry arrived there were rumors. Somehow all of the officers had heard that Rhotenberry had been a tough platoon leader in Korea, barely escaping with his life in the fighting near the Yalu River. In Vietnam, though, it was rumored that he had bounced around from military pillar to post, never quite earning the coveted position of battalion commander, in part due to inefficiency but also because of alcoholism.

Captain Lind, the commander of Charlie Company, didn’t much like what he saw in his new battalion commander. Rhotenberry was indeed a heavy drinker, and a stickler for spit and polish. One of Rhotenberry’s first innovations was to demand that the men of the 4th of the 47th shave every day in the field. Lind and the platoon leaders were very conscious of such matters while in base camp – but to require men to shave when on patrol? Who was going to be there to inspect them? He knew that the men would consider such an order to be nothing more than “chickenshit,” so Lind chose to ignore it.

Worse, though, was that Rhotenberry seemed to believe that he knew everything about warfare in Vietnam. Lind and his platoon leaders were delta veterans. They had been there since the formation of the MRF and had helped to develop its tactics. But they felt ignored by Rhotenberry. He seemed arrogant, aloof, and determined to do things his way – no matter what the cost. Command relationships within the battalion were strained from the start. Lind did what he could to shield his platoon leaders from the fallout, taking the blame for anything that Rhotenberry felt went wrong. In the field, Lind and Rhotenberry had a frosty working relationship. The command tensions were not without a level of humor, though, resulting in Benedick, Hunt, and the other platoon leaders nicknaming Rhotenberry “Pop Smoke.” Unlike Tutwiler, Rhotenberry hardly ever set foot on the ground with his men, choosing instead to circle overhead in a command helicopter. From his position on high, Rhotenberry liked to micromanage the unit, but he never could see things on the ground very well. Like clockwork, Rhotenberry would call in to his platoons, “This is Crooner 6. Have your lead elements pop smoke.” The first few times the calls came in were simply annoyances, but they kept coming – regularly every day, every operation. Hunt, Benedick, and Hoskins knew that it was all well and good that Rhotenberry know the location of his troops, but popping so much smoke was also a very easy way for the VC to track Charlie Company’s movements. Within a few days the platoon leaders began to pretend that they did not hear Rhotenberry’s orders. When that didn’t work they crackled paper near the radio handset to mimic static and reported communication difficulties. Rhotenberry’s voice would jump a couple of octaves as his demands for smoke became more shrill, but the communications difficulties continued.

Hoskins, Hunt, and Benedick knew that they were bucking the odds. The standard combat assignment for a platoon leader in Vietnam, for those who lived that long, was six months. The Charlie Company trio had already overstayed their military welcome, having been with their platoons for over seven months. With the standard date for rotation having come and gone, though, they dared to hope that since Charlie Company had trained together and served together they would be allowed to remain with the unit for its entire tour. Their hopes were in vain, and in late August all three were summoned to Rhotenberry’s office to receive their new orders. They were all headed to staff jobs scattered across the division. They were officers. They knew the score, but the news hit them hard. Charlie Company was their unit; these were their boys. They had been with them from the beginning. They had made them into soldiers; fought with them, bled with them. And now they had to leave them behind.

On the short walk back to their quarters, the group fell into a discussion about the timing of their rotation. Maybe it was simply a matter of military paperwork finally catching up to them, but they suspected that Rhotenberry had a hand in the matter. Maybe they had pissed him off just a bit too much. Well, they agreed that he deserved it. He was a menace and somebody had to stand up to him. Now that was Captain Lind’s job, and they all agreed that it was going to be a hard one. Hoskins, Hunt, and Benedick still had a few days remaining with Charlie Company, days devoted to training their replacements. The new platoon leaders were all green, untested, and gung-ho. They didn’t know Vietnam; didn’t know combat. Hoskins, Hunt, and Benedick did their best to give the young lieutenants (one of whom immediately earned the nickname “John Wayne” because of his propensity to rush forward into trouble) a crash course on how to keep themselves and their men alive in the Mekong Delta – tripwires, recon of tree lines, cloverleafing, ambushes, fire missions – the tricks of survival learned over seven months of war. The trio met for one last drink in the officers’ club before shipping out, and the conversation turned to their new pupils. They all tried hard to remember that they had been green once, but these new guys seemed greener than green. Maybe the training at home had gotten worse? Who knew? Absently staring at his glass of whiskey, Jack Benedick, not known for holding back his thoughts especially after a few drinks in the Officers’ club, blurted out, “These new guys don’t know shit from Shinola! John Wayne is going to get himself killed. Christ, he’s gonna get some of the men killed.” Hunt and Hoskins agreed. The whole thing stank. It was dangerous. But they had no choice. The next morning Hoskins, Hunt, and Benedick boarded a helicopter and departed. Charlie Company was under new management.

While dealing with the results of infusion by breaking in its fresh complement of new officers and men, during September, whether by design or by sheer happenstance, Charlie Company caught a break. The Viet Cong were lying low in the relative calm that preceded the Tet Offensive of 1968, leaving Charlie Company with little in the way of enemy contact as it left Dong Tam and began once again to operate from the ships of the MRF. With little to show for its search and destroy sweeps, except for a few booby traps and minor injuries, the 9th Division and the MRF shifted more of its tactical emphasis to “hearts and minds” operations. For much of the next two months, Charlie Company worked in and around “friendly” Vietnamese villages in support of local South Vietnamese elections and as security for Medical Civil Affairs Program (MEDCAP) operations. On such missions the soldiers of Charlie Company would set up a defensive perimeter around a village, often in the Dong Tam area, standing guard against any Viet Cong incursion. In the case of elections the company often remained dug in near the village for days of electioneering and voting, while MEDCAP operations usually only lasted a single day, or sometimes two.

The MEDCAP missions were often rather raucous affairs. Protected by the cordon of troops, the battalion medical team, accompanied by the individual platoon medics, would set up shop in the village square to provide medical and dental treatment of all kinds – vaccinations, wound debridement, prenatal care, pulling abscessed teeth – it was all part of the program. Civilians would flock in from miles around to receive care the likes of which they might never see again in their lifetimes. Having witnessed so much death, after having taken part in so much killing, helping so many people as part of the MEDCAP missions served as a powerful tonic to many of the men of Charlie Company. There were smiles of gratitude and handshakes from grateful civilians instead of booby traps and sniper fire. And then there were the children, who seemed to appear as if by magic as the Americans settled into their defensive positions. Some just stood and stared at the fearsome giants in green. Others begged for candy or sold trinkets. Some of the more jaded even tried to sell the services of their sisters. But they were there – tiny and often wearing infectious grins. On some occasions ARVN troops accompanied Charlie Company to serve as interpreters during MEDCAPs, which allowed the soldiers to actually speak with the children instead of just communicating through pantomime. It turned out that these children were just like kids back home – they went to school; they loved to play; they argued with their siblings; they wanted to live and deserved to live. The short relationships between the warriors and the children were reassuring. The soldiers could still feel, still care. At the same time, though, the relationships were like a great weight. The soldiers would leave the next day and the war would be there waiting. Who knew whether the soldier would live – whether the child would live? It didn’t pay to get too close, to care too much.

As the end of September drew near, many of the Charlie Company originals began to feel something alien – a sense of hope. They were getting short and would go home no later than the end of December. Rumors flashed around the company that, since they had suffered so badly and for so long, Uncle Sam would surely get the originals out of the field and to some safe job as REMFs in a cushy base camp somewhere. But home – eating dinner with mom and dad, shooting pool and enjoying a beer, going to school – seemed so distant. Some wondered if, after what they had been through, they would ever really be able to go home again. John Young spoke for many when he wrote to his parents on September 27:

 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Girls,

Sorry I haven’t written in several days. Things have been pretty hectic here lately. We’re on a new ship, the LST USS Whitfield County. It isn’t much of a ship… December 20 is the date by which all the “originals” in the battalion will have rotated… This is the best thing I’ve heard in a year. Even without the fighting, an infantryman’s tour here is terribly hard, boring, dirty, sweaty work, and there is no way to make another, who has not been through it, understand.

For a long time after I’m home, I’ll jump at sharp noises and watch for tripwires when I walk, and I know that the mention of certain names will take me back to this place. I don’t think I’ll be able to watch a war movie again. When I answer the phone, I know I’ll say “Akron One” (my radio call sign) instead of “hello.”

Imagine the ugliest sound, the ugliest sight, the ugliest smell you can. This war (all wars) is a continuum of events far more revoltingly ugly than it is possible to describe. It will be so unbelievably good to enjoy beauty again, whether it is just good hot coffee in the morning with the paper, or a Christmas tree or a painting in a museum, or simply the beauty of sleeping safely in my room at home. It will be very nice.

Well, it’s late and I’d better stop. Hope everybody is ok.

Love, John

While involved in local security operations, Charlie Company continued to receive new members, both as replacements and through the ongoing infusion process. Steve Hopper, the Charlie Company original from Illinois who had to identify the body of Forrest Ramos in the morgue following the battle on June 19, was surprised at the nature of a couple of the replacements they received. Gale Alldridge and Danny Burkhead were fresh to the company, but both were short-timers, with only 30 days to go before they rotated home. Hell, Burkhead had been a truck driver for nearly eight months and had never before seen combat. Both were good men, and willing soldiers. Hopper, in his position as squad leader for 3rd Squad, taught them everything he could about the new war they had suddenly found themselves in, but he couldn’t help but wonder about the military absurdity of it all. These guys should be in an REMF job somewhere, packing their gear, drinking their beer, and dreaming of home. Instead here they were learning a new war; one was learning about combat for the first time. What the hell kind of sense did that make? Hopper did what he could to help out, and the men became relatively close in a short span of time, with Burkhead especially happy to talk about his native Minnesota. Maybe that new football team of theirs, the Vikings, would be decent one day?

At the end of September, Lieutenant Charles Davis, an Alabama native fresh from officer training, arrived to take command of 3rd Platoon. Captain Lind met Davis briefly before leaving for some well-deserved R and R, and could only give the most basic of briefings on combat operations in the Mekong Delta. Things were quiet, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Most of the important issues could wait until Lind’s return. Until then, Lind gave Davis the most important advice that he could – stick close to Sergeant Marr. He was a pro, and had led the unit several times through difficult battles. If Davis listened to Marr – did exactly what Marr said – everything would be fine. With that, Lind made his way to Saigon and boarded a flight to meet his wife Becky in Hawaii.

As members of the mortar platoon, Alan Richards and Ronnie Gann occupied special positions in Charlie Company. Sometimes the platoon accompanied Charlie Company on operations in its mortar capacity, as it had on the terrible day of June 19 when so many had been lost in the PABs. On other occasions the platoon remained behind in a defensive position, with a few of its members out as forward observers, to help provide firepower support for the maneuver platoons. Sometimes, though, the mortar platoon carried rifles and acted as a fourth maneuver platoon for Charlie Company. On October 6, Richards, Gann, and the other members of the mortar platoon were carrying M16s and humping through the rice paddies on a search and destroy mission in the Mekong Delta just like everyone else. Charlie Company was back to the familiar routine of working off the boats in its search for the Viet Cong, but they seemed to be lying low. Richards, a country boy from Wisconsin who had been wounded by a mine on VC Island and missed the fighting on June 19, and Gann, from California and whose father had sold his car before he left for Vietnam figuring that he wouldn’t return, had been close friends since their time at Fort Riley. They had been through a lot together and had come through reasonably unscathed, which they largely attributed to their platoon sergeant, a tough Guamanian named Pedro Blas. Even though Blas wasn’t with them that day, the duo felt fairly at ease as they slogged through the rice paddy. Crossing the paddy first was 3rd Platoon, with Steve Hopper’s squad on point. Any trouble would come their way. But nothing would come. For some reason, the VC had been hiding, not fighting. Still Richards, Gann, and the rest of the platoon didn’t take anything lightly. They were professionals and knew that death could be anywhere. Their guard was up, on the lookout for tripwires or bunkers. Even so, it was late in the afternoon; the day had been a long walk in the hot sun. Nothing was going to happen before the call came in to prepare a night defensive position.

While crossing through the open paddy, with a dike off to his left, Alan Richards felt something slam into his shoulder and then turned a near somersault in the air before landing on his back in the muddy water. Only then, dimly as if through a thick haze, did he hear the reports of rifle fire from nearby Viet Cong positions. All of the training from Fort Riley and the hard lessons learned from battle just kicked in; almost without knowing what he was doing Richards reflexively pulled the quick release strap on his pack, wriggled free and crawled through the muck to the cover of a paddy dike. Within seconds the medic, a new guy – Richards didn’t even know his name – was by his side asking Richards where he was hit. Gritting his teeth through the pain Richards replied, “my back,” and the medic cut his shirt away to get a look at the wound. The young medic didn’t say anything, his training was too good for that, but a passing look of surprise and concern let Richards know that his injuries were bad. The Viet Cong bullet had struck Richards just below his shoulder joint, shattering the bone before travelling through his chest cavity and lodging near his spine.

When the Viet Cong opened fire, 4th Platoon hit the dirt with some men returning fire while others made for any cover they could find. With so many men caught in the open, the call went out to fall back and regroup. Ronnie Gann looked around from where he had gone to ground surrounded by the high rice in the middle of the paddy. He caught quick glimpses of men hustling back to cover and knew that he should go as well. But he couldn’t. Richards, his buddy, had just been standing there and then his shoulder had exploded, tossing him backward. He couldn’t just leave him out there. So instead of moving back to cover, Gann crawled forward to find his friend. By the time Gann arrived, the medic was hard at work, and Richards looked bad. Maybe he wouldn’t survive. Almost without thinking Gann looked around to take stock of the situation. Where was the enemy? What could he do to cover Richards and the medic? Then the world went black. A few minutes later Gann came to and watched detached as the medic frantically worked on him. On him? What the hell had happened? Then he felt the pain – a searing jet of heat – coursing through his body. He could barely breathe, and his legs – his legs wouldn’t move. A Viet Cong bullet had entered Gann’s shoulder, collapsed his lung, nicked a kidney and had damaged his spine. Gann had always wondered what it would feel like to be wounded, and he was surprised to be so calm. He just sat there lost in thought as the medic worked. The more Gann thought about it, the more it felt like his body was on fire. But what worried him the most was that he couldn’t move his legs. Then, as if from a long way away, Gann heard the medic yell that they had better get a chopper in quick if they wanted these men to live. These men? Could the medic mean him and Richards?

Steve Hopper’s 3rd Squad had been walking point for Charlie Company that day. It was nothing unusual. Moving with care, Gale Alldridge had led the men forward, about 100 yards in advance of the main body of troops. It was just another recon of just another open paddy while nearing just another tree line. Realizing that the day was almost at its end, the men had even chatted a bit about sharing C Rations that night as Alldridge was the first to make his way over the last paddy dike before the tree line, followed closely by Burkhead. Their turn as the recon element was nearly done. Suddenly fire blazed in from both the left and from the front. The Viet Cong were impossibly close, and Hopper and his men had been caught near the corner of an L-shaped ambush. Hopper’s RTO, a young replacement named Ybarra, was wounded in the opening burst. Hopper crawled over, took the radio, and began to drag Ybarra to safety. Yelling over the din of the incoming fire, Hopper ordered his men forward to the base of a paddy dike only 40 feet away – the same paddy dike Alldridge had just crossed. With bullets buzzing overhead and slapping the mud all around, Hopper and his men moved to the dike. It offered them cover from the Viet Cong fire from the tree line to their front – but did nothing to protect them from the fire coming from their left flank.

Battle of October 6

The enemy fire was intense, but most of it seemed to be passing above their heads. Hopper looked to his left and discovered why – he and his men were only about 10 yards from the nearest enemy bunker. They could see the VC – their eyes and their gun barrels. The firing slits were too narrow for them to get a good shot because Hopper and his men were so close. Hopper shouted quick orders to his men; they had to keep fire on that bunker; he and the nearest man, a replacement named Horney, poured fire into the VC position, but it was no use. Hopper and his men had been caught dead to rights. As Hopper was wondering what the hell he could do, he saw it. A grenade. Somehow the VC had tossed a grenade from their narrow firing slit, and it had landed next to himself and the wounded Ybarra. Getting up to run meant certain death, so the pair curled up in fetal positions and waited for the explosion. There was a short, loud FIZZ – but nothing more. The grenade was a dud. On the one hand almost unable to believe his good luck, and on the other hand nearly quivering with rage, Hopper got on the horn and called for help from a helicopter gunship. He knew that they were so close it would be like calling in fire on his own position, but he had to take the risk. Hopper and his men weren’t going to live long dueling with that VC bunker.

Hopper told the pilot what he wanted, a rocket put right on the junction of two paddy dikes. He then tossed a smoke grenade to mark the enemy position and told the chopper pilot that he and his men were only a few yards away and for God’s sake to shoot straight. Hopper, Ybarra, Horney, and the rest of the squad hugged tight to the ground as the helicopter made its first run. Machine gun fire? It spattered all around them. Hopper was livid. Amazingly nobody had been wounded, but that fire could get them all killed and was of no use whatsoever against an enemy bunker. What the hell was that pilot thinking? Hopper got back on the radio and yelled that he didn’t want any damn machine gun fire – they needed rockets! A few seconds later the chopper made another run. The rocket scored a direct hit on the VC bunker, tossing mud in all directions.

After the smoke cleared, 3rd Squad quickly took stock of the situation. With the fire from its left having ceased, the tree line to the front seemed to be the only real danger. Safe behind the paddy’s final dike, though, Hopper and his men could just pull back and let the artillery hammer the remaining Viet Cong positions. But Gale Alldridge and Danny Burkhead weren’t there. They had crossed the dike and were between it and the enemy positions in the tree line. Burkhead had gone to ground just on the other side of the paddy dike, but nobody in the squad had any idea of Alldridge’s location, let alone whether he was alive or dead. Something had to be done, and Danny Burkhead, Alldridge’s closest friend in the unit, volunteered to go out and find him. As the rest of the squad did what it could to lay down covering fire, Burkhead crawled out into the open. He could only have been gone for a few minutes, but, with the tree line erupting into fire, it seemed like an eternity. Then Burkhead was back, shouting that Alldridge was dead. The news hit 3rd Squad hard, and there was a momentary silence. Burkhead then raised up to repeat his news. His head jerked violently, struck by a Viet Cong round. Burkhead sank back to the ground and then disappeared out of sight on the far side of the paddy dike. Hopper couldn’t believe it. Alldridge and Burkhead were so short that they should have been in some cushy REMF job, not out here in the field. Now they were both gone – Alldridge in the opening burst of fire and Burkhead lost in an attempt to save his buddy. It all just seemed so wrong. Gritting his teeth, Hopper fired an entire clip of tracer rounds at the nearest VC bunker, and, though he never got the satisfaction of seeing any enemy bodies, he was reasonably certain that he had avenged Burkhead’s death.

Lynn Crockett (left) and Herb Lind.

Terry McBride and his M60 machine gun.

John Hoskins on board ship in the Mekong Delta.

Phil Ferro during a break in a patrol.

Alan Richards (left) and Ronnie Gann shown here on the right of the picture.

Fred Kenney (left) and James “Smitty” Smith.

Jerry Specht (left) and Gary Maibach.

Frank Schwan on board the John Pope.

Ron Vidovic posing for a hospital photograph.

Steve Hopper.

Larry Lukes (left), Tim Fischer, and Ron Vidovic aboard ship.

Carl Cortright.

Jimmie Salazar with his grandchildren.

Gary Maibach (photo courtesy of Bill Ganzel).

The indomitable Jack Benedick.

John Young in 2002.

Jacque Bomann (Peterson) upon her graduation from nursing school in 1985.

Charlie Nelson after his return to the reservation.

Charlie Company’s first reunion, 1989 – left to right, Tim Fischer, Jim Cusanelli, Joe Marr, John Howell, Tony Caliari, John Bradfield, Steve Hopper, and Tom Conroy.

Hopper got on the horn and started calling in artillery fire, hoping to take care of any additional bunkers, but there was nothing further that anyone could do for Alldridge or Burkhead. With darkness falling and facing an enemy unit of unknown strength 3rd Squad had to pull back or risk being overrun. It was amazing that they had survived this long. Hopper, Ybarra, Horney, and the remainder of 3rd Squad crawled toward the rear, hugging the spider web of rice paddy dikes for cover. Any movement through an exposed area brought immediate Viet Cong fire, which struck so close that it spattered the men with mud. After a harrowing journey, 3rd Squad neared what it hoped were friendly lines. Yelling that they were coming in, Hopper and his men jumped to their feet and ran the last few yards with enemy bullets whizzing past all around. Finally behind some decent cover, Hopper quickly located Platoon Sergeant Joe Marr and gave him a report on events. He pointed out the enemy positions and where he had lost Alldridge and Burkhead. Marr, ever the professional, processed the information while preparing to call in the first artillery strike. Marr then looked up into Hopper’s eyes and asked, “But where’s Lieutenant Davis?”

Tim Fischer’s squad had been some 75 yards behind Hopper and his men and had gone to ground in an open rice paddy when the firing had broken out. Marr had been further to the rear near the cover of a large paddy dike and had turned to Lieutenant Davis to coordinate the action, but neither Davis nor his RTO were anywhere to be found. After some yelling, Marr located the RTO, Tom Conroy – who had been so shaken by the loss of Elmer Kenney on July 11 – who was stranded behind Fischer’s position in the open in the rice paddy. The two communicated the situation to the company headquarters, but couldn’t undertake much in the way of meaningful action other than coordinating small arms fire. Nobody knew where Lieutenant Davis was, and nobody knew the exact location of Hopper’s downed squad. Hopper himself was coordinating air strikes, and that would have to be enough. In the open paddy, a few yards to Conroy’s front, Fischer and his men had a much better view of the unfolding battle. They could see Hopper and his men locked into place by enemy fire. They could even fire at the enemy positions, but to little effect. Then Fischer saw the most startling thing. A lone man running forward. Was that Lieutenant Davis? What the ever-living hell was he doing out there on his own – running toward the downed recon element? There was little time to wonder, because Davis’ body soon jerked two, perhaps three, times – as Viet Cong bullets struck home – before collapsing to the ground.

Marr could hardly believe what he heard from both Fischer and the men of Hopper’s squad. That new, gung-ho lieutenant had been under orders from Lind to stick by his side – to listen to him. But he had run off after the recon element and was down in the rice paddy? With twilight fast approaching, Marr felt helpless. Viet Cong fire was pouring into 3rd Platoon’s position, with a bullet blowing off Marr’s ring finger and another destroying Conroy’s radio, so a rescue mission was out of the question. Even Steve Hopper was wounded. It was so ironic; he had survived unscathed a few feet from an enemy bunker, and was hit by shrapnel once he had reached safety. Amid the heavy fire, all Marr could do was call in artillery missions and hope for the best. All night the men huddled under their ponchos in a relentless rainstorm, under constant attack from ravenous mosquitoes, while artillery rounds hammered nearby and the landscape was lit with the ghostly glow of falling flares. During it all the men of 3rd Platoon knew full well that their friends were out there. Burkhead and Alldridge weren’t Fort Riley originals, but they were good guys – guys who were about to go back to the world. Davis hadn’t been with the unit long. It was one of his first combat missions. But he was out there somewhere, and nobody knew whether he was dead or alive. His was the nightmare fate that had long haunted the men’s dreams. What if they were out there wounded, surrounded – begging for help? What if nobody came to get them? Although they were exhausted, the men of 3rd Platoon didn’t get much sleep that night.

The next morning Charlie Company moved toward the Viet Cong tree line, and, as usual, there was no enemy resistance. The enemy had fled during the night, dragging their wounded and dead with them. 3rd Platoon first came across the body of Lieutenant Davis, nearly submerged in the rice paddy water. He had been wounded in the upper thigh and groin area, meaning that he had bled to death out there alone in the paddy. It was difficult for the men to take. Should they have helped him? Could they have helped him? It seemed to be such a bad way to go. How long did Davis lie there, fully aware of the fact that he was dying and praying for help? Next the men reached the bodies of Burkhead, still slumped against the rice paddy dike where he had been shot, and Alldridge – who had been killed instantly. At least they hadn’t suffered. At least the Viet Cong had not had time to loot any of the bodies. All Steve Hopper could do was stand there and stare as the body bags were brought in. These had been his men. He was responsible. He had been unable to bring them home safely. Death and killing had been part of the tour in Vietnam, but this time it had struck so close to home. On one hand Hopper felt an incredible sense of loss and guilt, while, on the other, he felt an oddly conflicting feeling – a numbness. He couldn’t feel like he had before. Somehow he was a part of death, and death was an all-too real part of his own existence. The contradictory feelings rushed together, leaving Hopper confused and altered. He was not the same boy who had enjoyed watching movies and drinking chocolate malts after a day of baling hay in rural Illinois. He was not even sure he knew who he was. After writing letters to Burkhead’s and Alldridge’s families apologizing for failing to bring them home safely, Hopper wrote about the battle to his parents. In the letter, Hopper was careful to assure his parents that his own wound was minor before giving them a blow-by-blow account of the action. Hopper closed the narration:

There’s one good thing about it, though. Since I have received two Purple Hearts I shouldn’t have to go into the field any more. I really hope so. Mom and Dad, sometimes the tension gets so great that I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. Oh well. Maybe it will be the last time something like this happens. That’s what I said last time too, though.

Alan Richards waited on a gurney in the hospital in Saigon for hours while other, more urgent, cases received treatment. Finally a doctor came to his side and touched his back, which left Richards writhing in pain. Apparently just realizing that the bullet was still in Richard’s back and was lodged near vital organs, the doctors rushed him into emergency surgery. Richards awoke without much of his shoulder blade and with an open incision in his back to allow for drainage. It hurt far worse than getting shot – the pain was almost unbearable. The doctors gave Richards the good news first. He had been lucky – the bullet had nearly killed him, leaving a wound bad enough to be sent home for treatment. But the extent of the wound combined with the surgery meant that he would never regain full use of his arm. The doctors then put Richards into a full body cast and sent him to the hospital in Camp Zama, Japan. After only a week in Japan, Richards received the best news of all. He was going to be sent to the hospital at the Great Lakes Naval Station just north of Chicago – the nearest hospital to his home in Wisconsin. Richards was elated to see the white mountains when his medical flight touched down for refueling in Alaska. Many of the ambulatory patients disembarked during the short stay to kiss the ground – they were so happy to leave Vietnam and return home. Richards contented himself with gazing out the window and wondering whether it was really possible. Was he really back in the United States, or was it all some kind of dream? But it was all true, wonderfully true. A few hours later Richards arrived at Great Lakes, and there were his mother, sister, and brother waiting to see him. His war was over.

Ronnie Gann woke up in the same hospital ward in Saigon with Alan Richards. After running through the events of the last day in his head for a few moments (had he really been shot?), Gann remembered everything and looked toward his feet. After a few tries, he was able to wiggle his toes. He wasn’t paralyzed. The doctor came in and informed Gann that the bullet had lodged between his kidney and his spine, and it was the force of the blow and swelling in the area that had led to an initial paralysis. It was going to take a long time, and he was going to go home, but he was going to be fine. Just a few minutes later Gann had to shake his head, because he didn’t believe what he was seeing. General William Westmoreland had entered the ward and was pinning Purple Hearts on all of the wounded soldiers. Not quite knowing what to say to someone of such exalted rank, Gann simply informed Westmoreland that it was his second Purple Heart before the great man moved on. The doctors were concerned that a flight could result in Gann’s lung collapsing again, so they first sent him to a hospital ship off the Vietnamese coast. On October 15, Gann celebrated his 21st birthday, lying there in a hospital bed, barely able to move. But it was OK. He was going home. He had survived the Vietnam War. Gann spent Thanksgiving in Camp Zama. The treatment there was good, but all Gann could think of was the stink. Everybody on his ward was in a body cast, so they couldn’t take baths. The whole ward smelled of unwashed soldiers. Finally Gann was airlifted to Letterman Army Medical Center outside San Francisco. Gann had not told his family that he had been wounded, and finally called them from Letterman. It was the first time they had heard from him in a month. His parents drove to see him, and Gann thought that he was going to have to work hard to get the pieces of his life back into some kind of order, a life that had been interrupted and altered by war.

After the battle of October 6, Charlie Company stood down at Dong Tam for a few days before going back out on the ships, continuing to hunt for the ever more elusive Viet Cong. As the originals neared the end of their tours, the operations took them back to places they had not been for months – places that were so foreign yet so devastatingly familiar. Operations in some areas drove home how much the unit had changed over its deployment. After spending two weeks in the mangrove swamps of the Rung Sat, where the unit had once cut its military teeth, Clarence Shires, who had brought Charlie the cat – who was still alive and well – to Vietnam, wrote home:

When we first saw this worthless, muddy place we hated it. Now we think of it as a vacation… The thing that got me the worst were leeches. We got them all over us. I had one four to five inches long and an inch in diameter hanging from my you know what… I lit a cigarette and burned him off. The place bled for about three hours! Everybody laughed at me. Some of the guys had them that big to tiny ones all over them. I was lucky that I had only four.

In early November, the ATCs beached Charlie Company at the same location where it had fought the battle of June 19. To the many replacements the Can Giouc area was just another collection of rice paddies. Sure, they had heard that a major battle had taken place there, but to them it was ancient history. To the originals, the boys from Fort Riley, walking those paddies again was like walking through some kind of nightmare. Memories of friends who didn’t make it back from that day were everywhere. Memories of who they had once been. For Mike O’Gara, a 2nd Platoon original from Minnesota, it was another stage of an emotional see saw ride. At the beginning of his tour in Vietnam he had wondered if he would ever make it home. After the fighting of June 19 he had accepted the fact that he wouldn’t make it home. Now he was daring to hope that he might live to return home, but still feared that the end could come at any time. John Young wrote to his family and spoke for many when he attempted to explain his feelings:

 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Girls,

I really don’t know how much I’ll be able to write because there just isn’t much to say.

Not long ago we ran an operation through the area in which we had our big fight on 19 June. On that day my company had 13 killed and about 25 wounded. A Company had 14 men out of 134 who were not wounded or killed. It lasted 23 hours, and it was the most violent, frightening, exhausting, ugly thing I shall ever see. When we got to our old battlefield this time, I was able to look and say “this is where Lt. Schulman died”; “this is where that VC machine gun was”; “here is where our medevac chopper was shot down”; “over there, 9 men in the mortar platoon died – Jindra, Frakes, Winters, Fink, Robin, Cara, Rice and two others I didn’t even know”; “inside that shack Tim Johnson died”; “right there Geier, the 2nd Platoon medic, was killed while he tried to aid a wounded man.” I could see the tree line that my platoon finally assaulted and where I killed four men and one woman as they ran out of their bunkers. I could also see the big open area in which A Company was destroyed, and could remember with perfect clarity how it looked on the morning of 20 June when we moved to it to help police up the dead. There were dead GI’s scattered in the mud everywhere, and it was easy to see which ones were lucky enough to have died instantly because they didn’t have the pathetic trails in the mud behind them.

Now it is all changed. Where there were bare mud flats, the rice is now four feet high, and sugar cane now grows around the peasant shacks. The shell craters in the paddies have been filled in, and, except for the still-standing shattered trunks of coconut palms, there is no way to tell that 1,200 men fought there on a clear, hot day last June.

There is a hamlet called Ap Bac close by, and we drew fire from it all day on the 19th. This time we walked down its main street. In most villages the people smile at us, and they smiled this time in Ap Bac, too. But the smiles were acid; these people smiled a paper smile that said “we have seen you before, American soldier, just a few hundred meters out that way, and we hurt you very badly that day.” Ap Bac is a VC hamlet in a VC area and faces tell the story. They hate us there, behind their thin smiles.

We spent the night there, and it was hard to believe that any of it had ever happened. But I know that it happened, because this battalion hasn’t been the same since.

After writing all this, I feel a little empty. There just isn’t much to say…

Guess I’ll sack out. Hope everybody is OK. Say hello to everybody.

Love, John

In early November, the MRF received intelligence indicating that some of the main VC units in the Mekong Delta were regrouping in the Cam Son Secret Zone, the base area in Dinh Tuong Province near the site of Charlie Company’s first battle on May 15 in which Don Peterson had been killed. The entire 4th of the 47th went out on the hunt, with Lieutenant Colonel Rhotenberry circling above the scene and still asking his units periodically to pop smoke. The sweep began on November 15, and for two days the companies of the 4th of the 47th turned up little, except for leeches and red ants. The Viet Cong didn’t seem to be anywhere around; the intelligence had proved faulty once again. On November 17, slated to be the last day of the frustrating operation, Charlie Company swept down the bank of one of the Mekong Delta’s many canals. John Young’s 1st Squad of the 1st Platoon walked point, looking for anything out of the ordinary. The banks of canals were favorite locations for Viet Cong mines and booby traps; there were even signs posted reading “danger” and “do not enter,” so Young and his men took special care. The men had been moving for just over an hour that morning when an explosion tore through the middle of the Charlie Company column. Everyone stopped reflexively to await news, and word slowly filtered up to Young’s point squad that a man in the 2nd Platoon had tripped a toe popper mine. The explosion had only broken the man’s foot, but Young was still mad at himself. It was the duty of him and his squad to locate the mines and booby traps, and somehow they had missed one.

Young, who was third in line, gave the order for his point man to rest easy. During the next 20 minutes, while the medevac came and went, Young decided to share a smoke with the second man in line, Brookins, an African-American replacement from the Houston area. Brookins had been with the company for such a short time that Young knew next to nothing about him. So the two chatted, and Young learned that Brookins was married with three children – but had been divorced from his wife just long enough to be drafted before patching things up and remarrying. Of all the damn luck. And now here he was, humping through the heat of the Mekong Delta trying to learn how to survive. As the two men finished their cigarettes, word filtered back up the line that it was time to move out. Young got to his feet, patted Brookins on the shoulder, and told him and the point man to get moving when there was a flash and a roar, which sent Young flying through the air and slammed him against the base of a coconut tree. The entire thing couldn’t have taken more than a second or two, but Young had time to think, “Christ, I can go home in a couple of weeks and I’ve just blown my leg off.”

After Young’s head cleared, he looked down – his legs were still there and seemed to work well enough. Then he glanced off to his right where he heard an odd thrashing. It was Brookins. He had been the one who had stepped on the mine, not Young, and it had blown him clean into the canal. Young scrambled to his feet and, with the help of some of the other replacements, dragged Brookins out of the water. As soon as Brookins’ leg cleared the canal, Young knew it was bad. His boot and his foot were gone, severed just above the ankle. Battered, white bone jutted from the jagged wound, and blood ran freely from the stump. The new platoon medic arrived on the scene quickly, gave Brookins a morphine shot, and applied a tourniquet to his leg. Young knelt by Brookins’ side, lit a cigarette, and gave it to the young man. Brookins was shaking and afraid to look at his battered leg. He could only look at Young and ask, “My leg’s gone, isn’t it?” Young swallowed hard and replied, “Well, part of it is.” Brookins closed his eyes, sighed, and said, “Well, get me the hell out of here then.” He had been in Vietnam for only a few days and was now going back home to his children without part of his leg. As a team of men hauled Brookins off to a landing zone to await a medevac, Young crawled over to the side of the trail and vomited uncontrollably. He didn’t like showing emotion or weakness in front of his men. They depended on him for their lives. But Young couldn’t help it. After so long in Vietnam, after so many deaths and mutilations, men were still being lost. The price was still being paid. Somehow it hurt so bad that it made John Young sick.

Young quickly regained his composure – complicated feelings like these had no place out on an operation. They could get you killed. Bob Eisenbaugh came to the front of the file, along with his close buddy Ralph Wilson – the New Jersey native who had joined the unit as a replacement in May. As the unit moved out again Wilson led the way, while Eisenbaugh followed a few feet to his rear. Wilson was shocked to hear another explosion, and he whirled around just in time to see Eisenbaugh falling out of the sky and into the nearby canal. With a shudder Wilson realized that he had walked right over the mine that had blown Eisenbaugh sky high. Men from the 1st Squad rushed to drag him out and Eisenbaugh fell into a fit of hysterical laughter when he looked down to see that both of his feet were still in place. He has stepped on a toe popper. Once again the company held in place to await the arrival of a medevac chopper.

Charlie Company had strayed into a minefield. Movement any direction might result in injury or death. Back at the company command area, Captain Lind was becoming aware of the full gravity of the situation. The minefield was vast. Charlie Company had lost six wounded, while Alpha and Bravo companies, operating nearby along the same canal, had lost five and 11 men respectively. Taking such heavy casualties while accomplishing something would be one thing, but there were no VC around – no damage to inflict. The 4th of the 47th was just bleeding for no good reason. Lind, who already had a rocky relationship with Rhotenberry, agreed to take the heat. He got on the radio and told Rhotenberry that the companies of the 4th of the 47th were going no further that day. Rhotenberry was livid and responded by yelling into the radio, “Damn it! You get a move on! If all of those mines are there they must be guarding something. There must be something to find. I want you guys to find whatever it is right away! I either want a big body count or a large cache!” The built-up animosity between the two, the changes in Charlie Company and the 4th of the 47th made manifest, quickly came to a head. Lind shouted back, “No Sir! I will not move. If you give me a direct command I and my company will sit here until you relieve me. But I warn you, there will be a chain reaction. The lieutenants who would take command from me will do the same. You can’t win it!” A moment later, another voice broke in on the conversation, that of the new 2nd Brigade commander Colonel Bert David, who had been monitoring the entire exchange. Calmly, but quite forcefully, Colonel David said, “Rhotenberry, you listen to that young captain. He is on the ground and knows more about the situation than you do.” A few minutes later the ATCs were on their way to pick up the troops of the 4th of the 47th and take them back to their barracks ships. The brief foray into the Cam Son Secret Zone was over. Once behind closed doors on board, Rhotenberry let Lind have it. What the hell was he thinking, disobeying orders? He had better get his head straight. Lind just stood there and took all the abuse that Rhotenberry could dish out – he was confident that he had done what was right and had helped to save the lives of the men under his command in Charlie Company.

Nobody could have known it, but the mining of November 17 was the last significant contact for most of the Charlie Company originals. There was to be no climactic end to their tour in Vietnam, no seizure of an enemy capital or cathartic victory. Instead, Charlie Company’s war fizzled inconclusively – really no end at all. The draftees of May 1966 would leave Vietnam with the job unfinished, with nothing to show but memories of war, departed friends, and enduring questions. Like most, John Young knew that the end of his tour was close at hand and wrote about the experience of November 17 to his parents, trying to put it all into context. After recapping the action from that day, Young closed his letter:

 

We evacuated him [Eisenbaugh], then were extracted by the navy ATC’s. There is no way to describe how glad we were to get out of there. We were afraid to take a step anywhere.

The entire operation was called off a day early. It had cost my company 6 wounded men, two of whom lost a foot to mines.

Nothing about this mission will make the newspapers, but one of my good men is going home to his wife and family with no right foot, and three days ago he told me that his wife was getting crank letters from someone, telling her that her husband was in grave danger in Vietnam; so where, I ask myself, is the moral behind this small episode in this great tragedy of Vietnam?

I wish I knew. To doubt is to be without a foothold, and I look now at Brookins’ empty bunk and doubt. I really don’t know what to think of this whole war.

A few days later, Young wrote another letter with a solemn statistic given all too matter-of-factly:

There are 6 of us left from the platoon who came from Fort Riley. Of the other 39, two are dead and the rest badly wounded.

For the Charlie Company originals everything just felt different. Most of their old friends were gone – killed, wounded, or infused. Sure, there were new friends, and a job to be done, but nothing was the same. When they had first arrived in Vietnam they had been spoiling for a fight and ready to make a difference in the war. After the fighting had come, and the losses had begun to mount, feelings had shifted. Some were motivated by longing for revenge, some by grim determination to succeed, most by loyalty to their comrades. By December, though, the originals were so close to home they could almost physically sense it – the snow of Chicago, the waves beating on the California shoreline, the wonderful aromas from mom’s kitchen, hugs from wives and children. With so few days remaining in country the purpose of the Charlie Company originals shifted to survival. Everything else – the mission, the war – fell into the background. They had to live to make it home.

The originals of Charlie Company had already seen their once extensive family shrink to tiny, cohesive groups of a few men at the heart of each platoon. But in December, even that changed – shattering the original company seemingly for good. As the originals neared their DEROS, most were transferred to REMF positions scattered throughout the 9th Division. Some of the unlucky remained in the field on operations, virtually alone in what had once been “their” platoons, fighting until very nearly the end. Charlie Company had arrived in Vietnam together – as a family. It would leave Vietnam in ones and twos – as lonely individuals.

There were as many experiences of those final days in Vietnam as there were men. The new company first sergeant pulled John Young off the line and put him in charge of “horticultural beautification” of the company base area, leaving Young to spend his final days in country bartering C Rations with Vietnamese locals in exchange for banana trees and flowering plants to spruce up the drab landscape of Dong Tam. Tim Fischer came off the line to lead some of the old hands in clearing brush around Dong Tam, an easy – if sweaty – job that led to several bull sessions and visits from the local working girls. While sitting there one day with not much of anything going on, still missing his buddy Ron Vidovic, a shot rang out. A sniper. Fischer was a professional. He knew that the sniper was far away and didn’t pose a real threat. A few months back it wouldn’t have bothered him at all – but it was December. It was almost funny. After all he had been through, that little piss-ant sniper got him more nervous than anything had during the whole year. He had to get home.

Larry Lilley, the California draftee who had lost his two classmates and close friends Kenny Frakes and Tim Johnson on June 19, remained out on operations with 1st Platoon until the middle of the month, when he had jumped over a small stream and heard his knee pop. After a visit to the doctor, Lilley found himself on duty in the PX back at Bear Cat waiting for the freedom bird home. Jimmie Salazar, who had finally let himself hope that he was going to make it home to see his son, had worse fortune. He was out on operations with 2nd Platoon until almost all of the other originals had gone. Finally he went to Captain Lind to see what was up; was somebody mad at him? No. Everything was fine, and his turn was next. Relieved, Salazar made his way to Bear Cat, but the job he found there for his last day in country again made him wonder whom he had pissed off. Young was planting trees; Lilley was working the PX; Salazar was burning the shit cans from the latrines. Mike Cramer, another of the California draftees, was out with 2nd Platoon, serving as its RTO, until December 23, when he finally received his orders to report to Bear Cat. Just in time! Bob Hope was coming to Bear Cat to put on his famous Christmas show for the troops. Now Bob Hope was just fine by Cramer and the rest of Charlie Company, but they all really wanted to see Hope’s special guest – Raquel Welch. Cramer and some of the other lucky Charlie Company originals got there early – really early. It was a huge production that took a great deal of time to get organized, so Cramer and his buddies had to get there at 5am. But they were sure it was going to be worth it. But this was the army; this was Vietnam. The television crews came and constructed a massive camera platform right between Cramer’s group and the stage. They couldn’t see a damn thing.

As the remaining Charlie Company originals gathered in Bear Cat to await their flights home, there were several reunions – men who had stayed with Charlie Company and those who had been infused; reunions that took on lives of their own on New Year’s Eve. Most of the original officers were there – Lind, Benedick, Hoskins, Hunt – led by Colonel Tutwiler himself. They all headed to the officers’ club and talked about their latest assignments. Benedick had been a liaison officer with an ARVN unit, where he never felt safe. Hunt had been a junior aide to the commander of the 9th Division, and had even gotten a chance to meet Raquel Welch and Bob Hope. But they both had felt odd, even depressed, in their new assignments. Charlie Company was their family, their boys, and leaving had been harder than they ever admitted. The group gathered at a huge table on a concrete patio, and Tutwiler kept the champagne flowing. They toasted everyone they knew, shattering their 8-ounce glasses after each shot. They then started swapping stories, some bawdy, others of tearful loss, of the past year. Charlie Company had been something special. The men had been golden. But so many had been lost. Tutwiler didn’t let the group linger overlong on the pain of war. His young officers had done well, as well as any officers in any war. They were there to toast survival. More champagne came, and, running out of glasses, the group started a drinking game. POP went the top of a new bottle. Whomever the cork landed nearest to had to chug as much as he could.

The night had been epic. Benedick and Hoskins were awoken the next day by a voice saying, “I wonder if they are dead?” Shaking the cobwebs away as best they could, the two young lieutenants noticed that they were lying in the bottom of a muddy ditch. Slowly it all came back to them; they had been walking home from the O club, singing loudly, when there had been a mortar attack. The duo had then tumbled into the nearest ditch for cover, where they had promptly passed out and snored the remainder of the night away. Hunt, for his part, had made it all the way back to his own bed, where he came to the next afternoon. He was badly hungover – he had expected that – but he didn’t know why his arms and legs hurt so badly. He looked down to see that his trousers were torn and that he had cuts and bruises all over. Finally he remembered; thoroughly drunk, the lieutenants had challenged each other to a low-crawling competition across the gravel outside the O club. It seemed that he had won. Hunt sat and thought, through a blinding headache, back on the rest of the night. They had all let their hair down. It had been all of the pent-up emotion of an entire year coming out all at once. It had been a funeral dirge for men who would never return to see their families – men lost under their command. But it had also been a celebration – a celebration of survival. They had beaten the odds.

For the enlisted men of Charlie Company, New Year’s Eve was very much a mixed bag. John Sclimenti, who had been so badly shaken when the Viet Cong soldier had jumped up from a spider hole when 1st Platoon had charged the enemy positions on June 19, knew that there would be a lot of drinking going on that night. But he wasn’t going to take any risks. He was only a couple of days short of going home to California. The chances of being hit by a mortar round at Bear Cat were laughably low, but he was damned if he was going to take any risks now. Instead of drinking, Sclimenti, joined by a few others, slept in the protective bunkers that night. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was safe. For Sergeant Daniel Kerr of 2nd Platoon, the time called for reflection. He remembered back to “Parents’ Day” at the end of training at Fort Riley. It had been an occasion where parents could come visit their soldier boys – an occasion that Kerr relished. What a pleasure it had been to meet the parents of the men he had helped to train. But now he could only think about how much it hurt. He kept seeing those parents in his mind – parents of the boys who had been lost in Vietnam. Parents who would never see their children again.

Jim Dennison, who had been infused in late August, was so happy to be with some of his old Charlie Company buddies again that he wasn’t going to let fear get in the way of a last good drink. The army owed him at least that. Dennison, Jimmie Salazar, Bill Reynolds, and a few others could hardly believe their luck – it was like somebody wanted them to get drunk. Who did they meet manning the PX but Larry Lilley? The group drank the night away, and, while their celebration did not reach the epic level of the officers only a few tents away, it got the job done. The next day Dennison wove his way unsteadily to the holding area that represented the first real step before the freedom bird. Through an alcohol-fueled haze, Dennison became dimly aware that an REMF was telling him that he couldn’t bring his half-full bottle of scotch into the holding area. There seemed to be few options, so Dennison calmly drank what was left of the bottle and passed out on the spot. A few feet away, Gary Maibach, the conscientious objector medic who had also been infused, watched Dennison collapse and sighed. Even though they sometimes fell short of the ideal, Maibach knew how good these men were – his men. They had been through hell, and some had not made their way out unscathed. Maibach walked over to Dennison, got him up onto unsteady feet, and signed him in – they were going home.

John Young had started drinking heavily, but in secret, after the battle of June 19. On New Year’s Eve he knew that he would need a fair amount of booze to be able to get any sleep at all – it was the end of one year and the beginning of the rest of his life. On the way to the NCO club he had run into Buford Hoover, who had been Young’s platoon sergeant and mentor for most of the year. It was too early; the NCO club was not yet open, but the duo talked themselves in and sat down to a long, steady afternoon and night of drinking. They sat in a corner, very aware that their close relationship that had begun at Fort Riley was coming to an end, and shunned the company of the REMFs who crowded into the club at opening time. Hoover and Young realized that it might be the last time that they would ever sit down with another person who shared the same memories. They, like the rest of Charlie Company, were headed to different places – different lives, among people who would never truly know or understand what had happened to them, to Charlie Company. As the drinks kept coming, the two did their best to remember every battle, every encounter, every loss of the year – to burn them into their minds.

There were the losses outside of Charlie Company. “That one guy fell off of the boat.” “How about the mortar squad that got blown up at Bear Cat?” There seemed to be so many; people who got sick and never came back, people who had fallen off the ammi barge into the river never to be seen again. But most attention was given to their own combat losses. “Remember Lieutenant Black, blown up by the VC mine?” “Ron Schworer, what a tragedy. That guy was a genius, really going places. I wonder if they ever found his body?” At nearly the same time Hoover and Young remembered Don Peterson. “He was a good man; the best.” “I wonder how Jacque and little Jimmy are doing? Must be tough on them. Maybe we should look them up when we get home?” “I wonder how Nelson, Ski, and Cortright are doing?” June 19 was almost too difficult to bear. The mortar platoon lost on the PABs; Lieutenant Schulman getting shot after his command was destroyed; everybody’s friend Bill Geier dying while helping a wounded man; Forrest Ramos falling out of the helicopter; Tim Johnson being killed after everything seemed to be over. All of the wounded. “No way to remember all of the wounded – too damn many of them.” “Yeah, seems like everybody got hurt at least once.” Eakins, Ferro, and King – all killed together on July 11. “And what about Fred Kenney?” “Damn, that was tough. Never even got a chance to see his kid. Do you remember how he liked to show those pictures around all the time? He loved it when we got a replacement in, so he could show those pictures off to somebody new.” Young opened up and let Hoover know how much losing Benny Bridges on July 29 had hurt. How he had never quite been the same since. Then, when it had all seemed like it was over – Burkhead, Alldridge, and Lieutenant Davis – all killed on the same day. Maybe in the same burst of fire.

The conversation had taken hours. It was well past dark and the club was full of REMFs intent on celebrating New Year’s. But Young and Hoover just sat there and drank in silence, trying to process the now shared pain and loss. Young passed out on the table, and Hoover kept on drinking. A few minutes later the club’s Master-at-Arms came by and shook Young. It was obvious that he didn’t want passed-out drunks in his bar. Hoover looked at the MA and calmly said, “Touch him again and I’ll kill you.” The MA glanced up and Hoover continued, “I mean it.” The entire club went quiet, and the MA pled with Hoover: “Look, Sarge, I can’t have people passed out on the tables. He can’t stay here.” Hoover glared at him and shouted, “Is this a 9th Division NCO club?” The MA replied that it was. “Well this is a 9th Division NCO. You stay the fuck away from him!” Deciding to leave well enough alone, the MA retreated to his office. Hoover looked around at the silent REMFs who were all staring at him. He yelled to the throng, “Spread out men. One grenade would get you all.” A few minutes later Young woke up, and the pair ordered another round of beer.

Some of the Charlie Company originals had the good luck to fly home together; however, though arriving in Vietnam had been a shared experience, leaving Saigon and returning home was intensely personal and individualistic. Charlie Company was no more. Yet even as the young men prepared to return to lives and families in a different world, there remained a few shared experiences. Like many in the company, Steve Hopper watched anxiously as the freedom bird touched down at Tan Son Nhut airbase. His excitement turned to introspection, though, as hundreds of fresh-faced replacements, wearing starched fatigues, disembarked the aircraft. They looked so young. Had they looked that young just a year ago? He couldn’t help wondering how many of them wouldn’t survive to see their own freedom bird and flight back to the world. Then he saw how they were looking at him and his buddies. To these newbies they must have looked so old, so worn, so jaded. Hopper could just see that they were all wondering, “What the hell happened to these guys? I wonder if I will look like them after a year over here?” A few of the veterans wished the replacements good luck, and received congratulations in return before boarding the plane, but it was a sobering experience.

On the different flights home, the boys of Charlie Company slept, ordered glass after glass of cold milk, and flirted with the stewardesses. There were great cheers when the airplanes took off, and even greater cheers when they touched down. Some of the men hustled off the aircraft to kiss the ground, while others lingered to talk to old friends. Some were met by protestors and catcalls of “baby killer!” Elijah Taylor couldn’t be bothered by such foolishness. He was in too much of a hurry to get home and just ran right on past. Tom Conroy, who still could not shake the memory of picking up Fred Kenney’s body after the battle on July 11, had to be held back by MPs when he tried to get at the protestors in San Francisco. Larry Lukes, who had been right behind Fred Kenney when he had been shot, narrowly avoided getting hit with a rotten egg thrown by one of the protestors. He didn’t get angry; he just stood and stared at the screaming mob. He couldn’t even move. He could only wonder why they hated him and the boys of Charlie Company so much. Lukes hadn’t expected a parade when he got home. He knew that there was unrest in the country, but he hadn’t expected anything like this. This wasn’t the America he had left. He had lost so many good friends in Vietnam; had lost so much of himself. This was their welcome home? Somehow that one rotten egg had hurt Larry Lukes more than the sum total experience of an entire year spent in Vietnam.

Stan Cockerell, who had ignored his Malaria and abandoned his sickbed to join the battle of June 19, flew alone into San Francisco where he too was met by protestors. Making matters worse, Cockerell had to report in to receive starched new fatigues and a proper regulation haircut. Looking strictly military, Cockerell stuck out like a sore thumb and was shunned on his next flight to Los Angeles. Trying his best to ignore the many slights offered by his fellow countrymen, Cockerell then took the bus to the North Hollywood station but was still 2 miles from home. Hoping to surprise his parents, Cockerell didn’t call for a ride home; instead he hailed a cab. One by one, though, the drivers turned their backs on him; they refused to serve a Vietnam veteran. With a sigh of resignation, Cockerell shouldered his duffel bag and trudged home. As he finally neared his parent’s house, Cockerell stopped to gaze at the house across the street where Linda Walters lived. Stan had used to love to watch Linda and her friends walk past on their way home, and, even before he had left for Vietnam, he had told his buddies that he would marry that beautiful girl one day. But he had never worked up the gumption to ask her out. Cockerell was a changed man, though, and he knew what he was going to do. After reuniting with his parents, Cockerell was going across that street to ask for that date.

For Jack Benedick and Lynn Hunt, the flight home was the best of times and the worst of times. They were going home to see their families, but they had left behind a job undone. They were officers, trained to lead – to win. But the war was still going on – their platoons were still going into combat without them. For them there was no closure. After the two parted ways in San Francisco, Benedick caught a connecting flight to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where his wife, Nancy, and his young son Jack Junior, who had been born in March 1966, were living with her parents. When he stepped off the aircraft, he couldn’t help but notice how cold it was before he made his way inside the terminal. Expecting his arrival, Nancy ran to him, and the couple embraced. Watching their reunion, the assembled travelers broke into a round of applause. Nancy then drove Jack home and threw the door open, where Jack Junior was waiting. Excited to see his son after so long, Benedick opened his arms wide for a hug, but Jack Junior ran and hid behind the door, asking his mommy, “Who is that strange man?” Benedick realized that he had missed so much – so much that he didn’t even know his own son. But at the same time, he wondered what he was missing in Vietnam.

John Young had not let anyone at home know that he was coming. Instead, after landing in San Francisco and catching a connecting flight to Minneapolis, he caught a cab home from the airport and hoped to surprise his parents and sisters. The blinds were open, and his mother, Myrl, and his sisters saw the cab pull up and saw John get out in his uniform – they rushed outside and mobbed him with hugs and kisses long before he could make his way into the house. John had arrived too late, though, to catch his father, Wilbur, at home. He was already at work down at the International Harvester plant. After more hugs and a quick meal, Young donned his dress uniform and went to surprise his father. He walked into the plant and up to the foreman and simply said, “I’m looking for Wilbur Young.” It was a plant full of World War II veterans – they knew what the stripes on Young’s arms meant. They knew what the ribbons on his chest meant. They knew what was going on. The foreman ran out onto the floor and yelled, “Bill, get over here! Your son is home!” Wilbur Young walked over and gave his son a bear hug. He then stood back, and the men standing all around began to clap and walked forward to pat father and son on the back. John Young could see the pride in his father’s eyes as he showed his son off to his work friends. It was a brief, happy moment after a year of pain.

Jimmie Salazar couldn’t wait for his flight to land; he wanted to get home and see his baby. Couldn’t airplanes go any faster? In San Francisco, his group was held up by a protest and stood shivering on the tarmac before being hustled inside to meet their connecting flights. Salazar located his flight to Dallas on the board and realized that he was going to have to run fast or miss it. He took off and passed someone he recognized running for the same gate. It was Colonel Tutwiler. He slowed down just a bit to keep pace with the man who had been his commander, and the two reached the gate barely in time. Tutwiler checked in, but there was a problem with Salazar. Evidently he had reached the gate so late that an REMF captain was in the process of being booked into his seat. Salazar pleaded his case, but the captain made it plain that it would be him flying to Dallas – Salazar would have to wait for the next available flight. Having seen the entire incident, Tutwiler walked back to the gate area and made the captain snap to attention. He gave the unfortunate officer a classic military dressing down. What did he think he was doing, taking the seat of this combat veteran who was trying to get home and see his wife and child? After making the captain apologize for his transgression, Tutwiler walked with Salazar aboard the aircraft. The two, one who had been the battalion commander, the other an enlisted man, sat together on the flight, sharing booze and stories of Vietnam. Only after the flight touched down in Dallas did Jimmie Salazar remember that in the rush in San Francisco he had not had time to call his family to let them know he was coming home. Well, there was nothing for it now. It was only 6am, but he managed to catch a cab to his mother’s house. Not quite knowing what to expect – how does a father prepare to meet his child for the first time – Salazar rang the doorbell. The door opened. It was Aurora, up early to take care of little Richard. She let out a scream and jumped up and down before giving Jimmie a hug. Then she opened the door just a bit further, and Jimmie saw Richard – walking around in one of the little baby saucers with wheels. Aurora had done her best over the months to show Richard pictures of Jimmie, pointing to the pictures and saying, “Papa, Papa.” It had become such a ritual that papa had been one of Richard’s very first words. It had worked. When Richard saw the man at the door he began yelling over and over, “Papa, Papa, Papa,” while his chubby little legs churned the wheeled saucer forward toward the father he had never met. It turned out that Jimmie didn’t need any lessons on how to meet his child – he just picked Richard up from the saucer, gave him a hug, and held him. That hug and those little arms – little arms that didn’t care what he had seen or what he had done over the last year, little arms that loved him unconditionally and only knew him as papa – set Jimmie Salazar free.