A line of Seahorse helicopters lifted off from Chu Lai and roared over the white sand beaches and the blue surf of the South China Sea. Inside one of the helicopters was Lance Corporal Ray Hildreth, a member of the 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, of the 1st Marine Division’s Reconnaissance Battalion. As the chopper swung northwest, Hildreth marveled at the beauty of Vietnam. The endless rice paddies and the hillsides were a blaze of green. The golden rays of the sun faded to purple in the dusk. Enchanting, Hildreth thought. Over the ridgeline of the Hiep Duc Valley, the Seahorses circled a 1,500-foot mountain marked Hill 488 on their maps. Hovering behind an outcropping that hid them from the twinkling lights in the village below, Hildreth and 14 others in the 1st Platoon dropped behind enemy lines. Also scrambling out of the helicopters were two US Navy medical corpsmen. This was a recon team, Marines often considered the elite of light infantry. Unseen from the top of Hill 488, the 15 men of 1st Platoon would direct death and destruction to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regular army in the village below. Then the recon team would slip off Hill 488 in their Seahorses before the dinks knew what hit them.
The plan was worked out by Staff Sergeant Jimmie Earl Howard. “The men like him,” said Captain Timothy J. Geraghty, the company commander who put Howard in charge. On June 13, 1966, the day the 1st Platoon landed, Howard had been a Marine for 16 years. He left Iowa State and its football team in 1950 and went to war in Korea. There he won a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. That June day on Hill 844, Howard was the foundation of all militaries, the veteran warrior who knew exactly what to do once the fighting started. Officers in command of Charlie Company were often simply too young and inexperienced. They stayed in Chu Lai and listened to Howard on the radio net. The next day Howard pinpointed through binoculars what he was sure was a North Vietnamese army headquarters. The village was a beehive of military activity. From here, the Vietnamese were staging strikes on the Marines in Chu Lai. Howard had estimated exact grid coordinates for Marine howitzers to destroy the headquarters. But an artillery barrage would tip the enemy they were under observation—likely from Marines on Hill 844. Instead, Howard located a Bird Dog, a single-engine Cessna O-1, the eyes of the jet pilots known as Fast Movers. In Vietnam, only a Bird Dog pilot could locate a target for Mach 1 Phantoms and their 500-pound bomb load. Villagers below were used to forward air controllers flying overhead. Bird Dog twisted and turned over the village as Howard guided him to the target. “What have you got, Carnival Time?” Bird Dog asked, using Howard’s radio call sign. Once certain of the target, Bird Dog called for help on the Tactical Air radio network. Musket Three, a twin-engine F-4 Phantom, said he was minutes away. Bird Dog flew low and within a few feet of the target exploded a rocket of white phosphorous. “I got your smoke,” radioed Musket Three, who spotted the cloud of Willie Pete. “I’m rolling in hot from the east.” A long black plume of exhaust trailed the fighter-bomber as it silently pickled two 500-pound bombs exactly on the suspected headquarters. The roar of the engines came moments later, followed by many explosions that proved the enemy HQ was an arsenal for the North Vietnamese regulars. A frenzy of villagers ran toward the plume of black smoke that arose from the destruction.
Howard and his recon team had also exploded a hornet’s nest. Perhaps it was the precision of the attack. Hundreds of North Vietnamese the very next night swarmed to the base of Hill 844. They banged bamboo together so that it sounded like thunder. Then every one of the attackers seemed to have a whistle. There was a brief bugle call, then shouts: “Marines, you die tonight” and “Marines, you die in one hour.” Earlier in the day, Howard had waved off a headquarters suggestion that his tiny force be extracted. “We have a defensible position,” he radioed. As the size of the attack unfolded, Howard realized he had been overconfident. The blackness of the night and high grass all the way up the mountain hillside hid the enemy until they were on the edge of the Marine defense and began throwing grenades. Howard moved from one fire team to another, giving instructions, redeploying some, insisting on semiautomatic fire from the M-14s. Full automatic fire would only draw concentrated replies—the enemy would think it was a machine gun. Howard had designated a box of grid coordinates in front of his troops for Marine artillery. Green tracers from the Vietnamese AK-47s streaked uphill. Red tracers from the Marine M-14s poured downhill. Howard called for flares. They lit the hillsides swarming with Vietnamese, something like turning on the kitchen light and seeing the cockroaches scurry. Then Howard adjusted artillery fire on the attackers. Still they came, firing and maneuvering, like any well-trained army. Howard turned back a Huey helicopter medevac that came to rescue the mounting number of wounded. “It would be suicide,” he told the pilot. Two Huey gunships with rockets and machines raked the attackers. Around 3 a.m., a Marine A-4 Skyhawk rolled in over the battlefield that had been lit by blinding flares. The fighter-bomber dropped 250-pound bombs.
As the Vietnamese penetrated their perimeter, knife fighting ensued. Howard pulled his battered platoon into a tighter defensive position on Hill 488’s knob. By 4 a.m., the air strikes had cured the Vietnamese of making new mass attacks. At dawn most retreated, except for snipers within yards of the Marines. To preserve ammunition, Howard advised throwing rocks. Has it come to that? Hildreth thought? Howard explained, “They will think we have their grenades. When they jump out of the way, we’ll zap ’em.” Hildreth assembled a pile of stones and began picking off one man after another. Howard was wounded in his testicles by grenade shrapnel. He refused morphine, saying the other wounded needed it more. Seven others were so seriously wounded that they were unconscious and could not move. Six were dead. Also killed were four Marines sent to Hill 488 during the most intense fighting. Enemy dead were estimated in the hundreds. Their bodies were removed from the battlefield before the Marines could count them.
Back in Chu Lai, once the after-action assessment was finished, Carnival Time Company Commander Timothy Geraghty and other commanders would begin the holiest of holy processes: sorting out commendations for the heroes of Hill 488. Eventually, four Navy Crosses—the second-highest award for valor—were awarded to the men of 1st Platoon. The Silver Star—third-highest—went to 14. There were also 13 Purple Hearts.
A year later in the White House, President Lyndon B. Johnson draped around the neck of Gunnery Sergeant Jimmie Earl Howard a ribbon of sky blue with a field of white stars that held the Medal of Honor. “Howard was largely responsible for preventing the loss of the entire platoon,” the citation said. The award would result in invitations for Howard and Geraghty 16 years later to a sumptuous Manhattan dinner. It was the annual convention of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
As an honored guest, Geraghty was on the dais at the Sheraton Center dining room. It was December 12, 1983, barely two months after his command was destroyed in Beirut. “I felt pretty uncomfortable there having just returned home from a tragedy and a failed mission,” Geraghty said. The Pentagon would soon absolve his superiors and blame Geraghty for the tragedy. An awkward moment occurred before the dinner. Geraghty bumped into Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
“Standing face to face we looked at each other,” Geraghty said. “I believe he recognized me. As I took a step forward to pay my respects, his face became very flushed. He suddenly looked down at some cards he was carrying and raced off in another direction.”
Ruffles and flourishes rang through the hall, followed by an endless rendition of “Hail to the Chief.” The president of the United States entered, tall and broad-shouldered in a blue suit and a red tie. Ronald Reagan was in his element. “His presence as he entered the room was impressive and pervading,” Geraghty said.
Throughout his career, and particularly as president, Reagan attached himself to military heroics and elevated them with soaring speeches. In his speech that night, he said nothing of the 241 dead Marines in Beirut. The Grenada victory was another matter.
“Our forces had what they needed to get the job done,” he said. “And now the world knows that when it comes to our national security, the United States will do whatever it takes to protect the safety and freedom of the American people. May I just say that, as of this morning, 950 of the 82nd Airborne are enplaned on their way back to this country—the last of the combat troops in Grenada.”
Then he shared his favorite World War II Medal of Honor account with the audience.
“A B-17 [was] coming back across the Channel from a raid over Europe, badly shot up by antiaircraft. The ball turret that hung underneath the belly of the plane had taken a hit,” Reagan said. “The young ball-turret gunner was wounded, and they couldn’t get him out of the turret there while flying.
“But over the channel, the plane began to lose altitude, and the commander had to order bail out. And as the men started to leave the plane, the last one to leave—the boy, understandably, knowing he was left behind to go down with the plane, cried out in terror—the last man to leave the plane saw the commander sit down on the floor. He took the boy’s hand and said, ‘Never mind, son, we’ll ride it down together.’ Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously awarded.”
The story was untrue. A colleague of mine went through 436 Medal of Honor citations for the period and found nothing to match the account that Reagan had told many times. Something like that story was in a Reader’s Digest article that Reagan might have read. My colleague traced it back to a New York Herald Tribune reporter who said he heard it at a bomber base during the war. Nothing solid, of course.
Like everyone else, the audience that night liked a good story that left a lump in the throat. Applause echoed through the hall. Afterward, Reagan stood in a brief informal receiving line for the distinguished guests, who included Marine Colonel Timothy Geraghty. He came face to face with Silver Screen Six.
“The president told me how proud our nation was of the courage, discipline, and sacrifice of the Marines in Beirut,” Geraghty said. “He was very gracious.” The words bonded Geraghty to Reagan for the rest of his life. Geraghty would have only uncritical words for his commander in chief.
“On behalf of the Marine Corps, I thanked him for his kind words and simply said, ‘Semper Fi, Mr. President.’”