31 January to 10 February 1968
The ten days that followed the first terrifying night of 30 January 1968 were long, tense, frustrating, and very unproductive for the Charlie Company Marines. We were now effectively marooned in the Lang Co area of operations. The atmosphere of the area around the Lang Co Bridge turned sour and damp. The unusually bright and breezy late January weather dissipated, as though it was trying to stay in synch with the forces of conflict building up throughout Vietnam. As the pleasant weather gave way, so the first terrifying night of the enemy’s Tet Offensive gave way to daylight on the morning of 31 January 1968.
The firefight at Delta Company’s firebase was continuing, although its intensity had diminished somewhat shortly after dawn. The morning air along Highway One in the Hai Van Pass was still and silent. Ominous stacks of dark, boiling cumulus clouds began building up against the steep mountains that dominated the area.
Charlie Two returned from their night ambush and patrolling activities in the Hai Van Pass about midmorning. Rich Lowder reported in to Scott Nelson, telling him in detail of the extensive damage to the bridges of Highway One by the Viet Cong sappers during the long and explosive night. Although Charlie Two had spent a sleepless night up in the Hai Van Pass and had been surrounded by violent explosions during the darkest hours, they had seen none of the enemy, nor had they engaged in any firefights with the enemy. The Hai Van Pass chapter of the Viet Cong apparently wanted to blow the bridges without detection. The extent of their success had been spectacular.
Scott Nelson decided that there was no further reason to patrol the Hai Van Pass. Highway One had been effectively eliminated as a supply line for American and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) forces, so Nelson surmised that the VC would probably desert their vigilant watch over the area, at least for the time being. There would be no convoys agonizing up the Hai Van Pass for quite some time.
The antiaircraft missile battery at the top of the Hai Van Pass had weathered the storm reasonably well, although we heard a couple of days later that Viet Cong sappers had overrun the high-tech base during the long night and had succeeded in destroying several million dollars’ worth of missiles and supporting equipment. Casualties had been low, however, and the situation had not turned into a pitched battle. A few VC sappers had gotten inside the wire, had blown up some expensive hardware with satchel charges, and then had simply disappeared into the misty gloom that shrouded the mountaintop facility. No further attempts had been made to attack the missile site. Charlie Company was thus ordered to withdraw from the Hai Van Pass. There was nothing left up there worth defending.
By midmorning, a noticeable difference in the attitudes of the Marines of Charlie Company was detectable by anyone paying attention. The normal high volume of daily road traffic was completely shut off. Normally, long columns of green military trucks, interspersed regularly with straggling coveys of the highly colorful Vietnamese buses and punctuated by the occasional Vietnamese family stuffed into old, beat-up Renaults, Fiats, or Citroens left behind by the French, made their way over the tortuous Hai Van Pass. Today, there were none. All bridges north and south of the Lang Co Bridge were completely destroyed, so no one was going anywhere unless he could walk or fly.
Resupply, never a problem before, was now a major question mark: When would we see our next case of C rations? When would we be getting more ammunition and the other supplies required to stay alive in the bush? It appeared from our monitoring of the battalion and company radio networks on Benny’s PRC-25 that the troops from Delta Company north of us (and presumably everyone from Da Nang south to the Mekong Delta) were all fighting for their lives.
We didn’t know it yet, but during the previous night the combined forces of Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had attacked every major population center throughout South Vietnam. They had attacked American and ARVN forces with an intensity and determination never before seen from the enemy. Major combat bases were hit hard, and many of them had been overrun. Countless small outposts had been overwhelmed, many completely wiped out. Large segments of Saigon, Da Nang, Hue, Quang Tri, and other large cities throughout South Vietnam were now suddenly under the complete control of enemy forces. After many years of being the elusive prey, the VC and NVA now seemed to be saying that they would hunt for a while.
As the long and tense day of 31 January 1968 wore on, we learned more from our constant monitoring of the company and battalion radio frequencies. The Citadel in Hue was reported to be under control of the NVA. The firebase in Phu Bai had been hit hard; damage and casualties had been high, but friendly forces in Phu Bai had thrown back the enemy attacks. The 1/5 battalion firebase at Phu Loc 6 had been hit especially hard. Phu Loc 6 had come under ground attack. This had never happened before despite the enemy’s constant bombardment, but the Marine defenders had successfully repulsed the attacks. The Second Battalion of the Fifth Marines (2/5), our sister battalion who had been operating around Phu Bai about thirty kilometers to the north, was given the mission of moving into the south Hue area. The 2/5 battalion was the first American force committed to start the process of recapturing Hue, an important city because it was considered the cultural center of the Vietnamese people. The Marines of 2/5 were heading north.
The situation in South Vietnam had changed dramatically overnight, and the Marines of Charlie Company could sense the changes being explosively forged all around us. None of these changes would be welcome. Like the weather, the outlook of the men turned cloudy.
Late that afternoon, the Vietnamese first lieutenant in charge of ARVN forces in the Lang Co area of operations (AO) came to our company command post (CP) overlooking the southern approaches to the Lang Co Bridge. Scott Nelson and the Charlie Company CP group had relocated to the old, abandoned railroad station sitting about a hundred meters west of the southern tip of the Lang Co Bridge. Although the Vietnamese railroad system hadn’t run this far north in years, it had once been an extensive system. The railroad tracks that ran parallel to Highway One took an equally spectacular but lower route around the Hai Van Pass area. However, the tracks didn’t cross the Dam Lap An Bay entrance as Highway One did at the Lang Co Bridge. Instead, the railroad continued west for several kilometers and then turned north and worked its way around the perimeter of the bay, a detour of several kilometers, before it finally rejoined Highway One at a tunnel just below the Delta Company firebase. Since Lang Co had long been a thriving village and was a significant population center, a large railroad station had been constructed there many years before. Standing inside the old concrete hulk that was the remnant of the railroad station, one could still imagine the villagers as they walked across the bridge from the village, paid for their tickets to Da Nang or Phu Bai, and fought for seats on the train waiting to leave the station. The Lang Co train station had once been a center of commerce and travel, but had long since been abandoned when the railroad system died, probably during the early years of the French Indochinese War.
The ARVN lieutenant knew a little English, and he managed to get his message across to Scott Nelson and the hastily assembled officers responsible for Charlie Company (2nd Lt. Rich Lowder of Charlie Two; 2nd Lt. Travis Curd, our artillery forward observer; 2nd Lt. John R. Aamodt of Charlie Three; and me). The ARVN lieutenant had received some intelligence information that indicated that the VC and the NVA would combine and attack the bridge at Lang Co, probably that very night.
The ARVN lieutenant was normally a very calm person. Scott Nelson and I and a couple of the other platoon commanders had enjoyed a Tet celebration dinner in late January at his home in the village. The Vietnamese officer had seemed very nice and well in control of the situation in the Lang Co AO. Now he was obviously on edge and very tense. “Boo-coo VC an’ NVA, numbah fuckin’ ten, come to bridge to-ni’; boom-boom bridge, many VC come to-ni’. Numbah fuckin’ ten.”
The pidgin English was easy to translate, and his message was very easy to believe, given the shattering explosiveness of the previous night. Most of us had been wondering and worrying about the fact that the VC hadn’t touched the Lang Co Bridge last night. It was obvious to all of us that if the VC and NVA could take out the Lang Co Bridge, they could conceivably destroy our capabilities for ground transportation and resupply by truck convoy indefinitely. The railroad track around the bay might have been an alternate route, but our recent daytime patrols down the railroad tracks had confirmed that the tracks and bridges had been long since destroyed, and there were many signs of the elusive VC no more than a couple of clicks (kilometers) down the tracks. Those daytime patrols had been just too damned quiet. Trying to use the railroad track as an alternative route would be ten times worse than the Hai Van Pass, and that had been a nightmare.
So, we obviously had to protect the Lang Co Bridge. Charlie Company was left in the Lang Co AO to make sure of that. Every other unit of the Fifth Marines was fighting the enemy in pitched battles all over Northern I Corps. But in the nearly two weeks that we were marooned at Lang Co, nothing happened. The bridge was never attacked. However, every single afternoon during our nervous stay there, the ARVN lieutenant came to Lieutenant Nelson, told him that the NVA and VC would most definitely attack the bridge that night. We would respond with varying tactics to defend against the impending attack. The attack never came, however. All three platoons of Charlie Company were put on full alert during the night: two platoons out in the bush blocking the approaches to the bridge on both sides, and the third set up in defensive positions on the bridge itself. The Lang Co Bridge literally bristled with firepower each night during early February, but other than a brief skirmish with an inept VC mortar team that left us alert but intact, nothing ever happened.
I mean that literally: nothing happened, including resupply. Most Marines of Charlie Company had maybe one or two days’ supply of food and four days’ supply of ammo left when the shit had hit the fan during the early morning hours of 31 January. We had never before had to think about stocking up on a three- or six-day supply of C rats at Lang Co like we normally did while out on an extended patrol. We didn’t worry about it, because we could always get a nearly instant resupply of food from Phu Loc 6 or Phu Bai via the daily truck convoys. Now, there were no trucks, and the only available method of resupply was via helicopter. Charlie Company’s problem was that during the first weeks of February, all American helicopter resources were needed for moving tactical units into battle and for critical resupply for fighting forces, not to mention medevac usage. We would end up waiting seven days before we were finally resupplied with a pallet of C rations slung under a CH-46 helicopter.
Despite the lack of food (we probably wiped out a year’s supply of rice from the village, and we bought out the fresh vegetables in the market whenever we could), those first two weeks in February in the Lang Co AO were unforgettable, because for the first time in nearly three months, I started relaxing a little. The constant worrying about stepping on a mine or booby trap or getting hit by mortar shrapnel or a sniper round started to dissipate. The war really did stop for Charlie Company during those long days at Lang Co, although in the pit of every man’s stomach was a certainty that this heretofore pastoral, guerrilla war had gone through a metamorphosis. Everywhere else, the war had really intensified.
We knew with a perverse conviction only known by a combat infantryman that we were not long for this quiet, peaceful life. We could easily see the daily and nightly firefights at the Delta Company firebase, and we could hear the distant but constantly rumbling sounds of men being killed in the war all around us.
We spent a lot of time patrolling in the daylight and explored the small, abandoned villages that were little more than dots on my map, scattered sparingly along the approaches to the old railroad tracks a couple of clicks to our west. We never saw a human being on any of those patrols, but we could feel the presence of the enemy, who for some reason in the Lang Co area were hiding and watching. Perhaps they were simply biding their time.
During those ten confusing days, Charlie Company pulled in tighter in both formation and in personal contact. Ever since we had left Hoi An and landed at Phu Loc 6, Charlie Company had operated in platoon- and squad-sized missions. The one exception was our “reconnaissance in force” from Phu Loc 6 to the Lang Co AO in late January. We hadn’t spent much time with our new company commander, Scott Nelson, nor had the Charlie Company platoon commanders had much opportunity to spend time together. Now, because of the relatively small geographic area that we had to cover, namely the Lang Co Bridge and the Lang Co village area, it was decided that Charlie Company’s CP group and all three platoon CP groups would set up in the old railroad station for ease of command and communications. Daytime activities would be platoon and squad patrols, and nighttime ambushes would be focused on the approaches to the bridge and the railroad station.
There is an old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” which I had always wondered about. But after those ten days in the Lang Co railroad station with Scott Nelson, Rich Lowder, John Aamodt, Travis Curd (our recently assigned second lieutenant forward observer from 11th Marines), The Gunny (our gunnery sergeant), and our related radio operators and platoon sergeants, I quickly gained an appreciation of the adage. The closeness can be especially difficult when there is a severe shortage of food and when there’s not a lot to do. A group of Marines without food, and with no real prospects for resupply, can get to be a pretty ugly situation.
The war was still raging all around us. The Delta Company firebase continued to be the focus of daily mortar attacks and small-arms fire-fights, as did the Phu Loc 6 firebase (we had heard that the replacement 1/5 battalion commander had been wounded and evacuated already). The 2/5 battalion was already fighting in the southern sections of Hue. They were in heavy contact with NVA forces who occupied and controlled almost the entire city. Meanwhile, we were peaceful but hungry at the Lang Co Bridge.
We ventured into the village as often as possible; the first couple of days of our forced fasting was made bearable by the village kids’ selling us plates of rice. A small serving of rice, at which no respectable Marine would have given a second glance a week before, let alone pay money for, was now going for five dollars or more. A couple of times fights broke out between Marines bidding for rice.
Seven days went by. We kept our minds off food through constant daytime patrolling, nighttime ambushes to protect the bridge, the occasional bowl of rice from the village, and the inevitable back-alley bridge games. Back-alley bridge was very popular in Charlie Company, with some of the games continuing, nonstop, for weeks. The only thing that disrupted the games were patrols, ambushes, and death. If someone left a game permanently, there was usually some new guy who would step in and take the vacant position. Although no one discussed it, back-alley bridge games carried a disturbing parallel to the war we were fighting. There did not appear to be an end to it.
At the end of that agonizingly long week, some of us began to chuckle at the black humor of being sent to fight a jungie war, being afraid of being blown to bits by mines, booby traps, mortars, and rockets, and now it appeared that we would most likely die of starvation.
Finally, early on the afternoon of 7 February, an Army CH-47 Chinook twin-rotor helicopter made a brief stop to drop a pallet of C rations off at the railroad station by the Lang Co Bridge. Food had arrived, and we didn’t even care that it was the Army that delivered it.
It turned out that the lack of food was the most significant thing that happened to us during those ten days. Fortunately for us, The Gunny took control of the situation and prevented us from mutiny or some other such hunger-motivated acts of violence.
I am sure that at some point I was told The Gunny’s last name. But to my recollection The Gunny’s last name was never used within Charlie Company. When you needed to talk with him directly, he was simply “Gunny.” When you referred to him when talking with others, he was “The Gunny.” The capitalization of the word “The” was always heard; it was put there instinctively through respect, through the reverence of a nearly godlike figure.
During my four years in the Marine Corps, I had contact with many fine staff NCOs, the men who are truly the backbone of the Corps. All of them had a last name. I remember Staff Sergeant Mullan, Charlie One’s platoon sergeant who handed me the reins and the responsibilities of platoon commander of Charlie One; I can still see “Top” Stanford clearly, doing handstand pushups outside the Charlie Company headquarters tent in Phu Bai, looking for all the world like Popeye after he had consumed a can of spinach. I remember Gunny Portner, Alpha Company’s gunnery sergeant, as he stood in the middle of the dirt road called Highway One late one night and cussed out the battalion commander at the top of his lungs. These men remain, along with their names, etched in my memories forever. But The Gunny was simply The Gunny.
The Gunny was a man of very few words. Those words he did speak were so low in volume that any listener had to concentrate to hear what he was saying. All the Marines of Charlie Company, officers and enlisted alike, always paid very close attention when he spoke.
He was small and slight, standing no more than five foot six and weighing about 130 pounds soaking wet. It was very difficult to determine his age, and when we were not in his presence, this question was frequently debated. We knew that The Gunny had fought in some of the worst battles of World War II in the South Pacific and that he had seen action in the Korean War as well, so he had to be at least forty years old. He had the deeply sunken eyes and facial wrinkles of a much older man or of a man who had simply seen too much of the deaths and mutilations of young men.
The Gunny always had a Lucky Strike cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were so distant that it was nearly impossible to see their color. They were a light shade of dusty gray, but they could have been blue and covered by a film of cigarette smoke residue. But no one in Charlie Company seemed to care about any of this. The Gunny was The Gunny, and any man in Charlie Company would have followed him anywhere.
As the next couple of days crept by, the food situation was alleviated somewhat by the pallet of C rats. Nevertheless, The Gunny made sure everyone understood that he had no idea when we would get resupplied and that he would not issue any of the remaining few cases of rations until he, The Gunny, determined that we were either seriously starving to death or that we would be moving out, whichever came sooner. The Gunny posted armed guards on the remaining pile of C rations cases, and we understood why he did this: because you could never underestimate a hungry Marine. But I believe that this was totally unnecessary, because no one in his right mind would ever consciously cross The Gunny. Soon regretting that I had scarfed down half of my newly issued food in the first ten minutes, I determined that I would not eat another meal that day, and that of the remaining three C rations, I would eat one per day and hope we got resupplied soon.
2nd Lt. Rich Lowder, Charlie Two, had also taken his six meals into a lonely corner of the dusty, empty railroad station and had claimed this dank corner as the Charlie Two CP. In all the time I knew him in Vietnam, covering over a year, Rich Lowder never once complained about anything. Hailing from a rural area in North Carolina, he had adopted a very southern approach to life. He talked slowly and softly and seemed to be a very gentle man in spite of his large size. Rich was at least five foot ten and probably weighed over two hundred pounds. Although he had a somewhat chubby appearance, it was deceptive. He was solid muscle. I had found out from our many conversations from Hoi An to Lang Co that Lowder had played rugby. He was as strong as a bull, but he wasn’t an intimidating individual. Quite the contrary, Rich got results because you couldn’t help but like him. His men worshipped him, and they would go anywhere and do anything he asked of them. His gentle, melodic southern drawl made you smile in spite of yourself. He smiled a lot and seemed to find life in general to be his personal amusement park. Even after nearly three months in Vietnam, having patrolled the booby-trap-infested area around Hoi An, having experienced the terrors of the Phu Loc 6 firebase, and having been wounded in the neck by shrapnel from a Chinese Communist command-detonated claymore mine that detonated only fifty feet in front of him (fortunately, this particular ChiCom claymore was either old or defective and only a small portion of its explosive power had been unleashed), Rich still seemed unaffected by the war.
There was no way you couldn’t like Rich Lowder, and under normal circumstances, you would never suggest that Rich could do anything dishonest or underhanded. But, as I have mentioned, these were not normal times, and we were no longer normal people. Lack of food and our proximity to the war raging all around us—living in the eye of the hurricane, so to speak—had changed us into near-animals.
As the next three days progressed and my remaining three meals were reduced to two and then one, it seemed to me that Rich Lowder was eating all the time, but that despite that, his hoard of C rations never seemed to diminish. I can remember several times having muttering conversations with both John Aamodt and Travis Curd, wherein we discussed this phenomenon. It was as amazing to us as Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes must have been to those who had partaken of that feast.
Rich Lowder continued to eat, and he seemed to always have six meals remaining. Travis and I speculated that perhaps one of his men, or his radio operator, had given him some of theirs because Rich was so likable, but this made no sense at all, since those Marines had been just as starved as we had been.
In retrospect, I shudder to think of what might have occurred in that remote railroad station had we remained there past 10 February. In my worst nightmares I can see us lynching poor Rich Lowder, who was obviously innocent of anything except perhaps wise conservation of his meals. I can see Rich look down at us from the gallows with a gentle smile on his face, eating yet another spoonful of beans and weenies.
But the war saved us from committing this insane, paranoid act. On the evening of 9 February 1968 we got word that we would be relieved of our responsibilities in the Lang Co AO early the next morning by an Army unit. We would be transported by helicopter back to Phu Bai for resupply and then trucked northward to Hue.
Charlie Company was leaving the “eye of the hurricane” and venturing into the storm of death yet again. By all standards of human behavior, we should have been terrified about what was about to happen; we were headed north toward some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Yet I can honestly say that the only thing I was thinking about at that moment was that there was a mess hall at Phu Bai and that we would soon be getting a hot meal.