16 February 1968
The automaton took the new Charlie Three Actual forward with the small group of Charlie Three Marines, and shortly thereafter we arrived at a house facing phase line green in the middle of the block. Here I was, once again, facing the treacherous and deadly barrier, this street called Mai Thuc Loan by the Vietnamese and phase line green by the Marines. It was a little past noon on 16 February 1968, the fourth day of fighting for Hue’s Citadel fortress.
Although Charlie Two and Charlie Three had not yet been ordered to assault across phase line green, the attrition of four days of fighting the NVA at point-blank range in their dug-in positions across the street had taken its toll. So, despite having been reinforced by the remnants of Charlie One two days before, Charlie Three was seriously below the manpower strength called for by the Table of Organization of the U.S. Marine Corps for an infantry platoon.
Normally, a Marine rifle platoon was comprised of three squads of fourteen men each. Squad strength was further broken down into three four-man fire teams, with an additional Marine assigned to carry and shoot the M-79 grenade launcher, and a squad leader. Added to these forty-two men were the platoon guide, the platoon sergeant, the platoon commander, and two radio operators, giving a total of forty-seven men, not including our two Navy corpsmen. Finally, added to these were three four-man machine gun teams, rounding out a full force of nearly sixty Marines to a platoon. On the morning that we first attacked across phase line green, Charlie One had been at its highest manpower level since I had assumed command in November 1967, with a total of fifty-one men. The combined strength of the three platoons of Charlie Company and the additional men from the mortar crews and the company CP group stood at nearly two hundred Marines when we entered the Citadel. Now, four days later, Charlie Company was comprised of two forty-man platoons and the CP group; we were at about 50 percent of our normal strength. Still, we were better off than Alpha and Delta Companies, who had taken even more casualties in their battles to take control of the first block across phase line green and the infamous tower.
Early on the morning of 16 February, Bravo Company was taken out of reserve status and committed to the battle. They were ordered to move across phase line green to assist Alpha Company in securing Alpha’s control of the block, and by the end of that day, the combined force of two companies of Marines had forced the NVA to escape south across phase line orange, or Nguyen Bieu, the next parallel street south of phase line green. Once that block had been completely secured, one of the Delta Company platoons not currently engaged in the attack on the tower was able to cross the street and flank the NVA defenders. By nightfall on the sixteenth, Delta Company had established at least a tenuous foothold across phase line green as well. However, in Delta’s case, since they were still battling fiercely with a determined, stubborn enemy force in the tower, they could not rest easy. The NVA in the tower had the advantage of the high ground, and so they could easily keep Delta’s heads down. This made it very difficult for Delta Company’s Marines to maneuver any further until the tower was under the firm control of 1/5 Marines.
Late on the afternoon of the sixteenth, Scott Nelson found me and told me that Alpha and Bravo Company Marines would lay down flanking fires so that Charlie Company could assault across phase line green. The dreaded but expected order affected me very little; the automaton continued to control my actions. I don’t think that at that moment I expected to live much longer, anyway, so now was as good a time as ever.
With Charlie Two on our right flank and Alpha and Bravo Company Marines providing flanking fire on our left front, with the recent prep artillery fires having softened the enemy up, and with the Delta Company Marines keeping the NVA busy on the tower, we had a much more reasonable chance of success at crossing phase line green. We prepared to carry out the assault.
When I had assumed command of Charlie Three, I had acquired a new radio operator, who was introduced to me simply as Chief. Like many Native Americans who served in the Marine Corps, this sturdy young man bore his inevitable nickname stoically, never complaining about the unintended ethnic slur. In fact, true to his heritage (or at least to my then limited understanding of his heritage), he was a man of few words, unless he was transmitting and receiving messages via his Prick-25. He simply acknowledged his new leader by calling Charlie Six to let them know that I had arrived and had assumed command, and awaited my communications pleasure. I would grow attached to Chief over the next few weeks, much as I had grown attached to Benny Benware before him. A combat commander relied heavily on communications, and a platoon radio operator was a very critical resource for a platoon commander. Radio operators, because of the necessary antennae (or, as they were often referred to in the dark humor of combat Marines, “aiming stakes”) that made them easy to be located, identified, and fired upon by the enemy, suffered a casualty rate similar to that of point men and platoon commanders. Radio operators were an unusual breed of fighting men, and those who experienced combat in the Vietnam War, with their extra twenty-five-pound burden and constant exposure to enemy gunfire, were, in my mind, extraordinary human beings. Chief fit into this category extremely well, and I quickly grew to rely upon him.
I had Chief call up the squad leaders for a briefing before the assault, and we huddled together for a few minutes in the dreary afternoon drizzle in the back yard of the house that had served as the Charlie Three CP. I told the squad leaders that we would be assaulting across phase line green soon and asked for their input. We decided that the two squads covering the left two-thirds of our blockwide area, Charlie Three Alpha and Charlie Three Bravo, would join the Alpha and Bravo Company Marines in laying down a base of supporting fires. The third squad, Charlie Three Charlie, would assault across the street. The assault team would enter the second house in from the intersection on our right frontage, clear it, and then move back left, or east, toward the tower, clearing each house as they moved. If they experienced resistance, we’d move another squad across the street, and they could leapfrog each other, until eventually we’d clear all the houses that faced phase line green on its south side. This way, the initial assault team would be as far as possible away from the tower, but also not be exposed to NVA positions across from Charlie Two. The squad leaders returned to their men and conducted their preparations for the assault, and I let Scott Nelson know, via Chief’s Prick-25, that we were ready to assault across phase line green.
After giving the squad leaders enough time to get their men ready, I pulled another red star cluster signal rocket out of my pack and shot it off, signaling the assault. The supporting Marines from Alpha and Bravo Companies, Charlie Two, Charlie Three Alpha, and Charlie Three Bravo opened up with a terrific rate of small-arms and M-79 fire. The Charlie Company and 1/5 battalion forward observers called in an increasing amount of artillery and mortar fire on NVA positions further south of phase line orange, and the third squad, Charlie Three Charlie, emerged from their positions of safety and ran across the street, fully expecting death at any moment.
Chief and I had taken up a position behind the middle squad, Charlie Three Bravo, and we monitored the assaulting squad’s progress via the platoon radio net. They all made it across the street quickly, and no one was hit crossing the street.
After a few suspenseful minutes, the assaulting squad leader called us over the platoon radio net.
“Charlie Three, this is Charlie Three Charlie, over.”
“Three Charlie, this is Three Actual. What’s your situation, over?”
“Three Actual, this is Three Charlie. Looks like they’ve retreated. We have total control of both of the houses on the right-hand corner and have taken no enemy fire. We’re going to take the next house toward you and check in again. Out.”
A few moments later, we heard the shouts of Marines entering another house, a few bursts of M-16 fire, but no return AK-47 or .30-caliber firing. We all took our first deep breaths since the assaulting squad began their attack.
Within the next hour, both platoons of Charlie Two and Charlie Three crossed phase line green and we finally had control of all the north-facing structures that had, until very recently, provided the NVA with defensive positions along phase line green. We then moved cautiously, in covering fire-team movements, out the back doors of these houses, through their yards, and into the yards of the next houses. We entered and occupied the houses facing phase line orange with no enemy resistance or friendly casualties. It appeared as though once Alpha and Bravo Companies had completely consolidated their block, their area of responsibility, the NVA realized that their right flank was exposed, and they had deserted the territory between phase line green and phase line orange. With the significant exception of the tower, which was still being fiercely contested, 1/5 had full control of four city blocks. We were one-seventh of the way home!
The mathematics of 1/5’s attrition rate in this battle were still not very good, as we had lost nearly 50 percent of our fighting strength to take one-seventh of our assigned territory. I think that every 1/5 Marine still fighting on that morning inside the Citadel carried those mathematics around in the pit of his stomach. But at least we had finally moved toward our objective, the south wall of the Citadel, still six blocks away. Since having finally been given the heavy air and artillery support, and since the M-48 tanks had been allowed to start using their heavy weapons, Marine Corps tactics and firepower superiority began to take effect and the enemy was forced to withdraw. Maybe we could win this battle after all. . . .
Reality shattered the late afternoon, as the NVA suddenly opened up with an intense volume of fire from just across phase line orange, and both Charlie Two and Charlie Three took casualties. Charlie Company Marines returned fire, keeping their heads down as much as possible, and the dead and wounded were carried back to the Charlie Company CP for evacuation. For just a few moments, the automaton allowed a sinking feeling to settle in, and I was allowed to feel the despair of the tactical situation. We were going to have to cross another street, facing a well-armed, entrenched, and determined enemy of experienced fighters. At least we would get heavy support. That was the only bright side to the equation, although it provided little comfort.
As darkness settled in and ended the fourth day of fighting, the automaton took back full control of me, and I stopped worrying. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do about the situation, anyway.
Early the next morning, 17 February, I spent a few minutes checking out the houses that had, for four days, served our enemy well by providing them with ready-built fortified defensive positions facing phase line green. I finally began to understand why we had experienced such difficulty getting across the street.
Most of these houses were one-story homes, but a couple were two-story affairs, providing excellent and advantageous firing positions for the waiting NVA. From these positions, the NVA could shoot right down on us, point-blank, as we tried to run across the street. This was obvious, and we understood the situation clearly, so we had directed our return fire at the windows and doorways of the houses across the street, which were the likely enemy firing positions. What we had not realized was that the NVA were also shooting at us from well-concealed, dug-in positions between the houses, at street level.
The enemy’s Tet Offensive had kicked off on the night of 31 January, and the NVA had taken almost total control of the Citadel overnight. The 1/5 battalion had not entered the Citadel until 12 February. This gave the NVA two weeks to prepare, and they had taken full advantage of this time.
The houses that faced phase line green had been built very close to each other, presenting an almost solid frontage of structures for the entire length of four city blocks. They resembled today’s condominium complex structures, with individual units nearly touching each other. Although the homes along phase line green were actually all individual structures, the gaps between them were small, only a few feet at most. However, ancient shrubbery, which grew to the height of the eaves in many places, gave the illusion of a solid frontage. The NVA had made good use of this excellent cover and concealment.
During the two weeks that they had had to prepare, the NVA had cleverly chosen Mai Thuc Loan as their primary defensive position for several reasons. First, it was obvious to them that our only choice for a relatively easy entry point into the Citadel would be through the only gate that the NVA didn’t control, through the First ARVN Division compound. Thus, they could plan, with a high amount of assurance, that we would have to attack from there, from the north. Second, the full length of Mai Thuc Loan was completely dominated by the tower (the Dong Ba Porch, as the Vietnamese called it) that guarded the eastern gate into the Citadel, and which the NVA totally controlled. It was probably a total coincidence that 1/5 planners designated Mai Thuc Loan as our initial phase line, our initial line of departure for the attack, but it worked out extremely well for the defending NVA. The near-solid frontage of homes that lined the south side of Mai Thuc Loan provided excellent defensive positions for the NVA defenders. The layout of the street also provided the opportunity to prepare well-camouflaged, almost invisible positions between the houses at the base of the thick, ancient foliage growing between the houses. For four days, we had been directing our fires at the windows and doors, and although we had most certainly been taking enemy fire from those positions, we had also been taking deadly enemy fire from ground level, from the fighting holes dug in under the bushes between many houses.
The NVA had cleverly and energetically prepared these positions well in advance of our arrival, and from the looks of those that I inspected, the NVA gunners who had occupied them had scored very well with nearly total impunity. There were no evident blood trails in the hidden foxholes that I inspected that morning, as there were in many houses we had passed through.
I called Scott Nelson on the company radio net, and he came across phase line green a few minutes later and took a look at what we had found. When he realized the implications of what we had discovered, he looked at me with a pasty, pale complexion, tugged once again at his nearly invisible mustache, and said, “Well, no shit. Pass the word about this around, Charlie Three. I gotta get back to battalion and let them know. Start directing your fires to include likely dug-in positions between the houses as well as the obvious enemy positions in the houses.” With that and a hasty, somewhat sheepish grin, Nelson took off back toward the 1/5 command post, which was still several blocks behind us.
Charlie Company spent the rest of that day making sure that the blocks we had finally gained were completely secure. Every house was checked and rechecked, including the dusty, dirty attics, because we were fearful that an attempt might be made to hide a few NVA snipers, who could cause terrible chaos and confusion if they got behind our lines, especially at night.
We knew from our brief skirmishes the previous evening that the NVA were waiting for us on the other side of phase line orange, Nguyen Bieu, and that we would eventually have to assault across the open exposure of yet another phase line. But for the time being we concentrated on making sure that we had systematically checked every possible hiding place. The Marines of 1/5 understood that Delta Company would have to take and hold the Dong Ba Porch tower before it became safe to cross phase line orange. We also understood that until we had the high ground, especially in light of our dwindling strength, we could not be expected to pull off another frontal assault.
Shortly after noon, we got some good news. Second Lieutenant Bruce Morton’s Ontos platoon had finally made it across the river, and they had joined up with 1/5. Although his unit was seriously under strength, Bruce still had two Ontos vehicles (fast, maneuverable, and powerful armored beasts) to throw into the fight, and we welcomed them.
Bruce Morton, a native of the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts, had been my next-door neighbor in Quantico, Virginia, while we were going through Basic Infantry Officer’s School after OCS. Although he was one class ahead of me in Basic School, Bruce and I became good friends. We were both married, which was the exception rather than the rule with our peers during Basic School, and so it was natural that our wives and dogs became very friendly during the long, lonely (for them) summer weeks of 1967.
I lost touch with Bruce when he finished Basic School and went “OCS” (Over the Choppy Seas), but I was happy to run into him again at the Phu Loc 6 firebase. Bruce and his Marines, the men who manned the unusual Ontos armored vehicles, had already achieved hero status with the 1/5 Marines during the weeks that preceded the Tet Offensive, because the mobility and awesome firepower of their Ontos had saved many Marine lives.
The Ontos platoon had been visiting a Highway One bridge defensive position one night in early January when it had been hit hard by an enemy attack. The bridge’s defenders were an understrength squad of Marines and some South Vietnamese Popular Forces soldiers (the PFs were South Vietnam’s civilian militia and were considered by their American allies as unquestionably the worst and most unreliable South Vietnamese fighting men with whom we ever had to team up). The squad would have certainly been overrun and wiped out if it had not been for the presence of Bruce Morton’s Ontos platoon. The enemy attack, unexpected and very fierce, was stopped cold in the defensive perimeter’s concertina wire when both Ontos vehicles had loaded up beehive rounds in several of their 106-mm recoilless rifles. They had set the beehive rounds, containing something like ten thousand tiny flechettes each, to detonate as soon as they left the muzzle of the awesome “reckless rifles.” The shotgun effect of the beehive rounds had wiped out the enemy attack.
More recently, when Phu Loc 6 was under heavy attack and the 1/5 battalion commander, Lt. Col. R. P. Whalen, unsuccessfully tried to lead a force of CP group Marines to flank the attackers and had been seriously wounded and pinned down in the attempt, the Ontos platoon had again distinguished themselves. On this occasion, 2nd Lt. Bruce Morton formed another group of Marines from the battalion CP group and his Ontos Marines to try to rescue the pinned-down Marines. Morton successfully maneuvered his volunteer command into a position to suppress the enemy fire on the beleaguered Marines, managed to medevac the dead and wounded without taking any more serious casualties, and brought the rest safely back inside the firebase compound.
Bruce Morton had his act together as a combat leader, so it was really good to see him. It was also good to see that at least some reinforcements could get inside the Citadel, although we still had received no new infantry troops to offset the losses we had taken.
Bruce had come up across phase line green to our positions facing phase line orange to observe the situation and to see where he could best direct the fires of the Ontos and the M-48 tanks, which had been loosely combined as a supporting armored force for the infantry Marines. After I explained what we had been dealing with and what we knew about the enemy’s positions, he came with me to the houses facing phase line orange to get a better look.
After due consideration, Bruce gave me a smile and said, “Well, since we can team up with the tanks, maybe we can help you guys out. Have there been any RPG attacks recently?”
Understanding just how vulnerable the Ontos were to an RPG rocket attack, I couldn’t be too comforting. “Yeah, Bruce. Yesterday, my predecessor was blown away by two RPG-7s that came right through the front window of that house over there. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, the tanks haven’t been much help. They’re just too damned slow, and they have to drive right down the street and get into the intersection before they can shoot their nineties. One of them took an RPG right in the turret on the morning of the first day, and the tank commander’s head was blown off; that RPG put a hole right through the turret.”
“Yeah, I saw it. That M-48’s still in service, but I was wondering what the hell they’ve been waiting for. Maybe we can figure out a way to cover each other, so we can do you guys some good. Well, thanks for the tour. See ya.”
With that, Bruce headed back across phase line green and rejoined his Ontos Marines back at the 1/5 command post.
This was very encouraging news, because the Ontos carried an awesome amount of firepower. These small, speedy armored vehicles had six 106-mm recoilless rifles mounted on them, three to a side. In addition, they had a 7.62-mm machine gun that could be fired by the Ontos commander. Furthermore, in comparison with the lumbering M-48 tank, they were very fast and could drive over clear terrain faster than forty-five miles per hour.
Their disadvantages were several. First, although they were classified as an armored vehicle, their armor wasn’t very thick and could be pierced easily by an armor-piercing small-arms round. One well-aimed RPG rocket could easily knock out an Ontos, and if the rocket hit anywhere on the main body of the Ontos, the Ontos team members, buttoned up inside, were doomed to an instant and violent death. An Ontos carried nearly seventy 106-mm high-explosive rounds, and the gasoline and ammo, if ignited, would turn the Ontos into an instant death trap. The second disadvantage of the Ontos was that visibility from inside the vehicle was severely limited, and at forty-five miles per hour, the Ontos commander was seeing a vibrating blur. Third, their 106-mm recoilless rifles could not be reloaded from inside the vehicle; rather, the loader had to open the rear doors, get out, and individually load each of the weapons from their breeches. Fourth, the “back-blast” from the open breeches of the recoilless rifles was lethal to within about thirty meters behind them, so friendly troops had to be very careful around them. Finally, the six 106-mm “reckless rifles” were mounted in a fixed position on the top of the vehicle, three on each side, in an inverted, inward-pointing “L” configuration, and their trajectory could not be adjusted very much. An Ontos could mostly hit only what it was squarely facing.
Those of us who had been fighting inside the Citadel for the past few days didn’t give a damn about the disadvantages; the firepower of six 106-mm recoilless rifles was more than enough to blow down any house, especially at point-blank range. If the Ontos could use their speed and machine gun fire to get into position, quickly fire all six rounds (all six recoilless rifles could be shot either simultaneously or individually), and then get the hell back to safety, we thought they would be very effective.
It turned out that when teamed up with an M-48 tank, Bruce Morton’s Ontos made a huge difference thereafter in the house-to-house fighting inside the Citadel of Hue. About an hour after Bruce left our positions, the first nasty one-two punch was directed toward the NVA across phase line orange, with devastating effect. We heard the obvious rumble of an approaching M-48 tank, its diesel engine screaming in an effort to move at top speed, about thirty miles per hour, toward the intersection of phase line orange and Dinh Bo Linh, the street running perpendicular to the phase lines and dividing the two platoons of Charlie Company. The M-48’s .50-caliber machine gun and 7.62-mm machine guns were blazing in an effort to keep any heroic NVA RPG gunners from getting into an open position to shoot at the tank as it lumbered forward to get into position. In quick succession, the tank blew off two high-explosive 90-mm cannon rounds into the two houses on the other side of phase line orange and which framed the south side of the intersection. The vehicle then immediately threw its transmission into reverse and started its retreat to a safe location, machine guns still blazing. As the M-48 lumbered backward, we heard the distinctive noise of the smaller Ontos engine screaming at top speed, as the Ontos raced down Dinh Bo Linh, passed the tank, slammed on its brakes just short of the intersection, pivoted itself sharply until it was facing the house on the southeast corner of the intersection, and blew off all six 106-mm rounds simultaneously. As quickly as was humanly possible, the Ontos shifted into reverse and, machine gun blazing, retreated to safer ground to reload.
The NVA were caught totally unprepared, and although there was a small amount of answering enemy small-arms fire, the tank and Ontos crews were unharmed. The house that had been devastated by the Ontos caught fire, and the wooden rubble eventually burned to the ground.
This deadly tactic proved to be a major asset for the Marines throughout the rest of the battle inside the Citadel, and it significantly added to our momentum. Although the NVA defenders eventually adjusted to this tactic and attempted to blow away the tanks and Ontos with their RPG-7s, they were often caught out of position. Because of the speed of the Ontos and the combined firepower of the two armored beasts, the Marines nearly always came out ahead. To a man, the Marines of Charlie Company were very happy to have the Ontos join us inside the Citadel.
The Ontos/tank teams periodically and randomly made runs to the different intersections along phase line orange for the rest of that day. They pounded the enemy positions, accompanied by many choruses of “Get some!” sung by the infantry Marines holed up in the houses facing phase line orange. This was much more like it. This was beginning to resemble the tactics used during recent Marine Corps history: blast, burn, and bomb, and when the enemy positions were softened up, the infantry could then assault with a reasonable expectation of success. Charlie Company maintained our positions along the two-block frontage facing phase line orange that night, and we all slept just a little bit better.
The next morning, 18 February, our belated but welcome heavy support continued to chip away at the stubborn NVA across phase line orange, and Delta Company continued to hammer at the fanatical NVA who were still defending the tower. Tank/Ontos teams made several high-explosive runs at the tower, which had alternately been overrun by Delta and then counterattacked and overrun by NVA reinforcements, in the continuing deadly chess match. Until Delta could finally take and hold the tower, 1/5 was stuck, so we stayed put and kept ourselves busy by continuing to call in mortar and artillery strikes on enemy positions and continuing the harassing small-arms fire on the enemy positions we had pinpointed on the other side of the street.
Finally, early on the afternoon of the eighteenth, we received the good news that Delta Company had finally taken control of the tower, and the inevitable NVA counterattack had been repulsed. We had the high ground!
Chief handed me the handset of the Prick-25, and I listened to Scott Nelson update us on Delta’s success. I acknowledged his request for Charlie Two Actual (Rich Lowder) and me to make our way back to the Charlie Company CP area for another briefing.
Chief and I headed back toward phase line green, and as I angled toward Ngi Hieu (the street on our east, or left flank, which intersected the phase lines), my field of vision of the street opened up and uncannily took the form of a large movie house screen between the houses. On that huge, panoramic movie screen, I saw something, live and in living color, that has and will remain stuck in my memory cells, like unwanted superglue, forever.
A dead NVA soldier lay face down in the street. I had noticed this body a couple of times before, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to it. This was one of the few NVA bodies that had not been recovered by the usually body-conscious NVA. As our front lines had advanced and the NVA had been forced to retreat, the body was simply too exposed to Marine gunfire to risk retrieval. The dead NVA body had been there for a couple of days, face down, legs and arms splayed out, resembling a grotesque cartoon character that had fallen from the sky and stuck to the street.
Precisely when the movie screen had presented itself to my vision, an M-48 tank from a tank/Ontos team, having just delivered another deadly one-two punch against the NVA on our left front, lumbered in reverse gear back toward our rear area and safety. The tank commander opened his lid, raised himself out of its protective turret, and turned to face the rear of the tank, in the direction they were headed. Although there was considerable room on the street for the tank, and although the dead NVA was just barely on the street surface, the tank commander put his hand over his mouth, a gesture that I immediately recognized as his voicing a command over his internal tank radio net. The tank driver immediately obeyed his tank commander; he swerved violently and ran over the dead NVA body.
As much as the human being inside of me wanted to, I couldn’t look away. The scene wrenched into perverse slow motion, and my eyes recorded the frames, in graphic Technicolor detail. The tank’s right tread ran over the dead NVA soldier’s body at about thirty miles per hour, and the dead NVA’s arms and legs involuntarily thrust upward, toward the heavens, as though beseeching the gods against this utter humiliation. The spastic upward thrust of arms and legs looked, for all the world, as though the dead NVA soldier was embracing the tank tread, but since the dead NVA soldier’s body was lying face down, the embrace was impossible. After only a few frames of my mind’s camera had clicked by, the tank passed completely over the dead NVA body and continued on its hurried way, and the dead NVA body flattened itself on the street once again. A few seconds later, the Ontos, trailing the tank to the rear area for reloading, followed precisely in the wake of the tank and also ran over the dead NVA body, although not quite as squarely. In the diesel-fumed wake of the tank and Ontos, the dead NVA body did not complain; it just lay there, even flatter than it had been a few moments before.
The automaton, who was then completely in control of my actions, kept my feet moving forward, one foot at a time, step by step. I kept going, and eventually the wide-screen view of the street was obstructed by another house, and my vision ratcheted out of slow motion and regained the normality of life. But the entire scene was burned irrevocably into the permanent celluloid of my memory cells, and there it remains to this day.
The separation of my two personalities, the automaton and the human being, became very pronounced again, and as I continued to walk toward the Charlie Company CP, thanks to the continued work of the automaton, my mind raged with a futile debate about what I had just witnessed. The automaton argued that it was nothing, just a dead body, a dead gook body at that. That gook had probably shot at me before he had been killed; he had probably tried to kill me. Maybe he had even been the one who had killed Estes or who had blown Sergeant Odum’s face off. This is what happens in war. Don’t worry about it; just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you get to where you have to go. The human being inside me was horrified at the witnessing of the brutality of this deliberate act of violation, but I was at a loss to do anything but attempt to compartmentalize the scene into some dim corner of my mind that would be capable of forgetfulness.
The automaton fully in control, Chief and I proceeded to the Charlie Company CP. The house that Scott Nelson had declared to be the Charlie Company CP was the large, two-story house that I had holed up in on the third night. When Chief and I arrived, Nelson told Chief to take a break, that he would let him know when he was needed. Chief muttered a quiet, “Aye, aye, sir,” found a corner to sit in, and immediately broke open his pack to pull out a C rat or two.
Nelson, looking me over with his concerned but still grinning countenance, asked me how it was going and made some small talk for a few minutes. Rich Lowder hadn’t joined us yet, so he wanted to wait for Rich before he started his briefing. I knew, at least the human being part of my personality knew, that we would be hearing that another frontal assault, this time across phase line orange, was going to be ordered soon. The automaton did not allow me to show any emotion or concern.
Nelson said, “I have a surprise for you, Charlie Three. I want you to see this.” With that, Nelson led the way to a staircase and took me upstairs.
This particular house stood on the south side of phase line green and hadn’t suffered much damage. It was large, containing several bedrooms, two stories, and as I was soon to find out, a very roomy attic. Nelson guided me to the second floor and continued down a short hallway to another, shorter staircase that ended in a small door at the top of a half dozen stairs. This was the entrance to the attic, which covered at least half of the house. Grinning his sheepish grin, Nelson gestured for me to crawl up into the attic.
There were a couple of Marines in the attic, and it looked like they had been there for quite some time. Many C ration cans and other litter surrounded them. But I didn’t recognize these guys, and they didn’t look like everyday Marines. Finally, I noticed what set them apart. On close inspection I discovered that it was their weapons that were obviously different.
During this stage of the Vietnam War, all Marine infantrymen carried the distinctive M-16 rifles. Although we had all carried and qualified with the older, more reliable M-14, which was a wooden-stocked, heavy 7.62-mm semi-automatic weapon, someone in the Department of Defense had decreed that the new M-16, which looked like a Mattel toy, was more suited to the type of combat that we were engaged in. The M-16, which shot a smaller, but more deadly 5.56-mm round, was lighter, faster firing, and smaller. After a few bugs were ironed out, Marines quickly came to rely upon the much-lighter M-16, although a combat Marine in the Vietnam War knew absolutely that he must clean his weapon three or more times a day to be able to rely on its functionality. Unlike the M-16, you could drop an M-14 in the mud, plug the muzzle with debris, pick it up, and shoot off an entire magazine with no problems. Try that with an M-16 and you were much more likely to have a jam or, even worse, blow your own face up with an exploded round in the breech. But the M-16 weighed about half as much as the M-14, and once we learned the lessons of constant cleaning, the Marines of 1/5 had accepted the trade-offs and had adapted to the M-16.
The Marines in the attics had weapons that, on first glance, looked like M-14s. As I approached their positions about a dozen feet inside the small door, the gloomy light from several holes in the roof gave me enough illumination to see who these guys were. These men were Marine snipers.
Their weapons only resembled M-14s because they were about the same size and had the traditional gun-metal gray metallic parts and dark but highly polished wooden stocks. But there the similarities disappeared. On closer inspection, the weapons were bolt-action, with no magazines, and they both had sniper scopes mounted on them. Behind the two Marine snipers, their Marine Corps-green plastic carrying cases were carefully stowed out of their way. Both men were sitting on stacks of C ration cases, using them as stools, so that they could comfortably sit and point their weapons out a couple of holes broken out of the red clay roof tiles. From this position, just over a half block behind phase line orange, peering out of almost invisible holes in the roof, the snipers had very advantageous firing positions against the NVA across the street.
Scott Nelson grabbed the closest Marine sniper’s shoulder and asked him to let me take a look. The young Marine, with just a ghost of a smile on his face, pulled his sniper rifle out of its shooting port, stood up, and moved out of my way. As I started to move my face into position to look out of the hole, Scott Nelson grabbed me and quietly explained what he wanted me to do.
“Look through the sniper scope, Charlie Three. This is the surprise I was telling you about.” As the Marine sniper held out his weapon, I was somewhat confused by all this (I had not done badly on the rifle range, but I was by no means rated an “expert”). There were four possible results from an attempt to qualify on the rifle range. The highest-scoring shooters earned the coveted “expert” badge; those shooting decently but not quite as well were given a “sharpshooter” badge, which looked like a German cross of sorts; and those who barely qualified were awarded the dubious distinction of being “marksmen.” The marksman badge itself was so unremarkable, it was often referred to as a “toilet seat.” The only thing worse than having to wear a “toilet seat” was not having qualified at all. I had earned the “sharpshooter” badge at Camp Pendleton during boot camp, so I couldn’t imagine that Scott Nelson was reassigning me as a sniper. However, I accepted the weapon from the Marine sniper, sat down on the C rat crates, carefully pointed the muzzle of the weapon out of the hole, and got into a firing position so that I could look through the scope.
The other Marine sniper, sitting calmly on my left side began to quietly direct my vision, and I quickly discovered and focused in on Nelson’s surprise. The sniper said, “Look across the street, Lieutenant, across phase line orange, in the middle of the block, about halfway to the next phase line. You will see two large structures, three stories in height, with a courtyard between them. Look in the center of the courtyard.”
Following the sniper’s directions and adjusting the focus on the scope, I found the surprise. There were four dead NVA bodies, lying very closely together, sprawled in random heaps, their weapons dropped or flung to the ground during the moments of their instant death. One dead NVA body lay on top of another’s lower legs. All four of them had been dropped within a ten-foot diameter.
As my vision became rooted to this scene, the second sniper continued his dialog, as though he was narrating a documentary film; there was no emotion in his voice, no indication of horror, or glory, or anything. He was merely reporting the facts.
He stayed in his firing position as he said, “We came up from battalion early this morning, after having caught an Air America chopper in from Phu Bai. One/five sent us up here to Charlie Company, and Lieutenant Nelson thought that we could do some good up here in the attic. We popped the first gook at about 0930, and the second one a few minutes later. They were just ditty-bopping back and forth between those two houses. I guess they thought that they had plenty of cover, because they’re about fifty meters behind phase line orange, and several houses protect them from the guys on the street. The range can’t be more than a hundred meters. Easy shot.”
The second sniper continued the dialog, “The second dude came out a few minutes later, only this guy was moving fast. He tried to get his buddy, and we blew him away with one shot. He’s the one who’s draped over his buddy’s feet; the guy he’s laying on was the first one.”
My mind was trying to take this all in, but it was difficult. Up until this moment, the NVA had represented a sort of mythical enemy, like their Viet Cong brethren. They had moved fast, hit hard, and eluded us seemingly at will. We had taken terrible casualties that first day on phase line green. We had taken many casualties as Marines exposed themselves to help their dead and badly wounded buddies lying exposed in the streets. I suppose we had killed or wounded a few NVA with our counter fires, and certainly many of them in the tower had been hit. But with the exception of the now-squashed NVA body in the street, I had yet to see any dead NVA bodies. And now here were four of them. From this view of the grisly scene, it looked like they were just as human as we were after all. Three of them apparently had been killed in futile attempts to retrieve the dead bodies of their comrades.
“We had to wait for over an hour for the third one, but one thing they teach you in sniper school is patience. The third one is the guy on the left. It took us two shots, because we had to wait for an hour, and he kinda surprised us ’cuz he came outta the building on the left. I hit him with the first shot, and he went down, but he started to crawl back toward cover, and Riley had to take him out completely. We had to wait almost two hours for the fourth guy, but I hit him and blew him away with one round. He was moving fast, but it was an easy shot. Piece of cake.”
Just as their story was starting to sink in, and just as I started to feel some strange kind of a moral victory about some measure of revenge for Morgan and Estes and the other Marines who had died very similarly, reality struck home once again, with explosive force.
The distinctive whooshing noise of an enemy RPG rocket terminated with a brutally loud explosion and shattered my thoughts. The NVA had finally begun to zero in on our Marine sniper position, and although they had not pinpointed them yet, they had come damned close. The RPG-7 had hit the wall of the house we were in no more than thirty feet to my right front. Just when the rocket detonated, my vision, still rooted to the four dead NVA bodies, ground insanely into slow motion. Although the automaton inside me struggled with something else, something that just wanted to get the hell out of here, to leave immediately and go elsewhere, anywhere, my body refused to move. A fiery kaleidoscope of red-hot shrapnel disturbed the sniper scope’s field of vision, looking very much like the Fourth of July sparklers I had loved to light and fling around in the dark as a child, leaving burnt-in, glowing trails on my vision.
Very quickly, the slow-motion camera was shut down by the automaton, and the survival instinct kicked in. I pulled the sniper rifle out of the hole in the roof and, with only a glance at the young sniper, communicated my “job well done” mentally and hastily withdrew from the attic. This attic was about to become very hot, and I had to get back to Scott Nelson for the inevitable preparations for another bloody assault. We were still only one-seventh of the way toward our objective, and phase line orange was waiting for us.