I remembered that story as I moved through the high elephant grass on a hillside near the special forces camp at Throng Duc. I was “walking flank”. My squad was taking our turn moving parallel to the main body of our battalion size operation, “Mameluke Thrust”. It was late May and the heat was already oppressive even if you were standing in the open. The elephant grass absorbed and retained the heat like an oven. There was no way that you could move silently through it and keep pace with the main body which was moving along a river bed below. Moving up and down the hills along the river bank added a good deal of distance through terrain much slower to transit than the level and open river bed unless the main body happened to be in a portion of the river that required them to wade.
The tall grass, overhead high, had sharp edges that could leave tiny but painful cuts on exposed skin. It was impossible to see more than a couple of feet because the grass was so thick. It was not a problem to know where the other squad members were because the sound of the rustling grass clearly gave away their positions. The enemy could be waiting for us to approach, listening to us move toward them, and we would not know until they opened fire at close range from concealed positions. I now realized that my grandfathers story was not an exaggeration. Things had not changed since 1916 and the army was not the only branch that practiced “reconnaissance by being shot”.
The concept of the practice was sound although primitive. The flank squad moved just ahead of the main body. It was likely, and almost certain, that at some point the enemy would lay in wait to ambush the main body. The enemy could choose the place of the ambush and take advantage of the terrain to provide them cover, concealment and other tactical advantages. A perfect ambush allows the ambusher to trap the ambushees in an area that they cannot escape and that makes it difficult for the ambushed force to counter attack. The specific place where the ambushed party would be most vulnerable and where they could expect the enemy to open fire, is known as the “kill zone”. It is a place that you do not want to be.
Marines are trained to charge directly into an ambush. The natural reaction would be to try to find cover and escape. In a properly planned and executed ambush it is likely that there is now adequate cover and no route of escape. The enemy chose to open fire in that place for a reason. You are in their kill zone. If you tried to escape it you would probably be shot in the back by an enemy soldier who felt no threat from you and could take his time to aim carefully as you feebly and unsuccessfully attempted to run away. It unnerves the enemy when you charge directly into them.
If you knock down a wasp nest and you know that the wasps will all fly away in terror you have no reason to fear being stung and can take your time. If you know that the wasps will swarm and attack, your attitude will be quite different. Even if you kill most of them with your can of wasp spray a few survivors will attack viciously and you are likely to be stung. When the enemy can catch Marines in a well planned and executed ambush, it is not like calmly shooting the ducks moving across the carnival tent pond. When an enemy opens fire on a Marine he knows that he has just started a confrontation that will cause an immediate and violent reaction. The enemy, in a superior tactical position, will probably prevail. However, the survivors of the initial attack will run directly toward him and will be the meanest human being the enemy has ever seen and will be intent on killing him. The Marines who survive the initial ambush fire and charge into the enemy force may also be killed, but they will inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible before they are hit by enemy fire. Every enemy soldier should wonder if he will be part of that damage. As an enemy soldier concealed in a fortified position with tactical advantage should feel that he is about to start an action that might, just might, result in his death. That should make his heart race and his trigger finger tremble. That makes him less accurate with his fire and more likely to run away from the counter assault. Shooting at a Marine has consequences akin to hitting a rattlesnake with a stick.
The main body of Marines, moving along a river bed with sometimes steep banks would be sitting ducks for an enemy force dug in and concealed on the hillsides overlooking the river. The way to counter that threat was to send a patrol along those hills in advance of the main body. A small force would do. Their only function was to detect the presence of an enemy force waiting to ambush the main body. The signal that the enemy had been detected would be the sound of the gunfire when the flank squad was fired upon as they approached the enemy position. The flank squad would prematurely trigger the ambush before the main body entered the kill zone. I felt like a doughboy.
The hills were not all elephant grass, there were open areas as well. In the open areas it was oppressively hot, but not as hot as the oven that was the elephant grass. We were limited to three canteens of water a day. We wore flack jackets that would protect us from shrapnel from exploding grenades and mortars, but not from gunfire. Our helmets provided the same sort of protection. The added weight of both made it difficult to move. The weight of an infantry kit, ammunition, grenades, 3 canteens, first aid kit, bayonet, and of course a pack…..did not make it easier to move up and down the hills.
Heat exhaustion was a constant and common problem. I had learned early in my time in the Marine Corps that you are physically capable of more than you think you are. I also learned to never quit and to push myself to my physical limits. Sometimes, in the bush, you reached those limits. We were in an open area moving forward in a line abreast tactical formation. I was baking in the sun. I became light headed and thought that I was near the end of my physical capability and was on the edge of collapsing but pushed on. Just then the Marine to my left collapsed from heat exhaustion.
We halted while we attended to our heat casualty. We had no corpsman with our squad. We did have a Lieutenant with us, unusual for a squad size patrol. The lieutenant gave some of his precious water to the Marine who had collapsed. I remember that the water in the Lieutenants canteen was Kool-Aid. It was common to add Kool-Aid to our water particularly if the water had been treated with halazone to kill harmful bacteria. The Kool-Aid masked the awful taste of the halazone. All of us were suffering from heat exhaustion. The Marine who collapsed was much worse off than the rest of us, he was just the first to succumb.
Being able to push your physical limits past normal limits had the advantage of allowing you to accomplish more. It had the disadvantage of allowing you to damage your body. There is a saying in the Marine Corps today that “pain is weakness leaving your body”. Pain and discomfort are communication from your body that you are endangering it to the point that it may become damaged. We were at that point. We were spent. Unable to think clearly, barely able to put one foot in front of the other moving through difficult terrain with the need to keep up the pace to stay ahead of the main body, needing to stay alert to people hiding in the bush waiting to kill us, we were unable to fulfill our mission requirements.
Another squad was brought up to relieve us. We rejoined the main body sweeping along the banks of the Song Vu Gia River. After flank duty walking along the river, sometimes wading through it and sometimes moving through the boulders of the dry creek bed, was almost pleasant.
There were rifle companies of Marines and the command unit. I was assigned to the command unit which was usually in the middle of the group so that the battalion commander, a Lt Colonel, could best exercise operational command. My squad was used to fill in where needed and assigned ad hoc missions such as listening posts, flank patrol and responding to situations where manpower was needed immediately to assist one of the rifle companies.
Moving along the river bed we came to a bend in the river overlooked by a steep hill. Sounds of a firefight came from the area of the hill. The flank squad had performed its function. I and the Marines around me took cover behind the boulders in the river bed as we began to receive fire from the hill. The flank squad had discovered an enemy force dug in on the hillside waiting for our main body to enter the kill zone of their ambush site. The kill zone would have been in the rocks of the river bed just under the hill where the enemy could have fired down onto the Marines from concealed and fortified positions. Directly below the entrenched enemy positions the Marines would have no adequate cover and would be trapped by the steep sides of the river bed. It would have been a text book ambush and would have been devastating. The enemy was denied the ability to inflict maximum damage to us because they were discovered and engaged by the flank squad before the main body reached the kill zone.
The flank squad had suffered casualties. Several men from my platoon were drafted to move up the hill and rescue the remainder of the flank squad and bring their casualties back to a safe area where they could be treated for wounds and protected until they could be medically evacuated.
The sound of a firefight did not come only from the flank squad. Gunfire could be heard from some point ahead of my position.
The enemy must have been disappointed that the main body of our force had avoided their kill zone. Even so, we took some casualties as the NVA fired down on us from the hillside as we took cover among the rocks. I was further back in the column and in good cover. The problem for the enemy, especially during the day, is that they need to strike hard and move away from the area fast. Our infantry can usually call in supporting fire from artillery and aircraft. However, our position was outside the range of our supporting artillery. Air support was hard to get probably because it was n relatively short supply. We called for air support.
In the meantime, we needed to get our wounded off the battlefield and to Danang where they could receive medical attention. Several members of the flank squad had been wounded. An Air Force helicopter flew into the hot landing zone but departed without touching down because of the heavy volume of fire directed toward it. The pilot called down and said that the landing zone was too hot for him to land. He asked how badly wounded our casualties were. When he was told that some of them were critically wounded and needed immediate transport to a hospital, he decided to come back and pick them up. I was surprised that an Air Force helicopter was performing our medevac, I had never seen that before. We always had Marine helicopters fly those missions. When the twin rotor Air Force helicopter returned the fire was just as intense, maybe even more so. He landed the helicopter on a flat spot on the rocky river bed and remained there while Marines ran across open ground to the aircraft carrying the wounded and hurriedly loaded them aboard. Holes could be seen appearing in the skin of the helicopter as it sat with its rotors turning. It took only a few seconds to load the casualties. The helicopter immediately lifted and flew away with the NVA shooting at it and the Marines shooting at the NVA to try to keep their heads down while the medevac flew out of range.
Not long after that our air support arrived. Two silver colored F4 Phantom jets with Air Force markings. They made several passes at the enemy position on the hill. The Air Force jets seemed very high to be providing air support to an infantry unit and none of the bombs or napalm canisters came close to the hilltop from which the fire directed toward us was coming. The Air Force jets then departed, leaving me in no better position than before they arrived. The enemy position on the hilltop was undisturbed. We were pinned down in the rocky river bed and unable to move forward without exposing ourselves to enemy fire.
I was furious at the Air Force pilots. How could they be so incompetent as to miss the top of the hill with every single bomb they dropped? The Air Force is said to have a rule that they cannot fly lower than 2500 feet because that is the altitude that groundfire can reach. Those are great rules of engagement. You stay outside the range of the enemy and use weapons that puts him in your range of fire. If the Air Force pilots did not have the balls to engage the enemy, they should turn over those F4’s to someone who did.
The Marine Corps operates with different rules. The minimum distance at which to engage the enemy is face to face. After the failure of the Air Force to take out the enemy force pinning us down the word was passed that we would have to handle this situation in the old fashioned Marine Corps way. We were instructed to stage our packs and get light, fix our bayonets and prepare to assault up the hill. The enemy was dug in, concealed, and had the advantage of favorable terrain. We would be running up a steep hill toward an enemy that had all the advantage. All of us knew that the casualty rate would be very high.
It might seem strange that the bayonet would be a viable weapon in the 20th century. In situations where you come face to face with an enemy in close quarters, using a rifle, or even a pistol, is dangerous. If you miss your enemy the bullet may hit the marine a few feet away but not in your site. You never have to reload a bayonet.
I removed my pack and carefully placed it alongside those of my fellow Marines, fixed my bayonet, and verbally abused the Air Force. We were gathering for the brief on how to conduct the assault on the hill. I don’t know how many of us were going to make the assault. There were about 20 of us in my platoon forming up. I wondered how many of us would make it to the top and survive the engagement there.
Then, something truly wonderful happened. We got a call on the radio for a Marine F4 Phantom. The pilot, who was alone, told us that he had heard us on the radio with the other aircraft and wanted to know if we needed any help. He was returning to the airbase at Danang and still had ordinance! Hell yes we need help. The bad guys are on that hilltop on the west side of the river at the bend.
The camouflage painted jet flew directly toward the top of the hill so low that it seemed that you could reach up and touch the aircraft. The NVA, who had not even bothered to fire at the Air Force jets, opened fire with AK47’s. As the jet neared the top of the hill a canister of napalm was released. The jet was so fast, and so low, that the canister could not complete on full end over end rotation before impacting directly on the NVA position. That ended the fire from that position. The Marine F4 made one pass, dropped one munition, and flew off having fully accomplished his mission. I sheathed my bayonet, picked up my pack, and swore that if ever found that Marine pilot I would buy him all the drinks he could put down.
We sent a patrol to the hilltop for battle damage assessment on the NVA position. The patrol found a scene reminiscent of Pompei. Burned bodies were found in the positions they must have been in when the napalm struck the hill. From one of the bodies was removed a diary which had not been destroyed by the fire that killed its owner. The dead owner was an NVA officer who had, according to the diary, been fighting in Vietnam for about twenty years. He fought the French before the Americans arrived. The life of an NVA soldier was extremely difficult.
During combat you are focused on what is happening around you. If you talk to several people who were involved in the same fight, they may have different stories to the point that you wonder if they were in the same fight. Everyone sees it from his own perspective, focusing on the threats nearest him. I was focused on the enemy position on the hill overlooking the river from which fire was directed down to the Marines in the river bed ahead of me. I was unaware, and remained unaware for 50 years, of the more intense combat taking place ahead of my position and out of my view.
At the head of our column the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company was in the point position. The point platoon had arrived at what must have been a beautiful scene, a waterfall on a jungle river. The platoon was ordered to go a couple of hundred meters beyond the water fall and set up a defensive perimeter and wait until the remainder of the group caught up with them.
The river dropped off here to rocks below and a mist rose from the bottom. But, the riverbed forward of the waterfall was dry. How could that be? As the marines rappelled down the rock face on the edge of the falling water they saw beneath them that the water was swallowed by an opening in the rock and disappeared underground.
After reaching the bottom of the falls the marines formed up and moved forward. Ahead of them a large enemy force was watching from concealed bunkers and spider holes. The smaller group of NVA soldiers on the hill had not been the main ambush force. The enemy on the hill were in a position to fire upon the marine formation from the side or behind while the marines were in a vulnerable position. The column of marines would be backed up in the steep sided rocky riverbed while the marines ahead were slowed by dealing the waterfall. The NVA were in fortified and concealed positions ahead and behind. The flank squad and the point platoon would contact and engage the enemy first.
A normal marine squad would have 14 members and would be comprised of 3 fire teams of 4 men each, a squad leader and assistant. A navy corpsman would be a member of the squad and most likely a 2 man machine gun team. During this time period marine infantry units were under strength as a result of the very high casualty rate. A full strength platoon would have around 43 members. In 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war and the year with the highest casualty rate, a rifle platoon was at about half that strength.
Within a few minutes of arriving at the bottom of the waterfall almost all of them would be dead or seriously wounded. As the point platoon moved across the open ground away from the waterfall they suddenly received a heavy volume of small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades. Many of them were killed or wounded in the initial fire. The marines who were able to do so attacked into the fire. The marines fired their rifles and threw grenades as they advanced toward the dug in enemy position. Their initial assault seemed to be having an effect and the volume of fire from the enemy position in front of them decreased.
This ambush had been well planned and was well executed. The initial fire came from enemy positions in front of the marines. As they advanced toward the enemy in front of them, another hidden enemy force on their right opened up. Soon only a few marines remained standing, most of the platoon struck down by the intense fire.
One of the marines still standing was a machine gunner whose assistant gunner had been killed. He was firing into the enemy positions and but needed help in keeping his machine gun fed with ammunition. Each marine, in addition to his personal gear, carried a belt of machine gun ammunition. The machine gunner yelled “I need an A gunner”. Sgt. Tom Prater who was in charge of the platoon ran to him and helped him load belts of ammo into the gun. Sgt. Prater began removing belts of ammo from dead and wounded marines to keep the machine gun fire going.
The marines could not call for help. Their radio did not work. The night before they had to sleep in the river, the banks were too steep to climb out. Their radio had been soaked in river water.
Just then Sgt. Prater heard what he describes as “the sound of angels”. Jet aircraft flew overhead obviously there to provide close air support to the Marines. Prater worried that the jets would see them and mistake them for the enemy. Marines on the ground communicate with aircraft with smoke signals. Green smoke generally marks a friendly position. White smoke is used to mark a target
Prater asked if anyone had a green smoke grenade. One of the marines said that he did. Prater told him to throw it. The marine threw the grenade, it was not a green smoke……it was a white phosphoras. They feared that they had just marked themselves as a target.
White phosphoras is burns intensely and is almost impossible to extinguish. Prater and Duke tried to smother it with mud, exposing themselves to enemy fire as they did so. Someone threw a green smoke to mark their position as friendly. A jet flew by low enough to be seen to wave at the marines, indicating that he understood they were friendlies.
Now the marines knew that they could soon expect hell to descend on the enemy forces. The problem was that the enemy was close, and there were wounded marines in the open field in front of the enemy position. Prater made the decision to try to try to retrieve the wounded marines and drag them away from the area where the jets would soon be attacking.
Prater and Duke ran into the field and each picked up a wounded marine, running back to an area of cover under intense small arms fire. Prater, while retrieving the wounded marine noticed that Cpl Lonnie Gay, one of the squad leaders was alive although terribly wounded. Gay was face down. A bullet had torn him open and his intestines were on the ground beside him. He was conscious. Gay said “Prater, get me next”. Sgt Prater promised that he would.
When Prater reached safety with the wounded marine he was exhausted. After a short rest he resolved to bring back Lonnie Gay although he did not know how he would accomplish that. Gay was a big man, weighing 235 lbs without his equipment. Without knowing exactly how he would pull it off, Prater dashed out into the open field running toward Cpl Gay. Duke ran beside him determined to bring another marine to safety. Once again, the marines were running into intense enemy fire.
Just a few feet from Gay Prater felt as if he was hit with a baseball bat. The blow knocked him down. His first thought was, “why did Duke hit me”. He then realized that he had been shot. He was face down, he could see his left foot alongside his head. The bullet had entered his left hip area and took out a couple of inches of femur.
Duke, seeing Prater go down threw grenades and fired his M16 toward the enemy position. The grenades and rifle fire caused the enemy to put their heads down long enough for Duke to attend to Prater. Duke pulled Prater close to a raised earthen dike that would provide a few inches of cover from the enemy fire. He pulled Praters leg back to where it belonged and injected Prater with morphine. He then hurriedly scurried back to a position of cover as the NVA resumed firing.
Prater was now in the same predicament that he had saved one marine from and had attempted to save Gay from. Severly wounded and lying helpless in front of a fortified enemy position with only the cover of a dike in an old rice field to protect him and the potential to be hit by his own air support that would soon be bombing the enemy position just a few meters away.
The first jet came in very low. The short dirt dike provided protection from schrapnel and flying debris as bombs struck the nearby enemy bunkers. The blast wave jarred his body causing him to grit his teeth so hard that he felt one of them crack. Each jet made two or three runs dropping bombs and napalm precisely on the enemy position and avoiding hitting the marines trapped in the field in front of it. The heat of the napalm was intense. Prater heard enemy soldiers scream in pain while being burned alive. Then the jets were gone. But the enemy wasn’t. Incredibly, the NVA were still there. The NVA were expert at surviving the impact of overwhelming firepower. They had fortified their position well. Spider holes allowed a soldier to be completely underground in a hole with a top that would close, protecting him from all but a direct hit. As soon as the jets left the surviving NVA were back in place, angrier than ever.
As Prater lay in the hot sun, unable to move from his position without being shot and physically unable to do so anyway, he could only wait. Duke covered him with the M60 machine gun behind a dirt embankment nearby. Without Duke and the machine gun the NVA could simply walk into the field and shoot him. It was a standoff. The third platoon had gone ahead of the rest of Bravo Company and expected the rest of Bravo would come along soon. Prater was hoping and expected them to show up at any time. He did not know that Bravo Company was pinned down in the river bed above the water fall.
Prater saw a helicopter land and take off near the top of the waterfall, then return to land again. He could hear the fire of the enemy and see the rounds hitting the helicopter which soon lifted off and flew away.
Lonnie Gay, the huge black marine from Bakersfield California was, at 24, older than most of the members of the platoon. Prater and Gay were friends. Both of them had been raised by grandparents. Lonnie’s grandmother sent him food she made for him, which he shared with the other marines in his platoon. He pound cake was especially good. Lonnie was a corporal and the squad leader of the 3rd squad of the 3rd platoon. Lonnie was not moving and was pretending to be dead so as not to draw fire.
One of the marines in Lonnie’s squad regained consciousness and was confused. He had been shot in the arm but his legs were fine. He called out “where am I” Prater responded to him asking if he could run. The Marine said that he could. Prater told him that if he ran to where Duke was he could find cover and might make it. The wounded marine stood up but when he saw that his arm was almost detached and the bone was showing in several places he stopped to look at it. He was shot in the back and fell.
Gay attempted to crawl to the marine, causing his intestines to be pulled out of his body. Prater told him to stop. The movement brought the attention of the NVA who shot Gay in the back. Prater could hear the air escape from Gays lungs as blood spurted from his body in arterial bleeding. The streams of blood landed on Prater. Prater watched helplessly as Gay died. Prater saw Gays spirit leave his body….but then he wondered if the morphine had caused him to imagine that.
Prater was dehydrated as he baked under the noonday tropical sun. Ants had been attracted to the blood splattered on Prater from Gays spurting bleeding. The ants bit Prater but the pain of that was much less than the pain from his hip and leg wound. He reached felt for his canteens and found that both of them had bullet holes in them and were empty. He called out to Duke, “I need water”. With the water rationed at 3 canteens per day per man, water was in short supply. Duke threw a canteen of the precious liquid toward Prater, doubting that it would reach that far but giving it his best effort. He also knew that for it to benefit Prater it would have to be close enough for him to reach it without moving his legs. To the amazement of both men the canteen hit the ground and slid several feet right into Praters hand.
The NVA were systematically killing the wounded. If a wounded marine moved they shot him. Prater had thus far managed to not come to the attention of the enemy. He was behind the paddy dike and just barely out of their view. He knew that when he raised the canteen to drink they would see the movement and try to shoot him. His thirst was so great the he did not care. He lifted the canteen and drank from it. Sure enough the enemy soldiers noticed his raised canteen and opened fire. Ignoring the fire Prater continued to drink until the canteen was empty. The NVA missed.
As Prater baked in the hot sun with the morphine wearing off and his pain increasing, I was fixing my bayonet along with other marines who were preparing to assault the enemy position on the hilltop that was keeping the rest of Bravo Company pinned down and unable to reach the decimated 3rd platoon.
The sound of another jet caught Praters attention. He looked up to see a single jet fly over his head very low and watched as a napalm canister fell from its belly. “Why is he bombing over there” Prater thought. “The fight is over here”.
As Prater watched the life leave Lonnie Gay, he could feel his own life slipping away. The most important thing in the world was his wife Ruth and their newborn son Tommy. Prater and Ruth had met when they were 13 and had been in love since then. Prater had an inner voice. That voice told him that he could let go of life or hang on to see his wife and son again. Now that the morphine was wearing off the pain of his wounds was almost unbearable. Death would bring an end to that pain.
Realizing that he might not remain alive until the rest of Bravo company or a reactionary force arrived Prater booby trapped himself. He took a fragmentation grenade, pulled the pin and put it under his body, holding the spoon down with the weight of his body. As long as he maintained pressure on the spoon it would hold the firing pin of the grenade down and prevent it from detonating. If he died and the enemy came to search his body, the grenade would explode. Duke continued to cover Prater with the machine gun.
Nearby lay the body of Leroy Palmer Jr., the physical opposite of Lonnie Gay. Palmer, a 20 year old from Chicago. The only similarity was that both men were black. Whereas Gay was huge, Palmer was very small. His dimunitive size gave rise to the nickname “Mouse”, by which all the Marines knew him. He must have just barely met the size requirements to be a marine. Mouse always had a smile on his face and a friendly greeting. Everyone loved Mouse.
Mouse was the only marine in Bravo company that I knew well. We had both arrived in Vietnam in November 1967. I had been assigned to participate in Operation Worth a couple of months earlier. Instead I was assigned to mess duty for a month after the marine in my platoon who had been assigned to that duty came down with VD after a trip to Danang. Mouse and I were both lance corporals at the time and subject to being assigned to some of the less pleasant duties. The two of us were responsible for the warehouse where the supplies of the mess hall on hill 10 were stored. We unloaded the trucks that brought the supplies and organized them on shelves until they were needed in the mess hall. Both the mess hall and the warehouse were tents with wooden sides. It was easy duty and Mouse and I had time to chat and get to know each other. We became good friends. Mouse was a kind and gentle soul. In less than 13 months after he joined the Marines his wife Vernia would receive a visit from a Marine in dress blues accompanied by a Navy Chaplain. They would tell the teenaged wife of a marine that she was now a widow. Fifty years later, she remains Mrs. Vernia J Palmer.
The bodies some still alive, of 21 marines lay in the open field. Those who were still alive were either unconscious from their wounds, or pretending to be dead. Usually in such a circumstance the NVA would move across the field killing the wounded and removing weapons and equipment from the bodies. The only thing that kept them from doing that now was a curly headed kid from New York City with an M60 machine gun. Abraham Luftgas was never called or referred to by his given name. To the marines in his platoon he was “Duke”. Duke was fond of Doo-wop music like the hit song, Duke of Earl. Duke would entertain the rest of the platoon in the “banana room” with his doo-wop singing. The banana room was a sandbagged bunker in the 3rd platoon area made to function as a shelter during rocket and mortar attacks.
The battle space was like a big chess board with significant penalties for losing the game. The NVA had taken out a significant portion of the marine force by their ambush of 3rd platoon. They could not finish that job because of Duke and his machine gun preventing them from moving into the field. The marine force including the remainder of Bravo company could not move forward because they were pinned down in the river bed by an enemy force overlooking the river. The marines who had not yet reached the point in the river bed as to be under the direct fire from above still had the ability to maneuver. It was that group of marines, me among them, that was given the mission to take out the NVA position on the hillside. As we neatly placed our packs and other equipment in rows on the jungle floor, double checked our ammunition, grenades and other equipment in preparation to assault the hill, the Marine F4 phantom showed up and altered the chessboard.
After the complete destruction of the enemy position on the high ground overlooking the riverbed, the marine force moved forward Bravo company moved forward to aid what remained of the decimated point platoon. Praters platoon had not been able to contact the main force because it had no working radio.
The advancing main body of marines discovered the NVA position from which the ambush on 3rd platoon had been launched and understood the tactical situation. Prater heard the sound of helicopters and saw two cobra gunships arrive and attack the enemy position with rockets. Duke took this opportunity, while the NVA had their heads down, to run to Prater. Prater told the astonished Duke that before he could be moved it would be necessary to deal with the hand grenade under his belly. Duke reached under Prater, found the grenade and held the spoon to the body of the grenade while removing it from under Prater. Duke threw the grenade toward the enemy position.
Duke spread out a poncho and told Prater that if he could roll his body over onto the poncho Duke would move his legs for him. The NVA was still shooting, bullets were impacting the dike. Another marine arrived to help Duke as they ran, dragging Prater on the poncho until they got to the dirt embankment that had shielded Duke during the firefight. Having his wounded legs dragged along the ground, hitting bumps in the ground along the way, caused great pain to Prater.
Still under heavy fire the Duke and the other marine threw themselves and Prater over the embankment to relative safety. Being thrown onto the ground once again caused Prater sever pain.
Help had arrived. Another helicopter, a twin rotor aircraft of the type often used for medevac operations were several casualties are expected approached and received a heavy volume of fire. Bullets struck the medevac helicopter as it hovered but did not land. A left the helicopter from an unbelievable height before it flew away, still taking fire. A stretcher was thrown from the helicopter before it flew away. The person who seemed to have jumped from the helicopter was a navy corpsman. The marines do not have their own medical personnel or chaplains. The navy supplies personnel to fulfill both those roles. Navy corpsmen are assigned to each platoon to attend to wounded marines. Marines accept them as brothers and different from other navy personnel.
A corpsman arrived to tend to Prater. He was the person who Prater had seen jump from the helicopter in a tremendous act of courage based upon the altitude of the aircraft. In fact the corpsman did not jump, he had been standing in the door ready to jump when the helicopter reached the ground and fell out when the helicopter made an abrupt maneuver to avoid incoming fire. The corpsman looked over Praters wound, gave him a second injection of morphine and said “your going home”.
Other marines and corpsmen were locating and treating the wounded survivors of the ambush although enemy fire continued. A medevac helicopter once again approached to extract the wounded and take them to the hospital in Danang, 20 miles away. Prater and other wounded marines were quickly loaded while the helicopter sat on the ground, rotors turning, taking fire. As soon as the wounded were loaded the helicopter took off. The enemy fire had damaged the helicopter to the point that it would not make it to Danang. It a couple of miles away landed in a corn field just outside the wire at the US Army Special Forces camp at Thuong Duc. Later another helicopter transported the wounded from Thuong Duc to the hospital facility in Danang.
The following day was Sunday. A navy chaplain conducted religious services in a clearing in the jungle. Seven body bags were lined up along the edge of the clearing, one was noticeably shorter than the others. I had been saddened to learn that my friend Mouse was dead. I was told that he was shot in his small chest with a .50 caliber round. I was impressed by the fact that a chaplain was with us in the field. He must have been with us the entire time, humping the bush with the marines. Not only was that duty physically arduous, it was uncomfortable and extremely dangerous. We were at times surrounded by an enemy force far superior in numbers deep into enemy territory.
The other six body bags contained the remains of James E Bates, James C Butler Jr., Lonnie James Gay, William Royal Lindsey and Kenneth Ronald Semon and Brian Eugene Campbell. In addition to those killed in action fourteen men of the point platoon and several others from the main body had been medically evacuated to Danang. Many of those, including Prater, would be sent on to the United States for long periods of recovery.
Eighty nine US service members were killed in Vietnam on May 25, 1968. Thirty one of them were marines. Seven were members of the 3rd platoon of Bravo company, the point platoon.
I had seen only a small portion of the fight. I did not know what had happened to the point platoon. I assumed that the Air Force jets that made bomb runs which did not come even close to the enemy occupying the high ground over the river were trying to hit that target. In fact, they were hitting the target they were aiming for, it was the enemy position that had ambushed and all but wiped out the point platoon. I was under that impression for 50 years. I was angry with the Air Force for all of those 50 years.
While attending a reunion of the 1st Battlion of the 7th Marine Regiment I was approached by a silver haired man with a handlebar mustache. His name tag read “Tom Prater”. He told me that Duke had asked him to look me up and say hello. Tom told me about how Duke had saved his life on May 25, 1968. He explained to me what happened at the waterfall and how the jets attacked the NVA force that had engaged the point platoon. For the first time I realized my mistake in thinking that the Air Force had attacked the NVA on the hillside who were pinning down our main body and had missed widely.
I was wrong and my criticism of the Air Force was unfair. I believe that fairness is important, so I now officially acknowledge my mistake and apologize to the Air Force.
A lesson I learned from that is that even if you witness something you may not accurately understand what you saw. Keep an open mind to the possibility that things may not be as they seem.
After the church service a helicopter came for the bodies and we heard the command to “saddle up”. We were moving out to continue our sweep of the area searching for NVA to destroy. They were not hard to find. Often you didn’t even have to look, they came to you.
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