A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  At 11:20 a.m. Captain Willard M. Collins piloted his AC-47 gunship, call sign Spooky 70, into the valley in a desperate attempt to aid the camp’s weary and bloodied defenders. Throughout Vietnam, everyone knew about and respected these venerable old World War II cargo planes turned gunship, affectionately called “Puff the Magic Dragon” for the stream of red tracers that spewed from its threesome of side-mounted 7.62mm miniguns. Collins, assisted by his co-pilot, 1st Lieutenant Delbert R. Peterson, made two unsuccessful attempts to get under the low clouds that socked in the entire A Shau—and masked the treacherous mountain peaks lining either side of the valley. Finally on the third attempt they found a small hole and guided the AC-47 into the area at an altitude of 400 feet above the ground. Hugging the terrain on a southerly heading, Spooky 70 executed a firing pass down the west side of the perimeter; everyone inside the camp stood and cheered. Then, for the men in the camp, one of the most demoralizing incidents of the battle occurred right before their eyes. As Collins turned to the north for a second run, enemy antiaircraft positions on the east and west ridgelines opened up with a vengeance. The gauntlet of fire from .51 caliber machine guns tore the right engine from its mount. Seconds later another burst knocked out the left engine. With superb airmanship and unbelievable composure, Collins and Peterson brought the bullet-riddled gunship in for a crash landing on a mountain slope roughly three kilometers north of the camp. All members of the crew survived with minor injuries except Staff Sergeant Robert E. Foster, whose legs were broken by the impact.

  From the heavy movement and signal shots in the area, Capt Collins instinctively realized that an enemy attack was inevitable. When he found out that SSgt Foster could not be moved, Collins, rather than leaving the injured crewmember and moving to more favorable terrain, set up a defensive perimeter around the crash site and dug in to wait for a rescue helicopter. Fifteen minutes after the crash the crew repulsed the first probe by NVA soldiers. Minutes later Collins valiantly led his crew in fending off a second attack by a much larger force, but during the fierce firefight he and Foster were both gunned down and killed.18

  Just as an Air Force HH-43 helicopter arrived overhead, a third attack began. Muzzle flashes from a .51 cal machine gun that had been moved to within yards of the small perimeter were clearly visible to Lt Peterson, now in command of the crew. If the gun were not silenced, he reasoned, the chopper would likely be downed before it could rescue the four airmen. Firing his M-16 on full automatic, Del Peterson charged the gun, which went silent as the HH-43 dropped down to pick up the surviving crewmembers. The young co-pilot from Maple Plain, Minnesota was not among them. For extraordinary heroism and superb airmanship, both Captain Willard Collins and Lieutenant Delbert Peterson were posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross.19

  Following the unsettling loss of Spooky 70, the defenders at Camp A Shau concentrated on regrouping and repairing their battered perimeter and fortified fighting positions for the all-out attack they knew was imminent. Low on ammunition and desperate to get his many wounded medically evacuated, Capt John Blair repeatedly requested supplies and reinforcements from Da Nang. As Detachment C-1 processed the urgent appeals, the action shifted back into the air.

  When he received word that an AC-47 had been shot down in the A Shau, Major Bernard F. Fisher, from the 1st Air Commando Squadron at Pleiku, diverted his flight of two A-1E Skyraiders to the area. Locating a small hole in the overcast approximately five miles north of the camp, Fisher led his flight at just 500 feet above the valley floor, all the while dodging an intense barrage of antiaircraft fire. At that point he got instructions to destroy the Spooky 70 wreckage to prevent enemy retrieval of the aircraft’s three lethal mini-guns. Assigning his wingman to handle that mission, Fisher pressed on to the camp and immediately enlisted the services of a second set of Skyraiders. After directing their ordnance around the perimeter, Major Fisher climbed back above the overcast and escorted two C-123s down through the weather and into the valley where they parachuted much needed medical supplies and ammunition to the defenders. As the two C-123s made their low-level drops, Bernie Fisher and his wingman suppressed the enemy ground fire with 20mm strafe. And he wasn’t finished yet.

  Earlier that afternoon a Marine H-34 attempted a landing to evacuate the wounded, but as the chopper began to settle into the camp, it was hit repeatedly by machine gun and small arms fire, bringing it down. At that point Major Fisher escorted an Air Force HH-3 to the camp and once again suppressed enemy fire while it landed. Under Fisher’s covering guns, the Air Force helicopter, piloted by an unflappable crew, successfully evacuated the 26 wounded defenders and the Marine helicopter crew. One of the wounded, Sgt John Bradford, refused to sit down inside the crowded chopper. Although the crew demanded he take a seat, Bradford insisted on remaining standing; he had been severely wounded in both buttocks.

  A pair of B-57 Canberra bombers then joined the battle, being led through a hole in the overcast by Bernie Fisher, who by that time was dangerously low on fuel and ended up making an emergency landing at Da Nang with almost dry tanks. Just before dark, the B-57s dropped a series of cluster bombs (CBU) on enemy positions around the camp. Throughout that long day on March 9, a scant 29 sorties launched in support of Camp A Shau, mainly because of bad weather: 17 by the USAF, 10 by the USMC, and two by the South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF).20

  In yet another act of betrayal, two members of CIDG Company 141 were observed firing at the C-123s and Caribous as they airdropped supplies. At gunpoint one of the Americans took the men to Capt Blair, who turned them over to Capt Chung Uy Dung with the recommendation that they be executed for their treachery. The LLDB camp commander refused, expressing the opinion that Company 141 was loyal. Under the circumstances, the only realistic action Blair could take was to instruct the Nungs to keep a close watch on the company and to fire on it if any further signs of subversion occurred.21

  At 2:30 a.m. on March 10, NVA Regiment 95B opened fire on Camp A Shau with everything they had: heavy mortars, rocket propelled grenades (RPG), recoilless rifles, and automatic weapons. The ferocity of the enemy barrage stunned and horrified the camp’s survivors, the heavy bombardment continuing without letup until about 7 a.m., pulverizing what was left of the camp and inflicting heavy casualties among the defenders. All of the bunkers on the walls took several direct hits from recoilless weapons or RPGs, which destroyed about half of the machine gun emplacements. The heavy shelling also killed most mortars crews and put their weapons out of action. In the 81mm mortar pit, three direct hits by in-coming enemy shells killed 7 Vietnamese and wounded 6 men, including Bennie Adkins. Although bleeding profusely, he repeatedly relaid the mortar tube each time it was knocked down by hits or near misses and continued to service it alone. In short order, SFC Adkins was the only man left in the camp firing a mortar.22

  Around 5 a.m. under cover of darkness, three massed battalions of NVA infantry attacked the south and east walls. The defenders held fast and mowed the enemy infantry down—except in one area. When the enemy hit CIDG Company 141’s sector, that unit folded. Many members stopped fighting altogether and even assisted the attackers in getting over the wall. As the NVA troops poured into the gap created by Company 141’s defection, they began placing enfilade fire on the defenders along the south and east walls. Sergeant Owen F. McCann died at his post trying to stop the onslaught. To plug the gap, the Nung platoon and the civilians in the reserve force positioned in the center of the camp, attempted a counterattack but could not repel the masses of enemy soldiers assaulting through the smoke and rubble. Coming to the assistance of the Nungs, Specialist 5th Phillip T. Stahl manned a machine gun, killing numerous attackers as they threw wave after wave against his position. His devastating fire helped the Nungs stall the main enemy assault. Although seriously hurt in the previous day’s attack with a painful wound that partially paralyzed his left arm and another wound to his right leg, Stahl refused medical treatment and held his ground as once more the enemy mounted another full scale
assault. He resisted the onslaught by killing scores of attackers and continued firing his machine gun until the barrel glowed red hot. As the human waves inched ever closer, Specialist 5th Phillip T. Stahl was mortally wounded by an NVA grenade blast. For his extraordinary heroism, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.23

  As the deadly pre-dawn slugfest continued, Bennie Adkins, although painfully wounded, continued to blunt the fanatical waves of infantry attempting to storm his mortar pit. Finally withdrawing to a communications bunker where several Americans were attempting to fight off an entire company of NVA, SFC Adkins plunged into the firefight, killing numerous enemy soldiers with his suppressive fire. Running extremely low on ammunition, he returned to the mortar pit, gathered the vital ammunition, and ran through intense fire back to his colleagues at the communications bunker. Wounded yet again, he kept right on fighting.24

  The gut-wrenching battle also spilled over into a third dimension. In the pre-dawn darkness above the east wall, a warrior from outside the camp rushed to help. Attempting to work under a parachute flare dropped by an Air Force C-123, Marine Lieutenant Augusto “Gus” Xavier piloted his A-4 Skyhawk below the foul weather and low overcast to drop his bombs “danger close” on nearby NVA troop concentrations. On his second low-level pass, he died in a fiery explosion when his jet plowed into the side of a mountain.25

  As the close combat continued to rage inside the camp, Capt Blair ran from position to position to check on his meager forces and to assess the deteriorating situation. Reorganizing the men, the A-102 commander led them in three counterattacks across the open terrain of the camp but was forced to order his small force to withdraw each time because of the murderous fire. By 8 a.m. only the north wall and the American communications bunker were still in friendly hands. Shortly after that, the one remaining 81mm and 60mm mortars were either destroyed or ran out of ammunition. Blair had no choice but to regroup along the north wall and to call in airstrikes against the enemy troops occupying the rest of the camp.

  While waiting for the close air support, Capt Sam Carter, SFC Vic Underwood, and SFC Vernon A. Carnahan, using an M-79 and M-16s, took on a wave of infiltrators and killed a tremendous number of NVA in front of their position. Sam Carter said of the fight, “Three of us knew we killed 50 of ’em in a tiny area. I laid in one hole in the wall and killed twelve. Just in that one hole.”26 In Underwood’s debriefing, he noted that the enemy soldiers “didn’t seem to know what to do when they got inside the camp. They would stand up to look around, making good targets.” Underwood and Carnahan then rallied some of the badly shaken Vietnamese and launched another counterattack, charging through the rubble and debris around the communications bunker, only to be wounded by a grenade-throwing enemy soldier. Vic Underwood recounted, “I jumped around Carnahan and saw the VC who threw the grenade running back toward the south wall. I hit him in the back with our last grenade [M-79] and blew him all to pieces. We then pulled back to the north wall and Carnahan took care of our wounds which were all in our legs—he had a broken leg.”27

  Huddled along the north wall clogged with their dead and wounded, the survivors sat bleeding, dog tired, covered from head to foot with red dirt and soot, their eyes burning and tearing from the thick smoke, their ears ringing from the constant mortar explosions, their nostrils filled with the pungent smell of cordite, their mouths bone dry with that peculiar taste of metal brought on by adrenalin and fear. The defenders’ hearts sank when, through the acrid smoke, they observed another NVA battalion massing on the airstrip for a final push against Camp A Shau. Before the hostile force could launch the charge, however, two B-57s roared over them at 800 feet dropping CBU. The slaughter and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of CBU explosions literally stopped the momentum of the NVA assault in its tracks.

  Capt Blair’s urgent calls for napalm airstrikes against the camp resulted in the dispatch of six A-1 Skyraiders to the scene. Fresh off his mission from the day before, Major Bernie Fisher led the three flights of two aircraft each into the Valley of Death. Using the call sign Hobo 51, Fisher led his wingman, Captain Paco Vazquez, Hobo 52, to the besieged camp at an altitude of 800 feet. Right behind Hobo Flight, Major Dafford W. “Jump” Myers and his wingman, Captain Hubert King, followed in trail formation. On the second pass, Jumps Myers’ aircraft took a pounding from the concentrated ground fire; his engine froze and his cockpit filled with smoke. At only 400 feet Myers was too low to bail out, so he decided to land his burning A-1 on the airstrip. Miraculously the big Skyraider bellied in and skidded to a stop as Myers climbed out and took cover in a weed-covered ditch along the east side of the runway. Myer’s wingman, Hubie King, watched his leader go down and made a low level run at 30 feet above the runway, but he never saw the gun that shattered his front canopy windscreen and peppered him with shards of glass. King’s A-1 received multiple hits and broke off the mission to make an emergency landing at Da Nang. Inside the camp some of the defenders saw Myers get out of his burning aircraft and run to the edge of the runway. Vic Underwood and four Nungs raced toward the airstrip to rescue the downed pilot, but the enemy fire was so heavy the American was pinned down and all four Nungs killed.

  Fisher called in the third set of A-1s and led the low-level attacks against NVA troops converging in the direction of the downed pilot. The antiaircraft fire was intense and disarmingly accurate. In describing the scene, one of the A-1 pilots observed, “It was like flying inside Yankee Stadium with the people in the bleachers firing at you with machine guns.”28

  When Bernie Fisher learned that a rescue helicopter was at least 20 minutes away, he instinctively understood that his old friend Jump Myers would be captured or killed prior to the chopper’s arrival. He decided to land and make the pickup himself, realizing full well that such an attempt in the face of the murderous enemy ground fire would be suicidal. With the other A-1s covering him, Hobo 51 dropped his landing gear and touched down on the hazardous runway, dodging shell craters, fuel drums, debris, while being the target of heavy small arms and automatic weapons fire. In spite of the fusillade, Fisher taxied 1,800 feet back down the airstrip to Myer’s general location and brought the A-1E to a halt. Myers bolted from his hiding place, climbed on the right wing, and dived headfirst into the cockpit. His first words to Fischer were, “You dumb son of a bitch, now neither of us will get out of here.”29

  Turning his aircraft around, Bernie Fisher gunned the engine. Once again dodging debris, he coaxed the Skyraider off the ground at the very end of the runway as bullets slammed into the fuselage. The camp defenders cheered as Hobo 51 roared down the airstrip and into the air. When the plane landed at Pleiku, the maintenance crews counted 19 bullet holes in the bird. For his conspicuous gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Major Bernard F. Fisher became the first Air Force member in Vietnam to receive the Medal of Honor.30

  For Capt John Blair, by late afternoon on March 10 there seemed little more that could be done except to hold on and hope reinforcements would arrive in time to prevent the complete loss of the camp. Heavy explosions from enemy 82mm mortars constantly blasted the survivors while NVA riflemen and machine gunners continued to fire within the camp itself. Practically all of the remaining defenders were “walking wounded,” all hungry and thirsty, for there had been no food or water available for 36 hours. Complicating the situation, ammunition was dangerously low, and the remaining CIDG personnel were frightened and demoralized. At Camp A Shau no further offensive capability existed. At about 5 p.m. Blair was ordered to abandon the camp.

  Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 163 (HMM-163) based at Phu Bai got the call to evacuate the survivors of Camp A Shau. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. “Chuck” House, the squadron launched all its H-34 Choctaw helicopters with the daunting task of flying under the nasty weather in the valley and making the pickup, probably against heavy antiaircraft opposition. Without any hesitation, Chuck House led his section of eight H-34s escorted by severa
l “Huey” gunships under the 200-foot ceiling and into the valley well north of the camp. Unfortunately, the other eight Choctaws ran into a solid wall of weather and returned to Phu Bai.

  In preparation for the evacuation, Captains Carter and Blair, under heavy fire, crawled out to open a wire barricade on a path from the north wall. With a few other able-bodied men they set up a position to cover the withdrawal. SFCs Underwood and Carnahan were sent about 400 meters north of the camp to secure a landing zone in the elephant grass for the approaching choppers. Their other job was to see that the badly wounded got out first. Almost immediately the plan fell apart. In Vic Underwood’s own words, “When the Vietnamese saw us and the Nungs head for the landing zone they lost complete control and swarmed out of the camp in a mob, led by the Vietnamese camp commander. They ran past us, separating Carnahan from me and the Nungs. I was wounded in the legs and couldn’t move very fast. I tried to shoot the Vietnamese camp commander but someone always kept getting in the way.”31

  As the HHM-163 helicopters landed on the LZ, the frantic mob of CIDG irregulars rushed the choppers and fought among themselves to get on board. The H-34s were immediately overloaded to the point where they were too heavy to lift off. “We tried to drag ’em off, beat ’em off, kick ’em off,” House said, “but they just came back. It was mass panic. Finally, we had to shoot ’em off.” When Chuck House finally lifted off, he only managed to get about ten feet in the air before enemy fire—or perhaps panicky CIDG troops—shot his tail rotor off; out of control, his bird crashed. As the crew crawled out of the wreckage, shaken and bruised but otherwise unharmed, House realized that in the rapidly approaching darkness and the low cloud ceilings a rescue was no longer feasible. He started planning to evade on foot.32