A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  The action escalated even more when the Covey worked an F-4 around the bomb crater protecting the survivors of RT Alabama. The Phantom was struck by 37mm fire and exploded in midair. Both pilots ejected and were later rescued. Next an Air Force HH-3 Jolly Green appeared overhead, dropped his penetrator, and went into a hover. SSgt Allen tied Ken Cryan and the Nung to the penetrator and sent them up to their waiting salvation. Then he watched in horror as multiple rounds of small arms fire slammed into the two men being hoisted aboard. Now alone and surrounded, John Allen considered the options: continue to fight an unwinnable battle or bug out. Allen ran full speed downhill killing several enemy soldiers along the way. As he ran past a machine gun pit he leveled his CAR-15 at its startled 5-man crew, killing all of them.

  After running for what seemed like miles, SSgt Allen contacted the Covey FAC who directed a Vietnamese H-34 Kingbee to his location. As the Kingbee approached Allen, a .51 cal machine gun blasted the helicopter, sending it crashing into the ground in a fiery explosion. Again running for his life, John Allen changed direction and over the next two hours managed to evade his pursuers with the aid of several additional air strikes. Finally he came upon a large open field where the Covey arranged for another Kingbee helicopter to spiral down to the makeshift LZ and rescue John Allen. Upon his return to Phu Bai, Allen learned that Ken Cryan and his Nung team member, lifted out by the Jolly Green, had died. Each man’s body had been riddled by more than 30 bullets. For his gallantry, SSgt John Allen received the Silver Star, no consolation at all for the sole survivor of RT Alabama.53

  Meanwhile, within the valley itself, 1st Cav units continued patrolling. The 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry patrols operating several miles northwest of the airstrip engaged in several small, sharp firefights with the NVA. During one such action on May 4, the 2d Platoon, Bravo Company, under the command of 1st Lieutenant Douglas B. Fournet, maneuvered uphill against fortified enemy positions—in the A Shau, every engagement seemed to be fought moving ‘uphill.’ During the advance the platoon encountered intense sniper fire, making movement very difficult and extremely dangerous. The right flank man suddenly spotted an enemy claymore mine covering the route of advance and shouted a warning to his comrades. Realizing that the enemy would also be alerted, Lt Fournet ordered his men to take cover and ran uphill toward the mine, a deadly anti-personnel device filled with powerful C-4 explosives and hundreds of lethal ball bearings. With complete disregard for his safety and realizing the imminent danger to members of his platoon, the 24-year-old Louisiana native dived on the claymore and used his body as a shield as he attempted to slash the control wires leading from the NVA position to the claymore. Before he could cut the wires, the nearby enemy detonated the mine, killing Fournet instantly. Five men nearest the mine were slightly wounded, but their leader’s heroic and unselfish act spared his men from serious injury or death. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, 1st Lieutenant Douglas B. Fournet was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.54

  The battle against the raging weather over the A Shau continued when, on May 6, the meteorological conditions played a key role in the loss of two Marine A-4 Skyhawks from Chu Lai. After dropping its ordnance in the A Shau, and while climbing back through the thick overcast, a Skyhawk collided with another inbound A-4. Both pilots ejected and were rescued. The next day General Tolson, clearly influenced by the rotten weather and the anticipated start of the southwest monsoon season, decided to begin withdrawing his 1st Cavalry brigades.

  Beginning on May 10, as the heavy rains continued, the division began dismantling its firebases in preparation for departure. In many ways the extraction proved to be more difficult than the assault. The problems centered around how to backhaul tons of stockpiled ammunition and supplies, destroy the considerable stashes of captured enemy supplies, and leave behind thousands of mines and booby traps to make the enemy’s future work more difficult. By May 11 torrential rains had already washed out a major portion of the A Luoi dirt airstrip, rendering it unusable. Consequently, all men and supplies had to be lifted out by the division’s organic helicopter fleet. As the final battalion was extracted—during a driving rainstorm—Operation Delaware terminated on May 17, 1968.55

  As in the earlier big unit battles like Cedar Falls and Junction City, American senior commanders hailed Operation Delaware as “one of the most audacious, skillfully executed and successful combat undertakings of the Vietnam War.”56 During the 29-day campaign, the 1st Cav and the 101st Airborne divisions had captured incredible amounts of enemy equipment, including 1 tank, 2 bulldozers, 67 trucks, over a dozen 37mm antiaircraft guns, 2,319 individual rifles, and over 71,000 pounds of food. And General Westmoreland’s attrition strategy boasted 869 confirmed enemy dead at a cost of 142 Americans KIA, 47 MIA, and 530 WIA.57

  Yet in some ways the success attached to Operation Delaware turned a blind eye to reality, as evidenced by the statements of a senior general who opined that the A Shau Valley campaign “marked the loss of enemy control of a long-held fortress and demonstrated the control which the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were re-establishing in the wake of the enemy’s Tet Offensive.”58 At best such a view was wishful thinking, at worst, self-delusional. Within a week after American forces departed the valley, North Vietnamese units reoccupied the A Shau and yet again turned it into a heavily defended sanctuary. Unfortunately for Operation Delaware, any long-term success proved to be absolutely minimal.

  In a dramatic illustration of the point, just six days after Operation Delaware terminated, SOG inserted RT Idaho onto the west wall opposite A Luoi. The two Americans and four Nungs were never seen or heard from again. When 12-man RT Oregon inserted on the same LZ in an attempt to find the missing men of RT Idaho, a company of NVA attacked, killing one team member and wounding the rest. The survivors were successfully extracted under heavy fire.59 It became clear, at least to SOG, that by no stretch of the imagination had the NVA lost control of the Valley of Death.

  Although ground combat in the A Shau had ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the flak in the area proved to be as deadly as ever. June 9 turned out to be a costly day when enemy gunners in the A Shau brought down Hellborne 215, a Marine A-4 from Chu Lai. Lieutenant Walter R. Schmidt ejected over the north end of the valley, broke his leg on landing, but made radio contact with an Air Force FAC, Trail 33, who initiated a massive search and rescue (SAR) effort for Schmidt. Following several aborted pickup attempts under extremely intense ground fire, Jolly Green 23, piloted by U.S. Coast Guard exchange pilot Lieutenant Jack C. Rittichier, moved in for another attempt. The HH-3 was immediately hit by a barrage of machine gun fire and burst into flames. The big helicopter crashed a few hundred yards away in a fiery explosion; none of the crew survived. The SAR effort for Lt Schmidt continued until dark but was called off when all radio contact ceased and the pilot was observed stretched out on the ground, motionless. The following morning a team inserted into the site found no trace of Walter Schmidt or his parachute. Hellborne 215 was never heard from again.60

  Back home there was no national grieving for casualties in far away Vietnam. The entire country remained in a state of shock over the June 5th assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles. On both sides of the Pacific, anybody who watched the television coverage somehow knew that the day JFK’s younger brother died was the day that a vital part of the United States also died.

  By August, the 101st Airborne Division had been reconstituted into an airmobile division. In their latest role, the Screaming Eagles exercised their new capability with a combat assault by the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry, and the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry into the A Shau Valley in Operation Somerset Plain. Landing on the valley floor near the old A Luoi and Ta Bat airstrips, this search and destroy operation aimed at eliminating NVA troops trying to reenter the A Shau after Operation Delaware. Running from August 4 to August 20, the operation resulted in sporadic contact with the NV
A. When the 101st withdrew, they left behind 171 confirmed enemy dead. The Screaming Eagles lost 19 KIA, 104 WIA, and 2 MIA. Following Operation Somerset Plain, American forces would not return to the A Shau for another five months; the North Vietnamese were back in a week.61

  Eight thousand miles away and six days after the 101st’s exit from the valley, home front attention focused on a different kind of battle—the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago intended to showcase his and the city’s achievements to national Democrats, the news media, and the world. Instead, the proceedings became tarnished by the rioting of 10,000 anti-war demonstrators and the use of excessive force by the Chicago police during what came to be known as the “Battle of Michigan Avenue.” The ensuing riots played out on television screens around the world, and as one journalist noted, “The 1968 Chicago convention became a lacerating event, a distillation of a year of heartbreak, assassinations, riots, and a breakdown in law and order that made it seem as if the country were coming apart.”62

  Thirty-seven days after the world’s attention had focused on the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the deadly battles in the Valley of Death kept right on coming—and no one even noticed. On October 5, SOG RT Alabama, newly constituted following its disastrous mission back in May, inserted onto the west wall of the A Shau Valley. When the nine-man team departed their Kingbee helicopter, they spotted a large North Vietnamese flag on a pole at the edge of the LZ. They had inadvertently landed in the middle of the NVA regiment they had been sent to search for. Almost immediately the team found themselves under attack by a force of 50 enemy soldiers. The team One-Zero, Staff Sergeant James D. Stride, was killed in the first exchange of fire, along with one of the indigenous team members. The rest of the team formed a perimeter around his body and called for an emergency extraction but were unable to bring SSgt Stride with them as they fought their way to a pick-up area. In the confusion, Specialist 4 Lynne M. Black, Jr., the team’s One-Two, or third in command, took charge when the One-One became hysterical. Black stood up firing his weapon on single shot, methodically picking off NVA attackers on top of the small hill to his front. He slammed another clip into his CAR-15 and went down the line, shooting the enemy soldiers one after another. Sometimes they spun around when hit and he shot them a second or third time.

  As Lynne Black led the survivors of RT Alabama toward a nearby LZ, hundreds of NVA troops flooded into the immediate area. During the action, an enemy soldier was so close he tossed a hand grenade, which literally hit Black in the head and bounced to the ground. The surprised Green Beret instinctively dived for cover, but the explosion peppered his face with shrapnel wounds and knocked him unconscious. When his team revived him, Black, bleeding and groggy, gamely got to his feet and began coordinating airstrikes with the Covey circling overhead.

  Rescue responsibility had been given to the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang, which promptly dispatched two Jolly Green HH-3 helicopters. On arrival, Jolly Green 28 went into a hover for a hoist recovery of RT Alabama but was badly shot up by the NVA and forced to abort the pick-up. As the first two HH-3s headed back to Da Nang, another pair arrived as RT Alabama attempted to break contact, while the A-1 Sandys blasted the nearest enemy attackers with strafe and napalm. On arrival, Jolly Green 10 went into a hover over the team and was immediately hit by a barrage of fire and RPGs from all directions. The pilot attempted to fly his crippled bird out of danger, but after about a quarter mile the big HH-3 nosed over and crashed in flames. The orbiting Covey FAC was able to make radio contact with Jolly Green 10’s PJ and badly injured pilot, both of whom had managed to escape the burning wreckage and evade into a nearby deserted village. The co-pilot and flight engineer died in the crash. Meanwhile, faced with an attack by an additional 100 enemy troops, Lynne Black decided to move RT Alabama to the helicopter crash site to link up with its survivors.

  At that point another Jolly Green moved into position in an attempt to rescue them all—provided the recon team could get to the pick-up point in a hurry, and the A-1s could suppress the swarming masses of NVA. The plan worked up to a point. Specialist Black located the two crewmen in the village and led the shot up group to the hovering HH-3, but as he sent the men up on the jungle penetrator, he realized that an indigenous team member was missing. Refusing to leave a man behind, Black sprinted back to a small structure and found his man badly wounded and dying. The young Montagnard told Black to leave him and that he would hold off the rapidly approaching enemy. Black had only run a few steps when the Montagnard emptied his pistol at an NVA squad, then put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Black had only moved a few more steps when two young NVA soldiers popped out of the foliage right in front of him, both pointing AK-47s at the SOG man. Black approached the duo with his hands in the air, but at arm’s length he grabbed both weapons simultaneously, punching one soldier in the face and smashing the butt of an AK into the face of the other. The incredibly lucky Green Beret, covered in blood, dirt, and sweat, sprinted 100 meters and jumped on the penetrator dangling beneath hovering Jolly Green 32. But just as Lynne Black climbed inside, an RPG exploded on the helicopter’s underside. The pilot managed to limp over the next ridgeline and made a controlled crash landing in an open field where another Jolly Green, piloted by Coast Guard exchange officer Lt Commander Lonnie Mixon, immediately landed and picked everyone up except Lynne Black and the One-One. During the rescue, Mixon’s bird sustained over 30 hits from enemy ground fire. A Cobra gunship landed to pull out Black and the One-One, both flown to safety sitting on the Cobra’s ammo bay doors.

  Surviving a deadly ambush, severe wounds, near capture, and a helicopter crash, Black made it out alive; it had been his very first SOG mission. Unfortunately, the A Shau had added three more American lives to its increasingly long list of heroes: SSgt James D. Stride, Major Albert D. Wester, and Sgt Gregory P. Lawrence would rest in the Valley of Death in timeless sleep. For his gallantry in action, Lynne M. Black, Jr. received the Silver Star.63

  According to SOG veteran and noted military historian John Plaster, in 1968 CCN lost 18 Americans KIA and 18 MIA, almost all of them on operations around the A Shau. Combined with the 199 SOG Americans wounded in Laos, those figures meant that every single SOG recon man was wounded at least once in 1968. Statistically, SOG recon casualties exceeded 100 percent, the highest sustained loss rate since the Civil War.64 Those staggering losses, however, also reflected the valor that increasingly defined combat operations in the Valley of Death.

  As the Year of the Monkey ended, there was no denying one gut-wrenching fact: whether viewed at home within the context of the American domestic scene or from the perspective of the violent battles that raged across the two northern provinces of I Corps, by any yardstick, the year 1968 had indeed been one of heartbreak—the quintessential annus horribilis.

  *In the almost 50 years since the deadly battle on Tiger Mountain, Mike Sprayberry has remained determined to find the six lost men and bring them home. He returned to the A Shau in 2009 and again in 2013. Sadly, he was unable to find the missing men on Tiger Mountain, but he did locate pieces of helicopter wreckage that correlated to the missing Loach. Case number 1153 remains active for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

  chapter

  6

  OPERATION DEWEY CANYON

  The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle!

  —GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING

  The Marines in I Corps inhabited a singularly unique universe with its own rules, values, and its own sense of time. Whereas the other services mandated a 12-month tour of duty in Vietnam, during their 13-month-long tours, young Marines endured bruising battles around hell holes like the Rock Pile, Con Thien, Gio Linh, Hue, Khe Sanh, and Vandegrift Combat Base, but by early 1969 they were about to add another sinister name to the list: A Shau Valley. And ever since the fall of the Special Forces camp there in 1966, top American military leaders had persistently upheld
the view that the Valley of Death represented the single most dangerous locale in Vietnam. Yet no matter the battle or operation or the place, Marines tended to shrug off rumors and grisly war stories about the A Shau and instead remained enthralled by and focused on the homes and lives they had left behind in the United States. In their reverie they called it dreaming about “back in the world.”

  While comparisons are always open to interpretation, a Vietnam Marine’s world was every bit as squalid and inhospitable as that of their counterparts in World War II. Although entire battalions sometimes moved by helicopter to hot spots in I Corps, once in the operating area (AO) the Marines deployed on foot just like their World War II brethren had at Guadalcanal, Saipan, and Okinawa. Only in the harsh environs of Vietnam there were no front lines; small units patrolled for weeks at a time through thick jungle and up steep mountains searching for an enemy who hid and only fought on his own terms. Not surprisingly, the tactical advantage on these patrols often rested with the NVA, who would allow the Marines to stumble across their elaborately prepared ambushes in terrain that the enemy knew intimately and that the Americans might in all probability be seeing for the first time. While death might lurk around any curve in the trail, for Marines the battle against the weather and the jungle was just as pervasive and went on 24 hours a day. In the oppressive tropical daytime heat they sweated rivers. The incessant dampness, pelting rain, and the cold mountain air at night made them shiver much more than any fear of the unseen enemy. At night Marines frequently found their bunkers, tents, or foxholes flooded or buried in mud—or rats. One Marine described it thus, recalling, “Fatigues dripping wet with perspiration, clinging to the body … forever being tangled in ‘wait-a-minute vines,’ immobilized by elephant grass, and surrounded by the muffled voices of young marines in the heat muttering under their breath.”1