Blood in the Hills
Page 1
Blood in the Hills
Books by Charles W. Sasser
Nonfiction:
The Walking Dead (w/ Craig Roberts)
One Shot, One Kill (w/ Craig Roberts)
Homicide!
Shoot to Kill
Always a Warrior
In Cold Blood: Oklahoma’s Most Notorious Murders
Last American Heroes (w/ Michael Sasser)
Smoke Jumpers
First SEAL (w/ Roy Boehm)
At Large
Fire Cops (w/ Michael Sasser)
Doc: Platoon Medic (w/ Daniel E. Evans)
Arctic Homestead (w/ Norma Cobb)
Taking Fire (w/ Ron Alexander)
Raider
Encyclopedia of Navy SEALs
Magic Steps to Writing Success
Hill 488 (w/ Ray Hildreth)
Crosshairs on the Kill Zone (w/ Craig Roberts)
Going Bonkers: The Wacky World of Cultural Madness
Patton’s Panthers
The Shoebox: Letters for the Seasons
God in the Foxhole
Devoted to Fishing: Devotionals for Fishermen
None Left Behind
Predator (w/ Matt Martin)
The Sniper Anthology
Back in the Fight (w/ Joe Kapacziewski)
Two Fronts, One War
The Night Fighter (w/ Navy Captain William Hamilton)
Blood in the Hills (w/ Bob Maras)
Fiction:
No Gentle Streets
The 100th Kill
Operation No Man’s Land (as Mike Martell)
Liberty City
Detachment Delta: Punitive Strike
Detachment Delta: Operation Iron Weed
Detachment Delta: Operation Deep Steel
Detachment Delta: Operation Aces Wild
Detachment Delta: Operation Cold Dawn
Dark Planet
OSS Commando: Final Option
OSS Commando: Hitler’s A-Bomb
No Longer Lost
War Chaser
The Return
A Thousand Years of Darkness
Sanctuary
The Foreworld Saga: Bloodaxe
Shadow Mountain
Six: Blood Brothers
Six: End Game
Blood in the Hills
The Story of Khe Sanh, the Most Savage Fight of the Vietnam War
Robert Maras and Charles W. Sasser
An imprint of Globe Pequot
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2017 by Robert Maras and Charles W. Sasser
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN 978-1-4930-1975-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4930-1976-2 (e-book)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To all my Marine Corps brothers who died on those Khe Sanh Hills in 1967.
I will never forget you, brothers.
—Bob Maras
And to every Vietnam veteran who fought through his own hills.
—Charles W. Sasser
Contents
Contents
Authors’ Note
Preface
Chapter 1: Combat Landing
Chapter 2: The Graveyard
Chapter 3: Khe Sanh
Chapter 4: Saddle Up
Chapter 5: The “Big Picture”
Chapter 6: Take No Prisoners
Chapter 7: Good Morning, Vietnam
Chapter 8: A Walk in the Sun
Chapter 9: Kill Zone
Chapter 10: Rescue
Chapter 11: The Cherry Pie
Chapter 12: Dear John
Chapter 13: Ambush
Chapter 14: A Good War
Chapter 15: The French Lady
Chapter 16: Wounded
Chapter 17: Get on the Chopper
Chapter 18: The Green Parrot
Chapter 19: The Watch Continued Running
Chapter 20: The Pond
Chapter 21: A Night of Imposters
Chapter 22: Premonition
Chapter 23: Dog Biscuits
Chapter 24: The FNG
Chapter 25: The POWs
Chapter 26: Pencil Dicks
Chapter 27: America’s Living Rooms
Chapter 28: The Fall of 881S
Chapter 29: Show Time
Chapter 30: Move! Move!
Chapter 31: Timber-r-r-r!
Chapter 32: Dig In, Marines
Chapter 33: Knock That Shit Off!
Chapter 34: Purple Haze
Chapter 35: Kilgore’s Starlite
Chapter 36: The Few, the Proud . . .
Chapter 37: Sleep Like the Dead
Chapter 38: Mushy Dianne
Chapter 39: The Ridge Finger
Chapter 40: Body Count
Chapter 41: The Silver Dragon
Chapter 42: Skinny Dipping
Chapter 43: Picnic
Chapter 44: Along the DMZ
Chapter 45: Anything for R&R
Chapter 46: The Siege
Afterword
About the Authors
Authors’ Note
Time has passed since the “Hill Fights” of Khe Sanh fought in South Vietnam during April and May 1967. And time, as in this personal narrative of Marine PFC Bob Maras, has a tendency to erode memory in some areas and selectively enhance it in others. People may see the same action from different perspectives. Where errors or conflict in recollection occur, the authors accept full responsibility and ask to be forgiven.
Actual names are used throughout except in those instances where names could not be recalled or where public identification serves no useful purpose. Some dialogue and scenes have by necessity been re-created using the raw material of one Marine’s memory. We have attempted to match personalities with the activities and action while maintaining factual content. The recounting of some events and time sequences may not correspond precisely with the memories of all individuals involved.
The authors apologize to anyone who may have been omitted, neglected, or slighted in the preparation of this book. While some interpretational mistakes are bound to have occurred, we are confident that the content of this book is true to the reality, spirit, and incredible courage of the brave US Marines who fought and died during the Hill Fights in the Republic of South Vietnam during that terrifying spring of 1967.
I (Bob Maras) wish to thank my father, George, for instilling in me common sense. It helped me to stay alive.
I should also like to thank Mike and Sharon Lewis of Farmington, New Mexico, who provided me the peace of their vacation home for three weeks in November 2015 to help put together this book.
Most of all, I thank my co-author, Charles W. Sasser, for making me talk about my nightmares. You and Dr. Hoffmann were right; it did help.
The authors are indebted to the foll
owing authors and works for helping to provide a historical perspective to this narrative: The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh, by Edward F. Murphy; Last Stand at Khe Sanh, by Gregg Jones; The Battle of Khe Sanh, by Captain Moyers S. Shore II; War Without Heroes, by David Douglas Duncan; The Vietnam War Almanac, by Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.; and NAM: The Vietnam Experience 1965–75, by Tim Page and John Pimlott.
Preface
In Washington D.C., “The Wall” of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, etched with the names of that war’s KIAs and MIAs, is designed with a black mirrored surface that looks back at you as you look into it. Symbolically, the effect is intended to signify reuniting the past with the present. Peering back from its depths in 2002 was an older Bob Maras so unlike the nineteen-year-old youth I was when I took my senior trip to Vietnam right out of high school in 1966 and was thrust almost immediately into what Marine Lieutenant General Victor Krulak, Commander of Fleet Marine Force-Pacific, called the “bloodiest and toughest fight we had in Vietnam.”
Also reflecting out of the dark depths of The Wall beyond the 58,191 names engraved into it were the now-older images of former Marine Sergeant Ed Crawford and Private Tony Leyba, old comrades from what military history now calls the “Hill Fights.” For a long time the three of us stood there shoulder to shoulder, silently peering into the dark past, trying hard to see through The Wall, as though seeking something vital each of us had left in Vietnam thirty-five years ago.
The names on The Wall. They represented what we lost there. James Hill, Jaggers, Roldan, Todd, Doc Heath, and the others. All there for future generations to look back on, even one hundred years from now, and wonder, as we in the present generation look back on Civil War memorials.
Around three million visitors are drawn each year to the national Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Constitution Gardens adjacent to Washington D.C.’s National Mall. Like Crawford, Leyba, and me, the vets who come here have gotten older, but none of us outlive the memories of what happened in a violent land far away. Those memories come back fresh every day.
Construction of the memorial was completed in 1983. It consists of two 246-foot gabbro walls filled with names. The highest point is ten feet tall, the lowest points at either end are each eight inches in height. The design is meant to express “a wound that is closed and healing.” One wall points toward the Washington Monument, the other toward the Lincoln Memorial.
A short distance away, larger-than-life bronzes of three soldiers in full combat kit prepare to defend. Visitors pause before them. They demonstrate America’s diversity in war. One soldier is European American, one African American, and the third Hispanic American. In the Marines, there is only one color, and that color is Marine Green.
Loved ones of the dead and missing bring sentimental items to leave before the wall. According to legend, the custom began when a Vietnam vet tossed the Purple Heart his brother received posthumously into the wet concrete of the memorial’s foundation. Since then, items as large as a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with HERO on its license plate down to a simple plain brown teddy bear have been presented to The Wall.
Names of men killed in action are denoted by a diamond. Crosses next to the names mark some 1,200 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who are still missing in action. Tentatively, I reached trembling fingers toward a name with a cross next to it: Robert J. Todd. Tony and I recalled vividly the day Todd disappeared.
The Wall and its names have generated a unique ritual called “rubbing.” Relatives, friends, and loved ones come to The Wall with a sheet of paper, which they place over the selected name and rub with wax crayon or graphite pencil to make a memento.
Sergeant Crawford, Tony, and I were etching our eighteenth name from the stone when we heard sniffling and weeping. Startled, we turned to discover a small crowd gathered behind us to watch.
“Did you know so many guys who died in the war?” someone asked.
Tony turned away to hide the tears in his eyes. Sergeant Crawford’s face resembled stone. I lowered my head.
“They were all from our battalion at Khe Sanh,” I said.
Chapter One
Combat Landing
Marines claimed they could already smell the cooking fires, rot, and human shit of Vietnam from aboard the USS Ogden off the coast as BLT (Battalion Landing Team) 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, prepared to combat land on Red Beach, located four miles from Phu Bai. Wherever the hell that was. Not that it mattered. Common grunts in the By-God Crotch were like mushrooms—kept in the dark and fed bullshit. We were life support systems for our rifles, nothing more. Why clutter our minds with unnecessary details? Some general moved a pin on a tactical map and we moved with it. It was that simple.
“Your sergeant spots a gook over there,” an instructor at ITR (Infantry Training Regiment) said, pointing indefinitely into our future, “and tells you to shoot him, then, by God, you shoot him. That’s all you need to know.”
Today, 22 April 1967, was what BLT 2/3 had trained to do over the past months. Everything was assholes and elbows aboard LPD (Landing Port, Dock) Ogden and her sister ship, LPD Monticello. USS Princeton was the third ship in the little flotilla. She was an LPH (landing port, helicopter), an aircraft carrier for choppers. LPDs and LPHs were to Marines what troop ships were to the fighting men of World War II—a method of transporting us and our gear to the war front.
About a mile off Ogden’s bow stretched a thin green line of earth against the horizon of the South China Sea. The war front. That was where our pin was being moved. Looked peaceful enough from here, but a rumor spread among the troops that a regiment of NVA, the North Vietnamese Army, waited ashore to kick sand in our faces when we landed.
“Marines, get your shit together and saddle up!”
Golf Company’s 3rd Platoon Leader, Lieutenant Andrew “Mac” McFarlane, seemed to be everywhere at once on the open deck as coxswains drove amphibious tractors (AMTRACs) from the ship’s wells into the sea and the battalion distributed among the three ships prepared to board them for the landing. AMTRACs served as both landing craft and floating armored personnel carriers. Bobbing on the gentle sea still tethered to their mother ships, they reminded me of giant alligator turtles on farm ponds back in my home state of Oklahoma.
Lieutenant Mac cajoled, slapped Marines on the back, moved easily and confidently among us like the true motivational leader he was. At about thirty-five, he referred to himself as “the oldest second lieutenant in the entire US Crotch.” A tall, lanky officer with a thin face and a sharp nose, he was a former enlisted man, a sergeant, who fought in Korea at the Frozen Chosin. He pulled double duty in Golf Company as 3rd Platoon Leader as well as commander of the Weapons Platoon.
Tony Leyba, my assistant gunner (AG) on the M-60 7.62 machine gun, and I were assigned to Weapons. The Weapons Platoon, with less than half the manpower of a regular rifle platoon, was a Golf Company asset. That meant we could be piecemealed out to any of the company’s three platoons as needed. For control purposes, Mac and Company Gunnery Sergeant Bill Janzen were in charge of us.
“Maras,” Lieutenant Mac said to me, “you and Leyba with the machine gun will be on the first boat to land. We may need your gun.”
“Sir, yes, Sir.”
In my mind, I pictured WWII Iwo Jima or Saipan with thousands of pissed-off little yellow men waiting ashore for a chance to waste our asses. I silently vowed to make John Wayne proud.
“Gentlemen! Suck up your balls,” Lieutenant Mac shouted above the turmoil. “They need some men to kick gook ass. The Second Battalion is going to war!”
A month ago, the entire 2/3, some 1,300 Marines, clambered aboard the three boats following “Vietnam Training” at Camp Schwab, Okinawa. Since then we had sailed up and down the Vietnamese coast eager for the opportunity to prove ourselves. We considered it cool, real cool, that 2/3 was a Battalion Landing Team, which, according to our leaders, meant
we were specially selected. We were genuine warriors who policed the war zone, made everything bad good, and went ashore like the cavalry in an Old West movie to rescue the good guys just in the nick of time when they got in trouble.
I was nineteen years old. A few of the other Marines were even younger. Not many though, since you had to be at least eighteen to be sent to Vietnam. So far, before reality set in, everything was a great adventure. We were an impatient lot, champing at the bit: Hurry up and let us loose in the war. It’s going to be over by Christmas when we get there and the enemy sees what we can do.
We were a mixed lot. White and brown and black and from states, cities, towns, and rural areas all over the United States. From metropolises like Detroit and Los Angeles and my hometown, Tulsa, to dusty crossroads in Arizona or shacks in the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee where guys wore no shoes all summer. We had one thing in common and that made us brothers—the US Marine Corps and its uncomplicated warrior creed of Semper Fidelis. “Always faithful.”
From the halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli,
We fight our country’s battles
In the air, on land, and sea. . . .
You dug that kind of stuff when you were nineteen and had never been shot at.
Nothing happened aboard ship unless the PA system first announced it: PREPARE TO DISEMBARK. . . . GOLF COMPANY TO RED THREE. . . . PREPARE TO LOAD AMTRACS.
Decks on all three boats came alive with gray-green utility uniforms. They echoed with the clanking of rifles and E-tools and K-bar combat knives, vibrated with the shouting of sergeants and the stomping of boots as men scrambled over the sides of the boats and loaded onto AMTRACs. We were on our way to make the world safe for democracy. Like Marines had done in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France during World War I, on Tarawa a generation later in World War II, and at Inchon in Korea.
The loaded tractors set out across the water for Red Beach like newly hatched baby turtles leaving their mamas. Hunkered inside the steel AMTRACs, all we saw were other Marines around us and perhaps a patch of blue sky directly above through an open hatch. Tony and I were wearing helmets and packs and were laden with ammo and grenades, me toting the M-60 machine gun, Tony with his M-16 rifle, both of us packing .45 sidearms. We occupied a place next to the ramp so that when it lowered we would be among the first out.