Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  The sound of gunfire could be heard throughout the city, and there was no information to dispel the wildest rumors. The breaking dawn did little to banish gloomy outlooks, for the portents were everywhere enmeshed in the foreboding gray mist of the day.

  A quick assessment of the damage caused by the initial volley of NVA rockets revealed extensive breaches in the compound's outer wall. Fortunately, however, the wall was not in danger of collapsing.

  Communications with the outside world were intact, but the state of confusion at MACV was so complete that there were no cogent reports to send to potential rescuers. The radio room sent out the details that were known, but no assessments. As the morning wore on, this lack of cogency in reporting resulted in an Armed Forces Radio broadcast from Saigon that stated that the situation in Hue was well in hand. To the men who had endured the terror-filled night at MACV, the broadcast from Saigon was downright infuriating. At first, they yelled and cursed the radio announcer, but they changed their tune markedly as the magni­tude of the nationwide offensive emerging from ongoing radio reports put their plight, however awful, in proper perspective. They, at least, had not been overrun.

  Sporadic shooting continued throughout the morning, but at about 1300 the tired and frightened MACV defenders heard the sound of heavy firing to the south. There were the distinctive roars of American .50-caliber and Communist .51-caliber ma­chine guns, the yammering of American M-60 machine guns, the high-pitched chatter of AK-47s, and the slower pop-pop-pop of M-16s. No one at MACV knew what it meant. No one at MACV even dared to guess aloud.

  *

  The persistent fog that hung over Hue was a literal fog; the metaphorical fog that hung over Phu Bai and other major mil­itary bases within supporting distance of Hue was even less permeable to human senses. It was the fog of war. Piercing it was to be an extremely costly enterprise.

  No one in the busy, sprawling Phu Bai Combat Base could tell what was going on inside Hue. If anyone knew anything about the Communist Tet Offensive, it was local knowledge, the result of sketchy information from around Phu Bai and its satellite camps. The sum of the sketchy reports appeared to indicate that there was some Communist activity at the fringes, out along Highway 1. Maybe—maybe—there was some small excitement in Hue.

  Lieutenant Colonel Marcus (Mark) Gravel's 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment (1/1, pronounced "One One"), was usually assigned to southern I Corps. At this point, however, it was just coming off a two-month tour along the DMZ and displacing from Quang Tri to Phu Bai. The last of Gravel's four infantry companies scheduled to reach Phu Bai was Captain Gordon Batcheller's Alpha Company (Alpha/1/1, or "Alpha One One"). In fact, by nightfall on January 30, only a little over three-quarters of the company had actually reached Phu Bai. Captain Batcheller and his executive officer (exec) were the only company officers to arrive; two platoon commanders and about forty Marines had missed the last helilift of the evening, and one of the company's lieutenants had been nabbed to attend, of all things, a divisional leadership school.

  For Alpha/1/1, January 31 was supposed to be a day off to rest and reequip. Then, on February 1, it was to be trucked to Hue to guard the Navy LCU ramp on the Perfume River—the first time any Marine infantry unit had been assigned a job inside Hue.

  After settling his troops in on the evening of January 30, Captain Batcheller was informed by a member of the 1/1 staff that his truncated company was the Phu Bai "reaction force." No specific concern was identified at that time. Very early on the morning of January 31, Batcheller was ordered to move Alpha/ 1/1 south along Highway 1 at first light. The company was to meet an ARVN guide who would lead it to reinforce his unit, which was between Highway 1 and the nearby coast.

  In short order, the main body of Alpha/1/1 mounted sev­eral 6X6 trucks inside the base wire. Two U.S. Army M-55 antiaircraft machine-gun trucks, each carrying a beastly quadru­ple-.50-caliber machine gun, joined up. The convoy headed south along Highway 1. A moderately thick ground fog hampered visibility beyond the edge of the roadway. No one in the convoy knew of any alerts.

  This was new territory for Alpha/1/1; no one knew where the best ambush ground lay, and no one could see anything through the fog. Members of Marine CAP units encountered along the way told Captain Batcheller that local Vietnamese had reported numerous enemy units moving in a northerly direction. However, they added, they were unable to confirm the civilian reports about "beaucoup VC."

  The convoy arrived at the rendezvous point, but there was no sign of the promised ARVN guide. After reporting to the 1/1 CP by radio, Captain Batcheller was ordered to reverse direction and head north along Highway 1 to link up with a unit of the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, which was north of Hue. When Batcheller consulted his map to gauge the distance, he learned that Highway 1 ran off the edge of his map sheet at Hue. In-country since late August 1967 and the Alpha/1/1 commander since Christmas Day, the twenty-eight-year-old Bostonian as­sumed he would be able to sort the matter out on the way.

  At the time Alpha/1/1 turned north, the morning fog had not yet lifted and the Marines were as engulfed in the fog of war as ever. The journey past Phu Bai was relatively swift, but the men noted something eerie: Vietnamese highways were always abustle with commerce and travelers and kids begging for food; this morning, hardly a soul was afoot.

  Shortly after the small convoy passed Phu Bai, a radio call from the 1/1 CP changed Alpha/1/l's mission once again. Instead of proceeding through Hue to find the 1st Cavalry Division, the company was to stop off just south of the Perfume River to reinforce the MACV Compound. The radio call regis­tered concern about trouble in and around Hue, but there was no specific information. Captain Batcheller's orders were simply to relieve the Advisory Team 3 compound.

  *

  It was still hazy at about 1030, when the Alpha/1/1 convoy approached a bridge across a creek about three kilometers south­east of the MACV Compound. Just past the bridge, Alpha/1/1 could see the rear of five Marine M-48 tanks that were halted on the roadway. A brief conversation with a Marine major accompanying the tanks revealed that this was a platoon of Alpha Com­pany, 3rd Tank Battalion, a 3rd Marine Division unit on its way to the Hue LCU ramp for transshipment to northern Quang Tri Province.-The tanks had unlimbered their guns. Crewmen were peering from turret hatches into the fog, obviously looking for signs of enemy activity. The tankers' heightened state of alert was undoubtedly motivated by the nearby wreckage of a single ARVN M-41 tank, in which the gruesomely burned body of a crewman leaned out from a turret hatch. There were other obvious signs of recent enemy activity in the immediate vicinity.

  The major in charge of the little tank convoy had just been in contact with Phu Bai to ask what was going on ahead. The tanks had been proceeding out of Phu Bai on the assumption that Highway 1 was clear and secure. The response the major received from Phu Bai was ambiguous to the point that he had asked for permission to return to the base or that infantry supports be sent ahead. (For all their armor, tanks are distinctly vulnerable to infantry attack unless they are accompanied by friendly infantry.) Phu Bai had just told him to return when Alpha/1/1 arrived.

  Captain Batcheller and the tank major quickly agreed that the tanks should support Alpha/1/1 and continue north to MACV. Without further ado, Batcheller ordered his infantrymen to dismount from the trucks and advance on foot, sweeping both sides of the road as they went.

  *

  Several minutes after the tank-infantry column jumped off, Captain Batcheller was contacted on the company radio by Ser­geant Alfredo Gonzalez, the 3rd Platoon's twenty-one-year-old acting commander. Gonzalez informed Batcheller that, as the 3rd Platoon was clearing the buildings on the right side of the high­way, he could see a walled compound out in the center of a large field. There appeared to be uniformed people moving around inside the compound, but Gonzalez could not see what uniforms they were wearing. Batcheller ordered Gonzalez to set up a base of fire with his M-60 machine guns and advance across the open area. If the people in the co
mpound opened fire, the Marines were to destroy them. A short time later, Gonzalez reported that the uniformed people were ARVN soldiers.

  Meantime, Staff Sergeant Curtis Godfrey's 2nd Platoon was advancing up the left side of Highway 1, cautiously peering into every building. There was no one there. Suddenly, the 2nd Pla­toon was taken under fire from fifty meters away by several NVA soldiers manning a building at a fork in the road. Staff Sergeant Godfrey was shot in the right leg and thrown into the muck-filled drainage ditch bordering the highway. A minute later, the firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun. As Staff Sergeant Godfrey looked on, Sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez emerged from between two buildings across the highway. He was carrying an armload of four AK-47s. It was obvious from the triumphant expression on Gonzalez's face that he had had a hand in silencing the bush­whackers. A moment later, Godfrey was loaded aboard a truck with two other wounded Marines and sent back to Phu Bai.

  *

  The reinforced infantry company continued to advance at a slow walking pace through sporadic small-arms fire. About 700 meters north of where Alpha/1/1 had first seen the tanks, the head of the column passed through the T-shaped intersection at which Provincial Route 546 branched off to the west and High­way 1 made a hard right turn to continue almost due north toward Hue. About 100 meters beyond the intersection, the point of the column reached the edge of a built-up area that appeared to Captain Batcheller to be a Wild West town's Main Street. The buildings, which closely bordered the roadway, featured high facades of wood-lathe construction. The road ahead looked more like a constricted alleyway than South Vietnam's premier national highway.

  As the Alpha/1/1 vanguard was preparing to enter the built-up area, a convoy composed entirely of Marine work vehi­cles approached from the rear. Soon Lieutenant Colonel Ed LaMontagne, the 3rd Marine Division embarkation officer who had decided to accompany the work vehicles from Phu Bai to the Hue LCU ramp, sought out Captain Batcheller. After the two briefly discussed the situation on the road and what might be going on at MACV, LaMontagne said that he thought Alpha/ 1/1 was moving too slowly. Captain Batcheller agreed, and he ordered his infantrymen to mount the tanks and trucks.

  The loss of Staff Sergeant Godfrey, earlier, had left Alpha/1/1's already overtaxed command echelon severely strained. Cap­tain Batcheller was the only company officer in attendance, and he had only one staff noncommissioned officer left to help control the troops—Gunnery Sergeant J L Canley, the company gunny. Canley was an exceptional veteran troop leader, but—with the infantry company command group, tanks, trucks, work vehicles, and two quad. 50 trucks to keep track of—he was spread too thin. The rifle platoons were commanded by junior sergeants. Captain Batcheller noticed that the sergeant leading the forward pla­toon—Staff Sergeant Godfrey's 2nd Platoon—was obviously anxious about his increased responsibilities, so the captain joined him atop the lead tank with his two radiomen and a corpsman. Batcheller wanted to be on hand to steady the novice platoon leader. The captain knew that the point was not the best place for the company commander to be, but he felt he had no choice.

  *

  As the column proceeded into the built-up area, Captain Batcheller directed his infantrymen to fire their weapons ahead and to the flanks to preempt or suppress potential ambushes. Even so, the lead portion of the convoy was struck by light small-arms fire. Then a volley of B-40 RPGs streaked out from no­where. The lead tank's upper works were struck. Captain Bat­cheller was untouched, but the senior corpsman was killed in­stantly and the battalion radioman sustained mortal injuries. Despite the incoming gunfire and RPGs, the convoy plunged forward and crossed the Phu Cam Canal over the An Cuu Bridge. Surprisingly, this vital span was not even outposted by enemy snipers.

  About 100 meters north of the An Cuu Bridge, the lead tank emerged from the 600-meter-long gauntlet into a large, open intersection with a traffic circle in the center. Though Batcheller had not seen them, as many as six ARVN M-41 tanks and at least one APC were arrayed around the traffic circle. These had been destroyed during the last of the 7th ARVN Armored Cavalry Battalion's four unsuccessful attempts to relieve the Citadel by attacking straight up Highway 1. In the last attempt, shortly after noon—less than an hour before Alpha/1/1 arrived—the ARVN battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Phan Huu Chi, had been killed when his command APC was gutted by a direct hit, probably from a B-40 rocket.

  As the column debouched into the intersection, the tanks, trucks, quad-.50 trucks, and work vehicles dispersed, and the company corpsmen went to work on the casualties. Captain Bat­cheller jumped down from the lead tank to assess the situation and reorganize Alpha/1/1.

  About fifty meters beyond the traffic circle, a huge sugar­cane field stretched out on both sides of the highway. Highway 1, which bisected the cane field in a straight line from southeast to northwest, was completely exposed atop a tree-lined causeway built upon a meter-and-a-half-high berm. A full kilometer away, on the other side of the field, was the southern edge of a heavily built-up area, the beginning of downtown Hue.

  As Captain Batcheller supervised the movement of casualties to cover and tried to establish radio contact with the 1/1 CP and various supporting-arms agencies, the commander of the lead tank asked if it would be okay to fire the tank's 90mm main gun. When Batcheller peered northward, he could see what looked like ARVN soldiers moving around in two small compounds beside the causeway, about halfway across the cane field. Figures that appeared to be Vietnamese civilians were moving on foot from west to east across the cane field. Batcheller cautioned the tanker to avoid shooting into the two compounds or at the civilians; otherwise, he didn't care what the tank fired at, and he allowed it to just pick out targets and erase them. The tank commander gave the captain a huge grin and ordered his gunner to commence firing. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Ed LaMontagne had taken charge of the quad-.50 trucks and deployed them forward so they, with their awesome firepower, also could engage targets in the cane field. Batcheller was not sure if the tank and quad-.50 gunners had clear targets or if they were just engaging likely enemy firing positions, but, either way, it was okay with him. The loud noise of the outgoing fire was music to his ears, and the incoming small-arms fire seemed to subside. Several mortar rounds detonated in the cane field and around the halted Marine column, but their source could not be determined.

  By then, most of the fog had lifted, and visibility had improved significantly. Captain Batcheller tried to call for air and artillery support, but, except for other radios on the Alpha/1/1 tactical net, all the nets to which he had access were clogged with Vietnamese-language traffic. Finally, using the radios in the lead tank, Batcheller made contact with Lieutenant Colonel Mark Gravel, the 1/1 battalion commander. Gravel said he was coming forward from Phu Bai and expected to catch up with Alpha/1/1 soon.

  After Gravel and Batcheller discussed the lack of specific information concerning enemy activity around Hue, Batcheller ordered his infantrymen and the tanks to advance to MACV. The infantrymen were to hug the right side of the tree-lined causeway berm, and the widely separated tanks were to advance on the roadway while the quad-.50 trucks remained in position near the traffic circle to cover the advance with their fire.

  Captain Batcheller and his company radioman stayed on the roadway, slightly behind the lead tank. From there, Batcheller could see fairly well and talk to the tank crew through the inter­com phone mounted on the tank's rear fender. From there, also, the company radioman stood the best chance of talking with the platoons or switching frequencies to contact Lieutenant Colonel Gravel or supporting-arms agencies.

  The tanks had advanced well down the causeway, with the infantry keeping pace below and to the right, when Captain Batcheller heard the impact of a round to his left rear. He turned and saw that a Navy officer who had been accompanying LaMontagne's heavy-equipment convoy had been shot in the leg.

  After hesitating for a split second, Batcheller stepped out from behind the protection of the lead tank and ran to the wounded man. He bent
to grab the man by the shoulders of his flak jacket and started pulling him sideways toward the tank, but a solid burst of gunfire ended the effort. The wounded man was killed; Batcheller was hit in both legs and his right forearm. The impact of the bullets threw Batcheller across the roadway, and he came to rest against the base of a tree.

  Batcheller was on his right side, entangled in a coil of concer­tina wire, unable to move. His back was to the main source of incoming fire—to the north—and bullets were occasionally hitting close to him. His right forearm was open from wrist to elbow, and there was a gaping hole in his right thigh. He did not know it yet, but his right femur was shattered.

  After assessing his wounds, Batcheller twisted his head around to see what he could see. He realized that he was directly in the line of fire. Fearful that his Marines would sacrifice themselves to rescue him, he yelled to those on the right side of the causeway to stay down, to leave him be. A short time later, Gunnery Sergeant J L Canley came up abreast of Batcheller, across the roadway, and Batcheller passed command of the com­pany to him with orders to carry out the mission. It was now up to the company gunny to get Alpha/1/1 to MACV. Canley wished Batcheller well and moved forward.

  There was nothing left for Gordon Batcheller to do except wait for the firing to subside and hope someone would eventually come back and rescue him. He looked up through the branches of the tree and saw the beautiful blue sky. Then he began to pray.

  ***

  Chapter 9

  Captain Chuck Meadows's Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines (Golf/2/5), was the temporary "palace guard" in Phu Bai on the afternoon of January 30—it was the only fully orga­nized infantry company in the combat base. The rest of 2/5 was stretched out in company-size packets south of Phu Bai, along Highway 1, as far south as Hai Van Pass. The entire battalion was new to northern I Corps; mainly, it had lived and fought for about a year in Quang Nam Province, to the south of Thua Thien Province.