Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  Intelligent and aggressive to a fault, Bernie Burnham felt his heart skip a beat when he heard Lieutenant Hausrath asking for a volunteer to cross the street.

  Lance Corporal Burnham was well aware of the automatic-weapons fire streaming up Ly Thuong Kiet Street from the left flank. He looked at the wide-eyed youngsters in his squad; turned to his senior fire-team leader; and said, through abject fear, "It's your squad." To the others he said, "You guys give me some cover fire."

  The courtyard wall of the chemistry building was fairly high, and Burnham knew better than to climb over it. So the courtyard was evacuated, and a 3.5-inch rocket: was expended to create a fairly large sally port roughly in the center of the barrier. The dust had not yet cleared when Burnham stepped through the hole into Ly Thuong Kiet Street. He advanced all of three or four steps and was knocked on his butt by streams of rifle and ma­chine-gun fire. His left foot was on fire where a bullet had gone through it, but he was otherwise unscathed—an authentic mira­cle. Instinctively, Burnham crawled through flying concrete and masonry chips and wedged himself beneath a truck parked just to the right of the hole in the wall. From there, he yelled back, "I'm hit!" Sergeant Willard Scott, the platoon guide, told him to hang on where he was.

  Five minutes later, as Burnham was wondering how long he would have to hang on, a fire team from his squad, led by Lance Corporal Wayne Washburn, emerged onto the street from around the left side of the courtyard wall and made an oblique dash for the treasury gate. No sooner had Lance Corporal Burnham seen the four Marines than the NVA across the street poured a with­ering fire into them. Right in front of the gate, Lance Corporal Washburn was shot through the head, and at least two other Marines were also wounded.

  Burnham saw his opportunity. While the NVA troops were occupied with Washburn's fire team, the wounded squad leader crawled out from beneath the truck and bolted through the hole in the wall, between Marines who were furiously firing at the treasury to suppress the NVA fire. Seconds later, the truck was demolished by a B-40 rocket.

  The Marines inside the courtyard were doing everything they could to suppress the massive NVA fire, but the NVA had the upper hand. Staff Sergeant Jim McCoy, the 3rd Platoon's platoon sergeant, saw a B-40 rocket explode right in front of Lance Corporal Roger Warren's M-60 team. McCoy was sure that Warren and his assistant had been killed in the blast, but through the cloud of dust and debris McCoy heard someone cough. Then he heard Warren's voice saying, "Fuck this shit! We're not staying here anymore!" Both M-60 gunners had been injured. The assistant had to be evacuated, but Warren refused treatment.

  Once inside the courtyard, Burnham learned that his entire squad had been sent out through another hole in the left side of the courtyard. A minute later, aided by intense covering fire from the rest of the platoon, everyone in Burnham's squad had re­turned to the courtyard—everyone except Lance Corporal Wash-burn, who had been in the forefront of the attack. He had fallen too far forward to be safely retrieved.

  Lance Corporal Burnham waited to have the hole in his foot bound by one of the docs. A hulking, likable M-79 grenadier-Private Jerry Dankworth—was deposited next to him. Dank-worth, whose only dream in life was to return home to become a preacher, had suffered what looked to Burnham like horrible, mutilating wounds in both legs. At least, as far as Burnham could see, the legs of Dankworth's trousers were shredded and bloody. Burnham was so stunned by Dankworth's apparent condition that he told the doc to skip his relatively minor wound and get to work on Dankworth. Unbelievably, Dankworth's injuries were superficial, and he was returned to duty as soon as they were treated.

  As soon as Burnham left the aid station, he decided that it was time to retrieve Lance Corporal Washburn. Marines along the wall said they thought the fire-team leader was moving a little, so maybe his head wound had not been fatal. There was only one way to find out, but, before Bernie Burnham could squeeze through the hole in the wall, an amazing thing hap­pened.

  Private First Class William Barnes had joined Fox/2/5 only that day. He was one of the rear-area technicians who had volun­teered or been pulled out of his job at Phu Bai to help restore 2/5's bloodied infantry companies. The luck of the draw had seen him assigned to Fox/2/5's 3rd Platoon. No one in the platoon knew Barnes when he arrived, and he knew no one in the platoon.

  Yet before Bernie Burnham could go back out onto fire-swept Ly Thuong Kiet to retrieve his friend, Wayne Washburn, William Barnes beat him to it. The young mechanic, whose name nobody in the 3rd Platoon knew, rushed straight into the fire— and was shot from his feet several meters short of Washburn. Barnes was down, and he wasn't moving.

  Now there were two dead or dying Marines in the street.

  *

  A pair of M-48 tanks was brought forward to fire target suppression at both the treasury and the Public Health Complex. Hotel/2/5 was stalled in its bid to breast the enemy fire coming from the Public Health Complex, and further efforts to rescue Lance Corporal Washburn and recover Private First Class Barnes were being stymied by the .51-caliber machine gun that could sweep Ly Thuong Kiet Street from Le Loi Primary School. The tanks were seen as the best weapons available for breaking both deadlocks.

  The tank crews, by now, were getting the hang of city fight­ing. The plan was that, alternating turns, each would roll up to the head of Truong Dinh Street, the Fox/2/5-Hotel/2/5 boun­dary, fire their .50-caliber machine guns and 90mm main guns at either the Public Health Complex or Le Loi Primary, and then immediately withdraw. During its first sally, the first tank was struck on the glacis plate by a B-40 rocket, but the tank returned to action after the driver got the bells in his head to stop ringing. By then, Hotel/2/5's 2nd Platoon had crossed Ly Thuong Kiet.

  The tanks expended a total of twenty rounds of 90mm and 400 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition against the treasury and Le Loi Primary, but without apparent effect. Two B-40 rockets struck one of the tanks and one B-40 rocket struck the other. After that, both tanks were withdrawn by their dazed crewmen.

  *

  Two 3rd Platoon Marines were still down in the street, only a few meters beyond Lance Corporal Bernie Burnham's reach. When the word arrived that the tanks were withdrawing, Burn-ham yelled "Cover me!" and headed right through the hole in the courtyard wall, right out into Ly Thuong Kiet Street again. Behind Burnham was Sergeant Willard Scott, the 3rd Platoon guide.

  For some unfathomable reason, from some unknowable im­pulse, the NVA were merciful. Some fired at the two Marines, but most of them just watched. Burnham passed Private First Class Barnes's dead body and pulled Lance Corporal Washburn up over his shoulder. Then, as Scott covered him, he lumbered away to the right, toward the building next door to the courtyard in which the 3rd Platoon was holed up. Altogether, it was a fifty-meter run.

  Once inside the building, Burnham and Scott tore a door loose from its hinges and placed Washburn on the door. The back of the wounded man's head had been blown out, and he was bleeding profusely, but Burnham was certain he was still alive. To Burnham he felt alive. With the help of several other Marines they pressed into service, Burnham and Scott carried the improvised litter through several buildings and open areas. When they emerged onto Highway 1, they commandeered a passing Mechan­ical Mule that was loaded with ammunition. They dumped the ammunition into the street and loaded Washburn aboard; he was driven to MACV. When Burnham and the others last saw him, the fire-team leader was still alive, but he died in Phu Bai the next day.

  By the time Lance Corporal Burnham and Sergeant Scott returned to the courtyard across from the treasury, it was getting dark. To their chagrin, they learned that Private First Class Barnes's body was still in the middle of Ly Thuong Kiet Street. No one had even tried to retrieve it after Burnham and Scott had carried Wayne Washburn to safety. Scott settled the matter by assigning the job to four Marines he picked at random. One of the men he picked was Lance Corporal Ernie Weiss, who had helped to recover Sergeant John Maloney's body the previous evening. Sergeant Scott told him and the others to le
ave their rifles, web belts, helmets, and flak jackets in the courtyard. It was pitch dark by then, so speed was better than being armed or armored.

  It took all of a minute. The Marines crept through the hole in the wall, grabbed Barnes's stiff corpse by the clothing, and dragged him back through the hole in the wall. It was too late and too dangerous to evacuate Barnes to MACV, so they placed his body beside the building and covered it with a poncho.

  Late in the evening of February 3, a panicked Time-Life correspondent told Sergeant Scott and Lance Corporal Burnham that the NVA were going to mount a counterattack out of the treasury. How do you deal with a fantasyland newscast from the enemy camp? While rooting through the high school chemistry lab, Sergeant Scott had found a case of Carling Black Label beer. This he graciously shared with Lance Corporal Burnham while they stood watch together on the porch. As Burnham and Scott drank beer on the porch, a half dozen younger Marines played raucous, cacophonous music on a trove of band instruments they found in the music room.

  Nothing at all happened that night. For Fox/2/5, the worst part of the dark hours was the damp, chilly air. The company had grounded its packs when it went into action on January 31 at Troi Bridge, and no one had seen his personal gear since. Some of the Marines had rain suits, but these didn't keep out the cold at all. Despite persistent rumors about NVA counterattacks, the troops were more concerned about the bone-chilling night air than about the danger from the enemy.

  By the evening of February 3, the Marines in Fox/2/5 certainly knew something about waging war in a city, but the price of that knowledge had come very high. From Fox/2/5, several men had been wounded and medevacked, one man had been killed outright, and one would soon be dead. And all for no gain.

  ***

  Chapter 18

  Fox/2/5 and Hotel/2/5 were slated to jump off across Ly Thuong Kiet Street once again at 0700, February 4. As before, Fox/2/5 was charged with seizing the treasury building, and Hotel/2/5's objective was the Public Health Complex. Though Hotel/2/5 had taken the complex the previous afternoon, it had had to withdraw its vanguard platoon after dark because Fox/ 2/5 had made no headway at all. There was every reason to believe that Hotel/2/5 could repeat the previous day's success, and everything that could be done to assist Fox/2/5 was being done.

  During the night, Captain Ron Christmas had realized he had committed a grave tactical error in preparing for the Febru­ary 3 afternoon attack. Rather than employing the company's M-60 machine guns to establish the strongest possible bases of fire, Christmas had allowed the M-60 teams to remain attached to the rifle platoons. The result was that the bush-trained machine gunners had employed their potent 7.62mm weapons as assault rifles rather than as medium machine guns. On the morning of February 4, Christmas repositioned most of the tripod-mounted M-60s, placing them on the roof and in the upper-story windows of the university, facing the Public Health Complex.

  Adding appreciably to 2/5's firepower that morning was most of Golf/2/5. Elements of Golf/2/5 were posted with 3.5-inch rocket launchers and M-60 machine guns high up and along the southeast side of the university. Their primary target was the Le Loi Primary School, from which at least one NVA .51-caliber machine gun had fired on the attacking Hotel/2/5 Marines on February 3.

  Another twist unique to city fighting had become apparent in the waning hours of February 3. Quite naturally, the 3.5-inch rocketmen had aimed their weapons through open windows of enemy-held buildings in the hope of killing the defenders inside. The success rate had been stunningly low. The rockets did not detonate until they hit something solid, and, when they did, the blast was in the direction the rocket was going—away from the NVA manning the windows. Late-night bull sessions resulted in new orders to all the rocketmen. On the morning of February 4, they fired their rockets around—rather than through—the win­dows from which the NVA were firing, counting on the blast to send masonry shards and shrapnel ricocheting around the room to cut down the men inside.

  The Hotel/2/5 dawn attack jumped off under covering fire from M-60s, 3.5-inch rocket launchers, M-79 grenades, and LAAWs. The fire was augmented by twenty-five 81mm mortar rounds directed by Fox/2/5's 81mm forward observer. Firing the 81mm mortars was particularly nerve-racking because the nearest targets were actually within the minimum firing range of the weapons. The solution to this anomaly was provided by the mortar platoon commander, Gunnery Sergeant Lawrence Bargaheiser, a grizzled veteran and a superb mortarman. In the univer­sity courtyard, the six 81mm tubes were erected on their bipods at virtually vertical elevation, and the rounds were fired with minimum charges for the least possible range. As the rounds were lofted above the university roof, the steady southerly breeze off the Perfume River carried them just far enough to the south­west to tilt them into the NVA positions for which they were meant. Altogether, it was a masterful display of technical profi­ciency.

  For all the fire support, however, Hotel/2/5's lead pla­toon—once again, Staff Sergeant Johnny Miller's 2nd—ran into exactly the sort of fire that had stymied the attacks of February 3. Once again, NVA in high buildings fired down into the street, and the heavy-machine-gun nest in Le Loi Primary cut the attack off at its knees. NVA, hidden in other positions west of Ly Thuong Kiet, blasted away at the University, forcing Marines in the windows to duck or die.

  Hotel/2/5's attack across Ly Thuong Kiet was getting ex­actly nowhere until the lance corporal commanding one of the 106mm recoilless rifles approached Captain Christmas with an original idea. The 106 gunner pointed out that the deadliest fire was coming from way to the left, apparently from a .51-caliber in the basement of the Le Loi Primary School. He also pointed out that the backblast from his 106 could throw up enough debris to cover a rush across the street. The way the lance corporal had it figured, he and his assistant gunner could roll their 106 into the street on its Mechanical Mule and fire at Le Loi Primary to suppress or maybe even destroy the .51-caliber machine gun. As soon as the 106 fired, Captain Christmas could mount a platoon attack through the dust and debris thrown up by the backblast. The big advantage was that, unlike an attack through smoke, the NVA wouldn't know what was going on until it had already happened.

  Christmas asked the lance corporal if he really understood what he was volunteering to do. "Sure," the gunner said, and he was eager to begin. With that, Captain Christmas alerted Staff Sergeant Miller's 2nd Platoon to cross Ly Thuong Kiet as soon as the 106 fired.

  Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham got wind of the plan and decided to take a personal role in perfecting it. While the 106 crew was getting ready to go, Cheatham eased out a side door of the university and advanced up Truong Dinh Street to fire-swept Ly Thuong Kiet. There he tucked his six-foot four-inch frame behind a telephone pole. Cheatham peeked across Fox/2/5's front and toward Le Loi Primary. He saw the muzzle flash and the telltale green tracers of an NVA .51-caliber machine gun coming from a window right at street level.

  The battalion commander got down in a kneeling position behind the telephone pole and watched for several moments. He noticed that when the NVA machine gun fired at targets on the southwest side of Ly Thuong Kiet—the side the treasury and Public Health complex were on—it fired low. However, as the gunner brought the barrel around to lay on targets on the north­east side of the street, the stream of tracer rose. It seemed as though the gun was obstructed by something. Cheatham became convinced that the gun fired so high to its right that there was no way he could be hit if he stepped into the street to mark the target for the 106 gunners.

  Armed with this vital information, Cheatham went back into the university courtyard to lay out a plan of action with the 106 crew. The crew would bounce the Mechanical Mule down the front steps of the university, right out into Ly Thuong Kiet; he would mark the target with tracer rounds, the only type of ammunition he—and other senior Marine commanders—carried, precisely for situations like the one at hand.

  Ernie Cheatham went back to the telephone pole and sighted in on the target. He couldn't quite get a round
on it, so he leaned out for a better shot. His next round hit near the target, and the target tried to hit him. But, though the green tracer snapped and cracked right over his head, the .51-cal gunner could not hit the Marine battalion commander.

  Then, exactly as planned, the Mechanical Mule bounced right down the front steps and into the middle of the street. Instantly, as the gunners turned the recoilless rifle to bear on Le Loi Primary, the NVA machine gun traversed to bear on them. The gunners were standing hip deep in green tracer.

  Cheatham fired his M-16 marking rounds right at the target window; the 106 gunner squatted down behind the sight and twisted aiming wheels while the assistant gunner loaded a high-explosive round into the breech. "Fire the fifty," the gunner called, as if he were practicing gun drill on a Stateside range. "Fire the fifty," the assistant responded as he thumbed a half-inch tracer round into the .50-caliber single-shot spotting rifle set atop the 106mm barrel. As the world was blowing up around him, the gunner fired the tracer round and watched it strike near, but not on, the spot Ernie Cheatham's tracer was hitting.

  The gunner corrected his aim. "Fire the fifty," he yelled. "Fire the fifty," the assistant gunner yelled back. The second marking round curved down along Ly Thuong Kiet and struck closer to the target, but not quite on it.

  With the street around him awash in the light of green tracer, the 106 gunner corrected his aim once again. "Fire the fifty," he yelled for the third time. "Fire the fifty," the assistant gunner responded in a still resolute voice. The third .50-caliber tracer struck the northern face of Le Loi Primary right in among Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham's M-16 marking rounds.