by Eric Hammel
*
On February 5 the 1st Marines regimental objective remained the same: 1/1 and 2/5 were to continue their attacks to secure the Thua Thien Provincial Prison and the provincial administrative complex. Four long blocks lay between the objectives and the line 2/5 had held during the night of February 4-5, and there was no reason to suspect that the 4th NVA Regiment soldiers holding the masonry buildings along the way would be any more willing to give them up than they had been willing to give up the treasury or the Public Health Complex.
Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham's 2/5 was ready to go on, but Lieutenant Colonel Mark Gravel's 1/1 had just about run out of steam. Despite being brought partly back to strength by the arrival of its officers and nearly a full platoon of stragglers, 2nd Lieutenant Ray Smith's Alpha/1/1 was used up. It had endured much and had suffered numerous casualties, particularly among its veteran enlisted leaders. Moreover, the entire 1st Platoon had been detached to outpost the battalion's southern flank. First Lieutenant Gordon Matthews's Bravo/1/1 was not even a standard infantry company. Composed mainly of pickup squads of headquarters technicians and weapons specialists, the company was not completely viable as a tactical unit. The Marines who remained operational in Gravel's demibattalion gave it their all, but the task of clearing the enormous Jeanne d'Arc complex was beyond their capabilities, and little progress had been made there on February 4.
On the other hand, Ernie Cheatham was a happy, incredulous man. The 2/5 commander had fully expected that Fox/2/5 would remain stymied in front of the treasury for some time. He was therefore surprised and gratified when Fox/2/5's Captain Mike Downs had reported that the treasury complex was secure. Even more gratifying was the late-afternoon exploitative attack by Hotel/2/5 and Golf/2/5. This attack had taken 2/5 across Le Dinh Duong Street and resulted in the bloodless occupation of the French Cultural Center, on the northwest side of Le Loi Street. That night, Cheatham hoped that these quick, cheap victories heralded a softening in the NVA's opposition.
For all Ernie Cheatham's hopes, however, there were ample indications that the NVA were preparing to defend the city blocks in front of 2/5 in considerable strength. During the evening of February 4, the trickle of civilian refugees arriving from the southwest had turned into a flood of several hundred Vietnamese citizens—and, mercifully, five American civilians, most of them teachers or medical workers. The Vietnamese civilians had been passed on to the Vietnamese civil authorities, but the Americans had been questioned at length in the hope of turning up possible leads regarding NVA intentions and plans. The news was grim. According to the American civilians, the NVA and VC had taken over Hue Central Hospital as a military hospital and were fortifying it. Scores of seriously wounded Communist soldiers were being treated in beds from which civilians had been forcibly evicted.
*
The day's fighting south of the Perfume kicked off at 0530, on the south flank of 1/1 sector, where 2nd Lieutenant William Donnelly's 1st Platoon of Alpha/1/1 was outposting the Jeanne d'Arc Student Center. As Sergeant Joe Burghardt, Donnelly's platoon sergeant, was preparing the troops to move out, somebody yelled, "There's gooks outside!"
Sergeant Burghardt dropped what he was doing and ran toward the source of the shout. At a second-story window overlooking the Student Center courtyard, a Marine told Burghardt that at least three NVA soldiers were in a stand of palm trees inside the compound. Burghardt peeked out the window and saw the three NVA soldiers peeking back at him. The trees were only eight meters away from the building.
Burghardt ran down to a first-floor window in the opposite wing of the L-shaped building. From there he could see the NVA from their rear, without being seen by them. As Burghardt raised his M-16 to take aim at the nearest of the enemy soldiers, Marines in front of the NVA opened fire. The bases of the palm trees were wide enough for the enemy soldiers to hide behind, so they just hunkered down, out of danger from their front. However, Sergeant Burghardt nailed two of them from behind; someone else killed the third one.
Shortly after the shooting stopped, three Vietnamese women and a Vietnamese priest emerged from a tiny outbuilding on the far side of the courtyard. They told the Marines that they had been held captive by the NVA since January 31 and had just been released that morning. They had been debating the advisability of entering the Marine position when the three NVA filtered into the compound. As soon as the NVA soldiers were dead, the four frightened civilians decided that the moment to seek Marine refuge had definitely arrived.
*
Captain Ron Christmas's Hotel/2/5 led 2/5's efforts with a sweep to clear the area around the house its 1st Platoon had captured the previous afternoon. Hotel/2/5 accomplished this swiftly, against light opposition. Meanwhile, Fox/2/5 was once again scouring the area between the treasury and post office and Le Dinh Duong Street. When the area had been cleared to everyone's satisfaction, Fox/2/5 and Hotel/2/5 began advancing cautiously into new territory to the southwest.
At 0829, members of Fox/2/5's 3rd Platoon were checking out a building the NVA had given up without a fight when they discovered a handful of live U.S. Air Force officers and enlisted communicators who had been hiding there since the morning of January 31. In fact, this was the hostel and these were the men that Fox/2/5's 2nd Platoon had been sent to rescue as soon as it had arrived in Hue on February 1.
By 0834, Fox/2/5's 1st Platoon, on the company right, had advanced an entire block without opposition. The 1st Platoon occupied the neighborhood municipal police station, at the end of Truong Dinh Street.
*
By 0840, Captain Chuck Meadows's fully recommitted Golf/2/5 had progressed unimpeded through the riverfront parkland northwest of Le Loi Street. It had reached the Cercle Sportif, the high-class club that, in better days, had been the social center for Hue's French and Vietnamese upper classes. According to rumor, the Cercle Sportif complex was a nest of NVA and was heavily fortified. Golf/2/5 was ready for a bloody fight.
While trying to sneak into the Cercle Sportif complex, Golf/2/5's lead element—a cut-down squad—became pinned behind a knee-high stone wall at the entrance. They called for help, and a half dozen fellow Marines crawled forward.
As the entire group lay behind the fire-swept wall and prepared for the inevitable rush, Private First Class Doug Blayney saw someone crawling along the bank of the river, which was only a few meters to the right. Blayney assumed it was a fellow Marine until he saw that the man had a B-40 launcher strapped to his back. Carefully, Blayney centered the enemy soldier in the sights of his M-16 and fired three rounds. The NVA soldier slumped and lay motionless. However, Blayney's fire drew the wrath of an RPG gunner, who slammed an RPG into the wall behind which the Marines were hiding. The roar of the explosion was deafening, and several of the Marines were caught in the fallout. Blayney took a sliver of steel in the palm of his right hand.
The NVA fire remained intense, but a Marine M-60 team eventually worked its way up to the wall. A Marine who had been shot several times in the legs was dragged to the rear. Finally, a 106mm recoilless rifle was manhandled into position opposite the main building. Just one round from it caused an immediate abatement of the NVA fire. Golf/2/5 attacked in strength and entered the lavish sports center without further opposition.
The roof of the Cercle Sportif afforded Golf/2/5 a wonderful all-around view. The Perfume River was just to the north, and the Citadel, from which thick columns of smoke were rising, was in plain view. Also in plain view was 2/5's next objective, the multiblock warren of the Hue Central Hospital complex. But before the attack into the hospital could commence, Hotel/2/5 and Fox/2/5 had to fight their way abreast of Golf/2/5's advanced position.
*
Captain Christmas's Hotel/2/5 advanced down the narrow residential block in the center of the 2/5 zone. The 3rd Platoon and its commander, 2nd Lieutenant Mike Lambert, were chasing a covey of NVA when Lambert passed a Vietnamese girl lying face-down in a driveway. Her shiny black hair was neatly braided, and she
wore a crisp white blouse and a blue plaid jumper. To Lambert, the clothing brought back memories of parochial-school girls he had known at home. In fact, the elegant two-story home outside of which she lay reminded the lieutenant strongly of similar homes in his native Atlanta. The girl looked to be about fourteen years old, and the congealing blood around her suggested that she had been shot only minutes before. It was plain to see that she was dead, but no one wanted to move her to be sure, because the NVA sometimes booby-trapped bodies. The dead girl was not the most grisly sight Lieutenant Lambert had witnessed or would witness in Hue, but her innocence and the random violence that had ended her young life affected him profoundly.
*
At 0850, Hotel/2/5's lead platoon entered the Hue University Library, directly between the Cercle Sportif and the municipal police station at the end of Truong Dinh Street. Thus, by 0900, 2/5 had taken its entire objective for the day—and with only minimal opposition. The whole battalion was now arrayed along Le Thanh Ton Street, an east-west thoroughfare that cut across the battalion front at a 45-degree angle between the river, on Golf/2/5's right, and Tran Cao Van Street, on Fox/2/5's left. Though Mark Gravel's 1/1 was stalled a full block to Fox/2/5's left rear, Ernie Cheatham decided to keep going for as long as he could. He felt he had the enemy on the run—this was certainly no time to wait for 1/1 to clear the opposition on its front and advance abreast. As soon as all three of his companies were in line along Le Thanh Ton, Cheatham ordered the entire battalion to advance into the vast network of buildings that made up the Hue Central Hospital complex.
***
Chapter 24
By about 0900, February 5, the 4th NVA Regiment had conceded a complete city block to 2/5, but that was the limit of its largess. As soon as Captain Ron Christmas's Hotel/2/5 jumped off toward the Hue Central Hospital, NVA soldiers emplaced in buildings across the Marine company's front opened fire with small arms, machine guns, and B-40s.
*
Fox/2/5's advance into an empty triangle of parkland south of Le Thanh Ton was uncontested. But as soon as Captain Mike Downs's company pivoted back to the southwest to face the hospital across Nguyen Thai Street, it was stopped by the NVA who were already contesting Hotel/2/5's advance.
Fox/2/5 was further hampered by the need to watch its open left flank. By then 1/1 was several hundred meters to Fox/2/ 5's left rear, so Staff Sergeant Jim McCoy, the platoon sergeant of Fox/2/5's 3rd Platoon, was given Sergeant Chuck Ekker's squad and an M-60 team and ordered to seal the gap.
The outpost assignment was tantamount to giving Sergeant Ekker's squad the morning off. In fact, as soon as they had secured the second floor of the building, Ekker's Marines decided to take a break and chow down on some recently acquired booty—a large can of fruit cocktail mixed with a large can of chocolate syrup.
As they were dividing up the treat, one of the men called out to Corporal Arkie Allbritton and said he could see men in uniforms moving around on the flank. Allbritton looked out the window, but, by then, the men had disappeared. He asked the squad radioman to call back to the company CP to ask if any Marines were supposed to be out that way. The answer was "Negative. If it's got a uniform on, it's NVA."
Allbritton ordered the Marine lookout to fire a few rounds toward where he had last seen the intruders. Lance Corporal Roger Warren, the M-60 team leader, also opened fire. The Marine fire was answered instantly by B-40 rockets that blew out most of the upper-story wall of Staff Sergeant McCoy's building. When the dust settled, wounded Marines lay everywhere. When Lance Corporal Warren, the M-60 gunner, regained his senses, he found that the force of the blast had hurled him through an interior wall and into the next room.
Sergeant Ekker, Corporal Allbritton, and Staff Sergeant McCoy organized an evacuation of the wounded to the first floor. Everyone else in the building fired at the unseen targets. Among the shooters was Lance Corporal Warren, who, after being carried downstairs with painful wounds in both legs, had picked up a discarded M-16 and crawled to a window from which he could fire at the NVA.
Sergeant Ekker's squad was so badly riddled that it was replaced on the battalion flank by a squad of Fox/2/5's 1st Platoon. On the way out the door, Staff Sergeant McCoy warned the new arrivals to stay away from the southern windows, because of B-40 fire. He was hardly out of the building before he heard someone yell "There goes one of them now!" and the sound of an M-16 popping off through one of the .southern windows. The NVA teams across the way started blasting the building anew, and more Marines were hurt.
Getting the casualties to the rear was a hair-raising venture. As the withdrawing Marines carried piggyback the nonambulatory wounded, NVA snipers made a game of firing into the ground at their feet. Enraged, Corporal Arkie Allbritton turned to Corporal Ray Stewart, who had sustained some shrapnel wounds, and said, "Stew, get rid of those guys for me, will you?" Stewart was carrying Lance Corporal Roger Warren's M-60 machine gun because Warren, despite his leg wounds, was humping another wounded Marine on his back. Stewart and Lance Corporal Ken Crysel turned and stood in the open to engage the NVA snipers, but the very first round misfired. Coolly, Corporal Stewart cleared the jam and opened fire again. He knew he was supposed to fire short bursts to keep the M-60 from jamming, but he fired full tilt into the sniper's position, never releasing pressure on the trigger until the NVA fire petered out. By that time Lance Corporal Warren's borrowed M-60 was a dead loss; its barrel was burned out and warped.
In all, twelve 3rd Platoon Marines had been hit, but only eight were treated. Three were returned to duty that day, but five—including a motor-transport mechanic who had joined Fox/2/5 the previous evening—had to be evacuated to Phu Bai. Since Corporal Ray Stewart had already received two Purple Hearts, his shrapnel wounds were bound to get him shipped home. Because the wounds were light and did not impair him, he chose to ignore them and stay with his platoon. He was not counted in the day's official casualty tally. Neither was Corporal Allbritton, for the same reason.
And neither was Lance Corporal Roger Warren, who had also already received two Purple Hearts. Warren had failed to have a third set of serious wounds treated after he sustained them while clearing the treasury on February 4, and he ignored the painful leg wounds he had sustained on February 5. In the end, Roger Warren's bravery and extreme devotion to his platoon earned him a Navy Cross.
*
The NVA unit facing Hotel/2/5 and Golf/2/5 must have been reinforced, because at 1030 NVA fire just about doubled. At length, the 81mm mortar forward observer with Golf/2/5 called a fire mission, and, under cover of the mortar barrage and Golf/2/5's base of fire, the right-flank platoon of Hotel/2/5 rushed across Nguyen Thai Street and seized an NVA-held building. The rush cost the NVA eight killed against five Marines wounded and evacuated and three Marines with minor wounds.
For the next two hours, 2/5 was stalemated, but there were no casualties despite heavy exchanges of fire. Then, at 1240, Communist RPG teams facing Golf/2/5 on the southwest side of the Cercle Sportif launched five B-40s. The RPG blasts and an accompanying fusillade of machine-gun fire wounded six Marines. In response, Marine gunfire and three 3.5-inch rockets killed six NVA and opened the way for a flank attack by a squad from Hotel/2/5. This, in turn, opened the way for Hotel/2/5's seizure of an adjacent building. But the NVA in a nearby bunker stymied hot pursuit by firing eight B-40s and many automatic weapons. In retaliation, the Marines fired fifteen 3.5-inch rockets into the enemy bunker and followed up with an uncontested direct assault. Ten fresh NVA corpses were found in the ruins.
On 2/5's extreme left flank, Fox/2/5 was struck by intense small-arms fire and five B-40 rockets. The Marines returned the small-arms fire in kind, added a dozen M-79 fragmentation grenades, and called a thirty-round 60mm mortar mission. The fight turned into a standoff until a Marine Ontos worked its way forward. Lightly armored, the 106mm recoilless-rifle carrier was extremely vulnerable to small-arms fire, but the two-man crew managed to work it into a semicovered position from which it coul
d fire its six 106mm ready rounds at the enemy-held building. As the Ontos fired its last round, the Fox/2/5 Marines were off and running toward the objective. The dazed NVA survivors were easily driven from the structure. Four freshly killed NVA were found in the rubble.
*
On February 4, after the fight inside the treasury complex, Lance Corporal Ernie Weiss had been elevated to the command of the remnants of his 3rd Platoon squad. The squad consisted of himself, one veteran rifleman, a veteran radioman without a radio, and three stranded truck drivers who had just arrived in Hue. Now, twenty-four hours later, Lance Corporal Weiss was marveling at an array of Bunsen burners and other esoteric equipment in a hospital laboratory. He decided to leave his squad inside the laboratory building and step out to the front porch to see what he could see.
Weiss had no sooner arrived on the porch than he saw an NVA soldier dart into the open, crossing an alleyway. The squad grenadier, who had followed Weiss out of the lab, dropped an M-79 fragmentation round right in front of the NVA soldier. The force of the blast struck the enemy in the chest and knocked him to the ground. Weiss raised his M-16 and fired once. The bullet hit the man in the temple.
There were other NVA firing on Weiss's position, so he fired the rest of his magazine and then knelt with his back against a wall so he could reload. A B-40 slammed into the wall less than a meter to Weiss's left, right where he had been standing when he shot the wounded NVA. Weiss emerged from the blast with a mouthful of dust and gravel, but he felt okay. However, as he tried to raise his rifle, he felt a burning sensation spread up and down his left arm and leg. With each beat of his heart, the burning intensified, and his limbs grew increasingly stiff. Still unable to grasp the fact that he had been wounded, Weiss picked up his left arm with his right hand and saw that the sleeve of his field jacket was shredded and oozing blood. So was the left leg of his trousers. "I'm hit," he yelled or thought, and he crawled back into the building.