Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  Inside the building, Weiss saw Sergeant Willard Scott, the 3rd Platoon guide. "Scotty, they have a rocket team out there. They have us zeroed."

  "Ho, Hoss," Scott responded, "we'll take care of it." And he turned to leave by the opposite door.

  "Yo, Scotty," Weiss called after him, "do you think if I get to a corpsman I won't bleed to death?"

  Scott turned on his heel, a puzzled expression on his face. He leaned down close to Weiss. He realized that Weiss had sustained dozens of tiny shrapnel and stone-fragment wounds along his left side. Scott called a corpsman, and Weiss began the long journey to Phu Bai. As a squad leader, he had lasted exactly twenty-four hours.

  At 1300, on 2/5's left flank, the NVA hit Hotel/2/5 with rifle fire and two rounds from a captured M-79. The Marines returned fire and killed at least one NVA soldier. At the same time, the main body of Alpha/1/1, which was still mired in the Jeanne d'Arc complex, was engaged by NVA small-arms fire and two B-40 rockets. The Marines responded with everything from M-16s and M-60s to twenty 106mm recoilless rifle rounds. For good measure, a Marine tank supporting 1/1 struck the enemy position with fifteen rounds from its 90mm main gun. One Marine was killed in the exchange, and four Marines were wounded and evacuated. Later, four dead NYA were pulled from the fortified position at the focus of the Marine fire.

  As the Marines advanced, scores of civilians emerged from the rubble of their homes and the many public buildings. At one point, a large group of teaching nuns entered Fox/2/5's position from their hiding place in the National Nurses' Training Center, just off 2/5's left flank. The constant stream of frightened civil­ians, many of them wounded, hampered the company command­ers, who were forced to provide troops to escort the refugees out of the battle zone.

  *

  Shortly after 1300, 2/5 halted for two hours to reorganize and take on an ammunition resupply. Then, in some of the heavi­est fighting of the day, Golf/2/5 attacked southward, across Hotel/2/5's front, right into one of the main hospital buildings. The objective was strongly defended, and Golf/2/5 became embroiled in a meter-by-meter, room-by-room battle of wills.

  Private First Class Doug Blayney was helping to clear the first ward building the Marines had captured when he stopped to peer out into a narrow alleyway. It was his turn to go first. Another Marine stood by a window to cover the facing doors and windows. Blayney stepped into the open. As he ran to the oppo­site door, he heard the crack-whiz of a near miss, but he made it.

  Propped in the doorway to provide cover for the next Ma­rine, Blayney thought he saw a hint of movement in a second-story window. As he raised his M-16 to fire, he saw a muzzle flash in the window and felt something hit him. He was knocked down, and the M-16 in his hand was shattered. Too scared to move for fear of being shot again, Doug Blayney just lay in the doorway and prayed. All around him, men were shouting and shooting. Then he felt a tug at his flak jacket as someone he could not see pulled him out of the exposed doorway. It was Blayney's platoon sergeant, who asked if Blayney was okay and if he knew where the round that had hit him had come from. Blayney told him about the flash in the second-floor window, and the sergeant had a grenadier fire an M-79 round into the opening.

  Piecing the action together later, Blayney realized that the AK-47 bullet had hit his Ml 6 just as he was raising it to sight in on the window. The M-16 prevented the bullet from hitting him square in the forehead. Instead, it had cut the M-16 in half, gone through his left index finger, and lodged in the meaty part of his left thumb. That ended Doug Blayney's involvement in Hue. He was evacuated to Phu Bai by helicopter that evening.

  In most cases, whenever a new building or room in the hospital complex fell into Marine hands, the only signs of recent NVA occupation were little piles of spent brass AK-47 cartridges and, rarely, a blood trail. Civilian patients from medical wards silently indicated that NVA were close by, but they also made it clear with body language that they were not about to get in­volved.

  *

  At 1600, while waiting for Golf/2/5 to cross its front, Hotel/2/5 was struck by small-arms fire and RPGs from a position practically on top of the opposing Marine position. As was typical by then, the Hotel/2/5 Marines responded massively to the NVA challenge. They expended over 1,500 rounds from M-16s and M-60s, four 106mm recoilless rifle rounds, and six 3.5-inch rockets. For good measure, the Marines threw in a quick assault and secured the NVA position. In this exchange alone, seven Marines were wounded and evacuated, against eight NVA killed and one wounded NVA captured. In addition, the Marines captured two AK-47s, three M-l carbines, and a pair of B-40 rocket launchers.

  Also at 1600, on the 2/5 left flank, Fox/2/5 opened an attack on a building in a cultivated field to its left front. As the NVA resistance stiffened, the Marines softened the building up with intense small-arms fire supplemented with 106mm fire from an Ontos, 81mm mortar fire, and 3.5-inch rocket fire. Then the Marines attacked. The objective was seized at a loss of two Americans wounded against seven more NVA killed.

  Golf/2/5 continued to inch forward into the hospital com­plex, toward its objective, until the NVA defenders finally broke and ran at 1632. By the end of the 92-minute assault—in which Marine tanks, 106mm recoilless rifles, and 3.5-inch rocket launchers played pivotal roles—Captain Chuck Meadows's com­pany had lost five more wounded. The Golf/2/5 Marines found four dead NVA inside the liberated portions of the objective and thirty wounded patients who were suspected of being NVA or VC soldiers. Trucks had to be called forward from MACV to trans­port the wounded prisoners and forty-two assorted NVA. weap­ons to the rear.

  A thorough search of the operating rooms in Marine hands revealed signs of heavy recent use. Mounds of bloody waste bandages and other discarded supplies revealed that scores, per­haps hundreds, of patients with all kinds of battle wounds had been treated as recently as a few hours earlier. The search also turned up several dozen insane patients who had been locked inside their ward with barely enough food and water to survive. These poor souls were evacuated to MACV on foot, as were numerous medical patients and other civilians who were ob­viously not NVA or VC.

  *

  At 1645, less than a quarter hour after Golf/2/5 seized its objective, Hotel/2/5 jumped off again, this time to seize a large building between its front and Golf/2/5's left flank. The defend­ing NVA were between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Golf/2/5 was already holding the building behind them, and the only other escape route was covered by elements of Fox/2/5. Well dug in, the NVA fought like desperate men. They poured intense small-arms and B-40 fire on Hotel/2/5, and they would not budge.

  In the face of such relentless resistance, the Hotel/2/5 clean­up attack quickly bogged down. Under pressure from the battal­ion CP to get his men moving again, Captain Ron Christmas ran forward across a thirty-five-meter open area to confer with the troop leaders and see for himself what could be done. After taking a good look around, Christmas decided that he needed help from the Marine M-48 tank that had accompanied Golf/2/5 to its objective.

  To return to the company CP, Christmas braved the thirty-five-meter open stretch once more. He ordered his reserve platoon to work forward, into positions from which it could join the final rush. Then Christmas sprinted across another fire-swept open stretch—this one seventy meters wide—to the tank.

  The desperate NVA poured heavy machine-gun fire in the direction of the tank, and both of the B-40 rockets they fired at the armored vehicle struck the frontal glacis plate as Captain Christmas was climbing up behind the turret. With Ron Christ­mas standing tall behind the turret, directing fire, the tank fired five 90mm rounds into the NVA-held building. With the tank and Marines providing a base of fire, the Hotel/2/5 reserve platoon swept in with CS gas grenades and quickly reduced the opposition. Three Marines were wounded in this phase of the assault, and the bodies of twelve NVA and many weapons were recovered. Captain Ron Christmas was awarded a Navy Cross for his outstanding display of leadership under fire.

  As the Hotel/2/5 platoons scour
ed the objective, NVA soldiers manning what turned out to be underground bunkers on three sides of the building suddenly opened fire. The M-48 tank was brought up, and it fired its main gun and .50-caliber cupola machine gun into one bunker after another. The surviving NVA bolted from the last bunker, but they were cut down in the open as they sprinted across a street.

  Dead NVA recovered from the bunkers and gathered in the open amounted to thirteen, for a total of twenty-five NVA killed in the one strongpoint. The position also produced the largest haul of NVA weapons captured to date, including many personal weapons, three B-40 launchers, and two Chinese-made RPD crew-served light machine guns.

  *

  At 1700, the main body of 2nd Lieutenant Ray Smith's Alpha/1/1 came under intense fire from several bunkers in the no-man's land southeast of the Jeanne d'Arc complex. For reasons that never became clear—for the NVA did not launch an assault— the enemy fired an estimated 2,500 rifle and machine-gun rounds and eight B-40s into the Alpha/1/1 lines.

  The Marines responded with 3,000 rounds from M-16s and M-60s, and they directed the firing of twenty-two 90mm tank rounds, twenty-nine 81mm mortar rounds, and seventy-one eight-inch and two 105mm howitzer rounds. The artillery fire caused several violent secondary explosions in one NVA position. In this fracas one Marine was killed and eight were wounded and evacuated. Alpha/1/1 claimed nine confirmed kills.

  *

  At 1815, capping a successful though costly day, Staff Ser­geant Paul Tinson's 2nd Platoon of Fox/2/5 entered the south­ern portion of a hospital building in its sector. In addition to finding five dead NVA, the Marines took three prisoners. One of the prisoners, who was obviously a military man despite his hospital garb, claimed to be the mayor of Hue. The others alleged that they were his bodyguards. The Marines knew a wild claim when they heard one, so they spread-eagled all three captives against a wall and frisked them. When Captain Mike Downs entered the building, Staff Sergeant Tinson was terrorizing the captives, trying to elicit a credible story.

  "What's going on, Staff Sergeant Tinson?" the company commander asked.

  "Sir," Tinson replied, pointing to the eldest of the three, "this silly son of a bitch is trying to tell me he's the mayor of Hue."

  "My God," Downs thought, "maybe he is!" So Downs turned to his two radiomen, who had both graduated from Viet­namese language school, and asked them to get the whole story.

  The lengthy interrogation in Vietnamese revealed for a cer­tainty that the eldest captive was indeed Lieutenant Colonel Pham Van Khoa, the mayor of Hue and the Thua Thien Province chief. He told the Marines that his wife and children had probably been captured by the VC and that he thought they were probably dead. What Khoa failed to tell his chastened audience was that, when he had bolted from his residence on the night of January 31, he had left his wife and children and most of his staff to fend for them­selves in the face of an imminent Communist attack. Khoa and his two bodyguards had been hiding in the hospital, under the noses of the NVA, ever since. (Several days later, Khoa's entire family emerged from their nightmare alive. One of the children had sustained slight wounds, but, otherwise, all were in good condition.)

  At 1715, the first Navy landing craft arrived at the Hue LCU ramp from Danang. With the An Cuu Bridge down, the only way to get supplies and reinforcements into Hue was via limited helicopter assets or by boat. The LCU was not molested, and it was offloaded by 1815. At 2015, a second craft arrived with a three-day supply of ammunition. Following this success, many other LCU sorties were scheduled for the days ahead.

  At 1830, 2/5's three infantry companies stood down for the night and set in at the limit of the day's advances. When it halted, 2/5's most advanced element was little more than a block away from the 1st Marines regimental objectives, the prison and the provincial administration complex.

  ***

  PART VII

  Provincial Headquarters

  ***

  Chapter 25

  At their nightly command conference, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham and his company commanders laid out a sort of holy mission for 2/5 for the battalion's February 6 advance. From the first full day of battle in Hue, the flagpole in front of the Thua Thien Provincial Administrative Office had shown the colors of the National Liberation Front. Cheatham and his officers decided to take that as a personal affront that had to be expunged. They agreed that the NLF flag must be pulled down on February 6 and that the provincial headquarters complex had to be liberated. All 2/5 needed to do to accomplish that mission—which coincided exactly with the 1st Marines regimental operations order—was battle its way across one more street and through one more narrow block of NVA-held buildings.

  *

  On February 6, elements of the 4th NVA Regiment got an early start against 2/5. At 0425, positions manned by Captain Mike Downs's Fox/2/5, on the southeastern margin of the Hue Central Hospital complex, were struck by a volley of nine B-40 rockets. One Marine who was slightly injured was treated on the spot and returned to duty. Meantime, his comrades called for an immediate 81mm illumination mission and fired about 1,000 small-arms rounds and six 3.5-inch rockets into the suspected source of the B-40s. The RPG teams were gone long before the largely cathartic return fire even began.

  All three companies of 2/5 jumped off at 0700 to clear the remainder of the hospital complex and develop a line of departure facing the Thua Thien Provincial Prison and the provincial head­quarters complex. The NVA were out there, in front of the com­panies, but, initially, they put up only light resistance. The factor that slowed 2/5's early-morning advance the most was the cau­tion of the Marines who had survived up to six days in Hue. The Marines wanted to see how serious the NVA were about defend­ing their ground before they committed themselves.

  The Marines gnawed away at the NVA, and the NVA gnawed back. At 0734, Marines from Captain Chuck Meadows's Golf/2/5 were engaged by snipers as they attacked the hospital's main administration building through a billow of tear gas from four CS grenades. The gas flushed two NVA soldiers, who were cut down as they fled out a back door. Two Marines were wounded and evacuated as a result of the fracas. An American-built radio was recovered from the building the snipers had been holding.

  At 0741, Marines from Captain Ron Christmas's Ho­tel/2/5 were fired on by an automatic weapon set in about fifty meters southwest of the company front line. As Marines manning a base of fire responded with M-16s, M-79s, and LAAWs, another squad maneuvered toward the enemy position, delivered a volley of flanking fire, and attacked. The NVA had already retreated, leaving two of their comrades dead on the ground.

  At 0815, while a Hotel/2/5 platoon was delivering prepar­atory fire on its next objective, two NVA bolted out the back door of the building. Both men were cut down by M-16 fire.

  Due to Golf/2/5's attack across Hotel/2/5's front on the afternoon of February 5, Hotel/2/5 was on the right flank when it opened its attack at 0820, February 6. Against meager resis­tance, Captain Ron Christmas's Marines quickly captured the NVA forward position, where they found a cache of abandoned weapons, including a Chinese-manufactured submachine gun, five B-40 rocket rounds, five Chicom grenades, six M-26 gre­nades, 200 AK-47 rounds, and fifteen satchel charges.

  *

  The Hotel/2/5 Marines were waiting for orders to jump off into the provincial headquarters complex when a 6 X 6 truck carrying a load of fresh replacements chugged up the street. Before anyone could react, the truck passed right through the Hotel/2/5 line and proceeded on toward the company objective. It was halfway there when the NVA opened fire on it. The truck driver immediately threw the vehicle into reverse and backed down to safety, but two of the Marines riding in the rear were left wounded in the street.

  As the veterans of 2nd Lieutenant Leo Myers's 1st Platoon tried to figure out how to rescue the two Marines, one of the wounded men kicked himself on his back through a line of hedges. Immediately, the nearest Hotel/2/5 Marines grabbed him and brought him to the 1st Platoon CP. There the platoon corpsman went to work on
a sucking chest wound from which blood bubbled and foamed as the wounded Marine gasped for air. The wound was sealed with cellophane, and the wounded man—nobody ever learned his name—started the long journey back to the rear.

  Meantime, the second wounded Marine had managed to crawl out of the center of the street and was lying at the end of a driveway in front of the 1st Platoon's position. He was unable to move farther. Though the enemy fire was fierce, Lieutenant Myers called across the driveway to ask Private First Class Walter Kaczmarek to crawl out and drag the wounded man to safety.

  Kaczmarek was scared, but he knew someone had to go. He started down the driveway on his belly. He had gone only a few meters when a bullet-chipped sliver of brick struck him beneath his left eye. It was sticking out like an arrowhead. Kaczmarek ducked back to safety, and another Marine pulled the brick chip out. After holding the sleeve of his field jacket against his bleed­ing cheek for a moment, Private First Class Kaczmarek allowed a corpsman to treat the wound. To Kaczmarek's dismay, the corps-man informed him that the wound was minor.

  On Kaczmarek's next attempt, he crawled alongside the gar­age up to a metal-skinned driveway gate. As Kaczmarek pushed the gate shut so it would hide him, a bullet penetrated the sheet metal at the bottom, just above his hand. He was not hit, but his hand stung painfully for many minutes. Though Kaczmarek now knew that the gate could be penetrated by bullets, he crawled across the driveway behind it and on into the hedge bordering the street. The best he could hope for was that the NVA across the way would not be able to see him.

  After crawling through the hedge to a point even with the wounded Marine, Kaczmarek rolled out of his web belt and other jettisonable gear and dashed out through the hedge, into the open street. All hell broke loose. Kaczmarek dropped down next to the wounded Marine. All the shooting stopped.