Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  Every few moments, the wounded man yelled that he had been shot in the chest. Each time he yelled, he thrashed around. Each time he thrashed, the NVA opened fire until he stopped. Kaczmarek spoke to him in a calming voice, then grasped the man's arm, jumped up, and tried to yank him through the hedge. The victim screamed that Kaczmarek was tearing his arm off, so Kaczmarek, who was already in the hedge, let go and dropped down behind the thin cover. It became clear in Kaczmarek's mind that the wounded man had already been shot, and that he, Kacz­marek, had not. He was not going to go back out into the open.

  From his hiding place inside the hedge, Private First Class Kaczmarek reached out and grabbed the collar of the wounded man's flak jacket. When he was set, he jumped up and heaved the man into the hedge with both hands. The NVA opened fire again, so Kaczmarek laid low for several moments.

  As soon as the shooting died down again, Kaczmarek opened the wounded man's flak jacket to check on the wound. There were two holes in the collar of the flak jacket, but there was no blood. He opened the man's shirt. He still didn't see any blood. There were no holes in the skin. Kaczmarek felt his temper boil. He was so angry he grabbed the double-bit ax he carried on his web belt and was about to strike the wounded man with the flat of the blade when a corpsman arrived. The doc checked the wounded man and found that his collarbone had been shattered, no doubt when the bullet had gone into the collar of the flak jacket.

  *

  On the left flank, at 0828, Captain Mike Downs's Fox/2/5 was briefly held up by a pair of NVA who opened fire from the company objective. The Marines responded with their M-16s and two LAAWs and then overran the position. Two more dead NVA were found, along with an SKS carbine.

  At 0905, elements of Golf/2/5, while attacking through a very light screen of NVA skirmishers, discovered and sent to the rear over 300 hospital patients and other civilian refugees. It appeared that the NVA had decided to concede the remainder of the hospital complex to 2/5.

  Hotel/2/5 reopened its attack upon the provincial head­quarters complex at 0950. The company was immediately halted by intense enemy fire all along its front. As the Marines engaged the NVA strongpoint with small-arms and machine-gun fire, two M-48 tanks were called in, and a tripod-mounted 106mm recoilless rifle was manhandled to the front. One of the tanks was immediately hit by two B-40 rockets, but it remained in action. The NVA then moved a 75mm recoilless rifle to a position on Hotel/2/5's right front and fired six rounds that subdued the ardor of the attacking Marines. In their turn, the Marines called for 81mm mortar fire, and 100 rounds were dropped on various targets along Hotel/2/5's front.

  As the provincial headquarters complex was blanketed with heavy fire, Major John Salvati, 2/5's sanguinary executive offi­cer, oversaw the emplacement of several E-8 gas-launcher packs. As scores of tear-gas pellets were being fired, Hotel/2/5 Ma­rines wearing gas masks launched a direct frontal assault into the objective. Unlike the gas attack at the treasury, the tear gas at the provincial headquarters was not effective. The area around the complex was more open, and the breeze off the Perfume River worked to the advantage of the NVA defenders.

  Nevertheless, the Marines secured a fortified outbuilding inside the headquarters complex—at a cost of five wounded and evacuated. Twelve newly killed NVA were located in the strong-point.

  *

  The hospital complex, on the left flank of 2/5's zone, ex­tended along the full city block southeast of and alongside the prison. As Fox/2/5 continued its sweep through the complex, it entered the Antituberculosis Center and, in so doing, began to outflank the prison's southeast wall.

  At 1020, NVA resistance within the Antituberculosis Center suddenly stiffened. The NVA manning the prison must have realized what Fox/2/5's possession of their southeast flank would mean to them. The apparently reinforced NVA in the Antituberculosis Center put up such a stubborn fight that Fox/2/5's stymied 2nd Platoon had to call 81mm mortar fire to regain the initiative.

  As the company attack recommenced, a B-40 rocket struck a wall along which a Marine squad was dispersed. The rocket literally blew up in the face of Lance Corporal Reginald Gautreau, whose wounds were ghastly. One of the docs had to push a tube down the Marine's throat to keep him from choking on his own blood, but Gautreau was clearly dying. At length, Gunnery Sergeant Ed Van Valkenburgh made the hard decision and told the doc to stop trying, that Gautreau was past saving.

  Minutes later, from his position in a doorway facing out toward the prison, Captain Mike Downs could see Marines from Staff Sergeant Paul Tinson's 2nd Platoon working their way up a side lane running at a right angle to the prison wall. One of the Marines got inside a hospital-ward building. But, when Staff Sergeant Tinson and his platoon command group tried to follow him, alert NVA soldiers on the prison wall sealed the doorway with gunfire. Tinson backed off, led his men around to the other side of the building, and started looking for another way in. At that moment, NVA manning another position fired across Tin-son's front. Tinson, who was in the lead, tried to backtrack, but the Marines behind him were crowding him as they came around the blind corner from the rear of the building. In no time, the 2nd Platoon command group got stalled in the open beside the hospital-ward building. Before Staff Sergeant Tinson could get the stacked-up Marines turned around, NVA soldiers manning yet another overlook position chopped them all down.

  For Mike Downs, who had seen it all, it was a terrible mo­ment—and it wasn't over yet.

  Suddenly, before Captain Downs could act, NVA soldiers, who could see him and his command group in the doorway of the small building, opened fire on them. Downs ducked inside, his back against the wall to his right. At the same moment, the captain's battalion radioman stepped back to the left. Corporal James Violett, the company radioman, had nowhere to go. He fell flat, half in and half out of the open doorway. In the split second after Violett fell, Downs thought, quite clearly, that he should have fallen flat too—he knew that the incoming AK-47 rounds could penetrate the wall he was standing against. In that split second, however, Corporal Violett started flopping spastically on the ground.

  Captain Downs reached out through the doorway and made a grab for anything he could use to pull Violett back indoors. He got a grip on something and pulled with all his might. The handset of Violett's radio came off in his hand. On the next try, Downs caught the packboard to which Violett's radio was secured, and he pulled the radioman indoors. But James Violett was dead. He had been shot three times in the head.

  When Mike Downs's mind cleared a moment later, he asked for volunteers to accompany him in a dash across the street to a building from which they might be able to reach Staff Sergeant Tinson and the other fallen Marines. No one budged. "Do you mean to tell me," Captain Downs began, "that I can't get any of you to cross the street with me?" There was another moment of silence. Then Lance Corporal James Spencer, the 81mm forward observer assigned to Fox/2/5, stepped forward. "I'll go," Spencer said. A moment later, Private First Class George Blunt agreed to go, too.

  Downs, Spencer, and Blunt crossed the street under fire and ran up against a locked door, which they had to batter down. From inside the building, they could see the fallen Marines, but there was no way to tell if any were still alive. Lance Corporal Spencer volunteered to crawl across the fire-swept alleyway to find out.

  Downs and Blunt—a puny base of fire—fired their M-16s at the prison while Spencer went outside and crawled over to Staff Sergeant Tinson and the others. The news was grim. Staff Ser­geant Paul Tinson was dead. So was Sergeant Alonzo Mayhall, Tinson's platoon sergeant. And so were Private First Class Jimmie Palmo, the 2nd Platoon radioman, and Hospitalman Charles Morrison, the 2nd Platoon corpsman. All had been shot dead where they stood. Four other 2nd Platoon Marines had been wounded.

  *

  As it had on two previous mornings, 1/1 attempted to expand its holdings around the complex. Progress had been slow, but gains had been made against an NVA force that was clearly being reinforced from the south and southwest, throug
h 1/1's open left flank. At 0900, February 6, Alpha/1/l's main body was engaged by NVA soldiers occupying a church a half block south of the Jeanne d'Arc complex and a half block east of the 1st Platoon's position inside the Student Center. After a heavy fire-fight involving mortars, M-60s, and a 106mm recoilless rifle, the Alpha/1/1 Marines assaulted the church. Thirty dead NVA were recovered, a civilian man and a civilian woman were detained for questioning, and five rifles and one light machine gun were captured.

  At 1100, the NVA precipitously pulled out of the Jeanne d'Arc complex, leaving seventeen dead in the rubble of the west­ern half of the once beautiful Catholic high school. As soon as the Jeanne d'Arc complex had been scoured, Alpha/1/1 and Bravo/1/1 reorganized and attacked to the southwest to catch up with 2/5.

  Less than an hour later, while rushing to catch up with 2/5, Alpha/1/1 was caught on the move by a barrage of twenty 82mm mortar rounds. Eight Marines were wounded and evacu­ated, and another dozen casualties were treated and returned to their platoons. The 1/1 attack continued, but at a much slower pace. The Marines encountered no further direct opposition until 1345. As it was easing its way along the southeastern edge of the hospital complex, Alpha/1/1 came under fire from a group of NVA soldiers armed with a .51-caliber machine gun. The Marines responded with small arms and 60mm mortars. Two Marines were lightly wounded in the exchange, during which the enemy position was bypassed and Alpha/1/1 pressed on to the south­west to close with 2/5.

  *

  In the 2/5 zone early that afternoon, Fox/2/5 was attacking yet another building southeast of the prison. Gunfire from within the building suddenly engulfed the assault element. The Marines stepped back and responded with intense small-arms fire of their own, which was supplemented with twenty 60mm mortar rounds. Fox/2/5 resumed the attack and overran the building. No dead NVA were turned up, and two Marines who had sus­tained minor injuries were treated and returned to duty.

  At 1305, approximately two dozen NVA soldiers who had been resisting Fox/2/ 5's ongoing attacks southeast of the prison suddenly disengaged and withdrew toward the prison itself. For­tunately, 2/5's 81mm Mortar Platoon was already registered on the area, and fifty high-explosive rounds were fired at the retreat­ing NVA in a matter of seconds. Twenty-three of the fleeing NVA were killed in the open.

  Golf/2/5, meanwhile, had driven out the few NVA remain­ing in its sector of the hospital complex. Thus, at 1405, Fox/2/5 was in secure positions on the southeastern flank of the prison, Golf/2/5 was on line facing the prison from the northeast, and Hotel/2/5 was in line on Golf/2/5's right, held up in its day­long bid to break into the provincial headquarters complex.

  The Marines of 2/5 knew that the battalion's key objective was the stoutly defended provincial headquarters, on whose flag­pole the NVA had unfurled the large NLF battle flag. But first there was the prison. Behind its thick, imposing walls, a token force of ARVN soldiers and Thua Thien provincial policemen had held off a reinforced Communist battalion for three days. To the hard-bitten survivors of 2/5, the prison looked like the toughest nut they had yet encountered in Hue.

  *

  After nearly three hours of pounding by mortars and recoil-less rifles, the NVA defending the prison just caved in. Supported by a heavy base of fire provided by Fox/2/5, Golf/2/5 launched its final assault at 1405. The prison's stout outer wall was breached at 1415, and the entire prison complex was quickly overrun at the cost of one Marine wounded and evacuated. Five ARVN soldiers and two prison officials were liberated. Alto­gether, thirty-six dead NVA were found, two NVA soldiers sur­rendered, and six men who could not explain their presence were detained. Left behind by the fleeing NVA was a motley collection of captured booty and military relics. Golf/2/5 Marines scour­ing the fortress found one old French-made rifle, eleven SKS carbines, four AK-47s, three U.S.-made M-l carbines, six other carbines, three U.S.-made M-3 "grease guns," two Chinese-made RPD light machine guns, one U.S.-made Browning Automatic Rifle, one B-40, one submachine gun, seven cases of 7.62mm ammunition, eight Chicom grenades, four M-26 grenades, one M-2 "pineapple" grenade, four cases of CS grenades, and twenty assorted demolitions charges.

  ***

  Chapter 26

  Hotel/2/5's progress through the provincial headquarters com­plex remained nil through the late morning and early afternoon. The NVA holed up in the warren of small office buildings were putting up a hell of a fight.

  After firing the E-8 gas launchers in the morning and decid­ing that the gas blanket was more of a hindrance than an aid, Major John Salvati had joined up with a 3.5-inch rocket team. At one point Salvati and the rocketmen took up a position in a long, narrow hospital ward that had a window facing out on the provincial headquarters complex. As the rocketmen were getting set to fire, Salvati looked back into the ward to satisfy himself that the many Vietnamese civilians sprawled motionlessly on the floor were indeed dead, as they appeared to be. Then he selected a target and told the rocket gunner to fire. As the 3.5-inch rocket arced toward the target, the immense backblast blew all the bedding and many of the bodies into a great, twisted pile along the back wall of the room. To Salvati's shock, the many "corpses" slowly pulled themselves to their feet and, while hurling venom­ous epithets, hobbled from the building by way of the back door.

  *

  A squad from the 1st Platoon of Hotel/2/5 was holed up in a cookhouse across from the two-story provincial administration building. For hours all the Marines in the cookhouse had been able to do was harass the NVA in pretty much the same way the NVA were able to harass them—by firing randomly at windows in the buildings across the way.

  From time to time, Marines whose jobs kept them in the company rear arrived to vent their spleens. One such visitor, Private Louis Denny, a 60mm ammo humper, had only just stepped up to the cookhouse window when an NVA bullet pene­trated his helmet and ricocheted off his skull. Denny was knocked silly, but he was not badly hurt.

  At length, a 106mm recoilless rifle was emplaced at the end of the driveway Private First Class Walter Kaczmarek had tried to crawl down to rescue the wounded replacement. The 106 was loaded and prepared to fire directly into the provincial administration building as soon as Gunnery Sergeant Frank Thomas, the Hotel/2/5 gunny, opened the gate.

  Just as Gunny Thomas pulled the gate open by means of a brick affixed to a rope, Kaczmarek was stepping to the cookhouse window to take his turn at firing into the administration build­ing. The 106 was fired without the usual "Fire in the hole" warning, and the backblast caught Kaczmarek in the chest. It threw him into the back wall of the cookhouse, and he was knocked unconscious for several minutes.

  When Kaczmarek came to, his barely focused eyes told him that someone was leaning over him. It was the platoon doc, who was tagging Kaczmarek for evacuation. Still stunned by the con­cussion, Kaczmarek assumed that the NYA had blown the cook­house with a satchel charge and were now collecting prisoners. He squeezed the trigger of his M-16, which was locked in his tight grip, and fired a burst of 5.56mm bullets into the cook­house ceiling. He would have kept firing, but three or four of his buddies jumped on him, effectively pinning his shooting arm. When the last of the cobwebs lifted and Kaczmarek realized what he had done, he felt like an ass. But no one held him to blame. Under the circumstances, it was an error anyone could have made.

  *

  At 1425, while trying to jump-start the stalled assault on the provincial headquarters complex, Hotel/2/5 was hit with yet another barrage of intense fire from the objective, including one B-40 rocket and several 75mm recoilless rifle rounds. The assault­ing Marines once again stood down where they were and called for heavy preparatory fire. Though a half dozen previous attempts to break into the complex had failed, the fresh barrage of one hundred 81mm mortar rounds and sixty 106mm recoilless rifle rounds broke the back of the defense.

  During the barrage, word came down from Captain Ron Christmas that 2nd Lieutenant Leo Myers's 1st Platoon was to kick in the door. Myers selected Private First Class Alan McDon­ald's squ
ad to lead the assault, and McDonald and his men drew straws to see who was going to be the first man out the cook­house door. February 6 was definitely not Walter Kaczmarek's lucky day. He picked first, and he drew the short straw.

  The 2/5 battalion chaplain, a priest, came forward to the cookhouse, and the Catholic Marines in McDonald's squad said the Rosary. No one was more fervent in his prayers than Walter Kaczmarek.

  An E-8 gas launcher was fired, but Myers's platoon was called back because the men went the wrong way as they stepped out into the thick, roiling clouds of tear gas. As the platoon waited tensely for another E-8 pack to be set up and fired, Walter Kaczmarek used the reprieve to pray.

  The second barrage of tear gas pellets was launched, and the assault was on. Noise came from all directions, and the gas and the limited view through the gas mask goggles only made things worse. However, if the attackers could not see through the gas, then perhaps the defenders could not, either.

  A long board was thrown across the roll of concertina wire the NVA had erected around the administration building, and Private First Class Walter Kaczmarek led the way across. Kacz­marek had firm orders not to heave a fragmentation grenade through the front door because the Marines had heard that the walls were only plaster over lathe—too thin to contain the blast.

  With his view restricted by the gas mask, Kaczmarek fell over some rubble on the wide stairway to the front porch. When he had crawled to the top of the stairs, he emptied a full M-16 magazine through the portal and scrambled into the foyer on his hands and knees. Then the rest of Lieutenant Myers's platoon thundered into the lobby, right over Kaczmarek, and spread out.

  Walter Kaczmarek saw that there was a stairway to his left and a long hallway to his right that went the full width of the front of the building. NVA soldiers fleeing up the hallway were firing back as they went.