Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  A barricade lay across the doorway leading to the stairwell. Lieutenant Myers dropped a fragmentation grenade over the top of the barricade, waited for it to detonate, and led an attack up the stairs. At the top of the stairs was another long hallway, which also ran the full width of the front of the building. Here, too, NVA fleeing up the hallway were firing back at the Marines. Undaunted, the Marines chased them down the hall, but most of the NVA had simply vanished. From a second-story window near the end of the hall, Kaczmarek saw the backs of many NVA soldiers as they fled across an alley. Before Kaczmarek could bring up his M-16 to fire, an M-60 gunner was beside him, firing full tilt into the retreating enemy.

  There were so many rooms and buildings to clear inside the provincial headquarters complex that every Marine who could be spared from the company headquarters and 60mm mortar section was sent forward to help. Private First Class Jim Hunter, a 60mm ammo humper, was one of the first to arrive. Though Hunter had been in Vietnam since November, he had never directly engaged the enemy. His war had always been fought at relatively long distance, even in Hue. He was scared when he formed up with a handful of riflemen and entered the provincial administration building. No sooner was Hunter in the front door than several 1st Platoon Marines prodded a North Vietnamese soldier outside through the same door. Hunter's group was ordered upstairs to join the room-clearing operation. Everywhere around him, hand grenades were bursting as fellow Marines cleared each room the easy way. Each grenade detonation was followed by a burst of gunfire. In one large conference room, Jim Hunter saw a GVN flag still hanging on the wall. As the room clearers were running through that room, an NVA soldier in an adjacent building fired a round through a window. The bullet struck and killed Private Jerry Tillery, a 3.5-inch rocketman who, like Jim Hunter, had been pressed into service to clear the building.

  In all, the Hotel/2/5 Marines who cleared the administra­tion building found four NVA bodies. They were still searching the building when Jim Hunter heard a commotion outside, but he was too busy to get the details. He thus missed a momentous occasion.

  *

  As soon as Captain Ron Christmas received word that the administration building was clear, the Hotel/2/5 commander radioed Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham: "We have the build­ing, Sir. We're going to run up the American flag."

  Strictly speaking, Christmas's plan to hoist the U.S. colors was illegal. Under numerous prior agreements, American troops were forbidden to hoist the American flag on any liberated structure. Strictly speaking, Christmas should have turned the build­ing over to an ARVN officer or a GVN official so the South Vietnamese colors could have been run up on the flagpole. But Ron Christmas was adamant: when American troops, particularly Marines, are triumphant on a field of battle, the U.S. colors, if available, are shown. Captain Christmas turned to Gunnery Ser­geant Frank Thomas and said, "We've looked at that damn North Vietnamese flag all day, and now we are going to take it down. Let's go."

  Gunny Thomas was all ready for the captain. He had realized early on that the NLF flag would have to be replaced and had put the word out that he was looking for a large American flag. When none could be found, two hard-bitten riflemen ran all the way back to MACV and pulled down—stole—the flag that was flying legally over that compound.

  The company commander and company gunny were plan­ning to lay on a proper flag ceremony, but two uninvited guests nearly knocked their plans askew. The moment Private First Class Walter Kaczmarek had laid eyes on the NLF flag, he had decided that it was his if he could grab it. He talked his squad leader, Private First Class Alan McDonald, into helping him lower the enemy banner. The two had just reached the flagpole when Gunny Thomas appeared, the Stars and Stripes tucked into the front of his flak jacket. The gunny had no idea what Kaczmarek and McDonald were up to, but they were there, so he pressed them into service.

  At 1603, with Captain Christmas, Lieutenant Myers, several other Marines, one ARVN interpreter, and a camera crew from CBS News looking on, Kaczmarek and McDonald struck the wet, limp NLF colors; Gunny Thomas cut them free from the halyard with his K-bar knife.

  Then Old Glory was affixed to the lanyard. As bullets popped and cracked nearby, and as wisps of tear gas floated around them, Kaczmarek and McDonald, who had a cigarette dangling from his lips, ran their nation's colors up the pole to stand in history beside American flags another generation of filthy, tired Marines had run up over Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Seoul. There was no time to call the onlookers to attention, no one remembered to salute, and the lanyard be­came entangled for a few embarrassing moments, but there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd. Later, many of the onlookers sheepishly blamed their tears on the tear gas.

  When Ernie Cheatham reported the fall of the provincial headquarters complex to Regiment, he told it like this: "Be ad­vised we have taken the provincial headquarters. Somehow or other, an American flag is flying over there."

  As soon as the deed was done, the CBS camera crew got a handful of the flag raisers together to hold up the deposed NLF banner and pose for pictures. All the time newsman Don Webster was giving his report to the camera, bullets popped and cracked in the background. As the correspondent wrapped up his report, Lieutenant Leo Myers's Oklahoma drawl overcame all the other noise: "Hey, you finished?" Myers asked. "We want to get the hell out of here." There was still a battle to be won, and being in a static crowd inside Hue bothered the lieutenant and, when he brought the subject up, everyone else who was there.

  The crowd around the flagpole dispersed in a flash as Lieu­tenant Myers and Gunny Thomas led their Marines back into the clearing operation.

  *

  Moments after leaving the flagpole, Gunny Thomas noticed many distinctive square NVA fighting holes right along the inner edge of the head-high wall surrounding the administration build­ing. Most of the holes were camouflaged, but some were not. Though the holes appeared to be empty, Gunny Thomas had survived too many harrowing episodes in Hue to take anything for granted.

  Shotgun at the ready, Thomas stalked over to the nearest hole and, a moment later, yelled a warning that there was an NVA soldier in it. Without hesitation the gunny reached into the hole, grabbed the enemy soldier by the collar of his shirt, and dragged him halfway out. "This one's still alive," the gunny called as he leaned over the uniformed but limp rag doll of a man.

  Most of the other holes were also occupied by NVA soldiers, some dead and others wounded. Those who looked like they had any fight in them were shot. One raised his hands before the Marines could get to him, and he was spared. He was bound with a bandage, and blindfolded with another bandage, before being led off into captivity. His wounded comrades were treated and evacuated after all the wounded Marines had been cared for. The dead NVA were pulled from their fighting holes; searched head to foot; and, for the moment, left sprawled in the middle of the courtyard.

  *

  At 1800, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham's victorious 2/5 set in at the limit of the day's advance. That evening, 2nd Lieutenant Ray Smith's Alpha/1/1 caught up with 2/5 and relieved Captain Mike Downs's Fox/2/5 of its positions in the Antituberculosis Center. Then, for the first time since it had entered Hue, Fox/2/5 went into reserve.

  In four days of vicious combat, 2/5 had broken the backs of two and possibly three NVA infantry battalions and an unknown number of VC units attached to the 4th NVA Regiment. Thereaf­ter, though the 4th NVA Regiment fought on against 2/5 and 1/1 for nearly three more weeks, it ceased to be a strategically relevant factor in the battle for Hue.

  ***

  Chapter 27

  There were no celebrations on February 7, 1968. There was no cause for celebration. The battle for Hue was far from over. The loss of life continued.

  At 0530, February 7, NVA sappers, who apparently had worked through the night, blew the two center spans of the Nguyen Hoang Bridge into the Perfume River. For the moment, the action was little more than a gesture, because no American or ARVN effort was aimed at the bridge. However
, for anyone who cared to look, the demolition of the bridge and the resulting isolation of the 6th NVA Regiment from the 4th NVA Regiment symbolized that the NVA commanders had acknowledged the turning point in Hue. Though the Communist occupation of Hue was now pointless, three weeks of bloody street fighting remained to be endured.

  Late in the morning, a large NVA force attacked the 4th Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment, which was holding a static for­tified position in the vicinity of the Citadel's Chanh Tay Gate. The already much-battered ARVN battalion sustained numerous casualties and gave up communications equipment and weapons before finally fighting the attackers to a standstill.

  Also on February 7, in the largest air strike to date over Hue, VNAF A-l Skyraiders dropped twenty-four 500-pound bombs on NVA positions on the Citadel's southwest wall. ARVN observers on the ground credited the bombs with killing a large number of NVA soldiers. However, the NVA were well entrenched in bunkers and pillboxes within the wall and in masonry build­ings of all types across the ARVN front. Even though the South Vietnamese force—with four infantry battalions, three airborne battalions, and numerous smaller combat units—was larger than the NVA force, the ARVN was unable to make measurable gains at all on February 7.

  *

  Hue stank of rotting corpses tinged with tear gas, and smoke from hundreds of untended fires. Countless dogs and barnyard animals were loose in the streets, gorging themselves on animal and human flesh. Desperate for food and water, thou­sands of defenseless civilians risked life and limb in often vain attempts to reach Marine or ARVN lines, where they knew they would be fed and could have their wounds treated.

  In the course of a few days, the Hue University complex, liberated by Alpha/1/1 and 2/5 on February 2, became an overcrowded refugee relief center. By February 7, in the late morning, 5,000 homeless South Vietnamese civilians were being cared for and processed there. Though all the supplies the Ma­rines consumed had to be lifted to Hue aboard helicopters or LCUs, a huge stockpile of foodstuffs and other disaster-relief items maintained by the GVN in Hue was more than adequate to meet the basic needs of the refugees who had sought sanctuary within the liberated blocks of the city.

  One refugee, only a few short blocks from the Marine front, had to remain in hiding. Jim Bullington dared not dash to safety in the open streets. Bullington had not come close to being apprehended since his arrival on February 1 at the home of Father Cressonier and Father Poncet. This is not to say, however, that they had not had a close call or two. At 1000 on February 6, a shell—probably a Marine mortar round—had hit the house and demolished several rooms, but no one had been hurt. On the afternoon of February 7, they had heard savage bursts of small-arms fire nearby, to the northeast. In fact, 2/5 Marines were scouring the block adjacent to the municipal power station, at whose margin Bullington and the priests awaited their arrival.

  *

  The Marines' early-morning advance on February 7 fell into a vacuum. The NVA had withdrawn from 2/5's and 1/1's front, leaving the bodies of their dead, odd lots of military gear, and many untended weapons. Indeed, by noon, the Marines had advanced through buildings and compounds in an area two full city blocks wide and two blocks deep—all without encountering more than the odd sniper. As each building was scoured by the infantry companies, the 2/5 and 1/1 intelligence officers and scouts combed the area for booty and bodies from which docu­ments and other intelligence matter could be retrieved. In the course of the morning, Marine infantry units and intelligence teams turned up the battlefield graves of sixty-two NVA or VC soldiers and catalogued the retrieval of sixty-one carbines of various types, four RPD light machine guns, four flare pistols, forty-five M-3 submachine guns, one heavy machine gun, two .30-caliber light machine guns, and a handful of oddly assorted weapons.

  At 1245, Golf/2/5 Marines scouring the Directorate of Social Welfare compound, hard by the Phu Cam Canal, discov­ered the bodies of three Caucasian males who appeared to be Americans. The corpses were checked by an intelligence team and evacuated to MACV.

  The first significant resistance to the February 7 Marine sweep came at 1530, when Golf/2/5 started closing on the Le Lai Military Camp, south of the prison and a block north of the Phu Cam Canal. In addition to armed NVA infantrymen holed up in buildings, the Marines were hit by four 60mm mortar rounds. As Golf/2/5 began deploying to attack the enemy position, an 81mm preparatory fire mission was called. The attack, which jumped off at 1600, overran the NVA strongpoint and produced eleven more NVA corpses. Nevertheless, the bulk of the military camp remained in enemy hands.

  At 1746, two blocks southwest of the prison, elements of Hotel/2/5 were searching a building when four 82mm mortar rounds struck it. Ten Marines were wounded. An immediate countermortar mission fired by 2/5's 81mm mortars either si­lenced the NVA mortar or forced it to displace.

  The only Marine killed in Hue on February 7 was 1st Lieu­tenant Gordon Matthews, the Bravo/1/1 commander. Rela­tively few were wounded. In the course of the day, 2/5 and 1/1 found that the NVA had abandoned, virtually without a fight, the entire triangular area between the Perfume River, the Phu Cam Canal, and a north-south line from the prison to the canal. NVA snipers and stragglers still infested the area, but it was as good as liberated.

  *

  February 8 was another pretty easy day for the Marines, though the NVA kicked it off with an 0530 wake-up call often 122mm rockets launched at MACV from sites south of the city. From its battery site near Nam Hoa, Bravo/1/1 fired its six 105mm howitzers at the telltale rocket-ignition flashes. The rocket fire stopped, but no results could be observed.

  At 0547, Marines from Alpha/1/1 spotted a small NVA force moving into a building a block south of the Jeanne d'Arc Student Center. M-16 and M-60 fire dispersed the NVA soldiers. When a patrol from Alpha/1/1 searched the area later, it found six dead NVA and collected three carbines, an M-16, quite a bit of ammunition, and several M-26 and Chicom grenades.

  The large numbers of NVA bodies, abandoned weapons, ammunition, and equipment found in the liberated buildings told the Marines that the NVA had suffered a major loss of discipline and spirit. For NVA units to leave their dead or very much gear on a battlefield was almost unheard of. As the body count and small-arms and equipment caches added up, it became evident that the demoralized 4th NVA Regiment was having command-and-control problems as well. Of the small number of prisoners taken, a large proportion were officers and senior sergeants.

  Beginning at 0700, Hotel/2/5 and Fox/2/5 opened an attack to the south to close on the Phu Cam Canal. Once at the canal, 2/5 was to wheel to the east and attack in that direction as far as Highway 1.

  Almost at once, Hotel/2/5 came under heavy machine-gun fire from a building on its left flank. A vigorous response with small arms and M-79 grenades, bolstered by an 81mm mortar barrage, forced the NVA from their position. Hotel/2/5 overran the objective.

  Meanwhile, on Hotel/2/5's left (east), Fox/2/5 ran into sniper fire along its front. The enemy position was overcome with small-arms fire at the cost of two Marines wounded, two NVA killed, and one NVA soldier taken prisoner.

  At 0944, Hotel/2/5 attacked the Le Lai Military Camp, from which Golf/2/5 had had to withdraw the previous evening to consolidate the 2/5 night defensive position. The camp was overrun again at around 1000, this time at the cost of one Marine killed, one Marine wounded, and one NVA soldier killed.

  The biggest windfall of the day resulted from a routine search through the Le Lai Military Camp. While probing for more NVA, Hotel/2/5 Marines stumbled on the ARVN's main armory in Hue. Apparently, the store of weapons and munitions had not been discovered by the NVA, for, in addition to a huge stockpile of ammunition and military equipment, the Marines inventoried 1,500 rifles, carbines, and submachine guns; one hundred U.S.-made .30-caliber light machine guns; four 57mm recoilless rifles; fifteen M-113 APCs; and—get this—eight M-41 light tanks! After many Hotel/2/5 Marines had helped them­selves to weapons—.45-caliber Thompson submachine guns went particularly fast—the armory was t
urned over to the Thua Thien Sector Advisor, a U.S. Army officer attached to MACV Advisory Team 3.

  *

  At 1000, two platoons of Bravo/1/1 were sweeping along Highway 1 from the northwest, in the direction of the An Cuu Bridge. They were accosted by NVA holed up in the Thua Thien Province Police Bureau, a walled compound halfway across the cane field causeway. The Marines—mostly cooks, bakers, and clerks pressed into infantry duty—returned the fire with even stronger fire. When the Marines maneuvered into the compound, they found three dead NVA, fourteen rifles of various types, a B-40 round, three 60mm mortar rounds, some detonation cord, and a police armory containing 2.5 tons of assorted arms and munitions.

  *

  While the infantry companies were active to the east, the engineer platoon attached to 2/5 was preparing the westernmost bridge across the Phu Cam Canal for demolition. NVA snipers south of the canal wounded three engineers, who could not be evacuated until Marine M-48 tanks arrived to cover the rescue effort with 90mm smoke rounds and fire on the enemy position with their .50- and .30-caliber machine guns.

  Why the Marines were demolishing a bridge in a city they were liberating, and in the course of a battle they were winning, demands some explanation. The 4th NVA Regiment's intentions were then deeply cloaked in mystery. Marine commanders be­lieved that a counterattack across the Phu Cam Canal was immi­nent, or at least possible. It was easier to demolish the bridge than to use limited troop resources to develop a strongpoint around it. The bridge in question—the westernmost of six that spanned the canal—was not militarily vital to the Marines and higher head­quarters, which approved the bridge demolition in advance and judged that there were adequate resources in I Corps to replace all the canal bridges when needed.

  Interestingly, plans were afoot to mount III MAF's 1st Ma­rine Bridge Company out of Phu Bai the next day to replace the NVA-demolished An Cuu Bridge at the other end of the Phu Cam Canal. The bridge company, which was to be escorted by a platoon of the real Bravo/1/1 and all available replacements bound for 2/5, was to be met at the bridge site by Alpha/1/1 and the main body of the provisional Bravo/1/1.