Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

  There were no ARVN or VNMC units for several hundred meters to Lieutenant Nelson's right, but there were plenty of NVA out there. The result was that it took most of the rest of the day for Charlie/1/5 to clear a buffer zone and emplace the Delta/1/5 platoon in a number of buildings back along the flank.

  In the U.S. Marine battalion's center, Captain Fern Jennings's Bravo/1/5 had reached Mai Thuc Loan early. But the company had had to stop because Delta/1/5 could not come abreast on the left and because Charlie/1/5's advance had bogged down on the right. Thus, by the early afternoon of February 15, 1/5's three front-line companies were on or behind the line of departure that was supposed to have been passed and left behind on February 13.

  *

  Delta/1/5's squad on the wall—bolstered many times over by Marines replacing wounded Marines—reached the base of the Dong Ba tower at about 1600. By then, the tower was barely more than a higher pile of rubble, but it was still infested with NVA soldiers clearly intent upon defending it unto death.

  Before the attack could bog down from sheer loss of momen­tum—a real possibility that late in the day—Captain Harrington engineered a quick final assault with troops readily at hand. Fortunately for Harrington, Delta/1/5 was reinforced at the last minute by a squad from the company's own newly arrived 3rd Platoon. The squad was led by the 3rd Platoon commander, Staff Sergeant Robert Thorns. The staff sergeant had undertaken the reinforcement on his own authority, as soon as members of Charlie/1/5 had told him about Delta/l/5's fight along the wall. Thorns, who had served as a lance corporal in 2nd Lieuten­ant Myron Harrington's infantry platoon in 1962, had arrived in Vietnam only a week earlier and had joined Delta/l/5's 3rd Platoon in Phu Bai just in time to be detached for convoy duty. February 15 was his first day in Hue and the first time he had ever faced combat. Captain Harrington sent Thorns and his 3rd Platoon squad up to the wall to bolster the 1st Platoon Marines already there.

  At 1630, covered by a barrage of twenty 60mm mortar rounds placed squarely atop the objective, the main body of 2nd Lieutenant Jack Imlah's 1st Platoon jumped off from positions just south of the tower that Imlah and his men had occupied moments earlier. In a matter of only minutes, as Staff Sergeant Thorns led the way into the tower strongpoint from the north­west, Lieutenant Imlah's force overran the Dong Ba Gate's arch­way and bridge at street level.

  On February 15,1/5 lost six Marines killed and thirty-three Marines wounded and evacuated. The Marines pulled twenty-four NVA and VC corpses from the rubble along with two AK-47s and one SKS.

  *

  On the southwestern side of the battlefield, the 1st and 5th VNMC battalions secured the 1st ARVN Ordnance Company's armory and swung about to begin a two-column attack to the southeast, paralleling 1/5's move. In their parallel zones, the VNMC battalions faced pitiless resistance throughout the day, and they sustained heavy losses. But, by day's end, they were in possession of a line two blocks northwest of the Imperial Palace. This line was separated from the 1/5 line by a no-man's-land several hundred meters wide.

  On February 15, the VNMC battle group counted thirty-nine dead NVA soldiers and recovered twenty-two assorted infan­try weapons, eighty 60mm mortar rounds, and ten Chicom gre­nades. It is possible that the Vietnamese Marines also killed a high-ranking NVA officer, possibly the commander of the 6th NVA Regiment.

  As the Vietnamese Marines advanced deeper into what had been enemy territory from the outset of the Tet Offensive in Hue, they came upon increasing evidence that Communist hit squads were hard at work alongside the retreating NVA Regulars. Fresh civilian corpses bore execution-type gunshot wounds, and many other civilian corpses were disinterred from graves in which they had apparently been buried alive.

  *

  The 4th VNMC Battalion, which had just weathered two weeks of bitter fighting in Saigon, arrived in Phu Bai by air late on February 14. Major Bill Eshelman, the battalion's senior advisor, made his way to the Task Force X-Ray CP and reported to Brigadier General Foster LaHue. The 4th VNMC Battalion mustered 700 effectives, including 200 new replacements as­signed to the unit only two days earlier to make good the heavy losses sustained in Saigon. The battalion had only two jeeps, however. Eshelman guessed that General LaHue would be happy to accommodate the VNMC battalion's transportation needs.

  Though the Tet emergency was almost over throughout most of I Corps, the demands upon U.S. Marine transport units were still overwhelming. Mustering enough trucks for the entire VNMC battalion took most of February 15. By then, it was too late to leave Phu Bai.

  South Vietnamese and American commanders hoped that the addition of a third strong VNMC battalion to Battle Group Alpha would allow the Vietnamese and U.S. Marines to link up in the center of the Citadel battlefield and allow major ele­ments of the reinforced 3rd ARVN Regiment to stand down and reorganize.

  *

  At about 0430, February 16, the NVA bombarded Delta/1/5's Dong Ba tower position with 82mm and 60mm mortars. Before anyone in the target area could react, a volley of Chicom grenades and B-40 rockets forced the five Delta/1/5 Marines in the tower to withdraw. In no time, the NVA opened fire from the tower, down upon the main body of Delta/1/5. Captain Myron Harrington led an instant counter-counterattack, using whatever troops were available. As Harrington fired his .45-caliber pistol at point-blank range, Marines who had regained a position at the base of the tower lobbed hand grenades at the NVA who were firing at them from above. LAAWs, M-79 gre­nades, and intense small-arms fire eventually turned the tide. The tower was retaken, but sporadic fighting continued around the Dong Ba Gate until dawn. When the NVA finally withdrew, they left two of their comrades dead in the tower. Delta/1/5 had lost one Marine killed and four Marines wounded.

  ***

  Chapter 32

  February 16 dawned relatively fair and clear over Hue. For the first time since the struggle for Hue began, air support could be routinely scheduled into the morning's preparatory pounding, which also included naval gunfire from the east and heavy ar­tillery from the south. The NVA responded with what they had. At 0655, Bravo/1/5 and Delta/1/5 were engaged by NVA small-arms fire and several B-40 rockets. The Marine infantry­men responded in kind and with 81mm mortars. Enemy casual­ties could not be estimated, but two Marines were killed and seven were wounded.

  The U.S. Marine battalion jumped off at dawn. Delta/1/5, on the left, was the first company to cross Mai Thuc Loan Street. It immediately met stiff resistance along the wall, in an area that, for purposes of safety, could not be included in the morning's bombardment.

  Captain Myron Harrington had reorganized his hard-hit company before it jumped off at 0800. The 2nd Platoon com­mander, his entire platoon headquarters, and one or two of his squad leaders had been severely injured at the outset of the preceding day's attack. As a result, the 2nd Platoon had been employed only sparingly on February 15. When the 3rd Platoon arrived late in the day from convoy-escort duty, it was led by Staff Sergeant Robert Thorns, and a sergeant was the platoon guide. Though Thorns was new to Vietnam, Captain Harrington knew him to be a strong leader, so he moved Thorns over to command the somewhat demoralized 2nd Platoon and moved the 3rd Pla­toon guide up to command the 3rd Platoon. When Delta/1/5 stepped off into the attack on February 16, Staff Sergeant Thoms's 2nd Platoon had replaced 2nd Lieutenant Jack Imlah's 1st Platoon along the Citadel wall.

  Early in the attack, Staff Sergeant Thorns pulled Private First Class Jim Walsh aside and, though Walsh was a fire-team leader, armed him with an M-60 machine gun. Thorns explained that he had seen a sniper in a second-story window across the street; he wanted Walsh to help flush the man. The two broke away from the main body of the platoon and climbed to a half-story attic directly across from and slightly above the sniper's position. There was, however, no opening in the attic from which the sniper's position could be engaged. At Thoms's direction, Walsh fired the M-60 directly into the roof over the attic they were in, cutting a hole through the red clay tiles. Then Thorns and Walsh stepped forward into the open
and ripped the sniper apart with their fire. When word of Staff Sergeant Thoms's personal role in that adventure got around the 2nd Platoon, his success as a platoon commander was ensured. From the get-go, the troops looked up to him.

  *

  Captain Fern Jennings's Bravo/1/5, in the battalion's cen­ter, ran into extremely stiff opposition. The area to the front of Bravo/1/5 had not been struck by the morning's preparatory bombardment, and the NVA remained well entrenched in a rat's nest of fighting holes, pillboxes, and bunkers set into the ruins of many masonry buildings. There was no way to conduct an orderly advance into the rubble.

  On the far right, 1st Lieutenant Scott Nelson's Charlie/1/5 once again met light resistance and could have advanced deep into enemy territory, but the decision was made to keep its progress down to the pace of the two companies to its left. In addition, Charlie/1/5 was still responsible for screening 1/5's open and dangling right flank. As the tempo of the fighting increased in the adjacent Bravo/1/5 zone, more Charlie/1/5 troops were shifted toward the battalion center to support the struggling center company.

  During one of Charlie/1/5's late-morning moves, a platoon of Marines was nailed by an NVA ambush as it crossed an open area toward a large building it had been assigned to seize. One Marine was killed and four others were wounded. The rest of the platoon was pinned down. Realizing the platoon's precarious situation, Corporal Paul Cheatwood knelt in an exposed posi­tion—the only place from which the enemy fire could be effec­tively answered—and suppressed the NVA position with coolly accurate fire while the platoon corpsman moved up to oversee the evacuation of the casualties. Two of the wounded Marines had been moved when the NVA fire suddenly abated, so Corporal Cheatwood moved forward to help treat and evacuate the remain­ing wounded Marines. No sooner done, however, than the NVA commenced firing again. Cheatwood again suppressed the NVA position, and then he crawled forward to try to render aid to the wounded Marines. As soon as the corpsman arrived to relieve him, Cheatwood maneuvered to the flank of the still-active NVA position and lobbed several hand grenades into the building. The NVA fire ceased altogether. A subsequent search of the building turned up two dead NVA.

  Around the middle of the morning, Lance Corporal Tom Zwetow, a fire-team leader in Staff Sergeant Robert Thoms's 2nd Platoon of Delta/1/5, passed a little too close to a large window on the ground floor of a building his squad was scouring. Just as Zwetow exposed himself in the window, an NVA sniper who was apparently waiting for the opportunity, nailed him. Private First Class Jim Walsh saw the round strike Zwetow directly between the shoulder blades and slam him into the floor. There was no doubt in Walsh's mind that Zwetow had been killed.

  "Corpsman, up," the Marines around Zwetow yelled. And everyone started trying to figure out a way to pull the motionless fire-team leader to safety without exposing themselves to the sniper.

  Jim Walsh was devastated. Tom Zwetow was the only Marine he had allowed himself to get close to in Vietnam. Anytime the squad was involved in a fight, Zwetow's face was the first one Walsh looked for. If Tet had not overtaken 1/5, Walsh and Zwetow would have been winding up their R and R leave in Tokyo that very day. Now, a bullet had driven Tom Zwetow to the floor of this building in Hue's Citadel. He was motionless and probably dead.

  Then Zwetow started talking. He just came back from the dead and started talking. Just like that. Two Marines leaned out into the danger zone and grabbed Zwetow's ankles. Then they leaned back and reeled him in out of the line of fire. They turned him over to assess the damage, but there was no blood. Zwetow complained about the pain, but there was no sign of a wound. Apparently, the SKS round had hit him square in the back, but it had not penetrated his flak jacket.

  *

  At noon, a fire team from Alpha/l/5's 3rd Platoon was patrolling the no-man's-land northwest of the Imperial Palace when it was struck by a volley of seven B-40 rounds. One Marine was wounded, but his comrades returned a heavy volume of small-arms fire and four LAAWs at the supposed source of the RPG attack. No results could be determined, however, and NVA small-arms fire pinned the patrol behind a masonry wall.

  The cumulative effect of many such incidents and the heavy casualties—particularly among experienced, respected unit lead­ers—that Alpha/1/5 had sustained on February 14 had cut the heart out of the company. Alpha/1/5 was just about washed up as an effective fighting unit. Neither of the young lieutenants who had survived the rigors of the first day of combat in Hue was experienced or strong enough to get the company over its demor­alization. Things were looking very grim when Battalion ordered the young lieutenant commanding Alpha/1/5 to send a reaction force to rescue the trapped patrol. The lieutenant was unable to coax any of his men into volunteering.

  Fortunately for Alpha/1/5, there arrived at that precise moment an unattached young officer who had enormous presence and months of solid command experience. First Lieutenant Pat Polk had served as a platoon commander with Charlie/1/5 early in his tour, but he had been tabbed to serve as a junior liaison officer with the 2nd Korean Marine Brigade. Polk had just re­turned to 1/5's rear CP, in Phu Bai, to serve out the remainder of his tour as a junior assistant operations officer. That morning he had routinely escorted a mixed group of replacements and return­ing wounded to the 1/5 forward CP. He and his charges arrived at their destination just as the drama northwest of the Imperial Palace was unfolding.

  As soon as Lieutenant Polk reported in, Major Bob Thomp­son took him aside and explained Alpha/l/5's situation and the plight of the patrol. He asked Polk if he wanted to take command of the company. Pat Polk was just days away from rotating home, and he did not have to agree. But he did.

  When Polk reached the Alpha/1/5 CP, he tried to find volunteers willing to rescue their comrades. No one made a move, but Polk felt that a few could be persuaded if he set an example. He let it be known that he intended to lead the relief, and that netted him eight volunteers.

  The little group of Marines jumped off and made rapid progress against no real opposition until it reached a masonry building twenty meters away from the trapped five-man patrol. From there, NVA, manning RPDs and protected by many rifle­men, took Polk's relief party under fire. Among Polk s volunteers were Alpha/1/5's 81mm forward observer and his radioman. Rather than try to breast the enemy fire, which was now intense, Polk ordered an 81mm fire mission. The rounds dropped danger­ously close—Polk was hit by a few tiny fragments—but the NVA ducked for cover. As soon as the NVA stopped firing, the relief party closed on the trapped patrol. By then, four of the five Marines in the patrol had been wounded.

  Again calling on the 81mms for covering fire, Polk eased the patrol and the relief party out of the danger zone and back to the Alpha/1/5 CP. It took most of the afternoon because the four wounded men had to be carried in relays, but the move was accomplished without further loss.

  After the news of Pat Polk's nerveless debut in Hue got around, Alpha/1/5 Marines began walking tall again. The com­pany was sadly understrength, even after absorbing its share of the day's replacements, but its morale was restored and it would soon take its place again on the battalion front line.

  *

  Shortly after noon, Corporal Paul Cheatwood volunteered to lead a squad patrol to locate and destroy an NVA machine gun that had been sniping into the Charlie/1/5 zone. While search­ing through several suspect buildings, however, Cheatwood be­came separated from the rest of his patrol. Though he should have tried to locate the other Marines, he decided to go it alone. As he moved on through one building, he spotted eight NVA soldiers in an adjacent courtyard. Without giving the matter much thought, Cheatwood hurled several hand grenades into the courtyard and then fired his .45-caliber pistol at the surprised enemy soldiers. Several of the NVA were killed or wounded before the others pulled themselves together and returned fire. Though Cheat-wood was painfully wounded, he kept firing his pistol and throw­ing grenades until the surviving NVA cleared out. Later he was brought to the battalion aid station, where he was treated and evacu
ated. Corporal Paul Cheatwood's performance on February 16 earned him a Navy Cross, the only such medal awarded to an enlisted member of 1/5 for combat in Hue.

  *

  Private First Class Jim Walsh was resting. He was standing on the second floor of a house, in a room with one window overlooking the side street. He thought he was completely con­cealed, but he was wrong. The muzzle of his M-16 extended all of a half inch past the window frame. An alert NVA sniper across the way saw the muzzle and put an SKS round through the wall beside the window. The impact spun Walsh away from the wall.

  Jim Walsh could not catch his breath, and his vision was fogging over. At first, he thought the round had struck him in the chest, but it had not. It had punctured a CS tear gas canister dangling from his flak jacket. He felt the impact in his chest, but the loss of sight and breath was the result of being dusted with CS powder.

  Walsh yelled for help, and his buddies led him out into the fresh air on a safe side of the house. They washed his eyes out with their drinking water and rubbed off as much of the CS powder as they could. When Walsh could see again, he undertook a body search to assure himself that he was whole. He was, but two of the three M-79 grenades he had been carrying for the squad grenadier had been nicked by the round that hit the gas grenade. As gingerly as possible, Walsh lifted the grenade bando­leer over his head and set it down out of the way. Then he took off his flak jacket and checked it. The bullet had grazed along the fabric shell, right at heart level. It had been deflected outward by the corner of an armor square, and that is how it came to hit the CS grenade and the M-79 rounds. When Walsh realized what had happened, he felt Death's hand lift from his shoulder.