Fire in the Streets

by Eric Hammel

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  The three front-line companies of the 5/7 Cav jumped off at 1800 in a final assault against the bamboo thicket and treelines they were facing. The Americans hoped the defense had been pulverized by the ongoing artillery, mortar, and air attacks. If the attack went as planned, the frontal assault would breach the NVA line and carry the Cav companies all the way through Thon Que Chu to the NVA CP bunker in Thon La Chu.

  Once again the NVA let the U.S. Army battalion come on virtually without opposition. Then, as Company C entered the treeline on the right and Company D and Company A moved into the bamboo thickets, the world blew up in their faces. Since the Cav battalion had been preparing for the final assault for nearly four hours in plain view of the enemy, the element of surprise had been lost.

  On the battalion right, Company C advanced all the way to its original initial objective, a dry streambed that ran between Thon Que Chu and Thon Phu O. Unfortunately, to secure Thon Phu O, Company C had to attack to its right rather than as called for by the original plan. Company C had insufficient manpower to cover its own front and Company A's open right flank. The result was a widening gap to Company C's left and the inevitable loss of lateral contact with Company A. As soon as Company C reached the streambed, it was stopped cold by many NVA soldiers manning a deep defensive sector inside the Thon Phu O treeline. The right Cav company had to go to ground north of the streambed.

  Company A put the entire weight of its attack into the bamboo thicket that it now faced. The NVA let the company cross the narrow piece of open ground and enter the thicket. In fact, NVA manning a concealed line of spider holes allowed Company A to advance beyond their line, into the ville. As soon as the Cav troopers were between the spider holes and the next bamboo hedge within the ville, both NVA lines erupted. Caught in the middle, Company A was riddled by small-arms fire from the front and showered by Chicoms from the rear.

  On the far left, Company D began attacking into the bam­boo thicket—the first of several successive bamboo hedges the Vietnamese used as property markers. Like Company A, it passed through a line of concealed spider holes and then was engaged from front and rear by small arms and scores of Chicoms. Cap­tain Frank Lambert, the Company D commander, had deployed his unit routinely, with two platoons up and one platoon back. When the NVA opened fire, the left platoon veered to the left to try to find a soft spot, and the right platoon did the same on its side of the front. Both platoons were quickly pinned down, and the reserve platoon was pinned down in the open before it could move forward to plug the hole in the center. That left Captain Lambert and his tiny command group pinned in the open, in front of the reserve platoon and between the diverging assault platoons. Captain Lambert noticed that the NVA were concen­trating the bulk of their fire against the right platoon. He did not realize at the time that, if it could ever get moving again, the right platoon was in position to roll up the flank of the NVA trenchline facing Company A. From Lambert's perspective—gained by quick life-threatening peeks over a concealing clump of grass—it was just a matter of time before the NVA riflemen and machine gunners noticed the clump of antennas his radioman and several supporting-arms teams were showing.

  As the situation crystallized during the next few moments, Lambert realized that the company's advance into the bamboo thicket had placed a small NVA force to his left and left rear. That force was manning a trench and holding the left platoon firmly in place inside the bamboo. Lambert was thinking about ordering the reserve platoon to try to breach the NVA trenchline when he received word that the platoon leader had been killed. There was no one else qualified to lead the platoon into action—the platoon sergeant was on leave—so Lambert ordered the right platoon to tighten up toward the center, the reserve platoon to advance into the gap in the center, and his command group to pull back out of the thicket.

  In the midst of all the craziness, Lambert's company radio­man stood up on his knees, opened fire with his M-16, and yelled, "Sir, you get outta here." Lambert replied, "No, you go first." A little argument ensued, incredible under the circum­stances. Finally Lambert yelled, "Let's go," and led the way back while the radioman stubbornly continued to cover everyone else. That the various elements of Company D were able to move at all was thanks to the crack 60mm mortar section, which walked suppressive rounds up and down the NVA trenchlines—a master­ful performance.

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  As soon as the late afternoon attack jumped off, it became evident that the NVA were brilliantly deployed just inside the entire length of the Thon Phu O treeline facing Company C and in depth throughout the bamboo thicket fronting Thon Que Chu. In fact, they were manning multiple lines, each supported by interconnecting, mutually supporting trenches and strong-points. Apparently, there were as many or more defenders as there were attackers. In addition to their own small arms and a limitless supply of hand grenades, the NVA controlled many mortars and, apparently, scores of captured American Claymore mines, which they blew off in the faces of the struggling U.S. troopers.

  With all three Cav companies embroiled along their respec­tive fronts, at least two NVA companies now counterattacked toward Company A's exposed right flank. Fortunately for Com­pany A, the NVA were obliged to counterattack across the open rice paddy, where Company C was able to stun, then stop, and then turn them back.

  As soon as the NVA counterattack was repulsed, Lieutenant Colonel Vaught and Major Baker agreed that pressing on was hopeless. At 1815, word went out to the three assault-company commanders to withdraw back to Thon Lieu Coc Thuong.

  For Company A and Company C, disengaging was relatively easy, and the cemetery and the berm helped cover the withdrawal. Captain Frank Lambert's Company D, however, was boxed in between perpendicular and parallel NVA trenchlines. Unable to pull straight back toward the cemetery, Lambert ordered the company to side-slip to the left, where tall, thick bamboo hedges would screen it from the worst of the NVA fire. No sooner had the withdrawal order been screamed around the company posi­tion than Captain Lambert learned that a trooper had been wounded in an open paddy and that the NVA had him staked out. Lambert immediately left the relative safety of his trench and crawled straight out through enemy fire to retrieve the wounded man. The act earned him a Silver Star, not to mention the respect of his troops. Unfortunately, the company commander's example could not be followed elsewhere. When Company D held a nose count at Thon Lieu Coc Thuong that evening, it came up five men. short, including the dead platoon commander.

  On the night of February 12, after all the wounded had been lifted out of Thon Lieu Coc Thuong, the 5/7 Cay's losses were tallied: Company A, two killed and twenty-four wounded; Com­pany B, one wounded; Company C, two killed and eight wounded; Company D, five missing and three wounded. No one had any hope for the five MIAs. (A few nights later, Captain Frank Lambert personally led a team back to Thon Que Chu to recover the bodies of the five men. Just as the team found the disintegrating corpses, someone inside the battalion perimeter mistakenly ordered the artillery to fire an illumination round right over the bamboo thicket. Lambert's group froze stock-still until the light petered out. Then they withdrew, once again leaving their dead comrades where they had fallen.)

  As to how many NVA had been killed or wounded at Thon Que Chu and Thon Phu O on February 12, the 5/7 Cav could only guess. Major Baker's official count was seven NVA killed and twenty-three NVA wounded. These were primarily the NVA that Company C had been able to account for during the late-afternoon counterattack in the open. But Baker estimated that the jets, artillery, ARA, and direct fire had killed and wounded many more.

  It was clear to the men of the 5/7 Cav that they had encoun­tered a major enemy position that the NVA intended to hold. With that in mind, Lieutenant Colonel Vaught, Major Baker, and the company commanders set to work focusing all their attention on finding a way to break into T-T Woods to capture the NVA command bunker in Thon La Chu.

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  Chapter 36

  The planning to seize T-T Woods began again
in earnest almost as soon as the battered 5/7 Cav returned to its perimeter in Thon Lieu Coc Thuong. If nothing else, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Vaught and Major Charlie Baker knew one way it couldn't be done—by frontal attack.

  High-level visits began shortly after noon on February 13, when Brigadier General Oscar Davis, one of the 1st Cavalry Division's two assistant commanders, dropped in by helicopter to confer with Jim Vaught. Davis was shown the scene of the previous day's battle, and then he departed. Major General Jack Tolson, the Cav division commander, arrived at 1400. After he was briefed, Tolson told Lieutenant Colonel Vaught and Major Baker that he hoped to mount a three-battalion assault on T-T Woods as soon as he could muster the forces. The Cav's 3rd Brigade was spread too thin for the job; the 5/7 Cav and 2/12 Cav were on opposite ends of T-T Woods, and the 1/7 Cav was the palace guard at Camp Evans. Following its reaction to the Communist coup de main at Quang Tri City, the 1st Brigade was still engaged in mop-up operations in Quang Tri Province. Tol­son hoped that the impending arrival of the 2nd Brigade from central II Corps would free up the 1/7 Cav so it could help grab T-T Woods. Also, several companies of the 101st Airborne Divi­sion's 2nd Brigade were holding the area right around PK 17. If all went well, the entire airborne brigade would eventually be given a role along Highway 1. Capping his summary, General Tolson told Vaught that he hoped to secure the use of 8-inch howitzers and 155mm guns north of Hue and that he was trying to get an armored cavalry troop and some tanks attached to the 5/7 Cav for the final assault on T-T Woods and a follow-up drive on the Citadel's outer walls. General Tolson then departed, leav­ing Jim Vaught to grapple with what he actually had on hand: one 400-man Cav battalion and an objective too strongly held for that battalion to take.

  The 5/7 Cav was modestly reinforced on February 13. A sniper specialist armed with a scoped M-14 rifle was dropped off in the battalion perimeter, and he later accounted for the only confirmed kill credited to the battalion that day. Late that night, a pair of tripflares fronting a Company C listening post were set off, and some wild shooting ensued. The troopers manning the post swore they had three or four NVA in their sights, and there was indeed someone out there shooting back and throwing Chicoms. But the only known result of the fracas was two lightly wounded Cav troopers.

  General Tolson's promises began to bear fruit on February 15, in the form of upscaled 105mm fire-support resources. Only two modest jet strikes were mounted on T-T Woods during the day, but Vaught was assured from above that more would be laid on as the time to renew the ground assault approached. In fact things were looking up—until 1800, when Major Baker learned that no 8-inch or 155mm artillery were available for the projected ground attack.

  Therefore, planning took a new tack. On February 15, the 3rd Brigade commander informed Lieutenant Colonel Vaught that Lieutenant Colonel Dick Sweet's 2/12 Cav would definitely be taking part in the ground assault on T-T Woods. According to Brigade, the 2/12 Cav would be airlifted from its position south of Thon La Chu to an LZ behind Thon Lieu Coc Thuong in time to assault T-T Woods on the 5/7 Cav's left flank. There was some talk of providing a battery of quad.50 trucks and twin-40mm Dusters for a base of fire. That was well and good if it actually happened, but by then Jim Vaught and Charlie Baker were well along in formulating a radically different plan for a one-battalion attack through T-T Woods. Troopers were being trained in demo­litions work and were already constructing pole charges and makeshift bangalore torpedoes, and squads within each company were training to use them in the assault. The battalion supply section was directed to acquire flamethrowers and as many wire cutters as it could beg, borrow, or steal. Hoping for a two-battalion assault but relying only on his own battalion, Major Baker planned to use jet-delivered napalm and 1,000-pound bombs in the closing moments of the preassault bombardment. When naval gunfire became available on February 16, Baker amended his plan so it could incorporate the naval guns in the final assault.

  Activity beyond planning was minor. Company D, 2/501 Airborne, was placed under the 5/7 Cav's operational control on February 15. That day, while patrolling Provincial Route 554 east of Thon Thuong, the company was engaged by an NVA force amounting to at least two companies. Artillery was called and ARA ships were dispatched, but the airborne company remained hard-pressed until Company B and Company C of the 5/7 Cav rushed to the scene on foot. Fighting was at very close quarters. Captain Howard Prince, the Company B commander, called in fire from helicopter gunships, directed ARA to within twenty-five meters of his own troops, and adjusted 105mm howitzers to within fifty meters, taking shrapnel in the process. The NVA stood and fought the U.S. Army companies to a standstill, but broke contact late in the afternoon. Fifty-eight NVA corpses were counted on the battlefield. It was later established that the NVA units to which they belonged had marched to the Hue area from Khe Sanh, the first indication that the Tri-Thien-Hue Front was beefing up the three NVA infantry regiments already accounted for in and around Hue.

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  The systematic destruction of the northern end of T-T Woods began in earnest on February 16. Land-based artillery fired 1,000 high-explosive rounds into T-T Woods, the Navy delivered 4,000 high-explosive rounds, and Air Force jets deliv­ered 35 tons of assorted high-explosive bombs and 10,000 pounds of napalm.

  On February 17, Major Baker flew by helicopter to Quang Tri to board an O-l spotter plane for a reconnaissance flight over T-T Woods. Baker drew a detailed sketch of the bamboo thickets and treelines, but he was unused to observing from a fixed-wing airplane and could not make out the precise location of the NVA fighting positions. Baker explained this to the pilot, who had previously flown over the objective, and the pilot went into a steep dive and fired marker rockets to point out the NVA posi­tions. The dive made Baker throw up, but the maneuver did help him get a better mental image of the enemy bastion. On the way out of the third or fourth dive, the O-l drew fire from a .51-caliber machine gun, and Baker decided to call it a day.

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  Aggressive patrol activities, ongoing from the beginning, heated up closer to T-T Woods on February 19. Most of the 5/7 Cav participated in a sweep from Thon Lieu Coc Thuong north­ward a short distance across Highway 1. An NVA force en­trenched inside a large cemetery just north of the highway en­gaged the Cav force at long range, but Cav forward observers brought in an artillery fire mission while the troopers returned to Thon Lieu Coc Thuong. No one wanted to get into a big fracas in that direction.

  While the 5/7 Cav was patrolling to the north, two 2/12 Cav patrols operating east of Thon Bon Tri were engaged by separate squad-size NVA patrols. Both 2/12 Cav patrols re­sponded with artillery and withdrew. Finally, a 2/501 Airborne patrol probing southeast from PK 17 crossed Provincial Route 554 north of Thon Bon Tri and contacted an NVA holding force that did not break contact until sunset.

  Also on February 19—two days before the anticipated third assault on T-T Woods—the 2/501 Airborne was formally at­tached to the 1st Cavalry Division's 3rd Brigade, and the 1/7 Cav was relieved of palace-guard duty at Camp Evans and re­turned to the operational control of the 3rd Brigade.

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  The periods between the attacks on T-T Woods were not without tragedies. Patrol contact and aggressive NVA activity steadily whittled away at the battalion's strength. Every time a helicopter flew anywhere near Thon Lieu Coc Thuong, NVA mortars fired at it or simply at the large stationary target in the center of the American-occupied hamlet.

  Many of the Cav troopers had come to Thon Lieu Coc Thuong with lousy flak-jacket discipline. Mounting losses cured them of that ill, but not before scores had been wounded or killed. Any disdain the troopers held for the enemy—most of the troopers, before heading north to I Corps, had only faced part-time VC fighters in II Corps—was erased long before the 5/7 Cav completed preparations for the third attack on T-T Woods.

  The NVA kept the pressure up with unnerving harassment. At night, when they weren't probing around the outpost line or dropping in a few random 82mm mortar rounds, the NVA blew whis
tles and sounded bugles. Unable to guess what evil the noise augured, many troopers remained awake and tense—all to the detriment of the battalion's efficiency. It was a great mind game, and the NVA had the upper hand.

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  With four battalions now available for the February 21 as­sault on T-T Woods, the 3rd Brigade operations staff developed a plan at the last minute. The 5/7 Cav would conduct its long-planned attack from Thon Lieu Coc Thuong by way of Thon Phu O and the bamboo thickets at the north end of Thon Que Chu; the 2/501 Airborne would advance from the center, due east through Thon An Do, which was southwest of Thon Que Chu; two companies of the 2/12 Cav would advance northward di­rectly into Thon La Chu from Thon Bon Tri; and the 1/7 Cav would support the 5/7 Cav on the north side. The two unen­gaged companies of the 2/12 Cav would be the brigade reserve. Most of the noninfantry reinforcements and support Major Gen­eral Jack Tolson had promised to get for Vaught had not been delivered, but Vaught had no problem with that; he knew Tolson had done his best. As for being part of a four-battalion assault, Vaught gave it not one thought. His troopers had personal scores to settle in T-T Woods. Even though the 2/12 Cav and the 2/501 Airborne had been given better shots at the NVA com­mand bunker in Thon La Chu, Vaught's final assault plan envis­aged its capture by the 5/7 Cav.

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  Captain Howard Prince's Company B was to lead the 5/7 Cav's attack into the bamboo thicket at dawn on February 21, an ominous prospect to many of the young troopers who would be in the forefront. In fact, the inexperienced lieutenant command­ing the vanguard platoon anxiously told Captain Prince that his troopers were cursing and threatening to refuse to go back to T-T Woods the next morning. Prince personally talked with the troopers and learned that they simply did not understand the tactics they were expected to employ. The company commander did his best to allay their fears, but the men were acting as if they were under a death sentence. Tempers flared in the Company B sector for the rest of the evening and on into the night, a sure sign that morale was coming unglued. As the hours passed, Prince decided that he should check back with the man who had written the plan, Major Charlie Baker. Prince told Baker that the troops were grumbling over the complexity of the plan. Prince did not say so, but Baker had the feeling that the company commander was trying to warn him that the troopers might not jump off at H-hour.