Both the 1st Battalion, 5th Cav companies made the march back to Columbus without incident, closing in at five P.M., well before dark, on November 18. Columbus was a good-size rectangular clearing, running north-south. George Forrest’s A Company moved into position on the northwest while Buse Tully’s B Company men secured the southern end of the clearing. Tully immediately put out observation posts forward of his three-platoon defenses. Then he told his men to break out C-rations and take a well-deserved breather. Both the meal and the break were rudely interrupted at 5:35 P.M., when the outposts spotted the lead elements of a North Vietnamese force maneuvering toward Columbus. With that warning, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Acker-son, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cav, had time to get his men in their holes, alert the artillery batteries, and get set for the assault, which came in from the east and southeast.
According to then-Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Huu An, the NVA battlefield commander, that attack should have been launched against Columbus at two P.M., when half of Ackerson’s battalion would still have been marching back from Albany. General An said the commander of the attack battalion of the 33rd Regiment was unable to mass his men, who had dispersed over a wide area of the valley to avoid air strikes, in time to make the deadline. An said his commander also had problems finding a section of the Columbus perimeter where there was sufficient cover to hide his preparations for the attack. The result was a delay of over three and a half hours.
When the attack finally did kick off it was met with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire from Ackerson’s battalion as well as from the artillerymen who had cranked their 105mm howitzers down and were firing canister rounds at point-blank range. The Air Force was quick to provide tactical air strikes close to the perimeter. By nine P.M. the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry had beaten off and broken the attack.
An says: “The 33rd Regiment could not destroy this position, but they forced the artillery to withdraw, and the artillerymen left behind about a thousand rounds. We captured a thousand rounds of 105mm ammunition, but we had no guns of that size and never used it.” The North Vietnamese commander reckons that even though the attack failed, his men forced the abandonment of Columbus the next day. That’s not the way Colonel Tim Brown, 3rd Brigade commander, sees it: “We were in our last days. The 2nd Brigade had already been ordered up. We were just swinging out west so that Colonel Ray Lynch [commander of the 2nd Brigade] could take over. We were also moving artillery out in that direction. Lynch was going to put his brigade headquarters at Due Co Special Forces Camp. So we were in the process of getting out, but not yet.”
In furtherance of that plan, at midday on November 18 Brown had sent Lieutenant Colonel Bob Tully’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Cav on an air assault into a clearing designated Landing Zone Crooks (6.5 miles northwest of Columbus). Once they had secured Crooks, Brown airlifted the artillery from LZ Falcon to Crooks. From there the artillerymen would provide initial support to the 2nd Brigade and to the South Vietnamese Airborne battalions that were planning to move south from Due Co camp on November 19 and take up blocking positions along the Cambodian border to harass the North Vietnamese on their retreat from the Ia Drang Valley.
On November 19, Brown moved the artillery and the 1st Battalion, 5th Cav from Columbus to a new landing zone designated Golf, 7.5 miles northwest. Now all the pieces were in place for continued operations against the enemy, with Brown’s 3rd Brigade handing off the job to Colonel Ray Lynch’s 2nd Brigade and to the ARVN Airborne task force.
Back in the Albany area, policing of the battlefield continued. Survivors and witnesses most often use the word “carnage” for the terrible things they saw in the brush and tall elephant grass.
Specialist 4 Jon Wallenius of the Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry mortar platoon, and most of the rest of Myron Diduryk’s men were involved in this macabre and depressing duty. “It was incredible carnage. We went to areas where lots of artillery had come in during the night and we saw our guys had been blown up in the trees. The bodies were already decomposed and it had only happened the night before. We were in shock. It was the first, last, and only time I ever saw anything like it and I pray never again. The stench was unbelievable. We started hauling in the whole bodies first; then we brought in the pieces and parts. Two Chinooks came in and we loaded one with about twenty corpses, neatly arranged in litters. The pilot began preparing to take off. One of our officers pointed an M-16 at the pilot and told him to keep the bird on the ground; we weren’t through. Bodies were loaded floor to ceiling. When the ramp finally closed blood poured through the hinges. I felt sorry for the poor bastards who would have to unload this chopper back at Holloway.”
One of the last wounded Americans recovered from the battlefield that day was PFC James Shadden of the Delta Company mortar platoon. “The next morning and all day long the sun had no mercy. The ants and flies were crawling all over my wounds. My tongue and throat had turned to cotton. I had grown so weak I could hardly move. Captain Henry Thorpe came to me about six P.M. the evening of the eighteenth and said: ‘We didn’t know where you were.’ Well, I didn’t know where he was either. After a few days at the 85th Evac Hospital, I was flown back to the hospital at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where I stayed almost a year recovering.”
The nightmares born of this battle have never faded.
23
The Sergeant and the Ghost
We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.
—WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN
Every battle has its unsung heroes, and the desperate fight that raged up and down the column of Americans scattered along the trail to the Albany clearing is no exception. Two of them met after midnight, November 18, when Platoon Sergeant Fred J. Kluge, thirty-two years old, 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, led a patrol into the heart of the killing zone in search of the voice on the radio calling himself Ghost 4-6. Kluge eased into a small cluster of wounded and desperate Americans and quietly asked: “Who’s in charge here?” There was a long silence and then the faint reply: “Over here.” Second Lieutenant Robert J. Jeanette, who had been wounded at least four times that afternoon but had held on to his radio and called deadly barrages of artillery down on groups of North Vietnamese circling the Albany clearing, thought he had been saved. So he had, but not just yet.
Ghost 4-6 and Sergeant Kluge are the stuff of legend, and various versions of their sagas have circulated for years among the survivors of Albany. Literally dozens of men reckon they owe their lives to either the sergeant or the Ghost. Both insist that they only did their jobs, that the real heroes were among all the others who fought in Albany that day and night.
Sergeant Fred J. Kluge was a seventeen-year-old high school dropout when he enlisted in the Army in 1950. He fought in the Korean War with the 187th Regimental Combat Team. Between the wars, Korea and Vietnam, he taught map reading and small-unit infantry tactics in Army schools. In 1965 Kluge was on his way to the Special Forces but ended up in the 1st Cavalry Division, assigned as a platoon sergeant in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, Captain George Forrest commanding.
When the fighting broke out on the march to Albany clearing, Sergeant Kluge helped establish the perimeter at the rear of the column, and then single-handedly began finding and guiding to safety the Americans staggering out of the chopped-up column. Sergeant Kluge’s account:
“We started getting more and more wounded in from the column up ahead. I would go out and collect them. They were staggering out of the kill zone, dazed, badly wounded, shot up. I just moved off in that direction a good ways so I could guide them back. The column up forward of us was gone; it had disintegrated. There was just independent little skirmishes going on, little pockets of men fighting back. I moved on up to where I could see into the kill zone and pick up those people coming out. Some of them were running, some crawling. Almost all of them were wounded.
“I could see
the enemy up in the trees—and I could see them on the ground, moving along in groups of three or four, bent over low. They were moving like they had a destination to reach. Some of them shot at me, but mostly they were just moving along. What it looked like to me was their flanking units moving into the ambush zone.
“I picked up the surgeon of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav, Doc Shucart, about this time. I told him what we had going and he started dealing with the wounded. By now I started getting some choppers in. The medic, Specialist 5 Daniel Torrez, told me that one of my squad-leader sergeants had put a bandage on his leg but Torrez didn’t think he was really wounded. I went over and he was laying down, his pants leg slit up the side and a bandage wrapped around his leg. I asked him: ‘How bad are you hit?’ He said, ‘Oh, not too bad, just a flesh wound.’ I said: ‘Well, how about Torrez and me take a look?’ He said no, he didn’t want anybody messing with it. I tore that bandage off and there was no wound at all. Right then and there I beat the shit out of him. I ripped his stripes off his arms and demoted him on the spot. I didn’t have that authority, of course, but I sure relieved him of his job. I got his assistant squad leader and put him in charge. All this time the doctor had gone on treating the wounded.
“Another captain, I believe an Air Force captain, came in our perimeter around then and asked what he could do. I put him with the doctor. The evac choppers were landing about fifty yards from where I had set up—about two hundred yards from the kill zone. We had three or four choppers come in, one at a time, and I got all my wounded out, but more were coming out of the kill zone all the time, more than I was getting evacuated.
“A pilot called me over and told me there was a clearing two hundred yards further back that was much bigger, where they could bring in two or three choppers at a time. I had my platoon pick up the wounded, and I sent a squad on ahead to recon that clearing, and we moved on back. It was a nice big clearing, with a big anthill in the center. We set up a perimeter around that clearing and I went forward again to guide the people coming out of the ambush.
“Lieutenant Adams and Captain Forrest both came back to us about then. Forrest was really upset; he had lost some friends in this. I was getting reports on who was dead from our company: One lieutenant killed and two lieutenants wounded. One platoon sergeant killed, one wounded. The executive officer wounded.
“A little later Bravo Company 1/5 came in overland from Columbus, led by Captain Tully. He and Captain Forrest conferred, and they wanted my platoon to gather up all the wounded, maybe thirty-five or so, and prepare to move. Bravo Company would lead off. Tully wanted to go forward to the Albany clearing, through the ambush site. I told Tully: ‘You won’t make it even a hundred yards up that trail.’ He didn’t. They took real intense fire, lost one killed and several wounded. He decided that wasn’t such a good idea after all, and pulled back.
“Tully and Forrest then decided to set up a joint, two-company perimeter in the big clearing. At that point we were holding the perimeter. Now Tully’s people took over three-quarters of it, and we kept the rest. Tully’s people took the portion facing the ambush site. By now we had gotten in most of the wounded from the ambush. Only a few straggled in later. I had piles of wounded men, and now the choppers told me they were going to quit flying. It was getting on to dark and they said they wouldn’t land after dark.
“I pleaded with them to at least bring us some ammunition. Most of the people coming in from the ambush didn’t have weapons or ammo. They had dropped their harness and butt packs when they got hit. Some of my people carrying wounded had dropped their gear, too. I told that pilot I wanted grenades, trip flares and ammo for the 16s and 60s. The pilot said OK, he would do that one last trip. He must have just gone over to Columbus because he was back soon after. He didn’t land, just made a low pass over the perimeter and kicked out crates of ammo.
“Captain Forrest had no radio, so we set up my platoon’s radio over at the anthill; that’s where Forrest set up his CP. I was expecting us to get hit; we were really vulnerable with so many wounded that couldn’t move. I kept checking with the doctor and we tried to select an area where the wounded and the medics would be protected.
“Around ten or eleven at night Captain Forrest was fiddling around with the radio when he picked up a plea for help from Ghost 4-6. This was a 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry lieutenant. I spoke to him both that night and again, briefly, in the morning. He was telling us over the radio that he was all shot up, that he was going to die, that the enemy were moving around, crawling around in the grass, killing off the American wounded. He said he could hear them shooting and talking out there around him. He said there were a bunch of other American wounded in the area.
“Captain Forrest wanted to take a patrol out to rescue them. I told him it wasn’t all that good an idea. We discussed the pros and cons of it. The whole area was lit with flares. I told him there were a lot of arguments against it: Those people are closer to the Albany clearing than to us and we have no contact with Albany. What if Albany has sent out a patrol and we stumble into them and shoot each other up? The wounded Americans out in that grass are scared to death; they may shoot us up as well. Then there’s the enemy, and if they don’t shoot us, it’s damned near guaranteed the Bravo Company guys on this perimeter will shoot us when we come back in.
“He insisted: ‘Sergeant, get your people saddled up.’ I said: ‘OK, but there’s no point in both of us going. They are my people, I’ll take them out.’ It was arranged that Ghost 4-6 would fire his .45-caliber pistol and I would guide in on the sound.
“The medevac guys had kicked out four or five folding-type litters. We got those and an M-60 machine gun and I took the whole bunch of us, twenty-two or twenty-three guys, I think. Captain Forrest stayed back. We traveled as light as we could. I told the guys to leave their steel pots, packs, all that stuff. Just carry rifles, ammo, and grenades. We went out through Tully’s lines and I retraced the route back to this ridge I had been on earlier, collecting the stragglers. Then we moved ahead real slow, with Ghost 4-6 firing his pistol. I didn’t take a straight line up that column, but kind of looped around.
“We started finding dead everywhere—mostly Americans at that point, on the outskirts of the kill zone, where they had run after they got shot. It was just thick with dead. Then we began to find some enemy dead among them. We picked up three or four American wounded on our way up to Ghost 4-6. If they could walk we helped them along. We were already getting bogged down; we had no real capacity to react quickly if the enemy were to hit us.
“Well, we got to Ghost 4-6, and he was bad shot up, had been hit in the chest and hit in the knees. But of all the wounded we encountered, he was probably the most mentally alert and competent. I really admired him. That guy had a super attitude and spirit. We put up a little perimeter and started policing up the wounded and bringing them in. There were twenty-five or thirty or more that we brought in there.
“I had to make a decision. We could not take them all. There were too many of them. And I knew we would not be able to get back out there that night. There wasn’t time enough before daylight. I asked Daniel Torrez the medic to pick out those who were in the worst shape, who didn’t look like making it through the night, for us to carry back. Plus those who could walk on their own or with a little help. The rest we gathered close around Ghost 4-6.
“I told Ghost 4-61 wasn’t bringing him back on this trip, that I was putting him in charge of the others and I would be back in the morning. He didn’t like it but he accepted it. Then I asked Torrez if he would stay with them. He was the best soldier in my platoon, came from El Paso, Texas, and I thought the world of him. He didn’t like the idea of staying out there either, but he said he would.
“I left Torrez the M-60 machine gun. We were gathering up ammo and weapons off the dead and putting those weapons beside the wounded so they could help defend themselves, if it came to that. When we told them we were only taking the worst-wounded plus the walking wounded, some guy
s said, ‘I can walk,’ and got up. Some of them fell right back down, too. When I made the decision to carry out the worst cases, I was hoping that the choppers would come back in and collect those men. Turned out they wouldn’t, and that’s something that really pissed me off.
“Anyway, we started back in a straggling column; we had to stop every few minutes to let the walking wounded catch up. There were only three of us who were not carrying wounded: myself on point, and my radio operator and another guy riding shotgun at the rear. I was so apprehensive that the enemy would hit us now, when there was no way we could defend ourselves. Those carrying the wounded had their rifles slung on their backs.
“I was even more apprehensive about getting back inside our perimeter; that had worried me from the first minute. When we finally got close I stopped everyone and we clustered in the shadows. I knew we were real close, less than two hundred yards out from our lines. I was talking to Captain Forrest on the radio, and telling him we were afraid to come in; we were afraid they were gonna shoot us. Forrest came out to the line and shined a flashlight on his face. He was telling me: ‘We got everyone alerted—everyone has got the word—nobody’s going to shoot.’ I kept saying we are afraid to move. So Forrest came out another fifty yards toward us, still shining that light on his face.
We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young Page 39