The Odyssey of Echo Company

by Doug Stanton

  “Can you give me a shot or something?” Stan practically begs him. The pain’s getting worse.

  “No, I can’t, because you need all your faculties here. If I give you a shot, you’re liable to pass out on me.”

  Oh, sweet Lord, I ain’t going to pass out, thinks Stan.

  “You just sit tight. We’ll get somebody to you in a little bit.”

  A little bit? This surprises Stan. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

  “No,” Fulton says, and then he starts crawling backward, over the ground from whence he came.

  Stan is looking at him, saying, “I thought you said you weren’t going to leave me.”

  “Well,” says Fulton, trying to explain to the increasingly agitated Stan, “I’m going to be back for you. I’m not going to leave you here.”

  “But right now, you’re leaving me here, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Fulton says, as if to say, When you put it like that—

  “How long?” says Stan. “How long before somebody’s back?”

  “I don’t know, thirty minutes, an hour. We’ll be back.”

  “Don’t forget about me being here!” cries Stan. “Don’t go off and leave me.” What’s really bothering Stan is the prospect of being left behind, of not being carried onto the chopper, of not being airlifted from this terrible place.

  “We won’t leave you,” says Fulton. “I guarantee you.”

  “Okay,” Stan says finally. He’s shivering. He drifts off and wakes when somebody shakes him. It’s Dwight Lane and Brian Riley come to get him back to the rear, to a safe place behind the screen of trees along another rice paddy, where the helicopters are going to land. Stan is incredulous. He’s coming out of the initial haze of the pain and remembers that Lane and Riley are two of the shorter guys in the platoon. How are they going to carry him?

  “What happened to those six-foot guys we’ve got?” Stan asks.

  “They said we’d do a better job of dragging you,” says Riley.

  “Dragging me? You mean, you’re going to drag me back there? I thought you were going to carry me.”

  “There’s too much shooting going on,” says Lane. “We got to stay low. We’re the shortest, and we won’t get shot at as much.”

  “Hang on,” says Riley, and each of them grabs one of Stan’s shoulders and starts dragging, half-crouched, half-crawling at times, with Stan bumping along over the rough edge of the paddy along the tree line. Stan can feel every heartbeat in his chest. He’s throbbing with pain. Lane and Riley drag him for a while, and then they stop and turn and shoot at the place they’ve come from. They drag Stan another fifteen feet and stop to shoot. They do this several times, and finally Stan yells out, “How about I do the shooting and you guys keep dragging?” All the starting and stopping is killing him. The pain makes him feel like he’ll pass out.

  With Stan firing and the men dragging, they finally reach the trees. Troy Fulton rushes to Stan and asks, “How are you feeling?” and Stan says, “I’m hurting all over. Can you give me something?” That’s when Stan looks over to his left and right and sees the other wounded laid out, Tinkle and Hinote. Tinkle got it the worst: he got the machine-gun fire across his legs, right below the knees. It didn’t take his legs off, but it sure messed them up. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs. Stan realizes he’s been listening to Dennis Tinkle scream like this the whole time he was lying against the dike, after assaulting the position. Poor Dennis. Stan feels sorry for him. He’d gotten so used to his screaming that he wasn’t even hearing it anymore.

  • • •

  The chopper lands. Stan thinks it’s beautiful the way the blast pushes down yellow grass in a perfect disc shape. He thinks he will live if he can get on the helicopter and be medevaced to the hospital at Quang Tri City, about thirteen miles away.

  The helicopters are taking ground fire. Stan is aware that it’s dangerous but not aware that he’s in danger. He’s in shock. Somebody lifts him to the door and he sees there are other men inside, maybe worse off than him, and he says, “You don’t have to take me now. I can wait.” He’s not bleeding so much. He’s in pain, but he knows he’s not dying. He remains behind the dike with the helicopters taking off and landing and finally one lands for him, and he’s put on and he thinks, Freedom. I’m out of here.

  He’s about three hundred feet in the air when stuff starts popping up through the deck of the chopper and exiting up through the overhead, and it’s pretty clear that this is gunfire from the ground. And he’s thinking, This is not my day. They’re definitely trying to kill me today. I’m not going to live to see the end of this one.”

  The chopper starts spinning.

  The chopper pilot turns and looks at Stan and says, “Hang on, we’re going down.”

  When he wakes up, he doesn’t remember the crash. He only knows he’s on the ground. Men are running around him. Soldiers in khaki, NVA soldiers. How did he get on the ground, and why is the helicopter about fifty feet away from him? How did he get so far away?

  Everything’s silent.

  For the second time in several hours, he can’t hear anything.

  The helicopter is lying on its side, crumpled up. He still hasn’t pieced together that this is the helicopter he has just been in. The rotor blades are broken off. There’s gunfire, and Stan sees that soldiers—NVA—are running by him, shooting at the helicopter. They’re running past him like he’s dead, or insignificant, of no threat. He looks up, and here come two Huey “Hogs,” gunships bristling with high-speed mini-guns and rocket pods. They’re firing at the NVA soldiers around the crash site. Stan worries he’s going to be shot. One of the Hogs circles and a guy in the door leans out and waves at Stan to stay down.

  The Hogs are doing figure eights in the air, and everything starts exploding around Stan. He’s waving at the guys in the choppers to say, “Remember, I’m here! See me, see me!” The Hogs peel off, revealing, in the middle of the sky between them, a Huey medevac. For a moment Stan thinks it’s going to shoot him. But the chopper wheels around and is facing him broadside and a soldier sitting in the side door says, “Come on, man. Hurry up!” and Stan realizes, Oh. I gotta get out of here. I gotta walk, but I don’t think I can walk. The guy in the door keeps waving, and then all of a sudden he grabs his chest and falls over, out of the open door and hits the ground. He’s been shot. Stan can only think, Why didn’t they land closer? And the chopper’s door gunner on the machine gun swings around and starts firing right past Stan at an oncoming enemy he can’t see but can imagine running toward him. He needs to hightail it out of here. But he starts yelling that he can’t walk. He feels someone pick him up from behind and start carrying him, pushing him, toward the helicopter, whose rotors are still turning, the turbine still whining above the grinding of the gunfire. Who the hell is pushing him from behind? He feels a presence but doesn’t identify a person. He can feel the warmth of the other person’s body, the person who does not say anything to him. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sure glad you’re here. They’re getting close to the chopper. Stan can see the look on the gunner’s face; he’s looking past him, at something that is approaching from behind. Two NVA soldiers quickly come running past Stan and take aim through the open door up at the pilot in the left seat. The gunner in the door can’t swing his machine gun around because the angle is too severe and he can’t shoot the two enemies who’ve approached. If he does, he’ll shoot Stan and his friend. Stan still has his M-16 and he lifts it and fires, killing the soldiers. The copilot is yelling, “Come on, come on!” He’s on the left side of the chopper, closest to Stan, and he’s got his .45 pistol out and shooting people as soon as they run up. He’s shooting through the windscreen, which shatters. Stan falls onto the deck of the chopper and is pulled up into the cabin as it lifts immediately from the grass and wheels up and away. More rounds are coming up from the ground and piercing the deck. The chopper begins rocking back and forth, violently sw
inging side to side, as the pilot jams the stick and takes evasive action in the midst of so much ground fire. “Hang on, man!” he yells, and Stan is pretty sure he’s going to be shot down a second time. He blacks out. When he wakes up, the pilot announces they’re landing. Stan can feel heavy rain on his face coming through the door onto the deck where he lies. The chopper’s on the ground. People are running out to it with a stretcher, and they slide Stan onto it. As they take him away, he asks, “Where’s the dude who helped me get on the chopper?”

  ASSAULT OF RECON PLATOON, 1/501, TRUNG HOA

  FEBRUARY 18, 1968

  Abbreviation Key

  R1 = Recon 1st Squad

  R2 = Recon 2nd Squad

  RP = Recon Platoon

  RJS = Recon, Jerry and Stan

  R WIA 2 (T&H) = Recon WIA, Tinkle and Hinote

  R WIA 6 (P, D, R, K, KL, R) = Recon WIA, Parker, Dove, Russo, Kinney, Kleckler, and Rivera

  LZ = Helicopter landing zone

  NVA/VC = North Vietnamese Army/Viet Cong locations, machine-gun, small-arms, and RPG fire

  TIMELINE

  All hours shown in military time

  * * *

  Order of movement of Recon 1/501, to the NNE on dirt road: North side of road beside water canal, 3rd Squad SP/4 Jerry Austin point man, SP/4 Bob Cromer slack, then rest of squad, followed on north side of road by Recon HQ section; south side of road, 2nd Squad, SP/4 Stan Parker point man, SP/4 Guido Russo slack, then rest of squad, followed along south side of road by 1st Squad, SGT Tony Beke point man, SP/4 Charlie Pyle slack.

  0845 hrs: (R1) Recon 1st Squad, point man SP/4 Jerry Austin takes fire from VC scout at edge of village armed with 1918 BAR; Austin engages VC scout, kills 1 VC.

  0900 hrs: (R2) Recon 2nd Squad takes lead position with continued movement NNE along south side of road beside rice paddy.

  0910 hrs: (R2) 2nd Squad point man SP/4 Stan Parker makes contact with enemy force of unknown size; 2 NVA killed.

  0928 hrs: (R2) 2nd Squad point man SP/4 Stan Parker kills a third NVA soldier.

  0930 hrs: Recon Platoon breaks contact, pulls back for head count of members, and establishes better position of engagement.

  0938 hrs: (RP) Recon reengaged in heavy fighting at same location.

  0940 hrs: Recon calls in arty on NVA location.

  1000 hrs: (RJS) SP/4 Jerry Austin becomes separated from main Recon force, weapon malfunctions while he is charged by 25 to 35 NVA, and he yells for help. SP/4 Stan Parker hears his call for assistance from about 75 yards away and leaves his position and assaults through a barrage of enemy fire to get to Austin’s location.

  1045 hrs: (R WIA 2, T, H) Recon 2 U.S. WIA: SP/4 Dennis Tinkle (3rd Squad) and Terry Hinote (2nd Squad) both with multiple gunshot wounds (MGSW). Recon requested medevac, but medevac request denied because of heavy enemy fire in the area.

  1100 hrs: (RP) Recon receiving small-arms, machine-gun, and multiple RPG fire.

  1105 hrs: Recon encircled by large NVA/VC force with fierce close-quarter fighting.

  1112 hrs: (R1) Recon silences sniper but still engaged in small-arms fire and heavy enemy force.

  1125 hrs: Company A 1/501 notified for combat assault to reinforce Recon 1/501.

  1210 hrs: Recon captures 1 NVA WIA; POW states their objective was to overrun and kill all Americans.

  1230 hrs: Air support requested by 2nd Brigade HQ, 101st Airborne, and denied. Recon in contact at “extreme danger close” quarters with attacking NVA/VC force.

  1305 hrs: Company A 1/501 conducts helicopter combat assault into hot LZs and reports 3 WIA.

  1315 hrs: Recon engaged overwhelming NVA force at 50 meters or less to immediate front and sides with massive amount of small-arms, heavy machine-gun, and RPG fire.

  1325 hrs: Company A, 100 meters from Recon right flank; both Company A and Recon engaged large NVA force located between them.

  1335 hrs: Recon pinned down by NVA automatic weapons fire.

  1338 hrs: Recon receiving heavy machine-gun, small-arms, and RPG fire from heavily fortified bunker to immediate front. Also small-arms fire from left and right flanks and rear.

  1340 hrs: Recon uses machine-gun and small-arms fire to repulse enemy attack.

  1345 hrs: SP/4 Stan Parker assaults through machine-gun, small-arms, and RPG fire to within 20 meters of fortified bunker and fires M72 light antitank weapon into fortified NVA machine-gun bunker. Reinforced bunker explodes with secondary explosion resulting in 8 NVA KIA. Secondary explosion destroys building to right of bunker. After the explosion, Parker assaults bunker with automatic weapons fire to fully cease enemy fire. While assaulting, Parker WIA with multiple shrapnel wounds (SW) to right leg, rib cage, chest, arm, and face. Firefight engagement subsides but intensifies again with small-arms and rocket fire from left and right flanks. Five additional Recon members WIA: SP/4 Albert Dove with SW to head and face; SP/4 Guido Russo with SW to leg and buttocks area; SP/4 Angel Rivera with SW to right leg and foot; SGT Ronald Kleckler with GSW/SW to shoulder; and SSG Lindsey Kinney with SW to shoulder and arm.

  1350 hrs: Company B 1/501 notified for combat assault to reinforce Companies A, C, and D and Recon 1/501.

  1403 hrs approx.: First medevac lands, extracts two Recon WIA, Tinkle and Hinote.

  1410 hrs approx.: Second medevac lands, extracts Recon and Company A WIA.

  1440 hrs: Third medevac is called in, picks up additional wounded and Recon WIA, SP/4 Stan Parker.

  1446 hrs: Medevac chopper receives heavy machine-gun fire in tail and engine and crashes after flying approximately 1/2 km to NE.

  The door gunner looks at him. “What?”

  “The guy that helped me to the chopper, where’s he at?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, when I got up and I was coming to the chopper and I’m getting on . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “And then I shot the two guys.”

  “Yeah, that was so cool. You saved our day. I didn’t think you could do it. You wasted them both right there, man.”

  “Yeah, but the guy that was with me, helping me. Where’s he at?”

  “You were all by yourself, man.”

  Yet there is no trace or sign of the person anywhere. As he’s pulled from the chopper, he looks back and sees it’s empty.

  • • •

  He’s wheeled into the military hospital in Quang Tri wearing the commando sweater he’d been shot in. He’d bought the sweater at a PX back in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, a few days before deploying. That seems a long time ago, though it’s been only nine weeks.

  The sweater’s filthy and full of holes. The nurse takes medical-looking scissors and starts cutting the sweater off him. “Hey, not that,” he protests. “Not my favorite sweater.”

  The doc, walking in, says, “You won’t be needing this sweater.”

  “I will be wanting that sweater,” Stan insists. “Please don’t cut it off.”

  The nurse stops cutting with the scissors, and Stan realizes in his haze that he’s falling in love with her. No other way to explain it. She’s so pretty. She’s so clean. He can smell her hair even from several feet away.

  “You really want to keep this sweater?” she asks him, this time looking serious. “This is going to hurt.”

  “That’s okay,” he says. He just wants to sit and look at her.

  She’ll have to remove the sweater inch by inch away from the wounds across his body, the heavy strippling done by the shrapnel. His back, if she could see it right off the bat, would look like a duck or grouse when you’ve shot it up close and the pellets have driven the feathers into the flesh. She starts pulling the sweater away from the wound in his right rib where the grenade fragment went in an inch or so and where the blood has dried. You would think the movement of the fabric away from the flesh would make a sound, but it silently peels way. The entire right side of his body is lined with small, bleeding holes.

  He looks at her and says, “When I get better, I’m
coming back to see you.”

  “Okay,” she says, patting his hand. “Sure you will.”

  Stan lies back on the bed, exhausted. The nurse walks away with the sweater.

  A couple of days later, he’s in bed and when she walks in, he can smell her hair again. She says, “I’ve got something for you,” and he says, “What?,’ ” and she holds out the sweater.

  It’s been sewn up and cleaned and made whole.

  Stan feels like crying. He can’t believe she has done this for him.

  But she’s done it. She’s his perfect angel. She starts asking “Where are you from?” and “Where do you hurt?” and she says, “You’re going to be okay, don’t worry.” Stan can’t keep still; her presence stirs something in him. And it’s not just between his legs; she has made him feel alive. He’s wiggling on the bed, and she reaches down to his right wrist to take his pulse, to the vein there jumping under the skin, and she says, “What are you doing?” And “Will you be still?” and she stops and announces, “I’ve got you figured out.” She throws his arm aside and says, “You just want me to hold you, don’t you?” And he says, “Well, is there anything wrong with that?”