Ghosts and Shadows

by Phil Ball

  The FNGs seemed to be more arrogant and less disciplined than ever before. They were bringing some of the racial hatred from the States to the Nam with them, and there seemed to be a breakdown in the already fragile unit cohesiveness we needed so badly to be successful as a combat rifle company. There was more and more infighting and segregation between races, but those of us who had been in the bush long enough were not about to let this happen, not in 3-Alpha anyway. Chico continued to run a tight squad and, as many of the other squads began to experience more and more personnel problems, we maintained some semblance of order. I believe the company eventually worked out most of those problems and we became effective again. But to me, anyway, it was never as good as before Foxtrot Ridge when Schuck and many others were with us.

  Don’s absence was beginning to affect me in more ways than I was aware of. I was consciously or subconsciously spending a great deal of time and effort in search of a new partner. It was absolutely paramount in my agenda to hook up with a soul mate to share my hopes and fears with, to keep me going. I found that special soul mate in PFC Mike Atwood around the end of June 1968. He had been transferred from 2nd Platoon in order to even out the ranks, and Chico chose him for 3-Alpha. He was a good-looking guy from Ft. Worth who looked exactly like the movie star Clark Gable, thus his nickname, “Clark.” I liked him and his strong Texas accent right off, and we became close friends and confidants almost immediately.

  Mike had a big void in his life over the death of a close friend, PFC Bill Harmon*, much the same as I had over Don. Mike and Bill had been friends in school back home and had signed up for the Marines together on the buddy plan, the way Richie Stuerenberg and I had. They not only went through boot camp and Infantry Training School together, they wound up in 2nd Platoon in the same squad together, too. Mike needed to talk about the day Bill was killed, and he must have thought I would be a good listener. One day early in our acquaintance he spilled his guts to me. He said April 26, 1968 started out like any other day at Bridge #34. Second Platoon was running patrols the way we were at Bridge #35, keeping Route #9 open and free of enemy mines and ambushes. Mike and Bill had been in the Nam about a month then, and they were both looking for their first encounter with the enemy. They patrolled a few hundred meters south of the road, moving cautiously through the extremely heavy jungle and up through a small valley. An NVA platoon opened fire from the high ground using RPGs and heavy small arms, so 2nd Platoon returned fire the best they could, unable to see exactly where the enemy fire was coming from.

  Situations like this, when a lot of Marines are returning fire but do not have clear targets, can create friendly fire accidents. It is always best to hold your fire until you can clearly locate the enemy. Mike and Bill did just that, instead of going off half-cocked and shooting blindly into the trees. They found some cover and waited a few minutes while they searched for the source of the enemy fire. Lying close to each other, side by side, behind a fallen tree, the two friends felt pretty good about themselves. They needed only to smile at one another to communicate their friendship and assure each other they were okay.

  Artillery and then jet air strikes pounded the suspected enemy positions, and then the grunts were ordered to move in for the kill. Mike and Bill were still receiving a murderous volume of enemy small arms fire when they received the word to move forward. They spotted a bomb crater about 15 meters ahead and got up to sprint to it. No sooner had they begun to move when a blistering burst of automatic fire erupted all around them. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike saw Bill fall. By the time he dove into the crater and turned around to look, there was already one of the corpsmen at Bill’s side, and the blistering barrage had ended. Mike raced back to help carry his friend to the crater, but by then Bill was unconscious and barely breathing. They got him into the crater and helplessly watched as Bill died right in front of their eyes. He had been shot in the back and side, the high-powered rounds destroying his spinal column; he died quickly.

  Mike Atwood at Camp Carroll.

  Atwood did not seem to be accusing anyone, but I could tell that he thought Bill’s wounds were odd, insofar as the direction in which they were received. He told me there were two or three grunts shooting widely and carelessly through the fire fight. When Bill was hit, they were in the brush behind him, exactly where the deadly rounds seem to come from. He did not focus on the possibility that his best friend might have been killed by friendly fire, so I didn’t either. He told me he carried the corpse up the steep hill to the road and waited for a truck to pick up Bill and one other KIA.

  I told Mike about Don’s death on Foxtrot Ridge and how he had been shot in the back of the head while running back in from the four-man LP. We both seemed to really need each other at this particular time in our lives, and we had a lot of things in common.

  We had it pretty easy those first few weeks in June, but we heard constant rumors and scuttlebutt about having to go into the dreaded Ashau Valley. The U.S. Army’s two best divisions, 1st Air Cavalry and 101st Airborne, had gone there in May and we heard they really got torn up. It was a rejuvenated 308th NVA Division fresh from Hanoi who were about to kick off a massive offensive. (The Army met them in 1969 in what is now referred to as Hamburger Hill, but back then we just knew it as Ashau.)

  On June 20, we packed up our gear and went to LZ Stud, the designated headquarters for Operation Dewey Canyon, which was to take us deep into the Ashau. After so many weeks in the bush, LZ Stud was like a vacation in the rear area for us. We had showers and hot chow and did nothing but stand perimeter watch for three days. PFC Holt taught Atwood and me how to play double-deck pinochle, and with Chico as the fourth man, we played marathon games.

  Battalions 2/4 and 1/1 went into the Ashau and set up two LZs, one of which became a firebase manned by our old friends from LZ Hawk, Bravo 1/12. Battalions 1/4 and 3/4 also went in, then 3/9, all from LZ Stud. We just knew we were going to be next. In a matter of only two weeks the battered NVA 308th Division pulled out and went back north to regroup. This operation was a milestone for the 3rd Marines Division: It was the very first use of mountaintop firebases, and it worked well. There were eight batteries of artillery and two reinforced regiments totally resupplied by helicopters.

  We did not have to go to the Ashau at this time; instead, on June 23, we went to a place equally feared and hated by every Marine in Vietnam. Con Thien Combat Base had been around a long time and had a history of very heavy fighting. Only 800 meters from the southern boundary of the DMZ, the remote, battalion-size perimeter had been overrun several times by NVA coming down from the north. It looked it, too: a scorched piece of land scraped out of the hardened earth, with collapsing old bunkers. It was a haunting place to spend the night.

  The first thing I noticed about the base was that awful smell of rotting corpses. The foul odor was so strong and had been around so long that it had penetrated everything in the base. The rat population was thriving and rat bites were a daily occurrence. We were warned about the giant rodents, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened that night as I sat on top of a bunker along the northern edge of the perimeter.

  I took the midnight to 0300 shift. The moon was very bright that night and I could clearly see a good part of my fire zone. It was relatively clear of obstruction and as flat as a football field—the only variance at all was the posts that held the wire. This part of the perimeter, closest to the DMZ, had been where some of the heaviest fighting had taken place over the years, and instead of the hundreds of NVA corpses being moved to a mass grave someplace, they were simply bulldozed under. The barren earth had been scraped clean so many times in the past that barely a thin layer of dirt covered the decomposing rat food, and as various stages of rigor mortis set in, it was not uncommon to see an arm or a leg pop up through the soil.

  I was sitting there minding my own business, looking up at the millions of stars in the sky when I began hearing a very strange noise in front of me. I readied a grenade and flipped my weapon o
ff safe, preparing to wake up Chico and Holt. (Alabama was no longer with us; he had gone on to take his own fire team.)

  It was as if there had been some silent signal calling the rats to dinner. They came out of nowhere and covered the ground, hissing and growling at each other, fighting over their favorite pieces of human meat. Like giant ants or small dogs they scurried around in a feeding frenzy for what seemed like an hour or more. Then, as if another silent signal had been given, they disappeared. Needless to say, I wouldn’t go into any of the bunkers after that, nor did I go to sleep.

  Our participation in “Operation Kentucky” began on June 23, out of Con Thien. Northern I Corps was separated into zones and labeled for that operation. When we went into the area east of Con Thien we were entering the Kentucky Zone.

  Our mission was to patrol the large strip of land known as the McNamara Line, or better known to us grunts as the Trace. It was an ill-fated idea of the Secretary of Defense to construct an anti-infiltration barrier south of the DMZ. It was to be an unmanned clearing, 200 meters wide, between Con Thien and Gio Linh, some 10 miles in length. It was unmanned because it would be covered with a series of wire, minefields, and sensors that would send radio messages back to a monitoring facility in the rear area. It was a controversial strategy that met heavy opposition, including that of General William Westmoreland. The bulldozers arrived in May 1967 and cleared the designated tract of land. Before the sensors and other measures were installed the plan was scrapped. Now we had this huge, barren strip that had to be patrolled on a regular basis, and it was our turn to do it.

  For 10 days we battled the 100-plus degree temperatures and really had to hustle to complete the assignment. It was my first time out carrying the squad radio for any length of time and I was determined to prove I could handle it. We had a lot of heat-related casualties, and for the first time I saw what heat stroke can do to a person. One Marine died from it because he did not get proper medical care in time. All you had to do was get some water on the victim, but water was usually in very short supply. If you could get a little on the guy’s head it really helped a lot. A little more underneath his armpits and some on his groin could make the difference between life or death. The FNGs had the roughest time of all, and I admit there were times when I wanted to drop out myself. It takes a lot more than just strength and stamina to continue marching after your body tells you it’s going to quit. You definitely need the right frame of mind. A grunt who could not hack it in the bush was usually scorned severely by the others, especially if he was an FNG or someone who had yet to prove himself. There was absolutely no excuse for dropping out of a hump. There was no place for a nonhacker in the bush.

  Phil Ball at Quang Tri.

  When we finally reached Gio Linh we didn’t stay. We were immediately boarded onto a truck convoy and rushed south, down Route #1. This area between the four cities (Gio Linh, Con Thien, Dong Ha, and Cua Viet), known as Leatherneck Square, had previously been the sight of some of the heaviest fighting of the war. In May, this place was a real hot spot, but now it was relatively quiet. It looked as though the enemy was planning another assault on Dong Ha, judging by the increasing number of large artillery guns and rocket installations they were moving into the eastern part of the DMZ recently. Our mission was to locate those positions by drawing fire from them at night. There would be observers in the air, as well as Special Forces units inside the DMZ who would do the actual observing of muzzle flashes. We were simply to be the targets, code name Operation Napoleon/Saline.

  We boarded Navy patrol boats and were whisked up the Cua Viet River, in what was an uneventful but new and exciting experience for us, anyway. The high-powered, heavily armed steel boats ran 35 to 45 mph up the narrow waterway, crashing a huge wake against both banks and occasionally capsizing the small sanpans that negotiated the river on a daily basis. We all laughed and had a great time, enjoying this once-in-a-lifetime boat ride.

  We docked at a place near the village of Cua Viet and marched to a nearby firebase. I believe it was the U.S. Army manning this oasis-like paradise: white sandy beaches only a stone’s throw away from the South China Sea, and more palm trees than I’d ever seen in my life. I wanted to stay in this place the rest of the war.

  The firebase itself was on the north side of the river. We stood a relaxed perimeter watch until the stroke of midnight marked July 4, and then all hell broke loose. It was not an enemy attack, but an American celebration of our country’s independence, something that took on a very special meaning for us grunts in the Nam. Patriotism was at an all-time high on that firebase and morale skyrocketed. Every single weapon, no matter how large or small, contributed to the most awesome display of fireworks and firepower I have yet to see duplicated: 105s, 155s, 8-inchers, 106s, 81s, 60s and 4-deuce mortars, dusters, ONTOs, tanks, machine guns, M-79s and M-16s all erupted in celebration. Like everything else in the Nam, we got a little carried away. The village across the river caught fire and several buildings burned to the ground.

  On July 4, 1968, Fox Company headed north from the Cua Viet River into Leatherneck Square. This part of the country was different from anything we had seen so far. There was an uneasy feeling about this entire region. The sun was hot and the sky was clear as we humped across the open, sandy, scrub fields. The terrain was flat, with no cover, interrupted only by a few sand dunes and low-lying hedgerows. To make matters worse, we knew we were probably going to run into the enemy out here.

  The scorching heat and deep sand slowed our progress to a crawl. The two tanks and the APC (armored personnel carrier) going with us turned out to be a big disappointment. Their inability to negotiate the deep sand made them more of a liability than an asset. They kept getting stuck and losing their tracks, then we would have to stop and set up a defensive perimeter around them while the tankers fixed them. We used up our three-day supply of drinking water the second day out, and we were still two days away from resupply. The heat was more than anyone had anticipated, and heat stroke casualties became a problem again. The APC offered an easy way out for grunts who thought they couldn’t make it. It became ugly when the tankers had to start refusing access to the free ride. The CO gave orders that nobody could ride and that the tankers were expected to be the policemen.

  I was not very good at water rationing myself, having never really had to worry much about it before. Now, completely out of the life-saving nectar, I swore that I would get better. Without water you simply cannot survive in temperatures over 100 degrees. As I stood in the sun hour after hour, my brain felt like it was simmering in its own juices. I began to hallucinate a little and saw myself lying in a coffin at my own funeral. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, thinking maybe I was losing my mind. I just kept quiet about it and pressed on. Everybody was so miserable. Like zombies we put one foot in front of the other and kept moving. Nobody said a word or had any energy to waste, our minds collectively on the same thing: a drink of water.

  Suddenly a burst of heavy machine-gun fire woke me up, the terrifying whiz of bullets past my head snapped me back to reality, and my senses shifted into overdrive. One lone NVA sniper with a .30-caliber, some 500 meters away on top of a distant sand dune, was one hell of a good shot. I instinctively hit the deck and attempted to burrow into the sand. The majority of my body was above ground, in clear view for the sniper. The best I could do was try to keep my head down and protect the most fragile part of me. A head shot was almost always fatal, especially a .30-cal, but a shot to the lower parts of my body I might be able to survive.

  The two tanks and the APC began maneuvering around to fire on the dune, but one of them hit a large mine and blew a track before he could get into position—another dune stood between the tank and the sniper. The second tank accelerated through a sharp turning maneuver and threw off a track that way. He, too, was not in position to fire on the sniper. We wound up calling in jet air strikes to eliminate the threat, but not until remaining completely pinned down for nearly the entire day. />
  This little incident put us even further behind schedule and just about dried up everyone’s water supply completely. It was very frustrating to see emergency medevac choppers come in and take out our heat casualties without delivering a single drop of water. Tempers flared in our ranks and fighting broke out between thirsty grunts willing to do anything for a canteen cap of water. If you had water and were generous enough to share it with a buddy, you never handed over your whole canteen for fear his natural instincts would take over and gulp down the whole thing.

  The next morning the CO ordered the armor back to Cua Viet. The tankers repaired one of the tracks, but had to tow the tank that hit the mine. In a long, stretched-out column, we headed north through the deep sand. Marines who were still wearing flak jackets took them off and threw the heavy vests away. Other unnecessary items were also discarded in an effort to lighten our burden as much as possible. Like an army of robots, we trudged on with only one thought in most of our minds: When would we next get a drink of water? I saw some guys licking the sweat off themselves, in spite of Doc’s warnings not to do so. “You’ll be sorry,” he warned. Other grunts chewed on salt tablets or aspirin, hoping for some relief. I kept smoking my cigarettes and dreaming of happier times back home, desperately struggling to achieve my newfound distraction technique. If I concentrated hard enough, focusing on something else besides my own misery, I could sometimes transport myself someplace else. One of my favorite fantasies was the glorious day I would finally leave this hellhole and rotate back to the world. I would construct in my mind the flight home on my “freedom bird.” (The commercial airliner contracted by the U.S. government to transport troops back and forth, was affectionately known to Vietnam GIs at the “freedom bird.”)