Carlos smiled at the young Marine. “Come on, Mack. We got some shopping to do.”
McAbee grinned and climbed inside the truck.
Carlos trotted back to the Quonset hut and returned the keys, rather than drive the truck by. He did not want the private to see the back of the truck stuffed with boxes of utilities and boots, along with thirty-five R-and-R kits.
When they backed the truck up to the 7th Marines supply point, McAbee looked at the Marines who ran out to meet the truck—the canvas top bulged like Santa’s overfilled sack of Christmas gifts.
“Don’t ask. Just be thankful,” he called to them.
Carlos and his sniper platoon, David Sommers and many of the Marines in the regiment got new uniforms that mid-August week as they moved to Baldy.
After their success of wiping out the 90th NVA Regiment, the 1st Battalion stacked arms and stood down for R-and-R at China Beach. Because of that, they moved to LZ Baldy last.
While the 1st Battalion took advantage of the Stack Arms program, a period of rest and recovery, the remaining two battalions of 7th Marines set about clearing the Hiep Duc Valley in the Que Son Hills with the 196th Infantry Brigade.
On August 28, this major push of combined U.S. Marine and Army forces finally dislodged the stubborn enemy.
Ron McAbee and David Sommers sat on the porch of their new sea hut. They sipped ice-cold Coca-Cola and listened to Armed Forces Vietnam Radio. And, consistent with its “play-it-all” format, the selection that followed Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” was a country song. A song that many country music fans who especially enjoyed the songs of the bayou country of Louisiana had requested. “Joli Blond.”
“Shut that off!” Carlos shouted from inside the hooch.
“Damn! I’m sorry, Carlos. I forgot all about that,” McAbee said, turning off the small transistor radio.
David Sommers shouted to Carlos, who rested on his cot, “That song doesn’t mean anything, Carlos. It’s a real popular piece now. You just connect every time you have a bad experience with it. It’s not the song!”
Carlos got off his rack and walked through the door. “It’s a durn good country song. I like the way it sounds. But every time I hear it, something bad always happens.
“I don’t need to hear that when me and Mack are going out to meet up with Three-Seven.”
“Okay! Okay!” Sommers said, drinking more cold soda.
“You two going out with Three-Seven, huh? You’ve made a lot of progress in three months’ time. I can remember when all you were good for was shit detail.”
Carlos playfully slapped Sommers on the back of his head. “Watch it. I don’t need to hear that from a no-account career planner.
“My troops have done real good for themselves. And, those schools I held for all the platoon and company commanders in the regiment didn’t do any harm either. Now my men are on a heavy demand. Everybody wants snipers.”
“Everybody except the folks on the top of the hill,” Sommers said with a smile.
“Well they don’t need snipers,” Carlos responded with a grin. “They call in air strikes!”
McAbee laughed loud and hard. “Right! That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in years.”
David Sommers looked puzzled. “What’s the big joke?”
“You didn’t hear about the big air strike on Hill 55 the day before we left?” Carlos said proudly. “I thought everybody heard about that!”
“You know I don’t run with that inner circle up there,” Sommers said, sipping more cold Coke. “You’ll have to fill me in.”
McAbee leaned forward, on the straight-back chair. “They were unloading fifty-five gallon barrels of gasoline on Finger 3 and one of them got away. It rolled way down into the wire. Too far for us to get to, and just right for Charlie.
“They sent a patrol down toward the barrel to put a charge on it and blow it in place. Charlie must have seen it coming because they had a sniper out there picking at those Marines every time they got within fifty yards of the barrel.
“Carlos wanted to help. He told that top that he would put a couple of rounds through the barrel and get the gas to leaking good, and then put a tracer in it to light it off. Hell, anybody in the sniper platoon could have done it. It wasn’t anything spectacular.
“But nooo. They wanted to do it their way.
“Carlos and I sat down and watched while they popped willy-peter2 rounds down there with mortars and 105s. Hell, we sat and started laughing because they were blowing hell out of their wire and not coming near the barrel.
“I went to the top and offered again. I figured that he just didn’t like Carlos, and would be a little more receptive to me. But nooo. He wanted to do it his way.
“Then somebody—and nobody is claiming credit—decided to call in an air strike on that stupid barrel of gasoline! I mean, really! An air strike?
“We spend a million dollars and risk a pilot’s life to blow up a barrel of gasoline when Carlos was right there and could have burned it in a minute.”
Mack took a big gulp from his Coke, waiting for Sommers to ask the inevitable question.
“Did the air strike get it?”
Mack and Carlos both howled, “Noooooo! He blew a whole section out of the wire!”
“What happened to the barrel?” Sommers asked. “Did they ever get it?”
Carlos smiled and said, “Don’t tell nobody, but one of my snipers shot it, and set it off with a tracer.”
“Really?” Sommers said.
“Yeah!” Hathcock answered. “You know ole Jones with the bad feet—can’t walk so we put him on that .50 up in the tower?”
“Sure.”
“That top looks up at the tower and forgets that it’s a sniper up there. He yells for Jones to open up on that barrel.
“It took about four shots to set that gas off, and then the top looked at me like, I showed you. And walked off feeling smug.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the .50 in the tower was mine!”
Sommers shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m really not surprised, I suppose, considering some of the hardheads we have around here.”
“Their loss,” Mack said, sipping more cold Coke.
“That walk-in refrigerator that the Americal Division left behind has sure added to the comfort level around here,” David Sommers said, drinking down the last of his Coke. “All this cold stuff is gonna spoil me.”
Mack looked at Sommers. “You want to get spoiled? Come with Carlos and me next time we go to cool off and eat a little cheese and wieners.”
Sommers smiled. “It’s you two. I should have known.”
Mack laughed. “It’s so damn hot! That walk-in makes a fine little place to beat the heat. And its always full of cheese and hotdogs. We can go in there and cool off and eat, too.”
“They just keep putting a new lock on the door,” Carlos said with a grin.
“And we just keep cutting it off,” Mack said, cackling. “All they have to do to keep us out is put a guard on it.”
Sommers smiled. “Of course, Sergeant Major Puckett will have our skins when he catches us.”
Carlos winked at Sommers. “That will never happen.”
It never did.
The humor on the porch lasted until Carlos saw the helicopters.
“Mack. Time to go,” Carlos remarked, picking up his pack and rifle, which he had set next to the hooch door. In a minute both snipers were gone.
THE TWIN-ROTOR HELICOPTER shuddered above the Hiep Duc Valley where 2nd Battalion pushed an estimated two NVA regiments from the east while the Army’s 196th Light Infantry attacked from the west. The sky full of churning helicopters carried 3rd Battalion and the two snipers.
Four other sniper teams already advanced with 2nd Battalion, and in 3rd Battalion Carlos was there to reinforce the Marines on the ground and help overpower the enemy regiments who remained entrenched there.
In one of the helicopters that carried Kilo Company, Lance Corporal Jose F
. Jimenez—a fire team leader—rode with his platoon. The chopper set down in a hot landing zone, and Jimenez and his patrol quickly found cover at the edge of this valley, crisscrossed with rice paddy dikes.
Here they faced an enemy who held the terrain—entrenched in holes and tunnels. Success weighed on a balance, tipped by the courage of Marines—youngsters just out of their teens—whose valor would take them well beyond those measures that determine the call of duty.
As the helicopter that carried Kilo Company into the area of hostile fire set down, another chopper churned in low, clipping the treetops, dropping into an adjacent landing zone.
Carlos stood near the front window, next to the door gunner whose machine gun chewed the ground below them. Small holes popped in the helicopter’s skin, and Carlos looked at Mack. Each Marine could see the anxiety written on the other’s face—a look of concern that creeps across most men who embark on a tightrope where death laps at their heels.
Ron McAbee turned his head to look out the large open side window where the machine gunner sent pounds of lead drilling into the bush and snags below. And when he looked back, Carlos lay on his back, a look of total surprise and wide-eyed horror on his face.
“Carlos!” Mack shouted, and reached down to pick up his friend. As he wrapped his large hand beneath the base of Hathcock’s many-pocketed NVA pack, he felt sticky, warm wetness.
“Oh, no!” Mack cried out, sending greater fear into Carlos because he felt nothing—no pain. He had only felt the impact of the bullet as it picked him off his feet and hurled him to the helicopter’s floor.
Then McAbee took his hand away to look at the blood, and Carlos stood.
It was yellow and sticky.
“Turn around!” Mack yelled above the roar of the turbine-driven engines. And McAbee began to laugh as he sniffed his hand.
“Skeeter spray!” he yelled. “The bullet got your skeeter spray!”
THE BATTLE LASTED through the night and the two snipers spent much of it moving quietly across the paddies, from hide to hide, sniping and blocking the NVA as they attempted to hold and bolster their positions. When they crossed into the open, Carlos shot them—killing their leaders and leaving the surviving soldiers in the shambles of confusion and fear of this random death merchant who once again wore the white feather.
Throughout the night, he and Ron McAbee killed several NVA but confirmed none. Too often, there was no company or platoon commander, or third-party staff NCO or officer to confirm the dead. They were too busy fighting to keep count or give credit. And for Carlos and Ron McAbee, that was fine.
For Lance Corporal Jose Jimenez, the body count also made no difference. He was dead.
But Jose Jimenez—a youthful leatherneck from Mexico, who joined the Marines for the same reason Carlos and thousands of other such honorable men had—dealt a deciding blow to the enemy before he died.
As his fire team moved away from that hot LZ where the helicopters had left them, entrenched NVA soldiers turned their wrath on his platoon. Jimenez faced a choice of holding and allowing the enemy to enjoy the advantage or to charge—to seize the initiative—and turn the attack on the enemy.
The dark-skinned, square-jawed Marine took up his rifle and charged forward, leading the assault and personally destroying an antiaircraft gun that the NVA soldiers hoped to protect.
Jimenez turned to see his fellow Marines follow him, and the lance corporal yelled as he charged forward to within ten feet of the enemy. As he approached the trench, firing and shouting—leading his men and defeating the enemy—he fell to machine-gun fire.
Kilo Company took their objective. Third Battalion, 2nd Battalion, and the Army’s 196th dislodged the enemy from the Hiep Duc Valley. And Lance Corporal Jimenez earned the Medal of Honor.
15
Holding On and Letting Go
WHEN RON MCABEE returned to 7th Marines’ new home on LZ Baldy from Da Nang with his new glasses, Carlos had already gone. Had taken Perry with him.
The two staff sergeants had planned to rendezvous with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, when the unit returned to their base of operations on the east side of the Que Son Hills from the Hiep Duc and the Nghi Ha valleys. The entire 7th Marines Regiment had just finished clearing out two NVA regiments there. The two snipers had learned from battalion operations that the 3rd and 36th NVA regiments, the GK-33, and the 1st Viet Cong regiment had concentrated their forces in the Que Son area. Carlos saw it as a fruitful opportunity for his entire sniper platoon, most of whom had participated in the Hiep Duc and Nghi Ha operations and remained with the battalions, now heading for the eastern Que Son Hills.
The night of September 15, 1969, cooked the men who slept indoors, so Ron McAbee had decided to sleep outside, on top of the bunker with Yankee. Hardly a breeze stirred that night, but outside, lying on his poncho liner, Mack could at least breathe.
The tall blond staff sergeant had stretched out on the bunker roof, and had laid his last pair of unbroken glasses on the sandbags that ringed the bunker, just below the roof. He had unlaced his boots but kept them on his feet, should he need to flee for cover during the night. Yankee slept with his head on McAbee’s chest. The dog had adopted Mack much as he had Carlos.
In the early morning, well before dawn and while the moon shone brightly, Yankee raised his head from the Marine’s chest and perked his ears. A small rumble began to grow in the dog’s throat. His lips curled above his teeth, and the rumble deepened to a growl.
Just as Yankee made his first bark, Mack’s eyes snapped open. Before he had time for any rational thought, his feet swung to the side and he stood, about to run. The sound of crunching plastic and glass stopped him cold.
The next morning, he had pled for Carlos to wait for him until he had returned from Da Nang with a new pair of glasses. Hathcock told Mack he would wait, but not much past noon.
Carlos hated waiting. Boredom ate at his soul as he checked his watch again and again. He sat impatiently, dreading the two more hours he knew it would take before Mack could possibly return, when Staff Sergeant Boone from 1st Battalion’s intelligence section told Hathcock that a convoy was about to leave and that they had room for him and one other Marine. After a half-hour more of waiting, Carlos gave up and told Corporal Perry to grab his pack and come with him. They were heading south.
Seeing the sniper hooch deserted, McAbee told his driver to wait. The lanky staff sergeant ran inside and in a few seconds returned to the jeep with his pack and rifle. He planned on catching an afternoon helicopter south to Fire Support Base Ross and then hitchhike from there to 1st Battalion, 7th Marines’ bivouac.
“Skipper,” Ron McAbee shouted to an assistant operations officer as he jumped from the jeep in front of 7th Marines Operations. “How long ago did they leave?”
“A little after ten o’clock I think,” the Marine captain said as he stepped through the hooch door.
Mack looked at the officer and saw his down-turned mouth and sad eyes. He saw the tension in the captain’s jaws. There was something else. Something troubling.
At the same time a Marine, who did not see the captain standing to the left of the open door, jogged outside the operations hooch. Seeing McAbee he said in an excited voice, “They finally got Staff Sergeant Hathcock! I think he’s dead.”
Mack frowned at the captain. The captain gave the Marine a cross glance, and then looked at McAbee.
“Staff Sergeant Hathcock, Corporal Perry, and about a dozen other Marines took a hit on an amtrac,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed squarely on McAbee. “Sergeant Major Puckett is doing his best to get their status right now. He was really glad you two were not together. He said that is exactly why he had been so adamant about you not going on patrol together in the past. We would be without a sniper platoon leader now, you realize that?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” McAbee said. “What happened though?”
“All we know right now is their amtrac took a hit from a big mine, command detonated. Killed everyone ins
ide, and burned all the Marines on top. Some have said Hathcock is dead, but honestly we do not know.
“I was on the radio with Gunny Boone. He said Hathcock stood in that fire and threw everybody off before he jumped off. by then he was burned to a crisp. So it doesn’t look very good.”
McAbee’s normally reddish complexion turned fish-belly white. His heart beat so hard that it hurt. He could hardly catch his breath. For a full minute he stood staring at the captain, saying nothing.
“Mind if I use one of the Ops phones?” the staff sergeant finally managed.
The captain motioned with his head toward the hooch door. “Use the one on the gunny’s desk,” he said.
Mack looked back at his driver. “Don’t shut the motor off. Don’t go anywhere.”
Then in two long steps, Ron McAbee was inside the hooch and in front of the gunny’s desk, where the Marine sat scrawling notes.
“Hathcock and Perry were on an amtrac that got ambushed,” the gunny began.
Mack looked at him. “Yeah, the skipper just told me out front.”
“The VC set off a 500-pound box mine2 under it,” the gunny continued. “Blew that sucker sky high. All the Marines were burned bad—real bad. I don’t know whether he is dead or alive. He looked bad when they put him on the Med-Evac chopper and sent him out to the Repose.3 I didn’t get any word on Perry, but he’s on the Repose, too.”
McAbee took off his glasses and wiped sweat out of his eyes. “Thanks, Gunny,” he said, and turned the crank on the side of the canvas-covered box that held the field telephone. He held the receiver against his ear and then pressed the button on the side of the handle and spoke, “Master Sergeant Gunderson,” Mack began. “Eugene G. Gunderson. Yes, Moose. That’s him. Can I talk to him?
“Okay. Well, then would you mind giving him a message to please get ahold of me? Yes, Staff Sergeant Ron McAbee, at LZ Baldy, 7th Marines snipers. I just heard about Staff Sergeant Hathcock and was hoping Moose could fill me in.
“He’s gone out to the ship? The Repose? Reckon I can get a ride out there with him?
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