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First
Combat Mission Makes Men Of Boys CU
CHI, South Vietnam - Up until now it had all been play war. The
green paratroopers, only two weeks in Vietnam, would run down the dirty
road toward chow, and a sergeant would bark things like: "Hey, you
animals, let me hear you growl…” And they would go "Rowwwr ...” Arise
For Orders But
this morning the men and boys of Alpha Company came out of their tents
early, slowly formed into platoons, and waited for orders from their
company commander, Capt. Dave
Reiss of Alexandria, Va. This
was the morning they were going to war, their first combat mission - and
for some of them, the last. I
moved among them, talking to one, then another. There were hard swallows, tight smiles, and very little of
the famous airborne wisecracking. Some
admitted they bad not slept the night before. Capt.
Reiss had told me that though Alpha Company was part of the 2nd Brigade of
the "Screaming
Eagles" of the 101st Airborne, about 60 per cent of his men weren't
hardcore paratroopers. Many
had been mustered up hastily from truck driver or company-clerk jobs after
the brigade had received orders back at Ft. Campbell,
Ky. "But
they've turned into a good outfit fast," Capt Reiss said.
"Still, you never know until you've been shot at.“ Worries About Pigeons One
who didn't seem particularly nervous about it was the baby-faced Georgia
lieutenant who commanded the weapons platoon. He smiled and said he was
really more worried about the carrier pigeons he was training.
He didn't like leaving them alone. Another
who didn't appear in mortal terror was his big, laughing Negro platoon
sergeant from
Kentucky, described by his commanders as not just a good soldier, but a
“great” soldier. He and Capt. Reiss were members of the small nucleus
of combat veterans in the company who volunteered to return for a second
tour in Vietnam. One
who didn't mind admitting he was nervous was 2nd Lt. John Rodelli of
Chicago. Lt Rudelli, small, swarthy, intense, said he know how he was
going to react or how his platoon was going to react. Only six months
before, Lt. Rodelli had been taking ROTC and majoring in business
management at college. Another
nervous one was 18-year-old Pfc. Larry Mize of Baltimore, an impish-faced
medic with a missing front tooth. "I've
got a false one," he sort of stammered, pulling the tooth from his
pocket, "but I don't wear it when I'm walking.
It gives me a headache." Pfc.
Mize said he became a medic because he figured it might do him some good
when he “got out. And maybe
while I'm in…” "New
Ball Game" Sgt.
Dave DuBose of Birmingham, Ala., said sure he was an 18-year veteran and
had been under artillery fire in Korea, "but this is a new ball
game." At
8:30 a. m., Capt. Reiss gave the order: "Right about face!"
Then: "Move out in a column of fours." Alpha
Company was part of a battalion search-and-destroy sweep north from Cu Chi
toward the Ho Bo Woods about 35 miles northwest of Saigon.
The company platoons went out in three horseshoe-shaped formations
from the camp. "Get
that rifle off your shoulder," someone bellowed to a soldier in the
point platoon. "What
do you think you've got there, a. bag of oranges?"' hollered a squad
sergeant to a private carrying extra ammo clips in one hand in a sack.
"How you going to fight like that, soldier?" "Here
it starts," said Lt. Rodelli, popping a magazine in his M-16. 6
Hours, No Enemy It
started and went on for six hours. We
moved, watching for booby traps, guns ready, and kept going through
blistering-hot, thorny, thick-brushed, broken-treed, insect-swarming
flatlands. We found plenty of
enemy tunnels, but no enemy. The
heat knocked out a couple of troopers who had to be evacuated, and the big
black and red ants seemed to want to eat you alive; but it was all tension
and bull labor, no fighting. By
the time the company moved into a grassy stretch where they would dig in
for the night, the tension and grimness had been sweated out. They
plopped down their packs and rifles, stripped off their shirts, drank deep
from canteens, got out entrenching tools, started digging in the sun-baked
ground and filling up sandbags. "Is
this piece of nothin' what we been marching for all day?" laughed a
soldier, looking around. "That's
war," kidded another. Start
Off For Briefing Lt.
Rodelli asked if I wanted to go over to the briefing for the night
ambushes, and I said I did. "We'd
better go a little early," he said.
"I'm not sure where it is.” Beyond
our perimeter now, about 500 yards out, came artillery bursts-it was our
stuff back at Cu Chi zeroing in our position in case of an enemy attack
during the night. We
walked through the weapons platoon where the baby-faced Georgia lieutenant
was holding forth as casual as ever, probably still worrying about his
pigeons. His platoon
sergeant, the "great" soldier, was laughing and demonstrating
digging to the greenies. They
say you never hear the one that gets you.
I heard this one. It
came down behind us hissing and my head already was down and touching
ground before the explosion. That
bursting, shocking sound came and the concussion went smacking over us. Someone
to my left was saying: "What the devil, what the devil .. (and then
the voice was furious, unbelieving) "That was one of ours!" Another Explosion There
was another explosion farther away, and I heard the same voice yelling:
"Tell that damned artillery to cease!" In
a moment I looked up and saw the black cloud from the first explosion
barely 30 yards away. It hung
over the weapons platoon. All
around men were shouting: "Medic!
Medic!" And at the same time there came screams, ungodly
screams. I
stood up. Behind me a tall soldier was stretched out flat in the high
grass. "Are
you hit?" He
just lay there rigidly flat in the grass.
I bent over him and he stared straight at me blinking his eyes
furiously. He wasn't hit. He
was scared literally stiff. I
ran toward the smoke and stepped on something.
It was a man's arm, severed at the elbow. Belonged To Lieutenant The
man the arm belonged to lay in the dirt and smoke. It was the baby-faced lieutenant. His eyes and mouth were wide open as though he had died
shouting. A
few yards away was the "great" soldier, who had been laughing
and demonstrating digging moments before.
He lay on his back on a bloody hump of earth without his head, with
his left shoulder and arm blown away. In
the next nightmarish minutes I saw Pfc. Mize, the young medic, working
among the blood and bowls as though he had been a doctor all his life. Radiomen
were calling evacuation choppers. Capt.
Reiss and Lt. Rodelli were both moving quickly, directing their men.
Others were trying to identify the dead.
One man kept saying he had to find the sergeant's head. Another
picked up the lieutenant’s arm and wrapped it up with him in a poncho. Five
soldiers worked with morphine and bandages over a man whose leg was
hanging off. They had to keep
knocking away huge ants. Nearby,
ants were swarming over a helmet spattered with blood and flesh. The
helmet had "Tennessee" penciled on it. Count
Four Dead Between
then and the approximately 25 minutes it took the first chopper to reach
us, we counted four men dead, two more close to it, and eight others
wounded. It was also determined (and later verified) that one of our own
potent 4.2-inch mortar rounds from out of Cu Chi had fallen short by
mistake. One
man stood looking down and said over and over, fighting back tears: It's a
helluva thing to happen. It's
a helluva thing …” Another just said: "Damn, damn …” Lt.
Rodelli stood nearby, shaking his bead. Pfc.
Mize came over to Capt. Reiss. The kid's hands were bloody to his wrists,
only he didn't look like a kid anymore. “Those
guys had wives and children,” Sgt. DuBose was saying. “ They were good
men. “ "The
best," the captain said softly. “The very best." Alpha
Company had reached the war. -
The Pittsburgh Press, Sunday January 7, 1968 |