reserve battalions from the Chengdu military region — over four hundred men — down the ridge and
“Clouding over, sir, but clear for helos below two thousand feet.”
“Then,” said Wang grimly, “he will keep pouring troops into the area until he pushes the perimeter uphill. It must have been a terrible shock for him to find us waiting, to have forecasted this probable landing site, but now that shock is over—” Wang was pacing anxiously. “—I think he will stay, at least so long as the cloud ceiling makes it possible to call in air support.” Wang ordered another battalion, another eight hundred, down the ridge into the fields to where PLA mortars had cratered an area of about fifty yards across, through which platoon-sized elements of Wang’s Chengdu army were penetrating.
By now several hastily emplaced U.S. 105mm batteries were opening fire, and Freeman’s men saw several volcanolike explosions of scrub bush and red earth. Still, the PLA’s mortars were proving the more deadly fire, screams of “incoming” causing the Americans to scramble to what cover they could find in the detritus of war, from empty ammo boxes to the dead.
Now it was hand-to-hand where the mortars had broken the Americans’ defensive ring, and D’Lupo, Rhin, and Martinez found themselves in a firefight through clouds of smoke grenades they’d tossed into the breach. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to slow down the PLA regulars rushing through the clouds of dense white smoke, their shadowy figures cut down by the U.S. infantrymen’s best friend, the “pig,” the M-60 machine gun.
“Two o’clock! Two o’clock!” Martinez yelled. D’Lupo’s M-16 fired and the figure fell. In a rush of three PLA soldiers through the smoke, one was unlucky enough to run across the field of fire of Private First Class Walter B. Sloane. Sloane had a twelve-gauge pump action shotgun and fired twice, the Chinese soldier’s head gone, his blood-splattered torso still running around. “Sit down, ya silly prick!” some GI yelled out, and that was it — Martinez, D’Lupo, and even a harried radio operator Rhin couldn’t contain their fear-bred laughter, Martinez laughing so hard he could hardly change magazines. Rhin could barely be understood by one of the following air cavalry companies coming in with priority landing status.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, soldier?” a major bellowed.
“We jus’—man, Sloane just blew his head off—”
“Now you listen to me, goddamn it. Get a grip on yourself, fella!”
Rhin told Martinez they were to get a grip on themselves, and Martinez, having just fired off a three-round burst, said, “What parta me would he like me to grip? Shit, man, can’t—”
Rhin only got under control when a mortar shell landed yards away. Miraculously, he wasn’t hit by any shrapnel, but the concussion knocked him to the ground, a large, ocher-colored sod of earth from the dike along the edge of the field hitting him in the stomach, completely winding him. He was gasping for air, unable to speak, so Martinez had to take the field phone.
“Identify your Lima,” a voice yelled. “Identify your Lima. Over.”
“Far as I can tell,” Martinez answered, “we’re at the northern edge of these fields. Lot of white smoke. Over.”
“There’s white smoke everywhere. Mark the LZ with purple smoke. Can you do that? Over.”
“Roger. Can do. Over.”
“Out.”
It was a terrible mistake for Martinez not to know that day’s prearranged signal for an LZ. As the Americans had the enemy wavelength and were using Vietnamese/Chinese interpreters, so too did the Chinese have the American wavelength and Vietnamese/Chinese/English interpreters. Within seconds of the transmission between the air cavalry major and Martinez, the helo pilot saw a purple column of smoke curling up from the swirling hell of shrapnel-infested white smoke and ground fire. He started to descend and saw purple smoke rising, this time in the northern sector somewhere farther east.
“Jesus Christ,” the air cav major said, “which fucker is ours?”
“I say we go in on the first one, Major,” the pilot said. “If it’s a PLA dupe, we gotta assume our boys were the first to lay purple.”
“Guess you’re right, Lieutenant. Take us in.”
“Yessir.”
The blades of dozens of choppers above them, the neverending cracks of small-arms fire and roaring machine guns around them, D’Lupo’s platoon was in a cacophony of sound and confusion. Farther east, unseen by their fellow soldiers on the ground, the helo with the cavalry major descended into purple, the purple smoke now buffeted away by the downwash, the helo no more than ten feet from the ground.
“Jesus!” the pilot yelled, recognizing two or three PLA regulars below him, rifles raised. It was too late. An 85mm Soviet-made RPG7 round exploded into the guts of the chopper. Aflame, it fell like a brick, its blades broken and spinning like a scythe through the field, the explosion of its gas tanks an enormous saffron cloud, the bodies of its crew and squad of air cavalry curling grotesquely into wizened black fetal positions. The small-arms ammo inside the fiercely burning shell of the helo was popping off, the smell of cooked flesh, oil, and burning gasoline wafting across the battlefield.
From this point on, no LZ identification procedures were to be given in plain language over the field phones, only prearranged phrases or strips of cloth that would confuse the enemy.
The men pouring out of following choppers were now doing so in the center of the field and running out to relieve and/or reinforce the troops on the perimeter. Freeman kept pouring men in. “Don’t let ‘em bear-hug you!” he ordered his commanders as he landed in some tall elephant grass growing along part of the dike.
“What’d he mean?” Marte Price asked a private who was busy seeing whether it was possible for a human being to melt into elephant grass by will alone.
“What’s he mean, bear-hug?” she repeated, only now noticing that the recorder in her hand was shaking uncontrollably. She dared not ask Freeman, his aide Cline, or even his somewhat — ironically — timid press officer Boyd.
“Bear-huggin’, ma’am,” someone with a southern accent explained, “is when tha enemy gets in so close to ya ya can’t use arty — that’s artillery, ma’am — as covering fire for your men, ‘cause if you do, you’ll kill as many of your own guys as the enemy — maybe more.”
Marte Price spun around and crashed into a soldier’s M-16 rifle, a hole and a large splotch of blood on her left breast.
“Medic!” a soldier near her shouted. “Medic! Reporter’s been hit!”
Freeman moved her as gently as speed would allow, the pain of it making her gasp, a medic barely out of a chopper by her side. He slit open her blouse, cut her bra off, and gave her a shot of morphine, then taped her with a thick wad of field dressing. Then, with Freeman’s help, the medic carried her to one of the relay choppers about to take off back to Phu Lang Thuong.
“I’m sorry,” she told Freeman, who merely patted her on the other shoulder, shouting, “You’ll be all right — a million-dollar wound!” She had heard him clearly despite the terrible confusion of the battle, and she vowed then that her wound would not be a ticket out of the war. She would get well and she would cover this war as she had first intended — at the front.
At the northern edge of the perimeter the fighting was hand-to-hand with rifle, knife, and bayonet, and the American artillery couldn’t help. But the perimeter was bulging here and there, no longer the circle of Freeman’s plan but larger in area, if only the bulges could hold and not be squeezed by the PLA. Here the American ability to reinforce and resupply with a speed unmatched by any other army proved the decisive factor, along with the fact that Freeman’s troops knew he was there. They also knew Marte Price was there, a woman whose very presence not only commanded their protection, but also meant that their performance would be reported that day.
But if, as well as the bravery and training of the Airborne troops, there was one weapon that turned the tide at approximately 1500 hours, it was the U.S. flamethrower, which not only arced toward the PLA it could see, but set a deep “pie slice” of underbrush afire, and soon the high canopy of forest on the hill and its ridges were ablaze, forcing the PLA infantry back, where they simultaneously became visible to Freeman’s Forward Air Controller, who, in his Cessna Bird Dog spotter plane, was now directing the heavy ordnance from three F-14 Tomcats from
