“Relentless Valor.” Authors Kenneth D. Hughes and Richard J. Hast, available on Amazon. Comments are welcome.
As dawn approached, the rain shifted to a light drizzle. Growing daylight burned the fog away… Alongside the trail were freshly dug spider holes and punji stakes, sharpened slivers of bamboo dipped in human excrement to increase infection..
As Charlie Company moved toward a terrace… the point squad engaged an NVA soldier. Rick heard, for the first time, outside of training, the staccato of an AK-47. The veterans around him immediately took cover. The volume of fire rose to a crescendo… Rick…couldn’t reconcile the sound with reality. The firing reminded him of cooking popcorn, the rapid pop-pop-pop fading to irregularity, then nothing at all… the point squad had killed an NVA… Josey guided his platoon toward the rice paddies. He stopped at a terrace above the edge of a plowed field… a 500-pound bomb crater, deep with ridged edges was the best cover.
Peterson stood at the edge of the crater with Sgt. David Gray and Spc. 4 Haskins (Marion, NY). From the terrace, Josey watched as Gray silently knelt and raised his rifle toward the tree line. Josey’s eyes followed the aim of the gun: there, across the field, an NVA soldier was taking a piss. Gray shot him; the man fell.
As if triggered by the shot, an explosion of gunfire burst through the valley. Enemy soldiers all along the hedgerow fired at the stunned Americans. Josey dropped and rolled off the terrace,…
Josey crawled up to the lip of the terrace… He motioned one of his machine gun teams forward. Shouts of “medic, medic!” were muffled by the deafening cacophony of weaponry… Four rounds of 60mm mortar landed nearby, wounding Doc Mercer and Sgt. Jack “Jumping Jack” Strayer. A gash bled from Doc’s knee—the wound, merci- fully, was not serious. He quickly patched himself and crawled toward his Lieutenant. Spc. 4 Charles Groh (New York, NY) was at the front when the shooting began. His M-16 sported a chrome bolt, less likely to jam than standard issue, gifted by Frenchie after they met several weeks earlier on LZ Baldy. He fired toward the enemy but, moments later, he was shot in the neck. One hand clapped over the wound, and he dragged himself away from the line. He died during the night.
Both Gentry and Peterson were wounded. Peterson pulled a piece of shrapnel from his cheek and yelled for his squad to drop into the crater as Cpt. called in artillery…
Josey… Bullets whizzed past his head; he ducked back down, beckoning his MG team beside him. “Put some fire on that gun,” he told them. “It’s straight ahead.” Return fire struck the trigger guard on Machine Gunner Chuck Plummer’s holstered .45. Another round glanced off the helmet of his assistant, Bill Birkner. The team flopped back beside Josey. “Are you trying to get us killed?” Birkner gasped, breathless…
Peterson,… “Were gonna have to charge them. We’ll toss a couple of grenades, then we assault.”
The second landed directly in the machine gun position. “Let’s go!” Peterson shouted with the explosion. He hurtled up and out of the crater ahead of his men, reaching the enemy position first. The three NVA crewmen were wounded. Peterson killed them all as Gray and Josey ran up, wounding a fourth in a spider hole a few feet away. As Haskins and Doc Mercer arrived, Peterson was throwing bodies out of the enemy foxhole. Mercer bent to treat the gravely wounded NVA soldier. Peterson’s hand on his shoulder stopped him: “Leave him be. He tried to kill us.” Mercer watched as the wounded soldier died a few minutes later. Someone laid their rifle across another dead NVA. The hot barrel sizzled on the dead combatant’s arm.
