Chapter 1

Night fell early in the triple canopy jungle of South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. During the short early evening nautical twilight, the second platoon of Bravo Company, 1^st Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry, formed a perimeter on the military crest of Hill 887. Under the watchful eyes of their noncommissioned officers, twenty-seven exhausted soldiers quickly scraped out hasty one man fighting positions.

At the center of the circle, Second Lieutenant Thomas Bledsoe plotted his platoon’s location on his map and called the coordinates in to the Company Command Post eight hundred yards down the hill. As his NCOs supervised the redistribution of ammunition and cleaning of weapons, Tom keyed the radio again and spoke softly into the microphone.

“Starfish one-six this is Starfish two-six, meet me on guard two, over.”

Guard two were the code words for a radio frequency that was only known to Tom and his fellow platoon leader and best friend Jerry Chang. The two men could talk on that frequency privately. Jerry was the Platoon Leader of First Platoon. Chang and his men were set up on the next hill to the south. Jerry had been Thomas Bledsoe’s roommate at OCS (Officer Candidate School). Being best friends named Tom and Jerry left them open for considerable razzing from their contemporaries. Jerry responded immediately, “Two-six this is one-six, roger, out.”

Tom clicked the knobs of his AN/PRC-25 radio to his and Jerry’s frequency then keyed the mike, “You there Jerry?”

“I’m here bro, but I wish to f•©k I wasn’t. This mission scares the shit out of me,” Chang replied.

“Me too, man. I don’t know what they are smoking back at Brigade, but it must be some good shit,” Tom replied.

The two friends carped on the stupidity of the brass in the time honored tradition of field soldiers everywhere for another five minutes. Then Tom walked the outside of his perimeter checking on the disposition of his men. As he moved from position to position, his concern over the mission increased.

Bravo Company was split on adjacent hills between which meandered a small valley. The rest of the battalion was set up two klicks (kilometers) down the valley to the east. The two hills were only four klicks from the border between Laos and South Vietnam. The battalion was deployed in that manner, in the hopes of ambushing a Viet Cong regiment that the Intel pukes said was planning to infiltrate into South Vietnam from a safe haven in Laos. Bravo Company’s mission was to let the VC unit pass by unmolested, then act as a blocking force to prevent their escape back into Laos after the ambush was sprung. First and second platoons were deployed forward to provide security against an attack from the west.

The plan looked good on paper, but down where the rubber met the road, it was a different story. For one thing, the battalion was woefully under strength; for another, the troops were close to exhaustion from two solid weeks of continuous patrolling. In Thomas Bledsoe’s estimation, they were ill prepared to take on a fresh, well armed and well trained VC regiment, even in an ambush. And all that was if you could believe the source of the intelligence on which the plan was based.

Bledsoe returned to his position in the center of his platoon and dug a C Ration out of his rucksack. He sighed when he saw what he was having for supper: ham and lima beans, the most hated meal ever made. He fished his dog tag chain out of his shirt and used the P-38 hanging on the chain to open the beans and ham.

Adding to Lieutenant Bledsoe’s feelings of doom and gloom was the letter that rested like a lead weight in his top jungle fatigue shirt pocket. He didn’t have to read it again, because he had the short ‘Dear John’ note memorized:

He had felt this coming, based on the infrequency and vagueness of her letters the last two months, but that did not make the reality any less painful. Cynthia Taylor made his Basic Training Drill Sergeant’s favorite marching cadence come true: ” Ain’t no use in going home; Jody’s got your girl and gone...” Bledsoe shook those thoughts from his mind and reset his thinking back to the task at hand. There would be time to lament lost love later; right now he needed to focus on keeping thirty-two men and himself alive for another twelve hours.

All of Lieutenant Bledsoe’s concerns became horrible reality shortly after midnight, when the top of the hill erupted with small arms fire. The first few rounds were from the M16s of the Observation Post he’d deployed on top of the hill. Their fire was returned immediately by a withering fusillade of AK-47 rounds.

Bledsoe sat up quickly and turned to his radio operator as his platoon sergeant dashed off towards the uphill section of the perimeter. Sergeant First Class Wilson was on his way to assess the threat. Bledsoe would join him as soon as he informed the Company CP that the platoon was in contact.

“Call the weapons platoon, Jimmy, and tell them we are under attack from the West. Tell them I need illum (illumination mortar rounds) ASAP and stand by with H-E (High Explosive) on RP (Reference Point) one,” Tom told his radio operator, his voice calm as he could make it.

The RTO nodded, keyed the mike and relayed the message while Bledsoe was talking urgently to his weapons squad leader.

“Bring the other M-60 up on the left of second squad, Mikey, and have them lay it in for FPF (Final Protective Fire). I think this is going to get ugly quick, so I’m going to run our IAD (immediate action drill) for breaking contact.”

The young sergeant nodded curtly and took off down the hill. Bledsoe started moving in the opposite direction, his RTO one step behind him. They hadn’t moved ten feet, when a couple of flares popped into life over the top of the hill. Both men froze in place as the brightening flares backlit dozens of VC guerillas boiling over the hill.

Bledsoe grunted and grabbed the radio handset from his RTO. He took a breath to calm himself and keyed the microphone.

“FDC this is Starfish two-six, fire mission, RP one, H-E, troops in the open, over.”

The fire direction center repeated his fire mission and Tom confirmed a good copy. Twenty long seconds later, a single 81 millimeter, high explosive mortar bomb detonated near the top of the hill.

Tom did a quick estimate of the rapidly advancing guerillas and made a gun sight correction.

“FDC this is two-six, drop two hundred, fire for effect.”

The FDC repeated his correction back and told Tom to stand by. Fifteen seconds later, a different voice was on the radio.

“Two six this is four-six, authenticate danger close fire mission, over.”

Tom’s blood throbbed in his temple as his adrenalin surged.

“Goddammit, Stew, I got a battalion of Charlies pouring over the top of this hill, and no time to dig out my authentication key list so quit f•©king me around!” he shouted into the headset.

Tom started moving forward again without waiting for a reply. He knew that Rick Stewart, the Weapons Platoon Leader would fire the mission, authenticated or not. That he was calling for a fire mission fifty meters in front of his position was bound to get everyone in the company’s undivided attention. Rounds started dropping thirty seconds later, the explosions close enough to cause a shower of dirt and vegetation to rain down on the beleaguered paratroopers. Tom had a moment of hope as the wave of advancing VC faltered, but a lull in the mortar fire, coupled with the blossoming of illumination rounds on the opposite hill erased it. This was no accidental engagement, because it looked as if Chang’s platoon was in the same predicament as Tom’s. Since the weapons platoon only had three mortars, they were not going to be able to keep up the volume of fire the second platoon needed.

The young lieutenant used the brief respite to make a decision and put it in motion. He waved over the platoon sergeant and the squad leaders for the weapons and second squad. Once assembled, he quickly gave them their marching orders, starting with the second squad leader.

“Vasquez, on my signal, start pulling your men out of the line one at a time and beat feet down hill a couple of hundred yards. Find a place to cover the rest of the platoon so they can disengage.”

He turned to the weapons squad leader. “Mikey, you stay with the M-60 you brought up and control its movement. When I shoot off a green pen-flare, you disengage and move down with Sergeant Vasquez.”

Tom paused before he gave the order to his platoon sergeant. Sergeant First Class Wilson was an old veteran, hell, he’d even fought in Korea. He had probably forgotten more than Tom knew. In their IADs, the platoon sergeant normally controlled the screening element during the movement from contact. However, Wilson was only four weeks from his DROS (Date of Return from OverSeas) and he had a wife and three kids at home waiting on him. As of mail call two days ago, Tom had no one. He looked Wilson in the eye and addressed him, “Sergeant Wilson, you are the only person here that can get the platoon off this hill in one piece, so do it. I’ll stay with the second M-60 and buy you some time.”

Wilson studied the young lieutenant for a few heartbeats then saluted smartly.

“Airborne L-T,” was all he said.

Wilson did his job almost perfectly, suffering only a handful of casualties. Unfortunately, three of those casualties were Bledsoe and the two-man machinegun crew he was controlling. They became casualties when an RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade hit their position. The machine gunner and his assistant were killed instantly. Bledsoe survived, if you want to call it that. See, besides hurling him twenty feet into the trunk of an ironwood tree, a fragment from the rocket, ironically about the same size and shape of the lima beans he hated, penetrated the lieutenant’s skull at his left temple. The white hot, fast moving piece of metal scrambled Thomas Bledsoe’s brain just as effectively as an egg beater.

The unpleasantness on hills 887 and 895 was saved from being a debacle by a quick thinking Air Force Forward Air Controller (FAC), attached to the battalion headquarters. The FAC managed to divert an AC-130 Spectre gunship that was loitering over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to their location. The gunship’s infrared sights had a plethora of targets, because the VC regiment knew where the battalion was deployed, and was executing a large scale envelopment. The whole exercise, intelligence included, had been part of an elaborate Viet Cong trap.

Belching death at a hundred rounds a second each, the Spectre’s four Vulcan cannons broke up the attacking Viet Cong formations and sent them scurrying back to Laos. Bravo Company suffered twenty six troopers killed in action, most of them from the first platoon. One of the KIA’s was Jerry Chang.

At first light the next morning, Sergeant First Class Wilson and every ambulatory member of the Second Platoon trudged back up the hill. The platoon was walking point for Alpha Company, instead of standing down with their own company, because they weren’t about to leave three of their brothers up on that God forsaken pile of dirt.

Wilson and his men did find their three missing soldiers. The two machine gunners were dead, but to everyone’s surprise and delight, the Lieutenant was still alive. He was unconscious and unresponsive, but he had a strong pulse. The platoon medic and a medic from Alpha Company stabilized Bledsoe, started an IV drip, filled out a casualty card and called for a medivac. SFC Wilson went through the lieutenant’s pockets and removed his personal effects so they wouldn’t disappear when his clothes were disposed of, then he carried one end of Bledsoe’s litter to the landing zone.

Wilson watched as the Huey medivac flight rose into the air, spun 180 degrees and sped towards the 173d Airborne Brigade’s headquarters near the city of Pleiku. When the chopper disappeared over the hill, Wilson formed up his men and once again started down the hill.

Sergeant First Class Troy Wilson was a battle hardened career soldier. He had joined the Army when he was sixteen, partly to escape the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky and partly because he saw it as a duty. Wilson was mentally and physically tough. He was as hard as woodpecker lips, but he was fair and honorable. The men of his platoon respected the hell out of him, and were scared to death of him. The fact that Tom Bledsoe stayed in his place during the withdrawal was not lost on Wilson. He thought about it all the way back to the base camp. The combination of Bledsoe’s unselfish actions and Wilson’s strong sense of honor were probably what motivated him to fire off a reply to the letter he found in the lieutenant’s pocket.