Beyond Medals of Valor

They were obviously leading us into their web, and everybody knew it. As we moved along we made our final personal preparations for the battle ahead. I had a hollow feeling in my stomach and felt that this was probably my last day of life. In my prayers, I thought of home and my loved ones and what a mess I had made of my life. I’m sure everyone was thinking the same thing, at least about their families and loved ones.
Just ahead I heard our M-60 machine gun open up with a long burst, and several M-16s started crackling. The enemy rounds were coming from the front as we moved in fast to crush their fire to gain fire superiority. The rounds were coming in just over our heads as we were moving up a slope. I looked up to observe the bullets moving through the leaves. I saw a line of leaves thirty to forty long all move at the same time, which gave the realization of how fast the bullets were travelling. The incoming fire began to get worse but was only from the front as we moved forward.
All of a sudden the enemy was at our right flank with three American-made grenade launchers starting to fire at us. The M-79 grenade launcher had a sound that we were all familiar with. We knew exactly what it was. Grenades were exploding all around us along with AK-47 fire. Our stupid lieutenant thought that because these were American weapons, the platoon on the other side must be firing at us accidentally. He started yelling, “Stop firing!” and told us at the same time to hold our fire. He was yelling, “Hey, it’s us! Don’t shoot!” The rounds kept coming in and no one was returning the fire. The enemy was attacking us with our own weapons. I heard later that a Special Forces camp not too far away had been overrun and our weapons had been taken. We were starting to get chopped up. I gave the order for my squad to start firing, and we opened up. Others followed suite, and the battle was on. The fire toward us became intense and we were throwing a lot back. I estimated that the enemy was fifteen to thirty feet away, but we could not see them in the underbrush. I knew the M-79 grenade launchers were very close because they needed more distance for the grenade to arm itself after being fired, and many rounds went past us without exploding.
If this wasn’t bad enough, the left flank opened up on us with the same intensity of fire. All you could hear was a deafening roar. At that point we all became horrified realizing that we had been led right into a horseshoe ambush. Just a month or two earlier we heard that a whole company had been wiped out in one of these ambushes.
It was total bedlam, and a lot of people were screaming for the medic. The new guy in the squad just ten feet away was yelling for help. Two of us crawled over to him. A bullet had gone through his upper arm, into his chest, and out the other side. In his agony, he stared into my face with a look that said, “God, somebody please help me.” Doc was way too busy working on other men, so we had to try to stop the bleeding ourselves. We lifted up his arm and saw that the hole in his chest was emitting blood like a faucet. The man was dying quickly, and there was nothing we could do for him. We crawled back to our positions a few feet away and continued to lay down fire. The fire was unbelievable. The rounds were tearing trees apart and hitting the ground all around us.
The way a horseshoe ambush works is that soldiers are drawn in from fire in the front. They go charging in full force to gain fire superiority. Then the right and the left flanks start pouring in fire, the rear closes, and you are trapped. The enemy begins to run through you, breaking up everybody into small groups. Disoriented and unable to effectively defend themselves, the enemy begins to snuff out individual groups until everyone is killed. I had heard of this happening before, and now it was happening to our company. To our advantage one platoon had stayed back to prepare an evacuation point for the wounded, and the other platoon had briefly retreated because of the heavy fire, leaving our platoon alone. Because of this they were never able to surround us completely. They did run through us firing and screaming in an effort to try to break us up into small groups. The enemy failed to accomplish this because everybody started yelling to move toward the middle to form one perimeter where we could more effectively provide a defense and possibly survive. We were able to achieve this and were huddled close together in a circle to put out maximum fire.
The platoon that had retreated broke back into us. Despite being greatly outnumbered, with most of us wounded and many dead, we were effectively holding them off. The South Vietnamese scout unit lieutenant had apparently called in air strikes, and they were about to arrive. The Vietnamese officer had tried to call in air strikes, but he had been killed.
Somehow the captain of our unit had come to the front and had been shot. I think he jumped into what he thought was a shallow hole for cover, but the hole turned out to be a nine foot deep well with a small amount of water at the bottom. He could not get out to command the company, and he had no way of communicating with anyone; he had no radio and couldn’t be heard over the roar of the battle. He was stuck but out of the way of incoming fire unless the enemy should toss a grenade in there, which didn’t happen. The fire was too intense to rescue him at that time.