Operation Texas

The following passages are excerpted from the chapter.

". . .Echo Company had spread out, and the men of the unit approached the tree line at the edge of the village. There was a trench there and the marines were preparing to cross it to enter the village. The enemy would sometimes run away in the face of a large force, melting into the cover of the jungle or into hiding holes and tunnels, deferring battle until it could be waged on their own terms. Was that to happen today? After all that pre-attack bombardment, had they decided to leave while they had a route out of the area?

Today they chose to stay. And if they were hurt by the air and artillery preparation, their wounds were not yet serious. The Viet Cong had set up machine guns -- .50 caliber, I believe -- at either end of the trench. They had waited for the right moment, then opened fire, deadly enfilade down the line of marines. Abruptly, it turned into a macabre nightmare of small arms and machine gun fire, grenades thrown at close range across the trench in either direction. One platoon fought its way through the first line of the village defense, only to be stopped by a second. Men were trapped in the trench and on either side of it. Scant protective cover was available. They could not cross the trench alive, and to retreat from the village meant leaving what protection they had to expose themselves in an open field."

". . .The weapons fire continued unabated along the trench and in the wood line on the southwest edge of the village. Staccato bursts from the VC .50 caliber machine guns and the cracks of grenades rose from the background of small arms fire, of crisp orders (in English and Vietnamese), of cries of pain. I kept trying to make radio contact with my FO, yelling into the handset. What the hell was wrong with him and why didn't he answer? Precious time was passing, and I was getting more and more furious at him.

Amid the barely contained chaos, new helicopters started to arrive in the LZ. They were not bringing troops in; they were there to start taking them out. We had begun to evacuate our casualties.

Suddenly I understood: it was then that I saw my FO. Four marines were trotting, crouched over, toward the medical evacuation helicopter; they were holding tightly to the corners of a poncho and the burden they carried was my FO. I had been mad as hell at him and he was dead; he was a sack of meat on green plastic. I do not remember the man's name; and I still cannot form an image of his face."

". . .I called up a battery of 105mm howitzers and started to adjust their weapons on the village. Before long I had 24 howitzers firing. Shells from 105mm and 155mm howitzers were now slamming into the hamlet in a continuous barrage, with the weapons firing as fast as the men at each artillery piece could reload, check the settings on their sights, and pull the lanyards. The men at each of the batteries knew where we were, knew how close we were to the target and what could happen if they were not as accurate as we prayed they would be.

I blanketed the village with standard high explosive shells. I switched one battery to white phosphorus shells and spread their fire and smoke the length of the target area. My goal was to create a cloud of smoke to provide at least a small amount of cover to the men of Echo Company as they tried to extricate themselves. And to get past the trees and perhaps into the tunnels and bunkers, I used some delayed-fuse shells, to give the rounds additional time to continue past the point of initial impact before exploding.

A rain of metal poured from the sky above Phuong Dinh.

We seemed attached to some anchor in time. There was motion, things changed, but we didn't appear to be traveling a straight time line. We were oscillating around as if we were riding a plumb bob on a string, suspended, making circles and ellipses in time. There was no progress; it was just happening, and the damned thing would not be over, wouldn't go away. I think I lost track of what I was supposed to do there. The idea was to modify the flow of battle so that our forward troops could withdraw to safety. But for me, this had become the wrath of God, and I was His messenger.

Hours and thousands of artillery rounds later, the place was dead and it gave up its hold on our troops."