Nov 11.  

I’m in the jungle writing as fast as I can in the dying light of day. I want to record this day; it’s a day I never want to forget.  

The Recon platoon – all 17 of us – spent all morning chasing around in the jungle, almost frenetic, going from one set of coordinates given to us by headquarters to another. Apparently, there was intelligence of enemy activity in the area. But we couldn’t make contact. As I recall, on one of the recons, we fairly dashed to the coordinates.  

Lt. Little’s exasperation was growing, and things were getting a little out of hand. I overheard one radio exchange between Lt. Little and headquarters. “Okay, we just finished a mad dash through the jungle,” Lt. Little said, “which accomplished nothing. Now what are we supposed to do?” He listened for a time. “Okay, we’ll make another mad dash through the jungle to those coordinates. What do you want us to do when we get there? Assuming we find nothing, which is likely what will happen. Do you want us to walk in circles, do pushups or what?” “Check out the area,” I heard. “Oh, yes, of course, we’ll just fuck around some more.” He hung up. 

The whoosh, whistle and roaring slams continued for some time. The rounds landed so close the ground shook and great chunks of shrapnel crashed through the trees overhead, dropping on top of us, spent, like large, steel hailstones. At one point, the artillery lifted and Cobra gunships the lieutenant had called for swooped in overhead. They circled the area of contact, like eagles or vultures, firing rockets, grenades, and a Gatling gun.

Each has a distinctive sound – whoosh for the rockets, whump for the grenades and a buzz saw-like brrrrrr for the Gatling gun. They worked the area to our front, but the pop, pop, pop of AK-47 fire continued, unabated. 

Clearly, the enemy was protected in bunkers. We might have left the area and dropped the artillery on top of them and called in air strikes. But Lt. Little was into the fight. Apparently, no thought of leaving had yet entered his head. We responded to the barrage of artillery and Cobra fire with delighted shouts, until Lt. Little yelled, “Shut up! Everybody shut up!” The shouting stopped. “If there’s any shouting to do,” the Lieutenant yelled, “I’ll do it.” 

We had to leave Lt. Little behind. I was told later that his body was hung up on bamboo. We could not have gotten him out without further loss of life. At the time I could not see it, but now I recognize the horror of leaving a colleague behind.

Gibson, his arm wrapped and trussed to his side followed behind me. He was glassy-eyed from two shots of morphine. When we got to the LZ, I fed him half a canteen of water. 

A little later, I overheard some radio traffic. Lt. Col. Loeftke, the battalion commander and former professor at West Point, was talking to the chopper pilot that led the element bringing in Bravo Company for support. The Lieutenant Colonel sounded very downhearted.

“What happened to him?” the chopper pilot asked. “Sounds like it was just a running duel,” Lt. Col. Loeftke said. “I’m sorry he lost. But he did.” “Do you want to pull your Recon out of there?” “No,” he said, “my Recon element does not want to leave the field. They will be out there for a long time.” I guess he’s mad at us for losing our commanding officer and leaving his body behind.

The word is there is going to be a large mission to get back to the bunker complex. 

Nov 13. 

We’re back at the bunker complex. From the field, Lt. Col. Loeftke, using the Recon platoon as his headquarters, supervised a battalion-sized operation to get back here. He talked a lot to the general, who was flying in a chopper overhead. Yesterday afternoon, he called in airstrikes of bombs and napalm. I’ll never forget the slam of the bombs and the soft thud of the napalm explosions. It’s taken two days to get back.

When we got to the area, I was again providing rear security. The others found some 13 enemy bodies. Most had been killed by artillery fire. There were some 70 bunkers in the area. I heard that Lt. Little was found buried where he fell in a shallow grave. His body had not been mutilated. They had taken his West Point ring, but there’s no way of knowing if they knew they had killed an elite soldier.

A group of Army engineers came in and blew the bunkers. I’ll never forget how the jungle shuttered with each explosion. 

Much later I learned that sometime after that one of the line companies killed an enemy soldier who was carrying Lt. Little’s West Point ring.