South Viet Nam: Humor, Horror & Heroism

For the first time in more than a month, quiet reigned between Plei Me and the Chu Pong massif. The dead were gone from the field, and the living took their rest. The battered North Vietnamese regiments that suffered 1,950 dead in the five weeks of battle had disappeared—perhaps deeper into the mountains, possibly into Cambodia. The American 1st Air Cavalry, which took some 240 dead and 470 wounded in the largest U.S. weekly casualty list since the Korean War, remained in charge of the field. With the guns silent, the men themselves grew talkative, recalling the vivid episodes of humor, horror and heroism that the weeks of wild fighting had etched in their minds.

Up the Creek. They talked with wonder about John Bade, a 22-year-old sergeant from Toledo, who was leaning half-conscious against a tree with three bullets in him when a Red officer walked up, raised his pistol and shot Eade through the eye. The bullet lodged in the back of his skull but didn’t kill him, and Eade was back in the States for Thanksgiving. They talked with humor about Lieut. Bill Shiebert of Albany, N.Y., who wants to become a Catholic priest when he gets out of the Army next year. During a sharp fire fight, Shiebert suddenly stood up, and grinned: “Why, I’m not afraid of the sons of bitches. Why don’t they bring on their fight?” They talked with respect of Sergeant Eugene Pennington, 25, a laconic Kentuckian who during an ambush methodically counted the North Vietnamese facing him (84), the number of heavy weapons they carried (four mortars, five recoilless rifles), and even the number of shots they fired back while being mowed down (two). Said Pennington: “That’s what the captain said I was to do.”

Equally methodical was Specialist Fourth Class Nolan King, 20, a gangling, sleepy-voiced Georgian in the best Sergeant York tradition. In one day, he killed 14 Communists, captured 21, and seized seven weapons. “I walked off by myself up this little creek,” he explained. “There was five of them up there by this little straw hooch they had made. They was just sittin’ there coolin’ it. I shot four of them. Then I went on up the creek some more and three of them jumped up. They looked like they were going to shoot, so I put my rifle on them. They all took off running so I shot them. I saw five of them around a little ditch. I shot four and the other jumped into the ditch. I went along through the woods then, and they kept jumping up and shooting and missing, and I kept shooting them.”

Hunting the Hunters. It wasn’t that easy for Specialist Fifth Class Daniel Torres, 25, of Corpus Christi, Texas. A medic with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment of the Air Cav, Torres was standing by when a radioed cry for help came in from another company that had just been ambushed and decimated. Torres volunteered to go out with a rescue patrol, grabbed seven litters from MEDEVAC helicopters, and moved out. About 11 p.m. they found the wounded—some 45 men huddled around a giant anthill. On litters and on foot, 18 wounded got back. Torres searched out more wounded, then stayed on with them, using up all of his own morphine and bandages, then taking more from the musette bags of two dead medics near by. “Then,” he recalls, “out in the dark I heard these North Vietnamese moving. Then I heard one of our G.I.s scream and say, ‘No, no, somebody help me!’ Then I heard an automatic weapon fired. They were hunting the wounded just like I was, but they were killing them.”

Torres grabbed an M-16 automatic rifle and an M-60 machine gun and began hunting down the hunters. He killed three before dawn broke and the re maining 35 wounded G.I.s could be withdrawn. “I didn’t think I’d live to see daylight,” Torres said. “But somehow it came.” He was recommended for the Silver Star.

Just a Boy. One of the wounded that Torres didn’t find was Pfc Toby Braveboy, 24, a light-haired part-Cherokee rifleman from—of all places—Coward, S.C. Hit by three bullets, Braveboy didn’t dare call for a medic, for the North Vietnamese were prowling close by. So he crawled toward the sounds of fighting. When North Vietnamese approached, he played dead. He was once so close to the Reds that when they decapitated a wounded American trooper, blood squirted all over him. Crawling on, he made it to a small creek and hid in the elephant grass, wrapping his T shirt around his mangled left hand. Then, without food, without equipment, with only a few water purification tablets, Braveboy settled down for a week-long wait.

At night he huddled against the shrub-grown creek bank for warmth. “But it was so cold, every night it was so cold, and the mosquitoes and bugs were terrible. Once I heard footsteps and four North Vietnamese went by. One of them looked me right in the eye and pointed his rifle at me. I raised my wounded hand and shook my head no. I don’t know why, but he lowered his rifle and walked away. He was so young —just a boy, no more than 16 or 17.”

Finally, on the seventh day, a bubble-nosed H13 Sioux helicopter fluttered close by. Braveboy unwrapped his hand and waved the bloody shirt for all he was worth. The chopper swung in overhead and dropped a cardboard box of C-rations. In it was turkey loaf, and only then did Braveboy realize that it was Thanksgiving eve.