“I see it too. It looks over a hundred feet away. Too far for a grenade.”
“At least it’s a target. What should we do?”
“There’s no ground cover, so we can’t advance. Let’s shoot a couple of magazines up there and see what happens. Maybe we’ll get lucky and zap the bastard.”
Our firing was furious but not deadly. The only thing we accomplished was to draw the NVA’s attention. Suppressive enemy fire quickly rained down and forced us to hug the ground.
“That didn’t work!” I yelled, as bullets impacted around us. “I think there’s more than one Gook in that position! This time, let’s take turns firing. I’ll go first.”
We never got a chance to see if my strategy would work. When we rolled over to return fire, I was suddenly sprayed with water as Anderson let out a painful howl. An enemy bullet had ripped through his leg and into a canteen of water he carried in a side pants pocket, causing it to burst. Like a sequence from an eerie movie, it seemed to happen in slow motion.
“How bad is it? How bad?” he yelled. “I don’t want to look!”
“It’s nothing,” I answered, as if it were nothing. “They just nicked you in the thigh. It’s all meat there, no bones to worry about. It’s hardly even bleeding.” I was lying some, because it looked like a serious wound and there was a fair amount of blood. Still, I saw no reason to scare the guy. I tried to apply my field dressing but he wouldn’t lay still. Our fearless medic Doc Meehan, who never carried a weapon, appeared out of the chaos to attend to Anderson.
Now I was scared. A guy right next to me was shot. The Gooks really meant business! I didn’t know what to do. Dirt erupted again as more bullets hit the ground around us. I started firing back like a madman, not aiming at anything, just shooting wildly at the massive hill. I knew I had to get away because the three of us made too good of a target.
When the next burst of firing stopped, I got up and ran twenty feet to the next hole. Debris flew as the enemy opened fire again. It seemed the Gooks had singled me out because the bullets followed me wherever I went. Perhaps that emotional GI from the 3/187th was right: the NVA were shooting at me because of my sergeant stripes. I quickly put it out of my mind and wormed up to the edge of the crater. Then, holding my rifle high over my head sprayed two more magazines at the hill. When I peeked above the mound for an escape route, something painful suddenly blinded me. When I reached up to protect my stinging eyes, a bullet slammed into my chest, throwing me backward. I was shot—they got me!
Lying on my back with my eyes and chest in pain, I drifted off. So this is how I’m going to die, I thought, at the bottom of a pit in the middle of nowhere. But aren’t the battle sounds supposed to fade away like they do in the movies? I supposed I had to suffer first. The pain in my chest increased. I blinked my eyes a few times, and I could see again! I rubbed them clear enough to examine my chest and saw that my clothes were smoking. Jesus! I was on fire! I instinctively beat out the flames before any ammo caught fire and sent me into orbit. Then I checked my body for bullet holes but found nothing except the burn on my chest. “I’m going to live!” I kept telling myself. Maybe I even said it out loud.
An NVA bullet hitting the ground in front of me had blasted dirt into my eyes. A second slug, apparently a tracer, had lodged in the bandoleers of ammo draped across my chest. The impact knocked me to the ground and the tracer caught my shirt on fire. The Gooks had me cold: I should have been dead. Maybe I was super-GI, but I didn’t feel like it. Since that day, the expression, “You’ve never lived until you’ve almost died,” took on a whole new meaning.
I yanked the destroyed magazine out of the bandoleer and, forgetting that it had saved my life, cast it aside. I tried to decide what to do next but all I could think of was self-preservation. I jumped out of the hole and ran at full speed toward a tree-covered ridge. I held my weapon like a pistol, firing at the hill as enemy bullets nipped at my heels. As I raced past crawling GIs they yelled for me to get down, but my adrenaline drove me to the tree line. I hoped it was a safe place with no shooting. I looked back once yelling, “This way!” figuring that most of the GIs would surely follow me.
The sparse cover thickened as I advanced up the hill, jumping over logs and recklessly pushing bushes aside. I don’t know what drove me to move at such a dangerous pace because I could easily have stumbled into an enemy position without knowing it. At the edge of a bombed-out clearing I tripped and then scrambled to a fallen tree to rest. What a view opened up before me! I was on the summit watching the action below. “Below me?” I silently screamed. I had run past the left flank of our attacking force! I turned around to tell the others but no one was there. They hadn’t followed me. I was alone. I thought about going back down but realized I would risk our guys shooting me, so I stayed. Besides, exhaustion had suddenly taken command of my body and I could barely move. It became an effort just to turn my head to see if anyone was near, friend or foe.
Thirty paralyzing minutes passed while I watched the assault continue. The GIs made tremendous progress, killing the enemy in their bunkers where many had chosen to stay and die. Scores of other NVA ran off the western slope toward the Laotian border, a mile away. The fleeing enemy could easily be seen from the air where our helicopters directed a wall of artillery, mortars, air strikes, and automatic weapons fire on top of them.
As GIs swept past the front of me, I felt safe enough to stand up and be identified as one of their own. Then someone from behind called me by name, it was Howard Siner. Lennie Person was with him.
“Where’s the rest of the platoon?” I asked, looking past them.
“We are the platoon,” said Siner. “Nearly everyone was pinned down at the bottom but some of our guys are coming up now.”
“Were you two up here long?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes or so. We got separated but just now found each other. We stayed out of sight until more people showed up.”
We figured that the three of us were the first ones to the top. We must have been concealed within a hundred feet of each other without knowing it.
“See Lennie,” I said, encouraging him with a pat on the shoulder, “you made it to the top without a scratch. Ten years from now you can tell your kids all about this.”
“Yeah, right,” he responded faintly, then took two steps backward and stared at me. “What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.”
After everything that happened to me, I guessed that I probably did look bad. My face resembled a raccoon’s from rubbing the dirt out of my eyes. My bandoleers had caught fire and my shirt had a hole burnt in the middle of it. There was a mix of dried mud and urine stains on my pants, and some of Anderson’s blood had smeared on me. I had quite a tale to tell, so when more platoon members gathered around, they asked and I told it as dramatically as possible with a slight stretching of the truth. I figured my story would either endear me to them or be my final undoing.
“I look like shit,” I began, strutting back and forth and pointing angrily, “because I had to take this side of the hill by myself. Take a good look at me. I got shot in the face, shot in the chest, and I didn’t even take time out to piss. When I got into the tree line and called for you guys to follow me, nobody did. I was up here alone until Siner and Person showed up. Thanks for nothing guys. This is the last hill I’ll attack by myself.”
Everyone was dumbfounded. That little performance turned out to be one of the best things I could have done for myself. When word got around about what happened to me, I was regarded as one of the bravest men in the platoon. This respect may not have been exactly deserved, but as a squad leader it was welcome because the men under my command would be less likely to doubt my abilities and may even adopt my cautious approach to the war.
The fighting had dwindled to sporadic rifle fire and an occasional grenade explosion as our infantry continued swarming over the hill. Cobra gunships roamed the skies firing rockets, mini-guns, and grenades into the remaining enemy positions. The battle was ending. We had won. The final assault had lasted nearly six hours.
Tired, sweaty, and filthy soldiers straggled past us. Sergeant Krol was with them but he wasn’t tired. He wasn’t even dirty.
“Pork Chop Hill was tougher than this,” he said, referring to the famous Korean War fight. “That was a real battle.”
We all looked at Krol in disgust. “I’ll kill him,” grumbled Person.
“No, I’ll kill him,” I whispered, not sure I didn’t really mean it.
“Forget it,” said Siner. “He’s nothing but an asshole Lifer. He hopes you’ll try something. That’s his style. Don’t let him get to you.”
Our company set up positions on the hilltop alongside several huge bomb craters, each deep enough to park a truck in. We were told Lieutenant Bruckner had been wounded and that Krol would take charge of the platoon until a new leader was assigned. It was just what we didn’t need; Krol having complete authority over us.
All shooting had ceased by mid-afternoon, but the area remained a flurry of activity. Misplaced GIs criss-crossed the summit trying to locate their units. Cobra gunships and agile Loach helicopters also remained on station to prevent an NVA counter attack. As the regrouping continued, Krol ordered me to help get the walking wounded down the hill for evacuation. Near the bottom was a small LZ from which Loaches flew casualties to firebases for transfer to medevac choppers.
As we headed down through the area were the 3/187th was first hit ten days earlier, I got a good look at the mountain. I estimated the main battlefield covered almost a half of a square mile, more if the draws and ridges were included. There was no trail to follow, just a desolate ridge lined with a dozen body bags, each containing the remains of a slain GI. The dead NVA, and pieces of them, were scattered on either side of the ridge. They were uncovered and some had begun decomposing. The stench of decaying flesh, the shriveled NVA corpses, the silent body bags, and the massive destruction would be my lasting memory of this hellish hill.
With no trees left to shade us, the late afternoon air became unbearably humid. We waited around the LZ just to feel the helicopter rotor wash from each landing and takeoff. After the last of the wounded had safely gone, I began to feel faint. Then, before I could sit down, I blacked out. I was quickly revived by the piercing scent of smelling salts. I looked up as a medic hovering over me joked, “Hey buddy, no one leaves here that easy.”
A few minutes later we started up the hill when I remembered the M-16 magazine that had saved my life and decided to go back for it. I found the magazine right where I had tossed it. It was twisted out of shape with a jagged tear across the middle. I knew the magazine was something unique, so I slipped it into my side pants pocket where it stayed for the next three months.
The mountain had become an anthill of soldiers. Everywhere, GIs were digging in. There were also a few souvenir hunters checking over the dead NVA and their bunkers. Interpreters later found evidence of the enemy’s determination with commands sewn onto their uniforms reading, “KILL AMERICANS” and “STAY AND FIGHT AND DON’T RUN.”
When I got back to the top, there was so much brass stumbling around that it looked like the Pentagon had opened a branch office, everyone wanting to be a part of the action. There was also a square cardboard sign pinned with a bayonet to a blackened tree trunk reading, “HAMBURGER HILL.” A weary Grunt trudged over and attached a note to the bottom that read, “Was it worth it?” I stood staring at the sign, contemplating the question, when an officer ran over and tore the note off. “Bastards,” I mumbled to myself, thinking that we at least deserved the right to express some feelings.
“Sergeant Wiknik!” Krol yelled, waving me to come over. “Pick three men to go with you to the bottom and bring back some C-rations.”
“C-rations at the bottom?” I questioned, as if I didn’t hear him right. “If the Brass could be flown up here, why can’t our food be flown up too?”
“Our rations are already at the bottom!” he yelled. “So don’t argue!”
Everyone within earshot stopped what they were doing and turned their attention on us. I have never hated anyone in my life but at that moment Krol became an exception. His uncaring attitude for sitting on the GI in the body bag and his unwillingness to acknowledge our performance in the battle—especially after his lack of participation in it—was all I could stand.
“I was just down there!” I angrily shouted back at him. “Pick someone else for a change! I’m not going!”
“As your platoon leader, I am giving you a direct order! Now do it!”
The situation turned into a staring contest until Freddie Shaw and two other platoon members appeared between us.
“C’mon Wiknik, we’ll go down with you. Let’s get them C-rations. Everyone’s hungry.”
Their action may have saved Krol’s life. I had allowed my anger and frustration to get the best of me and was ready to blow him away because he was deliberately harassing me. We turned to go down the hill as a chopper hovering near the top dropped off our rucksacks. I moaned to myself, remembering how Siner and I had hidden our rucksacks in the bushes so they wouldn’t get mixed up with all the others. Now there is no worry about them getting mixed up because they’ll be hidden there forever.
Again I passed where the body bags had been. The slain GIs were gone now, airlifted to Graves Registration to be prepared for their final journey home. The dead NVA were still lying where they fell and would be left there to rot.
We passed other GIs carrying C-ration cases up the hill, looking more like safari porters than victorious warriors. We went to the same LZ the wounded were flown out of, only now it looked more like a miniature supply depot with stacks of ammunition boxes, dozens of C-ration cases, medical supplies, and water canisters. Hoisting a case onto my shoulder, I gazed at what would be my third trip up the hill, wondering if the day would ever end.
It was nearly dusk when we dropped the C-rations at the platoon CP. When I returned to my position, I was encouraged to find that Siner and Person had finished digging in. They had also leveled a place for me to sleep.