The order went out for everyone to take salt tablets, so far we had suffered no casualties by enemy fire, and to lose your whole company to the incredible heat wasn't going to happen. Everyone was well spread out, yet we were all exposed to the constant rays of the sun and the overbearing heat. We'd all been use to wearing bush hats, and no flack jackets, yet although this was extra weight, the problem of the heat exhaustion shouldn't be as bad as it was beginning to appear to be. We had scout dogs with us on this mission, and the poor dogs were suffering worse then the Marines, and the dog handlers looked very concerned. We too were concerned for them, as they had the gift of telling us where the NVA were located long before we'd actually know they were even in our area. These dogs were without a doubt worth their weight in gold, and to lose these dogs now due to the heat would just make this Operation that more difficult for us. The Captain was on the radio and from the sound of the way he was responding, some mistake had taken place. We knew we were in the DMZ, as what else could possibly look like this. The landscape was eerie enough as it resembled the surface of the moon. All that was around was one hugh bomb crater after another, and what areas were spared their destruction, were the thickest foliage or jungle we had ever run up against. Fred and I were at the point with a dog handlers and his dogs. Having the handlers with us and his German Shepherd scout dogs gave both Fred and I a feeling of relief, as all we really had to do is watch the dogs for any sign of the enemy being near by. German Shepherd dogs were the preference of the scout dog handlers as they were tough enough to bring down a gook in a heart beat, had excellent tracking qualities, and the way the German inventor of the breed, breed these dogs, Von Stefinites* in the 1850's, they could handle both extremely hot climates as well as cold climates and adjust rapidly to either one. When it came time to move out, the rumor had it that we had been dropped into North Vietnam by mistake, and we were to head directly to another landing zone to be picked up by choppers and reinserted in our original drop site in order to tie into Fox Company, Echo Company and Golf Company. This was a Battalion size operation, in which we were separated from the rest of the Battalion due to the heavy resistance that we met at our primary LZ. By no means was this a mistake made by anyone in Hotel Company, it just happened, as it was rumored the entire Battalion had been directed to secondary LZ's, and now we were all trying to link back up as a single unit again, which was suppose to be the original plan. All three other companies were also separated from each other, but Hotel Company was the furthest away from the rest of the Battalion. Fox, Echo, and Golf Companies had been at least dropped in the same approximate areas to each other, but Hotel Company was on the other side of a ridge and hill or mountain complex, cut off from the rest of the battalion and left to fend for themselves. In the far distance we could still hear ferocious battles being waged, and our orders of march were to join them as quickly as possible. Little time was given to us to accomplish this task, as Fox Company and Echo Company had met with superior size NVA units that were trying to eliminate them, but the NVA were having a rough time of it. Air support by Phantom Jets were running bombing and strafing sorties on suspected enemy resistance areas, slowing up the NVA's attempts to over power the Marine units locked in harden battle with them. This Operation Napoleon Saline was bigger then we even anticipated, as we had caught large forces of NVA regulars completely by surprise, and 2/1 was locked into a struggle for survival. Knowing we were coming to their aid, as the Calvary in the movies, didn't seem as exciting as I thought it was going to be. Our biggest obstacles now were, the heat and the terrain. They were both a difficult combination in themselves, as they began to cause men to begin to drop out due to extreme heat exhaustion. As hot as it was, taking casualties almost one after another, we would only stop briefly so they could gather enough strength to move on. Fred and I were totally exhausted, but having to stop long enough for the casualties of the heat to get salt tablets into their systems and drink some fluids, kept us going and not passing out too. We had to literally cut through one section of dense jungle after another, a process that held our entire company up and exposed it to a possible ambush. There were no alternate avenues of travel available. Foot by foot, was the incredible slow pace in which we were able to move, as we cut furiously away at the most dense underbrush and jungle imaginable. Progress was to a crawl, and to top it off, we were constantly harassed by snipers in the distance, that we were incapable of even seeing through the dense and thick jungle. They appeared to be above us, as we scarped and crawled over limbs and branches that tour the flesh off of our exposed skin, and tripped you to the ground about every few steps. All Fred and I kept hearing being passed up from behind us was, "what's the hold up, up there"? We had to be at the LZ at a particular time, or the choppers wouldn't land, and would be force to leave us out here, if we didn't reach our objective in the amount of specified time they allowed us to reach it by. The pressure was on us to move as quickly as humanly possible for the sake of the Company's welfare, as missing the choppers at the designated LZ wouldn't make anyone all too happy. I had drank all my water now, and we probably hadn't moved but a few hundred meters. I was cut and scratched up from head to toe, sweating so profusely I thought I was surely going to dehydrate. The gear we were carrying further slowed our progress down, and the snipers shooting at us just made the job that much more frustrating. Fred said to me, if we don't hit easier going soon, I'm going to pass out. Damn he said madly, this stuff is impossible to get through. Step back I said to him, take a break while I hack at some of it, it has to come to an end somewhere I reassured him. As I chopped away at this branch, it suddenly fell and I was staring right into the opening of a cement bunker. My heart stopped, as I froze at the sight of a dark hole peering at me at face level. I waited a split second to see a flash of light that would end my life, but nothing, just the stillness of the air, and the sound of battles raging in the distance. What's the hold up, Fred said. I couldn't even speak, as I was trying to believe I hadn't been shot yet. What do you see Fred demanded, as I was almost frozen starring into the open bunker. Fred made his way up to me and his mouth dropped open to his waist. Anything moving in there he said? Not that I've seen so far, I answered him back in a bewildered tone of voice. Hey! What's the hold up you guy's, we have an LZ to get to today! Bunkers, Fred yelled back, a whole complex of them. What are you saying, Solomon yelled up at us. We hit a hugh bunker complex, made of cement bunkers. Cement what? Than Solomon was right along side of us, and he was staring in unbelief as well. Pass the word back, "Concrete bunker complex up here". Solomon yelled back to Jay, "have Jim call the Six and tell him we have a concrete bunker complex up here, a big one". Got it Jay responded as he immediately passed the word to Jim, and he contacted the Captain to inform him of our situation. Solomon yelled to the scout dog handlers, "get those dogs up here ASAP, and check out these bunkers". While Fred and I had been inching our way through this maze of jungle, the dog handlers could do little but stay behind us, as they needed a trail to follow to be able to have any success with the dogs. The handlers seemed hesitant to just go barging in with the dogs, but the dogs gave no indication of enemy soldiers being in the area, so in they went with Fred and I following as their support and back up. These bunkers were dark and damp, they offered some relief from the hot sun we had been exposed to all this time. This was a pretty good size complex, but it had been over grown by thick jungle. There were clear areas still, where we could maneuver, but it appeared to be an old French bunker complex, probably last used during the French and Indo-China War in the 50's. There was no way of surrounding it, as it was completely overgrown by the jungle. The Company had now been at a stand still for quite some time between our hacking through this thick jungle, and now scouting out the bunker complex. The Captain wasn't at all happy about having the entire Company exposed to an ambush situation, especially with hard trained NVA soldiers, or NVA regulars as we called them, all around the area. The NVA regulars, were the North's version of their elite troops. These troops were personally trained up North. Then by truck, rail, and on foot made there way down into the DMZ to take on the Marines. That's what this whole operation was about I think. Intelligence had spotted a large force of NVA regulars moving into the DMZ trying to invade the South. This was a bold move for them since the 'Tet Offensive", as they tried it then, and were severely beaten by the Marines at every location they tried to enter the South, along the DMZ, in their major assault which failed to over power the South and end the war. Checking out the bunker complex was completed, and our Company, all strung out through a rough cut trail in the jungle, and others exposed in areas filled with craters out in the open from Arch Light bombings, by our B-52's, was causing frustration levels to rise in everyone. We were in an ideal ambush setting, with half the Company in dense jungle and half open and exposed. We had no alternative but to continue to push ahead towards the LZ where we were to meet up with the incoming choppers. As we tended to move downward through the jungle area, there were times where our movement was less impeded by the thick jungle, and we were beginning to make up lost time. Still we were suffering from heat exhaustion, and victims of it were having to bear up against it, rather then being medevacked out, in order to maintain their survival, but they held on and kept up with everyone else in spite of their weakened situation. The intense heat was as great an enemy threat to us all, equal to the NVA, yet all we could do was forge ahead hoping to get to the LZ before the choppers began arriving. It was mid day or a little afterwards when we reached this area that had a large clearing in the mist of surrounding dense jungle. This was the LZ, and we halted, and immediately set up defensive positions, as we waited to hear about the choppers that were coming to extract us. I remember thinking that this unusually quiet area reminded me how uncannily resembled a situation in the old movie film, "Back to Bat tan", with Errol Flynn and his troops being chased by a superior Japanese contingent, as they would reach such an area as this one, only to be ambushed, and suffer heavy losses, and be forced to pass up the opportunity of a rescue. It was eerie to gaze out into this open grasses meadow that seemed out of place in the hills and jungle we had been negotiating our way through to get here. Tensions ran high amongst the entire Company, as we were cut off from any other Companies support. Jay was busy pre-plotting suspected artillery barrages in areas of most likely concealment for ambushes by the NVA. By pre-plotting artillery support, all you had to do, if you received fire from an area, is call out a code directly to the artillery battery on standby, and in seconds, not twenty minutes, a full barrage of rounds would begin to blast the unsuspecting enemy, who were accustom to having a twenty minute killing opportunity before withdrawing from incoming artillery rounds. This was standard procedure with Alfa Squad, as we had been trained personally by Jay while at Cua Viet to do this instinctively weather on patrol or while setting in. We bagged quite a few surprised enemy, who attempted to ambush us, as they either had the capability of beaming themselves out of the direct line of falling artillery rounds, as in Star Trek, or were blown into their next life by accurate and precise artillery barrages. It had gotten that NVA or VC were hesitant to spring an ambush on us, as with their first volleys of fire, would come artillery thundering down upon them, blowing them into oblivion, before they could hastily retreat to safety. "Saddle up" came the order passed around to each Platoon, as we first thought that we had been advised of a large NVA force about to rain down upon us, only to discover we had been ordered to proceed to another LZ located a considerable distance from where we were now. "My God", Fred said, "what is going on here with this zig-zagging maneuvering through this ungodly hellish countryside. It isn't going to be long before we run smack dab into the largest NVA force we ever encountered, and get waxed". Thanks Fred, I said to him, why don't you just jinx us into the slaughter house, talking like that. "Jinx nothing", Fred responded in a harsher tone, he was exhausted and as frustrated as I and everyone in the Company was also. We'd been receiving sniper fire all morning and into this afternoon, and it was no great secret where we were to the NVA. It really was only a matter of time before they would be able to completely surround us, and Hotel Company would become another Bravo 1/9 from Khe Sanh. I know everyone was thinking of this, as we kept having to move at a very slow and spread out or bunched together fashion depending on the areas we encountered. It would seem that any one of these times, moving in one direction and then the other, that we would have to be moving smack dab into the middle of an NVA ambush. It was just a matter of when, as we formed up and slowly began moving out again to head for our next LZ destination. God I started praying, as Fred and I once again took point with the scout dogs and their handlers, don't let me die over here in a foreign land, at least let me die at home on the freeway, if you have to, but not here, not today, please God. We were all suffering from exhaustion and the intensity of the thought in which everyone was thinking, that of being inevitably ambushed, was making us all jumpy, as I expected to catch a round through the side of my head at any minute. I almost wanted to walk holding my hands up to my temples to prevent the sudden impact of an AK 47 round from striking my head. I could feel it happening in my mind, but I still went forward with the thought that with every step I took, I only came a step closer to being shot. Tired, hungry, and near dyeing of thirst, made moving out even harder, as we began to enter the thick jungle again, and this time we were moving upwards instead of in a steady decline, as we had been in reaching the area we were now in. We were also now moving directly towards the fierce fire fights that we had been hearing all day in the distance. In the exhausted state we were in, how in God's name were we going to find any strength to fight when the situation was finally came upon us? Chopping and crawling along, steadily moving upwards and closer to the sound of a raging all out massive battle, we struggled, as the sun fought against us just as intensely, causing us to stop periodically to avoid heat exhaustion, and for the Company to keep together for its own defensive strength. We could hear Phantom Jets above us now, as they passed overhead, in order to strafe and bomb the NVA positions apparently closer then we thought they had been. As we apparently entered the crest of the hill, that we had been climbing for most of that afternoon, the noise of the battles raging now below us were greatly intensified. Also, as we neared the top of the hill, the landscape once again resembled that of the surface of the moon, crater after crater was scattered about on a surface of reddish clay mud. We were evidently were spotted by a NVA force already engaged in battle with other Marine units, as they shifted their fire in our direction, so as to make sure we didn't miss anything. Exhausted as we were, when those rounds kick up around you, your adrenaline kicks in and strength we didn't know we possessed, flooded your body and revived it's ability to move, as it was early not capable of doing. We headed in the direction of the nearest crater, as rifle rounds exploded about us, as they narrowly missed our heads and bodies. The entire Company spread out and fanned the area diving into crater after crater taking cover and returning fire at the enemy. Up until now, baring the sniper fire we received, things had been relatively quiet compared to what we walked into at the top of this hill. Once again we had joined the main part of the battle, up in the sky, Phantom Jets dove and strafed suspected enemy positions below in the valley. It almost appeared as if you could distinguish between the married Phantom pilots and the single ones, as some jets swooped much lower to the enemy positions before dropping their pay loads of bombs and napalm, then other Phantom pilots who appeared more cautious and didn't swoop as low to the enemy positions as the former pilots I mentioned. As the jets came diving in firing their 20 mm cannons, with exploding heads on their rounds, the NVA stood their ground shooting back at them with their AK 47 rifles, right up until the jets released their bombs on top of them. I remember thinking, that is some gutsy soldier down there, that even while the jets guns fired rapid bursts right on them, they held their positions and returned fire at the encroaching jets, with rifles. These NVA troops were no push over, as they fought with such intensity and fearlessness towards both the Marine units on the ground, as well as the Marine pilots in the skies above us. Evening was drawing closer, as we all wondered if we would be fighting through the night up here in the DMZ? The word came passing around, we're moving out, choppers are on the way to meet us at a secure LZ. Relief could be seen on all the faces you saw as if life had sprung back into us all again. The trekking through the worst ground conditions I had yet to witness, the ungodly heat that caused our guide dogs to be medevacked, after they collapsed while drinking from the water in a bomb crater, from which we also were drinking from. For a short period of time we all just starred at each other as we thought the water in the bomb crater had been poisoned. Thank God the medevac chopper pilots radioed back, informing us the dogs had collapsed due to severe heat exhaustion. Everyone was instantly relieved and drank their fill of water from the crater. The water in the crater was brown as the color which you'd see when you mixed the undisturbed water in a mud puddle with a stick and it clouded up with mud and became as brown as the mud itself. Believe it or not, that water although brown and warm as it was, was decent compared to rice paddy water, which is fertilized with human waste by the villages, as they didn't have the modern conveniences we were use to in the United States, called toilets. This was too good to be true as the battle still in the valley below us raged on between Fox, Echo, and somehow, Golf Company managed to maneuver into an area where they were choppered out to Con Thien as we were going to be. How they knew the LZ was secure was beyond me. "Hey look there", Fred said, as he pointed to two F-4 Phantom jets diving
at the NVA in the valley. As they went in, one seemed to go lower to drop
his bombs then the other. As he climbed out of his dive, he gave his after
burners the go and the flames shot out what seemed to be twice the length
of his jet. Bomb! The jet exploded in mid air, into a fiery ball of wreckage,
and just as we all looked with our mouths in horror as the fireball disappeared,
you could distinctly see two parachutes drifting down into the valley.
Immediately a call came out over the radio to rescue the pilots at any
cost. This meant us, and anyone remotely near them, or in a position to
see where they landed. Out of no where a helicopter appeared firing it's
guns like crazy as it descended down in the area where the pilots finally
landed. This was close to the NVA, and what a racket was made both by the
helicopter, and the NVA trying to shoot the chopper down.
Will Hotel Company make their hook up with the choppers? Would there be an ambush waiting Hotel Company as they quickly headed towards the LZ? Hang in there till next week when you can see how this ends up, and see just how much of Hotel Company actually goes on to Con Thien. Author: Bobby Hingston
* Supplemental from above.
Schutzhund trials in Germany are the exclusive method used today for breeding working dogs in Germany. There is so much emphasis placed on this type of training and testing, that only the most hardiest of the breed are capable of passing and then and only then are they allowed to be breed. This practice is now found in many other European Countries as well, and it is the gage, sort a speak, used to determine what dogs can be breed and which ones can't. During the October Festival in Germany every year, a big holiday for their country, Schutzhund Trials are held to determine the best working dogs in their particular breeds. Winners of these shows are, and have sold for as much as $60,000.00. That's after a two year stay in Germany to further the lineage through their breeding lines, before the dog is entitled to leave the Country. ** Schutzhund is divided into three major areas to test the thoroughness of the breed. Tracking, Obedience, and Protection. Each is a separate and individual part of the training for the dogs in which failing to pass any single part of the test, meant the disqualification of the dog from breeding and having litters registered in Germany. There are three degrees of Schutzhund, one , two, and three. Each is similar to the other, but becomes progressively more difficult with each succeeding step, making a Schutzhund III to be the most prestigious title the dog can achieve, and also making the dog much more in demand for breeding, and much more expensive. It coast about ten thousand dollars to complete all three phrases of Schutzhund Training here in America. In Germany they formed Schutzhund Klubs, or clubs as we call them, and it is strictly a sport, in which all well known breeders of working dogs participate and have trials to see which particular dog or breeder is the most successful at it. It is a serious sport not taken lightly in Germany, and once a year, during the October festival in Germany, the Schutzhund Trials are held where the best dogs of their breed are entered to see which dog will win the prestigious title of "Bundaseiger" (Consice or Top Show) for that year. This dogs value to the breeding programs in Germany is almost impossible to set a price tag on, but today due to Foreign dog buyers, and the average wages in Germany lower then that of the United States, makes selling the winners irresistible. There are exceptions to every rule when money is involved as they , the winning dogs, are purchased for extremely large sums of money. The dog is kept in Germany for a specific time to breed to others of great potential, before being allowed to leave the Country of Germany. This way, Germany insures the best of it's breeds are not further developed in foreign countries and exceed the quality of breeding that the Germans are famous for. Information you won't find in the United States Marine Corps handbook.
It's always a treat for us, Marines, to expand or broaden our horizons.
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