Vietnam Story

The 8th Battalion of the 66th People's Army Regiment was taking a rice break at midday along the Ia Drang River when scouts reported that the Americans were approaching. McDade's lead unit captured two prisoners, and the Americans halted for 20 minutes while they were interrogated. That permitted the enemy commander time to set up a hasty L-shaped ambush. The North Vietnamese planted their machine guns atop the termite hills and raced through the jungle, drawing the long leg of the L alongside the Americans.

As their mortars opened fire, the North Vietnamese regulars maneuvering alongside the American column wheeled and attacked. In the center of the column, Charlie Company took the worst of it, losing 20 killed and many more wounded in the first minute. Some men fired wildly in every direction and another company complained it was being hit by friendly fire. At that point, as the enemy pressed the attack, McDade apparently believed that what was happening was a shootout between Americans. Lt. S. Lawrence Gwin wrote that McDade radioed orders for everyone to cease fire.

A bad situation got worse. By now, the North Vietnamese were in among the Americans and up in the trees. Anyone who moved got shot. Major Henry and the artillery observer got on their radios and began calling in artillery and air bombardments. That prevented a massacre, but with the column stretched out for almost 1,000 yards in the tall grass, the artillery shells and napalm that killed the North Vietnamese also killed Americans. The lead unit, Alpha Company, had spread out around the edge of the clearing before the attack and lost two platoons, 50 men, in the first minutes. It would emerge from Albany with only 20 men left out of 100. Charlie Company, which set off from X-Ray with 110 men, lost 50 killed and 50 wounded.

In late afternoon, Diduryk's Bravo Company, which had left X-Ray with Moore's men, was pulled out of Pleiku and dropped by helicopter into Albany. The cocky veterans of X-Ray drew a perimeter around the clearing and lent courage to the shaken defenders. Another company of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Cavalry marched from Landing Zone Columbus toward the tail end of McDade's half-mile-long column.

During the afternoon and night, the North Vietnamese roamed the battlefield, killing and being killed in desperate, isolated little incidents. Specialist 4 Jack Smith, who lay wounded in the grass, wrote that the enemy ran around "screeching with glee when they found one of us alive ... Every few minutes, I heard some guy start screaming 'no, no, no, please,' and then a burst of bullets."

Division headquarters seemed oblivious to the debacle. General Kinnard and his second-in-command, Brig. Gen. Richard Knowles, later said the brigade commander, Colonel Brown, had not alerted them. Brown said he could get no coherent report from McDade. "We had ample resources at hand to reinforce Albany -- Hal Moore's men would have gone in a minute -- but no one asked," says General Kinnard.

SILENCE: Counting the cost

Day 5: When the sun rose, McDade's battalion had lost 155 killed, 125 wounded and at least five men missing in action. A lieutenant stood in front of Specialist 5 Jon Wallenius, a Bravo Company mortar observer, and asked for volunteers to bring in the American dead. First they brought in the whole bodies; then the pieces. Wallenius and the others dragged the ghastly cargo to waiting Chinook helicopters, stacking the last one full to the ceiling. "When we raised the tail ramp, blood poured through the hinges," he says.

Landing Zone Albany was abandoned a day later, and four days after that, one of the Americans missing in action, Pfc. Toby Braveboy, a South Carolinian of Creek Indian descent, staggered into a clearing and, with his bloody undershirt, waved down a passing helicopter. Braveboy had been badly wounded on November 17, played dead while the enemy executed others near him and then crawled off to a creek bed. On the third day, the last man in a squad of North Vietnamese troops passing by spotted Braveboy lying in the brush against the bank and turned, raising his AK-47 rifle to finish him off. Braveboy lifted his shattered left hand in supplication, shaking his head. "He was so young, just a boy, not more than 16 or 17," Braveboy recalled afterward. "He walked away."