Vietnam Story

Hanoi's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap says his soldiers learned how to fight the U.S. helicopters in the Ia Drang, and perhaps they did. But they did not have the weapons on hand to apply those lessons -- the Chinese-made heavy antiaircraft machine guns that, if they had been deployed on Chu Pong Mountain, could have closed Landing Zone X-Ray. With their rifles and light machine guns, the North Vietnamese took a toll of American aviators, but during three days of battle only two of Crandall's helicopters were disabled -- and both were put back in service after the fight. Later in the war, however, the lessons the North Vietnamese learned at X-Ray would take a heavy toll.

Up on the mountain, Henry Herrick's Lost Platoon was desperately clinging to a 25-yard circle atop a slight rise. The North Vietnamese overran one of the Americans' two M-60 machine guns. Sgt. Ernie Savage says, "I heard Sergeant Hurdle down there cursing, even over the noise of the firefight. He was famous for that. 'Motherf-----. Sonofabitch. Sonofabitch,' I heard him holler. And then they threw grenades in on him." Sgt. Paul Hurdle, the platoon's weapons-squad leader, had survived the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea and had blown the last bridge behind the retreating Marines, but he did not survive this day. The enemy turned Hurdle's machine gun around and began using it on the Americans. Herrick was mortally wounded. His last words to Savage were: "I'm glad I could give my life for my country."

Command of the 2nd Platoon passed to Sgt. Carl Palmer. Specialist 4 Galen Bungum, who had left a dairy farm in Hayfield, Minn., for the Army, says that on the way up the mountain Sergeant Palmer said: "Bungum, I'll be 43 years old tomorrow, but I don't believe I'll live to see it." Within minutes of taking over, Palmer was shot in the head. Savage and the others laid him behind a log. Shortly afterward, an American hand grenade taken from the slain machine-gun crew sailed over the clearing and exploded beneath Palmer. He died instantly. The mortar forward observer, Sgt. Robert Stokes, assumed it was his turn to take charge, stood up and said: "We've got to get out of here." He was shot through the head and killed instantly.

Command of the Lost Platoon fell to Ernie Savage. A 21-year-old buck sergeant from McCalla, Ala., he had been with the battalion more than two years and was field smart and cool under pressure. He grabbed Stokes's radio and called artillery fire down in a very tight circle. By then, eight of the Lost Platoon's 27 men were dead and 12 wounded.

Midafternoon. Specialist 4 Vincent Cantu of Refugio, Tex., had only 10 days left in the Army when he landed in X-Ray. The local draft board had called him up the day before John Kennedy was assassinated, ending Cantu's fling as lead guitarist and vocalist for the Rockin' Dominoes, a local band whose theme song was "Born to Lose." Now an 81-mm mortar gunner, Cantu was riveted by the deadly drama around him. "We were so close our mortar tubes were pointing almost straight up. The pleas over the radio were desperate. We could all hear Sergeant Stokes, our forward observer, with the trapped platoon. By 2:30 or 3 p.m., it seemed like half the battalion was either dead or wounded. I remember rolling this dead soldier in a poncho. He was face down and when I turned him over I saw the lieutenant's bars on him. I snapped. I thought: These rounds don't have any regard."

By now, Capt. Ray LeFebvre's Delta Company was arriving at Landing Zone X-Ray. LeFebvre had served an earlier tour and was fluent in Vietnamese. Because of that, he had been tapped for a staff job in civil affairs at division headquarters. Like Tony Nadal, he had turned up on Hal Moore's doorstep begging for a rifle company. "Something's going to happen," LeFebvre had said. "I want to be in on it." He got his wish. "I started to unhook my seat belt when I felt a round crease the back of my neck," LeFebvre remembers. "I turned to my right and saw that my radio operator had been hit in the left side of his head. I grabbed his radio and jumped out ... I fired two magazines of M-16 ammo at the enemy, then I was hit." LeFebvre was in action approximately 10 minutes; in that time, he and four men around him killed 25 North Vietnamese.