Vietnam Story

Down on the critical left flank, Edwards's Charlie Company was relatively unhurt but the field in front of it was littered with North Vietnamese bodies. Delta Company had joined the thin line, and the reinforcements that Moore had requested -- 120 men of Bravo Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry under Capt. Myron Diduryk -- began arriving shortly after 5 p.m. Sgt. John Setelin, a 21-year-old Virginian, was with them: "As the chopper dropped in, I caught a glimpse of men in khaki, and I thought we must really be desperate if we are bringing in guys without giving them time to change into their fatigue uniforms. Then I realized their rifles were pointed at us; that was the enemy. When we jumped out, people were firing down on us; the gooks were up in the trees."

Nighttime. By 7 o'clock, Moore had his men digging in. For the first time, the Americans encircled the entire landing zone. Until now, Moore had thrown every man he had into a broad semicircle facing the mountain. The back side of X-Ray had been wide open, but, fortunately, no one had come knocking.

The wounded got immediate attention from medics, more from the battalion surgeon's men at Moore's command post, then were flown as quickly as possible to a clearing station at Camp Holloway in Pleiku set up by C Company of the 15th Medical Battalion -- "Charlie Med." Capt. George Kelling, who ran Charlie Med, recalls: "It was often a race against time to get blood into the soldier faster than he was losing it, while the surgeons tied off the bleeders. We threw caution to the wind and often gave a patient four intravenous cut-downs -- with four corpsmen squeezing the blood bags as hard as they could. It was not unusual for the patient to go into convulsions as a reaction to the rapid infusion of so much cold blood. But the alternative was to let him die."

By dark, all the wounded had been evacuated and the dead collected at Moore's command post; ammunition and water had been distributed; mortars and artillery had been calibrated to fire on a tight ring just 25 yards outside the American lines. Moore now made the rounds. "Morale was high," he remembers. "We knew we were facing a tough enemy. We had lost a lot of good men, but we had stopped them."

Up on the slopes of Chu Pong, the Lost Platoon was on its own; Sergeant Savage had been told that there would be no rescue tonight. He and his men could hear the North Vietnamese talking and took some comfort from radioing instructions that brought artillery fire down on the voices. During the night, with the wounded pressed into service, too, Savage's platoon withstood three North Vietnamese attacks, including one launched by eerie bugle calls from the mountain above.

After 10, Crandall and Freeman finally shut down their helicopters at the Turkey Farm, a temporary chopper pad near Pleiku, 37 miles northeast of X-Ray. They and their fellow pilots had flown nonstop since 6 a.m. "When I tried to get out of the aircraft, it caught up with me -- my legs gave out, and I fell to the ground vomiting and shaking," Crandall recalls. "It took 15 gallons of water to wash the blood out of my first ship, more for the second one I flew that day." Moore's battalion had lost 27 dead and 69 wounded, leaving it with 13 officers and 326 men. The artillerymen at Landing Zone Falcon had fired 4,000 rounds in support of Moore's men at X-Ray.

FIX BAYONETS: Holding the thin green line

Day 2: By first light, at 6:30, Moore ordered his companies to send out scouts to check for enemy infiltrators and snipers who might have crawled up to the American lines during the night. The scouts from Charlie Company ran into trouble barely 100 yards forward of the line, on the left.

Some 300 North Vietnamese, heavily camouflaged and crawling on hands and knees, attacked. The scouts were taking casualties as they tried to pull back. Sgt. Robert Jemison of Columbus, Ga., recalls: "The patrols sent out early saved us from being surprised. They came running back, yelling, 'They're coming, Sarge, they're coming. Lots of 'em.' Our machine guns and rifles cut them down."