History books and novels are filled with stories of young men and women going off to war. In each, the experiences and challenges are as varied as the people themselves. The stories tell of leaders and followers, cowards and heroes. In Where’s Charlie? author Tim Soyars narrates his own story of how he came of age while serving in the US Army during the Vietnam War. In this memoir, Soyars tells how his personality, background, and attitude contributed to his will to succeed and his desire to be involved in the Vietnam War. As a boy, he always knew he’d serve his country. With both humor and sincerity, Soyars narrates his story—his birth in Virginia in 1945, his induction into the army in 1965, his marriage in 1966, and his one-year service in Vietnam with the First Calvary from March of 1967 to 1968.

Including photos of the period, Where’s Charlie? conveys not only the sadness and heroics often associated with war, but also shares stories of warmth, compassion, and romance. It provides a glimpse into the horror of battle and offers insight into one soldier’s actions and thoughts during this unique time in history.

WHERE'S CHARLIE?

Memories from a Time of War, 1965–68By TIM SOYARS

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Tim Soyars
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-1494-1

Contents

Chapter 1 March 1967....................................................................................................................1Chapter 2 A Backward Glance.............................................................................................................9Chapter 3 Basic Decision................................................................................................................15Chapter 4 OCS...........................................................................................................................21Chapter 5 I Dream of Jeanie.............................................................................................................28Chapter 6 The Rainbow...................................................................................................................35Chapter 7 Coconut Cocktails and Odds `n' Ends...........................................................................................41Chapter 8 A Full Day's Work.............................................................................................................50Chapter 9 Frenchy to Montezuma to the Sea...............................................................................................54Chapter 10 Bong Son Plain...............................................................................................................65Chapter 11 Mountain Missions............................................................................................................78Chapter 12 Patrols in the An Lao Valley.................................................................................................87Chapter 13 Stand-down...................................................................................................................95Chapter 14 Village of Lo Dieu...........................................................................................................103Chapter 15 Cs, Sundries, and Doughnuts..................................................................................................110Chapter 16 Pop Smoke....................................................................................................................115Chapter 17 Night Patrol.................................................................................................................121Chapter 18 Highway One and the General..................................................................................................126Chapter 19 Wow!.........................................................................................................................130Chapter 20 The S4.......................................................................................................................133Chapter 21 Those Magic NCOs.............................................................................................................140Chapter 22 The Chick(s) and Egg Thing...................................................................................................143Chapter 23 Helicopters..................................................................................................................148Chapter 24 Love and the Officers of the Round Table.....................................................................................153Chapter 25 The Chaplain, the Latrines, and a Hot Shower.................................................................................157Chapter 26 Thanksgiving and Christmas 1967..............................................................................................163Chapter 27 Tet 1968.....................................................................................................................168Chapter 28 Home at Last.................................................................................................................175Epilogue................................................................................................................................181Appendix A Excerpts from Letters........................................................................................................187Appendix B Charlie Company, Second Battalion, Fifth Cavalry Regiment Operational Reports, March 1967 to March 1968.....................241Appendix C Thanksgiving 1967............................................................................................................259Appendix D Christmas 1967...............................................................................................................263Appendix E Faces of Vietnam.............................................................................................................267Appendix F Reflections on Leadership....................................................................................................271Appendix G Glossary.....................................................................................................................275

Chapter One

March 1967

It was clear and warm in the late afternoon on March 23, 1967, whenmy helicopter set down inside the perimeter of Charlie Company. Thecompany was operating in the mountains near the An Lo Valley, northwestof the Bong Son Plains in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. CharlieCompany, an infantry unit of the Second/Fifth (Second Battalion, FifthCavalry Regiment), First Cav (First Air Cavalry Division), had receivedcausalities during the battle of Phu Ninh on March 11, 1967, and I wasone of the officer replacements for the company. The battalion commanderescorted me to C Company's mountain camp to introduce me to CPTDon Markham, the CO (commanding officer).

A week earlier, while I was attending new soldier orientation trainingat Camp Radcliff (headquarters for the First Cav), I was introduced toCaptain Markham one evening at the battalion officers' club. The captainwas returning from R & R (rest and relaxation) and was scheduled torejoin his company in the field the next day. He was eager to get officerreplacements and welcomed me warmly. As we drank beer and passedthe night at the club, he shared stories and the history of the company'sactivities during his tenure there. One story was about the recent battleat Phu Ninh. Being trained for combat and joining his company in a fewdays, I was very interested in hearing the details of the battle. He laterpublished the story of this battle in an article for Assembly, a magazinefor alumni of the US Military Academy at West Point. The article is alsoposted on the Charlie Company, Second/Fifth website. I have used thatarticle to refresh my memories of the story that Captain Markham toldme that night.

Early on March 11, Charlie Company was operating near the villageof Phu Ninh supporting a mechanized sweep of the area by the FortiethARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) Regiment. Charlie Companysurrounded the target area with First and Second Platoons to the north andthe Third and Fourth Platoons deployed to the south near the Nui NieuMountains. Around 1000 hours, Captain Markham ordered LieutenantGerald, Third Platoon, to send a patrol to secure the southern flank.Gerald sent out a squad led by Staff Sergeant Kriedler, who came uponNVA (North Vietnamese Army) soldiers. The squad quickly pursued them,killing one and wounding the other. Hearing the weapons fire, LieutenantGerald took another squad to reinforce Kriedler.

Captain Markham was monitoring the radio, listening to thecommunications between Kriedler and Gerald. Kriedler left two of his mento guard the wounded while he and Specialist Garza searched the area. Asthey moved into an open area bounded by hedgerows, the enemy openedfire, killing both instantly. Lieutenant Gerald took his patrol cautiouslyforward. He soon sighted the bodies of Kriedler and Garza, only threemeters (ten feet) from the hedgerow. All was quiet. As they cautiouslyadvanced, automatic-weapons fire erupted from the hedgerow. LieutenantGerald was mortally wounded, and three of his men were killed outright.The remaining members of the squad took cover and were pinned downwithin eight meters (twenty-five feet) of the NVA.

Hearing of the situation on the radio, Captain Markham took theremainder of the Third Platoon on a sweep south of their position totry to get to the pinned-down men, leaving the Fourth Platoon in placeto block the rear. As they moved, they avoided the trails as much aspossible, breaching hedgerows and following the natural drainage ditches.Sergeant First Class Shelly took the lead with Private First Class Watsonon point (lead man in the column). As they approached the locationwhere Lieutenant Gerald had fallen, they turned east trying to encirclethe area. Moving cautiously along the trail, Watson encountered a loneenemy rifleman, who fired at him and then retreated. They continuedtheir advance when firing erupted again, and this time Watson was hit.The machine gunner, Specialist Beal, sprayed the area, allowing Shelly torescue Watson. When Beal stopped firing to reload, the enemy fired again,dislodging Beal's helmet but not wounding him.

With every step they encountered NVA fire and more casualties. Thebarrage of bullets was coming from many locations, which meant theopposition was much larger and stronger than first estimated. With thisassessment, Captain Markham decided to keep the Third Platoon in itspresent position and requested an airlift of the Second Platoon to providereinforcement.

Staff Sergeant Shoemaker, the Fourth Platoon leader, had beenmonitoring the radio transmissions and was anxious to get involved. Heradioed the CO and offered to lead five soldiers to a position northwest ofthe pinned-down men. Permission was granted. He carefully moved thesquad forward. When they were within fifteen meters (forty-five feet) ofthe wounded men, the enemy opened fire, and they were also pinned downwith little opportunity to advance.

One of Shoemaker's men crawled forward toward the stranded menonly to be shot. He was pulled back by his heels. Another attempt was madewith the same results. Shoemaker decided to call in Bravo Troop, First/Ninth Cavalry to hit the NVA positions with ARA (aerial rocket artillery).The gunships made several passes, pounding the area with rockets, yet theenemy continued to resist.

The Third Platoon was almost nose-to-nose with NVA, so CaptainMarkham couldn't call in artillery or rockets to their position and couldn'tdirect fire to assist Shoemaker either. When the ARA gunships left thearea, he ordered Lieutenant Gaffney, the artillery forward observer whowas attached to the main element of the Fourth Platoon, to move upto assist Shoemaker. He advanced with his RTO (radio operator), butwhen he came within sight of the pinned-down squad, he spotted enemymovement and dashed to safety. The NVA immediately fired. Gaffneymade it to safety, but his RTO fell to the ground, seriously wounded. TheRTO managed to strip off his radio and crawl to cover. Unfortunately, theradio lay on the ground in plain view of the enemy positions with littlechance for retrieval.

At 1300 hours, Second Platoon was airlifted to a nearby clearing andwas directed to move cautiously along the network of sunken ditches. Thegoing was slow since the ditches were filled with debris. As the point mancleared a patch of heavy vegetation with his machete, the enemy openedup with automatic weapons from within the ditch. They were on the otherside of the vegetation, waiting. The point man was killed and two otherswere wounded. The Second Platoon fired grenades into the area, andthe enemy was silenced. Sergeant First Class Salazar, the platoon leader,crawled forward to retrieve the point man's body, and the medic came upto attend to the wounded. The CO ordered the Second Platoon to pull backtwenty-five meters to the intersection of two trenches. This proved to be awise or lucky decision, because, as he found out later, that route of attackwas leading the Second Platoon directly into a great trench at the base ofthe mountain, which was swarming with elements of the NVA.

This mission had placed Charlie Company in the middle of an outpostof the Seventh and Ninth Battalions of the Eighteenth NVA Regiment.The terrain on the Nui Mieu Mountain slopes was an ideal defensiveposition. The slopes were covered with room-sized boulders with largespaces beneath them that served as natural foxholes and bunkers. Waist-high scrub brush grew among the boulders, providing additional cover.From the ground, the NVA was invisible, so movement up the slopeswould have been treacherous, given the enemy's placement there. Thebase of the mountain contained many natural drainage ditches leadingto a major trench approximately six hundred meters (two thousand feet)in length and nearly twenty-five meters at its deepest point. This was theNVA's main defensive position. The army had received a report of enemyactivity near the village of Phu Ninh but had known nothing of the NVA'slarge presence there. In front of the ditches and trench was a patchworkof agricultural plots, mostly enclosed by thick hedgerows. Within thehedgerows, the enemy had made bunkers and created firing positions. Thearea was a death trap to unsuspecting soldiers moving in the vicinity ofthe village, and Sergeant Kriedler, Lieutenant Gerald, and their men werethe first victims.

The CO left a portion of the Second Platoon in their blocking positionin the trench and took the remainder with him to link up with Shelley andthe Third Platoon. They moved about fifty meters when two more soldierswere wounded. They tried several more advances but were repulsed eachtime. The situation was becoming futile. Soldiers were reluctant to movesince the enemy seemed to have firing positions all around them. TheCO asked for volunteers to search out the immediate enemy positions.Specialist Bennett volunteered to accompany him, and they crawled slowlydown a sunken trail. Suddenly, there was a sharp crack close to the CO'sface. Only one round was fired, and it struck Bennett. He died en routeto the medevac hospital.

Around 1530 hours, the battalion commander, Colonel Stevenson,air assaulted Delta Company to a location about thirteen hundred metersfrom Captain Markham's position. Delta Company placed one platoon inreserve at the LZ (landing zone), and the company commander, CaptainMcInerney, led three platoons in a sweep toward the fighting. At the sametime, the colonel brought in Alpha Company as backup and airlifted theFirst Platoon of Charlie Company to a hill on the northern slope of theNui Mieu Mountains. The First Platoon, led by Lieutenant Dooley, wasordered to sweep down the slope and eventually link up with the Secondand Third Platoons.

The First Platoon's landing on the slope was uneventful; however,about halfway down the slope, automatic-weapons fire sent the platoonscrambling for cover. Dooley ordered a squad to return to the top of thehill to protect the platoon's rear, but they encountered fire, with one manmortally wounded. Later, Dooley's RTO was wounded as they moved overa large boulder. With the enemy contact on the slope, the colonel orderedDelta Company to assist them.

Delta Company moved in a column toward the north slope of themountain. They were, unknowingly, within close proximity of the greattrench when NVA firing thundered across the open field, killing orwounding everyone in view. Captain McInerney came forward with theother platoons to assist, and many more soldiers were wounded or died,including McInerney. Staff Sergeant Cuellar assumed command of thecompany and eventually pulled back to the LZ to evacuate the woundedand to allow room to engage the NVA with artillery. Cuellar orderedSergeant Dawson, the Third Platoon leader, to go forward and bring backthe wounded before he called for an artillery strike, but Dawson got pinneddown by deadly fire and could not complete the mission.

Darkness came to the battlefield, and both Delta Company and theNVA retrieved their dead and wounded. It must have been surreal to theAmerican wounded, playing dead, as they watched NVA soldiers walk pasttheir quiet, prone bodies solely to retrieve their NVA comrades. Whenall of Delta Company's soldiers were accounted for, the entire companypulled back to the LZ. Charlie Company spread its ranks to form a partialperimeter and settled in for the night. They also set up ambushes andtrip flares along logical routes but were unable to collect their Americandead.

By dawn, the NVA had vanished, apparently fleeing east during thenight, leaving many dead soldiers behind. Captain Markham wrote aboutthe morning's discovery as follows: "In the silence of the deserted battlefieldwe walked the great trench that yesterday had been bloody hell. Only nowcould we evacuate the bodies of several comrades. There was little talk."In an almost tearful moment, Captain Markham stated that twenty-twoAmerican soldiers were killed and twenty-six were wounded at the battleof Phu Ninh on March 11, 1967. They counted eighty-one NVA dead.

As I listened to the story I tried to picture myself there in the battle.I thought of how I might respond to the various situations and the callfor volunteers. I thought briefly of the dead and wounded, but I didn'tdwell on the subject. My time to join Charlie Company was close athand, and I would soon have first-hand experiences of my own. Thestory of the battle of Phu Ninh presented an accurate picture of the wayengagements occurred during the Vietnam War. On March 11, the enemyhad fortifications and battle lines; they waited in ambush; they engagedin combat; they disappeared into the night. Finding NVA with largefortifications was not common, but this kind of NVA, hit-and-run contactwas a frequent occurrence during the war. However, most combat soldiers,including me, would have preferred the large, decisive battles to the smallencounters that were the norm.

I was excited and apprehensive when I joined my company. Thebattalion commander presented me to Captain Markham, wished me well,returned to his helicopter, and flew back to battalion headquarters. CaptainMarkham greeted me with enthusiasm and introduced me to the officersand senior NCOs (noncommissioned officers) of the company. After someorientation concerning protocol and mission, the CO turned me over tothe platoon sergeant of the Second Platoon, SFC Adolfo Salazar. SergeantSal was a seasoned veteran and a fine man, as I'd soon discover. He wasin his midthirties, a veteran of the Korean War, and in his second tour ofduty in Vietnam. He talked about the history of the company, includingthe battle of Phu Ninh and the Second Platoon's role, and introduced meto the men of the platoon. With each introduction, we briefly exchangedinformation about hometowns, family, and service history. Then, SergeantSal went over the vacancies on the platoon roster and the orders for thenight. Second Platoon was to take a squad of men to a junction along atrail about 150 meters from the company's perimeter and lie in ambush,returning after first light the next day. He volunteered to lead the ambush.I agreed, and I told him that he would be in command but that I wantedto tag along. We departed at dusk to prepare the ambush site. The teamconsisted of Sergeant Sal, a squad leader, three soldiers, and me. While onpatrol earlier that day, the sergeant had identified a well-traveled trail as agood site for an ambush. Upon arriving, the men and sergeants took outentrenching tools and dug a deep trench along the tree line, out of viewof the trail. Soon, we settled in for the night. However, no enemy passedour way, and, with little sleep, we returned to camp at first light to begina new mission.

Continues...

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