Delta Force by Charlie A. Beckwith Page B

deep bunker. I never saw him once the whole time I was there. Outside the barbed wire there were a hell of a lot of Communists.
    I called Pleiku and explained to them that we should fortify the camp first, to make sure we could hold it, and then find out how many of the enemy we were facing. We shouldn’t do anything until we knew for sure. Bill McKean did not agree with me. He said, “I want you to get outside the camp, rummage around, clear the enemy out of there. Then, obviously, if you do that you can hold the camp.”
    I said, “Sir, that’s not a good idea.”
    He said, “Well, Major, I’m ordering you.”
    In the afternoon we mounted up both Ranger companies.Captain Thomas Pusser, a West Pointer I thought a lot of, was the advisor to the Vietnamese Rangers. I got him and the other American advisors who were going out on the sweep operation together. “I want you all to be very careful out there. Don’t take any chances you don’t have to take.” Then Pusser and I discussed the two Vietnamese companies. The leadership of one of them was stronger than the other. I suggested to Tom he go with the stronger unit. He felt because he could kick ass and get it moving he should go with the weaker one. I finally agreed with him. He went out with the weak company. I shouldn’t have let him do that.
    The plan was to begin to clear the northern slope area from which most of the heaviest fire was coming. The NVA waited for both companies to get outside the gate. Then they came out of their holes and hit us with everything they had. About fourteen men were killed, including Tom Pusser. Many more were wounded. I felt fortunate to get any of those Rangers back inside the camp. They had been very badly mauled. I immediately got on the radio, and got Bulldog to agree that we should fortify the camp. I then asked for an air drop of a couple hundred 5-gallon water cans, since we were running out of water, and a basic load of ammunition. I didn’t know how much we had, but I wanted to make damn sure we had enough. I also asked for a couple of boxes of cigars, some cigarettes, and a case of whiskey. “I don’t care what it is, anything assorted.” This got McKean a little bent out of shape. Then I asked to have a chopper come in and get our dead. I felt that many dead were bad on morale. Reportedly, McKean asked for volunteers in Pleiku to fly in to us, but no American chopper pilot stepped forward.
    The first Air Force resupply drop, in order to avoid the enemy .51-caliber machine guns that ringed the camp, flew too high and dumped most of its ammunition outside the wire. The second drop landed in the camp. It was all ammo. The third drop contained water, cigars, and the other things I’d ordered. It, too, landed on top of us.
    Late in the afternoon of this first day, after the Ranger companies got back and we licked our wounds and took our resupplydrops, I got together with Tommy Thompson, Bo Baker, Bill DeSoto, and John Pioletti. We were all beginning to realize that we would be damn fortunate to get out of this camp alive. We were receiving a lot of 81mm mortar and 75mm recoilless rifle fire. I was very concerned that we hold that first night. I had our people go out to all the crews manning the machine guns to make sure they knew what their instructions were. I didn’t want them picking up and running away scared. That night I thought we were going to get hit. We took heavy mortar and recoilless rifle fire all night long, but were not probed.
    The next day we began to strengthen the camp’s fortifications. The mortar and recoilless rifle fire fell in spurts. Occasionally a lone enemy soldier would jump out of a hole and rush the wire throwing hand grenades. Around 1030 hours Bill DeSoto got hit. One of those heavy machine gun slugs nearly tore his arm off.
    From the intensity of the fire Plei Me was absorbing, I made an estimate of the enemy force besieging