Screaming Eagles and The Battle for Mother’s Day Hill Part 3

By Don Kochi

Mother’s Day in 1967 Vietnam fell on May 14^th. The bone-weary men pulled themselves off the jungle floor and reluctantly greeted the morning with a palpable tingling of doom and danger. They tried to shake off the nervous stiffness by focusing their mental effort and energy on readying themselves and their gear for the day’s final push. The men popped malaria pills, policed the immediate area, readjusted rucksack loads, locked and loaded weapons, and shared a last cigarette or swig of precious water with their squad-mates. While the captain reviewed plans for the day’s track with his inner command circle, both the acting 4^th platoon leader, a senior NCO, and the 2^nd platoon lieutenant vociferously ‘suggested’ to the Old Man the inadvisability of continuing the route’s direction. The NCO, a seasoned infantryman with plenty of ‘field-time’, realized they could only walk into an inevitable ‘world of hurt’ the closer the hilltop. Ignoring the advice, the Captain’s only concern was meeting the projected supply drop as he once again set the order of the march. The 4th platoon point squad with anxiety and tension clearly etched on their faces, started-off the column into the thick jungle gloom.

It was not even mid-morning when a fork in the trail was reached. After being advised of this, the Captain split the column ordering 2^nd platoon to take the right branch while keeping his command element intact with 4^th platoon, veered off to the left angle. It was perhaps within a few minutes as both platoons moving somewhat abreast entered the kill zone. The point squad of 2^nd platoon had stumbled onto a bunker complex off the side of their trail and while the platoon LT was radioing the Captain of this new development, the jaws of ambush snapped shut.

The enemy’s opening salvo was a tremendous fusillade of automatic weapons fire unleashed simultaneously at both platoons. Within seconds, the air was filled with flying lead, shredding and chopping the surrounding jungle foliage into bits of green confetti. A shower of Chicom grenades soon followed, peppering the men with hot metal fragments and blowing several of the troopers back down the hill. The initial contact killed the 4^th platoon point-man, SP4 Pat Phillips and the scout dog handler, CPL. Michael Bost, and wounded several others. Reacting like muscle memory, the troopers shed their rucks, unlimbered weapons and began to lay down a base of return fire adding to the incredible noise and exploding violence. Snapping small arms fire whipped inches off the ground, muzzle flashes blazed in the dark undergrowth, endless bursts of enemy machine-gun fire hosed down the area as the incoming rounds found, smacked and thudded into the bodies of the troopers desperately clawing for available cover. When the call went out for ‘guns up’, 4^th platoon M-60 gunner, CPL. Benito Gonzalez, a Mexican-American from Texas, charged forward like a linebacker carrying the ‘Pig’ with its needed suppressive firepower, caught a bullet to his head killing him immediately. Without hesitation, the platoon medics along with the senior company aid-man, scuttled forward like land crabs low-crawling directly into the firestorm to retrieve and assist the wounded.

The command element edged up, not quite to the point of contact, but close enough to better assess the chaotic fluid situation. The company captain shouted into the radio for a priority fire mission while the forward observer (FO) called-in coordinates, and just as quickly a marking smoke round arrived. Since the immediate terrain presented only a 20-meters visibility restricting accurate observation, there is some confusion from the participants as to what followed once the first volley of 105mm artillery rounds hit. Some believed to have heard the point squad yell ‘Drop, Drop!’, when others heard shouts of ‘Stop, Stop! Check fire!’. Those near the command post heard the Old Man without waiting for an adjustment check, over-ride the FO by demanding fire support to ‘drop twenty-five and fire for effect!’ The troopers who instinctively knew the first volley was ‘danger-close’, began to scramble wildly, burrowing for deeper cover once they heard the distant booming of the second volley shot-out and the incoming on its way.

The second volley of six 105mm rounds screamed in like a runaway freight train and struck the nearby upper tree-line. Time-delay fused for the enemy emplacements, the projectiles ricocheted off the canopy tops resulting in a classic tree-burst effect. One cone of deadly shrapnel spray deflected downward, blasting directly into the company CP. Killed immediately were SGT. Jerry Norris, and both of the company’s radiomen, CPL. Crawford Snow, a full-blooded Paiute Native-American Indian, and PFC. Michael Peterson. Others in the CP were wounded including the FO and the Captain himself.

In the Department of the Army’s official combat after-action report on Operation MALHEUR, the Battle for Mother’s Day Hill was reduced to one (verbatim) sentence: ‘On 14 May, one company of the 1^st Battalion (Airborne), 327^th Infantry contacted an enemy force of unknown size in well fortified, dug-in positions, resulting in 8 US KHA and 36 WHA’. Michael Peterson’s body was handled and prepared on May 29, 1967 (fig. 5) for the somber return to CONUS by a Graves Registration Team from the 19^th Supply and Service Company at CARENTAN base.

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Before the casket was sealed shut for shipping, one of his dog-tags (fig. 6a–6b) was removed and returned among his personal effects to his mother. The dog-tag’s mate rests buried with his remains where he is currently interred at his hometown cemetery, Live Oak Cemetery in Monrovia Calif. (fig. 7).

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Posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and Valor device (fig. 8a–8b), his hometown newspaper featured, along with his photograph, a front-page article (fig. 9) that read in part his Bronze Star citation; “Pfc. Peterson, a radio-telephone operator with the 1^st Brigade of the 101^st Army Airborne Division, received the Bronze Star for rushing to the side of his commanding officer and firing on the enemy when his company engaged the North Vietnamese in a fight. He was killed when his body caught the brunt of shrapnel from an artillery shell, saving the lives of several of his comrades along with his commanding officer.” In the Nation’s capitol, Michael Peterson is also memorialized on panel 19E, line 121 of ‘The Wall’.

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With today’s mounting battlefield deaths coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is quite easy for Americans to lose sight of or become inured to the past sacrifices of our Nation’s long-ago wars.  To the memory of the eight courageous paratroopers who gave their lives on Mother Day’s Hill, May 14, 1967….ABOVE THE REST! ABU! DRIVE ON!  Lest We Forget.

Special thanks and acknowledgement to Mike ‘Doc’ Ainsworth (4^th Plt., A/1/327^th INF.), Ron G. Turner (2^nd Plt., A/1/327^th INF.), Steve Black (2^nd Plt., A/1/327^th INF.) and John ‘Jiggs’ Patterson (4^th Plt., A/1/327^th INF.) for re-living that fateful day for me.

All artifacts courtesy of the R.Wade MacElwain collection.

Credit to the Military Postal History Society Bulletin as the place where this article was first published. 

References

 

Braddock, Paul. DOG TAGS: A History of the American Military Identification Tag, 1861 to 2002. Chicora, PA: Mechling Books, 2003.

Cosentini, George and Norman Gruenzner. United States Numbered Military Post Offices, Assignments and Locations, 1941–1994. MPHS, 1994. (Steve Henderson via e-mail, 15 June 2010).

Department of the Army. USARVN Combat Operations After-Action Report, Operation MALHEUR (MACV/RCS/J3/32). HQ, 1st BDE, 101st ABN DIV, September 1967.

101st Airborne Division Association. Vietnam Odyssey: The Story of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Hillsdale, MI: Ferguson Communications, 1967.

Sallah, Michael and Mitch Weiss. TIGER FORCE: A True Story of Men and War. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2006.

Shrader, Charles, Lt. Col., USA. AMICICIDE: The Problems of Friendly Fire in Modern War. US Army Combat Studies Institute, Command & General Staff College, December 1982.

Stanton, Shelby. Vietnam Order of Battle. Washington, DC: US New Books, 1981.

“Mother Receives Citation of Son Killed in Vietnam.” Monrovia Daily News-Post, Vol. 59, No. 58, Tuesday, November 7, 1967, p. 1.

Oral Interviews (conducted via phone):

• Michael Ainsworth: 5/31/10 (Memorial Day), 6/4/10, 6/5/10, 6/10/10, 6/13/10

• Steve Black: 6/11/10, 6/15/10, 6/21/10

• John Patterson: 6/5/10, 6/10/10

• Ron Turner: 6/4/10, 6/10/10, 8/26/10

Web Sources:

• www.327infantry.org/first/stories_poems/mothers_day_hill_thread
  (Dale Hansen & Dave Markham, webmasters)

• www.virtualwall.org