"It was a decoy:' said John Barclay, who

was an 18-year-old automatic weapons

rifleman assigned to 1st Platoon. "It was a

lure meant to draw them into a trap:' It

worked. The 4th Platoon quickly was sur-

rounded and attacked.

"The rest of us tried to break through

to them," Barclay remembered. "But

then we came under attack. We fought

all afternoon. By around 4 p.m., we.

knew they weren't coming back. In fact,

they were being annihilated:'

Platoon Sgt. Bruce Grandstaff, 4th

Platoon leader, fought valiantly to save

his entrapped men. Time after time, he

raced through enemy fire in order to

help his wounded men, or to try to pop

smoke grenades up through the jungle

canopy to mark his position. Wounded

first in one leg and then the other,

Grandstaff called in increasingly closer

artillery strikes.

Bleeding profusely from multiple

wounds, he crawled forward until he

was able to lob grenades atop an enemy

machine gun emplacement. Finally, a

desperate Grandstaff called in an

artillery strike on his own position.

Ray Harton was then assigned to the

6th Bn., 29th Artillery. "I was told the

platoon wanted artillery on top of them:'

he recalled. "I said, 'Are you sure that this

is what they want? Yes, put it on top of

them: I immediately made a correction

for C Btry., 5th Bn., 16th Arty, and fired

many 155mm rounds on top of them:'

An enemy rocket took Grandstaff's

life. Later, he was awarded a posthu-

mous Medal of Honor.

Only eight men lived through the

attack on the 4th Platoon. The survivors

then endured a gruesome ordeal, pre-

tending to be dead while NVA kicked

and looted American bodies, shooting

anyone who showed the barest sign of

life. One survivor later reported that an

NVA actually sat on his back and shoved

a hand down his shirt to see if he was

still breathing.

The rest of B Company, meanwhile,

continued to fight until it drove off the

enemy. It sustained 10 KIA and 24 WIA.

Recalled Barclay: "At the end of the

day, I was amazed I had survived this

horrible battle. It had just begun."

By the next morning, B Company

had been joined by the battalion's A and

C companies, plus the Reconnaissance

Platoon from HQ Company. Members

of A Company found what was left of

the 4th Platoon, and spent much of the

day helping to care for the casualties.

Action resumed on the 20th, after the

1st Brigade set up a defensive perimeter

at a new site. "We had put up a low rock

wall between two trees as protection:'

recalled Kent Combs, who was a 20-year-

old with the Recon Platoon. "Sometime

after dark we started taking mortar fire,

followed by ground attacks:'

'Unwavering Courage'

Earlier that evening, Combs had talked

to a friend from C Company, P. Leslie

Bellrichard: "He was leaning against a

tree, reading his Bible." When the attack

was in full swing, with the Bible safely

stowed away, Bellrichard repeatedly rose

from his foxhole to throw grenades into

the midst of charging NVA.

During one such attempt, Bellrichard

was knocked backward by an exploding

mortar round. When his armed grenade

slipped out of his hand and into an occu-

pied foxhole, Bellrichard threw himself

atop the grenade, using his own body to

absorb the explosion. Mortally wound-

ed, he still managed to fire into attacking

NVA before succumbing to his wounds.

The action cost Bellrichard his life, and

also earned him a Medal of Honor.

(Another Medal of Honor was earned

that night by Frankie Molnar, a 24-year-

old staff sergeant who saved the lives of

his fellow soldiers when he threw him-

self on a live enemy grenade.)

The companies fended off the three-

wave assault that engulfed their night

defensive position. In two hours of fight-

ing the GIs lost 10 KIA and 65 WIA. The

3rd Battalion of the 12th Infantry pro-

vided a backstop, preventing the NVA

from retreating to its sanctuary in off-

limits Cambodia.

Another fierce assault came on May 22,

when the enemy sent human waves

against A and B companies. "Heavy close-

in fighting raged for four hours until the

enemy force finally broke contact and

exfiltrated from the battlefield:' reads the

brigade's Presidential Unit Citation.

Fierce fighting continued on the 24th

and 26th, involving elements of the 3rd

battalions of both the 12th and the 8th

infantries.

Richard Jackson was a medic assigned

to C Co., 3rd Bn., 8th Inf. "Doc" Jackson

was on patrol with his unit on May 26

when he stopped for a "nature call."

From the corner of his eye, Jackson saw

a slight movement-a shadow, perhaps,

shifting position. He alerted his unit

members. Then, as Jackson described it:

"All hell broke loose."

Some 300-500 NVA attacked with B-

40 rockets, grenades, intense AK-47 fire

and mortars, or possibly artillery.

"That firefight was so intense, and

the noise so deafening that it made you

strain to keep your senses:' Jackson

recalled. "Enemy fire was slamming

into our position like rainfal1."

Jackson immediately went to work. "I

was taking care of the wounded and see-

ing my guys get killed on a scale that was

overwhelming:' he said. When Jackson

himself took a hit, he pressed onward. "I

continued to weave my way through the

carnage to get to whomever I could."

Jackson recalled hearing his platoon

sergeant shout repeatedly for his sol-

diers to keep the enemy at bay. The

Americans did as their sergeant asked.

"Our line held:' Jackson said. "The

Vietnamese finally realized C Company

was no slouch:'

The same can be said of the entire

brigade. As stated in the Presidential

Unit Citation: "The combined fortitude,

determination and unwavering courage

of the 1st Brigade's personnel rendered

two North Vietnamese Army regiments

ineffective and totally disrupted the

1967 summer monsoon offensive in the

Central Highlands:'

During those nine intense days, the 1st

Brigade lost 79 men killed and at least 200

WIA. Confirmed NVA dead totaled 367.

A battle survivor added this perspec-

tive. "We weren't a high profile group:'

said Landis Bargatze, who was assigned to

A Co., 3rd Bn., 8th Inf. "We weren't

Special Forces or Airborne. We were

mostly just a bunch of draftee grunts who

turned out to be damn good soldiers."

SUSAN KATZ KEATING is a free-lance

writer and frequent contributor to VFW.

November/December 2004 . WWW.VFW.ORG . 35

"Reprinted with permission from the November 2004 issue of VFW Magazine"