All Vietnam vets remember the sound of the rotor blades of a Huey Helicopter.
They made a very distinct "wop-wop-wop-wop" sound, it went through the air: "wop-wop-wop-wop".
Every morning, every evening, a chopper would fly in and bring in breakfast or
bring in dinner, you got people wounded and you had to have a medevac.
That sound of the chopper blades is unforgettable.
I can forget a lot of things about life but I wont forget the feel, the sense,
the smell, the look of LZ-XRAY.
(Col. Tony Nadal) I was born in Fort Benning, Georgia.
My dad was an army officer, a West Point graduate, but both he and my mom
were born and raised in Puerto Rico. He was one of the first Puerto Ricans
ever to attend West Point. The only thing I can ever remember
wanting to do, was go to West Point and be an army officer.
I mean, I had no second thoughts. My first duty station when I was commissioned
and after I finished Airborne Ranger, the basic course, I was assigned to Germany
where I spent three and a half years in Munich. As my tour of duty was about to finish
I started hearing little rumblings. We had special forces units in Laos.
I always felt my duty was to move to the sound of the guns, so I immediately volunteered
for special forces.
(Lyndon Johnson) I have today ordered to Vietnam
the Airmobile Division, and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength
from 75,000 to 125,000 men, almost immediately.
Our Commander gets called by the Brigade Commander and says: the Division
has intelligence that says there may be something up in this big ridge
called Chu Pong Mountain and it's covered with heavy jungle.
He said: we don't know what's there but we think that there may be some activity,
so we want you to take your battalion and go check that out.
We get on the helicopter and we fly over the area, looking for a place big enough
to land, that's how we found LZ-XRAY.
We only have 8 helicopters, Hueys in those days could only lift about 6 troops at a time,
so, 8 x 6 is 48. So every lift could only bring in 48 guys,
so to get the battalion in there took a couple of hours.
Well we're flying in the helicopters. It was all done fairly low level.
The chopper paws got really down low. And you're going fast,
it's like being in a roller coaster. It's a fun ride.
When we landed, recon had just captured a prisoner. And I remember, scared
little skinny kid.
They interrogated him and asked him: What are you doing here?
"Well, we're here to kill Americans." Where's your unit?
He points to the mountain, which is 200 yards away. So that changed the plan.
The most essential thing we had to do was secure the landing zone, not lose the landing zone.
Colonel Moore quickly realized that for us it was gonna be a battle of survival.
I immediately sent my first platoon to take up the corner where the creek bed
ran up into the mountain. I started hearing rifle fire
from that platoon and the enemy starts coming in from that mountain.
As soon as the last platoon landed I run down and I start hearing machine gun fire
and I run into the platoon Sargent, who is lying on the grass, and I said:
Where is Lieutenant Taft, who was a platoon leader.
And he says: Lieutenant Taft is dead, sir.
I had told my soldiers, as Hal Moore had, that we're not gonna leave anyone behind.
So, myself and my Communications Sargent, went forward as the fight is going on
and I find Taft, but I also find another soldier and he's shot in the gut.
Because of the heat of the moment or whatever my mind said,
we have to go get Lieutenant Taft. So I grab Lieutenant Taft
and I bring him back, but knowing that I have to go back a second time,
cause I have to bring back the other soldier. And again, under fire, we go forward,
and this time they're throwing hand grenades at us. We get the soldier back and
the crescendo of the fight starts building up and at that point we're defending the
creek bed, and a corner. The enemy is coming down
of Chu Pong mountain in large numbers
and running right in front of my rifle, and we're killing a lot of them.
But during that period, B company has a platoon that gets cut off.
Hal Moore calls me on the radio and says: we have to go out and get that platoon.
I didn't have good vibes about that. My troops had been fighting now,
pretty hard and they were tired. For the first time ever
they had the experience of seeing their friends killed and wounded,
and I thought they needed a boost. I gave them a little pep talk about,
you know, we have a platoon on B company, they're your friends, your buddies,
we have to go out and get them. And they responded wonderfully:
Yeah, let's go! So, I got up on the edge of the creek bed,
said "follow me" and I led the assault. I was the first guy out.
I was ready to give my life for my soldiers. I had gone 50 meters or something,
talking to my artillery forward observer, Lieutenant Tim Blake, and he had a
compass on a strap across his chest, and I saw that compass explode,
and Tim Blake drops dead. On his side, he had a radio operator,
he drops dead, on my side I had Sargent Jack Gell, who's a friend,
he drops dead, and myself and John Clarke, who's standing behind me
as my other radio operator, unscathed. I always said that the machine gun hiccuped,
because the "boom-boom... boom." We couldn't see the enemy,
if the enemy could see us. I needed some way of hiding
our movement. On my radio I called for them to fire smoke. Unbeknownst to me,
only thing we had was white phosphorous. If phosphorous gets on you, it'll burn
right through your skin, and when I saw that stuff go off in front of me,
I thought: I've killed my rifle company. I can tell you, that was the first time
in the battle that I felt fear. Fortunately, it landed and it went
it made this huge, thick, dense cloud of smoke, and we stayed out there
until all my guys were back.
On day number 3, word comes out, we have to evacuate because Air Force,
they're gonna come in and they're gonna drop bombs all along the side of that
mountain. I really hadn't slept for two days. The reason I'm sitting there looking at the
AK is because I didn't have enough energy to do much anything else.
We flew out and then we went to Pleiku, just kinda the start of the recovery period.
I feel the loss of all my soldiers. When you get through all the bravado
and whatever and so forth, what you're left with is anguish.
But I have found help, and the help is: the soldiers who fought at LZ-XRAY
have been gathering together for the last 22 years and we have annual reunions
where we have gotten very close. We know each other's families
and that is a major healing event, for not only me but for the other guys.
It's important to remember the quality of service of these people.
We took soldiers with us that had 14 days left in the country.
And several of them died there. They sacrificed their life, not for a cause,
because the fact of the matter is that most of them didn't give a rat's ass
whether South Vietnam was liberated or not liberated.
They were there because they were told to go there and it was an expectation,
that when your country calls, you go.