The Day India Company Died

The black mountains of Chu Lai come down to the sea with rice paddies in front of them and then a wide area of orange sand that is covered by lifeless bushes that are shoulder high. The South China Sea, flat and luke warm begins where the land ends.

It was here on the sand and in the bushes, and under a terrible sun, which the United States Marines fought for the first, in this place in Asia called Viet Nam. They fought all day Wednesday and into the night and they fought again on Thursday. Their big American tanks and armored vehicles were useless to them. The enemy, these little Asians in black shirts, knocked the armor out right away. The Marines were hit with shots coming out of bushes in the sand. They fought with rifles and machine guns. When the Viet Cong were not on the sand anymore, the Marines went into the mud of the paddies after them. The fighting was continuous and the dead were everywhere and now everybody knows that America is in a war.

The Marines say they killed 564 Viet Cong. The Marines do not give their own casualties because this is war. But their dead were in the sand Wednesday and Thursday, waiting to be put in a box and sent home to America. The broken bodies of the wounded were being taken to field hospitals. And the rest of them, the kids of 18, 19, and in their early 20s, have had their lives changed forever by this day on the sands and in the mud in front of the black mountains of Chu Lai.

18 FUNERAL BAYONETS

By The Associated Press

Chu Lai, Viet Nam

The 18 rifles stuck in the hot sand by their

bayonets cast shadows across the ground. 

They were arranged in a semicircle in front

of a tent. A camouflaged helmet had been

placed on each rifle butt. 

The rifles symbolized the men of the

3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment

who died fighting at Van Tuong last

Wednesday and Thursday in the biggest

battle so far in the Viet Nam war.  

Roman Catholic and Protestant memorial

were held for them yesterday.

"A lot of boys came off that ship," Daniel Kendall, 19, a lance corporal, was saying, "and a lot of men are going back".  Kendall is from Boston and he is in India Company. He thinks that India Company is the best company in the Marines and when it was put together in October, back at Camp Pendleton, San Diego, they got to know each other right away because they all knew they had 30 months to lives together.   And on Tuesday afternoon, they were taken out of their tents at DaNang and put on a cramped troop ship without being told where they were going, nobody in India Company was worried.

"We all know what we're doing," Terry Hunter, 22, a corporal, said.

"We got the smartest officers and the best non-coms and the best men," George Kendlers, who is 20, called out. 

"India Company is the best in the Marines," another one of them called out.

"Yeah, we're the best," the kids started to yell, and the gray ship pulled out of DaNang and went into the sea.

They were given chili and rice and cold milk. They liked the cold milk. It was the first they had had since coming to Viet Nam.  "They give us this; they must have some wild operation planned for us, "Kendlers said.

None of them had been in action before, [note: see entries. Breakout, Thunderbolt] outside of having a few stray shots thrown at their camp.  After dinner, they were told where they were going. They were going to land on a beach 12 miles south of the town of Chu Lai.

"Intelligence says a lot of Viet Cong are dug in the area," one of the officers said:  “But this is one of the things: You must not fire a round or you might get your behind blown off.”

"Just remember what you've been taught," Bruce Webb, the company captain, told them. "When you're fired on, go down, then come up and shoot. Don't just lay there. After you shoot, move. Move even if bullets are all around you. You run up less casualties when you move."

They went to bed at 9 p.m. and were up at 4 a.m. and had eggs and pancakes for breakfast. At 6:50 a.m., with the sun breaking over the black mountains in the distance. India Company came through the water and onto the sand and bushes and it was the first time they had ever been in action [note:  see entries. Ops "Breakout" & "Thunderbolt"].

The Silent Women

Walking quietly, with no talk, they went into a small cluster of filthy huts with dirt paths between them. They call these places villages here.  The village was empty. On the paths leading from the village to the sand and bushes, they found women and children hiding. The women held their children and looked at the Marines and said nothing. The women knew where the Viet Cong were. But they would not tell the Marines. The Marines were the enemy.

A second village was approached. To get to it, they had to go over a small bridge. The front of the village was lined with bushes and shrubbery. India Company moved up to the bridge. They started to go across it when one of the bushes in front of the village moved and a machine gun began firing from a trench under the leaves.

The Marines and mortars dropped into the village. They called for an air strike. Armed helicopters lumbered in. Swept-wing jets dove at the village after the helicopters moved away. When the air strike stopped, all the bushes began to move and there was firing both ways and then black shirts were climbing out of the trenches under the bushes and running back through the village. India Company came after them.

They came across the bridge and into the village and Captain Webb was talking to two corporals, a radioman and runner, and they were going along one of the trenches with bushes over it when the booby trap exploded. It killed the three of them. India Company now knew what war is.

"He's not dead," another officer kept telling them. "They're taking him out by helicopter. He's all right." The officer didn't want the men to know their commander had been killed in the first half hour of the first action of their lives.

Smith Got Killed

Now they were out into this sand with the bushes and the fire was coming at them. Not concentrated fire (****paper torn and creased***) else, and all of it coming from holes and bunkers (******************) came through this sand, with the bushes tearing at their hands. Every few minutes, Michaels, who was carrying the radio, would hear something on it and he'd call over to those around him.

"Smith got hit. He's dead..."

"Smith." the one near him would say. He'd turn to somebody else.

"Smith got killed." It would go down the line.

They moved over three Viet Cong bodies killed by their machine guns. A helicopter was downed in one of the paddies in front of them. A line of tanks and armored were going in to get the helicopter pilots. India Company was to go in with them.

There was a line of eight armored vehicles. The tanks went first. The first tank pitched through the sand and into the mud of the paddy and nothing happened to it.  The Viet Cong fired at the second vehicle. It was an armored carrier, and tried to get it with a .57-millimeter recoilless rifle. The shot missed.

The India Company Marines in the carrier were climbing out to fight. The second shot from the .57 hit and covered the carrier with black smoke and the bodies fell out of the black smoke and into the mud.

The water ran out at noon. Fire was too heavy for helicopters to land with supplies. The Marines of India Company went through the sand with the sun glaring at them and the shots trying to kill them and they were licking their lips trying to forget about water while they fought. These stories should be from a book about 1944. They are about 1965.

Out of a Hole

In the afternoon, a young boy popped up in front of them. He had crawled out of a hole, which had an opening so small you could walk by it and not notice it. He pointed down into the hole. The boy started running. A small hand came out of the hole.  Then a black shirtsleeve.  Then a rifle.  The Viet Cong pulled himself out and started running. The India Company machine gunners caught him in the middle and his body fell in two parts.

India Company dug in for the night. There was firing all night and all morning and Michaels, the radioman, kept calling out to the ones near him the names of buddies who were killed.

Friday, their faces orange from the sand, their lips encrusted with it, their eyes bloodshot. Terry Hunter, Daniel Kendall, and George Kendlers sat in a foxhole with their rifles and a 3.5 rocket launcher and they were in with another outfit because India Company was not in the battle anymore. India Company had been blown apart. The others who were left had been taken back to the beach.

"It's still the best company in the Marines," Kendlers said in the foxhole. "We just had bad luck. Up on the hill, when the captain got killed, I wanted to go right in. When they started shooting at me later, I felt good. I didn't want to be the only one who didn't get shot at."

"We're all real good buddies," Kendall said. 

"We always went to the Pike together."

"The Pike? Is that a gin mill?"

"Gin mill? No. It's an amusement park. It's got rides," Hunter said.

"Dancing," Kendall said. "You know, an amusement park."

Somewhere close, artillery was going off. Jets screamed in the sun overhead. They sat with their chins down so the sand wouldn't blow into their eyes. They talked about an amusement park in Long Beach where young kids go. Then Kendall’s eyes came up and saw a guy walking towards them from another hole.

"What are you, soft?" he yelled. "You'll get shot right through the ass doing that."

The other two looked up. They all looked the same. Three kids in a fox hole with faces that are very old.

[BRESLIN Aug. '65]

___________________________________________________________

The following is taken from a letter from Sgt Maj Arthur O. Petty, 305727, USMC (Ret.),

DTD 18 Feb 1989, to Ed Nicholls (wpns).

Ed, there were two articles written by Jimmy Breslin  about "I Co.",

here is what he said in the last article:

India Company Revisited

The helicopter ride from the big base at Da Nang to Chu Lai where the Americans lived in the sand, takes 40 minutes. The ship follows a long unbroken strip of white sand with the blue water of the South China Sea coming onto it in easy waves that have white darts on top. The place was meant to be pretty, but it is ugly now.

It is a beach that you can get killed on. There was a boy of 11 dressed only in wrinkled shorts, who walked up to a marine who was in a foxhole at the top of the beach. The boy showed his teeth. The marine smiled back. The marine turned his head, the boy reached into his shorts and took out a hand grenade and dropped it into the foxhole and the marine lost both his legs.

The ship followed the ugly beach staying high over it and the machine gunner on the right side sat in the open doorway and slept with his hands in his lap and his legs dangling in the wind along side of the ship.

The air coming through the open doors turned hot and the ship landed in a swirl of white sand and oven air. It was 110 degrees and would get hotter. A few yards from the landing pad the sand hardened into a road, which had been cut by earth movers. They had "India Company", 3rd Battalion in this area.

A week before, South they came as 143 young faces. They were trained to fight but they had never fought before [untrue]. They came through the water and onto the sand and everything went wrong and 15 were killed and 54 were wounded. The ones who are left have had their lives changed forever. 'Some way to fight'

A Captain by the name of King from another company stopped his Jeep and said they were out on the perimeter around the airstrip. "We did some running around last night", he said while he drove. "The VC sent a dog with a satchel charge on it through us. They had no fuse on the charge. They were hoping a Marine would shoot the dog and set off the charge and take a lot of us. We were chasing the dog all over. Somebody down the line finally caught him. Isn't that some way to fight?

A mile down the road, off into the deep sand, there was a sand bag pillbox, King stopped in front of it. "India Company", he called out. 

A Marine stuck his head out "This is it, sir", he said.

“Who’s the commanding officer?”

The Marine said “Captain Ramsey will be our new C.O., he takes over tomorrow”.

"Really, what happened to your old C.O.?”

"He was killed last Wednesday." the Marine said.

"Oh!,” King said.  India Company’s acting commander was right up the walk behind him.

The walk was made out of sandbags nearly covered with sand. They went up a dune and down the other side to a bowl with sand dunes on all sides of it. The floor of the bowl was a patch of dirt with sparse grass and a few bushes coming out of it. It was a reject oasis; a sideless tent was on the grass.

Purnell, the Lieutenant, was sitting in the little bit of shade given by the scrub bushes, his gray t-shirt was dark with sweat, tarnished dog tags hung down the front. A fatigue cap was pulled down over a slightly freckled face. He said his name was John and he was 25 and from Ocean City, MD.

Some Way to Die

"How is your outfit now?" he was asked.

"Waiting" he said, "waiting to get some replacements. Then we will go back and do it all over again."

Another Lt., John Kelly, walked over [2nd plt cdr]. He was shirtless and his boots were unlaced. He is 25 and comes from Haven Ave in N.Y. City.

"I never saw any hesitation" Purnell said "not once". He looked up at Kelly, "Did you see anybody hesitating?"

"Never" Kelly said. "There never was an instance where you had to kick ass to get going".

Purnell said "You think you would see some of that after the way they were standing there watching their friends getting mangled so badly. There were a lot of horrible wounds but they never hesitated."

"A recoiless rifle and mortars hit an armored carrier I Co. troops were on. Ten of them fell into the sand right away dead or with bodies split open. It didn't stop the rest of them." Purnell said, "Returned fire and attacked, that's all they know how to do.  Cpl (Marvin Hunt) Hunt's men in his squad were killed. He helped carry the bodies out. Then he took the rest of the squad, three men and went right on. At night he waits in the rear and here comes 5 VC's dragging a wounded man, they come right by hunt in the darkness. He cuts 'em all down with an automatic rifle. So we did all right, that's six right there. They'll go out now" Kelley said, it wouldn't mean a thing to them as long as they get a can of cold beer. They don't complain about a thing. "Warm beer is all they squawk about" Purnell said.

They pay for their beer, Kelly said, twenty cents a can, Japanese beer. But we don't get ice delivered with it the beer is warm and they bitch about it.  They are paying for it. They are entitled to yell, they ought to get it free, Purnell said.

"They won't get it free", Kelley said. "People don't think it's a real war yet. The people", Purnell said, "the hell with the people, the sons of bitches. I remember this TV program I saw, it was on before we came over here. They were interviewing some student and he said he didn't want to come here and fight because he had six years of college education and if he got killed it would go to waste". "That's a whore talking, not a man", Kelley said.

"Yeah, but they put him on TV", Purnell said. "Why don't they put some of these kids on the television? Maybe people will listen to somebody like that," Purnell said, "And I know the guy on TV can't either. All I can remember is V.J. day and I remember it because they had a big party at my home and I was allowed to stay up late. I was six years old, I don't even remember much about Korea", Kelly said. "What the hell, I was 12 years old when it was going on, it didn't sink in."

The two of them got up and went to the tent and stretched out on cots.

The rest of India Co. was spread out on the sand on the other side of the dunes. 

Everything is sand here at this place -- which is a big beach -- where you can get killed on Sunday.

___________________________________________________________________

...In the beginning....

(Excerpts and picture from Ed Nicholl's homepage)

INDIA COMPANY 3rd BATTALION 3rd REGIMENT - VIETNAM

(This was Operation Starlite, August 18th and 19th 1965.

The casualties for all  3/3 Co's can be viewed here).