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From Inside Force Recon, Recon Marines in
Vietnam by Michael Lanning and Ray Stubbe;
Team Box Score of the Third Force Recon Company
reached its assigned recon zone six miles northwest of Dong Ha on 15
February 1968 by walking from the nearest firebase. Composed of
eight men including patrol leader Second Lieutenant Terrence C. Graves,
six enlisted Marines, and a corpsman, Box Score had a rather typical
mission, to determine enemy activity, engaging what enemy they found with
supporting fires, locating landing zones and trails, and attempting to
capture a prisoner. By the afternoon of the 16th, the
team had reached an area overlooking a small stream pocked with bomb
craters. Hearing voices in the thick brush across the waterway, the
team crossed the stream to set up an ambush in a bomb crater alongside a
trail. Within minutes seven NVA walked down the pathway. When
the enemy was within five meters of the ambush, the recon men opened up,
killing all seven. In the brief firelight, the NVA were barely able
to return fire; however, two of the rounds they managed to get off struck
Corporal Danny M. Slocum, tearing away shin and muscle from his thigh but
not producing life threatening wounds.
While the
team medic, HM3 Stephen R. Thompson, was treating Slocum, Graves hastily
searched the bodies and found a diary along with other documents.
The patrol leader then called a med-evac for the wounded Marine and began
moving the team to a better point to bring in the helicopter. Box
Score made it only a few meters before the team was raked by
automatic weapons fire from two different directions. Graves
ordered the team into a hasty perimeter as the Marines returned fire.
Several of the NVA machine guns were knocked out by accurate M-79
grenade launcher fire by Corporal Robert B. Thomson, though Thomson had
been unable to spot the exact position of the automatic weapons until
Private First Class Michael P. Nation exposed
himself to mark their
positions with tracer rounds for Thomson to zero in
on.
The silencing of the enemy machine guns brought
only a brief lull to the fighting. Every minute, more NVA joined the
battle, until at least two companies were ringing the eight-man
patrol. Despite the number of NVA, Graves had to move his team to a
better position from which to fight and hopefully be extracted. As
the lieutenant directed in air strikes and gun ships to cover their
movement, the team began inching its way to the top of a small
knoll. At one point a CH-46 attempted to land near the team but took
several hits and had to lift off.
As the CH 46 flew
out of range, the NVA again concentrated their firepower on the recon
team. Graves took a bullet in the thigh, but an inspection by Doc
Thompson revealed that the bone was not broken. After a quick
bandaging, Graves was back on the radio coordinating the supporting
fires. No sooner had the corpsman finished with the lieutenant than
Corporal Thomson yelled that he too had been hit. A bullet had
penetrated the Marine's left side and shattered the pelvic bone before
lodging in the abdominal cavity. Doc Thompson recalls, "He said,
‘I'm blacking out, Doc, I’m blacking out. ‘ Then he passed out on
me, and I think at that moment he died. I started closed-chest
cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. While I was doing
this, Lopez, Private First Class Adrian S. yelled, ‘Doc, Emrick's (Lance
Corporal Steven E.) hit, I think he's dying.‘ I looked over and
said, Nation [who had been cross-trained by Thompson in medical
procedures], just do what you can."
Nation
alternated between treating Emrick and doing his best to fight off the
NVA. According to Nation, "Emrick kept saying, 'Get the radio off.'
That was what he was talking about; he wasn't worried about
himself. Lopez finally got it off by snapping off the bottom of the
pack. Then Emrick said, 'Oh my God,' and that's the last thing he
said. I started to give him mouth to mouth. Lopez said he could
still feel a pulse."
There was no letup in the NVA
fire despite the repeated runs by fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter gun
ships. Graves continued to fight as he directed the team to make
another attempt to move to higher ground. With Doc Thompson and
Private First Class James E. Honeycutt dragging Thomson and with Nation
and Lopez carrying Emrick, Graves and Slocum provided covering
fire
despite their wounds. A few minutes later Box Score reached the low
grassy ridge that was large enough for a set down extraction.
Although the patrol was then in a good position for extraction, the ridge
they occupied was paralleled by two higher hills, both occupied by the NVA
only 100 meters away.
The fight by the eight Marines
against several hundred NVA had been going on for over an hour and a
half. Another CH-46 made an attempt to reach the team but took heavy
fire and had to regain altitude. Captain David Underwood, orbiting the
fight at 1,000 feet in his H-34, radioed that he was coming in to make the
extraction. Flying behind a Huey gunship for covering fire,
Underwood came in at treetop level through a gauntlet of small-arms and
machine-gun fire, touching down only a few meters from the team.
Intense fire immediately centered on the H-34, shattering the side windows
and some of the pilot's instrument panel gauges. More rounds were
slamming into the fuselage and fuel pods. Although practically every
warning light was lit up on the still operational parts of the instrument
panel, Underwood stayed at the controls, waiting for the recon team to
climb aboard.
Dragging, pulling, and crawling
through the elephant grass, the Marines loaded the aircraft as Graves
continued to return the NVA fire. Three long minutes passed as the
recon men ensured that their wounded buddies were pulled onto the aircraft
that was now profusely leaking fuel and was in danger of exploding.
Nation later stated, "I guess Lieutenant Graves saw how bad the plane was
hit and realized if the chopper didn't leave then it wouldn't be leaving
at all, because I saw him waving at the pilot and yelling 'get' or 'get
out.' He did this realizing that he might get hit again and his chances of
getting back were pretty slim, but he wanted to make sure that the
rest of us made it back. What Lieutenant Graves did is the
bravest thing I've ever seen."
As Underwood began to
lift the crippled chopper, the NVA ran out of their protected positions
for better shots. One burst strafed the bird, a bullet hitting Lopez in
the thigh and glancing off the bone and into the Marine's stomach.
As the helicopter gained a few feet of altitude, Slocum and
Honeycutt
realized that Graves was being left behind, with no words exchanged
between the two, both Marines jumped from the helicopter to help their
lieutenant. With the loss of weight of the two men, Underwood was
able to gain altitude quickly and nurse the bird to the nearest medical
facility. More than 20 bullet holes were later counted in the
aircraft.
Meanwhile, Underwood's wingman, Captain
Carl Bergman, was attempting to pick up the remaining recon men. Three
passes through the NVA fire failed to find the Marines, but on the fourth
try Bergman spotted the trio and set his H-34 down near them. The
chopper immediately came under intense automatic weapons fire from NVA so
close that initially Bergman could not distinguish between the sounds of
the outgoing from his door gunners and the incoming from the enemy.
A shout from the cargo compartment revealed that the crew chief had been
wounded and that the fuel cells were hit and leaking. Bergman was
forced to lift off before the remaining members of Box Score were able to
fight their way to the helicopter.
Graves, Slocum,
and Honeycutt continued to return fire as they made still another attempt
to move to a more advantageous position. The NVA dropped two mortar
rounds near the trio but did no damage. Suddenly a UH-1 pilot
spotted an opening and swooped in almost on top of the Marines. The
Huey hovered just off the ground as the recon men threw their gear aboard
and pulled themselves into the aircraft. Cross fire from the NVA
zeroed in on the chopper as it attempted to lift off. Graves was
hit again, as was the copilot, who slumped over the controls. The
Huey nosed over and crashed on its side into the
jungle.
Slocum found himself on top of "a heap of
bodies." As he crawled out of the helicopter, 15-20 NVA were
sweeping toward him on line. The enemy spotted the Marine and opened
fire as he turned and ran toward a nearby stream. Hitting the
streambed at a dead run, Slocum was able to elude his pursuers.
By then, darkness was closing in on the battle
area. A reaction force consisting of a platoon of B Company, 1st
Battalion, 4th Marines air-landed near the crashed Huey to rescue any
survivors. Before they reached the downed aircraft, they too became
engaged with the NVA from three directions and suffered one killed and
four wounded. Unable to proceed, the platoon formed a defensive
perimeter.
Slocum heard the firefight from
his hiding place near the stream but decided to remain in place. He
later recalled matter-of-factly, "I didn't want to go back over
there. There was a firefight going on and I didn't want to get shot
anymore."
At daylight the next morning, the
remainder of B Company was lifted in and finally reached the crashed
chopper to report that Graves and Honeycutt were dead and Slocum
missing.
The missing Marine‘s problems were not yet
over. In his attempt to link up with B Company, the infantry Marines
mistook him for an NVA and called in artillery on him. Slocum
states, "It didn't bother me; I got down in a hole."
When the infantrymen started toward Slocum's hole, not wanting to take any
more chances, he headed in the opposite direction. Finally a chopper
spotted him and coordinated his joining up with B Company. Slocum
was evacuated to the Naval Hospital in Cam Ranh Bay where after two and a
half months he recovered from his wounds and eventually rejoined the Third
Company. Thomson, Lopez, and Emrick were not so fortunate. All
three died of their wounds either aboard Underwood’s helicopter or within
hours of reaching the evacuation hospital.
Slocum,
Doc Thompson, and Bergman later received the Silver Star. Thomson’s
Silver Star and Honeycutt‘s Navy Cross were both awarded
posthumously. Underwood also had earned a Navy Cross. On 2
December 1969, in the office of the Vice President of the United States,
Spiro T. Agnew presented the Medal of Honor posthumously to the family of
Lieutenant Graves.
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for service as set forth in the
following
CITATION:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life
above and beyond the call of duty as a Platoon Commander with the Third
Force Reconnaissance Company, Third Reconnaissance Battalion, Third Marine
Division, in the Republic of Vietnam on 16 February 1968. While on a
large-range reconnaissance mission, Lieutenant Grave's eight-man patrol
observed seven enemy soldiers approaching their position. Reacting
instantly, he deployed his men and directed their fire on the approaching
enemy. After the fire had ceased, he and two patrol members commenced a
search of the area, and suddenly came under a heavy volume of hostile
small arms and automatic weapons fire from a numerically superior enemy
force. When one of his men was hit by enemy fire, Lieutenant Graves moved
through the fire-swept area to his radio and, while directing suppressive
fire from his men, requested air support and adjusted a heavy volume
of
artillery and helicopter gunship fire upon the enemy. After
attending the wounded, Lieutenant Graves, accompanied by another Marine,
moved from his relatively safe position to confirm the results of the
earlier engagement. Observing that several of the enemy were still alive,
he launched a determined assault, eliminating the remaining enemy troops.
He then began moving the patrol to a landing zone for extraction, when the
unit again came under intense fire which wounded two more Marines and
Lieutenant Graves. Refusing medical attention, he once more adjusted air
strikes and artillery fire upon the enemy while directing the fire of his
men. He led his men to a new landing site into which he skillfully guided
the in-coming aircraft and boarded his men while remaining exposed to the
hostile fire. Realizing that one of the wounded had not embarked, he
directed the aircraft to depart and, along with another Marine, moved to
the side of the causality. Confronted with a shortage of ammunition,
Lieutenant Graves utilized supporting arms and directed fire until a
second helicopter arrived. At this point, the volume of enemy fire
intensified, hitting the helicopter and causing it to crash shortly after
liftoff. All aboard were killed. Lieutenant Graves' outstanding courage,
superb leadership and indomitable fighting spirit throughout the day were
in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United
States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country. |
