KB
11-01-2009, 11:40 AM
http://vets.appliedphysics.swri.edu/images/vn/recon/gpete6.jpg
3rd Force patrol just returned; man 3rd from left holding AK on the left is Capt. Digger O'Dell, 3rd Force S-2. Lieutenant looking back over his shoulder is 2Lt Graves.
http://www.virtualwall.org/units/boxscore.jpg
Team Box Score upon return from 2Lt Graves' 1st patrol; company policy was new officers would function as team members until deemed ready to lead patrols.
Last Full Measure of Devotion
Extraction of Team “Box Score,” 16 February 1968
by Col. **** Camp, USMC (ret)
To the Rescue
Marine Captain David F. Underwood’s Sikorsky UH-34D Seahorse helicopter of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 163 was refueling when he heard the direct air support center (DASC) announce over the radio that a reconnaissance team was surrounded by NorthVietnameseArmy (NVA) regulars and needed to be extracted immediately. One CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter already had been shot out of the zone while trying to reach the embattled Marines. The DASC reported that the -46 had taken heavy fire.
Capt Underwood contacted the DASC. “I’ll give it a try if you want me to do it,” he radioed. “Dave Underwood felt like we could accomplish the mission,” his wingman, Capt Carl E. Bergman, reported. “He knew the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of getting it done rather than waiting for another -46. The team just couldn’t wait that long, so Dave decided to go in.”
As helicopter gunships and fixed-wing aircraft bombed and strafed the area, Underwood and his copilot, Capt Tom Burns, flew their -34 through a hail of NorthVietnamese automatic-weapons fire. They set the helicopter down on a little peak, fully exposed to enemy soldiers who were blasting them at point-blank range. “We were taking just unbelievable fire at this point,” Underwood exclaimed. “All the glass was blown out of my instrument panel; the windshield was blown out. You could hear the bullets going through the cockpit like bees!” Underwood and his crew were in mortal danger, taking heavy fire while the heavily burdened reconnaissance team struggled to reach them.
Team Box Score, 15 Feb.
Second Lieutenant Terrence C. Graves was one of the first of his eight-man 3d Force Reconnaissance Team 2-1, call sign “Box Score,” to jump down from the bed of the stopped deuce-and-a-half truck. He quickly led his men into the brush where they formed a small perimeter and waited, alert for sounds that indicated their covert insertion had been discovered. The truck gathered speed and continued on its way, trying to give the impression that nothing unusual had occurred. The team believed that the enemy was watching the roads closely. After several minutes Graves gave a signal, and the team silently moved out, well aware this “Indian Country” was alive with NVA.
The team had been briefed thoroughly before leaving the Force Recon area at Dong Ha. They were to “conduct reconnaissance and surveillance in their assigned zone to determine enemy activity.” In accordance with standard procedure, the team was to use supporting arms to engage the enemy, but was to attempt to capture a prisoner. Secondarily, the team was to plot helicopter landing zones (LZs) for future operations.They were cautioned to pay particular attention to trails to determine if the enemy used them.
Team Box Score “broke brush” for the first day, slowly moving farther into its patrol area, approximately six miles northwest of Dong Ha in Quang Tri Province, just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). They saw “lots of enemy activity, primarily footprints on the trails.” The seven enlisted members had worked together on several missions and were comfortable in the enemy’s backyard. Although it was his fourth patrol, it was 2dLt Graves’ first experience as a patrol leader. The company believed in first putting perspective patrol leaders in subordinate positions to gain experience. The team’s two corporals, Robert B.Thomson and Danny M. Slocum, were “extremely well-qualified reconnaissance Marines.” The other five men, Lance Corporal Steven E. Emrick, Hospital Corpsman Third Class Stephen B. Thompson and Privates First Class James Earl Honeycutt, Adrian S. Lopez and Michael P. Nation, were typical: volunteers, physically fit, well-trained and highly motivated Marines.
By late afternoon, the team had reached its reconnaissance zone and scouted for a nighttime harbor site. “After dark,” Nation recalled, “we found a brush-covered area that offered good concealment.” They established
a circle and immediately planned close-in artillery targets in case of attack. “Every two hours we would rotate the watch,which allowed everyone to get some much-deserved rest.The night passed slowly, as it does when you’re on patrol, but nothing out of the ordinary was observed.”
Ambush, 16 Feb.
By dawn the team had moved west through thick scrub toward hills covered with waist-high elephant grass. “After crawling through some very low brush,” Nation said, “we could see a well-used trail just across a stream in front of us.” The team paused. “Suddenly, we heard Vietnamese voices quite a ways away, so we all got down, moved to the side of the brush line and waited to see if they came closer.” When they didn’t, Graves decided to move the team to a better position to observe the enemy and possibly capture one. “We crossed the little streambed and crawled up the hill to a bomb crater where we formed a 360 circle,” Nation explained. “That’s when I spotted five NVA, carrying packs and rifles, coming down the path toward us.” The Marine patrol was caught in the middle of two NVA units. “We didn’t have much of a choice but to lay an ambush,” Nation said. Graves passed the word to execute their ambush drill.“We peeled off and set up a hasty ambush alongside the trail as best we could because the brush was only two- maybe three-feet high,” Nation described. “When it came my turn, there was no cover, so Honeycutt and I jumped into a 10-feetdeep, steep-sided bomb crater. All I could see was sky.”
The NVA, now numbering seven, continued down the hillside trail. “Four of us [Graves, Lopez, Thomson and Slocum]moved up the hill to ambush them,” Slocum recalled. The NVA approached the kill zone. “One guy got about 15 to 20 feet away from me and kind of looked over my way, and there was another one that just seemed to pop right out of the ground.” PFC Nation could not see the second enemy soldier. “I think he may have seen
me, so I had to open fire. I shot him straight through the head with my M14, and then everybody opened fire…Thomson with an M79 [grenade launcher], the others with small arms and a couple of hand grenades.”
The team stopped firing and prepared to check out the kill zone. Cpl Slocum stood up to move to another position when he was wounded. “All of a sudden one or two rounds were fired,” Nation recalled. “At first, I thought he was hit in the head because he fell back and then he sat up.” The team returned fire, and then Graves and Thomson crept into the kill zone to check out the bodies.
“They came back a few minutes later with a pack, diary and a few odds and ends,” “Doc” Thompson said. “All the NVA were dead. The trail was just one big mass of blood.” Thompson treated Slocum for “a minor wound in the upper right thigh … a ‘through and through’ wound that basically took out some skin. I put a couple of battle dressings on it and offered Danny morphine, but I didn’t recommend it because it would slow some of his senses.“ ‘That’s fine, Doc. If I need it, I’ll let you know.’ I believe that decision saved his life.” Although relatively minor, the wound was serious enough to prevent Cpl Slocum from continuing on the patrol. Graves requested a medevac helicopter and then ordered the team to move to the top of the hill.
Hornet’s Nest
“As we started moving up,we got pinned down by automatic-rifle fire,” Nation recalled, “kinda like the movies with the rounds bouncing off the ground.”The team returned fire, allowing the Marines to move up the hill where they formed a circle and waited for the medevac helicopter. “The NVA seemed to be getting closer, pretty much from all directions,” Nation explained. “I could see several. Honeycutt and I started shooting … I think he got three, and I got one…but we started getting rounds in, enough to make us want to stay down low.” Graves and LCpl Emrick worked the radio, directing artillery and air support. “The fire was so heavy,” HM3Thompson said. “Lieutenant Graves would sit up and see where the round hit and lay back down and call for adjustment.” He also directed Huey [UH-1D helicopter] gunships that had responded to the call, “Troops in contact!” Graves passed the word that the medevac “bird” was coming in, and Nation laid out an air panel to mark their location. “We started toward the hovering helicopter,” Thompson recalled, “when all hell broke loose!”
The NVA focused their fire on the bird. “It was being riddled with machine-gun fire,” Thompson said. “It looked to me like the copilot and the gunner were hit.” Before the team could reach it, the damaged helicopter lifted out of the zone. “The area was obscured by smoke from rockets that the Hueys and F-8s [jets] were firing,” Capt Underwood remembered. “I saw the -46 enter the area and momentarily reappear through the smoke coming back out.” As the damaged helicopter took off, automatic-weapons fire raked the team’s position. “The lieutenant, Emrick and Thomson all got hit,” Nation recalled. “I remember the lieutenant was the first to yell that he got hit.” Honeycutt bandaged the minor wounds Graves received in the upper thigh. The other two were wounded seriously. “Thomson was hit in the lower waist,” Doc Thompson remembered. “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.”
Nation tried to help Emrick. “When I flipped him over, he said, ‘Get the radio off ’ and that’s the last thing he said.” Nation administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because Lopez still could feel a pulse. After being bandaged, Graves limped back to work. “He directed air strikes,” Thompson said, “and kept up a small base of fire to give us some protection.” The radio nets at the reconnaissance company’s command post were filled with the team’s urgent requests for assistance. Plaintive calls galvanized the entire spectrum of support…fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, artillery tubes and an infantry reaction force. Lieutenant Colonel William D. Kent, the battalion commander, closely monitored events, but “felt absolutely helpless.” Everything he could do for the team was being done.
Hot Zone
Capt Underwood was some distance away when he heard about the unsuccessful extraction attempt. “The -46 took heavy fire and couldn’t bring the team out,” he explained, “so I left my wingman [in orbit] and went down on the deck to meet the Huey gunship to lead me into the zone.” Underwood needed a guide because the zone was obscured almost totally by smoke from six gunships and two F8U fighter/bombers that mercilessly were
pounding the NVA positions. Capt Bobby F. “Gabby” Galbreath, a friend of Underwood’s, flying a UH-1 from Marine Observation Squadron 6, volunteered to lead him in. “Just follow me, and when I break, the
zone will be right underneath me,” Galbreath radioed.
“I followed him in, going flat out,” Underwood said. “As he broke left, I button hooked and brought my aircraft into a low hover on top of the ridge.” As Underwood’s helicopter started its descent, it came under intense automatic-weapons fire. “I could actually see the NVA blasting away with AK47s…unbelievable fire…anything except a -34 would have been blown out of the sky. My rotor wash was pushing the elephant grass down, and I tried to spot where the guys were because I couldn’t see them. I air-taxied down the ridge until we finally spotted one of them half-hidden in the grass, dragging a guy who’d been wounded.”
The team struggled with the casualties. Doc Thompson and PFC Honeycutt dragged Cpl Thomson, while PFCs Nation and Lopez handled LCpl Emrick. Second Lt Graves and Cpl Slocum provided covering fire. “We couldn’t stand up because the fire was still coming in on us and the grass was so short,” Nation recalled. “You had to just kind of kneel down and pull them, while trying to keep them breathing.”
3rd Force patrol just returned; man 3rd from left holding AK on the left is Capt. Digger O'Dell, 3rd Force S-2. Lieutenant looking back over his shoulder is 2Lt Graves.
http://www.virtualwall.org/units/boxscore.jpg
Team Box Score upon return from 2Lt Graves' 1st patrol; company policy was new officers would function as team members until deemed ready to lead patrols.
Last Full Measure of Devotion
Extraction of Team “Box Score,” 16 February 1968
by Col. **** Camp, USMC (ret)
To the Rescue
Marine Captain David F. Underwood’s Sikorsky UH-34D Seahorse helicopter of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 163 was refueling when he heard the direct air support center (DASC) announce over the radio that a reconnaissance team was surrounded by NorthVietnameseArmy (NVA) regulars and needed to be extracted immediately. One CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter already had been shot out of the zone while trying to reach the embattled Marines. The DASC reported that the -46 had taken heavy fire.
Capt Underwood contacted the DASC. “I’ll give it a try if you want me to do it,” he radioed. “Dave Underwood felt like we could accomplish the mission,” his wingman, Capt Carl E. Bergman, reported. “He knew the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of getting it done rather than waiting for another -46. The team just couldn’t wait that long, so Dave decided to go in.”
As helicopter gunships and fixed-wing aircraft bombed and strafed the area, Underwood and his copilot, Capt Tom Burns, flew their -34 through a hail of NorthVietnamese automatic-weapons fire. They set the helicopter down on a little peak, fully exposed to enemy soldiers who were blasting them at point-blank range. “We were taking just unbelievable fire at this point,” Underwood exclaimed. “All the glass was blown out of my instrument panel; the windshield was blown out. You could hear the bullets going through the cockpit like bees!” Underwood and his crew were in mortal danger, taking heavy fire while the heavily burdened reconnaissance team struggled to reach them.
Team Box Score, 15 Feb.
Second Lieutenant Terrence C. Graves was one of the first of his eight-man 3d Force Reconnaissance Team 2-1, call sign “Box Score,” to jump down from the bed of the stopped deuce-and-a-half truck. He quickly led his men into the brush where they formed a small perimeter and waited, alert for sounds that indicated their covert insertion had been discovered. The truck gathered speed and continued on its way, trying to give the impression that nothing unusual had occurred. The team believed that the enemy was watching the roads closely. After several minutes Graves gave a signal, and the team silently moved out, well aware this “Indian Country” was alive with NVA.
The team had been briefed thoroughly before leaving the Force Recon area at Dong Ha. They were to “conduct reconnaissance and surveillance in their assigned zone to determine enemy activity.” In accordance with standard procedure, the team was to use supporting arms to engage the enemy, but was to attempt to capture a prisoner. Secondarily, the team was to plot helicopter landing zones (LZs) for future operations.They were cautioned to pay particular attention to trails to determine if the enemy used them.
Team Box Score “broke brush” for the first day, slowly moving farther into its patrol area, approximately six miles northwest of Dong Ha in Quang Tri Province, just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). They saw “lots of enemy activity, primarily footprints on the trails.” The seven enlisted members had worked together on several missions and were comfortable in the enemy’s backyard. Although it was his fourth patrol, it was 2dLt Graves’ first experience as a patrol leader. The company believed in first putting perspective patrol leaders in subordinate positions to gain experience. The team’s two corporals, Robert B.Thomson and Danny M. Slocum, were “extremely well-qualified reconnaissance Marines.” The other five men, Lance Corporal Steven E. Emrick, Hospital Corpsman Third Class Stephen B. Thompson and Privates First Class James Earl Honeycutt, Adrian S. Lopez and Michael P. Nation, were typical: volunteers, physically fit, well-trained and highly motivated Marines.
By late afternoon, the team had reached its reconnaissance zone and scouted for a nighttime harbor site. “After dark,” Nation recalled, “we found a brush-covered area that offered good concealment.” They established
a circle and immediately planned close-in artillery targets in case of attack. “Every two hours we would rotate the watch,which allowed everyone to get some much-deserved rest.The night passed slowly, as it does when you’re on patrol, but nothing out of the ordinary was observed.”
Ambush, 16 Feb.
By dawn the team had moved west through thick scrub toward hills covered with waist-high elephant grass. “After crawling through some very low brush,” Nation said, “we could see a well-used trail just across a stream in front of us.” The team paused. “Suddenly, we heard Vietnamese voices quite a ways away, so we all got down, moved to the side of the brush line and waited to see if they came closer.” When they didn’t, Graves decided to move the team to a better position to observe the enemy and possibly capture one. “We crossed the little streambed and crawled up the hill to a bomb crater where we formed a 360 circle,” Nation explained. “That’s when I spotted five NVA, carrying packs and rifles, coming down the path toward us.” The Marine patrol was caught in the middle of two NVA units. “We didn’t have much of a choice but to lay an ambush,” Nation said. Graves passed the word to execute their ambush drill.“We peeled off and set up a hasty ambush alongside the trail as best we could because the brush was only two- maybe three-feet high,” Nation described. “When it came my turn, there was no cover, so Honeycutt and I jumped into a 10-feetdeep, steep-sided bomb crater. All I could see was sky.”
The NVA, now numbering seven, continued down the hillside trail. “Four of us [Graves, Lopez, Thomson and Slocum]moved up the hill to ambush them,” Slocum recalled. The NVA approached the kill zone. “One guy got about 15 to 20 feet away from me and kind of looked over my way, and there was another one that just seemed to pop right out of the ground.” PFC Nation could not see the second enemy soldier. “I think he may have seen
me, so I had to open fire. I shot him straight through the head with my M14, and then everybody opened fire…Thomson with an M79 [grenade launcher], the others with small arms and a couple of hand grenades.”
The team stopped firing and prepared to check out the kill zone. Cpl Slocum stood up to move to another position when he was wounded. “All of a sudden one or two rounds were fired,” Nation recalled. “At first, I thought he was hit in the head because he fell back and then he sat up.” The team returned fire, and then Graves and Thomson crept into the kill zone to check out the bodies.
“They came back a few minutes later with a pack, diary and a few odds and ends,” “Doc” Thompson said. “All the NVA were dead. The trail was just one big mass of blood.” Thompson treated Slocum for “a minor wound in the upper right thigh … a ‘through and through’ wound that basically took out some skin. I put a couple of battle dressings on it and offered Danny morphine, but I didn’t recommend it because it would slow some of his senses.“ ‘That’s fine, Doc. If I need it, I’ll let you know.’ I believe that decision saved his life.” Although relatively minor, the wound was serious enough to prevent Cpl Slocum from continuing on the patrol. Graves requested a medevac helicopter and then ordered the team to move to the top of the hill.
Hornet’s Nest
“As we started moving up,we got pinned down by automatic-rifle fire,” Nation recalled, “kinda like the movies with the rounds bouncing off the ground.”The team returned fire, allowing the Marines to move up the hill where they formed a circle and waited for the medevac helicopter. “The NVA seemed to be getting closer, pretty much from all directions,” Nation explained. “I could see several. Honeycutt and I started shooting … I think he got three, and I got one…but we started getting rounds in, enough to make us want to stay down low.” Graves and LCpl Emrick worked the radio, directing artillery and air support. “The fire was so heavy,” HM3Thompson said. “Lieutenant Graves would sit up and see where the round hit and lay back down and call for adjustment.” He also directed Huey [UH-1D helicopter] gunships that had responded to the call, “Troops in contact!” Graves passed the word that the medevac “bird” was coming in, and Nation laid out an air panel to mark their location. “We started toward the hovering helicopter,” Thompson recalled, “when all hell broke loose!”
The NVA focused their fire on the bird. “It was being riddled with machine-gun fire,” Thompson said. “It looked to me like the copilot and the gunner were hit.” Before the team could reach it, the damaged helicopter lifted out of the zone. “The area was obscured by smoke from rockets that the Hueys and F-8s [jets] were firing,” Capt Underwood remembered. “I saw the -46 enter the area and momentarily reappear through the smoke coming back out.” As the damaged helicopter took off, automatic-weapons fire raked the team’s position. “The lieutenant, Emrick and Thomson all got hit,” Nation recalled. “I remember the lieutenant was the first to yell that he got hit.” Honeycutt bandaged the minor wounds Graves received in the upper thigh. The other two were wounded seriously. “Thomson was hit in the lower waist,” Doc Thompson remembered. “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.”
Nation tried to help Emrick. “When I flipped him over, he said, ‘Get the radio off ’ and that’s the last thing he said.” Nation administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because Lopez still could feel a pulse. After being bandaged, Graves limped back to work. “He directed air strikes,” Thompson said, “and kept up a small base of fire to give us some protection.” The radio nets at the reconnaissance company’s command post were filled with the team’s urgent requests for assistance. Plaintive calls galvanized the entire spectrum of support…fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, artillery tubes and an infantry reaction force. Lieutenant Colonel William D. Kent, the battalion commander, closely monitored events, but “felt absolutely helpless.” Everything he could do for the team was being done.
Hot Zone
Capt Underwood was some distance away when he heard about the unsuccessful extraction attempt. “The -46 took heavy fire and couldn’t bring the team out,” he explained, “so I left my wingman [in orbit] and went down on the deck to meet the Huey gunship to lead me into the zone.” Underwood needed a guide because the zone was obscured almost totally by smoke from six gunships and two F8U fighter/bombers that mercilessly were
pounding the NVA positions. Capt Bobby F. “Gabby” Galbreath, a friend of Underwood’s, flying a UH-1 from Marine Observation Squadron 6, volunteered to lead him in. “Just follow me, and when I break, the
zone will be right underneath me,” Galbreath radioed.
“I followed him in, going flat out,” Underwood said. “As he broke left, I button hooked and brought my aircraft into a low hover on top of the ridge.” As Underwood’s helicopter started its descent, it came under intense automatic-weapons fire. “I could actually see the NVA blasting away with AK47s…unbelievable fire…anything except a -34 would have been blown out of the sky. My rotor wash was pushing the elephant grass down, and I tried to spot where the guys were because I couldn’t see them. I air-taxied down the ridge until we finally spotted one of them half-hidden in the grass, dragging a guy who’d been wounded.”
The team struggled with the casualties. Doc Thompson and PFC Honeycutt dragged Cpl Thomson, while PFCs Nation and Lopez handled LCpl Emrick. Second Lt Graves and Cpl Slocum provided covering fire. “We couldn’t stand up because the fire was still coming in on us and the grass was so short,” Nation recalled. “You had to just kind of kneel down and pull them, while trying to keep them breathing.”