November 2009

VIETNAM: Last Full Measure of Devotion

Extraction of Team “Box Score,” 16 February 1968

By Dick Camp

Team Box Score, 3d Force Reconnaissance Co, 3d Recon Bn is shown just returning from a January 1968 patrol led by Sgt William H. “Billy” Andress—the first patrol of 2dLt Terry Graves. The patrol members (standing, from left) are Cpl Ray Warren; Mr. Giao, a Vietnamese Kit Carson Scout who later was captured and executed by the NVA in the Battle of Hue City; Sgt William H. “Billy” Andress; Cpl Danny Slocum; PFC Mike Nation and 2dLt Terry Graves. Kneeling, from left: Cpl John Kaulu, HM3 Steve Thompson and Cpl Robert B. Thomson. (Photo courtesy of Guy Pete)

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 North Vietnamese Army (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 North Viet­namese 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-feet-deep, 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,” HM3 Thompson 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 buttonhooked 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.”

Underwood remained in the zone more than three minutes under heavy fire. “I told my crew chief to lay down suppressive fire and to try and hurry the team up,” Underwood said, “but we were going to stay as long as we could to get everyone on board.”

Cpl Al Mortimer, the crew chief, frantically gestured for the team to hustle. “Two recon members brought up one man [Thomson]. They loaded him on board, and then the corpsman came in. He started pounding on the man’s heart, trying to keep it going.”

Nation, Lopez and Honeycutt struggled to load Emrick “because he was so heavy,” according to Nation. After sliding the mor­tally wounded man into the cabin, Honeycutt jumped off the -34’s step to assist Graves and Slocum in trying to suppress the NVA fire.

Lopez also jumped to the ground, but a fast-thinking Mortimer stopped him. “I grabbed him by the collar and was helping him in when he got shot in the leg. ‘I’m hit!’ he yelled. At that time we took off and were in the air by the time I pulled him in the plane,” Mortimer recalled.

Thomson and Emrick lay on the helicopter’s bloody deck. The corpsman, hunched over Thomson, massaged his heart, while Nation worked on Emrick. After a few minutes, Nation realized that “Emrick was gone, and I gave up on him.” He started working on Lopez who was unconscious from loss of blood.

“The doc gave me his Ka-Bar, and I cut his pant’s leg open and pressed a bandage on the wound to get the blood to stop. It was just gushing all over the bottom of the chopper.” The bullet severed Lopez’s ephemeral artery, ricocheted into his abdominal cavity and exited through his right hip.

Bullets suddenly riddled the helicopter. “The whole side of the chopper seemed to be coming in on us,” Nation said. “Some of the stuff hit me in the face.” Honeycutt was just climbing in, Slocum was to one side, and Graves was a few feet away. “The lieutenant was screaming at the top of his lungs,” Nation exclaimed. “ ‘Get out! Get out!’ And he just waved at the chopper pilot to get the hell out of there ’cause he can see that the fuel tanks had been ruptured.” Thompson was convinced that “Terry [Graves] probably knew that he was not going to live at that point. He knew that the chopper was hit so badly that the extra weight would have kept it from taking off.”

Thompson could see that “the pilot was working as hard as he could to get the chopper in the air; it was severely hit.” As the helicopter lifted out of the zone, Underwood saw Honeycutt jump out. “I called my crew chief and asked him how many men we had aboard. I was informed that we only had five; that two had jumped out, obviously in search of a third one who was wounded. At this point there was nothing I could do.”

Underwood stayed at treetop level and “poured the coal” to his aircraft. “The closest place was Delta Med [“Delta” Company, 3d Medical Battalion] at Dong Ha,” Underwood said. “I landed there and shut the helicopter down.”

Nation recalled, “The crew shouted for us to get out. There was fuel running out all over the place.” The helicopter had taken 20 hits, the majority in the cockpit. Underwood said, “I could not have flown it anymore. In fact it had to be lifted out.”

The wounded were rushed into surgery. “They worked as hard as they could on Thomson,” a corpsman said, “but couldn’t keep him alive.” The doctors stabilized Lopez and evacuated him to a larger hospital at Da Nang, but he died the next day.

No Man Left Behind

As the rescue attempt was planned, the other three members left behind were fighting for their lives. Graves, Honeycutt and Slocum scrambled away from the LZ to the top of the hill, “so we wouldn’t catch so much incoming and waited for the next helicopter,” Slocum said. It was not long in coming.

Capt Bergman followed a gunship toward the new LZ. “We went in low,” his copilot, Capt Ed Egan, recalled. “The ground was pretty well obscured by the smoke from WP [white phosphorus], so it was just about IFR [instrument flying] down on the deck.” They couldn’t find the zone and were forced to make three more attempts before finding it.

“As soon as we sat down, I could see them at my 11 o’clock about 10-15 meters away,” Egan said, “but they didn’t make any move to get in the aircraft. Just about that time, we came under fire. It was so close and so loud that I thought our gunner had opened up.”

The gunfire was so loud that Bergman did not hear his copilot say that he saw the team, and he started to lift out of the zone. At that point, “the aircraft gunner got on the ICS [aircraft radio],” Egan related, “and said that the crew chief had been shot in the shoulder and was bleeding badly. I looked down between the seats, and I saw blood all over the cabin deck and the crew chief lying there.” With a crewman down, the aircraft badly damaged and leaking fuel and hydraulic fluid, one of the radios shot up and both windows on the copilot’s side shot out, Bergman could do no more. He headed for Dong Ha. “I had a decision to make, and I made it,” Bergman said regretfully. “I didn’t accomplish the mission I was trying to do.”

The three men on the ground “moved to the south side of the hill so we wouldn’t catch as much incoming,” Slocum recalled. “We got all the packs and stuff together that we were going to take. Lieutenant Graves got a radio, I got one, and Honey­cutt got most of the weapons.”
With the NVA closing in on the three men, Capt Galbreath decided to attempt a rescue with his Huey gunship. “Don’t go in there,” Underwood warned. “The fire is too intense; you’ll never make it.”

“Naah,” Galbreath responded nonchalant­ly, “I’m going to go in and try to get them.”

Galbreath piloted the vulnerable aircraft through intense machine-gun and small-arms fire. “They [NVA] were real­ly putting some rounds in it,” Slocum said. “It never quite touched the hill, just kind of hovered about a foot off the ground.” The three recon Marines ran for their lives and scrambled aboard. “We all got on and it took off. I’d say not even five meters off the ground.” Enemy fire riddled the Huey as Galbreath tried to gain airspeed. “I saw the copilot slump over as rounds came through the rear section of the chopper, cut­ting up people,” Slocum recalled. “I also think the lieutenant [Graves] got hit again.”

The damaged Huey lurched out of control. “It was completely spastic,” Slocum said, “and crashed on its side across the river, about 50 meters from the bank, right above a bomb crater.” The tremendous im­pact hurled everyone together in a tangled heap. “I was on top of the pile, so I was able to shimmy out.” He jumped to the ground and found “one of the pilots stretched out on the ground, semiconscious.”

Escape and Evade (E&E)

Slocum could see a line of 15 to 20 enemy soldiers closing in. “One of them was yelling orders, not paying attention to anything. So, I asked the pilot if he had a pistol. He said, ‘No,’ that he had a carbine in the cockpit. I couldn’t find it, so I climbed up on the chopper and tried to get the machine gun. Just as I got my hands on it, the g--ks opened up, so I jumped off and landed about five to six meters from the helicopter. I froze near the wreckage of a rocket pod, hoping they wouldn’t see me.” He heard the NVA soldiers firing one or two rounds at a time.

Slocum headed downstream and spent the night dodging friendly artillery harassing and interdiction (H&I) fire. “The next morning I got up at first light and followed a trail. As I got to the top, I noticed a g--k about 15-20 meters away.” Slocum quickly backtracked until the trail crossed a stream.

“I went up the stream for 100 to 150 meters and crawled up the bank.” The NVA were close enough that “I could hear them talking. They seemed to be coming toward me.” Slocum inched his way through the brush to the top of the hill where he could see helicopters and hear the sounds of a firefight.

Slocum was unaware that late the previous afternoon 2d Platoon, Co B, 1st Bn, Fourth Marine Regiment was helilifted into the area to aid the recon team. Known as a “Sparrowhawk,” the small reaction force rushed to the scene of the crash. As the platoon approached the downed helicopter, the NVA suddenly opened fire from three sides with small-arms and automatic-weapons fire. Cpl William A. Lee, the platoon radio operator, was struck in the head and chest and fell mortally wounded. The NVA closed in and threw Chicom [Chinese communist] grenades into the ranks of the advancing Marines, slightly wounding four. Under threat of being over­whelmed, the platoon leader wisely withdrew his force 150 meters to the south­east and called in mortar and artillery defensive fires throughout the night. An AC-47 gunship, nicknamed “Puff the Magic Dragon,” circled overhead, providing illumination and fire support from its six-barreled, rotating 7.62 mm mini-guns, which could cover a football field with one round in one minute.

Early the next morning, the rest of the company joined the platoon. The combined force reached the downed Marine Huey and discovered a badly wounded crewman and four bodies. In “The War in I Corps,” Vietnam veteran Richard A. Guidry described the scene: “Outside the helicopter lay two dead NVA soldiers, their wounds still dripping blood. ‘Five Marines, all dead,’ someone from the search party called out from inside the helicopter. From the heap of bloody corpses an angry voice responded, ‘I’m not dead, you idiots!’

“A badly wounded crewman lay beneath the bodies of our dead Marines. He told of how the helicopter was swarmed over by enemy soldiers who stripped it of everything they could carry away, includ­ing the watch from his wrist, as he played dead. More importantly, he said that one of the recon team had escaped into the brush.”

Bravo Co reported the information, evac­uated the wounded crewman and started the search for Slocum. Before leav­ing, the company set fire to the wrecked helicopter.

By continuing to sneak about the battle­field, Slocum unknowingly presented him­self as an enemy soldier. “Someone must have seen me and called in a fire mis­sion,” he recalled vividly, “about five times, only five or six rounds, but they didn’t bother me because I took cover in one of the g--k foxholes that covered the hill.”

An aerial observer flew over to investigate the suspected enemy soldier.

“He waved his wings,” Slocum recalled, “and circled over me for about an hour before several Hueys showed up.” The gunships strafed the ridge, trying to keep the NVA at bay. “The Hueys seemed to want me to move toward the grunts [Bravo Company]. I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t want to get shot again. I didn’t have a weapon, and the g--ks were between me and them.”

Bravo Co moved toward the missing man. Slocum remembered, “The grunts started moving my way. First, I thought they were NVA, so I started moving the other way. The choppers sort of motioned me back in, and it was grunts after all. I walked over to them, and they had a medevac come in and pick me up.” He was flown to Dong Ha for treatment and, after 2½ months recuperating, returned to 3d Force Reconnaissance Company.

The team’s heroic and desperate fight for survival and rescue had finally ended.

Author’s note: The author is indebted to LtCol George “Digger” O’Dell, USMC (Ret); Col Dave Underwood, USMC (Ret); Marine veteran Mike Nation; and former Hospital Corpsman Steve Thompson for their efforts in assisting with this article. I could not have completed it without them.

Editor’s note: Dick Camp, a retired Marine colonel and frequent contributor, is the winner of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s 2009 Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for the best Marine Corps history article printed in a newspaper, magazine, journal or other periodical dur­ing the preceding year.

Aftermath

Captain George W. T. “Digger” O’Dell, the 3d Force intelligence officer, interviewed the three survivors. To listen to more of the Team Box Score debrief, visit our podcast archives. Based on the interviews, O’Dell pieced together the team’s desperate fight and made recommendations for individual awards.

Medal of Honor
Second Lieutenant
Terrence C. Graves

Navy Cross
Private First Class
James E. Honeycutt
Captain Bobby F. Galbreath
Captain David F. Underwood

Silver Star
Corporal Danny M. Slocum
Hospital Corpsman Third Class Stephen B. Thompson
Corporal Robert B. Thomson
Private First Class Adrian S. Lopez
First Lieutenant Paul A. Jensen
Staff Sergeant Jimmy E. Tolliver
Corporal Harry W. Schneider
Captain Carl E. Bergman

Bronze Star Medal
Lance Corporal Steven E. Emrick
Private First Class
Michael P. Nation

In an e-mail to the author, O’Dell wrote: “There is no question that Underwood should have received the Medal of Honor. I also believe that Bergman should have received the Navy Cross. Likewise, in retrospect, Thompson, Slocum and Nation should have received higher awards.”

—Dick Camp