It was November 15, 1965, and I was at Landing Zone Golf—a fresh and cocky Second Lieutenant—supervising radio communications for the Second Battalion, 7^th Cavalry. Our new CO and his bunch were sorting things out, leaving me to my own devices. I didn’t know where we were and, out of curiosity, began trying different radio frequencies. That’s when I picked up frantic messages interspersed with exploding sounds. Somebody was calling for help and it seemed I was the only one who could hear them clearly. By that afternoon, I found myself toting a radio antenna along with our C Company as we tried to reach the beleaguered men of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry. There were a handful of headquarters guys headed into the fight and I was one of them. I was ready.

We couldn’t get into Landing Zone X-Ray that day, so we made a feinting move to the north and hunkered down. It was my first time in a deep foxhole. I spent the night staring into darkness, tense, ready for that first attack. It never came. At dawn of the 16th we gathered up and tried again.

Still juiced on morning coffee and adrenaline, we moved toward the distant explosions. It was going well until the front of the column exploded, tossing dirt and rocks everywhere. We froze. We had been mistaken for enemy by the chopper artillery guys. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began and friendly voices called for us to come on in. We broached the clearing of Landing Zone X-Ray as the last of the fighters were dropping napalm on the side nearest the mountain, and hurried toward a large anthill in the center where we could see GI’s standing in conversation.

The anthill was surrounded by wounded being treated by medics. Choppers were whapping in nearby, tossing boxes of ammo off, while others rushed to them, with the wounded on ponchos, for evacuation. The choppers were landing and taking off in droves with their high-pitched whines and air-thrashing blades throwing dust everywhere. And then it just stopped. I looked around at the calm. Drained, I just stood there. The adrenaline ebbed; a sense of normalcy began seeping in. It was quiet except for a few distant voices out on the perimeter some two hundred yards away. Radio squelch and squawk chattered on but the fight was over. We had missed it.

Trying to see what had happened, several of us wandered toward the far end of the landing zone. It was a big flat field, bare in spots, tall grass in others, ringed by dark heavy growth and bordered on the west by a huge mountain. When we stopped to look into the dark jungle, I smelled death for the first time and saw men who looked like ghosts. They didn’t look real as they turned and looked at us from their holes. Through the dirt and grime of their expressionless faces, you could see streaks left by sweat and tears. Their eyes looked like black marbles.

Less than 24 hours later, the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry would be in a hell of its own.

17 November 1965, 1300 hours in the Ia Drang Valley: hot, exhausted, I collapsed to the ground as the column halted yet again. I dropped my harness and the forty-pound 292 antennae I was dragging. I was thirsty, just about of cigarettes, and wondered if we were where we were supposed to be.

That morning, our orders were to evacuate Landing Zone X-Ray, to move to another site,  Albany, and to check out a downed airplane on the way. B-52′s were on their way in, for the first close-in air strike in support of the American Air Cavalry, and we needed to clear the area. There was a shortage of maps, so my company was to follow the unit to our front, Second Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, under the command of Lt Col Bob Tulley, until they left to go to LZ Columbus. Then we were to go to Albany.

Headquarters elements were in a column of two’s as we plodded along following the person in front of us. When I asked what to do if we got hit, I was told the line companies to our front would take care of us, so the clerks, repairman and truck drivers of my company moved out, laden with the extra battlefield detritus—excess radios, weapons, ammo, mortars—which we hadn’t been able to load onto the choppers late on the 16th.

Fear was the furthest thing from my mind by one o’clock on the 17th, when the column stopped again. The commanders had been called to the front of the column to look at the maps and figure out if we were in the right spot. I was so dog-tired when shouts came down the lines in front of us, followed shortly by the far off sounds of pop pop, like small fireworks.

Startled, the medics to my front stood up. Loud commands echoed as Charlie Company was told to move on line to roll up an ambush encountered by the Recon Platoon at the front of the column somewhere to our front. To the north of the grass where I had dropped, men were hustling into a dark tree line yelling as they did so to “get on line!” The medics to my front plunged into the canopied jungles and I followed. We jumped a ditch and the underbrush gave way to small scrub oaks. Within seconds, the jungles around me erupted in gunfire.

Crackling noises like bees swarmed as the screams for medic screeched out. It didn’t take long to figure out it wasn’t bees. Quickly looking to my right and left, I saw men to my front and sides falling and medics racing forward to answer calls for help. All I recalled was a lesson at Fort Benning that said don’t stop moving, and to my front right was Charlie Company’s elements trying to form a line across the high grass and brambly jungles. I ran to catch up to them and heard shouts to cease fire:

“Cease fire! Cease fire! We are shooting at one another!”

Fear-laced voices hollered out to stop as shots continued coming in, hitting those around me, and then hitting at least one of the soldiers yelling for the cease fire.

We couldn’t figure out who was shooting at us. Who was shooting from the right of us? Were our guys behind us shooting at us? Who was it that was shooting at us from the front? You couldn’t see for the grass, but explosions were happening all around us from everywhere. And the trees—every twitch seemed to attract fire. They were in the trees ! What was happening? It was mass chaos and men were getting shot and shooting and tossing grenades as mortars landed in our midst.

There was no front, sides or rear.

The thought fleeted across my mind, We are all going to die right here. But it wasn’t fear. It was kind of icy confusion, an exploding sensory overload. It wasn’t panic. It was just hell and I was in the middle of it.

In the continuing chaos, I noticed that it wasn’t just us shooting at each other. The sounds were different; sharp buzzes, they were heavier somehow. By dawn on the 18th, one hundred and fifty five Americans lay dead and one hundred and thirty four out of action from wounds. There weren’t many left. Later I learned the truth of what happened.

Strewn across the jungle floor we had been hit on three sides simultaneously by 1100 fresh North Vietnamese and they cut the column into shreds adding to the madness, leaving small bands to do the best they could with what they had.

That night, I crawled two miles through the jungle, with four other survivors, who were severely injured. Their wounds were unlike anything I’d ever seen before—and there was no water, no medicine, no way to treat them or ease their pains.

The next morning, we made it into LZColumbus. We thought we were the only ones who survived, until Lt John Howard, our medical officer, brought other badly-wounded soldiers out.

That young cocky second lieutenant in me died that day. You can survive hell, but you’re never the same person you were before it.