Captain Hank Parker – Battery Commander – Part Four

Captain Hank Parker

PART FOUR

The Battle for LZ Betty

February 22, 1969

I am airlifted with Delta Company back into LZ Betty (eight miles south of Sherry – a sprawling complex of unit headquarters, ammo bunkers, oil storage tanks, and an airfield). They move us off into a separate compound for the 101st Airborne to rest, where we get steaks and can wind down. When you’re in the field it’s intense. You’re sleep-deprived all the time and on alert 24 hours a day. You come in and have a chance to decompress, have a few beers. The officers get hard liquor, the senior sergeants get hard liquor and beer, all known as juicers, and the enlisted men below them are the heads with their joints. You have to be careful about the marijuana because it’s still a court martial offense.

Capt. Wrazen says to me, “Hank, you can take off your helmet and flak jacket now.”

I say, “Captain, I’m just not comfortable. Something is not right here and I’m gonna keep my gear with me and on.” I instructed my RTO to do the same thing. My unease comes from that earlier engagement in the field when we were outgunned. A much larger enemy unit could have easily stopped us and they chose not to, and that means they have something else in mind.

At Betty they have a policy of taking away weapons from the infantry and anyone else coming in from the field. All the weapons are locked up in a CONNEX building. I am puzzled by that because in the field these guys are terrific. In the field they are crisp, coordinated, never fire on one another. But back at base camp they can’t be trusted; I cannot not understand it. The battalion commanders here  are good, so it has to be their higher ups.

I keep my M16, as does my RTO. So that morning at 2:00 AM, when the rockets and mortars and small arms fire start, my RTO and I are the only ones with weapons. We’re in the stand-down area for the 101st on the sea side of the compound where deep gullies run down to the beach. That is where the enemy is coming in, up those deep gullies overgrown with brush.

We give our weapons to Wrazen so he can go out to the bunker to secure that part of the perimeter that was breeched. I see Sergeant Beasley trying to get into the CONNEX building with the arms that were locked up. Here you’ve got the most experienced fighters that could have ended this in short order and they don’t have access to their weapons. You basically have REMFs doing the fighting.

Wrazen tells me to take up a position at the gullies. I rip an M60 machine gun off a jeep and Wrazen tells me where he wants me to go, just down from a bunker he is occupying. I am close to him, maybe ten feet away. He is in the open on the top of a French bunker, a concrete bunker with ports. I see tracers coming in our direction. I look over and see his body jerk and then go down. I run over to him and arrive at the same time as First Sergeant Horn and another lieutenant. He is already dead I think. They get a jeep and take him to the battalion surgeon. I continue on doing what he told me to do securing that part of the perimeter that was in front of the tower with the steep incline in front of it. You got enemy fire and mortars coming in and tracers both green and red flying in all directions. I know I have to get the infantry positioned like Captain Wrazen ordered before dying.

I drive stakes into the ground by the bunker and off to its right, so that when the infantry comes I tell them you can’t go beyond those stakes because the enemy is inside the wire and you don’t want people shooting at one another. I show them where to fire and where not, because you have battalion headquarters over there.

Another infantry lieutenant and I go up into the tower at that end, because whoever was supposed to be there had abandoned their M60 machine gun. You low crawl when you can, but I remember we stand up and run for the tower. We get up there and fire the M60 to the extent that we almost melt the barrel down and have to replace it.

I come down from the tower to get some support, either artillery or gunships. I also get a jeep mounted search light and position it where I know we have an enemy squad pinned down. I have a handheld flare and a radio on my back when the gunships show up. Where my RTO is I don’t have a clue. I’ll see him again in the morning it occurs to me.

The gunships arrive pretty quick. I turn on the spotlight, train it on the enemy position and pop a flare in that direction. When BOOM I’m blown off the jeep. I don’t know what it is, maybe a B40 rocket, but it shatters the light, peppers me with glass, and sends shrapnel through the radio, through the flack jacket and into my shoulder. The jeep turns over with me on it and knocks me unconscious for what feels like just a few minutes. I come to, get up and continue to fight. Me keeping my flak jack, helmet and M16 – I didn’t have to go looking for them – saved my life.

Now a sapper gets into an ammo bunker loaded with 42 mm mortar ammo. He blows the bunker with a satchel charge and a B40 rocket. It’s just blowin’ and goin’ everywhere all night.

We fight throughout the night, and when the sun comes up we evacuate the wounded and killed.

There is Captain Wrazen, PFC Tweedle and Sergeant Allen – all killed. We have over 20 wounded, including me. I get treated for my head and back, but I won’t take any sedation because I want to go with the infantry on a sweep to pull in the bodies of the enemy we had killed or wounded. Of course my RTO is now there.

We start the sweep. Betty has sharp and deep ravines of red clay running down to the beach covered with heavy, dense scrub brush.

Tower and Brush Covered Ravines

We’re going through the ravine probing looking for bodies or whatever we can find. In the process of doing that I have a bandage on my head. I put my steel pot helmet on and as we move forward it keeps falling off and I just put it back on again.

I have the sling of my M16 over my shoulder and my finger on the trigger guard. On this occasion my steel pot falls off. I reach down to get it with my left hand and my barrel hits something. I look and its an NVA soldier. My barrel is right on his head and his AK47 is right in my belly.

My RTO, a black man says, “Lieutenant Parker, you’re turning white.”

I say, “Shut up, Godamit.”

I look at the NVA and we lock eyes. Instinctively I say, “Dung lai, ong. Chieu hoi.” Give up, Sir. Surrender for clemency.

He looks at me and says, “Chieu hoi?”

For that reason I don’t shoot him. The other reason is he’s got web gear on. I’m thinking if I shoot this guy he’s going to blow up. I don’t know what he’s got. So I back off, he drops his weapon, he drops his web gear, and we get him.

Now I’ve got to protect him from the infantry. They want to kill this guy. Their captain’s dead and they want to kill him. I say, “No, I’ve offered this guy clemency, we’ve got to take him in.” I emphasize what Captain Wrazen said: A prisoner’s worth more than a hundred dead people. “This guy’s a prisoner, we’re going to interrogate him and get important information.” We turn him over to the MPs and continue our sweep. We find a whole bunch of bodies and weapons.

I go over to Graves and Registration where bodies are prepared for shipment home. I see Captain Wrazen’s body after the autopsy and I talk to the surgeon. The bullet hit him in the upper chest as he was laying prone and exploded his lungs. There is speculation that Captain Wrazen had been shot from the rear, that it was friendly fire. I can speak authoritatively that he was hit from the front.

A territorial thing, the infantry battalion commander is really pissed that an artillery FO captured an NVA. He feels his infantry should have done it.

GIs Hurl

Reds Back

At Camp

Saigon – Communists tried but failed to overrun an American landing zone near the South China Sea early Saturday.

The band of Reds laid down a 30 round mortar barrage, then charged the landing zone near Phan Thiet, 95 miles east of Saigon.

The Reds opened up on the camp at 2 AM. GIs of the 101st Airborne Division (3/506 Curahees) called for spooky and helicopter gunships and fought back.

The Americans, station more than 200 miles south of the bulk of their division, hurled back the Reds but not before a handful used Bangalore torpedoes to break briefly through their lines. They were repelled.

Two Americans were killed and 29 wounded in the night battle. The Communists left 12 bodies behind, as well as eight weapons and 11 grenades.

Pacific Stars and Stripes

Monday, Feb. 24, 1969

 

The newspaper article got it wrong. There were three GIs killed.

It was a sad moment loosing Captain Wrazen. He tried to convince me to go infantry. I was really close to him. In our night positions we would talk. I knew he was married and had a couple boys. We’d talk about his family and his plans. It was a special time. It’s that kind of relationship you establish in combat.

Captain Wrazen always wanted to come out to see the guns and meet the crews at Sherry, but unfortunately he died before that could happen. When an infantry commander says he wants to come and see the fire support base you cannot ask for higher praise.