Last Stand at Khe Sanh: The U.S. Marines' Finest Hour in Vietnam by Gregg Jones

Author:Gregg Jones [Jones, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306821400
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

“Proud to Be a Marine”

Friday, February 23 was the most hellish day of all for the defenders of Khe Sanh. Over seven terrifying hours, beginning in the late morning, more than 1,300 shells, rockets, and mortar rounds pounded the combat base and the hill outposts.1 Casualties would prove light for such a ferocious bombardment, a testament to the digging and fortifying the men had done in the month since the siege began. Still, twelve Americans were killed—eight at the combat base, three on 881 South, and one on 861—and nineteen wounded seriously enough to require evacuation.

The butcher’s bill could have been worse, but that was little consolation for the comrades of the fallen. Charlie Med surgeon Ed Feldman lost his friend Lieutenant Kim Johnson, who had been with him the night he removed the mortar round from the Marine’s abdomen. Tall and blond, a gentle twenty-seven-year-old reserve officer from Fresno, California, Johnson was also a devout Mormon, a husband and father. His bunker took a direct hit and his neck was broken, but there wasn’t a mark on his body when they dug him from the rubble.2

On Hill 881 South, Lieutenant Tom Esslinger had been in command of the Mike Company sector for a little more than three weeks. He had seen his young Marines conquer the “nearly paralyzing fear” of the early days of the siege and transform their piece of the hill into an impregnable fortress. The twenty-four-year-old Esslinger had been greatly aided in his leadership of Mike Company by two savvy gunnery sergeants under his command: Eugene Charles “Gene” Wire, the classic tough-love gunny, a mantle earned after devoting eighteen of his thirty-seven years to the Marine Corps; and thirty-two-year-old Edward Robitaille, a fourteen-year Marine veteran, more soft-spoken in his role as commander of Mike Company’s weapons platoon.

Robitaille had begun his Vietnam tour of duty as the siege at Khe Sanh was getting underway, and after arriving on 881 South, he became close friends with Gunny Wire. They had dug a hole beneath the rim of a bomb crater left over from the Hill Fights, and they would meet there to have a smoke, sip coffee, and talk about their lives back in the world.

Around midday on February 23, Esslinger was in his bunker when several large-caliber enemy artillery shells slammed into his area. It wasn’t long before his radio crackled with a terse casualty report: “007 has been hit, over,” a voice announced.

Esslinger’s heart sank: the number seven was a reference to any company gunnery sergeant, and “007” was Mike Company’s inside joke for identifying their pair of gunnies. Esslinger steeled himself, then asked, “Which one?”

“Both,” came the reply.

“How bad?” Esslinger asked.

“K.”

Esslinger felt sick. K? Killed in action? No way.

The lieutenant sprinted from his bunker to the crater that had become the refuge of the two gunnies. Just inside the lip, where Robitaille and Wire had dug their hole, Esslinger spotted a new shell crater. There was plowed up dirt and shrapnel, but no sign of either man.

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