Company D, sweating under their heavy loads, approached the base of the hill and slowly started up the slope. Above, two enemy machine-gunners watched the approaching Americans from positions hidden at the end of a thick hedgerow. The gunners waited until the company’s lead elements were within 10 to 15 feet of their positions; then, almost simultaneously, they opened up with a long, ear-splitting burst of fire. Several men from the 2nd and 3rd platoons went down in the fusillade, but the enemy’s success was short-lived. Mellon’s 4th Platoon, which now occupied the rocky structure on the north end of the hill, took them under fire and quickly silenced the guns.

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Company D’s encounter with the machine guns had been startlingly abrupt and expensive. The 2nd Platoon lost four men killed and six wounded, and the 3rd Platoon sustained five seriously wounded. It was far from over. Other bold, yet undetected, NVA continued to blaze at them from their brush-covered foxholes only 10 to 20 meters to their flanks.

Mellon remembers: I advised Dorland of my problem, and we agreed that my fourth platoon would remain static on the rocky structure. He directed that my second platoon slide left and linkup with his right flank. Elements of my first platoon were to fall back and secure an LZ for medical evacuation [medevac] helicopters and also sweep some areas we had bypassed.

My third platoon was still in trouble, and at that time we had not determined what was causing the damage. I linked up with my third platoon leader at a big boulder located at the lower end of the hedgerow to help him figure out the situation. After the better part of an hour, and two more wounded, we identified and eliminated three spider holes. During this time, my second platoon was sharing C-4 plastic explosive with the APC crews to destroy bunkers along the base of the hill below my fourth platoon’s position.

While Company D shucked their heavy rucksacks, found cover and fought the enemy near at hand, the trailing cavalry platoon put the pedal to the metal and roared around the northern end of the hill. As the tracks crashed through the undergrowth and skidded to a halt on the rocky hillside, their gunners blistered the enemy’s positions with .50-caliber machine-gun fire.

The metal monsters were no doubt a welcome sight to Delta Company. The NVA were not readily intimidated, however, and intensified their fire. A recoilless rifle cracked from across a paddy west of the hill and slammed a 57mm anti-tank shell into an APC. One cavalryman died and seven others were wounded.

Company B had taken only occasional fire up to that point, and Dorland directed Bierschmidt toward the contact. As the company moved toward the action, one of the men from 1st Lt. Jerome Dickey’s 1st Platoon spotted a rifle sticking out of a hole. The rifleman tossed a grenade into the position, killing an NVA officer. The enemy light machine gun was captured. Shortly after capturing the gun, Company B ran into a cyclone of fire from a line of meticulously camouflaged bunkers deep inside a hedgerow. Bierschmidt’s advance faltered, and Dorland quickly decided to commit the reserve.

Dorland remembers: I commanded the cavalry to move rapidly to the battle area, charging into a marsh covered with high grass between the two hills, catching the enemy completely by surprise. Numerous NVA soldiers scrambled (literally beneath the APCs’ tracks) for cover. Had we not had the element of surprise, catching the enemy out of their holes, we most likely would have been annihilated like the Marines and other units who confronted the regiment.

For a few minutes, the scene around the personnel carriers was an inextricable mix of friend and foe. As Dorland’s group fought the enemy a stone’s throw from his tracks, North Vietnamese positions on Hill 63 and Hill X took them under fire with machine-gun and recoilless-rifle fire. An anti-tank round smashed into the APC on which Dorland rode, killed the track commander, and hurled Dorland to the ground. In the chaos of the moment, the driver spun the track into a defilade position and ran over Dorland, who was badly injured and in indescribable pain. The medics treated him where he lay, but the severity of his wounds were beyond their abilities. Despite his agony, Dorland refused evacuation to stay with his men.

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