"We Want You"

On the rosters, it is called the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry of the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division. But to Viet Nam veterans who keep up on their casualty rates, it is the "hard-luck" battalion. And the hardest-luck platoon in the hard-luck battalion is the 3rd Platoon of A Company. Last January all of its men were killed when their C-123 crashed near An Khe before Operation Masher. Last week the unlucky 3rd got it again.

One afternoon the 26-man platoon was airlifted to a tiny landing zone in the northern Ia Drang Valley near the Cambodian border, where a North Vietnamese regiment had been spotted. No sooner had four of the six choppers unloaded than an enemy ambush opened up from the surrounding jungle. Most of the men were cut down in their tracks. Three overran one enemy machine-gun nest, only to be chopped up by another. "Sergeant Shockey," the platoon's first sergeant called out, "the commander's dead, and I'm dying. Take over the platoon." Moments later, Sergeant Leroy Shockey himself was felled.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the shooting stopped. As the North Vietnamese moved among the bodies lifting wallets, ammunition and weapons, Shockey played dead--through no fewer than six searches. Other North Viet namese fanned out through the jungle, looking for the five men who had slipped through the fire. "Come out, G.I.s," they shouted, "we want you." As a heavy rain swept down and the shouts drew closer, the five made a pact. "We won't surrender, right?" whispered Sergeant Willie Glaspie. "To the finish," agreed Sergeant Francisco Pablo. But the North Vietnamese gave up the search and cleared out.

The next morning, the rest of A Company arrived after an all-night march. "I cried when I saw them," Glaspie recalls. "And I cried when I saw our dead." Of the 26 platoon members, only Shockey and seven others survived. A few hours later, a chaplain arrived for a special Mass. "The smell of death was still in the air," Pablo recalls. "Spent shells were all around. And the blood had been rain-washed pink." Two days later, Pablo and Glaspie volunteered for another helicopter-infantry assault. "We ain't unlucky," Glaspie shrugged. "This is just war."

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