An LA Cop. John Bowermaster
III was beat up but still under the control of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division. The NVA retreated to the border. During the battle, Alpha Company lost thirteen men, Eighth Artillery lost two men.
There were wounded men in Delta but nobody was killed. 428 NVA were killed during the attack.
In April 1969 the Stars and Stripes Military Newspaper, printed a front-page story about the battles at Firebase Diamond. It was titled “Diamonds Are Forever.”
At noon, the bodies had only been dead for a few hours but lying in the sun’s heat and the humidity they were already ripe. The stench was almost unbearable. A bulldozer was brought in from Cu Chi by helicopter. It dug a hole so the men could bury the dead NVA. Everyone dragged the bodies to the pit. The bulldozer covered them up.
Ed and Cecil both grabbed the legs of a dead soldier by his calves to drag him to the open pit for burial. The flesh from the soldier’s legs separated from the bones, coming off in their hands. Much like the meat being pulled from the leg of a fried chicken.
To their surprise, Ed and Cecil both dropped the soldier’s legs while standing there in disbelief at what just happened. Still holding the bloody goo in their hands that was once the man’s legs.
Sergeant Waters was walking toward the command bunker as he passed by both men trying to wipe the bloody mess off their hands. He looked over at them, without missing a step in the direction he was heading, told the men, “If you wrap their ankles with empty sandbags and grab them that way you won’t get that shit and smell on you. You will have a hell of a time getting that odor off your hands. You need to get some diesel fuel from the guy operating that bulldozer. Use it to clean your hands.”
The sergeant was nearing his bunker, Ed hollered to Sergeant Waters, “Thanks for the advice Sergeant!” Without looking back, Sergeant Waters raised his right hand above his shoulder waving to acknowledge them.
Tuesday, July 29, 1969, was almost a year since Ed Bowes stepped off the plane in Vietnam.
They promoted him to sergeant, his tour in Vietnam was almost over. Scheduled to depart Vietnam on the first of August to return to the real world.
Ed Bowes survived ground attacks, ambushes, firefights, and those damn mosquitoes! He lived in places with names like Crockett, Reid, Diamond, and Jackson, in places called the Hobo Woods, Tay Ninh City, Angel’s Wing, the Michelin Plantation, and Hell’s Half Acre.
On Tuesday morning, Captain Kotrc, Delta Company’s commanding officer called Sergeant Ed Bowes to the command bunker at Jackson. He ordered Bowes to get his gear together. Telling him, he was going to Cu Chi on the morning chopper. “You’ll have a couple days to relax before returning to the States. Good luck, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Bowes shook Captain Kotrc’s hand, telling him, “Thanks.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, Ed was in Cu Chi relaxing on a cot in the barracks. He was watching TV in the barracks, the first television he’d seen in seventeen months. The moon landing in July was being talked about on the TV.
A guy from the communication building ran in the barracks, Ed arrived that morning from Jackson. He advised Ed Delta Company’s CO took a platoon out to support a unit of special forces pinned down by the NVA at a place called the BoBo Canal.
The dead soldiers from Delta Company were on a chopper headed to Cu Chi. The man didn’t know the platoon involved. Ed jumped out of his cot, ran to the chopper pad searching for inbound choppers.
The choppers had already landed; men were removing the bodies from the choppers. It was second platoon. Ed recognized some faces but didn’t know their names. A platoon is your close family.
They live, fight, eat, and sleep together twenty-four hours a day. You don’t always learn the names of men in another platoon.
They pulled the last soldier off the chopper floor. Ed recognized his face and knew his name. It was Delta’s commanding officer Captain Kotrc. After they killed Robert in December 1968, Ed lost another friend in 1969, Jerry Martin was one of the four men killed on the listing post during the ground attack at Diamond II on April 5.
The four men dug a shallow fox hole to watch and listen for the enemy. Their plan was to alert the firebase and retreat inside the perimeter. The men couldn’t warn the firebase or retreat to safety. NVA overran the four soldiers, killing them.
After three hours of fierce fighting the NVA retreated into Cambodia. Delta Company recovered the bodies of the four men. They transported them back to Cu Chi by chopper.
After they killed Robert and Jerry, Ed stopped learning the names of the new people coming into the company. Ed’s other friends, Everett, Arlie, Bruce, and Cecil all returned home. Doc Duncan survived his tour in Vietnam; he was wounded at Bobo canal. He returned home to his wife.
The men lived and shared their experience of the Vietnam war together and would always remain more than friends. They were brothers born in combat and would remain brothers the rest of their lives.
Now Ed realized why Sergeant Johnson was callus and seemed so matter of fact when he assigned the dead man’s machine gun and equipment to him his first day at Crockett. Like Sergeant Johnson, Ed knew what it was like to lose friends in combat.
Sergeant Johnson’s lack of emotion that day wasn’t because he didn’t care or had no feelings for his fellow soldiers. It came from dealing with the continuous deaths of friends and men around him, witnessing the lives of men he called friends snuffed out in an instant in that hell called Vietnam.
Although wounded by mortar shrapnel during the ground attack on Diamond I, Ed Bowes was lucky; he was going home alive and in one piece.
Freddie was Captain Kotrc’s RTO in Delta Company. The twenty-ninth of July 1969, Kotrc lead the men of second platoon to a location called BoBo Canal, to assist and rescue men of the fifth special forces. The eagle flight carrying second platoon, and Captain Kotrc landed near the canal. A sergeant from the Fifth Special Forces Group who survived the ambush met Captain Kotrc and Second Platoon. He explained the situation. The fifth special forces made contact with a group of NVA and sustained heavy casualties almost wiping out his unit.
The mission changed. It became a rescue and recovery mission of the dead and wounded soldiers. They started searching. Second platoon came in contact with the NVA. They were fighting for their lives at the canal. Captain Kotrc along with his RTO Freddie Ballard, Doc Duncan, and a second RTO Tim Brown shared the same bomb crater during the fight.
During contact with the NVA their crater acted as the command post for Second Platoon. After the fighting started, an NVA soldier threw a grenade into their crater. The explosion killed Captain Kotrc and wounded the other three.
Freddie used his radio to contact headquarters. He requested artillery, gunships and medivac support for their dead and wounded. Freddie Ballard received the Silver Star for his part in the battle of BoBo Canal for coordinating the battle at the canal with supporting units.
Sergeant Waters after the battles at Diamond received a battlefield promotion to lieutenant.
He was transferred out of Delta Company and reassigned. Lieutenant Waters fought in a ground attack with his new unit.
Shrapnel from an incoming RPG round wounded Lieutenant Waters in his arm during the battle. Lieutenant Waters returned to the United States for treatment. He recovered from his wound and remained in the army for several years. He never returned to Vietnam.
During the Vietnam war, over fifty-eight thousand men died. The two years with the highest number of casualties were 1968 with 16,589 men and 1969 with 11,614 men killed. The 28,203 men killed during those two years represented almost half of all the men killed during the entire Vietnam war from 1956 to 1975.
During Sergeant Bowes tour in Vietnam, Delta company lost sixty-three men, killed in action. Ed Bowes started his army training at Fort Ord, in Monterey, California. After completing his advanced infantry training at Fort Lewis. He remembered that night standing on the tarmac in Washington, waiting to board his plane for Vietnam.