THE WALL OF FACES

From the 1964 HOWITZER, the annual of the United States Corps of Cadets at the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, this is the First Class/Senior photo of John A. Hottell III

John was my commanding officer at the 504th Infantry,Ft Bragg,July 68.I had just returned from Viet Nam after serving full tour with Recon 2502nd Inf 101st ABN. John saved my ass more than once from being court martialed for getting in trouble.I was His personal driver,but was very rarely available when he needed me.I loved him for who He was,a caring and humble human being.I went awol while under his command,when I finally returned,he had his orders for VietNam and i never saw him again.I always wanted to find him someday and thank him for being so fair with me at Bragg.A very good and proud man.i remember he drove a 1930's Rolls Royce to work.God Bless his family,sorry it took so long to leave message. Thomas 'Beetle' Bailey, oh yea,he called me Beetle

HOTTELL, JOHN A. III

MAJ, 1st Air Cavalry Division

Highland Falls, New York

DOB 24 December 1942

KIA 7 July 1970

Panel 09W

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In March of 1976 I got out of the Army after a little over seven years including two combat tours in Vietnam. The war years were over and the Army was converting back to a peacetime role. Lots of formations and polished boots. It was no longer any fun.

I spent the summer unemployed and just relaxed around the swimming pool. In September I went to work for Scotts Corporation, a supplier of building materials. It was hard physical work. In December the Civilian Personnel Office at Fort Meade offered me a job as a Data Analyst. I had trained as a Data Analyst during my final 3 years in the Army. I was right back in the same office I had been in before. Eventually I would work my way up the ladder to become a programmer.

In July of 1983 a couple of analysts from MILPERCEN came to Fort Meade to test an update to the automated personnel system, SIDPERS. After talking to them for awhile they suggested that I apply for a job to work with them at Alexandria, Virginia. They said I could do half as much work for twice as much pay. In December of 1983 I went to work for the Field Military Systems.

About a year later I was sitting at my desk going over some programs when I heard a soldier behind me asking one of the other workers about a Recreational Vehicle he had for sale. The voice was unmistakable. It was Platoon Sergeant (PSG) Hensley, who was now a Sergeant Major (SGM). Needless to say I messed with his mind for about 10 minutes about Vietnam. I told him I wanted the camera that I gave him on 2 June 1969. He didn’t remember it. We talked for a while. He didn’t even remember me, but he did remember the incidents with Ash, Clause, and Diaz. He told me that he was messed up in an ambush and eventually got Medivaced to Japan. Then I asked him about Cpt. Hottell, one of our former company commanders. He said that Cpt. Hottell was killed in a helicopter crash along with Major General George Casey, the 1st Cavalry Division Commander. Cpt. Hottell had by then become the Generals aide. They were on their way to present awards related to the incursion into Cambodia and the helicopter ran into a mountain in bad weather. I could tell it bothered Hensley just to talk about it. Hensley thought highly of Hottell and related that he would have made General officer had he survived the war. After Hensley left I thought back to one of the last times I saw him. It was one of the worst firefights I ever participated in.

The dawning hours of 2 June 1969 brought the usual melancholy stillness of jungle outcropping. The air was cool as I arose and lit a smoke. As I looked out toward the other end of the perimeter the river beyond reminded me of an area on the Blackfoot River that I used to go fishing on years ago. I wondered at the time if I would ever see it again. For seven days now we had been humping the edges of the Dong Nai river in conjunction with Alpha Company. They were on one side. We were on the other. Periodically we would crisscross onto the islands in the middle of the river. Other than our point man walking up on a female NVA trooper with painted toenails and a couple of sightings of NVA troopers leaving the area we had met with no resistance. The point man was so shocked when the woman walked almost into him on the trail that he couldn't shoot her. Fortunately she didn't have a weapon and ran before he could regain his senses. We had come across a couple of caches of rice and weapons. When we blew the weapons cache someone had miscalculated the explosive power of the B40 rockets in the bunker. We were too close when the fuse was lit. It nearly blew our eardrums out not to mention the pieces of bunker roof and other assorted garbage that came raining down on us. It didn't mean a thing though. No one was hurt.

On the fourth night a lot of screaming and hollering erupted from the other side of the perimeter. Several minutes later four guys came through our area carrying someone delirious with malaria. He was kicking and hollering as they went by. They carried him about 25 meters out in front of our position to a Landing Zone that had been hastily cut during the day. A chopper had kicked our supplies out there just before dark. Now with complete darkness the Medivac chopper was having a difficult time landing. Finally, with the tail boom extending out over the river, the medics managed to load the man aboard and take off. The next three days were just a lot of hot, heavy, humping with nothing but empty NVA bunker complexes. We were about on par with Alpha company. Finally, at 0715 hours on that seventh day, the staccato 'pop-pop' of enemy weapons cracked the morning air. Several large explosions accompanied the initial contact. The shooting and explosions increased. I walked over to listen to the radio traffic. Our new RTO, Big John, didn't know the battalion frequency. For a moment I considered walking up to the Control Point (CP) to listen to their radio. But as I looked up that way I saw Cpt. Hottell milling around and changed my mind.

Cpt. Hottell was not what you could call a friendly type. In fact there were a lot of the guys that would just as soon send him to the happy hunting grounds. He was a hard man that would kick a dog when it was down. He usually wore black leather riding gloves and on one occasion I saw him carrying a black riding crop. On 17 May he had humped us on a forced march for about 600 meters in 110 degree heat. When he finally held the columns up we were in the middle of a clearing with waist high elephant grass surrounded by jungle on three sides. I was walking point on the right. Ray Owens was behind me. The rest of the platoon followed. To the left was another platoon walking parallel to us. Owens was so pissed when we did stop that he threw his M-79 on the ground and inadvertently threw his pack on top of it. About 20 seconds later a mortar tube started popping in the jungle on the left side of the clearing. We could see the discharge coming out of the end of the tube. My first thought was, ‘How the hell did the mortar platoon, who was in the rear, get up here so fast.' Our minds were so befuddled from the heat that we didn’t even consider that it was a gook mortar team until we heard the whistle of incoming rounds. About five or six rounds hit before any of us started firing back. Owens was hunting around for his M-79, not even realizing at the time that it was lying under his pack. After finally finding it he began lobbing rounds into the jungle. By this time the left platoon had opened the gooks started firing back at us with AK’s. In the mean time our people were starting to drop like flies from the heat. Taylor conked out along with several others in both platoons. Bob Pochopin was hit in the jaw with a piece of mortar fragmentation. Larry Theobald and another guy were also hit. The lights started to go out on me but I saw a large dead tree that had been previously blown down about 10 meters ahead. I crawled under it to get some respite from the baking sun. I drank some water. The lights came back on. By the time all the shooting stopped 20 men were on their way to the rear on Medivac’s for heat exhaustion. We secured the small bunker complex from where the mortar rounds had originated. The gooks had been in the middle of their lunch. There were still rice and fish heads boiling in their pots. They had run out the back door into the jungle. One of the men found some rice wine in an aluminum canteen. We all took a sip. It tasted as though the alcohol had leeched the metal out of the container. It was a terrible liquid. We set up that night on a low lying U shaped ridge. After digging in and setting out the trip-flares and claymores we sat down it relax. It was just beginning to turn dark when all of a sudden one of the trip-flares popped. It was close to the perimeter in a clear area. It was probably some small animal that had hit the wire so I removed the helmet liner from my helmet and went out and threw the steel pot over it to douse the light. Not soon enough though. Cpt. Hottell had seen the light and came over to investigate. By now the pot was a fiery red. He just kind of looked at the helmet and said something to the effect of 'good idea' and wandered back to the CP. By morning the charred pot had cooled off so I threw the liner back in it as we humped off. Somewhere along the line a news crew had flown in and was filming us as we humped out. After I passed the camera Cpt. Hottell stood there looking at my burned out helmet. He didn’t say anything to me, but did tell the Lt. to make sure that I got a new camouflage cover the next time we were re-supplied.

For the next two hours we sat around listening to the gunships spray the area with rockets and mini-guns. A couple of phantoms were on station above and periodically would dive in to release their 500 pound bombs and napalm. Towards the end it was the incessant buzzing of Light Observation Helicopters (LOCH) that stood out above everything else.

Eventually word filtered down from the CP as to what had happened. The A Company point squad had walked into an NVA ambush. The point man, carrying a case of C4, had been hit dead center with a B40 rocket. The resultant explosion obliterated him and killed the two men following. Within minutes 4 men in the point squad and a medic lay dead. 27 others in the company were seriously wounded during the withdrawal. Aborted attempts were made to retrieve the bodies. One of the LOCH's had been hit and fell into the midst of the NVA hornet's nest. The pilot and observer were missing and presumed dead.

From this report we all figured it was just a matter of time before we would saddle up, cross the river, and go into relieve them and retrieve the bodies of the dead. At 1053 hours the order came. We humped out to an area on the edge of the river. What was left of A Company had set up a perimeter and cut a Landing Zone (LZ) on the opposite edge of the river. On previous crossings we had used boats. Now the time factor didn't allow it. Choppers transported 8 men at a time to the LZ. It took about an hour to move the company.

For another 30 minutes we sat around waiting. Phantoms were still bombing the area. The incessant pounding of artillery was softening up the area, or so we thought. Finally the order came. We were going in three platoons in parallel columns. Our platoon would be flanked by the 2nd and 3rd platoon. Our squad was on point. Sgt. Sunde, Mr. Gung Ho himself, took the point followed by Ray Owens. Behind him a civilian photographer with a top of the line Nikon snapped pictures as he went. He didn't act at all nervous about the situation and must have figured that the gooks had pulled out. There was a sense of foreboding in the air among the rest of us. Taylor, our machine-gunner was saying silent prayers to himself, and telling others to be careful. I kind of scoffed if off when he told me. I never did like to admit to myself that things could get really bad here. The Lt. was briefing the photographer about the previous weeks activities. Big John followed meekly behind him. He hadn't been with us that long and didn't have a grasp of what was going on yet. I was next followed by Taylor, Tim Strauss and Bob Pochopin.

Arrival at the scene of contact portrayed the deadly game of hours earlier. Weapons and equipment, soaked in blood, lay strewn in chaotic patterns about the jungle floor. There was an almost absolute silence as we first viewed the area. It was short lived though.

'CRACK'... A single round and the hysterical scream of a voice, 'Get some fire out there'. Round two had begun. Within seconds the jungle was again vibrating with the sounds of automatic weapons. Second platoon, working the left flank, had already taken heavy casualties. I looked up towards the front and saw Sgt. Sunde on one knee shooting around the side of a tree. He never did have any sense. Maybe they didn't teach Shake and Bakes about the prone position I thought. Suddenly the jungle opened up in front of me as a B40 exploded. My only thought was that more would follow. You could hear the sound of the AK's moving toward our rear on the left flank. They were trying to close the rear door on us. Finally the word came to pull back. We were wasting no time in getting out of there. I had crawled about 10 meters and had just crossed a log on the trail when a tremendous force hit me from the rear. For a brief few seconds I saw stars. A B40 rocket had blown up directly over the area where I had been seconds before. I heard Taylor scream, 'God I'm hit'. He was scared and saying something about dying. He had shrapnel wounds on the neck and upper back. It didn't look that serious to me. I told him to keep going and that I would bring the machine gun. About that time a 51 caliber machine gun started knocking big chunks out of the log that I had just crossed. 51’s are not like AK’s. AK rounds you can hide from to some degree be getting behind trees, anthills, or berms. 51’s punch right through trees taking huge chunks of bark and wood with them as they exit along with anything else they might run into, including people.

The entire area was turning into a mad panic. The photographer came crawling by me at full speed with blood all over his side. He dropped his Nikon right in front of me. I policed it up. Most of the second platoon was now over in our area. Not wanting the burden of the MG as I tried to evade the 51’s that were coming in at ground level and not wanting to leave it for the gooks, I opted to take the gas piston out and leave the machine-gun. I took off back down the trail. I had gone about 25 meters when I ran into PSG Hensley. I asked him where Taylor was. He said he hadn't seen him. I gave him the Nikon and headed back up the trail. I figured Taylor had become disoriented from the concussion and wandered off down one of the adjoining trails.

When I got back to where I had last seen Taylor I put the gas piston back in the MG and kept going. About 10 meters up the trail I met Ben Goss, a guy who I had gone to Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) with. We set up the gun as the Medics were working on Big John. His radio had been blown in half and his back looked like a piece of raw meat. He was in the same spot I had been when the shooting started. I lucked out again I thought. As I sat there looking out to the front waiting for God knows what to happen I became aware of a dull ache in the rear of my left thigh. I reached around back only to find the unwanted reward of a handful of blood. I winced at the pain. Wes Smith, the platoon sergeant, asked me if I was hit. He had shown up from somewhere. There were two small perforations in my fatigue pants. I could still walk so I figured it must not be too bad. The shooting had now stopped.

Ben, Wes, and I waited until Big John was carried out. We took one last look around, took the machine-gun and a couple of cans of ammo that were lying on the trail and headed back to the main perimeter.

I still didn't know where Taylor was. When I got back they told me he had blacked out on the trail and Wes Smith had thrown him over his shoulder and carted him back to be taken out on one of the choppers. It turned out that his wounds were worse than they appeared. He also had shrapnel wounds to his left side, a piece in his spine, and another in his right hip. The Lt. had also been Medivaced with minor shrapnel wounds. Someone told me Owens had been trying to freak him out telling him he was going to die. I didn't know whether to believe it or not. Owens was one of those guys that was made for war, hard as hell. I don't think he liked the Lt. let alone anyone else. Somewhere along the line Tim Strauss took shrapnel in the arm and Bob Pochopin shot in the elbow. The last time we were in contact Bob was hit with shrapnel. He was one of those guys that if he had any luck it would be bad luck. As for my wound it was just two small pieces of shrapnel. The Medic was more concerned about infection or tetanus than any structural damage to the leg. I opted to spend the night and go to the rear the next day.

Not one man in the company was killed. But 47 were wounded. Combined strength of both companies was now about 90 men. There was a feeling of elation for those who had survived. Morale was high. A dead gook came floating down the river. How he got in the middle of the river was anyone’s guess. Several people were taking potshots at the body. Around the perimeter men were digging foxholes. Some of the deepest I had ever seen. Sgt. Sunde and two other men would be the listening post. At 2130 hours after blowing their claymores on monkeys they came back into the perimeter and set up at our foxhole. We could hear the sound of digging all night long. We thought the NVA were digging in for round three. In reality they were burying their dead and leaving the area. Strobe lights were set on each side of our perimeter. An AC 130 Spooky Gunship was on station above shooting snaky red patterns in the area of the digging. At 0119 there was a scream from the other side of the perimeter. I spent the night sleeping in the foxhole. Light and shadows danced around in synchronization with fires on the opposite side of the river. Just before dawn both our companies opened up with everything they had, a 'mad minute'. I had the machine-gun now. I pulled the trigger. A single shot was heard. I cranked another round into the chamber and fired again. Same results. After checking the gun out I discovered the gas piston was cracked. Lucky for me I never needed it during the night. We had just gotten this machine-gun two days ago. Taylor had lost the one he was carrying a week ago in the river during a crossing with ropes. Several of the men almost drowned.

The first chopper of the morning arrived at 0700. As I hopped aboard on the left Ron Thomas of A company, an old friend from Basic Combat Training (BCT) and AIT, jumped in on the right. He was going on R & R. I asked him what the scream was on his side of the perimeter. He told me that the gunship had accidentally fired up one of the foxholes. It was down from him and he wasn't sure how bad they were hurt. I felt sorry for the guys I was leaving behind. I suspected today would be even worse.

Back at the firebase the medics kept probing around in the holes in my leg for pieces of metal. Eventually they said that the pieces were too deep and so small that cutting in would cause more damage than just leaving them in. In time the pieces would work themselves out they said. They put a couple of patches on the wounds and sent me on my way. I was on bunker guard that night.

The following morning some Lt. came down to the bunker line and rounded up about 10 of us and told us to go up to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) and get some fresh fatigues, shave, and clean up. Some Army of The Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) General was coming to the firebase and he wanted to pass out some Vietnam Cross of Gallantry Medals. The Lt. didn’t care who got them. He just needed 10 men standing at attention when the General got there. We stood around for about 4 hours in the heat before they finally told us he had gotten side tracked at one of the other firebases. That night it was bunker guard again.

Four days later the company returned to the firebase. One of the guys told me that they gassed the area before going in. There was no resistance. After retrieving the bodies they wrapped them in poncho liners and laid them on the

LZ. The first bird in to pick up the bodies was loaded with a bunch of Cherries. As they jumped off Hensley was there to greet them with a, 'I'm First Sergeant Hensley, and we could have used you yesterday', as he looked at the bodies. The Cherries eyes opened like saucers at the sight of the bodies. That was just Hensleys way of introducing them to the harsh realities of war. Here today, gone tomorrow.

The B52's took over after we left that area. From the firebase we could see the arc lights above the tree line at night. The next three days we would stay on the firebase waiting for replacements. After we returned to the field we started working in platoon size most of the time. Tim went to work for Cpt. Hottell. Big John never came back. Owens caught malaria and left the field for a long time. Taylor got a job with some advisory unit to the Regional ForcesPopular Forces (RFPF). He had to live in one of their villages. A very bad job. He was worried about the locals cutting his throat during the night. He finally convinced them to send him back to Quan Loi to work. On 3 January 1970 he would be wounded again in a mortar attack. A piece of shrapnel struck him in his right ankle, broke the ankle, and fractured one of the metatarsal bones. He was Medivaced to Japan and spent 3 weeks in a cast before being shipped to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

A couple of months later Cpt. Hottell would leave the field to become the Battalion historian.

In 1990 I attended a reunion of the 1st of the 8th, 1st Air Cavalry Division, commonly known as the Jumping Mustangs, at the Washington Sheraton. Hensley went with me. Mentally I felt fine, but I entered the room where the memorabilia was I started to sweat uncontrollably. I’m sure a lot of the people who were assisting were wondering what was wrong with me. While rummaging around through all the pictures and stories I came across Cpt. Hottell’s epitaph. Hensley told me that a lot of the officers used to write theirs just in case they got killed. It was an impressive hand written document. After reading it I came away with a completely different understanding of this man.

Several years later I was given a book called 'Incursion'. It was about the Cavalry in Cambodia. There were excerpts about Hottell in it. There was also a picture of him with another officer. But whomever wrote the book obviously didn’t know Hottell. They referred to him as the tall officer when in fact he was the shorter officer. Nevertheless the book only added to my understanding of this man. He had one of those jobs that was a 'damned if you did it, or damned if you didn’t'. I knew the responsibility I felt for the lives of just the men in my foxhole. How it must have eaten at those that made decisions that affected the lives of hundreds I thought.

I was at the dedication of the Vietnam Wall. Possibly the most traumatic thing I have ever experienced. I have been back several times. Now days I have no desire to go there. Hensley never went. For years he lived in the shadow world where a good beer would wash the memories away. Those days have passed, but I am always there to remind him. Share the guilt and it becomes no ones' fault. I recall a time those many years ago when I was walking point in the open areas around the Parrot’s Beak. Hensley had come up to the front to see what was happening. It was an area of heavy booby traps. As he passed Owens, the man behind me, I said to him, 'Stick close to me, if I get blown away I’m taking someone with me'. He just gave me a wry smile.

Today, nothing has changed but the times. If I’m going to be miserable, so is he. Every time I get some piece of history of those days I make sure he sees it. And it’s just to see him cringe. The sadistic piece of me that was created long ago in the swamps and jungles is still there. And I suspect it always will be.

Rest in peace with the warriors.

Rest in peace with the warriors.