The Jolly Roger Gyrenes

By Edward Hymoff

May 1967, Saga Magazine

“They were a legend in WWII and Korea, and today, in Vietnam, their “colors” – a skull and crossbones – are again being carried into battle.  That’s C Company, 1^st Battalion, 7^th Marines – the most colorful, profane, and best damned fighting outfit in the Corps.”

This is the story of a company of U.S. Marines who bear a proud tradition whose beginnings have been lost in time.  These men of Charlie Company, 1^st Battalion, 7^th Marines cannot be stopped by the enemy in Vietnam – just as their predecessors who served in “C” company 1/7 in two previous wars, proved that nobody can stand up to the doughty Leathernecks of the unique company of men known throughout the Corps as the troops of “Suicide Charley”  - The Editor

“Hell, not Suicide Charley!” the tank platoon Gunny sergeant exclaimed immediately following this up with a number of choicer expletives.  He had just received the word (last December) to move his section of three tanks into the line to support “C” Company of the 7^th Marines.

            “Suicide Charley!” another senior Marine sergeant exploded.  What followed was definitely unprintable.

            “A jinx outfit, and I’ve got to join ‘em,” sadly commented the senior sergeant who headed up a small detachment of engineers.

            Each of these Marines had one thing in common with 170 other Grunts, the Marine Corps infantrymen: they were all destined to serve under a flag that is strange not only in the annals of the U.S. Marine Corps’ tradition, but in the entire history of the U.S. military as well.

            The flag actually exists.  In fact, two flags exist – because one is ancient and faded, while the other is new and colorful in all of its black and white glory.  However, the company flag is seldom displayed although “C” Company’s insignia can easily be seen as “visitors” move into an area staked out by the fighting Marines of Suicide Charley.

            It was a year ago, after “Operation Indiana,” that a 7^th Marine Regiment MP named Cpl. Wallace G. Estes received his transfer to Suicide Charley.  “I didn’t volunteer,” he recalled with a grin last December at the company command post.  “I was volunteered.”

            Whatever he was volunteered for, he was quickly to make sergeant and win the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.  But at the time he was transferred to “C” Company 1/7, he was a bit apprehensive.  The enemy had taken its toll of Suicide Charley during Operation Indiana, but the Marines had held their positions- despite the battalion size attack launched against the outfit the commanded by Capt. Herbert Walker.

            The stubborn CO had called for artillery fire virtually on Charlie Company’s positions as the main force guerrillas stormed through the jungled tree line and across the rice paddies west of the Chu Lai combat base south of Da Nang.

            “That’s suicide!” an artillery officer reportedly exclaimed after Captain Walker’s request reached the Fire Direction Control Center.

            “Hell,” Walker snorted, “that’s why we’re called Suicide Charley.”

            However, few Marines – even those who are now assigned to this unique company- are aware of the exact derivation of their company’s nickname or the skull and crossbones flag that is the unofficial insignia of this fightingest outfit in the Marine Corps.

            It all began on October 24, 1942, when the 1^st Marine Division was occupying a defensive position around Hendersen Field on Guadalcanal.  The 1^st Battalion of the 7^th Marines was the commanded by salty and profane Lt. Col. Lewis  B. “Chesty” Puller, who was determined that the Japs wouldn’t break through his line and smash the vital airstrip that the Leathernecks were using.

            “It’s a suicide mission”, he was told “but you’ve got to hold no matter what.”  The battalion CO nodded silently.  Whatever his thoughts, he was determined to prevent the enemy from taking the airstrip.

            “So it sounds like a suicide mission,” he later told his company commanders.  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.  Anyway, what do you gyrenes want to do, live forever?  Now go out and hold that goddamn line!”

            And hold they did.

            Charlie Company was flanked by Baker Company on the right and Able Company on the left.  At approximately 10 P.M. on the night of October 24^th, the Japs launched a major offensive throwing three regiments and a brigade – one and two thirds divisions – against the battle-weary, disease-ridden Marines of “Chesty” Puller’s understrength battalion.  More specifically, the brunt of the enemy attack was launched against Charlie Company’s positions.

            The fanatic banzai charges rolled up to the line of Marines who, in turn, rolled them back – leaving the jungle littered with enemy dead and wounded.  The following morning found the defensive line still intact as the Marines scrambled through the dense jungle searching for their dead and hauling off their wounded to nearby aid stations.

            Later that morning, a crude flag appeared over Charlie Company’s position.  It consisted of a piece of white Japanese parachute material with a skull and crossbones crudely painted on it.  Also inscribed were the words “Suicide Charlie, 1^st Battalion, 7^th Marines.”  Before too long this flag became shredded by bullets and shrapnel – but it continued to appear throughout the hard fought battle for Guadalcanal.

            In short order, Suicide Charlie became a legend among the Marines in WWII.  A skull and crossbones insignia may have appeared elsewhere during the war, but for obvious reasons it was quickly ordered away with.  Not so the unofficial insignia of “C” Company 1/7 Marines.

            After the Canal was secured, the skull and crossbones flag wasn’t seen again until the battle of Peleliu.  During one particular phase of that bloody battle, a replica of the original appeared briefly to inspire the tired Marines to victory.

            The legend of Suicide Charley grew way out of proportion to the deeds of its Marines during WWII and it wasn’t until the Korean War that the stage was again provided for the next appearance of this battle symbol.

            Many of the Marines during the Korean War were retreads called back to active duty from their reserve units.  These knowledgeable old-timers regaled the younger men in the company with the tales of WWII’s famous Suicide Charlie.  During a trip to Japan on R&R (rest and recreation), some young members of “C” Company 1/7 had a flag made and proudly carried it back to Korea just in time to be caught up during the bitter fighting at the Chosin Reservoir.

            They brought back a flag made of yellow silk and black lettering with the designation “Charley” misspelled.  The familiar legend of WWII was reborn.  The flag was carried out of the “Frozen Chosin” that bloody November of 1950, and later was set up wherever Charlie Company happened to be positioned along the 1^st Marine Division line.

            After the Korean War, the flag was carried wherever “C” Company happened to be stationed or even bedded down.  About 1960, now faded by age to a sickly green with lettering a dirty white, it was displayed with pride in a specially-built trophy case.  Then, about three years ago a new flag was put together to replace the Korean War banner.  In July 1965, the 7^th Marines stormed ashore in Vietnam and the familiar skull and crossbones marked the men of “Suicide Charley”.

            It wasn’t too far from the Chu Lai base that Suicide Charley was bedded down around a vital hill overlooking sprawling rice paddies and coastal Highway #1 that snakes from Saigon, 500 miles south, all the way down to the 17^th Parallel which divides the communist north from the embattled south.

            At the base of the hill-top CP is a Vietnamese cemetery through which all visitors to “C” company must pass.  Then, after a a climb up the sandy hill, there is the inevitable command post bunker, outside of which is a black painted slab of wood upon which is inscribed Suicide Charley’s vital data beneath the skull and crossbones.

            From within the bunker one can hear the booming drawl of the company’s Top, huge, towering 1stSgt William L. Deloache, who tops the scales at 250 pounds and looks down on the mass of mortals from six feet five inches.  In fact, the “Top” is a unique noncom – he’s a combat Marine from the word go, and wherever he goes he expects his men to follow, “or I’ll have their asses.”

            They followed him last November and were hit from  two sides by the Cong in a vicious 30-minute fire-fight just a few miles south of Chu Lai across the Tra Khuc River.  The men of “C” Company had been landed in a sandbar on the south shore of the river, where they began a sweep in search of a battalion of communist guerrillas who had been reported in the area.  The south Vietnamese peasants cowered as Sergeant Deloache strode, like an angry giant, through the village of Trung Phuoc, hollering to his men to check a hut or poke around behind another structure.

            The Marines found VC propaganda books, song sheets and pamphlets on tactics and demolition.  The Cong were around.

            “C’mon, head’s up,” the sergeant from Alabama boomed.  “Ole Charlie’s around heah somewheres just waiting to knock one of you off.  Now stay alert!”

            The younger men stiffened.  When the Top spoke, men just naturally jumped.  Nobody dared mutter a snide reply beneath his breath – or even think a nasty thought against the Top – because the sergeant had all the answers.  Specifically, 26 years of them in the Corps.

            Marines came running up to the sergeant for instructions, virtually ignoring Capt. Ben Goodwyn, the outfit’s CO.  The CO wore the rank, but the gigantic sergeant carried the weight.  It was one of those strange situations, despite the fact that the CO was a top-notch combat commander who was perfectly capable of handling any shooting situation.

            “Top,” the CO ordered, “we’ve got word that Cong buried weapons and ammo here.  Let’s get the engineers on this.”

            “Aye, skipper,” Sergeant Deloache answered and hollered for his engineer, one of the 70-odd men from other Marine units who were attached to Suicide Charley.

            Using mine detectors, the engineers failed to come across any of the supposedly buried weapons.  Captain Goodwyn decided it was time to have his men pulled out by chopper; he radioed for the Ch-46s.

            Sergeant Deloache was sitting on a log talking to one of his junior noncoms when-suddenly-the communists came roaring out of their holes.  The rattle of automatic and machine gun fire chewed into the log he was sitting on, and the huge noncom deftly hurled himself to the ground, shouting for the others to hit the dirt.  From the south shore of the river bank additional fire began pouring into the men of Suicide Charley.

            “Call in the Hueys!” the Top yelled to his radio operator, as he opened fire with an M-14 that he handled like a sawed-off broomstick.

            Sgt. Robert A. Pesaniello scurried toward the CP group as bullets dug up the dirt beside him.  A scout from Recon assigned to Suicide Charley, he crawled up toward the tiny group clustered around the sergeant.

            “Part of that Cong battalion’s out there, sarge,” he reported.

            Deloache grunted.  There was nothing his men could do until the fighter-bombers moved in behind the gunships.  “Keep cool!!” he yelled to his men.  They were kids in his eyes, and they had to be reassured at times-for that’s the way it really is on the battlefield.

            For 30 minutes the Cong poured in heavy fire, while the Marines fought back with all they had, meager by comparison through it was.,  Then the Huey gunships appeared and began to hose the Reds with lead.  A-4 Skyhawks screamed in a nd unloaded high explosive rockets that chewed into the ranks of the hidden enemy.  Then, as suddenly as it began, the fight was over.  The enemy fled.

            The choppers moved in and the Marines of Suicide Charley were taken out – “extracted”, as they say in Leatherneck lingo.

            It was after that incident, a routine patrol, that the “Top” got the word that he had been grounded.  No more patrols, Company first sergeants just don’t go on patrol.  They handle administrative duties in the rear.  And that’s the way it was going to be for First Sergeant Deloache.

            But the people at the 1^st Battalion CP hadn’t reckoned.with Suicide Charley’s “top”  He went all the way to the CO of the 7^th Marines and word came back from the regimental commander, Colonel Snoddey, that “C” Company’s 1^st sergeant was an exception.

There were other exceptions in Suicide Charley, too.  The first Marien to get the Navy Cross in 1^st Marine Division came out of Suicide Charley.  Pfc. Alvin S. Lapointe, from Greenville, NH, came through “Operation Indiana” with flying colors.  In fact, it could be said that the operation succeeded because of the short, wiry rifleman and his buddies in Suicide Charley.

A Viet Cong main force regiment had set up defenses in a series of hills and were well dug in just waiting for the 7^th Marines who-sooner or later-would have to sweep and clear the area.  It was a time when the Viet Cong were cocky.  In early 1966 they still believed that they could lick any American – and especially the U. S. Marines.

The last vital hill remained to be taken by the men of 1/7, and the Grunts in Suicide Charley had the mission of assaulting the heights.  Once it was taken, the Division G-3 could close out “Operation Indian.”  But until the hill was definitely Marine real estate, the game was still fast and loose!

A pattern of crossfire from enemy 50 caliber machine guns ripped into the ranks of Suicide Charley.  Private LaPointe winced as he saw his buddies fall at his side.  He had to knock out the guns.  But how?  Every time he lifted his head one of the heavy made-in-Red China machine guns would open up and dirt and bits of bush would splatter him from the force along the lead.  As LaPointe began crawling along the ground as he felt something tug at his pack; one of the heavy bullets had just grazed his back and ripped through the loose folds of nylon.

“Somebody cover me!”  the lack-haired youngster finally shouted in exasperation.  “I’m going to get those guns!”

It was the type of battlefield heroism that is strictly limited to movie sets.  Shouting at the top of his lungs, LaPointe leaped to his feet and began chargin one of the enemy positions.  He zigzagged up the sandy slope firing his M-14, which was set on fully automatic.  When he came close to one of the machine gun positions, he suddenly halted and hurled a grenade into the camouflaged bunker.  It exploded with a muffled roar and a cloud of dull gray smoke.  He dived into the bunker shooting.  One gun was knocked out.

LaPointe paid scant heed to the still figures of Viet Cong slumped over the knocked out weapon.  There was still another machine gun spitting lead.  Further down the slope his buddies kept up an incessant screen of rifle fire.

“Get the bastards!” somebody yelled from below.

“C’mon, LaPointe,” another voice boomed.  “You’re close enough.”

The wiry Marine took a deep breath, and then leaped to his feet and once again began rushing across the slope toward another enemy machine gun position. “Hiyiyiyi!” he yelled as he ran shooting.  His M-14 spat rapid fire.  The muzzle of the Viet Cong machine gun swung in his direction and he dived against the wall of earth that outlined the bunker just as the gun cut loose only inches over his head.

He pulled a grenade from his pocket, yanked the pin and breathed a moment or two before shoving it through the firing aperture.  It exploded hollowly and he scrambled up and ran to the rear of the bunker and dived in shooting.  Two Viet Cong lay dead, their bleeding bodies ripped by the force of the explosion.  However, a shot rang out.  A bullet slammed into the machine gun and richocheted off with a clanging whine.  He jerked back.  Against the slope was a man-size hole and within a dim form moved deeper into the gloom of the tunnel.  LaPointe swung his gun toward the opening and squeezed the trigger.  Nothing happened.  He was out of ammo.

With one hand he felt along his belt for another magazine.  Nothing.

“Damnit,” he grunted – with a few additional choice phrases thrown in for added emphasis.

            There was only one thing to do.  He dropped the rifle and pulled out his K-bar knife and hurled himself into the hole.  A shot rang out and a slug whizzed past his ear.  Then it was too late for the hiding guerrilla.  A silent fury descended upon the unlucky Viet Cong and cold steep ripped him open from navel to the middle of his rib cage.  LaPointe backed out of the tiny tunnel, his knife dripping blood and his hands covered with crimson.

            He stuck his head up and shouted to his buddies in Suicide Charley.  Two guns were knocked out.  Somebody hollered for the Marines to move up and with a roar the Leathernecks leaped to their feet and charged up the slope.  There was no stopping Suicide Charley now.  They routed out the rest of the enemy guerrillas who were left on the hill and “Operation Indiana” came to an end – thanks to the fighting Marines of “C” Company 1/7.

Combat time naturally takes its toll of men, and those who’ve served in Suicide Charley have been no different than men from other outfits.  It’s true that sometimes it seems that this one particular company has been in heavier action than other outfits, but in the last analysis their losses are no more nor less in number than those taken by other companies of Marine Grunts who are fighting the same war.

            But this company still seems to attract more than its share of combat.  For instance, there were those in Fort Page who caught it bad one night.  Last fall “C” company was moved to its present location.  Bolstered by about 70 more men from the Amtrac battalion, from the 11^th Marines, the artillery regiment, and other supporting units, Suicide Charley was given the job of holding an important pile of dirt that had lost time and again to the Viet Cong when the South Vietnamese Army had been deployed in the same area.  Below the heights is an old building that may have been a school or a regional official’s home during the days of French colonialism.  Now, however, it’s a fort named after a Marine named Page who was killed fighting with Suicide Charley some time ago.

If his first name is unknown, it’s only because the Marines of Suicide Charley have rarely been together in one place since the 7^th Marines first arrived in Vietnam in the summer of 1965.  Instead, this company of leathernecks is spread across a wide front holding down positions on two hills, at the fort and elsewhere in the 1^st Battalions sector.

“It’s that kind of screwy war,” explained Capt. Francis W. Carley, the CO of Suicide Charley.

It’s the kind of screwy war that had a young kid named Cetain shout, “Cease fire, cease fire!” during one fire fight because he was trying to go out and get a wounded buddy.  The Marines suddenly stopped shooting.  Surprisingly enough, so did the Viet Cong.  Cetain went after his wounded buddy, pulled him in and the shooting started again.

Or the time during “Operation Fresno” that earned a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry for Sergeant Estes who thrust his patrol into heavy enemy fire to relieve another squad that had been pinned down.  The VC flitted from bush to bush as they tried to outflank the pinned down squad and then out-manuever Estes and his men who were racing to the scene.

The determined noncom waved his men into position and they opened up on the enemy guerrillas.  One by one, the VC tumbled to the ground as hot lead slammed into the larger enemy forece.  Estes sighted down his M-14 and triggered a series of of short bursts that swept the enemy before him.  Two of the guerrillas rushed him.  Estes cut them down without hesitation.  But the cry of anguish from Cpl. Sidney Lee caught his attention.

“I’m hit, Wally!” he shouted.

“Corpsman!” Estes shouted toward the Navy medic who was nearby.  “Get Lee.  He caught one!”  The medic crawled toward the wounded Marine, while his buddies from Suicide Charley kept up a curtain of protective fire.  As quickly as the enemy attach had begun, it ended.  There were a few minutes of silence, and then the beat of a chopper moving in could be heard.  Somebody had called for a medevac chopper for Corporal Lee.

Estes and his men remained in the field that night.  Over chow they recalled the day’s events and chuckled as they talked about Corporal Lee’s wound.

“What was so funny about it?” Estes was asked as he reminisced about the action that won him the Cross of Gallantry.  He shook his head.  It was something that the men in his platoon would forever keep to themselves.

“You mean how Lee got shot in the ass,” the Top boomed with a grin, when I asked him about it at a later date.  “Hell, it could happen to anybody – and often does.”

But what hasn’t happened to everybody in the 1^st Marine Division are the adventures of Suicide Charley.  When, in early 1966, the Third Marine Amphibious Force command in Danang decided to open up Highway #1 from Chu Lai to Danang, Suicide Charley was selected to ride the convoy as shotgun.  It was a relatively quiet trip to Danang.  A few shots rang out from the hills as enemy snipers unsuccessfully struck at the convoy from long range.  But it was on the trip back a few days later that the Viet Cong made a determined effort to rip up the convoy.

The slow moving convoy rumbled down the highway.  Jeeps with radios zoomed among the trucks which, in turn, angled around the potholes.  Highway #1 hadn’t been used for years and time had taken its toll.  Repairing the road was impractical.  The VC only would blow more holes in the black top.  And it would be some time before the coastal area could be secured.  Meanwhile, the use of Highway #1 by periodic Rough Rider convoys would serve notice to the guerrillas that they wouldn’t always have it their way.

It was on this first convoy, on the return trip, that the Viet Cong decided to show the marines who really owned Highway #1.  The guerrillas opened up from the hills and expected the convoy to pick up speed and hightail out of the area – into another ambush further down the road.  But they were in for a surprise.  The convoy hit the brakes en masse.  The Leathernecks from Suicide Charley poured out of the trucks and jeeps and raced up the slope.  This was too much!  The guerillas fled.

Nobody, but nobody, messes with Suicide Charley.  That’s the way these Marines feel abou it.  And that’s why not a single man was lost on the first of the weekly Rough Rider convoys.

As time went on, Sergeant Deloache was kept busy with his paperwork, as well as spending time in the field with his Marines.  The paperwork consisted of keeping tabs on the Marines who came and went, either through constant rotation or who became casualties in combat.  He met each new man who joined Suicide Charley and then the replacement was farmed out to the platoon and squad which needed him most.  It could be months before the new man would visit Suicide Charley’s CP,  but the replacement quickly learned that he was under the personal scrutiny of the tall, husky “Top” – who was sure to pay a visit to the field at any time.

Meanwhile, the constant patrols through the rice paddies and the night-time ambushes continued for Sergeant Estes and his buddies.  There was the night during “Operation Utah” when Lt. Lewis Dale asked for volunteers to set up a night ambush and others to move out on patrol as decoys, sucking the VC into the trap.  Sgt Nick Navarro and Pfc. Tom Chasten along with Sergeant Estes and Corporal Bisky, the radio operator, went up to set up the ambush with Lt. Dale while the decoy squad moved along the river route.  The Cong opened fire on the decoys and revealed their positions.  The Marines along the river dropped to the ground and the ambush patrol opened fire, catching the enemy in a vicious crossfire that quickly decimated his ranks.  Estes killed two of three guerrillas, forcing the third one, who got away, to drop his weapon.

Meanwhile, one of the men in the decoy patrol had been wounded and began crawling towards Bisky.  A Viet Cong jumped up and began scrambling toward the wounded Marine to finish him off.  Bisky fired his rifle and killed the VC with two shots.  But the M-14 jammed just as another enemy guerrilla made a sudden appearance.

The tough radio operator dashed toward the VC he had killed and swept up the fallen guerrilla’s burp gun.  He wheeled around and dropped to one knee, firing the submachine gun and killing the second guerrilla who almost finished off the wounded Marine.  A Silver Star was eventually pinned on Bisky.

Even the “Top” is proud of the young Marines.  “They’re better than we were in WWII or Korea,” he volunteered quietly, so that the younger men who might be close by wouldn’t take it to their heads to swagger a bit at this public admission from their 1stSgt.

“They’re damned good men,” he repeated.  “But they have a tradition to uphold that goes back to my time in the Marines.  And by God, they’re going to live up to those who have served in Suicide Charley – the best damned outfit in the Corps.”

So much for the saga of Suicide Charley whose men are somewhere in the northernmost military sector of South Vietnam at this very moment battling the Viet Cong.  It’s that kind of screwy war.

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