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Hunting the Hunters. It wasn't that easy for Specialist Fifth Class Daniel Torres, 25, of Corpus Christi, Texas. A medic with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment of the Air Cav, Torres was standing by when a radioed cry for help came in from another company that had just been ambushed and decimated. Torres volunteered to go out with a rescue patrol, grabbed seven litters from MEDEVAC helicopters, and moved out. About 11 p.m. they found the wounded—some 45 men huddled around a giant anthill. On litters and on foot, 18 wounded got back. Torres searched out more wounded, then stayed on with them, using up all of his own morphine and bandages, then taking more from the musette bags of two dead medics near by. "Then," he recalls, "out in the dark I heard these North Vietnamese moving. Then I heard one of our G.I.s scream and say, 'No, no, somebody help me!' Then I heard an automatic weapon fired. They were hunting the wounded just like I was, but they were killing them."
Torres grabbed an M-16 automatic rifle and an M-60 machine gun and began hunting down the hunters. He killed three before dawn broke and the re maining 35 wounded G.I.s could be withdrawn. "I didn't think I'd live to see daylight," Torres said. "But somehow it came." He was recommended for the Silver Star.
Just a Boy. One of the wounded that Torres didn't find was Pfc Toby Braveboy, 24, a light-haired part-Cherokee rifleman from—of all places—Coward, S.C. Hit by three bullets, Braveboy didn't dare call for a medic, for the North Vietnamese were prowling close by. So he crawled toward the sounds of fighting. When North Vietnamese approached, he played dead. He was once so close to the Reds that when they decapitated a wounded American trooper, blood squirted all over him. Crawling on, he made it to a small creek and hid in the elephant grass, wrapping his T shirt around his mangled left hand. Then, without food, without equipment, with only a few water purification tablets, Braveboy settled down for a week-long wait.
At night he huddled against the shrub-grown creek bank for warmth. "But it was so cold, every night it was so cold, and the mosquitoes and bugs were terrible. Once I heard footsteps and four North Vietnamese went by. One of them looked me right in the eye and pointed his rifle at me. I raised my wounded hand and shook my head no. I don't know why, but he lowered his rifle and walked away. He was so young —just a boy, no more than 16 or 17."
Finally, on the seventh day, a bubble-nosed H13 Sioux helicopter fluttered close by. Braveboy unwrapped his hand and waved the bloody shirt for all he was worth. The chopper swung in overhead and dropped a cardboard box of C-rations. In it was turkey loaf, and only then did Braveboy realize that it was Thanksgiving eve.