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Ordered to recover the bodies of two G.I.s who had died at the foot of Nui Lon, Lieut. Shurtz radioed: "We cannot move out." Lieut. Colonel Bacon pressed him for an explanation. ''We have a leadership problem up here," admitted Shurtz, an ROTC graduate from Davenport, Iowa, who had been in command of the company—normally a captain's post—for just three weeks. When Shurtz told Alpha to advance, five of his G.I.s stepped forward and demanded a helicopter in order to see the Inspector General. "Everybody was afraid," said one G.I. "We felt we should wait for some more support." Bacon asked for a count of the men who would not go, but Shurtz begged off because "they all stick together."
Under orders to "kick ass," as Bacon put it in classic military terms, the battalion executive officer and a top NCO helicoptered into A Company's hilltop camp. They found Shurtz emotionally wrung out; the five protesting G.I.s, draftees of 19 and 20, poured out a sullen catalogue of grievances: the constant fire fights, lack of sleep, hot food and mail, fear of annihilation by Communists in well-protected bunkers. "One of them yelled to me that his company had suffered too much and that it should not have to go on," said Sergeant Okey Blankenship, a big, tough, 29-month Viet Nam veteran from Panther, W. Va. Blankenship replied that the enemy had abandoned the bunkers, and other companies far worse off than Alpha were still in action. "Maybe," he barked, "they have got something a little more than what you have got." Within minutes, Alpha was sheepishly moving out.
Caught in the Middle. Though Army spokesmen insisted that the problem was confined only to the five protesters, most of the company had in fact backed them up. "Nobody wanted to go back down the hill," Private First Class Fred Sanders, a 23-year-old Alpha Company medic, later told newsmen. "I guess the lieutenant was caught in the middle between us and the battalion."
No action was taken against any of the men. Bacon, who felt that the company had been "dragging its feet" all along—"I would tell them to move out at 0600 and they would move out at 0630"—promptly transferred Shurtz to an administrative post at battalion headquarters and brought in an experienced captain. The Army insisted that the incident was not unusual and certainly did not amount to a "whiff of mutiny," as New York Times Columnist James Reston called it. Said Bacon: "I've seen similar things happen before." So have the troops. Two weeks ago, Specialist Four Robert M. Ferris of Wildwood, N.J., assigned to another company in the Song Chang area, wrote home griping about a green officer. "If I think my life will be in danger by doing some of his crazy things," he wrote, "I'll just tell him I'm not going anywhere."