Death of a Marine

Richard was walking point – or near it – the morning he died, two months later, in a firefight outside the Khe Sanh Combat Base in rugged mountain terrain near the Laotian border 25 miles southwest of the church.

A leatherneck consoles his wounded buddy as they await an evacuation helicopter. (By Frank Johnston, Courtesy UPI/Corbis-Bettman)

Khe Sanh – the name still has a fearsome ring.

The 77-day siege that would begin there early in 1968 – six months after Richard was killed – lives in memory as the American Dien Bien Phu, the mountain stronghold lost by the French in 1954 as their colonial rule trickled to a bloody end. The Americans managed to hold Khe Sanh, but the punishing siege – along with the massive enemy Tet Offensive Jan. 31 – helped turn the nation against the war and bring about LBJ's decision not to seek reelection.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the legendary Communist commander, sought to lure the Americans into the mountains to "bleed them without mercy" – a prescient counterpoint to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's strategy of breaking the enemy's will with high "body counts." Lt. Gen. Lew Walt, the Marine commander in Vietnam, had long resisted the bait, believing his troops should concentrate on patrolling the heavily populated coastal lowlands. That's how Richard spent most of his combat tour.

In the end, Giap had his way. Gen. William Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, thought he could take the war to the mountains and smash the NVA before it ever reached the lowlands, using massive artillery and air support not available to the French in 1954. He was both right and wrong. The Americans won most of the battles, and lost the war. In the end, it was the American body count that would matter.

By the spring of 1967, just before Richard's picture was taken in the church, Giap was already increasing the NVA presence around Khe Sanh and, in late April, fierce fighting had broken out near the combat base – the "hill fights" that turned out to be among the bloodiest of the entire war. Frank Johnston had photographed them.

Mike 3/26, with the rest of Richard's 1,184-man battalion, moved to Khe Sanh in June. By the time of his last patrol, the area was quiet. There was a countrywide "lull" in the war, according to news reports – only 175 American combat deaths the previous week.

It was so calm, Crangle recalls, that one day as Richard's 1st Platoon was coming in off patrol, "One of the guys put a flower in his rifle barrel. Then the whole platoon did, so the whole platoon came wandering back into Khe Sanh and everybody's got a goddamn flower stuck out of their M-16."

It wouldn't last.

On July 21, Richard died almost instantly, shot through the left side of the forehead by what a report termed "extremely accurate sniper fire." Four others were killed, and 18 wounded. The enemy that day was not the Viet Cong guerrillas Richard had denigrated when he'd first arrived in Vietnam – "the worst shots known to mankind" – but seasoned NVA professionals, Giap's best.

"The company was on a search and destroy operation when they came under heavy enemy automatic weapons fire," DeBona wrote Richard's parents a few days later. "In the fight that ensued your son was critically wounded. A corpsman rushed to his side and administered first aid but Richard failed to respond and died of his wound at 10:05 a.m. It may comfort you to know the last rites of the church were given. ... Richard's cheerful disposition, uprightness and devotion to duty won for him the respect of all who knew him."

In 1990, when Robert Sutter was seeking further information about his brother's fate, DeBona wrote him in more detail: "Mike Company was used as a screen[ing] patrol force. We'd usually work out from the combat base and conduct six- to seven-day patrols looking for the NVA or any sign of them. On 21 July, we were in our fourth or fifth day.

"The plan was to have two platoons, 1st and 3rd ... conduct a large semi-circle sweep operation. The terrain was largely elephant grass that varied in length from waist to shoulder height. The area we were sweeping towards was somewhat wooded. ... The 2nd Platoon, along with the section of 81 mm mortars, remained in our night defensive position [as] the reaction force if we made contact. ...

"The 1st Platoon (Lt. Crangle) was the point and 3rd Platoon ... was slightly to the right. ... As we neared the woodline, Lt. Crangle's radio operator reported that 1st Platoon had found signs of fresh enemy defensive positions in the elephant grass. Shortly thereafter Crangle [radioed] that the point of his platoon 'smelled' the enemy."

Richard had only seconds to live.

Crangle, not far behind the Atlantan, recalls the point radioing that they'd found flattened elephant grass slowly rising. "I said, 'Oh man. ... Keep your eyes open. Keep moving.' We hadn't gone more than another 20 steps when all hell broke loose. Rounds were zipping everywhere. ... The really nasty twelve-sevens – [.51-caliber machine guns] normally used for anti-aircraft – when those things are coming at you it sounds like the biggest bullwhip, and they were snapping all around."

From Our Audio Gallery "At Khe Sanh ... we were out seven days in the boonies looking for a firefight. ..."   – 2nd Lt. Chandler C. Crangle describing the fight where Sutter was killed.

The man in front of Crangle took a bullet through a CS grenade on his belt "and suddenly there's this tremendous flash and plume of white smoke. ... He's screaming and thrashing around because this thing is burning him [and] there's mass confusion. ... I got three or four lungfuls of CS gas [and] I'm flopping around like the proverbial dead fish [and was] reported KIA."

But Crangle recovered, rallying his Marines in an effort to reach Richard and the others in front of them.

Marines carry a wounded comrade toward a helicopter evacuation point at Hill 881-North. (By Frank Johnston, Courtesy UPI/Corbis-Bettman)

"I had an M-16 in each hand. I said, 'C'mon, we've got to go find those missing guys.' We went booming back up there and we found all of them. ... Sutter, bluntly put, was deader than a doornail. All five of them were within 10 or 15 feet of one another. ... It was like a shooting gallery for the bad guys."

DeBona, too, remembers it vividly.

"What you always ask yourself is, 'What could you have done different?' Because, you know, these were my kids."

He sobs gently into the phone – this Montana fisherman who'd won the Navy Cross for "extraordinary heroism" near Nha Tho An Hoa just seven weeks after Richard's death.

"There's nothing they wouldn't do for you. They're the best America had to offer. And I would like to think that Richard didn't die in vain. As far as the Marine Corps goes, he didn't. ... You don't die for an ideal. You die for your fellow Marines."

Requiem

After Robert Sutter phoned Frank Johnston in 1988, he wrote him a letter describing "the range of feelings that resurfaced" after their talk.

"On my part, there was a great degree of hero worship for Richard, and for many years. ... I chased his shadow, wanting to follow in his path. ... At age 25, as a junior captain in the Marines, it dawned on me that there was no shadow left to chase. ... Yet I have often wanted to know what kind of Marine Richard was. Your description today of a brave young man was in keeping with what I would have imagined."

Johnston sent him a large print of the photo in the church, inscribed "To the Sutter Family." The two became friends, sharing stories of the gallant Marine they'd both known. They visited one another's families, spent long hours discussing the war.

Late last year, Robert wrote a cousin explaining his quest for the meaning of Richard's life and death:

"I have researched and studied the war intensely. I have many friends who fought there and were wounded, physically and mentally. I didn't serve there, and yet for 30 years I have carried some deep mental wounds of my own.

"Wounds of the soul."