Capt. William Carpenter, right, talks about how his company fought its way out of near-encirclement by North Vietnamese troops near Kontum. At left is 1st Lt. William Jordan. (Jack Baird / ©Stars and Stripes)
Capt. William Carpenter, right, talks about how his company fought its way out of near-encirclement by North Vietnamese troops near Kontum. At left is 1st Lt. William Jordan. (Jack Baird / ©Stars and Stripes)
At Dak To after the battle, Capt. William Carpenter, left, talks with Brig. Gen. Willard Pearson, commander of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Div. (Jack Baird / ©Stars and Stripes)
Comparing the beards grown during their ordeal are Capt. Walter Wesley, left, Capt. Walter Brown, center, and Capt. William Carpenter. (Jack Baird / ©Stars and Stripes)
Upon the fields of friendly strifeAre sown the seeds that,Upon other fields, on other days,Will bear the fruits of victory.—General Douglas MacArthur
CADET WILLIAM S. CARPENTER READ THOSE words blazoned on the gymnasium wall at West Point when he gained football fame as Army's "lonesome end" in 1958 and reaped All-America honors as team captain in 1959.
Athletes before Carpenter read and. remembered that: same epic motto and stepped from the long grey line of cadets into the pages of history — giving evidence of those words' value on the battlefields of World War II and Korea.
Carpenter's turn to uphold the West Point tradition of "Duty, Honor, Country" came in the dense, steaming, blood-soaked jungles of Kontum, Vietnam, last week. He has been recommended for the nation's highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor.
Capt. Carpenter, 28, and his 101st Airborne paratrooper company, were pinned down by a force of North Vietnamese regulars and outnumbered at least 3 to 1 in the mountain jungle some 30 miles north of Saigon. He called down a flaming napalm air strike on his own position to stop the swarming communists on one of the war's bloodiest battlefields.
"Bring it right in on top of us," he instructed U.S. planes above the savage close-up fighting. They did. It wiped out the enemy and turned the tide. Carpenter and a handful of his courageous "Screaming Eagle" unit survived the hellish flaming jellied gasoline. General William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, pinned a Silver Star — Carpenter's second — on the hero's chest.
And General MacArthur's memorable motto inscribed on the gymnasium wall once again exemplified the fruits of victory.
THIS WAS NOT CARPENTER'S FIRST HEROISM IN VIETNAM combat.
Back in December of 1964 — during his first tour of duty in Vietnam — the soft-spoken young athlete knocked out a Viet Cong position with a five-yard forward pass, using a hand grenade instead of a football. He already had been hit with a communist bullet through his throwing arm when .a Vietnamese airborne brigade he was advising carne under heavy VC fire in a sugar cane field 12 miles from Saigon.
Carpenter's group drew heavy fire immediately after being dropped by helicopters. He caught a round in his arm while changing magazines in. his carbine. Another bullet hit his radio, spun him around and knocked him down. "That really shook me up," he recalled later. Carpenter kept .fighting and threw a grenade at the VC position only five yards away. Eight Viet Cong bodies were found in the area later.
The month before, Carpenter was grazed by another bullet in an operation near the southern tip of Vietnam.
And back he came for a second tour in the combat zone. Both times he volunteered. "I wanted to get into the fight here. I asked to come," the dedicated young officer said.
IT WAS BACK IN 1958 THAT CARPENTER'S TEAM BROUGHT Army an undefeated football season. They tied Pittsburgh 14-14 that year and beat Navy 22-8 in the traditional service clash at Philadelphia with Carpenter playing end and another Vietnam hero, Pete Dawkins, at halfback. Dawkins won the Heisman Trophy that year as the nation's outstanding halfback.
Carpenter captained the 1959 Army eleven that lost to Navy that year 43-12. Handicapped part of the season with a separated left shoulder, Carpenter managed to catch a Joe Caldwell pass for a touchdown against the Middies.
He became nationally famous as college football's "Lonesome End." In that unique Army offensive strategy, Carpenter was used primarily as a decoy. He wouldn't go into any of the Cadet huddles, standing by himself split far out from the line of scrimmage positions.
Legendary Army grid coach Earl (Red) Blaik called Carpenter "the greatest end I ever coached at West Point."
Carpenter played a little more football at Fort Campbell, Ky., where he was stationed for 27 months, but his gridiron days are over forever, he says.
He wrote football history at West- Point and is making history. in Vietnam. With men like Carpenter in the lineup, America will never lose.
