Remembering A.G. Hensley
It was April 2023 when I received a call from someone in Tennessee. He said his name was Dallas Hensley, “A.G.’s brother.”
I knew about A.G.—one of the many young men in my dad’s infantry company who sailed to Vietnam in August 1966, SP/4 Arthur G. Hensley was also one of thirty-two killed in action during the company’s first year in Vietnam. Originally published in 2018, The Ground You Stand Upon tells of the day he died.
Later that afternoon, Alpha Company’s platoons were split up and moving on their own. 1LT James Harmon’s 2nd Platoon was searching along a small tributary stream of the Song An Lao, where a narrow offshoot of the valley jutted into the mountains. Marty Scull was walking point, followed by his buddy A.G. Hensley with his M-79 grenade launcher. Just behind was their machine gunner Bill Purdy and assistant gunner Ed Raciborski. The following is Purdy’s account of what happened.
Following the stream, the going was tough in the thick of the jungle, and we were moving slow. Lieutenant Harmon was on the radio with the battalion command chopper as a result of the slow movement. Following a heated exchange with the command chopper, our platoon was ordered to cross the stream and move on to a parallel trail. Normally, we avoided trails whenever possible due to ambushes. Before moving out along the trail, we took a five-minute smoke break where John Kruetzkamp, Ed Raciborski, and A.G. Hensley and I shared some C-Ration cheese crackers and a canteen of “iodine Kool-Aid.”
I can still picture it in my mind as if it were yesterday. When we moved out along the trail, we started across a clearing. Hensley was carrying his M-79 grenade launcher and approximately ten feet in front of me. Immediately ambushed; upon entering the clearing, Hensley was shot and killed, and another soldier was wounded. Lieutenant Harmon was instrumental in recovering Hensley’s body while we returned fire on the enemy’s suspected position. When it was over, Hensley’s body and the wounded were flown to LZ English.
Purdy thought that if Hensley had just gotten down and waited for the machine gun to be employed rather than immediately returning fire, his life might have been spared. In the ensuing firefight, he just kept firing his machine gun while others tried to get Hensley’s body along with the wounded. Raciborski loaded the ammo chains as Purdy fired, bringing up two more cans of ammunition as they ran low. Then he ran down to the stream and filled his helmet with water to cool off the barrel. When it was over, Purdy’s barrel was overheated, and its rifling worn out.
But aside from the fact that he was twenty-one years old from Limestone, Tennessee, there wasn’t any more about A.G. in our book.
I hadn’t spoken to Dallas—A.G.’s older brother—or any family members of A.G.’s before, but he had come across our book at some point. The reason for his call was to tell me that the Tennessee legislature had just voted to dedicate a bridge in honor of his brother. I told him that I knew some of A.G.’s army buddies who would probably want to attend the dedication.
Aside from Bill Purdy, I knew that John Kruetzkamp, Jim Hardenburgh, and Marty Scull had also been friends with A.G., all of them in the same platoon. But I’d only met them after our book was first published, at an Alpha Company reunion in 2019. Many of their memories are now included in the most recent revised edition published in September 2023.
John Kruetzkamp told of how he was clearing a Viet Cong tunnel when someone dropped a grenade into the other end, sending a wave of angry fruit bats at him—and when one of their lieutenants burnt his own hand while shooting off a flare and was awarded a Purple Heart.
Marty Scull recalled how a seven-foot boa constrictor crept into his foxhole while on guard one night. He also shared some memories of him and A.G. during their training at Fort Carson before going to war.
A.G. Hensley at Fort Carson, 1966
From Oregon, Marty Scull, known as “Scully,” was best friends with A.G. Hensley from Tennessee. Assigned to 1LT James Harmon’s 2nd Platoon, they’d been together since basic training. He recalled how Hensley chain-smoked cigarettes, how he could just lean against a tree and fall asleep in less than a minute, and how Hensley rented a car one weekend, and they drove out to Pueblo in a gleaming blue Corvette. Hensley liked to drive fast. “Why a Corvette?” Scully asked. Hensley said it was like the one he had back home, and he missed driving it since they wouldn’t let him bring it on post.
He also remembers the day A.G. died.
Scully recalled how 1LT Harmon had ordered them to go through this clearing and across a wide-open rice paddy. It looked like the perfect spot to get ambushed, and Scully argued against it. But Harmon was getting orders directly from battalion command, and there seemed to be no choice.
He told of how he had started across that same clearing Purdy spoke of with Hensley close behind, how they began crossing the rice paddy, how he was shot in the helmet and knocked into the water, how the ringing in his ears was louder than the gunfire, and how their radio operator had also been shot in the back. He faded in and out of consciousness during this time, so his memories are somewhat intermittent. Yet he remembers crawling back to Hensley through the rice paddy, seeing him lying in the water with his neck bleeding, and thinking he looked peaceful. He remembers looking up and seeing others sloshing toward them through the muck, then someone carrying him amid the sounds of yelling and radio traffic—then hearing someone say, “They killed A.G.”
And so it was that in 2023, a bridge was dedicated in honor of A.G. Hensley, killed in action on March 31st 1967, in his hometown of Limestone, Tennessee. His friends Marty Scull, Bill Purdy, John Kruetzkamp, and Bill Hardenburgh each spoke at the dedication on a beautiful July 8th morning. I asked his brother Dallas about A.G.’s Corvette that he had told Scully about at Fort Carson. “I don’t remember anything about a Corvette,” he said. “Perhaps he was wishing he had a car like that back home.”
Left – right: Marty Scull, Jim Hardenburgh, John Kruetzkamp, and Bill Purdy at bridge dedication
SP/4 Arthur G. Hensley Memorial Bridge, dedicated August 8th 2023
The 5/7th Cav Association also posted a nice article on their website: STATE OF TENNESSEE HONORS FALLEN 5/7TH CAV. TROOPER
A.G Hensley is also remembered on the Wall of Faces.