I was also appointed to be the backup radioman. This meant that when the regular radioman (usually an 18 or 19 year old PFC) was wounded or killed it was my
Souvenirs of War ‘Nam a Go Go 5 duty to immediately take the squad or company radio and carry it. I was in the third squad of the third platoon of Kilo (K) Company. The radio designation for the squad leader was Kilo Three Charlie. (Three to designate the third platoon of Kilo Company, and Charlie to designate the third squad of the third platoon).
Much of the area south and southwest of Da Nang was very low. The Vietnamese for generations built mounded graves for burials. Often these mounds were the only things higher than the swampy water surrounding them. They were a foot or so above the water and about 6 or 7 feet in diameter and dome shaped. These graves were the only dry places to lie down to get a little sleep. Problem is all other living things such as snakes and bugs also chose those little islands for their dry refuges. Sleep was often interrupted by crawling or creeping creatures on your body.
Mosquitoes in particular were terrible, day and night. There was no refuge from them. One of the most important pieces of gear we had been issued were green towels. We kept these wrapped around our head and neck when trying to get some sleep to keep the biting bugs at least off our face. Ticks were also a serious problem. Often infections would set in after tick bites. They were also hard to remove. I once had a tick bite on the side of my face that swelled up badly. It took a couple of weeks for it to go away. We were issued a heavy duty mosquito repellant that helped, but it didn’t keep them all away and some critters seemed to like its taste. Usually there were dozens of mosquitoes buzzing around your face. Sweat and rain quickly washed off any repellant and mosquitoes and other bugs weren’t slowed in their attempts to get your blood.
Different things bothered different Marines, but for me one of the worst was the leeches. They were everywhere and they were terrible. They would attach themselves to every part of your body and you couldn’t feel them until they were so full of your blood that their weight made them obvious. Getting them off was difficult. You couldn’t just pull them off. Usually lit cigarettes were the best way to remove ticks, leeches and similar bugs or parasites. To this day the sight of a leech makes me sick to my stomach.
Snakes were also a major nuisance and danger. There were several very poisonous snakes that we often crossed paths with. We gave them names such as 3-step Charlie, meaning that after being bit a person could take about three steps before dieing. A snake we called the bamboo viper was also especially dangerous. These small banded snakes were very aggressive and would attack anyone who bothered them. Of course they were annoyed by our very act of walking through their habitat, thus resulting in a number of snake bites.
As might be expected malaria was also serious problem, especially if you failed to take the daily malaria pills that we were all issued. A very small number of men deliberately didn’t take them actually hoping to get sick and be shipped out of country, but that was rare, and even if they did get sick a person was just sent to the rear for a few days for treatment, and then returned to field duty. I always took my pills but once when I got very sick a corpsman told me that given the symptoms I probably had malaria. Being sick in the bush just added to the overall unpleasantness of the situation. We of course had received a number of inoculations prior to leaving for Vietnam, and received boosters once there to ward off a variety of diseases. One of the more unpleasant shots was just called GG — gamma globulin — administered for enhanced disease resistance. Almost always the shots were given by the company corpsman.
A common sight in the night sky was “Spooky” or “Puff the Magic Dragon”. These were DC-3’s, C-47s and later C-130’s that had been modified and fitted with several high-speed electronic machine guns called miniguns. They could lay down six thousand rounds a minute. The ammunition for the guns had red tracer bullets every so many rounds and you could see the curving red lines from the plane (which you couldn’t see) to the ground. In night fights they also dropped flares that would illuminate a large area for two or three minutes each. There were also flares designed for use in mortars and artillery. The night was often disrupted by flares. We carried small hand-held flares in each squad that we could shoot up for signaling other Marines. When we were on patrol at night and coming near our own lines, we would shoot up a pre-designated color of flare to let them know we were coming in. Friendly fire casualties were a problem in this type of combat and environment. We took great pains to know the whereabouts of friendly units and what they were doing. We could not depend on radio contact solely because the NVA and VC had acquired many of our radios from the battlefield or through agents working at our bases. They became skilled at impersonating American units on the radio. We had to be very careful about contacts or calls that we weren’t absolutely certain of. Within the company the radiomen knew each other and could recognize voices, but when we were operating with other units this wasn’t the case.
In most of the area it was the norm to shoot at sounds. The only people there were us and them, and if we knew it wasn’t one of us, it had to be one of them. Sometimes animals were the victims. I remember shooting a deer one night when we had noises in front of our foxholes. Very often these noises were in fact VC or NVA testing our lines, gathering information, or setting mines or booby-traps. Other times they were a prelude to a full attack.
One of the things that always struck me while in Vietnam was the lack of wildlife. I was always attuned to nature and wildlife while growing up and
I noted early on that there were few song birds and wild animals to be seen or heard in the Vietnamese countryside. There weren’t singing birds in the quantity that would be expected, especially considering the near tropical climate. On a Michigan spring or summer morning birds can be heard almost everywhere — that just wasn’t the case in Vietnam. I also saw few wild animals. I had a couple of theories for this: first, the locals likely would have killed and eaten wildlife on a regular basis to supplement their meager diets. There were no conservation laws restricting the killing of wildlife — or if there were they certainly could not have been enforced. My second theory is that soldiers of all the various fighting forces over a period of several decades would probably have shot animals they saw just for the hell of it. I remember hearing of a few incidents whereby a soldier shot a tiger in the jungle — sometimes in self defense, sometimes not. The lack of birds and animals was yet one more dimension by which this place was very different than anything I’d ever known.
Slowly the days and nights passed — one feeling and sounding much like another. There was no light at the end of this tunnel and certainly no feeling that we would survive the experience to talk about it later in life. One late afternoon on a typical day in the field our platoon came upon an abandoned farmhouse that was surrounded by a masonry wall. The house itself was made out of a masonry type of material, and was bulletpocked and long-vacant. It must have been a nice place to live probably prior to World War II. We wanted to use the house and yard for a secure night stop, but first had to check it out for enemy soldiers and booby-traps. I and one other man were sent forward to search the house and grounds. We carefully searched the house and surrounding yard and found nothing. We then went towards a nearby tree line (about 60 or 70 yards away) to check it for snipers, ambushes, or anything that seemed out of the ordinary. We hadn’t gone very far, walking through shallow water, when all hell broke loose. The entire tree line opened fire on us at close range. Many bullets screamed next to my head and I could feel the force of the bullets as they passed millimeters away from my body. Miraculously there was an old rice paddy dike nearly at my feet at that moment and I just dropped face down into the mud on the safe side of the little dike, which was about a foot high. Unfortunately my M-16 was under me in the water and mud. Bullets continued hitting the dike as I slowly squirmed around to face the sky rather than the mud. About that time the enemy must have figured they had killed me so they a
imed their fire a bit higher. The remainder of the platoon was well within their range as well, and they were exchanging fire. I could hear and feel hundreds of bullets just inches over my face; caught in the middle of crossfire. I put my head and rifle over the dike and began firing at shadows and smoke puffs from the ambushers’ rifles. (These were almost certainly local guerillas, as the better-trained NVA would not have missed
50 Souvenirs of War ‘Nam a Go Go 51 from that distance!) Unfortunately my rifle jammed with mud after a minute or two and I had to try to clear the jam lying on my back in the mud.
At the time I had no idea as to the fate of my partner. In all the excitement I didn’t know if he had been hit or was also returning fire. It turned out he wasn’t hit and was about 20 or 30 yards away, also returning fire from behind a small dike. One thing that is drilled into everyone in training, and we were reminding each other of constantly, was to not bunch up. We always kept enough of a distance apart so that one grenade or booby-trap would only result in one casualty — not several. This tactic worked fine in areas that were open, but in thick jungle areas we had to stay close simply to keep track of each other.
The ambushers broke off the engagement shortly thereafter and the rest of the platoon made their way toward the two of us. They were amazed to see us both alive — they fully assumed we had been killed. After the rest of the platoon got to us we continued to the wooded area to search out those who had ambushed us. We found several blood trails but the attackers had simply vanished into the forest. Because it was getting near dark we didn’t pursue them — that would have been folly in the thick woods at dark. It’s likely they had some tunnels or bunkers nearby.
We ended up spending 2 or 3 nights at that ‘compound’ as it was strategically located and provided a relatively safe base from which to run patrols and seek out the enemy. It was also near a river so it gave us a chance to clean up a bit. This residence not only had a house, though severely damaged, it also had a masonry wall surrounding a courtyard that provided further safe cover should it be needed. We occasionally ran across these abandoned homesteads in the Vietnam countryside. The vast majority of locals lived in grass and wood huts clustered in small villages, so these homes, which stood by themselves in the countryside, must have been owned by someone of considerable wealth relative to the majority of residents. They often had a pagoda in the yard for religious ceremonies. These small pagodas were a common sight throughout the country.
During this three month period we seldom were clean, and wore the same fatigues week after week. We and our clothes were always dirty. Washing up involved wading into one of the shallow stagnant rivers we came to. The water was muddy and didn’t do much to clean us off. “Jungle rot” was a common ailment as our feet were almost always wet and very dirty. Getting replacement gear was inexplicably difficult. While rear echelon troops had new boots and utilities, we wore clothes that were in very bad condition and at times had to wrap cords around our boots because the soles were flapping.
Dog tags were small metal tags with basic identification and blood type carried by every Marine and soldier. Something that only the grunts understand is the fact that we always kept one of our dog tags tied in with our bootlaces. The second was hung around the neck on a chain. This was so that severed legs could be identified. It has always bothered me that the several Vietnam War monuments I’ve visited in various states, showing infantrymen in combat settings, don’t show a dog tag in the boot lace. It just shows that a grunt was not on the advisory or design panel.
Being a newly assigned soldier or Marine in Vietnam was very hard. You had to learn a great deal in a very short time, or die. We derisively called new replacements FNGs. I knew several that were killed their first week in the field. After being in-country a couple of months I received a promotion to E-3 / Lance Corporal. It wasn’t much but it was something and it resulted in a few more bucks each month.
While most days of the first three months in-country run together as being much like the other, a few specific dates stayed in my mind for some reason. The first was March 15th. On that day our platoon swept through Booby Trap Alley again. We were going to try to clear the area.
About mid-morning the radioman was killed so I took on the radio. We took a lot of casualties while sweeping through — hit and run ambushes and boobytraps. At one point the corpsman and I got separated from the others due to the very heavy cover. We were very carefully following a faint trail when we came to an old overgrown wire fence on the top of a small dike — maybe 48” high overall, and all overgrown. Corpsmen normally carried a .45 caliber pistol but not a rifle. They of course always had a large bag of medical gear. Corpsmen have always held a special place in the hearts of Marines. Their bravery and life-saving skills are legendary. It was normal for them to never lead, but always be in the middle of the group for safety.
When we got to the fence I tried to crawl through a small hole in it, but the radio kept getting snagged on the old wire fence and I couldn’t get through. I was going to take the radio off and drag it through behind me when “Doc” (we called all corpsmen “Doc”) said he’d go through first and clear the fence out of the way. He got most of the way through when he activated a mine. The concussion knocked me out and when I came to moments later Doc’s severed leg, with the boot still on, was lying across my chest. Doc was a couple of yards away moaning in extreme pain. The human body does not break apart neatly. The look of protruding jagged broken and splintered white bones and bright red mangled flesh is beyond the ability of words to describe. I received minor shrapnel wounds; but certainly nothing disabling or life-threatening.
I immediately began calling for help on the radio, but at the same time the rest of the platoon was being hit hard. I tried to help Doc the best I could. He was in very bad shape but still alive. I tried to suppress the bleeding with gauze and cloths, and Doc was conscious enough to give himself a morphine shot. I stood guard at the spot where Doc lay wounded and eventu
5 Souvenirs of War ‘Nam a Go Go 55 ally several other Marines made it to our location. We eventually evacuated the dead and wounded and made it back to a safe area where they were choppered out on a Medivac copter. Doc was still alive, but barely. I heard some time later that he survived. I certainly hope so.
The radio saved my life or at least my body that day. Had I not had it on my back I would have been the first one through the opening and would have tripped the mine myself. Doc’s body and the small dike protected me from the flying shrapnel for the most part. Combat is very much purely luck or fate-oriented. Sometimes a bullet misses you by an inch, sometimes it hits you. Sometimes you miss stepping on a mine by an inch other times it feels your footstep and does its foul deed. It’s all very impersonal. A person just has to be smart enough to act in a manner that lessens the odds — they’re never eliminated and you can never account for fate or just plain bad luck.
The next two months were just more of the same and time dragged on slowly, with each day a challenge to our physical and mental resolve. There were rumors that because our unit had been so badly decimated we were going to be sent to the rear to perform guard duty at the Da Nang Air Base. I recall moving back to the air base for a few days but not for nearly as long a stay as we had hoped. After this brief period of providing security for a feared attack that didn’t materialize, we were sent back to the bush. In a letter sent to my brother in late March I noted that of the 45 men in our platoon when we arrived, there were nine of us left. That in less than five weeks.
We ascribed names to certain areas of the large tactical region we were responsible for. Besides Booby Trap Alley, there was an area we called Dodge City. Another area had the name Riviera — it was especially memorable in a very bad way as it was a swampy area not far from the South China Sea. The sand, swamps, bugs, and vegetation that was sadistically designed solely to poke and tear skin made patrols there very difficult. It was also a region that Charlie controlled and we entered at our own great risk
. In the Riviera there was a Leper Colony. I don’t recall ever going in the compound, but I do remember that the VC used it as a place to hide and for stashing weapons and supplies.
We gave the title Indian Country to the entire region — it meant no disrespect to Native Americans — rather it was used to describe the Wild West nature of the area and the absolute lawlessness and mercilessness of it all.
One of the more difficult aspects was preparing to go into one of these locales. As we started hiking in we knew what was awaiting us. The anticipation of the screams of men badly maimed by a mine, the sound of the jungle exploding in gunfire in an ambush, the smell of burned flesh and gunpowder mixed together — they were all very real and we could taste the anxiety as we moved in — knowing the inevitable was just minutes or hours away. We all silently hoped and prayed that today wasn’t our day, or that if it was, that death would come quickly with minimal suffering.
I can remember being on a patrol on my birthday (April 1st) thinking ‘so this is what my 21st birthday turned out to be’. As a kid I remember scheming with friends and neighbor boys about what we were going to do upon turning twenty-one — the age of official adulthood in the 1960s. We had big plans about all the wonderful and wild things we would do when we were finally adults in a legal sense. We anticipated many doors opening for us leading to freedoms and excesses on that magical birthday. We talked of fast cars, faster women, and flashing our IDs when buying booze with a selfimportant smile — yeah, we can legally buy this, what about it?! We didn’t take any casualties on that particular April Fools Day but we did kill a sniper before he managed to kill any of us.
Souvenirs of War Page 4
