But most combat in Vietnam was anonymous. It was not documented in newsprint or recorded by television cameras. The participants of those battles were utterly alone. They had no audience and history will never record their deeds. Battles such as the several day struggle to stay alive in Operation Allen Brook were “minor” affairs that rarely got mentioned in major media outlets. To the people there they were anything but minor. Rather they were days filled with death and heroism, friendship, honor, and sacrifice, despair and pain; but they were largely anonymous as far as the outside world and history were concerned. The stories of what happened on those days will die with the participants. During my tour I was involved in at least a dozen major operations. This was because of my good luck in not being injured to a degree that required a hospital stay or shipment out of country. I was on the lines for the entire 13 month period. For injuries I did receive I was treated on-site or at nearby medical units and quickly returned to my unit.
At some point around June or July of that year I put in a transfer request for reassignment to a unit called Graves Registration. Quite obviously a rifleman couldn’t just say he didn’t want to be a grunt any more and ask to be assigned to the position of driving USO show girls around. We were 0311s and that’s what we would remain until death or discharge. However, rumor had it that Graves Registration — one of the most thankless jobs in the military — was short of help and was seeking transfers into the unit. Graves Registration was responsible for handling dead bodies once they got to the rear. I reasoned that as bad as that job was, at least it was safe and at the end of 13 months I could go home in one piece. The request was denied. I knew of several others from my company that also put in for the same transfer, and I suspect hundreds of others did from other units. Anything, it seemed, was better than what we had.
Those soldiers who’ve gone you must understand
The fate of your country is in your hand. May God give you strength, do your job real well If it all was worth it only time will tell.4
4By Eric Burdon & the Animals. Lyrics by Eric Burdon, 1968. Souvenirs of War
A Reprieve
Our battalion was in such bad shape that for the month of June the brass sent us to the outskirts of Da Nang to guard the air base. It wasn’t completely altruistic — there were reports that a major NVA offensive similar to the Tet Offensive was about to take place with the air base being their major target. It didn’t happen, quite likely because of the damage we inflicted on them in the prior weeks during Operation Allen Brook.
Back in the civilized world things were happening that gave us a false sense of hope. Peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam had actually commenced in Paris, and many of us foolishly thought that perhaps the end of this war was getting close at hand. We reasoned, logically enough it seemed, that with the very heavy losses the VC and NVA suffered in the last four months it must surely force them to bargain seriously for a peaceful solution. But of course it wasn’t to be. The North and their backers had correctly read the mind of the American people. They knew the country no longer had the stomach for war and would eventually leave the South; all the American people and government wanted was a way to leave with at least some honor still intact. And so North Vietnam ‘negotiated’ in a manner that dragged out for years and in the meantime many more thousands died.
The assignment to guard the air base was a mental and physical lifesaver. It gave us a chance to recuperate and regroup. While on airbase guard duty we also did a lot of what was called CAP work — civil action platoon. We went with doctors and other specialists to local villages to treat the sick, help build or rebuild homes, and other humanitarian actions. The American military did a lot of this kind of public service work and I don’t think we got the credit for it we should have. Notwithstanding what the radical fringe of domestic war protesters screamed we were not only not baby killers, we did a great deal to help the poor and the hungry and the sick. I take pride yet to this day recalling that we gave freely of our food and money to help almost anyone who approached us. Military doctors and nurses donated a great deal of time working at crude clinics providing health services ranging from inoculations to major surgery. Very often in these CAP missions we were trying to repair damage perpetrated by the Viet Cong against the people and their homes in these remote villages. Those locals that did not join the VC cause paid a very high price.
During June I got to some of the American facilities in Da Nang a couple of time. I went to the USO club and ate a cheeseburger, (I still remember thinking it was the most delicious food I’ve ever had) and saw a couple of friends from home. We talked about the good old days and took pictures which I still have. (To save photographs the trick was to immediately mail the photos or film home. Combat troops had no way to safely store or carry such things — they would have been quickly destroyed or lost. Everything I now possess in the way of pictures or documents I have because I was able to send them home in a letter.)
One day in Da Nang my friends and I even made it to China Beach, a “resort” on the South China Sea. I lay on the sand near the waves in a scene reminiscent to many like it prior to enlistment when we made trips to various beaches to spend days in the sun. It was days like that one when the melancholy tug of nostalgia was the strongest. This setting was something that was very reminiscent of home. It only seemed natural that upon leaving I’d jump in my car with friends and head to the local drive-in restaurant for a cold drink and burger. During those days when only the jungle and combat were encountered there was nothing to remind one of home, so the feeling was different. Then the pull was one of simply wanting to survive to see home again. There was no illusion of the good old days while on patrol or in combat.
One byproduct of my time at Da Nang on base security involved getting to know a ten or eleven year old Vietnamese boy who hung around our guard shack. This guardhouse and gate was on a dirt road still some distance from the actual air base. I spent a lot of time in that shack checking people going to the base, mostly to work, and got to know this boy quite well. He spoke broken English and seemed a very bright and happy child, despite the chaos around him. He called himself Joe and in long conversations he would talk about some day going to America to live, going to school, and basically of living a normal life. Joe lived near a small village and was a farm boy. One day he walked his family’s water buffalo down the road to the guard shack. It was an amazing sight! Water buffalo were very common sights in Vietnam’s rice paddies, with a farmer walking behind them plowing the field, but seeing this small boy on the top of one, close enough to touch, was very impressive! These animals were dangerous and more than one was shot because it charged a soldier. (The U.S. government reimbursed farmers for such casualties of the war). I have a grainy faded photograph of Joe and I’ve wondered many times whatever became of him. I hope he’s living a happy life somewhere.
It’s seems strange now in retrospect, but all the photographs I have from my time in Vietnam show rear base settings. These pictures were taken on those days when we were at a base, and thus depict a somewhat clean and safe setting. I have no photographs taken while on patrol or on extended combat missions. They don’t exist because there was no way to carry camera and film in the field for days or weeks at a time, as they would get ruined by the rain and dirt and muddy water. There were frequent occasions when we would wade across swamps with chest deep water. Anything that had to be kept dry we held over our heads, and of course this was basically limited to our rifles. As noted earlier, the circumstances while on patrol or in combat situations were such that taking pictures was just out of the question. One might as well suggest carrying a watermelon with us and having a picnic along the trail.
The pictures that I do have therefore would suggest a clean and safe setting that certainly wasn’t the reality 98% of the time. I did carry a wallet with me at all times for basic identification and a couple dollars worth of military Scrip, but the wallet was wrapped in plastic bags to keep its contents dry. I
t often ended up being soaked regardless of efforts to the contrary. Perhaps the only advantage of being a grunt was that I was able to have the Marines send almost my entire monthly paycheck directly home. I certainly had no need for the money there.
As a result of my backup radioman duties I still have a small notebook that contains code information needed for various radio communications. There were many different radio frequencies utilized in the military. Keeping track of those needed for certain communications was very important. For instance, for medivac missions we used what were coded as Button Vermillion at 35.50 MgHz (or KHz, I don’t recall for sure), and Button Yellow at 43.50. A medivac request had nine required items: 1) the priority of the medivac; 2) The unit involved; 3) Coordinates of the pickup site;
0 Souvenirs of War A Reprieve 1 4) Number of persons, both WIA (wounded in action) and KIA (killed in action); [to me KIA will always mean killed in action, not the name of a foreign car company], 5)Whether airborne assistance in the form of jets or gun ships was going to be required; 6) Whether the LZ was secure or not; 7) The best approach for the chopper; 8) How the LZ is to be marked (what color smoke flare or other signals); 9) The radio frequency to be used once near the LZ. All very important stuff.
We also had to give what were called Spot Reports to Battalion Headquarters. These were basic information updates such as location, combat actions, number of casualties, number of enemy casualties and captures, equipment lost and needed, and more. We also had to give detailed Casualty Reports.
Radio communication was complicated by the fact that we couldn’t use just plain language, as we were obviously being monitored by the VC and NVA. We had
to do everything in code — though not a very sophisticated one. We used a system that we called Shackle. In this system we utilized ten-letter words, with ten different letters, and they equated to ten numbers — 0 through 9. Two Shackle code words I recall using were ‘roundtable’ and ‘copulating’. In ‘roundtable’ R=1, O=2, U=3 and so on.
We also had a list of pre-assigned code words, which were occasionally changed. Specific frequencies for each unit we were likely to communicate with were also given code names. Everything we did, from the basics such as ordering more bullets to intelligence reports had a code. It was very difficult to keep track of it all. There were many different frequencies we had to know in the event we had to talk to pilots, choppers, tank units, artillery units, other ground units, ARVN units, and so on.
We never gave specific times over the radio. We always had what we called Tango Time. This was a preagreed on time, such as 11:00 a.m. We would say tango time plus 3 for 14:00 hours, for instance.
I always kept my notebook safely wrapped in plastic in my backpack so as to always have it available. Because I was a part-time radioman I didn’t memorize everything. This information, and memories of how very important these things were in their proper time and place, is hard to let go. How is it that something that once literally had life and death implications became simple curiosities so quickly?
Souvenirs of War I hear people talkin’ bad
About the way we have to live here in this country Harpin’ on the wars we fight
An’ gripin’ ‘bout the way things ought to be. And I don’t mind ‘em switchin’ sides and Standin’ up for things they believe in When they’re runnin’ down my country, man They’re walking on the fighin’ side of me! Yeah, walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me Runnin’ down the way of life
Our fightin’ men have fought and died to keep.5
5The Fightin’ Side of Me — Sung and written by Merle Haggard, 1970.
Cha rlie Compa ny-l/27
During the summer of 1968 the military command made several organizational changes, one of which affected me. It was decided that the 27th Marines would be sent back to the states over the course of the summer, beginning with the 3rd Battalion. This was a move that was essentially in name only. The vast majority of the enlisted men and lower level officers would remain in-country, assigned to other units.
In July and August I was reassigned to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, another rifle company. We were sent back out to an area west of Da Nang. During these two months we did have a ‘rear’ base we operated out of. Rear only in the sense that it had tents and we slept on cots when we were actually there.
Souvenirs of War Charlie Company-l/27 5 During July and August we ran a lot of 2 and 3-day patrols in a large contested area that was heavily impacted by VC and NVA, but we were trying to impose a presence by making frequent forays into it. There was one road, a small gravel road, through the area that as I recall went to a fair sized village that we were providing protection for. CAP teams were frequently sent in there to treat the sick and provide other services. Many mornings at daybreak it was our responsibility to walk the road from our base to the village to sweep it for mines. Only after we did that could any military trucks travel on it. We found mines many days. A 3-man engineering team was with us carrying the mine detectors, and they detonated the mines in-place. We provided the necessary security. These early morning mine detection sweeps always had an unreal feel for me. As a youth on the farm I was very frequently out and about at dawn to start the day. I have clear memories of walking in the summer fields at sunrise, hearing the birds and feeling the cool clean breezes and temperatures that are reserved only for those who are out at that time of day. Walking down this dangerous road at dawn every day for 2 or 3 weeks gave me that same feeling — except of course everything was very different.
In early July on this road we were moving the whole company to another location near the village and we rode, for the first and last time ever while in Vietnam, in and on LVTs. These are tracked landing vehicles (amtracs — amphibious landing vehicles), usually used to move Marines onto shore from offshore troop ships. They weren’t heavily armored. The vehicle directly in front of the one I was sitting on top of hit a mine, killing and wounding several of the Marines inside it. That was the last time we used any kind of ground transport. For all the months prior to this we never used motorized transport outside of the immediate Da Nang area. I had purposely chosen to sit on top and expose myself to rifle fire rather than be inside the LVT in case it hit a mine.
We also virtually never had armor or tank support. I can remember only once having a couple of tanks on operation with us. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it was just us, without armor of any kind, walking regardless of how far or how dangerous it was. I don’t remember why we had tank support on that one occasion. What I do recall clearly is the damage the tanks did to the local fields. This specific location happened to be one where there were still a few farmers trying to eke out a living from their rice paddies. In just minutes the tanks did great damage to the fragile paddies and the system of dikes that it no doubt took generations of farmers to build, working with their bare hands. As a farm boy that really bothered me. I could only think about the trouble and work we just caused them.
In August the NVA, who had largely taken over the war from local guerrillas, had again amassed in the area west of Da Nang and carried out what was called the August Offensive. Once again we were the trip wire used to learn of, and to slow down, the invasion. The location west and northwest of Da Nang was one of the ends of the Ho Chi Minh Trail pipeline that moved thousands of troops and tons of materiel into the south. One of the main designated sites for those troops and their supplies was this area just outside of Da Nang.
Over a period of several days and nights on one occasion our squad, and a squad of ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) turned an old bombed out Christian church into a base of last resort. The church building was in the middle of nowhere, although decades before the area had obviously been settled. Our little group was completely cut off from help and surrounded. Though the days were fairly quiet, on two nights we fought fierce battles, face-to-face on a couple of occasions, being often too close to use grenades safely. Similar small fights were being fought by other M
arines in the area. The NVA’s August Offensive was thwarted.
There were a surprisingly large number of Christians in South Vietnam. Many had fled from North Vietnam after the communist takeover. The Christians were among our strongest allies, as they desperately did not want the same kind of persecution they saw in the North to occur again in the South.
During this general period we teamed up with a company of ROKMC (Republic of Korea Marine Corps) for a week or so. The ROKMC had military responsibility for an area immediately south of the region that the 27th Marines were responsible for — an area south of Da Nang along the shore of the sea. The ROKMC seemed more aggressive, almost ruthless, seemingly not having to follow the same code of conduct that we did (and that armies must follow regardless of what the enemy does). I recall going on patrol with a squad of ROKMC through a small rural village. As was often the case we had taken fire prior to entering the village and everyone was edgy. In this little medieval village an old woman was hawking a hot bottle of soda to us. She was very persistent as whatever tiny bit of money she might have received for it very well may have been her entire income for that day. After several warnings for her to stay away an ROKMC shot her at point-blank range.
We were always very cautious about eating or drinking anything given to us by a stranger. (Though the temptation to take a cold drink was very strong indeed!) Suspicions, based on many actual incidents, of poisoned food or water were strong. The local VC used everything from sex and drugs to food or hard drink to lure Americans to their death or to poison them. We were constantly warned about fraternizing with Vietnamese women. The VC trained prostitutes to lure soldiers into traps where they could be captured or killed outright. We called these women Angels of Death. Even when with locals whom you believed were trustworthy it was a difficult notion to eat their food or drink whatever it was they were offering you. Cultural differences were huge, and this certainly included what they ate or drank. Surprisingly, however, Coca-Cola was common. Sometimes even in the most rural villages it could be found. Not that we ever drank it — it was in bottles that very likely did not contain the same liquid as when it left the bottling facility. It was very common for the bottle caps to be saved and the bottle re-capped repeatedly by the locals. There was no telling what the bottles actually contained.
Souvenirs of War Page 6
