On a regular basis one of our group would be killed or seriously wounded and they’d be gone just like that. There was actually little emotion shown on those occurrences, as we knew it would happen again and it would be one of us the next time. That doesn’t mean we didn’t feel the emotional pain — we just couldn’t afford to show the emotions we felt as it would destroy a soldier after awhile.
We dealt with the stark reality of death through euphemisms. For instance, a friend was never killed; he was wasted or blown away. Psychologically, not using the word “killed” made it easier to talk about somebody’s death.
Tom Noonan always had a lot of fun stories to tell. He told us the story about how he came to enlist in the Corps. In his own words he said he had once been very much a Hippie, and one night when he had a bit too much to drink he made a bet with someone about something which I now forget. The wager was that the loser would join the Marine Corps. Tom lost the bet and true to his word joined the Corps at age 23 or 24, after college graduation. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on Hill 1175. It was an honor being a fellow Marine and knowing and serving with Tom.
As I’ve noted, most firefights or battles of this sort went totally unnoticed by the press and the writers of history books. Hill 1175 was an exception in that a reporter from the Sea Tiger, a small newspaper printed by and for the III Marine Amphibious Force accompanied a rescue mission that came in to attempt to reach us and help extricate us from this life and death situation. He talked to several officers and men afterwards and wrote a good article about it that I later saw. I still have that original newspaper, dated March 7, 1969. The article starts out with: “The men were exhausted. They had eaten the last of their rations some 50 hours before and despite an ordeal that few men in their generation will ever experience their morale was high.”
Ultimately the fight to eliminate the A Shau Valley as an NVA sanctuary and supply depot was successful, though the success was short lived. This illustrated perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the Vietnam War strategy. Throughout the long war battles were fought and the prize obtained, only for the military to abandon the site and the enemy quickly moving back in. We lacked manpower to occupy land once it was captured. Our policy of capturing strategic sites, and then leaving to go fight elsewhere doomed us to fight the same battles again. This was true in all regions of the country. This strategy was also a morale buster. We were well aware that military targets we fought hard to win were often abandoned back to the control of the enemy, so what was it all about? Why die for a piece of land that would be abandoned afterwards? Even the average PFC knew that simply inconveniencing the enemy for a period by temporarily disrupting their supply logistics or denying them use of a sanctuary for a few months wasn’t going to win the war in the long run. We needed a true campaign whereby land was held after it was successfully fought over and the enemy denied its use permanently. The record of combat by the NVA and VC was actually quite poor. They lost almost every battle they fought against us but they knew our Achilles Heel was the inability to retain what we won. They bided their time, went back and licked their wounds, and returned again.
The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had several strategic advantages that we could never enjoy. They obviously shared a common culture and language and could thus easily blend in and communicate with the locals. Their supply lines were measured in dozens of kilometers, not thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. They had long since acclimated to the climate and environment of South Vietnam, and had built up resistance to endemic diseases and maladies that Americans had no familiarity with or resistance to. But most importantly they had one quality, one strategic weapon, that we would never have — patience. The North Vietnamese leaders and people knew that it could take years, perhaps even decades before their goal of assimilating the two countries might be achieved. As a society they were totally dedicated to commit whatever resources and manpower were needed to wait out the Americans and win the war. If it took ten, twenty, thirty or even more years that was fine — they would keep up the fight as long as it would take. They had done their homework. They knew that we would never stay in Vietnam, spending our nation’s blood and treasure as long as would be required to win. They knew that at some point our patience would grow thin and American society would stop supporting the war, and that our politicians would find a way out of the quagmire. We weren’t the first foe that they had fought in this manner. Their history of waging this sort of war had been successful for them for a thousand years. They had little fear of our weapons because they knew they possessed the most important weapon that is absolutely critical in any war — patience and the unflagging support of the nation.
The operations to take control of A Shau Valley, or at least to drive the NVA out, ended in mid-March. It was certainly a military success in that the objectives were achieved, though at a cost of many scores killed and nearly a thousand men wounded.
There are many memories and impressions that I carry with me from my time in 2 / 9. They’re those sorts of mental images and recollections that add texture to the memories even after all these years. There are things that you see in a war zone that won’t be seen anywhere else in life — and properly so. It’s hard to erase those pictures. There are sounds and smells that are unique to the experience. There are sights that burn themselves into your memory and never let go. For instance, it was a spooky sight, but fairly often you would see a Chinook or Jolly Green Giant helicopter flying low through the fog-filled valleys and over the mountains, below the clouds, with a long cable dangling back below the chopper. Tied onto this cable would be the bodies of two or three dead Marines. These choppers couldn’t land in the very rough and jungle terrain, so they would lower a cable and bodies would be attached. I remember thinking at the time how very fortunate it is that parents and other family members don’t have to see their sons from the point of their death to their
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arrival home in a casket. That interim period was not pretty. One of the most sacred and fundamental creeds in the Marine Corps is that you never, ever, leave a fellow Marine behind, dead or alive. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that we went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that every man returned with us when we left a battle site. This meant going to considerable danger and effort to retrieve and carry the dead and wounded, but there was absolutely no question but that it would be done. Perhaps it was because we normally operated in small units and knew each other quite well, or maybe this level of selfless dedication is what espirit de corps really means when you take away the bravado and romantic gloss and get down to nitty gritty realities. But the fact remains that we were very tight and had confidence that if a Marine were in trouble he would not be abandoned.
It was a strange brotherhood. There were certainly men there that in the real world would not have been friends. There were guys you wouldn’t like at all and would have nothing to do with. People who rubbed you the wrong way, or that had attitudes or personalities that grated on you. Everyone knew that we wouldn’t all be friends over a beer back home, but in the Vietnam jungle we would die for one another — it was that simple.
The weather was lousy on a frequent basis. It rained a great deal and in the mountains it was cloudy almost all the time. Visibility was often extremely limited due to fog and low clouds. We often had trouble getting supplies dropped to us. More than once we couldn’t locate a drop. I recall periods when for a number of days we had one C-ration meal per day, and at one point ran out of food for a couple days, but fortunately we got a supply drop the next day. When you’re burning up several thousand calories per day carrying many pounds and walking up and down rocky jungle-covered hills all day under great stress, food is vital. Sometimes our airdropped supplies fell into the hands of the NVA. Once in a while we came across bananas growing wild and they supplemented our food supply. They had to be ripe to be eaten however, as green wild bananas w
ere basically inedible. Biting into a green banana to this day will immediately bring back the bitter taste and memories of that wild and unripe fruit of years ago.
C-Ration meals were often traded. There were some that nobody liked (Ham and Lima Beans, aka Ham and MFers) and some that everyone wanted — the ones that had little tins of peaches or pound cake. Whenever I got these I’d save the desserts until I had both a tin of peaches and a tin of pound cake. I’d then eat them together — delicious. A lot of times we had to eat our C-rats cold. This was due to either being in a hurry, we couldn’t risk building even small fires that could be seen, or it was so wet we simply couldn’t start a fire. Cold C-rats had a lot of congealed fat that made them difficult to eat. The C-rations we were issued had dates of manufacture stamped on them — incredibly, most of the meals we ate were from the period 1945 — 1955! I don’t recall ever having “fresh” C-rations. The tin cans were opened with small can openers that we kept on our dog tag chains. We called these openers “John Waynes”. Everyone knew what was meant if we asked to borrow someone’s John Wayne. I don’t know how they got that nickname.
C-4 plastic explosive, when torn into small pieces like a wad of chewing gum burns with a small hot flame. We were always trying to get some C-4 from the demolition engineers that we’d occasionally run across. At one point we were also issued some fire tablets that were wrapped in foil and were lit with a match. They burned hot and long enough to heat a can of C rations. Very handy. A box of C-rations included a small pack of matches, a pack of 4 cigarettes, a main meal (can of beans or whatever), a packet of coffee or cocoa, toilet paper, and a “dessert”.
Time spent in Nam of course wasn’t consistently bad. No matter the location there were times of joke telling, horseplay, games, singing songs, or just relaxing. We made the best of the situation any way we could. We may have been Grunts in a combat situation but we were still teenagers or college-age at the oldest, and a good time was never far from our minds. Our options were often very limited, however. When back at LZ Stud or other rear areas for brief periods we did have the opportunity to hear AFVN — armed forces radio Viet Nam. They played popular music and of course had some war news — but always well after the fact so that it had no intelligence capabilities for the enemy. News from the home front was fairly limited over AFVN — which made sense because we weren’t the only people listening. Allegedly there was a station out of the North that carried broadcasts by Hanoi Hannah — a sexy sounding woman who taunted Americans and warned of their impending death and defeat, while occasionally playing popular American music. Supposedly her information was well documented and she broadcast names of individuals in specific units, and was well aware of what our operational activities were. I have to admit to never having heard her, but others said they had.
Unfortunately only those stationed in safe rear areas got to enjoy seeing Bob Hope or the beautiful girls that were part of USO shows. The men that needed that diversion the most were the ones that could not take advantage of it. I recall seeing two movies while in-country — once at Da Nang and once in Quang Tri — outdoor movies, needless to say. The side of a building served as the screen.
Running basically east and west just south of the DMZ was Route 9. It ran from Quang Tri on the east near
1 Souvenirs of War Moving On Up To The DMZ 15 the coast to the interior of Laos. This was a single lane old asphalt road that was probably built by the French decades before. When I was there the road had been long abandoned for civilian use and was becoming overgrown, with vegetation growing up between the cracks. Only military traffic used the road when I was there. If you could remove yourself mentally from the circumstances of war the road and scenery were stunning. It wound through beautiful countryside, following rivers and valleys through the mountains. Then and now I’ve thought about what a fantastic motorcycling road it would have been in a better day! I recall talking with other guys about how fun it would be to ride a scrambler, the late 1960s version of a dual purpose road / dirt bike, down the road flying along like Superman, outrunning NVA bullets. Because it was in the open and not protected by a forest canopy for much of its length, it wasn’t used much during the daytime by the NVA, but it was used at night by them for troop movement.
Along Route 9 were two notable landmarks. Furthest east, but at the edge of the mountains was the most forward (and only remaining) combat base — Camp Vandergrift. (Named after a former USMC Commandant) It started out being called Landing Zone Stud — simply a flat relatively secure area where choppers could land. It had a few large tents for supplies, and a small metal landing strip was also later built. When all the other forward bases were abandoned, LZ Stud grew in importance because a staging area near the front was necessary for moving supplies and men. It got promoted and was given the name Camp Vandergrift in late 1968. As the importance of Camp Vandergrift grew Route 9 saw an increasing number of supply convoys from Quang Tri. The base could not be supplied by helicopters alone. These truck convoys were targets of ambushes by the NVA, making the trips hazardous undertakings. I rode security on these convoys on a couple of occasions.
Beyond Stud Route 9 went northwest past what was called the Rockpile. These were actually three geologic formations of large limestone outcroppings rising out of the flat plain. They were very striking. I recall that we called one of the formations Razorback due to its particularly jagged appearance. Because of their heights and the fact they looked out over Route 9 they were of significant strategic importance. I recall climbing Hill 440 — one of the Rockpiles — to dislodge NVA from its top. We had to use ropes to climb as the sides were nearly vertical. Hills were given numeric designations that depicted their height in meters.
On Christmas Eve we set up an ambush on Route 9 west of LZ Stud but fortunately it was a silent night.
The village of Khe Sanh was located on this road west of LZ Stud, and the Khe Sanh Marine Base had been located just north of the road and village.
There were still some old French and Viet Minh mine fields in this area from the early 1950s. Mine fields of this sort are often not removed following wars and they remain to kill and maim for decades to come. Once when walking across an open hillside that was largely overgrown with small brush, a Marine in my company stepped on one of these old mines. I remember this specific incident clearly because he was scheduled to rotate back to the States in just a few days! The end of my own thirteen month assignment was also getting closer and I was becoming increasingly nervous about being badly injured or killed when I was finally beginning to feel that I just might have a chance to get home again.
The mine didn’t kill this particular Marine, but like so very many other casualties he lost his legs. I have often wondered how many Vietnam vets there are that are spending the rest of their lives walking with artificial legs, or having prosthetic arms, or in wheelchairs. The number of men who lost limbs was very high. People sometimes only recall the cold statistic of the 58,000 that were killed; they don’t remember the many more tens of thousands that were seriously wounded and had their lives changed forever.
There was a man in G Company with the last name of Rodriguez. He had a terrific voice and loved to sing. I remember many evenings in particular when we were digging in on some mountain top in the cloudy drizzle and he would sing out loud. His favorite was a Johnny Mathis song called “It’s Wonderful” or “It’s So Wonderful”. This kid sang it incredibly well. Rodriguez got approved for R&R in Hawaii and once there he immediately got on a plane and flew to Los Angeles to see his newborn son and wife. When he got back he was so happy to talk about his son and of their future together. He was killed a couple of weeks later.
There was another fellow in our squad that was a good friend who I called “aviation” as his nickname. He earned his name because he joined the USMC with the understanding from his local recruiter that if he joined for four years he could get into the aviation unit. Obviously he was made a grunt instead. His name was Gary Haley and he was from Mar
quette. Haley was killed on 1175. I’ve paid respects to him and his name several times at various VN monuments where his name is carved in stone. Gary was one of the world’s nice guys and the world would have been a better place had he lived. Another young Marine had an eastern European name that we jokingly said had every letter of the alphabet in it — thus we called him “Alphabet”. He was also killed during this time period.
In Golf Company there was also a young man who was a very handsome, 6’2” or so All-American boy that everyone liked. He was real athletic and probably could have played professional sports. I believe his last name was Richardson. In one of the A Shau battles he was hit in the head with a bullet. We were fighting side-byside when this happened. He was still alive so I threw him over my shoulder and carried him down to a safer location. I could feel the back of my shirt getting very wet and when I set him down finally he was dead and my shirt was completely soaked with a blood and brain mixture.
There were two other Marines in my squad (Barton and Bishop) that I was good friends with. I still have a picture of the three of us together. Because all three of us were from Michigan we sometimes talked about getting together if we got back home. We never did. I later checked and didn’t see their names among those killed so I assume they made it back at least alive. I think there were many like me who just wanted to forget it all and get back to their lives once they returned to the states. For some of us there was a private fear that if we talked about or in any way relived the experience it would only interfere with our goal of leaving it all behind.
This is yet one more facet of the Vietnam experience that is different than almost all other conflicts the country has been involved in. There was no real feeling of pride or accomplishment, only the comfort of knowing you survived. There is also much less of the post-war camaraderie and solidarity that veterans of earlier wars enjoyed. As Viet vets straggled home one by one they did not join organizations like the VFW or American Legion at nearly the rate of other veterans. What reason was there to join such groups to reminisce with total strangers twice your age about what was widely perceived by the nation as a failed mission? Society had made it quite clear that ours wasn’t an undertaking for which we and the American people could be proud or have a sense of a job well done. So why deepen the frustration by joining with folks who basked in the glory of the last good war, and who enjoyed a nation’s honor and respect? We had neither. Rather some of us gathered with one another, forming organizations such as the Vietnam Veterans Association and other similar groups.
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