by Phil Ball
We received a bright yellow sweatshirt with big red letters across the front. “USMC” it proclaimed proudly. We were issued a pair of olive drab, one-size-fits-all utility trousers, and a pair of white high-tops. There was also a matching baseball cap (cover). This was to be our initial boot-camp garb. We boxed up our “civies” and everything we had brought with us. We were told there would be serious consequences if anyone held anything back but Richie kept his cigarettes and a book of matches, stuffing them in his sock. When we were finally bedded down for the night, it was about four thirty in the morning, Richie and I snuck out for a smoke. It was a stupid thing to do, but Richie wanted to go AWOL that first night and I had to try to talk him out of it.
Richie was more upset than I thought. He had already changed his mind; he didn’t want to be a Marine anymore. He said, “Man, I’ve got to get the hell out of this fuckin’ place. These assholes are outa’ their fucking minds. I’m not going to make it.” I knew he was serious and I could tell he was desperate. I didn’t like what I had seen so far either, but I knew there wasn’t anything either of us could do about it now, so I tried to offer some encouragement by telling him that things would get better, but he wasn’t listening.
“How far you think you’ll get dressed like this?” I asked, tugging on my bright yellow shirt, and forcing a chuckle. Richie just rolled his eyes and shook his head, looking down as he snuffed out the cigarette.
“I don’t know, man, but I’ve got to do something. I can’t put up with this shit too long.”
It seemed like only a couple of minutes after we had lain back down in our bunks when the drill instructors came back. Like gang busters, they banged metal garbage cans and screamed vulgarities at the top of their already very hoarse voices. “Get the fuck up! Let’s go, you filthy bunch of maggots. You’ve got three minutes to get downstairs and line up on the yellow footprints.”
Before you could become a Marine, you had to first lose all the bad habits of a “slimy, undisciplined civilian,” as we were constantly referred to. This was done with a steady diet of humiliation, until you believed yourself that your life to that point, had been completely useless, and you were a “worthless piece of shit.” Then, and only then, could the righteous values of the beloved Corps begin to be instilled. Values like honor, loyalty, dedication, and discipline were pounded into new recruits’ heads. Priorities were rearranged, making the Corps the most important ideal in your life. “They say God doesn’t like Marines because we kill people, but since we need him on our side, we need to go to church and kiss his ass whenever we can,” we were told.
Marine Corps boot camp was by far the toughest 12 weeks of my life (as of 1967), but the valuable lessons I learned would help me through the tougher times in my life. I hated every single minute of it and would have quit had I had the chance, yet today I look back and wouldn’t have traded the experience for the world. It was grueling and abusive, but it showed me that I was capable of far more than I ever believed possible. By pushing us beyond our limits, those mean drill instructors instilled a sense of self-confidence that would later save my life in Vietnam. Like the signs all over boot camp said: “The more you sweat in training, the less you will bleed in war.”
One time we were at the rifle range, qualifying on the M-14. Besides shooting the weapon, we were also required to pass daily written tests. For whatever reason, I never did very well on those tests, and when half the platoon failed one day, we were ordered to assume the position known as “elbows and toes.” It is a punishing, four-point posture that requires a great deal of strength and endurance to hold for any length of time. As one by one, each man dropped out, he was taken behind closed doors and beaten severely by the DIs. I could hear guys in there screaming in pain, and I certainly did not want an ass-whipping myself. So I held that painful position longer than anyone in the outfit. I guess the DIs took notice, because I did not receive a beating that day. More importantly though, I realized I had the strength to hold out with the best of them, and not just hold out, but pass them all.
It was moments like this, while exhausted in the jungles of Southeast Asia, feeling like I couldn’t go on, that I would recall my boot camp accomplishments and find the strength to keep going.
Richie and I both graduated near the top of our class, January 16, 1968, and then went on to further training. I guess Richie’s higher test scores got him into Heavy Equipment Operator’s School, where he learned to drive a bulldozer and a road grader. I was assigned to Military Occupational Status (MOS) “0311,” which is a foot soldier in the infantry, your basic grunt. We were the guys who weren’t qualified for anything else and whose test scores were lowest; we got picked for the infantry. I knew it, and everyone else did too. Nobody wanted to be a grunt, but once you were placed, there was no sense complaining about it, because there wasn’t anything you could do. Your life expectancy decreased by 75 percent the moment you were assigned to infantry. Not only were you going to Vietnam, but as a Marine infantryman, you would most certainly be sent to the hottest spots.
After graduation, Richie and I went up the road to Camp Pendleton, to our respective schools. Mine was mostly physical training, humping the mountains of Southern California in full combat equipment, and becoming familiar with the weapons a grunt would encounter in Vietnam. We got acquainted with the newly developed M-16, which was replacing the older, much heavier M-14 in the jungles of Vietnam.
This new, lightweight, automatic assault rifle could fire a 20-round clip faster, and with less kick, than anything on the face of the earth. A special round had been developed that was made to “tumble” after striking its target, thus giving the M-16 tremendous knock-down power, we were told. Designed to make a small entrance wound, it was supposed to tumble through the human body to create a huge exit wound. The truth of the matter was that the U.S. government was in such a hurry to get this miracle weapon into the hands of our boys in Vietnam, that thorough testing was not completed. The tumble-round did not always work, plus there was a serious problem with the weapon becoming jammed with shell casings. Testing was done in the bush, under actual combat conditions, and many Americans lost their lives because of the failures. If the M-16 was the least bit dirty, or was not properly oiled, it failed. Of course, there were no problems in the States, but in the dirty heat and humidity of Vietnam combat, where a weapon is guaranteed to be less than clean, failures were frequent.
The first weekend pass I got from Camp Pendleton, I went to Los Angeles and got a USMC bulldog tattoo on my arm. It was essential for completing my image and was my badge of honor that showed the world that I was a Marine.
Before shipping out to the Nam, I got the standard 20-day leave. I went home to Cincinnati for a quite emotional family reunion. The worry and pain showed in Momma’s eyes, that she might lose her oldest son.
* Pseudonym.
Chapter 2
Welcome to Vietnam
Everything about Vietnam seemed to be different from any of our country’s previous wars. In the past, units were sometimes made up of men from the same hometowns. They went to training together and ultimately to war together. They got to know one another and sometimes they came back home together. This close camaraderie led to pride in their unit and a cohesiveness that we Vietnam soldiers did not know.
We went to war with a planeload of virtual strangers. We were split up when we got there, and after 13 months to the day we came back home with another plane of strangers. The day you arrived in country, you knew the exact day you were supposed to come home, and the counting began.
I arrived at Da Nang on April 26, 1968, via commercial airliner. I didn’t know it until we got off the plane, but a buddy from boot camp, Don Schuck, was on that plane with me and we both had orders to report to the same outfit up “north.”
The country of Vietnam is narrow, like the state of Florida, and you could only go two directions, north or south. As far as the grunts were concerned, south was where the civilians and the hotels wer
e. The skirmishes that were being fought down there were against the pajama-wearing, no-guts, peasant farmers known as Viet Cong (VC). They didn’t have the means or the balls to put up a decent fight, and it was down south where we all hoped we would go.
“Up north” was just the opposite. The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) with their artillery, tanks, and trucks, were a uniformed, well-trained, extremely disciplined fighting force. They would attack and always fight to the death, never surrendering voluntarily. Up north were places like the DMZ, Khe Sanh, Con Thien, Mutter’s Ridge, Hue, Leatherneck Square, Ashau Valley, and of course North Vietnam, all the places that had been in the news as the location for the bloodiest fighting since World War II. Don and I figured that since we were already here, we might as well be where the action was.
Don was an 18-year-old country boy, as tough as nails on the outside, but on the inside, just a fun-loving kid who liked to joke around. When we knew each other in training, I sort of “watched his back” for him when he got in a fight once. It was at Camp Pendleton, when a big, black PFC burglarized his footlocker. I admired him for taking a stand in a time when race relations were so volatile that it seemed as though a lot of white guys were too scared to even sneeze. He wound up beating up one of the biggest, baddest Marines, black or white, in the barracks. When a second man attempted to pull Don off the bleeding burglar, I stepped in and stopped him. I really didn’t think it was a big deal, but he did, and he felt that he owed me for it.
Neither Don nor I was a very big guy by any means. Actually we were nearly identical in size and build: 5'9''and 145 pounds soaking wet. Our black hair and mustaches made us look even more alike, and as we began hanging out together more and more, guys asked if we were brothers.
Everyone got promoted from Private to Private First Class (PFC) before going overseas, but for some reason Don was overlooked. The promotion itself didn’t mean a lot to him. It was the pay increase he didn’t receive that he missed. We all got “overseas” pay, plus “hazardous duty,” or combat pay, which certainly looked good on that monthly check.
Don and I were just like most every other Fucking New Guy (FNG) grunt: We were anxious to go up north and see what this war was really like. We didn’t talk about it much, but we wanted a chest full of medals and were eager to prove ourselves as worthy warriors. On one hand, we wanted to make our mark; on the other hand, we just wanted to do our time and go home in one piece. Neither of us knew why the United States was involved in this war so far from home, except for what the “lifers” told us. Lifers were those career Marines who dedicated their whole lives to the beloved Corps; war was their business. They said we were keeping the Communists from overrunning the whole world, and since this was the only war we had right then, “don’t knock it.”
FNGs, new replacements, were not treated well, especially in the Marine combat units. Until such time as they could prove themselves in the bush, new guys got no respect and only a few rights. Grunts with combat experience and those with a few months in country generally felt that FNGs did not deserve to talk the same talk, or walk the same walk, as they or any of their fallen brothers did. It was a strict and very elite passage that all FNGs had to go through. It was serious business to grunts, whether the guy next to you would fight as he was trained, or whether he would panic or cower. Nothing was taken for granted. How a Marine may have fared in training meant absolutely nothing at all in the Nam. This was a whole new ball game now—you could throw away the books on war strategy and conventional tactics. Vietnam would be more of a survival game than anything else.
FNGs stuck together, often out of necessity, making mistakes and hopefully learning what needed to be learned before they were killed or wounded. If you were somehow lucky enough to get accepted into one of the seasoned vets’ cliques, your chances of learning how to survive suddenly became much better. But most seasoned grunts (salts) shied away from FNGs, fearing that new guys were just bad luck. New guys made too many mistakes that not only got themselves killed, but also killed whoever was unfortunate enough to be close by. They said if you could make it through your first and second month, you might just make it all the way.
It usually took anywhere from two to three months for an FNG to actually get a handle on things, and become a useful, effective member of a squad. Then, right when he was coming into his own, usually in the sixth month, he was taken out of the field and given an out-of-country R&R. He was permitted to go to any one of a half a dozen foreign countries for seven days of leave. In effect, with the time it took to get ready and travel and get various paperwork together, he could be gone as long as a month. He often returned to his unit in the field only to find that his old buddies had all gone home, been killed, wounded, or had simply disappeared with no one knowing what happened to them.
After returning from R&R, a grunt might remain effective another three or four months, before being stricken by what was known as Short-Timer’s Syndrome. Somewhere around the tenth or eleventh month, he would start thinking about going home in one piece. Before, home seemed so far out of reach; now it was coming into grasp. The short-timer was no longer willing to stick out his neck, and he insisted on playing it very safe. No longer effective.
When FNGs or fresh meat arrived in the bush, it was cause for celebration for the salts. The most dangerous and dreaded assignments were given to the new guys, thus taking some of the pressure off the salts. Walking point and night-time listening posts (LPs) were two of the worst; more Marines were killed or crippled doing these jobs than just about any other single task, I think.
We hung around the airport at Da Nang nearly all day on the 26th. The heat and humidity were unbearable. Don and I, and every other Marine there, had just come from California via Okinawa, so we thought we knew what heat and humidity were all about—but this was another planet altogether. Even the air and dirt were different than anywhere else we had ever been. Even above the heavy smell of jet fuel and exhaust, there was a very strange odor, hanging like a cloud, that none of us could recognize. We guessed it was the smell of the Orient.
Finally, later that evening, we were rushed onto a C-130 cargo plane. The plane raced down the runway, struggling to take off, while we all sat on the floor, praying we wouldn’t run out of runway. There were no seats or seat belts in the plane, it was nothing more than a bare fuselage, stripped clean to make as much room for cargo as possible. The plane shook and vibrated like it was going to come apart, but it finally broke free from the ground and gained altitude. We all breathed a sigh of relief. It got very cold up there with no insulation in the bulkheads. At first it felt good, but by the time we reached Phu Bai, we were all freezing to death. With no insulation, the noise was a factor, too. It was so loud in that tin can that after a while I had to cover my ears. Fifty miles north of Da Nang, we began our approach to Phu Bai and received our instructions. “As soon as the aircraft comes to a complete stop, the rear gangway will lower, and everyone is to run like hell. There will be a Marine out there telling you where to go.”
“What the hell is all this about?” I asked Don and the guy next to me screaming to be heard. He was a sergeant returning for his second tour, and was the only one on board that knew anything, it seemed. He told us that the air field had been hit with enemy rockets recently, and that any aircraft on the ground was a sitting duck. “In fact,” he continued, standing up to look out one of the side windows, “you can still see the fuel depot burning from a hit a couple of days ago.” I saw Don open his eyes and mouth very wide in an expression of mock terror. Neither of us was about to show the least bit of fear or concern, although inside we were shaking in our spit-shined dress shoes.
The runway at Phu Bai was corrugated steel sheeting, with the groove pattern running side to side, perpendicular to the plane’s direction. When the rubber tires hit those cross-grooves at 150 MPH, the washboard effect threatened to vibrate the plane to pieces. It was a violent but successful landing, and we all ran for cover like we were told when we got of
f the plane.
It seemed like it got dark awfully early that first night in Phu Bai, and the heavy cloud cover certainly didn’t help. Back home, the end of April meant springtime, but in the Nam it simply marked the end of the rainy season. Vietnam had an annual monsoon season where it rained nearly every day for two months. It was torrential rain that flooded every river and stream and washed away roads and bridges. To add to the bad reputation that “up north” had as being the most miserable region in Vietnam, it also had a second annual monsoon season later in the year.
Don and I hitched a ride over to 3rd Marine Headquarters, and found the 2nd Battalion’s office. We checked in with a corporal, who seemed to be the only one on duty. We knew that this guy held our futures in his hands, as far as what company we were assigned to, and since we wanted to stay together, we thought we had better be nice to him. Even though he was a four-eyed little geek and kept calling us FNGs, we kissed up to him and pretended to respect him for having more time in-country that we did. When he asked where we were from in the world, we told him, but lied a little by adding we knew each other before boot camp. “Brookville, Indiana, is right across the state line from Cincinnati,” I added. Then, with all the phony respect I could muster, I asked, “I guess there ain’t no way you can put us in the same company, is there? We’d really appreciate it, man.”
Don added his two cents and said, just as respectfully, “Yeah, we’d really appreciate it, brother; you think you can help us out?”
The office pogue looked at us over his glasses; he knew he had us at his mercy now. “What’s it worth to ya?” he said, sort of paranoid, but he’d obviously done this before.
“How much you want, man?” Don asked. “We ain’t got no money till payday.”
