by Phil Ball
Holt’s birthday party, my first day at Bridge #35, demonstrated to me how tight the guys in 3-Alpha were. Never in my Marine Corps experience had I witnessed a display of friendship that was remotely similar. The grunts in my new squad got along better than my old gang back home did. There was a very real sense of brotherhood here that I certainly never saw in boot camp or training. Don and I were close like brothers, but not like 3-Alpha. This was a family who clung to one another for their individual sanity and their collective survival. These 10 or so, 18- and 19-year-old men had already been through more together than most men go through in a lifetime.
Chico and 3-Alpha taught me very quickly that there is a useful place for everyone, but too many chefs spoil the meal. There can only be one leader in a combat squad, and he has to make everyone else feel that he is important.
* Pseudonym.
Chapter 4
First LP and Patrol
I knew very little about the North Vietnamese Army when I first got to Vietnam. Most of our training had dealt with the Viet Cong. I learned very quickly that the one thing never to do was underestimate the NVA. They would stop at nothing to kill one Marine, even if it meant losing 10 of their own soldiers. The extremely hostile terrain in Northern I-Corps was second only to the dangers presented by the enemy, but the NVA wisely used it to their advantage. It was their backyard, so to speak; they thought the triple-canopy jungle and steep mountains were beautiful, whereas we grunts only saw intimidation and hostility. The NVA could survive in those mountains indefinitely it seemed, living on berries and rainwater. They were so adept at camouflage and evasion that we rarely even saw them until it was too late. They were not too good at hygiene: they didn’t use soap and rarely bathed at all. We almost always smelled them before we saw them.
Their strategy was just about the exact opposite of ours. While we patrolled during daylight hours, they bedded down in underground bunkers and tunnels. When we dug in to a defensive position at night, they came out and attacked. It was true that we may have owned the day, but they certainly owned the night. After dark you rarely saw a Marine away from his position; the safest place was your three-man fighting hole, usually with one guy awake while the other two slept.
Those first couple of weeks in the bush we spent nearly every night dug in at Bridge #35. I was told not to get used to being in the same spot every night, because this was an exception to the rule. Later on we would be at a different overnight position nearly every night. For now, Bridge #35 was pretty good duty.
First LP
LP was listening point duty. Three or four men were sent outside friendly lines at night, strictly as an early warning device. They observed potential enemy movement and reported back by radio whenever possible. In the event of an enemy probe, the LP was to return immediately to their individual positions on the defensive perimeter.
Every night in the bush, it was essential to send out LPs, strategically placed in the most likely avenues of approach. Sometimes as many as four LPs went out, one in each major direction. Usually 20 to 50 meters in front of friendly lines, the small unit would hide in the brush with little or no protective cover, leaving themselves very vulnerable to enemy fire.
My very first night at Bridge #35, I went on a three-man LP with my new fire team. Chico told me it would help me get used to the way things were done and there would be minimal risk because no NVA were believed to be in the immediate area at that time. He made it perfectly clear not to take anything for granted and treat the situation seriously, as if I did expect the enemy to show up.
My fire team leader, Lance Corporal John Oldman* was disrespectful to me and he talked about Chico and everyone else behind their backs. He definitely had an attitude problem and was very bitter because he was a lance corporal and not a squad leader. He thought his higher rank should naturally put him above Chico, Holt, and the others, but rank didn’t mean much in the bush. Lance Corporal Oldman told me that since he had more time in-country than I did, my life basically was not as important as his was. I would be expected to cater to his every need and perform all the dangerous and dirty tasks he might want me to.
It was almost dark when Chico came over to our fire team bunker to tell us to get ready to go, and to give Oldman some last-minute instructions. It was starting to rain again and that meant it was going to be extra dark out there. The least bit of cloud cover always made an already very dark jungle even blacker. Chico told the arrogant lance corporal not to go to the exact same spot every time he took an LP out. “You know you’re just asking for trouble,” he added. Before he said goodbye and good luck, Chico told me to be careful. The fire team leader obviously did not like the friendship he saw building between a lowly FNG and the most respected squad leader in the outfit, and he made a spiteful comment. “Be careful my ass motherfucker, stay awake is all you got to do for me.” He looked at Chico and started to laugh, hoping to get a chuckle from him too, but the cool Puerto Rican did not laugh with him. Instead, he told Oldman to stay awake: “You’re the only motherfucker I’m worried about.”
The third man in our team was Maxwell*, a PFC with a couple of months in-country. He was a baby-faced, young-looking Marine. We were all young, mostly 18 or 19 years old, but some grunts just looked younger. Maxwell put up with Oldman’s abuse, and he got pushed around a lot, a position I was not about to let myself get into.
We donned our ponchos and slipped away from the perimeter. It was so dark I had to keep reaching out to touch the poncho of the man in front of me so I wouldn’t get separated. I had already been told that I was going to have second watch. I’d be woken up at midnight and would stand guard until 0300. I’d also been told not to fire my rifle under any circumstances; if I had to fight, it was to be done only with grenades. I got the impression that I shouldn’t do anything at all unless checking with the lance corporal first. I knew that firing a weapon at night created a bright muzzle flash that allowed the enemy to see exactly where you were; therefore, the hand grenade was a better choice. I also knew that there was to be absolutely no talking, smoking, eating or any other unnecessary noise or activity on LP. Once we were in position, there could be no moving around, either. This was serious business.
In spite of Chico’s earlier warning, the team leader set up in the exact same spot other LPs had been using every night. It was so dark, I literally could not see my own hand in front of my face. I sat down on the ground and removed some sticks to get comfortable. I couldn’t see where I was going to lie down, but since I was limited to such a small space between Oldman and Maxwell it didn’t much matter anyway. I heard the lance corporal checking in on the radio and then everything was quiet.
I couldn’t remember when I had last had a good night’s sleep. I yearned for my bed back home, or even a real mattress. I’d only been in Vietnam about one week, but already I was starting to feel insecure, fearing for my life 24 hours a day. There was no way I could find that peace of mind I used to know before coming here. It was like walking on eggshells all the time, ever aware of the possibility that I could suddenly be attacked in the most violent way.
The falling rain created noises in the dark jungle that sounded very much like someone or something trying to sneak up on me. I trusted that the lance corporal was awake, and he could hear it too, but I still couldn’t fall asleep. The poncho may have kept the rain off, but I was still soaking wet with sweat from the sauna-like conditions inside. The low nighttime temperature for this time of year was about 80 degrees, but humidity remained around 100 percent.
I attempted to block out the jungle noise by tightening the hood of my poncho across my face. I realized I could use my mind and imagination to block out my entire surroundings; all I had to do was concentrate on something back home and literally forget where I was. I learned that this was the only way I could sleep under certain uncomfortable conditions.
The jungle really comes to life at night. All the nocturnal creatures come out to hunt and feed. The Khe Sanh area was famous
for producing trophy-size tigers, hunted in safari fashion by French plantation owners before the war. We occasionally heard reports of soldiers being attacked.
Any piece of exposed flesh was a dinner invitation to the giant mosquitoes that seemed to breed and flourish everywhere. Special precautions had to be taken on a daily basis so that malaria was not contracted from a mosquito bite. We had malaria pills and insect repellent that normally, but not always, kept us from getting sick. Normally, but not always.
I lay there in the rain, dozing, struggling to focus my thoughts away from whatever was biting me on the back. It was more of a nuisance than painful, so I tried to bear it and not move. Suddenly there was a loud buzzing in my ear and a very painful bite. It felt as though a mosquito burrowed into my eardrum. Reflex took over at this point, and my hand flew up and smacked my ear hard. I must have startled the lance corporal. He told me to get up. “It’s your watch, man. Hurry up.”
I couldn’t believe how wide awake I was. I thought I’d been sleeping, but I wasn’t drowsy. I was pretty bug-eyed and jumpy, actually. I sat straight up from where I had been lying and asked what time it was. I was assured it was twelve o’clock and took the hint that I had no right questioning Oldman’s honesty. He took his watch off his wrist and handed it to me. I looked at the greenish, fluorescent face of the Seiko, and both hands were straight up. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep. I could hear his heavy breathing almost as soon as he lay down.
The strange noises I had heard earlier were no longer present; the jungle was extremely still, barely a sound anywhere. It had stopped raining, but there was no moonlight at all. In fact, it was even darker now than before. I felt as though I was inside a sealed black box, completely and totally cut off from all light. I began to question whether or not my vision was working at all, as if my eyes were closed and I didn’t know it. I actually waved my hand inches from my face, hoping for a shadow or some change in degree of darkness. Still nothing. “Man, this is ridiculous,” I thought to myself. “This is the same sky we have back home, but it never gets this dark there.”
I began to wonder what I was doing out here anyway. Unless the NVA came and happened to stumble over me, I doubt if I would have known they were there. I felt a little like a guinea pig, a sacrifice of sorts. Maybe it would alert the rest of the guys back on the perimeter if I were to be killed. I already heard plenty of horror stories of how enemy soldiers could slip up on you at night, slit your throat without making a sound, and leave without anyone seeing or hearing anything.
I turned up my vigilance a few notches and pushed my awareness to a new high. I cupped both hands behind my ears and leaned forward ever so slightly. This increased my hearing ability more than I had thought possible, and I started picking up new sounds from greater distances. Slowly moving my head from left to right, like a radar beacon, I found myself kneeling to gain every possible advantage. A split second could mean the difference between life and death. I remembered what Chico said earlier about never letting down your guard. “Always be prepared for the worst possible scenario, never assume you are safe from danger. Imagine yourself surrounded by gooks who know where you are, but you can’t see them, yet somehow you’ve got to find an edge, someway you’ve got to get the jump on them. It’s better to lose a night’s sleep because you’re scared shitless, than to wake up dead. Figure it this way: what it comes down to is you can stay awake your entire tour, if it means you get to go home alive.”
I heard a crack, like a stick breaking a few meters directly in front of me. It sounded exactly like a footstep on dried-out twigs. Something is out there! Again I remembered Chico’s words that afternoon while we walked the perimeter: “Nobody is supposed to fire their weapon at night or throw a grenade without first checking in with somebody. If you are sure you have movement and don’t have time to get permission, just make damn sure it’s not friendlies out there before you do anything. I’m not supposed to tell you this,” he continued, “but whatever you do, don’t second-guess yourself, don’t hesitate too long.”
The radio handset was clipped to my breast pocket, the volume turned down low enough as to not be audible past my own ears. I considered calling in to report movement, but I was too scared to move. All I had heard was one little twig snapping. They’d probably just laugh at me and think I had the “new guy jitters.” Maybe that was right, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I slowly reached for one of my grenades and removed it from my ammo belt. With one hand still cupping my good ear (the mosquito bite had the other ear swollen nearly half shut) I managed to hold the frag between my knees and straightened the safety pin.
I wanted to toss the grenade toward where the noise had come from, but I realized I would have some explaining to do if there was no enemy. I wondered if I could deny throwing it—would anyone believe me? I was stuck with having to wait. Was I second-guessing? Was I hesitating too long? I had the awful feeling that a gook was inches away from killing me and I couldn’t do anything about it. My heart was pounding, and torrents of sweat poured from my brow, burning my eyes, yet I was too nervous to wipe it off. The tiny little insects that first started crawling up my back now covered by entire body. They were biting me all over, but I could only keep them from crawling into my nose and mouth.
I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to toss the frag I was squeezing in my right hand, but I was worried that I’d get into trouble with my fire team leader or someone else. But I also felt like I was making a huge mistake by just sitting there waiting for something to happen, knowing I could be killed any second, yet doing nothing. “Damn, is this how it is?” I thought to myself. Something didn’t seem right about the whole strategy. I needed to be on offense, not defense. Truthfully, it was easier to sit there and do nothing, and hope that I wouldn’t get killed. It doesn’t make sense to me now, and I quickly learned not to take those chances like that, but at the time I just didn’t know what to do.
I was lucky that night. Something was definitely out there, but nothing came of it. It could have been anything, a lion, a monkey, a large snake, it could have very well been NVA soldiers.
I learned an important lesson that first night on LP, and that was that teamwork is the best way. I didn’t wake up the guys out there with me, not just because I was too scared to move, but also because I did not want to draw attention to myself. I was so insecure and shy that I couldn’t bring myself to perform aggressively. The thought of doing nothing scared me so badly that from that point on I became more aggressive than I probably should have been. Never hesitating to wake up everyone around me, and nearly always the first to toss a grenade or blow a claymore, my buddies started calling me “gung ho,” a term usually reserved for the lifers.
In the course of my watch that night, I found out that Lance Corporal Oldman had cheated me out of an hour’s sleep by turning his watch forward, the oldest trick in the book. I sat up with Maxwell a while and we talked quietly about the team leader’s tricks. He told me that it was not uncommon for him to pull tricks like that, and everyone knew he was a jerk. I decided to wait until the right time, and then do something about it. I didn’t want anyone to think they could get one over on me.
We waited until the first hint of sunrise on Bridge #35 before we went back in. I was cold, wet and dying for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. As we walked slowly through the thick fog, I could see someone stirring at Chico’s hooch, so I made a beeline for him. It was Chico himself who was up so early. I learned that he always got up before everyone else. He made me a cup of coffee and we talked about the lance corporal. I told him first about all the sounds that had scared me, and I told him about the prank with the watch. Chico gave me permission to handle Oldman the best way I knew how. He offered to handle it himself, but I insisted on doing it my way. He was very curious about the noises I told him about, having heard something out of the ordinary himself during his own watch. I’m not sure how he knew, but he said we were definitely probed during
the night, by at least a half-dozen gooks.
I discussed my lack of aggression with Chico and he told me never to take anything for granted. “Always assume the worst,” he said. “Assume every noise you hear is a gook sneaking up to cut your throat, and do whatever you have to do to get the jump on him.”
I asked him what he would have done. His response was, “Probably the same thing you did, it’s hard to say. The important thing is to be ready for anything at any given time.”
Chico told me we had the patrol later in the morning, so I should get some sleep. When I arrived back at my team bunker, the lance corporal and a PFC were fixing coffee and C rations, neither of them acknowledged me whatsoever. I had a bone to pick with my fire team leader, but it would have to wait. I needed some sleep first.
