by Phil Ball
I changed out of my wet fatigues, and hung them up to dry. I said to anyone around, “I’m gonna get some sleep before we go out on patrol,” as I headed down into the collapsing old bunker.
“Patrol? What patrol?” Maxwell looked to the lance corporal for answers, his voice sounding frustrated and angry.
Oldman still didn’t have the nerve to look at me. I heard him answer with a grumble, “We had patrol yesterday. We’re supposed to have the day off. We ain’t got no fuckin’ patrol, man.”
He was sort of smiling, shaking his head back and forth, but looking at the ground instead of at me. I figured he must know that I knew about his prank, maybe Maxwell told him. Maybe he was beginning to realize I wasn’t as stupid as he thought. I heard him mumble in a sarcastic scoff, “Fuckin, new guys, humph.”
I couldn’t let it slide again. I looked across the stream about 75 meters where the CP bunker was located. Checking if the Lt. was watching, he was nowhere in sight, so I got right up in the lance corporal’s face, and talked as quietly, but as threateningly as I could. “Look here motherfucker, the way I see it, you owe me for that little trick you played with the watch last night, and I don’t fuckin’ like your ragged ass anyway.”
I was sure we were going to fight. I really thought his pride wouldn’t allow an FNG to talk to him that way. I didn’t really want to fight; that’s why I spoke softly, so that no one else could hear me. I didn’t face him down in front of everyone else.
With butterflies in my stomach and my hands trembling, I struggled to keep my voice calm. Oldman was quite a bit bigger than me, and would certainly be hard to handle, but I had already decided we were going to fight. Much to my surprise, he did not want to fight, either. Through eye contact and body language, I realized my advantage over him at that moment, and I could tell he realized it too. I immediately finished what I had to say. “If you want to fight, we can fight. If you want to get along with me, don’t fuck with me. Respect me, and I’ll respect you. Try to get over on me again, and I swear to fucking Christ, I’ll rip out your goddamn eyeballs and stuff ’em up your ass.”
Oldman actually apologized to me. He softened right up. I went down into the bunker because it was the only dry place around. Although damp and musky, it seemed like the best place for a nap. Oldman followed me in and said, “I don’t want to tell you what to do, but if I was you, I wouldn’t sleep in here, it’s full of centipedes.”
“Centipedes, huh?” I said, sarcastically, not sure if he was kidding me or not. “You sure about that?”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure, look here,” he said as he cautiously turned over one of the sandbags near the bottom of the stack.
I jumped back three feet when I saw the purplish, 16-inch critter scurry off with its hundreds of legs all moving at once. It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. “Them things are poisonous, huh?” I said as I headed for the doorway.
“Yeah! I don’t think they’ll kill you, but they’ll make you so sick you’ll wish you were dead. As bad as they are though, they ain’t nothin’ like a tarantula. I saw one of them down here too,” he stated matter-of-factly.
I decided to lie down on top the bunker, and I fell asleep immediately. I woke up a few hours later, hot and sweaty. The sun was out and was beating intensely against my semitanned flesh.
I took off my shirt and went right back to sleep after Oldman told me that the patrol was pushed back a couple of hours. I hadn’t realized that although I had a good tan from being in California and Okinawa, I had rarely taken off my shirt in training. The Doc woke me up and told me that my back was burning up.
It was too late. My entire back was one big blister, practically an inch thick. It looked awful and felt worse. I was told how stupid I was; if I was unable to wear my backpack, if it got infected, or if I wasn’t able to otherwise perform my normal duties, I would be subject to office hours. The charge would be destruction of government property. My body didn’t belong to me anymore. It was property of the Marine Corps.
Doc drained the blisters and put salve on my back and told me it would have to be done again later this afternoon, but for now I shouldn’t try to put on my pack. When it came time for the patrol, Chico said we weren’t going to need our packs because we would only be gone a couple of hours.
First Patrol
I didn’t have to wear my backpack, but I did have to put on my flak jacket. Chico helped me put a wet towel over the worst part of the burn, where the heavy shoulders of the jacket would rub. We had the old-style shrapnel vests with the heavy armor plates sewn in pockets in the critical areas that needed the most protection. They wouldn’t stop a bullet in most cases, but they could stop some pieces of shrapnel from tearing into your torso. They were heavy and very uncomfortable, and were eventually replaced with the modern, lightweight version made of special, strong Tevlar padding instead of the solid plates. We resisted wearing these old ones whenever possible.
Chico got us together on the bridge and said we were going basically the same place the squad had gone the previous days, but not the exact same route. “Oldman,” he said, “your team walks point. I want you to take us a half a click [500 meters] out, then circle left toward the base, and bring us around to the blue line [stream or river]. The sarge wants us to follow the creek down and check for dead gooks. He said they contaminated the water again with corpses. All right, any questions? If not, let’s move out. Stay off the trail and make a new one. Oldman, I want you to personally take the lead until we start our turn toward Khe Sanh, then I’ll come up and walk point with the new man.” Chico was going to break me in personally. I liked that, but I thought it was too soon and maybe he was going a little too fast.
“You sure I’m ready for all this?” I asked him.
“You better be; you got no say in the matter anymore,” he said with a grin.
Stepping off the dirt road into the thick wall of jungle vegetation was like stepping into another dimension altogether. It was cool and dark, and much quieter than the world we left behind on the roadway. Having grown up in the suburbs around wooded areas, I thought that I knew my way around the woods pretty well, better than most kids my age. I could always find my way back home. Right away I knew this was going to be very different. The underbrush was so thick you rarely saw the ground at all. Every imaginable kind of plant, tree, vine, and flower surrounded us like a botanical garden. Most of the time I couldn’t even see the sky overhead—the canopy was probably 50 to 75 feet thick in most places.
We were supposed to keep spread out from one another so that one enemy grenade would not hit us all at once. But unless I stayed right behind my fire team leader, I was afraid I’d lose him.
Bitching the whole time and making far too much noise, Oldman hacked away with the squad machete, blazing a trail for us to follow. He complained constantly about one thing or another and did not seem to be paying attention to what he was doing. “This is the kind of guy who will get you killed,” I thought. I decided to do whatever I had to do to get transferred out of his team.
The further we went, the thicker the jungle got. My sense of direction was really thrown off because I couldn’t see the sky and use the sun as a reference point. Chico carried the only map and compass in the squad, and he occasionally passed word up to alter our course of direction somewhat. After following my team leader for an hour or so, I took over the point position. Chico came forward and told Oldman to drop back a ways. “Keep it spread out you guys,” he repeated. Together we walked point, sometimes side by side, other times right in front or in back of one another. He taught me some finer points of a dangerous job. Instead of wasting all that energy blazing a trail for everyone else, we slipped under, around, and over most of the obstacles in our way. Quietly and deliberately, with great vigilance, we proceeded one step at a time, as if the enemy could jump in front of us at any moment.
He taught me that it was just as important to always have a spot picked out to dive for cover as it was to get the jump on my opp
onent. Chico told me it had to become a habit, instinctively knowing where the closest cover was at all times. “When the shit hits the fan you won’t have time to think,” he said. “You just have to react.”
I also learned the importance of being aware of my weapon at all times, not just the direction it was aiming, but also the status of the two switches next to the pistol grip. “Always keep your finger on the trigger and your thumb on the safety. Keep the selector switch dialed to the full automatic position, and be ready for anything. While it is absolutely essential that you always identify your target before pulling the trigger, so you don’t blow away one of your own guys, it is just as important to get off the first shot. You’ve got to be both quick and good,” Chico said.
Things were going pretty well. We saw no signs of the NVA, and we were making good progress toward the base at Khe Sanh. We planned to stay far enough away from the large perimeter so we wouldn’t be spotted by anyone who might be standing guard, although they were reduced to a skeleton crew in the process of tearing the place down. We came to an area where the canopy opened up and we were able to see the sky overhead. We passed along the outer edge of this meadow-like clearing, and Chico began to explain to me the risks and dangers of such an opening. “You never want to just walk right through the middle of a clearing; gooks could be in that tree line over there and could tear us all new assholes. Stick close to the tree line, even inside it if you can. Never take any unnecessary chances.”
“Keep it spread out!” I heard him say a third time, just as I was entering the tree line on the opposite side of the clearing. Chico was about five meters behind me, his radioman right behind him, and then the lance corporal and the PFC behind them. I turned around to see the next man in line step into the clearing, and then suddenly I heard the strange sound of something cutting through the air above me. It startled me at first, and I didn’t recognize the weird zipping noise. A split second later there was another, followed by a loud, crisp crack when it struck a tree behind me. Was somebody shooting at us? It didn’t seem real until I saw Chico throw himself to the ground and yell for me to get down.
Several of our guys in the rear of the column moved forward and came rushing into the clearing. They immediately hit the deck when they realized what was happening. Within seconds, the air was filled with the strange sounds, punctuated by the effect of hot lead penetrating leaves and other vegetation. The loud cracking sound of a bullet striking a tree or other object surprised me. I had no idea the impact would be so great. The tiny bullets seemed to literally explode on impact, giving me a real feeling of what they would do to the human body.
This situation was so confusing because we could not hear any weapons being fired, just the sounds of the projectiles. This fact made it difficult to determine the direction the rounds were coming from, but it really didn’t take long to figure out the origin was north of us, in the direction of Khe Sanh Combat Base.
When I hit the deck, I was standing in underbrush so thick it prevented me from getting close to the ground. I had to sort of wiggle through, which blocked any view I might otherwise have had of an approaching enemy. Chico was on the radio yelling at someone to get a “check fire.” I heard him say, “Tell ’em we got friendlies in the area, goddamn it!”
I didn’t know at the time, but the weapons being fired at our squad were M-16s of a U.S. Army patrol out of Khe Sanh. I took for granted that it was an enemy attack and as soon as we were able, we would go after them. For the time being, there wasn’t much we could do. We were pinned down by a heavy volume of some accurately fired small arms.
I wasn’t sure if it was friend or foe shooting at us, but it didn’t make a lot of difference to me at the time. A bullet from an American M-16 would kill you just as easily as a bullet from an NVA AK-47.
At one point, we started to be able to hear the weapons being fired, and the decision to make a run for it was made. When the guys near the rear of the column stood up and moved out, the fire increased significantly, bringing down branches and pieces of splintered wood on top of me. Debris and vegetation were flying everywhere, but when Chico yelled at me to go, I had to get up and follow the rest of them.
I was running as hard as I could, trying to keep my head down and high-step through the underbrush. We were all tripping and falling over ourselves, but my main concern was receiving a bullet in the back. The rounds kept sailing past my ears and smacking into trees all around me as I tried to escape. I kept thinking that if I did get hit, I hoped it wouldn’t be in the head, any place but the head; no one survives a head shot.
My feet got tangled in the vines and I went crashing to the ground. Something jabbed me in the stomach so hard it knocked the wind out of me, causing me to panic a bit. I got right back up and continued with the advance to the rear.
When we finally came stumbling out of the jungle onto the road there was a tremendous sense of relief, and a sense of exhilaration came over all of us. We had made it out alive; nobody got hurt. We stood there a few moments laughing and recounting the event as if we’d just won the big game.
* Pseudonym.
* Pseudonym.
Chapter 5
Gunny Franks
As April came to an end and May began, we remained around Bridge #35 participating in Operation Scotland II. We were part of a larger unit called Task Force Hotel, established to close down the base at Khe Sanh. We continued to run daily patrols in search of the enemy, but found only NVA corpses left over from the Tet bombings. Whenever we came across these mass graves, we were ordered to dig up and count every single corpse and piece of equipment for someone’s “bomb damage assessment.” This was a morbid task, to say the least; I still have nightmares about it. Of course the FNGs had to do most of the dirty work, usually with no shovels or tools. We wound up dragging scores of human remains out of holes and collapsed bunkers with little but our bare hands.
Because we felt that most, if not all, of these corpses and bunker complexes were the result of Tet, we did not feel particularly threatened. We felt that since Tet had so devastated the 40,000-man enemy force, the war might be nearing an end. I don’t think any of us believed it would drag on and on like it did. The NVA pulled out of Khe Sanh in such a hurry that they left an enormous amount of equipment and supplies behind. We uncovered this stuff every day. A typical find, on May 5, north of Bridge #35, consisted of 130 bunkers running generally east and west, revealing a communications arrangement from centrally located bunkers to outlying bunkers and trenches. We also found nine dead NVA.
The next day, we searched the area again. This time we found five shallow graves containing 12 NVA bodies. Seven family photographs accompanied the bodies and several ID cards were there too, presumably in the hope that someone would recover these men someday. At another site not far away, we found 28 graves containing 29 bodies. In a bunker nearby there were six more KIAs (killed in action). At one site we found RPGs (40-mm, rocket-propelled grenades), AK-47s, M-1 carbines, SKS rifles, Chi-Com (Chinese Communist) grenades and Chi-Com claymore mines, assorted papers and documents, 500 pounds of rice in 100-pound bags, 50 pounds of potatoes, salt, three gallons of kerosene, cooking utensils, and two portable generators with carrying packs. After counting and recording everything, we blew it all up. Some grunts took souvenirs, but most of it stunk so badly from the nearby rotting corpses that it wasn’t worth keeping. Don kept our promise to the office pogue by sending him one of the AK-47s.
The FNG syndrome deeply concerned me. I saw how new guys were given the most dangerous assignments when they had little or no experience. It was something I was determined not to get caught up in, but I was expected to pay my dues and earn any respect I might have coming to me. First, I had to prove I was not a coward and could hold up under pressure. Second, I had to be taken seriously. I began observing our squad radio operators in the platoon and saw that they were always right behind the squad leaders. They did not walk point and they were not made to go out on LPs. Radiomen were grunts w
ith 0311 MOSs and still were expected to do everything else a grunt has to do plus carry that heavy, awkward radio on their backs all day long. We were already loaded down with so much gear and ammo that it was difficult to walk any great distance. The radio with its extra batteries made it that much more difficult, but I saw it as my way out. I was convinced that I would eventually get blown away on an LP some night, so I tried out for the position of 3-Alpha radio operator and was given the job around the third week of May.
I believed I had finally found my niche. Chico and I got along really well and got closer every day. It made everything so much easier having him around to show me how to make the best of bad situations. I no longer had to make stupid, new-guy mistakes on a regular basis just to figure out how to do things. He was like having a big brother.
I copied the smooth, silky style of our platoon radioman, a corporal we called “Silk and Satin,” and soon developed my own style. We had certain code words and phrases that everyone used, but individual imagination was also acceptable to a point. We had fun with the radio, trying to be as evasive as possible yet still get the message across.
No longer part of a fire team per se, our little command post consisted of Chico, myself, sometimes a Navy corpsman or medic, and an assistant squad leader. In 3-Alpha’s case, PFC “Alabama” became the assistant, because he could not or would not get along with anyone else in the squad. Alabama was definitely a good man to have on your side in combat. He was big, strong, and a fiery warrior. He carried more ammo, grenades, and rockets than three Marines, and always dug the biggest and best fighting holes. He also hated white people with a passion, and did not attempt to hold back his feelings. Even the black guys, except for a few of the most militant, didn’t get along with ’Bama. Chico, with his sense of fairness and understanding, was able to handle him like putty, so that was the reason he traveled with our CP group.
