Ghosts and Shadows

by Phil Ball

  “They’re not medevacing anyone for hearing loss,” announced Doc. “There’s already been a few who tried. The CO says when we stand down in a few days, anybody with any problems then can go to Sick Call, but for now we need every warm body we’ve got in the bush.”

  I didn’t see how I was going to continue as radioman if I couldn’t hear anything, but for now all I was really concerned with was finding Don and making sure he was okay. Chico told Sal to go with me, and together we started making our way toward 1st Platoon’s finger, ground zero. I thought there were a lot of dead enemy soldiers up by our hole, but the farther west we walked, the more we had to step over. Many of them were badly burned, but the ones who weren’t were being picked over already by souvenir-hunting grunts.

  Some bitterly angry Marines insisted on repeatedly killing and mutilating the already lifeless enemy corpses. We stopped to look at one man who was digging the gold out of a dead man’s mouth with a big bowie knife. Another overly zealous grunt was trying to cut the ear off one of the corpses, but his dull bayonet did not seem to be getting the job done. I saw Marines thrusting bayonets and plain rifle muzzles into the dead bodies as if they were still alive and were posing a threat to us. It was a morbid sight, certainly unbecoming USMC behavior, but you can easily get caught up in this kind of hatred after a battle like this. I could not entirely resist the temptation myself. When I came to one of the burned NVA corpses teetering on all fours at the edge of the summit, I gave him one swift kick to the midsection and smiled as I watched him tumble down the hill like a dummy.

  Sal and I were both amazed at the destruction we saw when we reached 1st Platoon’s lines and looked down the western finger. This particular sector was not so much burned as it was obliterated. Tangled, broken trees were strewn about like a tornado had just blown through, and they were all piled-up at the tree line in an impenetrable wall. The ground was bare, with only a covering of loose dirt and gravel, like something you might expect to see on the moon. There were of course scores of dead bodies all over, and still a few dead Marines, though most of them had already been carried up to the LZ for medevac.

  I recognized some of the grunts I had seen the night before in the hole where Don’s LP had departed the perimeter. They all looked to be in one state of shock or another. I asked the group if they’d seen or heard anything of that four-man LP, but I don’t think I got an answer. They just continued to stare at the ground or off into space, occasionally shaking their heads in total disbelief.

  I went over to look at the face of a dead Marine being carried in a poncho. I was shocked by the tormented expression frozen on his face and wondered if that could have been my friend. Would I have recognized him? I doubted it. I looked at a couple more faces, but still did not see Don. I walked around the western part of the perimeter asking people if they knew Private Schuck at all, but no one did. Frustrated, I went to the LZ area where the Corpsmen were tagging the medevacs and asked Doc if he’d seen a KIA or a WIA by the name of Schuck. He replied, “Not yet.”

  One sergeant had a work detail going already. They were throwing dead NVA into the big bomb crater. When he spotted Sal and me he called us over and told us to “join in on the fun.” The sergeant could be a sick bastard when he wanted to be, but he had the rank, so we had to help. No gloves, no nothing, we had to pick the NVA corpses up with our bare hands by their ankles and wrists, then swing them back and forth a few times to toss them into the hole. They seemed much heavier when they were dead. The first chance we got to sneak away we did, continuing our search for Don.

  Something kept drawing me back to that hole in 1st Platoon’s line where I last saw my friend the night before. I found one grunt and asked him if he remembered me from the night before. He said he did. “You and Schuck were buddies, right?” At first I didn’t think anything about the way he said Schuck and I “were” buddies, but he must have thought better of it himself, for he quickly added, “I don’t think any of the LP made it back in last night.”

  “Well then you know Schuck, right?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen him around, but I don’t really know him,” he said.

  I jumped on top of the mound of dirt in front of the mortar pit and scanned the ground more closely this time. Near the hole, where some of the elephant grass was still standing, there was a body I had seen the first time I was here. All I really noticed was a thick crop of black hair and I must have assumed it was a Vietnamese man. But this time there was something strangely familiar about that particular head of hair. I looked at it several times before I finally decided to get down and take a closer look.

  The green jungle fatigues we wore in May 1968 really were not much different from what some of the NVA wore. We weren’t issued the camouflaged style until later in the year, so I couldn’t tell if this body was NVA or USMC by looking at the uniform alone.

  I knelt down beside the body and already knew what I was going to find. I recognized the back of the head lying face down and then I saw the wound. A hole the size of my fist was in the back of his skull, and the long hair could not hide the gruesome sight of the inside of the head. It was empty, Don’s brains having been completely blown out. I thought I was looking at the inside of the back of his face. I just stared at the fatal wound, feeling guilty as hell, but I could not pull my eyes away from the horrible sight for some reason.

  I was overwhelmed with a flood of emotion that I was not capable of dealing with. I was scared and confused. I thought I should do something, but what? I thought about stuffing the empty cavity with something, anything, and wrapping a sterile battle dressing around the whole mess to make it at least appear nice and neat, even though I knew he was dead. I felt like the whole world was watching me, and that any display of emotion on my part would be taken as a sign of weakness. I felt like I had just lost a brother, but I was not allowed to cry—that was my interpretation of the Marine Corps Way.

  My mind was snapping back and forth between the Marine Corps macho misconceptions I had concerning bravery and toughness, and the fact that my best friend was lying in front of me with his brains blown out. I was not that well-adjusted to begin with, and I had no idea how to cope. The only survival mechanism I had kicked in automatically and I began stuffing all my feelings, emotions, and fears somewhere deep inside the darkest recesses of my soul. I felt that by mourning my loss in the bush, I would somehow open myself up to criticism from my peers and possibly lose focus and get killed myself. I wondered if there was something I could have done to have saved my friend, but then the negative thoughts crept in and told me, “Better him than you.” I thought I should have gone on the LP for him; I hadn’t been out since I became radioman. Maybe I just should have gone with him; together, I’m sure we could have made it back. The fact that I really had no say whatsoever in who went out on LPs never crossed my mind. I wasn’t thinking rationally at all. My denial led me to try to convince myself that Don and I were never very good friends.

  I must have been making a scene because someone called Chico and told him to get down there right away. “Your radioman is coming unglued.” He came down and hugged me so tight that I shed the only tear I would shed for Don until 20 years later. He told me it was okay to cry and he reassured me that everything was going to be all right.

  I was terribly upset, but instead of venting my emotions I withdrew and became very quiet. Chico, Sal, and I got Don to the medevac area and made sure the corpsman got all the information he needed. We laid Schuck out with the others, a neatly aligned row of 13 poncho-draped corpses, and headed back to 3-Alpha’s area on the perimeter. I looked around at our guys and did not see anyone else mourning the loss of a friend. Nobody in our squad was among the KIAs. We did have a couple WIAs, none that I believed to be too serious. I thought how lucky everyone else is not to have been close to one of the KIAs and I swore that I would never allow myself to get close to anyone again as long as I lived.

  I monitored the radio for a few minutes at our position, but I fou
nd myself drawn back to Don’s side at the edge of the LZ. I wanted to say goodbye or at least attempt to finalize my thoughts, but I could not bring myself to accept the situation completely. It scared me to think that I still had 12 months left on my tour, and another battle like Foxtrot Ridge could very possibly happen to us again. I did not think I could survive another one like this, and so I’d better get out while I’m still able. I thought desertion was my only alternative at this point. I would help get the KIAs on board the medevac choppers and then stow away, perhaps by hiding under the dead bodies. Once I made it to the rear area I would somehow go to Switzerland and live out the rest of my life in hiding. I actually thought this was a plausible plan. The only part I didn’t like was never seeing my family again. I began to think about what people would think of me and what a cowardly act it would be.

  Around 1500, the first choppers landed. They dropped off some emergency resupply and started taking out our 44 WIAs. I stayed at the LZ and helped the wounded men get on board, struggling the whole time with myself, agonizing over whether or not to go through with my plan. We loaded the 13 KIAs in the last helicopter around 1600 and I paused for a minute at Don’s side. I looked around to see if anyone was watching and wondered if I could possibly get away with such a foolish plan. More importantly, I wondered if it would be worth it. I certainly didn’t want to die in Vietnam, but I also could not stand being thought a coward.

  I heard the chopper begin to throttle up and start to move. “God help me, what should I do?” Then I saw the crew chief waving me off the chopper, yelling over the noise of the giant turbines, “Get off if you ain’t got a medevac tag, get off!”

  I immediately jumped up and leapt out of the doorway, hoping the crew chief was not aware of what I was thinking. I ran to the edge of the LZ and hit the deck. I lay there with my face buried in my arms, a long time after the turbulence of the twin rotors was gone, and the chopper carrying the lifeless body of my best friend disappeared over the mountains to the east. I did not want to get up. I didn’t want to open my eyes and face reality.

  Echo Company was coming up one end of the ridge as we were walking down the other end around 1700. Only about half the number we started with the night before were still with us, and although we did receive the emergency resupply of ammo, most of us had lost everything else in the napalm fire. Some grunts wore only T-shirts or no shirt at all. Hardly anyone had a poncho or poncho liner to sleep in that night. We went to a clearing next to the road and set up for the night. The temperature dropped rapidly and it started to rain, making for an extremely miserable night. None of us got very much sleep; although we were dog tired we knew the possibility of another enemy attack was likely. I was jittery and nervous, overreacting to just about every sound I heard.

  Just before dark that night, I dove headfirst into my hole and nearly killed myself when I heard explosions nearly 1000 meters away. We later found out it was Echo Company calling in artillery on a handful of NVA they spotted digging in somewhere. We never thought for a minute that those enemy soldiers who remained from our fight had left the area. They were still close by, and would no doubt be back for more. We didn’t know whether or not they would attack Echo Company on our old ridge line, or maybe Golf Company and the Battalion CP down the road at LZ Hawk, or even come back to try to finish us off. One thing was for sure: hard-core NVA soldiers’ whole lives circled around killing Marines. Now that they were here, they would fight to the death.

  It scared me to think how devoted the NVA really were to their cause, especially because most of us Marines did not even understand why we were even here in the first place. We did not have a cause, and after Foxtrot Ridge it made even less sense what our mission was. We didn’t have any gripe with North Vietnam. This backward, Third-World country certainly didn’t have anything we needed, did it? I just didn’t get it. I heard we were still losing more than 500 men every week, and even though we were reportedly killing a staggering number of them all the time, their numbers kept growing. It seemed they were getting stronger and bigger.

  Just about that time, I read about a statement or speech Ho Chi Minh made. He said something to the effect that it didn’t matter that the United States killed 10 to one, or even 100 to one: Americans could not possibly win this war. He talked about a military victory and a political victory, which I did not fully understand at the time, but I knew the American people were no longer supporting us back home and the protesters looked like they might topple the whole government back home.

  Our morale was not what it would have been if we had believed in what we were doing. Also, there seemed to be so many rules of engagement on what we could and could not do, when to shoot and when not to, where to go and not go. It was like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. The rules of engagement to fighting a limited war were dragging this whole thing out. If they would let us fight like they really wanted it to end, we would go to Hanoi and wipe it off the map. It was that simple, but instead it seemed to me that our own government did not want the war to end because it was good for the economy or something. In my youthful skepticism and my rather confused, frustrated state of mind, I believed there could actually be a plot of some kind, initiated by the U.S. government, to kill off a whole generation of 18- and 19-year-old males, under the guise of the Vietnam War.

  I can see now how ridiculous this sounds, but deep in the jungle, with hundreds of dead bodies lying around, the thought process tends to get a bit distorted. Extended periods of extreme fear and overexposure to death and violence were already beginning to influence the way I thought and felt about life in general. Like many teens growing up in the 1960s, I had not had to deal with many serious things in life, and I was not a particularly well-adjusted teenager. When I was suddenly faced with all these monumental problems concerning life and death and war between two nations, I was not equipped to handle it emotionally. I did not know how to talk to others about my problems, again feeling as though problems themselves were a sign of weakness.

  After the May 28 battle on Foxtrot Ridge and the loss of my good friend Don Schuck, not only did my attitude about the war begin to change, but my personality changed, too. Almost overnight, I went from the lowly FNG/PFC with no combat experience to the most cocky salt to ever strap on a helmet. I covered up all my fear and anxiety behind a mask of macho madness, pretending to be the baddest son of a bitch in the bush. I was not in favor of the war, and I let everyone know it by painting peace signs on my helmet. I rebelled not only against the war, but against the Marine Corps itself. I protested the war in a subdued sort of way. My superiors frowned on such behavior, so I could not afford to be too blatant or open about it at first. I wanted out, but I would not do anything to jeopardize my honorable discharge or the Good Conduct Ribbon I hoped to receive someday. I was a very confused young man, torn between the drug-crazed, baby-killing Vietnam vet people back home seemed to think I was, and the peace-loving, nonviolent hippie I thought I wanted to be.

  The battalion commander came out to Bridge #34 around June 1 to award Fox Company with a Meritorious Unit Citation. Several heavily armed hueys circled the area from above while his personal chopper touched down just long enough to allow him to jump out. Another chopper with a cargo net slung underneath it came in and dropped a large amount of half-melted vanilla ice cream on the road for our enjoyment. The lieutenant colonel made a little speech, telling us all how proud we should be to have killed more NVA than any other rifle company in any single engagement in the history of the Vietnam conflict to date.

  The citation was actually a general award to the whole battalion for actions against the enemy from January 1 through May 31, 1968, but there is a specific mention of “heavy fighting near Khe Sanh in May, where enemy forces were dealt one of their most severe setbacks. Marines held strategic ground against a massive assault by an enemy unit far superior numerically.” I believe this refers to Foxtrot Ridge. The citation is signed by the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

  Th
ere were 176 NVA kills reported on Foxtrot Ridge the afternoon of May 28, immediately following the battle, with an extraordinary large number of very heavy blood trails leading away from the area. NVA stretcher bearers were observed carting off the dead and wounded all night long, indicating that the real numbers could have been much higher. Fifty-four more NVA kills were found on the 29th when a more thorough sweep of the area was made, bringing the total to 230.

  Chapter 9

  Leatherneck Square

  During the first 20 days of June 1968, we continued with Operation Scotland II, using Bridges #34, #35, and LZ Hawk as base camps. The three platoons of Fox Company resumed search-and-destroy tactics in our AO south of Khe Sanh. We kept a close watch on Route #9 and the many ambush points along both sides of the narrow, mountain road in an ongoing effort to keep the daily convoys in and out of the dwindling combat base moving. The 304th NVA Division was believed to have moved out of the area and possibly only a few stragglers remained. It stayed pretty quiet for us, giving us the opportunity to regroup and tend to our own losses.

  Many of our 44 WIAs from the Ridge would be returned to the bush after a brief convalescence, but some would not. Just the same, we needed grunts in the field, now! We received a lot of FNGs those first weeks of June, and Fox Company seemed to take on a whole new personality all of a sudden. Fox Company had a lot of FNGs and inexperienced grunts to begin with, so these new replacements really compounded the problem. Our skipper (CO) returned from R&R and 1st Lieutenant Jones was relieved. Skipper said it himself, after observing our new ranks: “The company was never the same again, after the Ridge.”