LRRP (Provisional)

2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

Vietnam 1966-67

by Frank Camper
Copyright © 2021 Frank Camper

All rights reserved.

ISBN:9798692334510
 DEDICATION

To the nearly 60,000 who didn’t make it. We scratched our grief
onto a wall. And it looks just like your names.

Author’s Note—
This book is as true as I could make it, based on my notes and letters
home, interviews with participants, after action reports, casualty
information from The Wall, and of course, memory. War is a confusing
subject at best, so I apologize in advance for any error.
This is a day-by-day journal, a story of names, dates, and places.
Some families will find their sons, fathers, and husbands mentioned here.
This is one of the reasons I have tried to be so accurate.
Of course, the conversations throughout this book are
approximations of what was originally said. At base, this is not my story but
that of our remarkable LRRP platoon which had such an effect on LRRP
operations throughout the rest of the war.

This is a story of origin, and I cannot tell the platoon’s story

without telling mine. So let’s get into it.

Frank Camper
The Insertion 6

LRRPs. Who We Were, What We Did. 26

Part I
Headquarters & Headquarters Company 28
2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

Part II 99
nd
C Company (2 Platoon)
2nd of the 8th Infantry 2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

Part III 170

Headquarters & Headquarters Company
LRRP Platoon (Provisional)
2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

Commander’s Conference 323

LRRP/Ranger. The Unwanted Elite. 327

 24 February 1967: The Insertion
It was cold in the helicopter this high and this early in the morning.
I couldn’t recognize specific landmarks, but the area was familiar. I was
back in the Kontum mountain country along the Cambodian border.
For this mission, it was again Bill Steffens, John Payne and I who
flew with Sgt. Roger Hill toward the new 1st of the 12th firebase. This was
my first extended mission with the LRRP platoon, and the anticipation of it
lay in my stomach like a brick. This was really do or die now. I gripped
my new, black Colt Commando. It had a very deadly appearance, this short
version of the M16 rifle, from the big, vented muzzle blast reducer to the
flat metal butt plate of the telescoping stock. It had been designed just for
raiding parties and special operations.
After shivering in our thin tiger fatigue shirts for fifteen minutes, I
saw the LZ far below us, partially obscured by the mist evaporating from
the forest in the sun’s first rays. It was a brown scab of earth on a green
mountain, as isolated as an island at sea.
I got a better look as we circled down. Great portions of the land
around it were burned off black by napalm strikes, pitted by dozens of
bomb craters, evidence of the recent battle on the 15th to establish this
miserable, dusty outpost.
Our Huey touched down only long enough for .us to jump off, the
area still too dangerous for such a good target as a chopper to tarry. We
were left standing near the debris of other helicopters that had never gotten
.off the ground again.
Around us, work details were repairing the defenses shot up just
days ago. We made our way through the activity to the HQ bunker, which
was shaded by a cleverly hung cargo parachute.
Hill reported to the operations officer, and went down into the
command bunker while we sat and waited outside and stayed out of the
workers’ way. This firebase was a busy place. Hill returned before we even
got comfortable. “I got the briefing,” he said. “Let’s go find a place to
talk.” We moved near the perimeter and dropped our gear, sitting in a
semicircle around our map.
Hill used his knife as a pointer. “Here we are,” he began, touching
the tip of the blade to a spot by the edge of the sheet. “It’s about three
thousand meters from this firebase to Cambodia.”
He moved the knife up slightly. “To our northeast another three
klicks, the old Red Warrior LZ. This is where the 1st of the 12th lost so
many people last year. It’s supposed to be watched by the NVA now. With
this new LZ so close, they might think we’ll try another helicopter assault
in the old LZ.”
A Chinook hovered in and dropped a sling of 105mm artillery
ammo, the turbulence drowning us in dust. Hill waited, allowed the
distraction to fly away, and continued.
“Our primary mission will be to check out that area. If we can do
that, and we have time, S2 wants us to take a quick look along the border
and see where the NVA have their base camp.”
I knew then I wasn’t going to be disappointed for my first long
mission. “How bad are the dinks around here?” I asked Hill. He hesitated,
seemingly reluctant to answer, then said, “An ambush patrol hit a squad of
them three hundred meters out last night. Last week they almost overran
this firebase. They’re out there.”
“Don’t seem like Brigade needs us to find them,” I said. Steffens
grinned. “Better we find them than they find us,” he joked.
What we didn’t know was Division was using a new tactic. Pull our
big infantry units back from the border where they could get mauled and
could not give chase as the enemy ran for safety in Cambodia, and fill the
void with recon patrols. We were early warning..
“Fire in the hole!” a voice bellowed from the headquarters bunker,
and all around us, men dived for cover. We didn’t know what was
happening, and joined them just in time.
An explosion rocked the earth so sharply I thought the entire
firebase might have moved over two feet to the west. My head hurt as I
looked up. A rising pillar of smoke and dust dwarfed our position. “What
the hell was that?” Steffens choked.
An infantryman lying on his belly nearby laughed. “They just blew
a five-hundred-pounder outside the wire. We had a couple of dud bombs
left over from the air strikes.”
I sat up, brushing dirt out of my hair. “Were you here in the air
assault?” I asked the trooper.
“Second wave,” he said. “You guys are with brigade recon, right?”
Payne nodded affirmatively. “Shit,” the soldier exclaimed. “I wouldn’t set
foot outside the perimeter for a million dollars. Charlie is all over the place
out there.”
“We heard. How bad was the battle?” I asked, getting back to my
original question.
“Did you know an AK round will go right straight through two
layers of sandbags? And that’s all we had. It was bad enough,” the dusty
trooper replied.
The sun was getting hot fast as soon as it rose above the trees. We
tied up a poncho liner as shelter, and rested, taking in the sights.
The work parties dug out the bunkers along the perimeter, and
increased the fields of fire. A mass grave for the North Vietnamese had
already been filled outside the perimeter, and the more recent finds of small
body parts were carried to the same place and buried in a shallow ditch.
“We’re pulling listening post tonight for the infantry,” Hill said,
“and going on our mission from there. We won’t come back in the
firebase.”
We ate chow with the firebase, served out of their sandbagged
kitchen, waiting for the night. At dark, we put on all our equipment and
reported to the perimeter for the listening-post duty.
“Be careful out there,” a sergeant warned us. “There’s still butterfly
bombs and unexploded CBUs the engineers didn’t get, and plenty of
chopped-up barbed wire.” The wire could snag us, causing unnecessary
noise, but the bombs were killers. We climbed out over the wire and tiptoed
single file into the dark. Payne led us, heading for a spot we’d been told was
marked by the remains of a burned Huey helicopter
We found the spot where they wanted us. The helicopter was a
disintegrated pile of mechanical oddments and torn aluminum. Tiny white
triangles of paper littered the ground, the corners of a burned manual from
the ship.
The area smelled like death. I gagged in the odor. Did they leave
American body parts in the chopper? I hoped not. It must be some dink
corpse no one has found yet.
I fully expected our LP to turn into a blind midnight shootout, but
the hours dragged by without bother. We swapped guard, actually able to
sleep after worry was replaced with boredom.

25 February 1967: Hide & Seek

The dawn arrived cold and foggy. Hill gave the signal and we came
to our feet and entered the ghostly forest, the mist smothering our footfalls.
For an hour there was no sound to disturb the unreal quality of the
morning as we trod softly through the dew-soaked bushes. My lower
trouser legs and boots became as chilly and wet as if we’d forded a stream.
You move with care and caution when your life depends on it. We
lifted our feet high as we walked, setting them down slowly, toeing twigs
and roots out of the way, pausing every few meters to kneel and listen.
When blue sky finally shone through the treetops, and we stopped to
rest, we found a trail and made radio contact with the firebase. I had
counted a thousand meters we’d traveled, a third of the way to our
objective.

No small infantry patrols had been sent into this area, for fear of
losing them. Three companies operating out of the firebase were working
east from us, in hopes they might drive the NVA this way, west toward
Cambodia.
As we rested, I covered tail gun, Steffens watched the flanks, and
Payne and Hill held the center. Hill had a long conversation with the
firebase over the radio, his map before him, weapon and hat laid aside.
Hill marked the location of the trail on the map, while the rest of us
guarded both approaches. “We’ll go north as long as this trail holds out,”
he said. “You take point.”
I resolved to shoot first and ask questions later, switching to full
automatic and proceeding up the path. This was baiting the tiger and we all
knew it. One of the laws of jungle warfare is that if you want enemy
contact, get on a trail.
 I began to sweat from nervous tension, finding myself frequently
holding my breath rather than risk the noise of inhaling or exhaling.
The team followed me, imitating my every move, watching my
reactions, and stepping where I stepped. The suspense was numbing.
In many places the overhead was so dense the sunlight couldn’t
penetrate. The trail was dim, beset by shadows, the rightful province of the
ambusher.
The trail had a destination. I spied the first bunker far enough in
advance so that I could blend down into the shrubbery gracefully. The team
behind me went to earth so quickly it seemed a breeze had blown and, like
smoke, they had disappeared.
Something was wrong. We were too close to the bunkers not to be
dead already if the NVA were alert. I took a good look around. The
bunkers seemed to be deserted. Sod had sunk between the logs and the
firing ports were covered with withered camouflage.
I signaled for the team to stay down, and I checked out the nearest
hole by creeping over to it. I was right. These were all old fortifications. I
gave a low all-clear whistle, and the team came out.
“Looks like a company or more dug in here,” Hill said, surveying
the positions. He took out his notebook and began to make a diagram of the
bunkers.
We began to recover from the exertion of the day, muscles
unknotting, fatigues drying out, stomachs growling for food. I pulled a
chicken-and-rice LRRP ration from my rucksack, boiling a canteen cup of
water to reconstitute it, and sat back to wait.
I hadn’t eaten all day, and I was hungry. The ration slowly absorbed
the water, swelling the packet. I had twenty minutes to wait for the
dehydrated ration to reconstitute, but it seemed like an hour to my empty
stomach. We’d get freeze-dried meals later, but for now, it was the first
generation of dehydrated rations.
To top off a hard day, a plague of sweat bees descended on us. They
buzzed and lit everywhere, coming right back after being swatted off, trying
to crawl into the corners of my eyes and into my mouth. I draped a
handkerchief over my face.

I made a mistake then. My attention wandered for just an instant. I

heard a slight sound nearby, and looked swiftly around to see what it was.
 I found myself staring at an NVA soldier twenty feet away. He had
come out of nowhere! I was sitting nearly out of his line of vision as he
glanced in my direction. He had looked my way but he acted as if he had
not seen me. I was too stunned to move. He continued to look around, AK
held muzzle low.
Then he casually turned to my left and walked away. Had he really
not seen me? If so, this guy had to have both nerve and cool. We had almost
looked each other in the eye! I quickly but quietly rolled into a depression
in the earth against some banyan roots, flicking the safety to fire on my
CAR-15. I detected no sound from him. He had to still be out there,
probably just a short distance away, crouched in the underbrush.
I looked back toward Payne as he repacked the radio equipment. I
waved at him. He didn’t look up. I motioned silently, frantically, Payne
totally not noticing me for what seemed to be one breathless eternity. Look
up, dammit, look up, I pleaded in my head.
When Payne finally saw me, he reacted by tapping Hill and going
down into the thicket. We waited. Disaster on the first day? Maybe not.
My heart knocked against my ribs so loudly I wasn’t sure I could hear
anything else.
Payne inched up to me. I indicated, “One dink, moving that way,”
in simple sign language. Payne pointed to himself, and to the right flank,
then to me and to the left, motioning we should go out and get our visitor.
We tried the impromptu pincers movement, but only found each
other and the trail on which the man had made his escape. “This is how he
got up on me without making any noise,” I whispered to Payne. The trail
was clean, well used, and wide.
 We crawled back to the old bunkers to wait and listen. I reached
over and pulled my ration package to me, still hungry despite the
circumstances. I found I was shaking so badly trying to eat, I was spilling
half the rice off my spoon. When we had finished eating, Hill told us to
prepare to move, pointing to the trail.
The trail passed on through the bunkers and went for higher ground.
I walked forward a few meters and found another trail branching off ours.
“We’ll go north as long as the trails do,” Hill said. “I believe they’ll
take us right to the Red Warrior LZ. And start looking for a place to spend
the night. I want to find a good one before it gets too late.”
I agreed. This place was too damn active for us to be stumbling
around in the dark. I searched carefully as we advanced, turning down any
place that didn’t afford maximum protection. It was dangerously easy to
stay on our compass course. All I had to do was move from one trail to
another. We were in a network.
It was hours before I came across some good high ground, and I led
us up into it. It was so steep it was hard to climb. That was fine. Anyone
trying to do it at night would make a hell of a lot of noise.
I pulled myself up from tree to tree, resting in place occasionally. I
reached the top dripping with sweat and bleeding from thorn pricks and
grass slices, but I didn’t just barge in. I hugged the hillside below the crest,
listening, calculating how fast I could jump backward and get away if the
hill was already claimed for the night.
I peeked over a fallen log and scanned the hilltop. Safe so far.
Loping in a crouch, I covered the distance across the small knoll and took
cover behind a tree, looking down the opposite slope.
It wasn’t as steep on the far side, being part of a ridge. I waved the
team up, and we secured the hill for the night, spreading out. I chose the
lower part of the slope, the team assuming its usual defensive position: team
leader and RTO in the center, point and tail gun at the far ends.
A stick thrown by Hill hit me in the back while I waited. I turned
and felt my heart sink as he gave me the “Be quiet” sign. Payne had his
M16 ready, his attention on something near us.
I picked up my weapon, moving nothing but my arm, believing we
were about to be attacked. Hill and Payne sneaked into the foliage, moving
with absolute silence. Then I heard it for myself.
 A short distance away people were walking by, the scuffing of
sandals on packed dirt very clear, voices in Vietnamese conversing without
fear of detection.
They walked away. I had edged downward until I was absolutely
flat against the ground. I realized we’d camped right beside another trail.
Hill looked up at me, so tense the whites of his eyes showed all around his
pupils.
We dared not try to leave the hill—they would catch us for sure—
but if we stayed here, all it would take was for one of them to wander off
the trail for some reason, and zap, instant catastrophe.
When it became fully dark, we pulled in together. Payne made the
last radio report of the day by only keying the handset and saying nothing
aloud. We just couldn’t afford it. We didn’t unpack anything, lying with
our rucksacks beside us.
Later, lights began to flash in the night sky toward the firebase we
had left. No one was asleep, so we raised our heads, hearing the sound of
gunfire drift in on the wind. Someone was getting probed.
The firebase responded with its artillery, firing out rounds in all
directions and ranges. Flares went up, and tracers arced over the jungle, red
for ours, green for theirs. A burning parachute flare fell into the treetops
near us and took away our night, until it sputtered out.
Several stray artillery shells sailed in and hit our ridgeline, sounding
much louder at night, the blasts echoing into the valley. Even a marker
round canister or two came whistling down and smashed into the trees, all
too near for us.
And we soon had company again. A North Vietnamese squad
rushed by us on the hidden trail, equipment bumping, heading for the
action.
The night and the battle progressed. More NVA went past us, all
involved in their own problems, none even guessing we were in whispering
distance.
Then a drumming roar from above vibrated through the valley. I
glanced up and saw what appeared to be a ragged beam of red-yellow light
plunging out of the night sky, making a cosmic flash of sparkles as the beam
struck earth, thousands of red bursts splashing up and away from the
impact, like lava exploding.
 Puff the Magic Dragon! The old C-47 cargo plane with the electric
Gatling guns! Puff belched another terrific volley, an unbelievable column
of pure bullets that soaked the forest below like a deadly rain. Only every
sixth round was a tracer, but it looked like they all were.
That was the end to the fighting. No army could stand up to Puff.
The dragonship’s engines droned lazily overhead, as it circled, methodically
spraying around the firebase with a breath more deadly than anything
imagined in King Arthur’s day.
Then it started coming our way! We had no arrangement for
radioing anybody to get Puff away from us. The miniguns drowned out
everything else, and I expected the fire to nail us to the hill. I had heard of
men being killed accidentally by Puff, hundreds of meters from the beaten
zone. Back on December 14th, a dragonship had killed one man from C/4-
42 Arty and wounded two others while firing a “safe distance” from their
firebase.

26 February 1967:
All things considered, it was a long night. The NVA retreated on
our trail until dawn, trickling by, disorganized, carrying their wounded and
dragging heavy loads.
As soon as it was light enough to see, we were ready to leave.
Payne made the radio report. He spoke so low into the mike he had to keep
on repeating himself to be understood.
We needed speed, and got off the ridge the fast way, via last night’s
highway. It was a fresh trail, leading into the hills.
Once we were on low ground and headed for the old Red Warrior
LZ, we ducked off the trail and took to the woods again. Evidence of
enemy movement was everywhere we looked.
Men walking in single file had treaded down the layer of leaves on
the ground in many places. The dampness of the morning dew betrayed
them. The untouched leaves glistened. The disturbed leaves were dull. It
was easy to see the winding routes the North Vietnamese patrols had taken
only hours before.
We covered the distance to the LZ before noon and without incident,
going very slow and careful. I had point again, and was the first team
member to see the NVA fortifications that circled the old LZ.
 We stealthily slipped into the old bunker line, the clearing visible
ahead of us. The team lay back as I advanced to scout the LZ. I parted the
high grass and peered into a vast open field. In the center, like a target, was
the landing zone itself, the scars of the battle only now being reclaimed by
nature. The pitifully shallow fighting holes on the LZ had begun to vanish
under patches of grass and shrubs.
The line of fire from the NVA position to the LZ was absolutely
clear. No wonder the 1/12th got their butts kicked, I thought dismally. It
was so easy to imagine the horror out there, exposed on all sides, the
helicopters being shot down, no place to run.
It took time, but we crept completely around the LZ, charting the
positions and marveling at them. It was very tedious work, checking for
booby traps, pacing off yardage, guarding and watching.
Every NVA bunker was firmly roofed over, the mortar pits looked
like wells, and trenches had been set in between the recoilless rifle and
mortar emplacements connected all the heavy weapons positions. 12.7mm
antiaircraft guns positions were frequent, so a chopper flying across the LZ
would be like a big, slow, clay pigeon launched before a crowd of skeet
shooters.
As I watched my feet for the possibility of mines, or of the arming
lever or wire of a booby trap, I saw a bit of canvas protruding through the
sandy soil.
I held up my hand to stop the team, and bent to examine my find. It
was the stitched edge of a Chinese-made AK-47 ammunition pouch, the
type worn across the chest. I poked at the packed sand around the canvas,
but it was hard, like limestone, and would not easily move.
Hill crawled up to me on his hands and knees. “What is it?” he
asked.
“Ammo pouch,” I whispered.
“Might be a body,” he said. I scraped at the soil with my knife,
digging around the canvas, and struck something harder than the pebbles. It
was a human rib bone, and as I removed more dirt, I could see it was
charred. I pulled part of the ammo pouch out of the ground. It too had been
burned. My guess was napalm. “Think we ought to dig him up?” I asked.
“No, let’s just report the body and the location.”
I agreed. I didn’t want to start robbing graves. We left the bones in
the earth and Hill wrote down the position in his notebook. I brushed the
dirt off my hands and kept moving.
It was nearly dark when we had finished the recon job and had
eaten. We sent a long radio report back, describing the patrol up to this
point. Then, as Payne signed us off and packed his mike and antenna,
Steffens reached down to his feet and pulled up a strand of buried wire.
“Commo wire!” he exclaimed in a loud whisper. It was gray
Chinese issue, not the black U.S. Army wire.
“Follow it,” Hill said.
Steffens ripped the line out of the earth until he came to a tree. It
joined a terminal there, spliced into another line. He held up a fistful of
wire. The splice was insulated by paper, not tape, and the paper was still
fresh. We looked it over closely. They had recently wired this place,
expecting to use it again. That answered all our questions for this mission.
Hill pointed to the slight rise toward the west. “Let’s get into those
thickets,” he said, “and take cover for the night. Steffens, lead out.”
Steffens led us to an entanglement of dried bamboo and vines, and
we crawled in like rabbits into a warren. After dark, we moved a hundred
meters away on our hands and knees before we slept, to confuse any NVA
that might have spotted us earlier.
The stars came out brilliantly and we rested, secure in the dense
underbrush, wondering what the NVA were doing tonight. My
apprehension was subdued, but it did not go away. We had enjoyed
incredible luck so far. It could not continue.

27 February 1967: Cambodia

We stayed late in our haven, eating our LRRP rations and making
coffee, organizing our gear and watching the LZ through a hole in the
foliage. The sun was high by the time Hill announced our next move.
“We’re taking a straight 270 degrees west,” he told us, “right to the
river and the border. We have enough rations to stay out two more days.”
I was given the point again, and I kept a steady pace, pausing only
long enough to examine a bit of evidence here or there that the enemy had
also been this way.
It was as hot as two hells by noon. We were in a mix of streams and
marsh, where the Nam Sathay River was low. The forest had become lush
jungle, enmeshed in swampy lowland and thick, green moss beds along the
streams. We ran out of energy pushing through the mass of it, sweat
pouring off us, a direct sun cooking us unmercifully.
We found a slight clearing and fell into it, throwing our gear off and
gasping for breath. Payne wiped the sweat from his neck with his flop hat
“Where the fuck are we?” he asked, his voice weak from the exertion.
Hill slipped his map from his thigh pocket. “About right here, I
think,” he said, indicating a place on the border. So this was Cambodia. It
didn’t look a bit different from Vietnam.
“We need to get an exact fix on where we are,” Payne insisted.
Steffens looked around. All we could see was swamp and rain forest
infested with vines. “Can’t tell anything from here,” he said.
“I’ll climb a tree,” Payne volunteered, gazing at a tall stand of trees
about a hundred meters away. Steffens picked up his rifle. “I’ll pull
security for you,” he said. Payne stripped off his shirt and boots, and slung
a pair of binoculars over his neck.
He came back down painfully scratched in places, but loaded with
information. “I’d put us right over the border,” he said as he dressed. “I
could orient my map and get those hills and the river lined up just right.”
Hill considered that briefly, then stood and pulled on his rucksack.
“Okay. We’re on our way home now. Camper, take the point. Let’s go.”
“We’re not going in any deeper?” I asked.
“No. We’ll just weave along the border until we can cut east.”
I aimed my compass, the arrow pointing our way ahead. We
slopped through the swamp, trying to keep on the more solid spots. The
humidity made the air itself dense and oppressive. Salty sweat ran in my
eyes, and my uniform was chafing and binding, as wet after ten minutes’
walking as if I’d dived into the stream. It felt like a hundred degrees in that
morass. My vision was blurred.
For a moment, my pain and discomfort overwhelmed my alertness. I
should have been paying more attention to my job. I did not know the
enemy had been standing exactly where I was standing now just a few
minutes earlier. Why they hadn’t heard us I don’t know. Maybe they were
as miserable.
As I walked through the grass and water, watching where I put my
feet, I saw the sandal print, freshly made in the gritty soil alongside the
water.
 I literally felt a shock race straight up my spinal cord. They were
here, close. Hill looked at the print. “Turn around, go the other way!” he
whispered. I hurried past the team and retraced our steps. The guy who
had made that print was only a few minutes ahead of us.
Was the print from a single scout or from a patrol? The dinks would
have border patrols. That made sense.
I was cautious, measuring my progress in minutes of life and not
meters of ground. Hill whistled. I looked around and he motioned for me
to hurry, by pumping his fist up and down like a drill instructor ordering
double-time.
I signaled refusal. Angry, Hill waved me aside and took point
himself. I let him go by and fell in behind. He began to move fast,
seemingly without caring how much noise he made.
We got out of the swamp and climbed a bombed-out hillside, finding
ourselves in a morass of dying elephant grass. Hill hadn’t slowed down at
all. I wondered if he was giving any thought to where he was taking us. We
were going too fast for me to check my compass.
An old pathway through the grass attracted Hill. It looked like it
had been pushed down just days before. We tromped on through the grass,
chasing Hill, getting more lost by the meter. What we hadn’t considered
was we might be going toward, not away, from, the main body.
Suddenly Hill fell in a most awkward way, his hat and M16 rifle
flying. I thought he’d tripped over a vine. I quickly stopped, sidestepping
off the trail, squatting down, expecting Hill to get back to his feet. What
happened next takes longer to tell than it did to live.
Hill was scrambling to free his rifle from the vines. “Sarge,” I
whispered, “what’s wrong?” Hill looked back at me, his face a mask of
terror. He could obviously see something bad that I couldn’t.
 Roger Hill had almost stepped into the lap of a sitting NVA soldier
who had an SKS across his knees. There were many more NVA just beyond
him, maybe a dozen, all crouched or sitting quietly. It was the main body.
And they had to have heard us coming. They hadn’t fired because they must
have thought we were their own people, returning.
“Dinks?” I asked aloud. Hill was still looking at me, pulling at his
rifle. Vines had the barrel and butt lassoed.
“Shoot! Shoot!” I said.
He could not. “Goddammit, if you’re not going to fire, I am!” I
said, still unsure of the situation. I lifted my weapon and was flipping it off
safe when a shot exploded from somewhere in front of me, blowing the
grass back in my face. It was so close my ears rang.
I had my CAR pointed forward and pulled the trigger, but instead of
a barrage of full auto, the CAR fired just once. Jam? I almost had heart
failure. I glanced down and saw the selector was only on semi.
I didn’t take the time to flip it to auto. I machine-gunned out the
whole magazine on semi towards the front, speed spurring my trigger
finger.
The shit hit the fan for real then. A deafening cascade of small-arms
fire erupted from in front of us. I saw Hill twitching, and thought he was
being shot. Bullets hit all around him. Leaves flew off their branches near
me; stinging dirt hit my face as near misses plunged just short of my knee.
I cringed, waiting for the impact of the rounds in my body. Under
stress it seems that time slows down, but it is a question of awareness, not
time. Ordinarily the mind allows time to slip by unheeded. Danger
changes all that. Time then gets full and deserved notice. I knew the heat,
the noise, the zip of bullets in the air, the voices of my team members
behind us. Each detail and each instant was there to observe. Somehow I
changed magazines in the midst of all that, though I wouldn’t realize I had
done so until I later found the empty mag under my shirt.
A North Vietnamese jumped up in front of me, about ten feet away,
his AK-47 smoking from muzzle to magazine well, probably trying to see if
he had hit Hill.
I changed the fire selector to auto and was already pressing the
trigger again as he exposed himself, and it was only by chance he was in
my line of fire. He never saw me. I put a burst across his chest and he fell
and disappeared, arms flung wide, his weapon spinning through the air.
 Unhurt, Hill launched himself off the ground and passed me
screaming, “Go! Go! Go!” I needed no urging. I was right behind Hill,
running as I’d never run before.
The earth exploded violently around us, bullets deflecting and
caroming, shrieking through the air as they spun, as if they were crazed
bees. It sounded like a firing range behind us. What had we done,
stumbled into a platoon? I raced through the woods, dodging trees, breaking
down vines, losing sight of Hill. My hat was knocked off. Where were
Payne and Steffens? Bullets were cracking by me at every jump. They were
actually chasing us.
The incentives to live took us out of the ordinary. Behind us were
men wildly trying to kill and we were men desperately trying to survive.
The North Vietnamese fired as they ran, with no targets except split-second
glimpses of our backs or the crashing and thrashing of the foliage.
I dashed into the clearing we’d passed earlier. It was inches deep in
napalm ashes, and I saw Hill ahead of me, leaving a wake of dust behind
him like a whirlwind. I caught up with him when he tried to leap through a
forked tree stump and became stuck. I grabbed him by the seat of the pants
and lifted as I passed, literally flipping him over the fork; he regained his
feet and outran me.
The swamp was straight ahead, and I caught sight of Payne and
Steffens waiting there for us. Hill and I dived into the swamp, totally out of
breath. The gunfire had ceased.
Hill grabbed for the radio handset from Payne, getting me caught in
the middle and tangled in the cord. I accidentally burned my cheek on my
weapon, the short barrel and flash suppressor as hot as a furnace. “I got
one, I got one. . .” I heard myself saying.
“My map, I think I lost it,” Hill croaked. Even in my own semi-
stupor of exhaustion I heard and understood the importance of that
statement. A map was gold to the NVA; especially one of ours marked with
patrol routes and coordinate codes.
Steffens watched the grass. “We gotta get the hell out of here, I
think they’re coming after us!” he warned.
Hill radioed battalion again. “Three-Three, I am changing to
another location, wait out,” he said, and began to slog out of the damp.
“Let’s go,” Hill said nervously.
 We trotted to higher ground, so alert an insect couldn’t have moved
without catching our eye. We found a break in the trees and laid out an
aircraft marker panel; Payne hastily set up the radio and Steffens and I
staked out the security.
Steffens cursed. His weapon was malfunctioning. He discovered it
wouldn’t change to automatic and the fire selector had to be pried off safe
with his knife. Payne swapped weapons with him while Hill called in our
position.
We could see two distant helicopters in the air about five klicks
away, and I hoped the firebase would relay our situation to them. But the
minutes ticked past and the choppers flew on. “FAC’s coming,” Hill said
excitedly, “get that panel out where he can see it!”
Talk about service. The small green spotter plane was on our radio
frequency before Payne could move the panel. Hill keyed the handset and
FAC rode the beam in. Payne stood and held the orange panel up like a big
bed sheet. What a target.
“He’s got us!” Hill said. Payne gratefully dropped the panel. “He
says there’s a bomb crater on a low hilltop six hundred meters west of here,
and to get to it!”
The two helicopters had caught FAC’s call and banked back toward
us. Help at last! I heard the unmistakable cracking of a Huey’s leading
rotor blade slapping the air. We ran uphill to the crater, the drumming of
the rotor blades getting closer.
I was the first man on the crest. It must have been a hell of a bomb
that had cleared this hill. It was as bare as a tabletop. Only one tree was
left standing, and it had no bark or limbs.
I saw the crater, the only cover anywhere, and made for it as fast as
my rapidly expiring legs would take me. The two helicopters were
approaching us in the sky from the east. We’d have transport in a matter of
minutes.
But surprise! -- the NVA had beaten us to the hill. I saw one hiding
in a bush, looking the other way. His faded tan uniform in the dark green
bush gave him away.
The NVA had set up an ambush on the wrong side of the hill,
waiting for us. It was sprung, and their fire was unleashed on us, kicking
dirt up all around our hole.
 It was a small crater, and the whole team with rucksacks crowded it
badly. The first helicopter came in low, trying to find a place to pick us up.
Ground fire drove it away.
We threw red smoke toward the trees and Hill called the spotter
plane for support. The second Huey was a gunship. He radioed Hill,
asking for an azimuth to the enemy from the smoke. Hill quickly gave him
that information.
The gunnie made a firing pass, quad M60's stuttering, hot brass
cartridge cases pelting us. The trees in the fire swayed in the onslaught,
grass and brush disintegrating in billows of dust.
I crammed another magazine in my weapon and hammered it out in
one pull of the trigger, putting out suppressive fire to our left flank. Steffens
emptied magazines off to the right, and Hill and Payne peppered the front.
“Get down! Rockets!” Hill shouted in the din, and we pressed into
the soft earth of the bomb crater. The Huey barreled in like a fighter plane,
rocket pods flaring, streaks of fire roaring over our hole, and the tree line
exploded into a deafening storm of roots and flying splinters.
“He’s coming back!” Hill said, his voice sounding distant to my
numb eardrums. The chopper cleared out his rocket racks, dumping
everything. Cannons boom and machine guns roar, but rockets make an
unearthly shriek. The projectiles went by just a few meters over our heads,
except the one that caught our lone tree.
It was a white-phosphorus missile. It hit the very tip of the only
standing obstruction on the hilltop and went off just above us, showering
down a thousand hissing bits of white-hot incandescent particles. If there
had been somewhere to go, we’d have unassed that crater then and there.
Incoming fire halted completely after the last rocket run. The
gunship chose a new direction to rip up the trees from, and blazed down,
machine guns running wild. We added as much of our fire at the tree line as
we could, our hole filling with expended cartridge cases.
The smoke from the burning trees covered the hill thickly. We lost
our visibility and had to stop shooting as Hill announced, “Slick coming in,
cease fire!”
The rotor wash from the Huey blew the smoke down and outward as
it hovered in carefully. I stepped on Payne’s shoulder as I jumped out of the
hole, and Hill scrambled out and outran me again as we dashed for the
helicopter.
 Hill had so much speed built up; he ran all the way around the ship
and came in through the opposite door. Payne made it out of the hole and
ran at the helicopter, but something was wrong with his balance. I didn’t
realize it then, but all during the firefight my CAR-15 muzzle had been
inches from his ear, and the firing had temporarily upset his equilibrium.
Payne slammed into the doorgunner’s machine gun mount, almost knocked
himself out, and had to be pulled bodily into the helicopter.
I was third, as I had slowed down to cover Payne, raking the trees
with one of my last magazines, and as I ran for the doorway, firing at the
enemy with just one hand holding my CAR-15, my last two or three rounds
punctured the tail boom of our own helicopter.
Now we were all in but Bill Steffens. He had remained in the crater
and continued to fire, dutifully covering his team, performing his tail gun
job to the last. He rose and made the dash, the strain showing on his face.
And his Starlight night vision scope fell out from under his rucksack flap.
He knew it fell. A Starlight was a highly classified device. Charlie
could do more damage to us with a captured Starlight than he could do with
a 105mm howitzer. Steffens stopped, his eyes still on the helicopter,
thinking it over. Then he turned, going back after the critical instrument.
The rotors were spinning at takeoff speed, and our skids were
already off the ground. Payne was lying nearly unconscious on the deck,
and the smoke was still obscuring the trees. This was the moment for a
stray bullet to take out the pilot, jam the rotor transmission, or some other
such catastrophe.
Steffens got to the door just as the pilot propelled us upward. Hill
and I desperately grappled at Steffens’ pack straps, hoisting him in, his feet
dangling out during the fast, high climb.
I took a deep breath and collapsed against the aft bulkhead,
watching the burning hill get smaller in the distance. My Lord, we were out
of it.
***
The main body of the NVA was close. Later on the same day, Alpha
Company 1st 22nd hit an estimated company of NVA not far from our contact
and Alpha Company 1st 12th came to help. Two GI’s died in that fight. 29
were wounded. 48 NVA were killed.

27 February 1967: Revised vs. Real History

 We were back from the Cambodian mission, which begins this book
about our main enemy contact of 27 February.
While preparing and fact-checking this edition of LRRP you are
reading, I came across an official, but incredible account of our 27Feb
action as recounted in Taking The Offensive by George L. MacGarrigle
published by The Center for Military History United States Army,
Washington DC 1998. It is a lengthy work at 485 pages, and anointed by
advisory committees and esteemed personages.
Here, quoted under fair use, is what this history book records about
this single mission for posterity. From page 171:

On 27 February [1967] a helicopter inserted one of these teams to

check the results of a B52 attack east of the Nam Sathay in an area
where the river formed the South Vietnamese-Cambodian border.
Apparently disoriented, the pilot set the men down west of the river
inside Cambodia. An hour later, the team surprised 2 enemy
soldiers, killed 1, and then asked to be extracted, having
compromised its position. Only then did US commanders realize
that the soldiers were on the wrong side of the border.

Shortly thereafter, a large North Vietnamese force spotted the patrol

but failed to react, apparently equally surprised at seeing
Americans. Before enemy commanders could gather their wits,
helicopters whisked the team away. This was neither the first nor
the last time that Americans would cross the border.

Peers wanted to relieve the offending commander on the spot for

what he called an “almost unbelievable error.” In keeping with
explicit instructions from MACV headquarters against incursions,
the 4th Division had scrupulously avoided the border, yet everyone
knew that even if the maps showed the border clearly, actually
finding it amongst the mountains and trees of the highlands was a
daunting task. Peers relented. After all, good commanders were
hard to find.

What? Our pilot was “disoriented” and the NVA “too surprised” to
react? And Peers wanted to fire our LRRP platoon CO LT Mike Lapolla?
The fake story is what became official history! We were actually weaving
the border as we’d been asked, and we’d walked in, not been inserted, but I
couldn’t say for sure on which side of the border we’ve been extracted.
All I can say is, if anything, this falsified account (from official
records, no doubt) reflects the sensitivity of our cross border operations at
the time. Of course, SOG secretly did it in Laos and Cambodia frequently
but US infantry and infantry recon were not supposed to “cross the fence.”
For the 2nd Brigade LRRP’s that was going to change.

Afterthought
Hill’s misstep and contact breaking retreat possibly saved our lives.
This is after consideration that only comes with age and contemplation.
Had I been point at that critical moment, I would have started a shoot-
out right in the middle of the NVA trying to make them run, and being
outnumbered, Hill and I would likely have been killed.

.
LRRPs. Who We Were, What We Did.

L-R-R-P. Pronounce it “lurp,” and when you do, think about a

figure half-seen, crouched in the elephant grass or the jungle underbrush,
aiming the camouflage-taped muzzle of a weapon at you, and know that
somewhere close—very close—there are more like him, doing the same
thing.
That was the last thing hundreds of North Vietnamese regulars or
Vietcong guerrillas saw, realizing their mistake too late.
The LRRP’s were not to be confused with a regular infantry recon
outfit. We were specifically designated for missions deep inside enemy-
held territory and willing to operate alone, beyond artillery or radio range. It
was easy to confuse us with the Special Forces or the Special Operations
Group, but the LRRP’s were mostly volunteers from infantry line
companies, men compensating for lack of elite training by substituting
sheer nerve to get the job done. Brave amateurs.
We had the World War II OSS “long range penetration” teams as an
ancestor, and got our name when the U.S. Rangers worked in Korea,
creating the “LRRP” designation. The term LRRP was part of the U.S.
Army from that time, but was almost lost when the Rangers were disbanded
after Korea, and resurrected for cold war recon missions against WARSAW
Pact forces.
 Early in the war in Vietnam, in the mid-1960’s, most LRRP units
were platoon-size and created on a “provisional” basis. The 196th Infantry
Brigade and the 173rd Airborne Brigade formed two of the earliest
provisional LRRP units.
The original 1950’s Long Range Patrol manual (FM 31-18) gave no
authorization for LRRP units to even exist below Army Corps level, and
then only as a company. That manual was written for a European war
where hiding on mountaintops and spying at a safe distance on road
junctions was a basic tactic, and the intelligence the LRRP’s gathered was
owed strictly to Army Corps headquarters. That designation was to reoccur
in Vietnam.
The subject of this book is about how our platoon gained its
recognition and in 1967 became the model for all Corps–level Vietnam
LRRP operations to follow.
The LRRP’s at all levels in Vietnam got attention from higher
headquarters because they were getting results. Some early provisional
long-range patrol platoons were scoring higher body counts than many line
infantry companies, and most of the enemy the LRRP’s killed were actually
just a side effect, since enemy contact was not usually the object.
Seeing how effective we were at killing, ranking commanders began
to assign more combat and raid missions to us. The first telltale change was
from LRRP to LRP, just long-range patrol (recon as a primary function
deleted), as combat was increasingly more of LRP duty. In February 1969,
all LRP’s were redesignated RANGER, reinstating the disbanded since
Korea Rangers units, and the wheel of Ranger history turned on again.
 Part I

Headquarters & Headquarters Company

2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

21 July 1966: The Infantry Business

In America, we worked hard to remove daily life from the reality of

illness, insanity, and death. We had institutionalized all that. Death was
usually confined to hospitals and nursing homes. The insane and infirm
were in rooms safely out of sight.
Accidental death was cleaned up quickly at the traffic lights or street
corners where it happened, and business went on as usual. We had become
separated from these realities, and the first time most of our young people
saw death was usually in an open casket funeral, just a relative wearing
makeup. We didn’t have to directly deal with our parents or grandparents’
mortality, and by extension, we were unprepared for our own.
It didn’t end there. We had also walled off food preparation, so that
most of us had never seen what terminal violence it took to put beef or
chicken on the table. Even the natural cuts of meat were increasingly
disappearing for the average shopper. Plastic wrapped processed meats as
bologna or hot dogs were more familiar to most of us than steak. After all,
the steak still bled.
How were we going to handle it when death was astride us, when
the blood was our own, when we were the meat?

Long convoys of trucks and buses carried the men of the 2nd
Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, the short distance from Fort Lewis
Washington, to the Tacoma docks. Our ship was the U.S.N.S. Walker. The
rust-streaked old Walker had the distinction of having been twice sunk but
raised each time. Another troopship, the Pope, would follow us. I was a 19-
year old private first class. 11B10 military occupational specialty – combat
infantry. Eleven bang bang.
We laboriously filed up the gangplanks, wearing fully packed
rucksacks, carrying heavy duffel bags and new M16 rifles, sweating in the
summer heat under our steel helmets.
American soldiers had left Tacoma in troopships bound for combat
in the 1940’s with the Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific, in the 1950’s
with the North Koreans and Red Chinese in Korea, and now, in the 1960’s it
was being used to send us to fight the Vietcong and North Vietnamese in
Vietnam.
Like the majority of 2nd Brigade troops filling bunk space on the
Walker, I knew little to nothing about the history of the 4th division. We had
been formally taught nothing. My presumption was the 4th was an old
division being reactivated to go to war. It was just a number. That the 4th
had a long and bloody combat history, from World War One and Two – and
we were about to extend that into Vietnam, wasn’t on our immediate list of
worries.
I was getting on that troopship because in July 1965, at eighteen
years of age, I had walked into an Army recruiter office in Orlando Florida,
and enlisted. I did it because I was young, recently married, my wife Mavis
was pregnant, and I needed a job. These were no more it than that. It was
not a patriotic act.
But joining the military raised its own questions. What branch?
What about one of those nice technical jobs that had a civilian counterpart,
so I would have an even better job on getting out?
There were truths and it was time to face them. I was in an Army
office because I thought of the Army as the most fundamental and least
glamorous of all our services. I was not looking for or expecting anything
special.
The recruiting sergeant and I discussed the types of specialized
training the Army had available, but as we talked, I realized I really wanted
a combat branch. My choice was Armored Infantry. I didn’t want to be a
clerk, mechanic, cook, or technician. My self-respect dictated that I serve
in a combat unit. And Armor might teach me something about mechanics.
The recruiter was a little surprised.
“Are you sure? Most volunteers join up to get the good jobs,” he
said. “The draftees get infantry. I can get you medical or signal or
electronics.”
My father and uncles had fought in World War II and Korea in the
Army, Navy, and Naval Aviation. Some of them were career military. As a
child, I had listened to their stories and experiences.
I had been raised with films and books about World War II and
Korea, and I thought I knew what to expect from war. Ironically, the part of
WWII that I had the least interest in was the island fighting in the Pacific
and the jungle campaigns in Burma. I think that the war in Europe was
closer to my misconceptions. The filmed images of soldiers and marines
fighting in dense Pacific island jungles looked too grim for my comfort.
Now, the US was getting deeper every day in a jungle war in
Vietnam. Questions about it were surfacing from politicians and political
activists. Was the war right or wrong? Should the United States be
involved?
The war was reflected back to us through a jumbled filter of political
naiveté, culture and distance, and biased or inexperienced journalists.
Neither the Right nor Left really knew enough about Vietnam to accurately
judge. Sides were taken based on political agendas or moral illusion.
In the early 1960’s, the “anti-war” movement in the United States
was actually anti-nuclear war. Atomic and hydrogen bombs were
apocalyptic, and writers and film producers waved the flags of dire warning
with books and films such as On the Beach, Failsafe, and Dr. Strangelove.
Now Vietnam was quickly becoming a convenient “antiwar” target, a way
for protest groups to focus from a vague but possible atomic war to a
specific shooting war.
The radio was plugged directly into adolescent and campus
America’s ear. Bob Dylan sang that the answer was blowing in the wind.
Glenn Campbell told us that the decision to kill or not to kill, rested alone
with the Universal Soldier. Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction said we
were already lost. And Peter Paul and Mary reminded us where all the
flowers and soldiers had gone - to graveyards, every one.
I had no serious political or patriotic questions about the war in
Vietnam. I believed that Communism was based on a totalitarian
dictatorship that we had to fight because it was expanding and threatening
us. The Soviets had nuclear weapons just like we did, and in 1964, the year
before I enlisted, Red China had blown their first hydrogen bomb.
 Like most other Americans in 1965, I wasn’t even sure exactly
where Vietnam was. On the day I was in the recruiter’s office, Southeast
Asia and Vietnam were too distant, and the Army too big, for Vietnam to
involve me.
Thailand had been the first place I’d ever heard of in the region. It
had been the subject of a Weekly Reader article while I’d been in grade
school, about how the country was once old Siam, and featured a photo of
Yul Brynner in The King and I. It was beside what was still referred to in
my old school geography book as French Indochina.
The first I’d ever heard of Laos had been in a newspaper article I’d
read as a student in 1959, about an obscure battle there and places called the
Plain of Reeds and the Plain of Jars.
Vietnam had popped up for me in Life Magazine in 1962. There
were color photos of suntanned American advisers against lush green
backgrounds. It was a place President Kennedy was becoming associated
with at the time, and by 1963, the news was about a real-life dragon lady
named Madame Nhu and a coup that assassinated her husband and South
Vietnam’s president, Diem. Three weeks later Kennedy himself was dead.
My father, Franklin Joseph Camper Senior, was a veteran of World
War II. He had been in for the duration of the war, joining the Navy
immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He had served on
submarines and sub tenders in the Pacific, an elite and dangerous job.
When I went home and told my father I had enlisted, his response
shocked me. He grabbed me by both my shoulders and blurted, “You’re
crazy! You’re going to be walking down the middle of the road somewhere
and get cut in half by a machine gun!” He then stormed away in anger,
leaving me standing stunned and a little frightened. My surprise
announcement about joining the Army had triggered something in him that
I didn’t expect or understand.
In that quiet central Florida spring, combat was not something I
anticipated. I figured I would serve my three-year enlistment in the Army,
and when I got out, I would be older, more mature, and better suited for
settling down and finding a civilian job.
I didn’t get Armored Infantry like the recruiter said. At nineteen, as
a private in the 4th Division’s 2nd Brigade Headquarters and Headquarters
Company, it was my turn to go to war. HHC, or “head and head” as we
called it, was the S1 personnel, S2 intelligence, S3 operations, and S4
logistics sections. My particular job was in S3, the operations shop.

Getting everybody to a troop compartment several decks down in

the pack of humanity was slow, with much pushing, doubling back,
swearing, and banging of rifles and heads into plumbing and low
hatchways. We struggled with our packs and cumbersome, weighty duffel
bags in confined spaces, often clashing with another column of infantry
trying to move in the opposite direction.
Work gangs of soldiers manhandled large crates and boxes down
hatches into the holds, performing amazing balancing acts and displays of
strength probably not seen since the pyramids were built—or the last
troopship had been loaded.
I stuffed my duffel bag into a niche near the bunks in the Head and
Head Company compartment, and stuck my rifle and rucksack onto the taut
canvas hammock precisely at the top of the bunks (the Navy called them
“racks”) that stretched from deck to overhead.
We were low at the waterline, near the bow, and the hull actually
slanted in on us. I climbed up onto my rack, pushing my ruck and M16
aside, and gasped in the heat. Almost touching my nose was an array of
pipes bolted to the overhead. I grabbed them to help lift my body up so I
could shift positions, and quickly let go in pain. The pipes were carrying
steam or hot water.
While we fought for places to exist below decks, the Walker crew
lifted the gangplanks, and tossed off the hawser lines to the dock.
Tugs nosed in and pushed us away from the pier, only the men still
on deck able to see the activity. I knew we were under way when I felt the
engines vibrating through the hull of the ship.
I wanted one last look at America. I left my equipment below, went
up the stairs and ladders to the top hatch, and climbed onto deck. The long
shoreline of Washington State was getting smaller in the distance, the docks
busy with shipping and the movement of small and large boats and ships.
There had been little ceremony to our exit. Once the Walker was
out of the way, the USS Gordon would move in to take on our heavier
equipment like trucks, jeeps, helicopters, and artillery pieces, sailing a day
or two behind us.
 I would have liked to wait and watch until I couldn’t see land
anymore, but I had to get back below. I knew our section leaders would be
trying to check personnel lists, and we still had a lot of work to do.
Like a cartridge in the chamber of a weapon, our destiny was set.

02 August 1966: Slow Boat to China

I didn’t know any more about it than anyone else in Head and
Headquarters at the time, but there was something about the war in Vietnam
that was like a nasty family secret that no one talked about or admitted.
From the White House on down to the rifle platoon leader, denial was the
order of the day.
The secret was that the way we were fighting the war in Vietnam
wasn’t working.
Our error was we were not trying to defeat Hanoi. Our mission was
to get the North Vietnamese Communists to stop trying to takeover South
Vietnam. Our stated political goal in Vietnam was not victory. And we
achieved exactly that.
Our highest-placed leaders treated Vietnam as a military problem
that had a technical solution. The common American view was that the
enemy was peasant farmers with old French rifles. They didn’t have
helicopters, armor, or atomic bombs. We could win Vietnam with our
superior mobility and firepower.
This attitude was unwarranted because during the secret Sigma I and
Sigma II “war game” simulations, the Pentagon discovered it would take at
least half a million men just to garrison South Vietnam, much less prosecute
an effective ground war, and that a heavy bombing campaign would not
defeat North Vietnam.
Plus, the CIA knew the Vietcong were no longer farmers with old
French rifles. The VC had been politically and militarily formed by the
North, and was being armed and led by the North.
North Vietnam = Red China + Soviet Russia.
South Vietnam, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN,
had to be built up by using military missionaries (advisors) to
“professionalize” them. But, the small number of American advisors
training and working with the ARVN needed a larger and larger US military
combat force to protect the advisory mission. Sigma I was proving right.
 The American infantry soldier began as just a detail in this overall
scheme. Someone had to pull guard duty for the sophisticated
communications sites, air bases, and headquarters units.
The Pentagon felt that Jack Kennedy’s pet Green Berets had been
humored long enough by allowing them to act out their political and
counterguerilla warfare scenarios. The Special Forces were good press, but
the Pentagon felt their effort was a little drop in a big bucket. More and
more conventional forces were needed.
So now, without admitting that we were strategically wrong,
troopships and airplanes full of men and war materials were arriving in
South Vietnam every day, while the official government propaganda organs
told the people in the US that we were doing it right.

Twelve long, hot days passed with the special monotony that only
slowly crossing the ocean can create.
The ship had two galleys, and they fed around the clock. Each
compartment had a chow schedule that required the troops to report three
times each twenty-four hours, but not necessarily at normal meal times.
The chow varied from bad to worse, and I survived on coffee and bread
from the ship’s bakery.
At first, our officers attempted to keep us busy with make-work
details and training classes on deck, but even that melted away in the
lethargy. The Pacific Ocean was picture-postcard blue, and the weather
calm.
I worked each day with the brigade operations staff in a
superstructure compartment that gave us a nice ocean view, sorting and
reviewing orders, reports, and other paperwork.
Part of my daily task was to plot, independently of the Navy, our
course progress on an ocean map. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust the Navy; it
just gave us a feeling of being involved.
Every twenty-four hours we compared our chart to the bridge
navigator’s chart, and to my surprise and satisfaction, we were always very
close. My only error was in not correcting for drift. Not bad for dead
reckoning.
The only real excitement for the whole trip happened one morning
when the Walker suddenly listed dramatically and we began sailing a tight
circle. The deck slanted under us, and for a few moments, eyes were wide
and faces pale. Was this some kind of anti-submarine maneuver? Had we
hit something? Brigade officers shouted to each other, not knowing what to
do.
The Walker’s list and circling speed increased. Men had to hold
onto bulkheads. Part of the force we felt was gravity, but part was
centrifugal. Imagine being in an office building moving twenty-five miles
an hour, swinging in a small arc around a parking lot. I had no idea such a
big ship could move like this. It felt like we were about to capsize. The
sound of the engines stopped at almost the same time one of our officers
received word from the bridge that a propeller shaft had broken.
With the power off, the Walker righted itself, and gradually slowed
to a dead stop.
Sitting still in the middle of the ocean is very different from sailing
under power across the same water. The constant breeze of movement, the
spray flying off the bow, all of it vanishes, and you float, still and hot and
silent.
We sat it out as the Walker’s crew made repairs. Leaning over a
railing I could see down into the water, and watch manta rays flap and glide
along our hull. Scavenger fish crowded around underwater sewage outlets,
biting at the shimmering wads of white toilet paper that flowed out to them.
From our brigade perch, we drank strong shipboard coffee and
watched the horizon. The ocean seems much bigger when you aren’t
moving. There is also a sense of helplessness. We were soldiers, and
already felt out of place on a ship. We had engaged ourselves with work
and make-work. Now even that halted.
In the solitude, there was too much time to think. We were not
going to Vietnam like earlier units, under the pretense of protecting
airfields. We were going to fight. Every day the radio news mentioned
battles involving the 101st Airborne, or the First Cav, or the Special Forces.
The news reports usually spoke of “light US casualties.” Numbers were
rarely mentioned. If specific numbers were at issue, they were often
negated by what I came to regard as the “World War II standard.” No matter
what a daily or weekly US casualty figure was, it could be countered with a
statement that usually ran like this: “Why that’s nothing. In World War II,
we lost that many in an (Hour) (Day) (Etc).
What a situation. To get respect, we were going to have to die more
than the record. It was like someone who had already brutally lost fingers
from one hand being told that for the other hand to matter, at least the same
number of fingers – or more – were going to have to be cut off. Not only
were we going to have to lose lives, we were going to be thought the less of
even while dying.
Sgt. Jones and I were standing outside on a walkway, watching the
Pacific as repairs were made. He had graying hair, and worked in our S2
Intelligence shop. He was in his late 40’s, and had fought in World War II
and Korea. Back at Fort Lewis, he’d sometimes told us stories of fighting
German tanks. He could even remember what colors and camouflage
patterns the ones that he’d seen had been painted.
“How did you do in your first combat?” I asked.
“You know it’s not the first fight a man gets into that means
something. It’s the second. The first time you don’t know what to expect.
The second time you know the score.” Before he could continue, an officer
called, and Sgt. Jones walked back inside the brigade compartment.
The second time. I understood this too well. A new recruit goes
into battle for whatever reason, where reality soon crushes any
preconceptions he had. That meant the next time he fought, it was reality
and not imagination he had to face.
I was glad when the engines began to thud again, masking my
thoughts, and we got back underway.
We passed the islands in the Iwo chain as we approached Okinawa,
including Iwo Jima itself, where Japanese and American armies had fought
so bitterly twenty years before.
Now we saw Japanese merchant ships passing us on the trade lanes,
and were glad to catch a glimpse of other people. Yesterday’s enemy was
today’s friend, and it caused me to wonder at what point in the future we
might be working with the North Vietnamese, and fighting an ally we had
today.
We were due on 02 August to dock overnight in Naha Okinawa,
take on fuel and drop off mail, and leave early in the morning.

A diversion from the voyage was the announcement of a talent

show. The ship had some drums and electric guitars and amplifiers as part
of its equipment, and after a few days of organization, the show was ready.
I was with a group using the instruments to do the 1950s hit “Love
Potion No. 9.” I didn’t play, but I was the only one who knew all the
words.
The show was held in the open on the foredeck, using one of the big
cargo hatches as a stage. The troops crowded around it, yelling, cheering,
and encouraging act after act. I was surprised at how good some of the
performers were.
When it was time for our song, Naha harbor began to come into
sight. We had been seeing the island all morning. It was a clear, sunny day,
and we were singing on the bow, the beat of the drums and the driving notes
of the electric guitars making the Walker sound like a floating jukebox.
I realized the show had been timed. We were supposed to come into
Naha singing and cheering. The army wanted to show how carefree we
were, how good our morale was. That was how we sailed into Naha,
looking like happy troops, as if sailing into a land war in Asia was just one
big party. I felt foolish.
We happy troops were confined to the ship that afternoon and night
while some of the officers went ashore. Sitting still in the harbor, it was hot
and calm, with little breeze. When we were underway at dawn the next
morning, it was a relief.
We were on the short side of the trip now. Lieutenant Colonel
George Wilcox, the 2nd Brigade’s executive officer, announced to us that
Tuy Hoa, our intended destination, was canceled. The 2nd Brigade was to
be diverted to a location far inland in the central highlands of Vietnam, near
a city named Pleiku. That was a big change, because Tuy Hoa was right on
the south central coast, and Pleiku was 125 miles incountry, just thirty miles
from the Cambodian border.
Another 4th Division brigade was to go to Tuy Hoa. I had spent
many an hour in Fort Lewis drawing and redrawing the Tuy Hoa base camp
plans. I realized we on the boat were the last to know about the change,
because our advance party, which had flown ahead just as we were getting
on the boat, had been sent to Pleiku. They would be waiting for us there.
Most of us in HHC had heard of Pleiku, or at least the Ia Drang
Valley. Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam all came together near there. A
North Vietnamese military maxim stated:
“He who controls the Central Highlands controls South Vietnam.”
Learning that we were going to Pleiku was a sobering fact. The
First Cav had been fighting in the foothills and valleys west of Pleiku to the
Cambodian border since last year.
 Between 14-18 November 1965, during the battle of the Ia Drang
valley, the Cav had been hurt badly. The insult added to the injury was the
people doing the hurting were confirmed to be North Vietnamese Army
regulars, not Vietcong. It was the first time regulars had directly fought
American troops in the war. Pleiku and Kontum was Charlie’s territory.
That’s why more American troops were being sent in. In fact, the 4th
Division had received the Dept of Defense directive to prepare a Brigade
Task Force for Vietnam in November of 1965 because of the Ia Drang
battles.
The November actions was being advertised as a US success
because the NVA lost more men than the Cav, but the truth was that the Cav
had only just managed to escape the Ia Drang with its head and ass still
wired together.
The NVA hadn’t been trying to just defeat the Cav, as in some set-
piece battle; they had been trying to massacre it. A grim fact was many of
the Cav dead were shot in the head or back while captured or wounded, and
the NVA had bayoneted many of the wounded Americans they didn’t shoot.
The telling fact was the Cav had more KIA than wounded.
Normally, the wounded to killed ratio is at least 3:1. More dead than
wounded only happens under modern battle circumstances when the
wounded cannot be evacuated and die, or if someone kills the wounded.
US intelligence was to later learn that the NVA had been saturated
with hate propaganda to do this, and units without bayonets – some who
had left them behind or thrown them away – were reequipped in
anticipation of close battle. The NVA leadership believed excess brutality
and terror was key to victory. And it was to stay that way. Standard enemy
operating procedure in the highlands from November 1965 on was to isolate
and annihilate US or ARVN forces with overwhelming numbers. And it
was about to start happening to us.

The Tri-Border Area

We were getting the headquarters-level briefing. No one was telling
the infantry companies aboard about Vietnamese agriculture or religion.
“This is the central highlands,” the S2 captain briefing us said,
pointing to a map taped to a bulkhead. “Our area of operations will be over
here, in the Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia area. This is the trifica of
trouble.” The mountain ranges he brushed over with his fingertips
contrasted brown against the dark green Ia Drang Valley north of Plei Me,
and the light green plateaus of Pleiku.
“The highland mountains are covered with subtropical forests of
teak, oak, pine, beech, and ebony. Bamboo forests are widespread along
rivers. Savanna-type grasses and shrubs cover the plateaus,” he said. “The
French had several big rubber and tea plantations up here. Some of them
are still operating.”
“How about the weather?” someone asked. “Is it really a hundred
degrees in the shade?”
“You don’t really have summer and winter. It’s hot dry season and
hot wet season. The annual average temperature in the highlands is in the
70’s and 80’s, but the dry season daytime temperature is usually in the 90’s.
It rains May to October, about 60 to 80 inches a year. We’re going into
monsoon season. It’ll be wet.”
“What kind of natives we got up there in the mountains? Who are
these mont-ta-ga-nards?”
“It’s French, pronounced ‘Mountain Yard.’ The Vietnamese are the
main ethnic group, making up about 90 percent of the whole population.
Minority tribes in the north include the Hmong, the Tays, and the Nungs. In
the highlands, you’ve got the various Montagnard tribes, the Khmer, and
the Chan. Vietnamese is the official language, but French, Chinese,
English, and Khmer are also spoken.”
“I read that some of the Vietnamese are Catholics. How can they
be?”
“Roman Catholics, from the French. But Buddhism is the major
religion. There’s a few minority Muslims and Protestants.”
“It ain’t all just fish heads and rice to eat over there, is it?”
“They eat lots of rice and fish. They fish inland from rivers and the
South China Sea on the coast. Most all of the farmland is used for rice
cultivation. They get two crops a year in most places. They also grow
some peanuts, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, and coconuts. They grow enough
tea and rubber for export. Pigs and cattle are the main livestock raised.”
“I’ve got a few books here on Indo China. Anybody want one?”
I raised my hand and he handed me an old history book.
After everyone dispersed, I sat there and began to read. If you going
to fight in a country and possibly die there, or maybe leave an arm or leg
behind, you should know something about it.
 An early 1950’s era color map plate in the book designated where
we were sailing as Cochin China, part of Indo China, and the central
highlands was labeled as the Annamese Cordillera.
Cordillera is a geological term to identify a chain of mountains near
the border of a continent. In the US, our “western cordillera” includes the
Rocky Mountains.
Annam referred to the old Chinese-dominated nation that occupied
central Vietnam, where we were going.
It was originally Nam Viet—Land of the Southern Viet People.
Chinese conquerors changed the name in 111 BC to An Nam, meaning “The
Pacified South.”
The Chinese held An Nam for eleven hundred years. The people we
knew as the Vietnamese were then called the Annamese.
So, “Vietnam” meant something. It was an unconquered name.
The Annamese finally drove out the Chinese in 939 AD, and
remained independent until the French arrived in the 1800’s.
In 1802 the country of Vietnam was officially created by an
Annamese emperor in Hue, the capital city of old An Nam. The emperor
cooperated with the newly arrived French to add western military might to
his rule. The French saw the agricultural wealth of Vietnam, and began to
colonize. Friction between the Buddhist Annamese and the Christian
colonists was inevitable.
By 1858, the French had turned their military might against the
Annamese emperors. Muskets won over blade and spear. One French
colony and two protectorates came out of that bloody disagreement. The
south, Saigon and the Mekong Delta, was the colony of Cochin China. The
coastline from Hue to the central highlands was the protectorate of Annam.
In the north was Tongking, a separate protectorate with Hanoi as its capital.
The colony years were 1883-1939, after which it became a Vichy-
French possession controlled by the Nazis.
The Japanese took it over from Germany during World War II.
Some of the Annamese fought the Japanese, aided by US Office of Strategic
Service commandos. The OSS used all available assets against the
Japanese, which included Communist-inspired rebels from the north, where
old Tongking bordered China. Some of that OSS training was biting us in
the butt right now. Talk about unintended outcomes.
Uncle Ho
One of the rebels was Ho Chi Mihn. He preached nationalism first
to placate the people, and communism second, to consolidate his power.
Communism was swamping China under Mao, and Ho saw advantages in
it. There apparently had been a time at the end of the war when Ho might
have been swayed as pro-democratic, and supported by the United States.
The OSS had been his strongest ally. That opportunity faded when the
“Free” French reoccupied Vietnam and the US did not oppose it.
In 1945, the Viet Mihn, Communist and nationalists following Ho
Chi Minh, declared independence of Vietnam. The British stepped in to
govern. For seven years Ho Chi Minh directed bitter guerrilla warfare first
against the British (who ironically used rearmed Japanese soldiers to fight
alongside British troops in 1945 and ‘46, then against the returning French
in what we were now calling the “First Indochina War.” I was sailing over
to fight in the Second Indochina War.
Ho won when the French surrendered at Dien Bien Phu on 07 May
1954. A United Nations agreement was signed at Geneva on 21 July 1954,
providing for a temporary division of Vietnam, between the Communist
north and a US-supported south. Elections were to be held to reunify north
and south, but the US realized the north had the population to vote itself
victory and rejected the UN treaty. In 1955, the US took over the war.
Writing this today with the perspective of history, we now know this was to
be from 1955 to 1975. Vietnam was not going to be a war, it was a twenty-
year career.
The Vietnamese had beaten back Mongol invasions in the 13th
century. They were temporarily reconquered by the Chinese in 1407,
finally driving the Chinese out again in 1428. The Chinese, the Japanese,
and the French had failed here. Now it was our turn.

Communism, the Left, & the Media

Increasingly after Korea, the American press tended to understate the
evils of communism and focus on the evils of capitalism. The press formed
public opinion and made our public both apathetic and ignorant about the
war or actually hostile against us who had to fight it. The press was no
longer observers. They were emerging 5th columnists against us. By 1965
this was apparent to those who paid attention.
 We learned the hard way the enemy could take your life, but the press
could take your honor.

Why We Fight
At the time, the USSR was preparing for war with the US via
indirect conflicts that changed the map to suit their future plans. US
strategists believed if South Vietnam fell, Cambodia and Laos would as
well. It was part of the “domino theory.” It turned out to be true.

We Lose The Gordon

We received word that the Gordon, our sister ship, had suffered a
breakdown, and had to dock in Hawaii. We would not have our heavy
equipment, vehicles, supplies, and ammunition for our landing. This was a
disaster, making us dependent on what we could beg, borrow, or steal from
other units in Vietnam until we could be resupplied.

In company formations on deck, we were ordered to give up all of

our U.S. dollars and exchange them for military payment certificates. MPC
was scrip that replaced genuine US currency for us in Vietnam, to prevent
dollars from going into the black markets and on to help the enemy in his
war effort.

I stood alone on deck in the warm sea breeze the night before we
were to arrive in Vietnam, watching a dramatic lightning storm high in the
clouds off our bow, toward Vietnam. Each stoke of lightning illuminated
translucent and opaque layers of clouds, making fantastic, blinding patterns
across miles of dark sky.
It was like watching God’s celestial artillery blasting through
Valhalla, a war in the heavens. I now clearly understood Wagner’s vision of
Valkyries riding lightning bolts. I wondered if the storm was an omen, a
reflection in the sky of the strife on the ground.

06 August 1966: Over There

I took a few moments off my work detail moving packed duffel bags
to get to a porthole and look out. It was early Saturday morning, and the
sun was just up.
 I saw a coast of green hills and jungles. I was transfixed by it,
knowing this was the turning point of my life. Vietnam was like a dragon
sleeping placid in the dawn, and we had to go into the mouth of the dragon.
I put on my helmet and combat equipment, shouldered my rucksack,
grabbed my M16, and joined the groups of milling soldiers on deck as we
boarded the landing craft.
U.S. Navy warships protected us, their guns and rocket racks aimed
ashore, and we climbed down into barge-like landing craft-infantry (LCI),
not using ropes, but through hatches low in the hull of our ship.
We did not have ammunition for our rifles or food in our packs.
This was not a beach assault, it was just a movement ashore so we could
organize and prepare to move again. We were near the coastal city of Qui
Nhon, and transport to the airstrip there was waiting, so we could be flown
to Pleiku.
My LCI steered us past the sampans to the beach. I couldn’t see
anything from where I stood except worried faces and steel helmets, until
the LCI’s engines reversed, and we bumped a sandbar, lurched to a halt, and
the LCI’s ramp fell.
We struggled through the surf and soft sand, helping each other.
Beachmasters barked orders, and directed us through the palm trees to
clearings beyond.
Trucks stood ready to take us immediately to the Qui Nhon airstrip.
I climbed into a dump truck, squeezing between other soldiers; the driver
clashed the gears and we bounced away, landing craft still coming ashore
behind us.
We drove through the coastal city of Qui Nhon, and I saw South
Vietnamese soldiers carrying old U.S. World War II carbines, M1 Garands,
and Browning automatic rifles. There were sandbag bunkers on every street
corner, and barbed wire strung along the sides of roads and across the tops
of walls of the low stucco and brick buildings. The ARVN soldiers loafed
about, pigs and chickens wandered loose, and the guards in the shaded
towers along the walls seemed to be half-asleep. Qui Nhon looked like a
militarized slum.
Just two years ago here in 1964, the VC had used 200 lbs. of plastic
explosive to blow down a hotel full of American advisors in Qui Nhon, and
obviously nobody wanted it to happen again. It was the first time I had ever
seen “grenade nets.” This was chicken wire fastened to passenger bus
windows to keep bombs—or whatever else—out.
As we jumped off our trucks at the airstrip, air force personnel
handed us each several cardboard 20-round boxes of ammunition for our
M16's, but there was no time to load rifle magazines. We were assembled
and quickly hustled into big, camouflage-painted, four-engined C-130
transport planes for the flight to Pleiku.
We filled the C-130’s, sitting anywhere we could. The tailgate of
our aircraft closed as we taxied down the strip and lifted off into the sky,
gaining altitude, but I couldn’t get to a window to look out or down. I
peeled open my cartridge boxes like everyone else, and started clipping
ammunition into my magazines.

The Graves Of Mobile Group 100

We flew west, above Highway 19 over An Khe toward Pleiku, right
over the spot where the 3000-man French Mobile Group 100 was ambushed
and massacred in their fighting withdrawal from An Khe to Pleiku in June
1954. Less than half of them survived. I’d guess that as we winged over the
mass French grave site in Mang Yang pass not one in a hundred 4th Division
troopers knew that historical fact. Ignorance is a form of mental anesthesia,

We landed at New Pleiku Airport, where more trucks waited for us.
We left our C-130's and boarded the trucks, gawking at the big remote
airstrip with its aluminum huts and buildings, rows of cargo and combat
aircraft, heavily armed perimeter defense bunkers, and barbed wire.
The sky had been clear over Qui Nhon. Pleiku was overcast, and it
began to rain on us as we drove in convoy along isolated dirt roads into the
countryside.
Machine-gun jeeps and M113 armored personnel carriers of the 25th
Infantry Division escorted us. The Tropic Lightning’s 3rd Brigade of the
25th Division had a base camp several miles from where we would establish
our own. There were also some elements of the 1st Air Cavalry Division
near for our security, invisibly located out in the field.
The 3/25th had been fighting and dying in the area when we were
just packing our bags in Fort Lewis, and for our arrival we were placed
OPCON (operational control) under them.
 It had actually been a year ago to the day that I boarded a train in
Jacksonville Florida for Basic Training. I’d gone by bus from Orlando to
Jacksonville for my induction physical and testing. I scored well on my
various tests, and spent the next few days being herded from one building
or room to another, filling out forms, answering questions, and eating for
the first time in military mess halls.
We still wore our civilian clothes, because no uniforms had yet been
issued to us. Our heads were shaved by busy barbers who moved their
electric razors across our scalps with incredible speed.
On 05 August 1965, with a large group of tired, confused, bald
inductees, I had raised my right hand and repeated after a bored sergeant the
oath of a member of the United States Armed Forces. He declared we were
sworn in, and we were then quickly assigned to various destinations for our
training.
I boarded the train leaving for Columbia, South Carolina on the 6th.
Just before dawn, we arrived at Fort Jackson, which was near Columbia,
and were issued bedding, but not given time to use it. At sunrise, there was
breakfast, and a day of more forms, more waiting, more anticipation.
We were given preprinted postcards to mail home to our families
and we filled them out with our names. The cards announced we had
arrived safely at Fort Jackson.

The reality of Pleiku was a long way from a memory of Fort

Jackson and nothing was safe now. It was the beginning of monsoon
season in the Central Highlands, and rain began pouring down on us,
making visibility impossible. The road soon turned into serious mud. I saw
our big, all-wheel-drive trucks sliding and slipping over the road, some of
them ignobly sticking in ditches, left to be pulled out by following vehicles.
When the first “Lessons Learned” reports were written by Division
many months later, high on the warning list would be Don’t try to settle in a
brigade in the monsoon.
Pleiku City was near the intersection of two important Highways, 14
and 19. They were important because they were the only highways in this
frontier area. 19 ran from Qui Nhon on the east coast all the way to
Cambodia on our west. It would be the 4th division’s convoy route and
supply lifeline to the Qui Nhon ports.
 Highway 14 ran north and south, up into mountainous Kontum
Province and south to bordering Darlac Province below us. At one time, 14
and 19 had been paved. Now, years of weather and traffic had rutted and
broken the surface so badly that in some places, chunks of asphalt in the dirt
were the only reminder that things had once been different.
Carts with big wooden wheels trundled by, pulled laboriously by
water buffalo. Impassive farmers sat atop their cargoes of cane and rice,
with farmers in shorts and straw riding beside them.
After a while, we drove offroad from 19, following swamped ruts
made by trucks that had come before us. When we finally reached the end
of the two-hour nine-mile trip, we seemed to be in the classical middle of
nowhere.
Before us lay a vast, grassy plateau. Off to the immediate west was
Dragon Mountain, rising dramatically out of the flatland. It was a sacred
place to the local Montagnard Jarai tribe. To them, it was the center of the
universe.
The first thing I noticed about the mountain was the complete tail
section of a silver cargo plane sticking out of the trees on the mountainside
—remains of an old accident that should long since have been removed. It
was bad for morale---at least my morale. That it was still up there
suggested that there were worse things in this area to worry about than
cleaning up after a fatal crash.
Almost a kilometer south was the only other significant terrain
feature on the plateau, a long hill with a prominent ridgeline.
On the plateau, inside a pitifully thin few rows of concertina wire,
were some 12-man GP medium tents. It was our advance party from
brigade, existing out in the grass like settlers on a wide plain in the
American west.
We dismounted the trucks and slogged through standing water,
trying to locate our premarked areas and drop our equipment. There were
wooden stakes in the earth with our unit designations written on them. The
rain had not stopped, but it had slackened, and, dripping wet, we began to
form into lines so we could pair off and set up our shelter halves.

08 August 1966: Accidental Homicide

The enemy did not kill the first 2nd Brigade soldier to die in
Vietnam. The first was when a tired, nervous man, returning from night
perimeter guard, was unloading his .45 pistol and accidentally shot his pup-
tent buddy in the head. On 08 August 1966, Sp4 Richard Vies, a 20 year-
old black man from New Jersey, died as the result of an “accidental
homicide.” It did not count as a combat death. The Army made special
distinction between accidental deaths and combat deaths, and on what
operation, what day, and where.
I was awake and on duty when this happened. News of the death
was met at the BTOC with surprise, disgust, anger, and confusion. Some of
our officers had not adjusted to a combat zone mentality and for a time,
were uncertain as to what to do. Stateside, they could have called for an
ambulance, notified the MP’s, and remained calm and stoic. But here, was
a still warm dead body in a small tent, and a distraught tent mate, with
blood on everything the two owned. For the next hour, the event was tragic
and inconvenient. “We” were on our own. “We” had to carry the body,
clean out the tent, and figure out what to do with the shooter.
Later, I wrote Vies name on the up-to-then virgin casualty list board
at Brigade headquarters. I had questions. What operation or phase of
operation do we assign him? We were not officially engaged yet in an
operation. We’d just got here. If he died of non-hostile fire in a hostile fire
area, do we tell the family their boy was just an accident statistic or he gave
his life for his country?

Unit Designations Explained

Vies was with Charlie Company, 1/22nd Infantry. A note about the
numbers that identify US infantry battalions (such as 1st Battalion 22nd
Infantry) you may notice that the 22nd is not described as a regiment. The
US Army no longer used the designation regiment, but Infantry battle
groups, because of ROAD (pronounced ro-ad), or Reorganization Objective
Army Division that occurred in the early 1960’s. It was a new pentomic
reorganization, billed as all the better for atomic war. In this book you’ll
see mentions of NVA regiments, but just as our Air Force had lost its guns
on jet fighters expecting all-missile combat of the future, the Army has lost
its historical regiments. Simply calling the new “Infantry’s” by old
regimental numbers did not fix the confusion in the disrupted pecking
order. The new system was awkward and both the Australian and West
German armies tried it and went back to the old ways. But not the US
Army.
The Collins Curse.
This bizarre Collins curse side-story begins in the States. As our
Colonel Judson Miller, CO of the Second Brigade, was getting ready to go
with the advance party to Vietnam, Major General Arthur Collins, 4th
Division Commander, called him to division headquarters for a talk. The 4th
Division Association’s “Ivy Leaves” newsletter was to report in the late
1990’s that this conversation transpired:
“Jud,” Collins said, “I want you to name the base camp after the first
man killed by hostile fire after you get to Vietnam. That would be a fitting
tribute to a brave soldier.”
The first 4th Division trooper to be killed by the enemy was PFC
Albert Collins on 03 September 1966, while on a search and destroy
mission with C-Company, First Battalion, 22nd Infantry. PFC Collins was
no relation to General Collins.
This created an ethical problem. If Colonel Miller followed General
Collins orders, base camp would become Camp Collins. The general would
not want people to believe he had named the camp after himself. Colonel
Miller sent a private message to General Collins back at Fort Lewis. “Since
the first enlisted man killed in action was named Collins, I recommend we
name the base camp after the first officer killed in action,” Miller
suggested. General Collins agreed.
On 05 November 1966, it happened. A-Company, First Battalion,
nd
22 Infantry lost Lieutenant Richard Collins to enemy fire. LT Collins was
no relation to General Collins. By now, General Collins was in Vietnam
and said this to Colonel Miller. “We’ll name the base camp after the first
posthumous recipient of the Silver Star, regardless of his name or rank.”
Collins was true to his word. The honor went to a good friend of
mine, but that’s getting ahead of the chronology.

08 August 1966, Continued

I was soaking wet and tired. We worked all day to unpack the
trucks that made it through the mud to the plateau, and lay in water all night
either trying to sleep or trying to guard.
We had the task of setting up the Brigade Tactical Operations Center
in the field. BTOC was a three-ring circus of tents, typewriters, copying
machines, wooden flooring, folding desks, radios and antennas, and the
master warboard.
My main job in S3 was to hand-plot, with grease pencil, the position
and status of all the units in our area of operations on the clear acetate
overlays protecting the many carefully assembled map sheets. The maps
were backed by a sturdy piece of carpentry, which was two full size 4x8
foot sheets of plywood flanked by hinged side panels to make it all stand
up.
We ate cold C rations, and drank only the water brought to us in
water trailers, and even that was in short supply. Trying to erect the heavy
GP medium tents in the rain and mud was exhausting. The support poles
sank and it was difficult to make the ropes tight, so most of our tents looked
as if they had been set up by drunks.
Incredibly, the mornings were cold and foggy. We had to wear our
field jackets. I had never considered that a tropical country could be so
chilly. The fog usually lifted before noon, but the cold and wet stayed. I
shivered in my soggy, clammy cotton fatigues, realizing there was a lot
about this place we had to learn.
There was firing all night from distant places beyond our perimeter,
which was a crude barbed-wire circle around a rain-saturated dump of
supplies and frustrated men. Sometimes our own perimeter would open fire
at noises and have to be brought under control.
Several mortar rounds sailed in and exploded inside our perimeter,
but we didn’t know if they were theirs—and therefore intentional—or ours,
and just the result of a unit out there getting their coordinates wrong.
We took a chloroquine-primaquine pill weekly and a Dapsone pill
daily to ward off malaria. This was our new normal

NEWS ITEM: 09 August 1966

“STARS AND STRIPES”
2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Lands At Qui Nhon
TAN SON NHUT, (USARV-10) Troops of the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry
Division arrived at Qui Nhon last week, aboard the USNS General Walker.
The “Ivy” Division troops were then shuttled to Pleiku.
The troops came from Fort Lewis, Washington, and are commanded
by Col. Judson F. Miller. The brigade consists of elements of the division’s
8th, 12th, and 22nd Infantry battalions, and the 42nd Artillery Battery plus
supporting units.
The 4th Infantry Division is most famous for its “D” Day landing on
Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944, during World War II.

09 August 1966: ROK’s Win The Battle of Duc Co

The NVA 5th Regiment was infiltrating from Cambodia and hit the
town of Duc Co, just 55 kilometers southwest of us. This was part of the
NVA plan to get more troops into the central highlands to fight us
newcomers, the 4th Division. Duc Co was held by a very stubborn and
dangerous Republic of Korea contingent, and the ROK’s stopped the NVA
and ran them back to the border. It gave me my first battle to plot.
The real headquarters for the war in Vietnam was not in South
Vietnam, it was in Hawaii. Saigon was not secure enough. On 09 August,
Gen. Westmoreland gave a press interview in Honolulu.
“I believe more troops will be needed.” Westmoreland said, even as
the fresh troops of the 4th Division were still getting encamped.
There were about 280,000 of us in country at the time. One of the
reporters pointed out there were also almost exactly the same number of VC
and NVA as US troops. The reporter did not know enough to add that
virtually all of the VC and NVA were field combat soldiers, and only one in
seven of us were line infantry.
Westmoreland didn’t directly address the “tooth-to-tail” numbers.
He suggested that the comparison was apples and oranges. “We have
firepower they don’t,” he said.

The SAWS Test

I had not fired a shot in Vietnam with my M16 yet, and did not
expect to anytime soon. At Brigade, we kept our rifles unloaded. The
coincidental timing of my arrival in Vietnam and beginning of my Basic
Training reminded me of the first time I even had an M16 in my hands. It
was exactly this same week, a year ago in 1965.
As I was being ordered around the in-processing stations at Fort
Jackson with literally hundreds of other harried and intimidated young men,
something slightly different from the average troopers training experience
was waiting for me.
 In 1965, the M14 rifle was standard military issue, but the Army
was in the process of testing and evaluating the M16, although it wasn’t that
new. M16’s had already been used in combat in Vietnam, the earliest ones
with the Air Force and Special Forces under the original designation AR-
15. In 1965, the 173rd Airborne (May) and then the First Cav (August) had
gone into Vietnam with the M16, the first US infantry use of the rifle.

In August of 1965, a special test weapons group was being formed

at Fort Benning and Fort Jackson, part of the new Small Arms Weapons
Systems (SAWS) tests just authorized in July.
The test group was going to be using the new weapons throughout a
standard basic and advanced infantry course to evaluate, among other
things, how new trainees would perform with the weapons, as men who had
no previous weapons experience—or prejudice.
I did not know why I was sent to the SAWS group. Perhaps it was
dumb luck, simply standing in the right spot at the right time. Those of us
who were selected for SAWS were quickly separated from the other
inductees and moved to a permanent company barracks area.

Our part was to compare the Stoner 63 and Colt “weapons systems”
to the M14.
We were designated Charlie Company, 1st Battalion 1st Brigade, or
C-1-1, and our barracks were high up on Tank Hill at Fort Jackson. We
were shown how to organize our footlockers, bunks, and how to properly
wear the baggy olive-drab fatigues we had been issued.
I took and passed the Officer Candidates test, and when asked if I
would volunteer for the Airborne training after my Basic Combat and
Advanced Infantry, I signed on for it as well. I wasn’t bloodthirsty or gung-
ho. The Army was a job, and money was my primary concern. I was
married, my wife was expecting, and officers made more than enlisted men,
and jump pay added to that.
 C-1-1 was a showcase unit. Ranking post officers and other VIPs
including the post Commanding General came to see us. and Charlie
Company was given a speech by the General about our mission to use and
test the new weapons, and how important it would be for the Army.
After that, we were issued our steel helmets, pistol belts,
ammunition pouches, mess kits, canteens and cups, and all other combat
load-carrying and field equipment we would need.
There were 250 men in Charlie Company, in four platoons. The
First Platoon was issued a version of the M14 rifle with a modified bolt and
full auto selector.

The Second (my platoon) was given the XM16E1. The X

designated experimental. The E1 meant this was the series with the
Forward Bolt Assist, a push-type device allowing you to manually close the
bolt if it was dirty or a cartridge wouldn’t seat in the chamber. The Army
wanted some external means of closing the bolt if the recoil spring didn’t do
the job.
At the time, we didn’t recognize the ominous importance of the
Forward Bolt Assist. It was necessary because the Army had decided to
replace the original clean-burning IMR rifle powder specified for the M16,
with the standard M4 Ball Propellant used for the M14. The M4 propellant
created too much carbon for the M16, and it also seriously upped the rate of
automatic fire beyond reliability limits. The Army knew it and Colt knew
it. They just didn’t tell us. The Army’s reason was politics. All the US
rifles since the turn of the century – the bolt action ‘03, the Garand, and the
M14 -- had been developed at Springfield Armory was an institution. The
upstart AR-15 could be sabotaged early if those in the Army against the
rifle demanded design changes that made it unreliable.
Colt went along with the changes, trying to make it work, because
the Army was paying the bills. Just being in the running for a new infantry
rifle gave Colt a chance to replace the venerable Springfield Armory as rifle
designer and supplier to the entire United States armed forces. History
records that Colt was to eventually win, that Springfield does not exist
today. The political support for the M16 eventually overcame the political
opposition against it.
Many American soldiers in Vietnam would die for such backroom
politics.

My rifle was serial numbered 151079, and I was given a Rifle Book
to go with it. The Rifle Book was part of the test. It had questions that
required written answers, and blank columns to list comments. The Rifle
Book had to be filled out each time I fired my M16, or used it in daily
training.
Reading through the book, the questions it asked were designed to
solicit information for the SAWS analyzers.
Typically, some of the questions the book asked were:

Is the rifle comfortable to carry?

What do you think is awkward about the rifle?
Can you see the strike of the bullet at 250 meters?
How many rounds did you fire today?
Did the rifle malfunction (describe).

The Third Platoon was given the Stoner 63 Weapons System. The
Stoner rifle was the brainchild of Gene Stoner, one of the developers of the
AR-15/M16. He had his quickly reconfigurable Stoner 63 rifle in the test,
believing it had a chance to get accepted by the Army, instead of the Colt-
made M16.

Gene Stoner was going to be with us often during the test, watching,
suggesting, and always accompanied by a crew of officers with cameras and
clipboards. He wore a black plastic nametag on his tan suede leather jacket
that read: STONER, and he was always in civilian clothes.
The Fourth Platoon was issued the standard M14 rifle, and was
designated as the control factor in the test.
No one was sure then that the M16 was going to continue to be
called the M16 officially, so we were the Colt platoon, with the Colt rifle.
There was already an AR-15, and an AR-16 was supposedly in the works.
Would the M16 actually be the M15, following the M14 if adopted?
The Colts and the Stoners both fired the 5.56mm Remington, as
opposed to the M14’s 7.62mm NATO cartridge. Army studies had
accurately concluded that even in Europe and Korea, most rifle
engagements were at 300 meters or less, and that the most common range
was under 100 meters. This agreed with the German WWII assessment
from which came their Stg. 44, the first true assault rifle, which the Soviet
designer Kalashnikov copied and created the AK-47. At close range, a
smaller cartridge could kill just as effectively as a bigger cartridge. The
5.56mm bullet had a much higher velocity than the 7.62mm bullet, and we
were told it had the potential to do worse bodily harm to a human being
than any military bullet ever used.
The most quoted story was about a June 1962 firefight in Vietnam,
where a South Vietnamese Ranger company experimentally armed with
AR-15’s ran into several Vietcong. One Ranger hit a VC with three
rounds. One bullet took the VC’s head completely off. A hit in the right
arm took it completely off. A hit in the man’s side caused a hole about five
inches wide.
What they did not tell us was that someone hit with a bullet from an
XM16E1 had a greater chance of survival than someone hit with an older
AR-15.
It didn’t mean a lot to us that the rifling twist of the XM16E1 had
been changed to “improve the stability” of the bullet in flight. This actually
had the effect of decreasing the wounding and trauma effect of the bullet.
The AR-15 had made horrific wounds because its bullets were not stable,
and tumbled violently on impact, fragmenting.

(A note for today’s troops: Your M16A2’s and later issues have even
less lethality per hit. The rifling twist was “improved” again, so you could
better group on an 800-meter target, which of course is a good tradeoff for
close range lethality, right?)

That the rifle capable of causing such trauma might be unreliable did
not cross our minds. We trusted the Army to use the right strategy and
tactics in Vietnam, and we trusted the Army to give us a good rifle.
Stoner’s Armalite concept has been vindicated. The M16 has stayed
in service now for a longer period of time than any other US infantry small
arm and has received many improvements. But it still is not abuse and dirt
and sand resistant as the AK-47.
I personally wish we’d gone to war with the Stoner 63.

10 August 1966: Jungle Boots

Fighting southwest of us broke out between the Vietcong and a unit
of the 1st Cav. Many of our trucks from Qui Nhon, with most of our
equipment and men, still had not arrived, but the afternoon of the 10th we
received something useful. We were each issued two pairs of jungle boots
off the back of a parked truck. The boots had deeply cleated soles and
nylon-canvas uppers so they could dry more quickly than the leather
combat boots we wore in the States. Everybody wanted a pair.
In World War II and Korea, our troops carried steel canteens, their packs and ammunition
pouches were made of heavy canvas, and their boots were leather. For Vietnam, our canteens were
green plastic, nylon was replacing cotton duck webbing, and our jungle boots were a laboratory
hybrid. Development of the jungle boot began in 1955, to overcome the hot-wet foot-rot problems
suffered by earlier veterans. In Panama during 1960 and 1961, the first direct molded sole boots
were tested. A combination of leather toe and heel and cotton-nylon uppers was eventually chosen
from a combination of materials. Both the Army and the Marines had officially adopted the boot on
23 January 1965.
As I stood in the line behind the boot truck, a patrol from the 1st Cav
walked past, all of the infantrymen in it muddy and loaded with ammunition
and equipment. A tall black soldier turned to us, looking at me as I reached
for my boots.
“Get ‘em big, man, so they don’t hurt your feet,” he said.

A big Skycrane helicopter force landed in the night two miles away
from us, but we didn’t know it until one of the crew staggered in the next
morning. He was badly injured, and the crewmen he left behind were
worse.
I was in the BTOC tent marking unit positions on the warboard
when someone shouted. Everyone froze. I turned, and saw a man in a torn
flight suit hobbling dramatically inside through the doorway. Someone got
the injured aviator to a chair, and as we waited for our medic to arrive, the
man said, “We were out there all night! We fired flares! We called on the
radio! Nobody came! What are you people doing out here? Is nobody
paying any attention?”
Somehow, he had limped to our perimeter, and been helped to the
BTOC. No one had even field-phoned from the perimeter to tell us he was
on the way. We had not received the radio distress calls. No one had seen
the flares, or if they had, said anything about it. So much for the signal and
communications abilities of the modern US Army. The lesson was that bad
luck and human error had as much an effect on us as it did Stone Age spear-
carriers.
And also today, an experienced MP, Sgt. E6 Robert Oates, was
crushed between two deuce-and-a-half trucks, when one slid in the mud,
pushing him into a stopped truck. I actually saw this happen. Oates was
trying to direct traffic, and died between the bumpers.

13 August 1966: Rain, Mud, Death

A perimeter patrol from the 1/22nd went out and a hand grenade
accidentally exploded on the belt of one of the men, Sp4 Gerald Metzner,
killing him. The pin had fallen out. The damage was confined to the
victim, because the grenade was partially covered by his flak vest. He was
the first from the 1/22 to die in Vietnam.
 The rain was perpetual. Our trucks were at a standstill. Only
helicopters were bringing in food and supplies to us within the perimeter.
We finally had the complete BTOC (brigade tactical operations center) up
and equipped the way we had it in Fort Lewis, but this place was another
world from Fort Lewis. The fighting holes we had scraped out of the mud
were full of water. If we had to take cover in them, we’d have drowned.
One wet morning as I trudged through the mud between the
headquarters bunker to the briefing tent to post the latest position reports on
the warboard, I saw an M-48 tank swimming and plowing along one of the
mud-river “roads” between the tents. It was heading for a spot where at
least two other tanks had gotten stuck before and had been pulled out by
bulldozers. Each tank had left the hole deeper.
Right before my eyes the M-48 submerged. The crew scrambled out
of it, bubbling brown water rushing in their hatches. They stood on top of
the turret. If it had not been for the cannon muzzle and antennas sticking up
out of the mud, no one would know there was a tank there.
During the worst of our mud, the trucks could not move, the tanks
and armored personnel carriers could not move, and finally the D4 dozers
were stuck. The only vehicles able to travel anywhere were the huge truck-
like “Goers,” with massive flotation tires and boat-like cargo beds. The
mud had our modern army stuck like a fly in glue.

The mud almost got me killed. Division headquarters had arrived,

and was being set up a few hundred meters from brigade, but division had
nice new prefab buildings and house trailers that had been flown and placed
intact by Skycrane helicopters.
Until the arrival of division, the 2nd Brigade had been the
commanding presence. The loss of status was tangibly felt at my
headquarters.
We had to send documents to division every day, and this was done
by messenger, with much difficulty because of the seas of mud and general
flooding.
When I was told to take some papers to division, I left with my rifle
and helmet, and stepped out of the briefing tent into the rain. I was up to
my knees in muddy water in no time, and I began to track toward a path that
might get me to my destination.
 Some places were over my head in mud and water. I had to make it
from island to island on high ground, holding onto barbed wire, posts,
anything.
I could see the division area ahead, uphill slightly and out of the
mud morass I fought through. My major obstacle was a road, or more
accurately a rutted canyon about eight feet deep in places and running with
sluice water.
Crossing it was necessary. I found a place and slipped down the
mud sides to the water, splashing along and looking for a way out. Then I
heard the rumble of a diesel engine.
I looked right and saw the blade of a bulldozer coming my way,
collapsing the mud, grading it into something usable. The operator of the
machine was high above me. I could see his face, but he wasn’t looking
down.
I ran from the dozer, my feet sticking in the mud. The jelly-like
walls of the ruts were trembling with the vibration of the cleated tracks of
the big machine. I knew I could shoot the driver if I had to, or at least I
thought I could, but I had to do it quickly. I could imagine talk about me
tomorrow: “He was only going to division, and he just vanished.”
The dozer was going to plow me under six feet of base camp mud. I
saw a spot along the mud wall I guessed would support me and I hit it with
all fours, digging like a cat. I went up the wall and onto the surface as the
dozer passed. The driver never looked my way.
I washed off in a pool of rainwater to make myself more presentable
before I handed the documents to division.
Living wet and muddy was so different from the artificial spit-shine,
razor-creased world of Basic Training and stateside garrison. Mud was the
real world.

In the SAWS test, we may have been test troopers, but it did not
spare us from the routines of Basic Training. We ran the obstacle courses,
waxed the barracks floors, pulled guard duty, marched, jogged, and
exercised. We did push-ups for real and imagined infractions of rules
around the barracks or at the mess hall, and we learned to eat so fast from
our steel mess trays, the entire company could be processed through a meal
in half an hour.
 During the first three weeks of Basic, we did not fire our test rifles,
but we carried them everywhere. I learned how to take my XM16E1 apart
and clean and oil it, and how to bayonet fight with it. The only cleaning
equipment we had for the Colt was a cleaning rod with a slot tip for a cloth
patch, and a wire bristle bore brush. There was no special lubricants, no
chamber brushes, no takedown tools. According to Colt and the Army, we
didn’t need any special cleaning equipment. The M16 was a low
maintenance marvel.
During all this, I was singled out by my Platoon Sergeant and made
Squad Leader of my squad. They were mostly draftees. The United States
had the draft in 1965, and men who were drafted were given the prefix
“US”, which meant “Unvoluntary Service”.
Draftees, on the whole, didn’t like enlistees. Because I had enlisted,
I was given the RA prefix to my Army Service Number, which stood for
“Regular Army.” I was RA14893063. As a rule, draftees did not want to be
in the military, and complained about it frequently. Enlistees, like myself,
could gripe, but not about being in the service. We had volunteered for it.
As a Basic Training squad leader, I often had to force or threaten my
draftee squad members to work. It created hard feelings, if not actual hate,
and it was one more stress factor in our training.
The 4th Division in Vietnam was 95% draftees. The truth was the
draftees often hated the Army more than the enemy.
In basic, we fought our hand-to-hand classes in muddy sawdust pits,
and marched everywhere in the sun and rain. Basic was mostly exertion.
The most excitement we experienced was being prematurely exposed to
choking, burning CS Riot agent once, as gas from another training group
accidentally drifted in on us while we were innocently involved in an
outdoor First Aid course. It got us all.
We trained on classroom subjects like Military Courtesy, Military
Justice, the Code of Conduct for an American soldier, and we practiced in
the field in hand-to-hand Combat, Field Hygiene, and First Aid. The Code
of Conduct had an impression on me. The first two articles of the code
state:
I. I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard
my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their
defense.
 II. I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will
never surrender my men while they have the means to resist.
Such statements are absolutes, and may seem melodramatic on a
poster in Basic, but become real when you are faced with war and an
enemy. These two articles swear you to being ready to die, and to never
giving up. I had learned them by rote in basic. Now that we were in
Vietnam, I began to understand what the Code really meant. It was a set of
rules tucked away in my mind, stronger than any religious or political
doctrine I knew.
Pressure-gun and hypodermic inoculations were given to us often,
as amassed a certificate that proved we were supposed to be immune to
Smallpox, Typhoid, Tetanus, Cholera, and Yellow Fever, for starters.
We were tested on all the subjects we had been taught for the first
three weeks. I passed everything, including the Physical Training (PT)
test. We lost some of the men from C-1-1 because they failed the PT tests,
the losers being removed from the company and placed in new Basic
Training companies just beginning, for “recycling”.
I was given the Officers Candidate School test, passed, then the
OCS orientation briefing, and scheduled for OCS after finishing Basic and
Advanced Infantry Training (AIT). My parachute training was postponed
until after OCS, and even before my Basic was over, I thought I could plot
my military career.
Experience was teaching me about the Army. The food, so widely
criticized in books and films, was not bad, and Basic Training, something
else touted to be a horror show, while not easy, was not unbearable.
Combat, our drill instructors constantly reminded us, was far worse.

20 August 1966: The Skull

An infantry patrol brought in pieces of a human skeleton in a
cardboard box. They had found the remains while scouting the tree line far
from the base camp perimeter.
The skull had two bullet holes in it. One bullet had taken off a
cheekbone. The other, impacting just over an inch away, had entered the
temple and blown out the back of the head. Did two hits so near each other
mean death at close range?
I adopted it as an ornament for my field desk in the rear of the
briefing tent behind the warboard. No one objected. It was a
Shakespearean Yorick, mute witness to all tragedy.
An old double-pocket black leather ammunition pouch had been
found with the skeleton. It looked like WWII German issue, suitable for
holding two stripper clips of Mauser ammo. Why the out-of-place
ammunition pouch?
The skull was a source of questions and contemplation. Was it
really oriental? I studied the profile. It was flat and receding from the nose
to forehead, consistent with oriental features. Caucasian profiles tend to
have more prominent brow ridges.
There were no real answers here, just more questions. At my
improvised desk behind the warboard, I drew only one conclusion. The
skull was evidence of death I could touch and feel. It was evidence of the
results of war. You cannot look into such hollow eye sockets and not feel
how eternity beckons. Human beings were dying here.

I met one of the Vietnamese interpreters assigned to us. His name

was Tri, he was twenty-two years old, and he had a wife and baby daughter
in Saigon. He admired a Bowie knife I had brought to Vietnam, and I gave
it to him. He was so short that when he put the Bowie on his belt, the tip of
the sheath touched his knee.
I was detailed one night to perimeter defense guard, and crawled
into a cesspool of an unfinished sandbag bunker with another unfortunate
trooper who had drawn the same duty. North of our wire about 500 meters,
near the camp road out towards Pleiku, was a large Montagnard village,
marked on the map as Plei Poo Ngo. Plei meant village. It was a long
collection of elaborate grass houses on stilts, totem-type poles, and
livestock pens.

We had the Djarai and Bahnar tribes around base camp. The Sedang
people, who lived up in the Kontum mountains, were actually Stone Age
types (no offense, just fact) and the Vietnamese lowlanders didn’t like any
of them. In fact, the Vietnamese called the Yards moi, which meant savage,
or monkey. An aside here is US-leftist anti-war propaganda had a popular
slogan and poster with the caption No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger.
No they didn’t. They called our black troops moi because they were
dark-skinned like the Yards. The Left apparently didn’t fact-check its
propaganda.
 The villagers sometimes sang and banged drums at night, the sound
effects made more theatrical by the great bonfires they would burn. You
could lay in one of our semi-submerged bunkers and say “The natives are
restless tonight,” and it was not just a line from an old Tarzan movie. It was
perfectly true. Our real worry was that the VC or NVA would use Plei Poo
Ngo village as a jump-off point for raids or infiltration attempts against us.

Our perimeter defenses at that time were barbed wire, trip flares, and
Claymore mines. In the bunkers we had rifles, M79 grenade launchers, and
M60 machine guns. A determined rush by an NVA platoon could put a hole
in our line that a company could follow. On the enemy side of the wire was
every odd shadow, leaping cricket, wild dog and wandering water buffalo
out there. The bunkers that had field phones kept them busy most of the
night reporting noise and movement to the guard commanders. But false
alarms did not mean the enemy was not out there.
Sometime early in the morning before dawn, we were probed near
my bunker, and we had genuine movement in the wire, just twenty-five
meters or so out. We could hear GI’s in the bunker to our left talking
excitedly on a field phone. The movement stopped, and then started again,
rattling wire, coming our way now. My partner opened fire, and so did I,
and in moments, several of the nearby bunkers were also shooting. I aimed
low, partially dazzled by my own muzzle flash. Christ, our rifles were loud!
There was no return fire. No more noise. The minutes crept by.
The hours seemed frozen. I did not sleep. I waited.
At first light, an angry infantry sergeant arrived to chew everybody
out. Firing on the line was punishable if the firer could not justify the
action. As vindication, blood and scraps of clothing caught in the barbed
wire were found. We had hit at least one of the group that had tried to
penetrate the wire.
I wondered if I had hit or killed anybody. It was an abstract thought,
not moral angst. A quick mental return to nightfire training in Advanced
Infantry Training.
As we were relieved of duty, the sergeant had us line up at attention
and he personally inspected each weapon to make sure it was unloaded. We
were doing a muddy, groggy up-all-night parody of the parade ground
command “inspection arms.” One of the soldiers had a .45 pistol. The
“inspection arms” routine for the .45 is to remove the pistol from the holster
with the right hand, bring it up and across the chest, and with the left hand
push the slide to the rear and lock it in the open position. The inspecting
officer or noncom is standing directly in front of you all this time.
The pistoleer never got that far. He unholstered, and fired the
weapon just as he swung it across the sergeant’s face.
The muzzle blast burned the sergeant’s eyebrows. The bullet missed
him.
I had no idea what was going to happen next. I expected the
sergeant to curse, to faint, to slug the private, to do anything except what he
did. The sergeant did not say a word. He closed his eyes, slowly removed
his helmet, clasped it over his chest with both hands, and walked away.
The base camp defenses were gradually improved, with permanent
bunkers about every 120 feet, all the way around, and beyond the bunkers
were rows and rows of barbed wire, mines, and fougass (55-gallon drums of
chemically thickened gasoline). Gravel-packed ramp parking at intervals
allowed tanks, M113 tracks, and twin-40mm Dusters to roll up and become
big iron foxholes.
It seemed that every other day one of our men was involved in some
harmful non-combat incident.
One of our Head and Head Company officers was almost killed
when a heavy CONEX container fell on him as it was being unloaded from
a truck bed. He was evacuated to Japan with crushed ribs.
We were three thousand young men, most of us just high schoolers
in jungle fatigues, confined in a barbed-wire cage with almost any
instrument of death you’d care to name and every opportunity to mishandle
them, and we were killing ourselves.
A post exchange was established in a GP medium tent at base camp,
selling Coca-Cola, candy, beer, writing paper, envelopes, and cigarettes in
exchange for our replacement MPC scrip, but with a limited ration per man.
Rumor had it there was a South Vietnamese government-operated
whorehouse in Pleiku. The rest of the rumor claimed that if you engaged
the services of one of the women there, you had best wear two condoms,
because their venereal disease would eat through the outer one. Healthy
vagina was apparently rare in Pleiku.
When our trash trucks made their garbage runs to the dump outside
the wire, the villagers literally stormed them, plowing through our refuse as
if they were searching for gold. What they found was much edible food,
salable items for the markets in town, and wearable clothing.

The American Army was very rich, and our garbage was rich. I
once rode out to the dump on one truck to act as security for the driver and
saw the crowds as they mobbed us and the trucks ahead of us.
I was embarrassed for the Vietnamese and for myself.

28 August 1966: Monsoon

In the late afternoon a rain like nothing I had ever seen hit us. It was
so fierce it forced down tents, the drainage ditches flooded, and small
footbridges built over the ditches washed away.
The meter-deep ruts filled, then overflowed, and the roads vanished
underwater altogether. Trucks were hopelessly trapped.
The newly established brigade field kitchen was ready to serve hot
evening chow, but the squall drowned it out, turning the food into soup,
then into water after it had washed out of the insulated cans.
In the midst of this, on the 28th the 2nd Brigade was declared combat
ready.

30 August 1966: Combat Assault

The 1/22nd Infantry had just been airlifted out to Tuy Hoa for combat
operations, and today the 2/8th Infantry, living in base camp, was preparing
a helicopter assault westward toward Cambodia, among the isolated Special
Forces camps of Duc Co, and Plei Djereng, and Brigade headquarters
needed an officer and radioman to accompany the assault, to coordinate
orders, and maintain communications, so I volunteered.
I drew a PRC-25 field radio from supply and went with one of our
captains (we seemed to have as many officers in HHC as we did enlisted
men) on the mission. I also carried a full basic load of rifle ammunition and
frag grenades.
The ride out to the target area in the UH-ID Huey helicopters only
took about fifteen minutes. Our helicopter landed in a rough clearing, other
Hueys touching down around us as the infantrymen jumped off them, and
the officer and I began to relay information back about how the flights of
helicopters were doing as they approached, landed, and lifted off again.
Hueys in a hurry take off tail up and nose down, which can cause the rotor
blades forward of the ship to sweep very low to the ground.
The LZ got crowded with all of the helicopters. A radioman near
me had his antenna cut off, the whirling rotor blades of a Huey chopping it
as the helicopter passed over the kneeling man.
I kept low, and only experienced one near-accident, when another
helicopter banked too sharply coming by and the rotor blades sliced just
above my helmet. The air cracked above me with the impact of a slap in
the face.
Once all of the infantry was inserted, the captain and I took one of
the Hueys back to base camp. Most of the time it had been so loud from the
jet engines and beating of the rotor blades I could not hear my radio. That
caused me to make the amateurish mistake of yelling into my mike. The
guys at Brigade said could hear me just fine, except when I was yelling at
them.
There was little enemy contact on the assault, just a few sniper
rounds fired. We were to discover that this was going to become routine.
The enemy would not stand and fight unless he was ready, and he
was ready, we would learn, only when he had every advantage.
What an amazing lot we Americans were. We had come in on the
coattails of the defeated French and flooded Vietnam with riches, even
committed our own men to war, and some of us were dying. Not as many
as the South Vietnamese, of course, but enough. Yet even with such an
investment of blood and treasure, we ignored the realities of war. We
almost played at it, adhering to civil rules and self-imposed restrictions that
gave so much advantage to the enemy. As a whole, politically, we were
well-meaning, overeager crusaders.

01 September 1966: Operation Sewerd

The monsoons were still with us, but most of our infantry and
artillery was committed to Operation Sewerd, meaning they were scattered
across the Central Highlands in the rain, living off resupply from
helicopters that could not fly most of the time in the storms.
I now had the new-issue jungle fatigues, lightweight tropical
uniforms with more pockets and better features for jungle warfare than the
heavy cotton issue we had for Europe and the United States. They seemed
to have been inspired by the old WWII paratrooper jackets and pants.
 We were actively in the war now, and our Brigade Tactical
Operations Center functioned day and night. I kept the warboard plotted
with movements of both our own and enemy troops, indicating locations of
enemy contact, and helped process and analyze the mass of radio reports
from commanders in the field in order to stay abreast of any developing
situation.
I also kept charts on enemy and friendly casualties, our sick and
wounded, incoming convoys and stockpiled supplies of food and
ammunition, and assisted in the command briefings of visiting officers.
Our record keeping made sense to me except for how we accounted
for the casualties. We began with the number of overall casualties and then
slotted them into separate categories, such as
Killed In Action, Killed As A Result of Hostile Action, Killed But Not
As A Result Of Hostile Action.
To keep casualty figures low for one period of time, or for one
operation, the numbers could be juggled. Men killed might be delayed a
day or so in being officially listed, or have their place of death reported
somewhere else. Those who died later in hospital in Japan or the US were
briefing bonuses, deferred statistics.
This method of parsing and categorizing did not really lie, but it
obscured the truth. A briefing officer could manipulate a given figure of
GI’s killed at any place, or on any one day, or any week, by only using
numbers from certain categories.
There are dead men with their names or dates of death still not
accurate on the wall of black stone in Washington, D.C. They were not
reported in the right category.

04 September 1966: Sunday Night Probe

The local NVA/VC got brave and made a move on base camp after
dark.
Our flares fell, just dimly glowing spots, wasted in the night rain,
mist, and low clouds, as the mortars and artillery fired illumination. I was
the radioman for the brigade reaction force, and I was out with our platoon,
lying in shallow water away from our tents and flooded bunkers, expecting
the night to get worse.
I watched greenish-white tracers from a Communist light machine
gun arc over our heads and plunge into base camp.
 The gun was somewhere up on what we would later name Artillery
Hill, a ridge of high ground just southwest outside base camp, and it swept
us with sporadic automatic fire. We couldn’t shoot back. We were
supposed to have lookouts and ambushes up there, and our artillery had to
wait to fire until we received word that our people on the hill were out of
the way.
The 4/42nd Artillery had the hill pre-zeroed. I had watched in
daylight over several afternoons as the 105’s had used the ridge as target
practice, getting airbursts over it timed just right. Arty people almost never
get to see their targets. But there they had been firing line of sight, trying to
hit individual trees.
Finally, cleared to shoot, our 105’s blasted the ridge, and drove the
enemy away, the night so dark and the fog so heavy by now I could hear the
explosions but not see them.
I had first fired my M16 in action, that early September night on
perimeter defense. I personally had fired my test XM16E1 for the first time,
the first week of September 1965. We had begun to take our SAWS test
weapons to the range during the fifth week of Basic. All of our other
classes on Bayonet, First Aid, and hand-to-hand were finished. We now
belonged fully to the Rifle Ranges and our first full week of live fire.
We endured cutting and bruising of the hands of many of the men in
our Colt Platoon during Bayonet. The new Forward Bolt Assist ribbed steel
push-button, which protruded from the right side of the XM16E1’s upper
receiver, slammed against our hands during hard, fierce, repetitive bayonet
thrusts at straw dummies. We were tough, of course, and suffered it in
stride, reporting it in the logbooks.
At the range, we took some jokes. Our small plastic and aluminum
M16, with its all-black finish appeared very different from the wood-and-
steel M14. It was sometimes accused of looking like a toy, and a rumor
among the cynics had it that our rifle was “Made by Mattel!” a slogan used
by that toy company for its products.
The Ft. Jackson weather was turning cold in early September, and
we marched—or ran—everyday to the Rifle Ranges to shoot. Often it
rained, and prone firing caused liquid mud and sand to soak through our
uniforms. We would wear it all day.
At first, we learned how to aim and adjust the sights on our rifles,
then we drilled on safety and firing range procedures. Since C-1-1 used
three different types of rifles, each of our platoons had to train separately for
sighting and sight “zeroing”.
The fact we did carry different rifles from the other units at Fort
Jackson often caused unusual circumstances, because the instructors at the
various stations and classes we attended would be curious about both our
strange rifles, and us and take up valuable time questioning us.
Many of the classes required the reporting company of trainees to
perform a few basic moves from the “manual of arms,” the drilled
procedures for carrying, presenting, or stacking rifles.
Neither the Colt or Stoner rifles had an official manual of arms yet,
and the barked orders of M14 rifle commands at us from instructors at their
various training stations had to go ignored—something that often sent them
into rages until they understood the situation.
I began by firing the required three-shot groups to get my rifle sights
adjusted, and I liked the way the light “Colt rifle” felt in my hands.
Each one of us, regardless of rifle type, was issued 48 rounds of
ammunition to fire. We had 48 targets to hit. The targets were black
cardboard human torso-sized silhouettes, mounted on automatic pop-up
mechanisms. The nearest targets came up at 75 meters; the most distant
was 300 meters.
When the targets began to pop up, I started firing, from a standing,
unsupported position. Each time I pulled the trigger, my target fell. The
targets came up in no particular sequence, but I was able to cope with the
quickly changing range differences.
I hit 45 targets out of a possible 48, and only fired 47 rounds. Each
one had been instinct shooting, taking a fast sighting on the target as it
lifted, pulling the trigger, seeing it fall as I visually scanned for the next.
At one point I even shot another student’s target, catching his and
mine on the rise, bringing them down with two quick shots, aiming at his
175-meter target then snap-shooting down my 75-meter silhouette.
Because we could not resupply ourselves in the rain, and the 3/25th
asked him to wait for an answer.
“Roger,” Miller said into the mike. “But if you drive by here and
don’t see us anymore, it’s because we’ve all sunk completely out of sight
into the mud.”
I had come to the conclusion the war in Vietnam was going to last a
while, at least through the term of my one-year tour.
 On the map, Vietnam seemed to be a small country, but on the ground, looking at the plains
and the distant mountains, the actual size of it became a reality. It was big enough to swallow armies.
20 September 1966: Contemplations
Sitting in my office, meaning my field desk behind the warboard in
the BTOC tent, the skull and I contemplated the war and watched the rain.
My son was one year old today.
On 20 September 1965, our Basic Training company had just
marched back from a full day’s shooting at the rifle range. We were still in
formation outside the barracks when a drill instructor told me I had an
emergency telegram waiting for me at a nearby Post Exchange. I was given
permission to go get it, and I walked to the PX, still wearing my dirty
fatigues.
The telegram was brief, saying that my wife Mavis had a son at the
Orlando Florida Air Force Hospital.
I had already written and given her the name I wanted to use for a
son or daughter. My father was Frank Camper, and I was Frank Camper. I
wanted to give my son his own name. I named him Barret. It was a name I
respected. William Barret Travis had been the commanding officer of the
Alamo.
I was still a month away from turning 19, and I was a father.
Having a child changes everything. You are no longer the center of your
own universe. During the qualification firing each day on the ranges, I had
done well, but the news of the birth of my son must have taken the edge off
my concentration.
I had expected to fire Expert, but on Record day my actual score
was only 39 hits out of a possible 70. It gave me the Marksman’s Rifle
badge, lowest of the three (Expert-Sharpshooter-Marksman).
The Colt Platoon shot better on Record Fire than any of the others in
Charlie Company, with a 49.9% average of hits per man.
We counted and analyzed malfunctions, stoppages, and jams, and
while our problems were not as few as the M14’s, our test 5.56mm rifles did
very well. Colt or Stoner malfunctions were rare during our testing.
Not that it meant anything to us at the time, but on some days we
were issued brown cardboard 20-round boxes marked M193 Ball. On other
days we were given white 20-round boxes with slightly different markings.
The brown cardboard boxes were obviously standard M193 Ball, filled with
M4 powder. The white boxes may have been ammo filled with IMR
powder.
 Perhaps a little “special testing” was going on. I distinctly
remember that on some days our rifles were much more carbon-fouled than
others.

24 September 1966: Operation John Paul Jones III

As part of its public relations effort the Department of Defense had
begun naming its large-scale combat operations with patriotic names
instead of using warlike, military titles. But the shooting was still the same.
Brigade headquarters was active. We were packing again, forming
up the “jump” command post. I was part of the jump CP crew.
The 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division was in action near the
border of Cambodia, as part of Operation John Paul Jones III, chasing
North Vietnamese soldiers through the mountains and valleys there. Our 2nd
Brigade, 4th Division, was going to join them.

25 September 1966: Jump Command Post

Sweltering, I rode alone the whole day down route 198 toward
Cambodia in the radio cabin of one of the Brigade communications trucks.
From Dragon Mountain base camp west to Cambodia was less than
fifty kilometers. Our orders were to move west twenty kilometers (about 15
miles) then set up our command post. There were over seventy light and
heavy trucks, jeeps, tanks, and armored personnel carriers in the convoy.
We had waited until the worst of the monsoon rains to end before
going on the offensive. Now, with the skies clearing, we were moving into
the areas where the North Vietnamese believed themselves safe – his
resupply, hospital, and base camp country.
The road had turned from mud to red dust, and it billowed under our
tires and choked us.
Our destination was a spot called the Oasis, which was an old
military position west of Pleiku towards Cambodia. The Oasis was just
north of the Ia Drang River and valley, where the First Air Cavalry had
been hit so hard the previous November.
The French and South Vietnamese had used the Oasis before us, and
most recently the Cav had occupied it, so it had a history. The Cav had
called it LZ Stadium, or sometimes ‘Catecka’ for the tea plantation nearby.
The Catecka plantation was the largest tea plantation in Vietnam,
acres and acres of 4-foot high tea bushes, shielded and sheltered by stands
of shade trees. It was still in business because Claud Salavaire, the French
owner, paid protection money to the Vietcong. Salavaire was not a
pushover. In 1962, the VC had knifed him in Saigon because he was
uncooperative, and he had been forced to flee the country for his health.
The plantation had its own powerful hydroelectric plant fed by a
river behind the plantation. At one time, the VC had blown up the power
plant because an auxiliary power line had been run to Pleiku for use by
MACV advisors. That stopped all plantation cooperation with the
Americans.
We were to learn that because the plantation provided jobs to the
local population, it was off limits to any patrolling or US military
interference to its operations. Of course, this meant that it was a wonderful
haven for the Vietcong.
While setting up camp, we found a considerable arsenal of old rusty
munitions, mines, and other types of explosives in the ground at the Oasis.
I personally discovered a fused 105mm artillery projectile stuck in the
earth. Like an idiot, I dug it up, and discovered my mistake when people
started running away from me as I was trying to find a safe place to put it.
We erected our brigade tents, built sandbag bunkers, and unloaded
our trucks and trailers. In less than two days, we had a semi-functioning
BTOC.
An organized security perimeter had been built around the Oasis.
We became a miniature version of base camp, with our own infantry,
artillery, and transportation areas.
Our infantry battalions moved from base camp on toward the border,
inserted by helicopter assault, and began search operations to locate the
enemy. The Oasis became the functioning brigade headquarters, relaying
orders to the field battalions and controlling the resupply and support for
them.
The Oasis was on high ground in the mountain foothills, far from
the flat plateau of base camp. We could look down below on a South
Vietnamese artillery firebase and a village, or up at mountain peaks that
rose to our north and northwest—where our infantry was now. Map sheets
were misleading. Vietnam was big.
I fell into the routine of the tactical operations center, arranging for
the briefings of the personnel, intelligence, operations, and supply sections
each day, and the special meetings held in the briefing tent for visiting
officers or other Very Important Persons.

Lt. Braun Shoots Pvt. Snell

The afternoon was sweltering hot. The camp lay becalmed, the
sides of my tent rolled up to catch any errant breezes. I sat idly watching
the MP on duty at the opening in the wire that led from brigade
headquarters to the road and the helicopter landing zone. He was only
about twenty meters from where I sat.
The MP’s name was Snell, and it was his duty to make everyone
coming into the perimeter unload their weapons. The wooden sign beside
him, propped against a small sandbag bunker, read “2nd Bde BTOC CLEAR
YOUR WEAPON.”
A jeep stopped in a cloud of dust outside the wire, and three young
lieutenants from the 2/8th jumped out of it. The first man past Snell had a
pump shotgun. He racked the slide back and Snell nodded. The second
officer had an M16. He opened the bolt and Snell nodded. The last officer,
Second Lt. Conrad Braun, had a .45 pistol. He went to demonstrate that it
was unloaded, and with it pointed at Snell’s groin, shot him.
“When he pulled back the slide, I saw there was a magazine in the
pistol and a round ready to be chambered,” Snell would later tell me after
returning from the hospital. “I couldn’t believe it. He was pointing the
damn gun right at my balls. I was trying to say something when he let go of
the slide and pulled the trigger.”
The shot was very loud. For an instant, Snell did not move. I
thought the shot had missed, that he was okay. I had always been told
people hit with .45’s went down on the spot. Then, Snell slowly collapsed,
his knees buckling.
I jumped and ran toward him. Our medic passed me, bag in hand.
Colonel Miller and other officers were pouring out of the BTOC. I moved
back out of the way. Someone took the smoking pistol from the stunned
lieutenant and led him into the headquarters.
Snell was carried away to the aid station quickly, and soon only the
medic and I were standing there beside Snell’s blood on the dirt. The medic
had the actual bullet in his hand, fresh rifling marks engraved in it.
“Where did he get hit?” I asked.
“Inside of the thigh,” the medic said. “It went all the way through.”
 Jesus, I thought. A direct hit and Snell had not wavered. The bullet
still looked like new. It was not even mushroomed. The facts conflicted
with every .45-down story I had ever heard. I realized then they were
mostly bar room and barracks myths.
I went back to my tent thinking it would be safer to leave people’s
weapons alone as they went about their business. The more we fooled
around with guns, the more accidents we would have.
Snell went to the 18th Surgical Hospital outside Pleiku. He was back
three months later, his leg healed. He was lucky. Second Lieutenant Braun
did not get court martialed. Col. Miller needed every officer in the field,
and after going through all the obligatory threats and chastising with Braun,
sent him back to duty.
Accidents happened. The closest call I had yet had wasn’t even in
Vietnam. It had happened near the end of my Basic Training. On the
grenade range, we were being taught to arm and throw the M26
fragmentation grenade. Since we were using live grenades, the chance of
an accident killing or wounding many men was real, so deliberate safety
measures were routine.
The cadre carefully observed we trainees arming and throwing
practice grenades, to eliminate potentially dangerous students. Only half of
us were picked to throw actual grenades. I was considered sane enough to
handle a live grenade, and was led into a waiting bunker with my squad, to
wait while we were called out a man at a time to go to the throwing pits.
Downrange, the grenades were exploding and I could feel the
concussion from each one in my stomach.
The throwing pits were not all in use, since only a few instructors
were working with us. When it was my turn, I ran to the sergeant who
waved for me, jumped into the pit with him, and was handed my grenade.
I grasped the grenade in the manner we had been instructed, with the
safety handle against the palm of my right hand, and hooked my left index
finger through the pin ring.
“Short one!” cried someone from a pit near me. The sergeant
pushed me down, and for an instant, I didn’t understand what was wrong,
then an explosion blew sand into our pit and almost deafened me.
An amazing volume of cursing erupted between a trainee and a
sergeant in a pit only two away from mine. The student had taken his
grenade, pulled the safety pin, and in a moment of fright, fumbled and
dropped it.
The sergeant, ready for a scared trainee, had managed to grab the
armed grenade, and toss it out of his pit, but not straight, and only far
enough away to have it bounce close to my pit.
The quick-reacting sergeant was pushing and berating the trainee all
the way back to the bunker. I pulled the pin on my grenade, cocked my arm
and threw it, and crouched in my pit as I counted the seconds off to the
blast.
Satisfied, my instructor sent me on, motioning for another student. I
ran back to the bunker and only felt the fear from the grenade accident after
I sat down. My career had almost been ended before it began, and my
churning stomach knew it.

06 October 1966: Ground Radar

At Base Camp, in addition to the AN/MPQ-4 counter-mortar radar,
the new AN/TPS-25 ground-surveillance radar system finally went fully
operational. It looked for people and vehicle movement rather than
incoming aircraft, but interpretation of signal was problematic. Back on 30
August, the 1/12th’s battalion radar section detected and reported a
company-sized enemy force approximately 65 meters outside the perimeter,
but it was just a rainsquall that had blown in over the radar site.

08 October 1966: Paths To Glory

I was slowly becoming accustomed to Vietnam, and working in
headquarters was beginning to disagree with me. I felt guilty seeing the
infantry officers coming in from the field to report, or my posting the
brigade’s daily kills and casualties on our charts. I was just a bystander to
the war, someone keeping tally. I felt obligated to get out to the fighting.
But how? I’d seen enough to know that the infantry was a miserable way to
live, let alone die.

One year ago, 08 October 1965, I had been my graduation from

Basic Combat Training. We of C-1-1 had put on our dress uniforms,
assembled on the parade ground, and with a military band playing very
loudly, officers, friends, and relatives watched us from the reviewing stands
as we marched by the Commanding General of Fort Jackson.
 On that day, each and every one of us was very proud of ourselves,
our friends, and the Army and the United States of America.
Back in our company area, we finally turned in our test weapons.
There was no ceremony. 151079, went into a locked rifle rack with all the
others. I would never see it again. It had been a daily extension of my
hands for the last two months. I can’t remember the serial number of any
other weapon I was ever issued, or any other firearm I purchased for the rest
of my life, but the serial number of that rifle is a part of me. It is not
affection I feel for it, but respect. It changed my life.

Orders were now posted for us on the bulletin board outside the
orderly room. We learned 150 of us from C-1-1 would return to complete
the SAWS test after our leave time. The test would continue here at Fort
Jackson.
About 90 of our training company were reassigned to other places,
and I read their destinations. Mortar, Artillery, Military Police and Medic
schools made up most of them.
We were hearing more talk about Vietnam now, and stories about
the war were appearing more frequently in the newspapers. We knew some
Marines, and a few Army combat units, were committed to what the
military called SEA for South East Asia. The possibility of some, or even
any of us going to that far-off jungle war still seemed improbable. . . but
no longer impossible.

West To Cambodia
“Rattling around the Cambodian border held nothing good for our
side,” historian S. L. A. Marshall wrote about the battles we were entering
into in his 1968 book West To Cambodia. “except in the most extraordinary
of circumstances where sheer luck or some fluke made things break our
way.”
How right he was. We were learning it every day, the hard way,
placing names on a black Wall that hadn’t even yet been built.

10 October 1966: “What does LRRP stand for?”

Working in the operations center had one benefit. You always knew
what was going on. The radios crackled all day and night as units in the
field reported their positions and enemy contacts. We listened to air strikes
and artillery barrages being directed, and heard the rumors, lies, and
arguments passed between the field troops and the higher commands.
Because I posted unit positions on the briefing tent warboard, I kept track of
all the details of the First Cav, 25th Division, Special Forces, and 4th
Division movements.
There was a complex set of icons for different types of military
units. All were based on a “flag” rectangle with a symbol inside and extra
external markings to add information for what division or organization they
represented.
Coming on duty one morning, on the warboard I noticed a small
grease pencil drawn flag on the plastic flap that contained a cryptic set of
initials. LRRP. It was different in several respects from the regular unit
markers. It apparently wasn’t even properly drawn.
There was no identifying unit code or size indication. The S3
sergeant major walked up behind me as I was plotting changes for the rest
of the units. “Hey,” I asked as I worked, “what does L-R-R-P stand for?”
He glanced at the map. “That’s a long range reconnaissance patrol.
The one you have there is a 1st Cav outfit. We don’t have any yet.”
“What size are they?” I asked. The sergeant major was walking
away. “Only four or five men, I believe,” he said, and ducked out under the
tent flap.
I stood alone in the big briefing tent, staring at the warboard. The
plastic sheet over it was dotted with units in the field, each one properly and
clearly marked. Infantry. Artillery. Transport. Armor. Firebases, landing
zones, Special Forces camps, base camp, all in place and identifiable. One
unit supporting another.
But this tiny unit was just barely on the map. Four men? And so far
out? Improbable men doing improbable things. There were no friendly
troops anywhere near. What did this LRRP do if they got into trouble?
I finished drawing the changes on the acetate and picked up my
clipboard to leave. I looked back at the LRRP flag once more. It fascinated
me. Who would want to do that type of work? How did you go about
finding them? I had never even heard of LRRP before.
I walked into the next tent and found Sergeant Jones of the S2
intelligence shop. As a WWII and Korean War veteran, his opinion carried
weight. “Hi,” I said, sitting down on a packing crate. “How do you go
about one of those long-range patrol outfits?”
 Jones looked at me and smiled. “You don’t want any of that, son.
Those people are out there asking to get killed.”
“Are they Special Forces?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair. “No, I don’t think so. But seems to me
it’s all volunteers. Look in that file cabinet by the door and hand me the
brigade personnel unit’s breakdown.”
I found the folder, a thick one, and passed it to him. “Yep.” He
said. “We’re authorized a LRRP platoon. It’s only provisional though,
because there’s no T.O.&E on it yet.” That meant Table of Organization and
Equipment, the bedrock of the military’s existence.
Once US combat units arrived in Vietnam, brigades and battalions in
the field desperately needed information about their local sectors. Unable
to provide it, Corps HQ now allowed division and brigade commanders to
organize their own LRRP’s, providing they were not on the books, didn’t
cost anything, and did not hinder the efficiency of the overall unit from
which the personnel had to come.
“This is another special unit,” Jones said. “The army don’t like
special units. It’s considered bad for the morale of regular troops to have
elite units in the same army. You know the Ranger battalions were broken
up after Korea and the men sent back into line companies. The Special
Forces are only tolerated because Kennedy himself gave them the green
beanie.”
My curiosity was at the maximum. “Sarge, what do you have to do
to qualify?”
Jones read for a moment. “No special requirements. There’s a
school planned in Nha Trang. The Special Forces will be running it to train
volunteers.”
“What if I want to go?”
“If you’ll wait, we’ll have our own LRRP platoon right here in Head
and Head as soon as we get it organized, but you better DX that idea and be
thankful you work for brigade.”
I stood up and looked out the tent doorway to the mountains. They
were lush green and far away. Somewhere out there was a patrol of only
four men, entirely on their own.
As I went back into the briefing tent I looked again at the LRRP flag
on the map. I knew I wanted to join. I’d find out as much as I could about
it first. Being in the brigade operations shop I’d have access to the
information. I started laying my plans then to become part of LRRP.

12 October 1966: 20 Years of Age

My birthday today. I turn 20 in Vietnam. I am not yet old enough
to vote or even to buy pistol ammunition in the States, but here I can kill
people. I am busy with the warboard. I do take time to wonder if I will
have a 21st birthday. I don’t mean if I am wondering what I’m going to do
with the rest of my life. I mean I am wondering if I’ll just be seeing another
birthday. The wonder is not worry, just practicality.

14 October 1966: Towards Cambodia.

The 119th Aviation Co. lifted most of the 2/8th (357 troops and 66
tons of equipment) into position for our planned mass movement northwest,
into Kontum, toward Cambodia.

15 October 1966: Pleiku City

Our 2nd Brigade communications setups at the Oasis came fully on
line and the BTOC was now totally functional. We could now support our
western operations.
I took my first opportunity to go downtown and visit Pleiku. All of
us from HHC had been working steadily since we arrived, and none of us
had even gone to town on an errand or work detail.
Once we had permission to go, a group of us took a light truck on
Highway 19, past base camp, and into town. Just outside town was an old
US helicopter strip named Camp Holloway. We passed it driving into
town. The camp was historical. It was a landmark of the escalation of the
war. On 07 February 1965, the VC had savagely attacked Holloway,
overrunning the perimeter, blowing up nine helicopters, damaging fifteen
airplanes, and killing eight US servicemen. 126 Americans had been
wounded. That started the military buildup in Pleiku.

18 October 1966: On the Offensive

It was time for the 4th to do that most basic of infantry tasks – close
with the enemy and destroy him.
Our 2/8th “Black Panthers” and 1/22nd “Red Warriors” infantry
battalions had been in the field long enough to be considered experienced.
Our artillery, aviation, and engineer units had been shooting, flying, and
building long enough to be considered ready.
Today, 18 October, units of the 3rd Brigade of the 25th division and
2/4th (Second Brigade of the 4th Division, us) began to move north into
Kontum Province in a large-scale offensive. We were no longer under
operational control of the 3/25th. In fact, now the 3/25th was OPCON to the
4th Division.

20 October 1966: The Local Shooting Starts

The 3/25th began running into platoon-sized NVA units. Our 2nd
Brigade units began to maneuver to support the 25th. We were getting better
at finding the enemy, or at least the bunkers where he’d been, but the NVA
still held all the cards in hiding. They could break up and make a regiment
on the move look like a few small isolated patrols when observed and it had
fooled us before. If you saw one NVA it meant there was a squad close by.
If you saw a squad, it meant there was a platoon. If you saw a platoon, there
was really a company just down the trail.

21 October 1966: 18th Surgical

I rode on a supply truck with a few other soldiers out of base camp
returning to the Oasis, settled in with the cargo in the back. The driver was
going fast. We had just passed the Catecka tea plantation between base
camp and the Oasis. Catecka was a dangerous place; US troops often took
sniper fire from there. That’s when we hit the mine.
It was not a big road mine, as mines go, and was probably command
detonated, meaning someone was waiting off the road with the detonator
and was a bit slow on the trigger, because we were just past it when it
exploded. The rear of the truck bounced violently. The mine made a
column of gray smoke and showered rocks down on us.
Our driver never stopped. We got faster. My left arm had been
hooked over the edge of the truck bed, the wooden railing directly under my
armpit. The railing had hit me hard. I realized as I changed positions that
my arm felt as if it were asleep, complete with micro-pain and tingles.
When we got to the Oasis, I went to the medic—the same one who
had bandaged Snell—and he told me I probably had a pinched nerve. He
sent me to the 18th Surgical hospital in Pleiku. The 18th was a large
compound of metal buildings, with concrete sidewalks, drainage pipes, and
runoff ditches. I could hear the steady throb of generators and the hum of
air conditioners as I walked through the double doors of the incoming-
patient building.
The staff, men and women, wore fatigues and lab coats. I was
processed in, x-rayed, and told to go back to the entrance hall and wait. My
arm was numb, but what I was seeing made me self-conscious to be there
with such a minor injury.

Wounded were being brought in constantly. I looked down one hall

and saw a pile of jungle boots, all muddy, some bloodstained, that was
almost up to my chest. They had been cut off, not unlaced. So many boots
equaled so many wounded. It was a soul-freezing sight.
A shout from behind jerked me out of my stupor. Able men were
needed outside to carry in wounded. I could hear a lot of helicopters,
sounding like they were right over the roof of our building. I had one arm
that worked, so I ran out with the others, and met the Hueys just now
touching down. There were over a dozen wounded on the ships, and I
noticed with horror that some of them appeared to be smoking, as if
smoldering from a fire.
We carried the limp wounded, their blood still fresh, inside the first
building where I had been waiting, placing them on stretchers set up on
sawhorses. I got out of the way as orderlies and nurses swarmed on the row
of litter cases, snipping off boots and webgear with sharp, heavy-duty
scissors, peeling off the bloody, ripped uniforms from the men. Twisted
metal shards were literally sticking out of their arms and faces. Small
stainless-steel buckets were placed between stretchers, and I heard the
distinct clinks of metal as the scissors pulled shrapnel out of the men and
the metal was tossed into the buckets. The scissors also cut away some
ruined flesh where necessary, and those lumps hit the buckets with liquid
splats.
One of the wounded that was not as bad as the others began to talk
to us. The metal splinters in the men were from US Air Force 20mm
cannon, he said. “We were just walking over the hill,” he said, “planes hit
us so fast we didn’t know what happened. The lieutenant was on the radio,
screaming at them to stop. They got half my platoon in the first pass.”
In the emotion and excitement of the moment I never noticed if the
wounded troopers were 1st Cav., 3/25th, or 4th division. I wish I had.
 Our own jets had done it, by accident. The smoke from the
wounded had been residue of the phosphorous-based 20mm cannon tracer
chemicals fanned back to burning by the winds of helicopter flight. The
worst of the men were being hustled to surgery. This was no place for me.
I went into the front hall and asked a nurse about the analysis of my x-ray.
The man checked, and told me I was okay, and to report back to my unit. I
found an ambulance going back to base camp.
I was subdued by this visit to the hospital area. This was Reality
101. The price of war. This was where the fight wasn’t in shooting back, it
was fighting to save lives. The grim reaper walked close here among the
suffering, waiting for heart and breath to stop. I rode away and did not look
back.
In updating this book, I’ve searched the Internet for any info on this
incident, and found nothing specific. Probably the incident was papered
over in reports and did not become part of history. Friendly fire accidents
were too-often diminished this way.
Years later, the television show M*A*S*H would depict a field
hospital as a comic affair, but there were no jokes and no zany characters at
the 18th Surgical. There was just blood, boots in piles too high, and halls
lined with desperate victims.

22 October 1966: The CIB

Our 1/12th and 2/8th battalions were now in contact with the NVA.
We had choppers from the 170th Aviation Co. providing emergency
resupply to these units late into the night and early morning. At the BTOC,
I kept the maps updated. It was apparent we were plunging deeper and
deeper into the shooting war.

One day, mass orders were circulated, the bulk of which awarded
those of us with the 11B military occupation specialty the Combat Infantry
Badge. 11B’s were automatically awarded the CIB if in a combat zone for
90 days. I had only recently begun to appreciate the CIB for what it was and
represented. Experience was to teach me the CIB, of all awards, was the
one that deserved the most respect. It represented life against death.
Also, my promotion to E4 came through, and with it an increase in
pay. I was now designated a “Specialist,” or “Spec Four.” The counterpart
rank to Specialist E4 was Corporal, but Corporal was a leadership rank not
much given any longer. To make Corporal, you usually had to first make
Sergeant E5 and then get demoted one grade, from three stripes down to
two.
At this time last year, I had been a Private E1, on two weeks leave at
home after Basic before reporting on to Advanced Infantry Training.
I saw my son Barret for the first time the day I arrived home in
Orlando. He was only weeks old, and seemed to me to be odd, tiny, and
nearly lost in the swaddling blankets in which my wife carried him.
I enjoyed my leave, but the two weeks passed slowly. I felt out of
place with my family. My people at home were occupied with their own
lives, my wife had our son to take care of, and I did not expect anyone to
understand the technicalities of the weapons I was using, or the details of
the life of a soldier.

After leave, on 24 October 1965, I found myself back in the SAWS

test at Fort Jackson for Advanced Infantry Training.
My AIT company was A-11-3 (“A” Company, 11th Battalion, 3rd
Brigade), and we were housed in old, wooden WWII barracks. Our
company commander was a strict military disciplinarian.
I was not a squad leader in AIT. We had new squad leaders who
were not originally with C-1-1. These men had been through Leadership
School. No one from “Test Weapons” (as we had become unofficially
known) had been eligible for Leadership School, because we could not be
spared the time off from the project.
Basic had been eight weeks long. AIT would take ten weeks. As
AIT grads, we would be 11B’s. I would be an 11B10 Rifleman. As the song
lyrics went, we were the ones to give our bodies as a weapon of the war.
We would be learning infantry squad tactics, and a variety of
weapons like machine guns, rocket launchers, pistols, grenade launchers,
and mines. My platoon was issued Colt test rifles again and the Stoner
people got their weapons back. It was good to have a weapon back in my
hands. During AIT, we were going to train with the variations of the Colts
and Stoners that made up the “system” part of weapons systems. I was
given a special XM16E1 with a heavy barrel that was a contender for Squad
Automatic Rifle. All of the M16’s would fire full auto, of course, but the
heavy-barrel SAR was supposed to be capable of sustained fire. The closest
M14 SAR competitor was the M14E2, a restocked M14 rifle with a front
handgrip, which was to prove nearly uncontrollable on full auto.
Because of the coming winter, we were issued long underwear and
liners for our field jackets, and fabric camouflage covers for our steel
helmets, something we didn’t have in Basic.
We started in with backpack field radio communications training,
field fortifications such as trenches, bunkers, and fighting holes, and the M-
67 90mm Recoilless Rifle.
The “90 Rifle” was intended to be shoulder fired, and man-carried.
It was the replacement for the older, aluminum-tube 3.5 Rocket Launcher,
popularly known as the “Bazooka”.
In training, we were allowed to examine the 90 Rifle, but did not fire
it or see it fired. I disliked it the moment I picked one up and felt the
weight. We were told the 90 Rifle would knock out almost any tank in the
world. Perhaps, if the tank would come to the weapon, because I thought
the all-steel 90 was too heavy to be carrying very far. If someone had told
me that we infantry would not only carry it, but also carry it and its
ammunition in the jungle, I would have laughed at the idea.
Our training during the day was followed by guard duty at night.
Sometimes, if the scheduling was right, any of us could have a night of
guard followed by a day of training with no rest in between. Freezing
weather had moved in, and our old barracks were cold. Our food, good and
plentiful in Basic, was poor and closely rationed in AIT.
The Captain had us running to training instead of marching, and
conducted frequent inspections to insure that we had cosmetically-prepared
displays of folded underwear, unused tooth brush, and new bar soap, on
pinned white towel backing ready in our foot lockers. Our morale, met for
the first time with harassment and hardship, was low.

The 4th Aviation was having a barbecue party, with a jeep-trailer

load of iced beer and soft drinks. They were well into it, and making a lot
of noise. I walked by, and off to the side noticed a single Vietnamese man
squatting in the high, hot sun, his head bowed, forced into that position by
the tiny barbed wire cage that surrounded him. He was in detention until he
could be questioned.
There was a woman sitting outside the wire, only a few inches from
him. She had laid a thin handkerchief across the top of the wire to attempt
to shade him. It was ridiculous, but it was all she had. Neither of them
were speaking. They just sat, while beside them the 4th Aviation ate their
just-off-the-grill steaks and punched holes in the tops of the iced beer cans.
I didn’t know anyone in the 4th Aviation, or why the two Vietnamese were
there, but I didn’t like it.
“Hey! Hey! Don’t mess with those people!” an officer said to me. I
followed my orders and walked away.

26 October 1966: President Johnson in Vietnam

LBJ visits Cam Rahn Bay. He, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and a
few other officials stop off on Johnson’s Southeast Asia tour. He had
already been to Japan, the Philippines, and was on his way to Thailand and
Malaysia. Up in the central highlands, there’s little news. We won’t know
it until it runs in Stars and Stripes. Not that any of us were overly
impressed, but it does take a certain amount of nerve for the President to
stroll into a war zone. “Safe” was a relative term in Vietnam.
Stateside, war protestors would chant “Hey hey LBJ how many kids
did you kill today?” The truth was, LBJ didn’t want the war. Politically–and
Lyndon Baines Johnson was nothing if not a political animal. There was too
much to lose in fighting the war to win. So, LBJ did as his advisors wanted
and fought not to win, but to stalemate.
For us on the ground, when we thought about the goals and strategy
of the war at all, we felt we were too big to fail. Surely American numbers,
military superiority, and technology would by weight of mass overcome a
third world country even if it was supported by massive evil empires. We
did more sandbag filling than thinking about politics, marking days off our
calendars, praying to go home.

26 October 1966: Roy and Dale

War or no war, the famous western singing, movie, and television
husband-and-wife team, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, came to the Oasis
with their band the Travellons. They had played at Camp Holloway on the
23rd. We had a small stage built for them so the troops could watch. Being
in Headquarters Company, I was part of the welcoming committee, and
carried Dale’s handbag for her off their helicopter to the stage.
Roy and Dale sang songs and told stories about themselves and their
cowboy movies, giving the men a good show and some time away from
their responsibilities and worries. When it was over, Roy and Dale
reboarded their helicopter, and flew away over the mountains to another
camp, seeing Vietnam for themselves rather than hearing about it on the
news. I appreciated their effort.

28 October 1966: (Day) Jump Command Post — Again

We had received the order to quickly break camp at the Oasis and
move deeper on into the war zone our infantry troops were establishing. It
had taken us over a month to dig in, sandbag, string barbed wire, and get
the Oasis functioning smoothly. It took thirty-six hours to strike the tents,
repack them and all of our equipment, destroy our fortifications, and leave
in convoy. The morning of 28 October, we drove over seventy kilometers
up into the Plei Trap valley, merging into the mountains of southern
Kontum Province, our trucks overloaded with tent flooring, equipment
crates, and baggage.
The dusty trek ended in a huge, abandoned rubber plantation, the
rubber trees planted in long, even rows as far around as we could see. We
took machetes, axes, picks, and shovels, and cut places in the jungle to set
up the new brigade command post. Everyone worked hard, and soon our
big GP medium tents were rising above of the underbrush and bamboo.
As we worked, an urgent warning was radioed to us to abandon the
new camp to leave the tents in place, and move back to higher ground and
link up with infantry units. The North Vietnamese Army was in contact
with our forward infantry battalions, and the fighting was coming our way.
We climbed aboard our trucks and drove into the hills, where a temporary
barbed-wire perimeter had been quickly rigged.

28-29 October 1966: (Night) The Battle of Nobel’s Knob

The infantry unit I was fated to join in November, Charlie Company
th
2/8 , was blooded tonight. Charlie Company later named it the “Battle of
Nobel’s Knob,” after Charlie Company Captain John Nobel.
Before Vietnam, Nobel had been the mayor of Rochelle, Georgia,
and a lieutenant in the Army Reserve. He was involved in the family
business. In the summer of 1965, in the reserve’s yearly summer camp, he
had been given a questionnaire that asked if would be willing to go to
Vietnam. John Nobel said yes. When the Department of the Army called
him soon after camp to confirm his decision, John Nobel formally agreed,
and left home, business, and his political career behind for combat in
Vietnam.
By March 1966, he was commanding officer of Charlie Company
th
2/8 Infantry at Fort Lewis, and just before we all boarded the troop ships,
was promoted to captain.
Captain Nobel and about half of the men from Charlie Company
held a hill in a predawn clash on 29 October, against a much larger
Communist company-sized force, and survived.
The action actually began the afternoon of 28 October when Charlie
Company found a recently abandoned village and, after discovering
evidence of NVA occupation, burned down most of the huts and killed all
the pigs and chickens they found. They even broke the crockery in the
cupboards. The village had been supporting and aiding the enemy.
After that, an NVA sniper killed a Charlie Company soldier named
Ken Maddy. The 20-year old Mormon had been hit squarely in the lower
torso with an AK bullet. He died in minutes. The 2nd platoon squad I would
later join told me that the medic had panicked and let Maddy die, but
probably nothing a medic could do would have saved him.
Captain Nobel called in his patrolling platoons back to the overnight
hilltop position he had picked near the village. It was a defensive move, the
infantry equivalent of circling the wagons. Village chickens clucked and
fussed whenever strangers approached, and Charlie Company heard
clucking as the NVA grouped near the village.

The NVA hit them late that night, probably expecting only one
platoon to be on the hill rather than three. It was supposed to be an NVA
victory. The NVA, in estimated company size, hit them eight times that
night, the battle going on into the early hours, officially dated as occurring
on the 29th.
Try for a moment to imagine what such a night battle is like,
isolated in the dark jungle, the enemy trying to break inside your perimeter
and kill you all. Battle is too clean and organized a word for it. Fierce,
wild, fight-for-survival is more descriptive.
 The NVA came at Charlie Company front and rear, trying to sweep
up the lower slopes on one side of the knob, keeping the GI’s pinned down
on the higher banked sides. One M60 machine gun guarding a side of the
lower slope had been in a vital position, able to disrupt the NVA assaults
each time they tried to run in on the perimeter. Both sides knew how
important the gun was. The North Viets constantly tried to knock it out,
shooting gunner after gunner. The GI’s had to keep the gun firing to
survive, and there was always a man ready to take over as the last gunner
was hit.
The NVA kept hitting Charlie Company with rifle and machine gun
fire. Green-white NVA tracers bounced off the trees. Red American tracers
plunged downhill, skipping off rocks. RPG-2 fire, (the Chinese B40 rocket
propelled grenades) lobbed in like artillery. The GI’s could see them when
they were launched, making sparkles and a brief comet-like streak in the
dark.

“I thought we were all dead, man,” Kravitski (one of the 2nd platoon
troopers) was later to tell me. “I was right there with the captain. I was
running around all over the place trying to get magazines from the guys
uphill and distribute them to the guy’s downhill.”
For hours no one was sure who was winning. The NVA tried
dashing in close to what they thought were holes in the American perimeter,
and the GI’s had to shift position and drive them back again. Men on both
sides yelled orders and questions to each other until their voices cracked.
The fire was sometimes spotty, sometimes constant. It numbed the ears.
Near dawn, it became apparent the NVA had given up trying to
break the line and was just pinning the GI’s down in order to drag or carry
away their wounded, but they were lacking coordination. That meant the
right NVA NCO’s and officers were out of action.
 The official casualty reports list that two GI’s died in the fight, and
that 16 were wounded. That was 18 casualties out of less than 70 men,
almost a 20% loss of all that Charlie Company had in field strength during
that fight. There were 25 dead NVA left behind to be kicked and counted.
“The tree top branches were so thick there was no LZ. We had to
climb up in the trees and guide the litters out, hoisted by a Chinook up
there,” Kravitski said.
Although each description of the battle differed with the memory
and opinion of each teller, to a man my squad was united on one point:
Captain Nobel had kept them together, and had done everything he should
have done that night as the enemy tried to overrun them.

The same night, a force much larger than was attacking Charlie
Company was hitting the nearby Bravo Company. A whole battalion. And
the SOB’s had mortars. Bravo Company fought like hell and beat them
back. That toll was four dead GI’s and 23 wounded.
Our 28-29 October battles made the news.

NEWS ITEM: 30 October 1966 ‘GREENHORNS’

STAND FAST SAIGON (UPI)
Veteran North Vietnamese troops Saturday charged
repeatedly in human-wave attacks against “greenhorn”
American infantrymen in the Central Highlands near the
Cambodian border. The hard-hit GIs held their ground and
killed 52 while suffering “moderate” losses. Three U.S.
Army helicopters flying to the besieged Americans were
shot down by ground fire. One of the aircraft crashed in
flames, “heavy casualties” to the crew. A U.S. spokesman
said the Communists threw a reinforced North Vietnamese
battalion at inexperienced troopers from units of the 4th
Infantry vision that arrived in Vietnam only two months
ago. The Americans, in their heavy combat debut absorbed
some of the worst punishment troops of the North
Vietnamese 6l0th Division attacks. A spokesman for the 4th
Infantry said defenders from the 2nd and 3rd Brigades
suffered “moderate” casualties during the fight, meaning
they were hard hit.”
 It rained on us that night, and we huddled inside our HHC trucks,
while ahead of us our infantry battalions were attacked viciously by
determined North Vietnamese Army units. The NVA had waited for us to
come to him, and he was ready.
From my truck, I could see the tracers and aerial flares, and realized
the fighting was getting closer. When mortar shells began to explode just
down the hill from where we had been working, we realized the enemy had
spotted us as we had begun to set up, plotted our position, and thought we
were still there.
I overheard radio reports that B and C companies of the 2/8th were
getting hit hard. Captain Jones’ Bravo Company was attacked sixteen
times. Captain Nobel’s’ C-Company was hit eight times. Three of the
helicopters flying support for Jones and Nobel were shot down. That
included one full of wounded.
At an overnight lager on the road, NVA infantry swarmed 4th
Division tanks. The tankers buttoned up and sprayed each other with
machine gun fire.

We Build 3-Golf
At first light, I laced up my wet boots, and jumped down off my
truck. Headquarters Company’s top sergeant came running down the
column of parked vehicles, shouting for us to get ready, grab our weapons,
and move back to the rubber plantation.
We drove the trucks down into the plantation, being the only troops
in the entire area, and dismounted, forming into squads and fire teams to
sweep through the area. The jungle was still thick with morning mist and
dripping with dew. I could feel my stomach contract and anticipation rise
in my throat. Rifles loaded and off-safe, we carefully searched the tents we
had left erected the afternoon before. In every move and step we were wary
of booby traps, or snipers hiding in the greenery of the rubber trees. Tail
fins from exploded mortar shells lay randomly about. A few of the tents
were ripped apart from direct hits.
The helicopters were passing overhead now, going out to the
infantry units to pick up casualties. It would take us many hours to
calculate the number of dead, both theirs and ours. Setting up the BTOC
took the rest of that day and part of the next, all of that before we could take
the time to prepare our own living quarters.
We had become efficient in command-post moves by now. Our
engineers had built us a shower tent near a stream, with pumps taking the
water, filtering it, and spraying it through showerheads onto slat-board
floors. We all managed to get a turn in the shower tent. The water was cold
but it was wonderful. We had eaten little and rested less for the last few
days, and any comfort was welcome.
But many of our officers had discovered they could take enlisted
men for use as personal labor. We did all the labor to erect and sandbag the
officers’ tents of course, and this is not to diminish the importance of a
ranking officer’s time, but we had to dig and fortify the officers’ bunkers
before we could make our own. If any of the brigade officers wanted our
tents or bunkers, or wanted us to break down and relocate their personal
sleeping tents, flooring, and lockers, we had to obey.
Enlisted men were barred from buying soft drinks or beer off the
mobile PX truck, but the officers had that privilege. To top it off, our
brigade maintained an elaborate officers’ mess complete with wooden
floors, tables with white linen, china and silverware, and its own ice cream
and ice-making machine. I was assigned KP duty there one day, and at
breakfast, the officers’ special cook would not let me serve the pancake
syrup until he was sure it had been properly heated and poured for each
officer into individual bowls.
Col. Judson Miller, our Brigade CO, and a few Brigade staff officers
tried to live like royalty, while the rest of the men—and officers—in the
infantry units and support units scratched out an existence in the field.

31 October 1966: True Monsters

Halloween night. Dark, quiet. I sit at my desk behind the warboard
and contemplate the skull I keep as a curio. It is Vietnam, and it seems
appropriate. The broken skull represents All Hallows Eve. The forest out
there is full of killers. Trick or treat is life or death. I realize I will never be
afraid of pretend horror and pretend monsters again.
For sheer horror, a werewolf is a poor second to a napalm bomb.
The bloodletting bite of a vampire is nothing to the kinds of holes a
machine gun makes in flesh.
War is the true horror, and man is the true monster.
 Mail arrived. I received a black and white Polaroid camera and film
from home, and began taking photographs to mail back and show what our
camp looked like.

War Prizes
Captured NVA ammunition, weapons, equipment, and documents
were shipped back to Brigade. Some of it was of legitimate intelligence
value, some just for curiosity.
Brigade and Division officers and ranking helicopter pilots took
what they wanted for souvenirs. NVA flags, enameled red star belt buckles,
and khaki sun helmets were popular.
I was more interested in common NVA field gear. Their medic bags
held mostly just bandages, and a few vitamin pills. Their weapons cleaning
supplies were often just motor oil and chassis grease. Their rain ponchos
were thin and flimsy, like cheap plastic tablecloths. Yet they made do.

The captured enemy weapons coming to our S2 shop from the field
were Combloc and Warsaw pact rifles and light machine guns. Some of
them were in poor condition. They were rusty, and had parts missing or
broken. I was surprised they would fire, but they obviously had. Some of
the weapons were in good shape, or were rare issue, like genuine Russian
Tokarev pistols with a quality blued finish, and newer laminated stock SKS
and AK-47 rifles. The top brigade officers often took the best weapons and
gave them to their friends. Soon we were seeing various pilots and obscure
clerical officers swaggering around with captured weapons.

I learned something from one of those weapons, a lesson that has

stuck with me all my life.
One of the captured RPD machine guns had burlap padding tied on
the barrel and receiver. I couldn’t figure why the burlap was wrapped
around the gun like it was, because the weapon couldn’t be used that way.
Then I realized what I was seeing. The guy who had to carry it had padded
it so when he carried it wouldn’t hurt his shoulder.
He was capable of feeling pain, just like me. There are things we
know intellectually, but not emotionally. I emotionally realized the
humanity of my enemy on that day.
 The NVA got hungry, tired, and thirsty, just like us. And, by
exploiting his humanity, he could be hunted and killed more effectively.
The irony, the duality, of that realization was not lost on me. The very
action of understanding that we all hurt alike was the key to both mercy and
murder.

Chinese Volunteers
China would finally admit many years after the war was over that it
sent more than 300,000 combat troops to Vietnam to flight against U S.
forces and the South Vietnamese allies during the 1960's. And it also spent
over $20 billion to support the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong
guerrilla units.
We killed more than 4,000 Chinese soldiers in South Vietnam
during the war, by China’s own estimation.
China constantly denied U S. claims that its soldiers were operating
in Vietnam. US. Intelligence reports at the time spoke of US. combat units
in the central highlands finding soldiers dressed in Chinese combat gear and
wearing Chinese insignia.
Hanoi maintained throughout the war its soldiers went south only as
“volunteers” to help the southern Viet Cong guerilla movement.
The story had been the same in Korea. Chinese volunteers by the
thousands had poured across the border at the Yalu and overrun US
positions. Their numbers and human wave attacks had been the inspiration
for the Claymore mine. The Claymore was packed full of ball bearings, and
exploded sending its projectiles in one direction, like a giant shotgun. The
first Claymores were a cardboard box with oily, yellow C3 explosive. Our
new Claymores were plastic with white, clay-like C4.

Vietcong and North Viet prisoners our infantrymen caught were also
sent to us. They were mostly young Vietnamese men, scared, starved, and
willing to talk. S2 had a special interrogation area in a nest of barbed wire
near brigade headquarters. American and Vietnamese Military Intelligence
people conducted the interrogations inside. The tied and tagged prisoners
would wait under armed guard, seated on low sandbag walls, as they were
taken one by one into the interrogation bunker.
 During October, I suffered an illness that severely weakened me, but
the worst passed in twenty-four hours. I vomited until I had the dry heaves,
and broke out in a raging fever. I was thirsty, but promptly threw up
whatever I tried to swallow. For the next two days, I still couldn’t eat, and
any movement caused nausea. I did not know it at the time, but it was a
malaria attack. The daily pills we took to prevent malaria would also keep
it suppressed, except at the very beginning.

01 November 1966: Transfer

We had water buckets and hand brushes at both front and rear entry
areas of the briefing tents. The purpose was to allow the many officers who
passed through here to get the worst of the mud off their boots before
coming in to sit at the folding chairs.
The problem was, some of our own brigade staff officers discovered
they could order any available enlisted man to brush their boots down
(while worn) as they entered. I myself had to clean boots if I was in earshot
of those officers who had learned the trick.
Washing boots, heated syrup for the officer’s mess, ranking staff
officers loaning out helicopters to friends to joyride in and we didn’t have
aircraft available for emergencies, and special Pleiku City helicopter
laundry runs for the officers finally got to me. Enough was enough. I made
my formal application to leave HHC and go to an infantry unit. The LRRP
platoon was not yet activated and I didn’t want to wait for it, plus I realized
I needed field combat experience to survive in a LRRP unit.
HHC Sergeant Major Lawson tried to talk me out of it. “You don’t
know what you’re asking for,” he said. “You’re getting pissed off at head
and head nitshit, but this beats the infantry hands down. And you’ll lose
your R&R allocation!”
R&R was supposed to be Lawson’s best argument against leaving
HHC. Our “Rest & Recreation” allocation was a week-long government-
sponsored vacation and everybody looked forward to it. The truth was,
R&R allocations and schedules had been overlooked in the rush to get
ready to go to Vietnam. Way too late, an alert HHC clerk had discovered
that to give everybody in the Brigade an R&R, we would have had to start
rotations the week we arrived in country.
“Give my R&R to somebody else,” I said. “I want the transfer.”
04 November 1966: The Ivy Leaf
Publication of the Ivy Leaf, the 4th Division’s weekly newspaper,
began today.

08 November 1966: Limbo

As the result of my request for transfer, maybe as revenge, I was
moved out of headquarters and placed in the “reaction platoon” which was
actually a work gang. We did garbage removal, guard duty, kitchen labor,
and helped improve the bunkers and trenches.
One of the labor details I worked was to go out to native villages as
guard with my M16, picking up Montagnards laborers to bring back to clear
fields and fill thousands of sandbags.
I got my closest look at them yet. The Montagnards were primitive.
They lived in huts, pierced and distorted their earlobes, wore almost nothing
but loincloths, and many of them were infected with diseases. We paid
them rice and salt for their work. They needed the iodine in our salt.
Without it, they suffered a more rapid breakdown of their health. Their skin
was commonly thick, wrinkled, and spotted with infections and sores.
Despite all this, they were a proud and able people, and they worked
honestly without begging, which was more than I could say for the
Vietnamese I met.
Today, trouble was breaking out that I would soon be deep into. On a
jungle mountain in Kontum the 5th Special Forces Task Force Prong was
running into large numbers of organized NVA who were there setting up
12.7mm (like our .50 caliber) anti-aircraft guns.

10 November 1966: Orders

I was told to pack and prepare to leave. My orders for the infantry
had come, assigning me to Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry.
The 8th was nicknamed the Black Panthers. At Fort Lewis, the 2/8th had
actually kept a real panther in a zoo-like cage. “Feed the panther”
donations were always being solicited.
I was through with the petty kings at Headquarters and Headquarters
Company. I also felt I could respect myself now. I was trained to fight, and
I was in a war. I belonged in the field. My friends in brigade, specifically
Wally Wicks the mail clerk, and Vejar the S3 clerk, acted as if receiving
orders for an infantry company were the same as a death sentence.
 If I wanted to get into a LRRP unit, I had to have field combat
experience. The infantry was the way to get it. I didn’t intend to make a
career of being a grunt.
Today, Task Force Prong was embroiled in bitter, close, platoon and
company sized fights, airlifting in Mike Force reinforcements.

I rode in a convoy from 3-Golf, the rubber plantation, back to

Dragon Mountain base camp, getting off at the Charlie Company 2/8th
headquarters, filthy with road dust. The 2/8th battalion area was almost
deserted; all of the men except for a small staff were out in the field. I was
told by clerks in the orderly tent to find a tent and rest until they arranged
for me to be issued my equipment and sent to the field. I located a GP
medium tent, dropped off my equipment, and washed, water being plentiful
from the tank trailers parked around the area.
Base camp was bigger now, and getting organized. The mud roads
of the monsoon were being paved with gravel, some permanent buildings
were going up, engineer teams worked in every direction, and cranes
littered the skyline of tent roofs. They were building a city where there had
been a tent slum. Drainage ditches were fitted with concrete pipes, and
signs identifying units and directions had been erected. Base camp was
large enough now to need signs. Months ago, those of us inside knew
where everybody was. Alone in my tent, I lay on a cot, glad to be where I
was.
In Head and Head company, you knew most of what was going on.
But now, for days, I knew nothing except what was happening right around
me. I didn’t know that events were already in motion that were going to
determine what was going to happen to me for the rest of my tour, or for
that matter, the rest of my life.
Timing is everything. I had asked for, and gotten, my assignment to
a line infantry outfit just as Brigade was launching our first major combat
operation. For years the NVA and VC had been occupying the mountain
and valleys of Kontum province where we were going.

Task Force Prong

Also today, 10 November, West Point and Ranger School graduate
Lt. Mike Lapolla was serving as a Liaison Officer for the 2/8th Infantry, to
the 5th Special Forces C-Team unit at Plei Djereng. The C-Team was led by
Col. Eleazar Parmly, who had been Lapolla’s Recondo instructor at West
Point.
Recondo means recon commando. The 101st Airborne had a school
set up for it at Fort Campbell, and the 5th Special Forces would open their
own Recondo course at Nha Trang soon. Nha Trang was the right place for
it. It was where the original South Vietnamese commando school had been
established, and the main camp for their Special Forces, the LLDB.
Lapolla was scrappy, and willing to get out and do it. On 10
November, he was supporting Task Force Prong, on patrol with the Special
Forces in the Plei Trap Valley, fighting a large NVA unit. The SF trooper in
front of Lapolla had his leg shattered by a bullet. The soldier behind
Lapolla, Sp4 John Mitchell, was hit in the throat. Mitchell died later that
day.
The NVA were trying their best to destroy the Mike Force units, but
the Yards and the Americans were giving them hell. The 4th division started
organizing to fly in infantry reinforcements. Young Mike Lapolla was being
forged into the right type of commander the yet to be formed 2nd Brigade
LRRP platoon was going to need.

Lapolla’s LRRPs
At Fort Lewis, Lapolla had been assigned to the 2/8th as a platoon
leader in December 1965. He had a platoon in Charlie Company, and took
that platoon through training for Vietnam. When the brigade went to
Vietnam, he was assigned to the 2/8th battalion HQ and remained there for
the next four months. His liaison with the Special Forces was part of his
HQ job.
Our 2nd Brigade Commander Col. Judson Miller had authorization to
form a provisional LRRP platoon, and Mike Lapolla was a noticeable
young officer with some Special Forces field experience. He was also not
assigned to a command, and was available. After Task Force Prong, Col.
Miller would call Lapolla to his air-conditioned command trailer and ask
him to form the unit.
Lapolla was willing to take risks. This was an opportunity to really
do something, to build a command from scratch. He was being offered a
blank check to create his own special, elite force. He accepted.
But when he left Col. Miller’s trailer, Lapolla realized the blank
check might bounce. He had no real authority; no checklist to follow, no
policies and procedures, no one to help him, and on top of that, no place to
sleep. He was going to have to make it up as he went along.

11 November 1966: Red Warrior LZ

Today the 1st of the 12th “Red Warriors” made a helicopter assault to
assist TF Prong. Two Hueys were shot down by NVA machine guns during
the landing. The 1/12 Infantry dug in and established the Red Warrior
firebase near the landing zone.

12 November 1966: Firebase Assault

Just before midnight, about two battalions of NVA, supported by
heavy mortar fire, hit the Red Warrior LZ. An estimated 500 rounds of
mortar hit the firebase, the worst any US unit in Vietnam had taken up to
that time. Whole sections of the base were on fire or destroyed by
exploding ammunition stores. Artillery fire from B-Battery 4/42nd broke up
the assaults and 175mm fire hit the mortars that were firing from the
border. Skyraider air strikes followed with napalm just outside the wire,
and by dawn on the 13th, the NVA were gone.
Five 1/12th troopers were killed and 41 wounded. Almost 400
countable, physical, NVA bodies were scattered outside the wire.
The NVA tactic was to break up his units into small groups and keep
them dispersed until they came together and did something big, such as this
type of attack. Small groups, if encountered by our forces or seen by
LRRP’s seemed just like what they were; small units, and they always ran
for it.
That gave the impression was there were no major enemy forces in
the area. It usually worked.

There was a story later circulated in the infantry that Colonel Miller
had been in a Huey overflying an enemy action when it was forced to set
down overnight at an infantry encampment because of mechanical
problems. Because he had to spend a night in the jungle, he got some junior
officers to recommend him for a medal. And not just any medal, but a
Silver Star, the third highest award the US can bestow.
Records show that on 12th-13th of November 1966, Col Miller did in
fact land in or near the 1/12th’s battle to establish the new Red Warrior LZ,
and “inspired his troops by exposing himself to danger.” Miller received the
Star.
This is not to challenge Miller’s courage. He had fought in Europe
and Korea, and in fact came into Vietnam with a Bronze Star with V for
valor. But full bird colonels do not land on battlegrounds just to inspire the
troops, stay the night, and fly out ASAP the next day. My opinion is with
the rumor. Maybe Col. Miller figured he was due such an award for his time
in service and took advantage of the circumstances.
 Part II

C Company (2nd Platoon)

2nd of the 8th Infantry

2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

14 November 1966: Joining the Infantry

I rode out to the war in a Huey, wearing my helmet, canteens,
ammunition pouches, rucksack, and carrying an M16 from the supply
sergeant at base camp. The helicopter ride was high and long, giving me
my best look yet of the central highland mountains and jungles. We were
going west towards the Cambodian border, where the mountains of Kontum
province began to settle into the southern Plei Trap valley, The Nam Sathay
River flowed south out of the highlands down this valley, making a dividing
line you could see. West of the river was a very short walk into Cambodia.
Here’s the official 4th Infantry Division description of the Kontum
area.
It is an area of almost continuous jungle with hardwood
trees of several varieties up to six or seven feet in diameter
and 200-250 feet in height. Where the sunlight can break
through the overhead canopy, the jungle floor is covered
with thick, dense undergrowth restricting observation to a
few meters and making movement extremely difficult. The
area represents some of the most difficult jungle terrain in
all of Southeast Asia. It is intersected by valleys and
mountains with elevations varying from about 500 feet to
nearly 6000 feet, presenting additional difficulties to
movement and maneuver. Moreover, although there was
practically no rainfall during the period of the operation,
there were wide variations in temperature. On several
occasions, daylight temperatures exceeded 105F whereas
nighttime temperatures sometimes dropped as low as 45F.
 I didn’t know my destination was LZ Lane, close to the TF Prong
battles, west of the Nam Sathay River and four kilometers from Cambodia.
I had not yet met Lt. Lapolla.
A Green Beret passenger on my helicopter was carrying a very early
model of the Colt Commando, a weapon we’d had in the SAWS test. I
wished I had one.

We dropped him off at the Plei Me Special Forces camp. I saw the
camp from the air, as our ship approached to land. It was a crudely
triangular fort, a throwback to strong points from two thousand years ago,
walled with earthworks and barricades. Plei Me made me realize how
elemental the war was. Our weapons might be made of aluminum and
space age plastics, and we could fly like birds, but on the ground death was
ageless and primitive.
I’d been out of touch with Brigade headquarters for a few weeks
now and didn’t know where the hot areas were. Hot meant enemy contact,
air strikes, medevacs, overlapping B52 strikes, RTO’s yelling into their
mikes. All I knew from the looks of things was we were going where it was
hot.
Back in the air, we flew deeper and deeper into the cloudy
mountaintops of the central highlands. Finally, we reached a hilltop. The
skies were gray and it was drizzling rain. I got a view of the camp from the
air as we circled for landing. This was Firebase Lane. It was all logs and
sandbags, with shirtless men carrying artillery shells to the battery of
105mm howitzers dug into emplacements inside the barbed-wire perimeter.
When we landed, I was sent to report to the 2nd platoon, and there I
was told that Captain John A. Nobel was CO of Charlie Company, and I
was introduced to Lieutenant Woody Tauscher, who would be my platoon
leader, and I met the men in my squad fire team. There was wiry little
blond Kravitski, the M79 grenadier Kircher, and big, friendly Gemmel, also
a grenadier.
We were isolated on that hilltop, with nothing but jungle around us
as far as I could see. We were west of the Nam Sathay, river, in Charlie’s
backyard. Had I not asked for this duty, I might have complained that it was
a miserable and depressing place. Because I did ask for it, I kept that to
myself and shifted mental gears to become a grunt. I intended to be a good
grunt. Out here was where you proved yourself.
 Current routine for our platoon was to stand guard at night, and
stand more guard in the daytime. In between, we filled sandbags, worked
on the bunkers, or helped improve the perimeter defenses. I worked. I
wanted to improve anything that might save our lives.

The artillery batteries fired night and day, making sleep something
very elusive. They were firing support for infantry companies out in the
jungle on search operations, when they needed artillery to blast suspected
enemy positions or had to hammer North Vietnamese trying to attack them.
This was a bad area. The GI’s called it “Indian country,” alluding to
lonely little army forts in the wild American west, surrounded by angry,
lurking warrior tribes. The comparison was too accurate to dismiss.

Back with Brigade, we had of course eaten C-rations but only

occasionally. In the infantry, we lived on C-rations, and I began to
memorize the code numbers the manufacturers used to indicate what type of
food was in what C-ration box. We had B1, B2, and B3 units. It was
important to learn which had candy, which had fruit, and which had my
favorite main meals. I learned how to heat the rations, open them
efficiently with the little “P-38” can opener tool, boil water for coffee, with
small pinches of highly flammable C4 plastic explosive. We were issued
two meals of C rations a day. We traded a lot of our canned food with each
other, and experimented with mixing or spicing the food to get different
flavors.
There were also the different SP packs, “supplemental” items to the
daily C-Rats, which sometimes had the heavy-duty Hershey Tropical
Chocolate bars. These were cocoa bars so infused with edible wax that they
did not melt in hot weather.

As we sat and ate, Gemmel warned me there was a flamethrower

buried behind our fire team bunker.
“Why is it buried?”
“Safer. The damn thing’s too heavy to carry, and too dangerous to
be around. If it gets hit by a bullet or a mortar fragment we’d all go up.”
“Who’s supposed to carry it?” I asked.
“Me. But it stays in the ground. When we pull out of here, just
forget about it. Let it stay right where it is.”
15 November 1966: Listening To The Killing
Alpha Company was out on patrol from our firebase when they ran
into the NVA. Alpha called artillery on them, and coming in after the
smoke had cleared, found no bodies, but did recover a bloodstained Chinese
submachine gun.
The NVA were not gone. Alpha was close to something the North
Vietnamese regulars did not want found. Moving on, Alpha soon came
under automatic weapons fire. Men were hit. This time the air support they
called got a secondary explosion from something a bomb struck. That
meant NVA ammunition.
We followed the fight over our field radios. We could also tell how
well or how badly it was going for Alpha by how fast the arty crews at the
firebase were blasting out the shells. All the while, we cleaned our weapons
and worked on our perimeter defenses. The killing was not that far away.
The fight ended badly for Alpha, with no confirmation of enemy
casualties. Alpha was lucky to disengage itself. By the time all the
shooting was over, the only bodies that could be counted were American. 4
GI’s were dead and 11 wounded.

16 November 1966: Number 10

Alpha regrouped and swept back through the battlefield, finding
nothing of significance. We stayed in the firebase and worked and worried.
“If you need the medic, yell for Number 10,” I was told. “Charlie
knows ‘medic’ so we use Number 10.”
“I thought Number 10 meant the worst. Don’t the Vietnamese say
Number One for the best?”
“Yeah. We say Number 10 because getting shot sucks.”
That night I went out with an ambush patrol down to the stream, my
very first infantry assignment, while another ambush squad went up the hill
from LZ Lane. We saw nothing, and came back just after dawn.

17 November 1966: Battle

While we were drinking strong black sunrise coffee from the boiling
5-gallon aluminum buckets, the other ambush squad arrived from uphill and
said they had seen something. Everybody listened.
 “We were getting ready to pull out when we saw four or five NVA
about twenty five meters away moving real slow and quiet. They didn’t
know we were there. Some of them were wearing steel helmets, and one
carried a backpack field radio.”
Alpha Company was soon sent up the hill to check it out. I did not
know that a Special Forces-led Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG)
unit was working with Alpha or that there was an NVA company dug in on
the hill above literally looking down on us.
The CIDG were not Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).
They were a political creation; a posse from a local village, whose job it
was to protect just their own area. The Special Forces organized, paid, and
trained the CIDG. The idea was to inspire a sense of local village
participation and unity.
To see a CIDG outfit on the road or in the field, in their black calico
noir and surplus webgear and old US weapons, they looked for all the
world like a classical ragtag band of VC.
Life started off normally enough. There were work details to fill,
more sandbagging, more barbed wire repairs, and constant guard duty. I got
lucky (no shoveling) and was put on listening post with Kircher, our
position far enough outside the perimeter of the firebase for us to give
warning if we were about to be attacked by the NVA. What this meant in
reality was that the enemy would make noise killing us, and the camp
would be alerted. I had my M16, Kircher his M79 grenade launcher. We
made our way out to a hillside and were sitting in silence, guarding each
other’s back, watching the forest, when the shooting began.
At first it sounded like it was somewhere down the hill from the
firebase, but gunfire echoes in the mountains. We guessed there was a
platoon taking weapons practice down by the stream. But the shooting
became more intense, with more weapons involved. It soon didn’t sound
like a practice anymore. This was bad.
“What do we do now? I asked Kircher.
“We wait until we’re relieved,” he said.
Soon artillery shells began to fall on the higher, steeper hill beside
us. The rifle and machine gun fire was now an unending din. A serious
battle was going on just out of our line of sight, and we were nervous.
“They must be hitting the firebase,” Kircher said. “They might try
coming up this way, too.” We lay down, aiming our weapons into the
jungle, expecting to see the uniforms and faces of North Vietnamese any
moment.
“Why don’t they send out our relief?” I asked, when the noon hour
for our guard to change came and passed.
“Because they’re busy as hell. We just have to stay put,” Kircher
said.
Now we could see propeller-driven A1-E Skyraider fighter-bombers
through the treetops as they circled the firebase. They began to dive and
bomb the nearby hilltop just across from us.
“Hell, I know what’s going on,” Kircher said. “That’s A-Company
up there!”
Kircher was right. Alpha had just returned to the firebase last night,
from sweeping the area of their fight on the 15th. Since our Charlie
Company had “palace guard,” the battalion commander had sent Alpha
Company up the hill.
Now it sounded as if Alpha was in real trouble again. The thunder
of the battle echoed down the valley and off the hillsides. Even from our
listening post, Kircher and I could see the smoke rising above the trees from
the bombs and artillery.
At noon no one came to relieve us. We waited until late in the
afternoon, and decided we should return to the firebase, orders or no
orders. We had obviously been forgotten. When we reentered the
perimeter, we did it with loud, clear shouts to the guards that we were
American soldiers coming in.
Everyone in the firebase that could be was below ground, taking
cover in the bunkers. Pale, grim faces watched the hilltop across the narrow
valley. It was not far away, perhaps three hundred meters.
“A-Company’s getting their ass kicked up there,” one of the men in
my squad said as Kircher and I dropped into the bunker beside him. Now
that I could look directly at the smoke-laden hilltop, it was a terrifying
sight, not for what I could see, but for what I knew was happening. The
radio reports coming back to the firebase from the Alpha Company
commander said they were pinned down, caught in a crossfire between
camouflaged machine-gun bunkers, and they had casualties they could not
save. He called the artillery directly in on the enemy bunkers, which was
where he and his men lay also, and talked the Skyraiders through their
strafing and bombing runs.
 “Better get ready,” said Gemmel, our other M79 grenadier. “They’ll
be sending us up next to reinforce Alpha Company.”
In my imagination, I could see the Brigade Tactical Operations
Center crew responding to an “enemy contact” alert, someone new doing
my job of plotting the movement of units, all the radios on the racks
chattering at once. It was now my turn to be one of the grunts under fire. I
felt surprisingly calm.
We waited. Sunset finally came, but Charlie Company was not
ordered up the hill. Instead, Alpha managed to break off the action, saved
by the gathering darkness. The men of Alpha Company did not come back
to the firebase as a unit. They straggled back in small groups, climbing up
the firebase hill from different sides, indicating they’d had to escape from
the battle any way they could. Some of them had lost their helmets, some
their canteens and ammunition pouches. They were muddy and sweat-
drenched, and they clutched dirty, carbon-fouled weapons. Some of them
were crying. Some of them were just staring into space.
Six GI’s were dead. There were no Alpha wounded to carry back.
The wounded had died in place.
The CIDG had seven wounded, six indigenous strikers and one US
Special Forces soldier.
By talking to the ones who would explain, we learned they had
indeed gone up the hill shortly after dawn, looking for signs of the squad
our ambush patrol had seen. They walked into an interlocking bunker
network, machine guns in each one, and when their point man had been
killed in the first burst from the enemy, he had fallen on top of an enemy
bunker. Several men had been hit trying to reach him before the battle
developed into a no-win situation for either side, the North Vietnamese
trapped in their bunkers, still firing their machine guns, the American
infantry trapped in hollows and behind trees, with the artillery and bombs
falling on them both. Three American bodies were left on the hill.

The next day, Alpha Company would go back up the hill to get
them, refusing help from us. One of the infantrymen from Alpha had
brought a captured Communist RPD light machine gun off the hill with
him, and he set it on top of a bunker, in plain sight of the hill.
“I want them to see it,” he said. “I just want the bastards to see it.”
19 November 1966: Rough All Over
Today, near our area of operations, about 14 miles west of the Plei
Djereng Special Forces camp, and less than a mile from Cambodia, one of
the Special Forces CIDG companies from Plei Me had been out looking for
an NVA regimental headquarters and found it.
The 25th Division’s 1/14th was sent in to help. Two NVA battalions
of the 33rd Regiment, Le Loi Division, were in maneuver and attack against
them.
The enemy fire, mortar and automatic weapons, was heavy and
effective. In an eight-hour battle, Sgt. Ted Belcher, a squad leader in
1/14th’s C-Company 2nd platoon threw himself on a grenade to save his
squad, was killed in the act, and earned himself a Medal of Honor.
People who throw themselves on grenades do it thinking, “I’ll save
my friends,” not “This is going to kill me.” There is no time to think it
through.
A B-52 strike the next day would help decide the issue. Between
the 19 and the 20th, the CIDG and the 1/14th counted 166 enemy KIA.
th

They paid for it with 19 US KIA and 47 US WIA, 3 CIDG WIA, and 2
Special Forces WIA.
 That night of the 19th, in my sleep, I heard the mortar shell coming
down, and dived into my bunker just as it hit. I had been sleeping on the
ground outside our squad bunker, well before dawn. It was a single mortar
shell, whistling through the air as it fell, and it hit a few meters from where
I lay. It failed to explode, and buried itself deeply into the ground. The
entire firebase went into a frenzy of action, the men grabbing their helmets
as they awakened, going for cover as I did.
The 105mm artillery guys near us were yelling “Beehive! Beehive!”
which was their warning to the perimeter they were about to fire their
incredibly lethal, last-stand munition, the Beehive. It exploded coming out
of the muzzle of the 105mm howitzer, and spread 8,000 dart-like flechettes,
in all directions.
A Beehive is the sort of munition you use last, not first, and the fact
they were yelling it’s warning in itself was scary. Did they know something
we didn’t?
But then everything went quiet. Reason prevailed. No Beehives
were fired. Not another mortar shell followed, but we lost the remainder of
the night’s sleep.

20 November 1966: Moving Out

After dark, my platoon deployed on an ambush, and I lay in tension
all night, listening to the nocturnal sounds of the jungle. I tried to sleep
when it was my turn, but I was too uncomfortable wearing my helmet,
ammunition pouches, and canteens. Ambush is an art. I wanted to learn it,
since killing the enemy before he knows you’re there is the best way to do
it. Survival does not always allow for heroism.
When we returned from the ambush, our orders were to prepare to
“saddle up,” slang meaning to get our equipment ready to move out on
operations. We were going to leave the relative safe haven of the firebase
and go out in search and pursuit of the enemy. Alpha Company was going
to take over firebase security. Bravo and Charlie companies were going to
make the push.
I collected all my 20-round rifle magazines. I had sixteen in all, and
I inspected and loaded them carefully. Each man was issued several meals
of C-rations, and two quarter-pound blocks of TNT high explosive, so we
could blow down trees to clear out helicopter landing zones. The platoon
sergeant made me fire-team leader of Bravo Fire Team in our squad, my
first assignment of responsibility in combat.

21 November 1966: Border Fights

Today, Charlie Company, 1st of the 5th Cavalry, just west of us, was
patrolling along the Cambodian border and was attacked by an estimated
Battalion of NVA. One platoon was overrun. Many of them were captured
and executed before our air and artillery could be brought down on the
NVA. US losses were 32 KIA. NVA losses were 145 killed

22 November 1966: Corpses

We started early in the morning on our push out of the firebase and
down into the valley, then up the hill where Alpha Company had been
mauled. I carried one of the heavy steel boxes of M60 machine-gun
ammunition. Each squad had the responsibility of carrying two boxes to
help feed the gun in case we needed it.
At the top of the hill, we discovered the shallow grave of an enemy
soldier probably killed on the 16th. The man had been buried by his own
people, and when we pulled him out of the ground with commo wire
attached to his belt and suspenders, his head broke off and rolled to my
feet. It looked like a mud ball. I kept my handkerchief over my nose as I
waited by his grave, and finally we moved on. The smell of the dead was
constant around the hilltop. There were corpses we were not finding.

A Panorama of War: The Nam Sathay River

At brigade, the war for me had mostly been grease-pencil unit
symbols I drew on the map board. I could glance across the Laotian and
Cambodian borders, or jump optically from province to province, because
the “areas of operation” were represented in a few square yards of paper. I
could see what in World War II was called “the big picture.”
But my big picture was still only a map in a tent. War movies
sometimes use panoramic views for effect, to show the scope of a battle.
There was little wide-angle viewing for an infantryman in the central
highlands. We saw trees up close, and the pack of the man ahead of us.
Sometimes in the highlands you couldn’t even see the sky because the
interlaced canopy of treetops was so thick overhead.
But today, on our push across country, we got a rare sight.
 As we climbed the hillside, we could hear bombing ahead, and we
were receiving radio warnings about the danger of possible bomb fragments
or big tree parts falling out of the sky on our heads. The warnings were
serious. As we maneuvered ever upward, through the dips and ridges,
pieces of metal actually did start to whistle down through the air and rip
through the trees. We could now see smoke through the vines and
branches.
We walked over the bare hilltop into the smoke and saw the war.
We were high enough to see for miles in all directions. Far below us was
the Nam Sathay River, and on the other side of the water, air strikes were
smashing the forest. Brush fires started by earlier artillery or air strikes
burned on our side of the river, sending waves of smoke up our way.
I was one soldier in a long line of soldiers passing over the crest of
the hill, exposed for a few minutes to warfare in Cinemascope. Strike
aircraft were roaring over the river, some actually below us, so that we
could see the tops of their wings. It was like some great glimpse of an
invasion, and at first I thought we were going to attack across the river.
As I looked up through the smoke, I clearly saw the distinctive wing
silhouette of a B-57 Canberra as it cruised over. The Canberra was a 1950’s
era twin-engine turbojet British close-attack bomber licensed to Martin for
American use. Some B-57B’s had been turned over to the South
Vietnamese Air Force. The USAF had B-57’s in combat duty, fitted with
night vision equipment for bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail.
 Seeing the war on a wider scale also raised another contrast. To the
man on the ground, the war was personal. You fought in close contact, and
might see their faces when they were in rifle, pistol, or grenade range.
As dramatic and fierce as the bombing was, it was not our battle.
Our column veered away, downward, following the river on our side of the
bank. Who was getting killed, and why, on the other bank was none of our
business.
We did not stop until nightfall. The jungle had been incredibly
thick, and our point team often chopped a path through with machetes. We
had searched an area earlier in the day that had been blasted by a B-52
bomb run. The damage was unbelievable, and it was difficult to imagine
anyone living through the destruction we saw. There were bomb craters so
deep a truck could be swallowed in them, and hardwood trees over a meter
thick were splintered and broken off at the roots.
We walked loaded down like pack animals, carrying almost as much
equipment and ammunition as we had body weight. When we were in the
direct sun, some of our men literally fainted from the heat. I saw men cry
from frustration.
Leeches, a problem I had never had in headquarters, were plentiful.
They attached themselves to our necks and arms, and had to be cut or
burned off. Sometimes, if they were hidden under our clothing, they stayed
on until they became so full of blood they burst, making large splotches of
blood on our fatigues that resembled wounds.
We stopped to dig in and clear an LZ for resupply. We had been out
of water all afternoon. I scooped out a shallow prone trench shelter, and
was idly dry shaving while the other men finished their digging. The same
sense that had protected me from the mortar round activated again. I heard
a faint noise up in the sky. It was a passing – or maybe falling – shell. It
was not uncommon to hear shells go over, that happened frequently, but this
one was getting louder. It was coming down. My friends were oblivious to
the sound.
“Incoming!” I said, and threw myself on the ground. The men
around me stopped digging, looking back at me as if I were joking.
The shell was real, and hit us with a tremendous explosion. I felt
the heat and the concussion. A tree fell near me. Men were shouting and
screaming. Our camp was dimmed with a haze of smoke and dirt in the air.
The smell of the explosive was bitter.
 I was bracing for another blast when the yelling stopped. It had
been coming from some soldiers trapped in a foxhole under the fallen tree.
When they were pulled out, and we discovered no one in camp was dead or
even injured, we began to laugh about it.
“Damn, you got good ears,” one of my squad told me. We received
an explanation a few minutes later. It was one of our own 4.2-inch mortar
rounds that had fallen short. The mortar battery responsible for it
apologized. We had come close to being one of brigade’s convoluted
statistics.

24 November 1966: Thanksgiving Dinner

Helicopters brought hot Thanksgiving dinner out to the field to us in
insulated olive-drab Mermac food cans. The food was wonderful. There
were even plastic bladders of chocolate and sweet white milk. We set up a
regular serving line and ate everything they sent us.
The moon, phasing now from first quarter to almost full, was so
bright that night I wrote a letter home by moonlight. Under the unusually
vivid moon glow, the dark jungle seemed deceptively peaceful. I had to
admire it.

25 November 1966: Blood Trails

We started moving right after daylight, Bravo Company off on our
flank. We found the trail before lunch. Very slowly, we began to follow it.
The point man stopped. There was a large patch of dried blood on
the trail, but not that old. We thought maybe a wounded NVA had been laid
down here as they changed a bandage or adjusted a tourniquet. The NVA
did not have helicopters to whisk away their wounded. They carried them
on canvas litters. The blood soaked through the canvas and left oval
patterns on the ground where it touched.
There was usually blood, used bandages, and other debris of war on
the NVA’s escape routes away from a battle.
Some NVA had been this way yesterday, maybe while we were
eating Thanksgiving dinner. At least one of them was hurt badly. We kept
moving, looking for them.
More blood. Yes, it looked like someone being carried on a litter.
Every half hour or so, there would be another patch. We saw no more
bandages. They were out. We were walking in the footsteps of the stretcher
bearers, witnessing a man dying slowly of loss of blood. The blood became
more and more fresh. We had to be close.

Finally we found the stretcher itself, but no body. The canvas was
dark and stiff with blood. It had run from the wounds in the soldiers back
down under his hips, leaving a partial image of a body. But we found no
body. They had finally dumped him, dead or alive, and ran.
Also later today, 1st Sgt. Ellis Orton of Bravo Company died of
malaria while waiting for a chopper ride out. He had stayed on in the field,
doing his job, as an example to others. I spoke to him as he waited, sitting
under a tree. He was lucid at the moment, talking about going home, but
was to die there inside the overnight LZ.

26 November 1966: Beans & Weenies

Bravo Company discovered a recently abandoned NVA bunker
complex, and we moved in to investigate. The enemy had not been out of
this camp long. I paced off the bunkers, mapping them on notebook paper
for Captain Nobel as everyone rested, and he talked to battalion on the
radio. There were 33 interlocking bunkers and trenches here.
The fighting holes were dug square and neatly, and many had woven
grass mats as liners. Improvised stools lashed together with vines provided
places to sit, and we found an ingenious oddity – a meter wide circular
sound reflector.
 The reflector was made of very tightly woven grass, stretched over a
framework of bent and lashed tree limbs. A triangular-legged stool was set
in front of it. The reflector’s purpose was to catch the sound of helicopter
rotor blades before the human ear would normally pick them up. A man
would sit on the stool, facing the reflector and listening. We tried it, and the
sound of distant helicopters was very distinct.
A search of the bunker complex turned up little, but we found a
document that when translated identified the previous occupants as the 320th
Company. We were looking for evidence of the 32nd and the 95B NVA
regiments. We were getting ready to move out when a very single loud shot
sent us all to the prone position.
“Who fired that shot? Did anyone just shoot?” the squad leaders
were yelling. Was it them or us? No one answered.
Damn, then it had to be sniper fire. While a couple of squads swept
around the perimeter, I lay in an NVA foxhole, trying to eat a can of C-rat
beans and weenies. It’s hard to eat when you’re scared. It’s harder to eat
when you try to dull some of the pork and bean sweetness with C-rat salt,
overdo it, and have to eat a canful of salty-sweet goop. We did not have
food to throw away.

Be careful of what you wish for, because you might get it, goes the
warning. I had wished for the infantry and gotten it. I had a heavy steel
helmet on my head, everything I owned in the world fit in my nylon
rucksack, and my greatest luxury was my lightweight olive drab poncho
liner. Sewn and quilted, it was my blanket, rolled and tied, it was my
pillow, tied and hung, it was my sunshade. Rarely does the government get
it right, but it sure did with the poncho liner.

27 November 1966: Tauscher Wins

We walked right into the enemy. My platoon led the company, and
Lieutenant Tauscher was up front with his radioman, on the heels of the
point. I was a squad back, just putting one foot in front of the other, one
more GI in a long line, wishing I were somewhere else. A wild flurry of
gunfire exploded from the point, and I dived for cover. I rolled into a
shallow depression in the dirt, believing a disaster was on the way.
I realized my M16 was useless under me, and I jerked it out, trying
to look forward under the rim of my helmet, and could see nothing but the
roots of the tree I was behind and the jungle-boot soles of the man ahead of
me.
The firing continued, our left and right flankers firing now, and I
knew we had hit something big. I was trying to make sense of the situation
in all the gunfire. I heard a cry for a medic, knowing someone was hurt,
and a voice up front began yelling, “Bring up the Ninety! Bring up the
Ninety!” That scared me. The Ninety was our M67 90mm shoulder-fired
recoilless rifle. If we needed that, we were in trouble.
Then, as quickly as the firefight began, the shooting stopped. I was
still confused. A few of the men around me spoke in hushed tones in the
sudden silence. I stayed where I was, behind the tree.
“All right, all right,” said Elmelindo Smith the 1st platoon sergeant
loudly as he walked past us from the rear of the column, “you can get up
now, let’s go.” He was a stout Hawaiian, his rifle slung over one shoulder,
and he appeared nonchalant. His actions and words made it seem as if we
had no worries, and should be ashamed to be on our noses in the dirt. We
got to our feet quickly. The column began to move forward again.
Smith was to win the Congressional Medal of Honor in a few
months, the hard way.
 We passed a dead North Vietnamese soldier lying in the leaves, his
head distended and bloody, hair and bone bulging over his ear. He wore
khaki fatigues and had ammunition pouches slung bandoleer-style over his
chest. A short steel shovel protruded from under his pack straps, and there
were brand new bullet holes in the blade. Lieutenant Tauscher had killed
him.
We had met an NVA unit of unknown size literally head-on.
Tauscher had seen their point man first, the man who now lay dead on the
leaves, and opened fire with an entire magazine from his M16. Our flankers
had encountered their flankers at the same time, and they had begun to fire
on each other. During all this, one of our sergeants had been hit in the
shoulder, but wasn’t hurt too badly. He explained he had been trying to run
backwards and shoot all at the same time.
The man Tauscher killed was wearing all his equipment, meaning
his unit was on the march, like us. They had not been ready to fight, and
they ran. Tauscher took the dead man’s Chinese SKS rifle. Incredibly, the
Vietnamese had been walking with his weapon slung over his shoulder. We
moved on and left the body in the jungle.

We linked up with Bravo Company on top of a hill and dug in for

the night. Bravo had gotten to the hill before we did. An ambush was
waiting for them there. As the company’s point man walked up the hill, he
was shot. Return fire from Bravo killed one NVA and drove the other one
away.
I saw the wounded point man leaning against a tree, doped on
morphine, while the medics took care of him. He had been shot in the arm
with an M16. Several of the Bravo company troopers who had been near
him said it was probably one of the weapons Alpha Company had lost on
top of the hill the day they were ambushed there.
The boy’s arm was wrapped in bandages, but by the way the bulky
bandages fit so closely to the bone, I tell most of the flesh and muscle from
his upper arm been shot off. It was evidence of the destructive power of the
5.56mm bullet, just like the SAWS technicians had told us at Fort Jackson.
The wound was there for me to see for myself, on a soldier who looked like
he should have been in high school, bagging groceries for extra money and
taking his girlfriend to a movie.
 It began raining again in the mountains. We were wet and cold.
Resupply in the rain was risky and the helicopters were grounded, so we
had to go without food until the storm cleared. We did not see the sun for
days. I lightened my load by throwing away everything I did not absolutely
need, but the weight I carried was still too much.
We were walking along the swampy Vietnam side of the Se San
River, along the stretch where it was part of the borderline, flowing south of
the Plei Trap Valley.
Our company carried M-72 light antitank weapons (LAWs), which
were single-shot rockets inside disposable launchers, and the 35 lb. steel
M67 90mm recoilless rifle and ammunition I mentioned before, and the
captain had increased the two boxes of machine-gun ammunition to three
per squad. The 90mm rifle was really useless to us in the jungle, even
though we had Beehive-type antipersonnel rockets for it that exploded into
2400 steel darts.
We found only one opportunity to shoot the 90, or maybe it was just
an excuse to rid ourselves of the 9.5 lb. weight of one of the big heavy
shells for it. We had just came out of the forest onto the banks of the Se
San, and someone thought he saw an enemy soldier trying to hide in what
appeared to be a few abandoned huts on the Cambodian side of the river.
After some debating, Tauscher authorized the 90 crew to fire one round.
The range was over a hundred meters, but the shot was accurate.
The huts exploded and vanished in a pall of smoke, the boom echoing down
river. I was not in complete agreement with shooting 90mm shells at
unconfirmed targets. What if it had just been some fisherman over there?
The 90 rifle was an anti-tank weapon. The LAW was a “bunker
buster” despite its Light Antitank Weapon name. The old reliable
lightweight Bazooka, officially the 3.5 Rocket Launcher, had been retired in
favor of the 90 and the LAW. The 90 was too heavy to carry. The LAW
wasn’t powerful enough to do its job. Another example of bureaucracy
working against us. What could we do? Just keep walking.

Loose Grenade Pin

Gemmel almost killed me, himself, and everybody else in the
squad. The company stopped for a rest break, and a few of us felt in our
packs and bags for food. Gemmel was right beside me. He reached into his
canvas bag of 40mm M79 rounds where he also carried C-rats and other
odds and ends.
I saw the expression on his face change instantly from exhausted to
a pale, fear-fueled alert. I thought he had stuck his hand in the bag and
grabbed a snake or one of the big hairy jungle spiders. He croaked an
unintelligible warning, slowly taking his hand from the bag. Everybody
around him froze.

Out of the bag he withdrew a live hand grenade with the pin pulled.
He had two fingers holding the spring-loaded arming handle in place. If the
handle came off, death and disability was seconds away.
“Pin! Pin! Get a pin!” Kircher said.
“T-the pin’s in the bag-” Gemmel said.
“Any freaking pin!” Kravitski pleaded.
I always carried a spare pin, and inserted it in the fuse as Gemmel
held the grenade. “Godalmighty,” Kircher said, “you might have been
carrying that around like that all day!”
Gemmel sat down hard and covered his face with his hands. The
pin had obviously worked its way out of the fuse, and all that had kept the
grenade from exploding was absolute good luck. The other grenades and
C-ration cans in the bag had been just heavy enough and just in the right
place to keep the arming handle down. And Gemmel had just happened to
put his hand on the grenade first, and it was luckily lying so that he could
feel that the pin was gone, and get a finger or two on the handle.
All the grenade had to do was just rotate a bit as we had climbed a
hill or jumped a streambed. Jesus. It’s better to not think about it.
The leeches, ants, and mosquitoes were eating us alive. My squad,
already short four men, went down to seven after Tom Harris, one of our
riflemen, seriously chopped himself in the leg just below the kneecap with a
machete as we were clearing fields of fire. The blade had glanced off a tree
Harris was cutting, as machetes will do, and cut deeply into his flesh and
bone. We evacuated him by helicopter.

29 November 1966: Squad Leader

I was appointed squad leader after the platoon sergeant and my
previous squad leader got into an argument. The authorized strength of a
rifle company was over two hundred men; a platoon over forty, and a squad
twelve. My squad was down to a fire team, just five, our platoon wasn’t
even thirty men, and our whole company less than a hundred.
Over the past two months, the 4th had lost about 100 KIA and 500
WIA. Combat, illness and injuries had reduced us in the field to half
strength. Our feet were rotting inside our boots from being constantly wet.
Cuts infected quickly. We all suffered from heat rash, and we itched badly,
but still, each morning we put on our equipment, picked up our weapons,
and moved on, looking for the enemy. No one would carry trip flares,
smoke grenades, or extra rifle ammunition. It was simply too heavy.
When it rained, we shivered in the chill. When the sun came out,
the heat of the day was blistering. Men cursed and prayed for relief. The
weather and the jungle were slowly killing Charlie Company. It set our
priorities straight. A new heaven was created in our minds. There were no
harps and angels in combat infantry paradise. It was where there were no
ambushes, and your gun didn’t jam and where you saw the enemy before
they saw you. It was where you had enough rations and drinkable water
and could get some sleep. It was being missed when shot at. It was coming
back whole and alive. That was paradise.

We had found the trail by accident shortly after dawn. It ran east-
west, was twenty feet wide and so well traveled it was worn down to the
sand. Trees sheltered it from observation by air.
Early that morning, with mist still hanging low, and the dawn sun
blocked by the high mountains, we waited around the edge of that massive
trail. All of us were apprehensive and silent, while a small patrol quietly
walked the sand to scout ahead, and our company commander decided what
to do with our discovery.
“This is sure a big son of a bitch,” Kravitski whispered to me,
peering down one approach of the trail through the cold gloom. He let the
muzzle of his M16 brush the dew-wet leaves as he crouched into a more
comfortable position.
“Keep it quiet, Ski,” I replied, watching our helmeted soldiers on the
other side of the trail, hidden in the foliage, their faces pale against the early
shadows. The patrol returned with the report that the trail was clear for at
least a hundred meters, and just as wide and spooky. No doubt about it, we
had something. The captain had notified battalion by radio of the situation,
and we soon had an order to follow the trail.
“Second platoon, take the point,” the captain said, and we began to
assemble. A machine-gun crew came up from the weapons platoon to walk
with the point. The gunner carried his M60 casually in the crook of his
arm, muzzle down, a fifty-round belt laid over his shoulder. His assistant
followed closely with enough ammunition to keep him in action until we
could shed the hundred-round belts we all carried in cotton bags and get
them to the gun. I had a full two-hundred-round box, one of the two my
squad carried, and I lugged it in my left hand, my M16 in my right. My
squad was spread out along the sides of the trail, all walking slowly, the
sand crunching under our jungle boots, rifles up and eyes straining to see
into the shadows under the huge trees.
At times we halted, when paths off the trail were encountered and
we had to inspect them. The morning wore on, our tendency to move
quietly relaxed, and our patrols checked the trail forks with less caution.
Near noon, it was hot, and the weight of my ammo box seemed
more real than the threat of an ambush.
“Hey, Camp,” Ski said, relieved to be able to speak after the
enforced silence of the morning, “is this one of them elephant trails? Looks
like a regular highway.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They carry rockets and heavy stuff on elephants,
but this trail hasn’t been used in a while, lots of it’s still covered with dry
leaves that have been here since the monsoon.”
“They probably gave it up as a supply route when we started
patrolling up here in the mountains,” Kircher said, his expression strained
from the heavy bag of 40mm grenades hung across his shoulders.
“Remember those empty hospitals and base camps we found before Nobel’s
Knob, Ski?”
“Hey, yeah, Camp,” Kravitski said, “you shoulda seen that. They
had regular bomb shelters, man, it woulda took a direct hit from a B-52 to
blow those dinks out.”
“I’d just as soon get off these mountains,” Kircher said. “One of
these days, we’re gonna walk up on one of those things with gooks in it,
and we’re gonna be so deep in the shit...”
“They shouldn’t let a company go out on its own,” Gemmel swore
from the rear of the squad. “Only battalions or more.” I wondered what
Gemmel would think about being out with a four-man LRRP team.
One of the trails led us to a platoon-sized rest area, where a large
group of NVA infantry had been recently camped. We were probably
missing each other by minutes, crisscrossing some of those trail junctions.
We did not talk much about home, except to ask where someone
was from. We talked about things that might affect our survival, such as the
Chinese who fought on the NVA side (they were bigger, taller than the
average dink); about a unit of NVA seen by the Task Force Prong guys, all
wearing jaunty red berets; about mysterious sightings of Caucasians with
the NVA – where they GI defectors or Russians? Part of the story was they
spoke English.

01 December 1966: Shoot - Don’t Shoot

Many times we were confronted with the need of firing or not. This
is a common problem to all soldiers in war, but it was a special problem to
us. We were under orders not to fire on unarmed personnel, and for that
reason, many of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese used the ploy of
unarmed scouts or point men to try to confuse us.
It was midafternoon. Up front, the point had found a clearing, and
as the company filed into it, we split into squads to make a perimeter. That
was good. We could rest, and maybe eat.
The clearing was small, about fifty meters across, and waist-deep in
dry grass. The trail narrowed to a path and centered straight across the
clearing and into the trees on the other side.
“Camper,” the platoon sergeant called, “put your squad on the trail
up front with the gun.”
I looked at the trail and the trees beyond. The machine gunners
came up and took a position just off the trail near me. The three-man crew
added badly needed people to my five-man squad. “Kirch—you and
Gemmel take that side of the trail, me and Ski’ll be over here. Gutierrez,
you get with the gun crew.”
Ski and I found a comfortable place in the grass and lay down facing
the tree line. In a few minutes the perimeter was secure, and weariness
brought quiet as the infantrymen napped or opened canned rations.
I laid the box of machine-gun ammo near my rucksack, and felt
around in my pockets until I found a lump of C4 plastic explosive. In my
pack I still had a day’s rations or better. I took out a B3 can of cookies,
which contained canned jam and cocoa, and ran my P38 opener around the
top, leaving the lid partly attached for a handle. I dumped the cookies out
into my hand to catch the crumbs.
I ate the crumbs and stashed the small jam can back inside my pack.
The cookies I balanced on the outside of my pack to keep them off the
ground and I tore open the cocoa packet.
As I lit the small lump of plastic explosive to boil the stream water I
had so carefully poured from my canteen into the cookie can, I kept
watching out toward the trees, my rifle near at hand. Kravitski slept,
leaning on his pack in the grass close to me. I was tired and would have
liked to rest as well; the calm of the halt taking its toll on my vigilance.
The gun crew played cards over the M60, their sergeant dozing in
the sun. Possibly the most alert people were in our two-man listening post
out beyond the perimeter.
We had been tracked by an NVA recon team, a common tactic. The
team was staying about two to three hundred meters behind us, pausing
when we paused, keeping our “drag” (the rear of the column, in sight.
They may have been with us for days. Lacking aircraft, it was their
best way to keep up with where our infantry was.
Suddenly, one of the machine gunners glanced down the trail and
saw an unarmed Vietnamese man strolling straight toward our company,
obviously ignorant of the fact we were all hidden in the grass. The man
wore a dark blue sweatshirt and khaki trousers, and had a faded green flop
hat pulled down over his military haircut.
The gunner dropped his cards and snapped the M60 up to a firing
position as his assistant gunner grabbed for more belted ammunition, and in
that moment four more soldiers, in North Viet khaki, armed with AK-47
assault rifles and wearing ammunition pouches and canteens, came into
sight right behind their point man. Our sudden stop in the clearing probably
had confused them. I would have been confused too, if I had lost track of a
big, noisy infantry company.
But the M60 gunner did not fire. In that moment of expectant
silence, the weapons-platoon sergeant, in shock at the unexpected situation,
forgot if he had a cartridge in the chamber of his M16 and pumped his bolt.
The sound of that bolt slamming forward was as loud as a hammer striking
steel in the tranquil afternoon.

I was drinking cocoa when I heard the bolt, and the sound carried
such urgency that I dumped my cocoa, snatched up my rifle, and instantly
went down to a prone position. Before I had my rifle to my shoulder, other
rifle bolts were clanging open and shut, and it scared the hell out of me.
For an instant the perimeter was a flurry of clattering rifle bolts. It
was a panic that fed on itself, as men took that extra step of life insurance to
make positive their weapons were loaded.
I held my breath, my eyes fixed on the high grass and the trees, heart
working overtime, expecting any moment for the shooting to break out. I
picked up my box of machine-gun ammo and crawled to the gun. “What
happened?” I asked.
“About five dinks came down the trail,” the sergeant exclaimed.
“We had those bastards cold! Why the hell didn’t you fire, Gig?”
“Shit! I didn’t want to hit our LPs out there!” the machine gunner
said.
Talk about shock. Think about that NVA patrol hearing a hundred
rifle bolts slamming shut right in front them. They’re probably still on the
run.
I was too nervous to even worry about the loss of cocoa. I packed
my gear and waited for the word to move out.

02 Dec 1966: Mark Enari KIA

 Lieutenant Mark Enari had been with HHC, and many a late work
night in Ft. Lewis, getting ready to go to Vietnam, he and I had discussed,
praised, and argued sports cars. Enari was from Pasadena California, and
knew sports cars. I was a Porsche fan, and Enari liked the classical British
cars, so our give and take was lively. That he was an officer and I an
enlisted man meant little in the informality of overtime, and Mark Enari
became a good friend.
Mark had been born in Estonia in 1942. His father Dr. Enari, his
wife, and Mark emigrated to the U.S. in 1949 and settled in Pasadena,
California. Mark grew up there and graduated from Pasadena High School
and attended Pasadena City College for one year. He enlisted in the Army
in 1961 and served a tour in Germany. He reenlisted for OCS and was
commissioned a 2nd LT. in 1964. He completed parachute and Ranger
training. He had volunteered for Vietnam several times and finally was
assigned to the 4th Infantry Division.
On leave before deployment to Vietnam, Enari bought himself a
brand new white Alfa Romeo GTA coupe. I remember how proud he was
of the car. We both liked Alfas. He drove it to the HHC area the day we
were leaving Ft. Lewis for all to see.
Once in Vietnam, Lt. Enari was begging Colonel Miller to let him
go to a line company and command a rifle platoon. We must be careful
what we wish for. A replacement platoon leader was badly needed in the
1/12th Infantry. Mark transferred to the “Red Warriors” Alpha Company
and took over the third platoon.
So it was that in December, Mark now 25 and I just recently 20,
were both grunt infantry, both of us had volunteered out of Head & Head to
go to the field and fight. But I would live to see Christmas and Mark would
not. And it’s bad enough to die, but it’s worse for your death to be spun for
public relations reasons.
Mark Enari was awarded the Silver Star for his part of the fight.
Here is the summation of how his official award read:

On December 2, 1966, Enari led his platoon in an assault on one of

these positions concealed in an area of dense trees. As the platoon
advanced, heavy automatic weapons fire erupted from bunkers hidden at the
base of the tree line. As the battle raged, Enari was continually subjected
to intense enemy fire while commanding the operation.
 In the heat of the firefight, five soldiers were wounded and pinned
down in an open area by machine gun fire. Realizing that his men would
die without cover and medical attention, Mark Enari stormed the machine
gun nest with a furious barrage of fire.
During his single-handed assault, the lieutenant was struck by both
sniper and machine gun rounds but continued his attack in defense of the
wounded.
The young officer pushed forward until succumbing to his wounds;
he finally slumped to the ground. As a result of his action, the five men were
saved.

I was not to know about Mark’s death until May 1967, when it was
announced Dragon Mountain base camp would be named after him. How
he really died, and what the actual circumstances were, took me years to
learn.
On that morning of Friday, 02 December, Mark was leading his 3rd
platoon in a company sweep across some lightly wooded terrain. The A-
Company CO was Lt. Brendon Quann.
Enari and his men were investigating a streambed, when Mark
himself found a small shack and a hot campfire. The coals were still
burning. People here had made a rapid exit.
With Enari’s 3rd platoon searching in place, and the 1st and 2nd
platoons moving on, Quann, his HQ team moving with Weapons platoon,
didn’t realize his rifle platoons were getting out of marching order, and
widening the distance between themselves.
And none of them knew they were too damn close to rows of
camouflaged bunkers where the NVA were huddling down in silence,
weapons ready. It was a small NVA base camp with groups of bunkers dug
in to provide support fire for other groups of bunkers.
Mark Enari’s second squad walked toward the bunker line and the
shooting started at less than twenty meters. As always, at first it was
confusion, and a great volume of fire. Enari was in no position at the
moment to direct men. But his own troopers began to take initiative,
fighting back in isolated battles, a few GI’s against individual bunkers here
and there. The 3rd platoon’s M60 machine gun crew put five one-hundred
round belts into the bunkers that pinned them down until both of the gun
crew was wounded. PFC Tommy Jones took over the gun, yelled “I got it
going!” and ripped through two more belts until he was hit five times and
killed by an NVA machine gun burst. He was to win the Silver Star for
having that kind of nerve.

The rest of A-Company platoons were close, but no one knew where
the other was. When they heard the battle erupting between Enari’s men
and the NVA, the other platoons began to fire defensively beyond their own
perimeters. The echoes of it all in the hills around them made it impossible
to identity incoming from outgoing fire.
A-Company believed itself surrounded and was burning up its
ammo fighting it’s own noise.
The four platoons accidentally formed a box. If you can picture the
streambed as almost a straight line down the middle of the box, Enari’s men
would be at the upper end of the stream, with 1st and 2nd platoons on each
side, and Weapons on the far lower end.
Lt. Gipson led the 2nd platoon. He was to quickly become very
important.
Enari radioed Lt. Quann for artillery. In just a few minutes Mark
was adjusting fire and bringing it down on the NVA bunkers, lessening the
fire his platoon was taking from them. But when he asked for help, for
reinforcements, Quann told him no. The company was totally engaged, and
he could spare only a single squad, if they could find Enari’s location. A
squad was sent, with a machine gun, but it lost one man, shot just before
reaching Enari. He showed them where to spread out to cover the bunker
line.

The incoming US artillery, accurate at first, shifted and dropped on

Enari’s 3rd platoon. 105mm shell fragments began taking out men
randomly, even as the NVA bullets did so with malice.
When Mark and his RTO saw that the platoon’s M60 machine gun
was unmanned, it’s gunner wounded or dead, Mark was shot through the
leg as he tried to either get to the gun himself or was trying to get someone
to take over the gun. Enari was hurt badly enough by the leg wound that for
a few minutes he was out of the fight.

His RTO took over, told Mark he was going to organize the men,
and crawled out ahead. The RTO was able to call out to the scattered,
isolated men, and started them crawling toward him.
By that time, Enari had recovered enough to crawl to where the
RTO lay. He realized his men had to be low on ammo, and he told the RTO
to call out a cease-fire so the platoon could redistribute ammunition.
The NVA had no such cease-fire. They were machine-gunning
every spot they had seen or suspected Americans.
Mark threw the RTO a bandolier of M16 magazines and was
immediately shot in his wounded leg again. He yelled, “I’m hit, I’m hit!”
The next bullet struck him in the chest. He was stunned but not dead.
“Medic, medic, medic!” he called.
No one came. He knew he had to get help or die. Mark Enari
dragged himself back toward where he hoped his medic was working on
other wounded.
It was now 45 minutes into the fight. At about 0945 hours. B-
Company was just under a kilometer away, hurrying in to help.
Lt. Quann and his platoons killed trees up to about 1045 hours,
when it began to dawn on Lt. Gipson that there were absolutely no
casualties anywhere but Enari’s platoon, and called a cease-fire.
The NVA, unprepared for the battle, had put up just enough of a
fight for their units to withdraw and avoid the inevitable air strikes, and
without the A-Company gunfire, the only shots were sporadic, from the
embattled 3rd platoon position.
Enari was in great pain and near death and being attended by a
medic when Quann found him. “I’ve been hit bad, so is my platoon,” Mark
told Quann. “Will you get up there and see what you can do for my men?”
Lt. Quann and his platoon leaders had read the situation wrong, and
by the time they had realized it, Mark was dying. To make it all look better,
Mark was written up as a hero, and the lethal phantom-fighting blunder of
Lt Quann was left out of the official history.
I don’t know if Mark died on that hillside, on the medevac chopper
going back, or in a field hospital that day. I don’t know what happened to
his Alfa, parked there in sunny Pasadena. All I know is he was a good
friend, a good officer, and like me, loved sports cars.
Just after the New Year, once Mark’s award was official, Gen.
Collins dictate that the first man in the 4th Division to win the Silver Star
was implemented. Dragon Mountain base camp was to officially become
Camp Enari at a 14 May 1967 dedication ceremony hosted by General
Peers.

The day that Enari was killed, our C/2/8th Charlie and Bravo
companies were still roaming around in the trail network. During the day,
Bravo Company found three shallow graves and out of them dug up three
NVA bodies. The NVA did not shroud their people with ponchos the way
we would have if we’d been leaving our dead behind. They put them in a
hole and threw the dirt right in their comrade’s faces.
Bodies were intelligence. They were always to be dug up and
searched, and the cause of death determined if possible. The NVA corpses
seemed to be about a week or less old. A body decomposes fast in the
tropical heat, and covered with freshly turned earth, is rapidly consumed
with ants, beetles, and worms. A week in shallow, fertile jungle earth
reduces a human body to an insect-riddled rag.
Since the Alpha Company skirmishes near the firebase were almost
two weeks ago, the bodies were Asian soldiers who had died of wounds
suffered in those fights. Maybe the blood we’d found on the trail a few
days ago was from one of these men.

04 December 1966: Westmoreland

We received radioed orders to gather the company because we were
going back to one of the forward operations bases. This was incredibly
good news. We were tired, sick, and exhausted from searching for an
enemy who had proved he would not stand and fight until he was ready.

The NVA 33rd and 95B regiments had gotten the worst of it. The
95B would never return to action as a unit, and the 33rd was to take a year to
rebuild.

Helicopters carried us back, the cool air at high altitude making us

shiver as we had in the rain, but this time we smiled about it.
The choppers put us down at the remote end of the long dirt landing
strip at 3-Golf, the forward base near the rubber plantation established by
brigade in October while I was still with them.
As we unloaded, our platoon sergeants ran up down the strip yelling
for us to get into the bunkers and stay there, except for one man on guard on
the bunker roof. We filled the bunker line, but we were confused. We were
low on water, out of food in most cases, and many of the men needed
medical treatment for infections and illness. We had been sixteen days
straight on the sweep, and we needed medicine, showers, hot food, cold
drinks, and rest.
In my bunker, we were getting angry. There was no explanation for
this harassment. Finally, a light truck drove down the bunker line and
passed out dry bread-and-bologna sandwiches, but no water.
“I know the guys in brigade,” I told my squad. “I’m going up there
and find out what’s happening.” I slipped across the airstrip to the supply
dumps, then through unit areas until I found brigade.
The men there were glad to see me. I felt self-conscious because of
my dirty fatigues and welts and scratches, but I was proud of myself.
“Look,” I said to brigade S3 Captain Miller, “my company is down
at the far end of the landing strip, with no food or water. Some of the guys
are sick. Nobody will let us come in! I’ve got to get some supplies down
there, we’ve got to do something.”
“Your people will have to stay there until the inspection is over,”
Miller told me.
“Inspection?” I asked.
“Yeah, Westmoreland’s here. He doesn’t like to see dirty troops,
and your people are filthy. It looks unmilitary.”
“Filthy?” I blurted.
“Sorry,” Miller said. “He won’t be here long. You better get back
with your unit.”
I walked to the airstrip in a condition of shock. We were being
hidden because we were unpresentable to General Westmoreland? I was so
frustrated and angry I wanted to hit somebody or some thing. We were
hidden because we were dirty.
I damned the war, the army, and Westmoreland.

09 December 1966: 3-Golf to 3-Church to 3-Tango.

Our infantry company began to provide security around “3-Church”
(which would become 3-Tango), an area near 3-Golf that brigade wanted to
use as field headquarters. It was about 15 miles due west from Cambodia,
and ten miles or so north of Duc Co on Highway 19, at the south end of the
Plei Trap valley. 3-Golf was on private rubber plantation property and that
wasn’t diplomatic.
We trucked to a group of buildings on a hilltop. The main structure
was an old, large brick and stone Catholic Church, and around it was a
grouping of small barracks and storage buildings, but there was not a door
left in a doorway or a pane of glass in any of the windows.
You could see sunlight glinting through holes in the clay tile roof.
The stonewalls were bullet-scarred and there were years of debris and
rubble in the corners. We discovered tunnels leading from some of the
buildings to others, but investigation into them was abandoned because of
the foul smells our searchers encountered. It was better to leave well
enough alone.

The story circulated that a unit of French soldiers had used this
church as a fort in 1952, and the Viet Minh, as they were known then, had
attacked and killed most them here.
As we watched the brigade troops move into the church to set up the
new brigade tactical operations center, and as sandbags and other
fortifications began to be erected in the windows,

13 December 1966: LRRP Volunteers

Brigade sent out a call for volunteers to all infantry units asking for
men to join the new long-range reconnaissance patrol platoon. I had been
waiting just for that, and promptly let Lt. Tauscher know I wanted to go to
the LRRP’s.
We three LRRP volunteers, Magnum, Jones and myself, were sent
back to 3-Golf. We lived in the 2/8th operations area, resting and taking
over perimeter guard, KP, and work details, so other infantrymen could be
turned loose to go back into the jungle.
Tom Harris, my squad member who had accidentally cleaved into
his leg with a machete in late November, rejoined us at 3-Golf. His leg had
healed, and we were glad to get him back. He had become a good friend of
mine in the infantry. He was quiet, capable, and had an interest in what I
had told him about the LRRP’s. He said he wanted to join with me.
LRRP’s were going to be a major factor in our war. To skip ahead a
bit, this is what 4th Division HQ would later record about us.
 Combat Operations After Action Report (RCS: MACV J3-
32) 16 May 1967
Deployment of Recondo Patrols.

During Operation SAM HOUSTON, an average of seven

Recondo patrols per day were employed in the division
AO. Their invaluable information included monitoring
enemy movement along trails, the location of enemy way
stations and defensive positions, ambushing NVA patrols,
locating possible landing zones, reconnaissance of B-52
strike areas, and verifying the absence of enemy activity.

The continued use of Recondo patrols is essential in gaining

a comprehensive intelligence picture of enemy forces
operating within the division AO. The use of Recondo
patrols for tasks such as observing potential landing zones
and the reconnaissance of B-52 strike areas permits
economy of force and frees tactical units for other missions.

17 December 1966: LRRP Training

I had a better idea of what LRRP operations were all about because I
had read all I could find about them while at 2nd Brigade HQ Company but
it was mostly organizational information. Nothing tactical.
In my mind, it all made sense. A few men, traveling light and quiet,
out there scouting the enemy. I had enough combat experience to know it
wasn’t going to be like the commando movies I’d seen. From my
perspective in the infantry, you could die from so many other’s mistakes.
On a small team, you were responsible for yourselves. It gave me a feeling
of control I did not have in the infantry. And control brings confidence and
confidence improves skill. I felt I would live longer as a LRRP.

Harris and I were given permission by CPT Nobel to go to what was

being called the “4th Division Recondo Preparation Course.”
The 4th was able to create such a course with the help of Special
Forces project DELTA, which was giving training for LRRP personnel,
providing lessons on enemy weapons, advanced first-aid techniques, map
reading, survival, and other related skills a small recon team would need to
know to perform in the field.
This was hard-won knowledge. In May 1964, the Special Forces
had started running secret long-range patrols into Laos under LEAPING
LENA. There were no rules to follow. SF had to train the Vietnamese
CIDG and LLDB (South Viet Special Forces) and participating Americans
for these missions as they learned, mission by mission, what best to do.
Project DELTA replaced LEAPING LENA in October 1964. DELTA was
created to run long-range recon and special missions inside enemy-
controlled areas of South Vietnam.
By late 1965, DELTA was able to train recon personnel other than
its own. Credit for the entire U.S. concept of jungle long-range patrol
operations and tactics is due to DELTA. Its success was such that at one
point about 40% of actionable combat intelligence for all of South
Vietnam’s five Corps areas were due to DELTA.
DELTA was never a big unit, numbering 50 or so US personnel at
any one time, and Infantry LRRP’s were badly needed. In May of 1965, the
173rd Airborne Brigade was the first Army combat unit to arrive in Vietnam,
The 173rd deserves credit for recognizing the need and acting on its own,
put the first line unit LRRP-type teams in the field, but called them “Delta
teams.” There was no relation to the SF DELTA.
The 101st came to fight in Vietnam in July 1965. The first non-SF
people through the improvised SF course were about ten 101st Airborne
troopers in September 1965. The 101st called its special recon teams by the
official designation, “Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols.” In December,
DELTA trained a platoon size group from the “Big Red One” 1st Infantry
Division, which was quickly followed by another similar group from the 1st
Air Cav.
A problem hampering the training was that the school instructors
were also active members of DELTA recon, and they taught classes in
between their combat missions. The answer to this was obvious. A
permanent training group had to be created.
DELTA set up a training program for men from the 5th and 1st
Special Forces groups. These graduates became teachers for the
establishment of the DELTA LRRP School. The 4th Division seems to be
the last line unit trained in this way. With the MACV-RECONDO School
about to come into action, there was no further need.
 I attended the DELTA course -- now officially wearing my soft
leopard-pattern hat—and absorbed everything they taught. I already knew
maps well, better than anyone in my class, and had no trouble with even the
most complicated techniques of triangulation, declination, side elevations,
and scaling. I had north, south, east, and west forever replaced in my
mental reference with degrees and minutes and seconds off the rotating dial
off the compass face.
Being something of a sketcher and illustrator, it was easy for me to
think in three dimensions and the contour lines on the terrain maps made
sense to me. I just imagined the map as if seeing the terrain horizontally,
and it wasn’t all flat lines anymore. But the problem with our terrain maps
was age and error. There was often as much wrong as right.

We examined and fired the Soviet-bloc Kalashnikov AK-47. Its

short wooden butt stock, pistol grip, heavy curved thirty-round steel
magazines, and unfamiliar sights felt very foreign to me.
The rifle-like full wooden stocked Simenov Karbine Semiautomatic,
which everyone called the SKS carbine, had a ten-shot magazine and a
blade or spike bayonet, depending on the variation, hinged under the barrel.
It fired the same 7.62mm x 39 “Russian Short” cartridge as the AK-47.
 Even the Russian Short ammo was different in detail. The examples
we had were not brass cased, but gray steel, coated with lacquer to prevent
rust. And the bullets themselves were not the traditional copper-jacketed
lead, but steel with a light copper “wash” to satisfy the letter, if not the
spirit, of the Geneva convention. Economy and practicality was foremost in
Soviet design.
There was also the simple pistol grip-fitted, tube-body B-40 rocket-
propelled grenade launcher. The rocket was larger than the tube, and only
its shaft-like motor and folded stabilizing fins were inserted into the front of
the launcher. The B40 was supposed to be mainly a close-range antitank
weapon, but the enemy had the reputation of shooting it at almost anything.
The B40 had only appeared in NVA hands just before the 1st Cav battles in
the Ia Drang.
 I fired the Chinese-made copy of the Russian Tokarev pistol, which
looked like an old .32 Colt automatic, and we handled (but didn’t fire) a row
of light, medium, and heavy enemy guns, from the squad model assault
RPD to the big 12.7mm muzzle-braked antiaircraft weapons, equal to the
U.S. fifty caliber.
We were lectured on how to recognize real intelligence in the field
and how to interpret it, beginning with such basics as “If they’re traveling
with packs and canteens, you know they’re a long way from camp” and
ending with oddities like “Ants won’t remake a trail after someone has
stepped on it. They’ll move around and start a new one. Look for this
when you’re tracking.”
Silence was the greatest LRRP ally. We modified our weapons and
equipment to eliminate potential noises; taping web-gear suspender straps
together, tying loose clothing down firmly to keep the cloth from rustling or
pocket items from thumping together. Even our metal mess kit spoons were
padded by tape around the handles to prevent telltale clinking while stirring
in the canteen cup. Weapon slings (before the days of the “silent” nylon
slings) were removed and sling swivels taped down.
Hand signals were used for communication, and any talking was
done mouth-to-ear. Since radios required talking, something not always
possible while near enemy positions, prearranged signals with the radio
monitoring stations were established that the LRRP’s could use by simply
keying the handset push-to-talk buttons.
Having the point man advance ahead of the team a few meters, stop,
crouch and listen, then wave for the team to follow performed silent
movement through the jungle. Once all the men were moved up into their
new positions and crouched down out of sight, the point moved on.
It was a slow process, and a team could only hope to progress one to
two thousand meters a day, but stealth was absolutely necessary in order to
survive in enemy territory.
While on the move, the point would watch his front and both sides.
The team leader, five meters behind him, would watch over the point’s head
for tree platforms (a favorite VC-NVA watch post) or snipers, while
keeping the compass azimuth and marking a pace count so distance could
be determined.
The RTO (radio-telephone operator) watched both flanks to make
sure the team was not approached from the side, and the tail gun watched
over his shoulder as he walked, then turned and faced the rear when the
team was stopped.
The only way to stay alive was to see the enemy first—and at that
the LRRP’s excelled. We kept our weapons loaded, rounds chambered, and
fingers on the trigger. Surprise encounters with enemy soldiers were almost
always ended in the LRRP’s favor, since the Communist, as savvy a jungle
fighter as he was made out to be, had the fatal habit of carrying his own
weapon slung or even unloaded while in a “safe” area.
 Since one R of LRRP stands for reconnaissance, the basic mission
of the LRRP teams was to get close to the enemy and find out as much
about him as possible. Enemy contact, even accidental and possibly
resulting in enemy casualties, was a sign of failure on a pure recon mission.
It seemed that if you followed all the rules set down for a recon
team operating alone, you couldn’t, absolutely could not, be caught. Only
those who compromised or made mistakes died. If you do get caught, you
have screwed up, and to screw up usually means dying to pay for the sin.
Teams doing their job would find the enemy first, shadow them
through the jungle and swamps, and either call in artillery, air strikes, or
airmobile infantry.
Artillery support and air strikes were presented to us by actually
doing it, until directing a fire mission on a target was easy going, even if we
was so near the target that the shells jarred our teeth.
Sometimes a team followed and reported on the enemy for days
before the situation allowed an attack. This was risky for one’s health since
Vietcong and North Vietnamese units rarely traveled alone. Mortar
platoons always had infantry nearby, and small infantry units had larger
units a day away or less by foot.
The gathering of real field intelligence was a skill best learned on
the job. Chipped bark at shoulder level on the trees alongside a trail
indicated the men who had passed were carrying crew-served weapons on
their shoulders. Enemy soldiers seen without their rucksacks were not far
from their base camp. Full canteens and packs hung heavily on the backs of
those wearing them, advertising they were on the march.
Even the NVA had routines and procedures. A campfire was
manned by one cook who fed a specific number of men. Latrines in the
base camp areas had the same significant numerical clue.
The enemy ate at certain times, marched at certain times and in
certain orders, and even fell victim to habit when it came to the use of trails,
roads, and river or stream crossings.
It was the habits of the enemy that cost them the most men. The
LRRP’s quickly saw how to exploit the weaknesses we had observed. Pure
recon missions gave way to patrols that went out to do battle, hunter-killer
teams.
Ambushes were set where trails crossed water, knowing that the VC
would pause to rest or fill their canteens. Long-range artillery was pre-
zeroed on good campsite areas, and LRRP’s hid on hilltops to wait for the
dawn wisps of smoke from passing enemy units to blend with the mist
rising off the jungle and then call the wrath of distant eight-inch howitzers
on them.

Trails that showed evidence of recent movement were staked out

and mined with Claymore broadsides, mini-M14 shoe mines dotted on all
the approach points, and week-long vigils were established in the cane or
brush thickets nearby.
Getting an LRRP team into an area was the first problem to be
solved, so the method of delivery was carefully considered. Teams could:
(1) be flown in by helicopter (most common), and then walk into the
AO (area of operations),
(2) be delivered by water from a boat or sampan, or
(3) simply stay behind, after having blended with a large
conventional unit. Parachute insertion, while tried, proved to be impractical
for the majority of LRRP missions.
Helicopter insertion made a lot of noise, but since there were
helicopters in the air over Vietnam all the time, the enemy could not
physically man and watch every usable clearing.
A typical insertion by chopper involved the picking of the least
likely landing zone, one that did not tempt the enemy to post guards
nearby. Such an LZ was usually waist-high or deeper in foliage, stumps, or
rocks. Next, the helicopter carrying the team would try to spend the least
amount of time near the ground. Actually hovering over the LZ was
dangerous, so the team had to jump from a moving helicopter at the
lowest/slowest point in the pass the pilot would make.
By having the helicopter speed through its pass, the distinctive
sound of a hovering machine was eliminated. If there were support ships,
such as gunships, along with the “slick” carrying the team, they could help
add to the ruse by slowing down also, then joining the escaping slick,
creating the impression that the whole flight had gone over without a pause.
Two other good tricks the LRRP’s used were fake insertions to
divert the attention of the enemy and the “DX” (direct exchange) of a team
by dropping off one team and picking up another at the same point.
The enemy, if they were aware there was a team in the area, would
normally think the team had been extracted and not expect a fresh team to
be there to continue the mission.
Team security, be it on an ambush, raid, or recon mission, was still
top priority. Men could not toss and turn or talk in their sleep. If they
talked in their sleep, we gagged them. Smoking was usually impossible.
Even eating depended on having the time and place for it, and in an
excitement-charged pursuit, or a recon so close a team could get involved
inside an enemy perimeter, eating and sleeping had to wait.
Guard shifts were established every night, all the men within
touching distance of one another, and plans made as to what to do in
various types of emergencies. Equipment was kept packed and ready. Most
LRRP’s never even took off more than one boot at a time, and only then if
we had to inspect our feet, not for sleeping or comfort.
To prevent the enemy from possibly tracking a team into its
overnight position, it was policy to wait in one place until almost dark, then
to change locations quietly, so a night attack would come where the team
had been, not where it was relocated.
Keeping in radio contact with headquarters was irregular. More
exotic radios were available, but most LRRP teams used the common issue
PRC-25 radio. The tall 15-foot whip antenna was carried and assembled for
situation reports, because the short metal combat antenna limited the range
of the set to about five miles on a good day.
Because the water in the jungle foliage bounces back radio waves,
by transmitting with the whip antenna from high ground, out of the dense
forest, a LRRP team could talk with radio relay stations on other hilltops
ten or even fifteen miles away. With the shorter combat antenna, a team
had to wait for a prearranged time to make contact with an aircraft that
could monitor their signal.
We made jungle antennas and strung them in the treetops, using only
common wire, and as the instructors said, they worked. Static, skip, meter
band, and jamming became realities to us.
Situation reports were made by radio on a routine basis, but rapid
emergency radio contact was usually out of the question since the
communication conditions had to be right. A team in trouble could not
always call for aid. We had to fight, escape, and then make the time and
opportunity to tell HQ we were in trouble.
We learned those methods of radio communications we would need
as small teams operating beyond normal radio range, and the basics of
photography so we could bring back better evidence of our sightings than
just verbal description.
We also learned ground-to-air signaling, and how to use the new,
top-secret Starlight night-vision scopes.
The medical and survival instruction was particularly more
complete than the basic courses we had received in stateside training. A
doctor ran the medical course we received in lifesaving techniques designed
especially for isolated situations. We learned about blood expansion kits,
arterial clamps, and trachea tubes, the experience broadening for all of us,
bringing out an assurance that if we had to, we could do more to save a life
than just apply a pressure bandage.
Even simplified dental techniques were covered. Few things can
incapacitate a man as much as a toothache, and we found out how to deaden
nerves and relieve abscesses.
One of the DELTA force troopers gave me a couple of leather-
handle Air Force issue survival knives. One had a sheath, the other didn’t.
They had a hammer butt, parkerized finish non-glare blade, and a saw tooth
keel. A sharpening stone was tucked into a special snap-closed pocket on
its sheath. For field use, big, bright-bladed commercial combat knives were
too much of a reflection hazard, and their impressive size only equaled extra
weight.
Knives are for working. We think of them as weapons, and they can
be, but mainly they are tools. This knife was a tool. If it had to become a
weapon, you were in very bad trouble indeed. I sharpened my blade, oiled
it, and carried on my belt everywhere after that.

I enjoyed the training, and graduated near the top of my class. I had
wanted to be a LRRP since I had first known what it was. This was my
chance. We were a graduate class of veterans honed to a sharper edge,
ready to be turned loose back into the jungles.
My infantry friends seemed to think going into the LRRP’s was the
same as a death wish, believing in safety in numbers. I thought being with
a small team in the field was far safer than being with a large unit, because a
large unit was looking for a fight, and a small team was just doing its
reconnaissance job.
I didn’t want to join the brigade LRRP’s. I wanted to go on to what
I knew as the “MACV” LRRP’s, who was actually DELTA or SOG, the
Special Operations Group. I didn’t know my choices were limited. Special
Operations was a “don’t call us, we’ll call you,” type of outfit, and the First
and Second Field Force LRRP’s were not to exist until later in 1967.
As good as the DELTA school we’d just finished was, most of us
wanted to go on to Nha Trang. The MACV-RECONDO School had only
recently started and was not yet ready to guarantee placement in any
specific training cycle. I put my name in for the new Recondo School. The
first class had officially started on 15 September, with new cycles beginning
every two weeks.

4th Division logs, lessons learned reports, and after action reports were
to record most Brigade LRRP activity as “Recondo” patrols, with the
exception of battalion logs, which used both LRRP and Recondo
designations interchangeably.

Sin City and the Syphilis Bar

Outside base camp a frontier-type collection of huts, shacks, and
other buildings had grown up. The soldiers called it Sin City, and it dealt in
the basics—liquor and women.
The 4th Medical actually sent inspection teams to Sin City to
inoculate the prostitutes and issue them updated identification cards. No
inoculations, no ID card, and that translated to no business, so the 4th Med
always had a long waiting line of women at their trucks.
I wanted to see Sin City for myself, so Harris and I went out through
the base camp wire, shortcutting across the minefields and kill zones. We
could have gone the long way, out the front gate, but we had no passes, and
we were cocky and figured we could get away with it. Some of the
perimeter guards yelled at us, but we just went on our way and waved back
at them.
In Sin City there were wooden sidewalks from establishment to
establishment, a civilized touch. I saw right away most of the soldiers
visiting Sin City were base camp types –.“clerks and jerks” -- we called
them. They filled the bars, or staggered down the street, feeling their beer.
A few combat infantry were there, too, trying to find mercy in the
alcohol. Telling the grunts from the clerks wasn’t hard. The base camp
commandos knew the bar girls by name, knew all the prices of drinks and
sex, and knew where to go for the best bargains. They also wore uniforms
marked with proper insignia and rank.
The line troopers wore ill-fitting fatigues without insignia or rank,
clothes taken from a mass pile at their rear-area supply tent, and washed
once, clothes that had belonged to the dead and wounded.
They also wore scuffed jungle boots washed free of mud and
perhaps daubed with a little polish in an effort to satisfy a base camp
officer. With their fresh-scrubbed faces and gaunt appearances, they looked
like a military version of a poor relative from the sticks.
Harris and I went into a wooden bar with a front sitting room and
plenty of open-air windows, taking a table in the corner. We ordered drinks
from the little bar boy, and when our whiskey-cokes were delivered without
ice, the smiling Vietnamese bartender apologized in English and sent the
boy away for ice with a curt command and sharp clap of his hands.
Two of the whores, just teenagers really, came from out of the back
room to sit with us. They were smiling and smoking cigarettes, trying to
talk to us in broken English. They wore traditional Vietnamese silk dresses,
but their hairstyles came from the west.
I noticed with a twinge that one of them had a portion of her nostril
eaten away by syphilis. Outside of medical photographs, it was the first
time I had personally seen it. She had tried to cover it with makeup, but the
thinned, brownish, decayed-leaf appearance of the spot was already eaten
all the way through. The 4th Med penicillin wouldn’t cure that.
There was a tug of sympathy in my heart for the women, but a cold
knot of caution was in my throat.
I waited in the front room, slowly nursing my whiskey-coke as
Harris got quickly drunk, and more quickly laid; then I walked him back to
camp that afternoon, going in through the wire again.
Guards from the perimeter towers waved at us. They knew where
we had been. We waved back.

19 December 1966: The Bob Hope Show

I watched Bob Hope’s traveling entertainment troupe at base camp.
They had landed just hours earlier at New Pleiku Air force Base and
choppered out to us. We were the first stop on Hope’s 1966 in-country tour,
his first in Vietnam. He brought Phyllis Diller, Joey Heatherton, crooner
Vic Damone, Anita Bryant, Diana Shelton, The Korean Kittens, Les Brown,
and Indian Reita Faria (Miss World). She was outspoken to the press about
her opposition to the war.
It was ironic. Base camp now covered a couple of square
kilometers, and had grown so much it had engulfed the hill off which we
had taken so much machine-gun fire that one monsoon night during our first
weeks in Vietnam.
Bob Hope’s stage had been built up against the base of “Artillery
Hill,” so named because of the 42nd Artillery’s heavy guns that now shot
from it. It was hard for me not to think of the hill as still “outside the wire,”
in enemy territory, but despite my feelings I enjoyed the show. It was a
privilege to see Bob Hope, and witness a piece of history. Hope had started
touring and entertaining American and Allied soldiers in World War II, and
his shows had become a military holiday tradition.
Bob, God bless you for all you did for us.

One platoon of Charlie Company, 2nd of the 8th, had been chosen to
be flown back out of the field and see the Bob Hope Show. It was 1st
platoon, whose leader was 2LT Conrad Braun, the same officer who had
accidentally shot Snell with a .45 at the Oasis.
The outing was fortunate for them in a way, because fate had
marked the entire platoon. Most of them did not have long to live.

21 December 1966: A Fistful of Medals

Stars & Stripes Pacific Edition

PLEIKU, Vietnam (10)—Premier Nguyen Cao Ky presented awards
to men of the 4th Inf. Div.'s 2d Brigade for their heroic actions in Paul
Revere IV. Arriving at the brigade's forward command post, Ky delivered
an impromptu speech and then took time to walk through the camp and talk
to several members of the division. The formalities began with Ky
presenting the National Order Fifth Class medal and the Gallantry Cross
with Palm to Maj. Gen. A. S. Collins, Jr., division commander. Also
receiving the Gallantry Cross with Palm were the 4th Inf. Div.'s Brig. Gen.
David 0. Byars, commanding general, 1st Brigade; Col. Judson F. Miller,
2d Brigade commander; Col. James G. Shanahan, 3d Brigade, 25th Inf.
Div. commander, and Lt. Col. Gilbert Procter Jr., 1st Bn., 14th Inf.
commander. Following these presentations, Ky awarded 15 Gallantry
Crosses with Gold Star and another 15 Gallantry Crosses with Silver Star to
men of the various units

22 December 1966: The Dawnbuster Show

There was an Armed Forces Radio station for Vietnam, and it had,
among its features, the Dawnbuster Show. It followed a civilian rock-and-
roll format, but started each day with a rousing, “Good Morning, Vietnam!”
Some of us laughed at it, some of us hated it. I had not heard it until
I came back to base camp. I personally thought the flippant stateside “rise
and shine” attitude of the disk jockey was surreal. It made this Alice in
Wonderlandish war even curiouser.
I stayed in the 2nd of the 8th Battalion’s area in base camp for
Christmas. I discovered it was no longer just “base camp.” Now the troops
were calling it Dragon Mountain Base Camp.

25 December 1966: Christmas

Armed Forces Radio broadcast quiet, traditional Christmas music,
and the battalion mess hall made a large turkey dinner for us that was
served all afternoon.
I checked the battalion orderly tent and was told I was on orders for
the official Recondo School course at Nha Trang, and would report there on
07 January 1967. I also learned my assigned date to return to the United
States was 06 June 1967.
As I waited, one of the brigade officers traded me a .45 government-
issue pistol and a couple of magazines, for a spare Air Force survival knife I
had gotten from the Special Forces during my LRRP training. I thought the
big .45 might come in handy, and hooked its leather holster to my web belt.
I planned to use it as a backup weapon on patrols.

01 January 1967: Back to the Infantry

At the stroke of midnight, it seemed like every weapon on the
perimeter opened up. The men on the perimeter security at base camp were
celebrating the New Year with the fireworks they had available to them,
M16 rifles, .45 pistols, and M60 machine guns.
After sunup, I got a surprise. Harris and I were ordered to rejoin our
company, because of a major air assault the battalion was about to make.
My orders for Nha Trang were postponed. By dark on New Year’s Day, we
were sitting with Charlie Company 2/8th near the old Oasis location,
packing for the assault. My LRRP hat was rolled and put away. We
worked by the light of big bonfires, burning ammunition and ration boxes
and old clothes. Operation Paul Revere IV was over, and Paul Revere V
was about to begin.
This was the eve of battle, and 1967 was ahead of us, a mortal
unknown twelve terrible months long. Who would die this month? Next
month? How long would the war last?
Everybody knew about Communist troops and supplies coming down
the Ho Chi Minh trail, that network that followed the contour of the South
Vietnam border on the Laotian and Cambodian sides. But largely kept out
of the news because of a diplomatic charade sustained by the US and
Cambodian governments was the fact that freighters full of war material
were docking in Cambodia’s southern ports and moved by truck into the
southern part of South Vietnam.
The Cambodian supply route was substantial. It supported the Viet
Cong around Saigon and down in the Delta.
The Soviet KGB, cooperating with North Vietnam, was soliciting dog
tags and ID cards taken off dead GI’s by the VC to be used by leftist
“peace” protestors inside the United States. The US press was leaning left,
sympatric to the enemy. Last, our own Pentagon’s political correctness was
killing us. It was going to be a long war indeed.

02 January 1967: LZ 502C

Operation PAUL REVERE V officially launched on 01 January. For
us, it began on 02 January as Bravo Company air-assaulted a grassy hilltop
designated Landing Zone 502C near the Cambodian border, securing it for
battalion headquarters and us. They met no resistance.

The morning of 03 January, we of Charlie Company all loaded into

big Chinook cargo helicopters and flew out to LZ 502C.
The Chinooks put us down in the billowing grass, and we quickly
assembled and moved into the jungle. The overall plan was for the 2/8th to
provide security for the 20th Engineers to open a road to the LZ. This was a
staged movement in force. The idea was for Charlie to suddenly find that a
new, big firebase had appeared out of nowhere, lots of US infantry was
patrolling around it, and energetic engineers were busy finishing an all-
weather road from 3-Tango out to it.

Fish Heads and Eyeballs

Bad luck caught me almost from the instant I came off the
helicopter. We were carrying 81mm mortars with us this time, so we had to
carry the heavy shells for it as well. I lost my C-rats (the cans were in a GI
sock tied to my pistol belt) in the rush to get out and establish a security
perimeter, trying to carry a wooden crate of mortar ammunition with
another soldier.
From the DELTA school, I had a reserve PIR (packet indigenous
ration). This one was rice and dried fish—probably minnows, I decided—
little dried heads, tails, and eyeballs. I ate it later, the dead little eyeballs
staring up at me from the rice. As if that were not bad enough, the ration
also contained dried seaweed. I dumped that into the rice, and the whole
concoction turned seaweed slimy and sickly green.
The PIR was originally for Montagnards, and had been developed in
1964 for $200 by a Special Forces trooper working in his own kitchen after
the Army had estimated it would take years and millions of dollars to
develop such a ration.
By contrast, to PIR’s the US C-Ration was uptown food. No fish, no
tea, rice, no red pepper. Just good old American chow. Heavy, but edible.

The infantry business began for me all over again. Walk, carry, dig,
walk some more. If you’re not shooting or being shot at, the daily exertion
turns it all into a fatigue-blurred routine.

As we reached the limit of one day’s movement, I volunteered for

the water run so I’d be sure I personally got full canteens. We formed a
small patrol and walked over a kilometer back to a stream we had passed
earlier in the day, and I carried twenty full canteens for my squad.
We saw an enemy soldier on our way back, but he was a long
distance away, and for a few moments he stood still in a group of dead
trees, his arms at his sides, causing us to doubt if we were looking at a man
or not. When we decided we did have a North Vietnamese in sight, and one
of the patrol aimed his rifle in that direction, the man dropped and ran. He
was too far away to chase, so we walked back to the company night
defensive position.
After a few days of stressful but uneventful walking, we finally
pulled in near the road being cut out of the jungle by our own engineers,
and dispersed to provide security for them as they rammed and ripped
through the forest with their heavy D-KB bulldozers. We had not been
recently resupplied, and thankfully the engineers gave us C-rations to eat.
The sight of the heavy front-end loaders, bulldozers, dump trucks, and road
graders this far out into the jungle was unreal.

Peace was the name of a black soldier in my squad. One afternoon

as we were digging in and clearing fire lanes, there came a shout from the
bottom of the hill, and I turned to see what was happening.
Peace was springing up the hill like a kangaroo, pants around his
ankles, one hand holding his helmet on his head, the other, even with his
rifle in it, trying to pull up his trousers.
Bare-assed and wide-eyed, he was yelling “Git! Git!” at the top of
his lungs.
We literally had to tackle him to slow him down. It took a few
minutes for him to get enough composure to speak, and even then he was
still on the verge of panic.
He said he had walked downhill to take a dump, and when he
squatted down, he realized he was just a few feet away from a hidden NVA
recon soldier who was watching him.
Peace had slapped at the safety of his M16, but could not control his
fingers to move it, so he did the next thing that came to mind. He began to
shout “Git!” as loudly as he could, and tried to run for safety.
“Who were you telling to git, the NVA?” I asked.
“I don’t know, man,” Peace gasped. “As long as one of us could git,
it was all right.”

03 January 1967: Peers Takes Over

Dismal fact Reminder. The Rangers of WWII and Korea fame had
been disbanded following Korea, the unspoken reason being the Korea war
Ranger companies suffered such high casualties due to command
mismanagement. When the infantry couldn't do the job, the local
commander would send in a Ranger unit instead.
 Ranger training after the disbanding of the Ranger units was
organized for the individual, not for units. Soldiers volunteered for Ranger
School at Fort Benning and returned to their original units on graduation. I
knew the history well. And history repeats itself.

Meanwhile back at base camp, the 4th Division was changing

commanders. Gen. Collins was getting another star, moving on to the
Pentagon, and handing over control to Major General William R. Peers,
who had once been assistant 4th Division commander in 1964. This was to
mean a lot to us. Peers was a believer in LRRP and Special Forces
operations, and he had a good relationship with Westmoreland himself.
Peers had been on the ground with the OSS in Burma in World War
II, running guerilla ops against the Japanese, and more recently had been
special assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for counterinsurgency. He had a
taste for special warfare. This book details how Peers parlayed the 4th
Divisions and especially the 2nd Brigade LRRP platoon’s performance into
what was to be the 1st and 2nd Field Force LRRP’s in Vietnam.

But today, it was all just beginning. Lt. Lapolla had his ragtag, under
strength, provisional Brigade LRRP platoon up and running and going on
its first missions out of the Duc Co Special Forces A-camp. They had no
idea they were making history. The 2nd Brigade LRRPs were not the first in
Vietnam, but they were to become the model all others would follow.

04 January 1967: 2nd Brigade LRRP Missions

Two teams from Lapolla’s new LRRP platoon operating out of Duc
Co were inserted today. These were the earliest recorded 2nd Brigade long
range patrols.

05 January 1967: Transfer Request Denied

Captain Nobel said I could not be released to go on to Nha Trang for
the new Recondo School. There were actually four of us scheduled—Jones,
Harris, Magnum, and myself—and we were all denied.
I realized Nobel did not want us to leave the company because he
needed us, and we would be four men he could not easily replace, because
technically even if we left to join a provisional LRRP unit, we would still
be part of Charlie Company. On paper, the company would still be
responsible for us even though we were serving with another unit. It meant
they would have to carry us on the company roster, handling our pay, mail,
leaves, and other administrative details.
But I wanted out, and decided to volunteer for the new provisional
nd
2 Brigade LRRP platoon. Brigade had requested volunteers to fill up the
platoon, and no unit commander could keep a man from going. The four of
us made the official request to our platoon leaders.

06 January 1967: My First LRRP

One of the two new 2nd Brigade LRRP teams that went out on the 4th
ran into the enemy today—they said they saw three NVA and were fired on,
but evaded away without casualties.
Lieutenant Tauscher came back from his talk with the Captain Nobel
and asked Harris and I if we would volunteer to go on a long-range patrol
the next day. The battalion wanted to send a LRRP team on ahead down
the valley to scout the way for the infantry. The mission would take six
days. I suspected it was a ploy to keep us. Maybe if we thought we’d get
to run our own patrols out of the company, we’d stay.
Harris and I both said we would be glad to take the patrol. The six-
man team was assembled out of the company. Only Harris and I had any
special training; the rest of the team was pure infantry.
We were given the mission briefing, stocked up on rations, and
walked into the jungle away from the company, our friends watching us go,
sure we had lost our minds. We left our helmets with them. Harris and I
wore our soft caps. The infantry with us wore issue olive drab baseball
caps.
The mission was to follow a route through the lowest part of the
valley. The road clearing engineers were supposed to be planning to use
this route. Our job would be to investigate the terrain, and check for signs
of recent enemy activity. We had a specific distance to walk each day. That
distance was really too far for a long-range patrol, where silence was vital
to survival, but the planning for our mission was made from an infantry
officer’s viewpoint. We were being controlled like an infantry patrol, but
we were fewer in number and much farther away than any common patrol.
I knew we were in trouble when our infantry point man tried to use
his machete to cut the trail. Harris and I stopped him. The hacking was too
loud. With an infantry company behind you, it might be okay to chop-chop
with a machete, but with a team of only six men, it was suicide.
The infantrymen wanted to dig in at night and build cover out of
logs, the same way they would have done back with the platoon. We
argued them out of that as well. I called the loud machete chopping a “bad
infantry habit,” implying that perhaps LRRP personnel ought to be bred
somehow from different stock. The troopers reminded me that if LRRP’s
were not taken from line companies, they wouldn’t have any “good infantry
habits” either. I stood corrected.
We were required to stay in radio contact constantly with battalion
headquarters, the same way a company on the march would, and it required
we carry many extra radio batteries. On a normal long-range patrol, the
team radio would only be turned on to make situation reports.
Our patrol continued down the valley, the battalion several days
behind us, and while we found many old signs of the enemy having lived
and moved through the area, we had no evidence of anything recent.
This caused battalion to order us to “get busy and find something,”
as if irritated we had not located intelligence of vital importance or had not
killed any enemy soldiers. This was how the higher command talked to
field-grade officers, goading them into risky enemy contacts. After a few
days of nervous, careful patrolling, even the infantrymen on my team were
upset with the infantry mentality.
During one rest break, a large snake crawled into our camp. It
slithered under Harris’s low-slung hammock, causing him to quickly jump
up. I was half-asleep at the time, .45 in hand across my chest, and due to
his sudden movement, almost shot him.
We were at the extreme range limit of the short combat antenna on
our PRC-25 radio, and lost radio communications with battalion for an
entire day. This was my first long-range patrol, and we’d lost our commo
lifeline. It was an educating experience. Being physically alone as a small
team feels very different from being physically alone and without radio
communication. All we could do was continue the mission and keep
moving along our patrol route.
A few hours later, all of us were really glad when a light spotter
aircraft flew over us. We moved into a clearing and waved up at him. He
responded by calling in artillery fire on us, the first shell hitting in front and
the next behind, getting us in a good bracket. The pilot was mistaking us
for enemy forces, because we were in a small group. We ran like hell and
hid from the plane.
I could see this would be a problem on any long-range patrol. Other
Americans expected Americans to be with large forces.
During the day without radio contact, we also saw a Huey flying
around that appeared to be looking for us. We decided to try flashing it with
a signal mirror. This was something I had never done, but understood in
theory. And right now it was important. My sum total of signal mirror
knowledge came from what I’d read off the back of mirrors from surplus
WWII survival kits. We hadn’t even done this at DELTA school. I took out
my own mirror, waited until the chopper was between the sun, and me and
aimed at the aircraft through the center peephole in the mirror.
As the Huey approached, I could actually see the spot of light the
mirror was throwing on its nose and belly. I directed the reflected sunshine
to the foot well windscreens, whipping the mirror from side to side.
The Huey suddenly turned toward us. Trying this was at odds with
my experience. The NVA had used every dodge in the book to lure rescue
ships down, so I rightfully expected a hail of tracers from above at any
instant. We waved, and a door gunner waved back. We were found. At
least now someone knew where we were.
Later, when we finally made radio contact and reported a wide but
old enemy trail, our battalion commander ordered us to walk it for a
distance of eight hundred meters and then come back. It was a dangerous
order, but we did it. Stepping lightly and slowly, expecting at any moment
to see a fully equipped NVA company ahead, I walked point.
It happened with no warning. I caught a sudden image of motion
from the corner of my eye as something—no, someone, because I saw arms
and legs—fell out of the tree beside me and crashed into the bushes.
I spun to fire, and came face to face not with a man, but an ape. He
had apparently been in the tree, watching me, and somehow had fallen right
off his perch. He was stunned and I was terrified.
The ape raced away, leaving me to sink down and take a deep
breath.
“What was that?” the team leader asked me, himself down and
ready for trouble.
“A goddamn monkey,” I said, and with my heart coming back under
some control, I motioned us up, and we went on.
 The commander was thinking of us as a unit to be ordered around
the same way he would have controlled one of his field companies.

We lost radio communications again once we were in the lower

country, and regained it a day later, still moving toward our predetermined
pickup point.

13 January 1967: Pickup

We located a sandbar beside the river for the helicopter to extract us
off, but when it arrived, the pilot did not land. He hovered the Huey just
above the water, and our team scrambled aboard. I was tail gun and stayed
on the sandbar with my M16 pointed at the trees.
When it was time for me to board, I turned to the hovering chopper,
but it was drifting away from the sandbar, out over the water. I chased it,
splashing up to my knees and then my waist. The helicopter kept moving
away.
The team was lying on the cargo deck, hands outstretched to me. I
threw them my rifle, jumped at the skid, and missed. I was up to my chest
now in the river.
Huey’s apparently don’t hover well over water. They tend to sway
and drift a lot. I jumped up again and got my hands on the skid, and hands
grasped my rucksack and arms. As I hung out the door, water pouring off
me, we gained altitude and flew away.
We had been on patrol since the 7th, and had made no enemy
contact, and had discovered little about the enemy. Battalion headquarters
was not pleased.
What I had learned personally was that trying to perform long-range
patrols under the control of an infantry officer who simply issued orders to
us over a radio, was asking for the kind of trouble you don’t always live to
tell about.

The helicopter flew us to 3-Church, where the old abandoned church

was located. For two days we had been hungry, our rations insufficient for
the length of the patrol. We found one of the infantry chow lines. Dirty and
wearing our soft hats instead of helmets, we slipped into the serving line to
get something to eat.
 A fat sergeant major, spotting us easily among the helmeted
infantrymen, stormed up to us.
“Who are you goddamn people with?” he demanded.
“The army,” I said, mystified by his question. Maybe he thought we
were SEALs.
“Whose goddamn army?” he shouted.
“The U.S. Army,” I said.
“Well, you get the hell out of my goddamn chow line! If you don’t
belong to this outfit, you don’t eat with this goddamn outfit!”
The six of us looked at each other. We were not ready for anything
like this. “Sergeant, we’ve been out on the Cambodian border for the last
week, on a long-range patrol-” one of our team said.
“Don’t give me that shit!” said the sergeant major. “We got rules
around here! You ain’t got no steel pot! Everybody that eats here has to
have on his helmet to go through this chow line!”
“We don’t have helmets—” I said.
“Everybody in the whole goddamn U.S. Army has a helmet!” the
sergeant major shouted. “Now get out of my chow line, or I’ll call the
MP’s!” With that, he stomped away.
Some of the embarrassed infantry nearby took off their helmets and
offered them to us, trying to apologize for the sergeant major. Field troopers
helped field troopers.
I could tell by the sergeant major’s weight that he was no field
soldier. He had a base camp job. I hated the fat man with all the energy I
had left.
We thanked the soldiers there, refusing their helmets, and walked
behind the mess tent, where one of the cooks was waving to us.
The cook was also embarrassed. He handed us several boxes of C
rations, and told us to sit down out of sight and eat while he went to get us
some iced tea from the vat on the serving line.
The battalion-operations officer at 3-Church debriefed our team. I
learned the name ‘Church’ was going to be replaced by 3-Tango, since
Church wasn’t part of the NATO phonetic alphabet.
So LZ-3T it came.
We were then flown back to our company, which as usual was deep
in the jungle near the border. They still had our helmets, and we rejoined
the infantry.
15 January 1967: Change of Command
Today Col Judson Miller transferred command of the 2nd Brigade to
Col James B. Adamson. Miller moved up to Gen. Peer’s Chief of Staff.
There was a formal change of command ceremony at 3-Tango with a parade
down an airstrip in the mud and light observation helicopters formation
flyover, complete with smoke grenade contrails.
I didn’t see the festivities. My ad hoc LRRP team was hustled back
out to C Company as soon as possible. We were reunited with our steel
helmets and became infantry again. The experience – the freedom – of that
first patrol was tangible. I wanted more.

16 January 1967: Road Security

Charlie Company was assigned to pull security for the engineers
who were still building the jungle road. Enemy contact was light, and there
was almost no shooting. Charlie Company had just found an NVA hospital
area with about 40 to 50 huts in it, all empty, of course. We were making
Charlie’s life hard with all our intrusion. He had not expected us this deep
off the beaten path.
The road now had the 2/8th “Panther Firebase” fully functional as an
anchor point on it, from where 105mm or 4.2-inch mortar support fire could
be delivered against any attacks on the engineers or the security forces.

18 January 1967: SAM HOUSTON

We had begun Operation PAUL REVERE V on the 1st of January,
but somehow it was changed to SAM HOUSTON today. Not that it
mattered to we grunts in the field, as there was no change in the mission.
Just more military bureaucracy.

21 January 1967: Mike Lapolla

A chopper flew in, and with the mail and food, came a visit from Lt.
Mike Lapolla, 2nd Brigade LRRP platoon commander. Lt. Tauscher’s RTO
had tipped me that Lapolla was looking for volunteers, and that he had the
authority to take anybody that he accepted.
Lapolla showed up dressed in tiger fatigues, the first visual mark of
being different from the grunts. Harris and I were ushered up to meet him,
answering his questions about our experience and time in country. Lapolla
impressed me as smart, dedicated and a man with a mission. He told
Tauscher he wanted us. Lieutenant Tauscher in turn told us we could go as
soon as Captain Nobel, our company commander, came back from leave.
Getting to the LRRP’s was now a revived hope. As much as I would
have welcomed going straight from HHC to the LRRPs, the infantry and its
indispensable field experience was letting me pay my dues for the job.
To go out with a very small team might seem heroic or romantic at
first glance, until you are faced with it. And if you’ve actually survived
combat, seen what rifle or machine gun fire can do, false bravado is just a
faster way to get in line to die.

On an ambush patrol near the river, our platoon lay in position when
we heard movement, then indistinct voices. Squad leaders motioned to
their men. Hands found Claymore mine detonators. Machine guns were
shouldered and aimed.
I saw them coming, just hazy figures through the vines. Lieutenant
Tauscher prepared to signal open fire then we all realized it at the same
time.
It was our own Alpha Company moving up the river, walking
slowly, and talking. No one had warned us they would be there. Seeing the
outlines of their helmets and clearly hearing their faint voices stopped the
ambush at the last moment.
We let them go past, shaking our heads in disbelief. It would have
been so easy to have killed half of them before we knew who they were. We
had to be more careful. Much, much, more careful.

Donut Dollies
Out of the sky came a Huey that landed inside our firebase
perimeter, and out from it bounced three young American girls. They wore
the uniform of the Red Cross; cotton dresses printed in gray-and-white
pinstripes. They were unofficially called “Donut Dollies,” and for this
firebase, they were certainly something out of the ordinary.
No one had to go to the trouble to call us up to the LZ to see what
they were doing there. The troops almost raced in. I watched the girls set
up a chalkboard on an easel, and unload several boxes of what looked to be
donuts or cookies. I also noticed the crew of the girls’ Huey kept their
equipment on, and stayed near the helicopter. They were ready to extract
the girls instantly if anything bad happened, like a mortar attack, or a sex
riot among the troops.
Their show got under way quickly, and I was astounded. The girls
were going to play games with us. They had a version of a TV game show,
and they pitched into it like professionals, with much showmanship and
enthusiasm.

I could not believe it. Here were three young, happy girls, all of
them probably ex-cheerleaders, and they were going to carry on a
chalkboard word game on top of a forward fire-support base in a genuine
war zone! I wanted to get up and tell them they could get their energetic
little tits and asses shot off out here.
At first, the girls were having to coach responses from the men, and
they told us jokes, and they giggled, sweating now in the direct sun. I
began to appreciate them. They knew what they were doing.
Soon the men were shouting answers to the chalked questions as the
girls overcame the reservations of the combat veterans, and before long we
were all laughing together.
 The show lasted about an hour. When it was over, the board and
easel went back aboard the Huey, and as the pilot cranked the turbine to life,
the rotors beginning to spin, and the girls opened the boxes and passed out
cookies to us. I stood in line and got a handful. They were hard, cheap
cookies with a little dollop of sugar frosting, like mothers buy for small
children.
When the girls, helicopter, and cookies were gone, and the firebase
seemed suddenly quiet, I went back to my bunker.
Cookies and cheerleaders. What a war.

LT Braun Again, False Sitreps

I took a small patrol one kilometer off the firebase to do a check of
the jumbled logs and trees the engineers had blown down to clear a better
avenue of approach into our landing zone.
We were concerned the enemy might hide commando teams in the
thickets, in preparation for easily infiltrating our perimeter at night; they
could lay in explosive charges, and blow the barbed wire so attacking
infantry could rush through.
I felt we would have a better chance of catching a small group with
a small group, and volunteered for the duty.
The downed trees made a broken mass of trunks and branches so
interwoven an acrobat would have had a hard time picking a way through.
My team heard voices coming from the branches; we stopped, our
hearts racing, all of us ready to fire, but we needed to get closer in order to
confirm the target. Then, like the incident by the river, we recognized the
voices as English. I led my team closer, listening, and soon we knew we
were near Second Lieutenant Conrad Braun (who had accidentally shot
Snell) and the 1st platoon. They were not supposed to be there.
I called out to them, and they dropped, grabbing weapons and
rolling into defensive positions. After challenging us, they allowed our
team to enter their enclave.
Braun was sitting against a tree, reading a paperback novel, his feet
bare, boots unlaced and set aside. His men were arranged in a loose
defensive perimeter, but they were also relaxed, their C-ration cans and
light tropical poncho liners spread out where they were resting.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Braun.
 He appeared ashamed. “Don’t tell anyone you saw us,” he begged.
“We’re supposed to be on patrol down by the river. The men just couldn’t
take another day of it. I had to give them some time off.”
The platoon radio was near Braun. He would have been sending
false position reports back to Captain Nobel, making battalion headquarters
think his platoon was patrolling the riverbank.
I told Braun I would not reveal what I had seen, and the men on my
patrol said the same thing. We had sympathy for these men. They were
infantry like us. I took my small patrol back up the hillside to the firebase.
But if I had reported Braun, perhaps Nobel would have come down
hard on him, Braun would have enforced some extra discipline on his men,
and maybe I would have saved some lives. The doomed 1st platoon had less
than three weeks left.

23 January 1967: Discord

While assigned to string new rolls of concertina wire around the
perimeter, an argument broke out between Peace and one of our white
sergeants. It was a hot day and tempers were thin, and the stress of the
daily patrols was taking its toll.
When the sergeant ordered Peace to string the wire, he refused. The
sergeant cursed him. In a rage, Peace snatched up his M16 and aimed it at
the sergeant’s chest, ready to kill.
I was the only man on the platoon-sized work detail not carrying a
rifle. I had my .45 pistol in a belt holster.
When the muzzle of Peace’s M16 leveled at the sergeant, one of the
sergeant’s friends raised his M16 at Peace. A friend of Peace aimed his
weapon at that man, and in a few seconds, almost everybody had a weapon
pointed at somebody else.
Everybody but me, that is. My pistol was in my holster. For a long,
expectant moment, no one moved. I realized all of them were waiting for
an overt act by someone else. I also realized that if I unsnapped the holster
flap and pulled out my pistol, that might do it. I froze, looking at ready rifle
muzzles all around me. At that moment, I learned how foolish a man with a
pistol feels facing a group of men with assault rifles. I lost any faith or
fascination I had ever had with pistols as combat weapons during that
incident.
 Moreover, how can a group of soldiers, who face death together
everyday, turn against each other so damn fast and be ready to kill on top of
it? The answer was self-evident. We were not a team, not a band of
brothers; we were a diverse group with no loyalty beyond one or two
friends. The war had made us brutal, secular, and alone within our skins.
Without warning, a soldier near Peace grabbed the rifle from his
hands, and the situation was over. We were all left to look at each other and
face the truth. We were ready to kill each other. All it took was a
provocation. These men were at a breaking point. I had believed there for a
moment we were all about to go down in a point-blank shootout. The gun
was solution #1 for us now, against friend or foe.

Because I had a pistol, the sergeant placed me in charge of Peace. I

put him under arrest and took him back to the acting company commander.
I ended up keeping Peace under guard at our squad bunker. I didn’t
want the job.
“What do you think they’ll do with me?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll go back to base camp. Maybe you’ll
get a transfer.”
“I guess they’ll send me to LBJ,” he said. LBJ was Long Binh Jail,
where soldiers were imprisoned incountry. He was despondent, looking
into the jungle.
“You can have my .45,” I offered. “I’ll tell ‘em you took it. Get
some C rations too, and head for Cambodia. It’s not far away.”
Peace looked at me as if considering the offer, then he leaned back
again against the bunker. “No,” he said, “I’ll go to LBJ. At least it’ll get
me out of the field.”
We put him on a helicopter for base camp that afternoon. I never
found out what happened to him after that.

25 January 1966: ARC LIGHT

The early highland morning was cold as usual. We awoke on the
mountainside firebase, with the sun just beginning to fill the vast valley
below. I swallowed the taste of sleep in my mouth and staggered down the
hill to the LZ. Two Hueys were approaching, flying low in the valley
shadows.
 The company stirred. Hot breakfast was coming in by airmail. Men
gathered gear and straightened the clothing they had slept in.
The helicopters touched down on the rocks, like giant eagles
roosting, and our infantry unloaded the insulated canisters of food.
Organization came quickly to the chow line. No one was in the
mood to play. I was one of the first to be served, and walked a short
distance away to sit and eat. There was black coffee, watery scrambled
eggs, and lots of white bread.
A B-52 strike was scheduled for this morning. Word was passed
around to watch the valley. We were going to have a show with our meal. I
ate my egg sandwich and drank the strong, hot coffee, idly gazing down the
length of the valley. I wished we had bacon.
We heard the start of it. It was a distant rumble that came rolling out
of the valley and up the cliffs to us. There were no individual explosions.
It was a steady roar, growing louder.
I looked up into the transparent blue sky for the planes. I saw
nothing but some wispy clouds. Not even a contrail. I felt the ground
tremble. We were over a mile away from the strike and the mountain was
moving!
Then we saw it. Blink-quick flashes, hundreds of them, fanning
through the treetops. And the noise Lord, what noise!

A fog of water vapor followed the blasts along the valley floor. It
was the dew recondensing in the air. For a moment I was awed and a touch
of fear fluttered through my chest. The planes were so high I couldn’t see
them, and they were doing this! The war took on a dimension I had not
known it had.
It was over quickly. The echoes remained for a breath, and then,
except for the smoke, it was peaceful in the valley again.
I was amazed we could do that. My God! Amazed.

Puff the Magic Dragon

I sat on guard duty on the perimeter of the firebase and watched the
awesome streams of tracers falling out of the sky from Puff, who was many
kilometers away.
Puff the Magic Dragon was an old C-47 twin-engined, propeller-
driven cargo aircraft that was fitted with three 7.62mm General Electric
Vulcan miniguns. They were called miniguns because the larger versions of
them came chambered for 20mm cannon shells.
Each gun had six barrels powered by electric motors, and could fire
up to six thousand rounds per minute. That was one hundred bullets a
second from just one gun. Called to a target, Puff circled it, and fired down
with all three miniguns roaring at once, creating a sound like a dragon
might, a howling, throaty thunder.
Each time Puff fired a volley, a solid yellow-red hail of tracers
plunged to earth. The rate of fire was so high, even with only every sixth
cartridge in the belted ammunition a tracer load, it looked like all tracers.
Somewhere out in the jungle along the border, one of the infantry
units or a firebase like our own was in contact with the North Vietnamese,
and had Puff firing support for them.
Our 105mm howitzers were blasting away, loading and firing
methodically, each report so loud it was painful, like being hit in the head
with a board. It was night in Vietnam, and out in the dark, the killing was
still going on. I was thankful it was not happening on my hill.
Thorn punctures in my left hand had infected badly, swelling with
pus pockets, making it impossible for me to close my fist. I let the
infections fester until they burst on their own, and I regained the use of my
fingers. I did not want to go on sick call and be accused of trying to get out
of duty.

27 January 1967: LRRP Contact

A LRRP capability was also being used at battalion level. Each
infantry battalion already had a recon platoon, so that’s where the
assignments fell. Despite the LRRP name, battalion LRRP’s were generally
just extensions of infantry patrols, sent out for the benefit of the battalion, in
support of the rifle companies. This is not to imply that the job wasn’t
dangerous.
On the 27th, one of the new 2nd Brigade LRRP teams surprised
several NVA who were staying hidden from our rifle companies. In all the
shooting, the team managed to get away alive.
The fact was that small groups of motivated Americans could get to
the NVA. Infantry companies were so big and so loud that sidestepping
them was almost too easy.
30 January 1967: Short Round
On another patrol by the river, my platoon was glimpsed by one of
our own helicopters flying fast, at low level over the water, and fired at by
its machine gun. We scrambled and tripped out of the way, bullets from the
helicopters striking the trees around us with a sound like hammers driving
nails.
Before we could respond in any fashion, the helicopter was gone.
At dark, we dragged back to the firebase from the patrol and went to see
what was left of the chow brought in by helicopter earlier in the day. The
food was cold, and there was little of it.
A 4.2-inch “four-deuce” mortar nearby was firing a mission for
someone far away; and we ignored its concussive blasts as we picked up
our rations, until one blast differed from the others.
I looked quickly over my shoulder, and saw flames spout from the
mortar tube as the propellant that should have fired the shell burned instead
of exploded. I could see the shell itself quite clearly, just exiting the tube,
flipping end over end. It was a gray painted chemical shell.

A 4.2-inch mortar shell is large enough to blow away most

everything on our section of the firebase, and this one was loaded with evil
white phosphorus, which would also set us on fire.
 Those of us who realized what was happening moved with speed. I
dropped the paper plate I was using to salvage food out of the insulated
cans, and dived over a sandbag wall into another mortar pit, landing hard on
a 81mm mortar and knocking it over but I hardly felt it.
The 4.2-inch WP shell came back down near its mortar tube and
thudded to the ground, but did not explode. Its impact fuse apparently
required more rotations or velocity than the short arcing flight had provided.
We all hugged the ground for a few moments, realizing we were
going to live, then got up slowly. A sergeant for the mortar section ran up
and began to curse me for knocking his newly cleaned and oiled mortar into
the dirt. M16 in hand, I told him what I thought of mortar-section people
who stayed in camp all day, greedily over-eating food sent to be shared with
the infantry, and then who berated a man for wanting to save his life, and I
implied with my rifle if he didn’t go back to his bunker, I might kill him on
the spot.
He left my area in a hurry. I was in no mood to tolerate assholes.
I took out my squad for a five-man overnight ambush patrol that
night, and set up on a knoll overlooking the road.
Early in the morning, Kravitski, who was supposed to be on guard
and radio watch, fell asleep on duty, and began answering radio calls in his
sleep. He was answering for other stations, saying “Roger” and “Out,” and
generally raising much consternation on the radio net.
What woke him was when he gave someone a “Roger,” and they
said loudly, “Don’t give me a roger, just do it!”
Kravitski opened his eyes, then woke me up, thrusting the handset in
my face, and said, “You talk to them! There’s crazy people on the radio!”
Then he went back to sleep.
I had been taking Ski on some of my small-team actions over the
last month. He was usually so scared that when he had to say something,
he’d whisper too low and I couldn’t hear him, causing me to have to ask
again what he was saying, until he’d hiss, “Forget it!” and turn away.

30 January 1967: TÊT MAU THAN

A two-week Têt truce was about to begin, in honor of the
Vietnamese Lunar New Year. Têt was Christmas and New Years all rolled
into one for the Vietnamese.
 The truce was political correctness by the United States, in an effort
to appear sensitive and reasonable. President Johnson ordered a temporary
halt to US bombing in North Vietnam, while British Prime minister Harold
Wilson held talks with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in London about a
possible permanent bombing halt and peace talks.
US intelligence from aerial photographs, agents, and SOG recon
teams revealed the North Vietnamese had used the relief from our bombing
and artillery to resupply themselves. More trucks than ever had rolled
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia, unloading food and
ammunition for resupply points along the South Vietnamese border, where
it could be divided into man-packed loads, and infiltrated across. As famous
as the Ho Chi Minh Trail was with the media, a substantial portion of war
supplies for the Vietcong and North Vietnamese also came from ships
docking at Cambodian harbors. There, the cargoes were loaded onto trucks
and driven across Cambodia to the South Vietnamese border for hand-
carried infiltration.

Captain Nobel had returned from his leave on the 30th, bringing
news that the 2nd of the 8th was going to be changed into an armored unit,
and get M113 armored personnel carriers, vehicles we called “tracks.” He
offered me the job of track commander. It meant the whole battalion was
going to get to stop wearing out jungle boots, and start riding.
He again did not give permission for Harris and me to go to the
brigade LRRP platoon. He said Charlie Company had another important
mission coming up, and every man would be needed for it.
I had heard that before.

03 February 1967: Search & Destroy

A day before Têt began, we went on the move. All four platoons of
Charlie Company packed up and left the firebase, walking southwest toward
the Cambodian border in a search and destroy sweep, trying to force the
enemy to run away, fight, or otherwise move and expose himself. The
difference in this sweep was that because of the Têt truce, we were not
supposed to shoot first. Sure.
One of our 2/8th infantry patrols fired on a small group of NVA, who
ran, except one man who fell wounded. They captured him and his AK,
and the patrol called in TNT and blew up an empty NVA bunker complex.
The prisoner was special. He was a recon squad leader from the 2nd
battalion, 32nd regiment. The NVA had their own recon units, and
sometimes they wore tiger fatigues like our Special Forces strikers.

04 February 1967: Niang

Second platoon – us -- took a patrol up a ridgeline, and while we
were walking the ridge and trying to recover from the exertion of climbing
it, we saw movement in the underbrush.
We spread out, and approached it carefully; then several
Montagnards wearing rough-woven blankets leaped out of the foliage and
raced away, not stopping even as we yelled at them to halt. They were men
and women, maybe a family.
One of our men discovered a child they had left behind. She looked
10, but was actually about 12 to 14 years old, starved, and had more sores
and skin infections than I had seen before on one human being. She was
given to my squad to guard.
We offered her food. She shyly accepted a C-ration bread roll from
one of my people. The little girl was afraid, but seemed somewhat relieved
by her capture/rescue. What struck me most was a touch of feminine vanity
she exhibited. She carefully arranged her hair, using a vine to tie it back.
Her friends had left her, and abandoned their baskets, blankets and
curved Montagnard machetes. When we radioed back the information to
battalion about what we found, we were ordered to return her to the firebase
as soon as we could. The battalion commander suspected those with her
might have been a scavenging party sent out by the North Vietnamese.
We turned around, and walked her off the mountain and back to the
firebase, a trek that took hours. As we trudged up the hill toward the
firebase, we were caught in demolition blasting by the engineers who were
clearing trees around the perimeter, and barely escaped having several of
our men, including myself, killed.
Hundreds of trees were down, making impossible mazes and tangles
of trunks and branches. We were flagged to stop by the engineers, and our
people sat down, thinking we could rest. I sat with my squad, against a
rock outcrop. We took off our helmets and listened to the engineers yelling,
“Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”
Somewhere, something was about to explode. I was not worried.
Even though I didn’t see any engineers nearby, I didn’t think they would let
us sit too close to live charges. Then right in front of us, there was a flash
of orange light. I actually saw the expanding ball of reddish-orange force
coming at me. The shock wave smashed me back against the rock wall, as
hard as if I’d been hit by a car. Dirt, stones, and wood splinters slammed
into us like a tidal wave.
For a moment all I could see was flashing spots, and my hearing was
gone. It took a few seconds just to get my breath. The first thing I heard
was angry yelling from those in my platoon that could manage to speak.
As we picked ourselves up and gathered our gear, I thought a few of
our guys might attack the engineers. Men who live with deadly violence as
a solution tend to use it very rapidly. What literally saved the day was the
order came at that moment for us to proceed on and enter the firebase. No
one seemed to be badly hurt. We weaved through the downed trees, a
couple of our men waving rifles at the retreating engineers and cursing
them.
Once safely inside, the first thing the little girl told an interpreter
who had been flown specially to the firebase that one of our men had stolen
her bracelets. That was true, and our platoon sergeant, who had taken them,
was made to give the bracelets back to her.
She said her name was Niang, and her family had indeed been
working for the NVA, but had been released (or maybe escaped) because
there had not been enough food to feed them. They had been starving.
The next morning, the whole company was ordered back to the
ridgeline. Second platoon was not very popular with the rest of the men
because of the extra work we had caused.
The push up to the ridge was treacherous, plowing through spiked
plants, thorny vines, and meshed, interwoven jungle so thick in places we
had to beat it down with rifles and machetes. I took point position on the
way up, and it seemed as if I lost a quart of blood from cuts. I looked like a
pair of sadists had whipped me with barbwire.
Just as we sat to rest in the early afternoon, trying to open some C-
rations and eat, Lieutenant Tauscher smelled something dead. We stopped
eating, and began to search for the body. Looking for unknown dead is a
very nasty and unpleasant task. It was not morbid curiosity driving us. In
Vietnam, the smell of death was an intelligence tool. You followed your
nose to the macabre discovery. I suspected it might be connected to he
Yards we found yesterday, and I was right.
 A short distance up the hill from me a group of our men finally
found the source of the stench. I walked up to them. They were picking at
something in the hollow of a tree.
Oh Jesus, it was a dead baby, wrapped in an army mosquito net, left
with an old baseball cap and two empty tin cans. I knew something about
Montagnard burials, having visited their villages when I was security for
the brigade labor trucks.
They used a totem pole at the head of their graves, very much like
the carved medicine poles of the Indians of the American West. The pole
was the way to heaven. The tree would have sufficed for the pole. They
also buried precious objects with their dead, as gifts for the next life. This
starved, displaced family obviously did not have anything precious, so they
had buried what they had, a baseball cap and two tin cans.
Lieutenant Tauscher pulled back some of the mosquito net on the
little body with the tip of his bayonet. “About two years old,” he said.
“Probably died of starvation.”
He stood aside while one of our men took an entrenching folding
shovel and threw a few spades of dirt into the hollow of the tree. We left.
The field routine was back. Wake up in the morning, put on all my
equipment, ammunition, and canteens, walk all day, struggling through the
jungles, picking at leeches, sweating, straining, holding in anger, fear, and
frustration.
There are no pleasant times on such an infantry push. It is either too
hot or too cold. It is too wet or too dry. Feet hurt. Backs hurt. There is
little sleep. Rashes break out. Sweat bastes your body. Sores inflame and
infect. Under so many layers of misery, minds numbed with suppressed
fear, sometimes your consciousness retreats into mental bunkers.
Life becomes pain, worry, hunger and thirst. Until exhaustion
trumps it all and you drop and sleep on rocks or in mud. You don’t care
anymore.

One day, climbing up the side of a hill so steep that we had to pull
ourselves from tree to tree, the fog of mental anesthesia lifted a little. I saw
the soldiers with me objectively. Their faces were masks of strain. All of
them were grimacing, all were moving up and ahead like zombies. Awake
now as I was, the weight of my equipment and ammunition was too much,
the threat of a hidden machine gun waiting for us just over the next rise was
too frightening. I willed the alertness away. The mental anesthesia came
back, and I could feel my load lessen.
How can you fight if all you are able to concentrate on is putting one
foot ahead of the other, or trying to get a few minutes sleep?
It was a 24-hour cycle. At night, we stopped, dug fighting holes, cut
down fields of fire, pulled guard duty, and sent out night ambushes and
listening posts. Sometimes the routine was interrupted by a few moments of
terror if we accidentally encountered the enemy.

On one patrol, we forded a clear, shallow river. The smooth rocks

on the bottom reflected the sunshine as it bounced in the ripples of the
water. The walk across was almost a pleasure. I unscrewed my canteen
caps and let them refill as we went.
“Hey, look up there!” somebody said, pointing to a high, flanking
embankment. “Is that a man? That looks like dinks!” There really were
faces up there. It was an NVA patrol looking down on us. By the time we
saw them, our squad was fully committed into the water, and realized they
had been watching us for a while. It was an electrifying moment. They did
not shoot. We did not shoot. And in a breath, they were gone.
Our units found rice caches, tunnels, more abandoned bunker
complexes, and destroyed them all. Only one trooper, a guy in the 1st of the
8th, was wounded by sniper fire. As the days passed, we changed directions
in our sweep, southwest to northwest, then south.
On 03 February, Alpha Company 2/8th encountered three NVA and
fired, wounding one. The other two got away.
On 08 February we stopped, digging in to run local patrols. Such a
break was like being given a vacation.
The NVA did not want to fight. It was not their time, or their
choice. They let us walk, using up our strength, patience, and supplies.
They waited.

09 February 1967: LRRP Contact

Unknown to me at the time, a team from the new provisional 2nd
Brigade LRRP platoon ran into trouble while supporting the Battalion
operations. Ron Bonert, whom I would meet later, was shot in the leg in an
ambush. More on this later.
10 February 1967: LRRP contact
Also unknown to me, another team from the 2nd Brigade LRRP
platoon ran into the NVA. Two LRRP’s were wounded, Staff Sergeant Carl
Littlejohn and Simmons. The team killed three NVA.
Littlejohn got a Purple Heart and a Silver Star for that action. He
“distinguished himself,” his citation would read, “by heroic action as a
team leader of a long-range reconnaissance patrol Feb. 10 during the
truce which included that day. He and his patrol made their way along a
jungle trail and suddenly made contact with a Viet Cong force, which
opened fire, wounding Sgt. Littlejohn. But he quickly regrouped his force
and called for artillery support. Then he led his force toward the enemy to
stave off an infiltration or flanking movement. He directed artillery fire
along the path of enemy withdrawal, then led the patrol to an emergency
landing zone, all the while refusing to slow down or stop, despite extreme
pain from his wound.”
Had I been aware the platoon was off to such a start, I might have
thought twice about joining. Maybe.
Also on the 10th, the 1/12th Red Warriors were directed to establish a
new firebase at LZ 501N, because of an NVA buildup west of the Nam
Sathay River. 1/12th units began moving overland to the LZ. The NVA was
waiting for them in force.

12 February 1967: Base Camp

The Têt cease fire officially ended at 0700 on the 11th. For us in the
field, there was a grace period to midnight of the 12th, the official end of the
holiday
Mail had been delivered at our overnight position with boxes of
ammunition and cases of C-rations. As I read one of my letters, I learned
my mother had been in a serious automobile accident in the United States,
and had almost lost her foot.
When I took the news to my platoon sergeant, he told Lieutenant
Tauscher, and I was given permission to return to base camp and make a
telephone call home from the new satellite-relay station that had been built
there. On the flight back to base camp, I realized I could go directly to
brigade and get my assignment to the LRRP’s, taking advantage of getting
out of the field. Captain Nobel might not like it, but as long as I was with
Charlie Company, on constant field operations, I worried I would never
make it to the LRRP’s.
I didn’t know what was in Captain Nobel’s mind until I began the
rewrite of this book. Here’s his explanation.
“ I was rapidly losing my experience base even as our
contacts with the enemy increased. I had already provided
the initial members of the LRRP with people like SGT's
Britt and Littlejohn, and I gave the division some of my
best people. After our discussion, I approved your request
because you wanted to serve in the LRRP's which I realized
would be good for the division in the long term.
 PART III

Headquarters & Headquarters Co.

LRRP Platoon (provisional)

2nd Brigade 4th Infantry Division

14 February 1967: The LRRP Platoon

After making an overseas telephone call home from the MARS
station (Military Auxiliary Radio System) at base camp, and settling my
mind that everything was going to be all right with my mother’s medical
treatment, I stopped by the 2nd Brigade headquarters S1 personnel section. I
told them I had come out of the field to join the LRRP’s. It was that easy.
They prepared my orders there, and gave me the paperwork to
personally deliver to Lieutenant Lapolla, the platoon leader. The LRRP
platoon was based out of 3-Tango.
Now, not even Captain Nobel could make me go back to the
infantry.
A convoy was going from base camp to 3-Tango. I climbed aboard
one of the trucks, and found as comfortable a place among the boxes and
baggage as I could for the long hot ride out. It was obvious we were
wasting time, and blood, with our infantry actions. We deployed platoons,
companies, and battalions. They were as graceful in the field as herds of
elephants. The enemy simply sidestepped us most of the time.
If there was a fight, it was because the North Vietnamese were ready
for it, dug in, supplied, and in position exactly where they wanted to be.
When we walked into them the killing began, but it too often was one-
sided. . . in their favor.
I was not satisfied with the infantry anymore, because all I could see
us doing was playing the game in exactly the way the North Vietnamese
wanted. The one-minute course for master North Vietnamese strategists
and tacticians could easily read like this:
Attack US Special Forces camps then ambush the American and
South Vietnamese troops coming to reinforce. Escalate ambushes to battles,
then quickly disengage and use your escape routes and supply caches back
to the border. While inside South Vietnam, stay within 3000 meters of US or
ARVN camps and positions. They cannot use B52 strikes against you that
way. Aggressively remove and hide all dead comrades from the battlefield.
This makes the Americans unsure about combat results. Your mission is not
to win battles, but to kill Americans. They cannot politically accept high
casualties.
With recon teams it was different. Small, quiet, and appearing in
unexpected places, our Special Forces, special operations, and long-range
reconnaissance patrol teams were not only bringing back useful
intelligence, they were killing enemy soldiers.

I considered the infantryman’s steel helmet as the symbol of the line

trooper; it was heavy, giving a false sense of security, and uncomfortable.
The infantryman was clumsy with ammunition and equipment, scared,
soaked with rain and spattered with mud. He was a victim of both enemy
aggression and US limited war philosophy.
 Now, I could take off my helmet. I put on the soft, narrow-brimmed
flop hat I had bought in Pleiku. I was now a LRRP.
I was sick of being the fool. We had to catch the NVA when he was
not ready, be hidden where he thought he was safe. And kill him. In the
LRRP’s I knew I could take the war to the enemy . . . my way.
When we arrived and I jumped off the truck, I noticed how much 3-
Tango had improved since I had first stood security over the Montagnard
laborers as they chopped back the jungle around the empty church building.
There were now graded roads, barbed-wire fences, and wooden
frames for tents. At the rate it was growing, 3-Tango would become
another base camp, I thought, sidestepping work parties sweating with giant
loads of C rations and ammunition.
I found an MP and asked the way to the LRRP platoon. He pointed
up the hill toward the old church building. “Right there by brigade
headquarters,” he said.

I walked up the hill. Two men in tiger fatigues, the green-and-black-

striped uniform worn by Special Forces and long-range patrol teams, stood
beside a low bunker. I approached them, feeling out of place in my infantry
equipment.
“Hi,” I said, “where do I find Lieutenant Lapolla?”
“What do you want him for?” the LRRP countered. I could tell the
attitude of the LRRP platoon personnel was a lot different from what I had
been accustomed to in the infantry.
“I’ve just come in from the field to join you guys,” I said.
The two men looked warily at me.
“Try the radio bunker,” one of the men said, pointing toward the
squat, sandbagged structure beside us. I nodded thanks and stooped slightly
to clear the low doorway, and edged through the blast baffle, an outer
chamber that required two changes of direction to enter the main bunker
room.
It was cooler inside, and much darker. My eyes slowly adjusted to
the difference. Lapolla sat in front of the radios, reading a coverless copy
of Playboy magazine.
“Well, I’m here,” I announced, handing him the assignment papers
from Brigade S1.
 “Good!” Lapolla said. “Damn, I’m glad you made it today.
Everybody is out but one team, and I’ve got to cover the radio.”
“I tried to get here last month, but Captain Nobel wouldn’t turn me
loose,” I said.
“Go find a bunk,” Lapolla said, “and see me when you get settled.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “and thank you, sir.”

Three medium tents were the living quarters for the platoon. They
were surrounded by low sandbag walls and backed with bunkers just a jump
out the doorways. The sides of the tents were rolled down against the sun
and dust.
Inside was a jumble of cots, weapons, wooden crates, and duffel
bags. An empty cot was pushed into a corner. I lay my rucksack down on
it. It would do fine. A Chinese AK-47 assault rifle hung from a tent pole.
It was clean and well oiled. It was obviously not a souvenir. It was
someone’s weapon who lived here. Olive-drab packets, marked “Ration,
Subsistence, Long Range Patrol,” cluttered some of the cots.
“What are you doing in here?” a voice asked from behind me. I
turned a bit too fast, revealing he had startled me, and saw a man I hadn’t
noticed was in the tent.
“My name’s Camper,” I said, unsure of how to begin with him. “I
just joined the platoon. The lieutenant told me to bunk in here.” He was a
young soldier like myself, and he wore faded-out tiger fatigues. I noticed
he did not wear boots, but Vietcong sandals.
“What outfit you from?” he asked.
“Second of the Eighth, Charlie Company,” I said, but the answer
seemed to make no impression on him. “Can I take this bunk?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I guess so. Littlejohn sleeps there. But he’s in the
hospital in Japan.”
I sat down and opened my rucksack. The soldier in sandals watched
me unpack. He looked to me like he might be Spanish, or maybe American
Indian.
“Hard to spot somebody when they’re holding real still, isn’t it?” he
asked.
I nodded.
“You seen any combat?” he asked, but it was not a question, it was a
challenge.
 “Yeah,” I said. He seemed satisfied with that.
“It ain’t like being with a line company, being out with a team, you
know that?” he asked.
“I know that. That’s why I’m here,” I said. There was silence for a
moment.
“My name’s Harmon,” the soldier finally said, extending his hand. I
took it. He smiled, and I grinned back in relief. I would later learn he was
an Alaskan Indian.
“Welcome to the LRRP’s,” he said.
I reported back to Lieutenant Lapolla and received my first on-the-
job training in the radio bunker. He explained radio procedures and platoon
structure to me and we talked about the platoon itself.
A fact of logistics life was the 2nd Brigade long-range
reconnaissance patrol platoon was provisional, and therefore unofficial.
Everything going to the LRRP platoon—from ammunition to personnel—
had to be begged, borrowed, or stolen.
Only division-level LRRP’s were officially authorized. Since the 4th
Division headquarters did not yet have their LRRP company fully
organized, for the time being, we were it.
“Our little platoon is a ragtag bunch,” Lapolla told me. “We exist
on what people and equipment I can beg from the regular units. There’s no
set number or SOP for anything.”
I learned that a provisional LRRP platoon could contain ten men or
thirty. We lived in donated tents and the “parent units” from which our
volunteers came were of course responsible for our pay, administrative
paperwork, promotions, leave, etc. Our weapons and equipment were what
we brought with us or could scrounge, and our rations were provided by
falsifying brigade or division mess hall reports.
“The field commanders ask their headquarters sections what they
want to know, and their G2 or S2 officers ask me. We go out and get the
information any way we can,” Lapolla explained.
“The highest-ranking man on any given patrol is likely to be a buck
sergeant. Our tactics are whatever works. Small teams, about four men
being the average number, can operate quietly with the tightest team unity.
The usual team assignments are the point man, the team leader, the
radioman, and the tail gunner.”
 I was to learn later that Lapolla personally went out recruiting as
much to keep units from dumping their misfits on him as he did looking for
good LRRP’s. One day, he’d have to take whoever was sent to him, but now
was a time of purity, an origin. Handpicked troops with the same
willingness to take on anything. It must have felt like this with the Lafayette
Escadrille, the Flying Tigers, and the Alamo Scouts.
There wasn’t much of a routine around the platoon area. It was
more like a transit station. Men off patrol slept during all hours, teams
came and went, and very few people were there at any one time.
The only place you could find someone twenty-four hours a day was
the radio bunker. It was headquarters for us, and every man was expected
to function in it.
We monitored our own teams in the field, which involved arranging
air, artillery, or other fire support for them if necessary, or helicopter
extraction if needed. So radio watch was a very important job indeed. Our
LRRP teams called their own for help, not random units.
Lapolla spent the rest of the day with me, showing how to take
situation reports (sitreps) from teams in the field, and familiarizing me with
the unit codes.
I put on the headset, and acknowledged the team sitreps, copied
intelligence reports, studied the map of our current area of operations, and
drank coffee.
I knew how to get artillery or air support from my experience with
brigade and classes at the LRRP School. There was a posted list of units to
call in an emergency near the map board, giving the radio frequency and
call signs of the 4th Aviation (for helicopters), the 4th of the 42nd Artillery,
and the forward air control unit at New Pleiku Air Base.
Late on the night of the 14th, 3-Tango was mortared. ChiCom 82mm
shells came sailing in and exploding across the airstrip, and among some of
the tents and bunkers.
I heard the first few shells detonate, the concussion from them
vibrating my cot, and quickly but calmly moved to the bunker. There were
only a few of us in it, and we said little.
There were flashes that lit up the trees near the church and outlined
the tent roofs by the landing zone as the mortar shells struck. I didn’t risk
too long a look out the bunker view slit, worried a round might hit directly
outside.
 There was nothing to do during a mortar attack except sit it out. The
next morning, I learned there were only light casualties (nine wounded) and
little real damage. We had been extremely fortunate. About 70 rounds had
hit us.
A two-man LRRP team far outside the 3-Tango perimeter had
actually been close to the enemy mortar. They came in on the morning of
the 15th, telling us about how they would hear the mortar shell leave the
tube, then a few moments later, listen to it explode in 3-Tango. One of the
team was Speck, a seventeen-year-old, who had kept saying, “Those poor
bastards, those poor bastards,” over and over as we were mortared.
Without radio watch, I had no duty, so I began to settle in, and after
breakfast on the 15th, my first order of business was to draw my special
equipment from the LRRP supply tent, which was run by a full-blooded
American Indian named Sergeant Wilford Snake.
The radio bunker and the living tents formed two sides of a small
compound. At the far end was the supply tent. It appeared deserted, but I
had learned caution.
“Anybody home?” I asked, leaning over the sandbag wall across the
front of the tent and peering into the gloom inside. I could see crates of
equipment in there.
“Yeah, just a minute,” said Snake, coming from the back. He was
heavyset and wore an irritated expression.
“I’m new,” I said. “I need to get my equipment issue.”
He accepted that without further qualification and began to gather
equipment, laying it on the sandbags before me.
“One strobe light. One snap link. One survival knife, sorry I don’t
have no more sheaths. One indigenous rucksack. Four canteens. You got
your own weapon?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve got my M16.”
“You plan to keep it?” he asked. That seemed like a strange
question to me. I shrugged. “I’ve got a couple of AK’s in here, and
Littlejohn’s M2 carbine,” Snake said, “but I’m short of magazines.”
“I’ll keep my Sixteen for right now,” I said, and signed for the
equipment.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “You can buy your tigers downtown.”
I knew tiger fatigues were not issue, so it didn’t bother me that I had
to get my own. In fact, I was going to adjust to just how much on our own
we were.

Yes, the LRRP’s were a different bunch. First, they were not the
infantry in spirit or attitude. The infantry wore large mental bull’s-eyes, as
if it were their job to get shot. The LRRP’s were gunfighters, and would
have been very much at home as highwaymen or pirates.
In fact, they felt and acted as if they were a gang alone, and in their
conversations spoke of the other armies, the South Vietnamese, the North
Vietnamese … and the Americans.

15 February 1967: Afternoon - Enemy Offensive

I realized I had left the field just in time.
Mortaring of our firebases became ground fighting just after 0700
hours, and by midday a growing number of 2nd Brigade units in the field—
infantry, firebase, or convoy, was under some kind of attack.
The 1/12th and 1/22nd was getting hit hard at LZ 501N as they
assaulted in, and it took all that concentrated air strikes and artillery could
do to get an the 8th battalion, 66th NVA regiment off them. Two Hueys were
destroyed and ten damaged in the battle.

The Congressional Medal of Honor citation usually contains this

phrase: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life
above and beyond the call of duty.” On 15 February 1967, the NVA
offensive produced a 1/12th Medal of Honor winner.
Pfc. Louis E. Willett was a Brooklyn-born, 21-year old rifleman in
C-Company, 1/12th. His squad was conducting a fan patrol sweep to see if
the enemy battalion was really out of the area. The NVA were not gone.
They were regrouping and coming back. The squad was swept with heavy
automatic weapons fire and pinned down.
Despite the risk, Willett jumped up shooting, and ran to a position
where he could place highly effective fire directly on the NVA. While the
enemy was ducking, Willet’s squad was able to begin to pull back toward
the company perimeter.
Pfc. Willett did not fall back. He stayed where he was, covering the
squad’s withdrawal, but he was under heavy enemy machinegun fire. The
NVA shot Willett again and again. When Willett’s fire stopped, the enemy
quickly again pinned down the squad survivors.
 Willett struggled to sit up, and, in serious pain, began firing again.
His rifle fire was again on target, allowing his squad many of whom were
wounded, to continue to evacuate.
The NVA machine guns finally killed Willett, but his squad was able
to get away. No one saw him die. He was considered missing until the
fighting subsided, and a patrol found his body.

Bravo Company 1/22nd Infantry, “The Regulars,” at LZ 501B were

no better off than C 1/12th. The NVA were trying to overrun the Regulars at
501B. After a close-in hot exchange of fire, the NVA dropped back – for
the moment.
A 2/8th recon jeep leading a motorized patrol hit a mine out on the
road the engineers were cutting through the jungle on their dawn road-
clearing sweep, blowing it to junk. The driver and gunner were wounded.
As a rescue convoy sped to save them, the lead jeep came under
small arms fire, and a 4.2 Mortar-Carrier M113 armored personnel carrier
had a track blown off. Four more GI’s were wounded. Mines with TNT
booster charges had been used.
The general situation in the highlands since Christmas had been too
quiet, and suddenly we had action and it was getting too big for us to
handle. We knew the enemy had been working on resupplying himself.
Now we knew what for. A full offensive was underway.

I went back to Sergeant Snake and asked him for Littlejohn’s M2

carbine. He gave it to me, along with a sack of 15 and 30-round
magazines. I took it to my cot and learned how to disassemble it, adjust the
sights, and use the automatic selector switch. I didn’t want to trust the M16
on a LRRP patrol, where, if one weapon failed, it was twenty-five percent
of the firepower available.
The carbine fired what was really more of a long-case pistol bullet,
.30 caliber in diameter, meaning standard US WW2 issue. It did not have
the impact of an M16, and its fully brass-jacketed bullet was made for
penetration, not deforming or fragmenting. But it would shoot reliably 99%
of the time. I liked it.
As I worked on the carbine, I was told I would go on an overnight
two-man patrol out near a Montagnard village. My partner, a LRRP named
James Huebner, was also originally from the Second of the Eighth, and he
told me what to bring.
We would not be sleeping, so we would carry no ponchos, and we
would not eat, so we would take no food. I was to take nothing but my
weapon, magazines, and a fighting knife.
Huebner was carrying an M16 fitted with a Starlight scope, and
wearing a PRC-25 radio so we could keep in contact with the radio bunker.
Our mission was to move after dark to near one of the closest Montagnard
villages and set up a sniper position, where we could shoot any people we
saw carrying weapons. Our overnight mission passed without event, but by
daybreak, we could tell something was wrong.

There were dozens of Huey helicopters circling 3-Tango. Huebner

and I hurried back to find out what was happening.

16 February 1967: Disaster

A twin-rotor Chinook cargo helicopter brought in about thirty dead and
wounded infantrymen from the 1st of the 22nd. The Hueys landing on the
pad up the hill beside the hospital tents were dropping off wounded, and
they were landing at the rate of one helicopter every two minutes.
Huebner and I saw the dragged-in wreck of the 2/8th Recon platoon
jeep that had hit a mine on road-clearing patrol the morning prior. The
M151A1 jeep had its frame bent totally back on itself, the rear axle almost
touching the engine compartment.
I saw groups of soldiers from the 1/22nd frantically breaking open
cardboard boxes of rifle ammunition, and loading new magazines. Each
time a hundred magazines would be filled, they were bagged in ponchos
and carried up to the landing zone to be thrown on an outgoing helicopter.
 Then, word came to the LRRP radio bunker that Charlie Company,
th
2/8 , was deeply involved in combat. That was my old unit. Two of the
platoons, Braun’s First and Tauscher’s Second, were taking heavy
casualties.
I sat on my cot in the LRRP platoon area, and looked at the other
two men waiting with me. They were from infantry companies
themselves. Our friends still in those companies were cut off and fighting
for their lives. We couldn’t just sit there and let it happen. All four of us
felt the same way, and began packing our rucksacks and cramming
ammunition into our pouches. The four of us from my tent started up the
street toward the landing zone, rifles in our hands. A group of MP’s
stopped us.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” the MP sergeant
demanded.
“To the field,” I said.
“We got orders. Nobody goes up to the LZ without permission,”
said the MP.
“Get out of the way!” one of the LRRP’s with me said. “We have to
get back to our units!”
“You go to your commanding officer and get his authorization,”
barked the MP, “nobody goes up there on his own.”
“But we have to go! Those are our buddies getting killed out there!”
the young LRRP beside me said, tears of frustration in his eyes.
“What’s going on here?” demanded Lieutenant Lapolla, coming up
from behind us.
“It’s my company, they’re getting wiped out,” sobbed the young
LRRP who had been with the 1st of the 22nd. “I’ve got to go out there to
them, don’t you understand? They need everybody they can get!”
I was as emotional as the man speaking, my hand trembling as I
held my carbine. I wanted to jump on the first helicopter out, and get back
to the field to take care of my squad. Feisty little Kravitski, clumsy
Gemmel, Kircher, any or all of them might be dead by now.
“Hold on, you’re with the LRRP platoon now,” Lapolla said,
“you’re not in the infantry anymore. They can handle themselves. You’ve
got a job to do here!”
“But my company . . .” said the LRRP.
 “We’re getting our missions now. We’ll be sending out teams
today! You volunteered to do this job, now, damn it, you’re going to stick to
it,” Lapolla said.
I looked at the others. I had only just joined. I didn’t even know
them by name.
“Yes, sir,” said the trooper meekly, and walked back down the
street. We hesitated, but Lapolla and the MP’s were resolute. I went back
to my tent and put away my equipment.
A few minutes later, Lapolla came into my tent. “If you really want
to help,” he said softly, “why don’t you go up to the aid station and do what
you can for the medics? They need it.” I nodded, and Lapolla handed me a
signed pass. I walked back to the MP’s, showing them my pass, and trotted
up to the aid station.
The scene there was hellish.
The landing zone was littered with scraps of aluminum from
helicopter rotor blades. It was a small pad, and only one Huey could
comfortably set down on it at a time, but the air traffic controllers were
trying to land two or three ships at once, and there had been rotor-blade
impacts.
Several ships that had sheared their rotors were pushed off to the
side. The line of waiting helicopters fluttered and thundered endlessly up
into the sky, each one carrying wounded men who needed emergency
medical care.
As a ship landed, soldiers stormed aboard, lifting out the wounded
and moving them near the aid tents. The wounded were not on stretchers.
The stretchers had all been used hours ago. Now, it was a matter of
manhandling limp bodies—or twisting, agonized wounded, and finding a
place to lay them.
Piles of ammunition alongside the landing pad being loaded aboard
the outgoing helicopters were constantly restocked by infantrymen carrying
boxes of machine-gun belts, rifle ammunition in quick-load stripper clips,
crates of grenades, and bags of Claymore mines.

The aid tents were long since full, and the areas around them had
been covered with wounded. Bodies, some alive and some dead, lay on
sandbag walls around the tents, on top of bunkers, and in rows on the
company streets between the tents. I saw one wounded soldier, sitting
against a sandbag wall, who kept absently covering the face of a dead man
in front of him each time a helicopter would partially blow the poncho off
the corpse.
Wounded men shrieked in pain. Medics among them worked as fast
as they could, injecting morphine, checking casualty tags, and trying to
decide who would go next to surgery and who would not. Those who were
obviously dying were left on the ground. Those who had a chance were
sent into the tents where doctors and medics worked desperately to save
their lives.
Chaplains from the infantry battalions were also there, going on
their knees from man to man, trying to give words of hope, getting blood on
their hands and Bibles as they touched the boys, looking as pained as the
wounded they attended.

Some of the helicopters were wobbling in flight, going around the

others, smoking from bullet holes in their engine cowlings, trying to land
before they crashed. A few of the helicopters came in with door gunners or
crew chiefs missing, shot out of the aircraft while trying to rescue wounded
from jungle landing zones under heavy fire.
There were also wounded and dead pilots or copilots in some
helicopters; whoever was left up front who could still fly brought them
back.
Sixteen US helicopters were shot down on 16 February 1967. It was
a one-day record that would last out the war. Like the casualty lists that
played with numbers, this number of sixteen is suspect. “Shot down” did
not count choppers damaged on landing, choppers that collided with each
other, choppers that did simply not come back and no one knew what
happened to them.
Ten-gallon vats of iced Coca-Cola and Pepsi sodas were carried to
the wounded. I saw one laborer loading ammunition on the outgoing
helicopters try to get a cold Coke out of a vat, but the soldiers giving out the
cans pushed him away, shouting that the drinks were only for the wounded.
I stopped a medic, and asked him what I should do.
“What outfit you from?” he shouted above the roar of the
helicopters. I told him.
“We’re getting a lot of wounded back from the 2nd of the 8th,” he
said, “they’re over there,” and pointed. I thanked him and ran to them.
 I found a group of stunned, bloody, filthy men, some of them still
wearing part of their field equipment. All of them seemed to be alive. I
took a double handful of sodas out of the vat, and stooped in the middle of
the survivors, opening cans and thrusting them into their hands.

“What’s going on out there?” I asked.

“First platoon’s cut off,” grunted one of the men. “They’re getting
wiped out. Goddamn gooks are all over the place . . .”
A medic looked at me. “You from C-Company?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You want to take a look at these bodies?”
I followed him. He led me to a group of poncho-covered corpses.
“They sent these guys in this morning. Do you know any of them? Are
they from C-company?” he asked.
I lifted the poncho over each face. Their hair was matted with dried
blood. Dirt stuck to their cheeks and some of them had open shrapnel rips
in their skin.
“No,” I said. “These guys might be with the engineers. I don’t
know who they are.” I probably couldn’t have identified the men had they
been from my own squad. Violent death changes more of a person’s
appearance than you might expect.
“We’re expecting a big load of bodies tonight or tomorrow,” said the
medic. “We won’t start getting them until some of this shit dies down. Got
to get the wounded out first.”
I worked the rest of the day moving wounded, giving water to those
the medics said could take it, separating the ones who died from those who
were still alive, and listening to disjointed, incredible tales of death and
survival from the stricken soldiers lying on the dirt. The finite human
beings we laid on the ground and sandbags bled their way toward eternity,
the spark of life in them dimming even as I watched.
I remember the worst of it came when we ran out of places to put
the casualties. Every ledge, bunker roof, street, and alley had been
occupied, and still the helicopters kept coming.

Enemy weapons were sent back. There were all types, AK-47s,
SKS’s, RPD light machine guns, Tokarev pistols, even cans of ammunition
and hand grenades. Many of the weapons were battle-damaged, with bullet
holes in their stocks and shrapnel scars on the metal. Some of them were
burned by napalm to metal skeletons.

Most of the ammunition was still in new paper packages, evidence

of the recent resupply. I realized how crazy our politicians were to agree to
any cease-fire that would allow the enemy to prepare himself for an
offensive like this. President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara
had done it simply to try and look good. We were dying for concern over
their public images.
I had heard that politicians were stupid and dangerous. Now I
believed it. They were as much my enemy as the North Vietnamese. To
live through Vietnam, I had to survive all that my side and the enemy
combined could throw at me.
When I walked back down the road to the LRRP platoon, I went
directly to the radio bunker and asked for news of Charlie Company.
All we could learn was from the radio traffic. It seemed the 1st
platoon had been isolated and was under siege, with the rest of the company
trying to break through to them.
They were in the area near the road-security firebase. They had
been on patrol going to the river. I knew very well what the terrain was
like. The trees were double canopy, too dense even for smoke grenades to
be seen through.
It was all happening exactly where I was just weeks ago, where
we’d found the Yard girl. It was 3000 meters from the firebase down to the
river. One platoon patrol to the river every day.

17-19 February 1967: Heavy Casualties

One of the LRRP teams sent out on the 16th quickly ran into the
NVA on the 19th, killed three of them, and managed to get extracted by
helicopter back here to safety. Struthers, a black LRRP, was point man for
the team. He saw the enemy first and killed all of them himself. He said
they were on a water run, carrying canteens for their unit.
The second team, with young Speck on it, was flown out to their
target area, but their helicopter hovered too high, actually over the treetops.
Speck hesitated, realizing they were too high. The door gunner
pushed him and he fell out of the helicopter, through the branches, and hit
the ground, spraining his ankle. He lay there, looking up at the hole he had
made in the tree limbs. The Huey was still hovering, just above the hole.
Speck lifted his M16, and later told me that if the chopper had tried to fly
away, “I would have brought the son of a bitch down myself.”
In the ship, one of the team grabbed the door gunner in a headlock,
and jumped out, taking the crewman with him, and the rest of the team
followed.
The LRRP team carried Speck to a hiding place, pushing the
confused, frightened, and weaponless door-gunner along, and they radioed
for an extraction at dawn.
The brigade had so many Huey helicopters damaged or shot down
by the morning of the 17th they were becoming scarce. Resupply missions
and Dustoffs (code for pickup of wounded) had priority over everything,
which included LRRP team insertions, so I did not go on patrol.
I went to the Charlie Company 2/8th orderly room and supply tent
they maintained at 3-Tango, which was not far from the LRRP platoon area,
and asked for news on the 1st platoon. There were two unwounded
survivors there from the battle, and one, Dresden, told me the story. This
account is pieced together from Dresden’s own words, an interview Braun
made very soon after the fight, with a news organization, and an 08 April
1967 “Combat Operations After Action Report” declassified in 1991,
written by LTC Gordon Duquemin, 2/8th battalion commander, and Captain
Nobel himself. The report is as revealing as an autopsy.

At 0730, LT Braun had taken his 32-man platoon out of the firebase
down toward the river, as all of the platoons had done so often. 21 of them
would be killed in the upcoming action. All but two of the survivors would
be wounded. Braun’s men would kill 86 NVA by actual body count,
meaning where you could walk up and kick the corpse. No one knows how
many others were dragged away and hidden in the night following the
battle.

It was a three-thousand-meter walk, the ground nearer the river low

and damp, grown over with thick vegetation. The After Action Report on
the battle describes the terrain as “rolling, with deep ravines, dense
undergrowth, tall trees, and a heavy double canopy. Observation was 10-15
meters.” According to the After Action report, Braun was supposed to
zigzag his platoon to cover several key areas, and rejoin the company by
dark.
C-Companies 2nd platoon, the one I had just left to join the LRRP’s,
along with part of 3rd platoon and the company HQ, exited the firebase at
0745, walked until 0915, and set up what was intended to be an overnight
position. The 2nd platoon then patrolled out south, also down toward the
river, on their own.
At 1027 hours, the trouble started. The 2nd platoon flankers engaged
an NVA recon team and killed two of the three men they saw, but the NVA
killed one GI. The 2nd platoon captured two AK-47’s, a Chinese compass,
and a sketch of the firebase.
News of the second platoon’s enemy contact should have made
Braun careful. He had chosen a route commonly used by the river patrols
because it was easier walking than the other terrain.
At about 1245 hours, the 1st platoon had stopped to take a short
break in place, standing up. Braun sent out a scout to the left and right
flanks, letting the men relax while they waited.
One scout came back, saying he had seen nothing unusual. The
other scout returned at almost the same time, saying he had found evidence
of recent chopping and cutting of the jungle foliage.
As the man spoke, the platoon was hit with a barrage of automatic
fire. Dresden said he thought at least half the men in the platoon were hit in
a matter of seconds.
Everyone able in the platoon hit the dirt and tried to fire back, but
they were caught on low ground. Braun shouted for the platoon to carry or
drag the wounded and try to get to higher ground. Enemy fire came down
on them from uphill, where they had walked past camouflaged North
Vietnamese ambushers.
The platoon couldn’t make it to higher ground. They were trapped
where they were, so they organized a hasty defense perimeter and tried to
hold.
 The NVA made two major assaults on the platoon perimeter just
coming at them screaming and yelling. The GI’s knocked them down with
small arms and M79 fire. But the assaults were too costly. They stopped the
attacks and Braun and his men could hear the NVA officers trying to get
their troops to make another rush, but it didn’t work. They reverted to
stealth. They crawled out one or two men at a time, threw grenades inside
the American perimeter, and then crawled back. The GI’s killed a few of
them as they doing this. One NVA crawled up on the platoon perimeter and
Owen Mapes shot him in the leg. When the wounded NVA’s two comrade
buddies came up to help him Mapes just emptied an M16 magazine full
automatic and killed all three of them.
Captain Nobel responded to their radio plea for help by recalling the
2 and 3rd platoons, so they could go to the aid of the embattled 1st platoon.
nd

Helicopters were dispatched to pick up the two platoons, but could not
move them quickly, because there was no place to land. The GI’s had to
walk to a suitable LZ.
Nobel was right there with the 2nd and 3rd platoons, CAR-15 in hand,
going in to save his men.
Artillery and air support, including F4 Phantoms, A1-E Skyraiders,
and Puff the Magic Dragon with its triple miniguns, was called to help. The
problem was the dense forest. With the trees so close together and so
heavily canopied, aircraft and helicopter overflights could not even see the
ground.
Trying to get accurate artillery fire around the 1st platoon was
difficult. Shells hit in the tops of the trees and exploded. Puff would not
fire too close to the platoon, because of the tremendous spread of his
“beaten zone.”
By the time Captain Noel and the 2nd and 3rd platoons could get
aboard helicopters, fly out to a usable landing zone near the battle, and
begin to walk toward it, most of the men in the ambushed platoon were
already wounded and many were dead. By 1440 hours, the second platoon
was being hit with enemy mortar fire, and rushing waves of NVA infantry.

Spec-4 Jones, who carried an M79, was hit in the leg, in an artery.
He asked Braun to tie a tourniquet around his knee. He was bleeding out
fast. Braun was on the radio, too busy, and trying to help with the
tourniquet, but was doing no good. . “The hell with it.” Jones said, “I’ll fire
all my ammunition then I’ll just die.” He blew three snipers out of trees, cut
them apart with canister rounds from his M79 then just put his head down
and died.

With tears in his eyes, Dresden told me how withering the enemy
fire had been, clipping through the leaves, tearing the brush apart.
Wounded men were hit, and then hit again.

Staff Sergeant Elmilindo Smith, Braun’s platoon sergeant, got hit with
B40 rockets and he was bleeding out his eyes and ears but he was still
directing fire for his men. “There’s one over there. Get ‘em. Get ‘em.” He
was yelling, his cool head and leadership killed about a dozen NVA. Braun
did little shooting, staying on the radio, mostly trying to get help. But the
radio is a weapon.
Braun was working to get support in there, talking to the company
that was coming. He believed he was going to get overrun. The company
was so far away, he didn’t think they could hold long enough to be relieved
in time. He knew we were getting hit with a couple companies. The NVA
mortars were falling all over his perimeter.

“Our perimeter got smaller and smaller,” Dresden said. “We kept
crawling closer together,”
Braun himself had been hit in the arm with mortar shrapnel, and was
bleeding, but stayed on the radio, pleading with Captain Nobel for help.
Nobel tried to reassure him, telling him he was only eight hundred meters
away, then seven hundred, and so on. Nobel’s men were ducking fire from
snipers, but still advancing. Three men from the rescue point squad went
down wounded by machine gun fire, but the squad overran the machine
gun, killing two NVA and capturing their gun and ammunition.
Braun said, “Everybody who died around me or was too wounded to
move, I started getting all their mail and their pictures and I was just going
to light a bonfire so dink wouldn’t get that stuff. Myself, I had my watch off
and my wedding band off. I was about to just blow it all up with me rather
than let dink get it. He definitely wasn’t going to get us.”

Finally, Braun made his last radio call. He said, “I’ve only got four
men left. Put the artillery on my position.”
 Then, Dresden told me, Braun took a grenade, held it to his
stomach, and contracted into a fetal position.
“Why did he do that?” I asked.
“The dinks were coming through shooting the wounded,” Dresden
said. “Braun figured when they got to him he might be able to take a few
with him.”
The US artillery began to crash in, blowing down the trees, and
forcing the enemy soldiers away. The shelling continued until Captain
Nobel stopped it. It was about 1500 hours when an M60 machine gunner
and a few men from 2nd platoon actually made it to the 1st platoon.
“We shot at the 2nd platoon’s point man when they broke through to
us,” Dresden told me. “We were crazy then, we were shooting everything.
The captain and his men came running in anyway, trying to throw up a
defense perimeter. They found Braun, and got the grenade out of his hand.
He had passed out.”
It was not over. The NVA counterattacked Nobel’s position again
and again, using B-40 rockets, mortars, and sustained machine gun fire.
Nobel and his men held, calling in artillery, only able to mark their position
for a Forward Air Control observation plane with star-cluster M79 shells
fired straight up out of the trees.
By 1845 hours, the NVA had quit and were in flight, pounded by our
artillery even as they fell back.
The After Action Report states that 114 NVA were killed, and 23
Americans died and 21 were wounded. Keep in mind the big bite came out
of the 1st platoon. The After Action Report does not refer in any way to the
wiping out or massacre of the 1st platoon or any platoon. Instead, it calls
“the mission” (presumably Nobel’s rescue) a success, and reads:
“In the final analysis, the officers, non-commissioned-officers, and
men were a credit to the fighting spirit of the American soldier. They
reacted promptly and aggressively to every situation, and fought with grim
determination to defeat the enemy.”
There is a last macabre detail. Over a dozen of the M16 rifles
recovered from Braun’s platoon were found jammed, most of them with
cartridge cases stuck in their chambers. This is not in the After Action
Report. What it specifically says about the M16 in the battle is:
 “Fighting at close range, the M16 distinctly proved its value. As
charging NVA were hit by the M16, they were stopped by the impact.”

Skipping ahead a little, in May 1967, a Marine wrote home about

the M16.

“...believe it or not, you know what killed most of

us? Our own rifle. Before we left Okinawa, we were all
issued this new rifle, the M16. Practically everyone of our
dead was found with his rifle torn down next to him where
he had been trying to fix it. There was a newspaper woman
with us photographing all this and the Pentagon found out
about it and won’t let her publish the pictures. They say
that they don’t want to get the American people upset. Isn’t
that a laugh?”

Photos taken by Catherine Leroy of disabled M16 rifles and dead

Americans were published in Paris Match magazine, fueling outrage for the
congressional investigation to come.
I knew many of the men in the 1st platoon. Little Beaty, who had
carried an M79 grenade launcher, “Batman” Batson, Powell, Sergeant Bob
Coffey, Sergeant Smith. . . almost all of them.
Staff Sergeant Elmelindo Smith, a Hawaiian, and one of those
killed, won the Medal of Honor in that massacre. His citation reads:

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the

risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. During a
reconnaissance patrol, his platoon was suddenly engaged
by intense machine gun fire hemming in the platoon on 3
sides. A defensive perimeter was hastily established, but
the enemy added mortar and rocket fire to the deadly
fusillade and assaulted the position from several
directions. With complete disregard for his safety, P/SGT.
Smith moved through the deadly fire along the defensive
line, positioning soldiers, distributing ammunition and
encouraging his men to repel the enemy attack. Struck to
the ground by enemy fire which caused a severe shoulder
 wound, he regained his feet, killed the enemy soldier and
continued to move about the perimeter. He was again
wounded in the shoulder and stomach but continued
moving on his knees to assist in the defense. Noting the
enemy massing at a weakened point on the perimeter, he
crawled into the open and poured deadly fire into the enemy
ranks. As he crawled on, he was struck by a rocket.
Moments later, he regained consciousness, and drawing on
his fast dwindling strength, continued to crawl from man to
man. When he could move no farther, he chose to remain in
the open where he could alert the perimeter to the
approaching enemy. P/SGT. Smith perished, never
relenting in his determined effort against the enemy. The
valorous acts and heroic leadership of this outstanding
soldier inspired those remaining members of his platoon to
beat back the enemy assaults. P/SGT. Smith’s gallant
actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the
U.S. Army and they reflect great credit upon him and the
Armed Forces of his country.”

Had the massacre of the platoon been Braun’s fault? Was he being
careless with his men again? I had caught him lax before, lying to the
captain. I wished I had reported him, but it was too late.
For the battle, Second Lieutenant Conrad Braun was awarded the
Distinguished Service Cross, which is just under the Medal of Honor. He
earned it making that last stand.
It was time to go back to the LRRP platoon area. The Bravo
Company tent was beside Charlie Company, and as I was saying my good-
byes, I noticed a largish bear cub waddling past the sandbags. It was
explained to me that was Bravo bear, Bravo Company’s mascot. They had
killed its mother while on an operation, and, out of guilt, had taken the cub
to raise. I could only imagine the surprise of the line trooper who had
happened across a mad mother bear, but obviously his M16 had been
enough of a match.
One of the Bravo Company soldiers asked me if I wanted my
picture taken with the cub. He had a camera in his hand.
Bravo sat with his back toward us, ignoring everybody.
 “Turn him around,” said the man with the camera. I knelt and
touched Bravo, who whirled around and had his teeth in my hand so
quickly I didn’t have the chance to jump back. Bravo was not a dog. He
was a bear, and he was not playing. His sharp teeth were sinking into my
hand.
I hit the bear with the butt of my rifle, a bit awkward because I was
holding it left-handed, and continued to hit him between the ears until he let
go.
The soldiers were howling with laughter. I was apparently one more
sucker who had fallen for the get-your-picture-taken-with-Bravo trick.
Embarrassed and angry, and still sick about the 1st platoon, I walked
away.

The Difference Between Knowing and Realizing

Sitting alone in my tent, for the first time the grief of this war hit me
hard. I had seen action before, I had been scared, and I had felt sympathy
for people I knew whom were harmed. Yet, I had dealt with all that on
some higher intellectual level. The loss of the 1st platoon went straight to
my heart. I was immobilized, blinded.
I finally realized the tragedy and depth of loss. It was the full
emotional impact of realizing, not just knowing, what all this truly meant.
All those men were dead today, and they would be dead tomorrow, and they
would be dead years from now as this war was argued about by people in
safe places.
When you took casualties you kept going anyway, kept going
especially because of them, you carried the fight to the enemy and you
made him pay. Something had to happen. I turned my grief not to anger, or
even hate, but revenge. I would kill as many NVA as I could. Perfection
would be to match the 1st platoon body count, man by man. It was a fantasy
born of pain.
Then a switch flipped within me. I remembered my lesson from the
padded machine gun barrel. The NVA got hungry, tired, and thirsty, just
like me. By exploiting his humanity, I could hunt and kill him more
effectively.
The thought was cold and satisfying.

17 February 1967:2300 Hours, LZ 3-Tango

 I volunteered to go up to the LZ and help with the loading. Most of
the men in the body bags came from the 2nd of the 8th.
It was almost midnight, and Lieutenant Lapolla and I waited on the
landing zone near the aid tents. It was quiet now. I wanted to help my old
company out just one last time.
I had a battery-powered lamp in each hand, and walked forward
when we heard the big Chinook helicopter coming. I began to swing the
lamps so the pilot would see me. The Chinook came down, the blast from
its twin rotors staggering me as I signaled for the pilot to hover, descend,
and touch down.
As the pilot cut the engines, two trucks from Graves Registration
drove in behind the big helicopter, and the Chinook’s cargo door lowered.
On the trucks were over seventy bodies, each one zipped inside a heavy
green vinyl bag, and identified with a graves registration tag. I could read
their names on the tags as they were carried past me.
I held my lamps up so the work party could see to carry the body
bags off the trucks and inside the helicopter. Each time they laid a bag
down, I could hear the corpse’s head hit the deck separately—until one of
the infantrymen helping unload threatened the graves crew with their own
mortality if they did not show more respect for his friends in the bags.
Braun made the news.

NEWS ITEM: 18 February 1967

GI’S ASK FOR FIRE ON OWN POSITION

SAIGON (UPI) A Communist battalion overran a U.S.

infantry platoon in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands
Thursday. The desperate Americans called in artillery fire
on their own positions and then fell silent.
Radio contact with the platoon was broken. It was
not clear whether the American casualties resulted from
artillery fire or from fierce hand-to-hand combat with the
400-man Communist battalion attacking the platoon.
The platoon’s parent company watched helplessly a
mere 200 yards away, pinned down by Communist gunfire
and unable to come to the rescue of the infantrymen. The
 action came on the day that American dead in the Vietnam
War went beyond 10,000.”

SOG, Project DELTA and our LRRP Platoon

MACV-SOG was engaged in highly classified operations across
Southeast Asia, but for deniability, exempted from missions inside South
Vietnam. Internal missions were run by the Special Forces “Greek Letter”
projects, of which DELTA was the first.
DELTA was a spin-off from SOG. The CIA-created Special
Operations Group used the cover title “Studies and Observations Group” in
reports and documents. It was supposed to appear to be a think-tank
function. Because the US military had other special operations forces
around the world, for Southeast Asia the actual designation was MACV-
SOG, or Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies and Observation
Group.
Gen. Peers was in progress of linking us, the 2nd Brigade LRRP
platoon, and the 5th SFG for combined operations because he had an idea
and was finding a way to prove it. Taken in one sense, Peers was looking
for Special Forces performance from volunteer grunts on the cheap. He
was going to be proven right, but in mid-February 1967, none of us knew
what he was thinking.

A common misunderstanding today about MACV-SOG is the

assumption that it was strictly a Special Forces unit. While DELTA was all
Special Forces, and most of the people in SOG were SF troopers, SOG was
a joint service “unconventional warfare” task force.

18 February 1967: Special Mission Volunteers

There was a call for all of us not on patrol to go to the brigade-
briefing tent, and I walked there, wondering what was going on. We were
told to take seats on the benches facing the warboard, the same one I used
to keep posted. Colonel Judson Miller, the 2nd Brigade commander, had
been moved up to 4th Division Chief of Staff in January, replaced by Col.
Adamson but was here now, with several of the headquarters officers
waiting for us to assemble.
A captain began the talk, speaking about the value of LRRP units,
and how we were such an asset to our brigade and division, but he was just
the warm-up for Colonel Miller, who took the stage in front of the
warboard.
He told us how proud he was of us, what a good reputation his
LRRP platoon had, and how other units admired us. His praise was
welcome, but suspect. Commanding officers rarely get the troops together
to brag on them to their faces.
Miller detailed some of the missions that impressed him, naming
names, smiling, sometimes walking up to individual soldiers and touching
their arms respectfully.
We were unaware that General Peers, 4th Division commander, was
making a case to General Westmoreland that our little provisional platoon
was the template for all LRRP units to come, beginning with MACV first
and second Field Force LRRP units that would be formed many months
later. We were being groomed.
Miller got a few laughs with easy jokes, and he promised
recognition for our good work. Then, still with no specific point made, he
dismissed us. We went back to our tents feeling appreciated and capable,
but we wouldn’t really know why we had gotten the glad hand, until the
next day.

Test Mission
“Hey, we got a formation outside,” somebody said as he walked
through my tent. I looked up from where I lay on my cot and frowned.
Damn, I didn’t feel like any interruptions. But the guys were stirring,
pulling on shirts and flop hats. I saw them moving through both tent
doorways. Everybody seemed to be gathering on the far side of the tents
near the company street. I ducked out under the tent flaps and took a place
in the group. There were only about a dozen or so of us in now. One team
was out on patrol, and with R & R, wounded, and schools, that accounted
for everybody. We stood quietly, bored with the heat and with the army.
 Lieutenant Lapolla and a stranger wearing clean unmarked fatigues
walked in front of our little band of renegades, and I realized there was
going to be more to this than a petty ass-chewing.
The attention level of the men perked up when Lapolla spoke.
“We’ve got an unusual mission we need volunteers for.”
Volunteers? We were all volunteers! Nobody was in LRRP because
he was forced into it. I thought you just raised your hand once and after
that they sent you wherever they wanted.
“This mission is out of artillery, radio, and air support range. You
can only make contact with an aircraft twice daily by radio. There may be
no helicopters to get you out.” The lieutenant was serious. He let us
consider what he had said for a moment. “All we need now is one team.
We can’t tell you where you’ll be going until the mission briefing. Okay,
who’ll volunteer?”
There was a pause as we looked at each other, questions in our
eyes. Then, as a group, we all raised our hands. Every one of us.
The stranger looked at Lapolla. He smiled. “Okay. Thank you.
We’ll pick who we want and let you know this afternoon.”
We drifted back to our tents, I lay down and went to sleep again.
They only picked unmarried men for that mission. It was a melodramatic
gesture. Dead is dead on either side of the border.
There were large, years-old NVA supply, training, hospital, and
headquarters bases just over the border, west into Cambodia, and northwest
into Laos.
No one told us so officially at the time, if you could call any of this
“provisional” enterprise official, but we had just begun working with SOG.
You will recall that DELTA ran special missions inside South Vietnam and
SOG ran them outside South Vietnam. In reality, cross-border patrols were
something of a gray area. South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all
happened to come together in the mountains west of Kontum. What did a
few kilometers one way or the other mean on old maps anyway?
Before LEAPING LENA turned into DELTA, their patrol area was
the South Viet-Laos border west of Kontum. Right where the 2nd Brigade
Area of Operations was now. After DELTA’s formation, they began
patrolling from Pleiku to the border. No one else was up there, and enemy
activity was plentiful. A patrol alone in Laos was no less alone in western
Kontum Province.
 But why use us, a Brigade-level provisional LRRP platoon? The
surprising answer was not that we were being turned over to work with the
Special Forces, it was the Special Forces were being assigned to work with
us. General Peers had received permission from Westmoreland to use
Special Forces recon “assets” in support of 4th Division operations, and
merged us with DELTA.
All of the SF camps became 4th Division recon outposts. Our own
brigade LRRP teams, who had sometimes operated out of SF “A” camps
anyway, now would do it with a much higher degree of coordination.
Battalion LRRP’s continued working for the infantry battalions. They also
took up the slack we created by working with DELTA.
One of the men I knew on that first “over the fence” mission was
Holloway. He was black, and a gung-ho LRRP. The team was briefed the
night before the mission. I asked him what they were about to do.”
“C’mon, man. They got us sworn to secrecy,” he said.
We watched them take off the next morning from the brigade LZ.
Within half an hour, radio traffic revealed they were on their way back.
Holloway and his team returned very shortly. They had never even gotten
out of the helicopter.
I was waiting at the airstrip when they landed. Everybody aboard
the helicopter was excited. “You should have seen those missiles!”
Holloway said, holding his hands spread apart as far as he could. “They
were this big!”
He said they had flown over the border toward their target area, their
mission pure reconnaissance. His Huey had been escorted by two
gunships. Close to the target area, they were fired on with ground-to-air
rockets, probably Soviet Strelas. Infrared guided.
The pilots banked the helicopters sharply and raced back to 3-
Tango. Someone told me later that under missile attack, the gunships ran
off and left the insertion slick.
A secondary target area had been plotted, and the team was ordered
to leave and reinsert. They did this doubtfully, because having to abort the
first attempt had left them with a feeling the mission was unlucky.
The helicopter dropped Holloway and his team into a bomb crater
just over the Cambodian border. It was dusk now, and rain was beginning
to fall. Attracted by the sound of the helicopter, North Vietnamese moved
in from several directions. Holloway’s team saw them coming, and hid
themselves in a large bush near the crater.
For hours in the dark, with heavy rain coming down, the NVA
searched for that recon team, guessing they were close to the bomb crater.
Holloway and the team stayed in the bush, not moving or speaking, while
the enemy walked all around them. Holloway said that it just before dawn
that the NVA finally moved on.

When the first chance for a radio contact came, the LRRP’s talked to
the relay aircraft over their area, requesting emergency extraction. They
were picked up out of the same bomb crater, soaking wet, shivering from
the near catastrophe.
Our first over-the-border mission taught us a lot. We changed to
“walkover” missions, not air insertion. Being located as close as we were
to the borders, it was easy for one of our teams to drop near the border and
make a slow, careful penetration by foot, using a weaving motion to cross
and recross the border, checking on supply and infiltration routes.

Working with SOG-DELTA brought changes to our platoon. Within

the next few days, we received several teams of Montagnard Rhade
mercenaries, weapons, and allocations for our men to receive special
training, and an Air Force and Special Forces liaison.
The weapons were new Colt Commando XM177E1’s, the short
version of the XM16E1 rifle I had carried during the SAWS weapons test.
They were now issue for Special Forces and Special Operations units. We
were also given specially built M14 sniper equipped with powerful
telescopic sights.
The Special Forces liaison officer was there helping us to check in
our new personnel and equipment. As the Montagnard mercs erected their
tents, Sgt. John Griswold, our LRRP platoon sergeant, watched them with
some misgivings.
When the liaison man asked him what procedures we would use in
employing the mercenaries, Griswold replied, “I don’t know. My people
have never worked with the NVA before.” It was a classic slip of the tongue.
We received fifty of the new Colt Commandos. We called them
CAR-15’s, a misnomer from an early designation Colt had used, the Colt-
Armalite Rifle 15. From the SAWS tests I knew the actual name of the
XM177E1 was Colt Commando, and it was stamped on the receiver, but to
all the troops it was the CAR-15.
Each man in the platoon, about twenty of us, were given a CAR-15,
but the remainder went to brigade officers and friends of brigade officers as
swag.
In the days following this new gift of weapons and men, our status
became clear. The Montagnard mercs were to operate as guides and scouts
with us. This was their home ground, their tribes living from the highlands
of Vietnam to the jungled mountains of Cambodia.
They were short, strong men who smiled a lot and carried M1 and
M2 carbines. They wore green fatigues and obsolete U.S. web gear, and
most had a colorful checkered pattern bandanna knotted loosely around the
neck.
Some of our men volunteered to work with the Yards, but I had my
reservations. I was making decisions concerning my one and only ass, and
I told Griswold I didn’t want to go on patrol with the Yards until I knew
more about their habits.
I was assigned to an all-American team. My team leader was to be a
sergeant E5 named Hill, but he was on a mission and I had to wait to meet
him.

20 February 1967: Sgt. Hill

Back at 3-Tango, I had listened to several of the experienced men in
the platoon discussing Sergeant Hill. We had the option, in our all-
volunteer unit, of refusing to go out with a man we felt was unsafe or
incapable. Both Clark and Hart, two of the platoon’s original members,
apparently didn’t like Hill. On the 16th, Clark, Hart, and I had been
assigned to go with Hill, and they had flatly refused. Luckily, the mission
was canceled.
I reserved judgment on Hill, and waited until I could meet him. All
I knew about him was that he was an E5 from the 1/12th Red Warriors who
had joined the platoon sometime in January. I found Hill reading a map
behind the ammo bunker, and sat down beside him. “Hi,” I said, “I’m
Frank Camper. Lapolla told me I’m on your team. What’s your first
name?” I asked. I extended my hand, but he ignored it.
“Call me Sergeant Hill,” he said.
 I felt an instant dislike for him. Petty formalities between team
members were unnecessary.
“I understand you’re new at this,” Hill said, “so I want you to keep
your mouth shut and follow orders. We’re going into a hot area, and I can’t
afford any mistakes.”
We were to be Team 4, our mission to try to locate the North
Vietnamese headquarters group for the enemy divisions that had been
attacking us.
The NVA divisions themselves were pulling back into Cambodia,
hurt badly from our airpower and artillery, and our infantry was now on the
offensive, pursuing them as they retreated.
Reinforcements were flying into Pleiku from the 25th Division and
the 173rd Airborne to assist the 4th. We needed all the help we could get.
“Better be careful,” Harmon told me when I entered my tent to
pack. “I heard old Victor Charlie don’t people snooping around out there.”
I managed a laugh I didn’t feel as I placed my new indigenous NVA
canvas rucksack on the end of my cot. Packing for a mission was a
science. Each pocket and each pouch of your load-carrying equipment and
uniform had to be filled with just the right items. Attention to detail and
professionalism equaled survival. The ritual was life insurance.
Lightness was important. What would I need? No spare clothing.
Nothing extra that did not contribute directly to my ability to move, shoot,
or communicate.
I decided to take my new CAR-15 with me instead of Littlejohn’s
carbine, and counted out 14 twenty-round magazines from my mortar box,
checking each one for fresh ammunition.
I had four fragmentation grenades, but went to the supply tent for
two smoke grenades, a red for enemy contact and a green for general
signaling. I tucked an international orange marker panel and two hand-held
skyrocket flares in with ten packets of long-range patrol rations, the original
dehydrated type.
I topped off the rucksack load with a tightly rolled poncho, and tied
the flap down securely. In the outside rucksack pockets, I stored three
canteens.
I clipped and snapped all the webgear together, hanging it over my
shoulders by the suspenders, leaving the belt unfastened for the time being.
I packed the magazines into the pouches and attached the grenades to the
rings’ and straps of the webgear. I took a roll of green fabric tape and taped
the handles down on all the grenades, and the straps together from his
ammunition pouches up the suspenders of the harness.
Finally, I shouldered the rucksack, and tested the weight of the
entire rig. It was heavy, but it rode well. I picked up my new CAR-15, and
felt ready.
Then I took off my gear and lay down on my cot fully dressed,
trying to sleep. It seemed like an hour before I lost track of outside noises
and the men coming and going in my tent, but in reality, it was only
minutes. I did not dream.

21 February 1967: Catch Us If You Can

Someone shook me out of my sleep. It was still dark.
“Let’s go,” Hill said.
In the chill of the night highlands air, I rolled out of my bunk,
quickly slipped on my equipment, and met Hill and the others on the dark
landing zone beside brigade headquarters.
An aircrew was boarding a Huey slick on the LZ. I wished I had
some coffee. We trundled into the Huey, its cold metal deck wet with dew.
The pilot and copilot flipped switches, and with a smooth whine, the main
rotors began to turn, gathering speed. The crew chief and door gunner wore
quilted nylon flight jackets, not a bad idea for a chilly morning.
The pilot watched his gauges, warming up the transmission. The
rotors whirled faster now, vibrating the ship, cutting the air with a whistle.
In the dark, our running lights seemed unusually bright, reflecting off the
rotor blades above us, making flashing ghost images on the ground. The
deck rocked, and my stomach sank as we went up, banked, and out of the
open door I could see the countless tent roofs of the Oasis. In a few
moments, as we climbed higher, were in a sky that had gone from dark to
pearl dawn.
The rising sun was behind us, illuminating the moist cloudbanks we
flew through with streaks of silver and pink. I took the moment to
appreciate it, a vision of beauty at altitude.
With Hill and I were John Payne and Bill Steffens. I hadn’t been
out with any of them. Hill carried an M16. The rest of us had CAR-15’s.
We rode with our rucksacks on, our soft hats rolled and stuck inside our
shirts because the slipstream would have ripped them off our heads.
 After a twenty-minute flight into the Plei Trap valley, we banked
again, and in the half-light saw one of our muddy, miserable, artillery
firebases below. The morning cook fires around its perimeter looked like
flickering yellow dots as the infantry heated their C-rations.
The pilot dropped us quickly into the perimeter, and we jumped out
and ran from under the whirling rotors, which could dip to something less
than six feet at the tips, conditions permitting.
An officer, who looked as haggard as the infantrymen huddled
around their bunkers, walked out to meet us. He and Hill shouted at each
other in the racket made by the helicopter, trying to make themselves
understood. Outgoing mail and a few soldiers boarded the Huey. The
officer waved, and walked back to the command bunker. Hill told us to find
a place and get comfortable, that there was no mission for us yet. The Huey
lifted up and was gone.
I was disappointed. The drama and effort of the flight, the
anticipation, the lightness in my stomach, had all been for nothing. We
could just as well have slept late, had breakfast, and caught a flight of
convenience to this hill. I dropped my ruck, and unpacked enough to find
my C4 and boil some water in my canteen cup for coffee. After I drank it, I
covered myself with my poncho liner and went to sleep.
The NVA were still busy. Bravo Company 2/8th was in heavy
contact not far away from us, locked up with the NVA K6 battalion. Bravo
Company lost 8 men killed and 61 wounded.
Hill didn’t get our mission until that afternoon. We were told to
wait until dark, then leave the perimeter, moving as a night patrol to the top
of another hill several kilometers away, and be in position there by dawn.
From the hill we would have a view of the valley, and we would
stay there and observe. The valley was on the Cambodian border, and was
used by the North Vietnamese for infiltration.
Except for the night patrol part, it sounded like a good mission.
As we spent the afternoon resting and talking, I studied the infantry
with a perspective I had not had before. I saw them now as mud-streaked
victims in ill-fitting jungle fatigues, wearing hot, heavy helmets. They
often had the eyes of doomed souls, eyes that showed little to no hope.
At chow that afternoon I was surprised to see Bessesi, a 2nd Brigade
Headquarters and Headquarters Company cook I remembered. I’d never
known him to be out of sight of brigade headquarters, much less out at a
firebase where the war was. “What are you doing way out here?” I asked.
“Living in a deep hole in the ground,” he said. “Come over and see
it.”
I took my chow and followed him to a bunker entrance. We walked
down steps into a miniature cavern. It was ten feet deep, and roofed over
with metal and timbers. All of his cooking supplies and equipment were
stored there.
“Fancy,” I said.
“I’m not taking no chances,” Bessesi said.
As soon as the evening shadows were deep enough, the sun down
behind the mountains, our four-man team walked out of the firebase
perimeter. The infantry along the bunker line wished us luck.
We moved down the hill in the dark, going into the trees, gently
rustling the bushes as we felt our way forward. Night patrolling was the
most dangerous work of all. Under the canopy of trees, it was totally black,
and anyone listening nearby could hear us going cross-country through
terrain that would have been difficult to penetrate in daylight.
All we could do was go slow, step carefully, and grope ahead of
ourselves like blind men. The dark abyss of the night hid the possible
ambushes, like so many traps set for the unwary, the perfect example of the
valley of the shadow of death.
I had experience at night movement, and after a rest break, took
point. I held my compass in my left hand and my CAR-15 in my right. Hill
counted pace, to keep track of our distance covered. I placed one foot out at
a time, shifting my balance, holding still and listening for a moment, then
doing it again. I could not see where I was going.
The pack straps of the canvas NVA rucksack I wore folded into
knifelike edges and cut into my shoulders, hurting badly. I had to get a
frame for it. Every step was pain. I had no hope of relief. At such a point,
pain becomes eternal. Isn’t hell pain without hope? I hoped for numbness. It
never came.
My luminous compass dial seemed bright in the almost complete
darkness, casting a soft green glow on my hand and face. I kept the
compass dial under my nose, refusing to divert from the correct course
regardless of the difficulty of the terrain. I could see the night sky above in
gaps between the trees.
 Heavy breathing and the breaking of brush behind me told me the
team was struggling along. Hill had to keep reaching and touching my pack
to stay in contact. I was the blind leading the blind, probably right into a
midnight burst of AK-47 fire, our reward for this most stupid of judgment
errors.

22 February 1967: ARC LIGHT

Sometime after midnight, the terrain began to rise and I knew we

were going up our mountain. I climbed onward, forced to sling my
weapon, my hands needed to grasp trees and rocks for support. The
mountain was rugged and steep. I could hear the noises of uprooted vines
caught by our feet and the scattering of pebbles we dislodged dropping
down the incline, knowing a fall could mean serious injury.
Hill stopped me on a small, level bit of ground. “It’s almost three in
the morning,” he said, “the top of this motherfucker can’t be far. We’ll stay
here until we can see.” That was fine with me. I eased out of my pack, and
lay back on it, my CAR-15 in my lap, and was asleep before the tailgun was
over the ledge with us.
It was dim predawn when I opened my eyes again, and I sat up,
alert, silent. The mountainside went up above us, but there was a
suggestion of lighter sky through the trees. Hill was awake, too, and only
had to tap Payne and Steffens to make them ready.
We climbed the rest of the way with the first sun of the morning
touching the treetops, and by 0600, we were on the crest. The climb was
exhausting, and I was hungry. We fitted the short combat antenna to the
radio. I opened a LRRP ration and began to heat water for it.
The view off the mountaintop was dramatic. Below us, the Plei
Trap valley was still in darkness, but soon we would be able to see.

Payne contacted the firebase and gave the handset to Hill. As I

poured the water into my ration, I saw Hill’s expression go pensive, then
sour. He gave the handset back to Payne.
“We’ve got to get off this hill,” he said. “Battalion says there’s a
mistake. There’s going to be an Arc Light here soon.” ARC LIGHT, of
course, was code for a B-52 strike.
We were silent for a moment. We had risked our skins to walk
through the night, climb this mountain, only to put ourselves in the way of
our own bombers.
“What?” I asked. “Those idiots should have known about an Arc
Light!”
“Eat your chow quick,” Hill said, “we’re getting out of here.”
We were fed, packed, and ready to go in thirty minutes. I had seen
the ungodly destruction of earth and trees caused by the massive bombs
from the high-flying, invisible B-52s.
I took point. This had to be quick and dirty, because speed and
distance mattered now more than anything else. We didn’t know at what
moment the bombs were going to fall, or exactly where. We could only
run. I checked my compass, and took us down the mountain, aiming for the
general direction of the firebase.
The team had to keep up with me. It was light now and they could
see. I didn’t look back often. It took an hour to get all the way down the
mountain, all of us stumbling and falling getting up again, sometimes
rolling until we could grab a tree.
Gasping, but on more level ground now, sweat dripping from my
cheeks. I used my CAR-15 as a club, striking at limbs and thorns, using my
body and equipment weight to smash through bamboo and interwoven
clumps of fronds or vines. I knew I sounded like a bull coming through, but
the alternative was to go slow and risk a 500-pound bomb on my head.
It is not as much of a joke as it sounds to say that I thought if I saw
any NVA, I might just yell “B-52! B-52!” and if they understood, they
would run with us.
 There was no stopping, no radio contact, no pauses to plan or
confer. We ran, we trotted, and we ran some more. At any moment I
expected to hear the rolling, all-encompassing thunder of the Arc Light, and
I tried to imagine what it would look like. Would I be able to see the flashes
of the bombs exploding? Would I see the shock waves? Would it be a
violent tidal wave of trees uprooting and flying at us?
We literally did not halt until midafternoon. Hill finally caught up to
me, breathing hard. We were on the edge of a deep dried-out streambed. It
offered cover, so we jumped down into it. All of us had to recover from the
run, and we lay and gasped like fish out of water. Our hands and forearms
were bloody from grass and thorn wounds, the sweat stinging into the cuts,
diluting the blood and making it run freely. Our web gear was full of twigs
and bits of vines that had caught and broken in our flight.
I took a drink from one of my canteens, and the pain of swallowing
made me choke. The second sip came more easily, and the third opened the
track all the way to my stomach. I drank the canteen dry. I was reaching
for another when I passed out from exhaustion.
I heard and felt nothing until Hill shook me. He looked as groggy
and disoriented as I felt. I noticed the sun was almost down. I had been
unconscious, or asleep, for a few hours.
Payne raised battalion headquarters on the radio. The Arc Light had
hit on target at 1640 hrs. right on the infiltration route we had originally
gone to watch. We were at least safe now from bombers.
We ate again, watching over the edge of the dry streambed like
fugitive doughboys peeking from a trench. After we buried the ration
packets, we saddled up and began our creep back to the firebase. This time
I went slowly, hunched over my CAR-15, eyes nervously shifting from side
to side. Darkness was coming rapidly in the depths of the valley we
followed, but we were close now to the firebase, perhaps an hour or less, if
we didn’t stop again.
I heard the shells coming down.
I dived into the trees, the team behind me doing the same thing, and
with great crashes, the l05mm high explosives dug into the hillside near us.
Hill covered his head with his arms. “That’s their damn registration
fire! They’ll hit us!” he said. Every evening, American units in the field
would call in artillery around their own positions, to get it pre-aimed, or
registered, so if they needed artillery support in the middle of the night, it
would be on short call.
“Radio!” Hill said, and Payne crawled to him, more rounds
impacting, but this time on the other side of us, about a hundred meters
away. Payne screwed the short combat antenna to his PRC-25, and Hill
began trying to contact battalion headquarters in the firebase.
He couldn’t make contact because of our low position in the valley
(FM radios transmit poorly from low ground) and crosstalk on the battalion
radio net, but he did learn something. We were caught in the overlapping
registration fire between the firebase and an infantry company on a nearby
hill.
“Break! Break!” Hill kept saying into the radio, trying to get
someone’s attention, but the shells kept falling all around us, obviously
coming from two different directions from different batteries. The valley
rocked with concussions and echoing shocks. There was nothing to do but
ride it out and hope we didn’t get killed.
When the last round had hit, and we had waited for a long time to
make sure it was the last round, we grimly began moving forward again. I
was disgusted with the mission. It had been incredibly dangerous, and for
no gain.
By dark we found the start of the long slope up to the firebase.
Ahead the trees ended; the slope was bare earth the last fifty meters to the
perimeter.
Getting into the firebase would be tricky. There were trip flares and
jumbled, rusty barbed wire on the slope. If we made noise, the perimeter
guards, warned about us or not, might fire.
Hill took the radio and told battalion we were on our way in. They
asked Hill on what side of the perimeter we would be approaching. Hill
told them the south; they ordered us to go on.
I started up the hill with extreme caution, wondering if I would live
to see the top. We had only been under way for a few minutes, just
approaching the cleared kill zone, when Hill whispered for me to stop.
“They have movement, and they’re going to fire an illumination
round on it,” he said.
“Where’s the movement?” I asked.
“North slope,” Hill said. We sat still. There could be a patrol, or
advance party of an assault force of NVA, coming up the hill just like us.
 With a hollow echo the round belched out of the 81mm mortar tube
up the hill. Then, like a blazing star, it burst almost directly over our
heads. “That’s us!” Hill said into the radio handset, “that’s us, don’t fire!”
Hill ripped his map out of his pocket, and under cover of a poncho,
frantically examined it with his flashlight. “We’re on the wrong slope!” he
told battalion. I bit my lip. Hill was the team leader. He had the map. He
was supposed to keep up on little things like where we were.
The flare would have alerted and frightened the soldiers on the
perimeter. Word to watch for us would be passed to the bunker line from
battalion, but I knew everyone on guard would not get it. All it took to kill
us was one nervous grunt that had just awakened.
“I can get us in,” I said. Hill hesitated before he asked me how.
“Let them cool off for a while,” I said, “then we’ll crawl up out of
the tree line. We can move slow and get in between the bunkers. They’re
too far apart.”
“Why wait?” Hill asked. “Let’s go now. I just told them we were
coming in.”
“No,” I said, “let ‘em get sleepy first.”
Hill knew enough about infantry habits and agreed with me. It
sounded crazy, but we had a better chance if we simply infiltrated the camp.
It was almost 0300 hours as I parted the last cluster of concertina
wire and crawled forward. I was exactly between two of the big
sandbagged perimeter bunkers. I lay and listened for noises, for
conversation, for footsteps, but there were none near me.
I poked my head over the berm, looking into the quiet, dark
firebase. The moon was lost in the clouds. We had night on our side. We
had not rattled one can of empty rifle cartridges in the wire; we had not hit
one trip wire to a flare.
Hand signaling for Hill, Payne, and Steffens to follow me, I slid into
the camp, my cheek to the dirt, then rolled aside as the team elbowed
inside. We waited on our stomachs for several minutes. It was all quiet
now.
“I’m going to the command bunker and report in,” Hill said. “You
guys lay down and get some sleep.” Payne and Steffens began to spread
their poncho liners, but I was hungry.
“I’m going to the chow bunker,” I told them, and dropping my
rucksack, I walked to Bessesi’s bunker and went down into it.
 He was asleep on his cot. I woke him up with a gentle shake on the
shoulder. “What have you got to eat?” I asked.
“Hey!” Bessesi said, “Where did you come from?”
“We just infiltrated your wire,” I said. “Most of your guys are
asleep on the bunker line.”
Bessesi jumped up and put on his helmet. “Stay here!” he said, “I’m
going out there and wake those bastards up!” I tried to stop him, but he ran
out of the bunker. I could hear him going down the perimeter, rousting
everybody. In spite of my fatigue, I had to laugh.

We had a short debriefing the next morning, and received an

alternate mission. A team was needed at another place, and we were to be
resupplied and moved out. The helicopter was waiting.

24February 1967: Alternate Mission

On the morning of the 24th of February, we boarded a Huey at 3-
Tango and flew west toward Cambodia. We were about to experience the
mission that begins this book.
I had faith in my decision to join the LRRP’s. Tales about their luck
and prowess were becoming common. For instance, we had a team leader,
22-year-old Sgt. Sanderson, whom we called Sandy, and the assistant team
leader was 24-year old Jim Umberger, a southerner from Virginia. His
nickname was Ridgerunner. Instead of an M16, he carried a commercial,
semiautomatic 12- gauge Remington shotgun mailed to him by his father.
He had painted the new shotgun with olive-drab enamel from the motor
pool, and he kept the long barrel so he could make fifty- and seventy-five-
meter shots. “Sawed-offs are for bank jobs, not field combat,” he said.
Ronald Norton, 20, of Tennessee; and Danny Harmon, 20, of
Alaska, were the other two team members. All were exceptionally capable,
actually downright lethal individuals if it came to a shoot-out. This caused
me to consider that LRRPs were born, not made.

The team had been lying in wait in the foot hills of the southwestern
corner of Kontum province, an area containing some of the most rugged
terrain in the country; when a 25-man North Vietnamese mortar platoon
walked by, loaded with mortar tubes, base plates, ammo, and shovels. The
LRRP team let them go by, then fell in behind the retreating at a discreet
distance, to see where they were going.
The mortar platoon was heading west, back into Cambodia. It
stopped at nightfall, and the LRRP team moved in closer. Then something
like three platoons of NVA infantry came out of nowhere and set up a
perimeter around the mortars and, of course, the LRRP team. There were
about a hundred of more NVA surrounding the team.
As long as it was dark, there was no problem, but at dawn, there was
sure to be trouble. The team made a plan. They waited for dawn, and as
soon as the first glimmer of gray was visible through the trees, they radioed
for a massive artillery-fire mission right on top of the camp. It was a drastic
situation.
When the shells began to shriek in and shatter the trees, the team
tried to run. The artillery barrage was more fierce than they had expected,
and instead of escaping, they were forced back to cover, along with the
stunned, disoriented enemy.
“We made it to a kind of shallow, dried-out streambed, and that was
it,” the team leader later told me. “There were NVA running everywhere,
man, it was crazy. It was still too dark to really see, and the damn gooks
were trying to jump in the streambed with us. We started shooting them.”
He said that in the confusion, the enemy didn’t realize where the
gunfire was coming from, and didn’t know they were leaping into a ditch
with Americans.
Finally, both the LRRP’s and the North Vietnamese were using the
same spot for cover. The team knew they could not stay, and ran again; this
time a shell exploded close enough to them to blow Ridgerunner’s web gear
off him, and he lost his shotgun.
The team got away. The NVA were hurt badly. When he returned
to the platoon, Ridgerunner seemed to mourn the loss of his Remington
more than anything else.

28 February 1967: Second Thoughts

We had been back one day from the mission. I was sitting on my
cot, marveling at what had happened, wondering how we had all come out
of it alive, and seriously considering what my chances were of living
through another such enemy contact.
 Our team hadn’t survived because we were such superior soldiers;
we’d had pure luck on our side. How long would that last?
As I sat there, Sergeant Hill walked up behind me, a can of beer in
his hand. It wasn’t his first. He put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned
down so he could speak almost directly in my ear.
“If you tell anybody what I did out there, I’ll kill you,” he
whispered.
“What?” I asked. I couldn’t have heard him right.
“I mean it, I’ll kill you,” he said, and walked swiftly out of the tent
before I could reply.
I was shaken by his threat. At first, I didn’t know why he would say
what he did, but I soon figured it out. I had seen him paralyzed with fear,
seemingly unable to shoot or make decisions, when we walked into the
enemy. That was no man to have as a team leader. And he was up for
promotion.
I didn’t know if he was sincere about his threat. I really hadn’t
thought twice about how he performed. I had assumed he had been
shocked and scared, and let it go at that. So were we all.
Now I had Hill as well as the war to worry about.
Maybe I should have stayed in Head and Head?

Just a few days past one year ago, stateside and still green, I had
joined Headquarters & Headquarters Company.
I was coming from Alpha Company 1/22nd Infantry, where I’d first
been assigned on arrival at Fort Lewis. HHC was involved in readying all
three 2nd Brigade infantry battalions and other support units we would need
for a move to Vietnam.
If there had been thirty hours in a day, it would not have been
enough for our task. Getting a security clearance for me was a priority, so I
could handle the classified materials in the Operations and Intelligence
shops. Each step seemed so logical then. No one was dying yet.
My request for Officer’s School was lost somewhere in the activity,
and I knew better than to push the issue. Troop movement to a combat zone
superseded other personnel orders.
Slang from American soldiers in Vietnam was finding its way into
our daily language. We heard our instructors and officers using it, so we
used it.
 Kilometers became “clicks,” killed became “zapped,” and enemy
territory became “Indian country.” Many or very much became the French
“boucoup.” Our enemy, the Vietcong, was being called “Charlie,” short for
“Victor Charlie,” since the initials VC translated that way into the NATO
International Phonetic Alphabet.
We had begun to contemplate Vietnam more seriously now. The
possibility of dying in Vietnam, or of being wounded and becoming a
cripple the rest of my life, stayed both in my mind and the minds of most of
the men that I worked with everyday. No one talked a lot about it, but
sometimes you could see it as a worried shadow in someone’s eyes.
Dayroom TV’s were always tuned to the news every evening, the
troops listening quiet and concerned, as casualty figures and combat footage
were shown. No anti-American slant or fake news was necessary to portray
the issue. The facts were bad enough.

Today, the United States Army officially adopted the XM16E1 as

the M16A1 rifle.

02 March 1967: OPSEC (Operational Security)

We were not allowed to take identification, either identity cards or
steel dog tags stamped with our name, rank, and service number, with us on
patrol.
While we were in 3-Tango, we could carry personal identification,
but before we left for the field, we turned in our wallets to Lieutenant
Lapolla or Littlejohn.
We had a choice about notification of our next of kin in case we
were wounded, captured, or killed. We could have no notification made
under any circumstances except death, or we could authorize notification
for wounds if we were not conscious to make a decision.
Both choices were for “casualties occurring in Vietnam.”
If we were killed someplace we were officially not supposed to be,
such as over the border in Cambodia, there would be no notification of next
of kin except to report us missing in action if our body could not be
recovered. It was part of the job, and we accepted it.
So effective was security covering activities of the Special
Operations Group that it would not be until July of 1973 that disclosure of
the missions, and the casualties, would be made to the American public.
 This concealment policy never fooled the enemy, of course. It just
slipped confusion into U.S. casualty claims. The long term effect was
veterans wounded on some classified missions, missions that did not get
committed to hardcopy, no record of, could not prove where
(geographically) or when, or doing what when they were wounded.
Some SOG vets applying for disabilities years later would soon
discover their claims denied for lack of proof of the mission they were on,
the record showing them being in a completely different country than
claimed, or in some military job or assignment that didn’t make sense
relating to the details of the claim.

05 March 1967: Mission

Our mission was to find an NVA headquarters believed to be in this
border area, which had been reported by prisoners.
The helicopter dropped our four-man team off on a Nam Sathay
river sandbar, and flew away. We traveled two kilometers or so, going due
north up the river, staying close-by the banks, but thick underbrush and
bamboo made it slow going.
I walked point, carrying a spare radio in my rucksack in addition to
other equipment. I had tied the canvas North Vietnamese-type rucksack to
my GI-issue aluminum rucksack frame, and now it carried the weight well.
I wore a genuine dark blue NVA turtleneck sweatshirt I had taken
out of a pile of captured enemy equipment. Coupled with my faded tiger
fatigue trousers and green soft hat, I hoped I could confuse any enemy
soldier who might see me for just a fraction of a second, long enough for
me to use my CAR-15 on him.
Our only communication—again—was by radio relay to an aircraft.
We sent in situation reports four times a day. There was no chance of
making radio contact at any other time.

06 March 1967: Seeing Things

It rained on us during the night, and I discovered the new so-called
nylon “Special Forces” poncho I carried, lighter in weight and smaller than
the standard ponchos, was no good. It didn’t cover enough area and it
shifted position easily. I was soaked.
Then the detent in the fire selector-safety switch on my CAR-15
locked up on me, and had to be forced. I took my knife blade, rotated the
switch to full automatic, and left it there, knowing I no longer had a safety.
As we crept along that morning, we discovered fresh markings on a
trail, probably less than twelve hours old. We knew then for sure that the
enemy was in the area, so we circled our tracks once, then moved up onto
an embankment overlooking one of the streams that ran into the river, and
lay in ambush.
By dusk, we had not seen anyone, so we climbed down off the
embankment, and slowly walked toward a dense stand of bamboo to use as
an overnight position. That’s when we saw fresh footprints alongside the
riverbank, made while we were in ambush. It was an enemy patrol. They
had been following us up the river, but when we had circled and moved up
to the embankment, they lost us. Their prints continued north, up the river.
We took defensive positions, and unfolded our map. There was a
major stream intersection about a kilometer ahead. People tend to stop at
such natural features, such as road intersections, forks in a river, and so on.
It is the same human trait that makes a person walk to the only tree in a
pasture.
The enemy patrol might stop to rest, or to set an ambush at the
intersection ahead. We waited until our radio relay time came, and called in
an artillery barrage on the stream-river intersection, hoping we had caught
the North Vietnamese tracker team.
Deep in a bamboo forest, we ate, and arranged night guard shifts. A
bamboo forest is great clusters of bamboo growing upward until bowed by
gravity, creating a maze of crawlways underneath. There were noises from
the forest that night that could have been cautious search teams looking for
us. It might also have been the wind shifting a fall of bamboo, making the
green bamboo squeak and the dead dry bamboo snap. We lay under the
thick arches and didn’t move.

It might have been stress or exhaustion that caused me to have the

hallucination. Maybe I should call it a dream. Either way, it might have
gotten me, or all of us, killed.
I thought I was awake. I would have sworn I was awake. Under the
curtains of curving bamboo, it was dark in all places and darker in others. I
was lying on my back with my CAR-15 across my stomach, my hand
resting on the weapon. It was loaded and stuck on automatic.
 A vague shadow of a man appeared just a few meters away. He was
standing up, and could not see me on the ground. It sounds trite, but it felt
like my heart almost skipped a beat. It was a scare so severe that it hurt.
The man was there. I was going to have to shoot him if he came our way. I
closed my hand on the CAR-15 pistol grip.
As I raised the CAR, I woke up. The strange part was that the only
thing that changed was that the man was gone. The forest and the dark
were the same. Can you dream and still see your surroundings so clearly?
Then the second scare hit me. What if I had fired because of a
dream? The NVA really were out there, maybe no farther away than my
dream had put them. Everybody would have known where we were. The
real world was more dangerous than nightmares. I told no one about the
dream. It seemed to be part of some mental adjustment to this kind of
work.

07March 1967: Extraction

The next morning, we waited until we thought it was safe, then crept
out and located our pickup zone. The helicopter got us out soon, everything
working smoothly. We had been careful, we had evaded the enemy, and
maybe we had hurt him. I felt tired as we flew back, but more confidant.
To live, we had to get better than good. We had to achieve
perfection.

08 to 12 March 1967: Pleiku City

I made recruitment handbills that the LRRP platoon could hand out
to the rest of the brigade. We needed more people, and the only way to get
them was to advertise. The handbills were to be distributed by us to various
aviation, artillery, and infantry units.
The handbills were printed by a small Vietnamese print shop in
Pleiku. The platoon paid for the job with contributions from all members.
It made me feel slightly odd to recruit in this way, as if the LRRP platoon
were an army within an army, but that was not too far from true.
Pleiku City had been temporarily declared off limits except for four
hours a day. The American soldiers were spending too much money there,
and inflation had caused prices to rise drastically.
A fair-price list was being agreed upon by the town council and the
th
4 Division headquarters to get the soldiers back.
 A rickshaw ride that had been ten piasters before had jumped to one
hundred, because GI’s would pay it. The American soldiers were unable to
deal with local merchants, not knowing the value of anything, and by virtue
of the soldiers using military payment certificates, or Vietnamese currency,
cost had no relation to what any service or item was worth in terms of U.S.
dollars.
The handbill, released in May, read:

“During June and July many of the experienced troops of the 2nd
Bde LRRP will be rotating. To prepare for the personnel changeover, the
Bde LRRP is now interviewing and selecting interested volunteers.
“Due to the nature of LRRP work—we are looking for good ‘“field
troops” who have a practical knowledge of map reading and land
navigation.
“If you are interested in excitement, responsibility, challenge, and
the feeling of really doing something during your tour, try the LRRP.
REQUIREMENTS
1. Rotation date of 15 Oct or later.
2. Previous experience in a recon or rifle platoon.
“If you are selected and meet certain physical and mental
requirements you will be eligible to attend the Recondo School in Nha
Trang. Further information may be obtained from your Bn S-2, Bde S-2, or
any member of the Bde LRRP unit. Don’t be afraid to ask.”

Walking down the streets of Pleiku I was barraged by the usual

challenges, offers, and pleas, all in badly broken English.
“Hey, Joe, you want Number One Baby-San?” “Buy pot, Joe?”
“Me Number One girl, me no sick!”
“I love you too much.”
“No can do!” argues a merchant over a price.
“Hey, Joe, you buy phenuts?” begged children selling small bags of
locally grown peanuts.
“You buy watch, my friend?”
“Goddamn you,” says a child, smiling and waving.
“Where you work?” How long you stay Vietnam?” asked a bargirl.
“How old you? You have wife America?”
 A sign read: Handling carefully, working exactly, most honestly
clean. No. 1 Job Laundry.
The bars had been named simply with an English noun, almost any
noun. There was the Honey Bar, the Mexico Bar, California Bar, Diamond
Bar, the Miami Bar. The locals pronounced the last one “Me-ah-me.”
The bars were hurting from the off-limits restrictions, and I knew
until a mutual agreement was reached, the price of venereal disease would
be high in Pleiku.

12 March 1967: Stay A LRRP. Stay Alive.

There was talk at division headquarters of breaking down and
moving 3-Tango. The monsoon season was coming, and our leadership
knew enough about it by now to realize we would be stranded in such a
remote camp near the border, but events began on the 12th that made
everyone temporarily forget the relocation. Another enemy offensive was
developing.
Both the 1/22nd and the 1/12th were in combat, the enemy attacking
them and not withdrawing. That meant we had at least six infantry
companies in action, and we were taking casualties again.
The Dustoff helicopters carrying wounded and dead clattered down
out of the air again to 3-Tango, every hour their numbers increasing.
It was good to be a LRRP, out of that infantry hell.

When the 2/8th was brought in out of the field to begin their training
on M113 armored personnel carriers, I met them at base camp, anxious to
see my old squad again.
I found Charlie Company as they were being issued clean uniforms.
They had moved into tents, and their dirty weapons, web gear, and
ammunition lay all over the tent floors. Ski, Kircher, and Gemmel were all
okay. They had not been wounded in the fight to save the 1st platoon, but
many in the platoon had been.
This was like a family reunion. There were hugs, hands shaken,
backs slapped. I was the relative who had moved away. I felt guilt at having
left them. I had been squad leader. We had slept under the same ponchos,
eaten from the same spoon, gone hungry and thirsty together. We were
closer than most stateside families.
 Kircher had something new, an M16A1 rifle with an M79 grenade
launcher tube mounted under the barrel. It was the new Colt XM148, and it
looked formidable. Field tests were going to show the XM148 trigger and
sight was fragile, the reloading slow and clumsy. The M203 would
eventually replace it.
What was good was the new 40mm “buckshot” round for the M79
and XM148. It was loaded with twenty No. 3 steel pellets and had killing
velocity at up to 50 meters.
The infantry boys were hungry, and one scavenging party raided a
closed kitchen supply tent. It was dark, they were worried about getting
caught, and they could not read the labels on the cans. They stole three
one-gallon cans of food. They discovered they had one can of powdered
chicken soup, one can of raisins, and one of cake mix. They ate all of it.
I watched all this with some amusement, and visiting from tent to
tent, was as interested as surprised to discover a couple of squads all high
on marijuana. They had rolled down the sides of the tent to keep the smoke
and smell inside, and staring into the yellow glow of a Coleman kerosene
lamp, were passing around handrolled joints. The drug had them in a type
of group hypnosis, like a flying flock of birds mindlessly following any one
of the group that veered. If one soldier started to sing, all the rest joined in.
If one hummed, the others hummed. The intensity of their unity impressed
me. They did not even see me, just the hissing flame in the lamp. I ducked
out of the tent, back into the clean night air.
Needing a place to sleep, I walked to 2nd Brigade headquarters, and
searched until I found my friend Wally J. Wicks, the brigade mail clerk, the
fattest of jobs. Wicks lived in a GP medium tent with plywood floors and
electric lights, only sharing the big tent with a couple of other clerks. They
had it partitioned off like an apartment.
He was tall, bespectacled, and smiling. He had a soft job and a
future. I had my tiger fatigues, web gear, NVA rucksack, and CAR-15. We
had grown a world apart from each other.
We ate, then went to the brigade movie, and sometime after
midnight, came back to his tent. He told me to use one of the empty cots
there, since one of the clerks was out at the Oasis. As I lay down on the cot
and pulled my poncho liner over me, Wicks turned out the tent’s single
electric light bulb. I went to sleep thinking that he deserved his job. Wicks
would have died in the infantry. He was too nice a guy.
 I hadn’t been asleep long, or at least it didn’t seem long, when a
siren began to wall. I sat straight up on the cot.
“Go back to sleep,” Wicks said. “That’s the alert siren. It’s just a
drill. We have to go out to our bunkers and get counted.”
I lay back down, covering my face with the poncho liner, and dozed
off. Then, the light came on again and someone kicked me hard, with
malice, on my foot. I threw the poncho liner back.
It was a short, fat black first sergeant, and he was furious. “Get up!
Get up!” he was yelling at me. The kick enraged me. I wasn’t even really
awake. I grabbed my CAR-15 off the floor, tossed the poncho liner aside,
and jumped up, pointing the weapon in his face.
“Go play your war games with somebody else!” I snarled, and he
had startled me enough I was ready to shoot him.
When he saw I wasn’t one of his clerks, he turned and ran out of the
tent as fast as he could. I sat down on the cot, now really awake and feeling
guilty. I had just threatened the life of the first sergeant of brigade
headquarters.
Thankfully, he was a new man, and didn’t know me, but he would
probably be back with help soon. Disgusted, I picked up my equipment,
walked out into the night and found a dark, empty bunker. I rolled up in my
liner, and went to sleep.
Well after sunrise, I slipped back to Wick’s tent. He was sitting at
his field desk. “God,” he said, “I thought you were gone. The first sergeant
has everybody looking for you.”
“Did you tell him who I was?” I asked.
“No,” Wicks said, “I told him you were from Special Forces.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going back to the field now anyway.”
“Be careful,” said Wicks. I shook his hand and walked out of the
brigade area as quickly as possible, back to the 2nd of the 8th street a few
units away.
My old squad was still there, resting, and I told them what had
happened with the first sergeant to give them a laugh.
Glad to have met my squad, I had to get back to 3-Tango. I said
good-bye to them, unsure of when we would meet again. It was a sad
parting, because I knew they had to go back into combat, as I did. They
were my friends and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.
 “If you ever hear of anyone getting killed hiding behind a tree,
that’ll be me,” Kravitski said as I shook his hand and walked to the
helicopter pads.

At 3-Tango, the war was getting hotter. The LRRP platoon was
notified to be on general alert. I went to my cot and tried to get some sleep,
feeling I’d need it.
I could hear helicopters still coming in up at the aid tents, just like in
February, bringing in their bloody cargoes.

13 March 1967: Attack At 3-Tango

“Getcha gear!” a voice shouted, “we have to guard the water point!”
I sat up on my cot and heard the message repeated at the next tent. It was
just after evening chow.
“Guard the goddamned water point?” one of my teammates griped,
“we’re not supposed to pull shit details for brigade!” I silently agreed as I
gathered what equipment I thought would be sufficient for a long night
watching over big washing machines.
“Let’s go!” someone called, hurrying us along. “Meet at the
operations tent!” I threw my BAR ammo pouch belt over my shoulder and
picked up my bedroll and CAR-15. We filed out the door and headed for
the brigade tactical operations center.
There was a tinge of red sunset just visible in the clouds as we
gathered. There were only a dozen of us. Everyone else was out on patrol.
A captain from S3 stepped out of the tent. “We think we’re going to
get hit tonight,” he said, “and we need everybody on the line. The water
point is weak, so we want you people down there to hold it.”
The announcement that an attack was imminent didn’t impress us.
It seemed like another one of brigade’s endless alerts. “Take your Starlights
with you,” the captain warned. “You’ll have help from Headquarters
Company and the regular crew that lives at the water point.”
I considered briefly loading up on more ammo, but I had ten
magazines. Most importantly, I had my poncho for sleeping off brigade
scares. Our group turned and walked back to the LRRP area to pick up the
last two Starlight scopes left in supply.
At the bottom of the hill, a good five hundred meters from 3-Tango,
was the water point. Its isolation was broken only by a dirt road back to the
main camp and a single field phone commo wire.
There were many huge laundry machines there, a water purification
unit, and a couple of shower tents beside the stream. The only fortifications
were bunkers that surrounded the place.
It was getting dark as we settled into the bunkers. I picked the
outpost bunker at the apex of the horseshoe-shaped stream. All the other
dugouts were behind us. As I laid my equipment down, I met the other
three men who had chosen the outpost. Brown was an infantryman,
obviously a veteran; Jack Hall was a Brigade Headquarters Company clerk;
and our own LRRP supply sergeant, Wilford Snake.
Since we had all eaten, and darkness came so rapidly, there was
nothing to do but to sit and talk and let the hours pass. Brown was quiet
and withdrawn and talked in monosyllables and grunts. The clerk was
talkative and a bit excited about being sent to the water point. He was new
in Vietnam and today was his birthday. Snake seemed a little nervous.
Our subjects of conversation were those common to soldiers,
hometowns, backgrounds, and our jobs in the army. The energy ran out of
the talk early. We arranged guard shifts and found places to sleep.
everybody else decided to stay in the bunker, while I elected to sleep
outside.
Brown took first guard. I lay on my poncho, looking at the stars and
listening to the stream swirl past. I went to sleep with no apprehension.
When it was my time for guard, Brown touched my shoulder gently,
and I came awake. The night was still clear and starry. I checked my watch
as Brown crept inside the bunker. It was well after midnight. I took my
weapon and climbed atop the bunker, looking over my surroundings in the
dark. The jungle around me was invisible in the night. I sat still, listening
and looking. Time passed slowly.
Then I saw flashes, almost like heat lightning, but directional. One
from my right, another from my left. I had a moment to wonder if I might
be seeing aerial photography flashes, then I heard the sounds coming from
somewhere close out there, but indistinct and directionless. It was the rapid
reports of 82mm mortars being fired as fast as the crews could serve them.
They were too damn close. I was hearing the rounds being fired before they
hit the ground. “Incoming!” I shouted to wake everyone, “Incoming!” I
jumped off the roof and dived in the bunker’s back door, tumbling over
Brown and Hall.
 Mortar rounds hitting the ground almost as one group patterned
from us all the way up to 3-Tango. Ear-numbing blasts filled the air with
dust and the shock of concussion.
3-Tango was the principal target. It was as if a crowded
neighborhood had come under fire. There were tents, temporary buildings,
the old church, bunkers, trucks and jeeps, fuel and supply dumps, and field
kitchens, all too close together. The NVA gunners couldn’t miss.
A big target was hit early on. The night just disappeared. Ten
thousand gallons of JP-4 jet fuel near the main camp airstrip ignited and the
explosion was brighter than daylight. We were awed by that hellish sight.
Flames shot up as high as we could see. It couldn’t have looked worse if a
volcano had erupted inside the camp.
Still, mortar bombs fell out of the air. The pounding continued. The
ground shook with each impact. A dense cloud of smoke obscured the sky,
reflecting the inferno’s blaze down on us all.
“My God!” Hall exclaimed, “what’ll we do now?” Brown strained
his eyes, peering out the front slit, a desperate look on his face. “Shut up,
goddammit!” he hissed, “they might be out there!”
My eyes recovered from the glare, and Snake and I joined Brown.
Hall was clearly scared to death. I couldn’t blame him. “What’s gonna
happen now?” he blurted. “Where’s our artillery? Where are our planes?
Why isn’t our artillery firing back?”
“The artillery people are in their holes just like us,” I said, surprised
at the calmness of my own voice. “We’ll have air support soon. Take it
easy!” Hall stayed down and breathed in gasps. It was his first combat. I
learned later that he thought I wasn’t scared. I was scared badly. I just had
a little more experience at containing it. Jack Hall was no coward. He
would later would join our LRRP platoon himself, and tell me it was partly
because he thought I was brave that night, which reflected well on the
LRRP platoon in general.
The NVA mortars finally lifted their fire off the hill and immediately
brought it to bear directly on us the water point, never missing a stroke.
This time it was all on us.
Mortar shells struck us like lightning. We lay in the center of the
bull’s-eye. Pieces of the water point’s equipment flew through the air, sheet
metal from the washing machines, canvas from the tents, wood from the
pallets. The smoke was blinding.
 The detonations were like kicks in the stomach and blows to the
head. “Where’s our artillery?” Hall asked, beating at the sandbags from
terror.
“Take it easy!” I said. “We’ll get help soon!” I didn’t really believe
we would, but I wanted to calm him down.
A blood chilling, methodical series of explosions began off to our
left. They were walking rounds down on us in even steps. Random death
was bad enough. Aimed death was unbearable. Only a few seconds apart,
each blast was louder and closer than the last.
I cringed on the floor beside Hall. The bunker jolted violently. Dirt
and smoke filled the air. I tried to crawl under the loose sandbags with
Hall. Then it passed.
My elation at being alive was indescribable. A group of shells had
bracketed us side to side and literally blown the burlap right off our bunker
wall sandbags.
I struggled to look out. My ears rang. The fuel fire at 3-Tango was
still going strong. The water point was covered with a blanket of dust that
made seeing the next bunker impossible.
Not that we could distinguish, but the NVA were also firing in
75mm recoilless rifles and B40 RPG’s.

Brown was up and looking to the front. “I think something’s

moving out there!” he said. I poked frantically around in the dark. “Who’s
got any grenades?” I asked. Hall rolled over. “I got some!” he said.
“Give ‘em here.” I said. The rookie had come prepared, and I had
thought I was going to the water point to sleep off a false alert. Hall passed
me his four grenades. “Do you see them?” I asked Brown. He looked out
over the slit.
“Yeah! I see the son of a bitches! They’re coming in right over
there!” he said.
I ducked out the back with the grenades. A bunker is a trap in a
firefight. I wanted to be outside, where I could move, “Right front, ten
meters!” Brown yelled. I used the bunker for cover and threw a grenade in
that direction, over the stream and into the brush.
It exploded with a solid crash. “Direct front!” Brown shouted
urgently. I pumped the next grenade out. The bunker trembled with the
blast.
 Brown didn’t hesitate. “They’re getting away!” he bellowed, firing
his M16 full automatic. “Left! Left!” I had the third frag ready and arced it
over the stream. There was no bang. It was a dud. I pulled the pin on the
last grenade and heaved it. It went off, but Brown said, “Too late, they’re
past us.” I looked over the bunker to see which way the NVA had gone, but
it was too dark.
I realized now the perimeter was crackling with small-arms fire. I
dove back into the bunker for cover.
“Look out!” Snake yelped, and fired his CAR-15 inside the confines
of the bunker, luckily getting his burst out the slit, but the blast deafened us
in the closeness, and it raised a solid cloud of dust inside.
“Hold your goddamn fire,” Brown said, “there’s nobody out there
right now! And put that thing on safe!”
Suddenly bullets flailed our bunker, kicking dirt through the view
slit as the impacts tore into the sandbags and logs. We hugged the floor
while a determined gunner raked us across.
I realized the source of the fire before it ceased. It was an M60
machine gun from inside the water point! Another bunker was shooting at
Snake’s muzzle flashes, having forgotten we were beyond the bunker line
on outpost!
“No more rifle fire!” I gasped. “Those idiots will kill us!” Brown
agreed with a nod. Snake learned his lesson and laid his CAR-15 aside.
I heard an engine racing wildly, and the roar of a deuce and a half
revving at full power. I risked a look out the back of the bunker. The truck
locked up all tires and slid sideways into the water point. The burning fuel
dump gave everything an unearthly orange glow.
The driver kept the engine running while the guard riding with him
stood up and shouted, “Do you have any casualties?” His voice was barely
audible over the engine and the fuel dump fire up the hill.
Men came out from the bunkers and ran to the truck to pick up
ammo and help a small group of wounded aboard. I heard someone say that
the telephone landline was out. We had no communications with 3-Tango.
Their business finished, the driver jammed the truck into gear and
spun the rear tires as he whipped the vehicle around and sped back up the
road. That was bravery. I was impressed.
On our right flank, where the two Starlight scopes were, LRRP
M16’s fired steadily. I hoped they were doing somebody great harm out
there.
“The phone’s out,” I told Brown. He grimly accepted the
information as he watched the night. Hall was still on the floor. That suited
me. He was out of the way.
Then the concussion of mortar bombs falling on 3-Tango started
again, making themselves felt all the way down to us like tremors of an
earthquake. It was obvious the enemy had plenty of ammunition. All we
could do was sit and wait, try not to flinch with each smashing round, and
watch our front.

We had no idea what was happening up at the main camp. The NVA
might be trying to break in there as well. With the gunfire rising and falling
around the 3-Tango perimeter, it was easy to imagine the camp was fighting
for its existence.
I sneaked a few nervous peeks up the hill to where the American flag
few over the BTOC in the old church building; well aware of the historical
parallel I was living. Fires lit up the hilltop.

Finally our artillery went into action as the rounds from the hidden
mortars ended. The 105mm howitzers made up for lost time with sheer
volume. They were firing by guesswork, hoping for a lucky hit. Our tricky
new MPQ-4 counterbattery radar had never worked right after suffering a
slightly rough unslinging from the helicopter that had delivered it.
The 105’s worked out for an hour. Then our air support finally came.
It was Skyraiders from New Pleiku Air Force Base. They dropped napalm
canisters and strafed around, but it was clear they were also hunting. After
that it was quiet except for the drone of a lone spotter plane overhead.
We eyed the dark tree line suspiciously as the predawn hours dragged
by, wishing for the sun. I managed to lean up against a bunker wall and nod
off to sleep with Hall standing guard. He was recovering fast.
A tremendous explosion pitched me forward. I thought an artillery
shell had hit us. Something really big had gone off literally right outside
our bunker.
“What was that?” Hall stammered, holding his ears. Brown looked
out the back door. “That son of a bitch was close!” he said. I was amazed
that our sandbags were still stacked. The stinging of high-explosive smoke
in our eyes and the pain in our eardrums testified to the nearness of the
blast. We did not know what caused it.
Finally, dawn did come. The sky turned lighter by degrees. First
there were the outlines of the treetops. Then a few clouds became distinct.
The sun was not yet visible over the mountains, but the world began to take
on color again.
I felt as if I had not closed my eyes for years. Brown gazed out the
slit at the jungle. “Damn, I’m hungry,” he stated to no one in particular.
“All I want,” I told Brown, “is a hot cup of coffee, and I’m going to
sleep.” I stooped as I crawled out of the bunker. It felt great to get out of
that rat hole. The hard clay around the water point area was broken and
pitted everywhere mortar rounds had struck. There were sharp, twisted
metal mortar fragments just lying about to be picked up for examination. I
pulled some out of the sandbags in our bunker.
A couple of the big laundry machines had been hit directly, and their
doors and outer panels were gone. Clothes from the machines were
scattered over the ground. We found the telephone landline, cut by a mortar
round that had by chance hit it so perfectly it couldn’t have been more
effective if it had been aimed.
Torn shower tents hung crazily on their poles. I was too tired to
even be disgusted. No one spoke very much. We were all in a sort of
subdued daze.
Then the bodies of two dead NVA were discovered. They lay only
five meters to the exact left of my bunker. We grouped around them,
staring, curious.
“We must have got them with the Claymore!” a soldier declared
who had been in the first bunker to our left rear. “They came crawling
through about four in the morning! I popped a Claymore on the noise! Shit,
I didn’t know I actually got anybody!”
I understood then what the big blast so early in morning had been.
The mine had exploded just outside our bunker wall. I’d never considered
that our outpost bunker might be even with the Claymore line! Actually, the
two NVA had crawled past the Claymore. The back-blast concussion had
killed them. They wore shorts and T-shirts. Their bones were broken and
their skin was bloodied and bruised below the surface. I could plainly see
where their veins had burst. They only had a few fragment holes in them.
One had died in the act of crawling and still held the pose. He had fragment
holes in the side of his face I could see, but no bleeding. Since the
Claymore ball bearings were aimed away from him, I presumed it was
rocks bits or pieces of mine shell plastic that were in his head. The other
man had taken a little more time to die. He was balled up in a fetal
position, his face a grimace of pain.
Two folding-stock AKM’s were found in the grass near them. A big
ball of C4 plastic explosive was discovered also, wrapped in a cloth. The
dead men were probably with the people I had driven off with grenades.
They must have laid low and waited for a better time and a less aggressive
defense before trying to move in again.
A soldier produced a camera and the scene was recorded for the
future, a trophy photograph. These two NVA were to be the only confirmed
enemy casualties for the engagement. We had their bodies as proof.

By 0700 there still was still no word for us to pull back from the
water point. Fatigue and hunger made us impatient. “I’m going back up
the hill. They don’t need us anymore,” I told Brown. Let’s go.”
“I better stay until they come and get me. You go ahead,” he said.
I went to the next bunker and asked the LRRP’s in it if they wanted
to go. In a few moments, all twelve of us were ready to leave. We trudged
up the road into 3-Tango.
“You get any with the Starlight?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said one of the riflemen. “I could see them standing out
there in the trees at about a hundred meters. Hell, they didn’t know what
was happening. They didn’t even try to take cover. I guess they thought it
was stray rounds.”
I was as guilty and wrong as most of the rest of us, because I
thought it was all over. The sun was rising. I felt stunned and exhausted,
slowly looking left and right as we walked up the hill, grimly impressed
with the damage I saw. Charlie had blasted us good. Our air superiority, our
advanced technology, none of it was a guarantee of protection when the
knives were out.

We passed through a wary group of infantry on the bunker line as

we entered 3-Tango. They had that all-night fatigue and terror look in their
eyes.
 A big double-door refrigerator at some outfit’s mess area had taken a
hit on its side. Insulation and twisted metal protruded through the gap.
They wouldn’t have any more ice for a while.
Tents had been blown away. Ripped canvas hung in the trees. Burst
sandbags were strewn everywhere. Commo trucks parked in a glade
between the motor pool and our LRRP tents had hundreds of mortar
fragment gouges. The old church itself had taken hits, but the headquarters
troops inside were protected, because they thoughtfully built sandbag walls
and overhead cover inside the building.
Hundreds of mortar rounds had hit 3-Tango. The NVA used the
Chinese 82mm mortar. American mortars were 81mm. There were many
untrue stories about Communist weapons being able to fire US ammo, but
not vice versa. In the case of the 81-82mm, it was true. Both versions were
powerful and scattered dense doses of bent, broken, twisted red-hot steel
shrapnel in all directions.
Even with good cover, Brigade Sgt. Major Stanley Lawson,
someone I knew well and respected, had been wounded when a roofing tile
hit him in the forehead from an explosion in the rafters of the church. The
medics carried him away and I never saw again. He had been decent and a
reasonable man, and a great help to me when I had been part of
Headquarters and Headquarters Company.

I was relieved to find my own GP medium tent still upright. I

pushed through the flap and went inside. I wanted to drop on my cot and
sleep. Instead I laid my gear on the cot and walked to the back door of the
tent, and held the flap open, pausing to yawn. On the other side of a
barbed-wire fence was brigade mess, KP’s righting the overturned mess
tables. It was just about 0700 hours.
A mortar shell suddenly exploded near the KP’s as they worked. It
killed Sp4 Donnie Ray Beasley. Direct hit.. Then a second round fell, and
another. It was starting again in daylight.
I jumped out of my tent and into the covered trench just outside. I
found it already full. It was really just a ditch roofed with plywood and a
single layer of sandbags.
The inmates were all LRRP’s. They huddled, lips tight, not looking
at each other. I thought it was just the tension before I saw the source of the
embarrassment. Griswold, our LRRP platoon sergeant was in the far end of
the ditch. He had stayed the entire night in the trench.
He was crying and actually digging a hole in the earthen wall beside
him with his fingers as the new attack immersed us in a fresh avalanche of
mortar shells. His function with the platoon was only administrative, but
now, when we really needed someone in authority to organize the men, fear
had reduced him to uselessness. I was angry. The bad thing was that his
breakdown could affect someone else.
This reads like a condemnation of Griswold. It is not. Everyone has
a breaking point and at this moment, his had found him. Lt. Lapolla had
brought Griswold with him from the 2/8th to ramrod the platoon, and so far
everything had worked out just fine. But Griswold was married, with kids,
and the stress had been wearing on him. On this day, the stress won. All I
have to say is before you dismiss him or pity him, you should first earn the
right by living what he, and we, lived.
A shell hit just outside the trench and rocked us all. It was followed
by a scream and a man falling through the open entryway on me, shouting,
“I’m hit! I’m hit.”
It was Tan, one of our Vietnamese interpreters. He had been
dashing for safety when a mortar round struck near him. He was bleeding
badly and was in extreme pain, his back full of pieces of metal.
I tried to get a pressure bandage on him, but I would have needed a
half dozen. He arched his back, eyes clenched shut, mouthing
incomprehensible words. Even his CAR-15 was scarred with fragment
impacts.
With a wounded man, a crazed sergeant, and a mortar attack in
progress, I did not understand how it could get much worse in our hole.
Then I learned. They hit the ammo dump.
It all started blowing up. Entire stacks of artillery and mortar shells
exploded and threw more hot ammo around the camp to burst on impact. I
managed one look out a crack in the roof. The sky was covered with smoke
and flame. It was a living nightmare. Debris flew overhead in all
directions.
Tan wouldn’t hold still. I was afraid he was losing too much blood.
The sergeant was dug further into the wall. I had had enough. “Help me
get Tan up,” I asked the man nearest me, “I want to get him to the aid
station.”
 I listened carefully, trying to pick a lull in the explosions. It
sounded as if maybe the mortar attack had slowed, but the ammo dump was
still raising hell. I got a good grip on Tan and decided it was now or never.
I leaped out of the trench, running as fast as I could. I had over a
hundred meters to go, uphill, before I would make the aid station.
Things were still detonating. A shell hit nearby and I stumbled, Tan
rolling away from me in agony. I scooped him up and took off again.
Goddamn, I thought if they’re going to kill me, at least I’ll be doing
something, not cowering in a hole. Anger overcame fear as I thought about
the medics. If they were hiding in their bunkers, I swore to pull them out
myself.
I fell to one knee and Tan screamed again. He was delirious with
pain. I saw the medical tents just ahead.
I jumped a sandbag wall and ducked inside the tent. The floor was
covered with injured men. Medics taking care of them worked rapidly.
They showed no concern for their own safety. I was almost moved to tears
at the sight.
A medic motioned for me to lay Tan down. I knelt and gently put
him on the ground. I was out of breath. Then I saw a man dressed in tiger
fatigues mixed in with the casualties. I tiptoed through the wounded to
him. It was Danny Harmon. Undressed mortar wounds bled on his
stomach.
“It don’t look too bad,” I said to him, “take it easy.” He closed his
eyes. I made my way out of the congestion of the aid station.
As I walked back to the LRRP tents, I realized it over. It was
actually quiet. Everybody was still in holes; it was as if I had the camp to
myself.
Then I saw my tent. The roof was almost gone. What little was left
hung in tatters. It had stopped a mortar round. I walked in. The air
mattress on my cot was flat, deflated by fragments.
Cans of shaving cream in our personal gear had exploded, dripping
foamy white liquid soap off the ripped canvas tent sides like melting snow.
Flashbulbs were shattered in their packages, uniforms were perforated and
scattered. There seemed to be nothing in the tent that wasn’t hit.
An M16 buttstock was smashed, the recoil buffer spring sticking
out. A helmet was hammered almost dead center with a chunk of Chinese
mortar fragment driven in as if by sledgehammer.
 On my cot, my own .45 pistol was ruined. A fragment had struck it
beside the magazine release on the frame and actually bent the pistol in a
shallow V-shape.

I lay down, and with the morning sun streaming in where the tent
roof used to be, went to sleep.
Someone shook me awake. I looked at my watch. I had been asleep
for almost two hours. “Let’s go,” said the LRRP, “we’ve got a briefing.”
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and with my CAR-15 in my hands, I
detoured over to the brigade mess tent for a canteen cup of coffee. The
estimate was we had taken about 450 rounds of 82mm mortar in both
attacks, and maybe some 75mm recoilless rifle fire. Our casualties were not
estimated. One GI was dead, and 61 wounded. The only two confirmed
enemy KIA were the ones killed outside my water point bunker.
The briefing was held near the church building, by an S5 captain.
S5 was supposed to be public relations, but in our case, it was really an
intelligence function.
All our LRRP’s were there, and a few troops from brigade
headquarters.
“This is a raid,” the captain said. “You’ll go out in two deuce-and-a-
half’s. The target is this Montagnard village. There might be an NVA
mortar position in it, and there might still be NVA there.”
There was one road into the village. It was surrounded by jungle.
“The first truck in will drive all the way through the village to the
far side before stopping. Those on it will spread out right and left to cover
the flanks,” he said.
“The second truck will brake at the front of the village, and its men
will deploy left and right. You’ll all be inside fast, and cover all four
directions.
Following the entry of the second truck, the captain and his driver
and interpreter would arrive. We were to round up all the people in the
village and herd them to the center. That was the extent of the plan.
“Sir,” asked one of the LRRP’s, “what if somebody runs?”
“Shoot ‘em,” said the S5 officer.

We boarded the trucks, checking our weapons and grenades. We

were tired and hostile, a bad way to feel before a raid that might require
cool-headed decisions.
I was on the point truck. Like racers, the truck drivers plunged us
along the dirt road into the jungle, limbs and branches smashing at us. One
took my flop hat right off my head, and I reached for it, but it hung in the
tree. The men on the second truck grabbed for it, but missed.
We could hear the beat of rotor blades overhead, as patrolling
choppers looked for signs of retreating North Vietnamese. It was full day
now, and 3-Tango was making an effort at revenge, like an angry giant
looking for the snake that had bitten it in the night.
I saw the village ahead, a quick impression of huts through the
trees. Rifle bolts slammed closed as we chambered ammunition.
Bouncing and tilting, our truck sped into the village. I saw log
bunkers buried in the ground and my heart almost stopped, but the bunkers
were empty. They were for the villagers who lived there. I had never
considered that they would dig bunkers for their own protection, like we
did, but it made sense.
Our driver jerked the truck around the bunkers, and I saw glimpses
of dark-skinned Montagnards adults, naked children, and fleeing chickens.
Hard on the brakes, our truck slid and stopped, and I jumped over
the side, not feeling my feet hit the ground. My section of the village to
cover was the left rear quarter, from six to nine on the clock, with the entry
road at twelve.
I could instantly see the village was roughly circular, with the huts
facing inward, toward the bunkers. The men on my section spread out. I
wondered if we should be looking outward, as well as inward, when
someone dashed in between the huts and into the jungle.
He was moving so fast, just a blur, that all I could tell was he wore a
loincloth, had on U.S. jungle boots, and carried a long, tubular object,
maybe a B-40 rocket launcher.
I snapped up my CAR-15 to fire, but instead yelled, “Halt! Halt!”
My trigger finger tightened. He ran on, zigzagging downhill into the jungle,
jumping like a deer.
I don’t know why I didn’t fire. I ran after him instead, crashing
through the foliage, shouting for him to stop. Suddenly I realized I was
doing just what I needed to be doing to run into sudden death. I stopped,
and to my surprise, he stopped, looking back at me.
 He was a Montagnard boy, just a boy. He was holding a wide staff
of capped bamboo, the kind his people used to carry water.
I was breathless. I motioned for him to come back, and he smiled at
me and walked up the hill. Jesus Christ. I had almost killed a boy even
younger than me. I delivered him to the group of natives who had all been
ordered to the center of the village. As yet, there had been no shots, no
gunfire.
The S5 captain stood beside his jeep, his interpreter talking to the
people. They were mostly old men and women, and some children. They
wore drab blankets and loincloths. It was like looking at prehistoric
mankind. They were impassive as they listened to the interpreter.
Their huts—their homes—were being searched. I took my place
back in the cordon of LRRP’s watching the village perimeter. The
searchers were finding no evidence of the enemy.
An old man was helped out of his hut by his family. His hair was
white and he had a thin, ragged blanket over his shoulders. On one of his
feet was a dirty bandage, the result, the interpreter told the captain, of an
American shell splinter from the night’s bombardment.
The captain ordered the old man placed on the back seat of his jeep,
to be taken in for treatment.
The old man’s family brought him a jug of water and a few sweet
potatoes wrapped in a rag, because they didn’t know if we would feed him
or not.
As we prepared to leave, and the S5 officer sat in his jeep, a young
Montagnard girl, perhaps ten years old, came running out of her hut,
shouting loudly at the interpreter.
Our convoy waited as the highly excited girl gestured and pointed to
the truck beside mine. The captain walked from his jeep to the truck.
“She says one of you guys took a couple of machetes from her
hooch,” said the captain. “Who’s got ‘em?”
An NCO from brigade headquarters sheepishly handed the machetes
down to the officer. I remembered the incident in the infantry when one of
my company had stolen bracelets from a Montagnard girl. The wooden-
handled, hook-bladed machetes were only curios to us, but to the poverty-
stricken Montagnards, they were as precious as a car would be to a family
in the States.
 The theft of the machetes humiliated me. I wanted to apologize or
explain to the people somehow, but we were already rolling. We drove out
of the village with the old man behind the captain, holding himself with
dignity.
On the road out, our driver slowed enough for me to pick my hat out
of the tree.

A helicopter flew in one of our LRRP teams that had been out at
Plei Djereng during the mortar attack on 3-Tango. They were later to all
receive Bronze Stars for killing three NVA while attacking enemy mortar
positions around the camp.
They had been mortared too, while in the camp. The team members
were Dan Davis, James (Ridgerunner) Umberger, James Hart, Ronald
Norton, James Roberts, and Harry Schreiner.
“They hit the ammo,” one of the men said, “and the trucks the
ammo was on were blown all over the place. You ever seen a deuce-and-a-
half turn a flip in the air? Goddamn!”
They sat together on a low sandbag wall, and were as glad to be
back at 3-Tango as if it had been Fort Benning. Their jokes were too
nervous, their laughs too quick. They were alive, and they were giddy with
the enjoyment of it.

15 March 1967: Details of War

From 15-27 March, a combat tracker team was attached to the 4th
division. The team, 10 men and two Labrador dogs, was specially trained
in reading the signs of the trail. It was employed to locate enemy
personnel, equipment and bodies; the team is credited with finding five
buried NVA bodies. Several bunker complexes and miscellaneous
equipment were also found, but the team was not with the division long
enough to evaluate its effectiveness.
As the 1/12th was making an air assault into an LZ, the Huey’s were
met with an effective, improvised type of “aerial mine.” These were clusters
of ten hand grenades each, propelled about 40 feet into the air by an
explosive charge, where the grenades detonated.
A dozen Hueys were damaged and one destroyed by these devices.
They were command detonated by NVA near the mines using electrical
generators to fire blasting caps embedded into the propellant charges.
 And like Cpt. Nobel said, the 2/8th began receiving its M13 tracks at
base camp, beginning its conversion to a mechanized unit. The tracks were
brought up from Saigon by sea, then off loaded at Quin Nhon and driven or
flat-bedded to Pleiku. Spare parts lagged behind, and training was slow.

16 March 1967: Situations

The 2nd Brigade was involved in heavy combat along the Cambodian
border. Today, the 1st of the 12th hit command detonated mines assaulting an
LZ. Since arriving in Vietnam, the 1/22nd, my original battalion at Fort
Lewis, had suffered terrible casualties. Almost everyone in Alpha
Company, to which I had been assigned, was killed or wounded. By the
18th of March virtually every man in it was a replacement.
The 1/22nd, and the 1/12th, were locked in fierce fighting with the
North Vietnamese. A battalion from the 25th Infantry Division, their 1/35th,
stood in for our 2/8th, which was getting track training and was no longer in
the field.
I flew back to base camp the next day to take care of some errands
for the platoon at brigade headquarters, and decided to visit a friend who
was still with Alpha Company, 1/22nd. His name was O’Shea, and he had
survived because he was a supply clerk in base camp, not an infantryman.
He had never fired a shot in anger or seen an enemy soldier in all his
time incountry, and he had arrived on the Walker with me.
When I told him I could use some equipment for the LRRP platoon,
he told me he had heard there was a load of it at the battalion headquarters
supply tent. I thanked him and left, walking through the company streets
until I saw the 1/22nd’s sign, and knew where to come back to tomorrow.
As the members of our LRRP platoon lost equipment, wore it out, or
had it damaged in battle, getting replacements was difficult. Our parent
units had issued us complete sets of clothing and equipment, and once we
were away would not issue more.
We often sent out individuals from the platoon on “midnight
requisitions.” All of us stayed alert for usable equipment, even if it was just
an extra shirt or canteen cup.
Having to be our own source of supply was one of the results of
being a provisional unit. It made us feel that much more independent.

18 March 1967: Remains

 With all the 1/12th infantry battalions in the field, their section of
base camp was as still as death. Not even a breeze moved the hot, stale air
between the tents. The place smelled like baking canvas.
I78I found the supply building. It was actually a wooden frame;
roofed with a GP medium tent. A clerk worked quietly inside. It seemed
very dark in there after the brilliance outside.
I walked in amid stacks of crates and boxes. “I’m from the
LRRP’s. I was told I could get some equipment from you.” I said, breaking
the silence of the afternoon.
The clerk looked at me with resentment. “It’s out back. Take
whatever you want,” he said, pointing at the door.
I walked between piles of laundered uniforms and stepped down out
of the building. On the bare earth lay several ponchos covered with web
gear and helmets.
All of it was dirty and shot full of holes and starched with dried
blood. I knelt beside a pile of the morbid gear and picked up a canteen and
cup, pressed together forever by a bullet. No good at all.
There was a helmet, the suspension inside still holding several
envelopes and personal letters, but it was all glued together with an amazing
amount of black, sticky blood.
I saw another helmet with a hole punched through it, making two
exit holes where the bullet must have fragmented as it passed through the
skull of the wearer, but the detail that chilled my heart was the name on the
sweatband. I had known the man.
Smashed rifle magazines lay around, all useless. A paperback novel
was mixed with the equipment, torn apart by a direct hit. I found the steel
core of a Tokarev pistol bullet still in it.
I lifted a pistol belt, made inflexible with dried blood, and tossed it
back into the pile. Ants swarmed into the packs, going for C-rations
punctured by bullets.
Each grisly item told a unique and ghastly story. The grotesque
appearance of a set of web-gear suspenders so stiff with crusty blood they
still held the shape of a human torso was sickening.
This was not equipment, it was remains, and it should have been
buried. I left the supply tent and walked back down the company road to
the airstrip.
I’d have to get my extra equipment somewhere else.
21 March 1967: Situations, Part II
The infantry units were still in contact on and off with the North
Vietnamese.
The 1/8th sent in two companies to link up with a LRRP team that
had seen NVA coming over the border from Cambodia, and made contact
with the 101st NVA battalion from the 95B regiment and killed 179 of them
by body count.
Our LRRP teams were spotting the enemy daily, and everybody’s
casualties—except the 2nd Brigade LRRP’s’—were mounting.
We were inserting and recovering teams every day. Trying to keep at
least three to five teams in the field at all times. The record we were
creating was making Gen. Peer’s case he planned to present to MACV that
we LRRP’s were essential to the war effort. Of course this wasn’t obvious
to us in the platoon. We barely knew what was going on in the Division
LRRP platoon and the 3rd Brigade platoon. To quote a WWII Willie and Joe
cartoon in which a GI is in a foxhole reading an newspaper about some
other major actions elsewhere: “The hell this ain’t the most important hole
in the war. I’m in it.”

We were the screen for NVA movements in a buffer zone from the
border to 3-Tango. Our main infantry units were pulled back, out of harm’s
way. Had they been on the border, our casualties would have been higher.
And as if charmed, our teams kept going out, bringing back intelligence,
and killing enemy soldiers as a side effect.

The monsoon was coming, and the smell of rain was often on the
breeze. 3-Tango the big overstocked supply dump was being dismantled,
with truckloads of equipment and supplies leaving every day.
When the rains came back, the dust that plagued us would become
mud, but in March the dust was still supreme. It was ankle-deep on the
roadsides, the winds stirring huge clouds of it like desert sandstorms.
Moving vehicles had dust plumes behind them ten meters high.
Everything was the color of reddish dust. It ruined weapons, food, and
crept into the tightest corners of equipment.
Whenever a helicopter landed, the dust was unbelievable. The
aircraft would vanish in a violent opaque mass of red-brown atmosphere,
the dust rising above the trees, moving outward, impossible to breathe in,
slowly settling, coating everything.
Vehicle drivers’ faces on the daily convoys were cracked masks of
dust, only their eyes displaying humanity.

The Mysterious RRU

The Military Intelligence tent, the LRRP platoon area, and the
mysterious RRU tents were all grouped together, like a compound within a
compound at 3-Tango, but the RRU was separated from us by another
barbed wire barrier.
RRU meant Radio Reconnaissance Unit, which was actually a cover
for the ASA, or Army Security Agency. What they were doing was
monitoring enemy radio frequencies. ASA performed electronic
intelligence and electronic warfare and was directly subordinated to the
Army Chief of Staff.
ASA had been in Vietnam since May 1961, working to locate
Vietcong transmitters. They were doing this from jeeps fitted with radio
direction finders. An RRU enlisted man named James Davis was the first
US soldier officially acknowledged to be killed in action in South Vietnam.
It happened just before Christmas, on 22 December 1961, just outside
Saigon. Davis was killed in an ambush while tracking down an enemy
radio signal. After that, radio reconnaissance was done from the air.
To we hardcore long-range patrollers, the RRU people seemed like
intelligent, nervous types who were maybe a bit intimidated of their own
security clearances. We didn’t see much of them, but they had to come out
and eat sometimes, and when they sat at the mess tables with us, they were
very careful never to talk about their work.
We had a small battery-powered record player set atop a narrow
crate in my tent. Stolen BA-30 batteries, the army version of the D-cell, fed
it. Having the record player was a godsend, and we played a scratched
recording of Mitch Ryder’s “Devil With A Blue Dress On,” some Beatles
music, and Simon and Garfunkel's album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and
Thyme.” To this day, “Devil With A Blue Dress On” reminds me of the best
of the platoon, of upbeat attitudes, of cocky recon-commandos joking and
tapping jungle-booted feet as they listened to the music.
Simon and Garfunkle were perhaps a bit too introspective for that
time and place. One song, “Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall,” hit
too close to home for me.
“So my fantasy, becomes reality, and I must be what I must be and
face tomorrow,” they sang. “So, I’ll continue to continue to pretend, my
life will never end…”
A culmination of motivations had taken me one step at a time to the
LRRP platoon. I had made life and death decisions on preconceptions,
risked everything on the fantasy that I knew what I was doing. Now it was
my reality. And to pick up my weapon and go on the next patrol, I had to
pretend my life would not end.
Perhaps this seems like too much of a melodramatic comparison.
Soul-searching song lyrics are easy to dismiss when times are good. But in
a darkened tent, alone with your thoughts, and going out tomorrow on
patrol again, such lyrics are conscience and prophesy.
One day, the record player began to do odd things. Somehow it was
picking up cryptic English-language military aircraft radio traffic that was
so powerful it would blare out and override the record we were playing.
We recognized none of the call signs, but we realized we were getting only
half of the conversations. It was disturbing what pleasure we got from our
records.
We wanted it stopped, and guessed that the RRU would know
everybody’s call signs. At chow one day, we told one of the RRU men
about the strange call signs and conversations we were overhearing on our
record player. The man almost choked on his food, and left the table in a
hurry. We lost the interference that afternoon.
There was an explanation.
An RRU linear antenna had been strung just over our tents. The
powerful electromagnetic transmission waves off the antenna were
activating the simple crystal pickup in the tone arm of the record player, and
causing the unwanted signal to be sent on to the amplifier and speaker.
The RRU had been bugged by a child’s-quality record player. The
antenna was relocated. We got a good laugh at RRU’s expense, but they
never saw the humor in it.

22 March 1967: Missing Team

Sergeant Britt, Charlie Keough, Davis, and Hatchett from our
platoon went out on patrol and just disappeared.
 They had taken not one, but two radios. A and B companies from
the 1 of the 8th, part of the 1st Brigade of the 4th Division, moved into their
st

last known area to try to find them, their bodies, or some signs of them.
The infantry ran into enemy, and soon a few firefights became a
battle; the 1st of the 8th was in full contact. A B-40 rocket hit the Alpha
Company commander and artillery observer, taking them both out, and all
semblances of command and control was lost.
There was no longer any coordinated artillery support, and Alpha
Company split into two different fighting perimeters, while Bravo Company
fought their way through to them, itself breaking up because of terrain and
poor commo.
A helicopter flying over the fight saw a smoke grenade burning, and
dropped low enough to recognize Britt’s team signaling them. Both radio
sets had failed, and the LRRP team was trapped in all the combat.

When they were flown back to our platoon area, they told how they
had observed about forty North Vietnamese soldiers while they were on
patrol, including some armed women.
Without radio contact, Britt couldn’t report them, but had his team
follow their movements as long as he could. After thirty-six hours without
radio contact, Britt heard gunfire and realized his small team was on the
outskirts of a developing infantry battle. His men were trapped between the
North Vietnamese and the American unit, and either, side would shoot the
LRRP’s, since the NVA would know they were American, but the
Americans would think the LRRP’s were the enemy, because of the
different way they dressed.
Once C and B companies linked up, the NVA withdrew. NVA
losses were 136 by body count, and the 1/8th losses were 27 KIA and 48
WIA.

23 March 1967: Back to the Oasis

We were told to prepare to pack and leave 3-Tango. We had to drop
the tents, destroy our bunkers, and all of our wood frames, props, and
structures. Tons of ammunition, fuel, food, and other supplies had to be
airlifted or trucked out. GI’s worked day and night to get this done, rifles
set aside for shovels and hard labor. We knew the NVA were watching
from a distance, waiting, planning.
26 March 1967: Road Mines
3-Tango was gone. The airstrip, the asphalted helicopter pad, all the
graded company streets, the LZ that handled all our casualties from
February, all plowed down and destroyed. It was Easter Sunday, but we had
little thought of the holiday. There were no colorful eggs or chocolate
bunnies this far afield.
We had worked ourselves to exhaustion, slashing sandbags to keep
the enemy from trying to reuse them, and fueling huge fires with the
carpenters’ labors of tent frames, wooden latrines, signs, and bunker
supports.
The old church was empty again, as hollow as the day we arrived.
All the work invested in it, the plywood paneling, the rows of offices inside,
the reglassed windows, all were ashes or shards.
The grass would grow back soon, bushes would cover the holes
where the bunkers, trenches, and roads had been, and the landing zone and
airstrip would sprout vegetation. The North Vietnamese would also soon
come back, free to roam there again.

The convoy back to the Oasis on Route 509 was a bumpy all-day
ordeal. I rode as guard on a truck, rolling along behind another truck,
passing the time looking at the jungle and mountains. The countryside was
wild and remote. We could be passing a regiment of NVA camped right off
the road and never seen them.
The enemy could have us any time he wanted us. I knew all too well
this was how the French Mobile Group 100 must have felt as they fell back
from An Khe to Pleiku, trying to be vigilant, straining their eyes to see
movement; right up to the moment the shit hit the fan. And then it was a
matter of dying on a vehicle, on the side of the road in a ditch, or trying to
run for it into the foliage.
The dirt road was narrow and badly rutted. The choking dust made
the drivers try to keep their distance from each other, but fear made them
want to stay close together.
It seemed that every twenty meters there was a deep mine crater.
Along the roadside was the sort of wreckage our army should have
removed, but had left instead. The ditches were literally filled in places
with pieces of vehicles that had hit mines.
 There were hoods, fenders, bumpers, wheels and tires, track links
from tanks, even twisted frames.
At 1122 hrs. I heard a muffled explosion behind us, and looked over
my shoulder and saw a tall column of dust go up. A mine had just
exploded.
Almost at the same moment, six vehicles ahead of me, a deuce and a
half truck hit a mine. My driver tried to dart our truck out of line, thinking
he had to get us quickly around the traffic jam ahead, and just as suddenly
stomped on his brakes. An M-48 tank raced by, coming up fast from
behind us, nearly smashing our truck.
There were some gunshots, and smaller explosions that I took to be
mortar rounds landing near the road, but we were moving ahead fast, and as
we drove around the truck, I saw a man lying off to the side, clutching his
legs in pain. It was Bessesi, one of the brigade cooks. There was no time
to even wave to him. The truck was loaded high with kitchen equipment,
but now it’s rear suspension was gone.
We kept driving. I counted the major parts of vehicles I saw beside
the road, and estimated by the time the day was over that the over the last
few months, the United States Army had lost a minimum of fifty trucks,
tanks, and other vehicles just along that single stretch of road.
There was an M-48 tank with its engine and transmission blown
completely out of it, parts lying beside the hull, all of the access hatches
missing over the engine deck.
A steel frame bridge lay crumpled in a deep gully, a new bridge
thrown up so we could cross. I wondered how many bridges had been built
there.
We passed one town. It was not inhabited. Much of the town had
been built of brick, with plastered walls and tile roofing. Now it was all
shattered, pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel, just masonry heaped in
worthless piles.
The sights were eerie, puzzling, mute evidence of battles fought and
forgotten.
It took us two days to dig the new radio bunker and get our tents
erected. The new LRRP platoon area at the Oasis was better organized, and
larger. We even made a duplicate of the radio bunker and designated it the
“television bunker,” because there was a low-powered broadcasting station
now at Dragon Mountain Base Camp. It was on the air several hours a day,
and we all donated money for a black-and-white television set.
We did not take our small unit of Montagnard mercs with us from 3-
Tango. They went on to another outfit. We did keep a few of the
DELTA/SOG Vietnamese and one or two Americans who had been attached
to us as part of our duties.
Now we were thirty miles from the border, not just a few kilometers,
and our new area of LRRP operations would mostly in the lowland Ia
Drang valley to the southwest of Pleiku and the highland Kontum
Mountains to the northeast.
A big change for us was the introduction of Captain John Clark,
who came to take over command of the platoon, making Lieutenant Lapolla
the executive officer.
Tom Harris, my infantry friend from Charlie Company, finally
joined the LRRP’s. Tan, the Vietnamese interpreter I had carried to aid
station at 3-Tango during the mortar attack, came back from the hospital,
his shrapnel wounds healed. We also got Sergeant Littlejohn back, and I
returned his carbine. He had been hit in the side with an AK, the bullet
itself not making half the scar the surgeons did getting it out of him.
Bonert had also come back from the hospital about the same time
Littlejohn had returned. He had been point man on his team, and about 09
February, had taken a bullet through his thigh in an ambush, before I joined
the platoon.
Bonert had told me the story of his ambush, and was disturbing.
He was on point and sensed the ambush a moment before it
happened. “It was too quiet, too still,” he said. “I knew we were fucked,
but before I could say anything…” Bonert was immediately hit in the thigh,
his leg collapsing under him. “I tried to run, and I couldn’t,” he said, “but I
realize now, if I had gotten back to my feet quickly, I would have been
killed.”
The NVA broke contact, but Bonert said his team left him for dead.
“I managed to get out of my rucksack,” he said, “and with the weight off
me, I could crawl.”
He did crawl, and happened to find his team at the assembly point
they had prearranged not long before the ambush.
“My team just ran out on me,” he said, and told me who they were,
and to watch out for them. “Those bastards,” he said. “They never even
checked. You don’t ever leave a man behind like that. Never.”

30 March 1967: Hunter-Killer (Green Weapon) Team

We organized as a five-man team for this mission, the objective not
reconnaissance, but ambush. We were going out as a hunter-killer team.
There was a dirt road that led away into the jungle from the Special
Forces camp being built near the Oasis. Enemy mining parties were active
on it, coming in at night to bury some of those powerful road mines that
could blow the wheels off our trucks.
We were to walk the road at night, for a length of six kilometers if
we could, try to intercept a mining party in action—and kill them.
The road was rocky, and it was difficult to walk it quietly in the
dark. I was point again, the rocks almost tripping me and generally
impeding silent movement.
I had already realized how crazy the idea of walking the road at
night was. A mining party would have security out on both ends of their
dig, and the first I’d know about it would be muzzle flashes from their AK-
47s.
Even though the night was cool, I was sweaty from nervousness.
We took rest breaks every thousand meters.
At one of our breaks, we heard the distinct sound of incoming
mortars, and suddenly the road was bracketed with explosions.
Sergeant Hill, who had recently been promoted to staff sergeant (E5
to E6), stammered that someone at the Oasis had made a mistake, and had
failed to tell the mortar crews not to plot fire on the road.
It was standard practice for both the mortars and artillery to drop
harassment-and-interdiction (H&I) fire on mapped targets either day or
night.
The mortar rounds walked away from us, in steady steps, and we
were afraid they would come back, so knowing we were at maximum
mortar range, we ran down the road in the dark, trying to make sure we
outdistanced the mortars.
We walked until midnight, decided then we had gone far enough,
and crept off the road into the forest, arranged guard, and went to sleep.
I was picked up off the ground by an explosion so close it cut down
the small trees near us with fragments. I bounced once, grabbed for my
weapon, and in that instant more explosions surrounded us. This time it
wasn’t mortar. It was 105mm artillery.
Sergeant Hill frantically grabbed the radio handset, calling brigade,
managing to blurt out for them to cease fire, that the rounds were hitting us.
The shells still came smashing into the night around us, as if we
were the specific target. Hill started to whimper, and sensing he was going
to try and run, two of us held him down, trying to tell him what we didn’t
believe ourselves---that everything was going to be all right—and Hill was
swearing he was going to quit the LRRP’s if he got back. We stayed there
the rest of the night.
We moved out at 0800, avoiding some Montagnards who were
walking through the woods toward the road, and continued on parallel to
the road.
The foliage became thick, and it took hard pushing to keep moving.
We made only a thousand meters all morning. We found nothing but old
Montagnard trails. Finally, aggravated, exhausted, and dripping with sweat,
we stopped in the late afternoon, found some good ground, and set up
another overnight defense perimeter.
Before dark, listening to the radio traffic, we learned two things.
One of the new division LRRP teams had to be extracted because they had
lost their map. I laughed about that. Some LRRP team. We did not have a
high opinion at the time of the fledgling division LRRP platoon.
Second, we got news that Sergeant Sanderson’s team had made
contact with ten enemy, killed six of them, and had captured a light machine
gun.
That raised the platoon toll of enemy killed to seventeen. We still
had no dead of our own. Littlejohn had been hit in the side, and Bonert had
been shot in the thigh, plus Simmons had a slight graze on his arm, and
Danny Harmon had taken a mortar fragment in the belly at 3-Tango, but to
date that was our total casualty list.

We ate, shouldered our equipment, and left our night position at

0830, struggled through dense foliage until 1300, having advanced only
about a thousand meters.
We were low on water, and trying to find a river indicated on our
map. When we called in our afternoon situation report, we were given the
order to return. Our mission was canceled.
 I couldn’t believe it. There we were, way out in the middle of some
of the thickest jungle I’d seen since a brick wall, and the word was forget it
and come home.
A spotter aircraft flew over us, and when we asked him by radio for
verification of the nearest clear landing zone, he gave us one only three
hundred meters away.
Brigade headquarters said they could not spare a helicopter, and they
wanted us to walk out. It had taken us a day and a half to get where we
were, and headquarters had the nerve to ask us if we could get back by late
afternoon.
I held my CAR-15 ahead of myself and pushed down the vines and
saplings, moving ahead like a human bulldozer. With no noise discipline at
all, I made three thousand meters in four hours.
Thorns ripped me, vines brought me down, branches blocked me
and stabbed me, but I made the distance.
When we finally found the road again, I was a bloody mess. I
collapsed in the high grass and worked my way out of my pack, and lay
there panting. I pulled the thorns out of my hands with my teeth. My neck
was burned where vines had lashed me.
Hill radioed back at 1600 hours. We were still several kilometers
from the Oasis, a long, hot, dusty walk up an unsecured road. We didn’t
have any water, and the heat and thirst were excruciating.
Brigade promised a vehicle would come for us. An hour later,
nothing had showed. We called again, and were told again the truck was on
the way. It never showed up. We later learned the truck went on the wrong
road. We walked about 1500 meters toward the Oasis before hearing a
convoy coming. We really wanted a ride, but there was the possibility that
if the convoy saw us, they would mistake us for North Vietnamese and
shoot us down.
I volunteered to be the one who stood in the road to stop the convoy.
I took off all my equipment, held no weapon, and opened my shirt
so the men on the vehicles could see I was light-skinned, not a brown
Vietnamese. My face and arms were tanned so darkly I knew I had to show
some light skin somehow.
The team hid behind a low hill beside the dirt road. I was prepared
to run if I was fired on.
 The first vehicle I saw was a huge VTR (Vehicle & Tank Retriever),
a large tracked vehicle fitted with a short crane and heavy-duty winches.
The VTR was armed with a .50 caliber heavy machine gun manned by the
helmeted figure standing in the deck hatch.
A Fifty is pure light artillery, and does not deserve to be classed as a
mere machine gun. The destruction a Fifty can cause is impressive. It can
shoot through low hills and bunkers, all with no problems.
The VTR commander rode casually, hands on the Fifty, but then he
saw me. The vehicle stopped abruptly, he snatched the Fifty around, and
pointed it straight at me.
Even at thirty meters out, I thought I could see down the bore of that
big machine gun. I didn’t move. If I had wavered, he would have pulled
the trigger, and I would have been racing for my life through the trees, huge
.50 caliber slugs uprooting everything around me.
I saw the man speak into his helmet mike, and the VTR started
crawling forward, obviously uncertain. Finally, as I was recognized, the
VTR resumed speed, the gunner raised the barrel of the Fifty, and my heart
started to beat again.
The convoy gave us a ride back to the Oasis. We were so perfectly
covered with road dust that we looked as if we had been spray-painted, but
it was better than walking.

The first thing I saw as we walked into the platoon area was a group
of our men and a few officers from brigade examining a bipod-mounted,
top-magazine-loaded, heavy-barreled automatic rifle. The weapon was set
atop a low bunker, and it had attracted a crowd. It was the “light machine
gun” Sergeant Sanderson’s team had captured. Actually, it was an old post
WWI French weapon, and rare.
Brigade officer’s say it ought to go to the West Point museum.
After getting a drink of water and dropping my weapon and
equipment beside my bunk, I felt better, and indeed was proud of
Sanderson’s team. I decided to find one of them and ask about the details of
the fight.
I looked into the next tent, and saw Simmons, one of the men who
had been on Sandy’s team, actually one of our few prior wounded. He was
had been grazed on the arm in the same patrol when Littlejohn was hit.
 “Hey, killer!” I said, “looks like you guys really put the hurt on
Charlie!”
Simmons was sitting on the end of his cot, looking at the ground.
He suddenly turned his head and stared at me, eyes wide open in fury.
“Get out of here! Get out before I kill you! You don’t know what
you’re talking about! Get away from me!” he shouted.
Shaken, I backed out of the tent, and Whitlock took me by the arm
and pulled me away. Hart stepped out with us.
“That gun was being carried by a Montagnard who was the point,”
said Whitlock. “There were only three cartridges in the magazine, and they
were rusted together. That was his personal weapon. He wasn’t NVA.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were in a hot area and had set up an ambush. We were
gathering our Claymores to move out. We heard the people walking up on
us before we saw them. It was a bad deal, man, we were caught trying to
pack up. Hart opened up and killed the point.”
“He went down, but I kept shooting until I saw pieces of his head fly
off,” Hart said.
“Everybody was shooting but me,” Whitlock said, “I was back with
the radio. Sandy threw a couple of grenades.”
“You couldn’t see these people?”
“No. They were behind the bushes.” Hart said, “We stopped
shooting when we heard the women scream. When I ran up there, I saw all
the women and kids. And not all of them were dead, man, but they were
torn up bad. It was a Yard family, carrying baskets. I didn’t know what to
do. We couldn’t carry all those people back.”
“Are you sure there were no NVA?” I asked. “Maybe the NVA were
making he Yard’s walk point for them?”
Sickened, I understood. I didn’t even know how to apologize to
Simmons, who I had just called killer.
.
The following account appears in the 4th Division’s 1966-67
yearbook. The event date is wrong, citing the incident as “late February.” It
was actually 30 March 1967.
Staff Sergeant John Sanderson was team leader, Danny Harmon was
the RTO, and the rest of the team was PFC Houston E. Whitlock, SP4
Jackie Simmons, and SP4 James R. Hart.
The sanitized yearbook account reads:

Interrogation of enemy prisoners indicated that the

NVA had deployed two and possibly three regiments in the
Kontum Panhandle. A LRRP team was inserted along a
trail about a mile from the Cambodian border.
Staff Sergeant John Sanderson set up an ambush site
50 yards off the trail. The first night passed without
incident but early the next morning the LRRP's were alerted
by the sound of small arms and automatic weapons fire.
They had been pre-briefed that a CIDG force would
be working to their south. Now it was a question of
waiting. It didn’t take long. Nearby was an enemy base
camp with 15 bunkers and about 40 to 50 NVA soldiers
whose voices as well as smoke from cooking fires and the
smell of food carried to the observation site established by
the LRRP’s.
Sergeant Sanderson radioed for an air strike on the
enemy camp, repeated the map coordinates and then
ordered his team to pack up. They were a bit too close for
comfort. The results of the air strike were unknown but the
LRRP moved through the jungled terrain feeling quite
satisfied at the sound of aerial bombs exploding well behind
them.
One of the LRRP observed 23 NVA soldiers and
signaled the team to halt.
“Let’s follow ‘em!” SGT Sanderson whispered to
his men. The LRRP’s moved easily through the dense
foliage. They kept the enemy in sight but other groups of
NVA soldiers, 3 to 9 men in a group and all dragging heavy
sacks thought to be filled with mortar rounds, crossed the
recon team’s path.
The LRRP’s evaded the smaller groups and kept the
large group in sight in a deadly game of hide and seek.
Darkness was falling fast. The team stopped for the
night, not too far from the enemy patrol it had followed.
Daylight. The NVA pushed out with the LRRP following.
 A small group of enemy soldiers moved along the trail and
passed the larger group.
One of the NVA carried a light machine gun and
they stopped in front of SP4 James R. Hart. The soldier
armed with the machine gun spotted Hart and Harmon at
his side. Hart opened fire first, and gunned down the group
of enemy soldiers.
From all around the LRRP team the jungle seemed
to explode. The enemy was everywhere. Sergeant
Sanderson lobbed grenades into the bush and called to SP4
Jackie Simmons to cover him.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” the LRRP team
leader hollered, the enemy soldiers had broken and began to
run down the trail dropping their packs. Sanderson had
killed several with his grenades but it would be minutes
before stronger enemy patrols came running to investigate
the explosions and sound of shooting. Especially since it
was coming from deep in their own backyard.
The LRRP’s retained enough presence of mind to
grab the enemy’s packs they had dropped. Packs meant
personal equipment and papers and possibly official
documents; the primary LRRP mission was intelligence
gathering.
Simmons and Hart even carried one of the NVA
soldiers who had been wounded. The enemy soldier died
before they had carried him 300 yards.
Now the LRRP team had become the hunted instead
of the hunter. Sanderson radioed for an emergency
extraction and advised the map coordinates that would mark
his team’s position; then he signed off. That night the team
pushed through the rugged border terrain toward the pick-
up point and met the extraction chopper.

31 March 1967: Truth, The First Casualty Of War

Why officially lie about the incident? Why even mention it at all? It
required the knowledge and complicity of Col Miller and the 2nd Brigade
commanders. Maybe it was to keep the incident from becoming propaganda
for the Communists and their radical left “anti-war” groupies. Maybe it was
okayed by Gen Peers to not inject political disruption into our budding
LRRP efforts.
To confirm my notes and memory of the original story, I found and
interviewed Houston Whitlock in July 1999, thirty-two years after the
event. Whitlock had all but forgotten about him. “The prisoner was a
Yard,” he said. “I think he fell out of the helicopter.”
This book is not an expose, but the Montagnard family killed in this
incident, and the team members who suffered under the cover-up, deserve
to finally have the cover story lifted. I talked to two of the patrol members
immediately after the incident, Hart and Whitlock.
Whitlock came from Alpha Company 2/8th, and joined the platoon
just before Christmas. I knew him mainly by his incredible infantry
survival story. His platoon had been ambushed and overrun on 24 October
1966, Whitlock had been wounded by shrapnel in his back near his left
shoulder. The NVA had passed him over for dead, bayoneting a GI’s body
that lay atop him. Whitlock was ready to get out of the infantry after that,
and volunteered for the LRRP’s, not really understanding what LRRP’s
did. He’d heard it was a soft life at base camp between patrols.

As Sandy’s team was literally landing at the Oasis, Colonel Miller

(now with Division) was waiting on the LZ with brand new Bronze Stars in
the box. He presented them to the team as they got off the helicopter,
carrying the old post-WWI 1924 M29 French automatic rifle they had
captured.
Houston Whitlock refused his medal at first, and his tears and
frustration might have been mistaken for the stress of combat. Miller
insisted and finally put it in Whitlock’s hands. The award is not in
Whitlock’s files. So the rest was a cover story. And they sent the damn
automatic rifle to West Point anyway

02 April 1967: Mission—Ia Drang Valley

Again we were designated as a hunter-killer team.
Captain Clark decided to come out with us, so our organization was
Sergeant Hill as team leader, me as point man, Streeter, one of our black
LRRP’s, as radioman, and the captain as a participant/observer.
 Captain Clark had been a bow hunter in the States, and a
transportation officer in Vietnam. He had been lightly wounded in the leg
while on a convoy, and healing in the hospital had volunteered for long-
range patrol.
Since brigade thought we needed an officer who more rank than a
first lieutenant, we received Clark. He was tall, brave, and ready for the
assignment.
Captain Clark wanted to actually go on patrol himself, something
Lapolla did not do often, except to familiarize himself with what kind of
conditions we worked under in the field. Lapolla had proven himself in the
field with the Special Forces.
Clark had gone on an earlier patrol with Speck, whose sprained
ankle had healed while he worked in the radio bunker. Keough, recently
back from the Nha Trang Recondo School, was point for Clark’s team.
They had only just come off the helicopter, and were moving
through a wooded area, when they walked face-first into a North
Vietnamese patrol.
Keough blasted the enemy point man with his CAR-15. Machine
gunners were taught to fire a “burst of six.” Keough had the technique on
such surprise encounters of emptying his entire magazine, or as he put it, a
“burst of twenty.”
The enemy point man went down very dead, and in a moment, both
patrols were scurrying for cover, still facing each other.
Speck knew the thing to do was escape at the first opportunity.
LRRP teams were not supposed to stand fight.
Captain Clark had other ideas. He suddenly grabbed Speck by the
arm, and shouted for the team to attack the enemy.
Speck was more experienced. He did not move from his fairly safe
place nose-down in the dirt, but Clark jumped up and charged the North
Vietnamese, throwing hand grenades.
“I knew he was crazy then,” Speck told me, “but I couldn’t let him
go all by himself. I jumped up too, and went in behind him.”
Speck and Clark killed five enemy soldiers with grenades, saturating
the bushes with a barrage of them, until, as Speck put it, “Arms and legs
flew out.”
Then they retreated to a pickup point and called back the
helicopters.
 Now, it was my turn to go out with Captain Clark. I thought bravery
was all well and good, but it had to be tempered with wisdom and a good
survival instinct. I didn’t want to be killed because Captain Clark saw a
chance to assault an enemy position.
I knew Sergeant Hill was worried about going out with Clark, but
Hill wanted too much to impress him, so I knew we might be in for a
general hard time on this patrol.
Two Hueys landed on our insertion, my team on one, and another
team on the other. The terrain where we landed was flat and burnt-over,
with many good places to set a helicopter down. The forest was close.
The other team went east. We went west, and as point I led my team
about a thousand meters through the jungle until we found a good, well-
used trail.
It was almost dark, and we split up to cover a fork we found in the
trail. Sergeant Hill and Captain Clark stayed at the intersection, while
Streeter took one branch and I took the other. We were covered front and
back, and settled into a quiet wait.
I boiled water for a dehydrated (pre-freeze-dry) ration, and was
waiting for it to reconstitute when there was a single, loud gunshot from
Streeter’s position. I didn’t have a direct line of sight to him, our positions
separated by brush, and as I went down, flipping the safety off my CAR-15,
I didn’t know what had happened.
“Are you all right?” Hill called to Streeter, who came running back
to him, out of breath.
“There was three of them!” Streeter said. “First couple of guys were
‘Yards, carrying baskets on their backs, the last guy was a VC, he had a
carbine! They walked right up on me!”
I crawled to his position. There were two baskets abandoned by the
escaped Montagnards. One had a few edible roots in it. The other had once
contained fresh meat, but now there was only congealed blood and fat.
“Maybe they’ll come back,” Captain Clark said.
And probably bring all their friends in the North Vietnamese Army,
I was thinking.
“The VC will think we’re gone,” Clark said. “We’ll set up an
ambush here and wait for them to come back.” Somehow that seemed like a
good idea at the time.
 We planned the ambush carefully, moving away from the fork a
distance, and arranged all of our Claymore mines to crisscross their
sweeping blasts of steel shot there.
We stayed in ambush, and very late that night, we heard movement.
I laid my hand on my CAR-15, waiting. It sounded like a point man
creeping off the trail, coming directly our way.
All of us tensed, weapons ready. The rustling of the grass and
bushes was slow, careful, and steady, except for the times it would go silent
for a few moments. I imagined the point man walking like I did, pausing
every few steps to listen.
Since we were lying down in the dark, the enemy would not see us
until we fired. Soon, the noise was only a few meters away. I prepared to
fire.
A wild pig snorted, sensing us, and walked away, sounding exactly
on his travels like a deliberate, slow-moving point man in the night.

03 April 1967: Staying Alive

We disarmed our mines and moved on into the Ia Drang Valley,
walking much farther than we would have normally gone. The distances
were Clark’s idea. By late afternoon we were exhausted, and found a spot
to rest, and set up another ambush.
The Ia Drang River flowed through the lowest point in the valley,
and we had been trying to stay high, in the trees as we southward towards
the wider valley and the Chu Pong Mountains rising up as some sort of
natural barrier into Cambodia.
The Ia Drang Valley was a dangerous place. This is where the 1st
CAV had been mauled back in November 1965, and our own units didn’t
penetrate parts of it very far. It was established enemy territory. Indian
country.
The 4th was going to try invading it again in May, and the 9-day
battle that would result was one of the worst in the entire war. My LRRP
team was going to have a front row seat.

04 April 1967: Trigger Fingers

The foliage became so dense it was virtually impenetrable as we
began the third day of the mission. At times, as point, I moved forward on
my hands and knees, or actually on my stomach.
 The briars, vines, grass, and saplings made a carpet two meters high.
I lost my ballpoint pen, broke the glass on the face of my compass,
and lost my stainless-steel folding-blade pocketknife. Hill lost his compass.
A helicopter flying overhead trying to contact another one of our
teams gave us a visual sighting on an abandoned Montagnard village, and
we changed direction toward it, but when we came out the rough foliage,
we found nothing but burnt-out clearings and many well-traveled foot trails.
We moved into the brush going uphill to observe any trail activity,
when we heard voices coming from out of the forest behind as.
Clark, Hill, Streeter, and I all raised our CAR-15s, no word among
us necessary. There were two men walking on the very trail we had chosen
to watch.
I could see their shapes through the jungle. Neither man was
armed. The voices were Montagnard. The lead man wore an oversize U.S.
olive drab T-shirt, and was carrying a native machete.
The man following him was bare-chested, dressed only in his
loincloth, and walked carrying a tall stick. Both were talking fast and
loudly. The lead man looked into the bushes, and saw the four of us, our
weapons all pointed directly at him and his friend.
The first man halted as if he had been paralyzed. The man behind
him bumped into his back, stepped away with a puzzled expression, then he
saw us and froze.
The first man tried to smile and speak, but we did not respond. I
was aiming center mass on him. The smile vanished and he raised his
hands.
For a moment, their lives were in Captain Clark’s hands. If the
captain had fired, I would have fired. The Montagnards were not armed,
but that didn’t automatically make them friendly.
Clark took his left hand off the fore grip of his CAR-15, and waved
the men away with a short flick of his wrist, never taking his weapon off
them. They ran.
We had no way of knowing if they were sympathetic to Americans,
or if they would go straight to the North Vietnamese Army. We had let
them live because they seemed to be innocent.
To survive, we had to leave the area. I took point, and we began
putting distance behind us, moving on the shadowy banks of the Ia Drang
River.
 I was fed up with Clark. He was making us take chances I felt were
unnecessary, and like a yes-man, Hill was agreeing with him.
At one spot, when we paused to refill our canteens, Clark didn’t like
the looks of the water at the edge of the river, so while we filled our
canteens from the concealment of the banks, he walked out onto a log to the
clearer, swifter water. He was in plain sight as he knelt. Captain Clark was
revealing the presence of our patrol.
“If he gets shot,” I told Streeter, “I’m not doing anything about it.
I’m just walking away.” He grunted in agreement.
We covered eleven kilometers that day before we halted, all of it
following enemy trails beside the river.
We had to move steadily until sunset to get that sort of range, and by
the time we stopped, we were so tired none of us could stand.
At dark, we crawled off into heavy foliage, and wired out our
Claymores to cover the approaches. Away from the better water of the
river, we had to get our water for cooking from a swampy spot nearby. It
required pushing back the green slime on the surface, removing the sticks
and moss, dipping in a canteen cup, and filtering the water into the canteen
through a cloth. After that, to kill the bacteria in the rich swamp water, we
would drop in one or two iodine tablets. The taste of iodine-laced swamp
water was nasty. I had to make coffee or cocoa with it before I could
comfortably drink it.
During the night we heard—very distinctly and quite near—an
enemy mortar firing. It sounded about five hundred meters away. Some
American artillery came in too, and it was long-range heavy guns, like 8-
inch or 175mm pieces.
It hit in the valley, and the concussion shook the leaves where I sat.
The termites appeared before dawn. When I woke up for guard at
0230, they had come out of the ground and were everywhere. They were
all clicking their jaw pincers and it made a sound like a constant buzz.
They could eat into packs, going right through nylon or canvas, even plastic
bags.
If I lay still, they would crawl all over me, but not bite. I touched
my finger to the ground once, and one of the soldier termites snapped its
pincers into my fingertip with incredible strength. It was not unusual for
the Montagnards to use them to close wounds, the way we would use
stitches. Once the termite had bitten into both sides of a cut and pulled it
together with its wide, curved pincers, the Montagnards would break the
body of the insect away from the head, leaving the pincers there to hold the
wound clamped shut.
I woke the next morning, had my first case of bleeding bowels, and
knew. I had to get to the 4th Medical when we returned. Living in the
jungle means making yourself a target for a whole medical book full of ills
and infections. There were certain amoebas in the water that could eat
away at your intestines, and I was worried I might have swallowed a few.
Brigade radioed and told us we would be extracted at 1400 hours, so
we held our position, listening to radio traffic, and wondering if the enemy
would come along and make us have to blow our Claymores.
We learned that Viking 3, our sister team on this mission, had been
extracted the day before, the team having made enemy contact, killed one
North Vietnamese, and captured a weapon. The team got away from the
enemy, called in air strikes and artillery, and came back without losing a
man.
The extraction ship found us with no problem after we moved to one
of the burned-over clearings, and soon we were back at the Oasis, washing,
eating, and relaxing.

06April 1967: Operation FRANCIS MARION

Operation Sam Houston officially ended on the 5th, and Operation
Francis Marion (our American revolutionary war “swamp fox” who evaded
and harassed the British) begins. The new operation focused our attention
out of Kontum south, to the western highlands of Pleiku Province, along the
Cambodian border.
The following was written in the FRANCIS MARION after action
report, about the use of our brigade and division LRRP’s in the campaign.

(2) Each of the platoons had 56 US and six MONTAGNARD

personnel and were organized into a platoon headquarters, eight five-man
LRRP teams: and three Hawkeye or hunter-killer teams. The platoon
headquarters consisted of a platoon leader, assistant platoon leader,
operations sergeant, intelligence sergeant and six communications
specialists. Each Hawkeye team was composed of two US and two
MONTAGNARDS.
 56 team members are a lot, and this paragraph sounds like a
planning concept rather than reality. I never counted more than 30 of us in
the 2nd Brigade platoon at one time]

(3) The LRRP teams had the broad mission of infiltrating, into
enemy controlled areas to observe and/or conduct harassing activities’. In
addition to this mission they observed and. reported enemy activities,
conducted terrain analysis for future operations, conducted reconnaissance
in and around potential landing zones, served as stay-behind patrols near
recently evacuated fire support bases and areas of operations, conducted hit
and run ambushes, directed artillery and air strikes on enemy locations,
served as surveillance forces to screen the front or flanks of an area of
operations and served as lures to draw the enemy into a given area.

(4) The Hawkeye teams, while designed primarily for a hunterkiller

role, performed on numerous occasions as LRRP teams.

[We called these Green Weapon and Green Eyes missions, for
combat and recon]

(5) LRRP teams were the forward eyes and ears of the division and
the surveillance scheme was developed with that in mind. Within each
brigade area of operations, LRRP and Hawkeye teams most often worked
directly under brigade control to screen the front and flanks, but on
occasion were attached to a battalion. The division LRRP platoon was
used to supplement the brigade LRRP teams, to screen the division’s flanks
and to provide LRRP support to the armor and cavalry units and infantry
battalions under operational control of the division.

(6) The teams established communications with brigade

headquarters (as the case of the division LRRP’s with the 1st Squadron, 10th
Cavalry), or with the unit to which they attached. Because of the extended
distances over which they operated it was often necessary for the teams to
relay their reports through other units to their headquarters.

07 April 1967: Warning Order

 Hill told me to get ready for another patrol, and to pack to be gone
five days. Our target area was to be south of the Oasis, in the Ia Drang
Valley area, where our LRRP teams were having so much contact.
Almost the entire platoon was assigned for this mission, which
meant we would be deploying three or more teams.

08 April 1967: Mission

Five of us went out this time, Sergeant Hill as team leader, Supply
Sergeant Wilford Snake (who wanted the experience of going out once),
two new men, Sergeant Rilley and SP4 Ramey, and myself
The platoon had started to get some new blood. We were thankful
for them, and were mixing new men with veterans to get them trained.
Training itself is one thing. Learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses
was as vital. Survival vital.

In my search and experimentation for a reliable and better weapon,

for this patrol I took out an M-3A1 .45 caliber “grease gun” I had borrowed
from one of our Vietnamese. I was ready to give it a chance.
The grease gun was World War II vintage, and no longer issued in
the United States Army, except maybe to tankers. It seemed lighter and
handier than a stockless M1A Thompson offered to me by a brigade
weapons trader. The Thompson had felt like an anvil.
 I also borrowed an ammo pouch for the grease gun; it held three 30-
round magazines. I would discover the weight of the ammunition alone
was enough reason not to carry a .45 caliber anything. I had saddled myself
with less total rounds of ammunition than if I had carried a carbine, and
three times the weight.
We were issued a new type of mine for this mission, the M14 “shoe”
mine. It was a small, lightweight, plastic mine that was intended to blow
off part of someone’s foot. We were going to set them out at night on
approaches to our positions, to use as warning devices.
The helicopter that brought us in also picked up Sergeant Britt’s
team at the same place. Britt was carrying an M1 Garand his men had
taken after killing a VC.
That made over twenty kills for us so far.
The trick of direct exchange (DX) was a good one, it replaced one
team with another, and made the think the first team was gone.
I took point again. It was my favorite position. Many men were
afraid of point because it was where most of the trouble started, and the
responsibility of the point man was heavy; if he made an error, the whole
team would suffer for it.
I didn’t realize at first that Hill gladly let me take point. It began to
be clear to me later that Hill wanted me on point for two reasons. First, he
knew I would fight if I encountered the enemy. Second, he wanted me
killed if possible, because he still afraid I might expose him.
Just before our surprise contact with all those North on my first
mission with Hill, he had been up for his promotion, and had probably been
worried if I revealed how he had reacted under fire, he would be not be
promoted. And he was worried enough about it to threaten my life.
I didn’t believe he would kill me himself. He would try to create the
situation where the enemy would kill me. That meant giving me every
dangerous assignment that came along.
Though I would be his point man, scout and risk-taker, I didn’t
confront him about his threat. I really didn’t care. I would do my job, and
that involved risks.
I led the team to high ground, found a trail, and we followed it down
to the water. This was a prime place to ambush somebody. We found a few
old enemy fighting positions near the stream crossing, and decided to lay in
an ambush there.
 It rained heavily after dark, soaking us where we sat, but we had a
good position, and we didn’t move.

Later after dark, we heard a mortar firing steadily, but could not hear
where its shells were landing. It sounded as if it were at least two thousand
meters from where we waited in ambush. We would learn that 40 to 50
mortar rounds had fallen just outside the wire at the Oasis, and that attack
was at 1900 hrs. Also, a 10th Cav command post also took about 40 82mm
mortar shells the same night. No idea if what we heard and who got hit had
any relation.
After I had gone to sleep, and one of our men was on guard, a
supersonic 8-inch howitzer shell hit a hill nearby, waking us all, and as I lay
there, surprised, a few more fell.
The valley echoed with the tremendous blasts. It was H&I fire, and
we were on the receiving end. Because I was separated from the team
farther than usual due to the hillside and ambush arrangement, Hill told me
to stick a blasting cap into the two-pound block of C4 plastic explosive I
carried in my rucksack and give him the wire to attach to his Claymore
clacker.
The reason he gave me was that if I were killed, he could destroy
my equipment. I didn’t like it, but I did it. We had done things like this
before, but rarely, and usually it was only on rucksacks that held Starlight
scopes or other special equipment.
With the wire fixed, I crawled downhill to my position. I was
worried about Hill, who literally held my life in his hands, because if any
shooting started, I knew he might squeeze the clacker and claim I had been
hit.
As soon as I was in place, I disarmed the cap. I could not trust him.
Not at all.
We held that ambush through the night, and, having turned up
nothing, took in our mines the next morning, radioed our situation report,
and were given the message to cancel the rest of the mission and find a
landing zone for extraction.
Soon a small, single-engined spotter plane was over us, and we used
it to get a radio-direction-finding fix, and have the pilot locate a nearby LZ.
He gave us a compass azimuth to an old American position, and we
started toward it, but the brush and grass was so thick we made no real
distance, and decided to cut a landing zone out of the growth ourselves.
It was what we called a “pocket knife LZ,” and we used our sheath
knives to chop it out, stomping and pushing down what foliage we
couldn’t. It four hours to hack out the clearing.
The Huey and gunship escort came at 1530 when the air was hot and
thin, which is bad for helicopters. They don’t get much lift then, even at
maximum power. The LZ was too small, and the Huey bounced on its skids
as it landed, but the pilot corrected and swung the ship around, as we
scrambled out of the grass, trying to get to the doorways.
The pilot couldn’t stabilize the ship, and it continued to swing, the
tail rotor coming at us like a huge, lethal fan. We ducked and weaved,
dodging to go under his tail to escape the rotor. Grass and leaves were
flying wildly. We could hardly see.
The jet engine exhaust hit us full and direct for a moment, and all
the sweat was evaporated off my face in that terrible blast of heat. We
finally managed to jump in the doorways.
Once aboard, the pilot got the ship above the treetops, and we
relaxed on the cooling ride back to Oasis. Coming off the ship, we reported
to the radio bunker, and discovered we had been recalled because we were
needed for insertion in another area, and we were to prepare to go back out
as soon as possible.

The new mission was to go into the Catecka Tea Plantation to find
some of the Vietcong cadre that lived there.

The VC had used the tea plantation for years, and had sophisticated
printing presses, electrical power generators, and machine tools in operation
within the safe boundaries of the plantation, because it was politically “off
limits” to U.S. military operations. The plantation was private property
protected by an agreement with the South Vietnamese politicians that ran
Pleiku Province, making it untouchable by the American Army.
U.S. forces could not shell or bomb the plantation, send infantry
soldiers onto it to damage the tea bushes, or harm it in any other way, such
as allowing tanks to drive across plantation property. We had taken sniper
fire out of Catecka before, and we were reasonably sure road-mining parties
worked out of it.
 Intelligence from friendly Vietnamese reinforced what we knew.
The Vietcong had a first-class “safe house” on that plantation. The workers
even sometimes attended Communist political meetings during the day
when they should have been working. They had little choice. If they didn’t
assemble on cue, they could be killed.
The plantation was allowed by the VC to operate while thousands of
other Vietnamese places of business had been destroyed because the
Catecka tea plantation paid protection money and taxes to the Vietcong.
Finally, we were going to try to do something about it. Catecka was
about to be visited by a number of LRRP teams.
At first our teams didn’t go directly into the plantation, but scouted
the trails and roads that led on and off the property.
There was no cover and little concealment in the tea bushes
themselves, which were grown in well-tended lots, divided by dirt roads,
and watched over constantly by workers.
As soon as our teams began to skirt the perimeter of the plantation,
they made discoveries. The Vietcong indeed had what our sources claimed
they did; an electrical generator, power printing presses, and machine tool
equipment.
There was a VC cadre unit that lived on the plantation and collected
taxes from many areas in the Pleiku Province. They were not a combat
unit, but a political and organizational one. They carried pistols, but a few
had U.S. carbines, and wore ARVN-type uniforms—in case they were
spotted, they could pass themselves off as local militia.
The Catecka missions were shorter than our usual patrols, because
they were so much nearer the Oasis.

I went out with a sniper team to a village in the hills behind

Catecka. Our orders were to lie in wait and protect our sniper, while he
watched the village for his special target. He knew who he was looking
for. We didn’t.
On a tree-covered hill overlooking the village, we dropped into the
waist-deep greenery, and settled into comfortable positions. The sniper
prepared himself a field of fire, camouflaged it, and relaxed. He had one of
the accurate, specially-built M14 rifles with a powerful telescopic sight on
it.
 Our sniper had permission to fire. The other teams playing duck-
and-hide in the tea bushes of the plantation had been told not to fire unless
fired on. I was reminded of one of the LRRP’s coming off a Catecka recon,
his face strained and his temper sharp, holding his hand at waist level and
saying, “You know how high a damn tea bush is? This damn high!”
I watched the village below us. It was large and well laid out. I
could see gardens and fences. The people there went on with their business,
unaware of the telescope that tracked them from their wells to their back
doors, and up and down their streets and alleys.
Apparently our sniper’s target never showed. After a day, we crept
away, the planned execution never taking place.
After our patrols had been hiding along the plantation tree line and
seen the Communist political officers openly talking to the workers, they
wanted to go back to raid, but no permission from our command was
given. To launch a hostile action inside the plantation required approvals
that started at Saigon and came back to the Vietnamese Pleiku Province
chiefs. We never received permission.
This situation angered Captain Clark and all the rest of us, but it was
only one more bitter disappointment in a war that was full of them.

The LRRP platoon area made up part of the Oasis perimeter, that
short stretch of wire being our responsibility to defend. Our bunkers were
about twenty-five meters uphill from the snarled rolls of concertina, an
informal junk pile-garbage dump growing on the inside of the wire itself.
A week or so earlier, a curious mortar barrage had fallen in a good
pattern about a hundred meters short of the wire. If it had been on target, it
would have devastated the LRRP tents. We figured it had indeed been
aimed at us, but that it had been accidentally short. Life went on.
I was resting on my cot inside my tent, writing a letter home. The
sides of my GP medium were rolled high to catch the breeze. The whole
platoon area was quiet. Several patrols were out, and the rest of us were
relaxing.
“Hey!” yelled one of our men. I looked up to see what he wanted,
but before I or anyone else around could respond, he launched himself over
a sandbag wall and ran downhill toward the wire. He was shirtless and he
carried no weapon.
 He ran through the garbage and reached down, pulling up a
Vietnamese man like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat. He started beating the
man before the prisoner could offer any resistance. I put my hand on my
carbine.
“Get a weapon! Bring me a weapon,” the LRRP was shouting. I ran
out of my tent and saw several others coming with guns, too. We were all
at the base of the hill in a few seconds.
“Give me a weapon!” the LRRP was still demanding.
“Why?” asked one of our men, “you’ve got him under control,”
“So I can shoot the bastard!” the LRRP said.
“Wait, let’s talk to him,” argued another man. Someone ran for an
interpreter. The prisoner was weak-kneed and bleeding from his mouth,
looking away from his captors.
“Son of a bitch was hiding in the dump!” the LRRP who held the
Vietnamese by the throat growled as the interpreter arrived.
The interpreter spoke to the prisoner harshly in Vietnamese, and
searched his pockets until he found an identity paper. “This say he was VC,
but no more,” said the interpreter. “He say he was looking in garbage for
something to sell.”
“Bullshit!” said the LRRP. “He was probably pacing us off for
another mortar attack!”
The interpreter and two of our men took the prisoner away. I went
back to my tent and returned to my letter, but found myself glancing from
time to time back down at the wire to make sure the infiltrator didn’t have a
friend.

16 April 1967: Mission (Leeches)

The team that had just left the area of operations we were into had
enemy contact there twice, and had been extracted.
We were going west to the border, south of the old 3-Tango location.
Sergeant E5 Lawrence R. Willey was my team leader this trip, and
was tremendously different from the moody Hill. Willey wore a gold
earring in one ear, and liked to fight.
Harris finally managed to get on a team with me, the first long-range
patrol we had done together since December. Tailgun for our team was
Shin, one of the new men from the infantry, but a combat veteran.
 While preparing my equipment for the mission, I studied the wrench
flats on the 4-inch sound and flash suppressor on the muzzle of my CAR-
15. I went to the motor pool, borrowed a wrench, and unscrewed it; then I
replaced it with a normal, one-inch rifle flash suppressor.
I figured that at the expense of some muzzle blast, I had saved
length and weight on my weapon. There wasn’t time to test it, but I
managed one shot out of the perimeter.
The muzzle blast was terrific, but manageable. I decided to take my
modified CAR-15 on patrol.
We were inserted by helicopter at 1030, and the two escort gunships
with us cut speed at the same time we did to create the illusion the entire
flight had simply slowed, covering the fact our ship had dipped close
enough to the ground to let four men jump off.
I had stood out on the landing skid as our helicopter rushed over the
treetops, and let go as I heard the door gunner yell for me to jump. I hit
hard, literally sprawling, gathered myself, and ran for the woods.
Shin and Willey crashed up to where I was waiting, holding my
CAR-15 ready to open fire if I saw anything coming our way. There was no
sign of Harris, who had our radio.
The three of us made a quick defense perimeter, keeping low in the
bushes, watching the helicopters fly away. A moment later, Harris came
stumbling toward us, his face contorted in pain. “I think I broke my leg,”
he said.
Willey examined his leg. Harris was hurting, gritting his teeth.
Shin and I kept security. Satisfied that the leg wasn’t broken, Harris laced
his boot tightly to give himself more ankle support, and we had to wait for
him to rest.
The jump out of the helicopter had been too fast and too high. I had
hurt one foot myself, and later, when I would take off my boot to inspect it,
I would find the bottom of my foot bruised.
We were on operational control to the 1st of the 22nd Battalion
headquarters, following their orders and gathering intelligence for them.
Battalion commanders, realizing how valuable it could be to them to have
the use of a LRP team in their own sector, used their influence with higher
headquarters to sometimes “borrow” a LRP team for a week. The team
would then conduct local reconnaissance (actually a function of their own
recon units) to help them locate the enemy. Going OPCON to an infantry
battalion commander was risky for a LRRP team. The infantry commander
wanted to be in constant touch with the team and move and direct them as
he would his own people.
Since stealth, not speed was one of the reasons we were survivors,
teams that obeyed were taking incredible chances to satisfy the officer.

We were cautious, but our “up the mountain, down the mountain”
type of highlands patrol continued. We had some sweeping views across
the valleys, our terrain rocky, high, and lightly wooded.
The first of the monsoon rains hit us, making rivers out of gullies,
and preventing us from seeing or hearing well,
After enduring the rain for the best part of a day and night, I was
trying to sleep in a wet hammock I had strung on a steep hillside, and at
about 0530 in the morning, it fell, rolling me to the wetter ground.
The four of us were shivering from the cold of the highlands night
added to the natural chill of the rain.
As soon as there was enough light, we packed and walked down to
the valley, and began to follow the river because it was easier to move
through than the heavy foliage on the riverbanks.
We were in the water for hours, moving quietly, holding onto
overhead branches and vines to keep our balance as we stayed close to the
banks and the concealing vegetation there.
I was point man, and I constantly looked up the banks as far as I
could see into the jungle, but my attention was wavering because I was
feeling sick. Finally, I turned to Willey and told him I was very ill.
He signaled for me to take the team up the embankment, toward a
cave-like hollow in the rocks. We climbed up into it, stripped off our
equipment, and collapsed for a break. The rains were coming down again,
and we made a fire to warm us.
I noticed an itching on my knee, and reached down to scratch it,
feeling the fat blob of a large leech under my trousers.
I rolled the leg of my trousers up over the leech. It was bloated with
blood, locked firmly beside my kneecap. I pushed at it gingerly with my
knife, but it would not release.
The leech had apparently changed places once, and left a small
purple mark still oozing fresh blood near where it was presently. I squirted
some insect repellent on the leech and it dropped off.
 We soon had a smoky fire in our cave, which angered a nest of
hornets that had residence there before we did. The hornets gave way
completely only after they learned we were serious about staying.
Shin, Harris, Willey, and I had to spread out in the small cave, and
slap and swat at the hornets, killing dozens of them as they attacked out of
their nest. The cave was too good to give back to insects.
After the rains, and some hot coffee, I felt like moving again, so we
slowly made our way down to a shady cove in the rocks and camouflaged a
poncho shelter so we could dry our clothes and equipment.
On the fourth day of the patrol, we walked down river 1500 meters,
and found bundles of sharpened bamboo stakes.
Later, we almost lost Harris during a river crossing. I picked a spot
to cross the river near the edge of a dramatic waterfall. There was a rocky
ridge under the surface of the water that made our crossing possible, but to
slip could mean being carried over the waterfall.
The rains had swelled the river, making the rapids and falls more
fierce. I made it across, scouted the opposite banks, and signaled for Harris
to follow. He walked toward me carefully, balancing, and had come near
enough to reach for my hand.
He fell into the water, and I saw him wash over the edge of the
waterfall. I dropped my CAR-15 on the bank, and grabbed for him. I fell
backward into the deep but less turbulent water upstream of the underwater
ledge on which I had been standing.
Shin had come far enough across by that time to reach for Harris,
who was totally submerged, only his radio antenna sticking above the
surface. He was holding on to a rock for all he was worth, his feet over the
edge of the waterfall.
I jumped out of the water and helped Shin pull Harris up. Willey
had watched the entire affair, covering us, from the opposite shore.
Harris was gasping and choking when we dragged him to the shore.
He had not even lost his weapon. The sight of him clinging underwater to
that rock, battered by the current, had been incredible.
“What were you thinking about down there?” I asked him.
“I wasn’t worried,” Harris said. “I knew you guys would get me out
... I just had to hold on.”
We set up another poncho shelter on a sandbar near the water,
camouflaged it, and split into two teams to watch up and down river, and
stayed the night there.
The leech spots on my knee had hardened in the center, and were
very tender around the edges, resembling rotten spots on fruit. I’d had
many leech bites before, but this one was the worst. It would be months
before the marks would really heal.
On our way to the area we had planned to use as our pickup zone,
we encountered a section of the river that had almost been diverted from its
course by a B-52 strike. Instead of a river, it had become a wide, bomb-
cratered swamp.
As we walked into the water, I saw a hazy, buzzing greenish cloud
hovering ahead, spanning the river and the treetops. It was a mass of flying
insects, still in turmoil, unwilling to land.
We had to go through them.
Squinting and closing our mouths as we splashed into the muck of
fresh grass and liquid mud, the insects swarmed us. There seemed to be
hundreds of different types of them, trying to crawl into our ears, eyes,
nostrils, and corners of our mouths.
Swatting at them was no good. There were too many. We walked
through the maddening, boiling mass of them, almost blinded, our skin
crawling with thousands of pricking, probing legs and wings.
When we emerged from the other side, the insects left us to go back
to the cloud, as if they were in agony over the despoiled river.
It was the first time in my life I have ever felt sorry for bugs.
We realized without surprise the next morning that we were
probably being followed when we saw movement and heard noises behind
us. We had been on the river too long. It was the end of the mission
anyway.
Willey gave the order and Harris radioed our position and extraction
request, which meant we were now committed to stay put. I hoped the
helicopter would arrive before the enemy did.
Our pickup spot was a grown-over sandbar beside the river. An
hour later, we heard the helicopter. The NVA could hear it too. I stood in
the open and marked our position with a panel as the swaying, thundering-
loud Huey settled onto the sandbar.
Shin was tailgun. The rest of us ran to the ship, then he followed.
The rotors were spinning, the jet turbine screaming, and the Huey was
bouncing, but we were not taking off.
 Turning in his seat, the pilot gestured that two of us had to get off. I
understood at once. The air was too hot and thin to allow the rotors enough
bite. To fly at all, the ship had to be lightened.
I was point and Shin was tailgun, so we jumped.
The Huey trembled and started to rise. It was going to be a long
walk home, if we made it at all.
Then Willey and Harris jumped too. They were not going to split up
the team. Willey grabbed me. “Get back on the ship!” he ordered.
“Why?” I shouted, my voice faint in the noise of the engine.
“Me and Harris have the radio! You don’t! Tell the pilot to take you
down river and then come back for us! I’ll change positions!”
That made sense. Willey was a good team leader. He made me
realize how bad I’d had it with Hill. The Huey took Shin and me out, and
went back for Willey and Harris.
I trusted Willey and I liked him.

Lessons Learned; Unauthorized Modifications

Back from patrol, Harris, Shin, and I went to the firing range at the
garbage dump on far side of the Oasis to do a little shooting. We did this to
keep in practice, and to burn up old ammunition. The ammo we carried got
wet and stayed wet so often that it was a good idea to change it out every
mission or so. One bad primer on one cartridge was all it took in a firefight
to start a disastrous sequence of events.
As my friends began firing, I raised my CAR-I5 and pulled the
trigger. It fired once, with its new horrendous muzzle blast, but failed to
recycle. I had to eject the spent brass manually.
I tried again. It would fire, totally fail to recock, or fire and recock
once. I could not get it to function normally on semi or full automatic. It
took me a few moments to realize the problem.
The four-inch-long sound- and flash suppressor that I had removed
compensated for the short barrel length by providing enough gas
backpressure to allow the weapon’s gas system to recycle.
As careful as I thought I was being with everything, I had almost
killed myself for an unauthorized modification done on a whim. What if I
had discovered my screwup in a firefight? Who else might have died
besides me? Feeling like a fool, I vowed to replace the proper suppressor
that day.
 Shin and Harris laughed at me, shooting up their old ammo. They
saw a dud 40mm M79 grenade projectile in the dump. It was lying out at
about twenty meters, a very small target.
“I wonder if it’ll blow if I shot it?” Harris asked.
“Blow it? You can’t even hit it from here,” Shin said. They began
firing at the high-explosive shell, kicking up dirt beside it with near misses,
arguing with each other about the chance of the grenade exploding.
Somebody hit it and it suddenly did, making a ball of flame and gray
smoke and flinging fragments at us. It happened too quickly to even duck.
Amazingly, none of us were hurt.
At least I wasn’t the only fool at the garbage dump.

26 to 30 April 1967: Radio Watch

While I had been on all the April patrols, Carl Littlejohn had
returned from the hospital, and Lt. Lapolla had also come back. My stand-
down reward for April was the luxury of finishing it on radio watch duty.
It was raining more, and the dust was settling. The promise of June
and my passage home were foremost on my mind. Radio-watch duty was
both tiresome and exciting, taking the team situation reports, listening to
coded signals, and sometimes trying to broadcast over frequencies being
used by the North Vietnamese in order to jam them.
By slowly turning the dial on our powerful radio set, it was possible
to tune in both propaganda and field combat communications of the enemy.
I could even hear background voices as the radio operator spoke in the
microphone.
Hearing their clinking of cookware, laughter, or commands being
given near the radio operators was fascinating, as if I was there with them.
One of our teams radioed us with a shocking but comical message.
At least it was comical to us in the radio bunker.
“What do we do about panthers? Over.”
“Say again? Over,” said the LRRP on radio watch.
“A panther has us up a tree. Should we just shoot him, over?”
“All of you are up in a tree? The whole team? Over.”
“Yeah. All of us. We want permission to shoot him, over.”
“Don’t do that, you’ll give away your position. Wait, out.”
The radioman ran for Captain Clark, who came to the radio bunker,
mystified as to how an entire team could be treed by one animal.
 “Say again your situation, over,” said Clark.
“We’re okay now,” replied the LRRP RTO. “We sprayed the
panther in the face with bug repellent and he jumped down and ran away.”
“Very good,” said Captain Clark. “Continue the mission.”
“Roger,” said the team, and they did.

29 April 1967: At 1500 hours Recondo Patrol 2E made contact with eight
VC, killed four

The Face
The sight of wounded and disfigured Vietnamese in Pleiku was
common enough, from hobbling veterans to pathetic women and children. I
had finally become accustomed to them, the way I had become accustomed
to the smell of the fish market, or the war itself, or so I thought. As I
walked down a Pleiku street one day on an errand, I realized someone was
following me much too closely, which was a dangerous thing. I spun
around and almost bumped into the man.
I was looking into a hole where his face should have been. As if a
crater had erupted from his nose outward, there was one hole, and in it I
saw nasal passages like open wounds, mixed with a few broken upper teeth
and what was left of his tongue.
There was a sunken yellow eye peering out of the top of it all.
He felt his way around me and kept walking. To this day I have
never seen a Halloween mask with the horror of that ruined face.
It was just another day in Vietnam.

02 May 1967: Silver Star

I learned Captain Clark had recommended me for the Silver Star
medal for the mission in February when we’d had enemy contact on Hill’s
team, and he’d also placed me on the promotion list to sergeant.
A week earlier I had been asked to go out again with Hill. I
refused. I was finished with him, but it no longer mattered. Hill did not
take that mission. He had already made up his mind to go back to the
1/12th. He packed and was out that last week of April.
The awards board at Dragon Mountain Base Camp downgraded my
award recommendation from the Silver Star to the Bronze Star with the “V”
(for Valor) device. “They do that automatically,” Clark told me, “unless
somebody powerful is pushing for approval. To get you a Bronze, I have to
ask for a Silver.”

03 May 1967: “They ran out of grenades first!”

Harris was out with Willey and they made enemy contact. The team
point man met a North Vietnamese soldier in a heart-stopping face-to-face
encounter. The NVA wore a tan uniform and a backpack. The LRRP point
man killed the Viet with one burst, and the team took defensive positions
near a stream to set up their radio and antenna and call in contact.
Harris was watching a trail across the stream when up stood another
North Vietnamese in green fatigues, with a U.S. carbine. Harris fired his
CAR-15 at the man, but it jammed after the first shot.
Harris quickly cleared the malfunction, and fired at man again, but
again the weapon only shot once and the enemy soldier went to cover.
Sergeant Willey lobbed a grenade at the opposite bank, and the
enemy began to throw grenades back.
The two stream banks rocked with concussions as the grenade duel
continued, Willey not giving ground, and the Vietnamese refusing to retreat.
Finally, Willey landed a grenade that settled the fight, but not before
he had been wounded many times by fragments.
The team’s emergency extraction call went out and 21-year old
Warrant Officer (W1) Marvin Melsha of Company A, 4th Division’s 4th
Aviation Battalion received it. He was piloting a D-model Huey slick and
he and his crew were quickly on the way to save the team.
Willey’s men were pinned down and under fire by the time Melsha
got to them. There were also gunships there now, and they were circling and
making firing passes to keep the NVA off the team, colored smoke from the
team’s grenades hazing the area.
As Melsha dodged the gunships and with heavy automatic weapons
fire cracking past his ship, he maneuvered into position to pick up the team,
staying calm and controlling that Huey at a time no one should be so calm.
He got the LRRP’s out, and on 25 November of 1967, officially
received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions. He flew the team to
the Oasis, where I happened to be waiting at the landing zone to help.
When I saw Willey carried off Melsha’s helicopter, both of his eyes
were swollen shut, and his body and face were scarred with bloody
punctures, his tiger fatigues tattered from the grenade fragments.
 He was trying to smile. “I got them bastards,” he mumbled, “they
ran out of grenades first.”
Harris was frustrated at his experience with the CAR-15, and angry
his request to test-fire the weapon before going on the patrol had been
denied.

04 May 1967 Ron Coons graduated from Recondo School in Nha Trang.
He was Recondo 355. Ron had joined the platoon about early March, and
been sent on to Nha Trang. I hadn’t met him, having been on one patrol
after another. And on his return to the platoon, we’d keep missing each
other as we went out and came back, etc., even in our small unit. That’s
how busy we were.

The 4th Med

Scabbed-over sores were appearing on Harris’s legs. He went on
sick call because of them, and got dosed with penicillin, but the sores did
not go away. After a brief retreat, they came back stronger.
The medics didn’t know what the sores were. We all suspected they
were some type of tropical disease. Finally, the sores developed on his
arms, and he began getting feverish. Captain Clark sent him to the 4th
Medical, to a holding area they had at the Oasis for recovering patients or
those too sick for the field but too well for the 75th Evac.
We told Harris we would visit him there, and a few days later, three
of us walked to the other side of the big camp and found the “hospital.” It
was nothing but a group of GP medium tents in an isolated section. It was
quiet, hot, and except for an orderly sitting at a field table in front of a small
pyramid tent, it seemed to be deserted.
“We’re from the LRRP’s,” I said. “One of our men by the name of
Harris is here.”
The orderly was reading a paperback novel. Beside his elbow was a
large jar of Darvon pain capsules. He looked up at me, a little puzzled by
our camouflaged fatigues and soft hats.
“Don’t know,” he said, “just look in the tents.”
We left him and went to the first tent in the row. All of the tents had
the sides rolled down, which seemed curious in the heat. What we found
when we lifted the door flap and stepped into the darkness first astonished
then enraged me.
 Along each side of the tent was an uneven row of cots. On those
cots were soldiers, some asleep or unconscious, and some were in pain.
The smell hit us like a slap. It was a combination of vomit, the rottenness
of infected wounds, and bitter urine.
When the conscious men saw us, they began calling out, begging for
water, reaching out with their hands.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We took out our canteens and
started going from man to man, giving them water. I yanked up the tent
side, rolling and tying it up, before I ran to the next tent.
Harris was there on a cot. He was in pain, but he recognized me. I
gave him my canteen and his hand was hot with fever.
“What the hell is this?” I asked. “Where’s the doctors? The
medics?”
“Nobody’s coming around,” Harris said weakly. “Can you go and
get us some water? Some Cokes? Cigarettes?” The other patients were
trying to find money in their pockets, begging for the same thing.
“Yeah,” I said, looking at men with blood-clotted bandages that
were long overdue for changing.
“We been takin’ care of each other,” Harris said. One of the other
LRRP’s found me, and started taking a list and money from the men. Just
outside, a street or two away, were water trailers, mess tents, even PX tents
with cold soft drinks.
“I’m going to get the orderly,” I told Harris, and ran, with anger, to
the pyramid tent and its shaded occupant.
I grabbed him out of the chair, my CAR-15 held at ready. “Why
isn’t there anybody taking care of those men?” I demanded.
The clerk was scared. He dropped his book. “I’m the only one h-
here!” he stammered.
“Then how come you’re not doing your damn job?’ I shouted, and
pushed him against the tent. “Go get your CO now!”
He ran off into the tents.
A few days later, Harris was evacuated. His sores and were worse.
I never found out what happened to him. I wish I knew.
05 May 1967: Carbines
Staff Sergeant Tilley and his LRRP team were operating twelve
kilometers southwest of the Oasis. They had been in ambush, but at 1715
hours, when it was time for them to move on, and they had begun taking in
their small M14 shoe mines and Claymores, the enemy walked up on them.
Tilley saw the first one. The man was wearing black farmer’s
clothing, a straw coolie hat, and had a U.S. carbine slung over his shoulder,
and American grenades on his belt.
Crouched in the bushes, Tilley fired a close-range burst of automatic
fire at the man with his CAR-15 and somehow missed him. The Vietcong
jumped back, and tried to unsling his carbine.
Tilley rapidly corrected his aim, and killed the man with a burst of
six.
The dead man’s partner turned and ran, the other LRRP’s shooting
at him, but Norton, who already had two NVA to his credit, aimed and
brought the escaping man down with one shot.
Tilley stripped his kill, finding money, a good knife, a North
Vietnamese Army belt, and an empty canteen, which still had the smell of
whiskey in it.
The carbine was a fresh like new US remanufactured M2 selective-
fire, unscratched, tight, and obviously not long out of the packing crate,
maybe originally from the Korean war.
As Tilley bagged the man’s valuables, the enemy began to
counterattack, and it sounded like a lot of them. The team left their mines
in place, and retreated back into the jungle, making the current score
twenty-six to nothing in favor of the LRRP platoon.
We were very careful of claiming “kills,” the direct opposite of the
infantry, which counted anything they thought they might have hit. It was a
point of honor with us to only claim the kill you were certain of having
made.
I examined Tilley’s trophy carbine, and decided I wanted another
one of my own. I had carried Littlejohn’s carbine on short security
missions and truck rides, but never in combat.
My CAR-15 had not jammed on me yet, but Harris’s had, and I
wanted more than ever now to get a dependable weapon, so I took an offer
from one of our platoon members who had an M2 carbine, and bought it
from him for $20. It was hard finding enough magazines for it.
Carbine ammunition was no longer general issue in the United
States Army, so I had to go to the Special Forces and the Vietnamese to get
my ammunition. After some searching, I had a good, workable carbine that
I took to the garbage dump and test-fired frequently. It always worked
perfectly.

11 May 1967: Mission

I packed for another mission, going out with Sergeant Rilley as the
team leader, Sergeant Padilla as the assistant team leader, and Huxtable.
I asked for and was given the point, hoping there was nothing
hostile out there. I was told in the mission briefing to bring my CAR-15,
not my carbine, because Sergeant Rilley didn’t want all of us not having the
same type of ammunition.
Our mission went routinely, riding the Huey in, jumping off into
unknown jungle, creeping the darkness of heavily canopied trees, listening
to each sound—or lack of sound—from the insects and animals, sleeping
lightly on guard at night, eating soupy LRRP rations, and worrying about
what size enemy unit we might encounter.
The mission produced no sign of enemy contact. I was thankful,
marking days off on my calendar. In June I was going home.

15 May 1967: Warning Order

I had not finished cleaning and sorting my equipment from the last
patrol when I was given another. This was a special mission, five days on
top of a high peak called hill 339 near the 2,400-foot high Chu Pong massif,
acting as a radio relay station for our teams operating in the valley.
Cambodia was about ten clicks due west.
 There would be no walking, only guarding the hilltop, drinking
water that we took with us, and braving the weather. I looked at the map
sheet. 339 was deep in the Ia Drang valley. About two kilometers west
from 339, the Chu Pongs began to rise. Directly on the other side was
Cambodia. The mountains shielded major NVA infiltration routes.
339 had been used by US forces for observation since the Cav had
fought their first, disastrous Ia Drang actions just a click west there in
November of 1965 at LZ ALBANY and LZ XRAY. The battles had been
right here, in the shadow of the Chu Pongs and below 339.
The NVA knew 339 was our outpost. On top of it, a recon team
could be trapped like a sniper in a tree.
As I was preparing for 339, on 15 May 1967, a Congressional
subcommittee was investigating the M16’s jamming problems.
Representative Richard Ichord, a Democrat from Missouri, headed the
committee. The Ichord Subcommittee was to issue a report in late June of
1967, stating “the much-troubled M16 rifle is basically an excellent weapon
whose problems were largely caused by Army mismanagement.”
Because of pressure and publicity from the Ichord committee, the
M4 Ball propellant was not replaced for the original clean-burning IMR
power, but the Army allowed reformulation of the gunpowder used in the
5.56mm M193 Ball cartridge. It was changed by reducing the level of an
acid neutralizer used in the gunpowder to extend shelf life to less than half
the amount known to foul the M16’s gas system. The barrel’s chamber was
chrome plated (like the AK-47) to resist rust and carbon buildup, and a
heavier recoil buffer was developed to reduce the abnormally high cyclic
rates. A better cleaning kit was developed, along with a new rifle butt stock
compartment able to store the cleaning kit. From these modifications came
the M16A1.
The Army, and Colt, never officially admitted responsibility. Jams
were still blamed on the individual soldier, and as if Basic Training
instructors had taken a holiday from making recruits clean their rifles, a
massive program on how to properly clean the M16 was created, and in
1968, the famous “M16 Comic Book” was published. It was a comic book
format cleaning and maintenance manual, intended to compensate for the
lower and lower levels of literacy our troops possessed.

16 May 1967: Hill 339

 Our three helicopters came in fast, just over the treetops, flying with
the contour of the land. Our team of four rode in the middle Huey. The two
flanking choppers were gunships.
I was with Sergeant Conrad, Sergeant Padilla, Hart, and Diamond,
our radioman. We each had a five-gallon water can. Everybody but me
carried a CAR-15. I had been assigned to bring my M16 rifle for any
necessary long-range shots.
As we approached 339, the helicopters started to climb sharply,
rotors beating the air furiously. It was like going up in an elevator. The hill
was a stark, rocky jut out of the jungle, covered with sparse foliage and
ancient trees. Three sides of the hill towered so wickedly they were almost
unscalable. The only side that wasn’t a sheer fall was the north ridgeline,
but it was a jumble of ups and downs like an obstacle course.
The pinnacle of 339 was a tiny, cleared flat area, just wide enough to
allow a helicopter to set its skids down. . I could see yellow smoke at the
top of the hill. Huddled around the small landing zone, holding their hats,
waited the previous team, packed and ready to go back to the Oasis.
Our Huey touched gently down, dust and leaves flying, and inside
half a minute we were off and the sunburned and bearded team on. In a din
of jet noise and slashing rotor blades, the Huey was gone as swiftly as it had
come.
After the sound of the helicopters had diminished, it was silent on
the naked, sunbaked crest. We all stood quietly, amazed at the grandeur as
we looked off the little LZ toward the mighty Chu Pong massif across the
valley and the jungle below.
All around the small landing zone the broken rock fell away so
sharply a stone rolled off the top would not stop until it had hit the treetops
far, far below. Three-three-nine overlooked everything, the view from the
top commanding the rolling, emerald-green valleys and hills of Vietnam.
Clouds cast shadows on the carpet of jungle below, and in the far
distance to the northeast, the Kontum Mountains were dim on the horizon.
The rugged Chu Pong Mountains and Cambodia beyond, was west. There
was no civilization as far as we could see from the top of 339, only serene,
patient nature. The Plei Me Special Forces camp was about 14 miles east of
us. Near Plei Me, the 42nd Artillery maintained a firebase with 8” and
175mm guns. An infantry firebase with 105’s was closer. They would be
our fire support.
 Diamond set up our two radios, erecting long-range antennas.
Padilla went looking for a good site for our command post. Hart and I
scouted the area to plan a defense.
My rucksack still on, I sat down in a rocky depression to cover the
north approach while Hart checked out some of the features of the hill. I
had just relaxed, when something under me in the dead leaves moved,
exerting enough strength to slightly shift me sideways.
I leaped up with my heart pounding, spinning to see what I had sat
on. At first it looked like a massive roach, wiggling its legs wildly, but then
I recognized it. It was a giant scorpion, its lethal tail just uncurling from
being mashed into the leaves by my rucksack. The insect seemed to be over
five inches long, and built broad and powerfully.
Then I saw more of them as they retreated into the crevices of the
rocks. They were the largest scorpions I had ever seen in my life. I
seriously considered killing them all with a white phosphorous grenade. I
changed positions in the rocks, inspecting my new spot with more care.
Three-three-nine had a long razorback of pure rock going down the
north approach. Infantry had once been encamped on the ridge, and there
was ample evidence of their presence in the scattering of rusty ration cans
and rotting cardboard boxes. The hill had been too rocky for them to dig
into, but in places they had tried, and even left the tree-branch frames they
had built to cover their positions with poncho sunshades. Large, heavy
rocks had been piled defensively around the shallow holes.
It was silent and magnificent on that great hill. We were respectful
of this majesty, speaking quietly as we worked.
Our defensive positions formed a rough triangle. Conrad and
Diamond with the radio in a niche in the rock, Hart and Padilla together
under a logged roof, and me by myself, protected by a low log barricade
facing the north approach, sheltered by a lean-to poncho keeping off the
direct sun.
Our main PRC-25 radio was set to “retransmit,” picking up signals
from our LRRP teams prowling the Ia Drang valley, and linking them with
the Oasis. We were a lifeline.

I had brought no Claymore mines, so instead I rigged grenade traps

in zigzag patterns on the north approach.
Thus settled, our wait began.
17 May 1967: Fire Missions
Before dawn, far down on the valley floor, there were lights in the
blackness of the jungle. The man on guard woke the rest of the team,
pointing to the lights. We realized we were probably seeing North
Vietnamese troops down there using flashlights for night movements or
labor.
We radioed in a report about the lights, and the Oasis told us no
friendly troops were in the area and for us to call the artillery.
Padilla looked up the frequency for the 4th of the 42nd Artillery in our
radio book, and I radioed them myself and requested a fire mission.
I was given one 105mm battery of five guns firing volleys. The first
round, a smoke marker, came in right on target, so I gave “fire for effect.”
The volleys came in groups of five, three times. I corrected fire,
giving a five-hundred-meter drop on their gun-to-target line for two more
volleys. The lights went out.
The rain swept in, forceful and blinding on our isolated little peak.
The wind howled across the hillside as the trees bowed to the downpour.
The sun was lost somewhere in the murky sky, and we all sat,
drenched and miserable at our positions.
Suddenly, something caught our eye. Towards the Chu Pongs, there
was a diffusion of campfire smoke rising out of the foggy jungle in the
valley below. The fog and rain almost concealed it.
It had to be the enemy, taking advantage of the low visibility and
lack of aircraft to cook some hot food. I ran over to Padilla’s tent and took
the radio and binoculars. I had called in one good fire mission and I wanted
to do it again.
I radioed the Oasis, described our sighting, and received permission
again for artillery. This time, the target was out of range for the 105mm
howitzers, so they gave me a battery of 175mm long-range guns.
The spotting round was a high explosive that fell a kilometer short.
I had plotted the location of the fires on our map, which revealed there was
a stream where we could see the smoke. That made sense. The enemy
would be camping beside the stream, using it for water as they cooked.
I corrected the fire, and asked for a ten-round mission, which is a lot
of fire from big 175mm cannons. The guns were so far away I could not
hear them shoot. I could see and hear the impact of the shells, but only
afterward would I hear the sound of the shell flying in. The 175mm shells
were supersonic, and reached the targets before their sound did.
All ten shells exploded along the stream, three thousand meters from
me. I hoped I had ruined their breakfast.

18 May 1967: The Destruction of B Company 1st/8th

In the late morning, a fresh war started northwest of us up in the
jungle valley. First came heavily armed Huey gunships, equipped with
automatic 40mm cannon, forward-firing quad machine guns, and multiple
rocket pods.
They began to shoot into a section of jungle with white-phosphorus
rockets, chattering machine-gun fire, and pounding 40mm nose cannons.
An epic battle was getting underway in our area that was going to
last. It would later be recorded in a book by Warren K. Wilkins titled Nine
Days In May. The NVA were coming out in regiments.
Artillery and Forward Air Control spotter planes buzzed in, Puff the
Magic Dragon came with its terrible miniguns, and finally, F-4 Phantom jets
arrived, circling warily above, swooping to drop bombs one by one as they
were called in.
A single spotter plane flew over our hill looking for enemy activity
near us, but saw none.
Later in the afternoon, opposite the morning’s demolition display,
we saw heavy smoke rising out of the jungle, and heard the distant, faraway
rumble of a B-52 strike. From 339, we could see the war.
We did not know we were witnessing the sounds and flashes of a
bitter, terrible massacre. Bravo Company, 1st of the 8th had gone in on a
company-sized sweep right on the border and slightly over. Weapons
platoon, which was the 4th platoon, had been separated from the company
and was being annihilated.
You do not want to be in a fight where someone qualifies for the
Congressional Medal of Honor. Weapons platoon sergeant Bruce Gandstaff
died earning his MOH that day, as out of his platoon every man was killed,
wounded, or missing in action. While we watched the smoke rise out of the
treetops, RPG’s and machine gun fire tore Weapons platoon apart, and
advancing NVA infantry killed or captured who they could find. Joe
DeLong, a machine gunner with Weapons, was held prisoner in Cambodia
until he was killed trying to escape months later, in November.
 That afternoon, a Huey flew out to us from the Oasis. Captain Clark
was on it, and brought us two more water cans just in case, his ship taking
the empties and delivering the full cans without ever landing. Later we were
radioed to get ready for extraction.
We packed all our equipment except for our ponchos and
lightweight tropical blankets, so in case we had to leave the hill in a fight
after dark, we could take everything important with us.

19 May 1967: Extraction

We were extracted off the hill at 1600 hours, our extra water ration
having proved unnecessary.
The sun had been intense during the day, and with our shelters
packed, the heat was brutal. As the helicopter eased in to pick us up, its
rotor blast felt like it was going to blow us off the hill. Two new men in the
LRRP platoon were on my side of the helicopter, poised in the doorway, but
seemed unsure about getting out of the chopper.
I shouted at them, motioning with my rifle, and they jumped. I
climbed aboard, handed them their own full water cans, and in a moment,
all of my team was on.
The helicopter pilot lifted us off into space, and dived for the jungle
to gain airspeed. For a moment it felt like the ship was falling, then I could
feel the rotors getting a bite, and we leveled out.
We were sunburned, bearded, and dirty, but happy. The door gunner
looked at me, smiled, and shook his head, as if wondering what made us do
our sort of job.

20 May 1967: Willey’s 2nd Purple Heart

Sgt. Willey was back with us after having his grenade fragment
wounds tended, and his team made enemy contact on the 20th. He had gone
out as patrol leader, with Russell Oliver, Charlie Ditterman, and Staff
Sergeant Loyd Lee. They were in the Chu Pa mountain region, northwest
of the B 1st of the 8th Weapons platoon fight, in plateaus surrounding 339,
and had found possible NVA footprints near a stream crossing. The signs
were fresh. They were close.
Moving slowly and quietly, the next day Willey’s team actually saw
an NVA unit and from a safe hilltop, called in fighter-bombers on them.
The air strikes caused two serious secondary explosions, blowing trees right
out of the ground. Willey had gotten lucky.
As the team laid low and set up a RON (Remain Over Night)
position, they heard definite sounds of prowling, searching North Viet
soldiers. The enemy was looking for them. The NVA knew there were no
US or ARVN infantry in the area, so it had to be a LRRP or SF patrol.
The four-man team took an ambush position, looking down off an
abutment. Soon, a platoon of NVA came walking directly into their kill
zone, heading for the top of the hill. The LRRP’s opened fire and dropped
five NVA. In the firefight and chase that followed, everybody on the team
but Willey was slightly wounded, and Willey himself covered the team’s
retreat, killing two more NVA as they pursued.
There was no handy LZ for extraction. The team had to be pulled
out of the trees on rope ladders as gunships shot up the jungle around them.
Willey’s second Purple Heart would come with an Oak Leaf Cluster.
The official report read: 20 May. At 1400 hours at YA977956 Recondo
Patrol 2D exchanged fire with six NVA; results, one NVA KIA.

Just off 339, I hadn’t yet turned in my equipment, or gone to eat,

when Carl Littlejohn, our platoon sergeant, stopped me. “You know you’ve
got another mission tomorrow, don’t you?” he asked.
“No.” I said. “Is that why we were extracted early?”
“Yeah. You and Hart are going to take out a couple of new men.
But don’t worry. It’ll be an easy mission.”

Replacements
Somebody had to take out new people. We were getting new men
every day, because all of us who had come over last August were due for
return to the United States soon. Some of the new men were volunteers, but
a few of them had simply been told to report to the LRRP platoon, and did
not know who we were, or what we did.
I wondered how the platoon would manage after the experienced
men were gone.

20 May 1967: Continued

20 May was another one of those bad, bad, days. The 1st of the 8th
was still in contact with, and pursuing the enemy. Our 2nd Brigade LRRP
teams were working the flanks of the battle, trying to detect which way the
NVA were moving. That’s why Willey’s team had gotten into trouble.
They found their NVA.
On the 20th, two more Congressional Medals of Honor were won by
men in B and C companies who died for the awards. Private First Class
Leslie Allen Bellrichard of Charlie Company was killed throwing grenades
at NVA who were advancing on the company perimeter. The NVA didn’t
kill him. He had already driven off a couple of NVA assaults with his
grenades, when a mortar round blew him down into his foxhole. He lost
grip of his grenade, and to protect his friends, he covered the grenade with
his own body.
Staff Sergeant Frankie Molnar of B-Company also died covering a
grenade with his body, this time an NVA grenade. Molnar had been rushing
from foxhole to foxhole as the NVA attacked, carrying ammo to his men.
He fell on a grenade thrown at him and others who were trying to carry
away a badly wounded GI.
Now, on the morning of the 20th, it was my team’s turn to find our
NVA. Crowded into the Huey slick with our heavy rucksacks, we cringed
as the pilot skimmed the treetops, flying under some of the trees rather than
over them. The jungle zipped past the doorway too fast to really see
anything.
The worst part of many a mission was the ride out. I was really
worried about getting killed in a chopper crash after all this time. I had
seventeen days left in the country. Hart, our team leader, crouched near me.
The other two men with us were new. This was going to be their
first time out. The first mission is the big one, the one that usually
determined if you made it or not in the LRRP’s.
You can be the greatest grunt to ever carry an M16 with a full
company around you, but out depending on only the other three men on
your team, it’s a different story.
Spec-5 Allen was our new RTO this trip. He had come from a
commo outfit, so we gave him the radio to carry. Private First Class Cates
was from an infantry company. Allen was overweight and soft. Cates
looked like he could cut it. We preferred our volunteers from line units, so
Allen was getting a fair shake.
I was almost confident about this mission. It was the same area
Rilley, Huxtable, Padilla, and myself had scouted a couple of trips back,
and it had been clean then.
The target area was high and flat, part of the plateau region
southwest of Pleiku, covered with light jungle and roiling plains of savanna
grass. The really rough country, the mountains, was to our west and north.
My apprehension over taking out new men was offset by the relative
quiet of the area. If we had expected trouble, we would have only taken out
one trainee, or none at all.
Cates and Allen were nervous. They watched the gunships flying
escort for us, one on each side. The gunnies had their doors shut against the
wind, and sunlight glinted off the ammo-belt guides that snaked out to the
twin forward-flying machine guns that were mounted on each side of the
ships, just above their ponderous rocket pods.
Captain Clark, our LRRP platoon commanding officer, was up
somewhere over us in the Command and Control helicopter to monitor our
insertion.
I checked my M16 rifle again, thinking about the sanity of going on
patrol so close to going home, but I should have sorted that out that back at
base camp.
The door gunner beside me gave Hart and me the signal that our
landing zone was near. Hart tapped Cates, who shifted to a ready position.
Allen looked out the door, holding onto his hat and rifle.
We passed the LZ, a long clearing among the trees, and made a
steep bank as we circled it. I climbed out on the skid while the pilot
steadied the ship and we began to descend, squinting into the airstream,
watching the LZ get closer.
The doorgunner’s raised their machine guns, ready to fire, and I saw
embankment and grown-over streambed below, mentally marking it as our
assembly point. As point man for the team, it was my responsibility to lead
the team off the landing zone and to a safe assembly point so we could
gather ourselves, decide on what to do, and move out. The team would
automatically follow me once we were on the ground.
On ahead, not far away, was the curving, shallow Ia Tae River,
choked by rocks and sandbars. This was the Ia Drang valley area, the Plei
Me Special forces camp about ten klicks to our east.
We dropped quickly, the grass a blur under our skids. The pilot was
already increasing power for liftoff. I jumped.
 The helicopter was gone, the rest of the team scattered down the LZ,
running for me. I was dashing for the tree line, aiming for the position
where I remembered the streambed. I didn’t hesitate at the tree line.
Silence was sacrificed for speed. I plunged down the hill, breaking through
the vegetation, almost falling.
I landed in a swampy stream bed- in that moment of stillness, I
found myself in the company of several very surprised North Vietnamese
soldiers.
Two of them were prone in the leaves and another one crouched into
the bushes. We were only meters from each other.
One of them pointed his SKS carbine at me. He was dressed in dark
green and had rags tied to his clothing and equipment as camouflage.
I reacted, bringing my M16 around, but he fired first, and I saw his
weapon recoil from the shot. I pulled my trigger almost at the same time,
but we both missed.
I fired again, my M16 jammed, someone else fired from the side,
and I yelled, “Dinks! Dinks!” at the top of my lungs.
The battle was on.
I was trying to run backward, get a grenade off my belt, and dodge
all at the same time. A burst of automatic fire tore through my rucksack
and knocked me down. I rolled, pulled the grenade free, and heaved it
behind me as I regained my feet. Rifle fire was cracking from all around
now.
My grenade hit a tree, bounced back, and exploded too close. I
clawed through the vines and ran as hard as I could back uphill,
remembering to veer to the side so my own team wouldn’t shoot me.
Automatic fire hammered from the left and right flanks. I knew we
were in the middle of something too big for a recon team.
As I ran, I pumped the bolt back and forth on my M16, trying to
clear the jam, stopping for no obstacles in my escape. I plowed through the
underbrush as fast as I could under the circumstances, and ran into my
second big surprise of the day.

An NVA soldier was hidden in the very thicket I was charging

through.
He twisted in the bushes to face me, but the vines prevented him
from quickly bringing his rifle—a U.S. M16 like mine—to bear. I imagine
the last thing either of us was expecting at the time was a face-to-face
confrontation.
He began firing (his M16 worked) as he turned, and I felt bullets
slam into the canteen and ammo pouch on my right side. The concussion
from his muzzle blast stung my stomach and groin.
I rammed the flash suppressor of my M16 into his belly and fired, as
I literally ran right over his body.
My ammo pouch was shot open, the magazines spilling out, and the
new two-quart flexible canteen I had fastened beside the amino pouch had
taken a couple of hits and was blown apart.
I reached the crest of the hill, seeing blue sky through the foliage,
and dived for cover behind the first tree over the hump - then something
unexplainable happened.
I was suddenly surrounded by thick, green, chemical smoke.
For a wild second I was completely confused, but the heat and the
taste of the smoke identified the source. My pack was on fire from one of
my own smoke grenades.
I executed the quick backpack jettison only used in dire
emergencies, rolling in the grass to extinguish any of the fire on my
clothing. My pack was flaming, issuing a column of green smoke up
through the trees.
I didn’t know it at the time, but up on the LZ our new RTO had done
only one thing so far in this fight. When the shooting began, he had
dropped and made radio contact with the helicopters, and upon seeing the
plume of green smoke rising from the streambed, he concluded I had
marked the enemy position with smoke before being killed. He told the
gunships to fire at the smoke. I was fight beside the smoke.
My smoke grenade had been shot at the bottom of the hill when I
had been hit in the rucksack. It had been burning all the time, but I hadn’t
slowed down enough in my escape for the smoke to catch up with me.
As I lay on the ground, watching my rucksack burn, trying to unjam
my M16, a gunship dropped out of the sky and made a firing pass at me
with his four flex-mount M60 machine guns.
The hillside exploded into falling limbs and splintered bark as the
trees took the fury of the automatic fire. With my face buried in the dirt, I
could actually hear the bullets as they flailed the earth.
 Another gunship was right on the tail of the first. This ship had the
turret-mounted automatic 40mm grenade launcher on its nose, and its shells
were bursting in the upper parts of the trees over my head. Pieces of the
trees were falling all around me. I was trying to mentally calculate the
effective kill zone of the 40mm grenades, hoping most of the fragments
would lose lethal velocity before they reached me.
The only thing I could really think of coherently was that I was not
far enough out of the tree line.
I pulled another frag grenade off my belt and heaved it down the hill
to discourage any followers, and tried to fire, but my M16 was jammed
again. After every round I ejected bent, double-fed cartridges, cursing the
Colt Arms Company with real venom. I resorted to another grenade, my
next-to-last one, and tried again with the rifle.
At that point heavy firing erupted from all sides around the LZ. The
clearing had been a trap. It was actually a giant ambush.
The North Vietnamese had obviously gambled we might use this
clearing for a large-scale infantry assault. If they knew we had patrolled
through this area before, they might have taken it to mean we were doing it
prior to an airmobile assault.
But instead of an infantry company charging down in dozens of
helicopters, only four LRRP’s were caught in the trap.
We had exposed the ambush the hard, hard way. Bullets chopped
through the trees. Explosions were close and rapid. Tracers flashed across
the open LZ, just over the grass. Gusts of dirty high-explosive smoke
blossomed from mortar hits.
AK-47s cracked zealously everywhere, and I couldn’t move an
inch. This was it. The truth struck. I was going to die on this LZ.
I’m not saying I was afraid I was going to die, or that I might die. I
was going to die. It was a fact, and I accepted it with a strange resignation
and sadness.
I lay on my back, looking up at the sky. It was a clear blue, marred
only by the smoke rising from the explosions. God, I thought, there’s only
four of us. It was a short prayer but to the point.
I moved, grabbing for my smoldering rucksack, crawling for the
open LZ. My physical will to live carried me when my mental will had
failed.
 I made it to the tall grass of the landing zone, hoping that if any of
my team saw me they wouldn’t mistake me for an enemy soldier. “Hart?’ I
yelled, trying to be heard over the gunfire, “Hart!”
Hart’s face popped up nearby, his soft hat pulled down tight over his
forehead. Allen was lying close to him, looking at me but not moving.
Hart was firing. He would rip off a burst from his CAR-15, roll to
another spot, rise and fire again. He was changing magazines as fast as he
could. I couldn’t see Cares or hear his M16.
I crawled quickly to Allen and took the radio handset from him. He
had his head buried in his arms as if dead. I discovered why. As soon as I
had the handset in my hand, bullets began to strike close to me.
A sniper had Allen zeroed. I threw down the handset and rolled
away, but Hart was screaming, “Get on the radio, get on the radio!” I
grabbed for the handset again, and again dirt sprayed in my face as the
sniper’s bullets hit in front of me. This time I held onto the handset, aware
that my entire body was a target.
Allen hadn’t moved at all. My rifle wasn’t working and he wasn’t
firing. “Shoot, goddamn it!” I pleaded with him, and wanted to take his
weapon, but knew he would probably shoot me if I tried.
The sniper was peppering the ground around Allen and me. I was
both afraid to move and afraid not to. One thing seemed sure. I couldn’t
talk on the radio.
Cates, our missing man, was alive. He was on his end of the LZ,
removed from the rest of us, also with a jammed M16. This time it was not
the manufacturer’s fault. Cates had cleaned his rifle before the mission and
had disassembled the trigger group. This is not authorized for the average
soldier to do, and he had replaced the hammer spring without sufficient
tension to fire the weapon.
He aimed, pulled the trigger, heard a light click, but the weapon did
not fire, ejected the round, and did it again. He was emptying magazines
doing this drill, and he could clearly see an enemy soldier in a tree.
My own rifle was still jamming regularly. It would fire one or two
rounds on semi and jam, or short bursts of automatic and jam. I tried
changing magazines, switching back and forth from full to semi, but
nothing worked.
In order for any of us to fire down the embankment, it was necessary
to rise. I was firing from a kneeling position, going flat to clear my jams,
getting up to fire again.
Hart was right beside me, crouching, raking the streambed with his
CAR-15, and waving one arm at me, shouting, “Get down! Get down?’ as if
he were immune to bullets but not I.
In the battle for the LZ, with my fear of the sharpshooter that had
Allen and me targeted, trying to make my weapon shoot back, I wasn’t
getting a great deal of radio communication accomplished with our air
support. My one message so far to Captain Clark had been brief and to the
point: “Get us out! They’re all around us! Get us out!”
One of the gunships was working the tree line over to our rear, and
the enemy fire there, including the mortar, slacked off, but the rifle and
machine-gun fire from our flanks and front was still considerable.
With their positions known, and air strikes on the way (if Clark was
doing his job), the enemy should have been rapidly pulling out his heavy
weapons.
Captain Clark, flying around up there in relative safety, was trying to
calm me down so I could give him something straight on the radio.
“We can’t help you if you don’t use correct radio procedure,” he
said. I admit my transmissions were garbled, but every time I tried to talk
into that handset, a bullet slammed into the ground close enough to sting me
with dirt.
The gunships had been cutting it a bit close. The tree line to our
front was their target now, and since we were almost in those trees, we were
catching a lot of spray fire directed at them.
We had a problem. If we moved too far into the clearing, the NVA
could blow us away, but if we moved too far into the trees, the helicopters
would blow us away.
I was scared of the NVA and mad at the helicopters. I didn’t want to
die pinned down on the LZ with a rifle that wouldn’t fire, a fear-frozen,
inexperienced radioman, and seventeen days left in Vietnam.
I continued to ask for extraction, and heard a pilot come on the radio
and tell Clark that as long as the ground fire was as heavy as it was, he
wasn’t going to land and pick up anybody.
I pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and threw it back onto the LZ,
telling Clark the smoke marked our position and to get the gunships straight
on that fact. As soon as the smoke burned out I threw another.
 The enemy fire was getting sporadic. My personal antagonist, the
sniper who had Allen and me so well plotted, stopped shooting. The
gunships were forcing the NVA to withdraw.
I didn’t blame them. If I’d been in there, I’d have gone too.
Cates saw the guy he had been trying to shoot jump down off his
tree stand and run. The two gunships were now circling the LZ like hawks
ready to pounce on anything that moved.
I threw my sixth smoke grenade. I had tossed reds, yellows, greens,
violets, and whites, every smoke Allen, Hart, and I owned. The LZ
downwind of us was fogged with multicolored smoke.
We watched nervously to our rear for infiltrators, casting long looks
through the smoke haze. We had stopped firing, and now the only shots
were from distant rifles, the retreating enemy firing at the gunships. It was
so quiet, I almost wondered if I’d lost my hearing.
The first warning was the distant clatter of rotor blades, the sound
shifting with the wind, and every ear around the landing zone was aware of
it. Then, machine gun fire. A Huey slick, actually the same one we had
ridden out on, came ponderously sailing in over the treetops, both
doorgunner’s blasting furiously into the trees and underbrush.
I stood and waved, hoping I wouldn’t be mistaken for an enemy
soldier by the helicopter. The pilot steered the ship toward us, the wind
from the rotors beating down the grass. The cloud of smoke was whipped
by the rotor wash into a murky haze that was driven across the LZ like
artificial fog.
We met it, running under its skids. Cates and Allen jumped aboard,
their bush hats lost. The grass was blown down by the windstorm created
by the helicopter, the last of the smoke swirling into the trees.
I climbed in as Hart covered us, and I pulled him aboard as the pilot
lifted us out and up into the sky we had come down from just a few minutes
- a lifetime - ago.
Allen quit the LRRP’s as soon as we arrived back at base camp,
dropping his radio, tiger fatigues, and weapon beside his cot and going back
to his unit so fast he didn’t even say good-bye. I knew nothing about him.
Cates stayed with the platoon.
Military records show that a Bobby K. Allen, Specialist E5 in the
th
4 Infantry Division started his tour 13 February 1967, which would
certainly put him in the right place and time to have joined the platoon in
early May and gone out with us. The Bobby Allen of record was KIA in
Kontum Province on 15 January 1968,

21 May 1967: The Check Is In The Mail

I was told that since I was so close to being sent home, my awards
paperwork would be sent on to the United States and handled there. Like
what happened to so many others, my own awards paperwork was lost until
1987, and found only collaterally, as part of a Senate investigation.

Senator KERRY: Were you decorated?

Mr. Camper: I was recommended for the Silver Star and for the Bronze
Star for actions in Vietnam, but due to the troubles that I had immediately
on returning, I never actually received those awards.
Senator KERRY: Let the record show that the committee has thoroughly
checked out the background of Mr. Camper: We have all of the military
documents, his service discharge, and indeed the award recommendations,
the citations as they were written up and submitted, not the actual award
itself.
The Bronze and Silver Star awards were read into the Congressional
Records, but never officially issued. I didn’t really care. The prestige the
awards themselves represent is unquestionable, but the military methods of
issuing them, often gaming the system, is too often shameful.
What I did care about was my orders for the automatic award of the
Combat Infantry Badge, (which every 11B receives after 30 days in a
combat zone) were also unlisted in my 201 file. Officially, I was never in
combat.

23 May. 1967: The Beat Goes On.

At 1030 hours Recondo Patrol 2F at map coordinate ZA045119
made contact with an unknown size NVA force; result, one NVA KIA;
patrol extracted.
We make kills. But still no LRRP KIA. How long can this last? The
platoon was on a winning streak. The stakes were our lives. Yet still we
gambled.

24 May 1967: One More Mission

 I was asked to volunteer for another mission, this one to go back to
Hill 339 and sit out another week of radio relay. I agreed.
On this mission, I would be going out with three of the newer men,
Doug Flowers, Jose Enriquez, and Russ Oliver. Enriquez carried an M14
sniper rifle, borrowed from Ron Coon. Jose’s friends affectionately called
him Beaner. Elsewhere, it might have been an insult. Within the platoon, it
was family. I took my carbine. Flowers took an M16 and Oliver had his
CAR-15. I didn’t know any of them well, so busy had we all been,
committed on patrols.
Oliver was the appointed team leader. He was a good man, and
being groomed for responsibility. My job was simply to fill a team spot. In
a few days, I was going home.
I figured a stay on 339 would do me good, give me time to think, to
consider, to plan. It was as quiet up there as a monastery, and invited
introspection.
We packed our personal equipment, filled our water cans, and
boarded a helicopter the morning of the 24th, taking the flight out across the
jungle, going past infantry battalions still locked in sporadic skirmishes, and
were delivered atop 339 like mice deposited by an eagle in a mountaintop
nest.
It was almost good to be back on the peak. The new men found it
breathtakingly beautiful. I showed them where to pitch their shelters and
organize the camp.
We erected the tall pole antenna for the radio, and made all of our
communications checks with the teams that were out, one team a special
consideration.
They were a stay-behind ambush at a firebase being abandoned by
the artillery and infantry. They had hidden themselves in the main bunker
as the Chinook helicopters flew in and carried out the 105mm howitzers and
gun crews, and the infantry walked away in column back to the jungle.
Enemy action came not long after I made contact with the stay-
behind team and arranged what we would do if the enemy came into the
firebase.
The team had been waiting for three days in the command bunker at
the firebase, watching the perimeter, keeping their weapons ready.
One of the men in the stay-behind ambush wasn’t a LRRP. He was
a Brigade Headquarters and Headquarters Company sergeant from one of
the staff sections. I knew him. He was a considerate man, always polite in
his daily work.
Having never seen any action, he had asked to go out with one of
our teams on something easy, and had been obliged with the stationary
ambush.
He was going to get his war story to tell, but he wasn’t aware of it
just yet.
They had a new type of experimental mine, the XM37 Fragmacord,
which was unusual in that it was a 25-foot, half-inch diameter rubberized
tube over detonation cord, and wrapped at regular intervals with coils of
steel fragmentation wire.
The team had unrolled this linear mine in the ditches and between
the bunkers of the firebase, with the mine detonators inside their bunker.
And they waited.
Inside the bunkers, vision is limited; making each man find what he
feels is a good observation spot, peering down and across the trenches.
There is no sound but the “Fuck You” lizards and circling birds. They knew
the NVA would take the bait, but not when. The days passed slowly.

The official report would read: 24May67; Recondo Patrol 2H made

contact with five NVA at YA845105. Results were two NVA KIA, patrol was
extracted.
This is how it really happened. I received the first call from them at
1200 hours of the 24th.
“We’ve got NVA coming out of the tree line,” their team leader
said. “I count one. . . Two . . . Three. . . Four. . . five—you better let
me call you back.”

I relayed the message to the Oasis, who alerted the battery of 8-inch
howitzers that had been standing by, their guns pre-aimed at the firebase.
The team, as I learned later, grabbed their weapons and went to their
firing positions. The slow, careful squad of North Vietnamese walked
directly into the firebase, AK-47s ready, as the LRRP’s weapons were being
drawn on them.
The LRRP team leader had a shotgun. He told his men to hold their
fire until he began shooting. The NVA walked boldly into the perimeter,
heading for the command bunker where the LRRP’s were hiding.
 The team leader shotgunned the North Vietnamese point man, and
the man behind the stricken point went down to a full magazine from
another LRRP’s M16.
As the NVA dived and rolled for cover, the team detonated the linear
mines, explosions smashing between the sandbag walls and bunkers,
throwing huge clouds of dust and smoke up into the sky.
Then while the surviving North Vietnamese were still stunned, the
LRRP team ran like hell, racing out of the firebase, going for the safety of
the jungle.
When they stopped running, they radioed me again.
“Okay!” the team leader shouted in his excitement, “we’re out!
Bring in the artillery!”
I called the artillery and they laid a barrage of big, powerful 8-
inchers on and around the firebase, destroying the NVA there along with the
sandbags and old barbed wire.

25 May 1967: Fire on the Mountain, Lightning in the Air

Here’s the press story. (Stars & Stripes June 1967)

Airstrikes Get Patrol Out of Tough Spot

PLEIKU, (4th INF-10) - After fighting off a North Vietnamese

Army (NVA) force for three hours, a small group of tired soldiers
tumbled out of the evacuation chopper at their home base. Minutes
before, the tiny force, a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP)
from the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, had been plucked from
a flaming hilltop which an estimated NVA company had attempted
to seize.

The men had been on the summit about one and a half miles from
the Chu Pong Mountains, for three days, calling in artillery and air
strikes on what appeared to be a large NVA concentration. Only that
morning the patrol had guided Air Force fighter-bombers to a target
and had watched large secondary explosions blossom skyward.
It was estimated that the LRRP could hold off a company trying to
storm their position. Apparently realizing this, the NVA force crept
up the sides until it was within easy striking distance of the small
defending force. The siege began at 8 p.m.

Sounds of movement in the nearby brush were the first warning of

the attack. One of the Americans spotted three figures. A burst of
M-16 rounds drove the intruders back down the steep side. From all
around the defenders' position the night erupted into bursts of small
arms fire and flying grenades. Specialist Four Russell Oliver, the
patrol leader, saw the patrol was in trouble. "If you wait until
morning to get us out," he told his radio operator, "there won't be
anyone here." Specialist Four Camper radioed brigade headquarters
for assistance. By this time an Air Force forward air controller
(FAC) and a flareship were circling the hilltop. The flares lit the
night and kept the enemy at bay.

During the wait for air power, 175mm guns from the brigade
headquarters splattered the hill's slopes with continuous fire. The
enemy, unrelenting, tried three or four assaults during the artillery
barrage. "Here they come again," shouted Camper in the middle of
one radio message. With his set still open, the sound of gunfire and
bursting grenades was heard back at headquarters. One enemy
grenade plopped into the LRRP's position, but it was a dud. Another
was tossed over the lip of the hill but bounced back, exploding
among the attackers. The Skyraiders were soon zooming overhead.
The FAC asked the infantrymen where they wanted the strikes. "Do
anything as long as you don't shoot us," replied Camper.

The planes worked over the top of the hill, dropping their ordinance
within 30 yards of the small group. With the attack broken and
summit still lit by flares, the LRRP leader called again for
extraction. "Where's the ship to get us out of here?"

By 11 p.m. the chopper lifted out of the area with the LRRP
members safely tucked into its belly.
 Not bad for a news item. And close to reality. Here’s what actually
happened.
On the morning of the 25th, we noticed what seemed to be smoke
from campfires coming off the mountains closest to us, part of the Chu
Pong range.
I radioed the Oasis again and described the target to them, and they
diverted a spotter plane to fly over and take a closer look. What he saw
caused my team to cluster to the radio.
“I’ve got trucks down there in the valley,” the pilot told me, “their
road leads back into Cambodia. I also have a visual on the campfires, I see
them up the ridgeline. Is that a roger for you?”
“Affirmative,” I said.
“Okay,” replied the pilot. “There is a flight of A1-E’s on their way
from New Pleiku now.”
The A1-Es were U.S. propeller-driven fighter-bombers that were put
into service just after World War II. They had been used in Korea, and
retired from most U.S. service afterward, on the premise that jets would
replace them.
Vietnam needed a close air-support fighter-bomber like the A1-E,
which carried a heavy load of bombs and rockets, and could stay on target
for hours, while the faster, sexier jets had to get there, drop their bombs, and
fly home. The Skyraiders, as the single seat A1’s and two-seat A1-Es were
called, were slow enough to be more accurate with their bombing, a point
appreciated by the American and South Vietnamese infantry.
The flight of Skyraiders droned in, meeting the little canvas-covered
spotter plane, and watched where the spotter’s white-phosphorus marker
rockets hit. We sat on top of 339 and watched, given the best seat for the
spectacle to follow.

The Skyraiders circled, coordinated their plans, and began to attack,

coming in over the Chu Pong Mountains with 20mm cannons cracking
wickedly, then releasing 500-pound bombs as they passed the target.
The bombs shattered the stands of trees along the ridgeline, and
after several passes had been made, there was a deep, powerful blast, smoke
billowing from under the trees, and a surprised “That was a secondary!”
from the spotter pilot.
 The explosion seemed to come from out of a cave, because we saw
the smoke jet out horizontally from the hillside before it billowed and
spread upward.
The Skyraiders were apparently hitting a cache of North Vietnamese
munitions.
The spotter pilot was talking rapidly with the Skyraider pilots, and
we were taking questions from the Oasis.
Our team laughed and congratulated each other as the Skyraiders
flew away, and we watched the smoke on the ridgeline across the valley for
hours, feeling not one bit sorry for the men there who would be trying to
salvage what they could of their ammunition and their lives.
We prepared for the night, assigning fields of fire, emergency
actions, repacking equipment, and moving slightly off the very top of the
hill to a safer break in the rocks on one of the sides of 339 where it was
virtually straight down.
We strung a poncho overhead as a shelter in case of rain, and about
2000 hrs., Oliver, who was on guard, woke me but said nothing. I knew the
moment I saw his face that he had heard something serious. He pointed
toward the crest. “I heard them kicking rocks,” he whispered.
Silently, I made sure everybody was awake. Then I heard it. People
were indeed walking around above us, pebbles crunching under their feet.
I picked up my carbine, and motioned for the other men to get their
weapons. I quietly instructed Oliver to stay with the radio and call the
Oasis immediately if the enemy was on the hill with us.
I motioned for Flowers with his M16, to move around to one side of
the crest and come up slowly. Beaner was to stay near Oliver. I began to
creep up the rocky slope, holding my carbine in my right hand and
supporting myself with my left.
At the edge, I lay still for a moment and listened. There was
nothing. I raised my head and carbine and looked over the top.
Directly in front of me was the silhouette of a North Vietnamese
soldier holding his rifle in a relaxed stance, but looking right where my
head stuck above the rocks.
I pulled the trigger of the carbine. The hammer fell against the
firing pin with a loud snap, but the chamber was empty. I had cleared and
not rechambered a round in my weapon after being inserted on the hill, a
safety precaution that was now likely to get me killed.
 I reached rapidly over the carbine with my left hand and slapped the
bolt handle back, feeding a cartridge into the chamber. The enemy soldier
was reacting too, swinging his rifle around toward me and he fired first.
The shot went by my left ear.
I fired on full auto, my burst staggering him, sweeping the muzzle
across the crest. The soldier stepped back, sat down awkwardly, and fell
over.
He had two friends. One dark form swung an arm, his stick grenade
flipping past my shoulder, bouncing down the hill, and exploded
somewhere below. I fired at him, and he jumped off the opposite side of the
peak. It was at least fifty meters to the first treetops he would hit. The man
with him dashed away from me, down the ridgeline, but my carbine was
empty.
Flowers fired at the retreating man with his M16, his bullets
breaking the rocks and tossing leaves and dirt into the air across the peak.
I rolled down to Oliver. “Get brigade on the radio,” I said, “now!”
Enriquez was wide-eyed. Oliver stammered out the message. It
wasn’t fast or clear enough for me. I grabbed the handset from him, and
described the contact.
I was furious. I knew what was happening. The North Vietnamese
had guessed where all their grief had been coming from, and sent a recon
team up 339. If we had just laid low, and let them leave, maybe we could
have gotten away without a fight, but not after this.
The recon team would not be alone. They probably had a platoon
somewhere near behind, and that platoon would have a company behind it.
We were in real trouble.
“Get up on the landing zone,” I said to Oliver and Enriquez. We
scrambled to the peak, and each of us covered a side.
Enriquez and his special M14 sniper rifle guarded the south drop,
Flower’s M16 and Oliver’s CAR-15 covering the sides. I took the north
approach. The only way they could come up was by that ridgeline.
The man I had shot lay still near me, on his side. I had put at least a
three-round burst into his chest. I wasn’t worried about him. I laid my hat
beside me, took all of my carbine magazines and grenades, and put them in
the hat so I could reach my ammunition easily.
Brigade radioed again, asking for our current situation, offering
help.
 North Vietnamese rushed up the slope, firing as they dodged from
tree to tree. I dropped the radio handset and fired back, the muzzle flash of
my own carbine blinding me.
Flowers rolled over my way and took cover near the body of the
man I had shot, snapping off aimed bursts into the trees from his M16.
I picked the handset up again, telling brigade we were under attack.
They could hear our rifle fire as I spoke to them. I asked for helicopter
gunships, artillery, Puff the Magic Dragon, and fighter-bombers. We had
nowhere to run off 339. We were at the very top, on a tiny rocky flat spot,
and I had no doubt we had NVA coming up all around us. It was last-stand
time.
Enriquez began to fire his M14, shouting to me, and Oliver started
to crack off CAR-15 rounds down his slope. I didn’t know if they were
firing because they were scared, or because they had targets.
The enemy soldiers coming up the ridgeline were trying to keep our
heads down with rifle fire as they crawled forward, but their aim was too
high.
I put the carbine on semiauto, hoping to conserve my ammunition as
long as possible, aiming at the flashes of the enemy weapons in the jagged
ridges below me.
 Then my dead man jumped up to run away.
Flowers and I were too shocked to respond for a moment, but cut
him down with a burst of 5.56 that started at his ankles and went up his
back. This time the man fell hard off the peak, down into the beginning of
the bushes.
I threw a grenade down the ridgeline, watching the trees frame the
flash of the explosion. Flowers was doing fine, aiming, keeping up steady
fire at the enemy below in the dark.
I heard a voice over the radio handset telling me a spotter plane was
on the way, and to mark our position with a strobe light. I took my strobe
out of its pouch and turned it on, twisting to place it by my feet. It began to
flash methodically.
The enemy rushers went to ground, and for a moment, their firing
stopped. It was oddly quiet. I looked at the faces of my team in the
surrealistic flashes of the strobe. They seemed astonished. This was an
apocalypse light show.

With a determined, steady drone, the spotter aircraft passed just over
the tops of the trees that rose above the ridgeline. The pilot banked the
ship, and stuck his M16 out his window, firing tracers down on the NVA. I
was struck with the bravery and futility of his gesture.
The enemy firing began again. Rifles from the ridge started
cracking, and grenades were exploding as we both of us threw them at each
other.
Our sniper flipped over toward me, badly shaken, trying to get my
attention as I fired my carbine. I felt him beating my shoulder and looked at
him.
“A grenade just landed beside me, but it didn’t go off!” Beaner said,
then rolled exactly back where he had been before, resumed firing down his
drop off, almost having to hold the entire rifle over the edge to do so.
I wanted artillery fast, and called the 42nd Artillery. They said they
could only reach me with their 175mm guns, and at my range from them—
slightly over ten miles—they had a thousand-meter error.
“You shoot, I’ll correct it,” I said, then turned to the team and
shouted, “One-seven-fives coming in! One-seven-fives!”
The first shell hit like the artillery officer had warned, about a
thousand meters away in the valley. The blast echoed off the Chu Pongs
and the sound rumbled along the valley floor.
I corrected, telling them to shift fire one thousand meters along the
gun-target line, in my direction.
The second shell hit near the base of the northern end of the
ridgeline, and the trees vibrated all the way up to us. The 175mms were
very powerful. The enemy rifle fire slacked for a moment as they turned to
look down the ridge.
The third shell crashed into the valley beside the hill, and I knew
then that just hitting the hill was a matter of luck for the artillery. We were
on the extreme rim of their total range, beyond their effective range.
For the moment, close was good enough for me. I told the gunners
to fire for effect, and hugged the ground. There were two 175mm guns
firing, and they alternated, one firing and one loading, their super-velocity,
extreme-range loads propelling the high-explosive shells toward 339.

The shells came down on the ridge, past 339, and on both sides of
339. The terrific explosions from all around our hill gave us courage,
knowing the North Vietnamese were unaware of our accuracy problems.
“Lift the artillery,” radioed the spotter plane, “I’ve got help up here.”
I called off the artillery support, talking to the spotter, who was having our
new assistance switch to our frequency. It was a C47 dragonship with
miniguns. I had the equivalent firepower of a division of riflemen now.
The sky seared with the brilliant white light of the dragonship’s one-
million-candlepower parachute flares.
The Chu Pong Mountains, the valley beside us, the distant hills,
everything became visible in the stark black-and-white world the
magnesium sun of a flare produces.
“Where do you want it?” the pilot of the dragonship asked me.
“They’re all around my hill, but put what you can on the north
approach. We’ve got people coming up that way,” I said.
“I can’t give you fire any closer than five hundred meters from your
position,” said the pilot, “or we stand too good a chance of hitting you.”
“They’re closer than that,” I argued. “I need it directly at the base of
the hill!”
“Can’t do it,” the pilot said again. “These guns spray a hell of a
wide pattern.”
“Okay,” I said, “do the best you can, but give me some fire now!”
 With a screeching roar, the sky split and hell came down like the
breath of an avenging god. The noise of the miniguns alone was terrifying,
but each time the dragonship belched flame and tracers, I could see the
treetops below in the beaten zone disintegrate.
I had been close to the fire from a dragonship before, but never
directly under it. The rumbling motors from the old cargo plane droned on
for half an hour, new flares dropping just as the old ones burned out,
keeping our section of Vietnam bathed in the tilting, unreal world of flare
light.
Finally, the dragonship wished us good luck and pointed itself east,
flying away from 339, back home to an airstrip somewhere, for its gunners
to shovel out belt links and empty cartridge cases by the truckload.
“Hang in there,” said the spotter to me, “but get your heads down.
Your fighters are on the way.” I could hear his little engine, but not see him
in the dark. I didn’t have time to tell my team.
here was a streak of something silver across our front, moving so fast there
was yet no noise. The sound of the aircraft came at the same instant the
blast did. Before I could draw a breath, the ridgeline directly a hundred feet
before me exploded with an expanding cloud of napalm flame.
I clearly saw the impact; the ridgeline was engulfed in red-orange
fire. I saw the flame-front roar across the ridge, striking trees, and saw the
splash of napalm as it spattered off bark and branches.
The heat was searing. I buried my face in my arms to try and
protect myself. For a time that had to be short-but in my memory has no
limits at all—all I could see, feel, or smell was fire.
The top of the hill was illuminated like day, if day were blinding
orange, I realized my skin had become absolutely dry, the sweat steamed off
me, and my clothes were very hot.
The worst of the fireball burned away, and I looked up, hearing a
distinctive sound. One of the fighter-bombers was diving toward us. It was
one of the few times in combat that I heard a sound that resembled almost
precisely a sound effect I had heard in films.
It came from behind us. I looked over my shoulder and into the
night sky. Brilliant in every detail, reflecting the napalm fire, precisely
aligned so I was looking at it front-on, came another Skyraider. Under each
wing was a long, tapered aluminum tank.
The tanks dropped off the wings. They were napalm bombs.
 I saw them begin to flip slowly in the air, coming my way.
The radio was right beside me, tall antenna up. The aircraft itself
was still on course, and now I could see the outline of the canopy frame and
the pilot’s face. He was going to hit my 10-foot radio antenna. I knocked
the radio flat.
The Skyraider passed over my head by what seemed like only a few
meters. I saw the rocket racks under his wings and the rivets in the polished
metal of the fuselage. The suction actually bounced me, and the screaming
roar of the engine was deafening.
The napalm canisters hit just down the back south slope, boiling a
spread of petroleum-based fire upward, towering over us, streamers of
flame falling onto the crest.
The four of us were too shaken to speak, not knowing what to
expect next.
I began shouting to the team, trying to find out what was happening
at their sides of our little defense perimeter. The napalm in front of us had
burned low now; only the underbrush was still on fire. Behind us, on the
drop off, the two canisters that had hit there were still going strong; making
a solid wall of fire that lit the smoke clouds over us with yellow heat.
One of the Skyraiders came back again, and dropped a bomb on one
side of 339 not burning in napalm. It was a CBU (cluster-bomb unit),
which opened in the air and spewed hundreds of small round bombs all
along the side of the hill and down the slope.
Most of them exploded in a group, making a resounding crash, but
dozens bounced and spun into the air, coming down to detonate on the
second impact, resembling scattered grenade explosions.
One thudded on top of the crest, skipped a short distance, and blew
away the poncho shelter we had erected in the crevice.
I lifted my face off the rocks. The CBU had been incredible.
Another one hit the opposite side.
As it blasted through the trees, the tightly packed bomblets
scattered, and exploded individually and in bunches. It seemed as though
the Vietnamese pilots were willing to sacrifice our team in order to kill the
enemy.
We could not see much from the crest any longer because of the
smoke, but I could still hear the Skyraiders powering past; now they were
firing their 20mm cannons.
 “Look!” one of the team yelled, pointing down below the smoke
cover.
Pinpoints of muzzle flashes broke the darkness of the jungle floor.
There were hundreds of them, from a large unit of North Vietnamese in the
valley below us, between 339 and the Chu Pong Mountains, and they were
firing up at the Skyraiders.
I estimated them at battalion strength, and put together a sequence.
The battalion was moving at night, off the Chu Pongs, down the valley and
toward the Oasis.
If the assault on us after we shot the first three men off the peak was
indicative of their strength, about two infantry squads had come our way.
They had tried to climb around us, coming up the drops on the sides,
and throw grenades, but most of their grenades had gone entirely over us,
falling down the opposite sides, so small was our peak.
The radio told me there were helicopters on the way. I
acknowledged, telling the team. None of us were hurt. One of the men
who had been using his pack as cover discovered the pack had been burned
on one side by a napalm splash from the second set of canisters. I found
small waxy pieces of unburned napalm fuel near me, bits of the bombs that
had been flung away from the main cell before complete ignition.
I received a call from one of the helicopters that asked me about
ground fire. I told him there was no more, and in a few minutes a Huey
appeared in the smoke, flying in sideways to our landing zone, the small
fires from burning trees lighting up the underside of the helicopter.
We climbed aboard, leaving the strobe light, the water cans, and our
ponchos, and at 2330 hours on 25 May, we flew into the darkness, off Hill
339.

26 May 1967: Morning: Accidental Heroes

At brigade headquarters in the Oasis, I saw the crowd coming
toward our helicopter even before it landed. It was men from all over
Brigade Headquarters Company, cheering us, pulling us out of the cabin of
the Huey, and carrying us into the tactical operations center. We were met
like heroes. They were laughing, shouting, grabbing, and clapping for us.
My feet were not allowed to touch the ground until the men who had
me on their shoulders eased me down inside the operations bunker. My
team members were right behind me. The crowd had taken away our
weapons and equipment, stacking it in a comer.
Colonel Adamson, our brigade commander and several of the
infantry battalion commanders were grinning at us. We were directed to
stand in front of the warboard, the same one I once had kept posted with
unit locations as a brigade clerk.
“Here’s to you!” saluted the officers, downing glasses of whiskey,
and refilling them quickly. Colonel Adamson walked up to me. I realized
he and the officers with him were very drunk.
“I’m goddamned proud of you boys,” Adamson said, “real
goddamned proud. We showed them bastards a thing or two tonight! Now,
tomorrow, I’ve got to commit a battalion to the field. I want to ask you,
where should I put them? You tell me where they ought to go.”
I was still shaken from the battle on the hill. Being in the operations
center, up against the mapboard, with all the electric lights and staring
clerks, I felt nervous. The fact my brigade commander was so drunk he
could not speak to me without slurring his words was another shock. He
was making a fool of himself.
“Those stupid sons of bitches don’t know where to commit troops,”
Adamson said, motioning toward the operations and intelligence shops.
“All they do is fuck up! I want you to tell me where to put my infantry!”
“Here,” I said, pointing to the Chu Pongs on the map, “from here to
the border. You’ll find them. The NVA are out there, I swear.”
“I’ll do it, by God, in the morning, I’ll do it,” said the colonel.
“Your captain tells me you go home in a week, is that right?”
“Yes sir.” I said.
“Well. You’re too damn short to be pulling any more missions. I
want you off those patrols now. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I said again.
“Okay, go get some sleep!” Adamson said, and the four of us picked
up our equipment and walked out of the operations center, through the
crowd outside, trying to smile at the men slapping our backs and asking us
questions.

26 May 1967: Afternoon

The nine-day battle in the Plei Trap Valley, which started on 18 May
finally ended today. Our 1st Battalion units in it were bled hard. Three
Congressional Medals of Honor were won, overlapping B52 strikes had
made the night and day thunder.
The good that came out of it was the NVA’s planned summer
offensive was disrupted and they were not to come back in strength until the
battles of Dak To in the fall.

27 May 1967 Living On Luck

At 1015 hours (at map coordinates YA773213) a platoon from
Company A, Battalion, 1/st 22nd Infantry and tanks from the 3d platoon,
Company B, 1st Battalion, 69th Armor, moving to reinforce Recondo Patrol
2F, had contact with two NVA platoons; results, 16 US WIA. Two 4th
Aviation Battalion gunships received ground fire; results, one US WIA.
None of the rescued LRRP team were killed or wounded.

Enemy Doctrine
Lt. Mike Lapolla was coming back to the platoon just as I was
leaving. The 2/8th didn’t need him any more. He had in fact been with the
infantry company that Brigade committed to sweep the area around 339.
The NVA had already taken their few casualties and gone. There was little
positive to find on 339. No enemy bodies or weapons, nothing but our fresh
cartridge casings on top of the hill, plenty of napalm ashes, and a still-
flashing strobe light. In fact, some of the infantry openly doubted we had a
real enemy contact at all. Another team of ours was to get the same
treatment within a week – and people would die for it.
This is quoted from the official 4th Division after action report for
Operation Francis Marion regarding removal of enemy casualties.
(c) Enemy doctrine. The enemy consistently makes a determined,
almost fanatical effort to recover his casualties from each contact. His
preparations for such recovery and his demonstrated efforts and willingness
to risk fresh casualties to police his dead and wounded have generally
proven successful for him. Enemy battle-orders for defense of landing
zones and plans for attacks on FWMAF (free world military assistance
forces) positions have invariably included emphasis on all NVA dead or
wounded being evacuated.
(d) As a result of the factors described above it is concluded that the
actual body count of enemy KIA during Operation FRANCIS MARION is
not a complete count of enemy KIA and is far less than the actual enemy
KIA during the operation. Unit after action critiques and reports have
indicated that in almost every contact with the enemy, US personnel, who
observed kills or hits on enemy personnel, found the enemy had evacuated
these casualties when contact was broken.

29 May 1967: Accidental Discharge

Many of the original LRRP platoon members were already in base
camp, or back at their units, arranging to get out of Vietnam. Most of the
platoon now, except for a very few veterans still on their last patrol, were all
new.
I sold my carbine to one of the new LRRP’s and gave a friend my
Air Force survival knife. I could have taken it back with me, but I told him
I wanted it to stay in Vietnam where it could do some good. “I hope you
kill a dozen NVA with it,” I told him.
With my rucksack packed, and each good-bye said, I started to walk
the short distance to the landing zone in front of brigade HQ to wait for a
helicopter ride to base camp.
“Hey,” one of the men said to everyone as he stepped out of the
radio bunker, “we got a KIA on patrol.”
I stopped, wondering what teams were out.
“It’s one of the new men. He was shot by one of the other new
men. It was an accident. One guy was trying to pull the other one uphill
with his rifle. It was off safe and on full auto.”
I had a mental image of men clawing up a steep hill, pulling
themselves up bush-by-bush, someone faltering, and a rifle being offered
muzzle first. I could imagine a hand grasping an M16 barrel near the flash
suppressor, strained, sweaty faces, a finger unknowingly on the trigger, an
explosive burst of automatic fire.
The dead man would have rolled all the way downhill as the
surviving team mates faces went pale. Especially the man with the smoking
rifle. Especially him.
“The body’s on the way in now.”
I waited by the LZ, and soon, a helicopter came, and the loading
sergeant there waved me aboard.
A body wrapped in a poncho was taken off the Huey in front of me.
The legs sticking out of the poncho were clad in new tiger fatigues. With a
grim chill, I realized it was the LRRP casualty I had just learned of. Several
infantrymen carried him. His boots bounced lifelessly as he passed me.
The dead LRRP’s mortuary chopper was my flight to freedom. I climbed
onto the same deck, braced myself against a bulkhead, and we lifted off.
4th Division casualty records show that on 29 May 1967, 18-year-old
PFC Richard Ross Luce died of “accidental causes.” He had arrived in
Vietnam just two weeks earlier. No one had a chance to get to know him.
The official record also shows on 29 May that at 1615 hours,
Recondo Patrol 2-Delta spotted three NVA and killed all three. I don’t
know who it was. I was now in transit.

31May 1967: Teammates

Besides Harmon and Bonert, a soldier with two months time in the
unit, Pfc. Ron Coon, 20, was picked to go. Coon’s father was a Ranger in
WWII. Coon had already graduated MACV Recondo School. The fourth
team member was RTO Jim Sommers (US 56-453-293). He had gone to
Recondo School with Coon.

01Jun 1967: Harmon and Bonert’s last Mission

At 1300 hours, Bonert, Harmon, Coon, and Sommers boarded their
slick and they flew west toward the border to make the insertion.
 At base camp, I was given a bunk in the transit barracks, and felt
very odd. No more missions. All I had to do was go from office to office
with a clipboard of paperwork and process out. There was an unreality to it.
I was alone. I resented the “base camp commandos” that surrounded me,
most of them without weapons. Most of them in clean, even starched,
fatigues. It took hundreds of them to work the desk and maintenance jobs.
They ate in mess halls.

I would later learn I was looking at the “real” army, that the torn
boots and blood and ammo bandoliers belonged to the minority. That was
we field troops. And the real army wanted as little to do with the field
troopers, as we had to do with them.
Making my rounds, I soon confirmed that Dragon Mountain Base
Camp was now officially Camp Enari. I did not learn it pleasantly. While
at a personnel office, I overheard some of the base camp clerks using the
new name.
“What the fuck kind of name is Enari?” someone asked.
“Beats me,” said one of the clerks.
“How long have you been here?” I asked him. I wanted to smash
him with his own typewriter, but I held the urge in check.
“Four months,” he said.
“Enari was one of our lieutenants that originally came over with the
nd
2 Brigade headquarters,” I said. “He left headquarters and went to a line
company,” I told the clerk, who might or might not have wanted to know,
but I didn’t care. I was going to tell him. “He was killed in action.”
“I’m sorry,” said the clerk. “I had never heard the name.”
“Well,” I said, very disturbed and wanting to leave, “it was Mark
Enari’s name. When you say it now, you know who he was.”

02 June 1967: LRRP KIA’s.

The official report reads: At 1406 hours Recondo Patrol made
contact with 17 NVA at [map coordinates] YA770221. A platoon from
Company A, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry and three tanks from Company B, 1st
Battalion, 69th Armor effected link-up with the patrol, after which contact
was made with an unknown size NVA force. The combined force received
B-40 rocket and small arms fires. Artillery was called; results, one US KIA,
five US WIA; eight NVA KIA, six AK-47’s, two B-40 rocket launchers
captured.

This account comes directly from Ron Coon, who survived the
ambush.
On the second day of the mission, the team crossed the highway,
picked its way through the craters and broken trees, taking photos, and ran
into signs of enemy presence early. They soon saw NVA soldiers, evaded
an ambush, and quietly made way back toward the highway. And luck was
with them. They bumped into a few NVA and in the following grenade
exchange, two from each side, the LRRP’s grenades exploded but the
NVA’s did not.
The team ran to an old French border fort site, an area of collapsed
bunkers and fallen walls, preparing to defend against attack, but the NVA
did not oblige. They encircled the LRRP site and waited.
 Bonert called artillery fire to keep the NVA busy, and reported his
situation to the 1/12th ’s Tactical Operations Center. The TOC responded
that the area had been checked out recently, and no one had seen enemy
activity.
In short, it was as if the team was lying. Shades of Hill 339.
No helicopter extraction was granted. Instead, because it was
available just a few miles east on the highway, the 1/12th was sending
armor, but it wasn’t coming quickly. One of the M48 tanks with the little
task force threw a track and the team was radioed that they would just have
to wait.
The LRRP’s had moved to the tumble of berm and logs at the end of
the road. Hours had passed from the grenade fight until the moment the
team saw the three tanks slowly arrive, and a lieutenant in the command
tank’s turret waved them to get aboard. He told them they were in an old
minefield.
They came running.
The officer seemed to have the attitude as if all this trouble were
unnecessary, an imposition, as if all were really safe. And incredibly, the
officer directed the tanks toward where the team knew the NVA to be. “We
ought to get off this tank,” Coon said, “this is bad.”
As the command tank maneuvered onward, the two following tanks
fired canister into the bushes, then all turned back toward the road.
Tanks give a false sense of security. They are big, they make a lot of
noise, and they have machine guns and cannons. In truth, they are big, slow
targets. At that very minute, NVA tank-killer teams with B40 rockets were
very close, hidden in the foliage.
The B40 was the Chinese version of the Soviet RPG-2, copied very
closely from the last version of the Nazi Panzerfaust. You had to be close to
use them effectively. And they were, watching the M48 cleat its way up
towards the road.
Ron Coons ambush sense was flaring. He held on, looking all
around.
 As the command tank, still leading, reached the road, a mine went
off under it and blew off a track, just as another mine disabled the last tank
in line, trapping the tank in the center. And RPG and small arms fire
exploded from the roadside.

The command tank was hit with rockets, and Sommers either
jumped or was blown off. He hid in a ditch, suffering only a small shrapnel
wound. An RPG hit right between Bonert’s legs, shredding them both, but
he stayed on the turret. Coon was riddled with shrapnel, nodding in and out
of consciousness. A loudspeaker mounted to the turret had shielded
Harmon. He grabbed Coon and helped him off the tank.
None of this had to happen. Pressed by enemy contact, the LRRP
team had asked for help the night before. They had been postponed. Then
help was late and the team’s pleas were doubted.. Now veteran LRRP’s had
to die, and one of the doubting tankers was to suffer. Close your eyes for a
moment and imagine what it sounded like, what it looked like.
All three tanks were firing machine gun and canister now,
desperately fighting back. The lieutenant with the attitude, exposed in the
hatch, had been hit in the shoulder by RPG fragments and was to later lose
his arm
Coon said Danny Harmon was trying to get Bonert off the tank
when Danny was shot and fell. It is possible Danny was able to recover
enough to return some fire before dying, as he was found on the road ahead
of the tank, as if he had moved under his own power. Coon listened to
Bonert screaming, trying to get up to help him, but every time Coon moved
he fainted.

The infantry had gone to ground when the shooting started, and was
little help.
But Danny Harmon didn’t run, and he didn’t leave his friends. And
he did not go home alive.
A letter from Danny arrived for his mother her a week after the
report of his death. Dan wrote, " I'll be going on patrol shortly. There are
only a couple of the original guy's left in my group and I don't feel good
about this patrol. They are all new guy's and green to combat condition's".
 Harmon was one of the first men I met in the LRRP platoon, and I
remembered him lying wounded on the dirt floor of an aid tent during the
heavy mortar attack on 3-Tango. Modest, affable Danny Harmon. Now he
was dead.
I was not to learn what had really happened to Danny and Ron
Bonert until a couple of days later, and not to know the details for years
later when Ron Coon told me the actual story. Danny was one of those
good-natured, no-trouble, easily liked guys. He was humble, from a humble
home, and he lost his life because of incompetent support. I grieve for him
to this day.
Bonert I had not met until he had come back from the hospital in
Japan. He had been shot through the thigh while walking point for his team
back in February. They had presumed him dead, and left him while they
dropped back. He had thrown off his rucksack, and crawled back to them,
in agony all the way, afraid they would abandon him. He had been
seasoned when we met, and we had been friends. I believed him dead that
day because of what my fellow LRRP’s said, but records state that Bonert
was to linger until 14 June before dying in hospital.

Say a prayer for Danny and Ron, and for all the others like them.
They did not die for God and country, they died for the platoon, and for
each other.

Stranger In A Strange Land

I walked around the expanse of base camp. It was a real town now.
Electric power lines ran from building to building on poles, there were
telephone lines, road signs to control the traffic, piped water, glass
windows, and concrete-block walls.
Grass grew on lawns, and walkways were marked with painted
rocks. Music played from wooden barracks. There were air conditioners in
the windows.
They were safe, too. Our mud-puddle foxholes and drooping
sandbag barricades of a year ago seemed like ancient history. Main
perimeter bunkers were now reinforced concrete. Mounted in towers
around the perimeter was a new kind of night eyes, the AN/TPS-25 ground
surveillance radar. They called it “human body radar” because it could
detect people. Most “targets” were actually detected between a quarter of a
mile to eight miles out. In other towers were powerful, aimable sound
amplification dishes. I’d heard that they could make a cricket sound like a
motorbike.
I needed to find C-Company because I had to get to the personnel
and supply offices to process some of my paperwork.
Approaching a formation of soldiers standing in front of a new row
of white wooden-frame barracks, I decided to ask about Charlie Company
because I knew it had to be close.
“This is C-Company,” said one of the soldiers. He looked very
young, and his jungle fatigues were new.
“I need C, Second of the Eighth,” I said.
“That’s us,” he said.
I looked up and down the formation. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t
see anyone I knew.
“Hey, Camper” yelled a voice from the back ranks, and one of the
veterans pushed his way out to me. “Good to see you! You must be
processing out!”
“That’s right,” I said, then nodded toward the company. “Who are
these guys?”
“Well, we got a lot of new replacements,” the veteran said.
“Everybody in 1st Platoon is new, and over half of us in 2nd Platoon are
new. It’s about half-and-half in 3rd. Weapons is still pretty much intact.”
“I didn’t recognize anybody,” I said.
“It was a rough year,” my friend said.

04 June 1967: Exit Tax

I made the rounds to finance, medical, personnel, and supply,
carrying a clipboard with my files and other paperwork on it, letting
Vietnam slip away from me with each waking morning.
It was near 2nd Brigade headquarters in base camp where I saw two
fellow Brigade LRRP’s. They were dressed in tiger fatigues, carrying their
rucksacks, apparently just out of the Oasis.
“Who’s out there winning the war?” I asked, walking up to them
with the first smile I had managed in days. The clerks had been harassing
me, and the more false base camp war stories I heard, the closer I was
coming to violence.
 The LRRP’s turned wearily; first glad to see me, and then a change
came over their faces.
“Did you hear about Harmon and Bonert?” one of them asked.
“No,” I said. “I thought they’d be coming out with you guys.
They’re going home the same time as me.”
“They’re dead,” the LRRP told me.
I took a deep breath. “What happened?” I asked.
“They were riding a tank, getting out of a contact. Got ambushed,
RPG’s. There was infantry there too, man. And they just ran away.”
I was stunned. There was nothing else to say. I wished them luck
and pointed the way to the outprocessing station, and walked quietly back
to the transit barracks, hearing and seeing little. We had been lucky too
many times. It was as if this was the exit tax we had to pay now that our
tour was over. This sort of penalty was paid for in blood.
The war, of course, went on. Here’s our platoon’s part over the next
two days.

03 June 1967. At 1855 hours Recondo Patrol 3B received fire from four
VC. The patrol returned fire and called artillery. Results; one VC KIA;
patrol extracted.

06 June 1967. Recondo Patrol 4H at 0815 hours fired on five NVA at 15

meters distance; results, one NVA KIA.

07 June 1967: California

I flew out Of New Pleiku Air Base in a Boeing 727 chartered to the
army, every seat filled. We left the airstrip at max power, nose up, climbing
for altitude to get out of ground-fire range as fast as possible.
Like most everyone else on board, I wore wrinkled, ill-fitting khakis
issued to me by a base camp quartermaster. The khakis I’d brought over a
year before had long since been lost.
I did not even have an AWOL bag of personal items. The one I had
packed was missing, lost or stolen in the shuffle at the outprocessing center.
My money, orders, and ID card were in my pockets.
Our first stop was Cam Ranh Bay, a short jet flight from Pleiku. As
we let off a few shuttling passengers and picked up replacements, I watched
the sand dunes and long stretches of scrub brush from my window, cruising
tracks plowing across the beaches like Panzers in North Africa.
As we took off again, some of the men cheered, but the elation I
expected to feel when our tires left Vietnam’s soil wasn’t there. I just felt
tired and a little sad. I almost expected to wake up from this dream,
exhausted on patrol somewhere.
We flew to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and landed there
along rows of neatly parked, camouflage painted F-4 Phantom fighter-
bombers and C-130 cargo planes. I saw no gun bunkers alongside the
runways; and had to remind myself there didn’t need to be. We were not in
Vietnam, but the combat aircraft around us twisted such reason. Our
perimeter was unprotected. They should have bunkers, I thought, just in
case.
Once parked, we were briefly allowed off the 727 to go into the air
terminal, where military families in brightly colored civilian clothes waited
for their own flights. I found a snack bar and ordered cold milk, something
I had wanted and promised myself for a long time, providing I got out alive.
The snack bar only sold reconstituted milk, the same type sent to
Vietnam. I wasn’t far enough away from the war yet.
Soon we were all back aboard our plane and airborne again, aimed
this time for Japan, and a longer stopover and change of planes.
It was night over Yokote by the time we arrived, massed neon
advertising signs in Japanese ideograms making a blaze of color below as
we approached for landing.
After Vietnam, the early June night in Japan seemed cold to me as
we filed off the 727 and were led to a hangar outfitted as a mass waiting
area for troops in transit. Inside, hundreds of soldiers milled around or sat
crouched on benches, listening to loudspeaker announcements for their
flight times and numbers.
I changed to a 707 there, boarding the bigger plane with an anxious
crowd of troopers. This was it. The next stop was the United States, The
World.
Really tired now, I slept during most of the flight across the Pacific,
trying to adjust my mind to the fact I was on my way home, at altitude,
suspended between realities.
When I woke later, having slept all I could, most of the men around
me were still slumped in their seats. Even the stewardesses were resting.
In the quiet dimness of the long cabin it was peaceful. Outside my window
was blackness. I studied it. You have to learn to see through darkness.
Slowly, a suggestion of gray appeared ahead of us in the night sky,
and the gray began to glow. It became purple, thinning to yellows and
oranges, a stratospheric dawn.
Here comes the sun, I thought. First, it flickered ahead in the
atmosphere, a rim of light that illuminated the edges of our wings, a filling
brightness that transformed the sky into vast glory.
We were flying into morning. Darkness was behind us. In the light
I saw the coastline and hills of California. Men were stirring, being shaken
awake by their friends. Faces were pressed to the windows. No one
cheered like some had leaving Vietnam. There was too much of a sense of
awe in the twin spectacles of dawn and America appearing together before
us like a vision.
We landed at Travis Air Force Base, near San Francisco, and were
bussed to Oakland Army Terminal to be quickly processed in and out,
authorized leave, given new dress-green uniforms with all the proper
insignia, and turned loose.
It was the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco. I went downtown
by taxi briefly, just to see the sights before going on to the airport. The
hippies and flower children were in their uniforms of ragged clothes, long
hair, love beads, and sandals. I looked at them and they looked at me, in
my uniform of summer weight green, service ribbons, polished brass, and
military insignia. There were VW vans painted with peace signs; and
hashish, pot, and LSD were staples of the streets. The latest music was a
Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released just that
week.
I said nothing to anyone downtown, and they said nothing to me,
and by noon, I was at the airport. I finally found my fresh milk there, and at
a snack bar in the terminal, I drank glasses of it and ate hot dogs with
mustard, my first meal Stateside.
On the way to the departure gate for my plane home, I passed a
newspaper vending machine. The headlines stunned me.
JERUSALEM MORTARED, it read.
The words didn’t even have a relationship with each other in my
mind. Mortared was a term I knew too well. Someone was always getting
mortared, but Jerusalem? It made as much sense to me as if it had read
DISNEYLAND MORTARED. I had to stop and read that story. There were
massive battles breaking out in the Middle East between Israel and her
border countries. What we would later know as the famous Six-Day War
was beginning.
Boarding my flight, a commercial 707, I was realizing my war was
not the only one around. There were others.
I was seated beside a young businessman dressed in a suit, and in
front of us sat two pretty college-age girls. Once we were in the air, and the
stewardess had served us soft drinks, the businessman and I began to talk.
Our conversation was polite, really just generalities. Soon, the two girls in
front of us turned to comment on something, and all of us were talking
together.
I honestly was charmed, realizing how I’d missed such kind social
words, and the iced drinks and informality made the small talk an event for
me. I told the businessman and the girls I was going home on leave, having
just come out of Vietnam.
“You mean you were in Vietnam?” asked one of the girls, “In the
fighting?”
“I just left yesterday,” I said.
“How long were you there?”
“About a year.”
“You were there in the fighting and you were killing people?”
The way she said “killing people” had a very wrong ring to it, as if I
had been killing for fun or committing murder. I was searching for an
appropriate answer when both girls turned away from me and spoke no
more.
For a moment, I didn’t understand. The businessman also lowered
his head and became absorbed in a magazine. The party was over. I sat
quietly, drinking my soda, studiously ignored by the salesman and the girls.
I had just left the protesters and hippies in San Francisco’s parks.
These passengers were just average people to me, not freaks waving
Vietcong flags. My God, were things that extreme? I stood and edged past
the salesman, apologizing for disturbing him, and he grunted a superficial
reply. Up the aisle, in an empty row of seats, I sat down alone, confused
and hurt. It was personal.
When the stewardess noticed me, she came over and offered to refill
my glass. “Are you all right?” she asked.
 “I’m fine,” I lied. I wanted to go back and tell those girls and that
salesman about the starved baby we buried, about the terror of the infantry,
about friends who would die for you … I wanted to, but I didn’t, because
they had made up their minds on Vietnam without really knowing anything
about it. They wouldn’t want to know what I would tell them. It would
upset their preconceptions, and soon I might be screaming at them, and I
didn’t think I could control it.
But in the end, what can you truthfully say about war except that it
had been bad. How bad was impossible to convey. It had been bad enough
to die in. There was nothing worse.
I remembered all our young troops on the Walker, sailing under the
Stars and Stripes, heading toward Vietnam. So many of us had done it for
patriotism. Wasn’t love of country the best of reasons? Enough to sacrifice,
if needed, all the years of life that were yet to come to a 19 year-old?
Because we had believed that, we had fought, but the commitment
we had given was not returned. Our government had betrayed us, playing
politics for votes with our lives, and our country had mocked us, disdainful
that we should have fought in its name at all.
America was letting us know the mission it sent us on to fight in
Vietnam was a fool’s errand, producing either live fools or dead ones. That
had been the joke. I could not let the insult go too deep and link with the
other losses and futilities within. United, all that grief would be
unbearable. It would surely break me.
Would time ease this in any way? It was impossible to guess what
the future might bring. I was looking ahead just to days, not years. Saigon
had not yet fallen. Carter had not yet pardoned all the draft dodgers. The
stark black Wall riddled with the names of my friends had not yet been
built.

I went home with infected leech bites on my knee, serious skin-

fungus problems on my feet and lower legs, a badly weakened digestive
system, and as soon as my thirty day supply of suppressant pills ran out, a
bad case of Vivax malaria.
Someone tried to tally the platoon’s kills the week I left. It was a
figure that among us stood between fifty and eighty, depending on who you
believed. We didn’t count artillery possibles. We counted those we shot up
close and saw fall. Those from whom you could take his weapon, see his
blood. Like notches on a gunfighter’s pistol grip, we kept count.

After we had landed and the door of the 707 opened, I exited with
the other passengers down the stairs into the afternoon sun of the
Birmingham Airport, seeing my wife and father waiting for me on the
ground.
For that moment, I forgot the incident on the flight and we
embraced; I was truly happy. I was alive. I had made it

June 1967; The LRRPs Expand

The establishment of the LRRP’s as official on-the-books units began
in late June 1967, when General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, authorized two long-range patrol companies for I and II
Field Forces.
History can credit Major General William R. Peers, commander of
th
the 4 division, for this. The provisional LRRP platoons, especially ours,
had proven you could get special ops on the cheap. The Green Berets and
SEALS took a long time to train. There was a great investment of time and
money in them. But if you picked the right guys out of the line infantry you
got small teams of very brave and very capable men right away. Success
wasn’t entirely in months of schooling and special equipment. It was heart.
Of all of us in the provisional platoon, Lt. Lapolla was the example of that
kind of heart.
24 Spt 1967: Commander’s Conference
The difference between tactics and strategy is important. Tactics are
how you do it. Strategy is why you do it. For instance, when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor, it was a strategic strike. The strategy was to damage
our naval ability to make war on Japan so badly the US would have to enter
into the best cease-fire and peace agreement it could with Japan. The tactics
were to do it by surprise air attack.
Actually, the original 1950’s US Army LRRP concept had come
from Europe, and consisted of patrols dropped on mountaintops for road
surveillance in a limited nuclear war.
So now, instead of just localized recon, the LRRPs were going to
cover all of South Vietnam in an organized way to gather strategic
intelligence important to the whole war effort.
 It wasn’t that we, as a platoon, were somehow extraordinarily braver,
luckier, or smarter than our LRRP compadres from any other units. It was
the way Peer’s had handled us. We had been groomed for Corps level
missions and we had passed the test. Other men would fill the slots. Those
of us who could were going home.
The consummations of Peer’s efforts were announced on this day at
a classified meeting in Nha Trang. One of the first things Peers did after
taking over as division commander in January 1967 was review 4th Division
LRRP operations and then enhance and expand them. Remember, Peers
was an WWII Burma-OSS veteran. A classified summary of the verbal
remarks were recorded by Westmoreland’s staff, and have survived to partly
explain why the 2nd brigade LRRP unit conducted the missions it did.
In the conference, Peers used the 2nd Brigade LRRP platoon, us, as
his prime example of LRRP success, citing our number of patrols, kills, and
major NVA attacks compromised.
Peers noted that in 1967: “Every major battle the 4th Infantry
Division got itself into was initiated by the action of a Long Range Patrol;
every single one of them. That included the Battle of Dak To, for the Long
Range Patrols completely uncovered the enemy movement. We knew
exactly where he was coming from through our Long Range Patrol action.”
E Company (Long Range Patrol), 20th Infantry (BAN) was activated
on 25 September 1967 and assigned to I Field Force with its station at Phan
Rang. The core of E Company came from the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne
Division LRRP Platoon
Company F (Long Range Patrol), 51st Infantry (Airborne) was
activated on 25 September 1967 and assigned to II Field Force with
operations out of Bien Hoa. Its people came from the LRRP platoon of the
173d Airborne Brigade. Each of the two field force LRP companies had an
authorized strength of 230, and was commanded by a major.
And what of the line company LRRP’s?
Division headquarters units for the 4th, the 9th, the 25th, etc.,
formalized their official, authorized TO&E (table of operations and
equipment) Division and below LRP companies with Pentagon approval.
All this had been going on in fits and starts anyway.

LRRPs to LRPs to Rangers

 Official status of the LRRP units brought changes. Soon, the
“Reconnaissance” designation was dropped, and the role of the “LRP”
teams changed to allow more combat.
In January 1969 the axe fell. The designation LRRP or LRP was
dropped altogether officially and “Ranger” was substituted. The Rangers
were going to exist again as TO&E units, instantly staffed by the LRPs.
After that, a long-range patrol was a mission, not a unit.
While appearing to be a move by the military to honorably restore
the tradition of the Ranger battalions back to active service, in my opinion it
was in fact the legalization of all the misuse the LRP teams had undergone.
The Rangers became part of the establishment and were saddled with GI
bureaucracy. Like the rest of the American effort in the Vietnam War, the
new Rangers were just holding a rear guard. The U.S. had no intention of
winning the war, or even of stalemating it, only of getting out.

Here’s what my March 1970 letter to the 4th Division returned.

25 Apr 1970

On 6 October 1969, LRRP activities within the Division were reorganized

to more efficiently use available LRRP assets. Prior to this LRRP activities
were divided between the Division controlled Company K (Ranger) 75th
Infantry and the brigade controlled LRRP platoons.

This organization produced duplication of effort and increased requirements

for assets, both men and material. Neither the brigade nor the Division had
the capability to monitor a large target area without difficulty with
command communication and reporting. After the reorganization was
completed, the brigade LRRP platoons were absorbed into Company K,
75th infantry under the operational control of the Division G3. The
centralization of LRRP assets is now being tested. Early indications are that
the reorganization has resulted in a much-improved 75th Infantry.
The most effective employment of Rangers is one in which a large number
of teams are deployed in a given area to screen an enemy route of approach
or withdrawal. An example of this employment occurred in early October
when the 2d Brigade was withdrawn from its AO northeast of Pleiku, a 12-
team LRRP platoon, with a platoon leader and control team, was deployed
to PLEI MRONG and staged out of the Special Forces camp there. An
average of eight teams were operational at all times, screening the mountain
range west of PLEI MRONG, with the other four used as a rotational back-
up for stand down and further patrol preparation.

When the 24th NVA Regiment began its move eastward toward Highway
19 on 12 October, its movement was reported by screen, and for four days
the enemy was subjected to direct artillery and air strikes, and lost twelve
men to ground contact with Ranger teams. Given early warning, the 4th
Division had moved a mechanized battalion into the PLEI MRONG area by
the time the 24th Regiment emerged from the mountains. In a series of
contacts the enemy lost over 100 men KIA and his offense was preempted.

It took many years to wrote this book. The first edition was published
by Dell in August 1988. As” LRRP: The Professional.” It barely beat Mike
Lanning’s excellent book “Inside the LRRP’s” to print, and Mike even
consulted my book for research details.
At first tried to write it as fiction, and that didn’t seem right. I had to
tell the facts about what I saw and felt, and fiction didn’t seem like enough.
It was not fiction to me. Harmon being gunned down in front of the M48
tank, trying to protect Bonert while the infantry ran was not fiction. The
body bags of Braun’s 1st platoon were not fiction.
Then, in 1973, the Department of Defense declassified information on
SOG, the special operations group, and admitted that SOG casualties were
officially “misrepresented” as to location and cause. SOG vets out of the
military trying to get medical help were being denied because the missions
in which they were wounded didn’t officially exist. I knew then I had to
honor the truth.

It’s hard to write objectively about something you deeply care about.
To make this the better book from the original, I researched other books, I
found more After Action Reports, I submitted Freedom of Information Act
requests, and I interviewed other veterans. Sometimes it hurt too much to
write, and I would have to wait for the grief to pass or the tears to dry so I
could start typing again.
Now, expanded and corrected from my original Dell paperback, the
story is finally here before you.
LRRP/Rangers. The unwanted elite.

In mid-1942, U.S. Army, received approval that an American unit be

set up along the lines of the British Commandos, which resulted in the
formation of the United States Army Rangers.
The Rangers are at the bottom and top of the LRRP family tree. My
experience is Rangers are super infantry, troops who know what they’re
doing. Not special forces, but highly skilled infantry. In short, they know
and can actually do the things most people think the infantry can do.
This is not to malign the infantry to which I once belonged. In a
long-term boots-on-the ground war, the infantry’s job is to absorb
punishment, bleed, and go back for more. Infantry was what the old guard
called cannon fodder, something to feed to the guns. Staying alive becomes
their goal, and map reading, calling artillery, fast rope, and airstrike skill are
just not as important as head-down survival.
 All of the U.S. Army Ranger units were disbanded following World
War II because officially they required expensive and lengthy training,
specialization, and extra equipment. Unofficially, the Rangers were truly
elite, and the Army command didn’t like elite troops, because they made
standard units appear inferior. Ranger School was opened to the rest of the
Army so as to try and bring up the level of skill overall.
But along came Korea in 1950, a fierce and bloody conflict (the word
war wasn’t politically correct then) that foreshadowed Vietnam in many
ways. The Rangers were soon reauthorized as individual companies that
were then attached to regular infantry units as a sort of a local operations
support capability.
The trouble was when regular infantry troops could not get the job
done; commanders were quick to throw in the Rangers, which resulted in
significant Ranger casualties.
A plausible excuse to disband the Rangers again was the US Special
Forces were just being organized in 1952 – no green beret authorization just
yet– that came in the early 1960s under President JFK. Ranger School was
now open to the Special Forces.

The Recondo School for the 101st Airborne at Ft. Campbell KY

began in 1958. At the time, graduation certificates were not dated, but
numbered sequentially. Recondo meant Reconnaissance Commando. It
originally had nothing to do with Rangers. Original LRRPs were totally
separate from the 101st Recondo school. From late 1966 on, the 5th Special
Forces Recondo School in Nha Trang was up and running. From that time
on, Recondo and LRRP were thought of as the same.
The original US Army LRRP units were organized 15 July 1961, and
most were active by 15 Dec 1961. The first LRRPs were for cold war recon
in Germany, mainly watching roads from mountaintops in what was
expected to be a limited nuclear war. LRRPs were described as being
modeled on Special Forces, but dedicated to reconnaissance.
The LRRPs were created to remedy weakness in Division level
information gathering in Germany. This included "Attack Alley," a gap in
the Alps where the Soviets were expected to make their assault from the
Czechoslovakian and Austrian borders.
 The LRRPs began with two test companies. The 3779th LRRP
(Provisional) Company was in Wildflecken, northern Bavaria, in the middle
of the Fulda Gap while the 3780 (Provisional) LRRPs were at the alternate
entry to the Saltzberg gap from the Austrian Border, close to Stuttgart, at
Nellingen. The 10th SF covered Saltzberg.
When the 5th Corp took over Wildflecken Kaserne the 3779th LRRP
(Provisional) officially became the 5th Corp LRRP and the 3780th LRRP
(Provisional), at Nellingen, Baden-Wurttemberg became the 7th Corp
LRRP.

A cold-war era LRRP was usually a four man team The Patrol
Leader carried a PRC-10 field backpack radio for calling in pickup, or with
a PRC-6 (Morse Code) CW continuous wave radio. The CW radio antenna
wire had a weight on the end for throwing over tree branches. The team
carried a heavy bicycle stand ANGR-9 generator, which was pedaled to
provide power.
A rucksack with equipment, C-rations and two canteens weighed
around 70-80 lbs.. The winter parka and insulated boot gear was bulky and
restricting. Common team weapons were at first M1 Garands and then
M14's.
The Germany training missions usually involved recon of a radio
tower, or a power station, and the like. A lot of the training targets were in
the Rhön Mountains that had been covered with snow so long that the local
footing was usually solid ice.
Another type mission was Escape & Evasion (E&E). The 10th
Special Forces from Bad Tölz were the aggressors along with MP’s and
translators for the citizens on the road running next to the mountain.
Highly classified at the time was these cold war LRRPs were also
trained to deploy Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADMs). In 1965
both the 5th and 7th Corp LRRP units were redesignated and transferred back
to CONUS (continental US).
.
LRSU: 1980’s forward
Long-range Surveillance Units teams (pronounced Lur-su) were specially
trained surveillance units employed for clandestine operation by Military
Intelligence for gathering information deep inside enemy territory. Standard
LRS deployment is to infiltrate deep into enemy territory, improvise
concealment and surveillance sites, and provide around the clock special
reconnaissance of a high value intelligence target. LRS teams allowed 24-
hour surveillance unlike drones, manned aircraft, and satellites. Without a
mission compromise, LRS teams could typically remain in position without
resupply for up to a week. A computerized efficiency evaluation based on
command-level questionnaires prompted the U.S. Army's top leadership to
decide to deactivate all active-duty and National Guard LRS units. By the
end of 2018 all Army LRS units were officially out of business. Drones and
other types of intelligence gathering won out over committing mortal teams
in the field.
History repeats itself.

The End