funny this should be asked for right now. I'm in the middle of writing a Vietnam memoir based on letters I sent home from boot camp, Vietnam and the hospital. I was on active duty in the Marine Corps for three years.
Went to Parris Island in March of 1966. Graduated PFC and was off to other advanced infantry training and arrived in VN Sept 1966. I was assigned 1st Bn 3rd Marines and moved to an outpost hilltop in the Da Nang area. Within a week was in my first firefight. Eleven of us were in a squad position with three fighting holes and a wall tent in the middle. We got hit right after I went off watch, were quickly overrun and my position with two other Marines was the only one to hold. Eight members of my squad were killed that night and I killed my first three men. I've got a magazine from my m-14 that has a AK hole in it from that night.
We saddled up and moved north to Khe Sanh after that. It rained and rained and rained for 12 weeks without let up. We lived in our ponchos and made makeshift hooches from shelterhalfs. We were always wet and I didn't take my boots off or shower or have hot chow for all that time. We worked like slaves setting barbwire and digging bunkers. Morale was at the point we were going to kill some of the Sgt that worked us everyday including Christmas. Nights were ambushes, combat patrols, listening posts, or hole watch two hours on two off two on two off. No more than four hours sleep. The only saving grace was the North Vietnamese weren't intrested in Khe Sanh at that time. I put in for a transfer to get out of the chicken------ outfit and I got it in Jan 1967.
My transfer went into the 1st Bn 9th Marines. 1/9 had a rep it was said that you got issued a body bag when you joined them as they were in constant combat. My tour in 1/9 was rough. Constant operations, humping from dawn to dark, setting in, getting motared, running all night patrols of laying in the bush beside a trail in ambush or listening post or hole watch. A grunt's life. We did operation Prairie in a heavily mined area. Alpha company lost 37 men to mines in four days. We were ambushed by a large force and one of our supply sgts saved my plt from annihilation by charging the ambush with a M-60 machine gun and was killed, his parents recieved his MOH. The fighting got savage, we had guys hit every day and I got a couple of chunks of shrapnel and got a PH. One day we called naplam in on two companies of NVA and had burning targets to shoot at. We counted 210 dead NVA and only took a couple of wounded. My rotation day was approaching but all I could think of was my next fifteen minutes. I lost count of my kills at around twelve or thirteen,I was nineteen and wanted nineteen kills. I know the day before I got shot I shot four NVA off the backs of tanks when they were trying to put satchel charges under the turrets. We had our M-14 taken away on April fools day 1967 and we were issued new M-16's. Delta company got caught in a big ambush and the new M-16 started jamming. We, Alpha co, ran at night through a minefield to their aid. We found dead Marines in groups of two or three with their weapons field stripped to try and clear their M-16. If we hadn't fixed bayonets and attacked into the ambush Delta would have been wiped completely out. They couldn't defend themselves. Deltas machine guns were out of ammo. There was a ditch where the corpsmen were staging the wounded and all the wounded and the Corpsmen had been executed. We captured three NVA and used them for bayonet practice. Our officer looked the other way.
Alpha company bumped into a NVA camoflaged bunker complex in May 1967. Everywhere we went we were in a crossfire of automatic weapons. It took us four days to clear those bunkers and our supporting arms were a plt of six tanks. We killed 137 on the third day. At the end of four days our plt was down to one squad and I was squad leader. We got caught in a crossfire and everyone in the squad was hit. I caught a round through my hip and we had to keep fighting to survive. The bunkers were so close it turned into a grenade duel. One member of my squad saved one man and went to get another and they both were killed. His parents got his Navy Cross.
I was wounded twice more that day by shrapnel but after four hours we had another company come in and drag the survivors out. The medevac helo I was on took fire pulling out and the guy across from me got hit again in the chest.
I was in the hospital for eleven months and returned to duty as a MP at Quantico VA till I got out in March of 69.
