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Welcome to “30 Days Has September, The Second 10 Days” by James Strauss.
If you are looking to start at the beginning of this Vietnam war story, head to “30 Days Has September” and catch up. (Warning: once you start reading this account of James’ time in Vietnam as a Marine Lieutenant, you will likely have a hard time stopping!) If you’re coming from the First 10 Days, you can continue reading below.
This is a sampling of the kind of feedback being generated for this riveting Vietnam story:
“It’s difficult to explain what’s in my mind now, but I’ll try… It’s shocking how the brass knew (or must have known) what kind of mess you were ordered into, yet they assigned you the blame anyway. Sad to say, the same thing happens today as well. Thank you for sharing the history with us. My wish is that future generations know if what happens in the event of command failure (you were not that failure of course), and the importance of the higher-ups taking responsibility for their actions. SEMPER FI” -Comment from reader Jim Wohlberg on Day 10
Unlike some of the others when a new chapter appears I don’t drop everything and read it immediately. Your story is so powerful, and it pulls so many memories, and emotions from me. I go to my quiet spot, I do all I can to shut out the outside world and then I slowly wind myself down into the account. All the while it’s like the account hurts me but at the same time I think it helps me heal from my own personal demons. It must be very difficult for you to return to those time/memories/feelings and peel back the protective coatings and lay the wounds of leadership bare. Thanks for sharing. I’m sure it’s helping others understand why we have had the opportunities, the honor, and the blessings of the last 51 years when so many others were denied the chance by the totally insane survival selection process of that time. Comment from reader Bob Stephenson
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THE TENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I went to work on my stuff, just outside the exposed rock area where the choppers had come in. The area wasn’t that large, having hardly the footprint of an average small home back in the real world.
THE TENTH DAY, 30 days Has September
The shelf running just down from, and alongside the top of, the mountain’s descending ridge eventually played out. The company once more trudged through the jungle under a barely seen double canopy of heavy brush
THE TENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I lay in my hooch, dug into the side of the hill through the effort of using Fusner’s entrenching tool. The hill was too slanted to lay against without a step being carved into its side. Fusner was just down from me,
THE TENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I ate ham and lima beans while the mosquitos ate me. The repellant backed them off but there were plenty of FNG mosquitos to replace the ones who flew away.
THE TENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I wasn’t quite right and I knew it. Even with the rags pulled from my ears I could not hear much of anything. The noise had been too great. Counting wasn’t working either because this night was not about getting through, it was about living through. Living through, I...
THE TENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
There was nothing to be done but to sit with Keating’s body. I’d wanted to carry it myself but the guys would have none of it. Surprising me, Stevens said it all with a strange statement, coming from a noncom in a unit that hadn’t tolerated officers well, to say the...
THE ELEVENTH DAY, 30 Days has September
I felt a large hand grip my left bicep, as I stood gazing with Fusner down into the hypnotic A Shau Valley below. The hand gently guided me backwards. I didn’t resist, turning to see the man I already knew the hand had to belong to. “Why do you suppose this clearing...
THE ELEVENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days has September
I took my binoculars and played with the focusing knobs to bring in the landing zone far below. I was trying to get a clearer view of why there was stuff piled up around the edges of the zone, but I couldn’t make out what they were. The Gunny walked over and took out...
THE ELEVENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days has September
“There’s a lesson to be learned from this and I’ve learned it oh so well,” was coming out of any number of small radio speakers when we marched across the perimeter and into the temporary encampment Captain Casey referred to as his command post. I walked in the lead...
THE ELEVENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
There was no hooch for Captain Casey. The remnants of his tent lay scattered about the sand, a testament to the power of the Chicom 82mm mortar rounds that had impacted, taking Billings' life with them. Only Billings’ bloody poncho survived, along with some items from...
THE ELEVENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I finished the letter home. It wasn’t my best work because I kept nodding off. Nodding off but not sleeping. I nodded through the letter, forgetting about what I was going to tell my wife, instead going into detail about how much Casey reminded me of Kramer, the major at the Basic School who’d hated me.
THE ELEVENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I crawled toward where I thought the cliff wall was in the darkness. The rain was unpitying and the drums were driving me insane, as the sound was magnified, bouncing back off of the cliff face. All of a sudden, I was out of the rain and the jungle floor turned into a...
THE TWELFTH DAY, 30 Days has September
The first spotting round of the fire mission came screaming in. I didn’t care if I could see or hear it in the rain, or the fact that clustered down under the overhanging cliff behind the berm, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to properly observe anything anyway. I...
THE TWELFTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
My attention was drawn by AK-47s firing. I could hear the fire reverberating back from far up the valley even as I took cover and prepared to move out. My full attention, however, was immediately focused back to right where I was, when the Russian-built fifty caliber...
THE TWELFTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I climbed the hill, switching back and forth, heading for chunks of outcropping rock and then toward the density of a protruding stand of low-lying bamboo. It was the Hill Trail climb my platoon at the Basic School had dreaded once a week in Virginia training…
THE TWELFTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
There was nothing to be done about the grenade at the moment, because there were other things that had to be done. I had to make sure that the artillery registrations I’d made earlier with Fire Base Cunningham for bringing rounds in along the lower edge of our...
THE TWELFTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The hill was more of a water and mud-driven mess than when we’d all taken the Vietnam “E’ ticket Disney ride down it, only moments earlier. I wondered, struggling to gain footholds against unstable rocks under the mud if the whole side of the mountain wouldn’t...
THE TWELFTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The Gunny left me with my watery coffee, squatting in the soft-glistening dark. Our company commander was going to the rear to get a silver star, which was no small decoration, or at least it had been discussed that way while I was in training. He was going to get it...
THE THIRTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
I was wrong and I knew it by the time the company had proceeded less than an hour into its rain-flushed mud-slogging move into an impossibly dark night of trying to break through abusive jungle bracken while attempting to be careful not to set off any booby-traps.
THE THIRTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
Dawn was breaking somewhere over the high parapet beyond the hill to my back, although the jungle down in the valley only glowed slightly with the coming of the light. The rain was gone. There would be sun. The radio handset hung down from my right hand, the dangling...
THE THIRTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Our return to the company was without incident, although Casey would not shut up. His incessant chatter was more than bothersome, because it couldn’t be listened to for long without the listener realizing that something was seriously wrong with the man. Some of what...
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
The day would not end. The hike to where the objective was supposed to be, that Sugar Daddy’s forward reconnaissance team said wasn’t there, was one of overwhelming fatigue and staggering inattentiveness. The first sign that something was wrong with the company came...
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I had to put my binoculars down, as the Skyraiders came in much faster than I thought they would from the higher altitude. Seconds before I’d looked in the direction the Sandys were dropping down from, and seen the end of the day’s sunlight glint off something near...
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, Thirty Days Has September
Casey should have been restrained by force, if necessary and held until resupply arrived, no matter how long that took, but that wasn’t going to happen. Casey wanted to go on the mission down to the river and confront the tank. In the dark. With a small band of men...
THE FOURTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
A fifty caliber machine gun opened up in short bursts again, but this one wasn’t pouring in tracer rounds from the hill further down south on the other side of the river. We were too close for the tracers to begin to light up from this one, and not far enough away to...
THE FOURTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I knew that our real registered position was known to the two Army batteries we’d used for fire, and Cowboy and Hobo had to have our position fairly well marked, but the jets coming in would not be quite so accurately informed.
THE FOURTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
There was no question that I needed a plan. The company had no equipment for crossing any stretch of water that I knew of, and since the NVA had gotten a full blown battle tank down the river, or some road paralleling it, the likelihood of a U.S. Navy Seabee unit...
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I’d made it across the river, even after struggling to drag Barnes to the bank. I was dressed back out and had my gear and my .45, none of which was in bad shape. My self-inventory had been done before the big fifty-caliber had opened up again. My team, positioned...
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The Sandys came sweeping down the river, obliterating all other sound, the roar of their engines and propellers lifting my spirits in spite of my being trapped at the tank with a dead good kid and a living bad noncom. I hugged the edge of the tank’s right tread, the...
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Nguyen moved ahead of me, as we departed the perfect overhanging concrete bunker-style encampment the others would be preparing behind us. The mild wind, rushing water of the nearby river, and the mud sand under our feet would all be pushed into the background once we...
THE FIFTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The Skyraiders came out of the low level pre-dawn light, the sun still out and down earth somewhere on the other side of the valley’s eastern lip. There were four of them, and the drone of their big powerful propellers and engines built from a faint buzzing to a...
THE FIFTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I came awake instantly. Crashing roars, with distant but shaking explosions, moved me out from the cleft down along the side of a mud wall I’d been sitting up against. I blinked my eyes in fear and nervousness. I was in a cave. I was in the cave. The cave made by the...
THE FIFTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
There was no recoil as the Browning fired. The recoil was absorbed by the fixed tripod attached to the top of the Ontos. I’d never fired such a weapon. In training I’d fired a short burst of an M-60 but it had been a stuttering jerky experience fired standing in the...
THE FIFTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Jurgens stood where he was, arms slightly outstretched, but he made no other move, his expression unreadable except for a faint tick arching his left eyebrow up slightly every few seconds. “We are the same,” Jurgens said, splaying his fingers out, like his statement...
THE FIFTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days has September
Fusner found me with some difficulty, as I’d gone pretty deep under the camouflage provided by the packed down plant debris that served as the jungle floor. Although the stuff allowed me to hide from the gunships above, it did nothing in providing any kind of cover. A...
THE SIXTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
It was full dark by the time the Gunny departed for the old air field with two full platoons and parts of the other two. I’d made a deal with the devil to get back a dead body which went against all logic but for no good reason I could think of made a strange sense to...
THE SIXTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I looked at Nguyen. His features remained as impassive as ever in the face of our dire situation. We could not get to the end of the bridge without being carried down past the tank into the rapids below that led deep into enemy held territory unless Kilo Company had...
THE SIXTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The Righteous Brothers began their song called Unchained Melody and, as the first words of the lyrics squeaked out of Fusner’s tiny radio speaker, life came to a stop for me. I just sat there and listened.
THE SIXTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
The night was coming on fast, what with the west wall of the valley rising up only a few yards to our backs. The question was not whether we would make a rapid advance down the valley to attack an expected and hopefully unprotected enemy rear, but how and when we...
THE SIXTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 days Has September
The smell of blood would not leave me. A coppery tasting mess of cloying sweet aroma that was invisible, yet overwhelmed every other sense. The sound of Stevens' body being wrapped inside a slippery wet poncho to be left, like that of the others, along both sides of...
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The Skyraiders came in again and again, each run spaced ten minutes after the last, according to my Gus Grissom wristwatch. They came in low, right down the river, opening up on whatever they saw there, then pulling up and making their way back around. All of that...
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The river was a good four hundred meters away, and it was impossible to miss. The jungle between the swept river bank and the side of the cliff we’d made our way over from was dense but impossible to get lost in because of the ever present penetrating sound of that...
THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days has September
There was nothing more to be said to Captain Carter, so I handed the handset back to Fusner. I wondered why we never heard from battalion about anything except occasional and outlandish orders to move somewhere, occupy wherever that was briefly, and then move on. The...
THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The night was going to be one of the dark nearly moonless things, without much of any glow through the misting rain to see by. The rain wasn’t a problem, and in fact might be better to have since it covered so much in the way of sound and visibility on the ground. But...
THE EIGHTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The wait through the rest of the night was wet, dark and conducted mostly under my poncho. It had taken several tries for me to convince the Gunny to get Jurgens' flashlight from him so I’d be able to lay out what we might do to ensure our return across the angry...
THE EIGHTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
Dawn was breaking as I tried to stuff a can of Ham and Mothers down my throat. The rain was gone, taking what cover it had provided, but permitting an open opportunity for supporting air to operate with full application using the clear visibility to accurately guide...
THE EIGHTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
With Fusner boosting me from behind I got out of the hole I’d taken refuge in. The Gunny’s words had bitten hard, and I wished he hadn’t said them in front of Fusner but there was nothing to be done for it. It was hard to leave the protection of the wet muddy redoubt,...
THE EIGHTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I moved back down the river bank, my mind spinning in contemplation of executing the Gunny’s plan, and feeling a bit sick to my stomach at the idea of it. Zippo and Fusner took their E-Tools and dutifully began to dig holes near where the other radio operators worked,...
THE EIGHTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Day Has September
The firing stopped suddenly, as if the return of our company was something for the enemy to take stock of, while the remnants of Kilo Company had figured out they were only making themselves targets for the RPGs. “They’ve quit firing those things,” Fusner whispered in...
THE NINETEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
I tried to relax for a few seconds, so I could get the Heart of Darkness Plan organized in my mind. The night and rain were everything, along with our speed of movement. It had taken me almost three weeks to figure out that the Vietnamese were slow, compared to...
THE NINETEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
Two 106 rounds went down range, both visible from the distinctive contrails they left behind as they barreled through the thick rain soaked air. The guns were fired from outside the Ontos by the crew. I didn’t know why they’d fired two instead of all six or only one....
THE NINETEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I stood with my right-hand flat, the dirty index finger of that hand slightly glued to my head by a light bond of drying mud. I stared into Clews' eyes, waiting for an answer. Was I going to live, or die with him? Was I going to do something terrible to everyone...
THE NINETEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I awoke in darkness, bringing up my Gus Grissom watch more for the tiny bit of illumination emanating out through the crystal than to see what time it was. I quickly oriented myself to where I was and how I’d come to be there. I heard the wind and river sounds wafting...