The sounds of the Bong Song’s nearby rushing waters, the whap whap whap of the descending chopper’s supersonic blade-tips rotating, and the rest of the valley background sounds all faded into non-existence, as four Skyraiders came down the valley from the north, no more than fifty feet off the surface of the river. It was like the jungle peeled back to let them pass, the deep quaking thunder of their huge radial engines spitting out life-threatening noise even a close-mounted fifty caliber machine gun could not compare to. When the Skyraiders were on top of us and the thunder didn’t seem like it could get any louder, Cowboy and his wingmen opened up with their twenty-millimeter cannons and swept the A Shau’s lower surface like four brooms shaking the sawdust to pieces on an old saloon floor. Dust, dirt, and debris sprayed from one side of the narrow valley to the other before the monster planes were gone. There were no Marines still standing when that occurred.
I stood up and brushed myself down, knocking the crap from my helmet with one clenched fist, but avoiding hitting the sharp chunk of shrapnel that was sticking out of it. I still didn’t like having the word “Junior” written under the single magic marker black bar on its front surface, but there was little I was willing to do about it. What was, was, and if I’d learned anything at all it was that the only way I had any chance at survival was to go along when I could, and adapt at every opportunity I was given, and forget about the fact that I was a valuable or a valued human being. I was just another jungle creature trying to get by, no better or worse than a venomous viper, the crocodile we’d killed earlier, or even the leeches and mosquitos I’d so hated in the beginning, before life had changed.
The sound of the chopper blades grew and grew. I looked up to see the two big birds orbiting at about five hundred feet. It was a sight I was becoming used to. I looked lower down near the top edge of the jungle. They came right over that fake green horizon. Six Huey Cobra gunships. They didn’t come like the Skyraiders, lined up and delivering a wall of rolling fire. Instead, they came as an ever-changing interlace of dancing dark creatures. No fire came from their machine guns or cannons. They were clearing the landing zone by observation and reconnaissance. They’d only fire if they needed to or if they were fired upon, which wasn’t likely, and that fact was the only reason I wasn’t back face down on the vegetation with my chest pressed into the mud. It took several moments of intricate weaving, and near-magical flying, for the sleek predator choppers to assure that the supply ships could come down. There was only one regular Huey, so I knew it had to be flown by Blackbird, which meant that Captain V.C. had to be aboard. My replacement officers would be in one of the 47s.
I crept closer to the only clear area of the river bank that adjoined a slight bend in the river. The Huey dropped out of the sky but pulled up abruptly just above the mud. It then gently and brilliantly settled on its long tubular skids onto the surface, like a giant dragon faintly brushing the earth.
Macho man stepped out, turned, brought his Thompson up to parade rest and faced me. I could not help smiling. The unreal character was still alive, and so was I. I hunched over under the blades, and scuttled forward to deliver my two letters. He let his right come down from the Thompson’s forward barrel guard to receive them. I could tell he was working hard not to smile and possibly fall out of his combat imaged role. I nodded, and he nodded briefly in return, the chopper’s turbine howl making it too loud to speak over or through.
The two big 47s came skimming in behind the Huey, dropping the rears of the aircraft down to touch before the fronts settled into the mud. I knew their turbines would remain spooled up, just like the Huey’s own. Even though there was no enemy fire, the only kind of landing zone in the A Shau was always to be considered a hot one.
V.C. crouched next to the machine gunner, just inside the Huey’s side opening. Instead of jumping down and out of the machine, the Army captain dropped onto his butt, bounced once on the flat aluminum surface of the chopper’s floor, and then landed to stand fully upright in front of me with a smile on his face. I liked him. Without a word, and not knowing a thing about the man, I liked him. His clean pressed and starched utilities, his bounce, his smile…all of it reminded me immediately of the kind of hard but clean and fair training I’d left behind forever.
Taking one last passing look at Macho man, for my memory banks, although I knew I would never forget him, I turned, and crab-walked back in the direction I’d come, hoping V.C. would follow. As soon as I was out from under the blades, Fusner, Zippo, and Nguyen joined in close at my side. I stopped when I thought we had enough jungle cover and distance from the Huey to talk. The Gunny, whom I’d thought would have been greeting the new officers bound to be aboard the 47s, appeared, as if out of nowhere. I was surprised, but I had no time to ask him anything.
“I’m reporting in,” Captain Victor Chase said, his voice overly loud, even respecting the chuffing and whispering sounds of Huey’s spinning rotor blades. “Where’s the OIC?” he asked, as I turned to take him in.
He stood with his right hand out. I moved forward immediately and shook his hand. I wanted to say the words: “welcome to the Nam,” like I’d first heard that day so long ago, but it wasn’t appropriate, I knew. And “welcome to the A Shau,” didn’t have the same cachet.
“OIC?” I asked, feeling stupid.
“Officer in charge,” the Gunny whispered into my left ear. “It’s an Army thing.”
I liked the captain even more. He had to know I was Junior. They would have told him, like everyone else who came to our company in the field. He’d chosen to ‘report in’ to an officer he knew was lower in rank, and he’d chosen not to call me by my nickname.
“They’re going to be unloading the supplies and getting the hell out of Dodge, sir,” I said, recovering myself.
“You came down here instead landing up on hill nine-seventy-five” the Gunny interjected, letting me know right away why he’d been waiting back with me instead of with the Marines unloading the choppers.
“Setting up a base for ingress and egress from that hill,” the captain replied.
“And how in hell, sir, do you expect to get up and down that hill without a chopper?” the Gunny asked, surprising me by the cutting edge of his tone and in the nature of the question.
“Climbing gear,” V.C. answered, his demeanor remaining one of openness and good humor, in spite of the Gunny’s aggressiveness. “Two of my guys are with your incoming Marines. We’re going to scale the face of this wall. I’ve brought in three small teams but we won’t operate independently on this one.”
I looked over at the Gunny, but he simply stood there. I wondered if he was too dumbstruck to respond. After a few seconds, he shook his head once, bent down and lit one of his cigarettes before walking away toward the waiting more distant choppers.
“Climbing gear, they brought climbing gear,” I heard him whispering to himself as he went.
My own mind roiled. The thought of being five or six hundred feet up on ropes against the face of the bare cliff, with only a single sniper, like we’d had the day before, over on the top of the opposing ridge, made me feel a bit queasy. But my feelings about that were overshadowed by my sadness. I knew there was no chance that the wonderful-seeming young captain in front of me was going to live out the week, and then an ever-deeper sadness overcame me. I didn’t want to die with him, near him or around him. I wanted to be away from him, for all the right survival, but wrong disciplinary reasons.
“You know, they all call me Junior, sir,” I blurted out, trying to think of something substantive or clever to say.
“Yes, I heard that,” V.C. responded. “A term of endearment. I wonder if my men will give me a nickname too. And, I heard that out here in the real shit you don’t have to call me sir, either. I mean, if you’re another officer.”
The man’s discomfort was palpable. I knew he knew that my name wasn’t a ‘term of endearment,’ but I much appreciated the blasé ornateness of his lie. Mostly, my Marines didn’t like me at all, any more than my fellow officers in the Basic School had. I’d spent many useless hours trying to figure out why that was but had never reached any acceptable or substantive conclusion. It was the way it was.
“It don’t mean nuthin,” I said, giving the captain as genuine a fake smile as I could manufacture.
“I’ve heard that expression too,” he replied, “but I don’t get it.”
“That’s easy, sir,” Zippo unaccountably broke in. “It means everything’s cool unless it sucks. And that’s okay. It’s just the way things are.”
The captain looked away. All I could do was stare at Zippo and try to reflect on his comprehensible comment.
The Gunny came back through the low-lying jungle bracken, leading four Marines. None of the four wore the spotless gear the captain was wearing but all of them looked even younger than he looked.
“The new officers, ready to take command,” the Gunny said, but in a tone that made it sound like he was saying anything but that. He backed off to light up another cigarette. When it was lit, and just before I introduced myself to the new officers, he added, “and I’ll be right here if you want to have a smoke when you’re done.”
With that, he squatted down to begin brewing a cup of coffee.
I looked at the four young officers, knowing something was wrong, but not quite able to immediately place what it was. I looked at the rank designations on their collars, to determine which of them might be commanding my own company and Kilo, and then I got it. They all wore black single bars of cloth. They were all lieutenants.
Young lieutenants. New lieutenants. Brand new lieutenants
“Tell me you’re not all second lieutenants,” I said, the left side of my lips going upward in an uncontrollable tic.
“Same Basic Class,” the leading lieutenant said. “Just graduated. Came in the country together. We’re all MOS infantry and it’s amazing they’d let us come out to the field together.”
I looked at the black printing on the front of his blouse. The letters read: “LIGHTNER” on the small canvas tag.
“Truly astounding,” I whispered, turning away to face the Gunny.
The Gunny worked with one hand to light his small deposit of composition B. He used his left hand only because his right was extended upward, holding out the burning cigarette he’d mentioned, toward me.
I slowly took a couple of hesitant steps, until I was close enough to take the smoking tube with my own hand. I inhaled deeply, and then coughed like I hadn’t done since my earliest days in the country.
“Is there a problem?” the leading lieutenant asked from over my shoulder.
I shook my head, handing the cigarette back down.
“Coffee?” the Gunny asked, beaming up at me as if the universe had just played another of its tragically hilarious jokes on us. Which it, apparently, had.
I nodded but had to make sure about the seniority of the new batch of officers.
“Dates of rank,” I said, “I’m going to presume that all of you are junior to me?”
“Junior,” now that’s funny,” the leading man with the blackened name of LIGHTNER printed on the front of his utility blouse replied.
I squatted down by the Gunny, my back to the officers, and pulled the canteen rig from my belt. I took the thing apart and waited with my holder in one hand like I had all the time in the world. I didn’t need their basic class or their dates of rank. It was all too obvious. I was still company commander of our company. All that could be done was to appoint one of the new guys to take over Kilo.
“Whichever one of you is senior by number, you get to take over as the C.O. of Kilo company, or whatever’s left of it,” I said, not turning to face the officers. “Take your friends with you. I’m doing fine here. Divide up the fucking new guys and take half over there, and don’t forget to pair up the Project Hundred Thousand Marines. They can’t read or write so you’ll know them right off the bat.”
“What’s that project?” one of the new officers asked, but nobody answered.
Zippo, Fusner, and Nguyen took off and began digging holes in the mud behind small chunks of the scrub jungle cover that grew close to the river. I watched as they worked, knowing they’d be careful to dig as far from the cliff wall as they could but not so close to the river as to have the mud around the holes cave in. None of them were going to forget the cliff coming down in huge chunks when my artillery call came in short earlier.
The Gunny poured half his hot water into my own cup holder, then threw down some sugar, creamer and coffee packets next to his small fire. I looked into his eyes. He said nothing, and all I could read from his barely expression-filled facial features was wry humor. I understood. The rear area was either laughing at our continuing deadly predicament or it was so out of touch that it had no idea what it was doing or why it was doing it.
“Ah, how do you tell who’s who and in what company out here, Junior?” one of the officers, I presumed to be Lightner, asked.
“You don’t call me Junior, lieutenant,” I whispered, not caring whether the collected group of officers-waiting-to-be-dead behind me heard or not. “You call me sir. And you find out who’s with Kilo by asking around. Everyone’s all mixed together right now. If you want to make your company fall in then you better do it pretty quickly because we’re about to take some enemy fire at any moment.”
“How do you know that?” Lightner asked, his tone indicating his lack of belief.
“Mind if I join you?” the Army captain asked, squatting down next to my right side.
“Of course, sir,” I responded. “If you want some coffee we’ll have to boil more water though.
“You don’t have to call me sir, and no I’m fine,” V.C. said. “I won’t call you Junior either, but I don’t know your name.”
“Hell, Junior’s fine, as long as you say it with a laugh.”
“Ah, okay, Junior,” he got out, hesitantly, and then paused a few seconds before going on. “You think it’s a bad idea to scale the wall?”
“Okay, V.C. here it is,” I replied, after taking a long deep drink of my hot coffee. “We wanted as few of you up there because you’re all going to get killed. Hill 975 is completely run through with tunnels. NVA tunnels. It’s a beehive but a bee’s sting is nothing compared to what those clowns deliver up there. They killed a whole brigade on top of that same hill a few days back. We wanted as few of you hotshot recon types up there again because we have to go up and get your bodies ready for medivac. You can climb that wall and probably get shot on the way up or you can call in a chopper and reach the top alive only to die in the night when the vampires come out of their coffins. Take your pick.”
“Wow, that’s pretty hardball stuff, Junior,” Lightner said.
I turned my head to look back at the lieutenant. There was no use correcting his use of my nickname I knew, so I didn’t bother.
“If I was you I’d get hold of an E-Tool and dig in like you see my scout team doing over there,” I motioned toward the river with the cup holder, causing some of my coffee to spill over the lip.
“I’ve got orders,” the captain said, his apparent enthusiasm not seeming to be one bit diminished by my lengthy and brutal comment.
“Do you have orders also, Lightner?” I asked of the lieutenant, who I knew had remained close behind my back.
“Kilo’s supposed to move north,” Lightner answered. “Kilo’s eventually supposed to work its way over to the Rock Pile, but I didn’t know I’d be commanding it. I’m supposed to be a platoon commander, not a company commander. I don’t know how to be a company commander.”
“Welcome to the Nam,” the Gunny said, blowing out a puff of smoke from a newly lit cigarette.
“Welcome to the A Shau,” he finished, putting the cigarette out in the mud with a flourish next to his small composition B fire.
“Sir?” I heard Fusner say in the distance.
I looked up and out toward the rushing water of the river. Fusner and the other members of my scout team were standing in their holes and looking up and back toward the cliff face. A light wind had picked up, and a drifting cloud of rain pattered down, making the cliff face look nothing more or less like just another cloud, albeit much thicker and grayer. Down the side of the face extended three bright yellow lines, running vertically from the top to the bottom.
“My Romeo must have called them to make the drop,” V.C. said, climbing to his feet and gazing back through the misty rain with his left hand held up to shield his face from the rain.
“Romeo? Drop?” I asked, not understanding anything of what the captain said.
“Romeo Oscar, radio operator,” he replied, surprise in his tone. “My guys up top dropped the climbing lines down so they can pull us up.”
I looked around. I couldn’t see any radio operators, other than the Gunny’s and Fusner’s digging away by the river. I wasn’t fully conversant with the Army’s military jargon or many of its other ways. In the Marine Corps, at least in my field experience, a radio operator was worn like a second skin, and he was called a radio operator, not by the alphanumeric of his title. Fusner was always in sight and hearing of my presence and it wasn’t something I controlled. It was just the way it was in the Corps.
“They didn’t have some ropes that were a bit darker?” the Gunny asked, taking it all in, as I was.
“I’ve got to get back to the LZ and get my stuff together to get up there with my men,” the captain said, “with your permission, and all, Junior.”
The smile on the man’s face was difficult not to smile back at. I smiled. I liked the man and I felt bad for him. I wondered if there was the smallest part of God’s heart that might be open to letting him live through the next twenty-four hours, but I didn’t wonder for long. I knew deep down that God, if he was there at all, wasn’t making his presence felt in the A Shau, except to take souls up to his side in great numbers.
The captain walked into the brush and was gone.
“You can’t stop him, you know,” the Gunny said.
“You stopped me,” I replied, hopefully, but defeat coming through with a sigh at the end of my words.
“You’re different,” the Gunny replied.
I was afraid to ask him any questions about such a strange comment, so I changed the subject.
“Everyone needs to dig in,” I said. “They need to make sure they’re covered when those Army types head up that cliff wall. I can get some arty on top of the other cliff, and Cowboy must be out there somewhere orbiting and waiting for the LZ to clear. The Ontos is no use at this low angle.”
I listened to the varying whines of the distant turbines. The choppers were lifting off, and that meant the wonderfully deadly Huey Cobras would be leaving with them.
Once again, the capricious Skyraiders, what we could get of artillery support, and the Ontos would be all we’d have to hold back the NVA. My stomach churned as I recalled my conversation with Lt. Lightner. Kilo was going north where life would be found, while we were going back down into the south of the A Shau, where life flowed out and away from everyone like the water coming through the valley bottom sluice of the Bong Song River.
It was mid-day before my team finished the holes, and we set up close to them. The bottom of my hole was covered in three to four inches of water, coming up from the low water table so close to the river. And it was moving. The water was alive with leeches. I knew that there was no way any of us were getting in the holes unless enemy fire required it. Then Gunny, Jurgens and Sugar Daddy reported in. They were trailed by what I presumed to be squad and platoon leaders I didn’t recognize. I hadn’t seen the new lieutenants since I’d set them off to try to form a new Kilo company from the remains of the old one, and a good number of the fucking new guys. The lower clouds circulating through the valley abated, but higher darker clouds, dropping more water than the low little one, formed high above and slowly rolled across the distance between the two valley cliff faces.
A Marine crept close from the brush to drop off an envelope. At first, I thought it was one of the letters I’d given to Macho man for my wife. But it wasn’t. It was a letter from the captain to be mailed home at the next resupply.
“He didn’t seal it so you can read it if you want, Junior,” the Marine I didn’t recognize said, before trudging off to head back upriver.
I dried my fingers on my blouse and tucked myself back under the poncho cover Fusner had set up for me by my hole. I opened the flap of the envelope and pulled out three sheets of flimsy paper.
“Dear Alice,” the letter began, “I met this really great Marine Officer. His men call him Junior. I haven’t got a nickname yet….”
I jerked the letter down, slowly refolded it and carefully put it inside the envelope. I sealed the envelope before folding it and putting it into my special trouser pocket I usually reserved for my own letters home. I felt like I’d jinxed myself. I wasn’t sure how. Reading the letter suddenly made me feel like I was reading a letter written about me after I was dead. I crouched inside my poncho, shivering, while the hot rain beat down on everything around me.
“Sir?” Fusner asked, holding out the Prick 25 handset.
It was time. I had to call in the defensive fires atop the far ridge, which wasn’t that far away at all, as we’d discovered.
“Air?” I asked him, before taking the instrument.
“Rain’s too heavy and the winds aloft too strong, sir,” Fusner replied, turning on his tiny Armed Forces radio.
I realized for the first time that Fusner didn’t use the radio to remind him of home so much as he did because it helped with his own fear. The situation was making Fusner nervous, and I felt it through my own bones. It was the feeling of being among good and capable men but trapped inside a cage where the good and capable men could only run in place, keeping the cage going, with the cage always only going nowhere.
Cowboy and his magic wonder ships of ruin and destruction had gone home.
I called the first artillery mission using Willy Peter at altitude, in order to creep the fire back toward me, before calling in ‘fire for effect’ with high explosive super-quick fuses. I wanted to take no chances that there might be a short round, or a series of them, again. The first rounds exploded but their effects were blunted and invisible by the fact that the rounds were going off back from the lip of the wall, which was just the way I wanted to keep it.
I heard Fusner humming to whatever song was playing. I couldn’t hear it well with all the other noises reverberating back and forth across the valley. I finally caught a stanza: “Come a little bit closer, you’re my kind of man, so big and so strong. Come a little bit closer, I’m all alone and the night is so long”
I smiled a cold smile to myself. It was Bad Man Jose again. One of my favorites. “Come a little bit closer,” I whispered out to the falling artillery rounds. Not too close, but a little bit closer.
I’d given my own Marines no warning, as to the barrage. There was no sense in everyone getting into the holes unless it was absolutely necessary. Secretly, deep down, I also knew that I wanted to prove myself to them again. I could call the kind of fire they needed to stay alive, and therefore they would consider keeping me alive, at least for another day. The drums started after the third series of fires for effect. The NVA was letting us all know, down below them, that they’d moved the drums and, therefore, probably everything else, to a more secure, or at least unknown new location. I knew that news was bad, but there was nothing to be done for it.
“They’re going up,” Zippo said, pointing at the wall with the yellow ropes hanging down.
I came out of my poncho cover into the rain in a hunched over position, putting my helmet back on and easing toward my hole. The cliff face was at least thirty meters away but that didn’t seem far enough if any real fire came in. Fusner stayed with me, as I called in the zone fire I’d planned to run along the entire distance of the other wall’s high ground.
It all happened in many slow seconds, or so it seemed later on. I brought the zone fire from three batteries at two firebases accurately in, glancing from the exploding top of one wall of the valley over to the other where the two men and one supply bag were being hauled up by the Army troops already stationed atop the hill.
The rain fell harder, and the drums seemed to beat louder, as their sounds interspersed themselves with the heavier thumps of 105 rounds going off, one after another, in rapid synchrony. Three fireworks arrows shot out from atop the far wall, somehow their launch points spaced perfectly between the exploding artillery rounds. It didn’t seem possible, to my stunned eyes and brain, and my sinking heart. RPG round tracks across the sky were definitive and there was no missing what they were. The fireworks arrows arced silently across the valley, seeming to move in slow motion, the sound of their passage cloaked by the artillery explosions above and the drums reverberations everywhere. Whatever NVA ballistics expert was in charge of launching the RPG rounds knew his business. Three explosions impacted on the closer wall, as one, not a few feet from where the men and supply bag were being dragged upward. Rocks and debris rained down, but neither I nor any of the Marines around me sought cover in our holes. We simply stood and stared upward in shock, watching what was left of two Army troopers, and their supplies, as they came plummeting down the side of the stone wall, like so much meaty confetti.
I sank back onto my poncho, not bothering to crawl under the edge of it to get out of the rain. The final rounds of my ineffectual barrage kept coming in, blowing the hell out of plenty of mountaintop foliage in the distance but accomplishing nothing.
I let Fusner pull the microphone from my hand. I turned into my poncho cover pulled it over me and removed my helmet. Very gently, I retrieved the letter V.C. had given me for safe keeping. I’d sealed it. I couldn’t read it without opening it, and I just couldn’t do that. I unfolded the letter and saw that the captain had used a Marine Corps envelope instead of some other. Maybe it was all he could get, I thought, but then thought again. The Army troops who worked with Marines had an inflated sense of how great the Marine Corps was, and I knew I was very likely seeing an indication of that again. I pulled my helmet slowly apart, placed the flattened envelope carefully against the helmet liner, and then slid the helmet over it. I put the helmet on and felt something better for having the letter right there right next to my face. I wasn’t better. I knew I wasn’t better because that would have required being better than something, and I wasn’t something. I was Junior, a monster survivor at the bottom of a swirling pit that consumed everything around him, like the circling Coriolis water at the bottom of a bathtub. Alice’s wonderful loving husband had just died before my eyes, as I knew he had to.
The very last lyrics of the Bad Man Jose song purred out of Fusner’s radio nearby: “…I still hear her say…I still hear her say…” What would Alice say? What could Alice say?
I wanted to notify you and your staff that I am sending a small package to thank you for sending me the 2 books of the trilogy. I hope you enjoy a little bit of Western New York.
Got that package and loved it, the contents and you for the sending. Made me smile for days as I went through everything!
Semper fi, and thanks so much…with love…
Jim
Sorry this is such a late answer but I was sick for a while there…
jim]3o days has sept. has become a thicker book then war and peace.its a good thing you didn’t make a full tour of duty or the liabrary of congress couldn’t hold the volumes it would take to store them.i no from my own short stay in nam that my own mind is comsumed with the memories of that tiny peace of time during my 70 plus years.thank goodness spring is here an i can get on with life ‘fishing looking for wild mushrooms and fooling a wild t
turkey.i grt it why you appreciate the people who critique your work . i should be so lucky . simper fi omer
ru
dy
Well, Omer, War and Peace wasn’t really descriptive of war, not inside the interior of it, anyway. There are very few descriptions of the real thing
because telling the truth about that awful shit mostly just loses you credibility. Like saying you were with an intelligence agency. Or talking about UFOs.
Dead before you start. Existing mythology is that powerful. Thanks for the usual note that made me smile. So Omer.
Sempere fi, brother.
Jim
Did the command in the rear just not want to hear the truth, that the hill couldn’t be taken without an Iwo Jima size attacking force? I see this in business all the time…senior management setting impossible goals that common sense tells them cant be accomplished.. But this, hundreds of men’s lives? Did these commanders have to drink themselves into a stupor every night to sleep and live with themselves after this?
I really don’t think they looked at things that way. They viewed our losses as bad field decisions and incompetence of the men in the field.
They could not understand the effect of either Project 100,000 or Project transition. They had no idea about just how specialized in the “Lord of the Flies” understanding
that one had to be to survive. And they never really gave credit for how good, committed and supplied the NVA was.
Semper fi,
Jim
jim]just saw trump congraduate putin on his winning election.please god send us a leader that well care for our people instead of their own wallet. sorry about the politics i just had to vent.your friend omer
Yes, these are times of angst when it comes to national leadership. We don’t really do politics on here
but a great many vets share your pain. The nation is strong and it can outlast most of the leaders who are not worthy
for the time of their stay in office. Hang tough, my friend.
Semper fi,
Jim
My turn to vent about condemning Trump, for something that all leaders do when another is elected.
Let me put it to you this way, I would damn well rather have a president who loved his country as well as one who appreciates the military personnel that serve it, then one who continually denigrated our nation and it’s military.
You need to think about that before condemning a president who is proud of our nation!
This is America J. We get to rail for or against our leaders as much as we like.
I won’t argue with you about that man. It is not worth it.
Semper fi, my brother,
Jim
Bone Spurs, that’s all I have to say
Again, great read. To bad about CPT V.C., then again, there a lot of ‘to bad’s… I was really surprised about the new “command element”, or lack thereof. Patiently waiting for the rest of the Third Ten Days, looking for your books on recovery/reintegration. A very compelling story.
Thanks Jim, I appreciate the compliment writing into your comment.
I am working away and finished the next segment last night. It should go up today.
Semper fi,
Jim
Just wanted to mention James..wasn’t a Marine but served with the First Inf. Div in the Iron Triangle AO. Great books waiting for the 3rd copy to be published.
By reading this work you will come to understand just how well the Army and Navy performed when called upon time after time.
I have nothing but the greatest feeling for the men and women who served in the other surfaces. American’s come up under duress
and combat is the ultimate duress…
Semper fi, and thanks for caring…
Jim
Isn’t the radio mans name Fessner and not Fusner..just saying
Yes, the books are closer edited…
Semper fi,
Jim
I think you stated V.C. came with two men. Was he one of the two men being pulled up with their supplies?
He and his radio operator and the third line was for their supplies…
Semper fi,
Jim
And if I learned anything at all it, was that….
James should that comma be behind it or all? Or not exist.?
Great read …. I get why some of these chapters come quicker than others. I’m sure you had a break or two writing this one.
Thanks for the sharp eyes, Mike.
The final chapters are a challenge.
Semper fi,
Jim
Great read , although I’m having trouble matching the topography you describe with the location you’ve writing about . And please , from an old Hooker, change that RAF chinnok to a US version ; )
The chapter shot was for drama, not because it was one of the real ones…
I did not have a camera over there!
Semper fi,
Jim
Just got back to Texas from my mom’s funeral and wish I would have had enough time to come over and visit you. Reading your story reminds me of some of my experiences over there. I did 3 tours, mine, one so my older brother didn’t have to go and had to re-enlist for present duty assignment to keep one of my younger brothers out of there. Like you know the learning curve to survive was very short when you first get there. The worst 2 days were when we got over run and had 21 out of 30 American casualties. The next night the south Vietnamese soldiers brought in around us had a worse night. The nova threw over a thousand rounds of mortars and rockets in on us. We filled every hospital in the delta. Over 700 medivaced, and over three hundred killed. Two more of my men got wounded that night.
Thanks for writing about your own devastating experience on here Ken. Most meaningful to the other guys and gals reading and me too…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I’ve made this comment before, but I feel compelled to make it again after reading this installment, which more than most, choked me up and put tears in my eyes: I was born in the middle of the Vietnam war (1967). I can remember news stories from the early ’70s showing returning soldiers being spit on, called baby-killers, and a host of other disrespectful things. My entire life, I have made it a point to talk with Vietnam veterans about what they experienced, so that I might better understand the things that happened there. I’ve heard stories of unimaginable horrors and incredible feats of bravery. I’ve been told of hatred for the enemy, the love between brothers in arms, and the pain of returning home to a country that seemed to despise them. I’ve been told what it was like at Khe Sanh and Saigon during the Tet Offensive in ’68, of brothers lost on Hill 937 in the A Shau Valley in ’69, and countless other battles and skirmishes. Although I never had the honor to serve (4F), I feel a sharp and definite connection deep in my soul to those who have, my eldest son among them. To those who served in ‘Nam: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for not losing the faith, for fighting against the spread of communism, and for fighting for each other. May the brothers you lost in that place forever rest in peace, and may those of you that made it home alive, in body if not mind, find the peace you deserve in this lifetime.
Lance
Can’t thank you enough Lance. I really appreciate the depth of your sharing grief. Yes, the burden has been high for so many of us,
and we could not have known…and did not know. War’s end does not usually call for after action reports on how it all went and how everyone feels in coming
home. I still remember seeing the whole series of Band of Brothers and then at the end all the guys are seen in vignettes back home, happy as larks and successful
as all get out. Right. Thanks for the length, breadth and depth of your comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
JAMES I love and dread reading your story, I was in D 3/1 11th Brig Americal 68/69. I came to the Company as a new PFC and was a Spc 4 Squad leader 5 months later and still trying to not getting my Guys killed due to my inadequacies, I was next man up instead of deserving to be a leader . By the time I was an e-5 I knew keeping my guys alive wasn’t up to me since too many above me were constantly getting them killed, I got to hating the sight of brand new butter bars that knew everything from day one. Thankfully some would take advice from Squad leaders and tended to learn quickly while those who knew it all were just waiting for their replacement. The problem with this is the new Butter Bars brought new PFCs with them to replace the ones who died with the other Lt. I am so thankfull I wasn’t in the A-Shaw ! Much respect to you and Yours
With Project Transition always being new guys in to replace dead or wounded guys, well,
it became the blind leading the blind, or, as some small kid said at school when he was asked
about that expression: “When the blind are leading…watch out.”
Semper fi,
Jim
I wait with great anticipation for each installment and have read the first book. A continued thank you for reliving the stress of this time in yours and many others lives. Mainly hope it is therapeutic for and them! God Bless.
You are welcome Ron and I am glad guys like you come on here to write at all. I am working away and the next segment will be much
quicker. Thanks for caring….
Semper fi,
Jim
James three tours in VN and faced more animosity from peaceniks at LAX than the Vietnamese population physically attacked in 67 at lax when returning from first tour 65/67 did 16months first tour back in 68 & again 70:71
Thanks for all your time over that and sorry you took shit back here, like so many of us did.
It sure was a fact of the time.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
I am confused. I hope this was not the last chapter and your book is completed.
No, Jack, this was the 21st Day 2nd part. We have eight more days and nights to go…
Book three is well under way…
Semper fi,
Jim
jim]just got done reading last chapter for the2nd time.saw someones comment about souveniers.i’ll never forget being loaded on to a streacher and at the end of it was my boots dangelling swinging in the air and all i could think of was fuck there going to make me go back.they also had a small purple bag with my purple heart and my wallet in it.my wallet took it pretty hard since my right ass was pretty much blown off and my girl friends picture took some schrapnel in the face. she had it coming to her since she wouldn’t put out knowing i was going to nam still a virgin.like most boots do when you get to Okinawa the virgin thing was cured costing 5 dollars.ill never forget this other boot who was with me trying to explain to this nice young girl that we were marines and trying to tell her how we flew into her world flapping his arms up an down.i aint smart but some how i new after screwing all the 3rd mar div virgins she was smarter then we were and richer.have a great day jim your friend omer
Thanks Omer, as usual. Pretty funning writing about your girlfriend and the time on Okinawa.
I was only on that island for a few hours, thank God! Glad you are sounding better. Hope your wife is doing ever
so much better. Your friend and,
Semper fi,
Jim
What was so dam important to the ass holes in the rear about that objective. How many men must die, blow the bitching hill up and move on, the waste never ended over there.Seen enough of it to know. Another great read thanks Lt, James
Ah, I don’t think the rear area was about deep thought. I think they cared a bit but cared more about not getting their asses
stuck out where we were. We became calloused to the death around us up close and personal. They became calloused to those same deaths from a distance.
They cared but they also did not understand what we were going through one bit, anymore than the FNG’s did.
Thanks for the depth of your comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey Lt. Every time I hear the phrase, “It don’t mean nuthin”, I am struck by the fact that it may be fraught with more meaning than any single phrase than any I have heard. Don’t mean nuthin my ass Lt. Any one who reads this chronicle knows better I am sure. Glad to see you are back in the grove. Take care Lt..Wes.
Thanks Wes. Yes, about that phrase. I didn’t like it when I was there. Even later I didn’t like it because most
people who heard it thought anyone saying it was just some back country idiot. It took years for it to permeate into me.
Thanks for explaining what you did in the few words on here….
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
For those of us fortunate enough to have been spared the horrors of combat, and the life long aftermath that it wreaks upon the body and soul, I want to thank you for illuminating the experiences of our countrymen in Vietnam. Your story telling has captivated me and I eagerly await each of your chapters. The disconnect between those directing operations in the rear and those in the midst of battle brings to mind a quote by Florence Nightingale that seems to fit the narrative that you have so eloquently espoused throughout your writing:
“What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior… jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
Your writing, I hope, has helped assuage some of the pain you and those of you who have lived through the horrors of combat have carried for so long by bringing it to the light of day. Again, Thank you for sharing your reality!
From combat, if you live, you rise in redemption or you don’t rise at all.
So many could not generate the ability to begin the redemptive process.
They fell into deep depression and the dishonor inherent in battlefield survivors.
Given honor from the outside sources that have no clue
just makes the interior dishonor worse. You come out and begin doing good works, even when you are beaten and
castigated as an idiot, easy touch or softy or whatever. You keep doing good works until you can open your
eyes after having slept at least half a night, and smile. I’m okay. I’m doing good.
I’m making up for all that shit…
Semper fi,
Jim
The entire series, but especially the last 2 segments, have brought back memories. I’ve tried to forget those memories for 50 years but they never go away and are sometimes vividly relived at night.
Thank you…
I never know how to answer this type of comment Jrw. Am I doing good in bringing all this back to you or not so good?
I don’t know. I can only lay it down the way I remember it and then let the chips fall where they may.
Not too many of us came out of that with the ability to write and having got through the tough younger parts of PTSD.
So here I am.
Semper fi,
Jim
Damn
Thanks for the one word compliment Kirk!
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey Strauss,
Inexplicable. So much of the really important stuff in our lives. Even now, you and I, in our 70s, along with the Boomers inoculated with the heady stuff of the 60s. Why is it that some people make it immediately into our “I want to be friends with this guy” portal, and others couldn’t dig their way there with a back hoe? And you, with a life-time worth of combat knowledge accumulated in 21 days know, beyond even a shadow of a doubt, that this “I want to be friends” guy is literally speaking the last words of his life to you. That letter in your hands is probably the most poignant picture I have of these triptychs of pain you have allowed us all to view and experience. We all appreciate how difficult these thoughts are to resurrect. Your loyal readers also include many who know exactly how you feel. My admiration for you all. Semper Fi.
Well, thanks a lot John. Real depth in your comment and you make me think about things in a different t way after the writing.
I just write it as I recall it and not as I evaluate it. I do think about Alice and her letter every once and awhile but there is no place
to go with it. And the guys that came and went and then come back again later. Thanks for the depth of your understanding and how well you lay it out on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you James Strauss for telling this story. I thought I had respect and awe of the Vietnam vetrans. I realize I had no idea of what I thought I knew. Y’all deserved much more. Thanks to all of you and WELCOME HOME.
How terrific to hear, even at this late date David. Thank you very much. It is great to be here.
Semper fi, and thanks for liking the work.
Semper fi,
Jim
James – As usual a GREAT segment. As usual I can feel the rain, the fear, smell the smoke. As usual my respect and admiration skyrockets for you, the Gunny and all the Marines who endured that valley (By the way – what is the correct pronunciation of A Shau ?). As disrespectful and disobedient as I originally felt about so many of your Marines (particularly Sugar Daddy and his “band of brothers”) a level of respect has grown in me for them because they endured that HELL for so long. But an increasing disrespect and anger has also grown in me regarding the higher ranking Marines in the rear who are supposed to be helping all of you survive but who have actually turned their back on you. Apparently they didn’t give a SHIT about you and your men…….as long as they didn’t miss the next hot meal, a good nights sleep in a real bed and their card game at the O Club that night!! Thank God I was in a unit (Golf Co – 2/1, 66 -67) that all the brass from our platoon commander to Company CO and through the Battalion upper echelon CARED about the troops in the field! I’m pissed at the Marine Corps right now for what they put you and your men through and something more personal to me which I will private messenger you about on Facebook.
One more ‘quickie”. You’ve got me hooked on Islands in The Sands now, so when you’re slow getting the next episode of 30 days finished I can go to Islands! Also I got your first two editions of 30 days – 2 each – one for me and one for my cousin (another Marine Vietnam combat vet who went on to do 28 years in the National Guard and retired a Lt. Col. – not bad for an old Marine enlisted vet).
Semper fi James.
Admittedly, the writing of Islands has helped me ease up emotionally on Thirty Days.
I put every segment of that in my weekly newspaper (The Geneva Shore Report) as I was the segments of
Thirty Days. But the seriousness and somber nature of 30 Days was too much for Christmas so I started
IITS. Thanks for liking it and going back and forth…
Semper fi,
Jim
Guilt runs thru every servivors soul. Those of us who served did so for a variety of reasons, although not political then, with hindsight, the issue then and today, was there was never a definition of victory
Thanks for the comment Roy. I’m not sure a determination of victory would have meant anything
at all for those of us who came home from the bush. There was no victory out there…
Semper fi,
Jim
In so many times in life there’s nothing you can do. If only they would listen.
Yes, Mike. Back here too, in so many ways….
Semper fi, and thanks for writing in.
Jim
That evil and dreaded THREE-HEADED-DRAGON of guilt, fear and shame that inhabited (and still does for so many) the hearts of Vietnam veterans (and vets of Korea and subsequent wars) while in country and lingering after DEROS and ETS.
So accurate and spot on Thomas. Thanks for putting that up on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, thank you for letting us relive this painful chapter of your life with you. Most of us will lay down & sleep tonight, while many who were there seldom can.
Semper Fi
Jim Kissick
I had to smile at that compliment Jim. I am not at all certain I write to allow others to relive their pain.
At least I don’t think that’s why I’m writing this. The reader’s perspective will always be something I do not really comprehend.
I write it as it happened the best I can recall it.
I thought the reality of life in that valley needed remembering and comprehending…
Semper fi,
Jim
I found myself shivering and sweating as I read this. I notice the change as you unflinchingly speak your truth in this installment to V.C. and to Battalion in a previous one. If only they would listen.
Small edit suggestion regarding Macho man and how he holds his weapon. As written: “Macho man stepped out, turned, brought his Thompson up to parade rest and faced me.” … “He let his right come down from the Thompson’s forward barrel guard to receive them.” Parade Rest would have the butt of the weapon on the ground with the right hand holding the forestock. Port Arms would have the weapon held diagonally across his body muzzle up with his right hand on the rear (pistol) grip and his left hand on the forward barrel guard (unless he was left-handed & then the hands would be reversed.) Present Arms would have the weapon held vertically in front of the body (I doubt that would apply).
“You came down here instead landing up on nine-seventy-four,” the Gunny interjected,
There seems to be an implicit or missed “Why?” Maybe add “of” before “landing”. Also previous installments have the hill as 975.
And amid all the craziness a moment of good cheer. No clueless officer to replace you.
“Coffee?” the Gunny asked, beaming up at me as if the universe had just played another of its tragically hilarious jokes on us. Which it, apparently, had.
“I couldn’t see any radio operators, other than the Gunny’s and Fusner’s” – don’t need possessive for Fusner.
About the end of 1969 after I finished my enlistment I met a real life Alice who had just lost her LT husband. Civilians still believed we would win the war and it was just and good. All I could do was listen and offer support. IIRC I kept my mouth shut about what I really thought. She would learn soon enough.
Thank you for sharing this with us. A tough one.
Thanks for the accurate and sincere editorial help. I am sure Chuck will be all over it in
the morning. Thanks for the neat response. Yes, I spent many years wondering about the hurt back home. My own wife
was notified of my near mortal injuries by Marines at her door and that damn near killed her and I wasn’t even dead!
Thanks for the well written and meaningful comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
We were given the
choice to opt out of letting the Army notify our NOK if injured/wounded and not requiring hospitalization or EVAC to a “Station Hospital” in CONUS. My wifexperience didn’t know until I told her Manny years later…the VA denied my claim for Service Connection in 1983 (a VSO at a VA Hospital that I worked at had encouraged me to file the claim as VA eligibility criteria we’re going to change and become more stringent). No lie, the VA wrote me a letter in 2014 for me to get a compensation and pension examination which I did and oula, 10% sService Connected — with no back pay of course!
PS: Thanks for writing your story so descriptively and posting it on-line. Last year I bought 2 copies of TDHS -The First Ten Days, giving one to my grandson who is has wanted to be a US Marine since his Boy Scout Troop Leader, who was USMC in the 1970’s, convinced him that he should consider the Corps. Right now he is on his third week of Boot Camp at Parris Island. My younger brother was USMC in Vietnam in 1970 (Grenadier in the boonies out of Freedom Hill), and was the longest surviving man in his squad (the “Old Man”), and we both knew his number was soon up, and that his luck was rinning out. I was an Army medic and on Terry’s 4th month in country,I went over (October’71) and sent him home. I didn’t tell the First Sergeant until I had completed the first week of Indoctrination, Orientation and Acclimatization at the Combat Center in China Lai. He freaked, but I prevailed and the Marine Command located him a week later and sent him to Guam to guard Naval Weapons Magazine Bunkers. No joy for him and he resented me for it. I wound up with the 1/6 Inf, 19th Inf Bde, American Division at LZ Dottie, and later with the 14th Combat Aviation Battalion.
PPS: My older brother was a Cpl & M-60 Machine Gunner with the 82nd Airborne and sent to Nam during Tet-68, and was in Hue City, Khe San, Phu Bai and the A Shau and came home an E-6, SSG and was a different person…he spoke little of his experiences there, but Re-Up’d, became a “Lifer,” retiring
as a Command Sergeant Major in ’92.
Thanks again for your doing the books…the days…the hard work.
Peace brother.
Jim, in my previous entry I mentioned the next of kin (NOK) notification process. In the Army it being a choice. You had mentioned that the Marines appeared in uniform at your wife’s door after you had been wounded and you suppose that she probably thought they were there to notify her that you had been KIA. Also when I was dictating the paragraph the word “China” Lai should have been Chu Lai in I Corps on the beach in Quang Ngai province.
You are too funny to correct your own mistakes on here. I like that. A droll sense of humor, at least from my viewpoint.
Thanks for the comments,
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow, Tom. Thanks for the personal recitation from your own life. Your family has seen some shit, no question about that.
I am glad you have come through. Your older brother, I wonder about him. He re-upped after that. I don’t think I could do that.
Anyway, thanks for your comment and the length and breath of it…
Semper fi,
Jim
This is a tough one to comment on Jim. I will leave it at that.
Thanks Glenn, for giving it a go.
Yes, it was a difficult one…
Semper fi, and thanks for being here and there….
Jim
“Okay, V.C. here it is,” I replied, after taking a long deep drink of my hot coffee. “We wanted as few of you up there because you’re all going to get killed.
Yet they never listened to reality from those that knew the truth.
Well told once again James, thanks for the telling.
SEMPER Fi
It was next to impossible to communicate just how precarious, dangerous and
brutal the combat was to those flying in with new utilities, packs,
and even nice great jungle boots.
Thanks for the comment and the understanding…
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks for sharing your story with us! I know how hard it must be! I was in II corps but know of the perils of the “valley” I was not a ground pounder but did walk point on sweeps and reacts so I know how exposed you feel. Yes I came under fire but it was mortar and rocket fire I was under more often. I am in awe of your service. I was 22 acting SFC during my last tour. I was married with a child when drafted in 68. Toughest think I ever did and I was army(4ID) an engineer ( generators) maintenance at camp Enari,Dakto,LZ Mary Lou, Kontum, Plei Mei,and more. Thank you again Jim for telling your story! God bless brother
Thanks, Joe, for writing on here about your own service.
Always interesting to see the other places guys ended up and what they did.
The rear area was mostly a mystery to those of us out in the shit…
Semper fi,
Jim
I walked point for the most part of my tour.. Tom B . A Marine I went threw Boot ITR BITS And Staging with..ended up being sent to us.. he walked second man behinde me..we were a good team..we had less than 30 days left in country..I ended up getting a toothache and sent to the rear to get it pulled., another grunt without much expiriance took over point that day.. he hit a 50 pounder boobytrap..and Tom was no more.. lost severa others that I was close to.. but Tom took my heart and sole.. I still mourn him to this day.. this part brought back so bad feelings.. you are a very good writer
Yes, Bill, those left behind. In this last segment I discuss the ‘museum’ of pieces I carried along that were
left by the dying. Tex’s .45, The skipper’s battered helmet. Keating’s watch and then Chance’s carabineer. When I got hit
later I would lose all those things in traveling from hospital to hospital. Wish I had those to this day. All that followed me
was my ratty address book! We left those guys behind and that was the way it was. Still hurts though….as you confirm.
Semper fi,
Jim
With out a doubt, the hardest part is the wait. When the shit goes down, no matter how bad it is, it’s almost a relief. Almost.
Missed the hell out of your “segments.” Worried about you and what may have been the problem.
Then, there it was and I read it voraciously. Glad you are still five by five.
I understand now, the delay.
I would have been writing that through a wall of tears.
It’s a hard, cold fact. We, all, have to stomp our own snakes. I’ll get my boots.
Thanks for the understanding Bud. Yes, it is a bit of trail to work through
the segments, especially in this third book. Thanks for the understanding…
Semper fi,
Jim
Such powerful writing. I feel as though I was right there with you, yet I know that I have no idea what it must have been like to be there. Just wow. Thanks for sharing this. This should be required reading for all politicians. Maybe the world would be a more peaceful place if everyone knew the horrors and hardships of war.
Thanks for the great compliment Elijah. It keeps me going.
Semper fi,
Jim
…. 2nd paragraph
…. and if I’d learned anything at all it, was that the only way I had any
and if I’d learned anything at all, it was that the only way I had any
…. I’ve read most of the books published over the years about our war, and very few have the ability to make it easy to visualize .. to be able to read the words, and somehow be transported back into the chaos that was Vietnam .. The 13th Valley by John DelVecchio has always been the Gold Standard for me, and you are doing us all proud with 30 Days Has September .. kudo’s !!
Rare air you have put my work in with that of DelVecchio. I so admire his writing too, although
different than why own. Thanks for that and the compliment inherent in writing it here…
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey again Lt. While re-reading this chapter today I picked up on the “Alice” factor. In early 68 my wife wrote me about two officers who pulled up to our house in a military vehicle. When she saw them her knees literally buckled. She told me some years later that she had also pee’d her pants. After they helped steady her and explained they were only conducting a requested Security Clearance check on a man who served in my unit previously…and she had finished her “piece of her mind” presentation explaining I was currently in Nam.
They, not knowing that, apologized profusely and completed their business. My reason for relating this?..
Let no one who served in Nam, or elsewhere, think that service affected them alone. The saying “They also serve, who ‘only’ sit and wait” serves well.
My “Alice” now rests in a National Cemetery since Dec 2017. Her name was/is, Barbara.
Those were indeed some tough times for those back home and their story is seldom written.
The angst much have been overwhelming, especially where there were groups of them.
One vet would get killed and then all of the wives must have gone bonkers around the one wife who’d lost her husband.
I can’t really imagine. Thanks for writing about your own ‘Alice’ and I am so glad you did, and so sorry about Barbara.
Semper fi,
Jim
“It means everything’s cool unless it sucks. And that’s okay. It’s just the way things are.” Yep. Semper Fi LT.
Tough phrase to really define. Those guys did the best they could and the meaning all of us got although it was hard to express
unless you were really in the shit and lived to tell about it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Gut wrenching…..
Thanks Charley. I’m going to take that as a compliment. Much appreciated…
Semper fi,
Jim
So glad you made it home, so that others can understand the nature of a war we fought, a war we knew we could not win the way it was being run
Wasn’t it amazing Bob, just how quickly the very thought of winning anything was totally
extinguished upon reaching the combat area? I still have a hard time with that.
Winning gets drowned out so fast just by the fear and a near hopeless feeling of
never going home in one piece.
Semper fi,
Jim
So there will be 3rd book? If so I will wait for it and buy all three together. want signed copies, looks like there’s ordering for that.
Thanks, Tom
I am working on the 3rd book right now, publishing the segments on here as I write them.
So, stand by.
Semper fi,
Jim
Such a waste of good men !! And I don’t think any thing has been learned from it.
Unfortunately, stories like mine do not do well in the mainstream publishing business Harold.
Most people have no clue, and that includes so many in the military…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
Unfortunately the mainstream media can’t handle the true unglorified reality of what it was really like. And sorry to say, that’s just the way it is. But those of us that were there (for however brief a time) know and appreciate it. Memories of things buried for so long. Good? Bad? Who knows, but maybe someday a future generation will understand what happened over there. Thanks for writing this!
Thanks Charlie. Yes, it took a bit for me to comprehend that the mainstream public will continue to believe
what they see and hear at the movies about war and how combat is. I did not know that the veteran population was that large, though.
I have come to really appreciate how many brothers and sister I really do have. I can live with the public having its head mostly stuck in the sand.
Thanks for being one of the real deal guys and writing on here…
Semper fi,
Jim
I can see where the DOD and the USMC would go out of their way to prevent this book from being published. My inference from your writings is that the leadership above you was a pure cluster. Had I read this in 69, I would have certainly taken a different route. I would have never believed that a person’s chain of command would put them through what you were forced to endure.
I don’t know that either the DOD or the USMC would bother.
They succeed because they have the voice. We do not out there.
They will keep the voice and teach what they want to teach and be listened to as they want to be listened to.
My work will reach only a small audience of mostly older veterans they do not give one shit about.
Semper fi,
Jim
After reading this chapter a thought comes to mind “like the concierge at the River Stix “. Hoping for a safe voyage but knowing otherwise.
Jeez what a duffle bag you carry.
I had to take a walk with my dog who only wants a round of fetch. Takes my mind away from your voyage.
I’d only hope I had the steel if in your shoes. Sempre Fi!
Interesting comment about the River Styx. Thanks for the care and also for the compliment…
Semper fi,
Jim
When I read this the thing that comes to my mind is “dead man walking”, knowledge that you could just as well do without. Great job !
Thanks Willie, means a lot to hear such things from guys like you…
Semper fi,
Jim
This part evoked something I’ve not felt before, Jim. I don’t know what to do with it. Except maybe…share it with Alice. Semper Fi.
Well, Dennis, I am not used to you at a loss for words! Alice. Your wife is Alice? Astounding.
Alice was the wife’s real name, incidentally….Thanks for the compliment not written like you but I got it…
Semper fi,
Jim
I appreciate “Alice” with respect to the letter you carried for the captain, Jim. ( I apologize if I gave you the impression I was married to an Alice. I’m not.) I only meant that I’d hope, at some point…I might be able to share the emotion for which I have no words to describe, which this part of your story so unexpectedly yet honestly, evoked. I know it could never be with the guys that were there…that belongs to you, sir! Thus, perhaps only with any one of the far too many “Alices” that war created..whether fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, wives or what have you…I only hope they might know that the burden of loss they carry from that time, might be still be lightened somewhat for knowing it “can be shared”. Semper Fi
Yes, this load is being shared in ways I never imagined. I would never have believed the support or the understanding of all the other men and women who were there and so many
who were not but seem to get it. It’s different take on war and what really happens when it’s down and dirty.
Thanks for your usual brilliant comment…
Semper fi,
Jim
I feel I should apologize, for being impatient. I wasn’t allowing you the time you would needed and I would most certainly need a lot of time to mull over my own memories, so I do apologize that I want to here your memory stories, but it explains so much of that time and I’m sorry that it was difficult for you. I understand how hard it is to coax some memories out to be able to tell them to someone.
Hard and not so hard some times.
I can’t figure out what’s going to hit me hard and what is not.
I put this together without an outline or anything.
I only know what’s happening next when I write what happened before,
and then it all comes back. I wrote a letter to Alice and got one in return.
It took me four days to dig and find the thing.
Stuff like that pulls me up short sometimes. I’d forgotten about Alice for a long time there.
How is that possible? And now it’s like she’s been there
all the time…
Semper fi,
Jim
Semper fi,
Jim
First read I only saw one thing, adept –> adapt and someone else already mentioned it.
somehow reading your stuff plays like a movie in my head. screen play? ever written one? World might be ready for the real thing.
Yes, I have written screenplays and could write this one fairly easily. I think somebody said that I have been writing it very ‘cinematically,’ and I must agree in rereading.
Thanks for the compliment.
Semper fi,
Jim
There was frustration in you words in the way you know the outcome was going to happen. I understood. No matter how much I try, I can not shake the demons anymore now than I did when I came home in 69.
Yes, the demons. You make them into old buddies I guess.
Avoidance of things and places where they hang out,
but never ever forgetting that the demons were over there inside reality
and they are held back by the wonders of this phenomenal world we’ve built to keep them out.
Thanks for the compliment and for writing it on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Don’t know what to say other than what soul breaking memories. This to date, was the most difficult episode to read. I walk away feeling compelled to carry a very small part of your burden with me. Your writing illuminates the collective suffering you all experienced in the belly of the beast. Can’t imagine how you compose yourself in recalling, and then writing, much of what you experienced. It was dripping with stoic pathos for V.C. and his unit and their assured deaths with the mission. I don’t know what to say about the collective insanity of REMFs directing operations in your telling. May your writing provide more then mere catharsis, but peace and healing- for yourself, and those who may not be able, and/or, willing to do so. As always, well done.
Wow. Now that is some great writing in of itself. Thanks for the delivery and the analysis.
The stoic nature of that did not come to me until I read your comment. Stoic. I had forgotten about how to use that word,
and so I thank you, and for the compliments and the care, as well.
Semper fi,
Jim
Personally I think this needs to go on the Basic School’s mandatory reading list. Semper Fidelis.
Thanks Mark, won’t happen of course. They don’t want stuff like this read to the new guys.
Even the public, for the most part, cannot read it without throwing it in the trash as BS.
Just the way it is.
Semper fi,
Jim
Appreciated your photografic memory more than ever. Thanks.
Thanks Glenn. I don’t think I could tell the story in this detail without having hit by lightening in 1985. The recovery ended up
handing me this memory and opening all those old corridors…which actually made things better and not worse. The story and the credibility is in the
details. I have had a very few guys read and then say that I’ve made the whole thing up. I take that as a compliment to anyone’s capability of making such
stuff up that has so much real detail in it. Where in hell do you find out some things I’ve written about without having lived it.
I don’t know.
thanks for the great compliment…
Semper fi,
Jim
A surreal morning in the middle of a surreal experience. That must have incredibly tough knowing what was going to happen and then watching it unfold in front of you. I imagine it is even harder pulling up the memory to write about it.
It’s not an easy series to write, you are correct. So many great men lost.
Thanks for the encouragement and writing what you wrote about the writing though.
Semper fi,
Jim
In the second paragraph, you used the word “adept” when I think you meant to use “adapt”. Still a riveting account and a story that needs telling.
thanks for the help there…
Semper fi,
Jim
Sadness never felt like this except for watching my mom pass. Glad you got it done, Sir. Heaviest burden I think I have seen laid down. Poppa
thanks Poppa for the most excellent and complimentary association.
Semper fi,
Jim
Glad you made it back to tell this story. And that you waited until now to tell it.. It means more to me now than it would have before if that makes sense.
I could not make real sense of it earlier. I tried with the original manuscript but it was too fresh,
the hurt too raw. I could not accommodate losing all those guys and also the ones I had something to do with…
Semper fi,
Jim
Peace is precious…..
Too true. Thanks for writing on here James
Semper fi,
Jim
If only we knew what could have been, before we allowed it all to begin. The story of mankind’s life on planet earth. Doubt our species will ever learn.
The learning is just really slow, J.
It’s taken about three and a half million years for humanity to advance just this far.
We have a long way to go and we keep pulling ourselves back every time we get ahead.
Thanks for absorbing the body of the story…into your own…
Semper fi,
Jim
“It was the feeling of being among good and capable men but trapped inside a cage where the good and capable men could only run in place, keeping the cage going, with the cage always only going nowhere.”
An excellent description of a near hopeless situation many of us have felt at one time or another.
Thanks, Roy, thanks for quoting the phrase that caught you.
I don’t catch them when I write them so I have no idea until
a reader as astute as you write them back with a comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Its early morning and I just read the latest chapter. Devastating read. I don’t know how you were able to function after that scene unfolded.
Truthfully, I become very anxious awaiting the next chapter. As I read I feel guilty that you have to relive this.
Take care Lt.
Thanks for your input and sentiment, Andrew.
The next segment will obviously be more of a challenge.
Semper Fi
Jim
Sitting in the waiting room of a tire store getting 4 new tires on my truck and reading this installment. I can feel my heart push way up in my chest and throat. Incredible writing. I’m sort of speechless. I need to read it again…later.
Please come back when ready, Duke.
Your support and that of so many readers is what is keeping me on track to finish.
Semper fi,
Jim
Knit picking – the water in the hole would be from a high water table due to proximity to the river. Really enjoying your writings, thank you for sharing. Had to take time out at work today in order to read the latest episode.
Rick
Appreciate your support, Richard.
you are correct.
Semper fi
Jim
It had to hurt so much to see how REMFS would dictate and micro manage your activities and get your people killed by their dogged devotion to some military manual which was outdated the day it was written. It is no wonder that our guys who survived that war came home so discombulated and messed up. Couple that with the total disrespect they received as veterans by our populace and it is no wonder that PTSD was so severe and widespread. I worked with cops who had been drafted to serve over there. Some I knew before they left. All of them came back as different as a brother from a different mother. None of that was good.
Yes, we all came home different. That much is certain. Part of the problem was that we were unable
to share what had happened. The public and our families were not ready to hear what is being written here now…
Semper fi,
Jim
Well Jim…this one was tough…my heart is there with you…I don’t know how you do it…like the Marine ads were when we were kids, only “the best of the best”…that was this segment…again I am reading at work and trying to hide my emotions…you make it hard on an old Army guy…
Thanks for that compliment Mark. I am doing the best I can in working through the third book.
Glad you made it this far!
Semper fi,
Jim
Been waiting as always, so hard to bring all of this back. Thank you again Jim, spell binding to read what you went thru.
Next segment goes up tomorrow Mike. Got it now and am running with it. That last one slowed me down.
Semper fi,
Jim
James, I appreciate your writing, even when it brings us bad news. It is evident that as you wrestle with writing each of these “next segments” that it reawakens harsh and extremely personally painful times. that tear at your soul. We appreciate who you are, what you are doing, what you are writing and your service to your country. May God bless you (real good) and all who served.
Thanks for the support and understanding Walter. Yes, these are rather difficult segments to get through.
semper fi,
Jim
Have been waiting for the next segment , thank you. This one must have been hard!
And the next one is up tomorrow!!! Fire in my belly now…
Semper fi,
Jim
LT….sitting here at dawn on this quiet mountaintop…covered in new snow…so far away from that Valley….yet just a heart beat away…The irony of the “newbies” coming out to play in your sand box..it was impossible to make sense of any of it then, the only possible thing to try and do was to survive each minute..knowing that anything you did right or did wrong could bring death to yourself or another Marine…..sitting there almost 50 years later, trying to make sense of it….”should I, could I..” ..take another sip of that precious coffee, think of Gunny….and Fusner….””Don’t mean nuthing”” and thank God that the Tears can still silently fall…….Semper Fi Brother…….
Your words like wondrous flowing syrup to the eye Larry. Man can you put them together sometimes.
Thanks for that short but oh so meaningful writeup. You hit it perfectly and in the perfect way…
Semper fi,
Jim
No words. Only respect.
Thank You Sir.
Semper Fi.
My great thanks for that William,
Semper fi,
Jim
Having worked through those decisions as wether I felt I could lead young men in combat, I ended up flying 250 missions in the A6. This chapter made a lot of that come back. That screwed up, racially charged company was very lucky to get a brown bar 2Lt who could read a map and understand artillery support. It has allowed survival while we see a “leader” develop….
Kilo Co is in deep dreck!
Funny how luck works in the real world Jim. Thanks for the kind words and the compliment…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
During the time that we worked together I used to watch you closely. I always knew that there was something special in you. While I never wish that I served with you in the Nam, I’m guessing that we would have done well together! Your writing is so compelling that I feel like I was! Keep up the wonderful prose!
Semper Fi,
Herbie
Well, Herbie, you were the single brightest cop I ever worked with. I remember still when you took the exam for promotion and it came back with the first perfect score ever in department history. I proctored that exam. When I gave you the result I told you that you had to go to college to hone your large intellect. You laughed and said it was just luck. Not. It was always fun to work with you and know that you were ‘getting it’ when those around you had no clue. It’s still fun to communicate wth you.
Semper fi, and I’m glad you are enjoying the story you never heard back then because we could not tell it back then…
Jim
“Damn, but it looked like such a great plan to us back here in Saigon” said the REMFs
Man, you are so spot on!!!
semper fi, and thanks,
Jim
Had to re-read this one twice to grasp why it was so hard to write. Thirty yards. Didn’t realize the cliff face was so close. What happened can only be described as “slow motion”, you might have an equal adversary in placing the RPG fire on the climbing ropes. The results must have had a lasting impression on all the new guys that arrived. This left me waiting for the next episode.
Episode. I feel like I am writing Flash Gordon segments sometimes because of how the segments end and then start again.
Thanks for the note of encouragement.
Semper fi,
Jim
Good morning! Thanks for my fix of 30 days. Well worth the wait and I understand.
one typo: the deep quaking thunder of their huge radial engines spitting our life-threatening noise even a close-mounted fifty caliber machine gun could not compare to. Should it be “spitting out” instead of “spitting our”?
Thanks for waiting Albert, as I continue to get the segments out
Also, thanks for the editorial help.
Semper fi,
Jim
What an episode that was. The futility of trying to inform one of what they are headed into had to be consuming. One has to wonder what the leaders in the rear uses for a thought process or if they even do. Found a couple corrections.
It was like the jungle peeled back to let them pass, the deep quaking thunder of their huge radial engines spitting (our) life-threatening noise even a close-mounted fifty caliber machine gun could not compare to. (out)
When the Skyraiders were on top of us and the thunder didn’t seem like it could (bet) any louder, Cowboy and his wingmen opened up with their twenty-millimeter cannons and swept the A Shau’s lower surface like four brooms shaking the sawdust to pieces on an old saloon floor. (get)
Thanks for the editing help and the obvious support Pete.
I am working at making all the changes while I write the next segment.
Semper fi,
Jim
I’m feeling the intensity increase as we get closer to the 30 day mark. This has been a long month waiting for this chapter, had to be an even longer month in the remembering and writing. For those of us that are honored with being a part of the production I think the longer between chapters the better sense we have of what it was like when minutes become hours and hours become days, never reaching the end. Thank you.
Trying to move a little bit faster here Ssgt but I am getting creaky and old!
Thanks for the understanding…
Semper fi,
Jim
I stopped everything I was doing this morning once I saw this episode come up. This one was a real tragedy, V.C. sounded like a great young man. (Like so many others before and after him).
Still looks impossible that any of you made it out alive given the current situation.
Thanks for the great writing!
Thanks Don, for paying such close attention to the segments as they come up on here.
Your support is much appreciated..
Semper fi,
Jim
Oh, the feels…
Thank you, James and God bless you. This segment had to be one of the hardest you have written. Stay strong.
Prayers for you always.
Nancy
Yes, this was another of those difficult ones. I’m not sure why. Life as it occurs to me daily now also
plays a role in what I can do with what happened back then. I don’t mean the story or the detail. I mean in breaking my
mind free to ‘clear’ it enough to really go back in time….
Semper fi,
Jim
Once again you have brought back the deep buried sadness of watching America’s best going out to do what everyone knows will not end well but are powerless to stop. Thank you for putting it on paperfor the world to see
Thanks Buck, means a lot to me that guys like you take the time to comment on the effort. It makes the effort all worth it.
I never thought I could help anybody else and it’s helped me too…and so have you…and the guys and gals on here….
Semper fi,
Jim
I believe that should be get lt.
the thunder didn’t seem like it could bet any louder
Thanks for hte help Eric and being part of the oh so necessary editing team…
Semper fi,
Jim
A great chapter James. I can feel the heart ache in the words. Worth waiting for.
Thanks for the compliment Ernie. I dived right into the next segment before I ran into any more delays.
Appreciate the backing and the help.
Semper fi,
Jim
Wrong day to read that.
Thanks for the backhanded compliment Walt. Hope you are not having a bad day out there.
You are a great man and I smile every time I remember you and Kansas.
Semper fi,
Jim
There is no good Day to read this. What a waste of good men. My heart goes out to the loved ones. What was leadership thinking? Now I understand why it took so long for this to get written. Stay strong James.
Thanks, Charles, for this and other comments in the same vein.
Yes, some segments are harder than others and I thought the toughest would be in the beginning.
I was wrong. Thanks for your understanding…
Semper fi,
Jim
Sorry Junior. That was a tough memory to exhume.
Doc
Yes, this was another of those difficult ones to lay down.
It did motivate me to start the next segment and move further from it, however!
Semper fi,
Jim
“I could -adapt- at every opportunity” Ironically, you were becoming more adept. Glad to have you back and Thank You for your service.
Now that’s a nice play on words and you made me smile in putting it together.
Thank you.
Semper fi,
Jim
Again all I can say is ” Awesome “, eagerly awaiting the next , have both books, still looking forward to the next bit . I understand how difficult bringing these memories back , are to you , but very grateful to you because they help me to accept my own, bless you Sir .
Thanks for getting the books Don and for liking the manner in which I am presenting the story.
The compliment of my somehow helping you did not go unnoticed and I dearly thank you for that.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hi Jim,
It’s 0600 here in Georgia…..I just finished your latest, and I need a smoke……I don’t smoke….
Above the best,
Bill
Now that’s a terrific compliment Bill and delivered in a brilliant way. You made me laugh out loud in front of this monitor and
I thank you for that…
Semper fi,
Jim
Depressing!
Thanks for reliving this hell for all us to read. So senseless…..
One word and wild compliment! Thanks Ken, I got the drift here…
Semper fi,
Jim