THE TWENTY-NINTH NIGHT, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The company proceeded along the eastern base of the sheer cliff rising a thousand feet above it. My arrival in the midst of Kilo’s Marines, and reaching the base of the glacis changed none of that. The fire from the other jungle inhabitants, the enemy, remained...
THE TWENTY-NINTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
There existed no corridor through the jungle, like the one that cut through the undergrowth located on the other side of the river. There, the night before, it had been easy to move back and forth through that protected passage to communicate, supply, reinforce,...
THE TWENTY-NINTH NIGHT, 30 Days has September
I examined the great stone wall, the wall that rose up from the bottom of the valley for a full thousand feet, vertically rising without big enough cracks, hand-holds or other features to allow it to be climbed without serious mountaineering equipment. The 175’s had...
TWENTY-NINTH DAY, THIRD PART, Thirty Days Has September
I huddled in what I had come to consider my cave, a dry place in a wet world of drizzling misery. The bottom of the cave, although consisting of sandy dirt rather than stone, like its walls, was mildly dusty from going many years without being touched by outside...
THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
No fewer than fifty Marines worked to drag the downed trees and jungle foliage up to the end of the bridge, and then secure it to the structure using the ropes that had been tied to make a cargo net for unloading the last resupply chopper and getting the supplies...
THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
I lay in the muck of oozing mud seeping slowly up through the packed, cracked, and broken debris of jungle and aging decay. The smell was of the damaged sort I’d come to know as my home away from home down inside the A Shau Valley expanse. I wondered if the smell...
TWENTY-EIGHTH NIGHT, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Whole Man and his A-6 Intruder were gone, and the jungle below was silent, as well as the drums mounted on what was left of the upper lip of the cliff. The lack of the mind-numbing drumbeats was balanced by the emptiness I felt over losing what air support we’d had...
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I slipped McInerney’s flashlight into my right side pocket, its end sticking out a bit and rapping back and forth against the hard leather of my Colt .45 holster. “Fusner,” I whispered, turning back toward the foxhole I’d left, but making no move to retreat...
TWENTY-EIGHTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
The six of us moved on our bellies, out toward the jumbled remains in the killing field of the mudflat, as one, without any signal. The ability of Marines in combat to need a whole lot fewer signals and orders than the guys doing all the training back home thought...
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days has September
Puff came in for the third time, orbiting Hill 975 and pouring what seemed to look like liquid fire into the mountain, while it sounded for all the world like the place was being chewed up with a giant out of control chainsaw. The way the big cargo plane tilted and...
TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I slept in my scooped out small spot atop the mud, dug down through the normal couple of feet of debris that covered those areas of the jungle not occupied by bamboo groves, trees, lianas and tubers, not to mention the vast dense thickets of ferns and other...
TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The engagement with the enemy began while it was still full dark. The Ontos fired into the general area near the western wall at its base and flung flechettes across the open exposed area in front of it. With the artillery still coming in, responding to successive...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH NIGHT, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
My eyes snapped open, and I took in a quick deep breath. The sound that had awakened me was that of a fifty-caliber machine gun firing at close range. The crack of it, with following cracks and echoes, assured that I was downrange from the muzzle blasts and the...
TWENTY-SEVENTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The M-60s had opened up from in front of me, but I could not estimate the distance or the true direction the machine guns might be firing from, what with the sound of the nearby rushing river water and the incessant beat of the rain down upon my helmet. I knew all the...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Wet muddy foxholes rapidly became repositories for almost everything the combat company Marines usually carried on their backs. There was nothing to effectively hide or cover the holes with when they were abandoned, as they’d been there so long that both sides of the...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The Ontos blew a hole in the jungle where the NVA fifty caliber had opened up from. With the resupply chopper down, Hultzer pulled all the stops out, firing both flechette rounds and high explosives. Two of the Cobra gunships slowly approached the edge of the jungle,...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The Skyraiders broke the dawn, and everything else, apart, as they came in over the river at an altitude that had to be less than a hundred feet. First light was upon the valley, and the smoke coming up from the still-burning dried mud of the river bank could be seen,...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
Picking out who was who or what was what from the cluster of men who hit the end of the bridge was impossible.. I worked the focus knob on the side of the Starlight scope to no avail. I couldn’t get a decent enough resolution to allow the green wispy moving creatures...
The Twenty-Sixth Night, Third Part, 30 Days Has September
The Ontos sat on the bridge, it’s dull presence barely visible across the distance, through the murk of the rainy night, with only the slight radiance of a full moon shining on clouds unseen above. I waited, as the battlefield in front of me across the fore drop of...
The Twenty-Sixth Night, Second Part, 30 Days Has September
I crawled to the lip of the berm and fell straight into an empty hole that had to be six feet deep if it was an inch. Fusner cascaded down upon me with Nguyen slipping down next to him. The sound of the drums and the NVA fifty followed us right down into the bottom of...
The Twenty-Sixth Night, 30 Days Has September,
I moved across the surface of the mud, with what was left of my scout team just ahead. Fusner and Nguyen trailed just behind. We crawled low, the light of the day beginning to die and provide some sort of camouflage, if not cover. The Ontos lay ahead, sitting like a ...
THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Fusner gently shook my shoulder. I inhaled sharply, suddenly realizing he’d been doing it for a while, but the depth of sleep I’d gone into would not allow me to think that I was in the A Shau Valley of South Vietnam commanding Marines in combat. I awoke slowly, no...
TWENTY-SIXTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The attack never came. We’d rushed back to our positions in the expectation that the NVA would understand that we’d left our rear area totally unprotected, but either the enemy had not figured that out, or there was another mystery that might never be explained. Even...
THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
A cacophony of open combat fire sent me as deep into the jungle floor as I could get. The sound was pure small arms fire, which at close range, with the Marines around me firing outward, didn’t sound so small. I crawled forward, eventually running into the feet, legs,...
THE TWENTY-FIFTH NIGHT, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I had the place and the time but I could not sleep. The NVA had brought its .50 caliber equivalent heavy machine gun up on line. The gun laced our position up and down every twenty minutes or so. I couldn’t figure it out, laying curled up in my cleft. What was their...
THE TWENTY-FIFTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
“The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by. I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do, they’re really saying I love you…” The lyrics gently streamed from Fusner’s small radio, the last song of the day,...
THE TWENTY-FIFTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Captain Carruthers settled into one side of my cleft, which wasn’t really wide enough to have two sides, but he wedged himself in anyway. There were clefts like my own up and down under the folded rock and he could, with his rank, have stayed in any one of them, but I...
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
My small cleft was filled with Marines by the time the day moved into late afternoon. I’d finished my letter home, once again extolling the virtues of the local fauna and flora and how the nearly continuous monsoon mist was such a relief from the harsh pounding of the...
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The red river was a rivulet of bloody water that happened to be running down the valley, back from the direction the company had to head up into. The major problem, as the Gunny pointed out, was not our movement, air support or even hauling Zippo and the bodies that...
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The only 25 series radio military occupational specialty in the company, not already serving one of the platoon commanders, was Hultzer. The only thing I knew about him was that he had been assigned to one of the Project Hundred Thousand privates sent in by special...
THE TWENTY-FOURTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Day Has September
I’d lost something indefinable, aside from my illegally promoted scout sergeant. I’d lost something like a loyal friend, but it was deeper than that. I moved through the jungle, low and almost on full automatic. How had the young black man eaten his way into my very...
THE TWENTY-FOURTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
The third time, I thought. The third time in so few days that our company had been called in to be saved from an attacking enemy, but in every case having to save Kilo Company, while they were being sent to do the same for us. The helicopters had flown an unlikely...
THE TWENTY-FOURTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The Ontos moved forward, with the Gunny swinging both armored back doors of the tracked vehicle closed behind him. I followed, slowly dropping back as the vehicle picked up speed, to stay clear of any back blast. I’d wanted to ask the Gunny if I could use a spare M-16...
TWENTY-FOURTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
First light was almost upon us. I peered around the left edge of the ammo box. What I saw told me that there would be no more pawing around through the supplies dropped by the choppers in the dead of night. Through the misty rain, and what was left of the gently...
THE TWENTY-THIRD NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Nguyen was gone into the night with the 106 round. I hadn’t given any thought at all as to whether the ammo box was marked with a flechette designation for its contents or not. There was no way to tell by feel, and there was no way I was going to use the flashlight...
TWENTY-THIRD DAY, 30 Days Has September
I scrambled, slid and crabbed my way through the low growing debris spread like small islands of living flora all over the mud flat I was trapped on. The NVA gunners had opened up high or were trying to take out the Ontos instead of shooting at a few scavengers trying...
THE TWENTY-SECOND NIGHT, THIRD PART, 30 Day Has September
I made it back to my cave under the rock wall of the cleft I was holed up in, the one I’d spent some time hoping to get back to. I laid in the darkness, shedding outer pieces of my wet rotting uniform, and wondering about the reality of the combat I was hopelessly...
THE TWENTY-SECOND NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The vibrations from the low-flying Huey choppers beat the mud, the low jungle debris, and even the pebbled cliff face into a mixed frenzy of anticipation. That state was nothing compared to the feelings of anticipation I and all the Marines were feeling inside our...
TWENTY-SECOND NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I stared at Jurgens, waiting for an apology I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear, and damned well knew I didn’t want to accept. The man was the epitome of a phrase I’d never used in my lifetime and had only heard about in occasional passing while I was in college. White...
THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The NVA soldiers moved back and forth in the tufted growth mud distance, like sidewinding snakes across a desert of nearly flat sand. The numbers, I instantly knew, although it was impossible to see individuals at distance even through the mildly magnified gun sight,...
THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
My chest and face hit the mud at the same time, the impact so hard that water was pressed out of my uniform blouse and sprayed up into a fine mist around me. My helmet and liner landed a good five feet away, but I didn’t care, as I fought to take any air at all into...
THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY, 30 Days Has September
Corporal Mike Riorden was the Ontos Commander, although everyone called him Rio, like the city because his roots were from somewhere down in South America. The Ontos crew loved the Ontos, and I was almost certain their love had little to do with the machine’s armor or...
THE TWENTY-FIRST NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
My body remembered each and every turn and drop, as I literally fell toward the fast-approaching bottom of Hill 975. I let the mashed mess of fern fronds, dead leaves, twigs and mud mix possess me like I was a well-massaged larva just popped out and plunging toward...
THE TWENTY FIRST NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
It was an impossible mission but there was no other way. Nobody in the company was going to make it up the backside of Hill 975 without getting blown to smithereens no matter how it was done. The first time they’d gone up the back side of the connection plateau had...
THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The monsoon day wore on, its rain relentless, the river mildly rising in the volume of water passing, and in sound, but nothing we weren’t used to enduring down in the bottom of our own private hell, known as the A Shau Valley.
THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY, 30 Days Has September
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...
TWENTIETH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I holstered Tex’s Colt .45 automatic that I had used half my canteen water to boil clean earlier. I had no oil but I knew there had to be some kept by others in the company I could get later. The Colt would operate just fine with no oil at all but only as long as it...
THIRTY DAYS HAS SEPTEMBER, The Twentieth Night
The mess of stationery I carried was a collection of soggy, semi-wet and dried water stains holding strands of paper together. The envelopes were in the best shape because I’d rolled them into a tight tube and used one of my extra trouser springs to hold them...Subscribe to FROM THE WILDERNESS
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