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Thanks for reading this short excerpt from the paid post! Fancy buying it to read all of it?
Jim, couple more. Seems like I’ve been through here before but they keep popping up. The story is so good, these little typos just get glided over. Later, Dave.
… into deep water unless they can (swim Junior,) and all Marines can’t swim. => (swim, Junior,)
Why don’t we move tonight? We’ll surprise the enemy if (their) planning something and … => they’re
Again noted and corrected,
Thanks Dave
Semper fi,
Jim
I will never forget the first time I encountered incoming mortars. They are spooky. My platoon had just moved to a new position for a platoon patrol base and we were settling in. It was common for troops to use the assistance of C-4 to help them dig their foxholes in the clay. I heard a loud explosion. I called out to remind everyone to call out “fire in the hole” before setting off C-4. Just then another loud explosion went off on the other side of the hill. No doubt – a bracket. This explosion was followed by a radio transmission from a security patrol that announce they heard a mortar being fired about 100 meters from their position. They reported that the were moving in on the position of the mortar. I radioed back, “the hell with that, they are firing on us, open up on them.” The mortars ceased. Yeah, mortars are spooky, ’cause you can’t hear them coming in.
Nope. Unless you hear the launch you are in the shit. Fortunately, the launch of those
things is really loud. The big ones are the worst. The 4.2 stuff of ours fired so far away
nobody could hear the launch. That 120mm they had could fire five miles and launched a missle about the
same size as a 105mm howitzer round. Tough stuff. Thanks for the experience and the support…
Semper fi
Jim
I was down in the Mekong Delta at Dong Tam 9th Infrantry,and you could here the motar round leaving the tube.Charlie would start walking them a mile a way or so,and walk them back and fourth taking out as much as they could before the 155s zeroed in on them.Was in a bunker during one attack durning Tet received a direct hit by either a mortar or a 120,my ears are still ringing.Thanks for sharing you tour with all of us can’t wait for day twelve.
Bunkers were great for mortars, as they did not have the ‘dig’ of artillery incoming.
Most of their terrible damage was done to undefended troops or Marines out in the field.
Thanks for writing about your experiences here.
Semper fi,
Jim
In the Cavs division base camp @ the golf course (An khe) a piss tube took a direct hit from a mortar round in our company’s area & blew its contents over everything nearby. Found 30 days on Facebook. Brings back memories buried long ago. I can’t imagine putting myself out there like you have With 30 days.
1st Air Cav 66-67. I was one of the lucky ones & left 1 month before the Tet offensive.
Thanks for the straight comment about your own service Phil. Some amazingly funny shit happens in the field.
Thanks for making us all smile over that one.
Glad you were lucky…
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey Strauss! Still pedaling my sore old ass around SE USA. Got Florida, Alabama and most of Mississippi behind me. Roughly 550 miles from jump off at St. Augustine. The first night in quite a while that we’re close enough to real civilization for me to get “connected” and caught up with 30DHS. I stayed with one of my closest friends from TBS days for a night and day in Alabama and introduced him to your work. We followed a similar path in drawing the lucky card that kept us from being in your boots and getting killed. With what you’ve already been through by the 11th night, I’m amazed at your compassion for Kelley. As hard as I try not to, I’m always inserting myself in your spot. I’m generally exceptionally patient, but when the patience is expended, I’m bat shit crazy. Kelley would have put me there, particularly with his blase failure to accept his role in the death of Billings. You’re a complicated man. We do need to spend some time talking face to face some future day. It’s Sunday, and I missed Mass. I hate doing that. I’m going to give my “Peace be with You”, to you instead.
Casey, not Kelley. Freudian slip. You’ve got enough to do without correcting my mistakes.
Nah, I got it going in. I know where the Conway is coming from all the time. Out there on Life’s Highway
drumming out the miles running from demons he doesn’t really have with a constant laughing companion
who knows it all and doesn’t care…I’m smiling here at you and your wife’s travel…and travail out there
as I write back here (actually I’m at the Turtle Bay right now on Oahu).
Semper fi, my friends,
Jim
Hell, John, I was mad at everyone just about all the time!
If I wasn’t outright being the subject of their murderous intent or they my own!
Emotions ran extremely high. There was no reason for us to be put out there to die with
such abandon and then leaving us alone, except for all the supplies and fire support
we could ever want or need. Like rich parents dumping their kids at a very terminally dangerous summer camp.
But there we were and trying to accommodate a bunch of whacked out uneducated brats loaded with varieties of
life and combat experience not truly knowable was more than a human challenge. I was an ‘alien’ for awhile in
life and somehow, like Rod Serling wrote about the twilight zone…
I made past the sign post up ahead…
To here…
wherever the hell that is.
I am out there on the road with you…
smiling and enjoying the trip…
Semper fi,
Jim
Lt General Harold G Moore
got his closure today. R.I.P.
“There is no such thing as closure for soldiers who have survived a war. They have an obligation, a sacred duty, to remember those who fell in battle beside them all their days and to bear witness to the insanity that is war.”
Thanks for the quote. Sacred is a word I might not have chosen to write if I had penned that quote.
The obligation of remembering has proven to be quite a burden to so many not given the ability to carry
that load. Interesting comment though.
Thank you for putting it up here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hal was frequently a man worthy of quotation. He exhibited good understanding of History and the human condition. His teaching time gave us Great Warriors too.
I ponder heavily his death on his wife’s Birthday, just 2 days prior to his 95th. I think there is meaning there on a scale I may never understand.
So sorry about this loss. Hard. Good men are so hard to lose because there’s just not that many
of them were are ever exposed to,..and then mostly we don’t know how great they are until they are gone!
Thanks for writing about it here….I care, and so do a whole lot of these guys…
Semper fi
Jim
Hello Jim, Just stumbled unto your site on facebook, through a posting by another vet’s wife. Had many “contact fire mission over” calls in the fdc, 1st Cav. 1970-71. Being mortared was my constant fear, nothing compared to walking in the jungle at night I’m sure. Went on one short daytime excursion outside the perimeter to practice grenade throwing as I recall, but returned with many leeches.My first mortar experience, just days after being assigned to an outfit was sheer terror as it was from a captured 120mm.
From then on I could awake instantly from the thump of a launched round in the jungle, wondering is this the one?
Subscribed and looking forward to the rest of the story.
God bless you!
Yes, Bob…all of that…and being out there was something.
At least I never had that delayed fear of waiting for something to happen.
It was happening all the time. I think if I got a leech on my neck today
I’d probably croak on the spot. Getting mortared in as set in position is
lousy because the solution in the bush is to run and dive into whatever pile of
jungle crap is around. Absorption and then the fact that if they mortared you
they’d probably measured the distance to their target carefully. They could not
launch zone fire stuff because they just didn’t have the ammo, thank God.
Thanks for the straight stuff and for following the story…
Semper fi,
Jim
We used to set up a Perimeter at night and then in the Middle of the Night move and surround a Village hoping to Kill or Catch any VC that were visiting their Wives or Girlfriends that night,,,,don’t remember it ever working and as We surrounded the Village the Dogs almost always gave us away,,,sometimes after the Company set up a Perimeter with full size shovels and picks and axes, digging Bunkers and cutting down trees to lay on top of sandbags and then sandbags on top of the logs for overhead cover with trip flares and claymore mines surrounding the Perimeter,,,at dusk the LP’s Listening Posts and Ambushes went out and set up,,,sometimes not always after set up would move in the dark to another location and set up….
I guess I could be pithy and say ‘my but weren’t those the days’ and nights. But it was
a lot of labor staying alive and trying to deal with an ever present but nearly invisible
enemy. Thanks for you observant comments.
Semper fi,
Jim
PTSD – Primordial Total Survival Defense. Though my time in Nam was nothing like yours, once one goes Primordial, in my opinion, that trigger is always there I live with it, go to group, and remember.
There is a certain catharsis in reading your story. Glad that my tour was not so rough yet guilty that some, like you, carried a disproportionate load.
I preferred the night, the birds lizards and monkeys were the best tell tells that something was moving. well enough for now. I will comment again I am sure. Thank you so much for writing this. I envy your talent.
Glenn. (Mustang Major)
Thanks or the kind comment Glenn, and the insightful commentary.
I am glad that your own tour was not so rough and I hope many more
who read this story can say the same. There was a great deal of luck
in whom you served with and where you served over there. Some good and some
not so good.
Thanks again for the motivation to keep going.
Semper fi,
JIm
Ten lines from the end does not make sense to me, “… when the Gunny pulled appeared outside the vent I left.”
And the 5 lines from the end “…and why I had might have any shred of hope of living…” I rearranged the words in my mind to make sense while reading. I think some words need to be moved around. So much for the editing today. Great writing. Keep it up. I’m reading it every time I see it on FB. Thanks.
Thanks for your input, Tom…..
Duly noted and fixed.
Let me know if it makes more sense.
Semper fi,
Jim
Looks good!
Thanks Tom, for helping me get it right…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim: guess I’m a bit confused or missed a chapter, didn’t Casey come in with two Lt’s, were both Kia? Look forward to your posts. Was there with USAF, 1966/67, and certainly not in the crap like you. Thank you for your service and excellent writing.
Yes, Bob, he did. Keating and Billings. Yes, they were both KIA, leaving me and him.
Semper fi,
Jim
Some of comments and replies hit so close to home it’s frighting! I was thinking PTSD should be called Post Traumatic Stress Condition! Anyone who was there would have a disorder if they didn’t have the condition! Keep it real and thanks.
I do not believe post traumatic stress disorder is anything described. Not in war.
If you go out into the bush or the desert and into combat you step through the door
to reality. You live that harsh unforgiving and rotten reality. You live and then
step back through the door to this unreal phenomenal world we’ve created. You are expected
to forget and not talk about the reality you saw so violently and personally. You are supposed
to go back to making believe. You are supposed to get over it. You are supposed to take mind altering
drugs. You are supposed to go to individual and then group therapy.
But you can never, and don’t want to, forget reality or the men who fought
and died with you while you were there. But nobody back here in our special
la la land wants to know what’s out there in that jungle or desert.
Whom ever thought that loneliness would be the companion you are
to have for the rest of your life, as your reward?
Sorry to run on…but it’s a tough one to accommodate.
Semper fi,
Jim
This reply really summed up the feelings. VERY WELL STATED! The problem from ‘stepping into reality and back’ is the situation that most will never understand.
The problem with the reality stepping thing is also to do with memory.
No matter what drug you take or bottle you drink from you cannot forget
or diminish reality and what you experience while there except for short periods
of time. It pops right back because living reality and knowing what it is
is part of genetic survival long written into our codes.
Thanks for the comment and reading the story.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I have attended several reunions of the company I served in. Most of the vets who attend were there during times that were a lot more perilous than when I was there in 1970. I often wondered why I was with them. Then, I had one Marine say to me, “I can tell you things that I cannot tell my priest, because you were there, and I can tell you things that I cannot tell my fellow Marines, because you are a priest.” (I am one of two former members of that company to become an Episcopal priest.) I now know why I was there. Thank you, John Regal, former Kilo 6, 3/1 for inviting me.
Thank you for that John. What a wonderful set of phrases pieced together.
You are a priest who was a warrior…and therefore a special priest.
Combat is about tribal behavior of the most elemental sort…a sort most
men and women are never going to be taken to or be part of…except in passing,
by reading stories about it like here or maybe in seeing Band of Brothers (that was good!)
Thanks for the telling of this and supporting the work…
Semper fi
Jim
Stepping through the door……..pretty well sums it up….
Thanks Michael. Yes, it does. Coming home was stepping through that door the other way.
I’m not sure which adaptation required was the more extreme!
Semper fi,
Jim
LT, when they ask you about making a movie from this, take ’em up on it. The story needs to reach more people and a movie would do that. I was Navy, I thank you for your service then and your newer service now in presenting this story.
Mostly they don’t make movies out of real stuff, as you might have
noticed. And then, if it does get filmed how do you keep them from
up and up and away and back into John Wayne mythological crap?
Remember, the people who live and work in Hollywood don’t believe this
story any more than regular citizens.
Thanks for the thought and the support.
Semper fi,
Jim
We cleared the same LZ 9 times after the 3rd time it became sureal. I mentioned this to my Crew Chief and at first he thought it was funny but then he panicked when I told him or was like we were repeating the same day over and over again.
They were like fly paper sometimes. You get unstuck in one part and you are stuck in another.
The persistence of the enemy in almost every way was daunting. The fatigue I discuss feeling
was partially because of that unending pressure when out on field operations. Seldom discussed
anywhere by anybody. Thanks for the touch of reality here Daniel.
Semper if,
Jim
That tenacity led them to victory. The lesson we should have learned – but doubtful that we did, or ever will – is that if you aren’t willing to commit to the long haul, don’t bother going. It just pisses people off, and kills or maims our young men.
Thanks for the very engaging read. I’m not a vet, for which I make no apologies. I enlisted in ’60 and received a prompt Medical discharge. I lost a close friend in RVN. I still miss him.
It wasn’t just their tenacity. It was fighting on their homeland
to decide what they hell they wanted and not what we wanted them to have.
Hard to fight a whole population that really does not want you there
no matter what they might be saying to your face. Behind our backs they
were killing us left and right.
Thanks for your comment and your support…
Semper fi,
Jim
Lt, I have shared you memories with a close and trusted friend, now in Saigon, to aid he and his friends a deeper taste of what we struggled with while there. Your honesty, travails and memories can only add demnsional light to “the rest of the story (apologies to Paul Harvey!). It’s my hope your work more deeply brings together ALL of us, them inclusive to a painful chapter of BOTH of our struggles. Your words are a medicine as horrible as they are for those who witnessed and endured. With your blessing??
But of course. The story had come to mean more than I ever meant it to be. The odyssey was
not just my own by man of us together traveling through those same patches of jungle, those same fetid
valley bottoms and up those slippery sloped craggy mountains. With my approval and pleasure…
Semper fi, and thank you for all of us…
Jim
What kind of Marine was Sugar Daddy in combat.
Functional in his way…and most were functional in their own.
Figuring out that function was another matter entirely…
Semper fi,
Jim
Typically I read an installment late at night when I’m not distracted and settled in, then I come back the next day and read the comments. Captain Kelley is looking more like Major Frank Burns of MASH all the time. Its hard to believe that a man with his responsibility could be so out of touch with reality.
There was that. Frank Burns. I’d forgotten about him. There were so many officers
in my time who had that sort of righteous weasel approach to command. And life itself!
Thank you for that appropriate comparison.
Semper fi,
Jim
I was on a carrier tied up at hunters point s.f. as duty deck po I would check on pier watches several times I night so the could make a head call and get some coffee. I watch as seaman contreres was checking on a mooring line tension when he slipped and fell in the water. I ran over to the pier side only to see bubbles . the 50″ utility boats where dead man tied off to the pier and ship. I took a running jump and landed on the boat cover slid down to boat edge grabbed the boat hook and was able to hook my shipmate up and get him out of the water. cold and wet I sent him back on board to wake a replacement up. 10 minutes later he is back out on the pier to resume his watch. I asked him why and he said its was his watch and would finish it. i then asked if he could swim and he said no he was a none swimmer which stunned me. I ok him for the remainder of the watch but only after he promised to stay clear of the pier edge. I went back on board and to our office and reviewed all 60 hands records and found about a dozen non swimmers. I changed how pier watches and boat crews where put together after that. jim great write story thanks for sharing boats
Great swimming story, or non-swimming story. You didn’t get a medal either!
Learning to swim is quite subtle but not as hard as so many people think.
Mythology holds them back. Thanks for the comment and support…
Semper fi,
Jim
In the book “The Things They Carried” the soldiers in this particular platoon , play game of throwing a live smoke grenade back and forth. The one that lost got smoked.
If you have handled smoke grenades, then other than the smoke they put out once they get fully going,
the other thing you notice is the heat. Smoke grenades get extremely hot and if you are throwing them
around, after only about three seconds you need asbestos gloves or your skin and muscles will be gone.
The grenades get so hot that if you thrown one in a cave you will burn up all the oxygen in the cave and
suffocate anyone inside!
Thanks for the comment. Insanity rules a battlefield but I will also say that nobody sticks a neck or
hand out to get hurt in any way unless it’s an attempt to get a ticket home.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey LT, great reading so far! Although I never went to Nam, I really enjoy reading about the country and all that went on. Funny thing about it though, I graduated high school in 1966. I had no plans on going to college, and being 1A, I couldn’t get a job anywhere, except on a farm driving tractors all the time. I knew I would be drafted soon, so I joined the USAF. Now I feel guilty when I read about all the pain that Nam vets have to go through. I know I did a job that needed doing, but I still feel guilty. Is that weird or what?! Thanks for your service and all the rest of the Vietnam Vets!!
Don’t feel bad. We don’t, by and large. It was the luck of the draw, most of it. Whether you were in the wrong
or right place at the time. whether you got place with a good unit or a bad one.
Give that guilt shit up. Sleep peacefully at night. Accept the gift god gave you!
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks! I appreciate that!