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Thanks for reading this short excerpt from the paid post! Fancy buying it to read all of it?
OK, I’ve finished the first ten days and have started to get caught up to the current chapters. Long history of service in the family, my Father in WWII in CBI, brother in law MACV, Dad’s buddy Parnell a chopper pilot Korea and Vietnam, myself a Cold War Warrior and in through Desert Storm, my son currently serving in the Navy, so I’ve been around the stories all my life, but I have to admit that this has to be one of the most dicked up companies I’ve ever seen or heard about. Are we going to get some clues to what fractured the company’s unity to the point that platoons where killing each other? Generally I would expect that aggression to be externalized towards things outside of the unit.
One of things that you must do Larry is carefully read the comments by guys
who were really out in the bush at the time.
It was not the most ‘dicked up’ company down in that valley. There were a lot of them.
And the guys don’t come back and talk about them that way. They make up stories to get them by.
None of us want the public feeling sorry for us or afraid of us or any of that.
The truth about what I and so many others faced is not really believable
(and that is reinforced by your writing)
and so we modify the stories to make them more acceptable
because we have to live back here with you citizens.
We are not citizens. We went away and came back as something else entirely.
If you will note what happens in many damaged marriages back in this world, husband and wife
often attack one another when faced with terrific stress from the outside.
What happened in my company was not really that odd, I am discovering.
It is simply odd when viewed upon by those who have not been in that situation.
And we were externally aggressive as hell also….at the same time…
Semper fi,
Jim
I was 101 and 6th Id and I realize that the public face of the war was different than the realities of combat, the same as the perceptions of what the guys today face in the Middle East. The stories told inside a unit are not the same ones that you tell your friends and family. But that really isn’t what my question was about. You walked into a company that was as much at war with itself as it was with enemy and that doesn’t seem to be the norm from any of the other sources. Even in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, the division was at leadership levels and the men in the platoons and squads weren’t killing each other. To use a historical example that my father supported in CBI, Merrill’s Marauders, where 2750 men spend over 5 months in jungle combat to the point that only two remained combat effective, but you still didn’t see this kind of breakdown in the unit. So what happened within the unit to allow things to get where they were when you arrived? And I am just old enough to have a real draft card, so I saw how returning vets were treated by the nation.
I was 11B (0300 for your guys)enlisted and commissioned (grass to brass officer), and also a 21J Combat Engineer Officer.
What happened Larry? What happened is that I have been willing to write what happened and not some fanciful movie version of Merrill’s Mauraders, Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Kelly’s Heroes, or any of that stuff. I don’t know what happened in WWII or in the rest of the Nam. I operated in a small part of that country called the A Shau Valley. That September, down in that valley, around me with those companies and ancillary units, I am writing what the hell happened. I don’t know the rest and cannot fathom the rest. When I started writing this I thought my experiences were singular. That I had been punishment assigned (for lipping off) to a bad unit out in the shit. I had no idea that my experiences were so general. That so many would identify. That so many could not or would not talk about what had happened to them. But here we all are. And the preponderance of comments comes form men who were there and who went through the shit storm like I did, whatever variation….
Semper fi,
Jim
The Merrill that my father spoke of wasn’t Jeff Chandler, nor were his experiences the movie version either. He spent from March of 1942 to November of 1945 flying into China and Burma, “Flying the Hump”, a mission that was so dangerous that the command didn’t report casualties for fear that public pressure would shut them down. The point of that being what he told me was not about glorious deeds of valor, but as real as one could get it, especially after I joined the Infantry.
While your experiences may not have been as singular as you believed, I certainly think that the situation you were dropped into was pretty singular. Been around enough to know about vindictive commanders and incompetent company grade officers, especially in a war that wasn’t popular back home, but what I can’t fathom is how the company was allowed to get to the point that it fragmented the way you state. Hell, I don’t understand why it was still in the field if they had taken enough of a beating to remove all the officers and senior NCO’s down to running a platoon with an E5, which isn’t even squad leader in the Army. I guess the Marines have their own brand of Stupid sometimes.
Please don’t feel that any of this is aimed at you, but you were dropped into a special kind of a hell, besides the A Shau Valley, and I am trying to understand how that hell developed.
Your foundational belief system is based upon the idea that the leadership back in the rear,
or even over in Washington at the time, was somehow grounded in principals of integrity and care.
We were out there doing what we were doing and going through what we were going through
because of some strange and weird Twilight Zone kind of experience.
That is the explanation you are looking for. I thought that for years. I thought it was me.
I thought it was just plain bad luck and strange circumstance.
Well, read the comments of others on here. I have. I was not alone and my unit
and the units I worked with were not being served by caring people in the rear…
if it meant that they might have to replace us in the field with themselves.
Nobody went out there voluntarily and sure as hell, if some did out of complete ignorance,
they never went back a second time voluntarily. You are reading this story and if you believe it then
would you have wanted to be dropped in on the coming resupply?
They cared in the rear and they were sorry.
They had booze and drugs there to get through their own angst over what they had to do to us so it would not be done to them.
Thanks for the depth of your comment and the way you have fashioned wording it
so as not to hurt my feelings or attack me. It’s okay. I could not understand more your own feelings, misgivings and doubt.
This is not a believable story and I knew that from the start. It’s why the whole thing has lain at the bottom of closets all these years.
I also knew that the writing of it might be costly to me as a person.
Semper fi, and thank you…
Jim
Jim, Welcome home, Dave.
Their twenty millimeter wing cannons opened up, and then a mass of bombs dropped from the
first two planes was followed () the bombs of the other two only an instant later. [ (by) ]
The gunner would fire (a fifty tracer rounds), one at a time until he got a hit, …
[either (fifty tracer rounds) or (a fifty tracer round)]
Thanks Dave, appreciate the comment and your making it on here…
Semper fi,
Jim
I’m still not sure you are understanding my question. I was in the Army long enough and a student of military history enough to know that Washington can screw up empty space and even in peace time I’ve had the S4 leave my platoon in the Tundra for two days without fuel or food, so none of that part is surprising or unbelievable. Nor do I find your personal situation unbelievable, while somewhat more desperate, it parallels the experiences related in James McDonough’s Platoon Leader, if you haven’t read it. And as a student of military history there are battles after battles fought by desperate men with inadequate support, from Valley Forge to Fallujah. Additionally my college roommate was a Navy Corpsman on the DMZ in 1968 and my buddy Bob spent most of three tours as a door gunner (do you believe that!!), only went home after he was shot up enough to put him out of the service, so I heard a lot of this first hand from people besides you. What intrigues me about your story is that you landed in a civil war within the company, and that certainly wasn’t the norm for field units as far as I can tell. So my question is still what pushed/allowed them to go in that direction? You may not know and I can understand it is you didn’t.
All acts of courage are done by scared men that would rather be somewhere else.
The answer would be that I don’t know. I came upon it and then left later so that one will remain a mystery. There is no place later in
the books were everyone sits in a circle around a fire and discusses how the unit came to be the way it was or why.
Semper fi,
Jim
Then thank you for taking the time to respond and I look forward to reading the rest of the story.
Most welcome Larry. It means a lot to me that you have written what yuu’ve written.
Semper fi,
Jim
back from my off grid world for a few days and got caught up. Sounds like you may be getting another visit from the 101st – at lease part of the 326 Engineers were working with us at that time.
The 101st was such a class act over there, even damned part of it.
And they liked Marines!!!
Semper fi,
Jim
Dang, LT, you got me crying, thinking about
the whole mess. Been lots of years. I remember that the Ontos was discarded by the Army, and here it is, saving your butt.
Yes, the Army dumped the Ontos but some units kept them in inventory
until late in the war. Vietnam was a funny place for equipment. It could
come out of the woodwork from the strangest of places…
Thanks and semper fi,
Jim
i have been following you since day one. wow, your in deep $hit and no end in sight! i chose 4 years in the navy instead (70-74), so i didn’t have to deal with what you are going through. that was no picnic either, but sure not this. in basic, was told all sailors had to pass water survival training or they would be transferred to marines. not sure if true, but a motivation for sure. half the recruit company went to corpsman school. seems like a lifetime ago now. guess it because it is. my God, we were a bunch of kids back then. it don’t mean nothin now does it? keep on writing. .
Thanks for following from day one. There’s an end in sight, all right. For all of us, of course. Half the company became Marines, anyway! Funny that eventuality
wasn’t well played in training either. Yes, were were kids sure enough, and most of us came home kids in trouble in one way or more…
Semper fi, and thanks for writing on here what you wrote…
Semper fi,
Jim
Lit the page up after my nap wondering if an unnamed Lt was relaxing on his couch under the runway waiting for a CB Outfit to arrive with a beverage cooler and generator to run it. This might shock some, but Nam Vets are old guys these days. Then I read the comments, this is the damndest place. If nothing else it convinces me I’m neither nuts or delusional.
I once wrote of that geography as an accursed vortex on a damnable peninsula that devoured all who came. That slab of ground devoured the blood and fortune of China, Japan, England, France and America. How it unfolded is well established, and kept very quiet by filthy politicians covering for prior politicians who drained our blood, savaged our minds, and hauled our expended carcasses back to a place we never knew, so they could throw shit at us.
I study too much History, learn too many facts, and remain pissed off. Sorry Dorothy, there is no place called home. I remain certain that place ended the day I buried my Mom, and I take solace Mom never saw what her son became.
SCPO, you are, of course, delusional.
And this is a place, this very site, called home if you want to sort of make it that.
Home for those comments and thoughts that just don’t seem to fit in with ‘regular’ folks, as much as we love them.
You became what you are, by the way, which is something of life experience and intellect,
if I am to gauge much from your writing here.
Most people cannot put words about emotions together like that.
You are troubled and you are right.
The people that send other people into the kind of circumstance you and I were sent in to had and have no
clue about what they were sending us into. They don’t go and they cannot understand.
What you got out of it is mixed. You got through with your life and some knowledge few others
will ever possess and the ones you tell will generally not believe or not want to deal with.
But you are special for what you have become and that’s one of the reasons I write what I write.
For guys to read and realize what they came through and how those experiences
shaped them into possessing a knowledge of reality few comprehend.
Here is where we can talk and write about such things and then
reflect upon how we can best use and shape the material we were given.
Semper fi, and welcome, my friend,
Jim
There was a song that came to me in a letter. It was 98.6 we all could not see how it could a song
Well, it sure was a song and it was put out in 1966. I don’t particularly remember the lyrics Like I do some
but it was there all right.
Thanks for the memory and writing it here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Good mornin’ sun I say it’s good to see you shinin’
I know my baby brought you to me
She kissed me yesterday hello your silver linin’
Got spring and summer runnin’ through me
Hey 98.6 it’s good to have you back again, oh
Hey 98.6 her lovin’ is the medicine that saved me
Oh I love my baby
Hey everybody on the street I see you smilin’
Must be because I found my baby
You know she’s got me on another kind of highway
I want to go to where it takes me
Hey 98.6 it’s good to have you back again, oh
Hey 98.6 her lovin’ is the medicine that saved me
Oh I love my baby
You know she’s got me on another kind of highway
I want to go to where it takes me
Hey 98.6 it’s good to have you back again, oh
Hey 98.6 her lovin’ is the medicine that saved me
Oh I love my baby
Writer/s: GEORGE FISCHOFF, TONY POWERS
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
Thank you ever so much for the song, my friend.
Funny the lyrics that got burned into
us while back here they were simply fun songs.
Not so with us. Parts of home, to be remembered and revered
and once back here to take us back there.
Strange time machine music…
Semper fi,
Jim
Strauss…. you okay???
The segment goes up tonight. I was down for the count with a bad respiratory thing but I am fully back at it. Thank you for caring and writing about it on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, glad to hear you are feeling better, wish I was.
Yes, J, thank you. I just put up the next segment. How are you?
I just have had this awful cold, the worst part being my voice not working. Not being
able to talk, doing the things I do, has been a bit tough. How are you doing?
Semper fi,
Jim
Unfortunately not well, have been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and waiting for all of the blood work to come back. Don’t know if I will be around for the end of your story, but hope all goes well for you.
Semper fi my friend,
J
P.S. Don’t blame God for the madness of men.
No, I am not blaming God for the madness of men. Right now I am busy blaming him for your cancer. Come on J! For Christ’s sake, I just found
you. That’s fucking not fair. From a selfish viewpoint, of course…God damn it. I was going to say something. Stage four where?
Yes, you are my friend. I don’t know what to say. I am here. Pouting. Mad. I’ll write faster, and having too because you are going to die
before I finish really pisses me off. But not at you.
Shit.
Jim
Good Lord man, don’t blame God for my cancer, He had nothing to do with it.
If you want to blame someone, blame our military complex that sends men on assignments where the land is full of radiation from shelling and bombing or where they have sprayed it with deadly chemicals and polluted it for all of mankind.
Then too, I chose to smoke most of my life and that was my decision, not God’s. Then there were all of the accidents I was involved in from using bad judgement on my part. I could go on, but you get the message.
Jim dying is a part of life and we all have to do it, sooner or later. We are all on a journey here on earth, but that is not the end of life as you well know. The sad part at the end of this journey, is parting with those whom you know and love, but then we may get a pleasant surprise on the other side and all come together once again under much better circumstances.
Yes it would be great if you would hurry up with your story as you are no spring chicken either. From what I see on Face Book you have thousands of likes, so there are a lot of readers who are following very closely now. Think of all the disappointed readers if you are never able to finish the story! You have been sitting on it now for over forty years and it is about time that it gets told.
Thanks for you kind words and the camaraderie as that is something my wife and I miss since leaving the military. We spent twenty years in the service and the troops became our family.
You confound me, or is the right word befuddle? So I proceed, with my special
relationship with God, who is no doubt as continuously antagonized by me as I am by Him…if
it is a Him. Thanks for the kind words. I’m as healthy as can be for a man of my age. No smoke, no more,
no drink, no more, no drugs, no more and my doctor after the physical this year said I should keep on doing
whatever the hell it is I’m doing because he doesn’t see people my age who don’t have problems.
Thanks Poppa, for trying to make me feel better…
Semper fi,
Jim
Were we the boobs? I believe we all asked that question at one time or another, along with many other questions, after coming back home from Nam. Why were we there and what did we accomplish? How can you win the battles and lose the war? Why did we have to be the first U.S. troops to come home in defeat, when we were never defeated by the enemy? Why did our own people turn against us, when we gave everything while representing our country? If those questions and many others were not enough to cause PTSD, what are?
It turns out that we went to war in the beginning stages of a cultural change within our society. Most of us were raised in an entirely different scenario, i.e., God, Family and Country. We donned our uniforms and our weapons with pride and went off to defend the honor of our country. Problem was, our country was in the process of losing it’s patriotism and honor. We found this out the hard way, when some of the troops came back from leave to the CONUS and related to the rest of us, what was going on back home. It was the first of many cultural shocks that we were to experience before leaving Nam. Suddenly the heavy loss of our comrades in arms on the battle field, lost it’s meaning. Did they die in vein and would we also? When the enemy body count became more important then supporting our own troops, we started losing faith in our government as well as the military command.
Of course the worse shock of all, was landing on U.S. soil and receiving the despicable greetings that we got from our own people. It was like coming back to a nation that we no longer recognized as our home. Instead of hero’s who served their country bravely, we were treated worse then any American troops ever to return from battle. If that is not enough to depress a vet, nothing is. That treatment did not end with just our arrival, but continued for nearly a quarter of a century. The unearned shame was heaped upon the vets, instead of where it belonged, which was our government and with our current society.
No, we were not the boobs, we were the unsung hero’s who went off to war for our nation. It was a society of boobs that deserve that nomenclature. The pendulum always swings the other way and in the process, there is a silver lining when it comes to the treatment of our troops and vets. Society finally realized the shame did not belong on the shoulders of the Vietnam Vets, but on society itself. That realization has brought about more respect for soldiers who are now standing for freedom in this nation and they have the Vietnam Vets to thank for that change!
Figured I better get this up right away. I’m obviously not the only writer on this site!
Nice lay out and delivery there. Nothing you said can be questioned. I think we all here share
your sentiments and have come to conclusions not far from your own. Those of us who made it through…
Thanks for taking the time and pouring out your intellect and heart…
Semper fi,
Jim
James
I was in the valley in 68 with A 1/7 Cavalry, on Operation Delaware. I have a possible correction for you. The Bong Son River doesn’t run through the Au Shau Valley, I think you might be referring to the Song Be River. The Bong Son is further South.
Correct. We simply called it the Bong Song mistakenly. To all of us, for some reason, it was the Bong Song.
You are right though as I had and have maps. The Gunny said, when I called him on it in country “fuck the gooks, it’s the fucking
Bong Song and that’s it.”
Semper fi,
Jim
Skip, you are correct, the Bong Song River runs west to east, south of Danang. As Seabee, I worked on a bridge over the Bong Song at Hill 36. The head waters of the Bong Song could be in the A Shau Valley but most of the valley drains north/east into the ocean east of Danang. We also worked on bridges there before Hai Van Pass. True though, The Valley was pounded day and night, the year I was there.
It wasn’t the Bong Song! We just called it that! I had maps with the correct river and tributary names on them.
It didn’t matter. The river was the Bong Song to us!
Semper fi,
Jim
Sir I just got caught up reading the whole second half! Once I started I couldn’t stop. Being a Marine combat vet (Iraq/ Afghanistan) this brings back so many emotions. I know your working quickly but please hurry with more. In a huge way this is therapy for me!
“MAKE PEACE OR DIE!”
Bco 1/5
Thanks Joey, for that vote of confidence in the story. I wish it was as easy
as the earlier segments but the story details a lot of the emotional baggage that began
to accumulate along the way, and I can’t ignore that. We are not “mean green killing machines.”
We are much more than that, and sometimes less. So I am on it, laying each segment down as I am done.
Thanks for what you’ve done too and for writing at all on here…
Semper fi,
Jim
You have kind of frozen my mind and therefore any words which could do justice to complimenting this damn hard job you took on. I will be stuck here for a good long time I reckon. Poppa
Well, after reading all of your cogent and intelligent comments on here it’s very difficult to picture your
vibrant active mind as frozen in any way. Thanks for that being sort of a compliment, though. I shall kick back
and await your ‘recovery’ and return…
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you Sir
No thanks necessary, but always nice to hear. Wonderful to start and maintain a dialogue with men like you. You and the men and some rare women who
come on here to discuss real life and how things are and how they came to be that way for you and every other combat veteran.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I hope that you continue this journey, bringing along folks who have reached a time in their lives when they are able to feel a little more, and dang near ready to forgive themselves. We may never live to see the long lasting effects of this story. But it may be or should be a model for future studs and helping them come back to this
Phenomenal world as I think you describe it, and unload the baggage much more quickly.
A man I love like a son,,, is at the point that he tries to ignore things he can’t do anything about. Maybe too much he saw, he wasn’t allowed to try to fix the situation. And another man I love like a new generation son is headed into the snake pit somewhere this week. I can only hope they can talk to each other when they need it the most.
Doing my best to be fine tuned medically for the July trip. Rest LT, you deserve some. Poppa
Wonderful reading your words Poppa, as usual. You always make me think and wonder some more
about you and those whom you have and do associate with. Thank you for putting me in your life
and keeping me there.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks Jim, you are bringing us along and mentoring at the same time.
Well Lieutenant, you just put all your readers down for a nap just like our mothers tried so long ago.
Not me. I ain’t closing my eyes.
I know you need your rest, but I’m afraid it’s about to get worse and I don’t want to be caught sleeping.
Your ability to foretell the future down in that god forsaken valley is spot on, of course.
Where I and the company were headed was called Indian territory but I don’t think the old
west ever compared…thanks for staying awake and on guard while we all pause…
Semper fi,
Jim
Well Lt. you have done it, Get some rest while you can. Don’t think I slept for more than a few hours a day for over 9 months. Gunny is using the two weak non-coms to his personal advantage and to keep control of the company.
Wifes are special, they know what we can’t share, why we can’t share our feelings and why we anger so very instantly. The rest they don’t want to know. Keep up the excellent writing!
from an old Army Huey Crew-Chief/ Door Gunner