The Gunny and Sugar Daddy looked at me when I approached, but neither man stood up. I hadn’t expected them to. I was becoming fully adjusted to life beyond Marine training and stateside barracks behavior. I dumped my supply of C-rations, and other stuff I’d gotten from the re-supply piles, on my poncho liner before turning to squat down and join them.
“Fourth Platoon has a problem with the new guys,” the Gunny began, his coffee steaming up out of his canteen holder held right next to the dying chunk of composition B he’d used to heat it.
I looked around. Once again Fusner, Stevens, Zippo, and Nguyen had somehow managed to blend back into the jungle, taking Pilson, the Gunny’s radio operator with them. Both Prick 25 radios left behind continued to comment and his meaningless transmissions through their small speakers.
James:
I had written a note to you several days ago and never received any reply. Did you get? It revolved around your “30 days” book.
No Steve, I never got it. Not that I know of, anyway. Please resend…
Semper fi,
Jim
What is the Revolutionary Doctrine paper? I googled it but wasn’t sure which way to go with the various and differing results?
Thanks
I can’t find it on the Internet. It was a seven page single spaced speech that had to be memorized
and then delivered verbatim to college campuses. I only got picked to give the speech because I was
on the disability list (available) and had a very high GCT score. They figured I could do the memorization
part because not many Marine Officers either would or could. I had that memory from the Nam. I read it and
said it back and I was selected. Just like that. Never gave it. Got that treatment at S.F. State and
then transferred back to Pendleton to eventually set up the supply plan for Babelthuap Island off of Palau, in case
the Micronesian Islands ever got invaded. From there I went to work on the Nixon compound in San Clemente.
Semper fi,
Jim
Just wanted to say I’m really enjoying your story if enjoy might not be the right word. I was a Gun’s pilot in the Air Cav so my experience was different. One thing I had was my father as soon as he learned I was going over after flight school he told me all about his time in North Africa and then in France in WWII so I somehow had a little idea of what I’d see and it worked it helped me alot. I never really talked about an MP Sargent got me out of Oakland Airport so I wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet of protesters.
When I was ambulatory again, Daniel, I was called upon to be the speaker at San Francisco State. I had to memorize the Revolutionary Doctrine paper and deliver that to the student body. I was still barely able to walk and wearing 4X4s up and down my torso under my green Class A uniform blouse. I stood at the podium. It was March of 1969. I never delivered the speech. The student body came unglued when I turned on the microphone and then began pelting me with decayed fruit and vegetable matter. All I ever said before I got out of there was: “but for the grace of God and two years you would be standing where I am right now.” I paid to clean my own uniform. I would never let myself to speak publicly about the war again. Only my experiences in Vietnam kept me from going back and killing them all. I was okay. I am okay. I was no hero. But I’m not a bad guy either.
Semper fi,
Jim
So glad you had your dad. What terrific meaning to have that in any man’s life. It’s part of why you turned out so great.
James, I don’t know where to start. It is incredible that you can remember these things so vividly. I was in the Navy on an LST bringing supplies up and down the coast and up and down the rivers, esp out of Vung Tau. I’ve read some of the Letters From Vietnam and some go into detail like you do. When we went to Cua Viet, the smell of gun powder and smoke from fires was crazy and we couldn’t wait to leave,not to mention the sand bar that we had to scrape over upon entry and exit from that port/town. WOW!! I can’t even remember most of the names of the men I served with anymore!
Leo. If you start it will come. I have all the letters I wrote home and I wrote home every day of my tour. I have all the letters I wrote to my Mom and Da and I wrote every day. I kept mud splattered journals through all of it, sending them home when they were full. I only lost the last one when I was badly hit the last time. And then there’s the vibrance of brutal memory. I feel that the memories were more ‘burned in’ because of the deep emotion I was going through. Without almost six months of isolated intensive care in a Japanese hospital where few spoke English I don’t think I could have recovered mentally.
But here I am. Reviewing, remembering and writing away. There’s not much good stuff on the Internet for some reason. The maps and scraps of stuff rom the period are mostly not there. But I’m trying the best I can to put it all together.
Semper fi,
Jim
Only thing wrong is that there are only 3 platoons to a Company. No such thing as 4th platoon.
A reinforced company had four platoons. A regular company had three platoons.
Your writing is exquisite. Your descriptions of the miserable and frightening conditions of your first few days and nights in Vietnam are as gripping as any account I’ve ever read about any war.
I suspect this is an exceptionally difficult story for you to recount, but thank you for doing so. I was too young to be drafted while we were in Vietnam, but I’m old enough to remember the angst that tore through our country during the war. It’s more than a shame that so many men died and suffered in war we should have never been in. Also a shame our returning men were not treated with the dignity and respect they deserve when they returned.
Again, thank you for writing, thank you for your service to our country and God bless you.
John. Your comment is so well written I had to re-read it a couple of times.
Thank you for the compliment. When writing I remain unaware of what the presentation
is like. I just sit at my desk or in the coffee shop and pound away, mostly listening
to music from back in the day. It’s easy but not. It’s easier, once underway, to bring the stuff
all cascading back, but then its hard to drop it and do other things like nothing’s going on inside.
I’m old now so the PTSD is not a real living thing anymore. I got over road rage, drinking and drugs
to vent and buffer. I kept my family or I guess I should say my family kept me. The grace of God.
There are a lot of people along the way who invested time and trouble in me. I don’t think anyone
could figure out the justice of that or the justice of any of it. But I write on, motivated more by
the comments
I read here and the need for the telling in whatever way than by a hope to be the penultimate
war writer. I touched briefly on being in the ‘show’ myself but got sent back to the bleachers.
The bleachers are better! Thank you for the straight from the shoulder comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
I just turned 70 a couple of weeks ago. The life I have been privileged to live couldn’t have been scripted any better than it actually has been. And when I read your accounts, I know that that life could have been, would have been so much different had I been that lieutenant you describe so well. Had I been you. And, but for the gods of chance, I most certainly could have been in your place. My guts literally churn reading your remembrances. I shift uncomfortably in my chair. I sweat. I fear. I see and feel me in that awful place, and I painfully wonder, “what would I do?”. I owe you. And all those other uncertain, scared shitless lieutenants. I owe you all.
SF,
Farmer John
I don’t think I’ve read anything more heartfelt on this site John. Thanks for coming straight from the heart and the mind on here.
I have a feeling, as this develops, I am going to have more explaining to do than I thought when I started. I thought of writing it in the third person and stressing that it was a novel but in the end decided I would simply have to take the heat for telling it as much as it was as I can. And there’s danger in doing that. But people like you keep me going.
Thank you, brother,
Semper fi,
Jim
I second Farmer John. It sure seems like to me battalion turned a blind eye to your dilima, they knew full well there were no officers running that company. Far as I am concerned the Battalion commander and his XO should have been relieved. A good XO would have choppered out ASAP and met individually and separately with each platoon leader and would see for himself how f***ed it was before the shit hit the fan. If any person who fought in that war thinks about what it takes to be a hero you are a classic example my friend. Artillery LT 67-70 (Ft Sill OCS class 7/68)
Thanks Fred for the huge compliment, not just not he writing but about my performance.
I really appreciate the comments about battalion too. I wish i had not been so badly wounded
for so long that I could have done anything there.
Semper fi,
Jim
Oh man the next night…
Yes, the next night and it was, indeed, one of those nights. So many of us
relive them at the oddest of times. Out at a restaurant, a Christmas party,
a late night when everyone else is in bed, a song on the radio….
Semper fi,
Jim
My brother-in-law was a Medic on rescue helicopters so difficult to read anything on Vietnam. To me it was a war that shouldn’t have been. Come to think about it, all wars shouldn’t be.
Don’t intend to upset by the writing. I personally think it’s better for
guys who were really in the shit to have a place to take it and something they
can hold in their hands when people tell them that their story might be bullshit.
Semper fi,
Jim
i so agree
How can anybody not agree with Marion! This is pretty tough stuff for so many….