When the company came to a slowing halt, I was more than ready to rest. The straps of my pack burned where they pressed down over the narrower suspender straps that held up my web belt. We’d made it back close to where the company had veered north and gone to the aid of Kilo Company the day before. I stripped off the pack and collapsed to the jungle floor. I checked my canteens but both were empty. Fusner pushed his own toward me, and I accepted it willingly. I drank down about a third of the warmly awful, but so welcome, liquid before giving it back. I looked around. Even though we were moving downward along the ridge we were still high enough for the temperature to be cool, the wind slight and the mosquitoes limited to occasional bites not important enough to warrant slathering on the nasty oil repellent.
My scout team rested only a few feet away. I leaned over to ask Stevens about the sapper regimental helmet affair. Zippo had discarded it when others around him had taken to calling him a black gook.
“I thought the Montagnards were on our side,” I said, motioning for him to put the question to Nguyen. It took almost a full minute for Stevens to counsel with the Kit Carson Scout and reply.
“They are advisors to the sappers, as he is an advisor to us,” Stevens said. “They don’t call themselves Montagnards. That was the French. They call themselves the Moi. Nguyen is Jarai Moi and the advisors to the sappers are Mnong Moi.”
“Why do some choose the NVA instead of us?”
“They help so that their villages will not be burned and their people killed,” Stevens said, without counseling with Nguyen this time.
“We don’t burn their villages, I don’t think,” I replied. “Why does Nguyen work with us?’
“His village was already burned.”
I looked over at the Moi scout. He stared back at me with his usual expressionless eyes. I knew if I blinked that he would too, though. I turned back to Stevens. “His family?”
“Gone.”
“Shit,” I said, softly, wondering what it was like to lose your whole family while you’re gone somewhere trying to do the right thing and take care of them, too.
In the back of my mind, in spite of the loyalty I felt from the strange man, I wondered just how much communication he had with other Moi around. The sappers would have had to hear about us, and me specifically, from someone, if that was really the point of the symbol.
“Arty up,” came whispering in from around me.
“Shit,” I said, wondering whether the Gunny needed artillery, which seemed unlikely because there had been no small arms firing or explosions of any kind. I began crawling along the jungle floor. I thought of snakes for the first time in three days. I found it kind of funny that I’d been too afraid of other things to be afraid of snakes, or maybe that was as it should be because the lack of them seemed to indicate that any snakes around were smart enough to stay high in the trees or underground.
I felt more than heard Fusner behind me, since my own noisy progress over the moist but solid ground kept me from hearing anything else. I found the Gunny thanks to many silently pointing fingers. This time I’d brought my binoculars, as the jungle near the edge of the ridge was more open and I hoped to be able to look out over whatever valley lay beyond it to the south toward, the American artillery fire-base.
The Gunny turned as I approached, holding an index finger over his mouth and pointing down to the south.
“There’s somebody out there,” he whispered. “And then there’s that…” He pointed downhill in the direction of our travel.
I couldn’t see anything in either direction. “What?” I finally asked in frustration, keeping my voice as low as his.
“I don’t know who’s there,” the Gunny said, pressing his head down behind a small pile of leafy bracken. “I just know that these Marines have been doing this for a while and they’re pretty good about knowing such things.”
I pulled out my binoculars and scanned the area down to the south. We were about a quarter of a mile, I guessed, from where we’d turned to head toward Kilo the day before. There was nothing. I swept down toward the second area the Gunny had pointed out. I silently cursed the stupid individual focusing of the eyepieces on the Japanese binoculars. Each had to be adjusted for distance individually whenever focus was needed. Regular combat lenses had one lever to quickly make that adjustment on both lenses, not to mention meter scales to approximate distance. I finally got the focus right and saw what concerned the Gunny, and helped bring the company to a halt. Two Marines lay next to a dark spot. Just beyond the spot, a bamboo reinforced slat of leaf weaved matting leaned up against the trunk of one of the larger trees. Without the Gunny saying a word, I knew I was looking at the entrance to my first tunnel. At Quantico, they had created a field of tunnels to train enlisted Marines how to find and fight the enemy below, or destroy underground supplies. The Marines who went down in the holes were called tunnel rats.
I put my binoculars down. “Okay to check it out?” I asked the Gunny, “or have you already sent in the tunnel rats?”
Both Fusner and Pilson snickered right after I made the comment. I caught their laugh but didn’t understand.
The Gunny got to his feet and then started moving low toward the hole in the ground guarded by the two Marines. I followed with Fusner and Pilson bringing up the rear.
“I’m more worried about what’s out there rather than down in this hole,” he said over his shoulder as he crouched low.
I laid on my chest looking down into the hole, surprised by its size. The round hole would have barely fit my body. If I crawled down into it, my shoulders would be pressing up against each side. The tunnels at the Marine Base stateside had been square, plenty big and dug into hard ground. I pointed my flashlight into the hole. It went down for about four feet before veering off in the direction of the company’s travel. I could not imagine a less welcome place to climb into. I stared for a moment more before deciding that I would never enter such a place if I could possibly help it. I noted that the cover of the tunnel appeared flimsy, but with cross-slatted bamboo strengtheners, it would probably hold the weight of a man stepping on its surface.
“Tunnel rats?” I asked again, still staring down.
“We don’t have any,” the Gunny said, accepting a green cloth-wrapped package from another Marine. “Nobody in this unit is dumb enough to go down into one of these tunnels. We find them all the time. The A Shau’s supposed to be full of them, but I don’t exactly remember.”
I realized the Gunny was priming several pounds of Composition B at my side. I eased back.
He glanced up at me. “You can write the words “tunnel rat” on each package if you want.”
Fusner and Pilson laughed again, this time not so secretly.
“So, we blow them in place,” I said, thinking about the ramifications. “We never find out where the tunnels go, and what’s down there?”
“Got a better idea?” The Gunny asked with a smile, while he worked away.
“But the explosives will only affect a small part of whatever the complex below really is,” I replied, not having a better idea.
“How about some of that concrete piercing arty shit you were dumping around before?” the Gunny said, getting to his feet and beginning to walk backward while unwinding a thin set of wires from a small spool.
I got up and moved with him. “The canopy,” I said, pointing upward. “The concrete-piercing will trigger in the tops of the trees and then detonate before hitting the jungle floor. The fuses are that delicate, even though the rounds themselves are called concrete-piercing.”
The Gunny squatted down behind a tree trunk and prepared a small metal box for transmitting the electric signal.
“Ah, the others you’re worried about, won’t this let them know exactly where we are?” I asked.
“Now that’s funny, Junior,” the Gunny laughed, stopping to light a cigarette. “We’re out here playing rock and roll across the jungle, and some huge regiment passed by and left a helmet dangling on a stick to let us know how much they respect us. And the enemy doesn’t know where we are? You’re killing me here.” The Gunny blew some smoke but didn’t direct it my way as Sugar Daddy had.
I took off my helmet and liner to scratch my head and think. There was really nothing to be said about how badly we’d had to let our position be known in coming to Kilo’s defense. If we’d all been killed, no one would have ever known about the company’s good intentions.
“Fire in the hole,” Gunny suddenly yelled out, dodging behind the tree trunk and twisting the little lever on the box.
The shock wave of the blast rocked my head and body back. I swallowed a few times to clear my ears. Bits of jungle and mud rained down for almost half a minute before subsiding.
The Gunny grinned while he pulled in and found what was left of the wire back around the little box. I put my helmet back on and prepared for what was ahead, although I didn’t know what was ahead of other than the fact that we were either already in, or just short of arriving in, what everyone called Indian Country. And that was all bad.
“Who do you think is out there?” I asked when the Gunny finished with his explosives task.
“Well, if it’s those sapper guys, and there’s a regiment of them, then we’re dead as doornails no matter what we do. What do you think?”
I looked out in the direction we were traveling and then down where we’d gone before. And then it came to me. They were out there alright, but it wasn’t the sappers if the sappers even existed.
“It’s the remnants,” I said. When we hit them down at the saddle, and then Kilo followed up, they took unexpected and big casualties. This part of the tunnel complex is probably part of it. They didn’t move down the mountain afterward. No, they followed us and now here we are. They weren’t expecting us to go get our stuff and come back because they didn’t know we left it there in the first place. Now, they’re waiting again for us to pass by on our new path to the A Shau.”
“Jesus, Junior, if I didn’t know you were green as a pea pod and been here for nine days I’d think you were a gook. You think like a gook. Hell, you’re about as tall as a gook.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I replied, as acidly as I could.
“So what do we do now?” the Gunny asked. “We’re damn near out of ammo, food, water and you name it. If we pass on by where they probably are waiting, then we get blasted. If we try to attack them first, we get blasted for sure.
“What’s the edge look like?” I said.
“What edge?” the Gunny said, taking the last drag of his cigarette before putting it out in the jungle debris at our feet.
“The edge of the mountain over here to the south,” I replied, pointing to my right. “The contours are pretty compressed on my map but if we’ve got any margin at all then I can use Cunningham to our advantage.” I pulled out my map and unfolded it to show him.
“Can we try that in English?” The Gunny said, his tone one of frustrated impatience. He deliberately looked away from my map.
I refolded the map and put it in my morphine pocket, wondering when I’d get a chance to write to my wife again. I could write about finding my first tunnel and what it was like, leaving off the rest, of course. “Come on, let’s just move a couple of hundred meters south and check it out.”
We walked past the tunnel entrance, which was a large smoking crater after the blast. I wondered how far down a surface explosion caused damage. If the tunnels were angled and blocked with anything at all then the shock wave would do little, beyond barely penetrating dirt cave-in stuff. It took only a few minutes for the Gunny and my scout team to arrive at the edge of the mountain ridge, although ridge turned out to be the wrong word. The edge of the mountain wasn’t an edge at all, except for a cliff that dropped about six feet down. After that the side of the mountain went down into a relatively shallow valley in flat steps, each about twenty feet long protruding from the side of the rock and dirt.
The Gunny studied the land around and below us as we stood on the top edge of the cliff. The view wasn’t stunning but it was pretty beautiful. The sun was low overhead but not close to setting, and the wind had picked up to make the warming air pleasant instead of cloying and miserable, as it always was in the lowlands.
“We can go one level down and just walk right by them if we keep our heads down,” the Gunny said, with one hand rubbing his chin.
I shook my head. “They’ve got Chicom radio crap and maybe even Prick 25s by now. If anyone spots us down there moving right along, they’ll attack and simply shoot down at us until we’re done, given that we can barely shoot back. Sitting ducks is the expression, I think.”
“So?” the Gunny asked.
“So, we climb down right here and move until we get about a thousand meters further along. That’s about where we detoured and headed for Kilo. Then we climb back up and set in right near the edge. We let them know we’re there. They’ll wait until the sun goes down and attack. When they attack we’ll quickly climb back down again. I’ll call in an artillery strike using variable time fuses. Should work like bug spray. The rounds will impact on top of the mountain while we’re covered completely by the lip of rock.
“Shit,” the Gunny breathed out. “Variable time, like in radar-timed?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “The gunners can set the fuses to go off from thirty to three hundred meters off the ground. The little radar waves will go right through the jungle and playback from the jungle floor. We can have them set for about a hundred meters. The shrapnel will spray down at about twenty-four thousand feet per second. Wonderful stuff.”
“I’m sure,” the Gunny said, sounding anything but sure. “Sounds a little bit complicated to me.”
“Well, it’s a plan,” I offered. “I can’t think of anything else right off the bat. Maybe you can.”
“Might as well try it,” the Gunny said, and then walked back into the jungle without saying another word.
“What do we do, sir?” Fusner asked.
“Let’s just hunker down here to wait and see,” I said. “I don’t imagine there’s going to be another CP meeting.”
We waited, resting next to the side of the cliff. It took about fifteen minutes for the company to begin pouring over the length of the edge that was visible. I watched in surprise. I had not seen the full company since I’d been in country, only bits, and pieces. Watching over two hundred men in full gear ease over and then drop down to the ground below was impressive. I felt more confidence in my plan although the idea that a scheme like I’d just dreamed up might prove so wrong that all of us could get killed nagged at the back of my mind. Would the company stop after a thousand meters? Would Cunningham have a supply of VT fuses on hand? Would the battery even be able to fire them, or fire enough rounds to make a difference?
When the company was over I moved to the edge, tossed my pack down and then climbed. The rocks were mossy but not too slippery. I let myself fall the last four feet, or so, onto the soft plant covered soil. It took less than half an hour, following the company lead, before we stopped to climb back up like everyone else.
Once back in the jungle, but not far from the cliff’s edge, we settled in to await nightfall. The Gunny joined us a few minutes later. Fusner had turned his little radio off, like the rest of the men, as we’d been making our way along in the defilade. He turned it on and immediately Brother John introduced Smokey Robinson singing ‘Tracks of My Tears.’
“The life of the party, right,” the Gunny said, lighting another cigarette. “Because I tell a joke or two,” he continued, after letting some smoke out. “Either this is going to work or there’s not gonna be much of a party.”
Tracks of My Tears
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James,
I’m puzzled by your constant reference to the grunts using Comp B as a field explosive and for heating water and rations. Comp B was a filler in HE rounds dating back to WW2 but was solid and not pliable. ( TNT and RDX mix) It was heated and poured into the rounds. C-4 was developed in the late 50’s in widespread use in Vietnam, was pliable (plasticized) and used in the manner that you describe like being burned to heat things and ingested as a hallucinogen
Can only relate what happened to me in that part of the world at that time.
C-3 was Composition B and C-4 was later for me.
I don’t know what to say. Comp B was burned into my brain by the packaging itself.
It came in brown paper wrapped sticks.
Thanks for the input…
Semper fi,
Jim
I haven’t seen you mention anything about close air support from the Marine aircraft. I was stationed at Chu Lai 68-69 and worked on the F4B Phantom jets my squadron VMFA 323 supplied close air support in this valley quite a lot. When we brought in close air support pilots brought in F4s tree top level
The first book of the series is just getting to the edge of the Valley. The next
has us in and along the ridges of that valley and close air support from phantoms
and adjusting fire with OV-10s came into play.
Thanks for the question, the comment and reading the story.
Semper fi,
Jim
Have been reading your work and like what I read. Was in B Co. 1/7 Air Cav. 66-67 I was a M60 gunner
What a bone breaking job that was, hauling that thing around, changing
barrels and staying in clips. Our machine guns were our most potent weapons
on the ground because we didn’t alway shave supporting fires and the 60 mortar
was always out of ammo since it was so damned heavy. Thank you for
being one of those guys and now a guy reading this work and finding it okay.
Semper fi,
Jim
I was so glade the company only needed 3 gunners ,cause I was the fourth. They put me in mortar platoon.Gladly humped as many 60 mike mike rounds as that dog handler pack could hold. We lost 2 of the gunners 2 months after we got in country.I was afraid they would remember my mos was 0331,but again I lucked out or I should say,Blessed. Later Semper Fi
Those 81 rounds were heavy. The good news of the packed in 81 was the heavy punch
of the round hitting. The bad news was the weight of carrying them around. Thanks for
your work in that regard. We only had the 60 while I was there.
Semper fi,
Jim
I have enjoyed reading your book and I am eagerly waiting for the next chapters. I did not serve in the armed services, my father served in WWII, I worked for 29 years in law enforcement(just recently retired) I had the honor to work alongside many re tired and reserve service men and women. I would like to thank you, your readers that formerly served in the armed services and the afore mentioned men/women I worked with for your service to our country.
Those of us who served and remain relatively recovered from the psychological
damage direct combat inflicts thank you for thanking us! Thanks for your service means
a lot to most of us, but not all. Some guys think it’s a sort of put down because more is not
done for the real veterans. I don’t see it that way. So thank you right back
and I am glad you like the story and took the time and trouble to write to me.
Semper fi,
Jim
The amazing thing to me after reading your riveting memoirs is the amount of excellent intuition, discernment, and grasp of situational awareness you possessed at such a young age. A gift indeed. Seems to me, the Gunny must have been just as surprised as we are. An intuition on his part that defied his own experience/ instincts perhaps. TY for sharing.
Thank you for the many compliments. I felt none of those things
while I was over there and I still think that so much of it was simply
situational. Was I gifted in certain areas? Yes, but I was pretty deficient
in others, like a lot of people I think. But thank you. My reconstruction of
events might also favor the gifts more than the deficits, as well.
Semper fi,
Jim
In the fall of 1968 I was stationed aboard a light (CLG) naval cruiser assigned to a NGFS (Naval Gun Fire Support) mission approximately 50K south of Danang in the Son Thu Bon river delta. We were supporting the 3rd MarDiv and I would hear the calls for gunfire support. Our Weps officers put their careers on the line every time we fired but they busted their butts getting rounds away as quickly as possible. It did not escape me that we were within range of enemy fire, buttoned up at general quarters, and still answering the requests for gunfire support. I can still hear the voices of those Marines on the ground to this day. I hope we made a difference for them.
Fire support from artillery, on the ground and from the sea,
was simply amazing in Vietnam. A whole lot of guys came back
because of it. The country and the military was not equipped to
fight a guerrilla war on land in a jungle. It was fire support
that won so many conflicts and saved so many U.S. lives.
All of us ground pounders thank the people in the rear areas
and aboard ship who works so tirelessly to help.
Semper fi,
Jim
I was just a little too young for that war, I joined in late 73. This is the first story I’ve read of yours, You’re a great author. I’ll look for your books.
Thank you Reggie. Your shore comment has deep impact. It’s nice to be called great at anything.
I sure as hell wasn’t much of a great lieutenant over there. I am working on putting the first book
together and getting it on Amazon. The Boy and Down in the Valley are out there already but this is
the rather definitive Vietnam work. Thanks for reading, commenting and asking…
Semper fi,
Jim
I have the utmost respect for all of the Nam Vets and each one is due a long over due “Thank You and WELCOME HOME. I was blessed not to have been sent there and in some aspects regret not having gone as my best friend and Marine brother was killed in 1967. Keep the stories coming. USMC 1966-1977 Semper Fi!
Clarence, like Clarence in the Movie It’s a Wonderful Life. Did you know that Stewart, the star,
was having terrible fits of PTSD during the filming? I think it comes through. Anyway, Clarence, I hope
you get your wings. I am glad you did not go with your friend or you might have come home with your friend.
Some units losses were simply terrible, but spaced out by the command structure to protect reputations and careers.
Thanks for hanging right in on the story and liking it.
Semper fi,
Jim
Another great story. I have really enjoyed them. Bringing back a few memories I thought were lost forever.
Keep it up James.
It is comments like your own that give me confidence and motivation. Sometimes I wonder if
I’m getting it exactly correct, except for some of the names and slightest of locations.
The feel is there, I think. The fear. The actions that only people looking in from the outside
would see as real heroism. To us it was each other and how to survive each other and that was about
it. It’s not like we ever had a landing on Normandy and then a charge across Europe winning one town, river or
battle after another. The meaning was us. In us. It’s in us now. You…and me.
Semper fi and thank you brother,
Jim
I just found this today, riveting! I just spent 10 hours reading from the the start. You have a splendid way of putting the reader in to a first person view. I joined the US Army in 78 most of my NCO’s were combat vets. I learned many important lessons in leadership from them. I will be waiting for the rest of story.
Thank you for your service.
SFC J
Sgt. Johansen, I sit here in thanks, as I work to get The Ninth Night on paper. It’s uplifting
to read about the opinions of the guys who came after the Nam and went through their own
crucibles of service. Thank you for taking such an intense interest in this story.
It’s most helpful in providing the kind of motivation it takes to keep on trucking along
since I don’t have a big publisher writing checks just off screen or demanding a deadline!
Thanks so much.
Semper fi,
Jim
As primary radio for our recon team I called in arty and air. My last transmission usually ended with “Danger close, danger close!” Time fuse was a no-no because we were usually too close to the impact area. We had 05s within 75 m once, while we cowered in an NVA bunker. Hard on the eardrums! But discouraging to Mr. Charles.
Danger close was a declaration that the battery needed to pay close attention
to the unit’s actual position and the ordnance that the were firing.
I never really understood it because the precise nature of modern artillery
firing has such intimate linkage. How do battery’s pay more attention then
they already are.
Thanks for the comment and your support.
Semper fi,
Jim
In the summer of 1970 when the NVA decided to take back 1 Corp we found a tunnel one the edge of the Ashau, had a 500 lb US bomb wedged in it for reuse by the snappers. I put a c4 charge on it and the whole mountain rocked, eleven secondary explosions we could feel each one as we lay on our bellies. Could hear the NVA digging away before we lit it up. God knows how many d I died in that blast. Strike Force, 101st Airborne.
Wow. I knew they had stuff down there all over. It was part of their success, fighting a war on the surface
while they controlled the world below. We were no good abut going down there or interdicting or discovering
that world. Thanks for you illuminating comment. How easy it would have been to have rounds stored right
under you and then what a mess!
Thank you!
Semper fi,
Jim
respect to all of you !!
Thanks Bill, means a lot to everyone who comes on here and reads what you wrote.
Semper fi,
Jim
James I really appreciate your stories and look forward to your book. Having experienced the Nam really adds the visuals to your story. There are a lot of us who experience our time in hell and don’t talk about it but really open up with fellow veterans . Your writing is excellent and also makes me happy I was a NCO and not an officer. You opened my eyes by showing me the other side of the military structure
I did not start out to demean officer roles in Vietnam.
My own situation was a bit of an aberration I think.
Company grade officers died like flies over there, especially the lieutenant types.
I am glad that this work has brought some veterans back to the table to try to make sense out
of their own service and also use it to show their friends and relatives that they are not as crazy as some might have assumed.
Thanks for the well worded
comment and the reading.
Semper fi
Jim
Jim, another riveting day. Trap doors to tunnels, all of them had a grenade dropped in them. Some our tunnel rat would check out to see if they went anywhere. Most were small, used for staging areas, but some had rooms at each end. After checking them out we blew them to hell with bang galore torpedoes. We spent most of our time around the Cu Chi area. Bravo 2/22 mech. 25th Inf. ’70.
Bangalore torpedos! Cool. I never saw any where I was. In fact, the only place
I’ve seen them at all was in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Better than grenades or
charges of Comp B, I’ll bet. Thanks for the update in how you guys handled things.
I wondered later what it would have been like to drop into a different kind of unit
than the one I drew.
Thanks for the story and the support.
Semper fi,
Jim
Was with 2/3 in 1966, remember the whole company marching twelve hours strait hill 43 area north of Danang, the hump was excruciating and mostly in the dark man did we make noise I believe it was operation alleganie.Totally exhausted when we encountered the enemy early morning could barely pick up my M-14 to fire. My first month in country, in 1967 was in KheSahn CAP3 unit, but that’s another story. Your segment just reminded me how difficult it was humping with seventy pounds of gear and ammo including 60mm mortar rounds in our pack I don’t think anyone but Marines could do it except for the gooks! Read every chapter so far”riveting”
YEs, it is hard to describe that kind of almost absolute fatigue Dick.
OCS was tough and so was the Basic School. I was running nine miles a day
to get ready for the Nam but I neglected the weight I would be carrying. I thought
I was an officer but in combat everyone is a packed donkey because you will need
every damned pound. And the gooks were tough. The French had toughend them and they
were fighting for their own country the way they saw it.
Thanks for the support and understanding because that can only really
come from the guys who were there. Like you. And me.
Semper fi,
Jim
good shit Lt keep it coming [ob] A1/7 Ingo on patrol with you
No doubt be proud to have you at my side.
Luck of the draw back then what with transition and Project 100,000, although some
of those guys who could not read or write turned out to be aces when the shit went down.
If I had it to do all over I’d prefer to have been a non-com and had maybe at least a year
under my belt before I went in.
Thanks for the support and the reading and maybe being out there on patrol with me.
Semper fi,
Jim
Surprised that Capt Mertz was from “The Point” Would have thought he would be out of USNA.
Was in a scout platoon in a Mech Infantry BN late 80’s. We spent time with the Mortar’s. Long story short, in my BDU coat pocket I found a packet of postage stamp sized cheese that was used to boost the range on the mortar round. The mortar guys told me it was comp B. Decided to blow it using a TOW blast simulator. Put the cheese in a 5 gallon bucket with the simulator. The wires were connected by a spool of wire to the leads on a battery charger. Probably should have been further back and damn sure in a less urban area. Did not know a plastic bucket would fly that high. Laid low for a while and played dumb.
Cool story. I came home and landed in San Clemente, Ca after the hospital. I don’t
know how I got hold of a small block of Comp B but it was the 4th of July so I took
it over to an empty lot between the apartment buildings. I had no detonator but I had
an old fashioned cherry bomb. I taped it tightly to the block, lit the fuse and then ran
to the wooden fence and turned around. The explosion blew me through the fence and broke the
windows out of both sets of apartments. I was relatively uninjured. The police let me fix
all the windows and the fence. I didn’t have to ‘play’ dumb!
Thanks for the smiling comment and jogging my own memory.
Semper fi,
Jim
Fantastic
Laconic reply with a big long message. Thank you very much Mac. I know a lot of the guy reading this story are
not writers so I just wander on as if you are! Choctaw, the name on your email address, says a lot. Native Americans are
damned special in regular life and especially in harsh circumstance. Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hooked, subscribed, waiting for the next segment.
You have a gift, and those of us who have been there have the advantage of filling in the sensory blanks. We know the heat, the smells and the sounds.
Your story is compelling and intensely honest. Maximum respect.
I was a draftee and my military career was one year, eleven months and eighteen days; basic, AIT, Vietnam. I separated with Sergeant stripes and two Purple Hearts.
B Battery 2/17 Artillery, LZ Schueller, QL 19 between AnKhe and the Mang Yang pass.
I had somewhat forgotten how good we had it on a small LZ, and your story has renewed a deep respect for those of you in the jungle.
I have more thoughts I’d like to share later.
Keep writing, it’s important and necessary.
DonS
You cannon cockers back there at the fire bases meant just everything to us
in the boonies, if we had anybody capable of calling artillery at all.
It was you and the FDC that made it work so many times when the guys did
not have a Fort Sill trained F.O. with them. I did not realize my own
rarity out there, with a gift for memory and that schooling, in getting some
of us through with your help. And most of us never got to thank or have a
dialogue with you guys. There was little ‘small’ talk on the nets there.
Thank you for the compliment and for the comment yourself. Not a bad writer at all sergeant.
Semper fi,
Jim
Good reading, just came upon these stories a day or so ago. I was further south in the Pleiku area – 4th Inf. Div. on a 105 gun. Made many visits to the “yard” villages, their rice wine was absolutely terrible.
Good God, but I had forgotten about that awful whitish wine they somehow
produced in those mountains. Worst hangover in the world, or so the guys who
drink it would report. I never drank any because I was afraid of being poisoned
or something. The Tiger Piss stuff somehow smuggle in on the lowlands was
pretty awful too. But then, it was all served so damned warm.
Thanks for the memory and the comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Oh my God, I’d almost forgotten about the Montegnard rice wine. I spent a little time with both the Jarai and Banar. They had a big ceramic crock that they would fill with rice stalks, water, and a dead rat in the bottom to help it ferment. They would seal the crock with clay at the top and then bury it for a few months. When they dug it up they would send a kid down to the river bank to bring back a reed to use for a straw. They’d knock the clay cap off, insert the reed, and all the guys would sit in a circle around the crock and pass the reed around. For h’or doerves we would have grasshoppers with the legs pulled off heating on a 55 gallon drum lid on the embers. Kind of like charred peanuts. And the green ‘yard tobacco was so nasty that even a confirmed tobacco addict like I was could hardly stomach it. I loved the Yards, but we ended up screwing them like we did the Hmong in Laos.
Ate those. Went Thailand in the Agency years later and ate them as a snack on the menu.
Good both times but not really acceptable socially back here! The wine made me throw up
and the smell alone might kill a normal human being. Montagnard’s are not human. They are tougher than that.
Semper fi,
Jim
I was thinking the explosive of choice was C 4 not Comp B. Comp B was in grenades and less stable as it aged. Got me watching for the next installment like a crack addict.
Thank you Pete! Composition B was an earlier variant of C-4, which stood for Composition 4, by the way.
C-4 could be molded as it was softer. Not so the older Comp-B. I think C-4 existed in Vietnam too but I only
saw the old Comp B blocks and worked with them. Don’t know why. Back at Pendleton all they had was C-4.
I think C-4 also was around 24,000 fps as opposed to Comp B’s 22,000, a sharper explosion for cutting steel and stuff.
Thanks for the query. I hadn’t thought of that stuff in some time.
Semper fi,
Jim
Near the end of the war, when I was there, C-4 was in plentiful supply. I am hooked on your writing. Thank you for writing this. Semper Fi!
The vets have been writing and apparently what you got for explosives changed a bit from time to time
and also in different areas. The Comp B worked quite well but was pretty hard to shape or fashion, although it
was easy enough to break off chunks to cook C-Rations with.
Thanks for the comment and the reading.
Semper fi,
Jim
All we had was c4. Great for cooking when the heat tabs ran out.
Heat tabs were a poor step-sister to the Comp B we burned. I didn’t know any of the guys
using tabs unless the explosives weren’t around. Different times and different units.
Thanks for the care in commenting and the reading of the story, of course.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim
I was with echo co. 2/9 in 67/68 after a large scale operation up around the DMZ we had captured lots of equipment and personal items from the NVA, i got a hold of tarp like material that the NVA would wear around their body to carry gear, when i opened it up i found some personal items and some rice and what looked like a few round very thin pieces of plastic with hole in it about the size of a doughnut and folded in half. at first i didn’t know what it was but we marines figured it out and what it turned out to be was a c-4 type material that the NVA used to cook their rice/food. I tried cooking some rice in my metal cup but it burned so hot and fast that I burned the rice. anyway I thought it was an ingenious way cooking their food and wondered why we the American troops didn’t have something like that instead of heat tabs. what unit were you with Jim?
We had Composition B, which was a forerunner of Composition 4, or C-4 as it
became known. I never saw the C-4 stuff, at least not as would have been labeled on boxes
and bags. thanks for the background. Comp B was great to heat C-rations.
Thanks for the read and the lengthy informative comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
C-4 was in abundance in 69 & 70 and used for cooking, boiling water, blowing up stuff and molded around a grenade for one of those little holes.
I didn’t know that C-4 would blow up from sympathetic detonation from a grenade.
Interesting thinking and acting. Thanks, although the tip comes a bit late!
Thanks for the informative comment and the read.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thinking back to the little time I spent with any of the “yards” who occupied the central highlands between An Khe and Pleiku. They were considered sub human by the coastal Vietnamese…hill people, fiercely independent, capable of making something useful of anything they could get their hands on. Their sense of honor seemed to be on par with the plains Indians of our country in that they respected a brave enemy, even though they wanted to kill said enemy. Killing a brave enemy was preferable to killing some idiot or wimp……. glad your rto had his shit together!
I had heard the word ‘yards’ used for the Moi. They were unusual to say the least.
When I took up with some Native Americans some of the reason why I held them to be close
true friends, and still do, was the experience i had with their kindred spirits in the Nam and then later on.
I like to think that the one’s who sort of respected me could read my heart, because my mind and emotions were a mess.
Thanks for the comment. Spot on!
Semper fi,
Jim
i wish this was already in book form. The suspense is getting to me real bad.
The first book, The First Ten Days, would be out in print on Amazon later this month.
It’s really hard to learn how to do Kindle and print on demand all by yourself with
only the most inexperienced of help. And then to get the editing spot on. Thank God
some of the veterans reading are helping me along. Please, your criticism and catching stuff
in your reading is very important to me. I don’t have a publishing staff and I don’t think
I would be allowed to get this out if I had one. So you guys are it.
Thanks for wanting the book. As soon as I finished the Tenth Day, which should be this
weekend, at the latest I will work to get out the book as I dive into the the Second Ten Days.
Whew. Sorry to run on about this.
Thanks and Semper fi
Jim
Cant wait for that. Just a young buck but im thoroughly engrossed in this. Thank you and cant wait for more
Well, Devildog, I wonder what the words ‘young buck’ engender these days. I am glad you are Reading and liking
what you read. It’s kind of important to an author like me, especially when the material sits so close to the bone,
so to speak. Thanks and I will endeavor to continue…
Semper fi,
Jim
Happy to be in service to you James Strauss.
Thanks James. Means a helluva lot!!!
Semper fi,
Jim
James, I do editing for a writer friend – check out the “Corps Justice” series by C. G. Cooper.
If ya want yer stuff edited, send to me as an editable document, OR as a numbered line document.
I charge an autographed copy for Vets. Or a free copy from Amazon if it doesn’t get printed.
Editing is a bitch! WordPress converts Word to some other format
and then converting it back is weird. Putting the documents up after writing
them becomes difficult to organize because of writing and saving on different computers.
The real tough part of editing is that so much of it requires my personal time to do
and be frustrated with. Editing is a whole lot more than checking for spelling and grammar.
In fact, some of it is making sure that final documents are not changed back by hidden
and unstoppable programs in the computers themselves or the services themselves.
Semper fi,
Jim
Me three. Good comment on the the pulse fuse. From what videos I’ve watched about arty support in ME, not much of it is being used. Scribble some more words and let’s see how this little chess game plays out!
Mr. Nobody
Thank you Tracy, I am working on Ninth Night right this minute, when I’m
not responding to comments on here or saying something barely intelligent on
Facebook. Thanks for keeping track and playing the chess game along with me.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
Do you have a book or just the stuff here.
Mike
Mike, the Book will be called Thirty Days Has September, The First Ten Days.
It will go off just as soon as I finish the next two segments. Off to Amazon,
that is. We expect to be in hardcover by the end of the month, as well as on Kindle.
thanks for the asking. Keep in touch and we will be announcing it on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
love these stories. I served with 9 th ID in the Delta.
Thanks for replying George. Means a lot to have the support of you guys out here.
I did not expect it, certainly not in the depth and meaningfulness as it has come in
and continued. I shall work to live up to the approval.
Semper fi,
Jim
Did I pick up on just a little respect from the Gunny? More great writing, can’t wait for more.
The Gunny was as twisted a bird as the lieutenant he ‘led.’
What happens, as this story continues, is anything but
normal or predictable until it’s past and then you scratch
your chin and say “hell, of course.” The Gunny and I respected
and feared one another in the oddest of ways, understood only under
the extremes of such outrageous conditions.
Thank you for noting what you noted, as usual Walt!
Semper fi,
Jim
I spent time on fb cunningham and a lot of time in the A Shau Valley
Lyle, do you have any photos of Cunningham? I don’t and although I fought the
A Shau I never made it to Cunningham itself. Thank you for firing on my behalf.
You kept me alive. And the Marines with me.
Semper fi,
Jim
i spent two and a half yrs. in the ashau. 101st.airborne
Good grief Charlie Brown! How in hell did you survive in that pit
for that long? And what were you doing while you did so? Extraordinary.
Thank you for the reading and for commenting at all!
Semper fi,
Jim