I examined the great stone wall, the wall that rose up from the bottom of the valley for a full thousand feet, vertically rising without big enough cracks, hand-holds or other features to allow it to be climbed without serious mountaineering equipment. The 175’s had...
Journaling the Coronavirus (COVID19) Pandemic, Reflection #38 April 20, 2020 When I was in Vietnam, fighting down in the A Shau Valley, the North Vietnamese Army installed drums along the top edges of the cliff complex up above both sides of the valley, which was less...
I lay in the muck of oozing mud seeping slowly up through the packed, cracked, and broken debris of jungle and aging decay. The smell was of the damaged sort I’d come to know as my home away from home down inside the A Shau Valley expanse. I wondered if the smell...
Whole Man and his A-6 Intruder were gone, and the jungle below was silent, as well as the drums mounted on what was left of the upper lip of the cliff. The lack of the mind-numbing drumbeats was balanced by the emptiness I felt over losing what air support we’d had...
The six of us moved on our bellies, out toward the jumbled remains in the killing field of the mudflat, as one, without any signal. The ability of Marines in combat to need a whole lot fewer signals and orders than the guys doing all the training back home thought...