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Znk luxci pivlamb lyrk itbs kwtr qc vmklx ngtj, dro spcvaxcv gyx jvyk cgsxqsxq vtcian af max vricp tvyupun euhhch. W ybsk xi jnf Tmpwsr’w zsfvkwl sfv P twnf grkd iwpi ibe yt tlhu. Alex zxcs yp wsccsyx mfi L bnwc Cvjntc sr bnym vgef g meht jwm esp uvk ri oa lieh uz max khyr? Qbun rkn nbef Fdvhb yahq wcb upxbse ftq wnajw cfe myjxekj gifgvi uapcz mywolcns dg ikffehj xifo afugeafy zcly slo hkkt gnxra payz susktzy ilmvyl? Bfx znk wkx ugehdwlwdq kzihg tw dcggsggsr ev l wioluay X dgxp B crtbvu? Reu, cngz htzqi zyccslvi unir jmmv nppbzcyvfurq, sjsb jg bm vxubkj matm se negvyyrel dectvp vorb’h truunm hyhub asapsf ar bcm ueqwvkpi rctva?
S vkhnvaxw ntnvafg iwt mkngd zq uqog buruvdu vgzsxq mkxx tqsfbejoh qwv fgtaj qi. Ftq igpvng lboojo, vzcbffvoyl sgqotm vgfrys xt nooz grzq yplc uif bmfydw yehhk, vkrrn ujapn nbyzvodc ri wkh tomnz jsaf nqqug tfca nby wplgpd. Maxr dbnf paiz gwbuzm, ocmkpi ny jvvd fce…
Thanks for reading this short excerpt from the paid post! Fancy buying it to read all of it?
Hey James,
I’m not an artillery guy, but a velocity of 22,000fps is over 4 miles per second. Does shrapnel from an exploded artillery shell really travel at that velocity??
“Rittenhouse had been carved nearly to pieces by razor sharp shards of sharpened metal traveling at twenty-two thousand feet per second.”
Depending upon the explosive used to drive the charge in the warhead…yes.
It can vary with TNT ‘burning’ at about fifteen thousand.
That’s considered a soft explosive, like diesel fuel and fertilizer.
You use TNT or Fugas when you want to ‘push’ something.
Comp B and C-4 are up in the 22 to 24 thousand ‘burning’ speed.
At the very point of the explosion anything adjacent will be accelerated to
that speed (like shell casings and stuff) and then move through the atmosphere slowing
with resistance to the air or unless striking something.
The smallest fragment traveling close to where the explosion took place can be frightfully damaging.
Had a tiny fragment go right through the metal barrel of an M-16. Just a pinhole but the power was sure there to see.
We carried that rifle around as a souvenir for some time.
Semper fi,
Jim
Lt. I read this segment with both trepidation and suspense. I am not disappointed.
A suggestion if you are open to it. Please consider a publication of your works complete with the associated comments from us your fans. I do not know if you would need releases from each person. But if you do, mine at least would be granted gladly.
God bless you.
Glenn.
Yes, you are correct about that Gleen. We’ve reached out for permission from some of the guys already and will seek more.
The comments are special and the people who write in have been so damned genuine and well spoken. Shockingly so, really.
Thanks for your own permission!
Semper fi,
Jim
Great idea to include comments for others to know that had similar experiences. Great read ,can smell the sticky mud and the humidity that is as close as a tick. Keep them days coming . Thanks
Thank you William. I am not sure what the comments mean but I think they are truly
wonderful and probably better than the book itself! I have read things in these last 5286 comments that have
literally reached in and touched and then changed my way of thinking. It has been a shocking and very different experience
to read, reread and then carefully answer them. Whatever the books may or may not do or sell, it is the comments that will
always remain with me.
Semper fi,
Jim
James-I read this one last Saturday. I was at a conference and started reading during the break. Needless to say, I was late coming back to my conference because I had to read your episode to the end. What a crazy time at that point in A Shau. I just reread it again much slower, can’t wait to buy the book and read the entire story again.
I also enjoy reading all the comments and replies after each one.
Thanks,
The comments are so damned special on here. I try to get the ‘flavor’ of each one
so I can appreciate the experience of others. My own was pretty bizarre, but now not so bizarre as I used to think it was.
Thanks to those of your who read and the comment, just like you…
Semper fi,
Jim
When Casey came back w/his anointed headgear , you used the name Captain CRUSH , rather than Crunch !! Intentionally?? As baby-San would say-“#10,000 GI !! I think he was crazier than a runover dog and that dog be me !! Thanks for all you do & did !!
thanks Tex. Unintentional. Just a technical brain thing with me. Thanks for the help and I will
get right to it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, Amazing writing about the horrors of combat. Read the chapter of Job in the Bible. God never gauranteed an easy passage through life or hell or what ever path you walk, you just have to walk through it to find the other side. Many didn’t make it, your story is riveting. Semper Ubi Sub Ubi, and most of all from an old Army guy! Semper Fi!
Thanks for the tough but very logical words in your comment Al.
I think about those things all the time too. Walking the walk is different back
here but similar when you apply what was learned over there. It simply took many years
to realize that it was an education I was going through instead of simply a hellish purgatory.
Semper fi,
Jim
I thank God that I didn’t have to go over to the Nam! Good Lord Man, you had no one to trust except your native scout. I don’t know where you got the intestinal fortitude to handle yourself but wherever you got it from it made you into a warrior!!! You are a rare breed of soldier. Chaos at every turn yet you kept yourself on the spot of instant retaliation. Don’t Fuck With Junior!!!!
Do not forget that I am writing this and although I am trying to get it right and let
every one know what happened as best I can…I also tend to make myself look a little better, I think,
than I really was. Appreciate the kind words and your support.
Semper fi,
Jim
Somehow your writing has appeared on my facebook page. I’m kinda at a loss as to what is going on. Are posting the story as you write it? How can I read it from the start. I read in one of the comments that someone, maybe it was you, said he wanted to be an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran since they are the real deal. I can just say this about that…I gave up a hell of a long time ago worrying about being the real deal. I was with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade at Duc Pho from Dec 67 to July 69. I do love your writing style.
Yes, I am posting as I write. All the older segments are available at jamesstrauss.com if
you click on Thirty Days Has September button when you get there. The first book should be out in
hardcover and electronic next week on Amazon…
Thanks for bothering to check this out…
Semper fi,
Jim
Come to think about it, this descent that we are talking about, was very much a part of the Vietnam war. Perhaps that was the reason that I responded the way I did. By the way James, the descent we faced when coming home, was from the very same liberal faction that started the descent against that war and it is also the same that we face today!
I want to share something personal that happened to me, when I attended my mother’s funeral in upstate New York, a mecca for flaming liberals and off shoot of the hippie generation.
To briefly set the stage, I was very angry with our government for the way they were handling the Vietnam war and the way they chose to end it. Not only that, those damn liberals had partially taken over our government and had turned a major portion of our population against the troops rather then the government. Our CO’s in the CONUS, had advised us not to wear our uniforms when off base, fearing physical confrontations with the radical long hairs. In other words, we Vets were to be ashamed of our service, rather then to fight the liberal idiots on our streets.
Well it took me twenty-five years to get over that anger and I decided to wear my Vietnam hat in public and yes, even to flaunt it. I wore that hat to my mother’s funeral, this in the early 2000’s. Guess what James, if looks could kill I would have never left that part of N.Y. alive. Do you get the message?
Well, I understand J, and I am sorry that your feelings are so raw about those who support the things
you believe in and also the things you do not. But there comes a time when we try to put it to bed.
I still have trouble looking at Vietnamese women on television, or even Korean. I just go right back
and then have resurface myself. There are so many belief systems out there with so much validity in
perspective. I have to give more merit to those I don’t agree with.
Thank you for making me think of that here.
Semper fi,
Jim
James I know this was a tough one for you ,thank you my friend!From those of us that have our own ghosts we talk to stay strong .
Yes, the last two have been difficult but necessary to the story.
There are some bitter days ahead yet but I think I can work through them
and stay whole and sane. Lots of years to get ready.
Semper fi,
Jim
PS thanks for being here for me…
Damn it. Helluva way to start your day. Rittenhouse certainly paid the ultimate price of being a pawn in a deadly game of chess. His final words add volumes to the depth of the story. As bad as this development is I have a gut feeling it ain’t nothing compared to what comes next. Shit’s about to get serious. Take your time writing Jim. You are the best. Semper fi
I am Waltzing Matilda through that bottom of a deep valley made up of red mud, clean sand
and implacable enemies. thanks for your support and for finding the story worthwhile…
Semper fi,
Jim
LT, as I began following this series, I found that I had a lot to say about each installment. Many memories were evoked and sometimes it was like I was there in the Valley with you. Now I’m more like stunned speechless each time. I wonder if I’m not going back to the ol’ Nam Vet cover up: Don’t mean a thing. But I’ll keep following until there is nothing left to read.
Thanks Andrew, I am hard at it and “it don’t mean nuthin” still means a ton to those of us
who lived it and said it…and still I’ve it and say it…
Thanks for the complimentary comment and your loyalty and interest in the story.
Semper fi,
Jim
This so much reminds me of my Saturday serial shows that always left us ‘cliff hanging’. Next Saturday couldn’t get here fast enough. Find myself checking your webpage several times a day hoping to learn what happened next. Mostly as a former Survival Instructor I am enthralled watching you survive and learn.
As for editing assist: “Just before the fast-moving rapids was a stand of bamboo stalks and a mass of trees that must have served as a small narrow island when the river ran less powerfully on body sides.” Possibly “BOTH” SIDES?
Also Jim, I notice that chapter one of the First Ten Days has 39 shares on FB, This chapter has 481. Great testament to your work Sir.
I thought someone else had spotted this already, ““Corpsman up,” I said, over my shoulder. The captain’s helmet, the one that had created the nickname of Captain Crush for him, had been added to.”” Crush = Crunch? Possibly reword ending to “had additions” or ‘added damage’
Thank you again for your support.
Suggestions noted and corrected.
Smper fi,
Jim
Hell of a track record, the shares, I mean. Yes, come a long way from the start
and had no idea where I was going…hell, still don’t!
Thanks for the support and the comment here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks, as usual SSGT. I need all the help I can get. And thanks for the Saturday Serial compliment.
When I was a kid I just loved that stuff and now I’m the guy writing it.
Amazing. Thank you!!!
Semper fi,
Jim
You are right, this is not a forum for discussion on descent, but you brought up some comments that warranted a response. I will leave it at that.
J, I hope you understand the message in my last comment. I do not necessarily disagree with
you. It is more a matter of the nuance of details in the discussion. There’s a lot of emotion laying
there like the sand at the bottom of the Bong Song. Never goes away, just moves around.
Thanks for commenting on the site and thank you sincerely for understanding.
Semepr fi,
Jim
Agree, but as you say, those feelings run deeply and will continue to do so as long as rebels continue to try to overthrow our Republic. We have a lot of political problems with our form of government but then, so do all other forms of manmade governments. When comparing ours to that of the rest of the nations, we have got one of the best.
Too true J, and I’m a patriot from beginning to end.
These battles among men to survive the most with the best have
been going on forever. Thanks for the straight from the shoulder stuff you
write on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
James.,
I don’t read a lot of Nam stories, but your story and your writings has me hooked. I wait patiently for your next chapter. Then I reread your past chapters. I served in Nam in 1968-69 in the army. Just a spc-4 draftee and was in logistics up at An Khe for 5 months and Bong Son for 7 months. We all have our own stories and ghosts. It is all yesterday.
For me I hid from it for years. No one wanted to hear anything anyway.
Thank you for telling your story.
I returned to Vietnam by myself last year and ventured around up around Quy Nhon and made it up to Bong Son where I had been in 1969. It had all changed, but when I stood down by the Bong Son River and closed my eyes I could see it all just like it was.
I was not in the bush, just logistics. We still had our crap. Friends died and bad things happened. When I returned home I realized the Nam had become my home without me knowing it. I wasn’t welcome back here.
Thanks again for sharing your story and insights in your other writings.
Hal
The Bong Song. Misnamed, of course, but what wasn’t to and buy us when we were there?
To know it’s the Bong Song was to have been there for certain. I’ve wondered what it would be like
to stand by that river again…like you, with my eyes closed. I’ve wondered just how welcome I’d be back there too.
It’s so hard to imagine that the Vietnamese would really want to welcome somebody like me back. But I’ve heard of
reconciliations among the Japanese, Germans and guys from WWII on our side. I never walked among the Montagnards so I know
nothing of their village life. Only Nguyen, who was so fucking impressive as a human being.
Tbanks for picking my story to take to and then to tell some of your own right here.
None of us were really welcome back here. Hell, we’re still mostly not welcome at the VA. I want to be a Desert Storm
or Afghan veteran. They are considered the real deal today. Which is okay. I don’t go there anyway.
thanks, my friend.
You are always welcome here.
Semper fi,
Jim
A song came to mind during Rittenhouse’s last minutes, “Ain’t No Sunshine” Bill Withers. He said he didn’t mean it and you replied “I know, I know”, Bill repeats that phrase 27 times in the song, the same amount of breaths Rittenhouse had left in him.
Thank you for sharing the thought and song, Thomas
Semper fi,
Jim
I remember that song from years ago in high school. I had an architect/engineering drafting teacher by the name of Mr. Edwards. He apparently had been in the army and at the end of every school year he would make us all watch the French Documentary “The Anderson Platoon” so that the seniors would have an idea of how the combat world worked. He never made any political commentary so I never had any idea if he was trying to recruit or deter would be enlistees! Anyways if I remember right one of the platoon members is shown singing that song while being flown out of an LZ at the end of a mission. It’s been 30+ years ago but I remember it as being quite eerie as they fly off at dusk.
I saw the Anderson Platoon. Didn’t really understand it but the feel was all there.
The looks, the misery of dirt and crud everywhere. Thanks for reminding me.
It was an eerie scene, like most of the muss was over there…although sometimes it was
light and entertaining if conditions were just right. And home, of course.
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow. So many questions (and thoughts) swirling in your head about the immediate past, the present and the immediate future. Powerful writing, LT. I was wondering at the end of the last episode if the LZ upriver was close enough to the river that the floodwaters might have taken it out. I am reading another book about Vietnam war (not nearly as good as your writings) and specifically read the portions dealing with the A Shau and military actions. Every one of the engagements mentioned there spoke of air support that was called in. That often resulted in a sad recounting of the number of U.S. casualties caused by friendly air fire that happens in the confusion and fog of an hot engagement with troops on both sides in movement. Am surprised that no air support was brought in to help you guys yet when faced with a much larger force of determined enemy massed against you. Of course probably every engaged unit was trying to call in air and they cannot be everywhere all the time…But if the brass sent your unit in there, they sure as hell should have some help ready to fly in to tip the scales your way. Except for ground directed but heaven sent artillery (from just one artillery battery), I am amazed that you guys were so “on your own”. Thank you for sharing what it was really like there…God Bless.
Air support is weather and time dependent. Daytime and clean clear air are the basic
requirements. Then there’s the type of air. F-4s and the fighter bombers missed more than hit.
B-52s were scary but too far away to do much good. Naval gun fire was simply scary and you needed a Navy
F.O. to call it in. Mostly, the Marines were scared shitless of air and artillery. My art and science applications to calling
artillery kept me alive more with my men then the enemy. Good accurate air and artillery support was uncommon.
Air did not talk to the ground a whole lot either, unless it was a SkyRaider or Puff or one of those great Intruders.
Thanks for the comment and your deep reading of the story.
Semper fi
Jim
Jim…such excellent writing again…didn’t see a lot of that coming…can’t see how Casey and Pilson came away without a scratch but I have a feeling there is more to that story too…and giving Rittenhouse the morphine…that’s the thing most people don’t understand about command…you have to live with decisions that you make that take lives, whether intentional or not…you were a hero whether you realize it or not…I have a 94 year old WWII vet friend that received 2 bronze stars, a silver star, and a medal of valor, but he summed it up pretty well when he said “we were all scared as hell during combat…the only difference between a hero and a coward is which direction you run…I just ran the right way a few times”…his humility always struck me but what he said he true…and your writing is bringing some of that experience into the light from the dark shadows where it has lurked for too long…I didn’t mean to ramble here and like the man said last segment…you could write this with a crayon on a brown paper bag and people would read it by candlelight if they had to…you truly have a gift…
Yes, the crayon quote. That guy was writing something from the heart and the compliment is huge.
Maybe too huge since I wonder when I finish a segment whether it is good enough now. I have to write on though because I could get involved
editing forever. Courage is learned behavior. It’s not innate or genetic. When born, babies fear only two things straight from the womb.
They fear falling and they fear snakes. That’s it. That also means that snakes were once much more of a threat to our survival than they are today.
All the other things about life we learn. We have to have a reason to demonstrate courage. It is always right to flee…unless there is something that’s more
important to stand for. Growing those more important things is how we live….and combat is nothing we’ve experienced before and totally foreign to the rest of the human
condition. Ergo, when that door slams down on the jungle mud and that guy says “welcome to the Nam,” you start learning. Whether you end up exhibiting courage or not
is determinant on living long enough and then deciding what is important enough.
Thanks for the interesting comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Twenty seven breaths. Numbered breaths reminds me of things I mostly try to forget. Great passage, it was real.