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Thanks for reading this short excerpt from the paid post! Fancy buying it to read all of it?
When this is published It should be with the comments at the end of each chapter. This just proves that those heros who didn’t survive their time in hell are still remembered.
When the book comes out count me in to buy several.
The commets by veterans and readers have changed my life. Quite literally.
I no longer feel alone and I no longer feel that I did such a terrible job.
I took all the deaths later as being mostly my fault, as arrogant as that sounds.
The comments on here have made me understand truly that I was just a kid
with little real training sent into an impossible situation.
It wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t even the fault of many of the decision makers.
Stuff in the universe happens and you can find yourself on the short end of it real suddenly
and real quickly and it doesn’t have to be your fault at all.
But we humans are a responsible lot, most of us, and we take it on our shoulders. I did.
I have ‘dropped my pack’ a whole lot because of what has been said on here
and no matter what happens with the books I will be beholden to the vets who’ve written
in order for me to have this part of my life set free….in a way.
And the guys I have carried with me through the years will always be there but they’ve grown silent.
I appreciate that silence and I thank you people on here for that unspoken and mostly unknown gift.
Semper fi,
Jim
JIm, just these 2 things or maybe 3. Welcome Hime, Dave.
“He’ll probably buy anything that gets him out () here and down to that old landing zone,” => (of)
“Out of where? I asked, momentarily stunned. “To get a medal?” => need trailing double quote on “Out of where?
“I’ll go have a word with our war hero. Get some rest. We’ll be running to daylight before you know it.” => don’t know if you want to capitalize running to daylight asa plan name. probably not.
Jim, I misspelled Welcome Home. Sorry. Also, this episode doesn’t have the pointers to the next chapter. Several other chapters don’t have them either. There was at least one previous chapter that pointed to itself. These pointers are very helpful to new readers. Dave.
Got it Dave, and thanks ever so much,
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks Dave, as usual, for really working through this for me. Chuck is all over this right now…
Semper fi,
Jim
Again much appreciated.
Corrected
Semper fi, Jim
You’ve mentioned several times that the Gunney was Hispanic but this image I have of him, looking and talking like Sam Elliot, is very persistent.
Actually he looked a lot like Antonio Banderas but darker in complexion and not quite as bulky of build.
The Gunny as about five eleven in height.
That’s the best I can do, although I love Sam Elliot in the role!
Semper fi,
Jim
Who witnessed the Capts heroics and signed his name to it? The Scribe I bet, just silent sneaky shits. Want out of the bush Rittenhouse, I’ll get you out of this shit.
Doesn’t explain why he’d frag you unless he was seriously afraid of you, he caught you flipping the safety in a meeting with the Capt and Jurgens. Doesn’t explain why he’d risk everyone fragging the FO. But he’s a sneaky shit like most house mouses, but that’s a ballsy move from description was afraid of everything.
Fear. The huge motivator almost always lied about.
Make people do the most bizarre of things and not very often with
a lot of rationality.
Thanks for your comment and for the support by writing it here…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, you’re mainlining right to the brain releasing those long ago locked up memories like a numbing euphoric junky giving in to the habit. You’re hitting home with us because we’ve wanted someone all along to understand what we experienced. I’ve tried to reach out to my son so he could understand a little what might have made me a little difficult to understand. I dropped hints,but he never wanted to hear. My other dauthers don’t have much to do with me since I’m not with their mother, it hurts. You’ve had to walk the walk to appreciate your story which is us who been there but in different forms. Your story is like a needle in my mind’s vein being able to feel that old feeling again. You got to know how theroputic your work is for us. Yea, you’re a Nam vet, they say. Get over it, they say. They just don’t know. Do they? Great story. Thanks for sharing your locked up memories.
If I can be of help…wow.
I had no idea that so many of us were out there and having difficulties
talking about any of it back in the real world. I thought it was just me.
And trying to tell other regular guys about any of it…
they would get so damned uncomfortable and I’d just keep on blathering on once I’d started.
A good way not to lose friends but not have them want to hang around you.
So here comes this story and many can just point at it and have
someone read it and say “see!” “It wasn’t a pack of lies or macho bullshit or a need for sympathy.”
“Here’s this guy and he says it the way it was for me too…”
And back here in the world…it’s still high threat but not in the same in your face way.
It’s for all the marbles but everything is disguised….like the villagers and civilians were.
Back here you have to make believe but it’s just as seriously terminal. And we didn’t know that when we went.
We found it to be true when we came back and thought it was us. But no, it’s the human condition.
It is that filled with fear. It is that selfish.
It is that tribal or you’re out in the cold and soon dead. And now knowing didn’t make us ‘better’ survivors.
It merely made us ‘aware’ survivors.
But, even so, the survival in America especially today is one of grand comfort
from the elements and from physical harm, as long as you can keep the elements of violence
which we so well sharpened in combat away from every day life or reaction.
Interesting times…
Semper fi,
Jim
Still can’t get the vision of seeing Puff work out and the gooks crawling toward me in the mud when the flairs went up out of my head. But I am following along. Good job Sir.
It was might rare to actually see the enemy in the Nam, unless it was after action and they were dead.
I saw some but almost all as dark moving shapes and not like real people at all…
Thanks for the comment and the support…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I knew the shit was bad from what little I could glean from my Brother and Brother-in-law who were in MC riffle companies there in 68/69. They just could not or would put it into words just how bad it was.
Your writing and telling of your story is superb and I wish you the best of luck with your book.
Sherm
Well, Sherm, I am hoping to allow some of the people who did not serve over
there to come to terms with those who did by revealing the depth of the emotion
and bitter circumstance that has made them different from regular people.
Thanks for reading along and commenting here…
Semper fi,
Jim
Embracing the SUCK….. After I heard that from a Marine so long ago, I found it applied to the Army just as well….. Yes, Leeches in Vietnam, I remember one time sitting on a PZ waiting on the monsoon to break to continue lifts out to a new FSB the ARVN had opened up, Sitting in the side of the slick watching the rain sluice down, and seeing a strange thing across the ground in front of me, Looked like grass growing out of the ground little wiggle greenish things, rising up above the water, I watch it for a while, as the rain slowed to a drizzle, I step down to look at what was growing up out of the ground…… Thousands and thousands of leeches…… The shock of seeing that was not pretty, I only ever had a few lock onto me, But God you grunts had a living hell to deal with…. Yes embracing the suck….. Semper fi. Jim, keep up the great work, It is helping me find and deal with some thing 44+ years old, Different hells same war. Bob.
Thanks Robert, for your usual penetrating and stirring comment.
The leeches were damned hard to love, as the Gunny put it. I don’t know
how he managed that ‘love’ so well because I never saw the man with a leech attached to him.
Hmmmm. Thanks for the interest in the story and your frequent take on it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Strange, but the leeches never bothered me–not even once. One team member got a small one in his pee hole. Luckily we were near an SF base camp and an Army medic fixed him up. We got inside the wire right at dark and they provided a dry poncho liner for each of us, plus hot chocolate and something hot to eat. Before first light we were back outside the wire. The SF guys offered us ponchos but we declined. We did accept a couple cans each of C-rations. The whole night had the same pounding rain that we’d had for the whole previous day, the day before and the day before. But Recon didn’t need ponchos–according to the gunny. Who was back in a dry hooch with dry socks. Recon needed bullets, bandages and beans. You could throw a can of C-rations, but a grenade is better. The bitch was that the gunny was right. Extended for three more days of cold, wet and hungry, eyes peeled for Charles, praying not to see him.
I don’t know where you were in country Tom, but the leeches were in almost every area I operated in,
“Go Not” Island and the A Shau were loaded with them. Maybe it was different at different times of the years too.
So many little wars in the big war. And you sound tough and your unit too Tom. I wasn’t that tough.
I suffered a lot and I must admit that for the most part I was miserable.
Maybe my best moments were calling artillery or coming up with one of my whacked out plans to continue
but eating, shitting, enduring, carrying, sleeping and being wet and leech hurt with foot rot…
well, those things I had to somehow get by with and I somehow did.
I did like squatting by the side of the paddy, river or wherever to have coffee
with the Gunny and I liked some times I could spend with my scout team and RTO but man,
that other stuff unending was pure shit.
You handled that better, but then you recon guys were the cream of the crop.
I don’t think I ever threw a can of C-Rations. We buried ours.
Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading the story and being kind in your comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you so much for writing this. As I look back on my own experiences and those of my family who served in the Pacific during WWII I have come to the thought that it takes many years after the experience to be able to look back and talk about what you went through. Those old WWII guys didn’t talk at all for many years, it was only as they began to hit middle age or older before they would ever talk about the experience. I was in the army ’66-’68 and on, now able to talk about the things I saw and did back then. God bless for what you are doing – this is a great work you are doing. God Bless and to use the marine term Semper Fi.
Thanks a million Hal. I’m not sure about what I’m doing here. This started out as the story of my time in the Nam but has
morphed into something else because of the quantity and quality of the commentary…some of which you have added right here with
your own comment. Go happy you like the story and you think this whole thing has merit.
Semper fi,
Jim
I seen that award coming…..I did however discount you needing him.
People are strange when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down
When you’re strange faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange no one remembers your name
When you’re strange, when you’re strange
When you’re strange
The Doors
Now those are some great lyrics and so applicable to so much in a war zone.
Thanks for that and for commenting here…as usual, Brad…
Semper fi,
Jim
Found this…..
Enthralling web as always…
Edit when removing the leaches….”two or there” when you meant three…..
Thanks Paul, for the help…
And the reading….and the commenting here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Why do I see a problem for Rittenhause?
Gee, might that be your giant fucking I.Q.?
Semper fi,
JIm
Soon as we heard Jurgens didn’t do it I immediately thought of Rittenhouse.
Hmmmm. Real life. Stranger than fiction…
Stay tuned.
Semper fi,
Jim
LOL… No all of a sudden when Gunny said it wasn’t Jerguns, I remember the little confab in the Casey’s tent, and what you said about Rittenhause….. and the fact that almost every company clerk I have ever known has been a weasel…… You and what you said would have scared him shitless….. I am willing to bet His weapon has never been fired….. Bob
You guys are all sleuths and you are reading this too closely for comfort!
Semper fi,
Jim
It can’t be Sugar Daddy. Please don’t tell me it’s Gunny! Of course it could be Jurgens and the Gunny is simply lying to allow Jurgens to continue to operate for the good of the company.
Interesting where you are going with this thought process…
The next segment…
Semper fi,
Jim
The list of suspects is dwindling. Three could be two I hope to God not.
Interesting dilemma, this one. With death everywhere and coming out of nowhere why
is such a death dealing attempt even bothered with…other than it is always hard to accept
death from within…
Semper fi,
Jim
Starting to think your book could be titled “30 days of Eternity” Realization that ‘WE’ are only in our 12th night in country for the experiences you’ve had boggles my mind. Steep learning curve indeed. Thank you for letting us be a part of your world.
Yes, the college degree of Vietnam delivered in a month of intense education if you live.
I have lain the story down as best I could for the past five months. I didn’t think it would
take that long but some of the story details don’t tell things without difficulty to the reader….
and maybe me later on!
Thanks for liking the story and commenting here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Lt.
You must spend more time answering replies than writing; which adds immeasurably to the value of what you are writing. We all long for that recognition that we’ve been denied. You remind me how very, very much I hate having to be out in the rain and drenched to the bone. I know mud, Armor stirs up a lot of mud! Someone mentioned night ambushes; I always worried “They” could hear the rain hitting the ponchos, it made a different sound. Your writings brings back memories tucked away for 45 years. It validates to an extent that which we all share. I will be very surprised if I’m wrong who tossed the grenade and why. Is it proper for an Army puke to say Semper Fi? roy
Actually, responding to comments doesn’t take me as long as you might think.
I type awfully fast because I’ve done so much of it over the years.
It’s like talking to me, this sort of writing.
I just blather on and don’t spend much time at all in edit
or final edit or any of the things I have to do procedurally to get a segment on the site
and up with graphic art and all the rest of it.
Here I can just write away about whatever it is that someone has written in.
Thanks for being so deeply involved in the story and remember what I’ve written about the Army.
That outfit has always been one that worked very well with any
Marine unit I was attached to.
So, you may use our honorific anytime you feel the need…
Semper fi,
Jim
PS That took two minutes and forty seconds from beginning to end and yes, you are worth it.
“He’ll probably buy anything that gets him out here and down to that old landing zone,” ( perhaps “out of here” )
Seems like Gunny is finding a fellow Marine in you.
Hell, I was sure trying but the definition of “Marine” was doing a shapeshifting thing for
sure while I was there and trying to adjust to such outrageous conditions.
Semper fi,
Jim
Great Job! I will try hard to distract myself for the next couple of days, because I want more now!
Thanks for the compliment Dave. I am not it as best I can right now after responding to a few of the comments.
I will answer the rest of your comment at a later date…
Semper fi,
Jim
Your description of the rainy jungle made me really feel, for the first time, what my dad went through on Bougainville. He still suffered with immersion foot 73 years after suffering through that campaign in 1943. He was never able to talk about what he went through, so I appreciate your writing of it.
The island campaign in WWII must have been a lot like Vietnam.
Ferocious enemy with no quarter or prisoners and the brutal jungle
crap to put up with. Thanks for the comment and the compliment…
Semper fi,
Jim
Well that sure took me by surprise….Jurgens didn’t throw the grenade. Only others in the area mentioned are Casey, Gunny, Pilson, and Fusner. I think its easy to eliminate three of the four, but can’t see the a reason for the fourth. Ritterhouse was also probably close since Casey and the Gunny were there….but why would he. Oh well, just gotta wait and see what happens…..good job, Jim.
Thanks Joe for the speculation. Read on, the mystery will lay itself out right in front of you,
and the rest of us, as it did then…
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you James for what you are doing. I know that it will help others as it is helping you. Keep up the good work. Semper Fi!
I am on it this very night in the rain, just like in the book but I’m inside and it’s warm and
I’ve got a cat next to me that doesn’t weigh eight hundred pounds and upset that I’m in his space!
Thanks for the attaboy….
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey Strauss,
The University of Iowa has, for 50 years or more, offered an 8 week “Writers Workshop”. Cathy always wanted me to sign up for it, but I never did. I was afraid of embarrassing myself. As it now turns out, I didn’t miss anything. From the very first episode of 39DHS, I have been learning what real writing is all about. Your ability to express in words and phrases the mind numbing, gut wrenching, heart aching memories of 50 years ago is a veritable “workshop”. And as the episodes kept coming, the comments coming unbidden, unwillingly, and painfully from your expanding reader base who have dredged up their own scab encrusted memories has improved the whole by a factor of 10. And, still, you send REAL replies to all of those hundreds of commenters. I have a little more faith in the publishing world than you do, apparently. Even a dolt, given the opportunity to read ONLY the comments, would know that you have struck a vein (hell, maybe even an artery) of literature than needs an outlet. Yeah, I know, it’s always about the money, but numbers equals money, and I’ll bet there’s nothing being digitally serialized out there right now that can compare to what you’ve got going.
Run for Daylight!
SF/PFJ
Never took a writing course John, like you.
Started with writing amateur plays for kids to perform in the neighborhood when I was a wee tyke.
Then letters, like the many I wrote home during my stay in the Nam and then the hospitals.
Then short stories. Then real screen plays and on to novels and a newspaper. I write a lot.
I especially enjoy the way in which dialogue intertwines with the expository
and the action sequences. Real life is like that and we don’t notice so much.
What has happened here is a mighty accident, as accidents go.
I had not clue that my 1970s manuscript would receive any care at all
or whether anyone would care about a luckless second lieutenant’s miserable story
about simply trying to make it to another birthday and out to anywhere but that valley
and that country and that war.
But you are right.
Here we are, wherever that may really be.
I am getting out the first book while continuing the second with a new
segment every few days.
I’m told by experts that putting the books out serially for free is a mistake and likely
to limit sales of the priced hard cover and electronic books for the future.
My lack of care about that is also driving the story. There are guys and gals reading this that don’t have a dime
and so it will continue to be free until I am done and then it’ll remain here
for free as long as this site stays an internet site.
What I’ve got going is a lot of motivation to continue and it’s not driven by one penny of anything
but the comments here and the popularity in reviewing the analytics every day
(today, before midnight, about seven thousand people will read the work I put up earlier).
Whom would have thought when I started writing five months back?
For sure it wasn’t me. What will happen in the future? Hell, I don’t know. I’m not even really here.
I’m up on that hillside this night and detailing how in the hell we got off the place I got us
onto in that downpour and under fire.
Thanks doesn’t describe my response to your interest and you continuing care.
And you write pretty damned well for not taking any classes, John!
Semper fi,
Jim
I for one plan to buy the book just as a way for saying “Thanks” for writing the story, and for responding to the comments which are just as therapeutic as the story I really appreciate your attitude that many reading may not be able to pay for it, and here it is free to them. I think it has connected all of us in a way that we have been searching for since coming home and even extends to those to didn’t or couldn’t go, or did not endure the danger and hardships you did, and does so with no accusations or judgement. I have never had any big desire to visit Wisconsin, but seriously considering a late summer trip just in the hope of getting to buy you lunch. Semper Fi
Well, Joe, you would be most welcome here, and that’s for sure.
Thank you for that very generous compliment about the therapy thing. I’m not credentialed in any of that
but I have sort of ‘been there’ and come to understand a good deal about the effects on me other survivors and
then all those touched by the war or the people who went there.
Seems simple and logical enough…although the details are intensely important.
The story is personal and I think the comments here are personal because of that fact….
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow! 7000 followers. I think a conservative number. Read comments everyday. Looking forward to first book. Thanks
Thanks Dave, it should be coming out damned soon. All the details. I have to approve the
final final final cover and spine and back on Wednesday and then that should be it.
Whew. Harder than it might seem to go from writing on here to an actual physical book.
Thanks for waiting and for caring enough to write about it on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Not Juergens?
Holy cow, another twist in the road !
Another great read, James, and as usual, can’t wait for more !!