I holstered Tex’s Colt .45 automatic that I had used half my canteen water to boil clean earlier. I had no oil but I knew there had to be some kept by others in the company I could get later. The Colt would operate just fine with no oil at all but only as long as it remained clean, which wouldn’t be for long if the last twenty days and nights were an example.
The brush was thick and wedged well back into the cleft but, working with Fusner and Zippo, while Nguyen faced outward to watch for trouble, it took less than twenty minutes to clear a space where we could all lay down our poncho covers and get through the night. The rain had lessened somewhat but, since it was monsoon season, the rain was never going to leave entirely, for at least the remainder of the month. I’d seen to the wounded and the dead. Morphine had made the visits not quite so agonizing, as the pain from the burns of white phosphorus were dulled to the point where those Marines that had them just breathed so slow and deep it seemed they were as lifeless as the dead.
Real help and relief would have to wait until the morning, when the sounds of helicopters, and the simple fact that there was no other convenient time to fly resupply and pick up the casualties, would mean that the enemy would be waiting. My refusal to proceed back down the valley and face almost certain annihilation would not go down well back at battalion, I knew, but I didn’t care. What were they going to do? Send me out to a worse unit or field of combat?
I took off my helmet and rummaged inside my pack and found a can of ham and mothers. I had to eat, I had to drink, and I had to get some light to set up the night defensive fires before arranging combined artillery and air support to cover what had to be coming in with first light. I ate from the grease-filled can with gusto, tipping it and waiting for the mess to slide into my mouth, not bothering to find and break out my little set of utensils. When I was done I wanted a drink but didn’t want to use my slippery hands to get my canteen out. Then, an idea came into my head. I carefully worked the flap holding the Colt into my holster.
With two fingers, I pulled the weapon free, dangling it in the dark in front of me, before grasping it firmly and then rubbing every exposed piece of its metal surface with both of my greasy hands. I worked with a slight smile. The smell would attract bugs, maybe even leeches if the leeches had as little taste as I did, but the action would be smoother, at least for awhile, and I lived only from one ‘awhile’ to another.
With the pork-lubricated Colt secured back in its holster, and with only the sounds of the rushing water from the nearby river penetrating the brush in front of our cleft, I pulled out my stationery from the plastic bag I kept in my right front thigh sewn pocket. I rummaged about but could not find my flashlight or my binoculars in the complete darkness. For some reason, I didn’t want to tell Fusner, or any of them, that I’d misplaced some of my gear. I knew the lack of sleep, and the intensity of what we’d been going through, had to be affecting my mind in strange ways. A shiver of fear went through my body at the thought of losing my mind or my memory, however.
My memory was keeping me alive, along with being able to create strange and unexpected plans and moves that had to be keeping the NVA from wiping us out. My wife would have to wait. My brain felt like a sponge anyway, and I wasn’t at all sure that I could conjure up a bunch more lies to make it all seem like I was okay.
I drank the other half of my canteen water down without stopping. It wasn’t enough to slake my thirst but I wasn’t at all sorry that I’d used half of it to clean the Colt. I pushed back into the very back of the cleft, half my body able to jam itself into the crack where the cliff wall encountered the hard rock plane of the grounds level surface. I wondered if I could sleep, knowing that I didn’t know when I slept anymore. Reality would fade and then come back with none of the relief or comfort, or even vague sleepiness I used to feel upon waking that I’d experienced back home. At times of seeming rest, I was there, not there, and then there again. I worried some more about how that might be the way I would sleep for the rest of my life if I somehow made it back home.
My left side was jammed into the crease and my eyes were closed for only seconds, I knew, before the sounds of bodies approaching caused my right hand to automatically unsnap the flap of my holster. I didn’t get a chance to crawl out of my space before I felt the presence of several men arriving and stopping only inches from me. I couldn’t see anything in the dark. Fear crawled across the surface of my skin like cobwebs being dragged by giant spiders. I knew if I took my hand off the Colt’s handle that it’d be shaking again, so I didn’t move.
“Junior,” Jurgens whispered.
I didn’t respond verbally, only breathing in and out heavily. I waited.
“It’s Sugar Daddy and me,” Jurgens continued. “We think you saved the Gunny from getting killed and, well, we wanted to say thanks for that.”
I wondered if I should laugh at the idea that I was saving anyone but myself but kept breathing in and out deeply in silence instead, wishing I had one of the Gunny’s cigarettes.
“He’s coming,” Jurgens whispered, like we’d shared some confidential conversation and should be afraid someone coming might find out.
I eased myself out from the crack so I could sit up. I heard the sound of ruffling poncho rubber in front of me before I was blinded by the light. I blinked rapidly, trying to recover.
“Your flashlight, sir,” Fusner said.
I noticed that I was sitting up inside a roughly thrown together tent. Fusner and Zippo had no doubt, created it with a couple of poncho covers while I was lost in whatever reverie passed for napping in the A Shau. The Gunny slid under the side facing outward. I grasped the flashlight with most of my left hand over the lens, to hold down the brightness. At least I had that instrument to plan the night defensive fires I’d been about to blow off from fatigue and the effect of the ham and mothers hitting my system like a ton of bricks. One more mistake and we’d all be dead, just like my Marines who’d been standing in or laying in the wrong place when the cliff and Willy Peter had come plunging down.
Jurgens and Sugar Daddy surged in again behind the Gunny but hung a few feet back. The three men lay on their stomachs, elbows extended to keep their heads up, as they faced me.
“We can’t stay here and we can’t head up the valley north,” the Gunny said, taking out a cigarette slowly and getting ready to light it. He spoke with a casual tone, almost as if he was talking only to himself. “So, we can’t go down river. You were damned straight about that. If we stay here, what’s to stop those assholes from coming out of the caves and tunnels they’ve got to have drilled all through this wall we’re up against?”
The Gunny blew smoke out his now lit cigarette, and a layer of it immediately began accumulating just under the top of our ‘tent.’ I liked the aroma. My wife was my idyllic home back in the world, and the Gunny and his cigarettes were my dysfunctional form of ‘home’ in the valley.
“Nope,” I responded to his tunneling question, wanting a drag from his cigarette but not going to ask.
I pulled out my map of the area and unfolded it. I pointed down at Hill 975 with the flashlight. With my other hand, I pointed at our position well up the flank from the tip of the hill.
“The hill’s not a hill at all as you know. It’s a finger of commanding high ground that juts out, looking over the river and down the valley to where the airstrip is. The end of that finger of land is tunneled through because it controls all cover and concealment in this part of the valley, and it’s composed mostly of mud and loose rocks, as you’ll recall.”
I tapped my flashlight on the top of our poncho cover tent. The metal cracked harshly against the hard surface above.
“That’s solid rock. No tunnels. Not even spider holes. And there’s no need for them, anyway. No one would pick this place to stop and make a stand for any other reason than the one we have.”
The Gunny held out his cigarette as if rewarding me for the explanation I’d provided. I took it gratefully with my left hand, still holding the flashlight with my right.
“What’s the reason we have?” Jurgens asked, as I puffed on the cigarette.
“What the Gunny said,” Sugar Daddy replied, his tone one of near derision.
“We’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“We’ve got another problem,” the Gunny said, accepting the cigarette back from me.
I waited. It seemed that the company was always in the same situation, with only the weather and geography being different. We had nowhere to go that would let us stay alive, and we always seemed to have ‘another problem.’ I knew the Gunny had waited to bring the new problem up until he could find some plan to get through the night. I also knew that he’d accepted my plan of staying where we were, which was more of a relief to me than I’d realized. I could not go directly against the Gunny, and he was damned hard to convince about doing anything I came up with.
I thought he was going to bring up the obvious fact that, even with our supporting fires being maximized and air likely to show up just after dawn, the medevacs flying up to the top of the hill and down near our location, along with resupply, we were going to be a nearly impossible mess to coordinate and also to provide protection for.
The Gunny looked at me directly for the first time, taking a long drag on his cigarette, before speaking.
“They want to insert a Lurp team on top of the hill to get their bodies out.”
A Lurp (LRRP) team. A Lurp team was the Army version of Marine Force Reconnaissance. An elite Army force of company size. The word stood for Long
Range Reconnaissance Patrol.
I breathed out a sigh of relief. I’d been frightened of being sent back up to the top of what I considered a hill of death. My relief was short-lived, however.
“They want the team to supervise the evacuation but then stay to occupy the top of the hill,” the Gunny said, his voice going so soft I almost couldn’t hear it.
“Ha!” Jurgens said, overly loud, before settling down. “The Army wants to do the job the Marine Corps failed at, and they probably want to do it with less men. Idiots.”
The Gunny looked at me again, his dark eyes unblinking. I knew there was more, and that I wasn’t going to like it.
“They’ll let them take the bodies out,” he said. “The NVA isn’t stupid. They know we want that hill. When the choppers leave it’ll happen all over again. They’ll come out of those holes and tunnels and that’ll be it.”
“So, it’ll be just like before,” Sugar Daddy said, his tone more one of a question than of restating the Gunny’s conclusion.
“And we’ll be ordered to go up there and find out what happened when they don’t respond,” Jurgens replied, “because we’re the only ones here.”
“So, what do we do?” he finally asked.
“We do our job,” the Gunny said, his voice going hard. We convince battalion to get the Army to send the smallest force possible. We convince them that we cleared the hill before we came down. We tell them we’re remaining in position to help secure the hill and we’ll back up the Lurp team. They’ll believe us because they have nobody else.”
“Just how in hell does having a smaller Army force up there help us?” Jurgens asked, before going on. “Isn’t it the more the merrier down in this shitty hot wet hell?”
The Gunny stared into my eyes. I averted the flashlight to avoid looking at him. I knew the Gunny knew. I knew we’d arrived at the part where he knew we had to finally get to.
“They’re going to order us to go get the Army guys when they’re dead,” I said, slowly. “We want the least number killed because they won’t fly in another medivac up there after losing so many. The Gunny’s saying that we’ll have to carry or slide them back down and we’ll have to do it damn fast or die up there with them.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sugar Daddy said, his voice a hiss. “We’re supposed to write those guys off, just like that? And then lie to make it all happen nice and easy?”
“They’re not Marines,” Jurgens whispered into the silence that followed.
“Why aren’t they sending us back up?” Jurgens asked.
“Because of Junior,” the Gunny replied, his words hard, but I caught a thin glimmer of a smile on his lips. “They think he won’t go. They think he’s gone rogue from the combat losses. He refuses orders openly.”
“Oh,” Sugar Daddy said, his tone indicating that he didn’t mind my being considered to be a dishonorable nut case officer. “I thought it was because they think we’re a mess of fucked up units who can’t do jack shit right.”
“Well, there’s probably a good bit of that in there too,” the Gunny answered, before laughing gently.
Sugar Daddy and Jurgens began laughing with him. It was my turn to stare, wondering what kind of gallows humor was driving them, and why I couldn’t find anything funny about some Army guys, probably decent fucking new guy Army guys, being sent up the hill of death to never return. I thought of Tex. My hand touched the Colt, but not in fear or anger, or as a threat.
“We don’t give the orders, Junior,” the Gunny said, reading my expression, finishing his cigarette, and snapping the short butt out from under the poncho cover.
I knew the Gunny’s math and logic was correct. The fewer bodies we had to pack out and down the faster we could move, and the more likely we would live. Anybody sent up to the top of Hill 975 for any period of time was going to die. Keeping the body count down was a weirdly humane thing to do, although our own survival was all that any of us were really worried about unless we sat and thought about it, and I knew none of us wanted to do that.
“They need to come in when its dark,” I finally said.
“Who?” the Gunny asked, getting ready to pull out and step back into the night rain.
“The medevac and resupply,” I said. “We can’t support them coming in with artillery, and firing early would simply alert the NVA as to what was coming. They can fly this far on instruments, orbit too high to allow for location, and then drop in at the very crack of dawn. With everyone ready, they can be in and out of here in less than ten minutes. When they drop the Lurp team up top, well, time is not going to matter for those guys.”
The Gunny, Jurgens and Sugar Daddy pulled back out from under the poncho cover tent. Fusner, Zippo, and Nguyen replaced them, all three shedding their own ponchos, but wet through, anyway.
“What’s the plan?” Zippo asked with his tone one of expectant enthusiasm.
I thought quickly about what we were doing.
“Parade Rest,” I replied, with only a slight delay. “We’re going to stand fast and keep our mouths shut.”
“Rumor has it that we’re being sent back down the valley, sir,” Fusner said, not sounding like he’d fully bought into the plan.
I knew that the radio traffic had to be filled with stuff about my disobedience of orders, but there was nothing to be done for it so I simply waited to hear what he had to say further.
“They say we couldn’t take the hill, sir,” Fusner said. “The Army 75th is being sent in while we get sent back down the river. Resupply is going to be filled with new officers and FNGs to replace all the Marines we’ve lost.”
The information Fusner was giving us from the rumor mill might be all true, or almost all of it could be nothing more or less than a fable, I now knew.
“We took the hill,” I replied, thinking about what it would be like to be fully back to T.O. strength and with a whole suite of officers commanding both companies. “We just didn’t hold the hill, and nobody else is going to either.”
After being in the country only three weeks I no longer held out any hope that wholesale replacements would be sent in to fill all open positions. Nobody in the rear wanted to come out into the bush if they knew anything about it at all. The only result a combat unit could expect was to receive replacements who’d just come into the country and knew nothing about what might be ahead of them. I’d come to terms with why nobody would talk, or even answer me when I was in the rear and fresh from the states. They knew where I was going and nothing they could tell me would help me at all in staying alive. I was already dead to them.
There was no point trying to explain everything to my scout team, so I put them to work.
“Fusner, arrange for the medivac and resupply 46s to touch down from a high low drop out of altitude at the crack of dawn. Tell them it’ll be a secure landing zone until just after light. Zippo, get to the Ontos and have them move back down the valley until they have the southern flank guarded. We’ll be going south before snaking around to head back up to the top of 975. Nguyen, you’re with me.”
“We’re going back up there again?” Fusner whispered, his voice filling with disappointment and fear.
“Not if I can help it, but we’ve got to be ready for anything,” I lied. “Get on the arty net and let me lay in the night defensive fires. Call Cowboy when and where you can. We’ll need them just after dawn, once the NVA figure out we landed our stuff in the night. Or damn near.”
I went to work on my map, memorizing the codes and grids and then calling it all into both firebases. I didn’t expect to fire in the night simply because of the security of our current position. The NVA could not come at us from across the river, they wouldn’t attempt the high cliff above it after the devastation I’d rained in on them earlier. Up there they were fully exposed, with only hard rock to dig into and sparse cover from artillery. They could come up the river on our side and encounter the Ontos, but I didn’t think they’d do that either. They knew that with their overwhelming troop strength and underground positions they only had to wait. There was no waiting when it came to orders pouring out of the rear areas of the Army and Marine Corps, however. For whatever reasons, the guerrilla war we were involved in required constant movement no matter how meaningless to the troops and Marines out in the field implementing those moves and orders.
When I was done I pulled out my package of stationery and wrote a brief letter to my wife. It would have to get delivered the following morning if all went well. I wondered what it would be like to go home and tell her about what had happened the day before. I pushed myself into the cleft of the rock, staying just far enough out of it so not encounter the trickle of water flowing down it from north to south. I explained to my wife what a ‘Lurp’ was and how reconnaissance was supposed to be these special guys who went behind enemy lines and did heroic things. I did not tell her that there were no lines and that heroism was all fiction brought to the field of real combat, and then hopefully taken home because the real thing was too awful to contemplate or discuss. I sealed the envelope and stuck it back in my pocket before laying back on the hard rock.
Fusner was pulling on my upper arm. I opened my eyes but it was too black to see anything at all. I knew it was Fusner because of his clawing grasp and insistent forever repeated phrase; “It’s time, it’s time, it’s time…”
Time for what I wanted to yell but didn’t because I knew exactly where I was. I wondered if I’d ever wake up again and not know exactly where I was.
“What’s the situation?” I asked, shoving Fusner’s hand away and working sideways to escape the crimped-in wall’s grasp.
Fusner was waking me for a reason, I knew, but the detail of what that reason might be would not come into my groggy mind. Very distantly I heard the distinctive sound of a Huey helicopter. My brain came alive. The choppers were up at altitude waiting. They would stay up there fooling any listener below. They couldn’t fly much higher than ten thousand feet without oxygen for everyone on board, which they didn’t have, but even at that altitude, the enemy would know they were somewhere above but would not be able to pin a location as to where they were or where they might be coming down. No altitude would allow for the complete silence of a Huey, however, since they were so loud they could be heard coming at sea level almost ten miles away.
“The lead pilot wants to talk to you,” Fusner said, pushing the air headset into my neck.
How Fusner saw anything in the stygian blackness was beyond me.
“What does he want?” I asked, mildly irritated, but happy that I’d not had to call in any night defensive fires.
That meant that the batteries unless they’d fired for somebody else, would be fully stocked for whatever the day brought. Unless we went back down the valley where their guns couldn’t reach us.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Blackbird, sir,” Fusner replied.
I waited for a few seconds for him to laugh at the humor of a helicopter pilot flying at night being called Blackbird but nothing came back to me. If a lieutenant was the flight leader then the choppers had to be Army. Marine chopper pilots were mostly captains and majors, the ones flying in the left seats, anyway.
“Six actual,” I said, hitting the tiny transmit button.
“Blackbird, over,” the lieutenant replied instantly.
“Time on target is one three minutes unless the LZ’s hot,” Blackbird said. “Can you give me some assurance?”
I almost laughed out loud.
“What’s he talking about Fusner? He wants some assurance that the LZ isn’t under fire? Are they flying too high, or what?
“The LZ is secure, quiet and likely to remain that way,” I transmitted, shaking my head in the darkness.
“Are you the one they call Junior?” the lieutenant asked back.
“No,” I transmitted in anger. “This is Gunny Socorro.” Evidently, the word about me was getting around, and the word wasn’t good.
“Got it, Gunny, and thanks,” Blackbird replied. “Touch down is in one minute. Be prepared to offload two 47s and a single Huey.”
The 47s were good news. The Army twin rotor carried twice what the Marine Corps 46 could haul. Resupply would be no problem and they’d be able to get all the wounded and dead to the rear.
“What about the Lurp Team?” I asked, crawling out from under the poncho cover tent where there was the faintest glimmering of morning light.
“That’s a separate operation,” Blackbird said. “The team is touching down at the same time as we are, using the gunships we’ve got, except for the C.O., Captain Victor Chase. He’s coming down with me.”
I pulled the headset off and handed it to Fusner.
“Victor Chase. What kind of weirdness is that? An Army captain, fighting a war in Vietnam, has the initials V.C.?”
“Zippo went to the LZ to get our stuff,” Fusner replied, ignoring my question. “Why’s the commander of the Lurp unit not going up there with his men? Did he find out something?”
I didn’t know what the underground radio rumor mill was generating, but I wasn’t confirming anything to Fusner or anyone else. Some good men were being sacrificed for nothing and the responsibility for that was beginning to resemble a game of musical chairs, even before the event occurred. I hadn’t asked Blackbird about who or what was in the choppers because it didn’t matter. Both big birds together could bring in more than sixty Marines, depending upon what else they brought along for resupply. I was almost certain there would be a full complement of officers to replace me. There seemed little doubt that the nightmare of our A Shau operations were being viewed as almost entirely due to my incompetence, by our commanders in the rear area.
“How’s the captain, if he’s coming here, supposed to get up that hill?” Fusner asked.
I put on my battered and ragged helmet, looked at my Gus Grissom watch and tried to ignore Fusner. I hadn’t thought about how the Lurp leader was going to get up to his men and I didn’t want to think about it. There were forces moving around me that seemed to make no sense and that I had no control over, just as before. I pulled the two letters home I had ready to go. Both were a mess of smudged ink and wrinkles. I tried to press them against my thigh but it was no use.
“We need to get to the LZ and make sure everything goes the way it’s supposed to,” I lied to Fusner.
In reality, all I wanted to do was get the two letters into a chopper crewman’s hands and then see if I could do anything to help the craft survive out of the valley to get the letters home. The sound of the descending choppers was drowned out by the heavy roaring thrum of bigger engines and huge spinning propellers. The Skyraiders were back. Cowboy was once again coming through. I started up the bank toward where the only cleared area existed that was big and flat enough for the landing.
Except for the Ontos crew and some of Jurgen’s Marines, everyone would be there to make the coming exchange happen as fast as possible. I moved as quickly as I could, my feet making sucking sounds that I could barely hear, as I pulled one boot after another up from the rain-soaked mud. I didn’t bother with my poncho since the rain had turned into a mist that penetrated everything no matter what I might wear. I kept my left hand with the letters shoved inside my utility blouse, my right hand naturally falling to the butt of Tex’s Colt.
“Can I turn my radio on?” Fusner asked.
The question surprised me, since usually he turned the little transistor thing on whenever he felt like it.
“Why not?” I replied, over my shoulder.
The LZ was going to go hot or it wasn’t. Making noise on our part wasn’t going to make a bit of difference about that, and what the new officers coming down might think, if they were really coming down, I didn’t give a damn about.
“Here’s one for you,” the deep voice of Brother John, coming out of the tinny speaker all the way from Nah Trang, said. “Now don’t you Marines out there take this one too seriously on this fine morning.”
The song began with a very light drum roll, and I recognized it even before the lyrics began. I clutched the letters to my wife more tightly, as the country western singer began singing: “You’ve painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair…Ruby, are you contemplating going out somewhere? The shadow on the wall tells me the sun is going down…”
Thanks James for writing this. I look forward to each chapter. From someone who was never there I am some what understanding why my brother (in the 199th LIB 69/70) wrote home to me to “stay in school, you don’t want no parts of this shit”. I can not comprehend how you guys delt with the day to day terror and struggles with not only the fighting but dealing with mother nature that you endured. Thanks for your service sir and relating what our service men endured. Mac
Thanks for your support in the reading and writing about it on here R.
Semper fi,
Jim
jim]
how many times have you heard someone say if i had his money i could do things my way’. little they no that’s its so hard to find 1 rich man in ten with a satisfied mind’.[porter wagner]. i do belive one of the hardest thing with man to no when is enough enough.i did love the retail business.building a customer base’having new people from outside your little isolated peace of earth.my most loyal were the alcoholic who would come in and wouldnd give you no shit new what they wanted payed and left.it was illegal to sell booze back then on a sunday but i always took care of them.IT WASNT ABOUT THE MONEY i couldnd handle the pain they were going through.and but for the grace of god it mite of been me.judie still improving.get all her hose;es taken out next week. when shes gotten well enough i want to come up and catch some wallies.i wish i could send you and your readers some words of profound wisdom but as you know I’m just a pfc. your friend omer
Omer. I shall have a boat ready and waiting. You will have to help me catch a fish because I am clueless about how to do that.
I prayed a prayer of thanks for God’s listening to my first prayer about Judie. That’s my arrogance, of course, that God might
actually hear my prayer for this woman I’ve never met, for the wife of a man I do not really know. And then more arrogance in
praying again to thank him. I am glad you are built the way your built Omer. I may not be as good a man as you private, but it feels
uncommonly good to think you think I am that good.
Semper fi,
Jim
In the immortal words of Oliver Twist: “More, please sir.”
s/f Steve
I will finish the next segment today, I promise Steve….
Semper fi,
Jim
So where is the next chapter that was promised by James on March 13th?
It is up tonight and Chuck is working on getting it on site by the morning. His wife is ill and that’s slowing him.
this is the most edited segment I have done so far through all the story. I am not sure about the segment because I reworked and reworked
to get it just right and I am not at all sure I did. At that time I was feeling like the bleak dark life I was living had a total control over
every bit of what I did and only my thoughts were free to roam…but every time I tried to think the thoughts would not come, only the next action
of the unstoppable and awful unfolding of chains and chains of dark events. I thought of you when I thought about that letter to Alice I unaccountably put
in my helmet. I wanted to bring Chance and Alice closer to me, to my cranium and inside where I was hiding, lived, survived. I think that of you J.
How can distance be closed and why is there this barrier among and between us all? I feel like I am not measuring up if I don’t hurry up but then, when I hurry up,
I can’t put it up on the site the way it is. I was done with this segment before the 13th and then I just kept going back every night. Every night until this night
because my emotional state was a mess. I’d pull up the segment and get ready to rewrite and then sit in front of the monitor like an idiot. Staring at the letters and
words without being able to really see the letters and words. I diddled with the bills, the cat, my big ball of rubber bands that is always falling apart. I have this letter from
Alice, after the war, too. She was a secretary for an insurance agent at the base in San Diego while V.C. and I were in Vietnam. She was so kind in writing after I wrote her from Yokosuka hospital.
I always have wondered what was in the rest of that letter I got off to Macho Man later, but
I could not ask her back then, and now I’ve lost track of her through time. You are laying there in that departing condition J, and it’s like you are being hoisted up on that wall that day
and I can’t do any more for you than I did for V.C.
Semper fi,
Jim
A lot said and understood, both in this chapter and your remarks here.
While most people know one day they will die, they never think much about death until it is staring them in the face. Then and only then, do they face the emotional battles that take place within the human mind.
Those thoughts can be overwhelming, if you dwell on them. Not only did you face them in the A Shau, but are also having to relive them once again, as you write your story. It was traumatic for you in the valley and it is traumatic for you now. You lost friends and acquaintances over there, but you lived.
It would seem that you carry a lot of guilt about living, when they did not. You try to deal with and justify that guilt, by belittling yourself or taking the blame for their death.
What you need to understand and accept, is the fact that those men were destined to die, whether you were there or not! You certainly did not plan their demise. In fact, you were not only trying to save your own skin, but also the men who were serving with you. That is an undeniable truth!
As for me Jim, my time has come as well and I have accepted that fact. Nothing you could do or say, would change that outcome. At present, I am doing just as you did while in the bush, living day to day, knowing that my time will soon come to an end here on this planet. However, I know that is not the end of my life, as my spirit will still live on and ascend to my Master.
When you live with that knowledge, there is no longer a sting, as far as human death is concerned. Those men who died over in NAM, no longer have to deal with the fear and pain or emotional trauma that human life offers. Their battle is over.
I read your writing thoughtfully. I am not sure I always understand it. I don’t see a belittling of myself because I see it as revealing the truthful thoughts of
selfishness and seeking of approval that might keep me alive with the other guys. I did tell V.C. the truth and part of that gambling revelation should have clued him
in as to my truth for him. I was telling he that we were not trying to limit the number of his men dying because we cared about that. We were doing it so we could minimize
our own losses in getting the bodies down and medicated. Yes, those losses of men and friends and whatever the other ones were cut dearly into my psychology. When I was back in the
world and out of the hospital and then the Corps I thought it would all go away. But I have been converted into a player. A man who’d lived reality only to come back to the unreal
phenomenal world. There was to be no adjusting to that other than to use iron discipline not to use my developed talents for surviving combat back here to solve problems.
I fit in by being a faker and I don’t think i have ever changed. I ended up in the CIA because my mother was right when she stood at Chicken Joes up in DePere Wisconsin that night.
She replied, when it was finally revealed to her that i was not a drug dealer. She said: “I just knew, if you ever found something that rewarded you for lying then you’d do well.”
She had defined the CIA of course, not to my good feelings or celebration of the day. You have faith and I am so happy about that. I have faith but it is by no means the stature of your own.
So, I pray, in my broken way, that God will have you go on for my own selfish reasons. I do not have that many of what you are in my life. And I really can’t answer the question, if it was
put to me, of exactly what you are….
Semper fi,
Jim
James,
This is a quote from a Facebook group called Que Son Valley Contractors. I could not help but think about the LT.
I’d rather kiss a barracuda than eat another can of ham and mothers.
Ken Brown
USMC 68-70
1st MAW
MACS 4
Funny Ken, but I wonder what it would be like to eat a can of those again. I truly liked
them but I wonder how I would feel now.
Semper fi,
Jim
Looking forward to the next chapter, and the remaining ones in the Third Ten Days. I’m sure it is very difficult for you, heck, just by where we’re sitting in the story, you know bad things are coming-worse than what we’ve heard. For one, we know you’re wounded severely. I also have a lot ‘invested’ in a couple of the main “characters” and hope they survive. Keep it up Sir. Just a suggestion when you’re done with the Third 10 Days, maybe make available a boxed set with some kind of interesting concept.
Yes, to all that Jim!
Managing the books I currently have for sale becomes an analytical exercise of monumental size,
and I only have six of them. Soon to be seven. The editing does not stop because they were not perfect going in.
The shipping and the postage and transportation to the post office every day. Shit.
Those big publishers that don’t really accept new work anymore really used to have a lot of work.
Thanks for understanding and being patient…
Semper fi,
Jim
please james write the book the war will be over before u get done
I am writing the book. It’s free, remember? And that makes the burden less for me, which is important for the story, as things get stickier and stickier as we head toward the end of book III. For the story and for me in the writing. Sorry, but there it is.
Semper fi, and thanks for wanting more faster…
JIM
i was trying to bring a little humor to a difficult task,as far as being free, i beg to differ, a very heavy price was paid
thanks to all the veterans
Understand, Siggy.
Thanks for the support.
semper fi, Jim
Good response – I ASSuME this was meant to be a joke on his part.
Thanks for the assumption Bob!
Semper fi,
Jim
The war will never be over for James and others who served in that hell hole.
Yes, that is an accurate statement known by so many of us who were there.
Thanks for sharing that and thanks for liking the work.
Semper fi,
Jim
There is a T-shirt that is advertised on Facebook that applies to many…..it says, “I was in Vietnam…….sometimes I still am.”
Guys, everytime Jim sits down to write, he has to go back, often for days and weeks, and then when finished, constantly edits and replies to comments, so he stays there while we can disassociate after 45 minutes or an hour. Let’s all cut him some slack. Semper Fi!
Thank you Joe, as I finished this segment. You have hit the nail on the head and I don’t
know how to apologize to guys and gals who are waiting so very patiently.
Semper fi,
Jim
You don’t owe anyone an apology. I just appreciate your sharing this story and this part of you with us. The story will finish when it is finished. Hurryin’ ain’t a gonna help.
Thanks Joe, really appreciate that. Really.
Jim
Hey James , I’m reading 12 Strong , about the opening days of the war in Afganistan & it seems the Green Barets were just pissing in the wind , try to direct fire on Taiban positions , even with range finding binoculars & maps. Eventually using lasers to paint the targets so the JDAM ordinance could hit the targets. Also I tried to research your friendly fire mishap where 22 marines were killed, on Google , without success
George, I much appreciate your attention to detail and your care and interest in the writing.
I am not writing a historical document with these books.
I prefer to spend my dotage on a couch or on a beach and not sitting on a bench checking out a prison yard!
It’s fiction. The truth will kill you.
It almost did me, the first time around.
Semper fi,
Jim
Another good response – I vote beach, couch (or bar stool)
I am with you all the way Bob….
Semper fi,
Jim
JIM; GOT judie home from her kidney transplant.i appreciated your prayers for her.after 50 years of her putting up with my shit its my turn to have to clean up her shit.now i no what my corpsman had to put up with me when i had to stay on my stomach for a month.hard to poop laying on your stomach.had all my skin taken off my back to put on my legs.skin graffs are a bitch especially when infection sets in.i still hate that dr that told me it was the thing to do while i was still in nam at the field hospital in da nang.got to oak knoll in time for then to strip all the dressing off my back.i think it was like it was when the apache captured you way back when.no one slept that night with me screming.i had a corpsman who told me if i would wait for the next shift
to dig the crap out of me he would take me fishing.i got my first pass from the hospital and he kept his word.his folks had a cabin up on donner pass just off i80. it was spiritual sight.i just got done reading[down in the valley].ive spent some time at bellows with judie was a typipal tourist.i would chatch a hop out of travis to Hickam.jude an i were cheap traveler hopping all over;korea japan Singapore Australia England Germany was great times.better close so you can get back to being jr were all waiting on next chapter.[ your friend ] omer
Well, Omer, it would appear the prayers worked, at least in saving her life, but now you have to pay the piper, so to speak.
I am overjoyed. Met with Ron today and had to tell him the truth. I am not going back to the Nam. Just can’t do it.
Like going back to the wall in D.C. Just not in me. I’d like to do it just for you but that probably is not a good reason
to do such a thing, particularly since you’ve already been before. I don’t want to go to where all those guys died.
I don’t know what that means or makes me in life but I’d rather go to Bellows beach in Hawaii and tip a toddy to them
than to step back into that valley…no matter how much it is changed.
Thanks for thinking of me, though, as I am thinking of you…
Semper fi
Your friend,
Jim
5th paragraph:”The smell would attract bugs, maybe even leeches if the leeches had as little taste as I did, but the action would be smoother, at least for a while, and I lived only from one ‘a while’ to another.?
You might consider changing both of those “a while”s to “awhile”s. might read a little easier. I think awhile is an actual word. Of course, smoother reading might not be real high on your list…..
Thanks for the editing help, Tom. As usual.
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow, crowd proofreading. who knew? 🙂 BTW, I wouldn’t call it crowd editing because your writing needs no or at least very little editing. Most all of what we see here is more like proofreading and spellcheck level stuff. You’re rockin, dude.
Yes, the new proofreading is done by people like you and I cannot thank you enough.
Semper fi,
Jim
Again a great read. Sitting on flack jacket,brought back a memory. And really enjoy your other writings.
Thanks Jim,
Yes, some old memories don’t go away, they simply lay down there and simmer to the surface upon occasion.
Semper fi,
Jim
Still with you sir, couldn’t shake me away with shitty stick. thank you.
thanks Al, for the great compliment…
Semper fi,
Jim
another great chapter
thanks Gerald, hope you like the next one…
Semper fi,
Jim
He might if he ever gets to see the next chapter.
You know J, my delays are all that are keeping your tiny little heart ticking away!!!!
So, I am writing to satisfy you? Jesus Christ, how did I get here? This is the most bizarrely written
series of books of all time.
Semper fi,
Your friend,
Jim
Well if you don’t get your ass in gear and finish this story, I never will see the end of it!
Once the story is finished, TDHS, you can then putter around writing those other fiction adventures.
I wish it was like you describe it J. I am not in complete control.
I write those other works because I must take that time while my brain gets worked up for the next sequence.
If I have real talent then I must explain that it is more the talent that controls me than I it.
For you, I do want to move faster, but I just can’t move faster even though I really want to…
Your friend,
And Semper fi,
Jim
Good job as always.
Hello there, just had lunch with a old neighbor and in talking to him found out he was in the Army over there in about the same time you were.Name is Jim Strom and he was the person that you would have talked to and would have sent you the overhead shells. Don’t know what outfit he was in other then artillery. His job was figuring out the fusing and all the other items needed to get it where you wanted it. They were pretty safe as they got hit with mortars and RPG’s but were in bunkers Safe unless you were outside when it happened. gave him the way to get your books and also how to get online with them. Have not heard back yet.
Thanks ever so much for recommending my books. Never expected that from some of you ‘real deal’ guys who’ve written on here so many times.
Thank you in the most complimentary way…
Semper fi,
Jim
Public service announcement for Marines who spent time at the palatial land of joy named for Gen John Acher Lejeune if I may Lt.
VA has finally stepped up and is addressing health issues caused by the water supply in lovely North Carolina. Apparently VA is now making such announcements via UTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfiINMMTof4&feature=youtu.be
Of course you may, SCPO…
With my thanks, I might add…
Semper fi,
Jim
I can’t wait for the next installment!!!
Appreciate that response Stuart…
Sempeer fi,
Jim
James,
Move the “(LRRP)” to the first use of the word Lurp in the sentence above it.
Am really enjoying your writing-I foresee lots of withdrawal problems from a bunch of readers when you hit the 30th day. Keep up the good work.
I am planning on continuing the series with the hospitals and the coming back home,
and the weird shit I fell into when that happened. And it has never stopped. The CIA was
after that. I have no idea why all this shit has happened to me or really how I came to be so
adroit at jumping from one pot of boiling water into another. Thanks for caring and reading and writing about that on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Good response
Understand the pause between chapters as it must indeed be very taxing, I know for certain I could not do it James.
One “technical” correction for your consideration is about the helos ~ “the ones flying in the left seats, anyway”. Fixed wing aircraft have the pilot seat in the left side of the cockpit, whereas helos have it on the right side. The collective stick is controlled with the left hand so with the seat positioned on the right side it gives more “elbow room” for the pilots left arm, the co-pilot also has that stick on the left side of his seat but has less accessible room.
The cyclic control is between the legs and controlled with the right hand in either seat.
The collective control raises or lowers the craft and it controls engine rpms, the cyclic controls forward/aft & L/R movement in co-ordination with the rudder pedals.
Thanks for continuing onward.
SEMPER Fi
Yes, to all of that. That was a mistake, the left seat thing because I was not thinking. You are
absolutely correct about the collective and where it is located. Thank you!
Semper fi, and also for understanding all of it…
Jim
LT, I can so relate to the “dirt” that you describe from time to time. I made myself a promise that I would NEVER be dirty again, to the point that I could not take a shower. Oh, and a little story from 1966–I got a chance to open a can of ham and muthers, and was gobbling them down, with dirt and blood all over my hands. Two of my Marines were watching. One said “Damn, Doc, can’t you even wash your hands?” I asked “you gonna let me use your water”? He said “No, my water is for drinking”. I said “So is mine”.
Thanks James, for telling us your own experience here. Tough times and hard for people not in that
emotional and physical circumstance to truly understand…
Semper fi,
Jim
Great chapter James! One typo…I think Lurp is actually abbreviated LRRP, not LLRP. Got the signed 2nd Ten Days paperback ordered, I’ll fill the trilogy when you finish this one! Semper Fi!
Yes, you are correct. I have to check again the final edit because I wrote LRRP but what the hell…
Semper fi, and thank you….
Jim
“Pork lubricated Colt”. Classic.
I was curious if the tobacco habit stayed with you after your tour?
No, I used a few cigarettes in my CIA career for cover. I was known not to smoke so if I felt under surveillance
I’d light up as part of the effort to throw them off. Never got back into it at all though.
For some reason, it did help under horrific stress
and maybe because it made me feel closer to a man who did not let people close…
Semper fi,
Jim
Keep those segments coming, and thanks for your service.
Thanks for the laconic encouragement John. I am on it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Your books made it ‘real’, again. I use to tell people to watch the movie,’Platoon’, because I felt it was the most realistic movie about Vietnam Nam. I will now tell them to read your books. What little time I spent there was extreme. L3/1-May69 early Sept69. Spent my 19th Birthday in the hospital in Guam. Bad deal. Keep safe.
That’s a huge compliment. I used to tell people to do the same thing. Platoon for vignettes of reality in combat and Full Metal Jacket for what a lot of Marine training
was like…aside from beating the kid with wrapped soap bars. Thanks for putting my work in that league…
Semper fi,
Jim
agree
They’ll believe us because they’ve have nobody else.”
Perhaps “they have no one else” or “there is nobody else.”
Got it Chuck, and thanks for the editing help.
Semper fi,
Jim
When a segment comes in, I consume it. I have to keep myself in check so that I read and retain it.
It astounds me that the “Editors.” can catch any slip ups. I never notice any.
Like the Brother said, I never saw a LURP team of more that five or six. There were only six men on my fire team. We went into the field as a squad but were broken into two separate teams almost immediately.
The A Shau was North of our primary A.O.
I was shipped home from the Ganoy River in a basket in December 1964
These stories bring back so much, and I find a great healing in them. I can feel and hear the rain on my Boonie hat. I can smell that stinking jungle. Just like yesterday. Only 54 years ago. The snakes don’t visit as much as they used to and The Monster has been at rest. I know he is there and I know he will protect me if needed. I am careful not to wake him. I know Junior, is not a friend of yours and I don’t pretend to understand how you deal with him while you are writing this.
Keep up the excellent work. It allmost feels like a Sit-Rep
Take a deep breath Brother. Already Jonesing for the next.
Bud, you reach deep down inside with that comment.
No, Junior is no friend of mine, and neither is the kind of bitter-edged survival pit
where he knows how to dwell and deal with living hell. I’m a nicer guy than that. This note,
by the way, along with your very own, would likely get both of us committed!
Thanks for understanding those things that most can never comprehend, much less believe.
Semper fi,
Jim
Geez you guys are killing me here. I’m catching up to the “bus” as fast as I can run but feel the pull of the mud slowing me down. These replays, the monster gets stirred and i so relate to not waking it…
The tendency to hurry but also not skim over each heartfelt response is crazy. I feel so much compassion and comradeship with you guys and what we carry inside. Its 2:30 in the morning and as one of 800,000 left alive from Nam it is a tremendous gift to have found you all….tears of appreciation….
We much appreciate you Dale, as well. This group just sort of came together. It is you
guys that made this all continue. I would have quite sometime back in book I. Really.
Keep writing and reading…
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks Lt. James
You are most welcome Don!
Semper fi,
Jim
You are flirting with the possibly of giving some of us needed medevac to the ER from a Heart Attack the way you keep us in suspense but it is all good when we receive the new and most recent installment of life in the A Shau! Poor Junior and his Marines! That is living life on the edge isn’t it LT? Am glad most do not know of it first hand.
Thanks Chris, for that great compliment!!!
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow James what a chapter for me to be reading today of all horrible days. I read the obituaries in the Portland Press Herald and my good friend Phil O’Connor jr died. He was a Green Beret who came back with a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. He told me the Army doctors wanted him to talk about what he went through over there and he refused. He said he would only tell me and my mother what happened. I think agent orange got him. He was aweful sick for the last few years. Right after that I fell on my face while holding my ex-wife’s baby and spent a couple hours in the ER getting cat scanned and had to hear the doctor say that people my age(74) have brains that have shrunk and leave a space that he was worried might be filling with blood. I was laying on a stretcher with tears rolling down the sides of my face thinking about the poor baby (14 months old) and hoping it was still blood not tears rolling down my face as my exwife sat 5 feet away. The baby is ok. But the doctor says I’m going to be hurting for a couple of weeks. He sent me home with paper work I haven’t read yet. I read your chapter instead. Great job. I feel like I was there.
Wow, yourself Tom! What a day. I like that part about having a shrunken brain so there is more room inside the cranium for blood to pool.
My brain is smaller now? Why do I feel smarter? I guess that’s due to the dementia. I am sure sorry that you have been going through such
a mess. I’m glad that my writing gives you some relief at all. I am glad you feel you were there in the reading but were not there in the reality.
Especially know that you have a such small brain! Like me.
Semper fi, my friend,
And I am, indeed, saying one of my little special prayers.
“God, make him more like you than me,
Down here with you up there and him where he is.
Don’t fix him because he’s that way, but make
the way around him filled with smiles and good will.
Take care God, for he’s one of us,
One of the few,
And he didn’t get and stay here with care,
Not for himself, but he needs it now.
Shine that warmth and love down,
For you have all that to share.”
Semper fi,
Jim
Glad to have you back Jim, I’ll always wait as long as you need.
thanks for the backing my friend…
Semper fi,
Jim
Great to have you back. There is a Vietnam Vet on Facebook, who has had a bad time since he came back. His son’s haven’t talked to him in over 27 years. He can’t explain his War, and they can’t understand. I told him to search for your story. Even those who never served, can smell the stink. You are helping your brothers.
Smell the stink? I am thinking about that phrase and then smiling to myself. I know it’s a compliment but it’s kind of hard to
really consider when I roll it around in my mind. I am glad to help where I can, of course.
Semper fi,
Jim
James: It always makes me smile to read your latest addition to 30 days, and brings back “memories” of 1968-69. I am wondering though of the reflections of those that feel they have to call out corrections of grammatical insignificance or word usage.. Kinda seems that if they had been there as some of us were, those are not errors but simple “skipping of the keyboard” things.. Write on my friend, as always enthralled with your “put on the valley”..
Thanks for writing on here about this Steve. The compliments are so damned meaningful and make the whole effort worth it.
Semper fi,
Jim
“We do our job,” the Gunny said, his voice going hard. We convince battalion….
Needs an opening quotation mark after ‘hard’ and ‘We’
Great job, Sir. All of us are hanging on, waiting for every word in each chapter.
Thanks for the help on editing Mac. Most appreciated. And thanks for the terrific compliment, as well…
Semper fi,
Jim
So many comments reminding us all that your journey has to be at your own pace. Well done as usual. That dang hill is stuck in some rear commanders craw. The shame, I do hope they still feel as they finally recognize the waste of America’s finest protoplasm, is knawing at their innards. I think I only had the honor of caring for two LURP studs. Still smile at their wolfing AF hospital chow. You have the helm Skipper, proceed at your own speed. P.J.
So observant, as usual Poppa. Thanks for letting me work my way along…
Semper fi,
Jim
Ahh the A Shau, remember it well or at least some of it. Got a call to move out and move, get over to the pad and catch the first thing hot and smokin to A Shau Valley, where ever the hell that was. I was just an OpCon soldier and passed around from unit to unit like a cheap date. I load up on a Chinock with some other guys, me and my M151 C1 and its big flashlight, I am a one man team, LOL. We head out and after a short time we get the nod we are going in and going HOT and I MEAN HOT. I notice holes appearing in various parts of the fuselage walls. The guy next to me in his sling seat left his steel pot on, but took off his flak jacket and sat on it, I left mine on. The big bird is dodging and weaving like a drunk prize fighter as the pilot is looking for a window in the .51 cal machine gun fire when suddenly that guy next to me explodes out of his sling seat and grabs his ass like its on fire and he is dancing around to the beat of the blades screaming. His pants come down and drop to his ankles and he has spread his cheeks so wide I thought he only had one eye. I instantly look down at his flak jacket and know he is doing the .51 cal 2 step as sticking nose up out of the double folded flak jacket is a .51 slug. By now he looking at his fingers and there is no blood. He is ok sans some 2nd degree burn dead center of his apex and he got hemorrhoidectomy courtesy of Charlie. By then we pulled pitch and head back to some close LZ to prep for another insert the next day. It was getting dark by then, spent the night and the pilot took his swiss cheese chopper back to have some holes plugged. They decided I would setup for a few days as thing were so HOT in the valley not Chinooks were going in. I left a few days later for another LZ on the DMZ for some action with my flashlight.
Wow, Cowboy, I just sat glued to your rendition of what it was like on that chopper. Yes!!! Man oh man. The A Shau was something, above, down in it and even below it.
Thanks for much for this write up.
Semper fi,
Jim
Great read, question 7th paragraph, it wasn’t enough to “slake” my thirst.
The 1/2 canteen of water wasn’t enough to slake my thirst…
I recall more for the ambushes I’d see, when I’d graduate from the cherry I was…Junior was put in harm’s way for a reason. Not only to carry out his marching orders, “Yes Captain…absolutely Major!…but what about the unseen evil out there in the Stygian blackness? My gut says their lookin at “anyone” about to step into the mud and the weather! Don’t go, Sir. Then, no longer the cherry you realize you’ve got to act as combatant to a war that wants your “home”. That part of you you cannot lose…lest you be forever unable to go “home” ever again. Junior..she ain’t out of pocket, she’s waiting for you. The man before he’d become her “in lieu of”, her “left tenant for”. He’s not dead for being in harm’s way…not yet. He’s protecting his “home” and no matter what the enemy claims, evil only triumphs when good men do nothing. So kill em all, and let God sort them out…because at the end of the day…lies, plans we’d never make, the shitty things we’d have to do lead to us back to our gut that says, ” Fight, fu*k, or run a foot race, unless I’m found dead along the side of the road, at least you’ll know that it happened on my back to ‘MY HOME’…so, ” Ruby, don’t take your love to town….” Semper Fi , my brother!
Jesus Christ…pure, or rather very impure, poetry man! I loved reading and rereading this.
The patina if reality all over it….and your original style in putting it down. Thanks a ton, man!
Semper fi,
Jim
first sentence: “I holstered Tex’s .45 automatic I’d used half my canteen water to boil it clean earlier.”
Far be it from me to nitpick your brilliant writing but this seems like a really awkward construction or run-on sentence. Thanks again for what you do here. I’m recommending this to my 20 year old son whom I hope never has to go through anything like this. He’s a good kid. I graduated HS in 71, big strong kid who would likely have died in Vietnam except for my congenital perforated eardrum.
I am not sure at all how non-combatants take these books.
The gulf of believability has to be huge for them because they are mostly imbued with what they have gotten from video games, movies, and television. How can they accommodate what they read here,
or do they? Do people with no ‘body of life experience’ simply toss the books as entirely not believable?
I don’t know, but I think about that…
and then I think about the stuff I’ve so far, and quite purposely, avoided putting in the books,
at least until the end of the Third Ten Days…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I find the view out this window of your slice of reality is, while disturbing, very real. Perhaps because during the course of my life I have experienced events first hand that I tried to convince myself “that this can’t be real.”
Reading your account feels like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Your brain telling you what is going to happen next, already thinking about how to respond, all while the actual event still is yet to happen in the future.
Jim, your writing style creates empathy in me, and while I know if it gets too horrific I can put the book down for awhile and come back later, I put myself in your shoes and experience the car wreck with you.
My prayer for you is that you have the strength to complete this journey (and drag us with you), and experience the love of Christ whose peace and compassion is everlasting.
This is also a big “what if?” for me. Looking back, I realize I came very close to experiencing this firsthand, and it was only by God’s grace that He spared me from this. Perhaps this is why I have become so obsessed with your story.
I told you I sent your books to my son. He is married now, with two kids. 40 years old. As a young man was very enamored of war and warfare. Books, movies, video games. I called him last night and asked him the same question you asked above.
His answer was that war and warfare has lost the romance. All he could think of was his son no longer “playing soldier” but living it for real.
Maturity is the answer. That is the only thing that filters the believable from the unbelievable.
None of it is believable. Life that is. Not anthropology, chemistry or even physics are what we think of as real…only in the most ephemeral way.
Atoms when finally photographed are not spheres, and that is simply not possible, unless the universe is not what we think. Mastodons found up under the permafrost in Siberia, dating back only 25,000 years, have tropical foods frozen in their bellies. Not possible. Two atoms far distant from one another reacted instantly and the same way to stimulus well beyond their disobeying the speed of light limitations…called simultaneity, is not possible if the universe is as we think it to be. Combat is not believable, anymore than those things. So we make it all up and that’s how we are able to accommodate life. That’s why my ‘novels’ will never be mainstream. They can’t be. It’s not that those experiences were not real…it’s that this is not real…
Semper fi, and thanks for the deep thought and the caring about the work.
Jim
Thanks for the backing and the involvement you are so sincerely expressing.
Yes, the ‘reality’ thing can be disturbing.
Leaving what I thought was the real world to go off to a mythical adventurous conflict was so natural-seeming.
Coming to discover that the reality was really what I was going into and then when coming out trying to readapt
to the world I’d left was almost impossibly hard.
It wasn’t that my world back here wasn’t the real one that was so bad.
It was that I was almost alone in knowing that and not being able to tell anyone because then I just ended up more alone.
Or, as one shrink went so far as to call the police over, that I should be committed for my own good.
Thanks for the well-wishes and prayer too.
Semper fi,
Jim
James, I am 55. Never served. Vietnam became a fascination of mine trying to gain an understanding of a neighbor and a few co-workers who did serve in Vietnam. I have read Short Timers, 13th Valley, Five Fingers, Huey and Chicken Hawk to name a few. I have worked with more than a few veterans. I have one life long fishing buddy that grew up in the A Shau Valley. Phong was able to come to the US with family and begin a new life. I knew him for 15 years before he would share anything about his childhood during this time you are writing about. Truth. The writing you are doing is an amazing read. Thank you.
Thanks for discussing a bit of your own life. I wonder what Phong’s take on the whole thing might be.
Semper fi,
Jim
They’ll believe us because they’ve have nobody else.”
They’ll believe us because they have nobody else.”
Brilliant as usual, what’s a typo or two between friends? 🙂
Thanks for the grand compliment Tom and for the editing help. I am all over it.
Semper fi,
Jim
Writing this has to cut threw the fabric of your very being. I sense the dispear of not being able to do anything about the situation even now and yet wanting to somehow. This is real shit and you are doing something about it by telling the whole world how it really was. The good the bad and the ugly all bared for the everyone to see. Thank you. JT
There has been no more healing experience for me since those days as the work and writing of these books, and reading the comments of
readers like you, has provided. I had no clue, no idea and could not have guessed that this would be the case. And it does not matter
if the books really take off and sell like mad or not…oh, I could buy that imaginary fishing boat, but what they hell, I’d probably have
and notepad out there and be writing (and miss the fish biting) anyway! Thank you for everything…
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow, I was so excited when I seen the e-mail , so glad I had a chance to read this installment. Glad you are OK doing well, keep up the writing as having to stop called turkey is not an option I want to accept!
Thanks for the support and the comment here Bill…
Semper fi,
Jim
So glad that you are back. A couple of corrections:
“more likely more we would live.” should be more of us would live
and
“help survive the craft” should be help the craft survive.
Thanks again.
Thank you, Bob.
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
I know and feel your frustration. Keep on trucking sir.
Thanks Jack, I am hard at the next segment this evening and then on the train tomorrow.
Thanks for the encouragement…
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey Jim: Good job. I am almost finished with “The Second 10 days.” Anxiously awaiting the Third 10 days. Awesome read,, Tom R.
Thanks, Tony, hope to increase the volume of my output but it’s not always under my control…
as strange as that sounds.
Thanks for the encouragement…
Semper fi,
Jim
here seemed little doubt that the nightmare our A Shau operations were being viewed as almost were entirely due to my incompetence, by our commanders in the rear area.
Hi Jim,
I’m having trouble with this one…. is it the nightmare ( of ) our A shau?
Also…were being viewed as almost were entirely ….. a.m. I notnreading this right or is there a correction here. Thanks
Great read … I always get a bit of anxiety when I notice the last paragraph scrolling up on your posts. It’s gotta be tough to write this I’m sure ! Thank you for doing it.
Thank Mike.
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
jim
Thanks for laying it down as you feel it and come to understand it.
It’s hard to be totally clear in the transmission. That was one wild hellhole of an experience
and memory is not always perfect.
Thanks again,
Semper fi,
Jim
Appreciate you taking me back to that dark place with some of the best people I have ever known. I’m very glad that you are back. No editorial comments from me. I read for content.
Semper Fi
Thanks John. Yes, the intensity of the combat and conflicts raging inside us at the time, and those
going through similar things around us. Entirely different than back here…
making it tough to come home…
Semper fi,
Jim
A lot of lives could have been saved if batallion had just listen to the boots on the ground.
You could not be more correct but it seems that in every war there is this same disconnect.
I am just illustrating what, as I have found, is so damned frustrating and typical.
Semper fi,
Jim
It doesn’t matter if in a war or civilian life. I have been fire fighting for 23 years. Command rarely knows what is going on. But their job to look at the over all picture. By the way I am pretty sure the right seat on a chopper is the pilot.
You are spot on Don, and thanks for writing that here…
Semper fi,
Jim
this helping with my healing thank you very much
Glad to be of any help Mitchell.
And thank you for YOUR support.
Semper fi,
Jim
Another great chapter, gives good meaning to stuck between a rock and a hard (bad) place.
Correction , addition in 2nd sentence, I had no oil but I knew there “have” to be some, maybe change to had or add would have to be some. Just my two cents…
Thanks for your support, J.
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
thanks for the latest segment LT. I patiently await each, and the many thoughts and memories of that time and place they invariably bring back. semper fi
Your support and that of our readers keeps me going as slow as it might seem.
Semper Fi,
Jim
No one providing corrections this time around. Need to proof read.
A couple of observations; Lurp is LRRP for Long Range Recon Patrol.
Brother John is in Nha Trang
We called them Lurps back then. Yes, I understand what that stood for and stands for but
the word Lurp was the vernacular of the time. Thanks for the help….
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I think he was referring to the fact that you used the initials LLRP instead of LRRP for the Lurps
That was done in edit and not be me. LRRP is the only thing that makes sense when you write the words down.
Thanks,
Semper fi,
Jim
Another great installment. Thanks,
Hard to find humor in any of your segments ,but you had me laughing hard at ” the smell would attract bugs,maybe even leeches if the leeches had as little taste as I did
Appreciate your comment, Roger.
You are right, there was not much to be smiling about 24/7
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you junior.
glad to see you back writing hope your feeling better that is a hell off a chapter.
Getting better and better. Well done!
Thanks to you and other readers I will get this finished.
As you know it has been on the “shelf” for a few years.
Semper fi,
Jim
Some other edits…
First line…..I holstered Tex’s .45 automatic I’d used half my canteen water to boil (it) clean earlier.
closed for only seconds, I knew, before the sounds of bodies approaching caused my right hand (to) automatically unsnap the..
Another edit…..
along with resupply, we’re (we were) going to be a nearly impossible mess to coordinate and also to provide protection for.
Noted and corrected.
Thanks.
Semper fi,
Jim
Whew 👍
Into the valley rode the six hundred, crap that brings so much back, my heart bleeds for you and your team and those those who crossed into the shadow that morning
Another interesting segment James…this is sort of background info for when the shit hits the fan again…LURP…haven’t heard that term in a long time…seems as though you have all your guys in your corner for now, even the Gunny…I anxiously await your next instalment. As a footnote, I didn’t receive email notification of this segment…saw it on FB and went to your site.
We just sent the e-mail notice this morning.
Chuck must have gone to sleep early Sunday. ~~smile
Thanks for your support.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks for another great segment. I sense that they are getting more difficult for you?
Ken Brown
1st MAW
MACS 4
Danang area 69-70
That is so true, Ken.
Semper fi,
Jim
Here we go” Ya gotta live it to know it”
Good to see you made it through the next chapter alright! Was wondering if we were going to have to hire a ghost writer to finish the story, before the end of this year.
A good guess would be that the CO for the Army unit, intends for your troops to accompany him to the top of the hill. Surely the brass from behind the lines, will be sending another team of marine officers to command both C and K company, if they think junior has gone rogue.
Since junior is very adept at calling in field artillery, it would be ridiculous to remove him from the front lines. However, a sound ass chewing is in order from his superiors who are on the way, as far as the brass are concerned. PMA is in order for junior.
The leaders in the rear could not have, apparently, ever given a shit about how artillery was called.
They did not know. The officers and men back at the batteries knew but that was a closed loop communications-wise.
I will reveal more in the next chapter which will come faster because I fear your wilting demands and criticism.
Semper fi, and glad you are staying alive to read my story…
Jim
No need to fear my criticism as it is intended only, to get you back on track and finishing TDHS before I end my journey here on planet earth.
It is only natural for brothers in arms, to be concerned about their brothers. Our camaraderie exceeds the boundaries of the planet. Always remember that James and that you are never truly alone as long as there is a brother that is still breathing.
Semper fi my friend.
I think about you. Still breathing, and all. I don’t want to miss you. Selfish, kind of, don’t you think.
Not alone but every once and awhile, when the waterfalls are at max flow, emotions can play tricks.
Thanks for sticking with me and know that I read what you write with even more meaning than you probably wrote into the words…
Your friend, and,
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks James for the sincere comment. Hopefully we will all make roll call together in the King’s Kingdom. Will be looking for you there.
The mountain men of early American times called it “crossing over,” and I think the expression
is very appropriate. When that time comes brother then I will for certain be looking for you on the
other side…
Semper fi,
Jim
I am sure by now you know that you alone control your schedule. Great Job – glad you are back writing this.
A lot of things control the schedule. I have a weekly newspaper I write most of.
I am working away on two other novels and getting my book of short stories out too.
A lot of stuff going on and I’m not always at a hundred percent anymore…
Semper fi, and thanks for the understanding.
Jim
As usual, you had me glued to the story. Took me back to the usual, very strange thinking of the rear Eschelon people who didn’t seem to realize what was going on.Here’s hoping that the LZ stays cold until you can get the wounded and dead off along with your letters. Waiting for Capt. VC and what he has to say or do. Waiting was all we seemed to do until the SHTF. Good Read.
Waiting to see what was going to happen next was a big part of what was going on. I did not act so much as react
out in that shitty valley. Thanks for pointing that out…
Semper fi,
Jim
Welcome back, Jim……..very minor point , but medivac should be medevac……
Thanks for everything,
Bill
Appreciate your comment and edit corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
Welcome back LT. This one’s been long in coming and now we’re back in it. Semper Fi
Thanks James great as always
James, very good. You did a great job showing both the professional soldier and the very doubts and fears felt by them when ordering men into dicey situations.
Thanks again, Bob
Semper fi. Jim
Jim, Glad to see the next chapter, but as I read it for the third time, I think I understand why it took awhile. After twenty days, the despair, fear, stress, fatigue, lack of sleep, and all the other factors that kept you living on the edge of sanity, are building to an almost unlivable level. Going back and recalling it, sorting it out and writing about it, has to take you back to it, and requires you to probably take it in small bites with other activities mixed in between. All those who have been there, know how easily and quickly you can go back to where you were 49 years ago. You take care friend, and all the time you need. BTW….good editing. The only correction I noted was “they go nobody else”, probably should be “they’ve got nobody else.”
Thanks for your support, Joe.
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
Glad to see another edition James , though we had lost you !!
Great writing, I rip thru each issue with high anticipation, and you fulfill that!
Small edit… “The only result a combat until (unit) could expect was to receive replacements who’d just come into country and knew nothing…
Thanks again and corrected
Thanks for sharing these stories with us.
Thanks again for continuing, I eagerly await each new segment. I had a close friend who was in 1-1 who was KIA July 29 1967. He and I wrote to each other very often, until…. A book was written about his unit called “The Lions of Medina”. My self and other vet friends had the honor of meeting members of the unit our friend was in. It was very emotional for all of us. A few of the friends ,also Marines, were in the area of the DMZ when our friend was killed. Your writings stir up many past memories. Thank you.
Thanks for the support and writing about it on here Henry…
Semper fi,
Jim
lol I hatted that song. Enuugh said.
Been waiting for this , can breath again, and then just like that you took my breath away again. Great writing , keep up the awesome work.
Thanks to you and all of our loyal readers, Bob.
It does help to stay on track, although it is getting a bit rough.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you James, been waiting for the next one and it was outstanding! Humans given the circumstances take little time becoming animals out of our own survival instincts, one wonders how that feeling ever goes away as the years pass.
Thanks for the response and the support written into your comment James. No, not much changes as we get older, although it is a bit easier to handle.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
Another fantastic entry. Line 3, shouldn’t it read “The only result a combat UNIT could expect…..
After being in country only three weeks I no longer held out any hope that wholesale replacements would be sent in to fill all open positions. Nobody in the rear wanted to come out into the bush if they knew anything about it at all. The only result a combat until could expect was to receive replacements who’d just come into country and knew nothing about what might be ahead of them. I’d come to terms with why nobody would talk, or even answer me, when I was in the rear and fresh from the states. They knew where I was going and nothing they could tell me would help me at all in staying alive. I was already dead to them.
Paragraph 7 from the bottom line 3,
Except for the Ontos crew and some of Jurgen’s Marines, everyone would be there to make the coming exchange happen as fast as possible. I moved as quickly as I could, my feet making sucking sounds that I could barely heard, as I pulled one boot after another up from the rain-soaked mud. I didn’t bother with my poncho since the rain had turned into a mist that penetrated everything no matter what I might wear. I kept my left hand with the letters shoved inside my utility blouse, my right hand naturally falling to the butt of Tex’s Colt.
Should read “….sucking sounds that I could barely HEAR,…”
Thank you so much for your story…….
Bill Monnie
Thank Bill,
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
totally awesome and dreadful. Can’t process the folly of it all knowing what has already occurred. God Speed to everyone is all I can think of or say.
Thanks for the comment and support, Rick
Slowly working toward the finish.
Semper fi,
Jim
“It wasn’t me that started that old crazy Indian war”.
Jim, thanks. Welcome Home. Typos. Dave.
They’ll believe us because they’ve (go) nobody else.” => (got)
The only result a combat (until) could expect was to receive replacements who’d just come into country and … => (unit)
There seemed little doubt that the nightmare our A Shau operations were being viewed as almost( were) entirely due to my incompetence, by our commanders in the rear area. => remove second were or =>
There seemed little doubt that the nightmare our A Shau operations were being viewed by our commanders in the rear area as almost entirely due to my incompetence,
… my feet making sucking sounds that I could barely (heard), … => (hear)
Again your help is so appreciated, Dave.
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
Excellent story.
Just plain awesome , memories at their worse , hill battles of Kae Shann B1/9 67/68
“We took the hill…..we just didn’t hold it……and nobody else will hold it either”……just that simple….it explains everything about the faulty ‘logic’ of Westmoreland and his heirarchy…their logic of how to ‘win the war’ was doomed from the beginning….. if anyone had ever asked us grunts, we’d of told them how it could be done…but that was never going to happen…. As always LT…so descriptive, down in the mud, as it was day by day.. I notice how you ‘cleaned up’ our usual retort for responding to utterly ridiculous plans….””fuk em..what are they gonna do?…shave our heads and send us to the Nam?””…lol love it….Semper Fi
Spot on Larry, but then that is expected from a vet and a great writer like you.
Thanks so much.
Semper fi,
Jim
…. you write
A Lurp team. A Lurp team was the Army version of Marine Force Reconnaissance. An elite Army force of company size.
…. I never saw a LURP team of over 10 men, and they were generally only 5 .. but that’s just what I encountered ….
Appreciate that Dave.
Many started larger but quickly became smaller units.
Semper fi,
Jim
LRRP teams, true LRRP’S, were rarely over five men. Echo Raiders, our recon platoons for the companies of the 173d Airborne Brigade (SEP) WERE like your force recon, a whole platoon. But lrrp teams. … 5 men… Their objective was gathering info … not closing in combat; if it could possibly be avoided. But LRRP teams were small for that reason.
That being said, I look fwd to the next writing. Excellent job, Jim.
Yes, as we shall see in the next segment Vernon…
Thanks for the comment and the accuracy of it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Alright, Writing this as compelling as you have and cutting when you did… well, that’s just not right. 🙂
What a ominous story to relate. I can see many demons had to be dredged up to work around or through. Hope this goes better then planed. I remember when Kenny Rogers sang that on radio.
Thank Pete.
Worth the wait James!!
Keep them coming. I lost friends in Nam and this kind of gives me closure of a kind. Thanks.
I am glad that my writing has helped you G. Appreciate the comment on here about it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Stationery not stationary
Caught it and Thanks.
Now corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow Jim, another fascinating segment. So glad to see the story continue to move along. Thank you for working through the pain caused by the process of seeing this mission to its conclusion.
One typo I noticed:
“our A Shau operations were being viewed as almost were entirely due to my incompetence, ”
There is an extra “were” in the sentence.
Blessings my friend
Appreciate the support, Ed
Noted and corrected.
Semper fi,
Jim
Great to have you back,sir. Along time coming and worth the wait.
Great chapter as usual. Welcome back.
Please keep them coming