We broke down into Platoon size elements and sometimes squad size elements to be effective as far as noise and concealment control. During the day we rested and then at night we ambushed trails and other likely gathering points. This was virtually a vacation from humping in the, sometimes “Shangri-la” appearing, mountainous tri-border area of the Central Highlands of Dak To. In the Tuy Hoa area we made a great deal of contact with the NVA and that always kept our ‘esprit de corp’ high. We were our best as a unit when in contact with the NVA or even the VC. Yet we all dreaded a return to Dak To.
For months, during the summer, the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate) had been in the mountains between Dak To and the western ‘tri-border’ area of Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam. My company had searched what seemed to be every mountain top and ridge line in that area, day by day, during the monsoon season. At the end of each day we would cut an LZ, which later was to prove a God-send. To this day, the ‘humping’ in those mountains, combined with the weight of materials and additional burdens of our sick brothers gear are seared in my memory. The heat, insects, disease and constant demand to remain ‘STRAC’, with your ‘shit tight’, are etched into us like carvings in stone, to this day, whether we are now dead or alive. I will never leave that place. I return there daily and at night. I need to be there. I cannot leave. Throughout all the years since Dak To, nothing but living on the ‘edge’ can separate me from that time and place. It is as if all time after Dak To is somewhat surreal and I am just preparing to return there in the end. The time is quickening again as it is the 16th of November 2001 but still it is yesterday, November 1967 at Dak To, and we are still there.
I promised myself that nothing in life would ever frighten me, until it had the same gravity as Dak To, November 1967, and nothing has. How as many of us, as did, survived it at all, is still amazing to me.
We got the call, on the radio net, to ‘saddle up’, get our elements pulled in and high tail it to an assembly point for the ‘slicks’ coming to pick us up. That is all we were told, yet I somehow knew where we were headed and I was not alone. We deployed into a laager site sealed by ROK troops. We were allowed to bath in a river and even spend a little time ‘grab assing’ in the water. A C130 landed on a dirt strip in the middle of nowhere, picked us all up, and transported us back to Kontum Province and Dak To, the big ‘Free Kill Zone’.
We were moved to Ben Hat Special Forces base camp and my friends and I were positioned on the west perimeter of the camp. We had a perfect view of the mountains and a short walk to the south was the tent where the bodies of the dead were being assembled. We were asked to go and look at them, for identification purposes. I was glad I did not recognize anyone. We had lost guys to wounds (WIA) and killing wounds (KIA), but this was different, because of the scale. Head shots jumped out at me almost like they were painted on some of the bodies, many ‘contact wounds”. They mostly seemed to be black troopers but their color was grayish while wrapped in the ponchos. The impending terror I can still smell.
We ran a fast mission, first north along a bamboo shrouded highway in the bottom of the valley, ‘Route 66', totally invisible from the air, red clay packed like brick from use. We turned east and then due south back along the way we came, moving very fast, faster than was safe. We hit a hill in the southern end of the valley, west of the government highway and hurried up it, only to find an abandoned forward observation point from which the NVA had been mortaring and rocketing the convoys on the road.
We were picked up, moved back to Dak To. We were taken to an area for resupply. I followed SSgt. Hookai and 1st Sgt. Duckett’s examples, just as I had always tried to do. I assembled 52 loaded 18 round magazines of 5.56mm, 25 fragmentation grenades, as many smoke grenades as I could get in another sandbag, 3 claymore mines, and another 500 rounds of loose 5.56.
We “choppered” out to a pin point LZ at the top of an incredibly steep pointed mountain. We took in-coming rounds as the chopper tried to flare and land. The pilot released his pitch and the bird fell as I heard and felt the rounds hitting it, I thought were had been shot down and prepared to jump into the top of the jungle’s triple canopy. Then the chopper blades bit the air, after falling many hundreds of feet, and we reestablished lift, just at the top of the jungle canopy. Fritz Schautz and I had made an arrangement to never crash land in a chopper, but to jump into the triple canopy jungle, rather than risk sure death in a fiery crash. I always rode first in the door, or shotgun as we called it, which enabled me to exit first and Fritz was second.
We inserted at the LZ on the second try. A lot of the bodies, that I had seen at Bien Hat, had come from that hill top and fear was on the faces of the troopers that were left on that hilltop as we landed. They warned us about the presence of gooks but we could smell them as we started down the steep hill.
We moved out, down the side of that hill, in an attempt to find the source of fire that was harassing our landings.
Shortly after that we made contact on a saddle of one of the ridge lines that would later lead us to Hill 882. The contact was very heavy and the air support cluster bombs hit us with a lot of spent shrapnel. The gooks were dug in with heavy overhead covered bunkers and connected by deep trench lines. Their snipers were tied in the trees. One of our guys took one of the snipers out with an M79 and he swung on a long attachment from the tree. This was just a literal taste, smell and sight of what was to come.
The next morning 1st Sgt Duckett had a mission for us to route the gooks from their positions across the saddle. Sgt. Riley, Fritz and myself were to work our way around the left flank of the saddle and come up on our far left side of the bunker complex. We had heard a .51 caliber Chicom, or Russian heavy machine gun, and there was fear of it downing aircraft.
The side of the saddle was virtually perpendicular to the valley below but by hanging on the vegetation we were able to slowly work our way to the far side without being seen. Once there, we started up the slope and could see the end of the bunker line. The gooks never thought that GIs could pull that off and had not addressed that avenue of attack. We could see a RPD machine gun being fired toward our guys from the edge of the bunker but outside and to the left of the bunker, from our view point. Riley decided to go further along the edge, below visibility, and then move up, from behind, on the bunker alone, with Fritz and I, drawing the gunners attention by firing at him. We did so from behind a very small clump of bamboo; I mean small, as in four or five, 2 to 3 inch stalks. The gook gunner, or his assistant could not bring the muzzle of the machine gun to bear on us without exposing himself, due to the angle, so they began to roll grenades down on Fritz and me. As they raised their hands to chunk the grenades, we shot at their hands. There was a great fear of the grenades coming down and exploding on us. Instead it became a game between us, because the bamboo stopped the grenades that could hurt us. They exploded at the bamboo while we dropped back over the edge. We watched as Riley crept up on the bunker line, and when he stopped, raised up and put 2 rounds in the side of the gook’s head while he was pitching grenades at us. His head just exploded into a fine red mist. Up the side of the hill Fritz and I went to join Riley and we began to grenade each bunker in the trench line and got rid of all the gooks. Our guys were still firing at the bunkers and trench line, so we had to be careful not to be hit by our own guys. We had no one else to fight so we sat down to rest. Fritz sat with his testicles about 2 inches from an unexploded cluster bomblet and was extremely disturbed. He tooled off his gear and I grabbed him and jerked him up and away safely. Riley went back the way we came and got the firing shut down. I sat down on a huge tree that a 155 artillery shell had knocked down over the trench line. I looked down at my boots and below was the anti-aircraft, tripod mounted .51 caliber machine gun, felled with the tree, but still intact. One of the gook crew was dead, there with it .My system went into overdrive again because I thought that the gooks would be back for that highly prized weapon before our guys could get up to where Fritz and I were.
We pushed out the next morning while one of our sister companies was in very heavy contact, to the point of being over run, which is what happened. We ran a ridge line to get to them and we were following a telephone line on the ground on the same ridge line. One of my good friends, David Herbert, was walking slack for a South Korean trooper named Chang, and Chang walked right up on a dug in RPD machine gun, with several gooks around and on top of the bunkered position. The gooks waved at him, as he was oriental, and they misidentified him. He ‘fired their asses up’ and the firefight began. We each loosed off 18 rounds of 5.56, left and right on the trail, dropped our rucks and moved up to form a defensive position. To my horror, my friend Herbert had been shot in his left temple with a single gook round. I helped the medic attend him, by holding the albumen bottle and talking to him, while the medic worked on him. We got a dust off, with a jungle penetrator and ‘Stokes Litter’ in and he was evacuated behind a sergeant who was shot through the thigh bone and femoral artery. I still don’t know if he made it. My friend was a Mormon guy and a hell of a soldier. He looked just like the little kid in the ‘Joe Palooka’ comic strip and we had been together in A.I.T. at Ft. Gordon, Georgia. There was nothing I could do to help him except look at his brain bleeding in his skull. Herbert hit his head on the skid of the Medevac, as he was being lifted out and the litter was turning, and I raged at the chopper.
We finally broke through to the sight of the ambush that our sister company had been in. The battle scene was horrific. We were looking for friends and found one guy’s helmet with his wife or girl friend’s picture in it, with his name on the camouflage cover. The round that got him went straight through helmet and his brains and blood were inside. Some how the remainder of that company was attached to us when the battle for 882 began, as they were too small to survive on their own.
On we went until we reached the base of 882. By now we all had our ‘shit tight’ and I mean like a stretched piano wire. We passed through a napalmed area and there was a gook that was flung back over the top of the vegetation. He entire body was fried black as the ace of spades. His mouth was stretched wide open and his eye sockets were empty holes, with the skin of his face stretched very taunt over the hairless head. I have seen an abstract portrait of someone in hell and they are virtually identical.
Now we could really feel the gooks in our senses. Trails were cut into the sides of mountains and there were stair steps with bamboo rails for hand holds. We were finding connected Commo wire laid on the ground. We killed a general officer with a hand drawn map that was virtually to scale of all of the area we had humped in the summer and fall. Each LZ was drawn. The map was a work of art. No question that the decision had been made, by the gooks, to engage whomever was sent to find them. We knew that they were significant in numbers, but had no idea that they were in the thousands in the valleys and hillsides nor in the preparations that they had made.
We began our assent at the base of 882. The map showed a fairly gentle finger running to the top, but Cpt. Jesmer insisted that we climb the steepest side of the hill, which was virtually straight up, and I do mean straight up. Lt. Robinson’s point element, pulled point, and after they reached the top Jesmer had me pull point for the rest of the company,. There was no path to follow. The ascent was so vertical that I had to hold on to vegetation. I had a D-handled shovel in one hand and my M16 in the other. Combined with the mortar rounds and M60 ammo, the climb was horrific. I would hook the shovel on a piece of vegetation and pull myself up while holding my weapon in my right hand. A thorn from a bamboo plant cut my left middle finger to the bone of the knuckle. I could not figure out what I would do if I came under fire since, no one was walking my slack. It seemed to take forever to make it to the top of that hill. Once on top, I dropped my rucksack and began to try to figure out where the other point element was. Slowly the next section of the company arrived. Jesmer had radio contact with the point and instructed me to move in that direction. I was enraged at him for the breaking contact with the point. I proceeded in the direction he had instructed and walked into an old laager site, with an LZ off to my right, small but an LZ.
This was the magical LZ, that the Commo Chief, Sandy had been writing a poem about for months. He was so smitten with the place and it’s beauty that he put it on paper. I had not seen the place, but when the company was there in the earlier part of that year, he was somehow so fascinated by it that he could not let it go. Foreboding was my sense of the location. The night before, 1st Sgt. Duckett had a dream in which a B-40 rocket streaked over his head. He recalled that and nothing more. That rocket would latter take both of Sandy’s legs and kill Riley after striking him in the chest. Cpt. Jesmer had taken command of the company on that very hill and at that precise laager site, earlier in the year also.
As we entered the abandoned laager site, my first understanding of where the point was occurred. Rounds cracked and some of 1st platoon came running out of the foliage yelling “Gooks, lots of them!” The area was a saddle with about a 30 to 50 yards distance across. This turned out to be why so many of us, as did, were able to survive. The fire fight had begun.
First Sgt. Duckett settled next to me and instructed the mortar platoon to get the tube operational. SSGT. Hookai positioned himself in an old fighting position on the far right of the saddle with the LZ behind him and thick brush to his front. I felt my left boot jump and looked to see a bullet hole through the heel. I rolled over and yelled “snipers in the trees”. Everyone that could, fired into the triple canopy of the jungle. The mortars would actually eliminate a sniper, with direct fire, from one of the trees.
I looked at Hookai’s position and saw two gooks approach him from his right blind side. One had a AK and the other a B-40 RPG. The noise of firing was so insanely loud I could not warn him. I engaged them as did an M60 gunner. At that point I grabbed my sandbags of grenades from my rucksack, all of my magazines, and ran across the LZ to join Hookai.
The position was very advantageous as the gradually sloping finger met the hilltop directly to the front of the position. The gooks had set up a horseshoe ambush for us on that finger. Because we had taken the most difficult route up the hill, we had approached them from the rear and surprised them. They were extremely well camouflaged, and all you could really see was the brush move and their weapon’s muzzle blast move the foliage, as they fired. They assaulted continuously. Hookai would start on the far right and I would start on the far left, and we would sweep grazing full automatic fire to our front, bringing it together, crisscrossing our fire continuously. This went on non-stop for what seemed an eternity, engaging them at 5 to 15 yards, wave after wave of them. We intermittently “grenaded” them and directed artillery, mortar and F4 Phantom 20mm fire by screaming back to Duckett and hand signals. We asked for closer fire but could not get it, as they were afraid of hitting us. The 20mm Phantom fire we got within 5 meters of our position. For some unknown reason a lull occurred, just a sudden silence, not a sound. One of the guys from the ambushed company came running across the LZ toward us with a M60 and pitched it at the hole we were in, striking Hookai in the head. Just as it had stopped, the hell started again. The guy who brought the gun was so shook up and terrified after what he had been through earlier, that he would only stay in the bottom of the hole, link belts of ammo and feed the gun. I took over control of the weapon and was so livid, that I fired a 100 round burst of grazing fire, plus many rounds up into the trees. That is not the way to properly handle and M60. It appeared that every gook in Viet Nam heard that gun and concentrated their fire at our position. Leaves, bamboo, and dirt cascaded down on us. Rockets hit the area and I was hit by a small piece of shrapnel in the left middle of my back. When Hookai checked my back and I could not force air out of the wound, my fear of a sucking chest wound subsided. No more long burst of fire. I fired so continuously with that weapon, that Hookai had to stand behind me and push me forward to support me. I could not use the bi-pod because I could not lower the muzzle enough to control the fire effectively. Before long we were running low on M60 ammo. I ran back across the LZ and back to the center of the company for more 60 ammo. Someone told me to “haul ass” because a sniper had my number and his rounds were impacting dead behind me as I had crossed the LZ.
I collected 6 cans of ammo and felt like I was flying across the LZ, no fatigue at all, just pure fear. We got the gun up and running again and I had brought back a can of oil that we attempted to cool the barrel with. It seemed that there wold be no end to the gooks. How many could there be? I was convinced that we would never make it out of there. We had too many wounded and I had seen Sandy and Riley when I went to get the ammunition along with other dead. Sandy’s stumps were just drooling clear fluid and he was leaning against a tree. Riley had been struck by the B-40 rocket in the chest and his blond hair was matted with his blood. There seemed to be no panic though and we were not giving ground, yet.
I had laid my M16 on the edge of the hole and was trying to get the guy in the bottom of the position to use it. We were suddenly intensely assaulted again, and out of my peripheral vison I saw brush moving to our left. I screamed at the guy in the bottom of the hole to cover that movement; he did by picking up my M16, and as the movement turned into a man, he fired a full magazine at him. The guy fell right at the edge of our position. He was one of our guys. He had no weapon, no helmet and no load bearing gear. One round had hit him in the neck, nearly severing the his neck, killing him. As the assault stopped I grabbed the guy who shot him and started slapping him and cursing him. Hookai stopped me and said I should let it go and he would explain later. It turned out that the guy had been in ‘Recon’ when Hookai had that platoon down south. Hookai later told me that the platoon was pinned down in a bomb crater by a .51 caliber machine gun. The dead man had been in a spider hole and had a Light Anti-Tank Weapon, but refused to fire it at the machine gun position or even raise his head up and look, no matter what Hookai did. Hookai said he finally got what he deserved, and for me not to mention the incident to anyone, as the poor guy who shot him was a basket case and nothing could change the facts. At the end of the day the gooks broke contact at dark. Fresh guys were moved up to our position and we pulled back into the center of the perimeter. Hours had gone by. One of the medics gave me some kind of medication. I have no idea what is was, but the fatigue I felt was undescribable. We buried a flash light in the center of the perimeter and turned it on for the Spooky gun ship. Spooky and the artillery worked the entire perimeter all night. I dug under the spot where everyone had collected their ruck sacks to get a little rest and to have some cover. Once when I got up during the night I heard and saw a M16 blast rip and saw the tracers go virtually straight up. After daylight I found out that a single gook walked up on a buck sergeant, in his hole, and he fired a magazine into the gook, but the gook fell forward into the guy’s hole and on top of the sergeant. The trooper worked him over with a knife, to further ensure that he was dead. The next morning I went back to my position and we were informed that ‘Super Six’ wanted some prisoners. I was easing out in front of my position, alone, to set up a claymore mine. I noticed another hole out to the front about 20 yards in front of our position with the tip of a B-40 rocket protruding out of the hole. I loosed out a grenade and crawled toward the hole. I pulled the pin on the grenade and started to pitch it in the hole, when I remembered about the prisoner request and the promise of a 3 day pass to Vung Tau and 250 dollars if you captured a prisoner with his weapon. I looked over in the hole and there were 2 gooks in the bottom. One had an AK47 and the other the rocket launcher. The one with the AK was shot in the top of the skull with the round digging bone for about 3 to 4 inches, with his brain oozing out, while the other one had the corner of his left eye shot out so that the bone was removed, but the eye amazingly worked. I put the muzzle of my M16 on the forehead of the gook with the eye wound and pushed his head back, while motioning for him to release the launcher. The safety was off on the launcher and the back blast would have killed them both if he had fired it. I got the AK next. I had the conscious soldier lift the other one out and drag him back toward the perimeter.
I should have killed the two gooks in the hole. It would have been kinder for them. ‘Super six’, our Battalion commander, flew in to view the prisoners. I am not going to describe what happened to them before his arrival but there was no R&R at Vung Tau, no pat on the back, and definitely no $250.00. No other prisoners were taken while I was with the company.
Later that day one of our guys hit a booby trap, or had a grenade go off on his belt. I never knew which, but when we policed him up, the largest piece I found of him was his thigh, just a black man’s thigh oozing clear fluid and blood. I wrapped it in a poncho and thought about what was his Mom going to say when they gave her the thigh to bury.
Duckett asked for volunteers and Schautz, another guy and I volunteered for the duty. When we found out what we had gotten ourselves into I know I questioned our sanity. Someone wanted a Recon of Hill 875 conducted. Three men, unarmed except for knives, at night and making no contact with the enemy, just to be sent out for observation. It was canceled at the last minute, thank God.
We were down considerably in strength and no one wanted to leave the other guys for aid treatment. I quietly had Doc Mescal clean my small wound and got him to agree not to say anything about it. Too many good men were seriously hurt. I am guessing about 75% of the company was hit and 6 were dead. Sandy made it through the night, and as far as I know, survived after losing both legs. The rocket that Duckett dreamed about did fly over his head, taking Sandy’s legs and killing Riley. We had 3 men in our company named Riley and all 3 were killed in due course while I was there.
A R&R came up in January and I took it because I had a feeling that if I didn’t, I would never get the chance. I was worried to death about the guys the entire time I was in Tokyo and felt guilty as sin about being gone.
The Tet offensive of 1968 occurred and we were sent to Ban Me Thout to track a large NVA force that had hit Ban Me Thout and had raped the 4th Infantry, we were told .
While tracking the gooks we killed a lot of stragglers trying to re-assemble. One of our sister companies was in heavy contact and had a WIA that had to be Medevac’d or die. Four of us volunteered to go get him. We took pistols and shot our way through the gooks, shot our way back out with the wounded guy on a poncho, and at a dead run for about 1 mile, carried him back to our perimeter. The ordeal was unbelievably difficult carrying his dead weight and for some reason I was worried about all of his blood in the poncho spilling out as we ran. We collapsed after we got back to the Medevac chopper. He was shot in the neck and died as we lifted him on the chopper.
On the 12th of February 1968, I was on a patrol late in the afternoon with approximately 11 other guys. Lt. Getty was leading the patrol, I believe, and we were tracking that same large NVA element that was attempting to get into Cambodia to escape. We found them in double canopy jungle on about a 25 degree inclined hill. It turned out to be a regimental base camp and we walked right into it. I believe that I was the only man not wounded as the fire fight began. The Lt.’s RTO was hit, so I advanced to where he was to take over the radio. A round had hit the brass threaded base of the PRC-25 radio detaching the antenna and we could not contact anyone. The second radio was some distance away and I sprinted over to get it and returned to the LT. We were a long distance from the rest of the company and the LT. called for mortar fire, more men and air support. If they had assaulted us we could not have survived. Apparently they did not know our strength and thought that we were the point element for a larger force. The entire company headed our way. We had 5 or 6 dead and things were very grim. We laid down as much fire as we had the ability to do, and waited it out. The company finally got close to us, but wanted us to come back to them, not the other way around.
We had a new company commander and he was scared, probably stupid by an act of nature, and useless. I was told that he was relieved of his command the next day after the fiasco of this day.
We had lost Cpt. Jesmer to the Army’s insane rotation program of having officers getting their tickets punched. This occurred just about the time that an officer was truly becoming very good at his job and his relations with his men. Cpt. Jesmer would come to see me and some of the other guys in the Hospital at Pleiku, later, and I told him he had to get that new Cpt. out of there before he got everyone killed.
Blackman had been shot through both knees and was in terrible pain and could not walk. As we prepared to move back to the company I put him on my back and proceeded to crawl back toward where the company was supposed to be. I looked back and saw James Coker on his knees laying down continuous fire with his M60. At the same time a gook machine gun found its range on Blackman and myself. The grass was 2 or 3 feet tall and the gun was shredding it over our heads. I told Blackman to hold tightly around my neck because we were going to make a run for it. We had no choice as the gun would eventually hit Blackman and then me. I had absolutely no problem standing up with Blackman, my weapon and sprinting to the rest of the company. I could not see anyone in the company but knew the general direction. I was screaming, “Rawhide!” which was our password to get through the perimeter. Blackman screamed the entire way, as his legs were flopping every which way. Those of us that could make it back did, but I never saw my friend James Coker again. He was 3 days past his DEROS date and did not want to leave the company. He is still with us in death.
Paratroopers do not leave their dead on the battlefield. 1st Sgt. Duckett asked for someone who knew the way, to direct the rescue element back with 1st Sgt. Duckett leading, to get our dead and any wounded. No one was left to volunteer, and I felt so guilty, not being wounded, that I said I would. I truly did not want to go back. Lt. Getty, although shot twice already in the neck and calf, volunteered also and we guided them back together. Five of us were already dead and I was the only remaining one not hit.
We went back and all hell broke loose again. Some dead we got, but Coker was not among them. We took another KIA. He was a school teacher that had already pulled a tour in Viet Nam. Someone had told him that if he joined the Airborne he would be sent to Europe because he had already been to Viet Nam. How he got through Jump School was a mystery to all of us. He was a nice guy but had no coordination, wore thick glasses, was scarred ‘shitless’ and tripped over his own two feet. He was ‘Sad Sack’ personified. I felt very sorry for him. He was our last KA of the day, that I know about.
One of the Lt.s was laying next to me after we arrived back at the scene of the firefight, Getty I believe. The gunfire was reaching a volume that seemed as loud as 882 at Dak To in November. We were on opposite sides of a large tree for cover and we had a radio. I had to position the radio antennae to maintain Commo. Some gook got the range on the antennae, and a B-40 somehow landed between us. It blew the Lt. 10 feet from me, at least, wounding him badly, and wounded me three times in the right rib cage and the right buttock. The detonation of the rocket picked me up and turned me over. I thought, “What the fuck was that?” I could feel the blood on my right side rib cage and was struck with cold fear of a ‘sucking chest’ wound, which drowns you in your own blood. We collected ourselves and as the decision was made to pull back, I took the radio, my weapon, and started back, as the Lt could not carry the radio. A round slammed into my right shoulder and flattened me. I was dazed and stunned. I was afraid to feel my shoulder. I rolled over and looked at the sky and thought, “God don’t let them take me prisoner!” I felt my shoulder and found no exit wound. I coughed and no blood was in my throat. I was again terrified that one of the wounds could be a ‘sucking chest’. I got up; I couldn’t find the Lt. I saw guys moving back and I sprinted back down the slope. When I was inside the perimeter I slid down beside Schautz and he asked, “What happened up there”? I said we were told to pull back. He pulled his right hand up, it was covered in blood and then told me that I had been hit. I told him that I was aware of that. He got me to one of the medics. The ‘Doc’ checked me for ‘sucking chest’, put on dressings and slung my right arm. He told me how hysterical and ‘fucked up’ the new CO was. 1st Sgt. Duckett started running things when we got back. The platoon leaders were too busy running the platoons. The new CO was about to have a ‘serious combat encounter’ if he got in the way anymore.
The rest of the guys arrived. ‘Fast Movers’ and ARA gun ships arrived. The sound was like the end of the world as they fired for us on the scene of the firefight, directly over our heads, waving their wings as they left. 20mm shell cases landed all over us and scaring the hell out of us as they cracked over our heads and rained down on us initially. It was decided that we would move in a circular perimeter formation with the wounded inside, back to the laager site. We had never done anything like this before. The school teacher was tied to a pole that someone cut, just like a mountain lion that someone has killed, hands together and feet together. One end of the pole was put on my left shoulder and someone else had the other end. My right arm was slung and my arm holding my weapon rested on one of my ammo pouches. I could not raise my gun arm. I carried a Thompson submachine gun at that point and it is a heavy but very reliable weapon. My shoulder throbbed and ached and I was not sure what to do if we made contact again on the long hump back to our gear and perimeter. If we had to fight again, dropping the teacher would not hurt him, as he was already dead, but still it concerned me. I could not hold him on the pole and have an extra magazine ready for my weapon if I had to fight. I wouldn’t take any morphine because I wanted to be in control of my senses. Back to the laager site we went. The school teacher’s face was looking up at me and he still had on his glasses with a bullet hole through the left lens, the round had to have killed him instantaneously. The look on his face was as if he wanted to ask a question of me again, like, “What did I do wrong?” I had tried to get help him get squared away but he was just too scared and uncoordinated. Back and forth he swung, while we moved back to the laager site. I still see a lot of him.
1st Sgt. Duckett was wounded by a round that dug into both of his thighs, just level with his testicles. He told me that he had nearly become the ‘1st Gelding’. He kept on keeping things in gear and working.
We arrived back and the worst wounded went out first, on the Dust Off ships. I did not want to leave and cannot explain why to this day. I still feel guilty for leaving. Finally I was ordered to get on one of the Medevacs.
We first went to a MASH unit and then to a hospital. At the hospital I refused to give up my weapon. The doctors and nurses were quite upset, but I did not feel we were out of danger. Our Chaplain came to see me and talked me into giving it to him.
I was transferred from Camp Holloway to an Air Force hospital around Bien Hoa, then to Okinawa, the 249th hospital in Camp Zama, Japan, on to San Francisco, and finally William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, where in all I was in the hospital for 6 months. I was operated on after I first came out of the field. Some shrapnel was removed from my right hip. The projectile in my shoulder was not removed nor was the shrapnel in my right rib cage. Due to the nerve damage and muscle loss in my shoulder, my 11B MOS was taken from me and I was discharged from the hospital and then reassigned at William Beaumont General Hospital for the remainder of the time I was in the service.
Still today I can see it all it my mind. I can hear and even distinguish the different sounds the different weapons make. I am able to smell the gunpowder and lubricating oil from the hot weapons and the urine from the dead. I can smell the awful odor of the dead gooks that we had to dig up and the decaying bodies, as we found them. I can taste the uniquely metallic, salty sweat. The sound of helicopter rotor blades biting into the air take me back instantaneously to the battles. All of the above is burned into my mind.
The events depicted above are just covering a few days. I could write more about incidences during my time in Viet Nam, but prefer not to do so. I have to relive it daily, nightly, so what is the point?
Gary Howard
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| Me coping with monsoon weather |
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Members of 1st Platoon, B/3/503d. 1968 Bao Loc & Central Highlands in South Vietnam |
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| Members of 1st Platoon, B/3/503d. 1968 Bao Loc & Central Highlands in South Vietnam |
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This is a REAL mobile home |
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| Me, in the bush |
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My original 173d Society membership card |
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