Interview with James Talone, August 24, 2022

Talone Full-001_subref.m4a

All right. My name is Thomas Wood, and I'm here on behalf of West Chester University and the University of Kentucky doing an oral history project on the Vietnam War. I'm in Cape May courthouse, Cape May courthouse in New Jersey with Jim Talone. The date is August 24th, 2022. Let's get started, shall we? Yes. You presented a unique opportunity for me as an interviewer, because I haven't interviewed an author yet. So I just want to I want to say that you have a book there it is about your experience in Vietnam. And I imagine we're going to discuss it quite a bit throughout the day and a lot of this interview is going 00:01:00to echo it. But let's imagine somewhat. Let's start a little bit before that. Okay. So where were you born? I was born in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, at Bryn Mawr Hospital, actually, 1944, June 5th, right before D-Day. Hmm. Okay. And you grew up in Ardmore. Grew up in Ardmore and Coleman School. Went to Monsignor Bonner High School. Mount Saint Mary's College. After that, I went to Temple. After I came back from the stairwell, before I went to the service. I came back and spent another ten, 12 years there getting getting master's degree in education and stuff like that. What did you get your bachelors in? Bachelors was English and education. Ah, so you're an English teacher, so that's why you set me up with a book report? Yes, yes. Always. So you. What year did you graduate from 00:02:00university? Oh, the first I graduated, 1966. The Vietnam War was heating up. You know, I actually went to graduate school right away. I still had deferment. I didn't have to do that. I sort of burned out, didn't do real well in graduate school, taken five classes and decided, you know, maybe I ought to go in the service.

Hmm. Why? Why did you decide to go into the service? Well, because the country was at war. I had grown up, you know, like I say, being born during the Second World War. I grew up with all of these guys that had served in different places, Iwo Jima. One of the guys I was close with had been in the Navy, across in back and forth across the North Atlantic. And it was sort of the thing you were 00:03:00supposed to do at that point. I wasn't married, but I had a good friend who was just married and he was, you know, he was okay. He was not going to have to go. But I felt like, okay, I ought to have to go. And then I was growing up in Catholic school, and there was an awful lot of anti-communist propaganda and truth. Both. Both were there. And you were sort of trying to help this brave country that didn't want to be communist. So it it was a thing that I did out of the belief that this is the right thing to do. That point couple of my Temple University professors tried to talk me out of it, but I went. I want to talk 00:04:00more about your I imagine you enlisted. I enlisted. I signed up in in March of 67. Okay. But before we get into that, I want to I want to rewind a little bit to you're talking about the Catholic conversation around communism, right? So I've had a couple of people tell me about the propaganda, the mythology they fed you. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, I can remember one time in college, they brought in a guy to talk about about Vietnam, and there was a guy named Tom Dooley, not the song, but he was a medical doctor who had been over there in 54 and came back and he was running missions up in the hills, I guess.

I guess maybe with the Hmong. I'm not sure who all was there. And you also turns out later was reporting back to the CIA what he saw, which was, you know, it's 00:05:00not like he was a trained secret agent or something like that. It was he's up in the hills. He sees what's going on. And what I remember particularly was the clash ended at noon, let's say, and lunch was noon. And he kept talking to about 1230 and nobody left that we were all on board with this. The Communists were doing some pretty horrible things in villages and stuff like that. And from what I gather, that's that's true. It's it's not just propaganda, but the Catholic Church was very much anti anti-communism because communism was anti-religious. And I don't know that I was religious. I guess I was sort of maybe a little bit more religious than the next guy at the time. And it made sense to then, you 00:06:00know, and here's a chance to do something bigger than yourself. I mean, one of the other pieces of it is, you know, who fights the war as well as the 18 year olds, the 22 year olds. And they've been in they've been in high school or college for years. And the. I want to get out and do something. Well, this is a pretty big something. So it made sense to me then to sign up for the Marine Corps. One of the things that I heard from other Catholics was that there was an emphasis on on helping the pagan babies or the pagan masses of Vietnam. The emphasis on the children. Yeah, I don't remember particularly the children. The pagan babies was a slightly different thing in the early fifties.

You could name a pagan. We brought up five books over your island. The Clash brought in $5. You got to name the pagan baby. Now, you know, I did it one time. I don't know. There's some kid out there named Jim Cologne or James or whatever, you know? I don't know what happened. You know, they never that ever felt that kind of thing in it. But the idea of service. Was also there. The idea that you're going to do something again, that's somewhat important. Another aspect that I think about when I think about Catholicism in the Vietnam War is that we were propping up a Catholic majority regime. Was that was that something you understood? Is that part of the logic behind. Oh, we knew that. Well, the French have been there before us for 100 years or something. So they had had a big influence. You know, there was Buddhist influence, the Catholic influence. And 00:08:00now here come the communists who are, you know, not religious. So they were the they were the godless enemy. So that's why. Okay, so that makes sense. So then back to you being in college and your professors trying to talk you out of this, what sort of things do they say? Well, just that it was it was a war in our self interest. It was a war. It's hard to believe now. Well, once communism sort of fell, I don't know that it's fallen all the way at all. You know, the communists took over. Russia was a handful of people. It was a democratic move. It was 500 people or a thousand people took over a country of however many millions after that. Right 00:09:00after the Second World War. Chinese communists come in then. I mean, you also had Greece was fighting against communism.

Italy had a communist premier for a while. So there was this sense that things are dominoes are falling. That was the big thing. And it wasn't untrue. It was it was happening. You know, I have a lot of sympathy for the communist ideal of, you know, government for the masses. But in reality, they've also I'd like to think capitalism has done less harm than. I don't know, you know. We've 00:10:00certainly committed enough sins on our side. So their argument was that that communism is, well, this communism is happening. Well, in 62, you have Cuba going communist. You know, it's it's it's moving in towards us. Okay, so let's stop it way back out there. So I understand that. But the I'm I'm asking what argument the professors are making against. Oh, against you doing. Yes, that we were doing it for our self-interest. That and it didn't quite make sense. I mean, if you're going to do self-interest, you know, go get an oil state or something. We didn't really need the the rice bowl. That was Southeast Asia. It was we kind of got caught in it. If you've watched Ken Burns is saying the very beginning is so frustrating because everybody says we should be helping, you 00:11:00know, Ho Chi Minh. And we're not and and we're not because, you know, partly we're really worried about communism. And and Russia turns after the war and becomes an enemy and the Iron Curtain falls down. And I later I met a woman who grew up in Yugoslavia, you know, Czechoslovakia. And she was still she was 18. She really believed that the guards on the the gates were to keep the Europeans out, because they really you know, we had it so good here.

So, you know, that's sort of the political background that made me feel okay. It was a worthwhile thing to do. Was was this I find doing these interviews and you mentioned in your book about the the memory and how memories can get blurred and 00:12:00changed over time. One of my big questions is, what did you know then versus what did you know now? And and how was that blurred to you? I know we lost her, so maybe she shouldn't have done it. But remember, we had also just come back from Korea. You know, they stopped the communists in Korea. Korea developed into one of our biggest allies. It's a it's a democratic country. Uh, there was the thought that you could do the same thing in South Vietnam. Now I don't. Different war war's different. Different places. I don't know whether it would have worked. I think, you know, most of the most of the Vietnamese didn't care 00:13:00one way or the other. You know, they were an agrarian economy and they're out there trying to run their fields and bring in their crops and live their lives. And they don't want either side messing with them. I did not see particularly that this was a that America got anything really. You know, very much in the self-interest of America, United States, to, uh, to do the Vietnam War. And most of the people that I served with seem to be are honorable people I got to served with, uh, uh, as a general aide at the end of the war or for the last three months of the three or four months of the war. And these were guys who were 00:14:00serious, professional military, but they were also thoughtful. They were not just knee jerk.

But, you know, let's blow up North Vietnam, blow it off the face of the map. I want to I want to get back to that a little bit later. But let's go back to when you were leaving Temple and when you were enlisting into the military. So why the Marines? Why the Marines? Because the Marines had better PR. That's most of your growing up of the Marines were the you know, the heroes of the Pacific. Not that the Army didn't do their job there, too. Marines were mostly volunteer. All said it was all volunteer. There were a few people that got sort of stuck coming in. But I wanted to serve with the best. And I don't know that we were the best 00:15:00in Vietnam. A couple of the Army units were pretty damn good. The 101st, the first Cav. Those guys, for one, they had better supplies than we have. I think I mentioned in the book, I definitely want to talk about that later. But one of the one of the things I really thought about the book or tried to think about was was the omissions that you had. And I wonder why you didn't talk a lot about training and, and your experience in officer candidate school and basic and things like that. One of the things that they teach you in writing is to write a book when you get done, throw out the first two chapters. Hmm. Get to the action. So that's what you did? Yeah. I certainly could have gone back and talk about training. I talk a little bit there about, you know, I was not a good 00:16:00candidate particularly. I wasn't I wasn't good at marching. I wasn't good at looking sharp spit and stuff like that.

And that was just a five month passage to do this. I made some good friends. I still got some of them. And. I was going to say served with them. They were over there when I was there. But they. You did. You didn't see them. I just had an incident where I found out that Bill Dakin was still alive and living up in Vermont. A lawyer. This is a guy I served with in Khe Sanh. And I called them up after 53 years, you know, and we talked and I went up and visited him. And even with him, he had second platoon. I had first platoon. We were sort of like, 00:17:00if you think of a typical suburban block, I had this corner he had the corner character over here. And, you know, I saw him when we we got together for, you know, the captain brought us together to give us orders. But other than that, unless I went out of my way, I didn't go over into his area. Well, partly that was Khe Sanh. And you got rocketed or mortared, you know, when you traveled above ground and you just didn't travel in necessarily above ground. Would you mind adjusting your mike the outside of your shirt? Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt your line of thought. Maybe we'll go to the sights if that works better. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. All right. Great. Thank you. You 00:18:00still recording? Yes. Yes, it's still. It's still going on. I see. Sounds okay. Yeah. Okay. So you do want to get involved? Do you want to tell me a little bit about your training? Yeah, of training with training was was tough. Uh, you went in through OCS for me. I had no you know, some of the guys had gone through college, some of the training, you know, you're just sort of thrown in there with 50 guys.

They shave your head, they make you run to breakfast and lunch and, you know, run you through all sorts of things. A lot of it is just sort of testing, I think. I think we lost we had 200 in our company and I think probably 50 or 60 washed out. He couldn't keep up on a run or you couldn't keep up with the book learning and stuff like that. And there wasn't a ton of book learning. A lot of 00:19:00it was, you know, polish your boots, you know, how to dress up, how to shine your brass then marching, which I was not very good at, but it was only ten weeks. My buddy went through army and he had four months of that where they were constantly harassed. People are yelling at you. I had grown up in Catholic school, so I was used to people yelling at you. It didn't particularly bother me. It got to some people. So after ten weeks they make me a lieutenant. They send you to basic school where they teach you to be a platoon officer to start. And that was I guess that was June to the end of October to November now. But at that point you're allowed to bring a car on you. You can go away for weekends. 00:20:00You can, you know, if you don't have a an operation, some kind of thing that you're on, you know, you can go drinking at night. And they treated you as a lowly officer, but as an officer. And, you know, that was a that was an interesting time. We all sort of knew where we were headed. You know, you're going to go to the in many places you could go in the Army, you could still go to Germany, you could still go to Korea.

You know, in the South, in the Pacific, there were a couple of spots you could go, but most people weren't unless you went to the air wing. Then you had another year of training and my eyes weren't good enough for that or something. They weren't bad and they were fine. So I finish that in November 1st of 67, a 00:21:00buddy and I Bowden was there and I hopped on a plane out of Edwards Air Force, Edwards McGuire Air Force Base to take us to Germany. And we spent 12 days touring Germany, Italy, France, England and back. An incredible rush of a trip. And then I had a few days at home, a party, a goodbye party that I had to be out in San Francisco to ship over, you know, like December 1st or late November. I forget just what. And then we went to Okinawa for four days. And then you're into country. When did you get the orders that you were going to Vietnam? We got the orders when we were finishing up. Fleet Marine Force Pacific is where and 00:22:00and most of us were happy to get the orders to Vietnam. It wasn't like a little later in the war. You got drafted. Oh, did you know I'm going to end up in Vietnam? It was we were trained. We wanted to do this. You know, we were we were ready to go. I know from speaking to other people that second lieutenants in the training process were drilled into their head, the high casualty rates and second lieutenants had in Vietnam. So was was that of a similar experience for you? I heard that, you know, the average length, length of a life of a second lieutenant is 10 minutes in combat.

But then also because at this point, they were going through some second 00:23:00lieutenant. If you get into the history of most wars, the people who die are 2%. I remember that as we were headed out, we were 4 to 5% chance that you would not come back higher than that, that you would be wounded something and you hope it's a horrible wound and stuff. And I think I mentioned that in the book before. 5%. Okay. You know, that's one in 20. Okay. All I got to do is be the 19, you know, and not be the 20th. And I sort of. I took a little bit of solace in that so that it didn't. You know, I certainly knew that I could die over 00:24:00there, you know, and there were times, you know, when it maybe came close. But I also thought most of the guys come out. You know that, as I say in the book, where I started the book, the moment when I got to my outfit one night. They had a big sign, The Walking Dead. And the sergeant major says, you know, I can't promise you're coming out of this alive. All I can promise you is a helicopter ride and a Purple Heart. And most people got that. Most of the people in my platoon, the platoon was 50. What did we have? Five died while I was there with it and many more wounded. Most most of the guys had would pick up a Purple Heart 00:25:00somewhere along the line. I think one of the most interesting things about the Vietnam War, among other things, is the way technology was used in it, specifically helicopters. So. Oh, yeah. And that reduced the death rate by so much compared to previous wars.

They were able to get wounded medivaced way faster. So what were you taught in basic? How are you thinking about the use of helicopters before you got to Vietnam? Well, I think they took us up and, you know, a couple operations down and had a load on to how to get on, how to get off. They didn't do a ton of that. And in in reality, they moved us by helicopter sometimes not like the army. The army had many more helicopters, and it was sort of a daily thing. But 00:26:00a fair amount of you know, when I got in country, they took a helicopter out to the first base that I went to. We were there ten days. We took a helicopter. The next one, we were there three weeks. We did. You know, you walk your infantry, you're walking on your feet most of the time. Same thing till we got caisson and caisson. We were there 70 days and actually it was probably 85, 90 days before we took a helicopter ride again. So we didn't do quite as much of the daily insertions and things that they did. The army was better supplied of, you know, they would have helicopters bring chow out. We carried our sea rations with us and mostly eight seas. And one of them. Does that answer your question of 00:27:00helicopters, though? Yeah, pretty well. I mean, I think it's it's a theme of the war overall. So maybe we'll jump back to something from the sound of the helicopter. Here comes resupply. Here comes medevac. You did call them for that? Mm hmm. And, you know, thank God for them. One of the things that really stuck out to me in the book, too, was the discrepancy between supplies that the Marines and the Army had.

And you talk about it fairly depth when you talk about the anecdote about the Marine general being asked how much he's going to how much you need to keep a man in the field. And what really struck me was you seem so relaxed about it. I would be pissed, especially with a chainsaw having to clear out fields of fire and things like that with a chainsaw because that's that's life or death for you guys. Well, it was a death. It was blisters. It was, you know, and we just 00:28:00didn't have it. You know, none of our buddies had it. No other platoon had it. You know, it was like, Oh, where do you get that? And the Army guys came in that one time. You know, we were resupplied. We were given sea rations generally. Uh, you know, one of the guys up 861, a friend of mine had been my roommate was talking about, they went a long time without being resupplied and they were looking to shoot rats. I talked about eating rats. I don't think they ever did. But, you know, that was. You know, that was not somebody screwing up. That was the enemy making it really hard to get resupply in. So you can sort of take 00:29:00that. I mean, I. I think. Some of it. You know, when I talked to the people who went earlier, they were surprised by a lot of things. I wasn't surprised because to me, it seemed like the stuff you had read about of the Second World War where, you know, you were out there, supplies were coming in. The supplies come through a sticky tunnel. And I mean, that would piss you off more. I remember we always were short of heat taps.

So you only got one heat tab and you could heat your coffee or you could heat your meal. And seeing one time a gunny sergeant in the rear and he had a carton of 2000 of these things that he's sitting there, you know, and he's using three at a time or something like that that kind of piss you off. But no, we didn't 00:30:00know enough to be. Pissed off at the Army or, you know, supposedly the Air Force at air conditioned huts. Oh, they did. I thought to some people they had air conditioning. Yeah. But they they, you know, they had their own food problems and things. So. So that didn't really bother me that much. Okay, so let's let's talk about Khe Sanh. Talk me. Because this is this is your you get in country and you almost immediately head to Khe Sanh, correct? No, actually, I, I really lucked out when I think about Hill three 6366. Uh, one of the guys had come in a week, two weeks before I was experienced. By that time I, when I came in, in December, it was probably the best time to come in. A lot of wars are are fought 00:31:00depending on the weather and. I had a pretty peaceful time where we ran patrols, but nobody nobody got shot. There were no firefights. The second month of January, we're we're starting to get into a little bit, but again, not much. And then so now I'm with the platoon. Six weeks, seven weeks. And they at least know me. When we go into Khe Sanh, on our Khe Sanh was a trip that I, I spent some time writing that, you know, we knew we were going into a bad area. They, you know, we knew that there were Marines up there.

Some of the guys I had been with, I had in my platoon had been there through the battles. In case of battles go in two stages, 1967, in May, they had some pretty 00:32:00fierce battles up there. And then things come down. They were pretty calm through the through the fall and into the winter. And then in January, boom, it explodes and they're pulling us in. And there's rumor that there's 20 or 40,000 North Vietnamese in the hills around caisson. And the sun itself is like something out of the West with these big mountains coming up, fast moving streams, very green, just beautiful. It was an imperial hunting ground, apparently. That's what we were told. It reminded me of Gondor in Lord of the 00:33:00Rings because I just finished reading that before it came over. And there I was over there a couple of days before we got shelled the first time and you know, oh, shit, yeah, I better have a deep hole. So we dug in and then we spent 70 some days sort of the sort of being a target. Most of the Vietnam War was fought sort of hide and seek. You would be looking for the enemy. You wouldn't find the enemy till they were ready just to hit you. And then they would mostly disappear. This was a pitched battle, and we really didn't know what we were doing, particularly how to fight it. We didn't know how to dig trenches. Marines don't dig trenches. Marines are salt troops. You know, there was that attitude, 00:34:00except that the damn trench could keep you alive. And you learn to do it. And you learn to love the sandbags. Tell me what it's like to be shelled. It's funny if you don't get hit.

Yeah, I remember that very first day of my my platoon had been up a country and they had taken shelling there and they were used to it. And I figured I'm talking to my platoon sergeant, Jim Houck, and I hear this boom, a big one and 22 millimeter mortar comes in and hits 20 feet away or something. Hey, he had dug a hole. He dives in. I dove in on top of him and somebody else does that on top of me. And Jim's down on the bottom, get held off of me, you know, and stuff. But we weren't going out and it three rockets came in and Jimmy left his 00:35:00helmet out. There's a picture of it with a hell hole in it. If we've been out, you know. But you would have been hurt. It's an adrenaline rush. Same with being shot at it. It's exciting. Like you say, if you don't get hit and if you mostly if you focus on that and there were a few guys who sort of did focus on the next one can kill me, the next one can kill me. You're not going to be able to do your job and you're not going to be able to sleep at night because you're worried. So somehow I managed to push worry down. You know, like I say, if the 00:36:00the rockets came in, the mortars came in a bunch of times, the mortars came in. The mortars, you had a half a second to get down. You would hear a pop 18 seconds before if you heard it. And then you would hear. And you. We got really good listener. I remember one guy used to take his helmet off and carry it here because he didn't want to cover his ears.

He wanted to be listening. Now, I don't know that safe or not, we're supposed to be buckled up and stuff like that. And then we just we just kept clearing fields of fire. We dug in. We dug trenches. We drug fighting positions. We we patrolled a little bit in the beginning. But one of the first bad ones that happened 00:37:00didn't happen to us. It was on the other side. I think it was two or 326, sent a platoon out maybe to go to water about a thousand meters out. I think 25 guys died out there. It was a trap. They couldn't get them out. They they they couldn't fight out. And, you know, you could be sort of if we kept patrolling, you would have been that would have helped them to bleed you to death. So we really didn't do a lot of patrolling, which was unusual for Marines, because mostly we would do you know, you would do you would have a base, then you would run a patrol here and run a patrol here, and you'd run a patrol here just to see what's out there. One of the other themes of your book is, is the the effect that Hollywood or media at large has on you. And I'm just as I'm reading in with 00:38:00what I know about Khe Sanh, I just I can't imagine this is what you thought of when you thought of war. Oh, the idea of the trench warfare, which is, like you say, the you don't want to get into that if you can do it. That was a World War. One thing, World War Two was they we're not going to get quite in the trenches. We don't want to get into one of these wars of attrition.

But in this case, you know, there were 6000 Marines out there. Okay. So you could do patrols of a thousand people out and there's 20 or 40,000 North Vietnamese. So if you walk out into their territory, you're walking into where 00:39:00they want you to go. So the Marine Corps reluctantly said, okay, well, we'll play defense. And they did it. Now, while that was going on, the Air Force bombed the hell out of the place. They dropped more supposedly dropped more bombs there than any a any place in World War Two. And we used to watch that. It was like if those 40,000. Here's our base of those 40,000 could massed here, they could overrun us. But as soon as they tried to get together to base here, they're getting B-52 runs and arc lights and artillery from Khe Sanh, artillery from camp, Carol, coming in here. So we didn't actually do so much of the fighting. They did. They kept the enemy off our back. And all of a sudden I 00:40:00might have seen a dozen enemy over 80 days because you just didn't see them. They were out into the into the jungle. You're referring to the small firefight you had. Well, we were. Well, even I. I didn't see a hell of a lot of the firefight. Towards the end of the siege. Khe Sanh what all the reports are. They're pulling away. They were coming closer to us, or some of them were coming closer to us because there was an immediate ground there where they weren't safe. They were getting bombed, the hell bombed out of them. So they came close. So they came in and took one of our hills that was about 100 less than 100 yards away.

And I really didn't think they'd stay there. So I took my platoon up, you know, 00:41:00with permission and all. And, uh, they killed me. One of my sergeants right beside me. And then I see a hail of grenades, and we just sort of rolled back. We went. We put a lot of fire on the hill. Again, average. I thought maybe he'd killed them. Went back up. Hadn't killed all of them. But I did see a lot of enemy up there. You know, they credited us with killing 35 enemy. And I think who who saw that? Who gave them that number? You know, I was out on top of the hill. I was I didn't see that. Did you question the calculus? No. You got to question the the brass says, okay, congratulations. You killed 35 enemy. You know, I'm a, you know, infantry platoon commander. I'm not a company commander 00:42:00or, you know, colonel, somewhere up the road. Sometimes they they they would have spotters up ahead and you would see them carrying the bodies. But we didn't see that we were up close and personal, you know, from me to you somewhat. One of the things that I thought was really interesting about that firefight and others is the the the different weapons, the rifles that they let you guys use. I think Gunny had the M1 Garand and and Ward had the M14. Yep. I'm just how, how did he get his hands on an M1 Garen and who, who let him keep carrying? He's a marine, gunny sergeant. You know, you could you can find things. You can trade for things. If you were in a really strict unit, they might tell you they can't 00:43:00use anything like that. But an awful lot of them had that.

I didn't want to carry the M14, but again, I think there were snipers had the I don't know where Ward got his or gun and got theirs his gun. He would have more ability to get things probably than Sergeant Ward. He was a Corporal Ward at that point. But yeah, he was he was a big, strong guy and he didn't seem to mind carrying that. But those were twice the weight, probably, of an M-16. But if the M-16 worked, it was pretty good. It didn't work. It wasn't. I want to ask you about the M-16 performance, because that's a big thing. But before that, were there any other there were any other strange rifles, armaments, submachine guns? 00:44:00You saw Marines? I never saw a submachine gun. A couple of different guys would carry shotguns. Shotguns were illegal, according to the Geneva Convention, but they were effective in jungle warfare, where you can't maybe see a target, but a shotgun could go out and spray. So one of my sergeants, I think, had a shotgun for a bit, but mostly we were M-16s. Tell me about your experience with the M-16, because that's a well, it's probably my fault. I don't know. When we went back up the hill or we went up the hill the first time outside Kazan, the AK 47 opens up. And I see my sergeant go down and I swing around to shoot, and I got nothing. It's it's I don't know whether it's jammed or I didn't have it round seated. But, you know, and then there's a grenade. So I sort of do a backflip 00:45:00down the. And then I think reseed it and and go back up. Then come August, I had the same thing now. In that case, we had been shot up pretty good.

We were carrying our dead and wounded out with us, and I had picked up half a dozen M-16s, pulled the bolts out of some, threw them away, and was using this one when we got cut off. And maybe 30 meters, 40 meters from us, I see these guys come in and I, I go to fire and it, it jams again or it doesn't fire. So I retreat. But I don't know whether it was a jam or very early on, apparently more in the 67 when they first came in and they had given the ammo order to an outfit 00:46:00that sort of cheated or didn't use. And the rope, the power, the gunpowder and the shells would clog up the thing. And they sort of learned to and there was a lot of people died trying to clean their M-16s. By the time we got there, that was mostly cleaned up. Now, did you have the the slicked side M-16 or did you have the ones with the push button on the side to shut the bowl or split back across the top? I don't remember the push button. There's so sometimes this might have been the issue is when you release the bolt, catch, the bolt won't go all the way home. So there's a little button on the side to push the bulk carrier into battle. I don't remember having that. All right. But that could be a different thing here. Back to on. You said we're at the point where there was 00:47:00the loop which either the wire. Well, it was a firefight. It was it was a little, you know, a little bad a battle. It didn't involve hundreds. It involved my platoon. It really mostly just well, probably I the whole platoon.

So 40 or 50 guys. 50 guys. And we wound up with three dead out of that and another 15 wounded. Half a dozen of them seriously. My platoon sergeant was sent back to Quantico there. Quantico to, uh. He had an interesting trip. It took him a couple of days, but his wife didn't know that he had been hit. His wife was back in D.C., and he winds up and, um, maybe it was Walter Reed, and he calls 00:48:00her up. Honey, I'm home. And, you know, now he he had to recover for a good long while and wound up with a disability. The same with my friend Bill taken. He was he was hit back in May after Khe Sanh and he couldn't stay in the military and still has to walk with a limp. So one of the things that I thought was interesting about how you talked about Caisson is that you briefly discussed why it was considered a siege. And going back to Lord of the Rings again, when I think of seizures, I think of like Helms de Boer or something more medieval as far as a siege goes. So can you talk a little bit about why it was a siege? Well, it was a siege because we were surrounded. They had cut off Route nine, 00:49:00which was the only way in Route nine being this twisting road right through the mountains. I mean, it's not hard to cut off. There's 100 places where you can cut it off. So the place could be supplied by that had to be supplied by air, which the Air Force did and the Marines did. They would bring in C-130s. They lost a C-130 on the deck they were bringing in. And I think they called the Buffaloes 120 threes, and then they eventually stopped landing.

And they would at one point they were dropping cargo by parachutes, and then we'd go out and get it. They, you know, they kept it supplied. But to supply 6000 people a day, a lot of meals, a lot of ammo, a lot of water, you know, a 00:50:00whole. One of the things to do that. So I don't know much about that end of it keeping Khe Sanh supplied. But it was a siege because we sort of couldn't go out without forcing a battle and you knew it. And then if you remember The Lord of the Rings, you know, they go out in front of the gate. You know, they're met. You know, eventually they go out when they got to the forces to to to win the field out in front of them, we went out and broke the siege. When the I forget it was the first Cav or one or one came in in April, Operation Pegasus. So it was a it was a real siege. 70 days. So where do you go from Khe Sanh, cKhe Sanh? We 00:51:00went to the hills. We were a little pissed at that because they talked about, well, the 26 Marines, 26 Marines get the credit for being there. We were on a hill right outside. We were sort of protecting one of the entrances and where they were all supposed to go back and get a steak dinner and stuff. They sent us right back out to the hills. We walked out to the hills we didn't even send us. And we spent the beginning of April till about April 24th or fifth up on the hills overlooking Kaesong relatively. Well, it was Bravo. We didn't really run into any any problems. Maybe we had one one casualty Alpha Company was a little further up on the hills, and they got sucked into a battle where they lost 30 or 00:52:0040 killed.

One of those deals where one platoon went in, a guy gets shot, squad leader said, somebody else he's shot. Send somebody. Our squad leader goes out, he's shot. That's the way we heard it. And they brought Delta Company in and Alpha and eventually pulled back and actually left wound up leaving bodies there. It was not a good scene and very luckily we did not get pulled into that battle. Then they moved us to down along Route nine for a few days and you saw how tough it was. You know, that road, you know, there's a fast moving stream. It was not a bad place. And then from there we went up to towards the DMZ, up by C2, which 00:53:00was about two miles below of country. And a continent is about a mile or so below the the border, the north, the DMZ. We spent April there doing operations out. And there was a that was pretty May was supposedly the worst that Tet even Tet was February. And there was a lot of fighting in that. But May was a second offensive and there were an awful lot of there's an awful lot of fighting in May. I think 2000 Americans died in May, something like that, 500 a week. And we were up on the edge of that. And with that, you know, and I talk about that 00:54:00somewhat up there, but we particularly didn't get into a war. My platoon didn't get into a major battle till August, though there were others. Was, um, was this the RockPile you were in or was that later? We went through May. We went through a series of operations. We were at Sea two, but we went out like three or four days at a time and the water maintained in the tanks.

We were there in the beginning of April and then in June we were up going to the RockPile, which was sort of like an orange. There was a marine base already dug. We didn't have to dig it each day and they even had a mess tent, which was like, Wow, you know, you don't have to eat cheese. And they had ice. It was like, Wow, 00:55:00you know? At one point I talked there about drinking out of a rice paddy, which disgusted by one of my troopers. Oh, well, one of the things that stuck out to me again is your affinity with goofy grape. So tell me. Tell me about Goofy Grape. Well, you would get it unless you had a straw as a spring, they would bring in water and everybody got two or three canteens. Now it's getting hot. So and you're we're in the canteens for canteens are hot. The water is hot in it. You would also put in. Apple's own tablets, iodine tablets to kill whatever was in there, and then you'd shake it up. And somewhere along the line, people started sending us little packets because they you could send ten of these 00:56:00things and each one would make you a thing of goofy grape. Or I forget what the orange was, crazy orange, cherry, whatever flavors. So you would put your iodine tablet in your canteen and then pour in one of these, shake it up and drink a thing at room temperature, more than room temperature, because it was you were outside and it was 85 degrees or 90 degrees or or more. And that that was a better tasting thing. It also gave you I think it gave you sugar, which we needed, probably most of us lost.

If you're if you were a viewer, to eat three meals of seas a day for a month, you'd gain a lot of weight because they're they're heavily packed with calories. 00:57:00So one meal seems like 1200 calories a day. If you do three 3600 calories now you're out pumping the hills. You're not gaining weight anyway. You're losing weight. So we used to love to get goofy grape mail was a huge thing in packages to get packages, you know, to get a pint bottle of scotch or to get a chocolate cake or cookies that somebody made, you know, and just to get mail, you know, it's not like today when a guy can have a cell phone and call home pretty much anywhere around the world. Uh, later in the war, when I was with the general, he once asked me to call down to Saigon for something, to make a call for him. And it took 40 minutes to get, you know, a line to go through. And, you know, I 00:58:00don't know what it is now. I want to talk to somebody and say, you know, you just pick up the phone and call. So a goofy grape was like a kool aid. It's a yeah, it was a Kool aid. It was. Yeah, it was like it was a kool aid, but it was a sweetened one. Yeah, yeah. It's like a little powder drink. Yeah. Something else that stuck out to me was how often you use the word buco. Fuku. Fuku? Yeah. Boku, boku and Vai Buka. That's a French name for many. Boku a.k.a Fuku. I don't I didn't know that I used it that much, but yeah, that was there were certain words of that that came. Dee Dee move.

Dee Dee Dee Mal Yeah. Were you picked up some Vietnamese or have you a little 00:59:00bit. I learned how to say hello and thank you. Let's see, um. Oh, it's been a couple months. What did you pick up? Not much. I mean, if I. If I regret anything, there was no interaction. There is no way to interact right away. You know, I'm out on a hill somewhere. There's no village nearby. No. We do patrol through villages and there are beautiful villages. And the young girls were very beautiful. But you never saw anybody. In between, it was like they age very quickly. That was that was our thought. We went down to way one time where we 01:00:00would have been able to meet some people or eat some local food or something. But really, the even when I was with the general, I very, very well. But we were at it as he stood. You know, the front line is, you know, 50 meters down that way. There were no villages that you could go into and stuff. Most, you know, you're stationed in Saigon. You're stationed in Danang. You know, those guys used to be able to go out to dinner to different places they could, you know. But I have a friend that was in the Army a little bit later, and they used to send a truck down to the village to pick up girls, and you'd come up and you'd rent a girl for, I don't know, whatever it was, ten or 20 bucks for the night. 01:01:00And then the girl had to leave in the morning. But we didn't. We never got that. Just partly by chance, partly by physically where we were. So, yeah, I'm reading Michener's, South Pacific and which is a wonderful, wonderful book, if you read it.

Yes. What I really liked about it was that there were 17 chapters, only three of combat that so much of it is waiting or preparing or moving supplies from this place to that place. And I didn't get to see any of that. I spent most of my time, you know, out in the jungle and then with the general and helicopters flying around. So you were you were in a way shortly after caisson, right? So 01:02:00you were before Khe Sanh. Oh, before Caisson. So you were in way before the Tet Offensive then? Yes. Okay. Tell me a little bit about your experience. I know this is a bad chronological order, but right before Caisson hit, everybody was pat themselves on the back of the pack. The war is over. You know, we've won this and stuff. And we were the company commander wanted to leave a platoon of Marines to guard a position and ammo dump. It was a gasoline tower that had already been set up. And we went down to do that. And God, it was lovely. I mean, there is a college girls college right there. You know, people are breaking bread. You got to perfume river behind you. It was at that point the most peaceful city in Vietnam. It had never really been had been involved in 01:03:00fighting. And I left a squad there, 14, 15 men. And then we continued operating. And then when, uh, what's his name hit? Not Tet, but when Caisson hit, we called the squad back in. Somebody else took their place. I would not be at all surprised if the people who took their place died there. It was, you know, it was a target was a big, big target. And, you know, then that became a whole other battle for a month, a pitched battle.

But by that point we were up at Kay. So one of my favorite parts of your book is your mindset before going into combat seeking it. I think it happens a couple of 01:04:00times, like before your firefight on the Hill and then later when you're sent back to get the bodies that were shot up by the disca. Mm hmm. Tell me about your thought process. As you know, you're about to get these orders forcing you into combat. Well, you know, partly, you know, you're cheering Marine. You're supposed to go into combat. That's where you're that's what's expected. The biggest one of the biggest things that I think I mentioned somewhere along the line and there is everybody going over is like. Am I going to? Will I embarrass myself in combat? Probably even before I get killed. Because you're young, you think you're not going to get killed. So, you know, what do I have to do? The order came down or really didn't even come down at that point. At the time the 01:05:00prior team went up the hill, they got shot down. It was like, Well, no, we can't let the enemy sit on that hill. You know, I ask permission. Okay. I'll go out, take two squads. We'll go up and clear them off. And that was the idea. And it was like, okay, we're. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing. And then, of course, they I expected them to leave. They didn't leave. And then we we got into that fight and had to eventually sort of drive them off. But then we never went back out onto that hill either. But my mindset was, okay, this is what we've got to do. And I didn't particularly worry about, okay, I'm going to get I'm going to get killed here.

You know, I knew that that was a possibility. 366 You know, I had a really good 01:06:00platoon sergeant out there, and I wanted him to just, God damn it, bring these guys back and I don't have to go out. But he had too many casualties. So I remember not wanting to go out, but I also felt it was my job. I was extremely lucky in that point. If that had come early in my career over there, I don't know that the troops would have been as willing to follow me. This point, I was the most experienced officer in the in the company. So they listened to me. They looked for me. Okay, I'll try to get us out of here. And that's what I tried to do. Then the next day, we were supposed to go back and I didn't want to go back. 01:07:00How about Charlie? Charlie company to go back. But eventually we went back and picked up our bodies and brought the back end of. Depending on how many times you have to do that, that's got to get really tough. You know, World War Two and stuff where the guys fought over and over. But the reality is. A lot of times in war. The same unit doesn't always go over and over and over and over again. It's it's different platoon. It's a different company. It's a different. And and in practicality, if we're out on a patrol, I'll give. Okay. First put the first squad. You guys have the point today. Next tomorrow it's second. And even in 01:08:00that they'll rotate because that's the guy going out first is that that's the dangerous one. He's going to make contact first. But those guys said, you know, there was a lot of that and that took a lot of courage each day because you just didn't know.

There are some places where you didn't think. There were other places that were like, Oh, shit, I don't want to go here. I don't know if that answers that or not. In between Caisson and Hill 366, at least I think this is in between. If I remember correctly, you had probably the most dangerous bout of your career, which was with malaria. I never thought of it as dangerous. You said you were just like 106, right? That's what they told me. You know, I didn't look at the thermometer, so I don't know. I know that they packed me with ice half a dozen 01:09:00times, so my temperature must have been pretty high. I was a serious effort wise about I my yeah, but nobody was shooting at me and most of the people with malaria didn't die. The first day there was a guy who was screaming and he apparently went to 110 and tried his brain or something like that. So I wasn't happy being there because I was sick by the time I started to feel good. Then it was like, Oh, you know, you know, there's food here. And I could drink milkshakes. And I had lost a lot. I lost I was thin when I went in, probably I got into Vietnam about 190. I was down 270. I went down to 150 with malaria and 01:10:00then gradually took that took that back up. But once I wasn't having the chills and the fevers and stuff of it was a little bit like in country R and R, except I didn't have any money. Somebody stolen my wallet or something, but I didn't have enough since I could have gone to some paymaster and they would have given me $20 or $50 to do my thing.

So because I can remember Cameron Bay, they actually had bars and you know, you could buy food and I had like a dollar 20 or me or, you know, beers for $0.10. So I sort of not that I had many beers, uh, but that was a, an interesting thing. A, my, my curiosity is, is with the wildlife and Vietnam, I think you 01:11:00mentioned it a couple of times, but tell me about the mosquitoes, you know. We know you were in long sleeves which protected you. So at night they gave us a bug we called bug juice. You see, guys have a strap on their head or something or in their pocket. You do your hands, your face, your neck and. I've had worse bug things down here. I don't know why. Partly a good chunk of this, you know, combat area that I was working in was higher up. And I think, you know, a lot of the mosquitoes and stuff were down low. So if you were an Army guy in the Delta, you may be had really bad, but there would usually be a breeze up here that 01:12:00would keep them off of. So, I mean, yes, there were mosquitoes. The mosquitoes that gave me malaria, you know, probably at the RockPile. But I don't remember that like waves or five years later. I took a camping trip with a bunch of students, Red Deer students up at in Vermont, and we read into black flies. And that was like Slap my face one time and it killed five black flies. You know, in that many there were swarming on you. But no, I never saw that. I mean, when you talk about animals, what do you I mean, you want to talk about tigers or elephants? Did you see any, like spiders or snakes or anything? No.

When I was there, the platoon ran into a 20 foot boa constrictor. At one point, 01:13:00I didn't see it. I think, you know, you're always with 50 Marines or 200 Marines and boa constrictors and animals are going to go the other way. Later on, when I was with the general here, you know, there was an incident of a marine get eaten by a tiger that were out there. We knew that they were out there. We found the carcass of an elephant that had been hit by airstrike or something like that, but we didn't see them again. Generally, they moved away. Earlier in the war, I think later in the war, too. But as the war developed, it became harder for them to use this. The the Vietcong. The NVA would use elephants for pack animals. I remember reading a New York Times article from I think 65 or 66 about helicopters strafing pack of elephants that were carrying NVA supplies. I 01:14:00wouldn't be surprised. What we saw were people. They had porters, you know, back in January, before or before Khe Sanh or before way hit, we saw, I don't know, 20 or 30 coming down. And they were wearing these big A-frame packs that went up over their heads. It must have been pretty heavy, but these guys were moving along pretty well. I never saw any elephants into that. When you got into the hills, into the mountains, they you know, they would have different roads and things and they would have trucks. I don't know that they had enough elephants to do that kind of thing. There's a wonderful book, by the way, called The 01:15:00Elephant Company in World War Two in Burma, where a guy had worked with elephants by the start of the war.

He had he knew a thousand elephants by name and they knew him. It's a neat story. I have not necessarily spent a great deal thinking about it, but I like to think about the the strange or the consequences of the war that we don't normally think about. And I think about the deaths of elephants and how combat around Kason or with Agent Orange or things like that would have affected the local wildlife. And we didn't expect it and we didn't consider that at all. One, You didn't know what Agent Orange could do. You knew it deflated. You know, nobody was thinking about that. Nobody was thinking about the guys that were handling it that were going to pay the price. But yeah, Vietnam, you know, a lot 01:16:00of unexploded bombs, a lot of horses. DAVIS Were there booby traps and things like that? I wouldn't be surprised if they're still there at this point. Was Agent Orange used around Khe Sanh? No, not that I know of. I mean, it might have been eventually, a little bit later in the war. I know you can see them spraying it and stuff like that. Um, actually, I'm supposed to meet a guy who was an Air Force pilot. Who? Who's that? Was his job. You know, deforestation was his job. One of the things was that you would the road up to country in from sea to was a 01:17:00normal two lane road. Dirt road. But like 40 yards on either side have been bulldozed so that you couldn't be surprised or, you know, ambushed that you could because you still could. But yeah. So no, nobody was thinking about that or if they were, I didn't know them and I wasn't thinking about it. I was more concerned with, you know, keeping alive or, you know, doing my job, whatever that was.

All right. So our chronology has gotten a little messy, but I think where we are so far is you get out very thin after malaria and you go back to your unit and you're. Are you still at County NC, too? No, no. At that point we had moved to LC Stud, which was halfway between. It was on the road to K, so it was a big, 01:18:00beautiful valley and we were there and we ran some short operations and then we, you know, we got hill lifted in up above the RockPile of what we used to be used to call it Mudders Ridge and you know, got into a big battle there. And that was about the end for me. Was was this the point in time after we had malaria or before there after malaria, but that you had climbed the rock pile? I climbed the rock by right before I got malaria. Tell me about climbing the rock pile. That was crazy. My captain, who I didn't get along with all that. Well, uh, you know, after that, we'd been working together for five months at that point, and 01:19:00we, neither one of us had anything to do that day. And he said, That's kind of a rock pile. I give him credit for that, cause I wouldn't have particularly thought it. But he said I did some rock climbing gorge, you know, we can do this. And we set out one morning and I guess, you know, we told our people where we were going. There were people on top of the rock pile. Rock pile. I, I know, six or 800 feet mostly, mostly up. But it was actually there was, you know, it was mostly like a steep trail. And you could pull yourself up very a lot of thick vegetation as you're going up.

There were a couple of places where he had to lean down or take his rifle or something and have the helping pull up. But it took us three or 4 hours to go up that 800 feet. And then at the top there was a great breeze and there was a an 01:20:00exit. I know that you're saying that I don't remember if I climbed back down or whether we got a helicopter back down. We might have gotten a helicopter back there because we'd done what we wanted to do. It was a beautiful view up there. And there was it was cooler. You know, we were sweaty and stuff. And so maybe we got a chopper back there. I don't remember. All right. So jumping back to where we were before you get air dropped into this valley where you're expected to send out or do patrols, which is this now? This is August. Yeah. Okay. We're we're we're in this valley. I don't know what you would call the valley. It was Elzey started, and it became Ellzey. Vandergrift or combat days. Vandergrift. That's. That was a big base. A lot of units were in there. And then we were hill 01:21:00lifted out to do certain things. I don't know where Alpha Company went or Charlie Company went, but Bravo was put on this narrow ridge, possibly on the wrong spot. Possibly. The 366 is where we were supposed to be dropped. And that was I you know, I don't know what would have happened if we had been dropped there. They had the 30 caliber thing there. They could have shot down 50 calibers. Pretty heavy weapon. So anyway, we're a mile and a half from two miles from that on this lower ridge. And now it's it's August.

It's hot as hell. And obviously, XO at that point, you still got. Yeah, it's very. We're all good. Okay. I was the XO. I shouldn't really have a lot to do. The couple, the platoon commanders run the patrols of the second platoon. I 01:22:00think it was the went out with Chapman and they got pinned down. And then I went out with some guys carrying ponchos, supposedly carrying water, a little bit of extra ammo to help pull them out. We got there. Yeah, it was really we were right up close to the 50 caliber machine gun. You couldn't I couldn't see it. Sergeant Chapman said he crawled within about ten feet and could see the bunker of it, but couldn't see people or anything and couldn't throw a grenade or anything because it was thick vegetation. But there were a couple of bodies up there and we had to get those down. He did that. And I'm like, you know, we've got to get this out of here. And we sort of turned the platoon around and 01:23:00started back. But with the number of dead, you know, a marine in combat can pick up another Marine and carry 50 yards. No problem. A dead guy takes four guys and in all, ten men drag or throw it. That's a line. And talking of, it's heavy. It's 95 degrees. These guys have been out fighting. So most of our riflemen at this point are carrying wounded or dead. So I had like four or five guys that were were left of the 40 out there. And we came came back across an open area. And the NBA had come up and cut us off and they started coming back down, killed a couple more there, killed the scout and a couple of the scouts.

And then I just pulled people back into the defensive perimeter and figured we had to wait for the company there. You know, I. And let's say we're going to leave the wounded. And you really didn't want to do that. There was no we didn't have the people to launch any kind of a counterattack at them, which might have worked or might not. It might have made things worse. I was worried at that point about having even more people killed. I wanted to get as many as back as we could. So we spent the night and surrounded ourselves with artillery fire and flares and stuff like that. And we made it through the night. Now, we didn't 01:25:00have any medevacs because the big machinegun was sitting there and we had it knocked it out that they knew of. So they kept firing artillery at that. So we had to walk in, which we did the next day. But again, no, at that point, we're out of any kind of water, any kind of food. Not that the food mattered. The water mattered because it was 95 degrees or so and they kept dropping mortars on this open area. So you had to get through that area and they should have probably just had to go to try to go through it. But they sort of detoured down the hill and then up. But now you're going down a hill and you're carrying a dead man or you're carrying a wounded guy. You know, a couple of guys got off and work themselves because it was so hot and heavy and it's August. And these 01:26:00guys that had started in Vietnam were £160 are down to 130. And, you know, then eventually we we got them across and went back in.

But we had to actually we had the dead we left near that knoll. And the fear the next day of going back was that they booby trap the dead or they ambush the dead. So it was a scary thing to go back out there. But we eventually did it. And of course, as you're you're making all these decisions on the ground, I think it's the day after you spend the night out there. You said you lost control of your troops briefly coming in. Yes, ones would pass. They had about a 01:27:00mile to go back and I'm trying to get them all across. And well, the company had come out, the company commander had come out with the gunny and they were going to be on that side. But they got hit by an airstrike that was supposed to hit the enemy and hit them. So both the gunny and the captain are wounded and those that were left pulled back. So yeah, it was sort of at that point, people just wanted to get in and get get their water enough stayed that we got what we could back. And then eventually I was the last of the next the last probably coming in and I can't remember getting I don't think it was goofy grape. I think it was one lime Jell-O or something kind of somebody gives me half a canteen of warm, uh, kool aid, which I just chugged down because, you know, I hadn't heard 01:28:00anything for a day or so. And tell me about the thought process of leaving the dead. Are you never supposed to leave? You're dead of slipping. Marines are supposed to, you know, period of dead with them. Uh, you know, the troops chosen in a lot of these very famous battles, they did that and that part of me having trouble getting my.

Yeah, yeah. Can you lift your foot or. Yeah I'm so you're all good. Voila. Yeah. It was a certain calculus of. You know, we sort of couldn't do it. We were too weak and didn't have enough guys to do it. Of the I thought about it recently 01:29:00that probably what it could have done was instead of having four guys on each one have dropped the guys and four guys just carry them back across this point. That would that would have made some sense. But we didn't think of it. And this time we're all we're under fire. They're dropping mortars. So you can keep hearing them. But luckily, they missed this. I don't know how, but they did. And but the pressure was there. You know what? I'm trying to call in there and talk to the colonel, and I'm trying to talk to my platoon. And, yeah, the the you know, the those that made it past just kept on going into the company area. So it was just a tradition thing. Was it a morale thing? Oh, it's a tradition thing. It's a marine Corps tradition. You don't leave, you're dead. You don't 01:30:00leave you wounded. Certainly you don't leave. You're dead. The enemy did it. They. They took their people with them, but. At a certain point. Well, like when we were pinned down out there. You know, I'm after Sergeant Chapman and I'm like, Yeah, but we got these guys that are live here. Let's get them back. You know, if we all die out here, it's not going to do anybody any good. And that was a that was certainly a fear motivating factor for me to try to get them, get them, go get them back. So you had quite the reception coming in with your lime Jell-O.

Kool-Aid? Yeah. You know, and then you just, you know, now at that point, because the the company commander I was the company commander for a few days there, you know, just go around, settle everybody in, make sure that we're set 01:31:00in case they attack us here. We had a no B and then Charlie Company came up through the night because everybody that was a pretty bad battle and people were trying to help us. So the battalion commander and stuff was working. I'm not as familiar with war movies from the 1950s as I am more modern war movies. But one of the tropes and certainly was a reality and World War Two and Korea and World War One of the entrenched machine gun position. And I think the way you talk about this battle is it shows the complexity and the uniqueness of the Vietnam War that the 50 caliber machine gun position was unique. Well, partly the 50 caliber was unique because the hill that we were on was shaped like this. We 01:32:00were on a ridgeline at the top of the ridgeline and went up and down some. But it was only I don't think it was as wide as this house and then it dropped straight down. Typically, if you stopped by a machine gun, you can move around it here. There is there is no way to move around it. So, you know, we were we were stuck there. You know, they had picked a good position. And you also mentioned, I think when you're the generals aide, how you thought somebody, a different unit, had captured a 50 caliber Russian machine gun, the HK and and he went out to examine it. So it just it sounds to me like entrenched machinegun positions were rare during the war.

Oh, yeah. Because they were, you know, they were fighting a guerrilla war mostly 01:33:00I think it was in any aircraft gun where it was. No. So it was a different sort of a thing of because they didn't want to entrench something. They wanted to be able to pull it back and move it quickly, you know, and then move it to the next spot. So there were a few and occasionally you would run into I never ran into another one, but, you know, people did. So and I think it's also an example of the difference between the VA and the Viet Cong. Because you were up. Oh, this is all NBA. Yes. So tell me a little bit more about. I mean, I don't think you ever fought the Viet Cong per se. But no, there might have been some. There were some probably Viet Cong early down below way when we were there. But the Viet Cong or the idea of the Viet Cong was it was a farmer of the day and a fighter 01:34:00at night, and it was in near villages and stuff like that. And where we were was further out. So one of the things that Caisson is one of my troopers was out in the valley, into the gully like and he sees another guy and he's dressed in green and he's like, all of our outfits are brown now, you know, and is, you know, and then it's a it's a VA and they sort of both looked each other go the other way. But yeah, they were. And they were more set to do that kind of thing. They, the Vietcong would never have a 50 caliber machine gun. You know, but the VA would sort of come in.

And American Revolutionary War had a lot of local militias who would then be involved with, you know, Washington's army. So. So you were at 120. What time do you need to cut? I need to cut it. Like cut her off if I can. Yes, certainly. Certainly. All right. We're going to go into you being a general aide and then we're pretty much about home free. Yeah. All right. So you go back to the company and you're you're is the colonel. The colonel? What do you want to do? Yeah, the colonel offered me the company of, you know, most good Marines that's supposed to get a rifle company in combat. I mean, there are guys who really would would give their arm to have a rifle company in combat. And I had nine months of combat as soon commander and couple of days as company commander. And 01:36:00I was like, I might get killed out here. So there had been a tradition before I got over there. And I don't know that it was always obeyed, but you would have six months of combat and six months in some kind of a rear job supply, intelligence, whatever. So I sort of said to them, you know, I wouldn't mind going to the rear. Now he he's, you know. Okay. He knows he's got a bunch of guys, senior to me that would like that job. So he puts in a really good guy in there and then they're going to send me to on tops, which is a special weapon. And new general had come in General Garretson and they needed an aide for him. So there were a couple of interviews and I think partly because the Colonel had 01:37:00put me in for he put me in for Medal of Honor, but I think he did that so that he could get himself a Silver Star.

I don't know for sure, but he was making a big deal of it. And so that impresses the general who already has the Navy Cross. And the other guy's got a Medal of Honor. You know that I had done something right in combat. What he didn't know was I was sort of he had the other parts of you know, I was just not as fit and polished thing. And now I suddenly had to have clean uniforms and polished my boots. And, I mean, I could do it, but I didn't, you know, you'd come into a thing and you'd have to, you know, attention everybody or the generals on board or something like that. And I just wasn't terribly good at that. You you did it 01:38:00end up earning a medal for your actions at Hill 366 I got a Silver Star. Thank you. That was my question. Yeah. So you're you're struggling with the spit and polish. And I think you said the general threatened your job at one point in time. Well, he never did. He was a good guy, you know, and he was experienced and stuff. And now know one of the one of the majors was like, you know, you can't do this. It's just an important job. But I maybe I did enough to to get by. But, you know, the bonus for me was having dinner with this guy every day and breakfast and lunch and and then when the General Davis came in, Bob Barrow came in, who was a colonel who became covered. Davis became assistant commandant of Davis aide. Jim Jones became coming up. This is this is high, high up. And I 01:39:00was impressed impressed as hell with all of these guys. And you're a first lieutenant at this point in time.

Yeah. So you're this is a very special position you're in. Yeah, I guess I. I wouldn't change it, you know, but I don't know that I would have chosen it. Uh, you know, there was a certain amount of pressure for it, but it had the bonuses that you flew around. You saw everything. That was kind of neat. Do you regret not taking the Anton's position? No, no, no. Because I never would have met any of these these guys. You know, when you look back when you look back on all of 01:40:00this or even teaching is about it's about people of. I would still tell people today to go into the service maybe of you met people you wouldn't meet otherwise. Third of my platoon had graduated high school, but they were they were smart guys. They were tough. They would do anything for you. You know, I never would have met, you know, the generals and the colonels and stuff like that. If I was doing the auto stuff. So, no, I don't regret it. I remember years later in that story I was telling you about with the Quakers at War. Light, light and Darkness. The one guy who was a medic lost his arm, you know, working 01:41:00for Patton. He said, you know, he had gone to an Ivy League school of. He would he still would go, I don't know, six times a year done into Kensington and have a lunch with these guys and drink beer. And he says, you know, politically we don't get along, you know, socially we don't get along. But these are guys, you know, that would have given their life for me and I for them. And, you know, they're magnificent. And what a learning thing that is like.

I really think that of our society, it's too easy for you to sit into your own little compartment and only talk to people that agree with your way of thinking. The service mixes that up so that you're you know, you got a black guy from Chicago that's shared a foxhole with a Louisiana farm boy and. That's good for 01:42:00the country. I just have a few more questions. I want to start wrapping up the interview, but so does that where does that leave you and feeling about the draft? Oh, absolutely. We should have a draft. Absolutely. I think the probably the military is better now without the draft, but I think that the country is much worse off without the draft. Do you think the draft during the Vietnam War was the right thing? Yeah. Yeah. Except there probably were too many outs. So now actually, my company commander and this particular were both Princeton guys. But that's that was surprising. But yeah, I don't think that everybody should have to go in the military, but everybody should have to serve like the S.S.. 01:43:00You know, Teach for America. You got to do something that is bigger than yourself. And I mean, that's the sort of takeaway for me was to be part of something that was bigger than myself. Something you believe in? Hopefully, too. Can you tell me a little bit more about your time with the General? Yeah, but I'm not sure what you want to know. The general. I mean, you know, we would get up, had breakfast and he would we would call when the helicopter got in. We would go out and he would visit his different units. And, you know, we'd call ahead. I'd call had said, the general is coming in.

You know, the colonel would come out and meet him. I'd stand by the helicopter. I would gossip with the, you know, whoever was around. And when he would give me 01:44:00a signal, I'd start tell those helicopter guys to start up. So we spent a lot of time doing that. I got to talk to the guy. You know, he's I don't know. He was 50, 55. He had been in World War Two, that he'd been in Korea. He'd been a football player at University of Oregon, I believe. You know, he he was an he was very nice to me, you know, but that was and then occasionally he would go to the big meeting with the the division general or even bigger than that, where they had the corps generals and things like that came in. But most of the time was spent meeting these colonels. For my end, the colonels were always nice, the, you know, the battalion commanders and stuff, because I was the general's aide, you know, they had to be nicer. So they they were nice to me and it was 01:45:00neat to talk to them. And the general would he had been impressed in charge of press for the for the Marine Corps. So he knew a lot of the reporters and stuff. And different ones would come out and, you know, he'd be entertaining them. And occasionally, you know, one of their aides or something I would get to talk to and spend some time. All right. I just have a couple more questions then. Do you remember or can you tell me about any urban legends or myths you heard when you were in Vietnam? I don't know. One of the. This was not what I was in Vietnam before.

That was that, you know, a guy goes out with 12 guys and he comes back with 13, and the 13th is a Viacom or something ready to shoot, you know, so count your 01:46:00guys when you come out, when you go in and come out of there were there was talk of atrocities of, you know, this outfit or that outfit got overrun. They went around shooting people in the head. That's not an urban legend. Probably. That's probably true. I had a guy who might have done that. I could tell that was June. We got into a just a quick little firefight. We killed a couple of them. And Johnson got shot through the eye and we're pulling him back. And then I hear a shot fired over here, and that was all just one shot. And a guy comes out and I didn't even go over to see if there was a what's his name there? Dead end VA But 01:47:00it might have been somebody shot somebody. So is that an urban legend? I don't know. I don't think, you know, there were there were atrocities on both sides, pretty much. I remember one of the tough guys telling me about before I got there, the reporter had come in and they had there had been a battle and there were some enemy bodies out there. And the guy says, you know what, you could cut off in here. And this guy takes his caber out and he starts it and he's like, I should cut your own ears off, you know, if you want. But no. And where we were, we weren't where anybody could do any raping or pillaging or something like 01:48:00that. So I really didn't see any anything that you would call a atrocity, though.

You know, I'm sure there were some. How how did you piece together your book? I did it in pieces. I read the Christmas thing probably first the chapter, and I wrote a couple others when I was at Radnor. Then I came out here and I taught a course on memoir writing, and each week you'd have to bring things to me in. So I started doing stories out of that. So I've got, you know, three or four years ago I had 30 or 40 little stories and then I had to go back because each one was taught separately and you had to sort of explain everything separately. And then when you're doing it as a book, you don't necessarily have to do that. So then I 01:49:00went over that and the group kept urging me on to do it, which was a big, big help. Others would have done it. And then I had some big help on proofreading because I can make a ton of mistakes. So was it. Was it all memory or did you use like journals or. I, I have a journal and I use that. That was an incomplete journal, but it had some of it. When I got out of the field, when I joined the general, I picked up a notebook and started trying to reconstruct in my memory that so I would at least be close. And that covered a lot of it. I did a little bit of research, went down to headquarters, Marine Corps, and read some of the stuff over the summer where I didn't have a journal and, you know, was trying to remember. It's certainly easy to get things wrong. I don't think I got the big 01:50:00things wrong. But, you know, the details, the scraping the blood from the fingernails that I thought was my own and my journal, I find it was somebody else doing that.

Okay. You know, that happens by one of my favorite cousins was just telling me she won't read the book. She said she lived through it, that she picked me up when I came home from the Marine Corps. I came in early and I called her and she gave me a ride home and I was like, I took a cab home. So we create sometimes we. Create our stories. So is there anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to bring up? No, I think we covered a pretty good, pretty good extent of it. The one thing is that even with the oral histories, you know, somebody 01:51:00asks you, how did you get a Silver Star? Or you tell them sort of what I told you. Maybe it's 5 minutes. But when I wrote it, it's 25 pages. You know, but people don't want to hear the 25 page version particularly. So you tend to edit things and tighten them up. You know, I you know, the key components of all of this are very true. Some of the details I might have wrong. You know, I certainly don't know whether I could pick goofy grape or crazy orange. And in writing the I had to allow myself to do the conversations. One of my favorite ones was the mail call, and I'm there with one of my favorite radio operators. 01:52:00You know, and what we would have talked about there. And, you know, that creates a reality. But I don't remember what we talked about. I do remember seeing the bags come in and stuff like that. Final question. I see you have scars on your knees. So you had knee surgery, I suppose? Yeah. Was it from military service? No. I don't think it's more arthritis.

Somebody told me, you know, I stood at attention too much where you would lock your knee and you should do that. But no. No, I don't think that. I think so. Okay. Thank you again. Thank you.