Autobiography

In order to avoid getting drafted into the Army, I joined the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps recruiter said that I would not have to leave for boot camp immediatley. I was allowed me to remain home for Christmas 1967 and New Year’s Day. I left for San Diego, California boot camp on Wednesday evening, January 3, 1968.

Because of my small size I was made the platoon house rat for platoon 301. I shared this duty with two other marines but they were eventually replaced. As house rat it was my duty to make the platoon drill sergeant’s bed every morning, clean up his room, get his coffee and other general house duties. Someoneelse was assigned to make my bed.

I remained the platoon house rat for most of my time in boot camp. About two or three weeks before the end of boot training the drill sergeant caught me talking in the mess hall. He punished me by taking away my position as house rat. That hurt because I really wanted to remain as platoon house rat for the entire time I was in basic training.

About half way through boot camp the platoon drill sergeant took us all to the base PX. Once there we were allowed to buy soap, toothpaste or other toiletries. I also bought a small travel size chess set. I did so because on Sunday afternoons we were sometimes allowed to have free time; I spent my free time playing chess.

One Sunday afternoon while I was playing another marine, the drill sergeant started to watch the game. The other marine lost and the drill sergeant asked if I would play him. I said ‘yes sir, the private would love to play the drill sergeant.’ I beat him and he congratulated me and went into his billet.

All the other marines were aghast that I beat the drill sergeant. I thought nothing of it as I had watched him play some of the other drill sergeants several times while I was making his bed and other duties as house rat; he was very gracious both in winning and in losing.

Anyway, a few minutes later he called me into his billet. Everyone, including me, thought I was in deep trouble for beating the drill sergeant. But he had his own chess set, set up – the pieces were larger and it was easier study the board.

Another drill sergeant laughed and told me that if I beat him I was going to do have guard duty for the rest of my stay in boot camp. The drill sergeant told me not to listen to him but to play my best. I was very nervous but I played my best. The drill sergeant beat me. But I was proud to have gotten the opportunity to play my drill sergeant.

After several months of basic training in San Diego and individual combat training in Camp Pendleton I was given a thirty-day leave. I was also given orders to report to Camp Pendleton for assignment in Vietnam after my leave was over.

Those thirty days are a blur to me now but I have a vivid memory of the day I left. My mother, Ms. Ruth, and Mr. Louie (my two “adopted” parents) came with me to the airport. My mother was crying because she did not expect me to come home alive. Ms. Ruth was consoling her. I was sitting in the plane and I could see her waving at the plane. I knew that she did not know where I was sitting in the plane and could not see me. She was just waving and hoping that I could see her.

I took out my cigarette lighter (I quit smoking soon after March 11, 1971) and I lit it and waved it in the window. She saw it and started to jump up and down and wave frantically; she knew it was me. I cried because I knew then of the hurt she was going through at the thought of never again seeing me alive. This was my first introduction to the horror of war. That’s when I began to hate war and all its evil consequences.

After receiving a few weeks of instruction in my MOS (military occupational speciality) I was transferred to Vietnam and assigned to the communications section of a 105 Howitzer unit, Golf Battery, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

I spent the next 13 months of my life just west of DaNang, Vietnam either on duty in a forward observation post for the artillery battery I was stationed in, on watch in the unit’s communications bunker, flying around in a helicopter from one LZ (landing zone) to another, driving the communication jeep on “beer runs” or just sitting in the sunshine and reading on the side of Hill #10, our units command post.

Most of my time in Vietnam was spent on watch in the artillery communications bunker. When not on watch I frequently found myself flying in a helicopter from one place to another or driving someone to division headquarters for either the mail or to get ice for soft drinks and beer.

My section chief Cpl. John Sanders, (he later made sergeant) put me in charge of making up the duty roster for the watch. Although I had less rank than a couple of other men in the communications section, he put me in charge of making up the duty watch because, as he said, I was better at keeping track of whose turn it was to be on watch. But I believe it was because no one else wanted the responsiblity.

I just continued with the schedule that was already in place when I arrived in Golf Battery: six hours on and twelve hours off; six hours on and twelve hours off; six hours on and twelve hours off; twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was monotonous.

However, I did not mind being on watch, as the communications bunker was the safest and most secure spot in my unit. Besides, in order to kill the boredom I either played poker with the other men on watch or I indulged in my two favorite hobbies — playing chess (usually with my section chief) or reading.

When I was not on watch or going from one place to another on some errand, I spent most of my spare time reading, as there was nothing else to do. I was a loner and I seldom joined the other men in my unit when they played ball or something. Instead, I would just sit on the side of the hill and read or watch the villagers work in their rice paddies.

Everyone I know that went to Vietnam started a short timer’s calendar on their last 100 days in country. It was usually a drawing of a nude woman with little squares scattered all over it, counting down from 100 and ending at 3 over one nipple, 2 over the other nipple and 1 over her vagina. But not me, I started my short timer’s calendar on my third day in Vietnam. It was just a big box with numbers counting down from 390.

Nobody liked the idea of me starting a short timer’s calendar at this time; they all told me that such was for short timers only and that I had no business considering myself a short timer. But I did not listen to any of them, not even my section chief who warned me about one particular marine who was on Rest and Recuperation (R&R) at the time I arrived. I was told that he would find it particularly offensive since he was a short timer.

When he came back off R&R he told me to take the calendar down since I was not a short timer. I told him no and that’s where the matter stood. But a couple of days later he started to call me Salty because of my attitude. This was a nickname I also got while in training at Camp Pendleton, again it was because of my attitude.

But the nickname did not stick. Soon another marine, Joe Beauchamp, began calling me Wally Gator because I was from New Orleans. He told me that he always wanted to visit New Orleans and I told him about Mardi Gras and an alligator that I had caught in a drainage ditch as a boy.

Anyway, for the rest of my tour of duty in Vietnam everyone called me Wally Gator or sometimes just Gator. It is a nickname I will always cherish. Another nickname that I cherish is “Kid.” I got that from a place I used to work at soon after I got home from Vietnam. All the other employees said I looked like a kid instead of a 22 year old man. So, everyone called me Kid.

Soon after arriving in Vietnam I was sent to Thong Duc as a relief for a marine who was stationed there. Thong Duc was just a few kilometers from Vietnam’s border with Laos. It was situated in a fork in a river at the end of along valley. Overlooking the village was a waterfall. The countryside was beautiful and the stars at night were even more beautiful.

There were only two ways to get to Thong Duc, either by helicopter or by a two-day convoy. I was told that this latter method was always under attack by Viet Cong. I believed it because from the air I could see the destroyed trucks and jeeps littering the road leading to the village.

When I got there I immediately discovered that the communications were in total disarray. There was virtually no communications between the Howitzers and the communications bunker and the excess communications gear was not much better.

I started cleaning up the radios and phone equipment and repairing the headsets that I could. The rest I tagged and returned to our base headquarters. I rerouted communication lines from the communications bunker to the Howitzers, burying as much of the lines as I could to protect them from being cut.

A few days later the communications sargeant came out to inspect what I had done. He was very impressed with everything that I had accomplished and told my section chief (Corporal Sanders) about the great job I was doing on my own at Thong Duc.

Later, after becoming sergeant, Sanders put me in for a Naval Achievement Medal for everything that I had done. But I did not receive the medal until after my discharge. The local reserve unit stationed in New Orleans gave it to me without any fanfare.

I remained at Thong Duc for about a month when we were given orders to return to Hill #10. We only had one day’s notice! Then early the next morning several helicopters arrived to carry us back to the base. There was one helicopter for each of the two Howitzers and another three or four for the marines stationed there.

When we left, there was gear all over the place. Medical supplies, food, (C-rations) clothing, ammunition boxes, M-16 ammunition, blankets, military cots and just about anything that an artillery unit needs to survive was left behind.

The only things that we did not leave were ammunition for the Howitzers, our personal weapons and any clothing that we could carry. I was also responsible for making sure the footlocker of communications gear was on one of the helicopters. Everything else was left behind. Everyone knew that the Viet Cong would get it all before nightfall.

That is one of the reasons I hated the Vietnam War so much. We were feeding, clothing and supplying the enemy with the materials they needed to carry on their war effort against us, and everyone, from the top command down to the lowest private, knew this. Nor was this an isolated incident.

Every time I went to a helicopter landing zone (LZ) outpost, when we were told to pull out, we were given only a days notice (once we were only given about an hour’s notice) and then everything was airlifted out by helicopter, leaving plenty of gear for the Viet Cong to come and re-supply themselves.

I am not surprised that the most powerful nation in the world lost a war to an underdeveloped, non-industrialized country. As I stated in Alpha Omega: The United States lost the Vietnam War because the government did not want to win it. Those individuals in positions of authority only wanted to prolong it as long as they could because too many people were making plenty of money “supplying the army with the tools of the trade,” to quote County Joe and the Fish.

Back at my artillery headquarters on hill #10, I spent much of my spare time sitting alone on the side of the hill on which my artillery unit was stationed. I had found an abandoned fox hole that was surrounded with barbwire and weeds and I could be alone there. Sitting there, I either read or watched the villagers at the foot of the hill work in their rice paddies.

One day while sitting and watching the villagers, a Viet Cong soldier shot at me a couple of times. I know that the man shot at me because I heard at least two bullets whiz by my ear and a second later I heard two shots. (To this day, I can still hear those two shots.) In fact, the man began shooting at everyone and anyone he could see. Sitting in my fox hole, I had a ringside seat, so to speak, to what soon became a “comical situation.”

At the time, my helmet and flack jacket were sitting on my cot in my hut. I had my M-16 rifle with me but no ammunition. I did not want to leave my foxhole as the Viet Cong soldier might shoot at me again and I did not want to give him a second chance at hitting me. So, I just sat there and watched the situation unfold.

It was one Viet Cong soldier against an entire Marine Corps Infantry unit (at least 1,000 men), an entire Howitzer unit (about 500 men) and a fuel depot (about 250 men). The man kept running from hut to hut and from hiding place to hiding place. He would take a couple of shots at someone on the hill and then run to a different hiding place.

I do not believe he was aiming because he never hit anyone. He would just point his rifle, take a couple of shots, and then run to another hiding spot. No one could stop him! The howitzers could not shoot at him because he was too close. The infantry unit Golf Battery was supporting, the 7th Marines, sent out a couple of squads to get him but they could not find him as he kept moving from farm hut to farm hut.

Finally, after about 30 minutes, one of the “cannon cockers,” as they were called, opened the breech of his howitzer and, looking down the barrel, pointed it right at the farm hut the soldier was hiding in and blew him up from point blank range. The only thing they found was the man’s helmet, one of his boots and a part of his rifle.

The incident of all these marines unable to kill one Viet Cong soldier itself was funny, but not the man’s death. That was the part of war that I hate the most.

There were a number of other incidents that I thought were “funny.” Notably, a Viet Cong soldier my unit called 5 O’clock Charlie. This was a Viet Cong soldier who would shoot two mortars at the mess hall, every second or third day, between four and six in the evening.

He never attacked at the same time and always spaced his attacks a day or two apart. The man hit his mark only once and that was when he hit the officer’s meat locker. (Everyone had steak that day.) But he would succeed in putting the entire command post on red alert for a couple of hours. This went on for about a month until a Marine patrol caught him.

Later, when I returned home and began watching reruns of M.A.S.H. 4077, I noticed a strong similarity between my unit’s 5:00 O’clock Charlie and M.A.S.H. 4077th’s 5:00 O’clock Charlie. Indeed, I noticed many similarities between my year in Vietnam and the television program — like the incident I described in the preceding paragraph. One particular episode was the one where Col. Blake was killed. It reminded me of the time a good friend of mine was killed.

My most harrowing moment was when George, a fellow marine and friend of mine, was killed while driving a jeep that I was supposed to have driven. My unit’s corpsman had asked me to drive him to division headquarters to get some ice for the unit. He wanted to ice down some beer and soft drinks for the artillery unit.

I was busy changing a flat tire on the communication section’s jeep at the time and told the corpsman that I would do it as soon as I finished. However, I was having trouble fixing the flat. He got tired of waiting for me and asked George to drive him to division.

George, who was from Texas, had become a close friend of mine. We often talked together in the communications bunker, trading stories about our school days back home, girls we dated, what we planned to do once we got back home and things of that nature.

While he and the corpsman were going to get the ice they were attacked by mortar fire. George was killed when a piece of shrapnel hit him in the head. I have always believed that were it not for the flat tire on the jeep I was having trouble fixing, I would have received that piece of shrapnel instead of my little Hispanic friend. This incident also had a profound effect on my view of war, especially the Vietnam War.

One day while I was walking from the mess hall I saw a troop truck filled with marines blow up. It was at the top of the hill and right in the path of the direction I was walking, only about twenty-five meters in front of me. I yelled ‘Incoming!’ as loud as I could and ran to the communications command bunker.

The whole hill heard the truck explode and went on red alert, but there were no more mortar rounds or anything coming in. Everyone thought it was odd since no one had heard anything except the truck exploding.

Some officers went to investigate and help out with the wounded and dead marines in and around the truck. What they discovered was that a marine threw a belt of grenades into the back of the truck just as he himself was climbing into it. The grenades exploded killing several marines and wounding numerous others and everyone thought it was incoming mortar fire.

About half way through my tour of duty, Golf Battery got a new gunnery sergeant; he was a stickler for cleanliness and Marine Corps spit and polish. As soon as he arrived he issued orders to have the entire artillery battery cleaned up of excess weeds, foxholes refurbished and our living quarters rebuilt. In short, he had us rebuild everything in Golf Battery.

I and a fellow marine were assigned to clean up some weeds in an area of Hill #10 that was seldom used. This was the same area where I used to sit and read and watch the local villagers.

Anyway, the other marine was swinging a sickle when I noticed a live grenade at his feet. I told him: “Freeze! There’s a live grenade at your feet!” He said: “Yeah right,” and he kept swinging the sickle. I again yelled: “Freeze!” This time he stopped in mid swing. He looked down, saw the grenade and said: “What do we do now?”

I told him to stay where he was while I went and got our unit’s gunnery sergeant and commanding officer. He told me that he had no intention of moving. When I got back he was still standing, frozen in mid swing, looking much like a pro golfer about to hit a grenade into the 19th hole. (He looked terribly funny holding that sickle in the air afraid that if he moved the grenade would explode.)

The gunnery sergeant put the grenade in an ammo box and exploded it safely. But what concerned me is that the grenade was only about a meter or two from where I would sit and watch the villagers work in their rice paddies. The incident sent chills up my spine.

The gunnery sergeant also had us build a new shower. Once while I was showering, the battery commanding officer came into shower. He asked me if I knew someone named Karl Keller. I said yes that I had gone to school with him. I asked the captain how he knew Karl. He told me that Karl had been assigned to Golf Battery.

It was rare to meet someone from one’s own city. But to have someone with whom you went to school with to be assigned to your unit was rarer than rare. A few weeks later Karl arrived and we got together occasionally to talk about old times back in Metairie.

Once he got some rice from a villager and I got a can of red beans my mother sent me and the two of us cooked up some New Orleans Red Beans and Rice. We gave some to our commanding officer and I felt like I was home again.

I mentioned previously that I spent quite a bit of time on watch in the communications bunker. I and every other marine in our artillery unit also spent a lot of time on watch on one of two observation posts at the foot of our hill. Duty for Golf Battery was from dusk till dawn for six marines who were unlucky enough to pull guard duty for that night.

The communications section had to supply one marine each week for this. When my section chief gave me the responsibility for making up the watch list he also told me to figure in the fact that we would be minus one marine each week for communications watch in the communications bunker. This was no problem as we had enough men to cover both so that no one would have to pull guard duty more often than once about every five or six weeks.

I did not mind guard duty too much as those who had to do it got out of any other work details the next day. This I liked, but what I did not like was that we had a standing order to call up the Officer of the Day if we heard anything. The OD slept in the communications bunker and the only link we had to him was a vintage hand-cranked field phone connected by a flimsy black wire phone line.

The line was frequently cut and the phones sometimes didn’t work. Reminiscent of the phones that frequently did not work on M.A.S.H. 4077. Then to force the marines on guard duty to depend on this to save their life if they were ever attacked made my blood boil. I hated it but there was nothing I could do. I was only a private first class.

The only time I was every told that we could fire a flare or a warning shot if we heard anything was the night I spent on Finger Five. This was on a hill that I was told looked like a hand from the air; Finger Five was supposed to resemble the thumb. I was also told it was near to where President Johnson’s son-in-law was stationed but I do not know if this latter information was true.

Finger Five was a section of the hill that had never been occupied and we were told to clean it up and prepare it for occupation. I, and about ten other marines, were put there and told to clean up the weeds and trash and anything else that had to be cleaned up.

There were only three foxholes on the entire section of hill (it was a littler larger than a soccer field) and we had no phone communications with the artillery unit that was on the other side of the hill. That night the sergeant in charge of us took the only radio we had and went to one of the foxholes with three marines and told the rest of us to spread out into the other two.

There we were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the Viet Cong, with no communications with anyone and we had to somehow protect ourselves. The sergeant told us that if we heard anything to light up a flare and if we saw anything move to shoot at it. He gave us a bunch of flares before he went to his foxhole. We heard a lot of mysterious sounds and had fun shooting off a lot of flares but luckily we never saw anything move.

One evening I had to spend the night on Hill #55. I do not remember why I was there, only that I had to spend the night there. While visiting their communications section I saw one marine shoot another marine in the stomach. This was an accident but while there I heard a story about a mess sergeant who was killed when someone threw a grenade under his cot one night. This was not an accident. I heard several stories about marines killing marines. Some of them were true; others I can only imagine about their truthfulness. But after seeing the 1986 Oliver Stone war movie Platoon I can believe them.

One in particular really scared me. Upon arriving in Golf Battery one of the first things that everyone — and I mean everyone — asked me was if I had any relatives in the Marine Corps. I told them all no. Only after I had been in Vietnam for a couple of weeks did I find out why everyone kept asking me about relatives in the Marine Corps.

The infantry unit which Golf Battery gave support to was the 7th Marines, and the commanding officer of the 7th Marines at that time was Lt. Col. Fagan. We are not related but this did not stop everyone from asking me about him.

Anyway, after a couple of months in Vietnam I was told that some infantrymen from the 7th Marines had offered a bounty to whoever would kill Lt. Col. Fagan. I do not know if this were true or not but when I found out about it I could only breathe a sigh of relief that I had told everyone that I did not have any relatives in the Marine Corps.

One day I received a packet of letters from my sister-in-law. She taught elementary school (I think it was fourth grade) and she got her students to each write me a letter. I read them and some of the men I was stationed with asked me if they could help me answer the letters, so I passed the letters around to those who wanted them.

I only vaguely remember what some of the letters said. But one in particular still fills me with warmth. The child, and I do not remember his name, had somehow got the idea that I was fighting the Nazis in Germany. Anyway, he asked me if I had killed any Germans and if I had blown up any Panzer Tanks. I wrote back to him that I was in Vietnam and that I was fighting the Viet Cong.

The other letters asked if I was homesick, did I have a pen pal, did I have a girl friend or if I wanted to date their older sister and things of this nature. All of their letters were filled with the innocence of children and when I reflect back upon the innocence of children I am appalled that mankind could bring something as terrible as war into their lives.

One day during the monsoon season Cpl. Connell asked me to go with him to get the mail from headquarters. I said sure and we hitched a ride on an am-track (amphibious tractor). We could not drive a jeep because all the roads were flooded due to all the rain.

We got to HQ without any trouble but on the return trip I think the driver must have gotten lost or something because after a while nothing looked familiar. The landmarks that I was accustomed to seeing on my way to and from regimental headquarters were no longer there. While it was true that almost everything was under water, still I thought something should have looked familiar. But nothing looked the way I remembered it.

I remember Jim saying that if we started to take sniper fire and it came down to saving himself or the mail then he was out to save himself. I asked him about the proverb that the mail always gets delivered; I was being sarcastic. He said that this was an exception to the rule and that this is one day the mail would not get delivered if we took any sniper fire.

Both of us were already having trouble hanging onto the wondering am-track as it was bouncing around in the water. Then he said: “If we take any fire, you hold on to the mail and I'll hold on to the am-track.” He too was being sarcastic. Then I said: “But what if I fall off?” He looked at me, smiled and then answered: “Then I'll send your next of kin a proverbial letter that you died in the postal line of duty!”

I still laugh about the whole incident. Luckily no one shot at us and, after about half an hour or so of meandering around, the driver eventually found the correct road.

The only other time I had trouble with the mail was months earlier when I was in Thon Duc. The mail was delivered to us everyday by a helicopter. In fact, everything was delivered to us by helicopter and the chop chop of the helicopter blades is one of my most vivid memories of the Vietnam War. (To this day I do not know why it was not called the Helicopter War since helicopters were everywhere all the time and there was no escaping them.)

Anyway, one day the daily helicopter had just left Thon Duc when it started to receive enemy fire; it was hit but not bad. It was only a couple hundred meters from us and we saw it return fire. We also saw that it dropped the mailbag when it came under attack. A patrol was sent out for the bag but they never found the bag. Luckily I did not have to go on that patrol. Yes, I had a letter home to my mother in that mailbag.

About three or four months before I was to go home we got a new commanding officer. He was a captain and he was one of the few officers who treated me with any kind of respect during my entire enlistment. All our battery commanding officers prior to this had been lieutenants.

He called me into his office one day and asked me why I was still a private first class and why I was never promoted to lance corporal. I told him that I did not know, that I just must not have been in the right place at the right time. He also asked me if I would ever consider making a career out of the Marine Corps. I told him that I did not have enough rank to even consider that and he said OK and dismissed me. Nothing more was said about this but a couple of weeks after this I was promoted to lance corporal.

It was through George’s death and the other incidents I have described here that I learned the horror of war and the horror of death. I saw a number of my fellow marines killed or wounded and countless civilians displaced by the war, children orphaned and whole families destroyed.

It was in Vietnam that I discovered that I was a pacifist and that war is wrong. Although I lost my father when I was a young boy, it was not until I arrived in Vietnam that I learned the full inhumanity of war and death. I have been against all wars ever since then.

I would like to point out that I did not put the above incidents in the order in which they happened. Nor have I written about all the horrors of my thirteen months in Vietnam. What I tried to relate was the bad and the good, the sad and the happy, the horrible and the beautiful.

Also, the longer I stayed in Vietnam the more my thoughts and beliefs began to parallel the philosophy of Dr. Hawkeye Pierce from M.A.S.H. 4077. I learned this after I returned home and began to watch the series on television.

I am indebted to Alan Alda for the character he played. However, because I was only a PFC instead of an officer I could not voice my beliefs as openly as did Dr. Pierce. But everyone I was stationed with knew that I did not believe in war in general and the Vietnam War in particular.

The main reason I did not believe in the Vietnam War was because of the way it was fought. To this day, I believe that the only reason that that war was fought was to make money for Wall Street. If I may quote from Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock: “There is plenty of money to be made supplying the army with the tools of the trade.”

But we not only supplied our own troops with the necessities of war, we also supplied the Viet Cong with the necessities to fight us. In fact, the only things that we did not give to the Viet Cong were weapons. We gave them food, clothing, ammunition, medical supplies, everything an army needs to survive, except weapons.

This was done every time we were moved from one place to another by helicopter, which was frequently. Sometimes we were given over night notice but just as often we were only given a few hours notice that we were being moved to another landing zone. Either way, because of the weight factor, we were not allowed to carry very much with us on the helicopter.

Invariably gear would be left behind. In fact, the only thing that was never left behind was our weapons. We were told to destroy anything left behind before we left but most of the time this never happened. As soon as we would pull out you could see the villagers come in and start to pick up what we left.

Of course, along with the villagers the Viet Cong would also pick up what we left. Hence, my statement above about us feeding and clothing the Viet Cong.

The other reason I hated that war was because of the standing orders we had while on guard duty. We could not shoot at the Viet Cong without first getting permission from someone. I was told this was not the case while on patrol outside the command post. But inside the command post it was the order of the day. I was told that we could not shoot back because we might “hit a friendly.”

That’s crazy! How can someone fight a war under such conditions?

The United States lost the Vietnam War, but only because the hands of those of us who were fighting it were tied by Washington, D.C.

To tell me that the most powerful nation in the world lost a war to one of the weakest nations in the world is to tell me that the world heavy weight boxing champion lost a match to an amateur boxer. The only way such is possible is if the heavy weight boxer threw the fight!

Autobobiography

The War Years