Neil Sheehan is a former correspondent for The New York Times, and the author of “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.”  This article was published by Neil Sheehan – Nov. 13, 2015.

A wounded American soldier returning to the X-ray landing zone in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, November 15, 1965. Credit Neil Sheehan/The New York Times

A FEW weeks ago, an archivist at The New York Times discovered a small trove of photographs I’d taken 50 years ago while covering the first major clash of the Vietnam War between the American and North Vietnamese Armies. Though I had written about the battle for The Times, and later in my book “A Bright Shining Lie,” I’d completely forgotten about the photographs. Seeing them brought back a cascade of memories of one of my most extraordinary days as a young war correspondent.

It was Nov. 15, 1965, in the valley of the Ia Drang in the wild mountains of the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. That spring, the Saigon government had begun collapsing under the combined blows of the Vietcong guerrillas and the regular North Vietnamese Army units infiltrating down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos. To save his Vietnamese protégés, President Lyndon B. Johnson had launched what became the big American War in Vietnam. The combined military might of the United States — the infantry of the Army and the Marines, the warplanes of the Air Force and the Navy’s carrier fleets — was arriving as fast as it could be assembled.

American soldiers guarding North Vietnamese prisoners near the Ia Drang Valley in South Vietnam, November 15, 1965. Credit Neil Sheehan/The New York Times

The lavish shelling and bombing by the Americans was taking a horrendous toll on the peasantry. Much farther north up the Central Coast, on Nov. 14, I had found a fishing village in which as many as 600 civilians were reported to have been killed by fire from American aircraft and Navy destroyers.

That evening, I telephoned The Times’s Saigon bureau to let them know what I would be writing. Charlie Mohr, the other reporter in the bureau and my boss, told me to head back up to Pleiku, the principal town and major air base in the Highlands, right away. The “Air Cav,” as the Army’s newest division was called, was apparently in a hell of a fight with N.V.A. units near there.

The First Cavalry Division (Air Mobile) was the Army’s revolutionary division. The troops of the Air Cav rode into battle in “slick ship” helicopters escorted by “gunships” fitted with superfast-firing machine guns and “rocket ships” that loosed barrages of 2.75 inch air-to-ground rockets from side-fitted pods.

American soldiers guarding North Vietnamese prisoners in the Ia Drang Valley in South Vietnam, November 15, 1965. Credit Neil Sheehan/The New York Times

Down the coast I hitchhiked through the night of the 14th on transport planes to the port of Qui Nhon, and then over the mountains to Pleiku. Except for some sensible restrictions, such as not writing about future operations, in those years reporters were free to cover the war wherever the fighting took us. There were no control gimmicks such as “embedding” a reporter with a single unit.

I was used to the quiet of the South Vietnamese Army headquarters at night. Pleiku Air Base was bedlam. Radios chattered loudly and the Army’s new CH-47 “Chinook” cargo helicopters clattered down to fetch another load of shells for the artillery that boomed and flashed through the darkness to the south.

The next morning I reached the artillery position about five miles from a clearing where the battle was taking place. Peter Arnett, an old friend and comrade reporter of many battles, had landed in another helicopter a few minutes earlier. The morning was crisp but the gunners were stripped to the waist, slamming shells into howitzers and sending the high explosive hurtling toward the enemy as fast as they could close the breeches and jerk the firing lanyards. “Battalion Rear” headquarters consisted of a major in a tent with a radio tuned to the main battalion radio in the clearing. It was my third year in Vietnam and Peter had been covering war somewhat longer. We had stayed alive by exercising a certain amount of caution. We asked the major what was happening. He said there was a lot of shooting going on at the clearing. We decided to wait five or 10 minutes in the hope there might be a lull. Time up, we went back to the major. Still bad, he said.

David Halberstam (left), Malcolm Browne, and Neil Sheehan—1963.

Peter and I looked at each other. We knew we had to get in there. “Screw it!” we yelled and ran to the nearest helicopter and leapt on. Despite the risk, the Air Cav pilots were continuing to fly ammunition into the clearing and lift out the wounded. The pilots of our helicopters took the machine up to about 2,500 feet to get their bearings on “X-ray,” as the clearing had been code named. The scene below was terrifying, a circle of hell full of bursting artillery shells and the bombs and napalm of the jet fighters that were stacked up over the clearing and called in one after another to swoop down and unload their cargoes of death. The napalm canisters were a handsome silvery color. They tumbled end over end until they hit and burst into flame. One wondered how the Vietnamese could stand it.

War correspondent Peter Arnett talking with a soldier in South Vietnam Oct. 1965. (AP Photo)

Our pilots suddenly dropped down and dashed in over the treetops, “flaring” the rotors as soon as they were in the clearing, which had the effect of braking the machine in midair. Reporters were expected to make themselves useful. Peter and I tossed out the cartons of ammunition and helped to lift in a couple of stretchers with wounded men as a bullet thwacked into the fuselage and others buzzed by our ears through the open doors. Then we leapt out and ran for one of the man-high anthills that rose, like silent sentinels, among the trees at the edge of the clearing.

Lt. Col. Harold Moore Jr., the battalion commander, known as Hal, had established his command post beside one. “By God, they sent us over here to kill Communists and that’s what we’re doing,” he shouted exultantly. Colonel Moore was a tall, blue-eyed Kentuckian who had learned the trade of an infantryman at West Point and during the Korean War. His emotions were soaring at having just broken a three-and-a-quarter hour assault on the perimeter. But the Vietnamese were not gone. The survivors of the assault had hidden in the treetops, in clumps of high elephant grass, and had burrowed into the anthills. Whenever anyone moved, perhaps to carry a wounded man to the clearing for evacuation, one of them would cut loose with a Soviet-designed AK-47 automatic assault rifle and more of Colonel Moore’s men would be killed or wounded before the sniper could be located.

IT always galls me when I hear or read of the men who fought the Second World War as “the greatest generation.” On the first day of the battle, Nov. 14, Colonel Moore assigned his C (“Charlie”) Company the south and southwest sides of the perimeter. They had taken few casualties because the brunt of the assault had fallen elsewhere. None of the officers and men of the company had ever seen serious combat before. Shortly after dawn the next morning, hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers, in loosefitting khaki fatigues that blended well with the terrain, rose out of the elephant grass and rushed C Company’s foxhole line, seeking to overwhelm it. When the fight was over, Charlie Company had ceased to exist. Of the approximately 100 men who had seen daybreak, fewer than 40 were not wounded. There were gaps in the foxhole line where the dead and wounded lay. But the North Vietnamese attackers never managed to break through that line in sufficient numbers to threaten the battalion position, because the men of C Company, First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, fought and died like the young lions they were.

They, and so many others who fought in Vietnam, were as great as any generation that preceded them. Their misfortune was to draw a bad war, an unnecessary war, a mistake by American politicians and statesmen, for which they paid.

Here’s the direct link for Neil’s book on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Shining-Lie-America-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B002ZW7EHS/ref=sr_1_

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and wanted to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are alive – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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Here’s another guest article by TJ McGinley “Free Bird”, who gives us a look at his rebellious side while serving in Vietnam.  As an infantry soldier who spent most of his time living in the jungle, periodic stand-downs in a base camp were cherished and offered an outlet for these grunts to rest and blow off steam.  Keep in mind that they are still teenagers and do what boys do every chance they can – but sometimes, they get caught.

In August of 2003, my wife and I attended a reunion of the guys I was with in Vietnam.  Suzanne was a little stunned at the number of people that confronted me with the statement; “I remember you, I was in jail with you.” To her, it sounded as if I spent most, if not all, of my time in Vietnam in a jail cell.

The way the military handled soldiers in a war zone who did something inappropriate was if the perpetrator had a job in the rear they would threaten them with a trip out to the field, which was normally an effective way of keeping “REMFs” (Rear Echelon Military Forces) in line. This acronym referenced those soldiers who had jobs that kept them in the rear areas with the gear.  Combat soldiers often referenced them as Pogues or “Rear Echelon Mother F*ckers.”  When it came time to threaten a Boony Rat, a slang word when referencing infantry soldiers, it didn’t apply since they were returning to the bush anyway within a day or so.  The brass was tasked them with finding a different solution.

They concluded that justice was appropriate to both groups if there were to take away a stripe from the “perp.”  For example, if you were a sergeant the brass would bust you to a corporal, which meant less rank, less money, and less responsibility.

Another roadblock occurred when confronting a perp who was getting out of the Army as soon as he returned to the states.  He could care less about rank, and the threat held no merit.  Now, what?

Their last tactic to punish a rabble rouser of this caliber was to evaluate his personnel file for any recorded misdeeds.  If he were consistently in trouble, no matter how many accolades are noted, they’d pull his medical records and hold on to them, thereby, preventing him from boarding the airplane home.  Now the only way out of the country was to face a Court-Marshal for his misdeeds.

In Vietnam, a soldier in the field did not need rank to have the respect of his comrades; instead, his experience was what mattered.  Of course, you did what your commanders asked of you, but because of your experience, or time in the field, they would do just that – ask.

You couldn’t do much to find trouble in the field.  If you screwed up, your actions could get you killed, and take others with you.  In the bush, you are surrounded by well-armed people that do not want to die because of a screw-up.  So you kept your act together!. However, NOBODY messed with you and gave you a hard time, not even the officers.

Now and then, for one reason or another, you could get out of the field by getting wounded, killed, R&R and so on.  Every so often at the end of an operation, the military would pull the entire unit out of the field and hold what was called a stand-down.

That’s where we went back to the main base camp, put down our firearms, took showers, ate real food, watched movies, and most importantly, tried to get some real sleep on beds with mattresses.

I think I experienced two maybe three of these stand-downs in the 14 months I served in Vietnam.

After spending three months in the jungle, our unit was pulled to the rear, and I experienced my first stand-down.

On the second day, a few of my friends and I decided to visit the nearby town without a pass and see what kind of mischief we could find.  Just before leaving the base camp, one of the guys retrieved an army issue 45 cal. Automatic pistol from his rucksack, handing it to me so I’d have a weapon to carry.  I stuck it into the waistband of my trousers and covered it with my fatigue jacket before leaving.

The Bust

When we got into town, a young boy approached us saying, “MP no find, MP no find.”  We presumed this was hugely important in successfully completing our mission and followed the boy.  He took us to a small house where we sat in the dining area and for the next hour and enjoyed the company of the local ladies.

Not long after we were completely broke, the little boy reappeared in a panic screaming, “MP coming, MP coming.”  Must have been his way of telling us that it was time to leave.  We jumped up and made a dash to the back door and found an MP there blocking the doorway.  It was like a scene from the Keystone Cops; we were falling all over ourselves while changing directions and hurried to the other end of the house.

Once we made it outside to the front yard, we found ourselves surrounded by MPs.  They searched us and confiscated the pistol, then charged us with being AWOL from the base, loitering in a well-known house of prostitution, and possession of a firearm.

As my squad and I sat in a cell, waiting for a representative from our unit to claim us, an MP approached the cell and called my name. He handcuffed me and then led me to his superior’s desk.  The 45 sat on a white piece of paper looking like an object they just pulled out of an archeological dig.  The young, new, totally inexperienced, officer behind the desk asked me if the weapon belonged to me.  I told him it was a loan.  He said that if I had tried to fire the pistol, it would have blown up in my hand.  Being the smartass that I am, I told him to return the weapon, and I’d move to the other side of the room and point it at his head.  If he is correct, I will lose my hand, but if he’s wrong, he will lose his head.  He didn’t see the humor in it, so in addition to the other charges, a charge of insubordination was added under my name.

After about an hour the guard returned to the cell, handcuffed all of us and ordered us all to move out. A young 1^st Lieutenant, we have never seen before, and one of our grunt brothers stood next to the desk.  The grunt said to his accompanied officer, “Sir this is your second squad”!

We all grind a bit. The MPs unhandcuffed all of us then we jumped on the back of a truck and returned to our base camp, two MP’s followed us in a jeep with all the paperwork.

When were returned to Camp Eagle we marched to our company commander’s tent and waited at the entrance until he gave us the word to enter.  Once inside, the MPs officially handed him our Article 15 paperwork. He skimmed through all the reports, one page at a time, then asked, “Is this all?”

The MPs answered with a snappy retort, “Yes Sir”!

Our commander, Tom Kinane, a tall, well-built man, ripped up the paperwork then said in a calm voice, “You’re all dismissed.”

While gathering our personal gear from the MPs jeep, we glared and grinned at the MPs with delight.  They drove somewhat confused, not fully understanding what had just happened.

Let’s Stop in for a Drink

Most all large base camps are comprised of a mixture of military branches–Army Infantry, Navy Seabees, Marines, etc.  Whenever coming to the rear area for a stand down,  we all carried souvenirs of enemy equipment that we collected during the mission, such as NVA belt buckles, bandoliers, helmets – the type of stuff we could take home after our tour. We stashed all the enemy weapons for ourselves then walked through the camp selling this stuff to those soldiers who had never been in the field or even saw dead enemy bodies.  These soldiers who had permanent jobs in the base camps cherished these items and paid top dollar, thereby allowing them to return home with souvenirs and bullshit war stories of their own.  Only one out of every eight Vietnam Vets saw actual combat in the field; that’s why a lot of vets won’t talk about their combat experiences–because they don’t have any!

After one of these selling trips, four of us from Tiger Force walked into a Marine bar to get a drink. Everyone there was spit-shined and polished while we wore our camouflage fatigues, grungy jungle boots, bush hats, and berets.  We carried pistols and knives both hanging from our belts.  I had a Bowie knife on one hip, and a sawed off 4-10 shotgun on the other.  The Marines freaked out when we sat at the bar.  The bartender rang a bell then informed us that we had to buy the everyone there a drink as a penalty for not taking off our hats and wearing firearms in their establishment.

We politely told the bartender where he could go, then exchanged some angry words with several of the other patrons.  Soon everyone in the bar was on their feet but unsure of what to do next since we were the only ones with weapons.  That was until the Marine MPs arrived.

They took us to the brig and never informed us of the charges.  The MPs released us the following morning and to this day, I still don’t know why we had to spend that night in jail.  We did nothing wrong!

Air Policeman

My squad was guarding the perimeter of a firebase during the monsoon rain one day when I asked a medic if he had some fun pills for my nagging headache. He gave me a couple of tablets that didn’t agree with my system. When I reported back later, I had a temperature of 103 and diagnosed with malaria. Before I could crack a smile, I was on a chopper heading for the nearest hospital.

Once there, I was placed in a long barrack with an air-conditioner in every window, and a clean bed sheet. I think they were trying to lower my temperature, I nearly froze to death!  It was very effective.  Even though I loved a clean bed, hot food, round-eyed nurses, and movies every night, freezing all day became rather uncomfortable. When the drugs the doc gave me wore off, and my temperature returned to normal, I was given my walking papers.

On the way back to my unit, I was passing through Bien Hoa Airbase when I decided to go into the Air Force snack bar, where I ran into a high school buddy of mine.  His title was Air Policeman, but all he did was sit in a tower on the air base perimeter, get stoned at night, and pull guard duty during the day. The local VC seldom did anything during the day in that part of the country. So I got a haircut, took out my earring, and became an AP. Swimming pool, tennis court, air-conditioned housing, three flavors of ice cream at dinner, movies every night, this was the life.

I never had smoked marijuana before I got to Vietnam, but in that situation, being stoned was a coping mechanism. In his living quarters on the airbase, my friend had a great stereo system with a high-quality set of earphones and all the music of the time.

It is the first time I’ve listened to music while stoned and found the experience to be like no other.  My daily routine as an AP extraordinaire soon became a habit.  I’d get stoned, put on an album, plug in the earphones, lay down, put a black sock over my eyes, crank up the volume, and come to a perfect understanding of just what the Moody Blues meant by “In Search of a Lost Cord.”  Stones, Beatles, Airplane, Cream, Dylan, Doors, you name it; I fully absorbed their music during this time.  It was paradise! After more than a month, I had a hunch that my unit missed me.  I told my friend that I would return soon and hit the road.  Needless to say, immediately upon my arrival at the base camp I was considered AWOL and sent back out to the field.

The Last Straw

During the last months of my tour in Vietnam, I started hearing about an early-out plan. If a soldier had seven months or less remaining in the service when returning to the States from an overseas tour, that soldier could extend his tour a certain amount of months and then be discharged from the Army immediately after.

I found the only place I could handle the Army’s bullsh*t was in the field while serving in Vietnam.  It was the only place where the lifers didn’t mess with you. You didn’t have to salute, there were no inspections, and soldiers didn’t have to shine boots, or say “yes sir” to anyone.  In other words, it was the one place in the Army where officers, sergeants, and privates alike treated each other with equal respect.

I knew that if I went back to a stateside unit and had to salute officers that didn’t even have a CIB, I’d be spending a lot of time in the brig. A CIB is a Combat Infantry Badge and earned when a soldier has seen combat for more than 30 days.  It’s the most coveted award in the Army and earned the hard way, by going to a combat zone and putting your ass on the line. I’d be hard pressed to salute anyone who hadn’t been in combat.

I signed up for the early-out as soon as I heard about it.  To qualify, I had to extend my Vietnam tour for two additional months, but my anxiety to get out of the Army far outweighed my anxiety to get out of Vietnam.  If I didn’t extend, I’d leave Vietnam as scheduled in April, and spend seven months at some God-forsaken military post as a PFC, then get out of the Army and go home in November, the beginning of winter. With the early-out I’d be home in June, the beginning of summer. It all worked out as planned.

The Getaway

When I left Vietnam, I had no idea what rank I was, as every time I went to the rear, I’d get busted for doing something the military deemed inappropriate.  As punishment, they took away whatever rank I had.  However, when returning to the field, the platoon leader always put me back in charge of a group of men because of my experience and immediately regained the rank I had lost in the rear the day before.

Finally on June 4, 1969, my time in hell ended.  I was in the rear area processing out when a super-striper I had confronted on numerous occasions, told me I was to be court-marshaled for all the petty things and AWOL charges I accumulated during the last fourteen months.  I was a good soldier. I followed orders.  Never ran from a fight or left a buddy behind. Therefore, I didn’t deserve this punishment with only a few days left in the military.

I proceeded with my out-processing only to find that the Army kept my medical records and wouldn’t add me to the flight manifest to go home.  So, I went to the aid station where, to my surprise, the officer in charge was one of my previous commanding officers in the field. I informed him of my predicament, and he immediately signed and released my paperwork. My flight wasn’t scheduled to leave for a couple days, so I visited my AP buddy at the airbase and caught up on much-needed sleep.

Soon I was on the Freedom Bird and bound for the states. I earned a certain respect from those who served with me in the bush. Out there, we were continuously stressed, anxious and fought the enemy almost every day. Those periodic trips to rear areas are scheduled so we could relax and unwind after spending several weeks on a mission. Those things that we considered “luxuries” are things that those who live in the rear usually took for granted.  I always wondered how they would react if the shoe were on the other foot.  I was never court-marshaled and arrived in the States with a good record and given an Honorable Discharge, which I deserved.

Back in the World

After traveling for umpteen hours, we finally touched down at an Army base in Oakland California.  It was early June, the first thing I did was to call home, telling my family that I was back in the states,  alive and well, and would be home soon.

One of my Nam buddies, Mike Morris, lived in San Francisco.  He’d pick up his Vietnam buddies after they checked out of the post, letting them stay at his house for a couple days and showing them the town before going home.

When I finished with the paperwork that officially declared me Honorably Discharged from the United States Army, I called Mike, and he informed me that he’d be there within fifteen minutes.

I stepped outside of the building and waited just inside the gate for my buddy.  Just then, a sharply dressed MP approached me and informed me that if I wore a dress uniform, the top button of my shirt had to be buttoned, and my tie needed straightening per regulations. The MP wore only one ribbon on his chest, The National Defense ribbon, which everyone earns after 90 days in the military. In other words, he obviously hadn’t been anywhere or seen anything, but I had less than five minutes left in the service and knew that now was not the time to start any trouble.  I said O.K. and straightened my tie.

Even though I had the paperwork stating I was officially out of the Army, as long as I was inside that post, I was still in their clutches, but once I passed through that gate, “that’s all she wrote”.

Three minutes later Mike pulled up next to the gate.  I picked up my small gym bag walked off the premises, gave Mike a brotherly hug, tossed my bag in the back seat and opened the passenger door. Before getting in, I said that I had one more thing to do. I turned and yelled to the MP, “Hey!”, He turned and stared at me. I took off my tie and threw it at him then gave him and the entire military a snappy final one fingered salute.  Then I got into Mikes car, and we took off into the free world.

TJ McGinley Tiger Force Recon 1/327 – 101st Abn. Div. Vietnam ’68-’69

Author TJ McGinely is an active member of War-Stories

Thank you for your service and Welcome Home Brother!  Watch for more articles by this author in the coming weeks.

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and wanted to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are alive – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

I’ve created a poll to help identify my website audience – before leaving, can you please click HERE and choose the one item best describing you.  Thank you in advance!

Interesting facts about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the sentinels of the United States Infantry Regiment “Old Guard”

How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the Tomb of the Unknowns and why?
     – 21 steps.  It alludes to the 21 gun salute, which is the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary.
How long does he hesitate after his turn north or south to begin his return walk and why?
    – 21 seconds, for the same reason as answer number one.
Why are his gloves wet?
     – His gloves are moistened to prevent his losing his grip on the rifle.
Does he carry his rifle on the same shoulder all the time, and if not, why not?
     – No, he carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the Tomb. After his march across the path, he executes an about face and moves the rifle to the outside shoulder to signify that the Guard stands between the Tomb and any possible threat.

How often are the guards changed?
     -Guard changes are dictated by the season.  During the summer months, the Guard is changed every 30 minutes, and during the winter, the Guard is changed hourly.  This practice continues 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year.

 What are the physical traits of a guard limited to?
     -For a person to apply for guard duty at the tomb he must be between 5 foot 10 inches and 6 foot 2 inches and his waist cannot exceed 30 inches.
How many sets of remains are interred within the tomb?
     – Until 1998, the tomb held the remains of four unknown soldiers.  One each from WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam.  The remains of the Vietnam Unknown were exhumed May 14, 1998. Based on mitochondrial DNA testing, DoD scientists identified the remains as those of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, who was shot down near An Loc, Vietnam, in 1972. It has been decided that the crypt that contained the remains of the Vietnam Unknown will remain vacant.   The crypt cover has been replaced with one that has the inscription “Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958-1975.”

When the Tomb Guard completes his march across the mat, in which direction does he turn and face?
     – The Guard will always turn to the east – facing the monument.

How often is the rubber mat replaced?
     – The mat is usually replaced twice per year: before Memorial Day and before Veterans Day. This is required because of the wear on the rubber mat by the special shoes worn by Tomb Guards. The sentinels have metal plates built into the soles and inner parts of their shoes to allow for a more rugged sole and to give the signature click of the heel  during maneuvers. The sentinels wear sunglasses because of the bright reflection from the marble surrounding the Tomb and the Memorial Amphitheater.  On the ground not covered by the mat, a wear pattern in the tile can be seen that corresponds to the precise steps taken during the changing of the guard. On the mat itself, footprints worn in by standing guard are also visible.

How many sentinels have been female?
     – There have been over 630 Tomb Guards awarded the badge since 1958 when we started counting. There are hundreds more from the year 1926 when the Army started guarding the Tomb. The 3rd US Infantry (The Old Guard) is the unit that has been given the duty of guarding the Tomb.  It was given this sacred duty in 1948. The Old Guard was –and still is — considered a combat unit. As an Infantry unit, females were not permitted in the ranks for many years. It wasn’t until 1994 that females were permitted to volunteer to become a Sentinel when the 289th Military Police Company was attached to the Old Guard. The MP branch is a combat support unit and includes females.In 1996, SGT Heather Johnson became the first female to earn the Tomb Guard Identification Badge. She volunteered for duty in June 1995 and earned her badge in 1996.  However, SGT Johnson was not the only female Sentinel. Since then, there have been two additional female Sentinels awarded the Tomb Guard Identification Badge. SGT Danyell Wilson earned her badge in 1997, and SSG Tonya Bell received hers in 1998.

Other requirements of the Guard:

They must commit to one-year in guarding the Tomb, live either on Ft. Meyer or off base, and in the barracks under the monument for the 24 hours he is assigned to guard duty.  He cannot drink alcohol while on duty, swear in public or disgrace the uniform or the tomb in any way.

The Tomb Guard Identification Badge, first awarded in 1957, is an honor for which a guard qualifies by “flawlessly performing his duty for several months” and passing a test, not something simply handed out to everyone who serves for a given period of time.

The shoes are specially made with very thick soles to keep the heat and cold from their feet. There are metal heel plates that extend to the top of the shoe in order to make the loud click as they come to a halt.  There are no wrinkles, folds or lint on the uniform.  Guards dress for duty in front of a full-length mirror.

The first six months of duty a Guard may do whatever they want (including watching TV) during their off-duty hours. But since any soldier wishing to become a sentinel must undergo rigorous training, including several hours a day of marching, rifle drill and uniform preparation, and every tomb sentinel is expected to be completely versed in the history of both the tomb and of Arlington National Cemetery (including knowing how to find the graves of all the prominent person buried in the cemetery), they don’t necessarily have a lot of free time to devote to recreational activities.  

All off duty time is spent studying the 175 notable people laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.  A guard must memorize who they are and where they are interred.  Among the notables are:  President Taft, Joe Lewis [the boxer] and Medal Of Honor recipient Audie Murphy –the most decorated soldier of World War Two and Hollywood fame.

The Sentinels Creed:

My dedication to the sacred duty is total and wholehearted.

In the responsibility bestowed on me never will I falter.

And with dignity and perseverance my standard will remain perfection.

Through the years of diligence and praise and the discomfort of the elements, I will walk my tour in humble reverence to the best of my ability.

It is he who commands the respect I protect, his bravery that made us so proud.

Surrounded by well meaning crowds by day, alone in a thoughtful peace of night, the soldier will be in honored glory rest under my internal vigilance.

Walking the mat

There is a meticulous routine that the guard follows when watching over the graves. The Tomb Guard:

Marches 21 steps south down the black mat laid across the Tomb.
Turns and faces east, toward the Tomb, for 21 seconds.
Turns and faces north, changes weapon to outside shoulder and waits 21 seconds.
Marches 21 steps down the mat.
Turns and faces east for 21 seconds.
Turns and faces south, changes weapon to outside shoulder and waits 21 seconds.
Repeats the routine until the soldier is relieved of duty at the Changing of the Guard.

Changing of the Guard

The guard change is very symbolic but also conducted in accordance with Army regulations. The relief commander or assistant relief commander, along with the oncoming guard, are both required for a guard change to take place. The relief commander orders the guard being relieved to “pass on your orders” to the oncoming guard. The guard being relieved will say to the oncoming guard, “Post and orders remain as directed.” The oncoming guard’s response is always, “Orders acknowledged.”

During changes when the public is witnessing the ceremony, the commander will inform the public that the ceremony is about to take place and that those in attendance should remain “silent and standing” throughout the entire event.

More interesting facts about the Tomb of the Unknown itself:

The marble for the tomb of the unknowns was furnished by the Vermont Marble Company of Danby, Vermont.  The marble is the finest and whitest of American marble, quarried from the Yule Marble Quarry located near Marble, Colorado and is called Yule marble.  The marble for the Lincoln Memorial and other famous buildings was also quarried there.

The tomb consists of seven pieces of rectangular marble:

Four pieces in the sub base weigh approximately 15 tons;
One piece in base or plinth weighs approximately 16 tons;
One piece in die weighs approximately 36 tons;
One piece in cap weighs approximately 12 tons;
Carved on the east side (the front of the tomb, which faces Washington, DC) is a composite of three figures, commemorative of the spirit of the Allies of World War One.
In the center of panel stands Victory (female).
On the right side, a male figure symbolizes Valor.
On the left side stands Peace, with her Palm branch to reward the devotion and sacrifice that went with courage to make the cause of righteousness triumphant.
The north and south sides are divided into three panels by Doric pilasters. In each panel is an inverted wreath.
On the west, or rear, panel (facing Amphitheater) is inscribed: HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD.

The first Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was a sub base and a base or plinth.  It was slightly smaller than the present base.  This was torn away when the present tomb was started August 27, 1931.  The Tomb was completed and the area opened to the public 9:15 AM, April 9, 1932, without any ceremony.

Cost of the Tomb: $48,000

Sculptor: Thomas Hudson Jones

Architect: Lorimer Rich

Contractors: Hagerman & Harris, New York city

Inscription: author unknown

The Third Infantry Regiment at Fort Myer has the responsibility for providing ceremonial units and honor guards for state occasions, White House social functions, public celebrations and interments at Arlington National Cemetery and standing all very formal sentry watch at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The public is familiar with the precision of what is called “walking post” at the Tomb.  There are roped off galleries where visitors can form to observe the troopers and their measured step and almost mechanically, silent rifle shoulder changes.  They are relieved every hour in a very formal drill that has to be seen to be believed.

Some people think that when the cemetery is closed to the public in the evening that the show stops.  First, to the men who are dedicated to this work, it is no show.  It is a “Charge of Honor.”  The formality and precision continued uninterrupted all night.  During the night time, the drill of relief and measured step of the on duty sentry remained unchanged from the daylight hours. 

To these men, these special men, the continuity of this post is the key to honor and respect shown to these honored dead, symbolic of all unaccounted for American Combat dead.  The study rhythmic step in rain, sleet, snow, hail, heat and cold must be uninterrupted.  Uninterrupted is the most important part of the honor shown.

When Hurricane Isabel came through this area it tore the hell out of everything.  They had thousands of trees down, power outages, traffic signals out, roads filled with downed limbs and “gear adrift” debris, flooding, and the place looked like it had been the impact area of an offshore bombardment.

The Regimental Commander of the U.S. Third Infantry sent word to the night time sentry detail to secure the post and seek shelter from the high winds, to ensure their personal safety.

THEY DISOBEYED THE ORDER!

During winds that turned over vehicles and turned debris into projectiles, the measured step continued.  One fellow said, “I’ve got buddies getting shot at in Iraq who would kick my butt if word got to them that we let them down.  I sure as hell have no intention of spending my Army career being known as the damned idiot who couldn’t stand a little light breeze and shirked his duty.”  Then he said something in response to a female reporter’s question regarding silly purposeless personal risk… “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.  It’s an enlisted man’s thing.”  God bless the rascal…In a time in our nation’s history when spin and total BS seem to have become the accepted coin-of-the-realm, their beat hearts – the enlisted hearts as we all knew and were so damned proud to be a part of –that fully understand that devotion to duty is not a part time occupation.  While we slept, we were represented by some damn fine men who fully understood their post orders and proudly went about their assigned responsibilities unseen, unrecognized and in the finest tradition of American Enlisted man.  Folks, there’s hope.  The spirit that George S. Patton, Arleigh Burke, and Jimmy Doolittle left us… survives.

On the ABC evening news, it was reported that because of the dangers from Hurricane Isabel approaching Washington, DC, the military members assigned the duty of guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were given permission to suspend the assignment.  They refused, “No way, sir!”

Soaked to the skin, marching in the pelting rain of a tropical storm, they said that guarding the Tomb was not just an assignment; it was the highest honor that can be afforded to a service person.  The tomb has been patrolled continuously, 24/7, since 1930.

Very, very proud of our soldiers in uniform!

Much of the above information obtained from Wikipedia, tombguard.org, and Snopes.com

In closing, here is a video showing the changing of the guard:

 Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

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“Looking at the pictures put me right back into the jungle as if I were a 21-year-old soldier again”

When Christopher Gaynor returned home from the Vietnam War, on Feb. 6, 1968, he didn’t leave with memories alone. He had spent his 13 months in the field artillery creating pictures, too. Untrained but inspired by combat photographers, he brought one of the era’s ubiquitous Brownie cameras—before investing $94 in an Asahi Pentax SLR—to record his experience. To develop each roll of film, he took it to the Post Exchange on the base camp, they mailed it to Kodak for processing, Kodak mailed it back to Vietnam and, finally, Gaynor mailed the pictures home.

But the world he encountered when he got back to the United States wasn’t exactly ready to look at them, and neither was he. The anti-war movement was strong and attitudes toward veterans were, he found, hostile. Before the year was up, he decided to leave the country. He spent the following years in England and Spain, and didn’t return until the year the war ended, which happened 40 years ago this month on April 30, 1975.“I put [the photos] in a box, a box from Lavoris mouthwash. I didn’t look at them, I put them in the box, sealed it up, and they stayed in that box until 2007,” Gaynor, now 70, recalled. “I didn’t want to deal with it.”

Even after his return to the United States, decades passed before he decided that he should do something with that box. In 2007, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which he thinks is related to his exposure to Agent Orange during the war, and facing an illness motivated him to think about his legacy. At the time, the VFW post on Vashon Island, Wash.—where Gaynor still lives with his husband—was sponsoring a Boy Scout troop; one of the troop members wanted to scan Gaynor’s photos as part of his Eagle Scout project. Though Gaynor admits that his expectations for the results were low, he went along with the idea.

To say that he’s glad he did would be an understatement.

“I looked at them and they all came alive again,” he said. “It was completely overwhelming. All my buddies from 40 years previously [were] looking at me from these pictures, even the guys who weren’t with us anymore. Looking at the pictures put me right back into the jungle as if I were a 21-year-old soldier again.”

Gaynor notes that most of his photos, some of which can be seen above, aren’t of the dramatic scenes familiar from war photography. Rather, he captured the off times, with soldiers relaxing, playing ball, hanging out. It was portraiture, not fighting scenes, that brought back the memories.

And it wasn’t just a matter of remembering moments long buried. After opening the box, Gaynor began to investigate his own memories, digging out the letters he had sent home. He started to talk about his experiences and began to get more involved in the VFW and the American Legion. (He is the only openly gay officer of the American Legion of whom he knows, he said.) He reached out to younger veterans who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. He established relationship with the families of his friends who had died in Vietnam. He became a consultant on the Vietnam-reenactor documentary In Country, which is out on video on demand on April 28. Though he does not want to make any money from the images, he tried to get his exposure for his photos in order to help other veterans connect with their memories, self-publishing a book of his photos and letters from the war.

The memories and images that had been buried for decades became the opposite of hidden, motivating Gaynor to reorganize his life around a new mission.

“It’s a difficult emotional stress [to revisit that time] but I had to do it,” he says. “Finding the pictures completely changed my life. There are no words to describe how it affected me. They’ve continued to reward me and live on.”

Infusion, 1967: “Soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division (red, white and blue unit patches) based at Bearcat (Camp Martin Cox) are trucked to a waiting Caribou aircraft for the flight to their new units.” All quotes in this caption and the ones that follow come from photographer Christopher Gaynor.

Mama San, 1967: “A term used by GIs in Vietnam for any older Vietnamese woman. In this case she was supervising ‘sandbag dollies,’ younger Vietnamese women who were working at the base camp in Dau Tieng.”

Floating Poker Game, 1967: “My buddy and fellow Team Chief, Sgt. Dick Jackson (holding beer can) separates the troops from their pay.”

Kiwis and Aussies, 1967

 

Change Up, 1967: “‘Mummy’ at bat while my buddy Perry (back to camera) looks on.”

Convoy, 1967: “My buddy Sgt. Dick Jackson (with glasses and camera) checks out the crush of villagers as our convoy slows to a crawl. Anyone in this crowd (including children) might toss a grenade into a truck.”

Bunker, 1967: “Troops of the 77th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division hunker down in a partially completed bunker to escape the mayhem of 3,600 of our own 105mm Howitzer rounds light off at knee level in all directions. The enemy was watching all this, but could not attack us.”

The Odd Couple, 1967: “My buddies Lynch and Cork share a morning ritual at Camp Bearcat (Camp Martin Cox).”

LZ, 1967: “Bell UH-1 Iroquois (Huey “Slick”) helicopter makes a quick troop drop at a Fire Support Base near the Cambodian border without touching down.”

Operation, 1967: “2nd Battalion, 77th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division assembles at the Dau Tieng airfield in preparation for a major combat operation near the Cambodian border.”

The Wasteland, 1967: “9th Infantry Division soldier burns the remaining twigs after our Bearcat Base Camp was sprayed heavily with Agent Orange to kill the jungle vegetation and then bulldozed into a desert wasteland.”

Triple Deuce, 1967: “Troops of the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment (mechanized) get squared away to move on a Search and Destroy mission into “The Rubber” (the Michelin Plantation).”

Richard Thomas Jackson, 1967: “My ‘brother’, my buddy, my friend. Dick was killed in action January 6, 1968, he was just 20 years old.”

Núi Bà Đen, 1967: “The Black Virgin Mountain looms in the background as our convoy of the 2nd Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Infantry Division crosses the Saigon River heading North West to Loc Ninh to support our infantry units from an artillery Fire Support Base.”

Caribou, 1967: “Troops of the 9th Infantry Division prepare to board a C-7 Caribou at Camp Bearcat for the flight to Dau Tieng base camp in III Corps.”

Thank you, Christopher Gaynor, for sharing this article.  Thank you for your service!  Welcome Home Brother!

Anybody else have a similar experience?  Let us know in the comment section below.

US Vietnam Veteran Died With No Family to Lay Him to Rest.  Just Watch What Happens on the Day of His Funeral.  Posted in TheBlaze.com on Dec. 18, 2015  by Dave Urbanski

James Beavers, a staff sergeant with the U.S. Army during Vietnam, died a few days before Thanksgiving at the age of 74.

Sadly, no relatives of his could be found after three weeks of searching.

While a Ft. Wayne, Indiana, funeral home — D.O. McComb and Sons — came through big and provided services and a burial with full military honors Thursday, the question remained: Who would show up?

Well, once word regarding Beavers’ passing made its way across the social media universe, WANE-TV reported that thousands showed up to pay their respects at the funeral home.

And very few attendees ever met Staff Sgt. Beavers.

Veteran David Alderman, 38, traveled 900 miles from Moore, Oklahoma: “Heard it on the Internet and just paying my respects to another veteran,” he told WANE.

“I found it across Facebook, and I felt I needed to be here because it’s a brother in arms,” Ryan Masten, a veteran from Battle Creek, Michigan, told the station. “Doesn’t matter what war or who it is — it’s family,”

While mail was coming in from faraway places like Hawaii and even Nigeria, the Indiana Patriot Guard got together and stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside the chapel, keeping a solemn watch.  

Click the link below to watch the Indiana early afternoon news video:

http://up.anv.bz/latest/anvload.html?key=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

“Doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have any family members that are known. What matters is that we’re here today to show him that respect,” Senior Chaplain for the Indiana Patriot Guard Pat Brase told WANE. “We’re honored to be here. People take time out of their days to do this. There are still a lot of patriotic people in this country and we’re glad to stand … shoulder-to-shoulder with them today.”

What’s more, Brase told the station he believes Beavers’ story can help other veterans who may be struggling since their time in the service.

“I think it comes from … how the Vietnam veterans were treated when they came home,” Brase added. “There’s folks that are still trying to heal from their experience … And in some way I hope that this can be a healing experience for some of them today.”

Inside the funeral home the line stretched, down a hallway and through the main seating area, with veterans from far and wide approaching Beavers’ flag-draped casket and offering salutes.

“When one falls, it’s good to come around and recognize them,” Jack Van Burk, who serves in Security Forces for the Air Force, told WANE.

Aimmie Jenkins and her husband both serve in the military, and she brought her 11-year-old son, Andy, to Beavers’ service because she wanted him to see the outpouring of support for himself.

“We have each other’s backs. We’re each other’s battle buddies. We’re going to be here for each other regardless of the situations,” Jenkins told WANE. “Whether it’s a stick of butter, a T-shirt that you need to borrow, or a funeral for a person you don’t know, we’re going to be there for you.”

Richard Griswold was one of the few who attended Thursday’s services who actually met Beavers — and his encounter a few years back left a lasting impression.

“I kind of had a hunch it would turn out this good,” Griswold told WANE. “He was an awesome fella that I can remember, spoke to me real kind and everything. It makes my life whole and complete knowing that he did what he did for our country.”

A representative from the Vietnam Veterans of America during the funeral home service perhaps said it best.

“It was said James didn’t have a family,” he noted. “Based on the audience here today, I believe he does have a family — and that is all of us.”  

Click on the link below to watch the Indiana late day news video for a final wrap-up:

http://up.anv.bz/latest/anvload.html?key=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Tunnel rats were US, Australian and Newzelander soldiers who went inside Viet Cong (VC) tunnels to kill any VC inside, gather any Intel, recover arms and finally demolish the tunnels by planting explosives.Their unofficial motto was ” Non gratum anus rodentum” in Latin. It meant ” Not worth a rat’s @ss”. Tunnel ratting required nerves of steel

Originally the tunnels were started during the war against the French, but which were rapidly expanded upon when the American’s arrived. They were constructed by volunteer village laborers using simple hoe’s and baskets. The Laterite clay in which the tunnels were dug has a dull reddish appearance and dries rock hard during the dry season. During the wet season it is very soft and much easier to work. Because of the very nature of the Laterite clay’s ability to dry rock hard it made a very good (if a somewhat difficult substance to work) soil in which to carve out a tunnel.

The passages themselves were not cut in dead straight lines, rather they were made with corners that had between a 60 – degree and a 120 – degree angle to them. In other words, the corners were constructed with no less than a 60 – degree angle and no more than a 120 – degree angle. This made shooting in a straight line impossible and helped to deflect explosive blasts from grenades that might be thrown down.

 

The tunnel systems (where the water table permitted) had several levels, each level was separated by a watertight trap door which would seal the rest of the system against gas, flooding, etc. The trap doors themselves were virtually undetectable and could fool a person into believing that the tunnel finished in a dead end, when in reality it led into a huge system of other passages. These passages would lead to underground ammo dumps, kitchens, air raid shelters, hospitals, store rooms, workshops, latrines, and even theatres for the performances of political plays.

The VC also dragged the bodies of their dead comrades underground in order to intern them in temporary graves when it became impossible to bury them above ground due to the presence of American/Australian troops. Once they had been dragged underground they were buried in the fetus position in the tunnel walls and covered with a thin layer of clay.

The common practice to deny tunnels to the enemy in US forces was to seal the entrances or throw tear gas inside to force the occupants of the tunnels out.

When the US forces started a massive search and destroy operation against VC (Viet Cong) in the Bo Ho woods, Northwest of Saigon, they suffered serious casualties but the enemy usually disappeared when the US forces gave a chase. It then appeared that the VC used complex tunnel systems for movements and ambushes.

Sergeant Sweetheart Green of the Australian army gave the VC a chase by entering their tunnels.

Upon detecting a tunnel entrance, soldiers would check the surrounding area of any booby traps and disarm them if found and a grenade would be thrown inside the tunnel entrance.

Then the point man would be lowered head first into the tunnel held by his feet by his comrades. He would be holding a pistol in his right hand and a flashlight in left hand. He would see for any enemy and feel the walls and ground for any booby traps and mines. He would be secured by a rope so that he may be pulled out in case of any emergency. The second man would then come inside.

The point man would constantly look for booby traps and enemy activity while the second man would note the soil and amount of overburden which would be later required in demolition calculations.

They would sense for the enemy and alert to movements and sounds like cocking of weapon or sound of grenade pin being pulled.

The primary mission was to kill the enemies and troops were instructed not to fire 5-6 shots in a row as it would tell the enemy that tunnel rats were about to reload.

They would then search the tunnel for S2 intelligence, maps and documents and would recover any arms and ammunition found in tunnels.

After searching the tunnel and getting out, they would get in again with C4 explosive charges which would be placed at tunnel bends and at strong points in calculated amounts. After getting out and at a safe distance, they would detonate the charges and hence demolish the tunnel.

One can’t imagine the feeling of crawling into a tiny hole, not knowing who is in there, where it leads and what dangers lie beyond each turn. We have the utmost respect and admiration for those bad a$$ enough to have been tunnel rats!

Below is an interview with a tunnel rat that quickly will help you realize the reality they faced.

If you would like to read another article on this blog relating to Tunnel Rats then click on the following link:  http://wp.me/pRiEw-op

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 Long before Chris Kyle penned “American Sniper,” Carlos Hathcock was already a legend.

There was no more welcomed sound of to a wounded soilder in Vietnam than the whop-whop-whop of the “dustoff Huey” coming to get them out of hell. Anyone that has ever flown in a Dustoff Huey will never forget that heavenly sound

Without a doubt the Dustoff Medics witnessed more of the brutality of war than anyone. It took men with incredible courage to face the quantity of wounds and injuries they faced many times in a day. Shot at, sniped at, under mortar and heavy arms fire, they ran through mine fields to get to the wounded. Some of the most heroic men in the war.

The Vietnam War posed a unique logistical challenge to the military leaders. The war was fought in triple canopy jungle terrain and bad weather, there were constant guerilla attacks and the front line changed from day to day. Often vehicles traveling on the roads were subject to landmines, ambushes and poor road conditions, and some of the areas where heavy fighting took place were so remote there were no roads. All of these factors posed one major problem for the military. How do they transport the wounded safely and in a timely manner to the aid stations and hospitals for proper medical care? The Army’s medical branch decided to revisit an idea that came about in the Korean War – a helicopter ambulance corps. An idea that was implemented with so much success in Vietnam that in most cases a wounded soldier would be in a hospital receiving medical care within 35 minutes of being wounded.

In April of 1962, the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) arrived in Vietnam with five UH-1 “Huey” helicopters. They took the call sign Dustoff. Over time the number of medevac detachments grew in Vietnam until the entire country had coverage and Dustoff became the universal call sign for all medevac missions.

A Dustoff crew consisted of four people: two pilots, a medic and a crew chief. Usually, one pilot would fly the helicopter while the other acted as the aircraft commander. The commander would navigate, monitor all of the radio transmissions, talk to the unit requesting the medevac and would take over flying if the pilot were injured. The medic kept the helicopter stocked with the necessary medical supplies and the crew chief would maintain the helicopter in top working condition. They would both load the patients onto the helicopter and the medic would administer any necessary medical treatment on the way to the hospital, often with the help of the crew chief. The medic and crew chief would stay with a particular helicopter while the pilots were interchangeable between helicopters. These crews saved many lives and were universally respected by all of the soldiers in the war.

Here is a selection of images of the Dustoff men:

Lieutenant Tuell and Capt. Howard Elliot pilot a helicopter in Dustoff operation, May 1970

This story originally posted on “War History Online, Nov. 5, 2015

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 Guest article by Nathan Nguyen

During the North Vietnamese Army’s surprise 1968 Tet Offensive, a fierce battle raged in the city of Hue. Pitting North Vietnamese Army regulars and Vietcong against South Vietnamese Army troops and U.S. Marines, the month-long battle ended in defeat for the attackers. This photograph from February 6, 1968, shows D.R. Howe treating the wounds of Private First Class David A. Crum of H Co., 2nd Bn, 5th Marines.

The corpsman in the picture is Doc Dennis Howie of Hotel 2/5. He was later medevaced after as his squad leader puts it, “mind went south”. The man being treated is David Crum. This was the first time he was wounded. He was wounded two more times before the end of the battle. The man in back talking on the radio is T.J. Walker. After the squad leader, Lance Corporal Robert Meadows was medevaced on Feb 3, he took command of the squad from 1st Platoon Hotel 2/5 until L.Cpl Meadows returned on Feb. 11

The Battle of Huế (also called the Siege of Huế), which took place from January 30 until March 3, 1968 was one of the bloodiest and longest battles of the Vietnam War. In February 1968 in the South Vietnamese city of Huế, eleven battalions of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, two U.S. Army battalions, and three understrength U.S. Marine Corps battalions, for a total of 16 battalions, defeated 10 battalions of the People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong.

To start off the Vietnamese New Year —Tết— the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) took the South Vietnamese, U.S. and allies mostly by surprise when they attacked by night various command and control centers in the northern half of South Vietnam.

Rear Adm. Kenneth L. Veth, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam (COMNAVFORV), remembered during a 1977 interview, “The first thing we knew about it was when we were all waked up (sic) in the middle of the night, and all hell broke loose in the way of gunfire and explosions.”

“Almost every spot that was an open piece of ground was under fire,” said U.S. Marine (then) Captain Myron Harrington, in a 1981 interview with the WGBH Educational Foundation. “You were almost in the face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the NVA. (…) As a result of their being so entrenched and utilizing the concrete type of buildings that we were running across, it required us to bring maximum fire power at our disposal to eliminate them.” Capt. Myron Harrington, added: “Street fighting was an entirely new experience for everyone in that company. Our last Marine Corps experience in street fighting had been in 1950 in Seoul, Korea. There were very few Marines left on active duty and those who were would have been too senior to participate in the Battle of Hue.“

Interview from a vet during the battle for Hue. He was the one who medevaced Doc Howie (the medic in the hue photo)…

Hotel 2/5 was one of the last companies to arrive in Hue. They had gone to Hue by truck on Route 1. They were close to Hue when the lead truck hit a box mine. Meadows vividly remembers that there was a Lt. that just came from Khe Sanh and on his first day back was sent with the convoy to Hue. He flew up into the air and fell back down through the bed of the truck. Meadows took his squad around and didn’t realize that the Lt. was there until he came around the truck. Meadows stated that the flames were too intense, and he knew the Lt was dead, so he continued. Once arriving in Hue, Hotel 2/5 set up CP on the second floor of Hue University in the library. Meadows remembers clearing out the chemistry room since he “shot up all of the beakers.” Once in the library, Capt. Christmas told him that he wanted him to take his squad down to a yacht club.
Being a hillbilly from Kentucky, he asked, “What in the hell is a Yacht Club?”

04 Feb 1968, Hue, South Vietnam — 2/4/1968-Hue, South Viet Nam: U.S. Marines keeping low because of intense sniper fire battle communist units which seized two-thirds of the ancient imperial Capital. The Marines were pinned don behind this wall near the old citadel and radioed for support. U.S. spokesmen reported that leathernecks hauled down the North Vietnamese flag after seven days of fighting and recaptured the city. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Christmas replied a building where they had the boats and stuff. Just go straight down Le Loi St. Meadows didn’t want to take his squad because they were low on men, so he asked for volunteers. About ten guys volunteered, and they started stripping off all nonessentials, just ammo, and grenades. He also tried to motivate his men.

In his words, he said, “All right, you first five sons of bitches are gonna die. You next five sons of bitches are going to get wounded. I’m the only one who’s gonna make it down that street.”

Just as they were about to go, Christmas called Meadows upstairs and told him to delay. I believe it was the next morning, and they were about to advance again when Christmas called Meadows upstairs again and said that they were going to postpone the attack and that his squad was to support Foxtrot Co. during their assault on the treasury building.

Again Meadows asked, “What the hell is a treasury?”

Christmas simply replied, “Where they make all of the money Meadows.”

Christmas wanted them to get on the roof, but there weren’t any staircases, so they shimmied up about 20 ft using lead pipes to get up on top of the roof. They used ropes to bring up 3.5 in rocket launchers and for an hour, they rained fire on the treasury which was to their bottom left. Meadows estimated that the roof was about 80 feet long and 8 ft wide. Well after awhile, two black guys in the squad, Pal and Smith, were firing an RPG through a crack in the wall about 3 ft wide. An NVA got an RPG right through the crack, and it exploded in the corner, blinding both men and cutting one of their throats. He pulled them off to the side where they lowered them down using ropes. He turned around just in time to see his RTO get shot, so he helped him out of his radio and lowered him down. Then a Lt.Myers told him to get the civilian off the roof. Apparently there was a Marine Sgt. who was a photographer and later helped write several Vietnam films. As he was moving toward the photographer, a mortar round landed and nearly knocked him off the roof, but it just knocked him out and put some shrapnel into him.

When he woke up, he was strapped to a stretcher and was being taken off a helicopter at Phu Bai. In the operating room they cut off his fatigues and by looking at his reflection, he saw that he head a head wound. He said that if he hadn’t been knocked out, he would’ve refused the medevac. So just about as they were going to operate on him, the NVA started hitting the base with everything they had. 120s, 122 rockets, etc. The nurses and doctors ran off leaving him still strapped to the stretcher on the table along with several other men. He saw Pal rip out the IVs from his arm and run butt naked to one of the bunkers. He said he couldn’t blame him.

As he was lying there, he wondered how he his mama was going to believe that he died in a hospital, strapped to a stretcher unable to move. Out of nowhere, a corpsman came back (by the way he would love to know his name) and started putting people under beds and on the floor. He went over to Meadows and flipped him over onto the floor with the stretcher still attached to him. He said that the attack lasted for about 20 minutes. That was how he ended February 3, 1968.

Parts of this article were also published on Argunners.com under the title, “Behind the Battle of Hue Photo” on Feb. 7, 2016. 

This article is not considered an all-inclusive account of the battle for Hue.  However, in fairness, I’d like to point out that in addition to the Marines and 1st ARVN Division fighting against an estimated 14 battalions of enemy soldiers within the city, the 1st and 3d Brigades, 1st Cavalry Division, and the 2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division also participated in the battle for Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

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Two generations ago, Americans went to a strange land to fight a strange war. In many ways this war’s rules were much like the French & Indian War more than 200 years before. In this war, a small group of soldiers met a people who would have been at home in the Americas of 1750. These people were the Dega (Montagnard).

Montagnards are the indigenous people of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and translates to mean “Mountain People” in French, a carryover from the French Colonial period in Vietnam.  This group of people seldom had contact with the Vietnamese people in the lowlands and few even understood their customs or spoke the language.  In 1958, the five prominent tribes united against the Vietnamese, but more for political reasons than militarily.

They were not Vietnamese. They differed in language, culture and religion, and pushed out of the fertile lowlands into the central Highlands.  In these mountains, they wanted freedom to continue their hunting and primitive farming lifestyle. They wanted to be left alone. This couldn’t and didn’t happen.

Their homelands were of strategic value and these people were excellent warriors. Each of the warring sides sought their allegiance but the Montagnards chose to ally themselves with the Americans. and fought side-by-side for more than ten years.

The RVN government agreed to let the U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) start training the Montagnard tribal militias in village defense and border patrolling.  What the SF soldiers found in the mountains of Vietnam was a group of people unparalleled in fierce fighting skills, personal courage, and loyalty to allies.

By December 1963, 43,000 Montagnard defenders guarded the area around the first camp, Buon Enao, from the Viet Cong, while 18,000 Montagnards were enlisted in mobile strike forces, which were deployed by air to spots where conflict broke out.  In 1962, the population of the Mountain People in the Central Highlands was estimated to number as many as one million.

In 1967, the Viet Cong slaughtered 252 Yards in the village of Dak Son, home to 2,000 Highlanders, known as the Đắk Sơn massacre, in revenge for their support and allegiance with South Vietnam.

American Vietnam vets have given endless accounts of the Montagnards’ heroism and loyalty. One such veteran was George Clark, a former staff sergeant in 5th Special Forces Group during the Vietnam War, who also went on to serve as a master sergeant in the Marine Corps. “My team was getting lit up in the middle of a hot zone,” Clark recalled, “and I had gone down, as I had taken two bullets. And the ’Yards [short for Montagnard] on my team jumped on my body to protect me from getting wounded. They are the bravest, most loyal, and fiercest fighters I have ever seen. …”

Clark was one of a number of SF soldiers assigned to work with the Montagnard tribesmen, assigned to one of the mixed SF/Montagnard reconnaissance teams. “The first ’Yards I met in 1967, well, they kind of looked at me like I was a tourist; they literally taught me, instead of the other way around,” Clark recalled. “They knew what was dangerous in the jungle, they knew what to eat in the jungle, it was a give and take situation but first I had to earn their respect. We on the recon teams would go in ahead of the battalions … and flush out the enemy … so in essence we were the bait.”

It didn’t take Clark long to earn the loyalty of his Montagnard charges. He and his recon unit had gotten themselves into a couple of heated skirmishes on the northern RVN border, had been picked up by a Navy patrol boat, and were on their way out of the area when they ran into another enemy ambush. The crossfire panicked the young patrol boat helmsman, causing him to hit an embankment and send a highly respected Montagnard leader flying onto shore into the middle of a minefield. Without thinking Clark leapt out of the boat, determined to retrieve his teammate, and managed to make his way back to the boat, getting both himself and the Montagnard warrior back alive.

“I had to disarm numerous mines as I went,” Clark recalled, “inching my way over multiple trip wires, all while bullets were whizzing past, as by now the enemy had pretty good positioning on us, as you can imagine. When word of the rescue got out, the ’Yards just went berserk; they couldn’t believe one of us had went in and saved one of them. When the ’Yards see you do something like that. … They will follow you to hell and back. And you only get that by standing beside them and going into the fight with them. …”

Clark was one of many special operations warriors who fought alongside the formidable Montagnard people during the Vietnam War. All of them remember the Montagnards with respect and friendship

During these years, the Americans who knew the Montagnards formed strong attachments to them as individuals and as a people. When these Americans, both military and civilian, left Vietnam, their attachment to these people came home with them, but the “Yards” were left behind. They were left alone to face the full fury of the North Vietnamese Army.

In 1975, thousands of Yards fled to Cambodia after the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army, fearing that the new government would launch reprisals against them because they had aided the U.S. Army.  Roughly 200,000 Montagnard people perished by 1975.

According to the political anthropologist Walker Connor, The SRV Vice Minister of Culture proclaimed in 1976: “It is necessary to eradicate all outmoded customs while gradually bringing the new culture to each ethnic minority. The state has the duty to  bring new progressive culture to these people in order to build a new culture with socialist objectives and Vietnamese National Characteristics”. All Bibles and reading materials written in the Montagnard languages were burned after the Communist took over. The trival languages could not be taught in schools and today many Montagnard children only peak Vietnamese. Ancestral homelands have been seized, religion is prohibited and traditinal Montagnard villages dont exist any longer.

The Americans who worked with the “Yards” in the Highlands understood the price they would pay, and as a result they were the first to welcome them to their new life in America. Those Montagnards who finally made it to the security of America had fought their way through Cambodia and Laos to camps in Thailand. Very few of those who left Vietnam made it to safety so a welcoming celebration was in order.

The U.S. military resettled some Yards in the United States, primarily in North Carolina, but these evacuees numbered less than 2,000. In addition, the Vietnamese government has steadily displaced thousands of villagers from Vietnam’s central highlands, to use the fertile land for coffee plantations.  Today, the Montagnard population in the Vietnam Highlands is estimated at 500,000.

Information for this article was collected from “Defense Media Network”, Wikepedia, YouTube and “Save the Montagnard People” (STMP), a nonprofit organization of veterans and others who try to bring these refugees into settlements in North Carolina.  More info. on STMP can be found here:  http://montagnards.org/home

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss outon the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

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The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration presented by the United States government to a member of its armed forces. The recipients must have distinguished themselves at the risk of their own life above and beyond the call of duty in action against an enemy of the United States. Due to the nature of this medal, it is commonly presented posthumously.

During the years of the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975) the United States awarded 257 Medals Of Honor to soldiers from that conflict: 171 U.S. Army, 15 U.S. Navy, 57 U.S. Marine Corps, and 14 U.S. Air Force.

In 2011, NBC anchor Brian Williams collected 117  stirring videos about the Medal of Honor recipients that featuring excerpts from their oral histories along with archival footage; his collection spans WWII, Korea and Vietnam and are all combined on YouTube.  I’ve pulled all the videos relating to the Vietnam War (56) and have them posted below and in one place – none are longer than 12 minutes.  I’ve listed them chronologically by date of action even though the MOH was awarded at a later date…in the case of “Too Tall” Freeman – a much later date!  Please keep in mind that this list is not all inclusive and I am not aware of the criteria used to record these interviews.  The attached archival footage is used as a visual aid and may or may not represent the action taken by the recipient.  All in all, there’s several hours of viewing and a chance for you to learn more about these Heroes.

To start, I’ve included the author’s short introduction video about the MOH which also includes previews of those recipients in the collection.  Enjoy!

On July 6, 1964, Captain Roger Donlon rallied his men and led the defense of his camp, despite serious wounds, while under fierce attack near Nam Dong, South Vietnam. Donlon was awarded the Medal of Honor on December 5, 1964—making him the first recipient of the Medal during the Vietnam War.

Second Lieutenant Walter “Joe” Marm, Jr., led an attack against a heavily fortified enemy force on November 14, 1965, personally knocking out several positions in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam. He was presented with the Medal of Honor on December 19, 1966, and three years later volunteered for a second tour of duty in Vietnam.

Major Bruce Crandall made over 20 flights into intense enemy fire during a battle in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, in November 1965, evacuating 70 wounded and delivering ammunition. The battle was later dramatized in the film We Were Soldiers. On February 26, 2007, Crandall received the Medal of Honor.

On November 14, 1965, Captain Ed Freeman made repeated flights into the Ia Drang Valley under intense fire to bring in supplies and evacuate the wounded. Due to a statute of limitations being lifted, Freeman was awarded the Medal of Honor on July 16, 2001.

On December 18, 1965, Harvey “Barney” Barnum, Jr., took control when his unit commander was killed in Quang Tin Province, South Vietnam, directing a counterattack and a withdrawal. He was presented with the Medal of Honor on February 27, 1967, but it would take years for the fragments of that day to come together in his memory.

Army medic Alfred Rascon, himself injured, tended to the wounded while under devastating fire in Long Khanh Province on March 16, 1966. On February 8, 2000, after a reevaluation of his recommendation prompted by the men in his battalion, Rascon received the Medal of Honor.

On March 28, 1966, Navy corpsman Robert Ingram tended to wounded Marines and held off the enemy under intense fire in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam. With the help of the men of his company, who insisted that his recommendation be reevaluated, Ingram received the Medal of Honor on July 10, 1998.

On June 19, 1966, just two weeks after arriving in Vietnam, First Lieutenant Ronald Ray led his unit in a rescue of trapped soldiers in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam. He then covered his men from an exploding grenade. He spent six months recuperating from his injuries, and was presented with the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970.

In July 1966, Staff Sergeant John McGinty III covered a Marine withdrawal in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. Although wounded, he defended the troops against an overwhelming enemy force. President Johnson presented McGinty with the Medal of Honor on March 12, 1968.

In July 1966, Captain Robert Modrzejewski led a defense against a fierce enemy counterattack in Quanq Tri Province, South Vietnam, calling in artillery and air on his own position. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on March 12, 1968.

After his unit was ambushed near the Demilitarized Zone on July 24, 1966, Lance Corporal Richard Pittman destroyed numerous enemy positions. He was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1968.

On August 8, 1966, Captain Howard Lee came to the rescue of a besieged Marine unit near Cam Lo, South Vietnam. Though wounded himself, he took charge of the unit and led a successful defense. On October 25, 1967, he received the Medal of Honor.

In November 1966, Captain Robert Foley led a fight to rescue a besieged American unit, single-handedly destroying several enemy positions near Quan Dau Tieng, South Vietnam. As a result of the recommendations of his soldiers, Foley was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 1, 1968.

Private First Class John Baker, Jr., destroyed six enemy bunkers and saved eight comrades during a firefight to relieve a besieged unit in Tay Ninh Province, South Vietnam, on November 5, 1966. On May 1, 1968, President Johnson awarded him the Medal of Honor.

When his fellow pilot crashed in the A Shau Valley on March 10, 1966, Major Bernard Fisher knew that a rescue chopper wouldn’t reach him in time, so Fisher called off the rescue and landed on the debris-littered runway himself. He made it back with the other pilot and, on January 19, 1967, became the first airman in Vietnam to receive the Medal of Honor.

Specialist Charles Hagemeister took charge of his platoon after an ambush in Binh Dinh Province, South Vietnam, on March 20, 1967, tending to the wounded and destroying enemy positions. On May 14, 1968, Hagemeister was awarded the Medal of Honor.

On March 21, 1967, First Sergeant David McNerney, himself seriously wounded, took command of his unit under intense fire and directed artillery and air support during an attack in Polei Doc, South Vietnam. President Johnson presented him with the Medal of Honor on September 19, 1968.

On April 19, 1967, Major Leo Thorsness destroyed at least one enemy plane while leading a desperate rescue attempt of a downed crew member. Two weeks later he was shot down and taken prisoner over North Vietnam. After six years of captivity and torture, Thorsness received the Medal of Honor on October 15, 1973.

Trying to break through a Vietcong stranglehold near Duc Pho, South Vietnam, on April 25, 1967, Specialist Ken Stumpf charged forward to rescue three of his men pinned down by intense fire. He was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Johnson on September 19, 1968.

On May 2, 1967, after his unit came to the rescue of another unit that had been ambushed, Private First Class Leonard Keller seized the initiative, destroying enemy positions near the Ap Bac Zone in South Vietnam. Keller was awarded the Medal of Honor at the White House on September 19, 1968.

On November 18, 1967, Private First Class Sammy Davis, wounded and under intense enemy fire, crossed a river to rescue three wounded soldiers near Cai Lay, Vietnam. On November 19, 1968, Davis received the Medal of Honor. The footage from that day as well as Davis’s citation were used as source materials for the film Forrest Gump.

On November 9, 1967, First Lieutenant James Taylor pulled wounded men from exploding vehicles while establishing an evacuation site and a resupply effort near Que Son, South Vietnam. Taylor was awarded the Medal of Honor on November 19, 1968.

After coming to the rescue of an ambushed American unit on December 15, 1967, Specialist Allen Lynch dragged wounded soldiers to safety while under fire near My An, Binh Dinh, South Vietnam. On May 14, 1970, President Nixon presented Lynch with the Medal of Honor.

Under intense fire in early 1968, Staff Sergeant Drew Dix led the liberation of Chau Phu, rescuing indigenous forces and a U.S. nurse. He was presented with the Medal of Honor by President Johnson on January 16, 1969—making him the fourth recipient from his small hometown of Pueblo, Colorado.

Dustoff helicopter pilot Patrick Brady made multiple evacuations of wounded soldiers in bad weather and intense fire near Chu Lai, South Vietnam, on January 6, 1968. He received the Medal of Honor on October 9, 1969.

On January 8, 1968, helicopter door gunner Gary Wetzel was seriously wounded when his chopper was shot down near Ap Dong An, South Vietnam, and he was hit by a homemade grenade. Despite his injuries, Wetzel destroyed a key enemy position while evacuating the wounded. He received the Medal of Honor from President Johnson on November 19, 1968.

On January 10, 1968, Army medic Clarence Sasser, himself injured, moved from wounded soldier to wounded soldier in a fierce firefight in the Mekong Delta, South Vietnam. The Medal of Honor was presented to him by President Nixon on March 7, 1969.

On January 31, 1968, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive, Chief Warrant Officer Frederick Ferguson flew his helicopter through intense fire to rescue trapped Americans in Hue, South Vietnam. He was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 17, 1969.

Under heavy fire on February 22, 1969, Specialist George Lang led his squad in destroying several enemy positions attacking the American force in Kien Hoa Province, South Vietnam. Lang’s spine was severed by shrapnel during the attack, leaving him a paraplegic. He was awarded the Medal of Honor on March 2, 1971.

In March 1968, Captain Paul Bucha personally directed the successful defense of his besieged unit near Phuoc Vinh, South Vietnam, until they could safely withdraw. He received the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970.

Although seriously wounded, First Lieutenant Jack Jacobs dragged 13 fellow soldiers to safety after an ambush in Kien Phong Province, South Vietnam, on March 9, 1968. He was awarded the Medal of Honor on October 9, 1969

Captain James Livingston personally led a Marine assault against a heavily defended enemy on May 1, 1968, overrunning their positions in Dai Do, Vietnam. Livingston was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970.

On May 2, 1968, after three days of intense fighting in the village of Dai Do, Vietnam, Captain Jay Vargas rescued a fellow Marine and dragged his wounded battalion commander over a hundred yards to an evacuation point, firing at the enemy as he went. He received the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970

On May 12, 1968, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Jackson flew his transport aircraft into a besieged Special Forces camp at Kham Duc, South Vietnam, rescuing three combat controllers. President Johnson awarded the Medal of Honor to Jackson on January 16, 1969.

On May 16, 1968, Navy corpsman Donald Ballard threw himself on a grenade to save the wounded men he was treating in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. Thankfully, the grenade had a defective fuse and only exploded when, after a few moments without an explosion, he threw it into the air. Ballard received the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970.

Staff Sergeant Nicky Bacon led assaults on numerous enemy bunkers to relieve a unit under fierce attack near Tam Ky, South Vietnam, on August 26, 1968. Bacon received the Medal of Honor from President Nixon on November 24, 1969.

While on long-range reconnaissance patrols deep into enemy territory on November 26, 1968, Special Operations helicopter pilot James Fleming rescued a surrounded patrol in Cambodia under heavy fire. Fleming received the Medal of Honor at the White House on May 14, 1970.

Despite serious wounds, on December 28, 1968, Sergeant First Class Robert Howard directed his Special Forces troops against a superior enemy force in South Vietnam. Howard received the Medal of Honor from President Nixon on March 2, 1971.

On January 11, 1969, First Lieutenant Harold Fritz repelled an enemy ambush under withering crossfire near Quan Loi, South Vietnam, leading the defense until reinforcements arrived. On March 2, 1971, Fritz received the Medal of Honor.

While seriously wounded, First Lieutenant Wesley Fox led his company in a direct attack against a superior enemy force in the A Shau Valley, South Vietnam, on February 21-22, 1969. He received the Medal of Honor on March 2, 1971.

Despite serious wounds, Lieutenant Joseph “Bob” Kerrey led his Navy SEAL team on a daring attack into enemy territory on March 14, 1969 near Nha Trang Bay, South Vietnam. Kerrey was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970, and went on to become the governor of Nebraska and, later, a U.S. senator

On June 15, 1969 Lieutenant Thomas Kelley’s riverine boats were attacked in Kien Hoa Province, South Vietnam. Despite being seriously wounded, he continued to direct the battle. President Nixon awarded Kelley the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970.

Under fire in A Shau Valley, South Vietnam, on July 11, 1969, Specialist Gordon Roberts destroyed three enemy bunkers while relieving a pinned-down unit and evacuating wounded. He received the Medal of Honor on March 2, 1971.

On October 2, 1969, dustoff helicopter pilot Michael Novosel made repeated trips without air cover or fire support to save 29 wounded soldiers under constant enemy fire in Kien Tuong Province, South Vietnam. On June 15, 1971, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

On February 10, 1970, Specialist John Baca dove on a grenade thrown near his firing position in Phuoc Long Province, South Vietnam, saving his fellow soldiers. Baca received the Medal of Honor on June 15, 1971. He returned to Vietnam in 1990 and worked alongside former enemy soldiers to build a United States–Vietnam friendship clinic.

On March 11, 1970, Staff Sergeant Allan Kellogg, Jr., was commanding a 14-man squad in Quang Nam Province, South Vietnam. After covering a grenade that exploded and seriously wounded him, he resumed control of his men and led them to the Marine company they had been awaiting. He received the Medal of Honor on October 15, 1973.

Special Forces medic Gary Beikirch treated wounded indigenous and U.S. soldiers under intense fire in the Kontum Province, South Vietnam, on April 1, 1970. He was presented with the Medal of Honor on October 15, 1973.

Sergeant First Class Gary Littrell took charge of a South Vietnamese ranger unit on April 4, 1970. For the next four days, he directed its defense and evacuation under fire in Kontum Province, South Vietnam. President Nixon awarded him with the Medal of Honor on October 15, 1973.

On March 23, 1971, Specialist Michael Fitzmaurice jumped on an enemy sapper charge in Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, saving the lives of his fellow GIs. He then continued to fight with serious wounds. He was hospitalized for the next 13 months, but on October 15, 1973 he traveled to the White House, where he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

On March 31, 1971, First Lieutenant Brian Thacker covered the withdrawal of his unit after a massive enemy attack in Kontum Province, South Vietnam, calling artillery in on his own position. He was cut off from his comrades and remained hidden for the next eight days without food or water. On October 15, 1973, President Nixon presented him with the Medal of Honor.

Staff Sergeant Jon Cavaiani organized and led an aggressive defense when his force came under fierce attack near Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, on June 4-5, 1971. He evaded capture for 11 days, but was eventually taken as a POW. When he was released in 1973, he heard that he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor. It was awarded to him on December 12, 1974.

In April 1972, Navy SEAL Thomas Norris led a daring rescue effort to retrieve downed American airmen in Quanq Tri Province, South Vietnam. When the rescue was finally declassified, Norris’s actions were reviewed and he was awarded the Medal of Honor on March 6, 1976.

On October 31, 1972, Navy SEAL Michael Thornton was on a mission near the Cua Viet River Base in South Vietnam. In the course of a five-hour firefight, Thornton, himself injured, carried two wounded comrades to safety. On October 15, 1973, Thornton received the Medal of Honor. One of his injured comrades, Lieutenant Thomas Norris, received the award three years later.

Shot down on a secret mission during the Vietnam War, Major George “Bud” Day was captured and resisted severe torture as a POW in the “Hanoi Hilton” from 1967 to 1973. Three years after his release, on March 6, 1976, Day was presented with the Medal of Honor along with fellow POW Admiral James Stockdale.

During eight years of imprisonment in North Vietnam, including three years of solitary confinement, Captain James Stockdale was a symbol of defiance, organizing the other POWs and refusing to serve as a tool for Vietnamese propaganda. Stockdale received the Medal of Honor three years after his release, on March 6, 1976.

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and wanted to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are alive – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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In August, 1970, when I served with the 25th Division Wolfhounds outside of Dau Tieng near the Black Virgin Mountain, our company once spotted a blond caucasian male with a squad of NVA soldiers. He was hatless and wore green fatigues but we couldn’t spot an ammo vest or weapon. We didn’t fire at him thinking that he may be a prisoner(?) and didn’t want to hit him so we lit up those behind him.  However, when the led started flying, he didn’t try to escape his captors(?), and instead, took off running with them. I’ve later heard that Russia had sent over military advisors to North Vietnam, but I seriously doubt any of them had ventured that far south and actually accompanied a ground unit. Never did find the blonde guy – dead or alive and God knows we looked for him.   Anybody witness or hear of something similar?  Who was this mysterious White Cong , White VC, or Super Charlie?

***

Another of the unsolved stories of the Vietnam War has to do with persistent reports that two Americans, one Caucasian and one dark-complexioned — nicknamed Salt and Pepper — were seen on many occasions operating with PAVN forces in I Corps.

Reports of Salt and Pepper span several years, are focused in a fairly small area of I Corps, and all reports are quite similar.  The consistency of these reports is enough to convince US intelligence that something was going on there.  I was never part of any of the work done on Salt and Pepper.  Most of that was done during the war and, when I arrived in DIA, there was only the file (a large file) and we were not working on it, though I did read through it.

The bottom line is that there was never any firm identification established of Salt and Pepper.  Most reports come from members of US combat units who report that, in the midst of a firefight, they observed a “black guy and a white guy” with the PAVN.  Others report seeing only the white guy, others only the black guy.  Some reports claim that one or the other of Salt and Pepper called out.   People who claimed to have seen Salt and Pepper were shown photographs of missing Americans.  While many guys picked out photos, there was no consistency to the selected photos sufficient to identify one guy as Salt or Pepper.

The reports consistently identified:

Salt as white; 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet; dark hair; medium to slender build.

Pepper as African-American or Hispanic; 5 feet 6 inches or so; black hair; medium build.

So, who were Salt and Pepper?

Could have been American deserters.

Could have been French colonial troops or Legionnaires.  There were (are) some of those who stayed in Vietnam after the French withdrawl

Could have been from some third country serving as observers or advisors.

Other theories?

***

In looking through the internet, I’ve been unsuccessful in finding any information to support either of the above theories.  I did find that of over 4,000 deserters during the Vietnam War Era, only 249 soldiers actually deserted while in-country.  Many of them have come forward, but some remain as MIA.  When amnesty was declared, many of these former soldiers turned themselves in.  Dozens have chosen to remain in other countries outside of the U.S. since receiving citizenship during that time.  Yet a handful remain hiding within the U.S..  A few have been found and charged, the latest, a man in the state of Georgia, who was arrested while filing for his social security pension and Medicare.  Personally, I will never forgive any of them!

Here is a copy of the newspaper article referencing our experience with the blonde soldier:

Vol 5 No. 31                TROPIC LIGHTNING NEWS                August 17, 1970

Caucasian Seen With Foe

By SGT DAN DAVIS

FSB LYNCH – A male blonde Caucasian was spotted among a group of enemy soldiers by the Wolfhounds of Alfa Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry near here recently.

As the point element of Charlie Company, a scout dog and handler from the 66th Scout Dog Platoon, approached a small clearing, the animal alerted to the presence of the enemy.  The team moved to the edge of the clearing and spotted two enemy moving away from them and slightly across their path.

The handler opened fire and wounded one of them, causing him to drop his AK-47 and run into the woods.
Following heavy blood trails and numerous other visual signs, the Wolfhounds spotted another group of six to eight NVA soldiers – this time with an unusual addition.

One of the men was a blonde Caucasian.

“I was ready to fire,” said Staff Sergeant Joseph Burnett of Tryon, N.C., who was near the front of the Wolfhound element.  “But I saw this blonde guy in the middle.  “They were in line and heading away from us, about to go into the woods,” Burnett continued.  “I figured the guy must be a prisoner, and I didn’t want to shoot him.  So I engaged those behind him.  He didn’t seem to try to escape but ran with the rest of the NVA into the woodline where we lost them.”

Along with the one rifle, the enemy left behind five rucksacks containing medical supplies and clothing.
The identity of the stranger remains a mystery.

***

My friend and Aussie brother, Barney Bigwood, sent this to me after publishing this article:

Information for this article obtained from:

MIA Facts site – http://www.miafacts.org/aa.htm

Tropic Lightning News – http://www.25thida.org/TLN/tln5-31.htm

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

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Bruce Fletcher’s oil on canvas “Long Tan Action.”

In 1965, Australia already had a presence in Vietnam, but under US control. The 1^st Royal Australian Regiment (RAR) had served as the 3^rd Battalion of the American 173^rd Airborne Brigade, which created tensions. Wanting greater control, Australia sent over a Task Force on 14 June 1966. These joined up with the 1^st RAR after having seen action in Malaya.

The R&R arriving at Tan Son Nhut Airport in 1966

A major point of contention was that the Australians were not used to the attrition warfare that Americans preferred. Believing that the guerrilla tactics they had mastered in the jungles of Malaya would be more efficient, they set up base in the province of Phuc Tuy because it was a well-known Viet Cong stronghold.

Phuc Tuy also had a port that would allow them to ship troops in and out. And after a reconnaissance of the area, it was decided that the terrain would be ideal for the veterans of the Malayan Campaign.

The site they chose was at Nui Dat, a hill that commanded the center of the province. Its location ensured that if the VC wanted to get to the rest of the populace, they would first have to pass through the Australian position.

The Australian base at Nui Dat in Phuc Tuy Province

In charge of the Task Force was Brigadier David Jackson. To secure their position and to ensure they knew friend from foe, Jackson imposed a 4,000-meter exclusion zone around the base called Line Alpha.

This meant expelling all the locals within the zone so that if they did encounter any Vietnamese, they’d know they were dealing with the VC. And to make sure the residents stayed out, all villages within the exclusion zone were destroyed.

By August 1966, the base was barely three months old and still not entirely readied. Knowing this and hoping to dislodge this very inconveniently located enemy base the VC attacked.

Brigadier Oliver David Jackson

The Australians had picked up VC radio transmissions, but sweeps of the surrounding area found nothing. Just before midnight on August 16, Nui Dat was attacked by mortar fire and recoilless rifles. The Australians responded with counter-battery fire. The firing continued till the next morning then stopped.

The location where the VC had fired from was discovered by a sweep of three companies. Though abandoned, they did find clothes and bloodstains, proving that their return fire had hit some targets.

The Australians, now feeling secure in their new base, flew in a rock band into Nui Dat on August 18. At 11:15 AM that same day, D Company left the base toward the rubber plantation at Long Tan some 2,500 meters away, reaching it at around 1 PM to relieve B Company. After having lunch together, B Company returned to base, while a small detachment of D Company left the campground to patrol the area.

It should be understood that the VC are different from the North Vietnamese Army. The former were a guerrilla force based in South Vietnam who were sympathetic to the communist cause, many of whom wore the traditional black clothing of farmers. The NVA, however, were North Vietnamese professional soldiers who wore green uniforms.

 

To the left are actors in NVA uniforms. To the right is a depiction of a VC guerilla in black.

At around 3:40 PM, the detachment came across a group of six to eight Vietnamese men wearing green uniforms. They didn’t see the Australians till Platoon Sergeant Bob Buick fired, hitting one. The rest wisely scattered.

Though the encounter was reported to base, the Australians didn’t immediately realize what they were up against. They were no longer just facing the VC 275^thRegiment and the VC D445 Provincial Mobile Battalion, they were now up against at least one NVA battalion (as of 2015, the Vietnamese government remains secretive about the details).

VC soldiers of the D445 Battalion

Shortly after resuming the advance, at 16:08 the platoon came under small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire from a flank after drawing ahead of the other platoons and was isolated. Pinned down, they called for artillery support as a monsoon rain began, reducing visibility. Beginning as an encounter battle, heavy fighting ensued as the advancing battalions of the Viet Cong 275th Regiment attempted to encircle and destroy the Australians. After less than 20 minutes more than a third of 11 Platoon had become casualties, while the platoon commander was killed soon after.

Their base responded by heavily shelling the VC positions, but Air support was out of the question. Nor did those at Nui Dat want to call on the Americans. They still didn’t understand that the VC and the NVA were starting to flank D Company from different sides as they made their way toward the base.

10 Platoon moved up on the left in support but was repulsed. With D Company facing a much larger force, 12 Platoon tried to push up on the right at 17:15. Fighting off an attack on their right before pushing forward another 110 yd they sustained increasing casualties after clashing with several groups moving around their western flank to form a cut-off prior to a frontal assault.

Opening a path to 11 Platoon yet unable to advance further, they threw smoke to mark their location. Nearly out of ammunition, at 18:00 two UH-1B Iroquois from No. 9 Squadron RAAF arrived overhead to resupply D Company. Meanwhile, the survivors from 11 Platoon withdrew to 12 Platoon during a lull, suffering further losses. Still heavily engaged, both platoons then moved back to the company position covered by artillery.

U.S. Army Bell UH-1D Iroquois

By 18:10 D Company had reformed but was still in danger of being overrun. A Company, 6 RAR was dispatched in M113 armored personnel carriers from 3 Troop, 1st APC Squadron to reinforce them. Meanwhile, B Company headquarters and one platoon were still returning to base and were also ordered to assist. Leaving Nui Dat at 17:55, the carriers moved east, crossing a swollen creek before encountering elements of D445 Battalion attempting to outflank D Company and assault it from the rear. The Viet Cong were caught by surprise as the cavalry crashed into their flank and with darkness falling they broke through while B Company entered the position at 19:00.

Arriving at a crucial point, the relief force turned the tide of the battle. The Viet Cong had been massing for another assault that would have likely destroyed D Company, yet the firepower and mobility of the armor broke their will, forcing them to withdraw. Continuing past D Company the relief force assaulted the Viet Cong, before moving back to the company position at 19:10.

The artillery had been almost constant throughout and proved critical in ensuring the survival of D Company. By 19:15 the firing had ceased and the Australians waited for another attack. However, after no counter-attack occurred they prepared to withdraw 820 yd west. With the dead and wounded loaded onto the carriers D Company left at 22:45 while B and Company departed on foot. A landing zone was then established by the cavalry with the evacuation of the casualties finally completed after midnight. Forming a defensive position ready to repulse an expected attack they remained overnight, enduring the cold and heavy rain.

Members of the Royal New Zealand Artillery (RNZA) firing an M2A2 Howitzer

The Australians returned in strength the next day, sweeping the area and locating a large number of Viet Cong dead. Although initially believing they had suffered a major defeat, as the scale of the Viet Cong’s losses were revealed it became clear they had won a significant victory. Two wounded Viet Cong were killed after they moved to engage the Australians, while three were captured. The bodies of the missing from 11 Platoon were also located. Two men had survived despite their wounds, having spent the night in close proximity to the Viet Cong as they attempted to evacuate their own casualties.

Due to the likely presence of a sizeable force nearby the Australians remained cautious as they searched for the Viet Cong. Over the next two days they continued to clear the battlefield, uncovering more dead as they did so. Yet with 1 ATF lacking the resources to pursue the withdrawing force, the operation ended on 21 August. Heavily outnumbered but supported by strong artillery fire, D Company held off a regimental assault before a relief force of cavalry and infantry fought their way through and forced the Viet Cong to withdraw.

Eighteen Australians were killed and 24 wounded, while the Viet Cong lost at least 245 dead which were found over the days that followed. A decisive Australian victory, Long Tan proved a major local setback for the Viet Cong, indefinitely forestalling an imminent movement against Nui Dat and establishing the task force’s dominance over the province.

Although there were other large-scale encounters in later years, 1 ATF was not fundamentally challenged again.

The Australian Memorial at Long Tan

Unfortunately, Australia used the Imperial honors system, which limited the number of medals it could give out. This policy resulted in veterans receiving mere commendations, or nothing at all. This problem was finally resolved in 2008, a process that continued till 2011 when 6 RAR received a Unit Citation for Gallantry.

Battle of Long Tan Part of the Vietnam War Date 18 August 1966 Location Long Tan, Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam Result Decisive Australian victory Belligerents  Australia  New Zealand  United States Viet Cong  North Vietnam Commanders and leaders Harry Smith Nguyen Thanh Hong Nguyen Thoi Bung Bui Quang Chanh Units involved D Coy, 6 RAR 5th Division 275th Regt D445 Bn Strength 108 men 1,500–2,500 men Casualties and losses 18 killed 24 wounded 245 killed 350 wounded (estimate) 3 captured

Thank you, Pram Vet, for providing the link to this 1.5 hr. documentary about the battle at Long Tan.

John E. Harrison, a Vietnam Veteran, has his own website and publishes a variety of articles – some relate to his experiences during the War.  John entsome of his workered the U.S. Army as a private and then completed OCS, commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and then sent to Vietnam.  He was assigned to A Company, 3/506th, 101st Airborne and fought during the ’68 Tet Offensive.  After Vietnam, John graduated from Georgetown University, practiced law and worked in Real Estate and Mortgage Banking for 30 yrs before becoming a High School History Teacher.  This article is published with his permission.  Direct links to Mr. Harrison’s website are listed at the end of this article.  Please stop by and check out some of his work.

***

Have you ever felt like you just don’t care anymore? I have. I felt exactly like that on February 3, 1968. That was the day after I had watched Smith die.

The last time I had eaten anything had been at least 24 hours before. That was also the last time that I drank anything except lukewarm water from a plastic canteen.

It was dawn again. I had had maybe an hour of sleep after getting back late the night before. Now, it was already dawn again. Yet another hot, clear, sunny, day near the coast of the South China Sea in beautiful, but violent, South Vietnam near Phan Thiet.

I was tired, but most of all that morning, I did not want to go over the Company CP. There were three bodies at the CP, all neatly lined up in a row, each wrapped tightly in an O-D poncho now. We had brought them in the night before, or more accurately earlier that same morning. I did not want to see them again. Not that way, I did not want to look at them. I wanted to remember them how they had been; how they had been before, not the way they were now.

So, I rubbed the sleep out of my bloodshot eyes and started to make some real Army cocoa the way my Platoon Sergeant, Jim Bunn had taught me. Take one canteen cup about three quarters full of water, put it on a homemade, little stove over a heat tab, add two packs of cocoa, four packs of powdered coffee, three packs of powdered creme and two sugars. Actually, Jim usually used at least three or sometimes even four sugars, but that made it way too sweet for me.

Before I added the first of the packets to the water, I took the white plastic spoon out of the pen slot in my fatigue shirt so I could stir them into the water that I had already started heating up in my canteen cup with the heat tab. As I did that, I looked around the perimeter for the first time that morning.

Our Company Commander that day was Tom Gaffney. His first war had been in Korea. There he had endured human wave attacks by both the North Koreans and the Chinese. You don’t forget that. So, when Tom Gaffney picked a night defensive position it always, and I mean it always, had good visibility in every direction. If you wanted visibility, you could not do better than where we were set up right then. We were arranged around the inside of a dry rice paddy, in the middle of a huge field of dry rice paddies. We had great fields of fire and good visibility in every direction. It was a true, a perfect Tom Gaffney night defensive position.

The caption reads: Phan Thiet: Paratroopers from Lt. Harrison’s 2nd Plt. cross the dry rice paddies, near the “Disneyland” area outside of Phan Thiet on the morning of February 2, 1968.  Up ahead the paratroopers would engage a large enemy force guarding the headquarters of the 482nd MF VC Battalion for seven straight hours. (Feb. 2, 1968)

Alpha Company had the southern half of the perimeter and Bill Landgraff’s Bravo Company had the northern half. However, I had no doubt that Tom Gaffney had picked the site all by himself. It had his ideas of how to fight a war written all over it. Captain Landgraff’s company had come in late in the afternoon the day before to reinforce us, and then had stayed with us later in the night defensive position. We had trained together in the states, so we knew that they were good too, but Tom Gaffney had picked our position. In my military mind, there was no doubt of that at all.

The dinks started shooting at us right about then, just about when I had finished looking around the perimeter was when first bullets flew. It was probably some of the same guys that had followed us back from the Blue House the night before. While it was automatic fire, it was probably all just AK-47s, not real machine-guns so they had to stop now and then to reload. There were at least two of them, and probably three, firing from somewhere in a tree line several hundred yards to our north.

The guys from Bravo Company returned fire immediately. The guys from Alpha Company jumped over the rice paddy dike we were behind on the southern half of the perimeter to put it between them and the incoming bullets from the north. Alpha Company did not return fire since we would have been shooting directly over Bravo Company.

People who have never been shot at do not know what it means to be shot at, to have an excellent weapon in your hands, plenty of ammunition, but to elect not to return that fire because firing back might endanger your friends. That is real discipline. These paras were all pros. Both Bravo and Alpha companies, 3/506, 101st Airborne Division, aka, the Bastard Battalion. All of us flat knew our business of war by then.

(AP Photo)

Everybody on the south side of the perimeter had jumped over the paddy dike, all except me. I stayed inside the original perimeter beside my little tin stove that was still heating my Jim Bunn cocoa. I did lay down, and I did put my helmet on.

I figured that Bravo Company could fight this battle for me. I was done fighting for a while. I had had enough of war right then. I was tired. I was thirsty for that cocoa and I had used my last heat tablet to heat it. I was not going to let it go to waste just to sit safe on the other side of that dike and watch my Jim Bunn cocoa sit on my stove and grow cold. Being a little safer was not worth more than that cocoa was to me right then. I had thought that I didn’t care anymore, but I found I did care. I cared about that cocoa. Besides, at first most of the bullets weren’t coming that close.

From the other side of the dike, I think it was Melgaard, my medic, that asked me if I was hit. I told him no, I was fine. I was just waiting there for my cocoa to heat up. No need to worry about me. I was fine, perfect.

There were little puffs of dust springing up all over the middle of the perimeter. Each one was a bullet strike. However, the VC were just pretty much spraying their weapons when they fired, not aiming them like we would have. At first, it looked like they were trying to hit the three bodies wrapped in ponchos in the center. At least that was where most of their bullets were going.

The only things left inside the perimeter were Bravo Company, spread out, but staying covered, close behind their dike on the north side as they returned fire, the three bodies wrapped up tight in ponchos laying out in the open in the center of the perimeter. And then there was me, laying down, sort of on the south side, waiting for my cocoa to finish heating.

Even with all of the return fire that Bravo Company was putting out, the VC were still firing back steadily from that tree line to the north. When the VC finished firing up the three ponchos I could see that they were now trying for me. It was getting to be, time to go.

Just for a minute though, laying there, I actually felt a little sorry for the VC or NVA or whoever it was that was shooting at us. They did not know Tom Gaffney like I did, but I knew that they would, and soon.

After they had started firing, it only took about a minute or so until my Jim Bunn coffee was finished heating. When it was, I grabbed it and my rifle and joined my platoon on the other side of the dike. That was the safer side of the southern rice paddy dike of our perimeter. I looked up, back over the dike, carefully sipped my hot cocoa, and waited for the Tom Gaffney show to begin.

I did not have long to wait, right after I looked back over the dike, came the first artillery explosions along that tree line to the north. Tom had registered the artillery on the tree line the night before while we were gone on a night patrol to retrieve the three bodies of our friends. Tom almost always registered artillery before going to sleep. For him, it was sort of like: wait till dusk turned out most of the light, drop a few artillery smoke shells to register the guns, wait as the rest of the light turns out and then sleep well, sleep like a baby even.

File Photo

So there were no ranging shots to acquire their target th morning; it started as airbursts, probably at least a battery six of airbursts. A battery six means that each cannon in the battery is fired as fast as possible six times. There are six cannons in a battery. Each 105 mm shell weighs almost 20 pounds and is stuffed full of cyclonite (RDX), T-N-T, or 50-50 T-N-T mixed with Amatol, with the explosive comprising about one half the weight of the shell. That means about 720 pounds of high explosives and steel shards of shrapnel were raining down on the VC, creating Hell on earth in that tree line.

Good morning Vietnam!

It started sort of like the biggest 4th of July celebration ever, but then it got even more serious as our Forward Observer, Bob Richardson, walked those artillery strikes up and down that tree line, airbursts mixed now with ground bursts. Thunderous noise, billowing smoke and red fire, schooling the VC on the awesome power and accuracy of American artillery. Bob played that tree line with artillery strikes like Ringo Starr played the drums for the Beatles—he played it hard and he played it well.

Steel rain—how do you like it now?

By the time Bob Richardson had walked the artillery up and down the tree line a couple of times, gunships arrived from the 192nd Assault Helicopter Company at LZ Betty. Tiger Shark lead was on the horn asking Tom for targeting information. They were on station, ready to come in hot when the artillery was done tearing the place up.

As I laid there, watching the fireworks show and sipping my cocoa, I thought that it was a shame that Jim Bunn couldn’t see it too. It was truly a remarkable performance by our Artillery Forward Observer, Bob Richardson. Stunningly beautiful really, as well as massively violent. Soon we would even have the rockets red glare from the two Tiger Shark gunships joining in as well.

Like me and Tom Gaffney, Jim Bunn loved American artillery. We all loved gunships too. Gunship pilots are almost as crazy as Dustoff pilots, and with all that ordnance on board, they are much more fun to watch. Bunn and his two buddies, Phillip Chassion and John Smith had the best seats in the house, but the ponchos they were wrapped in blocked their view—forever.

Photo by Jerry Berry, 3/506th PIO.

Author’s Note

The day before is described in my articles…

The Day Smith Died:  

https://johneharrison.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/the-day-smith-died

Cone of Violence:

 https://johneharrison.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/cone-of-violence/

Thank You, John for your guest article.  I also want to Thank You for your Service and Welcome you Home!

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other stories, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and wanted to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are alive – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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FORT HOOD, Texas (Aug. 8, 2014) – “In 1975, when I was 9 years old, we had to make that escape from Vietnam, and my family got out of South Vietnam the day before the fall of Saigon,” said Brig. Gen. Viet Luong, 1st Cavalry Division’s deputy commanding general for maneuver.

That experience would change Luong’s life forever.

Now, almost 40 years after his rescue, family and friends watched as Luong became the first Vietnamese-born general/flag officer in the U.S. military during a promotion ceremony on Cooper Field here, Wednesday.

“This is certainly a momentous event for my family and the Vietnamese diaspora,” Luong said. “But my journey from a refugee child to the deputy commanding general of the storied 1st Cavalry Division is as much a story of our great nation, and our Constitution.”

Luong said the promotion wasn’t just about him, but the men and women he has served with over the years.

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From left, Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, Pfc. Gary Hall and Pvt. Danny Marshall

KOH TANG, Cambodia — Monsoon rains and fearsome waves pound Koh Tang, as they have since the last battle of the Vietnam War nearly 38 years ago. The earth gives away on the island’s west beach, revealing a bit of cloth and a zipper.

They could be leftovers from one of the 10 excavations carried out by Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command investigators; holes they have dug sit nearby. Or they could be remnants of the American troops who died during one of America’s greatest wartime failures in Southeast Asia.

Stakes placed by investigator’s from Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command mark the spot on Koh Tang Island where a body was recovered during past excavations.  Former Khmer Rouge commander Em Son said that this is the spot where he had Lance Cpt. Joseph Hargrove buried after he executed him in 1975.  JPAC has said they recovered remains at the site but that they did not find Hargrove.

Isolated by the rough waters in the Gulf of Thailand about 60 nautical miles from mainland Cambodia, Koh Tang has kept its secrets well, including what happened to at least three Marines who were likely executed after being left behind in the chaos of fierce battles that killed 38 service members from the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force in less than 24 hours.

The U.S. government has never come completely clean about the missing, either refusing to provide details of investigations or releasing inaccurate information on military websites about what the White House initially called a victory.

The former Khmer Rouge command building where Em Son said that Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove was captured in the wee morning hours trying to steal food, about a week after the May 15, 1975 battle between U.S. service members and communist guerillas.

And the time to find any remains or other clues appears to be slipping away, with plans by a Russian consortium, Monarch Investment Co. Ltd., to build resorts, hotels and luxury villas that it hopes would draw an estimated 300,000 tourists annually to the island that currently is manned only by a small contingent of Cambodian military personnel in flip flops and shorts.

Despite multiple JPAC missions to the island, survivors and family members are tortured by the lack of answers and looming construction, which they see as a closing window to bringing the fallen home.

“We are very concerned” they will bulldoze over the remains and keep going, according to Dan Hoffman, who said he and other survivors have fought alcohol and PTSD while suffering in silence over the violent clash and revelations that the three were left behind.

East Beach of Koh Tang in September 2013, 37 years after U.S. Marines landed here and fought entrenched Khmer Rouge guerillas in what would be the last battle in Southeast Asia.  Thirty-eight American SS. Merchant vessel, the SS Mayaguez.  East Beach was the scene of two helicopter crashes and heavy loss of American lives. 

Janet Hall Meadows’ brother, Pfc. Gary Hall, was 18 when he was left behind on Koh Tang. He was taken to the mainland and executed by Khmer Rouge forces, according to Em Son, the Khmer Rouge commander of the island during the battle who talked to Stars and Stripes last year. Meadows said she hasn’t heard from U.S. officials in years even though they claim to have excavated sites in 1999 where Hall’s remains were said to be.

“I have no closure for him and that’s all I really wanted,” Meadows said. “They say never leave anyone behind, but they left him behind and the other two boys.”

The ‘Mayaguez Incident’

The battle on Koh Tang occurred on May 15, 1975, three days into what would later be called the “Mayaguez Incident,” after communist guerrillas from the Khmer Rouge seized the American merchant vessel, the SS Mayaguez. Marines from 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines were sent from Okinawa, Japan, for a rescue mission.

Four U.S. helicopters were shot down and five more were damaged, with more than a dozen killed in the initial assault. In all, 230 Marines and airmen were involved in the operation on the east and west beaches during the 14-hour battle against a much larger and more disciplined force than poor intelligence told them to anticipate.

“Our intelligence said we would face small weapons, maybe an RPG, and about 15 enemy on the island,” battle survivor Steve Simoni said. “We were told it was basically a cake walk and we’d be home for lunch.”

Forces from the Khmer Rouge had been beefing up island defenses to keep the recently victorious Vietnamese in check. Former Khmer Rouge soldiers put their own numbers between 30 and 67; however, Marine survivors believe hundreds were waiting.

“I did not fear anything,” Son said with a smirk. “There was no place to run, no place to withdraw to.”

While the battle raged, the SS Mayaguez was recovered offshore and the crew was released from a different island. Air Force pilots braved enemy fire in barely functioning aircraft to evacuate the Marines from Koh Tang.

In the chaos of the withdrawal, the body of Lance Cpl. Ashton Loney was left behind on west beach. Others lay where they fell, in the sea, inside or around the felled helicopters, or on the beaches.

A Marine who was seen alive near helicopter wreckage on the east beach couldn’t be found. Khmer Rouge platoon commander Mao Run claimed in a 2011 Koh Tang/Mayaguez Veterans Organization report to have killed a lone exhausted service member — possibly a fourth man left behind alive — with a grenade in that area in the days after the battle.

‘We wanted to go back’

When the smoke cleared, 15 were killed in action, 23 Air Force personnel died in a support force crash in Thailand, three were missing in action and soon added to the KIA list, and about 50 were wounded, according to U.S. reports.

The missing included Hall, Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove and Pvt. Danny Marshall, members of a west beach machine gun team that had been guarding the evacuation’s right flank as darkness quickly closed in. When last seen by Sgt. Carl Anderson Jr., they were out of ammunition and scared, according to reports. Anderson said he told them to evacuate and saw them making preparations to do so as he left their position.

Pfc. Gary Hall was beaten to death and his body dumped between these palm trees at Dom Ak Sdach, or the “King’s Place,” in Sihanoukville Cambodia, according to Cambodian sources.  He was then buried here but the Khmer Rouge came in and bulldozed the site at a later date towards the beach nearby to make way for development.  Officials from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command confirmed that they had excavated the site and removed remains from here in 1999 but said these results are not available.  Hall is still listed as unaccounted for.

Immediately after the battle, when it became apparent that not all of the Marines were accounted for, Navy SEALs and Marines asked to make a rescue attempt for the missing but were denied, and U.S. Navy ships were recalled from the area, closing the chapter on U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

Then-President Gerald Ford’s administration touted the operation as a victory.

“We wanted to go back [and rescue them] and the answer was no,” said survivor Larry Barnett, who founded the Koh Tang/Mayaguez Veterans Organization to help survivors heal. The group launched their own independent investigation in 2011 into the Marines left behind and the burial sites of their comrades.

“It was an embarrassment to a lot of powerful people. Somebody was responsible for saying, ‘We’re not going to go back and get those Echo [Company] Marines.’ And we’ll never know who it was. … You can’t fight the White House.”

The Wat Inn Nhean temple complex in Sihanoukville Cambodia has returned to a place of peace today after it was used as a Khmer Rouge prison in 1975. Pfc. Gary Hall and Pvt. Danny Marshall were reportedly held here after they were captured on Koh Tang island and taken to the mainland. The cells were located on the ground level of the building on the right, according to Cambodian sources. With food being scarce and no relations between the communist regime and the U.S. government, the Khmer Rouge decided to execute the pair of Marines, sources said.

Years later, after the Khmer Rouge fell and outsiders once again trickled into Cambodia, reports surfaced suggesting that Hall, Hargrove and Marshall survived the battle and were captured, then executed.

Donald Rumsfeld, then a chief adviser to Ford, said through a spokesman that he never heard that Marines were left behind alive on Koh Tang. He said he doubted Ford had ever been told either.

Son’s story has changed over time, but the Special Forces commander of Khmer Rouge Battalion 450 3rd Division told Stars and Stripes that Hargrove was caught about a week after the battle trying to steal food. He said Hargrove was kept overnight and spoke of two more surviving Marines.

The next day, Hargrove tried to escape while being marched to another holding area. Son said he shot him in the leg, then came over and shot him in the head. Son ordered his men to bury him there.

Danny Marshall was beaten to death and thrown in the water at Koh Puos, or “Snake Island” on the mainland in Sihanoukville Cambodia, sources said. His body kept washing up on shore, so the Khmer Rouge tied a rope around him and pulled him in between these rocks. Officials from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command confirmed that they had excavated the site and removed remains from here in 1999 but said those results are not available. Marshall is still listed as unaccounted for.

Later that day, Hall and Marshall were found and captured. They were taken to the mainland, to a place now called Sihanoukville, and held at Wat Inn Nhean, a temple turned Khmer Rouge prison whose inhabitants today are birds and robe-clad monks.

Son said he was also transferred to Sihanoukville. There, he saw Hall had been beaten to death. He ordered his men to bury him.

Later, he said he heard of a body that kept washing up on shore at Koh Puos, a secluded beach near where Hall was buried. He said it was Marshall and he ordered his men to pull him in between some rocks on shore.

Questions remain

Today, both sites are peaceful. Dom Ak Sdach was bulldozed after Hall’s burial to make way for Khmer Rouge facilities meant to entertain VIPs. At Koh Puos, someone has erected a small shrine for the dead on the rock above where Marshall was said to have been left.

Monsoon rains have unearthed what appears to be an American uniform or flak jacket on Koh Tang’s West Beach in the vicinity of holes dug by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command looking for Marine Ashton Loney, who was killed in action during the Koh Tang battle and whose body was left behind in the confusion of the evacuation. It is unknown if this is human remains. These photographs were handed over to JPAC investigators who said they plan to return to the island in 2013.

Hargrove’s cousin, Cary Turner, as well as battle survivors, said Son’s accounts must be taken with a grain of salt because he could be downplaying the details to avoid being tried for war crimes. Other former Khmer Rouge soldiers have offered differing accounts. Turner believes Hargrove was possibly wounded by friendly fire while evacuating, caught after a shootout, tortured and executed.

The lack of answers regarding the three has hurt their families and fostered conspiracy theories. Turner, who has visited Koh Tang looking for his cousin, believes the government wants to find those who fell in battle but not Hall, Hargrove and Marshall because it would essentially be admitting they were left behind alive to die. He’s convinced that JPAC has Hargrove’s remains.

There have been 10 excavations looking for the missing and 20 investigations, according to Missing Personnel Office spokeswoman Maj. Carie Parker, but JPAC declined to provide further details of those investigations with Stars and Stripes.

JPAC spokeswoman Elizabeth Feeney confirmed that JPAC excavated three sites where the remains of Hall, Hargrove and Marshall were said to be and collected remains: Hall and Marshall on the mainland in 1999, and Hargrove on Koh Tang in 2008. JPAC officials said the remains recovered in Sihanoukville in 1999 were “preliminary analyzed but due to their degraded condition need further analysis.”

“Oftentimes, identifications can span from a few months to several years, depending on the condition of the remains and the additional physical evidence that accompanies the remains,” she said.

So the families await word, even as they are reminded about their lost loved ones every day.

“Life goes on and you don’t hear nothing,” Meadows said. “I have a son, and I see Gary in him.”