We Walked Across Their Graves: Vietnam 1967—The Que Son Valley

Acknowledgements

Preface

Men brought together in a rice paddy, fighting against an enemy who is bent on killing and maiming them, are absolutely driven by the connection, reciprocity and love they have for their mutually-suffering brothers. Some writers have attempted to reconstruct or describe combat and the fellowship it creates, but words cannot convey the searing heat that emanates from the giant forge and burns everything away from the soul, except an intense, all-consuming desire for you and your buddies to survive the chaos. Moments spent together in the overwhelming peace that comes just seconds after the roar of bombs, bullets, and brokenness cause the survivors to become welded together in a fellowship unlike anything else experienced in life. Nothing has to be spoken; words would have no meaning after the shared experience of terror and suffering. Solemn quiet is demanded and is not to be broken by anyone other than the wounded and the leaders who direct the survivors to the next phase of the terrible ordeal. Although one may have the sense of having defeated the deafening roar, there is also the humbling awareness of the fickleness of the unseen hand that plucked one from the battlefield and left another. The rice paddy’s life-giving water swirls with the blood of warriors from both sides. There is no celebrating by those who make it through. Celebration is left to those who have never walked through combat’s wall of noise and terror.

Combat welded a bond between my soul and the souls of three others: Mosey, Pursell and Warrix. As I left Vietnam, Mosey was at home in the states, having been badly wounded, but Pursell and Warrix were still there in the clutches of that country. I felt a definite need to get back to them.

All that was going through my head as I struggled to answer the voices demanding my attention and pounding on my body and rack. I rolled over to see the one character I could have gone the rest of my life without ever laying my eyes on again, Forde. In the strange world of right and wrong on the battlefield, Forde had taken the wrong path—avoidance. Any of us might have done the same thing if given the opportunity, but Forde actually did and I despised him for it. And now Forde had two MPs at the foot of my rack. I had orders back to the states, and Forde and the MPs would see to it that I complied. They were going to send me farther away from the world I claimed to hate but had learned to find comfort in and even yearn for.

Later, as I groped my way out of an alcohol-induced sleep, I became very aware of the now and the terrible longing for the then. In that twilight moment between sleep and waking, I was beginning what would become an unending duel for my sanity. It would become my constant companion and could either be a source of terrible loneliness or the motivation to carry on. I had known loss in my short life—the loss of friends and familiar faces and the loss of the comforts of home—but that was all before I entered combat. That was something much more haunting and soul-searing. It would drive me to drink and anger and cause me to find comfort in being completely alone. But this was the first time I had felt its fingers starting to grip my mind, and I tried to find a way to respond to the voices around me.

It took me only seconds to remember I had escaped the battleground and fatigue, but I couldn’t feel the hope and joy I thought should have replaced the fear. I had noticed the paradox of this odd mindset as the jet bringing us from Vietnam touched down on a runway located on the island of Okinawa. While some aboard that jet rejoiced in having escaped an early grave, I dueled with a strange loneliness and an overwhelming regret that I had left something undone. Though only a few days removed from Vietnam, I was already suffering the terrible ordeal known by so many who have escaped the bleakness of war: we left buddies there, and no amount of happy news could make us forget those still in the madness and soul-searing experience of combat.

A gulf exists between those who have had the terrible experience of combat and those who wonder about it. Other than taking readers into an environment where hunger, fatigue, thirst and fear are constant companions, a writer cannot bring the entire reality of combat home to people who have not been there.

I once imagined that—if I could just reconstruct a microcosm of a battlefield in some secluded spot with its wet, darkness, deprivation, and noise then direct a reenactment of a battle—maybe noncombatants could feel the breath of the forge as it did its evil work. But people wouldn’t stand for the dirty filthy clothes marked by their own excrement, sweat, blood and caked-on dirt, and they would not be willing to starve themselves and go thirsty for months on end. It would be hard to develop the soreness and fatigue brought on by humping large loads and sleeping just a couple hours during the night, and it would be impossible to invade their world with the all-consuming world of war, where there is no thought of tomorrow or holidays, just diminishing hope for today. The same routine day after day, broken only by the suddenness of an ambush and incoming rounds intended to end your short sojourn here on planet earth.

The closest I have ever come to conveying something of the experience is by asking the person who has not been in combat whether they have ever been on a roller coaster. If their answer is yes, then I ask them if they felt terror and the rush of adrenaline and—in the worst moments—promised themselves they would never ride it again. And if they answered yes to that, then I asked them whether, upon exiting the source of terror, they produced another dollar to get back on the roller coaster and reenter the little known world of their own fears. To most young men, this is a familiar experience.

We who were blessed to have walked away from one terrible ordeal walked willingly into the next, slaves to our fate. We fight to keep the door closed to the abyss where our fears live and rage to get out. Our fellow sufferers are counting on us to be there again.

I now attempt to help you leave your world of comfort and cross over into the bizarre world that exists in my head and in the head of many of my brothers. Leave your day-to-day existence and enter our world of constant suffering, in one form or another. It is a place where there is no space and time, only the here and now of existence.

Introduction

Each of us who experienced combat in Vietnam started from somewhere far removed from its jungles. Other than the professional soldiers among us, we went in with no idea of what we might suffer. We had been trained as well as the military could manage, but part of the benefit of youth is naiveté. The common experience for Marines is boot camp then Infantry Training Regiment, which gets closer to the sound and fury of combat. In training, Marines know that there is relief from the suffering back at the barracks. In combat, there is the unknown: when will I rest again, sleep again, eat again, drink again, and see the world again? Direct enemy fire is the forge that tests and proves the mettle and core of each Marine.

We youth of the 1950s were readers to some degree, but the majority of us had a quicker and easier method of discovering what the initiated had to say about their experiences in armed conflict: the war movies and weekly television programs that proliferated in that decade. The one I remember best was Victory at Sea. Those patriotic and somewhat antiseptic shows depicted victories of the military, especially the Navy. The music set the mood, and all of it was mesmerizing for a young boy growing up in the comfort of southern California.

The war movies, on the other hand, lacked a lot. Even as a young boy watching To Hell and Back, I wondered why the soldiers’ uniforms weren’t a little more stained and torn; even my outside play clothes were trashed after a few days. We knew that those Hollywood portrayals did not give a real picture of what we would encounter a decade later in Vietnam, but the films were something we all had seen. A few among us had combat-tested dads or close uncles; from hearing their stories, we got a little closer, but again that didn’t go far in preparing us for the coming realities of our battles.

My own limited awareness of what battle might bring came from my dad, who had been in the Navy during the last two years of World War II. He had come close to actual combat during his time aboard a jeep carrier, a small aircraft carrier, while lying off one of the many islands invaded by the Marines and Army. He saw the aftermath of combat when some of the wounded were loaded on his ship, but—as with most non-combatants who hear or see only the distant report of small arms and artillery—the cause of suffering was mostly a product of his imagination. My dad’s most vivid memory of those wounded island combatants was how haggard and filthy they were when they boarded the ship. He didn’t know what happened to them but simply warned me that the living conditions for the land-based appeared to him as far worse than what he had come to know in life at sea.

At the same time, my dad was my childhood hero. He and my mom provided a decent home and food for the table. He was a blue-collar laborer and as hard a worker as I ever saw. He was doing small cement finishing jobs in the 1950s, when there was little in the way of mechanization other than the cement truck that delivered the cement to the job. It was up to the finisher to prep the ground, set the forms, then haul the cement, all the while working with the cement so it wouldn’t set up before he had finished it. He allowed me to work with him a number of times when I was very young. That was a magical experience and shaped the image of what I wanted to be like when I grew up: hard working and uncomplaining.

There was an unintended consequence. Dad’s example showed me the value of physical labor, and I never did quite catch on to the intellectual opportunities provided by the local school. I stuck with education until the ninth grade, but after that I attended for a while longer only in an attempt to please my parents by trying to complete high school. I was more dedicated to the small physical jobs I could find, because they were closer to what I really wanted—a full time job and the opportunity to prove myself. After struggling along, the high schools and I came to a mutual agreement that I would be better off doing something else.

After a short time and through a series of juvenile mistakes, I ran into trouble with the law and ended up in real need of leaving my hometown for a while. Nothing I had done amounted to anything serious, but it was apparent even to me that if I didn’t get away for some time then I might end up getting put away for a long time. I took the first choice of a way out of town and ended up down at my local recruiter’s office.

Not being well versed in the entry requirements of the individual services, I suffered the embarrassment of being rejected by both the Air Force and the Navy because I did not have a high school diploma. After the young Navy recruiter rejected me, I asked him what someone who had not finished high school might do (other than completing high school) to get into some branch of the service. Without looking up, he gestured over his shoulder toward the back of the room.

Hidden away in the dimly lit part of the small room sat a lone figure at a tiny wooden desk with one empty chair. Unlike the Air Force and Navy recruiters, the man sat almost at attention, hands folded and looking out at the crowd. He was dressed in a uniform of a different color and seemed more than ready to take on all comers. Growing concerned that I might never qualify for any of the four branches, I approached him rather meekly. He seemed about ready to speak, but before he could get his words formed I blurted out the question, Do you accept men without high school diplomas? He seemed to chuckle lightly and gestured for me to sit down in the vacant chair in front of his desk. As we talked it seemed as if my lack of education was of no consequence. He simply asked where I might like to go and if I had any idea what I might want to do in the Marine Corps. I couldn’t come up with an answer to either question, which seemed to put the young Marine recruiter even more at ease. We quickly filled out the paper work, and within a few weeks (I had to wait because my 18th birthday was a couple of weeks away), I was swept off by the military and never landed back on my feet until some years after I left the Marine Corps. I entered the Marine Corps expecting little, and I left it expecting even less. In both cases, I was duly rewarded.

Like many veterans, because of the men I shared the misery with, I would not wish to have avoided what I went through. My Marine brother, Mosey, often remarked that the experience of combat wouldn’t necessarily create you but would either sharpen or destroy the base material that comprised the real you. He felt that there was a predisposition to either extreme already at home in the individual’s psyche. The majority of men I served with were inclined toward the sharpening process and became good Marines. Most of us were products of good homes and minimal years of school but with a confidence in our ability to overcome any situation. After a major contact in battle, I was always impressed that nobody had run. At the same time, though, it was often remarked, Where would you run? We were in small groups, and we were living alone out in the bush. That was true, but still my companions in combat never took the easy way out and always pressed ahead. In the final analysis, a lack of education probably was an asset. I am proud to say I stood alongside of those men.

Many years after having served, and with my children raised, I realized that the few notes I had and the memories I retained, involved a bitter piece of America’s history. The memories of combat have always dogged me. There is a vivid contrast between the before and the after.

Years later, when a young hippie of the 1960s brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to me, I grasped at it like a drowning man. Though that has never changed the gnawing awareness that I suffered something out of the ordinary, my faith saved me from seeking out the solutions so many others took. I came home with nothing, but God graciously allowed me to find and settle down with a very understanding and supportive wife. Together we raised a family and have grown old together.

As a humble testament to those I served with, I offer my attempt at telling our story from my very limited perspective, that of a grunt rifleman and member of Kilo 3/5 1st Marine Division.

People say that America knew 1967 as the year of the summer of love. For us Marines in the Que Son Valley, we remember it as the year of suffering.

Chapter 1

Our Journey Begins

It was just another hot week in the hills of Chu Lai. As another day dawned, some reminded themselves of how many days they had left in country. For me that number was still creeping along in high triple digits. It required 100 or fewer days to be considered a true short-timer, but I had begun to believe that the number of days left really didn’t much change anything. Like a long journey, which started with that one step, we were lost in numbers that had no real relevance. We were relieved about a day that passed but ever concerned about a day pending—what would it bring?

There was no time to dwell on tomorrow. As usual, we had spent the night as a fire team on one of a seemingly endless string of ambushes, and like most nights it had passed in relative calm. There had been the almost nightly show of tracers in the far off mountains, lighting the evening sky, followed by exploding flares in the same general area. These displays, because of their distance, didn’t include sound, but each of us watching from our fire team ambush knew that the participants in last night’s show were some part of either 1/5 or 3/5 on a long-range patrol. In no more than platoon strength, they probably had been probed by a few of the enemy moving about in the inky darkness of the jungle-covered hills to our due west.

We relived that routine almost every night I had been in Vietnam. Some nights I was part of the spectacle, and some nights I was simply one member of the audience. As part of Kilo 3/5, we had long- and short-range patrols over the months. We generally found ourselves, even when in a squad-size patrol of men, outnumbering our adversaries or favorably matching them. But it hadn’t always been like that in this area, and with a major Air Force base behind us, things could change quickly. As part of two platoons from company K, we were now manning a hill on the perimeter protecting the air base. That placed us just a few a thousand meters, or klicks, away from the nearby mountains that always seemed to harbor some small element of the enemy.

This morning, though, April 21, 1967, we had returned from our ambushes and—after a quick debriefing—moved to our hooches to prepare our morning c-rats, clean our weapons and go about the daily business of manning a hill. That meant work parties for E3s (lance corporals) and below and other routine duties for those above that rank.

Eating and cleaning were out of the way by 10 a.m., then it was off to burn the fourholers. What a delightful way to spend a morning. Find the crap-encrusted gloves, retrieve the drum of fuel to start the fire, hinge up and secure the back of the outhouse, drag out the brimming full 25 gallon drum of waste with its resident fly families (including hungry maggot children feasting on the filth), pour the fuel over the mess, light it off, then enjoy a leisurely cigarette (or three), and immerse yourself in a conversation about home.

My fellow conversationalist for this morning was the always-likable Wilson, not the white one (who was an office poge and therefore not involved in this kind of duty), but the black one from Chicago who claimed to be a former member of the Blackstone Rangers. Being white and from ever-sunny southern California, I was always fascinated by his stories of derring-do and the terrible winters he and his family had to suffer in far-away Chicago. Wilson had been with the company for about five months and somehow had just gotten himself appointed as ammo humper to our newest gunner, a guy who hailed from Texas. Wilson looked on his new position as an opportunity to escape the drudgery of life as a 0311 (your Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) designation and, in this case, grunt, ground pounder, infantry). I tried to remind him of the added threat entailed with being next to the machine gun, but he countered that for a black man this was a chance to prove himself, though he and I agreed that being attached to a Texan wasn’t in his best interest. Wilson was to begin his new duties any day now, and I told him I would miss him and his tales of Chicago as delivered in the ashy smoke of the burning shitters. He chuckled that he would miss me, too.

Our morning pleasantries accomplished, we started back to the tent to receive our next assignment. There seemed to be a lot of moving about as we returned, and as we passed a familiar face we were told to see our squad leader because we were moving out. As always we were in the dark about what this might mean but made our way to our newly appointed squad leader, Gary Bovich.

Bo was one of my favorite people in the company, because he had befriended me in my first days in country. He was friendly and outgoing, which I wasn’t. He was from California, though, which forged a bond of sorts. He was also older than me and married, which to my young mind gave him a position of authority and wisdom.

When I joined the company in August of 1966, they were out on an operation. The hill they had been manning was occupied by only a skeleton crew, which I joined. I had no idea who Kilo 3/5 was or how it had gotten here, but when Bo and the remainder of the company returned later that week, Bo was made my team leader and adviser. He filled me in on what the company had been doing since arriving in-country earlier in the year, and he also counseled me on how to conduct myself with a group of combat Marines.

Until that time the company had been in only two major operations. The worst of the two was Operation Hastings, which became the measuring stick for intensity of combat in future operations. During Hastings, India Company suffered 23 killed. Kilo was in the vicinity of the major combat but hadn’t been able to participate as much as they would have liked. Even so, Kilo had sustained their own casualties and had learned how difficult it was to operate in the hills and mountains of Vietnam.

Bo was convinced that if we newbies—me, Kermit from California, McDonald from California, Wilson from Chicago and finally the ever-whiney Nelly from Chicago—would just learn from the older guys, we would be alright and finish our tour unharmed. Bo was positive and reassuring, which was definitely what I needed to hear.

After signing up for an extra six months of duty in Vietnam, Bo had just returned from leave and was our new squad leader. By extending his time in Vietnam, upon returning home Bo would be mustered out of the Marine Corps before his official time was up. The Marine Corps was using that incentive as a way of keeping more qualified men in country while we newbies entered the mix.

When Wilson and I got to where Bo was filling his pack (he took c-rats and extra ammo, flares, one 60mm mortar, poncho, extra socks and writing gear), he addressed us as if he knew we were coming. His directions to Wilson were quick and terse: Get your stuff and get over to the machine gunner tent and link up with the new gunner, the Texan. You’re with them now. Good luck. I was going to miss Wilson; he and I seemed to have a lot in common. Because we were both high school dropouts and barely 19 years old, most of the squad treated us like dumb kids.

As for me, Bo told me to retrieve extra c-rats from the open container in the middle of the hooch and to pack extra ammo for myself, a hundred rounds of linked ammo for the machine gun, and flares. Last, he said to be sure to include four grenades in my pouch.

I dug through the remaining c-rats and found that my favorite was still there: chopped ham and eggs. Most of the guys avoided it like the plague. Because the others hated the powdered eggs contained in the meal, my child’s mind calculated that by learning to enjoy them I would seldom be involved in the conflicts surrounding claims on the other meals, such as the ever-popular beans and wienies, which included a tin of flavored cheese.

I had also been made a team leader, even though I was still only an E3, Lance Corporal. Someone higher up had goofed. I was still used on the shit details, and my being a team leader didn’t heighten the men’s opinion of me.

Bo came over and told me I would now have two newbies plus Nelly on my team. The addition of Nelly wasn’t good. He was a whiner and, at 28, was one of the oldest men in the company. I had been his team leader before, during patrols, and he would badger me knowing that I was never really clear on details. He would ask at what grid coordinates (longitude and latitude positions on a military map) we were or when we should call in marking fire or any number of other bits and pieces that he knew I couldn’t immediately answer. When I had no answer for him, he would begin to lecture me on my responsibility to lead the fire team well. All of that would be going on as I tried my best to observe the actions of the team and keep my head into what we were doing. Of course he was right and because of my immaturity (or maybe just because of how I looked at our difference in age), generally I just couldn’t answer his arguments. And yet he had never requested to leave the team when assigned to it but rather would vent within Bo’s earshot, so that he could lead from the rear of the pack—or so I surmised. This intellectual game was something I must have missed by leaving school early. In the group I ran with back in the states, it was what you did and not what you claimed to know that placed you in the group. As I understood it, Nelly had actually attended a major college and the pecking order must have been arrived at some different way in college. Nevertheless, the fact that he had attended college served to cow me when he challenged me.

The newbies on my team included a stocky, well-built kid from Alabama by the name of Pursell. He seemed quietly confident and very observant of his surroundings. He had graduated from high school then joined the Marine Corps, but he never held his education over me. I was always comfortable in his presence and enjoyed his stories of home and the girls he had known. The other kid, Warrix, was a bit of an enigma, because he seldom talked. It was only through Pursell that I had learned Warrix was from a home without a father and he and his mother had roamed quite a bit during his youth. He had very little formal schooling and suffered from a terrible case of acne, but he never complained of it.

There was one other character that was thrown into this mix now and again, because teams weren’t fixed units but could number from two to four and didn’t always include the same faces. This much-maligned fellow was known among us as Gooney, which obviously was not his real name. He had acquired this nickname by his awkward gait during patrols, his head rocking from side to side, his eyes ever locked on the ground ahead of him, and his mind always seeming to be in some far off place. He may have developed that knack for staring at the ground because of our constant concern for booby traps, but that’s doubtful because when you were on point you needed to be very aware of your total surroundings, not just the ground ahead of you. The ability to escape into our own fantasy world was an asset at times, but not when you were on watch or on patrol. No, Gooney simply seemed to be gooney. He had first displayed this gift upon coming into the squad. He originally explained that, because of his rigid home life, he had never tried cigarettes and considered smoking an evil habit. We were all happy with that announcement because that meant that we could trade other items with him to get his c-rat cigarettes, which were much prized among the remainder of us. They not only eased our craving for nicotine but could relieve us temporarily from our ever-gnawing hunger. Once Gooney was convinced of the pleasure smoking brought us, he overcame his hate of it and began smoking as if his fingers were doing something repulsive to his face. He never could detach his mind from the simple act of moving cigarette to mouth, so he always appeared to be searching for a proper style of smoking.

Because Gooney was so detached, it was always hard for us team leaders to penetrate his fog and get him to function in some meaningful way within the team. This also meant that if you had Gooney in your fire team then you had one less man you could rely on when the going got hot. But this happy morning Bo was my squad leader and my team, for the most part, consisted of men that I trusted.

I finished packing my stuff in my pack, put on my web belt and helmet, shouldered my weapon, and moved toward my fire team. We were out on the LZ (helicopter landing zone) by early afternoon. Because of the excitement of now knowing that we were going to be moved by helicopter, we wrongly assumed that the choppers would be at the LZ at any moment, so we elected to remain standing in the afternoon heat with our packs, helmets and web belts still on. At this point in the game, that meant that we were standing under the pressing weight of more than 50 pounds of material. Our youthful enthusiasm slowly gave way to the realization that, as always, we were to hurry up and wait.

As I finally calmed down from the initial rush of hurriedly readying myself, I began to peer about the formation of men creating our perimeter and was pleasantly surprised to see that I was almost directly across from my good buddy Wilson. It took a moment to notice that, like me, he was under a crushing weight of stuff, but like all ammo humpers, he also had the added weight of hundreds of rounds of linked machine gun ammo for the 60mm. He was flanked by his gunner, the kid from Texas whom I had never met. I was surprised upon seeing the body weight the gunner was still carrying. Unlike the majority of us, he was no lean mean fighting machine but a rather large muscular kid with a big smile. Though he may have looked friendly, I always harbored my doubts about any kid from Texas. My opinion of them was formed in boot camp when I discovered that, unlike the rest of us, the Texans considered themselves a people apart. I always got a clear indication from them that men from other states were not in the same league as their fellow Texans. Having had to fight a couple of them during boot camp (a story for a different time) reinforced my opinion.

After much time had passed on the LZ, things began to relax. Many of us stripped off our packs and chose to lie on them as we often did when on the trail in the jungle. Actually one didn’t need to strip off the pack to relieve the burden. Most of us had learned to wear the pack just loose enough that it could be hiked up further on the back, allowing us to recline on it, with the pack serving as a prop for our heads still inside the steel pots we all wore. But now, after hours of standing, some chose to remove the pack before they made it a pillow for their head. The laxness of the situation allowed me to call out to Wilson to inquire about his new situation. He answered with nothing more than a shrug.

Wilson and his gunner were still standing as if practicing the endurance they would need in the coming months. Wilson had answered me in a way that told me he was already suffering under the huge load he needed to carry. As if to take his mind off the pain that must have been developing in his shoulder blades, he began to mindlessly thump the butt of his M-16 rifle against the LZ’s sun dried clay. Wilson and I had talked numerous times about the music we both loved. I tried to imagine what siren’s song was luring him toward the isle of disconnect.

We had just received our M-16 rifles and had noticed their cheap