Combat Marine Reveals Ugly Truth About the Vietnam War

Combat Marine Reveals Ugly Truth About the Vietnam War 

In 1968, I was married to Tony Jane. We’d been married for three years and had no children because she miscarried. I got a draft notice from Uncle Sam that I was being drafted into the United States Army. So, at the age of 20, I found myself on a bus going up to Columbia, South Carolina.

It was in a big room full of young men in there that were being drafted, all being drafted. The sergeant that was there, he says, “Is there any of y’all that would like to go into the Marine Corps?” Myself and a couple of other young men raised our hands—a very small group, it wasn’t that many.

The reason that I chose to go into the Marine Corps was because my best friend in high school, Dennis Michael from Vacaville, California, was in the Marine Corps and got himself killed in Hue City there in February ’68. At that time, my immature thinking was, well, I just wanted to go over there and kill this son of a bitch that killed my best friend.

“So can you walk me… so you get there in September ’68, is that right? First day of September ’68?”

“Well, that’s right.”

“And take me there one more time. So you land, and you’re already taking rocket fire?”

“Yes, within 20 minutes of getting landed into Da Nang on that commercial airline, we had rocket attacks coming in. Everybody’s jumping into bunkers. We didn’t have guns at that time, and the other man at the end of the bunker is making the sign of the cross. And I’m going, ‘How in the hell am I supposed to be here 13 months, and I’ve been here 20 minutes?’ That was my awakening. Yeah, I got awoke.”

“So they put you in Dog Company, in Delta or Delta?”

“Delta, yeah. We called it ‘Dying Delta.’ Delta Company, that’s right.”

“Delta, okay. And how long is it before you’re actually out doing patrols or out…?”

“Well, once you get in… my experience was, I think you’ll find quite interesting actually, that when they got us off of the helicopter at Delta Company, the night before, the company had been overrun out there by the VC. There was a young man coming back from patrol, and on his helmet, he’s got a scalp. He scalped somebody, and he’s got a scalp that he’s got on his helmet. All right, so I got my welcoming and awakening in Da Nang, and then when I got out to the jungle, I got my ‘Welcome to the jungle, Tony, here you are.’ Oh yeah.”

“Anybody out there that’s been under fire by an AK-47 understands what I’m talking to you here today. It puts the fear of God in you, and if it doesn’t, well, there’s something wrong with you, at least from my perspective.”

“The firefight, I can’t remember exactly when the first firefight was. I just remember being there like the first couple of nights and not being able to sleep. You’ve got your weapon, your M16 right there, so you’re wide awake and that kind of stuff, adrenaline. So I don’t remember when the first firefight was, but I’ll tell you one that you might find interesting.”

“Delta Company, our squad was walking across one of the dikes, and I’m carrying a LAW at this time on my M16. We get out into the middle of the rice paddy. As all the grunts out there in the Army and the Marine Corps know, when you’re out there on that dike, you are vulnerable because you’re out in the open.”

“About halfway out there, we come under that AK-47 fire. Boom, boom, boom! Fall down into the rice paddy. I’m in the water, in the mud, bullets are all flying around, and I look up into the sky. I remember looking up in the sky, and the sky was all nice and blue, and I said, ‘Oh, thank you, God. Thank you, God, for not letting me be dead right now.’ And then I looked down and saw where the hell I was, and I said, ‘Well, it ain’t over yet.'”

“Unfortunately, a young Marine at that time did receive a bullet wound directly to his forehead. Only by the grace of God do I sit here telling that story, and may his spirit and all of the rest of them that lost their lives and have suffered to this day find peace.”

“When I was over there, I was this close to stepping on a 155 artillery round. A little dome button, the silver pressure release you put your foot on, and it’s okay, but you take your foot off, you’re blown to a thousand different pieces.”

“The young man behind me, by the name of Warren Brayton, who could sense booby traps—we called them booby traps back then—could sense them in the night, and he says to me, ‘Tony, look what you almost stepped on!’ They called up demolition and blew it up. I could see my guts draped all over the trees out there, banana trees, like tinsel on a Christmas tree.”

“A young man that I knew over there, a Marine by the name of Robert Anthony Bye, had the grave misfortune of stepping on a 155 artillery round and went home. As all of y’all people know that are grunts and have been there and done that, you go home, and they take big manila envelopes, scrape you up, and put you in to take you home. Only by the grace of God that it wasn’t myself, and I’m grateful and thankful for that.”

“It was at Liberty Bridge on the 19th day of March in 1969. Delta Company had come out of what we call the bush back to what we call the rear area where it was Battalion Headquarters. You got the barbed wire all around you there, you got your tanks, you got your artillery in there.”

“So the grunts like us, when we’re out in the bush, we’re eating out of a tin can—this is before the C-rats—and sleeping on the ground. So when we come back to that Battalion Headquarters, it’s like dying and going to heaven. They had a damn chow hall, they got outhouses that you can sit your ass on and take a dump instead of having to do it out in the damn jungle. We’re back there for four, five, six days, getting some good hot meals and stuff like that.”

“Liberty Bridge, many of you all out there have been there, you know all about it. March 19, 1969, Delta Company. At about two o’clock at night, the regular NVA came in there with Bangalore torpedoes for the first time ever, flamethrowers… The bunker next to us, Marines in there were killed, burnt unto death. Bangalore torpedoes blowing up the wire, coming in there. They had incendiary grenades throwing down the barrels of our howitzers to melt them all up. They hit us right at about two o’clock at night, and this goes on all night long.”

“At about five o’clock in the morning, myself and another Marine pulled a naval corpsman, Doc Hammond, out of a hole there. He had been shot in the head, and when we pulled him out, his brain matter fell on my foot. I was barefoot at that time—I took my boots off so they didn’t get all bloody and get gangrene and that crap. I remember looking up into the sky while all this shit is going on and saying, ‘I have got to get the hell out of here.'”

“How close are the NVA getting to you though when this is happening?”

“They did not get as close to me as they did to others. I did not engage in hand-to-hand combat, but I remember after all this was over, about nine or ten o’clock in the morning, everybody’s tired and hungry. I’m sitting down on the ground, and I’m eating what all you grunts out there know as that chocolate bar, called the shit bar. So I’m sitting there, eating a shit bar—that chocolate chip tastes pretty good, too—and about 15 feet away from me is a Vietcong or NVA, whatever he was, that had been run over by a tank. When the tank was running over him, it twisted him all in, so he’s down in the ground, and the only thing human that you can discern from this guy was basically his thumb. Everything else was just a big mess.”

“And I’m eating my shit bar. This is how callous that I had become. I was only 21 years old at that time. But as I’m eating my shit bar and looking at this mangled corpse of someone that wanted to kill me—I don’t blame them—I’m looking and saying in my thinking, ‘I’m glad that’s you and not me.’ That’s how callous I’ve become.”

“Now, to my knowledge, I have no direct knowledge of directly killing any enemy at all, because in firefights, everybody’s shooting and fighting, you don’t know. I just really don’t have any idea, so I don’t have the memory of someone’s life fading or something like that.”

“Before we move on from the combat, I want to hear how you were wounded one more time, because you were hit twice, is that right?”

“Yes, I got a piece of shrapnel that went through my left leg, a piece of shrapnel that went into my stomach, and had a cerebral concussion from a grenade that went off behind me that was tripped by another young Marine. The piece that hit me over here in this leg hit him in a worse spot, directly behind the kneecap. So we wound up both being in the hospital there in Da Nang at the same time.”

“It was our great pleasure, blessing, and memory for me to have the great actor and military man himself, Officer Jimmy Stewart, who came through with his wife at the hospital. He comes up to me when I’m laying in the bed, and he does that stuttering thing. He goes, ‘Where did you get hit, son?’ So it was a real pleasure to have met him.”

“Now, my final thought would be more kind of what has been already said, about hopefully someday we’ll be able to rise above all of this. Today, truly, I am blessed with inner joy and inner peace, regardless of the many tragedies that have come to me. And it’s a tragedy—all of the Vietnam veterans and other veterans today that are coming home and commit suicide, lose hope, and stuff like that. So, you know, just maybe let go, let God, relax, take it easy, and you know, everything’s gonna be all right now. Yeah, so anyway, yeah, everybody, have a nice talking with you, and call me, we’ll do lunch.”