Four Times I Should Have Died in Vietnam | River Rat Veterans Interview

Four Times I Should Have Died in Vietnam | River Rat Veterans Interview

When you graduated in 1966 from high school, you had four choices. You either went to college and hoped you got deferment. You um went to Canada because you didn’t want to be drafted or you were drafted or you joined. That was your four choices. And I thought to myself, I don’t want to go to college.

 I And I didn’t like school per se. Not that it was all that bad, but you know, I just didn’t want to continue to study, or go to college. So, I thought, well, that took that option out. I wasn’t a, you know, they called them draft dodgers in the day. I wasn’t interested in going, you know, trying to go to Canada.

 Um, I didn’t, I don’t like snakes. I didn’t like the concept because when you graduated in 1966, if you got drafted, you were going to Vietnam. It was a given. So, I thought to myself, okay, and you may have heard this before, too, but worst case scenario, if I join the Navy, worst case scenario, I end up on a ship off the shore, or maybe not even off the shore there, someplace else in the world, or station someplace else in the world.

 I thought, I kind of like the odds better. I’m not a hero by nature. I’m not unpatriotic, but I didn’t really relish the idea of possibly getting killed. So, I started at the beginning of my senior year of high school. I said to myself, if I’m going to go into the Navy, I need to go talk to a recruiter and find out what’s, you know, how do I go about doing that? So, at the beginning of my senior year, I started uh I went to the recruiter and we had a chat and he said, “Well,” he says, “What are your interests in school?” And I said, “Okay,

uh I play trumpet in the band.” And he says, ‘Well, he says, ‘Are you very good?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, some people say I am. I don’t know that I’m great, but I, you know, I do okay. I was first chair as a sophomore in high school uh in the trumpet section. And uh he and so he says, well, he says, go talk to your band teacher, band instructor, and he says, see if he’ll give you a recommendation.

So, I went back and I got that recommendation and he said, “Oh, yeah.” He says, “Yeah, I recommend you to go into music in the Navy.” So the recruiter says, “Well, you can try out for the Navy School of Music.” But I had to get the recommendation first. So I thought, “Okay.” I said, “But now, uh, getting a recommendation isn’t enough, is it?” And he says, “Oh, no. You’ve got to go take a test.

” So you got to go somewhere and take a test. They’ll determine whether you’re good enough to go into to Navy School of Music and then end up playing the Navy band or wherever you know and uh so I thought um so so I asked him I said you know what’s involved and he says well you have to take test I said well you know I guess I can do that I said but what if I don’t take the te don’t pass the test uh I he says I can set it up so that you can go down there and they’ll fly you down there take the test got to go down to San Diego you can take the test if you fail the test, they’ll fly you back home and then you’re going to take your chances, you know, getting drafted or whatever, or you he says, “Or you can stay down there and go ahead and join the Navy.” And he says, “Uh,” he says, “How old are you when you graduate from high school?” I said, “Well, I’m still going to be 17.

” And my birthday’s in July, and so I was 17 when I graduated from high school and didn’t turn 18 until July 3rd. He says, ‘Well, we the Navy has something called a kitty cruise, as in child kitty cruise. And he says, if you get in before you turn 18, they will guarantee they will let you out the day before you turn 21. So, I thought, well, 3 years is better than four years.

Why not? He says, we can get you set up so that we’ll take you down there. We’ll fly you down to San Diego. You can take the test for the Navy School of Music. If you pass, obviously, you do that. If you don’t, you can go ahead and say, “Well, I’m going to go ahead and join anyway.” They flew me down there on June 29th.

And because of the way the holiday worked that particular year, I only had like one more day that I could that I would have been able to get in before I turned 18. So, I joined on the 29th of June, just short of 18 years of age. So, that’s how I ended up in the Navy. Oh, and the other thing he says, and he says, “By the way,” he says, “If you sign up, you know, if you actually sign up to do this and you you go ahead and go through it and you don’t make the Navy School of Music,” he says, “I can set it up so that you’re guaranteed a

class A school, meaning the introductory schooling in whatever field that you end, they end up putting you in in the Navy.” So, he said, “Well, that sounds good.” You see, so he set all that up. We went down there and I didn’t pass the test. And in the Navy, they have log books for everything they do to, you know, so they can justify or not, you know, whatever anything that happens.

 So when I took the test I probably didn’t play well enough to do it probably. But I got to looking at the log book as he’s going and filling out the paperwork. He’s got this log book opened up and there’s page, you know, names on this side and names on this halfway down this side, whatever.

 I’m guessing there’s probably 30 to 40 names over here and another 20 or so over here. And I’m looking and you know it says what instrument and whatever and pass fail whatever. Nobody on either page had passed. So I didn’t feel quite so bad because I figured, okay, they obviously do not need musicians in the Navy right now. They didn’t need anybody in the N.

 They didn’t have openings for the Navy School of Music, basically what it told me. So I thought, okay, uh I’ll just go ahead and join. So, uh joined and went through boot camp in San Diego and that’s how I ended up in the Navy. My orders out of boot camp or go to class A school first and they sent me to uh Illinois to um the Naval Bay.

 The name’s not coming to me right now. Great Lakes. They sent me to Great Lakes to go to class A school. At the end of class A school, I got orders to go to Daang and be a mechanic. Um, so they sent me to Little Creek, Virginia to do that. And I, um, was waiting to go through survival training for that.

 And then I was supposed to go from once I got through survival training, I was supposed to go to Daang. So, we’re waiting for the next class to open up to go through survival training. You know what survival training is, right? They call it Seir. Um, and we’re waiting for class to open up.

 And there’s 13 of us that had all graduated from school together. And all 13 of us had the same orders. And we got to the point where we’d been there like a couple weeks, two or three weeks, something like that. And they mustered all of us out for a daily check-in in the morning or whatever. And they said, “Now,” and they listed all 13 of us.

 And they said, “Now you guys all stay. Everybody else is dismissed. You guys all stay. your orders have been changed. So our new orders were to go to not to not do the survival training in Little Creek, Virginia, but to go do them instead in Coronado, California, San Diego area. Your survival training is there and because your orders got changed, you’re changing orders, they said you’re going to go home for 30 days and then you report to Coronado to do the survival training.

 After you get done with survival training, then we’re sending you to Mar Island uh in um San Francisco uh Valleo area and you’ll go through uh training for and they didn’t use the word river of tollboats. I don’t remember what they used, but it was operations in Vietnam. And I so I asked somebody, I said, “Well, what what what are we what are we getting trained to do?” They said, ‘Well, you’re going to be on river patrol boats.

 I said, ‘Well, or actually, they said you’re going to be on PBRs. I said, ‘What’s a PBR? It’s a river patrol boat. Said, ‘Well, like a Swift boat. They said, “Well, yeah, but smaller.” So, they’re 31 ft fiberglass boat. Um, by that, you know, having gone through engine school, by the way, that when I did my testing in boot camp, they decided that that’s where my talents were was mechanical things.

 Interesting thing about that was I really hadn’t worked on engines. I really hadn’t done any of that kind of stuff growing up. I My dad bought new cars every two or three years. That’s another story. So new cars all the time. So I never worked on anything. Uh we were on a little farm but not enough not big enough wanted to have a tractor or anything like that.

 So I didn’t even driven any equipment or that kind of thing. you know, I learned to drive like everybody else does, but I hadn’t done any any any boat stuff or any worked on any engines or any but they sent me to engine school and I picked up on it pretty quick. And uh anyway, so instead of going to Daang, I ended up on river patrol boats and found out what those were and thought to myself, you know, your plans about joining the Navy about worst case scenario, you’re going to be on a ship out in the shore or you’re going to be

so you know the best played laid plans of mice and men thing obviously didn’t quite work out that way since river patrol boats are kind of in the thick of it. But I got to thinking about it, it actually made a lot more sense than me stomping around in the jungle with the puny stakes and the snakes and the and the foot rot and the all the other diseases and stuff that you had to put up with.

 And of course the the Marines and the the guys that and the army guys and whatever that were stomping around over in the jungle thought we were crazy for being on a patrol boat out in the middle of the river. And their comment was, “Well, you’re just like a duck on a pond.” I said, “Yeah, but trust me, this duck gets real mad if you shoot at it.

” And those boats, you’ve I don’t know whether you’ve seen the boats, but 350 caliber machine guns and a 60 caliber machine gun and a Honeywell grenade launcher. I said, “If you don’t get me, if you don’t sting me pretty good right at the very beginning, you better duck because when everything when all that firepower cuts loose, you’re going to be in a world of hurt.

” So yes, we were a duck on a pond, but I say we were an angry duck. They talk about angry birds. We were an angry duck. When I flew into Tonsenoot, the air force base there, the very first thing that happened, I’m saying to myself, “Oh god, what I what have I got myself into here?” As we’re waiting to land at Tonsenoot, the pilot gets on the plane and he says, “We’re going to have to we’re going to have to just fly around here for a little while. Tons’s getting morted.

I thought, uhoh. We finally we landed and I was in yeah, you know, the barracks or whatever there for a while and waiting for my assignment where I was going to go and um finally got my assignment and I said they told me I was going to river uh section 531 and I and I got to 531 and I found out that I was a replacement for the guy that had gotten killed.

 So that was kind of my introduction to Vietnam is getting morted when we before we landed and then finding out I was a replacement for a guy that died. And uh so that’s how I got and and the section was is where we were first located was at a little town called MTO. M y ho is the name of the town.

 And it was a shore base. So they had a pier with, you know, pilings and docks and stuff for the boats to tie up to. And uh, interestingly enough, they sent two of us out of those 13. Another friend of mine, his last name was Thompson, um, from Wisconsin. They sent the two of us there. And because one guy had gotten killed, um, the, you know, the the warrant officer that was in charge of the maintenance for all the boats, he says, and he says, “You’re going to be the mechanic for the boat replacement.

” It was the other guy. So, I was on until I I stayed on base maintenance until basically somebody went home on, you know, permanently or whatever or leave. Anyway, so I was a mechanic working on the boats in the shop on the shore instead of going out on patrols. Well, Thompson went out on patrols and that ended up I don’t know probably saved my life.

 I don’t know. He you know you there’s no way to know what would have happened. But I ended up in the time that I was over there I was over there 18 months altogether. And in the time that I was over there I probably went on I think maybe 100 to 120 patrols. I never really counted which is not very many for a year and a half.

 It should have been closer to probably 300. Uh, and so I I didn’t spend a lot of time out on the water. And the reason I didn’t was because the warrant officer that was in charge of the maintenance really liked me and thought I had a good aptitude for fixing stuff. And eventually I hadn’t been there very long and he put me in charge of night maintenance.

 And he I was only in E2 at the time, you know. So you get out of boot camp, you’re an E1. You got a boot uh you’re a fireman, they call it a fireman apprentice and then the next one is straight fireman. I was only an E2. I had been in the Navy almost a year. And he says, “Why are you only an E2?” I said, “I haven’t been Cuz I went from this location to this location to this location to home on leave to this location.

” He says, “Why aren’t you why are you still an E2?” I said, “I haven’t had an opportunity to take the test to go up for the next rate.” He says, “You’re an E3.” I said, “What?” He says, “Yeah, I just promoted GD3.” So, I got my first promotion. So, now I’m a fireman instead of a fireman’s apprentice. And and he he liked me.

 So, anytime anytime somebody went home or they needed an an engine, I’d go back out on I’d go out on patrols for a while and as soon as a new person came in, the warrant officer would say, “Put the new guy out on the patrol. I want white back.” And that pretty much when I went, you know, that warrant officer and then the next warrant officer, the word went from one to the other and said, “You need to keep him on the as the main mechanic if you can.

” So I ended up doing a lot of work on the boats as opposed to going out on patrols. I was there for the Ted offensive. I don’t know how much you know about that, but the new the Chinese New Year thing happened in uh ‘ 68, the Ted offensive where the the North Vietnamese and the BC put on this big offensive and I was in Mito at the time and uh I remember being at the hotel.

 We we stayed in a hotel when we weren’t on the boats and I remember being at the hotel when it hit that night and being sniped at in the in the hotel. Um, I found out after the fact that the town itself might have been overrun, except the there was a a division or a group of Vietnamese regular Arvin soldiers that were going from some location to another location and they went through Mito and it was late enough in the evening that they weren’t going to be able to get to where they were going. So they stayed in

the park there in town and that kept the town from getting overrun. Uh there was another time while I was at Meto when I was at again I worked maintenance and they put me in charge of night maintenance. So sometimes I was the only guy that was working at night to do last minute stuff. I remember one time we got morted and um the deal was is if if you’re getting morted, whoever was down at the pier where the boats were, it was your responsibility to get all the boats away from the pier cuz what they’re trying to do is get the

boats. They didn’t really care about the maintenance facility or anything else. They just wanted to put the boats out of commission, right? So the deal was is if you were down there and there was only two or three of us down there, there was the guard and I don’t remember somebody else and I was the I think there was only three of us and uh so the the boats that are still at the pier, the ones that are on patrol, which would have usually been at about six of them, they you had to get them underway.

 So I remember running out. So they got this big building with a doorway in the end of it that you pull the boats into to work on them. pull them up out of the river and to work on them. And so when to to leave the facility, I was in the facility working on something. So I went running out to get the boats away from the dock. I got So here’s the door.

 And I went running through the door and I turned to go to the left to go down to the dock. And just after I cleared the door, a mortar came through the roof right where I just ran. Ran down to the dock. So then you have to you got all the boats have to get underway. So there’s only three of us. So there’s what you do is all the boats are you they’re tied together.

 So you got one on the dock and then you got another one and sometimes another one. So I ran down there and there’s three boats all tied together. I jumped on started untied the ones to the dock jumped into the one in the middle started the engines and drove all three boats away. So, you know, so that’s a couple of experiences that but you know, they I remember one time we’re out on patrol and we’re we’re idling along and uh all of a sudden the the pumps, you know, they’re a water jacuzzi pump, so there’s they have an

impeller rather than a propeller. And so we would hit vegetation and it would put them out of balance and then they wouldn’t shoot the water out like they’re supposed to. So, the mechanic’s responsibility, there’s a cover inspection on the top of the pump. You’d take the cover inspection off and and they’d shut the engine down and you’d make sure the guy didn’t start it up cuz you’d put your hand down in there and you’d pull the vegetation, you know, out of the pump.

 So, we’re idling along and he says, “Oh, I got he says he says he he all of a sudden shuts one of the engines down.” He says, “I got something, you know, some vegetation or something in the pump.” So, I popped the cover off the thing and put my hand down in there and I grabbed a hold and it pulled back. He’d sucked up a water snake. All the water snakes are poisonous.

Fortunately, I didn’t grab the business end. I pulled my hand out of there, put the cover back on it, and I said to the boat captain, I said, “Start that thing up and run it as fast as it’ll go for a while until that gets out. It is back in balance like it should be.” I says, “I’m not putting my hand back in there again.

” Of course, you know, after you run it a little while, I mean, but I I wasn’t going to put my hand back in there. So, that was another time. And then there was a time that we were we were tied up next to the other boat talking to him about something out in the middle of the river and a a patrol or we were we were getting ready to be relieved and so we were just sitting there waiting for the other patrol to come relieve us.

 Middle of the day or later in the afternoon or whatever. Anyway, so we’re sitting there tied up to each other with a actually I don’t think we were actually tied but we might have just been side by side and the the other patrol that was going to relive us and they come driving, you know, flying by and they slowed down but not not a lot. So we got this wake.

 So you’ve been out on the you know you know what happens when you got a wake, right? So these boats are going like this and they banged into each other. Did you see the M79 grenade launcher? Not the not the one that goes like this, but the the little gun that has the big barrel. It’s hanging over the engine cover just like that one is down there on that boat.

 The boats went bang. That M79 fell off the thing and hit the deck and discharged the the grenade that was in it. Came out of the thing, went from about about where you’re sitting to that wall and hit the wall. Fortunately, it hadn’t gone far enough to arm and I was standing near enough. I was the first closest person to it.

So, I look and here’s this there, you know, there’s this gold grenade looking thing spinning around on the deck and I reached down and I thought, I don’t want that on the boat. So, I picked it up and threw it over the side. Anyway, so you know, I had at least three other instances.

 Yeah, I wasn’t in a firefight, but there’s at least three other times. At least three other times. I shouldn’t be here. Anyway, so I was three weeks before I was scheduled to come home and we had a a directive had come out come down from Saigon saying they wanted our river section to patrol in a certain area 24 hours a day up in these narrow canals 24 hours a day.

 And we would go up and we would stay in the canal and patrol in the canal to keep the Vietkong from moving ammunition and medicine and all that stuff around. We stayed up there for 5 days. 24-hour, five days, okay? And patrol that whole time. And then you would get relieved by it. Each there were boat uh patrols were always two boats, lead boat, cover boat.

 So when the five days were up, one of the other tandem patrols would come out and relieve you. Those people would go back to the ship and get some rest and get anything done that needed work on the boat that needed to be done. So when they decided to do that, that we’d go up there in 5 days, they decided they wanted some of their best and most experienced mechanics on those boats because they’re not going to get come back to the ship until the end of 5 days unless there’s some reason that they needed to that accounted for it. So my

best friend, who was also another one of the good mechanics, we both have to now do a patrol even though we’re in charge of night maintenance. We were on the LST Jennings County at the time. So I went to Harnett County and then Jennings County. We were in Jennings County.

 Like I said, it was about 3 weeks. This would have been November, middle of November 1968. And they said, “So you guys you guys have got to do a a rotation up in the canal.” And I thought to myself, well, I’m 3 weeks away from coming home. I don’t really want to do this, but I wasn’t given a choice. And I said to myself, well, probably I’ll do this one time and then maybe that’ll be, you know, I won’t have to do it again.

 And I couldn’t refuse. I guess I could have, but I didn’t refuse. So, we go to get on the boats to leave the ship and go up in these canals, little narrow canals. This width of this room is long. And um yeah, the boats are 31 ft long. in this room is probably 40, maybe a little less than 40. So you can turn a boat around, but you isn’t easy to do it. Okay.

 So anyway, I we go up in these canals and I and and so we go go to put our So if you’re going to be there for 5 days, you got to have some changes of clothes and you know, so you got a a seabag with stuff in it, you know, with I don’t think the guys ever brush their teeth over there, but whatever, you know.

 But anyway, the stuff that you would that you wanted on the boat and the boats, you know, I don’t know whether you’ve seen any pictures or whatever, but the boats are tied up to these landing ship tank boats. And so there’s a boom that goes out on each side and the boats there’s a lead rope that goes down to them. And so basically, you go down onto the boat from the ship.

 So you don’t carry you don’t carry your seabag down the ladder the Jacob’s ladder that’s on the side of the ship or shinny down the lead rope or whatever the you just throw the you throw your bag down there and then you climb down and get on the boat. So, I threw my bag down and I, you know, told him to put it on and I don’t remember at the time.

 I do remember the number of the other boat, the 109 boat. I said, “Put it on, put it on 109.” And I threw it down and whoever went to put it away didn’t hear. So, they put my stuff on the other boat. I think it was boat 110, but they put my stuff on the other boat and they put my best friend’s stuff on 109, the one that I was supposed to be on.

And the reason I was supposed to be on it, I was considered the head mechanic at the time uh of the regular PBR guys. Not necessarily the head mechanic of all the stuff, but because a dayshift mechanic were uh members of the ship or in the case of meto, they were people that were stationed at the MTO facility, but I was the lead mechanic of the PBR mechanics.

 So, the two boats that we’re on, 109, the reason I chose that one is it had it had work done on the engine and the other one had work done on one of the Jacuzzi pumps. And the likelihood of something going wrong with a Jacuzzi pump is quite a bit less. Not hardly any moving parts. Engine’s got all kinds of stuff that can go wrong, right? So, that I said, I’ll just go on the I’ll go on that boat because if there anything needs to be fixed, I’m the trained person to do it.

 Well, they mixed up our gear. So, when we got down to the boat and I looked and see to make sure that my stuff got stowed away, I noticed it wasn’t mine. I said, “Well, where’s my stuff?” He says, “Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t that yours?” I said, “No, that’s Mike’s.” And uh I said, “Well, I’ll just stay on this boat.

” And I kind of in you when I discovered which boats we were going out on on, I thought to myself, this this probably is what I wanted to do anyway because the guy the coxin or the the guy that drives the boat on the on the boat that I was supposed to go on was the kind that never let go of the steering wheel.

 He wouldn’t let anybody else drive the boat. That’s just the way he was. He’d had to be dead tired or whatever. I mean, he just Nobody’s going to drive the boat but him. The guy on the boat that I went on was kind of just the opposite. He didn’t really care. And because I didn’t get to go out on many patrols, I like driving the boats.

So, I said, you know, I’ll just stay on this one. And so and so, I don’t remember the boat captain’s name now. Oh, yes, I do, too. Because, uh, we both got commendations and medals and stuff for this. Anyway, um, I said, uh, Cecil, do you care if I drive the boat? His name is Cecil Martin said, “Do you care if I ride?” He says, “No, go ahead.” So, I’m driving the boat.

 So, we go up in the canal and uh to replace these other two boats that are up there. And we got up in the canal and there was a miscommunication between us and the patrol that we were replacing and where we were going to rendevous with them. And so, we couldn’t raise them on the radio. So, but we were able to raise the ship, which is quite a bit farther away, but they’ve got big tall antennas on the ship. I mean, like way up in the air.

So, we’re getting good radio communication with them. And the ship had good radio communication with the other patrol. So, the communication got sent from the ship to us and to the other patrol meet at such and such a location. Well, I heard this is again hearsay that whoever sent the message to us used languages like we’re talking if I sit down here meet on 13th and Harborview instead of the code that told you it was 13th in Harborview that they just spoke the English where we were that rock saw and whatever it was the name of the

canal and where it meets whatever little canal You’re going to meet at where the the junction is where those two are. Well, guess who was listening? The VC were listening. They set up an ambush because we had a while to go before we got to that location. We got there first and when we got to where the intersection was, this is when we got in the firefight. They hit the cover boat.

I was driving the lead boat. I was the coxin on the lead boat and the VC always would hit the cover boat because the lead boat now in order to deal with what’s happening is behind them. So they’ve only got basically one one 50 caliber machine gun and theoretically 160 caliber machine gun to deal with what’s going on behind because the two the two big guns are up on the front.

The twin 50s are on the front and besides that you got to turn around to go back to deal with it. So they hit the cover boat and the first rocket well I don’t know whether it was the first or not but there we got hit by two rockets. One of them hit the radar dome with that big marshmallow looking thing on the top and it has a metal base that everything is fastened to with a fiberglass cover over it.

 A piece of metal from the rocket hitting that flew off of it and went down. And a guy was sitting up on the front of the boat. He was an extra person that was going along and cut his leg. Seriously. I mean like right to the bone with that piece of metal. The other rocket came into Have you looked at the boats? So it came into the coxins flat.

 So there’s a wall here. These boats down here have a wall in the middle. We were on a Mark1 boat. They do not have the wall in the middle. They’ve got armor plating over here. Armor plating over here. And the coxin drives the boat from right here. It hit in the air right in the middle of the armor plating on this side.

 When I wasn’t driving the boat as the mechanic and the M60 operator, I would stand right there where that rocket came. That’s where I would have been standing had I been on that boat and very easily could have been hit by the B40 rocket. My best friend was standing there instead and it went through into that armor plating and exploded right behind his back.

He didn’t die. He was seriously injured. The guy that was driving that boat was knocked unconscious. The guy that was driving the front that was in the front turret was knocked unconscious. And the guy that was sitting up there in front of where I would have been standing had his leg severely cut.

 So, he wasn’t able to do anything. And I think he was unconscious as well, not just because of getting cut, but the concussion of the explosion. The only guy available on the boat to do anything was the rear gunner. He was far enough away and so he was able to keep the fire down. But when the coxin, the guy that was driving the boat, got hit, he fell to the to the deck and his hand was on, you know, the steer probably just his right hand because when he when he went down, he went down like this with his arm and the boat that he was driving, we’re just at an idle.

We’re just driving along at an idle. The boat beed itself right where the rocket, one of the rockets, came from. And there were a bunch of VCs there with small arms. The rear gunner managed to keep everybody from shooting at that boat and eventually us from getting on the boat and killing the guys that were on the boat.

 I turned the lead boat around and pulled it up alongside of the boat that got hit and held it in position while the rest of the crew got the injured off of that boat and then we left the area. So that was my one firefight, but it was a doozy and I came home with a Bron Star with a combat V. I had to do what I had to do and I had to do it quickly and I had to do it without thinking about it and I had to have enough guts to do what I was trained to do without getting scared.

 I w I absolutely was cool as a cucumber until about a half hour later when we had cleared the area and I was so weak with adrenaline I almost couldn’t stand up. I just absolutely everything but fell apart physically. But when it counted I did what I had to do. So proud of the fact that I helped save those five guys’ lives that were on that other boat.

 Did my part at least, you know. Anyway, that was my firefight. I had a lot of other close encounters, but no firefights other than that one right before I came home. I got back to the ship and I told the CEO, I said, “I just went on my last patrol.” He says, “What do you mean?” I said, “I’ve got three weeks left in the country.

 I want to go home and see my wife and my daughter that’s less than a year old. She was born while I was in Vietnam. I didn’t see her in person until she was 5 and a half months old. And I says, “I want to go home and see my wife and I’m my baby girl.” And so I’m not going anywhere for us. He said, “Well, I can understand that.

You’re short enough.” The funny thing about it is there’s a thing that everybody will tell you about the guys that got killed in Vietnam within the first two months or the last two months, more specifically, the first month or the last month. I was still alive last month and I didn’t get killed.

 My buddy had been there for half a year. So, the table should have been turned, but I always say God had other plans. And I thank the Lord that I’m still here. You know, uh where I was from, the area I was from in Oregon, we didn’t interestingly enough, I wasn’t all that far from Portland, but I was far enough away from Portland that I didn’t experience any of that.

None. In fact, to the locals, I was in a little little town called Aurora, Aurora address. Actually, the town that I lived in was even littleer than Aurora. But, uh, I was, you know, greeted warmly, more like a hero rather than, you know, than a bad guy. And, uh, so I didn’t have to deal with any of that, which is really good.

 Um, I didn’t really experience any what you’d call significant PSTD uh because I didn’t get in a bunch of firefights. I never was never in a situation where I knew I had killed the enemy. There may have been some times that it happened, but not that I was aware of. Um, and well, in fact, when I was driving the boat, I obviously wasn’t shooting the gun when that fire, so I know I didn’t kill anybody there.

 And uh oh, I just thought of another reason I shouldn’t be here. So, we’re out in this little canal and it’s the middle of the day and I’m standing on the engine cover by the M60 and I’ve got my back to the side of the canal and there’s a BC sniper there unbeknownst to me and my back was to him.

 You literally could have been a target. My big broad back was probably well maybe twice the distance from here to the other, you know, maybe 100 ft away is where he where he shot from was just a little, you know, probably an AK-47. But he decided not to shoot me even though I was the obvious target because the boat captain, you wouldn’t have been able to see him very well at all cuz he shot from the starboard side of the boat and I was standing with my back towards the starboard side of the boat.

 The rear gunner has the rear 50 has a armor plating thing that the gun pokes through. So, he’s behind that. The front gunner is on his turret and he’s just got the 250s pointed forward. So, we’re kind of by where the guy shot from. So, the boat’s here and he’s back here and I’m standing right there and I’ve got my back to him. So, I’m the obvious target.

He decided to shoot for the head of the front gunner because that’s really from his vantage point based on where the bullet hit from his vantage point that he decided to shoot him in the head. Unlike the boat down here, the Mark1’s boats, which was what I wanted, had a U-shaped thing on each side of the gun turret that you would put your hands on so you put your feet on the floor and you could turn the turret easier.

So that metal thing was in between the guy’s head and where the bullet came from. So it’s about this wide. It’s like an inch outside metal tube that goes like this. Instead of hitting the front gunner in the head, it hit that metal tube. Didn’t go all the way through the other side.

 It went into the tube and hit the other side and glanced down and went down and ended up being down by the guy’s feet, the front gunner. So, he didn’t get the front gunner either. If it hadn’t been for that metal tubing thing, the front gunner would have had a head. He would have been hit in the head cuz he was right behind where the bullet was.

 And we didn’t all I all I heard was a pop and I thought, “What is that?” And the front gunner says, “I just been shot at. and the bullets down here by my foot. So, what’s that? Four different times other than the firefight. I shouldn’t be here talking to you. I’ve considered writing a book, not specifically about Vietnam, other than the the five times.

 The title of my book will be would be, and if I ever write it, why am I still here? beginning at, you know, a very young age up until even just few recent years. There’s a lot of reasons why it shouldn’t be affair. So, I think to myself, uh, God must have had other plans for me. Either that or I have an amazing guardian angel.

That’s what I took from it that uh I’m blessed and proud of the fact that I was able to do what I needed to do when I needed to do it without fear. That’s kind of what I take from and that and the fact that as an 18year-old, I wasn’t even 19 when I first went over there. As an 18-year-old, I grew up I grew up to be a 30 year old in about a year and a