Rare Combat Footage From My Tour in Vietnam

Rare Combat Footage From My Tour in Vietnam 

There has a stand on a standout, I should say. I, when I first got up to July, the uh platoon was out in the field and they were just coming in and they came in like a day later and when I got up there and then for about two days or so then we got reoriented, they just took a little minor rest and relaxation R&R and then went back out again and that time I think flew as a 19 year old kid, I didn’t really know too much where we were going or what we were doing, but other than the fact that it wasn’t, it wasn’t really friendly out there.

I went to the near the Ho Chi Minh trail, it’s about basically where we uh operated on. As soon as we landed there, one platoon or a yeah was getting on and we were getting off and within gosh, it wasn’t more than a few maybe an hour or something like that, mortar round or something came in close and I started thinking, “This is probably not very smart, but I want to get myself into.”

We were a weird unit, they’d drop us out and we carried our food for 7 to 10 days, we didn’t, we weren’t back at a rear anywhere, we would live out there in the helicopter come in and drop food off to us and ammunition or anything other supplies we might need and maybe a replacement and it was like that and we’d operate for about 30 days or so and then we’d come back in for a break again, back out again for another period of time with someone like that.

It wasn’t a front on front, it was mainly we were always out there, we were trying to stop their flow of munitions and stuff south and so we would get to uh set up blockage points like an ambush on a trail and the heck, I got my, I was awarded essentially not work earned my combat infantryman badge, you know, it’s just if you’re 30 days of combat or in active combat, you get the badge.

Well, I didn’t know it, it was kind of funny when I say didn’t know it, because it was very shortly after a guy got there and it was in the first week or so you get so tired and all your work you’re doing and every night you get up uh you had to take a a shift on on watch, okay, and uh could be throughout the whole night our prayer so we wouldn’t make certain no one would be coming around because every night we also have to, so back up a little bit, we’d have to set up a Claymore and grenade and trip flare out in front of our positions and then we would watch that.

Well, we had that set up and I had was just relieved to go back to my boots to go to sleep, I did, I slept and I got up again my next rope ship later on just before morning sunrise and the guy relieved, he says, “Well, you got your CIB.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

They said, “We were attacked, fired all last night.”

And I said, “We were? And I slept through everything.”

One of the guys they said, “I thought you might have been hit, but scary at first, then then you kind of wonder if you’re always scared afterwards, at least I was anyway.”

I remember the uh, but you’re also tired because you’re we’re patrolling an area, we’re walking close to you know a few kilometers a day with a backpack on weighs close to 50 pounds and I was just a skinny little kid wearing probably about 135 or 140 pounds if that.

I know all the guys that were walking around there will attest to this because I think, you know, we had our fatigues on, but you didn’t wear any underwear. I like that, that’s the silly thing like that, but there were leeches, everything, leeches and ants, so you got them all over your body at places in that and that just that was kind of uncomfortable.

And then like I said, our operation was literally we were always on the move, it was like a seek and destroy situation and we were always out trying to find where any of them was and there was other units doing the same thing.

We have taken a couple casualties, but they weren’t uh, well I guess we did, our first sergeant was killed and captain was killed, the radio operator has severe injury to his leg and that was that way landmine got these those three and with the bouncing very high magic because we had sat down and for a rest that evening and where every every night when we get in, we have to on the machine gun which I was on, we had to dig the guns in, in other words we have our trenching tool we dig a hole, a U-shaped hole, put the gun in the middle of it so we have some protection so.

And we were doing that and the guy was getting dark and then we heard the explosion going off and that when they called them helicopters to pull them out.

What group was that in that news crew from?

I think it was NBC and uh Eric Sevareid, I believe, I may be wrong on that, but I believe it was he was the uh commentator when the movie was put together.

Okay, but they were with our platoon for 30 days, if they did everything that we did, they ate with us, they slept with us, they can’t even walked with us, the only thing that was different they were shooting film and we had guns and their equipment was not real small little cameras either, they had like, I don’t know what millimeter might have a 16 millimeter something like that, it was it was pretty big for them to carry.

If we ever got into an issue they would move along with us pretty quickly so whenever we got and I were fired on the machine gun and me and Brad both she go to Brad and myself, we move up to the front where the firing was coming from to set up the gun we run it that way and then I had carried 300 rounds and Brad had 300 and everybody in our squad had 200 and it was my responsibility to keep the rounds the gun loaded so what I’m saying we’ll be doing that, I’ll be running up like that and the cameraman will be coming behind us things like that and they can’t really uh stick out like a sore thumb, put it that way.

We didn’t have any racial issues at all in our group, our fact our platoon sergeant was Larry Lewis, Larry B. Lewis and we loved him so much, we really we felt very safe with him, he was taking care of us all.

Our medic was uh I believe his name was Joyner, I can’t think it was last night, a lot of times we only knew kind of first names forget the rest of them, he was our medic and he was a a black kid from I don’t know and let’s say we were we were at least you know half and half 50 percent or so pretty close to that and everybody got along very well I had never had an issue that I’m aware of of anything.

You were wounded in Vietnam, is that right?

Yes.

Can you tell me about your wounds and what happened and how that came about?

Well, we were, let me think here, yeah we were supposed to put a holding operation on like setting up an ambush on a regiment that we believed and it’s uh as a like I said that that’s your kid, I don’t know exactly what was going on, but we were set down we were supposedly to our company to uh a blocking force, they were being driven down by another group from the uh from our unit from 101st to and which we had a lot of artillery support, okay.

Well what happened was uh I was up in the front feeling and I saw somebody out 400 yards away or so like that and I called our lieutenant, he was a forward upper observer, he came up and relieved me and went back to their about to the rear, but the rear was more like 20 yards, okay, because you’re all pretty much compact an area like that and uh a mortar round came in.

We didn’t know, I still to this day I don’t know for sure if it was ours or if it was theirs, because the day before we had that area sighted in with artillery where we spotted the activities by the activity and so then I got hit with uh I was white phosphorus and it’s uh which usually made me think it was our own people hitting us because they weren’t coming in at us, but I didn’t know uh but when I woke up on the hospital bed they there’s some fellas there they were from the unit that was providing us cover uh swore that wasn’t them, they didn’t do anything so we figured well Vietnamese normally didn’t use white phosphorus, but I’ve been suddenly liberated from somebody or somewhere.

When it was hit I was a thrown forward of course, but uh I couldn’t see anything because it was all white smoke and real heavy, that was stories I couldn’t see anything, but I was actively burning and the lieutenant came and pulled my clothes off me so I was still smoldering until I got me into the hospital.

They were the our medic took care of me pretty well, they flew me all the way back, I went from July where the helicopter brought me into to uh Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and from Clark to Yokosuka, Japan and then from Japan to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

I was lucky, I was not burned very much compared to the fellas that were there, some guys had you know amputations, they had the severe burns over more than 30, 40, 50 percent of their bodies.

There was a couple of young fellas that were we were all young I said uh that were on the I believe I may get the ship wrong, but the Forrestal, I believe, where a rocket went off on deck and he was burned from that and he was given his last rights twice, but he survived.

First time on leave from the hospital, I was given a 30-day repeat practical back for some other operations, I flew into Philadelphia and I took a a light rail up to Lansdale, Pennsylvania and then I got a ride into Allentown and then from there I basically walked the back streets and back roads and alleys until I got home.

I had a farmer one or two guys, one guy did pick me up and gave me a ride and he didn’t want it, I didn’t want people to see me see your injuries or see you in uniform see them in uniform, there was that much of a stigma that you didn’t, yeah, just the way I felt, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t say that’s for everybody, but it was just the way I felt at the time and uh.

Were you suffering from any kind of PTSD after the war, nightmares or anything like that?

Well, to this day, I still go to sleep with a radio, something just keep in mind that either thinking of something else.

Is that because you’re having nightmares?

Yeah, that and strangely enough that really didn’t start happening until I see something, it’s funny, but the Falklands War, that kind of triggered some feelings in me or whatever and I and I just uh after that, I just started listening to radio and just kind of listened to anything that was coming on.

Well uh when you reflect on Vietnam now, that war and everything that happened uh what do you think about your experience and.

Well, obviously it was a growing up experience, the uh I do think the war was insane, it was not, it was wrong and I would have no problem taking a kid to Canada if we had a draft to avoid a draft or something like that again came about.

The uh although my surf time in the service, I gotta say I admit this one thing, it’s his tongue-in-cheek, but in the military took care of me very well, I got uh got to go to college, I paid for my college, I would not have been able to go, I was working at Bethlehem Steel at the time when I got drafted and uh but I went went to college, ended up moving out here, got a very good nice job with Bureau of Land Management before I retired from.

And I say it sometime in tongue-in-cheek that if I could find the guy who who shot me was responsible for me getting injured, I’d sponsored him and his family over here.