Why This Soldier Had a $1,500 Bounty on His Head During the Vietnam War | LRRP Veteran Interview

Why This Soldier Had a $1,500 Bounty on His Head During the Vietnam War | LRRP Veteran Interview

As a LRP, you, you’re very quiet and that is because it’s your survival and you just soon as you land on the, on the ground and you make contact, you get out of there. And like I said, you just, you whisper most of the time and you take one step at a time, you don’t, try not to step on any branches or anything because they make racket.

Um, and let’s say we set up for the night or something, or and and uh when you hear all kinds of racket around there, I mean the birds and um water buffalo might be bellowing or uh monkeys chatter, and when they’re chattered and everything making normal noise, it’s usually it’s a sign everything’s okay.

But when everything gets quiet, monkeys aren’t making any noise, birds aren’t making…

That’s when you get a little nervous and you actually develop kind of a sixth sense, you know, when there’s Vietnamese around, you just know it, something in the air. Maybe it’s because like birds or whatever, you actually develop a sixth sense and and when you do, when you know they’re around, you’re constantly alert, very much alert, and but then you know when everything comes back to normal, you sit back and you kind of relax.

Now, I remember the first, oh, six weeks here in Vietnam, it’s the most dangerous time, the first six and the last six weeks of that year. And uh, you’re just so nervous and you’re just scared and you’re just a pup, man, you’re only 18, 19 years old, you know, you should be out chasing women, not chasing Vietnamese.

And so the first, like I said, first six weeks you and then after a while you get so tired of being nervous, you could be nervous and by then you’ve kind of developed that sixth sense, you know when they’re around, you know when to relax and when to be on alert. And uh, you listen to your gut and uh it got me through, got me through, yeah.

When you guys get into firefights and these really, you know, intense events, uh is it the same thing where where you kind of get used to that, or is it always uh when you’re in a firefight?

The strange thing about a firefight, during the time you’re in the firefight, you’re really not that nervous. You, you got a job to do, you do it the best you can. It’s when it’s over, all the shooting stopped and your mind starts doing tricks with you.

“Are they circling around us?”

“It could have been… that bullet could have been three inches over and you then dead or at least shot in the arm or something.”

Uh, it’s usually after the firefight is when you really comes down and and that’ll last for some several days. But usually during the time of the firefight, it’s just so much going on and you’re so focused, you’re really not that nervous. It’s kind of a kind of a strange phenomenon.

And you’re working in such small teams, these four-man teams. Are you guys taking casualties very often out there?

No, not very often, occasionally, yes. Um, like I said, we, our whole objective is be as quiet as we can, not to get caught and just monitor what’s going on and then we call in uh we might call in air strikes.

Which reminds me of one time, um, we have been monitoring this trail for several… We were down lower than the trail and the trail is right alongside of a hill, right? And we were down in in a low area and there’s some rocks and trees and super tall elephant grass, and elephant grass is I think six, seven feet high.

We could see the trail pretty good, but they couldn’t see us and uh well, we’ve seen these Vietnamese come down this trail and of course we monitor, the team leader, when the Vietnamese were here, he’d call an air strike over here, and when they passed us over here, they’d call it over there.

Well, we’d done this for several days and the Vietnamese started thinking, “Over here and over… somebody must be in the middle somewhere because they’re never calling air strikes in the middle.”

So, so they turned around, came down and they come right down towards the middle. And there was, oh man, there must have been 30 of them heading right direction for us.

“Oh, Jesus, this is not good.”

And there was only I think four of us at the time and uh the guy behind me, he started snoring. He went to sleep and he behind a rock, he started snoring.

“Shut up!”

He would just snore up, oh my God! And these Vietnamese come down there and uh they figure, “Oh, these, these guys are dead asleep, we’re going to catch them.”

And they like the idea of catching a LRP. They didn’t want to kill us so much, they wanted to catch, take us back to Hanoi. Because we were worth $1,500 a piece on our head, and at that time 1,500 bucks could buy you a pretty nice little tractor for the whole family.

So that was their objective, is catch one, one of us or more, take us back to Hanoi. And uh this guy, he was just snoring up a storm.

“Shut up! Shut up!”

And uh finally all hell broke loose and we fired and they fired and oh man, it was a mess and uh but we got out of there. They didn’t uh, I think we killed… I don’t remember how many we killed, but anyway um so we after the firefight, uh we backed off and what was left of them, they went down the trail and that was the end of that.

That could have been really bad, that guy snoring, yeah. If he hadn’t been snoring, he probably never… never would he came down there, but somebody had heard that.

Oh yeah, that could have been bad, but we got out of that all right, one of the guys got wounded, but that was it.

When is it difficult to, to fire at the enemy, or are you so well-trained that you’re just kind of, you go into a certain mode and you’re just, you do your job?

Generally, I had, when I first got over there, had an M16, which is a pretty good site rifle. And then after you been there little time, you got an AR-15 if you wanted it, and which fires the same round exactly as an M16, only it’s shorter, has a sliding stock, which is really nice because you can hold like this, move the brush out of the way like that.

And generally the Vietnamese, uh when you get in contact, they’re usually not more than maybe 75-100 feet away. So you don’t have to aim like this, unless you’re in an ambush or something like that.

Usually because you got it right here, you can just shoot in that direction and you’re going to hit them. Yeah, but like if it’s an ambush, and of course that’s a different story. But uh we did that a few times.

But uh yeah, and then that’s like the AR-15 was such a good rifle because M16, it was so long and that sucker got heavy after a while holding like this all the time. The AR-15 kind of back over like this, you scrunch it down, that was a good rifle.

Well, speaking of your equipment, what did you guys… or you see pictures of long-range patrol guys and you see like tiger camo and stuff. Like, how is your equipment different than like an average grunt?

Um, well, our equipment was… we carry usually less weight than the average grunt. They would, oh man, those guys would be carrying close to 100 lb in their pack.

Well, we usually went out four, six days, so we just have enough food for four to six days and uh so our packs weren’t near as heavy, but we still had grenades around here in ammo and everything.

Our, our uh we probably carried those 60, 65 lbs, I suppose, and average grunt was pretty close to 100 lbs, I’m thinking.

And, oh man, that’s a lot of weight going up them down, up and down those mountains, like I was in Pleiku, that was Central Highlands and there was some pretty tall mountains up there.

Yeah, um, yeah, so like I said, our weight wasn’t near as bad as the grunts. But uh and our… we had special rations called LRP rations. And uh what they were, they were in little bags and dehydrated food. It might be spaghetti or chili or anything and all you had to do is pour in hot water and mix it around.

And it was a lot better than C-rations. All the C-rations were horrible. And now after saying that, if you mix the C-rations with the LRP rations, that wasn’t too bad. They just plain C-rations, God, they had C-rations.

I remember some of the stuff was from World War II and we’re talking about you know the late ’40s and this in Vietnam it was ’68 so we’re talking about quite a few years. And some of that stuff was pretty old and usually, but very seldom did we have C-rations, everything was LRP rations because we wanted to keep as light as possible so we could travel fast.

You know, uh if it looked like we were going to get in contact, we were supposed to back off. Now that’s the way it was the first six months, that’s the way as reconnaissance, you know, you weren’t supposed to get in contact.

But after about six, eight months I’ve been there, they decided, “Well, we’re going to make them hunter-killer missions.” And then they like what we used to went out in four-man teams, now we’re going out six-man teams with a guy with a machine gun and we’re supposed to be out there looking for the Vietnamese, which I did not sign up for.

I signed up for reconnaissance, spying, not to go out there and hunter-killer. So I didn’t like… like that part of it, but the hunter-killer, not at all.

As a… as a regular LRP, what I signed up for, reconnaissance, that was… that was pretty good, you know.

I imagine those hunter-killer missions were much more intense, cuz…

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, they were a lot more intense. They changed the objective on us, okay? You and you got six-man team versus 30 or 40 Vietnamese, that’s not very good odds.

Oh, you guys can get in and get out, right? And but then then they gradually went just back to reconnaissance after that, you know.

Did… did any of those operations kind of go sideways where you did engage in a large force and all of a sudden went, “Uh-oh, we’re in a bad… we’re in a tight spot”?

Or yeah, um we got in one time, there was four of us and about 30 of them and uh it was just starting to get dark, if I remember rightly. And well, they had a firefight and everything, it’s starting to get dark to the point they couldn’t see us.

We were in the jungle and we kept as quiet as we possibly could. And uh we had Claymores, you know what Claymores are? We had them out and uh in the line usually you put a claymore out, go out this way, go out that. But as a LRP, you zigzag that wire.

So if a Vietnamese finds that Claymore, he’ll try to follow it in and know exactly where you’re at. But if it zigzags like this, he don’t know where you’re at.

And what we decided to do was uh like I said, there was like about 30 of them and there they had flashlights looking for us. So what we did, the uh team leader said, “Hey, what we’re going to do, I’m going to count to three, I’m going to blow all these Claymores, it’s going to scare the crap out of everybody, them and us, and it makes a lot of racket. We’re flattening on the ground, these guys are still standing up, they got flashlights. So soon as after get done blowing, we’re going to rise and we’re heading right through them. They’re… everybody’s going to be disillusions, they don’t know nothing. So soon as I blow that, going to get up to run, everybody grab the guy in front of you, his… his pack and follow us out of there.”

So we went right through them and they didn’t know what where in the hell we went and we just passed right through them and we got out of there.

But that was… that could have been a little hairy, but uh yeah, but that’s the kind of stuff you learn when you’re in LRPs because you got… you got to think a little bit differently than uh a regular grunt, yeah.

So you save my butt so well doing stuff like that. Did you ever get hit when you were over there, or…

I never got shot or uh wounded. Well, I did get wounded one time.

Oh, how was…

In my barracks, I… we came back after our 4-day mission and I was in the barracks and somebody hollered, “Dokey, Glenn Campbell’s on!”

“I love Glenn Campbell, he’s on the TV!”

Well, their little hooch for TV was outside and it’s pitch black. I come running out of there and there’s this wall locker laying on the ground and I hit that, scratched my leg from there to there and I was bleeding like a sun gun.

And I just took my t-shirt off, I had to watch Glenn Campbell, had nice women there, a whole bunch. So I took my t-shirt off, wrapped it around and got the blood to stop, went over, watched.

That’s the only wound I had in Vietnam. So I come out very, very good for… for being infantry. I… I was lucky.

Yeah, that’s the way to get wounded, I guess, yeah.

Yeah, so I just… no wall locker, it’s the only wound I had. And well, it hurt too, but that’s… that’s pretty mild, pretty mild.

Well, uh when you came back to the United States, cuz you talk about how alert, how you had kind of a sixth sense in the jungle, what’s that transition like coming back and trying to be a normal person again?

Well, you’re pretty nervous when you first get back. Give you an example, I remember I was uh got back and uh I was taking a shower one time and somebody threw… I had the window open, somebody threw some rocks up on a tin roof and I heard that and I dove for the floor because it sounds just like uh somebody firing at you. But that gives you an idea what kind of scared the crap out…

Um, when I got back out of Vietnam, I went down Midvale, it’s where I graduated high school and they were pretty good there. There, I bet I was offered five or six jobs and they treated me real well there.

Now here in Spokane is not… not the case.

Give you an example, I went over to see one of my cousins and they asked me about Vietnam. I told him this and that.

“Oh, Eric, that… that really didn’t happen.”

“You condescending son of a… it did happen!”

And uh at the end of our conversation, he said uh, “Eric, now that you’re out of the army and everything, what… what are you going to do with your life?”

“Says, well, the reason why I went in the Army in the first place was so I get the GI Bill, fly airplanes and fly helicopters. That’s what I want to do, focus on flying airplanes and flying helicopters, so I can get enough money to buy a ranch. I got now.”

And that was the whole thing. And my cousin looked at me, he says, “Flying airplanes, helicopters? No, Eric, you… you wouldn’t mean make a steward…”

“Where in God’s name did that come from, you know?”

I didn’t want to go to Vietnam, I want to go to Hawaii. I just want to go in the army to… to get a GI Bill to go to school. I wasn’t… he’s a lawyer, I wasn’t, you know, my father wasn’t super wealthy to send me to college, get flight training. I… I want… I had to get… get some money to go flight training.

So what I’m saying, here in Spokane, I was treated pretty crappy. Uh like, “Oh, you… you lowlife scum-sucking…” as if I had some great… it was my fault that I was sent to Vietnam.

The funny thing is I did… I did get my draft notice and my draft notice, they sent me a draft notice when I’d been in Vietnam for 7 months.

Yeah, oh my God, yeah!

And they sent me my draft when I’d been in Vietnam for 7 months. I wish I would have kept that thing, but I didn’t.

But… uh yeah, it seemed like the more educated the people were, the more… or they came down on you.

But like I said, when I went back to Midvale where I had been working for my boarding room when I was going to high school, oh I was treated pretty well. Uh and they offered me jobs and yeah, pat, pat on the back, “Well, we’re glad you’re home, we’re glad you made it back.”

But here in Spokane, I was treated like a lowlife.

Were you uh suffering from any form of PTSD? I know you mentioned the shower incident, but kind of long-term type?

Well, for quite a while after I got out, I used to have bad dreams. And uh I remember one dream that I had that I re-upped to go in the military.

“Oh, my God!”

And as a dream progresses, “You stupid son of a… why did you re-up? What is the matter with you?”

Finally I woke up and I was sweating and I was so happy that that was just a bad dream. That’s just, oh God.

But uh I wouldn’t… other than having super bad dreams, I wouldn’t say I had too much uh… yeah, like guys, I pretty fortunate to compare to a lot of those guys that were in infantry.

Yeah, well, when you reflect on the Vietnam War now and kind of what happened, how you guys were treated, uh what do you think of that… that whole thing?

You know, I really don’t think much about it. I have a lot of friends that they’ll keep in contact with me that that were in Vietnam, we were in Vietnam together. Steve, for example. And then I got another friend named Steve over there in Pennsylvania and we exchange Christmas cards all the time.

But uh and he… he talks about Vietnam, I just kind of… I just want it to go to bed. I put it to bed once and for all. And uh but you know, I’ll talk about it.

But uh yeah, well, I’m glad, like I said, I’m one of the luckier ones to get out of there and that was in infantry, without other than my scratch with a wall locker and know uh yeah, it could have been a lot worse, a lot worse.