3. Horrible Place, FNG, Old Guys

[Music] the jungle was a very horrible place to live in [Music] [ __ ] hot sweaty or [ __ ] leeches those are dirty you don't get a bathroom here is matted together just sweating all times thinking you get lousy food the terrain the snakes the cold icy ground and the food is terrible now you can see rations sucked how come you know you can see rest they sent you out where all the bad ones castles in the rear was stealing the good shape I think made you feel better with a care package from home you know mom send you some kool-aid and cookies or cake take the kool-aid throw it in your canteen a kind of showcase of that nasty-ass water FNG Buccaneer guy I didn't know squat I wasn't prepared for this [Music] all of the [ __ ] new guy very green lieutenant whenever the shooting start everybody would look at what do you want us to do that was some squared one it's a different world when you're brand new he's just scared it took me three or four firefights before I could function before I could see the enemies think about what I'm doing we shoot back we didn't want to shoot at all I know these guys were there they had dirty nasty looking boots and dirty nasty looking fatigues and everything I had was nice and shiny I looked at them as it's a dirty and nasty then they must have been here for a while but they're green and shiny then they must have just got here nobody warms up to anybody right away hey welcome to the club it takes a couple days for them to see you know whether you got your stuff together you know whether gonna be some babbling idiot it was my first experience with combat and it scared me I made it to the wounded soldier I just had a handful of dressings and bandages and I realized then I didn't have enough it was just overwhelming I said can we move him out of here and about that time there's some enemy rounds that ran out pretty much answer my question first actual fire fight a mortar attack early in the morning trying to shave and all of a sudden I heard the thumps and somebody yells incoming and I remember freezing at first you know like that's the first time I had heard this incoming but it was enough to open my eyes to the fact there are people out there trying to kill us there's somebody out there that wants to kill and he's going to do his best to get the job done I changes your whole perspective about everything [Music] depending on what unit you were in if you were there a monkey or an old guy everybody that came in to the brigade in the end of October was an old guy by the end of November if they were still alive Newark had been there for a couple years you've been there since 65 the first firefight yeah I know it's getting shot at but it didn't didn't really scare me like a building block of the 173rd he was always there earnest birch called a merge it's just like a story it's me that I just it was happening but he just didn't think it was happening it was 1967 when I got there so he was already there two years two years in the wind setting third airborne on the line just an amazing thing because of all the combat once every third was in have you ran into someone who spent three years in Saigon or Danai or Tamron Bay an exotic tour dude that's all they had lurch within the jungle all the time I like to excitement I liked it adrenaline rush the guy's a soldier and he mentored a lot of soldiers a young soldier he learned from the leaders Jesse South a doe and lurch were the old guys people felt safe hit by Tom I could get him through so maybe it's just that they saw ahead a lot of time in Vietnam Oh [Music]

Channel: Mark Joyner

Views: 1,796,004

Rating: 4.8079834 out of 5

Keywords: horrible place, fng, old guys, 173rd, vietnam, jungle, central highlands, military, battle, documentary, war, heroes

Id: u8kkFF62ko4

Length: 6min 19sec (379 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2009