Dennis Mannion Interview | Echoes of the Vietnam War: Episode 20

no uh tell me like where you grew up yes um my dad was an FBI agent actually um graduated from Notre Dame in 35 and then Georgetown Law School in 38 became an FBI agent and gay group removed his people all the time so I was born in Massachusetts lived a temporary in Florida three different places in Colorado my brothers were born there my sister was born in Maryland we lived in Brazil for four years he was a legal attache at the embassy and we came to Connecticut at the end of 1958 really technically connected and how old were you then um I was 59 well 66 I was I was born in 46 so 56 13 13. is that right I don't I'm not good at math I was an English teacher um 46 yeah yeah 13 or so yeah um I graduated I graduated high school in 1964. okay a boys Catholic School in West Haven Connecticut and so historical time for me in terms of my teenage years 60 through 64 when I graduated 18. and I was due to go to prep school for a year I played football I was a co-captain I was due to go to prep school for a year and then go to Vermont and play football up there on a scholarship my coach had an in there um and my father asked me to apply to Notre Dame I knew I wouldn't get in my boards were really good but my grades were terrible my students study much and um so without telling me my father applied to Notre Dame for me and in the spring of 64 when people were getting their college uh you know acceptances I got and I said my mother how did this happen she said well your father replied um and I'm sure he was I'm sure he called him up the admissions periodically and said I'm an Alum I contribute to the alumni fund and my boss is Jericho Hoover I want my son to go to Notre Dame so in the fall of 64 instead of going to prep school I went to Vermont I mean I went to South Bend sorry and I never went to Vermont I never played football up there yeah and it only lasted two years in South Bend and then I flunked out and then I had just as good a Time College as I did in high school I love both I really did I'm just didn't study very much and it was I I hitchhiked home from South Bend after my finals in the spring of 66 Memorial Day Weekend through first part of June and I hitchhiked home which I always did from South Bend and then my uh my mother was home when I got home to check through the night and then she said how are your exams I said I think they were pretty good but I mean I didn't even take a couple of them because I was already failing the course you know and then she said okay and then I said you know something about I got a job already working construction and I did and then about two weeks later I came home from my construction job at 4 35 o'clock and my father was home and his car was never in the driveway at 4 35 o'clock ever as an FBI agent and uh when I came in Dennis I'm sorry I'm gonna have to stop you there is are you wearing a watch on your uh is that is that what I'm hearing and I don't think so um is there some papers or something whenever you move your uh yeah it is your watch when your watch scrapes on the desk the microphone is picking it up oh I'm sorry that's not um that's not a it's a little bracelet my granddaughter made me um yeah let me take it off yeah because I I assume I assume that's what's making the noise unless you've got something else you know if you've got notes or a pen or I didn't know I can't really see what's going on there I haven't had this off since I put it on I'm going to try just make sure I'll try to not well I don't I don't want it to screw you up yeah I just don't have the skills to edit out that sound right and I got the house pretty quiet actually so yeah just give me one second yeah sure that's okay take your time take your time we're good on time stretch it over that's how I put it on so I'm good give me one more second oh I don't want you to break it oh she'll be so upset he makes them so I I bought it from her and I could always buy another one but no it's coming now just I just gotta roll it gently it won't break there we go oh no I heard it again that's my arm on the table that's just my arm really yeah wow it's it's really the microphone must be right there or it must be down on the table yeah so um I don't know I don't know whether it might I don't care about the image Park I just I will try to keep my hands down and away from the tape I'm sorry about that yeah okay so uh you your dad you were talking about your your the last exams you took at Notre Dame and uh what happened when your dad came home when so when I got home you know you know I came home my mother said how are your exams I said fine then I went to work the next day never mentioned anything about not taking some exams and failing you got a job that quickly I already had a job lined up on a high school buddy of mine already had the job he called me out in South Bend and he said hey I've got a construction job if you're interested I'll put the word in so that's what I did but then my dad came home one afternoon early when he was never home early and I came into the kitchen and he had he was sitting at the kitchen table he had a cigarette going and he had a can of beer and a letter from South Bend that basically said your son is done and I'd even eligible to go to another school University College for a semester and then reapply it because she's not we're not taking them and he looked up at me and he said God damn it God damn it you're gonna get drafted now that's what's going to happen to you um and um so I essentially lived at this buddy's house which is not far from where I live now um and I went home to get new clothing and you know change the clothing and underwear and stuff but I basically lived in my buddy's house all that summer and in the fall of 66 everybody went back to campus my roommates in South Bend were all back on campus my high school buddies were at various schools and I was sitting home Paving roads for the North Haven construction company and and what are your what are your siblings doing at this time um I had a my brother Tim followed me as a freshman at Notre Dame when I was a sophomore so he was in France and he took the second semester when I should have been a junior he was a sophomore and he was in France and my next brother we're all born right in Rome my next brother was a freshman at Niagara University and my youngest brother was a senior in high school and my sister was in eighth grade um and so where do you fall where do you fall in the birth order I'm the oldest yes you're the oldest wow so the expectations your dad had for you were probably pretty high oh my God yes yeah I mean I he applied you know he he applied for me he really wanted me to go he didn't care and when I when I said you know coach Taylor has got an arrangement with Cheshire Academy I can go there for a year someone will pay for it and he said I don't care I want you to go to South Bend I want you to go there I don't care about the scholarship so I I flunk out my dad tells me I'm going to get drafted what I didn't say to him and I couldn't argue with him like that because I'd flunked out of the school he wanted me to graduate from um what I wanted to say is dad remember when I hurt my knee when I was a junior in high school I never would have been drafted you know I wouldn't be drafted I knew I wouldn't have been drafted I you know I I just I knew it or X-rays of my knee I could have you know I could have gotten by on that and uh but I didn't say anything and then the summer dragged by and then everybody went back to school in the fall of 66. and I was living at home with my youngest brother and my sister and I was you know going to the store for milk and taking the dog for a walk and I just got bored and frustrated my parents were very disappointed heartbroken and angry I was angry that they were angry so in October middle of October 66 I went down to New Haven and I saw a Marine Corps recruiter and what was your what was your awareness at that time of you know what was going on in Vietnam and and particularly the involvement of the United States Marine Corps right um the Gulf of Tonkin had happened in the summer of 64 to two months after I graduated from high school so it was in the news and we were going to go to war and I I don't can't answer that question other than I felt I wanted to go to Vietnam um but I I just I needed to get away from home for sure and I've you know it's been a long decade five over five five decades now and I try to replay that time when I was 19 years old almost 20 at that point I just I don't know I just when we lived in Rio my father worked at the embassy and one day he came home um uh he came home and he had a global anchor pin and he said here one of the Marines gave me this for you and I wore it on my belt buckle down in Brazil when I was in seventh grade you know I did a school report in seventh grade on the Marines Landing in Lebanon in 1958 for God's sakes you know um but and I as I read through went through high school I read a lot about World War II I've seen the Victory at Sea you know I saw Sands of Iwo Jima I saw a pork chop Hill about the Marines in Korea and I just I just thought well maybe this is what I should be doing it wasn't patriotic I didn't do it for patriotic reasons I just was looking for adventure to be honest with you I see did you have any uh uncles or anything who were in the military I um my father as an FBI agent when the war broke out Jagger who recalled those agents to D.C and he said look I know you want to go in the service you're going to you know you want to go but the bureau needs you the bureau needs you don't leave you'll get the same benefits When The War is Over that the JIS will get and so my father hey he was actually in Argentina counteracting German and um Japanese spies in World War II he was down there for two years and when the war got over they never got any benefits yeah but so I had and I had an uncle who was a lawyer and Captain lawyer um on my mother's side and he and and um he was at Normandy but he didn't land D-Day until the third day and he was actually writing people up who had shot themselves in the foot and stuff like that so I see so there was no real uh family history of military service there was no expectation on your parents part that you would go military and you didn't have any particular patriotic um you know you weren't compelled for patriotic reasons your sense of adventure was so strong that you that you joined the United States Marine Corps right after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution uh two years later yes sir and I about that now and really that was the adventure part in the night being naive for sure stupid really foolish um and I joined the Marines particularly because that's where I wanted to go and if they sent me to Korea or sent me the embassy school where I went to an embassy or you know I I would have resented it I really was I really would have so I signed up without telling anyone I never and this is uh sorry this is October of 66. and I I late October 66 and I I signed up I I mean I went to see him we talked he wanted I wanted two years he wanted four we finally settled on three and then I said he said uh so then I had to go and take a fiscal I never told anybody I just took a day off from work and I had my physical never mentioned my knee I I passed the physical a couple days later I went back down to the recruiting office and I got sworn in how did you pass the physical with a bum knee wasn't that bomb it's just what I'm saying is I it wasn't torn up so that I had to have surgery anything it just it had been in a cast and so by one out of going anywhere had I been drafted I could have I could have ducked the draft I could have I know I I know I could have yeah um so I didn't tell him about my knee and it never bothered me I never I mean I you know I played I you know I just I was okay I was fine um and then I didn't tell anybody I got sworn in and he said to me I can put you in the first week of November of November 66 the recruiter said that and I said uh sir I can't go then he goes why the hell not and I said well I'm I'm going out to East Lansing Michigan next week Notre Dame is playing Michigan State and my roommate's got a ticket for me so I'm hitchhiking out to East Lansing and he said oh for God's sakes if you're going to stay home for that then a stupid football game then you might as well stay home for Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year and I'll put you in the first week in January 67. so I came home I'm signed up I'm going in I'm going in on January I'm taking the train out of New Haven on January 5th and I showed my mother the stuff and she said your father is going to be disappointed and when I when he came home I heard my mother from the kitchen say your oldest son has something to show you and we had a big fight about it he he was really angry he punched the refrigerator he said look when you flunked out I knew it was Spike but this I knew it was immaturity and foolishness but this is Spike you're doing it despite us and I said Dad it's not spite I just I gotta go I gotta I gotta go and with that he said wait right here and he went upstairs and he came down with the four loans he had taken out for the four semesters at Notre Dame and he said I would have gladly paid these all my life they're yours now sign here here here and here so I signed him and then he said I never thought I'd live to see the day when I would consider my oldest son to be an and on the word he stopped talking to me he never said pass the support stage go start the car he never said Happy Thanksgiving he never said Merry Christmas he was really bitter really bitter and angry because he knew or what I had signed up for and this is an aside I don't care would ever use it or not doesn't matter I tell audiences when I speak he was a cigarette smoker and he had lung cancer so when he was late 50s he got lung cancer and at some point when he was dying I think he was 61 or 62. he I'd go visit him in the hospital then he'd be home after and one of those days we talked about that time and he said as an FBI agent I knew in 1966 the war wasn't rentable and it just tore me up inside to think that my oldest son would risk everything to go there so that was his rational that's why I mean he was disappointed for sure but he was really angry and scared very scared uh for me and uh but he never could express that and I certainly wouldn't have been willing to listen to it anyway but since I was already signed up so so I went off to boot camp and then I have to say in my father's defense when I was in Vietnam my father wrote me more letters than my mother did he'd write postcards you know he needed a sweatshirt I sent you a slide the other day when I need a sweatshirt I'd write to my father and he was supportive with me when I was over there but he was angry about me going for sure so he was just he was he was terrified terrified yes and angry because he just he didn't think it was it walked the way it was being run it wasn't winnable he knew that in 66. Hill McNamara Newton 67 and he still kept sending kids over there I just that was you know so boot camp was Paris Island I assume Paris Island I arrived on the 6th of January took the train there was about a week of forming up because those drill instructors all have um they had hollered Christmas and New Year so it was a actually slow week but finally got formed up and started official first day of training was the 12th of January but I'd already had my head shaved you know stood on the yellow Footprints went through all of that and then training began on the 12th of December I mean I'm sorry 12th of January 67 and we graduated the 16th of March 67 the day Patrick's day and how did how did those weeks in Paris Island uh uh satisfy or not satisfy your sense of adventure well I never thought the physical part was any worse than triple sessions in football in August even in Connecticut you know the physical part I've been with lifting weights since I was a sophomore in high school it was a two-year starter on our state championship football team you know I was in good shape when I went into the Marine Corps I worked out that whole summer that and that fall when I was no one else was around I worked out when I got home from my job I ran I knew I was in real good shape physically and mentally I never got down on myself because I always kept thinking you signed up for this no one made you do it you know you make your bed you got to sleep in it and so that's what I did um and I had no trouble with that part of it a real good friend of mine from boot camp Carrie Lee Johns he and I were both pretty well built the same way it was from Alabama he was a high school football player and the day we were getting our shots this is just the day we in this week we formed up we're standing next to each other going through the line where the corpsman or giving us shots and that you're getting like six shots in each arm you know and and uh the doctor supervising the corpsman said to the senior drones truck to our senior own structures his starting wedding this afternoon don't you look don't you wish they all look like these two dragon Knuckleheads and the Drone instructor said if they all look like these two buddies Knuckleheads I'd be out of a job and I knew right then that you know I could do it I just knew it and as it turned out Carrie Lee Jones won the award as the best best uh Marine in our platoon I know um but that's I didn't care about that I just you know but I made UFC out of boot camp and I knew that um and only about the honor grad Jerry Lee he got it and about six or seven others was privates were promoted to PFC on graduation day and three nights before and this is why I emphasized that we graduated today before St Patrick's Day the drill instructor had us in a school Circle and we he was reading our Moses to us and O3 is infantry and go one is clerks and O2 is radio and I knew that 08 was artillery and I wanted to hear O3 that's all I wanted to hear and you know I'm in the middle of the Bell alphabet uh I'm in the middle of the alphabet with a man and last name so and most guys are all three but occasional 102's for sure awaits yep and I always thought artillery okay you drive a truck full of shells you pull a lanyard on a cannon and so he got to me now I I'm going to be promoted in three days so I'm not a shipper and I jumped up and I said here sir the private they're here sir and uh he said 08 and I must have winced because he stopped before he could say the other two numbers and he said what the what is wrong with you private what is wrong with you I can't use all the words I don't want to use all of them or the private the private was was hoping to hear O3 sir he says it's oh wait you know what that is and I said the private understands its artillery yes he said it's 0849 you're gonna be a Ford Observer you'll be dead by Christmas sit down and why had you wanted why had you wanted an infantry yeah well when you watch the San jua or you look at the Marine Corps flags of suribachi those those guys aren't clerks you know those guys are all in and it's true I don't you didn't realize until you go in but only 10 15 of the Infantry everybody else supports the Infantry you know but could have been disappointed if I've been a truck driver or if they put me in at a PO as a post office clerk I just so he told me I was going to be a Ford observant in town so so then you had to go somewhere and learn that job well then yes and so we all went up to graduated on the 16th we went up to um for six weeks of individual training regiment where everybody got the artillery course and then we went home on leave for 10 days and the grunts Carrie Lee being one of them went back to Camp Lejeune um other guys went to California to Camp Pendleton for radio school and I went to San Diego to Coronado Island to the Naval Amphibious space because my MOS wasn't artillery it was Naval gunfire Ford observing and the Marines use the fire were on the beach and they call it sure Fire Control and so I went through that course and it was eight weeks I think through the late spring and early summer of 67 and we twice went out to San Clemente Island and stayed for three days and they had these bunkers built with glass big glass windows up on the edge of a big Ravine and the ships would sail out and buy the Ravine back and forth the Navy destroyers and we call in fire missions on dumpsters and old car bodies and you know that's how we learned to take an angle on our compass and read the coordinates and call in Naval gunfire but when I got to Vietnam that changed instantly I became an artillery Ford Observer and so when when was that that you got to Vietnam I went home after Nate after after uh sorry after that Naval gunfire school I came home and I was home for the month of July then back out to California to Camp Pendleton for what everybody went through where if you didn't go over as a unit and I didn't I was a replacement by then they were replacing people rather than said rather than sending whole units over and it was six weeks of staging they called it where you just practiced escaping Invasion and crack you know all that all the nonsense not it's nonsense but it was just hot dry and Dusty the whole July and August or mostly August and early September of 67 and I left uh the week after Labor Day in 67 on a continental jet that took off from El Toro in California and arrived landed on Wake Island and I was really anxious to get off the plane because Wake Island was part of World War II and but they didn't let any help us off the plane they just refueled the plane to include Okinawa and three or four days at Okinawa and by now it's close to the I think it was the 20th of September and another Continental jet with stewardesses on it and everybody we flew to Nang and the stewardesses stood by the door in the front and kept saying good luck Marines good luck Marines good luck see you in 13 months good luck good luck out the door we went and the reason it was 13 months for the Marines is because everybody else was the Army Navy and Air Force were doing 12. so hell if everybody's doing 12 the Marines aren't doing 12 man they're doing 13. so that was their trial and then got off the plane at the name some big base you know we weren't in any danger we're still in Stateside utilities we're not even going to have you know helmets flak jackets anything and they said we went into a big room and they finally get to your name and they'd say you're going up north so you're going here you're going wait wait wait before you get to the big room what do you remember about stepping off the plane I remember the Heat and the humidity I don't remember the people talked about the smell and I can get to the smell later but we were on a base so we weren't near civilian populations where you can smell the different sauces what moist sauce and the real pungent spices that they use to to season their food plus excrement that's been burned or just left you know you I didn't get those smells I just got that heat and humidity and and it's almost oppressive because it just it it closes in on you and you're still in Stateside stuff which probably still has starch in your utilities you know we can wear in uniforms we were in utilities but Stateside utilities not the jungle camps but the bigger legs and the Bigger Pockets and a loose fitting shirt wearing a real tight start shirt and all that so it was that was the part that was I thought keep humidity that was my initial impression but I didn't see civilians at all then I just saw Marines they flew me up north that afternoon I went up to dongha and they just let us off the plane it was a I think it was a C-130 but I'm not sure but no one told us where to go you know it just it was almost dark so another guy and I went very right by the runway there at that at uh fubai outside of dongha and we found a deuce and a half truck big truck and we got in and we slept sitting up in the front cab of the truck for the night and then when the sun came up in the morning then we asked around and somebody sent us here and we went there and then we checked in here and a couple hours later I was in a helicopter to uh caisson which had been very quiet all summer and the hill place in April and early may but when I got there in September they hadn't taken a round of incoming or sniper fires since since July that's how quiet it was there and I but I was in Charlie battery 113 that's a 105 artillery battery that's who I was assigned to but when I checked in they said to me um you're not going to be here very long as soon as the moment comes you're going to get you're going to get attached out to an infantry company and I said okay I mean I didn't you know I didn't know the place was muddy um beautiful scenery though and missed in the Hills it was it was really it was really beautiful there on some of the distant Hills there were bomb craters left over from this encounter or that but nothing like what's coming in six months or five months it was beautiful but I was there I think probably a total of 10 days and then I got orders to join kilo company Third Battalion 26 Marines and they were back in at Camp Evan which is Camp Evans which was near way um and that's how I learned I was going to be an artillery Ford Observer with an infantry company that's why I got the job so I I go to Camp Evans I'm there I'm a PFC because I made PFC out of boot camp and I go to Evans our company Commander is on in country r and r um so he's gone for a couple of days and the 26 Marines had taken a beating at kantien in early September so they were refitting the 26 Marines you know some of those guys there for a year have gone home they were replacing people who've been killed and so there was a real turnover a lot of people were new they were still old hands you know salty guys but there were plenty of new guys like me and we weren't going anywhere for at least a couple weeks I think they told us and I was sitting in uh we were in hardback hooches they had screens around them they had plywood floors there were um cots you know you you picked a cotton that's where you set your stuff up and then uh the next day I met a lieutenant his name was John holderness he lives in Oregon now and he was getting out of the field he was he had been the fort Observer for kilo 326 and he was getting out of the field he'd been there six months he'd been through kantian he was a lieutenant he was a lieutenant and he had been doing the job that you were going to do as a PFC yes sir and that's because um in a normal Marine Corps artillery fo team there's an enlist there's an officer Lieutenant who is the fo an enlisted Scout slash Helper and a radio operator so when he handed me the map and the compass and and he said I'll introduce you to your radio man in a couple of minutes and the binoculars and and I said and he's a Corporal and I said sir where's the lieutenant he said there isn't one there's a shortage of wine officers it's yours so I was the only on the pure artillery enlisted Ford observer in in Third Battalion 26 Marines or all those other guys are officers but I had no real officer responsibility other than what my job was to call in artillery but you know I just but I didn't have enlisted man either I didn't have to burn I didn't have to string barbed wire I didn't have to rig booby trap I didn't do any of that stuff you know I was I I kind of in a way had it made in the shade but when you get in trouble he doesn't be in trouble you got something wrong but when you get in action two words you're gonna choose phrases you're going to heal pretty quickly you're coreming up warming up somebody's been wounded or killed and fola you got to get up and move forward get it that didn't happen right away to me I don't make it I don't want to make it sound like that happened instantly but that's that's why the the nature of an fo job is dangerous because you have to get up and be able to look for where the trouble is with your head looking up and looking around when other people don't have to be looking around necessarily yeah yeah so just forgive me for not you know already knowing the answer to this question but I'm curious about the the working dynamic between an fo and the radio operator uh because you being in that unusual role were outranked by your radio operator and I just wonder how that if whether that whether that recall whether that caused you to develop a different uh way of working together no it worked fine for us Dave crom was my first favorite operator he really was a good guy um he and as Lieutenant holder said to me when I looked at him like I'm the fo he goes get Bill it over rank in combat bill it over rank you hear that all the time and and David understood that he really did we were we were really close friends you know he I never ever pulled a rank on him and said you got to do this I'd always say let's do this can we go here let's take a look here you know and during The Siege I can talk a bit more about that but it was easy and we they put us on Convoy Duty first we would take a convoy from dong ha down to um the Nang and then Birch away and then the next day way down to Danang and Convoy is like a mile long all these trucks and we just provided the security and then then hang up to way and then way up to dongha and then turn the trucks around and that 10 12 day period was the only time I saw civilians because we were on Route One going up and down you know uh Route 1 dirt roads um just protecting the convoys we never saw any action we never saw it never took sniper fire or anything in the time I did it and I used to think you know some of these mountains just north of Danang they'd be perfect for an ambush if this was a World War II movie you know they'd be blowing these Hills up but none of that ever happened I did get to see the country and I got to see civilians not that I dealt with them but I got to see civilians and some of my instamatic camera pictures are of that you know Convoy Duty time and that ended after 10 12 days and then we went on an operation out of Camp Evans to the Kobe Tonton Valley which is up on the edge of the ashaw valley and when I first met Dave my radio operator he said to me I don't know where we're going at any point but you don't want to be going to the ashaw valley you know we don't want I don't want to hear those words and he explained how dangerous it was it was on the mountains west of way and it was a big he said we don't want to be going there I said if that's what you say that's okay with me so we were not in the ass shell we were on the slope east of that and we spent I don't know a week out there and the first day on the way out from Evans on foot not by helicopter where we get to a river and we cross this River and everybody's just like in the movies where the water is chest deep and we're holding our rifles over our heads I qualified for 45 by my job but I didn't want a 45. I asked for an M16 I I didn't want a 45. and we you hold through and I'm thinking wow this is just like in the movies you know and we go another three quarters of a mile and we set in for the night we haven't gotten to where we're going to be yet we set into 360. and the word goes out um I'm looking for volunteers to go get water back at the river and hell I saw all those movies I know what that's about so I jump up and I grab 15 canteens and slam to my rifle sling and go back with six or seven other guys and you know we set up the couple guys went with us for security they set up by the river bank and we filled the canteens we come back a half hour later and the company Commander is in my face screaming at me he said look where have you been he knew what do you want me to say I said sir I went to get water he said look I can get any swing and Dick to go get water you're the fo have you plotted your night defensive targets yet I said no sir I haven't he said well it's almost dark it's a good thing Lieutenant Fordham did it for you and I learned a lesson that my you know I was enlisted but I had officer's job and my job wasn't to carry water it was a real it was an eye-opener for me and I'll go back very quickly he comes back from the third day of in-country RNR and he has a staff meeting in his Hut there at Camp Evans and he called and everybody goes all the officers go everybody the senior corpsman the first sergeant the Gunnery and he looks I walk in with my little red Parris Island notebook and he jumps up the captain looks up and says who the hell are you and the gunny jumps up and said well this is PFC minion he's he's going to take Lieutenant holiness's job and he goes gunny I can't have him be a PFC Megan mccorpool and the first sergeant jumps up and says sir he hasn't been a lance corporal yet and the captain looked in his watch he said first sergeant it's 0900 promote him to Lance corporal when he comes back from noon child make him a corporate so I got promoted to banks in the space of three hours just because of the job but he still yells at me out in the Kobe Tonton Valley for going to get water and I learned my lesson from that because you have when you set in at night you got to set in you need to figure out where you think artillery might best be used Avenues approach fields of fire you have to do that and I knew all that but I just they asked for volunteers to get water so I went I don't know and we were out there for a week and a half 10 days I guess and then we hiked back in to Evans and uh another company replaced this you know one of the other 326 India Company replaced us and then they stayed out for that period of time and now we're out of October we're into Thanksgiving we ran a couple more small overnight operations in and around dongha but nothing heavy duty and right around Thanksgiving we came out of the field 67 we came out of the field right at Thanksgiving we stood under field showers which all they are are platforms with 55 gallon drums filled with water with a hole in the bottom and a cork and you just I got 10 of them rigged up on these platforms and you walk under one pull the cork you get totally wet put the court back in step outside use the soap clean up step back in and rinse off and that was the last time I washed the last week of November 67 that was the last time I saw soap and water to wash with until the last week of April 1968 never washed never washed I wipe my hands on my pants I weigh my hands on my shirt you know but we didn't and then during The Siege we were on the hill we were living in the ground sleeping on pieces of cardboard on the ground and you there's no then the water came in by helicopters so there was no chance to wash at all you know yeah so what were the what were the circumstances of you getting from that area I believe you said Camp Evans uh up to to uh caisson after Thanksgiving we went on a couple overnight things and then we were on trucks getting ready to go up towards Contin it was the 12th of December and we're on trucks and the as I said there were a couple of guys who had still were part of kilo the veterans the salty guys they were really nervous I mean they were really nervous because they knew what kantian was about whereas me and the other new guys we're just we're just along for the ride until until the hits the fan I guess and we were actually moving up route one from dongha and eventually the route the route one kind of deteriorated and that's where we're going to get off the trucks and go on foot further up to kantian and our mission was to Assa we were going to start to establish a new Firebase to the east or the west of kantian I don't remember we were going to establish another one and we were in trucks heading up and the Jeep went flying past all the trucks pulled in front of the first truck and stopped and a major got out and he was yelling turn these turn these trucks around these men are going to case on turn these men around they're going to caisson and most guys are scratching themselves and saying what's case on where's Case on but I already knew because I've been there um and it was still quiet it was still quiet at this time 12th of December it was the build up for what became but there are still absolute silence there really but and we flew in in helicopters and I expected to be looking down and to see you know real stuff going on and the helicopter Banks over the runway there and then swirls around and you see people down on the ground they're in soft covers they don't have helmets on they don't have flak jackets on they got their little trays going to the mess hall you know and we were we were locked and loaded ready to get out fighting that's what we that's what we thought and they send you that quickly but it was just the build up for what became the siege and we stayed at the combat base until the day after Christmas and that's where my company I went to 861 and replaced the company that had been there since October I guess can you talk a little bit about that um I just want to get as you know as Vivid as I can here going from the the base up to the hill what does that entail how long does that take and how how difficult to climb is that it wasn't difficult in the sense it was um we left we were told on Christmas day that we would be leaving the next day and I knew from and again because I was the fo I had a map I always knew where it were I always knew how far we had to go that was never an issue for me so at where are where our tent was Dave and I we had a tent we stole the cargo parachute and draped it over our shelter halves and we were really like two snug bugs in a rug man we just were we were out of the breeze and the wind and the cold air and the so but on Christmas Day we were told that you have your gear ready because in the morning you're leaving on foot to go across the flat ground and then 3 000 meters and you get to the base of what's 861 and then you're gonna go up on you going up there and I wasn't relating that on the fl's job is to lead I was just filing you know in the CP group and but they went on foot three thousand meters straight across the flat ground right past the landing of the drop zone for all the parachutes and cargo that was coming in this is all precedes now it's the day after Christmas yeah um and then we got on the slope and there was some sort of a trail and there were actually tank marks and where they had tracked Vehicles during the hill fights where the elephant grass was still flattened and burnt and so that way and we approached from the southern end of age 61 and as we walked into the perimeter over stepping over the trench or you know climbing down the trench and getting up on the other side because you couldn't jump It's too wide um we had I was I headed to the top of the hill someone was down at the LC so 861 sat up like this and the southern end of it leveled off maybe a couple hundred feet below the hill top of the hill and that was where the landing Zone was but the Northern end and the Western end the top the highest part of the hill is where I was sent and how much how much elevation gain is that from where you started a couple hundred feet and my the guy at the uh when I went to the class at the wall back there and when they had the inaugural class I was in that class that came down and they sponsored us to be representatives for our state he said to me he was an engineer and um he said it wasn't flat down there we brought up they brought up the Seabees put a bulldozer on one of the Choppers and they brought it up there and then when we they we flattened out that bottom part of the hill to make the landing Zone and I said what happened to The Boulders he said when it was over we just put it in the drive and let it just drove down into a ravine no one was driving it they just left the throttle on and jumped off and the thing disappeared into the Ravine um so the flat part was there then there was a vertical 150 200 feet and then you were at the very top of the hill and I was assigned to a bunker a knock was an above ground bunker but in the northwest corner because the sense was if they're coming this is where we're going to be coming from and not going to be coming from the south they're going to be coming from the west or the north um and I think if I was a lieutenant I probably would have been in the CP bunker with our captain new captain now Captain Jasper um you know with the first sergeant the Gunnery Sergeant you know I that's where I would have been but he didn't want us he didn't want Dave and I you know even though we were both corporals he didn't want us there so he we were on our own he assigned us to he said here this would be a good spot for you guys and all the bunkers were above ground at that point they had tried to put them in the ground but during the monsoons in the fall they just all washed away or flooded and they just knew they couldn't they couldn't possibly even the ones in the trench line actually worse because the water would just roar down the trench line just eroding all those fighting holes in those positions so the bunker that we wasn't it was an above ground bunker made of sandbags and that's where we stayed until the fighting began by then we were converting into the ground but that took about two weeks and so we arrived it was I don't remember the day specifically I just remember that it wasn't hard in terms of getting up the hill we're loaded down with equipment don't get me wrong but I had backpacked in high school and I in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and done a fair amount of that so and you know the Marines get used a little bit the only problem was the packs all that stuff was World War II and Korean stuff you know the Army had these framed Alice packs and we didn't have that stuff you know we said this old stupid soft things and my Dave used to carry his C rash in cans in two black uh black socks big athletic socks that he tied a knot in and draped over his radio because he didn't have room in his back you know I mean it just seems bizarre now but that's that's how he traveled um we got there we were assigned and then the very next day which would have been December 27th they ran the first Patrol out to the west and Dave and I went and we went on every Patrol they ran a long Patrol and a short Patrol we always went on the long Patrol which was going to last all day by the time we get back it would be close to dark just in time to eat see rations and clean up our equipment and the next morning out on another sometimes to the South to the west and to the north and I didn't resent it's what I was you know that was the job I had but I used to think man it'd be nice to have a day off here you know but and they weren't sending the whole company they'd send one platoon reinforced with their default and maybe a couple of machine guns and stuff like that but it wasn't the full company if most people were staying on the hill and uh but the value or the benefit for me later when the siege did begin in January is that I had a sense of what the terrain was out there I knew what it looked like behind this Ridgeline I knew knew what it looked like out there so it helped me have a sense of where they might be but that didn't come into play until January and we went on patrols every day from the 27th until I think it was the 15th it might have been the 16th of January where the Marines were told seal up the barbed wire get rid of the gates you know these like an old football field you want to zigzag Through the Wire they built their barbed wire the same way so you just zigzag zigzag now you close all that up and you're staying no more controlling no more patrolling because it was they knew it was coming you know they just you know and the analogy I've always used um I taught at a public high school it wasn't an inner city high school but it was a fairly mundane you know public high school in Connecticut and sometimes you come to school on a Monday and just everybody in the senior class everybody knew that these two kids were going to fight you know or two Juniors they were going to fight sometime over a girl maybe or some front a front over the weekend and everybody knew about the janitors knew about it the kids knew about it the teachers learned about it and the administration finally hears about it and they put a stop to it if they can but every once in a while they don't because they can't and all of a sudden at lunch time in the cafeteria these two kids who may have been in the same class for three periods in a row start swinging you know when they're going to get you know they're going to get suspended except whatever but it was the same thing over there everybody in the world knew what was coming at Cason everybody did but we weren't two high school kids we were heavily armed people and they were heavily armed people and this fight was inevitable it was going to happen and that was the sense that's how we felt about it and the last thing I would say about before it all started was uh probably on the 17th or the 18th which is two days before it started Captain Jasper came by my bunker and he said um we're getting all we're going to get we're going to get to platoons on the North and the Eastern side of the Hill they're going down to The Landing Zone CP group is going down to The Landing Zone you and your radio operator are going to stay up here and you're going to register the 175s from Camp Carroll 18 miles away and so that base was yeah sorry just for listeners who aren't familiar with that terminology can you explain what that means to register the 175s yeah so any artillery for observing you you don't fire like you you sense there's trouble in a certain spot well you don't just fire a lot of rounds here you have to adjust those rounds you have to make them hit so whenever you do a one gun one round shot comes out you see it you tell them left 200 add 300 or write 75 drop 25 and then when you get the round the land where you want then you call fire Fair effect and they'll fire as many rounds as you want them to fire and at the same time you can also register targets I did that with the 105s around 861. so you'd get around to land right where you thought this could be an Avenue of approach and this could be and then you get it around to hit there and then you tell the guns check fire record uh request a target number and so they compute the data they give you a target number and then two days later a month later if you there's people in that spot you just ask for the target number and you have to do any adjusting you just they just shoot so one fives are the biggest gun the United States had over there 175 millimeter guns the combat base the runway ran east east west and to north of the combat base were two mountains 950 which Marines were on in 10-15 and then 861 881 South were further to the West behind those two Hills 9th 15 10 15. it was a straight shot all the way to Camp Carroll because I used to think we were near the DMZ until I got my maps oriented in case I'm not right next to the DMZ it's about I don't know 7 000 meters below the DMC whereas um Camp Carroll and the rock pile were the 175s where they were closer to the DMC they could never have fired at the combat base in support because of the mountains in the way but they could fire behind 9 50 and 10 15 and have rounds Land north of us so everybody's the hill and it's just Dave and I the Corporal from Maryland and a Corporal from Connecticut sitting up there in a hole in the ground and they they're relaying the message up through 950 the Marines up there have direct communication with the Army and you they were Colorado one nine and then so that first round would come in and the only thing with the one thing about 175s is they come faster than the speed of sound now we never would have heard the gun from 18 miles away but if you were close to a 175 and it's firing at you you'd never hear the gun and then the swishing sound in the air the round would land and then you'd hear all that stuff for us the realm would land and we knew it because the guy would tell a shot and he'd repeat it and we'd say shot and we knew when it was going to hit he'd say Splash but what we would hear after the round hit was as he was coming through the air but it already happened it was on the ground already so we got it to land from 18 miles away 200 meters outside the wire in three different spots North and Northwest of 861 and then we got Target numbers from them and thank the Arty and that's how we registered the guns um and then all the grunts came back up to the other side of the hill and we settled in for what turned out to be the last two days before it got really ugly now was the night of the 20th in the beginning of the 21st hmm I could go forever here I don't know yeah no so I'm just trying I'm trying to get the picture so most everybody went back to the to the uh to the The Landing zone right they went back down the hill they just scattered around down there met up with buddies or whatever and then when shooting was over an hour later because they they were it was really dangerous I mean if they you know if they slip up from 18 miles away and they the elevation's too much on the gun you're you're you know that is a killing radius of at least 100 yards you know you can't be near that stuff at all when it lands so that's what we were that was our job so we did it and once we were done and then all those guys came out you know the hills had still Marines all the way around it and the last I'll say is this on the 20th of September early in the morning India had gone off 881 South and they were contesting with some NBA people on 881 North and we were jumping the frequencies so Dave and I were listening to that they were calling in for artillery and we're listening to that and then I got a call from Captain Jasper saying one of the one of the Marines in the trench line right on the western side facing directly out saw some MBA up on the Ridgeline which line of sight is only 500 meters from us it was only 500 meters in the same height even slightly higher than us and it ran the whole length of what was 861 but it's 500 meters away it's a cover with elephant grass and jumbo growth so he says to me do you have a target number over there Corporal and I said yes sir I do so would you fire can you get me fired a dozen rounds sure so I call up the target number x-ray Delta 595 fire emission this is and say fire one good fire for effect boom these rounds all hit they got permission to go outside the gate and to run a little Patrol over there and I didn't have to go it's only 500 yards I'm in sight where they are but I kind of want to see the fruits of our labor I want to be able to tell the people down in Charlie battery 113 what we saw so I go with Dave I said David come on let's go with him and I'm in Converse black low sneakers I'm not even in Jungle Books I brought my Converse black rose sneakers with me to Vietnam and I wore them all the time up there on 861. when I wasn't going on patrol but on this Patrol since we're only going five you know down into a little you know a little draw cross over to the other side of the hill and then get up on this Ridge line so we get up there there's 15 of us there's not even an officer just a staff sergeant and 15 or 20 of us and the elephant grass is all smashed the smell of the chloride the gunpowder it's gunpowder you smell that and there's blood there's blood on the elephant grass there's blood on the ground where they've dragged people so we the guy the staff sergeant in charge of the patrol radios to the hill and says request permission to jump over to the western side of the Ridgeline and the radar operator said wait one and then about 20 seconds later he came back and he I'm standing right next to them staff sergeants and he says uh the six meaning Captain Jasper the six want you to turn around and come back now and the staff sergeant said uh uh blank blank you know radio they said look there's blood here there's tracks here requesting permission and Captain Jasper gets on the phone himself and says Sergeant so-and-so-so turn around now and come back so everybody's you know because the grunts are thinking adult buckles and you know you look for stuff wallets anything but they did to us we did it to them and we turned around and everybody's just Toronto we get back it takes you know 45 minutes to get onto the hill and what I didn't know and didn't learn until later was it around the time we were leaving to go out an NVA officer down at the fight down at the combat base stood up outside the barbed wire I don't know what sector he was in and he had a AK-47 in one hand and he had a white flag in the other and they yelled for him to drop the weapon he did instead of killing them they went out with a team and they got him and they brought him in and he was a lieutenant he hadn't been paid he'd been passed over for promotion so he decided to quit and when they got him into the you know into S2 or the S1 guys were talking to them they weren't torching them he said look here's the plan 861 is going to get attacked at night at midnight so it's 881 South and the base will get attacked in the morning when the sun comes up and that's what saved my life because had the 18 of us dropped over on the other side of the Ridgeline there was a battalion down there there were 700 NBA soldiers on the other side of that Ridgeline just waiting for us and if that guy hadn't given up I wouldn't be I probably wouldn't be here doing this interview with you and so he they didn't know whether the lieutenant down that the base was a ruse was he was faking this out but they couldn't take a chance that he wasn't so they radioed up to the hills and said you have to you can't be on 50 alert you got to be on 100 alert you can't have one guy sleeping and one guy up you have to you have to be on 100 alert and so that's how we were and um then there was a green flare about one o'clock in the morning and they came up the hill I'm shortchanging that and I don't want to shortchange you or whoever might hear this I just we it was it was it's absolutely flat out dark we're in our we had started digging a hole right next to our bunker which was collapsing and we'd stolen some sandbags from it it wasn't and we knew it had to be living in the ground we started digging the hole two days before and during that night of the 20th starting after eight o'clock at night some I you could hear the NVA out in the wire talking in the dark and they were cutting the barbed wire and laughing and giggling and you'd hear the wire go pee and you don't fire at them you don't want to give away where your rifles are you throw a grenade if you want and people did that I didn't I was up on top but someone said to me can you come down here so I go down and Lieutenant down there Lieutenant for him the guy that helped me out almost a month before I said just listened and so you could hear them they're like kids on a school field trip they were just down there in the dark on this edge of the northwest corner of the Hill cutting the barbed wire and they the grunts would throw grenades and every once in a while they'd make contact with somebody because you should hear people yelling but they went about it that was their business cutting holes in the wire and that Northwest corn they weren't stupid those people that northwest corner of 861 it was the place where the ground in front of it was as shallow as any other part of the Hill were two Ravines one on the west one on the east The South was also flat we had come up that way but they're not going to attack from the south because they're under the guns from caisson if they do that so really the only place they can really attack is from the northwest because it's the flattest spot outside the last row of triple strand concertina wire it's also and they know this they're good artillery people it's the only place the 105s from the base can't hit because the hill sticks up in the way so the rounds come from the base and here's 861 they're going to hit 861 on their way to the Y unless you're shooting further out and I would say when it when when it began to happen at least five or six rounds hit 861. I thank God no one was ever hurt by 105 shelves I know that for a fact but we were trying to skim those 105 rounds to come directly down into that Ravine you know not Ravine the flat ground where we could where we were attacked from that's where they came from and going back to midnight it was just just after midnight and I don't know 20 minutes after midnight we're still both wide awake we're seeing we're standing in this bunker that we had started to dig we did a little bit over at protection but nothing that would have saved this and uh Captain Jasper called on the landline it's just a phone wire buried in the dirt from one bunker to another and he said some of the Marines some of the grunts to the South End Of The Hill South of the LZ have spotted a couple NBA out in the fog I need you to go down there and check that out so you go but you also bring everything you have to bring your helmet your flat Jack you can't leave that stuff behind you Dave and I go down there which means you go over the top of the hill go down this Dirt Track Road it's not a road just dirt pathway down to the LZ cross over the LZ and get in the trench line nothing there's nothing to be seen but it's mist and fog and I we wait and then all of a sudden on the western Ridge a green Flair went up and the whole northwest corner of the Hill got pounded where we had just left from by rockets and you know RPGs and recoilless rifle fire and mortar fire I mean they were hidden everywhere on the hill but the primary focus was the Northwest corner so Dave and I today we've got to get back up so we go back up towards the top of the hill but we don't get to the full top we're right by the CP bunker and the company Gunnery Sergeant was out laying on the ground he'd been killed he was a great guy from Pennsylvania and the whole CP bunker was a shambles had been hit with an RPG Captain Jasper was wounded radio operator was wounded so I said to David we can't we can't go this way we've got to get to where they're you know where they're probably coming from but we've got so we went back down the hill to the LZ and then crossed over and got into the Western trench line and we kept working our way up the trench line with all the gun fire and explosions and we passed Marine after Marine then we got to a certain point I'd say it is right if you're right that's it I don't think so I don't think so and we got up to a point where we were just at the curve of the northwest corner and you could start to see in the muzzle flashes and then flares will then drop you can see people out there trying to get Through the Wire they had already penetrated the wire they'd already been in inside the wire I didn't know that then and then that's where Dave and I settled in for the rest of the night and we were we were we got up to a point where there was a machine gun bunker this is before we could see beyond us and I knew the machine gun I don't remember his name anymore and there's supposed to be three or four guys in this bunker and he's firing and he's and I I said I'm gonna make up on him say Ralph Ralph that's a status thing he said oh yeah he said you know get in here so we go in it's built into the side of the trench and I said where's your crew said I don't know he said I said are you shooting at people he said no I don't see anybody I'm just reconing I'm just firing a burst fire a burst into the dark you know at that Ridge line I said well we've got to go further up and he said well there's an MDA guy right there in the trench line in the dark Beyond where the bunker is I said they're here already they're in here already he said yeah I can hear him he's moaning and groaning I think he got hit by one of his own hand grenades and I said you got to get by that guy and you can't see him you can't turn the flashlight on him I've got a flashlight you can't turn it on um and I said to I said David you got to give me your 45 so David give me gave me his 45 and I sat down in the dirt leaned out the edgeway of the bunker and then reached around the corner into the dark and then I had 45 in my right hand and I had my left hand like this and finally in the dark I felt somebody's head and when I touched his head he lifted it up and I just put the 45 underneath took my hand away and fired a couple of times and I knew it was dead and then he and I Dave and I then probably I'm sure we stepped on him and then we climbed past him and got up around the corner where we could see and then behind us the machine gun bunker got hit with an RPG but the Gunner was he he was alive he survived that but the gun was knocked out of action and then we called artillery in for the rest of the night from from right there that's that was the night of the 20th the morning of the 21st and sure enough just as the sun began to come up the combat base got attacked with rockets from from Laos and artillery from coal Rocco it was just like the guy said and the only reason 881 on the 20th all day and they were ready to press the charge to the top and they were told to come back in and they weren't happy about that either but they didn't get attacked and that saved us too because that night Captain Dabney authorized his 81 millimeter mortar guys and they fired almost a thousand 81 millimeter mortar rounds at max range from 881 South into that flat area and in front of 861 where the NBA were coming from over almost a thousand rounds of the 881 mortar landed there and had they been fighting their own battle over there they wouldn't have been able to help us so you were getting started there so yeah so you want to tell me about the map in your hand yeah I do I will for a second yes this is my original Ford Observer map from from case on um I managed to get it home it's folded over many times and it folded up to the area where I was and where the seeds took place in my hill and the various hills around it but each grid square is a thousand square meters and many of them have Target numbers on them and diagrams and Compass markings um then I got contact papers so I didn't deal with it anymore and it's preserved that way it's like a bit of history and I think sometimes of a grid square and I think of all the people that were in that grid Square from time to time and the depth and the trauma the tragedy and the good times and laughter and you know just all of it and not every good Square had anybody in it but plenty of them did and it represent that's it so it stays in my desk drawer and sometimes at night I'll look at it and just try to think back to what it was like then in some of those grid squares enough of Show and Tell yeah yeah so yesterday when we left off you would just uh started to talk about the very beginning of the siege um can you talk a little just about about uh your experience in in that role as a forward Observer uh once he's once The Siege began and what those what those weeks were like things that things that really stand out in your memory okay um I can um I'm not sure where we left off yesterday in terms of all that but as the Ford Observer for my infantry company um and there were some four Deuce mortar men up there probably 15 or 20 of those guys that was our we had about 165 Marines or Navy corpsman on that hill and um in a sense when you're the artillery Ford Observer particularly in a place like that where we were fixed and we weren't going anywhere my responsibility is to make sure that the hill is protected as much as possible through the use of artillery um that's where my training was and and so in a sense that's what I did um did I begin did I talk about the beginning of the siege in the first night did I mention that at all in terms of the NBA coming through the wire and I did all that right yeah you did um in the morning once the base was attacked it was a matter of us digging deeper and deeper and deeper and we weren't joined right away by the 81 millimeter fo and his mid 81 millimeter mortar fo team was a radio fo and His Radio operator they came into our bunker halfway through the construction of it and we used only entrenching tools we didn't have any not even a shovel on 861 just those little folding trenching tools and we dug our bunker down into the sand into the dirt mostly clay red clay very few rocks if it was New England we couldn't have done it we could not have done it in New England absolutely not and we eventually dug down 10 feet by 10 feet square and then put a log across the top and then put some engineering Stakes on the log and then started putting sandbags on it you had to climb up a ladder to get in and out of the thing it probably took us two weeks usually working at night and once we got down below five feet we would just dump the dirt into somebody's helmet and that guy would pass it up to the guy at the top and they'd dump the dirt outside and eventually all that dirt either we didn't need sandbags once we filled a certain number just we just thought we didn't need any more all the rest of that dirt just went on top of everything I'm telling you if we'd ever gotten real bad rain for a day or two that whole thing could have collapsed very easily and killed us all and we never thought about that but you know it wasn't being held up by much and we certainly weren't Engineers but after that first night um in the morning my real responsibility was to go through the list of my targets and Target numbers that we had called during the night try to give some sort of an assessment of what was going on out there the North Vietnamese who died inside the wire on age 61 and this is three rows of triple concertina and geez when the sun came up in that northwest corner there were guys literally inside the wire inside the triple somehow they got in there they you know they probably I mean they were probably dying anyway but they were they had been cut by the barbed wire there were also bodies just outside the last strand of barbed wire um and they ran a patrol out there just to we couldn't get rid of the guys we couldn't get rid of the guys who were in the barbed wire they stayed and the ones on the ground we didn't vary either we went out there to see if they had some weapons I went and the only body I turned over was an officer and it was only the date it was just that next day and there were already maggots on him he'd been out there for less than 24 hours but he had a map case and so I took it and I brought it back to the hill when everybody when they're 15 or 20 of the Infantry guys came back on the hill and I settled in the bunker and I took it out it had a red and blue pencil where it's red on one end and blue on the other and in English it said red and blue pencil made in Hanoi I mailed it home and I had it for years in my classroom and then one day some kid probably took it and the other thing were beautiful a set of maps of the caisson area and they were bigger grid squares than my map there were French Maps they had French on them and so about a half hour after I was back at the bunker and Dave and I were looking at these beautiful maps that I'm saying to them this is the maps man these we're going to start using these some staff sergeant showed up and he goes where's the map and I said my map my my hell it's right here he said no not that bad where's the big map I said steps are not so so and so I I I'm not sure what you're what I'm talking what you're talking about he said don't give me that I want the map it's got to go down to S1 or S2 at the base intelligence or you know that kind of thing so very reluctantly I handed over my French case on map which is a whole lot better than the maps we were using in terms how did he hear about it well from the other grunts who were talking because I was talking about it coming through the wire with the other guys you know this is great I can use this map now so somebody spoke to somebody and somebody spoke to somebody else and yeah I got and I was if I had kept my mouth shut I'd have been fine anyhow my daily routine was to um we got more we've got mortared plenty of times whenever we got mortared and we had a lot of targets already pre-planned uh otherwise we called in new fire emissions and we had to fire a counter uh we could get artillery but that takes a couple of minutes while you're getting mortared and everybody else is below ground and David and I are up with our helmets you know and looking around um and we got mortared from as far out as 2 000 meters away and is less than 300 meters away but the 300 guys were closer and they were on the back side of a little Ridgeline here or there all you could see where the muzzle Blast coming up and so we knew even before someone yelled incoming that um you know rounds were on their way and you had about 12 or 15 seconds I did send you a photo of me with the ship's binoculars but I also could point out that two things one binoculars I have Boston long beautiful Russian loan Marine Corps serial number binoculars and they the date on them was 1944 so they're from World War II they have a serial number on them they put that serial number in my record book so that's my was responsible for them and just before the siege I called down to the already batteries because I got tired of handing my binoculars to Dave and say hey look you know look over there by that tree that looks like this or look over there that Merry-Go-Round place we named merry go round but so I called up and I said any chance we could get another pair of binoculars and they said no it's not it's impossible if I'd been an officer I bet they would have said yes but I was just the Corporal so the first night when we got partially overrun that night and there were NBA inside our perimeter in the morning I called up and I said my bunker my my binoculars got hit by shrapnel last night they're useless that very afternoon I had a new pair of binoculars so David now had a pair and I had a pair and we could both be looking at our you know it was great and then when it was over at the end when I finally rotated home I sent my original pair of binoculars to My Buddy Joe who lives Joe Dougherty was my best friend in high school I've nailed them to him along with my map um so when I came home a year later or less than a year later he had the binoculars on his desk in his room and I've got him still um my Marine Corps original and then when I checked and the guy checked me out at the end of my tour in October of 68 and he said you have these no he's these are and I said no no they were changed the other ones got blown up he said oh you're right here's the new serial number so I was off the hook um but that was my job during the day and the same thing at night we were also involved in um the Marines that's just probably late January so we're taking incoming during the day we're taking incoming at night we never we were probe but we were never we were never attacked again in a full force in that 70 days that remaining um are are gonna go to food and water everything on the hill in terms of resupply I had to come by helicopter water came by helicopter sea rations ammunition ammunition was the first priority um uh water is the second and then sea rations were third and by February we were down to one canteen of water a day and you sometimes two sea ration meals a day and for periods of time when they couldn't get resupply and it would be one uh you know one box of C rations a day but we weren't going anywhere either we weren't expending a lot of energy you know so that was doable the comical part about that was there were my bunker was right next to a thousand pound bomb crater left over from the hill fights on the western side of the hill on the Eastern side of the hill was the other bomb crater and they were they faced the combat base so they weren't going to get mortared or attacked from that area when we got NRC rations they'd come in on the helicopters in those big Nets and they put them in that bomb crater on the Eastern side so there'd be a hundred cases you know well Marines and Marines guys were going over there at night and stealing stuff you know so they they had to put an armed guard sitting on top of all the sea rash and she probably stole at least two cases but you know but they so the company Commander got sick of that and so what happened and he just said we're getting resupply they told me we're getting C rations today and I'm Distributing all of them everybody's getting enough food for seven days if you eat it all in the first three days don't come looking to me so we no longer had a post to guard on the sea rations you know it did they distributed them right away so that was comical in that sense but Marines just would do that stuff just matter of habit you know I was over there at least once myself looking for stuff um we also I got the ships binoculars that first week no one even they just they said like they called me on the landline and they said there's something down at the LZ for you and I said well I'm not going down there now in the daytime I'll come down when it starts to get dark and when it did I went down and there was this parabinoculars there they weighed about 23 pounds and supposed to be on the bridge of a ship on a swivel or on the front of the ship they came off the Navy US Navy vessel somewhere out in South China Sea and 881 South had a pair as well and it was for the use of the fo um I don't think my company Commander ever looked through them but they were incredibly powerful but you had to lift them up and but we were basically facing as I said West and Northwest the following week just before January 31st I got another message to go down to the LZ there was there was a package for me so I said well I'm waiting till it's almost dark and I go down there and there was a plastic heavy heavy plastic it looked like a oversized Foot Locker it was black but it wasn't wood it was plastic and so I said well how the hell am I going to get this up the hill you know and one of the guys down there said well I'll help you carry it up so he grabbed one handle I grabbed the other and leave so we left it stayed outside the bunker for a day or two and then we got around to it and it was a knight an nod a night observation device now there were night observation devices that were on rifles they could be mounted right on an M16 or an M14 and you look through that like looking through a telescope this thing had a barrel on it that was this twice the size of a dinner plate in a big tube then it came back to a reduction in reduction reduction and finally an earpiece that was had rubber around it so you could put your eye right in it and it had a tripod and the thing could swivel and it had the first batteries I had ever seen in my life that look like quarters or nickels they weren't I was always used to the regular now we have those but and you put them in two end and there was a package of six or seven and the thing would start to wind and fcno you're looking at 500 meters away in the total dark and you can see people over there on that other Ridgeline walking around bringing up logs digging holes it was unbelievable and then you take your eye away and look over there and you're consuming there's be you couldn't see your hand basically in front of your face but this night observation device was that powerful and we there was a the 106 recoilers rifle was near us and um that fires one single shot at a time and it doesn't vary so that's why it's recoilers they it fires the back blast comes out the back Michelle goes out the front and essentially if you put another round in it's going to fire it in the exact same spot so we figured out a spot where those guys were um and we fight and they have a 50 caliber on top of that and they use a 50 caliber with a like a it's got the strength around and it Trace around and when it hits the ground you can see the red and then the barrel of the 106 is bore sighted with the 50 on top of it so they don't have to waste ammunition you know use 50 caliber one shot at a time bolt action so they they got the round to land right where we wanted it was about five o'clock and it's going to be dark by 6 30 so we waited we waited till about eight o'clock and then David and I turned on the scope and the guys were 100 feet from us and I looked through and I said David look at this and there must have been 20 guys over here and so David yelled down to them hit the button and they hit the button and the 106 went off but the light was so powerful from the from the charge that it shorted out the the night observation device it went offline and it was probably down for five or ten minutes before it came back up and by then it was over you know it was over then we just didn't so we learned we would tell them get ready we would turn off the thing and then go and they'd fire it then we'd turn it back on and you'd see bodies on the ground and people pulling bodies away we just picked a different spot every afternoon and if 106 wasn't used anymore they they'd set it up just so they need it to be and just put a tarp on it and wait and then that's how we killed a bunch of them with that the thing was amazing it really was I mean it was it was the telescope as well as night observation and it was so powerful in terms of how it absorbed the light that if there was a full moon it wouldn't work because it it absorbed it's too much light it just needs Starlight really is how it operated so they it was the first use of those big night observation devices and one of them sat there in the bunker in its little suitcase or a little trunk next to me and we'd lug it up in the afternoon and set it up for the night you could see people a long ways away with the binoculars in the daytime I could see people NBA eight miles away through those binoculars on those Far Hills North of 861 you know moving or carrying and pulling supplies and stuff they were almost out of range of artillery so we couldn't work a fire mission but eventually they'd get closer and then you could um what were your uh you know during that during The Siege you know you you talk a lot about kind of what you and your your um your fellow Marines were up to but you were you were observing the enemy um yeah you know what do you remember about your impressions of of how those guys operated I would say the the um I had a couple of thoughts one they looked even in in if some of them were closer and they even if they were dead and I looked at them through the Navy binoculars in the daytime and they were over on that Ridgeline 500 meters away straight across they look filthy you know they look they looked as filthy as we did I mean they were living in the ground like we were they also had more equipment on them than I'd seen other soldiers and I can go back to the men in the wire there those dead NBA just outside the wire and inside the triple concertina within two to three weeks they were total skeletons they still had their little helmets on they still had their shirt on and their shoes or their sneakers and their pants but it was just all skeletal the the bugs and the Rats had eaten all the Flesh and all the organs away um so it was the Eerie sight to look out and see these you know an arm coming out of a tattered uniform and it was just the hands but just the bones just the bones of somebody's hand um they were they were tenacious and I would say they were braver than I would have been I mean I I don't know I mean I I don't you can't judge your own bravery and how you act I did what I had to do but they did things in terms I can give you an example we we got Napalm a lot from the airstrikes on Napalm strikes um 500 meters away we were so close to that at 500 meters when the when the Napalm hit the ground 750 pound canister and all goes up in one big you could feel the heat 500 meters away you could just briefly but you could you could feel the heat um and one day these Jets were running they're running north to south because the number go east to west that crosses right over the top of us so all their missions were north to south on that Ridge line in the Ravine between the two hills and on the back of that Ridge but this guy was he was coming in he'd already dropped one canister of Napalm he did a big loop and he's coming around again I don't remember what kind of jet it was I think he was a Marine Corps pilot and he's on the approach to that Ridgeline and an NBA Soldier jumped up with an AK-47 and started shooting at the jet who's coming at him at 200 miles an hour maybe 100 feet above him and he's going like this you know he's raising his and then the guy releases the Napalm and it tumbles forward and it hit the ground just in front of him and just like a big wave in the ocean it knocked the guy back about 15 or 20 feet onto his back and then the fire rolled over on top of him you know what I'm saying the the force of the explosion drove the guy in the air backwards and he hit the ground and then the Napalm rolled over him and he was obviously done but I thought I would never do that I mean you you couldn't give me enough money to do that not enough patriotism to do that you know but he thought he was going to be able to shoot down a jet with his AK-47 and somehow save somebody and it would you know I guess it was Braves that's what he wanted to do so he did it well they were they were determined right um you talked a little bit about uh what was it called co-rock yes which was a surprise to me just how how uh clever that was can you can you tell me more about that and on that Cole Rock was a rock massive of granite it was on the Laotian side of the border so on my map here and my contour lines those contour lines are stacked right on top of one another and the whole thing faced from the south towards the combat base and it's 8 000 meters away nine thousand meters away but on so coal rock is a cliff like this and behind it it goes like that so over the over the months they dug tunnels in to back and then cut through or blasted through the Rock and their big cannons were inside the cliff there and they could roll them out to the end like The Guns of Navarone when I was a kid and they could roll those things out fire five or six rounds and roll them back in and fighter aircraft couldn't attack him because you got the cliff there you know you may try to rock it and use your guns but at certain point you got to pull up um B-52 strikes on top but it's 200 feet of granite down to where those caves were so that's they and they were firing from that from co-rock that's not the only place they were but that was their biggest artillery they were firing almost perpendicular to the runway and artillery is notable for being accurate once you get to distance so they can get around to land on the runway and then they're not they don't go long or short they tend to go where you've aimed them once you get it to the spot then you just have to shift left or shift right and they could walk those rounds right down the runway you know the rocket battalions were to the north behind 881 North most of the rocket battalions Rockets shoot they tend to be long or short you have no control over them once you launch them in the air and they tend to be long or short so once they got the distance from where they were to the runway they're shooting literally down the runway from 10 000 meters away and those guys would travel right over the top 861 on their way and if they were short or long it didn't matter they were still hitting the runway so one or two of them malfunctioned in the air and landed right outside the hill where the end of that Ridge line came down in front of our positions out there with the laden Parts out there for a long time but it was a malfunction you hear the engine kind of sputtering and then it crashed to the ground didn't blow up but those are 122 Rockets they make a huge hole in the ground but I didn't deal with that stuff you can't hit a hill like 861 with any consistency with a with a rocket or even artillery actually you know we were mortars 82 millimeter mortars some 120 mortars lots of RPGs um were coil-less rifles yes they had a 57 recoilless rifle millimeter recoilless rifle um and they murdered us a lot and they would move around so they'd water us from one spot and I'd get a Target I'd fire some rounds there they'd stop I'd record the data but then the next day or two days later when they fired they didn't fire from that spot again they moved you know they'd be another 100 yards away in order to have to shift my calls we had this hill below us on the right 861 Alpha which was established after The Siege began I think they got they came out of the valley on Hill 558 it was Echo company the president of our organization now was an Echo company on that and they took over that hill on the 23rd or fourth when the mortars went off down in the valley way down on the valley floor I could tell right away if they were coming for us because the muzzle blast would be this way if they were aiming for 861 the muscle blast would be that way and we'd jump on the radio and tell him it was coming you know we'd see one muzzle blast that way and another and say okay call you know get on the horn quick and tell them and they that give guys a chance to get under the ground and the same for Round Hill if they came up straight that meant they were coming for us and they were good tacticians about that they knew what they were doing um they yeah they just yeah they knew what they were doing um and they were as I said they were they were brave characters a lot of them were Brave I don't you know but as you say it was their country so you know they were they were fighting to kick us out I have a real good friend and not from high school days who said he never went was never drafted um he said I'll tell you what I was against the War I didn't protest but I didn't think we ever belonged there he said and I wouldn't if I was Vietnamese I wouldn't want Americans over there either and if they landed here then I would pick up a rifle and I would contest them but it was their country so I mean we don't we don't fight over it we never did but you know I didn't go for the political reasons I went because I was stupid and I was looking for adventure and well you know what else could I do I I made my decision and I wasn't drafted so I couldn't complain because I volunteered you know um and that went on for like that was 70 days of sleeping on cardboard sea rations come in a box of 12 and there's a cardboard wrap around it and there's a wire or two that goes across just to keep it from opening prematurely you snap the wire peel the cardboard back and it's about the length of a small table and about the widths you know two feet wide so we would put those down on the dirt floor in the bunker and we'd lay down on the cardboard I mean that's that's where we slept how much how much you know while you're while you're observing and and you know registering uh targets and you know trying not to get blown up and uh uh you know are you also having to maintain the bunker like I mean there's like I'm assuming that if you're dealing with red clay like almost every day you got to do something to shore it up well we didn't show it amazing we didn't it's not totally red clay it's red clay and dirt with minimal rocks we use no supports Michael none I mean it's scary now to think about that and I one of the movies that came out when I was in high school and I must have seen it 10 times was The Great Escape you know we'd sneak into the drive-in theater you know put everybody in the trunk of the car and then go and you know and they had three tunnels Tom Dick and Harry so I our bunker it faced the opening where the porch was up on top face Northwest and behind us at the back corner over here down on the floor the dirt floor I said to those guys one night you know if they ever got on this hill again and they came to the front we need a way out of here we should dig a tunnel about and they said oh you're crazy you didn't we can't do that and I said no no I think and it gave us something to do at night so I was the first one I lay down in the dirt right behind where I used to sleep with the cardboard and I just started digging straight in and I had a it was probably about three feet high three and a half feet high and uh three feet wide maybe at the moment could barely turn around in it and I scraped the dirt and I pushed it behind me and then David would take it scoop it in the helmet and it and over the course of a week we went about eight feet and then we made a right turn 90 degree and went another eight feet we walked it on the ground very early in the morning once and there was an old bunker there had no roof on it anymore and it was just an old ammunition bunker just the walls were up we just started digging up for God's sakes 10 or 12 feet it was digging in dirt falling down and we're pushing it behind us and I think about that as much as I think about anything about my time on that Hill that thing could have caved in I mean there were times when there were three of us we're in the tunnel we named it Tom I think because of the Great Escape there were three of us working that thing could have just and we'd be gone just like that it was very scary um so my time was involved with that I also didn't get a lot of sleep because I was the fo so if there was trouble they woke me up I would say in 77 days roughly when it started until we left I don't think they ever slept more than two hours at a time ever it was always 90 minutes get woken up be awake for an hour go back to sleep 45 minutes later get woken up but I still have terrible sleep habits sleep habits today as a result of that I wake up a lot it's just that's how it was then you know so that's what I dealt with a one final thing on my job and the danger for me because I did have to have my head up David not as much the second day of The Siege another Marine had been killed near our bunker I I didn't point it out to you in the photos I sent but I I went to his before they came to I didn't know him I took his flak jacket off I used a knife I brought I bought a hunting knife from the United States over there and I cut the fiberglass plates out of not all of them but many of the fiberglass plates they were four inches square and an eighth of an inch thick fiberglass and that's was in our flak jackets which were left over from the Korean War so I took those I took the cover I put I put them on my helmet underneath the cover my camo cover now if we had Army helmets with no cloth I would be able to do it but I put the plates around my helmet like that and then put the cover back on and then put the band around it to hold those plates in place because I was so afraid of a head injury and get I just wanted to give myself more protection if you go back and look at one of those photos that I sent you with the binoculars you know I'm standing there and I look like I have a German army helmet on because of the plates but when I got wounded on April 6th that partially saved my life because a couple of pieces of shrapnel from water hit those plates a couple went into my flak jacket and into my back but didn't penetrate far and a cup went into my arm over here bicep and halfway down and over here because I was looking like this and the motor around hit behind me but those fiberglass plates in the helmet I got knocked out completely I fell 12 10 or 12 feet down into our bunker and when I woke up the corpsman was there and um I had blood coming out of my ears and my nose and he had smelling salts you know and I kept pushing them away and he said are you okay you're okay so that yeah I think so I said but my arm is killing me you know when he looked at he said give me just oh wait a second and so then he got me sitting seated up and he did some probing and he said yeah these pieces of metal are inside in your arms about I said I don't want to go to the combat base I don't want to go down there doc we called all our Corman duck I don't want to go I just I need to stay you know he said well I can dig him out but it's not going to be easy and I said well do whatever you got to do I'm not being I'm not Clint Eastwood about it I just said and they were it was swollen and numb so he was able to pull those pieces out and throw some stitches in three different spots in my arm and then I went back to work um I mean you know he did wipe my arm off before he used the probe whatever those little probes are to reach into the holes in my arm and pull the stuff out put in some rough stitches but I had he gave me morphine also so it wasn't like he was operating on a totally awake person but what saved me was the stuff in my helmet flat jacket but also where the porch was where I've been standing in that photo I was kneeling like this and the ground behind us behind our bunker sloped up on a slight angle maybe like 20 degrees this way the round only hit about eight feet from me it comes straight you know straight down it's true but it most of the shrapnel goes sideways and up very little is going to go down because it's just the way the thing goes off it spreads it and so only if it had been level ground right behind me at eight feet I would have been decapitated I mean that wouldn't have been an issue I'd have been gone um I was just really lucky you know and if it had been a little bit closer I'd have been in worse shape but it hit where it hit and I managed so it was I was lucky um can you talk a little bit about the uh I mean you could see the combat base from where you were very little for me because I was on the western side so I say I was on the Northwestern just the downslope on the Northwestern corner to see the base I would have to go to the other side okay okay and I didn't go out very often you know I I um I sometimes had to go over to the CP group um we had uh um sometimes they go over and see my company Commander he talked to me about this we talked about he said we're going to get we're going to get um B-52 strikes soon so you you can't have an artillery Mission going unless it's really dangerous because they don't want rounds hitting bombs in the air and screwing everything up so so I learned sometimes that I know the B-52s were coming and there were other times one time we had a 226 had a Catholic chaplain father Raymond Brett he was from Philadelphia I learned all this later and he came up he went out to 558 by helicopter then he flew up to 861 Alpha and then because there was a path between us and age 61 Alpha he came up with his assistant a Corporal chin and the Word was passed to us that they would call us on the landline and did it by platoon and fire team but I'm independent but somebody said we'll call you when it's your turn if you want to come and uh father can give you uh uh plenary Indulgence and communion if you want it so when it was time David and I went and Dave said well look I'm not I don't believe in any of that I said what do you characters go get it so it doesn't matter you know he just he doesn't care you'll get blessed by a priest anyway and so we we crawled over there and he you know he only spent a couple minutes with each person he couldn't say Mass he was just doing a plenary Indulgence forgiven for everything uh do a cross on your forehead give you communion he's done he needs to get to the combat base so he's going to work his way to the LZ and just as he's starting to go down with his assistant we take a bunch of incoming so they dump in the first bunker they got to and he came into our bunker father Brett and he said to me man and how I said any you ain't related to anybody in Philadelphia and I said no father we're not um he said I know a lot of manions in Philly and I said well they're probably distant cousins somewhere on the tree but and no he stayed and talked to us a little bit and his assistant was in the next bunker over and then maybe 30 minutes later he departed down the LZ he's he wanted to go out that very afternoon to the next Hill but it was getting dark so they told him he had to wait overnight and he did and the next morning he was in the trench line which is zigzagged down by the airstrip and um he's with his assistant Corporal chin and they took a lot of incoming and an NVA rocket detonated right between the two of them killed them both only because he got held up on 861 get down there and then he couldn't fly out that afternoon he had to wait till the morning and it cost him his life he's buried in Arlington his name's on the wall and so is corporal chin and he's buried on top of him in Arlington yeah yeah I feel like did you listen to the episode on chaplains because I feel like that name came up I did not but it's possible I'll look for that yeah I will look for that there are only 16 chaplains on the wall and uh Tim and I talked about at the beginning of that uh episode I'm having a conversation with one of my colleagues just about the chaplains on the wall I think he and I talked about three or four of them I feel like Father Brett was one of them possible he was they uh because I remember the assistant the assistant having an Asian name I remember that purple chin he was a conscientious objective and he his mother didn't want him even going in but he went in he went through all the training at Paris Island but when it came time to and he fired his rifle of Paris on him but when it came to guy to go to Nam he said I can't do it I just can't he wasn't a coward he became a stretcher bear those guys were out on the runway bringing in casualties and running casualties out to the Choppers when they landed and then he eventually became his his assistant and when they were killed and both returned his mother was bitter she they lived on the Chesapeake Shore and she's she didn't want her son buried in Arlington she was totally opposed to it she said to her surviving children when I die if you want to move them you can do it but not while I'm alive and 20 years later she did pass away and those kids contacted the Navy department and they he was he was they exhumed the body out on the Chesapeake Shore and did a convoy to Arlington and he was placed in a in the ground above father Brett in the same you know not the same tomb but one on top of the other the way they do that right and uh it was and they named the chaplain School in Newport Rhode Island is the is the Raymond father Raymond Brett school for chaplains for Navy chaplains yeah maybe he wasn't maybe he was one of the guys that got pictures oh you'd have to go back I mean that was a long time ago that we did that episode but I feel like uh it sounds really familiar yeah so uh can we talk a little bit about the um you know the the end of The Siege the final days and and you know how you got out of there eventually and yep so I um I we did um I did hear your thing on music on for on you know on music and music from the 60s now I'm we were we were people weren't buying tape recorders and like that you know I mean that's not that wasn't happening in infantry companies in icore but on the hill we had a guy Sam uh Bill Huff William Huff he was related to the former linebacker for the Giants and the Rossi Redskins who just passed away this year Sam off he was a great professional football player he was a distant cousin and this guy was big and he was very heroic that first night um contending with the NDA in the trench line and he had a radio and at night you could pick up armed forces and I'd sometimes go down there or Dave and I would go down there and listen in for an hour but you couldn't hear it in the daytime he got promoted to Corporal in February and as a way of paying him back for his heroic heroism that first night he didn't have to do it but they sent him to Okinawa to NCO School so he goes down to the con so I gave him 15 and I said um when you're in Okinawa can you buy me a radio like that little transistor thing and he said sure So he took the money he's down to combat base and instead of staying in the trench line he's wandering around looking at the supply dump thinking there's anything he can steal and put on a helicopter going up to us Rockets came in and killed him I went down to his bunker on in the trench line and took the radio and the next thing I know his squad or fire team was right outside our bunker want to know where the radio was and I told him I said look I gave him 15 bucks I'm sorry that he passed away but and they wanted the radio just as much as I did the company Commander had to come over and listen to it and they finally gave me the radio so for the rest of the siege we had this little radio we can only listen to it at night and in the very early morning hours before the sun really came up we could still hear it and I remember running our Toby missions or airstrikes and hearing um Green Tambourine and Love is Blue by Paul muriat in his orchestra those are the two songs I remember they played others but I just you know once the daytime came around you couldn't hear anything um and then my radio got lost in transportation somewhere so I never heard another radio broadcast again towards the end of The Siege things began to lighten up we weren't taking the incoming that we had been it would you could you couldn't really safely stand up but you could be outside in the daytime sitting and you know not staying in one spot too long and you couldn't congregate with five or six people and but you could be out especially if you were near something to dive into and that's where some of those pictures were taken of me with my Converse black lows on and and uh uh you know we could sit out that one with me with the with the the binoculars you know and you can see that my helmet I'm sitting standing up in the porch there then we were told we just put all our anything we didn't need in waterproof bags to call them wooly Peter bags WP Willy Peter bags it has a plastic lining on the inside so I then because you said you're going on the attack you're going on the attack and you guys aren't in shape because you haven't been on the field for months you got to lighten up just ammo water uh grenades but and so I put my radio in there I put a Chinese disarmed hand grenade a little pineapple thing with a wooden handle I put a red star belt buckle off the guy with the map case and I my camera my Kodak instamatic 126 I put all that in my wallet everything and when we left 861 they flew all those down to the combat base and they just sat out in the rain for days and days and Marines being Marines you guys went over there and just went through all that so somebody got a radio and a belt buckle and whatever but we left on the 12th and they flew kilo company from 861 over to 881 South that was Easter Friday Good Friday on the 12th um and then we um my company in Lima were already there they flew um India was over there and they flew uh Lima Company up from the combat base so all four Battalion all four companies in the Third Battalion 26 Marines were on 881 South and there wasn't room for us and they weren't making any room for us you know it was and when we left 861 the guys who made 61 Alpha came up and took over our lines there and the 861 Alpha was abandoned they just let it dry away you know and then so we arrived on the 12th it was terrible because there was no place to hide and no place to really dig in and then on the 13th in the middle of the night the uh kilo company was first and we went over the northern side in the dark down 881 north south across in flat ground leading up towards halfway to 881 North which is maybe 2 000 meters away and we set in and then the other two companies came down early in the morning and on Easter Sunday on the 14th at sunup all three companies attacked 8081 North online and I'm telling you it was like out of a World War II movie because they had put 950 calibers on the western side of the trench line on 881 South they had a dozen 106 requireless rifles we were having air strikes artillery was firing and we Advanced almost online like you'd see in World War II movies and all the stuff on 881 South was firing directly over our heads just churning the ground up turning it up and then further on was the artillery that I was I was controlling my sector and calling in shifts and moving whole Grid's prayers at a time and we eventually got up onto 881 South they killed a bunch of North Vietnamese up there but most of them fled to the north and down into the valley and we sat there for about an hour and then we and people are thinking Jesus Christ I don't want to be out here this is a long way from you know there's three 105s on one on 881 South that can reach this but it's really at max range for 105s at the base and then the word was Lima and my companies are going back to 881 South Kila will go only halfway back and and set up on a Hill Called 800 in between 881 north and south and spend the night as a blocking force in case they counter attack well yeah they had the ship beat out and they weren't going to counter-attack but in from from a military point of view you can't assume that you do you make a mistake people die and so we were set up as a blocking force in case they came back which they didn't do and then in the morning they're lifting people off 881 South the 26 Marines are leaving caisson on the 15th and the 16th of April for good and other units are coming in and we're down on that flat hill 800 and I had become really close friends with a one of the lieutenants Ford I'm the one who helped me out on that when I did water when I shouldn't have been doing filling canteens back in October and he was from Texas actually lived in Mexico his father worked for Coca-Cola he'd gone to Baylor so he's Texas football I'm Notre Dame football we both read we exchanged books and we got them from home at night when it was just a two of us he'd come by my Foxhole you know and we'd sit and shoot the and he'd look through the binoculars and the scope and I always I called him Steve it was Benjamin Steve Fordham but he went by his middle name and so now on the last day it's April 15th it's Easter Monday and we're on that little Hill we're in a 360. his platoon had was the final Chopper going out because they had LZ security so they're scattered throughout the the 360 perimeter and I'm next to him in the dirt and you know we're just you know this I'm glad to be going me too I can't wait to get the hell out of here the promise is cold beer and steak dinners that's what we had heard in the shower then a shower when we got to quaint tree and uh so then two rounds hit two I'm here he's next to me to his right but out about 400 meters away two big and I look over and he looks over and looks back at me and I goes Jesus I said I hope nobody's adjusting those things he said if they're as bad as you are they couldn't hit you know don't worry about it and then two helicopters leave with the first two platoons the third helicopter is for the CP group I'm getting up to run to the ramp of that 46 and get on and he squeezes my hand and he says I'll see you at the combat base and it's like a five minute flight so I land we as I'm leaving before the ramp comes up I'm one of the last people on I can see that he's already up standing by waiting for the next the last helicopter to land and his men are starting to get up and converge and then the ramp goes up and I don't see it then I get down to the base and I wait and seven eight minutes later they land and they're carrying three guys off the helicopter who are dead and one of them's Lieutenant Fordham um the round had hit right at his feet right at his feet feet Michael and killed two other Marines right there wounded at least nine or ten of them that his radio operator was killed Chris Patterson another guy was killed I didn't know him I didn't know him and the fourth guy was many wounded but one guy was so badly wounded he was Medevac to the repos and then he was Medevac to Japan and a week later he died of his injuries in Japan that's how badly he was hurt because that fo was good and he put those rounds right in the landing Zone and the costumes like it costs Steve Ford in his life you know it was just it was beyond belief really I was he he and I were as close as it could be you know and I had an officer's job so he had more of a sense of I was really like an officer and foolish and our company Commander technically was at fault because if you make one LZ you're asking for trouble because they know what they're doing you make two lz's or three and you fake into this one and land there and then go back to the first one go back to the second then the third but he only had one LZ that's all it took Bill Dabney who was in charge of 881 South married to Jesse puller's daughter he said that was the only time he cried in Vietnam watching those rounds hit he said he said to His Radio man up on 881 South that bastard didn't he just didn't have more than one Landing Zone and then the rounds started hitting the guy adjusted him and didn't afford him got killed just like that and his was the first name I found on the wall when I went in 1982. do you remember what panel that is um it's out towards it's to the right going towards the Washington nine minutes only about I don't know the number off the top of my head it's about where the wall is only about um four feet high there in the second row and right almost close not right next to him because it's alphabetical but in that same block is the other guys Patterson His Radio operator is there Chris Patterson and the two other guys who died there um but that's part of another and that's a wall story you know so we we get down to the base and I wait he doesn't come off the helicopter except his body comes off I'm distraught and then somebody pulls up in the Jeep and it turns out to be the guy who went back to Vietnam with in 2000 Glenn Prentice and he he was from the Charlie battery and he was looking for me he didn't know what I looked like he just knew me by reputation and he said man you know I'm looking for man and somebody's over there he's over there and then he said I got to take you over to Charlie batter so I hopped in the back of the jeep with my radio operator it wasn't David anymore it was an Indian Ralph Wayne and we got to the Charlie battery uh artillery battery big bunker where the captain was and he said um they are seriously considering leaving you guys here and be attached out to a new grunt company that's coming in because you know the hills so well me you know he said what I need you to do is just go out there and you know and find a place to hold up for the day and the night and then come back in the morning and I'll tell you so everybody leaves they go to quaint tree and they get the band they get the beer they get the steaks they get the showers so cable companies go on and every morning Chief and I would go over to the CP Charlie battery CP bunker we didn't go far away from it but no one blocked from us in their bunkers we had to kind of find an abandoned Foxhole or something and um they're on the 19th so four days after 20th I think after five four days after everybody else had left we showed up and he said go down to the LZ they're gonna they've changed their mind you're gonna go to Quang tree so we worked our way to the LZ I remember taking all my grenades and giving them to people my M16 Clips gave them to people and then we got on a helicopter and we landed at Quang tree and um there was a shower unit there there was no band there was no cold beer there was no Stakes but we did get to stand under these showers and the water just ran red down into the drains it was it wasn't a little plug it was you know water that was pumped in and we could stay in there as long as we wanted you know scrubbing and scrubbing with soap and towels and other guys too we weren't the only ones and um but I hadn't shaved and I never shaved that's why I had a mustache then I never shaved my mustache because all the Shaving I did on the hill was just dry dry shaving which you can do if you're careful because I just didn't like all the but my you can't dry shave your upper lip you just can't do it so I'm filthy I haven't shaved in three weeks and I've got this mustache to work go with it I haven't shaved in three weeks and I get my shower um they give us clean utilities and we and I asked where kilo company is and they point us in a direction and we head off in that day and we get into the perimeter I start recognizing a couple of people I see my company commander and before I can get there the gun the first sergeant showed up and he said where the who you two people what are you guys doing here I I said sir where are the were the fo teams for kilo he goes you're a goddamn disgrace to the Marine Corps you haven't shaved you're not shaved you've got a mustache what the hell is going on here my hair was real long I hadn't had it cut in five months right you know it had been cut in five months so it was really long not not hippie long but it was long he said you're a disgracing miracle I don't want you going over and seeing the company Commander like that go find a place to get you know shave and get a haircut somehow yes that's why I hated the Marine Corps I mean that's what I hated about the Marine Corps they could be so petty like that so we said okay yes sir yes for sergeant and then he stormed off you know in his nice Stark utilities with his shine jungle boots and his cap that fits so nice and we waited about a minute and then we just kept going over to the CP unit and checked in with Captain Snead then a different one our first guy who was you know our first guy got wounded the first night and so and he was gone so we had Paul Snead after that and then we eventually found a place where there was water in a kind of a bathroom and we bought a razor and we shaved you know and at that point I hadn't I hadn't uh I had not mailed the binoculars home I had mailed my map home um I guess they didn't mail my map yet either but I had nailed the fin assembly and a tile has been shredded by a 82 round back in October now I go I had the binoculars and I got to get a rhythm because I can't carry two anymore you know and I can't ask my radio operator character his his radio alone weighed uh 27 pounds you know plus 50 pounds of gear and his helmet is flat so I went to I found a box I wrapped it up I got some tape and I and I wrote um Michael Crone 440 uh Whitney Avenue Hamden Connecticut zip code and then for the return address I put my college roommate Ralph Blake um Alpha Company one nine FMF whatever the ZIP code was and I went over to the post office with this package and some clerk in there in his nice clean utilities he says to me Woody mail in home I said just extra um extra socks and insect repellent he said you got ID for this I said hey I just got out of case on can't you tell by my face and my skin you think I have ID and he said do my case on I said yeah we were there from December you know through the whole Siege he said okay and he took the package and my buddy got it his house in Hamden Connecticut and then when I came home in October those binoculars are waiting for me they're downstairs right now they're really valuable what do you remember about leaving Vietnam I left Vietnam on the um I when in we they gave us a couple weeks just to stand down in quaint tree we had to go guard a bridge overnight Wayne and I the Indian you know with CFO they and but we they left us alone they had to we were physically beat up and then we went on a big operation down below Danang in Arizona territory it's near Anwar dry and Dusty and it was May and we were going to be out there for a period of time and as I said colstony didn't like the fact that I was enlisted and ordered the first cup so we were out about 10 days it's middle of May and Captain Sneed came by my Foxhole when I which I had Doug with Ralph he said we're getting um we're getting ammo there were Rivers there stream so there was water wasn't an issue we're getting ammo sea Rats on resupply in the morning and a real fo Lieutenant so and so okay another reason I hate the Marine Corps you know I wasn't enough voter because I wasn't an officer and I did a lot for them I did a lot for him in that company but anyway we're getting a real fo tomorrow and I said am I going to stay and be the Scout he said no you're going to go back to Charlie battery and they're up at Camp Carroll so I got on I said goodbye to Ralph in the morning and a couple of guys around that I knew fairly well and then shook hands and then I got on the helicopter and they flew to Danang it was Ho Chi minh's birthday and the base was on 100 alert and it was like you know everybody's and I'm thinking you guys have no idea what incoming is and it was a joke really and then the next day I flew up to Camp Carroll and they put me in charge of a a fire Direction Center at night and I had to clean up a little bit more and that's where the targets get plotted and the fos called them in and the guys who work on the table and I I didn't know what I was doing I didn't know what I was doing I'm supervising six or seven guys you know and I have no idea what I'm doing so I went to see my company Commander after two nights I didn't sleep either night I did barely slept in the day and I said sir I need to do something else and he said why not he said you come here with great um you know you have your reputation conduct proficiency reports are fantastic I said yeah but my training he said don't you know what the FDC does I said I know what they do but I've never seen him do it he said well when you went through Fort still for artillery school did you go on the FDC Center I said sir I didn't I was a naval gunfire and the Navy wasn't interested in having Marines come to the FDC Center on the ship because they never were going to go there he said you don't know what goes on in there I said I just know they plot the missions and I flunked geometry twice in high school he said yeah I got to get you out of there so next you know I'm in a naval gunfire team and I was in Naval gunfire in a small 12-man unit that operated on the coast of Vietnam for June July August and September right on the coast in the small outposts calling in Naval gunfire in the militarized zone and shooting at people in the Ben High River with Naval you know eight inch guns and my last two days is when the New Jersey came on station she she came over and you know took months to get her over there and then she came on the gum line September 30th and I left that outpost on the first so I saw her shoot on the 30th and the first first mission she had fired since the Korean War and uh I go down to Danang I check in down there I got a flight up to Camp Carroll I got my orders in a big yellow envelope I get a ride in the Huey first time I've ever been in a huey army guys and what at the LZ up in Camp Carroll you know they're up a couple thousand feet and the guy running the LZ would just call pilots who were coming in are you going towards the Nang would you be willing to take someone so finally after waiting an hour I get a helicopter comes in two army guys captains or you know whatever lieutenants whatever they are they see up a little bit higher I got in the side I've been in other helicopters three kinds but not one there was any Huey and we take off by going straight and we're about 20 minutes into a 40-minute Mission uh return to Da Nang and all of a sudden I can't hear a thing the two guys man on the guns at the door they've got headsets and I can hear a thing all of a sudden the two pilots turn around and look at me and and they go and they and one guy goes you know and I couldn't hear him so the guy here says you left your orders it came Carol the big yellow envelope with all your papers for you oh they go back I mean it'll cost them 40 minutes of beer time you know at the at the beer hall that night that they had to go back to this stupid marine and bring them down to Danang and they never even looked back when they landed never even you know gave me a thumbs up or nothing the two crew guys that shook my hand and said good luck wish we were going with you that kind of thing then I stayed overnight there and then the next day they flew us on a commercial jet we turned in all our Gear helmets flat jackets rifles the binoculars the second pair that I got um I turned those in anything I could unload and then I got on the helicopter and we're still in our utilities and mine were dirty but not like they were a case on and we flew to Okinawa and we had put our two duffel bags uh in a warehouse when we left 13 months before and when we got to this Warehouse it was a long like a train station the whole platform was lined with our bags you had to go around and find your bag and then other bags stayed there because those guys weren't coming home or they'd been Medevac and they weren't ever going to see their sea bags again and we went to Okinawa and we spent three days in Okinawa and then I got my flight on a continental jet from Okinawa right to El Toro and it was because with the trade winds going with us instead of fighting the jet stream they didn't have to land on the way home they had enough fuel to do it non-stop Plane full of Marines and some Navy corpsman and we go through at at El Toro they're going through our equipment now if you're an officer and you had a an AK-47 in your in your duffel bag they wouldn't even look at those guys but all the enlisted guys they made sure you weren't bringing home grenades and AK-47s and so the only thing I had in there that wasn't supposed to be there was a can of peaches from sea rations and he let me keep him um and I so then he said to me the guy was checking me said so where are you going I said I'm going to Connecticut he said well Jesus he said get together with a couple of guys it's only eight o'clock you can get up to LAX get a cab with a couple other guys go to LAX you could fly out at midnight um and be in Connecticut tomorrow morning so I said oh yeah and I'm in a uniform now it's got PFC stripes on it um but it doesn't have Lance corporal or Corpus Stripes because they stayed in the Foot Locker all that time and are the duffel bag sorry and um they don't fit because I've lost weight and they look kind of baggy but I don't care I don't I don't give a at all you know and um the third day we're there and then they say we get out of the airstrip and they call your name and you go up the ramp and you walk up those steps and you get on the plane the store says welcome welcome home you know you're going home it's pretty you know so now we're in California and they're going through our stuff I get to LAX just like he said I go down in those days you could buy your ticket right at the gate the gates attendance right there could take your money and you could buy a ticket and get on a plane so it was either United or American I don't remember which it's flying to Chicago and then Hartford and it's going to leave at midnight from LAX it's the middle of the week it's like the 4th of October so I get on the plane there's an aisle seat and the three seats there's no first class it's just all coach and um I get a window seat because I want to look out even though it's going to be dark and the plane isn't full not even half full so no one is seated three in a row here you know it's two or one and a guy in a business suit sat in the aisle he wasn't 40 years old slightly pudgy um but he was dressed up the way people did in those days he had a suit on and businessman of some sort and um he took down this tray and he put it took his briefcase open and he was going through his papers looking and then he looked over and he said uh where are you going where are you going it was nice where are you going I said I'm going to Connecticut I live in New Haven you so I have relatives in Massachusetts something like that um he said where have you been and I said I've been in Vietnam and uh he said did you see any action over there like that with a more Sinister kind of tone you know slightly different and I said yeah a little bit but I'm I'm lucky to be coming home and I'm thankful to be coming home and with that he never said anything else he just he just went back to his paperwork and eventually where the plane's gonna leave they shut the door the stewardess comes up Sir you have to raise up your tray and Stow your briefcase which you did we take off over the Pacific make a big right-hand turn 180 degrees now we're heading across California towards Nevada we get up to whatever cruising altitude we're at so it's 10 15 minutes so the plane's dark just the little lights on and the pilot took off the seat belts on and uh so as soon as that happened I thought he was getting up to go to the bathroom he pushed the button for the stewardess and she came up out of the dark from behind me I'm only 15 rows from the cockpit area and she looked up looked down at both of us and said can I help you and it was him he said yes he said I need a seat on this airplane as far away from this guy and he jerked his thumb in my direction as you can move me that's what he said and she said oh oh okay and she helped him with his briefcase and his overhead bag and they turned it's dark you know there's no lights on and you can go somewhere in the plane and about five or six minutes later she came up and sat in the aisle seats for a couple minutes you know she said I'm really sorry about that I said you have nothing to be sorry about she said you're not going to make any trouble are you and I said no I got too many ghosts to carry around to be making trouble she said when did you go over I said September last year 67 she said the country has really changed since the Ted offense in February the country has really changed and I'm I'm sorry that that had to happen I said look I'm so lucky to be coming home I got wounded twice there I could easily have been killed many times not many times a number of times um and I'm very pleased to be coming home so it's okay you don't have to apologize that's how I came home I didn't want to sit next to me on an airplane and I say when I speak to high school groups I say no one ever spit on me I've heard people say people spit on them and my response to them is then how come you're still how come you're out in the real world if that happened to me I'd be in prison for killing somebody you know I wouldn't let somebody spit on me I'd kill him and die trying I mean that that's how I felt then you know but some guys handled it differently you know no one ever spat at me I you know I wore my uniform home and I landed in heart Chicago um I don't think we even changed planes and just put more people on couple people got off and we flew onto Hartford got in in the morning I had to take a limo which was really a van from and it stops in Hartford New Britain um Southington next to where I live now and then North in New Haven and I'm going to get off in New Haven with everybody else but to get off in those other towns and he he said he said where are you where are you going and I said where are you coming from I said Vietnam he said well are you getting off in New Haven that's the last stop I said yes he said I said I'll probably take you know I said I'll get home my parents live in Hamden he said look stay in the van I'm going to return it to the barn in West Haven where my car is and I'll bring you back to your parents house and so he did so that balanced off the guy you know and I wanted to give him a tip he wouldn't take it he wouldn't take it right right you know so some people got it and some people didn't you know that's that's how I came home and this isn't to elaborate but when I was at UConn for those three years I was living in Meriden I was married for the first time I worked in a deli and I commuted to stores I had no campus life I was just taking my courses English education and whatever but I had to go to the VA the Veterans office on campus and this was 70 fall of 71. follow 70. sorry I've been out of the Marine Corps since December of 69 so it's the fall of 70. and within a week I had to go there to get my GI Bill papers and signed and approved and once kids knew you were now UConn's a big school so not everybody do it but once once they people identified you as a Vietnam vet and people wouldn't sit next to you in the classroom people I'd get in and sit down and people get up and move away just get up and move two chairs over three chairs over the only time I was with people is they didn't know about me or they were other veterans sometimes I read in the library for a couple of months first semester for a Green Beret guy who had been blinded but he needed volunteers tutors to help him read his manuals and I read for him and you know I got to know him a little bit but I had no campus life but no one wanted to sit next to me in those chairs eat those desks either that's how I was in this country back then well it's hard to imagine you know I mean it's not like you had any choice you know right yeah and I think we paid the price for that but nowadays people do say thank you to the men you know I think people are generally more accepting although there's a lot more there's a lot less people in the military like two percent of the population I guess right you know how many people serving um one of my sons Devin our youngest boy he went in Marine Corps as an officer he's out now he's the high school and was teaching a football coach like I was and my two older Sons my daughter didn't they didn't do it on the service but it we paid the price and sometimes it reunions with the case on vets some guy will say you know I was at the gas station last week in in you know Oklahoma City and some guy thanked me for my service and I got real angry because it's way too late you know and I said so you got angry about that let me ask you a question were you wearing a shirt you said caisson on it he said yeah I had a shirt on and I got a bumper sticker on my car I said well then don't get mad if you don't want to be insulted or feel like you've been stepped on then don't wear the shirt you know I think if you wear the shirt it's licensed for people to say welcome home people if the people people interpret that as an invitation right yes yes absolutely and my my response almost always is that I go to I go to Home Depot and you I get a 10 discount you know all the time and they'll always say thank you for your service and my response is uh thank you I appreciate that it was my reward for flunking out of college in 1966. and if they're old enough they get it if they're not old enough they don't get it but that's that's that's how I say but I'm grateful otherwise I wouldn't wear the stuff I wouldn't say Cason you know yeah yeah well I want to um and we could talk there's a lot we could say about that and how much your generation did to change that for the generations of fighting men and women who came after you right the great yellow rhythms ribbons and thank you for your service all of that change because of you guys um we were talking earlier about dogs and you mentioned that you know when you listen to the episode that we did on Dog Handlers that you were you were angered to find out what happened to those dogs but you know that doesn't happen anymore and the reason it doesn't happen anymore is again because of your generation right it was Vietnam Dog Handlers who said you know Robbie's law was a result of their efforts yeah so and I I were interviewing uh what was said 1999 Bill Clinton sometime around that is when I let legislation and I don't I'm guessing now because I've seen pictures from World War II Iwo Jima where the Marine is in a bomb crater and his dog is with him he was a German uh uh Doberman pincer the Marines used a lot of Doberman Pinscher dogs in in World War II they probably did the same thing to those dogs they probably did they weren't going to put them on a ship and Salem you know from Japan all the way back to America when they could barely get troops back sure you know people you know I guess I'm guessing now that I but I didn't know that I was angry in the car when I and sad really yeah you know yeah so I want to I want to talk about uh how things went with your dad when you got home but before we do that um can you just tell me briefly whatever happened to Dave my radio operator your radio operator he got wounded a piece of shrimp no Dave crom he got he got wounded by a piece of surround though I think it was in sometime late February early March and it hit the scramble that hit him directly went through his flak jacket he was moving across one part of the hill and I was behind him and then he got hit um and the the piece of shrine went through his flock jacket and into the cavity above his heart so he was medevaced out and he had he had to have surgery to remove that at some point either on the Repose or in Japan um I wrote to him once or twice and then we we you lose track of people and is it and but I heard later um he was 23. and his uh he was walking on the streets in Baltimore he was he was one of the universities there it was third third year student and he was walking down the sidewalk 23 years old and he had a heart attack and he died on the sidewalk well no one can convince me that it didn't happen because of the piece of shrapnel that nicked his chest area back in you know 1968 he's not on the wall because he didn't get killed there but he certainly paid that price and the other guy that I always attention to people is Trey me he he and I became friends he was a machine gunner from Texas he got malaria when we got to Cason he got malaria so they sent him to Danang and he was down in Da Nang because um he was being treated so malaria down there and then January 31st 21st happens and we're partially overrun and he's not there and he didn't come back to the hill until February and I got to know him on Convoy Duty real well and um so I have a picture of him and I on 861 at the end when we could stand out in the open I'll send it to you and he he wasn't there for that opening night and he felt so guilty about that that he told me you know when I was when I we were in down in that analog he said I said you're rotating roughly the same time as me right in October he said yeah but I'm gonna extend for six more months I'm gonna go home for 30 days and I want to extend for six more months and I said why Trey I said you're going to come back as a mailman or a clerk because they would do that you know you could come back for six months and you're and you'd be a clerk you'd hand out surfboards at the Nang at the beat red Beach and all that he said no I want to go back to an infantry company as a machine gun because I feel torn up inside that I wasn't there on the I said Trey it wouldn't have mattered you know that he said yeah I know it but I got to come back and he did and he was with and I could I I wrote to him periodically um and then he became uh he he kept he got shot the bullet went through this hip came out his thigh embedded his other thigh it wasn't it didn't lose it was no amputations but he received blood transfusions in whatever Battle Zone they were in they didn't know about Hepatitis B in 1968 and 69. they didn't know about Hepatitis B and he came down with hepatitis as a result of the blood transfusion the wound sent him home for good he was from Austin Texas he was an only child of both parents were only children he never got married he worked construction jobs and he and I stayed in touch he heard about my trip back in an email once the email started and we were exchanging emails back and forth and still working and he said I think I'm going to try to do that I think I'd like to go back and I said it was great for me it was meaningful I said goodbye to all these people and next thing you know we got an email from uh a distance cousin who said I understand you he died of liver cancer you know this he died in 19 uh I'm sorry 2003 2004. so he lived a single he was a single guy all his life uh never married no children and he eventually died of uh Hepatitis B liver cancer and then he was cremated and his ashes were scattered and that's the last I ever knew about Trey he was a real good guy he could write he could good sense of humor and he could write he was a really good guy um and that's just fate you know how that works out and I wish there had been more and for David um when I was um living in Meriden and going to UConn um I was treating 45 minutes each way and I there was a the local newspaper sponsored a contest my most memorable Christmas and the winner was going to get a turkey courtesy of the record so I wrote uh a memory piece called um Christmas at Cason and I talked about being at Cason on Christmas Eve and knowing that 12 hours when 12 hours in the daytime on Christmas my parents my sister and brother were all at St Mary's Church in New Haven at midnight mass and I knew exactly where they were when I was standing for morning mass at noon time at caisson I won the contest I won the contest and I had the turkey as my wife says a turkey for a turkey and then a couple years later this is how I found out about date a couple years later I got a call from a woman in Texas who was his sister and she said our Parish published a Christmas bulletin last year this was like I don't know 1985 or 86 and um they published we get a you know and we had a special Christmas edition at our church in Texas and there was this whole story about Christmas at Cason and I saw my brother's name and then you wrote it so that's why I'm calling you and she came up one time on a business trip and came to the house and I set up my slides they weren't digitalized then and I showed her pictures of her brother um and and she sat there Spellbound um to see her brother in at least 30 pictures 40 pictures you know from 1967 and 68. but then she disappeared into the mist and email hadn't really started yet so but that's how I found out how he died I died of a heart attack um so let's talk about let's talk about your uh your homecoming you you know you didn't leave things on very good terms with your father when you no and when I was away at school and my kids pay me back because they've done the same thing themselves I used to never tell them I was coming home you know I would just hitchhike home from South Bend you know and I'd be there knocking on the door opening the garage I did it all the time and um so when that guy gave me a ride home in that show you know the van um my parents were living had moved to a house while I was gone but I knew this setup and but I had told everybody including Joe my best friend I told everybody I was coming home at the end of October my family was told that I was you know I told Joe that anybody that I correspondent but I knew I was coming home on the 5th or the 6th that was set in stone you know months ahead of time and so I got home and I crossed this street and went up I had to knock on the door because I didn't have there was a garage code and I didn't have it so no one knew I was coming home and I not it was a cape and it steps right behind the front door were carpeted we had a big glass door and you know winter ice and uh it was October and so I knocked on the door and I I knew my mom was home there were some lights on she opened up the door and there I was standing there and she didn't faint but she fell backwards onto the stairs I mean it really it was such a joke see me standing there you know my dad was at work he had been he had gotten out of the FBI around the time I was going in the Marines maybe and he became the chief clerk of superior court in New Haven so he didn't go to he had been to law school had a law degree but he did his years in the FBI got a pension from them and he wanted to still do something so he didn't want to practice law he became the chief clerk so he's in New Haven at the office I know where he is and uh so I talked to my mother and I step into the cape I helped get her up off the stairs I look into what was the only little family room and there was our old TV there when a big council with like a 15-inch black and white piece of crap and we always begged our parents for an extra phone no how about an extra TV no so I look over and on top of the TV are two four inch square TVs with a little antennas coming up you can find them in New York in those electronic shops and stuff and I said Ma what's with the TVs because we never had you know she said it's your father he watches all three of the network news reports at 6 30 every night because you couldn't tape anything in those days so she had he had all three TVs on at the same time and I thought oh my God this is what I did to him you know he spent 13 months looking at three TVs every night and Cason was big in the news in January February and March and it was gigantic it was on the news every night and that was my father tuning in to ABC CBS and NBC just on the chance so my buddy Joe commuted to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield Connecticut from where we live now about a mile from his house where he grew up they're all out of that house now and it's about a 40-minute commute not sure he got his degree his grades were as terrible as mine but he had a heart murmur he wasn't going in the service anyway didn't worry about the draft he got it he went to this school he commuted and I had sent him the you know I had sent the binocs you know from one nine uh the guy in one nine uh to your name at 4050 Whitney Avenue right down the street here and so those he had them he wrote me and said I got them at ox and I got them with the towel and the 82 fin assembly and all that and uh and the map and then I so I uh I said to his mother what time is Joe coming home from class because I had a sense of his schedule say it's a Wednesday I knew what is Wednesday or Thursday she said he's generally here about 11. so I said uh no this is before I saw Mr story I'm with my mother so she spends an hour with me you know she can't take her arms off me she's holding me I'm saying mom just I'm happy to be home and it's great to see you but just you can't keep holding on to me you know I'm not used to that and you know then she made I don't drink coffee never I don't drink coffee at all she made me um a little breakfast and tea and um I said you know can you give me a ride up to Joe's house it's about maybe 15 minutes to where you know he lived and and I could see Mrs Dougherty and all that you know and and she said sure I can do that and I said because Joe gets home at 11. and then I and then Mrs Dougherty or Joe will give me a ride home so that happened we pulled up at 4050 Whitney Avenue and his mother invites Us in and she makes my mother a cup of coffee and they're sitting at the table chatting away and back and forth we've been friends since eighth grade you know and their parents knew my parents so and it gets to be like 10 30 and I said isn't Joe coming home at 11 and my mother took the queue she said yeah you probably don't want my car here I said no you got to go home uh and then Joe will give me a ride home so I sat with Mrs Doherty for a few more minutes and then I said you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna go up to his room and I'll know when he comes in because he'll pull in the driveway and I can see the driveway from his bedroom window so I'll know and I'll hear him just tell him that there was a package from Dennis and I put it in your bedroom so I went up to his bedroom and sat and looked at it he had he had the best room for a teenage kid in the world they had posters and plaques and maps and oh my God it was a fantastic room um license plates and everything and so I waited I heard his car come in I looked out the window I could see him get out of the car he opens up downstairs they're in a colonial kind of a house and and I heard him say hey Mom hi Mom and she said oh hi Joe how would your glasses good um a package arrived a couple hours ago from from Dennis it's I put it up in your room oh right and I hear him coming up the stairs up the stairs I'm in his closet with the door shut and he opens up the door it's partially closed and he doesn't see a package on his desk or on his bed and he turns to yell to his mother where is the package and I jumped out of the closet and he that's how I got home with him it was beyond belief in terms of happiness you know he he saved all 125 letters that I wrote to him I've got them they're downstairs and I've digitalized all of them and I'm going to donate them to the Texas Tech thing when I'm getting a little older and so we bullshitted for an hour We're trying my binoculars out and you know and then I said you know I got to get home so I he said I'll give you a ride home so we stopped at McDonald's and he treated me at McDonald's and then drove home and uh he said maybe we'll go out tonight or you know come by and I said absolutely come on by maybe get up supper with us you know so he left I don't go downtown to New Haven you know I've done enough moving around there was a mistake on my part I should have gone down there so I'm with my mother and she's I said no just just let me sit and absorb where I am just you can't you can't ask me a lot of questions right now just and so she was good about it you know she'd come in you okay do you want a glass of milk no one fine mine just and then uh she said we have all your slides um all your sides are in a tray because my father would Supply the film that was prepaid and he would pay for the processing I would get that roll of film and it had a envelope that went to Rochester New York and my my prince and when he bought the stuff at a drugstore he didn't know whether it was print or slide he just bought it so none of those pictures I took with my asthmatic that I see and I must have said to her she said all your slides are in a tray and all your prints are in an album and I said Mom just I'm not interested you know I don't care just just hang on I'm not interested in looking at him now so that it goes away so it's around 5 30. the carpool's in the driveway it's my father's car I don't know how to play it you know and so I sit at the kitchen table and then I hear him come through the garage into the kitchen so I stand up and he comes through the door and he looks at me like you know like he's not seeing what he's seeing and he he almost took a step backwards like he couldn't process you know in his head because I've been saying in letters to everybody October 20th 30th it's now the you know whatever day it was fifth sixth and he looked he said when did you get home son we hadn't hugged you know we weren't hugging anyway never even as little kids he was a regeneration that didn't really I don't think he ever said I love you in his life you know until the end when he was dying but when we were growing up my father never said I mean I try to say I love you to my kids all the time that's how I sign my emails off you know but so he said when did you get home and I I said this morning about 8 30 quarter to nine bang on the kitchen table with his fists you let the whole goddamn day go by and you didn't come down to New Haven you didn't call me you didn't come see me you know Michael it was like I couldn't please him you know I just it was an error on my part I shouldn't have been so wrapped up with my buddy Joe and thought more of my father and and gone down there my mother would have drove me to New Haven my father would have taken the rest of the day off and then driven me to Joe's you know so I didn't play that exactly right but then he came over he shook my hand um the most he could do was then put his other arm on my arm like that he wasn't one to hug me he never was that's just how he was raised you know and so then he said well tell me about it tell me you know what and I said this and this and I've been nominated for a bronze star for age 61. so and I told him that in an email back in by April I guess it was and uh he said so tell me if you get the Bronze Star I said I didn't the paperwork just got destroyed and lost and it doesn't matter to me I don't care I don't care I'm home I'm here he said well that's pretty important I said Dad it's not that important believe me you know I got nominated by my CEO but he probably didn't you know I don't know I can't go into all that he just I didn't get it um Nolan got it only people no one got any medals on 861 except purple hearts anybody that got written up for a medal they turned them over to some kernel down at the base Alderman and he just threw them all away he didn't like Captain Snead so he just threw all those he threw all those citations away didn't want you know that's how I didn't get one so it's not a big deal I don't care I really don't care would I traded it for my life no um so but then he wanted to hear a little bit how did you get home and all that and then the next day he took Joe and I out to lunch she took the day off from work and picked Joe up and Joe cut a couple of classes and he took us to a steakhouse in New Haven first time I had a beer in front of my father ever because I didn't even have a beer until I went in the Marine Corps you know I never drank I wasn't a drinker I almost didn't get out of high school and I almost and I flunked out of college but as I tell High School groups I'm not here to preach or moralize make your own decisions but I never had so much as a beer until I was in the Marines and I never have used drugs in my life so those were not factors I don't want you to sit there in your seats and think wow that guy you know he barely got out of high school and he flunked out of college he must have been drunk or stoned all the time and that's not the case you know I wanted to know that wasn't the case I loved high school and I loved college but I just didn't study you know so my dad wanted to hear that and so you know it got better like that and I have to say that when I was over there it was my father who wrote To Me uh and I wrote him back I would write he would write I would write to him he'd write back more than my mother would when I wrote to him it was to everybody so then he would get a postcard but he'd write was we got your letter last week you know blah blah blah blah blah you know it's nice to hear from you and then I got case on that that cut out a couple of clippings and are you in this place I said no I'm not there I'm not and which is ironic because years later and I'm talking five or six years ago my sister who's the youngest we stopped giving each other presents at Christmas when we got into our 40s or 50s you know and one Christmas she handed me would look like a a package wrapped up that had like a a like a yearbook would come in it you know it was rectangular and about that I said Mary come on we've we're not doing this and she said no this is different and she had moved and in a drawer when she was moving were 50 letters that my mother had kept she didn't keep them all but these 50 they span most of my time there including the letters at the end saying I was coming home at the end of October but a number of those letters are written on the same day that I wrote to Joe and I can put them up and it's totally different I wasn't terrible my parents much and I was telling Joe everything you know and I did write to Joe on um January 31st and I wrote him a letter which is a farewell letter which I actually got picked to be on the glass wall in New York City in 1985 and I wrote it as a farewell letter to him because I really thought I was going to get killed there and it was a way of saying goodbye and I'm come to terms with this and it was my own decision and you got to move on et cetera et cetera et cetera you know and at the same envelope I put another envelope that was addressed to my parents and it was sealed and I said if I get killed over there I want you to go to their house in the next couple of days after you find out and once you give them this letter and it was the letter that he was going to deliver if I got killed to them and that stayed with all my letters at Joe's house my parents never knew about that letter they never knew about it until the end of their lives when I don't think my dad ever knew about it I finally told my mother she said I don't ever want to read that but Joe and I read it one day we opened it up and it was a farewell letter to my my parents my brother brothers and my sister um I still have it I still have it um and the envelope you know and Joe was going to bring that to their house it didn't happen I was lucky and that was my homecoming with my father and I I think I sent you to send you the picture of the blue sweatshirt I wrote to him and I said I need a sweatshirt up here on 861 it's freezing and just make sure it's not yellow or orange and he went to the you know a sporting goods store the next day and bought a sweatshirt blue one and he mailed it to me and I wore it till it brought it off you know at night I'd wear you know in an adventure just brought it off because we were living in the dirt and sleeping in the dirt so it was better about all that but and he went to my graduation with my mother and father my father when was my mother obviously they went to war if they were married but they did come to my college graduation but you probably think my father sat at the Uconn graduation liberal arts May 1973 he was thinking this isn't the college graduation I want it to be at you know and a quick trip back when I was leaving that morning my father had already gone to work January 4th 1967 I'm going to take a bus filled with high school kids it's a city bus but it's all kids going to one of the high schools in New Haven which I had done when I was a freshman and a sophomore I paid the 10 cents to take the bus and it's filled with those kids you know they're all in the back farting around and just before I left the house to get on the bus my father had already gone to work I'd never say goodbye and I looked I looked down at my mother it's this tiny Irish woman and I said no um the recruiter says to me that we're probably going to graduate around St Patrick's Day sometime between the 15th and the 17th and and if you want to come down you know and she looked up like this with their little Irish accent she wasn't born in Ireland but she she was just off the boat from you know when she was born in Springfield no Dennis no no no no no no no the only graduation we were going to go to was the one in South Bend IN 1968. or not come to any stupid graduation in South Carolina you better go now and so I left and walked down the street paid my nickel a dime and got on the bus and sat in the middle section listening to all those high school kids and then I got to New Haven I took the train to New York and then over to Penn Station and I took the a Pullman uh car with sleeper car all the way to um yeah and then we arrived in the daytime in the afternoon the Marines never bring you there in the daytime to bring you there at night just so it's it's always after midnight you know that's when they bring you there because they want you totally disoriented and they don't want you to get a Nur your first night there you don't sleep you're just up and the only thing I remember about that is we pulled in on this Greyhound bus uh with the driver it's all coordinated with you know he's a civilian driver and we go over the causeway and even though wise ass guys on the bus everybody shuts up it's real quiet it's one o'clock in the morning and we come down this long drive area and then there's the yellow Footprints and big sign receiving parks and the bus pulls up the air brakes let loose the door swings open and this big big he was black but he could have been white or green he steps on the first step of the bus and he's not our drill instructor he's just one of the guys at the receiving barracks and he comes up another step and you feel the bus move as he gets up and the driver says good morning Sargent and he goes what's so good about it it's oh 2 30 in the morning and you got a Bus full a and then he turns and he says in another 30 seconds I'm going to start my watch and we're we're two two on each side of the bus everybody had a little gym bag or a little sports bag with them some actually had suitcases and he says I'm gonna give you guys 45 seconds to get off this bus when I say go and I'm gonna kill the people who are still left on the bus go ha and he's right by the driver and he's kicking people out the door just physically kicking him down the steps and pushing people down the steps until he gets the boss clear and it probably was more than 45 seconds but it it felt like it was less than 45 seconds I was so thankful I wasn't in the back of the bus I mean people were trying to climb over seats just to not be it wasn't going to kill anybody but you don't know that you know he's just telling you that and that's how we got to Paris Island um yeah sorry I have to I have to interrupt you it's uh we've been talking now for an hour and 45 minutes it's okay it's okay it's all good stuff um I did at some point I can't do it right now well if you're if you're willing I would love to have a third conversation with you because we haven't talked about your return okay yeah sure Michael I would love to do that I think we should I think that would be an important part of the story okay um I know you went back more than once but you know you only went once Glenn and some of those other guys more than once I only went one time okay yeah and I would like to talk I'd like to talk about that if if you think it's you know yeah I think so it's pretty significant actually it involves Bill Clinton too because he's the one that opened up the country again you know when we got arrested for going to caisson and climbing the hills without a permit right and it was just scam to make money but um uh and involved the first ambassador to Vietnam who was a former pow I forgot his name but he was involved in that you know just sort of a set set the scene for us a little bit and talk about the circumstances that led to your uh your visit to case on what year was it exactly it was 2000 I went back into July of 2000 2000. when Clinton had opened up the country in 92 or established relations in I think it was I mean no somewhere in the 90s um mid 90s I don't remember the exact year but they put an embassy in up in Hanoi and so the student who went on our trip and filmed it and put a 55-minute documentary out begins his video with um when I asked Mr Manion if he'd ever go back to Vietnam again his response was always only if I could stand on Hill 861 again and so but I had been asked by that by when I started teaching in 73 so we were just removed from the war um and event I eventually used Johnny got his gun I had all quite the Western Front by Dante's Inferno and the Hunchback of Notre Dame The Iliad and all that as well but and I but kids would sometimes say would you ever go back and my answer was only if I could go and stand on this hill so when the country when they established diplomatic relations again with with Vietnam in the Clinton time reunions go down the hospitality room so okay so the thing about the caisson veterans association it's mostly Marines because that was mostly Marines army guy like Bruce Geiger um Navy guys who were Corman Pilots Air Force some only Coast Guard and so when we go to those reunions it's a mixture of people who serve it so I don't know the branches so I don't um go to the 26 Marines reunion or you know kilo 326 reunion if there is one I know there's a 26. I don't go I like going to this because these guys are all at case on at the same time and our stories kind of intertwined so there'll always be uh not uh I remember three times probably in 96 I mean 97 98 in the hospitality room there'd be somebody setting up a table who had something to sell and it would be trips back Battlefield tours that kind of thing and I'd always walk over to the table and I'd say you know I'd say you interested I said well I am in a way um what's the deal when you go to kaisan he said we go for about 45 minutes you know there's lots to see up in that entire area not just case on and I thought well all right 45 minutes and so that's definitely not enough time I and I said well do you ever go on the Hills would you he said no no no there it's prohibited that's totally off limit the hills are off limits not permitted right and to that my conversation thanks good luck with you and I must I don't want to sign up so in the next year same table different guy same thing we go to caissons about an hour we have lunch there now at a hotel and then we depart can you go on the Hills no you can't so Flash Forward to 98 and I'm at the I'm in DC and I'm at the table and while I'm waiting for the guy to look through his brochures to show him to me there was a top of my shoulder and it was one premise and Glenn Prentiss was a radio operator with India Company he was attached out from the same artillery about here as me Charlie 113 and he was attached out as a radio operator technically for an fo up on 881 South but he was also a jack of all trades because he would go down to the combat base if needed stuff needed to be brought down there and he'd come back um California kid and he and I used to talk on the frequencies at night during The Siege just dial up the frequency and see if he showed up and then you could just talk it's no radio procedure so he always remembered my name I had forgotten his name I knew it was Glenn but I just didn't know his last name so he said he said Dennis it's me go on premise and I said oh okay and at that moment the guy at the table turned and said here's the brochure but we don't go on the Hills go ahead and said to me he said he said to the guy thanks we don't we don't need that and then we turned away and he we sat off in a corner and he said let me show you this and he took out some pictures and it was him and his girlfriend on 861 and 881 South he had been there the year before and climbed up and I said what how did you use he said Dennis you know the map's better than me I didn't use any Maps I knew where the hills were so if you want to go I can take you back to 861 without a doubt just like that and I said to him you know I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to rev this down slightly because I can't I gotta wait I mean I got to tell my wife about this I can't it's you know it's it's 98 now we're halfway through 98. it's going to take some time for me to convince her that this is really so it didn't fall into place until 2000. and Glenn was such a generous man um when he had taken someone on the previous trip he always made made us take an empty suitcase and not not an empty a suitcase that you weren't using but had to bring and you had to put in it pencils and ballpoint pens and note paper and PAB tablets for kids and vitamin pills and that he would distribute that to people so that was his way of saying let's you know and then eventually what he started doing was he's so generous he he went back and built a water treatment plant in near outside of dong Han for kids you know in a village he also stopped taking extra suitcases but he would always ask people for money like a hundred dollars if whatever you can give and then he took that money and bought stuff in their markets pencils and tablets and then distributed at the orphanages and stuff he was he was really remarkable so I said I talked to Joan over and over but 99 was going to be too soon it took a while for her to maybe gear down you know gear up for that and me as well and so we agreed what do you mean by that um Dennis was it a financial question or was she just worried about about you about me yes yes it wasn't it wasn't Financial at all um no it it wasn't Financial it was as if you know he Glenn said you know it's it we're gonna go we can go I can get you there you know we don't do a tour you know we'll go up on but it's safe and you know you got to stay on the path et cetera et cetera it really was the emotional part my wife you know we had four kids she's not really eager to see me leave and be gone for two weeks and go all the way on the other side of the world to a place that had been such a dangerous place you know decades before and but she's a good woman and she understands I mean she don't she's you know other than a couple people who've done documentaries with me and now yourself she knows more about age 61 than anybody I know you know it's just it's been part of me and part of her in some way so the agreement was we'd go in July of 2000 and that's Glenn Prentiss he was an 881 South guy barbarata was had been friends with him for a couple years out in San Diego he was on 881 South as well he was a Ford air controller and he was only a Corporal and his nickname during as of The Siege was the mightiest Corporal in the world because he ran airstrikes and ran all the medevacs and all the all the supplies into 81 South you know and the third guy that was going to go was Paul Knight and he was the same thing he was a Forward Air controller on my hill and he was only a Corporal but he didn't have Bill Dabney as a spokesman you know Bill Dabney being you know married to Chester pooler's daughter et cetera Etc and pretty famous in the Marine Corps so that was the initial group and then um Paul had been estranged from his son they were from Seattle area somewhere out in Washington maybe not Seattle but out in Washington state he'd been estranged from his son since he was a since the boy was a teenager and now the boys are a little older he'd been in the National Guard and Paul thought maybe if you she could if it would be okay with us because his son come along we said sure you know in the hopes that it would you know better increase their relationship so that's it the four Marines plus but his plus his son and then we were probably a month and Away a month and a half out so April we're going to go in July first week in July and so sometime in April when Joan and I were coming out of church on Palm Sunday uh you know I was born a Catholic raised a Catholic I've kind of moved from all of that stuff but at the time we were taking our kids and Palm Sunday I came out and normally I could go right past the box of Palms you know I mean John would have a piece and the kids might but I grabbed a whole handful of Palms blessed palms and I got to the car engine said what are you doing I said oh I'm thinking about something for the trip you know you know so what I did was I I cut off the flimsy the real loose flimsians and they've been blessed you know and I made strips about three inches long that were firm wouldn't fold or will you know turn or bend and I I put 28 of them together and then the rest of the stuff I just I didn't throw in the trash I just threw down the woods and at night I get out my book and I'd get my better pen and use the best printing I could and I'd write the name of the 28 friends that I knew who were on the wall and I'd write their name the day they died and then um R.I.P and so my plan when we were going to go and our original plan was oh no so that was the that was my thinking I'm gonna put in a plastic bag they're not going to get crumpled because they're The Firm ends of the Palm I got 28 of them and I'm gonna you know Lieutenant holderness not holding us uh Lieutenant Fordham being one for sure the guy I told you about and so I just kept him and then we're leaving in July and the flight plan was LAX to Seoul Korea change planes wait for a couple hours and then Seoul Korea on another jet down to Saigon and then a couple days in Saigon to acclimate the use of the hot sticky weather and then up to way hire a driver Glenn knew a bunch of people on his three other trips he'd met this guy or that guy and we hired a van to take us up to case on and the original plan was we get to case on on day one on day two week hike to age 61 we brought tents and we've got small backpacking tents there were three attempts and stay overnight on 861 and then travel 3 000 meters more across 881 South where Bob arato was and where Glenn was spend the night and then come down to the caisson Village the next day work our way back downtown and then get in the van that afternoon and leave or spend the night and then leave so that was the plan but just before we were going to leave a woman Donna Elliott whose brother was in the Army he was a crewman on a helicopter on a huey when the the day of the siege began 21st of January Long Bay and Kason Village got attacked but it wasn't the big fight at Long Bay that's coming on February 4th this was a minor Skirmish but the NBA were probing the Army lines out there so these army helicopters were going in to assist and one of them crashed so Donna Elliott's brother Jerry his helicopter comes in fairly low to the ground just to check and see what might be going on and there's two crewmen from the other Chopper on the ground Jerry jumps out to go to help them but he's in the elephant grass maybe 50 feet 60 feet away from the actual crash site and that's the last anybody ever saw of he was killed there his name is on the wall right up there on panel 35. Jerry Elliott and she had been back twice once to Hanoi wants to Saigon to see if she could find information on her brother and so when she heard we were going to caisson she asked if she would come along and nobody had any objection to me wouldn't say no to that so that really was the group and when we got up to way we uh we spent we spent we stayed in dongha nothing we stayed in way I'm sorry a real nice hotel but Glenn said I want you to meet tomorrow we're going to go up the sidewalk I want to meet you a family of a woman I met on my first trip and I've used her as a translator she was a college student and uh so we did her family owns a little coffee shop right near the Citadel on one of the main roadways into into uh um Quay and we sat on the sidewalk and Glenn left and it was just we were the mother and father brought us tea and you know and pastries and next thing you know Glenn's coming down the street is with a Vietnamese guy who was kind of thin and looked a little worn but he had a you know he had a shirt on open shirt and shorts and those Ho Chi Minh kind of sandals and Glenn said could you guys get up for a second we did he said this is and he named his name he said he was an NBA officer at the siege of case on and I met him my last trip last year he and his family live in way oh my God I mean you'll have to see the video David shot it he put it on he put it on YouTube and so we sat there for an hour and I had my map out and he was an engineer and he was pointing to this and his son was studying Engineering in Hanoi and uh his wife was a school teacher in way it was amazing we spent an hour with him I remember one time in the film I even I wasn't saying it for the film I was saying you were looking for me and I was looking for you you know and he laughed and everybody at the table laughed and and at the end we shook hands and he bowed to us and then he left and Glenn said he doesn't have long to live he's got agent orange cancer certain kind which is the same cancer that killed barbaratus six years later in 2006 from agent orange the mightiest Corporal in the world died of the same illnesses this North Vietnamese officer you know I mean his his I still have a little sketch he drew and he talked about the bombs and many bombs and bombs and I still have that sketch and the next day with our van pulled up we drove to the combat base and we got a hotel room in town and I and Glenn said you know you're technically supposed to get permits but no permit's gonna get us to go on the hill anyway so let's just as it works for me and after it started to rain and it was rained off and on and then very next day we packed up with our packs and we drove out on the what's the old access road to the past the old combat base that first afternoon we went down to the base and we looked around and you know and I kept saying this isn't the runway they say this is the runway I know this isn't the runway and people were saying how do you know I said because the helicopter revetments aren't here and eventually we went further and further to the north than the original so they built a new Runway just to make it easier for the tourists to get to and they put down the car and all and then all of a sudden the tree someone said what's that I said that's 861 it was my first look at 861. since I had left you know and it's sitting up there just like it did in my pre-seage photos from the combat base and so the next morning when we left I I told them that Glenn had said you could go past 861 here driving down that access road with the combat base back here and then there's a road that kind of goes right up I said no let's go this way and I wanted to go the way we went the way we went in December of December 26 1967 so that's how we went and I wanted to go back so I could say goodbye in a proper kind of way to those friends that I lost there if not directly on that hill in that contest and that was really my reason for going and as I said earlier if I couldn't have gone on the Hills I never would have made the trip and David sense that even in the video yeah we went on a museum in way we went to a museum in Saigon I didn't care about any of that we went to an orphanage and the kids were delightful heartbreakingly so but I just I just wanted to go and David in the film that's my student he's also with us obviously he said um the Vietnamese say there are ghosts in the Hills because it's all flat where way is and you go in land a couple miles and then it's just up and he said the locals say there are ghosts in those Hills and that's what Dennis is here for he's not here to do the sightseeing or the shopping or I'm not I wasn't you know and then we sat out and we were in that whole group of us including the woman the Vietnamese translator Lynn and we were hiking and the agreement was we'd stay together because you know it's you're on a path you've got to stay in the path they do run cattle over the top so it's not like you're gonna trip booby traps or anything like that and it took I would say five hours it was muddy because it was raining at times slippery and we got up to the point where we were on Hill 700 where that tremble kid was so I didn't know anything about then and in the Mist you couldn't even see 861 but it was there and I said to the we had kind of spread out you know because people were Paul Knight couldn't go as fast you smoke cigarettes all his life you know he just he didn't have the energy that I and Glenn and Bob had but they got to we got to a point where we sat down on the elephant grass the three of us and then Dave niece apparently came by a few minutes later and they said to them where's Dennis and they said oh he went ahead down to that tree to see if he could find the you know the trail that might be heading straight up and the reality is I did but I got to the tree and I kept on going I got kept on going through the elephant grass just pushing it and I had gloves and I pushed and pushed in a bit of a path underneath the next thing you know I came to this real bump and I thought Jesus Christ this is the trench line this is the old trench line right here and so I I stepped down into it it all collapsed that I went about four feet and then I had to come up about two feet and I'm on the landing Zone and it's all it's got scrub grass on it but doesn't have you know jungle growth it's got scrub grass and I thought geez this is the last place I was standing when I left this hill back in April of 1968. and I said but I can't go any further I don't want to go up on top of the hill I got to wait for everybody else to come up but I was impatient but I and I'm an impatient get-to person when I want to go when I need to be somewhere I want to be there I I whether I'm going to a football game or a movie I want to be in there you know so I waited and they a couple of Bob and plant Bob and and and um Glenn came along with Leanne the translator and she wasn't our guide she was just to translate for us in case we had a language issue with somebody and she really wanted to go she thought it was a big adventure so then by the time we got to the top of the hill I got up to the top Dave had arrived with the camera um and we were walking around for a little bit and um I kind of got my bearings there was the ridge line over on the other side and I I didn't know whether you notice it in the photos I sent you but the Triangular patch of trees is growing back now it's going back in the same shape that it had been before the seat started I could see the bomb craters over there and artillery craters and I thought man I'm responsible for some of that and it's 32 years ago you know it was 68 and now it's 2 000 and um and I stood and stood and then I walked over and all of a sudden the thick grass up on the top of the hill the grass was thicker probably four feet high in a lot of places but I I stepped and I'm getting my bearing I know this this and I it slumped down and I realized that the grass was a little lower and it was a different texture and I said that's the bomb crater our bunker was right next to this 2 000 pound bomb crater so I took a step back took another step behind me and boom I went down into the ground a little bit and that's where my bunker was and so that's I all of a sudden on whatever day that was in July in the year 2000 like 11th of July 12th of July sometime like that I was standing in the hole in the ground the spot that had done my bunker those three decades plus before because all the sandbags we had were cloth and they all rotted away the boards all right away and everything just fell in you know all the rain and whatever they get and it was it was beyond the belief to be there especially since like if you're at the combat base you really you could say okay yeah there's 950 and there's 861 but I'm not sure if my bunker was really here or over there but I'm on a small hill I know it but I know it like the back of my hand I know where I'm standing I know what the view was looking straight out so I knew I was I knew exactly where I was and then everybody arrived at that point and I think I sent you a clip from the film where they they came over down to where I was and I'm pointing out like that down to one of the draws where the NBA had come through that night that's what I'm doing and um it got raining worse it was really raining and uh the thought was mean I don't know if we can I can't I don't know whether we can do this the wind started to pick up and and I said and I brought an old backpacking tent that Jonah and I Joe and I had used in Europe and some camping when we ran a we helped some kids in the summer but it wasn't I hadn't tested it so it's a two-man tent it's got a nice fly on the top keep out the rain one of the other tents was brand new and fairly good and then the big tent it blew away it just they were trying to set it up and the wind was like 30 miles an hour and it blew away so a couple of them said we've got to go back down we got to go down we can't stay up here in the dark with no no tent and what shot the plans to go to 881 South and David got into my tent with me and my student and he's got his camera like this digital Sony digital camera in the year 2000 um that he borrowed from his work at Fox Sports News out in LA and digital was just coming then he's got this nice camera and he and all of a sudden he's saying look the roof's leaking you know it's just all leaking I look up there there's water coming in at every corner and so he moved into the other tent and then those people said they're going to have to leave and Dave said Dennis I don't I I said I'm staying I know I don't care if I have to wrap up in my tent I'm staying I'll come back down tomorrow and uh but Glenn said well I'll stay and because we got the one good tent um and so as it turns out everybody left except me Glenn babarata and Lynn our translator it was just the it was the four of us in a two-person tent on the top of 861 With the Wind howling and you'd have to know Bob to appreciate what I'm going to tell you now at reunions Bob was he said he had gray hair but beautifully done and and he and my wife used to talk about hair dryers what's the best hair dryer to take when you're on the road or you know he was so conscious of his hair and didn't want to be fussed with you know he didn't like his gear so at one point I was really muddying from walking around and you know looking in the trench line and stuff and I said can I use my hands to wipe my you can I use your towel to wipe my hands off with it he said no no no I brought that you know I you know okay I mean I kind of knew the answer I just wiped my hands like this between my feet and uh we get in the tent Bob's on my left I'm here it's a two-person tent and there's four of us and then it's Glenn and then at the very other end is Leanne the Vietnamese woman and the winds howling and what it was was the end of a food that had come in over the Himalayas and it was breaking up over over Thailand and and Laos and and on its way out to sea so it was ferocious and in the middle of the night you know rashola showed you can't sleep it's just bizarre and uh uh Bob tapped my shoulder and he said you got your flashlight and I said yeah and he said could you shine it over here and I did like that and I tried it on the wall and there was a spider this big honest to God huge body and legs were way out like this and it's right here next to it he can't we're so tight like sardines he can't he said can you can you get it for me I said give me that towel he gives me the towel and I clapped it like that he and I pulled it across his chest and then opened the hat to the door and then threw it out into the rain he said you threw the towel out there I said well go get it then if you want it you know I mean you want them spider out that's how we spent the night but in the morning it was so terrible uh the winds were howling blistering rain was coming down sideways it was it was pointless to stay we just we couldn't see you couldn't see 100 yards outside you know so very reluctantly we left my tent there the other tenant blown away and the third one we left it they told me to come back up maybe and down we went and we got down to the access road and the van we had hired for the four days we had been driving back and forth and uh I think Paul might may have been in the band with the guy and we Pile in and uh he goes I have to take we have to go right to the police station in Quezon Village you're being arrested arrested yeah for being and so drive right to the police station which was you know 100 yards from our hotel and uh he the policeman said you know you you didn't have a permit to go you didn't hire a guy and you camped out overnight all three of those things are illegal in in Vietnam uh you um you have to surrender your passports to us and we're gonna in two more days they'll be in dongha 26 miles back to the coast so he so I I'm not just said to him you're going to hold on to him here but they're not going to leave until 2 he said yes you're under arrest and over there you can't get on a plane you can't get on a train even if as a foreigner without your or check into a hotel without your passport so effectively we were arrested so we saw you know and then we got back to the hotel we're muddy and dirty and minimal shower this isn't a big fancy hotel believe me and uh I said uh I said to David you know we don't have to leave for two more days like tomorrow's a full day we we could be you know and he said he said yeah and so I said well let's go talk to the others and we did and so what we did we the Dave and I my student and I and Glenn and Paul Knight no not Paul he stayed out of it Bob the four of us went to see the police officer in the station knocked on the door you come in what do you want I said to him uh sir I'd like permission and I will pay for the permit if I need the permit but I need to go out that date 61 tomorrow why I said well we left at 10 up there we were in such a hurry we thought we'd be coming back and he said okay I know it's going to be minimal like ten dollars for the permit and uh Bob said to him we want to go to 881 South and the guy goes why and he said well that's where we were Bob and I were on 881 South and we will try to get a ride on the kid on a motorbike through the village of and go up to anyone from the other side he said okay as long as you pay for the fee so we made arrangements for kids to pick us up in the morning so we got up around four pouring rain absolutely pouring rain but the kids that Dave and I hired showed up with their moped kind of thump mopeds but little motorbike dirt bikes seat on the back and um so we head off down the bumpy road and we're gonna go to that same Trailhead right there that access point where we had gone up the day two days before and come down the day before gonna go back up and David's kids stopped to get gasoline which you just he goes to a house and comes out with a you know a soap Jar full of full of petrol and pours it in or you know Kool-Aid can or whatever and David thought I can't risk the camera I can't risk the camera but I have no way of telling Dennis in the rain you know he just couldn't protect it and I get to the trailhead with my kid in about 10 minutes sloshing through the mud and you know he's zigzagging and getting through the mud and what and I gave him this three dollars and I stood there and it was starting to get light it's like 5 30 in the morning and I could see the footprints filling up with water where we had made the day before and washing away and I waited and waited no cell phones I only waited about 10 minutes and what I didn't know until I came back later was that David decided he could risk the camera and went back to the hotel he told the kid to turn around and go back to the hotel and then he sent the kid back to get me but by then I was gone and I went back up by myself and I wasn't carrying a full pack anymore I knew exactly where I was going and it took less than three hours to get up there and all of a sudden I'm on the top of 861 I left my pack at the LZ and I'm on the top of 861 by myself it was like it's like being at you know the little you know the little uh I don't know about the Bighorn or Omaha Beach with no one there no one a couple birds were chirping the rain had stopped the sun didn't come out but and the Mist was just kind of pouring over all the mountains around us it was really I know my imagination was probably an overdrive because here's what happened so I stayed at least three hours I dug a whole fin assembly of a water shell out of the ground on the day before the first day we arrived I cut down all the vegetation around where I had where my bunker had been and as I said in the film today that I want to leave two footprints in the mud here where I left thousands and thousands of footprints three plus decades ago so I go back over to my old bunker I sit down and in the dirt and just think about you know first Super Bowl our second Super Bowl which I heard from there um Valentine's Day my birthday 4th of February all those passage of time events you know and it started to get towards you know 11 o'clock and I know we're leaving by four that's the cutoff for time four o'clock so I went down to my pack so you know it's a slog down and back up and I I took out the Les palms and I brought him back up I had the bag and I brought it back up and I stood in the wind I sat in our father and I said a Hail Mary and then I just pulled them out at random they weren't they weren't chronological I just pulled one out Ben so Stephen Fordham 15 to April 68 may God have mercy on your soul let the wind take it next guy next guy next guy Mike you know the Navy corpsman Malcolm may God have mercy on your soul Connie Remo 21 January 68. and the wind was so hectic they all didn't go in the same way someone that way some couple fell close to me but I didn't touch them because that was my I let him go and others went on the breeze and just disappeared you know into the Mist and I was crying a little bit um and then I gathered up the little bit I had on the top a little bag I put the mortar shell in the fin assembly just you know um some pieces of barbed wire from The Wire but most of it had rusted away I crawled I walked back down slogged my way back down oh and at the top I took my two gloves I had these you know good sized leather gloves and they were soaked from all the water I just took them and threw them as far as I could to the east you know they just disappeared and they're out there brought it away now and uh I got down to The Landing Zone and I was filming pretty pretty broke up and not lonely is not the right word isolated maybe and grateful at the same time and so I was working on my pack and I was getting the stuff strapped on and I looked up and in my imagination it was my imagination the wind is it real I don't know but I could see figures standing up by the top of the hill they were in Jungle pants and they had ponchos on and the ponchos were moving in the wind and they were standing in a loose line just looking down where I was looking and I went like this honest to God I did this I blinked my eyes I turned away and then I looked back and they were still kind of standing there just looking at me but they didn't seem real real they were just I don't know so I I finished putting the stuff in my pack but every time I'd look up I'd still see them they were in a different order or they you know one guy had moved over here and not that I would recognize any of them specifically but they clearly were a presence and then I stood up and I'm not much for saluting because I I said when I wrote it up I I gave them the best military salute I could and I saluted one time and I turned my back South so my backpack's on at that point and I never looked back I walked across the landing Zone and dropped down on the trail going all the way back down to the bottom and when I came out of the came off the trail I was waiting about 10 minutes or so in the Band came they've been looking for me Bob and Glenn never got to 81 South they tried but the weather was just too bad it was too slippery um and everybody else was in the van and I I I we kind of rotated who would sit where and it really was my turn to sit in the front and I just said I need to sit in the back I can't I gotta sit in the back and then so I was in the back of that nine passenger van and uh kind of slumped in the corner and I was crying a little bit and David said to me you look like you've seen a ghost I said I don't know but I don't think you're far from the truth and then we drove the 26 miles to dongha and I haven't forgotten it I mean I still can see it if I was an artist I could draw and then we dealt with the plea we dealt with the goddamn cops and the hotel they put us up in was right next door to the police station but we couldn't run we were in cells we were in the hotel but couldn't go anywhere they got our passports and two thousand dollars initially then a thousand on day three it was down to 200 each and then and they took us at different times they would take us into like not like a a torture movie but they'd take us into an interrogation room and ask us what we had done and the person who was in the most trouble was Leanne because she's Vietnamese you know she could have known better but they worry about smuggling and people you know going there with cigarettes and then smuggling them into Laos or taking them from Laos into Vietnam but that's not us um but it went on and on until the fourth morning and barbarata Mr hair dryer saying let's just pay the money let's pay the money I want to get the out of here let's pay the money and I'm saying Bob I don't have this kind of money you know you know let's they'll come down a little bit they've gotta then they came down under 1000 dollars that's a lot of money in my life and then it's 500 and 200. we agree on eighty dollars each and sometimes they would take us two at a time or three against one and they'd listen and so we're on our way to the bank to make our withdrawal with the Corporal who works for the I don't know the major he said the major is so uh pleased with the results of our conversations that you all told the truth so it was reducing it to thirty two dollars the each oh my God you know I said Bob get out of the way I would take my money out first and so we just move up to the teller window and get our money out and then we pay and then we leave and we go back to Wade and we had two more days in way and then we flew down to Saigon and came home um but when years later when I was oh so while we were in the I give you just give me a few more minutes on this even it's taped or not but we were in the hotel for that house arrest and Glenn had a because of the work he did he was an engineer in Corona California he was a city manager for engineering he had one of those original satellite phones and he called his Congressman in California to say that we were being you know we were being held for ransom and rest in this hotel the congressman whoever it was called Hanoi and asked to speak to the Ambassador at the embassy that former pow I forgot his name who became the Ambassador so that's all 2000. five years later I I I when I coached those couple years ago when I wasn't coaching in my own building I wasn't the head coach I was an assistant but I met a guy who was a history teacher and a football coach and he would sometimes have me come over when he was doing a unit on Vietnam or southeast Asia so maybe in 2004 when the memory was still fresh he called me said we've got the former ambassador to Vietnam coming for a big reception reception and uh uh you know he's going to speak to the student body but I'm hosting a supper first and I'd like you to come if you want it'd be great to have you come to the meet him I think Maine maybe post I'm not sure and so we're at this big table uh formal dinner kind of thing before we're going to go over to the lecture hall and John my buddy the coach says to the Ambassador Dennis was in Vietnam a couple years ago he said really and I said yes he said where were you I said well we were in dongha we were in case on and we got in a little bit of trouble with caisson and we came back and went you you're one of those guys you're one of those guys I want what do you think he said yeah I got a call from this half-assed Congressman in California tell him and he got four Americans being held hostage at a at a hotel in dongha I had to send a guy to come down from Hanoi and he said you guys were all gone by then but what I had told my guy to say tell the local police they got to stop shaking down Americans you know it's just not gonna it's not gonna go well for both our countries you know you got to stop so he knew all about it four years later it showed what are the odds you know that's that was my trip um I've written up a little bit about it I wrote up that whole thing that happened and being by myself David made the film differently if you ever do end up seeing the film it's only 55 minutes the documentary but well I'd like to watch it today actually okay yeah just I'll send you I can tell you can write it it's yeah it's on YouTube it's called Casona walking the clouds A Walk in the Clouds Got It case on yeah case on colon A Walk in the Clouds and it's um he put it on you it was it was in almost every public TV station in the country when it first came out it took him three years to put it together 25 hours worth of film down to 55 minutes and when you put it on YouTube you could only put it in 10 or 12 10 or 12 minute segments so you get that you get one and then it'll give you the prompt to go on two three four I think five yeah yep so that's the trip that's why I went back and I people will say would you go again and the answer is no I'd ever want to go again I went back for the reason I needed to go and I gotta I did it and I no interest to go back again if my kids one day if I'm not too one you know if I'm still healthy and they say they'd like to go and would take me maybe I'd consider it um but I won't ironically Bob Glenn and Paul Knight went back the following year because they didn't get to 881 which was Bob's Hill so they repeated that with a permit and a guide they didn't need and the translator who they had they made it up the following year update 81 South and when they were up at the top of that Hill Glenn still had that phone and he called the sister of uh Maureen from New York out not the city but maybe Brooklyn or the Long Island I don't remember who was killed on that Easter Sunday assault on 8081 North and um he died I didn't know he was in my company but he she had written a poem about her brother and Glenn brought that poem with him on that second trip over and with his satellite phone and and Dave need Dave uh Dave Dave niece my former student went back again he made a second trip he filmed that and Glenn is on the phone talking to this woman in New York state somewhere in New York and he's reading her poem about her brother on the hill that he died on from 33 years before it was really powerful it was really hard because the wind was blowing and you know elephant grass making switching sounds and why hi my brother fly hi my dear brother or something like that yeah so that's the trip what happened to Leanne she became a dentist no I mean how did she get out of the trouble that she was in oh well her mother her mother was actually French her mother was French and she um she was in a little bit of hot water but I think it was one of those everyone was making a lot of bigger noise she was not kept with us her mother she was released in the custody of her mother in in Whey which is 10 miles from Dawn Hall where we were and we didn't see her I don't think we saw her again I don't remember seeing her again but Glenn was very good to her family over the years he made many trips back probably at least eight trips back and he also helped with her education and he paid for her to come and she went to University in in San Diego for dental school and then she went back to Vietnam she married someone they've got kids and she's a dentist in way um and for the last 10 years of Glenn's life he was on Tarawa helping helping recover bodies on Marine bodies on Tara from World War II they recovered over 308 years and the government couldn't find those guys in 50 years right he got hooked up with freedom flight that's an organization that takes planes around but their side side business not business for money but their side interest is Mias and Glenn got hooked up with them and the next you know he told me he was going to taro and you know they don't have to put up with the red tape that the government does they found 300 over 300 in eight years Marines buried under people's garages under Pig styes all over Taro because all those Graves got moved at least twice and everybody just forgot about them yeah amazing and then he got sick and he went back again and got sick again and then he stopped going he couldn't you know and he he died last January around this time and then Paul Knight died a couple years a couple weeks after that and Bob had already been dead Don Elliott died she was a cigarette smoker she died maybe we went in 2000 she wrote a book I have it right here um about her brother and um I think she probably died in 2017-18 lung cancer and obviously the Vietnamese guy so everybody in the film The primary people I'm the only one that's left and your student and my students yeah David's there Dave and he's married to a Vietnamese one they have a couple kids who lives out in L.A is that right yeah and one more thing about that and this this would never you would I mean you have to use it I took a buddy of mine who's in the Marines he runs the gym I used to go to he doesn't run it anymore a real good guy Marine Cheshire high school graduate never played Sports because he didn't he liked doing individual stuff he was a weightlifter boxer and Marine Corps he was a machine gunner and he came down to one of the Cason reunions in DC I said you sure he said yeah I'm not going to stay the whole week like you guys but I'll come down and he loved it he he just loved it and he of all the guys he met and he met a lot of good guys Glenn Prentice is the guy that just impacted him the most he'd always say to me how's Glenn doing how's Glenn doing I'm always thinking of Glenn stories he told how he made me laugh et cetera et cetera et cetera and he was sad when I told him that this last year that Glenn had passed away and my my sadness is I didn't see him if he went to the previous reunion just when the pandemic was starting I didn't go and then Joan and I both were sick so we didn't go so it was we you know it's been three years since we were at a reunion um and then he died in January next reunion will be in the summertime this coming summer we'll go to that out in Reno I think you know it just occurred to me we never really talked about your exit from the Marine Corps uh do you have any feelings about how that went down or you know any particular memories about it the particular memory has is that um I kept wanting to go to jump school because there were only two Marine units that don't qualified anglico air Naval gunfire liaison which was what it was when I was in the states and Recon and so when I get back from Nam and checked in with the first sergeant in November of 68 I was home for the month of October and it's early November now and I bought a brand new Camaro 68 Camaro I parked in front of his spot and he leaned back in his chair and he said Gee that's you checking in right so Corporal I said yes I am sorry and he said that's a beautiful car not yours I said yeah yes sir and uh he said well I hope you enjoy it because you're going to cube you're going to get more on the 23rd of December we got to bring we rotate a platoon in now to get more every four months and we got to get those guys home for Christmas and what I wanted to say was like Jonas heard me tell a million times have you any idea where I was at Christmas last year but you can't tell that to First Sergeant so off I went um and then I came back from that went on 10 days leave and the spring was April now of 69 and 10 days leave come back park my car in the exact same spot he leans out the window he goes oh you got your car back I said yes I am for sergeant and how about jump school he said well you're going on a med Cruise now you'll be leaving in a month on a med Cruise you'll be going you'll be in the Mediterranean for two and a half months floating around making making NATO Landings with British Marines and Greek Marines and assorted Cowboys said when you come back talk to me so I come back in July just before the moon landing and he said I went to see him and still got that car yes I do for a start and he said I said any chance in Jones school he said well look I've got this right here it looks like you're getting out around the 12th of December I said I I am and he said well why would I send you to jump school if you're going to be getting out of the Marine Corps if you're willing to ship for four years I'll make sure you get to jump School you'd be a great candidate because I came back from Cuba I was you know I weighed 182 pounds I benched four four plates uh 410 pounds twice and at a buy weight of 182 and I never used a supplement of any kind wow it's just down in Cuba there was nothing to do but lift and work out and sit in the Sun and swim and you know so that fall they had a thing called project transition going if you weren't going to college now I'd applied to Uconn and um I I was accepted I then accepted conditionally once I'd be out first and then maybe take a one course out of at a community college and so I kind of knew and I knew my my getting out date was the 12th of December 1969 but they had a project transition so if you told them you weren't going to college then you could they'd hook you up you'll see and say what do you want to do well I want to work in the phone company they try to get you a job working with someone phone company in town or climbing telephone poles or or whatever so I told him I want to be a forest ranger they said oh okay we'll hook you up with the forestry group so every day after morning formation I'd go off into the woods with these civilian guys marking trees cutting trees down and it was great and then I'd get out at noon time and I'd come back and I'd football practice because I played on the team on the clock on the uh Camp Lejeune football team and then got to be December 5th or so and I went to see the career officer and I had said it to you before I think talking about Trey Mead guys could go back and they would you could be a mailman you could be a clerk you could just drive a truck and stay at the Nang um that was that was the way to get you to stay and then and then the rest of your time would be officially credited for three full years but you only served you know two and a half so I sat at the table knowing that I paid three thousand dollars for that Camaro out the door in 1968. it's now a year later he shows this he said I know you you say you you you think you're heading back to school I said yeah that's my hope I've been accepted he said well I just want you to the Marines would like me to show you this and he slid a piece of paper across and I was E5 by then I got promoted to E5 in when I was in Cuba and they were offering me E6 staff sergeant and three thousand dollars if I would ship for four years and there was three thousand dollars sitting right out there in the parking lot you know which means today I have a 216 Camaro give courtesy of Joan we worked that out she was turning in a Prius on a lease and she said I think we should get a Camaro because if we don't do it now we never will and that's what we have one of our two cars is a Camaro and it cost thirty thousand dollars so they were offering me the equivalent of today's money thirty thousand dollars if I would ship for four and I looked up and I said sir will I be going back to Vietnam and he said with that MOS absolutely meaning our you know artillery and Naval done fire see ya so that was the that was my getting out part of that and I I drove I'm not a spitting polished person you know I never bought the dress blues if I'd want them I guess I'd have sold them but I just I wasn't interested in that stuff I very rarely was in a dress uniform unless they made me getting one so I went to a bus station back in the days the Greyhound bus station in Jacksonville North Carolina had the Walkers you could put a quarter in and you know they don't do it anymore because people blow bus stations or train stations up or airports but so I had a duffel bag filled with all my uniforms and I paid 50 cents and I just opened up the door and pushed it in there and locked it and somewhere up in my desk upstairs is a key to a locker in Jacksonville North Carolina that no longer is there because no none of those bus stations have lockers and I traveled up the New Jersey Turnpike and this was before Easy Pass and they always tell you if you lose your ticket you have to pay from one end to the end you're getting off on and I was getting off on GW Bridge end so I kept the ticket I got it there to the toll booth I set up I don't know I stopped for I stopped for breakfast and I lost my ticket well you're gonna have to pay I said sorry I'll pay so I paid somewhere up there is the key and the took the ticket from the New Jersey Turnpike on my last day and uh I was only home for a couple days Christmas now of 70. or 69 sorry I was home for Christmas and then right after Christmas I got a job working uh in a concrete manufacturing plant through the spring and the summer of 70. and the only I the UConn had said to me you cannot we're not going to take you you're here conditionally you got to go take a course somewhere so where I work in this concrete pressing Bridge forms and stuff right across the street was and a big campus was Southern Connecticut State University it was College then so I went over there and I enrolled in a night course and they said what do you want to take and I said I don't know how about American history so they said okay and as it turns out if you're going to be a teacher in Connecticut uh whether you're grammar school or high school if you don't have American history you can't teach you've got to take that so I never had to take it at stores I just took it in the spring of of uh 1970 I took the history course and I had a guy who was a football coach I've been in the public schools he was a Princeton grad he also coached the Princeton but he was now finished down his career and he knew I was a veteran you know and I only went there one night a week in our so it was like two hours there was always a break in the middle and he talked to me a little bit about not lecturing me we're just talking and he said you know the war I said you know I sound like my father he said because I didn't know about my father for saying being angry you know in my back of my head I'm thinking this would be another thing like my father you shouldn't have and uh he said I don't think the way it's run I don't think he said I like I think it's like the American Revolution and I went like just like that and what how could it be he said think about it he said the American colonists they didn't have to beat the British Toe to Toe they didn't have to stand up and fight him in those fields they didn't have to do that all they had to do was keep from getting their asses handed to him and eventually England would get tired of sending their kids across the Atlantic Ocean to die in Concord and wherever else and he said it's the same for the Vietnamese he said they blew it at the Ted offense I mean they got so many people killed that almost wrecked their plan but all they had to do was keep from getting their asses totally kicked and eventually we'll get tired of it at that point it was will because it was still 1970. eventually we'll get tired of it and people will rise up and we you know we're not we don't want our kids dying over in Southeast Asia anymore it's kind of exactly what happened and I would say that on our trip back in 2000 we didn't see one frown not one person had a frown on their face and the Anne showed us her history book it's called the American war and it's only two paragraphs that's all it is it's just two paragraphs because they fight the Chinese they fight the cameroos they fight us they fought the French they're always fighting they just want their country and that's my story it is a remarkable story um you know one of the things that strikes me is you know you talk about how much you didn't like the Marines right that yes particularly the kind of spit and polish aspect of it um and you know maybe some of the bureaucracy of it um but you know here you are all these decades later and I still feel like I'm talking to a Marine I mean that experience that experience really you know is is maybe the most defining experience uh you know outside of you know being a husband and a father and you know the teacher you I mean right alongside those things is Marine so do you think about that do you think about the fact that you know even though you didn't have any particular love for the Marine Corps you didn't have any particular patriotic drive that led you to join um that it you know all these decades later you're still I mean you're still a marine I think yeah I I mean I keep my hair short um it's long now I need I'm getting a haircut two weeks from now because it'd be my birthday I wasn't going to say anything but yeah that's uh totally unacceptable oh look at my Sideburn sir um I know I I have pride in what I was able to do I have great um I have great compassion in my heart for the for the young kids that I was with and got to know not the tragedy Parts you know I mean I wish Trey me was still alive I mean I still have I still have all his emails and it's just he's I'm going to find an email tonight and now he he did say to me in an email once this is my view on it and he talks about what it was to be a Vietnam combat veteran it's and I've sent it to other people and they say wow this is really something and there's a reference in it to you he said I often think of you in your English classroom um having lunch by yourself because most of the time when I taught I never went to the teacher's room I either went to the coach's office or I sat in my own room and he uses he mentions that in this response about what it was to be a veteran and how pleased he is and so someone like that Trey um Mead um Lieutenant Fordham I've been in you know I've been in touch with his parents his not his parents his brother his older brother a younger brother younger brother lives in the DC area um I took Devin down to see Carrie Lee Johnson's parents mother Rhoda Robinson we spent five days with her down in Alabama so he is part of me and I remember Joan more than once said to people I don't understand it was only 13 months in this whole out of his whole life and it still sits up there big and big and big and I guess I mean other people friends of ours up the street will he'll say to me I don't know you can't you remember all the stuff from high school he said I can barely remember high school you know and and I'm 15 years or 10 years younger than you are and your memory is beyond belief and I say I know I just my whole thing's in my head somehow so I'm not I mean my sense of the Marine Corps is yeah it's an organization that drives you crazy but that they need to need to be Marines at least until the world finally comes to peace but at the same time I really don't want people going through what I went through or even worse if it's just it must be a better way if we can solve some of those issues somehow it's just heartbreaking to think that you know we're going to just keep on doing that but the Marine's been doing that for a long time I mean I hated the things like you know you couldn't go over the speed limit on the base and if you did they'd take your your bumper sticker away so you couldn't drive your car on the base and had to leave it and then hitchhike you know um we always we were free on Fridays if we didn't have the duty and we could leave on Friday afternoon did not come back till Monday I always went home to Connecticut called swooping everybody used to swoop all over the place but they would always have our field day on Thursday night few days when you clean the barracks sure of course and if you don't do a good job we'll have another one on Friday night you know and a couple times that's exactly what happened some people didn't clean their area up and now we're all being kept and we're not going to get a long weekend home to Connecticut or New York or Florida or wherever we're stuck here all the little you know all that stuff um when you think about those two uh trips to caisson right the one in the one in 68 or late 67 and uh and the one in 2000. um if you think of those two trips as sort of bookends is there any last thing you want to say about either the bookends themselves or the space in between you know sort of final comment um I guess uh my final comment is I I I know I have this memory I know hold it in there I'll say of all the letters I wrote to Joe and the ones my mother saved and the map and all this and the slides I have all the slides and all those Prints but I guess what I want to say is I'm really lucky I'm fortunate I have this agent orange neuropathy in my feet but I don't have bladder cancer I don't have leukemia you know I don't have all those other diseases that that people are getting from agent orange I have four beautiful kids I have a beautiful beautiful wife and I I appreciate the life I have it's always counterbalanced by what had happened to me in that short amount of time and it's only because I always think you know that shell that hit right there and the one that hit right there or the shrapnel from that if that had been just a little bit more forceful or that had been you wouldn't have your wife you wouldn't have your kids you you wouldn't have your grandchildren all that would have been gone and to think of the thousands and thousands of people that does happen to who go participate in military campaigns you know there's it's it's an unforgiving place the battlefield it's unforgiving um and you can come away with remembered things and I think it's like when I was a Backpacker back in high school you you go up in the White Mountains and stay a week week and a half up in the White Mountains and it'd rain half the time and you'd sick of it you couldn't wait to get back but then when you talk about it years later the rain is almost like that's real good man you know you did it and you smiled and you're still smiling and it's the same thing with the military you get it it can be so goddamn particularly the Marines can be so aggravating and the meaning and then but when you start and pull back from it and you're looking years later it's like that rainy camping trip well it didn't rain that bad and you know those Field Days on Thursday night weren't that bad really you know that kind of thing and I'm proud of what I did like one someone in the Marines you only got in the reserves because he played rugby in college and he was too big to go in right away so um and that was fine with his mother and I but he was a Marine Corps officer he went through the he went through uh OCS at Quantico done the basic school where they teach you how to be an officer and they went through the school of infantry which started school in the Marine Corps but he was only in the reserves and he's out now the other my other two sons daughter didn't serve but um yeah when Devin was going in you know his mother and I looked at each other and I looked at each other and said well this is what he wants to do and at that time the war was you know we weren't we were engaged don't get me wrong this was not too he graduated from Uconn and 212 I think but if he stayed in the reserves he wasn't going to be going over there that's what I meant to say and that's that seemed fine with me you know I said Devin you it's fine you don't need you know you got other things too and you're coaching now and you're teaching English just like I was and you're teaching Deliverance so just take that and run with it I guess that's my final thought but that bookend is right and but when I left to go I said to Joan in the driveway right out here going at July day in 2000 I said maybe I'll get some closure out of this and she went that's not gonna happen that is not gonna happen you're not going to get closure from this trip it may put in another compartment for you but it is not going to be closure for you it's too it's too big of a presence in your life there's no way you're going to get closure

Channel: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund

Views: 56,376

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Id: q4MG0_52g0Q

Length: 220min 37sec (13237 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023