Ed German – U.S. Marine Corps 1967-70

[Music] usa warrior stories is a not-for-profit organization designed to record archive and share videos of veterans stories to help veterans make a connection with one another and to help us all better understand their sacrifices for our freedoms [Music] i grew up in brooklyn new york i was born and raised in brooklyn and i come from a military family i come from a large family my father was a world war ii veteran and most of my uncles served in the military during during the 40s during the war my father was the super of an apartment building on willoughby avenue and we were the first black family on the block me and my best friend mickey we dropped out of high school in the fall of 67. we initially wanted to go in the navy because my cousin cedric was in the navy and he was writing letters home saying hey man we just sailed through the straits of gibraltar and then now we're getting ready to go on a mediterranean cruise i said to mickey one day i said man we want to do that too man so mickey and i went downtown brooklyn to the recruiting to the navy recruiting office so the recruiter said have you graduated high school yet we said no he said well the navy just changed its regulations they said they they won't accept you at 17 unless you've already finished high school and then he said but the marine corps recruiter right next door they'll take you at 17. that's me and mickey and those those were taken at paris island december of 67. while we were in boot camp one of our drill instructors said to us he said i'm sorry girls because they this is before we graduated they they called us girls all through boot camp you don't get to call yourself a marine until you graduate he said i'm sorry girls but most of your sweet asses are going to vietnam because what happened was the ted offensive had jumped off this is our graduation platoon yeah this is reese he was a mean one he was the one who said i'm sorry girls this is me and that's mickey so we graduated january january 15 1968 and then the next day january 16th we boarded buses which took us up to camp lejeune north carolina where we would begin infantry training i got sick at camp lejeune from the drinking water so mickey and i got separated i was given an mos 0331 i was an m-60 machine gunner when it was time to go to vietnam and we got on buses at camp pendleton we got on buses full marines we got on the bus and the bus took us to el toro airport we boarded a civilian american airlines jet with stewardesses and everything full of marines and they served us cocktails and everything all the way there and we landed in da nang it was like around noon and uh when we got off the plane the uh the stewardesses gave each one of us a kiss and a hug every single one of us as we got off the plane in august of 68 i was assigned to the 27th marines bravo company 127. so after i was with the 27th marines for about two and a half weeks word came around that the 27th marines were rotating the 27 marines were leaving vietnam but we knew guys who had arrived a couple of weeks ago we were not involved with those plans going back so when it's when the 27th marines left vietnam in september of 68 we were transferred up north to northern i-corps up north to quang tree in dongha so i was transferred up north to the 4th marines to bravo company 1-4 and that we got there in september 68. so when i once i got there i knew i was going to be somewhere close to mickey because mickey was with the ninth marines and i knew we i knew that they were up north so when i got there i asked around i said i said other ninth marines around here and somebody said yeah man they're right across the road i said oh wow i'm gonna find mickey you know i said hey is uh do you know where third platoon is and they said well third platoon is they're over at camp carroll so i said well where's camp carroll he said this down route 9 about 10 miles down route 9. so i had my rifle on my shoulder i went down to the road and a jeep came by i hit i got i said where are you going i said i'm going to camp carl i said get on so i got on the jeep took me down to camp carroll i got off i said is third platoon charlie company here they said yeah third platoon was right down that ridge i'm walking down the ridge and i'm as i'm walking i'm passing by guys who were at their fox holes and uh i said uh i asked one guy i said you know where goring is she goring he said yeah goring's writing that tent down he said hey gary did somebody see it and mickey was in a two-man because we slept in two-man tents out when we were on a when we're on patrol we called them hooches so mickey was in this hooch and mickey had no idea i was even up north so mickey came out of the hooch and he said buck because that's my nickname buck and we ran to each other we grabbed each other and hugged so i i ran into mickey like three times when i was in vietnam you know i saw him about three times he was wounded in the head at a ammo dump explosion in march and he came home and nobody talks a lot about r and r and what happened r r was a big part of the vietnam experience so what happened with me was in march of 1969 we were on a squad sized patrol at the base of dangha mountain so the word comes down the line r r quotas are in so they pass the word r r quotas are in and then the word comes back from the back where tokyo tokyo and then the word comes back from the rear when tomorrow so when once we got back to the base the next chopper that came in with mail or supplies i got on that chopper and it took me to lz stud to our rear operating base i put my tropical dress uniform on and i went to the dispersing office and i said how much money do i have on the books and he said twelve hundred dollars i said i'm going on r r he said how much you want i said how much do i have he said twelve hundred i said i want it all anyway when we landed in tokyo it was late it was maybe two o'clock in the morning one o'clock in the morning i don't know what time it was but it was dark and it was late and it was snowing so the plane lands in tokyo at the military base and but the px is open the exchange so the first thing we do of course we got to go into the px and buy coats so we're all going to the pit so i made friends on the plane with two marines who because we're sitting three across they're from different units i don't even remember their names right now so we went to the px we bought our coats and then we went outside and we got a cab the taxi's right there waiting for you because they're there you know he's come i'll take you to a nice club i'll take you to a nice club taxi driver takes us to a bar in yokohama called the blue note i never forget these things the name of the bar was a blue note so we couldn't go in the blue note and there's this bartender back there and there's girls in there sitting at the bar and we go in and we start buying drinks and the girls that we're buying drinks for they're drinking but they're not really drinking alcohol see they just because otherwise they get drunk you know they're just working girls you know but they're but you but they're charging us as if it's alcohol so we're in the bar and everybody gets matched up with the girl the girl that i get matched up with was the youngest of the girls in the bar and i was 18 and she was probably 17 or maybe 16 i don't know but i remember her name to this day her name was kikuco mantani her nickname was her nickname was yuka we spent 10 days in yokohama in a japanese style hotel and we each had our girlfriends and we spent every single dime that we had because when you went on r r in vietnam you lived like there was no tomorrow and the reason you lived like there's no tomorrow is because when you leave rnr you're going back to the war and you don't know whether you're ever going to go back home you're going back to the war so when i left tokyo and went back to the war a couple of months later i got shot in the back by a sniper on may 10 1969 we got up early because we knew that we were going on an all-day squat size patrol now we're walking in a winding stream and the water is about ankle deep it's just and we're in the middle of it and there are mountains on both sides of us or hills tall hills on both sides of the stream so we're like an alley and the point man was the guy named hallett all of a sudden we hear wow and we hit the water and the lieutenant lieutenant ludwig had told him he told me the morning before he said he said g-man remember if we need that machine gun the sign is the it's going to be the sign is going to be buddy up buddy up he said okay i got it so we heard that noise and we hit the water and in a few seconds the lieutenant let him say buddy up let's get that buddy up here so me and murphy we head towards the front of the squad and we can't see haley cause he's around the bend but um so so me and murphy we settled on the left bank of the stream we're up on the bank and ahead of us is our big flat rock and it has this rock has a flat surface it's about as far as from me from here to that house across the street and so i tell murphy i said aim and let the let the bullets hit that rock and ricochet around the corner so he gets the murphy gun and he's hitting the rock so you can see the traces and he's hitting the rock and the traces are going around the corner and then hallett comes around the corner he rejoins us we didn't know whether hallett was dead or alive but that that we heard they were all hala took about eight bullets in his legs but miraculously he was still walking because the bullets that hit hallett they all grazed him his pants were all torn up from these bullets that hit his legs but he could still walk which is amazing we started receiving sniper fire from all right we're gonna have to take the hill we all turn to our left and we've got to grenades they're throwing grenades at us but but but the vegetation is so thick that the grenades are not very effective and some of them were actually defective because they were just old the guys who were throwing the grenades were so close that you could hear the spoons flying off the grenades and we're firing up we're firing through the jungle through the vegetation because we want to make our way up to the top and as we're doing this i look to my right and a guy named darnell i saw a bullet go across his left eye right i saw that i s i heard it i heard this shot and i saw the flesh removed from his left eye like this and he went down i said dammit the guard darnell and then a few seconds later i looked over there where donna went down he was standing back up i said get down get down he got back down the bullet that hit darnell just like the bullet that hit hallett it grazed the top of his eye so he was the second one to get wounded then to my left as we're going up this hill and they're throwing these grenades holland who's to my left he gets shrapnel in in his shoulder so holland is wounded now so now we have three wounded and we're still trying to get to the top of this hill so that we can get medevac choppers to get these guys out so on our way up to the top of the hill we come across a big log a fallen tree log when i got on top of the log as soon as i got on top of the and i don't know why i did it the way that i did but as soon as i got on top of the log i got hit from the back by a sniper and i went down and the bullet hit me in the back a half inch from my spine and it went straight through my shoulder it went straight through and i went down and when people asked me how it felt i told them it felt like somebody hit me with a baseball bat and i went down and all the blood was pouring down my chest it was so much blood coming down my chest that i could smell it when i got hit i let out a shot i said ah and i was crying i was crying because i never felt that kind of pain and for the first when i first got hit for the first maybe for the first maybe 10 seconds i thought i was going to die but then after 10 seconds i realized i wasn't gonna die because if i was gonna die i would have been dead already it was hurting too bad for me you know it was hurting too bad it was two i was too i was alive i was i was awake after i got wounded we still had to climb about an hour to get to the to an area where we could call in a medevac chopper to get the four of us out and the choppers we could hear them coming and the medevac chopper came it was a ch-46c night a marine corps chopper with the big double blades and it didn't land it hovered and i mean it hovered about it harvard about 50 feet in the air or more maybe it was high and it let down a cable a metal cable with a stretcher on the end of it they laid me down in the stretcher strapped me in then they stood the stretcher up like this straight up and then then they began to hoist me up and as i was going up and as i was going up because you're standing up in the stand it's the vertical it's a vertical stretcher and as i was going up as soon as i all my men were down there at the bottom and they were all doing like this they said g-man we'll see you back in the world so when i got to guam i called home and i told my mom and everybody that i got shot and every i started crying i said no i'm okay mom i'm all right i'm i said i'll be home in a couple of weeks so anyway so when we landed at floyd bennett field in brooklyn we got on buses which took us to saint albans naval hospital in queens so when i got to saint albans mickey was there so the next day was sunday and i had to beg mickey to put his uniform on and we got on the subway we got on the j train we went to brooklyn we got off at halsey street and we walked down broadway and we turned right on putnam avenue and i was back on my block when i got to the house i walked in the gate i opened the living room door and my three sisters they screamed and my father he was laying on the couch taking a nap he was on the couch sleeping and when they screamed he woke up he woke up and saw me and he started crying you know my mother ran out of the kitchen it was just a joy to have been able to survive the war and be home again you know when i got home nobody in my family none of my none of my brothers and sisters nobody of my friends ever asked me what happened nobody ever asked me anything not even what was it like i found out about gallery magazine when i was working for for the veterans educational center at la guardia college and in 1991 we had a vietnam veterans reunion and one of the guys that i served with in vietnam named marty who's my first squad leader at bravo one four he lives he came to the reunion it was the first time i was seeing him since vietnam and that was 1991. and he told me he said eddie he said you know gallery magazine he said hey uh they have a thing called heroes the military experience and uh they pay 500 dollars for stories yeah this one is this is a story i wrote about mickey see it's called mickey from panama i was always pretty good a good writer so i had five of them published my dad he served in france and berlin and he also served in burma wow that's my mom yeah my book is deep down in brooklyn the reason i chose that title is because it's a deep story and also because we had a cellar apartment of an apartment building and that's pretty deep that's deep down and it's not just my story but it's it's it's it's a story written from a historic from an historical perspective because it includes institutions and places and things and and people and dates and times and significant events that occurred and how people reacted to them and so and i wanted to write it because i wanted to write it all down because i because of its uniqueness and because of the unique characters in there and also because i've wanted to write it before i forget everything they talk about world war ii which my father and a lot of my uncles were in and that generation is referred to these days as the greatest generation and i agree but lately i said well you know what each generation that served is the greatest generation the men and women who serve now they're a great generation because they're all volunteers world war ii was a draft vietnam was a draft but these young people now they're all volunteers so there's a great generation too you know and here we were are we served and almost 59 000 vietnam veterans almost 59 000 were killed in a war in a country that didn't do anything to us and that's why the college kids back in those days were going crazy of course because it didn't make sense and that's why the anti-anti-war protesters that's why because it didn't make sense for 58 plus thousand americans to die i'm sorry but it just i mean i am a patriotic american i love my country i have the american flag flying right now on my porch i love this country but certainly if it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense [Music] you

Channel: USA Warrior Stories

Views: 25,992

Keywords: 27th Marines, 4th Marines, Brooklyn, Purple Heart, USMC, Vietnam

Id: vWBhmJsbwms

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 31 2022