Jon Wallenius - Battle of the Ia Drang Valley

wow why i was sent to vietnam because i was ordered to go you know i really didn't have much concept about what was going on in vietnam i was naively you know a 21 year old soldier as a matter of fact i remember when we we went by troop ship and i remember we all knew we were going to vietnam but i don't think anybody really had a real clear idea even where that was and i remember one one of the days on the troop ship we a bunch of us were standing around at the base of the staircase and there was a it was a map of the world above it and some old master sergeant came up there and he pointed to some french french indochina and he said that's where we're going boys and you know as a stamp collector i knew what french indochina was but i really didn't know where vietnam was so that was my first clear vision of actually where we were going and i i knew the about the domino theory and i knew uh about uh you know communism and i figured that was what we were doing as we were stopping the spread of communism well i was uh i was a forward observer for 81 millimeter mortars and uh which which meant that every company uh in the in the line companies had a had a mortar platoon and uh there was there was one person that was the forward observer who was who was sent out to whatever one of the platoons was making contact or needed the uh needed somebody to call in fire support from our guns and so that was that was what my job was at x-ray and ended albany later on we we stopped using forward observers because everybody was forward and we didn't really need anybody out there but you know particularly with that job but and we stopped carrying three guns and we only carried one gun so the the role of the mortal platoon changed over time as we were there i was in b company second of the seventh second battalion seventh cavalry and because of because of the situation when we went overseas to begin with everybody with 90 days or or more who was in the army at the time went overseas and by the time by the time my drain came up in the middle of november there were a lot of a lot of guys that had were rotating home and gonna rotate home we had we had a lot of men in the unit uh that were that were old uh our fire direction chief was a sergeant matthew who was a e6 from world war ii um and so there were to the with the point is that the companies were very under strength so when the uh when the battalion was ordered to go into x-ray by colonel moore uh they were short-handed enough that they they got another company from the sister who from a sister battalion and my company commander was uh myron de derrick who uh was an incredible company commander colonel moore said that he was the best company commander he'd ever known including himself so colonel moore liked to use uh b company and so we we assaulted x-ray with his battalion and at the time company was was protecting some eight-inch howitzers that were track mounted at play me special forces camp and we got called there to go into into x-ray and we assaulted x-ray uh late in the afternoon three four o'clock and uh when we when we got there i remember my captain de derrick reporting into the ant hill with colonel moore and finding out where we were supposed to go and they they sent the uh they sent the majority of the company the line com the line uh platoons uh on one side of the landing zone and they sent my platoon the mortar platoon to uh to the rear sort of the rear of the landing zone and they took our ftc section the fire direction control section and they consolidated that into uh into d company first to the seventh and uh i was with the uh with the three mortar tubes that we that we had set up and by the time we get the the mortar tubes set up and dug very shallow uh pits for them uh it was dark and i assumed and everybody in the in my platoon assumed that we had a an infantry uh platoon or something out in front of us and and and we were safely behind the line so i dug a small a shallow shallow foxhole this deep in case we got mortared but i wasn't expecting a fight out of it or anything and frankly i went to sleep and the next morning as as began to get light i was waiting for it to get light enough to make some coffee and so made some coffee and the platoon sergeant and i were standing around looking out to our front and the elephant grass was about chest high we're looking out there and they were we had our three guns placed one one to our one to our left one in the center and went to the right and we're looking over and we could just see the tops of the uh of the mortars above the grass and i i saw a soldier about 30 yards in front of us in a khaki uniform and a pith helmet and he was up he was standing in front of us and we saw him run across and a couple other soldiers dressed like that came came across and having never seen a north vietnamese soldier you know latoon sergeant and i looked at one another and said who who are those guys are those the australians are they out in front of us right and then we saw a machine gun a light machine gun run across to our front and when they opened up on us we realized that they were the north vietnamese so no there wasn't anybody in front of us and and the mortar platoon had a little fire fight that that at that point um we ended up with with one killed and five wounded in that and sergeant bouzou alvarez from ponce uh puerto rico was uh was the first platoon uh excuse me the second squad squad leader at gun number two and he was on the on the left and uh when the when the shooting started early on um had uh the the soldiers that were with bouzou alvarez um uh tried to run back to where uh where i and the platoon sergeant and his rto were were standing and uh and back to the uh to sergeant ratwich's number one gun which was a little less forward than they were and uh the first soldier to run back was fred bush and fred bush got back safely and and then jose gonzalez came running back towards us and and he got shot by the machine gun several times not killed but severely wounded and and then we we asked to you know if there was anybody else out there and uh or it was just sergeant ralage and no one was sure whether or not sergeant ratledge was was dead or alive and the the machine gun was very very close to his his mortar so we didn't dare throw hand grenades at it because we were afraid we'd kill sergeant or aledge so we were debating about what to do about it and and uh the uh sergeant esselton's rtos radio telephone telephone operator virgie hibbler uh threw down his his pack and uh and started crawling out to uh alvarez's foxhole so i was there i couldn't let him go by himself so i followed virgie's uh heels out to out to the foxhole and we got out to the foxhole and there was bouzou alvarez laying on the side of the mortar pit and uh he was dead so the the machine gun it turned out was was right on the edge of his his uh the mortar pit and we were literally almost within touching distance of it but he didn't see us so we crawled back and we said alvarez is dead so you know we can throw hand grenades and somebody said well where was he wounded and i said well i don't know i didn't see a wound so he said well how do you know he was dead so i said well really he was he was dead i you know said you feel a pulse i said well um no i said well you know you can you can tell if a man's dead if you hold a mirror under his nose so you know somebody had a mirror so they can't handle samara and virgie and i crawled back out to the uh to the border pit again and and at that point the machine gun was firing and and held a mirror under his nose and he was still dead but we didn't want to take the chance of somebody accusing us of having having him not dead again so we we dragged him back and he was just he was a big man and as we started dragging the machine gun noticed that we were doing we were there was somebody there and fortunately our guys started shooting back and so we managed to get back without getting shot and shortly dispatched the machine gun with hand grenades but as i say we had four men finally wounded in that and bouzouelvarez unfortunately was killed [Music] when i go see panel 3e my eyes are immediately drawn to bouzou alvarez's name who is almost in the center of the panel and many of the other guys that are on that panel are people that i knew too that i served with but they're all they're all very dear to me it almost almost always makes me cry when i go see that the first time even just thinking about it uh it's it's a it's a very sacred place and after our banquets here we usually went down at six o'clock in the morning on sunday morning uh when it was still just getting light and we'd go down and and we'd read the names of the 305 men that are listed on that panel and we'd uh sing god bless america have a little uh little silence there and watch the sun come up and get on with our day and it was a it was a very private time for all of us that were there and a very wonderful wonderful time and i cherish those moments you know people ask about how heroes are made and how they would behave in combat people are always concerned about you know i i don't know how i'd be well you know most people rise to the occasion you know i mean you the opportunity to become a hero it doesn't come up very often i mean soldiers have a job to do and their job is to be brave and their job is to do what they're supposed to do but you know to be a to be a hero means that you make a sacrifice not for yourself but you know for somebody else and those opportunities don't come up but when they do come up people do them you know and and people are a lot braver and a lot and a lot more dependable than than maybe people would think and the only people that really know what combat is are the people that have been in combat so it's reassuring to us to be around other people that have had that experience so we love one another another for that and uh you know it's been said a hundred times you know that that men don't fight for mother and apple pie and garden country they fight for one another and that's what they do and so when i'm here with these with with with my brothers you know i uh they're just so special i i i can't say enough about that you

Channel: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund

Views: 73,832

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Id: Qb9a1L4rc2g

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020