Joseph Giannini - Vietnam 1967-68

I was born in 1943 in Brooklyn Kings County Hospital at the time my dad was in the army and my mom was working for the federal government and some type of intelligence thing I graduated Massapequa High School in 1961 I wrestled all the way to high school I played some football too and I went on to Hofstra University I got a draft notice and I notified my draft board in Great Neck I'm still in college they said let us know when you graduated so I graduated in January 66 and right after that I got another draft notice so my dad actually brought me down to Fort Hamilton so they'd take us into this room we're about to be inducted into the army all of us and then all of a sudden these two Marines walk in and dress blues and they looked very impressive so they said to us one of them said we're looking for volunteers for the greatest fighting force in the world and I looked at them and a couple of thoughts went through my head I said well I'm on my way to Vietnam and I bet I'll have a better I have a better chance of surviving with the Marines and I love to surf and I'll bet I could surf while I'm in the Marine Corps so I raised my hand I didn't know anything about Vietnam I was a Poli Sci major and I studied you know things about communism and fascism and democracy but on my way to Vietnam well shortly before I picked up a book called three without joy it was a very serious account of how the French had been defeated so I read that book before I got to Nam in August of 67 there was a problem down south southwest of Danang well the first valley we went into it was called Happy Valley and that's where I had my first my first Marine was killed machine gunner and he was killed by friendly fire and not only that he he had already finished his tour he shouldn't have been with us and it really it made me like it really it was a horrible thing for all of us who experienced that then we moved on into another place called the quasar Valley which was called the valley of The Walking Dead so we go in and we're moving along and Charlie Company has points for the battalion and Bravo was on the right flank and I'm point four Bravo and I'm moving along with my platoon and we and we go up on this hill but Charlie Company their point Bethune is out in this right it's dry rice paddies and just before they make the tree line they get ambushed and then big time and we can't get to them you know they're out there by themselves whole day it was getting dark it was in fact the guy so dark you couldn't see you couldn't see anything in front of you they started with illumination and saw you but all you could see was smoke you could hear the m16 you could hear the AKS you could hear men screaming but you couldn't see anything Staff Sergeant head comes down the hill you could see him the illumination went off and he came down the hill he was like running and falling but he came down he came and he came right over to me and Captain Atlantis and he you got to go you got to go back up there's Marines up there and they're alive so I heard Landis aidar battalion command that we have to go up and when Marines were already online so we started up but the thing was we couldn't open fire I'm in the middle of two squads of Marines and we're running our way up and we can't see anything and I'm told I'm telling them to hold their fire and I'm I really thought I really thought this is it I'm gonna get killed Thanks I really had those thoughts that just I'm gonna die on his Hill and I was very calm going up and I was thinking about my parents and my wife what were they doing right now that we we got near the crest of the hill and the NVA were leaving they actually were they were they were they were leaving but my whole squad on the hill every one of them was hit every one was hit and the machine gunner who had replaced Jola story he was only with us for three days he was dead his name was David Calabria from such a big big kid so I'm on top of the hill now with my two squads and captain Landis comes up to the hill and he shouldn't be there no he shouldn't be and the captain shouldn't be on there and he's standing there me and I said I'm going out we start down the hill and every once in a while an illumination round goes off right see we freeze get down freeze and we got to the base of the hill and at the same time we both heard something and we looked over to our right and lumination illumination around when and it was an NVA soldier he was like where he is right there and he was I guess he was trying to you know crawl away so I got a really good look at him and it was it was big I say you know he's about five eight really good shape his hair your clothes crop pea handsome he was wearing khaki pants and Ho Chi Minh st. sandals and really was bad chested and I didn't see any wounds on I didn't see any wounds on him and this guy Davis alongside of me he turned and he turned to shoot him and I grabbed his arm and I said don't shoot him use your bayonet and he went over and he that's what he did he got on top of them and use this bayonet but that young you know that young NVA soldier like later on I would think to myself he's just you know he's like the counterpart of a young marine I didn't fire around but I thought to myself this is all about luck it's just about luck there came a time in latter part of April on the north side of the claw via a battle started and it was it was big and we walked right through what was left to the 2nd battalion 4th Marines lines just like you would see on a movie you just walk through their lines there were dead Marines everywhere and some of them and some day no Vietnamese a lot dead Marines and as we were advancing I was I was moving with Charlie Charlie one the first Platoon I always moved with them because a good friend was the Petone commander lieutenant Higgins and we were moving along and we came across I called it a dish but it really wasn't a ditch it was about 30 feet long about 6 feet wide maybe about 5 feet deep and it was filled with dead Marines but every one of them was facing outboard and in the and still in a fighting position they they just died right and multiple wounds and the NVA were falling back so fast that they didn't they didn't take any weapons they didn't util ate anybody but I did watch the we had the chaplain was actually we have one chaplain for each battalion chaplain was actually moving with us and I watched him go down into this deep ditch and I watched what he did he took his index finger and it stinking and he closed the eyes of all the Marines a crazy thing we're in a graveyard in a Buddhist graveyard and the graves are like 1012 feet high so it's great cover and we had a looking forward air control was above us and one of those little Piper Cubs he was circling around us and and he radios down and I could and I'm near the captain and I can hear all the traffic and he says you got to pull back he says I've never seen anything like this there are thousands of them and they're coming right at you so all of a sudden me and the Gunny are by ourselves in the graveyard I look forward and the NVA are now coming into the graveyard and there's nobody around just me and the Gunny and I just said to him well I'll cover you when you cover me so we had to like leapfrog back a couple of hundred meters by ourselves it was one of the most frightening things I've ever done cause every time I turn my back I thought I was gonna get shot in the back we did it I was the Gunny reached our lines first and then I and then I had to go like maybe 20 30 meters more and I ran like how I was I was so frightened and as I was approaching the lines I heard these two loud blasts shotgun blasts lieutenant Hagin who had the first Platoon he comes over to me and he says do you know what just happened and I said no he said he says I got two of them that will right behind you it will right behind you turns out we didn't know this and we were fighting 8000 or Vietnamese and they had something in mind I mean they I think they wanted to cross the claw Viet and overrun the Dong Ha combat base it would have been a disaster if 8000 of them had moved into the perimeter but it turns out in Marine Corps history it's it's one of the battles that they mentioned at the me Marine Corps History Museum is the Battle of dido the less well less place before Vietnam was Okinawa I was waiting for my flight to go out actually we were being held up because of a tie food and I look over and I see at the bar my commanding officer he was captain Duffy so I went over to him and he's complaining to me about how he hasn't been able to get to Vietnam and he's a career officer and he needs time on the line I mean you know in combat and I left you know he was really angry I left to go to Vietnam in December of 1967 and we're on a hill in Vietnam called alpha 3 we established the combat base my battalion 1st battalion 3rd Marines it was just below 2 dmz and they start shelling us and it was horrific it was really bad I mean we had to basically stay underground all the time if you came out you can get killed doing anything that's how bad it was I get a radio call from battalion saying that major Duffy has joined our battalion made you Duffy and now he's a major and go into the hatchway and there's major duffy sitting right in the hatchway I mean it was like a a place where you could sit and I said a load of him and I walked in spoke to the battalion commander and on the way out he was still sitting in the hatchway and and I thought went through my mind said I hope he's not like you know gonna you know settle in in the hatchway because there was a where he was sitting was big enough to you know lay down and sleep and I walked away I walked away went back to my bunker and we got hit with another barrage of artillery and rockets and they radioed down and he was that he had been killed Duffy you know they wrapped him in his poncho punch of rotation and they brought him over to the LZ in the list I saw of him they were loading him on a chopper and sending him back to the okinawa which was an aircraft carrier when when they brought him in when they brought him back to Okinawa a Marine officer so you know so the child will come in and saw them unload the remains of Duffy shortly after that this marine officer a few days later gets on a chopper and he flies to alpha 3 so he makes it to the command bunker and it's incoming and he goes into the hatch when he runs over gets under a table with under the table is the battalion commander they're both sons of the table and he says look battalion commander said you must be able to attend of Jones and he said sir yes lieutenant Jones reporting for duty or something and the first thing they plant the command a battalion commander says see that hatchway over there made you dump it was killed there a couple of days ago these are these are letters that I wrote to my wife yeah these are all letters while I was in the Marine Corps was this but I have another box of letters that I wrote to my dad my mom my sister and some of my friends so what happened is in 2002 all these letters were returned to me by my ex-wife 2002 and at the same time by coincidence my mom we turned all the letters that I wrote but these letters start in Nam the letters I wrote to my mom started in boot camp in Parris Island so all of a sudden in the summer of 2002 I had these letters I haven't I had no idea they they saved them so I started reading them and something happened one day Nicky walked in and she said to me you have to do two things for me meaning huh you have to get help and why don't you write and I did it she saw something that you know that I didn't going on and she did I didn't sense it or anything I cook so I got into a writing class in September of 2002 at Southampton which I have never done it but I never wrote anything and I got into counseling at the same time and I went I went to counseling you know on a regular basis but then the counselor said you have post-traumatic stress disorder and I got angry and I stopped the counseling this was in 2002 but I continued with the class so the first story I wrote was double time Duffy about Duffy whoa and what happened to him so the writing which I didn't realize is another form of therapy there's a lot of Vettes right now and they and every and all of them I didn't claim it's some form of therapy the VA discovered something that was just a routine exam up in the clinic they did an EKG and the doctor it's very strange yeah it takes me I was in a hallway and he says you have an abnormally low heartbeat and turns out that I had this really bad heart disease called chronic ischemic coronary heart disease I started doing a little research about Agent Orange and sure enough the VA came out with a new reg specifically addressing what I had and they said if you have this and you were in Nam it's presumed that Agent Orange gave it to you so I added another claim Agent Orange and I'm at the point now where I'm over 100% because I can't work anymore between the heart disease and the loss of hearing and Agent Orange is I called the agent that keeps killing I never really said I was bitter about you know anything about Nam but the Agent Orange thing really bothers me because those [ __ ] I'm talking about the government they never told us anything about Agent Orange but there was no such phrase when we went to Nam we know we knew they were using some type of de foliat we knew because we saw them spraying it we would drinking Agent Orange was in the water we were bathing in the age of knowledge and we had no idea but you know what we were doing you

Channel: USA Warrior Stories

Views: 40,351

Rating: 4.9036918 out of 5

Keywords: Joseph Giannini, Vietnam, 1967, 1968, USA Warrior Stories, Marine Corps, Marine, Hofstra, 1st, First, Battalion, 3rd, third, Marines, East Hampton, Local TV, LTV, Double-Time Duffy, Double Time Duffy, DMZ, NVA, dai do, Dong Ha, PTSD, Agent Orange, LT, Queson, Happy Valley, Cua Viet, K 3/3, Poncho Rotation, USMC, Matt Hindra, Nick Kraus

Id: V08mJWHqdyk

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2018