3-11 SEPTEMBER 1968
Quang Nam Province - South Vietnam

Letter written by Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5 to fellow Marine, Elvin Bruce Jones, "BJ"
November 2003

BJ,

I was there 11 Sept. '68, the day that you got hit. I am not too sure how many that are online with us were there that day. There is at least two that were with the company at that time, but I have to check with them to see. They were both medevacs during that time period so I am not sure if they were in the hospital or the bush. But of all, I seem to have the best memory of those long ago events. I can sort of "time travel" back. It takes me a while to do it but I can get there and see all of the detail. The down side of it is that I also "feel" it. The gut wrenching fear and the horror. I only do it in short runs every couple of months or so.

I present the following to you as my recollection of the days 3-10 September, leading up to 11 September 1968, that awful day itself, and the aftermath. It will come in two parts. I am positive that my time frames are within 24 hours of being correct and even more positive that the events are accurate from my angle of view at the time. I am sure that some of this you will remember and some I will be filling you in on.

For all who gave so much that day, we, your fellow Marines of that battle, do remember and honor the courage and sacrifice. It is a story that America should know. The many acts of selflessness and bravery are the very spirit of the Marine Corps and America.

Mike Out

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Letter to Mike McFerrin from Elvin Bruce Jones, "BJ"
January 2004

I was not with 3/5 very long before I was hit 11 September 1968. I was with 3/27 before I came to 3/5, the things I remember are the HEAT & the RAIN, and that little walk we took. One thing I can still smell and taste some times, or I think I can, is a cup of JAVA we made the next morning, after that long, wet walk we took in the rain. We used a piece of C-4 to heat it in a canteen cup on top a c-rat can we had put holes in for ventilation, C-4 burns fast and HOT. I think that was the best cup of Java I have ever had!!

For 35 years I have not had any contact with anyone. Did not know who, or if anyone made it that terrible day. I really do appreciate very, very much all of you, and the work you have and are doing to make sure this story never is forgotten, not for me, but for all the guys that did not make it home!!

God Bless S/F BJ

PRIOR DAYS: 3 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

I had arrived in the bush by helicopter late in the afternoon the day before as one of twenty one badly needed replacements for the infantry companies of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. We were choppered to Go Noi Island where we were distributed to the various companies who were already involved in a search and destroy operation. Seven of us went to Mike Company. Go Noi Island was flat as a pancake with knee high to over head high elephant grass every where except for a few islands of trees and shrubs that dotted the landscape of the interior and followed the river banks. It was not really an island but was a large tract of land that lay between two rivers that ran all the way to the ocean some 20 to 30 miles away.

The night had been filled with fear of an attack. At least I had been. Nothing had happened during the hours of darkness that night.

On the morning of September 3, one of the squads from one of the other platoons had gone on a short patrol shortly after dawn. They had found and chased some 10 or 12 gooks into a treeline not too far away. The company commander did not allow them to continue the pursuit. As the squad returned to the company, we were given orders to saddle up. The whole company would enter the treeline to go after the enemy soldiers.

Before 7:30 AM, we moved out in column. The column was maneuvered along the edge of a bushline some 300 meters away and parallel to the target treeline. We made a left face and were now facing the target in a row. The target was an "island" of trees in the middle of a huge area of grass ranging from six inches to knee high. To the right and left of the island were long tree lines about 200 meters away from each side. As we looked at the target it seemed to be about 100 meters wide and perhaps the same deep. It also appeared to contain some hootches somewhere in its interior. We couldn’t actually see any but there seemed to be an order about the trees, bushlines, and paths that we could see that indicated man had been there for a while.

The Captain decided that we would approach the island in a "wedge" formation and enter the treeline at a path that was almost at the midpoint of the island. My platoon got picked for the front of the wedge. My squad was picked for the front of the platoon. And sure as shit, my fireteam was picked for the very point. My fireteam leader decided to take the very point himself and I was a few steps back and to the left of him. We were to wait until we were about 100 meters from the target and begin "reconning" by fire as we approached. It all sounded just like the training formations at Camp Pendleton. Easy stuff.

We moved into the open area and started towards the target. At about 150 meters, our simple maneuver started falling apart. Out of the treeline to the left came one of the other companies in 3/5. We kept moving but it didn’t take a mental giant to see that their column and our wedge would collide at a point about 75 meters out from our target. We were finally halted while the eminent tacticians decided what to do. Their decision caused somewhat of a stir in the ranks because I could hear some mumblings about the stupidity of it. Neither the decision nor the mumblings made much of an impression on me that day as I was on my first field maneuvers in a war and was concentrating on all the things I was supposed to do such as distance and direction between myself and the other men, watching for enemy movement in the trees, etc.

The decision had been to have Mike Company stop its wedge formation assault on the treeline and allow the other company to cross in column between it and the target. I now see how ridiculous that decision was and why everybody groaned and mumbled. We were approaching this treeline as if there were a large number of enemy troops in there ready to fight us. But for a few moments we would pretend there was nobody in there and another Marine company would walk right across in front of this treeline as if they were just walking by minding their own business. This probably looked good on paper and surely the gooks, if they were in there, would honor this little time-out we called. I mean it would certainly be unsportsmanlike for them to wait for the column to get spread out directly in front of them with the wedge formation directly on the other side of that column then open up with Marines two deep in front of them.

Of course, that was exactly what happened. Due to the heat the Marines of Mike Company had sat down to wait for the other company to move across. I was a new guy so I had a helmet. Not all of the non-new guys wore helmets. Some wore bush hats of various types. I sat on my helmet wiping the sweat from my brow. All of a sudden, the air burst into whizzes and whines of bullets. The cracks of dozens of AK’s firing at once followed the bullets across the grassland. And behind that the screams of the wounded and dying.

I rolled off my helmet instantly and flattened on the ground. There was no cover anywhere. And none of us in Mike Company could return fire anyway since the other company was in front of us. Bullets were striking everywhere around me. I tried to crawl underneath my helmet. My terror was increasing as the realization that there was nowhere to go came over me.

Then I heard a yell from behind me to my left. They didn’t know my name yet so they called me "New Guy." Three Marines had found a small rise that offered some cover and on the other side of them one Marine had found a small shell hole that had room for another person. I raised my head just enough to see them as they told me to come over there. It was probably no more than ten to fifteen meters but the bullets were thick enough to walk on so it looked like a click or more to me. I said no to the requests that I come to their cover. No way.

Then as I turned my head back to the front and began lowering it back into the earth I saw an automatic burst of fire parting grass and striking dirt about fifteen meters in front of me and tracking directly to me. I paused only a second and rolled my left shoulder, leg and head to the right. Right where my head had been and right in front of where my face now was a bullet struck. Dirt was kicked into my right eye from the impact. One more round hit about where my kidney would have been. The burst ended with that round. I yelled over and asked if they still had room for me. They did but again I found it difficult to move. This seemed more impossible than dodging raindrops in the monsoon. I was trying to figure my odds of getting hit staying there versus moving to cover. There’s one for Einstein to figure.

As they coaxed me to come and I vacillated, a blood curdling scream and cries for help came from behind me to my right. I could not see who got hit but the sound was very close. In an instant I low crawled, no, I slithered, dragging my face in the dirt to the cover of the shell hole. The cries for help over to my right began to slow down. Then there was nothing.

To the front, the fast and furious cracking of AK fire began to slow. The screaming and yelling of the Marines seemed to get louder. I looked up and could only see two Marines out there and they were running back toward the treeline from where they had come. Then I could see some more Marines back in the treeline who had apparently made it to safety. But there were still people yelling for help down there. I quickly raised up a little higher for a quick glance. I could see five or six bodies lying in the grass in front of the island. The AK fire slowed to a burst every ten or twelve seconds. After about a minute of this, it seemed to stop completely. I was thinking the gooks must be dead or ran off.

The screams for help were really loud now. My fireteam leader jumped up, turned and looked at us and said to drop our gear and follow him. My first order to follow in combat. I dropped my pack and jumped up to follow my fireteam leader. The other Marine in the shell hole with me yelled at me to not go and said something about me being sorry for doing that. It wasn’t registering because I was so scared and new that I was focused on what I had to do.

The fireteam leader said to follow him and I did. He began running out to the wounded Marines in front of the island. We had gotten about halfway there when my fireteam leader yells at me to zig zag. I said, "What? They’re all dead aren’t they?" He yelled, "NO!!!" I glanced behind me and saw that not a single other Marine had come with us. UH OH!!!! I almost shit my pants. This guy is a nut or a hero and I am the only one stupid enough to follow him out here. By now, we are almost three quarters of the way there and I want to stop my forward motion and run back. As I slow though, I get scared that I am starting to offer myself as an easier target and simultaneously I see four other Marines from the other company come running out of their treeline towards the wounded. Then there was a short burst of AK fire. Both my fireteam leader and I dove to the ground right where all the wounded Marines were.

My fireteam leader crawled up to a Marine who had been shot in the butt and/or thigh and yelled at me to come and help. The Marine was ashen faced and trembling severely. It was hard to tell if it was from the wound or the experience of being abandoned to die for the last five minutes or both. My fireteam leader pulled the guy’s poncho off his pack and told me to spread it out next to him while he took the guy’s battle dressing from his helmet and applied to the wounded area. We then rolled the guy onto the poncho and began to drag him towards the treeline. By this time other Marines from his company began to come out to help and two of them took over the front part of the poncho while my fireteam leader and I picked up the back end and we carried him all the way to safety. The wounded Marine was thanking us and promising us a bottle of booze each for saving him.

My fireteam leader and I went partially back out once more to help finish carrying one more. Then we went along the treeline until we were parallel to where our company was and dashed across the open to them. This time I dove behind the little rise with the three Marines behind it. I was amazed that we had pulled it off. I was sure that my fireteam leader at least would get a medal for this. I don’t think anybody would’ve gone out there if he hadn’t gone first.

We heard the order being yelled to pull back. All the way back past the bush line where we had started and into the trees. My fireteam leader and I were the first to respond since we had already been running all over the place. I only went a few steps back when I saw the dead Marine. It was my platoon sergeant. I yelled to my fireteam leader who recruited a couple of others to help pull his body back with us.

As we dropped his body at the makeshift LZ, my fireteam leader looked to me and told me I had first shot at anything I wanted from the platoon sergeant. I didn’t know what he meant. Then some of the other Marines began swarming around. One noticed that there was a K-Bar (knife) and told me that if I didn’t want it, he did. Now I understood. We were going to go through the dead platoon sergeant’s gear and take what we wanted. This seemed somehow unholy. I hesitated. I was told that K-Bars were non-issue gear and were prized possessions because of their usefulness in the bush. I might not ever get one if I didn’t take this one. I passed on participating in what seemed at that time to be a ghoulish practice. And yes, before 3 days had gone by, I couldn’t believe that I had been that much of a boot.

The Captain came over by my platoon and in a very gruff voice asked who that was that had run out to help the wounded from the other company. The other members of the platoon pointed us out before we could say anything. The Captain approached us and started yelling at us. Nobody had ordered us to go out there and who the hell did we think we were running off from our company to help another company, etc. I was dumbfounded. I guess I wasn’t just a dumb new guy following a hero but a dumb new guy following a fuck-up. Later I learned that the Captain had basically frozen during the incident as much from the shock of realizing that the entire situation had been caused by the stupidity of the maneuver he had ordered as from fear. I think he was compensating by striking out at us trying to make us look like idiots to everybody.

Medevacs were called in. Later I learned that there was an attempt to call in air support but that the delay in getting it was unacceptable since it would stall the operational plans. We would pick up where we left off. We would assault the treeline with our wedge formation. No guessing this time. They were in there. Oh, shit!

After the Medevacs left we reassembled into the wedge and were told to walk fast towards the treeline and to begin recon by fire immediately. I tried to put a wall of lead in front of me more in hopes of stopping any bullets headed at me than killing any enemy soldiers. There was no return fire yet. At about the halfway point, I had to change magazines. I think two bullets fired out of the new magazine and it jammed. Whoops! Here I am walking at almost full speed towards the enemy and I don’t have a weapon.

I slowed then came to a full stop as I tried to unjam my weapon. This messed up the wedge so my squad leader ran up and gave me his M-16 while he cleared mine. I caught up to my place and began firing and this one jammed too. Shit! Still no return fire yet though. My squad leader ran up again with my now cleared M-16 and grabbed his to clear it.

We were now down to the last 100 meters and I think everybody started slowing down a bit expecting the worst. About 25 meters out from the edge of the island was a bamboo thicket with about a 3 meter radius and well over head high. This was in front of me so I began to sort of use it for cover as we approached. This was the only cover available if the shit hit the fan. As I neared it, I realized that I would have to step to one side or the other to get around it and I would no longer have it available for cover after I passed it. I walked right up to within two arm lengths of it not having made my mind up yet which way to go around it. I sort of hesitated and looked around to my left to make sure the rest of the wedge was with me.

As I swung my eyes, I saw something and quickly looked back at the bamboo thicket in front of me. Resting in between two of the large pieces of bamboo at about four inches above ground level was the end of a barrel. I squinted my eyes to peer through the slit and followed the barrel to the other end. Our eyes met and locked. My rifle was pointed off to the right of the bamboo thicket. His was pointed directly at my chest. I know I gasped. I’m sure I paled. But the locking of our eyes apparently scared him, too, because I saw his eyes get real big and he ducked his head way down into the hole he had dug in the middle of the bamboo thicket. At the same time he opened up with what I now believe was an RPD machine gun. When he ducked, the barrel dropped and two or three bullets went between my legs before he started swinging it to the left to get the other Marines that he could see.

All hell broke loose. All the gooks back in the trees and vegetation of the island opened up. They tore up the advancing wedge. As the machine gun barrel swung away from me I fell flat to the earth directly in front of the machine gun. I was trying to swing my M-16 back forward when the barrel swung back towards me. I cringed expecting the top of my head to be split open. It passed right on over me and killed several people on my right. He must think I’m dead. He did duck when he fired. As I listened to what was happening around me, I knew we were getting our ass kicked.

I rolled my eyes up to try and see in front of me. The grass was some eight to ten inches high and I could not see the slit in the bamboo where the gun was. And my rifle was still not pointed in that direction. I now know he probably couldn’t see me either because of the grass but it did not occur to me at that moment. My predicament began to sink in and terror began to grip me. Just then the corpsman ran up and knelt down next to a guy off to my right. I tried to yell but could only squeak, "Doc, he’s dead!," just as the machine gun opened up and put a couple of bursts into his chest. As he fell over the dead Marine he had come to help, I began to cry and my head spun as I prepared to die.

My first thought was of a Marine officer telling my parents that I had been killed. My second was that I had been killed in my first 24 hours in the bush which certainly didn’t speak well of me paying attention in my Marine training and might even be embarrassing to my parents. It certainly was to me. Then my life began playing itself to me as vividly as any 3-D movie I’ve ever seen. I was crying but not making any sound. Nor was I moving. I would rather live frozen stiff like this than die. Ants began to crawl on my head and face. Whenever they got close to my mouth I would try to bite them. I could see my home as I seemed to be floating at about mid-tree level around it. I saw my family and friends. And it just kept going.

The Marines began to pull back. They would call out the names of everybody who wasn’t moving back with them to see if there were any wounded who needed help. They were calling six names out that didn’t answer even after repeated efforts. The five dead on either side of me and mine. I wasn’t about to answer this roll call. Then they left. And I was alone with the dead Marines and live gooks.

They pulled all the way back past where they had been before. Almost 400 meters and totally out of sight. As far as I knew they had gone to An Hoa. Or Danang. Or even back to the World. It didn’t matter. Even if they knew I was alive, I was right in front of the machine gun that they still might not know is there. Even if they did, what could they do? I would be killed in the crossfire. I cried for my death at such a young age. What a harsh world. I began to pray. And I mean for real. I began to see the things I was allowed to see. Life was a natural event. Death was also. I began to feel as if I had been here before, dying on a battlefield. All of a sudden with a shock that convulsed my body, I understood. My tears stopped. My sorrow and self-pity evaporated in an instant. Whether it was here or in a hospital at 100 years old, I would experience Death. And it was not bad. I fully accepted my own mortality. The only measurement that would apply was how I had lived. I had been in front of that machine gun for over 45 minutes crying. I thanked God for letting me live long enough to arrive at this point.

I still believed that there was no feasible way for me to get out of this situation. I only knew that I would not lay there and die crying for myself. I decided that I could help my fellow Marines out if I could take this machine gun out. Then they at least stood a chance of recovering our bodies without another death. I remembered that I had been issued a little grenade pouch that holds three grenades and it was on my web belt on my right side. If I could get a grenade out and the pin pulled before he killed me then maybe the grenade blast would be enough to penetrate the bamboo and kill him too. I very slowly began moving my right arm back alongside my body. It must’ve taken two or three minutes. Finally I could feel the pouch and I unsnapped one of the pockets and the grenade rolled out next to me. I felt for it, grabbed it, and spent another two minutes moving it up to the top of my head. Now I needed my other hand to pull the pin. Finally the deed was done. The grenade was ready and I wasn’t dead yet. I decided it stood a better chance of getting him if it was right next to the bamboo.

With my arms extended over my head, my hand was only an arm’s length from the bamboo. I simply opened my hand and gave the grenade a little nudge. I fully expected it to kill both of us. I didn’t even cringe. I was ready to die. The blast was incredible. It took my helmet off and felt like it split the skin on my forehead open. I couldn’t hear but hadn’t seemed to die right off in the initial blast. I couldn’t feel any pain except the skin of my forehead. I wondered if the gook was dead yet. I was so stunned from the concussion I couldn’t be sure how bad I was wounded.

Mike Company was calling in choppers for the wounded and dead that they had gotten out and were also attempting to get two "stacks" of air (4 Phantom jets) to do the island in. I was so new that I did not know that this was pretty standard in these types of situations. I had no idea that they were going to drop napalm and high explosives on the place then strafe anything that was left. I am really glad that I did not know. Fortunately for me, there was a great deal of action somewhere else in I Corps that day and they were unable to get the standard rapid response.

But people in Mike Company heard my grenade go off and knew that somebody was still alive up there. A squad came back and attempted to move up. The machine gunner in the bamboo thicket opened up on them. I almost shit my pants since he was firing directly over my head. Shit! Not only did I not kill myself with the grenade, I didn’t even incapacitate the machine gunner. The thought crossed my mind that I was not very good at this. But I also decided that maybe I should try to get this asshole without killing myself. Again I reached back for a grenade from my pouch. I moved a little bit more confidently this time. I realized the grass must be hiding most of my movements. But when I began to move, a sniper up in a tree back on the island saw me and began firing. The bullets were single shot and began hitting three to six meters from me. This did not slow me down whatsoever by this point. I was right in front of a gun that could split my skull open. The sniper fired five rounds at me and I realized that the "plunging" fire angle that he had must be difficult and/or this son-of-a-bitch needed glasses. This time when I got the pin pulled I stretched my right arm out as far as I could and threw the grenade around the side of the bamboo thicket so that it provided some cover for me.

Right after the explosion, the Mike Company people again tried to move up and again he opened up on them. But now they knew that I was somewhere in front of the thicket and that I was targeting the thicket as the source of enemy fire. I heard a yell in the distance from the Marines who were trying to get back up to the area, "Hey! Keep your head down!" I wondered what idiot thought he had to holler that to me from a couple of hundred meters away. All of a sudden there was a whoosh and a short sound of sucking air and then a horrific explosion as a LAAW rocket fired from that distance made a direct hit on the thicket. The blast and the shrapnel all moved forward into the thicket but the pure concussion that reached back for me was incredibly strong. My entire body, in the prone position was lifted above the top of the grass and dropped back to the earth banging my chin very smartly. It was a hell of shot somebody had made. Since the Marines had actually witnessed my body come up above the grass they now knew that I was not just somewhere in front of the thicket, but was literally right in front of it. I heard the same voice yell, "Hey! Don’t worry! We won’t fire another one."

To show them that he was still there, the enemy gunner immediately fired a short burst towards the Marines. Christ!!! I had no idea how he was not being affected. Boot as I was, I was not aware of all the weird holes and side holes they dug inside of large rooted plants and trees that gave them such good protection. But the other Marines knew. Somewhere with one of the other companies on Go Noi was a tank and an amtrac. This was the one and only time that I ever saw either with the bush companies in the bush. The tank was sent up to get me.

I did not know there were tanks out with us. Until I began to hear and feel the rumble. The tank approached the island straight ahead about one hundred meters to my right. I heard the yelling of the Marines to tell me that they were sending a tank to get me out. I suddenly returned to the normal world. I was no longer alone waiting to die. I was elated momentarily. Then slowly the elation began to die down as I tried to figure out how this tank was going to "get me out." I couldn’t see any reasonable way. The elation dissipated but not the newfound hope.

When the tank got to the same distance from the island that I was, it made a 90 degree left and came straight at me as if to drive between me and the bamboo thicket. Once it had made this turn, one of the crewman reached up and grabbed the 50 caliber machine gun mounted on top of the tank and began firing it as he swung it in a wide arc spraying the island from the top of the trees to the bushes on the ground. And the tank continued to come at me. I realized that the driver probably couldn’t even see me lying in the grass and the guy up on the 50 wasn’t looking at anything but the island. I was watching 52 tons of steel come at me and it wasn’t slowing down or turning.

From some two to three hundred meters back, I could hear Marines yelling, "Run! Run!" It was becoming clear that my options were limited. I watched as the tank rolled up on me. I was waiting for the last second to get as much tank cover as possible from the snipers back in the trees and hopefully the closer it got the more likely the gook in the thicket would have his head down. Just then the Marine up on the tank firing the 50 cal turned and looked at me and yelled at me to run behind the tank. In the blink of an eye, I did just that. The tank stopped right in front of the bamboo thicket as I got behind it.

From behind the tank, I yelled up to the Marine telling him that the gook was in the bamboo. He yelled back at me to run straight back to the company keeping the tank between the island and me. He turned the 50 cal almost straight down and fired into the thicket. I began to run. As I moved away from the tank I knew that I was presenting a target to the snipers in the trees and so did my feet because they moved like they never had before. The last grenade in my pouch flew out somewhere in the grass as well as several other unidentified items in my pockets. It didn’t matter what it was, I was not slowing or stopping for anything.

As I made my mad dash, I could see the heads of a couple of Marines as they yelled for me to come to where they were. When I got close enough, I dove for them. As I slithered around in the dirt to bring my head up with the other Marines, I realized I was in the same shell hole that I had sought cover in early in the morning. But now it seemed like it was years ago. One of the Marines looked at me and asked if I was okay. I said that I was but asked, "Is it like this in Vietnam every day?" He responded with, "Nah. It only gets this bad two or three times a week." I lay there thinking of what had happened to me in front of that machine gun. I had been irrevocably changed. I had accepted my own mortality and was no longer afraid of it. And it was a good thing because it did not look like surviving 13 months of this at two to three times a week was a good bet.

The tank withdrew some 20 meters, swiveled its cannon around and blew the entire thicket away. Then it retreated to the CP area some 100 meters behind us in some trees. Shortly thereafter, the air support arrived. Four Phantom jets. First they dropped napalm on the island. This was my first view of an air strike. I was astounded. The flames rolled through and totally engulfed the island. Nothing could live through that and yet they did it again. And again. Four times they hit the island with napalm. Then four times they hit it with HE (high explosive) bombs that shook the earth and toppled the trees. Then, to my amazement, they began making passes to strafe the island. I asked one of the Marines what they were shooting at since I didn’t think anything could have even survived the napalm, much less the HE. He said, "Ol’ Mista Charles ain’t dead. He’s just sitting in one of his tunnels waiting for the jets to leave."

While the strafing runs were still going on, the Captain yelled to my Platoon Commander to get the platoon ready to go get the bodies. He yelled to another platoon to set up a base of fire to cover us. As the last strafing run was made, we were told to move out running zigzag and get the dead Marines. I was still of the mind that there were probably no live gooks though. The other platoon laid down a very heavy volume of fire as we moved up. They kept shifting the fire as we moved into its range. We did not receive any fire from the island.

I helped get the body of the corpsman who had been killed next to me. Four of us struggled to run with this body some 300 meters. It was an ass kicker. He had a large pack on and one of the squad leaders said to carry him back with it on because it contained medical supplies that we might need. We put the dead next to a clear area that was to be used for an LZ. I could not take my eyes off the corpsman. This was my first in several ways. The first that I watched as he was killed. The first person that I knew, even if only for a few hours, that I had seen killed. The first dead body that I had clearly seen. I studied his face. The bullet holes in his chest. I thought of him as a person. His family. I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

The choppers finally came and took the dead and wounded. It was 1530 hours. We had been at it for about 8 hours now. I had been extremely exposed to death twice so far. I had undergone a psychic and emotional upheaval of the greatest magnitude in front of the machine gun. I hadn’t eaten or drank anything since about 6 that morning. And it was over 100 degrees. I was totally wasted. My stomach was in such knots that I couldn’t put any food in it. But I began to drink water ferociously. The Platoon Commander came over to me and warned me to stop drinking like that. He also seemed aware of what I had been through because he asked me if I thought I was going to make it through the rest of the day. I assured him that I was capable of continuing. But when I said that, neither one of us knew what the end of the day was going to be. If I had known, I might have changed my response.

After about a half an hour of cooling off, the Captain passed the word that we were going to "take the island." This did not seem to be much since it had been napalmed, exploded, and strafed and we had been able to get the dead without being fired upon. They were dead or had made their didi out the back. This time even the veterans believed that. To be safe, we got on line as a company and moved towards the island firing as we went. There was absolutely no return fire as we moved all the way up to where the point of the wedge had been earlier at about 25 to 50 meters out from the tree and bush line that marked the edge of the island. As we moved into this last space, the elephant grass began to get taller. By the time we were 10 meters out it was over head high and so thick that you could only see just past your nose and so stifling that you had to struggle for a breath.

And the shit hit the fan. Again. The AK’s seemed like they were right next to us. We were blind in the grass. There were no targets visible. But we were not visible either. Everybody hit the deck where they were and began pumping out the fire. There was 3 or 4 minutes of sustained fire from both sides as each sought to put out a wall of lead to kill their invisible enemy. Then the fire slowed to an occasional pop or two from each side as each tried to assess the effect that their initial, long volley had. The Captain and Platoon Commanders were behind us and couldn’t actually see us anymore. They yelled a couple of times about charging through the grass. No one responded to that. It did not take a Field Marshal to figure out that the gooks were sitting back away from where the grass ended at the edge of the island. As soon as a Marine poked his head out, every gook would be firing at him before he could even take in the view to see what was there. And even if he ducked back in the grass, there was no cover and they would concentrate their fire on the spot until he was riddled. There were some wounded Marines but they were able to back out of the tall grass and get to cover.

For the rest of us, the order to charge was modified by us to mean to keep crawling forward until we could see the edge of the island. Then maybe we could spot targets and assess what to do. But this was not easy or simple because the volume of fire became sporadically heavy as we tried to suppress their fire so that each of us could crawl up a meter or two then be sure the rest of the line had moved up as close as possible to parallel with us. This basically had to be done by voice since most of us could not see each other either. To get off line now could be disastrous. Without sight, we had to be able to assume that a 180 degree arc in front of us was the enemy and the other 180 degrees behind us were friendlies.

Then the first call from one of the Marines that was a signal of incredible significance. He called for somebody to throw him some ammo. It was then that I, and everybody else I’m sure, looked at their own ammo supply. Shit! Out of the two bandoleers of ten magazines each, I had four left. At the rate that I was firing, they’d be gone in a couple of minutes. The squad leaders began calling to their squad members to get a count. The story was pretty much the same for all of third platoon at least. This meant that we would not be able to continue advancing the way we had. They ordered the squads to stop firing and hold their place where they were. If the enemy decided to assault us in the grass, we needed a straight line and ammo to be able to repulse them.

We couldn’t be more than 5 or 6 meters from the edge of the island. We tried to move up one by one another meter but every time the enemy heard the rustle of grass they poured out huge volumes of fire. And we were unable to respond and put their heads down. We tried several times to have many M-16’s firing single shots but it couldn’t even be heard over the din of the AK’s and RPD’s. This went on until darkness began to arrive. It was decided to hold the ground gained for the night. To do this, the squad leaders had us inch sideways into groups of two or three that were close enough to touch each other even if we couldn’t see each other. These groups were our positions for the night. As the sun set, it became incredibly dark in the sea of grass that we lay in the bottom of. All firing from either side stopped and dead quiet set in.

The word was passed that more ammo would be choppered out in the morning and to redistribute remaining ammo between Marines in each position to insure all had some. I had a little over one magazine left and a magazine and a half after redistribution. As it cooled down my hunger grew. I began opening cans in the dark not being able to see what I was getting and not caring. I ate 4 cans of whatever before I started guzzling water. My body was thankful.

As the food and water worked its way through me, I lay face down in the dirt and pondered the new world I had entered. Sometime late in the afternoon, I had passed the twenty four hour mark in the bush and was now in the second day. My first firefight had lasted since before 8 that morning to almost 9 that night and was, in fact, still not over but just in a timeout due to darkness. I was just a teenager yesterday. Now I felt like an old man. People had been killed and wounded all around me for hours now. I had escaped a sure death situation. But the words of the Marine earlier in the day about this happening like this 2 or 3 times a week rang in my head. How could I, or anybody for that matter, survive thirteen months of this? It didn’t seem like a very good bet. I became pretty well convinced that night that I would not finish my tour before becoming WIA or KIA. I wondered how the war could have been going on for three years now at this level and I had not heard how bad it really was.

I did not sleep much even though I was totally exhausted. There were 3 Marines in my position so we had it relatively good. A potential of 4 hours of sleep. But the fear of the enemy crawling through the grass and the visions of the dead Marines that kept floating through my head made that impossible for me at least. In reality, the night was uneventful but in my head everything that twitched from the ants to the sleeping Marines was a full frontal assault on my position that was about to take place. I was still determined to die fighting.

PRIOR DAYS: 4 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

At first light in the morning, the company CP group moved back to the area where the choppers could safely land and got a load of ammo that was sent in. They moved off to the right side of the island and approached the edge of the very tall elephant grass on their bellies from there. They began throwing boxes of M-16 rounds into the grass and adjusting their throws based on voice commands from those of us in the grass. There had not been a single shot fired yet by anybody but all the blood stained ground and grass was there to remind one of what would happen when it did begin. Once everybody had reloaded, we waited for the word to move forward.

It didn’t come right away and we could hear the officers talking behind us somewhere. It seems that the Captain had used his binoculars when they were back getting the ammo and had spotted what appeared to be a bunker just inside of the trees of the island. After conferring with the Platoon Commanders, the decision was made to focus on this one bunker rather than a company wide assault. If the one bunker could be taken then the company would be able to get into the trees on the island and inside the enemy perimeter. I guess that sounds pretty good tactically speaking. But then the orders to implement this were passed down and I almost shit my pants. The bunker was situated in dense vegetation that would only allow for a few men to assault it at once. The seven men closest to the area would be designated a "new" squad since the squads were pretty well decimated anyway and they would assault this bunker. Sure as shit, I was one of them. I couldn’t believe it. I was the only one of the seven who had been in front all of yesterday. What the hell?

We were told to inch our way sideways for about 10 meters. Then we were to inch our way forwards to the edge of the grass. No one was to open up unless the enemy did. I guess the idea was to not announce our intentions. This whole process started out very, very slow but speeded up a bit with the lack of fire. In about 20 minutes, I was able to see through the last blades of grass and spot the bunker. As it turned out, the available lane of approach was even narrower than thought so two of the seven were to stay back and fill in when somebody fell. Of course, I was not one of the two. It seemed that the Marine Corps was arranging this entire thing just to get me killed. Every time I escaped with my life, they came up with another reason to put me out front.

I heard some voices behind me and the Platoon Commander called to the squad leader to hold. They were bringing up the tank that had saved my life yesterday. I was told to keep moving to my right. I had one person on my right who had to move with me. The other 3 moved to the left. The tank pulled up between us. The Platoon Commander yelled to us that the tank was going to fire its cannon at the bunker and that he would give us the order to charge. This felt like a reprieve for sure. The tank lowered its cannon and fired. It was a deafening roar and explosion but it only scratched a little dirt on the bunker. The tank was ordered to fire 2 more times. It shook the shit out of the bunker but again there was no visible damage.

The tank backed up and we got on line and were told to charge. Oh God! Here I go again. Immediately the Marine on my right fell to the ground. I looked at him and his eyes were as big as plates. He said that his rifle was jammed and he’d catch up later. I knew that he had just chickened out and nobody was moving up to take his place. All I could think was the son-of-a-bitch was deserting me under fire since he was part of my cover fire as I was for him and the other guy next to me. There were now 4 of us assaulting the bunker. We only had about 25 meters to go. We yelled and screamed and laid down automatic bursts as we ran forward. Since I was a boot though, I wasn’t familiar with the enemy bunkers yet and had no idea that there were multiple entrances. I kept my fire focused on the only doorway that I could see and the gun slot in the front. I fired back and forth. We kept bullets pouring in and no one fired back. As we got right up to it one of the Marines leaped forward and threw a grenade in the slot and yelled at us to get down as he dove to the far side of the bunker.

He let out a scream simultaneous with the explosion. This scared the shit out of the other three of us since we thought that we were being assaulted from the other side of the bunker. We leaped on top of the bunker facing to the rear of it forming a hasty arc of defense to repel the assault. Off to the side we saw the Marine who had thrown the grenade rolling around on the ground. There were no gooks assaulting us. The Marine who had thrown the grenade had leaped in front of one of the exits to the bunker for cover and had caught a piece of shrapnel from his own grenade in the shoulder. As the situation became clear, we threw a couple of more grenades into the bunker and called to the rest of the company. They then flooded into the area moving some 50 meters or so beyond the bunker to set up a defensive line as we entered the bunker to clear it. Things were beginning to go in my favor as I did not have to enter the bunker first. There were 4 dead gooks and one severely wounded in there.

We spent some four more hours on the island securing and searching it. We took no more fire and found no more live gooks. Some 29 hours after my first firefight had begun it was over. The quiet and lack of "electricity" in the air was disconcerting. Everyone kept looking and waiting for something to happen but it didn’t. We then were ordered into a column to move out the backside of the island. No destination was given. Just follow the man in front of you. As we left the island, I was overwhelmed with awe at what was happening. After over 24 hours of combat and all of the spilled blood to take the island, we were all just walking away from it. I groped for comprehension of what this was about. I turned to fellow Marines and asked why we were just walking away from this. Why weren’t we leaving Marines behind to hold it?

"That’s the way it is in Nam. We don’t hold nothing here, man. We just roam around out here waiting to find Charles or waiting for him to find us. We kill some of him and he kills some of us then we go do it somewhere else."

I was totally stunned as I thought of all the horror that had transpired and the near sacrifice of my life. It boiled down to this. The only prize to be won was my own life. And it was the same for all of us Marines. At least the other side had the illusion (or maybe not so much of an illusion) of us as an invading army to motivate them. We didn’t even have that. If there had been any traces of the illusion of fighting for Freedom, Truth, Justice, the American Way, or any of that other John Wayne movie bullshit in me, it was completely erased as the island faded into the background behind the column.

The near death experience in front of the machine gun had transformed me emotionally and psychically. The realization of what was happening here did the same for my wisdom and political maturity. I was not who I had been nor could I ever be again.

Later in the day, Mike Company rendezvoused with a tank and an amtrac and we set up a perimeter in a stand of trees. The night was uneventful.

PRIOR DAYS: 5 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

Early that morning, we woke up to soft rain and a light breeze. This was “cold” in Vietnam. There was bad weather heading our way. There was some kind of high level powwow and at least two companies from the battalion were being sent back to the base camp at An Hoa. Mike Company and the other company that had been mauled in the ambush yesterday.

Shortly after nine that morning, the soft rain became a drizzle. By nine thirty, it was raining. By ten, it was pouring and there was a breeze. Mike Company got in a column and moved out. The amtrac and tank were with us. By ten thirty, it was a wind and its speed was still increasing.

At this time we were getting ready to move out. The storm was about half developed and I got the "runs." I wasn't sure how to deal with this. If I faced into the wind and left enough of my butt behind me to clear my legs and heels then my balance was so bad I got blown over backwards into my own mess. If I faced away from the wind then the rain felt like needles in my butt cheeks and my "pile" got blown all over me. I was about to try sideways when, after watching me deal with my dilemma, one of the squad leaders came up and gave me advice that only a bush Marine of much experience could possibly know.

"What are you trying to do? Forget all of that. Just go in your pants." He could tell by the look that I was giving him that I thought he was kidding.

He said, "Look at yourself. Look at everybody else. Everybody has 2 or 3 gallons per minute running down them between their waists and the ground. You'll just feel warm for a second or two then it'll be drenched right out."

Well, he was certainly right about the amount of water pouring over us. It did seem to be the answer. But as a graduate of one of the toughest Potty Training Schools in America run by my own dear Master Sergeant Mom, I suddenly found my "runs" seizing up as if on command when I tried to accomplish the squad leader's suggestion. Finally, the forming up of the column to move out helped me overcome my fears. The fear of the embarrassment of leaving a "brown breadcrumb kind of trail" for the Marine behind me to follow coaxed me over the "hill" and I stepped behind some trees as I delivered the "warmth" down the backside of my fully panted legs.

By 11 that morning, Mike Company got in a column and moved out. The amtrac and tank were with us. We were trying to get to the river crossing before the water was too high and/or fast to cross. Across the river it was about an 8 mile walk to our base camp at An Hoa. Most of it was on a built up road that should be passable even in a storm. We were ordered to move quickly but by this time the wind speed was driving the rain sideways and we were marching into the wind.

The march was a physical ordeal of the highest order. We had to lean forward into the wind just to keep from being blown over. The wind driven raindrops felt like tacks being pounded into any exposed skin. Ponchos were being used with hoods up and pulled over the face. This limited the view to the ground directly in front of us and maybe the heels of the man ahead of us. Except within a half hour or so there was no "ground." Just water everywhere.

And the Captain was not letting the column stop. We had to keep going. And the wetter it got the harder it became to pick up the foot that had just been placed down. The muck and mud grabbed the feet and with each step tightened its grip. After a couple of hours of this, the men were praying for the NVA to shoot at us. That would give us some rest.

Soon a man dropped and couldn't get back up. Then another. The Captain ordered them to be put on the tank or amtrac that were with us. When this was seen there was suddenly a rush of men who suddenly could "go no further." More than could be held on both vehicles. The Captain realized his mistake in allowing the first two to be put on there. He ordered the platoon commanders and platoon sergeants to reverse the order and "kick ass." This worked on all but four of the would-be riders. These four endured all of the verbal abuse and insisted on being unable to walk any further. They finally were allowed on a vehicle.

Then the really scary part started. By this time there was nothing in sight but what appeared to be level field of muddy water that came up almost to the ankle. The problem was that Go Noi Island, flat as it may seem, was full of years' worth of war scars. Fighting holes, grenade holes, mortar holes, artillery holes, and all sorts of large bomb holes. All of these had disappeared from sight as they filled with water and made the water appear to be sitting on level ground. Totally exhausted men with 70 or 80 pounds of gear on their back were stepping into the smaller holes and taking foot, leg, and back injuries as they fell. This was a guaranteed "ride" on the tank or amtrac if it happened.

But then the worst case happened. Somebody fell into a bomb crater. Straight to the bottom of the 10 to 12 foot pool of water and into the mud. Three fast acting Marines dropped their gear and just barely saved the man from drowning. This incident combined with the complete exhaustion of the troops and the still raging fury of the monsoon storm was a crux point. Not to stop the movement of course. We were Marines. We just took a 5 minute break and moved out again. But this time there was nobody yelling or screaming at us to move fast. The column started to become a bit ragged as each individual struggled with the mud and his own body to make it move forward at all.

I found myself in the single greatest physical effort of my life. This far surpassed anything I had ever encountered. Carrying fifty pound rocks on the 10 mile doubletime forced march in boot camp was easy compared to this. It took every shred of will power that I had and then some more to keep moving. Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, and an hour became forever.

Finally, it was mid-afternoon when the tank sank far enough in mud to become stuck "for good" and we stopped for a while. A new prioritization had to take place to assess who would be riding on the remaining vehicle since the amtrac was not big enough for both loads. It wasn't going to matter much and everybody knew it. The amtrac had also been temporarily stuck several times and was probably going to wind up the same. The tank's ammunition load was transferred to the amtrac. There was talk of whether we were going to blow the tank up to deny it to the NVA. Common sense finally returned and the officers realized that the NVA were not going to drive off in the tank. It was left intact for recovery after the storm.

It was fairly clear to all that the river crossing was not going to be viable with all that had come down in the last hours but without a report saying so the Captain felt compelled to keep us moving towards it. Everything was in slow motion. It was taking 10 to 20 seconds to take a single step.

Right after the sun set, the amtrac became stuck for the last time. We must have spent an hour or more trying to get it out before declaring it KIA. Then there was at least a half hour of decision making regarding blowing this vehicle up. There was no way to get the ammo out to anywhere. Nobody could carry any more than they had and no choppers could fly. The thought that I heard was that the amtrac would simply be blown as the "container" of all of the ammo. This decision was finally abandoned and replaced with the brilliant idea to "hide" all of the ammo in the mud.

In the darkness all of the Marines got in line to the open door of the amtrac. Each was handed hands and arms full of ammo ranging from the tube cartons of 90mm tank cannon rounds to manageable sections of 50 caliber belts for the machine gun on top of the tank that were broken out of their boxes due to the weight. Then the first Marine walked away from the amtrac for about 10 meters and stopped. The Marine behind him went about 10 meters past him and stopped. And so forth until all ammo was out of the amtrac. Then the line of ammo bearer Marines was zigzagged by having every other Marine walk 5 to 10 meters out from the line to his left. It was then that, for the first and only time in the Marine Corps, I heard the order, "Bury Ammo, HOOH!"

The exhausted troops just sort of looked around trying to see the Marine closest to them in the dark and hoping he would know what the hell that order meant. Some dropped to their knees in the mud and water and began trying to dig with their hands. Some dropped their packs and got their e-tools out. Some just kicked at the mud with their boots. Regardless of the method used, the results were the same. No matter what went into the mud and water to scoop out the mud and water instantly became as trapped as our feet. A monumental effort was required to get it back out with anything on it and, even if you did manage to scoop some mud out, it was replaced with at least an equal amount of the same simultaneously as you removed it.

From the line of unseen Marines in the darkness came multiple complaints that it was impossible to bury anything in the muck. The command came rolling back through the night, "Stomp your stuff into the mud. Get it down below the surface a few inches. Make sure it is completely covered."

This was a bit better but also near impossible to accomplish with the varying shapes and sizes which first had to go through 4 or 5 inches of muddy water, then a few inches into the mud, and then, in near total darkness, be sure that all parts of the object were below ground and out of sight. After 5 or 10 minutes of stomping and cussing, everybody was told to move out again.

The entire incident had lasted long enough to give everybody a much needed rest. Fatigue was still like an iron suit on everybody but the rest had rejuvenated enough energy to feed the push on the willpower it took to continue to walk through the storm. The word was that it was not much farther to the river. This only served to create scary visions of being whisked away by a raging river in darkness. It wasn't as bad as it could be since it was only a little worse than what we were now doing as we stumbled, got stuck, and stumbled again in the unseen muck and holes.

After what seemed to be a couple of hours, the column was halted as the front arrived at the river. Where I was at in the column was very difficult to judge in the darkness. Even when orders were given for each platoon or squad to move out back at the amtrac, I could only hear what was being said when my squad leader yelled directly to me. I had no idea who was in front or behind me. There didn't seem to be anybody left in the column that was either hoping for or afraid of the NVA showing up. We were all convinced that Charlie was much smarter than we were. He was holed somewhere. Dry, warm, and eating a hot meal. He knew better than to waste his time and energy fighting the storm.

I knew that I was close to the river because there was a slight upward rise in the terrain and the beginning of an area with low bushes and no grass. As the ground sloped up it rose out of the standing water. It was obvious that the bushes would lead into trees along a river. I strained to listen but the ambient noise of the rain and wind blocked out any sounds of a river.

Upon the command that halted the column, I and at least the others right around me promptly turned around and faced downhill, plopped on the sloped ground, and dropped our packs for the first time in several hours. As the darkness fell the wind and rain had begun to subside. There was still a steady soft rain falling with a twenty to thirty mile an hour wind driving it. But the relief was that we could lay down on the slope in just plain mud without any water standing on it and could relax with just a hat or helmet over our face to keep direct raindrops from striking there. At that moment, leaning against my pack with my bush hat over my face and my muscles starting to loosen up, I felt very good and within a few seconds was on my way to blissful unconsciousness.

Before it could completely envelop me, words were being yelled from somewhere up front and relayed back through the column. "Pick up the body on the side of the trail and get ready to move out again." As my mind struggled with coming back to awake, I was not sure what the words that I was hearing meant. I could not connect them to anything that I thought I had just been going through. Body? We hadn't been in contact with the enemy for more than 15 hours and we had only taken one wounded who was medevaced some 2 hours before the storm started. Or had I just slept through something? Move out? Last I remember we had been marching through solid sheets of rain for over 10 hours and maybe even over 12 hours to get to a river crossing that couldn't possibly be low enough to cross. I was doing a lot of "What?" But I looked around and everybody else around me was just sitting there and mumbling the same as I. And we just sat there since whatever was going on didn't seem to be connected to us and wasn't even comprehended by us.

After some 15 or 20 minutes of movement and noise in the column in front of us, the platoon commander moved back in the column far enough to see that we and everybody behind us were just sitting there. He yelled at us and asked why we weren't looking for the body. My squad leader told him that we were all present and accounted for and nobody was KIA back this far in the column. In fact, we hadn't been able to hear anything over the storm and didn't even know that we had contact and had taken a KIA.

The lieutenant explained that we were looking for a KIA from India or Lima Company. They had come through here earlier in the day and had taken a KIA. The company had crossed the river but couldn't easily do so with the body so they left the dead Marine by the side of the trail for Mike Company to pick up and put on the amtrac. While the lieutenant was there, the squad leader asked him about how we were going to get across the river now since it had to be deeper and swifter as well as pitch black night. The word was that some amtracs from Liberty Bridge would come down river, cross over, and take a load at a time to the far bank. We would then hump over to the road and straight down to An Hoa.

There was only silence as everybody tried to visualize the possibility that even a Marine unit, after a full day's march against wind and rain and sinking in muck up to their shins, could continue on with a least a full night's march to go some 10 more miles under only slightly better conditions. The lieutenant knew what everybody was thinking since he too was suffering the same exhaustion. He chose not to address the unspoken thoughts of the troops and ordered us to spread out and look for the body off to the side of the trail. He didn't even know which side we should be looking on.

"Looking" for the body was not exactly what we were doing. The darkness was now almost total. If there were any moon or stars that night, the overcast blocked all light from them. In addition, the density of the knee high bushes in the area left little visible ground. After about 5 minutes of sort of stumbling around off to the sides of the trail, my squad leader who was directly in front of me, thought that he had found something. Everybody stopped for a second but then he said, "Never mind. I thought it was a body."

After another 5 minutes or so of fruitless searching, somebody got on the radio to get a more precise location. Another 10 minutes or so was spent in the darkness to locate the area of the trail that had been given. It turned out that my squad was at that designated point of the trail where the body was left off to the right side some 10 meters. We had thoroughly walked over the entire area without success. My squad leader said that he had thought that he had found it once but it was not a body. We were told to check it again.

My squad leader, another Marine, and myself moved back off the trail to the right. We scoured the area where he thought that he had found something by dragging our feet in sweeping movements around bushes off to either side of ourselves. Finally, the object was found again. Once again it seemed not to be a body. The squad leader had a Marine on the trail get a flashlight out of his pack and bring it to us. Using our bodies, hats, and hands we blocked the area off as he turned the light on low to the ground. There was a small section of an olive drab utility shirt with a web belt around it. A closer look revealed that it was an intact human midriff from about the top of the hips to just below the bottom of the rib cage. The web belt appeared to be undamaged.

The shock of this sight was followed by instant visions attempting to conjure up what could have done this. Initially, the thought that a wild animal had eaten the rest of the body occurred to more than one of us. But the edges were relatively smooth and even. We let the front of the column know that we had found "part" of the body and spread out again looking for more.

After a few minutes we were informed that the "part" we found was all there was. The battalion people had somehow just "forgot" to tell us that it was not a body we were looking for but a piece of a body. The best guess of what had happened here was that a very large box mine had been placed at the river crossing and was probably set with a pressure device meant to get a tank or amtrac since the amount of explosives was so much more than needed to maim or kill a human. After all of the rain turned everything into mud, the weight on the device had been increased enough so that a man stepping on it could set it off. It was obvious that this was probably the quickest, least painful way to die of all that any of us had seen in the war but that picture of instant and total destruction of the human body is one that does not leave the mind's eye very quickly.....if ever.

Then the news came that the amtracs from Liberty Bridge would not be coming. We would not be crossing the river that night. We would be setting in there along the river. I am not sure that I can describe the relief and joy that rippled through the entire company with that word being passed. The best Christmas and the best birthday combined with the best bowel movement, etc. The best of everything all rolled into one super gust of mental elation and physical relief. And this burst soon ate up all of the remaining energy in everybody.

The column turned to the right and moved parallel to the river for about 100 meters or so. There was a large node of high ground with some trees there and orders were very quickly given to assign perimeter portions to platoons and then to squads. There were only token words spoken that implied that the orders were being carried out and a proper perimeter was being established. My squad was sent "over there about 20 meters" to establish 2 positions. These two positions just wound up being the two trees closest together that had the right branches at the right height to string a poncho over to keep the rain off of the position occupants.

PRIOR DAYS: 6 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

It was just past midnight and everything went quiet immediately. There was no check by the NCO's or officers to insure the perimeter was set and each position knew where the neighboring ones were. I don't even remember being told which way was "the front" much less a watch schedule being set up. I cannot state positively but I believe that the entire company fell victim to the total darkness and total exhaustion by all going to sleep or rather, into unconsciousness.

I awoke at first light along with a few others. There was still a very light rain in the air but there was no wind. As the light came through the trees, it revealed a scenario that showed the company's near complete breakdown of attention to its own security the night before when it set in. It turns out that we had set in both in and around an actual village. Nobody was aware of that until first light. Not only that but we were not in anything even resembling a perimeter. I was 90 degrees off on what I thought was my front. My squad's two positions were no more than 5 meters apart. To the right was a position about 20 meters away and behind a tree. To the left, it was about 40 meters to the closest position that may have actually thought that the direction to us was their front. No other positions were visible from where I was that could be considered part of anything resembling a "perimeter" form. Not a word of recrimination was spoken regarding the situation that we awoke to. I believe that ALL Marines, both officers and men, were completely shocked by what they saw and each knew that they had succumbed to fatigue before completing their jobs the night before. It was an unspoken knowledge that we had "lucked out" and escaped the worst case scenario that could have resulted from our negligence.

Within a few minutes of my rising, a rooster in the village began to crow. The rest of the Marines began to stir and rise to the same scene and the same shocking awareness of where we were and what conditions we had set in under. And how lucky we were to be waking up at all. As the squad leaders and platoon commanders woke up and realized what had happened, they individually overcame their own guilt and, without need for orders from above, initiated a search of the village. Fortunately, the occupants had temporarily abandoned the village. Fear of the rising waters of the river could be why. Fear of the Marine response to the mine incident right next to their village might be another. Fear of an NVA ambush that might have been set for the Marines at the river crossing before the storm struck might be another. Or any combination of these. Who knew? I think everybody just secretly thanked God that nobody in black pajamas had showed up amongst us in the darkness during the night for it surely would have been total chaos.

The wakeup and limited exercise of checking out the village caused another demand of physical need to suddenly claim everybody's attention. Hunger. Ravenous hunger. Most of us had not eaten for at least 24 hours. Only a few had managed to gulp something down while moving in the storm the day before. The villagers’ temporary absence was defined by the fact that they left their animals behind. It wasn't long before the Marines had confiscated a pig, chickens and eggs to make a massive home cooked meal. I, as many others, could not wait the length of time it took to prepare that meal. Several cans of C-rats were consumed as appetizers before the first pork, chicken and eggs were ready. But it was still one of those few glorious meals that one remembers for a lifetime.

By the time we finished breakfast the rain had completely stopped and the sun came out. Everybody was excited. We had slept off our exhaustion and fed our hunger with hot, homecooked food. And now the sun was beginning to dry our clothes. This was just about as good as it could get for a grunt. We began to move around in our now much better formed perimeter.

From the other side of the perimeter, we heard busied voices and could now see troops congregating just out of the perimeter. I went over there to see what was up. They were at the edge of the treeline looking out back towards where we had come from the day before. I moved up to where I could see what everybody was looking at.

When I saw what it was I was stunned. Out on the grass plain probably not more than five or six hundred meters was the amtrac that we had left stuck in the mud the night before.

The first thing that struck me was how long it had taken us to get from there to the riverbank the night before. It was over 2 hours I was sure. And I could hear confirmation of this from those who actually had watches. The second thing was the large number of various types of ammo sticking up out of the mud everywhere in front of the amtrac. It was all over the place. Though the rain had stopped and the sun came out, the water level out on the plain was still a couple of inches and the mud was still just as deep or deeper than last night. This was confirmed by the Company Commander since it was obvious that he was thinking about sending people back out there to police up the ammo. Though we were now rested it would still take about two hours to get back out there on foot with the mud that deep. I went back to my position and told the others about what I had seen. Everybody went to take a look.

Almost everybody who had dry socks in their pack was now putting them on. The old socks were being washed out in any pool of water around and hung on trees to dry. The dry socks only worked a little bit since our boots were still soaked but it felt good. The skin on our feet was all wrinkled and pale from being in water for a day.

We stayed in perimeter for more than two hours as the Captain consulted over the radio with whoever captains consult with at times like this. Finally, at around 8:30 it was passed that we would be choppered back to An Hoa. Nothing was said about the amtrac, the ammo in the mud, or the tank. Somebody else must be taking care of that.

By 9:00 we saddled up and moved to an area just outside of the treeline where the ground was flat and covered only with grass. This was to be the landing zone for the choppers that would ferry us to An Hoa. The company was arranged in chopper loads and these groups were staggered to spread them out all the way back into the trees. CH-46's were to be used for the transport and 14 fully loaded Marines per chopper was the designated load.

The choppers did not arrive at 9:00. Nor by 9:10. The Company Commander moved the first two groups that were in the open back into the treeline to avoid presenting a tempting target to any NVA in the area. I was in the second group. Just as we got back into the treeline the order was reversed. The choppers were on the way. Move back out towards the LZ.

The first chopper came spiraling down. The pilot was warned about the mud but apparently wasn't too concerned. Until he set the chopper down. All wheels sank immediately to at least halfway. As the first group started towards the chopper, they were stopped. The pilot had felt the sinking and wanted to pull up to a hover before loading. He powered up and tried to lift the chopper out of the mud. It did not work.Oh, no! There goes our ride to An Hoa. Even a helicopter cannot pull its own feet out of this mud.

The pilot was not ready to give up though. He began doing with the helicopter what we did with our feet to get them out of the mud with each step. It was near impossible to pull your foot straight out of the mud. First, you had to sort of rock it back and forth and side to side until you could feel the air pocket underneath it give a little bit as air rushed in from above. Then you would have to quickly begin to pull your foot up in the same direction as the pull that had allowed air in until you felt it start to grab again. Then you changed to a straight up direction as quickly as possible while still pulling your foot. If you had gotten your foot far enough up in the first pull, you would have enough strength to break the second seal formed around your leg or ankle. If not, you had to repeat the process. Using this process, the chopper was able to break free within 3 or 4 minutes.

He then set the chopper into a hover some 1 or 2 feet above the mud and the first group of Marines went to load. This went instantly awry also. The Marines had no better luck getting through the mud and into the chopper. It took 5 or 6 minutes to load the chopper. As the second chopper circled above, the captain had some Marines walk around the area to find a better LZ. The LZ was shifted some 20 meters where the mud was only ankle deep instead of shin deep. I promptly soaked my clean dry socks as I boarded.

An Hoa looked pretty good. The red mud was everywhere but was not as deep as that on Go Noi. Hot showers, hot food, and mail. We were told to enjoy ourselves but make sure that we clean our gear and be ready to go back out the following day. They didn't say where and I didn't hear anybody ask. It was sort of a given in the Company at that time that we would be going into something very severe from the viewpoint of the grunt. There had not been any "easy" stuff assigned to the company for several months. The word was that things had been pretty bad on a nonstop basis since May of 1968. This word was sort of supported by the fact that there were less than 10 people in the company who had arrived before that time.

The rush to get us back out to the bush by the next morning hit a snag by that afternoon. The corpsmen were all reporting multiple "trenchfoot" problems in the company. The soaked and wrinkled skin on peoples' feet was tearing open. Feet were swelling. The Battalion Surgeon ordered a 3 day medical standdown. The troops were issued lots of foot powder and ordered to keep their feet dry and open to the air. "Wear thongs not boots." Thongs? There were some at the PX. Three pair or something like that. Bush Marines did not routinely carry thongs in their packs. Nor Panama hats, shorts, or even tap dancing shoes. But the three days was greatly appreciated anyway.

PRIOR DAYS: 7-8 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

Three days at An Hoa. What a treat! Mike Company was a happy crew. We didn’t know that yesterday was counted as one of those three. The days were spent powdering feet, cleaning rifles and magazines, doing laundry, making supply and PX runs to replace worn or lost or used up material, etc.

An Hoa has just become the new home for the 5th Marines. In fact, for most of the Marines of Mike Company this was their first visit to An Hoa. The company had not seen its rear area at Truoi Bridge, just south of Hue, much since the Tet Offensive beginning at the end of January. And during mid-August while Mike Company was involved in the battle of Hill 310, the whole regiment had begun its move to An Hoa. This was Mike Company's first appearance as a unit at the new base camp.

An Hoa had been used as a base before. There was not much there but you could see the area had been occupied by varying sizes of U.S. forces based on the different places where one could see that positions had been dug in at one time. There was an airstrip there. I don't know how long it had been there when I first saw it in August, 1968.

There was a lot of "construction" going on to enlarge the base to accommodate a regimental base camp. Reinforced bunkers were being put on the side where a large attack was most likely to come from with trenches being dug as a below surface trail between them. At least one bunker per company in the troop area for the company office. Two or three other bunkers per company in the open tent area. Tents being raised on the dirt with cots in them.

On the 7th, we had a company formation right outside the Mike Company bunker. Medals were awarded for actions over the last couple of months. Most were for the period when Mike Company was involved in a battle on Hill 310 with some other 3/5 companies.

That night, Special Services set up a movie projector and a white sheet as a screen in a depression by some tents. But the screen was still visible to a small section of the village, Duc Duc, just west of the perimeter. They showed some very old movie. And apparently the projector was also very old because it quit about halfway through.

Somebody yelled at the guy to get it fixed quick. After about 5 minutes or so, it still was not fixed. The guy yelled again and told him to hurry. He said that he had seen this happen before. The Viet Cong had been watching the movie from the ville and they would get mad if it didn't come back on soon. There was a lot of laughter and "Yeah, Sure."

After another 2 minutes or so there was the unmistakable sound of a mortar shot followed by the whistling and whoosh and screams of incoming as a mortar round landed some 20 meters behind the screen. Close enough to send everybody scrambling for cover but just far enough away in the right direction that nobody got hit. The same voice yelled, "I told you. Get the damn thing fixed. That was his warning shot." Whether this was coincidence or as the voice proclaimed, I will probably never know. The Special Service guy got it fixed and we and whoever else watched the rest of the movie without interruption. No rounds ever again fell in that section of the perimeter I heard. With one exception......another projector breakdown after which the Special Service guy got a new one sent down from Danang.

A little PX had been set up at An Hoa where you could get all sorts of things. This would seem a great way to quickly resupply oneself with cigarettes, candy and other such items. But there were problems with that. Number one was that the NVA knew that it was a PX and that Marines were congregating there so they had it on a Priority One list to drop mortars and rockets on. The little shack and where the line formed were zeroed in. Casualties were being taken at the PX on a regular basis. The hours of operation were changed and shortened. But that did not change the number of troops who wanted to secure items from the PX which led to problem number two. The line was always very long. It was even possible to wait for two hours then, just as it was your turn, have the door locked in your face as the hours of operation ended. For the bush Marine, the line to the PX was not a place to spend the few hours that you had in the base camp. Most of my platoon had their families sending them packages from home to stay supplied with those things that they could have bought for one-tenth of the price in the PX.

Enterprising truck drivers who made the supply run convoys to Danang were the main source of the evening entertainment. Bottles of the best alcohol refreshments were available for a price. And no price seemed to be too high for a bush Marine who was on a layover at the base camp.

The early evenings were filled with drinking parties that would slowly turn into various forms of bush Marines' relief outlets. There might be a guitar pulled out in one tent for some happy singing. In another, the mood might descend into the crying and screaming laments for all of the friends who had died in the last few days. Within an hour or two after the sunset, most of these gatherings had ceased as the night lights and noise were reduced to almost nothing. There was always a couple of guys here and there who hung on by themselves crying or singing or both for a couple of more hours.

September 8th was our last night. We would be off on another operation in the morning. Everybody was trying to figure if we REALLY got 3 days off. It seemed that we would actually come out a few hours short. Maybe somebody should point that out to the Battalion Surgeon who had ordered the standdown. Nobody volunteered.

We may or may not ever come back to An Hoa. Most of the time the company would just go from one operation to another without a stop at the combat base. There wasn't a sense of "leaving home." But there was a sense of leaving this world and going to a world where time and reality were severely altered. Tomorrow, we would once again fall into the "rabbit hole" that only some of us would find our way out of. And even some of those that found their way out may not recognizable as the ones who went in. Even to themselves.

PRIOR DAYS: 9 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

The morning was very busy. Many things had been put off to the last minute. We got our C-ration and ammo distribution. Canteens were filled. We had known since yesterday that we were going into the Arizona Territory. But we still didn't know where in the Arizona or how we were going.

We were hustled out to the airstrip for formation. From there we assumed column formation and headed towards the southwestern edge of the perimeter. As we left the perimeter, the word was passed that we were moving to the river in Duc Duc.

The eastern edge of the village of Duc Duc was some 700 meters from the first wire of the western edge of the An Hoa perimeter. It was the largest village in the entire An Hoa basin and was the district headquarters for the Duc Duc district which was similar in size and scope to a county in the States. It had a large market area, government administrative offices, and perhaps a population of several hundred but less than a thousand.

Duc Duc sat along the eastern side of a river that formed one of the boundaries of what the Marines called the "Arizona Territory." The entire Arizona was an approximate triangle formed by a mountain range and two rivers that left the mountain area about five miles apart and then joined together some 7 miles downstream as they headed for the South China Sea. The lowland area was very fertile and almost completely covered with rice paddies except along the edges of the rivers. Dotted about were small pieces of high ground that were large enough for three to 10 families to have a home and a garden. This very large "ricebowl" area situated far out in the countryside being bordered by two rivers and a mountain area made it a key economic and transportation hub that touched the life of Vietnamese for many miles around.

The enemy, in the form of the Viet Cong, drew its manpower strength from the local population. The enemy, both Viet Cong and NVA, drew major quantities of sustenance from the area. The South Vietnamese government sought to deny the yield of this prime agricultural area from going to the enemy military machine. This battle had not been decisively won by either since the beginning of the war. Even with American troops becoming involved, the commitment seemed only enough to keep the other side from completely taking over. There was always an operation going on in the Arizona. They were designed to find and destroy the enemy troops. But there was no occupation force of any kind to insure it stayed that way. And the enemy forces in the area were intent on holding on to what they did have there. They operated mostly during the hours of darkness and were successful in securing most of what they needed. They owned the night. The Marines looked for them during the day and if they found them were almost always able to destroy many but only in very fierce fights.

The quality of the NVA troops encountered there was part of the basis for the name given to it by the Marines. As I heard it, one of the first operations run in the area a couple of years before was called Operation Arizona. The Marines became aware very quickly that they were up against veteran NVA troops who were a notch or two better than the average and dedicated as well. The operation was called Arizona and the NVA were so good that they were compared to the gunslingers that occupied and made the original Arizona Territory so dangerous. The Arizona Territory in Vietnam was so named and thereafter never failed to live up to its reputation of almost daily contacts with a ferocious NVA unit of one kind or another.

We went right into Duc Duc in column and found our way down to the river. The column was spread out along the riverbank as the word was passed that we would be crossing the river in sampans. This almost sounded like fun. A Disneyland ride or something. But we were bush Marines and other things crossed our minds as we surveyed the scene.

First, this was a RIVER. Not a stream or a brook. At least six or seven hundred meters wide. And it looked deep. And fast.

Second, what's a sampan? I had seen a lot of things pointed to and called a sampan since I arrived in Vietnam. Mostly in Danang harbor. All I saw here along the beach were the little canoes that I also had heard called sampans. These looked like dugouts. Basically, a canoe fashioned out of a single large log. Room at either end for a paddler and a bit of room in between for a small amount of cargo. These did not look like they could cross a fast moving river. Maybe go down river easily and maybe, with an extreme effort by the oarsmen, go up river. But they did not appear to be able to remain upright with the current hitting directly broadside.

Third, the other side of the river was the Arizona Territory. It wasn't like we would be riding up to Omaha Beach on D-Day in thousands of motorized, steel fronted landing craft to perform a massive assault. Ten or twelve rowboats coming at the far side of the river seemed more likely to produce bellowing laughter from the enemy before he riddled them with AK fire sending all the Marines to the bottom as they drowned trying to disengage themselves from the seventy pound anchors on their backs.

As it turned out, we had lots of time to sit around and conjure up all sorts of these horrible pictures. Apparently, this troop movement had not been properly negotiated for. The entire operation was on hold as the Captain had to radio back to An Hoa. I suspect that a sudden, unknown tax was applied to a payment already received by the chief of the village. The Marines would not be boarding any sampans until that tax payment was received. The South Vietnamese governmental infrastructure was a fine tuned machine when it came to prosecuting the war with such a rich ally. The day was extremely hot and getting hotter. While the Marines languished along the river, the humidity rose with the temperature. The villagers were already stirring en masse to take further advantage of such an opportunity........some 130 bored, thirsty, and rich Marines right in their ville. It wasn't long before they were being descended upon by South Vietnamese National Sales Force with the staples of war.......booze, pot, sex, candy, and cold sodas. The ones selling booze, sex or drugs were chased off by the platoon sergeants leaving only the candy and cold Cokes sales people.

This simple scene was actually one of the many wonders of the Vietnam War. That is, it really made everybody wonder. Here we were some 35 miles from the nearest town of any size. Thirty-five miles from the nearest electrical grid. On the very edge of ancient jungle. We were beginning to succumb to horrendous thirst as the moisture was sucked from our bodies and these kids show up with literally thousands of ice cold Cokes. ??????

How did all of these Cokes get ice cold in this heat with no electricity? Some thought that there was a generator hooked up to an ice house or refrigeration unit. But there was no engine running anywhere. Others thought that a couple canoes of ice had been brought down river. It didn't seem practical or economical. And it would have taken a lot more than a couple of canoes worth to arrive with enough to make this many Cokes cold. Jungle ice was a mystery.

And how did all of these Cokes get in the possession of the villagers in the first place? These were cans of Coke from the U.S., not bottles of Coke from a licensed foreign bottler. And they had enough that every man could buy as many as he wanted. This amounted to well over a thousand. At least 50 cases. Even an American would be hard pressed to be able to purchase that many at once at even the large PX in Danang. Supply volume was an issue especially during the hotter times of the year. Obviously, somebody in this little rural village was well connected.

As the hordes of kids descended upon the Marines in column on the riverbank, the economics of the blackmarket became clear. They wanted $1 per can. This would be $7.50 per Coke in present value. An absurd price. A price so high that it made everybody squeal and turn their back on the sales force in disgust. Except for one or two Marines who paid it. The kids looked dejected but refused to lower the price.

After another half hour in the heat, the kids returned and a few more Marines bought some and even some of the first buyers bought another round. But even Marines who still did not want to pay the price were calling the kids over because they wanted to at least feel the ice cold cans. A couple of seconds of gripping the can was usually enough to break down any remaining resistance and a sale was made. Before the kids had finished the round, the word was passed down that it was going to be one to two hours before we crossed. That did it. Everybody began whipping out their dollars.

Somewhere around noon we were lining up to board the sampans. The initial idea was three Marines to a sampan. One Marine would sit at the back directly in front of the Vietnamese rower and facing the front. One Marine would sit at the front directly behind the oarsman and facing the rear. The third Marine would sit somewhere in between the other two Marines facing either way. Upon attempting execution of this maneuver though it was discovered that after a very careful balancing act to get two fully loaded Marines properly set in the sampan, the third fully loaded Marine's attempt to board and get situated would cause the boat to tip over. Two at a time would be the load.

It was broad daylight and the far side of the river was relatively flat and sparsely vegetated so a continuous reconnaissance of the far side for an hour or so before the movement and a small base of fire set up on the near side were considered adequate security for the first set of sampans. The first arrivals then set up a security zone for the others. The wobbly canoes seemed to do better with weight in them but the waterline was uncomfortably high. Within three or four inches of splashing in on the up river side of the boat. It was not a fast trip nor a straight one. Sampans were landing far more spread out than the formation they started in. But within a couple of hours the entire company and all of the gear it carried were safely in the Arizona.

Mike Company assembled on the western side of the river and began moving out in column in a northerly direction. The route of march began to take us away from the river which ran in a northeasterly direction. We moved across open rice paddies on the checkerboard of dikes that crisscrossed them to "islands" of high ground that had bushes, trees, and sometimes a small ville. Tactical security was used in the movement. Bases of fire were set up to cover open areas that were crossed in small units. Flanks were put out when moving through the high ground. This was slow, but safe.

We had a late start because of the delayed crossing and there seemed to be some concern about trying to get to a certain point before setting in. After about 4PM, I heard the Captain issue the order to move back closer to the river and avoid the high grounds so that we could keep moving. We set in on some uninhabited high ground that was three to four hundred meters from the river.

This was our first day and night in the Arizona. No contact with the enemy at all. This is not completely true. We had no contact with the NVA or VC is more accurate. But that night we had a great deal of contact with another Vietnamese enemy. The incredible swarms of large, ferocious "vampires" that scour the area at night for dinner. B-52 sized mosquitoes. I could not cover my body with anything thick enough or tough enough that they could not pierce. It was almost possible to fall asleep while under attack from these swarms. They were particularly hungry that night.

PRIOR DAYS: 10 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

BJ,

Still not enough room to finish the story yet, but it is close. One more should do it. It has been hard to stay "tuned into" that day for very long. It was definitely a bad day. I know that you have not walked since that day. I can only imagine the full effect of that day on you. But that day was one that burned itself into the souls of every man in the Company.

I was in Nam for two straight years and saw lots of combat but this day was one that has never slipped into the background of memory and experience. Even those of us who were not hit that day were profoundly impacted by the experience. I have involuntarily been revisited by the sounds of that day both in my sleep and in full consciousness. It stands with a couple of other days as the most relived of my life.

From the description of when and how you received your wound, I have put a couple of paragraphs that most likely included your effort that day. I did not know you at the time since you were not in my platoon. But I did see the efforts taking place. Those men were hurting very badly and we all felt it. Your heroism in trying to reach them spurred everybody to greater effort to do what they could to help from wherever they were at.

Mike Out

We were up early. Scratching, eating, and checking gear. It was obviously going to be another very hot day. We were not being hurried to move out. It seemed that there was a lot of radio communication at the Company CP. I had the impression that this operation was less than exact. Sort of specific but also reacting to current events and/or incoming intelligence.

It was late in the morning when we started out. The route of march was to be the same as we ended with the day before. Stay in the uninhabited corridor between the river on the east of us and the first ville areas to the west of the river. This was an area that was seven hundred to a thousand meters wide. Move north with safety and speed.

Third platoon, my unit, was assigned as the point platoon that morning. Before we moved out our Lieutenant gave the platoon its order of march and briefing. My squad was in last position for the platoon and I had tail-end Charlie for the squad. Directly behind me would be the Company CP group. For the benefit of the newer guys like myself who had not been in the Arizona Territory yet, the issues of safety in such a "hot" area were quickly mentioned. Then mentioned again by the squad leaders.

The area was well known for lots of booby traps, snipers, and company to battalion sized enemy troop masses. "Staying well spread out" was on the top of the list of "to-dos." Fifteen to twenty five meter gaps between Marines. Reduces the overall number of casualties if somebody hits a mine or booby trap. Reduces the chances that more than one Marine will be a surprised target of a sniper. Reduces the number of Marines that will be in the kill zone of an ambush at any given time.

We were moving from high ground to high ground but none were inhabited. And luckily none were occupied by transient NVA troops. Again it seemed as if we were in a hurry to get somewhere. From the brief looks that I had gotten at the squad leader's map I knew that we were in the northern section of the Arizona and would probably reach the northern edge where the rivers came together before the end of the day.

As the first small units moved across the open paddy to the next high ground there were moments of anxiety and fear as the men dashed from rice paddy dike to rice paddy dike. The closer they got to the far side the more tense it got. Everybody knew, including the ones that were out there making the first crossing, that if the enemy was there they would wait until the last second then try to kill or seriously maim all of these guys that were in the paddy.

The size of this initial unit was kept to a minimum. A fireteam was desirable. Most fireteams at the time were only two to four men. During periods of heavy combat, the Company was at less than full strength. This "period of heavy combat" was ALL of the time though so it seemed normal to be understrengthed. But the size had to be enough to cover the situation also. That is, the entire exercise was not done just to sacrifice a few to find out that the NVA was there but to both find out that they were there and where they were as well as to at least establish a toehold to get the rest of the troops across and destroy the enemy presence. So this may require more than a fireteam. Perhaps a squad, which was 3 fireteams with a squad leader and radioman. Or a reinforced squad that would also have a machine gun team with it. That day both the lead fireteam and the lead squad of third platoon made that fearful trip across the paddies several times.

Upon arriving in the high ground on the far side of the paddy, a "beachhead" would be established and widened as the rest of the company moved across the paddy. Sometimes they would continue moving across in small groups or en masse depending on the terrain and potential exposure. Now this "island" had to be searched. The method used would depend on the size of the ground, the density of vegetation, and whether it was inhabited or not.

The decision on this day to avoid high ground that was lived on was based on the amount of additional time and danger encountered in searching these areas. Every hut had a bunker and every living area had multiple terrain areas modified by the inhabitants for living use. All of this had to be searched. Camouflaged stashes and booby traps were common. Just as common were frightened villagers or NVA posing as villagers who would leap for a hidden gun or explosive device as the searching Marines came close to finding the stash. They could do a lot of damage to the Marines before they were brought down.

The uninhabited islands also had to be searched but were somewhat easier. Movement and use of the high ground was noted. How worn were the trails and why? Was this piece of high ground on a route that was normally used in the daily life of the area and/or was it a significant militarily strategic piece? Were there signs of military use and how old were they? Fighting holes, tree positions, trenchlines, camouflaged or hidden "spider holes" where snipers popped up from, etc. And, of course, were there any NVA or VC there at the moment? Were they hidden and trying to remain so or were they prepared to fight?

Or, as very often happened, did we just quietly walk right up on them literally surprising the crap out of them and us? These face-to-face encounters generally occurred between the first one or two Marines in a column of a platoon or company sized movement that had moved quickly and quietly into an inhabited island from the "blind"-to-the-inhabitants' side. As the first Marines rounded the corner into the view of the ville they would suddenly find themselves in close quarters with equally surprised NVA troops.

As a Marine who has been in that position as well as witnessed several others in front of me in the same position, I am confident that I can accurately describe the circumstances. Those first one to five seconds of that meeting go into a time warp. Those seconds are slowed down to the point that they may last an hour or longer for the individuals involved. About the first third of the elapsed time is spent while the vision brought in by your eyes is ping ponged through your brain cells as identification is sought simultaneously with the grip of fear beginning to put the squeeze on you. All voluntary movement and thoughts come to a halt as the involuntary reactions brought on by the fear that is beginning to come at you like a train start to take over. The shock of this sudden change to your status quo is still reverberating as the picture you see is continually being processed in your head.

The NVA troops that we encountered very seldom wore any recognizable uniform. There was no blazing red star or rank insignia on any particular item of clothing to clearly designate that the person was an NVA soldier. And there didn't seem to be any particular color or style of clothing in their military ensemble to differentiate it from similar items worn by civilians. Even a Vietnamese with a weapon in his hand was not absolute proof that it was the enemy. South Vietnamese soldiers, local militias, and even our own Kit Carson scouts were all Vietnamese who might have a weapon in their hand.

So in almost all cases, several other items were being processed together in your brain to tell you that you were face to face with a lethal enemy. The age, size, and stature of a male were the most obvious in Vietnam. If he was anywhere between 16 and 60, was not a deformed dwarf, was obviously better fed than any farmer, and was not wearing a recognizable uniform of South Vietnam or the Americans then he was 99.9% sure to be an NVA or VC. And even some of those who were wearing recognizable uniforms of our side were actually NVA or VC. We simply did not see anybody in the areas we operated in that fit that physical description except NVA or VC.

The second thing was how he was looking at you. In the instant that the eyes met, some "truth" was involuntarily transmitted. If they were NVA or VC, in that unguarded millisecond when the eyes met and where recognition took place, a ray of hatred may have slipped out. And then what mode did the eyes move into? Was he watching your eyes? Did he try to steal a glance to some point other than you?

This is generally all that you could process in the given time. General physical and the eyes. He, on the other hand, did not need much to positively identify you since you wore a uniform that went so well with your bright, shiny round eyes. He was already ahead of you in that game of "Think Fast!" He was into step two while you were still trying to add up the imprecise values of the elements that you were processing to decide who and what he was.

Now you have also moved into the second third of the elapsed time that began when you rounded the corner. That would be assessing the type and scope of the threat. You may or may not have arrived at a definitive answer for step 1, identification, yet but you knew that you had to move on if you were going to survive the worst case. Besides step 2 could help clarify step 1. But this step will be the most difficult to accomplish. Instinctively, you know that you must watch for what this person might do and the best way to do that is by staying locked into his eyes. But what else and who else is within your vision that you are picking up on and, more importantly, what is NOT in your field of vision that may require immediate identification and response? You must look but know that he will see the movement of your eyes. What will he do when you move your eyes away? Time slows down even more.

The final third of the elapsed time is the formulation and initiation of an action. The first two steps of identification and threat assessment may or may not have been completed when this occurs. The brain begins to hear each tick of the incredibly slow clock as it finally comes. An instinctive struggle begins as it recognizes an action is required for survival and attempts to come up with it. Time may not only return to normal at an instant, it may also go to "fast forward" depending on the action. Fast and furious with violent death very close. For survivors, the incredible rush of fear and adrenaline followed by the exhilaration of being alive after the event becomes one of Life's most notable moments.

The day was beginning to get very hot. As we slowed and stopped at the edge of each rice paddy and upon entrance to each high ground on the other side, canteens were coming out of their canvas holders to rehydrate us. But the humidity was at the level that the water was coming out of us in sweat at almost the same rate that it was going in. Sweatbands were being fashioned from anything available. Shirts, socks, underwear, M-16 ammo bandoliers, etc. We began taking breaks before leaving each high ground.

We had continued our northerly course all morning. Shortly after midday, I heard that we would be turning left soon. Due west. The terrain was giving clues that we were nearing the junction of rivers at the northern end of the Arizona. We were no longer going from high ground "islands" to paddies and back to "islands." The eastern edge of the paddies had slowly kept moving to our left and the gently rolling lightly vegetated high ground to our right along the river became our only path of march.

This terrain seemed safer because there were no rice paddies to cross. There was still open ground between bushlines and a few stands of trees but generally it was less vegetated than the average high ground out in the paddies. My first twenty four hours in the Arizona and the worst I had seen was gigantic swarms of vicious mosquitoes and hellish heat. The Arizona Territory was not nearly what I had heard in terms of the NVA and VC.

We began moving up a long slope. It was a light upgrade of maybe ten percent and was a couple of hundred meters to the crest. I was feeling the heat. I did not have a sweatband but I had a towel around my neck. Since I was back in the column I kept my head down a lot looking at the ground. Most of the sweat poured right off my face and forehead to the ground. When I looked up I would use the end of the towel to wipe the sweat from my brow so that it wouldn't roll into my eyes and sting them.

About halfway up the slope, I looked up to check my interval with the man in front of me. We were in the open so fifteen or twenty meters was a good gap. I slowed my step up a bit to let the man get a couple more steps ahead. I also checked for where he was walking. He was following a lightly used trail but it was clearly defined. To reduce the chance of hitting a mine or booby trap, the rule was to walk directly in the footprints of the man in front of you. Being at the end of the lead platoon made it difficult to tell which footprints belonged to the man in front of me and which belonged to others in front of him. But it really didn't matter since any of these meant that there was not a mine or booby trap planted there. I lowered my head and continued the extra effort to move up slope.

After another couple of minutes I raised my head again and was confronted with a bad situation. And worse, I had created it. I had slowed my step to allow the man in front of me to get a little further ahead. But I wasn't watching and he got much farther ahead than he should have. He was over thirty meters ahead of me and the gap was widening. The man in front of him was starting to disappear over the crest of a small ridge. And I was slowing to a near stop as I saw the waist high bushline some fifteen meters in front of me.

I was slowing because I could see that the light trail widened as it came to the bushline to encompass three clear breaks in the bushline that were each about two meters apart from the next. I did not see which one was used to go through. Uh oh! I made some noise to try and get the attention of the guy in front of me. "Psst! Psst!" He did not hear me. I would have to yell. That was just as bad. We had been moving very quickly and quietly up until then. I knew that if I yelled out I would give us away.

I turned to look behind me with the hope that the man back there had seen which break had been used. He was carrying a large radio but was not directly behind the Captain. This meant that he had a battalion radio or a Helicopter Support Team (HST) radio or a Forward Air Controller (FAC) or an arty forward control radio. In any of these cases, he was carrying more than the average load and it was clear that this heat had him hurting. He was drenched in sweat with his head down much like I had been so he didn't see where the man in front of me went. As soon as he saw me slowing up, he assumed the column was slowing or stopping so he was taking advantage of it by stopping and shifting his pack to a more comfortable setting on his back.

I turned back to the front realizing that I had to do something before the man in front of me disappeared over the crest, which would only compound the problem further. I moved closer to the bushline and my eyes scanned each of the breaks. They all appeared to have been used in recent times. I made my decision. I went for the one in the center and began to step into it. Then I saw that there was a trenchline just the other side of it. I adjusted my step so that I could place my right foot on the near edge of the trench and long step across it.

I began moving quickly to try to catch the man in front of me who was now past the crest and only visible from the shoulders up. I had taken some eight or ten steps when a large explosion occurred at what felt like directly behind me. I was diving for the deck and the concussion from the blast was throwing me there at the same time. As I slammed into the ground the fear rolled over me with a powerful intensity. Not only was something very violent happening to me but I did not have a clue yet as to what it was. Mortar? Rocket? RPG? Ambush?

For a second or two, I laid still. I was waiting for "more" of anything to identify just what happened, what was going to happen, who was doing it and where they were. Then I heard a short moan followed by a scream behind me. I pivoted on my stomach some ninety degrees so that I could easily look behind me. From the trenchline along the bushes behind me came a blood soaked hand and forearm. It was right in front of the break in the bushes that had been to the far left. I instantly understood. The radioman had done the same thing that I did. He apparently did not see which break in the bushes that I had taken and just picked one. The wrong one.

I got up and started back to the wounded Marine. I saw several Marines on the other side of the bushline running up. One Marine from the Company CP group, the Company Gunny, began yelling for everybody to stop where they were at so that the area could be checked for other mines or booby traps before anybody approached the fallen Marine. Everybody responded to his command except for the Company Corpsman who went right through the same break in the bushline where the mine had been and jumped into the trenchline with the wounded Marine. He ignored repeated orders to stop.

The gunny went ahead and started several people on a mine and booby trap check and a couple of others helped the Corpsman get the man out of the trench. He was alive but I believe he at least lost his foot and may have had several other severe injuries from the blast and the shrapnel. My platoon secured the forward area and an LZ was set up to medevac the wounded man.

The area search showed that both the right and left breaks in the bushline had been mined. I realized how lucky I had been when I had picked the only safe one. I wondered how many others besides me had screwed up and actually had to guess when they got up there. Or if there were any others at all. Maybe I was the first screw up in the column and the radioman was the second. I didn't tell anybody what had happened for a while.

We had been moving quickly all day. And everybody knew that one way or another that speed had contributed to this incident. It was sheer luck that the point man had picked the unmined path. Presented with the scenario of three breaks in a bushline, the prudent thing to do would have been to check all three before the point man went through in the first place. But now we knew that we were in a booby trap area and everybody slowed down to a pace of "extra caution." As we moved out to secure the landing zone, eyes were peeled and many were tiptoeing.

This was only my second week and my second operation in Vietnam. And by pure luck I had missed the mine but I was VERY close when it went off. Close enough to be shoved by the blast and lucky enough again not to get hit with any shrapnel from it. As I made my way through the bushes to a position to guard the LZ, the fear spread to every piece of my body. I had to struggle with myself to force my body to move. I was as at maximum "shaken" by the incident. Scared as I would ever get in a minefield.

The medevac chopper came in and left with the wounded Marine without attracting any fire from enemy troops. It was time to move out again. The third platoon commander, Lieutenant Moore, decided to relieve the point squad and moved my squad up to take over. I was given the job of point man.

I was still shaking internally and found all of my limbs difficult to control. I was told to continue north until I got the word to make the turn to due west. I stayed on the high ground that we were on but made a noticeable correction. I moved off the trail to the right about 5 meters. As I approached the first bushline I had to cross, I saw the single break in it where the trail went through. Without hesitation, I slanted even further away from the trail and went to the bushline. With my hands, rifle, and body I broke the bushes far enough apart to step through.

Apparently this method of avoiding mines and booby traps wasn't well known or heard of much. I heard some murmuring behind me. I turned and looked. My squad leader was smiling at me. He said, referring to the trail breaks in the bushline, "They're not all booby trapped. You are going to use a lot of energy if you go through every bushline like that."

I responded with, "How much energy do we use loading bodies on choppers?" Several hoots came from troops in the column who obviously approved of my walking point and steering them away from ANY possible mines and booby traps. The Company Commander and Platoon Commander both thought it was a good move so I continued avoiding the most likely places for mines to be placed.

In less than an hour I was turned to the west and approaching the down slope back into the paddies. I had managed to bring my fears under control and was taking my job as point man very seriously. Along the way on point I practiced the moving of my eyes from the ground where I was going to walk to the terrain ahead and beside me. Mines, booby traps, and ambushes. This was now my mantra on point. I had no intention of becoming an easy kill for Charlie.

I also practiced moving quietly. Even when I broke through bushlines I was careful to bend but not snap the bushes. And I listened . Every once in a while and every time I moved in or out of concealed or semiconcealed areas, I would stop and listen for anything indicating an unseen presence. Just as I came out of the lightly bushed and treed crest area of the high ground to start down the slope I could see the rice paddies and twin "islands" about 75 meters apart on a north-south axis. The "islands" were rough rectangles about 150 meters on the long sides facing each other and about 100 meters deep. Both were more thickly vegetated with bushes and trees at the edges next to the paddies.

Either one or both could be inhabited. I moved into an open area that gave me a clear view down to the "islands" and stopped. The column stopped behind me and was out of sight as well as without the sight I had. I came to a complete stop to listen for voices or movement from either high ground. I thought I could hear voices. I slowly moved my head from side to side trying to catch faint tones in the air. As I did this, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.

I snapped my head back to the area of movement. I focused on the scene and then squinted my eyes. I needed to wipe my brow and eyes to be sure there wasn't any sweat blurring my vision but I did not want to make any movement at all if I was seeing what I thought I saw. On the long northern edge of the southern twin "island" I was looking at what appeared to be an NVA fighting hole with four NVA soldiers sitting around it eating and talking. They did not see me. I was about two hundred meters away and they had not looked up to where I was.

Though I had a shot and might be able to get a couple of them, I was aware that I stood to better that greatly if I could figure out how many there were total and where they all were and keep the element of surprise on my side. I had a company of Marines behind me with access to lots of arty and air. I stayed still and scanned the treeline that they were sitting in along the edge of the paddy. I saw the head of another NVA soldier moving in the bushes about 20 meters beyond the hole I could see. That had to be another fighting hole in there. Now were all four of these guys that I could see actually positioned in that one hole or were they sort of moving around to visit friends in other under what they thought was relatively safe conditions? How many guys to a hole...two or three or four? Or more? How many positions?

Nobody behind me knew what I was looking at. They thought it was just another temporary pause and listen. I did not turn and signal them at all because I did not want to risk being seen. But when the pause went on too long, I heard my squad leader moan, "What the hell is going on up there? What's taking so long?"

I heard him but right at that moment the NVA had become active. Moving physically around the hole and moving their heads from one to another person as they were speaking. I did not want to risk them catching any movement in their peripheral vision or any faint noise through the air. But my squad leader had now moved up where he could see me standing very still and not responding. Without thinking he stomped up beside me saying much too loudly, "What you got?"

Whether it was his voice or his movement, I'll never know. But all four NVA turned their heads and saw us at the same time that my squad leader saw them. Apparently my squad leader and the NVA all came to the same conclusion. We were two hundred meters apart. We all saw each other. The chances of anybody being able to raise their rifle and fire accurately and fast enough to kill anybody in amongst the bushes or trees at that distance was very slim. Nobody made any moves to shoot.

The NVA talked to each other. Then they got up. One NVA left the hole and went somewhere else in the unseen perimeter. Probably to alert others. The other three began straightening up their position. They got in their hole and began placing their assorted gear in the desired positions. They were not in a hurry. Just getting ready for "another day at the office."

"Damn! I guess we're not scaring them too much." My squad leader shook his head and continued, "I've never seen this kind of thing before. At least not in the daytime. Looks like they are just getting ready for us to come over there. They don't seem to be scared that we'll call any thing heavy in on them. He checked his watch. It was a little past four in the afternoon. There are still at least a couple of hours of light left. He concluded with his final assessment, "This is strange! You keep an eye on them and I'll talk to the Lieutenant." He spun around and moved back through the column.

My job was easy because they were obviously very unconcerned with me being able to see them. As I watched the NVA go about their preparations, I was thinking how I had heard so many Marines who had been in Vietnam so much longer than I say that they had never seen any NVA ever. Even in firefights they had never actually seen the camouflaged enemy troops. I had only been in the bush for a couple of weeks now and I had seen more NVA, camouflaged and otherwise, than almost everybody that I knew in my platoon. Was it better eyes? Was it "better" or "worse" luck? And now I wondered if was it that I had arrived in Vietnam at a time when things were changing. My squad leader had seen many NVA in his time in Vietnam and he was surprised by this situation.

The Lieutenant and the squad leader returned to the front of the column along with the Company Commander. Everybody was duly amazed at the scene. Now what do we do? This apparently was not an easy question. The Captain and Lieutenant moved back in the column to get on the big radios with the big guys at Battalion and/or Regiment. As they began walking away, the Lieutenant asked the Captain if the sniper that was with the company should be brought up to start dinging the NVA. The squad leader quickly jumped in before the Captain could answer, "They have not shot at us yet."

The Captain looked at the squad leader and seemed to understand. He told the Lieutenant, "Let's wait and see what we are going to do before we change the status quo." The shooting would not start yet.

As the Big Guy Conference was taking place, other people in the column began sneaking up to take a look at the unusual circumstances that we were looking at. Everybody was stunned. My squad leader went back in the column and found a pair of binoculars on an FO. He brought them up to the front get a better look at the enemy position. By this time the NVA had finished their preparations and settled in. The one who had left had not returned so this must be a 3-man hole.

"They're eating C-rations! Look at this!" My squad leader passed the binoculars to me. The NVA had got comfortable and resumed eating. Sure enough they were eating U.S. C-rations. This word immediately moved back through the column. The initial thought that they had taken these meals off of dead Marines angered everybody. But it didn't take long before the more likely possibility of crooked South Vietnamese military officers selling them off to stuff their pockets with cash came to everybody's' minds.

This was followed by all sorts of comments coming back up the column. "See if they will trade their pound cake for my fruit cake." "I'll trade them some Tabasco sauce for some of that opium they carry." Etc., etc.

The Lieutenant finally returned to the front of the column with The Plan. I was to guide the column down from the high ground to the other twin "island" just to the north of the one occupied by the NVA. We would assume that the NVA perimeter was in the densest part of the foliage of the "island" which would be the eastern side where there were many trees and large bushes not only along the paddy edge but up into the center of the "island." We would assume this because we could see the NVA there and had seen movement in the bushes further east of them but none on the western side of them.

I was to move the column a bit to the right so that they stayed in the trees coming off the slope and at the bottom of the slope it would be a 50 meter jump across the rice paddy to the western tip of the northern "island." If the NVA perimeter was situated as expected, this open area that we had to cross would be almost completely out of their line of sight.

We would cross the paddy two or three at a time just in case the NVA had put a position over on the other island such as an ambush. After Mike Company was all on the island, I would lead them along the southern edge that faced the NVA. I would stay in the trees enough that we could see the NVA but not in the open enough to engage them. This would mean that they could also see us but it was hoped that by staying far enough back in the trees it would also discourage them from attempting to open up on us from such a disadvantageous point.

Once I was directly across the rice paddy from them I was to halt the column and pass the word back. The order for this entire movement was, "Do not open up on them unless they open up on you. Do not shoot first." Sort of a truce. A "King's X" while we moved into place. Time out has been called on the field of war while the Green Team moves from Point A to Point B.

The entire movement went as planned. But the part where we were moving into place directly across the paddy from them was the most uncomfortable. There were only about 75 meters of open paddy and some 5 to 10 meters more of bushes and trees between us and we could plainly see each other. If they chose to open up, they would not destroy or even seriously hurt us as a company but some people would probably get hit or killed. I really did not want to be "some people." I did not just walk through there. I darted and/or ducked and/or scooted on my knees or butt across the small open areas on our side of the paddy. But not only was there no fire from the NVA but they were very calm. It was disconcerting as hell to run up against NVA who did not seem to have the appropriate fear of us.

As I came within sight of the designated point to stop I ran out of cover. I would have to walk up to the middle of the "island" to go around a large open space with only one bush in it. I halted here instead. The NVA position that we had observed from the high ground was now about 150 meters behind me to my left and across the paddy. They were still visible and just staring at us. No shots fired.

Both the Lieutenant and Captain moved back up to the front again. It was around 6:00 PM. There were still a couple of hours of daylight left. It was decided to get set in on this "island" first. Establish a secured area. The western end of our perimeter would be just the other side of the large open space in front of me. The northern side needed to be up behind us to at least the middle of the "island" where it crested then sloped back down to paddies on the other side.

My platoon got there from the western corner on the paddy east along the edge of the paddy, across the open space, and back along from where we came for about 100 meters. The other two platoons covered the sides and the northern back side. I got the position right where I was standing at the edge of the open space. One position was put into the open space but dug in behind the only bush out there.

From our new vantage point across 75 meters of paddy from the NVA we could see more than we had from up on the high ground slope when we first spotted them. Their positions were camouflaged from the front but they were not trying to stay too hidden since they knew that we already knew they were there. From the number and size of the positions that we could make out, it was estimated that they were about the same size as us. Company strength. One hundred to one hundred twenty five men.As we began digging in we set up as we would if we didn't know where the enemy was. That is, one Marine would dig while the other two Marines would keep a "hasty defense" out in front to cover him. Every few minutes there would be a rotation. But it was all very relaxed. We had been in sight of the enemy for over two hours with no shooting and were getting used to it.

Then the Captain strolled back down to our section of the perimeter and informed the Lieutenant that he was going to have the sniper set up and start shooting at them. All digging and talking came to a stop as every Marine turned and looked at the Captain in total disbelief. The Captain looked around him as the "loudness" of the abrupt silence struck him. Everybody was looking at him. He said something like, "Well, it is a war."

My squad leader spoke immediately. "But sir, we are trying to dig in now. Can't we wait at least until we are finished so that we don't have people exposed when they return fire?" The Captain was feeling the weight of the Company's eyes on him but it elicited the wrong stance from him. His response was meant and delivered in a manner to answer and underscore the question, "Who is in charge?" Our sniper began shooting. They brought one man up and returned each shot. And we would be ducking for the rest of the day.

Our sniper would ding at them. Their sniper would ding at us. And they clearly made it a "one for one" response. Nothing more than tit for tat. In fact, I don't think either sniper hit anybody. Just kept everybody's head down and slowed the hole digging down to a crawl. As the afternoon began to expire, the digging of the fighting holes was being done in faster and jerkier movements as each sought to complete his "home" before dark. It was sort of a dance. Three quick swings with the E-tool then hit the deck while the opposing snipers fired one round each into the other's perimeter. Jump back up and three more swings. There were several songs of the period that could have been used for cadence but I remember thinking of the Seven Dwarfs working at the mine and the Disney songs that went along with that.

A few minutes before dark fell, my squad leader was called up to the platoon CP. It was our squad's turn for ambush that night. He went up to get the coordinates for the ambush. Upon returning, he got all of the squad behind some trees and sat down to give us the ambush plan. He was studying the map very closely and kept looking up trying to establish the physical location of the map coordinates. And I was right next to him doing the same thing as I read the map over his shoulder. I saw the coordinates on the map as a point about halfway into the high ground across the paddy and I, too, began looking around me to see if I had made a mistake. The high ground across the paddy was where the NVA unit was set in. Obviously they would not give us permission to walk into their perimeter to set up an ambush.

After a few minutes of double, triple, and quadruple checking, my squad leader and I went to the platoon CP to let the Lieutenant know there had been a mistake on the ambush coordinates. The Lieutenant quickly established that this was true and took us to the company CP to show the Captain. He, too, saw the mistake right away. He explained that the coordinates had come from battalion and said he would straighten it out.

The Captain picked up the battalion radio and called in to explain the situation as we waited for the correct coordinates. We could hear some of the radio conversation coming across on the earpiece of the handset. It only took a few minutes for the Colonel to get on the radio and say that he had given those coordinates and expected his orders to be carried out. The Captain, as all of us with him, still believed that he hadn't been made aware that the coordinates we had were inside the NVA perimeter so he began to explain to the Colonel. The response, in a very sharp tone and cutting off the Captain's explanation, was something like, "I know where the coordinates are at Captain. Did you hear what I said?" The Captain blushed, as he now understood what was happening and saw us looking at him, waiting for the "mistake" to be straightened out.

But he had been completely shut down by the Colonel. Everybody began looking back and forth at each other not knowing exactly what to say. Finally, my squad leader broke the silence with, "This is not an ambush being sent out. This is a suicide mission that is being disguised as an ambush. I am not taking my squad of 6 men on a frontal assault of some 100 gooks. We will all be dead 20 meters outside their lines. I've never even heard of this kind of shit." To their credit, both the Captain and Lieutenant turned even redder than they already were. There was no doubt that the squad leader was right. These were the kind of missions that they called for volunteers to do and only if there was some dire pressing need such as saving some American lives. No one present had even heard of a Marine officer attempting to "trick" Marines into a suicide mission and with one with no apparent reason, to boot.

The Captain said very softly, "Well, these were the orders that I just got as you heard." And then he just sort of let his voice and words trail off giving clear tacit admission that he agreed with everything that was just said by the squad leader. The Captain was NOT going to say or do anything else regarding the order that he had just heard. The squad leader did not catch this and started to renew his protest. The Lieutenant grabbed his arm and said, "Lets go back to the platoon CP." Still the squad leader was trying to protest as both the Lieutenant and I got on either side of him to direct him back. I tried to whisper in his ear that everything was actually okay but it wasn't until we dragged him several meters away that the Lieutenant and I both were able to explain to him that the Captain had just given his "approval" to sandbag the ambush in the only way that he could as a good Marine officer.

That night my squad was dispersed throughout the other positions of third platoon. We did not go out on ambush at all. There was no activity anywhere on the lines. Just before first light, the squad leader ran out into the paddy and fired a green popup flare as if we were signaling to come back in. How the Captain handled any radio traffic from the Colonel through the night, I have no idea. It was very clear that whatever punishment might come down for this, it was better than committing suicide for the Colonel's amusement.

This was a very eye opening experience for all involved. And disturbing. A battalion commander in the U.S. Marine Corps had knowingly issued an order that attempted to disguise one maneuver as another and he knew in advance that the order would only accomplish one thing the deaths of all Marines involved. He literally and knowingly had ordered a kamikaze maneuver without even a tactical gain as an excuse.

The speculation as to the reasons he would do such a thing were rampant that night and for days thereafter. 1) Maybe In the overall picture of the operation there were mileposts that if achieved would allow for an "upgrade" of the operation. One of these mileposts was Marine KIA's. The battalion was just short of having enough KIA's to allow the expansion of the operation into something bigger which would have looked much better in the Colonel's record book. 2) Same premise as number 1, but it was to get more air power involved in the operation. 3) The Colonel did not like our Captain and this was his way of showing it. 4) The Colonel was simply psychologically and/or emotionally disturbed.

Nothing else was ever said about the incident that I am aware of. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that the Colonel knew that we didn't carry out his orders. He was not with our company but was close enough to hear the gunfire that should have killed us and, of course, should have received reports over the radio. If he called the Captain asking where we were or why hadn't he heard any gunfire, I do not know. If he did, I am sure the Captain gave whatever answer he felt he had to. But there were no repercussions whatever on us, the troops. As for the Lieutenant or the Captain, I am not aware of any problems they may have had. I thank God for their strength of character as true Marine officers in stepping between us and whatever madness was coming our way.

If the Colonel had tried to pursue any kind of legal action regarding failure to carry out an order, it is obvious that win or lose, he would have wound up in a position of having to explain to fellow officers about his order for the ambush to be inside of an enemy perimeter. That would certainly have been at least professionally embarrassing if not career destroying. "Lawful order," if it was one, does not necessarily mean an order that anybody in his or her right mind would publicly try to justify.

THE DAY: 11 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5

At first light everybody was up. And the first thing everybody did was look across the paddy to see if the NVA had left during the night. They were still there. Eating C-ration breakfasts too.

This morning was another slow-to-go morning. Any morning that we were not moving within 30 minutes of first light was a "slow" morning. It was obvious that we were going to do something but once again there was a lot of radio traffic going on at the Company CP. We waited. At least the Captain didn't have the sniper start up again.

It was around nine in the morning when the platoon commanders went to the Company CP to get briefed. Soon after that we were staging our gear at the crest of our "island" and mounting up for an attack on the NVA "island." We would leave our packs and unnecessary stuff and take only what we needed for the attack. Weapons, ammo, grenades.

My platoon's position in the perimeter had been what appeared to be directly across the paddy from the NVA perimeter. Since we could not actually see the camouflaged positions in the tree line from this vantage point, it was more or less an educated guess based on what we had been able to see from above the day before, the lay of the terrain, and the density of vegetation. Today, my platoon would move back eastward along the edge of the paddy until this area was vacated. Second Platoon would take our place along the paddy directly across from the NVA and prepare to advance across the paddy in a wedge formation.

My platoon would stay strung along the edge of the paddy just to their left and act as a base of fire, shooting at a right oblique angle across their front, to cover their advance. To their right there was only enough room for a squad or so of First Platoon to act as a base of fire. The rest of First Platoon was kept up in the trees behind the attacking platoon as a "reserve."

All of the platoons got the word on what we were to do and began to hustle about. I heard questions coming from the squad leaders to platoon commanders regarding the intended assault. Most were asking why we were not calling in an airstrike first or even artillery since we were close enough to An Hoa to get it. There was a mishmash of answers talking about us being "too close" to the enemy, arty and air being "too busy" to give us timely support, and such. Bottom line.........none of the above would be used.

My Platoon CP stayed with the Company CP and the reserve force from First Platoon. The three squads from my platoon moved along the paddy just inside of the treeline. The squad leaders were designating positions where two or three men could get good cover behind trees and good concealment behind bushes. My squad was in the middle and there were immediately two good spots that everybody jumped in but I. We needed to be spread out in three spots so I moved on down. As I came around some bushes, I saw that there was about a thirty meter open gap along the paddy where there was no trees, no rises in the earth to give cover, and only one large but thinly branched bush in it. The last squad ran around me to the next available spot in a clump of trees on the other side of the open area and then another one just past that.

My squad leader told me to just get down behind the bush where they couldn't see me. I tried that but they only way they might not be able to see me is if I lay on my side because the bush wasn't wide enough. And the only part of the bush that might stop a bullet was the bottom where all the little branches came together. I didn't like this but there wasn't any room around the good places that were now all taken. This would have to do for now.

After getting set in we just lay there for a while. Maybe a half hour or so. There was speculation that they were trying to call some artillery in on the NVA position. It was somewhere past ten in the morning and I was starting to find out that the other thing wrong with my measly bush position. There was no shade. I looked around on both sides of me and everybody had shade except me. And it was beginning to get hot. Very hot. I had brought only my rifle, two bandoleers of ten filled magazines each, and three grenades. I had left my web belt with my one canteen stashed with my pack that had two canteens with it. I hoped that this would not take too long. I was really starting to sweat as I lay flat in the sun with my olive drab uniform sucking up the heat.

Finally the word came down that Second Platoon was ready and we all opened up on the NVA "island." We were targeting every clump of bushes and trees that we could see knowing that at least some of them had enemy positions in them. We concentrated the fire in the area from our direct front across the paddy to the direct front of where second platoon was going to cross. After a couple of magazines of ammo, the word was passed down that second platoon was moving out. We were to be careful when shooting to their front. When they had gotten far enough out across the paddy that it was too dangerous, we would receive the "cease fire" order.

There had been no return fire yet from the NVA. It was possible that they had slipped out of there this morning as we were getting set up. I continued firing at the bush clumps and tree stand areas across the paddy. I slowed my fire a bit as I looked to the right along the edge of the paddy and saw Second Platoon begin moving out. The front of the platoon wedge was some 25 meters into the paddy before the last man on the flank entered the paddy. They were moving at normal walk speed as they all fired their weapons into the same clumps that we were. There was a lot of firepower. If the gooks were there, they had their heads down for sure.

I continued looking back and forth as the platoon moved across the paddy and I kept putting fire out. The point of the wedge was nearing the far edge of the paddy so I emptied the magazine I had just as the cease fire order was given for us. There was a substantial decrease in the fire on the NVA positions but the point man was entering the "island." It seemed as if the "island" had been left for us.

I began changing magazines and was expecting to be ordered back to get our gear and move out. Just as I chambered the first round from the new magazine, there was a five to 10 second blast of fire from across the paddy. It was short but deadly.

It was immediately followed by the sounds of many men who were dying at the same time. And they were conscious of that fact they were dying for a few milliseconds to many seconds before it happened. "Ohhhhh NO!" "God! Please NO!" "Help ME!" The screams came across the paddy filled with fear, pain, and the protest of death at such a young age. The sounds pierced every fiber of my being. For that instant, I felt all of their terror.

There was an eerie few seconds of silence. I glanced up but saw no Marines standing in the paddy. The Marines that I could see down in the paddy were not moving. There were no orders being shouted from anywhere. There were no volleys of fire in either direction. Just the fading sounds of those who were still clinging to life.

Then things began to stir again. I heard some single shots ring out. And another yell from a Marine being hit, or hit again. Then I could hear the crackle of my squad radio, which was in the position to my right under a big tree. It was the Platoon Commander out in the paddy. He was almost completely "over the edge" as he screamed for help. "Help us! Please help us!"

There was no answer from the Captain or anybody else. Contact with the enemy was expected but it had just started. The only Marines firing at targets when the NVA opened up were the Marines in the paddy. All other Marines were sort of waiting for the Marines in the paddy to respond to the NVA by concentrating their fire where they knew it was needed. But there was no return fire that we could tell and even the NVA stopped firing after their first short volley. The contact with the enemy was so short that nobody outside of the paddy fully realized what had happened.

After a few seconds of nothing over the radio, the Platoon Commander called out again. This time the scream was reduced to a wailing cry. "We need help. Everybody has been shot. We can't move or they shoot us again."

I could hear movement and voices over to my far right where the reserve portion of First Platoon was in the treeline behind Second Platoon. Though I couldn't see them through the trees, it was obvious that some of them had moved to the edge of the paddy. I heard some M-16s open up from there. Then I could see some four or five Marines running out to the downed Marines furthest back in the wedge and closest to our side of the paddy. There was more fire from the Marines and then from the NVA. From the voices and sounds, it was clear that more Marines were getting hit.

The Company Commander was even further back in our "island" than the reserve platoon and had less of a view of the paddy. Everybody was trying to assess the situation without the normal input of voice and visuals from the attacking platoon. The only one who was attempting communication was the Platoon Commander. The Captain finally responded to him and tried to get him calmed down. He fired questions at the Lieutenant to get him to assess and convey the status of his platoon. "How many casualties do you have? Where is the enemy fire coming from?" Etc., etc.

The Lieutenant was in shock, but very well trained. The questions, in an authoritative tone, from the Captain worked as he immediately started pulling himself back together. It crossed my mind that THIS is where the Marine Corps training became the differentiator that made the Corps what it was.

The radio traffic began to clarify the situation and several shots from the NVA confirmed it. The Lieutenant said, "Almost everybody has been shot. I don't know how many are KIA. I've got at least 4 emergency medevacs. We can't move."

"You have everybody who can start returning fire now. We'll get you some help," the Captain replied. I could hear a shout from in the paddy that must have been the Lieutenant. It was followed by several popping sounds from the NVA side of the paddy.

The radio crackled and it was the Lieutenant again. "Mike 6, my men cannot even move without getting shot again. They have a bead on all of us. I don't have any men left. It's only me and my radioman. We need help!" The radio hissed and crackled then hissed and crackled again as if somebody was keying and unkeying the handset. Simultaneously there were several shots again from the NVA.

The Lieutenant's voice came out of the second crackle with a deep urgency to it. "They just killed my radioman. Oh, God!" There was a half scream across the radio before the handset was unkeyed and cut it off. There was a gap of several seconds and the Lieutenant was back on. "I'm hit. I've been shot in the leg."

"We are coming Mike 2 Actual." That was all the Captain had time to say. Over the last couple of minutes, the reality of what had happened and what was still happening out in the paddy was finally sinking in for the Captain as well as the rest of us.

In terms of a normal firefight, there had not been one. No furious exchanges of fire. There had been the "recon" by fire as the platoon, moving across the paddy, had sought to put the enemies' heads down. Then there had been a few seconds of "popping" that was the very limited return fire by the enemy. Then nothing but an occasional pop until the Marines from the reserve went out to get the wounded. And even then there was only a few bursts of Marine fire followed by a few pops and it stopped. Though we had all heard the screams of the dying Marines, there simply had not been enough rounds fired by either side during the time period when both sides had people up and firing to indicate any significant level of damage to either side.

But this contact with the enemy had been unusual from the very beginning. They had not scattered during the first sighting even though it was daylight. They had not hit us during the night then slipped away before dawn. And they apparently were excellent shots with superb unit coordination. Word came down the line that almost the entire platoon had been hit in the head or chest with one shot each in the two or three seconds of initial fire from the NVA.

Somebody made the comment, "Those aren't AKs that have been firing at us." Somehow, that key piece of information had slipped by everybody. The distinctive "crack" sound of the AK firing at you was one that we were all intimately familiar with.

And these were not AKs. One of the Marines who had been there for several months identified the weapons being used against us as SKS rifles. A Communist made rifle that was much longer than an AK. It did not have an automatic fire setting. In fact, it had no external magazine. It had a small internal magazine with a ten round capacity that was loaded by hand and possibly with a charger guide for faster loading although I never saw one. Because of its length, bolt action, semiautomatic firing, and relatively small amount of use compared to the AK, it was associated with sniper use by the NVA but I do not think that it was an "official" Communist sniper rifle. In any case, the realization of the extent of damage done to the Marines in the paddy combined with the realization that all of the NVA seemed to be carrying an SKS generated the concept that we had run into a company of NVA snipers.

As the picture of what had happened began to develop and the comprehension of what we were up against rolled through the Company, so did the anger and the esprit de corps. Now, just like those few Marines in the reserve platoon who first realized what was happening and were spurred to heroic action to save the Marines in the paddy, every Marine in the Company was ready to take action to save their fellow Marine and take revenge against these NVA no matter how good they were at anything.Things were moving too slow for the angry Marines on the base of fire. The reserve platoon was being spread out to fire over the heads of the Marines in the paddy. Rescue teams were being formed. Rescue targets were being identified by calling out names and looking for movement from any of the prone Marines in the paddy. My squad leader grabbed the radio handset and asked if we could also open up from the base of fire. Permission to do this was denied because our angle of view and the rice plants in the paddy kept us from seeing some of the Marines that could be hit by our fire.

The live Marines closest to our side of the paddy were targeted for rescue. More firepower was concentrated from the reserve platoon on to the enemy side. I could hear the M-60 machine guns and see the tracers. The fire did not let up as the rescue teams went out. The Marines just shifted their fire to make a "safe lane" but kept pouring out maximum fire. The NVA did open up on the rescuers but there were definitely fewer weapons that fired towards us. I believe Marines were hit this time also but the yelling, shouting, and firing of Marines trying to get the NVA was dominant.

One or two of the wounded or dead were recovered but it was still too tough to go very far out into the paddy. We would try again but this time they would allow the base of fire to join in. My squad leader got on the radio with the Captain and they worked out a physical point on the NVA side of the paddy that would be our limit of fire to the right. This was an imaginary line that ran from one big tree on our side of the paddy to a big tree on the NVA side. The base of the tree on the far side would be the lower limit of our fire. About two foot above rice paddy water level. The trees were identified to everybody and another rescue effort mounted. This was repeated a couple of more times. Only one was recovered in these attempts. The efforts were then stopped to await an artillery barrage on the NVA treeline.

I had now been lying in the open sun for a couple of hours. And I was feeling it like I had never felt it before. I had no water with me. I had assumed that this would be over quickly one way or another and had not even considered bringing a canteen with me. I would not ever make that mistake again. My squad leader chastised me for not bringing a canteen then threw one out to me. I gulped down the water and then lay flat as my head and face seemed to bake. Within a minute or two, I began a very loud vomiting session as I emptied my stomach of breakfast and the water I had just taken in. But I couldn't stop there. I continued heaving with an empty stomach for another minute or two. I was completely doubled over and was sure that my stomach was turned inside out in my throat somewhere.

About five minutes later, I again broke into a couple of minutes of dry heaving. I had completely stopped sweating and was turning red all over. My squad leader saw my condition and found somebody with some salt pills. They were thrown to me and I took two with some water as ordered. It wasn't long before they were thrown out of my body. I continued repeating the process.

It took the arty about twenty minutes to get set up and fire the first rounds. These were adjusted by the Forward Observer (FO) and the barrage was unleashed on the NVA line along the paddy. After a few minutes of this, we all got ready to make more rescue efforts. The FO notified the Captain when the last round had left the cannon and the Captain gave us the "Go!" as that round impacted. We were up and firing as the rescue teams ran out.

This time the NVA also fired on us in the base of fire. All of the Marines in the base of fire had adequate cover except me. If any NVA had an unobstructed view across the rice paddy at the appropriate angle they would be able to see me. Or at least part of me........an arm, a leg, etc. behind my measly little bush. As time went by, it became obvious that I had been spotted and was being spotted by more NVA. Single rounds began striking closer and closer to me. But they never seemed to get closer than an occasional couple of inches away. Foliage and camouflage around their positions along with our fire and the involuntary convulsions of my body when I was dry heaving seemed to be enough to keep any "dead eye Charlies" from hitting the bulls eye. In the prone position facing them, I was a very small target anyway. And I was the least threat to them since I had to stop firing every time I heaved.

In any case, the rescue effort was aborted due to intensity and accuracy of the enemy fire. More artillery was called in. This time the artillery did not stop. The pounding of the enemy perimeter kept up. Back and forth across the NVA "island." Screeching, wind splitting projectiles coming in one after another. Huge explosions, flashes. Hot metal whistling in all directions.

The rain of steel continued for fifteen to twenty minutes. It began to tear down the canopy of trees over some of the NVA positions. Rounds were beginning to get through to the reinforced bunkers below. Most could withstand multiple direct hits. But for those inside the bunkers, the concussion was so severe that it would be several minutes before they knew that they had survived.

I doubled up again as the heaves tore at my stomach. Two, three, then four heaves. The abdominal muscles began to relax again. There was a yell from a Marine in the next position. "There they go!"

Everybody on the base of fire line brought their heads and weapons up at the same time. At first, I only saw three running. Then there were two more. They were almost directly across the paddy from us and running up and to the east away from the tattered treeline along the paddy. In order to get to safety in another tree line, they had about a 75 meter run across a relatively open area lightly strewn with tree parts from the explosions.

I quickly aimed in on the lead NVA at a distance of about 120 meters. There were no fire orders being given so all fifteen to twenty of us on base of fire were picking our own targets. Without tracer rounds, it was near impossible to see where the rounds were hitting. Completely so when that many were firing simultaneously.

It was like being in one of those arcades in downtown San Diego trying to shoot the ducks before they got across the pond. I saw one go down but I am sure he wasn't hit. He decided that it wasn't worth the try and took refuge behind the trunk of a tree that had been blown down. Then two more did the same thing, at least temporarily. But they waited a few seconds and were up running again. The second time they went down, I believe that at least one was hit. They didn't pop back up.

The two that were in the lead were very difficult targets. They were running and leaping over the obstacles and were moving very quickly. After a few more seconds they were well past the halfway point. Our machine gun team was ordered to join in by one of the squad leaders. Now every fifth round out of that gun was a tracer and he could adjust easier than we could. But even with that these two were both good and lucky as they continued the dash for their lives. As the tracer rounds began to catch up to them from behind, it was as if they were gaining even more speed to stay ahead of the deadly stream of fire.

Every man on the base of fire was pumping out rounds. The sounds of the battle and the clarification of what had happened that was delivered by the words and tone of the platoon commander out in the paddy had filled every Marine with angst as they sought to save their fellow Marines. These two NVA soldiers had become the focus of our wrath. Yet they seem to be charmed.

After another ten seconds or so, the NVA were within fifty meters of a treeline that would give them cover and safety. Finally, the trailing one fell. He had been hit but was attempting to get up and move again. He popped up a couple of times and went down each time. I don't know the final result but he did not pop up again. The lead NVA was thirty meters from the treeline when he went down and stayed down. There was no positive indication that he had been hit but we could see his body so we continued pumping rounds at it for a while.

As the chatter of our guns decreased, my mind came back from its focus on getting the NVA and realized once again that I was really sick. The heaves struck me. And simultaneously, the order to begin laying out cover fire was given. I had to complete the cycle of two or three heaves before I could chance putting my finger on the trigger of my weapon. The spasms were so great that I could not control them. I was afraid that I would pull the trigger without being able to insure that my rifle was pointed toward the enemy. Within a second or two after I got up to fire, the order was given for the base of fire to cease firing as Marines went out to the rescue.

This time the rescue effort was very short. Only the Marines known to be alive were recovered. Though we had seen the five NVA making the break for it, the rest of their perimeter appeared to be intact and functioning as they delivered accurate fire at the rescuers.

The decision was finally been made to bring in the F-4s. We were ordered to pull back all the way past the crest of our "island" to remove ourselves from the danger zone. The order of the pull back had the base of fire covering for rest of the company as it moved up and over. From the crest there was no view and no way to provide any cover fire because of the trees along the paddy edge. We fired fast and furious at every bush and leaf left on the far side of the paddy. For the first time it seemed that our M-16 firepower was having an effect. The return fire was noticeably less.

The Marines in the center and far side of the main contact area with the NVA moved back quickly. They had a short fifty meter run with about ten meters in an exposed area. They moved back in groups of three to five men at a time as everybody else on the paddy covered for them. Finally, there was only us on the base of fire to get to safety.

Our output of fire ceased as we got ready for the retreat. We had the longest way to go to get to safety. The crest did not exist behind us. We had an oblique run from the rice paddy edge up and across mostly open terrain to an upward slope to the crest. Somewhere along the crest on the far side, a perimeter was set up. Now we would be the "ducks going across the pond."

Once I stopped firing and the adrenaline flow eased, I began heaving again. My entire body was very hot. My face and head felt like they were burning from fire. It was impossible to not take a drink of water. My body needed it so bad even though I knew it would prolong the heaves. My abdominal muscles were sore and I was starting to get cramps in them. I could not see myself standing up much less making the run to safety.

The squad leaders were arranging the order of withdrawal for the platoon. Nobody was going to be able to provide cover fire for us except ourselves. This meant that with each that made the escape there would be less to cover him. The worst case scenario would be the last one who would have absolutely no cover. They asked for a volunteer for this slot. I quickly did just that.

My squad leader looked over at me and asked me if I was sure that I wanted to do that. I told him that I needed the time to rest up for the run. He hesitated but understood, or so he thought. The truth was that I was so sick that I was considering not making the run at all. I asked him to move the first ones out in a manner that made room for me in the shade and safety behind the tree where he was so I could rest in the cooler area. I was thinking I might move into the shade, not make the run at all when it was my turn, and take my chances right there.

The starting point for the main part of the dash across and up the slope was to be just the other side of the tree to my right where my squad leader and a couple of others had been comfortably situated for the last couple of hours. Depending on his location, each Marine would also have a short dash or two to get to the jump off point. At first, there was an attempt to send two Marines at a time up from the paddy but, even with all of us firing, the NVA were putting out enough accurate fire to make the trip extremely hazardous. One at a time reduced the targets available and allowed more room for that target to zigzag.

As each Marine moved in place for the run, my squad leader coached him with the route and method of zigzag. The run would go first from the tree to a group of large bushes about ten meters away on a slight upward angle of about ten degrees. Then he would bear right for a more acute forty five degree upward run from the bush group to a stand of two or three trees about twenty meters away. Coming out from behind the tree stand would require another right shift to the angle to an approximate sixty degree up slope for about thirty meters to the "spine" of the island that was running up to become the crest. Upon reaching the "spine," the Marine would turn left behind a waist high bushline that offered concealment but no protection from the bullets. It would be another twenty meters up the spine before there were trees that provided cover from the bullets. Then about twenty meters more to the new perimeter on the reverse slope of the "island."

The entire platoon opened up on the enemy lines across the paddy. The first Marine made his run. Our fire was suppressing some of the NVA's return fire but not all of it. And again, the NVA that were firing were carefully picking their targets.

Being the only Marine on the base of fire that did not have protective cover or adequate concealment, I was a target. The bullets began striking the earth in front and to the side of me. The group was rather tight as all seemed to be within six to eighteen inches from me. Much too close. I rolled one shoulder back so that I was on my side. I was hoping that my little bush was big enough to conceal me without my shoulders sticking out either side. It seemed to work since there were only a couple of more rounds that appeared to be addressed to me.

The Marine on his run to the crest was crossing the last and widest open area. The squad leader ordered "more fire." Some Marines switched to automatic fire to increase their output. This seemed to reduce the enemy fire some more and the Marine made it to safety. Based on this, several Marines would switch to automatic each time a Marine arrive at the last open space.

By the third run up the slope, not only was I dry heaving again but I was taking very close fire each time a Marine began his run. The fire was tapering off before the end of each run but it was not because I was hiding myself by lying on my side behind the little bush. It seemed to be because the NVA trying to get me were switching to fire at the escaping Marine when he reached the widest opening. I called to my squad leader and told him that I needed to get into the shade of that tree where he was if I was going to be able to recover to make my run. He changed the order of the escaping Marines to make room for me under that big, beautiful, cool shade tree. As the Marine exited that tree are to make his run, the base of fire opened up. This time when the NVA shifted their fire away from me, I low crawled across the open to my new "home." The timing was right and I believe that I did it without a single round being fired directly at me.

My body was severely overheated. The shade kept me from absorbing anymore heat but I could feel it emanating from me like a radiator. I took a canteen from my squad leader and dumped water over my head. I fought the urge to take a long swallow. I knew that if I did, it would send me into spasms shortly after. I needed to be up and firing to help protect the last runners.

It was going well for the runners. Our firepower was keeping the NVA from putting out accurate fire. Everybody was making the run without getting hit or even very seriously threatened. Of course, our firepower was decreasing as each left. By the time that there were only three of us left, it seemed that the NVA had noticed the significant decrease in the fire at them.

They began firing at the running Marine in every opening available. The first of the last three Marines received a great deal of fire across all three openings. It was more of a wall of lead put out in the hopes that one would become deadly. He made it but the rising crescendo of bullets whizzing and whining through the air around us along with the snapping and cracking of branches and bushes told the remaining two of us that the level of danger had just been dramatically increased.

We looked at each other. His eyes were very big. Mine may not have been. I was very scared but my nausea was probably covering it. We both knew that he was in very grave danger with only me covering his escape. I told him to wait while I changed my half empty magazine out and put a full one in. I knew that I could not fire constant full automatic cover fire for him or I would run out of ammo before he was clear. Time to change the magazine was also enough for two or three well aimed shots to be sent his way.

The NVA didn't really know how many of us were left to fire cover. They knew there were only a few but they could not be sure how many. I decided to use staggered bursts of two to four rounds of auto fire while changing the aiming point in between bursts. Hopefully this would give the illusion and sound of more than one weapon firing. The Marine looked to me for acknowledgment that I was ready and with a plea for my best assistance in his eyes and on his lips he moved to the start point.

There had been a longer than normal pause. I was hoping that at least some of the NVA were trying to take advantage of it by reloading or shifting body positions or lighting a cigarette, etc. I decided not to announce the Marine's run by firing first. I would let the Marine use up the safety of his "surprise" appearance before committing any ammo. I had to explain this to the Marine who was waiting for me to open up before taking off on his run. He looked back at me puzzled when I did not open up for him to start his run. I told him what I was doing. His expression showed his dismay but I followed with, "I've only got 18 bullets in the magazine and you are going to need those to get across the big opening."

He understood, but it was no comfort. He turned back to the front to steel himself to leap out. I could see the large beads of sweat running off his ears and down his neck. I felt his fear and also felt every ounce of Marine esprit de corps in me. I needed to get this fellow Marine across there alive.

He hesitated two or three more times. I was just starting to wonder if he was not going to be able to do it when he jumped forward like a sprinter out of the starting blocks. He was so fast that he surprised me as well as the NVA. I don't believe that a single round was fired while he crossed the first gap.

He was at full speed when he got to the second gap. But there were plenty of bullets in the air when he got there. I began my planned bursts at varying points across the paddy where the NVA were entrenched. In addition I took careful aim at known and suspected points of NVA presence in hopes that accuracy would serve to offset quantity. Still I felt insignificant and very impotent as their fire gained in volume despite my efforts. I stole a glance back at my fellow Marine as he made it to the final gap.

He started to zigzag across the opening. The fire was intense and they were zeroing in on him. The bullets were striking the earth all around and within a foot or two of him. He could see the puffs of dirt. The zigzag maneuver uses up time to gain an edge on being less of an easy target. When one is scared this additional exposure time may not look so good. It didn't to him. He dropped the maneuver and headed directly for the closest point of safety. As the bullets closed in on him, I dropped my measured fire routine and sprayed on full automatic until my magazine was emptied just before he got to the end of his run. I wasn't sure if he had made it. I didn't hear anything from him and he had disappeared by the time I looked back while I was changing magazines. Then I could hear a cheer from somewhere up on the crest as he entered the Marine perimeter. He was safe.

I had pretty much made up my mind now. I would NOT be making this run. I was too sick and now, also too scared. I would sit out the bombing where I was and take my chances. I picked up the canteen that had been left for me to take a big long swallow. I knew it would start me heaving again but I didn't care. I was thirsty and I had done my job getting the others back.

Just as I raised the canteen to my lips, I heard my squad leader, "McFerrin, get up here!" Now was the time to tell them I couldn't make it and that I would wait it out. I lowered the canteen without drinking and looked towards the top of the crest. I could not open my mouth and I knew why. First, I had been in the Marine Corps for a little over two years and I had never said, "I can't do it." I suddenly realized that even with the extreme sickness and danger, I probably was not going to be able to say those words now. Second, I realized that I was so sick that I wasn't going to be able to yell loud enough for anybody to hear me anyway. Third, I knew I would not sit there quiet and unresponsive until my fellow Marines endangered themselves by coming back to get me.

I took several slow deep breaths and stood up under the tree in a protected area. My head was pounding with aches and I was dizzy with nausea. This is the first time I had stood in several hours. My legs seemed to be shaking. Now my Platoon Commander began yelling to me that I had to get out of there before they could bomb. I walked in a circle a couple of times to see if I was going to pass out or "lose" my legs. I passed that test so I moved to the start point.

Now I began to think about what I was facing. I knew that it wasn't good but I was able to avoid getting into that thought too far by focusing on my "temporary disability" of heat stroke as my main problem. If I ran backwards I could put out fire to cover myself. But I could not put out enough fire by myself and I could not run as fast and would be subject to tripping since I wouldn't be watching where I was going. I was just going to have to make it without firing. I remembered that the Marine that just left had foregone the zig zagging in the last gap and they had almost got him. I resolved to make sure I zig zagged.

There were multiple Marines yelling from the crest to see if I was OK and to get me to make the run. I had waited long enough that at least some of the NVA had surely become unfocused. I went for it dashing across the first gap without a shot being fired. As I approached the second, I knew that they were waiting with their fingers on their triggers for me to come into the second opening. I ran directly to the edge of the opening but stopped before my body was exposed. I swung my arm with rifle in hand out into the opening as if my body was to follow then jerked it back as what seemed like ten or twelve bullets came whizzing into the opening. Without missing a beat, I entered the second opening immediately as the bullets went by. I had almost cleared the second gap before some hastily fired second rounds came by me.

The long dash across the last opening at a much steeper angle was not one that I could do much with. Stopping my forward motion for a "fake" would mean that I would have to start the uphill run from a dead standstill. I was moving now so I just kept at it. As the angle became more acute, I tried to pour more power into my legs to maintain my rapidly declining speed. It wasn't working. I seemed to be slowing to a crawl. Maybe even a standstill. And the bullets began coming to me from everywhere. I began zig zagging simply to get my body moving. I could move sideways quickly. I could tell from the sounds of the bullets whizzing that the zig zag maneuver was helping but to get to safety I had to move upwards also. So the last step or two of a zig across the side of the hill was a sideways upward step then zag back across the side of the hill and repeat. My exposure time on that last opening quickly became greater than anybody's before me.

Finally, I realized that I had faked all that I could and only had a few ounces of energy left. I had to abandon this and get to safety quickly. As I zigged back towards the correct direction I angled upward for the small bushes along the crest and gave it everything I had. Everything I had turned out to be nothing. I was beginning to lose my legs. There was no feeling and no strength there. I was beginning to feel the wind of the bullets as they closed in on me. Suddenly, I seemed to trip and almost went down. It would have been tumbling all the way down had I not caught myself with my hand first, then spinning my body to get my foot behind me on the downhill slope. Later, I would find that a bullet had struck the heel of my boot causing my fall.

I had just come to a dead stop and the bushes were still 10 meters away. I scrambled first sideways to get momentum then up the hill. I reached the bushes in a hail of bullets but I was afraid to hit the deck there. The bushes would hide me visually but they wouldn't stop a bullet. As I reached the more level ground of the crest I pumped my legs up like a sprinter and took three strides before I dove forward to get behind some larger bushes and trees. And the bullets kept coming as they sprayed every bush on the top of the hill in hopes of getting me. I low crawled to even bigger trees as I was showered with branches and leaves. I was safe. Whew!

I let the firing subside completely before moving. No sense getting hit by any stray ricochets now. Another twenty meters up the crest I could see a large bomb crater on the reverse slope of the "island." I saw some Marines down in the crater poking their heads up to yell at me, "Get in the crater!"

As my pulse rate dropped back down, my nausea began rising up. I was feeling very sick again. I stood and strolled up the trail to the edge of the bomb crater. It was some 15 meters across and perhaps 10 meters deep. There were some 8 or 9 Marines scattered around the sloping walls of the crater. Three or four of them were screaming at me to get in the crater. I was safe on the reverse slope of our "island" and I was sick. I stopped at the edge of the crater and bent over with my hands on my knees as I waited for the convulsion of dry heaving to come. The Marines who were yelling at me changed their words to, "Get Down!" Their tone jumped up an octave or two, as it seemed to fill with fear.

I cranked my hanging head up a bit to look at them. I wanted to tell them to shut up and let me heave. Just then the large clod of dirt on the edge of the crater between my legs seemed to fall apart as the report of a rifle crack reached my ears. Uh oh. Now I got it. There was an enemy sniper who had sneaked around behind us. I let myself fall forward headfirst into the bomb crater as I heard another round fired and impacting somewhere close. I landed on the sloped wall of the crater and slid halfway down. Now the other Marines say, "There's a sniper behind us!" I was too sick to actually laugh. And if I hadn't been, I am not too sure who I would be laughing at. Them for not telling me what the danger was to start with or me for needing a "picture painted" before I took appropriate defensive action.

It took a few minutes before I could get the full word on what was happening and where everybody was. It seems I fell into a hole with a lot of Marines who did not know what was going on. Where was everybody else? Where was my platoon? None of them were in the bomb crater. Sick as I was, the fear being generated in me rose above it. There was at least one enemy behind us. Maybe more. All I could see were these other Marines in the crater who were not looking out of the hole and did not know where anybody was. I began asking questions but rapidly moved into demanding answers from the Marines in the crater.

Nobody was in charge here so it wasn't being run as a viable fighting position. I did not want to be killed sitting down in the crater like a dummy. Especially not after just making the run across the NVA firing range with ALL of them getting a Maggie's Drawers on their turn at me. I quickly rose to anger when nobody answered my questions. When I got up, barking questions and began moving towards a group of three Marines on my side of the crater, I began to get answers. I was only moving to the other side of the crater to get another view in order to make an assessment for myself since nobody else had seemed to. I guess the sick look on my face combined with my rapid fire questions and sudden movement made me look like a sergeant. There were multiple responses to each question. The whole story had to come from several Marines who had arrived in the crater at different times.

It seems that over the last hour or so while my platoon was pulling back from the paddy's edge, the casualties that had been removed from the paddy were moved to an area behind and to the west of the "island" that we were on. A landing zone had been set up and secured by the Company CP group and part of First Platoon to bring in medevac helicopters to get the wounded out. The LZ itself was almost completely out of the direct line of fire of the NVA on the other "island" but they could still see and shoot at the choppers as they entered and left. Some Marines had moved up to the far western side of our "island" to put out some suppression fire.

Then the NVA had slipped at least the one sniper around in back of our "island" where he was able to shoot at both the reverse slope of our "island" and the LZ. My platoon had moved to the rear of the "island" along a finger of high ground that stuck out into the rear rice paddy. From there they were able to put out fire towards the location of the sniper across the paddies behind us.

After learning this, I moved out of the bomb crater to the rear to find the trail to the finger to rejoin my platoon. There were many trees around the rear of the bomb crater that limited the view. I realized that the wrong trail may lead me to NVA who were sneaking around back here or even make me appear as an NVA soldier to other Marines whose location I did not know. I hesitated and turned back around to the Marines in the crater but none of them could confirm the trail that Third Platoon had used. I was dismayed at the lack of awareness and lack of any defensive stance. The sniper had scared me with his presence in the rear of us and all that could mean. Before turning back to the task of finding my platoon, I looked at the closest Marine and said, "You might want to keep a couple of men at the top of the crater looking out. I was the last Marine on the other side. If any gooks come across the paddy, they'll walk right up on you." His eyes got big with fear and he started giving orders to the other Marines.

I pointed to the east out of the crater and said almost the same thing, "We know at least one is back here and your view is limited by the bushes and trees out this way. Better have a couple looking this way." It worked again and he began completing the defense of the crater on his own.

I was a Nothing No Class in the hierarchy of bush Marines. Still new but not brand new. I had only spoken out of fear for myself but I wondered if they thought I was out of line. At the moment, I was too sick and too scared to care what they might think. I scoured everything in a 180 degree arc in front of me while slowly moving out away from the crater. I was trying to identify all possible paths or trails as well as look for signs of recent passing along them. Finally, I found the one they used.

I moved down it happy to be heading to my platoon but stopped after 20 or so meters. It struck me that all of those scared Marines back in the crater didn't really know where my platoon was. If we came back up this trail they might fire at any movement before they had identified it. I U-turned immediately and moved back until I could see them through the bushes and trees. I hailed the Marine who had taken charge so that he could see where I was at and notified him that I was on the trail that 3rd Platoon had used and MIGHT be coming back on. I added the obvious just in case, "Don't fire on anything in this direction without fully identifying it, okay?"

I took off back down the trail moving quickly. After about 50 meters, I heard some movement somewhere to the front, halted and took cover. Soon I could see movement as well as hear it. I brought my M-16 up and flicked the safety to semiautomatic just as one of my squad mates appeared. Then my squad leader. Then I heard my platoon commander behind them. Whew! I suddenly realized how scary it was to be walking on a trail in the bush by myself. It had only been a couple of minutes but I was REALLY glad to see these guys.

The last medevac chopper had just taken off from out in the paddy to the west. I turned back around and led the platoon back up to the crater. My platoon commander set up a much wider defense of the area. Apparently the F-4s were already over us waiting for the clearance to make their runs so the defense was not just from enemy assaults but from "danger close" bombing. I stayed in the crater at the upper eastern edge. The crest of the island was just above me so I had cover from the bombs. I could slither up at will and make sure no enemy troops were coming at us from across the paddy on the other side of the “island.”

Within a minute or two of getting everybody set, the first F-4 came screaming in. There was a question as to what kind of bomb that he was going to drop. The normal procedure in these kinds of circumstances was to first come in with napalm drops from both jets. That would be followed by a pass from each with high explosive bombs. Then they would finish by strafing the area with the large caliber machine guns. But we had been told that they were coming with "mole digger" bombs to get to the bunkers in the treeline along the paddy. "Mole diggers" were bombs with VT (variable timing) fuses that delayed the explosion until after the bomb had gone into the ground. I heard that, in addition, "mole diggers" were cased to create a shape charge effect where the majority of the blast was directed forward. The question was whether they would also have napalm.

The question was answered with the first blast. Marines began yelling warnings everywhere as the explosion across the paddy lifted EVERYTHING into the air. Mud, water, dirt clods, bushes, trees, rocks, boulders, etc. The seventy five meters of rice paddy between the bombing point on the NVA "island" and our "island" and the additional fifty to seventy five meters of trees, bushes, and even the hard earth crest that we had pulled back behind were not enough. Not only did all of the earth turn into "natural shrapnel" that zinged through the entire area but a mushroom cloud of some one to two hundred feet formed at the center of the explosion. This mushroom cloud spewed out dirt and chunks of everything up to hundreds of pounds in size creating a deadly rain of bone crushing debris.

I looked up as the warnings were yelled from all around the defensive perimeter. Dirt and leaves were already coming down making it necessary to shield my eyes. I couldn't see anything that looked too big but the stuff just kept appearing so I had to stay looking skyward and prepared to jump. It seemed to take almost a full minute before I felt comfortable that all that was still coming down was dirt and leaves. But even before that minute was up the other F-4 could be heard arriving at the target.

The jets were coming in at a steep angle. Perhaps fifty to sixty degrees. They would release the bomb just as they began their pullout as if to give the bomb maximum speed into the ground. The aircraft nose would just arrive at the point where it was pointing upward less than 100 feet above the target when the bomb would hit the ground. Several seconds would pass as the aircraft swooped up and away from the target. Then the delayed timer would run its course and a massive woomph would reverberate across the paddy as the earth rose and seemed to disappear behind the dirt and smoke of its own annihilation.

There wasn't as much yelling when the second bomb hit since everybody was already completely aware of what was coming. Within seconds of the second woomph, a huge object appeared in the sky. It took a second or so to realize that the trajectory of the object was bringing it to the crater area. At the same time that this realization was happening, the object became identifiable as an entire tree of some twenty to twenty five feet in height, a diameter of seven or eight feet between outer branches, and what seemed to be the entire root system in a giant dirt clod of several hundred pounds weight that was attached to the bottom of the tree.

I scrambled up to get out of the crater but only got my body about halfway out when the object became huge in my peripheral vision and I hit the deck. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the tree portion of the object crash into the far side of the crater that my feet were still hanging over. I saw at least two Marines who also had been scrambling to get out of the crater fall onto their backs with their hands and arms up in a defensive posture. The tree blotted them out of my sight but it wasn't over yet. I rolled on my back to look upward as other smaller but just as deadly chunks of dirt, rock, and tree thudded down. It was an impossible dance. The chunks were too many and moving too fast to be able to decide which ones were large enough and/or fast enough to be lethal and which way to jump.

Now there were Marines really yelling. This time it was for help and the corpsman. The two across the crater from me were alive but screaming in pain. So was another over there. The tree trunk and the root clod had missed everybody but not the branches. Lots of broken bones. Too many Marines in one place. My Lieutenant sent several of us out of the crater area to form another position. We had to hurry to beat the next pass of bombing.

Four of us ran back over the crest, moved down towards the paddy, and found a fighting hole that had been dug the previous night. It was big enough for three. One Marine ran over to another hole to join two other arrivals from the back slope. We were actually closer to the bombing but were in the trees, which could afford us some protection from the deadly rain. The next bomb hit before we could actually get set in the hole. There was a mad scramble to get situated but the initial blast wave fired its "debris bullets" directly across the paddy while we were still above ground. This was even more frightening than the rain since even the small stuff could kill you when it was moving at several hundred to several thousand feet per second. It was like a machine gun was firing at us.

We were ready for the next run. Everybody had a place in the hole that allowed them to keep their heads below the surface. The blast shook the earth. During the "fallout," there was a yell from a Marine in the other position, "Here they come!"

This was a shock and unexpected. The fear in me went all the way up with the realization of what this meant. They were charging us en masse. There were two positions of six Marines total out in front. We would be on our own to stop the hordes of NVA that I imagined there would be. The fear leveled off as we raised our heads and weapons up to face them. The "hordes" turned out to be just one and he was charging into the paddy from the NVA island heading right for us. I kept scanning the treeline for the rest of them. Not one other was seen. What was going on?

One of the Marines in my hole recognized the situation first and began yelling to all of us to hold our fire. It wasn't an enraged kamikaze NVA soldier charging us. It was a Marine. Apparently, the enemy had let the point man of the wedge formation that was assaulting them get all the way through their line before they had loosed their initial volley. This may or may not have been intended. This Marine had gone down in some kind of depression in the earth over there when the shooting began. He was totally confused and lost. He could not see the bunkers that were shooting the Marines or the Marines shooting back. Somehow he had not only survived but was not even scratched by all of the small arms fire, all of the artillery, and five bombs.

But he was not completely unaffected. A couple of Marines stood up and directed him in to our hole. Once he saw us he began to breakdown. He was unable to control himself. He was crying, screaming, and moaning all at once while his body shook like a leaf. He was saying words but they were not connected. "Dead bodies everywhere" was the largest comprehensible phrase that he got out. We knew there were dead Marines all out there but since he was the closest to the NVA, everybody was hoping that it was them that he was talking about. Maybe it was both.

The F-4s continued their demolition of the treeline. It soon became clear that the Marine who had escaped from the Zone of Destruction was not going to settle down and come out of the psychosis. Two Marines had to stay with him at all times in case he tried to bolt off in any direction. Weapons were kept out of his reach. His suffering as communicated in his mournful wails was being heard and felt by the rest of us. It was a pain in the mind and soul that EVERYONE in combat felt and wrestled with to some degree. The purposeful and horrific ending of human life is an event that no participant or witness truly escapes from without consequences. The babbling Marine would be on the next medevac chopper out and never seen or heard from again.

After some four to six runs each, the F-4s had spent their loads and had done so effectively. As the Marines got up to move around and deal with their own problems from the bombing, there were no volleys of deadly accurate fire from the other side of the paddy. The quiet was very loud. The smell of small arms fire hung in the air. The smell of death was rising in strength. The heartache of so many Marine bodies in the rice paddy was on everybody's face. As I looked at the hunks of green in the rice paddy, the screams of those men as they died kept reverberating in my head. This had been a very bad day. I hardly remembered being heat sick and nauseated all day. Now I only had a headache and was weak but could barely feel either.

The day wasn't over yet. We still had to recover the bodies in the paddy. We did not know if there were any gooks left alive or not. There had been no fire from the NVA in a while but we could not assume that they were dead. The toll for the day had been high. It seemed that nobody really knew how many. Some First Platoon guys who had been in a place where they could have seen everything that happened in the paddy argued. One said that there was nobody left from the platoon in the paddy. All were dead or severely wounded and maybe dead by now. Another argued that there was one left. Another claimed that he was sure there were two left unscathed. But regardless of which one was right, for all intents and purposes there was no Second Platoon left.

So the next argument was about how many were in Second Platoon. These ranged from 18 to 24. Nobody in the group really knew for sure. That meant that there were at least 16 and, at most, 24 Marines killed or wounded in the battle just from that platoon. And there were an unknown number of casualties amongst First Platoon members who had risked everything to save those in the paddy. And whoever they were that the tree had landed on. No matter how you looked at it, we knew that we were in the vicinity of 30% casualties from the single day of combat. A very bloody day. And just 8 days before this, we had taken a similar number of casualties on Go Noi. Over half of Mike Company gone in two battles.

I could see on the faces around me that my thoughts were being echoed in others' minds as each tried to calculate the number of 8 day periods left in his tour. Whatever that number was represented one side of the formula that determined his "probability" of leaving Vietnam alive and in one piece. And very few finished the calculation with much hope. I had some 46 more of these to go through which completely wiped out any reasonable chance of making it but I am not sure that 10 more of these periods would have made much difference in my feeling good about making it. I mean a "1 in 10" chance isn't all that much better than a ".2 in 10" chance. Both are completely against you.

After the F-4s left, a new base of fire was set up with direct fire across the paddy at the points closest to suspect enemy bunkers. Artillery barrages were started and small arms poured out to cover those who went to get the bodies. There was not any return fire from the other side. It seemed that they might all be dead or gone.

Medevacs were again brought in to get out the last wounded and dead. We all assumed that we would be assaulting the NVA island again. It was late in the afternoon. The heat and nonstop activity had taken a toll on everybody physically. The combat had spent everybody emotionally. After the medevac we were given a break but it did little for us. Water and a cigarette and silent contemplation. The heat and horror diminished the appetite. If we were going to assault again, they changed their minds. "We would wait until the next day," they said after about a half hour of break.

We moved to get set back into a perimeter. Later there were some rounds fired at us from the other side of the paddy. It seemed as though one or two weapons fired. We opened up with some 10 or 12 weapons and they went silent. This happened a couple of times more before dark. They seemed to just be letting us know they were still there.

That night we went to extra effort to put out a lot of Claymores to the front and to the rear where some NVA had been that day. Everybody was hoping for a night assault by the NVA. A wall of Claymores would give us a chance to personally pay them back.

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Letter from Elvin Bruce Jones "BJ" to Mike McFerrin
17 January 2004

Mike,

I know what you mean about the cold sweats and unwanted memories that come at night. I can still hear the screams and calls for help. I remember looking out across the paddy, thinking GOD, we have to get those guys. I don't think there was any hesitation in anyone's mind, I know there was not in mine. Now looking back, it's like a dream. I think we had one false start, someone said they were calling arty, but then it was like we just went, can't remember anyone giving the order to go. I remember zigzagging as I ran, seems like I remember one guy going down as we ran, not sure if he was hit, or just fell.

11 September '68

We made it all the way to the paddy dike, what there was of it, you have what was left of the guys that already were out there, and add all of us, believe me it was not very big. There was a break in the dike to my left, and two Marines between it and me. One of them got hit, and we moved him over to the right to take care of his wound. Then I thought I saw one of the Marines move that was between the dike and the tree line, he was maybe five or six meters out. I rolled over the Marine to my left, then I could see through the break in the dike. I saw him take another hit, I started to crawl out so I could touch his leg, Two rounds hit the dirt near my right shoulder, I moved back as fast as I could. I called to him, he did not respond.

We were trying to return fire, but every time we moved, it was like they had every one of us in their sites. it seemed like we were out there for hours in the heat. Then I heard what I thought was Jim's voice scream, "I'm hit!" I raised up to look, and then I felt what was like an electrical shock, and I seemed to lose all my strength. I did not pass out, I don't think. It was like I was not really there. There was not a lot of pain, just a burning feeling in my legs. I was about half way out in the open of the break in the dike when some rounds threw dirt in my eyes. I tried to move back, but nothing worked.

I called out, "I'M HIT!!" "The Marine nearest me pulled me back behind the dike. Someone asked me where, I told him in my back, I could feel blood running down my back. I heard him say, "Man, you are!!" Things get a little dim from this point, I can't remember a lot, I do remember the guys putting me in a poncho, and starting back across the paddy. I think one of them that was at my feet must have fell or got hit. I think I can remember something happening, just not sure. I don't know how much time had passed from when I got hit to when they carried me out, it seemed like hours!

I wish I could put all that into words as you do Mike, but that is what it was like for us out there, as best as I can tell it, and from my point of view. BOY!! That was one HELL of a day!!

S/F BJ

Elvin Bruce "BJ" Jones
2004

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AFTERMATH TO 11 SEPTEMBER 1968
Mike McFerrin, 3rd Plt. M Co. 3/5
April 2004

Nothing happened that night in terms of combat but just before and just after first light we could hear sounds from a section of the NVA perimeter that had been made visible by the bombing. It was an alert that something was up so we went to 100% on the lines. After a while like this with nothing happening, we suspected that they might be leaving the area.

When it was my turn to sleep that night, I slept very deep. The heat stroke had taken so much from my body. There was a great deal of repair and replacement needed to get me back to normal. One night of 4 hours sleep was not going to do it but it was a start. When I was roused from sleep for my turn at watch, I rolled over and tried to raise myself up into a sitting position. A giant, body snapping cramp rolled up from my foot to my calf to my thigh. I was flopping on the ground and groaning as I tried to escape the pain. The others in my hole woke up thinking I was hit. After some agonizing minutes, the knotted muscles began to subside though it felt like some had ripped.

Being awake and out of physical pain had its downside though. After orienting myself in the darkness so that I knew which way was which, the previous day’s combat soon began rolling through my head. It wasn’t the heat or smell or the few bursts of rifle fire. It was the horror and death screams of the Marines. The sound of the platoon commander in the paddy pleading for help and providing eyewitness positive proof of the massacre of his men. The heroism of those men in the paddy and the few that were in a position to attempt rescues. The impotency of the rest of us. Nausea was returning to me but this time it was centered much deeper.

I kept scanning the darkness for sights and sounds indicating the enemy. There were no dreary, heart tugging homesick thoughts as I sat alone. My world, my life, and probably my death were all in the here and now. I would move through these endless days of violent encounters simply trying to keep myself and my fellow Marines alive. The end of this would be when it was my turn to be killed. It was not good or bad. That’s just the way it was.

Shortly after first light, movement was spotted on the other side of the paddy. They were still there. It was difficult to see where their perimeter was even with the majority of trees stripped away from the area where they had been. A bunker could be seen about 50 meters up from the edge of the paddy. Based on its position, it had probably been the Command Post bunker for the NVA perimeter that had existed yesterday. Today, it might be the front line for a new perimeter.

Then, in the trees behind that bunker there were more NVA. They were running away from the area. All of us on the Marine lines facing that side opened up. There was no return fire. Only more NVA soldiers running. Either a platoon commander or the company commander read the situation and mounted an immediate assault across the paddy with those of us who were in a position to do so quickly. In rushes of 3 or 4 Marines at a time we advanced across the paddy then up to the bunker. Using the bunker for cover, we then laid down fire to send a squad into the trees beyond. They moved through to the far side in time to see NVA soldiers fleeing across the paddy behind.

After securing the treed area, a Marine went to enter the bunker to check it out. He had not even got his head all the way into doorway before backing out at high speed. It seems there was still at least 1 live enemy soldier in there. “Chieu hoi” was yelled into the doorway to get the occupant or occupants to surrender.

“Chieu hoi” was part of the pidgin Vietnamese language developed during the war. In Vietnamese, it did not mean “surrender” but every North Vietnamese who had made it this far south knew that is what we meant. The words actually mean “open arms” and that was the name of the South Vietnamese program to entice the North Vietnamese into changing sides. The promises of the Chieu Hoi Program were printed on leaflets dropped all over the country by the tens of millions. The leaflet was their “safe conduct pass” to a “better” life. By waving it in the air as they approached an American or South Vietnamese unit in the field, they would not be shot. Instead, they would be welcomed with “open arms” and given a free house and plot of land to call their own.

I have heard of North Vietnamese soldiers actually doing as the leaflet said but my personal experience was that they were most often used by the NVA to mark lanes for night travel. That is, the leaflet would be crumpled up and laid on the ground or on a bush every few feet along a trail or cleared path or lane of approach to one of our positions. During the night darkness, the whiteness of the one side of the paper could be seen when one was close to it. What looked like just more leaflet trash to the Americans were actually carefully staggered lane markers allowing them to move quickly and quietly right up to you. In fact, using these leaflets combined with other trail signs using native material, the NVA could move an entire battalion and all supporting arms right up to you, set and aim them without ever being heard or seen during the night.

There was no response to the call for “chieu hoi” from the bunker. After a couple of minutes, somebody had the idea to “gas” them with heat tabs. Heat tabs were packaged like Alka-Seltzer in foil packages that were green instead of blue. The heat tab was also like an Alka-Seltzer tablet but just a bit bigger and was blue instead of white. By applying a lit match to it, it would begin to burn at a slow rate putting out a low blue flame suitable for heating water or C-rations. It also put out fumes that would burn eye and throat tissue as well as choke you.

The bunker had two entrances. One was at either end. Both were L-shaped so that there was not direct access from the outside. You had to make a 90 degree turn to get into the bunker itself. We took 7 or 8 heat tabs out at each entrance and lit them in the doorway. Using towels, we wafted the fumes into the bunker while once again yelling “chieu hoi.” Still nobody came out. But the coughing inside the bunker indicated there was more than one person in there and probably more than two. Three or four more heat tabs were added to each pile. That didn’t work either.

The offer to let them surrender was based on the fact that there was nowhere left for them to go and, maybe, an upper level request that we take some prisoners for intelligence purposes. But they had already used up any patience that may have existed. And the memory of the Marines being slaughtered yesterday came rushing forth again. The order was given to go to using hand grenades. If there were survivors from that and they didn’t come out then we would bury them by blowing the entrances.

The grenades were held for two seconds after letting the spoon fly that released the fuse igniter. This was to reduce the time any bunker occupant would have to grab the grenade and throw it back out. Then the grenade was thrown at an angle against the entrance wall to get it to bounce off the wall into the bunker. It still took three grenades before the occupants began to come out.

The first three came out unarmed and were searched. They were all wounded to one degree or another from grenade shrapnel but, considering the circumstance, they were amazingly well off. The tone of the Marines handling the situation had already gone from professional to more personal while they had been refusing to come out. I believe that we all had very little humanity left. What they had done to our Marines yesterday seemed to demand some kind of payback. I wondered if one of us was going to just wind up shooting. I kept an eye on the other Marines as well as the captured NVA. I did not want to be on the other side of one of these prisoners if a Marine decided to start shooting them.

The rest of the NVA were not coming out of the bunker. The story began coming out when the prisoners were interrogated on the spot. There were five occupants of the bunker and the senior man inside of the bunker was a lieutenant. He had not allowed them to surrender. When we started throwing the grenades in, the NVA officer ordered the rest of them to grab the first one of their group who looked like he was dead or dying. His body was thrown on the next grenades that came in. The body absorbed most but not all of the blast and shrapnel.

When the officer passed out, the surviving three came out. Eventually the unconscious officer was recovered and all prisoners were choppered out.

Everything was rushed that morning. The prisoners had admitted that they were supposed to fight a delaying action with us that day. Apparently most of the others had decided that they would like to actually get out of there before we could come at them. All others besides this one bunker had wound up running out that morning. We immediately saddled up and headed out after them. We were in hot pursuit. And every ville we entered that day would know it.

This would be the first day that I was called upon to conduct a spot interrogation of villagers. A family that lived directly on the main trail that exited a village was selected as the most likely to have seen enemy soldiers moving through. There was an old female and an old male. Probably grandparents. There were two young boys with them. Maybe six and ten years old. Initially I talked to the older couple. I asked about soldiers moving through. How many, which way, how long ago, etc. Each question was responded with the same answer, “I don’t know.”

One of the Marine sergeants who was not with my platoon looked at me and asked if I knew what I was doing. I assured him that I knew the correct Vietnamese. He said, “Correct Vietnamese? That’s not what I mean. If you do this right, you don’t need to know any Vietnamese. Come over here. I’m going to show you how to do this.”

He put the family together and pulled the older boy out in front of them. He ordered me to begin asking questions. Every time the boy answered with, “I don’t know,” he would punch him. Sometimes in the stomach. Sometimes in the face. He was making it look like he was striking him very hard. But the boy would not change his answer. This went on for several minutes making me very uncomfortable. The sergeant yelled at me to keep going when I hesitated.

Then he quickly tossed the older boy off towards the family and grabbed the younger one. Starting with the first question, the younger one began telling us everything. No force was necessary. The sergeant had pulled this off beautifully. I knew that he had actually not damaged the older boy as much as it had looked like because there was no blood and the boy wasn’t knocked out. He had made it look bad to affect the younger one. But my little bit of comfort with this was shaken when he told me, “If there had been a second time around with these people to get the answers, there would have been no pulling punches. They might or might not be civilians but you don’t let a single one of them get a Marine killed.”

We wound up spending another three weeks in the Arizona Territory. And it lived up to all I had heard about it. September 11th was the worst of all of the days in terms of number Marine casualties. Almost every single day was punctuated with at least one sudden burst of violent combat. We ambushed them or they ambushed us. We attacked them in the day. They attacked us at night.

We lost men to their mines and booby traps and even to our own ordnance. One day a small round metallic object was found near a position that was being dug. Nobody knew what it was. A Marine took it up to the CP to show it to them. After a couple of radio calls, it was determined that it was an anti-personnel “bomblet” from one of our newer bombs that exploded and sent out hundreds of these to explode independently like grenades. Apparently this one had not gone off. The engineer was called up to take the thing outside of the perimeter and blow it up. A couple of Marines went with him as security while we continued digging foxholes. After getting outside of the perimeter on the way to a safe distance away, the device exploded in the hand of the engineer. He was killed and the security Marines were wounded. It was surmised that the subtle heat change effected by the object being held in human hands for several minutes was enough to set off the unstable explosives.

Getting killed by an opposing combatant was bad. Getting killed by our own troops and/or ordnance was just as bad, of course, but seemed worse. But there were other, even less glorious ways to be killed. Snakes, tigers, poisonous tigers, etc.

Mike Company also got very close to one of these “other” ways while on this operation. Water buffalo were known to not like or otherwise be disturbed by the presence of Americans. It wasn’t that the one to two thousand pound horned animal was an avowed Communist in its political leanings or that it had acquired a distaste for American arrogance. It was chemical in nature. The amount of meat in our diet, even in C-rations, was enough for our body odor to register us as carnivorous to the water buffalo. We were the same as a tiger to it. A predator that must be fought.

On one of the days in the Arizona, Mike Company was in column and well spread out. The point of the column was snaked across a paddy with the point man stopping at the edge of some high ground that he was going to enter. The middle of the column was still on a piece of high ground some 100 meters away with the rear of the column in the paddy on the backside of that. The entire column stopped with the point man. I was on the high ground with a good view of the front of the column and the forward paddy. As the point man listened and looked, I noticed an untended water buffalo in the rice paddy not far from the point man. As our scent wafted across the paddy, the water buffalo alerted and turned to see where the smell was coming from. He was becoming visibly upset at what his nose was telling him. Nobody was moving so I don’t think he actually saw anything.

It was very hot and we all began to sit down to wait for the column to move again. I pulled out a canteen and took a long drink. Then I lit a cigarette, wiped my brow, and tried to take advantage of this impromptu rest time. The water buffalo began snorting and pawing at the ground as it looked around. Then it began slowly moving across the paddy towards the high ground that I was on. It seemed to not see the Marines closest to it in the paddy. It stopped and started several times but kept coming towards me. In fact, it seemed to be looking at ME. And it was getting angrier by the second. Everybody’s eyes were now on the water buffalo.

I turned around to say something about how the water buffalo seemed to be looking at me. There was the Marine directly behind me. He was the only Marine standing up and he was waving his arms at the water buffalo and making goofy faces. I said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Just messing with the water buffalo.”

Well, he was right about “messing” with it. By the time I turned back around, the water buffalo was in a full charge through the paddy right towards his “tormentor” who I was unfortunately sitting directly in front of. I scrambled and heaved to get to my feet with the full weight of my pack on. Everybody else around me was also. The Marine behind me didn’t mean for it to this far but it was too late. He turned to run, ran a few steps but realized the futility of attempting to outrun the beast, and turned back with his M-16 on full automatic firing.

Most of the bullets hit the water buffalo but you could not tell because he kept up his charge unabated. The bullets that were not hitting the animal were raking across the Marine column in the paddy causing Marines to dive behind rice paddy dikes into the mud. They were yelling, “Cease fire!” but the Marine could only see the large animal become larger and the snorting become louder as it pounded the earth coming at him. I dove off to the side of the animal’s track and the Marine continued firing until he emptied his M-16 magazine. As the water buffalo got to within 10 meters of him, it just stopped and shook its head as it began to feel the effects of 10 or 12 m-16 rounds in it. It trotted off to the side dazed but very much alive.

Marines were scattering all over the high ground that I was on and the ones in the paddy were still screaming about shooting towards them. The sniper came up and finished the water buffalo off. And the rest of us learned to “let sleeping water buffaloes lie.”

The Arizona Territory was probably the best “live fire” academy the Marine Corps had. If you survived a week there, you were definitely at least an Eagle Scout Marine. If you survived a month there, you had probably seen 90% of everything that could and would kill you in Vietnam. Surely worth a Black Belt in Violent Death. I would graduate from this school whose only color was Blood Red. And I would make it home from Vietnam. And back to civilian life.

But September 11th, 1968 would never leave me. It has always just been “yesterday.” It has been the center of nightmares, but it also has been the place where I have seen REAL heroes. After more than thirty five years, I finally found and talked with two of those heroes and hope to meet them soon. The sacrifice and bravery they displayed on that day have been a positive guiding influence for me ever since.

And, even more amazing, I find that they are today what they were then. Quiet American heroes. This is the REAL story that crosses all lines between vets and non-vets, handicapped and non-handicapped, genders, and religions. Despite the psychological horror of their participation in such battles and regardless of the severity of their physical wounds, both of these men went on to lead productive lives helping other people.

Mike, Out

Killed In Action
3-11 1SEPTEMBER 968

These Marines and FMF Corpsman stand proudly on the Mike 3/5 Wall of Honor. We will never forget. Semper Fidelis.

3 September 1968

Cpl. Ricky Jerome Almanza (Silver Star)
M/3/5
Born on Oct. 16, 1947
From MOLINE, ILLINOIS
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 45W - - Line 30
Memorial page

SSgt. George John Belancin
M/3/5
Born on Apr. 18, 1937
From PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 45W - - Line 30

LCpl. Larry Dale Coats
M/3/5
Born on Aug. 1, 1948
From TWIN FALLS, IDAHO
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
Non-Hostile, died of illness/injury
GROUND CASUALTY
MALARIA
Panel 45W - - Line 31

Pfc. Antonio Benavidez Hernandez
M/3/5
Born on Feb. 21, 1948
From ABILENE, TEXAS
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
OTHER EXPLOSIVE DEVICE
Panel 45W - - Line 32

Pfc. Paul Edward Hyland
M/3/5
Born on Nov. 15, 1946
From DALLAS, TEXAS
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
OTHER EXPLOSIVE DEVICE
Panel 45W - - Line 32

Pfc. Timothy Edward Shanower
M/3/5
Born on June 11, 1948
From PERRYSBURG, OHIO
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 45W - - Line 34
Memorial page

Pfc. Michael Donvian Wilson
M/3/5
Born on Mar. 9, 1948
From LIMA, OHIO
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Body was recovered
Panel 45W - - Line 35

HN Russell L Wright II
M/3/5
Born on July 9, 1947
From RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
Casualty was on Sept. 3, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 45W - - Line 34
Memorial page

11 September 1968

LCPL. JERRY DON COPELAND
Born on Apr. 6, 1948
From OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 44W - - Line 22
Memorial page

PFC. RICHARD GALE DANIELS
Born on Dec. 2, 1949
From COLUMBUS, OHIO
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 44W - - Line 23
Memorial page

PFC. JAMES KENNETH HOYEZ
Born on Aug. 13, 1949
From ALBANY, OREGON
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 44W - - Line 25
Memorial page

PFC. ARMANDO LOPEZ
Born on June 3, 1950
From LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 44W - - Line 27
Memorial page

PFC. PHILLIP EDWARD SLAUGHTER
Born on Mar. 22, 1949
From KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
OTHER EXPLOSIVE DEVICE
Panel 44W - - Line 30
Memorial page

CPL. DOUGLAS MARK SMITH
Born on Nov. 27, 1947
From NORTH TONAWANDA, NEW YORK
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
OTHER EXPLOSIVE DEVICE
Panel 44W - - Line 30
Memorial page

PFC. THOMAS WILLIAM STEELE
Born on May 13, 1949
From COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 44W - - Line 31
Memorial page

PFC. OWEN WHITE, JR.
Born on Oct. 14, 1947
From CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Casualty was on Sept. 11, 1968
in QUANG NAM, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Panel 44W - - Line 33
Silver Star
Memorial page

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This is not an official USMC combat operations page, but my personal attempt to recover as much info as I can about the operations participated in by the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in Vietnam. Information is from informal emails, phone calls, and other correspondence to Brad and I. All related pictures and information is greatly appreciated.~DR