by Jack McLean
For the following three days, until Alpha vacated, we occupied a small perimeter that we dubbed Robin Alpha. It was too small for a helicopter landing, so every morning we’d send a working party back over to Alpha to pick up mail, fresh ammo, and C rations. It was a haul and we hated it. This was a long way from the nightlife in Olongapo we had dreamed of.
On the second morning, we discovered an enemy tunnel inside the perimeter. It was not uncommon to find one, but the fact that it was inside our lines grabbed our immediate attention. It was said that an NVA soldier could go from the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos to Saigon and never see the light of day. This may have been an exaggeration, but perhaps not. The tunnel complex directly under LZ Loon that had been pointed out to me by Leeland Johnson upon my arrival on June 4 was later found to include a barracks and a medical station.
As was customary, one of the smallest marines was asked to volunteer for the task of going into the tunnel—to be the tunnel rat. I was six feet, three inches tall, though very skinny. Any time that tunnel rat volunteers were called for, I’d stand as tall as I was able and puff out my chest. Days before on LZ Loon, I’d provided the largest target there was to the enemy, and there wasn’t a second that I didn’t curse my parents for passing on the big-person gene. At this moment, though, I was a giant and did all that I could to see that everyone noticed. I had no interest in being a tunnel rat.
The volunteer was picked, and, after having a rifle sling tied around his leg, he was lowered into the abyss. It’s hard to describe how small the hole was or to imagine how any person could get in. Moments passed with little sound but some movement that we could detect. Those of us not on watch gathered closely around. Then, for several minutes, there was nothing.
A second marine, Dwayne Slate, who only weeks earlier had procured all of our new combat gear, was sent down. He spotted the first marine on the bottom, dead. We were never told his cause of death but assumed that it was from the lack of air in the tunnel.
Slate couldn’t breathe, so we pulled him up before he died.
It was an excruciating moment for all of us.
We had just suffered another casualty, and for what?
Some time later, a diminutive major from Alpha Company came over and, armed with ropes and appropriate gear, went back down into the hole and retrieved the dead, dirty, ashen-faced marine.
It was a numbly horrifying moment.
The poor fuck had survived LZ Loon and died in this little shit hole.
Bill Negron was distraught. An hour later, after it had sunk in, we saw him quietly crying with his head held in his hands.
It was an awful moment, a terrifyingly helpless moment.
That afternoon, a chaplain was sent out. It had originally been planned as a time of remembrance for the boys lost on LZ Loon, but the recent tragedy gave it new overtones. We all stood silently on the inside lip of a bomb crater with our heads bowed and listened to his comforting words. He led us in prayer. He handed out rosary beads and crosses to all who wanted them. I had never seen rosary beads before, but in the event that they might have some value, I kept them in my pocket for the balance of my tour. How could it hurt?
Later in the week, we went on a small operation about a thousand meters to the west. Walking through the tall grass and dense bush, the point man suddenly found himself face-to-face with two NVA soldiers. His MI6 at the ready, he shot and killed them both before either could react. Our nerves, already shot, sparked with the first sound of rifle fire since LZ Loon. We scouted the area, and determined that the two enemy troops were alone. Negron then called up to the point man and asked that the two bodies be brought to the perimeter that we were forming for the evening. Propping the bodies up next to a tree, he called the new replacements over for a quick lesson.
“Can you all see this? Come on, gather around closer and let me see a tight circle. Okay. You all see this now? This is what happens out here. This is serious business.”
Several new marines broke ranks and began to throw up. “You are all going to be here for thirteen months, if you are lucky. You will sleep outside every night. Most of your meals will come out of a can. The enemy will be watching you constantly. … Constantly. Do you all understand that?”
Silence.
“You never really believe what’s going to happen till it happens to you. Then you say, ‘Oh, shit, I better really pay attention now.’ Well, this is it. You don’t pay attention, you end up like this.” Negron rubbed the dead NVA soldier on the head for emphasis. “Ten minutes ago, this poor fuck was alive and thinkin’ about pussy and beer, just like you. This will be you if you don’t do what you are told and listen to your leaders.
“Thank you, men. You’re dismissed.”
We old guys were too numb to notice. Most of the new guys were sick with fear.
Eleven days after LZ Loon, on June 17, we got the word that we had been waiting for. The Skipper was looking for volunteers to go back to LZ Loon to retrieve our dead marines. To a man, we all wanted to go and begged that he leave no one behind. Those were our brothers back there. We also were silently hoping that we might get a little payback in the process.
The following morning, we saddled up with helmets, flak jackets, and gas masks. There would be a terrible stench, not only from our dead comrades but from what we could only imagine to be hundreds of rotting napalmed NVA soldiers. We were given Compazine to be certain that our stomachs stayed settled. Our mission was to get in, get the bodies, and get out.
One platoon was to go down to the site of the helicopter crash, while the other two platoons were to canvass the hill. In addition to our normal ammo and gear, we carried body bags and grappling hooks, in the event that the bodies had been booby-trapped with hand grenades. The 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines came in right behind us and set up perimeter security to protect us while we executed our morbid mission.
The operation went off without a hitch. The choppers dropped us off under a heavy layer of smoke that had been dropped as a shield for protection from the Co Roc guns. We wanted to make it impossible for the forward observer to recreate his deadly bearings. Given the nature of the mission, we were accompanied by the press for the first and only time during my tour. A photograph of the mission appeared on the front page of The New York Times days later. It showed four of us carrying the bagged remains of the crashed helicopter pilot past a staked American flag that we found in Tom Morrissey’s pocket. He always carried it with him.
The dead bodies that we had left behind on the night of June 5 when we’d moved to the other hill were still on the LZ exactly as they had been left. We silently began the task of identifying them, bagging them, and preparing them for evacuation. We also found Sergeant Brazier’s body and several of the others who had been killed during the third day of the battle. Dan Burton was called over to make the identifications, as he was one of the few marines left from the decimated 2nd Platoon. It was the hardest thing he ever had to do. Morrissey’s mostly dismembered body, a trigger for Dan’s nightmares since, was the most frightening figure imaginable, bearing the otherworldly facial expression with which he left this earth. Only four of the other bodies were identifiable to the eye.
The enemy bodies were everywhere.
There were hundreds of them, and they all appeared young and small.
It was obvious that the NVA too had left in a hurry; they generally were as meticulous as we in removing their dead. Most of the bodies that I saw were burned on one part or another from the napalm. I softly kicked the helmet of one of the NVA dead and removed most of his rotting scalp in the process.
It was ghastly.
Mission completed, I began to head back to the LZ with the rest of my squad to prepare for evacuation. On the dusty narrow path, my eye caught sight of what appeared to be a cigar. How peculiar, I thought. A cigar. Do they smoke cigars? I was puzzled, so I reached down and picked it up. Now standing and holding the object, I realized with revulsion that it was in fact a human thumb. I let it fall ba
ck to the path. For years this was a source of my own nightmares. By then, I had been informed that Doc Mac Mecham had lost his thumb in the battle. Thirty-eight years later when I finally found Doc Mac, it was one of the first questions I asked him.
“Doc,” I began. “Doc, you lost your thumb during the rocket attack on LZ Loon.”
“Right,” came the simple response, wondering where I was going with this.
“Doc, did you, like, lose it right there, or did they take it off later?”
“No. In the rear. They took it off in Dong Ha, I think. The hand was a mess, but they couldn’t save the thumb. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I quietly responded. “No reason. I’m just glad you’re alive.”
“No shit, Jack. Me too.”
And so the conversation ended.
The choppers came back a few minutes later, and, with little fanfare, we loaded the body bags, boarded, and headed three minutes back to LZ Robin. Looking down, it was not lost on me that the last time we had all been together in the air, the five dead boys at my feet had been sitting across the aisle ready to go into battle, not prone on the deck ready to go home. We were fortunate. Although we wouldn’t know how fortunate until the following morning. The 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, which had been holding lines while we retrieved the bodies, began getting hit with the artillery from Co Roc as soon as we left. They took twelve incoming rounds and a number of casualties before they too were able to get evacuated.
My head was pounding by the time we got back to Robin. The smell—the rotting flesh, the cordite, the sulfur—was all too much to endure. Our hands and clothes were covered with the blood and innards of the bodies. Wipe your nose once, and the smell would stay for days. The only water on Robin Alpha was in our canteens. We tried to wash the stink off, but it was impossible. Throughout the balance of the afternoon, marines would find quiet spots just outside the lines and vomit.
We were tired—exhausted. Our nerves were like crystal and we stank to high heaven. Bill Negron did his best to keep our morale up, but it was a near-impossible challenge. The rumors of a float phase continued, as did rumors of just going back to Dong Ha for a few weeks to regroup. The season had instantly changed to summer and it was now unbearably hot. Our daily bath consisted of removing our olive T-shirt, wiping the sweat from our bodies, and putting it back on. Sweaty as we were, it was an effective way to get the dirt off. We had worn the same boots, pants, T-shirts, and socks since we’d left the Washout three weeks earlier.
The following morning we watched with unbridled joy as Alpha Company was lifted off of LZ Robin. We gathered our gear and headed down into the ravine and back up the hill for the last time to take over the lines. It was heaven. No more walking back and forth for supplies, and there was a large water tank that was the next best thing to a hot bath, as far as we were concerned. The only downside was that it was noisy. The big 105 mm howitzers fired all day and all night long, shaking the ground and splitting our ears. The hilltop was so small that there was no place to get away from them.
For the next seven days, we manned our lines, ate our C rations, read our daily mail, cleaned our rifles, and sent out patrols during the day and ambushes and listening posts during the night. We’d make occasional contact, but we were becoming increasingly numb to the NVA presence. We were just doing our jobs and watching out for one another.
Some big brass flew in one day, including General Henry W Buse, the new commanding general of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific (FMFPac), which meant he was in charge of all marines in the Pacific (including us). His headquarters were in Hawaii, so he was a long way from home. He awarded several well-deserved Bronze Stars for action on LZ Loon.
We later joked that he probably got a Silver Star just for coming out to our little hill.
We left Robin about a week later, abandoning the position. We set fire to and blew up all that was in our wake so as not to leave the enemy even a C ration can. We returned to Vandergrift to regroup, take showers, get clean clothes, and pick up more replacement troops.
By the end of June, freed from the chains of partisan politics, President Johnson admitted that it would be impossible for the United States to pay for both “guns and butter.” On June 28, he signed into law a bill that called for both a 10 percent income tax surcharge and significant reductions in government spending. The fiscal strain on Washington to pay for Johnson’s Great Society programs while financing an increasingly costly war half a world away was beginning to catch up with the extraordinary human sacrifice.
By Wednesday, July 3, 1968, news of our three days at LZ Loon and the ensuing body snatch had reached an increasing number of press outlets in the United States. The San Diego Evening Tribune featured a front-page article titled “Marines Always Pay Their Debt to Dead.” It contained a photograph of a very tough-looking Bill Negron with the quote “I personally wouldn’t want live Marines coming in for me if I were killed out there. But I know their parents, their wives and sweethearts would. We have an obligation to them.”
During the first week of July, I got word that my flight date out of country had been assigned. I would be leaving from Da Nang on July 30, 1968. Those rotating home normally left the field ten days before departure, which meant I had just less than three weeks left.
The following days were spent doing what combat marines in Vietnam did. We boarded helicopters, opened new firebases, or took over ones that were there. We ran patrols, sweltered in the sun, engaged in the occasional small firefight, and always returned to Vandergrift for a night to get resupplied. The following morning we’d be off again. Perhaps road security this time, or a company-size patrol into the bush. It was hard, grueling work, but we all seemed to thrive on the routine and enjoyed the activity. Bill Negron was now an integral part of our lives, and we were deeply happy for that. We would do whatever he told us to do because we always knew that he would be the first to go in and the last to come out.
Every time.
The morning of my departure from the field was bittersweet. I had said my good-byes earlier and now sat to the side of the LZ waiting for the supply chopper to come in and take me to Dong Ha, the first leg on my journey home.
The marines of Charlie Company had spent the morning in high activity in preparation for another operation to the west. They were now positioned across the small LZ from where I sat with all of my gear. Since Charlie Company was headed off on an operation for an indeterminate time, Captain Negron let me go a few days early to be certain that I made my flight out from Da Nang the following week.
It was odd—eerie—watching my Charlie Company saddle up without me with their full packs and ammo, as we had done so many times before. There were some hugs and a few waves, but the boys were headed back off into the shit. There was work to be done. I could visualize the scene inside the chopper. When they became airborne, squeezed along the bulkhead with the weight of the world on their backs, they’d look at the man across the aisle and share a thumbs-up. On our way, we never sweated anything. It was a wonderful quality of being a marine. A can-do attitude permeated all that we did. I would miss it. I would never again share that kind of a bond with anyone. The chopper would land, and they’d charge off and hit the deck as far from the helicopter as they could get.
The daily mail chopper came in minutes later. I hitched a ride on it back to Dong Ha. I was no longer a member of Charlie Company. Within days, I would no longer be a United States Marine.
I was so very sad.
I was so very happy.
Mostly, I felt very alone.
26
MY FINAL DAYS IN VIETNAM WERE SPENT IN DA NANG, waiting for my flight home while trying to wangle out of getting the required gamma globulin shot. Every marine beginning and ending a Vietnam tour was required to have one. Back stateside, we used to hear that it took three men to carry the needle. Before I left Okinawa on my way over, I realized that this was not much of an exaggeration. I hated needles, although I had come to love navy corp
smen. It was a conundrum until, hours before my flight, a doc approached and said, “The needle, Corporal McLean, or back to the field.”
I never felt a thing.
Home in New England, the Newport Folk Festival was in full swing. The launching pad for Joan Baez and Bob Dylan years before was now featuring the young son of American folk icon Woody Guthrie. Arlo Guthrie seemed a whiny cross between his father and Bob Dylan, although he could play the guitar and he had a gift for storytelling—long storytelling. On July 24, 1968, he debuted his twenty-minute ballad “Alice’s Restaurant” to rave reviews.
“Alice’s Restaurant” is a song about dodging the draft and the ridiculously humorous lengths to which someone might go to do so. To many boys of that generation, however, no length was too ridiculous. The draft was a deadly serious sword of Damocles that hung over the head of every healthy boy in America.
I, however, was on my way home.
Shortly I would become the only person I knew, or that anyone that I knew knew, who was older than eighteen, male, and of sound body and mind for which the draft was not a major obstacle that had to be managed.
The radiant early-morning California sun shone brightly over Travis Air Force Base as our loaded troop plane touched down in the continental United States. The groggy group quietly applauded and, with the opening of the doors, inhaled the sweet fresh air, and bustled down the ramp with a mixture of cheers, back-slapping, and tears. Several kissed the tarmac.
Hardly a one had reached his twenty-first birthday.