by Phil Ball
We heard rumors of a well-constructed road out here being used by NVA convoys. It was hard for me to imagine that the enemy had such a foothold and would commit so much equipment and manpower to this remote section of Vietnam, but I really didn’t know very much about the strategy or the logistics of the Marine Corps, let alone the NVA. I fought my war one day at a time, and often it was one hour at a time, or even minute to minute. When our sister company, Golf 2/3, ambushed an NVA convoy on the night of March 18, 1969, my interest in logistics and strategy increased greatly.
They (Golf 2/3) had just found this new section of road that afternoon and hid in the jungle all day long not far from the single-lane thoroughfare. That night, they returned to set up their L-shaped ambush near a bend in the road. One hundred and twenty Marines of Golf 2/3 did not have to wait very long; around 2245 they heard vehicles approaching. Like any successful ambush, the element of surprise is paramount, and the ability to get a tremendous amount of accurate firepower on the target simultaneously was just as important. Therefore, the timing had to be perfect. When the ambush was triggered would be determined by one individual.
The Marines waited as the first truck came into view. It was empty except for the driver and one passenger. The second truck following closely behind definitely was not empty; it was piled high with small arms weapons, ammo, and RPGs. Also hanging all over the vehicle were NVA soldiers, armed with AK-47s, apparently riding security.
The Marines could hear the gooks talking and laughing, obviously enjoying the assignment. The ambush was triggered perfectly, and although the lead vehicle escaped, the truck loaded with supplies and troops was completely destroyed in a barrage of gunfire and grenades. The NVA security team tried to fight back, but there was little they could do. Seven dead NVA were found at the scene later.
This contact was big news for us Fox Company grunts. For the salts who had seen combat around Khe Sanh and the DMZ, the introduction of enemy trucks and possibly tanks was a whole new ball game, a game most of us did not like at all. I’m sure most of us would have liked to ambush a convoy or two, but it was generally quite terrifying to see how far the enemy had come.
On March 20, we came in contact with 12 NVA who were dug in at a very well-fortified bunker complex that could house as many as 50 enemy troops. We fought all afternoon until we finally pulled back and called in some air strikes. Two Marines were killed and several more seriously wounded, but only three NVA were killed. It was fire fights like this, when we stumbled on small groups of NVA who fought hard and long, that really began to frustrate us. We were losing men all the time, one here, a couple there, and it affected morale very negatively. We felt we were being picked apart a little at a time and not getting anywhere for our sacrifice. It was obvious to us that the NVA could go on a hell of a lot longer like this than we could. Each time one of our men was killed it had a devastating effect on our attitude and our willingness to continue.
I was still having nightmares, only now I was waking up in the middle of the night in a panic and startling the grunts around me. I would wake up fighting, often going for my M-16 in a frantic attempt to defend myself from an imaginary enemy. At first I wouldn’t remember these things the next day. My buddies told me about my nighttime antics and we all had a good laugh. But those who knew me best, like Mike Atwood and Hillbilly, after seeing how terrified I actually was during the incidents, realized that maybe I had a problem.
One haunting dream placed me deep in enemy territory, separated from my unit. Perhaps my biggest fear was being left behind or otherwise split up from the squad. It became a frantic race for time, avoiding not only enemy fire, but friendly fire as well.
The other recurring nightmare included a vision of the devastating head wounds that had killed three of my closest friends, Don, George, and Tex. In all three cases, I had stood in disbelief and stared at those massive wounds for a long time, burning an unforgettable image in my mind forever. Now they were surfacing again, just as realistic as when they occurred, in the form of dreams and nightmares. Occasionally I was experiencing an added twist to these nightmares, where I would discover a mutilated body with one of these traumatic head wounds, much the same way I had come across Don and George. After viewing the bloody wound for quite a while I would roll the body over and see that it was me, that lifeless, distorted expression on my face instead of theirs.
A third recurring nightmare I had was especially disturbing. It always started out innocently enough with a single innocent drop of blood—usually in a white room of some sort—which would multiply very quickly. Before long the room would be dripping in it. I later learned I wasn’t the only Vietnam Vet to have this so-called “blood dream.” When I spoke to him in 1996, Chico’s father told me his son complained about having the “blood dream.”
I couldn’t really talk openly to anyone about my uneasy feelings, for fear of being criticized as a nonhacker or coward. I had come too far, almost at the end of my tour, to let anyone think maybe I couldn’t handle it now. Inside I was a nervous wreck on the verge of a major breakdown, but on the outside I continued to play the role of the rough, tough, macho Marine who didn’t care if I lived or died. The standard reply of all grunts when faced with adversity of any kind was, “fuck it.” That was how I lived my life, saying “fuck it” to everything, as if I just didn’t care anymore. How much of it was actually an act I’m not really sure, but I can distinctly remember Gunnery Sergeant Larsen contributing to or encouraging this behavior almost every day. From his hilltop position in the company CP, in his best drill instructor’s voice, he would call out to the grunts as we prepared for another day in the bush, “Foxtrot Companyyyyyy, attitude check!”
In unison, we would all respond, “Fuck iiiiiitttttt!”
Believe it or not, I think this was really good for morale, perhaps because we were already so low the only way was up, or it brought us all together for just that brief moment every morning.
The area along the Laotian border referred to as the “salient,” or “bulge,” seemed similar to the northwestern part of the DMZ we had visited back in September; indeed, it was the NVA’s backyard and the enemy’s presence was very obvious. The area just “smelled” like gooks. Roads and trails seemed to be everywhere, and we were constantly coming across recently evacuated base camps and bunker complexes. One of those NVA roads we stumbled across was particularly exciting, not because of anything to do with the NVA, but because of Mother Nature’s own oddities.
Fox Company stopped on the road to take a break one hot afternoon in late March. There was one of the enemy’s “guard shack”–like checkpoints cut into the side of the mountain not far from where we stopped, but no sign of the NVA themselves. We laughed and joked with each other as we sat along both sides of the narrow dirt road facing the opposite side to cover the backs of those Marines, and in turn they covered ours. Hillbilly and Atwood were to my right and left, and we were facing Doc and two others across the way. I leaned against my large pack without taking it off and enjoyed a can of cold spaghetti and meatballs, my all-time favorite C ration. I guess everyone else was pretty much doing the same thing until I saw something very odd move out of the thick brush directly behind Doc. It stood six feet tall and flared its neck muscles out a on either side of its fanged head. Bobbing fore and aft and waving left and right, the huge snake appeared to be ready to strike the top of Doc’s nearly bald, helmetless head.
Hillbilly, Mike, and I saw the snake at the same time; in unison we grabbed our weapons and stood up. Doc’s eyes got as big as silver dollars when he saw us rushing toward him with weapons drawn, and he immediately sensed some sort of danger very close behind him. He jumped out of the way and the snake threw himself onto the road in pursuit. Two fully automatic M-16s and one M-60 machine gun commenced to filling the long snake with hot lead, concentrating mostly on the head. Everyone up and down the company column thought we were under attack, but when no enemy weapons were heard shooting back they must have wondered wh
at could possibly be going on. Somebody tossed a grenade, just for kicks, and that was when I knew we were in trouble. Lieutenant Schoolboy and Staff Sergeant Hamilton came running, calling angrily for us to “cease fire goddamn it!” The captain was screaming so loud we could hear him without the use of the radio, “What the Sam Hill is going on back there?’
The three of us serpent-slayers were about as salty as you could get at this point in our tours, and we really did not care one way or the other what the captain or anyone else had to say about anything. In fact, we did not obey the lieutenant’s “cease fire” until we were 100 percent certain this world-record snake was dead.
Dead snake on the Laotian border.
This section of South Vietnam seemed to be less affected by the war than other areas we had been to, as far as wild animals are concerned. We rarely saw monkeys or tigers around Khe Sanh, but here we did. We found numerous signs indicating that elephants had passed through the area as well. One day we were walking point down a trail and a tiger cub came prancing right up to us. It already had the beginnings of the Bengal stripes on its fur. Barney could not resist the temptation to take the cub as a pet, and against orders not to, he carried the furry creature around in his helmet for several days.
We humped all day long and finally arrived at our objective well after dark one night. The hilltop was not a good location to spend the night because the terribly thick underbrush made it nearly impossible to find the ground. Very thick jungle with a triple canopy overhead blocked out any moonlight and made it pitch-dark for us. It was too late to look for something better and we did the best we could. We did not have the time or the equipment it would take to clear a decent field of fire out in front of our defensive perimeter, but we did clear enough of the brush away to dig our three-man fighting holes and accommodate a small sleeping area. As we settled in for the night and things quieted down, we began to realize that we were smack dab in the middle of a large colony of some sort of primates. The nostril-burning odor of urine and feces became overwhelmingly nauseating, and then the trouble began. Large monkeys, possibly baboons, or what were known as “rock apes,” started moving through the treetops in an increasingly hostile manner. It was too dark to tell, but things were falling on us that were more than just branches and twigs. They became extremely agitated when one of our guys fired a weapon into the trees; they started screaming and did not stop until the sun came up.
We stuck it out all night trying to avoid being urinated on by covering up with our ponchos, but as soon as first light arrived, we were outta there.
On Easter Sunday 1969, we awoke to a clear blue sky somewhere near the Laotian border. A pair of USMC jet fighters flew over us at an altitude that seemed higher than usual. They appeared to be running flat out, trailing intermittent puffs of black smoke. Everyone on the ground began to cheer, rooting for the pilots. At first I didn’t know if those small explosions behind them were possibly enemy anti-aircraft weapons of some sort or evasive actions being taken by the pilots. I’d only recently heard of heat-seeking missiles and I knew very little of the enemy’s capability in this field.
The planes were obviously coming back from Laos, trying to get to their airfield in Phu Bai or Da Nang. There had been one of our more sophisticated A-6 Intruders shot down in this area back around February and I wondered if maybe the NVA were shooting at these. My questions were suddenly answered when out of nowhere I saw an enemy missile streaking toward our jets. It was all right there in front of me and it did not seem real. Was one or both of these pilots about to be blown out of the sky? Would they be able to eject in time? Would we go looking for them?
Everything must have worked exactly the way it was supposed to, because when the missile came within range of the trailing puffs of smoke, it exploded harmlessly, approximately 100 meters behind the aircraft. A tremendous roar of cheers went up from our position and everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, the pilots included, I’m sure.
Apparently we were scheduled to stay put that morning; a rare church service was announced and everyone was advised to attend. I had woken up with a bad toothache and was hounding the corpsman for painkillers. All my teeth were in really bad shape from lack of brushing and the kind of diet we were on, but this day I had one tooth in the back that was killing me. The entire right side of my face was so swollen that Doc decided to medevac me. “A resupply chopper is due in about an hour, you can leave on it,” said Schoolboy. My mouth immediately started feeling a little better.
No sooner had I got back to my hole on the perimeter to start packing for the trip to the rear when a terrifying scream of incoming artillery rounds pierced the quiet Sunday morning. The big 122-mm rounds started exploding about 50 meters out in front of us—they walked up the hill and over us. Curled up in the fetal position I had grown so accustomed to the past year, I huddled in the corner of my fox hole trying to brace myself against each explosion. Every muscle in my body tensed up and I clinched my teeth together as always, grinding them in the process. I prayed nobody got injured, since too many emergency medevacs could bump me off the chopper.
A twin-rotor CH-46 landed on the far end of our position soon after the incoming stopped and I sprinted the length of our hill to get on it. Two or three WIAs were being helped on board and I had to wait until last, but I got on and felt a tremendous sense of relief when the ground got smaller. Gaining altitude was the only way you left Vietnam unless you were leaving on R&R or going home. When I was above the ground in a chopper, it was the only time I really felt safe and secure. The next best thing to going home, I thought.
The dentist pulled my bad tooth right away and gave me a liberal supply of Percodan to take with me. “Three days, no duty,” he said. “Then you’re back in the bush, young man.”
For the first time ever, I did not want to stay in the rear area. I wanted to avoid even checking in over at the battalion area, for fear my records would be pulled and my prolonged rotation date discovered. I had been in complete denial over the fact my original rotation date of May 24, 1969, had been changed when I went AWOL on R&R, to make up for the bad time lost in Tokyo. I did not prepare myself for what was to be a great letdown.
I found out right away that instead of May 24, I would not be leaving Vietnam until June 13; 20 days’ bad time had been tacked on to the end of my 13-month tour of duty. This meant I would have to stay in the bush an extra 20 days, too, putting my 12-and-20 at 12-and-40, which meant May 24 was the day I would be removed from the battle zone.
This was terribly upsetting to me. I felt like I would never see the day I would go home. The thought of going home for a couple of months and having to return for my second tour was completely incomprehensible. My life suddenly seemed more hopeless now than ever, but I was not about to give up. One of the things that always kept me going, besides wanting to see my family so badly, was that I had fought too goddamn hard to get this far, and I’d be damned if I was going to give up. So many other grunts, a lot braver than I was, never made it through their first month. I should be grateful, and I was, but sometimes it was just so hard to see the forest for the trees.
I think I managed to stretch my three-day no-duty chit to a week, but then when I had no choice I went back to the bush, back to the company still participating in Operation Maine Crag. Schoolboy—who by now had become an excellent leader—had completed the requirement that all USMC officers serve only six-and-a-half months in the bush, and he was gone to serve the other six-and-a-half in the rear. His replacement was, of course, the typical, boot-brown bar, fresh from OCS, who thought he knew it all. He was determined to run his platoon with an iron fist, by the book.
I don’t remember this new guy’s name, only that he tried very hard to be liked by everyone except us short-timers. Schoolboy had been cutting some slack to us, as did his predecessors. When a grunt was lucky enough to survive 12 months of war, he was allowed to slow down a little those last 20 days or so and his buddies looked out after him. This new officer
would have none of that. He said that short-timers had been getting away with doing nothing for too long, and he was going to personally see to it that we did our fair share right up until the day we left. He surrounded himself with FNGs for the most part, ignoring and avoiding anyone with any length of time in-country. Even Staff Sergeant Hamilton was on the outs with this guy.
Our new platoon commander did manage to make a few friends by permitting the heads to smoke pot in the bush. He didn’t actually encourage it, but he turned a blind eye to it. This did not make any difference in my case, because I had quit smoking pot altogether. Now and never would I smoke in the bush regardless.
Third Marines Area of Operation had recently grown in size and was much larger than it had ever been since I’d been with the outfit. We were spread pretty thin in some areas, and ordered to extend our patrols farther from base than seemed logical. We were doing night patrols, going 500 to 700 meters out from the company overnight perimeter, and putting ourselves in very dangerous situations. These sorts of missions had been done by Special Forces up until now, and needless to say they did not agree with us grunts at all, especially us short grunts. Operation Maine Crag ended May 1, 1969, the day Operation Virginia Ridge began.
Around the second week in May, Fox Company was dug in approximately 500 meters south of the DMZ. There hadn’t been any large enemy contacts recently, but we continued to run into smaller groups of NVA (5- to 10-man squads), as well as the occasional mortar, rocket, and artillery fire from inside the DMZ. There was no question that the gooks were here, but they were picking and choosing selected targets as they saw fit. I was to go out with the squad on one of these long-range patrols one night and set up an ambush several hundred meters north of our overnight position. When I realized that put us right on the DMZ I really began to get second thoughts. A squad of nine grunts and a two-man machine gun team had no business whatsoever stumbling around in the dark so far inside of “Indian Country,” and as short as I was, I wasn’t about to go without a fight. I argued with the lieutenant until I was blue in the face, and I was almost ready to flat-out refuse to obey a direct order because he absolutely would not budge from his position. He finally agreed to send the artillery FO out with us so we would have some support if we needed it, but that did not make me or anyone else feel much better.