Guns Up!

by Johnnie Clark

  Capt. Scott Nelson left the Corps a highly decorated hero. He went on to become a big shot with the FBI. To all who watched him in Nam, that is no surprise. Leaders always rise to the top. He retired after becoming the head of the FBI in one part of the country and is now the head of security for Warner Brothers Studios.

  I watch men like Scott in amazement and wonder how America finds these guys, for America found a lot of them in Vietnam. The media never seemed to notice them, but they were there, by the thousands, winning every major engagement in a decade of war, no matter the odds. It’s like a football team winning every game when only it’s defensive line is allowed to play. The U.S. Army did a great job over there, too. The Navy and Air Force didn’t let anybody down either. The NVA lost three full divisions during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The Viet Cong were basically eliminated. The enemy could not mount another offensive for three years after their beating at Tet. We heard some scuttlebutt that retired general Douglas MacArthur said, “Give me the First Marine Division, and I’ll be in Hanoi in a few weeks and end this war!” I think he was right. When President Nixon decided to force Hanoi to the peace table, it took only twelve days of B-52 strikes to bring them to their knees. Our combat forces left Nam in 1973. North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon almost three years later. If anyone lost militarily, it sure was not my Marine Corps.

  Michael “Doc” Turley was one of our Navy corpsmen. I’m not even sure how many corpsmen we had. Remember, as a machine gunner I was in Weapons Platoon. But if the Third Platoon lost a gunner, I might get attached to them for a while. It was the same for corpsmen. One of our corpsmen was sort of arrogant, and I wrote about him quite often. That corpsman was not Doc Turley. By the way, that snob corpsman saved a lot of lives, too. Doc Turley was in the Navy from 1966 to 1970. He went to Nursing School at Wagner College. He was varsity quarterback on the football team from 1970 to 1972. Doc went to U.S. Public Health Hospital in Staten Island, N.Y., and graduated in 1973. He joined the Coast Guard the same year and served in the Reserves until 1999. In the Coast Guard, he became an ER physician assistant, level 1 and level 2 trauma cases. Doc worked in Jacksonville, where this hero continued to save lives. Doc is in a battle with Agent Orange right now, but he isn’t whining, and he’s proud to have served with the Corps in Vietnam.

  When the story of the missing records first came out, it brought some sorrow and some joy. One of the joyful moments happened a couple of years ago as the mystery began to unfold. One day my doorbell rang. When you have teenagers, you never figure it is someone to see you, but I answered anyway. When I opened that door, all I could do was stare. A man who resembled a boy I once knew stood before me holding a gray shirt. The shirt had the picture of an M60 machine gun on it with words above and below: WHY WALTZ WHEN YOU CAN ROCK AND ROLL. I stood reading that shirt and remembering a hundred times when this man ran forward under fire to help wounded Marines. It was a wonderful reunion. Doc was one of the most respected and beloved men in Alpha Company. Hugging him was like holding on to all that was good and right about my time in Nam.

  Doc Turley had just come back from touring Vietnam with one of our old radio men, J. B. MacCreight. He had gone back to Hill 55 and Truoi Bridge and Hue City and a few other places that still haunted him. He had lost his best friend on Truoi Bridge: Cpl. Walter Roslie. Doc was from Staten Island and Roslie was from Valley Stream, Long Island. Corporal Roslie was another remarkable hero from Hue. He had been awarded the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in the Battle of Hue City. He was offered a field promotion to second lieutenant but turned it down. Truoi Bridge was his third and final Heart. Another hero, L/Cpl. Jim Tedesco, died trying to rescue Roslie on that bridge. Doc and J.B. wanted to say a prayer and throw some flowers off the bridge. A young Communist lieutenant would not allow them on the bridge. There were machine-gun bunkers at each end as if the war were still going on. The young lieutenant told them he could be shot for allowing Americans on the bridge. While visiting Hill 55, they decided to film a monument that had been built to all the enemy soldiers that the Marines had killed there. Mike looked up from filming to discover that he, J.B., and their driver, a former ARVN who had worked with the U.S. Marines, were surrounded by little pith helmets carrying AK47s. They told the Americans, “We can kill you, and your government can do nothing about it.” They took the Vietnamese driver and grilled him for hours before letting them go. I’ll not be visiting Nam with my tourist dollars unless they let me bring along a few friends—the First Marine Division and an M60.

  In July 1998, my old executive officer, Fifth Marine Regiment, Lt. Col. Joe Griffis, called me on the phone. Aided by the tireless help of another retired Marine named Bill Harley, the red tape involved in presenting a medal thirty years late was worked out. It would happen at the First Marine Division Reunion in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 8, 1998.

  I drove up with my son, Shawn, and daughter, Bonnie Kay. My wife met us there along with Richard Chan. Chan is now the leading cardiovascular perfusion expert in the world. We are still buddies and still argue. Chan had a rough time when he came home. He had thirteen surgical operations and battled like the rest of the guys to fit in again. He finally met and married a great lady named Doreen. She’s a middle-school teacher. He travels the world, teaching and lecturing on the subject of cardiovascular perfusion. He says that invariably at the end of a seminar, some person will approach him with a reluctant expression. He knows what’s coming. “I know this will sound silly,” the person will say, “but I read this war book called Guns Up! and it had a character named Richard Chan. Is it possible that you are the same Richard Chan?”

  Chan was medevaced out only after two choppers were disabled. He still remembers the body bags on the medevac chopper. At 1st Med. Battalion doctors performed the first of thirteen operations on him. It took over a month for them to get Chan home. He had to be stabilized at each stop: Okinawa, Yokohama, Anchorage, California, Washington, D.C., and finally St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, N.Y. His weight went down to 130 pounds when he arrived at St. Albans. At 1st Med, they considered removing one of his arms because he’d spiked a fever. He begged one doctor, a family friend and commander of 1st Med, not to cut off the arm unless they were able to confirm a positive culture. The doctor said there was a terrible risk of gangrene spreading. He told the doctor that he was fully aware of the medical risks. Why does this sound so typical of Richard Chan?

  Chan went into a coma for three weeks. He woke temporarily and has never forgotten the touching sight of a huge wounded Marine who had climbed out of the next bed. He was on his knees praying for Chan. “I was too dehydrated to shed many tears, but all that was left came out at that defining moment. It was then I was sure that God had spared me for better days. I wasn’t sure if I would have normal neurological functions or even two arms, but I knew I would live and will live for His purpose.”

  Chan went through a postgraduate course that was two years long at Long Island Jewish Medical Center–Stony Brook University, one of the few universities in the country at that time to offer this advanced degree. Today, there are twenty-three, but only five that offer an advanced degree. One of them is NSUH-LIUCWP. Chan is the director of this school. He has helped to develop many devices used in cardioperfusion. He has also developed physiologic calculators with his name on them. (I would explain that, but I don’t have a clue what it is.)

  Chan and Doreen love my kids and spoil them rotten with their generosity. My son, Shawn McClellan Clark, is nineteen, a student at Saint Petersburg Junior College and heading for Florida State University, God willing. After that his father sees him as a second lieutenant in the First Marine Division, God willing. My daughter, Bonnie Kay Clark, is a sophomore at Keswick Christian School in Saint Petersburg, sixteen, beautiful, spiritual, and already more mature than her father, which is a little scary. They adore Chan and Doreen.

  The day of the First Marine Division Reunion, there was a parade in downtown Cincinnati. The parade was to honor a Marin
e machine gunner killed in action thirty years earlier in Phu Loc, Thua Thien Province, Vietnam. He had been posthumously awarded the Bronze Star, thirty years late for helping a platoon of Marines hold off four hundred NVA at a place called Truoi Bridge. Of course, Red deserved more, as do many of the men who fought in Vietnam, but it still gave me goose bumps to watch his hometown finally say thanks.

  Later that day, a smile walked through a group of Marines at the reunion. That smile made my heart stop. It was the same smile and same face I watched throughout my war: Sudsy. The real name of the radioman I wrote about is Cpl. Bob Carroll. Even as I write these words I feel ridiculous. I gave my limited view of a few incidents. I did not even touch on the depth of the men of Alpha 1/5. Bob “Sudsy” Carroll did not show up in Nam as a radio man. He was handed a radio during the Battle of Hue City, at the wall of the Citadel. He was one of the 3 percent of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, 1/5, Marines who made it through Hue City. Bob, like so many of the Marines of the First Battalion, Fifth Marines, was wounded in Hue but never received a Purple Heart. The wounded were patched up and thrown back into the battle. The History Channel is currently doing a story about Hue City. When they asked the men for a good Marine to interview, a 1/5 Marine who saw it all, the answer was Bob Carroll. Bob “Sudsy” Carroll was involved in what could only be described as a suicide assault near the Citadel. That assault is considered to have been the turning point in the battle.

  Sudsy was the Second Platoon radioman for most of my time in Nam. He eventually became a squad leader. At one point I thought Bob Carroll had been killed. He was seriously ill with malaria. When we were crossing the Thu Bon River on amtracks, he passed out from the fever and fell off. He was medevaced out for quite a while. He thinks that may be why I thought he got killed. I am thankful to be wrong. Everyone who served with Bob Carroll loved him. Bob’s best friend was one of the Marines killed when Jesus Quintana lost his legs. His name was Ronald L. Powers. I believe this is the Marine that I called Private Simmons. He had a safe job in the rear but volunteered to change his MOS to join the grunts in the bush. Bob tried to talk him out of it, but he was a Marine. He lasted a month.

  Cpl. Bob Carroll came home with combat fatigue as most of the guys did. It made his life and relationships tough. He escaped by becoming a park ranger and basically living in the woods for many years. He was a ranger at the Grand Canyon when he showed up in Cincinnati at the reunion. Bob worked with a friend who was constantly asking him why he chose to live the way he did. He got tired of ignoring this woman, so he finally gave her a copy of Guns Up! She read it over and over. When Bob mentioned that Johnnie and Chan would be at the reunion, this woman talked him into coming. Here is another one of those incidents where the guy who wrote a book seems special, but the truth is that Johnnie Clark was and is “boot” to Marines like Bob Carroll, Corporal Huteson, Bruce Trebil, Big Red, Jesus Quintana, Gunny McDermott, Lieutenant Pruit, Lance Corporal Hensley, Cpl. Marty Lynch, John Carrow, James MacCreight, Frenchie, Charlie Goodson, Lieutenant Montgomery, Sgt. Stacy Watson, Sergeant Monroe, Sgt. Vince Rios, Leonard Ramirez, First Lieutenant Lowder, Capt. Scott Nelson, Lieutenant Colonel Griffis, and a thousand others.

  Sgt. Vince Rios, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, is a Marine whose story is not in Guns Up! He was at the reunion. PFC Pat McCrary and Cpl. Steve Britt idolize the man. In the chapter “Happy Birthday, Baby-San,” Steve was with me at Thuong Duc when the tanks were blown up as we charged a hill beside the Vu Gia River—the day Swift Eagle was wounded for the last time. They told me that when Sergeant Rios was on his second tour, he was the guardian that saved their lives a dozen times. When he lost his legs and right arm, and his left hand was mangled, they thought he was finished. He went home and got two master’s degrees and raised a new first lieutenant for the Marine Corps, his son. Where does America find these Marines? There were a lot of them in Vietnam.

  First Lieutenant Montgomery is another. Steve Britt’s squad was pinned down and in a hopeless position. Lieutenant Montgomery heard the mess on the radio. He ran to the action and charged an enemy machine-gun position to save his men. He was wounded by .30-caliber machine-gun fire. Another Marine hero with him was killed. Montgomery was awarded the Navy Cross. He became an FBI agent, and years later, he was on national television for again being a hero for his country. Just another Nam vet.

  Bill James and others have tried to find Cpl. Swift Eagle. He seems to have dropped off the earth. The guys think he went back to some Indian reservation and is still there. One of my buddies, a Nam vet, recently visited an Indian reservation. He told me that quite a few of the men there were former Marines. He said that it was a revered custom for the veterans on the reservation to wear their medals on their shirts to show they had served. These warriors are respected by their people. I hope Swift Eagle is honored by his tribe.

  I wrote about a character named “Sam the Blooper Man.” Sam was actually based on two different men. The combat was as accurate as I could remember it, but part of his personality was based on a soldier who served in 1969. My blooper man risked his life for mine. If I ever had the choice, I wanted that Marine beside me in a fight.

  There is more I’d like to say about the Marines of 1/5. There is more I’d like to tell you about this book. Like how a sixteen-year-old kid from Ireland came to America to join the Corps because he read a little book titled Guns Up! Stories of sergeant majors making every young Marine in their outfit read the book. Squad leaders in the Gulf War tearing the book into sections for every man in their squad to study. Nurses who hand it out in VA hospitals. Kids who have read it sixteen times. High schools and colleges making it required reading. Middle school and elementary teachers reading the book aloud to their students at the end of class each day.

  This book has flaws, but God has used this book in ways I never dreamed. After four years of having Guns Up! rejected, I got nailed by a memory verse in a Bible study group: 1 Samuel 2:30, “but now the Lord declares … for those who honor me I will honor.” I made a simple decision to remove all the curse words from the book, against the advice of professional writers. Within a month, nine publishers wanted Guns Up! I asked the editor who bought the book for Ballantine why she wanted it now, since she had rejected the exact same book six months earlier. Was it because I took the curse words out? She said not one reader or editor at Ballantine had noticed. She read and rejected the book six months earlier and could not explain it. I can.

  My prayer is that this flawed effort will honor Jesus Christ first, His Marine Corps second, and everyone who served in Vietnam. To all of the valiant leathernecks I was privileged to serve with, be healed by forgiving.

  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

  —John 15:13

  Semper fi,

  L/Cpl. Johnnie M. Clark

  GLOSSARY

  A 1/5 Alpha Company, First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment.

  AK47 A Russian assault rifle.

  ARVN Abbreviation for Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

  AWOL Absent without leave.

  B-40 rocket A communist antitank rocket.

  betel nut A nut, widely chewed by the Vietnamese, that stains the teeth and gums a pomegranate red.

  body bags Plastic zipper-bags for corpses.

  boot Slang for a new recruit undergoing basic training.

  bush The outer field areas and jungle where infantry units operate.

  Charlie Slang for “the enemy.”

  ChiCom Chinese communists. Slang for enemy grenade.

  choppers Helicopters.

  claymores Mines packed with plastique and rigged to spray hundreds of steel pellets.

  Cobras Helicopter gunships heavily armed with rocket launchers and machine guns.

  concertina wire Barbed wire that is rolled out along the ground to hinder the progress of enemy troops.

  C-rats C-rations or prepackaged military meals eaten in the field.

  C-S A c
austic riot gas used in Vietnam.

  C-4 Plastique explosive.

  C-130 A cargo plane used to transport men and supplies.

  C-141 Starlifter A large jet transport.

  deuce-and-a-half A heavy transport truck used for carrying men and supplies.

  dink Slang for an Asian person, especially in reference to the enemy.

  EM club Enlisted men’s club.

  E.R. Emergency room.

  flak jacket A vest worn to protect the chest area from shrapnel or bullets.

  I Corps Tactical Zone The northern five provinces of South Vietnam, called “Marineland” by some. I Corps stretched 225 miles from the Demilitarized Zone to the boundary with Binh Dinh province and II Corps Tactical Zone.

  frags Slang for fragmentation grenades.

  Freedom Bird Slang for the flight that took a soldier home after his tour.

  friendlies Friendly Vietnamese.

  gook Slang for an Asian person, especially in reference to the enemy.

  grunt Slang for any combat soldier fighting in Vietnam.

  Hueys Helicopters used extensively in Vietnam.

  Ho Chi Minh Trail The main supply route running south from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia.

  hootch Slang for any form of a dwelling place.

  humping Slang for marching with a heavy load through the bush.

  K-bar A Marine Corps survival knife.

  KIA Killed in action.

  klick One kilometer.

  LAAW Light antiarmor weapon.

  LZ Landing zone.

  MACV Military Assistance Command Vietnam.

  medevac A term for medically evacuating the wounded by chopper or plane.

  M14 An automatic weapon used in Vietnam by American ground forces.

  M16 Standard automatic weapon used by American ground forces.

  M60 A machine gun used by American units.

  M79 A 40 mm grenade launcher.