Guns Up!
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nouc mam A strong-smelling Vietnamese fish sauce.
NVA North Vietnamese Army.
pogue A derogatory term for rear-area personnel.
punji sticks Sharpened stakes used to impale men.
RPG Rocket-propelled grenade.
R&R Rest and relaxation.
sappers Viet Cong infiltrators whose job it was to detonate explosive charges within American positions.
satchel charges Explosive packs carried by VC sappers.
SDS Students for a Democratic Society.
search and destroy American ground sweeps to locate and destroy the enemy and his supplies.
short-timer Someone whose tour in Vietnam is almost completed.
smoke grenade A grenade that releases colored smoke used for signaling.
Tet The Chinese New Year.
III Corps The military region around Saigon.
Tiger beer/33 beer Vietnamese beers.
tracer A bullet with a phosphorous coating designed to burn and provide a visual indication of a bullet’s trajectory.
VC Viet Cong.
Viet Cong The local communist militias fighting in South Vietnam.
web gear Canvas suspenders and belt used to carry the infantryman’s gear.
WIA Wounded in action.
willie-peter White phosphorous round.
Big Red on graduation from Parris Island. This was the photo the author did not recognize in the Cincinnati Enquirer years later. Notice in the photo below the change in Red’s looks that a few months in the bush caused. “Vietnam made nineteen-year-olds look like thirty-year-olds.” (Richard Weaver memorial collection)
Richard “Big Red” Michael Weaver. Three Purple Hearts, Bronze Star with V device, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and several other medals. Red was killed in action at Phu Loc, Thua Thien Province, I Corps Tactical Zone, on May 20, 1968. This photo was taken before moving into the A Shau Valley in 1968. (Richard Weaver memorial collection)
Pvt. Johnnie M. Clark. Boot camp graduation from Parris Island, South Carolina, 1967. Wounded three times in the 1968 Tet Offensive. The Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with palm, Vietnam Civil Action Medal, Marine Combat Action Ribbon, and various campaign medals. (Author’s collection)
The author and PFC Richard Chan, April Fools’ Day, 1968, Phu Bai. A hot miserable dust bowl that felt like R&R compared to the bush. (Author’s collection)
PFC Johnnie M. Clark, holding the M-60 machine gun at the Truoi River Bridge, 1968. A new bridge is being constructed in the background by American Seabees. Photo taken just before the long hump into the mountains where we discovered the NVA training replica of the Truoi Bridge. (Author’s collection)
First Platoon, Alpha Company, staging at the southern tip of the A Shau Valley for choppers into Elephant Valley. Kneeling, left to right: Doc Michael Turley and Doc Chris Rieger. June 1968. (Photo courtesy of Doc Michael Turley)
Front row, left to right: Lance Corporal Layman holding a can in front of the sleeping author’s face, Stew Campbell, Cpl. Bob “Sudsy” Carroll, and Pvt. Abernathy. Lance Corporal Hensley is behind Abernathy. Back row, left to right: Cpl. Fred Huteson, Private First Class Mariani, L/Cpl. Bruce Trebil, and Pvt. Buford Unerstute, the Marine whose heart stopped. (Photo courtesy of Robert Carroll)
Gunny McDermott standing (back to camera) as the platoon is transported up the Truoi River. This is the same way the author was medevaced out later. (Photo courtesy of Sgt. Stacy Watson)
PFC Pat McCrary, An Hoa village, 1969. Feeding the Vietnamese kids as Marines often did. Pat was PFC Barnes in the chapter “Dodge City.” He was wounded in the graveyard. (Photo courtesy of Pat McCrary)
Cpl. Jesus Quintana (Corporal Sanchez in this book) in a stateside naval hospital six weeks after being wounded. He was awarded the Bronze Star with V and two Purple Hearts among other decorations. (Photo courtesy of Cpl. Jesus Quintana)
Cpl. Quintana (Paunchy Villa Sanchez) just four hours before he lost both his legs to a 155mm booby-trapped artillery shell, An Hoa combat base. Four other Marines were killed and the gunny seriously wounded in Dodge City, Arizona Territory. (Photo courtesy of Jesus Quintana)
The author, looking and feeling exhausted, takes a break in the A Shau Valley, 1968. Soon after this photo was taken the author was wounded for the first time by a mortar round. (Author’s collection)
PFC Richard Chan poses after capturing an enemy soldier in Quang Nam Province, 1968. (Author’s collection)
Gy.Sgt. Mac McDermott fires his 12-gauge shotgun at the enemy along a river in the Thua Thien Province, 1968. Bridge duty was considered easy compared to being in the bush. (Photo courtesy of Sgt. Stacy Watson)
Gunny McDermott of A1/5 gets Marines “saddled up” in An Hoa, August 1968. Note the shotgun and shells, Gunny’s calling card. (Photo courtesy of Sergeant Major McDermott)
Sgt. Stacy Watson of A1/5 stands with the flag that was raised over the Citadel by the 5th Marines after the victory of the Battle of Hue City during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. Photo taken before his best friend, Cpl. Frank Burris (Jack Ellenwood in the book), was KIA, August 9, 1968. (Photo courtesy of Sgt. Stacy Watson)
An old French army tank and the three-story bunker that ARVN gunners fired from when the Truoi River Bridge was overrun. The M-24 Chaffee tank was equipped with a 75mm main gun, had a top speed of thirty-five miles per hour, and carried a crew of up to five men. (Author’s collection)
“Frenchie” writing a letter home from the Truoi Bridge. It was here that a Marine was pinned under the bridge and an entire Marine gun team killed. (Author’s collection)
Eighteen-year-old PFC Johnnie Clark in front of the three-story bunker at the Truoi Bridge, just moments before his first long-term experience in the bush, April 1968. (Author’s collection)
Look for Gary Linderer’s two books on LRRPs, LRPs and Rangers in gut-chilling, extreme combat far behind enemy lines. When every mission may well have been their last, these brave men went willingly into harm’s way with only their skills, sense of duty, personal weapons, and each other between themselves and death.
Phantom Warriors Book I and Book II:
LRRPs, LRPs, and Rangers in Vietnam
by Gary A. Linderer
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available at a bookstore near you.
Experience the pain, the pride, and the triumph of the United States Marine Corps.
Not Going Home Alone:
A Marine’s Story
by James J. Kirschke
All the members of 1st Lt. James J. Kirschke’s mortar platoon and then rifle platoon knew what was expected of them: the Marines are America’s military elite, required to train harder, fight longer, sacrifice more. Kirschke led by example in the hotly contested zone just south of the DMZ and in the dangerous An Hoa region southwest of DaNang. Sparing no one, he has written a powerful chronicle of the deadly war his Marines fought with valor.
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available at a bookstore near you.
Forged in blood and courage, sacrifice and survival, in a jungle war none of the soldiers who experienced it will ever forget, this is a true story you won’t want to miss.
Rites of Passage:
Odyssey of a Grunt
by Robert Peterson
Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce ambushes and enemy charges. From this deadly hell he reveals the special brotherhood formed between these brave young men.
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available at a bookstore near you.
Delivering death from a distance—one Marine’s account of precision marksmanship in Vietnam.
Dead Center:
A Marine Sniper’s Two-Year O
dyssey in the Vietnam War
by Ed Kugler
As a new sniper with the 4th Marines, Kugler picked up bush skills while attached to 3d Force Recon Company, and then joined the grunts. To take advantage of that experience, he formed the Rogues, a five-sniper team that hunted in the Co Bi-Than Tan Valley for VC and NVA. The result is the amazing true story of long, tense waits and sudden deadly action: the dangerous life of a Marine scout-sniper at war.
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available at a bookstore near you.