Semper Cool: One Marine's Fond Memories of Vietnam

by Barry Fixler

* * *

  Later that day, we humped down from our hill feeling ten feet tall.

  But very few of the guys in Echo Company who descended the hill were the same Marines with whom I climbed it seventy-seven days earlier.

  I remember scanning the faces of the Marines around me, and I only recognized maybe a quarter of them.

  As I kept searching those dirty, weary, war-hardened faces, it hit me: Most of my original Echo Company was gone. I’d climbed that hill with about 150 Marines, and I was still standing, but most of the men with whom I had entered the fight were either in hospital beds or dead.

  Water had been so scarce the whole time we were up there that it was hard to resist when we reached the bottom and saw a stream. We were in a staging area near Hill 558 waiting for helicopters to come fly us out, and that stream was right there.

  Normally, a corporal or staff sergeant would say, “Fuck the stream,” if the people in charge felt that the area was still too dangerous. I’m always a cautious guy, and the higher-ups didn’t pass the word down to stay away from the stream.

  Deep down, I really felt that the NVA was crippled and had totally pulled out. It was that quiet. Normally, if the area were crawling with the enemy or if the commanders felt that the NVA might be massing for an attack, the B-52s dropped their payloads so close to us that we received the familiar dirt-and-rock showers.

  We were never caught off guard when the friendly bombs fell close; we knew we were in imminent danger. That wasn’t happening this time. We realized, “Whoa, this is the first freedom we’ve had.”

  The guys were excited by the prospect of drinking fresh water and washing up in a stream.

  “OK,” I told them, “you want water, you gotta have water.”

  I let my guys go. Two-man teams would go down to the stream and return all happy—“We got water, man!”—and then two more would go down. We dropped our guard, and then NVA rockets started screaming in. We didn’t get any warning at all. Had they been firing mortars, we would’ve heard the popping sounds and taken cover, but there was none of that.

  The NVA saw an opening and drew a bead on us, and they tore us to hell. Three corpsmen were killed. That’s heavy. That almost never happened. The NVA had been watching us the whole time. We were totally ripped apart that day.

  That was April 17, and I remember saying to myself, “What the fuck?!”

  I had felt great, almost invincible, earlier that same day, and then to take a hit like that? It was a dramatic, emotional swing from one extreme to the other.

  NO SLACK FOR

  A SHORT-TIMER

  28

  A Mixed Reward

  I was formally promoted to corporal after the siege ended and we were evacuated to a huge Army base, where I was taking cover in a trench lamenting that we’d lost a reward meal of steak and eggs when NVA bombs followed us to the base.

  Those of us who made it through that last harrowing attack near the stream at Khe Sanh were flown by helicopters to the base. The looks of awe in the eyes of the Army guys watching us exit the choppers pumped up our spirits again.

  “Whoa! These are the Marines who just fought the Siege of Khe Sanh!”

  Then orders came down that we were being freed from guard duty that night—the Army would watch the lines for us—and we all were to be fed steak and eggs.

  “Fuck, man, this is great!” I thought. “Hot chow! Steak and eggs! The Army is going to watch the line, and they’re looking at us like we’re superhuman!”

  I felt really good about myself and all the Marines of Echo Company, but it seemed as if the NVA really had it in for us. After we found our assigned positions in the line, we all headed to the mess hall for our reward meal. It was a real mess hall that served hot chow, and our steak and eggs were waiting.

  I had just gotten my tray and settled down to cut into my steak when NVA artillery ripped in from what seemed like every direction.

  Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Ba-boom!

  I swear that I was just about to cut into that steak, and the next moment, we were jumping up and knocking our trays over into the dirt and scrambling like madmen for our assigned spots in the trenches. There went our great meals onto the ground. I don’t think a single Marine got to eat his entire steak and eggs.

  “Damn!” we told ourselves. “There goes that! Back to fucking C-rations.”

  The Army guys probably blamed us for bringing the NVA artillery fire to the base with us.

  It was a helpless feeling in the trenches with artillery rounds falling all around. I had no control. The next one could be a direct hit on me, and there was nothing I could do. But I was used to those conditions. It was déjà vu.

  “Didn’t we just do this at Khe Sanh?”

  The artillery base was a maze of trenches about three feet deep with sandbags stacked to about shoulder height, and supplies and everything we needed were in the maze.

  “Fixler! You’re wanted in battalion command post!” another corporal ducked in and said to me.

  “What the fuck?!”

  The battalion command post was like the office of superintendent of schools, like I was in eleventh grade and the superintendent—not the principal—wanted to see me.

  “Fuck. How do they know I exist?” I was low on the totem pole, only about eighteen months in the Marine Corps, and battalion headquarters wanted to see me?

  Battalion headquarters was about five hundred square feet of bunkers, all Officer Country: lieutenants, captains, majors and lieutenant colonels who ran the show for a few thousand Marines.

  So I ducked through the maze of trenches, artillery rounds hitting all over, asking directions every twenty feet or so until I found battalion headquarters. I wasn’t some nineteen-year-old punk. I was a hardened combat veteran, and I felt like it until the major saw me.

  “Lance Corporal Fixler reporting sir!”

  I forget the major’s name, but I figured the only two reasons he could have wanted to see me would have been if I had accidentally killed another Marine, or he wanted to put me in for the Medal of Honor. I didn’t kill another Marine and I didn’t rate the Medal of Honor, so I didn’t know what to expect.

  “You’re Lance Corporal Fixler?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m Lance Corporal Fixler.”

  “I have a combat meritorious promotion here from the headquarters of the Marine Corps in Washington, D.C., promoting you to corporal, but there’s no way that I’m giving you this promotion!

  “Good God, son, you look like you’re fucking twelve years old. There’s no way that one of my corporals is going to be twelve years old! Get the fuck out of here!”

  He threw my promotion orders to the dirt floor. I bent down and grabbed them and left. The major had no choice. My promotion came from headquarters. So my reward for Khe Sanh was making corporal. Before that, corporals wouldn’t look at me. A lance corporal couldn’t even have a conversation with a corporal. Now I was a noncommissioned officer.

  That was a big deal to me, and I felt great. It was meritorious, not a normal thing. Somebody higher up knew about me and really wanted to recognize me. I’d evolved from a raw, green Marine to a combat-seasoned corporal.

  The major was still sputtering when I left.

  “Fuck! I’m not going to promote a twelve-year-old. I am not going to have twelve-year-olds for corporals!”

  29

  Life-and-Death

  Decisions

  Corporals ran the war in Vietnam. The responsibility for the guys in the field fell on them. Captains and sergeants didn’t run the ambushes, the patrols. Corporals did, and on some occasions seasoned corporals deviated from the plan. I did once.

  Second lieutenants didn’t last long and didn’t command respect. One time a second lieutenant came to me and said, “OK, your squad is going on a patrol tonight.”

  Then he took out the map and went over the details, the points where we were to check in and the times that he expected us to reach those points. Those were important details because our
guys needed to have a good idea of where the patrols are at all times so they could direct artillery without friendly fire accidents. That was the idea anyway.

  I was in charge of the map, and I had a radioman assigned to me. I was the senior corporal; it was my squad now, so I ran the patrols. But this other corporal was attached to our platoon and in my squad, and we looked at the map together and he said, “Fuck the lieutenant, man. This is impossible. It’s suicide. No fucking way we can do this in daylight.… It’s impossible at night.”

  We were on enemy turf and the terrain was terrible. It would be like walking through a swamp up to our necks with no light on. No light. We could at least do it during the day because we could see each other, but at night it was impossible.

  The second lieutenant giving the order wasn’t seasoned at all. He was going by the book. He was too new and too ambitious, and that’s how mistakes get made. I couldn’t say, “Lieutenant with all due respect, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. This is a suicide mission.”

  So the other corporal and I decided that we’d just go right outside the lines and hang there and call in every half hour as if we were at our checkpoints.

  “Fuck the lieutenant. He won’t know.”

  We thought we had a good idea. Things don’t always work out as planned.

  We were right outside the wire, and things were going good. We called in every half hour as if we were at the checkpoints. The lance corporal on the other end kept telling us how the second lieutenant was really concerned that his mission be successful.

  About 1:00 a.m., guys were getting a little restless. We started making too much movement. One of the lookouts inside the wire either saw us move or heard something, and they lit us up.

  First they shot up illumination rounds, little parachute flares that stay lit for about fifteen seconds and turn darkness to daylight, and then mortars started exploding around us.

  “Fuck, man!” I reached for the radio. I wanted to scream, “No, no! We’re Marines! We’re here! Fuck! No more! No more!”

  I was that close to calling it off. I’m a good Marine, a very good Marine. If we had been caught, I would’ve been mortified, and I would have been reprimanded. I wouldn’t want to think about the consequences had one of my men been killed. It would have been my fault, my responsibility if someone had gotten killed.

  But they just sent out a few warning rounds. No one was hurt. I was so mad at myself for letting another corporal talk me into dodging a patrol, and I was so happy when 0600 arrived and the sun came up, and none of us were hurt. All of the guys thought it was great, like playing hooky.

  * * *

  Vietnam never let us relax. Right up to the end, things changed in a heartbeat.

  I’d been through the deepest shit in Vietnam: Khe Sanh, Phu Bai, Quang Tri, Dong Ha. I wasn’t the green Marine who stood and gawked at tracers flying past me. I was seasoned. I was up there in the pecking order. I had been twice promoted, and in a combat zone, from private first class to lance corporal to corporal. And now I was a short-timer, I’d be rotating back to the world in less than thirty days.

  But instead of being more cautious, I let my guard down. I was too cocky, too confident. I started taking photos, clicking away with my camera while on patrol. It’s not like I abandoned my M16 for a camera, but I was able to take a few snapshots, which would have been a no-no if there had been anyone senior to me in the platoon.

  After a year in combat my attitude was, “Fuck it, man. I’m the senior guy in this platoon. I’m the most seasoned. I’m taking pictures. There’s not one guy that can say to me, ‘Hey, Fixler, don’t take pictures.’”

  That attitude almost caught up with me. I didn’t want to get killed on my last patrol, but I couldn’t look nervous to the guys in my squad.

  “My time in Vietnam is coming to an end,” I thought. “Let’s get this combat operation over without anything happening.”

  We were on a sweep, a platoon-size operation of thirty-five to forty Marines. Search and destroy, flush out the enemy, engage. We were sweeping across an open, napalm-scorched field with waist-high elephant grass and shrubs.

  The DMZ was the most dangerous area in Vietnam. It was a death land, no civilians around, so if anything moved it was kill first, ask questions later. And I was clicking away with the camera.

  There was no way to see the two NVA dug into the ground just ahead of us. They knew we would be patrolling the area and had dug a little spider hole.

  They waited until we were spread all around them, and then they both popped up from the ground and opened fire. I was maybe thirty feet from them, and bullets zinged all over the place. The NVA emptied their AK-47s and took off running in different directions.

  I couldn’t get a good shot because I had a Marine in front of me, and the last thing I wanted to do was shoot another Marine, so I held my fire. One of the NVA soldiers ran maybe forty feet before the other Marines cut him down with their M16s. He fell on the spot.

  The other one got away. Not all of us could shoot or we would have taken each other out. The body of the first one was still jerking when we reached him. We didn’t put a bullet in him because he was so riddled with bullets already, and he died maybe within a minute or two.

  I didn’t kill him; I was with the guys that killed him, but I’d seen my last enemy dead, so that was satisfactory. We almost didn’t care about the NVA who escaped. We nailed the one guy, and none of us were hit. It was a good day.

  * * *

  After thirteen months of death and destruction it becomes very easy to kill. Pulling the trigger and taking enemy life is easy. Routine. But I never lost my sense of right and wrong. I never lost control. I didn’t get to the point where human life meant nothing to me. It was just easy to kill the enemy.

  One of the last ambush patrols I led was in bad, bad enemy territory, as usual. It was a night ambush from dark to dawn. There were no reports of friendly forces patrolling in the area. Anyone that walked into our trap was almost certain to be the enemy.

  We set up in an area that had a great field of fire. It must have been pretty close to a full moon and the terrain was very advantageous to us for the ambush. We were totally concealed.

  Somewhere about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, I saw five North Vietnamese soldiers approaching us, slowly. Everything moves slowly at night in the jungle.

  They were less than one hundred feet from us. Perfect. I remember distinctly seeing the outline of their uniforms. I was analyzing them, watching and waiting for the right moment to cut them down. My rifle was on full auto. They were as good as dead.

  Then something entered my mind…doubt. The headgear was similar. No friendlies should have been around. We were on enemy turf.

  The decision on whether to open up on these guys was mine. I was the senior man; it was my ambush. I had the authority to kill anyone in the area.

  The rest of the guys waited for me to fire the first shot. After the first round went off, it would have been a shooting gallery.

  I stared at the silhouettes through the sights of my rifle. My thoughts raced. “Marines or enemy? Kill or let walk? Marines or enemy? Kill or let walk?”

  Not easy decisions for anyone, much less a nineteen year old.

  “Marines or enemy? Kill or let them walk?”

  The silhouettes were sitting ducks. They would have had no chance.

  “These are definitely the enemy,” I kept telling myself, but that one percent of doubt kept popping in. All I had to do was squeeze the trigger and they were dead. They were almost certainly the enemy. But if that one in one hundred chance were right and they were other Marines, I would have been devastated. So I let them walk. I let them live.

  Ask me forty years later, did I make the right decision even though in my heart I knew that they were the enemy? Absolutely.

  30

  Haunted by Horseplay

  I’m proud that I made it through the war, went on with my life, and have been successful. I
do keep a tough demeanor, but I was able to leave a lot of things behind in Vietnam. When you’re just eighteen, nineteen years old and you’ve seen Marines get blown to pieces on a regular basis for thirteen months, your mind just kind of accepts it. It doesn’t stick.

  But a few months after Khe Sanh, something happened to a Marine that I could have stopped, and I carried that with me for years.

  After Khe Sanh, we’d lost so many guys that we thought we’d be sent to Okinawa to regroup. Instead they sent us from the frying pan into the fire, Quang Tri Province, Con Thien and Dong Ha.

  It was very close to North Vietnam and the NVA, and we were out in the field with no rear support. The only rear we had were the packs on our backs; we didn’t have a combat base or outpost. We lived on the move, sometimes in helicopters but usually humping it on foot.

  Every so often, we would come across a small outpost of Marines. It was usually planned, but low-ranking guys didn’t know.

  It was almost like R&R for us when we’d get to an outpost after humping for so many days and nights. Instead of sleeping in a little fighting hole in the middle of a field in enemy territory, we had sandbags, a wire perimeter and the extra protection of the other Marines that were stationed at the outpost. Still, the perimeter was small, usually only an acre or two.

  Four guys shared a foxhole, and two guys were always on watch: on two hours, off two hours, 24/7. Two hours were pretty much the longest that we could sleep. This was war. Something was always happening or about to happen.

  Our platoon had hooked up with another Marine company at one of these small outposts. We had a short break, maybe a few hours, before we had to saddle up for the next patrol.

  As squad leader, my responsibility was to make sure half of the guys were always on watch.

  We hunkered down in these protected bunkers that were roughly five feet wide and three feet high. The bunkers were covered with the same kind of perforated metal sheets they use to build combat runways, and sandbags were stacked on top of the metal sheets. They were always very crude, typical combat zone bunkers like the ones we built at Khe Sanh.