Fragmentation grenades of the mind
I remember the taste of warm, homemade flour tortillas sent by Rivas’s mother. I had grown up hundreds of miles from the parts of America with a Mexican influence and had never eaten tortillas before. I often eat them now, and always remember the warm, sunny day we crouched in front of a small fire warming the tortillas that were one of the ties binding Ernesto to home…
Warm beer
I remember the taste of warm Coors beer mailed from the states by Country Roach’s friend. Stateside beer tasted better warm than anything we got in Vietnam. Perhaps it tasted better because it was from home, or didn’t have what we all thought was formaldehyde preservatives, or didn’t have rusty lids like the Carlings Black Label sent out once a week on the supply truck. I remember the crooked smile on Country’s face as he drank one, and shared the rest with us. I don’t know if I would have been as generous with something so precious…
I remember running across the rice paddies, barren after the harvest, with my med bags and rifle because a patrol had hit a booby trap and someone was down. I ran until I felt as if my heart would explode, and kept running until we, Nelson and myself, found them on the river trail outside of ghost town. “Montana” had gone into an area he had been told to stay out of, and a mine had blown off his foot. I remember feeling that it was such a waste. We all knew the area was heavily booby-trapped and there was no reason to go in there, but like too many newbies, he had to see for himself.
I remember a lazy day spent at the Big Pines with Roch while the rest of the CAP was out on a joint mission with several other CAPs. He and I had been elected to stay with the gear so that the others could travel light. The corpsman from CAP 2-7-1 was providing medical coverage. There was an earthen well a few meters from where we lounged in the shade and one of us noticed a frog swimming in the water. I don’t remember who started it, but somehow we concluded the frog was VC and he refused to chieu hoi. In response to this overt enemy behavior we decided to frag his ass.
So, a grenade was tossed into the water. Unclear about the laws of physics we didn’t realize the water would rise with the explosion and the frog would rise along with it. After the smoke cleared, there was the frog, swimming in the well. Another grenade was tossed, followed by another and another. At last count, 14 grenades were used in the action with a resultant body count of zero. The last we saw of the frog, was when he climbed out of the well and hopped off into the brush. We didn’t get the frog, but we did get the wrath of some villagers when they saw the damage to the well. I felt bad about that for some time…
I remember riding in a jeep on Highway 1 north of Chu Lai after one of the sergeants and I had gone to the Army PX. I had been wounded a few days before and was killing time at CACO until going back to the bush. I agreed to ride along as shotgun on an unauthorized trip to the PX. The sergeant would later tell the gunny that we’d had transmission trouble and that’s why we were gone all day on a simple run to 2nd CAG and back. As we drove up the highway, we came upon the scene of an accident that was all too common. A SeaBee truck hauling gravel for the highway project had struck a civilian who had run into the road.
On the ground I found a child of perhaps 2 years lying in a pool of blood. I didn’t have my medical gear, but couldn’t have done anything if I had. The injuries caused by a 40-ton gravel truck were beyond hope of repair. So I sat on the road, holding the child on my lap as she (I think it was a girl) died in my arms. The truck driver sat beside me with tears flowing down his face, devastated by what had happened. He just didn’t understand the clash of cultures involved where people had never seen an 18-wheel gravel truck, and didn’t realize that it takes a quarter of a mile for them to stop. I attended many such accidents on Highway 1, where it ran through Thanh Quit during the time when the SeaBees turned it from a gravel road into a blacktop highway. But this accident stayed with me longer than the others…
I remember going out with Roch to detonate an unexploded 105mm shell just off the highway one morning. This was early in our tour when Highway 1 was still a gravel road and had to be swept for mines every day. Each morning we would see the engineers walking down the roadway with their minesweepers before opening the road for traffic. As Roch and I examined the 105, he decided that a grenade with some time fuse would destroy the dud by sympathetic detonation. As he looked through his pockets, he swore and told me he didn’t have a blasting cap with him. I suggested that he borrow one from the engineers.
Ever the optimist and improviser, Roch walked up to the highway and approached their leader who was, I think, an Army 2nd Lieutenant. Roch explained the situation, told the lieutenant it was a couple of klicks back to our day haven and asked for the loan of a blasting cap. The engineers were glad to oblige. The lieutenant then followed us back down into the paddy to watch us detonate the ordnance.
Roch inserted a short piece of time fuse into the blasting cap and stuck it into his mouth to crimp it with his teeth. The lieutenant turned a little pale. We didn’t have crimping pliers like the engineers, so we had to improvise. Then Roch took the detonator out of a grenade, inserted the cap and fuse, set it next to the dud, lit the fuse and said, “Let’s go, Doc.” We ran a few steps, dropped down behind a dike and covered our ears. The startled lieutenant yelled, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” and also took cover.
The blast shook the ground, filled the air with dust and smoke, and sprayed dirt over us. Roch and I got up, brushed ourselves off and headed back to our day haven. I looked back over my shoulder to see the lieutenant staring at us as if he had seen something he couldn’t believe. Events like that produced the legend and mystique of the CAP Marines…
I remember hitching a ride with some doggies in a PC when I came back from R&R and needed to get from III MAF Transit back to the ville. As we neared Thanh Quit, the other occupants in the back, who had nice shiny boots and clean utilities, were taken aback as I locked and loaded my M-16. One of them informed me that carrying a loaded weapon was against their regulations, while another slightly brighter doggie asked why I was doing that. I yelled at the driver to stop, which he did, and I stood up at the rear of the PC.
I looked at the poor, sad little doggies and said, “In case you guys didn’t know, this is Indian Country. Across the road there, half of a platoon was wiped out and just up the road a ways, CAP 1 was completely wiped out a couple of months ago. If I was you I wouldn’t ride around with your magazines up your ass, I would put them where they might do a little more good.”
Having put them straight, I jumped over the tailgate, grabbed my M-16 by the barrel and rested it across my shoulder. Then I headed down the trail into the ville. I was lost to their sight within a few meters, and couldn’t help smiling at them and their stupidity. After all, hadn’t they heard there was a war on? I felt salty as hell, imagining their amazement and awe as I just walked off into the bush, undaunted and unafraid. The legend of the CAP Marine grows…
I remember trying to sleep during the first night of Typhoon Kate in October of 1970. We set up in the grave mounds that night, just as the rain started. Before long it was a torrential downpour and I was soaked. I took first watch since I didn’t think I could sleep anyway. But by the time my two hours were up, I decided to try sleeping.
The lower-lying areas were already knee deep in water, so I lay down on top of the low wall around the grave mound Duncan and I occupied. I covered myself with a poncho and tried to sleep, but each time I dozed I rolled off the wall into the water. Awakening with a start as my head went under, I would struggle back up on top of the wall and try again to fall asleep. Five or six tries later, I gave up, wrapped myself in my poncho and laid down in the water with my head propped against the wall. It was one of the longest nights of my life…
At the end of my tour in the bush I was pulled out and transferred to 1st Medical Battalion up the road from Freedom Hill. CACO 2-7 senior corpsman Richard L. “Rick” Uht (B627353) and I were both assigned to A&S at the Med Bn. This was the triage/emergency area where the wounded went directly from the medevac choppers. Many of the sights and sounds of A&S have never left me even after 29 years.
There was one Marine who had been blown apart by a land mine, but not killed. He was peppered with shrapnel from head to toe, had both of his legs mangled and was blinded. He had waited over 11 hours to be medevaced without any pain medication and he was still conscious when he arrived at A&S. We worked over him feverishly, getting him medicated and ready for the OR. I can still hear his moans and screams as we moved his shattered legs into splints. Later that night I responded to a call for blood when this Marine had used all the O positive available in the blood bank (more than 30 units). So I gave him a pint of mine. He died later that night…
On our “days off” we would occasionally fly medevacs with MAG 16. Usually they were milk runs from 1st Med out to the hospital ship U.S.S. Sanctuary. But one day we were sent to the A Shau Valley to retrieve a platoon that had gone down when two CH-46 helicopters had crashed. The Marines had been fully loaded with gear and when they crashed and caught fire, all their ammunition cooked off.
We pulled charred bodies out of the wreckage for hours and flew them back to 1st Med for graves registration to take care of them. I have never forgotten the smell, which reminded me strangely of barbecue, or the sight of the disfigured bodies. The flight crew largely survived because of their fire-resistant flight suits. That’s why I won’t fly now without one when I do air transports by helicopter. It was the only time I ever saw the A&S crew shocked speechless…
I remember my last night in country. I was sitting on the sandbags outside the corpsmen’s hooch when I heard incoming rockets. I couldn’t believe I was going to get wasted on my last night in Vietnam. The rockets, however, weren’t for us. They went directly overhead and hit the runways and some jets at Da Nang air base. I was amazed at the huge orange fireball from one of the jets that was hit. A few minutes later I was back in A&S as we received the casualties, over a hundred total, with burns and shrapnel wounds. I guess it was just Charlie’s way of saying, “Bon voyage, Doc…”