Raggedy ass grunt

I joined the Corps long before I signed the papers. I like to tell, much later on, that I was headed for one of three places; the cemetery, a penitentiary, or the United States Marine Corps. I was glad that I found the Marines. I also like to say that it made a man out of me but this was only partly true. My manhood wasn’t complete until I had left the callowness of my youth behind. The innocence that is life came to me in the chaos of war. I mean the innocence of living life without a suspect dark meaning. I had no awareness of the political reason for this war; I was there for the adventure. Where else would I have the power of life and death in my hands and so handy? The stories of hand to hand combat to the death from Reader’s Digest magazines filled me with awe about a situation where I stood on my own. I found that I always spared life unless my own mortal danger was evident. This generally meant that you had to shoot at me before I would shoot at you. I did initiate action in the proscribed way…laying down firepower. This was getting off as many rounds at first as possible instead of aiming for a kill. The training wisdom was that you keep your head down when the bullets are flying. True, too, at least for us. The sappers were another story with their one-way ticket into the wire.

I was a grunt, an 0311, the lowest of low huddled in a metal Quonset hut next to the air base in Danang. They clipped the alcohol page from my ration card…I noticed that right away. Only the grunts. The Phantoms took off the run way right about where we were and the afterburner noise hurt the ears. I got tired of cupping my hands over my ears and was glad to board a C-47 to Phu Bui. Open cargo door all the way up the coast flying at 3000 feet or so just out to sea, we didn’t have weapons yet and I felt safe. The base was red dirt and dry with a heat that took some getting used to. The pogue that tried to acclimatize us tried to bully me to keep up on the run. We had flak jackets and helmets on and he was in his t-shirt and cap. I ignored him…what are you going to do? Send me up to the front? I was in a hooch with Lupe and a few other casualties of June 9^th. They were all happy to be skating while their wounds healed. Lupe pointed out one man’s trophy. An AK-47 slug dug out of his chest, just pierced the skin, and now dangling at the scar on a leather cord. We were told to outfit ourselves for the bush out of the KIA gear in the back. Rummaging through the duffels I found a pair of jungle fatigue pants that fit. D.R. Pledger had written his name in ink across the right thigh pocket flap. So I put N.H.Jack across the other one and told the other scroungers that the next guy would be shit outta luck. Slim pickens and we had to scrounge at Khe Sahn for the good stuff…like poncho liners. They were our blankets in the bush. Thomas was very upset and was the first to get all of the gear that we truly needed to do the ground pounding. When we had been at Khe Sahn for a while, in the rain and under artillery fire, he would cry out, “I’m only human!” to no one.

Flying up to Khe Sahn in a Chinook was my first experience in a helicopter. Riding high and up and over the mountains, the door gunner sat back and endured the bumpy ride as if asleep. Dropping us on the runway at the firebase, we were told to run out the back and away from the chopper because it wasn’t slowing the engines and would rise as soon as the supplies and we were off. Incoming and the wrecks of other choppers and planes showed us the wisdom of this hasty resupply effort. I was a replacement member of Bravo Squad, First Platoon, Foxtrot Company, 2^nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division of the United States Marine Corps. We went to the lines and stayed put…never wandering around because the siege was still officially on. Man the lines all the time in case of attack. Their positions included trenches just outside the wire that I faced and the small valley in front swallowed up a marine platoon to the man one night. No mess hall and C-rations were picked by seniority. That meant spaghetti and “ham and mother fuckers” three meals a day at first. Motherfuckers were lima beans…big soft ones and clearly the least favored meal in the box. Short timers snapped up the favorite choices like “ham and eggs” and we learned to trade the small things. “I’ll trade you a cheddar cheese for a jelly.” These small tins of condiments were all you had to work with if you wanted to change the taste of the same eight meals over and over. The John Wayne can opener immediately made it’s way to everyone’s dog tag necklace. A bunch of new ones were in every box of c-rats and they didn’t become dull very quickly. Two small pieces of metal about 1 inch by ½ inch by 1/8^th. They were hinged together and you opened the blade away from the grip when you wanted to open a can. They snapped back together to form a rectangle with rounded edges and no points…safe around your neck, even running. There were other goodies in the boxes like coconut patties full of sugar and coated with waxy chocolate. You discovered who was queer for what and bartered the items from them that you wanted to try. A fixation on peaches, say, could cost a man a pretty penny in the market but that was how you made value judgments. Cooking C-rations was an obnoxious exercise. The heat tablets that were provided to burn in small can ovens, gave off such noxious fumes that it required skill to use them at all. I discovered that C-4 would burn furiously giving off high heat and cooking C-rations very quickly by comparison. A pinch the size of a marble was enough for spaghetti although lighting it was tricky. You had to pull your Zippo away quickly once it caught because the fire would flare up suddenly like sparklers on the Fourth except this fire would burn you. Another difficulty was carrying the stuff in your pocket or pack. A bullet was supposed to be able to set off the plastic explosive, a shock really, and the thought of catching a round and going bye bye kept most of us from using it at all.

Not me for I was the demo man. I spent three more days at Freedom Hill learning about explosives. Top of my class in grades, I rejoined the platoon ready to roll. The other demo men in the Battalion tried to belly up on me, but I had enough friends. The most obnoxious was a staff sergeant who explained what a “flame foogas” was to me. Rigged up in the wire was a device that could cover a football field size area with flaming napalm in an instant. A fifty-five gallon drum of napalm was cocked like a stubby gun barrel at a forty-five degree angle towards the outer wire. In front of it hung an incendiary grenade wrapped in det cord. The explosive cloths line then trailed over the length of the barrel dropping onto the back with a quarter pound of TNT hanging in the middle of the butt end. In theory, and I never saw one shot, the TNT would drive the napalm forward and the incendiary grenade would ignite it. I sure as hell didn’t want to be in front of it and came to hate LP’s.

Listening Posts were right up there with walking point in fear factor. Essential sacrificial positions, they were never described as such. You were expected to mix it up with any Gooks who came your way. Trouble was you were out there with one other man and just outside the wire. If the Gooks didn’t get you then friendly fire might. I never carried my demo bag on an LP, which means the can of blasting caps normally in my left thigh pocket stayed in the barn, too. I was right in front of that damned “flame foogas” one night on LP when sappers and three mortar tubes on the west quadrant hit the Battalion where the pogues lived. Funny thing, the times that the Gooks chose to attack us they always went to the pogues. The grunts lived on the east side and knew how to respond. My radioman and I spent a frightful period after the initial attack. I watched motionless as two cobra helicopters fired their rockets and Gatling gun rounds into the mortar positions. When we tried to come into the compound we caught some friendly fire and I spoke out in a loud and calm voice for the shooters to stop. It was the LP. The flare light made out passage through the labyrinth of wire, past explosive surprises a little easier than lunar lums would and we hit the berm joining other marines ready to fight. My M-16 coughed a magazine of bullets into the soft sand when the bolt failed to lock. They came out of the twisted metal bottom of the magazine with enough force to be buried and it took me a moment to realize it with my t-boning efforts to lay down fire. T-boning, by the way is the manual clearing and reloading action when the bolt fails to close home. The t-shaped handle at the back of the gun took the two strongest fingers on your trigger hand to pull back against the sand grain jammed bolt. Releasing it was supposed to seat another bullet in the chamber. You couldn’t aim when you had to use this procedure nor fire until you reclasped your rifle to your shoulder. Worse part about it was that you didn’t know if you had to do it again after shooting the round…hesitation gets you killed and no faith in your weapon made some of us seek other weapons. I already had LAWS and C-4 so an additional hump was out of the question. An M-14 was a good weapon and wouldn’t quit over a grain of sand. The weight was a killer and the best NATO round weapon was easily the AK-47. It was so impervious to the elements that I plucky one out of the sand and fired it on full automatic. It had been buried there at least long enough for it’s owner to have become a skeleton of an NVA soldier in the middle of nowhere. There was a small oily rag wrapped around the end of the barrel to keep it in good working order. The distinctive crack crack crack of it echoing over the plains of Quang Tri made me realize that I couldn’t use it as a personal weapon. The sound drew fire in its direction. It was a favorite way of determining which way to lay down fire. You could echo locate the source before the telltale puffs of smoke would drift away from their camouflage backdrop and give the shooter away. Nope…friendly fire was definitely the most dangerous we could encounter.

Now I don’t want to disparage the pogues too much. They performed a useful function in supporting us. They fed us and transported us and brought light from flares and heavy fire from artillery, mortars, helicopters and even phantoms into our existence as needed. They bore the brunt of the war behind the grunts. One out of ten men make up the actual fighting group, the grunts. If we were fucked with, it was to make us angry enough to fight. Some deference was shown over dress and we looked at the clean uniforms of the pogues in jealousy. It was a badge of honor to get gungie and we were allowed to take pride in our gungieness. That didn’t keep us from looking like a poor excuse for a marine but it did let my slacker mien express itself by my pack. Russell once told me that I was pretty humble. “Raggedy ass” was what he called me. He traded me a pristine NVA pack for a Russian wristwatch that didn’t work. I didn’t use the pack for fear of getting shot and it sat in my duffel in the hooch. His trophy was equally worthless but it probably made it home…mine didn’t. I think I traded mine for some joints. I think that it was what got me into the camaraderie of the Battalion Com boys. My smoking buddies back in the rear.

Flash was our platoon arty FO. As a forward observer, he called in fire strikes and carried a radio on his back. He knew other radio humpers including the Com boys, who went out with us on Operations. Back in the rear, Flash skated most ambushes but had to stand lines. I skated, too as a short timer and when I had my wisdom teeth taken out.