Vietnam: A Television History; America Takes Charge (1965 - 1967); 105

When. We got to the door the plane would open. And he would come in just like that it was like a blanket. It was that intense that thick. It was to you know wonder where the hell you were at because it was just one of those places you couldn't recognize you know. I grew up in a small town called Perkasie about 5000 in rural Bucks County. And. All of us. And in that environment I simply learn too that you know you all had something to your country. That's very nice person.

I never heard the word before the night. There. Is an average your negative press. If you dare to get up on it. Again. The soldiers got got a great deal of support from the state's classes by the hundreds would write

letters addressed to a soldier in Vietnam and and these were packed and sent to our unit and by and large the soldiers would try to respond to these things. There was a groundswell of popular support the troops in 1965. American combat troops went to South Vietnam to prevent the Communists from taking over. Before that Americans had served as advisors to the South Vietnamese army. The advisory and for the field. Now America was taking charge of the work that. South Vietnam was on the other side of America's world. It was a strange and comprehensible country for the American soldiers. A land whose people language and culture were completely unfamiliar.

Over the next two years the American forces built up to nearly half of the troops they were deployed in the mountains plains and built a fort highly trained North Vietnamese regulars and lightly armed South Vietnamese guerrillas. This is the story of a few of those men. I had been accepted in at several colleges for college by my senior year and then I just decided now I'm going to I'm going to join the Marines. And I had to spend a lot of time talking to my parents about it because at 17 Of course I would not have been allowed to sign a lemon contract in my own right. They had to sign it too. And really what I think what tipped the scales in the discussion was that at one point after talking for a long time I said Mom Is this the way you raised me to let other mother saw this fight

America's wars. And they were young people are World War Two. They believed in their country. And that was it. They hadn't raised me that way. Before going to Vietnam recruits were shown in the official film produced to explain America's commitment. I do not find it easy. To share in the flower of our youth our finest young man and the battle. I have seen them in a thousand. One hundred can. And in every state in this union. And life. And. In life. But as long as the man who he can destroy. We must have the courage to resist.

During my senior year when when the government said that the Communists were taking over Vietnam and and if we didn't stop them there we would have to stop and eventually in San Diego I took that at face value. And I saw my opportunity to really to be a hero. The people of South Viet Nam have for many years thousands of them have died. Thousands more have been crippled and scarred by war. And we just cannot now dishonor our word or abandon our commitment. I believe. Believe. That who posted. Who they. Are. And replace. Her That would follow. This. But the Americans. Were NBA tonight.

The buildup of American forces accelerated during 1965 trying to fight a conventional war against the Soviets in Europe. The Americans found themselves on repping hand-grenades in South Vietnam. By the end of the year. Nearly two hundred thousand American troops had landed. One of the things that struck me first upon arriving in Vietnam and still strikes me now was that is probably the most beautiful country I've ever seen and the one aspect of it that strikes me most deeply and it stays with me and is the hardest to describe is the intensity of the colors especially the greens they virtually I mean they almost vibrated. They were that intense. American soldiers were unprepared for the complexity of South Vietnam.

Some Vietnamese were loyal to communist North Vietnam and the Vietcong guerrillas some belonged to various religious and political factions. Many tried to remain neutral. Others supported the anti-communist government backed by the United States. The Vietcong in the North Vietnamese army the NPA controlled large parts of South Vietnam. Gee I just call these areas Indian country the villages were hidden because they are almost always surrounded by very thick hedges from outside the village. You might not even see any evidence of a village and they'd walk through this hedge.

And here is this whole society. We knew that the people who live there probably live normal lives that we might even understand if we were a part of it. But we were a part of it all these are the people staring at us like we are from Mars. One of the first things that I began to wonder about I really wonder about is the the soldiers who are our allies the Army of the Republic we call them the Aravind. Adiga. They wouldn't fight. At least in our area in a heavily populated civilian area where the enemy was. It was literally the old farmer by day fighter by night kind of saying what was virtually no equipment except what they could capture from the Americans and they are been tremendously outnumbered the Vietcong were there day after day after day picking away at us. You know like I don't like gophers at the feet of a buffalo or something.

And it occurred to me these are the same people they are going in the VC are the same people the same race same culture and yet one side seems to be chicken and the other side seems to fight in the face of overwhelming. Disadvantages. I started want to watch you know why is this. They were far more mobile than we were it was their country they knew where they were going they didn't need guides to get them around they didn't need interpreters or we went to the field we took 50 years 50 60 70 pounds of gear. Your average be a gorilla might have carried might have been carrying 10 pounds worth of stuff you could carry a rifle on a few rounds of ammunition and a little plastic bag or at least fill with some rice. That's all that man needed for a woman. There were a lot of female gorillas. They were quick they could get around that if they did not want to engage you. They simply melted away. They disappeared you didn't see them. Why

whenever you did make contact with the enemy you'd go from the most horrible boredom. I mean just absolute deathly bored of his absolutely the other extreme the most intense continual excitement I've ever known in my life. I would I'm not sure how to describe the energy you would feel. And the excitement you would feel. However you thought about in terms of being scared or liking it or disliking or whatever. The excitement was there I think for everybody. You couldn't go through combat and remain detached. It was the idea of someone shooting at you. Someone was trying to kill you. You were trying to kill someone. You were using that finger. To try to take someone's life. And that sends a real charge to you. If the area where I operated for most of 1967 and then then

province on the central coast was probably the closest I'll ever come to seeing a Chinese silkscreen print come to life free have these. Now this just rising up out of nowhere. We're been doing province had never been really unfriendly throughout recent history from the time of the French return in 1946. Has it been done Prov. it always been under VC control. Our job was to destroy the North Vietnamese capability of conducting war in South Vietnam. So naturally we went against these strong holds or strong points. And when we tried to take the enemy on. Toe to toe. American strategists plan to use air power to break the will of the enemy.

And make them talk peace on America's terms. It brought to bear the power of its industry and technology. And also its young men. I can recall one time when the twenty second NBA regiment was located down on the coast in an open area. They were trying to move from one point to another and had hoped to be able to carry out this movement without being detected. But the first the ninth cap did detect him detected them very late in the evening. It was around 5:30 or 6:00 o'clock. And throughout the next two days proceeded to eliminate them once again I might

point. Primarily through the years of loss and firepower that I know my battalion alone fired 22000 artillery rounds into a very small area and this area had been heavy jungle. When we started the fight. It really looked like the moonscape when we got through but it wasn't just artillery fire and with airstrikes coming and tanks were brought out. This was the third time we had run up against the twenty second and the eighth regiment one and every time we ran up against them why we would turn up. And they would fall back into the mountains. And six months later they'd come back completely refurbished a new regiment and we'd have to go through this drill again. We captured the operations officer the twenty second NBA regiment. He was very interesting to talk to after we'd had him for about a month. And this

man was a senior captain. Of what should be the equivalent probably of a major lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. He was dedicated to his leaders as I was dedicated to mine. I wasn't questioning I what I was doing in Vietnam either. My leaders decided that I should go and I went and I was a good soldier. He was in the same position as that he was down there really unifying his country as far as he was concerned. And that was all that he needed to know. The. Infiltration of large North Vietnamese army units into South Vietnam increased rapidly as American troops expanded their combat role. When the North Vietnamese reached the South they often relied on Vietcong guerillas recruited from Vietnam's predominately peasant society in Vietnam for generations.

The real power and the economy and the education through which you get power was in the hands of a very few people maybe three to five percent of the population control the government control the economic life of the country. If you were a peasant or lowly born it was almost impossible to break out of this chain of your father and your grandfather. They Vietcong quite often turn the peasants mind into the idea that if you revolt if you join us we can change the system. As a result many young men and women voluntarily willingly join the Viet Cong in Vietnam. He's developed into a savior as a village and his family a super nationalist. He has to be able to be a pretty savage fighter ambushes quick hit and run operations participate in the terrorism and beheading our assassinations of village chiefs or I think the government officials who are opposed to him. He might be an extremely

sensitive young man maybe even Buddhist. They regard human life very highly actually lose merits for his past life and beyond by taking human life. It's a complete metamorphosis. When I was riding that buffalo in the paddy field and became a fighting soldier against the government. Most of our enemy contact at that time was not contact at all it was mines and

snipers mostly mines our battalion if I recall correctly had something on the order of 75 mining incidents per month. Most of them many of them producing casualties. So you day after day you had dead dead Marines wounded Marines and nobody to fight back at any time you've got guys you know you go out you run a patrol somebody hits a mine there's a couple of dead people. And here's here's Joe the rice farmer out in his field just he don't even stop you know you and it's like he didn't even hear the blast. And after a while you start thinking what do you people must know where these mines are how come they never stuff on. They mean they must be you must be VC must be VC sympathizers. And so over a relatively short period of time you begin to

treat all of the Vietnamese as though they are the enemy. If you can't tell you you shoot first and ask questions later. Deprive the enemy of peasant support. The American command tried a new tactic. Moving the population out of the it can be a serious action operation itself consist of mobile landing air mobile land by helicopter and seven separate landing zone this simultaneous landing of this much force unable to get as a result of the surprise many of whom were in that area just adjacent to were caught totally by surprise. Many without weapons running to place your car after this guy got you by killing or capturing you over 30 feet

away. The main goal of it was to eliminate the UN the National Liberation Front political military structure from a triangular area about 50 60 square miles and it was decided that in order to do this they would move out the entire population. The part I was involved in was evacuation of bents which was a. Decent sized city perhaps around 3000 people. We were providing some medical screen and medical backup for the operation. During evacuation of villagers from Venice. I was struck by a sense of resoluteness in the villages they. Understood what was happening. Then you're still they couldn't really change to.

Change the situation they were going to take it out of their homes. I'm sure that deep down inside they knew that that was the end of bands such as the village that we were going to destroy the village. They seemed to accept it with very special kind of strength. It was kind of sad in a way because Ben suc was a pretty village it was a very old Bell age. The people there seemed to enjoy a little better standard of living and people in any of the other villages. Villages were taken out by boat by helicopter and by truck to relocation centers. Basically once the people were taken out the whole thing was just turned into a parking lot. At the same time the villages themselves would be destroyed. Anything of material value would be eliminated mattresses would be slashed. Rice would either be taken out

or poisoned or down to the river. Crops would be defoliated and they have much more difficult for the Liberation Front to continue without this material and population base. For about the press corps in Saigon was briefed on the operation by its commander General Jonathan seaman. We'll have a little trouble using it but I should say right now that they are destroying these vast tunnel complexes a pretty formidable job. And we do the best we can and I'm sure that if they're willing to go back in with just a whale of a lot of effort and expend all that effort they could probably rehabilitate them over a period of years but or months. But when you realize it's taken them about 20 years to build this thing up. If I were a VC I'd be somewhat discouraged.

American forces ended the operation and withdrew. Soon even without help from the civilian population. The enemy was back in its base again threatening the region around Saigon. What really began to happen after after a few months was that you begin you could get as far as understanding that this was crazy what was going on here was nuts but you didn't dare begin to draw conclusions from that because they pointed in directions that were just terrifying. I mean America might not be the guys on the white horses with the white hats. Maybe we shouldn't be in Vietnam. Maybe I've gotten my ass out here in the bushes for nothing. You can't think about that kind of stuff in a situation like that. For instance it never occurred to me to quit. I laid out my rifle and I'm going to do this.

Somewhere lurking in the back of my mind with 20 years of making big rocks into little rocks. I knew when I went to Vietnam that I had to be there for three hundred ninety five days and if I was still alive when I got to the end of those 395 days I could go home and forget the whole thing. If you wondered you know are we going to make contact today or we're going to get hit. But if you spend a lot of time thinking about that particularly if this is the day I'm going to buy the farm you go nuts. You go nuts. You found ways without even doing it consciously of keeping your thoughts well within the immediate environment that we're dealing with. Either there or back in the world someplace where I can remember thinking about all the time was my girlfriend who had sent me a Dear John letter when I was

halfway through. The wild extremes of my emotions would go through between thinking I could def I could patch everything up when I got back and she didn't understand what I was going through and then and then the next moment feeling like I want to kill or just just wait till I get my hands on her and she was going to nursing school at the time. And I want to hippies were out there I imagine their free stuff. Most of the time. In Vietnam nothing happened. And you run patrols and run more patrols and you run more patrols and. The only things that would. Happen in that area down around denying was mine mining incidents were constant. There were leeches everywhere. And so whenever you stop for a break you

have to take of boots off and check for leeches. One of the major problems that guys had was a thing called Immersion. You get this kind of rot on your feet because your feet are always wet. It did get cold at night. When we were out on operations during the monsoon. The heat was a lot harder to deal with. In the summer months. You had been used to 100 regularly hundred degrees up to 110. Some days you would get up to a hundred twenty. And we ended up taking a lot of chances you'd go without a flak jacket to go without a helmet. I'm trying to decide what the odds were that heat stroke as opposed to what the odds were get hit. The ball. I don't have

nightmares. About. Killing on soldiers in combat. If. You start saying I have the nightmares of valorous the women in the rice field that I shot one day because she was running for no other reason because she was running away from the Americans who were going to kill her. And I killed her 55 60 years old unarmed. And at the time I didn't even think twice about it. It's not like the San Francisco 49ers on one side of the field in the Cincinnati Bengals on the other. It's just not the fact that. The enemy is all around you. One second you may be fired upon from the rear. The next second FROM straight ahead will be the flank.

You never know. In other words you never knew who is the enemy and who is a fan dressed like they were all be at me. Some of them were lovey a cock. They all looked like. What follows is an account from both sides American and Vietnamese of what happened in a village Marines were trying to clear a Vietcong 10 miles from where US troops first landed in 1965. It's January 1067. We planned a detail to company operation involving a Golf Company of the 2nd Battalion 1st Marines and hotel company which I commanded. I was put in charge of the operation as a senior can be commanded. Well I can say like Normally you come through on a village an operation you come to want to sweep motion on line and you're sweeping through the village so we get a

little light sniper fire and then you get this 50 calibers open you get 30 Cowboys open up and you get people from all over so you're running around trying to find out what you're doing so we just put out the dog and the lead squad that got about 100 to 150 meters from the tree line and fire increase from the tree line directly to their front. And they also started receiving fire from both their flanks. Was intense gunfire just like a jackhammer if you ever hear a jackhammer going off start like you get about 10 15 jackhammers going off at the same time I mean told us and I called an artillery support to fire on a tree line waiting for the word to advance. But there wasn't and Lance has been down and we've been down all night. In the rain it rain like something beautiful. You could see nothing. Then you just pan down.

And we had casualties we took a lot of casualties out of about 30 men and there were 11 left and we called in helicopters to come in that night in the darkness to get the wounded in and killed out the first helicopter load we got out was the last one because the current opened up on a helicopter when the pilot and the other pilots were willing to volunteer to command. I'd watch the guys lady and cry all night long. By slowly asking to be shot because you can't take it when you're sitting up there which are going to be a bundle of nerves you know by now and there's no you can do is wait wait wait wait wait. We. Ended up going some 36 plus hours without food or water or sleep obviously. And that is saying a lot when you consider the temperature was around 100 degrees.

No water no food no rest. We're pretty tired Marines at the end of that of that first day. There were two villages there at that time wanted swept and searched to re-enter see if there were any remaining B.S. in there. Lighten lightened up and we were very fast towards the village. When the Americans came I was a boy in the fourth grade. I was on my way to school when I heard the Americans were coming so I was very scared and ran back home with my friends. By the time I got there not hidden I think the Americans were close to the village by airplanes were overhead bombing soldiers were coming and shells were exploding.

Some may see as a movement of some of the houses and next thing we knew we were receiving automatic weapons fire. The town of Qana was hit in the left shoulder and above the heart and it was bleeding quite severely. I remember sloshing back to where he went down with the company gone and. We started returning fire and providing a covering base of fire calling artillery in and schedules emergency medical helicopter to command and get the town of Qana out. Which I recall was delirious. He kept trying to get up to take three of us to keep him on the ground trying to get up to get to this bitch to deploy them and command them not realizing how seriously he was very calm and put a hemostat. On the artery to stop the bleeding

and we were successful in getting a helicopter to take out Lieutenant O'Connor at the same time as we assaulted the village two or three hundred meters to the front of this where the fire was coming from. He was first team and we dropped a couple of grenades in. And who just to get the people out because you get out of that hole. I mean you know and we didn't speak perfect in order to get a great explanation and to get the message and the assault took anywhere from two to three minutes maybe five minutes at the outside as quickly as I could determine that they were. There was no longer any fire being returned. I ordered ceasefire and when they came to my house there were 10 family members inside

including four of came right over. When they came in I stood up and greeted them. They laughed when I seemed to hate us. They just turned around and threw a grenade into the house. Nine or 10 people were. I was the only one I was wounded and survived. My son and everyone else dead. I was extremely frightened and crawled into a corner of the house had already exploded their guns at the people to make sure that he would survive. It was mass chaos.

Like I say everybody is running around screaming we got in a village and I ask him where VC were and people in the villages they know VCU like one in a village you can hear machine gun fire going off and people screaming you know and you know that somebody was either down in one of them holes getting dug out of me or something and we dropped Blaney hand grenades down and booby traps me and holes and stuff to see if we could rule them out. You go into hooch and you've got you've got tunnels in there and you've got all A's and kids and they're running out you know. We didn't I didn't shoot any old ladies and kids. I don't half the guys in my squad didn't you know because it's just that wasn't the fight there. They came and asked us about the Vietcong there were only women and children around and we didn't know where the VC were. But they shot at us anyway. They burned down the houses and then they killed all our farm hands. After they killed the people they burned down all the houses so

the survivors had no place to live. They burned everything. Even dead children could collect only this much of the remains of three children. It was only a handful of us. Like I say you get away with M-14 or in 60 cal machine gun. There's no telling who is going to get when you get a 18 year old kid behind a gun and he just seen his buddy get killed. He's not going to have no remorse or who's on the receiving end of that 60 caliber machine. The soldiers use their guns in a very brutal way. Some of the people went to their beds to lie down. The soldiers shot their ears. Blood was coming out and as they lay there. Then the soldiers shouted their stomachs and their insides splattered all over. Then they smashed people's heads using the butts of their guns.

This terrified everybody was still alive. Children screamed at the brutality they were seen but the soldiers kept on with their questioning. First they shot our water basin to pieces. Then they just opened fire at us just opening fire continuous shot. I was wounded and fell down. Looking back at that time I have to say that it was so horrible that I can't describe it only after I was wounded. I was wounded here and there's still a scar from the bullet wound right here. Several dead people fell on me so I scaped being probably in his eyes from the kids point of view probably did he probably seen it that way but like I said we've got a dog that third day and it was enough Nonu about buying them which is down and they're going to the Vietnamese people out of the

holes and scattering animals pigs and chickens around like we normally do it's just a normal procedure we do especially after three days three days of blood and guts and the mud. You can't take it we couldn't take it. Like I say I can't account for every Marine that was there or what they done at that particular time because they felt that that's what they had to do. I can't account for how they acted. You know everybody's got their own way but we seen it that way the way still in the way I seen it was was it was war. After military operations in the field men return to their base camps. They were little American islands in the midst of South Vietnam.

Next to the bases small Vietnamese towns grew up. With a man here and on the new American air bases there was never much time off from the war bombing operations were conducted around the clock North Vietnam was a

main target. Leslie Gelb. The bombing of North Vietnam was considered a lynchpin of the whole war strategy for two reasons. First it was the way you applied pressure and caused pain in North Vietnam itself. Secondly it was supposedly the way you cut off the necessary flow of supplies from North Vietnam to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops fighting in South Vietnam which. Interdiction. And good luck to us that even though we were stepping up the bombing. Almost month by month. That there was no impact on the North Vietnamese and Vietcong military activities in the south. So we had to ask the question was the interdiction campaign working at all.

So we started to make the calculations how much supplies would have to come from north to south to keep one hundred and fifty thousand troops in the field and fighting producing as much devastation as they were and we had a pretty good fix on how many trucks the North Vietnamese were sending out. And we estimated I as I remember it something like 50 to 100 trucks a week and that they only needed to get through 10 or 20 of those trucks to maintain just that level of military activity that they had been carrying out. And we estimated that based on past experience there was no way we could eliminate those that 20 percent no matter how bombing effective was they were going to get at least that through. In other words the internet interdiction campaign was not working and would

not work. Of course there was one alternative you could have engaged in the kind of bombing of North Viet Nam that would have devastated the society totally. You could have bombed the dam you could have destroyed the population. I suppose you could have used nuclear weapons. We I think fortunately you have the good judgment and the the basic humanity not to consider that kind of a bombing campaign by the end of 1967. The war was draining America's armed forces when experienced soldiers completed their one year tour of duty. Their replacements included a growing proportion of draftees. When I first bought it when I first bought of the country from the plane is when I really started to understand it. There is really a war going on here

you know. I mean I can tell by looking at the countryside where bomb craters artillery craters everywhere. I mean it wasn't as if you saw a nice beautiful forest and you went on and you saw the battleground. The whole country was covered with bomb craters. As soon as the plane landed. When we got off the plane we got onto these buses typical bus except they look like prison busses Army green prison buses with wire mesh over the windows. And I ask why you know this kind of why you know this kind of buzz. I thought we were in a friendly country here you know. And he told me that it was to stop people from running up and throwing grenades into the bus. People kill me. You know I never really thought about before. You know 20 year old kid really Harlingen me.

With a pretty narrow view of what the world was really like. As soon as I got there things just it was almost like they were a bunch of guys they got together and gone camping one afternoon and never camped in their lives. I probably saw half a dozen dead Americans before I ever shot at me. Strictly from our own mess day. People walking along behind somebody with their trigger guard and tripping and shooting somebody in the back exit. You trusted your cell phone like. You would like you to trust many other people in your life is on the line here. We had like 20 year old platoon officers who had gone. To officers candidate school for 10 months and got shipped to Vietnam and were in charge of a platoon of men in. Combat.

Twenty years old and I think they were there the first time they got into fire they're supposed to lead us into combat. And they were telling us to go up a path. That we'd been there months and knew better than to do something like that. They were telling us to to go down the block down a path instead of the jungle beside it. When you know you know by this stage in your life. Just because. The third time I heard somebody was in Texas. Help me Tex.

And so my friend says don't be a fool. Don't go out there. You. Probably think that he was more scared of me leaving him here alone and making her but I didn't go out for like 10 minutes I came here in this thread about the holler and Tex HELP ME HELP ME. So finally I don't know what happened I didn't really think it over anything. I just instinctively jumped up out of the greater you know ran over to help this guy just as I got to him I was putting one need to the ground. And. I was just reaching for him and I felt the blood in my back and I thought my other friend had run out you know and he tripped or something. When I stopped you know and had died accidentally need me in the back. We just you know like somebody punched you right in the back as hard as they could. But enough about that I mean I took this deep breath when I took the breath the blood just came flying out of my throat as if I had a faucet in my mouth and.

I ended up just falling you know like my chest hits the ground. Million on me I'm 16 and. I realize that I've been shot. I went back a flashback to what's the spirit of the band and you have to scream back to kill. That was the spirit of the band that I think in you know job is to kill. I'm a trained killer. That's all I know how to do and I live in before you light weapons I'm just a trained killer. And it's a you know obvious and I thought here I never wanted to be a trained killer I don't want to kill anybody. And you know the first thing about I start thinking you know the first time what the hell is communism. I couldn't define it. Die for killing a bunch of people because I. Realized that if somebody will actually live out here in the stupid jungle

tunnels all day long live in these tunnels in years just to find us. You know when we're there to do good you start wondering you know they want to go through all that. You know you know those things where you don't know maybe if it had been a different kind of war we would start thinking like the troops who were actually out there doing the killing really began to respect the people. By late 967 the American forces in South Vietnam numbered nearly half a million. U.S. commanders were asking for more.

Water. Vice President Hubert Humphrey came to Saigon and to reaffirm America's commitment. Oh. May I say this. That it may I say I think that the nation's got it that. It's. Right that. We. Have. Just. That. And that guy just. Let me. Tell you that. That is the fallacy of the president of the United States right. President Obama going to get a

lot more regulation or I wouldn't get a North Vietnamese unit I think after a while I began to feel that someone was taking advantage of our bravery and our courage and I think there was that to no good end that we were being used really for God knows what purpose. At least in terms that we can understand and appreciate on a gut level which is the level on which you operated and in Vietnam. Words like peace with honor and negotiations. They didn't pay the bills over there. Now when you're out in the field. And the things I try to put away you see my partners get well you know out there and that and that rain for so long that's the only thing that really upset me about that whole operation. I couldn't give a damn by whatever means I did which is my personal freedoms. In grade school we learned about red coats the nasty

British soldiers that tried to stifle our freedom and the tyranny of George the Third and I think again and subconsciously but not very subconsciously I began increasingly to have the feeling that I was a redcoat I think it was one of the most diagramming realisations of my life to suddenly understand that I was I wasn't he were no I wasn't a good guy I wasn't handing out candy and cigarettes to the kids in the French villages that somehow I had become everything I had to learn to believe was evil and I want to Carnarvon Hong Kong. I came very near to deserving it somehow in a space of eight months had reached the point from being a volunteer hurrying off to do his duty for his country to seriously contemplating desertion and just disappearing into the world somewhere. We had just got me and we was all sort of eager to to do a good job and and gain the respect is the be the Marines you know.

And then we can look after each other because like I say we came out of boot camp and I was on that on that first team knew and we got real close because the old guys that were rotating that they had their time and we was trying to set a pattern for our own selves to do good. And there's just seem to be no doubt. No label on any one soldier and comrade and Buddy and that they performed well strangely well and it was a pleasure to and a privilege to command them. One of our early ones. After almost three years American combat forces had won major battles

but not the war. American commanders had expected their massive firepower to grind down the enemy. Despite enormous casualties. The communists were increasing their infiltration into South Vietnam as they prepared for the biggest offensive of the war. Changing into not mean mean mean mean

mean mean mean mean mean things. Work. With.