Return to Viet Nam: One Veteran's Journey of Healing

Return to Viet Nam:

One Veteran’s Journey of Healing

Linda G. Myers

and

Arthur H. Myers, Veteran, USMC

AuthorHouse™

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© 2011 by Linda G. Myers and Arthur H. Myers, Veteran, USMC. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 2/29/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4678-7445-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-7444-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-7443-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011960729

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CONTENTS

JANUARY 1968

One Day Of Combat

The Years Between

SEPTEMBER 2004—SEPTEMBER 2005

Getting Ready

SEPTEMBER—OCTOBER 2005:

The Journey

OCTOBER 2005—2011:

Afterwards

Dedication

To all the Veterans

JANUARY 1968

One Day Of Combat

My husband Art is a Viet Nam veteran. He was a sergeant in the Marine Corps stationed at Da Nang during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He saw only one day of combat, but that day affected every aspect of his life for 35 years. Here is his story.

Art: I joined the Marine Corps in 1964 when I was 21. I attended boot camp (Infantry Training Regiment) at Camp Pendleton, California, and radio school at San Diego. Every Marine is a rifleman first. I was an expert.

On August 31, 1967 I arrived in Viet Nam after three and a half years in Southern California. I was ordered to Quang Tri, but my orders were changed because they needed me at Da Nang.

In January of 1968, the Da Nang area was an in-country R&R (Rest and Recuperation) area because of its proximity to My Khe beach, known as China Beach by American soldiers. We weren’t allowed in the R&R area unless we had official business. Weapons had to be carried in Da Nang, but we were not issued ammunition and could not have a loaded magazine in a weapon. My unit was the normal blocking force for the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) military sweep of the area. That meant it was a photo op, where we would bring candy to the kids and take their pictures. In other words, my unit was not a combat outfit.

Our military intelligence had learned that a large Vietnamese assault was to happen on New Year’s Eve. So, on December 31, the Da Nang area had been shut down in preparation for the attack. But the attackers did not arrive that night, so the sky was filled with American tracers celebrating the new year. But military intelligence used the Julian calendar, and they should have used the lunar calendar. The assault was actually planned for the Vietnamese New Year, called Tet. And this was the first day of Tet.

My unit, the 1st MP battalion, was responsible for base security. We had four line companies surrounding the base on all sides except where the Air Force was; that area was guarded by South Vietnamese forces—ARVNs, QCs (Quan Canh, the military police of the ARVN), and Popular Forces (local militias).

I was awakened in the middle of a January night by the sound of the crypto gear—radio apparatus to send coded messages. This usually meant high security information from Communications to our colonel. I got dressed and went out to the vehicle that had the crypto gear and asked one of the operators did it look like we were going to go on patrol that morning. He said it was highly probable.

Within an hour the whole company was awakened, and three platoons were formed to go out as a reaction force. Several men were borrowed from other sections because we had a lot of men in our own unit who were either working a shift or about to go on shift.

A platoon is usually three squads with three fire teams in each squad. A fire team could be an automatic weapon, two ammo carriers, three riflemen and a squad leader. So a full platoon could be 63 people. My platoon that morning consisted of 11 men. Maybe everyone else was so important they had to stay at the compound and do their precious job.

This morning, instead of being a backup for the line company, the reaction force was being sent in as the front line for the Air Force section. Three platoons and the commander (Lt. John Manning), staff non-commissioned officer (SSgt. Robillio), interpreter, two radiomen and a medic, were loaded into trucks and taken to the Air Force gate.

We dismounted at the gate and proceeded out down a dirt path, and then turned parallel to the gate. We crossed over a farm and then a rice paddy up onto about a ten-foot-high field with a row of trees. (See map on page 12.) The lieutenant instructed me to lay out the third platoon. And I placed my first man there. Fogle was about 30 years old and had a couple kids, and he’d be out of any trouble in that position. Then we came to a large path where we set up our M60 automatic weapon and left two ammo carriers there with the automatic rifleman. Then we laid out a couple more men down to the rice paddy on the other side of the hill. My last man was in the middle of the rice paddy.

The lieutenant told me he and the staff sergeant would continue on and lay out the first and second platoons, with the two radiomen, the interpreter and the medic. He said they would return and let everyone know what was going on and whether anything needed to be shifted around. Then they left.

My platoon was facing away from the base, expecting to encounter an advancing enemy. About a half hour after the rest of the reaction force left us, we heard shooting, small-arms fire and grenades from the direction of where the other two platoons had gone. We heard later that the lieutenant’s group had been hit by major fire. The lieutenant was killed and a private (Colben Benjamin Stokes Jr.) was killed and eight others were wounded pulling them back out. So we never heard what was going on, and the colonel who heard about the fight didn’t know anything about my platoon and its location.

I had gotten Cpl. Robertson to keep a watch out for the enemy, because he had seen combat up north in a different outfit and would know what they looked like.

We were standing on top of this hillside above the rice paddy when we noticed, from behind us in the direction of the base, this guy come down into the rice paddy and walk through it, and it looked like he was carrying a rifle. We had no idea who he was. And we kept watch on him because our last man was sitting in the middle of the rice paddy. When they were about ten feet apart, they looked at each other, brought up their rifles and shot at each other, and the stranger started wading back towards the base. And we dropped him in the rice paddy.

From where he had come there appeared a string of men dressed just like him, running down this path. We could only see about ten or twelve feet of the trail before it went into the rice paddy. And it was just like a shooting gallery. I placed my rifle right on that spot and kept shooting one man right after another. One would be hit, and he would fall off to the side, and the next guy would just keep right on coming. I learned later they had been on a forced march for five days; they must have been kind of rummy.

Some of the other men in our platoon had heard the shooting and came over the hill and they got right down in front of me and started firing. I had already gone through one magazine. A magazine normally holds ten rounds, but I had my three stuffed with 20 each. And I had some bandoliers of extra ammunition. I tried to load the magazines but I was shaking like a leaf. I was an expert rifleman, but I had never fired to kill a person.

I thought I had better tell the rest of the men which direction the armed forces were coming from—we were expecting them to be heading into the base, and instead they were coming out. So I went back over the hill where the dirt path was and told my men that the enemy was coming from the other direction. As my men were turning around they said, What did they look like? And there, coming down the path from the direction of the base, was an enemy soldier. When he saw us he turned around and started running back the other way. The guy on the machine gun opened up on him in short bursts. I shot him three times and it didn’t slow him down a bit. He ran a hundred feet down the trail and then about ten yards up the next hill and disappeared. It looked like he was wearing red pants. The machine gunner said he could see the bursts from his automatic weapon tearing the flesh from the guy’s back. That didn’t slow him down either.

I went back over the hill. My men had stopped firing because the enemy had stopped coming. It was dawn by now. At the top of the hill I could see a small footpath that led down to a village. I didn’t want anyone to sneak up on us from behind, so I went down the path to check it out. It led to the back side of several thatched houses with pieces of corrugated metal. I got within about 20 feet of the houses. I could see between two of the houses, and on the front porch was a Vietnamese guy with a machete, dressed like the line of soldiers, standing over this other Vietnamese guy who was on the ground with his hands and feet tied. On the other porch was another uniformed man reading off a piece of paper. It looked like an execution of some sort was about to be done. I shot the guy with the machete between the eyes, put a bullet behind the ear of the guy reading the paper, and put one up underneath the ribs of the guy on the ground. I have no idea who these people were, but there was a saying adopted by the Marines, Kill them all and let God sort them out.

Then I saw three soldiers come around the far end of the house, and I heard the bullets slapping the leaves around me. I knew they were looking for me. I don’t think they knew where I was, but they were firing into the bushes. When they brought an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) around the corner I got out of there fast, running back up the trail.

I had the guys at the top of the hill watch the path. I said, I think I stirred up a hornet’s nest. They may be coming out. I started back down towards the main path. That’s when I heard a helicopter coming. It wasn’t one of our Hueys. It was one that the ARVNs used, like a little Bell helicopter, and they usually had a 30-caliber machine gun with an M79 grenade launcher. The pilot was shooting down the tree line alongside the trail. And that’s where I was.

I was right next to a cistern, which was probably ten feet deep and full of water, with an opening at the top about four or five feet in diameter. I tried to hide underneath my helmet. And as the helicopter came by one of the rounds kicked dirt up into my face, and another one hit in the water right behind me.

That’s when I peed my pants.

I told one of the ammo carriers to go back to the base to get a radio. There was no news coming back from the other two platoons, and we needed to know what was going on.

Everything quieted down for a while. Our guy who was out in the center of the rice paddy suspected that the ammunition we had was the faulty kind that would jam the rifles, so he had fashioned himself a straw out of one of the reeds in the rice paddy. When the enemy soldier approached him our guy fired once and his rifle jammed, and he went under the water and breathed through his reed for about a half hour. I don’t remember his name. He was a radio operator. But I can see his face—he looked like Tony Curtis, the actor.