Profile Highlight: Part Two
I was going to LACC, I was trying to get into the Mark-Ad program to become a pilot. I wanted to fly F-8 crusaders. But with the assassination, I thought war would come sooner rather than later. Because it was going to take two years, at least two years of this, you know before you can fly into the program.
So that kind of jumpstarted me and I was the radio operator for an artillery battalion. I became a radio operator for forward observed routine. Sometimes we’d work with American units sometimes with ARVN units. You know, on foot with the infantry we’d get into position to observe the enemy. We would call in artillery fire on the enemy positions. And we were making a way for us to get in or out of, you know…
The Marine Corp is organized so that everything supports the riflemen: the artillery, the air, everything. And we went over there, you know, we were like you know a well-oiled football team. Having practiced this all over Camp Pendleton and 29 Palms, and over and over, and we’ve been together for years, so you know, things worked really smoothly.
I was 19 at the time. I spent my 19th birthday in Pearl Harbor, on the way over. The first year of the war was … hmm … kind of wild and woolie, you know kind of like two fighters feeling each other out.
I returned to the States after about a year, and I was stationed in… on the East Coast in Fort Swamp Ladoon, North Carolina. And we were kinda caught in a … well the public hadn’t totally soured on the war ….but there were… I think we kind of expected to be received like the returning heroes of WWII and you know that didn’t happen.
In the States, in Vietnam, not related. Different worlds altogether. We used to call the States back in the World. Totally… yeah – total disconnect. By the time you pass Hawaii its another world.
So, when i got back, the 7th marines were in the area of Da Nang. And, the pace of operations was somewhat slower as far as major movements involving large units going long distances. A lot of, most of the thing that we were having were small units, battalion size or less. An infantry battalion although on paper is about fifteen hundred men, although a while on the field its more like six hundred or eight hundred, (laughs) you know.
In this picture, this was my don’t come back picture. I was 20 years old and I was working on my bucket list. Or, you know, one time on the morning patrol I even got stuck in quicksand.
How was that?
It was scary because we were executing a sweeping movement and I got stuck in quicksand and everybody else kept going. Suddenly there I was knee deep in the quicksand, by myself. So I put it in reverse and took some small steps and backed the way I came, until I got out of it.
And when did your last tour end. When was that?
68, in the late summer of 68. And when you finished did you have the same positive morale feelings about the fighting itself even though you were really skeptical about…
I… I was still up for a fight, but. It seemed fairly pointless.
Did you feel like you were losing at that point? The battle.
No, but we weren’t winning. It was like sitting in a room hitting yourself in the head, you know is there a point for it?
Is there one thing that you think future generations should learn about the war?
People who’ve never been in one, shouldn’t be allowed to start one.