There is no title. Yet.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Une fois qu'une Marine - Toujours une Marine



The actual enlisting in the United States Marine Corps was the least stressful part of a process; you just walked into a recruiting station of your choice, and told your up-to-date life story to the recruiting Staff Sergeant, then gave him your reason for deciding to join the Corps. Easy as pie, people were wanted, and what better type than a volunteer.

In those days, if someone still had all of the body parts with which they had started off in life with, and didn’t have an outrageous police record, they were accepted. The periods of enlistment were set out in increments of two, three, and four years. Being of a somewhat cautious disposition I signed up for an initial two, with extension options.

A “cooling off period” was in place, but by mutual agreement it could be foregone. It was there just as a precautionary measure until the FBI had time to check someone out, for if they had lied to the recruiter it was a federal offense which carried serious jail time. Otherwise, as they had signed there was no way, other than by death; the Corps was going to let them renege on the contract. It was like doing a deal with the devil; they now owned the persons body and soul, and on which they planned to collect.

Seven days later I received instructions to make my way to Beaufort, and there to stay in a bug infested Marine Corps approved, and paid for motel, before being moved by bus, along with others, to “Sandy Rock”, an 8,095 acre island where my summer of transformation would begin. Ever since I can remember I have admired the way Mother Nature conducts herself in that monumental struggle called life. At the very moment in which the spark of life ignites everything has an even chance to make it, or fail. And so it was with the United States Marine Corps in what proved to be a hot summer, even for South Carolina, in the year 1966, as the Marine Corps speeded up their graduation churn-out rate to a wartime level.

Just as Mother Nature lets the weak and infirm fall by the wayside so did that great bastion of the US Marine Corps, our appointed Drill Instructor, for he did not tolerate by even one degree, or part thereof, any form of weakness, nor failure. In his mind it was either live or die in what was black or white military thinking, where shades of gray did not exist.

Our Drill Instructor was not a reformer, nor was he in any way interested in the usage of neither psychology nor any other, as he called them, “Goddamn highfalutin college boy theories” as a process in the training of Marine recruits. He was of the old school era, being a hard, intolerant, and rigid man, who by unwarranted force blasted a door near off its hinges to gain entry, then invaded a room with his presence like a grenade going off!

It was claimed, possibly true, that the average 1960’s Drill instructor was born with a book nestling within his skull cavity, as an alternative to a brain. Had this presumed book been a wide spectrum encyclopedia of intricate knowledge, well then, it would have been a wondrous thing indeed. Unfortunately, the book in question was narrow-minded in content, being stuffed to the full with rules, regulations, and interspaced with carefully selected passages of pain and suffering taken from the writings of the Marquis de Sade.

Late on what had been a gloriously sunny day, with the sweet smell of magnolia blooms lingering in our nostrils, a band of nervous looking reluctant heroes, of which I was one, stepped from a Greyhound bus in South Carolina at a place nicknamed Sandy Rock, better known to the world at large as Parris Island. There we passed through a portal into an alien world called a United States Marine Recruit Depot, that military green parallel universe which exists side by side with the more colorful civilian one, and were instantly transformed from being individuals into what our Drill instructor lovingly termed his, “little green fu*king maggot platoon”.

We were offloaded at the Receiving Barracks, and there met with the “great yellows”, painted yellow footprints of which each recruit was assigned a pair to stand upon, at attention, in silence. Any slouching, fidgeting or talking meant the Marine Corporals gave out the first glimpse of just how brutal boot camp was going to be, as punches and screamed instructions rained down on any transgressor. Movement orders were gathered up and final induction paperwork completed by the duty clerks.

A few recruits had long, shoulder length hair, and were dressed as if for a trip to Woodstock. As they stood out from the others who had a more conservative cut to their jib, it was inevitable that the training non-coms gleefully zeroed in like angry bees on those “flower people”, whom they considered to be almost clown-like.

The first two lessons had been learned if nothing else. One, it was best to remain inconspicuous by quietly blending in with the herd, and the second being that the four main vocabulary words chosen for use on recruits by the training staff were fu*k, fu*king, Fu*ker, and maggot.

The virgin recruits were speed- marched off to the Mess Hall for a Marine Corps meal, high in bulk and calorie count it left many feeling bloated and uncomfortable. It also left some with sore faces, or throbbing eardrums, having been slapped in punishment for leaving part of their meal uneaten, as it was considered, “a fu*king goddamn insult, to such a magnificent culinary effort by the catering staff for you fu*king maggots!”. That first night spent in the Receiving Barracks I heard many a wailing sob of self pity, and homesickness. Sounds of the tormented, of which I would hear on a regular basis throughout my volunteered incarceration at boot camp.

The culture shock at such events, especially for those who not a few weeks before had been going to high school; eating mom’s apple pie and dating the girl next door, left some reeling from fear and fright. Others were moving around in a zombie like trance from the near deafening screaming of orders which had started the very second they crossed that portal’s threshold into what was to be for eight weeks, a new domicile.

Some wanted to run back through the portal and escape, but there was no way off Sandy Rock except out through the front gate, which was blocked by an enormous Marine corporal, who from past experience knew that the first reaction of many was to run from the place. Over the eight weeks I was there some did, try to escape that is, and try being the operative word, for none I either knew or heard of, who made that crazy break for freedom ended it with success.

They could of course have swum from the island if brave, or desperate, it had been done in the past. However, due to the presence of sharks, and other predatory species the chances of a clean getaway was extremely limited, if not near impossible. If they succumbed to exhaustion and lay out in the swampy salt marsh, or on the shoreline, then the infestation of sand flees would in all probability have driven them mad, or, if they happened to expire, then the enormity of the blue crabs that were scuttling about would indubitably feast upon them, stripping off flesh to the bone in no time.

When an escapee was caught a severe punishment was meted out, for they were classed as deserters, and charged accordingly, rather than with the more benign AWAL, absent without authorized leave. If extremely lucky their punishment would be decided by their recruit platoon, and not a court marshal. It was extremely difficult to decide either way which sentence was the more unwelcome in its ferocity.

The best of all worlds was to simply conform to a regime of discipline and transformation. Shutting the mind off to the norm and concentrating on producing a conditioned response to any command that was given. Inevitably it meant putting aside such foolish thoughts as an escape back to that world from which they came. Above all was to try and avoid the at times unreasonable punishments for even the minutest of military infringements.

For those who could not, or would not, conform there was always the possibility of confinement at the Correctional Custody Platoon, in essence a jail, or if deemed as “rejected, unfit for further induction” they were housed in an isolated building before being unceremoniously kicked out. In that era, being a failed Marine carried both a social and military stigma that most of those who fell into the category didn’t realize, until they tried to join another branch of military service, or returned home.

The only solace to be gleaned for those who did conform lay in the fact that hundreds of others were enduring, and many thousands more before them had endured, that torturous process of turning generally unfit, soft living flabby, young men into basic Marines, in as short a period as possible. The Drill instructors tools of the trade for doing so were voice, fists and boots.

From the first day to the last of those eight weeks we lived in Quonset huts, awoken every morning at 05.00 on the dot by a large garbage can being thrown down the center of the hut by a bawling Drill Instructor, as the transformation processing continued relentlessly. Anywhere we went it was done in double-time, whilst clutching a bosom buddy, the “little red monster”, a little red book of everything a recruit was required to know. It had to be learned verbatim from its front cover, to back cover, and we were tested on our knowledge of its content anywhere, and at anytime. Failure to answer correctly meant receiving the usual blow of disapproval.

Eating, sleeping, going to the can, there was always a Marine Corps way of doing it, and an insanely impossible Marine Corps time for doing it in, as there was for everything else, even when it came to religious worship. The believer, non believer, and the not quite sure all received with equal enthusiasm from the various denominational Marine Corps Chaplains high-speed spiritual guidance at Sunday prayers, like it or not, as it was considered an essential part of “molding a Marine”.

Some recruits, encouraged by the Chaplains and Drill Instructors, prayed throughout their training that somehow God would allow them to graduate as a United States Marine. Graduation by the “Grace of God” was their expectation; many were to be bitterly disappointed. The Marine Corps demanded a strong love for God, Corps and Country; whether someone actually believed in God or not made not a jot of difference whatsoever. It was a requirement to believe so you did, even if it meant by pretense. There was no need for any pretense when it came to the Corps or Country part, everyone was definitely a patriot and were in the Corps.

All in all, the first two weeks was undoubtedly the worst to endure, as the Drill instructors systematically tore down the recruits mentally and physically, readying them for the building of basic Marines. Once the building-up started then life at Parris Island took on a slightly more favorable outlook. The actual seaborne infantryman training content is not worth mentioning, as it was more or less the same as our brothers-in-arms the Royal Marines, during their phase one training. Whereas they remained at Lympstone, CTCRM, Commando training center, for phase two and three, we moved on elsewhere for more advanced military skills, and selective MOS, Military Occupation Specialty, training after our basic graduation.

For Graduation the marching band played a variety of John Philip Sousa marches, and the Marine’s Hymn as we displayed our hard won ability at drill, and passed in review. Halting in front of the reviewing stand we listened to the standard set piece speech welcoming us into the Marine Corps. Being ordered to dismiss we took one step back, and bawled out at the top of our voices, “Aye,aye,Sir! “. Just as a runaway freight train would eventually come to a shuddering, crashing halt, our acknowledgment to the dismissal order meant that boot camp, for the surviving members of that “little green fu*king maggot platoon”, was numbingly over!

My time at Parris Island has followed me throughout life, in one way or another, like an accompanying ghost of a time long past, and I can’t say that it bears me that many happy memories, other than perhaps my first promotion. It was nothing more than an unpleasant means to an end. Even after all the decades now passed since that long ago bus-ride there is no escaping the influence of the place, and thus proving, at least to me, that the time worn phrase, “Once a Marine – Always a Marine”, is a powerfully true one.

[LongCharlieSlim]

Well done brother. The 1960’s USMC boot camps were no place for the half-hearted.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Many thanks Charlie.

Yes, to some the Parris Island regime was akin to a custodial sentence in 1940’s Alcatraz, and its nickname of Sandy Rock reflected such.

Take care.

Bernard.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Encalminé


" Ok, listen up! As far as the Navy is concerned, under our rules and regulations, the only person solely responsible for a ship and her crew is her Captain! I say again, her Captain! Therefore, those of you who manage to qualify will be held responsible, for both boat and crew. Remember it, your decisions will decide their fates, so don't go fu*king things up! For there are no accidents in the military, only foul-ups: Got it? "

The Marine Craft Operators School, Naval Facility, Norfolk VA, 1966.


We were out where, as in the old song, the scattered waters rave and the tempests roar. However, that would be on a bad day for boating in the South China Sea, for such weather can produce vast rolling, and tormented waves. Better off onshore than out venturing forth over the bounding foaming main, on such a dismal day.

On the other hand, what we did have was a good day for boating, with a flat calm sea, and no wind blowing other than a gentle zephyr, with a burning sun blazing down, which turned our steel Mike Zippo boat into a giant frying griddle. In fact she had already been used as such, by the engineer, who had rubbed a patch of shaft grease on the top of the flamethrower turret, and used it to fry eggs for breakfast, appropriately sunny side up.

As we had been detailed out to Phu Quoc Island, the Port Captain, in his infinite wisdom, had saddled us with taking along one of his pet annoyances and dispose of it at sea by scuttling. After leaving the river estuary and out to sea we encountered a problem which made us in a way, becalmed. At least that was what an olden time sailor would have called it, if aboard a windjammer and its power source, the wind, gave out leaving it sitting there static, as in the tale of the ancient mariner, "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean", and there it would wait for the wind to return.

A Mike Zippo was not a sailboat, she was driven by diesel motors connected to shafts which in turn had propellers fastened to them, and those propellers had a problem, something was stopping them from turning. So, just like a windjammer without the wind to drive it, she was going nowhere in a hurry.

However, unlike the windjammer sitting peacefully in mid ocean where there is little or no current to be drifting along on, nor any dangerous lee shore to go fretting about, the Mike Zippo was in a War zone, which by their nature tend to be extremely unpredictable. In addition, she was securely fastened to a half rotten, end-of-life, wooden, coastal trade junk that had been converted into a type of dumb barge. This in turn was piled high with a cargo of unstable captured munitions!

The barge's piled cargo was acting as a form of sail, and driving the Mike Zippo and her tethered charge slowly landward on a light breeze towards a mangrove tangled shoreline, which had the bad reputation of being VC Charlie's back yard. In the military operational term of the day, that coastal area was designated "fu*king Red hot", the emphasis being more on red, as in Communist.

The engineer was leaning on the aft .50 cal weapons quad, and puffing away on the stub of a fat cigar, whilst watching a big fish lazily swimming around close to the surface at the Mike Zippo's flat stern. The surface is the danger zone for fish, and especially for that one, for every so often the engineer, between cigar puffs, and in his boredom, would take a poorly aimed pot-shot at it with a colt 1911 automatic pistol. It was in no great danger of being hit, other than by chance. The fish would dart off under the boat's hull in fright, but quickly reappear after regaining its nonchalant swimming posture, and continue on with its leisurely cruising pace.

Although obviously irritated by the intrusion into its watery domain by the fired pistol rounds, it never lost track of why it had been attracted to our boat in the first place, an easy meal that's why, supplied by a large shoal of gaily colored smaller fish, who were greedily feasting on a cloud of debris coming from the propellers as two of our boat's crew hacked away with battle knifes at the seaborne trash, which had screwed itself tightly into a rock hard ball on each of the propellers.

Instead of smoking and pissing about by annoying the fish, the engineer should have been showing a little more diligence when on shark watch for the guys working over the side. There had been the odd dorsal fin breaking the surface which belonged to small juvenile pigeye and blacktip sharks.The real predators, human eaters, with certainty had been out there somewhere. Even with the shark watch our "divers" may never have seen a denizen of the depths as it raced up from its domain in the deep blue sea to take a bite out of one, or both. However, it was better to have one, even if he was less than attentive when on the job.

A Mike boat had an air compressor, and it wasn't advised to go about breathing the diesel fuel tainted, and foul smelling air it produced, not if you wanted to retain your lungs in good condition you didn't. Therefore, our "divers" were forced to surface for fresh air every few minutes, as any air breathing, sea diving, mammal would, which didn't have an alternative air supply allowing it to stay down in the briny sea for longer.

Squinting in the searing sunlight, I looked at the shoreline trying to gauge our drift value, and we were moving along faster than I had originally estimated! Just an hour before it had been no more than a mere shimmering line on the horizon, like a mirage in the desert. Now individual mangrove trees could be made out! If things weren't bad enough, here was another unwelcome fu*king complication added to the pile of problems needing dealt with!

The current was set shorewards, as was the breeze. I could not understand why I had missed such fundamental maritime calculations! The worst of the situation we found ourselves in, being that there were still two or so hours of daylight before night fell, and the relative safety of dark, even then, it was never really safe off that coastline. Charlie had been reported as running arms and men into the area using sea-going Junks.

Finally, the "divers" managed to free the props, and brought up a sample of the offending fouling for my inspection. It was a seawater sodden bundle of Stars and Stripes newspapers. And I had a good idea as to how they came to be floating around in the South China Sea. A "Slick" helicopter had been reported as crashing into the sea after mechanical failure, its cargo being thousands of the Stars and Stripes newspaper destined for the grunts in Saigon, and the surrounding operational areas as moral boosting bul*sh*t.

If you ever felt depressed, possibly just from the every day stress of trying to stay alive, or receiving a jody letter from your wife, or girlfriend, you didn't go on an irritating visit to medic, who was busy enough treating the more deserving. The best self cure available, other than the life wrecking drugs option, was to read a copy of the Stars and Stripes. The jingoistic crap written within it would have you laughing for weeks. You had to choose carefully on which article to read, for some could throw you in the very opposite direction of what was intended, by making you even more depressed than when you stated off!

The sun was barely beginning to set, and the sky reddening a little with it, when I finally fired up the motors ready to tow our dangerous charge further out for scuttling, per my instructions from the Port Captain. I climbed up on the wheelhouse to increase my horizon a little, and as I looked towards seaward my heart gave a little panic flutter, for heading straight towards us, but still a good way out, was what looked like a large Junk with obviously no intention of standing off.

The impressive white moustache of a bow wave showing within the sparkles of the blue sea's surface meant it was no ordinary Junk. She would have one, possibly two, high speed diesels racing away below her deck, driving her on. The smugglers out of Hong Kong and China had similarly converted Junks, which could do in the region of eighteen knot's or more. This meant that the one heading towards us could easily catch a Mike boat with its hammer down, for at full throttle, with the wind on its stern and tide in favor, could make at the very most nine!

As she drew closer I could see figures on her deck, silhouetted against the sky, like a carelessly minded patrol sky-lining on a ridge, and far too much in number for any normal fishing Junk crew, even a high speed one. My mind cried out fu*k! Charlie! I wanted no action with the Junk; in fact I was determined to avoid it, if at all possible, for if the munitions on the barge exploded it would dash all in proximity into fragments, us, them if too close, and both vessels. If the barge wasn't hit by direct fire, it could still easily be if we were to be fired on first due to ricocheting rounds from our steel hull, for any hits on us could easily spark off.

And it was at that moment of pondering I decided to scuttle the barge, there and then. Regardless of the depth she would rest in as a watery grave. The Port Captain wanted one hundred fathoms or more, he would have to suffice with eight or less. I ordered the tethering lines that fastened the barge to our boat cut, spun the wheel and headed off at full throttle away from the damn thing. Once in the region of 600 yards out the quad .50s came into play, with the gunner "walking" his rounds in over the water to his target in the proper way, and raked the barges hull along the waterline.

Within five minutes the riddled barge's deck was already near awash, she was settling very quickly, much more speedily than I imagined she would. The quad 50's rounds had ripped great gaping holes in her rotten hull, and we could clearly hear over the idling note of our motors a loud sucking noise, as the sea eagerly invaded the barge's hull spaces through them. What stunned me more was the sudden appearance of the unknown Junk on the opposite side of the sinking barge, and people jumping on to it, who then began throwing boxes of ordnance on to the deck of the junk.

Before I could decide on a considered response, and in the blink of an eye, a millisecond, there was a great blinding flash, closely followed by an enormous, near eardrum bursting explosion, which instantly disintegrated the barge, above and below its waterline, into billions of fragments! And took the junk, and its people, with it! The shockwave produced from the detonation made a "dent" in the surface of the sea, and drove a twelve foot mini tsunami outwards from the blasts epicenter!

Traveling at an unbelievable rate it struck our boat on the stern, lifting her high then dropping her down with a bone shaking shudder, as the explosion produced tsunami tore under us, heading for the mangroves, and leaving the Mike Zippo boat lolling around in its foaming after-wash, like a playful porpoise. It then rained splinters of wood, none larger than an index finger. Our boat deck was covered with them, as was the surface of the sea.

Once the sea's turmoil returned to near normality, we cruised around the immediate area of the blast. All that was left of the barge and its cargo, the Junk and its people, was a shredded Kapoc life preserver, a few scraps of clothing, and the odd floating sandal here or there, locked within a massive raft of wood splinters, which was peacefully drifting shoreward to be deposited amongst the mangroves. On the same current and breeze our boat, and the now disposed of barge, had recently been.

Amid this raft of debris we could see the occasional splashing flurry, but they were not generated from some poor drowning sailorman's last frantic attempt at clinging to life, these were produced by fish out for an easy meal.

[MANICHAEAN]

Bernard
Ever been back? A friend of mine went on a work assignment and said he still got the "ebee jeebers " from when he was in the military.

[Armaane_Writes]

Pretty interesting, I like where the story is going. Nice work solider!

[Gimpy_Fac]

Bernard
Ever been back? A friend of mine went on a work assignment and said he still got the "ebee jeebers " from when he was in the military.

Hi M.

Yes I have, once. 108 fountains already asked me the very same question and this was my reply:

“ Hi 108 fountains.

I have only returned once, 1982, and that was to dive on the wreck of my Mike boat and leave a personal tribute. However, we approached the wreck from seaward and never landed on Vietnamese soil, but we still required a special Government permit which took years to obtain, and even then they only gave us a 48 hr window to complete the dive. The Vietnamese Navy made their presence known from our arrival in their waters until our departure. By the late 1990’s, your time there, relations had thawed out considerably. “

The Vietnamese had no idea that the wreck even existed. As we had to give the exact position of the wreck before permission to visit the site would be given I am convinced that the time delay in granting such permission was to allow their own Navy divers to survey the area first, for all of her ordnance and weapons had been removed.

Some people who fought there are drawn back to Vietnam time and time again, and I understand why they would be. However, my visit was to our Mike Zippo boat, and was not intended as any form of pilgrimage to the war regret others suffer from.


Take care.

Bernard

[MANICHAEAN]

So glad to hear it. Though one can be pompous enough to say they understand the hang up of all the aspects of "war regret," there are those that came out stronger. Unfortunately this was never given enough emphasis by the press coverage at the time and is only now being realised more explicitly.

In my fathers generation, they used to speak quite honestly of having had what they called " a good war." Basically, a formative experience they could talk of with more than an element of pride.

Be well and have a good Easter.
M.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Hi M.

I quite agree, for war regret is such a variable that it can’t easily be defined, nor explained, with just a few simple words in press coverage, or by some pompous a*s claiming to somehow understand it. We all regret something in life, and that something could be either simple or serious.

That is how it is with war regret; it is a deeply personal thing. When I say that I understand why some veterans return to Vietnam it is with the personal aspect in mind.

My father fought in the Second World War but never hankered after “Going Back” .He only ever talked of the good times, just as my grandfather did.

Take Care.

Bernard.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Des morts en sursis

“Yup, you boat grunts are crazy fu*kers for sure! Sitting on a target filled with inflammable and explosive crap, and sailing around inviting a response from Charlie! Ok bud , 10000 rounds of mortar HE for delivery, and 4000 in AP, tracer and ball for your boats BB guns, coming right up!”

Ammunition loading port, from USN Ammo handler to Riverine, Vietnam, 1967.


It was intended to be our boats maintenance slot, but the Mike boat detailed to run munitions and supplies up to a F.O.B, forward operating base, had been ambushed. She had been hit by rocket propelled grenade and recoilless rifle fire, which resulted in her receiving severe structural damage. One of her crewmen being killed and another three wounded.

Making water and listing badly she had barely managed to limp home as dusk fell. Had they been ambushed in a canal instead of the river I doubt they would have managed the return. You simply couldn’t turn a Mike boat around in a canal that was half, at times even less, a boat’s length wide. If ambushed in a canal all that could be done tactically was to run the gauntlet of fire, and return same.

We were ordered to act as a replacement on the same detail as she. No crew ever wanted their boat to act as replacement for a damaged boat because bad luck always tended to come in threes! It was hard enough trying to survive in the boonie without increasing the risks by being ordered to take on the bad karma of others. The land grunts were in no way different to us when it came to that way of thinking.

Our military boating, in the practical, was no different from someone doing civilian boating; other than we had the added hassle of weapons, tactics, and of course water mines to contend with. Then there was at times an unpredictable enemy to consider. Following the standing order that our boat had to be in a constant “ready-to-go” state was one thing, but our own enforced protocol of checking everything at least twice still applied.

Get caught out in the boonie with no machinery power, or out of ammo and supplies, and then you were, using the most used “in-country” word of the time, fu*ked! Sure, a dead-in-the-water boat could technically be used as a fighting platform, but it wasn’t really that enthusiastically recommended. However, if one did, and rescue didn’t come quickly enough, either by another Riverine boat, or more preferable in the shape of a helicopter, then the boat would need to be abandoned, and the long walk home would begin. At which point you would end up being at the mercy of whatever the fates, jungle, but more importantly the enemy, would throw in your direction.

Then there was capture to consider, a frightening prospect in itself, and needless to say one best to be avoided at all cost. So, regardless of anyone or anything, orders or otherwise, we stuck doggedly to our double check protocol.

Checking, and checking again, turned what was a normal boring chore into a crazy rush as we prepared for the task we had been given, and this made the crew irritable. I was also in a crap mood, so came down hard on their bit*hing. Finally firing-up the boats motors we were rolling within an hour of receiving the order, everyone was pissed off, with none of the normal joking and friendly banter going on, just sullen faces.

Once maneuvered out of her berth into mid-stream, and heading down river towards the estuary at cruising speed, with the big diesels gurgling away happily, the crew resorted back to some normality. Everyone loved a night run out on the river, regardless of any lurking dangers. On a clear night, such as this was, there was always the stunning view of a blanket of stars over the silvery sheen of a moonlit river surface, and if a warm jungle scented breeze was blowing it could be quite beguiling. Had it not been for the war factor, we could easily have had a tranquil rhythm of life in the Mekong Delta.

The threat of ambush for all boat’s crews was of a constant concern. They ranked well above the water mines on our list of “biggest dangers manifesting” when out boating in Vietnam. It was always a strain, for encounters with the enemy were seldom planned. They were normally unexpected and tended to be fleeting by nature.

We had just turned off the river and into a side canal which led to the F.O.B when a B-40 rocket, rocket-propelled grenade, sailed through the air, bounced off the flamethrower turret and exploded very close to us, with pieces of shrapnel striking the full length of the hull. By instinct, we flung ourselves down, and as we did so, there was a clattering bang as a second rocket hit, but this one failed to explode!

We had no time to go peering about in the darkness of the well deck to see where the damn thing had gone, due to some shadowy figures starting to fire at us out of the canal bank reeds! Ball rounds and Tracers flashed across the boat without hitting, and we could clearly hear dull thuds as they struck trees and bored into mud on the opposite bank.

Our only available tactic was to open the throttles to their maximum and charge forward, like cavalry of old, at the same time “Fire-Trash” with multiple small-arms, the reed beds, including bringing into play our aft “quad 50’s,”whilst getting the flamethrower clicked-up and ready to burn-out the reeds. A few quick squirts of the flamethrower’s red and orange flame towards where the firing was coming from settled the issue by putting an end to the firing.

The VC were completely terrified of a Mike Zippo, for they knew that if we set fire to a reed bed in which they were hiding, they hadn’t a hope in Hades of outrunning the ensuing wildfire created. To escape the inferno they either had to jump into the canal, and take their chances against our small arms fire, or toast. Either way, it would have been a devils choice for anyone to make.

The obvious advantage to this enforced cessation in hostilities, was that we could thunder off just as fast as or propellers could shift us. This was no time to go worrying about possibly fouling a propeller, so off we went with motors racing and exhausts blaring. Like a farmer spraying cattle slurry, a mix of foul smelling canal water and bottom ooze shot out in twin jets from the rear end of our boat!

There was one draw back, as normal we were traveling at the "speed of a crippled snail!”. It was enough, and sometimes enough is all that is required in life! Charlie, having to fight his way through a near solid curtain of reeds, couldn’t keep up, even if he wanted to.

Protesting furiously at being ordered to do so, our engineer, using a flashlight, found the unexploded ordnance. It had lodged itself tightly under the well deck edge, and was bent almost double, its fuse housing distorted; hence it’s failure to explode. We had no choice but to leave it resting snugly and take it with us, praying that it didn’t change its mind and decide to detonate!

In the direction of our intended destination we could hear a small arms battle raging. Then the night sky lit up with arc lights, colored flares, and bursts of “Willie-Peter”, white phosphorous. These produced a glittering shower, similar to a fourth of July firework display; pretty to look at but deadly to be anywhere near, for once adhered to flesh it would burn to the bone. A fantastic amount of ammunition and pyrotechnics could be fired off by both sides during nighttime battles. Strange as it may seem the casualties tended to be light, on either side.

Overhead, and flying high, passed a flight of “Fast Movers”, Phantom jet fighter-bombers of the tactical air support fleet. A few minutes later a group of helicopters, made up of “Slicks”, UH-1H, Hueys, used for transporting troops in tactical assault operations, headed towards what appeared to be a quick heating up battle area.

The fast movers dropped 25-lb bombs. We felt the jarring vibrations, and heard the thumps of their detonations. And a none-too-gentle slap to our faces as the blast waves reached us. Shortly after, great slow rolling balls of black tinged fire, accompanied by a strong smell of gasoline, Napalm! Hideous stuff in the extreme, even the water surface of the swampy ground and canal would be on fire! Like the various colored defoliant agents, napalm destroyed everything it happened to came in contact with.

As there was no way on earth we were going anywhere near that battle, we set about making the boat secure in what was now a guaranteed hostile area, and wait for the fight to die-down to an acceptable level. This decision was not made through any battle reluctance; it was made through good practical thinking, in that a slow moving Mike boat and her crew wouldn’t last even five minutes in that hells cauldron. All it would do was present a mad-moment fun target for the FOB’s attackers.

The battle din crescendo reached a deafening peak, and then slowly tapered off in the night, and the deck watch heard movement along the opposite canal bank from where we were moored up, On hearing this activity they had frantically awoken me, I said “no contact”, deciding it was better to keep silent and not compromise our position. Whoever it was hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about their own safety or security, as they had made no effort to keep their voices low, but we could hear the lilting tone of Vietnamese being spoken. So off they went unmolested, for we were in no position to encourage any form of a fire-fight with an unknown enemy strength.

By the time there was enough daylight for us to clear away our standard make-shift camouflage of reeds, and get the boat moving again, the battle had faded out to an occasional pistol round going off, which we discounted as the VC dispatching their more seriously wounded. Charlie always knew exactly when to press the fight, and when not too. Something our own people in Da Nang and Saigon took a long time in learning.

As we eased our boat along-side the FOB’s half destroyed landing stage we could finally see the battle damage. It was a scene of mass destruction and desolation, Charlie had pressed the fight home and hard for sure! The FOB no longer existed, for practically nothing stood above ground level; it was just a smoking ruin of its former self. All of the plant life had been destroyed, leaves covering the ground in a dense carpet, branches and wood splinters lay everywhere. Here and there the remains of fire damaged helicopters poked up, twisted into strange obelisk like shapes.

Grey faced, helmeted, smoke blackened Marines, who never said a word, started to appear. Arising out of the green carpet of leaves, like the dead from their graves. They just stared at us with dull, near lifeless red rimmed eyes, as if we were aliens from another world invading theirs! A Marine Staff Sergeant, who had been tasked with going around any badly wounded VC giving them the coup de grâce, fired his last pistol round. Complete and utter silence descended, as if a thick cloak had been thrown over the land, shutting out all sound!

[Gimpy_Fac]

Vagues sans Gloire



“The first thing you will notice in war is that absolutely nothing, and nowhere, is safe anymore.”

Our Drill Instructor, a Veteran of the Korean War, Parris Island Graduation, 1966.



On a morning that had broken clear and sunny, our detail had started off in an agreeable and pleasurable way, with a sun-warmed little flotilla of Mike boats heading down the placid mid-channel of a brown colored, kilometers-wide Vietnam river, towards the sea in a line astern formation. Thick, tall jungle, appeared as smoky purple in the misty early sunlight, and the lush bloom spangled trees along the river’s edge subtly tinged the air with their scent.

The flotilla had consisted of two GS Mike boats, general standard cargo “humpers”, working in a troop transport role with lines of round green helmets just barely visible above their gunwales, and looking like peas in pods. Ahead, as the vanguard, an armored Monitor “Lawnmower” boat, so called due to an ability to literally “scythe” an area with its weaponry, and our dependable “Zippo” brought up the rear as stern guard.

It had been a “Sweeps and Stops” detail, a simple and deliberate military action which had entailed dropping off the human cargo of one GS Mike on the river bank near where the river estuary joined the sea, after which the troops headed inland through the reed beds and elephant grass to pre-chosen relatively clear areas, and once there to set-up choke points using stops, four man squads armed with two M60 Machine guns.

The next phase of the operation entailed the remaining boats heading out of the estuary to the mangrove mudflats which formed the chosen seashore, to an accessible point where the second GS would discharge her S V Marines. These were to act as the sweeps, a long line of Marines, who, as beaters on a bird-shoot, would drive Charlie before them to the chosen killing ground, and onto the machine gun fire of the stops.

Each of the flanks had to be secured to take care of any attempted “bug-outs”. To achieve this, two companies of SV Marines from the second GS were to cover the left flank, and as the river was effectively the right flank then the task of securing it inevitably fell to the Lawnmower boat and our Zippo, the two GS Mike boats standing by to retrieve the Marines at the mission’s conclusion.

“Sweep and Stop” operations were conducted for one reason only, and that was to clear out any VC from an area by completely annihilating him. There was never any quarter given, on either side, for Charlie soon came to realize that these were killing missions, so he reacted accordingly. Anyway, the VC very rarely gave quarter, only doing so when it suited their purposes, and even then our most seriously wounded would be killed. If taken prisoner it was a case of either being capable of marching, or you died.

I had been mighty grateful that my boots would not be stomping around in the boonie on that detail. Acting as a Sweep trying to push through twelve feet high elephant grass with a forward visibility of no more than two feet, accompanied by the ever present fear of a rifle, or pistol, round fired at point-blank range at ones face, or being a Stop, slaughtering everything which presented itself that wasn’t dressed in the same uniform as I, was, to say the least, completely devoid of appeal.

Walking on the sand with not a care, warm sun on my shoulders, a summer breeze played with my hair as the ocean hissed a mournful tune on the beach. I was lost in my dream as I napped on top of the wheelhouse in the early morning sun’s influence, until I was rudely dragged away from it, and back into the real world, by weapons noise. The Zippo’s forward 50’s had opened up with short test bursts, and then the aft quad joined them in the racket of weapons being fired.

Small, interspaced blobs of red and green light, produced by tracer rounds, lazily arced away from our boat with the normal illusion of slowing down as they reached the peak of their trajectory. Then the other boats joined us in the mad moment, for testing weapons before an operation was an imperative. The Lawnmower’s ranked mini-guns, Gatling guns, always proved the most spectacular. Firing with a sound similar to that of ripping silk, their muzzle flashes rippled along her hull in a terrifying display of fire-power, similar to cannon blasts during an ancient sea battle.

Going exactly as pre-planned we had left the first GS where she had disembarked her contingent of South Vietnamese Marines, and a small group of Special Forces who had bummed a ride, and were going off on their own somewhere. With them were a few Montagnards, a somewhat primitive highland people, who detested communism and were part of the CIDG, Civilian Irregular Defense Group, a paramilitary force working exclusively with our various Special Forces. As with their SF handlers, and trackers, they had been trained in Commando techniques at the British Jungle Warfare School in Malaysia.

Continuing down the river and out to sea, and daringly running close inshore, we headed for the next deployment point, when two great water spouts shot into the air, one ahead of our three boat flotilla, and one astern, then two bracketed the GS. The down-shower from what we took to be artillery bursts saturated the packed troops in her cargo well-deck. The rounds being possibly fired from an old Japanese 75mm field piece, abandoned at the end of World War Two, or even an NVA supplied US made “75” pack howitzer, and both of which had the easy ability to sink a Mike boat. Prudently we changed course, moving out of firing range. If a statement was required as to the Viet Cong laying claim to Delta real-estate, and his ability at hitting back, that was it.

With the tide running near the top of the flood we approached the mangrove tangles at a place known for its furious tidal rips. It had to be a quick off-loading to make the most of slack water before the turning when the ebb tide would generate the rips. Inflatable rubber boats were quickly made ready to convoy the SV Marines and their equipment ashore. Known in the service as an IBS, they were ubiquitous in Vietnam during the war, and even considered by some as easily expendable, apart from the two purloined by us from the Vietnamese Navy, as those were our “life rafts”.

Paddles were made useless by a swift current and the tidal eddies, also were outboard motors due to the shallow nature of the silted beach, with its many thousands of partially buried mangrove root snags. To get the heavily laden rubber boats ashore it had to be done by hand hauling, a continuous running line was rigged; one pulley end fastened to the bow of the now securely grounded GS Mike, the other to a large mangrove tree.

By late morning there was a menacing rough, dark line forming on the horizon, as if a child had scrawled it with a crayon between the sea and sky. In a short time the onshore wind had started to freshen, driving accompanying tropical rain in soaking sheets, and angry short waves, before it into the mangroves.

The peaked waves capsized two of the rubber boats, spilling their packed weapons and gear, which were immediately swallowed by soft, foul-smelling, black, mangrove mud. The now empty, but still tethered, rubber boats started flailing around in the wind until eventually tearing themselves free. Sailing off in the strong wind they became impaled on the mangrove roots and slowly deflated, looking more like trash stuck to a garden hedge rather than boats.

Only the life preservers worn by two Marines, who had valiantly attempted to control the madly cavorting boats, saved them from joining the weapons and gear in the morass. Having no more success at clinging on than amateur steer riders in a rodeo, they had been quickly bucked off, and into the foaming brine. But still they had a struggle remaining afloat as the waves continually rolled over them. Threatened with surface drowning they made for the mangrove tangles in an unconventional swimming style forced by fear and desperation.

My throat felt raw with shouted orders that had become empty and meaningless against the now quickly strengthening wind, which had already reached near gale force, as sweating Marines worked furiously to complete the final part of the off-loading, allowing our Zippo and the GS to reverse off the beach and head for the river at best possible speed, before the fast approaching tropical storm descended like a mad thing in flight.

Blowing out of her exhaust ports enormous clouds of blue- black diesel smoke from her overworked motors, the Lawnmower boat had managed to drag her monitor class bulk out of the beach ooze, and stood-off about two klicks out waiting on the GS Mike and our Zippo to do likewise, whilst she rolled and pitched in a rising sea she was not specifically designed to endure.

It took what seemed like an eternity in getting the GS and our Zippo off the beach and out the surf on a falling tide, to regain the relative security and safety of the open sea, and rejoin our cohort the “lawnmower” boat. A fly when adhered to fly-trapping paper must feel the same way as we did, for no matter how much power our motors produced, or every suction breaking trick tried, we were held firmly by the beach mud, and there we would have stayed until the next high tide, if not storm-wrecked beforehand.

Fate looked kindly upon us as an unusually large wave rushed in, and effortlessly lifted us up and off! Going with its after-wash, and at full throttle, we had reversed into the next hissing, roaring wave, which smashed into our sterns with a force only the sea can produce. Massive amounts of water cascaded over the boats threatening to completely swamp them.

With the only thing keeping us afloat being the inbuilt buoyancy of double-skinned hulls and with tons of seawater sloshing around in the boats altering their stability, we finally had committed to a turn with bilge pumps going flat out trying to clear the well decks of their flooding. Counting the waves from the highest to the seventh in line, in normality the shortest, and still listing dangerously, we acted in harmony and turned in its trough, both boats together as a pair of dancers would in a ballroom.

Propellers bit deeply into the face of the next surging wave, driving the pair of Mike boats upwards towards its white-capped crest, and once there perched for a second, nigh-on twenty feet in the air! With motors racing and propellers spinning, our boats unwillingly rode the wave shoreward’s as if it was a tamed beast, before gravity enforced its will, making them tip forward to slide down the waves reverse face. With bluff bow-doors hitting the trough with a booming slam, and diving into the translucent water before shaking themselves free of its grip, they started on the next climb.

There was no horizon to judge distances by as the great towering waves, and flying spume and spray, blurred out everything. We were riding on a roller coaster of the gods, where the dull sky and sea seemed to merge into varying hues of gray, blue and white. Slowly but surely we clawed our way out to deeper water, where the raging seas became just that little less steep and severe, allowing us to turn once more, and make a run for the river. The stern quarter-on sea gave the boats a corkscrewing motion so violent all hands became terribly seasick.

Sailing in such perilous seas had made the passage from the beach to the river long and agonizing, but once in the relatively calmer water it had become surprisingly quiet compared to the raging world outside. I had felt stiff and bone-weary from fighting the weather at the helm of such an ungainly craft, like an arthritic old man. Even though I was finding it hard to keep awake there was still no rest to be had for neither my crew, or I, as the mission had to be brought close as possible to its designed conclusion.

It proved to be a bitter-sweet one as our latest encounter with the forces of nature meant we had arrived too late to properly participate in the action as had been ordered. Other than the short spate of near-miss artillery rounds we had encountered no further enemy fire. Not so the river GS which we had earlier parted company with, for she had serious damage from B-40 rocket and small arms fire, and looked it by the amount of punched holes from shrapnel and rounds that riddled her hull area. In addition a rocket had penetrated the motor compartment, and exploded. It smashed the port motor killing her engineer who was working on it at the time.

The final analysis was that the mission, taken as a whole, had proved to be a waste of resources, both human and material, for what little success there was. The casualty tally being two SV Marines wounded, and one so severely he later died. The river GS engineer killed. On the Viet Cong side nine had fallen victim to the operation, and two of those were later found to be innocent civilian reed cutters, who had, in all probability, spooked at the battle noise, and then, inadvertently, coming in contact with the sweep line had been shot-down on sight without challenge.

We had needed all our seamanship skills and knowledge as we faced and endured hardships greater than those penciled in for us by the military planners in Saigon, and Da Nang, who gave the impression that they seldom took into account the temperamental weather pattern of the area. But the heroes of the day were undoubtedly our boats, for a half dozen times we had been within an ace of destruction, but still we had survived due to nothing less than their stout construction.

[Mike Tevion]

Excellent and interesting Bernard, keep it up.

Mike.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Many thanks Mike, very much appreciated.

Take care,
Bernard.

[Gimpy_Fac]

Le fou Courir


“Bro! The 1960’s Nam code of the Grunt says that If there is even a remote chance for survival, don’t go fu*king around trying to be a dead hero, grab it with both hands!”

Corporal “Bayou” Lejeune , Plain of Reeds, Vietnam, The Summer of 67.


To be suddenly surprised by the enemy when in jungle is a terrifying experience, and the Marine Corps training manual states that you must know the distinction between cover and concealment. The first may give you some protection against any incoming enemy fire; the second only keeps you out of his line of sight. Ok, fine, but in jungle it is odds-on that neither of them will stop 150 grains of full metal jacket travelling at 2750 feet per second.

Oh how we detested leaving the sanctuary of our Mike boat, but it became more and more demanded of us as Charlie honed his guerrilla tactics into perfection. First he would ambush a boat with a light force, similar in size to a standing patrol, about three or four guys. They would fire a few rocket and small arms rounds at the Mike, and then withdraw at speed when we dumped snatch squads, made up of SV Marines and Mike crews, on the river and canal banks. Forcing us to pursue them deeper, and deeper, into the jungle they would re-group and hit us in force. Inevitably, our casualty rate started to soar, just as they did for Charlie in these vicious and costly skirmishes. However, the VC didn’t seem to give a fu*k how many guys they lost.

Standing orders gave us no other option than to pursue these small enemy groups. Everyone knew it was a dumb fu*king idea crawling all over the jungle hunting a few guys, when all the time knowing that a large attacking force was lurking somewhere ready to rip into us hoping to raise their kill tally

After one such an ambush we had moved a considerable distance into the jungle so decided to stop for the night. We sent out a listening patrol. These were normally two guys who would quietly walk a track for say fifty meters or so, stop, close their eyes and listen. Then, after a minute or two, move on for another fifty. They would continue in that way for about a klick, and then head back. It took a couple of seconds for your ears to tune into the night sounds but it was extremely effective.

Then in the early light our tracker found fresh evidence of movement heading to the west of our night harbor, so we quickly packed up and headed off to track them. We had been moving for about three hours when the tracker gave the stop sign and we went to ground. The tracker had found fresh spoor, track signs, converging on his original that we were following. It looked like a large force was building so we sent him and a SV Marine scout forward to check it out. They returned about half an hour later to say a force numbering about thirty Viet Cong were just ahead of us. They were heavily equipped with a variety of weapons which included our most feared, the RPG. With an unpredictable burst radius, depending on what they hit, they were deadly when used by the experienced.

What happened next only took a second to register and it scared the fu*king crap out of me! For running down the track towards us was the thirty or so VC our tracker and scout had spotted! All that we had available was a lightly armed six guy force, made up of the tracker, two SV Marines, and three of my boat crew, one of which was I. The shock was electrifying, excuse the pun, for all six of us dived into the jungle and took off in varying directions.

Not exactly a glorified exit I admit, but we stood absolutely no chance in a fire-fight against so many. Sure, we could have done a “Sergeant York” and stood our ground in the face of overwhelming odds, but we would all have died doing it. So, working on that time old human principle of fight or flee, common sense ruled the day with flee, in that it was every man for himself! We went crashing off headlong through the undergrowth, with birds screaming in alarm and animals running in fear, just like we were!

I knew that our radio guy would have ignored the normal Morse protocol, and instead be screaming a warning over the radio to the other snatch squads following. Once compromised as we were, radio security was pointless. They in turn would head for a pre-arranged emergency RVP, rendezvous point. There to set up a strong perimeter defense, and wait for any of us who made it. They would wait at the very utmost eight hours, but more than likely less. Anyone who arrived after that would have to take their chances, and try to walk back alone, regardless of their physical condition.

Like any of us, our radio guy would not ditch his gear to enable a faster legging, which would simply be like a signed death warrant in the jungle. All you have is your gear, for your gear is your life! Loose your gear and then break a leg, or anything else, tear some skin, and with no compass, medical help or ability to make fire then you are guaranteed fu*ked! Better to sit against a tree and blow your brains out than face the inevitable agonizing slow death which would follow. As the risk of being captured was high he would only get rid of the radio, by smashing and burying it, in so doing denying a freebie communication monitoring point to the enemy.

Head down, and with helmet on I just ran for it! Legging it as fast as I could, trying to put distance between any human being in near proximity to myself. As I ran, I could hear barked shouts of command in Vietnamese. Then, short bursts of automatic gunfire. I automatically ducked as I heard the “Zing” of rounds as they passed over my head. I also knew the enemy would become the hunters in a role reversal. Just like we they would quickly break down into teams of three or four and follow each of the spoors heading off in varying directions deep into the jungle.

Our guys, if they caught any of them, would be beaten bloody then dragged off to some stinking North Vietnamese sh*thole, and be used like a pawn in a chess game, and if lucky possibly sold back. The tracker and the SV Marines, being local guys, would be killed. If they found any alive, they would dig a hole in the jungle floor, pistol shoot him in his elbows and knees, then place him at the bottom of the hole and piss off leaving him there. Unable to do anything but scream he would just lay there until everything within a reasonable distance of him that could crawl, slither, walk, fly or run, would fast as possible be heading in his direction for a free feast.

If found dead he would be left there, just like any of us, as a food source for the jungle. I knew that armed with a Colt 1911 Auto he would choose the better option. I did not have that kind of courage, so was spurred on by the thought of it. I started heading for our emergency RVP, and its safety. I could hear behind my enemy laughing excitedly as they locked onto my spoor. The chase had begun in earnest!

Within twenty minutes of running, I was on my chinstrap; the humidity was literally killing me! The sweat poured from my pores and my head was swimming, and if I did not change my tactics, and very quickly, I would collapse. Unable to defend myself my pursuers would have me and the beatings and humiliation would begin.

This had happened before on the training course in Florida. It was basically the same scenario minus the possible deadly outcome. There I was, confidently bombing along when, without warning, I collapsed; the training team caught up with me and slapped me about a little in punishment. They pressed home the need to think, to remain in control!

Every blow I received from the training team was to emphasize each verbal lesson in survival. “Don’t run blindly, for we will catch you! Don’t dehydrate, for we will catch you! Don’t be overly defensive, for we will catch you! Don’t assume we are superior, for we will catch you! “Every statement made had an emphasis and that was a hard slap! Now it was my time to emphasize, to give the enemy my form of hard slap. This would be my tactical change, to attack! It is known to those with military service as the Aggressive Defense Action.

I burrowed backwards into the soft moss covering the jungle floor beneath some large leaved fauna and waited. Within a few minutes four figures appeared intently searching the track in front of them. A quick burst of fire and two went down, either intentionally to cover, or from being hit by my rounds. The other pair remained standing, another quick burst to disorganize those remaining upright. Then I was up and off again!

The jungle is not only the impenetrable mass as shown in War and adventure movies, where every step requires a pre-whack with a panga or machete at the foliage. Far from it, it is also crisscrossed with a myriad of tracks, both animal and human. Animals are not stupid, unlike some humans, for when animals make a regular track it is for them to make a safe and swift passage, and it was down one of those which I ran!

After another klick I was on the very edge of collapse again, and I knew it! I had uncontrollable heart palpitations, my breathing rasped in my throat and the sweat gushed from me as my body made one last brave, and defiant, attempt to keep going by mass cooling. Only those who have been this close to the end of their physical stamina will know as to what I am referring .Then salvation, in the form of our emergency RVP, where I literally just passed out at the feet of a forward sentry. Lucky for me he defied his standing orders and did not fire at the staggering, exhausted fool who had fallen out of the jungle!

[108 fountains]

It seems to me that in the last few installments, you've really found your voice. This last one and the piece above entitled Encalminé not only were filled with tension and excitement, but also were very well-written. When I cruised in the same canals, around Can Tho and further south around Ca Mau, about 30 years after you did, in much more peaceful times, I often imagined what it would be like to be aboard a Mike boat in these small waterways with a possible attack always looming, always threatening around the next bend. Your descriptions bring those imaginings to life.