In August 1966, analysts at the CIA produced an extraordinary, 315-page document entitled the “Vietnamese Communist’s Will to Persist.” It contained the following paragraph:
“The Lessons of the Franco-Viet Minh War: Present Vietnamese Communist strategy is appreciably influenced by the 1946–1954 struggle in which the Communist-controlled Viet Minh forced the French to withdraw from Vietnam. In Communist eyes, probably the most significant feature of this earlier successful campaign was the fact it was won without inflicting a strategic defeat on the French military forces. During their nine-year struggle, the Communists successfully used military pressure as a political abrasive. They worked more on French will than on French strategic capabilities and eventually succeeded in making the struggle a politically unsaleable commodity in metropolitan France. Communist strategy, in short, succeeded in creating a climate in which the government in Paris lost its will to fight even though the French Expeditionary Corps remained effective and largely intact as a military force. The Communists suffered horrendous casualties and went through periods of severe setback, but their persistence eventually paid off.”
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0001169545.pdf (paragraph 17 on page 8)
That passage was written as Bud Eckert and I and many more Marines, including my classmates at The Basic School [for Marine second lieutenants], in Quantico, trained on opposite coasts for our assignments. Of course, none of us knew about that assessment, which was intended for Secretary of Defense McNamara and which would not be made public until about thirty years had passed.
Not that it would have mattered to us. We did have Bernard Fall’s cautionary classic Street Without Joy, which I did read (and would come to understand the meaning of that title in time), but we were Marines and Americans, and we could do anything. (Bernard Fall was himself killed by a mine near that street in late February 1967—word of which somehow travelled to 3/1.)
So, after the preliminaries at division and regimental headquarters, and introductions to Lima Company’s great leaders, it was on to command of Lima One, but only after an orientation patrol with my predecessor, Lt. Gran Moulder. (He was an effective commander, and I had substantial boots to fill.) Largely uneventful, the patrol did take some harmless evening sniper fire, my introduction to bullets that would have been happy to find me or any of my Marines. Such evening visits became a kind of routine–later, it seems to me, made fun of in an episode of Mash. (Actually, I remember reading of such sniper “visits” in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the classic novel of World War I.)
Our beachfront headquarters was not at all sumptuous or elegant–a wall of sand surrounded by sand and scrub brush with simple buildings as shown in the previous post. Still that was home of a kind. In short order, the prospect of leaving it always filled me (and I’m sure others) with butterflies (if not grim foreboding). We had our orders (always the five paragraph order famous in military units), all details of movement were nailed down: Situations in our planned operating areas clarified as best as possible (though intelligence always seemed sketchy); missions and objectives identified; routes and movements drawn; loads of ammunition and rations clarified; and communications and passwords defined. Everything in perfect order.
For the many years since then, the feeling of walking or riding out of the security of that base camp, has defined my sense of dealing with something big and new. Yes, everything has been thought through, but the first step out of the gate….
Time and again we passed through that gate. Maybe only a platoon, maybe the entire company–though more often the latter. We’d sweep through an area to disrupt any VC movements, set up ambushes of our own on trails thought to be used by VC infiltrators, or respond to some intelligence report concerning an enemy movement.
Booby traps (sorry, IEDs) were big worries, as were the snipers we inevitably would hear from. “Move out,” “spread out,” “down,” “dig in,” “go go!” the watchwords of daily life. Days and days in motion. Nights of fitful sleep in shallow fighting holes, fighting anticipation and red ants. In this environment, there were no historic battles or even newsworthy events.
But, although the stories of wars are most often told on the basis of the actions of large units (and large arrows drawn on large maps), they are lived one Marine, soldier, sailor, or airman at a time. Tens of thousands of “pixels” of individual experience in a massive, moving image.
For the following pixels, as Bud Eckert has recalled them, I am grateful. I’m doubly grateful that he has been able to juxtapose his memories of the day with his visions of this day in Vietnam, an amazing parallax view in time. So, with thanks to Bud for giving me permission to this, I will let him describe our common experience (in italics), with my occasional notes inserted in brackets.
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“Today [January 4, 2015] was an incredible experience. Early this morning I rented a Yamaha motorcycle and headed for the battalion’s old area of operations [south of Danang and Marble Mountain, in the so-called Mortar Belt]. Initially I thought I had crossed some type of time warp as everything was so different. Major highways crisscrossed our AOR along with major luxury resorts. There are no longer any hooches [bamboo structures with thatched roofs or worse]. Instead, big buildings everywhere. In Nui Kim Son (the village nearest our base camp–it is now about twenty times larger than it was in our time), I hired a guide named Tuoi, who could speak minimal English.
“I found the spot where Ottey was killed on August 23rd. Today, that spot is adjacent to a major golf course. Another golf course lies next to the area in which we walked into a terrible ambush. Eight of the 11 squad members were hit, and Zagerac was killed. I then found the spot where I was wounded and Hahn was killed. It lies not far from a large cemetery for thousands of dead Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers. [A search of GoogleEarth reveals the amazing extent of development since the war.]
[It fell to me days later to formally identify Hahn at the morgue of the naval hospital in Danang. In some ways, Mash, had it pegged. In thinking about the fortunes of many of my Marine comrades, I can say I was blessed not to be required to do this as often as they might have been. Still, it is duty that never leaves the memory.]
“I then drove all the way to An Hoa looking for the areas we had worked so many years ago. I had a wonderful seafood lunch on the beach and toured a number of ancient temples and counting houses before heading back to Nui Kim Son. I then spent over an hour climbing to the top of Marble Mountain, exploring a variety of caves containing among other things the statue of the sleeping Buddha. [Marble Mountain loomed over our positions. Sometimes it held snipers, and we were sure its caves held much more.]
“What happened next was amazing. I headed out to the Tu Cau area to the village where Alexander was killed in February. The area was largely like it was in our time with the exception of regular houses and electricity. Still, there was a lot of jungle and rice paddies. I was driving down a small trail when I spotted a large family gathering. I saw an old man who looked about my age. I walked up to the gathering and was invited in. It was a multi-generational family and the 71-year old man turned out to be a senior Viet Cong commander during the war. He was able to speak chapter and verse, through the interpreter, regarding a variety of major events he planned. One was the January attack on the desert position that resulted in over 20 Marine KIAs as well as over 80 dead VC.-It seemed that every event I brought up, he knew about … we spoke for over an hour and ended the meeting by toasting our dead brothers.”
Wish I had been there, Bud. Semper fi, Andy
The brothers Bud toasted from this period are: CPL Charles Alexander, LCPL Daniel Zagerac, LCPL Carl Ottey, LCPL Paul Hahn.
Next: Hill 41.