Reflections on Vietnamese Voices and the Novel “The Sympathizer”

The Sympathizer, a first novel by Vietnamese-born associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Viet Thanh Nguyen, is generating substantial buzz–assuming that glowing reviews in the Washington Post and the New York Times are buzz generators.  The blurb on the book’s cover would have the same effect, calling it “A magnificent feat of story telling. The Sympathizer is a novel of literary, historical, and political importance.” (Maxine Hong Kingston)

The Washington Post review, “‘The Sympathizer’: A cerebral thriller about Vietnam and its aftermath,” by book editor, Ron Charles, called attention to the book’s pluperfect timing of the book’s appearance: “Forty years ago this month, after a long, deadly release of flatulence from American politicians, the United States evacuated its personnel from Saigon in an operation appropriately code-named Frequent Wind. Whether you were alive then or not, the images of those panicked Vietnamese crushing the U.S. Embassy are tattooed on our collective consciousness … In the opening ­pages of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s extraordinary first novel, “The Sympathizer,” that terror feels so real that you’ll mistake your beating heart for helicopter blades thumping the air.” (What veteran ever lifted into a hot landing zone hasn’t felt that sensation?-av)

Vietnam War Marine Corps veteran-turned-author Philip Caputo reviewed The Sympathizer in the April 2nd issue of the NY Times.  I could not help but pay attention to this review because Caputo’s memoir about his time in Vietnam,  A Rumor of War (1977), was the first such book about the war I could bring myself to read. Though I didn’t like it, many considered it important as an early entry into the genre and still do.

I quote Caputo’s opening paragraphs at length, because they drove me to return to Rummaging after an overly long absence.

The more powerful a country is, the more disposed its people will be to see it as the lead actor in the sometimes farcical, often tragic pageant of history. So it is that we, citizens of a superpower, have viewed the Vietnam War as a solely American drama in which the febrile land of tigers and elephants was mere backdrop and the Vietnamese mere extras.

That outlook is reflected in the literature — and Vietnam was a very literary war, producing an immense library of fiction and nonfiction. Among all those volumes, you’ll find only a handful (Robert Olen Butler’s “A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain” comes to mind) with Vietnamese characters speaking in their own voices….

Which brings me to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s remarkable debut novel, “The Sympathizer.” ­Nguyen, born in Vietnam but raised in the United States, brings a distinct perspective to the war and its aftermath. His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light.

In any case,  the highlighted paragraphs caught me up short. How, I asked myself, could Caputo have overlooked some truly important and truly Vietnamese voices that have appeared in beautiful English translations in the United States? So, other than to agree with Caputo that the opening chapters (taking place in April 1975) are powerful indeed (my Kindle tells me I am 17-percent into it), I want to call attention to a couple of those Vietnamese “voices” resident on my bookshelves, voices that have moved me intensely.

Vietnamese VoicesThe Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam, by Bao Ninh, appeared in English translation in London in 1993, two years after it appeared in Hanoi. The translation was hugely well received in Europe, winning awards and frequent comparisons to Erich Marie Remarque’s classic All Quiet on the Western Front. They were richly deserved in my view. Indeed, Bao’s opening line was, to me breathtaking; “On the banks of the Ya Crong Poco River, on the northern flank of the B3 battlefield in the Central Highlands, the Missing in Action Remains-Gathering Team awaits the dry season of 1975.” How different from us really was that enemy soldier we tended to dehumanize? Maybe not so much?

While Bao Ninh’s work was accepted and well-received in Hanoi, the work of a woman, also a combat veteran of the war in Southeast Asia, Duong Thu Huong, was not. With the exception of her first novel, Paradise of the Blind, her work was banished in Vietnam and she was jailed for a time.  I have four of her books, all of which are powerful and speak in the Vietnamese voice. To me, the most affecting were Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name. When published in the United States in 1993, Paradise of the Blind was said to be the first Vietnamese novel ever to be translated and published in the States. It was originally published in Vietnamese in 1988. Because the book depicts the extremely difficult and, as the title suggests, ideologically guided recovery from the war, its writing and publication in Vietnam were acts of real courage.

Duong Thu Huong’s second book, Novel Without a Name, goes to combat itself–and has also been compared to All Quiet on the Western Front. The author had led a youth brigade into the battlefields, serving and fighting in tunnels, trenches, and jungles for seven–count’em–seven years. She writes that she was one of the four (of forty) volunteers to survive the experience. (Bao Ninh above spent ten or so years in the war zone, and an equally small percentage of his comrades lived to the end.) Novel With a Name is searing reading, especially as it involves women at war.  The other two novels of Duong Thu Huong’s that I have read, Memories of a Pure Spring (2000) and No Man’s Land (2005), like Paradise of the Blind, speak to life after “peace.” One other, Beyond Illusions (2002), I have missed, but I can guess its themes. The dust jackets say that four of her novels had been published in Vietnam, though they are no longer permitted. I would guess, however, they are still quietly making the rounds–as such things tend to do in tightly ruled societies.

I would add to the above the memoir of a North Vietnamese Colonel who left Vietnam and a job with a Communist Party newspaper in 1990, Bui Tin. His work, Following Ho Chi Minh, appeared in translation in 1995.  Finally, on my bookshelf I have a collection of poems, Flowers from Hell, by a Vietnamese poet, Nguyen Chi Thien, who spent many years in North Vietnamese prison camps. Published in 1984 by Yale’s Center for International and Area Studies, it is grim reading into the Vietnamese communist experience.

Back to The Sympathizer and Viet Thanh Nguyen: If I were to return to commenting on Nguyen’s book, I would say that the Vietnamese voice has been out there for decades now–if one only looked around for it (and I’m sure on looking harder one would find much more than the few above that have spoken to me).  But this particular voice—the  voice of the Vietnamese refugee, the voice of the Vietnamese displaced—is a distinct and powerful contribution, I will say confidently even if I am only 17-percent into the work.

I will close with appreciation of Nguyen’s life story, which resonates with my own rummagings into the past. From terror (my mother’s), to uncertainty, to rebuilding, to restoration of purpose and passion.

And given the enduring power of the images noted in the Washington Post review, I guess one could say Nguyen’s story (and the stories of all refugees and displaced persons) also resonate with this weekend. Perhaps in the survival stories growing from such experiences, there is reason to hope for the futures of those millions suffering in similar ways today. Would that such suffering were not on going.

A cause to pray for, as it always has been, these Holy Days.

SignaturePostscript (added on April 5, 2015 (Easter Sunday):  In Nguyen’s book,  The Sympathizer,  his prime characters were transported from Guam to the sprawling Marine Corps base in Camp Pendleton, California. Stationed there until June 1970, my last 18 months in the Corps , I couldn’t help but poke around the web. Indeed, Camp Pendleton took note of the 35th anniversary of the refugee resettlement in April  2010 with a photo exhibit. KPBS in California covered the story through an interview with a base historian

I expect some of my Marine Corps friends, those who stayed in at least, may well have been part of the effort to set the place up and to support the 50,000 refugees the story said were housed there.

Remembering with Sgt. Mike, II

Today, graphical works are very much in vogue.  So let me offer a bit of Lima 3/1 history in graphical mode, courtesy of Sgt. Hornsby, though I know he didn’t have us in mind.  These recollections are tied to Operation Cochise and offer, at least to me, a kind of window into life in mid-1967 in the southern end of  Military Region I of Vietnam.

Cochise-TheHotLZ Arrival in a hot and soggy LZ. As Bud Eckert and I described earlier, our landing into a (somewhat hot) LZ at the beginning of Cochise occasioned some worrisome moments as helicopter pilots reconsidered the wisdom of settling into the wet rice paddies chosen for our assault. We didn’t work our way down ropes to land, but the picture of uncertainty is clear enough in this cartoon. “Do we really want to put down here???” Well, we did, and we marched on.

 

Cochise-VC-and-People

Forced Provision of Food for NVA forces.  As we moved through the mountainous terrain, we spotted signs of Viet Cong and NVA activity, some of which spoke to the suffering the VC and NVA imposed on the people of the region. Though this cartoon speaks to forced recruitment, which we did hear of, what we saw most of was forced levies of rice on farmers in the substantial stores of it we encountered along our route through 2nd NVA Division territory. These storage vats (about the size of the Pod storage containers one can rent these days) well exceeded the kind of storage farmers had for themselves. They could only have been intended for NVA troops.

Cochise-CreepingCrudeCleanliness is next to Godliness–So God Seemed Remote. The helicopter landing mentioned earlier in the Cochise story put me into a flooded rice paddy, up to my armpits in mud and rice seedlings. This was neither good for the rice nor me, as a bath and change of clothing was not in my near-term future and I doubted the seedling could be replanted. I was mud-caked and filthy. And so I would remain until my combat clothing actually began to come apart. Somehow new uniforms arrived weeks later. Still, the cartoon had my diagnosis–and that of others in Lima right. We were a pretty cruddy lot in this journey.

Cochise-SkuzzyWelcomeHomeSmallerPut another way, I suppose we could have been said to be pretty skuzzy, witness the images left and right. But such is the way of war—not at all tidy. And so it was for many, many, many of us, Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers alike. Sgt Mike nailed it in this as in so many things. (More to follow, eventually.)

Remembering With Sgt. Mike

I generally thought of the Pacific Stars and Stripes as an official military voice of US forces in Vietnam and in the Pacific theater generally.  I have made no attempt to confirm this–today’s official-sounding papers like the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps Times are commercial enterprises.

Stars and Stripes somehow appeared at our compounds in regular intervals. The most pleasurable aspect of the paper—beyond the occasional kind report on our operations (see earlier post on Cochise) —was the series of cartoons entitled “With Sgt. Mike.” Drawn by former Marine Corps Sergeant Michael T. Horsnby,  the series  featured the slovenly “Sledge,” the fresh brown bar “Lieutenant Frisby,” and the relatively seasoned “Sgt. Mike.” The cartoons, according to Amazon.com originally appeared in the Army, Navy and Air Force Times, Saigon Press, Okinawa Morning Star, San Francisco Examiner, and other newspapers. (Amazon forgot Stars and Stripes, which is where I clipped the examples you will see in this and the next posts.)

Horsnby’s cartoons spoke to my experience–and, I’m sure to many, many others–so very, very well. This and another post or two will feature a number of Hornsby’s drawings that spoke most directly to me.

NewLt-1The “Boot Loootenant” In the beginning of his memoir, Bud Eckert alluded to the new platoon commander (me) who seemed so remote. This first image on the left speaks to a “first impression” one supposes a new platoon commander is obliged to make.   I went in with plenty of uncertainties. A couple I did have included the belief that I would have to care for my Marines in every way possible, but I could not grow so close to them that I could not bear to send them on missions that might cost them their lives. I may have been obliged to look tough—and remote—as this cartoon implies. But I also knew that others had been there longer than I, and I was obligated to learn from them.

NewLt-2“Don’t be Stupid, Loootenant!”  I have no doubt Hornsby would have sketched this scene differently had he been with me and my First Platoon on my first major operation in January 1967, Operation Stone. Captain Gibbs had put Lima 1 on the point of a regimental (or so I imagine today–let’s say it was more than just Lima Company) walk to a position we had to occupy to block enemy forces being pushed into an anvil (us) by other units in the region. It was important we got to the right place at the right time, and so, in a moment of doubt, I pulled out a map to check our location. So what if I was out in the middle of an open rice paddy? Who would think to spot me (with map spread out before him) as anybody worth shooting at? Duh.

So, wrong. Gunfire erupted from our right. An AK-47 round clipped my right eyebrow—resulting in a very bloodied map; a Marine on the right flank of our formation took a round through his neck; a corpsman collapsed unable to help, going down to the ground in fear—shouting a basic truth (straight out of Catch-22), “They’re trying to kill me!.” Irrefutable. Still, a cause for medical evacuation.

Maybe none of that would have happened had I kept my map in my pocket.

More with Sgt. Mike in a day or two. It’s almost midnight here.

 

 

 

Operations Pike and Cochise, 1–18 August 1967: Bit Part 3—Reflections (cont.)

Having closed Operation Cochise on the high note that we did on 17 August, who would have denied us the right to feel a bit triumphant? We hadn’t exactly taken Mount Suribachi, but it was a rare moment for us. Given the obligation of reporting on the outcome of engagements–with due regard for our own and enemy casualties—Cochise gave us a good number of bodies to count. The day stood in stark contrast to our mortar and rocket belt experience, in which we might have had one, two, or three bodies to report along with innumerable (real or imagined) blood stains.

But over the years, the triumphant feeling I felt in August 1967 turned into something less, and I began to question the importance of that day’s accomplishment. Instead, I came to wonder, over and over, if we had abandoned the opportunity to engage on our terms in a bigger and more important fight, one that might have precluded much more bloodshed later. Essentially, I came to believe—given the number of uniformed North Vietnamese troops we saw on the way to that mountain, the rice caches we spotted hidden in the hillsides, the troops we saw and fired on in the valley below, and the amount of fire we took as we moved through the region, that on top of that “boulder strewn” mountain we were looking down on the command center of the 2nd NVA , and we were on the edge of a much greater fight, had we only realized it and taken the opportunity. Instead, as Bud described it in our previous post, tired, thirsty, and somewhat depleted, and perhaps to meet another challenge perceived by higher headquarters, we abandoned that high ground.

Yes, we force-marched our way to a triumph, but, as Otto Lehrack described in his book, it was not long after we (Lima) left that the Fifth Marines we had been sent to help were again in fierce fights with units of the Second NVA Division. In what came to be known as Operation Swift, both sides suffered severe casualties, and I learned after Swift ended that Father Capodanno had been killed and  LtCol. Webster had been relieved of command, apparently for something he did or failed to do during the operation. I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation of the reasons.

One story had him refusing an order from the regiment–he’d had two of his four companies of 3/5 placed under the operational control of another battalion, 1/5–not a happy situation for a commander at that level.  Perhaps he protested to his cost; perhaps he was ordered to give up another one; perhaps he had been told to move units into untenable situations; perhaps some tactical decision he made was deemed to be a mistake. An alternative explanation suggested that he was held responsible for the death of Father Capodanno by giving him permission to accompany a company into combat. (Though I think a very much higher authority was responsible for that one.) I’ve talked to Col. Webster three times since seeing him during Operation Cochise. He has declined to address the topic.

Over the years I’d come to wonder if our departure from that mountaintop denied us the opportunity to prevent the events that followed in Operation Swift. I can’t confirm it today, of course, but the gnawing has persisted for a very long time, even with the knowledge we have gained in retrospect about the operational habits of the NVA in this region.

One source of such information many years later is an officer who went to Basic School with me, Andrew (“Andy”) Finlayson. On leaving Basic School and arriving in Vietnam, he became a special kind of grunt, a leader of so-called Force Recon Marines. As such, he and a handful of Marines were regularly flown into distant places to spot major enemy forces and either call in artillery or air strikes on them or simply report their movements for strategic and tactical planning. Andy would serve a second tour as an officer in the CIA-managed program to capture VC leaders known as the Phoenix Program. He would serve a full career in the Marines and retire as a full colonel.

I had wondered what Andy might have known about the events of Cochise and then Swift and the relief of Colonel Webster. Andy offered the following, which points to another kind of frustration that those of us in contact with the enemy would experience, an unwillingness or inability of higher headquarters to respond to information received from troops below:

I do not know why Lt. Col. Webster was relieved. In fact, I was unaware of his relief until you sent your email to me. I will try to go back an look at my participation in Operation Cochise, since it is in my OQR and I am sure I was patrolling during that operation. In fact, I think I may have confused it with Union II in my book Killer Kane since I was on a hill overlooking the area where both Capt Graham and Father Capodanno (both MOH winners) were killed. My team observed large groups of NVA moving towards the village where the incident took place and I tried to call in arty on them but the clearance was denied because of “friendlies nearby.” In the hours before the fire fight we observed groups of five or ten moving east, as I recall, all NVA with most having brush attached to their packs to make them hard to see. What was so frustrating to me was the fact that our reporting did not get down to the 5th Marines in time to warn them. If I had had their company frequencies, I could have called them and warned them. Instead, I relied on 1st Recon Battalion and the Division G-2 to relay our Salute reports to them. Never happened for some reason.

“Some reasons,” I’ve concluded are the stock answers to questions veterans of combat inevitably carry with them. The “what ifs,” the counterfactuals, and the unknown pieces prowl endlessly in their imaginations, offering explanations they will rarely, if ever, be able to substantiate.  The questions need not be–indeed seldom would be–about grand strategy, the sort of thing generals and military historians ponder endlessly to endlessly varying conclusions. The hardest questions are the ones veterans direct at themselves and those immediately above them, “what if I had (or had not) done X?” or “Why wasn’t the sergeant or the lieutenant there when I needed him?” or “Why didn’t someone tell me that?” or “Why did I choose that route instead of the other?” and on and on and on.  Post-traumatic stress—a game of Post-Traumatic 20, 30, 40, ∞  Questions.

But I would have little time for that game after Cochise. Lima returned to its 3/1 compound below Marble Mountain, where after some local patrol activity with First Platoon I was ordered to Okinawa to attend a one- or two-week course on planning and managing the combat loading of Marines and their heavy equipment onto amphibious landing ships–Embarkation School.

The Marines of Third Battalion, First Marines, a battery of 105mm howitzer cannons, a platoon of tanks and another of amphibious tracked vehicles and more–numbering about 1,100 Marines was going to get “special.” As Special Landing Force (SLF) 3/1, we were going to do what Marines did during World War II, launch attacks on the enemy from the sea.

And so, I was given a two-way ticket on military transport to Okinawa to learn how to put SLF 3/1, in fighting shape, onto the five ships that we would board, first for training in the Philippines and then back to war, this time in the north, by the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams.

I don’t remember the date I left, but it was surely in late September, not long after Operation Swift ended,  that in Danang I boarded an Air Force transport with about 60 passengers. Apart from the flight crew, I was the only living person on board. The others lay in repose in aluminum caskets, with one-way orders home.  Perhaps Father Capodanno was among them. Perhaps a Marine I knew. Perhaps a friend or two.

Again, no knowing.

* * *

Operations Pike and Cochise, 1–18 August 1967: Bit Part 2—Reflections

A historian whose book I edited some years ago said, “War stories are just war stories when told without any effort to explain their meaning.” True enough, I thought.  But meaning can take years to emerge. Perhaps 50 years? So it seemed with that book, which marked the 50th anniversary of an organization. And so it may be with my piecemeal memoir.

I have often told myself and others that I could remember every day of my time in Vietnam, though not in any particular order—a kaleidoscope of war stories changing with every twist.  I no longer believe that–at least not entirely.  I now see the experiences as one might see a Chinese landscape painting, with lone figures or prominent features visible, though indistinctly,  through fog and haze. Like the scene above—from a 54-foot long scroll depicting the entire length of the Yangtze River in China—strong impressions take shape, while details survive in pieces sufficient to offer, as a French artist/philosopher once wrote, clues to the “propensity of things.”

This way of looking or thinking about things is unsatisfying in some ways–for example, names and details others expect me to recognize have faded into the fog–sometimes embarrassingly–and the “facts” others proclaim may or may not ring bells with me.  This feeling of inadequacy generally leaves me bereft and wishing for forgiveness, as though I have failed in a responsibility. I suppose I could challenge the “facts,” but mostly I am left to say I mean no disrespect in not seeing them and beg forgiveness for not knowing what I should.

And so I offer the peaks from my memory scroll of time as Lima One Actual, my call-sign as the commander of the First Platoon of Lima Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, from late January to September 1967, give or take.

The personal, touching, enduring moments of Operations Pike and Cochise

First, Lima’s assignment to reinforce Third Battalion Fifth Marines during Operations Pike and Cochise brought about a reunion between me and the Marine officer, Major C. B. Webster, who commissioned me as a Second Lieutenant into the Marine Corps on Major Ohanesian’s recommendation. (See my earlier posts on entering the Corps from the University of Rochester.) By August 1967,  Webster had become a lieutenant colonel and had taken command of 3/5 in the Que Son Valley. Meeting him there was a special moment for me, though also a sad one. LtCol. Ohanesian had been killed, as had my good friend and classmate 2nd Lt. Tom King. Both died in bitter battles well north of us, near the DMZ, not long before this meeting. I would learn the details years later. The chance to serve with LtCol. Webster–in effect to show him that his faith in me as a potential Marine leader had been warranted–was special. That we (meaning the Marines of Lima 3/1) didn’t disappoint him made it even more so.

Second, how many of us can even imagine meeting  Saints?  Though I can’t know these things, I think I did meet a Saint in the person of Father Vincent Capodanno, the Jesuit Catholic chaplain of 3/5. Father Capodanno walked with Lima One, beside me,  on a patrol during either Operation Pike or early in Cochise. In the months I led Lima One, no other chaplain walked through hostile territory with my platoon or any other platoon of Lima. I don’t remember our conversation precisely, but I remember the feeling, its “propensity.” Father Capodanno was warming and comforting and clearly unafraid. I am sure we talked of New York City—he was from Staten Island, I was from the Bronx–and other things. I just remember connecting. A presence I have never forgotten.

The primary window over the chapel at the Marine Corps Heritage Museum.
The primary window over the chapel at the Marine Corps Heritage Museum.

Father Capodanno would earn the Medal of Honor when he died in action during Operation Swift just a couple of weeks after he walked with Lima 1. A biography, the very aptly titled “Grunt Padre: The Service and Sacrifice of Father Vincent Capodanno, Vietnam 1966–1967,” by Fr. Daniel L. Mode, would tell his full story quite well. More about that next, but for now I will note that the glass in the beautiful chapel at the Marine Corps Heritage Museum in Quantico, VA, was dedicated by friends in his name. It is a beautiful place of reflection. You don’t have to be a Marine to visit, and Wonder.

More to follow, another day.

Semper fi, AV

Operations Pike and Cochise, 1–18 August 1967: Bit Part 1

In mid-January, during his personal tour of 3/1 operational areas, Bud Eckert recalled Operation Cochise in some detail (I reproduce it below) and concluded with the following observation:

Operation Cochise was a perfect operation for Lima Company, so unlike any other operation we had participated in. No major casualties, beautiful countryside, without mines or booby traps, and a defeated enemy.

Corporal Santos Salinas—also of my First Platoon—was quoted in Otto Lehrack’s 2010 history of the many fights in the Que Son region, “The Road of 10, 000 Pains.” He said,

It makes all the humping worthwhile when you hit them like that.

Company Commander Gibbs remembered,

We had hand-to-hand combat and killed every one of them….We only had one walking wounded and no medevacs and no KIAs.

I called it “My birthday present” in the Stars and Stripes clipping, shown above, which I mailed to my parents. (Somehow, I thought, that would keep my mother from worrying about her only son. )

Portions of what Bud recalled in the brief account he shared during his January visit appeared in Lehrack’s book. (To his great credit, Lehrack went to great pains to get the perspectives of individual Marines in the long running battle against the Second NVA Division in the Que Son Basin.)  As to my memories, Bud’s account pretty much accords with them, though I think he left a few things out—the biggest being that Cochise was a followup to another operation in the region, Pike, which some regarded as pretty important, though in my memory of it—the sweeps through one village after another; one hilltop climbed after another; all through blazing heat— Operation Pike produced little but scary moments and exhaustion.  Other differences between us are relatively small, accounted for by different positions and different views in long lines and by the differing (and somewhat erratic) ways in which we all process and preserve memories of such things.

So following is Bud’s account of our success, such as it was in the larger scheme of things, that August. I will turn to my reflections on the operations of that month in my next round of rummagings. They are reflections that pretty much transcend the particulars of Pike, Cochise, or any of the operations we’d engaged in up to that point.

Operation Cochise-by Bud Eckert, 12 January 2015 [with my notes in italics every now and then]
A number of major battles took place in [the Que Son] area in 1967 between the 2nd North Vietnamese Army Division and elements of the First Marine Division.  As a result of these battles, the 2nd NVA was largely destroyed and was unable to fulfill its primary mission of cutting Vietnam in half during the Tet Offensive [still some five months or more away, in early 1968]. Over 900 Marines were killed in these battles. Various studies concluded that more than half of these Marines were killed as a result of malfunctioning M16s. [As Bud suggests, this is arguable, though there is no doubt malfunctioning M16s cost lives.]

When Lima Company returned to the 3/1 base in early August, we were excited to learn that we would be opconned (sent to reinforce) to the 5th Marines and that we would be involved in a major operation in the Que Son Valley.  We were overjoyed to be getting out of the 3/1’s normal area of operation, which was full of booby traps, ambushes, and an ever elusive [evasive] enemy. [Most of us were also acutely aware of the fact that Lima Company had sat out two of the most substantial engagements of the war, Operations Union I and Union II that spring, while we occupied the relatively placid defensive perimeter surrounding Danang.]

Rough approximations of Pike and Cochise Operational Areas
Rough approximations of Pike and Cochise Operational Areas

[After the short-lived Operation Pike. See the map on left for a very, very rough approximation— drawn from ancient memory—of the operational areas for Lima Company of Operations Pike and Cochise. I stand ready to be corrected in a heartbeat. ] After a few days of rest we were told to saddle up and head to the area where helicopters would pick us up—it was early morning when we flew into a small clearing. It was a hot landing zone and we were taking heavy fire—I was in the lead helicopter and the crew chief started yelling “out, out, out.” The helicopter was hovering about 12 feet above the ground. I was the fourth Marine to exit the ramp when i heard the crew chief yell “stop, stop, stop.” It was too late as my momentum carried me out of the aircraft-four of us felt pretty lonely for the next 10 minutes as gun ships flew overhead trying to suppress the enemy fire. [I’m reasonably sure that Bud’s squad was in the same CH-46 helicopter I was in, and, I was actually the first one out, jumping into a flooded rice paddy, submerged up to my armpits in mud. It was a scary few minutes, as I turned over and over in my mind how I would get us out if we were, as it seemed, being abandoned]  We were joined by the rest of the company a short while later and started a trek which seemed to last forever. (From left (west) to right (east) in the red ellipse on the map.] Up and down jungle-covered mountains, which were at the same time beautiful as well as foreboding.

At dusk we set up near the crest of a large mountain. A company from the 5th Marines occupied the other side of the crest. The next afternoon a fire started on the top of the hill due to incoming enemy fire. Someone yelled out to throw grenades to put the fire out. It was a pretty stupid idea as a number of men from the Fifth Marines ended up receiving small shrapnel wounds.

it was amazing what Marines were expected to carry. Besides our weapons, ammunition, grenades, water, flares, explosives , mortar and machine gun ammunition, it seemed there was always something else to carry. I remember once having to carry a 45 lb.  triangular shape charge [an explosive device—very finely designed and in no way improvised—to explode on command and direct shrapnel in a specific direction] for what seemed like miles….  A Native American Marine was carrying a green box with straps, which had to have weighed 60 pounds. Nobody knew what was inside this sealed metal box, but carry it we did. The Marine fell down the side of a hill and badly wrecked his knee. I ended up carrying the metal box for the next three days until a resupply helicopter inexplicably flew it out.

For days and days we continued our trek. On one particular day we were taking heavy fire. We had been out of water for hours and were really feeling the effects of dehydration. A Marine who no one recognized,someone said he was a  forward air controller, had been killed and four of us were carrying his large body up the side of a boulder strewn mountain, when machine gunner PFC Jack Atkins went down with heat exhaustion. I started dragging Atkins up the hill when i noticed an old rice paddy with a film of mud on top 40 meters to my right. I momentarily dropped Atkins and crawled under fire to the paddy and scraped mud into one of my canteens. When we finally reached the top of the craggy mountain I took a sock off and used it to strain the water from the mud. Each squad member got enough liquid to wet lips and tongue.

Napalm was exploding all around us. It sort of looked like the mother of all Fourth of July’s. Later that night, 2nd Platoon was tasked with collecting all canteens and humping a couple of clicks [kilometers] to a small stream. To this day i do not know who ended up with my dirt-encrusted canteen. [Good bits of this do not exist in my memory or exist in different order—though it is not really important any more. I do recall the climb up the boulder-strewn mountain, under fire. It fell to me to do a bit of my own hauling of a human being, this one living. Our interpreter, afraid to face the gunfire, refused to go up. Needing him, I just picked him up and threw him over my shoulder and hauled him up to the crest (In a  sense he was my “brother,” and he certainly was not heavy.) Near the top, we dug in as best as we could for the night. That place, that hillside and the valley below it, haunts me still. I’ll explain later.]

[The next day, after a medevac helicopter took out the heat exhausted, and the interpreter, we were ordered to leave rapidly, and Lima was assigned to the point, First Platoon in the lead.]  Lima was leading three other companies. I was point man for the whole shebang—we reached a large draw that looked spooky as hell–a decision was made [I ordered it] that my squad would sprint across the 200 meter draw, climb a hill to the point where we could lay down a base of fire for the rest of the Marines as they ran through the open area. [The trail we were following actually took us through the right edge of a small valley/gully (a couple of hundred yards deep to our left). We had high ground immediately to our right and high ground to the left beyond the little flat space–with no protection if we came under fire. It was perfect ambush territory if we were not paying attention.] Sure enough, as the rest of the column made its way across open ground, the NVA started to direct heavy fire at the crossing Marines. The squad was in a perfect position and we were able to lay it on the NVA and largely suppress the enemy fire. The only problem was we were not able to see the crossing Marines and did not know the last Marine had gotten past the draw. We felt pretty lonely as we ran for a good 20 minutes trying to find the end of the column with virtually all of our ammo expended. [That was on me. I had understood that another squad from the platoon behind us would replace Bud’s as it arrived. I also understood that we would reconnect in short order. Neither happened and the squad was furious with me–can’t say that I blamed it.]

As the operation was drawing to an end, Lima Company had its most glorious  moment of the war [at least as we knew it in 1967 and early 1968].  Second platoon was out on a patrol and was about a kilometer away from the company position.  A resupply helicopter flew over its position. A few hundred yards away, one stupid, stupid NVA shot at the helicopter and gave away the position of some 45 NVA  hunkered down in a perfect ambush position. [I think they were spotted for other reasons, as well.] The rest of Lima company was called up. [Captain Gibbs set up an assault of two platoons on line, First Platoon on the right] I was on the extreme right flank of the company line with a Marine named Patton. We received the word to attack. We did not receive the word that the company was going to run halfway to the enemy position and lay down a base of fire. [Have to admit, I don’t remember such an order being given. My recollection is that it was a nonstop affair.] Patton and i kept running not knowing that we were alone. As we slid into the gully where the enemy were located we almost bumped into two NVA soldiers. Everyone except for me fired at once.  I had the M79 grenade launcher and the round would not detonate from that distance. Without thinking, i rolled on my back,pointed the barrel straight up, gave it a little Kentucky windage, and pulled the trigger. As i watched the round fly skyward it looked like it was going straight up which meant it would be dropping right back on us. It was a long few seconds with my wondering if I was the stupidest Marine on earth. It ended up being a miracle shot. We ran past the two dead NVA and Patton was able to pour fire into the back of the enemy position while the rest of the company rushed into the gully from the front. All of the enemy were killed. Lima Company suffered only one wounded.

After the fighting was over, the resupply helicopter and a major stepped out of the aircraft and asked our skipper if he could shake hands with the two Marines who had so boldly run ahead of all the Marines to confront the enemy. While the major was commending  our actions and shaking our hands neither Patton nor I ventured to explain that we thought everyone else was running  right with us.

—————————–

So, Bud—we all—had good reason to feel good about that day, 17 August 1967, that operation, that “present” of a one-sided firefight. WelcomeHomeSmallerWe had made a contribution. I didn’t doubt it then either. Hence the smiles on our faces as we returned to our base area in the shadow of Marble Mountain just below Danang.

Eventually, I came to see it and Operation Cochise differently.

* * *

Operations Pike and Cochise, 1–18 August 1967: Bit Parts in Grand Strategy

Preface

I own only three things I carried with me in Vietnam in 1967: a pair of well-worn, scuffed combat boots–today they are hard as cardboard; a precious poncho liner–a symbol of safety (and for emergency use) I keep in my car at all times; and two map sheets (taped together in 1967) I used during visits to a forbidding place, a place in which many–military men of both sides and civilians–died, were hurt, and suffered. The map will help with this two-part episode, as will Bud’s remembrance of it from his January 2015 visit.
(photo above courtesy of Ltc. Joe Gibbs, USMC-Ret)

* * *

Part I: Introduction

Of the many books written about the Vietnam War—30,000 by one, probably iffy, estimate—and in particular of the books written about Marines in that war, I dare say the majority have dealt with the bloody, conventional war-like fights in the northern tier of I Corps, the combat zone abutting the “Demilitarized” Zone separating the two Vietnams.  First Platoon, Lima Company, would find itself there in December 1967.

Until then, as I’d noted before, Lima patrolled territory just below Danang, serving as part of the shield protecting our major facilities in Danang, which was located along the South China Sea about in the middle of I Corps.

The units then assigned to that part of Danang’s shield,  Lima and the other three companies of the 3rd Battalion, First Regiment of the First Marine Division, were regularly pulled out to participate in large regimental or even division-sized operations in areas thought or known to be occupied by major North Vietnamese units. For the First Marine Regiment, most of these operations took place well south and somewhat west of this patrol area. It was territory usually patrolled by the Fifth Regiment of the First Division. (Don’t ask about the numbering system—the explanation is historical.)

At least twice during Bud’s and my tours, Lima was brought into such operations. In each case the territory was in and around the Que Son Valley (also the name of a village in it), which, more or less, is thought of as the space between and above two communities almost worthy to be called cities, Hiep Duc and Tam Ky (see my combined two sheets, “Map 1,” below [give it time to load; it is a large file, and once opened it can be enlarged and scrolled around. And forgive the wrinkles of the folds; it hasn’t been opened in some decades before now.]).

Map 1: The Que Son Region. Hiep Duc on left; Que Son in upper left; Tam Ky right; South China Sea far right.
Map 1: The Que Son Region. Hiep Duc on left; Que Son in upper left; Tam Ky right; South China Sea far right.

Both the territory—mountains, foothills, and paddies—and the enemy were unfamiliar to us, putting us in something of a disadvantage on each visit—at least at a greater disadvantage than the 5th Marines, who had worked the region, painfully, for months.

We were also at a bit of a disadvantage because the full strategic picture wasn’t totally clear to us, at least it wasn’t in my memory of those days. Perhaps I knew better then, but for years I wondered many times about the larger meaning of our, Lima’s, relatively brief operational efforts in the Que Son region. These were efforts that felt different, very much more important than the toings and froings in the mortar and rocket belts around Danang.  We were really part of something much bigger. Still, even though we experienced a notable, even newsworthy, win, I have felt for years that in the case of Operation Cochise, we really missed a big opportunity to damage beyond repair one of the NVA’s best fighting units, its Second Division. And although Operation Pike is hardly worth talking about—only legal trouble would follow me from it months later—Cochise was memorable.

The more memorable to follow in the next installment (together with some references for further reading).

* * *

On the Idealistic Young and Heroism

The recently reported killing in Syria of Kayla Mueller by the despicable ISIS (ISIL in official US government parlance) murderers brings me back to distant memories of undergraduate and later days at the University of Rochester and the Vietnam War era.

The love of my last two years of life at the University of Rochester (1964-66) was a smart, beautiful, redheaded, English major named Sandra Lee Taplin.  She was from Clarence, a town near Buffalo, New York.  That she cared for me at all is, in retrospect, a little hard to understand. She took her studies seriously (a straight A student, while I scrapped along at a few hundredths of a percentage point above a passing C), didn’t drink much (I was a fairly typical frat bozo who kept too many empty beer bottles on display to prove manliness), and spent much time in Rush Rhees Library (where I regularly joined her in studying–most likely the only reason I possessed those few hundredths of a percentage points noted above).

Your blogger and Sandy (left) together at a University of Rochester NROTC event in 1965.  On the right are Dick Hulsander and his wife-to-be Carol. We both entered the Marine Corps. Carol and Dick are together to this day--a great couple!
Your blogger and Sandy (left) together at a University of Rochester NROTC event in 1965. On the right are Dick Hulsander and his wife-to-be Carol. We both entered the Marine Corps. Carol and Dick are together to this day–a great couple!

As my first posts noted, I was destined for the Marine Corps— provided  I graduated (thank you, Sandy.) At some point during the five months of training after my commissioning to be an officer in Quantico, Virginia, Sandy wrote to tell me that our relationship was over. I don’t possess her “Dear John” letter any longer, but my memory of it ties her decision to my impending  involvement in the war in Vietnam and her inability to support it. I could be wrong in remembering it that way, and even if that is what she said, there may have been other reasons of her own, but it doesn’t matter. I accepted it. Anger toward her was simply not possible for me. I did love her.  Love is not “ownership” and love allows for parting.

I did look Sandy up after my tour ended  in February 1968. She was a senior then. I recall meeting her, with others, in Todd Student Union on campus and talking about the war. Knowing she had come to oppose it, I remember defending it. I told her of the acts of the Viet Cong–stealing the harvests of the peasants and forcing young men to join their forces and of their atrocities on the battlefields. It was our last conversation. I can’t say it ended badly or well. It just ended.

I suppose we all think back on past relationships and wonder where those acquaintances, friends, and loves have gotten to. A couple I have had the good fortune to reconnect with–and I am happy for reconnections.

This would not happen with Sandy. Somewhere along the line I learned she went into the Peace Corps after graduating and on her first assignment (I wrongly thought in El Salvador) she had died. I had details wrong—the location and the reason. But she had died for a serious cause in Bolivia, a seriously good cause. One source: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19690920&id=RfRNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=sYoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5994,2267724

I recount this story here because I want to make plain that sacrifice for a greater good takes many forms—not all of them having to do with warfare and arms. English-major Sandra Lee Taplin turned to the Peace Corps, and she made the “ultimate sacrifice.”

I often wonder if a conversation Sandy and I had about the study of English (English literature, actually) had anything to do with her decision. We shared the major. She majored in the subject because it was her passion. I majored in it because I couldn’t succeed in (or like) biology, psychology, or math. I had told her the major was pointless. What effect could one ever have on anything by studying that field? It was a tearful exchange for her. It was easy for me (hatefully so in repeated, involuntary recollection). English mattered little to me as a field. I managed a BA and a commission in the Marine Corps and–it turned out–a living. The major mattered almost nothing in that equation.

Did Sandy’s decision to go into the Peace Corps in any way grow out of that conversation? I’ll never know.

But I admire and hold her in great esteem for having made the decision.

These days the talk of “ultimate sacrifice” comes easy and has become kind of trite sounding when applied to those who have died bearing arms.

In Sandra Lee Taplin’s case, her dying in Bolivia is not at all so. I was and continue to be awed.

 

A Brief Return to the Subject of Displaced Persons

Down time during this past weekend in New York and on the train back to Washington  led me back to the period of my early life in Europe as a displaced person. (Remember? I promised I would bounce around–And to Vietnam and other things I will return.)

Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article by journalist Eric Lichtblau, who is researching the period. He stumbled on some pretty unfortunate findings about the state of Displaced Persons (DPs), especially the state of Jewish survivors of death camps (who were lumped into the DP category). The story, entitled “Surviving the Nazis Only to Be Jailed by America” included a description of a 1945 investigation into George Patton’s management of DP camps immediately after the conclusion of hostilities. The report indicted the American war hero for his callous and prejudicial views of Jewish and other refugees of the war–at points quoting his horrific views of people forced to live in utter squalor and degradation.

It is a depressing read. And like so many stories of the day it reflects certain truths and not others–the others being the relatively good treatment many of us (non-Jewish refugees) did receive in many places. Those who follow the link above to the story, might want to read some of the comments–more than 70 as I write this–which refer to the many personal realities of those days, each somewhat different and many somewhat like my own family’s and the families of Estonian and other immigrant friends.  Collectively they serve as humbling reminders about the breadth of suffering and the range of individual heroism of people of the day–for those of my generation, mainly parents now mostly gone, who hardly ever complained of the days.

The common good news, I’m thinking, was that so many survived and went on to decent lives–so often in the United States where the White House and Congress could find room in their hearts and in the land for displaced persons through the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, mentioned earlier.

But still saddening is the continuing unfortunate truth that more and more displaced persons (refugees) are being created daily. And so I give credit to Angelina Jolie, a special envoy of the UN High Commission for Refugees, who wrote of the problem in Syria and Iraq  in a January 27th article, “A New Level of Suffering.” In one paragraph she describes the scale of the problem today:

“When the United Nations refugee agency was created after World War II, it was intended to help people return to their homes after conflict. It wasn’t created to feed, year after year, people who may never go home, whose children will be born stateless, and whose countries may never see peace. But that is the situation today, with 51 million refugees, asylum-seekers or displaced people worldwide, more than at any time in the organization’s history.”

I’m certain not enough is being done by those who possess the power and money to  help in big ways, but I also wonder if I am doing enough to help in small ways. The answer is certainly, “No.”  Perhaps by the time I return to this I will have found some way.

a

A Month Patrolling from Hill 41

So, in June 1967, from 3/1’s base area on the beach–where “Circumference’s” companies had patrolled an area within range of mortars (inside the “Mortar Belt”)–Lima was detached and assigned westward to a more distant protection zone, the “Rocket Belt.”  Our new, company-sized base area, Hill 41,  was located on a piece of high ground just east of a mountain range that provided safe haven for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units.

Capt. Joe Gibbs III, USMC, on Hill 41, overlooking the flatlands east of Hill 41.
Capt. Joe Gibbs III, USMC, on Hill 41, overlooking the flatlands east of Hill 41.

We were now well-removed from the beach and sand that defined the topography of our lives during the late “winter” and early “spring” of 1967.  We were done with a period of experimentation with a new weapon–the Stoner weapon system, another story entirely–but we were still in a life of patrolling.  Here, at the edge of territory owned by main force enemy units, we tended to patrol in larger, platoon-sized units. Our goal: stumble on (that is, in more formal language, “engage”) enemy units looking to infiltrate Danang’s defenses and attack, directly or through mortar or longer-range rocket fire, the major installations of the city.

Indeed, we patrolled, and we patrolled, and we patrolled. And much of that patrolling took place at night. What sleep we managed was most often achieved during the hot days of June–to say it was fitful and unsatisfying sleep is an understatement. At night, we moved, we watched, we stopped, we listened, we moved, and hoped we were alert enough to the other dangers, the booby traps, the mines, the ambush, etc. And as Bud will recall below, we took casualties.

Each meant a helicopter medevac, usually with me in the middle of a rice paddy guiding a Huey helicopter to a night-landing, as a corpsman and Marines prepared to rush the wounded to the bird—always anticipating sniper fire from a nearby tree line. Somehow, this impossible scenario always worked out. Those pilots were heroic wonders!

Of course, Lima wasn’t alone in this defensive mission inside the “rocket belt,” and at least once Lima 1 came within a hair of taking under fire a nearby patrolling Marine platoon from another zone within the belt. (I remember some very fiercely spoken four letter words in a radio exchange with a platoon leader of another unit that had strayed into our territory, and which we were poised to wipe out on my command.)  It was a period of extraordinarily high tension and great fatigue.

And, even though I had come to believe that, as fighting units, Lima Company and Lima 1 really worked and moved magnificently well together, by mid-month, one could argue we had failed our mission, as Bud’s remembrance of the period will show:

Woke up early this morning [January 2015] and travelled about twenty miles to the vicinity of Hill 41 where Lima spent the month of June. Memories from that month:

SSgt Dean lost his foot to a booby trap and insisted on trying to walk on his own power to the helicopter. SSgt Dean was hard Corps. He had captured the last Japanese soldier on Guam in 1964.

Don Lappegaard was wounded by a booby trap and had about 100 shrapnel wounds including the loss of part of his foot

USMC had run out of M26 grenades and issued us old pineapple grenades which had shorter fuses than the grenades we were accustomed to. One night I was in a foxhole with Harry Gross, he pulled a pin on the grenade and let the spoon fly. He held the grenade too long before he threw it. The grenade exploded too close and Harry got a good-sized hunk of shrapnel into the bridge of his eye. It was pitch black and no one had a flashlight. Harry spent the rest of the night moaning and did not appreciate my muffled laughter.

My squad was detached to a CAC Unit [these were small Marine entities assigned to villages that were important to perimeter defenses to help prevent   takeovers of them] which Intel said was supposed to get hit by an attack. Sure enough the next night the V.C. started pushing about 100 civilians carrying lanterns in front of them as cover for the attack. I put some M79 rounds around the flanks of the crowd which resulted in the people dispersing and the V.C. calling it a night.

On June 18th the platoon was set up in the jungle. About 2000 , I took four Marines out to set up listening posts. About 50 meters outside of our position I saw three or four figures moving toward us. We ended up having a running gunfight. We had just returned to our platoon night time position when the ground started vibrating. It turned out that an NVA rocket position was less than a click away. Their first salvos hit the bomb storage area at the airbase in Da Nang. It was pure bedlam and probably the most costly attack on an airfield during the history of the Vietnam conflict. More than twenty aircraft were destroyed and the runways were shut down for days. As we rushed towards the NVA position our own aircraft nearly got us. I had a smoking pipe I had picked up on R and R and never saw it again. It was my only creature comfort.

Bud is right. That night defined “bedlam.”  World War II seemed to have erupted again: the rockets, the mass of artillery fire from Danang directed toward the not too distant rocket firing place (but seemingly toward us!!)  — the rocket shooters were tucked in a draw at the foot of the mountain range to our west. Then came “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” a C-47 equipped with machine guns that exploded onto the scene.  No July 4th scene has ever surpassed the power of what we witnessed, and heard, that night.

I know we ended that night frustrated beyond words. Even though we had a fix on the origins of the rockets, we were not allowed to run them down. A big disappointment, as I remember it.

And, as to Bud’s reference to creature comforts, yes, they were few, amounting only to whatever precious things one might have carried. In my mind, it was a matter of basics: field rations, cigarettes included, a poncho and a nylon poncho liner–a most precious piece of my gear that I possess and treasure, for symbolic reasons, to this day.  It is wrapped up and fixed to my belt, behind me, in the below image.  Now, I carry it with me in my car, wherever I go,

About to head out on a patrol. Checking routes.
About to head out on a patrol. Checking routes.

Enough for now. More reflections next time.

(And as usual, these are my and Bud’s memories so many years later. Corrections, different perspectives, and different interpretations from Lima 3/1 Marines are most welcome. –Lima One Actual sends)