I joined the company in the spring of l966 at camp Schwab, Okinawa, wearing the stripes of a Sergeant, waiting anxiously for the mail to arrive with a promotion to Staff Sergeant. This was a bit of a change in expectations as my orders had originally been to report to IIIMAF "in-country". However, it seems my predecessor as the platoon sergeant of the first platoon, SSGT Muro, had suffered a fall and a broken leg during work-up training in the Northern training area, and was not going to be healed in time to go south with the company.I knew Muro, as he had left HQ. Co. RTR at San Diego just weeks ahead of me, where I had finished up a four-year tour as a D.I.. As is so often the case in our fraternal order, I never saw him again. The training on Oki was nearly done, and we were soon embarked on the APA Pickaway, headed south along with the Princeton and Alamo as the Special Landing Force. The loading was a little unusual for those times, as we had only two rifle companies on board, in an era where an APA normally carried an entire battalion. Kilo was designated as the tractor company, which meant that we would be going ashore in Amtracks from the Alamo, and India would be doing the classic Papa boat assault. Lima and Mike companies were aboard the Princeton, and would be flying ashore in choppers. Having gotten that cherished rocker before leaving Schwab, life aboard was not too onerous, considering that SSGTS and 1ST Class Corpsmen lived in the fo'csle. GYSGT James and ISTSGT Locken lived even better, being ensconced in the Chief's quarters. Our officers, of course, were up in Officer's country, where, it was rumored, they had stewards to make up their racks, and serve them The Navy chow (Which, I think, they had to pay extra for?). Our days were filed with the usual shipboard routines for Marines, which have changed little since the Navy quit using sails¼¼¼. Navy chow was pretty good, and we soon learned that the crew's nickname for their Captain was the Colonel, as he was reputed to like Marines better than his own crew. (This was later borne out by his treatment of us when we returned to the ship after operation Hastings) One of the fonder memories of this brief interlude as we sailed toward the Philippines was coming through the starboard chow line the first or second night aboard and seeing hanging above the line a large medal, obviously a gag, inscribed "awarded to Sgt Rock of Easy Company". Sitting down at the 1stClass
Bosun's table, I had to ask, "what's the medal all about, Boats? He told us that Sgt. Rock was a seaman deuce who was assigned to the mike boat that he (boats) was the cox'sun on. Seems that before 3/5 was aboard, they had taken 1/5 on a riverine operation upriver some where on the coast of Vietnam. The seaman had been assigned to man a .50cal BMG sandbagged on the port side of the engine deck, close by the coxsun's tower. Their trip upriver had been uneventful, but on the return trip, they had run into and through a waiting ambush on both banks of the river. "Boats" said"this kid was workin' out with that fifty, when all of a sudden he quit firing, reached for his .45 lying on the sandbags, racked the slide, and cranked off all the rounds he had, then went back to shooting the fifty. Once we were clear, I grabbed him by the stacking swivel and asked him why he did that? - - - And this dummy says,"Boats, I never fired a .45 in combat before, and that seemed like a pretty good chance!"

We were aboard for several days when we pulled into Subic Bay, the Philippines, for liberty and jungle survival training. The jungle training area was a few miles outside Subic, in the Philippine National Forrest. We carried minimal gear and very few rations. These included raw rice carried in a sock, sort of slung about the neck and shoulders. It was extremely hot and humid on the hike up, and not much better when we got out of the direct sunlight and into the depths of the jungle. Many of us, yours truly included, were on the verge of heat exhaustion------soaked, headachy, fatigued, and not too effective at that point. Our instructors, one per company, were Negritoes, or Philippine

Aborigines. Ours was a tiny man, of indeterminate age, who was absolutely at home in the jungle. With no more materiel than a sharp bolo machete, he quickly had constructed a raised sleeping platform of bamboo lashed with rattan vine, made a serviceable roof of banana leaves, started a fire with no matches, found fresh drinking water in sections of green bamboo, showed us how to dam a stream with banana leaves, and find fresh water snails and catch small fish with our bare hands. He cut a section of green bamboo about four inches in diameter, sliced a wedge-shaped piece out of the top, put a handful of rice, some snails, and a couple small fish inside, slipped the wedge back in place, and put the whole thing in the fire. When it was done, he split off the top half, split two chopsticks off of that, and proceeded to have supper. Doing dishes was a simple matter of tossing the remainder into the fire. Over the next two days, he taught us about the jungle, the edible plants, the medicinal plants, which way to twist a vine to make a rope, etc. He spoke passable English, and we learned that he had first gone into the bush in 1936 for the government, hunting down Huks (Philippine Communist rebels), had been in the bush when WWII broke out, and did not come out of the bush until the war was over. In that time, he had gotten married, and had two children, with the family never staying in one place more than three nights. He claimed a personal count of 42 Japanese soldiers, and said his favorite weapon was the crossbow for a throat shot at 25 yards. When we last saw him, he was humping a pack of unbelievable size for a man of his stature, filled with our leftover C-rations and grinning from ear to ear. In all my sixty years, I have never seen another being who was so completely one with his surroundings..At the time I was certainly hoping the Vietnamese we would encounter later were all mama's boys from the city.

Re-enlistment----My first re-enlistment had occurred in 1960 at Treasure Island between back-to-back tours on OKI and the oath of enlistment was administered by a WM CWO-4. This time, with K/3/5 it was going to also be a little on the unusual side; The six-year anniversary of that day at TI came as we were off the coast of Vietnam (side note------marines didn't refer to "the "Nam" for a long time----that was largely an army and media convention) Being the tractor company, Kilo had to do a pre-D Day transfer from our ship to Alamo, so at 04:30 in the morning Gysgt James,1SGTLocken and I mustered in Captain Maresco's stateroom.where the deed was done. Sometime after dawn, we went over the side, on our way to our first taste of combat, Operation Deckhouse One.
The wisdom of signing on for another six was briefly questioned in my mind a couple of days later, but what the hell, I'd trained nine years for this, and just had to find out what it was really like. Now, the old-timers of my day were a lot of salty guys who had been through Korea some at Inchon, and others who had made several landings in the Pacific. They all told the same story, which was that the Navy intentionally screws with the Marines before a landing in order to get them so pissed off, that they're ready to kill the first thing they see when the ramp goes down. I had long ago dismissed this as another tale from that mythical organization that has existed since 11 November of 1775, known as "the Old Corps"

Now, it was blistering hot, humid, and we had broken out a full Basic Allowance of Ammo, and were packing it as well as marching packs. It was a glassy calm sea, there wasn't a bad guy within 50 miles, the companionway was down on Pickaway, and Alamo not only had her companionway down, she also had her stern gate open. It seemed pretty logical, that for what amounted to an administrative move, that we would just stroll down the companionway to the waiting Mike boat, motor over to Alamo, and either just walk up the companionway, or possibly run inside the well deck, drop our ramp and just walk off.----------It was not to be, and what actually evolved began to weaken my conviction that the oldtimers were just gassing. We had to go down the nets! Some of our people were humping 70-80 POUNDS, and cargo nets can be dangerous in their own right. Once we were all jammed in the Mike boat, it was a short run over to Alamo, and the breeze was welcome. Arriving at Alamo, we pulled up alongside the starboard wing wall at the stern, and sure enough, we got to climb up the nets! To add insult to injury, this was in full view of a perfectly good companionway, and, the nets were directly under a davit where one of the ship's boats had just been lifted out of the water. The boat was still swung out, and dripping, so our weapons and we were being rained on with salt water. What little troop berthing existed on this class LSD was fully occupied by the embarked support units, and we were instructed to just find the best place we could, and crash. I spotted what looked like pretty prime territory under a bunch of deuce and a half trucks on the weather deck, and promptly put the first platoon under them where the decks that were-to be our beds that night were relatively cooler. Ensolite sleeping pads had not been invented yet, and any air mattresses kilo owned were packed away in company supply boxes below decks back on the Pickaway, so it was the best of a not-too-good situation. It didn't last long------a Master at Arms insisted that we move because the trucks were all loaded with 105MM arty ammo for our direct support battery from the 11th Marines. About all that was left at that point was to disperse, and flake out wherever there was available deck space. Most of the platoon wound up lying in passage ways a deck down. However, the good news soon passed by the Navy was that we would be able to sleep on the mess deck, which was air-conditioned AFTER the crew movie!!!!!-----This ended about 2300, and as the crew filed out , most available deck space was soon covered with tired Marines. Reveille was at 0230---------followed by the traditional steak and eggs breakfast. It was darken ship conditions on the weather decks, and we filed down the port ladder to our assigned amtracks under orangish sodium-vapor light at about 0430. We were already tired, tense, somewhat apprehensive,and dirty (ships can be dirty places, despite the constant swabbing) The tracks were buttoned up at 0500, and this for a 0600 splash. There must have been about 25 men in our tractor beside Lt. Rosenau and me. Some were first platoon, and I think we had one team from H&S's 81MM mortar platoon, as they were attached to each rifle company for this operation. Everyone was hushed in the tractor, pretty much alone with their own thoughts, and probably more than a few silent prayers. The crew had the interior lights on the battle condition red setting, and the air soon was a mix of the smell of sweaty bodies, faint gasoline fumes, oil, web gear, tobacco (not smoke-the lamp was forever out in a gasoline powered amtrack), but every one maintained pretty well until some genius broke out an orange he had taken from the mess deck and began to peel it. The citrus oils were pretty pungent in that close space, and that finally go to on of the troops who lost his breakfast, the odor of which promptly got to some more . Six o'clock came and right on schedule, the tractors began to roll, one at a time, controlled, of all things, by what looked a lot like a traffic light high up on the inside of the well deck at the stern. There was a light surf running inside the well deck, breaking at angles to the wing walls, so I suppose we may have been launching without being underway? Once we started to move, there was a fair amount of vibration in the tractor, as the steel treads were running on the wooden deck until we were afloat, or what passed for being afloat in a steel box that weighed forty tons-----it was a different sensation from riding in the same tractor on land. There are two periscope type vision blocks in the front of a LVTP-5 for embarked troops. The Lieutenant had the starboard block, next to the vehicle commander, the third crewman stood on a little platform between the Lt.and me,where he had a small turret with a .30 caliber 1914A4 machine gun, and I had the left vision block, next to the driver, who basically is positioned over the port track. It was a bright sunny day, and when the scope showed something besides green water ( P-5's have about 8 inches of freeboard, so you can be underwater a good bit of the time) I could see the tractors launched before ours in a straight line before us. As the last (10tth) tractor launched, the track 's platoon commander ordered a left-flank movement, and we could no longer see the other tractors from our limited view. It must have been quite noisy inside that vehicle, what with a 800 horsepower engine running wide open and the steel track churning beneath us, but I don't remember hearing a sound other than my own thoughts as I contemplated my navel, thought of my pregnant wife and young daughter, my rapidly increasing reliance on an omniscient God, and worry that I would somehow fail my fellow Marines. Death was a remote possibility, and something that could be resignedly accepted, but being maimed or in so much pain as to lose face with the young studs that relied on me.was a truly frightening concept. At 27, with nine years in the Corps, I was the old guy to them, and felt sort of a fatherly responsibility towards them. I was, in another plane, also sardonically seething at the way we, the point of America's spear pointed at the godless communists, had been shuffled around like so many cattle. We had been briefed that there was a Vietcong main-force battalion using the objective ashore as their R&R area, and we had seen a number of low-oblique 8x10 black and white photos of the area. These showed terraced fields with rock walls rising from just behind the beach. All I could think of was all the combat footage I had seen of the WWII assaults, and every one of those terraces looked like a good place for interlocking fields of fire from hidden weapons. Every now and then an A-4 attack plane would be briefly visible swooping down and raising clouds of red dust at a barren spot at the top of the ridge that looked like our objective area. The vehicle commander must have given Rosie the word when we were about 5 minutes from the beach, as he passed the word to "lock and load". We rumbled up onto the beach, the ramp dropped, and we ran out of that amtrack at top speed, and hit the deck in a skirmish line just short of the tree line. Excited, hardly describes our state at that point----there certainly was no shortage of adrenaline, and one of the many emotions circulating in our brains (or mine, anyway) was anger, or maybe it was raw aggression, but at that point, anyone not a member of K/3/5 was in danger. The Amtracks closed their ramps, pivoted to their left, moved off in column to our left, splashed, and proceeded back to Alamo in column. There was no fire----friendly or enemy and we had touched down within 30 seconds of the scheduled 0630 time. The birds were busy in the trees.but it was otherwise quiet. It seemed that psyops had come over in a bird dog plane at 0600 with the announcement that the Marines were coming, and not to worry,'cause they're your friends. Charlie had boogied, or as we later learned to say had "di-di-mau'd" We saddled up, I royally chewed on of the fire team leaders for somehow loosing a pouch with two live grenades in it, and we began a cautious hump up to the objective. Memories of the balance of the day are sparse, except that it was god-awful hot, and the scuttlebutt was that India company was having a lot of heat casualties, whileKilo was doing OK, thus vindicating the skipper who had insisted that we live aboard Pickaway without air-conditioning in the berthing compartments, and do daily PT on the deck as acclimation. The crowning event of the day came as we neared the top of the objective ridge, and it began to rain, as we found it did nearly every day at 1700 or so. One Charlie, unseen, popped one round at us, from the sound of it, a .30cal U.S. carbine, and the entire company, to a man, looked up and someone was heard to say "did you see that?!" (I think to this day it was the skipper), but that was it. As we arrived at the top of the ridge and were given areas of responsibility, one of the first things found was an aluminum cylinder lying on the ground in an area where the grass had been burnt off. This thing had no visible markings, but at 5 inches in diameter, and maybe 3 feet long, it appeared to be potentially one hell of a booby-trap of some kind. Word was passed down to battalion to get engineers or EOD up to our position, and in the meantime a probing with bayonets found no control wires leading to this mystery. It was more than a little embarrassing to have a salty EOD staff sergeant show up, pick up the thing and toss it down the hill with some words about a bunch of boots who had never seen an aircraft flare canister before. Shortly after that, a patrol brought two women and a child into the position, tied at the wrists, and keening away, crying and going on, jabbering in what was probably the first real Vietnamese we 'd heard. It was a grim scene, and began to bring home the seriousness of this enterprise we were engaged in. The women were frightened out of their wits, the patrol was sure they had captured some Viet Cong, and the S-2 and interpreter gradually determined they were no threat, and escorted them away from our position. The resupply choppers came and went we dug in (admidittly not very deep), ate, and set up the watch at 50% security. It was the end of K companies' first day in combat for this war-----such as it was. There were other days to come.
I was to learn later of other first days in combat for the company when afforded the opportunity to spend time with K Co. veterans of Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Cape Glouster, and Okinawa-------men who had fought in similar climes, but against an entirely different sort of enemy.

The Red Beach story reminded me of another similar conflict between Kilo's combatants, and REMF's (which by the way, is another one of those army terms that has somehow crept in to the Corp's lingua franca) . We came ashore from the Special Landing Force assignment at Chu Lai, where Task Force X-Ray (E.G, First MarDiv HQ) had come down from Oki, with a bleedin' plywood city, including flush shitters-----you know that when I passed one that officiously said "Hq Bn Only", I just HAD to take a healthy dump, and flush all of the commodes while at it, hoping the bastards would run short on water, and have to crap behind their heel, thereby earning, their $65.00/month., Anyway, we were ever so graciously shown to a barren field
where we could set up GP tents adjacent to HQ BN. It was not a good mix-----we were fresh from Hastings, still short of things like jungle utes, some of us still wearing leather boots and sateen utilites, and it didn't set well to encounter people from the Division Band who were wearing SPIT-SHINED! jungle boots, etc... However, there was a PX, and a mess hall. We looked pretty ragged, and that white powder that was all over us was "old salt"------the pogues were just a little leary of us, having heard tales, and
of course, we did nothing to discourage their rapid spread. The capper came the first day at noon chow-------I was approaching the mess hall from one direction, three of the 1stPlt's finest were coming from the other direction, and four or five bandsmen (with shiny boots) had just come outside and were dumping their trays into the garbage can. Seeing this, my guys hollered "LOOK!!! FRESH CHOW", and proceeded to eat out of the garbage can. This got the desired effect among the duty tooters, and they kinda eased on out of there with worried looks on their faces, much like you might if you
encountered a sleeping rattlesnake-----. I let them have their fun------it was a new experience to have somebody senior to you in rank and age ask quite seriously "what's it like out there????" as if you could explain. (I think it was the Harley-Davidson crowd that came up with the best quote, which goes "if I gotta explain it to you, you wouldn't understand it anyway" )

At some point between Okinawa and Deckhouse I, and after having been into Subic Bay for liberty and jungle survival training, the Battalion sailed over to Mindanao for a practice landing---by way of the edge of a typhoon, which had good 'ol Pickaway standing damn near on her beam ends. Don't recall exactly how we got ashore, whether it was an admin move in mike boats, or if we did the transfer thing to Alamo and took the tractors in, but the weather and the surf weren't bad at all----guess the damn thing hadn't quite gotten to the island yet. There had been heavy rain before we got there, and the sugar cane fields were flooded stubble----you'd slosh by a drowned cane rat every few feet (they float belly up, invariably----stow that in your file of useless information---I've got a lot of it). We moved across the cane fields and paddies into some low hills for the usual training, and as usual, it began to rain again-----visualize the word "unceasingly"------no big thing at all, and it was cooler that way. The second night out we had to move the company from hither to yon in the pitch black, and across a damn steep, deep, and rocky ravine. We're talking rope work here, and we didn't have any------however, some resourceful lad found an irrigation aqueduct or sluice that crossed the ravine. So hot diggity damn, we're gonna quietly move about 250 Marines (had the 81MM section with us, engineers, etc.) across this thing, in the dark, in the rain, while wearing field marching packs under ponchos, and it was a loooooong way down to the rocks, by the sounds of things. Now this aqueduct was concrete, about 30" wide and 30" deep and it had an open top, with a 4x4 cross brace about every 5 feet. Stepping from brace to brace would have been bitch enough in dry daylight without the impedimenta we were carrying, so it was decided that the whole damn lashup would crawl across inside the aqueduct. Which, by the way, had about a foot of water running through it, or anyway, maybe seven inches of water moving over five inches of silty, squishy mud. On all fours, ponchos getting caught under knees, packs getting caught on cross braces, pitch black and rain-----I actually believe I may have heard one of America's finest utter just the teensiest curse word, once or twice. It took hours, but we made it with no injuries, and the next day we were on our way back to the beach. As we came down from the hills, we found the cane fields between us and the beach were now waist to armpit deep. So hey diddle diddle right up the middle we go, in company single file (we got to do a lot of that formation later in the jungle and on paddy dikes). Per the usual rotation that day, first platoon was last. As was the platoon SOP, the platoon Sgt was tail-end charlie, charged with taking names, chewing bubble gum, and kicking ass, having been provided with neither pencil, paper, nor gum. We had been so wet now for so long, that we were "pruney" in unusual places, and "dry" (anything) was just a distant memory. The Corps, however, has always looked out for her own. One way of doing this is that whoever has a bright idea, or "Tip for the troops" is obligated to pass it along, or in this case, back along this long, long, column wading amongst the drowned rats with their rifles held high, until the "Tip" got to the last man...and boys and
girls, quite seriously, the tip that came back that day was this----"If you will put your wallet in the webbing in your helmet liner, it will stay dry!!!!" I would have done it, too, except that there were already green things growing on it, that I didn't want anywhere nearly that close to my scalp. We only lost two PRC-10 radios to stealy-boys at the beach that day---yes, newbies, there was a thing called a PRC-10 in the old corps, before the PRC-25 came along.

Our first in-country Bn Chaplain, Protestant type----think he was of the Baptist persuasion, but no matter what the flavor, he was an older man (shoot, probably in his late forties!!!!!). When we were in the bush, he was in
the bush, and he got around from hole to hole in the evening, would go out on
MedCaps, etc. A good man, in more ways than one and his thing was chewing gum. ------Never knew where he got it, or how much he carried, but the Chaplain was always good for a stick of Doublemint. We had made an unplanned, unrehearsed, unscheduled, night helo assault into 1/5'sTAOR during Colorado (another story, all in itself for another time.), and we (1stPlatoon) were told to set up in what was probably the screwiest positions ever-----sort of a second ring of defense, inside the 1/5 HQ group area, the next afternoon---at least we were close to the hamlet well. It was not all that secure an area yet, and as I looked over a paddy field, I could see four of our Marines, digging in. This was fine, except they had removed their shirts, and having sweated themselves quite pale where they weren't sunburned, they really stood out against the dark green tree line. Being the daddy rabbit, and being only a couple of months away from four years under a Smokey Bear hat, I advised these young lads in my best stentorian tones, and with words probably not recognizable by the Queen Mum, that perhaps it would be wise of them to re-don their upper garments with great alacrity before they become the target du jour for some slope- headed sniper, or worse yet, I come help them. Having done my fatherly duty as their leader, and perhaps having saved their lives, I turned smugly back to digging, only to bump into the Chaplain, who had heard the whole tirade. More than a little sheepishly, I muttered "whoops, sorry 'bout that, Padre"-------To which he just smiled, pointed skyward with one finger and said, " you don't need to apologize to me, I'm not the one keeping score!!" He was later transferred---his replacement was an Episcopalian (I think) by the name of Krulak---son of, and brother to, the more famous Krulaks--have heard he has a church in San Diego nowadays.

Kilo was operating out of Tam Ky airstrip on a "no-name" operation. We had a Ruff-Puff (Regional/Popular Forces) militiaman with us, who had an absolute burning hatred for Viet Cong (something to do with them disemboweling his grandparents or the like).
We also had only one interpreter with us, an ARVN SSGT who did NOT, repeat, NOT want to be out there with us. He was the only person I ever saw who wore the diaper part of the flak set, and was petrified of what became known as suprize firing devices (booby traps). He spoke passable English, having been a White Mouse policeman in Saigon before being drafted. We were pooping along through a ville, pretty much in single file, and this Ruff Puff is like a good bird dog----cutting back and forth, checking everything out, while we're just kinda bored, enjoying the shade and plodding along. The Ruff-Puff finds an old Krag bolt-action rifle hidden in the tree line. It would have exploded if fired, because the one round that was in it warn't made for that rifle (kinda slopped around in the chamber). He is now convinced that the nearest household contains the owner of this dastardly weapon, and flushes an old man and his wife out of the nearest hooch. The old man was fat, which was remarkable in itself. After much agitated screaming and jabbering, RuffPuff gut shoots the old man with his .30 carbine (US made, of course). While he's lying there, with his wife just having fourteen simultaneous litters of kittens over him, he's still denying any
knowledge of anything. The RuffPuff's next step is to cut some bamboo, split it, and commence to whaling away on the old man's backside.

The question to the CP group was, "What do we do?" The word back was "If it's
Vietnamese on Vietnamese, stay out of it." We did, and eventually moved on, leaving the wife to care for hubby. It was a t&t wound, so unless infection got him, the old man may have survived. If he wasn't VC when we got there, he undoubtedly was reviewing his political options when we moved on.

A hundred meters on, the RP is trying to get somebody to pay attention, and/or help him, 'cause he's found something where the rest of us see nothing. Word goes up to hold up a minute, and RP points out half a bare footprint in the dust------somebody'd been covering tracks. He gets to poking around with a stick, and under the dust, prys up a woven lid covering a hole about the size of a G.I. desk, which contains 4 gooners squatting in a
nice 2-square formation. They just sit there---he tells 'em "get out of the hole " (my guess), they tell him the Vietnamese version of F**K You. He takes a M-26 frag out, pulls the pin, and re-issues the invitation to join the rest of us at surface level, which, this time they agree to do. RP re-pins the grenade, and we've got ourselves four POW's, all of whom are wearing no more than a breech cloth sort of thing. (Natives usually know how to best dress for the local climate----we were considerably more sartorially elegant in our flak jackets, individually decorated helmets, etc.) The four were blindfolded, and tied in a string, maybe 3 meters apart, and we moved on through the ville until we got out to a pasture area where a chopper could come in to pick up the POWs. We're sorta strung out in column, and waiting. The POW's just squatted. Back along the Column comes Mr. RP, who stops to palaver with each prisoner. The last one was maybe 10-15 feet from where I was leaning on a post, trying to figure how many days till going home. When Mr. RP got to him, he jabbered something and the squatting prisoner answered him------whereupon, the RP casually swung his carbine up and shot the little SOB in the left temple. The POW straightened out flat on his back, pumping a .30 Cal stream of blood from the head, and died with an erection under his breech cloth, which the RP found absolutely hilarious. Having heard the expression for years, and even having used it myself, without thinking about it, it was a lightening flash-------THAT'S WHAT IT MEANS WHEN SOMEBODY SAYS, "I'LL KNOCK YOUR DICK STIFF!!!!!!" We learn the oddest things at the oddest times, sometimes.

I passed the word up to get SSGT Lee back to the pos, and he came up on the double, wanting to know what I wanted. I told him, "Sgt Lee, you ask him (pointing to Mr. RP) what he asked them people, and you tell me what he (pointing to the deceased) told him, 'cause if he asks me, I sure don't want to give him the wrong answer." The two of them conversed for several minutes, then Lee turned to me and said, "Ah, he ask them what they do for VC." Pointing to the dead one, he went on saying, "Ah, he say he sniper", and pointing back to RP, "He say he no like sniper."(To which I felt compelled to reply, "No Shit!!!"). RF/PF didn't get much respect, as a rule, but this was one home boy on his own ground who made decisions and carried them out. Am sure the sniper went on the day's body count.

Seen on a four-holer wall, my second tour, by three sequential authors------first one, (who may have contracted some loathesome condition that he paid for) wrote "Half the women in Viet-Nam got VD" and the second, possibly a Corpsman, had written "and the other half have TB", to which, the third, obviously a lad with a practical bent had written"so, only screw the ones that cough"

Pape was a First platoon Marine who would trade anything, even peaches, for peanut
butter. Don't know if he had continuious runs, or whatever motivation, but it was to the point that he had one extra MG ammo can on his packboard that was for nothing but
his stash of peanut butter. Now those of us who are avid readers may remember reading whatever printed matter we came across while in the bush, and reading it over and over. Some of it had to burn into memory, and I will guarantee you that in 1966 there were two companies making peanut butter for C-rations. One was Kern Foods, of Kern, California, and the other was Cinderela Foods of Dawson, Georgia. One made a homoginized butter, and the other made the kind that seperated--you know, oil on top, brownish sticky mud underneath. Which made which, escapes me at this far remove, maybe because instead of opening it, I traded it to Pape? Anyway, this issue of oil
seperation, as the British say, "got right up his (Pape's) nose", or in Marine lingo, really pissed him off after a while, so he sat down one day with a stubby pencil and the top part of a C-Rat box, and laboriously printed a letter to the offending company, in a very few carefully chosen words telling them how they didn't know squat about making good peanut butter, and that they should write to this other company, and get their reciepe for proper peanut peparation prior to producing piss-poor peanut butter, or words to that effect. With the required return address in one top corner, and the
requisite "FREE" in the other, out it went with the other mail on an evening re-supply chopper, and was about as quickly forgotten. Some weeks later, at mail call there was a business size envelope, typed no less, and addressed to LCPL Pape of K/3/5, !st MarDiv, etc. This in itself was unusual enough to draw comment, as the bulk of the mail was always hand-written and smaller enevelopes. The envelope alone was enough to draw a lot of comment, and when the mail clerk finished with the envelopes, he said "Pape, you got a box here, too, and it ain't from your folks OR your girlfriend" Well, the letter was a personal one to Pape from the folks at the peanut butter company, telling him that they thought that us guys who were out there in those forsaken jungles killin' Commies for Christ were pretty good people, and how they all appreciated us and so forth, and as a small gesture, why,,they were sending along a small token of their appreciation. This, of course, was the box--- about four inches deep, twelve wide and about eighteen inches long, and fairly heavy. Pape soon had it open in front of a bunch of newly found warm friends, best buddies, and assorted goodie-snatchers. The
box contained many neatly packed C-ration cans of -----------------------Peanut Butter!!!!! (do we need to elaborate here that it was the kind that separates????, and that it was already separated????) Pape was apopoleptic (pissed), but he kept it. I ran into Peanut Butter years later-he had shipped over, and was a combat engineer---- good man, wouldn't be suprized if he had stayed in for a full career.

On the importance of a good time piece----- We were at the end of Deckhouse II, and crapped out in a graveyard, fairly late in the day. It was hot, no shade, but at least we weren't humping, and for some reason, now forgoten, we hadn;t started to dig in yet. I was lying back on a grave mound with a cap over my eyes, half-asleep, and kept hearing this "eep,eep.eep." sound, close by my head.----Sat up , looked around, didn't see a thing unusual, and lay back down again, only to continue to hear the sound. Finally found it------there was a hole in the mound about six inches from my ear, and the
hole was maybe an inch or so in diameter. In the hole was the source of the noise-----a tiny frog, who was going "eep,eep" because he was firmly held in the jaws of a snake. I relocated. Minutes later, there was a ruckus over in the area of the really rear echelon (Co Hq group), and there were rounds popping over our way, along with a lot of hollering. A little later there were a couple of sorta muffled explosions-----grenades in a hole sort of muffled. Seems that two NVA had emerged from a camoflauged hole smack in the middle of the CP group, much to their and everyone else's suprise- hence
the rounds flying about the area, all "friendly fire" (there's a REAL oxymoron for ya!!). The NVA ducked back into the hole, and wouldn't come out, so the grenades went in. When the bodies were finally drug out one was found to be wearing a wrist watch that was about two hours fast. The conclusion was that they were stay-behind recon types, and had come to the erroneous and fatal conclusion that darkness had fallen, so they could come out of their hidey place and exfiltrate. We met the rest of their unit a
couple days later---- that part was called Operation Hastings------

Uses for a Bayonet: digging, probing for mines, opening "C's", as a spare tent stake when rigging a poncho hooch. Will cut comm wire, light brush, and little else, unless greatly sharpened, which didn't happen much.

Maybe the bayonet-carrying generation of our war had not read much of the accounts of our predecessor's activity aboard ship. It would have been difficult to find, in those early days, anyone who seriously thought that their bayonet would ever be put to use in the traditional mode--- i.e. on the end of a rifle, as a pike. It was just something we carried, having some utility, and carrying no particular comfort in knowing that it was along. Some where along the trail on hill 262, grid square____________, sheet_________ during Hastings, one of the first platoon found a new use for his. We had hooked up with India, or what was left of her, and were helping as we could to police the battlefield. There was a narrow trail between the location where the bulk of Kilo was positioned, and the LZ for India's MedEvacs/ Re-supply, etc. I had been tasked to take part of one of the squads to recover our India brothers'casualties along the trail and down off to the south (as I remember it) side of the trail. We had passed up and down this narrow trail several times, each time passing a partially buried and sufficiently dead NVA, who still had most of the head and shoulders exposed. No big deal. By this time we were hardened to the sight and smells of violent death, and he was just some thing that was. On the fifth or sixth trip past this point, I noticed that the dead gook had acquired a new feature--------there was a U.S. Govt. issue M-14 bayonet well and truly secured in the corpse's right eye socket. It was kinda like the wooden stake for a vampire-----it was for damn sure that this slope wasn't going anywhere. It had to have been one of my hard-chargin' young studs, and while duty may have dictated that I conduct an inventory to see who was missing his bayonet, I never did. Have wondered over the years if there isn't a rusty remnant buried in that very location. The metal by now would be nearly gone, and the human remains would have been returned to the earth years ago, but those damn plastic handles could conceivably last a couple more thousand years. Net---pin'em to the deck to be damn sure they stay there, and by the way, payback's a bitch!