I came to the Battalion Area from somewhere in Da Nang, sitting low in the back of an uncovered deuce and a half with an M14 and one loaded magazine. I thought to myself, "One magazine!? What if we are attacked?" Not a good feeling at all. Nevertheless, the envisioned attack never materialized and we arrived safely inside the Battalion Area's wire. I felt quite a bit better after looking around at all the raggedy-assed Marines. There I stood in my fresh greens feeling like a canary, once again.

"Okay, you guys grab an M16, here are the magazines, filled and ready to go. Stand over there and test them out."
Standing on the dirt berm that surrounded the base camp, I started firing semi-automatic. Pow, pow, powpow, the 16 grabs the ass end of the casing as it is ejecting. I free it. Pow, pow, pow. I trip the select to full, braaaap; another ejecting casing is grabbed and I free it. A moment later the 16 grabs another casing.

A Marine I had previously noticed that was standing quietly over by the bucket of magazines walks over to me and says, "Problem? "
"Yeah, this piece of shit keeps malfunctioning," I complain.
"Okay, get another one."
I am handed another 16 and have a successful trial. The Marine walks up to me again and says, "I am Lt. Ruggles, your platoon commander. Do not stand at attention, do not salute me."
"Yes sir. Sorry sir, I did not recognize any rank."
I don't remember a thing he said after that. I was shaken by my mistake and the freshness of my boot camp experiences still lingered. 2nd Lt. Ruggles didn't show one hint of emotion towards my disrespect. This was my first, and not my last, one-sided "talk" with 2nd Lt. John Ruggles III. He was a fair man and not once did he ever put me down for a mistake. I liked him a lot.

The next thing I know, after being assigned to my squad and several days at the rear area, is that I am sitting on a bunk in my hooch near a river at Anderson Bridge. Then the long days and nights of my tour begin to fill up with security watch, primarily on the west gate; searching the Vietnamese before they crossed over the bridge. Sometimes watching Vietnamese children play near the gate. One game consisted of drawing a circle in the hardpan dirt road, placing small rocks inside the circle, then standing back and taking turns throwing other rocks at them trying to knock the other kid's rock out of the circle. The Vietnamese rendition of an American marble game. All the while dealing with their incessant begging for food, candy, or cigarettes.

Days would also be filled with the usual day/night patrols around the area. The night patrols mostly consisted of setting up an ambush somewhere. There were episodes while doing duty at the bridge. Some are even noteworthy. But my favorite duty was bridge watch, particularly at night. Great duty by Vietnam War standards. But not without exceptions.

One evening on the bridge, as the day's light fell into the darkness of night, Pfc. Aycock and I began our routine of tossing grenades in the water. Supposedly trying to get a secondary off something the gooks would float down the river. Next to us is a brand spanking new box of grenades sitting there in their individual cardboard, tube pouches Plenty. More than enough.

After a bit of pulling the pin and tossing the grenades into the river, I had a splendid idea. I would pull the pin out of the M26A1 frag and drop it straight down by the pilings of the bridge. Whoomp! The bridge would shake like an earthquake. A fountain of bubbling water would boil up from the depths. Cool! To add to the hand grenade fun, I decided to pull the pin, let the spoon fly, count quickly to three and toss it. I had, obviously, seen a few too many war flicks in my youth. Perfectly thrown, the grenade would hit the water, deep six a few feet, then go off with a brilliant white flash and throw water up into the air. More cool.

This of course was a tragedy waiting to happen. Although tragedy never came, this lesson would come without injury, with the exception of some pride. In the slow moving hours after midnight, I pulled the pin, counted to three and tossed a grenade. I am standing there in pitch-blackness, bug-eyed, and waiting for the show; CRACK! The grenade goes off just above the water line. White and red pieces of shrapnel fly in all directions. The bridge is peppered with the small bits. Neither Aycock nor I are hit.

Somebody screams, "INCOMING!" Marines start piling out of their hooches. I'm standing there with this huge white spot in my vision. Damn near blind.

"No incoming!" I yell out. "Short fuse on grenade! It's okay! No incoming!"
Then comes the muffled sound of grunts wired on adrenaline swearing and bitching. I felt like shit. Waking these guys up like that. Things quieted down. I cannot count the times I said f**k, under my breath. What a dumbass! I let it go. Nothing is said. I am relieved of duty for the night by normal rotation.

The next morning, I am called to the bridge, front and center. 2nd Lt. Ruggles is standing there with the platoon sergeant. I come up and stand in a relaxed position. Ruggles eyes move from mine to the deck of the bridge. Looking down I see his observation. Grenade spoons laying all about. Our eyes meet again. He says nothing while his head shakes a tiny bit like he is silently saying no. Possibly disbelief. The Sergeant (Collins) tells me to police the area. I cannot recall a word said to me about it by anyone after that morning. Not the Marines I rudely awoke, not the LT, not the sergeant.

That ended the grenade throwing off the bridge.

I am sitting on my bunk staring at my boots. I haven't seen my feet for well over a week. I was scared and I wasn't going to get caught by the gooks with my pants down, or boots off. The other Marines that had been in country for much longer, were getting naked, bathing, and swimming in the river. "Ballsy stuff!," I thought. Not me. FNGitis. I still preferred being Pvt. Crud with my boots on. I make my decision. I had heard the stories. The one's about some guy taking his boot off and leaving half his jungle-rotted foot inside it. Tonight, I was taking off my boots and getting a good night's sleep. A good night's sleep being one with minimal bone-jarring jerks awake. I never was able to "sleep" in Vietnam. I remove my boots. I remove my socks. I do a double take on my feet. They are green. The green dye off my government issue Marine Corps green socks, combined with the constant wet, was now the color of my feet.

What the hell!?! All of a sudden something comes screeching in.

BOOM!!

Tipton jumps off his bunk, grabs his gear and yells at me that it's incoming and heads out the hatch. I cannot believe this is happening. I hurriedly put on my socks. Then my boots. All the time the intensity of incoming is getting greater. I grab my rifle and ammo and out the door I go.
My hole is probably twenty yards away. I am running in a crouched position and two more screeching rockets make their way in simultaneously. A noise one never forgets. I hit the deck. BOOM!/BOOM! One lands to my left. The ground shakes. The shrapnel swooshes by me. I jump up and take a few more steps and literally fall into the safety of my hole. I don't feel hurt or sick. No shock. I cannot see a damn thing Pitch black. I must be okay. I cannot believe I didn't get nailed. My luck was running out.
Pfc. Aycock, who is supposed to be with me in this hole, is over at the Army artillery unit doing mess duty. The Army had been letting us eat chow over there as long as we sent a couple Marines over to help out in the mess. Tonight was Aycock's turn. And I am alone, scared shitless, shaking with tremors and trying to keep my muzzle above my head to keep from shooting myself accidentally.

Another rocket comes in and hits near. SCHHHHHhhhh as the shrapnel passes over my hole. I am not going to stick my head out of this hole.

Then I come to my senses; gooks. The gooks are going to come across the wire. I have to look. I start peering above the edge of my hole. No small arms fire, that I can detect, is being fired at us. I see mortar shells trying to be walked into the gun position on my left. They fail to hit it.

On my right a rocket hits one of the hooch's. I would find out later that PFC Crockett was in it, buried in sandbags, and bleeding from the ears. Someone in the southwest sector on the other side of the road accidentally sets off a tear gas canister. The prevailing winds are in my favor. Across the river comes yelling for whoever is up in the tower
to evacuate it. There are red flashes coming from the tree line at my twelve o'clock. Possibly the launch area for the rockets, or the flash of a mortar tube. Someone calls for the tank to cross the river. I watch as the tank, with about only six inches on each side to spare, slowly make its way across the bridge. I am thinking about the pilings that had taken a helluva pounding from the grenades I had been dropping next to them. The bridge holds and the tank arrives on the west side.
The Army artillery unit is now firing large flares from a very close proximity to our position. The shells popping open, releasing their candle power, and the casings spiraling towards the ground with their whoop, whoop, whoop, sound. I now have anxiety about getting beaned by one of those damn things.

Still no gooks in the wire.

The tank commander yells, "Everybody down, fire in the hole!" I wasn't going to miss this. Zeroing in on where the flashes had been spotted, the tank fires it's 90mm. The tracer round penetrates into the tree line. Boom! The tank keeps up its firing into the tree line. More rockets and mortars land in our perimeter.

Shells are hitting all around. They don't seem to be trying to hit the bridge. They must want to keep it in tact. Crazy thoughts race through my head. They can't aim those things, can they? They're gooks! They must be after us and the tank. So, where are they?

Still no gooks in the wire.

The tank keeps up the fire and then is hit by a rocket. Then silence.

Morning's light comes. Charlie decided he didn't want too come inside the compound. Hit, do some damage, and run. The bridge was intact. The tower still stood tall. Nobody killed or wounded. Although I would have considered PFC Crockett, with his ears bleeding, as wounded. Pieces of rocket fragments laying around. We even found a tail section. The tank was hit, but not penetrated.

The tank had its large spotlight blown apart. It was a dangling mess. There is a nice dent in the turret where the rocket had hit. Large and small holes had pierced the outside railings on the tank's body. One was almost big enough to put my fist through. Even today, when I see one of those light beams going into the air from some sale downtown, I think of that tank.

I had survived a night of terror on Anderson Bridge. A place that had started out as good duty. Besides several inbound mortar shells, no less than six rockets had landed in the northwest sector. One just before I left my hooch; two hit as I was on my way to my hole; another passing its shrapnel over my hole while in it; one that hit Pfc. Daisher's hooch; and the one that had nailed the tank. I was beginning to get the picture. This was a very serious place. What the rocket shrapnel had done to the tank would cause a person to turn into hamburger. I was never the same after that night.

I cannot recall the next time I removed my boots.

Just another morning in Vietnam. Coming right up was another job for the Corps, the South Vietnamese people, and the beloved people of our country. But something special today. We were going outside the wire in platoon size and spending a few nights out protecting the flank of Highway 1. And we were loaded for bear, as they say in the West.
We walked off our Phu Gia Pass hilltop home with a view, and onto the paved road leading down the hill and into a fairly tight valley with steep, jagged hills on both sides of the road. Possibly the "Bowling Alley." I knew we were east of Hue, towards the South China Sea, but other than that, knew nothing. An FNG knowing nothing was very common and, I suppose, a good thing. After walking a bit, a village came into view in front of us.

Large artillery shells started to hammer the village, throwing masses of dirt and clods high into the air with the explosions. We took a left off the road and headed towards these wicked looking hills in front of us. A wild pig darted out across the open rice paddy on my right. We all got a long good look at him. "What a magnificent animal," is the thought I had. His white fangs hanging outside the sides of his face giving their forewarning to anything looking for trouble. His disposition was much like ours. A do not f**k with me, I'm not in the mood, disposition. He was very cool, and one of several exotic animals and birds I had seen. The platoon started the climb up the hill. Several times I had to put my hand on the ground in front of me, or grab a limb of brush for help, while we climbed. Steep and rocky. A real bitch. Finally, after getting through another morning of putting one foot in front of the other, we arrived on top of the ridge sometime around noon.

We stopped to eat our portion of C-rats. I had been carrying a quart of apple butter someone had stolen from these Army guys we had been around a few days before. I had been elected to carry the delicacy. The apple butter was an "accessory" to our food and ammo. A bonus. We ate and prepared to move out along the ridge.

Brisky's fire-team, of which I was the newest member, was put on the point. Lots of brush, almost double canopy. Tall trees, but you could see the sky and lots of thick tall brush, with some openings. PFC William "Billy" L. Harris was on point. Billy was having some difficulty cutting our way through. We were moving real slow and through the process we would cluster f**k at times. 2nd Lt. John Ruggles III decided to move forward to help Billy. The Lt. and Billy were chopping our way through when we came into this S curve on the trail. I had no visual contact with the Lt. or Billy because of the trees and the brush.

The first booby-trap went off with a ground moving shock and blur. I immediately hit the deck. Trying to get a better view, I started to crawl forward to look around this tree trunk. I just was getting to the visual when a second booby-trap went off. The ground again heaved in a quick blur. This one came with an ear-ringing CRACK!! I just got a glimpse of PFC. Robert Aycock as he crumpled off the trail. PFC. David Brisky was in front of me. We got up at the same time, as did PFC. Christy "Chief" Goodiron, who was behind me, and PFC. Sal Negrelli, the Lt.'s radioman behind Chief. I only knew Aycock was hurt and my job was to move forward to help. Nothing was coming from the lieutenant or Billy.

My luck had run out. I took maybe two steps and a third booby-trap went off to my left rear. The trap was very close. The device was directly to the front left of Chief. We had been lying on the deck right next to the damn thing and never saw it. I was blown into the air as if doing the standing long jump at a high school track meet. I landed on my feet. On the initial blast, I could see limbs and twigs in front of me snapping off from the shrapnel hitting them. As weird as this may sound, I did not want to fall on my face, so purposely fell backwards. I felt no pain. I thought I had just taken a helluva ride through the air from the concussion. I was lying on my pack in what seemed a small open area. My helmet was gone. My rifle was gone. I completely freaked out. I thought I was going to now be shot to death by gooks involved in this ambush we had just walked into. I was carrying my usual seven magazines with twenty rounds each for the M16, two or three hand grenades, two bandoleers with each holding four boxes of twenty round loose M-16 ammo, and two belts of M-60 machine gun ammo wrapped around me in the Poncho Villa style. Most of the grunts were carrying extra M-60 gun ammo for the A-gunner.

There I lay. No weapon. And, thankfully, no gooks. My ears were ringing so loud I couldn't hear anything but Chief screaming. I looked up from my prone position and saw that the top of my right ring finger had been blown off. I caught a glimpse of Brisky on the ground thrashing. Then there was the crackling of fire. The hot shrapnel had me on fire and the M-60 gun ammo was starting to cook off. I recall at least two or three popping and actually jarring me when they went off. I had to get the pack and ammo off. Panicked, I reached for the pack strap with my right hand, but my arm just flopped along my side with absolutely no control. I looked down and saw large gaping holes with meat hanging out of my right forearm. No blood. I saw very little blood. Nevertheless, at that moment I did not realize I had a broken artery in the arm and that I was losing blood very quickly. My panic was upgraded a bit. I then tried to use my left arm to get the pack off. I rolled to my right a little. My left forearm swung around, and my hand landed on my face, palm down. I could not lift it off my face. I could feel my hand on my face, but could not feel my hand. Now it went beyond panic. I freaked. I lifted my head and shook it real hard to get the hand off my face. That moment was a creepy feeling and still gives me little freak out thoughts now and then to this day. My hand fell from my face and swung with the arm out to the left. I could see I had dislocated my elbow, or something, by the odd angle my forearm and that f**king hand had landed next to me. Now I noticed I was bleeding profusely from my left arm. In reality, the trap had blown my triceps muscle off the back of my left arm and the elbow was completely shattered into small bone fragments.

I was on fire, gun ammo cooking off, bleeding to death, and now came the realization I was helpless. I needed help. I started screaming for help. I couldn't see anybody. Nobody was around. Words for this moment are difficult to find. Chief, taking the brunt of the trap in the front, had been blown into a tree and had came down in a squatting position with his back up against the tree's trunk. He was screaming like I have never heard a person scream before. I could see where shrapnel had hit him in the chest and forehead. A small amount of his entrails were hanging out of his right side. It was shear horror listening to him. I'm yelling and screaming for help and chief is just screaming. We are about fifteen feet apart, maybe less. Marines started arriving and swarmed me. Two corpsman moved forward to help Chief, while the Marines started working on me, Perelli, Brisky, and Aycock. Billy and 2nd Lt. Ruggles were dead. I'm thinking that Chief's screaming is going to give our position away. I yell at him to shut up. Someone tells me to shut up. I have suffered immeasurably my whole life for that moment. I do not know what I was thinking. Like the gooks didn't hear this shit go down miles away, or something. I made an error in judgment. And I have paid for it. I'm forever sorry that I yelled at him. I would glance at Chief at times to see how he was doing. He finally settled and quit yelling and screaming. I heard the air go out of him for the last time with one long exhale. The time span from first being hit is impossible to tell. I heard the corpsman say he was gone. It was over. The suffering had ended for him. And had just began for his family.

I feel someone jerking my left leg around and look down. Pfc. Daisher was trying to cut my boot strap off. I told him to just unhook it. He does. I am stripped of my gear and clothing. The Marines tell me they need to sit me up and look at my back. They sit me up and I am starting to pass out. I had a hole blown in my lower back, just below the belt line, that you could stick the end of a soda can in. They stuffed it, and laid me back down. Not one piece of shrapnel had penetrated the flak jacket. I asked for morphine and got it. I told someone to write to my girlfriend and let her know what had happened here if I die. And now came the wait for the medevac. I knew I was dying. At least it was going to be a painless death. Where is my chopper? I could hear choppers a long ways away on a couple of occasions and asked if that was mine. No. The wounded laid there for over an hour before they brought in a CH46 to pick us up. The Marines threw me up on the rear ramp while the chopper hovered in the air. No place to land it up there. I will never forget seeing Pfc. Aycock on the chopper shaking his fist at me, glad to see me alive.

The noise was deafening inside the 46. We landed somewhere in Da Nang. They ran me down a long corridor and put me on a cold metal table. There was blood everywhere. Most of it was not mine. A nurse grabbed my head and we looked at each other upside down. Without words, she turned my head to the side and I felt the stick of a needle in my neck. Lights out. Now began my "other" tour. My first two months in an Army hospital's infectious amputee ward in Yokohama, Japan, before being shipped out to the Bremerton Navy Hospital. I would eventually spend a total of almost fourteen months in military hospitals. I had sixteen operations before finally walking out with what was left of me. Both arms had been saved.

I was nineteen years old. I was alive.