My first view of the country of South Vietnam was through the window next to my seat in a Flying Tiger Airways Boeing 707 that was transporting about 250 American servicemen of all 4 military branches, but mostly Marines, from the island of Okinawato DANang, a major city on the east coast of South Vietnam.  I had left North Dakota, where I had been home on leave, on December 28, 1969, and now, a few  days later, I was arriving at the place where the previous year’s training as a U. S. Marine Corps infantry officer would be put to the test.  DaNang was the site of the headquarters of “I Corps”, the military district that was comprised of the 3 northernmost provinces of South Vietnam: Quang Tri; Quang Ngai; and, QuangNam.  The dominant color of the countryside, as seen from the air, was a brilliant emerald green.  It looked beautiful, but it was deceptive, concealing rottenness, corruption, cruelty, destruction and death of a magnitude that is difficult to comprehend, even today, looking back more than 40 years.  As our plane circled in – planes landing at DaNang came in high, then spiraled down to the runway in order to stay out of range of enemy anti-aircraft rockets which might be hidden somewhere in the mountains to the west – we could see the massive city sprawled out from the South China Sea on the east to the low range of mountains that ringed DaNang on the other 3 sides.  It wasn’t obvious from the air, but about 2/3 of the city was comprised of shacks, “Hooches” we called them in Vietnam, made of discarded plywood, cardboard and corrugated tin that housed a teeming multitude of impoverished war refugees.  There were several passes through the ring of mountains that passed into the flat countryside beyond.  I didn’t know it then, but the next time I saw the City of DaNang would be through the window of a C-130 transport plane on my way out of that piece of hell on earth.  When the plane landed and we were getting off, the first thing we noticed was the humidity.  It was like getting hit in the face with a warm, wet towel.  The humidity was everywhere and all the time.  It was pervasive and oppressive.  At first, it felt like you were trying to breathe under water.  Eventually, you got used to it.  The next thing to hit your senses was the smell, or rather, the stench.  The entire country of South Vietnam had an odor similar to the combined reeking of an over-ripe garbage can at a seafood restaurant and an over-used, uncleaned outhouse on a hot day in July.  It was stomach turning, but, after a while you got used to that, too.  One thing I did not get used to was the C-130 military transport plane that was being loaded with metal military caskets bearing the bodies of U. S.military personnel killed in action during the preceding few days.  It was a grim greeting.  As it turned out, the climate and the smell weren’t too bad, compared to what was to come my way about a month later.

From the airport, I went by Jeep to Division Headquarters, where I would be assigned to a unit.  The highway was crowded, with civilian and military vehicles, pretty Vietnamese prostitutes and their pimps on motor scooters and motorcycles, and all kinds of bicycles, tricycles and foot traffic.  As we made our way down the road, I noticed one woman who was walking along the side carrying 2 bundles on a neck yoke, pull down her trousers, squat and defecate right there, by the side of the road.  I asked the driver if that was a common occurrence and he responded, “Hell, Lieutenant, that ain’t nothing!  Wait til one of them picks it up and throws it at you.”  That never happened to me, but, at least a handful of that stuff won’t kill you, not right away, anyway.

At Division Headquarters, I was given orders to report to the Fifth Marine Regiment, which was then headquartered in the AnHoa Basin(pronounced An Wa, at least by the Marines) in Quang NamProvince, southwest of DaNang.  We went by helicopter, through one of the mountain passes and out over the flat countryside.  From the air, it could be seen that the land was crisscrossed by rice paddy dikes, with a few roads suitable for vehicles.  The countryside was also marked by thousands of what appeared to be small, circular, water filled potholes.  I found out that these were the craters left by aerial bombs and artillery shells, and they were everywhere, as far as the eye could see, in all directions.  That country had really been pounded.  I found out later that the United States dropped more aerial bombs on Vietnam than had been dropped by all of the air forces of all the countries that had fought in World War II, combined, but just dropping bombs doesn’t win the fight.  You have to hit something besides the ground.

When I arrived in Vietnam, at the beginning of January, 1970, the monsoon season was just ending.  The Marine base at An Hoa was a sea of reddish yellow mud, about the consistency of split pea soup and a couple of feet deep.  As we got off the helicopter, we were handed a pair of knee-high rubber boots and told to put them on.  Sometimes, they weren’t high enough.  During the dry season, the reddish-yellow mud turned to reddish-yellow dust that got into, and covered, everything.  I didn’t spend much time at An Hoa, either, and was glad to get out of there.  At Regimental Headquarters, I was assigned to First Battalion, and the Battalion Commander, a Lieutenant Colonel named Joe Griffith, assigned me to Company D, as the Platoon Commander of 2^nd Platoon.  Lt. Col. Griffith had come up through the ranks.  He was a pretty good guy, tough but fair.  Lieutenant Barney Lenihan was Company Commander of Company “D” and Lt. Rosenow, who looked like he was about 16, was the Company’s Executive Officer.  The Top was 1st Sergeant Windisch, and the Company Gunny was Gunnery Sergeant Winters.  Staff Sergeant Sutton was acting Platoon Commander of Weapons Platoon, but the weapons, M-60 machine guns & 60 mm mortars, were all attached to the rifle platoons.  First & Third Platoons, then led by Lieutenant Joe Henry and Lt. George McMahon, were inside the base, on work details during the day and manning the lines at night.  Second Platoon, my guys, were providing security for the water plant, which was just outside the base perimeter.  Our position reminded me of pictures I had seen of the ruins of the Alamo.  Fortunately, the NVA and VC near An Hoa were not commanded by Santa Ana.  My Platoon Sergeant at that time was Sgt. Virgil C. C. Meeks, a Marine from Milwaukee WI who looked, walked, talked and was tough as nails.  I was never quite certain if Sgt. Meeks knew where the boundary line between civilized behavior and barbarity was located, but when the shit hit the fan, you knew you could count on him, and I was damned glad that he was by my side.  Later on, Staff Sergeant Theo. Richardson became Platoon Sergeant, and Sgt. Meeks assumed the duties of Right Guide, but that didn’t happen until after the event that is the main point of this article.  When I joined the Platoon at the water plant, we had 14 able bodied Marines, not counting myself, Sgt. Meeks and our Platoon Corpsman, HM3 Paul “Doc Buzz” Baviello.  There should have been more than 3 times that number, but this was the Marine Corps, where “we have been doing so much with so little for so long that, starting tomorrow, we are going to do everything with nothing.”  We were Second Platoon, so we did what a platoon was ordered to do, whether we had 14 men or 54 to do it with.  It was at the water plant that I first learned what it was to “sandbag” a patrol.  Each night, small units were sent out to take up listening posts and ambush positions along likely approaches to our lines.  Only a few nights after my arrival, a squad led by L/Cpl Michaels decided to sandbag their night patrol by hiding out in a nearby abandoned school building until the Battalion sent out “mid-rats” night rations, to the water plant.  At that point they intended to slip into the main base through the open gate, and get a good night’s sleep in the base.  They would come back to the water plant in the morning to report no activity at their ambush site.  Sgt. Meeks and I got wind of the plan, though, and, about the time that the patrol was going to try to slip into the base, we yelled, “Who goes there!” and loudly discussed prospects of firing machine guns and 60 mm mortars into the school building, or calling in an artillery fire mission on the site.  The patrol spent an uncomfortable night, hunkered down in the old schoolhouse, and that may have been one classroom experience that none of them ever forgot.  The entire Battalion was set to go out on a major field operation in short order, so I didn’t have a lot of time to settle in.  They looked like a rag-tag bunch, those Marines put in my charge, but I soon found out that they had iron in their backbones.  There were times when I felt that I had been put in their charge, as most of them had been in country longer than I had, and they had more combat experience, too.  I listened to them, and tried to learn from them, and I like to think that we learned some things from each other that made us all better Marines, and, hopefully, better men.  They were white, black, Hispanic and Asian.  They were all young, tough and disciplined.  They were part of what they called “Uncle Sam’s lean, mean, green killing machine.”

In addition to the country of Vietnam having a unique odor, the people did, too.  I suppose that it came as a result of their diet, the water they drank and the air they breathed.  Any group of Vietnamese people gave off an odor that reminded me of a multitude of dead carp on the shores of Lake Tewaukon.  This was useful at times, as enemy units in the field could sometimes be smelled before they could be seen.  Americans, too, had their unique odor which was equally offensive to the Vietnamese.  We smelled like a combination of rotten meat, stale tobacco smoke, toothpaste and after shave.  You can imagine what 40 or 50 men would smell like after 3 or 4 weeks without a shower or clean clothes in temperatures that hit 100 or higher every day, with the humidity at 95%, or higher.  Those of us who were there don’t have to imagine it.  We can remember it.  Usually, within a week, our clothing would begin to rot and, in a month, we ended up looking like some rag-bag ruffians from skid row, and smelling worse.  The odor of an American unit could enrage the water buffaloes that Vietnamese farmers used for farm power.  These huge creatures, weighing 1,500 to 2,000 pounds and equipped with a magnificent set of heavy horns, were normally so gentle that little Vietnamese children could climb all over them, like backyard playground equipment, but one whiff of an American soldier could put them on the attack.  We tried to avoid them, if possible, but sometimes it was necessary to kill one to keep it from doing serious damage to our men.  That was a real tragedy for the Vietnamese family, and certainly did not endear us to them, either.  Second Platoon didn’t have to kill any water buffaloes during my time as commander, but my guess is that, if we had killed one, we would have eaten it.

The Vietnam War was a war of small units.  World War II and Korea had pitted armies of hundreds of thousands of men against each other in pitched battles, but in Vietnam it was one small group sliding through the jungle and the dark, hoping to find the enemy small unit before it found them.  In Vietnam, the basic Marine Corps infantry unit that carried on this work was the rifle platoon.  A Marine Rifle Platoon consisted of 3 squads, each squad having 4 fire teams of 3 riflemen each and 1 squad leader.  Additionally, there is a Platoon Sergeant, an assistant Platoon Sergeant called the Right Guide, and 1 officer, a 2^nd or 1^st Lieutenant, in command.  In Vietnam, we also usually had 2 machine gun squads of 3 men each, a 3 man mortar squad and 3 grenade launchers, called “Bloopers”, attached to the Platoon, making our total strength, if we were at full strength which we usually weren’t, at 54 Marines.  At that time, most of the Marines in the Platoon were quite young, 18 to 20 years old.  At 24 years old when I arrived, 25 before the end of that month, I was one of the oldest men in D Company, with only the Company Gunnery Sergeant and the First Sergeant being older.  The various ranks of the men in the Platoon started at Private (Pvt), the lowest, and worked up through Private First Class (PFC), Lance Corporal (L/Cpl), Corporal (Cpl), Sergeant (Sgt), Staff Sergeant (S/Sgt) and Lieutenant (Lt).  Each Rifle Company, which consisted of 3 Rifle Platoons and 1 Weapons Platoon, also had a Gunnery Sergeant, a First Sergeant, an Executive Officer (usually a 1^st Lieutenant) and a Company Commander (supposed to be a Captain, but in Vietnam usually a 1^st Lieutenant).

In my Platoon, PFC Larry Green was a rifleman and L/Cpl Larry Dyer carried a 40 mm grenade launcher.  The Marine who carried the 40 mm Grenade Launcher was called “the blooper man”, because the weapon made a sound that went “bloop” when fired.  The blooper man was pretty important because his 40 mm grenade launcher, which looked like a short-barreled, extremely big bore, single-shot shotgun, could shoot grenades out several hundred yards and was kind of like a mini-artillery piece.  Larry Green was a black kid from Baltimore and Larry Dyer was a red-headed kid from Oxen Hills,Maryland, as Irish as Paddy’s pig.  They were both wiry, tough as nails and 19 years old in February of 1970.  They also shared a foxhole when we were in the field and were friends as only those who have shared foxholes, cold C-rations and a baptism of fire and blood can be friends.  They were comrades in arms, to use the classic military lingo.  They were well-trained, tough, battle hardened Marines, but they were also 19 year old boys who were a long way from home and the people they cared about.

On the night of February 3, 1970, our Company was on the second week of a month long field operation west of DaNang, in an area Marines called “Arizona Territory”, because we could run into hostiles any time anywhere, and sometimes all the time everywhere.  At that time, I had been in country for about a month.  Just to the west of Arizona Territory was a range of mountains we called “Charlie Ridge” because the Viet Cong, usually referred to as VC or Victor Charlie, had been thick as fleas up there.  When I was there, the VC had pretty much been replaced by North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units.  The NVA were tougher and more disciplined than the VC, but the VC were sneakier.  Either way, though, any time we went to Arizona Territory or Charlie Ridge there was sure to be hell to pay, with fire and blood being the currency.  Both Arizona Territory and Charlie Ridge were “free fire zones”, which meant that anyone out there was considered to be hostile and was subject to being killed on sight.

That evening, February 3, Company D had set up in a defensive perimeter, with each Platoon being assigned a sector of the line.  I was going down the line, checking positions, weapons, equipment and the men, and stopped at the foxhole occupied by Green & Dyer to make sure that they had clear fields of fire in case of an attack that night.  We had been resupplied by helicopter the day before, and some of the men had also received some mail.  Larry Green had received a letter from his girl friend back inBaltimore, and he was eager to tell me about her.  She was real pretty, he said, with a smile that brightened the day, and she was real nice, too.  He said that she was so nice, and so sensitive that, if he was short of money when they went to a movie, she never even asked for popcorn.  He said that she was the only girl for him, and when he got home he was going to ask her to marry him.  He had a picture of her which he showed to me and Larry Dyer, and he was right – she was a very pretty girl with chocolate colored skin and long, black hair, big brown eyes and a nice smile.  She was 19, too.  Larry Dyer didn’t have a girl friend, he said, but he intended to find one prettier than Larry Green’s, when he got back home.  He planned to relocate to New York City when he left the Corps.  They asked me if I had a girl back home, and I told them that I didn’t then, but I used to.  Her picture was still in my wallet, so I showed it to them. They thought she was real pretty.  So did I.  Larry Dyer said that he just might forget about going back to New York and come out to North Dakota to find a pretty girl like her when he got out of the Corps.  We laughed then, because we were half a world, and what seemed like an eternity, away from the ones we cared about, and I moved on to check the next position.  Why we shared this personal information, I don’t know, but the simple humanity of it touched me, much more deeply than I realized at the time, I found out.

We had a quiet night, with no enemy contact.  The next morning, I was given an order by the Company Commander, Lieutenant Lenihan, to send out a squad sized patrol.  L/CPl Michaels went out with the 1 squad patrol.  They had a medical corpsmanHM2 Martin “, Doc Marty” Martinez, and a machine gun team with them.   Doc Marty had only been with the platoon for a few days.  He had been the medical corpsman for another platoon, then had been assigned to the Battalion Aid Station because he was “getting short.”  He had been assigned to 2^nd Platoon, though, and sent back into the field because our senior corpsman, Doc Buzz, needed some relief from constant duty, day and night.  PFC Green and L/Cpl Dyer were also in that squad.  Most patrols went out early in the morning and returned to our Company position later in the day without incident, just another long, hot walk in the sun.  The patrol from 2^nd Platoon nearly made it, too, but not quite.  About 600 yards from the Company’s line, Larry Green, who was the Point Man, stepped on what is now called an “improvised explosive device”, what we called a booby trap back then.  This booby trap consisted of a large artillery shell, most likely a 155 mm, that had failed to detonate when it was originally fired, which the VC had planted at a spot where a trail crossed a rice paddy dike, and rigged it to explode when someone triggered it.  The explosion hurled Larry Green at least 30 feet into the air, shredded his flak jacket and clothing, blew off both of his legs, mangled his lower torso and drove red-hot shards of steel shrapnel up into his abdomen, chest and arms.  Somehow, though, the blast did not immediately kill him.  Larry Dyer had been about 15 feet behind Larry Green, and the force of the explosion split his body open, from throat to crotch, spilling his insides onto the muddy ground and killing him instantly.  Four other Marines were wounded by the blast, some seriously, some with only minor wounds.  One Marine, Cpl Perry, the machine gun team leader, was wounded by a piece of shrapnel that was about 18 inches long and twisted like a corkscrew.  The chunk of shrapnel struck him in the abdomen and protruded from both sides of his body, front and back.  All of this happened simultaneously and instantaneously – death and destruction in the blink of an eye.  Our Medical Corpsman, “Doc Marty”,  did what he could for the wounded while L/Cpl Michaels was on the radio, calling in a medevac chopper.  Larry Green’s wounds were horrendous.  He was in shock and delerious.  I was told that he kept asking the Corpsman to make sure that no one amputated his legs, even though his legs were already gone.  Occasionally, he had a brief moment of mental clarity, when he realized what had happened to him, and he cried and begged his comrades to kill him right there rather than send him home that way.  It took nearly every battle dressing they had to cover his wounds, and everything was soaked with blood.  The ground, too, was saturated with the blood of Green, Dyer, perry and the other wounded Marines.  The Corpsman gave Green a lot of morphine to kill the pain, too, but it didn’t seem to help much.  Larry Green was alive when he was put on the medevac chopper, but he died before reaching the hospital at DaNang.  That was a blessing, so we thought, and all of us agreed that we would rather die than survive with the terrible wounds he had suffered.  Lary Dyer’s body was put in a body bag and loaded onto the same chopper.  His comrades tried to make sure that all of Dyer’s body parts got into the body bag, and some of the bloody mud ofVietnam went in with his body, too.  Cpl Perry also went out on that medevac, and he survived to make it back to the States.  I know that Cpl Perry eventually recovered and was released from the hospital, but I never learned what happened to him after that.  If he is still living, he has to have one heck of a scar and other problems as a result of his wound, though.  Even the care giver, Doc Marty, did not escape that bloody day.  As he moved among the wounded Marines another booby trap went off, severely wounding him.  He kept right on taking care of his Marines, though, until they were all loaded onto medevac choppers before he would leave the field himself.  The wop,wop, wop of the medevac chopper faded into the distance, and with it went all that remained of the 2 Marines I had shared some thoughts and a laugh with the night before.  Back in the States onFebruary 4, 1970, life went on.

That night, I checked positions, men and equipment, again, and the next day we went out on patrol, again.  A day or so later, some new men were assigned to the Platoon.  Within a week, it seemed as if Larry Green and Larry Dyer had been gone a long time.  Events moved on, and we just didn’t have time to think about those 2 good Marines, but that day and what had happened to them was seared into my memory.

Now, more than 4 decades later, I often think about Larry Green and Larry Dyer, and about how their lives were wasted in a war that need not, and should not, have been fought, had our nation’s leaders taken the time to understand the situation.  I have often thought about the terrible loss the deaths of these 2 good boys must have been to their families.  I have often wondered what happened to Larry Green’s girlfriend, the girl who was so sweet and sensitive that she didn’t even ask for popcorn when he was short of cash.  I have often wondered why our lives touched and we shared that personal moment on the night before they died.  I have often thought about what I could have done that might have kept those 2 Marines alive.  I have often wondered why the rest of us survived Vietnam and they did not.  For what purpose did they die and I survive?  Was, or is, there a purpose to any of what happened back then?  Our faith tells us that all things happen to God’s purpose, and I hope that there was some divine purpose in what happened to Green and Dyer and to the rest of us, but I have never been able to discern what it might have been.  I wish that the Almighty would be a little less obscure.

That was 41, now nearly 42 years ago.  Multiply 42 times 2 and that’s how many years of useful life were sacrificed on that day in February, 1970.  Larry Green and his girlfriend would probably have married and had grandchildren by now.  Larry Dyer might have found that “prettier” girl inNew York, orNorth Dakota, married her and had a family, too.  They were two good young men.  They have been dead and in their graves for nearly 42 years now.  No one can ever know what might have been, but all of the might have beens for Larry Green and Larry Dyer became never would bes onFebruary 4, 1970.

The memory of Larry Green and Larry Dyer and how they died always reminds me of the waste and futility of war.  The memory of Larry Green and Larry Dyer always makes me sad for what we, all the rest of us, lost when they were killed.  The war inVietnamtook more than 58,000 Larry Greens and Larry Dyers from those they cared about and from those who cared about them, and that’s just the ones who were killed.  The number does not reflect the hundreds of thousands who still bear the physical and psychological scars of that conflict.  The memory of Larry Green and Larry Dyer is what makes me so angry about the other times that American soldiers and Marines have been committed to combat so some politician can look “macho” to the voters.  There are nights when I have dreams about that day inVietnam, when my inability to stop the tragedy from happening wakes me up in a cold sweat, with my heart pounding.  Those dreams used to be frequent visitors, but don’t show up very often now.  I never lost another man to enemy action while I was inVietnam, and I made it my mission to try to make sure that all of the Marines for whom I was responsible made it back home to their wives, girlfriends and families.  We did our duty and carried out our missions, but, as much as I could, I did it in a way that exposed my men to as little danger from enemy action as possible.  We were involved in plenty of combat situations after that, and destroyed more human beings than I care to think about, but, whether because of my efforts or because of a great deal of good luck, there were no more fatalities in the units I commanded.  Other Marines I knew were killed or wounded, but none for whom I was responsible.

At that time I could be a very hard and cold person, and I would have happily killed every Vietnamese in southeast Asia without mercy, remorse or regret, if I thought it would save the life of even one American soldier.  Being hard and cold was the method  many of us  used to insulate ourselves from the daily insanity ofVietnam.  That cold feeling still comes over me sometimes, when something has to be done that I don’t particularly want to do, but, compared to the way I was in 1970, I am a pretty warm and mushy guy, now.  There have been some high points, and some low points in my life.  That day in February, 1970, was one of the lowest points in my life, and I hope that neither I, nor anyone I know and care about, ever has to experience another like it.  I know, though, that the nature of mankind being what it is, the scene will play out again and again in future conflicts.  I am proud, every day, of the Marines I served with in Vietnam.  They did not shrink from danger. They did not flinch at combat.  They did their duty with the steadfast courage of United States Marines, and for that Americans can, and should, be grateful.  Rest In Peace, Larry Greene and Larry Dyer.  Your comrades in arms remember your sacrifice and honor your service.

Read the post...