This article was originally published in the “Stars and Stripes” on October 5, 2014.

By Jennifer Hlad

Another Veteran’s Day is fast approaching! 

After a searching through dozens of patriotic videos on Youtube, I’ve captured ten that I like the best and posted them below for your viewing – most folks will be familiar with all the following tunes except for maybe one:  “The Lights of Freedom” video caught my attention – the tune is catchy and the author uses pictures from  every state in the union during the presentation.  What do you think?  Are any of these your favorites?  I trust you’ll enjoy this compilation!

NOTE:  ANY OF THESE VIDEOS CAN BE VIEWED AT FULL SCREEN BY CLICKING IN THE BRACKETS ON THE BOTTOM RIGHT OF THE VIDEO.  WHEN OVER, HIT THE ESCAPE KEY TO RETURN TO THIS PAGE.

Lee Greenwood – Proud to be an American

 Toby Keith – American Soldier

Toby Keith – Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue

 Billy Ray Cyrus – Some Gave All

 Johnny Cash – The Ragged Old Flag

Hank Williams, Jr. – America will Survive

Plank Road Publishing, Inc. Music by Teresa Jennings – The Lights of Freedom -

 President Ronald Reagan – We Must Fight

Neil Diamond – America

 Celine Dion – God Bless America

Thank you for taking the time to view these videos!  Don’t miss out on the many articles, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

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One of these videos was posted on my Facebook site earlier in the week resulting in quite a few comments from vets and non-vets alike.  The main reason for posting is two-fold:  first, to show how the scenery has changed – vegetation reclaiming the land after 45 years.  Second, many people had absolutely no idea what it was like patrolling (humping) through the jungle – posed pictures somehow don’t offer a real “feel” of that experience – hopefully, this video allows viewers to get a taste of what us grunts experienced way back then.

While watching this video, you’ll have to use a little imagination so consider the following:  The temperature and humidity are both in the mid-90’s; the rucksack of supplies on your back weighs about 70 lbs. –  its straps are digging into your shoulders, restricting the blood flow to both arms which are already numb – you can try shifting the pack around, doubling up the towel under the straps and even increase your forward bend (like in the picture below) during the hump for temporary shoulder relief; the sweatband circling your head is now soaked through and beads of salty moisture are rolling down your forehead and irritating your eyes – causing them to water and get blurry;  your fatigues are soaked through and through from sweat and your back is beginning to itch; watch out for the elephant grass fronds, their razor sharp edges tear and cut  skin and become irritated from your salty sweat; Oops, land leaches are beginning to fall from upper branches onto the troops as they pass through; snakes, spiders and other insects rebel when entering their domain; 

higher canopied jungle have “wait-a-minute vines” hanging from above, their thorny rope-like vines snag onto uniforms or rucksack – stopping you dead in your tracks.  The solution is to back up and allow the soldier following you to “unsnag” the vine from your body to continue the march; 90% of the time, columns of soldiers will not walk on trails and instead, use machetes to cut a path through the thick jungle, making travel much more difficult and slower;

spacing is critical and soldiers normally keep a distance of  10 – 15 feet between one another – closer in thicker jungles; when setting up a small perimeter for the night, sleeping positions need to be cut out in the thick vegetation and pathways cleared to a central location for night guard and radio watch – everyone rotates and gets an hour-long turn every night.  So there ya have it, everything you might experience while on patrol through the endless jungles.  Oh yea, I almost forget the two most important things – keep a sharp eye out for enemy soldiers who could be lurking anywhere and for their boobytraps – both, capable of maiming and death!

In 2012, a Facebook friend of mine visited Vietnam and toured Dong Ap Bia, where a punishing 11-day battle took place for a mountain near the border with Laos. The 101st Airborne Division fought North Vietnamese regulars in May 1969 for control of the site designated as Hill 937 on U.S. military maps, but known to American soldiers as “Hamburger Hill.” The U.S. operation took the hill, but only after 71 Americans died and 372 were wounded. Some estimates put the Vietnamese deaths at 600.   This friend sent me these two videos and several pictures of current day Hamburger Hill to share.

I am not attempting to tell the story of this battle  – certainly there are thousands of versions.  Instead, the focus of this article is to educate those who have never been in the military or  had to patrol / fight in the jungles and hills of Vietnam. It is an opportunity for one to experience what it might have been like.  In the second video, my friend is following a guide up “Hamburger Hill” in the A Shau Valley and filmeing the video while walking – he is not carrying any supplies on his back, yet  is short of breath, making it difficult for him to provide a running commentary. It’s the monsoon season and both men are following a small path.  Prior to showing the video, I’ve posted his pictures and some from the actual battle, and then added comments from those viewers who’ve seen the video earlier in the week.

Hill, between the ‘Screaming Eagles’ of the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) and the 29th ‘Pride of Ho Chi Minh’ NVA Regiment. 

LZ for the evacuation of those wounding during the battle.

Short look from former LZ and up the mountain

Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill)

Fighting up the hill

LZ at base of Hamburger Hill

Guide heading uphill

Looking downhill into an opening within the thick vegetation

One of the LZ’s used during the battle

Stairs at the base of the hill – leading up to the monument

Monument near hilltop honoring those Vietnamese Communists lost during the battle 

English version of plaque inside of monument

Near the summit

Backside of mountain where the NVA escaped

Example of elephant grass

Panoramic view

Looking downhill

Stream

Okay, it’s time to watch the video – please keep in mind all the things I mentioned at the beginning to get an up close and personal feel of what grunts had to endure in the jungles and hills of Vietnam.  

Better to watch in “full screen” – items to watch for:

1. My friend cuts his hand when brushing against elephant grass
2. He comes upon a snake and bunker, but it’s too fast for us to see anything
3. He stops to film an unusual flower and loses his guide.  Since they are on a trail, it will be easy for him to catch up.  When cutting our own trail and losing sight of the person in front of you sometime causes panic due to the uncertainty of how to proceed.  Most of the time, the person in front will come back for you when he notices you gone.

Walking Up Hamburger Hill

Comments from Facebook:

“Looks so different now!”

“…not all of the terrain was this thick and heavy. Some areas had been defoliated and cut down.”

“Yes the foliage varied in the A Shau and some hills were steeper than others. Walked point there a couple times and avoided trails like that as much as possible.”

“That was life back then nothing important but taking the next step !!!”

“From the vantage point of 40 some odd years later, I am asking myself, how the hell did we do it for weeks at a time?”

“WOW! Barely a trail there at all. I don’t know HOW you could have seen any enemy! They could lie down just a few feet in, and you’d never see them! Snakes? Insects?”

“I’ll tell ya, we sure did pick some God-awful pieces of real estate to assault and then abandon…”

“That was one of the things wrong with this War – ground was not/could not be held.”

 These thirty quotes were cherry-picked from the website “BrainyQuote” – all are from famous people referencing war – especially the Vietnam War.   Using a photo editor, I was able to create a backdrop for each of these special quotations and have posted them below in no specific order.  The pictures are from Facebook and the internet.  Feel free to copy and paste any of them to your personal directory.  I hope you enjoy them!  Let me know if you have a favorite…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to view these slides!  Don’t miss out on the many articles, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are live – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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This article was originally published in the Stars and Stripes on November 17, 2014 by Matthew M. Burke.  My good friend and fellow VVA Chapter 154 member, John “Doc” Cicala is interviewed in this article and also featured in the forthcoming documentary.   

My earlier article, “Famous Quotes About Vietnam and War” was well received and generated a ton of interest.  As a result, I’ve published this new blog with 34 additional “Quotes on pictures” – some are anonymous, but all are statements we’ve heard at one time or another while in Vietnam.  Like I did before, the quotes were cherry-picked from the website “BrainyQuote dot com” – most are from famous people referencing war – especially the Vietnam War.   Using a photo editor, I created a backdrop for each of these special quotations and posted them below in no specific order.  Most pictures are from Facebook and the internet – a couple include my mug and are from my personal collection.  Feel free to copy and paste any of them to your personal directory.  I hope you enjoy them!  Let me know if you have a favorite…

Thank you for taking the time to view these slides!  Don’t miss out on the many articles, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).  To view the first posting with 30 additional quotes on pictures – click HERE

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are live – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

I am trying to determine my website audience – before leaving, would you please click HERE then choose the one item best describing you.  Thank you in advance!

By Terry Leonard, Stars and Stripes

As fellow troopers aid wounded comrades, the first sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division, guides a medevac helicopter through the jungle foliage to pick up casualties suffered during a five-day patrol near Hue, April 1968. /ART GREENSPON/AP

South Vietnam, May 20, 1965: U.S. helicopters rake the perimeter of a landing zone with rockets and machine-gun fire before dropping off troops brought in from Binh Hoa.  Mike Mealey/Stars and Stripes

When Neil Armstrong took his small step for man in the lunar dust in July 1969, Americans saw it as proof there were no Earthly limits. Nothing then seemed beyond the reach of American power, prestige and know-how. It took Vietnam to expose the hubris in that sentiment.

The American Century was at its zenith. Unrivaled U.S. wealth and prosperity, predictable fruits of the postwar Pax Americana, lifted national influence to new heights globally. Hollywood, rock music, blue jeans and hamburgers carried American culture, taste and values to the far corners of the world.

Yet with images of Apollo 11 fresh on the mind, Vietnam forced Americans to accept limits to U.S. power and to acknowledge their reach had exceeded their grasp. With apologies to Robert Browning, that troublesome realization was not what they believed a heaven was for.

Fifty years later, the Vietnam War remains an enigma. Its legacy distorted by folklore, myth, political spin, cloudy memories and the perverted history of feature films and popular fiction. Yet it remains clear the war changed America in profound ways still not understood.

It changed who we are and how we see ourselves. It fundamentally revised our view of the world and the world’s view of us. It reshaped our institutions, particularly the military. It altered not only how we fight wars, but when and why we choose to fight.

Stars and Stripes is commemorating the Vietnam War at 50 annually with a series of stories and special projects intended to add context and understanding to the history of that war and to the changes it wrought. The project examines the fighting abroad and the protests, politics and turmoil at home. It includes the voices of veterans who fought and those of others who marched at home for peace.

More than 58,000 Americans and at least 1.5 million Vietnamese died in the war that divided the country as nothing else had done since the Civil War.

“No event in American history is more misunderstood than Vietnam. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now,” former President Richard Nixon wrote in his 1985 book “No More Vietnams,” a selective history and apologia for his role in the tragic war.

Americans fought fiercely and gallantly in Vietnam. The Medal of Honor was awarded to more than 250 individuals. U.S. troops won nearly every significant battle. Yet it was all in vain. Many fighting men would feel betrayed by political leaders and people at home who turned against the war.

At home, the war taught a generation of young people not to trust their government. In an astonishingly short period of time they taught their parents and even some political leaders.

“The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them,” former Sen. J. William Fulbright told the New York Times in 1985, a decade after the war ended.

The government also didn’t trust its people. Security agencies spying on civil rights leaders and political dissidents added people who spoke out against the war to their surveillance lists. Later Senate investigations detailed widespread illegal intelligence gathering on U.S. citizens.

Anti-war and civil rights protesters were also portrayed in government-run campaigns of character assassination as anti-American or communist sympathizers, sometimes with violent consequences. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago police savagely attacked and beat anti-war protesters. A federal investigation later would term it a police riot.

In May of 1970, National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four and wounding nine. Just 10 days later, police killed two and wounded 12 when they fired on African-American students protesting the war at Jackson State College in Mississippi.

Kent State triggered a nationwide student strike that closed hundreds of colleges and universities and became a symbol of how the war divided the country. In a Newsweek poll three weeks after the shootings, 11 percent of the respondents blamed the National Guard and 58 percent the students. The shootings at predominately African-American Jackson state were largely ignored.

When the war began in the Sixties many had already begun to question a U.S. international policy shaped by the cold war narrative of the Red Menace and the Domino Theory. Domestically, American society was under pressure from many sides to become more inclusive and fair.

The civil rights movement forced a reluctant country to confront its values and its shameful past. The sexual revolution and the women’s rights movement sought to fundamentally change how Americans lived, loved and worked. It reshaped gender roles and widened a growing gap between the younger and older generations.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy stunned the country and exposed deep and dark divisions. The subsequent murders in 1968 of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy destroyed lingering illusions about an idyllic America and raised troubling questions about our violent national character.

The mostly peaceful civil rights movement was fiercely and violently resisted. Police brutally suppressed peaceful demonstrations, and not just in the south. Civil rights workers were murdered or beaten, black churches were bombed, black men lynched. Race riots in the ‘60s rocked New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. Americans were shocked by television images of National Guardsmen and U.S. paratroopers, locked and loaded, patrolling the streets of burning American cities.

America’s disaffected youth recoiled from society and their discontent gave rise to an anti-authoritarian counterculture that sought to reinterpret the American dream. Peace and love replaced duty and honor. The popular refrain “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” defined the boundaries of the generation gap.

Entertainers such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and others made rebellion part of popular culture. Dylan caught the emerging tenor in his 1964 song “The Times They Are A-Changin’”:

Come mothers and fathers  

Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command

Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary became a counterculture guru by advocating mind-altering drugs such as LSD. He popularized the phrase “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.” He was fired by Harvard, but he was seen as something of a philosopher by the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” culture of the ‘60s. So much so that even today a common joke is: “If you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t really there.”

Despite the obvious excesses, mainstream society began to embrace causes of the youth movement, particularly its anti-war sentiment. Peace marches that began with a few thousand students grew into marches by tens of thousands from all walks of life.

Nixon sought to deflect criticism of the war and growing distrust in government. He spoke in1969 of the “silent majority” of Americans whose views supported him and the war but whose voices were being drowned out by a more vocal minority.

That was the summer Apollo 11 landed on the moon and confirmed our belief in American exceptionalism. Americans constantly boasted that if we could go to the moon, we could do anything.

Many historians argue that a series of U.S. presidents and their military and political aides believed it too and erroneously assumed military might would win in Vietnam.

“Tell the Vietnamese they’ve got to draw in their horns or we’re going to bomb them into the Stone Age,” warned Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, in May 1964. U.S. warplanes dropped more tons of explosive on Vietnam than fell on Germany, Japan and Italy in World War II, but his hollow threat would later be lampooned by critics of the war.

In just three years, that overconfidence retreated to a position of curious optimism. Walt Rostow, President Johnson’s national security adviser, tried to deflect bad news about the war in 1967 by saying: “I see light at the end of the tunnel.” That light, his critics joked, was an oncoming train.

Even the curious optimism faded.

Two years later, Nixon, under pressure to end the war vowed: “I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.”

Nixon later claimed victory in Vietnam but blamed a hostile press and an irresponsible Congress for “losing the peace.” In the book “Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair and the Origins of Watergate,” journalist Ken Hughes said this year that newly released transcripts of FBI wiretaps indicated then presidential candidate Nixon ordered the sabotage of the Paris peace talks in October of 1968, apparently to bolster his election chances that November.

Over the years, news coverage of the war shifted from supportive to an increasingly grim portrayal of the fighting. As the reporting became increasingly negative, as casualties continued to mount, public doubts grew dramatically.

One of the most enduring legacies of Vietnam and its negative impact on public opinion and policy is the Vietnam Syndrome, the name to the paralyzing effect on U.S. foreign policy brought on by the fear of becoming mired in another quagmire, a questionable war with no clear objectives and a defined end game. Every president since the war ended has had to deal with the syndrome.

The Vietnam War was perhaps the most publicized war in American history and certainly the first televised war with ghastly images nightly on the evening news.

“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam,” Marshall McLuhan, the highly regarded Canadian philosopher of communication theory told the Montreal Gazette in 1975.

That coverage of the Vietnam War and its impact on the public became a serious concern. Early in 1968 polls showed 61 percent of Americans supported the war. By years end, 53 percent opposed it. By the time Armstrong landed on the moon, 58 percent opposed it and s upport for the war would continue to fall.

“Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind,” retired Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, would tell Time magazine in 1982.

For some, the key lesson learned was that it was the coverage of failed policies, and not the policy failures themselves, that caused Americans to lose faith and confidence in government.

The military now tightly controls access to a battlefield. With the policy it can and at times has limited what could be seen and by extension, what could be reported. Critics argue the policy supports the old adage: “Truth is the first casualty of war.”

Although support for the war dwindled, until Saigon finally fell April 29, 1975, many still refused to believe we could lose. Today, many scholars contend the war marked the loss of American innocence. It deeply divided a nation unified by World War II and the division and distrust of government continues to grow.

leonard.terry@stripes.com

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If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are live – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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By Erik_Slavin
Article originally publishes in Stars and Stripes, November 12, 2014

The Vietnam War’s lasting impact on America’s foreign policy is largely characterized by doubt, in the opinions of many analysts.

Doubt that the United States, despite possessing the most powerful military on earth, will win a war against a determined enemy.

Doubt among presidential administrations that the public would support a conflict, once television showed them pictures of dead soldiers being dragged through the streets of countries most Americans knew little or nothing about.

Mostly, doubt — with some notable outliers — that the United States can impose its will through force, no matter the situation.

Driving those doubts is the desire to avoid another open-ended commitment with an uncertain endgame, where U.S. troops spend years on the ground in a foreign country, fighting against an enemy that can blend back into the civilian population far too easily.

That desire is part of what some have defined as “Vietnam syndrome,” a concept declared dead and reborn several times in the decades since the last American combat troops left Southeast Asia.

“Getting involved and not being able to get up, like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians suffering constant blows, that’s the concern,” said Carlyle Thayer, an American professor and Vietnam analyst who taught a course on the Vietnam War at Australia’s National Defense University.

That concern endures — buffeted by experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan — as Americans debate today’s military actions.

Americans support fighting the Islamic State group by a 60 percent to 31 percent margin — unless that action turns to ground troops, according to a September Gallup poll. Only 40 percent approve of that, according to the poll.

President Barack Obama went so far as to rule out U.S. ground troops before the latest round of air and naval strikes on Iraq and Syria began.

Before the end of the Vietnam War, presidents didn’t speak in such measured, cautious ways about how they would wage war. However, Obama made it clear during a May speech at the U.S. Military Academy that caution would be a cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda.

“Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences,” Obama said.

The U.S. would act unilaterally when it was directly threatened and would otherwise explore other options, he said.

Obama, 53, is too young to have served in Vietnam — yet his words that day mirror the definition of Vietnam syndrome offered by journalist and Vietnam War author Marvin Kalb, who called it “a fundamental reluctance to commit American military power anywhere in the world, unless it is absolutely necessary to protect the national interests of the country.”

The term Vietnam syndrome first reached prominence when presidential candidate Ronald Reagan used it during an August 1980 campaign speech. Reagan said the syndrome was created by the “North Vietnamese aggressors” aiming to “win in the field of propaganda here in America what they could not win on the field of battle in Vietnam.”

In Reagan’s view, America failed to secure Vietnam because it lacked the means and the will to do so from the home front.

Nevertheless, fear of another Vietnam “quagmire” became the lens through which military action was viewed in the post-war 1980s.

Although Reagan’s budgets dramatically increased defense spending, his military actions were generally small, covert or obtained by proxy.

Then came the first Gulf War. It was civilian America’s first look at the reconstituted, all-volunteer force in a very large-scale action.

Victory came swiftly and at the cost of relatively few casualties. President George H.W. Bush avoided the quagmire by pulling troops out of Iraq quickly and leaving Saddam Hussein in power — moves that drew little criticism at the time.

Basking in the afterglow of military triumph, Bush ended a speech in 1991 with the proclamation that, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”

About two years later, the doubts that Vietnam brought about returned, this time in the Horn of Africa.

On Oct. 3, 1993, the “Black Hawk Down” incident kicked off the Battle of Mogadishu, leaving 18 U.S. servicemembers dead. Americans recoiled at images of Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland’s body being dragged through the Somali capital’s streets.

Days later, Clinton ordered U.S. troops to begin preparing for withdrawal.

A year later, the genocide in Rwanda began, and Clinton sent no military force. He would later describe not intervening in the genocide, which claimed about 1 million Rwandans, as one of his biggest regrets.

“If we’d gone in sooner, I believe we could have saved at least a third of the lives that were lost. … It had an enduring impact on me,” Clinton said on CNBC in 2013.

American overseas involvement remained somewhat restrained up until the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

After that, eight out of 10 Americans supported a ground war in Afghanistan.

If President George W. Bush had any worries about Vietnam syndrome, he didn’t share them publicly.

Defense analysts once again declared Vietnam syndrome kicked, at least, until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grew protracted, and opinion polls turned against the conflicts.

“Getting involved and not being able to get up, like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians suffering constant blows, that’s the concern.”– Carlyle Thayer

In 2009, conservative scholar Max Boot said that George H.W. Bush got it wrong with his 1991 proclamation — Vietnam syndrome was alive and well in the Obama era.

Boot noted several examples of lawmakers and analysts questioning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the prism of Vietnam.

Boot dismissed their doubts as defeatist. He saw no reason to make the Vietnam comparison, unless it was to compare administrations “more interested in ending than in winning the war.”

Boot’s view led him to agree on one point with Obama’s assessment: “You never step into the same river twice. And so Afghanistan is not Vietnam.”

slavin.erik@stripes.com
Twitter: @eslavin_stripes

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by Jon Davis, Sergeant of Marines. Fought in Iraq during OIF. Amateur military historian. 

When I went through boot camp, upon enlisting with the United States Marine Corps, I had this one drill instructor. Every platoon has that one drill instructor; the one that takes an interest in a … creative sort of way. He’s the one who they invented words for like “sadist”, “psychopath”, and more colorful terms which we are too afraid to utter because he always seems to be around at the edge of earshot. We try not to even think it too loudly. He is the instructor who, more than the others, embraces the philosophy that, without discipline, a platoon’s members will be unprepared to defend themselves in the event of an actual combat event to the death. He also delights in providing that discipline in the belief that he, in his own marginal contribution, is ensuring their survival on down the road. Or maybe he is just sick and twisted and loves to see grown young men on the verge of tears. I believe either possibility to be equally true and plausible.

Well, for me and the platoon of Fox Company 2094, that Drill Instructor was Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Tucker. At first, he seemed the quiet one, then he seemed to come into his own by the end of our first month. By about that time he also got to know me better… which is always a bad thing.

It was July and as I said, we had been in training for a month. It was also my birthday, which isn’t itself an important fact, but for this story it is. SSgt Tucker had forbade me from “treats” at the chow hall. I wasn’t heavy enough to rate being part of any weight control program, but I was heavier than many of the others, so SSgt Tucker just said that I wouldn’t have desserts for any of my meals. You might be surprised that a Marine Corps boot camp story would center around the mundane events surrounding a pastry dish. You might be surprised that such desserts happen at all in boot camp. You imagine the place as depriving a person of every necessity in the hopes of forging some well honed warrior; sleep deprivation, love deprecation, deprecation of food. These things build character right? Well yes, there are times when all these are true. Sleep is a chaotic luxury when you get it. Any form of affection comes only on Sundays from a small letter, if your lucky and there are times when you aren’t given enough to eat. In general, however, the military understands that training can not take place if the recruits are on the verge of starvation. A proper caloric intake is always provided, training schedule permits. We even get a little desert with our meals. Well, most of us did. As I mentioned before, I did not. I was not allowed to partake. Not exactly a huge problem really, but today was different. Today was my birthday and I was having a stinking doughnut.

Yeah, so that was stupid.

As I made my way to the end of the chow hall line holding my tray, to my dismay the instructor at the end of the row was him. It couldn’t have been any of the others. It had to be Tucker. Maybe he wouldn’t remember what he said a month ago. That is at least what would have happened if I was a lucky person. I’m not a lucky person. I made my choice, and yes, it had chocolate frosting. My good fortune of deciding to make my courageous act of defiance on a day when my favorite tasty treat was in stock was the last fortunate thing I experienced for a while.

As might be expected, I turned the corner after clearing the line and there stands SSgt Tucker. I knew him immediately, though I really didn’t know what he looked like. We had been taught never to look directly at them. You know the line, “You eyeballin’ me?” They never really said that, but it’s really surprising how possible it is that you can actually not know the subtle details of the face, or even what it looks like at all, of someone who runs your life literally every single day. Provided, this probably only happens if you have been trained on threat of reprisal never to look at them. What I could recognize from my peripheral vision as he came into view was the way he stood. He was tall and thin, with remarkably long arms and features, otherworldly really. I did get a clear view of those when his outstretched arms invaded my personal space for what Marines affectionately call the “Knife Hand”, with which I was already acquainted.

As I tried to walk past, attracting as little attention as possible, he stopped me and looked down at my meal. He looked at my food and back at me, back at my food, and back at me. He picked up my doughnut, his rangy fingers and long arms brought the evidence slowly and purposefully to his face. His every movement was punctuated by a robotic forced tension throughout his body. He looks at the contraband hauntingly, looks back at me again and even mockingly stares at me through the hole, perhaps I suppose as if he were the god of the underworld peering through the gates of Hell before devouring his victim’s soul for all eternity. From what I could see of his face, I knew he was angry, or at least I thought the feeling was anger. The scowl on his face bemoaned his displeasure with my poor judgement. His mouth was the only communication tool I had with the man since I could practically see it from every angle. He had an unimaginably large mouth, perhaps amplified in my memories at the thought of seeing it unfurl in one of his extremely auditory reprimands as would be dealt to other recruits and myself. Though he had a mocking tone with his movements, his the down turned corners of his sneer made very clear that this was not a moment I would soon forget. Knowing of his own omnipotence and the fact that he had irrefutably caught me guilty of perhaps the single greatest sin ever committed in the history of mankind, he spoke to me in the slow and condescending manner, complete with the raspy, hissing growl of a Marine Corps Drill Instructor, about to strike upon his frightened, quivering prey.

“Is that right Davis? I guess you like treats then… Good to go…”

He placed the pastry back on my tray, every muscle in his arm apparent with every one of his deliberate movements. Still growling demonically and almost in a whisper he said to me:

“You enjoy it…”

I cried out my acknowledgement of what I perceived to be an order. I shouted “Aye-aye, Sir!” and walked away as fast as I could, shocked that he would let me have it, just like that. I sat down and looked at my breakfast, not knowing if the correct action was to eat or just shoot myself. My head was spinning with a mild panic and confusion. As I shoveled my breakfast into my face a dozen questions circled like a swarm of panicked bees.

“Why did he let me go? – How much more time do I have to eat? – This isn’t over, is it. – Did he know it was my birthday? – I wonder what my family is doing today. – Now that I think about it, the thing doesn’t even look that good. – Another Drill Instructor to the left. – What was my third General Order again? – Should I just not eat the doughnut and throw it away? – No, the damage is done. – Should I just eat it? – He’s going to kill me.”

I realized that I should just enjoy it while I had the chance. This was probably going to get worse before it got better. I ate the doughnut. It was marvelous, but as the first bite entered my mouth I suddenly realized something that horrified me.

“Oh God. That was the first time he has spoken to me using my real name. He now knows who I am.”
It was actually the last time he would do it for quite a while. For the next month, he only called me “Treats”. That was my name. Treats. Every time he had a bone to grind, I was his grinding stone. Every time he stood over the quarterdeck, there I was. Extra duties, there I was. Two turns at firewatch on the same night? You guessed it. If you don’t know that much about Marine Corps lingo, I’ll clarify briefly by telling you that my life sucked for that month because of him. It got to the point that all that he had to do was cry out “Treats!” and the platoon would know to echo, “Recruit Davis!” though none of them quite knew why. Looking back, it must have been quite odd to them, since I didn’t tell anyone why he did it and SSgt Tucker wasn’t exactly courteous or social enough to let them in on it. He defiantly didn’t believe they deserved to know anything more than was absolutely necessary. All the platoon needed to do was make sure I got the message. So to him, I was called treats, and in that month, the two of us became very, very much more acquainted with one another. It’s safe to say that SSgt Tucker went above and beyond the call of duty to aid me shed the calories from my tasty act of rebellion.

That marquee stuck above my head, like I said, for the rest of the month. I didn’t shake the stigma until the Crucible, the Marine Corps’ grueling three day, fifty two mile test of character and its final main obstacle, known colloquially as the Reaper. I did really well, I’m proud to say. So well, that on the way down I was literally dragging other recruits and griping out the slow movers, lollygaggers and loafs. I remember a moment when I didn’t realize he was there. I gave it hard to one of the recruits who was slowing down the platoon. I gripped him out for the weakness he displayed, though perhaps no so eloquently as I’ve just stated with you. As I did that, from the corner of my vision, I saw him standing there. He had come from behind and would have heard the whole thing. I knew he was going to get mad about it. I didn’t know why exactly, but I knew that I was going to be in deep for the tongue lashing I gave the fellow recruit. But I didn’t. He didn’t say anything. In fact, he really didn’t say anything noteworthy to me again after that. I think I regained his respect with that. Perhaps I showed some shred of leadership. Perhaps it was all the extra training I had endured. Perhaps it was also my sudden weight loss while not losing strength in my legs, which miraculously seemed to be very strong indeed. The world will never know. He never called me Treats again anyway, and he didn’t give me any more extra attention. Others had replaced my name on his list.

What I was certain of was that he was the one face I wanted less than any other to see again after boot camp was over.

A year and a half later I found myself in Iraq. I was on the phone with my wife when I thought I would be cute. I told her that someone just joined the unit and asked her to guess who it was. She needed a hint and all I told her was that it was the one Marine in the world who I hated more than any other. She said immediately, “Tucker.” I was actually surprised that she arrived there so quickly, but I guess she remembered the deep and colorful language I gave for the man in the letters she received while I was at boot camp, or perhaps the stories I told afterward. I laughed since I got her. It was a joke after all. I mean really, what are the odds that in all of the Marine Corps, Staff Sergeant Tucker would join my unit?

Six months later I was back in California. Iraq went smoothly and now we were back at home. One thing that many don’t realize about the US military, is that after a war, we have to spend the “down time” fixing uniforms and getting back into a working, presentable order as individuals. We spend fortunes getting our uniforms up-to-date and perfect, or as they say, inspection ready. We stand in endless formations awaiting inspection. Honestly, it is a lot like boot camp all over again.

So there I was in one such formation. We were in a company level Alphas uniform inspection. You don’t need to know what those are, just that they are our version of a civilian’s three piece suit, along with thirty more pieces. The formation is at Rest and free to adjust our uniforms or talk among ourselves. I’m good. My uniform is immaculate so I am just looking around, investigating the rest of the company, from my spot in line. As I did I noticed a Marine I wasn’t familiar with. I had lived elbow to elbow with all these people for the last year and a half so I knew all of them by their smell. When someone new shows up, you recognize it immediately. He was a new Staff Non Commissioned Officer. This must be the replacement for the SNCOIC of the S-4. There was an odd familiarity about him, though. I glanced over at him a few times trying to fill in the blanks in my mind.

Then he reached over to one of his Marines. In a slow and methodical way his long and gangly arms reached around to correct the Marine’s belt, which was an odd thing to do for someone in the fleet. His outstretched fingers purposefully and precisely moving with a mechanical perfection of a movement he’d performed perhaps thousands of times before. I was suddenly struck with an emotion I can only describe as the feeling somewhere between déjà vu, nostalgia and a post-traumatic stress flashback. I had been here before! I had been exactly here before. I had been standing right here many times before, in a formation exactly like this one, in uniforms exactly like this one, with a Drill Instructor making corrections exactly like that one! Oh dear God! That’s him! It’s Tucker!

I thought it couldn’t have been possible. The questions surged back into my mind just as they had before.

“How is this possible? — Is it really him? — Did I earn this by lying to Jennie about this very event? — This can’t be possible. The odds aren’t possible. — Why don’t I recognize him? — Is it possible that I never once actually looked at his face? — He should have a DI ribbon. Damn, there it is. — Did he try to find me? — They look totally different without the Smokey Bear cover. — Maybe it’s not really him. — It couldn’t really be him. — Would he even remember me? — Would he remember the doughnut?”

As I thought all these things in my head, he must have noticed me glancing over at him more than a normal Marine in my situation would. He looked me over for a time. I noticed his stillness as he glared at me. As my pulse quickened a bit, he said to me,

“I know you from somewhere…”

There was a pause. It was true and undeniable at this point. Against all odds, here he was; Staff Sergeant Tucker. Of all the Marine Corps, he had to land here, Marine Wing Support Squadron 372, Headquarters Company. My company and right there in my formation, standing just as he had so many hundreds of times before not two years earlier.

Not wanting to carry the pause too long I said the only thing that came to my mind that I could think to say.

“You called me Treats through all of Second Phase, Staff Sergeant.”

He looked at me inquisitively through another pause as he contemplated what I had said. Then a wide smile overcame his face and his arms went up in exclamation.

“Davis!”

The conversation after that was surprisingly normal. I was incredibly nervous. He just thought it was cool that one of his recruits was in his unit, now a fully actualized and bonafide war veteran.

He was surprisingly normal on the outside, as normal as Marines get, anyway. Mind you, in three months I had never once seen him, or any other Marine on the recruit depot, smile. So his opening expression upon realizing where he knew me from was a startle, to say the least. We visited for a while before the inspection. In talking to him, less his forced “frog voice”, I began to really realize that Drill Instructors really are just great actors rather than actual psychopaths. They act the way they do for a purpose, which, upon reflection years later, gave me a deeper understanding and respect for all of them, not the least of which Tucker. Of course, the time spent since “Treats” also helps to mend old hatreds as well. I worked with him and we would be around each other for the next year or so, but it was still interesting that the two of us, apart from all the other Marines of the unit had such a unique relationship.
A few months later I found myself to be a rifle and pistol coach for the Squadron and a Non Commissioned Officer. It seemed I had a pretty good grasp of the fundamentals of weapons marksmanship. In the Marines everyone has to qualify with their weapons at least once a year. That’s all Marines, including former Drill Instructors, certainly not to exclude my former taskmaster, mentor and tyrannical despot, Staff Sergeant Tucker.

As opposed to his much more encompassing understanding of what makes a good all around Marine, I was in possession, now, of in the specific techniques for making marksmen and the minutia of what makes a good shooter. I shared with him the knowledge I had as he, from time to time, could find it of use. On the first day of training week, we still mostly talked and visited for a while. Perhaps he spent that time coming to grips with the cognitive dissonance of one of the men he trained in the use of the weapon, now his coach.

His confusion, likely was accentuated by the moment he was practicing, aiming in with an empty weapon on tiny painted silhouettes on a white painted barrel, myself standing behind him, inspecting his form. The occasion, as Marines know, is oddly reminiscent of boot camp’s Second Phase, the time this man called me by another name besides my own. When the shooters were dry fire practicing I did take a moment of pleasure. I walked up behind him and watched him as thoroughly as I could to find anything I could wrong with his form. As he pulled the trigger, I found it.

“You’re yanking the trigger Staff Sergeant… Slow, steady squeeze.”

He looked up with a somewhat shocked, “Why you little Son-of-a…” face. I smiled a cocky little smirk I’m known for, turned and walked away. It was a small victory, to say the least, but a brief moment of vengeance and vindication, more than Marines could ever hope for. What gave the moment real meaning was that he knew it was true.

There is a tradition in the Marines, that when you qualify each year, if you thought a particular coach went above and beyond in helping you cross that barrier of expert, then you give them your chevron, the small insignia of rank all Marines wear on their uniform. Two weeks later and after qualification was over, the results came in from the pits and the math showed what I expected to happen. I was standing near him. He got expert. He walked over to me, with an interesting look on his face. He took the pins that held his insignia off, removed the chevrons from his collar and pinned it to the pocket beneath my name tape.

I’ve since left the Marine Corps and gone on to other adventures, but I still keep all the memories. I still have all the chevrons given to me by shooters in a small wicker box on a bookshelf beside my desk. I call it my treasure chest, ironically filled with worthless trinkets, themselves worth nothing, but to me they are a priceless collection. His is there, perhaps among them, one of the crown jewels. In particular, though, this little trophy will always be special.

If you’d like to know more about Marine Corps boot camp and my adventures within it check out my answer here: Jon Davis’ What is U.S. Marine Corps boot camp like?

If you’re interested in more information or just to hear the ranting of a lot of bored Marines check out The Marine Corps Board. Thanks for reading. Semper Fi. 

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory to the right of each article, lists my published posts in chronological – links are live – click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page and be redirected to the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom helps move between pages.

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70 Years ago to the day, Bryan Campbell’s grandfather, Ronald G. Gallie, was captured by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge. Here, we publish Gallie’s notes from his time as a POW.

This article was originally published on GearPatrol.com on December 20, 2014

“You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!”  –  Commanding General William Tecumseh Sherman addressing the Michigan Military Academy graduating class of 1879.

When I first started learning about WWII, I became fascinated with the first half of the 20th century. It seemed to be such a romantic time in the world, just before the explosion of information intake we know today. An ambassador to the era, my grandfather Ronald Gallie immigrated from Wales when he was six years old in 1929; he grew up in Queens, New York, attended Cooper Union for architectural design in 1942, and was drafted into the United States Army in 1943. His exploits inspired me, to say the least. Enough so that one Sunday evening, before dinner, I told my grandfather I was thinking about joining the army myself. He quickly but calmly rebutted: “Don’t.” I stared, surprised he didn’t spur me on with my decision. With sound confidence, he continued: “War is something no one should experience.” He could have recited words to the tune of General Sherman’s graduation speech in Michigan, but he didn’t have to. I knew my grandfather had experienced war and I wasn’t exactly naive about what happened in WWII. But to this day, I’ve never heard such softly spoken words carry such weight.

My Grandfather never talked about his time in WWII, and come to think of it, I struggle to remember any detailed answers from when I inquired about it. I desperately wanted to know what one of the largest events in human history looked like through the eyes of someone I knew and loved. But for whatever reason he never felt the need to share — as if to humbly say, “What happened happened. It’s in the past and there’s no need to dwell.”

However, a few years ago my mother had transcribed the diary my grandfather had kept to document his wartime experience. I needed to read it. Just to get a better understanding of what he had gone through. The events leading up to my grandfather’s capture seemed to be straight out of a movie. It was hardly believable, yet there I was reading his day-by-day account that he had scribed into a composition book given to him by one of his German captors.

Just five days after taking up position in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, my grandfather, a corporal and mortar gunner, and the rest of the 106th Infantry Division were engulfed in one of the largest battles of the war: the Battle of the Bulge. The attack began, as he described, “in the foggy dawn of December 16th with a tremendous artillery barrage.” His regiment, the 422nd, along with the 423rd, was “engulfed by the overwhelming weight of the German breakthrough spearhead” in an attack that continued through nightfall. By mid morning the next day, the 422nd, 423rd and 424th regiments were forced to withdraw. “At 3:35 PM on Dec 18 the radio sputtered that all units of the two regiments were in need of ammunition, food and water. Because of the fog, parachuting supplies was out of the question.” By 4 p.m. his regiment had surrendered to German forces. Over the following days they were marched to Stalag IV-B, one of Germany’s largest prisoner-of-war camps, where my grandfather and his fellow soldiers would remain until the following Spring, all while enduring forced labor and Allied air raids.

I was always thankful that my grandfather made it home, and after reading his personal account of imprisonment, the feeling is tenfold. He survived artillery barrages, air raids, a frozen winter landscape and a stay in one of Germany’s largest POW camps, and was able to make it home to eventually marry my grandmother. My grandfather never lost his quiet warrior’s spirit, even though he had been long removed from the theater of war; he was tough and straightforward, yet charming, intelligent and wise. He passed away earlier this year and I thought it would serve his memory best by sharing with you a glimpse into one of the most trying times of his life, 70 years to the day of his capture. The following is my grandfather’s account from the day he was captured to his eventual liberation, along with two letters he wrote home to his parents and brother while imprisoned:

My regiment was surrendered at 1600 [hours] Dec 19. From my experiences I would never have been taken. But that is water under the bridge.

Our regiment had been without food for two days prior to capture, a misfortune as it turned out later. The day we were taken was a hard one. No one seemed to know where to go. Officers were helpless when it came to finding themselves. It became mainly a game to see how long we could stay away from the Germans. Cornered at last we gave up on top of a hill. Weapons destroyed, we marched out to the enemy.

That night we were marched some 15 miles past long columns of advancing Jerries. Naturally the German troops took advantage of the situation to strip us of our valuables: wristwatches, rings, pens, knives, etc. were taken and pocketed. That evening we were bedded down in an old, muddy barnyard. However we were awakened an hour later and pushed into an old church. The temperature was about 0 degrees F. No food was given to us.

Next morning at daybreak we started out again on what turned to be a 30-kilometer or more march. Unfortunately for those of us without overcoats and blankets it remained cold. Frozen feet was the complaint of everyone. That night we went to sleep again with no food, except for some raw turnips we had picked up along the way. The following day was a repetition of the first. By 10 p.m. we arrived in a small town,Gerolstein, and again bedded down in the open courtyards.

After four days without food we were given two bags of hard biscuits. Each bag weighed about one pound. There was also a pound of cheese divided between seven men. These rations were for two days on the boxcars. The boxcar trip lasted 10 days. 60 of us were crowded into a French 40-by-8-foot car, the floor covered with straw and horse shit. The doors were locked and we were on our way to God-knows-what. At infrequent intervals we received 1/6 of a loaf of bread with a little margarine.

Lemberg, Germany was our first major stoppage. On the night of Dec 23 the RAF bombed the railroad yards just outside the Stalag. I woke from a sound sleep to find the car rocking and an unholy red glare in my eyes. The Jerries had taken off, leaving us locked in the cars. We pushed a boy out of a small window to open the doors; a few of us then piled out of the cars. The bombs sounded like locomotives coming down. Running across the field with a piece of bread in my hands, I hit the ground twice. I finally lay on the side of a hill and prayed to God to stop it. The glare died down and the bombers flew off. I was rounded up and put in the Stalag while the majority of the boys were left in the boxcars.

The 10th day saw us at Stalag IV-B, an English non-com camp. Here after arriving in the morning we were deloused and registered. This took till 5 a.m. the following morning. A week was our length of stay; from there I went to Halle(Saale) [sic] on Kommando, Jan 9. Assigned to a private railroad contractor named Reckman, we started work the following Monday, Jan 15. There we labored 11 hours a day through the cold, snow and rain. Our food allowance came from the military plus what Rechman gave us for working. We received one bowl potato soup, 1/4 of a loaf of bread and 20 grams of margarine. Weekly we received about 300 grams of meat and monthly 1 pound sugar, 1/4 pound cheese and on Sundays we also got a small amount of jam. That was our roughest period, sweating out air raids by day and by night. The railroad was bombed a few times so we were put to work slowly filling the bomb craters. Americans, by this time, had earned the reputation of being the laziest beings on Earth.

Towards the end our rations were cut to 1/6 of a loaf of bread and one bowl of soup daily. We had received about six Red Cross parcels during this time, divided at times between six men. Thank God for the Red Cross.

We worked till April 12, when we were evacuated because of the approaching Yanks. After a three-day march of about 80 kilometers, with very little food, we were finally brought to rest in a pine forest. This proved to be our home for a week, under the filthiest of sanitary conditions. In the camp we were all mixed together: English, French, Serbs, Russians and Italians. Rations were small so we dug up potatoes in the fields, risking getting shot by some guard.

The morning of April 24 we were marched about 15 kilometers to the welcoming arms of the Yanks.

 My grandfather was sent back to the States not long after being liberated and awaited reassignment at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Though the war had been won in Europe, Japan was still a very active theater and seemed an inevitable destination. Luckily for him, the Japanese formally surrendered on August 15, 1945, before he could be redeployed. I’m sure he celebrated the end of the fighting with special vigor, knowing there’d be no chance of writing a Japan-based sequel to his German thriller.

After being honorably discharged on December 6, 1945, my grandfather went on to work in New York City as an architectural designer at Barr & Barr until his retirement at age 74. He also happened to be working in downtown Manhattan the morning of September 11, 2001, arguably the most impactful event of the 21st century so far — but from the calm, even demeanor he displayed until the day he died, you’d never imagine he’d been subjected to violence in both his youth and his old age.

You’re always raised to respect your elders as a child, but it’s often unclear why. Having shared a fraction of his experience in WWII through these notes and letters, the admiration I’ve always had for my grandfather has only been solidified. Ronald Gallie was one of many members of “The Greatest Generation”, and an encyclopedia of experience and wisdom. Most importantly, he was my grandfather.

Here’s a direct link to the original article and an opportunity to review others on Gear Patrol:  http://gearpatrol.com/2014/12/19/grandfathers-war/

Thank you for taking the time to view this article!  Don’t miss out on the many other articles, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are live – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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To all my friends, family, military brothers and sisters:

THANK YOU for all your support of this website during the past year!  I look forward to 2015 – many new articles and pictures are planned for your reading enjoyment!

Scenes of Christmas 40+ years ago in a country 10,000 miles away…

 Just before Christmas in 1970, our company returned to Cu Chi base camp (Vietnam) for a three-day stand down. My package from home included a Christmas tree and tins of home made cookies. Everyone pitched in to decorate and devour…I’m on the left!

South Vietnam, December, 1967: 9th Infantry Division soldiers Staff Sgt. William Dowell

On Hill 875 near Dak-To

Field Resupply – bringing out hot meals from the rear

12/25/1969-Cu Chi, South Vietnam- During a Christmas cease fire at Fire Base Evans, 40 miles west of Saigon

Bob Hope Christmas Show – 1969

Cans used as ornaments on artificial Christmas tree

Christmas Bush – 1967

Bu Dop, South Vietnam, December, 1967: Spec. 4 Ron Brault of Kansas City, Mo., eats dinner while sitting next to a Christmas tree sent to him by his family

1970: Pfc. James Heckman, 20, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, reads a letter attached to the Christmas present he received while stationed in Con Thein, Vietnam. | (Bettmann/CORBIS)

1969: U.S. soldiers set up a Christmas tree in a spare mortar pit at the Duc Lap Special Forces camp. | (Bettmann/CORBIS)

Audience & special guests at a Bob Hope Christmas Show

Bunker ornament – 1967

Mechanized unit in the bush

Screen dump of  a video game showing a 1st Cav Christmas in Vietnam

Thank you for taking the time to view this posting!  Don’t miss out on the many other articles, pictures and videos available to you on this website (see below).

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are live – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

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 Hello Everyone!  Happy New Year – 2015!

Vietnam War movies can almost be counted as a genre on their own–there are so many of them.  This list contains the best Vietnam War movies that were ever made, including popular classic like Full Metal Jacket and more recent films, like Tunnel Rats. The best Vietnam movies place the war in correct context and capture the ethos of the environment at the time. Many of the titles on this list are from the point of view of Americans, but international and independent films are included as well.

What are the best Vietnam War films? This list of of Vietnam war movies is thorough, but it is not complete. If you see that your favorite film is missing, please add it to the list. You can click on any of the Vietnam movie names for more details and change the dropdown info to display the release date, directors, and stars. So, what are the best movies about the Viet nam war? Vote on this list to display your preferences.

Please scroll down to the bottom of this article and click on the link indicated to be redirected to my list of movies which also include trailers in most cases.  As more votes are cast, the favorites will migrate to the top of the list.  Feel free to revisit this page any time to see how your favorite film is ranking.

Click this link for the list of movies:

http://www.ranker.com/list/all-vietnam-war-movies-or-list-of-vietnam-war-movies-v1/johnpodlaski

Thank you for taking the time in contributing to my project…I am most appreciative!

One of the icons of the Vietnam War is the Zippo lighter.  Sure they are wind-proof and guaranteed by the manufacturer to light every time – if it didn’t, it was replaced for free – perfect for Vietnam.  Everyone had one – even if they didn’t smoke cigarettes.  Next to a P-38 can opener, a lighter came in handy for lighting a heat tab or C-4 when cooking meals or making coffee in the field.

Tattoos are popular today and allow recipients an opportunity to “advertise” those things they feel strongly about.  Could be a picture, scene, saying or even foreign characters.  Back in the day, engraving Zippo lighters was the rave in Vietnam.  Every one of them was unique and “advertised” a bravado saying, homage to their units and reminders of those back home.

I had one with a saying, but have absolutely no idea what happened to it.  Today, the Vietnamese and personal vendors are selling those that metal detectors have uncovered throughout the country.  Some are real and others counterfeit – made to look like they survived the elements for the last forty years.  I have included about forty pictures of various engraved lighters from the internet for your viewing pleasure.  If you still have one, take a picture of it and send it via my email and I’ll add it to this blog.

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Do you still have your engraved Zippo for your days in Vietnam?  If so, send me a picture and I’ll add it to this article. 

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory of my published posts is posted chronologically to the right of every article – links are live – click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to be redirected to the blog’s main page…most recent posts are shown first – a navigation bar at the bottom helps to move between pages.

In my last post, I focused more on the first day a Cherry spent in the jungle.  He discovered how difficult it was to search for the enemy through the thick, impenetrable jungle while carrying sixty-five pounds of supplies on his back.  The temperature and humidity were both near one-hundred and it felt like walking through the largest sauna in the world.  His first night was like a terrible nightmare; the pitch blackness limiting visibility to only a foot.

His bed was the jungle floor; sharp twigs, roots and stones jabbed at him all through the night, jarring him awake each time he shifted around or turned over.  He was so tired, but would not sleep on this first night.  He knew the enemy was out there somewhere looking for him, and every shadow – be it leaves and branches moving during a short breeze or the moonlight filtering through the canopy and dancing across the vegetation.  All this told his brain that something  is out there.  He’s paralyzed, frozen in place with fear, too afraid to even close his eyes.  He prayed for daylight, which was still hours away.  It was, by far, the most terrifying night of his entire life.

Today, I want to write more about another fear these young men had to endure while living in the jungles.  Mother Nature had created many wonderful things over time; some were beautiful and others were downright frightening.  The jungles of Vietnam were home to every creature, beast, and insect known to man.  Some veterans attest to seeing tigers and elephants in the boonies, but I can’t say that I saw neither.  However, I had seen many wild boars, cobras, small and deadly viper snakes, different spiders and a few boa constrictors.  Someone once said that Vietnam was home to 100 different species of snakes – 98 were poisonous and the other 2 could crush a person to death.

Tarantulas (and other species / sizes of spiders – some the size of dinner plates), red ants, and black horseflies all hurt like hell when they bit.  Bees, wasps, hornets, centipedes, millipedes, lizards, frogs, rats, scorpions, land and water leeches, orangutans, spider monkeys, bats, and hordes of mosquitoes attacked us whenever we entered their domain.  The liquid bug juice supplied by the military kept many of the flying insects from landing on bare skin, but did nothing to prevent those long-beaked malaria-carrying insects from biting you through clothes.  I’d try to cover my head at night with a poncho liner to keep the mosquitoes away, but it was hot and uncomfortable and there was no escaping the constant buzzing in your ears as the blood-thirsty swarms hovered above my head, awaiting patiently for an opportunity to taste the sweet nectar.

Another heart stopper is when you felt something moving across your body during the night –  there were no lights to turn on or flashlights available to investigate – besides, any light in the dark jungle would be a beacon to those who want to kill me.  You took your chances and either swatted, brushed, jumped up from the ground, or just left it alone.  Some of these creatures had claws that gripped you; swatting at them usually pissed them off and resulted in a retaliatory bite, sting, or pinch.  Most of the above were poisonous and could make one very sick or even kill.

Someone once said that what you can’t see won’t hurt you.  That might work for your peace of mind during the night, but let me tell you, these creatures were always found in the damnedest of places first thing in the morning.  You could find them in your pockets, boots, helmet, rucksack, canteen cup, or laying with you under the warmth of your lightweight poncho liner blanket.  A search and destroy effort was usually the first thing on the agenda every morning.

We had no choice but to endure! How would you have fared?

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory to the right of each article, lists my published posts in chronological – links are live – click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page and be redirected to the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom helps move between pages.

Let me preface this post by saying that over 2.5 million U.S. men and women served in Vietnam during the time period of 1959 – 1975. However, only 10% of the total were in the Infantry and ‘humped the boonies’ in search of the elusive enemy, the remaining 90% supported them in various capacities, their tasks, at times, more dangerous than those searching through the jungles.  Helicopter crews were held in the highest regard and seen as “saviors” by the infantry soldiers, at times, watching in awe and disbelief while pilots braved enemy onslaughts to transport, rescue, supply and protect those on the ground.  Crews were always there when needed – losing many of their own while performing in this role.  Other supporting groups, stationed in rear areas or fire bases were also at risk of enemy mortar and rocket attacks, ground assaults or ambushes when traveling outside the base along roads in supply caravans.  The ‘grunts’ or ‘boony rats’ had to contend with enemy ambushes and booby traps, sometimes walking directly into well-camouflaged enemy bunker complexes and getting pinned down for hours in the middle of the jungle.  It was deadly tour for everyone – no one group was safer than the other!  This article will focus only on those Cherries within an infantry unit.  Certainly, each military unit received new replacements throughout the war; their indoctrination to war may have been quite different to what is written here.

Imagine, if you will, that most Cherries in Vietnam had graduated from high school within the past year; some never finished and were quickly drafted into the military.  In Vietnam, these eighteen year old soldiers were thrust into a hostile environment where they had to do things never imagined in their wildest of dreams or even thought of as humanly possible to achieve.  Nineteen year old corporals and sergeants were in charge of squads and twenty-one year old Lieutenants and Captains ran the platoons and companies. Turnover was rampant and a soldier with experience in the jungle was highly respected – regardless of age – and in most cases was a lower ranked enlisted man and not an officer.

After returning from my war, I had an extremely difficult time when trying to explain what it was like as a grunt in Vietnam to my family and friends .  Finally, when the movie ‘Platoon’ began playing in local theaters, I relished the ability to have something visual to ‘show’ them.  Not that I’m saying the movie portrayed my tour of duty, but I could relate to  some of the things Charlie Sheen did in the film – that first hump in the bush (patrol in the jungle) when he passed out from exhaustion because he carried more on his back than what was really needed, filling sandbags, fighting mosquitoes and leeches, and of course, those times we returned to the rear area for stand down after surviving weeks in the jungle.

The average weight of a grunt’s rucksack and supplies was about sixty-five pounds and if you had to carry either an M-60 machine gun or PRC-25 radio, add another twenty-six pounds to your load.  Cherries were usually assigned one of the two or walked point.

Humping with all that weight was difficult in itself, without having to mimic a chameleon; eyes continuously darting up, down and side to side, looking for booby traps, snipers and identifying possible enemy ambush sites – always hoping to catch them first before seeing us.  The constant stress of tripping any of these took its toll on these young men. Adrenaline continued to pump through our bodies, ready to support us in whatever action we might take against enemy threats. But when none occur during a patrol (which happened often), this extra energy took time to bleed off - adding to our anxiety as the night approached.

I also remember the scene of Charlie Sheen’s first night in the bush when he suddenly awoke and saw the enemy soldiers walking straight toward his group in the pitch-black darkness. When on watch and the only one awake, every sound heard is amplified ten fold, making it easy for our minds and the jungle to play tricks on us.  It was a sense of dread that I never overcame.

To understand this feeling, imagine yourself waking up in your bed during the middle of the night; the room in complete darkness – suddenly the bedroom floor in the old house creaks – sending a chill up your spine.  

Your mind suggests that a stranger is moving toward the head of your bed – he’s unable to see you but knows you are there.  You break out in a cold sweat, your heart begins racing, the beats gaining momentum and pounding loudly like a large drum in the dark quiet of night.  You hope the intruder doesn’t hear your beating heart and give away your location.   You lay paralyzed, frozen to the spot and too afraid to move your head or sit up to have a look around – let alone get up out of bed to turn on the light (not an option in the jungle).  This is real fear! Now multiply that feeling by twenty-four hours a day over three-hundred plus days…You have just experienced how a Cherry felt on his first twenty-four hours in the Nam jungle.

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about the Vietnam War – subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory to the right of each article, lists my published posts in chronological – links are live – click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page and be redirected to the blog’s main page…most recent posts are first – a navigation bar at the bottom helps move between pages.

Do you have a short story to tell about your Vietnam War experience?  Something funny, personal, frightening, enlightening or special about a “Brother in Arms” that fellow veterans, friends and interested citizens might enjoy reading?  If so, I’d like to talk to you about posting your story on this blog.  Initially, I created this website to introduce my book – “Cherries” – which was published in April, 2010, and to provide a venue for readers to share their thoughts or ask questions about what they read.  However, since then, it has become a collection of articles, pages, Vietnam War book reviews, videos, soundtracks and pictures – both personal and public domain – mostly relating to The Vietnam War, along with a few stories about previous and current wars.  It averages 5,000 hits per week, has 1,600 subscribed email followers, and shares weekly article links with over 100 FB group pages.

These posts are not long (1-3 pages) and usually include pictures to support the article.  If anyone is interested, please contact me via personal email:  john.podlaski@gmail.com

Please, nothing pornographic or political.  If you are a published author and want to share a side story from your book – it’s free advertising.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to this blog and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.   A directory, to the right of each article, lists all my published posts in chronological order – links are live – just click and read.  If you’d rather sample every post by scrolling through the many pages, then click on the Cherries title at the top of this page to land on the blog’s main page…most recent posts are listed first – a navigation bar at the bottom of every page aids readers in moving between pages.

Let me introduce Joseph Welsh.  He served in Vietnam 1967- 68 and was stationed at The 8th Radio Research Field Station, (Trai Bac Station) located on Highway 1, Phu Bai, Vietnam (Republic Of).  They were co-located with HQ 3d MARDIV and across the road from the Hue-Phu Bai Airport.

Joe, in his room sometime during Tet ’68.

Red X: marks where my room was.
(There were 5 – 6 people to a room.)
Blue X: is the Operations Bldg., where I worked (Usually Swings).
Green X: marks Star Bunker 3, my Alert Station.
(I was an ammo bearer. We had the 3.5 in. rocket launcher [Bazooka]
and a whole conex container full of white phospherous rounds for it.
We were supposed to take out the MP’s bunker, next to the main gate,
if it were to be overrun.)
Yellow X: is the Mess Hall (In today’s Milspeak, the “Dining Facility.”)

     

Shortly after my arrival at the 8th RRFS, Phu Bai

I was searching for “army” units to find a place to bed down. I came upon a large compound belonging to the First Logistical Command. Made my way to the orderly room and requested a bunk for the night.(Because we performed a classified mission, I had been told to not disclose my specific unit. Since I was wearing a MACV patch, I told the 1SG that I was from MACV-J2. That was as high as one could go in the intel field in Vietnam.)The MACV Patch

Got my bunk. In fact, got an entire hooch to myself. . . and I was a mere PFC! The 1SG even sent the orderly room clerk (a SP4) over with a jeep to give me a tour of downtown Da Nang. I toured (saw the oldest tree in the country), ate, went to sleep. Next morning, the same clerk woke me and escorted me to breakfast then drove me back to the airfield. I caught a ride on a 123 and was back at the 8th in time for swings.  I’ve often wondered just who they thought I was. . . and what shenanigans might’ve been going on inside that First Log compound.

American Icon …

An ice-cold Coke. Funnily enough, when I think of that icon I’m remembering Vietnam.July 1967 …
110 in the noon-day sun …
work detail (repairing the trench line) …
metallic-tasting warm water in the canteens.
The NCO in charge leaving us …
going to the EM Club …
returning with a case of Coke …
a bucket of ice …
sleeve of paper cups.
Break time!
Sucking down Coke over ice …
guzzling Coke on ice …
cold ‘n wet.
Coke on ice …
Nirvana,
on a brutal hot day.A memory carried for more than 40 years.   Don’t drink much soda now.  Never did drink much to start with.  Probably wouldn’t be drinking it nowadays at all… except for that memory of Vietnam.  (I’ve become diabetic.)  Nothing else has ever tasted quite as good since.  Despite what the Docs say … every once in awhile, I just gotta have… a Coke!

A memory surfaces …

Late summer:

Had been there a short while . . . perhaps 2 months. Was beginning to feel confined. We weren’t allowed off the combat base. A ration convoy was being put together. I volunteered . . . wanted off post, badly. We had to be fully armed, but nobody said with what. I decided to forego taking the -14 and borrowed a .45 pistol from a machine-gunner friend. (Note: I had no idea how to operate said pistol. How fucking stupid was I??) We rolled out the main gate early one morning and turned north, towards the city of Hue. After traveling for about 30 minutes the truck I was riding in began back-firing and jerking and then stopped. The convoy kept going, per SOP, and we three found ourselves stuck on Highway 1, in an area away from any villages or U.S. forces. Me, armed with a pistol that I’d never even held before and two other nervous ASA’ers armed with their M-14s and 80 rounds each. After an eternity of time, along came the maintenance trail. They fiddled with our engine and after a time we were rolling again. We wended our way through paddys, villages and farm country until we reached the shore of a large body of brackish water. On the shore was a small village and our trucks were all parked there, on the beach. Out on the water, about a quarter mile,  was a US Navy self-propelled reefer barge. A “Mike Boat” (landing craft) was ferrying the trucks, one at a time, out to the barge, where they were loaded then returned to shore.

Since my truck was now last in line, I had a goodly bit of time to explore. I wandered through the village, taking in all the strangeness and tranquility and poverty. A little girl caught my eye. My guess is that she was about 10 – 12 years old. She waved me over, then offered me a slice of watermelon. It was a brutal hot day. I accepted. I was struck near dumb. Here was this child who had nothing, offering me something . . . for nothing . . . out of compassion. The melon went down smooth. Tried to talk with her but she spoke no English and I was mono-linguistic. I was then called over and ordered to go out with the next Mike Boat to facilitate the transfer of foodstuff. It was getting late. Once aboard the barge we labored long and hard, shifting crates of vegetables (To include a deck cargo of heat-rotted potatoes that the navy insisted we take because they were ours and “sorry, there was no room in the cooler for them, and we know we’re three weeks overdue but regs are regs . . . and there’s a fuckin’ war going on!”) The hardest part was moving the frozen meats up from out of the freezer compartment. I stood on a crate and passed each piece up, through the open hatch, to someone there, waiting for it. This went on for about three-quarters of an hour. It would have been a good workout for a weight lifter in a gym. I was whipped afterwards. Went up on deck and lit a cigarette. Local kids, in round caracle boats, had swarmed the barge and were yelling (begging) to the GIs on board. Somebody had opened a crate of oranges and had begun tossing them into the water to watch the kids fight over the fruit. Some of the fights were downright vicious. Guys were taking bets on which kid would get to the orange first. I found this to be repugnant behavior on the part of well-fed Americans.

Soon, the transfer of foodstuff was complete. We formed convoy on the beach and prepared to drive off. I was, once again, in the back of a truck. This one happened to have a couple crates of oranges on board. As we passed through the village, I spied the little girl who’d offered me the melon slice. I waved at her, then heaved a crate of oranges out towards her and yelled “Thanks.” She waved back . . . that’s the last I saw of her.

I’ve remembered that little girl through the intervening years. Wondered if she survived, grew up, got married, raised a family.
I dearly hope so . . . hope her life was peaceful and uncomplicated.

.

This cartoon may be from the current conflict but back in Vietnam, at the 8th RRFS, Phu Bai, this actually happened.