Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be"Esprit de Corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like - the spirit of the Corps, but what is that spirit, and where does it come from?

The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that recruits people specifically to fight. The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security (its a great way of life). Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take lives at the risk of his/her own.

Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion. The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet. The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful, invigorating, and safe. There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder.

The Marines Hymn, by contrast, is all combat. We fight our Country's battles, First to fight for right and freedom, we have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve. The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marine Corps to go to War!

But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps. The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now", soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off the bus at the training center. The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or worse, but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.

Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October through December of 1968. In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade River, had not even begun. Yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their 112 recruits, graduating eighty-one. Note that this was post - enlistment attrition; every one of those who were dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service. But they failed the test of Boot Camp, and not necessarily for physical reasons; at least two were outstanding high school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child's play. The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs, but in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines.

Heavy commitments and high casualties not withstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose. History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base. So ask any airman who Major Thomas McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated. I am not carping, and there is no sneer in this criticism.

All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it. But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade, fifth and sixth regiments. Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest under growth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill - advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support had not yet been invented, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout, "Come on you sons a bitches, do you want to live forever"? He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality, he already had two of them.

French liaison officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire. Their action was anachronistic on the twentieth-century battlefield; so much so that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans called them "Dogs from the Devil." Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them!

You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the Eagle Globe & Anchor and claim the title "Marine", you must know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps, you can take your place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose.

A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy. Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines' penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations.

No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design. Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and always! You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that wheat field! Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary – the Corps does them because it must.

The modern battlefield requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we, but no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice. "For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, "the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead. "They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little wheat field into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their actions are immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever.

Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you will die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals. All Marines die; some in the red flash of battle, some in the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age, all will eventually die. But the Marine Corps lives on.

Every Marine who ever lived is living still - in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will out live your own mortality, which gives people alight to live by and a flame to mark their passing.

Author/Retired USMC Colonel

Thirteen of us who were in the same platoon in boot camp were pulled out after staging battalion and sent to Camp Hansen, Okinawa, as replacements for 3/5. After a week they sent us to Subic Bay to wait for 3/5 to return from Deck House One. We barely had 6 months in the Corp and 30 days at home to say good-bye for 13 months.

We were untested, still wet behind the ears, and it took time to gain trust and respect from those who been tested and trained together for so long. I ended up in I Company, first platoon, first squad, Skip Cory’s fire team. I can remember like it was yesterday, standing on the deck of the USS Pickway looking off to the shore of Viet Nam and thinking “what in the sam hill am I doing here” or words to that effect. The beach landing was tough. They dropped us of at the first sand bar they hit, which was about 100 yards from the beach; good thing there wasn’t any enemy on the beach. Deck House Two was a real test. I’m only 5'-8" and those rice paddies that were all sand were just far enough apart that I couldn’t step from crown to crown. So that meant one step down and at least two steps up. It was on those first few days that I wished in boot camp, ITR, and Advanced Infantry Training, we were carrying a couple of 25 lbs weights so I could have been in better shape.

Little did I know as we entered Hastings things would get worse. It seemed like forever when I jumped off that chopper till I hit the ground, what a jolt! As we set up that first night Skip and the squad leader wanted me to go to the CP for a can of night vision. Knowing what was up I told them I wasn’t going. Skip said “you refusing an order in a combat zone?” I did an about-face and headed for the CP. They let me get about 20 yds down the trail before calling me back.

On the 22nd I was Tail end Charlie. I hadn’t really noticed the secure feeling when you’re in the middle of the ranks. It was a little spooky for this boot that was starting to get climatized. When it hit the fan that evening I first thought it was H or K Company that we were trying to meet up with. When we finally got up this trail it was dark and I heard they were trying to stop the artillery because it was getting to close. It was nothing but rocks just off the trail where they had us set up for the night. I don’t know how I did it but after my watch I somehow managed to shift around between the rocks and crashed.

On the 23rd we seemed to be getting regrouped. “It’s going to hit the fan” that we had been told since we landed happened, and it seemed everyone had a greater sense of awareness. Skip and the squad leader took me over to see the enemy KIA, my first. There was a Chinese adviser,6 foot 180 lbs,and I was told all during training the VC were 5'-2" and 90lbs soaking wet.

That night my position faced hill 362. I had second watch and had trouble getting to sleep on my break. As I started my watch it seemed like everything was moving and after a while I was fighting to stay awake, then I remembered what I had heard somewhere in my training about putting your bayonet on the end of your rifle, your thumb on the end of your bayonet and your thumb nail on your chin. You put the stock between your feet and rest your chin on your thumbnail. I had no trouble keeping awake while I was doing that.

I’ve read a story or two that said we should have had some artillery soften up the hill before we went up. But I remember not starting off early because we waited for some jets to drop bombs on 362. I also recall someone commenting that they didn’t like telling them where we were headed. After the jets did there thing my squad 1st platoon 1st squad started off as point. I was sent out on left flank point.
The elephant grass was the thickest I’d ever seen. All of us on point were pretty well whipped by the time we crossed that valley and reached the bottom of hill 362. 1st squad was relieved by 2nd squad which was now lead by Skip Cory. He replaced the 2nd squad leader who was medavaced with a hernia. After a short rest we entered back into the column, and I was at the top of the hill when I think it was third squad caught two NVA.

It was shortly after that when “All Hell Broke Loose”. Before I left for boot camp I went to a close family friend, who was a WWII USMC Veteran, for some advice about going to boot camp. He told me that their job was to train us to take orders, and remember what ever they do it’s for your own good. They did a good job, because when it hit the fan all the training we had was put to the test. My squad ran towards the front of the column, and when we reached what turned out to be the LZ we were to sent down the trail to bring back the wounded. About 75 yards down the trail Pittman was coming back up with one of his men on his back I think he was hit in the knee.

We went a little further down and four of us picked up what I think was the other man from Pittman’s fire team. He had a lung wound and we were carrying him in a poncho when someone yelled grenade! I was at his feet and before we could set him down the grenade went off behind me knocking me over him. We got up again and started back to the LZ when what some said was a 57 recoilless rifle went off behind me knocking all of us down again. After we got back to the LZ and reach the corpsman we headed back down the trail.

We had to dive off the trail when we heard the mortars coming out of the tubes. Still get a weird feeling 4th of July at the fireworks. Certain smells and sounds trigger the brain I guess. When we reached the point where we picked up the Marine with the lung wound we were told to go back and set up a defense perimeter around the wounded, which turned out to be the LZ. When we got back to the LZ I saw some blood on my hand, thinking it wasn’t mine I wiped it off and some more came. After taking a closer look I had a couple of small holes in the back of my hand and my watch took a hit right in the center knocking the hands off.

I was told to go fill any gaps north of the LZ. I was 20 yards from a spot to fill when I dropped down and started counting them coming out of the tubes again. I forgot how many they let go that time, but I do know # 10 got me. I was down on a little knoll and it went off right behind me. After checking the family jewels I felt the bottom of my right boot and everything seemed OK, but when I got up and put weight on my right foot I went down to my knees and had to crawl up to an open spot.

There was no digging in where I was at, nothing but rocks and roots. Lt. Williams came by and asked if anyone was hit and someone said Harris couldn’t walk. He came over saw the hole in the side of my boot and told me to turn on my back. While on my back still looking down the hill I felt my laces being cut and as I looked back when my boot was being pulled off I notice some blood dripping from my boot. I didn’t know the shrapnel went in the side of my boot. Lt.Williams put a battle dressing on and said the corpsman would be by when he could. The corpsman came by shortly after Lt. Williams left. He checked my dressing and asked if I needed a shot. Before I could say the throbbing wasn’t that bad, he said there was a lot of guys who were going to be needing it, so I told him I was OK. He told me I could go out on the fifth chopper. After what sounded like the third chopper coming in I passed out my ammo, grenades, and C-rations to the guys around me, and started to crawl back to the LZ with my rifle, one magazine, and grenade.
As I reached the LZ I looked as a chopper tried to hover. It quickly left as ground fire was peppering it, but you have to give them credit for valiantly trying. They said on the two previous attempts the choppers took fifty hits if they took one. It was at that time I figured we had to hold the hill until help came. I spent that night just off the trail. In the morning when Bednar called for help it was like something out of a John Wayne movie. A bunch of guys jumped up and started down the trail and someone said to hold up it might be a trick. After a few questions they went down and brought him back to the LZ.

When the reporters came down from the chopper they had water and that really hit the spot. The Medavac started and they grabbed my rifle as I went up in the harness. It was a very uneasy feeling as I cleared the treetops until I was pulled back into the Huey. I went to Dong Ha, the hospital ship, Japan, Great Lakes Naval Hospital and was medically discharged in the following July.

Author/Bill Harris

The moon gives you light,

And the drums give you music,

And my heart,

O my soldiers,

my veterans,

My heart gives you love.

Author/Walt Whitman

It seems like yesterday, although it’s been 39 years since we served together in a land far away. I can still remember:

Being on board ship, stacked like cordwood below deck while a typhoon raged above. As the ship slammed down into the bottom of each wave like a giant roller coaster going up and down hills, you knew your kidneys were on their way out of your back via your butt hole.

A cold beer, when we could get one, wet and almost alive with taste, sometimes burning your throat because it was so cold.

Going through a chow line and actually eating off a metal tray and being happy about it.

The cookies or brownies from home, stale, broken into little pieces, but as good as Mom or that special someone ever made.

Grateful for that packet of presweetened Cherry Kool-Aid, which came with that long awaited letter from home.

Sleeping on a cot, in a tent and not in a bug infested hole in the ground with the rain pouring in on you. Life was good!

Shivering at night because you were soaked with sweat from the day and it had cooled to a mere 95 degrees at night.

Ever wonder why we were sent to Japan before Vietnam?

Playing football in a monsoon.

Trying to catch a wild pig for dinner.

Crazed Water Buffalos.

Hot Sauce for your C-Rats.

Turning the C-Rat cases upside down, empting the individual cartons of C-Rats with the labels down so it was the luck of the draw….…..let the trading begin!

And the smell of that letter you finally got from home. It actually smelled like home, not like war and death.

Looking, watching, scouting, trying to find out where that shot came from as you lay in the rice patty and the water explodes around you or the dirt flies in your face.

The call for “Corpsman up.” The wait sometimes seemed forever to see who got hit and how bad. You walk by, there is blood, and you feel nothing except for being numb all over. You wonder if he will make it. You think about families and friends back in the “world” who don’t know yet.

The sound made when a 155 fires close by and the ground shakes with thunder as you try to sleep. The dust spraying into your face as you lay on the ground, your teeth feeling as if they are going to be shaken from your month.

The sound of a 155 as it approaches way off in the distance, getting louder as it gets closer and finally, when it passes overhead on the way to it’s target, it’s like standing next to the railroad tracks when the midnight special comes through at 100 miles per hour.

Your M-14, the bolt slamming home after you tapped a new magazine on your helmet and slammed it place.

That sound of an AK47, so different, so special, so very deadly, a sound that you never forget.

An F-4 as it makes a run, so close to the tree tops you swear the pilot can reach out an pick a leaf as he roars by, the trail of black smoke turning and twisting as it pours from the engine exhaust.

Riding on a tank, it’s great not walking, even for a short time, especially in sand.

Being knee deep in mud and what seemed like thousands of mosquitoes.

Drinking water with those nasty iodine-tasting tablets in it.

Eating Ham and Slams for breakfast, hot if you could get it, otherwise cold with that ever-present film of cold, hard grease on top.

The smell and intense heat of burning C-4 while trying to heat your C-Rats.

Heating pound cake from your C-Rat’s by cutting a few small holes in the top with your John Wayne, adding a little water and heating the whole thing over a small C-4 fire. Life was good!

Getting menthol cigarettes in your C-Rat pack. Life was not so good!

Lucky Strikes or Pall Mal life was good!

Beech Nut chewing tobacco, don’t swallow it!

Listening for that ever familiar “take cover” or “incoming or outgoing.”

Watching the skies and listening for the Medvac choppers, telling our brothers to hold on, you’re going to be OK.

The “thump” of a mortar round as it leaves the tube.

Digging your “cat hole” in the middle of nowhere and hoping that no one would take a pot shot at you.

Waiting, listening and watching while on a night ambush, trying not to move, to not slap the mosquito that is chewing on your face, buzzing in your ear. The first shot of the ambush. Now were in deep shit and in a fight for our very lives!

Remember the smell and taste of your adrenaline?

The sound of a fire mission at night, close by, as the rounds pass overhead to their target and explode, always hoping the cannon cockers have the correct fire mission and the correct grid.

The sound and smell of rain as it moves closer, ever closer through the jungle at night.

Watching tracers as they “dance “ through the night sky like shooting stars, but as deadly as the bullets they are part of.

The darker than dark jungle nights, those nights you could not see your fingers 1 inch in front of your nose and how those dark nights would light up like day when illumination rounds arrived overhead, slowly and ever so gently falling to the ground with parachutes, looking as if they were dancing angels with wings.

Experiencing the long boredom of an operation mixed with the seconds and sometimes hours of shear terror when the “enemy” opens fire and keeps firing.

Standing and staring at the water in the streambed as it flows by your feet, thinking how beautiful and peaceful this place is except for the sounds of the flowing water. It could be home. Forgetting, if even for a brief moment, the terror, horror, heartache, pain, destruction and death that it held only a few minutes before.

The cries for help we tried to answer, but could not.

Listening as the mortar rounds fall through the leaves on the trees. You know you can hear each leaf parting as the round descends to earth exploding death and destruction in every direction.  

Listening and watching from a hilltop as our brothers are lifted into the blue morning sky, the baskets they lay in turning in the wind from the chopper blades as they leave us, some for the last time.

Author/Tom Gainer    

So many of the guys have submitted their personal recollections of this gunfight. I have learned a lot. My perspective was limited to only the activities within my sight. There was so much going on. My story reflects only a fraction of what happened those days. Please reader forgive me if it appears that I’m oblivious to other actions that occurred.

On the morning of the 24th of July we started the day in a valley at the base of the hills. This was the most open area we’d been in since we’d landed in the mountains the week or so before. Our mission this day was to proceed to the top of Hill 362. My platoon, the Second, was to be the second platoon in the column going up the hill. Something held us up till almost mid morning before we actually started up the hill. It was a very tough hill. We went directly up the side. We had to make a trail. Very steep. There were times when we were on our hands and knees in an effort to scramble up. The going was slow. I could imagine what a swell time the point guys were having. Not only were they on point, where they had to be aware of everything around them, but they had to chop a trail at the same time.

Not long after I started up the hill I heard gunfire towards the front of the column. Not a lot. Just a few short bursts. The word came back that they had come across a gook listening post. Killed a couple of them, wounded another, and one surrendered or was captured somehow. I don’t know if we had any casualties, but by the time the column had progressed to the area of the listening post, I only saw the wounded gook, and a healthy one being questioned. The wounded one was not long for this world one way or another. I was just passing through, but he was in pretty bad shape.

Someone pointed out that they had sound power phones in their position. The com wire ran right past us towards the opposing hill to our right. Second platoon advanced through the point platoon, and took over the point. We continued to move to the right, across the top of our hill and towards the opposing hill. I didn’t know much, but I thought that we were going entirely too fast. I counted three strings of com wire in the trees going right along the trail. Three strings! The trail we were following was very well used. Under a perfect jungle canopy. Wide, as jungle trails go. Yet we kept moving forward. A good portion of the company was still strung out behind us. Many of them hadn’t even gotten to the top of the hill yet.

This is where I have to editorialize a bit. Private Holt was not normally a thinker. I did what I was told, and tried not to screw up. Standard E-1 procedure. I was pretty good at what I did, though. We all were, but it was at this moment in the advance when Private Holt thought that he knew more than whoever was running the show...a very, very rare concept. Where were we going in such a goddamned hurry? It was obvious to me that we were on the enemy's’ home turf. It was obvious to me that there were probably a bunch of’em just up ahead, hence three strands of com wire. It was obvious to me that we were advancing in column with more than half the column behind us. Private Holt thought, "Hold on now. Let’s stop and think about this for a while."

Nobody asked for my opinion, so we went. I was in third squad, and just as I started to descend the opposite slope of the hill, out from under the jungle canopy and through some tall dry reedy stuff, I saw a fighting hole right next to the trail. It was perfectly round. A couple of feet across. It was packed with SKS’s. Ten or fifteen of’em. Bore up. The column happened to stop just for a moment, and Presby, the rocket guy, pulled one out of the hole. It was clean and oiled. It was loaded! He and I just looked at each other when it all started.

A firefight started up ahead a ways. It sounded like it was at the front of the column. The trail had gradual bends in it so I couldn’t see more than a guy or two in front of me and the same to the rear. As we continued forward there was an explosion to my rear. Very close, but it was tough to determine how close with all the dry vegetation. In those few seconds the noise had become deafening. Both forward and to the rear.

I thought, “This is it! The shit has hit the fan and I’m right in the middle of it.” Through all the noise a guy came up from up forward and yelled for us to move forward fast to help out the guys at the point. I turned to Gaunce, one of my riflemen, and told him to pass the word and follow me. He went to his rear a few feet to relay the order. I started running down the trail. I hadn’t gone more than a few yards when I came across a clearing. About a twenty-foot open area in the trail. I locked my brakes up as I got to it. Because of this clearing I could see out to the opposing hill. Muzzle flashes. Many muzzle flashes. I took a step back, took a deep breath, and launched myself across the small clearing.

Two things happened simultaneously. One. The entire clearing erupted in dirt with the first step I took. Two. I tripped on something close to the ground with my second step. I fell ass over teakettle off to the side of the trail in the bushes. I was muttering all sorts of bad stuff while I was disentangling myself from these tall dry reedy bushes. As soon as I got to my feet I ran down the trail for a few more yards until I made contact with somebody. Can’t remember who it was, but I was surprised it wasn’t Presby. The column had stopped. Gaunce caught up with me, and we both got down on the trail looking towards the front, but there was nothing we could see. Only bushes. Another major burst of fire towards us, through the bushes. We couldn’t really get to any cover. We were on the facing side of the hill. We were taking plunging fire from the opposite hill. I got scared. Directly in front of me I saw a hole appear in a stalk of this dry grass. Not three feet in front of me.

Even though the column had stopped, I had to do something. Just as I got to my feet Gaunce yelled, “I’m hit!” I turned around, and he was holding his shoulder, wincing. I walked back to him, looked him over for a few seconds, and I remember thinking it looked just like a Roy Rogers wound. Right in the meaty part below the collarbone, to the side of the shoulder joint. He looked to me like he was able to get to the rear under his own power. For some strange reason I didn’t feel that he was in trouble. Goodness knows why. He’d been shot, for Christ sakes! He got up and started towards the rear when I realized there wasn’t anybody behind him. I ran back and shouted myself blue,” Second Platoon up!” A few seconds later Corporal Luzietti came round the bend, looking distressed, but able. As it turns out, mortar rounds had landed among the fire teams to my rear. There had been casualties.

The shooting stopped abruptly. I headed down the trail. Kenny Walker was coming up the trail. He was so pissed he was near tears. He was coming up for help. Sgt. Hailey and Daniels had been killed instantly with the first shots. Malone, Lt. Woodburn, Sgt. Drake, Horsely, and Reyes, the radioman had been hit. They needed help. Doc Collins had been shot through the wrist with the first shots also. I went a few yards further down and met the guys carrying Malone up on a poncho'; return true;" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 3px double; TEXT-DECORATION: none" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=31&k=a%20poncho">a poncho. He’d been shot through the lower abdomen. He was conscious and coherent. One of the guys lost his grip on the poncho, and they dropped Malone a few inches to the ground. He complained, “Aw guys, cut me some slack, will ya!” One of the Corpsman’s large dressings was over his lower belly. He’d been opened up pretty bad. I grabbed one corner of the poncho, and we proceeded to carry Malone the rest of the way back to the top of the hill. On the way up we were passed by guys from the other platoons coming down. The firefight had resumed behind me towards the bottom of the trail. I was amazed to see Lt. Kopfler coming down with an M-14 in his hands, and a radio on his back. Eyes wide as saucers. I thought, “What’s he doing down here? He should stay where it’s safe. He doesn’t have to come down here.” Other guys were following us up with some other wounded.

After we got Malone to the top of the hill I turned around and went back down the trail. The firefight had lulled for the moment. I met Felton. He was running up looking for more ammo. He’d either run out of ammo or he had lost his rifle somehow. He was frantic. We happened to be standing next to one of the gook holes with the SKS’s. He reached in and pulled one out. He knelt there for a minute and tried to figure out how to operate it. In his excitement he tripped the magazine latch. (On an SKS the magazine is fixed with a hinge.) All the rounds tumbled out on his lap. He was in absolute despair. He continued up the hill, and I continued down along with the remainder of the column moving forward. It sounded as if the firefight had begun to heat up again.

Near the bottom of the trail there was shootin’ everywhere. More than a handful of new wounded were being evacuated back up the trail. Gunfire was constant, a bunch incoming, yet I didn’t see any distinguishable targets. No one in my immediate area got wounded during this period. As the wounded slowly made their way back up the trail a few of us lingered to cover for them. I expected to see gooks any second; yet I never did. Other guys did. Often. They were shootin’ thisaway and thataway. Every time I looked to the left, somebody would see movement to the right. Every time I looked to the right, somebody would see movement to the left. We were backing up the trail, yet there were still guys going down past us. Why? To retrieve the dead? Were there other men further down the trail than us? I doubted that there were. We were running low on ammo. For the life of me I can’t remember firing my rifle when we were at the bottom covering the trail, yet when I started back up I realized I was low on ammo and my shirt was full of empty magazines. Go figure.

When I approached the area where we had all the wounded guys laid out I went through some of the gear that had been left in piles. I got five or six more magazines from those belts. I then learned of our casualties from the mortars. Fenstermacher had been killed with the first one. Gurbal and McGuire had been wounded. Cruz had been killed with another blast.

I was under the impression we had all withdrawn back to this point, but it was immediately obvious that we’d left some guys down the trail. There had been earlier radio communication with Lt. Kopfler. He’d been hit, and was still toward the bottom of the trail, but then we lost contact with him. Someone was organizing a group to go back down the trail and get the rest of our guys. The last place on earth I wanted to go was back down that trail, but we had to. We had to. With the purest sense of duty I’ve ever felt, this column of about ten or fifteen guys started down the trail. We hadn’t gone ten feet when Lt. Williams appeared and said no.

“Nobody’s going back down that trail!”

He then said something to the effect that we’d lost more men every time we went down the trail, and he had just checked the area out, and he truly didn’t believe there was anyone left alive down the hill.

Once that decision had been made we all got busy. We didn’t really form a defensive perimeter at this point, but we had a good-sized group on the downhill side of the hilltop in case the gooks came that way. Our main mission was to clear an area for medivac. Ever since the first mortars had fallen, there had been an effort to clear a helozone. All we had were K Bars and machetes. It was slow going. The Corpsmen had consolidated all the wounded at the topmost part of the hill. Marty Morris had taken Doc Collins Unit One, and was, in effect, acting as a Corpsman too. We’d radioed for some sort of tools to help us clear the zone, and when a 34 came swooping in they dropped two axes through the canopy. The helo came under fire the second they approached so I don’t blame them for being hasty in their delivery, but wouldn’t it have been silly if a guy got killed by an axe being dropped on his head?

There were efforts to medivac the wounded, but each time a helo came in it was fired upon. Heavily. After the second or third attempt, they abandoned their efforts. Then it started to rain.

Caro and I decided we’d start digging holes. We were on the far side'; return true;" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 3px double; TEXT-DECORATION: none" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=31&k=far%20side">far side of the eventual perimeter just a few feet below the crest of the hill. When I stood up I could look directly at the group of wounded at eye level, twenty feet from me. Things had calmed down some. There hadn’t been any shooting in a while, and we were intent on doing what needed doing. In my case...digging a hole. Once I got through the loose ground cover, it was pretty easy digging. When I’d dug the hole to the right size I realized Gurbal needed a hole too, and he simply couldn’t dig with one arm no matter how much he tried I told him to sit down and take it easy. I just chopped off one wall of my little fighting hole, and made it big enough for two. I figured I’d make it deeper later. Caro was doing the same for McGuire. I had just started to get a rhythm going when the mortars fell. We hadn’t heard them come out of the tube. We had no warning. They landed directly in the center of the wounded.

Horrible. Truly horrible. There were screams.

I had recoiled from the explosions to such a degree that I landed on my back down the slope a few feet. I knew I wasn’t hurt, but I hesitated to look at the carnage. One of the rounds appeared to have landed on one of the wounded. In that area of the wounded there were many more casualties.

Everybody ran to help. In fact there were too many of us. For a moment there was confusion, then somebody started giving orders for some of us to keep digging, and some of us to help with the wounded. Higgy stayed to do what he could, and I went down just those few feet to continue with my digging. If I was digging before, I was digging like hell now.

The rain was steady. Not enough to fill my fighting hole with water, but enough to get everything muddy. Redish, slimy mud. I had just about completed this two-man hole when Higgy brought some other guy down towards me. This fella could barely walk. His whole body had been peppered with shrapnel. Small holes everywhere. Maybe from dirt or gravel, but he was a sight. His face was swollen and bloody. I wouldn’t have recognized him if he was my own brother. He was distressed. He needed a hole to get into, and I was volunteered by Higgy to give him a hole to get into. No problem. I just chopped off another chunk of the wall of my hole and kept digging.

The rain stopped. The hole I was digging became a trench. We heard two mortars come out of the tubes from the other hill. Everybody heard’em. Everybody yelled at once. “Incoming!” Everybody hit the deck. I threw my E tool to the side, and plopped in my trench.

These mortar rounds can be heard real well when your listening for’em. A hiss that gets louder and louder as they fall. You just know they’re gonna fall right in your pocket. Again, I was scared.

Boom! Boom! Further down the slope a bit. There may have been casualties, but none in my immediate area. I jumped up and grabbed my E tool. Caro and I decided to join our trenches into one monster trench. We proceeded to dig out the dirt between our two positions. Higgy kept bringing us guys who needed help. This trench was getting bigger and bigger.

Again. Thump, Thump from the other hill. Mortars coming out of the tubes. “Incoming!” I plopped in my trench. Boom! Boom! As I got up I heard Higgy calmly say, “ I need some help over here.”

I figured he was needing help in moving one of the wounded guys, but when I turned around I saw he had blood coming down one side of his face. He was only a few feet from me. Just up the slope a couple of feet. I stepped up to give him a look. He’d been hit in the arm and obviously the head. It only took me a second to see that his scalp and forehead had been cut open, but there didn’t seem to be any holes in his head. It was bleeding all to hell so I pulled my last remaining pressure bandage out and strapped it around the side of his forehead and hairline. I’d already given one bandage to Higgy a few minutes before so he could dress somebody else’s wounds. His arm wound was right in the center of the bicep. Whenever he moved his arm there would be an impressive squirt of blood out of the little square hole. I didn’t have any sort of dressing for it so we decided that he would hold a leaf over the hole to plug up the leak. Even in his state we both felt rather clever in coming up with this technique, but it didn’t work worth a damn. Shortly thereafter his arm stiffened up from the trauma so it quit leaking anyway. If he didn’t move his arm, it wasn’t bleeding.

I made the trench big enough to include Higgy. It had gotten long enough, but it still wasn’t as deep as I would have liked it. We could all fit if we sat in it, but I doubted if we could actually get our entire bodies crammed in. There had been two or three more mortars dropped, but then they stopped. It was getting late in the afternoon. As I was finishing one end of the trench, the wounded guys were sitting in the other end. I couldn’t very well ask them to get out so I could make it deeper at this point. We were getting prepared for a long night. The perimeter had been completed. Luzietti came over and let it be known that he would like to make a reservation in our trench. He’d been scrounging grenades from anywhere he could.

By the time the sun went down we had at least nine guys in our trench. Among us we had twelve magazines, and twenty-two grenades. Caro, Carroll, Luzietti, and myself were the only able bodies in our position. Luzietti had been wounded with shrapnel in the legs, but he wasn’t complaining. Ballog was to our right front, just down the slope from us a few feet. Word was passed that we were on a hundred percent alert. Private Holt agreed.

It got dark quick. Real dark. We were as prepared as we could be. We were absolutely silent.

A few events of that nightstick in my mind. The first was the attempt at illumination. Some bright soul thought we needed the jungle lit up for some reason, so an hour or two after dark we got incoming illumination from some sort of artillery. There were two problems with this effort. One, Private Holt didn’t want any illumination. I was perfectly at ease with the dark. Illumination just made the bush come alive with shadows, and perked the hell out of my imagination. Two, as the illumination rounds would pop open, their canisters would fall to the ground...directly into our perimeter. They sounded like they were gonna land in our laps. We eventually got them stopped.

Later that night Sgt. Hayslip kicked the shit out of a gook. We would throw grenades every once in a while just to keep the enemy away without giving away our exact positions. Up until this time we didn’t know for sure if they were probing our lines, but I just figured they were out there somewhere, and I was ready. We were so silent that any noise at all was magnified in the night. Suddenly, from my left rear, I heard a loud, “Ugh”. A big breath gushing “Ugh.” I spun around, ready to shoot at anything, when I heard what sounded like somebody punching somebody else, accompanied by the low tones of somebody saying, “I got you, you little son of a bitch!” As it turns out, this little gook fella was supposed to harass us or whatever, but somehow he managed to jump into Sgt. Hayslip’s fighting hole. (Much later I learned the gooks’ motive. Not everybody had grenades to spare. The word was passed that if anybody suspected movement to their front, throw a rock at it. There was the odd chance the enemy would think it’s a grenade and make a move prematurely. Sgt. Hayslip did. The gook did. The rest is history.) If it wasn’t for the sound of Hayslip’s imaginative muted mutterings, I would have been scared. From the sounds you couldn’t tell if somebody was being stabbed or bludgeoned or what, but I was pretty sure Sgt. Hayslip was winning.

All of the able guys in our position had a couple of magazines of ammo, but I had most of them so I was the designated shooter for the position. If I heard a noise, or just thought I heard a noise, I’d sit up a bit and let go with four or five rounds down the hill. Before I’d do this I’d cup my hand over the next guy’s ear and I’d whisper my intentions. After the message was relayed to everyone, only then would I rearrange my position and start shootin’. I didn’t want to surprise anybody, or worse, scare anybody with my haphazard bursts. The wounded, who must have been in pain, never made a sound all night. No moans. No whines. To me this is unbelievable even to this day.

To me the most memorable event of that long night is almost comical now that I look back on it. Joe Luzietti took it upon himself to be the designated grenade thrower. He had scrounged all the grenades before dusk, and he didn’t give anybody any of’em. He must have been sitting on’em because I know none of them were stashed outside the trench, and there wasn’t an inch of spare room in the trench. Most of us were sitting up with our legs crossed in front of us. All crammed in. After an hour or two of numb butts we independently decided to lay back and extend our feet and legs out over the rim. We could all maneuver our limbs to a limited degree, but for the wounded guys it was just another misery to endure. If anyone could have seen us we would’ve look ridiculous. Our feet were actually higher than our heads.

Intermittently through the night Joe would toss a grenade to keep any enemy away. Using the same logic as me, he wasn’t sure how many gooks were out there, but pitching a grenade whenever we heard a noise sure made us feel better about it. He was using the same protocol too. He’d whisper to the guy next to him his intentions, and when everybody got the word he’d untangle himself enough to stand up and give it a good throw. He was silent, and it was completely dark, but you could hear the rustle of his clothes when he threw it, the release of the spoon, and then you could really hear it fly through the jungle. Flapping through leaves and snapping twigs. A faint thud, then detonation.

We wouldn’t even try to get our feet out of harm’s way. He was tossing it a country mile so we all felt there was no immediate danger to us. Besides, I couldn’t imagine everyone fitting in that trench if we tried to get all our limbs in.

Joe must’ve thrown four or five already, and he was standing up to give it another go. I faintly heard him get to his feet. Then the sound of him throwing it, but the instant he threw it we heard, Thunk! Directly in front of our position! He’d hit a tree with it! All of us, in unison, wounded or able, whispered, “Oh shit!” I tried to get my feet tucked in. Everybody did. All at once. Joe immediately dropped down, and was trying to squish his entire self into any nook or cranny he could find. Those few seconds took a while, believe me. Then, WHAM! Dirt, leaves, all sorts of crap and corruption pelted us. I was surprised by the affect. Just the noise was a shock to the system.

It took us a few seconds to determine if everybody was OK. Then everything went as usual. Legs outstretched in front of us over the rim of the trench. To no one’s surprise, and everyone’s relief, Luzietti didn’t have the opportunity to throw another grenade that night.

There never was a legitimate attempt to overrun us that night. I reckon their mission was just to keep us occupied while the rest of their unit made a hasty retreat off the opposing hill. For sure, come dawn, we were gonna blast that hill to hell.

As the sun came up so did our spirits. Many of us were just happy to be alive to see another day. At first, movement was cautious. We spoke in whispers. It was difficult to have faith in this new day. The horrors remained around us. Our dead. Our wounded. The first news I heard was that Malone had died in the night. For some reason this affected me much more than anything previously. I lost a lot of friends the day before, but Malone was a star. For the first time I felt a tragic sense of loss.

Immediately after hearing of Malone’s death we had better news. There was quite a bit of commotion on the opposite side of the perimeter, and when I went to investigate, there was excitement that Bednar had somehow survived the night, and had crawled up the hill. He was horribly wounded. He’d been bayoneted and left for dead. Unbelievable. He was a sign of hope for us. Could any more have survived down the trail? None had.

The gook that Sgt. Hayslip had thumped on in the night was in the middle of our clearing. Hog-tied. Complaining all to hell. About what, I’m not sure, but I do remember thinking he had balls complaining about anything. Any one of us would have been more than happy to cease his complaining. I’m not sure if anyone did.

Our little clearing had to be enlarged. We had dozens of casualties to evacuate, and the gap in the trees was only large enough to lift guys out by sling. Not enough room to land a helo.

The engineers were turned loose. With a gleam in their eyes they systematically went about blasting the shit out of the jungle. At the same time we had helos come in and lower us chain saws'; return true;" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 3px double; TEXT-DECORATION: none" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=31&k=chain%20saws">chain saws. Between the blasting and the sawing there was quite a frenzy. The more serious casualties immediately went up in a basket type of arrangement. Huffman. Horsley. Others I didn’t know. The basket kept spinning. The process was too slow and chaotic, but it was all there was. Sometime in this time frame we had more corpsmen lowered to us. They were desperately needed. Most of our corpsmen had been casualties, and the remainder were out of supplies. They were frantic.

I was stunned when I realized the first guys down the sling were reporters. Reporters! Photographers! Many of us have stories of these worthless assholes. They were no help when any help was necessary. The only memory I have personally is when I was holding up one end of a poncho carrying a casualty up the slope towards the helo zone. This guy stood right in the middle of the trail and motioned that he wanted us to either pause or pose for a photo. All four of us hesitated for just a second, then realized what he was doing. If we weren’t so busy any one of us would’ve slapped the shit out of him.

The noise and the prop wash of the helos only made a bad time worse. After the firefights of the day before I couldn’t hear much as it was, but with all their racket, the tension was doubled. Thank God the gooks had disappeared.

The casualties were eventually evacuated. Now our job was to evacuate the dead. Then all the gear that had been piled around the area.

I know I have a problem dealing with dead bodies. I had a helluva time the morning after our streambed ambush. I was one in a long line of guys that moved our dead to the top of a hill for evacuation. They were wrapped in ponchos as best as could be managed, but with all the lifting and hauling some of the ponchos were just barely hanging on. The rest of the guys appeared to me to be managing this task a whole lot better than I was. To me this was obscene. The indignity of it all. These were my friends. My brothers. Marines. Yet here we were handling them like meat. Nobody felt much different than me, but I just about came apart at the seams. With Daniel’s understanding and assurance I somehow made it through that ordeal.

Two days later, here I stood with the task at hand. Move and coordinate our dead for evacuation...Daniels among them. We couldn’t even recognize his body. It wasn’t that he was mangled or disfigured, but without his life he was simply nobody. More than a few of us inspected his body hoping for visual ID. Somebody eventually cut the wallet out of his pocket and we were all astonished to learn it was Daniels. Another slam to my heart. More so than learning of Malone. I didn’t need to cry, but I was beginning to seize up. I forced myself, one step at a time, to approach one of the bodies and do what needed doing. All this going on with helos still making all their racket. I yelled at someone to give me a hand with the body at my feet. “You take the feet”, I said, trying desperately to be strong. I leaned over the draped, loose poncho, estimated where this mans’ head and shoulders would be, and tried to grab them. There was none.

I know I shouted, but I couldn’t tell you what. I stood up. I just walked off like I had somewhere to go. I could not do it. I just couldn’t. I knew if someone had ordered me to continue I still couldn’t. The guilt at failing to do my duty was completely obscured by my horror.

I went about doing other tasks. Gathering and stacking gear mainly. When the dead were gone so were the helos. It got quiet. Murmurs. Even a laugh or two. We knew the gooks had gone, and Lima Company was going to show up any minute. We relaxed. We had survived. Lt. Williams ambled up and announced that it was his birthday. As usual, just the act of wishing him Happy Birthday cheered us up a bit more. In the years since I’ve wondered if it really was his birthday.

Not five minutes later Lima Company made contact with us. No shouts, but a potful of smiles. The first guy I saw when I got to the trail at the edge of the hill was Bob Cote. We’d enlisted together. I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my life, and the same went for him, I’m sure. Lima had been ambushed on the way to reinforce us. They lost some guys and couldn’t get to us till this morning. All night they’d heard the mortars, imagining horrible things. In the morning they heard explosions again on our hill, but it was our engineers blowing trees, not the gooks hammering us again. Some of the guys I spoke to heard the chain saws. It had sounded creepy to them, but salvation to us.

I was happy to give this whole damn hill to Lima Company. Private Holt assumed the remainder of India Company would be helo’d out any minute. It didn’t appear to Private Holt that there were enough of us left to do much else. One of our Platoon Commanders had us fall in to Platoon formation. Just to get us reorganized. When Second Platoon formed up there weren’t many of us left. I was the only Fire Team Leader left out of the whole platoon so I was designated, to my guys’ glee, to be the Platoon Sgt. until further notice.

After this we got our gear together and prepared for evacuation...or so I thought.

A firefight broke out. After my immediate reaction I concluded that even though the firefight was only fifty yards or so away, most of the gunfire appeared to be going outbound, and any incoming was going in the trees above my position. I stayed low, but I felt no fear'; return true;" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 3px double; TEXT-DECORATION: none" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=31&k=no%20fear">no fear. This was Lima Company’s fight now. Leave Private Holt alone.

Thirty something years later, after reading the story of Harris and talking to Capt. Tatum, I finally realize how close India Company had come to being overrun that day. There were more than a few gooks coming to continue the fight, and Lima had set in not a minute too soon. We of India (Private Holt for sure) were acting like the fight was over.

As this firefight ended I was told that we were not to be evacuated out by helo. Now I got scared again. It was near dusk and I didn’t even have a hole to get into. I feared another mortar attack after dark. The call was sent for the Platoon Sgts. to come to the Company CP, wherever that was. My first and last official duty as Second Platoon’s Platoon Sgt. was to get my men spread out among the Lima perimeter and dig in. After a few minutes of total disharmony we all managed to find somewhere to plop down for the night.

There were no mortars that night. We never did get helo’d out the next day. We walked out. Eventually to the Battalion CP. Sixty, maybe seventy of us. Not near enough guys for Private Holt’s comfort, let me tell ya. It took us two days to get back to the Pickaway, but that’s another story.

Epilogue

I’ve had this account on paper for a few years. I’ve hesitated to share it with anyone. The more I thought about those days, the more I wrote, the more unbelievable it seemed. No matter how many times I think about it, I always came up smelling like a rose. As the events unfolded on Hill 362 I feel that I was never a true participant. I might have been an observer, but not a participant. Everything happened just ahead of me or just behind me or just after I’d turned around or just after I’d left or just before I got there. Nothing happened to me. Then why should I be the one to tell the story? The truth is that I shouldn’t be. There are scores of guys who have much more personal, dramatic tales to tell. They should. They must. If only to honor the guys that are no longer with us. I will remain Semper Fidelis.

Author/PH