Selective Memories of Vietnam 1969-1970
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As darkness began to fall, we built a meager perimeter in one sector of the mountain. It was becoming very clear that the situation was new to all of us. Our number one concern was that we had no perimeter defense. We were used to having a platoon of trained infantrymen defending us and our position. Our number two concern was that we had no spiraled barbed wire. Usually the area was surrounded with one or two layers of it or razor wire to slow down an invading army. Our number three concern was that we couldn’t dig any defensive foxholes because the gun squads were using the picks. Usually, the Battalion gave us a bale of sandbags as a house warming present. Now we would have to use earth-filled ammo boxes to line the outside of the FDC and foxholes. Our number four concern was that we were short of ammunition. We had arrived with only the M-16 ammunition in our guns plus a few extra ammo clips. That would be enough for a 15-20 minute firefight at best. The situation: no razor wire, no foxholes, no filled sand bags, and no ammunition for our M-16s or four-deuce guns. We realized that we would have to make do and could only hope and pray that we would eventually receive some support for our end of the mountaintop. After studying the topographical maps and guessing the most likely places from which the NVA might attack us, we set up our perimeter defensive positions. Those included six claymore mines. We placed them in the ground, just above an approaching ravine, in an open and flat area. Assured that we had done everything we could to prepare for the night, we assigned watches and called it quits. Besides, it was dark by then and we did not want to work with flashlights and give away our position. It would have been nice if we could have placed a few trip flares around our position, but we didn’t have any. Having set the best perimeter we could, we set the first watch. I had the second. My watch said it was two o’clock. I had been staring into the darkness for two hours and had two hours to go. In my right hand was a two-piece trigger mechanism attached by an electrical cord to a claymore mine. I held the electrical cord like a fishing line. I kept pressure on the cord while I watching for any movement in the line. I was wishing that we had painted the back of the claymore with white paint. I remembered that one instructor had advised us to do that. Where would you get white paint in Nam? During our training sessions in the Americal Relocation and Training Center, the instructor said that, "You could stare at the white paint. If it disappeared it would indicate that someone was moving the claymore and you could squeeze the trigger and blow them to bits."
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About the Book
At the age of 25, I was drafted and whisked through stateside training in the Army’s hopes to have me ‘in country’ (Vietnam) for the 1969 TET offensive. During the twenty weeks of training, I survived knowing I would have 30 days ‘leave’ before going. I never got the ‘leave’, instead was shipped directly to Southeast Asia. Selective Memories is my experiences as a good will ambassador to Southeast Asia with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division. We were on mountaintops without officers or even career military personnel. We were a bunch of kids fighting for our lives in a strange hostile environment, surviving using knowledge gained in our childhoods. This book is about the time I spent wiping out communism and having my faith in the Washington leadership’s ability to wage a war against a non-traditional enemy destroyed.