I arrived in Cam Rahn Bay on May 3, 1968 at the replacement detach.
There I requested duty with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. I had heard about “Hill 875” in Dak To and wanted to be where the action was. I was gung ho, “All the way – Airborne”. I had to settle for my second choice, the 101st Airborne Division.
Soon I was at Bien Hoa and taking the 7 day P-training. During a Sgt’s presentation he caught a guy in the bleachers half asleep. He said, “Climb down here and get inside this body bag and see what it feels like to be dead”. He said 185 of you people sitting here will be dead on your first day in combat, 35 % will be wounded.
At Bien Hoa, this new replacement, a “Shake & Bake, (NCO School) named Sgt. Eugene Sutton, singled me out for guard duty every night. Two of those nights the airfield at Bien Hoa was rocketed with 122mm rockets, leaving craters within sight of my bunker. After about a week of this stuff, I told him that I was a SP/4 hard striper with over one year in this man’s army. I was in Germany and got 3 more jumps on my wings, I was not a “Cherry” anymore. “Can’t you find some privates for all this duty?” But that wasn’t enough for him, so I said, “Just like our instructor said, You will be one of those killed on your first day in combat”.
We flew up to Phu Bai in a C-130. I was wondering why they didn’t give us a chute, in case we got shot down. We arrived at Charlie Company’s rear area in Camp Eagle, and they told us that we just missed the re-supply flights going out to the bush. We would go out on the next re-supply; in four days. The waiting was an anxiety trip. I was anxious to smell the glory of victory. They took mostly everything that had been issued to us in Bien Hoa, then re-issued what we needed in the bush. They took our underwear and said that it would cause crotch rot from rubbing your thighs.

On the 19th of May, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, we flew into the A Shau Valley. I had been told that we were to replace those guys that were shot up during TET. There were 56 men in our company before the 18 of us flew out. The company’s normal size averaged 125 – 135 men.
As we flew out to the jungle, I noticed that we were very low, at tree top level. The chopper suddenly lifted up fast, then more and more at a steep climb; and yet we remained at tree top level the whole flight. It rose to the crest and we were peering at the awesome A Shau Valley for the first time.
Then the chopper descended at a very fast pace that gave us extra butterflies, more than caused
by the anticipation and fear of the unknown. There was Morris Powell, who I served with in Germany, 3 other Cherries, and Sgt. Sutton, who I had met in Bien Hoa, all on the bird with me. As fast as we could assess the view and rate of descent, and before I realized it, we were on a small LZ in the dense jungle with the door gunner screaming for us to get off his chopper. I made sure that I had all of my gear as I departed low and fast for the tree line. I looked up and three men were pointing at me and the other “cherries” and haggling over who gets who. I felt like they were evaluating my performance in the way I dismounted the chopper and hit the tree line so quickly. It was like a college football draft run by the Sergeants. I just got pushed very quickly through the jungle by SSG Fager, the 2nd Platoon Sgt. He introduced me to the second squad leader, Sgt. Tom Harms, just as the first mortar round hit.
Guys were diving down, then low crawling for cover all around me, they hadn’t dug in, just blew down some trees for a quick re-supply LZ. I was totally awestruck for a couple of seconds, when the second mortar round hit, somewhere behind me, someone hit me hard in the back driving me to the ground and said, “Get down Cherry!” The NVA only dumped four rounds o us, picked up their tube and split before the gun ships came.
The screaming of wounded and dying was like no sounds that I had ever heard before. This wasn’t like TV. This was real. I kept hearing “Band Aid” … we don’t use the word Medic in the jungle. Medics are prime targets, running to give aid with no care for their own safety. We were moving out immediately after the last round hit; artillery was on the way. I saw stretchers going by with wounded; and then one stretcher that had what looked like a slab of beef from the slaughterhouse on it. Two squads were left behind t get out the wounded and the KIA
All this happened before 9 am, just after the fog lifted. We moved out fast and quietly, the rule in our company was total silence on the trail. Some time in mid afternoon, we were climbing this hill when we got shot up at the front of the column. We spread out on line and advanced, ReCon by fire, until the enemy opened up and disclosed their position. Then our machine gunners were placed and I was put on rear security, to move up only after terrain was taken. After about ten minutes of grenades going off
and learning to know the “special crack” of an AK 47, I went up with the rest of the guys on line.
I was told by Sgt. Harms to get back with the other rear security guys.
Harms said, “You’ll see action sooner than you think”. I went to move back down with the 3 man rear security when automatic weapons fire starting cracking the brush all around us. Harms said. “just stay within ten feet of me so I can watch you. Don’t move up unless I move you up…Ya hear?”
I followed Harms up the hill shooting at bushes that might hide a gook. Then I lay behind a large tree for cover, but when I looked around at the other side, there was an arm hanging out of a spider hole behind the tree, and just two feet from my head. It scared the heck out of me, as I stared at a pile of what used to be a human being. Sgt Harms was looking at me as I looked up. He said, “ Yeah, it’s a body; dummy”. On our way up we passed numerous spider holes and gun positions that were knocked out by the other squad. Harms insisted on chucking a grenade in every hole as we went past.
That night we set up our Night Defensive Position (NDP) in total silence. We didn’t dig in because the NVA had us out numbered and “Grubby” our CO (Captain Hayes) said we must have a well disciplined code of silence. The sound of an entrenching tool chopping the dirt and machetes chopping brush would surely bring on a mortar attack at dark. It gets totally dark at about 5:30 pm in the triple canopied jungle.
I needed someone to debrief me on what the hell happened today. It was not to be told to me until the third night at another NDP. We were sitting around eating C-Rations and drinking hot chocolate, when Dantley, our M-79 grenadier, asked me if I knew Sgt. Sutton. I related the story of me and Sutton at Bien Hoa, and what a jerk I thought he was. Then Dantley said, “You know we got mortared a couple
of days ago, Sgt Sutton got zapped!” I said “zapped?” He said, “KIA Fool, the first round
hit him dead center in the back”. I can’t tell you, all that went through my mind that night.
I only know that I felt that I deserved to die more than he did.