Collateral Damage

By Michael Conroy

A fact-based novel of what happens to a family and a community when a soldier is killede. If you look at the Vietnam War Memorial you will see the name of a Marine named Michael Conroy who was killed in Vietnam. Our middle initials were different but we were both of the same rank and in the same division. Due to an error my family was notified that I has been killed. The news had an astonishing impact upon everyone who knew me, from the extended family and girlfriends to church members and former school mates and neighbors. This type of event transcends the generations and nationalities. This is how it affected me and my circle of family and friends. There is tragedy and heartbreak. It is a love story and a war story by someone who experienced the war down in the bush eyeball to eyeball with the enemy, who was seriously wounded and has had to fight to overcome the restrictions of those physical and psychological wounds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781631926228

Book preview

PROLOGUE

MIKE

BALBOA NAVAL HOSPITAL

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

MARCH, 1969

I hope I got the slope-headed, rice-propelled, slant-eyed bastard that killed me.

I fought my way sluggishly to consciousness through deep layers of pain – unimaginably intense unrelenting head-pounding agony. My arms and legs, my head and especially my chest throbbed with horrendous pain. It came in waves with every labored shallow breath I took and with every heart-beat, seventy-six times per minute of every torturous hour of the day. I didn't know how long it had been since I'd been wounded. It seemed as if the body-wracking waves of searing hot pain had been tormenting me for years. I wondered if it would ever end. I lay as still as a log in the Petrified Forest. I couldn't move as much as an eyelash without bringing on another nauseous attack of razor sharp pains that sliced through my chest cavity like a butcher's saw blade cutting through a side of beef. No one can survive such monumental pain. Was I feeling my own autopsy, then? Was some doctor removing and weighting my organs? Is that what I was feeling? Was my soul clinging to my body, refusing to surrender its grip on my life? Is that possible?

Pain. There is no stronger word for what I was feeling. With that horrific and monumental level of pain came its hand-in-hand companions -- fear and helplessness. I was experiencing both. They arrived with voracious appetites. They were gnawing at my guts and my nerves, devouring the last vestige of my courage and confidence. I was not used to being helpless. It scared me.

How could I be dead? I was too young to die, too vital. I had too much to do and too much of life yet to be experienced. I didn't want to die but if it was happening then I'd rather go fast and not linger with this pain and the inability to help myself. That fear served to feed the cycle.

Perhaps I have died and gone to hell. Or worse, to Oklahoma! As much as it might hurt I needed to move a finger or a toe, anything in order to prove to myself that I was still alive. As hard as I had tried I had not been able to move a muscle. I could not wiggle a finger or a toe, not even as much as an eyelid. My muscles simply would not respond to my wishes and commands. I wondered if that was due to rigor mortis having set in.

My efforts to move my limbs were not just unsuccessful. They were met with fiery pain like an extreme heat that consumes and scars you from within. The fact that I couldn't see was even more frightening than my inability to move. What did that mean? Was I blind or sleeping and dreaming or just unable to open my eyes for some reason? Could they be covered with bandages? I had tried to speak, to call out for help, but I couldn't even make a hissing or a croaking sound. Fucking butterflies can scream louder than me.

Any one of those disabilities would have scared me, to live mute or blind or as a helpless slobbering vegetable unable to wipe my own ass. However, to suffer them simultaneously would truly be a fate worse than death. With that in mind, fear rose within me like the sour acid bile that burns and boils in your stomach and erupts up through your esophagus to explode in your mouth as if you'd just eaten a skunk asshole first.

I didn't understand what had happened to me. I knew I'd been shot but I hadn't thought it was this bad. Perhaps the shock and adrenaline rush that comes with being wounded in combat had prevented me from realizing just how seriously I'd been wounded. Or maybe there was some psychological defense mechanism at work. I wondered if I'd lost anything. A finger, maybe? Or an arm? Perhaps a leg. Is that why I couldn't feel anything but pain in all of my limbs? Was that the ghost pain associated with missing limbs I'd heard so much about?

I needed to cough but I was just too weak. My mouth was too dry to spit. It felt as if I'd been sucking on a mouth full of hot desert sand. My tongue seemed swollen and lifeless. My throat felt as if it had been sandblasted raw. Is this what it feels like to die? Oh, Christ! You can't feel pain after you die, can you? What does the bible say about sinners suffering after death? If I'm dead then where is Saint Peter? What about the angels and the harp music? Where are they? I don't hear anything. Am I deaf on top of everything else? Nothing seemed to work but my mind, or was it my soul? I wondered if you have to stand in line to pass through the pearly gates. Ten to one the line will be miles long and just creeping along like Dallas rush-hour traffic without the cursing and the single digit hand signals. I wanted to see heaven's scenes being guarded by United States Marines like the third stanza of the Marines' Hymn says. They need a crusty old drill instructor up here to organize things and get them moving.

Alright, ladies, tighten up that line! Asshole to belly button! Make your buddy smile!

That expression so often heard in boot camp had probably never been uttered in heaven. It made me wonder if there are any drill instructors up here.

I hadn't thought heaven would be so incredibly hot. I felt as if I was on a spit the way LBJ barbecues whole sides of beef at the Texas White House. Some minor little devil was probably turning me slowly over the flames. My body fat was dripping and sizzling on the hot coals. I imagined all the people I'd told to bite me! or Eat me! were lined up with their forks at the ready. I hoped I tasted like tough old sun-ripened road kill.

Maybe I'm in purgatory and the pain is being inflicted upon me as punishment for my sins. How long will this go on? I wondered. I couldn't handle that much pain for ten thousand years and certainly not for the rest of eternity. Holy hell! How many times had I sung about those ten thousand years as a joyous beginning? I didn't really mean it, God. I swear I didn't. I was just being a good boy and trying to please my mother. Damn! How many times did she tell me to be careful of what I wish for?

How big a sin is lust? How much time do you get for that? Some of those Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders almost make it worth a bit of time in hell. How about lying? What about fornication and cheating on your girlfriend? What else have I done to deserve being roasted like this? Will I get a chance to make amends?

There was a small chance I might not be dead, at least not yet. If I'm alive then where am I? I am unable to move, to see, or to hear anything. Nevertheless, I'm breathing, right? And thinking? Doesn't breathing and thinking mean I'm alive? Hoping it wasn't too late, I prayed. Dear God, I hope you are listening and that this is just a preview or a warning and you'll give me a second chance.

Then slowly, as if God were answering all my questions, my ability to think failed like a movie ending with fade to black.

CHAPTER ONE

MIKE

DALLAS, TEXAS

FEBRUARY, 1963

I joined the Marine Corps under a 120 day delayed entry program just a few months short of my eighteenth birthday and high school graduation. Those four months counted toward my time in grade as well as my four year enlistment. I had been in no particular hurry to leave home. I had a wonderful girlfriend but neither of us had the desire to get married right away. Mary was going off to college first. Perhaps that contributed to my decision to join up for four years.

During the four months prior to reporting for boot camp I spent my weekends with the local reserve unit learning how to drill and become a Marine through rigid discipline and endless pushups and sit ups. That gave me a physical and mental jump start on other recruits. Consequently, I made platoon honor man out of boot camp. That came with a promotion to PFC and a set of expensive dress blues which I otherwise would had to have bought. Soldiers always talk about their homes and their families. I realized how blessed I had been when one of my fellow recruits commented, Home wadn't no paradise, man.

I had a happy childhood. Dallas had been a wonderful place to grow up. It is a terrific city full of exciting and magnificent big-hearted people. There is no place on earth that can compare to Dallas. The city is blessed with top-rated schools, great sports entertainment, and a thriving, diversified economy -- all things that add to the quality of one's life. I believe quality of life is enhanced by travel and exposure to extrinsic people and their cultures. Seeing the world was part of the allure I associated with military service.

I had not joined the Marine Corps as a way of escaping Dallas or getting away from a difficult family situation. The Collins family is full of interesting, supporting, loving people who work hard and enjoy life. We are patriotic, church-going and upwardly mobile-oriented. I guess that makes us middle-class folks. But, like most families, we have our share of oddballs.

There is, for example, my favorite aunt, Gwynne, who doesn't mind being called eccentric but won't tolerate the words crazy or screwy in any form. There was a great grandfather who was hanged as a horse thief in Oklahoma Indian Territory. My joining the Marine Corps was a big surprise to the family as there had been no Marines in our family tree.

My father is what they call one of America's greatest generations. He served with the hard-fighting T-Patchers of the Texas National Guard. Corporal Paul Collins had first seen combat in North Africa and then in Sicily. He made the heavily resisted beach landings at Naples and Salerno. He fought his way north through Italy into Germany where he'd been wounded. My dad knows a thing or two about combat.

Along the way Dad had seen Cairo, Rome, Paris and London, places he'd talked about and described infrequently yet in vivid details. For twenty years following the war, although his job takes him to cities throughout the United States, dad has been mentally planted as firmly in Texas soil as the giant oak tree in our back yard. That is the legacy of my generation. I didn't expect any more of my own life and military service and I wouldn't accept anything less. I wanted to see some of the world and build memories of my own. I knew I would never travel broadly on my own. I wanted the experience of youthful romantic adventures before settling down with Mary to that life of quiet desperation. The Marine Corps seemed a likely place to get them.

If nothing else, I considered myself to be something of a realist. Academically I'd been prepared for college. Mentally, I knew I was not. I hadn't had the interest or the grades for law school or a career in medicine. I just couldn't see myself as some money-grubbing stiff-necked lawyer. You have to go to school for far too long for one thing. I didn't know who I was yet. I was even less sure of who I wanted to be or of what I ultimately wanted to do with my life.

Insurance agent. Accountant. Stock broker and banker were all out of the question. A career in finance just seemed too damned dull. I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with working in a factory or driving a truck. I had never learned to play a musical instrument. I had an interest in art but I lacked the creative imagination and the talent to be any kind of artist. I was interested in architecture and archaeology. As for my early thoughts on careers, I'd told the reporter as a quote for our high school graduation year book, Indian chief would be great except for the fact that I don't have any Indian ancestors.

I hadn't been one of those boys who could build a crystal radio from scratch or even from a kit with instructions so simple a child could follow them. I would never understand how televisions and radios work. I didn't care how structures are designed or buildings are hammered together. I understood absolutely nothing about mechanics or woodworking or welding. I didn't care how things work, only that they did so.

After giving serious thought to my future I had come to the conclusion that I needed to mature before making firm plans for my life and attending college in order to achieve them. The G.I. Bill was a major factor to my joining the Marine Corps. Secretly, I thought I would make a wonderful spy or detective. And so maybe military intelligence is where I was destined to be.

Although I had been somewhat of an academic underachiever, I had still been a well above average student. My parents, satisfied with that, had never pressed me for more. I had attended large Dallas schools. Making the athletic teams at those schools had not been easy. I played baseball as a hard-throwing short relief pitcher and football as a kicking specialist with an accurate but only medium range leg. I'd made the track team as a cross-country runner long on stamina but short on speed. I'd generally sat on the bench during basketball games. I was on the teams, lettering in each sport but starring in none of them.

Perhaps that had something to do with my choosing the Marine Corps over the Army when I decided to enter military service. I never even considered the Navy or the Air Force. I had some things to prove to myself and to others. I felt that four years in the Marine Corps would provide me time to mature and grow in every way possible. Joining the Marine Corps would provide me an acceptable job while I used the time to figure out who Mike Collins really was and what I wanted out of life. Four years later I didn't seem to be one step closer. There were many options but none of them held great appeal to me.

From boot camp I was assigned to special training as a scout/sniper where I met my life-long friend, Jimmy Barrmore. As different as we were in so many ways, Jimmy and I had formed a bond as strong as most brothers. He had been the one real constant in my life for the past three years. I had seen more of him than I had of my family, or of Mary. We worked together in a small, highly-trained, elite unit. In addition, we often went on liberty together, to a movie in town or to one of the wonderful beaches of Southern California. We didn't have anything like that in Dallas.

Upon completing sniper school eight months later, I was promoted to Lance Corporal. After our graduation from that tough school Jimmy and I were assigned to the same sniper squad at Headquarters and Service Battalion, 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. We replaced two corporals who were completing their uneventful four year enlistments. We expected to do the same.

In social settings I had always felt a touch of shyness and awkwardness which resulted in a certain lack of confidence. Hell, if Mary hadn't been so forward I'd still be a virgin, most likely the only one in the whole U.S. Marine Corps. Jimmy also helped me come out of that shell.

In hind sight, perhaps everything I wanted from my time in the Marine Corps had worked out for me. I had dreaded the thought of being assigned as a driver or a cook. I wanted to be a rifleman and belong to a fighting unit although none of us thought we would find ourselves in a combat situation. Jimmy felt the same way. We were both proud of who and what we were. My attitude now is that I would rather be a private in the U.S. Marine Corps than a general in anyone else's army.

I had found all the adventure I could possibly handle. I was even seriously considering becoming a professional or career Marine. It wasn't any easier being a Marine than it had been making one of those Dallas high school athletic teams. As a matter of fact, it had been harder both physically and psychologically. But a strong will, generally defined as self-discipline, sometimes as obstinacy or grit, had helped me tough it out at those times when I really felt like giving up.

Having a true friend to share the experience and my feelings about them helped considerably. Jimmy and I came to know San Diego and Long Beach quite well. We cruised Long Beach's five mile long sandy beaches trolling for bikini-clad beach bunnies routinely. We visited the bars on the famous Pike during weekend liberty more than just a few times. It became one of our favorite places.

We visited other attractions as well. We spent our share of time and money in bars and strip joints up and down the coast from Tijuana, Mexico to San Francisco. Being Hollywood Marines and young men just recently away from home on our own; we spent a few days at Disneyland and Knott's Berry farm. We took photos of one another under the street sign at Hollywood and Vine just like all the rest of the big-eyed tourists.

Jimmy and I not only served together and spent our free time together, but we talked. We held real and meaningful conversations. We shared our lives and beliefs with one another. That degree of social intimacy was something new to me. Oddly, I was quite at ease with it. Both of us knew if we were ever to see combat our lives might depend upon one another. We were comfortable with that as we trained for our first overseas tour of duty.

As inexperienced as we were, Jimmy and I knew we would soon be shipping out to Okinawa for a thirteen month tour of duty with the Third Marine Division, FMF (Fleet Marine Force) which was also called the Third Herd or the Fighting Mother Fuckers by our brash young compatriots. The first time I traveled outside of Texas was when I'd left Dallas for San Diego. I had been excited by the prospect of a WesPac tour and of seeing Hawaii and Japan, maybe Taiwan and the Philippines. I wanted to experience Geisha girls and Hula dancers. I wanted to eat a pig that had been roasted in an earthen oven at a luau. I wanted to swim in the clear blue waters of Waikiki and visit exotic locales. What I hadn't foreseen was the Vietnam War and that exotic locale.

Our deployment came a busy six months after we transferred into the unit. By late summer of '64, I was a nineteen year-old kid who looked the part of a Marine but was still raw on the inside. I was on my way overseas to serve a thirteen-month tour of duty with the Third Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force in the Western Pacific. Specifically, I would be stationed at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, Japan. It is ten thousand miles and a world apart from Dallas, Texas where I was born and raised.

Jimmy and I crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with a throng of Marines and sailors aboard the ships which would cross the Pacific and deliver us to our new command. The U.S.S. Princeton, LPH-5, was basically a helicopter assault aircraft carrier. It wasn't a giant as far as aircraft carriers go. Still, it was a very large war ship. The Princeton was as awesome as a magic carpet. It was our vessel to adventure.

Our departure was blessed with pomp and ceremony. The 1st Marine Division Band played Semper Fidelis and the always stirring Marine Corps Hymn. The boys who were quickly becoming men waved to the cheering crowds of families and girlfriends. We called out to the clusters of news-men and military commanders who had gathered at dockside to see us off. It was a celebration in true naval tradition. The ship began to inch away from the pier. The Navy Band began playing the thrilling Anchors Aweigh! Hawsers fore and aft were cast off by sailors on the pier. The ropes splashed into the water and were hauled aboard by a working party of sailors in their work blues. The slip of water separating us from the pier began to widen. Tug boats tooted their loud, deep-voiced horns.

You know, Jimmy I said, Corpsmen, doctors, chaplains and Navy nurses aside, the best thing about the Navy is their song.

Are you as excited as I am about going to Hawaii and Japan? he asked.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to all the new places we're going to see.

Leaving familiar places is kind of sad although it's not quite the same as when we left Texas and Louisiana for boot camp. This is a bit more exciting but I'm going to miss those south of the border dog and pony shows. Jimmy commented as the ship began slowly turning away from the pier as if it were scenting the ocean breezes. I went a bit wobbly-legged. My stomach was suddenly queasy. I tried to ignore it as I responded.

From what I've heard, Mexico can't hold a candle to Okinawa in that department. They even have bullfights.

Yeah, where some karate master faces a bull barehanded and rips his beating heart out when the animal charges him. I've got to go see that.

Sounds like a Los Angeles divorce lawyer. But I doubt they have anything like San Francisco.

I hear Olongapo is the best and wildest liberty port in the Pacific.

Well, what about Las Vegas? What have they got that compares with Vegas? That silenced Jimmy for a moment. While assigned to desert training at Twenty-Nine Palms Jimmy and I had spent a memorable weekend in Las Vegas. We'd done some gambling and saw Dean Martin live. That weekend in Las Vegas had cost Lance Corporal Barrmore his stripes and me a bit of my stiff-necked dignity or perhaps arrogance.

We're going to Hawaii, Jimbo. Diamond Head and Waikiki Beach with hula dancers in grass skirts trump Vegas.

We haven't seen the world yet but hot damn! We're on our way!

CHAPTER TWO

MIKE

RED BEACH, DA NANG

SOUTH VIETNAM

MARCH, 1965

I was eight months into my WestPac tour, my first exposure to anything foreign or exotic. I was really enjoying it. The Japanese architecture was completely different than the southwest ranch and typical American homes I'd taken for granted as existing everywhere else. I recognize now just how provincial that thinking was. I played baseball with the local kids whenever I could.

As a result I was invited to several homes which gave me more exposure to such things as watching television while sitting cross-legged on a thin straw tatami mat on the living room floor. I was introduced to sake and soba, a flavorful Japanese noodle soup. I learned a bit of the language, enough to count a little and ask for the time of day. I learned to greet people properly in the Japanese way. The graceful, alluring Japanese girls sometimes made it difficult for me to stay true to Mary back home in Dallas. That was the type of adventure and cultural enrichment I had been seeking when I joined the Marine Corps.

In March of 1965 the First Battalion, Third Marine Regiment to which Jimmy and I were assigned, became the first contingent of combat Marines to be sent to South Vietnam. In spite of history and my training for such events, making a beach landing under hostile conditions was something I never thought I thought I would experience.

We woke up to a day that promised more tropical heat with bright parakeet blue skies. Aboard the U.S.S. Lenaway Marines of the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet Ready Landing Force were instructed to report to our quarters. The order for us to make a combat landing came as a surprise. Loading out came with the usual amount of Marine Corps organized chaos. Instead of sending people we might really need with us, a corpsman and a chaplain for example, my squad was reinforced with the addition of a radioman, a grenadier and a three man machine-gun team. One more man and we wouldn't be unloading via the ramp. Someone would pull a tab and peel the whole top off this can of shoulder-to-shoulder Marines. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see U.S. Navy—Seafood printed on the sides of the trac.

Once we got in the water the day's promise of sunshine and calm seas was broken by choppy three to four foot greenish waves capped in white foam. The powerful engines of the amtracks were sending up tall rooster tails as we churned through the rolling waves of the South China Sea toward Red Beach, Da Nang. I feared this made the trac a bigger target for the land-based artillery that might begin firing at us any minute. If we were hit we would sink like a huge boulder. Even without the bulky seventy-five pound field marching pack we all had strapped on our backs none of us would get out of the amtrack alive.

The Navy had laid down a billowing, oily smoke screen between us and the shore. You could taste it coating your lungs with every breath you took. There were no explosions or shells from coastal artillery whistling overhead. Not yet, at least. Still, it had been a rough ride from ship to shore. The flat keel of the amtracks did not cut through waves like a ship or a boat with a bow. Instead, we smacked into each one with tooth-jarring results and rolled over them with exaggerated shakes, shudders and quivers. It was like riding a mean bucking bronc that knew all the tricks of throwing a rider.

We had recently practiced wet net and amphibious assaults against dug in defenders at our training area in Okinawa. There was one real difference so far. We had practiced with blank ammunition. For this landing we had locked and loaded our M-14 rifles with live bullets. We expected the landing to be opposed by an enemy also firing real bullets. Well, it was admittedly a bit more exciting than chipping paint aboard the U.S.S Rustaway. At nineteen, I was still a naïve kid who felt as if I were living in a war movie. Audie Murphy should have been on one side of me with John Wayne on the other.

Marine and Navy close air support roared overhead, eagerly searching for targets. Their 20mm cannons were loaded. Their weapons racks were armed with anti-personnel bombs. Fading into the background as the landing craft neared the beach, the ships of the fleet were at general quarters. Gunners stood by in their orange life jackets and grey helmets, anticipating orders to begin firing their weapons at real targets for the first time in their careers. Even with all the heavy fire support it was reassuring to have a relatively puny weapon in your hands that would allow you to fight back on an individual basis if the landing was resisted.

Everyone wanted a piece of the action except perhaps those of us who would have to face the enemy gun-fire at close quarters. My M-14 rifle was safed for the moment. I carried two hundred rounds of ammunition in my magazines and still worried that I might run out of bullets too quickly. We had also been issued live grenades. I knew this was serious business but for some unfathomable reason I wasn't scared. Perhaps the situation just didn't seem real to me. I was sure that would change the first time someone shot at me. I was excited by the prospect of going into action. It's what I had been trained for. It was somewhat like sitting on the bench at a high school football game and wanting to get in there and knock heads with the opponent. My lack of fear and level of excitement were, well, stupid. I would wise up quickly.

There was fear in the eyes of the young Marines all around me as well as excitement and anticipation. There was also a cocky aura of confident determination that comes with being a Marine. Some lips quivered. Some men prayed, touching the religious medals around their necks. I knew some of those boys had grown hummingbird hearts and owl eyes with the prospect of seeing real combat action. We were all so young and relatively innocent.

This was not the army of our fathers with its great cross section of ages, professions and socioeconomic status. A lot of Vietnam veterans were society's castoffs. Most of us weren't fully formed men yet. We were like undercooked biscuits, raw on the inside but done on the outside. Our mental processes weren't as mature as our physical beings. We were just boys trying hard to become men. Would it happen overnight in the crucible of armed combat? Can it happen that fast or does it happen in stages the way a fine blade is forged? I looked around and wondered who might piss his pants when the bullets started flying. Who would break down and cry? Which of them would step up and become a hero? What might I discover about myself? Who would go to sleep on guard duty and get someone killed? Lord, please don't let it be me. Who among us is going to be killed? I didn't fear that as much as I feared getting someone else killed.

The amphibious tractor plowed into the beach like a ship grounding itself on a sand bar. The ramp was lowered with a splash. We rushed ashore, our rifles at the ready. I hit the beach with growls and shouts in my throat. We rushed forward across the flat sandy beach and threw ourselves down behind the first small rise of sand dunes we came to. I was sure I didn't look like much of a Marine as I hit the ground with the butt of my rifle and swiveled the barrel to face the enemy. I retrieved my helmet which had bounced off my head and rolled to the side before someone could shoot me as I lay where I had initially fallen. These were all things you learn early at the Infantry Training Regiment which immediately follows boot camp. For the first of many times I wished I could stuff my entire 5'-10" tall two hundred pound body all the way into my steel helmet. I spat salty sand out of my mouth. Sweat rolled down my forehead and stung my eyes. Heat waves blurred my vision further. The shiny wooden stock of the rifle I had spent so many hours rubbing with linseed oil by hand was scratched. Damn, war sure is hell!

Our assault was met with silence instead of bullets. We may as well have been assaulting a library. The soft sounds of the surf dying on the beach behind me filled the silence. My nerves were dancing on a sharp razor's edge. I couldn't see any enemy soldiers scurrying about. There was no weapons fire. I couldn't hear anything but the whispering sea, loud heartbeats and rapid breathing of the first wave of Marines to land on the beach, or is that just me? Yes, now I was scared. My asshole was still puckered water tight from that ride in the amtrack. Perhaps the enemy had pulled back and set up a large scale ambush inland. I'd seen a World War Two movie where the Japs did that. Still, we were ashore in Vietnam. Later that night I noted the event in my short-timer's calendar where I kept track of how many days were left until I rotated home, one hundred twenty three of them.

As I waited for someone to fire the first shots of the engagement I listened to the waves lapping at the beach behind me in their age old never ending rhythm. The sun beat down on my back like a galleon's drummer, insistent, non-stop. There was no cooling sea breeze. There were no raucous gulls circling and diving, looking for cut bait or small bits of fish. No biting insects buzzed my ears. I imagined they were all back in the jungle sharpening their long teeth. It was as if nature was holding its breath in the presence of imminent danger.

I took a peek around. Jimmy was about six feet off to my right, exactly where he was supposed to be. He was looking my way and pointing insistently. Alarmed, I looked to the left. Red Beach was close to the city of Da Nang. I didn't know a thing about this place or its history and culture. I knew nothing about the Vietnamese people. I had no animus toward them. I didn't know why we were there. Something political probably. A misunderstanding or failure to communicate, causing someone to display his patriotism. Perhaps that's one of the reasons we will always have wars. They aren't always about territory or rights and wrongs. Sometimes wars are simply the result of saber rattling or muscle flexi ng and chest pounding by one or more national leaders. Wars though do seem to have some positives, one of them being the advancement of medicines and medical procedures, but at such a horrendous cost. Many of the world's great leaders have risen from relative obscurity during such perilous times.

I wondered if I was serving with some future diplomat or head of state who might actually prevent a war someday. I couldn't see it, not from that group. On the other hand, I'd found it hard to believe one of my high school buddies was becoming a priest and another was in medical school.

I shifted my eyes from the beach in front of me to the city and back again, trying to take it all in. The houses overlooking the beach were roofed with fading red Mediterranean tiles, pink and yellow stucco walls and green shutters. They could have been on a post card. Although they stood off a bit, crowds of locals had gathered to watch our landing.

It was like the circus had come to town to many of them. A Viet Cong cadre member who was observing the landing from his nearby home marked his calendar with a note equivalent to open season on Americans. That was the way our enemy would fight this war, no holds barred like a typical Saturday night brawl down in Cut and Shoot, Texas. There were no restricted fire zones and no limiting rules of engagement for the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong we were fighting. The strict rules of engagement kept us from shooting everything that moved. Damned politicians!

All the fears and adrenalin rush was for nothing as our landing was unopposed. Still, America was now at war. I was now at war. We didn't have time to take in the sights of that strange new place. We were ordered to march inland and take up positions around the airfield. We picked ourselves up out of the sand and shook ourselves off. We adjusted our packs and safed our weapons. We shouldered our rifles and trooped through the outskirts of the city. My head seemed to be on a swivel as I tried to take in everything about this ancient third world country.

Women with their grey-streaked hair twisted into buns and pinned to the top of their heads squatted before nearly empty baskets of meager goods they offered for sale on the busy sidewalks. Their teeth and lips were stained dark purple by the narcotic betel leaves and nuts they chewed constantly. The gnarled, tanned, leathery-skinned women were younger in years than they appeared to be. One elderly lady sported man's original wrinkle and many more earned since.

Most of the people appeared not to notice us. They carried on with their daily lives uninterrupted by our arrival. We were just another in a long line of armies who came to Vietnam to fight and die. Others eyed us with open hostility in their dark eyes. Was this the face of our enemy?

Our biggest surprise was the airfield. There was absolutely no security. It was not surrounded by any type of fence or barrier. There were no gates. Civilian traffic flew out of the same airfield as the military aircraft. I watched as passengers helped load chickens and pigs aboard the airplanes. It reminded me of the buses in deep Southern Mexico. There didn't appear to be any organization to the facility. That had to be driving the senior Marine sergeants absolutely crazy. Aircraft were parked at odd angles. I didn't know how the Vietnamese could find anything in that maze of forklifts, military supplies, and machinery. Pallets of artillery ammunition and bombs were stacked in mixed lots.

The battalion was ordered to dig in deep around the perimeter of the airfield. Our weapons section pounded in their aiming stakes and dug pits for their light mortars and M-60 machine guns. Radio watches, code names and guard watches were announced. We had no tents, no hot chow and no chance for liberty to meet the Vietnamese people. I dug a fighting hole four feet deep and was ordered to dig it deeper. I would soon learn that deep was never deep enough. C-130s flew in from Okinawa with loads of fence stakes and military razor wire. We spent a week pounding stakes and laying barbed wire obstacles. I worked with the engineers to lay out and plant a new minefield. With that completed, we began offensive operations.

Up to that point my Marine Corps career had been all theory; training for the eventuality of being in a combat situation. I had taken courses in scouting and patrolling and in land mine warfare and demolitions, and land navigation for example. A real patrol was much more than an armed walk through the jungle. It was an emotionally nerve-wracking event. Every man was aware that each step he took could be his last.

Ambushes were probable but they were one of the least of our concerns. There, at least, you can fight back not only with your personal weapons, but with the full might of U.S. air power, naval gunfire and artillery. All that close air support and other forms of devastating weapons support was useless against an anti-personnel mine, booby trap, punji pit or any number of ingenious devices such as a Malayan Gate. A patrol in Vietnam was akin to walking barefoot and blindfolded through a den of buzzing angry rattlesnakes with hopes of avoiding stepping on a tail.

My job as a scout required me to walk point on patrol every day. We were sometimes taught harsh lessons about fighting indigenous guerilla forces by the more experienced Viet Cong who had the home field advantage. We learned fast. We had to. Of course, we began taking casualties. I was one of them. Wounded by grenade shrapnel when my squad-sized patrol was ambushed by Viet Cong guerillas, I returned home with a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and an attitude bordering on the belief that I had somehow become invincible by surviving the vicious tropical jungles of South Vietnam for four long months. I didn't know how very wrong I was.

Still, even in that brief space of time I had discovered things about myself that would have always gone unanswered and most likely unasked but for Vietnam. A part of who I was died in those quick, bloody squad-sized battles of Southeast Asia. An important part of who I am was born of them. The Marine Corps had changed me. Everyone who knew me told me they could see it. Combat had changed me even more. The experience taught me some things about myself I'd rather not have known. For example, I'd grown somewhat callous toward death and suffering. I hoped that would fade in time. Being faced with your own mortality at such an early age is quite sobering. Facing it almost daily in combat can't help but change a young man forever. All my relationships changed as a result of my military service and the world and events I was exposed to.

It was inevitable. No one who goes to war as a young man returns home unchanged by either a singular traumatic experience or the totality of his hazardous duties. Although I had only received minor wounds, my youth was killed in the vicious jungle battlefields of Vietnam where my life as a man began.

In his own quiet way, my father let me know how proud of me he was. He began treating me as an adult, almost as an equal. At his urging I joined dad's VFW club, only now becoming eligible. We were all more than just veterans of foreign wars. We were victims of them as well.

You cannot be a witness to the harsh realities of war, to horrific deaths and permanent injury and disfigurement without becoming a victim yourself. Although I was still under age the veterans turned a blind eye to it when I ordered a drink. I'd earned the right to be treated as an adult. Still, I wasn't ever really one of them. I overheard a discussion where my own father said that Vietnam isn't a 'real' war. His peers agreed. Perhaps I was just too young. I didn't seem to BELONG anywhere except in the Marine Corps. My high school friends seemed to be somewhat in awe of me, of where I'd been, what I'd seen, and what I'd done, although they couldn't even begin to realistically imagine the things I had seen and done. I wondered if they had any regrets about the decisions they had made. Most of them had moved on with their lives. Earl married Carol and was on his way to managing an auto parts store. Gary was driving a delivery truck. Dennis and Marilyn have a little boy. John was operating a press brake. Ted was an EMT. Linda James was on her way to becoming a teacher. John Boyce had become a priest. Howard was setting football records at Tulsa University. Somehow Cayla seemed to get more beautiful every day. Normalcy seemed to have passed me by.

My mother, Fay, helped me keep it all in perspective. She doted on me. She kept me on parade in my dress blues for her friends at church and the social clubs to which she belonged. My girlfriend, Mary, treated me like a returning hero. I basked in it all and yet was a bit uncomfortable with the role of hometown hero. I never wanted to be a hero. In spite of the medals I was awarded I have never considered myself worthy of being called a hero.

My leave lasted for a month. I was ready for it to end sooner. I needed to be among my own kind, among Marines. After returning to duty at Camp Pendleton in Southern California I found stateside duty boring and routine. Tempting fate, I volunteered for a second tour of combat duty. I'd been wounded again but returned to Northern I Corps in 1967. I had learned I didn't even come close to being invincible. I had lost my warrior ethos. It had been replaced by reality. Combat was no longer exciting and adventurous. Being a Marine was a serious undertaking, dangerously so, perhaps even fatally so. I wondered if that was why my father seldom discussed his wartime experiences. I wondered if I would get through the next year alive. If so what would I tell my own children about my experiences in Vietnam? What would I tell my mother, or Mary? Suzy? My friends? How much of it would they believe or be able to understand? I would try to make them see what I saw and feel what I felt through the letters I wrote home.

CHAPTER THREE

MIKE

QUANG TRI PROVINCE

SOUTH VIETNAM

FEB., 1967

In the lowland scrub brush and dense bamboo thickets at the foothills of the Annam Mountains a squad of soldiers from the 88th NVA Heavy Artillery Bombardment Regiment prepared to fire a Soviet rocket at the Americans at Quang Tri Combat Base. They had erected a crude launcher of stout bamboo. In spite of their best efforts to build it true, the twenty foot long tube was canted slightly to the left. The two hundred pound weapon was carefully lifted into its crude cradle. The missile was not guided or even truly aimed. It was simply pointed down the long axis of its target 12,000 meters away. The 122mm rockets were deadly but they rarely hit their intended targets.

Sergeant Bui Vao Tham hooked two electric wires to the proper posts at the eight foot long rocket's base. He unreeled fifty feet of plastic coated wire, hooked up to a twenty year old detonator left behind by the Japanese Army after World War Two, and twisted its handle. A small electric impulse raced through wires at the speed of light, igniting the solid fuel that propelled the rocket.

There was a flash with the spark of ignition. The missile quivered. The flimsy launcher trembled. Bui prayed that Buddha would not let the platform collapse. Propelled on a long tail of flames, the cigar-shaped, unfinned weapon shot up its hastily erected launcher. The aerodynamics of the once polished sleek ·weapon had been destroyed by its rough handling during its transportation from North Vietnam. Undetected, the missile rose beyond sight, piercing low thick grey clouds like an errant arrow. The wobbling weapon's solid propellant burned out quickly. The rocket continued silently until it achieved the apogee of what should have been a perfectly parabolic flight. Gravity pulled the dented nose of the missile over and down. The winds pushed it slightly to the north. The projectile gained speed as gravity returned it to the earth.

All the elements and factors influencing the erratic flight