Leaving Brogado

By Marshall Harrison

Humor, wit, action and drama intertwine in another Marshall Harrison masterpiece.
From published author Marshall Harrison comes another moving book of valor, patriotism, and savoring life. In this posthumous release, Harrison documents the life of one of the most decorated enlisted men who served in the Vietnam War. Readers are bound to be fascinated with the life of Beauford T. Adams in the engrossing pages of Leaving Brogado. For someone who could have bragged about many things, Beauford T. Adams is astoundingly down to earth-honest yet witty. His name is well known in national, political, and financial circles. For the first time, Adams, reputed to be the power behind several national candidates and sitting representatives, speaks on his youth, primarily on events leading to his enlistment in the United States Marine Corps and his subsequent combat tour in Vietnam. Through vivid narration, readers will be taken to the battlefields of Vietnam and witness what it was like for "a poor boy to go to a poor boy's war". Leaving Brogado virtually takes readers into one man's comer of the world in 1967 and '68.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453563380

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Marshall Harrison.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010912516

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-6337-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-6336-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-6338-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

84059

84059-HARR-layout-low.pdf

Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MARSHALL HARRISON

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This manuscript is based on a series of interviews between January and April 1995 at the ranch home of Beauford T. Adams and at his offices in Dallas.

Although Mr. Adams hurriedly skims his accomplishments, his name is well known in national, political, and financial circles. For the first time, Adams, reputed to be the power behind several national candidates and sitting representatives, speaks on his youth, primarily on events leading to his enlistment in the United States Marine Corps and his subsequent combat tour in Vietnam. Until now, much of his past has been speculative.

The author was initially skeptical when this project was urged upon him by friends of Mr. Adams. Quite frankly, most such proposals are usually self-serving, and the results bear little resemblance to actual fact. I was not long into the interview, however, when I came to realize what I was hearing had the ring of truth. Not that it differed greatly from the story of many war veterans, but the profound effect of the war on one of Mr. Adams’s stature could have been representative of all combat veterans of all times.

I found myself alternatively moved, delighted, and repelled while making notes during the interviews. To Mr. Adams’s credit, he never tried to take the bark off. Except for this note, his words are his own.

Marshall Harrison

Lubbock, Texas                May 1995

FOREWORD

When Marshall Harrison first contacted me about doing a book on my life and times, I thought he was full of shit. I still do. There must have been a million people who are more interesting, have made more money, or are better looking than me. I’m proud as hell of the fact that I was a United States Marine, though it’s taken me more than twenty years to admit it. The only other thing that I’ve ever done that I’m particularly proud of was marrying a good woman and raising three fine kids. Well, two of them didn’t turn out too bad.

Me and Harrison wasted a week before; by mutual consent, we threw all the taped interviews in the trash can. He asked me what I wanted to talk about, and I said just about anything but how I was a modern-day success story. Hell, there’s no secret to what I’ve done. Anybody with a lot of good luck might have done the same. Many have.

What had been chewing on my guts for almost thirty years was something that happened way back in Vietnam. These days, it seems like half the male population of the United States claim to be combat veterans of that place. In the Alpha Company, we’d have given a lot to see even a small percentage of them who say they were bush soldiers. We’d sometimes go to the field with less than half a company of men.

In any event, I decided to tell what it was like for a poor boy to go to a poor boy’s war. There weren’t any lawyers or doctors or accountants or their sons in the Alpha Company. Still, we weren’t the bunch of bums that we’ve been made out to be by some. Even now, a hell of a lot of us don’t parade around the Wall in camouflage fatigues trying to get sympathy from those who don’t know any better. Some of us have cleaned up real good—that is, if we lived long enough to be of voting age.

The language of this manuscript may dismay some, but if they are, then they just haven’t known any Marines. Teenagers either, come to that. I don’t apologize for it. Swearing was the language of nearly ever combat soldier I knew. Some were better at it than others. It’s a habit I control except when I’m comfortable with my friends. You got to admit that a well-chosen swearword gets right to the point; there’s no doubt exactly what you mean. The deal I cut with Harrison was that if somebody did publish the book, there would be no editing out of words just to make me look good. He agreed.

So here was my corner of the world in 1967 and ’68. It wasn’t anything so great as to get all nostalgic over.

Beauford T. Adams

¿Qué Pase? Ranch

Brogado, Texas                May 1995

CHAPTER ONE

ARIZONA COMBAT ZONE

FIRST CORPS, REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM, 1968

I smelled him before I heard him. The rain coming down on the jungle canopy had quit as fast as it began. The usual night clatter of critters and varmints hadn’t started, almost as if they were holding their breath to see if the rain was serious about staying stopped. The drips from the leaves were cold and louder when the air is so still. I shivered like a dog trying to pass a peach seed. I became aware of his odor though I hadn’t heard a thing out of the ordinary.

It really wasn’t HIS smell. It belonged to all of us, including me, and I didn’t usually even think about it until we separated and then got back together. It was a mixture of stale sweat, smoke, bug spray, cordite, tobacco, and most of all, plain old shit. When you go three weeks between showers, every bowel movement adds another layer no matter how hard you try to clean it off. Most of us had dingle berries the size of cockle spurs clinging to the hairs of our asses. Sometimes we even had to cut them out with scissors when we couldn’t soak them loose in the showers back at base camp. It was damned uncomfortable and one reason we didn’t wear underpants in the field. The smell got stronger, and I rolled my eyes toward it but kept my head pointed straight ahead at the dead gook sprawled in the trail.

How you doing, Whitebread? Happy in the Corps? Even whispering, Chisum’s voice was thick and syrupy and straight from the streets of Detroit.

I could almost see his breath oozing around my face. That boy’s breath would melt a brick. I tried to brush my teeth once a day so at least one end of me would stay clean, and it didn’t take much water, though right at the moment we had all of that we needed. But it was just too much bother for some.

What’s not to be happy about? I hissed back. Three squares a day, a place to flop, good savings plan and the chance to travel. Besides, I’m thinking of maybe enrolling in some night courses so I’ll be one step ahead of the competition when I get out of this fuckin’ place.

Good thinking. That way you’ll only be three or four years behind them deferred pricks back home hiding behind daddy’s money. Take a few months off to make beer money. Buy a new ’vette. Shit like that. You take a couple of courses and you’ll even up with them in no time.

Right. And if push comes to shove I can always kill ’em.

There was a soft chuckle in my ear, and a very large chocolate hand squeezed my shoulder, and the deadly smell of his breath was gone. I rolled my eyes back to the dead dink in the trail and studied him as well as I could in the dark. Just a regular dead gook. Nothing special.

It was Chisum’s idea. He figured if they came our way tonight seeing one of their own dead in the trail along with his weapon, they might get a little careless and bunch up to gawk. See if they knew him and maybe used to date his sister. They knew we always took weapons if we were around. Maybe seeing the AK-47 next to the dead man’s outstretched hands just might make them feel secure enough to gather round and discuss matters. That was the idea anyway. It was a pretty good one as most of Chisum’s usually were. On the other hand, if they didn’t buy the idea that one of their own had a heart attack or something and just happened to die right there, then they might get real nervous and edgy. You plain don’t want to be around a bunch of edgy and nervous North Vietnamese regulars. Especially spread as thin as we were along the trail. But Chisum’s idea was good.

Too bad I was going to have to kill him.

It was supposed to be a platoon-sized ambush, which most straight thinkers who know anything at all about the U.S. by-God Marine Corps would probably figure to involve about forty men with a minimum of four machine guns. However, this being the real Corps, Third Platoon had exactly twenty-two swinging dicks available for duty this morning. I don’t mean to say that the rest had all been KIA or wounded, although some had. But when you consider all the warm bodies back at base camp from the company like postal clerks and bartenders at the officers’ club tent, the XO and the first sergeant, the supply pukes, the troops on leave or R and R. Not to mention those screwing off from the field trying to stretch their time away from the bush by getting glasses, having teeth filled, getting syph shots, or trying to convince the hospital staff that they had contacted a new strain of malaria that didn’t raise a fever; well, you can see why a piss-ant platoon could show up at a fight more than a little shorthanded. At that we were better off than the First and Second Platoons.

Some kind of bush rat thing crept out onto the trail and was nosing around the dink body. He wasn’t hard to see even in the gloom since we were spread only about ten meters off the trail in an L-shaped ambush. We’d like to have been farther back, but even another meter or so completely cut off the sight of the trail in the thick bush. Anyway, our new lieutenant fresh from Annapolis and Marine Corps Basic Officer School figured we were just fine where we were. Chisum tried to argue for a little distance or a move to another site but got set down pretty hard. I’ll bet the lieutenant was hell on the plebes or whatever they call them. My eyes kind of widened, and I breathed real quick for a minute when I saw the dead dink move his left arm; then I relaxed as I realized that it was the rat thing moving under the elbow.

I took a quick glance toward my wrist to see how much longer we had before dawn and then remembered some sticky-fingered son of a bitch had stolen my watch. I can’t speak for the rest of the Corps, but the Third Platoon of Alpha Company has to have the scum of the earth in it. You talk about your band of brothers! You’d think that out here in the bush where everybody depended on everybody else to save his ass, it’d be like those stories you hear from World War II with everybody pulling together for whatever they called the common good. But these people simply didn’t give a rat’s ass about the common good or anything else except themselves and maybe their immediate buddies. Oh, they might come together to kick the crap out of some doggies or sailors, but that was more in the nature of setting straight the rightful rules for things so there wouldn’t be any doubt about the pecking order.

Sometimes it seems we fought more among ourselves than we did with anyone, and that included the North Vietnamese Army. It was more like being in a street gang than anything else. Of course, about a third of the platoon had come directly into the Corps from the draft where they’d been scooped up in Detroit, LA, or Dallas, so they weren’t without experience in that regard. I’ll tell you one thing, that in-your-face manner they brought with them took some getting used to. Some of them made the adjustment to the bush like they’d been born to it, same as the rest of us. Others didn’t. I think it was more a matter of temperament than anything. The difference is whether you look at yourself as the hunter or the one being hunted.

My body had already begun to react before my brain sensed that something was different other than the rain starting to fall again. I sat with the M16 upright in my lap, and I fingered the safety off and traced the little lever that assured me it was set to fire full automatic while I squinted at a slight movement on the far edge of my vision. The rain was thumping on my helmet and cut off any sounds that I might have ordinarily heard. A slight movement of my head showed Flanigan’s legs sticking out from beneath a broad leafy plant. I started to poke him with my rifle barrel to see if he was awake but thought better of it. If he was wound as tight as me, he might cut loose with a clip when he felt something prodding his kidneys. I could feel the hair start to bristle on the back of my neck.

The rat thing drew my attention for about a second as it left the dead dink and scuttled back into the undergrowth. The movement stopped, and a heavy squall of rain completely obscured the trail except for the five or six meters directly to my front. My hand trembled on the butt of the M16, and I consciously squeezed the grip tightly to control them and rechecked the safety to off though I knew it was. I had a terrible urge to take a leak.

The rain slackened a little, and sure as hell, the little movement had become a man, inching along, like he didn’t quite understand why somebody was lying in the trail. At five-meter intervals a line of other dark shapes followed him. The thought flashed through my mind that these birds were too professional to get caught bunching up looking at a stiff, lodge brother or not.

The point man reached the body and knelt beside him after a thorough look-see of both sides of the trail. There were four or five of them within my sight just then, and I was right in the middle of the kill zone. Their point slowly straightened up, holding the dead dink’s weapon in his left hand, and again looked closely along both sides of the trail. He was just to my left, and I could see his face a little as lightning flashed and some of it leaked down through the canopy. He looked as scared as me.

Then that fat fool Wertz lost his nerve and blew the claymores. Of course, that cut down everybody in front of me, but there wasn’t any telling how many of them were still down the trail out of sight, and us with only the first half of the platoon in position to fire without hitting our own people.

Fire! Fire! I heard Chisum screaming.

And everybody who hadn’t been asleep or intended to shoot was doing just that. Even some of the idiots on the far end of the ambush line were just blazing away at the empty trail to their front, or worse, trying to get in a few at the actual enemy and coming close to the rest of us. A couple of rounds cracked dangerously near my right ear, and I went prone from my sitting position, poked my rifle in the general direction where the trail disappeared in the rain and mist, and emptied a clip. I rolled on my back while I shoved in another and cocked one up the spout. I emptied that, and the cordite hung like a heavy mist while I began on a third, starting to feel a little optimistic since there hadn’t been any return fire. I clicked the selector and commenced popping single caps when I heard the first ka-chunk of a mortar round leaving the tube.

We couldn’t have been more than two minutes into the fight, and the dinks were already putting mortar rounds in the air. They were the damndest mortar men I ever saw! They must carry those things ready to go because they could get them into action quicker than a bird scooping up a Junebug. They could also put one in your ear hole if you stayed still long enough.

Before the first round impacted, there was the sound of two more leaving the tube, and the first volleys of green AK-47 tracers probed the bushes on our side of the trail. I tried to squirm lower in the jungle mire when the first mortar bomb detonated about thirty meters behind me and well into the tree line. The next two crept toward our thin line of people, and the AK fire intensified. A fourth shot caught the edge of my farthermost fire team’s location. They were part of my squad.

The two machine gunners, Frenchman and Peaches, were working their Hogs hard until another mortar landed just about on top of Peaches. That explosion, or maybe it was lightning, showed Flanigan’s legs vibrating up and down in the bush next to me. I became suddenly aware that he was screaming. I finished the clip after flipping the selector back to rock and roll and rammed home a fresh one before I scooted over and grabbed Flanigan by the leg. It was still by this time.

Flanigan! You hit?

He was still under the bush and didn’t answer, so I grabbed a leg and hauled away. He slid out easy on the mud and his own guts that covered the ground beneath his chest. Without thinking, I turned him onto his back and reached forward to push some of the slimy stuff back into his chest before I thought, whoa! This boy is as dead as he can get, and it’s time for me to get back to work or I’m going to join him. I don’t suppose that more than a minute had gone by between me deciding to help Flanigan and taking up my M16 again, but in that short time the whole complexion of the fight had started to change. For one thing, the volume of Vietnamese fire had increased, and it was in places where it shouldn’t be. They were flanking us, and we were well on our way to getting ourselves surrounded. We had a fall-back position and rendezvous at a streambed about a hundred meters to our rear, but if we didn’t move smartly, we weren’t going to move at all. I wasn’t the only one who must have thought this because suddenly Chisum’s voice roared above the noise of the fight.

Fall back! Fall back! Head for the blue line!

I guess he got tired of waiting for the lieutenant to make a decision or consult his Marine Corps Officers’ Manual. I debated briefly with myself about trying to haul Flanigan back with me, but decided I was probably going to be doing good to get myself back whole. I did reach under the bush long enough to snatch the bandolier of M16 clips from around the shoulder of what used to be Flanigan. When I did, my hand ran into something wet and sticky about the size and consistency of a large rotted squash, and I jerked it and the bandolier back, my hand, not the squash thing, and wiped it in the mud.

Move! Move! Move! Chisum again from somewhere at the head of the line. I still hadn’t heard nothing from the lieutenant. Adams? Frenchman? You hear me?

Yo! My voice sounded pretty high pitched, but he heard me. The Hog stopped barking as the Frenchman responded.

You two cover. Everybody else, get your asses back! Move it! Right goddamned now!

Cover, the man said. Well, he could kiss my ass if he thought I was going to try to keep a whole NVA Army off his black butt and those lowlifes already starting to slither backward. Especially since one of them was a thief who stole my damned Seiko. Cover! Only me with my little .223 slugs that could be deflected by a damned twig on a tree and the Frenchman on his MG about to burn out the barrel with those excited, overlong, five-second bursts. They could all just kiss my ass. Corporal Beauford T. Adams did not join the Green Crotch to leave his body parts spread alongside some rain slick trail in the northern section of the First Corps, Republic of Vietnam. By God, they could just cover themselves!

There is this to be said about the Corps. Just about every time somebody tells you to do something you really rather not do, you might piss and moan, but you find yourself doing it anyway. I suspect it’s mostly habit that you pick up in boot where the DI would have his foot up your ass if you even thought about considering one of his orders.

That’s about where I was at the moment. Even as I was thinking my thoughts, I was already rolling over Flanigan’s body, where I could get to a better view of the action. AK rounds were snapping just over my head like somebody cracking a bull whip. I raised to my elbows and stuck the M16 in the right direction and loosed off a whole clip in the general direction of the green tracers. I figured I had better let the Frenchman know he wasn’t by himself, or he might take his gun and decide not to play anymore. Even with it, we laid down a pretty poor covering fire, but it seemed to do the job, or else our boys were very motivated. When I changed clips, I looked to our rear, and I couldn’t even see the bushes shaking. Those boys were moving. I turned back and sprayed a new part of the undergrowth on the far side of the trail, and that brought a shitload of AK fire, so I rolled back toward Flanigan and hunkered behind his body.

I lay there for a minute waiting out the worst of it, and then lightning lit the area like somebody had turned on the neons. I quickly scanned the trail, and before the light had gone completely, I saw a glint on Flanigan’s dead wrist. It seemed darker than ever when the lightning show ended, but I reached up till I felt the flesh of his arm and followed it to his wrist. The metal expanding band felt familiar, but there had to be a dozen like it in the company. Still, I eased it from his dead wrist and brought it close to my face. Another mortar round impacted about twenty meters away, then another about another twenty meters farther on. I jammed the watch in my pocket and fired another clip where I figured one side of the flanking party must be. Nobody yelled or offered to give up, so I probably guessed wrong. Chisum’s voice came faintly through the rain.

Beau! Frenchman! Start moving straight back. We’ll cover you! Come straight back and stay low!

Straight back and stay low! What the hell did he think we were going to do? Stand up and march in step? Sometimes I’m not sure about him.

The Hog choked off, and I figured the Frenchman was moving, so I emptied two more clips toward the bushes and started inching back myself. I was into Flanigan’s ammo by now. You can go through a lot when you’re firing automatic. I wasn’t particularly worried about it though. If I reached the streambed, there’d be plenty of people there with full pouches since only about half the platoon ever pulled a trigger. I’m not saying those who didn’t were chickenshit or not as brave as anybody else, but it was a simple fact that only half of them ever shot at the dinks. I read in the Stars and Stripes once that there were usually about fifty maneuver battalions in all of Vietnam. I figured that if the same ratio held in them as did in our platoon, then that number was cut to twenty-five useful. Shit! No wonder we always felt outnumbered.

There was a plop in the mud on the other side of Flanigan, and I stared at the noise, kind of stupid, like for a few seconds, before I realized that the dinks were heaving grenades. I scooted forward and pulled my head down behind his right hip just as the first one detonated. I could feel his body shudder as it absorbed most of the punch except for a couple of small jolts on the top of my helmet. It was definitely time to egress the area, as they say in briefings. If they were close enough to chunk those things, then they were close enough to stroll over and kick my ass.

Shoving backward through the mud and thick brush is not as easy as it might seem, particularly since I didn’t dare take my eyes off the front. Progress was slowed by having to duck my head every time I heard another grenade plop to the ground anywhere close. I was making way too much racket as I backed blindly into sizable trees and stumps, but the rain and rifle fire must have been enough to cover it. Just as I thought I was getting out of grenade range, some strong-armed son of a bitch heaved one that landed no more than five or six meters from my face. Son, I told myself, this is the place where you pay for your sins. I ducked my face down into the mud and leaf mold and used my free arm to wrap around my head.

The explosion lifted me from the ground, and I felt that arm kind of pushed real hard. When I settled back to earth and got my breath back and realized I wasn’t dead yet, I did a fast check to see if there were any parts of my body missing. They all seemed to be there and functioning after a fashion, though the arm that I had wrapped around my head was starting to sting, and I could feel several bleeding lacerations on the forearm. Grenades are funny. One killed two men and wounded three others in the platoon a couple of months ago. One lousy grenade. On the other hand, one might go off and if everybody is down on their belly, no one might be hurt.

I quickly pushed off backward again in case the dinks had somehow recruited Whitey Ford and had him pitching for them. The vegetation grew even more rank, and I thought I was going to have to reverse and go head first when I fell off the bank of the stream and splashed into the water. When I came up, I was afraid my own people were going to kill me. There had to be at least six M16s pointing at me. For the life of me I couldn’t say anything. The situation was saved when the Frenchman did just about the same as me about twenty meters up the stream. At least he managed to fall off the bluff where the water didn’t go all the way to the bank. He kind of lay there gasping.

Made it, huh? said Chisum, not bothering to whisper. He watched me crawl out of the water without helping. Figured they’d got your ass when them grenades started going off.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Oh, I ain’t disappointed. You might come in handy on the perimeter since I figure all we’ve done is delay things for a while. We’re about to get ourselves surrounded and Chesty Puller—he indicated with a nod toward the lieutenant who was talking on the radio—wants to make a stand here. Go back and get the dead after we whip up on them dinks.

Makes sense. Can’t be more than three or four to one.

I figure at least that. Probably a reinforced company from all the noise they’re making. And they got at least four mortars I counted. Probably RPGs as well. We can’t expect no air support till dawn but we’ve got two batteries of 105s that can reach us just fine.

What’s the bad news?

He grinned. A slash of white against the darkness of his face. The FO was killed and dickhead himself will be doing the adjusting.

I didn’t say anything but started trying to get my entrenching tool loose from its scabbard on my web gear, kind of fumble-fingered with weariness and excitement. The only time the lieutenant had called in artillery was last