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Larry and Rex used to hooch together and used to do a cavity check on each other every night for just that reason….. Or was was it?
Calm down Larry….. Just kidding…… Or am I?
Rex….. Where are you? Pop smoke and let us know you are OK.
Jimbo Grose…. you still with us?
One guy, Bob Jascek I think, had one crawl up his ass during the night. They had to dust him off to get it out.
Fortunately I only had leeches once up in the mountains. I am guessing I got them off with a cigarette. I remember we paired off checking each other where we could not see on our bodies. Now that is being a close buddy!
LT
If you had eaten those John Wayne bars like I said to, the leeches would have stayed away from you.
We used to literally soak our jungle boots in bug juice to try to keep the land leeches off. I remember one time watching one zero in on me from about 10 feet away and I just sat there thinking to myself, ” Come on you SOB” which he did. When he hit my boot he turned and slinked away. Another effective means of killing the damn things was to rub them with salt. Kind of made them shrink in pain! Loved it!
Bill: An Hoa was the name of that region SW of Danang where the river came out of the mountains around Antenna and Happy valleys into broad, wide valley. It was also the name of a big Marine base at one time and some of the more familiar names the Marines used there were things like Arizona Territory and Liberty Bridge.
I used bug juice, but I didn’t like it. It was greasy and smelled bad, but what choice did we have? Use it or lose a pint of blood. LOL Someone told me years later that it had dioxin in it, but I don’t know for sure. But, the mosquitos there were so bad that you literally couldn’t put on enough of it, especially at night when you rolled around in your sleep and rubbed it off. If you left one little crack in the net, they”d get in while you were sleeping, one by one, and by morning you’d have hundreds of them feeding on you. I’m sure we were all anemic.
One thing I did like bug juice for, though, was killing ground leeches. It was better and safer than burning them off with a cigarette. The worst place I ever saw for those was out in the area around LZ Mary Ann. There were so many of them that when you were walking through the jungle, you could stop and look back and see the ground appear to move as they tried to follow your heat signature.
It’s a damn wonder any of us survived.
Gary, I remember the mosquitoes and the repellent seem to do the job. I can remember putting it on my face and just smearing the dirt all over over my face like an Indian putting on war paint. It reminded me at that time how dirty disgusting I was. We spent some time in an area like you described but do not remember the name An Hoa.
Glad we could handle that time of the year with repellant.
Bill: It wasn’t jungle. We were in the area south of An Hoa, which was pretty mountainous but with very little jungle. It was mostly scrub brush and rocks, with streams and lakes between the hills. At the time, there were some old, unused rice paddies there which I guess is where the mosquitos bred because the rest of it was pretty damn dry.
Gary,
What area were you operating in?
We had big mosquito nets during the dry season which we used to build a tent. It was just too hot and miserable inside a poncho tent to sleep, even at night. But, you couldn’t just sleep on the ground because the mosquitos would drain you dry by sun up. One night, I woke up in my net tent and noticed that I couldn’t see any stars in the night sky directly above me. I could see them everywhere else, but not there. Clouds? No. The top of the tent was covered with so many mosquitos that they literally blocked my view of the stars. There must have been thousands of them sitting on the tent trying to find a way in.
I guess it was late January 68 and 1st plt was working with a plt of APC’s from F troop. We set up an ambush on a major intersection where two large trails crossed. In the middle of the night, a battery from 3/21 fired H&I in the exact same location. Lt Prince lost part of his left foot. It seems a lot of that occurred in our day. Today, they want to court marshal people for “friendly fire” accidents.
Mosquito netting LT. I thought you later guys were “hard core”. We never heard of those things in the olden days. We had muskets and coon skin caps and jerky for rations. Our 12 year old Kit Carson killed him a bear when he was only three.
We had a 4 deuce mortar round from our guys dropped in the middle of our perimeter one night. Luckily no casualties, just a hole in my patrol cap hanging on a tree limb and the mosquito netting over the top of several of my guys sleeping positions. I guess they must have dug it a little deeper that night. That’s another night when Norman Greenbaums “Spirit in the Sky” came to mind.
Gary, that is why I am always surprise when the public acts shock when men are killed by friendly fire. They do not realize how chaotic it can get in battle.
Or, how inexact and imperfect our high-tech toys are.
Some estimates of friendly fire casualties go as high as 1/3 of all casualties in Vietnam, but I doubt its that high. It’s common enough though. During my time there, we had that incident with a Cobra, the two other platoons got in a firefight with each other, I nearly fired up 1st platoon myself and somebody mortared us with American mortars (probably ARVN). And that’s just the stuff I can recall right off hand.
Bill: The first time I was shot at in Vietnam was by a Cobra gunship. I thought, “Well, hell. Ain’t this great?”
Carl,
One of my closest calls was from a helicopter which mistook us for NVA. No one was hit to my knowledge.
He died on active duty, so he meets the requirements for burial in a national cemetery. Not much other than a dishonorable discharge will keep a Veteran out of one of those cemeteries.
I check this list all the time. It doesn’t go into depth. I check the Americal facebook page daily for those killed on that date in the Americal. I’m keeping track the best I can of those who lost their lives by non hostile incidents. Through the first 3 months of the year, 157 great men lost their lives in accidents. Some just stun me. One was killed by accidental discharge of a flame thrower. I’ve never seen one. One got bounced off and APC and run over. What a mess that would be. Some are killed by our own mistaking others for the enemy. Many die in helicopter accidents that are non hostile. Some I check on the Coffelt Database to see if it’s hostile or not. I saw one earlier this week of a guy who went AWOL off one of the FSB and got killed by the enemy. He was a private E2 and apparently a trouble maker. He had been court marshaled several times. He was being reviewed for a dishonorable discharge when he left. The part I don’t get, this guy’s buried in Arlington!!! Something’s wrong with this picture or I just don’t get it.
Carl,
The record shows JOHNSON, Dennis Van dieing from a mine. Check this link. http://www.coffeltdatabase.org/reqdetail.php
On a lot of our KIA’s, I have quite a bit of details like eyewitness accounts, action logs, etc. But on this death, I have almost nothing. Dennis’s tour started on February 19, 1970, so he would not have been with the company for not much more than a month before he was killed.
Anyone remember the circumstances of the death of Dennis Van Johnson on 4/1/70?
Welcome home my brothers and sisters.
Bro LT,
Unfortunately I was sick from the day we arrived until the day we left. Went to a walk-in clinic and got some medicine. Kicked in the day we left which I am thankful. Did see the northern lights and it was beautiful. Fulfilled our bucket list. Another sign to me that there is a God and all of this was not caused by an “accidental big bang”. Although in bed most of the time it was a trip which I will remember forever. Thanks for asking.
Happy Vietnam Veterans day today to all you Grunts………..
Hey Brother Beckum,
How about a synopsis of your Fairbanks bucketlist trip?
I am late in doing this but I would like to honor the men who in Charlie Company 2/1 made the ultimate sacrifice during my year tour in Vietnam. May we never forget and keep their memory alive.
March 21, 1969
Alan Bernstein, Flushing, NY
March 22, 1969
Donald Alexander, Socorro, NM
Ching and Jeannie,
Tai and I are deeply saddened to hear of the loss of your daughter, Lea. No one should have to bury their children. Please accept our deepest sympathy and condolences on your loss.
Love Yah Brother!
Ken and Tai
Just thought I’d let y’all know that one of our brother’s daughter has died. Ching and Jeannie Lau’s daughter Lea died this morning from bleeding of the brain. She was 36 or 37.
Many of you have seen on national news of the huge mudslide here in Washington State. This is very close to where we live and many of our church friends live near there and have been evacuated from their homes for precautions of a possible dam break. Our church secretary has lost everything in the slide except her life, husband and elderly mother because they had left their home to go shopping.Our daughter lives in Arlington and her husband ( a veteran ) works at the hospital there and was contacted for emergency help if needed. Many of his co-workers live up river from the slide and will now have a 100 mile trip to get to the hospital instead of 20 miles. Please keep these people in your prayers as this will take alot of time to overcome I’m sure. Thank you.
I looked up those mud slides and they looked to be about 20 miles straight north of your house. Stay safe, brother.
Lt,
Saw the northern lights last night outside of Fairbanks for the first time. Was amazing. Going back tonight hopeing we have good luck in seeing them again. Check off another item on the ole bucket list. I must say when I think of the guys who did not come home and seeing what I saw last night I do have some serious guilt feelings.
Gary and Carl: Got it and can’t believe I misread west for east.