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I have not used the VA Hospital for a long time. Fortunately, I have health insurance from my former employer ( State of New York) at a reasonable price. I remember when I did use the VA, there was always long waits. Some VA hospitals are hell holes, but some are pretty good…..But there is no excuse for vets dying because they couldn’t get appointments. Something is wrong with the policy if this is happening.
Any comments on the bad press the VA hospitals are getting?
Well…you know LT…..some people got it and some people ain’t. LOL
Gary and Clay,
Either you two having amazing memories or mine is completely shot because you guys can remember a lot of details. I don’t have much of that specific details of most of my time. Good for you or maybe not.
Thank you both for a little history on Charlie Company.
As Paul Harvey would say, “Now you know the REST of the story.” 🙂
LOL I remember the Medic you’re talking about. I can’t remember his name because we just called him Doc Barney. He was about 40 or so, out of shape and had served in the East German Army, the West German Army and then ours…or something like that. In any case, he’d defected to the west at some point.
We were humping through those awful, done dry and deadly hot, rocky hills and stopped to take a break at the top of a little knoll where we might catch a breeze. Doc was missing, nowhere in sight. Lee Corman and I went back down the trail a couple of hundred meters and couldn’t find him. We finally gave up, figuring the dinks must of gotten him, and started back. That’s when I spotted him lying on his back, underneath some bushes just off the trail. He was soaking wet with sweat, pale and babbling to himself. We told him to get up and come on, we were taking a break just up the trail.
He said, “No. Leave me. I’m dying!” 🙂 We couldn’t convince him he wasn’t dying, so we literally dragged him out from under the bushes, stood him up and pushed him on up the hill. Of course, he eventually recovered and, within a few minutes, probably saved Tiny Goble’s life when Tiny collapsed with a big time heat stroke. It was so bad he spent the next 3 or 4 days in the hospital. Since Vietnam, I’ve been to a lot of places, but I think that day was probably the hottest I ever felt.
I agree on the Redlegs. They stood out in the shit, rain or shine and gave at least as good as they got. They also had to work their butts off digging in the artillery pieces, building bunkers for their ammo, hauling ammo and maintaining their guns. They damn sure earned their keep.
I think Red Baron hit a booby trap on a later operation. The first day after we left Rawhide was hot and very tough humping mainly because the company was not in top physical shape. I remember walking within sight of the battalion firebase and them firing a 4.2 inch mortar w/i 500 meters of us. I guess the intent was to let us know they could see us and to keep humping. We found a brand new litter/stretcher which must have fallen out of a chopper. I set it on fire to avoid carrying it and to deny it to the dinks. Battalion complained about that too.
The hornets were pretty much the last straw. A few guys got evacuated due to major stings. A large number of smoke grenades were used trying to get them away from us. I don’t recall it making any difference. So much for keeping our position under wraps. I was a pretty good humper and I was as shot as I remember getting that day. One of the new medics said to leave him behind, he just couldn’t keep up. Much ranting and raving later he decided he could go on. I was pissed I had to expend precious energy motivating him.
Thanks for the validation of my old memories. Time can take a toll on what our feeble little minds can dredge up. I also am Face Book friends with Frank Ripley and I asked him to come by and look at it too. He agreed also, so I don’t feel that badly about what little I got wrong.
And, thanks for tipping me off about whoever that guy on the Jeep was. All these years I thought I’d stood and watched Stout being loaded on the Dust Off, and even told his brother about it. I guess it doesn’t really matter though, does it? There was nothing I could have done to help him…or the other guy either.
Rockets: We could seem them firing the damn things out from behind a big outcropping of red rocks on the side of Charlie Ridge and could watch the trail of smoke until the engine burned out. Then it was “LOOK OUT!” LOL I was really impressed with the Artillery guys and the crews of the Duster’s and Quad 50’s when they returned fire. We got to huddle in our bunkers, but they stood right out there and gave it back to them without flinching. Up until then, I thought Artillery was basically a REMF job. Not after that, though.
When we left Rawhide, we went over into the foothills of the mountains across the valley and, as I remember it, the first thing that happened after we disembarked was Red Baron hit a booby trap and went home. Or, that might have been during a later operation in the same area, I’m not sure. During the first day of that operation, we had a lot of guys dusted off for heat stroke and some for hornet stings when our platoon’s point man cut open a nest of the little fuckers. They attacked and scattered the whole company all over those hills! LOL
In addition to Gary’s observations I can add that LZ Rawhide was an old Marine firebase known by them as Hill 65. It was a steep sided hogback which should have been a first class defensive position with a modicum of maintenance and a full sized company to man it. I think the ARVN position where the ammo dump had blown up was the Marine’s old Hill 55 position which had been a major strong point and maybe a battalion HQ. There were villes of some size around us and on the west side we used to be able to watch them play volleyball all day. Nobody was playing before or after the rocket and mortar attacks which caused us to believe they knew it was coming. Besides the snipers and so on the heavy stuff the dinks fired at us was 60 and 82 mm mortars and worst of all was the 122mm rockets. Those came from a long way off on Charlie Ridge and they had our range.
It must have been an artillery guy in the jeep because I stayed with our casualties until the chopper came for them. I do recall that later the artillery top sergeant came to me to see if I would look after his guys because they had lost their medic. I don’t recall whether he had been hit or what. Their top sergeant (who was pretty cool and squared away like most tops that I met, if you were squared away) gave me keys to his medic’s footlockers of medical supplies. I was amazed at the quantity available to those who set up in reasonably stationary positions.
When we left Rawhide we CA’ed out to western Arizona Territory. We were then rewarded for our easy living of the previous month or two with some ass-kicking humps which got us back into shape in pretty short order.
It was in late April, early May, 1971. Charlie Company had been sent up to Rawhide presumably to strengthen their defenses over the May Day holiday, but I think the real reason was to build or improve bunkers for the lazy bastards. That’s about all we did for the first couple of days and the work was really needed. What bunkers they had were in an advanced state of disrepair and there weren’t any bunkers at all on the south side of the hill, away from Charlie Ridge. Down at the lower, east end of the hill, there was a large open area covered with steel runway mats where they stored artillery ammunition on pallets right out in the open. Even that area only had two bunkers on opposite diagonal corners.
Anyhow, beginning on either the night of April 30th or May 1st, the dinks moved into the area and captured the little hamlets which ringed the firebase. They also attacked an ARVN compound down the road near a large town and the defenders fought all night before driving them off with heavy casualties. At one point, their ammo dump went up and that really put on a show!
For the next 2 or 3 days, we held the little firebase and the dinks held the base of the hill. We took a lot of incoming rockets from the side of Charlie Ridge and mortars from somewhere down below. Every night, there were sappers in the wire at some point along the perimeter and stray sniper shots from the villages, but the heavy attack we were warned to expect never materialized. In the meantime, the dinks were killing people in the villages and hunting for ARVN’s home for the holiday and we couldn’t do a thing about it. At one point, an ARVN officer who had been hiding made a break for it and ran up through the wire to our perimeter and safety. But, he was turned away because somebody thought he might be a VC in disguise. I was standing right there when he came in and I can tell you without fear of being contradicted that the guy was scared shitless. When they told him he had to go back to what was surely his certain death, he was in a genuine panic, but he had no choice.
After a couple of days, the weather broke and the sun came out and ARVN began sweeping the area all around us, driving the VC/NVA away. We could see them from where we were. Eventually, Charlie Company had to leave the firebase and conduct a road sweep looking for mines, a trip which took us down into the villages and towns and nearly all the way to Danang before we met an Engineer group coming from the other way. It was pretty tense at first as we passed through the mostly abandoned villes, but we met an ARVN track unit which told us the way was clear ahead.
It was a pretty warm few days and I, for one, was damn glad to get back to the bush. So far as I know, Stout was the only one of our guys killed, but we also had several wounded. And the Arty guys suffered casualties too during their intermittent artillery duels with the dinks on Charlie Ridge.
That about sums it up from my perspective.
Would someone who knows what happened put together some more detail. From reading I know it happened in May. What year? I believe on FB Rawhide. Was it motors incoming, RPG’s, VC or NVA. I would like to know more at the history of our unit. Thanks
Clay: You also worked on an ARVN some kids carried in that same day, or the next one. He’d been gut-shot, but with no exit wound, and you couldn’t find an artery on him either.
It may have been someone else because when I came down into the CP, you were there, sitting on a bunk with somebody’s blood all over you. I asked how Stout was, and where he was, and Top said they’d just taken him down to the pad. When I got up to the main street through camp, there was that jeep moving really slowly with someone on a stretcher and a guy holding an IV in the air over him. I just assumed it was Stout because of what Top said. I guess it could have been anybody, and maybe not even one of ours because some the Arty guys got hit that day too. Or, it might not have even been a Jeep. Hell, it could’ve been an Onto’s as far as know 40+ years later! LOL
Gary, I may be wrong about riding in a track. I clearly remember a big vehicle like a deuce and a half on tracks being up there. Had a ring mount M2 50cal and I think it may have originally been for use as a prime mover for a 155mm. On the other hand riding down to the chopper pad on a jeep does ring a faint bell. Despite his wounds I don’t remember his wounds bleeding that bad. I figured shock lowered his blood pressure drastically and lowered the external loss of blood. It was hard to get an IV into him.
As an ironic footnote to the Rawhide deal, when I derosed I left from Cam Ranh Bay. A guy from the 101st was bunked next to me and in the course of talking it turned out he was one of Barker’s best friends from California. He heard he had been hurt and was very concerned. A few months after Rawhide Jim sent him some photos from a party held in his honor after he got out of the hospital. The 101st guy was some pissed about all his concern being wasted and him missing the party.
I was the medic who got to Stout. The M60 crew he was in was bunked in a Sea Hut 10 yards from the CP bunker where I was bunked along with the CO, various NCOs and radio men. They heard incoming rockets and headed for their fighting position. The rocket hit close to the middle of the triangle formed by the CP, hootch and fighting position. It blew me off my chair in the bunker and that was 10 feet deep behind massive timbers. Leveled the Sea Hut and blew Stout and Jim Barker, the gunner from Canoga Park, CA, into the fighting posit. Another crewman was peppered in the legs and butt and he came down into the bunker for help. I thought thank God he’s here and I don’t have to go outside. He said “No, not me, help the other guys” so with a deep breath, up I went. Stout was mortally wounded by schrapnel and Barker had a sucking chest wound. I did what I could and a track took us down to the landing pad. I remember laying in the dust of the pad with them while mortar rounds came in around us and a huge helicopter fuel blivet. No fun there. Stout died on the chopper on the way to Da Nang and Barker made it home. I saw him six months later in Colorado Springs. He was apparently fully recovered.
Clay: If y’all rode to the chopper pad on a track, who was that I followed down there on a stretcher laid out on the back of a jeep? I always thought it was Stout, but it may not have been, I guess. Whoever it was bled profusely the whole way, in spite of yards of bandages wrapped around him.
Carl: I was there when Stout was killed.
I have been following the 4 May discussion here. From the Americal facebook page, I know some guys lost their lives in an NDP to a sniper. Can someone elaborate a little to give those of us who weren’t there an idea of what happened? Also anyone with James Stout, who was killed on FSB Rawhide on 5/2/71?
Take a look.
http://moments.org/thank-you-for-your-service/
LT—i have never, nor would ever doubt grunt brotherhood. as exemplfied on the nite of 4 may 70. ty harper and i talked about events of that nite yesterday.i tried contacting joe casas also, but the call wasn`t answered, cell phone problem ? I` m betting a bunch of us have memories–even nite shivers still, about that nite.
on the lighter side, shame on me if i ever pass up a chance to make sure our LT`s are kept alert.
Just a reminder to anyone who’s planning to attend the 70-71 group reunion in Jefferson City, MO June 5-9th, tomorrow, May 5th, is the last day to make reservations and get the group rate.
Come on and have a good time!
Short round: Some of us, who were both enlisted and officers later, understand TOO much. LOL
SR
Ben and I will be in Mt Morris IL on May 20 paying tribute to one of the May 4 soldiers, Ed Rimmer, by helping his high school friends give out annual scholarships in his honor. They are a great bunch of folks and the kids receiving the scholarships are always very deserving. I believe that I contrary to what some people think do know quite a lot and understand thoroughly the meaning of brotherhood.
LT don`t worry, we non officers, having some experiences, understand officers and confusion.
and of course–HI -to your better half.
just wrote a couple letters concerning current events related to Bengahzi. realize we try to avoid poltics here but figured a few congressmen should hear some comments from a combat vet . too few combat vets now in congress.if they haven`t been in combat they have no real idea what days like 4 MAy 70 are like. maybe they would understand if on 4 May we called B-TOC and told them we were too busy planning a trip to Vegas, but we`ll get to our dead and wounded 8 hours from now–maybe. yea–i`, im in a foul mood.
Lt,
We moved to PA to be closed to my daughter & two grand kids in 6/2011. In July, 2013 my son married a lady with three kids so we immediately had grand kids in FL. God has a great sense of humor. Plus my son’s wedding conflicted with the reunion in D.C. Hope this is clear as mud!
Rev Bill,
I thought you moved from FL to PA to be near grandkids. Now I’m confused.
another May 4 coming up and thoughts of fellow grunts. R.I.P.
1988 Cleveland had a vets reunion and rocky blier showed up. only time in cleveland he was applauded. decent grunt. thoughts of incoming helped him score touchdowns
larry–i hope walt showed you the picture of me carrying fred mayorga across a wet spot while on 1 of his last patrols. that`s how we took care of our short-timers, except for tiny.
that was flannery at smileys bar in 1971 when we visited fred. flannery was too cheap to buy us a beer.