In Their Own Words
Fifty-four years ago, the Siege of Khe Sanh had switched into high gear. Tet churned the South Vietnamese landscape. On February 4th, the NVA assaulted Hill 861-A, breached the perimeter before a savage fight drove them off. Echo Company, 26th Marines, suffered 33 killed and wounded.
The Special Forces camp at Lang Vei was being overrun the morning of February 7th with seven Green Berets killed or missing and three others taken prisoner by the NVA. The North Vietnamese deployed tanks. We heard them out in the misty night, or imagined we did.
On February 8th, the NVA overran a platoon from Alpha Company, 9th Marines, on Hill 64 before being driven off. Twenty-seven Marines died in that fight.
Meanwhile, the incoming rocked us on a daily basis.
What was it like?
Let some of the Marines and Navy Corpsmen who made it home tell you about the shock and fear. These comments are from the original interviews done for the film BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR. Some of the comments made it into our final cut, some of them you have never read. Even though the interviews were conducted on an individual basis, the men often recollected the same events without anyone prompting. That was one of the amazing things about interviewing the men of BRAVO!
Clik here to view.
All of the men talked a lot about the incoming artillery, rockets and mortars.
And not always in a manner one would expect.
Mike McCauley:
Some of the time the rockets would hit a bunker, the bunker would be destroyed and there would be a rat nest in there with small, baby rats, pink fleshy things, and we’d do away with them. The parents…we’re talking rats. Now I’m not talking about American little mice-rats, I’m talking about rats with fur, huge rats. We wanted to train them to carry our packs.
The incoming seemed like it never ceased and the men remembered that.
Ken Pipes, The Skipper:
Incoming in a defensive perimeter can become very disconcerting and very disturbing, particularly if it goes on around the clock. And ours did.
Peter Weiss:
You’d lose men, not just in the field, but we lost them in those trenches, and latrines and other places.
Tom Quigley:
It was just a constant barrage. You just caught sleep when you could. Your nerves was on edge all the time. You could laugh and joke around, but I mean each day was serious because it seemed like someone was getting it every day, either wounded or killed, unfortunately.
And not just the big stuff, the 152s and the 130s and 120s, the mortars, but other incoming, too.
Ron Rees:
Rounds from a sniper, I mean it was like a mosquito. They were buzzing your head constantly. You just realized that that was a bullet.
The nature of the incoming often gave you time to think about what was coming.
Dan Horton:
You never knew when it was coming until you heard it leaving the tube. Then you knew it was coming but you didn’t know where it was landing. Of course, we had the Khe Sanh Shuffle. We learned to do that real good. Everywhere you moved on base you had to be ready to look for shelter because you never knew.
Frank McCauley:
If you heard it screaming you were safe. If it was a short scream you were in serious trouble.
Ron Rees:
From the time you heard that round leave the tube until its impact, you imagined death. You’re thinking all along, is it you?
Michael E. O’Hara:
Day after day after day and January pretty quick became February and I thought to myself, this is crazy. People don’t understand what it’s like for all that artillery to come in like that. It’s meant to do more than just tear up your body. It’s meant to tear up your mind. It will scare you to death. I’ve told people time and time again, there is no way I can explain it but it’s like a freight train coming through the bathroom when you’re taking a shower. And you know its coming and you can’t get out of the bathroom and it will just scare you to death.
Clik here to view.
Lloyd Scudder:
I was scared to death…that shhhewww and the whistling of the rockets and that poof of the mortars and the kapoof shoooosheeewhirwhirwhir. You know that right there scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t get deep enough in the trench. I don’t care if it was five feet, ten feet, twenty feet, I couldn’t get deep enough.
John “Doc” Cicala:
A lot of fear from everybody. You know, from everybody.
But in spite of all the hell raining down, men still showed courage, showed some attitude.
John “Doc” Cicala:
I saw so many acts of heroism, guys running to help other guys.
Steve Wiese:
Knowing that tonight is going to be another night, you know when the sun goes down, the rockets and mortars are going to start in again and you know it’s just a crap shoot whether you get hit or not.
One night I stood up on the roof of my bunker in the middle of a rocket attack and went, “Hey, here I am, man, take your best shot.” You know, it’s either you get me now or you’re not going to get me. I remember a few rockets came in and I thought, maybe this isn’t a good idea.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available @ https://bravotheproject.com/store/.
A digital version of BRAVO! is available in the US on Amazon Prime Video @ https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In..
BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject?ref=hl.
The new documentary film from Betty and Ken Rodgers, I MARRIED THE WAR, is now available to watch. Check it out at https://imarriedthewar.com/.