Vietnam USMC Recon photographs

[Mr-X]

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[Mr-X]

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[Mr-X]

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[Robert B M]

1ST Recon sign at main gate of Camp Reasoner Vietnam

[USMCRECON]

Recon Team Dutch Oven........Dunn's Raiders.

 

[USMCRECON]

Ron Kovic raising his flag over our hootch.

 

[USMCRECON]

Recon Team Grim Reaper (taken in about April 67 after the c/s change from Dutch Oven.

 

[Grinch]

Ron Kovic? Same person that the movie is about?

[USMCRECON]

Ron Kovic? Same person that the movie is about?

 

Sorry I missed this earlier. Yes, the same Ron Kovic.

[USMCRECON]

An long as I'm back on this subject again, here are a couple more Recon pictures. This picture was taken about Mar of 67 during a rare outing with the Skipper.

 

Prominently featured is our Company Commander, Captain (soon to be Major) Albert King Dixon. King Dixon was an All-American running back from the University of South Carolina in the late 1950s and was a darn good Skipper.

 

Immediately behind him is Ron Kovic and Fred Brisch, taking a drink, (Fred took his own life some years after going home). In the background over King's left shoulder is our Corpsman, "Doc" Rock (yes, Rock was his real last name). For the past decade or so he's owned a successful bar in S/W PA called, of course, The Stone House. Just visible on the far left of the frame is Ray Triana and in the front left you can just see my hand.

 

[USMCRECON]

This one is Willie Green, Roddy Rodriguez, and Mike "Jibs" Burns taken in mid Jan 67 and it the last known picture of Willie Green alive.

 

Willie Green was killed on 20 Jan 67 by a "short round" that landed in our team perimeter during a fire mission fired by the artillery battery at An Hoa. Roddy was wounded by the same artillery round. Jibs was a character. He got drunk as soon as possible after coming in from the field and stayed drunk until we went out into the field.

 

When he was drunk, he liked to fight.....with anyone he could find to accommodate him. Once in the field, I caught him with four bottles of the red codeine cough syrup that we were given when needed (coughing in the bush was usually a bad thing). Normally one bottle would last several patrols.

 

After he rotated home he ended up in San Francisco but by the time I went home he's basically dropped off the face of the earth and no one has ever been able to find him since.

 

[USMCRECON]

I might have posted this one in an earlier thread but can't find it at the moment. These two were was taken of me by a fellow Recon Marine showing me bleeding and the Corpsman digging into his bag for bandages.

 

I don't know why one came out so small and the other so large on the post???

 

[USMCRECON]

These two show us doing rubber boat training at China Beach. The slides I scanned these from were not in the best of shape so the pictures are a bit crappy.

 

[USMCRECON]

This one is of Ervin Lovell (on the left) and his brother Tom, taken on Tom's combat base in (I believe) late April 67. Ervin's brother was already in Nam, serving as a grunt when Ervin arrived with Recon. This photo was taken during a visit Erwin and his brother had in country....I believe in April of 1967 (I didn't take this one, it was sent to me by a family member last year).

 

Ervin and I went through Basic Infantry School and Recon School together but, after arriving in Nam, he went to another Recon Company in Chu Lai. He was killed on a recon patrol outside Chu Lai on 14 May 67.

 

[USMCRECON]

One more.

 

This one is a really crappy photo. It was actually scanned from a photo in a Connecticut newspaper that accompanied an interview with Lt Dunn about Ron Kovic shortly after the movie "Born on the Fourth of July" came out.

 

The original went to my Platoon Commander and he gave it to the newspaper to copy but he never got it back and this is all we have left. Lt Dunn is guiding the helo in for our extract (notice, he's carrying a "grease gun." I believe the man with his back to the camera and his head right in front of the helo is Doc Rock. I can no longer identify the other Recon Marine standing next to him with his back to the camera anymore. Ron Kovic was the patrol radioman and he is kneeling, talking on the radio in this shot.

 

[USMCRECON]

This one is one of those old Polaroid b/w shots that you had to smear a fixative on after pulling it out of the camera. You can see where some spots got missed and have faded.

 

I am on the left of the picture. Ron Kitzke (KIA 27 Dec 67) is in the middle, and Bobby Earp (WIA on OP Swift, 4 Sep 67) is on the right. I believe I posted a very similar photo on a camouflage thread several months ago.

 

[earlymb]

Thank you for posting those great pics Bill!

 

You seem to have lost a lot of friends though...

 

Greetz

 

David

[USMCRECON]

Thought I'd add one more four-picture series this morning. This event took place during an emergency extraction of our Recon team after being hit while on Operation Swift on 4 September 1967. I may have posted some of these on another thread but I don't believe the details of the shots were included at that time.

 

The wounded and two other Reconners were to go on the first bird. My half of the team were on the second bird. SOP was for those on the second bird to provided security for the first bird.....with the M-60 I was always on the first bird in and the second one out.

 

We had been hit from my end of the ridge earlier and we were expecting the NVA to come from that direction again. Apparently another group had climbed the other side of the ridge and were planning to hit us from the opposite end. When the first helo landed, they came in on the far end of the ridge to be as far as possible away from the known NVA positions as possible. When they set down, they were near the second group of NVA.

 

In the first picture, the first helo is just about to lift off. The white smoke behind the helo and just down the side of the ridge is the aftermath of an NVA w/p grenade (or mortar round??) that detonated behind the bird several seconds previously (with two wounded to load, they were on the ground longer than usual).

 

I began firing the M-60 at the enemy and the Huey gunship followed my tracers to the target. The second shot is the gunship beginning his firing pass on the NVA position.

 

The third one is the first bird airborne clearing the ridge line under cover of the gunship.

 

The fourth was taken by me as I was actually running to the second helo which, mercifully, had landed nearer to where our position was.

 

 

 

 

[USMCRECON]

Thank you for posting those great pics Bill!

 

You seem to have lost a lot of friends though...

 

Greetz

 

David

 

It was not my best year+, to be sure.

[USMCRECON]

Here's a couple more. Top one is me holding a liberated AK-47. I'm wearing a pair of home-made shorts, made from a pair of stateside utility trousers that I'd cut off into shorts. It's hard to see but over the boot socks, I'm wearing a pair of also liberated Ho Chi Minh sandals. Dog tags are on a piece of 550 parachute cord and they're taped together with a strip of gray-green 100-mile an hour tape. I went to Nam at 6' 0" tall and weighing 178 lbs. When this photo was taken, I was down to about 145 on my way to a rock-bottom weight of 138 lbs before I rotated home.

 

Middle one just shows what the yellow smoke grenade we used to mark the LZ for the extraction birds looks like.

 

Bottom is J. J. Jones clowning around in the base camp. On 3 Jul 68, JJ was leading a team into Elephant Valley. They had just been inserted and they came under heavy fire. The helicopter wheeled around and headed back to the LZ to extract the team and as they hovered over the LZ to touch down, the helo took several hits and began to burn. Both pilots were hit and the helo crashed into the LZ and on top of JJ and the seven other Recon Marines, killing all of them as well as all of the crew aboard the helo.

 

 

 

 

Recon Marines killed:

Sgt Joseph J. Jones, Scotland Neck, NC (Silver Star)

Cpl William D. Johnson, Kokomo, IN (Silver Star)

Cpl Gary D. Tisdall, Modesto, CA

Cpl Sherman D. Vance, West Point, IL

LCpl William C. Moon, Joliet, IL

LCpl Paul Scheckler, Huntingdon Valley, PA

LCpl Fay C. Simmons, Cayce, SC

PFC Alton House, Walstonburg, NC

Capt John D. Dalhouse, Montgomery, AL (acting as the Insert/Extract officer, I think)

 

Helicopter crew killed:

Capt James L. Littler, Honolulu, HI

1stLt Raymond C. Daley, Dover, NH

SSgt John C. Bilenski, Clifton, NJ

Cpl Randell B. Little, River Rouge, MI

[USMCRECON]

Here is "the Skipper"......1Lt John Dunn, from whence the name "Dunn's Raiders" came from.

 

We're sitting on the Camp Reasoner LZ waiting for the helos to take us out to a permanent OP on Hill 452. That's why there's so much gear lying around. It had not been resupplied for a while and we were bringing out a bunch of fresh ammo, water, etc, along with a .50 cal Ma Deuce MG.

 

The arm and side just visible on the right side of the picture belonged to Ron Kovic.

 

[Corpsmancollector]

Bill, they are some fantastic pictures! Thank you so much for sharing them with us! I'm researching uniforms for Marine Recon Corpsman in Vietnam 68-70 so these have been a great help!

 

What team were you with? If you don't mind me asking

 

Many thanks again,

 

Will

[USMCRECON]

Bill, they are some fantastic pictures! Thank you so much for sharing them with us! I'm researching uniforms for Marine Recon Corpsman in Vietnam 68-70 so these have been a great help!

 

What team were you with? If you don't mind me asking

 

Many thanks again,

 

Will

 

I was with the same team for most of my tour. Our team names were tetermined by our radio callsign (c/s). When I first got to Recon I was with LT Dunn and our c/s was Dutch Oven. Some time in about May of 1967, LT Dunn was transfered to the Bn HQ and we got a new Platoon Leader. About that same time (not particularly associated with the new LT, there was a mass c/s change and we got the "best c/s in the world" for a recon team (in my humble opinion) as we became RT Grim Reaper.

 

In about Mar of 68 there was another c/ change. During the time we were Grim Reaper, Recon Battalion was Pal Joey. I guess Battalion liked the Grim Reaper c/s as they took it. I can't remember what my last c/s was.

[USMCRECON]

In this picture you can see Hill 488 in the background (the rather flat-topped hill. Otherwise knows as "Howard's Hill" it is where SSgt Jimmie Howard's Charlie Company Recon team was attacked by a large force of NVA and where he won the medal of honor.

 

[USMCRECON]

This is what a hastily cut LZ looks like. This was taken in Happy Valley. We had bee sparring with the NVA for a couple days and they were pursuing. Battalion was unable to get a grunt reaction force to be helo'd in so they decided to extract us.

 

We had about 30 min to hack an LZ out of the bush. After blowing a couple larger trees with Det Cord we hacked the sparlings and brush down with K-Bars and aircrew survival machetes that we liberated from an earlier helo crew's gear. It ain't perfect but it was good enough for a ballsy helo crew to get their Ch-46 into.

 

It's not easy to see but one of our guys is burrowed into the brush just to the right of center on the far side of the "Z" providing security. there are two more Recon Marines near him but they are "invisible" to the camera.