Recollections of a Vietnam Vet including his time in Hue during Tet

[AnDuc49]

Hey guys, I had the pleasuring of talking to a vet so I'd like to share some of his stories. He's private so I'll address him as Mr. M. There is no really start or end with the stories he told me, so I'll include them in the order in which he told me

 

Mr. M was from an Irish family in Ohio and arrived in Vietnam in November of 1967 into Con Thien. He was a machine gunner attached to 1st Plt. Alpha Co. 1/1. His most vivid memory of Con Thein occurred when he was ordered to retrieve an item. To traverse the mud at Con Thien, the marines had laid down WWI style duckboards to make it easier. As he was walking to retrieve the item he heard a loud "whoosh" and felt mud splatter all over his back. He turned around and less than 5 ft from him was an NVA 122mm rocket which had failed to detonate upon impact. He hadn't even been in country for a month and he always thought it would've been a bad way to go.

 

Next we go to Hue. He arrived into Hue by truck. He didn't talk much about Hue, so I'll piece together what he told me. He said in the first day arriving into Hue, he saw a M48 Patton tank. The commander had opened the hatch and was talking to somebody. Suddenly they heard the distinctive pop of a mortar and the tank commander quickly slid back into the tank and closed the hatch. Mr. M said he looked up from the ground for a view and saw the mortar hit less than 3 inches from where the hatch was. He said the NVA mortarman were almost able to land a mortar round round down the hatch. From that moment on, he said he'd knew it be a tough fight.

Later in the same day, he remembers that there was some kind of booth, a street booth perhaps. Well the booth was firing at him so he put a couple rounds into the booth. He walked up to the booth and he said he was so squared because inside was a massive soldier. He said the guy must've been 6 ft plus. The guy was so tall that even when he was killed, he couldn't fall down because of the booth so it gave the impression he was still alive. He swears to this day that it was Chinese soldier, not a North Vietnamese soldier.

Around 6 days later he was wounded and was being medevaced. They put him down in some field and when he woke up, all he could see were dead marines and South Vietnamese soldiers placed around him. There were another couple wounded marines near him. I mentioned that it could be the soccer stadium as that was where another Hue vet had told me he had been medevaced, so he agreed on that. He said that there were a couple of tall buildings near the stadium and he could see an NVA sniper pop out of the windows and take pot shots at the men lying on the field. He remembered thinking to himself, "Boy, I better stop breathing so hard or else he's going to notice that I'm alive."

 

He didn't return to Hue, but he recuperated by early March or so when his company moved to a Hill 861A near the Khe Sanh combat base. He said not much happened there besides patrols and when he was medevaced once again due to him coming down with malaria. The one notable event was when they had a skirmish on Hill 558. He said he picked up binoculars and a German made pistol off of an NVA Major who was sort of a forward observer and had called down artillery on Khe Sanh during the Seige. He had a view of the base between Hill 881N and Hill 881S. The binoculars were stolen when he was returning back to the US, but he still has the pistol

 

Finally the last story occurs sometime in 1968. They were on a night ambush. His buddy, Joe (keeping the name private) was the platoons tunnel rat and point man. During his watch he happened to fall asleep with his gun on the opposite side of his foxhole. When he groggily woke up and peered over the foxhole, he met face to face with a NVA point man. For a second, nothing happen. Then Joe let out a large scream. Mr. M said it wasn't a high pitch scream, but it sounded more of like a war cry. So the NVA point man did the exact same thing and ran off along with his other North Vietnamese counterparts as they started to scream as well as the marines waking up to screaming, only to scream themselves.

 

Sorry for the bad grammar, but I hope you guys can understand the story well enough and enjoy it!

[ryksem]

Thanks for sharing, really cool you got to talk to Mr. M and that he shared this with you. Thanks for sharing with us!