CUPP Marines in Vietnam Looking for former Marines who served on CUPP teams .

[The Rooster]

Greetings all.

Ive been in touch with the author of "A Personal War In Vietnam" by Robert Lopez Flynn.

 

syanopis of A Personal War in Vietnam. From Amazon

Like no other war, the Vietnam War was marked by the involvement of the mass media. The war exploded daily on the evening news and weekly in the magazines; reports of drug-dulled GIs and a place called My Lai made rich copy that seared an impression in American minds about U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Robert Flynn was himself in Vietnam as a war correspondent, but his contemporaneous account of the two months he spent with Golf Company, Fifth Marines, reports a facet of the war that went largely unreported by the mass media.

Golf Company was composed of CUPP teams--a Marine squad and attached Navy corpsmen in the Combined Unit Pacification Program. CUPP teams were stationed in remote Vietnamese villes, tiny hamlets whose civilians the CUPP teams trained and assisted in protecting their homes from the Viet Cong. The men of Golf Company were without the backup of other U.S. forces; they had no barbed wire or bunkers and day and night had to move every few hours to avoid being pinned down. As pacification teams, they worked with villagers on a one-to-one basis, helping improve gardens and livestock, providing medical care, and putting in such facilities as community houses and water wells. It was a personal war; CUPP soldiers got to know and had to know the individuals of the villes, because an outsider or unease in the ville could mean Viet Cong were in the area.

Upon his return from Vietnam in 1971, the author wrote this account of his experiences with Golf Company, in their firefights and in their quiet moments, and his impressions of the men and their work. In the context of the early 1970s, the resulting manuscript was not the kind of copy sought by any faction in the Vietnam crisis going on at home. It has been published without the polish of hindsight, and in its original, unrevised form, it provides a clear window to the villes and booby-trapped jungles and the conversations and impressions they evoked.

[The Rooster]

Mr Flynn is writing a new book about the Cupp Marines and is seeking former members for interviews.

 

The following is a letter I recieved from Mr Flyn concearning a helmet I found that I believed he may have worn in Vietnam.

 

Link to helmet.

 

 

 

Mr Flynns Letter. Reprinted with his permission.

 

I'm sorry to disappoint you but I don't believe that was the helmet I wore. I wore a regulation helmet with a cammo cover. The initials are an amazing coincidence. I didn't paint my initials on anything in Vietnam. It is possible that a CUPP Marine painted the helmet and intended to give it to me so I would be recognized but there was a company of them and I tried to spend some time with each platoon but the platoons were usually split into squads and the squads were scattered across the countryside. It wouldn't be easy to have gotten the helmet to me. If someone had, I think I would have tried to bring it home.

 

I am working on a book now that will contain the stories of the Vietnamese in the AO and the stories of the CUPPs. I want people to understand the CUPPs, their daily lives, how vulnerable they were, how they never had a "home", a place they could relax, sleep without fear. I have asked them to tell me their stories but they are reluctant. I need a story by a corpsman, a Jeep driver, a story about their first day in Vietnam, about R&R. Two Jeep drivers separately told me that the CUPPS in the vils thought the drivers had a slide because they were behind the wire at LZ Baldy at night with cold showers, hot food and maybe a movie, but if they died they would be with their buddies. If he died, he would die alone.

 

Sorry I was of no help. If you know any CUPP Marines or how to contact them, please ask them to contact me.

Robert Lopez Flynn

101 Cliffside Drive

Shavano Park, Texas 78231

(210) 492-1127