I have always regarded my 1966-67 Viet Nam combat tour with the Marine Corps as a remarkable adventure, experiencing similar circumstances my WW2 veteran Father and Uncles had told me about when I was a kid. Watching war movies then, I often wondered what I would do if involved in similar combat situations, now I know those answers. For me, Vietnam was just my turn to fulfil my military obligation, have an adventure, get an honorable discharge, and then go on with my life. (I was never concerned with what the Viet Nam anti-war protesters thought or felt then, and I am certainly not concerned with what they and their successors think or feel now.)
At 3/5’s Battalion formation in Camp Pendleton, before beginning our Vietnam combat tour, the CO stated, “Throughout the history of our battalion back to WW1, one third of us would not be returning from combat.” Well, hearing these odds and already having read the life expectancy stats of infantry MOS’s in a fire fight, this, just turned 18-year-old, along with other peers having no stateside responsibilities, adapted an “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die” attitude.
We were realistically trained at Camp Pendleton, then in Okinawa, Japan, and the Philippines before landing in ‘Nam. After that first initial combat contact, everything proved to be “familiar” and any fearful expectations were gone, being replaced with an instant, automatic, sixth sense of caution, I defined as “an edge” that remained the entire tour. Those countless adrenalin surges that took place during the action we saw on our search and destroy operations were addictive. Add to that the number of times you were aware that you had defied death, and this makes for a lifelong, unfading experience. One thing I took away from our battalions’ combat operations was an affirmation of the statement which is on the Marine Corps War Memorial “Uncommon Valor Was a Common Virtue.”
Aboard LPH-5 USS Princeton the start of our combat operations was routine; eating a steak and egg breakfast, boarding the UH-34 Sikorsky helicopter on the deck of our converted Essex Class aircraft carrier, flying over rice paddies and jungle to a clearing that would become our Landing Zone, and beginning the search and destroy operations. We were continually on the move for ten, twenty, or thirty days at a time with intermittent resupplies of water, c-rations, and ammunition from similar copters, before returning to the ship.
The detailed objectives while on these combat operations differed with varied rules of engagement. On most of our operations the rule was caution there could be friendlies in the area. Sometimes, we would enter a designated “free fire zone” where anyone observed was the enemy and to be eliminated.
Following several operations, we would float east from the Viet Nam coast, across the South China Sea, back to Subic Bay, Philippines for either a few days of training or an occasional “Cinderella Liberty” in Olongapo City. The latter always proved to be a boisterous “eat, drink and be merry . . .” affair for us before returning to the combat zone (and I like to think the fallen had that experience, also.)
We disembarked from the Princeton after approximately three months and became land based in-country, near Chu Lai, carrying out more of the same search and destroy operations. In December of 1966, I was transferred to the 1st MP Battalion at Danang Airbase, until I rotated back to “the world” in April 1967.
