In The Spotlight

June, 1967 - I arrived in Bravo Company along with more than 10 other "twinks" (twinks = newbies - never in combat before) the very day that Bravo came back from "Operation Billings."  For those who may not be aware of it, Bravo Company took heavy losses on that operation, and third platoon had some of the heaviest losses.  So, I was assigned to third platoon.

The first person I remember meeting in Bravo Company was the X.O., Lt. Jerry Allen.  I was favorably impressed by Lt. Allen, and would continue to be so to this day.  Lt. Allen was an Airborne Ranger and really wanted to be with an airborne unit, but served us well. He had also worked his way up through the ranks from private, later going to OCS and getting a commission. Lt. Allen told me that I was assigned to third platoon. (Jerry eventually got transferred to an airborn outfit at Long Binh.) I reported to the third platoon hooch where I met Platoon Sgt. Freeman.  Freeman, as I remember him, was a little wiry guy with a CIB (Combat Infantry Badge) with two stars on it, which meant this was not the first war he fought in.  Or the second.  It was his third war.  He was a WWII and Korean Vet.  He also had jump wings with a star in them - he was a "Master Blaster" or Master Jumper (I think that means he had more than 100 jumps to his credit).  In other words he was Army through and through, and had survived enough wars that I should be (and was) very glad to have him as my platoon sergeant.  Freeman told me to draw my weapon and web gear from supply.  While waiting in line for my turn to draw gear, I noticed lots and lots of bloody web gear laying on the ground in front of the supply hooch.  One or two packs had letters sticking out of them.  Possibly letters from home, or letters yet to be mailed.   I did not envy the job of the supply sergeant, having to go through the gear and clean or dispose of, what ever was appropriate.  I thought I was lucky, the weapon I was given was an "over/under"  which meant it was a hybrid - part M-16 rifle and part M-79 grenade launcher.  It also meant that I had more heavy ammo to tote! 

Upon arriving back in the third platoon hooch, I saw several familiar faces - men I had been in Dion with, or even in Long Binh, awaiting our assignments.  Most of us had been together since we left Oakland, California a week or so earlier. I was happy to see those familiar faces.  I was told to pick a bunk and store my gear.  While I was doing that, Sgt. Gilbert, formerly platoon sergeant of third platoon, came over and sat on my bunk.  Sgt. Gilbert had just been promoted to company first sergeant on Operation Billings, replacing the first sergeant that had been killed on that operation. 

I found First Sergeant Gilbert to be a professional soldier, yet he was fatherly toward me and more than willing to give me some sound advice.  The primary piece of advice served me well during my tour - listen to the guys that have been there longer than me!  He did mean LISTEN, and believe me, I LISTENED!

While I was unpacking my stuff and trying to get squared away, I heard someone (I think it was Sgt. Hare) say, hey Lt. Bracey, that guy is stocky...he could make a good RTO (Radio-Telephone Operator or radio operator) for you!  Turning around, I saw several people looking at me.  No thanks, I will pass on being the radio operator. They are a prime target for Charlie (V.C.). Third platoon was not a democracy, so I got no vote in the matter. The third platoon RTO that had survived Operation Billings was coming off line and being assigned to the mess hall for the duration of his tour.  He only had a few weeks left and the officers wanted to make sure he would still be around to complete that tour.

I no longer remember that RTO's name, but he was a great guy (like almost all of the guys I met).  He taught me the tricks to taking care of a radio if high heat, high humidity conditions, and how to properly carry and use the PRC 25 radio.  That said, I already had too much to carry on patrol, so I decided after the third patrol to eliminate the ammo for the grenade launcher.  To lighten my load even further, I eventually took the M-16 apart and detached the grenade launcher completely.  Only problem with that is the plastic guard on the rifle barrel would not fit back on without the grenade launcher.  So, I had an M-16 with a naked barrel forward of the trigger housing.  That was fine with me, as the M16 was very light at this point.  Fine that is until we got in a serious fire fight!  Did you know that the barrel of a rifle gets VERY hot when fired for extended periods of time?  Apparently I did not know it before that day, but I learned quickly.  And it only took several days for the blisters on my left hand to heal.

 Back to my first night - David Aldridge, Fred Hill, Don Anderson and a few others that had been with the third herd for a while came over and took me under their wing.  They were friendly and we spent the evening getting to know each other.  I found Fred Hill to have a very dry wit.  He kept me in stitches for the rest of his tour.  Don Anderson was friendly, but some what reserved (at least at first).  Don had curly blond hair and a Cheshire Cat grin.  David Aldridge was serious, but very friendly. I made many life long friends that first night.

We were fortunate to have a great leader in our company commander - Captain John Turner.  A man's man if ever there was one.  He led by example.  I watched many lieutenants try to emulate Turner.  They would stand the way he did, carry their rifle the way he did, and even try to talk the way he did.  In one way it was funny to see them try to act like Turner, in another way it was good, because I knew they admired him as much as I did.

Looking back, there were many operations that I was on that I will never forget.  I may not remember what they were called, or exactly when they happened, but the action is still vivid in my memory.   Such as when third platoon was assigned to work with local militia (CIDG?) in one certain village.  We litterally moved to that village and stayed there for more than a week or two.  We went on patrols daily with the local militia.  Many of those Vietnamese militia men were old hands at combat - they had fought with the French against the Vietminh and now with us against the Vietcong.  One old poppa-son carried a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR).  If you are not familiar with that weapon, it is HEAVY.  I don't think the US Army has used it since the Korean war.   The old boy carrying that thing never broke a sweat.  He smoked a curved pipe and would just grin when he would see me humping with that heavy radio and sweating like a rain storm.

Then there was the operation with the 2/2 Armored, somewhere north of Lai Khe I believe.  This was possibly September of 1967.  We were in a hotbed of activity with ambushes being "popped" every night.  If I remember right, Sgt. Hare had the first ambush make contact, then several others during the course of the next night or two.   Then we were attacked.  Information found on dead V.C. indicated that they were told our morale was low, and that we were a small unit (hardly, it was atleast our company and the mechanized company, but may have been a battalion-sized operation).  Any way, they found out that our morale was anything but low, and they got their tails kicked.  I am always grateful to the 2/2 for firing their mortars for me when I called in a mission from my L.P. post.  Somebody with authority within our company had denied my request, but Dale McKay from 2/2 was monitoring and called it in to his mechanized mortar squad for me.  I could  hear metal clanking out in front of me - it reminded me of the sound of shovels digging in hard dirt and rock. The noise stopped after the mortar mission was completed.  The next day, the 2/2 checked the area that I called for them to strike and found a demolished ox cart and lots of blood.  We were attacked the night after that happened.

Then there was Ong Thong.  There is plenty of info elsewhere on this site about that one, so suffice it to say that was the biggest one during my tour, if not the whole period the 2/28 was in Vietnam.   Shorlty afterward, Loc Ninh.  Also recounted elsewhere on this site.   Then Budop, An Loc, and Hwy 13 operations around Christmas.   By Christmas, we had seen a lot of our really experienced NCO's rotate home - Sgt Freeman was long gone, First Sgt. Gilbert was gone, Sgt. Hare had just left, Jiminez and Moreno were gone, Lt. Bracey had been reassigned to Dion, Captain Turner was now a major at the Pentagon; but by that time, we had Captain Jim Kasik, also a leader of the John Turner mold, and those of us former twinks that had arrived after Operation Billings were no longer twinks and we had accumulated a pile of experience ourselves, so we were now training the twinks.

In late January or early February of 1968 we were involved in the Tet fighting somewhere near Ben Cat south of Lai Khe.   Immediately after Tet, I went on R and R to Australia.  I got an extra couple of days there because Bien Hoa airbase was coming under daily rocket and mortar attack as some mopping up was still being done from the Tet Offensive, and it was not safe for our plane to fly into Bien Hoa, so we got and extra two days in Sydney.

When I came back from R&R, Jim Kasik had been transferred to Battalion, and Captain Jim George, a hero of the battle of Ong Thong and former Alpha company comander, was now our C.O. Captain George, like the two preceeding company commanders, was a good leader. In March, Fred Hill had gone home. Shortly after Fred left, we located a HUGE basecamp west of Lai Khe.  It was the only time I had ever gone into a tunnel in Vietnam.  As a matter of fact, whoever was our platoon leader at the time "suggested" that I go in.  SCARY!  I was so nervous.  I had heard about the V.C. tunnels and their booby traps, snakes tied by their tails and haning from the ceiling, etc.  That may or may not have ever been true, but I sure thought about all those times the old timers would talk about it!  I was also concerned lest I had to fire my 45 pistol while in the tunnel - I was told it would make me deaf (turns out I am close to deaf any way from being on a four-deuce mortar crew in the states prior to Vietnam, being a machine gunner for a couple months while in Vietnam and being in or near artillary during the tour as well, so I would probably have been no worse off if I had to fire my .45!).  To continue, I found several rooms off of the main tunnel.  One was obviously a class room, complete with tables, chairs and a chalkboard.   Another one was an operating room/hospital with an electric light, a Briggs and Stratton generator and more medicine than our medic had seen in Vietnam.  As a matter of fact, there was some medicine there that Doc said he was unable to get. It was an exciting find. After we moved out of the basecamp, our demo man, "Red", was to stay behind and blow the tunnels up. A short time later, Red caught up with us and had a prisoner, a "chu hoi" (came over to our side for a reward) wrapped in "det" cord (det cord is highly explosive and the chu hoi seemed to know that!)

In late march or early April, Don Anderson left for home, and I felt all alone. Oh, I had made lots of good friends with the guys that arrived after I did, and had a lot of respect for many of them, but all the guys I had always counted on were now gone. I was the old timer. On April First, we were involved in big fire-fight that resulted in Lt. Colonel Menetrey being awarded the DSC, our platoon medic being awarded a Silver Star, and several others getting Bronze Stars.  That was April 1, 1968.  I made sergeant that day.   I am proud of my actions and the actions of third platoon that day. The day started out like a normal batallion-sized patrol. Some mechanized unit (I don;t think it was the 2/2) had their armored personnel carriers (APC's) intersperced among us on the patrol. About an hour into the patrol, I realized I was not feeling good. During a break, I approached our medic and asked for some aspirin. "Doc" took my temperature and said that I had a 105 degree temp and he was going to put me on one of the APC's. The closest APC to us was the lead APC. I sat on top of it with four other guys - the M-60 machine gunner and three other grunts from the mech unit.

Not long after getting on the APC, the patrol halted for some reason. While we stopped, I noticed movement in the trees off to our right. I believed the movement to be our flank element. Turned out we had no flank element out at that time. It was a V.C. with a rocket propelled grenade (RPG). He hit our APC just below where we were all sitting and the concussion blew all of us off. After hitting the ground face down, I got to my knees and looked around - the other guys that had been on the APC - on both sides of me - looked like they had pepper sprinkled on their faces. Quickly, blood started trickling down from each spot of pepper. It was shrapnel. I was unhurt (I later found a piece of shrapnel embedded in my gas mask).

I climbed back on the APC and took over the M-60 machine gun, raking the woods to our right. The gunner on the 50-caliber machine gun on the front of the APC was unharmed and had continued to man his weapon. We tried to move out, but were pinned down by a sniper for quite some time. Airstrikes were called in on the sniper to no avail. None of us were able to silence him. Finally, a tank was brought in. The tank fired a canister round into the tree, and we were not bothered by the sniper again. We moved forward, with the tank taking the lead, only to find ourselves smack in the middle of a big V.C. basecamp. We were getting fired on from all directions. I opened up with the M-60. The 50-caliber gunner opened up as well. I remembered watching in awe as the 50-caliber mowed down trees. Big trees. I noticed that gunner was picking targets farther out from us, so I selected bunkers closer to us. One bunker was right under out right track. I continued to fire supressing fire while bullets flew all around us. The tank in the lead was hit by an RPG in the engine and caught fire. I couldn't believe my eyes...metal was burning! The ammunition inside the tank started cooking off and exploding. All of the tank crew got out except one man. A larger sgt was wounded and unable to get out. Our medic, Randy "Doc" Knowles, climbed into the burning tank with the ammuntion going off and litterally lifted the sergeant up through the hatch for others to pull him out. Randy was awarded a well deseerved Silver Star for that action.

While that was going on, we were still under fire from the enemy. One bunker was giving us an especially difficult time. LTC Menetrey charged that bunker himself, and using hand-grenades single-handedly put that bunker out of commission. Shortly after that, someone brought me a wounded soldier - he had a sucking chest wound. I climbed inside the APC and put cellophane from a cigarette pack on the wound and pushed down to stop the bleeding and seal the chest so that air would not enter or escape. Someone buttoned up (closed the doors and hatches) on the APC and we took off. It was a long, wild and bumpy ride. I was sweating in the sealed up iron coffin, praying like mad that the wounded man would not die on me and suffering my own little hell from the high temperatures adn the high fever I had.

We arrived in an open area and someone opened the door on the APC. The cool outside air rushed in and it felt so good. I never thought the air in Vietnam would feel cool, but when that door opened, it certainly felt cool! A medic took over working on the wounded G.I. and Doc Knowles came and checked on me. Dock wrote something on a large tag, attached it to my fatigue shirt and told me to go lay in the shade and wait for a dust-off. I was almost delirious, but I still felt bad, laying their by all the wounded guys. LTC Menetrey came over and spoke to me, then looked at my tag. I told him I wanted to go back to my unit, but he ordered me to stay there and wait for the dust-off. The rest is history

In June it was my turn - I rotated back home.  I was now leaving the guys I had trained. They were good men. Funny, I had come to Bravo Company and the third herd with at least 10 other men, yet I was the only one leaving. I wonder what happened to the others. Some how, they had all managed to get out a head of me. When I got back to the states, I had nine months left to serve  and had the good fortune to be Stationed at Ft. Ord. California to finish my tour.  If I had only six months left, they would have discharged me.  I tried to get them to knock six months off my remaining time (which is what they did for everyone with six or less months left), but that got me no where. I had to serve my full nine months. At Ft. Ord, I was stationed with CEDEC ("SEA DECK").  It was an experimental weapons and tactics outfit.  We spent more  time TDY at Camp Hunter Liggett (I understand it is now Fort Hunter Liggett) near Paso Robles than we did at Ft. Ord.   Time spent in this unit was extremely interesting and quite fun.   It was the only unit I have ever been in a unit where the buck-sergeants outnumbered the  PFCs and E-4's.  Sgt. E-5's pulled K.P. here.  We also slept out in the barracks in bunk beds.  In other units, by the time you made Sgt. E-5, (buck sergeant) you usually had your own room or shared it with one other sergeamt.  But CEDEC had all these sergeants returning from Vietnam and the only place they could put us was in the bunk beds in the barracks. We had one private or PFC for every 20 sergeants, so we had to do the work of privates. We didn't care, though. We were home, we were alive, and most of us were "short timers" - just months or even weeks left in our enlistment. I ran into a few guys from Bravo Company while at Ft. Ord. Jeff Larson from fourth platoon was there. A couple more from Bravo Company arrived after me and told me about some action that happened shortly afer I left). I ran into Don Anderson and I saw Jim Jiminez coming out of the PX.

At CEDEC, we experimented with lots of different weapons. One weapon I remember experimenting with was the "Stoner Machinegun."  It is in use in the Army today in Iraq, but is not called the Stoner.  I am not sure of the proper nomenclature of the weapon is now, but I have seen it in the news, and recognized it instantly. It is basically an M-16 machine gun with a bi-pod, that is belt fed from either the left or the right side, and has plastic clips holding the bullets in the belt.  We also experimented with different squad sizes from four man squads all the way up to 13 man squads. I suspect the Army never adopted any of those sized squads, but I never heard for sure. Different tactics were also tried out. As I said, it really was an interesting assignment.

After the Army, I spent more than a year traveling around the U.S., visiting relatives, seeing the country and tryiing to decide what to do.  I know I was "antsy" and had a hard time trying to settle down.  I did start really settling down in 1973 when I met my first wife, Lula Barfield.  We met in June, were married in November and remained married until her untimely death after 29 years of marriage. Lula died from heart problems.

Several years into our marriage, I ended up going back to school majoring in science (physics) and becoming an Energy Analyst for the water and electric utility company in Springfield, Oregon.   I eventually took on  several more tasks - water conservation, solar energy, AND doing commercial building new construction inspections for the City of Springfield, making sure contractors were following the state's energy code for new commercial buildings.

After my wife's untimely death, I tried to retire, but it proved to be premature, both financially and I really wasn't ready to sit back on my duff yet. So, I went back to work.  I am now the maintenance supervisor and facilities manager for a large charity here in the Eugene-Springfield area, and enjoy the challenges of maintaning multiple buildings in two cities, most dating from the 1950's, one from 1917. 

In 2005 I met the love of my life - Maria Elena Samson.   Dr. Samson, Ph.D.  Maria Elena is from the Philippines, but looks like her Spanish ancestors. Big beautiful brown eyes, a wonderful smile, and extremely intelligent. She was runner up Miss Philippines in 1968; starred in 10 Movies (one with Robert Conrad); was a Fulbright Scholar to the University of Indiana where she got her Master's Degree in Psychology.  She picked up another Master's Degree and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology after that. She has made my life whole again.

Looking back on my life, I think I have been very fortunate - I have had a good life, was lucky enough to be in the best outfit in the First Division in Vietnam, met some life-long friends that are among the salt of the earth, have had two good wives, some great kids and grandkids.  It really is more than I deserve, but I will take it and be thankful for all of it!  And, please know that I am extremely proud to be a Black Lion! My attitude is, once a Black Lion, always a Black Lion!

Watch this page for more former Black Lions "In The Spotlight."