Company Life

When we arrived we were assigned bunks in an empty hooch or barracks. It, as the others, was just a simple one floor plywood building. There were screens for windows with plywood flaps you could let down when it rained. Tin roofs with sandbags on top to help it stay on in the wind. Also sandbags around the outside of the buildings up to window level and a sandbag blast wall about three feet out from each door to protect the entrances. This particular building was empty because the six man team that had occupied it had been wiped out shortly before we arrived. This hooch had been completely stripped when they cleared out the dead teams equipment and personal effects, not a bunk or broom remained. I did that myself once or twice, clean out a dead guy’s area and prepare his personal stuff to be sent home. We used a little common sense in this. If the guy had some porno magazines or something like that we didn’t send them home to his mother. Same if we knew the guy was married but was writing to an old girlfriend (or new girlfriend) we’d separate those letters and trash them. Not a desirable task anyway you look at it, especially if it was a friend of yours. Although different teams moved in and out of this hooch while I was there it was never prime real estate and was always known as “the dead team’s hooch”.

As I understand it, the team was wiped out sometime during the night while on a mission. SOP was to radio in a Situation Report (sit rep) every 30 minutes during the night. This team’s last sit rep was about 2 AM and everything was normal. Since contact was lost, the next morning a helicopter recon was sent to their last called in location. Helicopter reported bodies so a reaction platoon and recovery team was sent out to get them. The report was that they had been shot at close range where they slept. One man had crawled a couple feet away but not far. Guess was that someone had went to sleep on guard. This is all from heresy of course, because I wasn’t there when it happened. Anyway that is why that hooch was empty.

Usually a team would try to more or less bunk together-it was easier to pass out information. It wasn’t a requirement tho and sometime when they were trying to piece together a team for a mission or two people would be bunked all over the company. It wasn’t one team per hooch tho, usually at least two teams would share a hooch and most times divide it into smaller rooms or area’s with scavenged plywood.

After arriving in the company we had an additional two weeks training to teach us the Ranger companies SOPs and to get us up to par on things LURPs did differently from line companies. One of the things we learned was to give IVs to each other. I was a frequent guinea pig as I had big veins easy to see and hit. That continued while I was there, whenever a I.V. class was given and I was available they wanted me to be the pin cushion. After the two weeks of local training we were sent out on a “training mission”. It was a regular mission, no use to waste all that man power, but we went with ten men instead of the regular six man team. So I guess we had four experienced men and us six newbies.

I think the T.L. on the training mission was SSG Kline, and I went on at least one mission with Zetner as the T.L. before settling in as a member of Team 1-1; First Platoon, team #1 and finally was able to move out of the dead team's hooch.

Frank Rocco Fratallinco was a kid from New York City. He was in a group of new recruits to L Co that volunteered straight from the 101st Repo Depo shortly after the company lost a whole team in early May 1970. He went through the company training and the "training mission" with the rest of us "FNGs". In L Co everyone had a code name for use on the radio. Usually it was something you picked for yourself but sometime your choice was simply discarded and something else given to you by popular acclaim. Frank's choice was "Rocky" (this was before the movie) but after the training mission he was forever known as "Sniffles". It seemed that Frank was carrying a bottle of insect repellant in his front pants pocket and didn't put the cap on tight. The entire bottle leaked out while we were on the move. Well, Frank must have had some sensitive balls because when that insect repellant hit them he "sniffled" for the last two days of the mission.

I don't want to mince words here, In Frank's personal conduct around the company he was a real asshole. He was a smartass when sober and a smartass jerk when drunk. It was normal for him to get drunk in the rear as did most of us, but then he would go around picking fights with guys twice his size. He was a real scrapper, but in this company the big guys were just bigger scrappers. I do not recall anyone who actually claimed him as a friend. Some said he had a lot of family problems in the states, that his family had practically disowned him for joining the army, but that's probably just scuttlebutt.

SOP in the Ranger Company was if a new guy was sent out with a team and the Team Leader came back and said he didn't want him, the newbie was sent out with another team. If that Team Leader came back with a bad report then the guy was history. Well, "Sniffles" did not do well in the field. He made too much noise, didn't seem to be paying attention, and worse of all fell asleep on guard. The Rangers would put up with a lot of strange personality traits in the rear but you had to have your shit together when you hit the bush. Frank did not have his shit together and what was worse didn't seem to care. Maybe that was just the New York City in him I don't know. Our Platoon Sergeant, SFC Taylor (Popeye) must have seen something in him that the rest of us didn't because even after his two bad missions he kept trying to keep him in the company. SFC Taylor finally lost that battle and Frank was sent to a line company and about 2 weeks later won the Medal of Honor (posthumously). "Sniffles" was known to say he was going to get some Medals, and he damn sure did that.

That's just the way I remember it, anyone is welcome to straighten me out.

I stayed with team 1-1 the whole time I was there although I sometimes filled in on missions with other teams. I think SSG Delaney was my first team leader. Later on as guys came and left, Team 1-1 was run by SSG Hund, SGT Clark, SGT Smith (Fish), SGT Fraizer, and finally by myself SP/4 Edwards.

The company had a basic SOP of the minimum of equipment and ammunition to be carried, but every team leader would add to this according to his own experience and that particular mission’s requirements. I went out with some team leaders who wanted every man to carry two claymores and with some team leaders who would not hear of anything less than four claymores apiece. So what you carried in the way of ammunition and equipment depended a lot on the team leader. But we all went out carrying too much weight according to the D.A. guys that came out and took a survey of the recon units. The theory is that a recon unit shouldn’t carry much weight (ammo) because they should cover a lot of ground and not get into firefights. As a guy that was actually going out there however, I understand that I do not intend to run out of ammo when I’m in the middle of nowhere and Charlie is being up close and personal. I don’t know the actual weight of my rucksack but I do know I usually had to sit down with my back to it, slide my arms through the straps, roll over on my hands and knees, then use my weapon to brace me while I stood up. No, we did not move fast or far quickly, but we did move carefully!

Some of the things I normally carried: 35 twenty round M-16 magazines, tho we only loaded each with 18 rounds. Twenty rounds seemed to compress the spring too much and cause a double feed jam. Once you were there for awhile you developed you own method for carrying magazines. The best I found was the 1-quart canteen cover. You can put seven 20-round magazines in a 1-quart canteen cover where the standard ammo pouch could only hold 4 or 5 magazines. True, the ammo pouches had little holders for 2 grenades on the sides but an additional 1-quart canteen cover could also hold six or seven hand grenades and you didn’t have to worry about a tree or bush accidentally pulling the pin on them. Most of the men removed the shipping safety from their grenades and wrapped some black tape around the pull ring to hold it flat and help avoid accidental pin pulls. We left a little piece of doubled over tape to make it easy to pull the tape off. In the excitement of a firefight it was too easy to forget to remove the shipping safety and pull the pin. With the tape method you had to remove the tape to get to the pull ring.

After I had been there awhile my LBE had nine 1-quart canteen covers around it; five held 7 magazines apiece of M-16 ammo, two had 6 hand grenades apiece, one had my E&E gear and one actually had a quart of water in it. The E&E gear consisted of a penlight flare, a fluorescent distress/identification panel, a couple of pre-mixed dehydrated rations. and a small emergency radio that only tuned in to the aircraft emergency channel that all aircraft monitor. I also carried a flashlight (with a red filter to reduce the light for reading the map or code book at night), a hunting knife or bayonet, 1st aid dressing, lensatic compass, and a strobe light (for signaling aircraft) all on my LBE. I initially carried a bayonet that I sharpened to knife edge but later ordered a “K- Bar” knife from a magazine. I tried several ways of carrying it; on the pistol belt, but there wasn’t much room with 9 canteen covers, I tried sticking it down in my boot and strapping it to my leg, which looks good in the movies, but in the real world it kept getting caught in the bushes. I finally ended with it taped to the front LBE suspenders. That seemed to be the most popular way to carry it and just about everyone carried a knife of some type. The AR-15s (CAR-15s) many of us carried were not made to attach a bayonet, still a knife in the woods has many uses. It could be cutting a makeshift litter, or digging a cathole (shithole), and of course always that possibility of using it to kill somebody being too up close and personal. Mine was never used for much beside digging shitholes. Whenever you were out on a mission you always dug a hole to shit in, a “cathole” officially, so you could shit and cover it up. Wouldn’t want the enemy to find our trail because he stepped in shit. I still have the knife I carried tho the handle is slightly chipped.

Inside or attached to the rucksack were generally two or four claymore mines, (great weapon!) three smoke grenades, a CS grenade (tear gas) and a white phosphorus grenade, nine to fifteen quarts of water (depending on the individual), food for seven days (a mixture of C-RATS and LRRPS) extra machine gun ammo if the team had a M-60 on that mission. Extra socks, the Team Leader and Assistant Team Leader carried their own radios, everyone else carried extra batteries, handsets, or antennas. Some men carried rain suits or full ponchos, I just carried half a poncho and half a poncho liner and wrapped it around the frame to help pad my back. Sneaking around in the jungle we couldn’t put up any type of shelter anyway. I carried 11 quarts of water and only ran out when another guy ran out and I had to give him a couple of quarts. Some guys drank more and carried more, some less. We also carried a repelling rope for the team and everyone carried their own 15 foot rope and snap links for a Swiss seat in case we needed to repel or be lifted out my McGuire Rig. We each carried a small gas mask that was only good for CS.

Maps, compasses, codebooks, and I’m sure many other items I just don’t remember right now. I carried a lot of candy and lifesavers. Each morning I would put four candy bars in my shirt pocket to eat during the day while we were on the move. The lifesavers I’d use during the night while on guard to help me stay awake. Oh yeah, we also carried some plastic explosives in case we had to blow up a bunker or knock down some trees for an LZ. Also one or two LAWs for the team and one or two concussion grenades. I’m sure there’s more but give me a break, it’s been almost thirty years! I never had a reason to use the concussion grenade and Didn’t want to throw the white phosphorus grenade. That was some bad stuff with a bursting radius of 35-40 meters, now tell me when you are in triple canopy jungle you can throw anything 35-40 meters without hitting some type of tree that will bounce it right back at you? There were a couple of missions in the Khe Sahn plains in that elephant grass that I could maybe throw it that far but then it would start a fire and you’d have to make sure you were up wind! A good weapon for last resorts but not one you want to use without thinking about it.

You fight hard and you play hard. We had a feud going with D troop 2-17 CAV. They were located on a hill about 300 yards from us. They were normally our designated reaction force and they did not care for us at all. When one of our teams made contact, we would be extracted and they would be inserted. Either we would report a contact, they would come in and find nothing because the enemy did not want to fight a larger force, or they would come into a mess of trouble we had stirred up. Either way they did not appreciate us! We shared a Mess Hall, tho often guys would rather eat left over field rations than make the trip up the hill, (especially in bad weather). One time, a couple of our guys went up in the middle of the night and dropped a couple CS grenades (teargas) and a block of Flex-X explosives with a 15 second delay fuse down their shithouse. Blew shit and tear gas all over their company area. They had a gun-jeep patrolling the area between our compounds for awhile after that. Also a couple nights after the shithouse incident, one of our guys went out to take a piss and had a couple M-79 rounds fired in his general direction.

One night between missions I was in our company club. It was close to closing time and not many if anyone was left besides me. One of the guys in the company came in with a rifle, pointed it at my head and said he had to kill somebody. This fellow was drunk as a skunk and obviously upset about something. I learned later that both his parents had died but he had not been notified until well after the funeral. A few other things had gone wrong for him lately too, but I forget all the details. Now I hardly knew this fellow and he had nothing personally against me as far as I know, I just happened to be standing there at the right or wrong time. I remember he didn’t have an M-16, it was an M-14 or an old carbine. Anyway there’s not much you can do in a situation like that. I just told him to aim a little lower, I didn’t want my face messed up and went on having my drink. I suppose there was what you would call a pregnant pause, then he left and I let out a sigh of relief and ordered another drink.

People do get strange sometime when they are drunk out of their mind. Before I left, the real army club system opened a club right above our company area. One night a fellow who was suppose to out process the next day got a bit too drunk while celebrating. When the club was ready to close, he wanted to keep partying. Our club might have stayed open for him but this one said “no, out you go”. Well he went out, got his M-16, and came back saying the bar would stay open til he was ready to leave, and to punctuate his words, he fired a few rounds into the ceiling and walls. Needless to say that got everybody’s attention in a wide area. Some of his buddies tried to talk him into leaving but he was too far gone for that. Finally the scheme was concocted for one guy to piss him off and get him to chase him outside where several others would be waiting to jump him as he came out. The plan actually worked and thus the night ended. I don’t think he got to leave the next day tho, they kept him locked up in the stockade for a couple of days but did finally let him out-process and ETS.
There were numerous incidents that happened around the company area between missions. After 5-7 days sneaking through the enemies territory, you had a lot of tension to let out. I was never a wild drunk though sometime an unreasonable one, like the time I scraped my leg on an engineer stake and wouldn’t go to the medic. Several times Jim McLaughlin had to put me to bed and several times I had to go and talk him down for the night. Their was one incident where a couple of fellows decided to do a little dancing on top of the hooches roofs. This disturbed a Samoan named Tusiee who was trying to get some sleep. Tusiee fixed that by going up there and throwing both of them off the roof. Nobody was hurt, not even their feelings, after all they did ask for it.

You never know when death will strike. One night, knowing I had guard in the company the next day, I ask a fellow I knew, Lawrence Schieb, to wake me up early since he was leaving early on a mission. This he did, and I went on to my guard duty. When I returned in the afternoon I learned Larry had been killed on his teams insertion.

I have mentioned our company club. It was totally unauthorized of course and usually run by some of the clerks in the rear or someone who was getting short. It worked by everyone in the company turning over their ration card to the club manager who would then buy what liquor, beer, and cokes he needed. I think we paid 25 cents for a beer and 50 cents for a mixed drink, or maybe it was 15 cents a beer and 25 cents a mixed drink. A PFC or SP4 only made about 150 dollars a month back then so things were usually pretty cheap in Viet Nam where they were no taxes. Coke was sometimes in short supply and certain kinds of beer. What we always had plenty of was Freska and Falstaff in rusty cans. The government must have got that stuff free because they couldn’t hardly give it away. Once, when an IG inspection was coming ( yes, even in Viet Nam) we closed the company club and turned it into a dayroom, complete with curtains and bibles. Of course, it didn’t really fool anybody, our club was well known, but the inspectors accepted the temporary change because that was the way the game was played and everyone knew the rules. If it wasn’t there during the inspection, it didn’t count. The inspectors might be down there drinking the next night but they could honestly say it was a dayroom when they inspected it. The club was for company personal only. Outsiders were simply not allowed unless they were with someone from the company or they were one of the pilots that supported us. Helicopter pilots that picked us up or inserted us could drink free.

We had a company mascot named “Dixie”, she was just a mongrel dog that hung around the company area. She took a liken to us and stayed. She did not bother anyone who was in the company but she would bark whenever an outsider tried to walk through. I don’t know how she knew who was in the company and who wasn’t. Giving Dixie a “pussy pat” was thought of as good luck before a mission. Another dog hung around for awhile but I don’t remember much about that one.

Leeches were bad in some areas, generally in the rice paddies but also in some of the mountains, and mountain valleys where we worked. I remember waking up one morning with one attached to the inside of my bottom lip. Usually, they would get on your neck or back and you wouldn’t even know they were there until they fell off naturally leaving blood dripping on your shirt. I remember stopping for a break in a leechy area and seeing a leech about 15-20 feet away. It poked its head up like it was sniffing the air, then headed straight for me in its inchworm fashion. I don’t know how they detect us, by vibration or body heat but fortunately just regular insect repellant or a match would shrivel them up quickly.

Sometimes between missions we would be assigned a ambush patrol outside of Camp Eagle. These were sometime more dangerous than regular missions because of the chance of some Ya-hoo firing you up on your way back in the next morning. There was a large graveyard outside of our side of Camp Eagle. Several times we set up ambushes in the middle of it. Some of the Vietnamese graves had a low wall in a circle around the grave. We would set up inside the wall and wait to see if anyone was snooping around the perimeter that night. I never had any problems while out on the local ambushes, tho one of our teams did get fired up while coming back in the morning. No matter how much you coordinate and no matter how many times you check, some ya-hoo never gets the word.

L Co had responsibility for two bunkers along the perimeter of Camp Eagle. They were right in front of our company area, no more than 75 meters from the hooches. While we were in the rear between missions, if you were not on your stand-down day or prepping for a mission you were eligible for guard or ambush. Guard duty itself was not bad, the worst part being guard mount or inspection. While on guard you had to stay at our two bunkers, generally rolling up in a poncho liner to sleep when you were not on shift. Guys from the company would come down and bring you cokes and hotdogs and bullshit for awhile. Our part of the perimeter would have been the worst for the enemy to attack. We normally kept our rifles and ammo right next to or under our beds, so we had a lot of firepower at a moments notice. Most of the perimeter was manned by rear echelon non-combat arms soldiers. The only ones with access to weapons were the bunker guards with the minimum ammo required. All other weapons and ammo was locked up in connexs and ammo dumps. You know we had to be winning if the army felt that secure. Usually the Officer of the Guard (normally some REMF officer) did not bother to visit us and would just make a radio check. One time one of these REMF officers came to check our bunkers late at night. He was coming from the direction of our company area so there was really wasn’t a question of who he was, but it was dark so the guards went through the challenge procedures. This fellow wanted to be an asshole tho and did not reply. The guard told him to halt once more than fired a warning shot a little over his head. THAT made him stop and Identify himself. PROVERB: The man with the M-16 is always right. The officer tried to raise some hell about it the next day but as soon as he had to admit he didn’t halt when challenged the Company Commander just laughed at him.

There was a MP gun jeep that came into the company area one day; I don’t remember (if I ever even knew) why they came. It could have been investigating one of our rangers indiscretions or it may have been about the jeep we stole. I do remember that the sight of an MP in OUR COMPANY AREA brought out a lot of M-16s and CAR-15s and the MPs were last seen backing rapidly back down the street!

Somebody had a monkey for awhile-that’s it, that’s all I remember, that somebody in the company had a monkey for awhile.

There was one fellow that was assigned to team 1-1 that experienced the infamous “Jody” as in “Jody’s got your girl and gone”. He was a regular LURP doing the best he could until he started receiving letters about his wife running around on him. He wanted to take a leave to go home and straighten it out, but you don’t take a leave from combat because you have personal problems. Mother, Father, Wife, immediate family DIES, yes you might get an emergency leave, but just because your wife is running around on you does not count. I was ATL at the time and after a mission where this guy’s mind was nowhere near that hemisphere, and he was constantly screwing up, the TL and myself agreed to tell the PSG that we’d just rather go out a man short than have this guy in his present mental condition. Between that last mission and the next, I was drinking at the company club and he came in and said he wanted to talk to me about something and would I come by his AO (bunk area) at 7 o’clock that evening. I said sure, no problem, I’d be there. About 6:30, he found me again and said “don’t forget about 7 o’clock”! I said no sweat I’ll be there. He was already pretty wasted as he had drank a full bottle of Jack Daniels by himself that day. About 5 minutes to Seven I headed for his AO and was about 30 yards away when I heard a shot. By the time I got there the other guys in that hooch were already with him. I don’t know what his intentions were but he ended up shooting himself in the foot with his M-16. He may have thought that would get him sent back to the states so he could take care of his personal affairs. It did get him out of the company real quick, but I think he stayed in Vietnam til his tour was over. I do know I was still receiving questions from DA about him for two or three years after I returned to the states.

Steven Glenn England was my friend. He was from Pocatello Idaho as I remember and his father was a detective or something on the city police force. Steve and his dad did not get along well, as often is the case in growing up. His dad wanted him to "walk the line" and so, of course that is the one thing Steve would not do. Yet Steve had talked about how much he wanted his father's approval and how much he respected him. Steve had been involved with some drugs at home, how much I do not know, but I do know that if he drank more than a couple of beers he was liable to "flashback" and go completely nuts for a while.

Steve was a medic, he came to the Rangers from a line unit about Aug of 1970 (I'm guessing) and was assigned to Team 1-1. There is no spot for a medic on a 6-man LRRP team. He was a regular rifleman or technically speaking "scout", of course if you happen to have a medic qualified scout on your team he is a obvious choice to carry the aid bag which usually consists of a claymore bag stuffed with things you are most likely to need. Steve wasn't satisfied with this of course and came up with a modified field medical kit that was more extensive. It also weighed more of course but he carried the extra weight without complaint. Steve went out with Team 1-1 for a couple of months and did as well as anyone else in the field. Sometime in Nov-Dec the company medic position came open and he took over that position. In this job he did not go to the field on a regular basis, but instead took care of everyone while they were between missions, teach classes on giving IV's and other stuff and would go out on special missions or whenever any team needed help.

I remember sitting up with him one night when he was having a "flashback". He talked continuously all night about anything and everything and thats probably when he talked about his father. He went out to take a leak one time and someone brought him back saying he had been trying to walk thorough some triple strand concertina wire. Myself and another guy talked about trying to hit him once to knock him out, but that stuff doesn't usually work like it does in the movies so we just set it out and waited for him finally to wind down.

On 15 February, 1970, a team was in trouble. One man wounded and weather conditions so bad they wouldn't even send a medivac out to them. I guess CPT Ohle may have called up B Troop 2/17 Cav and asked for volunteers, at any rate he got a slick to go out with a McGuire Rig to pull the wounded guy on strings. There was no plan to land and picking up the guy (SGT Trujillo) on strings would not require a medic, but someone was hurt and Steve grabbed his aid bag and jumped on the chopper "just in case" he could help. They picked up SGT Trujillo in the McGuire Rig and were headed back when the helicopter suddenly crashed a short way from the Airbase.

No one really knows what happened, tho they think the pilot had "vertigo" and simply flew straight into the ground. B Troop 2/17 Cav lost 4 brave men that had probably volunteered for a mission the Medivac "wouldn't" touch. The Rangers lost 3 men; LT Smith who had volunteered to fly bellyman for the strings extraction, SGT Trujillo who was still hanging in the McGuire Rig, and one Steven Glenn England who went along just in case he could help. It was the only time during my tour I cried.

I have a couple of scars on my body from Viet-Nam, none of which I can blame on enemy action. I nearly sliced the tip of my finger off with a friends knife. Jim McLaughlin and I were up at Camp Evans. I think he was sponsoring a “Kit Carson Scout” and I came up just to bring him his mail. As part of his mail he received a brand new Buck hunting knife from his father. He was showing it around and I reached for it at the same time he moved and “SLIT”! The knife was indeed sharp! We walked over to the Aid Station with me sucking on my finger to deep from bleeding all over the place. The young medic didn’t seem to know much about anything but he put a couple stitches in it for me, said they were the first he had ever done. Jim seems to remember me putting the stitches in myself; who knows, it’s been a long time.

I have a couple of long half moon shaped scars on my right thigh. The last couple of months of our tour Jim worked as the company club manager. One night I was waiting for him to close up, drunk as usual. I was laying on the sandbag blast wall behind the club’s back door. These blast walls were kept erect by engineer stakes sledge-hammered in around them and this tends to leave some sharp edges. When Jim came out and locked the door, I casually rolled off the blast wall to my feet unfortunately I rolled over one of the engineer stakes which took off about a half inch wide piece of skin about eight inches long. skin wounds bleed like hell and Jim wanted me to get the medic to look at it, but of course in my condition at that time I wouldn’t hear of it til I sobered up the next morning.

I mentioned that we blew up D Troops shitter; someone also blew up one of ours (we had two). They did it with a regular frag and a trip wire, I don’t remember who tripped it, but if he had not heard and recognized that distinctive “PING” as the lever flies off a grenade, he would have a really bad evening. When I arrived in the company, we had our own “shit burning” details. Then the company hired some Vietnamese to do the job and everyone was happy to help pay for it. Shit burning was accomplished by mixing up the containers of shit (cut down 55 gallon drums) with diesel fuel and gasoline or JP-4, and when it burned out, doing it again. Although the smell was intense, the worse part was seeing all the maggots when you pulled those cans out from the shitter.

On any review of Viet Nam they always mention the RACE and DRUG problems. Well, I was a pretty naive fellow about those things at the time so I may not have recognized a problem even if I saw it. I don’t remember any race problems at all in the company, but as I said I simply may not have recognized them. There was however a definite division between the “Heads” and the “Juicers”. No difference in the field that I ever heard of, but in the company area I guess “Birds of a feather flock together”. I was always a mellow fellow and tho strictly a “Juicer”, I would often take my drink and join friends who were enjoying different drugs. I could drink my drink and they would smoke their stuff and all of us just get along. I could feel the division within the company tho and one fellow did get a blanket party that I believe had something to do with this. It was an unwritten rule that you did not drink or “smoke” the night before a mission. The Juicers as far as I know adhered to this, but I’m not sure the Heads did the same, and that could have caused some hard feelings.

The army is always the army. While in the company area between missions we were subject to the same routines of any unit. When coming in from a mission you had the rest of that day to unload ammo, do an official debrief at the company TOC, take a SHOWER, (a necessity after 5-7 days without one) and things like that. The next day was your official Stand Down Day, and you were not available for details like guard or ambush. Then you usually had one or two days eligible for details before the team received a new mission. The day before the mission you were again exempt from details so you could pack for the mission get your briefings and generally prepare your mind and body. Aside from details tho, there was still a morning formation, sometime we even did PT, running in formation through the dusty streets of Camp Eagle calling cadence. I believe there were just two formations a day, tho I could be wrong.

The weapon of choice for a LURP was the CAR-15. Beside the gung ho image, being shorter, it was much easier to carry in thick jungle. Many LURPS would attach a sling of some sort (often just a piece of rope) so you could let it hang from your neck when you needed both hands to work your way through the jungle. Some of us (myself included) also taped a put together cleaning rod to the side to be ready when it jammed. Not if it jammed, when it jammed. When you move the selector switch from safe to semi, or auto, it makes a definite “click” sound. To avoid this we would take out the selector switch spring, cut a couple twirls off it, and then the weapon would move silently from safe to semi or auto. The problem with this is without the tension on the selector switch, it would sometime hit some brush and move without you knowing it. several times while moving I remember looking down and my selector switch had moved to auto without me knowing it.

There were not enough CAR-15s for everyone in the company. At first I was issued a M-16, only later after some folks had DEROS’d was I able to swap it for a CAR-15. I remember that I had a hard time zeroing my CAR. I could barely hit paper at 25 meters. I borrowed the M-16 of a fellow that was zeroing and made a tight little shot group. It turned out that many of the barrels of the CAR-15 were simply “shot out”. We could turn them in to supply and send them to ordnance for new barrels and hope to get them back or we could use alternate means. LRRP rations were a popular alternative to C-rations for the folks that could get them. We took our bad CAR-15s along with a couple cases of LRRP rations on our shoulder’s directly to ordnance. We left with new barrels on the CAR-15s and accidentally forgot the cases of LRRP rations.

Sometimes while between missions and not on guard or ambush, and the company managed to get transportation for us we were able to spend a day a Eagle Beach. The 101st own rest and recuperation area. We would ride a 2 1/2, or 5 ton truck from Camp Eagle thru Phu-bi and Hue and take a army landing craft across the bay. I think I was able to go twice. It was a good break from the company area. I remember the last few hundred yards from where the landing craft let us off and the official entrance to Eagle Beach was lined with small Vietnamese shops selling everything from photo albums and velvet pictures (bought both) to their young virgin sister (didn’t fall for that one). The most important thing about Eagle Beach tho was the salt water. The ocean was not near as clean and clear as Cam Rahn Bay but it was salty. After a few missions in the jungle, we would have a cornucopia of mosquito, leech, and various other insect bites and sores all over us. A few hours in the salt water just did wonders to help heal the body, and I suppose it didn’t hurt the mind either.

About January of 1971 I took my official R&R and went to Sidney Australia. Nothing against Australia but it was pretty much like any American big city where they happen to drive on the wrong side of the road. All in all I wished I had went to one of the other places offered like Thailand or Hong Kong.

Sometime the company would be able to get movies for us. We would watch them outside the company club on a portable screen that extended to about five feet high and six feet wide. We would also go to other units movies sometime. I remember watching “MASH” being shown at one of the aviation units. They projected it against the side of a building painted white. About the only things I can think of that will almost always give me a “flashback” to NAM is the theme song of MASH and the smell of either gunpowder or the sulfur of a smoke grenade. But then I have not tried drinking VO and Coke out of a coke can with the top cut off, lately.

Jim McLaughlin and I got in a fight one time. Well, actually I doubt you would really call it a fight. It was down at the company club, and for some reason Jim gave me a pretty hard thump that knocked me down. Maybe I had criticized his golf game or something. Anyway I got back up and returned the favor. This knocked him backwards and he fell on a army portable field table. The table collapsed with all four legs splayed out like you see in cartoons. That broke the whole club up into laughter and I remember no more of it.

Whenever a team was in contact the word would drift through the company area and folks would start gathering around the TOC entrance waiting for information on what was happening. Several times the toc personnel just got tired of all the questions and just put a remote speaker by the entrance so we could hear all the radio transmissions at the same time they did.

Whenever a team was leaving on a mission, those in the rear in between missions would see them off. When a team was coming in after a mission, they were met at the helicopter with a cold drink of their choice; A ice cold beer being the choice 98 out of 100 times. One beer, then debriefing, unloading explosives, a shower, then more beers!