Written by a man who served with James Frank McElyea:

James Frank McElyea
March 28, 1948  -  February 5, 1967



This man died on February 5, 1967. The event of his death has had a tremendous impact on my life. At the time and for the following 17 years I didn't really realize it. I had just tucked the incident away in my brain with a number of other shitty memories.

But in a therapy group, 16 years ago, I was confronted about my rage and in the subsequent introspection, this incident stood out as the blossoming of that rage.

Our company, Charlie 4th/12th 199th, was doing one of our three-day sweeps. I believe that it might have been our first visit to VC Island. It was an extremely long and tiring day. A claymore had hit one of the platoons, not 2nd platoon, and there were considerable casualties. We had been making contact on and off all day. As I remember it, we had flushed a bunch of VC out into trying to cross a river on three sampans and some gunships that had been working with us caused them considerable pain.

At the end of the day, with it starting to get dark, we were pushing to get back to our company perimeter. For some reason I was at the rear of the column. This wasn't an appropriate place for me so I began to work my way up to the middle. I had passed one, possibly two guys when there was a short burst of automatic incoming and then our line lit up with return fire. Through the noise I heard a soft, "Help me. I am hurt." Coming from behind me. When I looked back I could see a helmet bobbing just above the water in a ditch below the embankment that we had been walking on. I jumped down into about four feet of water and reached down and grabbed the guy that was struggling to keep his head above the water. As I touched him he went unconscious.

It was all that I could do to hold him up, because he was so heavy with all his gear and the dead weight. Meanwhile the shooting is continuing. Up above me on the embankment behind a tree there was a photographer that had been out with us all day. My memory says that he had an Aussie accent and that he was a civilian photographer. I was looking up at him and he was looking down at me through his camera as he stood there snapping my picture. I asked him for help and he just kept snapping photos. I started screaming at him to help me. He didn't. Finally three members of the squad came back to where I was and started giving me cover fire over my head. The concussion from the fire was so strong that I couldn't stand the pain and I begged them to stop firing, which they did. As I write this I have a ringing in my head that may have come from that moment.

These three guys got the wounded man up on the embankment. I wound up stripping him completely naked as I searched for where he was hit. It turned out to be a bloodless hole on his right hip at his belt line. His pulse was strong and his breathing was good, but his belly was becoming distended. Soon his breathing quit and I began to give him mouth-to-mouth. His breathing started again and I felt really pumped at bringing him back. His breathing stopped again and I gave him mouth-to-mouth again, this pattern repeated a few times, until his heart stopped and his breathing quit. The last air in this man's lungs was mine. Quite an intimate relationship.

Through all of this, the photographer kept taking pictures, even after it was too dark for any of them to come out. I had decided that when we got back to the perimeter, I was going to wait for him to go to sleep and then I was going to wake him up by strangling him to death.

A chopper was brought down by flashlight and the body was put aboard. Then we moved out in the dark. It was a bitch continuing on that night. I was so tired that my internal prayer was that if anyone else got hit that night, that it should be me. I was too tired to be of any service anymore, except to take care of the photographer.

When we got back to the perimeter, Legaux was especially kind to me that night. Ron, you are a wonderful human being and the fact that I am not completely whacked out, I owe to your friendship. I never said it before, but "thank you."

Anyway.. I gave everyone time to settle in for the night and then I went out to find the photographer. I crawled around inside the perimeter looking for the photographer and finally had to ask someone in the company CP where he was and was told that he got on the chopper that took McElyea's body away. Never in my life, before or since, have I been so directed to completing a task, as I was that night. That rage and frustration directed at that man, impacted my relationships with my fellow man ever since.

I didn't know McElyea. He had just joined the platoon for the VC Island sweep. He wasn't wearing his dog tags, so those of us huddled around his body were wondering who he was and how he got there. Harrison, another new guy, showed up and then flipped out when he saw McElyea. They had joined the army on the buddy system. Harrison died on April 23 when Sellers was hit.

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