There's no place like home

It was a sunny, warm, and very humid day in 1967. They were announcing on the radio that South African Surgeon Christiaan Barnard had just successfully performed the first human to human heart transplant. And even though the 53 year old Cape town grocer Louis Washkansky only lived 18 days the surgery was considered a resounding success.
I was listening to AFRS the government sponsered radio station that military personnell throughout the Republic of Vietnam listened to in 1967. It was received in the 'field" on channel 99 of the PRC-25 radios we would be carrying. That was 1 channel above the BS net which was the channel we used for non-official B.S. or talking about home, the Sox, Mom, Dad, the pesky siblings, the girlfriend, you know all that stuff that is so vital, so important to the young men thousands of miles from home and facing death every day.
 Even though this story is about Vietnam that sentence holds true whether your in Vietnam, Korea, The Gulf, Afganistan, Panama, or anywhere that those brave young men and women go to protect the life, and freedoms so many back home take for granted.
I was 18 years and 3 days old. They had held me over until I turned 18 to let me go and being young and dumb I was anxious to kick some vietnamese A$$.I arrived via a United flight in Danang, South Vietnam, my first day of a tour that would remain with me for life. The dues that I was raised I needed to "pay" for the right to enjoy the life and benefits of living in the greatest country on Earth. The United States of America.
I was (am) a marine and was on my way to 1st Amtrac Battalion located at the mouth of the Cua Viet river less than 10 miles south of the DMZ. I boarded a C-130 military cargo aircraft and flew to Dong Ha where I boarded a "fast river boat" I, and the 3 other FNG's were unarmed and hiding below the bulkhead during the 3 times we received sniper fire on that trip. Upon arrival at 1st Tracs I was told that they were setting up an anti-personell radar system along the DMZ (the AN-PPS-5 & 6 currently used by the Border Patrol along the US / Mexican Border) and I was the first person to be trained for it. Yay!!
The first rule in Cua Viet was if you hear the siren head for the nearest bunker and get in it until the all clear is blown. After all the classroom training ( 1 day LOL) I was considered proficient and thus the person to walk along the beach way down there away from the bunkers and stuff so the others could detect me. I was walking along looking out at the ocean when I heard a swoosh, splash, and watched a geyser of water shoot up. There were about 6 of these and some "misses" thgat hit the sand. I stood there, like the first time I saw the Aurora Borelis, in awe. Wow, that was cool, I thought. Then the siren came on and off I ran to the closest bunker about 200 yeards up the beach. Well, I made it and being a big dummy never realized until after the fact that I had just experienced my first "incoming" and those cool geysers were actually caused by rockets hitting, and exploding in the water, and the ones that hit the sand were not misses, and the fact that they seemed to follow me back to the compound was probably true because they were "walking" the rockets back to hit the compound as I was running the same direction. Then I got the shakes, and a lot of my cockiness went away.
Being the first FNG I was in charge of the other newbies who arrived a day or two after me. We set up our first outpost at a place called C-10 about 4 miles North of Cua Viet. Now, I forgot to tell my Mom that I was no longer in the "rear" training the newbies on the Radar but was in fact out there operating one.
In fact she sent me some flower seeds to pant flowers at the front of my Hooch. I couldn't tell her those days ended when I was "trained"
I was doing the Radar thing until May or so, and there were some adventures, and mis-adventures. One time a Vietnamese bad guy through a chi-com grenade into the fuel storage area at Cua Viet. I happened to be down there that night. Now Cua Viet was a major distibution hub for all of the Northern I-corps. Navy ships would off load there and they would ship the stuff inland to Dong Ha and Quang Tri etc. So, there were a lot of fuel bladders (rubberized storage cells) as well as frieght, c-rats, equipment, etc. Well that night 1 chi-com destroyed most of everything. A helicopter was blown up as it tried to lift off, fires raged, and stuff fell from the sky for hours crashing onto and through hooches, buildings, vehicles and the next morning I was running up the beach on top of an Amtrac and the entire 4 miles was littered with cases of c-rats, beer, sodas, weapons, etc. It made all the fireworks I had ever seen insignificant.
One night I was watching the screen deep inside the bunker I and the other newbies built just to hold the Radar receiver when I noticed some major movement about a mile Northwest of us. I estimated the group to be around 100 and they went behind a sand hill which was a couple hundred yards long and 50 - 60 feet high. I kept watching and they didnt come out the other side so I called around on the radio to see if we had any "friendlies" in the area only to find out we didnt. So, I began calling for a fire mission. The 155's in Dong Ha was busy, as were the 105's in Cua Viet. I kept trying my sources to call for a fire mission when this large, booming, voice echoed in my headphones. "Unit calling for fire mission. This is the USS Boston can we help"? Wow, the sound and power of the voice almost made you want to climb under a table, after I overcame my shock and awe I responded yes sir, and proceeded to provide a description of what I needed inluding coordinates. The big booming voice came back saying they needed to re-position but would be available in a few minutes. Well, a few minutes later and the voice came back and simply said DUCK.
I knew they were shooting thier 8" guns and would be firing a flat trajectory meaning the rounds would be just above us and several hundred pounds and very large, at least compared to the .223's that I carried or the 106 mm I had loaded into an Ontos back in school. They fired 42 rounds and everyone sounded like a frieght train and you were laying between the tracks when it came over. After the show I went back down to the radio and called saying there was no movement, in fact there was no sand hill at all. That big voice said have a nice war and went away. next morning I, and the others, looked out at the new landscape to the Northwest, FLAT, no hill, no trees, no nothing but sand.
I was brought back to Cua Viet one day and told that I had done a good job and my reward was to now do a tour with the "grunts" so I was re-assigned to Charley Company First Battalion Ninth Marines otherwise known as the "Walking Dead" a name bestowed upon them earlier by a North Vietnamese Radio Personality known as Hanoi Jane.
My frist day with "C" 1/9 (I was assigned to 1st platoon) I was led to a foxhole and handed an M-16 with a starlight night vision scope on it. Now the starlight was as long as the M-16 but bulkier and heavier not all nice and compact like now. I was told my job was to watch a foot bridge and shoot anyone trying to cross it and that they liked to hide behind water buffalo as they led them across. Well, once again, being a FNG I asked "then how do I see them if they're behind a water bull"? I was told that any water buffalo with six legs I was to shoot it and then shoot the guy behind it. Fortunatly no water buffalos died that night, my first night with "C" 1/9 was uneventful. The next morning we received word that the heli's had spotted a body alonside a bomb crater in an area we had been at two weeks previously and that it was lying out in the direct sunlight and was probably the mssing one of ours. So a team was gotten together and my platoon sergent said "send Hale, he's new and may as well loose his cherry" and so began my tour with "C" 1/9, the grunts. We patrolled the area between the Cua Viet river and the DMZ, the Ocean, and Laos. the only time we got to ride in helicopters or trucks were when they wanted us there quicker than walking and the only time we saw hot food was the night before we were to go into the  poop and that was always by helicopter and if they brought ice cream, well, you may as well write that letter to Mom because you weren't coming back. We lved up to our name and had hot food, even ice cream more than I liked at the time.
I remember Apricots in Cua Viet, Huang Nam Lang a 17 year old vietnamese girl I met on my second trip to the hospital, this one in Danang, Lt. Vision (not her name but what she was) on the hospital ship for my first medi-vac, beautiful country, some nice people both Marines and Vietnamese, and some not so nice people Marines and Vietnamese, performing security for a medical team that went to villages to perform basic clinic type medical checkups on the locals both old and young. A little 6 year old French / Vietnamese girl I met on those trips that was cute as a bug and became my best buddy for that short time, and Christmas 1968 (its written about in a previous blog) and the United flight home.
There is certainly no place like home when your on foriegn soil thousands of miles from home carrying a rifle and trying to be the one still alive every day. I loved it, hated it, regret it, would do it again, and try to forget it as I try to remember it.