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05-13-2009,
11:16 AM
HairyEyeball
Moderator
Service: Marine Corps
Status: Veteran / Prior Service
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: In the moment
Posts: 708
Re: HMFIC Sends
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"Your" Marine Corps? Don't try sticking your chest out with me
as if I've never served in the USMC. I don't owe you anything. I've
never disrespected any Marine for his service especially a combat
veteran. If being in the Marines is the only great thing about your life
then you are indeed in a sad state of affairs. You sound like the
special project for DI's. Trust me I don't fear DI's anymore. Too old.
0311
2/9
3/1
Desert Storm
Somalia
OIF
How bout you etuff guy?
Have a good day and take the rank off your collar. Going to finish my
masters degree now. How bout you? Good day.[/quote]
Since you ask, sonny, Sgt, DOR 01JAN69, 6242, 4634. 8652 (and a few
others not 'official', including 0331 and UH-34 left seat), RVN 67, 68,
69: Con Thien, Khe Sanh,
Hue
City
, and a few others. HMM-163, HMH-463, HMM-164, 3/26. And I earned the
'Smoky Bear' in '69.
Your language, your attitude, and your apparently inflated sense of
self-importance are an insult to many good Marines - and Corpsmen -
who've been a part of this forum for years, including at least one
Tarawa Vet (search the archives) as well as people from your era.
I strongly suggest you lose the attitude, familiarize yourself with our
SOPs, and play by our rules in our house: If you continue blundering
around like a drunken LCpl in the O Club just to prove how badass you
are, you're not going to be very happy here. You may also notice that I
chose to go PM rather than calling you out in the general forum.
------- Duke
(XXXXXXXXXXXXX's
message to Mr. Eyeballsweat)
Honestly, good sir,
if you would be so kind as to verify, once and for all, how an air
winger did quality time with the grunts in Vietnam
and earned
5 Purple Hearts,
if I understood your posts correctly, then you will quickly have about
25 new Marines in your corner.
You've got a golden opportunity to shut up a whole lot of new assholes
in this joint.
I'm thinking you should call a school circle and show everybody your
bonafides.
Semper Fi
[/quote]
The 'how' is simple - a few of us were 'volunteered' for a patrol early
on during my first tour. I was still '10 feet tall and bulletproof' (or
young, stupid and healed faster), discovered I liked it, and was good at
it, and didn't need as much sleep in those days. Word got around, so
when people were needed I was occasionally asked for, and when I could,
I went.
Two
of the awards were for the same incident, my '60 was hit by something,
probably an RPG, and I took shrapnel in both hands and legs, but somehow
got 'reported' as separate incidents. I had a cheekbone broken in
hand-to-hand, and got dinged in the thigh and stomach (one on the
ground, one in the air) on two other occasions.
I don't 'advertise', there are only a half-dozen people here who've
actually seen my rack, and I wish 03 hadn't made that point - it's not
'who I am', and I prefer to be judged on what I currently do or say -
during my recent run for political office, all that came out was that I
was in the Corps and went to Nam - than what HQMC saw fit to honor me
with decades ago. I'd appreciate it if you kept it that way.
----- Duke
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Night
Ambush
A Memoir
J.D. “Duke” Schechter
I really hate being shot at. Okay, maybe not as much as I hate being
shot, which truly sucks, but getting shot at is right up there at the
top of my shitlist. Now, I get my chance to give some back, up close and
personal, for the rockets, the mortars, the long-range sniping. The FNGs
were practically drooling at the chance to ‘get some’, or maybe
crapping themselves, and the short-timers were caught between
‘payback’ and ‘this better not screw up my seat on the Freedom
Bird’, stroking – consciously or unconsciously – whatever lucky
talisman, murmuring prayers or curses, thinking each in his own way how
he welcomed this little walk in the woods as much as Custer welcomed
more Indians.
I belonged here about as much as teats belong on a bull: I was an
Avionics technician with a top-secret/crypto clearance, a combat
photographer, a NATOPS NCO. Then again, every Marine is first and
foremost a rifleman, and I was not just an expert rifleman, not just
Recon qualified, for the moment, at least, I was a Sergeant of Marines.
Of course, I qualified with the M-14, which they took from me this tour
and replaced with the Mattel toy, which used a full magazine to stop a
charging chihuahua. No sweat, I was now the proud owner of an M-1929
Thompson, capable of stitching perfect vertical lines in the sky when
fired in bursts of more than three rounds. Still, it had stopping power.
Serious stopping power.
Before leaving the base, affectionately known as MCRD Marble Mountain,
Chickensh*it,
Vietnam, we’d gone over, and over, and over the basics. Standard
L-shaped ambush, two reinforced platoons, hand-picked from Zulu company.
Draw extra ammo, fill and chill two canteens, pad the canteen cups with
spare socks, lampblack and M-Nu on shiny surfaces, liberal applications
of electrical tape to muffle anything that rang, scraped or clanked,
camo makeup. No stink-pretty, no smoking one hour prior to departure –
Luke the Gook can hear the sound of a mosquito puncturing skin at fifty
paces, and smell American cigarettes at three kliks, upwind. Not much to
do about the way diet affects body odor, especially in a country where a
balanced diet includes rat and rancid fish heads. I ponder that every
now and again, contemplating the quarter-century old C-rats we regularly
feast on. Another century, another war, another flavor of Injun
Territory, but Larry Verne’s words rang true as ever: “What’m I
doin’ here?...Say Mr. Custer, you mind if I be excused the rest of the
afternoon? (Please, Mr. Custer, © Larry Verne 1959).”
That managed to kill all of one full minute, possibly even 75 seconds.
The Six was somewhere behind Bug Juice’s platoon, strung out along the
right side of the trail, opposite the claymores: I could visualize the
60-meter kill zone, I couldn’t see sh*it.
The moon had gone down, and the triple-canopy jungle was darker than
Stalin’s soul. I had the blocking force, and nothing on two legs or
four was going to squeeze, tunnel, crawl, ooze or otherwise get by my
people. We were cocked and locked, but as HMFIC of the anvil I had too
much on my mess tray to worry about adding personal notches on my grips.
My job was to guarantee the effectiveness of my position, and any
peckerhe*ad
through my line meant dead Marines. I was just mastering writing bashful
conqueror letters to certain ladies back stateside. I wasn’t about to
tackle ‘Dear mom and pop your son died a hero’, and that meant open
season on anything in black pajamas or palm-green cottons. I’d
situated second squad on a rise just left of center, where they could
catch the front ranks in a crossfire without endangering main force, but
were just a quick sprint away if we needed reinforcements.
We were here for one reason and one reason only: Sat Cong. Kill VC. Or
NVA regulars. Or anyone else stupid enough to go for a stroll in the
jungle on a moonless night, on an unmarked trail, somewhere in the
middle of a jungle where sweaty, tired, hungry, ticked-off Marines had
been unleashed. Briefly, I flashed on my first patrol, less than a week
in country: I’d volunteered in typical Marine Corps fashion: “I need
three volunteers from this section – Red, Mary, and the Rabbi. See the
Shirt. Now.” It was an S&D, snoopin’ and poopin’ in
Charlie’s back yard, and the Lieutenant finished the mission brief
with the rhetorical ‘We’re goin’ on a VC hunt, any questions’,
the missing interrogative palpable. If you had a question, you hadn’t
been listening, and not listening in a combat zone got a good man
killed, never mind your sorry as*s.
“Just one, sir. What’s the bag limit?” Easy to ask when the only
part of an automatic weapon you’ve ever faced was the handle. Funny
how your perspective changes after you’ve counted some coup, collected
a few scalps, cut a few notches. When the excrement makes contact with
the ventilation mechanism, all the training and repetition, the
‘combat mindset’ snaps in and you’re on autopilot. A great green
killing machine. A jawbone-operated, beer-cooled, garbage-fed,
semi-slash-fully automatic amphibious engine of death and destruction
that thrives on chickensh*it.
It’s when the shooting stops and the twin bit*ch
goddesses Fate and Luck have had their game that you learn whether you
still have a claim to humanity. Provided, of course, you survive.
It’s easy to write letters home sounding like Roy Rogers in a flak
jacket, bragging to Susie Rottencrotch how you saved a whole village
from those nasty commies. It gets a little harder to look at a mirror
and see a callow youth with the dead eyes of a hired killer: Eyes that
have seen eviscerated teenagers, fetal fragments mingling with shredded
entrails, the same eyes behind the finger that triggered the causitory
lead hail. The SKS in her shattered hand was reason enough to fire, she
was The Enemy. In death, she’s someone’s daughter, someone’s
sister, almost someone’s mother. Conundrum: As a Marine in a combat
zone, your job is to stay alive by insuring those opposed to that
concept do not. As a human being, with perhaps a spark of the Divine
somewhere in what purports to be a soul, you cannot fail to be uneasy,
bordering on disgusted at the act you have committed: The wanton death
of another human soul at your hands. Kill or be killed. He/she/it is
not, cannot be, a human being. It’s dehumanized, it’s ‘the
enemy’. As long as the dichotomy exists, you wonder at your
effectiveness, your value, your loyalty to your buddies. Harden yourself
to it, immerse yourself in necessity of killing or dying, just flat
refuse to let it affect you, you forfeit any claim to humanity. This is
(with apologies to Yul Brynner) a puzzlement. So much for the Joy of
Combat.
With lessons from that first patrol, and every one since, clear as the
airbrushed skin of Miss September, I went over every piece of killing
gear I’d brought: The 50-round drum securely in place, safety on and
one up the pipe; the two thirty-round stick mags taped assho*le-to-appetite,
both .45s in C-1; Ka-Bar, Bayonet and both hunting knives shaving-sharp
and securely sheathed; bullet-bouncer and tin pot secured; all ammo
pouches full and snapped. Might as well check the troops. Low-crawled to
the east end of the blocking force where 1st squad had set up the BAR.
The Sgt. was still short of his 18th birthday, but had picked up his
chevrons with his second Silver Star. A skinny towhead from a flyspeck
on the map of Mississippi, with the kind of fish-belly white skin that
never tans, just burns, he’d been ineptly yclept Jim by parents with a
sense of humor: Ed and Hilda Crowe. No wonder he was a pistol in a knife
fight, growing up he’d probably had a lot of practice.
Made my way back down the line, checking here and altering a position
there, swapping a few words of encouragement, a bad joke, a shared bit*ch
with the troops. Here I was, all of 22 and those who didn’t call me
Sarge referred to me a ‘Pappy’. Better than ‘Mother Hen’, I
suppose. Ol’ Watash hadn’t lost a man on patrol yet, and this would
be a real poor time to start. I checked the fire lanes on the M-60, and
noted with some satisfaction that the traverse stop was adjusted so that
the belly of the trail where the kill force waited was just outside its
field. Expected, but still satisfying in the way you order prime rib at
The Old Homestead – you know it’ll be perfect, but you need that
first bite to prove it. These are Marines, our business is killing, and
business is good.
I had a radioman glued to me, radio silence was absolute even after
contact, unless it really hit the fan and we needed air support or
serious medevac, and it dawned on me even with the four-foot limpid*ck
antenna the PRC-25 sported, I’d hadn’t heard it brush anything. The
boy was good, at least so far. The Six was Hammer, Bug Juice was Snow
White (I’d have to ask him about that call sign), and I was Boy Scout.
I didn’t feel much like a boy scout at the moment, unless they give
out merit badges for ambush craft or defeating jungle rot, decided to
make an appointment to think about it. Ten o’clock next summer sounded
about right. I wanted a cigarette so badly I was willing to swap it for
my chance to be President, which meant I wasn’t concentrating on what
I was supposed to be doing. If I had been, I might have heard the noise
off to my left a skosh earlier, where the two platoons joined. If that
was one of my people screwing around, he’d better pray he was our only
casualty. If he lived long enough to get back to base, after I chewed
him up one side and down the other, I’d make sure the Old Man busted
his ass so far down he’d be saluting air farce hooch maids for the
next 20 years.
The
Chicago Piano may be one hell of a weapon in a brawl, but it was not
designed to be transported by someone in a low crawl, flak jacket and
silent hurry. It is also a personal weapon, and to a Marine, your
personal weapon is treated better than yourself, your wife, your mother
and your firstborn. Combined. On Christmas morning. This meant the heel
of the stock and the snail magazine, which had somehow grown to the
dimensions of a pregnant basketball, will not touch the ground, which,
in turn, tended to get very hard on the elbows. All of which, however,
became somewhat academic when we – yes, I still had the radioman
following at high port – reached the ‘source of the disturbance’.
It was one of mine, a Lance Corporal Delbert with an unpronounceable
Hungarian last name, but I doubted the necessity of a court martial. In
fact, he was a sterling example of discipline under duress, silent, his
rifle still on ‘safe’, firmly clutched and unfired, as all one
hundred fourteen pounds of him (plus combat gear) was dragged from his
position. His flak jacket, cotton sateen covering loose over the
shoulder plates, was firmly in the grasp of a tiger’s teeth as the
look in his eyes told all and sundry he had not yet decided whether to
sh*it
or go blind. My money was on the former. The tiger’s eyes, on the
other hand, had a somewhat harder and more determined look. I couldn’t
shoot, no matter how badly I wanted the hide. Screw the endangered
species nonsense, it’d give away our position, there were no rocks to
throw, and I certainly wasn’t about to waste a grenade. Frustrated?
Does ‘understatement’ ring a bell? I did the only logical thing a
frustrated combat trooper could do: Rising to my knees I punched the cat
full in the nose. Simultaneously, as I later learned, Bug Juice at the
other end, one might almost say facing the ‘situation’, reached out
and grabbed him some tail. Large predatory cats are not, as I
understand, accustomed to this sort of treatment. Voicing his
displeasure, and perhaps some confusion, the cat hastily melted back
into the jungle, perhaps in search of a dinner that behaved in a more
normal manner. With a whispered “no sweat, Sarge” Mary crawled back
where he belonged as the rest of us resumed sweating and providing light
snacks for mosquitoes and leeches. Charlie either took another route, or
possibly the night off. From that day on, though, nobody called the kid
by his first name, nobody called him ‘Mary’. From that night until
the day he retired 22 years later as a Master Gunnery Sergeant, he’s
still known as the kid that was almost eaten by a 300-lb. pussy.
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