“Find the Cost of Freedom”

5 December 1969:

LZ Stinson (also called The Hill) sat atop a small mountain, more or less in the center of our area of operations. The mountaintop had been bulldozed and stripped of any vegetation. The Battalion commander was there, along with support staff, a communications facility, artillery, heavy mortars and a mess hall. All of this was protected by a ring of bunkers, which, in turn, were protected by concertina wire, mines and a lot of lights. The Battalion’s infantry companies took turn defending Stinson, just as we took turns defending Ðai Lôc.



We spent eight days pulling guard duty at night and attending to chores during the days. Our time was occupied by cleaning weapons, replacing worn equipment and, of course, filling sand bags. We also had hot food once or twice a day and saw a couple of movies. Because we were a bit less likely to get shot at on the Hill, we were able to relax a little.

When another company was brought in by helicopter, we left Stinson, walking down the east side of the mountain. Now, for the first time, I was going out into the countryside … in the field … walking around, exposed, with nothing to protect me but thin air (and a steel helmet). Sure, we’d been at Ðai Lôc, and carried out a couple of patrols in the vicinity of the village. Mostly, though, we had been in the perimeter, guarding the local citizenry (who may or may not have wanted to be guarded by us).

This was different, though. Ninety or a hundred men were walking single file down the mountain, across the fields and rice paddies. Our platoon was at the rear of the column. It was mid-afternoon of another cloud-filled day – warm and humid, undisturbed by wind. The rain that came in torrents in November had lessened some, but not by much.

When we were moving across the land like this, whether as a company or smaller units on patrol, everyone walked well apart from each other. If the person in front of you hit a booby trap, it lessened the danger to you, at least a little. If you walked into an ambush, staying farther apart made it more difficult for the Viet Cong or NVA to hit several people quickly. Twelve feet was not an unusual distance. You developed a sense for this pretty quickly. If you didn’t, somebody would let you know. On this day, coming down off Stinson, walking through open country, we were probably strung out 800 to 1,000 feet.

Rarely did we know more than a day in advance where we were headed in the coming 24-48 hours. What we knew today was that we were walking east, towards the old railroad line and then, well, we’d see. Our platoon was hardly off the shoulder of the mountain when a rapid burst of rifle fire split the hot afternoon. One of the rounds went right over my head, 30 feet in the air. Immediately, there was return fire from the front of the Company. It was a sniper. He probably just fired a burst and ducked into a tunnel … or ran like hell.

That single bullet, made in Russia or China, sent speeding above my head by some poor Vietnamese peasant, fixed me with excitement and fear. It began the defensive tightening up inside that grew and burrowed deeper over following weeks and months.

The gunfire over, a cigarette or two smoked, we started moving eastward again. Near the end of the day we set up a night defense position two or three kilometers from LZ Stinson.

Morning came. Moving east again, we headed towards the village of Trà Binh Dông. The day was quiet, threatening rain. A villager came up to us with a sick child. He looked to be about ten years old. The company medic examined him and determined that the kid was suffering from what looked like malaria. A medevac[1] helicopter took the boy and his mother to a hospital in Quảng Ngãi city.

Three or four hours later, as we moved through some trees, a booby trap went off, killing one man and wounding three. The same medevac that had taken the sick Vietnamese boy to a hospital for treatment was now taking four American boys to a different hospital. The booby trap had been a hand grenade, hanging in a tree and set off by some sort of pressure device.

We set up a new night defense position. Around 11pm, the sky was lit by rifle fire coming out of the night, ripping into us - Viet Cong assaulting our position. We returned fire, but against whom, and where? All we could do was shoot in the direction we thought their firing had come from. This was the dark uncertainty that defined the war for us. Here, we were vulnerable, conspicuous, rarely knowing who our assailants were, or where they were.

In the morning, a patrol went out to check the area where the gunfire had come from. They found four dead Viet Cong, one who was wounded, some weapons, and a packet of documents.

According to the Battalion Daily Staff Journal[2] for that day, the documents included “1x award to Nguyen Thao for service, 1x travel pass to Troung Toh Nha in Binh Son, several propaganda leaflets, 1x notebook with an entry containing roster of VC and the number of Americans and ARVN’s[3] killed by each man, 1x notebook of songs and propaganda.”

Songs and propaganda. To keep spirits and morale up while they waited in rain-washed mountain forests, hiding among the people, hoping to strike a blow against the Occupiers and their Vietnamese allies … for that is how they saw it. And what became of Nguyen Thao and Troung Toh Nha? Were they local men, from Quảng Ngãi, motivated to join a guerilla movement? Or had they come from up north, leaving wives or girl friends or children hundreds of kilometers away? Did they survive the American War, and go back to their families, like all of us yearned to do?

A couple of days later, December 9th, the reality of our war was made very clear. Around noon, we were suddenly fired on. Thirty or forty rounds of rifle fire and a couple of M-79[4] grenade rounds.

One man in our company was killed. He was going home, two weeks before Christmas. It was not the way anyone wanted to go home. Not him, not me, and not Nguyen Thao, either.

In the days following, the mood in the company was cold. We could go for two weeks and not be shot at. Just walk, search a village and walk some more. Now, though, two men had been killed and three others wounded, within two days of each other. The fear that no one talked about, that we all pushed inside to keep from thinking about, to keep from confronting as we walked from village to village, wound itself a little tighter and was pushed a little deeper.

We were being marched north, toward the Sông Trà Bong. Each day, for two days, we walked and ran into Viet Cong. We fired on them, called in artillery on them, and then found nothing except small craters in the ground where the artillery shells had landed. Blasted trees, destroyed rice paddies; hot empty days, searching for phantoms.

Near the river, we joined a Company of Army Engineers – bulldozers and tanks were their weapons. Our new task was to protect these guys while they ran their bulldozers over the Vietnamese countryside, on either side of the road that paralleled the Trà Bong River. The idea seemed to be that, by scrapping the land bare for two or three hundred yards out from the road, it would be easier to protect the road and defend the villages along it. The people who lived there, alongside the Trà Bong road, would probably have preferred to keep their homes and fields, rather than sacrifice them to the greater good.

The statistics from the Daily Staff Journal dryly tell the story. 13 Dec 69: “B Co. reports clearing 28,500 square meters of land”. 14 Dec 69: “B Co. reports clearing 30,000 square meters of land.” 15 Dec 69: “B Co. reports clearing 26,000 square meters of land.” And so on, for another two days. Over 100,000 square meters of land was scraped, laid bare - almost 1.3 million square feet. Who measured this? An area the size of seven or eight city blocks was flattened. We were destroying the country, in order to save it. Except, we didn’t save it.

Christmas was less than a week away. Everyone became a lot more cautious. We found a tunnel one day, and just blew it up, without looking inside. That day and the next, we also found two American artillery rounds that had hit but not exploded. We blew both of those up, too. When the VC found unexploded ordnance like these, they were turned into very deadly booby traps, capable of killing many people at once.

Five days before Christmas, just before dark, we ran into a large group of Viet Cong or NVA. They fired and ran, and we ran after them. In the end, twelve North Vietnamese lay dead. One of our men ran into a booby trap during the pursuit, was wounded and had to be medevaced out. Fear of dying just before Christmas was swamped by adrenaline.

Later that day, we were picked up by helicopters (the Hueys that ferried troops all over Viet Nam) and taken to the head of a valley in the far south-west corner of our AO[5]. For two days we worked our way down the valley. Few people lived there. It was a route for the VC and NVA to filter down from the mountains and fade into the dozens of villages set among the hills and rice paddies of northern Quảng Ngãi Province. Our task was to keep them from doing that, at least for a little while.

The day after being dropped off, moving down the valley, we suddenly came under heavy small arms fire. We returned fire, and then gave chase. Once again, one of our men ran into a booby trap during the pursuit. While we waited for the medevac chopper to take him back to a hospital in Chu Lai, one platoon searched the area of the firefight. They found several dead Viet Cong and some weapons. Their war ended in American graves, unidentified. Their families had only unanswered questions. We moved on down the valley.

24 December 1969:

Christmas Eve. We got lucky. Our turn for stand down coincided with Christmas. We walked back up to Stinson, were picked up by choppers, and ferried back to Chu Lai.

Trucks brought us from the Chu Lai helicopter pad to our stand down area along the beach. We were back where I had first met these guys, barely two months ago. It seemed much, much longer. Two or three men – replacements – were waiting there, to join the Company. A hot shower and a cold beer sounded really good.


[1] Medical Evacuation
[2] These were summaries of the daily activities and engagements of each unit in the battalion, kept by a Staff Duty Officer. These are now publically available through the Freedom of Information act.
[3] Army of the Republic of Viet Nam: the army of the South Vietnamese government.
[4] This was a short weapon that fired a large round. The projectile exploded like a hand grenade. Like an old shotgun, you flipped a lever and opened the weapon at the rear. It could also be used like a hand-held mortar, to fire over trees or buildings.
[5] AO: Area of Operations