Ripley's Raiders

  Payable                  Saving My Life         Easter 67             A Dogs Life or Yours           Trip to Danang                    Going Home
    We left for another operation somewhere to the north in February 67 and ran into NVA ( read more aboutmckenzie2.jpg (23453 bytes) this in the No Shining Armor book) this is when my friend Richard McKenzie got wounded ,along with some Marines getting killed by our own Army artillery that was firing from our new base  camp Payable at the Rockpile, we had abandoned the Punchbowl base for this new one. This is where I would spend my remaining time in Nam. Patrolling, and going out on NVA operations or riding roughrider on convoys to Khe Sanh on Route 9. You can see from the photos my new bunker and the zig zag trench we had to dig by hand between bunkers. When we left to go 155.jpg (125495 bytes)out on any extended operation, the Army artillery guys would take over our bunkers until we came back. I do recall a time when we came back and most of us got crabs from those Army guys sleeping in our bunkers. We had to wash our private parts with kerosene to kill the crabs ( anyone else remember this). We would have these Army artillery guys asking if they could go out with us to see some action, strange how you want to show your virility as a young 19 year old. They would offer to buy anything that we would take off the dead NVA, just to have something to take home with them. One thing they were good for was they would give us all the ammo and grenades that we wanted, and we would steal their C rations at night off them. I think this is the month when the guy from New York tramped on the booby trap, strange how three other Marines in front of him tramped over the trip wire on patrol that day. You would just say bad luck for him or fate or some other dumb reason why he got it and not you.( click here to read about him) You know about the great USOBand.jpg (45959 bytes) shows that Bob Hope brought over to the troops, well take a look at what they sent us for entertainment, up here in no man's land. I felt so sorry for the poor band, playing in the rain, mud and hardly no one listening to them play. And then they send us the TV star Wyatt Earp (Hugh O'Brien the actor) and Floyd Patterson the boxer. Floyd was great, he was to fight Mohammed Alli who had changed his name and avoided the draft with all his antics, but Floyd spent time talking and shaking hands with everyone. I felt bad for Hugh O Brien they sent him out with his six gun and he would show us how fast he could draw his gun out, and there are Marines standing there with all kinds of guns big and small, who were killing real people with  them. We would look to the sky hoping that Ann Margaret would come visit us, or just any female, but no such luck. It was about this time that I got to see my first freshly shot dead NVA, I don't remember  who killed him, but it happened just a squad or two up form me, he shot him with his 45 pistol outside a bunker complex, when I got up to him, he did not look real, it was like I was looking at a toy doll, just laying there, his eyes wide open, this was the enemy that we all wanted to kill, but it just did not look real. I remember the Marine being so happy that he got a kill, because he said that the Captain said that anyone who gets a kill will get a mini in country R&R.        
To see more photos Click Here
  
  Saving My Life March 1st 1967
     I had made it clear to everyone that I wanted to go to Hawaii for my R&R. I had heard that if you let your hair grow a little and changed into civilian clothes you could get on a plane and fly home. I figured I could spend one day  out of five home with my girl, but miss any plane and I would get caught, but it would be worth it, so I passed up many places until I was at the top of the list for my first pick. Then this operation comes along and it just felt like it was going to be a bad one. We were told to carry as much ammo as we could carry, I looked like Poncho Via, this is March 1st 67, as we are waiting to be picked up by choppers, a jeep pulls up with the Gunny in it with Hughs and Markris , he calls out my name asking if I want to go to Singapore right now for my R&R, well shit I take one look around and drop my gear right there and get in the jeep saying the hell with Hawaii. I had never even heard of Singapore in my life before, but I didn't care, I was going right now. To read more about Hughs and Markris. For any L company  Marine they all know what happened on March 2nd 67, here I was having the time of my life, and my brothers are getting killed on that operation. It was a real strange feeling when we came back to base camp from R&R, like I said it felt like a ghost town, lots of empty bunkers, and just real quiet so many wounded and dead gone. Was it fate or just dumb luck that saved Hughs, Markris and Me from that operation. Like Larry said, what if he would have been there, could he have saved his best friend's life, what could I have done or what would have happened to me, I still sit and think about it to this day. No one will ever thank all the R&R girls who gave us a few days of real pleasure, for some guys it was the first and last time in their life, to get laid, for after they came back with that great big smile on their face, they were killed in combat. On that commercial plane to Singapore the all female flight attendants had their hands full with us, guys grabbing at them as they tried to go up and down the aisle, we acted like real animals, but on the flight back from R&R everyone was just sitting back with a big smile on their face, they could have walked up and down the aisle naked and no one would have cared. After acting like jerks in Singapore, just giving strangers money on the street, giving taxi drivers money and telling them to drive off by themselves, I did buy myself a new Nikon camera, that I used to take most of these photos from March to September "67",to this day I still have it. I remember having to take my turn carrying  out a dead Marine on a two man stretcher that we made, and how damn heavy a dead person really is, it gets to you, looking down at him and thinking that it could be you instead of him. Once I found a dead Marine, face down, that was left behind after a fire fight. We tied a rope to him to pull him over onto a poncho, so if he was booby trapped the explosion would not get us, once over, he had maggots crawling all over his face and he was bloated up twice his normal size, anyone else remember us doing this? I only have the one photo of a dead NVA on highway 9, and sometimes wish that I didn't have it. I always said that I would not like it if some NVA had a picture of me dead, and was going around showing it off for all to see, and saying look at that poor dead Marine. 
  
   Easter 67
     Another operation in March, the week of Easter, was a bad one for me, from what I remember being pinned down in a open field with mortar shells landing all around, trying to get down as close to the earth as you could, hoping that a shell would not land on you. Three of us were together, it's not nice to say what each man did in the fear of dieing, fear can make you say or do some strange things, but I do remember the wounded calling for the new medic, who was with me, and he was too scared to go help them, he  finally did go, but we had to threaten him,  it was his first and last time out with us, the Captain sent him to the rear for a replacement. This battle went on for a couple of days, we ran out of water, when the first resupply chopper came in they threw off only ammo, the thinking is that without ammo you're  dead, we prayed for another chopper to bring us water, but no luck that day. I remember being pinned down in front of a mound of dirt, I could hear the bullets whizzing over my head, I wanted to look up over that dirt so bad, fearing that when I would, a NVA would be looking at me eyeball to eyeball, later on the M60 mortar guys were to the left ofm60_01.jpg (149897 bytes) me and they were throwing those shells down the tube as fast as they could, the guy putting the shell in the tube had to move his head fast before the shell came out, well he gets out of sync and a shell hits his helmet on it's way up, and starts to come down on them, you talk about running for your life. This was the first and only time that some how I was given a squad of men to go on patrol that evening, we get close to this village and the point man sees this NVA going down the trail in front of him, so he takes off running after him and so does everyone else, then it dawned on me that he was drawing us into a ambush if we continued, I got everyone to stop dead in their tracks, hoping that it was not too late, we turned around and got the hell out of there as quick as we could, that was the only time that I ever stayed up all night by myself on a machinegun, so pissed off at what they tried to do to us, I said I'll kill anyone that I see moving, no questions asked, but I saw nothing that night. The next day we went into the village and kicked everyone out their huts and lit them on fire, we burnt down the whole village, I remember us all acting like real animals to those poor people.
We had a lot of times when all of us were firing into a area of where the shooting was coming from, when it stopped it meant that either they escaped us, or they were dead, it was hard to always say I killed that one myself, but I did think that this dead NVA was mine, and I looted what I could off him, you were to turnpad12.jpg (14680 bytes) everything that you found over to intelligence , but I kept his diary, his shoulder pad and some shaving gear. When I went to Danang in the story below, I asked a Vietnamese girl at the USO to read his diary to me, it was so sad, he had a girlfriend back in Hanoi, her photo was in the diary, and she read to me about how he missed her so much, just like I was writing to my girlfriend back home, the whole thing really got to me because he said that he did not want to be there fighting any more than I did, and that his government made him go South to fight us. Now this is still strange to this day what happened to that diary. I was working in downtown Pittsburgh when I got out, and down the street from me was Point Park Collage, one day I see a girl dressed in real Vietnamese clothes walking down the street, I stopped her, she spoke some English, she said that she was ga student at that collage, so I had her come back to my office and I showed her the diary. I said that I would pay her to translate the whole thing for me, she said she would take it and in a few days have it done. Well she never came back with the diary, and when I went to the Collage they said that no Vietnamese girl or boys  were enrolled in the collage, she just appeared and disappeared off the face of the earth, maybe she was North Vietnamese, and felt that I had no right to the diary, but I'm so sorry to this day that I trusted her with it, because it is gone forever along with his name and story. I still have the shoulder pad that he wore carrying the supplies on the long  trip down from the North on his shoulders (see photos.)
  
 A Dogs Life or Yours
There were times when I just felt like dropping that damn heavy radio, one time I threatened to do just that, I took it off saying someone else carry it, but they knew if they picked it up they would become a radioman, so I started dragging it along the ground, they all freaked out, saying I was going to break it, so I said fine someone pick the damn thing up, well no takers, I did finally pick it up. On this mission in July, I think, we had a news photographer in front of me, we had to cross a stream and this dip-shit falls under the water camera's and all, I had to cross the same stream with my camera, radio on my back and rifle in the other hand, and this jerk has the nerve to ask me if he can use my camera because his are all wet, I laughed and said you got to be kidding, not my new camera. We had two German Shepard scout dogs on this long hot operation,
and this really happened, it was so hot that for the first time we had guys dropping over from heat exhaustion, and the two dogs went down with it too, well the higher-ups are really pissed at the Marines who went down, so they call for a medevac chopper and put the two dogs on along with the press photographer who had to get his cameras out fast, leaving the Marines behind, the chopper takes off, they say that they could get more Marine replacements but they only had a few Scout Dogs and that they were more important, and that if the Marines didn't get up they would leave them behind, they got up and some how and made it out with us. I remember us making it out to a highway and hardly being able to put one foot in front of another on that march back and empty Army troop trucks passing us by, we could not ask for a ride back on them because they were Army trucks and not Marine trucks, I said to myself what the hell country are we all from anyway, but that's the way the Marine Officer pride is, it still makes me mad to think about it. About this time, or sometime around this time I think, we had a lot of guys coming down with malaria. They would get to go to the Philippines on a hospital ship, a week over and a week back. Some even claimed to have had sex with the nurses on the ship, so it sounded so good. We came down with too many infected for the Captain, I think he found out that we were laying out and rubbing jelly from the c-rations on ourselves at night, so the mosquitoes would bite us. He would not let the last guys go, he said that he had to put a stop to what was going on. I remember him and the head corpsmen getting into a real bad argument about what if they would die here, he was not going to let that happen. Again it put the fear of the Captain in us, and the rate of infected L Company Marines dropped right away.
Trip to Danang
    Some how I wound up the Lt.'s radioman a few weeks before I was to go home, Now Lt. Osborne was a Korean War Vet and had a big thirst for beer, I only remember one night in his bunker with him and Captain Ripley tying one on, and the Captain's going on and on about how he hated all American civilians and had no use for them, I was thinking to myself if he only knew how much I wanted to get out and to be a civilian, he would probably kill me right there. Well one day Lt Osborne decides that he needed a new beer cooler, hebw_osborne.jpg (14835 bytes) said that he would send me down to Danang to get him one, I said all right Lt. I ride back to Dong Ha and catch a plane to Danang, thinking I'll get the cooler and catch a plane back, it just so happened that the VC shelled the hell out of the runway and no planes could leave that day, so I'm walking around Danang and this guy pulling a rickshaw stops and asked me if I want a girl, you know boom boom, well for what ever stupid reason I said ok and hop in the back, he pull's the  curtain shut and off we go, I have no idea where he is taking me, he could be VC for all I know, but I have my M16 with me so I feel ok. We stop and I get out in a alley, he takes me to this house and talks to a older woman and comes back to me and said its all set, that I can pay him and have sex with her, I said no way am I paying for a mom-a-son, I want a young girl, he makes a big scene, yelling at me, but I hold fast, and say only young girl for boom boom. The woman leaves and comes back with her beautiful young daughter, I say now this I'll pay for, he leaves and we go into this one room house that only has beads hanging down separating one part from another, I can see the mother and father sitting at a table through the beads, but that's not the worst part, she gets undressed and I can tell she is about six months pregnant with a belly on her, talk about feeling like a jerk, there I am with my pants down around my boots, on top of her, with my M16 in my other hand, and the two parents sitting at the table, strange things a young horny guy will do in his lifetime. I slept at China beach that night and the next day flew back to Dong Ha and back to Payable. One week later,  I discover that I have a sticky thing happening around my groin area, so I go see the corpsmen about it, he asked if I had sex recently, and I said I did, well he said I must have caught something from her, great I think, I'm going home in a week and now I have this shit. He sends me back to Dong Ha where a doctor can find out what I have, I have this little note in my hand when I walk into this MASH looking room with all kinds of wounded Marines being worked on, and me with my big problem, I felt like just leaving, but this one doctor, seeing me,  looks at the note, he said he'll take a blood sample from me and to come back in a few hours and he'll let me know what he finds, I still felt like shit that he had to waste his time with me and my stupid problem. I find out that I have what is better known as jungle rot of the groin area, from always walking in water and being wet, and that if I cover this cream over me and wrap myself up like a mummy including my penis with the bandages he was giving me that I should beme2.jpg (34841 bytes) ok by the time I get home next week. So that is how I spent my last week, trying to keep myself wrapped up, and laying out in the sun every chance I could get trying to get that last golden tan to go home with.
  
  Going Home
    I  run into Rich Banks in Danang, as he was waiting for his plane to leave he decides to get laid one last time in Nam, he paid the whore but before he gets to do anything the MP's come and he has to run out the back, so now he is pissed, he wants me to go back with him, to either get laid or his money back, so like a fool I go along, getting caught means loosing a stripe on the spot, plus in my condition I can't get laid anyhow. We go in, and there are two whores, Rich grabs this girl by the throat and up against the wall, saying he wants laid or his money, really making a scene, scaring the hell out the girls. She finally said ok, the other one thinks I'm going to work her over, so she offers me a free-be, she pulls my pants down and takes one look at my mummy looking wrapped up penis and runs screaming out of the house hoping not to catch what ever I had.
I get to Oki, and we all go out on the town that night for one last time. What I drunken mess we were, most I can't ever remember, but being in one bar with guys doing girls in the booths, on the floor and every other place. The next morning standing out in formation I had one hell of a headache, I thought that I was going to pass out, I asked if I could go and get some aspirin from the corpsmen to help the pain. What a big mistake that was, they took my temperature and it was 104, they said it was against military regulations to let anyone on a plane with a temperature that high, I begged them, my plane was to leave at 3:00 in the afternoon, they said no way, and it left without me. They put me in a tub of ice water time and time again trying to get my temperature to come down, after screwing with me for two days they put me in a ambulance to be taken to a Army hospital. There I am laying in the back of the ambulance thinking I'm going to die on the way, I make it out of Nam only to die in the back of some ambulance. When I get to the hospital I am paralyzed from the waist down and can not move my legs. They take me right away to have a spinal tap done and put me on a floor with other disabled guys, some Army, Air Force, Navy but I was the only Marine. What a bunch of pissed off guys at the world, and for some reason me, calling me jar head and every other nasty name. The male nurse's were these guys who did not want to fight in Nam so this is where the Army put them, and they did not like me, making me beg them for help getting to the bathroom at night, after that I said screw you and would roll out of bed and drag myself down the hall to the bathroom, Marines don't beg. I got a shot in the ass twice a day by a real beautiful nurse who was very nice to me. After asking time and time again what the hell is wrong with me the doctor finally comes in and tells me he thinks that I drank out of a dirty milk glass in one of the bars in Oki that night, and that I have some kind of spinal meningitis. My parents were expecting me home on a certain date, and I never showed up, they sent in a Red Cross worker for me to dictate a telegram to my parents, I went into great detail to explain what had happened and that I was getting better and every thing was fine. They get this telegram saying that I'm in a hospital with a fever, end of message, The Red Cross, my parents went nuts, I'll never give a dime to them to this day for that short message. Well after being in the hospital for two weeks I could start to move my toes and then my legs. One day the doc comes in and ask if I want to go home, you talk about being happy, I was on the first plane out that day. When I  get home I no longer had a tan and look like hell, but I didn't care, I was finally home. When I got discharged from the Marines I had a short time to file any charges against them for any thing that I thought happened to me for disability compensation, so I go down to the Federal building in Pittsburgh and see this old doctor who asked what's wrong with me, I tell him my story, and say nothing right now, but what happens if some day down the road from now, I wake up some morning and I can't move my legs again, I want you to be responsible for taking care of me and my family. This jerk is making me run up and down steps, jumping up and down on one leg, I say doc, there is nothing wrong with me right now don't you get it, he said so you're out of luck, I left very pissed off. The American Legion said that they would get my medical records from Kansas city and fight my case for me, when the records came the Army doctor only wrote down that I was admitted with a high fever, that was it, nothing about meningitis or being paralyzed, they said I could try to track down the doctor and ask I he could remember me and fill in the treatment, I said shit you think he is going to remember me with all the other guys on that floor, so I dropped it. So now you all know that if I ever wake up paralyzed some day, I'll make them pay, some how some way.