Memorial Day 2014
What did you do in the war daddy?
During World War II there were eight million soldiers, sailors and marines in our armed forces. At the height of the war in Vietnam there were over three million. Soon the total will be 440,000. This trend means that fewer and fewer Americans will have any real contact or knowledge of our military and the veterans who served in it.
The portrayal of the military today is seen mostly through video games and movies. Everyone is a navy seal or a ranger who cradle fifty caliber machine guns in their arms as they Rambo their way through the enemy. Everyone is an elite and a hero. It is life on steroids.
These warriors do exist but they represent a very small percentage of our armed forces. For example, of the 2,500,000 men who served in Vietnam only 250,000 served at the front. To put one soldier from a rifle company on the front line takes ten men to support him. You need artillery teams, cooks, truck drivers, supply accountants, weapons repairmen, ammo humpers, mechanics, communications personnel and most of all clerks who have to keep the endless records that the military requires on each and every soldier and item that is used. Not quite the image you see on the recruiting poster yet every marine knows that regardless of specialty your primary occupation is as a basic rifleman. You need to be prepared at all times to be called without notice to move to a forward position and fill in the lines.
To do so you need to know where you are, what the situation is and what you need to do. Every marine is trained to be an effective basic rifleman. He is taught year round to know map reading, fire team tactics, operation of weapons, chain of command and most importantly to follow the directions of his officers and NCO’s.
Because I had a high on my aptitude tests in boot camp and could type more than 25 words per minute, I carried a typewriter rather than a M60 machine gun. The rate of fire is slower on the typewriter and the staccato of the keys is quieter yet in some situations it is a very effective weapon.
My view of the war in Vietnam in 1968 was from my little desk at Camp Foster, Okinawa, home of the supply regiment for the 3rd Marine Division. My job though lackluster as most jobs in the military are was an essential part of our effort. I handled high priority supply requests from Vietnam. My job was to obtain unavailable high priority supplies from the other branches of service and get them to Da Nang immediately rather than requisition them from the states.
One morning, I looked up from my desk to see 3 marines in combat fatigues standing in front of me. They were unshaven, their wrinkled fatigues were a faded green from the time they spent perspiring in the heat and the jungles. Their unshined boots wore the red dust from the clay in the Vietnam soil and each of them wore the gold jump wings indicating they were Recon Marines. They were obviously not stationed on Okinawa and seemed unconcerned with inspections and dress codes. These are the marines of which movies are made.
“Can I help you sergeant?” I asked.
“The Marines in Khe Sahn need your help Lance Corporal.”
I thought “Does he mean me? They sent 3 recon up here to get me to go to Khe Sahn?
“We have to airlift supplies into Khe Sahn. The airstrip is out of commission and there is no way to land C-130 and off load its supplies. We have parachutes and supplies at Da Nang for an air drop but we have no cargo bags in which to put them.”
I greased up my typewriter, made some phone calls to cut red tape, commandeered some trucks and went off to the to the 2nd Army Logistical Command to pick up the bags. By 3 that afternoon they were on their way back to Da Nang.
I never thought about them again until 20 years later when I watched a documentary about the seige at Khe Sahn. In the film there was the famous picture of a concerned President Johnson looking at a map in the war room and declaring “The marines have to hold Khe Sahn at all costs. The battle had reached a critical crescendo. All eyes were on the Marines at Khe Sahn.
As the battle unfolded the images of the shells bursting, life in the bunkers and the isolation of the Marines was very palpable. You could feel its darkness. They were surrounded and completely cut off from aid or reinforcements. It was a grim portrait of Marines in trouble.
The film clips were from one marine’s hand held 8mm camera with which he recorded some of the scenes. From over the top of his sand bagged position you could see a plane and helicopter wreckage on the tarmac as the narrator began to talk about the desperate lack of supplies. The marine position was isolated and under fire.
Suddenly a C-130 cargo plane appeared above and as it circled the Marine fire base, you see the supplies being pushed out the back of the plane. As the parachutes slowly descended to earth, I jump up and exclaimed to my friend “Those are my cargo bags” “Those are my cargo bags!” “I sent those bags to Khe Sahn.”
It was at that time I realized I was small part of the Marine efforts even though I was 1000 miles away. I laughed as I thought of the great chain of history linking President Johnson in the war room, to the marines in Khe Sahn and ultimately to the supply accountant on Okinawa. Later I discovered more of those links. We were all parts of one body.
Some years later I met a former Marine who overheard my story. He introduced himself as former food service officer in Da Nang, who was on the airstrip that day waiting for the cargo bags from Okinawa to arrive to load up the supplies for the Khe Sahn drop. He was another link in the chain.
The other 90% of men and women who serve in these unheralded and unglamorous jobs are the heart of the combat body. Their purpose is to pump the life blood of men and material to the clenched fist at the front.
When my kids or grandkids ask me what did I do in the war? I will tell them that like all Marines I just did my job.
3 Responses