[Avast] -Haa. heips. -Haa? Katsosu taskuun. Täällä näin. Avastun puhelimesta neste Äppi. Sillä saa talennusta viissenttiä litralta mobilitan kauksista. Etuaan voimassa neste liikenneasemmilla toonko kuunajan. Ei koske expressasemia. Hyödy näetuvai kai heti. -Okei. -Moiikka. Mitäs menee? -Nyt onko olla makiaan mahan täydeltä. -Nuken rokkaitti. Tuli vedetua oikein urakalalla limpariin. -Moiikka söydä kumminkin. -Moiikka tuntoki. -Nukke ei oo jätki. -Jahvitti jälkäriksi lisää jätki. -Nahyvä. -Ot kulla pala mä rövret tuntu edelle. -Anne mä arvahal. -Ot alukutipatilla. -Sella pasilla. -Rispekt. -Haariat ja varamaan kokot erhen riemuristen kuutipatille. Tallinksi liapistefi. -Kiitit. -Kiitit. -Kenharbau. Täällä on tullut vahdua. ja NVA-NVC-sia on pahdalla, että NVA-NVC-sia on.
These pilots were so brave, you know, they were just getting all of the wounded and I remember that helicopter taken off and I remember seeing that the gunner on the side with his M60 just, you know, just blazing away at the where the firing was coming from and he made it out of there. And when they got back, I think they had to get rid of the helicopter because it had so many holes in it and I remember leaving that operation with mortars coming in and I'll never forget those mortars because I had nightmares when I came home from Vietnam about getting hit with mortars thinking I was going to die so many times, so many times. So and that was our first that was our first battle and that was nothing compared to the future battles that were coming in. You know, you're terrified, you're wondering, Jesus, you know, if this is the first battle, I hope I don't have to go through many more. Well, that's not what the case, you know, in operation, bo charger. You know, we ended up back on the ship for maybe two or three days. We'd be on a mission for a month out there and they'd bring us back for supplies and stuff like that and then they'd helicopter us and then we had bo charger in June. Bo charger was pretty, pretty vicious. What we had to do is we had to go into the DMZ and many marine units and also they had the South Vietnamese police and everything. They were going to get all these people that all these villagers that lived near the DMZ. They wanted them out because the NBA were coming down. They were infiltrating over the DMZ and they were creating such havoc and these people were right in the middle and you know, it was our job, special landing force Alpha. We had a come in and along with the other units, marine units that were in there on Bo charger, they called in the Amtrak's and they put the people in the Amtrak's and then they would get them out of there and you know, I remember that it was terrible because they knew the Marines were there and these people were being evacuated and you think that, you know, they'd have a little mercy on their own people but they slaughtered them as much as they tried to kill the Marines and you know, it's interesting. They got to fire us from over on the other side of the DMZ. I mean, they actually used our artillery. I mean, you think this is a mobile force but they actually had emplacements buried in the ground on the other side of the DMZ and they would be able to pull them out and shoot and then go back inside their caves along with their mortars and they had cave systems up there in the DMZ that nobody really realized. You think you could just go in there and just wipe them out but there were so many caves and underground entrances and things like that. It was like near to impossible and of course, you can't go over to the other side to eliminate these different, you know, artillery pieces. Well, anyway, we ended up getting a lot of people out of there and we had a lot of guys that were wounded and killed. We went through several other operations. As a matter of fact, we went through 25 operations in 11 months and in that time, we were awarded two presidential unit citations for the actions that we fought. One was Bever Cage and one was Operation Buffalo and Operation Buffalo was when we had the first battalion, Nights Marines, it was the Bravo Company was pretty much annihilated. That means like 250 men were either killed or wounded. There was only a few that weren't and we had just gotten back on the ship. We didn't even have a chance to, you know, change our clothes or anything. We had to go right back out and right back into the DMZ. It was pretty vicious to tell you the truth. You know, we landed and we had a sweep and wherever we went, we just kept on getting hit with artillery and we're supposed to attack a tree line and that was like one of the most horrible experiences of my life. You know, it's just so surreal to think that, you know, they want us or all lined up and we're going to attack a tree line. You know, how many times have you seen in movies, you know, of marching forward when it all goes wrong and everybody gets hit and that's that was one of those battles. I remember Maloyan and Pike were just to the left of me and we're attacking that that tree line and we had three tanks to support us. I mean, you'd think, well, well, we got three tanks. Well, about 20 rockets came out just annihilated the tanks almost immediately. They were shooting, you know, large caliber rounds at us and, you know, it was just like, let's get the hell out of here. Let's try to get some cover because as soon as we got in the open, that's when they opened up on us. We ended up pulling back and we couldn't understand that the jets were coming in, the phannoms that were coming in and they were dropping napom and 500-pound bombs and everything else and we thought that they were going to be eliminated because, you know, that's why we're supposed to assault the tree line because they were they're probably all blown away while they all went underground and nobody probably died. [Music] [Music] So, you know, then we ended up getting out of that particular situation and in August, we next operation, there was a nightmare, it was Operation Co-Chiefs and it was in the Quay Sun Valley, again, we went back to the like where the operation beaver cage was. So, we go back in there and, you know, we were supposed to attack a specific unit of NVA. They had come back into the valley and they were going to take it over and so the strategy was, you know, to sweep and but the problem was, they had a different strategy, their strategy was to just take all these men and just have ambushes everywhere. You know, they had their machine gun set up and as you're sweeping, then all of a sudden, here's a tree line and it's opening up on you, they're hitting you from haystacks, they were hitting you from just about any concealed position from little ravines or whatever they could to get you and it was just out of artillery range. That was one of the crazy things about Co-Chiefs that we had a lot of artillery support but this was just a little out of their, the 105s range. So, anyway, I remember running into the tunnel complex and I remember going into one of the tunnels they yesterday volunteer and I went thinking that'd be a hero and well, I got to tell you, crawling in that hole and it was one of the most nightmarriage experiences of my life, just crawling in deep and deep and deep into that hole and the further I got, I just all I could see is an AK or a pistol coming out and just shooting down the hole. I mean, they'd have a perfect target down in the hole here. You know, I remember that I was walking and my sight was down the tunnel, looking straight down the tunnel and I'm crawling and I've got my 45, not my 45, the sergeant's 45 and I'm getting out and I'm getting closer down the hole and all of a sudden I felt something hit my face. You know, some like a heavy string or a cloth or something and I backed up real fast and I put the flashlight up there and looked and it was a snake skin. They had hung a snake inside that particular hole and it had shed its skin and I backed out of that hole like you can't even believe. I mean, that was the last time I ever entered a cave hole. So anyway, we went further and then we spent the night in our lines and woke up the next morning and we were held up because there was ambushes everywhere and our lieutenant wanted to play hero and we were moving in a certain direction and there was a tree line and he wanted to make sure that the tree line was okay. So he sent my squad down towards there. By the way, in Buffalo, Sergeant Pike and Maloy were killed right out. I mean, these are our heroes. If any two men could actually live through that battle, I would have been them and now you're looking at you've lost that. My squad leader became the platoon sergeant and now I've got Sergeant Jones in August 67 and Sergeant Jones was a great leader and you know, Francis just wanted to send our squad out and he argued with Francis about, you know, it wasn't a good idea and all that. Francis still wanted it done. So he said he would lead the squad down to the tree line and yeah, we got within I don't know, 40, 40,
40 yards of the tree line when it just opened up on us. I mean, you have no idea. You've got a squad of Marines and you've got maybe 50 people with machine guns shooting at you. I mean, you find covers so fast you, I went behind a dike. One of the dikes that was there and bullets were just, I know they were missing me because you can hear them zinging by you and I remember laying there. And that was from like 8.30, 9 o'clock in the morning and just laying there and guys are wounded everywhere. And I remember seeing one of the corpsmen get up and pop his head above that dike. And I remember seeing him getting shot right in the head. I mean, guys were dead laying everywhere. This is my squad is out there. So what does Francis do? He's gonna get us some help, but in the meantime, we're out there in the heat in this rice paddy. I'm throwing a magazine, a burst magazine over the dike every once in a while and keeping my head down 'cause of everything I'm seeing everybody's getting hit. So finally, the other squad came out there and of course, that was a stupid thing. I mean, if we got wiped out, they came out and they got wiped out. And of course, he said, well, I'm gonna send this third squad. Well, one of the squadly, he says, I'm not gonna do it. He said, it's terrible. This is a horrible decision. You just had two squads wiped out. Why should I take mine down there and have them all killed? But he said, he relieved them of command and put another guy in charge and he said, I'll do it. And they just tried to figure another way to do it and they got wiped out. And so by the end of the day, which I finally was able to crawl out of there at three in the afternoon. And by the end of the day, there was only seven of us left in that platoon. The second platoon was literally wiped out. So the jets couldn't come in. Nobody could come in to go after the people in the treeline because I mean, we were so close, they were using us for bait. And that's why they couldn't use the advantages of air power. Then that night I had to go back to the treeline and get our bodies in the middle of the night. There's only seven of you left and you got to go get the guys that died out there. And that experience is like one of the toughest experiences of my life. We finally ended up out of that particular operation. Then we ended up on Medina, which was in October. Oh, and by the way, Jones was killed. And of course, that was the end of all the good leaders for a long time. Everybody we had was pretty, they weren't like the original. It's like we were soldiers in that battle. You know, you had Mel Gibson and all these great leaders. Can you imagine if they got killed? You know, that whole thing would have fell apart. They probably would have been overrun and annihilated. But you have these great leaders that are able to, you know, put up a defense and put up and know just where to send the guys. They just, they know how to move and tactics. So anyway, on Medina, we were, we were, Operation Medina was pretty, we weren't doing the sweeping. We were being the blocking force. And another unit of Marines, another battalion of Marines was, I believe it was two battalions, was going through the Highline Forest and pushing all the NBA towards us. And of course, we're supposed to wipe them up. Of course, at that time, Captain Rechech was promoted up in battalion. And we got a new guy and he came in from supply. He wasn't very good. I mean, he didn't set the lines up. We knew what we were doing. We had set up the lines and he came around and changed the lines. He took us off the crest of the hill, pulled us back. Was the stummus move. I was like, I was so upset because by then, I knew what the heck I was doing. And now they're giving us leaders that don't know what they're doing. And that night, that's when it really got scary. No one came out to the lines to tell us that the LPs were coming in because they were out there and they were out there in force. So there was no illumination whatsoever. And then we just came to find out that the CO wasn't telling anything. It was like scared hiding in his hole. And when they-- everybody was saying, we need to have illumination. And he kept on saying, we're going to give away our position. What we needed light, it was so dark. It was so dark you couldn't see. And your terrified in your hole, just waiting for him. I remember one of the OPs outposts that came in, came right over my hole. And the one guy that went right into our command post behind us. And he stopped and he said, there's hundreds. And I'm going, oh my gosh. Nobody's coming. Nobody's talking to us. And then all of a sudden, it's like two in the morning, two 30. All of a sudden, they were throwing charges at us right in front of us. And the charges were exploding. And the guys to my left were opening fire. And I had a new guy. And I told him, don't open fire. I said, look at these guys that are firing. They're giving away their positions. Every time they fired, it was like a strobe light in their face. And they were saying, hey, we're right here. You know what I mean? That type of thing. And I knew that that was the wrong thing to do. I had put all my hand grenades right in my parapet right in front of me. There was-- all my-- I always carried a lot of hand grenades, let me tell you. And the guy next to me put all his hand grenades. We had about 12, maybe 15 hand grenades in the parapet. And I was just waiting. I was just so waiting for-- I knew these guys were coming. They kept on probing the lines and throwing grenades. And actually, they didn't throw grenades. I think they were more like a charge, like an explosive charge, not so much a-- a chai com's when they throw a chai com. There's sparks comes out of the handle, and you could see them in the air, because I had seen them previously and what they looked like. So I didn't think it was that. And then when I knew they were coming, I mean, I knew that's when they started just throwing a lot of grenades and stuff like that at us in the lines. They didn't know where I was. They didn't know where my whole was, but they knew where everybody to the left of me was. And they were coming. And as soon as I realized, I just-- and one thing I did with my hand grenades, when I was in a situation like that, I would take that cotter pin that you pull out. And I would straighten all that pin out so that it was very easy to pull the pin in. You wouldn't be struggling. So when they started coming, I just threw every one of those hand grenades in front of my hole, every single one of them. And as they got closer, and we got down in the hole, because there was going to be a lot of explosions in front of us. And it was like a minefield in front of us when they went off. It was, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. So all of them in front of us were pretty well wiped out. It was drag trails and everything after the morning when I went to sea, plus there was a lot of dead bodies out in front of my hole. But to the left of us, they had completely overrun the lines. Almost the entire third platoon was wiped out. And they went right down into the command post. And all the guys put up a good fight. Now I remember turning around, and you could see green tracers going one way, and you could see the red tracers going the other way. You could see them all over the place tracers. And I wanted to start shooting, but I knew our guys were down there. And I didn't want to hit any of our guys. And I wasn't sure of who was who. So I just held my fire. But the guys that were down there were shooting at them, and they ended up killing quite a few. And it actually captured some. And then they swept out of the lines and killed even more guys on their way out. So this unit did a number. And it was all because of this captain that came in from supply. You got to understand, you don't think you're going to make it out alive. At this particular point, even before that, you say, you know, I got here in February, and it's already October. I don't leave until almost March. I have all this time. I don't think I'm ever going to make it. And of course, then, you know, because we were this special unit, we ended up, you know, going back into the DMZ. And then our particular company took the lines. We went to Kantien first, and from Kantien, then we walked over to A3, which is all part of the McNamara line. And so we're on a hill. And I got to tell you, there was no grass. There was nothing but bomb holes over this A3 area. And these guys that were walking out looked like, you know, like in World War II, you see the guys with their heads down, walking away, they're just all nasty dirty. And you can see it on their face. They got beards. They just look horrible. And that's what these guys looked like. And, you know, we're kind of refreshed. And that's what we were supposed to do. We were supposed to be at A3 and take their positions while they took some kind of break somewhere else. And so we took the lines. And I remember getting into the hole and thinking, this place is horrible. And it can't get any worse. And that's when the monsoon rain started. I couldn't have been further wrong from the truth. I mean, it literally rained and we got hit three times a day. They would murder us three times a day. They would come in and we'd send mortars back at them. And every time a chopper would come in, they would try to knock out the chopper. So we didn't get a lot of supplies. And it was just miserable. But another unit came in, took our place. We were going to start.
We didn't know what we're going to do, but eventually we were going to be on a base right on the ocean, just south of the DMZ, just a short distance away, maybe a mile and a half two miles from the DMZ. And we had to build a base right there, and we were supposed to stop all the infiltration from the DMZ. There was a lot of infiltration that came down and nobody could handle the amount of infiltration. Nobody could stop this infiltration. And here's our unit. We're going to be, you know, stopping this infiltration. And I remember when we were, we were leaving a three and we're walking and there's a huge explosion to my right. I remember walking and seeing all these holes everywhere. And I thought it was just like a mortar barrage or something. And when that explosion happened and someone said, minefield, we were in the middle of a minefield. I stopped immediately and was looking around wondering, now what the hell do I do? I mean, I had no clue. I'm standing there in the middle of a minefield. And here's all the other guys around me. They're all like, we're all looking at each other, wondering if we were going to step on a mine. Back our way, I remember turning around in one foot and looking for the steps that I had taken. And I remember following my steps that I thought I took and each and every step was like, am I going to die? Am I going to die? I don't just slowly work back. By the way, they were bouncing betties and bouncing betties are pretty horrible. We ran into them, you know, through all of our sweeps. We ran into, you know, butterfly mines, all these different punchy pits. Also, we get to see four and we had to run patrols up towards the DMC. And that's when the last battle for me was in January just after Tet. In January after Tet, we would run up to this certain place called the washout. And that's where, you know, whenever there was the monsoon rains or whatever big rain they would have. All that water from the flatland would run out to the ocean and it would run right straight through the washout right there. And so it was kind of a slight depression with no trees, no bushes, no nothing just an open space from one location to another location where we were. And we remember as soon as we hit that every day, mortars would come in and hit us. It was just like a game they played and we played. All right, they would send a patrol like up and it would be a platoon size and we'd come up and we'd hit a certain spot and then they would mortar us. And then we get down, we send mortars back on them and then we back off and we did this day after day after day. The guys who were in charge decided that they were going to they said, you know, we're going to wipe these guys out. So we got a plan. And so the plan was is to send a platoon and to sneak them in there over the washout in the middle of the night and wait for the NVA that were going to be coming from the DMZ. Well, you know, our lieutenant and our sergeant was without a doubt they were the worst ever. They were the worst of all of them. And you know, I'm trying to I hear I have all this great experience and I'm point man going out there and I'm seeing all the signs of, you know, they're here. They're already here and so just before we cross the washout, I just said to them, I don't want to cross this washout. I got to tell you what, why don't I do a real quick recon. I'll go check the other side a little bit and then I'll have confidence enough to know that we will be safe. But I don't want to walk in the middle of the washout and see us all die. I just don't want that to happen. He says, well, hurry up. Well, I ended up taking, you know, right, my cartridge belt off. All my grenades and everything. I only had my M16 and a couple of magazines in my pocket. And I crawled like a lizard all the way through that washout and then I got over to the other side. And as soon as I hit the other side, I mean, I heard voices. I mean, it wasn't just like one or two guys talking. This was like three or four or five guys talking and laughing. And I'm going, oh my god, they're here. So I would have thrown a grenade if I had a grenade. I didn't have any grenades with me. I wasn't going to jump up and attack him. I didn't know who was there. So what I did is I crawled back and I figured we could call an artillery on those guys that just wiped the heck out of them. Artillery was at the quavio river. That's all you have to do is back off and bam the hell out of it. That's not what happened. The apparently our sergeant Lieutenant didn't know how to call in an air strike. I'm not an air strike, but artillery. And that was the beginning of the debacle. He wanted to make me cross that opening, even though I told him that they were on the other side. You want me to go across that that wash out and just bring everybody to get killed. And it was just no way I was going to do it. I said, you know, I know that they're there. If we have to, I think it narrows over by the ocean. I think maybe what the one way to go over there and see it. And it was like three 30 in the morning. He agreed to it and we walked over there. And I remember the mist that came in. I mean, it was so it was almost 100% humanity was you can hardly see in front of you. So misty and so we ended up crossing near the ocean of this wash out and we're walking in a single file. Meanwhile, our lieutenant, because of what I'm talking about, he decides not to go that way. He decides to go to the left in the open area where there was cover and a pagoda. I could direct the battle from there and he's sending the other two squads right up to the towards the DMZ. And I knew they were there. I knew they were there. I just knew they were all over the place, but you know, I couldn't convince anybody. And we got just got further and further up and he kept on finally we dropped off a squad. And they had machine guns with them. And then our squad, we continue further north. We got to there was a big doing in front of us. And we either had to go right or left. And so right was to the ocean left was to deeper within that area. And I looked at the ground and sure enough, there was a I remember when I was in high school. I lived near Rainbow Beach in Chicago. And at three or four in the morning, we would go out and go a skinny dipping and like Michigan. And I remember as I was running on that wet sand that there's white pure white sand underneath and the top sand is is like dark brown. So as you walked, you could see the footprints of white as you ran to the beach. Well, here is the same thing I'm saying we're got wet sand all around us. And here's this path about two to two and a half feet wide. Now that wasn't footprints. That's a whole group of NBA walking down that path. And then he's telling me I have to walk down that path. And here it is. It's going like I'm four, four 30 in the morning. I'm terrified. I'm telling me he said if I don't go down the path, I go in the back. And he'll put me up for cowardice and face to the enemy. I'm going what the heck do I do. Well, I don't want somebody else who don't know what they're doing. I'm going to be in the lead here. And if I spring the ambush, I'm going to spring the ambush. So I ended up walking down and we got pretty far down there before I saw this plastic top on the, you know, someone had put plastic over their heads and I had propped it up with sticks and I, and I looked it looked like just a piece of plastic that kind of blew there. I remember sticking my head down and getting closer to it, thinking maybe somebody might be in there and sure enough, two guys popped their heads up and I had my M 16 all and full automatic and put 20 rounds and got both of those guys, you'll then bush right. That's when the Chancon Bernade started coming out from our tour right. And, you know, I screamed at the the sergeant was telling him, see, I told you they were here. And that was the beginning of the battle. I mean, that battle went until three in the afternoon. We were pinned down my M 16 jammed on me. Guys were getting hit everywhere. It was one hell of a battle. Well, I remember at the end of the battle, I ended up. They're going to send me back into the DMZ. It was now February and they're going to send me back into the DMZ on a patrol and I'm going, oh my gosh, I'm going to die for sure. A lot of the guys who were 13th month, they ended up dying and I'm here I am going into my 13th month and I'm thinking I'm just, this is the end. And that's when he told me my third purple heart had come through and that I was going home. And I got to tell you it was one hell of a tour of Vietnam. And it was on a grant level. I'm not a hero. Those guys that died there, the heroes. They're the ones. You know, when I first got there, I was a new guy. I was naive. I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground. And I was an FNG, which is a new guy. And I thought I knew why we were there fighting for liberty and for freedom and everything. But what I started to notice after a while is that I questioned why we were there because I remember thinking, who were we fighting? We're fighting the North Vietnamese.
those are the people of the north and we're fighting the Vietcong and who are the Vietcong? They're the South Vietnamese. So who the hell are we fighting? I mean are we in there fighting for the South Vietnamese if they're trying to kill us? Everywhere I went these people were out of the Stone Age and I started to develop like a you know not a not fighting for liberty but just trying to survive trying to make it out trying to make it try to make it home and and I remember thinking so many times that I was never going to make it out alive or I was going to come out wounded so bad that I might be crippled for the rest of my life and for what? I wasn't even sure why we were there and so you know I got smarter and I kept on getting smarter you know my instincts were sharp as a tack I remember always thinking and always being aware if if someone was shooting at me I was down so fast and so you know I really began to like doubt the war about what was what was going on and I would start talking to the other guys and you know the question came up you know why are we here? Are we really here to help these people when they want to kill us? They just wanted their lie they just wanted the farm they just wanted to be left alone and they didn't care whether it was going to be communist or you know whether the Americans were going to be there and save them they just that's that's the way it all became and it became a nightmare for a lot of Marines now you know one thing I also want to say is I just explained all you know I'm explaining everything that's happening and you wonder why some of these guys can't talk about the war you wonder why I can't you know why is he so tight-luck these are scars and it took me hundreds of tears thousands of tears to write this book because you know these moments in in the book that are are just so horrendous and to get them out and it's very cathartic to write a book and I and I would highly recommend even if it doesn't get anywhere to do anything just getting the stories out of your out of your body I noticed that I'm able to talk about them now and I'm able to you know honor those guys in my unit that should have been honored that was Sergeant Bill Taylor to hear more of Bill stories from Vietnam read his book on full automatic the link is in the show description thanks for listening to warriors in their own words if you have any feedback please email the team at
[email protected] we're always looking to approve the show for updates and more follow us on twitter at team underscore harbaugh and if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to rate and review warriors in their own words it's a production of evergreen podcasts in partnership with the honor project our producer is declin roars bridget coin is our production director and shan rule offman is our audio engineer special thanks to evergreen executive producers john andru's michael de alloyah and david moss i'm ken harbaugh and this is warriors in their own words
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