thedrifter
10-25-02, 09:59 AM
Vietnam Veterans Remind Modern-Day Marines that Warfare is Still All About Leadership, People
Story by R. R. Keene
In 480 B.C. the ancient Greek states were invaded by Xerxes and his Persian army. On the southern Grecian peninsula there was a city-state called Sparta, famed for its military power and loyal soldiers. The battle creed of the soldiers of this city-state was, "Come home carrying your shield or on it!" At the Battle of Thermopylae, 300 Spartans were ordered to hold a 50-foot-wide pass against 6,000 invading Persians. They were outflanked and most were killed, but their stand, gallantry and sacrifice became the stuff of legend.
Today, old battlefields, although quiet, still harbor many sanguinary tales. And, in Vietnam, between the Quang Tri and the Bien Hai rivers, there are many old battlefields that the Vietnamese shun.
Although the din of battle and crescendo of artillery rounds have for decades ceased, there is still much of war to learn in these places littered with bits of burlap, rusting dog tags and unexploded ordnance, if those who venture there listen.
The Khe Sanh escarpment juts up defiantly like a pugnacious fighter leading with his chin. It was especially so in 1968 when Americans burrowed in on its plateau and taunted the North Vietnamese Army burrowed in on the surrounding hills to deliver a knockout blow.
Fighting in a battle not of their choosing, the men at Khe Sanh were determined, with some trepidation, that this would not become a military disaster. Defiance emanated from their combat base with each blow it took from 152-mm., 130-mm. and 120-mm. guns and 120-mm. mortars fired by Communist gunners.
The fight ended 77 days later, with the help of 100,000 tons of ordnance from B-52 Stratofortress carpet bombing, air strikes and massive artillery bombardments. Khe Sanh held, the siege lifted, and the Marines eventually dismantled the base they never wanted. It was not without cost. The battle flags of the 5,000-man 26th Marine Regiment; 1st Battalion, 9th Marines; and 1/13 carry unit citation streamers from Khe Sanh where they suffered 199 killed and 830 wounded. (With them were members of 37th Army of the Republic of Vietnam Ranger Bn.) Estimates of Communist losses range between 10,000 and 15,000, many of whose bones still lie under the jungle canopy leading to Laos and along the old demilitarized zone.
Today, at the site of the Khe Sanh combat base, coffee trees are close to obscuring those distant hill landmarks which gave American aircrews and Communist gunners their bearings. Alone at what was probably once the center of the combat base air strip stands a weather-beaten marker with propaganda in worn letters in Vietnamese and in broken English that states, "THE AREA OF TACON (sic) POINT BASE BUILT BY U.S. AND SAIGON PUPPETS," referring to TACAN or the tactical air navigation (system). It is all that's left to mark the battle for Khe Sanh.
From time to time, however, Americans who fought there return and in their own way mark the battle by remembering. March 16, 1998, was such a day.
At Khe Sanh in the splendor of the day's last saffron rays, the late afternoon sun was not so unmerciful. Khe Sanh veteran and former reconnaissance Marine Steve Johnson played "Amazing Grace" on his bagpipe and wept. Those Americans with him also shed tears.
Only half of the group who accompanied Johnson were veterans of Vietnam and perhaps only half of those were actual veterans of the siege; the majority of the rest were family or guides from Military Historical Tours (MHT) who arranged the trip. Nine are modern-day Spartans: active-duty Marine officers, who among them have experience from Desert Storm, Somalia and Haiti, but are too young to have hefted the old M16A1 rifle, worn French-styled jungle utilities or with great caution followed the tread marks of "Ho Chi Minh" sandals. The nine, however, were there to learn.
It is rare when military men of today can walk a battlefield with actual participants of the original campaign. Two, Major Craig Baker and Maj Sam Mundy, have the distinction of hearing their fathers, retired Colonel Horace "Pony" Baker and retired General Carl Mundy Jr., former Commandant of the Marine Corps, relive their war experiences on the actual battlefields where they occurred and with several of the men with whom they served.
It is in no small part due to Gen Mundy that the active-duty Marines were there. Military Historical Tours has been sponsoring veterans' return trips to Vietnam for several years. When MHT's chief executive officer, retired Marine Col Warren Wiedhahn, asked Gen Mundy to be the guest host for a 30th anniversary trip to Khe Sanh, the former Commandant, who as a major served with 3/26, agreed on the condition that the trip be more than a time to reminisce. The general wanted the veterans on the trip to pass on their experiences to a handful of today's Marines. Gen Mundy also believed the knowledge and experience gained by those Marines would best ripple down to other leathernecks if those selected for a trip to Vietnam were instructors or students within the Marine Corps University.
It was an idea with merit. But the Marine Corps of today is in many ways tighter with taxpayers' dollars than the Corps of the past, if that is possible. While those Marines making the journey to Vietnam would do so on permissive, temporary additional duty orders, someone besides Uncle Sam would have to foot the bill.
Enter the Marine Corps University Foundation, which specializes in the progressive education of Marines. Gen Mundy is currently the CEO of the World USO and also happens to chair the MCUF. A Pacific-Asian Studies Program was formed, and the foundation decided to invest $50,000 to fund such trips. Vietnam is the first-year focus. If trips to Vietnam proved fruitful in historical and tactical knowledge, the foundation envisioned expanding the program to Marine operational history on battlefields throughout the Pacific and Asia.
For the veterans it was not only a chance to put their experiences into perspective, but also an opportunity to vent their thoughts before willing and understanding listeners. The Marines quickly recognized possibilities for lessons to be learned from so many gathered again in the places they fought. Before them were former and retired Marines, some of whom had been officers, some enlisted, some "lifers" and some "short-timers." All had served under fire in Vietnam.
"To hear these gentlemen talk.... They can recall amazing details," said Captain Scott Packard, a Command and Control Systems Course student at Quantico, Va., and nine-year Marine. "These guys remember every single name, where every casualty took place, and they remember with such particulars that it astounds me."
Capt Byron Harper, a 15-year veteran and instructor at The Basic School in Quantico, nodded in agreement. "A lot of these guys did their tours and got out, but they never forgot. You can show them a map, and they can pick it up and read it as if they were going out on a patrol right now. Obviously, combat made it that much more important to be good, but it stayed with them and, they know what they are doing."
Yes, they did know what they were doing. They had to if they expected to survive. In 1968, while others lucky to be at home listened to Otis Redding singing "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" or watched Barbra Streisand play "Funny Girl" in air-conditioned theaters, they sun blistered their backs and callused their hands digging deep trenches, stringing razor wire and setting Claymore mines and fougasse traps, a mixture of napalm and fuel in 55-gallon drums. While still others at home chose to become "flower children" or chant "Make love not war" or pop funny-looking pills, those sent to Southeast Asia existed caked in red mud, living by the combat credo of "Do unto others before they do it to you" and sucked down nearly a dozen-and-a-half salt tablets a day.
Getting some of the veterans on the tour to open up and talk about those experiences initially was not easy. Maj Jeff Speights (whose father, a veteran of Chu Lai, was a career enlisted Marine) cited an example. He, like the other active-duty Marines, had studied for the trip. In his readings he came across an account of Sergeant David H. Brown, who'd been a platoon sergeant with Company L, 3/26 and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.
Speights noted that Ken Sandall, who'd been in L/3/26, was also on the tour. "I said to Ken, 'Tell me about Sergeant Brown.' He walked away with obvious emotion and said, 'He was the greatest human being I've ever known, but I don't want to talk about him.' " One on the trip who would talk about Sgt Brown was Dick Camp, a retired colonel, who as a captain, had been Brown's company commander. Camp said Brown was the "bravest of the brave. Back then, only tough guys got to be sergeants and only the smart ones did it in less than a year. Sergeant Brown was both."
It was before Khe Sanh in September of 1967 on Hill 48 southwest of Con Thien. Brown was not on the tarmac when his "freedom bird" home began boarding. He had volunteered instead to accompany "Lima" Co to the field where his platoon was later ambushed.
http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/spartans.htm
Sempers,
Roger
Story by R. R. Keene
In 480 B.C. the ancient Greek states were invaded by Xerxes and his Persian army. On the southern Grecian peninsula there was a city-state called Sparta, famed for its military power and loyal soldiers. The battle creed of the soldiers of this city-state was, "Come home carrying your shield or on it!" At the Battle of Thermopylae, 300 Spartans were ordered to hold a 50-foot-wide pass against 6,000 invading Persians. They were outflanked and most were killed, but their stand, gallantry and sacrifice became the stuff of legend.
Today, old battlefields, although quiet, still harbor many sanguinary tales. And, in Vietnam, between the Quang Tri and the Bien Hai rivers, there are many old battlefields that the Vietnamese shun.
Although the din of battle and crescendo of artillery rounds have for decades ceased, there is still much of war to learn in these places littered with bits of burlap, rusting dog tags and unexploded ordnance, if those who venture there listen.
The Khe Sanh escarpment juts up defiantly like a pugnacious fighter leading with his chin. It was especially so in 1968 when Americans burrowed in on its plateau and taunted the North Vietnamese Army burrowed in on the surrounding hills to deliver a knockout blow.
Fighting in a battle not of their choosing, the men at Khe Sanh were determined, with some trepidation, that this would not become a military disaster. Defiance emanated from their combat base with each blow it took from 152-mm., 130-mm. and 120-mm. guns and 120-mm. mortars fired by Communist gunners.
The fight ended 77 days later, with the help of 100,000 tons of ordnance from B-52 Stratofortress carpet bombing, air strikes and massive artillery bombardments. Khe Sanh held, the siege lifted, and the Marines eventually dismantled the base they never wanted. It was not without cost. The battle flags of the 5,000-man 26th Marine Regiment; 1st Battalion, 9th Marines; and 1/13 carry unit citation streamers from Khe Sanh where they suffered 199 killed and 830 wounded. (With them were members of 37th Army of the Republic of Vietnam Ranger Bn.) Estimates of Communist losses range between 10,000 and 15,000, many of whose bones still lie under the jungle canopy leading to Laos and along the old demilitarized zone.
Today, at the site of the Khe Sanh combat base, coffee trees are close to obscuring those distant hill landmarks which gave American aircrews and Communist gunners their bearings. Alone at what was probably once the center of the combat base air strip stands a weather-beaten marker with propaganda in worn letters in Vietnamese and in broken English that states, "THE AREA OF TACON (sic) POINT BASE BUILT BY U.S. AND SAIGON PUPPETS," referring to TACAN or the tactical air navigation (system). It is all that's left to mark the battle for Khe Sanh.
From time to time, however, Americans who fought there return and in their own way mark the battle by remembering. March 16, 1998, was such a day.
At Khe Sanh in the splendor of the day's last saffron rays, the late afternoon sun was not so unmerciful. Khe Sanh veteran and former reconnaissance Marine Steve Johnson played "Amazing Grace" on his bagpipe and wept. Those Americans with him also shed tears.
Only half of the group who accompanied Johnson were veterans of Vietnam and perhaps only half of those were actual veterans of the siege; the majority of the rest were family or guides from Military Historical Tours (MHT) who arranged the trip. Nine are modern-day Spartans: active-duty Marine officers, who among them have experience from Desert Storm, Somalia and Haiti, but are too young to have hefted the old M16A1 rifle, worn French-styled jungle utilities or with great caution followed the tread marks of "Ho Chi Minh" sandals. The nine, however, were there to learn.
It is rare when military men of today can walk a battlefield with actual participants of the original campaign. Two, Major Craig Baker and Maj Sam Mundy, have the distinction of hearing their fathers, retired Colonel Horace "Pony" Baker and retired General Carl Mundy Jr., former Commandant of the Marine Corps, relive their war experiences on the actual battlefields where they occurred and with several of the men with whom they served.
It is in no small part due to Gen Mundy that the active-duty Marines were there. Military Historical Tours has been sponsoring veterans' return trips to Vietnam for several years. When MHT's chief executive officer, retired Marine Col Warren Wiedhahn, asked Gen Mundy to be the guest host for a 30th anniversary trip to Khe Sanh, the former Commandant, who as a major served with 3/26, agreed on the condition that the trip be more than a time to reminisce. The general wanted the veterans on the trip to pass on their experiences to a handful of today's Marines. Gen Mundy also believed the knowledge and experience gained by those Marines would best ripple down to other leathernecks if those selected for a trip to Vietnam were instructors or students within the Marine Corps University.
It was an idea with merit. But the Marine Corps of today is in many ways tighter with taxpayers' dollars than the Corps of the past, if that is possible. While those Marines making the journey to Vietnam would do so on permissive, temporary additional duty orders, someone besides Uncle Sam would have to foot the bill.
Enter the Marine Corps University Foundation, which specializes in the progressive education of Marines. Gen Mundy is currently the CEO of the World USO and also happens to chair the MCUF. A Pacific-Asian Studies Program was formed, and the foundation decided to invest $50,000 to fund such trips. Vietnam is the first-year focus. If trips to Vietnam proved fruitful in historical and tactical knowledge, the foundation envisioned expanding the program to Marine operational history on battlefields throughout the Pacific and Asia.
For the veterans it was not only a chance to put their experiences into perspective, but also an opportunity to vent their thoughts before willing and understanding listeners. The Marines quickly recognized possibilities for lessons to be learned from so many gathered again in the places they fought. Before them were former and retired Marines, some of whom had been officers, some enlisted, some "lifers" and some "short-timers." All had served under fire in Vietnam.
"To hear these gentlemen talk.... They can recall amazing details," said Captain Scott Packard, a Command and Control Systems Course student at Quantico, Va., and nine-year Marine. "These guys remember every single name, where every casualty took place, and they remember with such particulars that it astounds me."
Capt Byron Harper, a 15-year veteran and instructor at The Basic School in Quantico, nodded in agreement. "A lot of these guys did their tours and got out, but they never forgot. You can show them a map, and they can pick it up and read it as if they were going out on a patrol right now. Obviously, combat made it that much more important to be good, but it stayed with them and, they know what they are doing."
Yes, they did know what they were doing. They had to if they expected to survive. In 1968, while others lucky to be at home listened to Otis Redding singing "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" or watched Barbra Streisand play "Funny Girl" in air-conditioned theaters, they sun blistered their backs and callused their hands digging deep trenches, stringing razor wire and setting Claymore mines and fougasse traps, a mixture of napalm and fuel in 55-gallon drums. While still others at home chose to become "flower children" or chant "Make love not war" or pop funny-looking pills, those sent to Southeast Asia existed caked in red mud, living by the combat credo of "Do unto others before they do it to you" and sucked down nearly a dozen-and-a-half salt tablets a day.
Getting some of the veterans on the tour to open up and talk about those experiences initially was not easy. Maj Jeff Speights (whose father, a veteran of Chu Lai, was a career enlisted Marine) cited an example. He, like the other active-duty Marines, had studied for the trip. In his readings he came across an account of Sergeant David H. Brown, who'd been a platoon sergeant with Company L, 3/26 and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.
Speights noted that Ken Sandall, who'd been in L/3/26, was also on the tour. "I said to Ken, 'Tell me about Sergeant Brown.' He walked away with obvious emotion and said, 'He was the greatest human being I've ever known, but I don't want to talk about him.' " One on the trip who would talk about Sgt Brown was Dick Camp, a retired colonel, who as a captain, had been Brown's company commander. Camp said Brown was the "bravest of the brave. Back then, only tough guys got to be sergeants and only the smart ones did it in less than a year. Sergeant Brown was both."
It was before Khe Sanh in September of 1967 on Hill 48 southwest of Con Thien. Brown was not on the tarmac when his "freedom bird" home began boarding. He had volunteered instead to accompany "Lima" Co to the field where his platoon was later ambushed.
http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/spartans.htm
Sempers,
Roger