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thedrifter
11-06-06, 09:02 AM
Service is a duty Story as told to Cathy Dyson n Portrait by Mike Morones John McGaughey I
November 6, 2006 12:50 am

IT WAS PART of our upbringing: If you're going to be a citizen of this country, then you owe the country service.

Service in time of war or peace. You don't get to choose. You can't say, "Well, I don't want to go to this war," or, "I kinda like that war."

No, sorry.

After I went through boot camp, I called home, and my dad asked, "What is your MOS--your military occupation specialty? Are you gonna be infantry?"

And I said, "No," and there was kind of a sigh.

Because infantry is probably the hardest, most dangerous job in the Marine Corps--probably in the Army, too.

I said, "I'm gonna be an artillery scout observer," and he kind of inhaled me right through the phone.

See, I didn't know.

He had been in artillery in Korea, so he knew what being a forward observer was all about.

There were three of us in the platoon with the same MOS--my MOS was 0846--and they had us all stand up in front of everybody, and they waved goodbye to us.

I still had no clue.

I was 19 when I went to Vietnam, and I really didn't know what to expect.

Each Marine rifle company would have attachments besides the infantry. That could be machine guns and mortars, but in my case, I was an artillery forward observer. I wound up being toward the front.

Once contact was made with the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] or VC [Viet Cong], the company commander expected me to call in the artillery help.

When you are in contact, you are requesting artillery, adjusting mortar fire, and you're just trying to defeat the enemy.

You know, make sure your fire falls on the enemy and not on friendly forces.

I would call in the direction to the bad guys and what kinds of shells I wanted. Maybe I was so sure of where I was, I wanted immediate fire for effects. Maybe I wanted some shells that would hit, penetrate a little bit before they blew, or I wanted some stuff that would blow just as soon as it hit.

There were so many booby traps and mines, and they ran the gamut from a single grenade to 500-pound bombs. There were a lot of 105 mm rounds, too, and when a 19-year-old tripped one of them there was really nothing left of him.

You were conscious of them all the time. If you were picked to walk point that day [and be in the lead], you were like, "Oh, well."

For a long time, my toes curled down when I walked. You're looking for any sign, dew on the wire, something that might give that trip wire away.

To this day, when I walk through a field of grass, I'm constantly looking at the ground.

One afternoon, we were sent in, and a friend of mine, Jim, and I were cutting down branches for a hooch [a shelter]. He asked if he could borrow my K-Bar [a knife].

He started cutting down bamboo, and I dragged my branches away, and he hit a mine. Same area where I'd just been.

There was no rhyme or reason to it. Why you made it and the guy next to you didn't.

You try to figure out why, and you really come up with no good reason.

There was another guy named Bill. Wanted to be a Detroit policeman. He was very bush savvy, but he made one wrong move. One wrong move.

He loved grenades, he felt you could never have enough of them. And when he tripped that wire, every single one of those grenades went off.

They were others--probably 30 or 40 guys I knew who got killed. They came from all over the United States. Some were married, some weren't. They all had things they wanted to do, plans they wanted to execute.

Pretty soon, we didn't learn the names [of those who replaced the dead ones]. It was easier that way. You knew the guys you knew, and that was fine.

Just do your job.

Hope that your time to go home arrives sooner than your time to die.

Ellie