The Night Recon Called In "Guns-A-Go-Go"

Hill 119 in the 'Nam

By R. R. Keene

It was 1969, the Chinese Year of the Cock. A time when the Plastic Ono Band sang "Give Peace a Chance" and Marines from recon answered, "Yeah man! There it is!" and from Hill 119 helped blow the livin' hell out of a regiment of North Vietnamese.

Former Sergeant Bob Gwinn and former Corporal Roger LaRue returned to Vietnam's Hill 119 after a 32-year interlude—back across what they used to call the "Big Pond," from where they lived in the "land of the big PX": CONUS, the Continental United States.

In their late teens, they not only had been the forward eyes and ears of the Marine Corps at war but also had been at the pinnacle of a tumultuous era: "The Sixties," peace, love, sex and drugs, none of which applied to leathernecks stewing in their own juices atop a hill in Southeast Asia.

"The rest of the world could have ceased to exist and we'd have never known," shrugged Gwinn, whose only memory of 1969 aside from Vietnam was the fact that astronaut Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon.

The war, although the subject of division and derision Stateside, was a very long way from the culture of "flower power." The Marines atop Hill 119 were "Ricky Recon, swift, silent and deadly."

While "hippie pinkos" sang "Bring Them Home," reality for men of lst Reconnaissance Battalion was that they weren't going anywhere until their 13-month tour of duty was over. The only respite from their deep reconnaissance missions was being assigned periodic duty atop hills similar to 119, filling burlap sandbags, stringing tangle-foot and rolls of razor wire, and positioning claymore mines.

"There were 450,000 sandbags on that hill," said LaRue.


"How could you know that?" asked Gwinn.

"I counted 'em and personally filled most of them," was the reply.


Gwinn conceded that he might have filled the rest.

Bob Gwinn still suspects Roger LaRue of commandeering the CAR15 rifle that Gwinn had commandeered from the Air Force. As the Military Historical Tours-chartered minibus made its way toward the Que Son Mountains along Route 537, sometimes called "Liberty Road," the two argued like first-termers debating the pros and cons of being sent to the bush on missions, coming back to cold showers at Camp Reasoner in Da Nang, or doing hard time on Hill 119.

Hill 119 today, aside from having the accoutrements of war removed, probably doesn't look all that different than it did in 1969. As an observation post, the hill was better than most. It is the last mound on a ridge line that leads to the Que Son Mountains. Located maybe 25 miles south of Da Nang, it commands an excellent view of what was then Indian country: the Thu Bon River basin and Goi Noi Island to the north; the leatherneck bastion at An Hoa and the Arizona Territory to the west; and to the south, Alligator Lake on the right and a flat valley floor that gradually sank into the South China Sea on the left.

There was only one problem with Hill 119. It was as barren as the old, one-armed woman who lived in the village below, and if the Marines could see everyone moving below, rest assured everyone below knew exactly where the Marines were. No wonder 119 was buried under bags. Anyone wanting to be king of the hill had to come up with their own cover.

"The Marine Corps had men with strong backs and arms to wield picks and shovels," said LaRue, who further lamented, "You could only dig down so far because of the rocks. The idea was to build bunkers that would take a direct hit from a 60 mm mortar or a gun pass from 'Spooky' the Air Force AC-47D gunship in the event Hill 119 was overrun."

LaRue, then a lance corporal, first stepped onto Hill 119 in March 1969 to "help to monitor the big valley out there by Alligator Lake and the area of Goi Noi Island itself. We were also a radio relay point for our teams in the bush."

It was radio watch with an attitude.

They forsook comforts provided by generators, electric lights or even candlepower. It was total blackout when the sun went down.

Fortunately, according to LaRue, the enemy "didn't see us as a threat or decided we weren't worth losing a bunch of people over." As a result they seldom drew more than occasional mortar or sniper fire, and at night the only thing beyond the wire was LaRue's imagination.

LaRue recalled one of his first night watches. "I was sure I heard NVA [North Vietnamese Army] coming up the hill. I had a grenade ready, but dropped the frag's pin." There was no way LaRue would find the pin in the darkness.

"I didn't want to be the first of the new guys on the hill to attract attention, so I stood the rest of the watch holding the spoon. I learned then to carry extra grenade pins."

The 18 or so Marines sent to occupy the hill at any one time were at a perpetual 50 percent alert with six hours on and six off. There were patrols every morning to the wire. Later, there were working parties and housekeeping duties.

Food was a combination of C-rations and care packages from home.


"We usually took the pound cake, ham and eggs, beanie weenies and some long-range rats [rations], you know, the freeze-dried stuff," said LaRue. "We kept all the fruit except apricots. They gave you incoming. Even 'doggie' grunts knew that."

"There were no hot meals except for heat tabs," said Gwinn. "We added a little spice by using indigenous rations which were rice, fish and pepper tailor-made for the Vietnamese."

Conversation topics were similar to conversations held by young men everywhere in Vietnam: women, R&R (rest and relaxation), women, food, women, families.


A battery-powered transistor radio provided about the only entertainment and contact with "The World."

LaRue said, "We listened to Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, and just before 0600 every morning we would crank up the radio and listen as the disc jockey screamed, 'Good morning, Vietnam!' And we would respond with '----you!' We also listened to certain segments of Radio Hanoi because they played more current hits from the States."

Songs from that era are memory mechanisms. "They must have played Scott McKenzie singing 'San Francisco' 10 times a day," said LaRue, who does not need Military Historical Tours to take him back to Vietnam. He's back on Hill 119 every time he hears that song.

But they weren't there to listen to Motown. They were dealing in life-and-death matters.


http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/Hill119.htm


Sempers,

Roger