27th Marines
(LZ410 Danang)--Nearly everyone who has served in the military has an experience worth writing about, most of them go unwritten. The ones that do are somewhat predictable and usually relate, essentially, combat. But there is far more to war than heroes charging up a hill under artillery fire and hand-to-hand encounters with the enemy. Hopefully, some of that unsung hero stuff can be documented here.
I enlisted in the Marine Corps out of Reno, Nevada and went to San Diego basic training in early 1966. Having made PFC out of boot camp, my first duty station was Corry Field, Pensacola, Florida, a class A US Navy radio school. The Marine unit at the station was Company K, Sub Unit One. Running into trouble at every turn, I was eventually transferred to Camp Pendleton, and if the story of what happened at Corry is of any consequence, it can wait to be told later.
On 10 March, 1967, under "Administrative Remarks" in my Service Record Book (SRB), Major RL O'Brien, the Sub-Unit One CO, made an entry that I had been disenrolled from the CommTech "R" course. In the "Record of Service" section, the page shows 3 April '67 as the first entry for H&S Co., 3rd Bn, 28th Marines.”
My first major assignments at H&S, Camp San Mateo weren't radio training, teaching others the rapid speed I had on Morse code I learned in Florida, but chopping back all the ice plant off the sidewalks in front of the quonset huts, firewatch and guard duty all night. Although there is no entry in the SRB, sometime between my arrival in April, I was again assigned to mess duty. At San Mateo 3rd battalion messhall, the chief was Sgt. Dabney, a real slave driver but he laid off me and I was assigned the officers' mess along with CD Rossi, also from radio platoon. The star of the show, hands down, was the "bird" Pvt. Mertz who worked the GI cans out on the back landing. No matter what they threw at Mertz, it would roll off. After I'd gotten out of the Camp Pendleton brig in October for an AWOL junket to the "Summer of Love" in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, we had just returned from a field exercise and were dead in formation one morning with MSgt "Top" Casella giving us the lowdown,
"What's the matter with you people, am I pushing you too hard?"
In the ranks, Mertz begin to sing the Seeds hit released in October, 1966,
"You're pushin' too hard, you're pushin too hard...."
In January, 1968, at the White House in Washington, DC, LBJ was surrounded by his advisors and high-ranking military men from all branches. The president had received a request from US Army General Westmoreland, commander of US forces in Vietnam, for two-hundred thousand additional troops to break the combined NVA-VC Tet offensive. The advisors were at the moment more concerned with the rising tide of unpopularity of the war Back-in-the-World. At least one general wanted to crush the rebellion on the homefront, using any means necessary. Obviously this was not an option, neither was granting Westy’s request. Instead, LBJ opted for two units to go over, the US Army 82nd Airborne and another unit, a newly formed landing team out of Camp Pendleton, the 27th Marines.
In January, 1968, at the White House in Washington, DC, LBJ was surrounded by his advisors and high-ranking military men from all branches. The president had received a request from US Army General Westmoreland, commander of US forces in Vietnam, for two-hundred thousand additional troops to break the combined NVA-VC Tet offensive. The advisors were at the moment more concerned with the rising tide of unpopularity of the war Back-in-the-World. At least one general wanted to crush the rebellion on the homefront, using any means necessary. Obviously this was not an option, neither was granting Westy’s request. Instead, LBJ opted for two units to go over, the US Army 82nd Airborne and another unit, a newly formed landing team out of Camp Pendleton, the 27th Marines.
“Private L'Angelle, I didn’t think you were going to go along.”
Pausing briefly as Patti Dell drove off into history, I looked at all the apprehensive faces in the ranks and replied;
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir.”
In the ranks were married men who didn’t want to leave their wives and kids, there were green recruits who didn’t know a radio from a flare gun; white kids from the farm, blacks from the inner city, surfers from the coast. In one sentence I had done what the Colonel, the major, the captains, the lieutenants and the sargents couldn’t do. None of them thought I would go over to the war. I would skip out, hitchhike back to Haight-Ashbury and sleep in basements with hippies and girls from Boston. They were wrong. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I gave them all a reason, the reason, for going. It was our duty, our time had come.
James C. L'Angelle USMC 1965-70