27TH MARINES--The Road to Duong Son (2)--PART ONE: PUSHIN' TOO HARD

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27th Marines

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     (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.

     One morning at the 28th Marines camp, at H&S company, 3rd battalion, word came down that the radio section was to be transferred to the 27th Marines for immediate deployment, mounting-out, to Vietnam. The first reaction was shock, we all had it made at the 28th; plenty of liberty, light duty, a field operation or two (image credit: CD Rossi, USMC), we even had a beach landing off ships by landing craft and helicopters. It was all just one big training exercise. There wasn’t any time at all to recuperate from the shock. A few days later my Newport Beach girlfriend Patti Dell, driving her VW, dropped me off in the parking lot "grinder," where the section was in formation. I never saw her again. After I fell into the ranks, the Captain at the head of the formation said;

     “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.

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James C. L'Angelle      USMC 1965-70

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HILL55--The Battle for Go Noi Island--MAY 1968

 

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27th Marine Combat Regiment                                                    RVN 1968

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     Operation Allen Brook--

     (DUONG SON 2)--Early summer, 1968: Operation Allen Brook had begun and the 27th Marines was set to drop in on the VC south of their positions on Go Noi Island and push the enemy North, from Cu Ban and Le Bac into the Song Thu Bon just below Nui Dat Son, Hill 55.. It didn't quite work out that way. The enemy was well entrenched on the so-called "island" and wasn't giving an inch of swamp. Part of the radio platoon from regimental H&S company  was assigned to the north side of Liberty Bridge to coordinate the operation between the units in the bush and command back at Duong Son 2. 

 Several very important events took place in the rather insignificant op, at least from a personal standpoint. The first was saturation bombing using C-130s dropping 55-gallon drums of napalm into those enemy fortifications hoping to dislodge them. Following the dropping of the drums, the area was hammered with 155 artillery and the entire island lit up like New Year's Eve, in the middle of the day. That was followed by a huge rain squall forming from the black cloud that rose from the ensuing fire caused by the combined napalm-artillery saturation. Must have dumped an inch of rain in less than an hour. Still the helis kept coming in, dropping off body bags and picking up ammo, water and rations for the companies pinned down by enemy machine guns from bunkers tactically placed to maximize the kill zone. One Marine charged those bunkers, managed to shut them down for a little while, lost his life in the process, and was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valiant effort.

     Change of command in Saigon resulted in the new boss who replaced Westy, US Army General Creighton Abrams, to show up unannounced in the bunker at Liberty Bridge where the radios were buzzing with the sounds of the firefights and calls for air support and arty. One of the line officers was hollering something about casualty reports and it might have been Abrams who commented, or was told;

     "You're in the game with the big boys now..."

     Later on, the radio operators took a break and dodged the relentless downpour by huddling in a makeshift shower, smoking some pot and philosophizing on what was coming down. It was Cpl. Morze, a hefty Marine who looked more Chinese than White, and who could speak fluent Chinese, summed it all up;

"Who picks up the tab for civilization?"

     Before the unit wrapped up the forward setup, I was fortunate to spend one night in a radio relay jeep overlooking the island from Hill 55, on the AT map at 970620, Nui Dat Son.. There are many things I remember about the war, but that's one I will never forget, for several reasons. It was the one and only time I was free from the regiment back at Duong Son 2; I had some cans of beer, some pot, some cigarettes, and a radio jeep tuned into a Danang station.

     Late in the night, I could look out over the island and beyond as flares randomly lit up the night sky way off in the distance to the south. It was the only night that I had no one to tell me what to do, where to go, and report to whom. There was nobody else around, just the jeep, the flares way off in the war somewhere, the necessities of Black Label beer, mamasan's pot and Pall Mall cigarettes. On the radio came a song I remember to this day and every time I hear it, I go back to that one night on Hill 55.

    The song drifted out across the entire valley below, across the island where the VC and NVA were servicing their weapons, getting ready for the battle the next day. In the morning, I drove the jeep about five miles north back to regimental command at Duong Son 2 and to this day wonder why I wasn't ambushed and KIA on that brief drive back into the DaNang TAOR, through territory called "Dodge City." I received credit for participation in Operation Allen Brook in my Service Record Book.

     The Battle for Go Noi Island went on for another year; even after the 27th Marines rotated back to the world. It was conducted by elements from the 1st and 26th Marines during Operation Pipestone Canyon in the summer of '69.

     I went north to Dong Ha, on the DMZ.

Photo is on the sands of China Beach, DaNang; probably taken by Barry Coulter; a big African-American PFC from the platoon wire section.  Barry and I braved the ARVN gun emplacements at night in a trail through the concertina wire to visit mamasan and her girls.

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James C. L'Angelle,             USMC    1965-70

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