July 14, 1967: A French 4th of July to Remember!

[ Although not yet cross-checked with old 2/1's S-3 log entries for that night! dpm ]

2nd. note: Cpl. Campbell could have been, at this precise moment in time, either a newly appointed Ist Sqd. Ist. Plt. Squad leader, or a senior Fire Team Ldr., which would have also made him Asst. Sqd. Leader. By the end of this month in any case, he would have been have been the squad leader, in time for the next Big One, Operation Pike, an amphibious assault landing on Og Noi Island, where yours truly, as a newly minted Lance took my very first fire team into combat and celebrated my next birthday, so to speak! In between times, within 96 hours of the incident described below, we were to lose three guys from our squad in a shoot out practically a la quema ropa -- at point blank range. And in broad daylight.

Cpl Michael Dittman, from Rochester New York, whose mother had visited by phone with my sister living there, I believe, had a particularly hairy experience: as they rushed in our direction his guys ran smack into a communist unit dressed in Marine uniforms that they at first mistaked for us, but just in time Mike grew wise, and through his wisdom, narrowly avoided getting waxed. Author Murphy recounts a similar incident leading up to the pivotal Battle of Khe Sanh. [ Archived in May Armed Forces Day entry ]

3rd. note: The 2006 French Bastille Day Celebration:

http://www.info-france-usa.org/atoz/14july.asp

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July 14th., 1967, in Vietnam, where we were on security detail for Da Nang's Cau Dao Bridge, would have been two days shy of the date for my promotion from Marine Pfc (E-2) to Lance Corporal (E-3).

It would have also marked roughly the midpoint of no less than the first of three(3) consecutive summers that yours truly would have found himself roaming around almost the same exact tactical area of operations: between Da Nang's Cau Dau River and the Thanh Quit River, albeit with three(3) different combat units.

And while signing off on all that paperwork might have worried and caused loss of sleep for our 2nd. Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment C O 48 hours later, I doubt if he would have been in any particular hurry to send the now-signed paperwork back down to the individual rifle company commanders, including ours in Fox Company.

Thus, when two(2) luckless Anglo M.P.s, one blond, tall and rangy Lance Corporal and one lean and mean red-headed Corporal (E-4), found themselves suddenly "volunteered" as 1-night loaners to us in Ist. Platoon from what might have been politely described in those days of 39 years ago today as a minority dominant military police unit, derisively nicknamed the Fearless Harlem Ho-fighters, they were none too pleased to find out that the patrol leader was some 19-year old punk of an E-2, me!

Plus, although I didn't think it wise to tell them so, this was in fact, my very first night as a Marine patrol leader.

Corporal Campbell, a soft spoken Alabama man who had worked back in the world as a painting contract estimator took one look at these 2 clowns and knew I was more than likely going to be in for some trouble.

"Morony, I'm only going to say this just once: you're the patrol leader, and our rules for here and now are that all patrols leave out with everybody wearing their helmets, got it?"

This was in response to what I guess you might call their body language, as they slouched into our lines with their helmets flopping by their sides and so sending an attitude message that wouldn't quit.

So, yeah, o.k. I guess you could say I got it, but maybe those 2 clowns didn't, at least not at first, nor were they real happy at how I finally managed to get all this across to them.

Finaly we trailed off, all four(4) of us. The one other Fox Company man, Julio Marquez, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, carried our PRC-25 radio, while I led out, the 2 clowns bringing up the rear.

Basically there should have been nothing to it. We headed straight down the old French Highway One, turned right at the first intersection and headed down a gravel road straight towards the First Marine Regimental C.P. About halfway there, we found the culvert that was our destination, and settled in. I placed two men on one end and two at the other, maybe only a few yards apart.

Looking back, I also did something pretty damned stupid, come to think of it.

Because the radio sould have been with me, but I don't recall today, here at UTEP 39 years later, demanding that Julio give it to me before sending him into position with the surly Lance Corporal.

In the course of the next hour or two things got pretty mellow. Maybe it was the micro-climate, but the night wasn't really all that hot and muggy. Moreover, the red headed Corporal turned out to have a name: "Corporal Fluharty," or so he pronounced it, and was really a good talker.

Corporal Fluharty had worked for the Marine Corps back stateside as what he called a cross-country chaser going after all sorts of Marine Corps deserters and losers.

While I can't remember exactly as to whether he sometimes worked in plain clothes, my impression decades later is that he said he had.

What Julio and the other hardcase found to talk about I never knew, because it was just about maybe eleven p.m., 2300 in Marine Corps time, that a crack unit of some PAVN/NVA Rocket Artillery Regiment let fly, and the nearby skyline lit up big time as those 2-meter long Soviet rockets took off in a bright flash.

It wasn't long before I re-connected with the radio and got in contact with Ist. Platoon's C.P. and we all hauled back towards home.

I might suppose that we would have been asked immediately to shoot an azimuth from our location to that the rocket flashes, inasmuch as that would soon become standard procedure, but after nearly 4 decades of time, I no longer recall.

Oh, my! Any UTEP psychology and or philosophy major would have been amazed at how all this enemy rocket-launching business miraculously cleared up any lingering unaddressed issues leading to mutual animosity; we were suddenly four(4) human beings all united with one big all-encompassing idea: to get the [??!!! Deleted ] out of there and bug the flip out!

So we did!

Semi-official historical source: Edward F. Murphy's Semper Fi Vietnam, new York: Ballantine Books, 1997. [ I bought my own paperback copy over at Albertson's, up a little ways on N. Mesa St. UTEP Library has a copy of hardback version, I believe! ]

Page 108. "During the rest of the summer [of 1967 ] the allied units intensified their efforts against NVA infiltration into the Que Son Valley.

"Thirty kilometers to the north, guerrilla activities kept the 1st and 7th Marines [Regiments] occupied around Da Nang. In mid-July the enemy moved 122mm rockets into firing positions around the city. On the night of 14 July, [1967], 50 of these-high trajectory, 12,000-meter-range, high-explosive rockets slammed into the Da Nang airfield. Though the response was swift, the damage was done. Eight Americans died and 176 were wounded. The rocket attack also destroyed 13 barracks and 10 aircraft and damaged 40 other aircraft.

"The rocket attacks continued. It was a very frustrating way to fight a war."