In early 1966, at the tender age of seventeen, Dan Horton enlisted in the Marine Corps at Wayne, Michigan. Dan said that at the time he was “lost and had nowhere to go.” His Marine Corps recruiters took him to his high school and tried, along with school officials, to talk Dan into staying enrolled, but Dan was on a mission.

Dan Horton at Khe Sanh

He arrived at Khe Sanh in June of 1967 while Bravo Company was on Hill 861 South. Dan was a rifleman in Second Platoon and was wounded while on patrol outside the Grey Sector on March 21, 1968, during the Siege of Khe Sanh.

After Vietnam, Dan was stationed at Camp Pendleton in southern California and then in Washington, D.C.

After his stint in the Corps, Dan returned to Michigan where he had a long career as an animal control officer.

Dan Horton at his Bravo interview at Ann Arbor, MI

When asked about his time at Khe Sanh, Dan said, with a twinkle in his eye, “It is what it is, and that’s what it is.”

Dan Horton, a Marine every day of his life since entering boot camp, passed away on November 10, 2010, the Marine Corps’ 235th birthday.

We miss Dan Horton. Semper Fidelis, Dan.

In today’s guest blog, photographer and artist Mike Shipman muses on his memories of the 1960s and the Vietnam War era. Mike is the graphic designer for Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor.

I’ve never been involved in a war. I’ve never been in an extremely violent situation. My life has never hung in the balance for extended periods of time. I’ve never been directly responsible for the lives of others – saving or extinguishing. My life is not that much different from the majority of Americans nowadays.

I do know war. My father and uncles were involved in Vietnam and Korea in various ways. My dad’s brother, a member of Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, was at Khe Sanh in 1966 for about a week and says in an email “Went out to the Rock Pile for a couple of days. Nothing much going on when we were there. Some sniper fire, but not enough to be interesting.” All survived. They came back alive, at least. Perhaps they would prefer not to have had that experience but even then are satisfied with their individual contribution. Some of them came back perhaps stronger, with more purpose than when they shipped out. All came back forever changed.

Mike Shipman

I was five years old in 1968. I had a vague concept of war then. Mostly, it was a time when my dad was away. When I was a little older, I understood that some dads didn’t come back. My dad was in Vietnam in 1966 and 1969 in a non-combat role as a photo interpreter. That’s all I know and about all he can tell me. I’m fine with that. I don’t need to know everything that goes on in war. I’m sure even my wildest imaginings can’t compare with the reality.

One of my earliest memories is from his first tour. My dad was stationed at Beale AFB in northern California. Uncles and friends would come by our house on base for dinner before leaving and come by again when they got back. I was exposed to some exotic meals like wat, an Ethiopian stew made with beef and onions and hotly spiced with berbere, which I knew as “berry-berry”. Wat (What? That was the big joke) was ‘berry-berry” good and the man who introduced it to me and our family was a friend named Rambo. I remember him being a husky guy, kind of Marlboro Man-like, but shorter. I don’t know if that’s an accurate description, but it’s how I remember him. The main thing about him eating wat at our house was the amount of spice he put on his plate and the amount of sweat that poured off his face as he ate. My brother and I would marvel at the sweat and laugh at the sometimes apparent distress he went through as he ate. He came for dinner one time and after that I didn’t see him again. I don’t know whatever happened to him and, although I’ve thought about it many times, haven’t eaten wat since.

I remember at Beale the “morning roar” of B-52’s (and maybe an SR-71 or two), a thunderous noise as the bombers fired up their engines, just warming up and/or taking off. I don’t remember seeing B-52’s in the air, maybe because we were far enough from the flight line that we couldn’t see them. But the noise, every morning (seemed like, anyway), I will never forget.

I captured a giant bullfrog at the corner of our house and took it to school for show-and-tell. Yes, of course it escaped. I remember riding on my dad’s shoulders trying to grip his gel-coated crew cut in my hands and getting a stern warning from my parents after drinking water from a stream during a camping trip. Something about things in the water that could make me sick or kill me. I remember not being too worried. The water tasted fine. I picked out a puppy, a cocker-dachshund mix, and named her Coco after a cartoon clown on a TV show (Koko the Clown, created by Max Fleisher and produced by Hal Seeger).

I was born in Kansas and we moved back there in 1968 for my father’s second tour in Vietnam. I remember the house was a little square white box on a street lined with big trees. There were blue shutters on the windows. My Uncle Marvin (my mom’s brother) was visiting while my dad was away. During a typical heavy and loud Kansas thunderstorm, I must have been scared or nervous though I don’t remember feeling that way. My parents tell me it was my brother who was terrified. He’s three years younger than me and it was the first time he’d experienced such a storm. They can be quite intimidating. My brother and I were standing in the doorway, looking out onto the street. Uncle Marvin knelt next to me and told us that God had a big table with a sack of potatoes on it. Thunder was that sack tipping over and those potatoes rolling off onto the floor.

Another dish that became more of a regular meal at our house was ponset (I remember pronouncing it “ponsoot”), which I associated with Vietnam even though I think its origin is from the Philippines. It’s a simple rice noodle dish made with chicken and garlic. I don’t remember if it’s a dish my dad brought back with him or if my mom learned it from someone else in our military community. We ate this dish often as I was growing up, even after my dad returned home. I haven’t had ponset since those days, either. At least as we made it. Many Pad Thai dishes resemble ponset, so I suppose I’ve been eating variations of it for a while.

The Vietnam War went on for a few years after 1968, but I don’t remember much about that. We had moved to southern California and March AFB and I was busy trying to figure out if I was a Hippy or not and trying to convince my Dad to let our friend, who was an excellent airbrush artist (and a kind of Hippy), paint flames on our Datsun pickup. He eventually did. In 1969, I sat alone in front of the television one night and watched a man walk on the moon, as it happened, while my parents and some friends grilled hamburgers in the backyard. I took up playing the cello at school because I was apparently not old enough to play violin. My brother and I caught lizards in our backyard, when their tails didn’t break off and allow them to get away, threw pomegranates and snails against our back fence, and jumped our “custom” single-speed bikes, with ten-speed bike saddles, no fenders, and fat, nobby tires, over dirt mounds in an empty lot at the end of our street. We were excited to get our Time Life series of books on the world, science, nature, cowboys and Indians as well as the World Book Encyclopedia. Many hours were spent leafing through the pages of those books.

Our family watched Gilligan’s Isle, the Brady Bunch, Sonny & Cher, Laugh-In, the Carol Burnett Show, I Dream of Jeannie, the Carpenters, The Smothers Brothers, and Bob Hope on television. We went to Ontario Motor Speedway to watch Al Unser, A.J. Foyt, and others race around the track, and to see Evel Knievel jump 19 cars with his motorcycle. We went to Disneyland and I cried most of the time because I didn’t want to be shrunk on the World of Tomorrow’s People Mover ride where as you waited in the lobby to get on the ride, people got on the ride at one end in Tilt-A-Whirl type cars (only they didn’t spin around). Openings in the wall showed the full-size cars going by, then smaller model cars and people on another level, then a clear tube with cars about a foot tall leading into a box which emptied into a large, clear sphere where little specks flew around randomly, hinting at what was to come. Such were the concerns of at least one little boy in the 1960s.

I led a pretty regular, “normal” life for a kid, even though my dad was in the Air Force during a time of war. We moved around a lot, mostly in the west and Midwest. We didn’t go overseas. Getting to know the “new kids” usually started with a rock fight, though there really was probably only one. I don’t remember seeing much about the Vietnam War on television or encountering any anti-war protests. I wonder if that’s just me forgetting or if my parents made an effort to keep that kind of stuff away from me. My memories of that time are hit and miss, really. I was young, and I think most memories from that age period tend to fade easier than those made later in life.

Though I wasn’t interested in a military life (I thought I had enough of that in our own family), I respect those who do choose it. It’s easy to distance ourselves from the events that take place during war because it’s an experience incomprehensible by those who haven’t been there – the hardships, pain, stress, instantaneous decisions that alter the course of a person’s life, the things you wish you could take back as well as the things you’re extremely proud of being a part of, the lifelong friendships forged. The only way we can get a sense of what it means to go to war, to be on the ground fighting for your life and the lives of others, is to hear it from the individuals who were there. I don’t think it’s a fascination with war that drives people to want to hear “war stories” because, while we might initially be entertained by a Hollywood notion of heroes and noble battles and a glorious storytelling, we’re quickly sobered by the reality of it as told by someone we know, who we can see and touch. Someone who was there. I think the desire to know these stories is the desire and need to try and comprehend the enormity of war, the power and breadth of it, the utility and futility of it, and to understand – even a little bit – how war comes to infuse itself on a person’s soul.

When I watched the film Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, I heard in the voices and saw on the faces of the soldiers in their retelling, so many years later, a complex range of emotion: sadness for the necessity to participate in conflict, anger because they did not want to be there to do what they needed to do, resoluteness because they did do what needed to be done, disbelief and amazement in what they saw and experienced, a sense of duty to make a difference, and profound grief and respect for those who didn’t make it back.

I deeply respect those who choose to serve in the armed forces. My involvement in this project, though on the periphery, is in some small way honoring all soldiers for their courage then, and specifically now to the members of Bravo Company for their retelling of their stories which is helping America and the world understand more fully the ramifications of war and the truth of it, good or bad.

Mike Shipman is an Air Force brat who grew up mostly in the west and Midwest, shuffled from school to school, rock fight to rock fight, until high school when his father, too, had had enough. He started out with a career as a wildlife biologist and now is a freelance photographer and photography instructor living in Idaho. Mike met Betty several years ago when she was a student in one of his photography classes.

As a lot of folks who have been following the progress of Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor know, we have been submitting to film festivals in hopes of creating some interest with distributors in order to gain worldwide distribution. To date, eight film festivals have not accepted the film, but we still have entries out for nine more and anticipate even more submissions upcoming.

For the good news, the Vietnam Veterans of America have watched and invited us to screen Bravo! at their annual leadership conference In Dallas, Texas, on August 9, 2012. As of this date, we do not have a lot of details on the conference or the showing, but as they come to us, we will report them.

While we are in Texas, we are contemplating screenings at other venues. If you live in Texas and are interested in seeing Bravo! in your town, we would love to talk to you about the possibility.

Furthermore, after our trip to Texas, we anticipate motoring east to the annual Khe Sanh Veterans Reunion in Washington, DC. We plan to go through Arkansas, on to Shiloh, Chickamauga, Look Out Mountain, Knoxville and into DC. If you live in one of those vicinities and would like us to screen Bravo! at the VFW, the American Legion Hall, a VVA meeting or the local Marine Corps League, give us a shout today. You can either email us or call (208) 340-8889.

As a youngster, Mike McCauley was hanging around the Boston Common when Boston Police Sergeant Haynes advised him to join the military. Mike took his advice and enlisted in the Marine Corps when he was nineteen.

Mike McCauley

Mike arrived at the Khe Sanh area in November 1967 when Bravo Company was into its second deployment on Hill 881 South, west of the Khe Sanh combat base. He served with First Platoon, Bravo Company, during his time in Vietnam.

He turned twenty the day the Siege of Khe Sanh ended on April 7, 1968. After his tour he returned to the States and over the years spent time in Massachusetts, Washington, DC, Maryland, Nevada and California before settling with his wife Ruth in the Seattle, Washington, region.

Mike McCauley

Mike spends his time doing woodworking and taking care of the family’s horses. When asked if he rides the horses, he says, “I’ve never ridden anything but a subway; I’m from Boston.”

Among other things, Mike is known among the men of Bravo for giving out sharp looking red (Marine Corps red) ball caps that say “Bravo Co. 1/26, Khe Sanh,” in snappy gold thread.

Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor is a documentary film about the Siege of Khe Sanh, a seventy-seven day period in a war that went on in excess of eight years. Thinking about those eight years, I often ponder what my old unit was doing in Vietnam while I as home in the United States.

Today is May First, 2012. What was Bravo Company doing on various May Firsts while the battalion, my battalion…First Battalion, 26th Marines…was in Vietnam?

On May 1, 1966, neither the battalion nor Bravo had yet been in the Vietnam area of operations. They were on their way and soon would function as a battalion landing team up and down the coast of Vietnam.

I was in my second semester of college at Arizona State University studying Business Administration and as far as I can recollect, had no intention of joining the United States Marine Corps, or the service, or of ever venturing to Vietnam.

After a chain of events that saw me enlist and ship out for Vietnam, by May 1, 1967 I was already in the field with Bravo Company. First and Second Platoons were dug in at an old ville south of Hill 55, which was southwest of Danang in I Corps in the northern part of Vietnam. Third Platoon was dug in on a river crossing further south. Alpha Company of the battalion had already left the Hill 55 area for Phu Bai on the battalion’s journey that eventually led us to Khe Sanh where elements of the Third and Ninth Marine Regiments had been and were then locked in vicious fights for Hills 861, 881 South and 881 North.

On May 1, 1967, on patrol south of Hill 55, elements of Bravo Company found a 60MM mortar employed as an antipersonnel mine which they destroyed with a pound of TNT. They also found a Punji stake which was taken back to the company CP for examination.

On May 1, 1968, I had been home from Khe Sanh, the siege and Vietnam for over two weeks, and had been drinking, partying and pondering a trip with friends to Nogales, Mexico, for margaritas, street tacos and bullfights to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Bravo Company, gone from Khe Sanh, was defending Wonder Beach on May 1, 1968. First Platoon ran an ambush the night of April 30 and returned into the perimeter early on the morning of May 1. During the day, 9 rounds of incoming mortar fire were received and one Marine was wounded. The company also took incoming machine gun fire.

On May 1, 1969, I was deployed at Marine Barracks, 36th Street Naval Station in San Diego, California, where I worked in the Navy Brig Base Parolee dorms, harassing prisoners, holding snap inspections and throwing improperly arranged footlockers out the windows three stories down into the yard.

Bravo Company was part of a battalion landing team and took part in a heliborne and seaborne assault rehearsal north of the NamO Bridge near Danang in anticipation of more rambunctious action in the days to come.

On May 1, 1970, I was out of the Marine Corps attending a local junior college in Central Arizona and working as a sheetrock humper on the construction of some high schools in the Phoenix area.

Bravo Company and the 26th Marines no longer existed in terms of a combat unit in Vietnam on May 1, 1970. Their last activities in-country were in March of that year and Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment now exists in the history of the Corps and the hearts and memories of the Marines and Corpsmen who served.

In this edition of Meet the Men of Bravo!, we get acquainted with Tom Quigley.

Tom Quigley at Khe Sanh

Tom Quigley hails from Springfield, Illinois, where he was interviewed for Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor.

Eighteen years old when he went to Bravo Company in June 1967, Tom served as the senior company radio operator for Bravo Company’s commanding officer, Ken Pipes, during the Siege. After the Siege he went on to be a squad leader in Bravo Company.

Tom Quigley

After his service in the Marine Corps, Quig (as he is affectionately called by his Marine mates) was an independent automotive wholesaler.

Tom enjoys being a new grandpa and also likes to spend his time watching movies, bowling, target shooting and hunting on the farms in the Springfield area.

You can read more about Tom in an interview he gave to his local newspaper here: http://www.sj-r.com/firstinprint/x863085660/Memories-of-Khe-Sanh.

Today’s guest blogger, nationally recognized historian and journalist Gregg Jones, muses on the Siege of Khe Sanh.

In the autumn of 2010, I had just finished writing a nonfiction book about America’s rise to world power in the Spanish-American War and the subsequent colonial war in the Philippines that bedeviled Theodore Roosevelt’s young administration. While my editor read my manuscript, I began weighing possible subjects for my next book. I had spent years researching the death of my uncle and eight comrades on a B-24 bomber crew in World War II, and so that story was high on my list. At the same time, another subject called to me: America’s war in Vietnam.

My interest in the Vietnam War had its roots in my lifelong love of American history. Growing up in a small southeast Missouri town, the American Civil War had been my passion, and I had devoured books by Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote. I was nine years old in the summer of 1968 when we piled into our ’64 Chevy Impala for a family vacation to Washington, D.C. I persuaded my parents to stop at every Civil War battlefield in our path, but each day our journey into America’s past was jolted back to the present by newscasts and headlines about the widening war in Vietnam. As we walked through Arlington National Cemetery a few days later, we could not help but notice all the fresh graves. We watched in solemn silence as a flag-draped coffin passed the Custis-Lee Mansion on a horse-drawn caisson, and then, some minutes later, the sound of Taps echoed over the hallowed hills. Back home in Missouri, my family followed events in Vietnam on the CBS Evening News and in our local newspaper. Every so often, the paper wrote about some hometown boy who had died in America’s service in Indochina. Eventually, fourteen young men from my hometown of 15,000 people would never return.

Gregg Jones

Two years ago, as I began to seriously consider a book on the Vietnam War, I debated two questions: What should be my focus? And could I write something of lasting historical value? Three events occupied my thoughts: the battle for Khe Sanh; the Tet offensive; and the fall of Saigon. As a student of American military history, I had long been fascinated with the former two events. While I read everything I could about Khe Sanh, I initially decided to take a broader approach and chronicle the experiences of several men who fought in Vietnam in 1968.

Almost from the beginning, I found myself drawn deeper into the epic story of Khe Sanh.

Three Khe Sanh veterans—Michael O’Hara, Tom Quigley and Dennis Mannion–were my first interviews in the project. When I first contacted Michael, he was wary. He wanted to know who I was and why I wanted to write this book. They were fair questions, and I answered these and others in detail. I explained that I had been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in my 29 years as an investigative journalist and foreign correspondent, and I had spent 10 years in Southeast Asia.

I told Michael about the years of work I had done on weekends and holidays to unravel the mysteries of my uncle’s lost bomber crew, tracking down family members of the men and arranging for a memorial to be placed in the Austrian meadow where the bomber crashed on the afternoon of October 1, 1943. When I told him that the remains of my uncle and his comrades had been returned to the United States in early 1950 and buried in a group grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, he could barely contain himself. Michael had stood almost in that exact spot, paying tribute to several comrades from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines. It turned out that some of the Marines killed in the “Ghost Patrol” of 25 February 1968 had been buried in a group grave just a few yards from my uncle’s crew.

Months passed and Khe Sanh continued to dominate my thoughts. Michael, Tom and Dennis shared their experiences and generously put me in touch with other men who had served there. I became an associate member of the Khe Sanh Veterans Association. Last summer, I drove up to Rochester, Minnesota, to attend the annual reunion as Michael’s guest.

Those three days I spent with the Khe Sanh veterans rate among the most memorable 72 hours of my life. I met some exceptional men and their families, and witnessed the extraordinary bonds that forever sustain Khe Sanh survivors. I spent hours recording the experiences of Ken Pipes and other Khe Sanh veterans like Ghost Patrol survivor Cal Bright. (I also witnessed some priceless karaoke performances by such iconic Khe Sanh Marines as Tom Eichler and Bruce “T-Bone” Jones.) I left Rochester inspired by these men. On the drive back to Texas, I resolved to focus my book on what the defenders of Khe Sanh had endured and achieved in those red clay hills in 1968.

Four weeks later, I handed my literary agent a 40-page proposal that laid out the book that had begun to take shape in my head—a narrative history of the epic battle for Khe Sanh, based on extensive interviews with enlisted men and officers who were there. My agent sent the proposal to a dozen top trade publishing houses in New York and Boston. There was immediate interest, but ten publishers eventually retreated to the tired conventional wisdom regarding books on America’s most unpopular war: We like the proposal, but Vietnam War books just don’t attract enough readers…. I wanted to say: Well, they should! Fortunately, two publishing houses believed in my vision for a new book about Khe Sanh. I settled on Bob Pigeon at Da Capo Press, who told me that he had long wanted to do a major book about Khe Sanh.

And so the project, now a book focused solely on Khe Sanh in 1968, took life.

The project timetable calls for me to deliver a manuscript to Da Capo by 31 December of this year. As of this writing, I have interviewed 52 men who served at Khe Sanh in 1968, and I will be speaking with many more in the coming days. I have been moved and inspired beyond words by the accounts I have heard, testaments to the camaraderie and indomitable spirit of the men who served at Khe Sanh. The great challenge I face in the months ahead is transforming these hundreds of hours of priceless interviews into a narrative worthy of these men and their service.

Among the powerful accounts I have gathered is that of a fellow writer who had been a young Marine rifleman from Arizona in 1968. Spending time with Ken Rodgers and his wife Betty at the Rochester reunion had been one of my personal highlights. I had become aware of their film, Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, even before I began contacting Vietnam veterans. Later, Ken and Betty generously invited me to attend the private screening of their film with Bravo Company veterans. I thought I had steeled myself for the experience, but the power and raw honesty of Ken and Betty’s interviews swept away my defenses. I’ve never shed more tears than I did while watching the scarred survivors of Bravo Company speak of their experiences at Khe Sanh.

As I move ahead with my own modest effort to preserve the history of Khe Sanh, I am closely following Ken and Betty’s important work to bring Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor to a wide audience. Financially and emotionally, they put themselves on the line to make this film. It is an extraordinary piece of documentary art. Whatever your opinions of the war, the young Americans who served our nation in Vietnam deserve to have their stories told in movies like Bravo!, and in books like that which I hope to create. If I may paraphrase Ken and Betty’s powerful prologue, this is not a pro-war or anti-war statement. This is about what happened. And, as Americans and intelligent beings, we need to remember.

A Missouri native, Gregg Jones is the author of Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (New American Library/Penguin, 2012) and Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement (Westview Press, 1989). He is currently writing a narrative history of the 1968 battle for Khe Sanh, which will be published by Da Capo Press in 2013. He was a Pulitzer Prize-finalist investigative reporter and foreign correspondent before writing books full time.

In this installment of Meet the Men, we get acquainted with John “Doc” Cicala.

“Doc” lived in St. Clair Shores, Michigan when he enlisted in the Navy.

John "Doc" Cicala at Khe Sanh

In the Marine Corps, the medical personnel who go onto the battlefield with Marines are United States Navy Hospital Corpsmen. Grateful Marines fondly call Corpsmen “Doc.”

“Doc” Cicala served as a Corpsman with Third Platoon, Bravo Company, during the Siege of Khe Sanh. At the “ripe old age of twenty-one,” he was the second oldest man in Third Platoon.

After a forty-four year career with Chrysler Corporation, “Doc” retired, but he didn’t like retirement, so he went back to work for Chrysler as a contractor, where he now works on specific problems where his experience pays off. He also trains Chrysler employees.

Besides still helping out with his old company, “Doc” is a “classic car nut.” His highlight right now is a restored 1967 Plymouth GTX.

On February 23, 1968, Khe Sanh combat base took 1307 incoming rounds, evidently breaking a record for single-day incoming in Vietnam. Around 4:15 in the afternoon, Khe Sanh Siege time, a particular round slammed into Gray Sector, Bravo Company’s sector on the line. The round blasted a 106 MM recoilless rifle bunker and four Marines inside that bunker were killed in action.

I remember that day, both for the number of rounds and for the destruction of the 106 bunker. The bunker wasn’t too far from our platoon’s (Second Platoon) area of responsibility. I recall several Marines from our squad (Third Squad) went down and tried to assist the men of that stricken bunker.

One of the men killed, I believe, in that particular incident at the 106 bunker on February 23 was Bravo Company Marine, Vincent Antonio Mottola. I am in contact with Vincent (Vinnie as his family called him) Mottola’s cousin, Marie Chalmers. Marie has asked me to put the word out that anyone who remembers or knew Vinnie, please contact her at 617-327-4587 or via e-mail at mchalm1044@aol.com.

Our memories of youth and family die hard. I will rephrase that. Sometimes our memories refuse to die. It is often important for us to keep our memories flowing, intact, relevant. If you knew Vinnie Mottola or anything about his time in Vietnam, please contact Marie Chalmers.

Bravo! Marine Cal Bright introduces himself.

I was born and raised on a farm in Parma, Michigan, until I joined the Marines at the age of 17 and went to boot camp at San Diego. From there, went through BITS and AIT then got to Viet Nam the first part of January, 1968, just turned 18. Went to Khe Sanh directly after getting to Nam and joined 3rd Platoon (Lt. Jaques), Bravo Company, 1/26 Marines.

During the month of February, while I was already at Khe Sanh, my dad sent me my draft notice. Dang ARMY drafted me since I did not report to my local draft board for my 18th birthday.

I did various details such as filling sandbags, burning crappers, LPs, guard duty, etc. I had no idea while on my first sandbag detail, that I would get buried under a ton of debris. We were in the process of rebuilding a 106 MM recoilless rifle pit when we took a direct hit that buried all of us. Fortunately, none of us were injured or killed.

Cal Bright as a young Marine

On one of my LP (listening post) details, I was out and the only contact with our
rear was a strand of wire that was hand-held by a fellow Marine. We would tug the wire for a Sit Rep (situation report). During my watch the wire got tugged and pulled almost out of my hand. Talk about being scared shitless, I didn’t know what to do. I was too scared to pull on the wire so I just lay there until daylight. As I proceeded to crawl back in the daylight, I discovered my wire had been broken or cut (not sure which) and there were several footprints and mounds of dirt shoveled. It had been a night that the NVA had crawled in behind me and were in the process of digging a trench up to our wire. I am glad that I did not tug or pull on the wire, for it would have given my position away.

My first patrol will be one that I’ll NEVER forget. It was February 25, 1968, which became known as the Ghost Patrol. I have no idea how it was possible but I was not hit or wounded on it even though I found out afterwards that I went crawling and running through one of our mine fields from the opposite direction (from the enemy side) without touching off a round. I have lived with guilt to this day since so many of us died in the Ghost Patrol.

My next patrol was on March 30 (pay-back time).

I have turned my experience of combat into a positive, by contributing in other capacities.

I transferred from Bravo Company and went to S2 and worked with Kit Carson Scouts for the rest of my tour. We went on many patrols and ambushes in places I can’t remember and some I’m not willing to report about. On returning to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in 1969, I did a tour in Gitmo Bay (Cuba).

After getting out of the Marines for a couple/three years, I joined the Air Force Reserve for the next twenty years along with being hired by the Federal Government. During this stint, I was activated for Desert Storm and got as far as Ft. Hood, Texas, before being deactivated.

While working for the Federal Government, I was transferred to a section for Emergency Essential Personnel due to my previous military experience. I eventually ended up doing four Southwest Asia tours to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. I worked for the DoD/DLA as a Customer Support Rep. I was tasked to train, supply and equip the local security forces, as well as supply and equip our own military including NATO forces. I was deployed there for just under three years.

Cal Bright at his interview for Bravo!

I feel that God put me on this earth for a purpose and serving our Federal Government in one capacity or another was His way of keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Since I wasn’t allowed to go back overseas because of being diagnosed with skin and prostate cancer, I retired in June of 2010.

For the past few years I have been rebuilding my 1984 Corvette and have it almost completed. It is a 383 Stroker putting out just under 450hp. I enjoy hunting, fishing, cooking on the grill, camping, dates with my wife Debbie and enjoying all of our grandchildren (all sixteen of them).