There’s a photograph of BRAVO! Marine Tom Quigley receiving a purple heart medal while in a hospital bed somewhere in or near the Republic of South Vietnam.

The photo was taken on April 1, 1968, two days after Tom was wounded outside Khe Sanh Combat Base in what has since become known as the Payback Patrol.

Tom served as the radio operator for Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines’ company commander—or Skipper, Ken Pipes.

Tom is on my mind the last few days. He passed away on Tuesday, March 22, after battling for 17 years with serious health issues.

Tom, like so many of the men who survived the Siege of Khe Sanh, was a tough, tough man. He was also funny and loving, a family man, a hard worker, a success at many things, a friend. A good and kind person.

Tom liked to tease. He teased me a lot and I will miss his humor, his wry observations about people and about me.

I remember that day when Tom got wounded, March 30, 1968, fifty-four years to the day from this writing.

I was a radio operator, too, for 2nd Platoon’s platoon sergeant. We were running down the NVA trench on the way to the very front edge of that nasty battle. Staff Sergeant Alvarado and I moved out in order to mark the extreme edge of our perimeter so artillery barrages could be called in to create a barrier between counter-attacking NVA troops and us. This would allow us to save our wounded and retrieve the dead in an orderly withdrawal.

As Staff Sergeant Alvarado and I ran down the trench, I noticed the company command group—Skipper Pipes, radio men including Tom, corpsmen, the company gunny, several forward observers—all standing in a bomb crater.

As Tom liked to say, “The fighting was intense.”

And he wasn’t exaggerating when he said that; the sky chock full of smoke and fog and the cries of fighting men, and wounded, too; the noise…the noise.

I looked again as we ran on, and a barrage of mortar rounds landed in and around the command group; and when the smoke cleared, Marines were scattered everywhere, on the ground, on their knees.

The platoon sergeant and I ran on and years later, when I had the honor of interviewing him for Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, I learned about Tom’s wounds and how even though he suffered from a concussion that forced blood out of the pores of his skin and serious shrapnel wounds, he helped evacuate the others in that bomb crater back to the rear where the medical teams endeavored to provide medical attention to the injured.

Seeing a wounded Tom receiving his purple heart while in that hospital makes me think about how, instead of getting help for himself, he made sure that others were taken care of. I will always admire the sense of duty, loyalty, and courage that compelled him to ensure other wounded men were served. Tom personified the Marine motto: Semper Fidelis.

Badly wounded, he put other wounded men first.

Tom told me that because all of those men died back there at Khe Sanh, he needed to “live a good life because they never got the chance.” And he did have a good life.

Tom didn’t need to talk about all of this. You just knew it, the kind of man, the kind of Marine he was.

Semper Fidelis, Tom. We are going to miss you. Really miss you.

You can read Tom’s obituary here: https://www.staabfuneralhomes.com/obituary/thomas-tom-n-quigley/.

In Their Own Words

Fifty-four years ago, the Siege of Khe Sanh had switched into high gear. Tet churned the South Vietnamese landscape. On February 4th, the NVA assaulted Hill 861-A, breached the perimeter before a savage fight drove them off. Echo Company, 26th Marines, suffered 33 killed and wounded.

The Special Forces camp at Lang Vei was being overrun the morning of February 7th with seven Green Berets killed or missing and three others taken prisoner by the NVA. The North Vietnamese deployed tanks. We heard them out in the misty night, or imagined we did.

On February 8th, the NVA overran a platoon from Alpha Company, 9th Marines, on Hill 64 before being driven off. Twenty-seven Marines died in that fight.

Meanwhile, the incoming rocked us on a daily basis.

What was it like?

Let some of the Marines and Navy Corpsmen who made it home tell you about the shock and fear. These comments are from the original interviews done for the film BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR. Some of the comments made it into our final cut, some of them you have never read. Even though the interviews were conducted on an individual basis, the men often recollected the same events without anyone prompting. That was one of the amazing things about interviewing the men of BRAVO!

All of the men talked a lot about the incoming artillery, rockets and mortars.

And not always in a manner one would expect.

Mike McCauley:

Some of the time the rockets would hit a bunker, the bunker would be destroyed and there would be a rat nest in there with small, baby rats, pink fleshy things, and we’d do away with them. The parents…we’re talking rats. Now I’m not talking about American little mice-rats, I’m talking about rats with fur, huge rats. We wanted to train them to carry our packs.

The incoming seemed like it never ceased and the men remembered that.

Ken Pipes, The Skipper:

Incoming in a defensive perimeter can become very disconcerting and very disturbing, particularly if it goes on around the clock. And ours did.

Peter Weiss:

You’d lose men, not just in the field, but we lost them in those trenches, and latrines and other places.

Tom Quigley:

It was just a constant barrage. You just caught sleep when you could. Your nerves was on edge all the time. You could laugh and joke around, but I mean each day was serious because it seemed like someone was getting it every day, either wounded or killed, unfortunately.

And not just the big stuff, the 152s and the 130s and 120s, the mortars, but other incoming, too.

Ron Rees:

Rounds from a sniper, I mean it was like a mosquito. They were buzzing your head constantly. You just realized that that was a bullet.

The nature of the incoming often gave you time to think about what was coming.

Dan Horton:

You never knew when it was coming until you heard it leaving the tube. Then you knew it was coming but you didn’t know where it was landing. Of course, we had the Khe Sanh Shuffle. We learned to do that real good. Everywhere you moved on base you had to be ready to look for shelter because you never knew.

Frank McCauley:

If you heard it screaming you were safe. If it was a short scream you were in serious trouble.

Ron Rees:

From the time you heard that round leave the tube until its impact, you imagined death. You’re thinking all along, is it you?

Michael E. O’Hara:

Day after day after day and January pretty quick became February and I thought to myself, this is crazy. People don’t understand what it’s like for all that artillery to come in like that. It’s meant to do more than just tear up your body. It’s meant to tear up your mind. It will scare you to death. I’ve told people time and time again, there is no way I can explain it but it’s like a freight train coming through the bathroom when you’re taking a shower. And you know its coming and you can’t get out of the bathroom and it will just scare you to death.

Lloyd Scudder:

I was scared to death…that shhhewww and the whistling of the rockets and that poof of the mortars and the kapoof shoooosheeewhirwhirwhir. You know that right there scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t get deep enough in the trench. I don’t care if it was five feet, ten feet, twenty feet, I couldn’t get deep enough.

John “Doc” Cicala:

A lot of fear from everybody. You know, from everybody.

But in spite of all the hell raining down, men still showed courage, showed some attitude.

John “Doc” Cicala:

I saw so many acts of heroism, guys running to help other guys.

Steve Wiese:

Knowing that tonight is going to be another night, you know when the sun goes down, the rockets and mortars are going to start in again and you know it’s just a crap shoot whether you get hit or not.

One night I stood up on the roof of my bunker in the middle of a rocket attack and went, “Hey, here I am, man, take your best shot.” You know, it’s either you get me now or you’re not going to get me. I remember a few rockets came in and I thought, maybe this isn’t a good idea.

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The new documentary film from Betty and Ken Rodgers, I MARRIED THE WAR, is now available to watch. Check it out at https://imarriedthewar.com/.

In Their Own Words

Fifty-four years ago today, the Siege of Khe Sanh commenced and for roughly 77 days, the battle roared and the scenes of carnage and death and courage were featured on television screens across America.

While the participants’ families and friends sat in their easy chairs in their living rooms, watching with horror, going to work and church and school with the thoughts of death and fear in their minds, the men who fought the battle dug in.

What was it like?

Let some of the Marines and Navy Corpsmen who made it home tell you. These comments are from the original interviews done for the film. Some of them made it into the final cut, some of them you have never read before. Even though the interviews were conducted on an individual basis, the men often recollected the same events without anyone prompting. That was one of the amazing things about interviewing the men of BRAVO!

On the night before the boom lowered and the siege began some of the men had a sense of foreboding.

Ken Rodgers:

I went out in the trench and I think I had first watch and as I was getting off watch it was misty. You could see through the mist and there was Puff the Magic Dragon flying around and all you saw was the blur of the tracers and hear the thing and it was moaning. I understood then that something was going to happen.

Cal Bright:

Everything was all nice and quiet. As a matter of fact it was, more or less, too quiet.

The initial eruptions of incoming found most of the men of Bravo 1/26 in their racks. The chaos ripped them out of their sleep and into the trenches and fighting holes.

Dan Horton:

There’s an explosion in the doorway of the hooch. Slammed me against the bulkhead. Then I knew the shit was hitting the fan here. Scared the crap out of me, of course, I was all discombubulated.

Cal Bright:

All Hell broke loose.

Michael E. O’Hara:

I was there digging holes in the trench. I wanted to go down as far as I could go. I was scared.

Lloyd Scudder:

I went outside and tried to curl up in a ball as much as I could. I looked like a turtle underneath my helmet.

Then the ammo dump took a direct hit.

Mike McCauley:

When the ammo dump exploded, man, we thought it was atomic.

Cal Bright:

It was obvious that they, the NVA, had been reconning the area for quite some time because you can’t hit an ammo dump with artillery and rockets and score direct hits without practicing. And it took them no time at all.

Ken Rodgers:

Our own artillery rounds that were stored in the ammo dump were cooking off and shooting straight up into the air and coming down on us.

Tom Quigley:

The NVA rounds had hit our ammo dump, and in the ammo dump was a lot of CS canisters and those went off and the gas started coming in through our hooch.

Mike McCauley:

Nobody had their gas masks with them so everybody’s trying to find a gas mask.

Ken Pipes:

The CS gas that was blown out of the dump was burning and settling into the trenches because it goes to the low ground and into the bunkers.

Guys were getting hurt. Guys were dying.

Ken Korkow:

We got a lot of incoming and I’ll tell you, three separate times, incoming was so close to me I didn’t jump down, the concussion of the shell actually knocked me to the ground.

John “Doc” Cicala:

I heard ‘em yelling for a Corpsman and I started running down the trench line and the next thing I know I was looking up at the sky and I heard a Marine calling for a Corpsman and “where the hell is that son-of-a-bitch?” I was kind of lying there dazed and I got up and I picked up my helmet and I had the tail fin of a mortar in the top of my helmet. It must have hit me and knocked me out.

Peter Weiss:

I didn’t know it at the time: the radioman who had been killed. Must have been killed right at the door of the bunker. Touching a body…first time I touched a dead body. It was like, “Oh, my God.”

After hours and hours of explosions, the ammo dump going up, the CS gas in the trenches, things calmed down.

John “Doc” Cicala :

The rest of the morning was just taking care of every guy that had shrapnel wounds.

Mike McCauley:

It was pretty chaotic.

Steve Wiese:

I thought, my God, you’re not going to survive this. Little did I know that it was going to go on for 77 days.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available @https://bravotheproject.com/store/.

A digital version of BRAVO! is available in the US on Amazon Prime Video @ https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject?ref=hl.

The new documentary film from Betty and Ken Rodgers, I MARRIED THE WAR, is now available to watch. Check it out at https://imarriedthewar.com/.

We will be screening BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR in West Jefferson, North Carolina at 3:00 PM on Thursday, November 18. Come join us at the Parkway Theater. Filmmakers Betty and Ken Rodgers will be there in person to talk about the film along with Bruce and Francine Jones. Bruce served with the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh as did filmmaker Ken Rodgers.

On November 20th at 10:00 AM at the Library in West Jefferson, we will be screening our second film, I MARRIED THE WAR, about the wives of combat veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. Francine Jones, one of the strong and courageous women in the film, will be on hand to discuss the project along with the filmmakers, Betty and Ken.

Please join us.

In separate but associated news, DVDs of I MARRIED THE WAR are now available to purchase. Details can be found at https://imarriedthewar.com/buy-the-dvd/.

As Veterans Day approaches, our thoughts turn to the wars fought in our lives and our friends and loved ones who served, some living, some now gone. We think of them, see their faces, hear their voices.

Our films speak to some of the issues surrounding war and combat. We wouldn’t have been able to create these stories without the help of all our friends and supporters, who are many. Thank you!

The phone jangled—1992 or 1993—and when I answered it, a voice out of my past said, “Is this Kenny Rodgers?”

I wondered who it was and then kind of remembered and then he said, “You may not remember me but…”

It all hit, the way he liked to stand, cocky, even though he was just a kid.

He told me about a reunion in Washington, DC, for survivors of Khe Sanh, and that he wanted me to come, and he told me about who he’d contacted, who he’d met up with. I think he’d made it his duty to find all the men who’d served in Third Squad, Second Platoon, Bravo Company, 1/26 during the siege of Khe Sanh.

If he hadn’t called me, our lives—Betty and mine—might have been very different. But we went to the reunion and for 28 years, Michael E. O’Hara has been a big part of my life—our lives.

We were lucky in that.

He was in our film, BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR, and his powerful, emotional words were, and still are, a testament to the long-lasting effects of combat and to the reverence he, and most of us who served at Khe Sanh, felt for our comrades.

Michael passed on last week after a battle with cancer.

I feel his absence already, a voice over my shoulder encouraging, scolding, scoffing, laughing at me. I find myself thinking, “Okay, O’Hara, what do you think about…,” and then I realize we won’t share any of those moments again. Only in my imagination.

We didn’t always see eye-to-eye. We argued more than we should have, but none of that matters now. And never really did.

An image comes to mind when I think about him. Maybe the first time I really recognized him as one of our Bravo Company Marines. I’d been on R & R in Bangkok, and right after I came back, we moved out of the lines at the combat base and up to 881-S. It was October of 1967.

We had gotten a lot of new guys in the squad while I’d been on R & R. Including him.

We humped it from the base up to the hill. I see Michael now, in my mind’s eye, on that trek. His clean helmet cover, his clean jungle boots, his clean jungle dungarees, his sleeves rolled up, a pack of Marlboros stored in the rolled left sleeve, his young biceps bulging, his M16 held in his right hand, butt against the right thigh, the business end into the sky. He was easy like that, and confident.

For three months we were in the same fire team. Long, wet patrols, humping up and down, once into Laos when we weren’t supposed to be there. Ambushes off the south end of 881-S. Soggy, miserable listening posts. Leaking hooches, everything wet: your socks, your boots, your mummy bag. Leeches, leeches, leeches.

We charged up hills into the enemy’s trench more than once, and we watched men die, watched them get maimed. We carried the dead and wounded off the battlefield.

During the siege, we endured the fury and the fear and while there, O’Hara earned three Purple Hearts.

Michael was an outstanding Marine.

One night in March of 1968, the artillery battery that was right behind our lines in the Gray Sector suffered a direct hit on their ammo dump. All night, ordnance exploded. Some of the rounds threw out smaller bits of explosives that detonated here and there, until after sunup, like they were randomly intent on killing whoever chanced to wander along our trench.

I was on radio watch most of that night in the platoon command post. Off and on, through those dark and dangerous hours, Michael came down that trench line delivering messages to us in the command post.

He was like that. Undaunted. Carrying out orders in the face of extreme danger.

My definition of a hero is someone who does what needs to be done against long odds, even though fear gets on his back like a big cat. Even though he or she doesn’t want to do it.

That was Michael E. O’Hara.

There’s a saying about Marines: No better friend, no worse enemy.

If you crossed Michael, he might chase you down and tackle you in the middle of the street and straighten you out. No worse enemy.

Years later, when the men he served with needed help or when their families needed help, he was there. He’d fund your dreams, he’d bury you. He’d show up to speak your name and remember you.

That, too, was Michael.

No better friend.

We will miss him. I will miss him. Man, will I.

Semper Fidelis, Michael E. O’Hara.

Fifty-two years ago this morning on the battlefield of Khe Sanh, Vietnam, Bravo Company, 1/26 burst out of the confines of siege and siege mentality and went on the attack.

The details of what is now known as Payback are documented in a number of places. But what’s difficult to document is the fury and desperation that occurred when men from separate sides met face-to-face in a morning’s worth of savagery. For two and one-half months they’d blasted and murdered and maimed us and scared the living hell out of us. And we hungered for revenge.

We caught them sleeping and we jumped in their trenches and we caught them in their bunkers and we dropped grenades on top of them and shot them when they crawled out and we dropped satchel charges on them and we shot them while looking in their eyes and we burned them alive with flame throwers and lobbed 60 millimeter mortars on top of them and we killed and killed.

The faces of the dead turned sallow and as I ran through the NVA’s trenches, I talked to myself about how the sallow nature of death made them all look the same, whether our side or theirs. They all looked the same and maybe that was appropriate given that the hands of death had choked all life out of them no matter their rank or race.

Most of us were young. Our skipper called us kids. We were kids with lethal weapons and a bitter taste in our mouths and a load of hate in our hearts. Not a hate you reserve for the man you know who stabbed you in the back, but the hate you know against an idea, against an enemy—not individuals—that killed people that you love, and even though . . . even at the time you know . . . even though you’ve been taught thou shall not kill, and love your brother, and turn the other cheek, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you, you’re filled with hate and you are going to kill. You need to kill.

Fifty-two years ago this morning.

Enraged, we coveted revenge. Enraged, we needed to salve our pride. Indifference to them as human beings was the hallmark of the morning of 30Mar1968. We felt nothing towards those people over there except the need to see them dead. Payback.

***

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Steve Wiese was an American Hero. I think he would dispute that statement and would have said something like, “The real heroes are the dead, the ones who didn’t come home.”

But he was a hero.

Unlike so many of us who fought with Bravo Company, 1/26 at Khe Sanh, who did 12-month-and-twenty-day tours, Steve extended his time in country and served 18 Months. He joined up with his Bravo Marines when 1/26 was headquartered at Hill 55 southwest of Danang, and could have rotated home in late autumn of 1967, but chose to come back from his leave just in time to endure the Siege of Khe Sanh.

In many regards, I think, he was the Marine’s Marine, a leader and a warrior who loved his Bravo Company mates.

A lot of Khe Sanh vets knew Steve better than I did, but what we shared was special: intense and intimate in the ways combat veterans share. We’d been to war and we’d made it home and after decades of keeping our traps shut about our experiences, we opened up and told our stories, separately and together.

And boy, did Steve’s stories impact the message that, after thirty-plus years, went out to America and the world.

The things Steve said in BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR illuminated the service of all Vietnam Veterans. He said it like it needed to be said, blunt and bold and no-holds-barred. He bared his soul and revealed his vulnerabilities while edifying the men with whom he served.

There were a lot of tragedies in Steve’s life. In Vietnam, with Bravo, he was involved in every battle or firefight of any consequence that happened during his tour.

While I managed to not be in a number of the fights that Steve was in, I lived through enough to get an inkling what it was like for him.

On June 7, 1967, in what has lately been termed by historians to be the last clash in the Hill Fights segment of the Battle of Khe Sanh, Bravo went on a two-platoon patrol off the north end of Hill 881-S. Back then, we patrolled in soft covers and no flak jackets, and we generally ran patrols on the same routes every few days.

So, when the NVA ambushed Bravo out there that day, the casualties were devastating. I wasn’t out there. Our squad stayed on the lines but I heard it and I saw it, and how it felt to me then, sticks with me now: emptiness, like some part of me hightailed it and can’t come back. So with that in mind I can only imagine how those men who fought that day—like Steve Wiese—felt.

He gained some notoriety that day when, upon coming in the gate after the patrol returned to the combat base, he barked at a colonel, maybe, or a lieutenant colonel, or a major who tried to soothe the returning warriors with platitiudes. (A load of officers came up on the hill at the end of that fight.)

After returning to his squad area, he expected to be standing tall in front of The Man because of what he said, but instead he was approached by a general, whose name I don’t think he ever enlightened me with, who told Steve to not pay attention to anything that officer had said.

On July 21, 1967, First Platoon of Bravo went out on a patrol on Route 9, east of Khe Sanh, which was ambushed. Steve was out there that day, too, and men with whom he served and bonded, died.

And then there was the Siege and all that came with it.

Including the Ghost Patrol. Steve was a squad leader on that debacle and even though he survived, a lot of the men in his squad didn’t. He carried a ton of grief and guilt over that. His narrative about how he managed to escape and evade the NVA to return to the base is one hell of a story.

And then there was the savage Payback Patrol where he was a squad leader in First Platoon and again, lost a lot of good Marines.

After he came home, he put up with all the guff and lack of respect that came with being a Vietnam Vet, and he suffered tragedies that would break folks with less steel in their spine.

He loved his Marines and he cherished and honored them whether dead or alive.

IF you were one of his Marine Brothers, he supported you. He showed up when the manure hit the fan.

One of the strongest moments in BRAVO! Is when Steve says this, “I’ve had people say, ‘Well, that was 30, 40 years ago. Why don’t you get over it?’ You know, I wish I could. I wish I could get over it. But on the other hand, it’s like I don’t ever want to forget these guys. I don’t want to forget what I’ve seen, what I was witness to. And I don’t want to forget them and their memories.” And he never did.

Steve wouldn’t have called himself a hero, but I will.

***

After the Ghost Patrol of 25Feb1968, no larger units sortied outside Khe Sanh combat base for almost a month. We sent out some listening posts but those were small and they went out after dark and came in before sunrise while the mist still hung low to the ground.

But on today’s date fifty-two years ago, as the sun threw up the first hint of daylight, we Marines of Second Platoon, Bravo, 1/26 stood in the trench and smoked our Camels and Winstons and Salems, flinched at the incoming rounds, heard the scrape of scuffed jungle boots in the red mud at the bottom of the trench. Noted some mumbles.

And if fear had sounds, they would have ricocheted in the deep trench, off the walls, against the sandbags. Being Marines, we needed to keep the fright quarantined to a slow boil at the bottom of our guts. We must not entertain the notion of fear because its insidious gnawing weakened us.

And then out the gate we went, crossed over the minefield, got on line and charged across the vale and up the ridge towards the NVA position in the vicinity of where the Ghost Patrol had traveled.

Our big guns on base boxed us in with ordnance, geysers of red mud, black smoke and the din of combat suddenly crammed in our ears and brains, sucking the breath out of our lungs. And as we headed towards our objective, our allies to the rear, on the base, fired machine-guns over our heads.

As the Marines of my old squad, Third Squad, reached the top of the ridge, explosions erupted among them and then .50 caliber rounds fired by our guys, our allies, our mates, ripped into the men of Third Squad. I saw the rounds hit; flashes and bodies pirouetting, falling.

The explosions I suspect were from NVA mortar rounds and RPG rounds, but the machine-gun fire was what we call friendly fire. Friendly fire.

Up top, while the wounded were medevacked, we got in the NVA trench and headed east. At one point elements of First Squad, who were on point, veered off to the north, away from the trench.

We’d been briefed to stay in the NVA trench because it was believed that the surrounding terrain was infested with booby traps.

When this went down, I had about fifteen days left in the field. I’d survived my twelve month-plus tour by being good at surviving, being lucky, not being heroic, just doing my job and keeping it as low profile as possible.

So I was shocked as I took off, out of the trench, sprinting behind the Marines of First Squad, yelling, “No, no,” and when several turned at my words—and as I think of it now, how they heard me in the furious din that boomed around us—how they weren’t blown up by some of that ordnance and how we all didn’t get blown to smithereens by the mines and booby traps out there where we had wrongly ventured, is a wonder to me to this day.

But, nobody lost legs or died or anything. We just got back in the NVA trench and drove on towards our goal.

Not far from our destination, a gate we could enter through the maze of our own mines and wire and booby traps, the man on point triggered an NVA booby-trapped grenade that went off. He went down, but then got up and a Corpsman went to succor him and after that, we went in, missing some of the men with whom I’d served previously in Third Squad. The squad leader, Corporal Jacobs’ back had been rent by one of those .50 caliber rounds that had been delivered by the friendly fire. He stood there among us like nothing had happened to him.

After we all retired to our area, we shouted and jumped up and down and the Marines sent historians to record our thoughts. I remember relief. I remember a sense of satisfaction, and I also remember feeling extremely elated. How I imagined exaltation. I was bad, I was indestructible. I was alive.

And we’d gotten in their trench. Their trench.

We were…were…were unbreakable, we were shatterproof, we were everlasting.

The thing that sticks in my mind after all these years was that high, that feeling that I stood atop a throne at the apex of the world was at that moment so different from the almost two months of despair that permeated everything that I had lived through. Thousands upon thousands of incoming rounds that shook the ground—some that roared like railroad engines and some that hissed like sneaky spirits—and dismembered men I knew and didn’t know, who at that time and in that place were like twin brothers to me.

I realized that for two months I’d lived on huge doses of luck and that sometime, if the siege did not stop, I’d be hit by a whooshing chunk of shrapnel that would sever an arm or a leg, or I’d be sitting in my bunker and a rocket round would crash through the roof and my fellow Marines would be gathering my parts that were pasted on the sandbag walls, or a sniper would put a round through my brain.

So, having been in their trench, and having survived, and for at least a few hours, having been on top, the aggressor, the winner so to speak. Yeah, I was elated. I was bad.

***

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A digital version of BRAVO! is available in the US on Amazon Prime Video @ https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.

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52 years ago today, one of the most significant events in my memory of Khe Sanh’s siege occurred in what has now become known as the Ghost Patrol. When Marines and Corpsmen from Third Platoon of Bravo Company 1/26 were ambushed by a battalion of NVA, a squad from First Platoon went out to relieve them, and they were ambushed, too. A lot of good Marines, young men with futures that would never be discovered and fulfilled, died that day.

I have written about this a lot over the years I suppose in hopes of finding resolution, and yet I still return to the memories almost daily.

I recall our skipper, Ken Pipes, talking about the event one evening, sadness drooped on his shoulders like a too-heavy mantle. He talked about a patrol on Guadalcanal—the Goettge Patrol, led by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge—that was ambushed by Japanese forces and which lost almost its entire 25-man contingent.

Skipper Pipes talked about how bad things happen in war and how the Ghost Patrol was another of the long list of actions where Marines were attacked and nearly obliterated. But his and my recognition of this fact of war had no effect, as far as I could tell, in lessening his profound sense of loss, and responsibility, related to the ambush of 25Feb68.

The Ghost Patrol has been the subject of a number of news articles, battle studies, and for a while was used as a case study in the Scouting and Patrolling class at the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico, Virginia where all new Marine Corps officers and warrant officers are trained. One of the things they taught in that course was how it feels to lose your troops/mates in the chaotic heat of battle, and in retrospect, the ensuing grief.

One of the online dictionaries defines grief as “deep sorrow, especially the sorrow caused by someone’s death.”

Grief comes in a variety of types. According to the website WHAT’S YOUR GRIEF (https://whatsyourgrief.com/ ), grief can be prolonged, anticipatory, masked, disenfranchised, secondary, cumulative, inhibited, ambiguous, complicated, normal, traumatic, abbreviated, exaggerated, absent, prolonged, chronic, and collective, to name a few.

As far as I can discern from my short appraisal of the types of grief, I suffer—or have suffered, related to the events surrounding the Ghost Patrol: normal, prolonged, complicated, traumatic, chronic and collective grief.

Collective grief, in my case, means that besides my problems with the malady, I am joined by a relatively large number of my fellow Khe Sanh survivors in our grief that is also prolonged and chronic and traumatic.

The French playwright Moliere said, “If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.”

For years, for decades, I tried like hell to stuff the grief I felt from my mates having been massacred on today’s date fifty-two years ago. And from my experience, I can say it probably didn’t help to do that. In the Marines back then, and maybe now, too, you were just supposed to tough it out. War’s hell and all that kind of sentiment, or lack of sentiment thereof. But all my grief demanded to be let out.

I think again of Bravo Skipper Pipes and it seems to me that so much of the life he lived in the too-short time I knew him was dedicated to the memories of the men he led who died at Khe Sanh and especially to all those casualties on 25February1968. His grief was palpable. It was long term. It directed him to constantly search for ways to honor those who didn’t come home.

Over the years, people have asked me why I don’t just get over it.

When we made BRAVO!, Steve Wiese said it best:

“I’ve had people say, ‘Well, that was 30, 40 years ago. Why don’t you get over it?’ You know, I wish I could. I wish I could get over it. But on the other hand, it’s like I don’t ever want to forget these guys. I don’t want to forget what I’ve seen, what I was witness to. And I don’t want to forget them and their memories.”

***

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52 years ago today I awoke and realized that the end of my life could come at any moment. Before, even though Khe Sanh had been under siege for 20-plus days, I’d been quite optimistic that all would end soon and well.

On February 5th, 1968, NVA troops had attacked the Marines of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines, penetrating the barbwire lines and a vicious up-close battle ensued.

On February 6th and 7th, 1968, NVA troops had assaulted and overrun the Special Forces Camp at Lang Vei and part of their weaponry—tanks! The first time tanks had been used by the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. All that long and scary night, I heard tanks. Doubt began to slither into my soul like a cobra in the mist. Did I hear them? Didn’t I? Am I crazy? And following doubt, the cold viper of fear followed.

On February 8th, 1968, NVA troops had attacked and penetrated the defenses of Hill 64, manned by Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. A lot of good men died that day in another up-close-and-personal melee.

Misgivings started kicking the inside of my mind. No relief for Khe Sanh was in sight. Supply aircraft were blown out of the sky. The airstrip was damaged. Men I served with were maimed and dying.

Joining the Marine Corps, for me, was an act of pure impulse, like stepping off the edge of a cliff which is shrouded in a thick fog. I fully believed that I would land on my feet on some unseen safe ledge. My optimism defeated any doubt I might have harbored.

But the Marine Corps has trained millions of warriors and they know that when the bullet meets the breastbone and fear begins to gnaw and nibble, the warrior might begin to entertain doubt.

And I believe that’s one reason for the vicissitudes of Marine Corps training. The physical and mental exercises of Boot Camp. The harassment. Then the hard training in what they now call the School of Infantry.

They want to harden your body, your heart, your mind. They want your backbone ramrod straight when the manure hits the fan. They know doubt and they aim to defeat it.

But 52 years ago today doubt crept in.

I doubted I could overcome fear.

I doubted my country could save me.

I doubted my ability to do what must be done to survive. The hard things: Die for your brother, charge under deadly fire up a hill with fixed bayonets like Stonewall Jackson’s Confederate Army warriors after he told them, “Give them the bayonet,” and meet your enemy face-to-face. And kill him.

As the Siege wore on, doubt seeped into my bones, my skin, my attitude, and at times I felt as if the end of the world would show up any minute: A barrage of 152 Millimeter artillery rounds that would obliterate me, the deadly hiss of an 81 Millimeter mortar round hurtling out of the misty sky to send me home in a body bag, or a sniper round that would slap against the side of my head leaving me with a momentary expression of complete surprise before I slumped into the red mud in the bottom of the trench.

But then, after two months of getting pounded, pounded, pounded, we went into action. Action overcame doubt. I still feared mightily every possible way I might die, and I feared other things like what was out there that I didn’t know—yes, all of that. But I needed to concentrate on the tasks at hand, so doubt, for me, didn’t disappear; but it waned.

More than once we charged up hills with fixed bayonets, into the teeth of death, my doubt forgotten because I had a job to do.

We gave them the bayonet.

***

DVDs of BRAVO! are available @https://bravotheproject.com/store/

A digital version of BRAVO! is available in the US on Amazon Prime Video @ https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.

In the United Kingdom, BRAVO! is available on Amazon Prime Video UK @ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BZKJXBM.

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