This morning, and frankly, many mornings every week, month, and year over the past fifty-eight years, I think of what happened to my mates on this date in 1968.

I was there, in the close vicinity, I heard, I should have been out there, we weren’t allowed out there, we watched them return, we heard the stories, we listened, we whispered, we resented our leaders, we hated our enemy, we wanted revenge, we lived with it, we were guilty, we are guilty, we will always be guilty.

But whatever my recollections are of this anniversary of what has come to be called the Ghost Patrol, they are nothing compared to those who went outside the wire and walked—or were led by a young officer—into an ambush. A slaughter.

When we made the film, BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR, we talked during each individual interview about the date, the horror, the aftermath.

Here are some things the survivors had to say about that date. I have added some of their additional remarks that are not included in the film and have never before been heard.

Cal Bright

“I was on a patrol on February 25^th. We were leaving at, I think it was like 0800, 0900, something like that. And I ended up being point for a while, and my team member, a Clayton Therrell, who was from Racine, Wisconsin, was directly behind me and we got out so far and he motioned for me to stop. He says, ‘I’m going to take your place,’ he says, ‘This is your first patrol and consequently we just want to be safe.’ I said, ‘Okay, fine,’ and probably within five minutes, all hell broke loose from the back portion of our patrol, and I find out afterwards two or three NVA jumped and suckered part of our platoon into following…chasing them, which they definitely did and that’s when the ambush was really sprung.

“And when I finally hit the ground, I could tell that Therrell was killed. My team leader who was Lance Corporal Thrasher from Oklahoma City, asked me to go up and retrieve the body, or bring him back, he might still be alive. I kind of knew differently, but, okay I would. So I stripped down and went up and grabbed ahold of his flak jacket by the collar and as I was dragging him back, the body was bouncing, jumping back and forth and I could feel bullets whizzing past my head, to my sides, and so in a sense, his body protected mine and I look back and for a long time, in fact I still do it every once in a while, that it should be me instead of him, but I guess the good Lord upstairs had something more in mind for me. “

John “Doc” Cicala

“That’s a tough one. I relive that thing quite a bit. I remember us saddling up and going out the gate. We had a Chu Hoi scout with us and we were supposed to follow a designated route, bracketed on all sides by artillery within an instant. Well, we got about five hundred meters, I guess, outside the gate, crossing the road, and Lieutenant Jacques spotted a couple of North Vietnamese standing over in a field, and he made a decision, we’re going to take ’em prisoner. And I do remember the Chu Hoi telling him no, and a lot of us saying maybe we shouldn’t do this, but he gave the order, so we went to get ’em. And, I guess probably a few hundred yards further out, we crossed the road, we crossed a set of trench lines and then they opened up on us and it was just pure chaos from there on.”

Ben Long

“I helped plan that patrol. We had made the checkpoints. I knew how far they were going out, and from my perspective I thought this patrol should have no problems; there should be nothing to be concerned about. So, I remember watching them go out the wire. You couldn’t see them for very long because it was very foggy. And they soon disappeared and I went back in the bunker. I remember listening on the radio—they were checking in and what they were doin—and then I got busy because the next thing I realized was that they had contact, and I didn’t realize—wow, they’re in contact. How did this happen?  Because I thought, no way they’re going to be in contact when they follow the route that we had prepared for them. So I thought, either in the fog they got lost, or didn’t know where they were, or they were well beyond the checkpoints…it shouldn’t have happened that way.

Company Commander Ken Pipes

“There’s been a lot of things written about that, some of it not good, some of it an attempt to be factual. But it was something that was not uncommon in Vietnam at the fire team, squad, platoon level, and in some instances entire battalions, entire companies.”

Peter Weiss

“I was the backup for Don Jacques, and so when he went out, my platoon—two of the squads—we were the backup. So we were on the radio listening to what happened and when he was ambushed, Captain Pipes came on the radio. ‘Okay, Lieutenant, it’s your time to go out.’ And two squads—we  actually split up—one squad and I went straight out towards where they were. The other squad went to the right, which was up toward the road, because the sergeant I was with had been out there before…had been there for a while, and he knew the terrain. I didn’t know what was out there. I’d never been outside the perimeter other than being on the hill. And unfortunately, he got trapped in the same kind of ambush, and so of that squad—maybe of ten men, I think—four were killed in that ambush.”

Steve Wiese

“It took me thirty-five years before I could get into my mind that we went out there at nine or nine-thirty, whatever it was, ten in the morning, and I didn’t make it back into the base until the sun was going down, and used darkness as a cover to work my way back.

“But the initial ambush, once they opened up, I mean it was bad. I mean they opened up and you know most of the guys went down in the first minute. I mean, it was not a good thing. The actual battle itself at that point went on for hours. The only reason I survived was I just happened to be standing in a bomb crater where it was like 2-1/2 feet deep where it blew the ground out, and I just happened to be walking through that at the time that the ambush opened up. And when the first round went off, I dropped and just…my luck was that I just dropped in that hole. So I was below ground level when all the—you know—all the bullets and everything were going over. And I just laid low.”

Cal Bright

“I come across a radio operator who had been killed—to this day I have no clue who, what his name was. And all I could hear on the radio was, ‘Hello, hello, anybody there, anybody hear us?’ And I never had any training whatsoever as far as talking on the radio. I had none whatsoever.  But I knew, press the mic. So I keyed the mic and said, ‘Hello.’ And somebody come back and said, ‘Who’s this?’ and I said, ‘Well, this is Cal.’

“‘Cal who?’ And I told him. He said, ‘Who else is there with you?’ I called back and I said, ‘Nobody.’ He said, “What do you mean? I said, ‘There ain’t nobody here alive; they’re all dead.’ And he said, ‘Where are you at?’ and I says, ‘I’m laying next to a road and I’m overlooking another road that goes down over a hill.’’ And he said, ‘How did you get there?’ I said, ‘This is where we ended up.’ He said, ‘What can you see, from where you are…laying down?’ I could see little helmets in the background.

“Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was just a few meters away from the NVA trench line. I had no clue I was even there, that close to them, and somebody else come on the radio and says, ‘I want to shoot a round.’ He says, ‘I want you to let me know where they land.’  I say, ‘Okay.’

“Next thing, out comes a round—afterwards I found out that it was a Willie Pete round. It was a spotter round, and I went back to him and I said, ‘You need to drop the range down,’ and he says, ‘How much?’ I said, ‘50 yards, 75 yards,’ something, and he dropped it. Shot another round. I says, ‘You need to drop it another 40 yards,’ he said, ‘Okay.’ He says, ‘Bury your head, because we’re going to fire for effect.’ And that was the last I heard, because all of a sudden, bah bah bah boom boom boom, rounds were going off left and right.”

John “Doc” Cicala

“I just watched a guy drop and I took care of a couple of guys and then I was crossing back over the road because another guy got hit, then the next thing I know I seen a guy pop out of a fighting hole. He hit me a couple of times in the chest. I was laying there and the other Corpsman, Frank Calzia, seen me go down and he come running over yelling at me, ‘JC, are you okay, are you okay?’

“And then a grenade landed between my legs and I looked down and I seen it and I yelled ‘Grenade,’ and he hit the dirt and I curled up into a ball and it went off and I couldn’t hear or see anything for a minute with all the dirt and everything and then when I could see, my foot over there and I’m thinking to myself, this isn’t good. My foot moved and I said, ‘Well, at least it’s still attached,’ and by that time Frank came over and he said, ‘You know, we got to get out of here,’ and I told him, ‘Git, you know, go take care of that guy, I’m okay, I’ll take care of myself.’

“And then Lieutenant Jacques came running by and he looked down at me and he said, ‘Doc,’ he said, ‘Get out of here.’ He said, ‘We’re all getting killed.’ And he made it from about here to the wall and I seen him go down and I crawled over to him and he’d caught it right across the legs, both his femoral arteries, and by the time I got to him he’d already bled to death and there was nothing I could do for him.

 Ben Long

“In all the confusion that’s going on, men were getting shot and you could hear that happening and I moved from my bunker. I moved up on top because I not only wanted to listen, but I wanted to see if I could see them, and it was too foggy and I still couldn’t see, but I still stayed outside because I thought maybe I’ll be able to see something. Maybe the fog will float by and I’ll be able to get a glimpse, but really, it was very foggy that day and you couldn’t see hardly anything.

“First Platoon was called up and they were the ones who were supposed to go if it got into trouble and I thought, they’re not going to get in trouble, no problem. I was Platoon Commander for that platoon for 8 or 9 months, for a long time. Those were my buddies. They were my friends. I knew them. And I thought, if they’re going to go out, I want to be their leader. I want to take them out. I know how they work together.

“And so it was hard for me to not be with them. I knew that some of my friends were being shot, some I knew were dying. I heard it on the radio. But it would just tear your heart out. These were guys that I had been working with for a long time. I felt helpless. I felt so powerless. There was just nothing I could do. I mean, I wanted to do something. I think everyone in the company wanted to go out. We wanted to do something, but we got orders: no, no more people, we can’t do that, can’t go out.”

Peter Weiss

“Then we got the word, come back, retreat, and I remember very well, because we were laying out in the open because we got stopped at some point; rockets started coming in.

“I was right next to someone who I believe was killed because I checked his pulse. My weapon had stopped firing. Couldn’t use it. Just me and the body and I wasn’t sure if I should drag him back. And bullets started coming…being walked toward the two of us. And the last one stopped right at the fellow, right in his chest—must have been a fifty caliber hit him, and I said, ‘He’s got to be dead.’”

Steve Wiese

“You know, the initial blast started quieting down, and then you could tell they were just firing pretty randomly and if anybody moved, they just drew fire. So I just laid there and threw grenades. Shot a clip of ammo out of my rifle which basically I figured out pretty quickly, that was not a smart thing to do. Because as soon as I fired a round there were hundreds of guys shooting back. So, it was like okay, don’t draw attention to yourself.”

Cal Bright

“I was able to get out of there after some time. How long? I have no clue. It was still daylight but I could tell that the sun was—what there was of it—was going down so I figured it had to be late afternoon, early evening.

“I knew where our lines were at, and I was able to evade some enemy soldiers, and I was able to get back, and then, as I was coming back, all of a sudden, here’s these—I didn’t recognize as to who they were until I got closer—South Vietnamese ARVN Rangers. And they were waving at me to stop. And then I could see some American advisors telling me to stop, halt, don’t move. Don’t move, whatever, but I kept coming. And that was when I tripped over barb wire that also had a red triangle-shaped sign on it. Come to find out afterwards, I went through the entire mine field in front of Khe Sanh and never touched a round off. Now I know why they kept telling me to stop  and not to move.

“Again, I’ve never been real religious, or anything whatsoever, but I have to think that the Man Upstairs had something in his…on his agenda. Says, ‘I want to talk to you, young man.’

“I know there has been conflicting reports as far as how many of us went out. I was led to believe there was like anywhere from 60 to 70 of us that went out and there was only just a small handful of us that come back.”

John “Doc” Cicala

“They said I made it back to the base, maybe six, eight hours later. But I did see a lot of guys go down. I seen Clay go down, I seen Jerry Lee Dotson. I took care of them. There’s nothing you could do, it was just chaos for that five or six…probably five minutes or whatever it was. I mean I heard all the stories afterwards. We ran into a battalion-sized force and everything, but it didn’t last long and it wasn’t pretty. That’s for sure.

“I crawled back to the base. I was kind of passing in and out, you know. I don’t remember all the details and I was pretty well messed up myself, but I do remember setting off a trip flare and when that went off I was thinking, ‘Oh, shit,’ but one of the weapons platoon guys—a guy named Eddie Pendergast—had a set of binoculars and he looked out and seen my uniform and he said, ‘Stop, cease fire, that’s a Marine coming in,’ and he physically ran out, him and a couple other guys, and they threw a poncho over the wire, grabbed me and yanked me back over the wire. Took me to Charlie Med.”

Ben Long

“I just started seeing people coming back, not in groups, but straggling back and some were wounded. Some were very severely wounded, and it was just very hard to take, but from my perspective, also what I saw was just a sense of confusion, a sense of ‘what’s going on…what’s happening?’ And it’s like how come we’re not doing anything? How come we’re just standing there? How come we’re not going out?

“We always want to rescue our people and we don’t want to leave our dead and wounded. Nobody was doing anything, and it was hard. Hard to watch that. We wanted to do something, but at the same time, we just couldn’t. So we had to be patient and wait and that was hard, that was really hard.”

Company Commander Ken Pipes

“But that one, that one was the hardest, I think. I think it broke all of our hearts.”

Peter Weiss

“We came back, maybe about three or four of us left, and we then came back into the perimeter. And a couple hours later, we were shelling that area. Planes were coming over dropping bombs, and all of a sudden, out on the outskirts of the wire, a lone Marine came. He was not in my platoon. And then I went out to get him. Walked through that minefield, not, you know, around the side, but through the minefield. And I was scared. Walked through the minefield, walked through the concertina, and he was in absolute shock. Grabbed him by the arm and we walked back through the minefield, back into the perimeter. I was happy that I got him out of there and that we both got back. That was a sad day.”

Steve Wiese

“I ended up leaving my rifle and just trying to work my way through. I had a pistol and I was using that for personal protection because the rifle was useless at that point, and it was just something to carry. I would dive from one bomb hole to another. Work behind anything I could find that was any kind of cover.

“I would lay there for fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes. So, in between the firing, when it started to settle down a little bit, I would try to, you know, peek above and see, try to see where I could get to. And it took several hours, you know, of working my way across and moving out of the kill zone.

“Sometimes I’d have to lay there for two hours and wait for the firing to slow down. Towards sundown, in the shadows, I could move better and I worked my way out and moved down around the back and came back to the base.

“Several people came in through the gate, you know, and it was just like, where is everybody? I just remember the guys saying, ‘You’re pretty much it.’ When I got back to my squad area, Author Smith was in the bunker, and he said he was it.”

To reiterate what Skipper Ken Pipes said: It broke all of our hearts.

They are still broken.

~ By Ken Rodgers

To learn more about each of the men in this blog, click here.

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Thank you for reading, and for honoring all Vietnam War veterans by sharing this blog, our films, and stories with friends and other veterans. 

BRAVO! Common Men, Uncommon Valor can be viewed on Amazon Prime. We also have DVDs available, which can be ordered on our website at https://bravotheproject.com.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven courageous spouses of combat veterans from various eras at https://imarriedthewar.com. I Married the War can be viewed on Amazon. DVDs are also available via the website.

By Ken Rodgers

I suspect that everyone who sees combat has terrible times, terrible days, or years. For me, at the Siege of Khe Sanh, the month of February stands out. Not only did the heavy incoming arrive on an almost daily basis, but combat on the ground, and in the air, took on a furious character.

When we weren’t in the middle of it, we had ringside seats, and the evil stink of rumor crept among us, a whisper that added angst to every bite of the spare supply of C-rations we crammed into our mouths.

Some of my salient memories follow.

On the early morning of the fifth, the enemy assaulted Hill 861-A, manned by Echo Company, Second Battalion, 26^th Marines. The NVA came through the perimeter wire and were on the hill. A vicious fight ensued, and the enemy finally withdrew. While this was going on, NVA mortars and artillery pounded the combat base below, to silence our guns that would help defend 861-A.

On the night of February 7, the NVA assaulted the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, not far from Khe Sanh Combat Base. Using tanks, they broke through the defenses and the camp fell after a nasty fight. During the middle of the night, we got word that enemy tanks were in the area. Tanks. I remember thinking I heard the squeak and crank of tank tracks out in the night. Mostly my imagination, I suspect. We were taking heavy incoming fire to create more chaos, so all the noise added to our anticipation. Dark, and death, and fear, and a horrendous racket.

In our area, our squad leaders told us to saddle up in anticipation of relieving Lang Vei, but we never left the combat base. I think there is still, after fifty-seven years, some residual anger from the men who survived the fight at Lang Vei, as well as some residual guilt among the Marines who didn’t come out to save them. I recall, about ten years ago, hearing an audio clip from the commanding officer of the Third Marine Division, explaining in graphic and direct terms why he refused to go out and save the camp and the men who didn’t get out.

Continuing salvos of incoming killed men on the surrounding hills and men in the trenches and men in their bunkers. A plane was lost south of Lang Vei while bombing enemy tanks.

Alpha Company, First Battalion, Ninth Marines, had a platoon stationed on a location known as Hill 64. On February 8, the NVA, led by a bugle call, assaulted Hill 64 and an hours-long firefight went on. With the enemy in their trenches, the Marines of Alpha fought. Eventually a relief column from the company managed to fight its way onto Hill 64 as the enemy was driven off. To those Marines who fought on the hill, the subsequent call to abandon must have been a bitter pill.

On February 10, an incoming C-130, callsign Basketball 813, approached Khe Sanh, but at the last moment veered off the runway approach and flew low around the south side of the base and came in from the west. It was obvious to us, standing there on the ground watching, that something was wrong, maybe mechanical, maybe a wounded bird from the NVA flak constantly flying into the air. The plane came in hard and fast and veered off the runway and wrecked close to our lines. It ignited and men came dropping from the windows of the cockpit as the plane burned.

On 23 February, 1968, the NVA sent at least 1,307 rounds of incoming into the base. Mortars, rockets, artillery. Some of them big guns—152mm howitzers—and you learned to recognize the sound of the round leaving the tube—thump—and then you knew it was already in the air and on its way. They sounded like freight trains. If you survived long enough, you knew the fear they threw at you along with the hot metal and shrapnel that tore flesh and cut off legs and arms, and you learned the details of the thump and if the thump spoke in a very particular vernacular, you knew that where you lay in the trench would soon erupt. Despite the hell and mayhem and death, you got up and moved.

We received lots of new guys during the month of February. When the 152s fired, I would yell, “Move, a round is on its way,” and many times the men gawked, mouths open, their fear refusing to let them crawl to a different place in the trench.

On 25 February, besides a debacle I will write about soon, NVA trenches were detected within 25 meters of our perimeter. If we didn’t feel surrounded before, we did then. Marines with stethoscopes listened to the sounds of the enemy digging their trenches. We imagined tunnels beneath us, mined with tons of explosives to erupt and kill us all.

On February 28, The NVA launched a massive assault on the ARVN troops sharing the line with us. The din of combat sailed over the ground into our ears. Our bombers and artillery units pounded the attackers and the ARVNs bravely fought them off more than once, their courage under fire in stark contrast to so many of the disparaging rumors we had heard concerning ARVN troops. In this case, they didn’t disappoint us.

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Thank you for reading and sharing our story with friends and other veterans.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven spouses of combat veterans at https://imarriedthewar.com.

Four years ago, when we were on the road to shoot interviews in Michigan, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska and to conduct research at the National Archives and the Marine History Division in the Washington DC area, I wrote only our fourth blog about the making of BRAVO!. That particular edition joined what has become a hefty variety of pieces about BRAVO!, the Siege of Khe Sanh, and the men and women both in the film and who helped make this project a reality. We think a visit back in time to that fourth blog is an appropriate subject for this week’s blog.

08/05/10

While the grackles, the kingbirds, the cuckoos and kites sung and hunted over San Antonio, Betty, Mark Spear and I interviewed and filmed eight retired or former Marines and a former Navy corpsman. As we sat rapt, listening to the emotion gushing like rain water running down a red Khe Sanh trench, one of the repetitive memories we heard centered on listening posts.

Listening posts—rather mundane words for a mundane (most of the time) night duty related to combat activities in a hostile environment. In the Marine Corps, a fire team usually mans (or in my tenure manned) a listening post (LP). Four men and a radio go outside the outfit’s night perimeter to listen for approaching enemy combatants. Mundane, unless the enemy shows up, and then the men in the listening post become pretty much incidental to the good of the bigger unit, the ones they are doing the listening for. And doing their duty as Marines, they may be trapped and killed, maimed, captured, never to get back to lovers and sons, and if they beat feet towards the security of the perimeter, in front of the enemy, they may get shot by their own men because the listening post personnel are often indistinguishable from the enemy. In Bravo! the documentary, the danger associated with LPs will squeeze your gut.

Mark Spear at the 2010 Khe Sanh Veterans Reunion
© Betty Rodgers 2010

I recall an LP when the siege was raging. We waited until darkness fell and then crept out the east end of the Khe Sanh air strip finally stopping short of our assigned position. I always felt that we should never go to the same spot time after time. We crawled into the jungle grass and covered up with ponchos so we could read a map with a flashlight if we needed to. Below us, the Song Rao Quan cut a deep ravine as it rushed towards its conflict with the saltwater South China Sea. American jets shrieked over. So rocket and artillery shy were we, we cringed at the sound of the jets as they streaked over us and dropped bombs somewhere to our front. We heard the thunk of mortar rounds leaving the tube. In the dark of the night we spotted aiming stakes—enemy aiming stakes illuminated by some type of red lights. We estimated the position and called in artillery, “Fire mission.” The barrage whistled over us like the jets, but with less basso, more tenor, some alto harmonied in. Below in the Rao Quan River valley, the rounds crashed like they were landing in the next century. The aiming stakes still remained. I essayed that they were far beyond where the rounds landed. I whispered into the radio handset—based on where I thought I’d heard the rounds land—“Up 100 left 100.” The voice of the lieutenant repeated my words. We heard the gun mouths bark the next barrage and again it sung over us and landed far below. The enemy mortars still thunk, thunk, thunked. Somewhere to our rear the crash of a rocket round inside our perimeter. The aiming stakes still glowed in the misty pitch black. I adjusted my estimate, again, missed, and we spent the long night with arty going in and out, like a badminton shuttle cock going back and forth over the net. I don’t think we ever hit the target, though we may have scared the hell out of them, because the aiming stakes’ red lights disappeared. The lieutenant barked at me over the radio about ”What kind of spotter was I?” I pouted most of the night about that and in the morning just before the first light we sneaked back in. Off to the west, between Khe Sanh base and Hill 861, I saw rockets spew off the ground. Seconds later I heard them crash into the far end of the air strip. I might have called in and told them where those rockets had come from, but I was still pouting.

Khe Sanh Combat Base, Photo courtesy of www.authentichistory.com

An LP wasn’t something you wanted to get sent out on, with all that death waiting in the black of the misty nights. A couple of our platoon big shots, the lieutenant’s radioman and the platoon right guide, both went to sleep on radio watch in the command post. We all were deprived of sleep, our eyelids like trap doors on a sniper’s hole. We couldn’t sleep because of duty’s call or because the NVA hammered us day and night, so I wasn’t surprised that they nodded off. I had a way of going half to sleep when I ended up as the platoon sergeant’s radio operator. I could somehow doze and somehow stay alert enough to call in my sit-reps every fifteen minutes and call out to the listening post and get their sit-reps, too. Being a big shot and then getting sent out on an LP was like a kick in the cojones. Everyone sniggered at you behind your back. I’m glad I never got caught sleeping on radio watch.

The last LP I remember going on was later in the siege and I got a surprise from the lieutenant about how it was to be conducted. My team was going out with a fire team of South Vietnamese Rangers. I rolled my eyes at that one and complained, “They can’t even speak English. How the hell we going to communicate?” The lieutenant told me, “Just get your asses out there when it starts getting dark and go out to those slit trenches at the end of the runway and set in for the night. Like you’re supposed to do.” I whined, “But, the NVA know exactly where that. . .” “Shut up,” he barked, “we know exactly where it is, too, so if something happens we can come out and get your asses. “ I kicked at the red clods in the bottom of the trench and said, “Aye aye.” He said, “And if you have to come in early, make sure you come in first so those Marines down there in Alpha Company don’t blow our Ranger friends away.”

There were four of them. Four of us. We Marines were skinny, half starved, but compared to them we were giants. They were bowlegged and short, wiry, though, and they all had flinty looks in their eyes as we sat in a deep Alpha Company bunker lit up with ten or twelve candles. We were wary of them, the rumors we’d heard about them all being North Vietnamese sympathizers. The way they sneaked glances at us made me ponder why they were wary of us.

After the night went totally black, we sneaked out the gate in front of Alpha Company and bent over like bugs scuffling across the airstrip. We hustled out to the two slit trench fighting holes at the end of the strip. I pointed to the left and the four Rangers slipped in and sat down. I could see what light there was reflecting off their eyes which were as big around as the bottom of a forty-millimeter anti-aircraft round. They sat as still as stones.

We Marines plopped in the other trench and I started whispering the watch schedule, two of us awake, two asleep, two hours on, two hours off. I tried to whisper some orders to the Rangers, but either they didn’t hear me or ignored me. The breeze whispered through the tall elephant grass out to our fronts. All night I imagined, or dreamed, a platoon of NVA sneaking up on us. Their helmets festooned with pieces of grass to hide their passage. They didn’t, though, because the next morning in the false light I elbowed the sleeping Marines on each side of me to wake up. I looked up at the Ranger fire team leader who was glaring at me. He took his right index finger and drew it across his Adam’s apple and then nodded to our front. I made a sign with my thumb for him and his team to get up. We bug-scuffled back in the opposite direction of the enemy to the Alpha Company gate. Me in front so they didn’t shoot the Rangers.

As I said in the beginning of this post, what got me thinking about LPs were the men we interviewed for our documentary.

On the screening front, BRAVO! will be shown in Nampa, Idaho, on September 25, 2014 at the Elks Lodge. Doors will open at 6:00 PM with the screening of the film at 6:30, followed by a Q & A session. Suggested donation, $10.00 to benefit the Wyakin Warrior Foundation. http://www.wyakin.org.

If you would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town this fall or winter, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. For more information go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way you can help us reach more people.