By Paul Churchill
I got your card and letter today and since I am not doing anything but resting between patrols I’ll try to get off a half way decent answer. I enjoyed the card very much and was quite pleased with the letter too. See, you just can’t go wrong.
Speaking of patrols, I am running (well, walking fast) 2 & 3 a day.
They average 6 miles apiece and last 3 to 4 hours. They aren’t too bad except for the fact that my ankles hurt like _ _ _ _ (guess and swell like balloons. Of course with only three a day I get plenty of rest after the inspections between patrols but what gets me is the P.T. after the inspections. Simply have to keep in shape you know. It’s really not too bad on a two patrol day. I guess it could be better if we were allowed to sleep during the day when we are not engaged in one of the afore mentioned activities but then everyone knows that any Marine can get along swell on 2 to 6 hours sleep over a 24 hour period so I can’t really complain.
At least the patrols are interesting. So far we have captured one VC this week and I have been sung to by a little boy of about s or 9. The song, Mary Ann, and very well done. That’s enough to keep anyone happy and I am most of the time.
Each of the three squads in the platoon would run 1 or 2 patrols, ambushes or a combination of the two each day adding up to 3 to 6 actions each day. With a corpsman accompanying each patrol that meant Doc Williams and I were going out two or three times each on any given day. With our man power being so short we were going out with five to seven men on a patrol rather than a fully manned squad of 13 plus a corpsman.
As for my ankles I had severely injured one of them while at Camp Lejeune and messed the other up pretty bad on Operation Georgia and neither of them had had the chance to heal properly. In fact I was on crutches for the last week or so at Camp Lejeune and turned them in the day we boarded the plane for the first leg of our journey to Viet Nam.
I haven’t heard anything of Operation Liberty yet but I sure am trying to find out how it is going. They can’t have had too much trouble yet or we would have heard of it. Bad news travels fast here. For example I heard today that I may be transferred to another outfit as they lost 5 of their corpsmen at once. #10. I don’t really expect it to happen as one corpsman would have a little trouble running 5 patrols daily.
Operation Liberty was an operation that Dave Canter’s unit was involved in and his mother had asked what I knew of it. As for running 5 patrols a day, I would find out just how that worked before to long.
The Viet Namese rated things from 1 to 10 with number 1 the best and number 10 the worst.
Losing five corpsmen in one action was definitely number ten.
The weather is badder here too. I don’t know how it keeps getting hotter but it does. I guess some day it will all come to an end though and I’ll freeze like a drowned rat.
I had no idea how true this statement would be.
My birthday was a fairly good one. I made it through the day (barely) and so did all of my boys. I only had two patrols, 3 inspections and one call on reactionary status as the VC hit a unit in front of us and they needed a little assist. Still it will have been better than tonight.
My schedule.
9 PM to 1AM Patrol – 6 miles
I AM to 4 AM
8AM to 12 PM
8 miles
12 noon on – PT and another patrol or two tomorrow night. Fortunes of war I guess.
Before I forget, the old marine himself was here today. The man who took Iwo Jima more times than can be counted, at least once in every town in the nation that has a theater and two or three times on the late show. Yeah, John Wayne stopped by for about 15 minutes and I was lucky enough to get to see him.
John Wayne did indeed stop by. A helicopter landed at the NSA Hospital Compound (Naval Support Activity) and out climbed John Wayne, A two star general, a colonel and two majors. John Wayne was shaking hands, posing for pictures and giving out autographs for a few minutes when the general started saying ” come on Duke, we have to get going”. John Wayne after hearing this a few times turned to the general and said ” By God these guys are in this war too. If you are in such a hurry get on that thing and come back for me in an hour”. We had never seen or heard anyone talk to a general like that and neither had the general. The veins in his neck popped as he locked his jaw and turned beet red. He did not say another word as we erupted in cheers. After a few more minutes “the Duke” said “ok, we can go now and headed for the chopper as he waved good bye to a happy bunch of grunts.
