By Paul Churchill
July 18th 1966
According to the heading on this letter it was started on July18th and the first excerpt starts out referencing a previous letter that was not in the packet I received. The referenced letter may have been lost or misplaced but it is more likely that it was on a helicopter that did not make it back to its base.
Well, I can quit worrying about what the special C.Os meeting was for.
It’s over now and we are getting ready to move out on a roving C.P. basis. In other words the whole company or platoon will move during the day and the squads will run patrols and ambushes at night. I don’t like the area we are going to at all but that’s the way the ball bounces. I just hope we can scrape up another corpsman.
It had been about 8 or 9 days since “Doc Williams” had left the unit and I had been pretty busy having been on well over thirty patrols and ambushes since then, I was hoping that help was on the way.
Of course everyone is glad to be going because General Walt himself wrote the order for us to go. He also said that the reason for it was the fact that L/3/3 has such a fine combat record and he is sure that we will prove that we deserve it. Yeah team! Big Deal. Actually we are all glad to be getting back into things in some ways. We just can’t see skating while all those other guys are in hot water.
Writing this letter was interrupted by a small attack by some VC. The letter was finished the next morning as follows:
I’ll try to finish this now. Had to quit last night to go have some fun. Went on a reactionary patrol last night as some gooks tried to cause a little trouble. Boy, I have never been in such a thick mess of brush, vines, shrubs, and thorns. We moved through the darn stuff for about half a mile. Most of the time we were 6 to 8 feet off the ground trying to crawl over, under, around and through the stuff. About the farthest I went without touching bottom was 100 to 125 yards and then I fell through a hole and wound up in about 18 inches of slime with my automatic M-14 and all. Stayed on my feet somehow though so only got wet to my knees. It was sure dark.
We broke into the open at about 9:30 P.M. and came up one man short. I went back in to get him and about ten yards in I hit someone in the shoulder. Feeling the impact of his shoulder on mine I grabbed for him and came up with an arm covered by some kind of long sleeves. It was slippery & sweaty. Just as I grabbed he pulled away and backed up. Like a fool I tried to get hold of him again and came up with nothing.
in the meantime the man had found his way out. As I came out of the brush again it hit me that I had come pretty close to something. It’s funny how you are never scared till it’s over. I knew I had a gook by the arm but I just didn’t think anything of it at the time. I just had to get him but I didn’t.
This action scares me more now than it did then. When I first made contact I just assumed that it was my missing Marine and that he didn’t want to admit he was still in the brush after the rest of us had broken through but when I came back out and was told that the Marine had come out just after I went back in the reality of what had happened gave me a pretty good scare. This was one of those things I had forgotten and when reading the letter The hair on my neck stood up and I started sweating just like when it happened over fifty years ago.
We got back to the outfit at 10:00 and were told to go on our regular patrol. We were mad to say the least. The VC don’t know how lucky they were that we didn’t find any of them on that patrol.
We should be leaving here tomorrow. The most probable place for us to go is Phu Bai as they are having quite a bit of trouble up there.
Hope you won’t quit writing if I slack off. The weather is getting lousy and we may be busy.
Well, just got the word. We leave first thing in the morning. Right after my patrol from 2 to 6 A.M.
I have to finish getting ready now. Good Bye and God Bless. Take care & keep laughing.
Love YA All
Paul
