Chapter 7: Changes 030725 

      When Operation Junction City did start up, my unit still sat it out for a while down south. We pulled security and ran patrols around Phuoc Vinh and Lai Khe areas. A trickle of new guys continued to show up. Though still nineteen, I was now the oldest guy in my squad in terms of combat experience. More and more, I sensed in my born again spirit how futile this war was. At the same time, those demonic strongholds of my soul longed to feel the thrill of the kill. Never mind worrying about whether the war could be won or not. I was too busy chasing my own delusions in life to worry about the plight of any other individual much less an entire nation.  

     I was a messed up kid, but smart, and I had been grounded in many of the principles of a Judeo-Christian upbringing. That upbringing kept those demons sitting on my shoulder from talking me into doing anything that was too crazy. Though I had turned my back on God, I still had my new heart which was sensitive to Him. No, my heart did not always rule, but in times of terrible trouble it did. In this way, I was able to set the tone for the rest of my squad grunts. Walker really helped do that too. It did not happen all at once, but it did happen. It was during this time at the beginning of Junction City that we changed battalion commanders. We immediately began to experience a better atmosphere. The older and gregarious Milliron also made a difference. He had a way of pulling the rest of us out of our shells. When I had first come to the unit, there was just too much of a gap between the old veterans and us new guys. They had seen too much combat to identify with us. Sergeant Rook was the biggest problem. Just the simple respect that one human being should have for another was completely lacking in him. Bartee was different in a good way. He was much more approachable and friendly. We also got a new Platoon leader, after we lost the West Pointer. He was okay but he still ignored me, so I ignored him right back. The general mood of our other NCOs in the platoon did not seem to change much. They were lifers and a lifer had usually become cemented into a pattern of behavior that worked for him. A lifer was not going to change that which had been working for him, even if it was only just getting him by in the grand scheme of things.

     I was walking point full time now. Bill Milliron just automatically stepped up to the plate and started doing more and more to make that job easier. In return, I began to build trust in him. He did a good job shooting compass bearings and keeping us on the correct azimuth. While running point, this completely freed my hands and more importantly my eyes to focus on scanning the landscape in front of us for trouble. Glenn Bowman soon began to help too. Both men just had a certain unspoken way about them when it came to taking care of business. I could not help but like it. Their actions told me that they wanted to help everyone get through this alive. Looking back, it was really quite amazing how the entire unit started changing at this point.

     I believe that we were at Phuoc Vinh when we took our last shower for three months. These showers were rigged with faucets plumbed up to hastily installed water tanks made from bomb shells. I got an applesauce cake from my mother. “Operation Junction City” would last from February 22nd until May 14th. Junction City would go down in history as the largest ground operation of the war. The Communist spies in Saigon already knew a lot about our intentions before the operation got off the ground. All things considered; my battalion fared better than most involved in the operation. That had a lot to do with the change of commanders.

      We were facing off with regiments of the enemy's 9th Division. In all, there were almost 30,000 allied troops involved in this operation. We faced a total force of over 73,000 enemy troops. Most were conscripts. The grand prize for the operation would be the capture of South Vietnam's Communist Party leadership (COSVN). We never won that prize. At the beginning of the operation, our intelligence reports said they were hiding deep within War Zone C, somewhere between us and our blocking forces inserted some fifty miles north. My battalion stayed on operations around Phuoc Vinh during the entire first phase of the operation (Feb. 22 thru Mar. 4).

      During the first days of this operation and while Denton was still with us, we marched out of Phuoc Vinh on foot. The battalion snaked through the countryside single file. It was a populated area of tin huts, backyard gardens and dirt streets. There were civilians surrounding us everywhere we looked. Then the terrain opened up into vast rice fields and the area became much more sparsely populated. During one large sized night movement in this area not far north of Saigon, I was the point man for our entire battalion. Sergeant Bartee and his RTO just naturally settled in about ten meters behind me. Then came the rest of the squad with the machine gunner pulling up the rear. We had walked and walked day after day, sometimes digging in and staying for the night and sometimes walking all night. I always ran point for our squad. Sometimes my squad ran point for the entire company. On this particular night, I was in the lead and walking alongside a roadway. I ran upon an ARVIN (South Vietnam Government Forces) sand bagged machine gun position. It was a dark night but there was a partial moon out. Fortunately, they did not open up on us. Of course, I froze when I heard voices. Surprisingly, the occupants of the position were talking quite loudly. I had no idea what they were saying, because it was in Vietnamese. I just stood there, silent, with my weapon lowered, waiting to feel the impact of machine gun bullets ripping through my body. Bartee was behind me, and I could hear his radio as the RTO broke squelch. Our platoon sergeant was just a few paces behind him. Someone behind me spoke up and that sound of an American voice in the ears of that machine gunner probably saved our lives. That machine gunner held his fire. From out of nowhere, the company commander appeared. He shined a bright flashlight into his own eyes and repeated over and over, "Americans, see Americans". While he was grabbing center stage, this was my chance. I hit the ground and rolled to the left. When I stopped rolling I assumed the prone shooting position. That prone firing position gave me a perfect mead on the machine gun and the guy behind it. I reasoned that the best course of action would be to shoot the very second the machine gunner opened up on my company commander. My return fire would no doubt render that machine gun inoperable. I knew that my company commander would be dead but there was nothing I would be able to do about that. However, since that gunner had allowed me to draw a bead on him, I also knew that he would be dead within a half second after he squeezed the trigger on his machine gun. I would then take things as they came. Fortunately, the gunner never fired and my captain, Captain Brown, continued shining the bright lensed flashlight into his own face, repeating over and over that he was an American. Those few seconds seemed like an eternity. Finally, the machine gunner was ordered to stand down when an ARVN officer showed up. We went on about our business.  

     On March 10th, our division commander, General DePuy, was replaced by General Hay. Depuy's support people at Division headquarters did not like the change one bit. Most of the old grunts in my battalion also had high regards for General DePuy. Now DePuy was gone, and Hay was assuming his command. Gone too were those old guys in my squad. It felt good to be rid of them. Everyone was just naturally unsure of General Hay. We “new guys” loved General DePuy because the “old guys” loved General DePuy. Now, General Hay was simply an unknown quantity.

     No matter what was happening at division level, fortunately almost every one of these new guys in my platoon had a good attitude and as a general rule the guys who had now been there longer, like me, had not been tainted by enough violence, to ruin that good attitude. I forgot the names of those old guys as soon as they boarded a chopper to leave. I am sure they forgot mine too. After they left, however, my squad was free to shape our own squad dynamics with the focus on making sure we all had a better chance of returning back from an operation in one piece. Nobody looked down on anyone and the race card was non-existent. Actually, as the aggravation of being shot at by sappers increased in the coming days and the random mortar attacks also increased on our NDP positions, our entire company and even the entire battalion became more unified. Today, when I hear someone use the phrase “male bonding”, I have a very different picture popping into my head than most folks might imagine. 

    My job in the squad as point man came about just before Rook left but I cannot remember the details of how that happened. Did I volunteer or was I ordered to walk point? I just cannot remember. Typically, walking point was not a job that a squad member was ordered to perform. However, I do remember working with a dark-skinned, tall, lanky southerner, who was ordered to train with me on that job by good ole Sergeant Rook. His name was Earl Dingle and Earl soon let me and everyone else know, that he did not feel comfortable in that position. He was really quite open and honest about expressing his feelings on this matter. Since he was so honest about it, and was also such a good soldier, most of us agreed, that he should not be made to walk point, and he was soon given another job in the squad. There simply were no hard and fast rules about who was assigned to walk point. However, in general, people like me with backwoods experience just naturally gravitated to that position. Others, who did not want to do it, were generally not made to walk point unless they had a sergeant like Sergeant Rook.

    Walking Point was unforgivingly dangerous. It was also very tedious. One of the reasons it was so dangerous was obvious. The point man was usually the first man to come in contact with the enemy because he was usually first in line. The major reason the job was so tedious was because a point man had to keep an accurate pace count to know his location on a map at all times. It was extremely easy to get lost in the jungle terrain. One clump of bamboo looked just like another and there were many obstacles which had to be skirted. That could destroy the accuracy of the all-important pace count. The stress could be overwhelming for almost anyone trying to navigate through thick jungle. If I got lost so would everyone else who were following me. Keeping on course was important for several other reasons too. For one, artillery gunners needed to know our exact location when providing artillery support for our patrols. If a patrol got lost, they could not direct accurate fire onto an enemy if attacked. Noise control was another thing which needed to be observed on a patrol. A point man needed to know how to walk quietly through thick jungle. A good point man never blazed a trail. Instead, he slithered through and around the thick vegetation, never leaving a trail behind him. While moving through the Virginia woods back home, my dad had taught me that it was a sin to make noise. Quietly navigating through thickets and briar patches was something I learned to do early on. Actually, my father showed me the techniques needed to become a ghost. A machete was not my friend. I never used one. They slowed me down, made too much noise, and tired me out. Chopping a path through the jungle with a machete was insane. It made a huge amount of noise. It would not only give away one’s location but also the direction in which one was traveling. Knowing the direction in which we were traveling, the enemy could then run ahead and pick exactly the right spot for an ambush.    

    Simply put, walking point and surviving as long as I did, without losing a single man, was also the result of a not so small legacy passed on to me by my father. Quite frankly, the average American kid in the sixties did not make great point men. Tom Mercer was probably the best point man to ever serve with the 1/18th Infantry Battalion in Vietnam. He said this. "Point men were a special breed who were a little crazy but smart". There was no other squad job that I would have preferred to have had, as crazy as that may sound. For me, walking point seemed to clear my mind from so many other negative thoughts, which I had about myself and others.

     At this point Staff Sergeant Bartee was blessed with one of the best squads in the Division when it came to thinking on our feet. It’s too bad that Sergeant Rook had not recognized our potential but it’s great that Bartee did. A leader can have the best people in the world but if he doesn’t recognize their potential, it’s all for nothing. As far as I know, Sergeant Rook slipped away without saying goodbye to anyone. That not only showed how little he valued us, but how little he valued himself too.

    During those first days of our march, we went through some rather large villages as well as large tracts of jungle. In and around those villages there was a large number of civilians. That made a big difference in the way we operated. We couldn't pop off rounds to test-fire a weapon anytime we felt like it. In these populated areas, watching our six, at all times, was important too. Young children followed us, begging, and trying to sell us anything from pot to cold cokes. It was a real distraction. Just before I arrived in Vietnam a member of my squad, who had only a few days of his tour left, volunteered to keep an eye on a young man standing by a rubber tree just a few yards away. The rest of his squad patrol passed by the man. The soldier turned his head away for just a second and the man standing by the tree picked up a carbine and shot him dead. Yes, running patrols in and around heavily populated villages created a lingering stress all its own. A point man had to not only watch his men but the civilian activities going on around him. More importantly, he needed a squad leader like Bartee to work with him to manage the reduce the stress of the job instead of adding to it as Sergeant Rook had done.         

      The Junction City Operation lasted for almost three months and as I have said, when the operation was over, I was wearing the same clothes which I was wearing when it began. I had to lace up a large tear in the right leg of my pants with como wire. The tear went from my groin to my knee. Seven men in the unit lost their lives during this operation but that was an unusually low count compared to what we had been experiencing before our new commander showed up. Actually, two of those seven men were killed in accidents, and another was murdered while away from the unit in a province far to the north. One of the most decisive life-saving changes that happened with General Hay was the issuing of an S.O.P. which required us to construct a DePuy bunker in our NDPs. It was a lot of hard work, but it saved lives. Guys who still slept in hammocks were ordered to get rid of them and sleep on the ground with the rest of us.

      While still in the south, close to Lai Khe, we moved into areas covered with larger expanses of thick jungle growth. The enemy would sometimes mortar our night defensive positions with a few rounds. This happened so often that after a while hardly anyone became rattled by it. Our defenses protected us. Actually, this enemy action worked to strengthen our combat resolve. There is some truth in the old comment which says, "Whatever, doesn't kill a person makes them stronger". While in our various NDP’s, after marching all day, it was rare for a night to go by without having one of our ambush patrols make contact with bands of roving sappers. These sappers would also try sneaking in close to our listening posts near the NDP. Some would turn our claymore mines around on us. Others would set up their own claymores and then wait until dawn for some hapless soul to wander too close while looking for a place to do his business.

      I remember looking into the faces of members of another ambush patrol after they had wiped out an enemy patrol the night before. I could see the blood lust glowing bright in their eyes, but did not recognize it for what it was at the time. Blood lust is an extremely sick thing. It spreads a shroud of death over our souls. To make things more confusing, there is a righteous way of dealing with the fact that other human beings may need to be killed. However, we should never glory in the taking of any life. Like a surgeon who removes cancerous human flesh, a soldier should always look at the taking of an enemy life as a necessary evil. In God’s eyes, killing the enemy in warfare is always righteous, when it is done for a righteous cause. However, a soldier must be taught to keep their feelings of blood lust under control. Unfortunately, I had not had the opportunity to take that class and was therefore very jealous of these guys. Unlike the other squads in my company, My squad went on ambush patrols time after time and never made contact with the enemy. Though we were shot at on a handful of security patrols, we never felt it necessary to return fire, because the enemy was firing blindly. They were trying to get us to return fire and reveal our location in thick jungle. Even on these small security patrols, we were always under an umbrella of artillery coverage. It was more advantageous to stay hidden and call in this artillery or mortar fire on the shooters. In this way, perhaps my actions did result in the taking of human life, but that way of killing was not the up close and personal kind which feeds blood lust.         

    A sapper team ranged in size from 3 to 15 people and were made up of local VC. Like our special forces, they operated more autonomously. However, many were more likely to be true haters than true believers in the communist ideology. Almost all had hey had lost loved ones to outsiders in the past and were now assigning the blame for that loss to us alien Americans whether we were responsible or not. They had very different mindsets from the very brutally treated conscripts from up north. Conscripts composed the ranks of the NVA and usually survived no longer than six months in the harsh conditions facing them when they arrived in the south. Besides becoming cannon fodder, they were exposed to some of the most harsh living conditions imaginable. Those that made it six months were promoted to NCOs. These NCOs fared a little better because they could lag behind in a human wave attack after herding fresh conscripts to take their place in the kill zone. Very few conscripts from up north lived through their experience, much less became true believers. In the absence of Judeo-Christian values there was nothing to mitigate the demonic forces aligned against a beautiful Vietnamese people. Senior communist leaders knew that they could never go toe to toe with us, but they also knew that they did not have to do that. They just needed to kill enough of our young men to make us quit. That was doable and our own media made sure that we let the enemy know that it was doable. These sappers were the grease which greased the shadow government. They were amoral types who were not only willing to do anything to protect their own position in life but had no problem turning their back on a comrade too, if need be. Submitting to the demonic indoctrination of the communist ideology assured that every vesture of any god but the communist god, would be stripped from the soul of every comrade in arms. The drive to exploit all favors from anyone, including one's mentors or superiors, is also built into the dirty mechanics of the communist ideology. Some others were "Stockholm Syndrome" victims on steroids.

      Many North Vietnamese families never saw their teenaged children again after that day when they were taken away by the government but here again in the absence of truth, most consoled themselves with communist lies. They and their children had been consistently fed these lies since the communist took over the north. No creative personality like a Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Michael Dell would ever have a prayer of emerging from this swamp. 

     Now, returning to a description of the men on my side of the fight, let me say this. Each man in my squad seemed to be settling into his job. Most of us lacked the ability to communicate with our superiors as freely as was necessary. The RTO and Bill Milliron were exceptions. Our big machine gunner, from weapons squad, and a private from the Reservations out West was probably the worst at communicating. I don't remember him saying anything to me. Bowman and I were introverts too but compared to some of the new guys we were the life of the party. As it so happened, it worked out well for Bartee to have an older guy like Milliron to give him feedback from the rest of us. Without Bill, those communications would have been severely hampered. I felt comfortable around Milliron because of his outgoing and excepting personality but also because he was newer than me. In that sense, I would always be the old guy, and he would be the new guy.  Never mind that he was later promoted around me. I believe that most of the others felt comfortable around Bill too. Milliron was the same age as Bartee. They were on the same level of maturity. There is a lot of difference between the way a nineteen year old thinks than a twenty six year old. Bill could not be intimidated by Bartee, but also Bartee felt more comfortable with Bill. What was a bit unusual was the fact that Bill seemed to instinctively focus his attention more on me than anyone else, when it came to taking care of business. Perhaps, that was because I was the guy in the squad who had been there the longest. He set aside his silliness and listened intently to every word I said concerning tactics, just as I had listened to every word coming out of Charlie Bell’s mouth. Bill became a great "go between" for me and Sergeant Bartee. He also had innate self-confidence. He bridged the communications gap with Bartee, not only for me, but the entire squad. Important tactics discussed between him and I in private, were explained to Bartee in a much more presentable way than I was able to present them. From me, they would have sounded like sour notes. However, when reverberated by Bill, these ideas became sweet music to Bartee’s ears. Milliron was really gifted in that way. 

     There were over 20 Battalions involved in this operation, but we were still attached to 2nd Brigade south of War Zone C closer to Saigon. We were more or less marking time going back and forth in the same general area around Lai Khe and Phuoc Vinh. I remember my entire battalion doing a lot of night movements. We would link up with other units in the middle of the night, but we were not moving further north as I had originally thought. At one point, intelligence reports had indicated that COSVN and its 40 or 50 members, who ran the entire insurgency effort, were hiding in an area around Highway 246 some twenty miles or so west of An Loc, which was much farther north and nowhere near my unit.

     On this particular day, I remember my battalion finally arriving at a huge open area composed of at least several hundred acres with no civilians around. It was midday, and the sun was like a blast furnace in a steel mill. We were being told to dig in immediately. My squad just happened to be the last squad in the line of march for my B company.  The forward elements of C company followed behind us. When we started digging in, the lead squad in C company just naturally linked up with my squad to form the perimeter for our NDP. Every single person in my squad, including Bartee, was exhausted. We kept looking for Chinooks to show up over the horizon to bring us ice and cold soft drinks. We also needed war supplies. Almost everybody began to get a bad feeling when the Chinooks never showed. That could only mean one thing. We were not going to be staying here for the night. It was obvious that we would soon be filling in the very same fox holes which we were now digging. We would then move to another location. Never mind how tired and hot we were. We would soon be digging in all over again and we still had not finished the ones we were digging now. As these depressing thoughts settled in on our entire B Company, the lethargic pace of our digging slowed even more. Bartee soon returned from his brief meeting with the other leaders in our platoon to confirm that the situation was even worse than we were imagining. Instead of moving to a new location just a little distance away we would be moving out at dusk and walking most of the night to link up with another battalion somewhere in the darkness. To make that link-up happen we would be working the entire night with no sleep for anyone. “All this work”, I thought to myself, “For a little over one hundred bucks a month and a good shot at never growing old. Wow! What a deal”.

     Now, with that workload ahead of us, I remember looking over at Bartee. He was digging in slow motion. Usually, we talked while we dug, but today no one was saying a word. With this miserable lull in vocal distractions on the home front, it was easy to be drawn to the sounds of normal conversations coming from the direction of the C Company positions. As I was digging ever so slowly I turned my head in that direction. Those guys were buzzing. They were talking away. I couldn't understand individual sentences, but I was able to pick up on their upbeat tones. Unlike us, these guys were chatting away, in the hot sun, like hard working factory workers on a Friday afternoon just before punching out for a long holiday weekend. Had they not gotten the memo? Our long holiday weekend had just been cancelled. Had they not walked the same distance we walked that morning in the blazing hot sun? Were they not getting ready to fill in the same fox holes that they were digging and walk through the pitch-black jungle for most of the night with eighty pounds on their backs? To make matters worse, I could see a shirtless tall lanky guy walking toward his half-dug hole with a big smile on his face. How could this guy be smiling? He was not only smiling but he was joking with one of his buddies standing in the hole. How could their hole be half finished when we had just started on ours? As I continued to work halfheartedly, I couldn't help observing these guys out of one corner of my eye all afternoon. Many times, companies in a battalion went on the same operations and fought in the same battles but rarely did individual soldiers from these different companies become acquainted with each other. I didn't know a single guy in C Company and furthermore I didn't care to know a single guy in C Company. Yet, throughout the afternoon, I couldn't help but notice that the tall lanky guy had an engaging way about him. He constantly engaged the other members of his squad in friendly bantering, as if he was trying to be friends with the whole world. Though I wasn’t one, I had a real talent for spotting popular people. This guy was one of those. While I continued to keep an inquisitive eye on those C Company guys, it wasn't long before one of the Sergeants from C company stopped to talk to another sergeant in my Company. Of course I listened in. They brought the grapevine to life. That other sergeant told my sergeant that the tall lanky guy was not only popular with the other men in his squad, but he was also a rising star with the officers in the battalion. Yet, he was a grunt like me. His fox hole was only about twenty meters from my fox hole. After hearing that, every time I glanced his way the top of my head started burning and it wasn’t coming from the sun. I was beginning to think that this might be a guy whom I could learn to hate. Amazingly, it would be almost fifty years before I was able to put two and two together and learn his name. The guy's name was Mac McLaughlin. Years later, after reading Mac's story and seeing his picture in a book called "Dogface Charlie" I learned that he made Sergeant, after being in country less than three months. He also made staff Sergeant before he finished his one year stretch in Vietnam. Now, I am sure that I would have hated him.  

      By the time we filled in our fox holes, and saddled up to move into the wood line, starting through the thick jungle on our night march it was almost pitch dark. My company was in the middle of the pack in the order of march. At one point, we halted for a little longer than usual. A couple guys in my squad took their entrenching tool and busted up a bioluminescent rotted log. They then handed out the green glowing splinters to the rest of the squad. Each man slipped the wood fragments under their elastic camouflage band at the back of their steel helmets. The idea caught on quick. My guys had learned this trick sometime back. Sometimes it was so dark we couldn't see our own hand if we waved it in front of our face. We kept track of the man in front of us by following the bouncing green glow on the back of his helmet. It worked great.

     It was well past midnight when we stopped for the last time. It seemed to me that we were meandering aimlessly, but I was in the middle of the pack, and it was dark, so I really couldn't tell. We had three companies in the Battalion at this point and we were all there that night. Sometimes one company would be held in reserve, while guarding nearby base camps or roads. However, this night we were all together. Word came back from the front that we were getting ready to deploy into an NDP for the night, but things were moving awfully slow. While waiting for my squad to be told where to start digging in, red tracers started popping by my head. They were coming from about fifty yards to my left flank. It wasn't just a few incoming rounds. The volume of fire was tremendous. It was a miracle that no one was hit. The tracers were red, which indicated that we were being shot at by our own people. The enemy used green tracers. All we could do was lay low and take it, until orders were passed down to do otherwise. Within a few minutes, communication was established with the other battalion doing the shooting. During that night and the next day word filtered down that the reason the other unit opened up on us was because our point men had gotten off course. In other words, we were lost. Whoever was running point for our battalion that night had gotten the entire battalion lost. After reviewing after action reports, I believe this incident happened around the first week of March while Denton was still in command.

     Here is more on why that incident was not good. It was caused by elements of one American battalion shooting at another. What if artillery strikes had been called in by either or maybe both units? It happened because those walking point had gotten off course. Denton left shortly after this incident having only served 2 months of a normal six-month tour for officers. I believe Denton was considered to be a very weak commander after he had displayed such incompetence taking that bunker complex. I also believe that is why my unit was left out of the main thrust during Junction City. Our Patton-like General DePuy was also replaced about this same time. He left February 10th, but not before replacing Lt. Colonel Denton. There are a couple intriguing questions that beg to be asked here. Question number one: Did this friendly fire incident become the last straw for Denton, prompting DePuy to relieve Denton? There is no way to know for sure. Question number two: Did DePuy fire the hero of Pork Chop Hill making that action become a final straw for Army Chief of Staff, General Johnson, who then removed DePuy from command? It’s reported that DePuy had already been warned by Johnson that he was firing too many battalion commanders. Again, who knows, but it is interesting to contemplate. Denton never received another promotion after leaving the 1/18th, but he did go on to do what many are unable to do in life. Denton completely reshaped his life and by doing so made considerable contributions to his country in another field which didn't require one to face the cruel decisions necessitated by war. His new contributions in a budding field of a new technology were extremely important.     

      Whether my speculations are right or not about what precipitated the changes in leadership, we now had a new battalion commander and a new First Infantry Division commander. Most of us grunts didn't know this new guy's name for a while. When we first heard it, we had trouble pronouncing it. Was it "Casorus"? No, that wasn't it. The name had a "v" in it. Was it "Cavasus". Yes, that was it. So, it would be "Cavasus" for most of us. 

      Around this same time, my squad was running a patrol one day. Bartee was still relatively new. Milliron and Bowman had just started working with me up front. It was fortuitous that Milliron had joined the squad at the same time Bartee showed up and that they seemed to bond so quickly. Had that not happened I would probably have been court marshaled after running this particular patrol. Here is what happened. We had just come under fire from a sapper team looking to draw us out. Laying low until the shooting stopped, we quietly moved back a few meters, side-stepping the direction we were traveling about twenty meters. We were still near enough to our check point to shoot a reverse azimuth home, which we got permission to do. The new Bartee got so rattled he couldn't remember whether to subtract or add a 180 degrees to get the correct azimuth. I believe this was the first time that many in my squad, including Bartee, had been shot at, but never mind that. I remember thinking, "How could anyone be that stupid". As Bartee continued to hesitate allowing me to shoot the correct bearing, I became irritated. There were obviously enemy sapper teams all around us. My perfectionist mindset just naturally shifted into overdrive. "If Bartee couldn't do this one simple thing, what else could he not do?" Actually, it wasn't his job in the first place to be reading a compass. That was my job and by this time he should have known he could trust me. All this was running through my mind at light speed. In those days, if a situation caused a conflict with an authority figure, I really didn't possess the interpersonal skills to deal with it. Usually, I would remove myself from the situation and never mind what happened next. I really would throw the baby out with the bath water. Naturally, it was impossible to remove myself from this situation, so, I did what I had always done in the past when faced with a seemingly impossible situation. I got mad. I remember saying in an angry tone, “Listen Bartee, you can go in any direction you please, but I am going to take the opposite direction and go home". As we stared at each other, thank God, Milliron was there to intercede for me in the nick of time. Bill was able to become the calming voice in the situation. He wisely ignored my over-the-top statement and began addressing Bartee in a very calm way. However, he too was not able to convince the hardheaded Bartee. Finally, Milliron picked up a small stick and laid it down on the map to visually show how shooting bearings worked. Bartee finally relented and obviously we made it back okay. Nothing more was ever said about the incident. I never considered that Bartee was under tremendous stress, having just had his squad shot at for the first time. I also never considered that he had listened to me many times before and that this was maybe just a one-time lapse of trust. Perfectionists just don't think like that. However, perfectionism was also the reason I was such a good navigator and point man. Milliron probably saved me from getting an Article 15 or worse, and more importantly maybe saved the squad from getting shot up.

      Another time, while on a security patrol, Bartee decided to call in a spotter round" because we had done a lot of zigzagging in and out of our azimuth on this particular route. Accurate pace counting was very hard to do when something like this happened.  However, I didn't get mad at Bartee this time. To avoid obstacles in our path, one of which was a giant hornet's nest, we had intentionally gone off course so many times that I too was second guessing myself. We called in a spotter round from our mortar platoon to be fired at a particular map coordinate located 50 meters in front of where we thought we were. The round sounded like it landed exactly where it should have landed. It was the only spotter round I ever requested. After that, we went on many patrols together, but Bartee always let me, Milliron and Bowman drive the car, while he sat in the back seat and kept quiet. What began ugly became a beautiful thing. That's why I say Bartee was the right squad leader for us at the right time, but "Thank God for Milliron". I mention these two aside stories as a small example of how random it was for talented people to mesh, in the 1967 Army. It was even more rare for them to form a coherent team. Yet, I think we did it against all odds.

      At some point during these back-and-forth operations, and not long after the friendly fire incident, we were picked up and choppered into Lai Khe. I will never forget sitting in the shade of a rubber tree when Sergeant Bartee walked up and squatted down beside me. He had just come from a big battalion level meeting. There was a rather excited look on his face. "We are going to be doing some night maneuvers", he said. "They want our squad to take the lead for the entire battalion.” Then he asked, “Wade, do you think that you can handle that?" I could tell that Bartee was much more nervous about the idea than me. I didn’t know enough to be nervous. “Yeah, I can do that”, I said in a calm voice. I believe now that Bartee was wondering whether he could trust me or not. Oh sure, he had come to trust me to take the squad to any location on a map with just a compass, but could he trust me not to lose my cool. I had an “edge” and Bartee knew it. Heck, by now, it was becoming more and more obvious to everyone in the squad that I had a light trigger. If only I had realized that fact, myself. I did know that I marched to a different drum beat, but “so what?”, I thought. I wasn’t going to go along with the crowd, or everyone would be wrong. By now, Bartee, recognized this not so little flaw in his point man. That was the reason for the worried look on his face, and not because he thought that I couldn’t do the job.   

     As crazy as this may sound, my first thought in response to Bartee’s question was that finally the Army was asking me to do something which I was good at doing. Yes, I was very comfortable with walking point at night. Actually, I was more comfortable doing it at night than during the daytime. Many times, on smaller patrols, we had traveled on nights so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. However, I felt that the night gave me concealment which I never had during the day. On this particular march, it would be the first time that my squad was taking the lead to guide the entire battalion through the middle of triple canopy jungle but so what? It really didn’t matter how many people were following me. I had also long since realized that there was little chance of running into an ambush out there in the middle of nowhere. Truth is, that the enemy had more important work to do at night, terrorizing villagers.       

     I had no idea that our new commander may have had something to do with me being picked to do this job. However, I now believe that screening his command for an odd ball like me to lead the battalion is just one small example of our new commander’s ability to tweak his chain of command. Although only one grunt in a million understood how tweaking worked, with the arrival of Dick, it was now happening. I am sure some of the older lifer sergeants probably knew that Dick was behind the tweaking but most of the younger ones didn’t. Everyone would know later when things really got down and dirty. Dick knew how to let a rook be a rook and a knight be a knight. We would soon learn that this was just part of his nature. It seemed almost effortless on his part. I now believe that he tagged me to lead the battalion without me ever knowing how that happened. It didn’t bother him that there were things which a grunt couldn’t do as long as that grunt could do the job assigned him. I am sure now that many of us grunts had no idea how Dick was using his command experience to screen us.      

     I know now what my nineteen-year-old brain did not know then. Picking a competent navigator would have been extremely important, but not that hard to do. This is an all but mute problem today because of G.P.S. However, during the Vietnam War it was a major problem. Yet, the problem could easily be overcome by a savvy commander putting out the word for his subordinates to keep track of those point men who hardly ever got lost, especially at night. Believe me, the veteran platoon sergeants would have definitely known who they were. If a point man kept getting lost then a good platoon sergeant would have quickly made changes at his level, and you can bet your booties on that. Looking back, I am sure it took only a few brief but clearly stated commands by our new commander to get the word out for a list of names of the unit's most capable navigators. I didn't realize how an experienced commander could work the chain of command back then, but I do now. It would have taken very little time for a list of names of the very best men for that job or any other job to be presented to the battalion commander.

      Never mind, that I was an odd ball. My name was picked. Shortly before dark, the entire battalion assembled on Lai Khe’s perimeter. It was a huge base camp, and I can't remember exactly what spot, on the perimeter, it was, where we started out, or in what direction it was that we started our march. I do remember, after being on the march for several hours, that we were traveling through very thick triple canopy jungle. All three companies in the battalion were following behind my squad. It was dusk when we started out, but the night soon became pitch black. Light rains had begun to come down now in the late afternoons but lasted no more than 30 minutes. A soaking wet Milliron was shooting the compass bearing and was a little to my left and in front of me. Bowman was also to my front a couple paces and a little to my right. We maintained contact with whispers as we listened for unusual sounds. Bartee was behind me several paces, with his RTO in his hip pocket. The rest of the battalion was strung out behind us single file for probably more than a mile. We had a new platoon leader following at the back of our platoon somewhere, but then we always had a new platoon leader. They just didn't last very long. The only way I could see Bowman and Milliron was to watch the little slivers of glowing wood bouncing up and down in their hat bands on the back of their steel helmets. On and on we went. I have no pictures in my mind now of leaving Lai Kai or entering the jungle to continue our search and destroy mission while linking up with other units in the dark, nor do I remember how long we walked on this particular night. However, I will never forget how exhilarating the entire experience was, being up front and not having to depend on another unknown person’s judgment to guide us. The area we walked through was triple canopy jungle. We crossed ox-cart trails, but we never walked on them. Our new commander strictly forbid us doing that. In my mind, the darkness was my friend. As long as I had access to a map and a compass I had no worries about doing my job. The enemy couldn't see any better in the dark than me.