War stories.
Every soldier who served in combat has at least one. These are mine.
This series offers a glimpse into my time in the Army as well as my 19 months in the Vietnam War.
Included are tales highlighting the extraordinary people I met along the way and descriptions of some of the defining moments that shaped my two tours in Vietnam and helped make me the person I am today.
This is a series, so I recommend you read the posts below in sequence.
Thanks for reading!
From High School to Riot Control
I enlisted at 18, expecting MP school and a road to college. Instead I spent weeks on KP under a cruel cook, ended up in a knife standoff, and landed on riot-control duty at the Presidio in San Francisco, asking again and again to be sent to Vietnam ...
How I Became the Envy of the Battalion
No one in my unit could get orders for Vietnam. Then, after an all-night guard shift, I clipped the battalion commander’s favorite car with a bus, refused to blame my First Sergeant, and had my orders within five days. Everyone called it punishment. I called it a reward ...
Zero Week in Nam
My first week in Vietnam: pallets of dead soldiers loaded onto planes at Long Binh, spiders in the latrine, a night of screams in Nha Trang, a C-130 with no door, and finally the road up to Pr’Line Mountain, my home for the next 19 months ...
The Pr’Line Mountain Security Platoon
July 1970. I arrived on Pr’Line Mountain exhausted and green, and met the 194th MP security platoon: hardened infantrymen, a few MPs, a gentle giant, and a man who warned me never to touch his rifle. And why the old hands kept new guys at arm’s length ...
A Tour of Pr’Line Mountain
Take a walk around our Central Highlands home near Dalat in 1970: the guard shack and helipad, Checkpoint Charlie, the hooches, the bunkers rigged with Claymores, and the men who shared the hill with us, Americans, ARVN, and Montagnards alike ...
Meet Chris Sakell and Mai the Monkey
Chris Sakell took me under his wing on Pr’Line Mountain. So, in her way, did Mai, his clever, mischievous Rhesus monkey. A story of friendship, pranks, and hard nights in Vietnam, and of what became of Chris after the war ...
One Helluva Day!
In Dalat, our armored personnel carrier struck a man on a motorcycle during a turn, and he died. An angry crowd gathered, armed soldiers closed in, and on the road home we were ambushed. Decades later, I still ask whether I could have prevented it ...
Izzy Was a Friend of Mine
Izzy was a loner and a heroin user, and he was my friend. When I found him unconscious from an overdose and no one else would help, I kept him awake through the night. His first words were, “Why didn’t you let me die?” ...
Claymore Alley
My first combat experience in Vietnam: a reconnaissance patrol near Claymore Alley, a sudden silence in the jungle, an explosion, and a man screaming for his mother. The longest thirty yards of my life, and a truth about who set that trap that took me decades to come to terms with ...