Guns Up! (42 page)
Authors: Johnnie Clark
Sudsy was the Second Platoon radioman for most of my time in Nam. He eventually became a squad leader. At one point I thought Bob Carroll had been killed. He was seriously ill with malaria. When we were crossing the Thu Bon River on amtracks, he passed out from the fever and fell off. He was medevaced out for quite a while. He thinks that may be why I thought he got killed. I am thankful to be wrong. Everyone who served with Bob Carroll loved him. Bob’s best friend was one of the Marines killed when Jesus Quintana lost his legs. His name was Ronald L. Powers. I believe this is the Marine that I called Private Simmons. He had a safe job in the rear but volunteered to change his MOS to join the grunts in the bush. Bob tried to talk him out of it, but he was a Marine. He lasted a month.
Cpl. Bob Carroll came home with combat fatigue as most of the guys did. It made his life and relationships tough. He escaped by becoming a park ranger and basically living in the woods for many years. He was a ranger at the Grand Canyon when he showed up in Cincinnati at the reunion. Bob worked with a friend who was constantly asking him why he chose to live the way he did. He got tired of ignoring this woman, so he finally gave her a copy of
Guns Up!
She read it over and over. When Bob mentioned that Johnnie and Chan would be
at the reunion, this woman talked him into coming. Here is another one of those incidents where the guy who wrote a book seems special, but the truth is that Johnnie Clark was and is “boot” to Marines like Bob Carroll, Corporal Huteson, Bruce Trebil, Big Red, Jesus Quintana, Gunny McDermott, Lieutenant Pruit, Lance Corporal Hensley, Cpl. Marty Lynch, John Carrow, James MacCreight, Frenchie, Charlie Goodson, Lieutenant Montgomery, Sgt. Stacy Watson, Sergeant Monroe, Sgt. Vince Rios, Leonard Ramirez, First Lieutenant Lowder, Capt. Scott Nelson, Lieutenant Colonel Griffis, and a thousand others.
Sgt. Vince Rios, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, is a Marine whose story is not in
Guns Up!
He was at the reunion. PFC Pat McCrary and Cpl. Steve Britt idolize the man. In the chapter “Happy Birthday, Baby-San,” Steve was with me at Thuong Duc when the tanks were blown up as we charged a hill beside the Vu Gia River—the day Swift Eagle was wounded for the last time. They told me that when Sergeant Rios was on his second tour, he was the guardian that saved their lives a dozen times. When he lost his legs and right arm, and his left hand was mangled, they thought he was finished. He went home and got two master’s degrees and raised a new first lieutenant for the Marine Corps, his son. Where does America find these Marines? There were a lot of them in Vietnam.
First Lieutenant Montgomery is another. Steve Britt’s squad was pinned down and in a hopeless position. Lieutenant Montgomery heard the mess on the radio. He ran to the action and charged an enemy machine-gun position to save his men. He was wounded by .30-caliber machine-gun fire. Another Marine hero with him was killed. Montgomery was awarded the Navy Cross. He became an FBI agent, and years later, he was on national television for again being a hero for his country. Just another Nam vet.
Bill James and others have tried to find Cpl. Swift
Eagle. He seems to have dropped off the earth. The guys think he went back to some Indian reservation and is still there. One of my buddies, a Nam vet, recently visited an Indian reservation. He told me that quite a few of the men there were former Marines. He said that it was a revered custom for the veterans on the reservation to wear their medals on their shirts to show they had served. These warriors are respected by their people. I hope Swift Eagle is honored by his tribe.
I wrote about a character named “Sam the Blooper Man.” Sam was actually based on two different men. The combat was as accurate as I could remember it, but part of his personality was based on a soldier who served in 1969. My blooper man risked his life for mine. If I ever had the choice, I wanted that Marine beside me in a fight.
There is more I’d like to say about the Marines of 1/5. There is more I’d like to tell you about this book. Like how a sixteen-year-old kid from Ireland came to America to join the Corps because he read a little book titled
Guns Up!
Stories of sergeant majors making every young Marine in their outfit read the book. Squad leaders in the Gulf War tearing the book into sections for every man in their squad to study. Nurses who hand it out in VA hospitals. Kids who have read it sixteen times. High schools and colleges making it required reading. Middle school and elementary teachers reading the book aloud to their students at the end of class each day.
This book has flaws, but God has used this book in ways I never dreamed. After four years of having
Guns Up!
rejected, I got nailed by a memory verse in a Bible study group: 1 Samuel 2:30, “but now the Lord declares … for those who honor me I will honor.” I made a simple decision to remove all the curse words from the book, against the advice of professional writers. Within a month, nine publishers wanted
Guns Up!
I asked the editor who bought the book for Ballantine why she
wanted it now, since she had rejected the exact same book six months earlier. Was it because I took the curse words out? She said not one reader or editor at Ballantine had noticed. She read and rejected the book six months earlier and could not explain it. I can.
My prayer is that this flawed effort will honor Jesus Christ first, His Marine Corps second, and everyone who served in Vietnam. To all of the valiant leathernecks I was privileged to serve with, be healed by forgiving.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
—John 15:13
Semper fi,
L/Cpl. Johnnie M. Clark
A 1/5
Alpha Company, First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment.
AK47
A Russian assault rifle.
ARVN
Abbreviation for Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
AWOL
Absent without leave.
B-40 rocket
A communist antitank rocket.
betel nut
A nut, widely chewed by the Vietnamese, that stains the teeth and gums a pomegranate red.
body bags
Plastic zipper-bags for corpses.
boot
Slang for a new recruit undergoing basic training.
bush
The outer field areas and jungle where infantry units operate.
Charlie
Slang for “the enemy.”
ChiCom
Chinese communists. Slang for enemy grenade.
choppers
Helicopters.
claymores
Mines packed with plastique and rigged to spray hundreds of steel pellets.
Cobras
Helicopter gunships heavily armed with rocket launchers and machine guns.
concertina wire
Barbed wire that is rolled out along the ground to hinder the progress of enemy troops.
C-rats
C-rations or prepackaged military meals eaten in the field.
C-S
A caustic riot gas used in Vietnam.
C-4
Plastique explosive.
C-130
A cargo plane used to transport men and supplies.
C-141 Starlifter
A large jet transport.
deuce-and-a-half
A heavy transport truck used for carrying men and supplies.
dink
Slang for an Asian person, especially in reference to the enemy.
EM club
Enlisted men’s club.
E.R
. Emergency room.
flak jacket
A vest worn to protect the chest area from shrapnel or bullets.
I Corps Tactical Zone
The northern five provinces of South Vietnam, called “Marineland” by some. I Corps stretched 225 miles from the Demilitarized Zone to the boundary with Binh Dinh province and II Corps Tactical Zone.
frags
Slang for fragmentation grenades.
Freedom Bird
Slang for the flight that took a soldier home after his tour.
friendlies
Friendly Vietnamese.
gook
Slang for an Asian person, especially in reference to the enemy.
grunt
Slang for any combat soldier fighting in Vietnam.
Hueys
Helicopters used extensively in Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh Trail
The main supply route running south from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia.
hootch
Slang for any form of a dwelling place.
humping
Slang for marching with a heavy load through the bush.
K-bar
A Marine Corps survival knife.
KIA
Killed in action.
klick
One kilometer.
LAAW
Light antiarmor weapon.
LZ
Landing zone.
MACV
Military Assistance Command Vietnam.
medevac
A term for medically evacuating the wounded by chopper or plane.
M14
An automatic weapon used in Vietnam by American ground forces.
M16
Standard automatic weapon used by American ground forces.
M60
A machine gun used by American units.
M79
A 40 mm grenade launcher.
nouc mam
A strong-smelling Vietnamese fish sauce.
NVA
North Vietnamese Army.
pogue
A derogatory term for rear-area personnel.
punji sticks
Sharpened stakes used to impale men.
RPG
Rocket-propelled grenade.
R&R
Rest and relaxation.
sappers
Viet Cong infiltrators whose job it was to detonate explosive charges within American positions.
satchel charges
Explosive packs carried by VC sappers.
SDS
Students for a Democratic Society.
search and destroy
American ground sweeps to locate and destroy the enemy and his supplies.
short-timer
Someone whose tour in Vietnam is almost completed.
smoke grenade
A grenade that releases colored smoke used for signaling.
Tet
The Chinese New Year.
III Corps
The military region around Saigon.
Tiger beer/33 beer
Vietnamese beers.
tracer
A bullet with a phosphorous coating designed to burn and provide a visual indication of a bullet’s trajectory.
VC
Viet Cong.
Viet Cong
The local communist militias fighting in South Vietnam.
web gear
Canvas suspenders and belt used to carry the infantryman’s gear.
WIA
Wounded in action.
willie-peter
White phosphorous round.
Big Red on graduation from Parris Island. This was the photo the author did not recognize in the
Cincinnati Enquirer
years later. Notice in the photo below the change in Red’s looks that a few months in the bush caused. “Vietnam made nineteen-year-olds look like thirty-year-olds.” (Richard Weaver memorial collection)
Richard “Big Red” Michael Weaver. Three Purple Hearts, Bronze Star with V device, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and several other medals. Red was killed in action at Phu Loc, Thua Thien Province, I Corps Tactical Zone, on May 20, 1968. This photo was taken before moving into the A Shau Valley in 1968. (Richard Weaver memorial collection)
Pvt. Johnnie M. Clark. Boot camp graduation from Parris Island, South Carolina, 1967. Wounded three times in the 1968 Tet Offensive. The Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with palm, Vietnam Civil Action Medal, Marine Combat Action Ribbon, and various campaign medals. (Author’s collection)
The author and PFC Richard Chan, April Fools’ Day, 1968, Phu Bai. A hot miserable dust bowl that felt like R&R compared to the bush. (Author’s collection)
PFC Johnnie M. Clark, holding the M-60 machine gun at the Truoi River Bridge, 1968. A new bridge is being constructed in the background by American Seabees. Photo taken just before the long hump into the mountains where we discovered the NVA training replica of the Truoi Bridge. (Author’s collection)
First Platoon, Alpha Company, staging at the southern tip of the A Shau Valley for choppers into Elephant Valley. Kneeling, left to right: Doc Michael Turley and Doc Chris Rieger. June 1968. (Photo courtesy of Doc Michael Turley)
Front row, left to right: Lance Corporal Layman holding a can in front of the sleeping author’s face, Stew Campbell, Cpl. Bob “Sudsy” Carroll, and Pvt. Abernathy. Lance Corporal Hensley is behind Abernathy. Back row, left to right: Cpl. Fred Huteson, Private First Class Mariani, L/Cpl. Bruce Trebil, and Pvt. Buford Unerstute, the Marine whose heart stopped. (Photo courtesy of Robert Carroll)
Gunny McDermott standing (back to camera) as the platoon is transported up the Truoi River. This is the same way the author was medevaced out later. (Photo courtesy of Sgt. Stacy Watson)
PFC Pat McCrary, An Hoa village, 1969. Feeding the Vietnamese kids as Marines often did. Pat was PFC Barnes in the chapter “Dodge City.” He was wounded in the graveyard. (Photo courtesy of Pat McCrary)
Cpl. Jesus Quintana (Corporal Sanchez in this book) in a stateside naval hospital six weeks after being wounded. He was awarded the Bronze Star with V and two Purple Hearts among other decorations. (Photo courtesy of Cpl. Jesus Quintana)
Cpl. Quintana (Paunchy Villa Sanchez) just four hours before he lost both his legs to a 155mm booby-trapped artillery shell, An Hoa combat base. Four other Marines were killed and the gunny seriously wounded in Dodge City, Arizona Territory. (Photo courtesy of Jesus Quintana)
