War Story 2: Close Call in a Killing Field
The Rest of the Story 53 Years Later
I was so excited when I hung up the phone.
Through friends, I reconnected with my former Company Commander, Lee Klein. I had served under him during the Vietnam War in 1970. At the time he was a First Lieutenant and 22 years later, he retired as a Lt. Colonel.
Little did I know what I would learn during a reunion dinner in Alexandria, VA, for the 196th Light Infantry Brigade.
It rocked me.
We met in June 2014. Right from the beginning, we embraced each other as brothers. Reminiscing, I related to Klein one of the stories that set the tone for my very first patrol with the Infantry in Vietnam.
Back in 1970, after two years of grueling infantry training culminating at Jungle School in the Panama Canal Zone, I arrived in Chu Lai, just south of Danang. It was a sprawling air base and headquarters for the U.S. Army’s AMERICAL Division commanding over 20,000 soldiers. At Chu Lai, the heat and humidity were intense and so was the activity of helicopters, planes, soldiers, artillery, and all types of vehicles moving around in what would be called “organized chaos”.
It was mesmerizing for a 23-year-old who graduated from UMass, Amherst, enlisted in the Army, and then two years later now witnessed the massive scale of the military combat operations.
Immediately, I went into what they called “in-country” training for orientation on enemy tactics and local practices, typical armaments, and a lot of time on booby traps.
After two weeks, I boarded a Huey to join Bravo Company,2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry of the 196th Infantry Brigade on Hill 251, west of Chu Lai. From the air, I could see it was like a bowl turned upside down on a table, only this table was a collection of rice paddies that stretched to the mountains on the horizon.
I reported to my Company Commander, Joe Genereux, on his second tour of duty in Vietnam. He told me that I would be going on my first mission in the morning with the 3rd Platoon. During the routine patrol, I was to observe and learn by watching the more seasoned Lieutenant (from West Point) and get familiar with small unit activities.
Up early, we quickly formed and left the base perimeter and slowly hiked downhill to the rice paddy. I soon learned how difficult it is to move through knee-deep rice paddies (not on the dikes as they could be booby-trapped) filled with putrid water while loaded down with a rucksack, ammo, equipment, and my trusty M-16. The paddies were filled with leeches, buffalo dung, insects, and bugs I did not know existed on the planet.
I had it easy compared to others carrying much heavier loads that included critical gear like radios, batteries, machine guns, extra ammo, machine gun belts, Claymore mines, and more.
As we slowly patrolled in a single line across the paddies, zig-zagging here and there, I remember looking all around me simply captivated by all that I could see. No longer at home in Quincy, Massachusetts, the landscape, animals, and people were all so incredibly different.
After watching the TV news and Walter Cronkite every night for years, I reflected that I am finally here in the rice paddies. My head was spinning as if I was a visitor on an exotic tour in a dream. Sweat dripped into my eyes.
The point man, walking first in the line of march, was followed by the cover man, then the Lieutenant, the radio man, and me just a few feet behind him, followed by the rest of the 20-odd soldiers in the platoon.
About two hours into my first patrol on my very first day in the field, I was looking across to a distant line of tropical foliage when it happened.
Ka-BOOM !
It was loud and the force blew me backward. I fell completely under the water and as I slowly raised my head with my wide-brim, jungle hat still on, water draining into my eyes and my ears ringing I could hear yelling and screaming, and soldiers racing around splashing through the water.
Wide-eyed, I desperately looked at myself with panic to see if I was bleeding and if I had all my limbs.
But I felt no pain. Saw no blood. Wow!
The radio man about ten feet in front of me had stepped on a booby trap in the rice paddy and it blasted forward to hit the Lieutenant in the back. Both were severely wounded, and I did not think either of them would survive.
“Red”, one of the few buck Sergeants, came forward and organized a dust-off (a Medivac helicopter) for the emergency rescue.
As we waited for the Huey to land, I thought to myself, “How in the world am I going to survive a full year of this?” Then I asked myself if the enemy is waiting to ambush the Medivac.
Later I would learn that Army platoon leaders, Lieutenants in the northern sector of South Vietnam called “I Corps”, would have the highest casualty rates by rank in all of the Vietnam War.
Red raced up to me, after the Huey came and left with all engines howling at max speed, and asked, “OK, L-T, what do we do now?”
It was a classic scenario, just like they taught us in classes at Fort Benning.
On the radio, Genereux told me to move to a position to spend the night.
And so it went, week after week, month after month.
As the new 3rd Platoon Leader, we went on to fight the Viet Cong and NVA from Chu Lai and Tam Ky to Thien Phuc and Kham Duc. In a few days, Genereux returned to the States and was replaced by Lee Klein.
Years later in 2014, I was really excited to meet my old commanders for that dinner at the reunion.
At one point in our discussion, Klein casually announced that he had contacted Joe Genereux, who now lives in Daytona Beach, Florida, and confirmed the rest of the story about my first mission off Hill 251.
Lee caught me by surprise. What did he mean, “the rest of the story?”
When Klein asked him about it, Genereux exclaimed that of course, he remembered that day. He had called the 3rd Platoon leader to his command post and explained to him that for months he had made a record of the known booby traps on a battle map to identify and avoid their locations on future missions. This is the kind of real field intelligence that is so valuable to mission plans and reflected Genereux’s experience and tactical judgment.
Genereux went on to describe to Klein what this Lieutenant should do and where to go – and NOT go. The warning was clear.
When Genereux got word of the blast and the call for a Medivac, he got the coordinates of the blast site and compared it to his map.
He got quite angry and was swearing as he retold the story even today.
Apparently, the Lieutenant had either ignored the instructions or did not read his map, or was simply careless. Whatever the case, he led us all straight into the minefield that Genereux was trying to avoid.
Now, it became quite clear to me that I did have the unusually good fortune to take the platoon out of the area to our night position without further casualties.
As Klein told me this, my eyes welled up with emotion.
I realized for the first time that we could have avoided the whole incident.
I also remembered how close I came to getting hit in the first few hours of my first mission in a war zone.
My former company commanders, both Genereux and Klein, are real heroes. I am honored to know and serve under them.
I wonder how many times during our lives we escape tragedy but never know about it.
This time, I learned the rest of the story - while still alive.
I realized again that I am one of the luckiest men on Earth.
Epilogue
For whatever reason, I developed a severe case of bowed legs. I think it was the diet I had for a year in Vietnam, but anyway, my knees were now bone-on-bone and painful. I resisted the idea of getting knee implants. I’m a grunt used to grunting and bearing it. Now at 76 in November of 2022, I started the process and arranged to have an MRI after discussing plans with an orthopedic surgeon.
At the hospital center, I emptied my pockets of anything having metal. A disciplined, no-nonsense woman double-checked me and then put me on the sled and pushed me into the huge machine. Soon, I heard her yelling at me.
“I thought I told you to remove any and all metal!” It is messing up the images.
I assured her I had nothing on. She did not believe me. Out of the machine, we checked and I did not have any metal. She then proclaimed that I must have metal inside me.
Later X-rays confirmed I still have one piece of shrapnel sticking straight into the bone six inches below my knee.
It is thin as a razor blade and given all that went on that day, I never sensed I had been impacted. No matter what, I was focused on taking charge and dealing with the situation without hesitation. It was what I was trained to do after over two years of preparation.
Little did I know that just 2 months later I would be knocked down again by the enemy with another booby trap that killed several and injured others when I would be on that Medivac.
Such was life in the killing field.
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