Should anyone have noticed the long interlude since the last exploration of this shack, my apologies. Holidays, press of work, and existential angst are my excuses. To those I’ve promised to bring in more material related to my immigration and University of Rochester experiences, I have not forgotten, and I will keep my pledges. It is a New Year, after all, and I wish readers good luck in keeping their resolutions in 2015.
Now, I am urgently drawn back to rummaging by a Marine comrade, a member of my platoon in Vietnam, a man I have not seen in decades, but with whom I have corresponded and talked–especially during the past few months. His name is Bud Eckert. He was wounded twice during his Vietnam tour, the second occurring not long before he was due to return home. The wound, in a way, hastened that return, as it was serious and would result in the amputation of his left leg below the knee. He was evacuated, hospitalized and returned to his home.
With Bud’s permission, in this and follow-up postings, I will tell a bit of his story. In particular, I will write of the journey he is on at this moment in Vietnam. Actually, I will mostly let Bud speak for himself about the his visits to the battle grounds of his squad of Marines, the Third Squad of the First Platoon of Lima Company of the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment in 1967. (In Marine Corps parlance, we were Marines of Lima Three One or L/3/1 or Lima Company of the First Marines. )
I asked Bud’s permission to share his story–as he is writing it even now–because in many respects it is also mine–and I know it will be so for many others. I wasn’t wounded and I didn’t spend as much time with First Platoon as Bud did, but for many pieces that he describes I was there or nearby and doing the things, I like to think and pray, Marine platoon leaders were supposed to be doing. Bud also has an extraordinary memory–it is vastly superior to mine. So in talking to him and reading his emerging memoir, I am rediscovering very dusty and moldy boxes and their contents heretofore lost in my miserable memory shack.
As the leader of the First Platoon, I knew Bud as a genuinely fine rifleman. Bud was also a fine point man, often serving as the Marine who was first in line when his squad, platoon, or company moved on patrol in column, one man at some distance behind another.
The point was an unenviable position. He might be the first to draw enemy fire or the first to encounter a booby trap, explosive mine, or some other device. (In those days, 1967, our language was much simpler it seemed. Nowadays such things have more professional sounding names, such as the infamous “improvised explosive device” (IED), e.g., as a substitute for “booby trap,” which I suppose implied to some that only an idiot or fool would trigger it.)
Another thing Bud is (and has been since he was a teenager) is a wanderer, an explorer. I think in retrospect that quality may be one of the attributes that made Bud a good point man. The Marine walking point has to be able to move comfortably in unfamiliar environments, be observant, and, in the guerrilla war environment in which much of our time was spent, go almost unnoticed or invisible to those looking to harm us or warn others of our approach.
Until Bud and I resumed our communications, I knew nothing of the explorer in him. In the memoir he is writing, which he shared with me, he tells of leaving home at 17 and hitchhiking across country and then sailing as a merchant marine to Europe, where he hitched more rides into the (for him) unknown. While exploring the United Kingdom, he learned the war in Southeast Asia was intensifying and decided he needed to join it. He sailed back to the United States, and enlisted in the Marine Corps–probably at nearly the same time I was commissioned a second lieutenant, in June 1966.
We would both arrive in Vietnam and join Lima 3/1 in January of 1967. Our company commander, the “Skipper,” was Captain Joseph Gibbs III.
Long since retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, Joe remains, for all intents and purposes, our Skipper. He has followed our fortunes and still writes regularly to us these decades later.
Enough for now. I invite you to board this vehicle, on a journey through parts of Vietnam, with Bud observing the “today,” and remembering 1967—with occasional interjections and illustrations (I hope) from me, including, eventually, a picture of Bud from that time.
A word of warning, this journey is unlikely to accord chronologically with the actual sequence of events we all experienced. In a way that is appropriate. Three-one’s radio call sign was “Circumference.” First platoon’s was “Circumference Lima One.” We did, indeed, turn many circles, as may these stories.
No reservations (and no packing) needed to board this vehicle.
Your writings, about Bud’s writings, have lit yet another spark under the back-burner Great American Novel entitled “Grunt Letters”, which I have been slowly writing for the past few years. Each of us rifle platoon commanders had a “Bud “. Mine died shortly after I took command of 1st platoon H/2/26 in Jan 1967. Miraculously, and in the Marine Corps tradition, another Bud stepped up from the of the 3rd squad.
I resolve, once again, to focus this year on Grunt Letters.
Thanks, Phil. I really look forward to seeing the outcome. On the subject of letters, of course we all are familiar with “Dispatches” by Michael Herr from 1977, which came across to me as a form of letter-writing, though not be a combatant. I, for one, wrote fairly rarely (I hope I do a bit better here–though the record is not promising). I knew others who wrote something almost daily, even if not mailable immediately. One who did write a lot is Col. Andrew Finlayson (USMC-Ret) (an A company TBS 1-67 officer you may know). His collection of correspondence and other documentation (not to mention retirement) has allowed him to published two really good memoirs of his two tours in RVN you might want to check out, if you haven’t already: Killer Kane: Long-Range-Recon Team Leader in Vietnam, 1967-1968 and Rice Paddy Recon: A Marine Officer’s Second Tour in Vietnam, 1968-70.
Andy, I did read Col. Finlayson’s Killer Kane and Herr’s Dispatches. And of course many others including our classmate, Ord Elliott’s The Warrior’s Silence. In Grunt Letters, I’m showing the original letters, in chronological sequence, separated by relevant narrative telling what really was happening (from a platoon commander’s perspective). I use narrative as a conjunction, not only between letters, but also between the then and the now. Much is not said in letters home, and much of what is said requires further clarification. Of course, decades of pause allows one to incorporate context and perspective unavailable at the time of writing. A letter home briefly portrays the recent past and exhibits both hope and anxiety about the unknown future. The narrative, written in the past tense, knows the outcome and understands the effect of time.