New Years Day 1969
PRE-NEW YEARS DAY FIREWORKS
December 27th. I was an fng, having joined D Company earlier that month. We were told we were going to be air-lifted to the field, probably the next day. On December 28th, after a lot of waiting, we were told we wouldn't go out until the next day.
Finally, on the 29th, we loaded onto Hueys and made a combat assault to a small village. I followed suit of the old-timer I was sitting next to on the side of the chopper, legs hanging out, and slid out onto the skids as we were landing. About seven to ten feet from the ground door gunners were hollering, "Jump! Jump!" I was glad for all prior physical training up to this time, while also aware of the impact on legs and back from the jump and landing with about 75 pounds on your back. I heard my first combat gunfire as 2nd platoon made contact. It didn't last long, and then we moved out and dug in for the night.
On December 31st vc fired at a resupply chopper; tensions were high.
One of the sergeants who had been there for a while spoke, supposedly reassuringly, "Hey, fngs, you got nothin' to worry about. It's New Years Eve. There's supposed to be fireworks. Now come on, let's get our asses dug in for the evening. If there is a show you all can watch it from the foxholes."
Later, after dark, we heard things from out front of our position. I asked the sergeant, "Doesn't that sound like people climbing trees?" "Yeah," he replied, sounding worried. "Hope our LPs are okay."
Throughout the night ominous sounds were reported from all around the perimeter. "Don't like this at all," the sergeant said, "Fucking New Years Day truce supposedly. Hope Charlie got the message.媒
NEW YEARS DAY, 1969. SO MUCH FOR TRUCES
Around 8 am [Jackie] Tucker and I were heading out for an OP when all hell broke loose. We ran back to the perimeter and I saw a guy I knew as "Jose" [Isabelo Jimenez Gonzalez] leaning against a tree in a sitting position, dead. He was still holding a C-Ration can he had been opening. There was a look of shock registered on his face, and it looked like he never really knew what had happened.
Guys were coming to where he was so I went toward the foxhole where my squad leader, Sergeant Kenneth York, was. On the way I heard someone, I believe it was Ray Petway, screaming, "Jesus, Jesus, I'm hit. Someone help me, Jesus, Jesus!" He was running toward a medic so I focused again on getting to the foxhole. Sergeant York was wounded in his right hand, and so I asked what I could do. He told me to make sure all our men were in the positions they should be in order to counterattack.
A medic, Doc Hurley, had been hit. I was with Hurley for a few moments with another medic, Doc Gallagher. Leaving to go to check on another position, there was another volley of enemy gunfire; I dove for cover. After the gunfire subsided, Gallagher, with Doc Hurley, called for help, I went back.
Doc Hurley had taken a bullet to the heart and was dead. Could I have done things differently to have kept him alive? Could I have shielded him? Or helped get him to another location? There are no answers after the fact. Doc Gallagher, was cussing a storm of frustration. "Damn it, I treated him a few minutes ago he was fine, just some shrapnel. I come back a few minutes later, he's dead from a bullet in the heart. I can't take this shit anymore. People dying right under you!"
I checked, then redistributed some ammunition to some other positions, and was with a man who took shrapnel in the back and it came out his front pulling some intestines with it. I helped bandage him up. He was in a lot of pain, and asked how Doc Hurley was. I was afraid he could go into shock if he knew Doc was dead, so I told him Doc was fine, that he would see him at the hospital. I figured if he found out there, that there would be access to immediate care if he went into shock.
I went back to the foxhole where my squad leader was and updated him on what all had happened so far. There was more shooting going on, and then we saw out to our front one of our squad members, Paul Ebol, lying in some bushes facing our direction, pale as a sheet; we thought he was dead. Sergeant York said he was going out for him and I replied, "Fuck you, you're already hit; I'm going!"
I low crawled to where Paul was and he moved. He had gotten caught in crossfire early in the attack and just lay there. When we got back in he said he had heard gunfire right behind him so he had feigned dead hoping to trick the shooters. After the firefight was over, before we moved out, Paul and I went out and found several spent AK-47 casings no more than ten feet behind where he had been lying.
In the third platoon we had almost 20 WIA and two KIA. We had about 25 men that morning. I began to think my chances for survival over the next year weren't looking so good.
HOMESICKNESS
For whatever reasons, I had never experienced homesickness in my life. Even when I choked up watching my mother through the airplane window I wasn't feeling homesick, I was overwhelmed by what she must have been thinking. Later the evening of January 1st, fixing a C-Ration meal, I pulled a heat tab out of the box. Stamped on package was 天an Brode's Milling Company, Clinton, Massachusetts.・It was about a mile from home; my father walked to work there every day. I was never homesick as a child, but there reading that heat tab package I felt like I had been sucker punched in the stomach. Welcome to 1969!
Following up on the idea that my chances for survival weren't looking so good over the next year, I pretty much adopted a new motto, "Hell, I ain't gonna live to be 21 anyway.
Basil B. Clark, D Company 1968-69
