history Review

Oral History Association

Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight: Changing Perspectives over Time Author(s): Fred H. Allison Source: The Oral History Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer - Autumn, 2004), pp. 69-83 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oral History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3675376 . Accessed: 13/12/2013 15:52

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight: Changing Perspectives over Time

by Fred H. Allison

Abstract Intense, deadly combat is one of the most trau- matic of human experiences. How veterans remember it and how they retell it, is explored in this article by Marine Corps Oral Historian Fred H. Allison. Allison compares two inter- views of the same Marine talking about the same horrific Vietnam firefight in which five of eight Marines on a recon- naissance patrol were killed. One interview took place in- country two days after the firefight, the other 34 years later. The early interview is an oral snapshot of the world of a combat Marine, while the later interview is a study in how memory reconstructs a combat experience. In comparing the two interviews the reader can begin to understand how veter- ans' memory works to organize and make comprehensible an event that might not have been orderly or comprehensible in the first place.

The military truck ground to a dusty stop. The Marine driver, acting like something was wrong, got out and kicked the tires. Out the back slipped an eight-man Marine Corps Recon- naissance (Recon) patrol and shadow-like disappeared into the brush of the Charlie 2 area, I Corps, South Vietnam. The driver got back in and roared off down the road. The Recon team, code named "Box Score," headed into bad guy country. It was February 1968.

PFC Michael Nation, twenty years old, from Southern Cali- fornia, "in-country" for four months, was rear security on the patrol. He had been on several such patrols; they were almost

Fred H. Allison, Ph.D., a retired Marine officer, is an oral historian with the History and Museums Division of the Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA. He attained his doctorate from Texas Tech University in 2003.

The Oral History Review, Vol. 31, Issue 2, pp. 69-83, ISSN 0094-1223, electronic ISSN 1533-8592. ? 2004 by the Oral History Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for per- mission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

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70 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

I NO

A Marine Corps reconnaissance patrol moves through elephant grass in Viet- nam, 1967. Official U.S. Marine Corps Photo.

routine, almost comfortable. The team lived and worked together, they were professionals and they were close.

The second day into the mission, the Recon patrol, call sign "Box Score," encountered the enemy. The Marines did not know it but they had walked into the midst of two companies, about 200 North Vietnamese (NVA) troops. First, they only heard them-light-hearted voices, laughing, maybe having lunch. Then they spotted six or seven NVA troops coming down a trail opposite from the direction they heard the voices. The lieutenant leading the Box Score patrol, Terry Graves, determined to "snare" one of the trail walkers as a prisoner. The Marines hid them- selves along the trail, waiting for an opportune moment. As they lay concealed, one of the NVA troops discovered Mike Nation. For self-preservation, Nation opened fire; the other Marines did likewise, and wiped-out the small group on the trail. The ambush brought a desultory smattering of small-arms fire from the enemy. One of the Marines received a slight thigh wound. The patrol summoned a medevac helicopter. As the first medevac helicopter hovered and bounced down intense enemy fire erupted, damaged it, and drove it off. In the meantime intensified enemy fire wounded three other patrol members,

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 71

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Reconnaissance Marines in Vietnam, 1969, open fire on the enemy during a reconnaissance patrol. Official U.S. Marine Corps Photo.

two seriously. The Marines were now in the snare and the enemy was not about to let them off easily.

Another helicopter swooped in. Despite heavy enemy fire, it managed to land. The Marines got two seriously wounded Marines on board, then others boarded, including Mike Nation, the U.S. Navy hospital Corpsman, Steve "Doc" Thompson, and Adrian "Trini" Lopez. In the seconds that it was on the ground enemy machine gun fire viciously raked the helicopter. One round hit Lopez as he climbed aboard. Observing the effect the enemy fire had on the helicopter, the lieutenant knew it had to leave imme- diately. Refusing to climb aboard, he instead shouted to the pilot, "Get out, get out!" It immediately took off leaving him and two other Marines still on the ground. Moments later another heli- copter dropped in and picked up these last three Marines. It got just a few feet above the ground, however, when enemy fire ripped into it causing it to crash into a small streambed. Enemy troops swarmed over the site and killed those who survived the crash, except one. Somehow, Danny Slocum, of the Box Score patrol, evaded detection and death. He made it back to friendly positions the following day, wounded and shaken, but alive. He, Mike Nation, and "Doc" Thompson were the only survivors of

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72 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

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A recon Marine in a CH 46 helicopter prepares to land in a combat area in Viet- nam. Official U.S. Marine Corps Photo.

the patrol. The two Marines who had been seriously wounded earlier (Steven E. Emrick and Robert B. Thomson), died of their wounds. The bullet that hit Lopez's thigh found a major artery and his life-blood spilled out on the deck of the helicop- ter that carried the Marines to safety.

The unit's intelligence officer conducted interviews with the three survivors of the Box Score patrol two days after the fire- fight, a routine occurrence. The interviewer eventually donated copies of these interviews to the Marine Corps Oral History Collection.' These interviews, like most of the 10,000 or so

SCaptain George W.T. O'Dell, intelligence officer for 3rd Force Recon, interviewed the three survivors of the Box Score patrol two days after the battle. In 2002, O'Dell forwarded copies of these interviews to the Marine Corps' Oral History office, in

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 73

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UH-34 helicopters (like the one that picked up the Box Score patrol) drop off Marine riflemen in Vietnam in 1966. Official U.S. Marine Corps Photo.

interviews done with the Marines during the Vietnam War, took place chronologically and geographically close to the event that is itself the focus of the interview.

If the same individual is re-interviewed later about the same events, the availability of these contemporaneous interviews provides an opportunity to investigate how combat veterans remember their experiences, both immediately and over the long term. One of the Marines of the Box Score patrol, Mike Nation, was selected to be re-interviewed and thus provides a case study of veterans' memory of combat. Serving as rear security on this patrol, Nation had been on several patrols, but he had seen little combat. His previous patrols had little contact with the enemy, certainly nothing approaching the intense combat experienced on February 16. Junior and inexperienced, he did not know, or really care, why or how decisions were made. As he said, "I was still tail-end Charlie so a lot of what happened as

Washington, D.C. He had kept the originals after the war and then had them con- verted to CD. The recordings were remarkably clear.

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74 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

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A U.S. Marine Corps reconnaissance team returns from a patrol in Vietnam, 1968. Official U.S. Marine Corps Photo.

far as what proceeded to happen I have nothing to do with, no knowledge of except,'let's go.' 2

The 1968 interviews with Nation and the other survivors are eerily compelling. The background sounds on the recording impart the ambiance of the Marine Corps base camp at Dong Ha, South Vietnam. One hears men talking and jesting. There is hammering, an aircraft flies overhead, and an occasional 1960s rock song provides a barely audible backdrop that takes the lis- tener back to the 1960s and Vietnam. Mundane and everyday life, sure, yet, the Marines interviewed were talking about intense, deadly combat. They killed the enemy, saw their bodies blown apart as they fired into them, and they saw their buddies die bloody gruesome deaths. Yet they spoke of those events with an unemotional, mundane candor that imparted an everyday qual- ity to their stories. This characterizes Nation's 1968 interview, in which he is unemotional and business-like. One would not think the battle was that unusual or terrible.

2 Michael R Nation, telephone interview by author, 23 February 2002, tape record- ing and transcript, Marine Corps Oral History Collection, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard, D.C.

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 75

But it was-no doubt the worst any of them had been in. Five of the eight patrol members were killed. All of the patrol members received medals for heroism and valor; indeed, patrol leader Second Lieutenant Terry Graves received the Medal of Honor, posthumously. For the short period that it lasted, the com- bat these men endured was as intense as that at Omaha Beach in 1944 or Gettysburg in 1863 and when one considers the odds, it assumes "Custer's Last Stand" characteristics.

In 2002, Nation was willing to speak of the events of February 16, 1968. He was friendly, cooperative, and open. He remarked that that day's events "probably go through my brain at least once a week." His memory of the events had also been enhanced by recently listening to his 1968 interview; he had attained it through the same Marine Intelligence Officer who had inter- viewed him in 1968, although Nation had had only limited con- tact with fellow Marines from Vietnam. Although privy to his 1968 story, there were remarkable differences between the two interviews that do indeed give us insight into memory and how it is shaped over time. The comparison also provides a window into the world of the combat soldier/Marine.

One of the most apparent differences is that in the 2002 interview there is cohesion to his account that did not exist in the original interview. In the 1968 interview, Nation's descrip- tion of events is disjointed, narrow and excruciatingly detailed, a reflection of the confusion and fog that surrounded the fire- fight. In the 2002 interview however, he has bound up his account into an understandable story, with a beginning, middle, and end.

His personal and narrow view of the battle is evident in this excerpt from the 1968 interview: "One round I saw landed about I guess maybe three feet away from the Doc. Me and him had been trying to get Slocum up on his feet. At first he didn't want anyone to help him, because he said he was ok to do it, you know, he didn't need any help. But, apparently he said, I remember him saying his knee, no his leg, didn't want to bend, you know, he said it was too tight. I guess it hurt too much to bend it to get up. So we started helping him up and the round came in and hit right close to the Doc and we let Slocum down again."

Nation does not even address this episode in the later

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76 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

interview. At the time however, it was apparently significant. This finely detailed account is replaced with testimony that paints a clearer and broader picture. Here is how he describes helping the wounded in 2002: "So we're dragging them, giving them artificial respiration, trying to stay down, and still get- ting fired on. We're getting fired on all the time, continuously. And you move, they fire at you, you move, they fire at you, we're dragging and dragging and dragging these guys, getting them going."

Another important distinction between the two interviews is that Nation adds much more color and description to the later interview. Unlike in the earlier interview, events now seem to take on significance and drama. He is not only telling a story, but he makes it interesting to the listener, in effect painting a word picture.

Compare his account of the events surrounding Lopez's wounding. In 1968 he describes it in a mundane fashion: "That's when I noticed that Lopez got hit in the leg but when I first got in the chopper we got hit pretty hard from the side, there. The whole side of the chopper seemed to be coming in at us. Some of the stuff hit me in the face, but I didn't think I got hit. So, I turned around and I looked and saw Lopez's leg was bleeding. So the gunner told me that behind me was a first aid pack for the chopper. Well, I turned around and I got that and I handed it to the gunner and he opened it up. And then I asked for the Doc to give me his K-Bar [a Marine combat knife] because I had lost mine somewhere, I didn't know where it was. I think I had used it first when Emrick got hit, cutting off his shirt, I'm not sure. The Doc gave me his K-Bar and I cut his pants leg open and started pressing on this thing with a bandage on his wound. It was bleeding real bad, it was all over the bottom of the chopper and everything."

The passage contains significant detail but again, a narrow focus. Nation seems at least as concerned about his Marine Corps-issue fighting knife as he is of Lopez's wound. This is per- haps explainable in that his combat training had taught him that a Marine keeps up with his gear, especially a weapon. In combat a knife was an essential tool of his trade.

Compare Nation's 2002 description of the same events: "Lopez starts to get in and I'm turning around and he's yelling at

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 77

me, he says, 'Dang it man, I'm hit!' And I look down, his leg, his inside thigh, he'd been hit in the artery and blood's just gushing. So, I dropped Emrick and grabbed Lopez and put a tourniquet, grabbed a tourniquet from somewhere, one of us still had one on us and I'm pushing on that leg, on that wound, trying to get that blood to stop and its just gushing like a sieve. The gunner is firing helping pull people in. Honeycutt [James Earl] starts to get on, and the shit hit the fan, this chopper starts taking rounds like you wouldn't believe . . . ding, ta ding, ta ding." Here, Nation arranges the story to focus on what is most important: Lopez and his wound, not the knife. There is more drama, color, and expression, even sound effects.

This characteristic of the later interview is most striking in that part of the interview in which Nation describes how he ini- tiated the ambush. In the 1968 interview Nation again sees very little of significance in this part of the fight, although five close buddies died in the following struggle: "They were on the trail, on this ridgeline [which] apparently ran over on this ridgeline where I had seen them, because they came on down the trail. Well, one guy got about 15 or 20 feet away from me and he kinda looked over my way a little bit and there was another one that just seemed to kinda pop right out of the ground. Appar- ently from my position I didn't see him coming up or walking up there. But he stood up high, but the other one I think had possibly seen me, so I had to open fire there." Then with incred- ible understatement, Nation notes why he had to fire at them: "They were getting a little too close for comfort."

Note the difference in his 2002 interview: "We peeled off, everybody peeled off getting the hasty ambush set up, and when it came my turn and I guess it was either Doc Thompson or Lopez, I don't know which it was that was with me at the very tail end, by the time we got down to the far end where we peeled off at, there was no place to peel off to. But there was a crater, a bomb crater. Well we went into a bomb crater. We were as use- less as can be there because you couldn't see, you couldn't hear, you're down inside this thing, you move up a bit, you slide back down, you move up a bit, you slide back down. The thing is eight, ten feet deep, it had been a pretty hefty bomb that hit that thing. So assumingly these NVA are continuing down the road, well, they did, down this trail, and all I could do was look

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78 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

up and see slope and sky. And all of the sudden one of them was standing right there, right above me on the edge of the cra- ter and it looked like he was going to try to take a leak on me [laughs]. So, I guess he figured that was a pretty safe place to pee at, right inside of a bomb crater. Well, that was the last place he ever saw. And I set off the ambush I guess, I shot him straight with the M-14, and took the top of his head off, along with the hat he was wearing, his bush hat, it flew forty, fifty feet in the air."

In the later interview we have it all, color, drama, gore, even humor. And something else is added: justification. Nation justi- fies shooting the enemy soldier in the 2002 interview. Instead of he was a "little too close for comfort," he explains more fully: "It was a situation that you couldn't ... hopefully we could have let them get by, you know, that would have been the best bet. But when the guy is standing there looking at me there is no choice, there is no concealment, I'm in the bottom of this bomb crater and had no choice but to blow him away."

Are we to assume that Nation has exaggerated, fabricated, or overly dramatized events in his later testimony? Possibly, but not necessarily; after all, most of the basics facts jibe with the original. Could those things that are added have been part of the actual event and just not expressed in the original? Abso- lutely, and this tells us much about the combat experience and how combat veterans recall it and tell it to outsiders.

In the early interview, Nation's business-like, officious, and succinct description is explainable in that although it was the most intense combat Nation had experienced, such an event was not beyond the realm of possibility for a combat Marine in Vietnam in 1968. It fit the environment, what he had been trained to expect and possibly heard about from more experienced vet- erans. He was thus mentally, psychologically, and physically prepared for such an event.

This perhaps explains why in describing boarding the heli- copter that Nation dwells on the loss of his knife. This was not supposed to happen. What if he would have needed it later, for combat, the reason he was there and why he had a knife in the first place? Therefore in the first interview, done by a Marine officer from his unit and thus a fellow member of the combat environment, he stuck to the pertinent details. There was no

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 79

need to make the event comprehensible to the interviewer, because the interviewer himself already understood the culture of Vietnam combat. Just as one experiencing the Depression has no need to relate the bleakness of life to someone who is also experiencing that bleakness.

In the later interview however, Nation has to interpret the events for me since we were not in the Vietnam combat culture. But he has had to make the events understandable to himself too in order to provide an interpretation of them to an outsider. In his mind over the years, he has made the events of that day understandable by placing them in context and creating a logi- cal story of them, something that did not yet exist when the original interview occurred. All he could state at that time was what he saw from his personal, narrow frame of reference.

This characteristic of recounting life events is what Char- lotte Linde describes in her book Life Stories, and defines as the "creation of coherence." Linde writes that "life stories involve large-scale systems of social understandings and of knowledge that are grounded in a long history of practice; indeed, these stories rely on presuppositions about what can be taken as expected, what the norms are, and what common or special belief systems are necessary to establish coherence."3 Although this is not Nation's life story, the same principle applies.

Belief systems have associated behaviors, rituals, morals, and actions that are considered appropriate and good. Linde writes that "life stories express our sense of self .., .we use these stories to claim or negotiate group membership and to demonstrate that we are worthy members of these groups."4 In both interviews Nation reflects his loyalty to his fellow recon Marines. These relationships, forged in combat, are popularly described as the "band of brothers." The highest attribute in this relationship is taking care of one's buddies, to sustain the group, the small unit; to create and nourish those bonds that create this band of brothers. This is required for success against the enemy, per- sonal survival, and possibly mental stability. Nation reveals the strong bond between himself and his fellow Marines. This is

3 Charlotte Linde, Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1993), 219. 4 Ibid.

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the underlying theme in both interviews. There is more focus on his fellow Marines, supporting, affirming, and caring for them, than on dealing with the enemy, a perfectly natural state for combat Marines.

Nation allots considerable time in each interview to describ- ing how the wounded were cared for. In the 1968 interview, Nation defends the reputations of his fellow Marines. He assures the interviewer that everyone was doing their job, and doing it well. "Honeycutt was to my left, he was shooting all the time. He was doing a real good job out there, all of them were." Describing the wounded Slocum's action he asserts, "We then got up there and formed a 360 [an all-around defensive posi- tion], and all the time Danny Slocum, he was real good, and he held tight, no problems at all. He still had complete control, you know, he was staying calm." In another passage: "Meanwhile, Thompson with his 79 [an M-79 grenade launcher] was doing real good. He came up behind me and he wanted to see the area was where the VC were at I was shooting. So I put tracers and he would fire the 79 right where the tracers were. It was perfect, he never missed."

The only indication that anything was awry was Nation's comment: "Meanwhile Lopez had been right next to Emrick, and Lopez was pretty shook up, I guess we all were." This final phrase is in defense of Lopez, it assures us that Lopez although having troubles, was still performing as well as any of them. He assures us that, even in dying, they did so as appropriate for combat Marines: "And I remember Emrick saying get the radio off. That's what he was talking about. He wasn't worried about himself because he kept saying get the radio off of him, best we could. Me and Lopez finally got the radio off by snapping it off the bottom of the pack and everything. Then I flipped him over and he said, 'Oh my God,' you know. That's the last thing he said."

Although the band-of-brothers attribute is one characteris- tic that spans both belief systems, it is expressed differently in the later interview. He translates this loyalty so that it makes sense in a larger context; again the whole story is given to include value judgments, explanations, and drama. In the later interview, out of Vietnam and the combat culture, he knows now indeed how horrible the experience was and explains why they

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 81

were not more afraid. In 2002 he says, "None of us were really scared, we were pretty damned concerned. This was not a good spot to be in, but you know at this point, you got to do what you got to do, and there ain't no sense in sitting here crying about it, let's fire and let's do what we can and let's get the hell out of this situation if we can, with whatever we can." Nation equates combat with an act of nature, there is no blame attached and to give up would be worse than continuing. He attests, "You know, its funny as hell to get stuck in a situation like that, I mean it had never happened to any of us, obviously, so what the shit do you do? You got to keep going at it." Such explana- tions are not in the original because, again, these attitudes were already understood.

Also, in the later interview, Nation reveals the moral sup- port laced with humor that enhanced the band-of-brothers bond and thus enabled them to cope: "But all through this time you know we tried to keep ourselves joking and this and that. Some- body would say something and everybody would crack up [laughing] all the sudden, so we had a good attitude, or the best you could with the situation." He provides an example of their joking around: "I had a picture one of my buddies had sent me of LBJ and he was laughing, he was getting on an airplane, just a big smile on his face, laughing, and on the bottom it said, 'Who do you think he's laughing at?' This buddy of mine in the states was a draft dodger, had sent it to me. So I passed that over to the lieutenant and he cracked up over that one."

In conclusion these two interviews with Mike Nation indi- cate that he has taken his narrow, fragmented and personal view of a combat experience and made it into a comprehensive and understandable account of what not only happened to him but also the entire Box Score patrol. He has added context and jus- tification to it to create a well-rounded story of much greater significance than it had when initially interviewed, and which did not exist in his mind two days after the battle.

Early, immediate accounts of combat however give us an audio window to view combat as the participants saw it. The inter- viewee is still part of it, and the interview reflects it, in detailed but disjointed testimonies that expose a narrow frame of refer- ence. Interviews reveal what the individual saw from his per- spective and depict the confusion associated with combat. Only

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later, when a veteran considers and rehashes his experiences out of the combat/military environment, does he begin to eval- uate the events, attach significance to them, and paint a word picture that an outsider may understand. This could become especially significant when the event is of considerable historical value, where information from outside sources, other participants, books, TV, or movies is available and could be used to enhance an individual's memory to move beyond what he witnessed.

This does not seem to be the case in Nation's interviews. The basic facts and sequence of the later interview matches that of the first. This was aided no doubt by his having listened to his 1968 interview. The distinct difference remains in how he has interpreted the basic information over the years. There is an elab- oration, explanation, and cohesion to make it an understand- able and interesting, if not dramatic, story.

This case study of before-and-after interviews with Mike Nation suggests that contemporary combat interviews, done within hours of the event, although disjointed and narrowly detailed, are an accurate portrayal of what an individual expe- rienced in combat. They give the most immediate view of the event before the memory has worked to organize and inter- pret the event that initially might not have been orderly or understandable.

Later interviews with veterans are valuable, certainly, and perhaps more understandable to those who are not ensconced in the context of the event. The weakness of later interviews is that one's memory naturally works to either forget the horrific experience or make sense of it. Making sense of it means pro- viding explanations, context, drama, value, significance, and jus- tification. All of these could be enhanced by information gained by other means other than personal experience, thus possibly weakening the value of the interview as a primary source. An analogy would be comparing a photograph of an event with a painting done later of the same event. They both portray the event; one is stark, and bland, while the latter is appealing to the eye, evocative, and interpretative. When we have both, inter- views done immediately after the event and one done later, we have the best of both worlds, the raw, stark facts enhanced by explanations, context, and interpretation. Unfortunately these opportunities are few and far between.

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Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight 83

The matter-of-fact tone of Nation's 1968 interview indicates also that he was ensconced in a belief system that characterized Marine combat units in Vietnam. This belief system operated in a culture where brutal combat was a likelihood and mutual sup- port and belief in one's associates was a fundamental element of faith to endure in this culture. Nation's interviews reveal the overriding value combat soldiers and Marines place on their fellows.

This loyalty lasts a lifetime. At the conclusion of his 2002 interview Nation remarked, "I just wish the hell they were still alive."

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