FSB RUSSELL

25 FEB 1969

It was a strange feeling to be in Nam.  I was a new guy.  There were three of us who had just joined up with the 3rd Platoon, Echo 2/4, 3rd Marine Division.  We didn’t know anything standing on the tarmac at Vandegriff, except that we were going into a helicopter with a bunch of other Marines… but they were different than us.  We were all about the same age, but they looked older, dirtier, more experienced.  They were more experienced about something called combat and so I think they were more experienced about life.

That Helicopter, along with several others, took us to this relatively small hill with some 105 Howitzers on it.  Somebody told me the name of the hill was Fire Support Base Russell, and we were going to man the lines for a few weeks.  “OK,” I thought.  “Manning the lines can’t be too hard, whatever that meant.”  Somebody else said, “There’s Gooks all around this area”.  Again I thought, “Gooks.”  And with a passing thought, I wondered just what it would be like to see one.

I think a few days passed and we were situated and getting comfortable with the area of the hill that was our squad’s responsibility.  I think it was the east finger.  The squad leader, his name was Beam, came to us one day and said the whole platoon was going on a seven day patrol.  We loaded up with C-Rats, ammo and water.  This was my first long patrol and, for the most part, pretty uneventful except for finding some buried gooks whose graves we dug up to make sure there were bodies there.

We got back into LZ Russell’s perimeter after the patrol and looked forward to relaxing a little. We were supposed to have no LP, no night ambushes, just your regular hole watch… and best of all, no humping!  But then we found out that 2nd Platoon got called out to do a security for someone, so we had to come up with an LP.  Beam came to his squad of about twelve and picked four guys to go.  I felt a bit of relief because I wasn’t one of them.  Then this guy  named Larry spoke up and said, “Hey man, why don’t you send Gardner instead of me.  He’s a new guy and needs to learn how to do the LP thing.  Besides, I’m too tired to go.”  He laughed a little.  So, Beam looked at him, then he looked at me and said, “Gardner, getch yer gear.  You’re goin’ on LP too.”

So, the four of us, Mack, the one experienced Marine, myself and then there was Gartee and Buchard, all went humping back out into the jungle just about 50 meters outside Russell’s single strand of razor wire.  We weren’t too happy about it, but we were Marines and we had orders.  Mack was teaching us how to set up the LP.  He had me and Gartee set up a trip flare on the trail just about 15, or 20 meters from where we set up.  He then designated one to watch the trip flare and if it went off to throw a grenade.  He asked us who wanted to do that and I mentioned that I had played quarterback on the football team in high school.  Mack said, “OK then, you’ll throw the grenade.  Just don’t hit any trees, or it’ll come back on us.” 

“That’s OK,” I said, “no problem.”  I saw all the trees around our location and I failed to mention to Mack and the others that it was the 3rd string on the freshman team that I played quarterback.

We were taking turns on watch.  I forgot whose watch it was, but at about 3:00 a.m. (and I have read reports that say it was more like 3:50 a.m.) mortar rounds started hitting inside the perimeter.  Mack was wide-awake and getting us alert, making sure we had our weapons and grenades ready.  Man, it was the most frightening and most powerful thing I’d ever heard in my life.  All over the hill there was the, “KA-WHOMP! KA_WHOMP!” of the mortars exploding.  We all sat tight, straining to listen to detect any movement of ground troops.  I moved up to the root end of the fallen tree and watched the spot where we’d set the trip flare.  We couldn’t hear anything except the explosions and more explosions.  Then the flare went off!  I pulled the pin, stretched my arm back to throw it, then heard a voice say what I thought was, “Don’t throw the grenade.”  I whispered back “Don’t throw the grenade?!”  I couldn’t believe it!  Then the voice said, “NO! THROW the grenade!”  Shaking my head, I threw the grenade.  It hit a tree.  But it deflected perfectly into the area where the gooks were.  I think the momentary delay caused by our brief conversation gave the gooks a moment to think they were OK and they started coming toward us.  This made the grenade even more effective.

We heard movement as if they were trying to circle around us.  Mack directed us to fire.  We stayed low and fought them off, until someone on the other side decided we weren’t worth the cost.  They broke off and moved away.  I don’t know who was on the radio, but it was probably Mack, most of the time.  He moved our position just a little bit, because by now there was someone firing a 50 caliber machine gun in our direction.  It was ripping through the trees all around us.  All we could do was hug the ground.  Then the night around us lit up with explosions from artillery that was called in for support.  The ground shook with the power and the night sky became brilliant with light from the exploding rounds.  One after another hitting around us.  The noise was deafening.  The battle was raging.  The whole experience was both exhilarating and scary as hell at the same time.  Who knew if we would live, or die?  And who knew what the hill would look like when day came?

Sometime just about daylight everything got quiet.  Everything was still, except one Marine’s voice that cut through the air and cut through my heart.  He was on what I think was the south side of the hill and he was crying.  “Oh, God help us!  Please help us!  Oh, God please help us!  Please, somebody help us!’  He cried like what seemed ages.  This one thing I know, the Marines who survived the onslaught had lived through a lifetime in one night.

When we finally got permission to come back to the perimeter, the first thing I saw was a gook laying face up on the ground, his skull neatly quartered with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.  Then I looked around.  The Marines who were left were as stone faced and somber as human beings could look.  Mack went up on the top of the hill and had a few words with Beam before they medivac-ed him.  Someone said the two other LP’s that were in place that night were wiped out.  One of the Corpsmen who watched as we moved into the perimeter said he thought we were ghosts, because they expected us to be dead.  Buchard and I were told to go dig Larry out of the bunker and carry his body up to the LZ  I forget who told us.  We pulled off sandbags from the top and lowered ourselves in.

I was nineteen and never had to touch a dead body before.   Now I was kneeling at the head, Buchard at the feet, of the guy who said he was too tired to go on the LP and that Gardner should go in his place.  We laid a poncho on the ground next to the body.  We looked at each other.  Buchard said, “I don’t want to touch him, do you?”  I replied, “No, but we’ve gotta get him outta here.”  So we pulled on his clothes and dragged the body onto the rubber casket.  He was so heavy as we pulled him out through the top, where we’d moved the sandbags.  And as we carried our comrade up the hill to the LZ, I thought I saw Death sitting on top of him, laughing at us as we held our tears inside our hearts.  We were Marines.

After Buchard and I carried up our buddy, I just went from bunker to bunker helping dig out dead marines. I can recall helping to carry up 5 or 6 of them, and then I got recruited to help this guy, I think he was a warrant officer, pick up and stabilize a bunch of the mortar rounds mostly 81's, that had been in the ammo dump and got blown out of the dump site. We worked together for about an hour maybe two hours....who knows now? We were getting sniped at too during that morning cleanup. I recall a few guys stepping on dud rounds and explosions going off, and some of them lost a foot. I think our squad lost 4 or 5 that night.

It was pretty mixed up for next several nights. I'd be in one hole one night and then have to move to another hole the next night. The gooks kept trying to penetrate our perimeter for the next few nights, and I was told that they were trying to get some of their dead back.

I also recall two cargo nets with gook bodies stacked up about 5 or 6 feet high, but I could be wrong. I've had another guy tell me there was only one net. Some other Marine told me of his experience of helping to throw several gook bodies off the side of the hill into the trash dump. At any rate I am most certain that there were far more NVA killed than the 25 that's in the report.

In the aftermath, as we who were on the LP view our individual actions and our efforts as a unit, we realize we stopped the suicidal NVA sappers from completely circling the hill.  We believe in doing this that our efforts saved some Marine lives.  We could’ve sat tight and hid in the jungle darkness and we would never have been spotted.  But, that would not be the way of Marines.  We were and still are proud to have been a part of the brave men who beat back a well trained, disciplined and superior numbered NVA force to uphold the tradition and honor that remains ingrained in us to this day.