• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 664 0

a formation in an outdoor ceremony honoring their dead. American and Marine Corps flags, a forest of battle streamers hanging from the standard, flapped beside a wooden platform. There was a row of M16 rifles in front of the platform, bayonets in the dirt. Twenty-two rifles, twenty-two helmets, twenty-two pairs of jungle boots. Sergeant Major Awkerman—whose father had served with the Marine Corps in WWI, and who himself had landed at Gaudalcanal, Saipan, and Okinawa—read the honor roll.

LtCol John A. Dowd (CO, 1/7)

Cpl John R. Constien (B/1/7)

HM3 Alan W. Brashears, USN (H&S/1/7)

LCpl Joseph G. Sands (B/1/7)

LCpl D. P. Quinlan (B/1/7)

LCpl Fred J. Delarenzo (D/1/7)

LCpl Charles J. Garity (C/1/7)

LCpl Harvey Peay (C/1/7)

LCpl James Cashman (D/1/7)

PFC James R. Rice (A/1/7)

PFC Charles A. Hood (B/1/7)

PFC Benjamin W. Stone (B/1/7)

PFC Joseph Colorio (D/1/7)

PFC Gerald Rios (D/1/7)

PFC Tilmen Bartholomew (D/1/7)

PFC James Braham (D/1/7)

PFC Phillip Guzman (B/1/7)

PFC Stephen Kelly (B/1/7)

PFC Ronald Ray (B/1/7)

PFC G. D. Tate (B/1/7)

PFC W. R. Wilson (B/1/7)

PFC Carlos Baldizon (A/1/7)

The next day, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines got what everyone who’d survived what they’d seen deserved: a rest. One company at a time, the battalion was rotated through Stack Arms, an in-country R and R center within the compound of the 3d Amtrac Battalion on China Beach north of Da Nang. Stack Arms had been opened in June exclusively for the infantry, a labor of love by General Simpson. His motivations were expressed on the wooden sign that hung above the compound gate: “… in recognition and appreciation of the tremendous load these Marines are carrying for Corps and country.”

D Company was the first to Stack Arms and Lance Corporal Wells went with them. They filed in, handed over their weapons, ammunition, gear, and faded jungle fatigues, and getting undershirts and tiger-stripe shorts. Then a gunnery sergeant herded them to an outdoor theater and mounted the stage. The gunny pointed to fifty-five-gallon drums filled with ice and beer and shouted, “Okay, everybody go get a beer!” Wells was swept forward in the pandemonium; then the men settled back onto the wooden benches. The gunny surveyed them tight-lipped. “What’s wrong with you, you’re not really Marines! You only have one beer! I want to see a beer in each hand!” The grunts exploded, shouting, spraying beer—laughing.

Stack Arms lasted three days, three whole days without any duties or lifer harassment. The grunts loved it. They watched movies all night. They showered and shaved in hot water. They played football on the beach. They telephoned home via a communications unit. Some got drunk. Some got stoned. They slept on cots. They ate steak, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers, drank can after can of beer the first day and opted for soda the next two days. Most overdid it, but it smoothed out the wrinkles. Wells ate so much the first day, he barely ate afterwards. Bradley got drunk for the first time and his buddies dragged him to bed. He woke up, put his trousers on backwards, and ran into the ocean. He managed to wash up before the lifeguards had to dive in. Zotter watched a buddy careen drunkenly towards a general who was shaking hands and talking with the grunts. The kid stumbled and crashed at his feet. He looked up, “Goddamn, I never got to shake hands with a fucking general before!”

The officer reached down. “Well here’s your chance, son.”

They both laughed, everyone loved it, and the next morning, Zotter found his section leader, Staff Sergeant Gordon, passed out in the barbed wire.

The 1st Battalion, 7th Marines came out of the Arizona on 14 August and rotated its companies through Stack Arms from the 18th to the 25th; on the 20th, Delta Company led the incremental move south to LZ Baldy for another combat operation.

The Americal Division was in trouble.

The command had been trying to preempt this trouble since 20 July, the day Operation Durham Peak began. Three battalions (2/1, 2/5, and 3/5) had been sent into the Que Sons south of the An Hoa Combat Base