WAYNE ROBSON’S WAR
Royal New Zealand Artillery Regiment, Gunner and Radioman, 161 Battery, attached to the US 173rd Infantry Brigade and the 1st and 6th Battalions of the Royal Australian Regiments, Bien Hoa and Nui Dat, 1965 – 66
I grew up in Hawera, New Zealand, a small town of 10,000 people back then, in the Taranaki Region on the North Island. This is fairly flat cattle and dairy country and we make a lot of cheese there. New Zealand’s population was only 2.6 million when the Vietnam War started, about 4.8 million today, so our military is structured very differently from the United States. It is a small, volunteer force, highly trained and organized into Infantry, Artillery, Engineer, Medical and other units. A draft was politically out of the question, and our entire armed forces only totaled 3,900 men back then. Of those numbers, 187 men were wounded and 37 killed in action in Vietnam.
We all went in the Army as very young cadets and advanced up through the ranks on our own. In my case, I attended a local technical high school until I was 16, and then quit and joined the New Zealand Army Regular Force Cadet School. It was a bit like military college, and I graduated into the Regular Force in January 1961 at 18 years of age.
All New Zealand recruits went to basic training at the Waiouru Military camp, a rugged piece of ground in the center of the North Island. I graduated and went on into the more specialized training in the Royal New Zealand Artillery Regiment in late 1962. I later passed the selection course for training in the New Zealand SAS, modeled after the British commandos, from 1964-1965 before going to Vietnam. We had a long-standing mutual support treaty with the United States, and New Zealand had routinely cooperated with the Australians and British, in some cases with joint units, going back to World War I and World War II.
The US requested that both New Zealand and Australia provide troops for a multinational force in Vietnam. We had a very strong antiwar movement in New Zealand, sending combat troops was very controversial, budgets were tight, and our military resources were already stretched very thin with our commitments in Malaya. However, the government felt that Cold War concerns and its treaty obligations to the US were very important. In May 1965, our Prime Minister announced we were sending medical units, engineers, and an artillery unit, the “161 Battery,” as it was called, of the Royal New Zealand Artillery Regiment, to help in the war effort. This consisted of nine officers and 101 enlisted men, which may not seem like very much, but it was a very big deal for our country. For the first nine months in-country, we were under the command of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade at Bien Hoa near Saigon. When the 1st Australian task force was established at Nui Dat in Phouc Tuy province around Vung Tau southeast of Saigon near the coast, we were transferred and became part of that.
Importantly, this was the first war in which New Zealand troops were not fighting as part of a British command or as part of a Commonwealth contingent. Our national commitment to the Vietnam War came in very small steps, beginning with advisors in 1962 and then a small civilian medical detachment in 1963. I went over as the Forward Observer radio operator with the original 161 Battery. In the beginning, we were armed with four lightweight Italian L-5 pack howitzers. They were very mobile, could be broken down and carried by men on foot in packs, but they weren’t very durable and proved unsatisfactory for our mission. One nice thing about them was that they could be put in the back of an APC and moved around with us, which came as a surprise to the VC when they didn’t know artillery was around. The number of guns in the battery was later increased to six, and the Italian guns were soon replaced with the more rugged American M2A2 105mm howitzers.
Infantry units were added in May 1967, when New Zealand sent Victor 2, a 182-strong infantry company from the 1st Battalion of the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment. In December, it was joined by “Whiskey 2 Company.” These units were superbly trained in counterinsurgency warfare and well-experienced in jungle fighting from their years in Borneo and Malaysia. The 4th Troop from the New Zealand Special Air Service, consisting of one officer and 25 enlisted arrived the following year. They were placed under the 1st Australian Task Force’s command, as part of the Royal Australian Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, and were primarily deployed on infantry operations in Phuoc Tuy province. The infantry companies were from the Regiment in Malaya were rotated in and out of Vietnam several times, usually after 12-month tours of duty. Eventually, the infantry companies were withdrawn without replacement in November 1970 and in December 1971. We also had as many as 20 Air Force personnel attached to various American units, a small contingent of Navy personnel assigned to the USS Kitty Hawk and a destroyer, some Armored personnel assigned to the US 4th Cavalry and several other units, and Signal Corps personnel in-country. While most of these were attached to American units, they also rotated in and out of Thai and South Korean units.
The American 173rd Airborne Brigade we were attached to was light infantry, and we provided them with artillery support, along with one of their own batteries. When we arrived, it was summer. There was nothing there, just scrub brush and dead grass, and we lived in tents on dry, bare dirt. We adapted quickly to working with and being co-located with the Americans and relied on them for ammunition and food. One thing that was very good was the US C-rations we were given. They consisted of individual meals, and even contained packs of cigarettes! Australian field rations were intended to last for an entire day and were very spartan, primarily rice. On the other hand ours were much more lightweight, so that we could carry a week’s worth in our packs when we went to the field. We did not expect to be resupplied. As a result, we were very disciplined with water, ammunition, and food. That wasn’t the way the American troops operated. With their fleets of helicopters and control of the sky, they relied on frequent resupply of those items, and they even received the occasional hot meal when they were in the bush.
My first nine months in-country I worked on a gun crew as an artillery crewman. We were assigned to the south sector of the perimeter. The 173rd was a very active unit and always had companies and battalions out on sweeps, patrolling. We fired our guns every day and fired a lot of “Harassing and Interdictory,” or H&I rounds, at night to places where it was suspected that the enemy was located or could be concentrating or traveling. It kept them on edge. It also meant that we never got a full night’s sleep. We would be woken several times in the night for a fire mission.
As the war expanded and more troops were brought in, the joint Australian and New Zealand command, ANZAC, was given operational control of Phouc Tuy Province southeast of Saigon on the coast as its own area of operations. In June 1966, we moved there, to Nui Dat, attached to the 6th Royal Australian Regiment. Similar to Bien Hoa, there was nothing at Nui Dat when we arrived. Phouc Tuy Province had been a major VC stronghold for years, and we set up camp in the middle of “their turf.” Eventually, we made our compound comfortable as the regiment continued to add facilities. The worst part about that location, however, was mosquitoes. They were so bad that we had to wear long-sleeved shirts.
After a few months there, the big highlight was to be given a three-day in-country R&C to the Australian recreation center at Vung Tau. I was also entitled to one trip out of the country on leave (R&R) every six months. I got one trip to Bangkok and two to Hong Kong.
When I arrived in Nui Dat, there was a sudden need for radio operators from the artillery battery to go out with the Australian infantry during their operations to act as FAC’s or Forward Artillery Controllers to call in fire missions to our battery. Someone looked through all the personnel files in our unit and discovered that I was a qualified FAC radio operator in addition to a trained gunner, and that was all it took to end my pleasant existence in camp with the battery. Instead, one officer and two radio operators were assigned to each infantry company. So, while the facilities at the base steadily improved, I had little occasion to enjoy them because I was always out on patrol with the infantry. Every New Zealand soldier regardless of branch had been trained to be an infantryman in our Basic Training course, so I had no problem adapting to the disciplined patrol techniques used by the Australian infantry companies.
When we were in the field, each man was assigned a plastic sheet, which was like a shelter half. You could use it to make an individual lean-to or put two pieces together and make a small tent. However, we only put them up if it was going to rain. Most nights we slept on the ground in the open. Typically, I would go out on patrol for two or three nights, sometimes for a week. The radio I carried was the standard American field backpack model, the AN PRC-25. I also carried what was then the standard New Zealand infantry rifle, the Belgian 7.62 FN. It had a lot of stopping power, but it was heavy, like the American M-14. The ammunition was very heavy too, so we carried less of it than you would be able to carry with, say, the M-16.
I was assigned to various companies of the Australian Infantry Regiment as a radioman. In early August I was working with B Company. Our compound had been mortared the night before, and the company was sent out as a quick reaction force to locate the enemy. Unfortunately, we were understrength and had no rations with us. We located the enemy’s tracks and followed them toward the Long Tan rubber plantation, until it was decided by higher-ups that D Company would be sent out to relieve us and continue the hunt, while we pulled back and were resupplied.
D Company had around 120 men, and we had far fewer than that. It did not appear that the VC were expecting a major battle, and neither were we, when on August 18, 1966, D Company ran into a strong enemy force five kilometers east of Nui Dat, and all hell broke loose. It turned out that the enemy was a combined NVA and Viet Cong force of regimental size, comprised of the VC 275th Regiment, the D445 Mobile Battalion, and a number of other units, estimated to be 1500-2000 men, which had been massing for a major attack on Nui Dat itself. If our much smaller B Company had run into the ambush, the outcome would have been quite different, and I would not be here typing this story. But that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
D Company was in serious trouble. Headquarters immediately turned B Company around, sent in APCs, armored personnel carriers, armed with their heavy .50-caliber machine guns, and unleashed the guns of our 161 Battery plus three Australian batteries back at Nui Dat. The task was made more difficult by a heavy rainstorm, which began early in the two-day engagement. During the ensuing battle, D Company held off repeated NVA and VC attacks. Our Forward Observer parties from the 161 Battery ended up pinned down in the rubber plantation with the infantry, where we were able to direct devastating artillery fire on the enemy and break up their repeated attacks.
Back at Nui Dat, the Battery was still using the lightweight Italian pack howitzers. By that time we had six guns, however, and that night they fired over 3500 rounds, a phenomenal amount and rate. Normally, you would expect a howitzer to overheat and its barrel to warp with that amount of firing, but we were doing it in a rainstorm, which did help cool down the barrels. The firing was so intense that trucks full of artillery shells were arriving nonstop from the ammunition dump and port at Vung Tao. Even the cooks and clerks from headquarters were called out to uncrate shells and feed them to the gun crews. There is no good place to be when an artillery round goes off near you, but the trees in the rubber plantation were a very bad place to hide for the enemy. In addition to the flying steel, the air was full of flying wood and splinters, adding to the carnage. Unfortunately, eighteen Australian soldiers were also killed in the battle, but the nonstop artillery fire from 161 Battery was key in breaking up the attacks and handing the VC a major defeat.
The Italian pack howitzers weren’t meant to sustain the rate of firing they did during that battle. Shortly after I rotated out at the end of the year, they were replaced with the heavier, more rugged American 105s. Later, the battery also played important roles during the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Coral Balmoral in 1968. More than 750 men served with the Battery until it was finally withdrawn from Vietnam after providing virtually continuous fire support for six years to American, Australian, and New Zealand infantry units. The infantry companies and tri-service medical teams were withdrawn in November and December 1970, and the SAS Troop and the 161 Battery in February 1971. We have the distinction of being awarded a United States Meritorious Unit commendation while serving under the American 173rd Airborne brigade.
Every Veteran has some memories of their time on operations – a particular firefight, a near miss, or maybe a comrade killed in action. Victor 3 Company Veteran Bruce Goodall put it best. “The trouble with contact with the enemy is that the first time it is great. The second one is not so bad. By the third one, you know what’s going to happen. And the fourth time, you’re starting to shit yourself. You start getting very wary, particularly when you are ‘short,’ and the time is coming to go home.”
The war in Vietnam was fought at close range in jungle terrain negotiated inch by inch. The ever-shifting “front line” and an elusive enemy made for tentative soldiering and little downtime on operations. While the war was ultimately lost by the Allied coalition, the objective to seize the initiative in the Phuoc Tuy province was largely achieved, with provincial enemy forces rendered largely ineffective without outside support.
Antiwar protests were loud and very pronounced in New Zealand from the very beginning of our commitment. After the last troops were withdrawn, Veterans faced continuing struggles to obtain the care and support that many felt they needed. As with US forces, many of our illnesses can be attributed to the use of the “Agent Orange” defoliant. From 1962 until 1987, the 2,4,5T herbicide was manufactured at an Ivon Watkins-Dow Chemical plant in Paritutu, New Plymouth, New Zealand, and was then shipped to U.S. military bases in South-East Asia for spraying. In 1984, Agent Orange manufacturers paid New Zealand, Australian and Canadian Veterans an out-of-court settlement, and in 2004 Prime Minister Helen Clark‘s government apologized to Vietnam War Veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange or other toxic defoliants, following a New Zealand Health Select Committee’s inquiry into its use on New Zealand servicemen and its effects. In 2005, the New Zealand government confirmed that it had supplied Agent Orange chemicals to the United States military during the conflict.
I left the New Zealand Army at end of my contract in February 1967 and went to work for the New Zealand government in law enforcement where I stayed for 43 years until my retirement in September 2010.
DAN SULLIVAN’S WAR*
U.S. Marine Corps, Lance Corporal and Ambulance Driver, C Company, 3rd Medical Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, Dong Ha, Chu Lai, Khe Sanh, Hue, Quang Tri, and Phu Bai, two tours, 1966 – 68
I was born in Boston City Hospital and grew up in nearby Dorchester. I enlisted in the Marines at the age of 17 in November 1964. After boot camp at Parris Island and ITR, or advanced infantry training, at Camp Lejeune, I became an MOS 3500 Motor Transport Operator, or truck driver.
My first tour in Vietnam was nine months long, from January to September 1966. I was assigned to a Marine Corps aviation unit, VMFA 314, “the Black Knights,” at Da Nang and Chu Lai. They were a fighter-attack squadron that flew F-4 Phantoms to provide close air support for the Marine ground troops in I and II Corps. During my second tour, a year later, from September 1967 to August 1968, I was assigned as an ambulance driver to “Charlie Med,” C Company of the 3rd Medical Battalion. It was based at Phu Bai but had companies spread all across I Corps supporting the 3rd Marine Division. As an ambulance driver, my job was to get wounded Marines from the battlefield to one of our medical facilities for treatment as quickly as possible.
It was during that second tour that I was assigned as an ambulance driver at Khe Sanh during the 77-day siege of the base, from January 21, 1968 to April 7, 1968. Basically, there were 6,000 Marines on the Khe Sanh combat base and its surrounding hills, like Hill 861, 881S, and 881N, each of which had bloody battles of their own. Surrounding us were three North Vietnamese divisions with over 20,000 men, complete with rockets and very large artillery.
Two days I’ll never forget are Day 44 and Day 45 of the Siege. I still have vivid memories of them. It was about mid-morning on Day 44 when I heard rockets headed our way from the southwest, but we had never heard anything like this sound before. It was twice as loud as the usual 122-millimeter rockets the NVA fired at us and scared the hell out of us like death from above. The first one landed between Graves Registration and what was called “the Ponderosa” bunkers. The impact made the ground quiver like it was an earthquake. The crater was about twelve feet deep and twenty feet wide in the red clay.
I turned to a Marine named Roberts and said, “I hope those assholes don’t have any more of whatever that was!” Roberts yelled back to me, “Incoming!” That was the only answer to my question I needed, and pretty soon everyone was coming out of their bunkers to see what type of shit they were throwing at us now. Evidently, all they had were just those two. Thank God, because we never saw any more of them at Khe Sanh. Later, we heard they were 210-millimeter missiles. But they still had lots of other rockets and mortars.
I couldn’t believe after forty-four days those assholes hadn’t run out of shit to throw at us, but they hadn’t. A short time later I was eating C-rations with Ralph Shelly, waiting for our usual mid-morning entertainment. The B52s would come overhead and kick ass on the NVA, and you couldn’t watch a good show like that on an empty stomach. You needed lots of energy to cheer on the B52s. At no time did I ever feel sorry for the NVA. Picking up dead Marines on the airstrip for a couple of months had that deadening effect on me.
The next day was Day 45 of the siege. We were in the bunker playing cards most of the night and paid no attention to the Incoming falling all around us, trying to block out the sounds and learn to live with them. Some nights we were better at that than others. That night’s group conversation dealt with Robert Kennedy. We were discussing if he were elected, would he get us the hell out of South Vietnam? Most of the group said, “No way, Bobby was just trying to get JFK’s old job.”
Shortly after midnight, the “Charlie Med” field phone rang. I picked it up and heard a voice cracking with emotion as he said to me, “Gray Sector, Marine down, come quickly.” Corpsman Ralph Shelly and I jumped into my ambulance and we made our way there. Shelly and I ran over with a stretcher, but nothing could be done. A nineteen-year-old Marine lay dead with a very large part of his body missing. A hand grenade had exploded in his pocket, and I felt like shit. This was an accidental death that should not have happened; and I thought of all the pain we would be sending home to his parents.
At Twentynine Palms in California a year earlier, I drove an officer and a chaplain to the home of the parents of a fallen Marine to inform them of their son’s death. His parents were working in their yard. Before we even came to a complete stop, I saw the mother collapse on the grass. Her husband’s face turned pure white with tears falling down his cheeks. We did what we could for them, which was next to nothing, and left them with their pain, grieving for the loss of their son. With that memory still in my head, Corpsman Ralph Shelly and I placed the Marine in my ambulance and took him to Graves Registration.
It seemed the guys at 113-A Battery never slept; and if they couldn’t sleep, no one else was going to either, because they fired lots of artillery rounds at the Gooks. It was 3:00 a.m. and I spent two hours pretending to sleep. I picked up my “E tool,” a fold-up shovel, and went looking for revenge for being awoken. I found it in the form of a rat in my bunker. It was as big as a cat and it took me three hard whacks to take that SOB out. The rats at Khe Sanh had been living off the corpses of dead Gooks on the south side of the base since the beginning of the siege. Even rats had to eat you know, but not in my bunker! One of the Corpsmen was awoken by the noise I was making and was really scared that I might have killed his pet rat. I told him no. This rat had blue eyes and looked like his girlfriend. He said okay and went back to sleep. Rats don’t have blue eyes, of course, but he didn’t know that. Anywhere else, the two of us would have been shipped out to a nut house, but here we were. We were the “Kings of the crazy people.”
Around 0700, it was C-ration time again. Oh boy, I lived for ham and lima beans. Oh God, did I really, really, miss the old mess hall. The damn Gooks had blown ours up on the 21st of January. That was when the ground started shaking again and we were treated to more good entertainment courtesy of the B52s. It might have been a little early, but if I had to eat ham and lima beans again, then let those Gooks eat five-hundred-pound bombs by the hundreds. Showtime lasted ten to fifteen minutes.
A short time later a CH-46 helicopter landed in front of Charlie Med with four dead men from the hills. We took them to Graves Registration to be bagged and tagged. This never got any easier for us. What was always in the back of my mind was that I no longer had any hope of getting out of this siege at Khe Sanh alive, and I truly believed that. My luck would only last so long, so I no longer gave a shit about anything except doing my job. That attitude helped me, and I became less afraid and colder.
At noon, I was having “whiskey nips,” miniature bottles of alcohol, thanks to Dr. Finnegan, who gave them out to us a couple times a week. At least there were some benefits to being assigned to a Navy unit. A corpsman started yelling “Incoming!” It sounded like artillery this time, and ten minutes later wounded began coming into Charlie Med from all over the combat base. A gun pit crew had taken a direct hit. Three out of four of them were dead, and the only one left alive might lose both legs and his left arm. Two doctors and a Corpsman worked feverishly on this Marine until they got him stable. He was awake and he kept saying, “I want to live!”
Corpsman Allen called for a Medevac flight, and ten minutes later all of the wounded would be on their way to Delta Medical, the Forward Casualty Receiving Facility for the 3rd Marine Division in Dong Ha, six miles from the DMZ, where we sent a lot of our casualties. Carl Ebert and I were at Charlie Med when the Marine from the gun pit came out of surgery. Carl asked the triage doctor for an update on the Marine’s condition, but the doctor shook his head in the negative. Both of his legs had been removed above his knees and his left arm had been amputated. I turned around, looked at him, and saw him stop breathing. They tried to revive him, but they could not.
The next day, I was going to cheer much louder and longer for the Air Force and their B52s. It seemed that the only payback we were going to get around there was from them. It was 1400 hours and it had been a little bit quiet for about thirty minutes.
The Medevac helicopters were on their way in to pick up a second flight of wounded from Khe Sanh. Twenty or more wounded Marines and stretcher-bearers were standing around waiting at the helipad. I was headed for the Charlie Med triage bunker thinking that was too many people in one area at the same time. Within a millisecond of that thought, as I was on the second step down, I felt the concussion of a large blast.
I turned around, ran back out, and only saw one man on the helipad who could stand on his own. That was Hospitalman Second Class Carl Ebert. Miraculously, he wasn’t hurt. I couldn’t believe I had found someone alive. Carl was a damn good Corpsman, and I considered him a good friend of mine since I came to Charlie Med in November. Carl was trying to help move our Catholic priest, Walter Driscoll, to the triage bunker before we got more Incoming, but he needed a stretcher for Father Driscoll. By the looks of things, Father Driscoll would never walk again. One of the doctors came out of the bunker to help Carl, so I started to look for more stretchers.
A lot of the Marines on the ground weren’t breathing. I began C.P.R on one of them, but I got nowhere with him. A Corpsman came up from the bunker and helped me get that Marine onto a stretcher. We moved him into the triage unit; but when we got to the bottom of the walkway, we saw Dr. Magilligan and Dr. Wolfe working on Jonathan “Nat” Spicer. They had his chest open and were trying to remove a very small piece of steel from Nat’s heart. I can’t remember how many times I had reminded Nat to keep his flak jacket closed.
It took another fifteen minutes to get the rest of the wounded down into triage, but the main triage bunker was almost filled to capacity with casualties. All of the Corpsmen and four doctors were working at a frantic pace to save as many as they could and get the wounded ready for the evacuation flight to Delta Medical at Dong Ha. Carl Ebert and I carried Nat Spicer to the CH-46 “Sea Knight” helicopter. We were trying to get everyone on board, but it was filled to capacity. Nat’s stretcher was halfway into the helicopter and I was standing on the helicopter ramp when an incoming round exploded next to the chopper. Debris went flying all around us but missed me. I lucked out again, I told Carl, “looks like those assholes missed us again.”
That was when the helicopter did what seemed to be a full power lift, with me still standing on the ramp. We were gaining altitude very fast, and Carl and I weren’t supposed to be on the flight at all. We got Nat all the way into the helicopter and placed his stretcher on the floor. Seconds later, the helicopter lost power and Carl and I were thrown to the floor with him. The CH 46 was falling fast, and it wasn’t auto-rotating. Carl said we must have been hit, but I said nothing. I continued to watch my life flash in front of me. I tried to raise my head, but that seemed very hard to do and I saw the horizon coming up fast. These last couple of days had really been a bitch and I figured this was going to top it. It wouldn’t be long now, I thought.
Suddenly, the chopper’s engine started up and we began gaining altitude again. This time, I believed we survived by living off of Carl Ebert’s lucky day. No one in the helicopter said a word. There was dead silence, because it was a long way to Dong Ha. Carl checked on Nat. He was still unconscious. We dropped him off at the Delta Medical triage about 30 minutes later and Carl and I finally got a chance to sit down and have a hot meal at their mess hall. Shortly after that, it began getting hit by incoming rockets, six or seven of them, but who was counting. The assholes were either following us or we were getting very unlucky. The next morning we hopped a helicopter back to Khe Sanh.
Three weeks later we learned Nat died in the hospital in Japan of an infection.
All in all, my Charlie Company medical unit treated more than 2,500 casualties and even participated in the birth of a local baby girl during that time.
I was awarded a Bronze Star with “V” for valor. It is my favorite medal, because it was for helping Marines. The Citation read:
“For meritorious achievement in connection with operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam while serving as Motor Vehicle Operator with Company C, Third Medical Battalion, Third Marine Division from 27 January to 15 February 1968. Throughout this period, Corporal SULLIVAN’S unit was deployed at the Khe Sanh Combat Base, which frequently came under intense enemy mortar, rocket and artillery fire. Disregarding his own safety, Corporal SULLIVAN repeatedly exposed himself to hostile fire in order to transport casualties to the medical facility, saving the lives of numerous Marines. On 5 February 1968, a C-123 aircraft sustained severe battle damage from hostile ground fire and crashed on the Khe Sanh airfield. Although the site was under an intense rocket and mortar attack, Corporal SULLIVAN unhesitatingly maneuvered his ambulance across the fire-swept terrain to the location of the downed aircraft. Observing one of the crewmen standing in the hatch of the aircraft with his clothing ablaze, he ran to the man, assisted him from the aircraft and rapidly extinguished the flames with his bare hands. Moments after he moved the airman from the hazardous area, the aircraft exploded. His heroic and timely actions inspired all who observed him and prevented the man from sustaining severe injuries. Corporal SULLIVAN’S courage, sincere concern for the welfare of his comrades and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of great personal danger were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.”
Corporal SULLIVAN is authorized to wear the Combat “V.”
FOR THE PRESIDENT
I rotated out after that second tour was over in August 1968 and was discharged the next month. In addition to the Bronze Star with “V,” I received a Purple Heart for a wound to my hand, and a healthy dose of PTSD.
After leaving the Corps, I went to work with ATT Long Lines in Boston, where I worked as a central office technician. I retired from the phone company in 2001 after thirty-two years. My wife and I have been married for the past forty-eight years and reside in Massachusetts. We have two daughters and eight grandchildren, and I enjoy painting in my free time.
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If you found these stories compelling, you can purchase this book or box set HERE.
*If you liked Dan’s story, Dan has also written an excellent book on his time in the Marines at Khe Sanh, titled Teen Marine, which is also available at Amazon and on Kindle. It goes into much more detail about his time as an ambulance driver at Khe Sanh.
All books can be found on Amazon and are available in Paperback, Hardback, Audible, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited formats. All of my thriller novels are available in English, German, Spanish, Italian and soon in French editions. However, my non-fiction Vietnam books are only available in English.
