Heaven and hell By Alpha-Adventurer 24 Š2012
It was a hot and humid night in 1969 Vietnam and Tom Valdez was reading the letter from his 12 year old brother Harry. He knew something was up and he wanted to read the letter one more time before he went to war. The next day Captain Miller spoke to all the men in the barracks and told them that they were going to the Mekong Delta. Tom tried to remember what he had been told about the Mekong Delta “something about the V.C hiding there and we were attacking them with gunboats”. Miller said “they had three hours to get there stuff and get on the helicopters”. Everyone was to shocked to think as they wandered to the mess hall. Three hours later everyone was on the helicopters and on there way to the Mekong Delta. Tom’s first sight of it was three gunboats and a attack helicopter raking some rice paddies with rockets but being shot back at. Then Tom and Miller both looked back and saw a F-105 dogfighting a MIG-19 everybody cheered when the MIG was shot down. When the helicopter landed in camp everyone was told they had two hours to settle down and grab their gear and board the gunboats as they were going on a patrol. When they had gone on for ages with no action,an angry shout was heard and Tom looked at where it came from and saw forty V.C appear on the river bank. Quickly the gunners swung the 50.caliber and raked the river bank with bullets. The V.C shot back,there were explosions everywhere. Then Tom and Miller both looked to the left and saw three men go down:the first soldiers to die from the regiment. There was blood everywhere! Quickly,the radio team called in a gunship which arrived two minutes later with a team of medics. The gunships killed all the remaining V.C. This was the same scenario for weeks,and the men where getting very tired of it as two hundred men had been killed. Four months of this and three hundred new recruits arrived,one of them was called Donald. Tom and Miller (who were already friends) decided to introduce themselves. Donald became very good friends with them. After two more months of the Mekong delta Miller announced that the regiment would be going to a place called Khe San as the N.V.A were moving towards it. The men were very happy as the were all bored of the Mekong. ”The last patrol in the Mekong would be an eventful one” Tom’s,Miller’s and Donald’s gut told him. As the men boarded the gunboats for the last time there hung a low mist. Halfway down one channel there was the roar of a jet. Donald and Miller dismissed it thinking it was a friendly,until the bomb hit the water right next to them,sending shrapnel everywhere. ”How could they see us”thought Miller the fog should have hid us”. Then the MIG came in to sight. The men holding the the LAW rockets fired off two shots at it. One rocket missed but the other smashed in to the plane and it went down in a blazing fireball. Miller checked his men seven dead five wounded.”Lucky this was the last patrol” thought Miller. The next day they got airlifted to Khe San. It was a fairly large base occupied by the Marines so Tom was happy. The Marines were nice to Tom as he was a Marine but the Marines did not the like army men and so were horrible to the rest of the men. After getting settled down at Khe San,Tom,Donald and Miller got bored of because there was no action. Then seven days after getting there,a mortar bombardment opened up and three N.V.A divisions moved on Khe San. Everybody dug bunkers and sandbagged their posts as there was shells going off all the time. The N.V.A
were attacking all the time and the men’s morale was at an all time low. The gunships and the B-52s were always above Khe San bombing the N.V.A. One day,the base got attacked by old Soviet tanks. The men had no Anti-tank weapons to fight back and the tanks were just smashing down the walls. Miller called in air strike after air strike and eventually the bombs hit the tanks but not after the Marines had lost forty seven men. After two months of fighting the men had no food or water. Then two CH-47 Chinook helicopters reached them with two regiments and supplies. Donald was sent out on a patrol in a helicopter and as they were hovering above the trees shooting down at the escaping N.V.A a MIG came out of nowhere burning but still flying. Donald turned the machine gun to shoot it but the MIG fired two heat seeking missiles and the helicopter got blown out of the sky. Tom and Miller saw the explosion from the base and saw Donald getting thrown out of the machine and killed. Tom got so angry that he grabbed a rocket ran in to the open and shot the MIG. It was a huge blow to morale as Donald was a well liked person and Tom and Miler were very sad that he had died. When the regiment got pulled out of Khe San. Tom and Miller were told that their tours of duty were over and they were going back to the U.S. Tom was overjoyed and Miller was too as he could now retire. The next week they were shipped back and there families were their to meet them. Tom saw his little brother Harry again and Miller saw his wife again. Tom and Miller kept in touch and frequently visited each other. They also kept in touch with Donald’s family. Tom got married and had two sons who joined the Marines. Miller bought a farm in Texas and settled down with his family.