April 1967

7 April 1967:

“… We have moved from our last position about 5 miles to the top of one of the taller mountains. This is a better position because it overlooks 2 valleys—including the main one. On a clear day, which they all are now, the coast is barely visible…. We usually put the CP [command post] by a stream, but up here that’s impossible, so all our water has to be flown in. It’s a little cooler up here at night but it’s still hot as hell during the day.“

"Our problem now is that when we get the VC cornered down in the valley, they simply go in the villages and act as if they lived there. We’ll go through the villages & know the VC are there due to the abnormal amount of men there, but they all claim to be ‘innocent civilians’ & of course some of them are. We could clean this place up, but we’d have every one from [President Lyndon] Johnson on down on us for killing civilians. But this is no problem for the Koreans. One of our capts. [captains] just spent a month with the Koreans & told me this. The Koreans don’t care about 'world opinions' & consider all Vietnamese [to be] VC until proven innocent. Each of their platoons has an interpreter (a Korean who speaks Vietnamese) while our entire btn. Is lucky to have one Vietnamese interpreter. The Koreans will go in a village & interrogate any suspicious looking person (something we can’t do) & kill them on the spot if they don’t talk. Therefore usually they talk. The Koreans burn any village that produces any evidence of shielding VC. Therefore the villages in the Koreans’ area don’t protect VC because the Korean terror is greater than the VC terror. This is why the Koreans are more successful than we are.”

21 April 1967:

“… Each platoon has a scout dog, but they’re not kept in the field too long or they get shellshocked. We have a big kennel back at Pleiku so the dogs can be rotated…."

“The Koreans want to send more troops & the Chinese want to send some, but for some unknown reason we won’t let them. As to the use of napalm, it was used extensively during the war in the Pacific (but not in Europe) because it’s the only way to get at an elaborately dug in enemy. The VC are not better at this than the Japs were (both being good at it). So why the criticism, I wonder? It’s ridiculous!“

"We have moved up the coast to Chu Lai…. We’re working right now with the 1st marine division & the 196th inf. brigade. At the moment it’s great. We’re about several miles from the sea, but actually camped ‘on the beach’ as you can see from the picture of the marine guns next to us (note the Confederate flag. The marines are moving out to go north & the army & air force are moving in (they have a large new airfield here). We’re hoping the btn. will be staying around here for a while to secure the base when the marines move out, as our other 2 btns. are out in the hills (not as high up here however) a little bit south of us. Be that the case we would move into the wooden barracks the marines have here. They have quite a setup here, swimming at the beach which is the best thing I’ve seen here. We managed to get to the beach several times already…. We’ve ‘lost’ our big tents so we’re living in pup tents now dug several feet in the ground. Several nights ago we had a tremendous cloud burst for several hours. My tent didn’t leak so I slept through it until I woke up floating on my air mattress, which had been on top of a stretcher. I had a foot of water in my hole & half of my stuff was under water. It’s all dried out now & nothing was ruined—not even my tape recorder which was under water…. It was rather funny hearing the whole btn. simultaneously cursing & laughing at each other. Our practice of digging in has been abandoned while ‘on the beach.’”