The White Sand Dunes

The Sand Dunes, as they were called, actually had some wider fame than the recollections of those who were there: they were featured in an article in Life Magazine which I later saw when I returned to the World. They were a very strange geological feature. They were well enough inland, there being some considerable distance between them and the coastline. Yet the land thereabouts was quite flat otherwise and was surrounded with the ubiquitous rice paddies. The Sand Dunes rose 12 feet or more from the surrounding plain and were composed of the purest bright white sand I have ever seen before or since. It was made up of a series of sand ridges that looked like miniature mountains of sugar. Through the middle of this formation ran a very small creek narrow enough to jump over and not very deep. In the bright light it sometimes appeared blue or even green. There was a small village or hamlet maybe 150 yards distant. We liked to set up in the Sand Dunes, even though it is almost always a bad idea to set up in a spot that has been previously occupied. Digging in was an easy chore compared to anywhere else and it had the further advantage of being the much desired high ground.

I Get High. We first set up in the Sand Dunes in June or July, 1967. It was a brilliant cloudless day and the sun was still out in force when we took up our positions. Digging in was so easy we made ourselves a very luxurious foxhole with a prone directly behind it. It felt good to take off my heavy web gear. The prone was set up with ponchos over it as a tent to shield out the sun. I was lucky enough to get first guard and had taken my place in the wide foxhole we had dug for the machine gun and crew. One of the Brothers, whose name I have forgotten since he was so short at the time that I did not know him for very long, sat down beside me and we talked for awhile. I had expressed an interest in sampling some of the local grass (marijuana), and he happened to have some with him. It was a pronounced green in color, very unlike the usual brown that I had seen the few times I had tried grass back in the World. Since the unit was still largely airborne we had to be discrete about smoking dope. All the officers of the company, or so I was told on good authority, had smoked it, but only to show they did not habitually decline its use out of any weakness, such as fear of being overcome by its intoxicating effects. The airborne people remained devoted to beer, which was a bit harder to get and a good deal heavier to haul. The Brother gave me a small joint to smoke, then retired to the prone directly behind the so-called foxhole, which was really a small trench. The sun was still up when I decided to give it a shot and lit the joint up. As a non-smoker, it was hard for me to keep the hot smoke in my lungs, but with a considerable force of will I was able to do so. I exhaled with a vigor known only to devotées of this drug, and followed it with a few obligatory coughs of a kind which might be mistaken for whooping cough. I kept on toking my small joint which was soon exhausted. The next thing I knew, I felt something like a wave moving through my feet: it was as if I were standing on water at the edge of a lake and my feet were rolling like soft plastic with the onset of every wave that passed on to the shore. I stood up and felt like I was some kind of dirigible that had come off its moorings and was now floating free. After a day of humping heavy machine gun ammunition the sudden lightness made me feel as if I had escaped gravity altogether. Then I was overcome with the sound of an uninvited inner music that was almost an hallucination. My memory and imagination exploded with colorful free associations. I was seriously dinky dau. I had to turn to the guys in the prone and tell them I was so "fucked up" that I could not pull first guard. There was some mild annoyance, but it was not too difficult to find someone who wanted first guard, and I soon "crashed" into a deep sleep. This was by far and away the most intense experience I ever had with grass. I eventually ended up quitting the habit of smoking marijuana in 1976 or 77, since it had begun to affect my memory. At the time I labored under the supposition that my brain could perform some useful function for me in the future and that I might do well to safeguard it. In the Sand Dunes it was important to have someone pulling guard who was not rollicking in an acid-like high, since this area, although something of a natural fortress, was the home range of a strange character known as the "Mad Seventy-Niner." Fortunately, in spite of all, we passed an uneventful night.

The Night Skirmish. The next time we set up in the Sand Dunes it was at a time between the hot season and the monsoon, as I remember that it was cloudy the next morning, but I do not believe it was gray the day before. It may have been in October, 1967. At that time I was a member of a rifle squad, probably the Second Squad. We set up on a nice ridge with the creek behind us. The ridge declined down to the plain just to our left, and that is where they decided to put the gun. It was about three foxholes away, and to their left the line curved with the newly ascending ridge off to the left and behind us. There were a couple of green bushes about six feet tall spotted here and there in the low area. The hamlet was off to our left and its screen of bamboo was clearly visible. As usual we reminded ourselves that the Mad Seventy-Niner might pay us a visit during the night, so we had to keep a certain level of extra vigilance. Still, we felt very secure and I can still remember how beautiful it was there in the moonlight with the white sand visible in the night and the ribbon of water shining lightly from the pale radiance of the moon. When my first guard shift was over, I fell comfortably away into a careless slumber. I next remember a rude awakening in the dead of the night with a series of loud explosions. A grenade here and there never bothered anyone's sleep, since we usually threw one a shift for H & I - but a series of grenade explosions was a message that even the sleeping brain could not ignore. There was excited whispering as one grenade after another exploded. It was coming from the left, at Wash's position, the low point where the gun was posted. We figured it was some kind of probe, and it might well end in a major attack. On the other hand, it could just be somebody, perhaps even the Mad Seventy-Niner, who was tossing a few grenades at us. In any case the noise soon subsided into an eerie quiet. We got the word that the gun and some gooks had exchanged grenades, and that the enemy had pulled back. No shots had been fired by anyone, which showed good discipline at the gun, since the object of such an encounter is often to get the gun to open up and reveal its exact position. Before the enemy can assault our position with any confidence, they need to knock out the machine gun in order to reduce our firepower to a level that they can overcome. The next day I wandered over to the gun when I got a chance, and we found one unexploded grenade laying in the bushes nearby. At first we surmised that the enemy had dropped it when they had fled, but it became clear that during the excitement one of our guys had thrown the grenade without pulling its pin. At any case, we were very happy that no one had been hurt.

The next day it had clouded up, but there was no rain. We were still milling around our positions when a deputation came from the village. They were mainly old women. It was pretty much my duty to interface with them, although I could hardly say I spoke any Vietnamese. As this small column plodded towards us from the hamlet, it was apparent that they were carrying a couple of things in a hammock-like cloth slung under sturdy bamboo poles. When they got to us, they set down their loads. The officers and I were present to see what this odd visit was all about. Quite unexpectedly, they had brought two young people on these makeshift stretchers. They were both between the ages of 16 and 18, and one was a fairly attractive young woman. Unfortunately, they were both "seriously fucked up," as we would say in those days. They had numerous lacerations and puncture wounds, and at most, they were only semi-conscious. A thin old lady who looked intelligent and who had a kind of ironic hint of a smile, tried to explain in words supplemented by gestures that the two "baby-sans" had fallen victim to our artillery, which we had fired about our positions during the night. This was possible, but most everyone concluded that here were two people who had attacked our positions during the night. I thought it was interesting that they would seek us out for help. I suggested to the brass that perhaps their story was true, as they would not likely send two bushwhackers to us for medical repairs. On the other hand, as I now recollect it over the passing years, what else could they do? These two kids were likely going to die without prompt and expert medical attention. They might as well give them up to us in the chance that we would do something for them. So we called in a chopper - I don't think it was a Medevac - and loaded them into it with my assurances to the woman that we would do our best for them.

However, I later heard that when the choppers had gotten out of view, they had thrown the young couple out to their deaths. This revelation left a bitter feeling that has never parted from me.

The Mad Seventy-Niner. Later in 1968, when I was a spec 4, the sergeants were looking more towards me to assume some higher level of responsibility, as I was not doing at all well as an interpreter. I remember that day we did a long hump through the Bong Song area on our way to the Sand Dunes. I recollect that I spent most of this time looking at my feet as I walked, as that is about all I could remember when the sergeant suggested that I could take out an OP that night. He said, "Do you remember that [such-and-such] that we passed just before we got here?" In truth I could not remember this feature, so his desire to have me take out an OP was frustrated. Someone else led about three guys back to that spot. We set up a nice trench style foxhole in the dunes complete with a luxurious shelf for our grenades, which we all set out in a neat row. The prone was connected by a small passage to the foxhole. I went to sleep very comfortably. The next thing I knew, my dreams were interrupted by the sound of an explosion, and I felt a sharp sting in my right shoulder blade. We had been sleeping with our heads pointed towards the foxhole, and I suddenly bolted upright and grabbed my right shoulder blade with my left hand, reaching over my right shoulder. Someone asked me what happened, and I said it felt like I got hit with a small fragment off a 79 casing. I suspect that it was just a coincidence, a bug had bitten me exactly at the critical moment. For just as I awoke to the noise and the bite, the guy in the foxhole said we were under attack by the Mad Seventy-Niner. We scrambled into the foxhole in time to see a round shot off in our direction form the edge of the long open field in front of us. Per usual, it exploded harmlessly somewhere behind our line of foxholes. Knowing that our artillery would be fast upon the scene, the Mad Seventy-Niner never spent too much time firing at us before running off to his home, presumably in the hamlet that lay off to our left. He had gotten his name from his weapon, an American M-79 grenade launcher. This weapon broke open like a shot gun to load, but instead of the normal barrel, it had a large but short tube of a diameter to accommodate a 40 mm grenade shell. Its stock was heavy and short with a pad at the end to help absorb the strong recoil that resulted from firing such a shell. You had to be careful not to wrap your thumb over the stock, since the recoil had been know to break people's thumbs. You could fire a shell several hundred yards, and this made it a convenient weapon for a sniper, since he could stand back 100 yards in the dark and fire off a couple of shots and still get out without being clearly spotted. As a result he had carved out a little niche for himself as the premier sniper in Bong Song, the only one so equipped. I think we had a strange, paradoxical affection for him, and considered him to be mainly a nuisance to our sleep more than a really effective foe. Just the same, you had to admire his balls, as attacking the Cav always got a massive retaliation of artillery, even if we ourselves never bothered to fire small arms back at him. I hope he survived the war. He no doubt has quite a number of hair-raising stories to tell of his numerous narrow escapes.