Another installment in our ongoing "eyewitness to combat" series. Beware that this materail contains graphic images of war, not for the squeamish or the faint of heart (although the image to the left that appears to be a human being's body is actually a strangely human- shaped tree root):
During June of 1966, the entire Battalion was committed to Operation Liberty. I was detached out to Foxtrot Company for this one. We had been running County Fair Operations throughout the 2/9 TAOR and much of the northern part of it was declared as cleared of V.C.
However, the southern portion south of the La Though River to the Key Lam River was still not cleared and was literally crawling with the V.C. This operation was supposed to be an on line sweep clear to the Key Lam River with each company having their own objective area of responsibility.
We were to secure Route 4 to the river. This area was where we had made contact with a large V.C. force in April and it really made me jumpy. Mines and booby traps were everywhere and the area was covered with punji stakes and spider traps.
As we moved across one rice paddy through a tree line to the next rice paddy, we had cleared a safe area.
However, Nick Sparicino or some reason just cut through an unsecured brush area before we reached the cleared area. He had just stepped into the tree line when he dropped and screamed in agony. He had stepped into a punji pit. The bamboo stakes had impaled his lower leg and calf and the punji stakes around the sides of the pit and pointing down had impaled his thigh pinning him there.
He screamed; “Pat, Help Me! God Dammit! It Hurts. Hurry!” I ran to him and Bradford and I grabbed him under the arms and tried to pull him up enough to get the pressure off of his leg. Another guy started digging around the outside of the pit to get him out. This took a really long time because he was so stuck and bleeding like crazy.
We were all sweating like pigs and he kept slipping. We would just about have him out and then he would slip and fall back full weight onto the punji stakes and he would scream out in pain. The muscles in my arms were starting to cramp us but I couldn’t let him go until we got him out.
He continued to scream and started really shaking. This made it harder to hold him up. We finally got him free and were able to pull all of the stakes out of his leg. One went up through his foot into his leg; another went up through the calf and ripped it completely open to the bone. He had three really deep punctures in his thigh where the lateral spikes had got him.
Doc gave him morphine, the chopper came in and just like all of the others, he was gone, never to be mentioned again as if he also never had existed. I had allowed myself to get close to him and we had been through a lot of shit together and he was gone. I did not like making friends. I was feeling very alone as we all did. Hadn’t had been killed in the last of May, and now Nick was gone.
The next morning, around the 11th or 12th of June we moved across one large rice paddy, over a dike across a shallow channel and onto a grassy field bordered by very thick and dense tree lines. The flanks and point squads had already moved across and then the center portion of the platoon came onto the field. I was still carrying a flame thrower and could not clear the ditch in one jump, so I jumped into the bottom of it.
When Nick had been wounded, I had to take the tank again and its weight caused me to bend at the knees and waist when I landed in the ditch. There were several loud simultaneous explosions and dirt pelted me all over. My ears were really ringing.
When I came up, there were Marines knocked down all over the open field and the dry grass started to burn from the explosions. We had walked into a mine field full of Bouncing Betties and booby trapped with artillery rounds. This was some real serious stuff. I was afraid to try to help because of more mines and afraid not to, too.
I thought of De La Fante and dropped my tank and got to the nearest guy. He was really messed up. The other squads were now moving in to help. I thought: “We are dead if they hit us now.”
There were arms, hands, legs, feet, boots, helmets, busted rifles, and body parts and pieces of Marines and blood swaths scattered all over the field. The fire was burning toward the wounded and dead and setting off other mines, taking out even more Marines. I thought to myself, “This is some really, really, bad shit!”
Guys were moaning and screaming out in pain all around me and their bodies were convulsing like crazy. I didn’t know what to do other than to just try to stop the bleeding of the one that was next to me and put out the fire as it came close to someone. Everyone around me was down.
The clothes on the wounded Marines were starting to catch on fire as they lay in its path. Other Marines started to pour out onto the field from the tree lines and rendered whatever aid they could as they began stomping out the flames around our guys and emptying their canteens on the burning Marines.
When this was gone many of those rendering aid began to urinate on their buddies to put out the flames. This became a very frantic effort as we also began to take sniper fire from the tree-line dropping other guys as they tried to help their wounded buddies.
More jets came in and dropped 500 pound napalm bombs on the tree-lines and after a while the snipers became silent. They had been either killed or had simply moved back down into their tunnels and disappeared.
After the fire had swept through the field and the wounded were finally taken out by media, those of us that were left were ordered to get on-line and sweep across the area to police up body parts, equipment and ammo.
As one of the choppers was taking off, I noticed something flutter in an un-scorched nearby bamboo tree-line. I looked closer and it was the face skin and scalp of one of our dead guys. It had evidently been completely blown off of his skull and had landed in the bamboo thicket and was caught on one of it branches. The blade wash from the chopper had caused it to flutter and move to where I could see it.
It made me wonder what in the hell we were supposed to be accomplishing other than getting friggin blown away. We took all of these horrific casualties and didn’t fire one friggin shot at anyone. Hell, we didn’t even see anyone to shoot back at. It took us all day just to clear the field of our wounded, dead and spent equipment and body parts. I hated it then and just wanted to kill something really, really, really bad.
