In and Around The Vicinity of Danang, 1965/1966
By Mike Poppe
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About this ebook
In And Around The Vicinity of Danang, 1965/1966, is a history of my experiences during my year in South Vietnam. It's written both as a personal history, but also to shed some light on what life in Vietnam was like for men and women who were not regular combat troops.
Mike Poppe
I was born in Rector, Arkansas, a small farming based town in Northeast Arkansas. Later, my parents moved to St. Louis in search of better economic opportunity. At age 16, disallusioned and bored with the “One Size Fits All” educational system, I dropped out in the 10th grade.Just as soon as I turned 17, I joined the Marine Corps. The education the Corps provided, wasn't always polite and pleasant, but it most certainly was not boring. My four year enlistment included one year in South Vietnam. 7 November, 1965 to 6 November, 1966. At the end of my enlistment, having attained the rank of Sgt E-5, I returned to civilian life.After nine months as an Industrial Engineering Clerk, I took advantage of an opportunity to move into transportation. For the next 34 years, I was a dispatcher and driver supervisor in the Trucking Industry.In 2011, the rise in popularity of E-books caught my attention. A life long avid reader, I'd always believed I could write a book, but didn't know how to go about getting it published. The birth of E-Books changed all that. In the fall of 2011, fulfilling a life long dream, I published my first book, The Sparrows Whisper.Today, my wife, Mary Katherine, and I, live in a small rural town in Southwestern Illinois. With the encouragement of family and friends, I've published a total of 13 novels. The split between my books has been divided pretty evenly between Mysteries and Westerns. Work on number 14, is under way.For all those that have taken the time to read my books, I appreciate your interest very much.
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In and Around The Vicinity of Danang, 1965/1966 - Mike Poppe
Chapter 01 Introduction
Fifty three years have passed since I boarded a plane on the Danang airbase, and flew to Okinawa, for my first stop on the way back home. So, after all this time, why write a book about Vietnam now?
Many times I've stood in front of a family member's grave where his years of wartime service were inscribed on the tombstone. Each time I felt a certain amount of sadness that the details of the very unique, experiences these men must have had while serving their country had completely vanished with their deaths.
Should any of my family, now or later, show an interest in my service in South Vietnam, I would prefer they have more than just my dates of service to work with. Hopefully, this book will provide facts, rather than broad generalities about the war found elsewhere, that may or may not have applied to my own service.
I suppose another reason for telling my story now, is to organize in my mind what up to now, has been a disorganized collection of memories. At 73 years of age, if I'm ever going to write this story, now is the time, while I still have a reasonable amount of confidence in the accuracy of my memories.
A few notes need to be made before I begin this story. No one person can tell the story of the Vietnam war. It lasted so long, and covered so much different geography, that every person's experience was unique. The war I knew, in and around the vicinity of Danang, in the Republic of South Vietnam during 1965/1966, differed significantly with the Vietnam experienced by Marines in the 1970s, or the Army, Air Force, and Navy personnel in the more southern regions.
As much as I wish to be 100% accurate in relating my experiences, I know that too many years have passed for that to be totally possible. Unfortunately, at the time, I did not record the names of the men I served with. Fifty three years later, with the exception of a few, the names of these men have escaped my memory. I still see faces, but having had no contact with them after leaving Vietnam, the names have long since faded away. For that reason, most of the names I used here, will not be accurate. I wish now, that I would have had the foresight to keep a record during my time in country.
Michael S. Poppe
Sergeant E5, USMC Inactive
2019
Chapter 02 A Snapshot
The truth is, as was the case with my own service, the vast majority of troops in Vietnam were there in support roles, not to be regularly involved in combat. As far as I know, other than the China Beach TV series, the story of the support personnel's service in Vietnam has never really been told. I should add that although the China Beach program was fiction, those writers and actors, really did a first rate job of representing the contributions made by the doctors and nurses in South Vietnam.
Anyone who served in Vietnam was never 100% free from danger. The Grunts (Infantry), the swift boat personnel, the chopper, fighter, and bomber pilots, faced danger almost daily. In contrast, most of my time was spent fighting less dangerous enemies such as loneliness, miserable weather, bad chow, rats and mosquitoes.
There's no false modesty intended here. Like every other Marine in a war, I wanted to know if I had what it took to measure up the tradition of those who had served before me. Make no mistake, I wanted in the worst way, not to get maimed or killed. If you think that it's a weird situation, trying to test your mettle, while praying you won't get hurt or killed, you're absolutely right. When you join the service one of the first things you're told by the old school veterans, is Never Volunteer.
But I volunteered to join the Corps, and later volunteered for Vietnam, so when presented with the opportunity to step away from my routine duties, and get outside the protection of our guarded perimeter, I almost always jumped at the chance. Why?
Nobody made me go to Vietnam, I volunteered to go. As I saw it, being there of my own choice, meant I had a responsibility to do more than just play it safe. Certainly the few risky situations I found myself in, were nothing that a Marine infantryman would lose any sleep over. But for a newly married, barely 18 year old Marine whose primary MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), was in Supply, they were more than enough.
The idea of spending a year in this unfamiliar land, and among it's people, whom I knew almost nothing about, then returning home with my experience limited to the confines of our perimeter wire, made no sense to me. I didn't want to return home and regret not having pushed more to broaden that experience.
My work week was often in the neighborhood of seventy to eighty hours, but much of that was on me, since I regularly volunteered for extra duty. To be honest, I didn't see it as a big sacrifice. It's not like we had much in the way of recreational options at our disposal. Having learned that free time meant too much time to think about home, and a wife whom I'd married just two days before starting my journey toward Vietnam, the easiest way to minimize loneliness, was to flirt with exhaustion. Most of the time, I managed to stay active enough that as soon as I stretched out on my cot, sleep was seldom more than a few seconds away.
Chapter 3 Map
Hopefully the map I've included above, (Not to Scale,) will make it easier to connect the dots.
The Danang Airbase runs north and south, with the South China Sea at the end of it's northern runway, and the city of Danang located on it's eastern side.
The Old French Compound where I spent my first seven months, was just to the west of the Airbase. So many years have passed, that it's difficult for me to make an accurate guess as to the distance between our compound and the Airbase. Still, after consulting a number of maps, I'm fairly certain that my tent area was roughly four to five hundred yards west of the airfield. We had an exceptional around the clock view of the jets as they took off and landed. The amazing thing to me now, is that in my seven months in that location, despite the constant 24/7 activity, there was only one crash. An F4 Phantom that had been shot up on a mission over North Vietnam, was forced to attempt a belly landing. As that F4 skidded down the runway, we could see a steady stream of sparks shooting high in the night sky. Two thirds of the way down the runway, for whatever reason, we saw the pilot eject. Unfortunately, he was killed when his chute couldn't deploy in time.
*
Our compound was located just to the west of the airbase, with the dirt (mud during Monsoon season) road known as Highway One, on our western border. Highway One, ran the length, (north and south), of South Vietnam.
*
Facing our compound to the west, just on the other side of Highway One, was a small Vietnamese village. In the whole time I was there, I never ran across a single Marine who knew it's true name. We referred to it simply as, Dogpatch.
Despite having a few shops designed to get money from Marines as they walked through the village, it's primary function served as cover for Viet Cong Snipers at night, and as a residence for a significant population of Business Girls.
*
Hill 327, the main base for the Marine Grunts, (Infantry) was located a little over mile west of Dogpatch. The Bob Hope shows in the Danang area were held at the base of Hill 327. After his first Christmas show there, the media renamed it, Freedom Hill.
The Grunts who lived there, didn't seem excited abut the name change.
*
South West of Hill 327, and it's surrounding hills, was Happy Valley, a stronghold, especially at night, for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars. From what I was told, Happy Valley had been so named, because nothing good ever happened there. My one trip into Happy Valley was sufficient to satisfy my curiosity.
*
In June of 1966, our unit would move north of Danang, some ten to fifteen miles, to an area known as Red Beach. This area had been the original landing site for the Marines who came ashore in March 1965. From there, they had moved South and established a perimeter around the airfield at Danang.
*
China Beach was the Naval Hospital located east of Danang on the coast of the South China Sea. According to what I was told in late summer of 1966, I was one of the first Marines to go to China Beach after it was expanded to an R&R site, in addition to it's vital function as a Navy hospital. At that time, the beach itself was the only 'In Country' R&R facility in I Corps. The eating and drinking places, movies, games, and music, as depicted on the TV Series, China Beach, would come later. I would be remiss if I didn't make the point that the China Beach television series did a tremendous job of recreating that area of Vietnam, both physically, and emotionally. As I've said countless times over the years, the Nurses were the unsung heroes of the Vietnam War.
Chapter 04 Why Volunteer?
Personally, I've come to the point where I have respect for those, like Muhammad Ali, who because of their beliefs, refused to be inducted into the service, and accepted whatever punishment came their way as a result of their decision. Whether or not I agreed with their decision, the fact is, what they did, took courage. I take the same position with those who took advantage of college deferments. While I believe college deferments should not have been available, they were in fact, legal. Those who used them, did so in accordance with the law.
How many of today's flag wavers used Daddy's influence and money to buy fake deferments in order to duck military service during the Vietnam era? For those who took that route, I have ZERO respect. There's only one word to describe those individuals – Gutless.
I suppose I owe the Marine Corps for whatever success, good fortune, and experiences my family and I have enjoyed along the way. They took a barely 17 year old kid, who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, and somehow turned me into a man. Faced with leather lunged Drill Instructors who refused to accept anything less than excellence, while forcing me to give more than I believed possible, the lessons they drilled into me have stood me in good stead, both in the Corps, and in my civilian life.
I suppose in some ways, Vietnam might have been the Graduation exercise of my Marine Corps training. Why would an 18 year old Marine, with his whole future ahead of him, volunteer to go to war? I suppose for a lot of people, it might be hard to understand. Part of it probably goes back to my reason for joining the Marines. Like a lot of other young men of my generation, I grew up on World War II movies that featured the Marine Corps, like Sands of Iwo Jima, Battle Cry, and Guadalcanal Diary. The Corps had the reputation as being the toughest military service, and when I decided it was time to leave home and make my own way, I picked the Marines, with the idea being that if I could hack it there, I could handle anything from that point on in my life.
Once finished with basic training, it didn't take long to notice that Marines, both Officer