 |
Plei Me October, 1965. Maj. Charlie Beckwith and his Special Forces team after the siege (pg 234-294). Beckwith is in the front row with no hat, second from right, between Maj. Bo Baker (left) and Maj. Charles Thompson (right). "Plei Me and Ia Drang provided a perfect paradigm, and therefore a warning, of the struggle of arrogant wills to come that would transform Vietnam into a vast slaughterhouse for the next ten years." |
 |
Marine platoon leader, Lt. Walter Levy, on patrol near Danang, Sept. 16,
1965. Second platoon went on patrol just after dawn. The Marines walked single-file out of the camp and along the banks of a narrow brown river and onto the hard dirt embankments of rice fields and across open fields of unplanted farmland and finally under the shade trees of a hamlet where women and children held one another in the shadows of their straw houses and watched as the Marines passed by. (pg 184) |
 |
American paratrooper,
Central Highlands, 1966. Photograph by Steve Northup, UPI The physical requirement to keep moving in that heat affected your mental equilibrium. Your thinking became less complicated, more primitive, descending slowly in stages to a state better suited to the demands of the jungle...After a while, the physical and psychological stresses of the forced march--pain, depression, fatigue, exhaustion--altered the way you looked: jaw slack, eyes vaguely focused, thoughts distracted, senses dulled, scared, lonely, mean--you were just another beast prowling the wilderness. The rainforest was always wearing you down, making you suffer, trying to take you. (pg 372)
|
 |
September, 1967. Marines under siege at Con Thien, photo taken by Dana Stone for UPI on a trip to the outpost with Kay & Laurence in September, 1967. When youth was a soldier And we fought across the sea, We were young and cold hearts, Of bloody savagery. Born of indignation Children of our time, We were orphans of creation And dying in our prime. Poem by Cpl. Edward Broderick, written on his flak jacket, Sept. 1967. (pg 448) |