Tail End Charlie: Memoir of a United States Marine in the Vietnam War by Ronald John Jensen

Author:Ronald John Jensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2015-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

VI

The Firebase

I was not back very long before the word was passed that my platoon was assigned to join a platoon from another company to form what they called Outlaw Company. Our mission was to clear some mountaintop in the middle of nowhere so they could put in a 105 Howitzer firebase and use us as security for the base. They flew us to a clearing in the valley at the base of the mountains, leaving us to climb up through heavy vegetation to a mountaintop, where we used C-4 to blow down the trees for a landing zone. When the hill was secured, the CH-53s helicopters came in with bulldozers to clear the whole top of the mountain. We built bunkers around the top out of sandbags and logs. We had no idea how long we would be there. At night we would send out one OP (observation post) off the side of the mountain and down the trail. The idea was to catch the enemy before they got to our lines. One night while on OP, we heard a sound on the trail but could not make out what it was. We waited with our rifles in our hands. This time, it sounded like purring, and it wasn’t too far away. We radioed back to the command post that we were about to make contact with the enemy. They asked us what were we seeing. We told them we heard purring and it was getting closer every second. They radioed back not to fire until we saw something. Then, about ten feet away, we saw the enemy. It was a tiger. We radioed command that we had a tiger on us, but they ordered us not to fire and give away our position. We radioed back that the tiger was going to take our position away or take us away, if we didn’t shoot. We had no choice but to wait and see what this big cat was going to do next. Thank God we waited, for in a few minutes the tiger turned and went back down the trail, leaving us alone for the night.

The days turned out to be long and very boring on this outpost, but we always tried to keep ourselves busy. I never really knew where we were. We did have maps, but they were just of the immediate area. Now, where the area was in relationship to the rest of Vietnam, I never really knew. We spent a lot of time just fooling around or playing cards. I didn’t like playing cards. I guess one reason was I didn’t like losing money; I worked too hard for it. Sometimes it frightened me how hard I did work, to think I was only making about 25 cents an hour. I often wondered whether, without me there, they could have won the war. Did I make that much of a difference? Anyway, our minds were always roaming as we sat there looking over virgin mountains and valleys in the heart of nowhere.

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