Chapter 30

Lima Hill

As the 6-by entered the perimeter, all six of its tires spun as it labored to climb the muddy road, but finally arrived at our destination, the supply area just inside their perimeter. I jumped off the truck and sank down in the mud. I walked across the road and reported into the company command post where I met the company clerks.

After the formalities were finished, I was introduced to the company commander. Captain John W. Ripley had the air of command, but upon meeting him, he was a friendly guy, and I could tell he cared for his troops. He was from Virginia and had started as an enlisted Marine in 1957. Shortly, he received an appointment to Annapolis where he graduated in 1962. After graduation, he had attended ranger school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He had assumed command of Lima Company only several days before and arrived on the hill on January 8. Ripley was neat and clean and squared away in spite of the living conditions. When he arrived, he noticed his troops were living in filth and mud. His first mission was to get his men out of the terrible living conditions. He was unlike any of the Marine officers I had encountered up until then. His staff showed him a great deal of respect.

Captain Ripley welcomed me to the hill and invited me to have a meal at the newly constructed company mess, a camouflage plastic tarp on a wooden frame near the command bunker. One of the clerks told me that the cook had just come out three days prior. The captain had called to the rear and had his cook and two burners sent out to the hill to provide hot chow to supplement the C rations. The cook heated water and made hot coffee He also heated water for shaving. It did wonders for the morale, and soon he was making sheet cakes and soup.

Inside the mess were a couple of burners with large pots over the gas burners. One pot held hot water and the other held chicken noodle soup. There were also pots of hot coffee. I was invited to help myself to the soup and coffee. I filled my canteen cup with chicken noodle soup and sat down and drank the hot broth leaving the noodles in the cup. I refilled several times until I had a cup full of noodles, which I ate with a spoon. I then had a canteen cup full of hot coffee. I was advised that I could come for a hot meal anytime. After they were sure that I had eaten my fill, I returned to the command post where I was informed that I was assigned to Third Platoon. I was directed across the mud to the far southwest end on the other side of the hilltop where the Third Platoon command bunker was located.

To get to Third Platoon required that I slog through knee-deep mud. It was thick and sticky, making it difficult to walk through. After about five minutes, I was able to leave the mud and find the bunker located a third of the way down the hillside. I walked down to the bunker and requested permission to enter.

Inside I met HM2 John Kelsey. He was Lima Company’s senior corpsman and had been covering the night ambushes for Third Platoon until a replacement arrived. He introduced me to Platoon Commander Lieutenant Hansel Osborne. Lieutenant Osborne was a mustang (a Marine who before becoming an officer had worked his way up through the enlisted ranks, usually a battlefield promotion). He welcomed me and introduced me to his radiomen Ron Hebert (which he pronounced “A-bear” but everyone called him “Hee-bert”) and Richard Banks.

When joining a new unit, one of the first questions asked is “Where you from?” Banks was from the city of Redding in Shasta County. He was delighted to have another Northern California boy in the outfit. Back home, Banks was a photographer and spelunker. While in high school, he had helped to map the Lake Shasta Caverns . After high school, he was attending Shasta Junior College when he was drafted and ended up as a Marine. When he got orders to Vietnam, his hometown paper, the Record Searchlight, provided him with a 35 mm camera and kept him supplied with film. He took pictures and sent the film back to the paper where they were published.

Soon after I arrived, incoming mortars coming off the Razorback ridge hit to the north end of the hill near where I had been when I first arrived. The tanks and mortars on our hill opened up on a cave on the side of the Razorback. After the shooting stopped, I heard that a Marine from the tank crew was killed.

After everything settled down, I was assigned a bunker, which I shared with the other corpsman, HM3 Denver Gray, who was out on patrol. Since we would be working opposite each other, only one of us would be occupying the bunker except for between patrols and ambushes. The bunker was a hole in the side of the hill with a sandbagged roof. Inside was dugout deep enough to stand. A raised area had been carved out, and an air mattress and blanket provided the only bed. There was a wooden ammunition box setting on its end serving as a crude table. On the table was a short candle in a C ration can. I tossed my gear in the corner next to Gray’s.