Free 15 Months in SOG by Thom Nicholson

airfield.
    Farther down the beach to the south was the headquarters of Company C, 5th Special Forces, which commanded all the regular Special Forces camps located in the northern region of I Corps. Next door to C Company was the 3d Marine Air Base, which supported the Marine units working in the northern provinces. Next was the navy field hospital, an oil tank farm, and a small POW compound. Across the road was the massive junkyard I mentioned earlier. It was filled to overflowing with destroyed tanks, trucks, jeeps, armored personnel carriers (APCs), Marine amphibious tractors (amtracs) which looked like an army’s APC on steroids, and the rest of the refuse of the war. The junkyard was a treasure chest of spare parts and “goodies” to those of us with the inclination to deal with its keepers. Fresh serial numbers for our jeeps, rebuilt carburetors, tires, generators, firing pins for rifles, desks, typewriters, the list of goodies to be found there was endless. The soldiers who were assigned to the junkyard had one of the most profitable assignments in all of South Vietnam, since we paid whatever was asked for the things they sold.
    The reason was simple. In the midst of plenty, relative to supplies to prosecute the war, there was always something we were short of. Once we asked for five hundred sets of fatigues for the supply shed. We got ten thousand sets delivered, yet a simple carburetor for an old M-35 jeep was not to be found, except at the junkyard. The lucky soldiers assigned to man the junkyards grew rich, I’m certain. Cash, enemy souvenirs, a sister’s honor, whatever they wanted, they got, or wewalked, and a good SF trooper never walked anywhere if he could ride.
    Just to the south of our compound was the forbidding upthrust of rock called Marble Mountain. Beyond the rocky barrier of Marble Mountain was the 3d Marine Amtrac Battalion and the village of Xom Som Tui, from where the NVA sappers had launched the attack on us in August. From our back fence, we could see the despised cluster of grass huts, and many a scheme to repay the villains responsible was hatched and reluctantly discarded over cool beers at the club.
    Actually, those poor villagers would certainly have had their throats slit if they had informed us of their unwanted guests. Of course, even that knowledge didn’t temper our hatred for the village and those unfortunate people caught between the two warring parties, both uninvited, in their land.
    Beyond the village and the Marine base lay only swamp, rice paddies, heavy jungle, and the South Vietnamese fighting against us, or Viet Cong, who we usually called Charlie, or VC, if not something worse. Lately, we were seeing more and more North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regular troops, hiding up in the mountains that defined the rest of northern South Vietnam; the Tet offensive of January 1968 had resulted in the death of most of the VC in I Corps and elsewhere in South Vietnam.
    The Marines had a small defensive outpost located at an old French fort right at the base of the high ground to the far west end of the valley. They had the unenviable assignment of patrolling the exits from the west, which was “Charlie Land,” and of providing early warning of incursion into the local Da Nang AO (area of operations). The Marines knew their business, as was proven by the high number of KIAs they counted in the hunt for our attackers in the fall. Except for the sad truth that we army types were handsome dudes and the Marines were all ugly grunts, happier in the dirt and weeds than in civilization, you couldn’t have told us apart.
    In every war, one is going to meet a number of unforgettable characters. Some brave, some cowardly, strong or weak, smart or dumb, sane or crazy. The list of descriptors would fill a page. I met my share of them. One of the most amusing I met was Sgt. Jose O’Connor.
    One of my best recon team leaders, Sergeant O’Connor was a half-Mexican, half-Irish, blue-eyed, tanned,