Memory gap
I cannot write with more accuracy because I can't yet recall what happened after I broke loose from Pete's grasp and exited that bunker. Nor do I remember how soon thereafter I rejoined my unit (Alpha Battery, Hill 724, Hai Van Pass). I don't know if it was later that morning, a few days later, or several weeks thereafter.
I do recall the date of 28 July 1967, when I was on Hill 724, and the next day a truck accident occurred that injured 18 men from our battery. One of the Marines on that truck, Richard White, had asked me to go with him as he planned to visit our unit's admin office in Danang. I declined because I think/believe/feel that, because I'd just returned to my unit, I didn't want to return to Danang so soon again.
Nor do I recall most of my remaining 90 days in Vietnam. Only bits and pieces of confused memory come back once in awhile. Years later friend Bill Bucher told me that Marines at that Danang location stored their rifles by hanging them in the hooch's rafters, whereas on our hill they were by our side at all times. No wonder I couldn't locate a weapon.
For years, I had thought that it was Danang's napalm dump that blew. Recently, however, someone told me it was the AF ammo dump. Just this week, a Marine who was there (SSgt. G.W. Tomlin) during the 14 July 67 attack informed that both the ammo dump and the napalm dump got hit and detonated. Yipes! He added that "it cooked" for several hours, which makes me wonder: Where the hell was I?
I wasn't in the bunker — because Pete Duncan said I did not return after I ran out of the bunker and toward the figure who had been running toward the bunker. More questions to answer.
SSgt. Tomlin recalls, "On the evening of 14 July '67 as the barrage began, several mortars came into Danang (one dud was found on the tarmac near a C-130 the next morning), then the rockets. The small-arms fire was not continuous but sporadic bursts with tracers being launched in all directions. I recall seeing tracers bouncing around in the treetops near the Marine Ops Terminal/VMGR-152 compound, and ricochets striking several buildings nearby. That would have been southwest from your bunker, and on the west or the Marine side of the airfield."
I wonder if those initial mortar rounds were what woke me up? I was the first awoken (by muffled explosions from a distance), and reached over to nudge Pete saying, "Pete, think there's an airplane accident out there" (can recall those exact words to this day).
Then we heard another detonation and realized it was an attack on the base. At first I couldn't believe it as everyone else in the hooch was still asleep. Pete has a very loud voice for a man short in height, so between him and I we had everybody up in moments. We stood by the hatch shoving the hooch's other residents out, then we left.
It seemed like one of those Chinese fire drills we used to do as kids (also at reveille in Marine boot camp). When all were out of the hooch except for Pete and I, it became a "You go!" "No, you go first!" situation. Pete finally shoved me out the door — then passed me as we beat feet to the bunker.
My injury was minor: Shrapnel cut my top-left forehead, enough to cause minor bleeding. If that five-pound piece of glowing-red shrapnel had hit me it would've ripped my head off — unless, as I was going backward, part of it just grazed me?
