The New Lieutenant

By David Beakey

He arrived at Khe Sanh raring to go. Of course he had a 4 year college degree and Officer Training School under his belt, but he looked pretty young. We distrusted all the 2^nd Lieutenants. They were green, just out of Quantico, and they wanted to lead marines, kill the enemy and make rank. Hardly any of them were smart enough to listen to the Gunnery Sergeants and the Staff Sergeants, who had years of experience and of course they never asked the infantry squad leaders for advice. Some of us had been in country for 10 months and had a lot of suggestions that may have helped, if only we were asked.

We had relieved the 26^th Marines, who had withstood the siege at Khe Sanh. We cleared the mountains and Route 9 on Operation Pegasus and now we took over the base camp while those brave men went somewhere else, hopefully to recover from the unsuccessful siege. The NVA had dug trenches to within 50 meters of the barbed wire. They had fired artillery shells from as close as Hill 881 and as far away as Laos. They had probed the perimeter nightly. But they couldn’t overrun Khe Sanh as they had Dien Bien Phu. We were still taking a lot of artillery rounds daily, some sniper fire, and it was still so hot that the C 130’s wouldn’t land on the airstrip which was pockmarked with holes from exploding bombs. There were also some wrecked planes on the airstrip, left there where they had been shot to pieces. So they dropped supplies to us by helicopter.

The Lieutenant had been at Khe Sanh about one week. We were saddling up to go out on patrol. This patrol had a specific goal. There had been some enemy activity about 1 ½ kilometers from the base camp at a bunker compound that the NVA had constructed during the original siege. We were ordered to go check it out. We walked out of the base camp cautiously, there were land mines everywhere. We neared the area where some recon marines had seen NVA in the old bunkers. The Lieutenant was eager to catch and kill some bad guys. He kept walking further and further in front of us. He thought he was John Wayne. He yelled, “Come on men, assault the position!” He was far ahead of us now. We lost sight of him. There were some NVA in the area. We had a brief firefight and then they fled. We looked around for the new Lieutenant. He was nowhere to be seen. We started a thorough search. Eventually we found him. He was in a bunker, dead. His weapon, gear, boots and most of his clothes were gone. He had advanced so far ahead of us, his adrenaline pumping, his mind full of theoretical training, that they had just snatched him and killed him quickly. I never even learned his name.