Khe Sanh Veterans Association Inc.
Red Clay
Newsletter of the Veterans who served at Khe Sanh
Combat Base,
Hill 950, Hill 881, Hill 861, Hill 861-A, Hill 558
Lang-Vei and Surrounding Area
Issue 46 Spring Summer 2000
A Sprinkling of Your Poetry
Home
In This Issue
Notes From The Editor and Board Health Matters
Reunion
Short Rounds Memoirs Poetry
In Memoriam
Poems In This Section
Why Are We here-Reunion
'99 Combat Buddy
Cpl. Manuel Pina Babbitt - May 5 1999
The Threshold of Hell Black and Yellow Dog
Crash of a Pilot Section
Eight: The Babbling of Bug-Out Billy
Why did we come and why are we here?
It is a question that we all may hear.
We came by train, plane and car
What causes us to travel so far?
It's not just to meet and remember when
But more to reflect on how it was then.
We look at the pictures - and stories we tell
And we all remember our time in hell.
We look at each other as we grow old
And reminisce about how we were so bold.
Just to live in that dirt grit and grime
How did we do it all the time.
So long ago, but the memories vividly clear
It seems that I will never forget the fear.
The shells a flyin' with no place to hide.
One reason we are here is the pride.
Many were wounded and their brave blood spills.
We are here now with a monument built
I'll tell you why we come back each year
It's to honor those brave souls no longer here.
So pause and reflect and let out a sigh
REMEMBER them……..Semper Fi
Author Unknown
Combat Buddy
A "'Combat Buddy?' is what you are
Our Friendship was Forged during War
I watched your back and you watched mine
In battle each day with our lives on the line
A Trust developed that only we knew
You're my Combat Buddy from a long time ago
Someday soon, we'll meet again
My Combat Buddy, My Faithful Friend
Lloyd E "Snake" Arender
Dedicated to the
Marines and Corpsman of Kilo Company 3rd
Battalion 26th Marine Regiment
Corporal Manuel Pina Babbitt - May 5 1999
By Charles Patterson
He suffered their cage
With the dignity of vigil,
And graced them with his forgiveness
In the dying language
that will never speak
And in return,
They strapped him down
The only living thing within
Their Warm green room.
A green untinted by sunlight.
As fecund as the fifteen greens
Of Vietnam.
While he listened
For that last beat
of his heart,
Justice Scurried off
Leaving behind
A broken Scale and bloody sword
Then death crept in the opened door,
And took him
With the gentleness
Of a pickpocket's caress.
For those in the hushed semicircle
It was not what they thought
It would be. No one saw justice,
No one found satisfaction:
No sanctuary, no salvation.
Just a good man dead,
A long drive home,
And a cold wet night outside.
Ed's note:
Chuck Patterson was Manny's attorney who witnessed his execution, Two nights
before his death, Manny called and asked that I apologize to the brothers for
putting a dark cloud over the brotherhood. Ernie
They climbed to fight their way to fame
Upon a hill that bore no name,
And won the though and deadly game,
Though many had died to stake the claim,
Old Lucifer himself was there
Amidst the death and much despair
To fan the smoke and caustic air,
This place to hell would compare
Evacuation choppers soared
Above the guns that loudly roared
So close to steel and lead that poured
From weapons of that VC hoard.
The tired Marines dug in and stayed
To hold that hill against the raid,
Heroic roles they often played
The price in lives was highly paid.
The Devil grinned because he knew
His share for hell would be a few
He waited as the battle grew
Then watched it die and start anew.
A chaplain came upon the scene
And knelt beside a still Marine
Who looked no more than seventeen?
The youngest one he'd ever seen.
The padre saw the bitter light,
Blessed countless souls and gave last rites.
He followed those who scaled the heights,
Barring Satan from the tragic sites.
Some say Marines serve time in hell
While still on earth their legends tell
And the Devil knew it all too well
So he tried recruiting when they fell.
But the fearless Padre held his ground
And whipped the Devil round for round
Atop that shell-pocked bloody ground,
And salvaged every soul he found.
When tales are told within the Corps
They'll talk about the Padre's chore,
And how the Devil ran on before
Through the threshold of hell
…and close the door
Harry A. Koch
My ass was cold and wet the rest of me I warm as I sit on the just thawed mud bank of the Potomac, just south of the Great Falls, just north of Chain Bridge, after a mid-winter heat wave, watching billions of gallons of dirt brown water flowing over, under and through at the Chesapeake then on to the Atlantic unstoppable.
Garbage an debris, a sea of shit, floats by cradled as if it belonged, not wrenched from the surrounding forest, not dragged unwillingly from some farmer's field or barn, or swept from a country road built on the flood plain: an uprooted sycamore tree, a section of wooded fence painted green, a bloated black and yellow dog. Is it still a dog?
I sit and watch intensely, mentally noting everything that passes, without grasping, only wondering what action to take if a human body floats by out of reach, beyond redemption, cradled, as if it belonged, belly down and bloated like the black and yellow dog. Is it still human? Should I interfere with the river?
Up and down the Missouri, the Arkansas and the Des Moines and every tributary in between, all draining into the Mississippi, I've roamed making maps of wetlands, sucked dry by stupidity, and-not once have I ever seen a river that had the same color, the same level, the same temperature, the same smell, the same taste from moment to the next.
All bodies flow like rivers, none are the same from moment to moment. The perception of permanence is an illusion empty. A sucking chest wound on a dying nineteen year old gurgles like Goose Greek after a spring rain before his last breath is taken through the wrong fucking hole. All illusions of permanence vanish, when the last red bubble, sopped in blood, pops.
The river gives birth to all things and the river takes them away, an eternal cycle of creation and destruction. In a season of consonance my son was conceived on the banks of the Archafalaya River wetland pregnant with life. In a season of chaos I hunted down and terminated life on the banks of the Rao Quan.
I dumped their bodies into the river that drains the eastern slopes of the Annamites just shy of 17 degrees north latitude, light years from home, flows south then east to the Mien Giang, which turns slightly north of east just before depositing my sins into the South China Sea at Cua Viet. Waters from the South China Sea and the Atlantic must mix somewhere.
I trust the river to do it's job as it's done since before birth, without interference, without consulting me ignoring my dreams of glory and my fears of suffering which are swept away in the current with the bloated black and yellow dog and merge somewhere with the blood red waters of the Rao Quan washed clean now by thirty summers of torrential rain.
Joe Green
Now they are reconstructing it,
Putting the fine sticks of fate together
As if they were tinker toys.
Man has never come to terms
With accident, his own birth;
Or it's antithesis
Surprised at miracles, he lives,
Thinking that Order,
Explains everything;
And that reason is why
Men fly into trees,
Or sink at sea. Or die of disease.
It is difficult to think nothing.
We grow up thinking our way
Out of jungles, and often survive
To reinforce thinking Something.
And so, while the crews work
Cleaning the site, I fly
Among fog-caressed valleys,
Forging the wild rivers of faith;
Knowing the chances are
Reasonably on my side.
If I should die in fight today
By some malfunctioning of skies
Will there be peace before I cease to be?
Or shall I terror stricken, cling to fear
And wait until this tumbling craft
Defines my destiny.
I can but contemplate how I'll respond
And I'll define that now,
Because I've treated death before:
In truth I do believe that in a tumbling craft,
I'd try to analyze its path
And chart its twisting course.
When fury warned
I'd soar as angels have for centuries past
Then seek a lofty plain and cling to it
Until I'd journeyed Home
Jim Dykes
1013 Kitsap St.
Port orchard, WA 9836
Section Eight: The Babbling of Bug-Out Billy
I used to deem and dream myself
A beam-lean mustached warrior,
Shining in the armor of god sped glory.
Wielding the flamethrower of the just cause,
Screaming Geronimo and parachuting:
A pragmatic Prometheus bringing
Frightful firepower to a shrinking
Enemy, serenaded by a blatant brass band
Then I woke to the haunting hounding human sea.
The raddled rattle of trumpet going to battle
Infinitesimal cotton-padded infiltration,
Frostbitten feet in a festering foxhole.
I could not bear or bring myself to live like that.
In Memoriam
Jim Epps
July 2, 1944 - January 18, 2000