“I believed at the time, in the domino effect, that if Vietnam fell, the rest of Southeast Asia would fall to Communism. …Who was I, as a young boy, to disagree with the government? Especially the U.S. Government.”
“I was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. My first assignment was with H&S company, but then I was sent to Mike 3/7. I was a radio operator.”
Corporal Jeff Butch
“We took a convoy to L.Z. Baldy, which is about twenty-six miles south of Da Nang. The realization set in at that point that this is war. This isn’t play. This isn’t a practice game. This is the real thing because we had .50 caliber machine guns on top of trucks, flak jackets, and our weapons were locked and loaded. You knew it was the real thing. Driving down the road, going to L.Z. Baldy, you saw different things. You saw different units. You heard helicopters. You heard airstrikes. You knew it was real at that point. It was kind of scary at first because you thought, “Oh my God. What did I get myself into?” On the other hand, you thought, “I’ve been trained to do this. This is the real thing. Now, I’ve got to perform.”
“I was in an operation up in the Que Son Mountains, and we got mortared. That as my first experience with actual combat. Four Marines got killed. …That was a scary experience. That was the first time I saw death and actual combat, and I think it scared me mentally, because that I wasn’t prepared for. You can’t prepare anybody for it.”
“In combat, you never worry about tomorrow. Because, tomorrow may never come.”
“The last 45 days you call yourself a short timer. We even carried around short timer sticks, As the time goes down, the stick gets smaller and smaller until you’re holding a toothpick. And they you get nervous, because there are new guys in the unit that you may be in charge of and who may get you killed because of something stupid they’re doing. And everybody was one of them. I was one of them.”
Excerpts from a 1995 conversation with Veteran Jeff Butch, as interviewed by Ken Miller.