Cpl. Darren Walton, USMC Reconnaissance, Vietnam, Part 2

to become a recon marine. He also told us about the pivotal role of the point man on missions and how the jungle was also an enemy for the Americans. In a moment, you'll hear some of his most intense moments under fire. But we start the second half of Walton's story back in the jungle. As I read the heart pounding way that he described operating in the jungle.

In the chapter about the Jungle, as you explain what's happening, there's always a sentence, every couple of paragraphs saying in italics, where's the enemy? Where's the enemy? Because you're so close in they could be anywhere. And here's a paragraph that just really grabbed me. Every sound that wasn't yours stilled the heart. Was the clang in the distance of cow bell or the sound of enemy equipment bouncing about? Were the whistling sounds from the shutter of rustling leaves or

enemy bodies moving through the brush? Did that twig snap under the paw of an animal or the booted foot of an NVA soldier on patrol? So I mean these missions are sometimes taking multiple days, when every sound makes you wonder how close a threat could be. How do you deal with that psychologically?

more jungle, there's no more listening or being alert. You are unconscious and you're someplace else. So now it's time to get up in the morning. And it's not like when you get up here in the morning, you look forward to the day. You get up in the morning and you start thinking, I'm going to be on alert again. Am I gonna make it through the day? I made it through the day yesterday, and so all I'm trying to do is make it through the day so I could go back to sleep and forget about where I'm

at and what I'm doing. So you're on alert constantly. You can't ever let your guard down. You do hear things and see things that aren't there sometimes because you're

imagining that it could be the enemy. And as I became a short timer in the jungle as a point man, they actually had to take me out of the jungle eventually and put me on what you call an observation post because I would see, for instance, the bamboo or the elephant grass would be blowing in the wind, and one piece wouldn't be blowing, one piece would be just stable, and that wasn't right, so I'd shoot it. Now, once I shoot it, I give away my position. Usually when

I shot at something, there's something there. Well, it was a pick, so I knew that there was something there, but I overreacted and gave away a position. And blew the mission, and so I became super alert that I was shooting monkeys out of trees because I'd see something and I'd think right away it was the enemy. You would not want to be near me near the end of my turred duty, because anybody got my vision able to alert me and I would just start shooting right away.

So the only time that I felt peace is when I fell asleep at night the whole time.

is a good one. We're coming out of the jungle the forty six landed and and Dennis was a gunner on the forty six. I think that was an m He had an fifty and he was just trying to keep the enemy from closing in on us, and they were getting close to us, and I knew if I could make it to the helicopter that I was going to probably stay alive. And I was fast, I was a good runner, and my team was passing me and they never beat me before, and I was running like I could I could run on water that day. And

as I'm running is a good story. As I'm running towards the helicopter, Dennis's gun is just blazing and it's getting hot, and he's keeping the enemy at bay, and I see this one guy, one of our team members, running in the opposite direction. I go, what are you doing? You know you're crazy. It's get you know. He goes the guys down, Well, I got behind. I got behind Dennis in the helicopter. I didn't know it was Dennis at the time. There we had a guy down, or

two guys down. We had two guys down, and the guy who was going the opposite direction was the corman. He's out there trying to figure out who's who he could patch up and who he can shoot up and keep comfortable with the morphine. And he's putting guts back in and gluing this one guy up, trying to save his life, and another guy from the helicopter went out to help him. But to show you, as tough as I was, I wasn't that brave to go back out

and and help him. I was watching this whole thing and I'm going, this is amazing, and that these marines weren't going to leave those two guys out there under that kind of conditions. And Dennis was firing everything he could, and there was another guy who had an M sixty who was trying to help Dennis out. There was another

mission that we were being chased. We made points point contact and I had to didd him out, did him out, and we had smoke grenades out there and white phosphorus, and we were able to break contact for a short period of time, and I could hear them catching us, and they did catch us going down to these ravines out of the mountains, and they would be intertwined with

my team, and we were losing contact. And I was trying to keep up with the radio man wherever the radio man when I wanted to be, because that's the only way we have contact with the rear. And the enemy got in between us, so if I shot at an enemy soldier, I might miss him and hit one of my guys. And it was dark, and you see silhouettes, and everybody's just fallen and over each other, rolling down the ravine and getting tangled up in these roots and stuff.

And we made it to the I made it to the bottom of the ravine, and my team we we yeah, somehow we got together and we started running out to pass across the rice paddies, trying to make it to the other side to another jungle covering, and there was a bomb crater and the enemy had left let us be for a short period of time to get reinforcements, and we knew that we weren't going to be able to fight them off. And we were actually saying our goodbyes to one another because we could not figure out

how we're going to get out of this mess. And it was going to be like, are we going to go out like Alamo and just stand their ground or some of us are writing letters or notes, you know, to our loved ones. Some of them were crying. I figured out I was just going to put the clay moors out there and uh wait for them to come and overrun run us and kill us. And I was going to go out like Davy Crockett or something like that.

We made contact with a squadron that was coming out and they got had to turn back because it was too hot of a landing zone and they couldn't get the ladders to us, and they didn't want to lose any more helicopters or lose any men, and so they said for us to hang in there, that they'd figure

out something else. The helicopter went back and we really were pressed then, and out of nowhere, the Purple Foxes it's another squadron heard what was going on, and that was with Dennis Welch again, and they said, we here were you're you know, Papa smoke, so we can find you. We're coming in and our radios don't seem to be working, so uh, headquarters hasn't told us to abort the mission, and we're going to come in and do what we can for you. So they came in. Right before they

came in, there was someone to call OV. Ten broncos that came in, and there was a broncho pilot and an aerial observer who found us and coordinated the extraction with some Cobra helicopters. And then Dennis Welched the gunner again and his squadron, the Purple Foxes, maintained that helicopter and dropped the ladder one hundred foot ladder to us. They couldn't land and we had to climb up the ladder while they're being shot at. Now we're climbing up

the ladder. I'm looking at this helicopter and start to looked like Swiss cheese. And again I'm saying, let's get out of here, but we can't leave until last guy is secure. And we have these what they call Swiss saddles for repelling that have d rings, and we link up on the ladder and they pull us out there. Again, there's certain individuals who broke protocol and saved our lives unconditionally.

And basically late years later, I talk to the gunner, Dennis Welch, and he said, we weren't going to leave you guys out there to die. That's not he goes, we just don't give a shit. But the you know what, they're trying to tell us that we just turned the radio off. He goes, I remember that mission, and he saved our lives. That the helicopter pilot more than anybody had to keep that helicopter stable while he's taken rounds big balls. I don't know how they could do that.

That squadron, I can't tell you how much Recon loves them. And then the ov Ten pilots, the Bronco pilots finding us out there and coordinating the extraction. Now I'm going to be middle of July, I'm going to go meet some of these aerial observers and pilots down in San Diego. And they invited me because of the book. They want me to let the whole These guys are old now and I get to thank them because I've never got a chance to thank them for what they did for us.

So I'm meeting with a lot of these guys that were instrumental and save in my life and my team's life.

and counseling to social activities and help securing housing. The service at Brickfield's Hub will provide a welcoming environment and support tailored to the unique challenges faced by veterans transitioning to civilian life. According to the Argyle Community Trust, It's being supported by Plymouth based contractor Retain Limited, which has supported veterans with jobs within the group. Today's sixty seconds of Service is brought to you by Prevagen. Prevagen is

the number one pharmacist recommended memory support brand. You can find Prevagen and the Vitamin Aisle in stores everywhere.

his service a secret for more than forty years. But we pick up his story with the explanation of how Dennis Welch saving his life on those extraction missions in Vietnam hit really close to home. A few decades later, Dennis.

and his girlfriend was the same class. And I went to school with his girlfriend since junior high school or even earlier in Nevado, and eventually he married her. Is a high school sweetheart, and they got married right after he came home from Vietnam. I would go on a mission, and you know, we'd get it. We'd get in the chopper in the purple Foxes would be our date, insert us and extract us. And I'd be sitting there in the helicopter and he'd be sitting there behind his gun

for you know, many missions we were together. So at a high school reunion years years later, I go, Dennis, where you've been? He goes, I was in the Marine Corps. I go where were you? And he goes, I was at Danang. He goes a marble mountain. I go, what were you? He goes, I was a gunner. He goes, really, what year? And he goes, well, nineteen seventy. I go I was there. He goes, who are you with? And I said first recon And he told me his call

signed and I said, this is my call sign. He goes, well, our squadron was assigned to your team to insert and extracts you guys. And I go, well, we must have been on the same helicopter together, and he goes, yeah, we had to be. He goes, how can he didn't say hi to me? And I go, Dennis, how would I recognize you? I wasn't thinking about an old high school buddy. They go, you could have said hi to me. I'm sitting right next to you. He goes, you're all

painting it up. How could I recognize you? So we were on these missions together and we've become it's kind of nice because when you for many, many years, Greg, I tell you, there's nobody I could talk to about what I've been through. When I ran into Dennis Welsh, he was on those missions the same as I was. I was on the ground and he was in the air.

And we laughed today because what he saw was a completely different war than what I saw, even though it was the same war, because when you're down low, I don't have the perspective of he has. He goes now that one mission I was telling you about where we were in the bomb crater, I put in the report that there's maybe twenty thirty guys who were going to overrun us, and Dennis said, no, there was over one hundred guys from where they were looking at that were

surrounding us. That we weren't getting out of there alive. And so he had a different way of looking at things. And so Dennis and I have done some talks about this, you know, locally, and so we've been invited to some talks. Actually our last they did a film with Dennis and I at George Lucas's studio before they tore it down, and so we're the last ones to be filmed at George Lucas's private studio.

calm and collective. They couldn't put that as shipping and pissing my pants because I couldn't get that, you know, round to go off, and I got two guys that I killed one and the other guy had his barrel pointed at me, and I knew I was going to get killed and somehow hitting and you know, I just beat the ship out of that rifle and I got a round off and killed him too. But the way they wrote it up the story was not the way.

That wasn't reality. They had to make it look like I was a real marine, and I did panic and I was screaming and yelling. That said and done. I never walked point again with an sixteen after that, and there had to be a better way because I couldn't take the chance of jamming up on me again. But that did happen.

This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is US Marine Corps veteran Darren Walton, who often served as point man on a reconnaissance team. In this final portion of our conversation, Walton reflects on the forty plus years that he kept his military service quiet and what it means to him to be able to talk about it now. But we continue now with a

story about unlikely allies in two ways. It's about US service members determined to help kids at a Vietnamese orphanage and how the Marines got help from the last people they expected it from.

they were trying to keep these kids healthy somehow. They they'd come into our compound occasionally and we'd give them chocolate bars and they you know, make sure our hooches were cleaned, and they waited for us because we'd played baseball with them and play catch with them, and they liked that, and uh uh we treated them really well and we got we got more out of having them around, uh than anybody else. And uh, this is what made me proud of the Americans. You know that I was

with my little team of six guys. We did another team and we would get baseball gloves from the exchange or from home. They'd sent us some baseball gloves and we'd played catch with them and give them chewing gum and and they seemed to really enjoy a game. But

they they were struggling. And so a group of us decided what if we went up to command and talk to the chaplain or talk to some of the you know, kernels to help the orphanage ot And basically what we got was a run around saying we were fighting a war. We can't worry about Buddhist kids. Uh, we have enough to worry about and uh uh we got a war to fight. So I wrote home saying can you send me a care package? And I need food, medicine and

clothing for these kids and my town in Nevado. It was right in the middle of when we were having protests and and and there's a lot of chaos back in the sixties with the Black Panthers and protests and riots. There are a lot of riots going on, and anti war riots and Kent State where college kids were getting shot at and killed, and so them that's weren't well received. And so and mostly my neighborhood. They were going to Berkeley and San Francisco State and they were the protesters,

and I was someone who they resented. Now, even though we grew up as kids, I was the enemy to them because I was on board to protest the war at the time. So I was asking the city council, who I was friends with, and I said, can Nevado help out? And they got we got a city to run. We can't help you out there. And you know, I'd like to, but you know, we got a city to run.

So I went to the church. My mom was a Catholic, and I grew up with the Catholic religion for a while, but she married a Mormon and got excommunicated for marrying a Mormon, and so but I went to the church and they weren't interested I went to the Mormon church and they said, you know, we should give to our own before we give, you know, to Buddhists. Let the Buddhists take care of the Buddhist And so I went to my mom and wrote her a letter saying, you know,

can the neighborhood help us out? And she wrote back saying, you know they hate you for what you're doing. They're protesting that people's park over in Berkeley and it's getting real nasty, and the anti war protesters are all your friends now and they won't help you out. I said, well, just ask them, you know. So my mom put the

word out without much success. I thought that Darren is asking for help for the children for the orphanage, and he needs food, medicine, clothing, And a short period of time after that, truckload of food, medicine and clothing came into my compound to give to the orphans. Guys, the people who hated me, who are protesting the war, who were protesting me, were the ones that pulled through for me because of the children. They were willing to give.

And that's what Americans kind of do. We're always we're a conflict. We're kind of a dysfunctional family. But if you give it a chance, I think we all pulled together for a cause. And if it's a cause that's a moral cause and a good cause, Americans will pull through. I think I believe that today, even the people who did not like me were never going to be my friends again were the ones who came through for me.

And that was very humbling. And the rest of my team also got care packages for the village, for the orphanage, I should say, and yeah, it was very humbling.

be known. So, now that it's been about a dozen years since you've felt comfortable telling your story, what does it meant to you to be able to share that and not keep that a secret anymore?

I saw atrocities, but I saw also good things that happened, Like we just talked about with the children, and I said, the Marines I was with would do anything to help the village and save a villagers life unconditionally without thinking about it. And they would never do anything that was like the stories that we were told. So the media got hold of the America and when we came home

combat vets. They raped women, burned villages, killed babies. And if the protesters and the hippies and the people who I was involved with, and if I was a little bit more how should I put it more brave as instead of being a kind of a chicken shit and

keeping my mouth shut, and I stood my ground. I think the American public, if they would have given these veterans a chance and listened to them instead of condemning them, they would find that most of these soldiers, most of them were more against war than they were and if you heard their stories, you would find that they didn't have a story like these guys coming home did, and why war. If we all worked together, maybe we could do something more peacefully. And it just didn't happen when

I came home. And what I did is I grew with beard long hair, lived in a you and smoked dope and became a hippie and found out if I kept my mouth shut, I get late, you know, I go to parties and stuff, and so it got easy. And like most combat vets coming home, they've been married and divorced at least once. And that was me. I was in turmoil for a long time. So I just found that if I just forgot the war in which I did, I let the war go, that life would

be good. And it was pretty good. And I met another girl later on in my life and we married, and her name is Gina was from the Midwest from Michigan. She's what they call a Yupur from the Upper Peninsula. And as matter of fact, I met, I go, where are you from? I go, You're not like from any place. You know. She's a hard worker, she's smart, she's independent. You know. She didn't condemn me. And she told me stories about Vietnam vets, how much she loved them, and

I go, what are you talking about. She goes, in my little town called Iron River, they honored the bets they had to pray. I never heard of such a thing. And so I kind of opened up to her a little bit, and over a period of time, she thought maybe I had some benefits from the VA. But I didn't have a DD two fourteen, and I got rid of everything, all my records, and I didn't know how to go about going to the VA because the first

thing they ask is where's your DD two fourteen. So she and some of my friends behind my back, with using my ID, got my records and I came home one night from work and she's on the couch and she's saying to me. I'm looking at her. She looks very angry at me. She goes, Darren, I thought you had an open relationship with me, and you told me everything about you. You're good, your bad times, you've been arrested, times, you've gotten in trouble. You know your relationship. You know,

you were supposed to be honest with me. How come you never told me about this? I go about what? And she threw in some papers in my face and I opened up the papers and in there was my Uh. They got all my records. They released them to my wife of every mission I was ever on and they're not pretty when you read them. And she goes, who'd I marry? You didn't tell me you did this kind of stuff? She says, how come you couldn't tell me

to talk to me? And and basically I was afraid to tell her that I was a ranger because of my past. And I didn't mind telling her I was a marine. That I never told her who I was and what I did. And she was pretty angry with me, and uh, but we overcome that. And uh, and that's something that I would say to all that's you know, just be upfront and honest, and it's not gonna it's not gonna hurt, it's gonna heal to you know, to what the people you love, let them know who you are.

foreign land to help. What a warrior does is help people who can't help themselves, and they put themselves in a position to help the ones that need help. Vietnam, I started thinking in the jungle, we've been here for how many years? You know? I mean, this war is going on for way too long. And I go with the army, the military. We have the power, in the strength that we have, the equipment we have, and we're not winning this war. And what are these guys dying for?

Which you know they're getting killed, and how do you go back and tell their parents, their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters what they died for. I didn't have an answer, and I was getting a little bit angry about the war and that I didn't believe for a long time, and I still have a hard time believing that it's a just war. I didn't think when I came home that maybe I was wrong about the war. And a lot of veterans today still think it was a just war, in the right war, and that we

won the war. I was. I had my doubts recently at luncheon because of this book. I was doing a book signing and this Vietnamese older woman comes up to me and she goes, Darren, I want you to know something. I'm not the only one. But we love America. We loved the American soldier. We loved the American Vietnam soldier. She goes, I have a family, my children are going to college. I have freedom. She goes, if it wasn't for the Americans come to my country, I wouldn't be

here in America to live the life I am. And she goes, I'm not the only one. And she goes on. She says, there's thousands of us that you help us become free in our country. I never have what I have here today. She goes. I have a job, I have an education, I have a family. She goes, I love the flag. I was stunned. She goes. When I go back to Vietnam to visit my family and they consider themselves of Vietnamese, I tell them I'm not Vietnamese anymore.

I'm American. This happened just recently. I needed to hear this. You know. I never heard of such a thing in my life. Made me feel like maybe there was something that came out of this war that was positive. Not only that she spends her time and all her energy and volunteering for this organization that flies veterans to Washington, d C.

her well, we saved her American savior. And I never look at I don't appreciate America like she does, and what she has she'd never have in her own country.

For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles