They met on a hill in a far corner of Vietnam.
Especially on Veterans Day, David “Randy” Norton of Charlotte, North Carolina and Larry McCartney of Black Mountain, N.C., remember that time in early 1968 at Khe Sanh, the Vietnam War’s longest and bloodiest battle.
Faces of other Marines who survived the horrors of Hill 861 Alpha stand out in their minds, along with faces of those who, like Norton’s best friend, didn’t make it off the hill alive.
At a 2007 reunion of Khe Sanh veterans, Norton and McCartney crossed paths again and became friends.
Both are mentioned in a new book that examines the battle from the viewpoint of those who did the actual fighting. The author, former foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize finalist Gregg Jones, interviewed nearly 90 Khe Sanh veterans, including Norton and McCartney.
A cloud of controversy still hangs over a battle where both sides claimed victory. But many Khe Sanh survivors, like veterans of other wars, look beyond military and political arguments. They look out for each other.
“Over the years, we’ve become a close group,” said Norton, 66. “Veterans Day really is a personal day. I guess, for me, it’s a time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. It’s almost like there’s an obligation to respect their memory.”
Jones’ book, “Last Stand at Khe Sanh,” revisits a story that once gripped the world’s attention. For 77 days, a North Vietnamese Army force of 20,000 besieged an outnumbered U.S. combat base in the northernmost province of South Vietnam near near the Laotian border.
Shells rained down daily on the base and surrounding hills held by the Marines. It turned into a deadly zone not only for those stuck there, but for aircraft bringing in food, water and ammunition. Flying out with the wounded was just as dangerous.
For his book, Jones focused on the four months from January through April 1968, when the siege was broken. He devotes a full chapter to the Feb. 5 assault on Hill 861 Alpha, where Norton lost his best friend, Joe Molettiere of South Philadelphia.
“You would have been hard-pressed to find two guys with more different backgrounds and temperaments, but Dave loved Joe to his core, and his sense of loss over Joe’s death moved me deeply,” Jones said. “Dave helped bring Joe alive for me as I wrote the story of the Feb. 5, 1968, assault on 861 Alpha.”
In the Khe Sanh book, Jones said he wanted to “capture the experience for audiences today. It’s a universal experience of bravery, fear and camaraderie. I wanted people to understand the human experience of war.”
Young soldiers
Norton and McCartney went to war as teenagers.
The full story of what happened to him on the hill in Vietnam is one Norton hasn’t told his two children. He’s given them copies of Jones’ book to read, if they want to.
In his senior year at South Mecklenburg High School, Norton joined the Marine Corps with two friends.
“It was something we felt we needed to do,” he said. “And we did.”
On June 3, 1966, he graduated in a ceremony held at Ovens Auditorium. A year later, he arrived in Vietnam, a rifleman with First Platoon, Echo Company, 26th Marines, based out of a place called Phu Bai.
His war experience had begun. Norton got to know his fellow Marines, including Martin Rimson from Detroit who liked to sing Motown soul music. But Norton became especially close to the 18-year-old Molettiere, who talked a lot about the baby his wife was expecting.
In January 1968, Norton returned to Phu Bai after a week of R&R in Bangkok to find that his company had been transferred. He caught up with Molettiere and his other friends in the field outside Khe Sanh Combat Base.
Echo Company had the usual duty at first – going on patrols and ambushes. But an order came down to fortify one of several hills surrounding the combat base.
Hill 861
Jungle and razor-sharp elephant grass covered Hill 861 Alpha, elevation 2,800 feet. The Marines climbed at night.
“It was absolutely brutal,” Norton said. “We were hacking our way up, and I’ve never been so tired in all my life.”
The hilltop became their world – a swirl of hot days, cool nights and mornings wrapped in heavy fog and mist.
All day, the Marines dug trenches in the red clay and filled sandbags. At night, they pulled guard duty or tried to sleep.
Often, supplies of C-rations and water ran low.
For two weeks, the North Vietnamese left the Americans alone. Then, in the predawn of Feb. 5, they hit – and hit hard.
The hill erupted in explosions and gunfire.
Norton could see rifle flashes split the darkness as North Vietnamese soldiers blasted away. At one point, he and Molettiere recognized the voice of Rimson calling for help. They ran to him and saw that a mortar had almost blown off one of his legs.
As they helped the young Marine, a mortar round exploded nearby. Molettiere was killed and Norton knocked unconscious. When he came to, he couldn’t feel his right arm. His M-16 rifle was shattered, so he held onto a knife with his good hand for protection and crawled into the grass.
By sunup, the fight had ended. Norton was loaded aboard a helicopter along with the other wounded, including Rimson. But the Marine from Detroit died before the chopper touched down at Khe Sanh Combat Base.
A watershed moment
Even then, Norton knew Khe Sanh was a watershed moment in his life. He spent 1 1/2 years in hospitals and had many reconstructive surgeries, and his arm eventually was OK. He returned to Charlotte and attended Central Piedmont Community College for two years. People knew he was an ex-Marine, and he sensed resentment from some instructors. But that didn’t matter. He had support from family and friends.
Norton married in 1970. He and his wife have a son, daughter and four grandchildren.
About two years ago, while exploring the Internet, he learned about a veterans group combing cemeteries for unmarked graves of people who’d served in the military. One grave they found using a list of war casualties belonged to Norton’s Detroit friend, Rimson, who was killed at Khe Sanh. The cemetery rock identified him as No. 27.
Norton was angry and contacted the veterans group, offering to pay for a marker. But he learned the group was already in touch with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs about getting a free marker for the grave.
Meanwhile, Norton met up with McCartney again at a reunion of the Khe Sanh Veterans Association in Washington, D.C.
McCartney, 65, spent 30 years in the Marine Corps, including two tours in Vietnam and tours in the Persian Gulf, Haiti and Bosnia. He saw some bad things but said “there was nothing like Khe Sanh. Absolutely nothing.”
Yet he feels the experience helped him. On Hill 861 Alpha, fellow Marines “covered my back and taught me what I needed to do to grow up,” McCartney said. “They taught me to survive – and in a very short period. I matured on the hill.”
Helping veterans
McCartney is concerned about veterans, helping them navigate bureaucracy at the VA when they’re seeking mental health counseling, regular health services or other benefits.
He said the Khe Sanh association is providing scholarships and financial support for veterans’ children and grandchildren.
Recently, McCartney replaced a damaged headstone of a Khe Sanh veteran buried in a Philadelphia cemetery. He’d survived Hill 861 Alpha only to die in another battle.
In June, McCartney made the trip of a lifetime. He returned to Khe Sanh, where war tourism now pumps cash into the local economy. Instead of a hole in the ground, he spent the night in an air-conditioned hotel.
Then he went to the hill and walked to the top.
“It was a step back in time,” McCartney said. “A flood of memories came back, mostly about the people who helped me stay alive. And memories of the people we lost.”
©2014 The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)
No comments:
Post a Comment