Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Darren Walton. He's a US Marine Corps
Speaker 1: veteran of the Vietnam War, during which he was involved
Speaker 1: in recon missions, often serving as the point man. He
Speaker 1: is also the author of D D MAO, a true
Speaker 1: story about tigers, rock, apes, the Jungle and War. And
Speaker 1: mister Walton, thanks so much for being with us.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Where were you born and raised?
Speaker 3: Sir?
Speaker 4: I was born in San Francisco and pretty much raised
Speaker 4: across the Golden Gate Bridge north of San Francisco in
Speaker 4: a county called Marin County, which was a pretty rural
Speaker 4: at the time, and it was out of the city,
Speaker 4: but San Francisco is the closest city, and it's not
Speaker 4: too far from where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1: And have there been a history of military service in
Speaker 1: your family?
Speaker 2: Yeah, has been.
Speaker 4: My father was a Marine in World War Two in
Speaker 4: the Battle of Okinawa, and I didn't know until after
Speaker 4: he died, going through the closet through his possessions that
Speaker 4: I found that he'd been shot and had a purple
Speaker 4: heart in that battle, and that he had a brother,
Speaker 4: my uncle who was named after who was what they
Speaker 4: call a Carlson Raider in Marine Corps history, they're kind
Speaker 4: of a separate group of individuals that were handpicked to
Speaker 4: do what we ended up.
Speaker 2: Doing being rangers basically.
Speaker 4: So they were the first Ranger Battalion and they did
Speaker 4: some really nasty work in Pacific Islands.
Speaker 1: Were you drafted or did you enlist in the Marine Corps?
Speaker 2: That's a story.
Speaker 4: I was going to college and I wasn't able to
Speaker 4: I was out of high school and here in Marin
Speaker 4: County's we're pretty free, and so when I was going
Speaker 4: to college, I didn't maintain a certain grade point average,
Speaker 4: just as before the draft, and I was to be
Speaker 4: drafted in the Army. And what happened was I decided
Speaker 4: to go look at the Marine Corps because they had
Speaker 4: a program special service program for athletes, and I thought
Speaker 4: maybe I could be a runner on the Marine Corps
Speaker 4: track team. And I almost qualified and they actually accepted
Speaker 4: me to be an athlete for the Marine Corps. And
Speaker 4: so I joined the Marine Corps thinking I would be
Speaker 4: a track star traveling the world representing the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2: And what happened was my times.
Speaker 4: Are good and they're just borderline, but they thought with
Speaker 4: training and coaching that I could be a pretty good runner.
Speaker 4: And so what happened They found that I didn't have
Speaker 4: enough years and to be on special services, so they
Speaker 4: asked me to join up for a couple more years.
Speaker 4: And after going through boot camp and being part of
Speaker 4: the Marine Corps for the short period of time that
Speaker 4: I was there, I decided I thought maybe I'd go
Speaker 4: back to college, and they go, you know, that's not
Speaker 4: going to work for us, and so they volunteered me
Speaker 4: to become a ranger what they call it recon ranger,
Speaker 4: so it's a volunteer force. I didn't really volunteered, but
Speaker 4: that's where I ended up. So that's how I ended
Speaker 4: up in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned boot camp. Marine Corps boot camp is
Speaker 1: pretty famous for not exactly being a resort, So how
Speaker 1: did you deal with that and what do you remember
Speaker 1: most about that challenge.
Speaker 4: I had been a county champion in distance running in
Speaker 4: cross country and track, and I was one of the
Speaker 4: better runners in the state and competed in some marathons,
Speaker 4: and so I was in pretty good shape when I
Speaker 4: went to boot camp, and I thought that the boot
Speaker 4: camp really wasn't that challenging. I could climb their open
Speaker 4: ten minutes. I could run the course. It's a three
Speaker 4: mile course, and I was running in under sixteen minutes.
Speaker 2: So I got a little cocky, you know.
Speaker 4: I could do fifty push ups, and I'd give him
Speaker 4: an extra ten for later on, put it in the
Speaker 4: bank for me because I know I'm going to be
Speaker 4: doing some more later on. And they were frustrated with
Speaker 4: me because of my physical conditioning was far superior than
Speaker 4: anybody in my platoon. They even got so frustrated that
Speaker 4: on the three mile run that they put sand in
Speaker 4: my pack and still had me go run. And I
Speaker 4: still lead and win the three mile course. And the
Speaker 4: whole concept of being in the military Marine Corps especially
Speaker 4: is you stay with your platoon, and you stay with
Speaker 4: the slowest guy, and you're no better than the slowest
Speaker 4: guy on your team.
Speaker 2: Of course I had to go show off. Eventually.
Speaker 4: It put me in what they call a motivation platoon,
Speaker 4: and I was in it for one week. I came
Speaker 4: out of motivation platoon. They did break me, and I
Speaker 4: was a good little Marine, and I learned how to
Speaker 4: polish my boots and polish my brass starts my uniform,
Speaker 4: and I learned what being a good marine was. If
Speaker 4: you think you can get through without getting broke. They
Speaker 4: broke me eventually.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love the euphemistic title there, of the motivation.
Speaker 1: They found some way to get to you physically. Wasn't
Speaker 1: going to do it. They always find something, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was what they call sleep deprivation, and they
Speaker 4: had me to do it. They had me breaking rocks
Speaker 4: and putting them in a bucket and piling make it,
Speaker 4: you know, taking them across the you know, the field
Speaker 4: and making a rock pile. And then I'd get back
Speaker 4: to my rack after you know, chow and go to sleep,
Speaker 4: and the new drill structure have come in and say,
Speaker 4: you didn't want that rock pile there? Who gave me
Speaker 4: orders to put it there? Put it back to where
Speaker 4: it was? And so I was doing that all night
Speaker 4: and all day, and uh, I figured that if I
Speaker 4: was ever going to get out of there, I'd better
Speaker 4: learn how to be a marine.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 4: They broke me. It was pretty I didn't think. I
Speaker 4: thought I was tougher than that, but the Marine Corps
Speaker 4: they have ways.
Speaker 1: So at what point did you after basic training move
Speaker 1: towards recon ranger training. How soon was that?
Speaker 4: Well, let's see, I went to from San Diego, ended
Speaker 4: up going to Camp Pendleton, and then I was thrown
Speaker 4: into a recon training group. And these guys were pretty
Speaker 4: focused individuals. I like being with them because they were tough,
Speaker 4: they liked the challenge. They're in great shape physically, they
Speaker 4: were as good as anybody that I ran into. And
Speaker 4: I could hang with them and they could hang with me,
Speaker 4: and they're very competitive.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed that part.
Speaker 1: What did the training consist of?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, A lot of running, well you ready for that.
Speaker 4: A lot of what they call wrecking where you have
Speaker 4: a backpack about sixty pounds and you go on these
Speaker 4: long what they call you hump all day up these
Speaker 4: mountains and hills in the desert.
Speaker 2: And Camp Pendleton.
Speaker 4: We would do some swimming, a lot of repelling, you know,
Speaker 4: different all kinds of different schools. We'd already gone your
Speaker 4: boot camp, So the challenges that we had now was
Speaker 4: mostly honing our skills to be rangers, and that would
Speaker 4: be going to the range, learning how to do demolition work.
Speaker 4: They would have courses for us to complete where they've
Speaker 4: tried to ambush us in certain situations. They would give
Speaker 4: us situations and see how we handle them. They had
Speaker 4: a lot of psychological programs where they'd put you in
Speaker 4: a situation just to see how you'd react. They would
Speaker 4: use live fire, crawling under constantine, or bob wire, and
Speaker 4: they want to make sure that you could handle the
Speaker 4: stress and pressure. We did fifty mile hikes with the
Speaker 4: backpack full gear, and so we just was mostly just
Speaker 4: learning skills. After boot camp.
Speaker 1: Did most guys make it through or was there a
Speaker 1: pretty high attrition rate there.
Speaker 2: By the time I was with the group.
Speaker 4: Actually, they're pretty desperate for men at that time, so
Speaker 4: I don't think they lowered their standards, but the standards
Speaker 4: aren't as high as they are today. And that's the
Speaker 4: one thing that I found was all the men I
Speaker 4: was with psychologically they were tough. They were guys that
Speaker 4: were a lot.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I lived in a bubble in this county called Brinn County,
Speaker 4: north of San Francisco, where life was really easy.
Speaker 2: I was just you know, as a kid would I do.
Speaker 4: I went out surfing, I went out spear fishing, I
Speaker 4: went skiing up in the mountains. I was backpacking, hiking, camping.
Speaker 4: You know, I had so much freedom, and I was
Speaker 4: really enjoying life. Were the guys I was working with had.
Speaker 4: I heard stories about them having to get up at
Speaker 4: four or five in the morning and go milk cows
Speaker 4: and do a lot of chores before they even went
Speaker 4: to school in the morning. They would the Midwest kids
Speaker 4: guys were pretty tough. Then there were the guys from
Speaker 4: the South. They were poor. The guys from the South.
Speaker 4: And there's some black guys on the team from from
Speaker 4: Baton Rouge and some my team leader eventually was from
Speaker 4: Baton Rouge. And hearing their stories in the summer, in
Speaker 4: the heat, and you know, and the jobs that they
Speaker 4: did was pretty horrendous compared to what would I do.
Speaker 4: I served and had bonfires on the beach and drank
Speaker 4: beer in case you smoked the doobie.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: And so hanging with these guys, I learned that the
Speaker 4: life for me was pretty good and for other guys
Speaker 4: in the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps wasn't that tough
Speaker 4: for them, because like me, they had a lot tougher
Speaker 4: boot camp for them, getting up at five in the morning,
Speaker 4: and I mean, you go to chow hall, for instance.
Speaker 4: They didn't mind the food they enjoyed, you know, the food,
Speaker 4: and I'm looking at the food and I'm wondering.
Speaker 2: What I'm eating.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't you know they called it so
Speaker 4: os ship on the Shingle uh. And you know, I
Speaker 4: didn't know what chip beef was, and I didn't think
Speaker 4: it was that great. But these guys loved it, and
Speaker 4: they would eat anything, and they had an appetite. And
Speaker 4: I'm going, I'm being a little picky, like, why would
Speaker 4: you eat this stuff here? Because where I live, we
Speaker 4: get fresh fruit and vegetables and fish from the ocean.
Speaker 4: You know, I wasn't used to eating that kind of food,
Speaker 4: so I was a little spoiled. And I learned real
Speaker 4: quick that I was living in a bubble. Where I
Speaker 4: grew up.
Speaker 1: I had a good When were you sent to Vietnam
Speaker 1: in I was.
Speaker 4: Sent to Vietnam in nineteen sixty nine, the end of
Speaker 4: sixty nineteen sixty nine, and I spent thirteen months in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: That's Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps veteran of the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. Mister Walton was a Special Forces Marine who
Speaker 1: often served as point man on a reconnaissance team. Still
Speaker 1: to come in this first half of mister Walton's story
Speaker 1: of service. He will explain how the Jungles of Vietnam
Speaker 1: were another enemy that his team had to contend with
Speaker 1: every single day, from the mud and muck to alternatively
Speaker 1: sweltering and freezing on many days, razor sharp foliage, and
Speaker 1: even dangerous animals, including these so called rock apes that
Speaker 1: are often classified as folklore in official accounts of the war,
Speaker 1: but they were very real. Walton will also take us
Speaker 1: inside critical life and death decisions that had to be
Speaker 1: made within just a few seconds. But up next, Walton
Speaker 1: tells us how the six man recon teams were assembled,
Speaker 1: how they functioned in Vietnam, and what their objectives usually
Speaker 1: consisted of. Stay with us. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
Speaker 1: is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumba's our guest this
Speaker 1: week is Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps veteran of
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War who often served as point man on
Speaker 1: a reconnaissance team. Walton now picks up his story, explaining
Speaker 1: how those teams were assembled and deployed.
Speaker 4: Well, I was put into a team that had been
Speaker 4: in the bush for quite a while, and I filled
Speaker 4: a hole, and so originally I was what they call
Speaker 4: a secondary radio man, so a recon team, everyone knows
Speaker 4: how to do everyone's job, and they know how to
Speaker 4: do it fairly well. So I was a radio man
Speaker 4: for a short period of time, and I found that
Speaker 4: that wasn't a real comfortable position in the fact that
Speaker 4: I was getting shot at a lot because I had
Speaker 4: a radio with an antenna walking through the jungle and
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 2: A walking target.
Speaker 4: Eventually a position came open as a point man, and
Speaker 4: after a couple of patrols, I became a point man
Speaker 4: because of the team leader. He was the serget kind
Speaker 4: of trusted me and we worked together really really well.
Speaker 4: Now we were putting You know, you have a company.
Speaker 4: I was an echo company. In each an echo company
Speaker 4: you had six man teams and then they would insert
Speaker 4: a quorman on a patrol. And in a company there
Speaker 4: was like four or five different teams. So the company
Speaker 4: is really really small.
Speaker 2: And put in a.
Speaker 4: Hooch with all these guys and you're with each other
Speaker 4: twenty four to seven. You have to learn to get
Speaker 4: along with one another, and occasionally, because of the geography
Speaker 4: of where we came from, that was hard to do.
Speaker 4: You know, the guys I was with they like to
Speaker 4: drink Jack Daniels wild Turkey. I was from the West Coast,
Speaker 4: and I like beer and smoking a joint once in
Speaker 4: a while.
Speaker 2: And I was.
Speaker 4: Considered a dope addic, a drug addict, and a hippie.
Speaker 4: And I'd listened to Jimmy Hendrix and they were listening
Speaker 4: to some country Western music or motown music, and their
Speaker 4: conversations would be, you know, how they you know, what
Speaker 4: kind of a what they call a funny car or something,
Speaker 4: I forget what they call them, these racing cars. What
Speaker 4: kind of car do you have, Darren? I got a
Speaker 4: pretty I got a VW with a sunroof, and I
Speaker 4: got a surfboard.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So they couldn't comprehend where I was coming from. And
Speaker 4: I didn't understand what wrenching on a car was, or
Speaker 4: what a dual carburetor was, or you know, you know,
Speaker 4: fuel injection was, you know, and they're talking about racing
Speaker 4: muscle cars is what they call them, you know, and uh,
Speaker 4: and so we there's some disconnects on the you know,
Speaker 4: in the rear, but in the jungle, after it's all
Speaker 4: said and done, they didn't care, and I didn't care
Speaker 4: what their belief system or politics, were we could trust
Speaker 4: one another, and we became Once you go into jungles
Speaker 4: a few times and the stress of combat and you
Speaker 4: survive an ambush or a firefight, you you start getting
Speaker 4: a little spiritual and you look at each other and
Speaker 4: go and each one of us has proven to each
Speaker 4: other that we would be there for each other no
Speaker 4: matter what. So it's a badge of honor. Eventually, after
Speaker 4: you've been on a few missions that you can trust
Speaker 4: one another. And when you developed that trust, that bond. Geographics, religion,
Speaker 4: color doesn't matter. We're all we're all in this together
Speaker 4: and we all love each other. And we're dysfunctional family
Speaker 4: back in the rear, but in the jungles we were
Speaker 4: focused and nobody let each other down, never, not once.
Speaker 1: So after all that training and building the camaraderie in
Speaker 1: the unit, what's it like to go out on that
Speaker 1: first mission known this is this is the real thing,
Speaker 1: especially the first time you met the enemy.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a ritual actually, And you watch these guys
Speaker 4: on your first mission, and you're watching them and they're
Speaker 4: painting themselves up, and they all have a particular way
Speaker 4: of they think their artists or something, and they have
Speaker 4: a particular way of painting their faces up that's going
Speaker 4: to keep them camouflaged in the jungle. And I had
Speaker 4: no idea what my face was going to be painted like,
Speaker 4: so I had to come up with a traditional way
Speaker 4: that they could recognize me with my pain on. So
Speaker 4: and I noticed on every patrol that their faces were
Speaker 4: always painted differently, but they always painted each other. Each
Speaker 4: one had the same markings the way they painted themselves up.
Speaker 4: And they were quiet, and it was almost like a ritual,
Speaker 4: and you could tell that they were someplace else. So
Speaker 4: I was excited. The adrenaline was really high because now
Speaker 4: I get to prove myself and they wouldn't talk to me,
Speaker 4: They wouldn't have much to do with me. They didn't
Speaker 4: know if I was going to fit in or not,
Speaker 4: and so they kind of ignored me. And I had
Speaker 4: to go out and in the jungle. And you know,
Speaker 4: we had missions, and we were told what our mission
Speaker 4: might be, and I think my first mission was to
Speaker 4: go scout out a staging camp behind enemy lines and
Speaker 4: gather information intel on how big the staging camp was,
Speaker 4: how many North Vietnammese Army soldiers were there, how long
Speaker 4: they've been there, with their morale was like if their
Speaker 4: clothes were clean or dirty, if their boots are shiny
Speaker 4: or not, and it was so it was mostly just
Speaker 4: a reconmission to take the gather information. So it didn't
Speaker 4: look like it was going to be a very difficult mission.
Speaker 4: So after you know, we complete our mission, to go
Speaker 4: to a debriefing, and nobody had any problems with me.
Speaker 4: So I had you know, you know, I didn't freak
Speaker 4: out or I didn't show it that I had fear,
Speaker 4: even though there was I was. You got the adrenaline
Speaker 4: rushi and then that the fear, and you got all
Speaker 4: these emotions, and it's like, uh, you have to learn
Speaker 4: to control it, you know. And I remember my first mission,
Speaker 4: and I remember second. I remember the first time I
Speaker 4: was in combat. I was scared. I was really scared.
Speaker 4: And the guys I was with had been you know,
Speaker 4: I'd been shot at for many missions before me, and
Speaker 4: I wondered how come they weren't afraid like I was
Speaker 4: so afraid. But apparently, as I found out later, that
Speaker 4: fear never goes away. Able to put it in their
Speaker 4: back pocket and deal with the mission.
Speaker 1: That's Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where he often served as point man on a recon team.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Walton talks about his first recon
Speaker 1: missions in Vietnam. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is US Marine Corps veteran Darren Walton, who
Speaker 1: often served as point man on a reconnaissance team. In
Speaker 1: a moment, he will explain how the jungle in Vietnam
Speaker 1: was an enemy to Americans all by itself. But we
Speaker 1: now pick up Walton's story as he describes what a
Speaker 1: recon point man had to be looking out for.
Speaker 4: Mostly we were in their backyard, so there weren't as
Speaker 4: many pungee pits or booby traps, and they weren't trying
Speaker 4: to set up to ambushes because they wouldn't think that
Speaker 4: there'd be a team like us out there. And so
Speaker 4: if we got spotted out there, I haven't had screwed
Speaker 4: up somehow, because you're not supposed to be spotted, and
Speaker 4: we're usually we're breaking brush and not on the trails.
Speaker 4: But many times you can't get through the jungle because
Speaker 4: of these vines to call them. Wait a minute, vines.
Speaker 4: You're getting tangled up and in the heat and the
Speaker 4: mud and the muck, and you're climbing over giant roots
Speaker 4: and slipping and sliding on these hills, and you're exhausted
Speaker 4: and you haven't even gotten close to your mission yet,
Speaker 4: to where you need to be. And so you find
Speaker 4: a trail, and when you walk the trail, then you
Speaker 4: have to become spider man. All your spider senses have
Speaker 4: got to click in, you know, and they do. And
Speaker 4: it's amazing how we don't use our senses unless we
Speaker 4: really need to. And as a point man, I could
Speaker 4: see things, I could hear things, I could smell things
Speaker 4: way beyond the time. You know, you just get suspicious,
Speaker 4: and so I am. I did find some pungy pits.
Speaker 4: I did run into an ambush occasionally, and I found
Speaker 4: you know, I knew it was an ambush before it happened,
Speaker 4: because I was that good. But the problem was is
Speaker 4: when you ran into another patrol out there and you
Speaker 4: make point to point contact, that's where it gets exciting.
Speaker 4: And there's nothing I can do about that. They're quiet,
Speaker 4: we're quiet. They're doing their job. We're doing ours. And
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, we're bumping into one another. And
Speaker 4: that happened on occasion more times than none. And so
Speaker 4: now it's up to your team. How good your team
Speaker 4: is to handle the contact and everything. Everybody's got to
Speaker 4: work in unisons, and they got your reflexes have got
Speaker 4: to be keen, and everybody has to know what they're
Speaker 4: supposed to do in a certain situation. And as a
Speaker 4: point man, I would yell out D D and put
Speaker 4: a couple of rounds out there. I walked with what
Speaker 4: they call an M seventy nine grenade launcher with the
Speaker 4: shotgun round in it, so I had only one round.
Speaker 4: So when I came to point point contact, I didn't
Speaker 4: aim so much and it spent any time aiming and
Speaker 4: not worried about being on automatic. And the team would
Speaker 4: set up a perimeter once I made contact, and they
Speaker 4: knew exactly what to do to give me time to
Speaker 4: put what they call a white phosphorus grenade into the
Speaker 4: M seventy nine. It's called the blooper, and I bloop
Speaker 4: a kind of like a hand grenade over their heads
Speaker 4: and make a smoke screen. It would be hard to
Speaker 4: penetrate that smoke because it would be burned. It would
Speaker 4: burn through you. It wants it hits your skin, it
Speaker 4: starts penetrating the skin and the only way to keep
Speaker 4: it from burning is from keeping oxygen from that wound,
Speaker 4: and it's almost impossible, which gave us time to re
Speaker 4: evaluate the situation and get out of there, and the
Speaker 4: radiomen would start making contact saying that we made contact
Speaker 4: and that could there be an LZ around that we
Speaker 4: could meet the extraction choppers and get us out of there,
Speaker 4: and we'd be chased.
Speaker 2: Beautiful teamwork.
Speaker 1: And for those who don't know, your mission was not
Speaker 1: to engage. The end of your missions were generally to
Speaker 1: capture people or discover information or discover locations and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and so it's really about the gathering
Speaker 1: of intel.
Speaker 4: It's a gathering of intel. And a lot of our
Speaker 4: missions were what they wanted us to do was do
Speaker 4: what they call prisoner snatch or they get more specific
Speaker 4: and say we need an officer, and we need you
Speaker 4: go into a base camp and kidnap high ranking officer
Speaker 4: and preferably to officers if we could. And most of
Speaker 4: those missions failed, and on occasion when we were successful
Speaker 4: in a mission, it would put us on the chart
Speaker 4: where we get back to the rear, back to headquarters.
Speaker 4: We'd get like a week in lead to go to
Speaker 4: what they called China Camp or China Beach. I said,
Speaker 4: say and have cold beer and listen to some good
Speaker 4: music and hang out. It's like a little many R
Speaker 4: and R. But most of the time our job was
Speaker 4: to gather intelligence and or try to capture somebody that's
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, you tell one very gripping story in
Speaker 1: the book about one of those missions and your team
Speaker 1: was able to capture a figure, but unfortunately, as you
Speaker 1: were leaving the area, he was hit and he became
Speaker 1: a hindrance to the speed with which you could get out,
Speaker 1: and so you had difficult decisions to make.
Speaker 4: That still haunts me a little bit today. My patrol leader,
Speaker 4: the Serge, and that I changed his name in that chapter,
Speaker 4: but his name was Michael, and we just talked about
Speaker 4: that and we've been in touch. It's been really a
Speaker 4: wonderful situation where where we've not talked to each other
Speaker 4: for fifty plus years and it's like we never missed
Speaker 4: a beat. And we talked about that particular mission because
Speaker 4: it kind of haunted him and the lieutenant was with
Speaker 4: us at that time. He was tough and it bothered him.
Speaker 4: And I'd let them know that they made a decision
Speaker 4: that saved our lives, the team life, and that what
Speaker 4: they did they shouldn't be haunted by it. It's war,
Speaker 4: and if they didn't do what they did, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: be here talking to you today, and I wouldn't have
Speaker 4: written that book. So I made it knowing that that
Speaker 4: decision that they made had to be really a tough decision.
Speaker 4: And there's other teams that didn't make that kind of
Speaker 4: a decision. Even later on. There are some books. Loan
Speaker 4: Survivor was a good example of a Navy Seal team
Speaker 4: that had to make a decision like that with some children,
Speaker 4: and they let the children go and the whole team
Speaker 4: was killed, you know, because of that mistake. But the
Speaker 4: deal was, when you kill somebody, you know, you don't
Speaker 4: know if it's a moral situation, if you did the
Speaker 4: right thing or not. In a way, I look at
Speaker 4: it morally, they did the right thing. If they didn't
Speaker 4: do that, we would We only had seconds to get
Speaker 4: out of there. We were being chased, and we couldn't
Speaker 4: keep the guy with us much longer. You can't leave
Speaker 4: him there to give our position away. You can't shoot
Speaker 4: him because the noise would give the position away. The
Speaker 4: korman had to make decisions on how to maybe off
Speaker 4: him with morphine, and he needed that morphine for us
Speaker 4: in case we looked like we were going to be
Speaker 4: in another firefight, and so using our k bars, we
Speaker 4: had to do a nasty job. And I'm so proud
Speaker 4: of these guys, the lieutenant and the sarge, for making
Speaker 4: that decision. And I'm letting them know today that I
Speaker 4: know they struggle with this, put it that way, and
Speaker 4: it happened more times than that. I was only nineteen
Speaker 4: years old, putting kids in that situation and have to
Speaker 4: live with it.
Speaker 2: But that's war.
Speaker 1: We're talking here with Darren Walton. He's a US Marine
Speaker 1: Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, involved in reconmissions, often
Speaker 1: as the point man. The book is D D Mal
Speaker 1: a true story about tigers or rock apes, the jungle,
Speaker 1: and war. And we'll get to two more specific missions
Speaker 1: a little bit later in our conversation. But another adversary
Speaker 1: really in all of this is the jungle itself, and
Speaker 1: you spend a chapter on that from the razor sharp grass,
Speaker 1: to the oppressive humidity, and just being wet all the time.
Speaker 1: Talk about how difficult that was, what bothered you the most,
Speaker 1: and how you persevered through it.
Speaker 4: Well, the jungle was one of those places, which it
Speaker 4: was still today a mystery to me. It's a living organism,
Speaker 4: a true living organism. It's alive. We have no business
Speaker 4: as human beings penetrating that entity. It's a triple canopy
Speaker 4: jungle in the highlands. I've never experienced ever anything that excruciating.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: As tough as I was, and these guys who are
Speaker 4: on my team were even tougher than me, they almost
Speaker 4: gave up because of the jungle. And when we got
Speaker 4: into a firefight or met the enemy, that was almost
Speaker 4: a relief for the moment. The pain wasn't there of
Speaker 4: what the jungle put us through. You had mud and muck.
Speaker 4: The heat would penetrate that jungle, and the steam would
Speaker 4: come up from this moist, muddy floor.
Speaker 2: They would rain.
Speaker 4: Every day, and you're constantly wet. You have these fire
Speaker 4: ants dropping down behind your back biting you. You'd have
Speaker 4: leeches crawling all over you, mosquitoes buzzing you all day long.
Speaker 4: The razor grass bamboo type of a razor grass would
Speaker 4: cut through your We had gloves on and it would
Speaker 4: just shred your gloves. And you're getting twisted all the
Speaker 4: time in these vines and you get tangled up in
Speaker 4: these vines and you're fighting them. So you're taking your
Speaker 4: k bar out and you're cutting the vines out, which
Speaker 4: is physically it doesn't seem like much, but those vines
Speaker 4: were tough. They're like cutting cord. And so you're constantly
Speaker 4: twisting and turn learning and cutting and trying to step
Speaker 4: and not slip, and also watch out that you're not
Speaker 4: going to get ambush if the enemy can't get to you.
Speaker 4: You have monkeys out there and the trees. You have
Speaker 4: elephants that are going through that jungle. You see either dune,
Speaker 4: and they're moving through the jungle a lot faster than
Speaker 4: we are. Sometimes we'd follow their trails and we can
Speaker 4: make a lot more movement, faster movement. But all in all,
Speaker 4: at night we'd be so tired that didn't matter what
Speaker 4: the temperature was, how wet you were, how exhausted you were.
Speaker 2: You just pass out and.
Speaker 4: Then they'd wake you up for what they call radio watch,
Speaker 4: and you'd stay up for an hour and a half
Speaker 4: or so and have to listen to the radio and
Speaker 4: with command, know that you're still alive. But the jungle,
Speaker 4: the bugs, the insects, the snakes, you name it. It
Speaker 4: had it all. And the heat was just it would
Speaker 4: get up to one hundred degrees in the jungle, which
Speaker 4: doesn't sound like a whole lot, sometimes a little hotter,
Speaker 4: but it was the humidity that kills you. And then
Speaker 4: at night it would drop down to seventy at night
Speaker 4: and you'd freeze because you're wet, and the wind would
Speaker 4: come up a little bit and the rain would come
Speaker 4: in a little bit, and you'd cuddle up with your buddy.
Speaker 4: And this is something a lot of kids don't understand
Speaker 4: about war. It's not so romantic as you think it is.
Speaker 4: You're not out there being Arnold or Rambo. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not like that at all. It's trying to survive.
Speaker 4: And so you find your buddy and you curl up
Speaker 4: with them, put a poncho liner around you and him
Speaker 4: and try to stay warm even though it's seventy degrees
Speaker 4: and you're freezing.
Speaker 2: Go figure, huh oh. Yeah. Still to this day, I
Speaker 2: talk about the jungle.
Speaker 1: Did they drop agent orange where you were?
Speaker 4: I saw I have photos later on of the jungle
Speaker 4: and agent orange was dropped out there in certain areas,
Speaker 4: what they call certain clicks out there, and it looked
Speaker 4: like a fire had gone through it, like a forest
Speaker 4: fire had gone through the jungle, opened it up so
Speaker 4: that you could travel through the jungle and you could
Speaker 4: see quite a ways away, and if there was any
Speaker 4: enemy around, they'd be exposed. But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: we look like a forest fire without any charcoal, without
Speaker 4: any burnt And yeah, the agent orange destroyed the jungle,
Speaker 4: really did poison it and open it up, and we
Speaker 4: did see that.
Speaker 1: Or any guys in your company affected by the effects
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 4: I think as we get older, there's a few of
Speaker 4: us that, fortunately I seem to be really healthy, but
Speaker 4: a lot of guys that I know have got cancer
Speaker 4: problems all at the same time, all the same type
Speaker 4: of cancer. Some of their children have defects because I
Speaker 4: think the agent orange had something to do with the DNA.
Speaker 4: If you look at your statistics, it wasn't that long
Speaker 4: after we all came home. I think the numbers, the
Speaker 4: government numbers, were that there were about three hundred thousand
Speaker 4: American combat troops that had died of Agent Orange, and
Speaker 4: that's the government number. I don't think that's the true numbers.
Speaker 4: I think that's probably a little bit low. And how
Speaker 4: many more are going to die of agent Orange? It's
Speaker 4: hard to say, but I think at the time it
Speaker 4: seemed like a good thing to open up the jungles
Speaker 4: so that we could get through them, so the enemy
Speaker 4: couldn't hide.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I look back now and a lot of my buddies
Speaker 4: are affected by Agent Orange.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's talk a little bit more about the animals.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the monkeys a moment ago, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: in the book that the more monkeys you heard, the
Speaker 1: better you felt, because the enemy liked to eat them,
Speaker 1: and so you k know if you could hear them,
Speaker 1: the enemy probably wasn't nearby trying to have them for dinner.
Speaker 1: The other story that I think is fascinating that people
Speaker 1: are going to want to hear, and I'm sure you
Speaker 1: already know what I'm going to say, the rock apes.
Speaker 1: You were tipped off cryptically of out them back at
Speaker 1: Camp Pendleton, but you didn't really know what they were
Speaker 1: until you did.
Speaker 4: That was our serage, our gunny sergeant who was training us,
Speaker 4: and he was a tough little guy and been he'd
Speaker 4: been in the jungles, and he liked us because we
Speaker 4: performed so well and he enjoyed working with tough, high
Speaker 4: performance individuals. And he was giving us a little pep
Speaker 4: talk and he goes, you guys are going to be
Speaker 4: where I was, and you're going to be in the jungles.
Speaker 4: And he goes, I have no problems with you. You
Speaker 4: guys can be good soldiers, and I know most of
Speaker 4: you guys are gonna make it through. But he goes
Speaker 4: to one thing I want you not to do and
Speaker 4: listen to me, and I'm not kidding, don't fuck with
Speaker 4: the rock apes. And we bust out laughing, like what
Speaker 4: are you talking? You know, and we made we mocked
Speaker 4: them a little bit about that, and we heard rock
Speaker 4: ape stories and a lot of the rock ape stories
Speaker 4: were like a Bigfoot story, you know, just a myth.
Speaker 4: And when we got to Vietnam, a lot of us
Speaker 4: asked about the rock apes and that was a mystical animal.
Speaker 2: It didn't exist.
Speaker 4: But I had run into a few rifle teams out there,
Speaker 4: grunts we call them, who told me personally they'd run
Speaker 4: into some rock apes and that they were harassed by them.
Speaker 4: And I started thinking, wow, where was this and they
Speaker 4: told me, you know what area, and I go, wow,
Speaker 4: We're going in that area in another day or two.
Speaker 4: By god, we ran into the rock apes. And there
Speaker 4: are only two locations in Vietnam where they were spotted.
Speaker 4: And some of the grunts even today, I run into them.
Speaker 4: They know when we talk rock apes, they go, yeah,
Speaker 4: we messed with them, but hardly anybody in the military.
Speaker 4: And if you google rock apes, it's a joke. They
Speaker 4: say they don't exist, and that's not true. They do exist.
Speaker 4: And unless you're a marine that was in these areas,
Speaker 4: you would never heard or seen.
Speaker 2: A rock ape before.
Speaker 4: There's a few of us said yeah, we ran into them,
Speaker 4: and we had to be emergency evacuated because we were
Speaker 4: chased by them in middle of the night. The noise
Speaker 4: that they're making, and the rocks and mud and logs
Speaker 4: and they're picking up anything in tossing them at us.
Speaker 4: And they tossed underhanded, not overhanded, and it was raining
Speaker 4: down on us these branches and logs and rocks, and
Speaker 4: we had to call for an emergency extraction and they
Speaker 4: pulled us out and we had to go to a
Speaker 4: brief a debriefing, and it was a tough one because
Speaker 4: they wanted to know the reason we got, you know, extracted,
Speaker 4: was because of we thought our lives were endangered. And
Speaker 4: they go, well, how many enemy were there? Well, they
Speaker 4: weren't really enemy. Were they VC or were they NVA? No,
Speaker 4: they weren't VC or NVA. Well what were they there?
Speaker 4: They're rock games. They're trying to tell us that we
Speaker 4: spent how many thousands of dollars sending a helicopter to
Speaker 4: extracts you guys out because of monkey and we're trying
Speaker 4: to explain it. But they just weren't monkeys, and they go,
Speaker 4: what were they then? If they weren't a monkey? And
Speaker 4: so we were kind of on, you know, we were
Speaker 4: kind of laughingstock for a while. But other teams came
Speaker 4: back from patrols and the debriefings were the same that
Speaker 4: they had run into or saw rock apes. So they
Speaker 4: do exist. But if you google it, they'll say it's
Speaker 4: a big foot that and everybody sees this big foot
Speaker 4: out there, but that's not true. These things are only
Speaker 4: about four and a half feet at the highest and tough,
Speaker 4: just tough Little Critters.
Speaker 1: That's Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where he served on a recon team, often as point man.
Speaker 1: He's also the author of d d MAO, a true
Speaker 1: story about Tigers, rock Apes, the Jungle and War. Be
Speaker 1: sure to listen to the conclusion of Walton's story in
Speaker 1: our next edition, as he describes the most intense combat
Speaker 1: of the war, harrowing escapes from almost certain death, and
Speaker 1: coming home to a nation that despised the war and
Speaker 1: prompted him to hide his service for more than forty years.
Speaker 1: Don't miss it. I'm Greg Corumbus. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
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