🪖 Brothers In Arms • Field Notes from Those Who Served
Content note: War trauma, substance use, racism, and suicide. Personal recollection; details are from my memory and perspective as a young Marine in 1969–70. Other Marines’ experiences varied.
Boot camp taught me that if I ever touched marijuana, or any other illegal substance, as a Marine, I’d probably end up serving a long stretch in a military prison. Later, I arrived in Vietnam and discovered to my complete shock and amazement my entire platoon was smoking weed.
My name is Richard Schaefer, I was a Marine who served on active duty from 1968 to 1972, served a combat tour in Vietnam as a combat engineer MOS 1371, I was nicknamed Skippy because I always traded pound cake or fruit for peanut butter in our C rations, (C for field or combat rations in a box containing mystery meat, fruit, peanut butter, all in little green cans, and a couple of stale cigarettes, also some TP and a John Wayne – what we named the little can opener) Later my nickname was shortened to just Skip. My first assignment in Vietnam was with the 3rd Marine Division as an engineer assigned to a Bridge Platoon, part of the 11th Engineer Battalion located near Dong Ha, what was referred to on maps as northerm I Corps, so close to the DMZ you could almost see the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) our enemy, raise their morning colors! This after a night flight by supply helicopter from Danang airfield where our charter flight from Okinawa landed in Vietnam. The platoon consisted of one E-6 as acting Sgt Major, one boot brownbar (2nd Lt) as Platoon Commander, one E-5 as platoon sgt and just a few troops, a very small unit. Was I welcomed by “brother” Marines, jokingly as the FNG, (Fucking New Guy) just reporting in, short answer, no. They were all dopers, so strung out on marijuana they could hardly function. The LT and the Staff NCO didnt do anything to stop it, they were afraid they would be fragged (bombed or shot in their hut while asleep), so they joined in with the smoking and carrying on. I was appalled, all my early training in boot camp told me that if I did drugs in the USMC I would be prosecuted and sent to Great Lakes Naval Prison, or worse, the DaNang Brig! I was barely 19 years old, having just arrived in Vietnam in August of 1969, shortly after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and my 19th birthday. I was full of patriotism and ready to do my best to stop the flow of communism and to serve alongside South Vietnamese troops in their fight to retain their country. I was told I needed to smoke pot to fit in and to convince them I wasnt a CID (Criminal Investigation Division) spy. I refused, thought naively that was the end of it but one night as I lay on my cot I heard footsteps, (I had learned to sleep with one ear open, listening for the 60mm rockets launched at us by the enemy from the surrounding mountains) but before I could investigate what was happening a blanket was thrown over my head, at first I was confused as to what was going on, disoriented from sleep, had the VC gotten into the compound and I was being hijacked and carted off to the notorious Hanoi Hilton? No, it was worse, my fellow druggie Marines were about to introduce me to a Marine custom where someone who refuses to comply, rightly or wrongly with the majority, gets a blanket thrown over their head as they lay sleeping and then beaten with soap bars in socks until unconscious. (very similar the the scene in Full Metal Jacket where Pvt Pyle gets a “blanket party” by his fellow boots, who blamed him, calling him a slacker, responsible for the whole platoon to be punished for his behavior) The next morning I was expected to join the joint for breakfast crowd, asked if I had suddenly “changed my mind” about joining in. I said nothing, still remained steadfast in my refusal. I went to sick bay thinking I might have a concussion and after that they left me alone., actually I was ignored. We were rocketed by the enemy every night and the regular shouts of “incoming” rang out across the compound, reminding me that yes, someone wanted me dead. It was disconcerting to say the least that not only did the NVA want me dead but my own Marines did as well. Nothing in boot camp had prepared me for this. After that I was assigned odd jobs, mine sweeps, shotgun on trucks taking supplies to the grunts, going out on infantry patrols, constructing ambush sites, security perimeters, blowing up tunnels, etc. I got shot at a lot by small arms fire and sustained minor wounds treated in the field but nothing serious enough to warrant a Purple Heart although I was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon.
Boot camp taught us the world in absolutes: dope gets you prison, discipline keeps you alive, brotherhood is everything, and “friendly fire” is a phrase you hope you never hear. I was an 18-year-old kid from Missouri who’d had a few beers, passed my tests, and thought I understood right and wrong. Boy, was I about to find out that a lot of it was just BS. The real Marine Corps—and the real Vietnam—were about to bite me in the ass.
When the rules met the war
Vietnam rewrote those rules the moment I reported in. In a small bridge platoon, marijuana smoke hung as heavy as the humidity. Some of it was self-medication. Some of it was survival—fall in line or face “discipline” from your own, the kind nobody puts in the manual. I refused, and quicky discovered that’s how quick the war rearranged a young Marine’s ideas about comradeship and control, flipping all I was taught to believe, upside down.
“Fragging” wasn’t just a rumor. With grenades everywhere, it didn’t take much for someone to toss one into a hooch (open air plywood huts where we slept) in the darkness of night if they had a grudge against an officer, a Staff NCO, or someone who simply knew too much. Whether it happened often or not almost didn’t matter. The possibility hung over everyone. Most of us just wanted to do our jobs and go home. Some days the front line felt like it ran right through the barracks.
Tension inside the wire
Race and music, who stood watch, who went on a patrol—all of it could spark. We were teenagers and twenty-somethings under a lid of heat, noise, and loss. I saw refusal, resentment, and cliques. I also saw acts of quiet bravery and brotherhood that never made it into any movie. Two truths lived together: we were a unit, and we were frayed.
Enemies without—and within
By day there were farmers and by night professionals; the VC and NVA were not amateurs. Drugs flowed, sometimes helped along by people who wanted us dulled. Heroin wasn’t just a word. The war didn’t care whether the thing that took you down wore a uniform or a street shirt.
A Ticket Out of Dong Ha
By the fall of 1969, President Nixon was under relentless political pressure to reduce America’s involvement in Vietnam. The headlines back home celebrated troop withdrawals and talked about bringing the boys home. To the public, it looked as though the war was finally beginning to wind down.
From where I stood, it looked a little different.
The Marine Corps began shifting people around. Those of us who had recently arrived in Vietnam—Marines with less than six months in country—were transferred south to units in the 1st Marine Division. At the same time, many Marines who had already spent more time in the south were moved north to replace us in the 3rd Marine Division as it prepared for its eventual redeployment.
To the folks watching the evening news, it looked like entire divisions were simply packing up and coming home. Those of us wearing the uniform knew it wasn’t quite that simple. Combat power didn’t disappear overnight—it was shuffled around while Washington tried to balance military realities with political promises.
Since I had arrived in Vietnam only a few months earlier, in July 1969, I was one of the Marines transferred south. Along with thousands of others, I left Dong Ha and headed for Danang.
I won’t pretend I was sorry to leave.
Dong Ha had been an education I never wanted. Between the nightly rocket attacks, the tension inside the platoon, and the constant uncertainty, I’d seen enough of that corner of Vietnam to last a lifetime. I didn’t spend much time looking out the back of the truck as we pulled away.
My new assignment was with the security team at Marine Wing Support Group 17—MWSG-17—in Danang. We were still in I Corps, but compared to Dong Ha, it felt like an entirely different war.
Little did I know I would run into a similar situation here.
Life near the airbase at Danang was a whole lot easier than what I had experienced in the north. Far fewer rocket attacks, threats of being overrun halted by the number of Marines on the line. The Air Force personnel and particularly the jet jockeys (F-4 Phantom pilots) designated the Wild Weasels loved us and gave us access to their mess hall and theater where we saw the John Wayne movie, The Green Beret and laughed our asses off at the absurdities and how achingly corny it was. Were the people back in the “world” thinking this was how it was here? If so, they were sadly mis-informed by Hollywood. We also saw what was happening at Woodstock with all the “hippies” we loathed as cowards, anti-war protests like Kent State, saw Jane Fonda sitting on an anti-aircraft gun in N. Vietnam (which was particularly offensive to the air jocks flying SAM interdiction missions) and how the political climate was changing. All that meant little to us who were in Vietnam who had long ago abandoned the idea of the so-called domino effect and just concentrated on survival and making it back home in one piece. We were able to get a decent nights sleep most of the time but occasionally would go outside at night, sit on the top of a bunker and watch Puff the Magic Dragon work in the bush, all the while offering up a silent prayer for the guys who were doing the real fighting out there. Our hooches were better constructed than the ones in the north because they werent being knocked down every night by incoming rocket fire. However, we discovered there was a thief among us, our fans and stereos purchased on R & R’s were coming up missing as we were gone on various missions during the day. One day we decided that two of us would remain behind, secluded in our hooch, to see just who it was that was stealing our stuff. Lo and behold, we heard Vietnamese chatter, followed by English, two Marines in collusion with Vietnamese were stealing stuff out of the hooch next to ours. My buddy and I locked and loaded our M-16’s and ran out to confront them. There was a tunnel inside the bunker that led under the wire into “Dogpatch” a name we coined for a village just outside our compound. They were passing things like fans and stereos through it. The Vietnamese ran off, we took 2 Marines we held at gunpoint and turned them into the Sgt Major in the Command Post. As we were leading them away a crowd gathered, asking why we had guns trained on fellow Marines and I heard one of the captured Marines tell an onlooker to kill us so we could not bear witness to their crime. Just goes to show you that you can take the Marine out of the ghetto but not the ghetto out of the Marine. This turned out to be a classic case like the gunfighter that is hired to clean up a town and when he does the townspeople turn agains him for his methods. Two innocent Marines were murdered in a case of mistaken identity and one of the guys in our hooch was shot. Then all the guys in our hooch moved out so as not to become the victim of a fragging. One day we found a grenade in a fire extinguisher outside our hooch, no one would sit near us in the mess hall, saying” we dont eat with dead men” It was horrible, we thought we had done the right thing and now we were being persecuted for it. Every single one of them wanted something done about the thefts and catching the theives and now that we had we suddenly became the enemy. Thats when we discovered that shit flows uphill in the Marine Corps. After the second Marine was murdered we gave up the idea of any prosecution of these crooks and went to our superiors asking for transfer to other units. The denied any murders, claiming these were accidents, “friendly fire” so to speak. We were to learn that any commander who admitted there was a problem like this under their command, there was a distinct possibility their likelihood of promotion was out the window. No one would support us, so I felt it necessary to write a letter to my Dad saying that if anything happened to me it would likely be murder. That got his attention in a hurry and unknown to me he contacted Headquarters Marine Corps in DC demanding they take action. This resulted in a letter written back to him by my commanding officer that in effect, I was exagerating the danger to me, and not to pay any attention to my “unfounded” accusations. This made my Dad even angrier, knowing me not to be a drama queen so he fired off letters to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. This created even more problems within my command and I was called into the Company Commanders office and was read the military version of the riot act. I was informed that I was hereby to be considered a sub-standard Marine, forever frozen in the low rank of E-3, a Lance Corporal, that I may even be subject to a dishonorable discharge if I persisted my demands for a transfer. I wasnt asking to be sent home. I just wanted to get out of the unit that was trying to kill me. As I stood at attention getting all this screamed at me I started getting really angry, thinking, what have I got to lose now, screw being intimidated by officers, these were just men performing the dance of CYA. So I relaxed my posture, sat down in front of the commanders desk, put my feet up and said, “Colonel, I wouldnt do that if i were you, if you think you got troubles now, just wait until I convey your threats to more higher ups in DC. I have a perfect record here, you yourself once said I was the kind of Marine you wanted under your command and I have the commendations signed by you to prove it.” After more bluster and a red-faced demand to get my feet off his desk he kicked me out. A few days later I got orders to go back to the US.
Coming home doesn’t mean it’s over
I served out my hitch stateside, went to school, married, and tried to file the memories in a drawer. For years I thought I’d closed it. Decades later, a headline about a famous friendly-fire death blew it open. The official story changed; investigations said it was our own rounds. The word “friendly” has never sat right in my mouth since Vietnam. It still doesn’t.
Only in my fifties did someone say the letters out loud to me: PTSD. I wasn’t unique. I was late to my own diagnosis. Once you start hearing the old sounds again—the shout in the dark, the rotor thump you can’t unhear—you realize how long the war kept living rent-free in your head.
Why I’m writing this now
Because too many of us carry it alone. Because words like “friendly fire” and “overexposure” and “historic water” sound neat on paper but tear at people in real life. Because some of the proudest Marines I know don’t ask for help until they’re at the cliff’s edge—or not at all.
If you’re reading this and feeling that old weight in your chest: there’s no shame in dialing a phone, walking into a clinic, or telling one trusted person what’s really going on. War already took enough from us. It doesn’t get to take the rest of the years, too.
Editor’s note: This is one Marine’s recollection. It is not meant to generalize to all units or eras, nor to litigate specific cases. It’s a plea for candor, context, and care—for those who served and those who still serve.
Veterans Crisis Line (U.S.): Dial 988 then press 1, text 838255, press 2 for: I don’t give a shit, press 3 for: get over it you pansy, press 4 for: the psychic hotline. or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat — 24/7, confidential. If you’re outside the U.S., contact your local emergency number or a trusted clinic.