The Green Line
Sgt. Terry Foote
Company C, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 12th Cavalry

After the disaster at LZ Bird we only had two companies at "combat efficiency", A and B company were still in good shape. C company (mine) had been decimated. After Bird we were moved back to the base camp of the Cav at An Khe. This was a sprawling base in the middle of the central highlands.

There was one distinguishing mark to the base. There was one mountain just on the edge of the base. It was called Hon Cong mountain and right on one side of it from the top of the mountain to about midway down the mountain was a huge 1st Cav patch in living color. Rumor had it that it irritated Ho Chi Minh so much he swore to eat dinner off the patch. This was probably the safest place in the central highlands. This was gravy duty.

They would rotate battalions in periodically to guard the perimeter of the base camp. After the beating we took on Bird the decision was made to bring the battalion back to An Khe to set up on the green line. The green line was the name we called the perimeter of Camp Radcliff, the 1st Cav's base camp. The actual perimeter had bunkers and towers set up with an permanent M-60 machine gun position very close together. This was the place my life with the 1st Cav began what seemed like years ago although it had only been about 4 1/2 months. We had 4 - 5 man positions because we were reinforced by the REMF's that happened to draw guard duty that day. That gave us an opportunity to sit back and relax a little.

On the first night back when we reached the battalion area there were several jeep trailers filled with iced down beer. Most of it was Carling Black Label, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Schlitz but who cared, it was ice cold beer. We certainly made the best of it. I remember the next morning there were people lying all over the ground. I don't think anyone made it back to a bunk that night. We just passed out where we fell. We had just lost a lot of good men and the beer somehow numbed a person. We simply didn't think about all the men we had lost in the last 4 1/2 months. It was part of war. When people are shooting someone is going to die. That's just a fact of life. It may seem callous but when it happened nothing was ever said but all the thoughts were "better thee than me". It was an unwritten rule that these kind of things were seldom mentioned.

When the sun came up we all had passes to go into An Khe which meant "Sin City". We all got up, went to supply to get new jungle fatigues then signed out at the orderly room to go to town. On the way out the door there were several boxes of condoms and we all took a couple on the way out. We kind of grouped up in groups of 3-5 (usually your squad members). This was our day. No guard duty, just fun. We never really had to walk anywhere. When we hit the dirt road just off the company area a deuce and a half would stop and tell us to hop in. They always drove to the gate to let us out. From there we were on our own. We walked around town for about a half hour but we all knew we weren't shopping or taking in the sights. We were just waiting for someone to mention "Sin City". Once that happened we headed straight down to the road entering "Sin City".

Now, "Sin City" was actually an army run whorehouse. There was concertina wire around all the bars. The bars were all set up in a rectangle each attached to the other. In the middle of this rectangle was a smaller rectangle of bars set up the same way. It was there for one purpose only. For the GI's to blow off some steam and have a little "fun". The minute you walked into one of the bars you were damned near attacked by young ladies who took you to the bar so you could get a beer for a quarter. They never let you drink over one beer though before they brought up their purpose. It was always "you number 1 GI, you boom boom 200P" Number 1 was great, number 10 meant you sucked. And of course I think we all know what the "boom boom" was. 200P meant 200 Piasters which translated into two dollars (not bad). They then grabbed you by the arm to take you back to a room behind the bar to consummate the transaction. When you were finished they took you back to the bar and had you sit down so they could then fill your belly with beer and move on to a new GI that just walked in the door. I don't think there was a much "love" involved here. You could stay there as long as you and your money held out but when the sun was going down the MP's at the gate ran everyone out. Charlie would slip into An Khe at night and you didn't want to get caught in An Khe at night. It was almost the same as a death warrant.

But that went on for the first day you were there. Then it was back to guarding the base camp and running patrols outside the perimeter at night. About every 3-4 days you would get a pass into town to take care of more business. If you were lucky you would draw patrol duty on the An Khe side of the Green Line. We would set up behind "Sin City" for the night and the girls would come out to us. Charlie didn't mess with us if we were in 5-10 man patrols so we went whoring at night if we had that patrol.

That was about the way your break went. When I was in country we only went in to base camp one time. The rest of he time the best we could hope for was a forward supply base. We sat around the green line playing cards, going to town, and standing guard at night. We just enjoyed the break while waiting for replacements to fill our ranks to make us operational.

We stayed in for almost three weeks then command decided it was time for us to go back to the bush. The company was loaded down with young green replacements. I was an old veteran by that time (right, 19 years old and an old veteran, is there something wrong with this picture?). But we all loaded on to an army Caribou and were flown to LZ English, the forward supply area for the Cav. From there we were sent to the chopper pad to be lifted back into the bush and you'll never guess where they took us, to the end of the Kim Son valley. Bird had been abandoned by that time but our area of operations was the mountains at the end of the valley. We patrolled that area for a couple of weeks still running into a few stragglers left behind by the 22nd NVA Regiment who we promptly dispatched with extreme prejudice.

From there we went back and forth among the mountains and valleys to the west of Bon Son because there was a lot of enemy activity in that area. We found it everywhere. We hit the booby traps again and found signs of Charlie all over the area. We ran into small elements but nothing big. When you run into a lot of small elements like that it tells you they are gathering for a fight somewhere. We did our best to disrupt them but simply didn't succeed.

One night while we were set up on top of a mountain over looking LZ English, the forward supply area, the "secure area" I was on guard facing the LZ. Suddenly all hell broke loose on English. They were being hit by sappers. A sapper was like the suicide bomber the middle east uses. They would strap explosives to their bodies and attempt to destroy our supplies. They hit the POL (fuel dump), the ammo dump, the chopper pad, and the hospital. The whole place was making a spectacular show for us but we were too far away to even think about helping. What was kind of sad and made you feel so callous was the talk going around the perimeter was "it's about time you REMF's got into the war." I mean, men were dying and that was what we thought. Of course I don't think anyone really meant it but it seemed to distance the death and destruction from a man's mind since we couldn't help.

I actually ran into a man that was on English that night. It was simply by chance. When I was transferred to Indiana and I was going around meeting the people in the plant I ran into a laminator operator that was in the Cav. We talked a little bit and he told me he was a clerk typist on English when they got hit that night. I thought, well hell, then told him we were watching from a mountain top. He knew what we were thinking because he asked me if we got a kick out of watching them have to do some fighting? He knew because boonie rats were a different kind of animal than a clerk typist of a cook or any other job like that. We did get along very well though. It's called comradeship, it was still there after all those years.

During the months of January and February of '67 we stayed in the same areas but spent a little more time down in the plains and checking out villages. Charlie was on the move and he wanted Binh Dinh Province. We were determined he wasn't going to have it. One thing we did notice was booby traps became much more numerous along the mountain trails but the strange thing was we began to notice more booby traps in village areas. The rice paddies were still full of water because of the wet season so we were running into them on rice paddy dikes more frequently. This was early '67 and Charlie was building up for something. We ran into more and more larger elements, usually platoon size which told us they were gathering for a fight somewhere. Some of the other brigades were hitting some major firefights. We were usually air lifted in to help them out. Just the sight of the sky black with choppers would cause Charlie to break off he fight and live to fight another day.

By this time it was near the end of March and I was looking forward to my R&R to Japan coming up the first week of April. All I was doing at that time was trying to stay alive and counting the days until I climbed on the plane to Japan.

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