Morning Thoughts: Carnage

On this day in 1968—let’s see, that will be 50 years ago next year—I was standing gate duty as part of the Naval Security Forces at a former French base outside Da Nang, Vietnam when orders came that we were on full alert.

It seems all hell had broken loose. That’s all we knew at the time.

Our unit immediately moved to “six on and six off.” Every six hours we stood guard somewhere and every six hours we slept, fortified our areas of responsibility, went on patrols, or observed “other duties as required.” We were to stand that duty for the next 26 days.

Since I had been on gate duty, my armament consisted of a 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, called “the weapon responsible for more accidents than any in the history of our military,” despite having three separate safety devices. I treated it with respect and was happy the day the Federal Government confiscated it from me. My other armament was a sawed-off pump 12-gauge shotgun that stayed at the post. It tended to command a lot of attention. But I carried no other weapon than the pistol.

Directed I was, therefore, to report to the armory to be issued an M-16 rifle for the duration. I had carried it for three days when a gunner’s mate decided that, instead of sleep, we need to fill a six-hour respite with some target practice. There had been some reports of poor marksmanship during this dust up, forever to be known as “The Tet Offensive.”

At a makeshift range, I proceeded to miss every target, to the hoots of my shipmates and the consternation of the gunner’s mate. “Give me that goddam thing,” he requested of me. Then he proceeded to miss every target.

Seems something had caused the barrel to bend, no telling what. We often received our weaponry second-hand from infantry units. They, the Navy, issued me another weapon that shot straight, and, because I was a strapping six-footer, made me an “M-60 man.” Well shucks. I was to carry both the M-16 and the additional responsibility for the remainder of my tour, as I later left for a mountaintop base on Monkey Mountain, a 3,000-foot landmark on the south side of Da Nang Bay.

I have many more memories of that hellish period, but this one involved no carnage and serves the current purpose. But, to this day, when I hear someone use that word—carnage—flippantly, I’m tempted to say, “Jocko, you have no idea what carnage is.”

If you feel you must vote for a
candidate who proposes a land war
in a foreign country. Don't.