Read e-book online Ground Pounder: A Marine's Journey through South Vietnam, PDF

In early February of 1968, at the start of the Tet Offensive, inner most top quality Gregory V. brief arrived in Vietnam as an eighteen-year-old U.S. Marine. Amid all the confusion and destruction, he all started his journey of responsibility as an 81mm mortarman with the 2d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which used to be stationed at Con Thien close to the DMZ. whereas residing in horrendous stipulations akin to the trenches in global battle I, his unit was once bring to an end and regularly being bombarded through the North Vietnamese heavy artillery, rockets, and mortars. quickly thereafter brief left his mortar team and have become an 81mm’s ahead Observer for lodge corporation. operating with the U.S. Army’s 1st Air Cavalry department and different devices, he helped relieve the siege at Khe Sanh via reopening direction nine. brief participated in different diverse operations as regards to the Laotian border, the place touch with the enemy used to be usually heavy and constantly chaotic. On may possibly 19, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, the NVA tried to overrun the strive against base within the early morning hours. Tragically, in the course of a two-month interval, one of many businesses (Foxtrot corporation) inside of his battalion might maintain greater than 70 percentage casualties. by way of September brief was once transferred to the first Battalion ninth Marines (the strolling Dead). Assigned as an infantryman (grunt) with Bravo corporation and working alongside the DMZ and close to the A Shau Valley, he might spend the following 5 months patrolling the mountainous terrain and enduring the cruel components. on the finish of his first journey, he re-upped for a moment and was once assigned to the first Marine Air Wing in Da Nang, the place he had a chance to get to grips with the Vietnamese tradition. Direct, sincere, and brutal in his observations, brief holds not anything again in describing the hardships of contemporary war and our leaders’ illusions of success.