Don C. Hall - I Served

Copyright 2001 by Don C. Hall and Annette R. Hall

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the authors.

Book designed and produced by Annette R. Hall

Contact the authors at

A.D. Hall Publishing Co. #241, 15600 NE 8th St., Suite B-1 Bellevue, WA, 98008-3927

Canadian Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Hall, Don C. I served

ISBN 1-55212-489-4

ISBN 978-1-4122-4195-3 (eBook)

1. Hall, Don C. 2. United States. Army. Airborne Infantry, 51st. Company FHistory. 3. Vietnamese Conflict,

1961-1975Personal narratives, American. 4. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975Reconnaissance operations, American.

I.Hall, Annette R.

II.Title.

DS559.5.H32 2001 959.7043092 C00-911547-1

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Contents

Praise for
I Served

I think I Served is a great contribution to the overall story of the Vietnam experience. It is a riveting personal account of war that very few know anything about, except those directly involved. It is also a beautiful love story. The after-action reports give added credibility. God bless you and thank you for your work and your personal sacrifice in getting the story out.

General Fred C. Weyand (U.S. Army, Retired)

I Served is Oliver Twist, Romeo and Juliet, and All is Quiet on the Western Front, all rolled into one. An extraordinary literary achievement.

Jim Morris, author of War Story, The Devils Secret Name, Fighting Men, The Sheriff of Purgatory, Strawberry Soldier, Breeder, and Silvernail.

Honest, gritty, passionate- I Served greatly adds to the personal narrative history of LRRPs in Americas longest war.

Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning, (U.S. Army, Retired), Author of Inside the LRRPs: Rangers in Vietnam Inside Force Recon : Recon Marines in Vietnam, and Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam

From a turbulent childhood, to a warriors role, to a special loveriveting and true.

Dennis Foley, author of Long Range Patrol, Night Work, Take Back the Night, an d Special Men.

Company F, 51 st Long Range Patrol played a pivotal and hair-raising role in the defense of Long Binh during the 1968 Tet Offensive. In I Served, Don Hall tells the story of Company F before, during, and after Tet in intimate details.

Keith William Nolan, author of The Battle _for Saigon: Tet 1968, Operation Buffalo: USMC Fight for the DMZ, Battle _for Hue: Tet 1968, The Magnificent Bastards: The Joint Army-Marine Defense of Don Ha, 1968, and Sappers in the Wire: The Life and Death of

Firebase Mary Ann

This book is dedicated to Col. William C. Maus (U.S. Army, retired), to the twelve men who died in F/51 st LRP, and to all those who served with honor.

The soldier, above all men, is required to perform the highest act of religious teachingsSACRIFICE.

General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Army

It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, and who serves beneath the flag,and whose coffin is draped by the flag,who allows the protestors to burn the flag.

Father Denis Edward OBrien, USMC

I was born in February 1948 in Russelsheim, Germany. Four months after my birth, my father Cecil, a hard-drinking G.I. stationed in Germany after World War II, married my mother Eleonore, a naive young German girl. On the other side of the world, in America, Peter, a handsome young ex-Marine from Brooklyn, NY, married Drucilla, a beautiful young woman from Hansford, W. VA, also an ex-Marine. They had met during World War II when they served in the U.S. Marine Corps at Camp LeJeune, NC. Their first child, Annette, was born nine months later, in January 1949, in Brooklyn, NY. I always find it amazing that two people born so far apart, and into such different circumstances, ended up meeting each other in an eighth-grade classroom in a small city in southwestern Virginia. Fate put us together.

I SERVED is a wild romp of a journey through one decade in my life, a decade that made me who I am today. Above all, it is a story of great love and friendships. During this ten-year period, I was, at one time or another, a prisoner, a traveler, a naive child, an altar boy turned warrior. As Mark Twain wrote, I have found that there aint no surer way to find out weather you like people or hate them than to travel with them. I have no regrets whatsoever, even about the hard times, because I can look back with fond memories about the love I found and the friendships I developed that will last a lifetime.

I always wanted to be a writer, though as a kid I was told by many an adult that I didnt have what it took to be one. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, kids with dyslexia were relegated to the dumb side of the classroom. I was one of those kids. God decided I needed help if I were going to be a writer, so he sent me Annette. Besides correcting my multitude of spelling and grammar errors, she helps me make what I write say exactly what I mean.

In 1984, after having spent years making notes, I finally sat down in front of a computer (a dual-floppy 8088 PC with no hard drive and only 128K of memory) and began typing out the first draft. Annette took each chapter as I finished it and made it readable. Because she was part of my life from such a young age, she was able to add content from her own knowledge that fleshed out the story. In 1985, when we finally finished the first draft of twenty-three chapters, we started sending out queries to a large number of literary agents and publishers. We received nothing but rejections. We were told no one was interested in reading memoirs about the Vietnam War. Finally, Annette and I shelved the manuscript.

In 1991, I went to my first company reunion, and put to rest much of the guilt and anguish I had felt all the years since 1968 when I had gone home from Vietnam and left my teammates behind. The 1991 reunion of Co. F, 51 st Long Range Patrol (Airborne) Infantry was a watershed event in my life. Because I discovered that the guys were okay, I was able to put to rest so many of the anguished feelings I had carried with me all those years. My friends had survived, just like I had. I came home from that reunion walking on air.

That reunion also opened the floodgates of memory. In reminiscing over old times with the guys, so many memories were revived that I knew I had to add more chapters to my book in order to do justice to the men of F/51 st LRP. I was revitalized and came home ready to get back to work on it.