Major Bruce H. Norton - Force Recon Diary, 1969: The Riveting, True-to-Life Account of Survival and Death in One of the Most Highly Skilled Units in Vietnam

Ivy Books

Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright 1991 by B. H. Norton

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to William Krasilovsky, Esq., for permission to reprint three poems by Robert Service: Just Think! copyright 1921 by Dodd Mead and Company; The Call and My Mate copyright 1921 by Dodd Mead and Company.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-91828

ISBN9780804106719

eBook ISBN9780399177712

v4.1

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FOREWORD

Bruce Doc Norton is a unique individual. The former U.S. Navy Force Recon corpsman, now a field-grade Marine officer, performed as an exceptional team member while in 3d Force Recon in Vietnam, 1969 to 1970. We who worked and fought with him admire him.

The accounts in Force Recon Diary, 1969 are, unlike many Vietnam experiences, accurate and factual, lacking any self-aggrandizement. They are, in short, professional, which is important to all of us from Alex Lees 3d Force Recon Company because he had no patience whatsoever with inaccuracy, dishonesty, or lack of balls. Mistakes are paid forwitness Singleton and Garcia. Doc hasnt held it back and this account of his tour in our company is, like his performance in the bush, well done!

Bucky the Igor

C. C. Coffman, Jr.

Lt. Col. USMC (Ret.)

PROLOGUE

BY GOING BACK IN TIME, THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO, to 1957, I hope to explain how the early years of my childhood, spent in the woods of the small New England township of North Scituate, Rhode Island, served to educate and prepare me for a truly adventurous and exciting period of my life. I cannot recapture all of the many thrills and disappointments of my youth, but I do believe that sharing some of my more interesting childhood experiences will serve to demonstrate how the lessons of sportsmanship and woodsmanship which I learned as a young man helped me to stay alive when I went to Vietnam.

In 1969 and 1970 I was a United States Navy hospital corpsman serving in Marine Force Recon teams with both 3d Force and 1st Force Reconnaissance Companies, on twenty-four long-range combat missions. A Marine Force Recon team, which conducts combat reconnaissance patrols, has always been considered an elite unit, even outside the Marine Corps.

Serving alongside Marines in combat is a common tradition for Navy corpsmen because the Marine Corps has no trained medical personnel that are organic to its organization. The Navy provides the corpsmen to the Marine Corps Fleet Marine Force (FMF) units. To have served as a team member within two Force Recon companies while I was in Vietnam was the greatest of personal honors.

This is my account of how I happened to serve with these two Marine Force Recon units, and what occurred on patrols during that time. I have not embellished any of the events, nor have I exaggerated the truth for the sake of enhancing the story. There really isnt any need to do that. I have tried to name the people, places, and dates that influenced my life, whether they were in a positive manner or not. I have also tried to give credit where that credit was due.

Hopefully, many of my lessons learned while patrolling against the North Vietnamese will prove to be useful and positive to those small-unit leaders who may someday be tasked to carry out difficult patrolling assignments in combat.

To those military men of the present, and to those of the future, I will pass on to you the first of several truisms, It is the man on the ground with his rifle who ultimately wins the war.

JUST THINK!

Just think! some night the stars will gleam

Upon a cold, grey stone,

And trace a name with silver beam,

And lo! twill be your own.

That night is speeding on to greet

Your epitaphic rhyme.

Your life is but a little beat

Within the heart of Time.

A little gain, a little pain

A laugh, lest you may moan;

A little blame, a little fame,

A star-gleam on a stone.

Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

(Robert Service)

THE WOODS

DEEP IN THE THOUGHTS OF NEARLY ALL YOUNG BOYS is the belief that there is something mysterious, fascinating, and powerful about owning a real gun. It makes no difference whether it is a rifle, a pistol, or a shotgun. As a youngster growing up in the 1950s in the small rural town of North Scituate, Rhode Island, I was no exception.

To possess my own rifle meant many things to me. It meant that I could be trusted, and it meant that I was expected to know the difference between what was right and what was wrong. It also meant that I would be held responsible for my actions with that rifle.

I learned that a rifle could take a life, but it could never bring a life back.

My very first rifle was given to me by my father when I was nine years old. It was a Crossman model 140-B, pneumatic, .22 caliber pellet rifle. The rifle had to be pumped up by hand at least a dozen times so that the solid lead pellet would have enough velocity behind it to make it to the target, whether that was a marked piece of paper, a squirrel high up in an oak tree, or some unsuspecting rabbit that had exposed itself in the open.

The Crossman was a single-shot rifle, and that one important characteristic would later prove to be a very useful teaching point some ten years later in Vietnam.

Looking back on those times, it seems as though I spent every idle moment in those quiet pine forests of North Scituate.

The property that surrounded our old family home on three sides was owned by the city of Providence, and all of those thousands of acres were fenced off and posted, to keep trespassers from ruining the land or fouling the pristine waters of the reservoir.

The entire area was made up of farmland, pine and hardwood forests, and the great body of water that was the reservoir. All of the property was under the control of the Providence Water Supply Board. It is still an extremely valuable watershed for our small state because the Scituate reservoir provides all of the fresh water to the city of Providence.

To me, at the age of nine, it was a place of dreams and made for adventure. The forest was there to be explored, the reservoir was there to be fished, and the open areas of old farmland were there to be hunted. The only obstacle that separated me from the woods was a three-foot-high stone wall.

The heavily wooded areas were the perfect place for any small boy to learn what nature had to reveal to one who was curious. It was there that I learned how to track small game animals and how to move slowly and silently through the forest. I learned how to tell when the New England weather was about to change quickly, and I learned how to prepare for it. I was taught how to live-trap muskrat and mink, using catfish for bait.