| Summary: | Mr. Nale discussed living conditions at Kon Tum, Vietnam, including some encounters with indigenious snakes. He then discussed his being discharged from service in Vietnam.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Mike Nale
Part H
September 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Patti Hannah: So, how long did you stay in Vietnam, total?
Mike Nale: Eight months, eight months and seven days total. As a matter of fact, I got wounded again. It's not on there but we went up to a place called Kon Tum and like I say again, hindsight you can see all of this now. But in Kon Tum they were making a lot of contact. Well I still could not go back into battle yet because this arm would not bend all the way down. I couldn't, you know, carry a heavy load and carry a rifle like I should and all. So, they were checking me, kept checking my arm. And I've never seen as many cobras in one place in my life. You could walk just a couple of yards, you'd hear [Mr. Nale makes sound] when they'd rare up. And it's just, these aren't king, these are regular cobras, two and three and four footers. And they were brown and had a little red on their hood or green and had a little red on their hood. And, and ah, a buddy of mine, the monsoon season just stopped and he had- you know where they haul like big loads on their heads. They had these little wooden crates, you know, like this. And they put it down in the bottom of the bunker th- so you wouldn't have to stand in water. And he jumped in there one day and was reading a magazine, a Stars and Stripes, or a newspaper and he heard a [Mr. Nale makes sound] and looked and that cobra came out and was looking at him over. And he was looking at that newspaper and he was looking at the cobra. And he, and he just didn't move and the cobra went back down up underneath that wooden crate. And he said, 'To hell with this." He said, "He can have this hole." And, there was a little town there. And the barbers there used these hand clippers. They go up and down, you know, your head. And they put it's like a corndog stick with a razor on it, cut the hair out of your ear. They have another one that has a mop on it. And then they have like a tuning prong, it's a medal [?] and they put it on there. And this barber rammed that in my eardrum. And when he did, I had a very, very short fuse and I grabbed him by his Adam's apple and I started to squeeze it, jerk him out of the chair. He saw that look in my eye and knew I was fixing to kill him. And he said, "Beaucoup"." He said he thought he had the mop. And so I pulled my forty-five out and they had a mirror out there and I said, "One more time, you bic." And that means you understand. And I had my forty-five cocked and I was just like this with him. Well, that next night they came in on what they called a sapper raid. And sappers were suicidal units kind of like what they got now. And they were throwing satchel charges in the helicopters at Kon Tum Airfield. And this was about the end of December, the first of January, end of December of '67, first of January of '68. And I roll off, and a whole lot of us were sleeping out on the bunkers because of those cobras and all they were finding. Those rats get in those tents and cobras and other snakes go in there to get them, you know, that's their food. And a lot of guys would talk about they would feel them going over them. And a lot of nights you would feel stuff crawling over you and you'd just think, "God, keep going." They really don't try to bite you. They just, they're looking for food. I woke up one morning, from as far as from here to that little platform righ-- the speaking podium [15 feet], there was a bamboo viper, which is the deadliest snake. It's a emerald green snake. They call them two-step because usually it hits you, you take two steps and you're down. And he got in a jungle termite mound and was trying to get him a meal and they made a meal of him. But I thought, "You know, how close was he to me?" you know, that night. But anyway I roll off in that bunker. All firing started everywhere. A lot of guys in the rear they're not, they're not used to combat and they just – when they start shooting, they shoot ever which way so- I roll off in that bunker and I was listening for that hiss, thinking one of them could be in the bunker, you know, looking for a rat. I didn't hear it and I went, "Whew." Well a tank came down the road. And I saw that tank go up in the air and the track came off. And I said to myself, I said, "Damn, they hit them with a RPG rocket." And I thought, "I didn't see that rocket." And the track came off and they came down and dust settled and I thought, "That must of killed everybody in that tank." And it had to be a good forty seconds to a minute, all of a sudden I heard the hatch on the top fly open and they shot a flare up in the air. And they caught the NVA in a staging area. And a guy got up there, the gunner on the fifty [fifty caliber machine gun (mama deuce)] and just [Mr. Nale makes sounds]. And next morning, I waited 'til daylight and went out there and they were stacked up like cordwood just every which way. And what we do, we would take clothes off and find any information, take the weapons. And I noticed the guy on top of that pile that morning was the NVA that punctured my eardrum. So he was a, he was a double, almost a like a double agent if you want to say to speak. And to this day, like I say, a little blood trickle out of my ear, but that eardrum is still tender to this day. I went over and talked to the guys in the tank. I said, "You guys okay?" And they said, "Yeah." And I said, "I thought you guys were dead. That tank almost flipped over. I saw one side come up and it almost flipped over." He said, "Look on the other side of the tank." He said, "If that had went off we would have been dead." And there was a huge Russian anti-tank mine about this big. It was black and it had these pins on it. Evidently you pulled the pins to arm it and somebody forgot to pull the pins on that one or they didn't have time. And they didn't arm it. If they had of they would have knocked that tank out and killed everybody in that tank. They planned their attacks before they do so their plan was good except for the fact they didn't pull the pins on it- anti tank mount. And actually I went out to the field. The battalion surgeon was out at a fire support base and he was, kept checking my arm, and saw one of my friends. And he got some back blast. They have a, it's anti-personnel, it's what they call a claymore mine and it's got little legs on it and you can turn it up and down. And it fires 750 like ball bearings, like this, it's in C-4 explosive. It looks kind of like peanut butter brittle so to speak. And it's kind of half moon shaped. And he said, "We're fixing to hit it again." He said. I said, "What's going on out there?" I said, "I've been listening on the radio." And he said, "An NVA officer stood up there the other day and said, "Lada, lada" which means "come on" to his men. And they were using our tactics, getting on line. They blew three claymores on him. And from far as here to that wall right there, if you're in back of a claymore, you can get killed from the back blast of it. And he had got some twigs or something wood in his eye, you know, and he was getting treated for that. And sure enough, like I say, they hit, the, the, we were around that airfield and they hit that airfield that night. So, that was actually some of the first battle of Tet, of Tet Offensive. But we were regrouping and weren't doing a whole lot of battle back then because we had taken two thirds causalities. But nearly all the officers and all the NCOs were killed. It was just- So it's just a matter of if it's your time to go, you know, it's your number you're going to go.
PH: So how did you, how did they decide your time was up to bring you home?
MN: Well, they kept looking at my arm and they said, "This arm isn't healing." So they sent me to 249th general hospital in Japan and the doctor said, "Is this your first time to be wounded?" And I said, "No, actually it's my third time, Doctor." And I said, explained it to him. And he said, "How long have you been over there?" And I told him. He said, "Do you want to go back?" And I said, "If you send me back, I'll go back." And he shook his head. I stayed there about a month. A month later they sent me home. I went to the Fort Meade, Maryland to a hospital and then I came back to Martin Army Hospital in Fort Benning, Georgia. I stayed there about three months and then I went back to the 82nd Airborne to the 2nd Bat 508 Infantry and we went up and trained cadets in guerrilla warfare for three months. And then that ended my career. I got out the day after I turned twenty after three years to the date.
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