Mike Nale (C)
Mr. Nale talkes about living conditions for soldiers in Vietnam. He also discussed his first conbat contact at Dak To and his being wounded.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive Interview with Mike Nale Part C September 13, 2011 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Ha...
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| Format: | Electronic |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library
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| Online Access: | https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/war/id/207 |
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Electronic |
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War Years at Home and Abroad Collection |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Military life |
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Military life Mike Nale (C) Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Military life Military life; War casualties; Dak To, Battle of, Vietnam, 1967. |
| description |
Mr. Nale talkes about living conditions for soldiers in Vietnam. He also discussed his first conbat contact at Dak To and his being wounded.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Mike Nale
Part C
September 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Mike Nale: So, there was a lot, a lot of times your clothes would just rot off of you at night. But one night you would have like what they called LP, listening posts. The next night you would have, go out on ambush patrol. The next night you would be two hours on, four hours off, watching this, right there you'd usually be in a circle or oval and you would be watching to see if they were going to hit you at night. At night they would have ah, stand down and I don't know why but a lot of Orientals hit you usually in the hour before dark. Or right at dark or an hour before dawn. And then there was stand to and stand down. And stand to was, was in the morning, you would be up before the sun was up and you'd just be watching and looking and waiting and just see what was going to happen. You would usually get something to eat real quick. Ah, we had some little tablets, heat tablets, that you could heat up your C-rations in a can. And pretty soon we started getting what they called LRRP rations, Long Range Recon Patrol. And it was dehydrated food. I guess some of the first dehydrated really that type food they used. But we got to where we would carry a two pound block of C4, which is explosive. We would take, it looked like clay, we would take a little bit of it, just a little bitty minute bit and make a little tip on it and light it. And we would have a B3 can full of water and it would heat it up within a matter of seconds. And you could just pour it in that dehydrated food and it would be like chicken and rice or beef and rice. Fold it up and leave it five minutes and your food was ready.
Every day (I weighed 142 pounds then) we would hump usually eighty to ninety pounds on our back every day and this was up in the mountains. And you had to carry a lot of water with you. Ah, we learned tricks. They had some huge water bamboo that you couldn't even reach around that was a hundred feet high and they were in segments. You could cut another piece of bamboo, a smaller one, like and make a little straw out of it, make a little point on it. Take your knife and drill down in the top of the bamboo right where the section is. Stick that straw in there and it was some of the coolest water, drinking water, and it was crystal clear. And we would drink the water out of it. Ah, usually you never knew every day, you didn't know if you were going to live or die for that one day. And that's the reason people developed the attitudes they, they do. I mean it was just a day in, day out thing. It was, you didn't know if you were going to make contact that night. You didn't know if you were going to make contact the next day. The first, when I first got up to Dak To there was a fire fight raging with A Company. Ah, this was June. And that's my first time they finally got me up in a helicopter up there because firing was so heavy. And that was my first contact. Ah the first night in the jungle, I met everybody in my squad, and they really looked out after you. And they, the reason we did is because you had to depend on those people for your lives. If you didn't teach them what to look for, or train them, you might get killed yourself because you didn't show them what they needed to know or what they needed to do. And they had a lizard over there. I don't know the name of the lizard. But it would go [Mr. Nale makes lizard sound]. And I, first time I woke them up- they told me if I heard anything to wake them up. We were on ambush patrol. And I said, "Hey," I said, "there's a VC out there yelling." And they said, "No, that's a lizard." they said. So, the first night in the jungle I don't think I slept hardly any. It was a full moonlit night that night. But during monsoon season you went to bed in the rain. It would rain on you maybe twenty times a day. It would start, it would stop. It'd start, it'd stop. And usually at night on the ambush I would find me a place and wallow in it like a hog. And make me a little place to try to stay warm. And up in the mountains at night it was cold. You had to wear sweaters actually up there at night. It would drop down, the temperature, and your blood had thinned out. And the first time I was wounded was 21 July of '67. 20 of July '67 ah, it was a lightning storm and I was, it was my night to be on what they called perimeter guard. And the lightning flashed and I saw a NVA soldier holding his AK47 up. And, and I yelled to some of them, you know, told them, I said, "There's a NVA out there," said, "we're getting broke." And I moved down a little because I figured he would know where I was at, and the next time lightning flashed I wanted to see him before he saw me. Well all the guys really kidded me about that, they said, "You're seeing things, you know you're seeing." I said, "No, I'm telling you, I saw a NVA soldier holding his rifle." We started patrolling again that morning. And we saw things like arrows on trees and we learned their signs. Arrow on trees meant base camp ahead. If you saw three rocks or three sticks in a row that meant you were fixing to walk into a booby trapped area. Whether it was Bouncing Betty mines or some kind of mine that you could get a booby trap that you could get into. We walked until we got to almost the bottom of this hill. And artillery was walking ahead of us. You could hear it. And when artillery comes over you hear [Mr. Nale makes sound] and if you hear that go over you, you're okay. And you can hear it from the fire support base. You hear the boom and it'll go [Mr. Nale makes sound]. Well this time we heard the boom and [Mr. Nale makes sound] it stopped and all of us hit the ground. And I had a Special Forces, he was ex-Special Forces captain, named Captain Willoughby then. Captain Willoughby was very hard core. And they said, "Do you want us to fire again?" And he said, "I'll kill the next g-d-s-o-b that fires a round." He said, "Cease fire, g-d, cease fire!" An, ah, we had a floating point in front of us. There was about six people, three on the left, three on the right. And we were at the bottom of a base camp and there was a latrine, they had their latrines at their bottom of the base camps, on the right side and they had steps going up the side. So we knew we were fixing to make contact. Then they did what they called recon by fire. And what that meant was they would start shooting, basically telling them, "We know you're here," drawing them to make them shoot. And they shot green tracers. And we were down a little bit and you could see the tracers coming out of the tree line. And Captain Willoughby, after he gave them permission to recon by fire, he said, "Cease fire, g-d-, cease fire!" And Zero Varoli yelled back to him and said, "Cease fire, hell, we're in contact." You know and he said, "Take that g-d hill, men." And so we charged. And as we charged and went up the hill, ah, my squad, there were eleven of us in the squad, every one of us got wounded that day. We were in what they call a kill zone. And B40 rockets started raining down. The B40s are the ones they hold on their shoulder you see and they fire off the – and you just see a green ball of flame coming toward you and as it comes, it just gets smaller. And you're thinking, "Oh no," and it's so quick you can't move. But I remember going up in the air, tumbling. And when I came down I got hit. I felt my neck. I was a medic and I had blood but it wasn't spurting out. It almost got my juggler, that's what I was afraid of. And then my right arm over here, I felt it and I knew I got hit there and then my back. And actually what had happened, a sniper had opened up on me the same time. That's the reason I'm saying if it's your time to go, it's your time to go. But as I went over the sniper shot me. He would have shot me twice in the heart but he railroad tracked my back twice. There was me and a guy named Baby Stud Doug Roth. I looked over at him and he - one of the places he got hit was over the eye right there and the blood was coming in his eye. He couldn't see. So he got a bandage out and I put the bandage on. And him and I kept firing. I had a M79 grenade launcher. And when you shoot it, it looks like a little short barreled shotgun, it's 40 mm. It comes out, it goes twenty-eight feet and it arms. And I was bouncing those off trees getting air bursts. And I fired twenty-eight rounds and it was a twenty-three minute fire fight all the way down that side I was on. I never saw the firing ceased. I thought, "I learned something today." Well, after that I went back and I started using my combat, my medical skills again. And there was a guy named Wyley, Jerry Wyley I think was his first name, but Jerry was hit in the groin and he had a huge hole in his, his back here, his shoulder. And I was afraid it got that main artery coming up through there. And so I took him out and I noticed that it had taken his right testicle pretty well out. So I was patching him up and a guy named Mugsy Minard, Jerry Minard walked by us. There was a little trail there. And I said, "Hey, Mugsy." He said, "Hey." And he walked about two steps. And I was, I don't know why I was watching but I saw a bullet, heard a rifle go off and the round hit him and I saw the bullet come out his back and hit the dust. I thought to myself then, I said, "They killed Mugsy." And as he was falling back he saw the sniper and he put his weapon on automatic and fired the whole magazine. And the sniper came out of the tree. It looked like something you see on movie. And he hit right beside, on the other side of me. So I turned around and started working on him. And ah, a lot of those guys, Jerry Minard and him had left country they were wounded so bad. I came back in a month. |
| title |
Mike Nale (C) |
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Mike Nale (C) |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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FLCPLwar207 |
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https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/war/id/207 |
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http://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/war/id/207 |
| _version_ |
1705462193136336896 |
| spelling |
Mike Nale (C)Military life; War casualties; Dak To, Battle of, Vietnam, 1967.Mr. Nale talkes about living conditions for soldiers in Vietnam. He also discussed his first conbat contact at Dak To and his being wounded.Florence-Lauderdale Public LibraryFlorence-Lauderdale Public LibraryMike Nale2011-09-13sound/textaudio/mp3; text/pdfEnglishIs part of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Collection.Contact the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for permission to use.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Mike Nale
Part C
September 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Mike Nale: So, there was a lot, a lot of times your clothes would just rot off of you at night. But one night you would have like what they called LP, listening posts. The next night you would have, go out on ambush patrol. The next night you would be two hours on, four hours off, watching this, right there you'd usually be in a circle or oval and you would be watching to see if they were going to hit you at night. At night they would have ah, stand down and I don't know why but a lot of Orientals hit you usually in the hour before dark. Or right at dark or an hour before dawn. And then there was stand to and stand down. And stand to was, was in the morning, you would be up before the sun was up and you'd just be watching and looking and waiting and just see what was going to happen. You would usually get something to eat real quick. Ah, we had some little tablets, heat tablets, that you could heat up your C-rations in a can. And pretty soon we started getting what they called LRRP rations, Long Range Recon Patrol. And it was dehydrated food. I guess some of the first dehydrated really that type food they used. But we got to where we would carry a two pound block of C4, which is explosive. We would take, it looked like clay, we would take a little bit of it, just a little bitty minute bit and make a little tip on it and light it. And we would have a B3 can full of water and it would heat it up within a matter of seconds. And you could just pour it in that dehydrated food and it would be like chicken and rice or beef and rice. Fold it up and leave it five minutes and your food was ready.
Every day (I weighed 142 pounds then) we would hump usually eighty to ninety pounds on our back every day and this was up in the mountains. And you had to carry a lot of water with you. Ah, we learned tricks. They had some huge water bamboo that you couldn't even reach around that was a hundred feet high and they were in segments. You could cut another piece of bamboo, a smaller one, like and make a little straw out of it, make a little point on it. Take your knife and drill down in the top of the bamboo right where the section is. Stick that straw in there and it was some of the coolest water, drinking water, and it was crystal clear. And we would drink the water out of it. Ah, usually you never knew every day, you didn't know if you were going to live or die for that one day. And that's the reason people developed the attitudes they, they do. I mean it was just a day in, day out thing. It was, you didn't know if you were going to make contact that night. You didn't know if you were going to make contact the next day. The first, when I first got up to Dak To there was a fire fight raging with A Company. Ah, this was June. And that's my first time they finally got me up in a helicopter up there because firing was so heavy. And that was my first contact. Ah the first night in the jungle, I met everybody in my squad, and they really looked out after you. And they, the reason we did is because you had to depend on those people for your lives. If you didn't teach them what to look for, or train them, you might get killed yourself because you didn't show them what they needed to know or what they needed to do. And they had a lizard over there. I don't know the name of the lizard. But it would go [Mr. Nale makes lizard sound]. And I, first time I woke them up- they told me if I heard anything to wake them up. We were on ambush patrol. And I said, "Hey," I said, "there's a VC out there yelling." And they said, "No, that's a lizard." they said. So, the first night in the jungle I don't think I slept hardly any. It was a full moonlit night that night. But during monsoon season you went to bed in the rain. It would rain on you maybe twenty times a day. It would start, it would stop. It'd start, it'd stop. And usually at night on the ambush I would find me a place and wallow in it like a hog. And make me a little place to try to stay warm. And up in the mountains at night it was cold. You had to wear sweaters actually up there at night. It would drop down, the temperature, and your blood had thinned out. And the first time I was wounded was 21 July of '67. 20 of July '67 ah, it was a lightning storm and I was, it was my night to be on what they called perimeter guard. And the lightning flashed and I saw a NVA soldier holding his AK47 up. And, and I yelled to some of them, you know, told them, I said, "There's a NVA out there," said, "we're getting broke." And I moved down a little because I figured he would know where I was at, and the next time lightning flashed I wanted to see him before he saw me. Well all the guys really kidded me about that, they said, "You're seeing things, you know you're seeing." I said, "No, I'm telling you, I saw a NVA soldier holding his rifle." We started patrolling again that morning. And we saw things like arrows on trees and we learned their signs. Arrow on trees meant base camp ahead. If you saw three rocks or three sticks in a row that meant you were fixing to walk into a booby trapped area. Whether it was Bouncing Betty mines or some kind of mine that you could get a booby trap that you could get into. We walked until we got to almost the bottom of this hill. And artillery was walking ahead of us. You could hear it. And when artillery comes over you hear [Mr. Nale makes sound] and if you hear that go over you, you're okay. And you can hear it from the fire support base. You hear the boom and it'll go [Mr. Nale makes sound]. Well this time we heard the boom and [Mr. Nale makes sound] it stopped and all of us hit the ground. And I had a Special Forces, he was ex-Special Forces captain, named Captain Willoughby then. Captain Willoughby was very hard core. And they said, "Do you want us to fire again?" And he said, "I'll kill the next g-d-s-o-b that fires a round." He said, "Cease fire, g-d, cease fire!" An, ah, we had a floating point in front of us. There was about six people, three on the left, three on the right. And we were at the bottom of a base camp and there was a latrine, they had their latrines at their bottom of the base camps, on the right side and they had steps going up the side. So we knew we were fixing to make contact. Then they did what they called recon by fire. And what that meant was they would start shooting, basically telling them, "We know you're here," drawing them to make them shoot. And they shot green tracers. And we were down a little bit and you could see the tracers coming out of the tree line. And Captain Willoughby, after he gave them permission to recon by fire, he said, "Cease fire, g-d-, cease fire!" And Zero Varoli yelled back to him and said, "Cease fire, hell, we're in contact." You know and he said, "Take that g-d hill, men." And so we charged. And as we charged and went up the hill, ah, my squad, there were eleven of us in the squad, every one of us got wounded that day. We were in what they call a kill zone. And B40 rockets started raining down. The B40s are the ones they hold on their shoulder you see and they fire off the – and you just see a green ball of flame coming toward you and as it comes, it just gets smaller. And you're thinking, "Oh no," and it's so quick you can't move. But I remember going up in the air, tumbling. And when I came down I got hit. I felt my neck. I was a medic and I had blood but it wasn't spurting out. It almost got my juggler, that's what I was afraid of. And then my right arm over here, I felt it and I knew I got hit there and then my back. And actually what had happened, a sniper had opened up on me the same time. That's the reason I'm saying if it's your time to go, it's your time to go. But as I went over the sniper shot me. He would have shot me twice in the heart but he railroad tracked my back twice. There was me and a guy named Baby Stud Doug Roth. I looked over at him and he - one of the places he got hit was over the eye right there and the blood was coming in his eye. He couldn't see. So he got a bandage out and I put the bandage on. And him and I kept firing. I had a M79 grenade launcher. And when you shoot it, it looks like a little short barreled shotgun, it's 40 mm. It comes out, it goes twenty-eight feet and it arms. And I was bouncing those off trees getting air bursts. And I fired twenty-eight rounds and it was a twenty-three minute fire fight all the way down that side I was on. I never saw the firing ceased. I thought, "I learned something today." Well, after that I went back and I started using my combat, my medical skills again. And there was a guy named Wyley, Jerry Wyley I think was his first name, but Jerry was hit in the groin and he had a huge hole in his, his back here, his shoulder. And I was afraid it got that main artery coming up through there. And so I took him out and I noticed that it had taken his right testicle pretty well out. So I was patching him up and a guy named Mugsy Minard, Jerry Minard walked by us. There was a little trail there. And I said, "Hey, Mugsy." He said, "Hey." And he walked about two steps. And I was, I don't know why I was watching but I saw a bullet, heard a rifle go off and the round hit him and I saw the bullet come out his back and hit the dust. I thought to myself then, I said, "They killed Mugsy." And as he was falling back he saw the sniper and he put his weapon on automatic and fired the whole magazine. And the sniper came out of the tree. It looked like something you see on movie. And he hit right beside, on the other side of me. So I turned around and started working on him. And ah, a lot of those guys, Jerry Minard and him had left country they were wounded so bad. I came back in a month.http://server15947.contentdm.oclc.org/u?/war,207 |