TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Tour of Duty in Vietnam
officers from the air wing, and I asked them if they knew the
crew’s identities. At first they could not recall the names, so I then
asked them if one of them had been Dale Wyrauch. They sadly
answered in the affirmative. I was devastated…, but the tragedy
was long over and I was busy as hell at the time. Dale was
probably already in the ground back in California, so I just pushed
it aside to concentrate on present problems. As it turned out,
Dale’s name had been in their minds, because he had taken a bullet
in the leg while flying on another mission and had been
medevacked to Japan. For fifty­one years I thought Dale was dead,
until I saw his name on the attendance roster for our Basic School
reunion in the spring of 2019. I am very grateful to have this great
guy back in my life.
In late August of 1968, several things happened that changed my
life. It was proving too difficult for the Marine Corps to fill
replacement needs for all the units it had in I Corps, so the
decision was made to deactivate all the old 5th Division units that
had been activated to reinforce the 1st and 3rd Divisions. We had a
big party at the desert compound to commemorate the return of the
27th Marines’ flag to Camp Pendleton, and also incidentally, my
25th birthday, and my promotion to the rank of captain. The
promotion came as a surprise as I thought it was about three
months ahead of expectations, but whether the above zone
promotion was intended or an administrative faux pas, I didn’t
care a bit.
All of us with significant time left on their tours were transferred
to the 1st and 3rd Divisions. Since the 27thMarines were stood
down, I was quickly reassigned as a 3A (assistant operations
officer) with the 11th Marines and given the responsibility of
assessing a very interesting observation post overlooking the
entire city of Da Nang.
Near a place southeast of the city center called Marble Mountain
were two huge monoliths rising high above the relatively flat
ground similar to the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming or the Pus
thrusting up between the volcanoes on the big island of Hawaii.
Placed on the flat top of the largest monolith were observation
posts manned by Marines on the west end and soldiers on the east
end. The only practical access to the top was by helicopter. It was
possible to climb the almost vertical face of the mountain, and I
did it once just to see if I could do it, but I never would have tried
it a second time. There were places I would have to push at one
side of a crevice with my back and my feet on the other, and I had
to use long ropes to rappel back down. From the top, one literally
looked down on the city of Da Nang. The purpose of the OP was
to try to monitor enemy rocket activity around the outskirts of the
city. To aid this mission, there was a huge Xenon searchlight and a
big 25­power Naval binoculars on a pedestal. The hope was that
enemy rocket launchers might be seen in time to do something
about it although that was rarely happening. There were just way
too many possible launch sites to watch.
The majority of the city’s rocket defense was the reliance on
tremendous amounts of H & I fires (Harassment and Interdiction)
shot at known potential launch sites by all artillery units within
range. I thought this was a huge waste of ammunition. Because of
my artillery training, I was able to instigate a system of laying the
searchlight and a 12­power BC scope so that they could both be
aimed together at any given location around the city. The idea was
to pick a possible site then lay the BC scope and the searchlight,
A‐63