Dear Sgt Grit,
I thought someone might be interested in these pictures.
My three platoons were attached to Battalions and my Headquarters was located inside the Regimental Headquarters perimeter less then a mile from the beach.
The one of the Company CP was taken after we had been there a week or so and only shortly before some VC's slipped in between two outpost and shot up our water point with French 22cal submachine guns and threw han gernades at our cooks' tents. One of my two cooks, a Corporal, was wounded by a gernade fagment in his elbow. He was the only Marine to return fire at the VCs. My other cook was very lucky. He had a dud gernade land under the head of his cot. He never woke up during the excitement. The next morning, there was the gernade next to his duffle bag with his name clearly stenciled on the bag. That was quite a picture. The only other casualities from this was the total unnecessary loss of two helicopters and crews that collided on take off from the carrier before dawn. They were FRAG to pickup my Corporal whose wound was not serious and could have waited.
The picture of the tanks in formation was later and on the hill we had moved to. We had received some promotions and had a formation for that. This was pior to Starlite.
The picture with the Retriver was taken about the same time.
I had two platoons attached to Battalions involved in Starlite. Both platoon commanders were wounded and evacuated. I had one tank commander killed. We lost one tank, C-24. I really hated to see it left behind, but it was badly damaged and the 1st Tank Bn company commander who was incharge felt that it was too dangerious to try to extract the tank and get it back to the beach. Considering the circumstances, I am sure that was the correct call.
I returned to CONUS shortly after Starlite, as I was on the tail end of a 13 month tour when I took C Company to Vietnam.
Joe Sanders
Major USMC (ret.)