Infantryman in Vietnam: SGT Jim Purvis

Ken Harbaugh:

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I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Lieutenant Colonel Jim Riordan. Riordan served as a forward observer in the Marine Corps in Vietnam.

LtCol James P. Riordan:

Well I enlisted at a time when it was really popular to do things for your country, and I liked the challenge of the Marine Corps. It was an idea that appealed to me, and the idea of being a Marine officer with its leadership challenges was something that had always fascinated me. And so while I was in college, I joined the Marine Corps through what was known as the Platoon Leaders Corps and did my summer training at Quantico and then went on after I had graduated from college.

Initially, I did follow the same path that you would expect for all Marine officers. I attended the basic school at Quantico, Virginia. And after graduating from the basic school, I attended the... At that time, the Marine Corps was doing its own artillery training at Quantico. I did the field artillery officer's basic course at Quantico and then joined the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa. I was assigned to the 12th Marine Regiment and picked up duties as a forward observer.

The primary duties of a forward observer would be to be the primary fire support coordinator for an infantry company. In those days, we would move with the company commander and the company headquarters. We would be able to bring fire to bear for the company in support of the company's scheme of maneuver on the ground.

Well, generally what you would do is you would try to position yourself relatively close to the company commander so that you would understand and know his scheme of maneuver, that you could then best pick targets that were of greatest threat and most appropriate for the application of artillery. And we would then identify the targets and attack them with artillery through radio communications and then adjust fire until the target was either destroyed or neutralized.

Well, you need forward observers because artillery is an indirect fire weapon. Under most circumstances, the artillerymen, the cannoneers cannot see the targets that they shoot at, and you need somebody who is close enough to be able to see the target and then to be able to adjust the fire on the target. There are a lot of different factors that impact on putting fire on a target, weather, the terrain, just even the rotation of the earth. All of these things affect the ability to put fire on the target. And because you cannot see the target from the cannoneer's perspective, now you need someone who can locate the target and can put the correct amount of fire on the target either to neutralize that target or to destroy it.

Well, I deployed from Okinawa with 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, went in country with them in mid 1965 it would've been. Yeah, mid '65. And I went directly down to the company and trained with the company and then moved with the company for wherever the company went, we went.

The first encounter was in a morning, full daylight, as we had moved across rice fields by a village and we came under fire. It was pretty strange because there were a lot of civilians in the field, and one of the most important things for us was to be able to move the civilians out of the way so that we could indeed attack. The civilians really hampered the movement, as I remember. And because of them, we simply had to use small arms fire to suppress what was coming from the village. What we did, we went ahead and moved through. And by that time, the enemy had faded into the bush. My reaction initially was kind of nonplussed, "So that's what it's like to be shot at." And then you realize what it is. The real shock was not the initial contact. The real shock would come later through the surprise, which would take place so much at night. It would take place with mortars or heavy artillery and those types of things. That was a source of real concern.

It's waking up from a very, very sound sleep, not knowing what the situation is, and trying to assess it primarily in the dark, trying to move sometimes and see where you're at and how you're able to move around so that you don't either endanger those who are with you or become mistaken by your own people. That was always difficult. And of course, during incoming mortar fire or artillery fire, it was always a wonder as to the randomness sometimes of things. It's trying to get yourself to move. It's to react, not to sit and be helpless. And if you're able to control that fear and move forward, the situation will generally get better. If you succumb to the fear and let yourself sit, then you lose the ability sometimes to maneuver. When you do that, then you really do take casualties.

First casualties generally were not as hard to deal with, because they were casualties that we knew that would survive, and it was never easy to deal with casualties at any time. Perhaps the worst was in an artillery position on the rock pile when we had started to unload ammunition and we had ammunition open and I had just gotten in as the... I happened to be the exec for the artillery battery at that time, and we'd just received replacements in, a whole series of replacements that had come in to replace guys who had been rotated out or who had been wounded and left. And they hadn't been with us, the replacements hadn't been with us 30 minutes. We lost a whole series of them through heavy artillery fire. That, I think, was perhaps the hardest to take of anything. A lot of times with casualties, particularly with the companies when you were in the field and moving, you would evacuate them out very, very, very quickly to get them into medical treatment. And I suppose that that has a very, very reassuring effect on those who are around you, to know that you're not going to be left, that people will indeed take care of you. And that gives people, it gave me a great deal of courage to know that my comrades would never leave me if there was a possibility that I could be gotten out. And I think that that made it a whole lot easier for lots of us, and particularly not having the wounded around and having to be around them for prolonged periods of time made Vietnam particularly much easier to handle. Later on, when we'd fly out to the hospital ship to make visits and things like that, that's when it really was hard to see the guys aboard the hospital ships and talk to them and things like that or to go down to Charlie Med when we were down around Da Nang and go into the wards and stuff to see your mates. That's when it really hit you.

Fear is always healthy. I don't know anybody who was not afraid. The difference, I think, a lot of times between those who were really successful were those who had the capacity to control fear. And fear is healthy because it causes you, I think, to think. And if you had the training to back you up to understand that you have to move when you're under fire, that you have to do things, that you don't become foolhardy. And I think that's a key to survival. The idea is being able to be successful in a battle and to live to fight. It's not dying in battle, it's living, and that's what you need to do.

Yeah, one of the differences about Vietnam for forward observers was a tactical difference. The tactics at the time called for the clearance of fire missions under the principle of silence being consent. In other words, if somebody did not intervene to stop the mission, the mission would go forward. In Vietnam, because of being so close to all of the villages and so close to the population in a lot of areas, at least particularly initially, and because of not knowing sometimes where all of the units were, particularly the Vietnamese units and others, there required a positive clearance on missions. And that positive clearance of missions would sometimes, in the initial days when we moved in to Vietnam, could be a lengthy procedure. And it wasn't until later when we were able to work out the control measures that were so necessary to be able to bring fire to bear in a relatively short period of time.

Once the mission was received, it was monitored at fire support coordination in the headquarters. And waiting for the mission, this tactical situation could change on the ground, and often did. The first fire mission that I fired in Vietnam took 45 minutes to clear. And by the time the clearance was given, we were virtually out of contact. The contacts we had initially were short and did not take long. The engagements were generally not very long. They were fleeting. And rarely did we have engagements in the daytime. It was more engagements in pre-dawn or at dark, and that's when we would have to wait sometimes so that they would know where all of the patrols were, make sure that you were not going to fire on friendlies, because that was a devastating effect to be fired on.

As a forward observer with a rifle company, you would do the same thing that any Marine rifleman would do. The challenges that a forward observer would face were always the same as any infantryman. He shared the same burdens. In a tactical sense and situation, the challenge would be to understand the commander's scheme of maneuver, to understand the company and its personality well enough to know where to position yourself to make best use of your supporting arms. Most of the time I would have a forward observer team consisting of two radio operators and a scout sergeant and myself. I would take and split the forward observer team into two units. A scout sergeant and one radio operator would often travel with lead elements, and I would maintain as close a position with the company commander as I could so that I could understand what the other platoons were doing and then I could then move when we came into contact to the point where I was really needed.

A Marine company has got to operate like a well-oiled machine, and you've just got to integrate yourself to be successful as a forward observer with the company. You have to be in the company commander's hip pocket, you have to have his confidence. I worked with commanders who were not fairly competent or were not fairly comfortable, not competent, but comfortable with the use of artillery, particularly in the early days. They weren't sure how close to bring it. They were concerned over the length of time that it would take to bring it in and things like that. And it took time to be able to work with the company to develop the degree of confidence in your skills as a forward observer so that the company commander would allow you to bring the fire to bear when it was necessary.

In addition, what we would do, the Marine forward observers would function as the company commander's fire support coordinator and would often integrate targets with other supporting arms, whether they were small mortars or whether they were the artillery that was in direct support or in many cases the aviation elements that we had. Sometimes we would have a forward air controller with us and sometimes we would not. So the forward observers would pick up additional skills a lot of times to be able to bring in naval gunfire or things like that if the situation warranted.

Calling fire on yourself is a mission of last resort. That happens when you're about to be overrun, when there is no other alternative to stopping the enemy from taking your position. Forward observers would always, in Vietnam, plan for fires on their own positions. It was used several times in Vietnam, but it was used relatively sparingly. You would plan for that eventuality with the hope that you never had to in fact employ it. But I do know that a lot of places, particularly when we moved into places like Con Thien, up to the rock pile and other places, the Razorback up in Northern I Corps, we always made sure that we had had fires planned on our own position.

Harvest Moon occurred for us very early in Vietnam. One of the first major operations we went on, moved in south of Da Nang and way up into the mountains, finally got out of the rice fields, rice paddies. And we had moved for several days with a company of Marines, with several companies of Marines into an area looking for a battalion headquarters. And we finally found it and destroyed it very deep into the jungle. And on the way back out, it was late in the afternoon when we came down a ridgeline. And as I recall that day, we were in a hurry to try to make a landing zone so we could get out before dark, and this long finger come down out of the hills with grass on it, relatively tall grass. And one company went down one side and one company went down the other side. We were physically separated when the other company became very, very heavily engaged. It was in that action that Harvey Barnum was able to assume control of a Marine company. He was a forward observer from the same battery that I was with. And Harvey reorganized a Marine company after the company commander had been killed and subsequently was awarded the Medal of Honor. And that was quite an operation. Because of the terrain, we were physically unable to move in support of the company. And during that period of time, Harvey Barnum had really distinguished himself quite well in this engagement and did essentially the same thing that we had talked about earlier. So it was quite an operation.

I was with one of the Marine companies as a forward observer. I was still a second lieutenant at the time. And we were moving down trying to get into this landing zone to secure the landing zone so we could get out that night. And we did not come under fire, but the other company came under massive fire, and I think it was by the grace of God that we just happened to move down in this particular area to move in two different directions. And the company headquarters was severely attacked, the one that Harvey Barnum was with. And it was only through his ability to reorganize and pull things together that they were able to survive. The company commander was killed in that action.

The worst day undoubtedly for me as a forward observer had to be as a lieutenant patrolling at night in the area south of the Ca Lo River near Hill 55. And we had moved out at night with a platoon size ambush. The company commander had asked me, because of the nature of the mission, if I would take my forward observer team and a company of the platoon that night because they were expecting trouble. And I moved out with the platoon, and in this case I positioned myself relatively close to the center of the platoon near the platoon commander. We had been out a couple of hours patrolling and were near the base of Hill 55 when we became enmeshed in what I would describe as a minefield ambush where the mines were triggered electrically and also mechanically. The lead elements of the platoon had been allowed to pass partially through the field. When they hit, they hit center of the platoon where I was, and immediately the platoon commander was severely wounded and several other people were severely wounded at that time, knocked out some of the communications. The artillery has a capability of interfacing its communications with the infantry, and I was fortunate enough to be able to reestablish communications to assist in the reorganization of the platoon, finding the dead and wounded, bringing them out of the area, reestablishing the contact with the people who had moved through the ambush killing zone. And then coming back, we were able to use artillery illumination that night to move ourselves back together into a cohesive unit and to evacuate the dead wounded. We brought medevac choppers in that night under illumination and then reorganized ourselves and moved back out of the area after a while. We did complete the mission, although it was truncated. What we did is we went out to make contact, and we indeed did make contact.

When you're moving with a platoon at night into an ambush situation, what you're hoping to do is to be relatively unobtrusive, relatively quiet. You've stripped down all of the unnecessary gear, you're trying to move with some sort of stealth. That night was very, very, very dark. It was overcast, clammy, as I would recall. And as we were getting ready to move into the areas, what we were actually doing was kind of exploring the approaches up to Hill 55. And so we happened to, at this point in time, have been on a relatively wide road area and we were off on the shoulders of the road. Platoon was split on either side and moving down it. And what I recall is just a brilliant flash that was probably about chest high and the concussion from that. And then the firing took place from both sides. Our lead elements obviously had moved through and to make contact, and then the firing ceased relatively soon. It was kind of quiet. We had to figure out who was left, who survived, what you had. And the first thing that I did was to make contact with my scout sergeant who happened to be with the lead element, have him stay put and then look for the platoon commander. And not finding him, I found a platoon sergeant, a Marine staff sergeant who was with us, and used him to begin to figure out who was left and what we needed to do to bring things in. And then at that point in time, this is very, very fast, I needed to clear an area. So I actually went in back into the minefield to clear an area to find the people and bring them on out. We reestablished communications and requested the medevacs, informed the company commander that I had control of the platoon and that we would reorganize ourselves and bring ourselves out once the medical evacuations had taken place.

Well, it's the idea that you would never leave anybody. It's hard to understand this sometimes. Marines under fire, men under fire, don't respond out of idealism, love of country, and all these other grand things that underlies. What they seem to understand or what they seem to do is they respond to each other. And that's a very, very powerful bond, and it's an obligation that you take. It's something you have to do. Once you assess the situation, once you know what's happened, you've got to do something. If you don't act, then you're begging for a great deal of more trouble. And each person's got to do his job as he sees it at that point in time and at that situation.

I can remember asking for an additional flack jacket, grab an additional flack jacket, and put it over my chest to help me as I moved back through this area just to find people. We had to know, I had to know whether people were alive or dead, where folks were in order to pull things together. And once you pull things together, then you can become a unit again, and then you can become an effective force. If you don't do that, then you're piecemealed and you'll be picked off in little pieces. You'll be chopped up and spit out as little pieces of bait. So you do things because of other Marines. It was the one thing, it was the one comfort that I had being out there, is to know that if something happened to me people would do whatever was necessary to take care of me. And so your obligation on the other hand is to live up to that sort of a standard. It's a pretty high demand, and it's one of the things that makes a Marine a Marine.

Massing fires is a technique of bringing different calibers of weapons and different weapons from different locations to bear on a single target or a group or series of targets. And when this is done, what you do is you give weight to battle. It can make the difference between success and failure. At the company level in Vietnam, a lot of times we would preplan fires on targets that we knew that we were going to attack, and we would try to use the element of surprise. Fire would be adjusted or registered at a different location, different spot, and maybe totally unrelated to the target. And at the time of the attack, the targets would be shifted and then massed so that the fires would all arrive at the same time. It certainly gives surprise to battle, and it certainly gives the element of weight to your attack so that you can be successful.

The impact on the enemy is awesome, and history is replete with the impact of what happens. It's the psychological devastation, it's the ability to keep an enemy's head down as you move close to engage him at close quarters. It's the ability to keep fire onto the target right up to the very, very last minute and then shift it to a secondary target or to hold it off on another target. I had several experiences, unfortunately, in Vietnam where we were fired on by friendlies, both from the air and from artillery. I know what it's like firsthand to be caught in what's called a battalion time on target mission, where a battalion of artillery fired on a position, but unfortunately fired short. And that is something I will never forget. Just the shaking of the ground, the smell, the confusion that goes on, the destruction that comes with something like that is truly awesome. It's indescribable to be on the receiving end of it and is the one thing that I always thought, from my experience in Vietnam, the one thing that I knew the advantage to us was in the ability to deliver fire on targets from artillery or from air. And it was the one thing that made the job a whole heck of a lot... a whole lot easier over time.

As I guess I had indicated earlier, a lot of times you didn't know. You didn't know when people were killed, when they died, because we were able to get them medevaced relatively quickly, and that was a godsend. The cases where it did happen, I guess over a period of time you develop a wall or a shield that looks at it, impersonally as best you can, because it is never ever an unpersonal matter to lose a comrade, somebody that you have worked with, that you have shared the burden with. And that's tough. It's tough on anybody, but you look at... You take it day at a time. I would take it a day at a time and move forward from that point.

Well, I suppose the proudest memories, the most fondest memories are of the people. Even the Vietnamese people, particularly Vietnamese people. It's just the memories, you tend over a period of time, I think, to put the bad things, to make them recede in your memory, not to dredge them up, not to dwell on it, and to look to the comradery that you had. And Vietnam has been described, and I think very accurately, that it's been period of long periods of boredom that have been punctuated by some very intense moments. But you look to the other periods when you had time to interact with people and you look to the funny things that happened and just those things that stick out in your memory,

I don't know that I have a best memory. That's really a difficult question. That's a real curve. I suppose my best memory is as a second lieutenant being with a company commander whom I had a great deal of respect for, lived in absolute awe of this man, and his ability to command in a very absolutely no nonsense way. And he has become to me and in my memories what a Marine officer should be. And it helped me focus on what I wanted to do. And I think that from that I took away a great deal of healthy respect for what it takes to be a Marine. And particularly proud of being able to have served in that capacity, and it was a good experience. I don't think I want to do it again in Vietnam, but if we did it, certainly hope we did it differently, by the way. But it did help me get some sort of an idea of what I wanted to do and try to do it in that vein.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was SGT Jim Purvis.

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