STUBBE: I was in high school, Washington High School in Milwaukee which was quite an academic place at the time. And, I was probably, a junior, I was a junior then. It was the summer before my senior year. I decided that I wanted to go into the military. For some odd reason, it was a very odd; it shocked people because everyone thought I was going on to do schooling, more schooling. And, I guess now that I'm thinking about it, I was sort of torn at the time. I was very interested in science. I had received perfect scores on my Chemistry and Physics final exams and that kind of thing. And, but at the same time, my local pastor wanted me to consider the ministry and so I was sort of torn there. To get out of the box, so to speak, I decided to join the military and do something, do a side end run here. So, I joined the Navy Reserve and at the time, the Navy Reserve building was just being built in Milwaukee on Potter Street on the south side there. And in fact, they dedicated it right after I enlisted and I was one of the side boys when they had these Navy Captains come in to dedicate. And, I recall at the time, I was seventeen, I recall how old these Navy Captains were when they were in their thirties. They just looked so ancient. I think of that every once and a while now, because I'm one of the ancient ones. And I think every time I talk with someone who's young, in high school, I always remember that because I think that's how they're looking at me. So, anyway, I enlisted.

DERKS: But they don't see any difference between thirty and seventy, so–

STUBBE: No

DERKS: So, you're okay [laughs].

STUBBE: I'm just, ah, over the line [laughs]. But, anyway, I drilled during my senior year in high school once a week and went to two weeks for boot camp down at Great Lakes and then two weeks on a ship on the Great Lakes. At that time, we had little, several, about six, half a dozen little PCEs Patrol Craft, diesel powered. There was one in Milwaukee called the Portage, USS Portage, PCE 902 and there was one in Chicago and one in Sheboygan, I believe. There was–

DERKS: What time was that?

STUBBE: There was the Elee. This would have been the summer of '56. I enlisted on the 28th of September '55. And so during the summer I had like four weeks of training; two weeks of boot camp and two weeks of sea. Then I made, was promoted to Seaman Apprentice from Seaman Recruit to E2 and fortunately, because of that, didn't have to go through regular boot camp when I went on active duty in October of '56. So, I graduated from high school in June of '56 and then went on these training things and then went on active duty. And I went right to a Navy destroyer, the USS Noa, N-O-A named after a midshipman killed in, I don't know, Samoa or something like that. And I was on the deck force, swabbing decks and bringing out mops. And, it was very cold. It was December by the time the ship came in and they'd done all the processing, it was December. And, around the end of December, maybe January of '57, the word was passed on the ship announcing system that for me to report to ship's office. And, because I had such high clerical scores and high general–they call it high GCT scores–anyway, my test scores were high, they had an opening for what they call a yeoman, which is like a clerk typist. So, that's where I spent the rest of my enlistment, in the ship's office. And, eventually I got promoted in two years to E5, which is sort of unusual. I made second class petty officer and then was separated and went to college. Went to St. Olaf College for four years from '58 to '62 and majored in philosophy. And, started off, interestingly, I still was kind of torn. I had advanced Chemistry in my freshman year. And, they had two Chemistry courses; one for those who needed a science course and those who were going to major in Chemistry. I took the advanced one. And, I also took New Testament Greek which was usually only for juniors and seniors, with the other stuff. So, I had a very heavy load and after two years of being away from school, and living with a, being a, or rooming with a roommate who was also a veteran but who liked to study late and have loud music and so on, my scores at college, my freshman, my first scores were Cs which devastated me. And, eventually got up to Bs and As but, anyway, that had a difficult adjustment there, initially. And, dropped Chemistry, because, well, I had always been interested in Chemistry and I don't want to go into all that I guess.

DERKS: But they just, all they wanted to talk about is Chemistry.

STUBBE: Ya, well, no what happened–we were given an unknown to research how we were going to determine what it was and mine happened to be uranium, so the test was to put sulfuric acid into the solution and it changed from green to yellow or yellow to green, I'm not sure the, uh, which one. But, anyway, I, instead of putting the acid into the test tube of solution, I put the test tube of solution into the acid and it exploded. And this is concentrated H2SO4, sulfuric acid, and it could have blinded me. Because in those days we, not like today, in those days, I did have glasses, fortunately, but had I not had glasses, it spattered on my glasses, I might have been blinded! Now a days, all the students have to wear protective plastic eye–

DERKS: So, you just happened to have glasses on

STUBBE: Yes

DERKS: Wow

STUBBE: Right. And it was a shock to me. And I said, no, you know, I was just sloppy. I should do that. So, anyway, I went into philosophy. I graduated from St. Olaf and then went to seminary, a little seminary in Minneapolis, Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary. And went there three years and then graduated from there, was ordained a Lutheran minister and then went into mission development in Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee and started a church which is still there, All Saints Lutheran Church. And, then, but I still had this desire to do schooling. I was still drilling in the Navy Reserve. I must say, during seminary, I was able to go into a thing call the Ensign Probationary program which is for lawyers, doctors and seminary students. We could join the Navy as an officer, commissioned, get time in grade and also get training. So, I went to chaplain school for eight weeks at Newport in the summer of '64. And, it was during seminary. And, so, anyway, after I graduated from seminary, I went to develop this church. We got it organized in Easter Sunday of, I believe it was the 10th of April of '66, but I still had this lingering yearning to do study and so I applied to the University of Chicago graduate school. Which, at the time, was considered probably one of the four, maybe five top theological schools in the nation, along with Princeton, Yale and Harvard, maybe Union. But, just to be accepted was very gratifying. And I went down there for one year in a PhD program in ethics and society. I learned a lot. I learned even more about Luther than I had learned in a Lutheran Seminary. I mean I learned about the two kingdoms and things that the relationship of God working through society and government and so on, which I hadn't really picked up during seminary training. Which was very interesting and helpful later on in trying to reconcile things in war. Anyway, the Navy at the time was asking for chaplains because of the build up in Vietnam. This was, this would have been the summer of '65 and '66, summer of '66. Actually, summer of '66 I went on active duty. But also there was, that was a positive way to leave graduate school. The negative part was that I would have, I found out once I was there that I would have to be there for about ten years, which was the normal amount of schooling to get a PhD from the University of Chicago. That's why it had a high standing. They demanded a lot from their students. I would have had to pass qualifying exams in history of, Christian history, the Bible, Christian theology, know Hebrew and Greek and, which I already did know, but not up to their standards, I'm sure. Plus, since I was in ethics and society, I would have had to do qualifying exams as a senior major undergraduate in sociology, economics, political science and all those things also. So it would have been at least ten years. And, I was beginning–and also some of my professors were questioning whether the academic–we had R. M. Grant who was a world renowned scholar and we had four people in our Gospel of John course with copious footnotes–a hundred pages thesis kind of thing just for a single course. And, he would, instead of criticizing it academically would say, “How is what you have written going to help the faith of some old lady in Iowa?” you know. And really, now that I'm, for many years now, more sensitive to what people are really asking, I think he was questioning himself. You know, whether it was all worth it and I probably would have gone aside as a pastor and said, well, “What's going on?” or something. But the time, it didn't, I was so focused on my own issues that I wasn't available for other people's issues in that regard, so–Anyway, I went on active duty and went to Washington to be interviewed and they said, would you waive your thirty day waiting period and I said, “Sure,” so this was like in the end of May. And about the early, first week of June I was on active duty. Went right to Camp Pendleton and at that time they had a thing, they had a course for chaplains going over to Vietnam along with medical people, but I was the only chaplain at the time. So I had a sergeant major who was retiring take me around to different places to see how an M79 is fired and how artillery is fired and how a LAW is fired and mortars and all that kind of stuff. And, having been enlisted myself, I had a real, I'm gonna say sensitivity to enlisted people separation, the anxiety, the aloneness, the helplessness, the different feelings that I was aware of that the troops had. So, they had, for example, they had an infiltration course where you go under barbed wire crawling on your belly and while they're firing over you and stuff. And instead of just observing it, I went through it. And they had a night course where they, assaulting a hill and it was pitch black and you're under a corporal and they're firing blanks and that kind of thing. And I learned how it is to be under fire in that kind of situation and how you want to freeze to the area. And the corporal says we've gotta get up and move. If we stay here we're going to get killed and, you know, that of thing. They made it very realistic. And, but anyway, accompanied the troops on these kind of things and then I would go to their barracks and I'd hear them say, “Aren't we going to get any more training before we go to Nam?” you know, they were really, realized that this is for real. Its life and death. They're young. Suddenly death is a real possibility. There were cases when–

DERKS: These are Marines.

STUBBE: These are Marines. Oh yes. I must say, as a chaplain, I saw a different side of Marines than what Marines themselves usually portray or everything else. I mean, the rough, tough, hard, hardened–These are people, obviously. I mean, they're not just roles. I saw that side throughout my whole being with them. So, anyway, they also had a POW kind of thing where you escape and then you get captured and you have to eat the rice. You know, all that kind of thing. It was–But, I, instead of just observing, which is what I was supposed to be doing, I participated in. And, so, I met my future commanding officer there. Colonel James Woolkinson, young, at that time, young, lieutenant colonel. He was going through staging, what they call staging battalion, also. And, just happened to talk with him and meet him. I never thought I'd meet him again. And, so then I, let's see, I left–Oh, there were some things that I did observe that were interesting. We had one Marine who was talking about patrolling and going down a river and he says, “You go down the side of the river to keep yourself dry so you don't get wet. And if you do that, you'll get wet in your own blood,” you know, and talked about–it was very realistic of things. We had one in the, one where they actually, the sergeant actually killed a rabbit, a live rabbit in front of us and told how we could skin the rabbit and make a pouch out of the skin and, you know, we never saw rabbits in Vietnam, [chuckles] but I mean it was, I think it was mainly just to show how brutal and how real death could be. I mean, I think there was, there were meta messages in a lot of these training exposures. But, anyway. So, then I went to Vietnam. I'll never forget how long it took to get there. We were, we landed in Hawaii at night and I remember stopping off at the O Club with a few others and we had zombies or something and some rum drum, drunk, ya, drink and got back on the plane. We landed in Wake Island and then we landed in Da Nang, in the morning, I believe it was. And initially it was so hot and bright. There was a lot of sand. The sun was very bright and I wanted to buy a Coke, I remember, and I had some American money; a quarter, whatever. And they said, “Oh you can't use that money here. You have to use funny money,” you know, which is script or paper money. Military payment cerificates–MPC. And someone happened to have a, you know, a ten cent MPC and bought me a Coke. I think it was ten cents, I don't know, it was something like that. And, so we were waiting and we were divided up. We were all given numbers and there were several hundred of us waiting to go to different places. Some were going to Phu Bai which is where the division was. Some were going to just stay at Da Nang, some were going to go south, I can't remember what was, I can't remember all the destinations. Some were going to Cay Son. Cay Son had just, this was July of '67 and Cay Son had just emerged from a very major battle called the Battle of the Hills. Wasn't publicized too much, but it was in Life Magazine and so on. This is where they went out to patrol the area and suddenly got embroiled in a, in the fact that the North Vietnamese were building up bases on these hills. The hills are all named for meters above sea level, so 881 is eight hundred eighty one meters above sea level, and the main hills were 881 South and North and then 861. Anyway, they erupted into a huge battle at a large cost to human life. I forget how many Americans were killed there but it was not publicized too much because we didn't have too much press there at the time, I believe. But, nevertheless, it gave indication that the North Vietnamese were interested in Cay Son, and I'll get to that later on, maybe, I can talk why that is. So I was back at DaNang, there, with a number and they'd say, “Okay, all you numbers 51-106,” you know, “report to this airplane,” or whatever and they'd fly off. So, actually, there were many hundreds of us there. And, I remember seeing two Marine there from Cay Son who were there to get a Purple Heart. They were the recon company at Cay Son. I think one was named Lopez, if I remember right. They were so proud. They couldn't wait to get back to do their job. And they were always talking about hill 918 which is part of that 861, 881 chain of hills. 918 was closer to Laos and they suspected that there was a huge North Vietnamese encampment there and that was not part of the Battle of the Hills. I think that they were still built up there and they were going to go back there and single handedly, as Marines would talk, recapture that hill. And they were anxious to get back. I remember their verve for life. I mean, they were young, full of life and full of the spirit of activity and that remained in my mind. But I wasn't going to Cay Son at the time. I was going to Phu Bai. And, so I checked into, no, going back there, at Da Nang–I have a slight cold.

DERKS: Uh, don't worry about it.

STUBBE: It's not emotional. Its pollen generated. But, anyway, I was at Da Nang and it got to be about 10-11 o'clock at night and they said, “All Marine flights are suspended, however there's an Air Force flight that is due to leave around midnight. If you want to, you can stay at the Marine area and stay overnight on a cot, or you can try to fly out with the Air Force at around midnight.” Well, it was so uncomfortable and I was so sticky and sweaty and I was just not used to that kind of feeling which I was to feel permanently later on [chuckles], but I opted to go to the Air Force. So, I went to there and got on this C130 and they raised the ramp at the end and it was like steam coming out of the vents. It was actually air conditioned air but it was forming a vapor because it was so dense, it was so humid inside. And, that's my image of that. And we flew, we landed in Phu Bai while it was still dark and some jeeps took us to the division cantonment area and we had to pass through several checkpoints. It was all very mysterious to me and very spooky, I guess. And, people with rifles stopping us and so on. We, I ended up at this Marine officers area and wanted to take a shower because I was so cruddy and I remember asking around there and they said, “Oh, no. Water has been secured. There is no water.” What is this? So, in the morning, you know, you have to go to the “four holer” out there. I went to the four holer and there was a Marine officer on one of the other holes doing our morning evacuation drill [chuckles] and instead of dabbing himself where he should be–he probably did later on–he's dabbing his leg because he's got all sorts of bloody wounds in his leg and he's taking this shit paper and dabbing his leg where he's been wounded. Marines don't usually get evacuated for minor wounds, I mean, gashes in the leg is a minor wound. Broken legs, broken arms are minor wounds. You only get evacuated if you're dying, I think [chuckles], you know. And, that proved true later on at Cay Son. So I'm thinking welcome to Vietnam, you know. So, I stayed there for about a week, I think it was, with the division chaplain who was trying to orient me in what a chaplain does in Vietnam.

DERKS: And what is that?

STUBBE: Well, I must, ya, this is probably a good place to talk about that. Chaplains are, by international law, are not combatants and are not even military personnel, no they are military personnel, they're not, what do I want to call it? What's the technical term? It escapes me right now. But they're not, they're not like everyone else, I'll put it that way. And according to international law, the Geneva Conventions, that shows itself in that when they are capture, if they do get captured, along with other military personnel, oh, they're not military persons that's the technical term, they're not military persons, because if they get captured, they have the option of returning back to their own base or staying with the prisoners of war wherever they can do their ministry best. That's the Geneva Conventions. They're not allowed to take up arms. Not because arms are sinful or immoral, but because they are, quote exclusively engaged unquote, in religious duties. That's the way it reads. They cannot even take up arms like to pistol shoot or rifle shoot in civilian life, off base, whatever. As a chaplain, you can never fire a firearm. And that's to protect their status so that they can return back to their–I mean it's all very convoluted and Alice in Wonderland, I guess, Twilight Zone. But, I remember, before going over, the chaplains' bulletin had a article called the “Paxton Case,” in which they had a mythical situation in which a chaplain and an enlisted clerk, rifleman, are in a jeep and going off somewhere, to an outpost maybe, and come under fire. And the, of course the enlisted Marine is there to protect the chaplain and to drive the jeep. The jeep driver becomes wounded in his shoulder and can't fire his rifle. The chaplain, who is a marksman before he became a chaplain, knows how to fire a firearm very accurately and there are four or five enemy creeping in. Does he pick up the rifle? Not to protect himself, his self preservation, which, probably most people would say is, is uh, a prudent thing to think about. You know, most people would say you have a right to self defense; but not a chaplain. But he can't even pick it up to protect his wounded enlisted clerk. They both have to be captured or killed. I mean that's the way–that was the doctrine and that was ingrained. You know, you just don't do that. So–[End of segment one, beginning of segment two]. Talk about, uh chaplain's–

DERKS: You know, he's not rolling yet. The one, uh, the one question I had, and I don't want to forget it.

STUBBE: Yeah.

DERKS: So I don't know if this–

STUBBE: Sure.

DERKS: –is the place to insert it, was, would, uh, when you went back in, you said it was the b–you know they needed chaplains for the build up in Vietnam.

STUBBE: Right.

DERKS: So you went in knowing that Vietnam was your destination?

STUBBE: Yes. Oh they told me that at the time. They said you're going to Vietnam. Um, and I said yes. And, of course at that time there were, uh, yes. Going, going, going to, just prior to going to Vietnam, there were picture stories in Life magazines about POWs. It showed pictures dressed in their red pajamas if I remember right. And, and, uh, oh, I guess it was. At the time I also missed the military. Having been enlisted in the–At the, when I, when I was discharged, or when I as separated from active duty, I wasn't actually discharged 'til a year later while I was in college. Um, I had a two-year active duty and four year active reserve commitment. Uh, so, um, but I missed, um, that, uh, social milieu. I, I–I um, at the time I was so happy to get out of it. I mean, I, I–I don't want to paint myself as more peculiar than I am, but I found it very distasteful, all the foul language, all the um–whatever. I mean it just, being with a bunch of uh, 18, 17, 18, 19, 20 year old young men, um, on a destroyer, we were going on liberty in foreign ports and getting drunk, completely drunk–unconscious drunk, um, and uh, while with the women and everything else, I just, uh, with my religious background, and I was planning to become a pastor, it became more and more evident at the time that I really wanted to become a pastor. Um, I um, just found it so, uh, foreign. I just didn't belong there. But then after I was gone out of it for a–two, three years, I missed the excitement, I missed the, uh, the orderliness. I missed the, um, the difference of things. I, I mean the way the language is–I don't mean the foul language. A–like the ceiling is the overhead, the floor is a deck, you know. Um, different ways of referring to things, as sort of the “in” kind of thing. I, I missed that. I missed ships. I missed the going to sea. I missed the freshness of the air. I missed the–all the exciting things that happened, and uh, knowing that, um, knowing some things that the American people never did know, you know? Nuclear things and, uh, whatever else. And so, I, I–when I saw what was happening in Vietnam, I realized there were these service men–the enlisted men. I really was focused on enlisted men. I must have had an aversion to officers. And I–

DERKS: Go figure.

STUBBE: I, I was one myself. Um, when I went through chaplain school, I found people were saluting me. I found that very, um, troubling. I just didn't like it. I didn't want to–It wasn't that I had a low self esteem or anything. It wasn't that part. It was just that I didn't, I thought, this is not right, you know? Chaplains shouldn't be officers. That's, that's a thing I still feel. In the British system, they aren't. Um, they don't wear rank. Um, they, uh, are always considered to be one rank less than the commanding officer, for purposes of eating and social, um, parties or whatever, or privileges or getting things done for other people. There is a point of rank of getting things done for other people. Um, but when it becomes a personal, um, you know, a peacock kind of, uh, self-aggrandizement, um, uh, the you are your rank, you know, then it troubles me greatly. And, I remember talking to a chaplain one time–before I went on active duty. I, uh, had, uh, six weeks of active duty at Alameda Naval Air Station. Um, this was I was a, pastor. And, and I remember telling one of the chaplains, there, I said, I remember this very distinctly. I said, “My rank is my cross, and my cross is my rank.” And he looked at me and said, “Oh stupid!” He said, “Your cross is your core device, and your rank is your rank,” you know. I was speaking metaphorically in a deeper level, but he just didn't grasp it. And, um, and, he didn't live that way. He had been passed over for promotion. He was bitter. But, uh, anyway, so I had a real yearning to be with enlisted people, and–cause I knew. I knew how they felt. And, oh I can't be so presumptuous that I know how they felt, but I had, I had an inkling, cause I was one myself. And I, at the time, I still felt myself to be that way.

DERKS: Well you know how you would feel.

STUBBE: Exactly. And I knew how my ship mates, you know. When you live on a destroyer, you're very close. Very, very close, you know? Um, physically, you're birth close. Mess close. Work close, you know? And everything's cramped. Anyway, no, going back to, uh, being a chaplain. Uh, like I said, chaplain is not a military person. And, in Vietnam, one of the big things was what they call a personal-response program, PRP. Um, another thing that never really got publicized, but for chaplains, was very important. It was, like public relations with local people. Um, the chaplain was, among other things, to be sort of the expert in training troops to respect local customs and local culture. And so we–while I was at Pendleton, we did have a few courses on that, or a few classes I should say on that. Um, and also at, um Fubai when I was checking in. We got oriented in the personal response program. For example, One of the–I mean, several things. When you're like, with kids, children, you would never pat them on the head because that is very, very disrespectful in Vietnamese culture. Or when you're, um, sitting with a group of Vietnamese, you would never sit with your shoe, with your toe pointed at a Vietnamese. That's very, very disrespectful. Um, things that we would never know, but which were very offensive, um–It's sort of like offending God unknown, you know? Uh–[laughs]. Um, uh, most people think, well, you're only responsible for what you know. You know, if you intentionally do something wrong to another person. Even in our court system. Intentionally murder as opposed to unintentionally murdering somebody or killing somebody. Um, it's quite different, as far as punishment goes. But, you could unintentionally offend, and that might result in retaliation of, uh, poisoning or bombings or shootings or assassinations or who knows what against Americans, because they were so offended. And you didn't even know you offended them, you know? So anyway, I mean, we were, we have all sorts of things about that kind of thing. Chaplains. The other thing that chaplains did was, um, deliver death messages. Red Cross would notify the death of a parent or wife or child or aunt or uncle or grandparent, whatever. Um, many times the marines would take care of that themselves. They're–Marines really do take care of their own, and it would come down to the platoon commander would deliver the message. Uh, but in many cases, the chaplain–a chaplain would do that. Um, Marines are very tough. I rem–when I was on Parris Island later on, one of the uh, jokes that went around, was, “How do you give a death message to a recruit while the drill instructor forms his recruit company, and says 'All you with fathers, one step forward.' Smith, why did you step forward one step? You ain't got no father,'” you know? That was how they talk about it, is a joke, you know. Although maybe it was done, who knows? [laughs]. But anyway, death messages. Um, the other thing was, of course, holding the main things. Holding worship services, for the troops, and um, counseling problems. Um, and the problems were many and varied. Um, mainly about home. Um, a fellow has a sister who's just become pregnant. She's in high school. Or, uh, has a brother who's going into drugs. And, uh, or, a mother who's being beaten up by the father. Or, um, uh, a serious illness back home. In all these cases, unless it was death or whatever of mother or father or wife or children, they couldn't go back home. And so, being literally halfway around the world, I mean it's–if it's noon in Vietnam, it's midnight in Washington D.C. It's literally halfway around the world. So, uh, the feeling of helplessness, is very common, was very common. I think everyone felt it. Helpless to do anything back home when there was a problem. So we'd talk these out. Um, you can never resolve them. Um, but you can get the feelings out. You can try to sort things out. Maybe there's other people that can look in on. Maybe there's–whatever. You know. Do they belong to a church? You know, is there, you know, some other support thing? Uh, agency, group or whatever that's in. We can talk these kinds of things. That's one the things a chaplain would do. Um, for me, every chaplain was sort of different, I must say. Um, we had, we had the full scope of, uh, everyone who would regard being a chaplain as simply doing religious duties, um, where, we'd hold church services, worship services. And, would–where men would come to the chaplain for counseling. Um, and the chaplain would have like bible study groups, um, all the way to chaplains, like myself, who would do that, but would also, um, feel that we best communicate, um, God's love and presence and concern, by being with–by a presence. And so, instead of expecting people to come to us, we would go to the people. Um, um, that took the form at Que son. Oh, when I got to Que son, or after being at Fubai orientation, I was sent to Que son. I was sent to Que son as a, um, replacement because the chaplain who was there, uh, had rotated and they didn't have a chaplain. Well they had a Catholic priest. They had a Catholic chaplain, but they didn't have a Protestant chaplain. A chaplain at that time were assigned to battalions. A battalion is about 1,200 hundred men. Um, and, there was an abbreviated regimental staff at Que son, also, which didn't have a chaplain. Um, but there was, uh, battalion, 3rd battalion 26 marines. We call that 326. Uh, had the Catholic chaplain and they were at Que son. And the, they had a 1st battalion 26 marines. 126, was at Que son. These are infantry battalions. But, to get me there, uh, this is a little convoluted, but it probably should be reported. Um, 26 Marines was unlike the other Marines in Vietnam, in that, it as historically part of the 5th Marine division, and um, the 5th Marine Division was at Camp Pendleton, was activated. Um, 3rd Marine Division. The divisions that were in Vietnam were 3rd Marine Division and 1st Marine Division. 1st Marine Division was basically around Da Nang and South. 3rd Marine Division was basically north of Da Nang, Fubai and North and West. Um, so, Que son at the time, had these two 26 Marine battalion. And the chaplain for those battalions, including 226, which was at Fubai at the time, those three battalions, um, rec–the chaplains received their orders directly to their particular battalions because Washington still regarded 26 marines as 5th Marine Division. And, so the uh, 26 Marines in Vietnam, and then the 27th and the 28th Marines were still at Pendleton. Um, so, to get me to, uh, to get a Protestant chaplain up there, the division chaplain assigned me to 3rd Shore Party Battalion, which had it's headquarters near Fubai at a place called Ja Le [?]. Um, but they had a company of Shore Party up at Que Son. Shore Party are the ones on the shore, which handle supplies when the navy bring us supplies on the beach, they divide them up into ammunition, medical supplies, water, food, um, that kind of thing. They stage the supplies according to their, whatever. And then the people inland, on land, come to get the supplies, and Shore Party's the one that sort of handles all that transfer. It's a logistic kind of, um, unit. And they have red patches on their knees, on the side of their knees, and on their, um, helmet, or uh, cover, a little red patch up on top [uses hand to gesture], to disting–so, so that they are the authorities. And, you know, what they say, goes. And comes. [laughs]. Comes and goes as far as supplies and people. So anyway, they assigned me to 3rd Shore Party, and I went to Que son that way. Um, shortly after I was there, the 3rd Battalion 26 Marines left and I was the only chaplain there. Um, and I immediately realized, uh, that many of the marines were out on these different hill outposts. We had, one company, a company is about 250 men or so, out on 81 South, one company on 861, and we had another company out east of the base of the base of the place we called the Bridgesight, which overlooked a bridge of Route 9 coming into Que son. And, uh, we had a nice swim hole there, for real. We'd take swims. I have a picture of that [laughs]. And it was a high malaria area, too. In fact, we had one man catch malaria. They took him up in the helicopter nude, pouring water over him to try to cool his body down, but he died. Um, Anyway, I was the only chaplain, and I immediately decided that the only way to communicate, um, what I felt needed to be communicated, namely that people aren't alone, that god is with them, uh, that they're of, are of, value–inestimatable value, and not just grungy, old, uh, dirty marines. Um, that God is with them, and uh, uh, and, and love them. And has concern for them. The only way, it was not by word, but by being with. Anyway, I went out to Hill 881 South. There was a Captain John Raymond, who was the, uh, company commander at the time. And I, decided to talk on the prodigal son, Luke 15, about the, son of–one of two sons who asked the father for his inheritance now while he can still live it up. He goes off to a far off country and realized that he's living with the pigs, which are unclean animals for a Jew and uh. I decided to, uh, talk about the Prodigal Son. About the son who goes off in a far-off country, and it seemed to apply to these, uh, men, uh, living very uncomfortable and despicable kind of existence. And, realizing that there's home far off. So I, I talked about that. I remember that that's what I talked about. And, uh, the company commander, John Raymond saw me afterwards, and he said, “You know, you shouldn't really talk about how life is with these men, unless you know how life is.” He says, “We have a patrol that's going off, uh, within half an hour. If you want to, you can accompany them.” So I said, ok [laughing]. Being the foolish person that I was at the time. We went off on this patrol. About 8 hours of constant movement up and down. Well first of all, we left the North slope of Hill 881 South, which was the slope, when they attacked the hill in the hill battles, that they attacked up. And I could never, for the life of me, understand how marines, anyone, was able to attack up that. So, it was almost like a cliff. It wasn't walking down the slope. It was falling down the slope. Catching onto, um, little trunks of trees that were left, or a big–I learned, they were on a big plant, which would support me, was a banana, and it just uprooted. But the little thing, it was about half an inch, was strong. It could cer–canteen cu, uh, canteens falling off of my web belt, which were fastened on quite well. Um, anyway, um. That was just the first uh, ten minutes. Uh, eventually, we were going up and down streams with large boulders. We were going through bamboo thickets in which we would get lost. Grass that was razor sharp that would cause cuts, that did cut. And oh, the skin, and leaches, little 2-inch, like, worm-like things, that were attached to a leaf on one end and wiggling and hoping to attach to your skin with the other. They said you should never pull them off because the head would remain under the skin and cause an infection. And, um, we, they loved areas that were exposed. Marines, unf–whatever, their bravado, would usually roll up their jungle shirts, or jungle utility shirts, having exposed forearms, um, get leeches, and, um, eventually get festering sores, that no matter what antibiotic they put on it, basitrace and whatever, um, uh, would remain there for a long time. Sometimes they'd go around the, uh, top of the–the leeches would get into the top of the boots, where the sock was, and crawl up in the trousers and lower leg area. Uh, occasionally they would even go in through the fly and into the penis, and that was a very bad situation, to say the least [laughs]. But um, oh, that happened to our intelligence officer one time. He was, accompanying a patrol and he got a leech that way. But, uh, anyway, um, uh, the grass. Usually we, they would recommend using insect spray. Uh, the fluid. You'd squirt that on the leach and it would, uh, kill the leach and the head would come out, and that was the way to do it. Sometimes they would try to burn them off with a Zippo cigarette lighter or something. And uh, um, anyway, I learned, a–well it became sheer exhaustion after one hour cause at that time, I had just come from the academic world, basically, and being a pastor, I had seven years of schooling. One year of being a pastor. One year of graduate school, and here I am in Vietnam, grossly out of shape. Never had participated in high school athletics. I wasn't an athlete. I was, an, a, a, bookish type person–academic–nerd. And here I am climbing these hills, um, with these young marines. And, fort–finally we were climbing up the southern slope of 881 South, which is a rather gradual slope, maybe 20 degree incline of something like that, enough. Tall grass. And, I thought, oh, you know. And some core man, fort–I had gone through my water. I savored each drop, each little half-mouth full. Um, rationed it out. Paced it out. But I was out of two canteen cups of water by that time. And, a core man fortunately game me some of his, um, water. Um, I got up the top of the slope and realized that, it was just a little foothill, and then another slope, which we couldn't see because it was blocked by the first slope. Um, Beetle Bailey had a comic strip about that two years ago. It was very appropriate. Um, anyway, I got up there, and they filled me with juices that they had. They gave me their pineapple juice and apple juice and orange juice, and, I got rehydrated, and–but I learned. I learned that these marines did this everyday. And–

DERKS: Did they enjoy having you with them?

STUBBE: Oh yes, yes! And I, uh, um–They would have–They had three platoons to accompany. They have one platoon–sometimes two platoons, out patrolling. One platoon to man the little outpost, or two platoons. Um, they would usually have resupplied in the afternoon, and by that time, late afternoon, the patrolling platoon would come back. So I learned, after a while, that if I wanted to get the most people for a worship service, is to go in during resupply, and stay there, while overnight, late afternoon, I could hold my worship service for all the marines, and stay overnight, talk with the marines, stay in one of their bunkers, go on a patrol in the morning, come back in the afternoon, go to the next hill and the next resupply, and that's what I–that's how I did for, July, August, September, October, November. Um, did that.

DERKS: So that one time wasn't enough for you.

STUBBE: No, no.

DERKS: You needed to keep doing–

STUBBE: Oh, I kept. This was my Modus operandi. After a while, I was 28 at the time, um, I was born in 38, I was probably more agile going up and down the hills than the new 17–they had to be 18. 18 year olds, who were having a hard time. Um, a lot of times we would go up and down a hill, we'd, we'd take a rifle that someone would grab onto to pull up, you know, or something. We had scout dogs for a while, and eventually they abandoned the scout dog program for–because the grass was so–the vegetation was so thick. We thought that scout dogs could sniff enemy lurking there, you know. Uh, they abandoned that because the scout dogs couldn't take it. The dogs actually become dehydrated, uh, faster than humans do. And, I remind people walking their dogs now when I see them. Um, I usually walk a dirt bike trail by my house every day. And, uh, with the little dogs, I remind them. Any time I see the dogs, remember the dog's going to get dehydrated when it's hot out. Anyway, um, uh, these marines would stay on a hill outpost for, uh, 6 weeks. During that time, no showers, now baths, torn uniforms, um, um, sleeping in mud, and their bunkers later on when the monsoons came with mud, cold, very cold. You never think of Vietnam as cold, but it was cold in Que son. And I, I learned that these marines deserve everything, and God, very, very little. Very little. We had jokes about that kind of thing. Even the colonel went down to Fubai one time where the division was, and at the briefing, he talked about the wonderful “Land of Buy.” He said they even had sidewalks made of, uh, wooden pellets. He said, “You could walk and you wouldn't have to walk in mud.” You know, he was just, he's talking about–he really embellished this. He said, you go to the head, and they actually had toilet seats on the, you know, really talking about this. And he said, “Course, they had air conditioning in the senior officer's hardbacks. These were plywood buildings. But it would never get as cold as it was in Que son. In Que son during the mon–monsoons started about September and–[End of segment two, beginning of segment three]. Okay, around September I believe it was, 326 left and went to operation Kingfisher near Contient. A very bloody battle. And I was left as the only Chaplin of the base. I covered our infantry units, the hill outposts. Even went out to the Army Special Forces camp at Long Vey [spelling?]. Our intelligence officer said, “What do you want to do? Get yourself killed?” I didn't realize at the time that that Long Vey during the battle of the hills in April and May, the 30th of April to the 10th of May. Had been indeed overrun. And they killed the commanding officer and executive officer of the Army Special Forces out there. It is sort of interesting; I think it is probably worth going into a little bit. The Special Forces had recruited some local Vietnamese as soldiers, CIDG's, Civilian Irregular Defense whatever. And had them on the line, on the perimeter during the night. This is all part of a plan they had. They were really North Vietnamese soldiers, posing that way. They knifed the other Vietnamese, killed, slit their throats, permitting a larger group of North Vietnamese outside the wire to come into the camp. And then they assassinated the commanding officer and the executive officer. Both of which were black, afro-Americans. Crenshaw and Stallings. And they, so the camp was over run from within, sort of speak. And that was one of the reasons later on in the siege why Col. Lounze, or regimental commander prohibited refugees from coming on to the base. I will mention that. It was a very human tragedy. And why FOB3 was separated by a wire, and so on. Anyway, I would go out there and stay overnight there, in the exact bunker that where Crenshaw and Stallings were killed. I didn't know it at the time. These are old French bunkers. Sort of hexagonal shaped things. And I remember one time I was out there and I so surprised they had white toilet seats, plastic toilet seats. By that time I had been, well I got there in July, this was like September, October, maybe November, even. I was climbing hills every day. I mean I was grubby, I was like any other grunt, you know. And, white toilet seats. And then they showing a movie. I couldn't believe it. An actual movie in their team house, a plywood team house. And so I went there and they turned off all the lights. They had a sheet up there for a screen. And the title of the movie comes on, and “You Can Never Go Home Again,” or something like that. Virginia Wolfe or whatever, I don't know. The title got me so, I can't say agitated, nervous, whatever. I just couldn't watch it. So I went out and sat at the picnic table outside. But the Special Forces, there was a Doctor Hunter who belonged to Special Forces. The Doctor who covered all their A-Teams. Came up one time and he said, “Oh yeah! You Marines!” He classified me as a Marine. “You all live with less than you could be, I mean, you live like animals.” He was so disparaging. All those innuendos he had, but anyway. So I stayed over night at Special Forces. I would stay over night a Ka San [spelling? village with the combined action company that we had there. I would stay over night at another, at the bridge site. All these different places. I would go from one place to another, and go on patrols with these people. Not with the Special Forces, but with the Marines. And eventually the monsoons came. And I am talking like seven inches a day. And being at the elevation we were. The base was about 400 meters above sea level. And the hills of course 881, 861. They were all higher yet. With being wet and never being able to get dry. And at that elevation with the temperature being around 40, 45, whatever. Under 50 I would say. It was absolutely miserable. I don't think I have ever been colder. I mean maybe I was colder. In seven years of schooling in Minnesota, college and seminary. Northfield in Minneapolis, was cold, obviously. St. Olaf is on top of a hill. The winds coming off the north by the men's dorms there. Was unexposed. Brisk winds were very cold. But when you are wet and can't get dry. And it's in the 40's constantly week after week after week, it is cold. It was so cold that I went into a bunker one time where there was a metal container for 40 mm rounds that the Army fired. They fired Navy ammunition on a Marine base from an Army vehicle called a “Duster.” They fired 40 mm rounds. It was antiaircraft, designed for antiaircraft, but it was actually designed as a close defensive fire kind of thing. But any way the container for the rounds was a metal rectangular shaped container. And people would put C-4 explosive in there to burn it. C-4 burns at a very nice hot temperature. You could heat C-rations water with it, a canteen cup of water to make coffee, or whatever. It was very nice. The engineer on control would have extra blocks of C-4 with them to blow up tree stumps, or whatever. And they would always encourage the infantry to burn their C-4 so they didn't have to carry it, you know. But anyway, this container of 40 mike-mike was used as sort of a heater. You know they would burn the C-4 in there and heat up the whole bunker, or whatever it was. And I remember a Greek New Testament in my utility shirt. The Marines refer to them a blouses, believe it or not, Pocket, outside pocket. And it was fairly large thing. About 5 inches by 7 inches, whatever. And had a plastic cover. And I was standing near that heater trying to get warm with my shriveled skin. It was so cold, and I stayed there so long that the plastic on that bible melted. And it was all shriveled up. And I donated that bible to the museum in Madison. And it was on display the last two years. It was part of that display. It was sitting out there. There were going to return it to me. And I said no, they can keep it. So it is part of there permanent collection, I guess. Anyway, the monsoons affected us by making life completely miserable for everybody. Even on the combat base itself. But especially for those on the hill outposts where the trenches would collapse. And in fact everything that was built below ground collapsed. And so that when the siege battle began in January a lot of the reporters were sharply critical of the Marine Corps for not digging deeper. And they didn't realize that we were just coming out of the monsoons and we couldn't dig because it was just physically impossible. Also, the men, in addition, before, all before the siege life was just so miserable for these people on the hill outposts. I can't emphasize that enough. Talk about women in combat, and so on. And I know during the hill battles I wasn't there, but I was close enough to being there. That it was rainy then too, and they took lots of casualties. And they had to drag, or transport dead Marines, and wounded Marines on ponchos held with bamboo poles up and down hills because they couldn't bring in helicopters because of the rain and the fog for maybe four or five days going up and down hills with these dead people. Completely miserable. Sliding, because the slopes become very slick with the mud. And carrying the load of a Marine. A hundred and fifty pounds, or whatever. One person carrying another dead weight, literally dead weight. And in the anxiety of where is the enemy? Are they going to attack again? And I often think, women, I give them credit in a sense for wanting to volunteer. But the bone structure, the muscle structure. Sure, there are Amazon women. There are strong women. I don't want to be disparaging here. There are probably some women that are stronger than some of the men. That goes without saying. But generally speaking, the way the bones are constructed, and the muscles, I can't see a woman going through, carrying a dead Marine up and down a hills for three days in mud slick fog. And you can't say “Let the men do it!” You know if you are out there everyone is the same. You should expect everyone to take care of everyone else. In modern combat maybe everything's behind a computer, or who knows what. But war is unimaginable in many dimensions. The terror, horror, the physical exertion is part of it. Of course, women with their health issues, too. Remaining clean and everything is in that situation would be unthinkable. But anyway, we had monsoons. And like I say even the scout dogs we had to abandon because we couldn't, they couldn't hack it. Marines could. So we had the monsoons. Part of the problem with monsoons also was that helicopter resupply was more problematic. Hills which depended upon daily rations, daily water. Hill 950 went without–the first part of the siege battle went without water for over seven days. Admittedly there were a smaller amount of people up there. Maybe thirty or forty people at the time. But being without water. I mean you had to have water. You have to have water. In fact, well, maybe I should get to that at the proper point. But so helicopters, aerial observers couldn't observe enemy creeping in. We depended on low flying helicopters that had ammonia sniffing capability, called “people sniffers.” I believe it was early December they plotted on the tactical map, acetate overlay, with a little red dot for all the people sniffing detections. And the map was just hundreds and hundreds of little red dots. But the problem with people sniffing devices on helicopters is that human urine and elephant urine and tiger urine all register. So is this a human, or isn't it? You know. About the same time, because of the fog and monsoons, they brought in these top secret units called a radio company. Three Meth [spelling?], the senior headquarters in Da Nang, had a radon company with there little loops for radio detection finding. These people would listen in on enemy radio transmissions and try to determine the location with there loops. How many meters out. The azimuth, you know the compass direction. And in terms of traffic analysis, who reports to who how many times. They can usually determine where the headquarters are located, and that kind of thing. Of course, the problem with that is that, this has been done since World War One. It's always top secret. I always wonder why because everyone know how to it. But the enemy can always put out false transmitters. Which with tape recordings or something to broadcast, where there is no person. Just broadcasting all these broadcasts. And you think it's a headquarters, you know. So between aerial photography, when it would clear, people sniffing, prisoners of war if you were able to capture somebody or an agent. Radio signal traffic analysis. What I am getting at is a multi, for intelligent purposes you have to have a multi source operation with many different inputs. Some of which verify or cancel out each other. And we also has some agents with the Joint Technical Advisory Detachment, JTAD. Which was part of the military intelligence. MI Group at Khe Sanh Village. And they would attach North Vietnamese who had rallied to our side, like a Kit Carson Scouts, and would send them out to be picked as, up like they were North Vietnamese soldiers back again. And they would report back to us. This was for very deep reconnaissance, maybe 20, 30,000 thousand meters, 23 to 30 clicks out. Would report movements of regiments and battalions. Of course our own intelligence would always rate them as F-6, which our intelligence rating system was based on A through F. And one through six. A through F, one determines the source. If the source is reliable, or unreliable, or undetermined. And if it tallies with other intelligence, it would be a one. And if it doesn't, it if it's obviously false it would be a five, and if it's undetermined it would be a six. So F-6 was a source, couldn't verify the source. And couldn't verify the source and didn't correspond with any intelligence. It was always F-6. But we had the JTAD. We had patrols that went into Laos, from the SOG unit. We had one patrol, a large patrol that went there on the 14th of January, seven days before the siege. Actually the tenth of January. And brought back a lot of intelligence that was very useful when the siege began. So much for intelligence. Anyway, the monsoons limited our intelligence and it limited our own movement of troops, and so on.

DERKS: Was there a sense that something was brewing?

STUBBE: Indeed! Oh, indeed! Very much so. On Marine Corps birthday, November 10th, I was on 881 South, and it was very foggy, as usual. The hill was completely encased in fog. There was one platoon that was out in this monsoon rain, fog, which happened to be third platoon, Don Jocks, who was later killed. His whole platoon was practically wiped out on the 25th of February. But anyway, the 10th of November I was up there with the Marines as part of my normal staying over night kind of thing. And we could all hear the helicopter going around and around the hill. Obviously couldn't see to land. And it was the base commander, Col. Lounds. With the Artillery Commander, a Major. And my Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Wilkenson. And, all of once there was a clearing, I guess, or something, and they landed. And they got out. The Captain at the time was Bruce Green, I believe. And he got the troops–Bruce kind of a–he wasn't a martinet, but he was very military in his bearing. He got the troops all in formation, in a circular formation for Col. Lounds. Col. Lounds got there and gave us all a stand at ease and that kind of thing. And I put it in my diary, so I know it was true. The words that came out of his mouth at that time. This is the 10th of November. Were, I can almost quote him. He said, “You will all soon be in the American history books.” That just sent shivers down my spine. I think most of the other people thought well it was going to be a news article, or something. But just prior to that, while I was on the hill also it was a clear day. And a four star General, Alfred Starburg, landed with his entourage of other generals and col.'s, on hill 881 South. General Starburg was Army and he had come from Washington DC. And this would also be early November. And he was head of the DCPG, the Defense Communications Program Group. Which was part of ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Which we still have ARPA. DCPG however, was really CIA. They told me. I don't know who “they” is. But at the time someone told me. Probably the Col. Was a cover working in the Department of Defense. But they were developing all these snooping kind of intelligence gathering things, including electronic sensors. Which were, I donated one to the museum. They have one if you ever want to take a picture of it. It's a device that's about three inches in diameter. Pointed at one end. And about two, two and a half feet long. And on the other end is sort of flat with plastic, it's a plastic antenna, a plastic antenna with wires in it. But it looks like vegetation. It's to be dropped from a helicopter. And they land and they plant themselves in the ground. It's a radio transmitter. There are two kinds. There is a seismic and there is an acoustic. The seismic one detects movements of trucks, or artillery pieces. And the acoustic one actually picks up conversations. And Alfred Starburg was there as part of that sensor program. Now they were going to seed them along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in December. As part of well what was the code name? Mud River, I think. Anyway they were eventually diverted to Khe Sanh, seeding around Khe Sanh at an early January. Anyway, Starburg was part of this whole DCPG, Defense Communications Program Group, was developing all these sensors. They were very costly. Several million dollars they cost. They had some Senate hearings later on in the 1970's when all this came out. But it was very unusual to see a four star general up on the hill. And he took Bruce Green, just the two of them, just the general and Bruce, Marine Captain. Went off to the north side of the hill. I will never forget it. They went off and General Starburg's pointing off to the north there. So that was another sign to me. And them I came there and I saw a little hut by the landing zone. It was a little–it would only hold one Marine. And the helicopter was making, as they do, make so much noise resupplying. And I went into this, which I hadn't seen before. What is this? I poked my head in and I saw this little box with this little radio loop on top and this Marine was yelling at me but I couldn't hear him because of the helicopter. And finally the helicopter goes away. “Sir! You can't be here. You can't be here!” And he was looking at some paper that looked like notes. I don't know. But anyway. I mean musical notes. Vietnamese is a tonal language. You know, they have different levels of speaking. Anyway, there were various, yes, we know something was coming. And of course for those of us that were there for sometime it was either the Vietnamese elections, the coming of the monsoons, the what ever this, or what ever that. We were going to be attacked. And we were close to the Laotian boarder. Under the demilitarized zone. And mountainous. And Jungle. They could creep in without us being aware. And for me it was more like they are crying “wolf!” And then finally in early January–well, going back to December again. December 17th, 16th, 17th, like that. 17th I believe it was. They brought the 326 back to Khe Sanh, because unknown to me at the time. I learned this later on. The signal intelligence people had determined, indeed, that two divisions were coming down Laos and were coming toward to Khe Sanh. And they were going into radio silence. Which was a technique they used before an attack. Our patrol that went on top of ColRok [?] from SOG around the 10th of January, had also detected their presence. So it was obvious that things were happening. Unknown to me again at the time. They brought 326 in because it was a decision to abandon Khe Sanh, or to reinforce. The decision was made to reinforce, because of the strategic location of Khe Sanh being close to Laos. To launch recon to see what the enemy was doing. And also being monsoons it would have been very difficult to evacuate all the machinery and artillery and everything else, and all the people. And also, I think. I haven't been able to verify this but Westmorland told me personally it was to attract the North Vietnamese so that our B-52's could destroy a large force rather than if we had evacuated this force would continue on into the populated areas to the east, like Hue, Quang Tree, Da Nang, and so on. And once they are in populated areas it would be very difficult to eliminate. To kill without killing a lot of civilians. To determine who is the enemy. Who is a civilian. Like they are doing in Iraq, you know. And so his idea was to attract them in fairly isolated area. And destroy them with B-52's. A large number. And that was what he said later on. I don't know if that's ex post facto, or you know thinking. But it perhaps does seems congruent with what happened so it probably was a conscious decision on his part.

DERKS: Which is no different than sending a patrol out until they make contact.

STUBBE: Well, that's exactly why they would send recon patrols out. Was to make contact. Not to see if the enemy is there, but to be, if the enemy is there. And then try to get them out. Now this was actually this was North Vietnamese plan. Those documents that I gave to you. There basic plan for Khe Sanh was to attack us to draw in Americans so that they could kill all the American rescue forces. And they talk in these documents how they failed to do that. Now some of our more liberal historians will say, “But they did succeed, because we did bring in a lot of extra forces to northern I-Corps. Which were taken out of cities during Tet which could have been used to defend Saigon, Da Nang, and so on.” So that's one thing they say. However, these forces were not brought into Khe Sanh, at least the ground forces were not, until much later in April. By which time several of the North Vietnam divisions, 325 C, had already left Khe Sanh. By the time our relief forces did come there, there was only an independent regiment left of North Vietnamese army. So in a sense, their idea. That was one of there main tactics all the time. That's why they attacked Long Veh, that's why they attack infantry. They would always try to wound. Create a wounded Marine. Or a wounded platoon, or a wounded outpost or something. Not to over run or kill, but to get the reinforcements. That was a basic North Vietnamese tactic. Anyway, um [End of segment three, beginning of segment four]. Ok. I also want to talk a little bit about just before the siege again. During the monsoons, we lost some people. Um, actually we lost our first marine the 21st of August of 67, part of a recon patrol. They went in by helicopter and got shot out. And it was on a Sunday, and his name was–Gary Tellant. Gary Glen Tellant. Um, I was holding church services at the time in, in our mess hall. And these four marines came in. There faces were all camouflaged with paint–war paint, like a green, variegated, dark green, light green, and uh, uh, I three worship services on the base each Sunday. Um, this was the first one in our 126 mess hall. By the time noon arrived, the Catholic chaplain–this was right before they left on the Kingfisher, uh, told me there's a dead marine in graves registration. So I went to this tent and here was this marine with little granules. They had washed him off but there were still some granules of pigment in his face. And he looked vaguely familiar. And sure enough it was Tellant. And, uh, it was the first marine that I had, uh, that I knew had been killed, and, and, um, it was just uh, it was, very shocking. Very shocking indeed. And um, then I found out that he was a very religious type person. I didn't know that at the time. And they were preparing to go out on their recon uh, insert, but the helicopter was being delayed and they were play cards and so on, and he said, “Let's go to church.” And he's the one that brought the other ones to the worship service, so he was in my worship service at about 10 and, and uh, 2 hours later, he's in graves registration dead. And, and uh, um, then one of his close friends, Amarrian Lee Megs, um, in early November, was, a recon team was crossing a big river to our, the north of the base called the _River. Very, um, because of the monsoons, full of, uh, uh, it was just raging, boiling, rocks, a lot of flat rocks. And he was swept under, and drowned. And, um, he didn't, wasn't located 'til about a week later. Um, but he was a friend of Tellants. The two of th–I have a picture of the two of them. Um, Megs was a short-time. We had less than a week to do. Um, and the same day that this drowning occurred, we had an airdrop. We were airdropping supplies for the rebuilding of Lang Vei, uh, camp. The new camp, and uh, a lot of the marines would take the parachutes, um, and decorate the inside of their bunkers to keep the dirt from falling in or just to have some color. And, uh, the inside of the mess hall and so on. And so eventually the air delivery people from Da Nang, uh, learned that they had to jump with their supplies. At the end of a supply jump they would jump, to retrieve their shoots. To, uh, bundle them up and so on, to keep them from the thieving marines. Um, who go so little, but learned to steal what the needed. And um, unfortunately, these two marines jumped with this, uh, at the end of the air drop. And, one jumped too fast. The second one jumped too fast. Landed inside the canopy of the first one. Deflated it, and, course his own canopy wouldn't inflate because of the canopy under him. And anyway, just to make it a long story short, there reserves didn't reply cause they had jumped too close to the ground, I guess, and, uh, they both died. So, uh, uh, one was named Jenkins. I can't remember the other one. But anyway, so that day three marines died. And then in late December, uh, our recon teams were making contact, and some more marines were killed. So, uh, they were killed because of contact. So it was obvious that indeed, something was brewing, even though I was thinking of the boy who cried wolf too many times. But indeed, about, oh the 17th of January, um, 16th or 17th. I can't remember if the one in December was 326 or the one in December was 226, but they're both on 16th or 17th anyway. Um, they brought in 226, so at this point we had 126, 326 and now 226. We, for the first time, we had all the ri–all the battalions of 26 Marines in war, since the first, since Hiroshima in World War II. And, um, the regiment, however, wasn't all there. They only had, uh, half of regimental staff. The marines had–the other half was on Okinawa. Uh, so the regiment lacked a sergeant Major. Um, and they lacked, uh quite few uh, quite a few of their people. And, so they brought in some augmentation from division, to beef up the regiment. The reason why the regiment was split was that MacVee had put up a ceiling on how many Marines could be in, in country in Vietnam. They had no ceiling on the army, but uh, for this reason, the marines had their repair facilities, a lot of their, a lot of their higher echelon repair facilities were on Okinawa. And they had a lot of marines in Okinawa, including half of the regimental staff of 26 marines. Which were actually, at that point, called, a unit called 9th MAB. 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade. Um, whereas all the Marines in country, were part of 3 MAF, third Marine Amphibious Force. Um, it's, it's kind of technical. Like the assignment of chaplains. But the–oh by the way, after I was assign–after I had been in Que son for three weeks, they liked what I was doing. The division chaplain got a hold of Washington, and I got transferred to 126, um, as a third Marine division chaplain rather than a 9th MAB chaplain. Our fifth marine division chaplain. And after, after, after that happened, all the chaplains of the battalions of 26 Marines were, thence force, afterwards, third marine division chaplains. So they didn't have to have separate orders. Um, anyway. I was the first one that started that, I guess. So, anyway, 9th MAB, every once in a while during the monsoons, we would get an inspection, from, uh 9th MAB, because, uh, 26 Marine regiment was technically 9th MAB. Even the forward part of it. And one of the artillery, um, units, was 9th MAB. They weren't 3rd Marine division. So 9th MAB would come to do their inspection. They would always come on the last day of one month and the first day of the next month. And that way, they got combat exclusion pay–$500, uh, a month from their pay for income tax purposes, and they'd also get combat pay for, for two months. For one day of each month. They played the system, you know? Um, so yes. Things were picking up, and, about–well the siege began on Sunday the 21st at about 5 in the morning. But about the 14th or so–about a week before. Maybe ten days before, the order was out that, uh, we had to wear out helmets at all times. The marines had to carry their rifles at all times, including when they went to eat. They had to wear a flack jacket at all times. Um, they had to put in internal consortium, case if we got penetrated, that they couldn't just sweep through the base. Um, Colonel Lowns, at one of the evening briefings–I used to the evening regimental briefings, and the morning battalion briefings. Um, in the evening, Colonel Lowns, early January, around noon or so, put out the word. He said, “While, we've developed our fields of fire. We've, we've got our fortifications. Um, which were mainly above ground. Um, uh, we've done all the defensive things that you're supposed to do according to the manual.” He said, “Except for camouflage,” he said, “So he says, I want everyone to–” He says, “Everyone knows where the regimental bunker is.” Uh, overlooking the base to the north, was a mountain range, which was filled, we assumed, with forward observers who could observe everything that was happening on the base, and indeed was. Um, so they knew where we were. And he said, “They know exactly where I am.” And he says, “I'm very uncomfortable with that. With the regiment”–cause we had all these, they had all these antennas up for the radios. He said, “I want you to erect false antennas all over the combat base. And I want you to build false bunkers.” While, to build a bunker is really, an onerous task to say the least. I mean it's just weeks of filling sandbags, and, um, and so the–he said, “That way, they won't know where I am.” Of course they already knew where he was. So the next morning, Colonel Wilkinson, who was always a very humor–he was just. Marines have a humor about them. He's, uh, anyway, Colonel Wilkinson announced that the colonel, Colonel Lowns, had said the previous evening, what we were supposed to do. He said, “Now that way,” he said, “that instead of the regiment taking a hundred rounds, the whole base will take 500 rounds.” And, uh, you know. So indeed, that was exactly what was to happen [laughs]. But, he was saying it as sort of a joke. So, we uh–And, and also there was a, a, kind of hurrying up. They were bringing in more. They brought in counter mortar radar asrat, um, they call is asrat. Uh, they brought in surgical augmentation teams. They brought in more doctors. They brought in more intelligence staff. Um, fortunately, they brought in more intelligence staff. They brought in a Pakistani named, uh Mersa Beig. Uh, Mersa Menear Beig. Um, I might divert just a second to talk about Mersa Beig. Uh, I never knew him. I never saw him on the base, but I certainly learned a lot about him later on. Mersa Beig was a, a, born in Pakistan, 1936 I believe, so he was 2 years older than I was. Uh, his father, his grandfather, was knighted by the king. Uh, it came from India. That was before Pakistan formed in 1949. They, uh, uh, by heredity, his uh family, uh, his, uh, the males, uh, defended a fort in a bishop war there. And, uh–which was eventually taken over by the British, of course. Anyway, Mersa's grandfather was knighted by King George V–I don't know. And, uh, worked with Prime Minister Asquith and those people. Uh, his father, um, Osmand Beig, um, established the Pakistani Embassies in Toronto and Washington D.C. Um, Mersa himself, was educated at Cambridge. Um, and, uh, went to McGill University in Toronto. Um, was a brain. Um, he wanted to be a marine, and uh, the family was personal friends of the, uh, de Weldon famil–sculptor, who did the Marine Core monument in Washington D.C. And de Weldon, um, uh, interceded with the President of the United States at the time, to uh, get Mersa on active duty, cause he was a foreigner. And, and he went in as unlisted. As unlisted marine, while he was in boot camp, they could see how he was a, you know, a superior person, intellectually and militarily. Um, he went to OCS and became a, was commissioner. He was on the 3rd Marine Division G2 staff. He, um, then came to Que Son. And, within–when the seed started, within ten days, um–Oh! Wh–yeah. Within ten days, he had pinpointed the artillery headquarters, the artillery, um supply depot of, of the North Vietnamese, and, uh, targeted and had them bombed. One of them–one of the supply headquarters was, went secondary explosions all night long. Um, and he, uh, bombed some targets in Laos because of the information from this recon that had went out there. Uh, another interesting person that was in charge of that. Um, uh, George Quamo. Uh, George was a–there were so many people here, but George Quamo was a Major in army special forces, whose parents immigrated from Albania. Grew up in New York, and personally strung a landline from his desk so to speak, his bunker, to uh, Major, our Captain Beig, to give him, uh, intelligence information. He would always say, “Well you might want to consider bombing this place.” He couldn't exactly say why. But he was supposed to send all of his intelligence down to Saigon, and then it was supposed to come back to 26 Marines, and by that point would be history. But, uh, anyway, uh, that was one–but Beig his targeted successfully. He said, “I'm here because of Beig.” All, all the marines who survived Que son, uh, owe their life to uh, Mersa Beig.

DERKS: Could you say that again?

STUBBE: Yeah. All the marines who survived owe their life to Mersa Beig, and he's basically unknown. Um, he–the were seeding these electronic sensors for the first time around Que son. And again, the, the readings, the electronic transmissions from them, would go to NKP in Thailand. I can never pronounced it. Nakhon Phanom or whatever. It was an air force base.

DERKS: That's why you say NKP.

STUBBE: NKP. And everyone else did. NKP. It, it was an air force. Task Force Alpha was there, and they, uh, interpreted these electronic sensors. But, even–and so, they would then send messages back to the regiment about the sightings. These are hours and hours later. By that time, people have moved, vehicles have moved, and Beig wanted direct, uh, information from the sensors. And so he developed on his own, how to read these sensors. At first he thought, that the electronic sensors, broadcasted the exact positions, of moving troops, or trucks. And he would target those areas for bombing, which would eliminate the sensors, then, of course, too. But then he realized, that these were dropped in patterns, and that, uh, the–the people moving or the trucks moving, were at a distance from the sensor itself. And so he developed, on his own, he was able to develop how to read all these transmissions, which were just beeps, and interpret that in terms of units, or, the size of units or whatever. And he had studied North Vietnamese, um, movements and how fast they moved through jungles and how they moved, and uh, with flank echelons or columns, or whatever. I mean he, he was a real student of this. And later on when I, I did an art–a monograph on Beig, about 80 pages or so. I, I talked with a fellow named George Allen, who was a, who briefed the president form the CI, he was a CIA briefer. And George Allen had been, in World War II as, um, a–he has an interesting story too. But anyway, he mentioned the Beig, when the siege was over, they invited Beig to the CIA, an he briefed George Allen and an army major un, unidentified. Um, or George couldn't remember who he was or didn't want to remember who he was, whatever. And, uh, he said, he couldn't believe this marine major was, uh, standing so, uh, straight and, uh, aplomb, you know with dignity. And, and the CIA, just having come out of the Que son siege. And, uh, kept their attention just wrapped for over three hours while he went through the whole siege. Um, I had tried to get the briefing notes from George Allen and I couldn't. But in any event, um, uh, George Allen said he had briefed the president many times. He said but–so he, he knew about briefers, And he said, this, this marine, was just, uh, something unusual. He also, Beig also briefed, of course, the general in, um, NKP if Task Force Alpha. Um, and just to continue that strain for a moment. Uh, afterwards, uh, uh, uh, Mersa was assigned to, uh, uh, the embassy in Thailand. It's a vindicate. Err, no VMTN? I'm not sure. Wherever the embassy was, and he was assigned there. And, uh–No. I'm, go–take a correction. He was a assigned to the embassy in Thailand, yeah, at Bangkok. However, he went back into Thailand, uh, dressed as who-knows-how? Would do snoop-and-poop. Uh, he was extensively there to teach train the intelligence, uh, people of Thailand. But, he was undercover to do, um, intelligence gathering in Laos. Um, he brought his wife and his, uh, daughter there to live with him in Bangkok. And they run a second floor of a hotel, when a fire broke out. And, uh, the doors on either end of the corridor on the second floor, were padlocked from the outside. And, when I was talking with George Allen about this, um, he, he, he's–he got shivers. He said, well that's a technique they've used before. You know, they were assassinated. And, uh, so all three of the members of the family were killed. Um, I talked with his widowed wife. We exchanged correspondence for over a year. Uh, she was in her 90s, living in London at the time, and she gave me all sorts of background on the fam–that's how I found out about the family and so on. And about his education and–all he–She said that–

DERKS: I think we should probably focus in on your story.

STUBBE: Yes, yes! Well, anyway, I just wanted to finish–this will take up only a minute. Uh, so, so he was killed. She mentioned that at his funeral, there were marine Generals, and uh, uh, Navy Admirals, and she didn't know all the stuff about how he had worked in Laos. And, and was just a lonely marine officer. But, he saved us all. Uh, ok. Now getting, he, he was one of the people that beefed up Que son. Uh, and there were many others. And, and uh, so, all at once, it was a Sunday, the 21st of January. And I was going over my sermon notes, cause I was going to have my three services on the base. And all at once, explosions you wouldn't believe. And of course it's night, and the sky's illuminated with red, and explosions. And, on one side of us, was the uh, uh, what we call a P.O.L. Dump–uh, petroleum oil lubricants. Uh, and big 55 gallon drums, and that was on fire. And billowing, you know, these orange-ish, uh, yellowish, uh billows of fire. And on the other side of us, was the supply depot, a very small supply depot, with lots of sand bags and things like that, which were on fire. And further on was the ammo dump, which was cooking off. Spewing off all sorts of rounds itself, while we were taking rockets, and uh–not artillery at that time, but rockets and mortars. So, I was in my bunker, which I had built myself, alone. And I was in the medical area–uh, sea-med. And they had a slit trench, um, and it was debating in my mind, if I should run to that trench for cover, or stay in my own bunker, which was–I had built it rather substantially. I had put air matting along for the, uh, walls. I had chiseled off, with a cold steel chisel, 55 gallon drums, um, for the P.O.L., and filled them with dirt, placed them around the bunker. And then filled up sandbags and put them around the drums and the rest of the bunker, and covered the whole thing with plastic because of the, uh, monsoons. The plastic that they would bring in, uh, supplies with, the air force did, and, uh, the top was solid aluminum air matting, about half an inch or whatever, three quarters of an inch thick. Uh, and all of that was held up with engineering steaks that I had driven into the ground, um so it was rather substantial.

DERKS: But it didn't seem so substantial?

STUBBE: But it. But it. But it, uh, wouldn't take a rocket. It would protect me from, um, mortar shrapnel. And I had, sort of an L-shaped entrance for blasts, you know, you don't get blasted. But I was alone, and you don't want to be alone in those times. Um, and, so I–but I knew, that you don't run during a mortar attacked, because a mortar attack–uh, mortars explode in a V-shape. So, if you're standing, you'll probably get shrapnel in your head and chest. If you're crawling, you could probably crawl right next and you wouldn't get hurt. Whereas rocket, splatters, laterally. And uh, so I was–and then there was ammunition cooking off, so I, I knew I shouldn't run. And yet on the other hand, I wanted to run. Um, and uh, eventually, I ran. Stooped down, of course, but I ran into the trench. And, uh, the doctors–we had four doctors at the time. And the core men were in there. And all of a sudden we started getting tear gas, from our own ammo dump. We had powdered tear gas drums there. And the tear gas was spreading throughout the whole base. It was a CS, uh, crystals. And they were in, so–I had my gas mask with me always, and put it on. And immediately felt claustrophobic. Uh, uh, I just, I wanted to tear it off, and yet I knew I had to have it on. And then there were some of our guys who didn't have a, a, gas mask with them. And they would try to wet their shirt or whatever with water, and put it over their face to protect from the tear gas. It lingered for some time. And, uh, we were under attack for–actually we were under attack not all that long, but our ammo dump kept spewing and our, uh, POL kept burning, and it was 5 o'clock at night, you know it was still night, and so on. Then the day came, and uh, eventually helicopters started to land to take casualties out. And um, uh, I remember, uh, one of the corpsman came running back–I was still in the trench there for, for a few minutes, and stunned, as everyone else was, I guess. And, I remember a corpsman came running back, and, uh, with a medevac tag, and he, and he said, uh, he said, “Oh,” he said, “My casualty outran me.” And, and they said, uh, to the helicopter, you know. He said, “I couldn't pin his medevac tag on him.” And the doctor said, “Well, what was wrong with him?” “Well he had a bad wounded leg. And then we said, “And he outran you?” You know? “Yeah but he was a marine,” you know. “I'm a sailor.” I guess they actually would–did say that, you know. Anyway, bantering back and forth. And the doctor said, “No, don't worry. They'll know what's wrong with him when he gets there,” you know. But, uh, that's how it–There's always kind of, that kind of humor, um, in the midst of all of this. So, I emerged from the, with my brass cross and a, a container with wi–with a bottle of wine and some little hymnals, and was going to hold church services, you know. So I'm walking towards the eastern part of the base where the ammo dump was, towards the mess hall, which is where I was going to hold church. The mess hall, of course, as completely, uh, caved in, as were any above ground wooden, plywood bunkers, recon, and the CVs, they were all destroyed. And, uh, I remember helping to dig out some people, uh, in root. And tears are coming in my eyes from the ear gas, you know, lingering every once in a while, the cloud. There were pieces of unexploded, uh, or burned off 105s ammunition. And, flush sets little of darts, and little pieces of this and pieces of that. I gathered some of it up, sent it to the museum–or I sent it home and sent it to the museum. Gave it to the museum. Um, uh. That was the first day. I remember just walking around the base kind of stunned. I knew I couldn't hold church services. Everyone was busy anyway. They were building, filling sandbags, rescuing people, whatever–assessing damage. I don't know. They were busy. They wouldn't gather anyway. I remember, uh, passing our own, uh, 126 BAS Battalion Aids station, medical area, and seeing from a distance, a man on a stretcher, whose abdominal wall was missing, and you could see the intestines. Um, I remember in my mind, saying why don't they cover that up with a wet cloth? I–that's what you learn in first aid, to cover the intestines with a wet cloth. And–but they didn't and I, and I was standing sort of like in shock. In shock and awe, and just looking at a distance, and I with a corpsman, and he said “Well that man's dying. He's gonna die.” And, uh, and knowing what I know now, obviously I would have run to him to try to comfort and, do something. But I just stood there. I–to my shame, I just stood there. But uh, it's partly shame. I've learned to forgive and not to be so hard on myself because I'm probably in shock. But, but nevertheless, I mean, uh, that's the way–and that's the way we, uh, we operated. From then on, everyone was just in shock, you know. People wonder, well, how are you feeling? Why don't you cry? Why don't you, uh, get angry? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And, and the reason is that the emotions become, um, frozen. They come out later on. But, uh, uh, so that as the first day. [End of segment four, beginning of segment five]. Ok. So that was the first day, of many. And they all sort of merged. I did keep a diary. Every day I'd go to my bunker and, uh, write down what happened during the day. From my briefings, from my observations. Uh, whatever, and uh, on the basis of that diary, I was able to keep things in, later on, in, in somewhat of a chronological sequence, and some sort of order, and, and help me, uh, write right about it later on, also. And talk about it in some what of a knowledgeable way. Um, the um–we were attacked on a Sunday. And, uh, uh, the first battalion, 9th marine regiment of 1-9, the walking dead, the whole battalion arrived the next day, on the 22nd. And, uh, uh, so then in all we had four infantry battalions, uh, with us. We were about, with attachment and everyone else, about 6,000 friendly people. Um, we were at that time, we'll–during the siege we were surrounded by at least 40,000 North Vietnamese, which had crept in, suddenly. And, uh, and basically, being hit by rockets and mortars, um, basically, or not basically, usually, about 2-3-400 rounds a day. Our base was a little under a mile long, mainly an airstrip. About a half mile wide. We didn't have all 6,000 on the base. I'm talking about, cause we had two companies on 881 South, a company on 861, um, we had, um, uh, a battalion 226 on hill 558, which was a valley approach up from the north, west of the base. And then 1-9 took up a position at we call rock query, which was just southeast, correction, southwest of the base, near FOB3, there. Uh, Rock Quarry because they quarried rock from there, from–Que son's set on an extinct volcano, which is sort of–we didn't' realize that at the time. And, uh, so the area was born under heat and violence, and it's sort of the spirit's sort of lingered there, I think. Um, we could talk about that too, but I won't. There were a series of 5 volcanoes in Northern Icorn, and Que son was one of them. Uh, at one time, Colonel Lowns had thought we would dig, uh, dig a well for water. Uh, cause we were dependent on a source of water outside of our wire, from the Ra Kwang River. Uh, I suppose if we had dug we would get lava or something [laughs], but uh, we certainly wouldn't get water. Uh, anyway, uh, 1-9 was there, and they arrived the 22nd. And then we had a arban ranger battalion, that arrived, and they're only about 500 or so. Uh, 37th arban rangers. So that was, uh, that was our friendly situation and our enemy situation. We would take these round on our base. Uh, interestingly enough, we didn't take all that many casualties, for that density or that amount of incoming. Um, usually there was a fog in the morning, which we all enjoyed cause we could walk around freely, the north–the aerial observer's spotters couldn't, uh, report in targets. Uh, neither could we bring in supplies. Around noon, the fog would burn off, the planes would come in, and then the mortars would start also. Uh, also on the 22nd, um, we started getting a huge amount of ammunition because our ammo dump had been destroyed. Fortunately our S4, Colonel McKeown, um, the logistics man of the regiment, had established another ammunition supply point on the western part of the base, so we had ASP2. Um, so we did have some ammunition there. However, the day we were attacked, Que son village was also attacked. And Hill 861 was attacked, and also one of our recon teams called Nurse, uh out there was attacked and they had to be boxed in with artillery. Uh, Hill 861 had to be supported with artillery and um, Que son Village had to be supported. So, um, we were um, very, very low on ammunition and what little we had was burnt off. So we had C130 after C130 bringing in pallets and pallets of ammunition. And then rather than return empty, the 1200 Vietnamese who occupied Que son village, we airlifted out. But the 12,000 local mountain tribesman were not able to be airlifted out because, the 3 star Vietnamese General, General Xuan Lam X-U-A-N L-A-M, uh, two words, uh, back in wherever he was, Phu Bai, um, determined that there was no place in Vietnam for mountain tribesman. Uh, uh, Vietnam, just a parenthetically heresy, has 31 tribes of, of uh, mountain tribesman, which are ethnically different from Vietnamese. Um, they're stocky, they're shorter, they're more muscular. Vietnamese are basically Chinese in feature um, and more culture. The mountain tribesman are very primitive. They were illiterate. They didn't have a written language. Um, until the missionaries came. Uh, W-Wi-Wicleff-Wycliffe Bible translators why uh–we had some at Que son, who uh, developed a written language for a, tribe, and then would translate the Bible, but also teach the young people how to read, for the first time in their life, uh, cultural life–Their whole cultural history. Anyway, um, uh–and also, the mountain tribesman talk like we do. Uh, a nontonal language, whereas the Vietnamese have a tonal language, and, and so on. And they distrusted a, uh, a–the racial antipathy. It seems like wherever you go. Uh, uh, they killed each other. They hated each other. They were fearful of each other. Um, so uh, uh, General Lam said there's no place, uh, for mountain tribesman in the rest of Vietnam. Also these 31 tribes couldn't understand each other. They all had different languages, but they were all nontonal. Uh, so the bru, B-R-U, or sometimes it's B-R-O-U, it's really Brrou, uh, that's how it's pronounced, uh, had to stay. And, uh, at the end of the siege, at a resettlement village of the 12,000, I think there were like 4,000, um, that made it. And, these were not only the 12,000 from around Que son, but also included, um, uh, mountain tribesman that were still in the mountains that hadn't resettled, uh, in these strategic hamlets, we called them. Close to the base for their protection. Um, mainly communist. So, uh, many, many thousands of the local tribesman perished during those first three months of the Que son siege battle. Um, uh, as long I'm going to talk about casualties, I figure 475 or so of Americans died. Um, 21,000 were medically evacuated. Uh, and approximately 20,000 North Vietnamese, by estimation, uh, perished during those first three months of that battle, so it was a very bloody battle. Probably the most bloodiest battle of the whole Vietnam War. Um, and uh, occupied, I believe, I later read something like 75% of NBC uh, new coverage, of evening news. And, uh, CBS, 50%. I might have them mixed up. A fellow named Phillip Braystrep wrote a book called “A Big Story,” in which he documented all that kind of stuff. Um, and uh, they were even going to name a big ship USS Que son in their new L.A. Che series at the time. Um, but it seemed like after the siege was over in April, there was a real effort to forget it. Um, and uh, uh, the USS Que son became–it wasn't named as such. And uh, uh, people nowadays don't know what Que son was. Um, but anyway, that's a all aside. I, I, I, I'm here to try to help people remember these things so that they don't forget uh–

DERKS: So it's just day after day.

STUBBE: Day after day after day. And uh, so uh, the Vietnamese left. The Bruce stayed, the ammunition came, um, that was the 22nd. Around the 25th of January, uh, a unit, just inside of Laos, called BV33, Battalion Voluntaire, the French term, uh, uh, was overrun. They were just inside Laos, at a, abandoned airship called Van Huysen, and they were a, uh, unit like our National Guard. They had the wives, the children, the pigs, the chickens. They, uh–everything with them. They weren't soldiers off on a base somewhere by themselves. They were–they lived there with their families. They originally had been at a place called Cherpont, further, uh, towards the venicate further west. And Cherpont was overrun in 1961. Um, and became a North Vietnamese logistic, uh, base along the Ho chi Minh trail. And then the, the people who were there, was the BV33 relocated to, Van Huysen. And, uh, it was the overrunning of Cherpont, by the way, that got us into Vietnam, um, because in 1962, I'm going to tell you things that, are–are not in print, but they're very, very, they're verifiable. I'll put it that way. There was a, there was a–every two years, SEATO, a Southeast Atlantic Treaty Organization, had a um, military exercise with SEATO nations. I mean Thailand, and Australia, and a, United States and so on, uh, would have military exercises and, uh, started in 1958, I believe with, uh Operation Strongback. And uh, anyway, in 1964, um, there was Operation uh, uh, uh, Silver Lance. But anyway. In 1962, there was an operation, um, and now it's just escaped me cause I was thinking of the other ones. Uh, Tulungun, T-U-L-U-N-G-U-N, which is a, a Phillipino um, uh, word, meaning mutual assistance. And, uh, 1962. And it was because um, Cherpont had been overrun, I believe in November of 61, that the scenario of, uh, Operation Tulungun, talks about um, uh, Cherpont being overrun, and what do we do? And so this operation, Tulungun, is to practice what we would do. And it's–so out of that came, um, the introduction of helicopters by the marine core covertly, into a, Da Nang, and out of that came um, uh, uh, a focus by the White House on, um, and the department of defense, on Vietnam. And then came the advisors, in '63–62, 63. In fact the first special forces arrived at Que son in summer of '62. Um, and so it was because of Cherpont. But the unit that had been at Cherpont was now in Van Huysen, and in the 25th of January, they were overrun by tanks. And this was the first time tanks had been used by the North Vietnamese, in Vietnam. And, uh, the air force people reported that to Lang Vei and to everyone else. “Oh, they can't be using tanks. No no no, they can't be using tanks.” And, uh–Well they had pictures. I mean, they had tanks. And the, the refugees. Instead of going westward to Slevenecat versus where they should have gone, although, perhaps the North Vietnamese–they'd have to go through the Ho Chi Mihn Trail network—that was very dangerous. Instead they went east, crossed the border into Vietnam, and settled and took refuge in Lang Vei at the army force–special forces camp. Um, fast forward to the 6th–8th–6th–7th of February, of 68. Lang Vei is overrun by these same tanks. “Oh, there are tanks! They're really, they really do exist!” So, our air force, uh, knocked them out. Lang Vei got overrun, and I can talk about that a little, but uh, anyway, by the tanks. And um, ever after that, our marines on the line heard rumblings of tank treads, you know. And, um, and there was nothing in-between uh, us and then that ocean border at that time. Um, and in fact, I have learned since that, uh, um, North Vietnamese supply, um, trucks, freely went down Route 9 despite all our bombing and everything else saturation. But, I mean really saturation bombing. More bombs were dropped at Que son during the siege, tonnage, than were dropped in all of the Pacific during World War II, during 1942 and 43. That's according to the air force. And, and, so, uh, although we took lots of rounds, on the base, we were a small base, and the battle field was of course much larger, however, they took a much larger tonnage of tons per square kilometer, than we on the base. Um, the ground was rocking, constantly. B52 strikes, constantly. Um, uh, just a constant bombardment. There were some days that we would take up to thirteen hundred incoming rounds a day. Um, and uh, uh, so, it was just, uh–and, and all this beautiful vegetation. This garden of Eden Vegetation, was soon–a moonscape. And uh, um, uh–it, it was hell. It was literally hell. It was, uh, uh–there's many passages in the Book of Isaiah talking about the Earth being shaken and you know, the mountains trembling. I, I–all of those uh, words in the Bible suddenly became very, very real. In fact, I had a casualty one time at seabed, lying on a stretcher, and he said “Chaplain, would you say it with me, the 91st Psalm.” I never really thought much about these things, you know, existentially, I never thought much about them. But uh, here you know, uh, uh, a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand. Um, you shall not fear for the arrow that flies by day nor the pestilence that walketh it stalketh at noon day, you know. And um, um, and so on and so forth. I mean, as I was saying it to this fellow, uh, it talks about trust in the lord and that God is always with us, and, you know. But uh, I thought, you know, a thou-thousand may fall at your side. That's our own casualties. Ten thousand your right hand–right hand always refers to strength, you know. Ten thousand enemy. Yeah, ok. Uh, pestilence. The, the rats, the uh–we had lots of rats. And–I can talk about that too. But, uh, uh, uh, the noisome pestilence, whatever. I mean, all of a sudden that psalm took, uh, uh, existential significant, um, to me. And I, I, I–here was a grubby marine, um, leading me into that, um, um, anyway. Uh–

DERKS: Tell me about why you were evacuated.

STUBBE: Yes. I'll get to that in just a moment. The, uh–so anyway. These, um–that was the 25th. On the 28th, which was a Sunday again, uh, two reporters with chests full of cameras, came to me. Or actually, I saw them. I was walking towards a regiment, and I saw them near the S4 bunker. And they said, uh, “Chaplain, uh, we want to take some pictures of marines.” Well at that time, um, we were not only had four infantry battalions and one arban arranger battalion, but we had, probably a battalion of, of news reporters. They were all over the place, and Colonel Lowns just hated them. And, and, taunted them. And, uh, not only taunted them. Uh, um, he'd say, um–A reporter would say, “Well this looks like Dien Bien Phu.” And he'd, “Oh, what was Dien Bien Phu?” Like he doesn't–he was a Socrates. He was so smart. He was a Socrates. He's still alive by the way. Um, you go by his Rack, and, and, hell has a very small place by uh, whatever the famous guy is um, anyway, who wrote about that, uh, Frenchman. Um, anyway, he, he knew all about Dien Bien Phu. Oh, and Mersa Beig, as I found out from this George Allen, as the siege began, he had requested from the CIA all the uh, maps and diagrams and reports from uh, Dien Bien Phu. Now, that indicates to me, I mean he had a family of connections with his father and grandfather and all that kind of stuff. And he was more, I will always be convinced, he was more than just a marine captain. Anyone who knows how to request things from the CIA and get them, and then to brief the CIA later on, is more than just a marine captain. Uh, I mean, you know. But like I say, we're alive because of him. But anyway uh, so the, the 28th of January, I, I know the state because of my diaries and so on. Um, these two, uh, one was Dick Swanson, from Black Star, and the other one was a Marine Staff Sergeant, John A Reid, R-E-I-D. I've been trying to locate both of these people. Um, I wish I could find, I know they can find Swanson because they got permission from him for the display and everyth–but I can't, I want to get his address. But I've had had, uh–I, I don't know if John Reid is alive or dead. But anyway, they were, they said “we want get pictures of marines.” I said, “Well follow me. I go all over the base. Uh, at that time, the colonel had said I couldn't gather more than six people in one group because the spotters would spot and call in mortars. In fact, no, no groups of more than six could for any reason. Um, so I had developed a way of holding church services that were about, less than 10 minutes long. I'd have a sentence and a half for sermon, I'd, I'd give th–I'd have a prayer, a scripture reading. At the time I think I was talking about Jesus calming the troubled seas. I talked about Jesus being with us, and, and uh, in our troubles, and calming our, calming us. And uh, uh, I'd give out communion. Even have a closing prayer and, uh, hugged the guys–marines. They hugged each other, these hard marines. And incoming, they'd hug each other. I mean that's, um, the human side. But I'd do maybe, twenty thirty of these a day. Um, and uh, so I told these photographers, “Come and follow me, and I'll–you can–I'll show you where all the marines are. Um, and you can take some good pictures.” So, they did, and that that's how this, rather famous picture of me holding church services, was taken that day by these two people. Um, Dick Swanson's appeared in Life Magazine, I believe the 8th of February issue. And uh, and several other places. In books now, and so on. Cathy LeRoy's book, uh, um, recent book. She just died, but she came out with a book of photographs of people who died in Vietnam and so on–news reporters and so on, um. Anyway, I'm in there also, and I also wrote something for her. Um, but uh, John Reid's photograph appeared in all sorts of base newspapers for Chaplain corp. anniversary. It's appeared all over the place. It's even appeared lately in a North Vietnam, uh, some of the Que son vets went back to Vietnam and, and, reported that there's a blowup of that picture in one of their museums in a caption in French and English, that says, “Marines desperately pray for their lives, but unfortunately, all those pictured were killed.” Uh, and uh, it's appeared in, in a line drawing, and it's, it's, it has a history of it's own. Um, uh, but that particular picture. I had, when that picture was taken, I had a fever, of uh–my body's temperature is normally 97. I'm a coldblooded fellow. Um, but uh, um, if I could get a 98 whatever, I'm, I have a fever. But I had 101 or 102, near 102 temperature, and uh, and I was very weak. I had lost a lot of weight. I was in the 120s. I went over the 180s, and uh, we were down to–all of us, were down to one sea ration a day. We were supposed to have at least three. And especially with all the excitement and stress of running, and uh–our calories were very depleted. We were down to one canteen cup of water a day, if that, uh, cause our water supply, from being–uh, was destroyed several times. Um, the general came and said one time, “Ray, you haven't shaved.” “Sir, I just drunk all my water,” you know. That, that was–that's the kind of stuff, you know. Um, uh, so anyway, I was in a bad way, but I continued and, uh, went back to sea-med and I collapsed and uh, but I still there. And then the next day I was getting ready to go out on my rounds again and I just fell down. And the corpsman, like I say, manhandled me onto a stretcher, and then next thing I knew, I was down at Da Na–or I was in actually Quang Tri, and then to Da Nang. Um, they did uh, tests and test and found blood in the urine. And sent me to the hospital ship. You know, did a cystoscopy, uh, the metal tube up the penis, you know, thing. And, and uh, said uh, “Well, you have a kidney problem. You have kidney problems. And I said, “But I've got to get back to Que Son.” And they said, “No, no, no, you've gotta–You're out.” “No, I'm the only Protestant Chaplain on the base. You don't understand. I've gotta get back there.” So eventually I got back. It was in a few days, against medical advice. It's all in my health record, that I returned. Um, I returned. I know I returned, certainly by the, well this was the 28th of, 29th of January. I know I was back by the 4th of February, because Lang Vei was overrun on the 7th. I met all the casualties that came, that were evacuated. And, and also, I was there a couple of days before. But anyway, a, so I returned. Um, and fast forwarding that, um, they said “We'll let you go back, if you get medical attention when you leave Vietnam. So when I left Vietnam, I went to Parris Island for 18th months, and there was a little hospital there. And I had an open biopsy, and they determined, indeed, that I had, uh glomerular fritas. And, uh, the doctor there said, uh, “Do you want to stay in the navy?” And I said yes. And he said, “Well we can get you out on a medical board.” And I said, “No. I want to stay in.” And, uh, he says, “Well you're only going to live twenty years at the most.” And uh, he said, “This disease is an autoimmune disease that the body destroys itself.” And he said, “at anytime, it'll start attacking your kidneys, and that's it. Sometime within 20 years.” And, uh, because of that, I made the decision, uh, definitely to stay in the service and not to get a civility on parish. And also not to get married, have a family, cause I thought it would be very unloving to suddenly die. So that, uh, set my, uh, set me for life. Obviously I'm still here, um, but uh–I still have blood in the urine too. Um, and so I'm reminded all the time.

DERKS: So he was off about 30 years?

STUBBE: Yeah. Who knows what? I'm mean we've all gotta go. Um, I'm living each day every–fully, I box.[laughs].So, anyway. Getting, going back to uh, um, back to that. I came back, and um, and it was just one thing after another. I mean, um, first, the uh, the-then Lang Vei was overrun. And I knew these people that knew the Americans. And they were at Sea-med. They were completely in shock. I mean they couldn't say a word. I, I knew the CO and the XO and, um, the men. And, um, I just sat with them, you know. Sometimes all you can do is–just like at a funeral–sometimes all you can do is sit with and be with, and communicate the care that way, you know. Maybe they aren't even aware of it. But maybe they are. The XO of, of, of that, is living here in Wisconsin, um, Wilkens. He was just interviewed, by [shakes his head in thought]. Um, anyway, he was just interviewed. Um, doing the hardware business and doing very well I guess. Uh, anyway. Um, that was the 7th of, 8th of February. Then on the 10th of February, a C130 was landing a Marine Silvery C130. The air force ones were camouflage. The marines were silver. Took a direct hit and, uh, burned, and he huge, uh, conflagration. And uh, after that, the air force didn't land supplies anymore. Um, and neither did the Marine core. They closed the airstrip. And they dropped everything on a, on a small drop zone that we had outside the airstrip. Sometimes the supplies would drift off and they'd have air strikes on them so the enemy wouldn't get them. Sometimes they'd land things on, on a sled with a parachute, called LAPES–low altitude parachute extraction system. L-A-P-E-S. Um, later on they used GPES–Groups Proximity Extraction System. Um, the military's famous for its acronyms. Sleds would come out of the end of an airplane while it was flying real, real ultra, like 10 feet off the–and, uh, parachute would deploy and drop supplies would all be on this big sled and pull it off that way. We had an occasion once where a sled crashed into a bunker and killed, uh, the marines in there. We had an occasion where, uh, airdrops were happening, were being dropped, and because of the noise, one marine shouted to another marine who was right in line to be crushed by the airdrop, “Run, run,” and uh, he didn't hear. So this marine, like a football player, went and tackled him, pushed him out of the way, and himself, was crushed by the pellant. Um, that's all in my book on these casualties. But anyway, so it was, it was grim and it was unfeeling grimness. Uh, I think we got, we all got to the point where we knew we were all going go die. Um, at least I did. Um, I can't speak of everyone else. But I think from what they said, they, they felt that way. But anyway, I knew I was just going to die. At that time, marines were very, uh, uh–Marines have asked me since, “Where is God in all of this?” And, I point to the fact that, uh, there was all this humor that they had, and I can give some more examples if you want, but uh. But uh, uh, there was also, um, a sharing, and a caring for each other. People in bunkers that would be out of water, and someone else would give them their last drops of water. Um, be without food, and would give their last–[End of segment five, beginning of segment six].Ok, about the, about the God. God is–People ask me sometimes, and, uh, I talk about the humor, which is maintaining life in a situation which is death. Uh, the courage to be, uh Paul Tillich wrote a book about that, uh the theologian. He himself, by the way, was an army chaplain in World War I. Hardly no one knows that, but uh, he saw a dead man, or a wounded man, very badly wounded man, and that changed his whole theology. Again that's, uh, very, uh–even professional theologians don't know that about Paul Tilic, but. Anyway, uh, uh, people, I guess because we knew we were going to die, anyway, were somewhat free to live. You don't have to worry about getting wounded or worrying about dying because you know you're going to die anyway. So some guy's out there by himself, wounded, um, and the rounds are going off. Well, you just go out and run out and dash out and drag him in. Um, you know full well that you could probably get killed. You don't think that, you just know it, you know? But what difference does it make? You're going to die anyway, so you're free to, uh, free to live. Um, it, it sounds very–I'm sounding very kind of crazy in some senses and some psychologically twisted, but, but that's the way it is. That's just the way it is. And, and maybe I am sick. Uh, according to sometimes just stuff is socially social standards, but uh, um, uh. You know, you can be reckless, afford to be reckless, uh. And uh, so I assu–I'd tell people, “God is um, the one who gives courage to live. God gives life, and by having humor, by having courage in death situations, God is giving us life, you know?” But the main thing is that, uh, when we had so, so, so few to eat, so, so such, such little to eat and such, uh, wondering if we're going to drink and whatever. Jesus even talks about that–I was hungry and you fed me and I was thirsty and you gave me drink, and you know. And as much as you do it to the least of these, my brothers, you do it onto me, you know? It's a kind of thing that God is present in needing us, and in sharing and caring for each other, and uh–Everyone who was there knows about that. I mean you know about the sharing and the caring and the humor and the bravery and the, um. And I'd say, “That's God.” God is present in ways–not in a spectacular, uh, show of force or whatever else, but uh, uh, is present, uh, blessing us with the life and courage and love of each other. Love is always an action, not an emotion, basically. I mean biblically anyway. Um, so anyway, we, we care for each other, and we don't think these things at the time, we just do them. And later on we can think about things. Um–

DERKS: Did you not think about it at the time? You?

STUBBE: I thought about, at the time, uh, oh–where is God? Yes, I did question that sometimes myself. But there was certainly enough around me. Like this fellow asking me to give the 91st psalm, or, um, um–one day they said, well this is the night we're going to definitely be attacked. And so I went to be in a bunker on the perimeter. You're always safer on the perimeter than on the, on the base itself, which can be attacked with mortars and rockets and whatever. Uh, so I lived with these marines in this bunker that, uh–which was the crew for the 106 recoilless rifle. Um, and I learned how nervous they were. They would come in and out of the bunker at all hours of the night to cook up some coffee or–they would do whatever. They would play this little 45–they had a, a little record player and they'd play this 45–The Creedence Clearwater version of “I Heard It On The Grapevine,” which is a very nervous, uh, kind of version. Da-da-da-da-da, I heard it on the grapevine. You know, all kinda–and I thought, Oh it's just, oh, the music just, uh, resonated their, their feelings. And um, as I approached them that late afternoon, I noticed one fellow in the trench by himself reading from the prayer book that I had previously distributed. And um, later on people asked me about atheists and foxholes. And I said, “Well yeah, there are atheists and foxholes.” It surprised 'em, you know? I said, “Those who are not religious or didn't have any religious sensitivity, probably because of their upbringing or whatever else, uh, obviously they are not going to pray.” I mean, they just–not, you know? Um, but some that had had, uh, did. And probably more than they normally did. Uh, but uh–That reminds me of a, a thing that chaplain said while I was going through Jump School–Army Jump School at Fort Benning. Uh, he said, uh, this one parachutist was jumping and his parachute didn't open up. And so, he's saying “Dear Lord,” he said. “Dear Lord,” you know I don't pray very often, if at all. He says, “But please, open up my parachute. Open up my reserve.” And um, cause they always–we always have a reserve parachute in front of us. That didn't open up either. “Oh Lord, Lord, you've got to–please open up my parachute.” All of a sudden “PSHOOOO” [uses hands to gesture], it opens up. He said, “Oh that's ok Lord, you don't have to do anything. My parachute just opened.” You know, that's how most people, I think. All of us–We think about the Lord comes in ways that we don't understand. And, anyway, that's what I tell people now about God being present in Battle. Um, I will say also that since then, I've gathered together Veterans who were at Que son. Uh, organized a Que son veteran group, uh, Wisconsin Corporation. It started out with twelve, and now we have over 3,000. And uh, I will say that approximately two dozen of these are priests and pastors, um, who were enlisted marines at the time. And they all tell me that it's because the presence of God, um, while they were there. In the middle of battle, in the middle of death, seeing their own buddies get killed and so on, they knew that God was with them and that's the reason that they became ministers or priests. And, I, I mentioned that too to some of our more doubting people. But um, so uh, there's that dimension as a chaplain I can talk about that, um, But uh, let me see, towards the end of February, it was, the Division Chaplain, is indeed, all people there, I guess, all the marines, had this policy six-months forward, six months in the rear. Actually marines have thirteen month tours. The army had twelve month tours. Um, so they tried to get us back in. I had been there since July, so, uh, it was my time to leave at about seven months, up at, in a forward area. And so they reassigned me to, uh, a unit down at Quang Tri. Um, and uh, um–Oh, I must say also, well when I was evacuated, I ended up at, the Naval Support Activity, which is a medical facility at Da Nang. Um, and I arrived there around lunch time, and they had–this was an officer's mess–and they had white tablecloths, um, clean. They had silverware. They had glassware. The water in actual glasses. Um, and, here I was, I must have stunk terribly, worse than garlic. And, um, got emaciated, full of mud that had impregnated my skin. I mean, I couldn't wash it off. Gas mask at my side, K-bar at my other side, wearing a helmet, flack jacket, um, uh, you know? Like a, a spy who came in from the cold. Only this was the grunt who came in from the mud, um, from the battle. And here all these officers, these doctors in their starched utilities with creases down their trousers, you know? Uh, sitting, like civilized people and eating their lunch. And here I walk in, and it was quiet, and no one was–[long pause][face tight and tearing up]. No one sat with me [long pause]. One doctor came up with a camera and said, “I'd like to take a picture of you,” like I'm an object, a thing, you know? I, I mean I didn't have any feelings at the time. I was just, that's ok. Um–[laughs]. I never get emotional over something that's not all that intense. But, uh–

DERKS: Well it is, just cause you had all those guys with you too.

STUBBE: Yeah, but uh. Anyways, uh–you'll have to excuse me just a second here. I uh, uh–[wipes eyes with handkerchief]. Anyway, so, I uh, left Que son the 29th of, uh February–It was a leap year. Um, and uh, as I left, we were attacked. Oh! I must–I think I didn't–I forgot to tell you. When I was at Da Nang, I got out in this air force plane, and, later on I arrived at Que son. While I was at Da Nang, I met a marine Major Harper Bohr, B-O-H-R, and we struck up quite a conversation because he was Lutheran also. In fact, he had talked about leaving the, uh, uh–resigning his commission as a marine Major, and going to seminary. He was a very religious person. He lives up in–he lived in Kalispell, Minnesota and now he's in, I mean Montana, and now he's in Billings. But uh, uh, anyway, we had quite a conversation. When I arrived at Que son, I believe it was the 16rh of July. Uh, there's Harper Bohr. He was the regimental S2, the intelligence officer. And the first thing he tells me–we uh, of course recognized each other immediately, he says, “Oh, he said, how did you get out of Da Nang?” And I told him how I got out. I took this air force plane around midnight. He said, “Oh,” He said, “You don't know what you missed.” Cause he decided to stay. And he was in the marine, uh, compound there. And, the Da Nang airbase took, a, a, a, rocket attack. Just, uh, five minutes after midnight. In other words, my plane had just taken off and the base was attacked by rockets. He said, “You wouldn't believe how terrible it was!” They'd–everything was exploding and it was, it was like the Que son Siege, you know? Only this was before the Siege. And, uh, he, he said, “People were dying and they were killed. And, you know, wounded and everything” It was all rockets. Of course rockets, uh, for those who don't know, are not only powerful enough and they splatter, but they have this awesomely wretchedly vulcary like screech of their fins going through the air. It's, it's sort of like ZZzzzooooooooooOOOOOOOMMM. Boom! [Uses hand to gesture]. And, and explode, you know? We, we were hearing that all day at Que son during the Siege. But anyway, um, uh, they always say the one you hear doesn't hit you, but that isn't true, by a little fellow that lived through one. But uh–

DERKS: And he heard it, huh?

STUBBE: Yes. He was in a bunker and that took a direct hit. And, uh, uh, and I'll talk about that. I, I should talk about that. I must talk about that one. In fact I'll talk about it right now [laughs]. There's uh–a one of the nights in my bunker, there was, uh, a bunch of casualties that came in, and they couldn't be med, medically evacuated. Medivac, because it was night and, and the helicopters couldn't come in for one reason or another. And I had this nice, uh, above ground but sturdy, bunker that I had built. And, um, there were about 4 or 5 marines. Um, they were–I happened to have a metal, iron rack bed. But I was ou–I was myself, on top of a field desk, which is about 3 foot by 4 foot, and I was curled–that's where I slept, at night. And uh, there were a couple of doctors sitting on my deck, on my wooden floor. Um, one of which had his feet out the door. And then there was an air force Lieutenant Colonel that came in and had a piece of shrapnel in his flack jacket, right–less than an inch below his neck. If it had been just a little bit more, he probably would have been paraplegic or killed. Um, and there were rats at night in the bunker. And they were squeaking and making their noises. And on my rack was this one man, Rick Noise, I know him now, uh, who is dabbing his head all night long of blood, and long the deck of my bunker, were all these crumpled pieces of white shit paper, with red blood all over the place. And, everyone was quiet. No one said anything cause we were all in shock. And, and I didn't know what happened. And, just before that, in the late afternoon, a fellow named Robbie Painter, uh, had come into the medical area and he had no shirt. And his back–he had a big, muscular back, and it was a like little–like someone had taken a magic marker and put little dots all over the place. His back was completely filled with sharp, little pieces of shrapnel that had gone into his back and burned their way in. Um, and he, he got out. He was evacuated. And then it was later on that these other marines came and stayed in my bunker and these air force men and so on, the doctors. And uh, that's how we slept, with the–we didn't sleep I guess. The rats squeaking, I was curled up uncomfortably. More than a fetal position on this little surface. And these marines were sitting on my bed. One dabbing his head. The next morning, I went out and walked around and went to the recon area, and here's Rick Noise, the fellow who was dabbing his head. I said, “Rick, what are you doing here?” And he sai–I said, “Why weren't you evacuated?” And he said, “Oh the blood on my head wasn't my blood. It was the blood of the other people in the bunker.” You know, and all their inners and stuff. And, Robbie Painter, who I talked with later–much later on, many years later. Maybe about twenty years ago. Late 80s, maybe early 90s, I got to talk with him, and, he was in the bunker when the–when the rocket came in. Or actually it was an artillery piece that came in. And he could hear it. He said he could hear the fuse going PzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZ [uses hand to gesture], and then it was all black, he said. And uh, he said that was once where he could here the round that hit you, you know? And uh, that bunker collapsed and they were dug out. And, um, Rick Noise, and the other marines on my rack were in that bunker. And Robbie Painter was in that bunker, and all–four other marines died who were in that bunker. Uh, uh, there's a Scripner and Rosa Cormen, and um, I can't remember the others now. But, uh, I, I knew more of these people. Um, and Rick Noise, uh, was also the one who swam in that river when that man drowned–Megs. Marian Lee Megs. He was a first class swimmer. He had been a lifeguard before he went into the Marine Corp. He dove in to try to save Megs and he himself almost drown himself, even though he was a very good swimmer, but the current–And uh, he felt very, I guess he still feels very guilty about that. He also knew some of the other marines who killed, and, and uh, there, and–I remember going out on the truck. Sometimes they inserted marines by truck. They'd go out as far as they could and then they'd walk off. And I was sitting in the back end of this 6 ply truck with these marines ready to go out. And this was the end of December and some of their teams had been, uh–had made contact and some were killed. And he was going out near the rock quarry–this was before 1-9 arrived, and so I rode out with them. I was one to always be with the people as much as I could. I, I, I miss–I miss them. And, so I uh, rode out with them, and I'll never forget, he looked at me and he said, he said, “Chaplain,” he said, “I just can't do this anymore. And, uh, so, anyway. This was the end of December, but now we're talking in the middle of February while he's dabbing his head in my bunker and then he's out there, uh, later on filling sandbags. Um, he wasn't evacuated. Uh, so, um, this bunker that I had stayed overnight with, on the, uh, on the perimeter, we weren't hit that night. Um, uh, but a few days later, that bunker was hit. Actually, it was an above ground bunker, right on the lines. A prominent target I assume, for a recoilless rifle. Um, and uh, and, and that was right near our sea-med area. Right at our lines, you know, cause I could go right there to that bunker to stay overnight. And, uh, that bunker was hit. And the c1–or the uh, the 106 recoilless rifle wasn't damaged [laughs] up there. But everyone in the bunker was killed. And um, I went down with the medical people to, to uh, well to see if there were any survivors. And I carried out um, uh, one of the guys. He didn't have any head. Just uh, strings of flesh, and–but uh, uh. Anyway, I left, I left Que son, and uh, went down to see the division Chaplain again, and his first, uh, comments to me. Oh when I first got there, I was by myself. I left off, I left–got off the helicopter and was walking towards the Shore Party area, and uh, just, you know, a bedraggled creature from hell. And uh, I remember there was a marine standing off to the side. Quite a ways away. Maybe 30 feet away. And, uh, with another marine, there were two of them. And they looked at me on the road, and they said, “Oh, IT must be Que son” [laughs], you know. In a, in, a–not in a snide way, you now, like I just said it. But uh, “Oh it must be Que son,” you know. Or something like that. I don't know. But it, the thing was, “it” must be Que son, not “he” must be Que–“it.” We were, uh, depersonalized, I guess. Um, we depersonalized ourselves, then, um, [rubbing face]. But uh, sometimes I wonder–but then I saw the division Chaplain, and then he–I seemed to be particularly emotional today, I'm sorry, um.

DERKS: How could you not be?

STUBBE: Uh, usually I'm not with these interviews. Maybe I had a–too much of boxing last night. It was kind of weakened. It was an intense session. And I'll do it again tomorrow night. But anyway, the division Chaplain saw me and he said–

DERKS: Just clarify for me, is this when you left?

STUBBE: Left Que son.

DERKS: Not when you were evacuated? This is when you left?

STUBBE: No, this is when I left permanently. When I–yeah. More or less permanently, uh, as I will get into [laughs]. But uh, he says, “Why aren't your jungle shoes–jungle boots polished?” [Smiles].You know, they're powdery. They–they're, they're in the display. In fact you can see a picture of them in there. See me walking down the is–the road with my–probably as I was then. Um, but I learned that, you know, Vietnam is many things to many people. And there were those in the rear who would just never understand what it was for us up in the front. And uh, there were those in the air, who would keep coming–who'd go back to their nice places but come into hell and who didn't have the chance to get numbed. Go back and forth and were always aware. I think they probably had it worse than those of us who were there all the time. Um, but in any event, there was, uh, Cam Rahn Bay, which is nice, you know. Luxurious, air conditioned, and whatever else. And then there's Que son. Um, uh, where it's air conditioned, [laughs] with monsoons. Um, but uh, uh, so I, I was attached to 3rd Shore Party, and uh, 3rd Recon Battalions. They were next to each other. And however 3rd–both of those units had company sized units back up at Que son. They also had company size at other places. Throughout I core, and I visited all of them, and including Que son, so I would go back to Que son quite often during, uh, March and April of 68. And then the Division Chaplain got wind of it and called me in on the carpet, and said “We took you out of there to get you out of there, and you keep going back.” And, uh, I said “Well, you know, I have there that are from my unit, and I have people who aren't from my unit but who I know very well and I want to be back there, you know?” That's one of the common things you'll find with Vietnam people. They don't like to leave their, their people.

DERKS: And the Siege was still going on?

STUBBE: And the Siege was still going on. All through March. It had tapered off, a little bit, although there was one day in March where they took a large among of incoming. But basically the 20–31st of March, they broke out, um. The, uh, other things that happened. The 25th of February, while I was still there, a platoon went out to do some local wire checking of the parameter. Veered a little bit out further than they should it. It was foggy, it was–they were all tired. They saw a uh, what they thought was a North Vietnamese soldier. They were going to try to capture a prisoner of war, which is really important to get information. Uh, for whatever reason, they got sucked into an ambush, and all of them except for maybe 3 or 4 of them were killed. It was Don Jocks's patrol. Sometimes called the “doomed” patrol or the “ghost” patrol, whatever. Um, then on the 31st of March, I wasn't there, the whole company went out to try and retrieve the bodies, cause they were still out there, and that company got under a, a, a bad, severe attack. The company commander got severely wounded in his shoulder, his radiomen and the artillery men with him were both killed. And uh, um, uh, Ken Pipes, is his name, wonderful fellow. Uh, he made it, made it back. But, uh, they didn't collect the casualties that day. And they weren't until the 6th or 8th of April that they finally got the, the dead people back. Um, but anyway. I kept going back there. I know I was back on Easter Sunday, the 14th of April, because, I, I document that. But I was back maybe 5, 6, 7 times else, else times–other times. And then–oh, before, right before the Siege, I volunteered to extend 6 months in Vietnam. So, I came home on 30 days free leave. Didn't count on your, uh, leave. My mom was, uh in, uh–she controlled herself–but she was, um, uh, she was terrified at the sight of me. That I'd lost so much weight. And then she was especially terrified when I said I was going back to Vietnam. And I didn't really know the full story of that until, oh, about in the late, uh, around 89, 90, 91, 92. Somewhere around there, I was asked to give a talk to uh, some 6th graders at a school. And so, um, I had done that before. But this time my dad said, “Well, I,” he said, “I'd like to come along.” I said, “Ok, come along,” you know. So–and I was the only one. Sometimes we do this in groups. Sometimes we do this in groups of three or four. So I was talking to these 6th graders, and um, um, gave my talk, and uh, then at the end they asked–I asked for questions and, and uh, I had already talked to a high school group and college group–Marquette group, and, so on. But these people–these kids gave the most perceptive questions that I have ever heard. I only remember one of them, but they were so intense. And they–what turned out to be such an intense time anyway, but one of them said, “But how was it–how was it for those of your family that were still at home while you were in Vietnam?” I thought that was a–I don't know if they were prompted to give these questions or not, but sometimes out of, uh, out of young kids come the more perceptive. The high school ones would say, “Oh, well how was the ice cream over there?” Or, you know, that kind of thing. Um, well anyway. I said, “Well I can answer that perhaps, from what I've heard, but my dad is with me this time, so why don't you ask him?” So he was standing at the back of the, of the uh, classroom. And all the, these little heads turned to him, and fortunately no one's watching me. I'm off the, out of the fire for a while. They're all looking at him. And he's standing there, and, and–He's–he had talked, done public speaking before, but not a lot. But I mean, he was comfortable and that. But very uncomfortable now. And uh, he started talking. He said, “My wife and I were watching television one night.” And I know that this had to be the 23rd of February. Um, Anyway–I won't say why. Anyway, he said “We were watching television and they reported a chaplain was killed at Que son.” And that was the day Father Bred, that's why I know the date. Um, Father Bred was a 226 Chaplain, a young fellow. Um, he had–I can get into how was killed, but anyway, Uh, the important thing is, he said “We were watching television.” His voice is getting to be broken up at this point. And, and, and I'm thinking, oh well, he's really feeling this. And he said, “Well,” he says, “My wife and I were, um,–and, and,” he said,” It took a week before we knew if Ray was alive or not. Um, you know they couldn't do Red Cross messages in those days because of the battle. When they, uh, flashed messages and operational media messages couldn't get through and Red Cross are always routine. Maybe a priority, but uh, that takes at least a week or two before those messages come through. In the meantime, I had written a letter dated after the 23rd, so they knew that I was alive, anyways. Going on, he said uh, “We didn't know if Ray were alive or not,” and his voice is cracking up. He's pausing and, and he said, he said, “And,” he “An, An, And my wife's hair turned white,” you know. And, here I am, fortunately no one's looking at me. I was completely unaware of the pain, um, felt at home. Uh, I mean, I was so wrapped up in my own issues, in my own pain, in my own unraveling pain, [laughs], which is still unraveling, um, but uh, that's what happens when anyone has a headache or a toothache, you know. They're insensitive, and they don't mean to be. It's just they're focused on their pain. And, there he is. He's crying. My dad is crying. He's crying, you know? And, um–so we went home and didn't say a word, you know. Um, again, just like that man on the stretcher, you know. If I know now what I had knew then, I would have ran to him and hugged him, and–but uh, it's uh–I wasn't uh, competent enough or uh, hu–I wasn't in touch with my feelings enough at that time. Um, anyway, um. So,uh–

DERKS: You ask a lot of yourself.

STUBBE: Well we all do. I mean, you know. Um, so anyway–