Down South: One Tour in Vietnam - Tapa blanda

In 1968 William Hardwick volunteered to go to Vietnam as an officer in the marines. A month into his tour, Hardwick's company had taken significant casualties and was fighting a seemingly invisible but omnipresent enemy in the hills of Vietnam. Down South is the story of how he and his fellow Marines survived their first thirteen-month tour. In December, 1966, William Hardwick was a senior at the University of Oklahoma when he signed up for Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, in the hopes of serving in Vietnam. The war was still relatively small. By December 1968, when Hardwick landed in Da Nang to begin his thirteen-month tour in country, the "conflict" had escalated to unexpectedly violent heights, with five hundred American soldiers killed every week. Assigned as the FO (forward obserber) to Mike Company in support of 3d Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment,

“I was always happy to see first light.
By first light it was over . . . for a while.”
–from Down South

There were a lot of ways to get killed in Vietnam. You could get “zapped,” “dinged,” “burned,” “popped,” “smoked,” or “wasted.” Marine 2nd Lt. William H. Hardwick was familiar with all of them because, unlike most USMC artillery officers–who waged their war from bunkers inside protected compounds–Hardwick as a forward observer fought alongside rifle companies and lived like a grunt for most of his thirteen-month tour.

In Okinawa, Vietnam was referred to as “Down South,” and in 1968, “Down South” was a bad place to be. Hardwick did it all–walking point, springing ambushes, capturing prisoners, and spending months in the bush surrounded by crack NVA troops. At times the attacking enemy was so close, Hardwick had to call in air strikes almost on top of the Marines themselves just so they could survive. William Hardwick volunteered to fight as one of the few, the proud, the Marines.