Mike & H&S Companies 

Third Battalion, Fifth Marines

Veterans of the Vietnam War

Mike Krall

(Click on picture to enlarge)

From Left:

1. Here is picture two in the series, Munson in front of me walking down from Stone Pit, notice he is carrying my spare battery, what a nice guy, of course that only left me with the 50 pound prc-25 and the 40 pound cypher set! (plus helmet, flat jacket, M-16, smokes, 6 magazines, water, etc.) Damn, how did I do it?

2, 3 and 4. Mike wrote to Curt Munson, his FO: Anyway, here is the picture of our hard core POW, and then the extract. The last one is of me getting water in the river while waiting for the extract, Damn, it was hot and that river felt great. I also remember there was 1 little tree in that field and about 10 of us were trying to stand in its shade!! Funny how little memories like that come back when you think about them. 

This is Curt Munson's (81s FO) remembrance of the pictures above: The walk down from Recon Ridge into the Arizona territory was one of our highlights during our time together. We were supposed to be in position before dark to block anyone trying to slip out of the village we were heading towards when you snapped this jobby. Of course, the Lieutenant got lost. We crossed and recrossed the Song Vu Gia about three or four times during the night. On our last crossing of the river I slipped coming up the bank and wound up sitting in the mud on the bottom. I looked at my watch at that point and noticed it was after midnight. My words to myself were, "Happy Birthday Dumbsh--!" It was then my 20th birthday, June 5, 1970. 

Several hours later, we stopped and I immediately fell asleep along the trail. Pretty soon the word came down for 81s to report to the CO.  When we got to where he was he had us shoot an illumination round to a known point so he could use it to get oriented. He even told me where he thought it was going to burst. He was only off by about 3 kilometers... and in the opposite direction at that. Of course, at this
point I am a lot less confident that the data the 81s used was accurate enough to hit Viet Nam with much regularity. Anyway, even later that night we were walking along the river when several VC could be heard walking and talking right along beside us. There was a heavy wind blowing and their voices carried right to us. But somehow they didn't hear this clanking bunch of jarheads a few yards away. We finally realized what we had there and got down. The Lt  sent the word down
for someone to send him their rifle. That was nixed by popular non-subsciption, so he threw a grenade at them a fragment of which hit my buddy Donny Tucker from North Carolina. God, Tucker was pissed, and those VC disappeared into the night never to be seen by us again. He stayed hacked off about that quite literally for the rest of his life.  He was killed in November when we were operating around FSB Ross--Tucker, not the Lt.

Finally, we found that freaking village and got set in around it. By this time, people in Saigon probably knew we were out there. When we went into the ville we found one poor old man and with a reinforced platoon were able to "capture" him. We then schlepped our way back to the river where after roasting in the sun for several hours a single CH-53 came in and got us. I am sure that was probably a CH-53A, and
every manjack of us got on board, including our POW, and we were flown back to Hill 52. We were all literally standing up jammed together in that thing. I know we should have crashed, but somehow made it back.  Adventure over. 

From Left

1. Eating K-rations.

2. Mike Krall and "Doc" Mike Evans, corpsman from Wabash, Indiana.

3. I'm glad I wrote on the back of the pic because I didn't remember all this, it says - "with India Co. 3/5, inserted on Recon outpost Stone Pit to work our way down Charlie Ridge." I remember we humped all night and hit a VC Village the next morning, took several prisoners and have pics of that too. I didn't remember spending much time with India, mostly Mike and Kilo. (Ed. note: Mike Krall and Humting, recon.  Both of them and I came to Vietnam via Iwakuni where we were all radio operators with H&HS1. I had occasion to talk to Humting while he was on a recon outpost and I on Hill 52).

Mike wrote me this note: Here's kind of a strange one for you. I have 6 pictures of this village, 2 attached. Here is what I remember. I was on a Hill, don't remember which one, don't remember what I was doing there but I think it was to visit a friend, might even have been you. I missed the last helicopter shuttle of the day and the Hill I was supposed to be on wasn't far away so I decided to walk. So I walked off one Hill and headed for the other Hill. I found myself in the middle of this Village and looked around and suddenly felt very lonely!! I remembering saying to myself, "what the hell am I doing here?" Anyway, I took a couple pictures and just kept walking. So how do you just walk off one hill and on to the next? Cant remember, but that's what I did. (Ed. note: This is similar to what I did in the FNG story on this site.)

Curt Munson, 81s FO, mostly with Mike Company