In this compelling episode of America’s Veteran Stories, Kim Monson interviews Carl Leppard, a Vietnam vet with a remarkable journey that began with an early enlistment in the Marines at just 17. From joining for the promise of the GI Bill to navigating the challenges of a rapidly escalating conflict, Carl’s story is filled with unique experiences and ferocious dedication. Explore how his curiosity and skills such as scuba diving and karate set him on a path to becoming a respected jungle instructor, training others in guerrilla warfare tactics critical to Vietnam missions.
SPEAKER 05 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and her other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Monson.
SPEAKER 09 :
welcome to america’s veteran stories with kim monson be sure and check out our website that is americasveteranstories.com and the show comes to you because of a trip that i took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four d-day veterans to normandy france for the 72nd anniversary of the d-day landings and returned stateside realizing that we need to know the stories of our military We need to record them and broadcast them and archive them. So hence, America’s Veterans Stories. I’m pleased to have on the line with me Carl Leppard. He is a Vietnam veteran. Carl, welcome to the show. Well, Carl, let’s begin at the beginning. Where did you grow up? Tell us a little bit about you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, Dallas, Texas, principally. I went to Bryan Adams High School, et cetera, joined the Marine Corps on my 17th birthday.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is what it is. That was a serious experience in January of 1963. It was colder and blazes out in California, San Diego.
SPEAKER 09 :
So your 17th birthday. Oh, my gosh. You were so the day before you were 16 years old. So did your parents have to sign for you to join the Marines at the age of 17?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, actually, they did. I joined when I was 16, but until I became 17 on December the 6th of 1962, then I could not get into service. And when I did… in 1962 in December. There were not enough Marines to form a platoon, so I was there actually through December of 62 until the company was formed on January the 3rd of 63.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, Carl Leppard, why did you decide to join the Marines, particularly at such a young age?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, to be blunt, my family, my mother had remarried, and that wasn’t satisfactory to me, shall we say. And I predicted that… There was a war coming somewhere, but if I got into the Marine Corps and got out, theoretically, I would have the GI Bill, go to college, and proceed on like I knew what I was doing. The only problem, of course, is we got into a war, and then second, after I got out, I found that the GI Bill was worthless. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, really? Okay. Well, you were right. The war was coming. So set this up. Many of us don’t quite know the history of how we got into Vietnam. And of course, you were there during, I think, the really hot times as well. But you’re in in 63. So what happens after that, Carl Leppard?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I went to recruit training at San Diego and then at infantry training on Camp Pendleton. Actually, we had a very good unit. The way the Marine Corps worked, at least at that time, is you had two different divisions, one on the east coast, one on the west. One went to the Mediterranean on their normal, as we say, cruise, and the other goes to the 3rd Marine Division on Okinawa. for further training and so forth and protection of that particular area. So, we trained with Marines that had returned from Okinawa to her. Generally those gentlemen went out and were discharged and we prepared, they helped prepare us. And then we rotated over to Okinawa later in the year of of 1964 so we had been training for oh i’d say 10 months or so And then we went afloat, as they say, and we went by ship, the USS Mann, over to Okinawa and replaced a Marine unit over there. And we changed our company from Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. We became H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. Sorry, 3rd Marines, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines. We then trained on Okinawa.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and I bet many of your instructors were World War II veterans, yes?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, we had a few, very few. We had some that were Korean veterans.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
If we back up a little bit of a second, you know, I have to blame some of my experience on the Boy Scouts. I think the Boy Scouts are one of the reasons I’m alive today. A lot of people came from cities and so forth and so on. They were not comfortable in jungle conditions or, put it this way, living off the land or knew a little bit about themselves, right? And so you had to learn that. But my interest early on was in scuba diving, which was quite rarely done at that time, and also parachuting. Actually, while I was at 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, their camp San Mateo on Camp Pendleton. I had my own dive equipment and my own parachute.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 04 :
I was a curious guy. And I jumped with people over at Force Recon Marines and other Marines over at Lake Elsinore. and became acquainted with them fast forward if i’m trying to catch you up here a little that’s great they sent me to map and arrow photo school okay map and arrow photo school what happens is is that the marines are generally not provided with what we call fo’s forward observers We actually had one in Vietnam. I communicate with him every day. As a matter of fact, he sends me a prayer, as I got this morning, every day. Captain Wilson. So I appreciate Captain Wilson. I never saw him in Vietnam. He was in the headquarters with the company commander all the time. And I never saw it. But what happens is people that are trained at Mapinero Photo School, if you need artillery or something of that nature, you have at least one experienced person, right, that’s capable of doing that. And that would be me. So… Due to some other incidents, it’d probably take a little bit of time. They had an opening at Force Recon at Del Mar camp there on the coast at Oceanside, and I was sent there to become a Force Recon Marine. Upon my return back to battalion to remove my effects, some of those effects that I had left, I was asked to join our unit as an aggressor in a night operation in which I was shot in the face and blinded there for probably six weeks. So I did not return to force recon. And so when we landed in Mize, it became better. I didn’t lose Mize. Thank God for that. And my company commander elected to take me along on our transfer to overseas. And when we arrived, within a couple of days, the Sergeant Major of the battalion, Sergeant Major Potts, called me to the office and said, And, you know, I essentially apologized for not sending me to force because of my eyes and that sort of thing. And he thought I was best suited to be a jungle instructor and so forth, so they sent me to jungle instructor school. And then I began teaching special forces and all marine units on Okinawa came through that school.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so Carl Leppard, you must be exhibiting something that your company commander thinks is important, that he’s first of all going to apologize and then he wants you to become an instructor. What is that exactly that’s special about you?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it’s probably… Could be self-serving comment, I guess. I was also a karate person.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I used to run barefoot at about three miles per day on my own. We had a, what we call a makawara. It is a Japanese punching board that you plant in the ground. And at the end, I would exercise on that. Well, in a very quiet setting, you could hear quack, quack, quack across the entire regiment. Everyone knew who was making that sound. So that’s why. A little bit kind of different, and plus… I had my own firearms and I shot my own firearms regularly. I was probably the only person in the regiment who actually had a range card, which means that I can call the provost marshal and take a range hot. On my own, I can schedule a range for my shooting at any time because I was certified for that purpose and they would make it so the entire base knew who was on this range firing ammunition on a Sunday. Okay, okay. So everyone kind of, I guess, I’m sorry to say it, they pretty well knew, no, everyone knew who I was. Okay. To the point that it was such an aggravation that the regimental guard was ordered to cut my macawara down to the ground. to give some people some relief on a Sunday or on a Saturday or when everybody else is on liberty.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
So, yes, I mean, you had someone that went to Mathenero Photo School. You had a person that had his own dive equipment, his own parachute, that had his own guns, loaded his own ammunition, It shot frequently when everybody else was going some other place and doing something else. So, yes, looking back, I think I was kind of strange.
SPEAKER 09 :
I didn’t say strange. I would say driven and unique. I might say unique as well. I’m talking with Carl Leppard. He’s a Vietnam veteran and fascinating story. The show comes to you because we have a number of great sponsors and appreciate each and every one of them. And a sponsor that I greatly appreciate for America’s Veterans Stories is Hooters Restaurants. They have locations in Loveland, Westminster, and in Aurora on Parker Road, and great specials Monday through Friday for lunch and for happy hour. Great place to get together with your friends to watch the sporting events and just to have some great food. In particular, their fish and chips and their nachos are delicious. I hear that their fish tacos are quite good as well. So again, thank you to Hooters Restaurants for their sponsorship of the show. The official Marine Memorial is located right here in Colorado in Golden at 6th and Colfax. It was dedicated in 1977, and it is time for a facelift. And the USMC Memorial Foundation is working diligently to raise the funds to make that happen. And a great way that you can honor our military, to say thank you to those people who have put their lives on the line or have given their lives for our freedom, is to support the USMC Memorial Foundation. And you can do that by going to usmcmemorialfoundation.org.
SPEAKER 08 :
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All Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s kimmonson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories, and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier, and thank you for listening.
SPEAKER 05 :
Ha, ha, ha.
SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. I’m talking with Carl Leppard. He is a Vietnam veteran. He’s a Marine. And we were talking about how you were best suited to be a jungle instructor. And you said during break that you’d left out a detail. What detail is that?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, when I mentioned Force Recon, that’s a very restricted unit. At that time, there were two openings there. Marines from all over who might want to join that unit are put through a rigorous test. It is very difficult to get into a Force Recon unit, all right? And so, but what I missed and didn’t say… What happened was is that when we had all of these Marines returning from Okinawa who had rank on all of us who were there at Camp San Mateo, it blocked our increase of rank, and we were not happy. So I called for a little meeting of people who wanted to chat about it at 1600, that’s when normally we get off, outside my squad bay. And lo and behold, we had about 100 men there. Uh-oh. So somebody saw this gathering and sent down the regimental guard and had us disperse. Oh, my gosh. I said, look, I didn’t call these guys out. I said, we need to chat about this situation or whatever. And everybody showed up. And we did have the officer of the day standing right there next to me. So it couldn’t have been a mutinous activity. So in any case, they were getting ready to fry me for breakfast. And so the Sergeant Major intervened and thought that perhaps because of my, quote, leadership skills and my ability to jump and scuba dive and been to Mapnero Photo School and was a karate expert hand-to-hand, et cetera, et cetera, that maybe I would be better suited for force recon, which was exciting. Nothing happens by mistake in the Marine Corps or casually. You just don’t up and move. Someone has to move you. So when we arrived on Okinawa, naturally the Sergeant Major sent for me and was sorry because I got shot in the face and was not allowed to return to my unit, etc., and thought I would be excellent over there as a jungle instructor, in which I was. And while our battalion did a number of things and moved off and went to Mount Fuji in Japan and so forth and so on, I was training special forces and first special forces in Okinawa and all other battalions and Marines and so forth that went through jungle school. These are a live fire situation. Wow. So I also, which probably is important at this juncture to know, is that part of my duty was handling the ranges that we had. These ranges were for artillery and for airstrikes. So basically, I would monitor these ranges within 1,000 yards by heavy binoculars and so forth. I would use my rifle because I was an expert rifleman. I would remove people from the impact zone using a .308 M14 rifle at often 1,000 yards.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so question, you said it was live fire, but how did you remove them?
SPEAKER 04 :
By putting rounds around them.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, got it. Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I don’t think I say much in my book about that because it’s probably a little sensitive. You think? Also, it does talk about us being ridge runners. We had an additional piece of duty at night. Major McMillan was my commanding officer. He was the only one to sweep the 1962, I think, Olympics. He had no one with him that could not shoot offhand with a rifle at 500 yards. Today, I hold world records at 1,600, 500, and 200 yards, open sight with a pistol, my own design. Wow. I shoot fairly well.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, it sounds like it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. But the ridge runners, what would happen is I would call. We may have an airstrike coming in, and I would have to communicate then that we had high-angle artillery in their area and so forth control their firing, and I would make a record of what detonated and possibly what did not. The villagers would hide in ravines and in between firing would run out into the impact zone and grab unexploded ordnance and run back into the ravines. And then we’d take them into town or a village somewhere and disassemble those and sell the parts and the gunpowder or whatever and C4, whatever. And occasionally one part of a village would blow up. So we needed to interdict this. So we had McMillan Ridge Runners and we would get in our trucks and they would drive along the trails and so forth, roads and so forth up in there at night. And we’d roll off the tailgate and we’d go down into these ravines with generally an entrenching tool. And we would wait, and they would come down like a parade with their gatherings or whatever, and we would educate them with our entrenching tools, reclaim all the undetonated ordnance. And, you know, bring these people back to, quote, justice.
SPEAKER 09 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
So that was kind of interesting. And, you know, people don’t know much about that. But in Vietnam, then it explains a little bit more about a battle I was in over there. So, yes, I talked the slide for life, which was interesting. A manner in which you rapidly go from, say, a high cliff to an ocean setting if you needed to get off that beach or that area quickly, rappelling. With ropes sideways, backwards, forwards, a number of different ways with wounded and so forth and so on. Rope bridges, I taught how to build all of those, demonstrated all of those, repelling off of those, explosives, mines, etc. Then we had live fire areas where we’d carry you through. We had pop-up targets in the jungle and teach jungle mines and booby traps and things of that nature to bring everybody up to speed on those and how to make them. So it was a very good piece of training for all the Marines, for sure.
SPEAKER 09 :
So it seems like I had interviewed Colonel Bob Fisher, and he realized early on that guerrilla warfare was— would be very important if we got into a war with Vietnam. And he said that some of the higher-ups didn’t believe him, but clearly you probably were teaching guerrilla warfare in this jungle training, correct?
SPEAKER 04 :
That is correct. And let me back up a second. In the United States, each regiment, which is roughly 3,000 men without attachments, okay, they compete. They compete in all manner of things and so forth. You know, platoon formations, your effectiveness to engage an enemy force, all the way down to driving a Jeep if you’re a Jeep driver in the company. Bottom line with that is that the very best of that regiment. One company is made a raider company. They then, that is the very best, and they then take on different types of training that the other units do not. And that is submarine training, uh, rubber boat training, um, they are a elite unit, okay? And so they are super trained, if that’s a word for that. If there is a problem, they’re the boys that get it. And so if you’re in trouble, that’s the boys who come to your relief. And everybody knows who they are. So when we’re now back on, say, Okinawa, jungle instruction and things of that nature is paramount. Marines train all the time, heavy, all the time. But when you’re in a particular area, if you’re in, let’s say, the Mediterranean, your training is a lot different. When you’re in the area of Okinawa and so forth and so on, now you’re in jungle training. And so your jungle instructor is the guy that you call on if we’re in Vietnam in a particular area, position, or things of that nature. If something needs to be booby-trapped, mined, this or the other, he’s the guide. He’s the guy that you go to. So we had one jungle instructor in our company. I don’t know if we had any others that went to math and aerophoto school or not. Obviously, I was and often used.
SPEAKER 09 :
Wow. This is absolutely fascinating. I’m talking with Carl Leppard. He is a Marine veteran, served during the Vietnam War. How many years were you in the Marines, Carl?
SPEAKER 04 :
Four.
SPEAKER 09 :
Four.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, I needed to get out, actually. I needed surgery pretty bad. I was wounded, well, if you count, 15 times or so, but only about seven were fairly serious. The Marines didn’t know where I was. I’ve learned that in recent years. I didn’t know back then. I was asked to leave. I was not in good shape. I had a bullet drain in my trapezius. My shoulder was damaged. I had a shrapnel in my throat. I had a bullet drain in my side, so I needed to come down.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, it sounds like it. And your book is The Warriors, the United States Marines, and people can find it on eBay. And it was first printed in 1984 and looks like a very important book. So we’re going to continue the discussion. Before we go to break, though, I did want to mention the Center for American Values is located in Pueblo on the beautiful Riverwalk. And it was founded for several reasons. One, to honor our Medal of Honor recipients. And they do that through… over 160 portraits of valor of Medal of Honor recipients. But additionally, they are teaching these foundational principles of honor, integrity, and patriotism through many of their educational programs and also their On Values presentations. So for more information about the center, go to AmericanValuesCenter.org. That’s AmericanValuesCenter.org. We will be right back with Carl Leppard.
SPEAKER 07 :
In these tumultuous times, it is necessary that we each have a freedom library to know and understand our history. Bury Him! A Memoir of the Vietnam War by Captain Doug Chamberlain is a must for your personal library. In this honest and gripping memoir, Captain Chamberlain recounts the chilling events that took place during his command of a company of young Marines at the height of the Vietnam War. Chamberlain painfully recalls the unspeakable order he and his Marines were forced to obey and the cover-up which followed. Purchase the book at marinedougchamberlain.com. That’s marinedougchamberlain.com so that you gain perspective on this time in our history.
SPEAKER 03 :
All Kim’s sponsors are in inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories, and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier, and thank you for listening.
SPEAKER 05 :
God bless us.
SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And I am talking with a Marine veteran, and that is Carl Leppard regarding the Vietnam War. And so you’ve done all this training on Okinawa. What else should we know about your time in Okinawa, Carl Leppard?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well… I became very close with some Army Special Forces people. What happened was my battalion had gone to the Philippines. And then it went on to Japan. I’m stuck but don’t know anything about that at the time. But I’m stuck doing instructive business. We had two areas of major training. One was northern training area, heavy jungle, very wet. And then we had the middle of the island off of Camp Hanson there where I trained. and another school. We had three different ones, and I trained people in all three schools. But that included First Special Forces Delta Company, who had their own, you know, Viet Cong or Vietnamese village built on a beach there. And they trained from using bows and arrows, actually, snipers like that, live fire operations. And so… I was their jungle instructor. So I jumped with Delta Force, First Special Forces, at Yantan Airfield, an old airfield there, Japanese airfield. And until the commanding general of Fifth Forces looked up and saw there was somebody with an odd parachute jumping with boys. And he wanted to know who in the hell is that? So he called his colonel over and said, who is that? I’m trying to think his name was. Shoot, I can’t think of his name now. okay was it paxton but in any case uh the general uh over fifth the special forces group was standing there and so he brought the colonel over special forces said who the hell is that and he said oh well that’s their jungle instructor so they brought me over there and i’m a lance corporal at the time and he looks and says what you know he was mystified bottom line is is that Until his death, I sold him guns to him as a civilian and his sons, his three sons, et cetera, et cetera, until he passed away. But in any case, I’m just thinking of him now. So that gentleman that I associated with then became Command Sergeant Major of all Special Forces, and I still see him today. So in any case, I came in from jungle. Normally, we would come in around noon. The men at the jungle school would retire to eat, etc. And we came in to change clothes. Our clothes were often ripped and, you know, in bad condition. We’d strip right on the floor when we came back in the barracks. shower quickly, change into new clothes, go back to the field like nothing had happened and do it again. Meanwhile, we had Okinawans that would repair our clothing, clean our clothing, starch press, do everything for us, etc. On one of these returns, I had just put on, or was finishing putting on my utilities, which are your fatigue uniforms, if that’s what you call those, and three helicopters landed in the yard of our facility, and a reasonably short fellow to me came in, and he had one star on his collar, a brigadier general. Didn’t know his name. He had only one decoration on his chest, Medal of Honor. For years, I never knew who this gentleman was. I never knew his name. He wasn’t introduced. And so bottom line is, it says in my book, he handed me a folio, I think, a brown envelope. And he said, you are ordered to return to your unit in Vietnam. You were to board my helicopter now. So you reach up, you grab your field transport pack, and I grabbed a few items that I used, trip wire, some other things for booby traps and stuff like that, put them in my grenade pouch, and then stepped on his helicopter to… to Kadena, looked around for a transport aircraft, a KC-130, as it turned out, and there were some recon Marines that were boarding that helicopter, and I asked the lieutenant if I could join him. I had orders to go to Vietnam, et cetera. Now, these are verbal orders. You know, I never talked to our company commander. I never talked to a soul. So we boarded on a helicopter. You know, you’re ordered to go to China. You go. I mean, and you find your way. That’s expected. So in any case, what’s interesting about this is the man’s name, the officer I was speaking to, was Lieutenant Reasoner. So I boarded with that recon group. And we went to Vietnam. Reasoner died shortly thereafter, a month or so later, Medal of Honor. Okay. So now we arrive in Vietnam. It’s hotter than Hades. And my battalion is company. My battalion is nowhere to be found. Actually, they’re afloat, right? And they are down in Thailand. and they were on their way back to the Philippines when they were instructed to turn left and to land off of Da Nang. Well, I was already there, so it was nothing to do. I think it was called… Shoot. Well, we had the recon guys, but there was a Navy contingent there. Our business was doing depth samples and checking the beach landing area. 1,000 yards wide, 500 yards deep, clearing it of any mines, anything of that nature, and preparing for our company to land on the beach. So I aided those guys, happy to be with them and to stay with them, etc., until my unit arrived. Here they land on the beach and I’m already there. So we moved in fairly rapidly across a brine area there, came under attack from mortars from a place called the French Fort, which is about four miles north of Da Nang and probably four miles inland on the Cottey River itself, the northern river boundary of Da Nang. So we diverted, some withdrew back to Highway 1 and were able to gain some truck transportation to a particular area. I plotted all naval gunfire registrations to protect the battalion on its left flank, and those are Unfortunately, or well fortunately maybe, you don’t write on a map, right? But I had my own map case after Mapanero Photo School. I had an original map in my grenade pouch. I plotted all of the impact zones. If we got hit, my job was to obliterate everything on our southern flank. So those are recorded on the map in a, as we say in the book business, if that’s the word, a double truck, meaning a left and right page is that original map. It has the original coordinates of gunfire registrations in Vietnam, the first ones ever recorded, certainly by the Marine Corps, which is kind of interesting. So now we’re there, and we found ourselves at the bottom of a hill called 312. To our south on that same mountain ridge line was Hill 327. We had another battalion down there, which became 39. People rotated in and out. And so we protected the northern, northwestern quadrant of the Da Nang area there. It was interesting. What we were told is that we would probably be in there 30 days. I didn’t think that that was the case. um it’s kind of hard to do a landing with all your assets tanks machinery everything to bulldozers everything on a beach and then turn back around and and go back out the same way and figure 30 days is going to work but in any case as we’ve learned later um General Walt, as General Green told me, the commandant of the Marine Corps told me, that they had planned to get out by December of 65. Okay. So this is all a very temporary thing. Essentially, you had a bunch of Doberman pincers out here in a fixed position and, you know, chomping at the leash. And you needed to do something. So from a beach landing, it became an incursion, which is a little different. And we are protected by Navy ships while we get settled in and get our own artillery located, etc. So our ships were generally destroyers. We had two at that time, the USS Craig and the USS Stoddard. And they were under the direct command of General Wallace Green. which is very important, I think, to know at this time. So we had some difficulty with some Viet Cong, and we had quite a few of them in the area. Just below Da Nang, across the river there, we had about 6,000 Viet Cong in that area. And then spread out directly south down to the Chuli area, we had Cromley C. There were about 7,000 there. In total, there were 16,000 massed below us. Wow. So that, we had two, at that time we had two battalions, that’s about 2,000 Marines. We can generally handle five to seven, seven to one. So we’re not too bad if they’re only got, if they only aggress us with 5,000 or so. We can generally kind of handle that. But we were spread very thin and we had extreme restrictions. We had a tactical area of responsibility. That means you don’t go beyond that line. The northern part of that tactical area was called the Coddy River. There is a bridge there called the Cottey River Bridge. You go across it to go up the coast of Vietnam to a number of other areas. And to the south of Da Nang, and I’m sorry, I think it’s a too long river there. There’s a number of little bitty rivers that all join it. So specifically, there is a bridge there. We were not able to cross it. There’s an infamous town that was located right there called Kam Nee on the south side. And so we had a lot of trouble out of that village, and they resupplied every night, and we’d fight them every day and so forth. So at some juncture then, I moved down there. But I was with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines. We ventured to the edge of our tactical area of responsibility, which is about 10 miles inland with a high mountain called Dong Din. The enemy, of course, they hide in the mountains, and they come down in the villages and so forth generally at night, get resupplied, and go back out. It’s kind of like vampires.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Hey, Carl, let’s go to break. We’ve got one more segment after this. This is absolutely fascinating. I’m talking with Marine veteran Carl Leppard, and his book is The Warriors, the United States Marines. And we will be right back.
SPEAKER 06 :
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Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories, and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier, and thank you for listening.
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Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson.
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Check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. I am talking with Marine veteran Carl Leppard. And I realize as we during this break that we will have to have a part two of an interview with you because we have not even uncovered a whole lot of the information. So this is part one. And let’s talk about this battle, the Cottey River Bridge. Talk a little bit about that, Carl Leppard.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, the Cottey River Bridge was the northern bridge. weakest point, but also the end of our tactical area of responsibility. In other words, the government of Vietnam, the warlord, General T, in that area, allowed us only a specific area that we could go into. So an enemy essentially could run across the Coyote River Bridge, and we couldn’t touch them. We couldn’t pursue them. Okay, but on our northern end, which is fairly secure for Da Nang, there’s nothing below Da Nang but just brine and nothingness, right, all the way to Da Nang Airfield, which is about four miles away, but we needed it protected. Okay, so they set the third platoon elements of the third platoon of Hotel Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines under Lieutenant, 2nd Lieutenant Reeder to set up on the south side of that bridge. to keep that bridge not only from being blown up, but to interdict anyone trying to cross it. So we had it heavily mined along the railroad track itself in the footbridge. So in any case, our regimental commander at the time was Colonel Wheeler. General Wheeler later, he drove down to the bridge and told Lieutenant Reeder, our company commander, to not lose that bridge. Actually, if he lost the bridge, we’d all be dead anyway, so including the man giving me the order. But he wanted to stress to take whatever precautions he needed and to be sure. What we did not know at the time was that there was a unit called the 7th VC Battalion. it was a strike force and it pulled an envelopment in other words it went from the south below the south river there tucson around our west flank and came down through the mountains and open on the open plane on the 28th of july 1965 an entire battalion. This was a strike force, a killing force. They all carried fully automatic weapons. They also had a mortar contingent, which makes it heavy. And so, be that as it may, Lieutenant Reeder sent me across the other side of the bridge, which was illegal, but to give adequate warning and to stop anybody on the other side of that bridge and to let them know if someone was trying to pass and so forth, etc. I was attacked in the early areas of darkness there. And as it turned out, a very large force. I called in a mayday, mayday, mayday. General Walt sent me the USS Craig first. She came in shooting. With its illumination, we identified more than 600 enemy who were trying to cross that bridge. They were formed in a manner of march. I engaged that enemy, and then during the ensuing battle there, the USS Craig was joined by the USS Stoddard, and those two ships assisted me in destroying the 7th VC. We killed all of them to the man. Wow. So that ended about 3 a.m. It started around 9. So they fired from me until the ship, Craig, ran out of ammunition or very extremely low on it. And the rest was the Craig. But the final element of this battalion, I put 200. And 50 rounds of HEVT, or in the words of the Navy, fused quick on top of the remaining enemy force until they were all eliminated. So.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. During break, you said that you had found some orders from the enemy?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. At the time, I had no earthly idea. I mean, we’re Marines, and we don’t care about such things. Yes, there was a lot of enemy, as it turned out, but we do our job. I mean, it’s not, you know. But I had no idea about this battle. I mean, nobody asked for a debriefing. I took after-action photography from a three-story building, showing the damage and so forth and so on. Kept it. And no one ever said a thing. I never really paid much attention to it. It’s my job. In my book, it talks about the battle, but doesn’t go into much detail, really. The book is not about me. It’s about points that I want to make. But in any case, by accident… uh someone uh bill scott as a matter of fact uh heard some one sergeant davis uh talking about this battle and he had my book open to that uh to that page and uh queried him about it how is it that this happened in a way knows about it type thing so in any case uh um uh if I’m trying to make it short, we investigated it now. Because back in 1980, when I first contacted the Navy trying to find out the ships that supported me, it was very difficult. Their records were not available. And so Texas University now, they have all of the, or most all, of all of the Vietnam records there. So we were able to access it, and we found that this battle was intentionally hidden. As it turned out, and unknown to me really at the time, half of that battalion were Chinese. The rest were NVA. This is North Vietnamese Army. And so now we know that this was a real bad thing. Had they got beyond me, we only had 20 Marines there. There was no one between us and the Da Nang Air Base and the 3rd Marine Headquarters. And if they put 6,000 men across that damn bridge to the south and we get engaged by a battalion from the north, we’re done here. I mean, we’re done here. So, in collecting this information, I was researching the commanders that I was against, and I came across a document in a Vietnamese historical record that I found, you know, today on the internet, which obviously you couldn’t do in the 80s or even 90s. And this document I turned over to Texas University because they didn’t have a copy of it either. And this one is an official Marine Corps document, intelligence document, and it clearly states their purpose. It says that they intended to lose 5,000 men and they would kill every living thing who breathed air on that base. Okay, so all that had to happen is this battalion to cross that damn bridge below the bugle because communications they didn’t really have and to hit that base from the north and we’ve been done. Now, there were 16,000 of them down at Chuai, which is probably, oh, 15 miles south or so. We had two battalions down there well spread apart. Again, 16,000, you don’t have a chance.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, hey, Carl Leppard, we’re out of time. We’re going to have to keep this as a cliffhanger for your next interview, and we will get that scheduled. I truly appreciate you taking the time to share this with our listeners. Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, my pleasure.
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Okay, my friends, indeed, it is apparent we do stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you, and God bless America.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
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The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
