They could be anywhere! After about 30 minutes of futile searching, Hunt was ready to call for the platoon to pick up and move out when there was a muffled THUMP about 40 yards away—the telltale report of a booby trap. What the hell could it have been? It was so close. Could it be the VC coming back for a fight? Not knowing what he would find, Hunt grabbed five of his men and slipped out into the thick of the mangrove to investigate.
As they closed in on the source of the explosion, Hunt caught sight of movement in the undergrowth and heard a man moaning. That explained it, he thought; a Viet Cong must have made his way back to the 1st Platoon perimeter and had been planting a booby trap when it had gone off. Realizing that the VC might have planted more than one mine, Hunt warned his men to watch for more booby traps.
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Hunt then looked to his right just in time to see a tripwire tighten around the leg of Danny Bailey. In surrealistic slow motion, Hunt watched in amazement as the grenade went off, hitting him first with an intense blast of sulfuric heat before peppering his left leg with red-hot fragments. Danny Bailey, from Hot Springs, Ark. Soon though, it had become clear to the men of Charlie Company that Bailey was the most genuinely good guy in the whole unit. He was always cheerful, wearing a perpetual bemused grin, and, though he often took his time, was the hardest worker of the bunch.
And when he finished his task, he would go straight into helping others finish theirs. Once Hunt had shaken off his daze and realized that his injured leg could support his weight, he hobbled over to check on the wounded. He first came across Kirby Spain, who had taken fragments in his arm and back, perilously close to his spine. Spain assured Hunt that he was OK and could walk.
Hunt then made his way over to Bailey. Had he not decided to strap his helmet to his belt that day—strictly against regulations—the grenade would have blown his groin to bits and likely killed him. Hunt leaned close to ask the boy how he was, and Bailey, seemingly oblivious to the pain, responded in a normal voice: I heard what you said about booby traps, but right then I felt something tug.
I looked down and it went off. You know, it damn near blowed my ass off. As the dust and smoke from the blast settled, Hunt joined up with Clarence Shires and Marty Renert, who had been a student at UCLA but volunteered for the draft, and they made their way toward the source of the moaning. As they parted the foliage, Hunt was stopped short at what he saw.
There he lay, with fragment wounds in his extremities and a gaping hole at the base of his neck. Duffy found a booby trap and tried to disarm it himself, and the damn thing went off in his hands. Shires knelt by Black.
He was still breathing, and making horrible gurgling sounds. Shires told Black to hang in there; help was coming. For a few moments Black seized up, and Shires gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until Doc Maibach arrived on the scene.
The boys who said no to Vietnam | The Point Reyes Light
Maibach did what he could to make Black comfortable and applied dressings to the worst of his many wounds, but his training had taught him that Black had little hope. The shrapnel that had torn the hole in his neck had traveled up into his brain.
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He just had to save that leg. For Renert, Black had always been a kind of hero. He had been there all through training, urging him on. He had been a constant presence in Vietnam, always sure of their purpose. This was his leader, his hero, his friend. The medevac is coming, the docs are going to sew you up and you are gonna be fine.
The boys who said no to Vietnam
Wounded, but still in command of the situation, Hunt ordered that a landing zone be cut into the swamp and called for an emergency dustoff. Men flew into a frenzy of chopping with their machetes to carve a hole in the undergrowth big enough for a helicopter to land, but the going was difficult. An engineer wrapped detcord, a flexible cord filled with explosive, around the base of several small trees and the explosion created an LZ just big enough for the purpose.
The chopper thundered in, spewing water and mud in every direction, and the men placed Black and Bailey on board, while Hunt and Spain were able to climb in on their own. The helicopter rose out of sight, and just like that, the wounded were gone.
A few thousand yards away, near enough for the explosions to be barely audible, 2nd Platoon under Jack Benedick continued its search pattern. Their morning had been much less eventful, with no Viet Cong in sight and no hints of traffic to be found anywhere.
For 2nd Platoon April 9 was just another dreary day of slogging through the endless mud. In what had settled into a normal routine, Benedick swam across the foot-wide stream and tied a rope to a mangrove tree on the far side. While Benedick was in the water, some men busied themselves with blowing up air mattresses and getting their gear ready, some stopped for a much-needed smoke. Willie McTear and Ron Schworer stood near the back of the group talking while they blew up their air mattresses. As nonswimmers they would cross in the middle of the pack, flanked by some of the better swimmers, and pull themselves across hand-over-hand along the rope while floating on their air mattresses.
When about half the unit had reached the far bank, it came time for McTear and Schworer to enter the water. McTear led the way, with Schworer behind and Benedick swimming alongside to make sure that nothing went wrong. Suddenly Benedick heard a roar off to his right and looked in horror to see a U. Before Benedick could scream a warning, the chopper opened up with its machine guns.
Those still in the river made a mad scramble for the nearest shore. Frank Schwan watched in almost detached amazement as machine gun bullets cracked and hissed past him, and left trails of bubbles as they zoomed by in the water. Idoluis Casares and the youngest man of Charlie Company, Stan Cockerell, were already on the far shore waving madly at the pilot, whom they could see clearly—even his eyes—he was so close. So far, the team has interviewed over 30 draft resisters from around the country and spoken to historians about the impact of nonviolent resistance in bringing an end to the war.
Friend was sentenced to three years in prison for his resistance efforts, which once involved pouring napalm over baskets of stolen draft files and setting them on fire. In describing him, Mr.
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David Harris was a prominent face of the draft resistance movement, creating an organization that encouraged young men to work to end the war. Jones will host a screening of act one of his film at the Dance Palace, and says he will likely play Mr. The event is part of a fundraising initiative.
Jones is not a fan. I've decided to give up writing this journal, because I don't know who'd believe it after today. We had a chance to go home, and we blew it off for a soccer game I guess we'll just keep on walking into one bloody mess after another, until somebody figures out that living has got to be more important than winning. This film has been issued numerous times on video through the decades since its release, first in-house via Columbia Pictures, and later through other companies as certain ancillary rights changed hands it ended up becoming part of the library of ITC Entertainment.
Today, the major rights are with independent film company Fortune Star Media, who also now holds the film's copyright, with distribution by Hen's Tooth under license. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Boys in Company C Theatrical release poster. Golden Harvest Columbia Pictures. Films directed by Sidney J. Retrieved from " https: