Update from Jon Feltner 20 June 2024:
I found this photo (left) from my trip to Vietnam in 2010. It shows me and my Vietcong counterpart in the village of Mai Xa Chanh,Quang Tri Province (about 3 to 5 miles south of the DMZ). Both of us fought in a major battle (March 3, 1968) but on opposite sides. 27 Marines were killed and I had my finger shot off at virtually the same location. This man remembered the battle and knew the number of Marines killed and provided other proof that he was actually there (a real “goosebump” moment for me!). More important, I had intended to hold a memorial service at the little temple there for the Marines that died there. After meeting him, I modified the service to remember all who died there — Marines and NVA. We later gave the Hamlet Chief a significant donation for welcoming us to his village. The photo may be thought inappropriate for some who fought and died. On the other hand, to me it seems fully appropriate 56 years later as the world has moved on and both countries are now at peace with one another.
Biography:
I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant at Dartmouth College in June 1967, following 4 years in the NROTC program. My inspiration for military service was my father, who was an Army Medical Corps surgeon in World War II, serving in North Africa, France and Germany. While at Dartmouth, I joined the NROTC, and belonged to a fraternity where Marine service was a house tradition (5 of 6 Marine officers from Dartmouth in TBS 1–68 are fraternity brothers).
Following my graduation from TBS in December 1967, I flew from California with 40 other classmates over New Year’s Eve to our ultimate first tours in Vietnam – as 0302 infantry officers. After a brief stop in Okinawa, I reached my first rifle platoon in India Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, just in time for the 1968 Tet Offensive launched by the North Vietnamese Army (“NVA”).
When I arrived at my unit, our battalion was one of two designated Special Landing Forces (“SLF”), with the mission of insertion into any heavy combat zone. Our first mission was to interdict the NVA along the Cua Viet River, a prime entry point for the NVA coming south into Vietnam, less than 5 miles from the DMZ. I took over 3rd Platoon, my predecessor having been killed less than 24 hours earlier along with nearly half the platoon killed or wounded. My tour – during the height of the 1968 Tet Offensive – lasted not quite four months, because of two serious wounds, along with almost continuous combat operations.
Initially, our combat assignment was to engage the NVA on, around, or near the Cua Viet River as it emptied into the South China Sea and the Marines and the NVA battled continuously for 3 months. After several battles in various hamlets and towns, I was wounded in the town of Mai Xi Thi (West) (now known as “Mai Xa Chan”) in a significant battle where 27 Marines were killed. I had been shot in the right hand, resulting in partial amputation of one of my fingers.
I was medevaced to Cam Ranh Bay Hospital and, after 3 weeks, returned to my unit, now located along Route 9 heading for Khe Sanh. This whole area was a major staging area for NVA troops headed south along the “Ho Chi Minh” Trail. My platoon was stationed on Hill 512, a lonely outpost, high above the jungle area next to Route 9, patrolling an area where the NVA significantly outnumbered Marine forces. I was wounded a second time, with serious rocket shrapnel wounds to my right leg.
Returning to the United States, I was assigned to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where I served two and one half years in 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines as an Assistant Operation Officer and two time Company Commander, with two Mediterranean deployments and one Caribbean deployment.
My next assignment was to be the Officer Selection Officer in Raleigh, North Carolina where I met my wife, Carol, a nursing graduate student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She had previously served as a Captain in the United States Army Nursing Corps, where she was assigned to a neurosurgery/plastic surgery ward at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. During her career, while I had been in combat, she had taken care of far more servicemen with gruesome injuries resulting from Vietnam than I had encountered. My time as an OSO was both interesting and challenging. While I thoroughly enjoyed recruiting quality young men to be Officer Candidates, this effort was continuously challenged by the then significant anti-war movement sweeping college campuses.
I followed OSO duty with an assignment to AWS in Quantico, ultimately leading to a second tour in Southeast Asia, this time with 1st Battalion, 4th Marines in Okinawa. Ostensibly, our mission was to provide a Far East expeditionary force. This somewhat routine tour was dramatically altered in 1975, as the NVA advanced south in full force and South Vietnam collapsed. Our battalion was charged with recovering South Vietnamese “boat people” trying to escape from Vietnam, as well as support for the dramatic evacuations of Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Saigon, Vietnam in April 1975.
Following the fall of Saigon in April 1975, my battalion, BLT 1/4 took part in the “last battle of Vietnam” in early 1975 to recover an American civilian container ship, SS Mayaguez. On May 12,1975, Cambodian Khmer Rouge communists seized the Mayaguez as it was sailing by the Cambodian coast near the island of Koh Tang. The Mayaguez had a crew of American merchant mariners who were captured and then taken to Koh Tang, with the ship abandoned and anchored off the island. On May 13, a specially configured task force from BLT ¼ (approximately 120 Marines and special attachments; I was the operations officer) was tasked to fly from the Philippines to U-Tapao Air Force Base in Thailand, form a rescue plan, and recover the Mayaguez. Specific details of support assets were developed along the way as most Vietnam military assets were far from Cambodia. On the early morning hours of May 15, 1975, a reduced number of our total Marine force was helilifted to a Navy destroyer, USS Holt, located off Koh Tang Island. The Holt then came alongside the anchored Mayaguez and our Marine force made the first ship boarding operation in over 100 years. The Mayaguez was searched and cleared while a separate Marine battalion landed on the island itself and suffered significant casualties and loss of helicopters. The ship’s crew was released unharmed in different location after the recovery operation had begun. The recovery operation was the last combat operation of the Vietnam War and our unit’s activities were depicted on the May 26, 1975 cover of Newsweek.
I finished my active duty in June 1976 at Headquarters Marine Corps, ironically as the head of the office in charge of the Officers’ Career Planning Office. I joined the Marine Reserves and became part of a reserve Mobilization Training Unit in Boston, which was assigned various tasks, most notably, the training of reserve marines in cold weather operations and skiing. Apparently, the “cold weather training” made me a prime candidate for recall to active duty during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, a war that ended quickly and without my participation. I then retired.
Following the end of my active duty career in 1976, I became a lawyer in Boston after graduating from Boston University School of Law in 1979. I first worked for a major law firm in Boston (along with TBS 1-68 graduates Bierne Lovely and Drew Ley) and later became the Chief Trial Counsel for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, where I have remained for the past 29 years. In many ways, my job at the 5th largest transportation authority in the United States has been an interesting parallel with the Marine Corps as the MBTA is the major legal entity sued in Massachusetts because of its role in carrying 400 million riders annually and the numerous personal injury lawsuits arising from that effort. In short, we are involved in “legal combat” nearly every day.
My life in Boston has been influenced by my Marine Corps career, as reflected by ongoing Marine Corps events and Marine friends. (One of my Marine Corps high points was my selection as Guest of Honor at the Fox Company TBS Mess Night in 2007). Indeed, in my personal family life, I recreated my early Marine Corps training, as my three daughters and I climbed all 48 mountains in New Hampshire over 4000 feet. Each climb was a “military operation”, including maps, routes carefully designated, specific assignments for each climber, and a summit photo on each peak, complete with American flag.
One final biographical note of interest. In 2010, I returned to Vietnam for a 3 week vacation. As part of my vacation, I returned to the two places where I was wounded in Vietnam. I was involved in a very moving memorial ceremony in Mai Xa Chan, the small hamlet on the Cua Viet River, where I received my first wound and where 27 Marines had been killed in combat. In ultimate irony, in searching for the general location of the battle site, I was assisted by one Vietnamese villager who had been in the same battle, serving as a Vietcong soldier on the other side. Accordingly, we made the memorial service a tribute to all who died in that place in 1968.
My life has been shaped indelibly by my Marine Corps career, starting with my core experience at Quantico in TBS Class 1-68. I have always relished the TBS experience and its lessons for me. And, I can say, that I have never been with a group of (then) young men who were more inspiring, courageous and wonderful examples for the rest of the country to emulate – then and, most especially, now.
