Worse things have happened than what that Marine described.
Did you ever see anything like this?
"I was company radioman, so I didn't usually go out with individual patrols. But one of the radiomen was a friend of mine so I went out with him, right? His name was Whitey and he was from Brooklyn. We were in boot camp together maybe three months before we found out that we lived six blocks away from each other back home and he went out with my sister. So me and Whitey are pretty tight. I got him into being a radioman. We even tried to take out insurance policies on each other with Hawaii Mutual, but they wouldn't let us do it. You know, I'd pay his premiums, he paid mine. That way, if I get it, he'd get it. Friends make out, right?
I went diddy-bopping out there with them. We went past this village and it was sort of getting dusk. The next thing you know - pow-pow-pow - we're taking rounds. So we're firing it up. But the f*ckers ain't moving, and there's only about a squad of them. They were really hardcore, so I figured we must be up against NVA regulars. We're trying fire-team rushes and they are, too.
I called the rear and told them what was happening and was begging for support. I'm trying to get artillery. I give the grid coordinates and they say, 'It's no good, we can't do that. That's friendlies.'
I says, 'What? Hold the phone a minute, man.' Then I yell out, 'Yoh, you speak American?'
'Aaww, sh*t,' I hear from the other side. My finest fire fight is with another Marine unit.
But then - they don't want to stop. You got both squads knowing that they're shooting up Americans and they're still firing at one another. Pissed off. F*cking jungles are hot and nasty, the whole world is against you, and these guys were pissed off. So calmly, me and maybe two fire-team leaders, we just sat and waited for everybody to run out of ammo. Finally they ran out, and we went over there. They had two KIA and maybe four or five guys wounded. We had three guys wounded. They wouldn't stop and they wouldn't let us approach them. It gets that crazy. They were still hot." - from NAM: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Soldiers Who Fought There by Mark Baker
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