Veterans’ Stories: Marine served with ‘The Walking Dead’ in Vietnam – Sarasota Herald-Tribune

By Curran Smith as told to Abby Weingarten

Curran Smith was among several 1964 graduates of Sarasota High School who live locally and remain close friends. Smith, like many of his male classmates, ended up fighting overseas during the Vietnam War. After earning an undergraduate degree in finance from Florida State University in 1968, Smith was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division (1st Battalion, 9th Marines, also known as the 1/9 or The Walking Dead an outfit that sustained the highest casualty rate in Marine Corps history in Vietnam). Smith was honorably discharged as a captain in 1973. He married his wife, Pamella, in 1976, and pursued a career in worldwide naval shore facilities management (eventually working directly for the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy as the senior adviser for strategic sourcing from a shore installation and facilities perspective). He still lives in Sarasota.

I went to Okinawa first. When you got over there, you turned in all your civilian gear and all your stuff went in a suitcase, in a locker, in this big warehouse, and youd put your name on it. Youd look at the suitcases and lockers, and youd see there was tape over the previous names. It would say, Deceased ... Deceased ... Deceased, one after another. That was a shock, to see that right away.

We flew into Da Nang and, on the first night, the zappers attacked the perimeter. They were attacking every night. I was stationed at Vandegrift Combat Base (20 miles from the DMZ to the north and 20 miles from Laos to the west). I supported the 9th Marine Regiment and 3rd Marine Division as a convoy commander (that meant I was the officer in charge of a group of heavily armed vehicles like trucks, Jeeps and sometimes tanks, and I was tasked with various missions). Among my missions were deploying Marines, weapons and supplies to forward combat areas such as the DMZ and Con Thien.

I would take guys into the bush. I was responsible for getting them somewhere and then Id come back and get them. I also did other things. One time I had to take a bunch of kids from the village to the sea so they could swim, and sometimes Id take them to the hospital. It was pacification. On one hand, you were trying to kill them. On the other hand, you were trying to help them. One minute I was sitting there in a truck almost getting blown up. The next minute I was helping the kids.

One time, one of our trucks got blown up and we caught the Viet Cong who did it. I was riding with my gunnery sergeant back to Vandegrift and I asked him, What did you do with the VC? He said, Theyre interviewing them now. Then I looked in the back of the Jeep and there was a bag of rice the woman had left there. I picked up the bag and started feeling it. There was a grenade in it. She had hidden it in there. They did that. They hid grenades in their food all the time. It was one of our grenades and it still had the pin in it. She had been transporting it. But that got my attention and I told the sergeant, Anytime you get one of them, you have to search everything. We caught that one quickly enough.

When we took troops up to the DMZ and Con Thien, we got fire there, too. We even ran into gas once and we had no gas masks. The gas doesnt kill you but it makes your nose and eyes hurt, and I was hacking and trying to run the convoy at the same time. I was also heavily exposed to Agent Orange. But I was more exposed to rocket attacks, mines and snipers. I was in country for approximately five months and there were always attacks. After a while, I just got numb.

Abby Weingarten may be contacted via email at Abby_Weingarten@Yahoo.com.

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Veterans' Stories: Marine served with 'The Walking Dead' in Vietnam - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero