James Crockett and seven other soldiers in the ambush squad moved in sync with the setting sun through rows of concertina wire circling the fire support base.
The men walked into jungle near the Cambodian border northwest of Tay Nihn, South Vietnam.
“We had light duty and rested most of the day before going out that night on the ambush,” recalled Crockett.
His platoon had previously conducted a daylight reconnaissance patrol to identify potential ambush sites. Crockett was U.S. Army, 2nd Platoon, D Troop, 3rd Squadron, 17th Air Cavalry.
The Oklahoma native was 21 years old. His year in Vietnam included a host of potentially dangerous situations, some more foreboding than others. Ambush duty, which involved lurking all night in restrained stillness in the jungle to try to surprise and kill the enemy, ranked high on that list.
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“This is the most terrifying experience,” Crockett said. “You’re going out with only eight guys. You’re going out in an enemy held area. To sit there all night.”
The jungle was alive with nocturnal stirrings. The ambush squad listened for the slightest sound that seemed not to fit.
Anti-personnel Claymore mines were deployed. The men carried M16 rifles. Crockett also armed himself with grenades.
“We set the ambush up with four positions with two men at each position,” Crockett observed in writings about his experiences in Vietnam. “One person had to be awake at all times, while the other could help his buddy stay awake or rotate taking short naps.”
Crockett said the men kept movement to a minimum. Talking was taboo.
“It is amazing how sharp one’s senses become when one’s life is in jeopardy,” Crockett observed.
He described this particular night of ambush duty during a recent interview at the log home he shares with his wife in the Deep Creek area of Anaconda-Deer Lodge County.
Crockett, now 74 years old, believes that night was one of six such ambush outings during his year in Vietnam. None resulted in contact with the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese Army.
Still, this particular night turned out to be transformative.
Crockett wrote about that night’s duty in a tribute to a high school teacher who had supported his interest in the arts. He had graduated in 1965 from Altus High School in Altus, Oklahoma.
“As I sat in the mud and wet elephant grass, I began to think about going back to ‘the World,’” he wrote. “I thought about marrying Karen, my high school sweetheart, upon my return, having a family and living a long life together. As the light, misty rain fell, it was then when I made a commitment to myself to go back into the School of Architecture at Oklahoma University, become the best student possible and become a successful architect.”
As it turned out, all those things happened.
He and Karen married and have been together for 53 years. Crockett returned to school and became an architect. The couple had a daughter, Hillary Marcum, who lives in Butte. Crockett’s career as an architect included working for the National Park Service for 31 years.
His first attempt at Oklahoma University was hamstrung by all the usual alternatives to studying that distract college freshmen. The distractions included fraternity revelry and river bottom parties along the Canadian River south of Norman, Oklahoma.
Crockett weighed his alternatives after struggling his first year with some coursework. He decided to volunteer for the draft. He reasoned then that after two years he would be eligible for the GI Bill to help pay for returning to architecture school.
Crockett’s older brother, Jack, was a U.S. Marine. Jack also served in Vietnam, spending time near the DMZ, or demilitarized zone.
After Crockett enlisted, he naively pitched the idea to the Army of serving as a combat engineer. His suggestion was roundly and gruffly rejected and Crockett was assigned to the infantry.
He entered the U.S. Army on Sept. 9, 1966.
Crockett completed basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas, and then continued training at Fort Polk in Louisiana.
Later, Crockett’s brigade moved to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for air cavalry operations and tactics training. More training followed with Special Forces troops and Army Rangers.
Finally, Crockett’s unit flew in September 1967 from Fort Knox to the Port of Oakland, California, where they boarded the World War II troopship USNS General Nelson M. Walker.
The former architecture student marveled as the ship passed the Golden Gate Bridge. The young soldier wondered as the light faded whether he’d ever see loved ones again.
Crockett’s parents, Jack and Benena Fay Crockett, had beseeched their younger son to seek a non-combat role given that their older son was also serving in Vietnam.
Decades later, remembering his parents’ fervent request and his decision not to comply, Crockett’s voice caught.
“I had already bonded with my unit,” he said. “We had trained together. I just couldn’t do it. You’re not fighting for a certain cause at that point. You are fighting for the guy next to you.”
The long voyage to Vietnam aboard the troopship sent many seasick soldiers to port holes and railings. Crockett became so dehydrated that he was sent to the sick bay for IV fluids.
His unit ultimately disembarked off the coast of Vung Tau, South Vietnam.
Word spread about Crockett’s artistic talents after his unit arrived at its first base camp. He retrieved art supplies from a supply depot at Long Bin and his parents also sent materials. Crockett was soon in demand - painting signs, adding cartoon figures to Jeeps, daubing crossed sabers on the nose of a helicopter.
He later wrote that the art projects became a soothing and cathartic release from the stress and horrors of the war.
Crockett’s unit deployed often into the treacherous killing fields of Vietnam. It conducted reconnaissance missions for potential helicopter landing zones and other recon/intelligence operations. Crockett helped man listening posts outside the relative safety of a fire support base perimeter, a duty he described as even more harrowing than setting up an ambush. He was a loader for a mortar crew when he and his unit provided convoy security support. And more.
During the last week of May 1968, D Troop was assigned to provide security support for resupply convoys traveling from Long Binh, passing through Cu Chi, and then offloading at the basecamp outside Tay Ninh City.
On May 30, the unit’s mission was to recon and sweep the highway from the basecamp at Tay Ninh to a small village at Ben Muong, near an old French rubber plantation.
Around 10 a.m., as Crockett’s unit approached Ben Muong, it was clear something was amiss. The Americans saw families fleeing the village and even noticed South Vietnamese soldiers abandoning positions.
Intense enemy fire erupted from the area of the rubber plantation, from spider holes, underground bunkers and a group of thatched roof houses.
U.S. troops returned fire and were supported by helicopter gunships and the battle ended quickly.
The Americans suffered several wounded and at least one killed, Crockett recalled.
Sgt. John R. Sinnock, 20, suffered a chest wound and died at the scene. Crockett recalled seeing Sinnock’s body and the clear signs that the soldier from Ohio had died from massive blood loss.
“It is an image that still haunts me today and will for the rest of my life,” Crockett wrote.
When his tour ended and he flew into Travis Air Base in California, a lieutenant advised him and other soldiers that wearing their uniforms in public wasn’t a good idea because of growing domestic opposition to the Vietnam War.
Crockett resumed his civilian life. He married Karen. He completed his degree, worked for a private architectural firm and then had a long and successful career as an architect for the National Park Service. The couple lived in Houston and Colorado Springs before moving to their cabin in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, where the loudest noises include the wind-driven creak of lodgepole pines, the bugling of bull elk and the nasal growls of Steller’s jays.
Crockett, who has kinship ties to frontiersman Davy Crockett, said his time in Vietnam taught him the importance of living life fully every moment of every day.
“This is paradise,” he said.