I was killed during WWI or WWII. I was born in 1945, July 22 to be exact. I must have died trying to take a hill of some kind and it must have really gone wrong. I came back worrying about the hill. As a small child, I could point out and name just about every weapon used by the Marines. The only thing that I ever wanted to do as a child was be a Marine. I joined up in August of 1967 and when I graduated from college in January of 1968, left for Quantico. I was leading a Rifle Platoon in India Company, 3rd Battalion, 9th marines when the dreams started again. There's nothing worse than screaming about taking a hill when you're lying in a harbor site in the Ashau Valley and it's 3:00 in the morning and your radio operator is trying to wake you up and shut you up! I could never remember the dream when I awoke but my radio operator said I was screaming..."we've got to take this hill"!

January 22, 1969. My platoon, 1st platoon, leaves our position on the side of a mountain called Tiger Mountain. Tiger Mountain was our objective. it took a month to get to the top and secure it. 1st platoon left the company perimeter at 0700, leading the way up the mountain which was close to 3000 feet high. We were out about an hour, cutting our way up the mountain on a finger of land about 50 feet wide. I looked at my map and compass and got the strangest feeling we were walking into trouble. I stopped the platoon and called for a fire mission on a tract of land farther up the mountain. The guns on Fire Support base Cunningham couldn't fire because of resupply so I waited. A half hour later, I called for another fire mission...still a nogo. I said to hell with it and we started up the mountain again. We went 50 ft and the point man shot two NVA soldiers with an RPD who were manning a listening post. The whole side of the mountain opened up on us. First squad and myself crawled up that finger of land where the brush was so thick you could barely see a man standing 6 feet from you. When we stopped crawling, there wasn't anything growing any taller than 6 inches down the finger behind us.

We never made to the top that day. 1st squad was decimated. The 2nd platoon moved through us and assaulted only to be pushed back. Their platoon sergeant stuck his K-bar into a mahogany tree trunk to mark the forward progress. We pulled back to medevac our dead and wounded and called a flight of A4s which dropped their ordinance and left. It was 5:00 in the afternoon by this time so we set in to get ready to assault again in the morning. 3rd platoon led off at 0600 and found 40 MT bunkers. The NVA had pulled out during the night.

I never had that dream again after that day and to this day can only remember small parts of what happened on that hillside. None of us die, we just change form when we go and if we're lucky when we return, don't remember how we went during our previous existence. If we're not lucky, some of it comes back with us.