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Battalion staff were actually in Qui Nhon prior to our landing—they had flown in earlier. The Third Battalion, Seventh Marines actually landed at Qui Nhon on Jul. 1 and had set up needed security at Qui Nhon. Yet, our ‘command’ led our young Marines to believe they may face hostile fire when we landed—there is a certain amount of natural anxiety that most Marines feel when entombed in an amtrak racing full speed towards an enemy beach—each Marine is silently thinking about the moment when the amtrak hits the beach and the ramp goes down and they are exposed to whatever is waiting for them in the sand dunes ahead. Some Marines silently pray—some simply stare ahead and brace themselves for what’s to come. For some unknown reason the BLT command decided to announce that this would be an ‘opposed’ landing—knowing that there were no known VC in the area where we landed—no identified gun emplacements, no enemy units spotted in the area—instead we found women, children and innocent villagers watching the landing from the dunes as if this was a Hollywood production! Knowing the anxiety factor —why would our Commanders add to the stress of the landing by misleading us with erroneous information??
The amtrak's began moving off the ramp of the ship at approx. 0400—the feeling of ‘inevitability’ was prevalent among the troops—-the amtraks become ‘boats’ once they’re in the water—in every ‘ship to shore’ movement there is definitely a ‘risk’ factor involving the equipment—some amtraks have been known to sink when they roll off the ship—the troops were very aware of that fact and there was an obvious happy moment when the vehicle began to float and move forward
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