Vietnam War Timeline

58
15 June 1970
Bravo 2/35th
Submitted by: Jim "Doc" Hall

Following our contacts on June 3 and June 4th where we lost a WIA (Kenneth Bone) and a KIA (Bob Guinn) Bravo Co was brought back to FSB Lance for a few days. This was our second stint there as we had helped to build it during the last few days in May and the first few in June. On June 15 we were CA\'d off again in the early morning. (Daily Journals give the CA location as in the \"vicinity of 251744\"). This seems to have been a rather flat high plateau that was heavily jungled. The foliage here seemed to go from 6 or 7 ft high on up to about a 70 ft. high canopy. At midday we stopped to rest and eat lunch.

Suddenly the air was filled with incoming small arms. (The Daily Journal for this day gives the contact time as 1221 and the location as 253743). I didn\'t have to wait for the usual first lull in the action to find if any one was hit. I actually saw an FNG (Richard Schrupp) sitting just 5 or 6 feet away from me get hit in the arm. When I got to him his arm was hanging by a few threads of skin having nearly been severed. Strangely enough there was almost no blood. The near traumatic amputation had apparently tensed up the muscles so tightly that it cut off the circulation much like a tourniquet. I bandaged the arm and applied a real tourniquet to stem the flow of blood that I knew would have to come eventually. Schrupp\'s initial shock quickly wore off and he was in a lot of pain so I gave him a shot of morphine.

All this time a lot of firing was still going on but eventually a halt was called and it became quiet. I took the opportunity to call out to see if anyone else had been injured? I fairly quickly got a response from near by and ran over to find Gary Robinette sitting against a tree indicating that he had a chest wound. When we got his shirt off we discovered a small chest wound that had evidently been caused by some sort of ricochet and turned out to not be too bad. As I finished up with Robinette I heard the voice of my old friend Herbie Sapp just a few feet away. He said in his normal southern drawl, \"Damn, I\'ve been hit Doc.\" This had to be 10 or 15 minutes after the fact. I walked over to Herbie to find that he had been shot in the upper back of one leg which I bandaged off to stop the bleeding but it wasn\'t too serious.

After the usual rounds of Redleg in the area of the initial contact a dustoff was called in. By far the most serious wound was that of Schrupp\'s. The morphine had pretty well taken care of the pain but he was pretty shockey. We had no known area near to land the dustoff so he came in at treetop and dropped the jungle penetrator. (This was from about 70 ft up). The penetrator dropped through a small opening in the trees and landed in a kind of tangle of fallen trees and brush. It was then that I did one of the dumbest things that I ever did in country. I went and picked up the penetrator and moved it about 25 or 30 feet to the edge of the brush pile so we could strap Schrupp in. When I say dumb you\'ll have to imagine that a jungle penetrator at the end of a steel cable is much like a plumb bob at the end of a string. When it came down it was straight up and down. When it went back up it was going to try and do so in this same straight up and down position. So when we got poor old Schrupp strapped in with his nearly severed arm and signaled to hoist while we let him go, of course, the line sought to reach this up and down position. But because it had so far to go it started to swing wildly back and forth. To my horror this poor kid that I was trying to help and who only had the use of one arm began to swing and crash into trees as the hoisted him up. First a tree on one side and then another on the other side while he was 30, 40, 50, 60 feet in the air. Finally after what seemed like hours they pulled him into the chopper and took off.

Herbie and Robinette had to wait until we could find a clearing where a chopper could land as they weren\'t so seriously injured. I can\'t recall how far we had to go to find one but it was sometime that same afternoon that we found a site. I believe that a supply chopper took both of them out. For many years I did not know what the FNG\'s name was. He was very new to us (He may of been with us a day or two). I\'d always wondered how he made out but I never had a name. 30 years later I began to do some research at the National Archives and found the Daily Journal for this day. It gave the line number and name for Herbie and Robinette but Schrupp was so new that they only referred to him as \"FNG Schrupp\". Finally I was able to find his name through my friend Herbie when Herbie received copies of his purple heart orders. Listed also on the orders was Richard A. Schrupp. I had intended to attempt to locate him and find out how he made out but a quick check of the SSN Death Index told me that he had died in 1983. Gary Robinette had also died in 1973. Herbie I got to see again after 30 years at the Association reunion a couple of years ago in Washington D.C. At this same reunion I got an insight into something that I had forgotten from another buddy who was present that day. Ed Ingle talked about how he was laying on his back eating his C-rations when the firing started. Ed pointed out that seasoned veterans knew enough to do this while new guys like Schrupp sat upright. I\'d forgotten this but it\'s true.