Booby Trap Boys
Subtitle: A Unique Journal Of The Vietnam War
By: FL
Publisher: Xlibris
Published: 2009
Place of publication: United States of america
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 82
ISBN-13: 9781436385671
Description: Written by Bernie Weisz Vietnam Historian Sept. 22, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florida  USA contact: BernWei1@aol.com  Title of Review: "13 Months of A Marine Machine Gunner in Vietnam:Monotony Followed By Moments of Terror!"  

Dave Beakey, born on Wednesday, April 27, 1949, and leaving us on Monday June 6, 2011, will sadly be missed! Fortunately, his spirit endures, leaving all with his unique memoir of what he witnessed as a machine gunner during the 1968 "Tet Offensive." "Booby Trap Boys" blossoms with quality regardless of the scant 82 pages. When I finished this book, I felt that I had vicariously digested more information about this conflict and his particular tour than any of the dozens of biographies that currently flood the bookstores. In January of 1968, Mr. Beakey landed in Danang, the Republic of South Vietnam. Originally born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1949, he moved to Hull, Massachusetts in 1959 and in 1967 at age 17 went with his father, a W. W. II anti-aircraft gunner and combat veteran himself, to the local Marine recruitment office. Mr. Beakey senior had seen heavy combat against the Japanese in battles at New Guinea and the Philippines and urged his son to do "the right thing." David enlisted in the Marine Corps, an action he attributed to his naive, but genuine patriotism, as well as his wish to fight in a war to continue the tradition of both his father and grandfather. 


However, he confided that there were other motives, such as the Marine Corps serving as his personal test of physical and psychological strength. Finally, knowing it was his only ticket for higher education, Beakey wanted to qualify for the GI Bill. After Vietnam, he went on to earn graduate degrees at Assumption College, Emerson College, and Tufts University. His career spanned from serving as a social worker for the "Massachusetts Rehabilitation Association," to other vocations, including being a counselor, tutor and a college instructor. As a 2000-01 Boston Schweitzer Fellow and Tufts-Emerson Master's Program in Health Communications student, Beakey worked to increase the attendance of seniors at Quincy Medical Center's mental health programs. To leave his legacy, Beakey authored "Booby Trap Boys" in 2008. Beakey was fourteen when Lee Harvey Oswald's bullet had snuffed out John F. Kennedy's life, however he never forgot the President's eloquent address during his inauguration on January 20, 1961 ringing through America's youth, patriotically urging millions of them to sign up for the Trans Pacific conflict almost 10,000 miles away. What was the gist of Kennedy's speech that still incited "war hawk adrenalin" seven years later? 


To quote J.F.K.: "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility. I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Beakey was one of the approximate 2,594,000 US servicemen who served "in country" in Vietnam that also heard J.F.K.'s call. David Beakey, in explaining his naive form of patriotism, qualified it by admitting that he accepted the validity of the "Domino Theory". Between 1950 and 1953, during the Korean War, it was made apparent to the American government that the communist threat was not just restricted to Europe. Particularly two regions appeared vulnerable to communism; Indochina and Latin America. Indochina had been colonized by the French in the late 19th Century but had been lost to Japan during the Second World War. Resistance groups set up to fight the Japanese often contained supporters of the communist party, but after the Allied victory in 1945, France attempted to reestablish control over its former Vietnamese colony. 


Western governments feared that if France was unsuccessful, communism might spread throughout the whole of South East Asia. Juxtaposing Latin America, the same reasoning was applied after guerrilla fighters under the leadership of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara overthrew Fulgehncia Batista, the right-wing dictator of Cuba in 1959. This was 90 miles from America's shores. To justify America's financial support for France's quest to suppress Ho Chi Minh and the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice-President Richard Nixon put forward this "Domino Theory." It was argued that if the first domino was knocked over then the rest would topple in turn. Applying this to Southeast Asia it was put forth that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, then the other countries in the region such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia would follow. Immediately after J.F.K. was elected, he made it clear that he intended to continue Eisenhower's policy of supporting Ngo Dinh Diem and his South Vietnamese government. He argued that if South Vietnam became a communist state, this trend would gradually spread throughout the world. Kennedy went on to argue: "No other challenge is more deserving of our effort and energy. Our security may be lost piece by piece, country by country. America would be willing to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." 


Apparently, this line of logic ran through Mr. Beakey's mind at the recruitment office as he signed up for a 3 year stint in the Marine Corps in August of 1967. The 1968 "Tet Offensive" was just around the corner. From 16,000 troops at the end of the Kennedy Administration, the U.S. commitment grew to 184,000 troops by the end of 1965 and reached a peak of 537,000 in 1968, the last year of Lyndon B. Johnson's Administration. However, there were no dramatic national addresses in which the public was "called to war." In fact, the troop increases were typically announced at mid day with little or no fanfare. And LBJ explicitly refused to put the nation on a war footing and argued, in his 1966 State of the Union message, that the country could have both "guns and butter." President Johnson reluctantly inherited after Kennedy's assassination a "political war trap" that was a product of the nuclear era, the Cold War, and domestic politics in the United States. The "trap" involved an incompetent ally, the bumbling South Vietnamese regime, constantly threatened by North Vietnam. With the memory of the Yalu River in the Korean War where the Chinese intervened against the Americans on North Korea's behalf, this war equally threatened to embroil the U.S. in a superpower confrontation. Johnson believed, for example, that an all out military effort against North Vietnam would trigger a Chinese or Soviet response that could escalate into a nuclear exchange. 


Given this logic, action was limited to conventional military force designed to achieve limited and political objectives, instead of territorial ones. Translated into restrictive "rules of engagement" that U.S. air and ground forces were forced to abide by, many Vietnam Veterans feel that if properly turned loose this war would have had a completely different outcome. The war became that of endless body counts and search and destroy operations. L.B.J and his military commanders had an agenda to inflict a level of pain on the North Vietnamese that was sufficient to make them bargain in earnest. Thus Vietnam became a war of attrition. Selling this to the American public, despite J.F.K.'s initial pro patriotic war frenzy was trying. With little progress reported on the televisions of America, aside from nightly MIA/KIA/POW figures, there were few set piece or conventional battles and American objectives. No plans to invade North Vietnam or cross the DMZ's 17 Parallel were set forth. Instead, indicators of progress were set forth as "pacification zones" and "kill ratios." In November of 1967, L.B.J. and his assistants launched an extensive "public relations" campaign, designed to convince Congress, the press, and the public that there was "progress" in Vietnam and that there could be victory. 


L.B.J. was advised to emphasize "light at the end of the tunnel" instead of referring to nightly enemy body counts. The effects of this effort would be short-lived, as on January 21, 1968, North Vietnamese regular forces launched an attack on the American installation at Khe Sanh, a remote outpost in I Corps. With the specter of another Dien Bien Phu, American forces were ordered to hold the base at all costs. The siege lasted for over two months and the North Vietnamese were eventually turned back after the base was reinforced in April of 1968, in part by Mr. Beakey's Unit, Second Battalion, First Marine Division, after they had completed Operation Pegasus, a month long sweep through the mountains surrounding Khe Sanh. David wrote of this time in such chapters as "Sky Pilot", "The Man who Fell From The Sky", "Cleo's Bad Day", "The New Lieutenant" and "Two Generals." The siege was a Communist diversionary trick, as the events of the morning of January 30, 1968 show. On that morning, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched the "TET Offensive." Over 100 South Vietnamese cities and 35 out of 44 provincial capitals were attacked including Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, with the U.S. Embassy compound being penetrated. 


In light of L.B.J.'s public relations campaign of November 1967, the TET offensive came as a shock. Critics asked on America's public airways, "How could the enemy mount such a campaign if the war was being won?" The fighting continued into February. In January 1968, the number of US troops killed in action was 1,163; the death toll increased to 2,197 in February; in the next three months, another 5,000 would lose their lives in battle. Perceived by David Beakey was a new element, which he labeled the "TV Factor." Unlike his father's war of 1941 to 1945, and even the Korean War 1950 to 1953, Vietnam was the first televised or "living room" war. Each evening, the networks would show film of the fighting that was, at times, gruesome. Unlike the censorship of World War II or the clamor of the Korean "Cold War Crusade", American airwaves were neither censored nor subjected to any systematic scrutiny by the U.S. Government.  Americans saw graphic scenes of battles in progress, the dead and wounded, and the coffins of the dead being unloaded. One of the more shocking photographs of the war occurred during the Tet Offensive. A Viet Cong soldier was captured by South Vietnamese military officials (known as ARVN.) and summarily executed in the streets of Saigon. 


As the Tet Offensive continued into February of 1968, the most famous anchorman in America, Walter Cronkite of CBS, traveled to Vietnam and filed several reports. Upon his return, his publicly broadcast observations did more to seal America's fate in Vietnam then the most devastating battlefield rout. On February 27th, 1968, Cronkite said: "For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." After watching Cronkite's broadcast, LBJ was quoted as responding. "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." There is still controversy over what really happened after this statement, as well as how the Tet Offensive was covered by the US Press as a whole. Militarily, the American forces aggressively repelled the attacks and rapidly retook the cities initially occupied by the NVA and VC. However, this was not emphasized in media reports, so to Americans reading news reports, the TET offensive incorrectly appeared to be a "psychological victory" for the enemy. The Tet Offensive's impact on L.B.J was incalculable. As a consequence, the President refused requests for substantial troop increases from General William Westmoreland and initiated a reconsideration of his policy of escalation. 


Finally, on March 31, 1968, on national television Johnson made a stunning announcement. After discussing Vietnam, he announced that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination for another term as president, withdrawing from the race. Nevertheless, after Boot Camp, Advanced Infantry Training and Jungle Warfare School, Beakey landed in Danang at I Corps, the northern part of South Vietnam amidst the aforementioned turmoil. Describing his first week in Vietnam as follows, he set the exciting tone of this book by writing: "Our plane landed noisily on the corrugated steel runway. We were told to run off the aircraft and form a perimeter. Rockets were falling out of the sky. After we were given weapons, we were told to mount up on waiting trucks. We were part of a convoy, headed north. We traveled through Quang Tri and Dong Ha on our way to the fire base Con Thien. The Tet offensive had begun!  There were explosions everywhere. During this confusion, our convoy was ordered back to Hue City." Although Beakey doesn't mention it in this memoir, while he was in Hue City the N.V.A. conducted a surprise attack there despite a supposed "Tet Truce" agreed upon previously by both sides. ARVN units defending Hue were not in a good position to fight as they expected that the enemy would abide by their 4-day cease-fire "Tet Truce" as they did in the preceding years. 


On the first day of the new year, January 31, 1968, also known as "The Year of the Monkey", Hue City streets were filled with conquering, bloodthirsty NVA soldiers eager for vengeance. Their ruse was to "call up" all ARVN soldiers, civil servants of all services, political party members, and college students, to report to the "Revolutionary People's Committee." Those who reported to the communist committee were ruthlessly and barbarically murdered in one of the world's most unrecognized massacres. Most of the executed were soldiers in non combat units and civilians. As Beakey's truck rumbled out of Hue they were suddenly ordered to reenter the city, where they swept through outlying villages. This contingent was greeted by snipers and they had to clear the building and hooches one by one. He elaborated in his Chapter "Da Nang 1968", how he and his fellow Marines then jumped back on the trucks and continued on to their destination, Con Thien. In late February of 1968, South Vietnamese local authorities found several mass graves. In each site, hundreds of bodies of the missing were buried. Most were tied to each other by ropes, electric wires or telephone wires. They had been shot or beaten or stabbed to death. The mass graves shocked the city of Hue as well as all of South Vietnam. Almost every family in Hue had at least one relative, close or remote, who was killed or who had disappeared. Beyond the 2000 whose deaths were confirmed after the revelation of the mass graves, the fate of many more thousands are still unknown even today. 


The 1968 massacre in Hue brought a sharp turn in the common attitude toward the war. Interestingly, this did have pro war effects in the U.S. Many "Doves" and pre-Hue massacre activists in the U.S., even pro-Communist sympathizers, now aligned themselves with the South Vietnamese government after this atrocity. It is interesting to note that during "Cruel April" (April 30, 1975) when South Vietnam fell into the hands of the Communist Party, the greatest number of boat people came from Hue since there was still a fear of a repeat massacre. Ironically, today, I can find many books examining Lt. William Calley and his role in the My Lai Massacre, where from 200 to 350 persons were killed.  Ruefully, the 1968 Hue Massacre, perpetuated by the VC and NVA, has never been as properly documented. In "Booby Trap Boys", Mr. Beakey takes the reader into the jungles of  South Vietnam and allows one to discover the feelings, sights and sounds a Marine grunt experienced against an elusive enemy. He described the thoughts and feelings that took place among American Marines while seeking out the NVA during patrols, while setting up defensive night perimeters or on search and destroy missions. 



In explaining key terminology all Marines heard in Vietnam,"Search and Destroy" was a phrase used to describe missions that were aimed at flushing the NVA and Viet Cong out of hiding. "Body counts" were the number of enemy killed. Competitions were held between American units for the highest number of enemy KIA's. Army and Marine officers knew that promotions were largely based on confirmed kills. The pressure to produce confirmed kills unfortunately resulted in massive fraud, exaggerated body counts and rare atrocities. A central disadvantage faced by American soldiers throughout the war was widespread local support for the VC and NVA. Friendly to Americans by day, by sunset, villagers would supply the enemy with arms, food and assistance and in the planting of land mines. Mr. Beakey wrote of his frustration in trying to negotiate with the villagers, especially the children, in the chapter titled "The Booby Trap Boys." In recounting a long, dreary mission where rain and darkness were just as tough as the enemy, Beakey wrote, "We headed into the jungle. The mission was to search out and engage the enemy. Little did we know that we were to become the hunted. Things deteriorated quickly. The monsoon had been threatening for a week, with scattered and intense rain and on the first day of the week long patrol the skies opened up." 


Continuing with his recounting of his rain soaked patrol in the jungle, Beakey lamented: "Nevertheless, we trudged along, grimly seeking contact. Sheets of rain fell, quickly filling the rice patties. We wrapped ponchos around ourselves and put the cellophane wrappings from our C Ration cigarette packages over the barrels of our rifles. By now, we secretly wished we could throw away the extra machine gun ammo that we carried, into the three feet of water we trudged through. Our feet were bleeding and swollen from the constant submersion. On the sixth day there was a short burst of automatic gunfire at the head of the column. One man was wounded immediately. We opened up, shooting in every direction, into clumps of trees and in the general direction of the hostile fire. But the enemy had quickly withdrawn, leaving nothing but a few bullet casings and bent branches. In the morning, a small VC flag hung from a tree, only meters from our position. By now, we were weary and agitated. We no longer walked stealthily, but stomped through the sodden trails, barely looking to the left or the right. At dusk, we finally rendezvoused with the choppers, which were to carry us home, to the base camp. As we were boarding, there was more hostile fire, some rounds slamming against the sides of the choppers. The door gunners let loose with abandon, but only a few of us fired, preferring instead to ensure a spot on the choppers, the birds of freedom. As we rose above the jungle, we stared sullenly, thinking only of changing our stinking clothes and getting dry. Later, in the same area,the enemy built a vast network of tunnels and was operating again within six months." 


Beakey uses dark humor to tell some of his stories, such as "The Joke," where two Marines sit on a hill, after a battle, drinking water and sharing a marijuana cigarette next to an American KIA. They are unable to grieve, so they pretend to find humor in their situation. They didn't know what else to do. Again, taking a historical look at this time, we encounter the term "Vietnamization". It was American term first used in the spring of 1969 by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to describe the strategy and program Richard M. Nixon instituted for the War. This involved the progressive withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam combined with efforts to enhance the training and modernization of all ARVN. forces with the goal of enabling the government of South Vietnam to assume full responsibility for the conduct of the war. Under General Creighton W. Abrams, who succeeded General William C. Westmoreland as the overall U.S. military commander in South Vietnam in June 1968, Allied military strategy took on a new direction. Emphasized now were certain operations designed to weaken the enemy's capabilities by attacking their logistical bases in South Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia and Laos.  Operations such as the May 1970 American ground incursion into Cambodia and the January 1971 South Vietnamese incursion into Laos, dubbed "Lam Son 719", were justified as means to gain additional time for Vietnamization to be implemented. However, the ARVN. troops failed in these missions, casting doubt on the efficacy of Vietnamization. 



Saigon's total reliance on U.S. air power to repulse North Vietnam's 1972 Easter Offensive proved as well that the ARVN troops relied solely on US troops and weapons when battles became furious. Despite the extensive equipment the departing U.S. forces turned over to Saigon's military, the latter were ill prepared after 1973 to face North Vietnamese Army in the absence of sustained, direct American military support, with the end coming in Hanoi's ultimate triumph in April of 1975. Beakey may have predicted this scenario in a short but poignant anecdote. His platoon was stationed on an eerie, dark island, where they ran night patrols with ARVN. soldiers. One day Beakey overheard both a Marine and ARVN Sergeant discussing the plan for that evening. Beakey wrote: "Later that day, they were discussing the details of our night patrol. The Marine Sergeant said, "We go out on patrol at 2200 hours." The ARVN. Sergeant said, "No, No! we go at 2000 hours!" The Marine Sergeant asked him why the time mattered. The ARVN Sergeant said, "At 2200 hours, VC come out!" Perhaps the author misunderstood the ARVN Sergeant, who spoke only broken English, but the fact remained that some ARVN units were afraid of the enemy and retreated hastily upon contact, as described in the chapter entitled, "A Rifle: Dropped Once, Never Fired." 


In all fairness to them, the South Vietnamese had been fighting the VC and NVA for 20 years, and many had been wounded numerous times, some extremely brave. Beakey felt that they had come to see their roles as civil servants, who preferred to work 9 to 5, then go home to their families. The memoir reminds us of an evil twist on a ruthless war. In "Body Snatch" Beakey wrote that the enemy would intentionally leave as bait a Marine KIA out in the open. Knowing that a body snatch patrol would come, the enemy would devise an ambush. We also read of an American dog handler who had such great love for his animal that when he and the canine were wounded, the handler insisted that his dog be evacuated first. In the story "Blinded By The Light" the author related how risky the smallest movement can become, as a grunt who lit up a cigarette unwittingly gave an NVA sniper a perfect bead on their position. Humanization of the enemy is described in Beakey's interesting story, "The Prisoner", when a captured NVA was found to have a picture of a Playboy "Playmate of the Year" folded in his wallet. A private story the author never included in the book was an occasion he walked by graves registration building in Danang. Inside Beakey saw uncountable American corpses awaiting processing for their final ride home. This memory came back to the author as he was explaining his treatment for PTSD to me. 


One of the saddest stories in this incredible book is the description of an incident where the author and his fellow Marines carried the bodies of helicopter crew members out of the jungle. Mr. Beakey horrifyingly watched from the ground just below a pair of helicopters as they were hit by NVA rocket propelled grenades. He wrote: "The NVA were firing RPG's at the choppers. Two choppers were destroyed, blown apart. All crew members had perished. The bodies were scattered like rag dolls among the machinery and pieces of metal. I walked among the wreckage. It seemed surreal. There was no discussion regarding the bodies. We would carry them out of the jungle." Showing death as the great equalizer of humanity, Beakey commented further on his role as jungle pallbearer: "I tried not to look at his face. But I couldn't help seeing his hair. The pilot had bright red hair and he was tall, well over six feet.  His flight suit seemed out of place. I was used to the jungle fatigues that we wore, but his suit reminded me of a space suit. All the grunts respected the men who came from the sky, to pull out the wounded or drop supplies, or get us out of tight spots. Now I carried the man carefully and made a silent promise not to drop him, to be respectful. But I never looked at his face. And when we got to the base camp and our job was done, I laid down and gazed at the stars, unable to sleep, unable to admit that the man from the sky was just like me. Today, it was his turn to die." 


The title of this book refers to the Vietnamese kids that routinely followed Beakey and his unit. Mainly orphans, these children relied on hand outs from the Marines, from C rations to clothes. Finding a tunnel infested with booby traps in an area the Marines called "Booby Trap Alley", Beakey's Captain devised a plan to pay these kids to discover and retrieve these VC planted booby traps. Forming what Beakey deemed a "business/friendship relationship" with these youngsters, every day the "Booby Trap Boys" would bring in land mines and other explosive devices and he would pay them so that they could buy food. He told them to be careful, but not being trained in the art of explosive ordinance disposal, these children were on a crash course for disaster, as Beakey expressed poignantly within the pages of this book.  The cover of "Booby Trap Boys" shows the actual boys, two of whom were later injured retrieving mines, and were subsequently nursed back to health at a US "MASH" type hospital Mr. Beakey returned to the US at the age of 19. He was unaware of the survivor guilt and post traumatic stress he carried. In the later stories of "Booby Trap Boys", he recounted how difficult it was for him to come home, leave the military, go to college and try to live life with untreated PTSD, which he tried to control with exercise, alcohol and by constantly working. 



Eventually, he sought treatment for his problems and after years of a few hospitalizations for alcoholism and PTSD, he sought other avenues for normalization. By engaging in counseling, yoga, meditation, A.A. meetings and individual therapy at the Boston Veterans Center as well as help from many Marine Vietnam Veterans, he was able to turn his life around and become a social worker, then a counselor, then a college instructor, an author and even a volunteer who helped other Veterans. Most important to this reviewer, he became my good friend. A slim book, "Booby Trap Boys" looms larger in quality than most Vietnam memoirs I have ever come across. This is a recounting that cannot be put down and begs to be reread over and over again! As a postscript, this author happened to be a very close friend of mine, one whom made a great impact on my life and will sorely be missed. At 62 years of age, this great warrior died unexpectedly June 6, 2011, at his home in Braintree, Massachusetts.  It was in reviewing this book that I came to meet him, and in the 3 years that I constantly corresponded with him, he became one of my closest friends. I have never met a man more sincere, caring, giving, and selfless. He would give the shirt off of his back to help anyone . In the hundreds of conversations I always had with him, he would never want to talk about any problem, rather...live in the solution. He preached sobriety, therapy, getting well, and even in his last few days, he left a message on my answering machine of optimism, hope, and brightness of the future. My only regret is that I never was able to say "good bye Dave" as no one ever really knows when God will call. I think of Dave often, his positive messages of hope, strength and genuine confidence. Dave was an angel, and he will be missed.
Table of contents: title: 1949-1967 P. 9; title: Parris Island P. 11; title: Jungle Warfare School P. 13; title: Da Nang P. 15; title: Patrol P. 16; title: Body snatch P. 18; title: Dog Day Afternoon P. 20; title: A Rifle Dropped Once, Never Fired P. 20; title: The Joke P. 22; title: Blinded By The Light P. 24; title: The Prisoner p. 26; title: The Fragging P. 27; title: Sky Pilot P. 29; title: Ascension P. 31; title: The Man who fell from The Sky P. 33; title: Cleo's Bad Day P. 35; title: Two Generals P. 37; title: The New Lieutenant P. 39; title: The Close Call P. 41; title: Garwood P. 42; title: Thanksgiving, 1968 P. 43; title: Dante's Inferno P. 45; title: The Booby Trap Boys P. 50; title: Whore P. 52; title: Ace P. 54; title: The Visit Part I (1968) P. 57; title: My New Bunker P. 58; title: In College P. 60; title: Hero P. 62; title: Colombine P. 64; title: Saving Private Ryan P. 65; title: VC #1 P. 67; title: Major Sergeants P. 68; title: Coward P. 70; title: The Visit Part II (2008) P. 72; title: Poems P. 73; title: I Saw Chesty At The Mall P. 73; title: Gerry P. 75; title: The Old Warrior P. 77; title: Terminology P. 81