Karl Lippard Shares His Experiences from Three Key Vietnam War Battles (Part 2)

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World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson.

These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.

Kim Monson
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. The show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings.

I return stateside realizing that we need to know these stories. We need to record them and broadcast them and archive them. So hence, America’s Veterans Stories. Very pleased to have on the line with me, Carl Leppard.

And this is part two of our interview with Carl Leppard, because there’s so much to talk about on his experiences as a Marine serving in the Vietnam War. Carl Leppard, welcome to the show.

Karl Lippard
Thank you.

Kim Monson
because you were on one side of the river and what approximately 20 of your colleagues were on the other side. And if the North Vietnamese and the Chinese would have

Karl Lippard
been

Kim Monson
able to get across that bridge, they would have annihilated, you know, our forces, correct?

Karl Lippard
Yeah, I didn’t, of course, know that at the time. But pardon me. Our T.A.O.R., our Tactical Area Responsibility, particularly at this time, because we were just fresh into Vietnam a few months, right? The Vietnamese were very strict.

You did not go out of your area of responsibility, and second, at that time was General Wallace, or sorry, General Walt, He has his orders and you do not cross that line. Now I was illegal on the other side of that bridge. So the Marine Corps would deny anything that happened over there. But when the General, and I’m saying the General himself, got the Mayday call from me, because that must be hand given to him by Marine Corps regulations, he is the person to get it orally in his hand, regardless of the time.

So when he saw that there was a raider in trouble, and he was a former raider, he sent me the best he had, his two destroyers. It would have been good for the Marine Corps not to know anything about this battle over there, and they went to extreme lengths to hide it. Also, we were very… But

Kim Monson
Carl, just a quick question, though. If you had not been illegally on the other side of that river, they would not have been stopped. The enemy would not have been stopped, at least…

Karl Lippard
I wouldn’t be on this phone.

Kim Monson
Right.

Karl Lippard
I mean, we’re done here. I mean, 20 people. The thing is, is that the north side of our TAOR is the Kadi River. An enemy force, they were not enemy forces per se in any quantity north, but if they were able to amass some forces to the north, there was nothing to stop them from attacking the Da Nang airfield.

So we do know now, and only I think since maybe 2019, 18, at a Marine Corps reunion where I found the source of all these records, do we now know what occurred. Back then, I killed a lot of people, that’s very true, and that’s a matter of normal business. I hate to say normal, but we do our jobs and don’t really think much about anything else. It’s not my business.

I don’t clean up that battlefield, that’s somebody else’s business. But we do know that the 7th, the Strike Force Battalion, made a very lengthy envelopment from the south all the way around the edges of our TOR in the mountains on our 10 miles to our west and then came down on the plane of the Cotty, sorry, of the plane above the Cotty River Bridge and the battalion records show exactly that. That’s part that they did not find to redact, okay?

And they did redact entire sections of the record. They’re totally blacked out. So I was not aware of any of this piece of business, but this force hit us. I was not aware of how many.

When I got illumination, I knew we were in trouble because I could see Listen, there are one hell of a lot of NBA. Now, NBA is different. North Vietnamese Army, okay? Those are professional paid soldiers, right?

And they’re wearing khaki and khaki helmets and so forth, and they are formed in an orderly order of march. This is highly unusual. They are moving. Now we know that they’re a strike battalion, which means that they don’t have anything but fully automatic weapons and demolitions.

These people are killers. They’re coming. Fortunately, you know, I saw they were a rather large force here and and the general had sent me the first destroyer, the Craig. We got on them immediately.

They were very close to the bridge. They could have started to cross. and I put HEVT or Fuse Quick as they say in the Navy over that element and they were desperately trying to silence me of course but I had moved and they were then trapped under this enormous pounding so I pounded them for about five hours as they moved back to their original location and I put 250 rounds of HEV to your fuse quick on their last position, totally destroying any and all that were left.

So that was my business, and I took care of it.

Kim Monson
So Carl Leppard, I’m going to ask you a real novice question. But here you are, you’re on the side of the bridge, it’s just you, this is a big force with the illumination, you realize that there’s a lot of enemy there. How How do you get it so exact when you called in the destroyer? Because in World War II, my understanding is you had to have like observers to try to get the coordinates figured out.

So how could you, under intense pressure in a battle, make that communication and get that location right?

Karl Lippard
Well, that’s one of the reasons Lieutenant Reeder sent me over there. of I regulated and controlled air attacks and so forth and bombing missions in coordination with artillery and so forth. So, you know, you had a person actually here that’s well schooled. I’m looking as an observer of Karl Leopardi.

I mean, I’m looking at him. and he’s extremely qualified for this particular piece of business.

Kim Monson
So it’s with great confidence, you call in the destroyers and you push the enemy back, but it took five hours. So what happens after that, Carl?

Karl Lippard
Well, I mean, I followed them until they were destroyed, but I ended up at the uh… say regional force there north of the bridge which is uh… they call the battalion but it was uh… a local militia uh…

and uh… i had a uh… vietnamese uh… uh…

army uh… sergeant with me sergeant tee he broke off to tell the vietnamese uh… they were located there near the beach uh… and that would be about uh…

three eighths of a mile, maybe half a mile up the beach from where I started. Okay. And I was out in front of them to the west about 50 yards or so. So I could see the impact areas and control that fire.

So I retired after that, through all of the remains of that battalion, if that’s what you want to say.

Kim Monson
And what was the date?

Karl Lippard
I had no idea. There could still be some people alive here. I was only by myself, so it was kind of dangerous.

Kim Monson
Kind of. What was the date of this battle?

Karl Lippard
28th and 29th of July, 1965. Okay.

Kim Monson
So what happens then after that?

Karl Lippard
Well, in the morning, I mean, I went back to my original position and when I had dismissed the ships. Listen, this is Navy thing here. Once the ships are giving artillery commands, or sorry, naval gunfire commands by a person on the beach, okay, that person is in control of those ships. If I put them on the bottom, they go.

They came in shallow for me, as shallow as they could get without beaching themselves, and they risked their ships to support my element, which was the 20 Marines on the other side, of course. They do not control this battlefield. The person on the beach controls them. He’s the commander.

He’s ultimately responsible for every round fired. So God knows who the man was on this beach, regardless of how you try to hide it. No one pulls the trigger on a destroyer without God knowing his name. Okay, so this battle was completely hidden.

That’s no problem. I don’t really particularly care. Marine Corps records begin in 1965, kind of after this occurred. They don’t go back that far.

Okay. And any record of it was pretty much expunged. But we were able to find a record from the commanding general Walt to his regimental commander informing him that a battalion of Viet Cong was attacking my position, that two companies were engaged, and that he had deployed destroyers. That remains on the record.

In naval gunfire, they start from the first round they fire and go forward. I think this starts at about firing of 101 or something. They cannot expunge or erase what the naval guns shoot. somebody has to be responsible and accountable.

So

Speaker 10
okay,

Karl Lippard
bottom line, that’s all for that.

Kim Monson
So question is the reason that this battle was not is not well known is because you were on outside of the what the to our that’s the tactical

Karl Lippard
area of responsibility.

Kim Monson
area

Karl Lippard
of responsibility.

Kim Monson
Is that why it’s not well known?

Karl Lippard
Perhaps, other than the fact that I’m quite sure President Johnson was aware. He had told the people we were not engaged in combat. And the Marines actually were. Second, You do not, the general will not allow a violation of the T.A.O.R.

It’s court martial offense. Oh. So, the fact that they put me technically just a few feet over the line, across that bridge, was illegal. And because they had killed 300 Chinese, they know because they sent a shore battery to sea.

Wow. They would sponge that one too. 300 dead Chinese would may have brought the Chinese into the war. So they wanted to bury this deep.

We heard something that would be you know, that’s the urban territory they may have done. So I mean, look, they took that to extremes to say we weren’t there, I guess.

Kim Monson
But it was necessary that you were on the other side of that bridge. This is fascinating. Carl Leppard, a Marine veteran, talking about his experiences in the Vietnam War. I did want to mention the USMC Memorial Foundation.

That’s why the work that they’re doing on this remodel of the Marine Memorial is so important. because we need to remember, we need to honor those that have given their lives or been willing to give their lives for us and our freedom. And so during this holiday season, make a contribution. Go to the USMCMemorialFoundation.org.

You’ll get all the information and make a contribution so that we keep all of this alive and we honor, we honor these stories. We will be right back.

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Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. I’m talking with Carl Leppard.

He is a Marine veteran from the Vietnam War. This is part two of our interview because he was involved in some very serious battles, and we don’t know about a lot of them. But you have completed this battle at the Kadi River Bridge, and it was a very important battle. and you said the Marine records had not gone back that far, but this battle got the Marines’ attention, yes?

Karl Lippard
Yes, oh yes. What’s interesting is the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The Commandant of the Marine Corps’ name was General Wallace M. Green, okay?

And we became, well, intimate, not necessarily, but affectionately. Because I had driven him around for about five days previous in another shore landing and so forth in the United States. Primarily because I could drive a vehicle. There’s a longer story there.

But I could read a map and regardless of time of day or night, if he wanted to be on a particular location, I was to put him there. So I was very efficient at that. So the General knows who I am, aside from him having probably a photographic memory. Now we come to the Cotty River Bridge.

Trust me, the Commandant of the Marine Corps knows, so does the Fleet Commander. You do not pull the trigger on destroyers like this in a combat situation without everyone all the way back to the White House knowing it. Okay. So what’s happening next, if we fast forward…

Kim Monson
Oh, just a quick question on that, Carl. If you’re in battle, you need to be able to react almost immediately. Yes. So if the commandant, the fleet commander…

Karl Lippard
Well, he reads. And I mean, General Green reads. He gets a report from the commanding general forces there every day and maybe several times. our fleet commander as well.

I mean, Krulak, Victor Krulak, he knows exactly what goes on. I mean, if the general asked him, yes, that’s Carl Leppard. I mean, please.

Kim Monson
Okay. Okay, great. Okay, good. So, so the commandant, the fleet commander, they’re all aware of this.

So what do we need to know?

Karl Lippard
Well, what happens is, and I will just tell you this in advance, there was a number of times in my military career that we crossed paths with a commandant of the Marine Corps. Okay. So when your name pops up several times there, he knows precisely who that person is. Okay.

So this next battle is called July, and it occurred on the 18th of August. Okay, so then there’ll be another one at Le Bon. These battles were recorded, but specifically the general, the commandant of the Marine Corps got the report that came from me.

Speaker 10
Okay.

Karl Lippard
Then finally, when he’s leaving the Marine Corps, I’m on the drill field, he spots me again. So anyway, it’s interesting.

Kim Monson
Okay. So what happens?

Karl Lippard
So what happened was, is that this battle, this movement of Marines down to what an area called Chu Lai, which is a Crulex name in Chinese actually. It has nothing to do with Vietnam. That’s his name, not a village or whatever.

Speaker 10
Okay.

Karl Lippard
So they’re preparing to engage the first regiment, VC regiment, down there because the Arvin troops in May had been wiped out further south at a place called Quang Ngai. But in any case, there were about, there were, I can be actually exact, there were 16,000 enemy forces from Chulai on down. Okay, so we needed to get in there. We had two battalions down there, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines and a new airfield and 1st Battalion, 4th Marines and they were located about five miles further north on the beach.

Okay. So, this battle was supposed to happen on August the 10th, but we got hit on the bridge, and that scared the holy hell out of the Marine Corps, so they sent 3rd Battalion 9th Marines onto the airfield instead. Okay, so now the battle is scheduled for the 18th. They are short about 250 men down there.

So they robbed different battalions of men to fill in to where we could bring those units up to full strength. I was sent down to Hotel 24 with machine guns, etc. to fortify that unit. My company, we went down together. Our raider company, H-2-3, went down to fill their positions of H-2-4 while they were engaged and to protect the west flank of this division, which is very important because no one knows anything about what I’ve just said.

Everything is shiny and rosy if you read about our battle down there, but it was never that way. We actually could have been hurt real bad. But in any case, we’re down there. I’m there on the 17th.

We went into battle on the 18th, about 7.30 in the morning. We had about, from records, we see that we lost about 90 people before 11 o’clock. So we hit, landed about 745. We had taken about three-quarter casualties of the company before 11.

Oh

Speaker 10
my

Karl Lippard
gosh. I was hit coming out of the helicopter and there’s where the problem started. My machine gunner got hit twice. The gun itself got hit and was destroyed.

I got hit running in my right boot heel, which I thought my leg was blown off, attempting to stand. I couldn’t. I got hit in the helmet. My helmet was connected by chin strap.

It knocked me out cold for a time. I really don’t know how long, but I tried to pursue our company by following the blood trail of our dead, etc. and I never connected with them or saw them ever again. So now, what happens is that we had a division size operation here of some consequence. I guess what the readers would not be able to follow me, I’m afraid, but The bulk of the force itself, the major concentration of enemy forces was where H-2-4 landed.

They engaged to the east of them a hill called Nam Yen 3. There was a hill to the west of that called Hill 43. that they didn’t take it. And so when they engaged Nam-Yen 3, they got hit and then also hit from the rear.

I came in on the second flight, right, of helicopters. First flight, a lot of those were seriously down, smoking or burning, and a lot of chaos going on, a lot of shooting, you know. And so they had my platoon, second platoon, engage that hill, 43. And then they went off doing that somewhere.

I’m laying in the sand face down somewhere. And I followed to that hill. I knew where we were supposed to go. When I got there, nobody was there.

I was nearly out of ammunition. I was robbing some of the people who were rocket men or are machine gunners that were dead to getting their pistols, ammunition, anywhere I could get it. And so I fought my way out of Hill 43 and went to where I thought the unit would be because my instructions and so forth, I have them on my map, I know where I’m supposed to be and where they’re going. So I go to Nam Yen 3 and thank God they’re not there and there’s one hell of a lot of enemy on that one.

So, okay, fine. Cut to the chase here. I went to another one called Nam Yun 4. I ran into my battalion commander on top of that one, thinking my unit is there for sure.

And they’re not there. And I told that colonel to get his damn ass off of that hill. It’s VC controlled. I left.

So did he. Okay. In his helicopter. Thank you.

Bull Fisher was I don’t know. I think Bull Fisher got the silver star twice on Iwo Jima. Listed man. He’s now the colonel.

Listed man this. So I proceeded north trying to find my unit. And there was one hell of a lot of VC running every freaking place and a lot of them. So I had accumulated three other people by then.

I’m not sure where they came from or who they were. I think they were from India Company at the time. And I put us in the inside the quote bushes of a little hill I was looking for this morning. I think it’s not on any kind of map here.

It’s about 22. So it had to be about 80 feet or 90 feet tall. Okay. But if it’s big enough for just us, okay, there are a lot of jungle around, but have a good position as a jungle instructor.

And, you know, I may have had, I don’t know, 15 rounds of ammunition. They had none. I gave two to everybody, you know. And so we had to be very careful about what we were doing because we didn’t have any ammunition.

We didn’t need to engage anyone except with a knife. are absolutely danger close. Basically, there was about a hundred of them that ran past us in the open, full packs, everything. They came under artillery fire and were destroyed.

We could see that. There’s probably 30 or 40 of them that came by us close, but they didn’t smell us and that’s fine. So the next day I went to another village… Question,

Kim Monson
you just said something. They didn’t smell us. And I was interviewing somebody that said that there were different smells of Vietnamese or Americans because of what we ate. Is that accurate?

Karl Lippard
Well, you don’t wear deodorant, right? I didn’t bathe except, no, well I did take a shower once while they burned my clothes back in June I think. We were pretty ragged and hadn’t changed clothes for, I don’t know, several, three or four months or whatever in the jungle. But other than dressing my wounds, I didn’t bathe.

I mean, you didn’t. There was no opportunity. You didn’t use deodorant or whatever. And you stank like they did.

Normally, you can smell. You don’t smoke unless you’re told to. You don’t urinate or defecate unless I tell you to. The Viet Cong are very religious about when they eat.

They eat every four hours. They begin at 6 a.m. Right? So at 10 o’clock or whatever, I tell you to defecate or urinate, you get hemorrhoids because that’s when you go.

We remove what we did, okay? You eat when I tell you to. You drink when I tell you to. You sleep when I tell you to.

And if you don’t, I pull your dog tags, which means I have control over your life. All right, you will pay attention to business. Now on this business of me moving from point A to point B sounds a little unusual, but it is not. In the Marine Corps, it’s called missing a movement.

If you are not on location at the time and place that you were assigned, you were either dead or you’re missing. I mean, which is a court martial offense and could be an execution offense in combat. So they must know where you are and you must be where you’re supposed to be. So I proceed along my map exactly where I’m supposed to be, my company or not.

And as it turned out, I was the only one from my company who arrived on Phase Line Banana next to Echo Company and reported to my battalion commander, Hotel Company, was on the line with a complement of five. Okay, I don’t know who those five were. Presumably, they put them some other place. Then he told me to move in on the edge of Echo Company with my complement.

And in the next day, the next morning, he gave me my instructions.

Kim Monson
Okay, we’re going to stop right there, Carl Leppard. This is absolutely fascinating. And I did want to mention the Center for American Values, which is located in Pueblo, Colorado. And Pueblo is known as the home of heroes.

There’s four Medal of Honor recipients that grew up there. And their portraits of valor of over 160 Medal of Honor recipients with their quotes is so inspiring. And so be sure to check out their website. That is AmericanValuesCenter.org.

AmericanValuesCenter.org. We’ll be right back with Carl Leppard.

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Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website, that is americasveteranstories.com. The show comes to you because of our sponsors and a sponsor that has been with us for many years is Hooters Restaurants. They have five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster, and Colorado Springs.

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And so we become friends and they’re sponsors of the show. Check out the Hooters restaurants and their five locations. I’m talking with Carl Leppard. He is a Vietnam veteran, a Marine, and we’re talking about these different battles.

And in the Battle of Chulai, you said that you needed to get from point A to point B. There’s a time you’re supposed to be there. You arrived there. You were the only one from your company that was there.

So what happened then, Carl?

Karl Lippard
Well, Colonel Fisher came and he recognized me because I had confronted him the day before at night and demanded that he exit his vehicle. and get in front of the headlights to be recognized. And they said, Do you know who I am and all this other business? I said, Yeah, I do.

Or, you know, until I do, then you will step out of that vehicle or I will shoot you down. So he did and, and presented himself. That was my first introduction. So when I reported to him at phase line banana, there were three lines.

Let’s see, first line was Apple, a very long line. And on that line is supposed to be the 3rd Marines, the 7th Marines, the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, on this line, elbow to elbow. And in the middle, next to Echo Company, is supposed to be Hotel. But I’m the only one in Hotel.

I’ve got some stragglers from other units that had lost themselves and so forth, another story probably. But that was it. Okay, so the colonel recognized me immediately and said oh step out in front of the headlights And well, yes, sir. I’m sorry And so he told me to fall in and the next morning He would give me an assignment to fall in next to echo with my compliment.

Speaker 10
Okay

Karl Lippard
So the next morning The colonel said for me to, if I, he asked if I had a map and I had my case of course and he said, I said yes. And he said, uh, ANCON2. I want you to go back to ANCON2 and, um, I want you to clear the battlefield and I want you to take your compliment and clear the battlefield and protect the wounded there. I said, aye, sir, and I’m gone.

Ancon 2 was the right, there’s a stream bed right there, and 3rd Battalion, yes, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, they’re over on the south side. Hotel Company is supposed to be on the north side of that little creek, depression, river, swamp, what. Well, there are a lot of dead people everywhere. I mean, please.

Hundreds, well over 500. But in any case, The battlefield itself was fluid. There’s little bitty hills, right? And that’s called like Namien, this and that and the other, Nankong.

These are little high rises that are above the rice paddy itself, full of big bamboo, a lot of, you know, bushes, etc. And these Viet Cong men were all over the damn place. I mean, we’re talking about Well, I can be exact. There is over 5,000 of them there. So I had seen 100 of them at one time go past me to the south.

They were coming from Echo Company straight south, or sorry, straight west, escaping. But Gunnery Sergeant Carr took them down with some artillery, which I seriously appreciate. Meanwhile, I’m hiding in the bushes, like I’m supposed to be, and I see what’s going on. So we had about 90 Marines that were seriously wounded laying in the open.

Our helicopters were shot to pieces. And I can be pretty bloody exact on on that. There were just very few of them that were flying. And to try to get out this many wounded and we had over 200 wounded men.

It was impossible. We lost 80% of our helicopters within the first three hours. And every time they’d come in for wounded or whatever, they’d be shot to pieces. So bottom line is, we did not have a resupply of water.

We did not have any ammunition. Okay, I mean, please, and so we had trouble and these wounded, we were trying to consolidate them in a spot of some sort of safety with the river to our back. Theoretically, we had some bad water to give our wounded, right? But we had no morphine.

We had nothing. Okay, so I arrived there to try to dispatch all the living, wounded Viet Cong and to account for all of the dead to report to my battalion commander. I was wounded twice during that exercise, but I was in We’re getting into an area of sensitivity, but I will tell you that they couldn’t dress my wound because I was 100% blood. So they had me strip off my clothes and I exchanged them with some of the dead that were not so soiled and treated me and allowed them to go back about their business.

Okay. So we secured our battlefield there. dispatched any living enemy forces, killed any that we could find, and generally protected that element. Then the next day from there, we had pretty much those guys removed.

Some of India Company, I think, came in to give some assistance. I proceeded back to phase line Cherry, which is closer to the beach, and I am doing what I was ordered to do, clear the battlefield. and probably don’t need to speak too much about what that’s about.

Speaker 10
OK,

Karl Lippard
so in the end, I think I finished my business, I believe, on the 24th. We began on the 18th and I returned to my unit and the unit, of course, was gone. My old company that had was filling those positions, defending from the West. I was flies had no place to sit on me.

I mean, it was bad. But a captain came and a sergeant came that same morning. And they wanted to interview, presumably h2 for on tape, which is kind of interesting, because you know, it was real to real back then. And the first sergeant says, well, they’re gone.

You know, they’re not, you know, they’re not here, you know. And so, but we’ve got a Corporal Leopard over here. And of course, they interview me and the captain got ill and couldn’t take it because of what I look like and left the tent losing his lunch. The sergeant then carried on the interview and it was taped.

Now we know today by Marine Corps record that only one after-action report was taped for July. They don’t say whose name it was, but they did tape me. So General Green got the full nine yards of things that I don’t want to talk about. He got it all.

Again, and he knows who it was on that tape. Okay, so now we know that H-2-4 by 1600, four o’clock in the afternoon, 1630 to be exact, they were ordered to withdraw earlier in the day. I didn’t know they were withdrawn to the west to where they originally landed. and they had a complement of 24 men remaining of 152, I think.

So I didn’t know about any of that. I didn’t know they, you know, they’re supposed to be going where I went. Okay, fine. So they sent them back to Okinawa to be reformed.

I mean, they were not an element at all anymore. Okay, so I don’t know how long I was there. But I went to regiment then. And then they sent me to a place called Mike three nine.

And I was shot down in a helicopter coming in. And we got heavily engaged and so forth with some Viet Cong on the ground there. I called in some artillery, which they didn’t find was the right thing to do. I just call artillery when I need it.

I don’t go through channels. Plus, I just was arriving. And so the battalion at that time had a little bit of a problem with Carl because he doesn’t go by procedure. Oh boy.

So they send me back out to get my face repaired. I had some of my uniform jammed up in my nose. My face was kind of arranged a little differently. And then I came back with my old machine gunner from Hotel 2-3, Ron Smith, and we promptly get shot down again coming in.

Today, I have a record today because I was trying to follow where my Marines, when they were split up, they split us up to the entire division and that was a bad thing. But in any case, they sent some of the more combat proficient, shall we say, people from Hotel, the Raider Company, 2-3 down to Mike 3-9, and some other companies as well. So Ron Smith was there with me. Raymond, C.D.

Raymond was my rocket man. We had Private Parsons with us. We had Miller and Butler and, or no, we didn’t have Miller. We had Butler and we had Hardin, a bunch of people from Hotel 2-3.

flying in on October the 3rd. Now, when I was shot down the first time I lost 21 of the complement of my platoon, which is, I think we only had about 40. So we lost most everybody.

Kim Monson
Good. Let’s let’s stop there. Carl, we have one more segment. I’m talking with Carl leopard, a marine veteran serving during the Vietnam War, we will be right back.

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Announcer
From the mountains to the prairies

Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And I’m talking with Marine Vietnam veteran Carl Leppard.

And we’ve talked about two battles. There’s a third, and that is the Battle of Le Bong. So let’s talk about that, Carl.

Karl Lippard
Yes, OK. Well, basically, the Viet Cong NVA, they try to say this is all Viet Cong, but we had NVA there, North Vietnamese. But on the 29th of October they had planned to wipe out the Da Nang airfield again. But this time they were interdicted in two different locations by patrols and artillery.

Okay, but on the evening of the 30th, I was ordered to hold an ambush in a place called Le Bon One, right in the middle of this marketplace, pretty much on the river. Across the river from me was Alpha One One. My friend Sergeant Dempsey was over there, and he was the platoon sergeant of that. So we’re there at midnight, and I’m getting fire now from 360 degrees.

They’re trying to find me in there. And I knew we were in trouble. There was nine of us. And so I had to fight our way out of that situation.

And I broke broke out through enemy fire. We had six wounded and made it back to our company. They sent me to battalion immediately. probably three o’clock in the morning and uh…

major hopkins was there are uh… executive officer of the battalion and uh… who is my formally my company commander in the united uh… back in the united states and i drew him a picture of what this looked like because then they had already slaughtered the marines across uh…

the river there uh… uh… during the night, and these vampires were looking for someplace to hide. Well, the attack was about 1,500 Viet Cong.

Part of that unit was called the 45th VC, a main force battalion. We engaged them first, ourselves, down in Chu Lai, and before that at Quang Ngai, they killed an unbelievable number of Vietnamese marines, and Arvin troops. They wiped out 997 Arvin. But in any case, they’re the bad boys that made the attack.

They had been hiding underneath of the marketplace in Lebong. And so I visited with the battalion commander, told him the situation, drew him a little picture where you could hide, possibly hide a force of that size. and that they were definitely in Le Bon. He grabbed his battalion and some company other units from other companies and we immediately proceeded on Le Bon in the daylight.

So we engaged Arvin on our west flank, engaged about a company of Viet Cong trying to flee to the north. They went into Le Bon. We surrounded it. I located where they were underground.

The battalion commander or XO brought in the demolitions. We blew that marketplace up. It sank from five feet to eight feet in some areas, some areas 15 feet. It sank.

We surrounded that for 24 hours and there was no one that came out alive. So the 45th and its complement was about, well, there were between 400 of that unit, presumably they had lost some, so we can say 400 pretty easily to 500 died at that location. I know the names of the battalion commander and all of his company commanders and exactly where they’re at. So that ended the 45th Battalion, and I’m real happy about it.

Kim Monson
And that was the

Karl Lippard
45th? You can ask me, because I have compiled a record of any village you wish. I can tell you the commander’s name in 1965, his complement of men and what arms that they carried. Period.

So at July I can tell you exactly who was engaged, his name, of what unit, Viet Cong unit. There were not one regiment, there were two. There was a second Vietnamese regiment there. So I know precisely and exactly how many were there, their names of their company or battalion, their commanders, etc. I know their names and their exact positions.

But this is part of being map and arrow photo guy. You do this. You know, so I record tunnel sizes when I’m there. If there’s a tunnel that’ll hold 400 people, we know how many people it’ll hold.

So I know precisely the 7,500 people that were around us there. And we worked every day to kill every single one of them we could find. So it’s a game, they were trying to kill us, we’re trying to kill them. And we did it very professionally.

and I’m very happy about the people I’ve served with. So, I was wounded again on, at last, on December the 5th. They asked me to leave on December the 6th because the wound was bleeding and we couldn’t control it in my neck. So, I proceeded back to the United States by way of Okinawa Kui Hospital and I was promptly assigned to the drill instructor school at San Diego.

Kim Monson
Oh my gosh. Wow. What a story. Carl Leppard, we have maybe about a minute left.

How would you like to button this up for our listeners?

Karl Lippard
Well, I don’t know. The Marine Corps is a very small place. I mean, and we’re very well trained. I mean, at times we didn’t have what we needed to have, but those are normal errors in combat and so forth, things happen.

You need to adapt and take advantage of your training. And I think that we did it very efficiently. Generally, your E-4s, your non-commissioned officers who were your leaders, right? They were generally very, very professional.

a Hopkins, General Hopkins, for sure. I can go on. Colonel Martin, for sure. All of my platoon commanders were the best I think we had.

Kim Monson
Wow. Well, Carl Leppard, thank you for sharing all of this with us. This is so important. I really do appreciate it.

And my friends, as we hear these stories, it is very apparent that we stand on the shoulders of giants. God bless you, and God bless America.

Announcer
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.

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