Although many who were sent to fight in Vietnam were young boys who were drafted and only given a few months of training, there were more experienced soldiers sent to fight as well.
For Command Sergeant Major Jim Crapse, fighting in Vietnam was part of his 30 year career in the Army.
“I enlisted in the military in 1962,” remembered Jim. “It was in July of 1965 when we sent our first division of combat troops to Vietnam. I was in Europe at the time when that happened. In 1966, I was levied, or involuntarily selected, to come back to the States to train with a unit in the States. Then, I went to Vietnam with them in November of 1966.”
He served wherever he was needed and was moved around based on his experience and the needs of the military in the area.
“While in Vietnam, I was a combat soldier. I served with the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division,” continued Jim. “I originally started out in the Delta at Benhoa. I was there with that unit, and then the 101st Airborne unit that I served in mostly was shot up badly, and they needed troops. Not everyone qualified, so they levied us and sent us to Central Highlands up there. We were about 35 or 40 miles from the coast, but my last duty station was up there.”
His job in Vietnam certainly wasn’t easy. He was responsible for leading an elite team, and they had specific tasks to accomplish.
“When I moved up to the 101st, I’d already had combat experience. I’d already earned my CIV, my purple heart, and all that stuff,” recalled Jim. “I was put in a unit called Tiger Force. It has a bad connotation now because something bad happened with it later on, but I wasn’t on it anymore when that happened. I happened not to be there when the incident happened because I was home on mercy leave since my dad died. When I was on it, it was comprised of three platoons. In our case, there were 24 people, and we had six man teams that operated by themselves. We went out on missions and did either one of two things. We did what you call a recon mission, which is where you go out looking and seeing what the enemy is doing and see where they’re at and their movement. You just eye what’s going on and come back and report it. That’s six men doing that. You’re not supposed to get into fire fights, but you get into them because they spot you and stuff. We had occasions like that. Then, we would go on what’s called search and destroy missions. That was when they would say that there was a VC or NVA, North Vietnamese Army, people spotted in the area. It would be a group small enough that a six man team could slip in and wipe out a lot of them before the main team got there. We could keep them from moving out because they would typically hit you and move out. We would go in and start a fire fight with them, and then the big company or whoever was going to support us would get there. Sometimes they wouldn’t get there on time, so sometimes my butt would be in a hangar. I lost a lot of men. Sometimes I’d go out with a six man operation and would come back with only two of us. We would clear the villages, and a lot of times we had bad things happen. People got killed. I was a Staff Sergeant and was in charge of that six man group. I was the medic, plus I was in charge of the group. They gave me enough medical training to be able to perform to keep the men alive long enough to get them somewhere else. ”
He was blessed to lead an elite team on missions.
“I was lucky. I was in charge and had elite guys. I didn’t have regular guys,” explained Jim. “I had guys that were handpicked. They had to have so much time in country, and their leaders had to tell what type of guy they were. They were the guys that weren’t going to turn their back on you. They were the guys who could put a 100 pound ruck on and run up a hill. They were 18, 19, 20, and 21, but they were kids with a little bit more tenacity than the average guy. The average guy would just follow instructions, and a lot of times got themselves killed. There were many times we would be on a mission and would see an American unit and could slip right up to it, and they wouldn’t even know we were there. They would be smoking cigarettes and talking about what was happening at home and stuff. We couldn’t do that. All our groups were like that. On my teams, the youngest I had was about 19, and I had some that went up to 26. I had some people older than me because I was 23. I learned a lot and experienced a lot.”
They saw and experienced unimaginable things while there; unfortunately, it wasn’t the ones who were in the midst of it calling all the shots. Their hands were tied to follow whatever orders they were issued from the government.
“We had little kids that would come along with a grenade and drop it and walk right off,” described Jim. “You had to be very careful, especially if we had no fire zones. That meant no fire for us. The political aspect was so great, and that’s what caused all the riots. We had stuff happen like Hamburger Hill. They fought it for three days, and the Americans had 300 killed in action in three days. They went up the hill, got to the top, and eight days later they evacuated the hill. We had a lot of that happen in Vietnam. We had a lot of conflicts that we ran into. We fought and won the conflicts and took advantage of the terrain, and then they would move us out somewhere else. It was a political war we were fighting. With some of the bombing and all that went on over there, there were certain places they should have bombed. They knew the enemy was congregated in those places. They wouldn’t bomb them for political purposes.”
He didn’t escape all the missions uninjured. In fact, the fighting was so intense at times that he didn’t even realize he’d been injured until later on.
“That’s how I got my crease in my head in the back,” expressed Jim. “They had thrown a grenade, and some of the shrapnel hit me in the back of my head. I didn’t even know it until the next morning when I couldn’t get up. When I went to get up, I couldn’t because I was so weak from all the bleeding. I didn’t even know I’d been hit. It was so intense. It was just us, and we were on top of a hill. They were firing mortar rounds and everything, and with all the adrenaline I didn’t fill it hit.”
That wasn’t the only time he was injured.
“I was shot. I went to Vietnam in November of 1966, and I got shot on February 14, 1967,” remembered Jim. “I got shot at 1:30 in the morning, and because of the low ceiling, they couldn’t bring in the chopper to medevac me out. I had to wait until they could get the choppers in low enough because that’s the only way to get you out. Those were what we called dust offs. The night I got shot up, we had another sand pan, which is a Vietnamese boat. It was like a canoe with a little motor on the back because they have shallow waters. We had to let them float close to us, and we had to see a weapon before we could fire on them. I had the rear security, and they were coming up behind us and hit us from behind. I was lying down behind a berm. They killed a guy on the end, the machine gunner. Then, they started raking. When they raked, that’s when they hit me. They hit me in the colon area. I was a lucky person. I had on a lot of equipment, and it went through a couple pieces of equipment before it ever hit me. It slowed the bullet down, but it still did damage. They had to repair my colon and stuff. I was back online in about 50 days.”
One of the jobs that he continues to have a strong respect for from Vietnam are the men who would perform the dust offs. In the midst of battle, they were the brave forces who would come to assist the wounded and take them for medical treatment as quickly as they could.
“We would have to call for and wait for a dust off,” informed Jim. “You could be under fire, and they would come in and get the wounded. They wouldn’t wait for anything. They’d come in. They had support helicopters firing, and we were firing and all that. They would come in and carry all the bodies and wounded to the medivac.”
After his own experience receiving medical attention, he returned for duty; however, he wasn’t able to do what he was doing previously. Instead, he took on a different job working alongside another branch of the military.
“I worked with the Navy for a while,” declared Jim. “I ran a gun boat for the Navy. I used to live in South Carolina, and we used to shrimp and fish every summer during our high school years off the coast of South Carolina, so I already knew how to run a boat. I had a Navy Yeoman in the hospital with me, and I talked him into it. I was just young and dumb. I didn’t want to stay in the hospital, and I got him to talk to his chief. They had a guy who was killed, and they didn’t have anybody to replace him. They let me do it. I couldn’t go back on the field like I had been because I couldn’t carry a 75 to 100 pound rucksack, so I just worked jointly with the Navy and ran the gun boat wherever the chief told me to go.”
His return to the United States after the war wasn’t as difficult for him as it was for some of the other veterans coming home because he continued to be active duty in the military instead of returning directly to his civilian life. He wasn’t completely able to avoid the public’s disdain at the time, but he didn’t have to experience it too much.
“One of the things that helped me out when we came back was that I stayed on active duty,” proclaimed Jim. “When I came back, I went right back to the 82nd Airborne Division. I had guys with the same mentality as me. We had a mission and went and fought our mission and stuff. I didn’t have to get out in the real world. I had stuff thrown on me; I had eggs and crap thrown on me. When I was in the 82nd, we were the only unit in the United States at that time from ’69 to ’74. At the time, if they had a funeral, we got the call to go to the funeral. We finally had to have armed NP escorts to go to the funerals. People here blamed us for the war. I was lucky because I didn’t have family with that problem. My family was from South Carolina and was country people. They understood the purpose and knew what was going on. They were old country folks, so it wasn’t like in the big cities where it’s dog eat dog.”
He learned a lot from his experience in the military and everything that happened in Vietnam. Over his 30 year career in the military, he managed to earn multiple military decorations and awards, including the Purple Heart, the Legion of Merit, two awards for Meritorious Service Medal, a Bronze Medal with V Device for Valor, the Master Parachutist Badge, and the Combat Infantry Badge.
His years of service, sacrifice, and dedication will never be forgotten.
