“I Got Off One Planet And Landed In Another”: A Recon Marine In Vietnam

Larry Meyer was born in July 1948 in Englewood, New Jersey, growing up there and in Hacketstown. His dad was a photographer during WWII in Italy, and later sold freezers and worked in meat packing. As a boy he enjoyed physical activities like gymnastics, track, cross country, and swimming. His parents divorced when he was young, and at 17, Larry graduated from high school and on June 25, 1966, he joined the Marine Corps because “I wanted to be in the best, the elite outfits.” Parris Island was a real eyeopener, though, and he wondered, “I volunteered for this. Why are they treating me like shit?” He remembers the discipline of the Marine Corps, especially in his drownproofing instructor, who had attended the Navy Dive School and was Marine Force Recon his whole career. He enjoyed “the physical stuff” like the confidence course and the rifle range, but he hated the harsh discipline. He turned 18 in boot camp. After graduation, he took 30 days leave before returning to Camp Pendleton, enroute to Da Nang through Okinawa. He volunteered for all the training he could get: Recondo School, Navy Dive School, Sniper School in Vietnam, and Aerial Map Reading. He remembers jungle and survival training at Camp Pendleton, and on one particular patrol, he was “tail-end Charlie” and was so miserable “I wanted to die.” He then experienced a turning point and realized, “I want to be point.” At Nha Trang, he completed Recondo School, and participated in increasingly arduous patrols. He describes walking point, what he carried, and how he moved silently through the jungle. He preferred the M-16 to the M-14 because he could carry more ammunition. Even though he had a lot of respect for the NVA (North Vietnamese Army), he “hated them.” He recalls a patrol along the Laotian border, where his team was surrounded and they had to call for extraction by helicopter. He remembers feelings of high anxiety being the first one off a helicopter on another mission. Larry shares his experiences leading up to the siege of Khe Sanh and on his last patrol in country. During the siege, he remembers incoming rockets and four Marines who were killed in a bunker he was supposed to be in. When he left Vietnam, he returned to the States on Tiger Airlines. There was no greeting when he arrived, and he recalls an empty feeling, noting it was “strange when my parents picked me up.” In 1973, when American forces left Vietnam, he “cried and cried,” and the feeling that “we had lost the war” was terrible. Following the attacks on September 11th, he had a similar feeling and was against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Returning from Vietnam, he completed Navy Dive School in Key West and later deployed on a four-month Mediterranean cruise. He describes exiting a submarine and once seeing tiger sharks swimming beside a sub. In April 1969, he left the Marines and settled in Florida where he continued to dive for work and for pleasure. Eventually, he began a career in commercial fishing. Larry has always felt tied to the ocean. His experiences in Vietnam left him with Post Traumatic Stress and he sought help from “several shrinks.” At one point he was suicidal, but time and finding his spirituality helped. At the end of the interview, he reflects on his service in the Marine Corps, stating he is very proud of his service because it “turned me into a man” and shaped his future.