[00:00:18] (HOST) Darren Walton arrived in Vietnam in 1970 and served on Marine Corps reconnaissance teams. For 13 months he was inserted behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, sometimes in the form of high ranking NVA officers, and to be extracted, at least theoretically, without being detected. It’s an elite job and an extremely rare experience, and thanks to the unending bravery of pilots and door gunners and supporting outfits, he lived to tell about it. But Darren didn’t tell about it. Coming home to San Francisco in 1971 he quickly discovered that nobody wanted to hear about it, so for the next 50 years, he did what so many Vietnam veterans did. He buried it. For all those decades some of Darren’s closest friends had no idea that he’d been in Vietnam, much less that he’d been a recon marine. And then something happened that finally cracked him open. The result is a new memoir called Di Di Mau: Tigers, Rock Apes, the Jungle, and War. The book is Darren’s attempt, he says, to finally thank the men who routinely risked their lives to save his. Stick around. From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Founders of the wall. This is Echoes of The Vietnam War. I’m your host, Michael Croan bringing you stories of service, sacrifice, and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict more than 50 years later. Episode 70: Di Di Mau. Right after this.

[00:04:16] (HOST) Darren Walton joined me via zoom from his home in Marin County, California.

[00:04:22] (DARREN) In the Marine Corps, recon is considered an elite group of guys, the most elite group of guys. You don’t hear about the guys in the support groups that have to come out unconditionally and save your lives. And by saving our lives, they had to put their lives on the line, and they are brave individuals. They are the heroes. They’re the ones that were extraordinary in rescuing us and keeping us alive while we get the accolades, and we get the citations and the medals.

[00:05:01] (HOST) Our listeners may not know what a seven-man recon team is in the Marine Corps.

[00:05:08] (DARREN) There’s many, many different kinds of jobs, and each team can do all of the jobs that are required, and that would be mostly to be inserted behind enemy lines and to gather what they call intelligence. So you might be just sitting in the in for us in the jungle and outside the perimeter of a base camp or a, you know, it could be a hospital camp or a P.O.W. camp and just take information, maybe take notes and do some drawings and take pictures and go back to or get extracted and go back to headquarters and be debriefed on what you saw and in detail. How many enemy are there. Where the officers hooches are. Where do they eat? Where do they sleep? Where do the NCOs sleep? Where is their sentries? And you just providing information, maybe for another recon team to go out in the jungle, the same place, and they’ll sit, and their job is to do what they call a prisoner snatch Go into the facility and capture a high ranking officer. They preferred us to get two at the time, and that didn’t happen very often. So we would do a kidnap. What we would do, and it would all be not as hard as you think, because we had all the information from other teams that were monitoring the situation. There are other teams that were search and destroy where they have ambushes and just create havoc. Other times was, to just go out and see if we could find enemy activity out there and report back. So we were not supposed to make contact with the enemy. We don’t have the fighting power or ammunition or the weapons to stand and fight a skirmish. If we made contact, it’s because we made a mistake. We should be able to go in and out of enemy territory without them ever knowing that we were there. Most of the time that didn’t happen. They were pretty smart and they weren’t stupid. And they had their own patrols out there looking for guys like us. So we’re not grunts. And, a grunt is an infantry platoon or a part of an infantry platoon. They’re the fighting Marines. They’re the real Marines. They’re out there in the the rice paddies or the jungles and they’re actually fighting the enemy. They were out there for weeks at a time, sometimes month, many months. We, as recon, uh, rangers would do a mission, maybe spend six days, five, six, seven days at the most. It’s all the food we had. We had one meal a day.

[00:08:11] (HOST) Yeah because you got to be able to move.

[00:08:13] (DARREN) Right, right. Yeah. We couldn’t carry weight. And so we were fast. The grunts carried a lot of heavy weight. We tried to do everything we could not to carry weight. So we sometimes would not carry a canteen because it might be a mission that might be kind of dangerous. So we carry an extra hand grenade or this mission didn’t, seem like it was going to be too bad. So we carry extra canteens because water was always an issue and but it was also heavy. And so it was a matter of each individual had to decide how much weight they wanted to carry and bring with them, and usually the lighter was better because it was exhausting out there in the jungles. Because it’s not just the jungles, it’s the mountains to climb, you know, climbing up in the mountains and, and breaking brushes, what we call it. And sometimes we’d go days without food because it was the helicopters weren’t able to come and find us, and we just have to try to keep finding an area where we could get a helicopter to find us and land. So there are times we were without food for 2 or 3 days, so we were pretty depleted. But when we got back to our camp called Camp Reasoner, they had a great mess hall and hot food, and we were taken care of and fed really, really well. And we had what they call hooches to sleep in. We had beds to sleep in where the grunts had nothing like that. They didn’t, you know, they didn’t have that luxury that we have.

[00:09:48] (HOST) What constitutes a six man or seven man marine reconnaissance team? What are the different roles?

[00:09:55] (DARREN) Before I got there, recon teams were larger with more firepower and that wasn’t working out so well. So they brought it down to a six man recon team and inserted a corpsman. So that’s your seven man team. You have a point, man and a patrol leader, a radio man, what they call a primary radio man, and he might be an assistant, patrol leader. Usually the point man was an assistant patrol leader. Then you have, a rifleman. You have a secondary radio man. So we had two radio men with the six man team, and then you had what they call a tail end charlie, who watched the rear in case we were attacked and we had to run the opposite way. Now he’s the point man and given signals, hand signals and telling us what we’re running into. And then I think that. That’s it.

[00:10:48] (HOST) So you’re carrying a minimum of weaponry, right?

[00:10:51] (DARREN) You got a few hand grenades, and you, most of the guys are carrying an M-16, and they have pockets for their clips and mostly what you’re carrying is food and water. And you’re you have a poncho and maybe a poncho liner for the rain. And that poncho is your is what keeps you warm. The radiomen have to carry the weight. They have these radios that they’re heavy, you know, they’re 30 pounds or so, 25 pounds or 30, something like that.. So each individual has a role, but each individual can step into anybody else’s shoes if needed be. And we’re all trained in each position. The patrol leader, he was usually a sergeant, at least a corporal or a sergeant, an NCO. And they were pretty amazing individuals. They were the alpha male. A lot of times I was fortunate enough to have leaders, patrol leaders that were fair and knew their men and didn’t try to get them in trouble or put them in harm’s way. Other patrol leaders were kind of gung-ho, and they really wanted to get their kills, and they kept the whole idea of recon was wasn’t part of their mentality. They wanted to be real Marines and get in the action, find action. But most of the teams I was on, they’re pretty, they’re real professional. And I was the point man most of the time I walked point. I was a radio man at the time, and I was on a few patrols where I was handpicked for certain missions. I was handpicked as a rifleman.

[00:12:32] (HOST) Let’s back up for just a second and talk about how you got to Vietnam. Tell me where you grew up and how you ended up in the Marine Corps.

[00:12:38] (DARREN) So I grew up in a place in California. It’s called Marin County. It’s a small county north of the Golden Gate Bridge, north of San Francisco, and the town I grew up and went to school in was called Novato, and I had the best childhood you could imagine. It was all country. It was orchards, dairy farms and hills and mountains. And I had the ocean right near me and mountains of the Sierra mountains not far from me, you know, I was free. There was there was no restrictions and I could go hunting or surfing. I was diving at 14 years old. We had adventures as kids and so went to high school and ended up on a cross country team and eventually became the captain of the team. And my team was a championship team. We won our local championships, we were state champions and stuff like that. Then ended up in college and I was like. I wasn’t disciplined at all, And I was. My grades dropped and I was surfing and going to beach parties and had girlfriends and smoking pot and drinking beer, and life was good.

Not thinking about anything about the draft. And this is before the lottery. And next thing I know is I got a notice saying, you know, or I actually I had a friend who worked his mother worked in the draft board and said that I was going to get my draft notice, and I, I go, what am I going to do now? So long story short, It looked like I was going in the Army and I went to the Marine Corps recruiter, and I knew that they had a real good track team. The best runner in the in the United States at the time was a guy named Billy Mills, who was a marine who won a gold medal in the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964. And he’s the only runner to win the 10,000m. And he’s an Indian, off the reservation, and nobody has done that before or since him. And so he was kind of my idol. And so I wanted if I was going to go in the military, I was going to do what he did and run in the Marine Corps,

[00:14:53] (HOST) Be like Billy.

[00:14:53] (DARREN) Yeah, I wanted to be like Billy, right? Well, he was a real he was an Olympic athlete. I was not, but my times were pretty good to qualify for the track team. They looked at my times, and my times weren’t great, but they were good. And I was accepted into what they call special services to represent the Marine Corps in track and field.

[00:15:17] (HOST) And what year? What year was this?

[00:15:19] (DARREN) 1969, after I qualified to make the track team, they said, we have a problem. I go, what’s the problem? They said, you have we need you sign up for a few more years. And I go I’m not signing up. I’m getting out of the Marine Corps. I’m going back to school. And they said, well, you just volunteered for recon. And I go, That’s how I ended up in recon. They volunteered me and because.

[00:15:46] (HOST) I don’t, I don’t understand. Help me understand that.

[00:15:48] (DARREN) Well, because I was in such good shape, they decided that they needed some recon rangers, and they’re getting short, and they volunteered me. The lieutenant said to me that I was kind of fucking up in the Marine Corps. I had to go to a thing called Motivation Platoon because I got myself in trouble. And I had scored so high in the physical what they called PT test, and I scored high in other exams, and but I was undisciplined, and I wasn’t really I would laugh at guys in boot camp because they couldn’t do the rope climb or they couldn’t do the pushups. And, and so they, you know, I had a little attitude adjustment that I had to do. Boot camp was a lot of fun. It was a piece of cake there, you know? But they put me in motivational platoon. They broke me. I was in it for one week, breaking rocks with the hammer, putting them in the bucket, moving them from one spot to another. And then the drill instructor would come in and wake me up. Who put that pile of rocks over there? I didn’t, you know. And they make me go take it back. And so I figured it out. I was if I didn’t clean up, I was in trouble. So I learned to polish my brass starch. My you know, polish my shoes, you know, and I learned how to salute. And I became a good little marine. And I ended up in a recon team and ended up in Vietnam.

[00:17:17] (HOST) So when did you when did you arrive in Vietnam?

[00:17:21] (DARREN) In 1970. The first, first part of 1970. So I wasn’t in the States very long. I went from San Diego to Okinawa, did some training in Okinawa, then went to Guam and then went to Danang and did some training in Danang.

[00:17:42] (HOST) When they told you that they were assigning you to a recon team, did that mean anything to you?

[00:17:47] (DARREN) I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea. I’d never heard of a recon team. I didn’t know who. I didn’t know what they were talking about.

[00:17:57] (HOST) Do you remember the moment that it dawned on you? What it meant?

[00:18:01] (DARREN) Well, they sent me to this training facility in Camp Pendleton with a bunch of rangers, other recon guys. These guys did volunteer. They wanted to be recon. They knew recon. And they were explaining to me what recon was. Now, that training was tough, really, tough. And I found it as a challenge and an adventure, and I, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. I liked it a lot, and I liked the guys I was with because they were so focused. And it wasn’t like boot camp where they’re all fuck ups, you know? And these guys all wanted to be the best and they had no fear. And so we went through some extensive training in Camp Pendleton, which I enjoyed, and I didn’t mind the fact that the definition of recon, what it was all about, I kind of embraced it. So I was kind of intrigued.

[00:19:00] (HOST) And what rank are you at this point?

[00:19:02] (DARREN) I was just a private.

[00:19:04] (HOST) Still a private. Okay.

[00:19:05] (DARREN) Yeah. Yeah, I was a private a couple of times.

[00:19:13] (HOST) I didn’t know if that additional training somehow accelerated your advancement or if, you know, being in special services maybe had done that, but it doesn’t sound like it did.

[00:19:23] (DARREN) No, but most of that, the recon by the time we went to Vietnam, we were lance corporals, most of us. Okay. So we did we did get we climbed up rank pretty quick. By the time we were assigned to our team, we were there were no more privates. We were all lance corporals, it seemed like. And then coming to E4, corporal, that wasn’t easy in the Marine Corps. And, you know, you have to spend a few years now. I was I was an E4 so that because I had my own team a few times, a team leader had to be an NCO. And so they I didn’t have to go to NCO school or do any kind of NCO training. They just gave me a team and made me. I went from lance corporal to corporal that day, and…

[00:20:15] (HOST) This was in Vietnam that that happened.

[00:20:17] (DARREN) In Vietnam. Right. And so then so now I’m a corporal in E-4, and I have my own team, and I screw up somehow I’d be insubordinate and they’d demote me back to Lance corporal, which I didn’t care. My ambitions weren’t to stay in the Marine Corps. I knew that I wanted to go back to college and get an education and get back to Marin County. And I knew that as soon as my tour was over, I was done. And most of the guys I was with, I’d say, you know, 80% of the guys who were like me, they were there to do their job. They did a job good. Some re-upped the second time. I wasn’t going to do that. Though later on in life, I learned to come to grips with the Marine Corps, and I do. I do criticize the Marines, and I might talk bad, I might not, I might be pretty negative about the Marine Corps, but if you or anybody else talks bad about the Marine Corps, you’re going to have to deal with some shit with me, because I love those guys, and they’re my brothers. They’re my family. And uh, even though I wasn’t in the Marine Corps very long, I mean, I’m 74 years old, and I look back and I’m proud to be a marine.

[00:21:35] (HOST) You mentioned earlier that the reason you wrote the book is you wanted to give credit where credit is due to the support teams that, as you said, are the reason why you’re still alive, right? Groups like the Purple Foxes and the Broncos. And do you want to talk a little bit about some of those groups and how they were important to you in Vietnam?

[00:21:56] (DARREN) Well, I at the you know, it took me 50 years to realize because like, I like I said, I was just a point, man, and I had a job to do, and I didn’t understand the logistics that was involved in saving our lives. And I just figured that we were just lucky to have these support groups that came out of nowhere, under, you know, tremendous, danger. You know, it was just utter chaos when they came to extract us. So, an interesting story is, and it’s in the book, I think, I was in I went to high school, Novato High School, and I was on the track team, and there was another guy who was a football player and a on the track team. His name is Dennis Welch, and he was a year older than me, and we were friends, and he was a shot putter, discus thrower, and I was a runner. And so I’d watch him and he’d watch me and we knew of each other. And he ended up going into the Marine Corps, which I didn’t know that. And when I was in Vietnam, he was assigned as a gunner to a Purple Fox Squadron, and he was instrumental as a gunner saving my life. Now I come back home and years later, at a high school reunion, I run into him and come to find out he was in Vietnam and to ask him what his call sign was because he said he was a Purple Fox. I said, I knew all those guys and he was his squadron was instrumental in inserting and extracting us, and we were in the same helicopter together. And it was interesting. Here I go. Dennis, you could have said hi to me. I mean, I’m right there with not a whole lot of space that we could hide from each other. I go you know, how come you never said hi? He says, well, Darren, he goes, how could I recognize you with all that paint? You got all this camouflage on. He goes, and we weren’t making a lot of eye contact. You could have said hi to me. Well, he’s covered with armor and helmets and all kinds of gear. And so our whole period of time, both of us in Vietnam were working together. He’s saving my life. And come to find out he lives in Novato still. And we linked up and we we’ve reconnected and it’s like, we can’t say or talk to anybody about what we talk together because nobody would understand. Here’s a good story is I’m on the ground and I go, we’re getting overrun. And you guys are going to do a ladder extraction. But before that all happens, you have what they call these OV-10 pilots that are called a Bronco plane. And you have a pilot and an aerial observer AO, they call them who find us, you know, and then they start directing. They try to keep the enemy from overrunning us with their Gatling guns, but they don’t have a lot of ammunition. They can maybe make a couple flyovers, and then they start drawing fire, even though they can’t shoot anymore. So that the, what they call the Cobras could come in with their rockets and make space and provide time for what they call the CH-46. I think they’re called Seahawks is what they’re called. I might not have that right, but they would um, they would drop an extraction ladder while we’re getting just about overrun. And the pilot had to keep that helicopter stable, and the gunner had to keep rounds going to keep the enemy from overrunning us. And so we’re hanging on a ladder extraction ladder for, you know, 100 miles or so swinging in the air. And I get off the ladder and I look at the chopper and it looks like Swiss cheese with all the bullet rounds in it. And I just want to love these guys and let them know how much we appreciate the fact that they saved our lives. And I go, where’s the pilot? Where’s the crew? And they don’t want to see you. They don’t want to talk to you. Leave them alone. They’re in the bar drinking. And I go, well, why can’t we say hi to them? Because they might not be able to save your life tomorrow, and they don’t want to know who you are. I go, I never thought about that. So I never met these guys for 50 years. And now, 50 years later, I’m able to thank them and let them know, hey, I wanted to thank you then and now I get the chance to do it now. So that’s basically the book. Now from what their stories are different than my story because I was on the ground and when they’re up above what they saw, I didn’t know. And their reports are a lot different than my report. And I said, well, there’s maybe 20 enemy, you know, in the jungle shooting at us. And it looks like they’re just waiting for us to run out of ammunition. And they’re going to overrun us. Well, from their viewpoint, there’s like 120 with reinforcements coming, and they got a circle and we didn’t know that. So, so from when they are coming in with all that firepower, it’s hardly enough to, to save our lives because there’s a lot more going on than what we understood. If I would have known that. I think I just I give up right there, you know? But the guys in the hoppers, they had to keep that helicopter stable. They’re taking rounds. That pilot had to have big kahunas. Because, I mean, he’s just. He’s a sitting duck. You know and we don’t hear about those stories you hear about, like I said, us sneaking in and hanging out in the jungle and kidnapping and doing, you know, extraordinary things. But these guys to come in and save our lives like they did they deserve so much more, uh, than what we hear about.

[00:28:11] (HOST) You know, a lot of the images in the beginning of your book. You guys look like badasses, right? You look like warrior gods. And then there’s a picture of you guys at the stagger back in.

[00:28:23] (DARREN) Oh, yeah.

[00:28:24] (HOST) And I don’t even know if you guys are in uniform. It doesn’t look like it, but you certainly don’t have your faces painted and you don’t have, you know, cover on your heads and looking at that picture, what you realize is these are kids under all that paint. These are just boys.

[00:28:43] (DARREN) They’re just, we’re just kids. You know, we’re kids trying to we’re thinking that we’re men. And quite honestly, we’re special kids, but we’re not men. And, and we’re living kind of an existence. And it’s a fabricated existence where we’ve been indoctrinated, kind of brainwashed and thinking that we are warriors and, but our enemy was the same age as we were. So they were kids, too. And the Marine Corps, they make it sound. That you’re so special to be a marine and so go out and show the world how special you are. And they make you feel proud. And I did, and you’re doing stuff that nobody ever does. Like the ladder, for instance, though we’re 19 years old and we’re trained to climb up that ladder. So one of my frustrations was I took that ladder for granted because I had done so many ladder extractions that I thought this was way all military was. So when I came home talking to guys in the Army or even the Marine Corps about ladder extractions, they thought that they were confused and I couldn’t understand why they were confused, because I thought that’s the way things were. Come to find out 50 years later, that extraction ladder was kind of invented by the Purple Foxes so that they could get us out and not have to try to find a landing zone or try to land in places they can’t. And how to save our lives.

[00:30:26] (HOST) Because again, you guys are behind enemy lines, right? So landing is probably not an option a lot of times.

[00:30:35] (DARREN) Right. So this is the point is they didn’t have to keep us. I mean, we’re only six guys. And on some occasions they’re told to abort the mission because it’s too hot. We can’t lose any more choppers. Uh, we can’t lose any more lives. And, you know, they’re putting themselves in a bad situation, and it’s not worth it. And these guys wouldn’t obey command. They would turn the radio off or say, what did you say? Can’t hear you. You know, or too much static. And they would…

[00:31:08] (HOST) So they’d pretend not to hear the order because they were determined to come and get you.

[00:31:11] (DARREN) Exactly.

[00:31:15] (HOST) After a short break, Darren talks about coming home, shutting down, opening up and reckoning with the Vietnam War. Stick around.

[00:34:59] (DARREN) And now back to my conversation with Darren Walton. You told me when we talked before that for decades between the time you got home and the time you started working on this book, you did not think about the Marine Corps. You did not think about or talk about Vietnam. You buried that for, you know, almost 50 years?

[00:35:19] (HOST) I did. Michael. When I came home I went- Right off the bat things weren’t good. I was in San Diego. I got my papers. I was discharged from the Marine Corps. Got a plane in San Diego heading home. Called my parents to pick me up in San Francisco. I go in the bar and I want a beer, and they look at me and they go we can’t serve you. And I go, what do you mean you can’t serve me? I just want a beer. I’m waiting for my plane. And you go. Are you 21? I go, no, and I forgot that you had to be 21 for a beer. And I kind of I got a little verbal, and they put me in the shore patrol, showed up, put me in a holding cell for a few hours, you know, until I calmed down. They were good about it. I guess I wasn’t the first. They seemed like they knew what to do. And so I go back to college. Sign up for college. And I’m older than everybody else.

[00:36:23] (HOST) And you’ve been in combat.

[00:36:24] (DARREN) I’ve been in combat. Right. And they’re protesting the war. And all I want to do is basically go to school. I kept my grades up because now I went back to school, realized how an education is such a gift. It’s something that I took for granted. And I felt that I’m going to, you know, I went to school, I studied, my life was in the library doing my homework for the first time in I can remember I enjoyed school, I enjoyed the education. I enjoyed being home, getting back in the water, running up on the mountains, getting back in shape. And I also I wanted to do was keep my grades up, get a job, have a girlfriend, get laid, smoke some dope, And get back to life. But it wasn’t that easy. I’d be dating a girl and they go, how come? Where have you been? And I said I was in Vietnam. Oh, okay. You know you’re in the Army. I said I was a marine. You’re a marine? Well, Marines really didn’t have a good reputation at the time. And but you weren’t a combat marine. I go, yeah, I was in combat, and that would be the last I would see her, because it would be embarrassing and against their convictions to be dating somebody who was a soldier when they were protesting and going to what they call in Berkeley called People’s Park or San Francisco, where they had the protests going on and all the music and all the entertainment was rock stars singing protest songs. And it college campus was speakers, speaking against the war and talking about all the bad things that happened in Vietnam and how you know, this is like My Lai had happened, and and I never, I never what I saw in Vietnam was different than what was being portrayed here in America, because I saw guys, Marines, combat Marines go into the village and give what they could give to the villagers, the orphans. They would try to give them food and medicine and clothing and protect them. And they loved the villagers. Now, there are some marines that did some bad things, like shoot a water buffalo, which really pissed me off a lot. And they’re, you know, just they were uneducated, uninformed that that’s their track, that’s their livelihood. But I was with a group of guys who protected and they loved the villages. They loved the Vietnamese people, and they embraced them. But you don’t hear that story. You hear about all the. You know, I came home and, you know, I’m a marine combat marine. I burned villages, I raped women, I killed babies, and that did happen maybe on a rare occasion, but I never saw that happen.

[00:39:23] (HOST) You’re not saying that those things didn’t happen. You’re saying that you were unfairly painted with this broad brush.

[00:39:29] (DARREN) Right. Right.

[00:39:30] (HOST) Because it may have happened here and there people assumed that that was your standard operating procedure as a combat marine.

[00:39:39] (DARREN) Exactly. And that’s the way in this area here with, you know, 5 million people in the Bay area, all against the war in Vietnam and I. And the point was, I was getting frustrated because I couldn’t explain or talk to these hippies. And I said I was trying to explain to them if they gave these Vietnam vets a chance. If you listen to hear and talk to them, that they would probably find out that a Vietnam vet is more against war than anybody. And so I never got that chance and I was frustrated and it got to the point I was losing friends and I wasn’t socially I was not accepted. I went on the track team and there was maybe one guy on the track team who would sit with me and talk to me, who was not afraid of me, and a lot of other people who were around me who wanted to talk to me, were afraid to be seen with me because they would be you know, dealing with the enemy. I was the enemy. So I was frustrated, and I got to the point where I grew my hair long and I became a coward. And the fact that I didn’t stand my ground anymore, and I joined up with the living in a commune for a little. I got kicked out of the commune, too. So, but I kind of disguised myself so that they would see me differently. So I grew a long hair, and I got laid finally, you know, because I didn’t I never admitted that I was a Vietnam vet. I held it a secret for a long time. The story is I wrote this book, and a lot of people were angry at me when they read the book saying things like, because we’d be in conversation for 30, 40, 50 years. We’ve been friends and we talk about things, about our lives. And I talked about my life before and after Vietnam, but somehow Vietnam got overshadowed. I just kind of forget about it. It wasn’t part of I got to the point where I don’t remember Vietnam and I didn’t talk about it. I wasn’t interested in the VA or getting involved with any other soldiers or going to groups or anything. I didn’t, and if there was a Vietnam vet, I never exposed myself as being a Vietnam vet. So I lived a lie for a long time, but life was good. I had good jobs, and I had great adventures and good friends who never knew I was a Vietnam vet. And when this book came out, they were pissed because they thought that why would I hold back something? But at the time, they’re the ones who were also protesting the war and demonizing the Vietnam vets. Now, on the flip side of this, later on in my life, I met a girl, a woman who I married, who was from Michigan, called it, she’s called Yooper, the Upper Peninsula.

[00:42:51] (HOST) Upper Peninsula, yeah.

[00:42:52] (HOST)Yeah. And she lived on a farm, and she had a little. I, you know, I didn’t understand her language sometimes because a, you know, it was like a Canadian accent, you know, I didn’t, you know, And she was talking about the Vietnam vets coming home to her little town community and how they were accepted with open arms. And they had a parade for them. And they loved the Vietnam vets. And I never heard these stories before. And I didn’t I couldn’t believe what I was hearing because I never saw or heard what she was talking about in my backyard. And so I had to change my thinking about the way things work. There were areas in the United States that, did accept the Vietnam vet and did listen to him and did bring him in. And, I was stunned when she told me that. And then I went back home to where she comes from, a place called Iron River, of course. And they had a parade and they had and the parade, all these veterans and most of them were Vietnam veterans. And they were getting they were clapping and, and celebrating the fact that they were veterans. And I go, I can’t believe this. Later on, my wife and I, we went to Washington, D.C., because she has a brother there. And like I said before she didn’t tell me, you know, what we were doing. I thought we were going to go to the Smithsonian. I wanted to go see the Lincoln Memorial. And we’re walking down the path, and I’m just in awe at Washington the Lincoln Memorial. I was just like, wow, this is America right here. And as we’re walking down the path in the middle of this path, I mean, I have these life size statues of tired combat veterans with their packs and their rifles and life size. And we’re in the middle of this platoon and this team of Korean veterans. Korean War veterans. War veterans. You know, statues of them, they go crap that this is, I go, we forgot about these people. And then I hit The Wall and it happened to be on Memorial Day.

[00:45:21] (HOST) You remember what year?

[00:45:22] (DARREN) It was in 1991?

[00:45:27] (HOST) Holy cow. So from 71 to 91.

[00:45:31] (DARREN) Yeah.

[00:45:31] (HOST) Nothing.

[00:45:32] (DARREN) Yeah. Nothing. Zero.

[00:45:34] (HOST) And then Gina walks you right up to the wall without telling you.

[00:45:36] (DARREN) Yeah. Yeah. And I saw all these vets. Vietnam veterans. Um, and they look like a motorcycle gang. And some were wearing just dirty jeans and leather jackets. And they had the map of Vietnam on their back, and you know, they’re wearing sunglasses and beards and long hair and I didn’t I didn’t fit in with them. But when I got to The Wall, I was on my knees with them and we were all crying. And, uh, I don’t know what it was about that Wall, but it’s just a name. It’s just names on The Wall. But I saw some, people putting gifts down on the ground next to a name, flowers or something, or artifacts from families that looked at all the different families. And I think at that time, it finally dawned on me that this is who I am. I’m a Vietnam vet, and, so then later, as time went, Gina and my wife again said, it’s time for you to get into the VA. I go, what for? And she goes, well, you got, uh, you got some benefits coming to you. And, uh, and I said, okay, well, it took about 15 more years of her beating me up before I got a DD-214. I didn’t have a DD-214, so I didn’t know, you know, that was what I think I burned that I had burned all the stuff I had that was given to me from the Marine Corps. In a ceremony at the beach by myself.

[00:47:25] (HOST) Yeah, that was a hard that was a difficult part of the book to read.

[00:47:29] (DARREN) Well, and I’m not I’m not happy. I’m a little ashamed about that because that was my emotions and my anger get the best of me. And I was drinking at the time, too. Drinking a lot, a lot so and I was a little immature on my part. But I couldn’t burn all of it. I had, and I still have today my boots and my bush hat. I couldn’t burn them for some reason, but, she eventually got all my records, and this is where the shit hit the fan. Here, you know, she triggered the hell out of me because her and a friend of mine wrote somewhere in Baltimore for my records, and they sent them to her, and all my patrols were sent to her because they’d been, you know, because you go through, briefing and debriefings and it’s all been recorded and saved in some archive. I didn’t even know that they saved that stuff, and I I’m coming home from work, and I’m walking in the door, and my wife is sitting on the couch, and she’s kind of pissed, and I’m going, well, shit, what is she pissed at? She goes…

[00:48:48] (HOST) Now what did I do?

[00:48:50] (DARREN) I go, what did I do? I don’t drink anymore. I don’t smoke dope anymore. You know, I mean, I work out every day. I work, you know, ten hour days, and I go, I don’t have a girlfriend. You know, I’m pretty boring. I go, how could she be pissed at me? And she goes, what is this? I go, what is what? And she goes, you. You told me that. You told me everything about you. I said, what? That’s my that’s a Marine Corps something. Where did you get that? And she goes, well, they sent it to me. And you never told me about who you were. She goes, who did I marry? Because I just said I was a marine in Vietnam. I mean, I never told her that I was a ranger, you know, that was with the recon team. I never told her about any of these missions, so it was kind of a shock to her when she read these, these missions that I was on.

[00:49:47] (HOST) And she’s reading the mission reports.

[00:49:49] (DARREN) Yeah, yeah. And then she saw she finds a citation in there where, you know, I get a medal for killing people, you know, and she goes, who are you? And so then, she made me go to the VA and to make sure that I don’t have triggers later on in life because you know, I was I had some issues that I didn’t know that was you know, from the past. I thought that was just the personality that I had. And so she’s been my best friend, and she had a lot to do with me, understanding what was going on. And, here in America and that in her neck of the woods, they would have, uh, accepted me with open arms. I think that a lot of the problems I had was coming home here to San Francisco Bay area and, dealing at that time, it was actually I felt safer in from Vietnam at times.

[00:50:57] (HOST) How did all of that eventually lead to you writing a book.

[00:51:00] (DARREN) The VA? Um, it was a failure at first. Because, like I said, I have this bad attitude sometimes, and they put me in a group of other Vietnam vets. And I left the group because to me, they were talking everything that was the way they were. The reason they have issues and problems is because of all the bad things that happened to them in Vietnam. Well, things happen in war anyway, and they are feeding off each other about how they got screwed and how, you know, things were so how nobody listens to them and how, you know, they wanted this and they wanted some benefits. And I go, you don’t get any benefits. Let’s help each other her out. Instead of talking about how bad things were back then, and I felt that we should help each other out and help other veterans out, and that that would be more healing than feeding off each other about how bad things were. So I was asked to leave the group because I couldn’t go with the program. It just didn’t fit. Later on, I went back and I got into a group where the energy was more positive. We’re still Vietnam vets, and they wanted to do stuff for other vets, change the way things are in the military by welcoming guys, coming home helping them out with the benefits, letting them know that they have any issues or problems that they could come to one of us or us as a group, to be aware of the drinking and the drugs. And you might have issues if you’re a combat vet, how to control them and that there’s help and something we never had when we came home. But we’re here to help you because of the mistakes that America made when we were coming home. I wouldn’t want, I would not want to have happen to these kids going to war now, coming home to what I came home to. I want them to let them know that it’s not their fault and that you know, and that that they’re not bad, they’re not evil. So here, I have to say, the VA has been really good, you know, pretty good about, helping the wars we have. And now they’re, they’re bringing these kids in and catching them and reintroducing them to society in a better way than we came.

[00:53:53] (HOST) You guys were pretty much just spat out. I mean, I can’t even imagine being spat out into civilian society in 1971, San Francisco. I mean, good grief. Can you say the title of your book and then translate it for us?

[00:54:14] So, walking point if I got in trouble walking point, I would yell “di di”, which meant di di mau. The interpretation. It’s a Vietnam word for leave or get out of here in a kind of a, rushed voice like, I want you out of here or leave now. In the Marine Corps di di mau meant get the fuck out of here. And so when I go, when I say, I make point to point contact and I’d say “di di, they knew we need to get the fuck out of here now. And so it was used a lot on recon teams where di di Mau it was like, I, I’m you’re the enemy. I say di di mau. That means get out of here and/or it can be used, di di mau. Let’s get out of here now. So. And the whole idea of Vietnam is let’s get out of Vietnam. It’s I, I believed I was a patriot, and, um, and I’m not saying I that the Vietnam was right or wrong, good or bad. I know enough about history. I’m conflicted about it. There was a time that the communists were taking over, and I was kind of thinking that was wrong. But when I was there after 6 or 7 months in the jungle, I. I started thinking that you know, we’ve been here a long, long time. Doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere. We’re losing men right and left, good men. And, we have the biggest, strongest army with the best equipment and weapons in the world. And it kind of bothered me. And the fact that my guys Marine Corps wanted to win this war, and we weren’t winning. I could see that we weren’t winning. And then they started implementing rules of engagement. And I go, that’s not how you fight a war. So I was really disillusioned. And the only reason now that I was fighting was to get another day on the calendar and to survive, to come home and hopefully that my whole team and I would come home together. Now, that’s said and done. Just recently, a Vietnamese woman came up to me and she said how much she loved me and how much she loves Americans and how much she loves United States. She was born in Vietnam, and if it wasn’t for the Americans, she would not have been alive because her father was a colonel in the South Vietnamese Army. And they took him. And she is one of the boat people coming to America. And she’s got educated and she goes, um, she’s not a Vietnamese anymore. She’s an American. And it’s because of the Americans that she’s here and has the life that she has. So when she talked to me and hugged me and said, thank you. It’s probably the first time I felt, you know, that maybe, you know, we did something right.

[00:58:08] (HOST) You can learn more about Darren and his book Di Di Mau by visiting darrenwalton.com. In this job I read a lot of books, usually to prepare for an interview, sometimes just to educate myself. I don’t mind telling you that Di Di Mau is among my favorites that I’ve read so far. The writing is vivid and personal. It’s detailed without being cluttered, and it balances Darren’s external and internal experiences in a way that felt really complete without being disorienting or overwhelming. It’s well done, and I thank Julia Drake for bringing it to my attention. We’ll be back in two weeks with more stories of service, sacrifice and healing. See you then.

Full Interview with Darren Walton