Military History of Jeff Kelly

In 1967 Kelly moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and transferred to 1st Battalion, Twenty-fifth Marines, USMCR. On 17 November 1967, Kelly resigned from the Marine Corps Reserve and volunteered for two years’ active duty in the regular Marine Corps. He requested and received assignment to ground forces, WestPac – Vietnam.

Kelly’s first active duty assignment was to 1st Staging Battalion, Camp Pendleton, California. On 25 December 1967, he departed for overseas duty. On Okinawa he was reassigned from Subunit 1, 1st ANGLICO to the Third Marine Division. On arrival in Vietnam he joined the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, as a member of Communications Platoon, Tactical Air Control Party section. Kelly participated in the following combat operations: Kentucky, Napoleon/Saline, Lancaster II, Scotland II, and Taylor Common. He was promoted to lance corporal on 15 April 1968, and to corporal on 1 September 1968. Kelly was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon, the Meritorious Unit Commendation ribbon, the Naval Unit Commendation ribbon, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with three stars, the Republic of Vietnamese Campaign Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross and the Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Medal. He completed his Vietnam tour on 21 January 1969.

After Vietnam, Kelly was sent to Marine Barracks, U. S. Fleet Activities, Sasebo, Japan, as a guard NCO. On 1 June 1969, he was promoted to sergeant. On 4 August 1969, Kelly received an early release from active duty to return to college. He received an honorable discharge on 7 August 1970.

I arrived in Vietnam on January 2nd, 1968 and was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines which was stationed on the ironically named Demilitarized Zone or DMZ separating North and South Vietnam. Within weeks Khe Sanh was under siege and the Tet Offensive was in full bloom, and I found myself in the heaviest fighting of the war.

Staging Battalion, the last bit of training before leaving California, taught me to look out for booby traps made of sharpened bamboo and the like. There was no mention of 152mm artillery shells raining on us from across the river in North Vietnam. I encountered no daytime farmers, nighttime fighters with old French rifles. The 6,000 Marines on the DMZ faced 30,000 hardened and professional soldiers of the People’s Army of Vietnam. We called them NVA, for North Vietnamese Army.

For my memoir I use the diary format not only to show the progression of the war in that pivotal year 1968, but also my transformation from a naive, idealistic volunteer only wanting to prove himself worthy of the title Marine. In the final chapters you will see what a hard bitten, disillusioned young man I’d become. Why didn’t I just stop fighting?  Stop the killing?  I couldn’t. I was trapped in a torrent of violence where the only way to stay alive was to destroy the enemy. I fought hard to save myself and to save my brother Marines.

On this website you can see photos of those men I served with. We are old now and no longer the hard bodies we once were. We reunite every two years and reestablish those bonds of friendship formed under the most extreme of conditions.

See Other Works by Jeff Kelly