Written by Alan Krause
In 2022, we posted an article about Frederick Hart’s Three Servicemen Statue which stands near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC–The Wall. The statue has a flaw noticed by many veterans: the soldier on the left carrying the M-60 machine gun on his shoulders has two bandoliers of ammunition facing the wrong way, up instead of down. President and CEO of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Jim Knotts, sent me a copy of a letter that Frederick Hart wrote in 1993 to Robert Horton at the Department of Interior about the statue. We posted the letter with our article. The other day, Vietnam veteran Alan Kraus ran across the post and sent the following letter explaining why soldiers made sure to carry their ammo belts with bullets facing down.
I happened to stumble upon your web post about the three soldiers statue at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the fact that the one soldier was wearing the M-60 bandolier backwards. I also read the artist’s letter as to how that came about.
I’d like to enter my two cents worth on the issue.
Above is a picture of me. I’m in the middle carrying a bandolier, circa 1970. I was in a Recon Platoon operating along the Vietnam/Cambodian border in Phuoc Long province. This was a province filled with very steep hills and we had to literally crawl up and down these hills during the monsoon season while wearing our 65 pound backpack. This involved a lot of falling, sliding backwards and silent cursing.
A person only had to fall once to realize that if you did not wear your bandolier with the points of the bullets facing down every time you fell you would get stabbed in the neck by the bullets – see where the bullets are in relation to my neck.
Since the bandolier had to ride on top of my backpack so they would be easier to flip off and throw to our assistant gunner, they were even closer to my neck than the picture indicates.
While I understand that the war was fought in the mountains, valleys and rice patties in drastically different conditions from 1965 to 1975, my own personal opinion is that to wear a bandolier with the bullets pointing toward your neck you would have to be in a war where you only walked on a flat surface and never had to hit the ground.
Just one ex-grunt’s opinion.
Al Krause
Recon Platoon
Echo Company
5th BN, 7th Cavalry
1st Air Cav Division.
PS: The reason there is no jungle in the picture is the area had previously been heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. The jungle was just growing back. We had to drink the water from those Agent Orange laced jungle streams. Good thing we were told Agent Orange had no negative effect on human beings. Below is a more typical jungle trail – you can see one of our guys on the right side (just his ear, neck and hand) as I asked him to step aside so I could take a picture of the trail. Quite a difference between pre and post Agent Orange spraying.
Post Note: Vietnam Veteran Walt Brinker writes in response: “This article makes me wonder which units the author (and creator of the statue) were in. I served two tours, as rifle platoon leader (173d Abn in 1967) and rifle company commander (1st Cav Div in 1969). We never carried M-60 ammo outside its box – never bandoleer-style. Carrying the ammo in its box (of about 200 rounds) with only a “starter” number of rounds on the gun itself kept ammo clean and relatively dry – to preclude jamming. My units never had such a problem. Keeping ammo in its box prevented its picking up mud and crud when the machinegunner went prone, as he did quite often.”