Ed Niederberger collects dirt from his former base, C-4, in Vietnam on Saturday, March 3, 2018. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
This article first appeared in the Stars and Stripes Global edition, March 5, 2018. It is republished unedited in its original form.
DONG HA, Vietnam – Bending down to the sandy earth, Ed Niederberger scooped up a handful of dirt from the former Marine encampment he once called home just off the coast in what was then northern South Vietnam.
Nearly 50 years after one of the Marine’s most traumatic battles – losing two close friends in a North Vietnamese ambush – Niederberger, 68, found something he did not expect Saturday at the former C-4 base. He found something resembling closure.
“I didn’t think it was possible to even get here,” Niederberger said, as he trekked up a dirt road through a tiny, remote Vietnamese village outside Dong Ha. “I certainly didn’t have any thought it would impact me like it did.”
Niederberger is among 15 Vietnam War veterans visiting the country where they fought five decades earlier as part of a program through the Greatest Generations Foundation. The nonprofit provides free visits to battlefields where Vietnam and World War II veterans served.
In an emotional monologue that Niederberger, of Anderson, Calif., said he had no prepared to give Saturday, he spoke of the brutal firefight Jan. 19, 1968, just a few miles from C-4 that would claim two friends. One was Lance Cpl. Bill Burgoon, a boot camp buddy from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego.
Tears streamed down Niederberger’s face as he recalled the mission that left Burgoon and two other members of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, dead. As he spoke, Niederberger clutched a photo of him and Burgoon taken just three days before that fateful patrol.
Surrounded by his fellow Marines, Vietnam War Veteran Ed Niederberger talks on Saturday, March 3, 2018, about a vicious battle in 1968 that claimed two of his close friends. Niederberger was visiting the site of the former base C-4 where he served as a Marine leading up to the Tet Offensive. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
“He was carrying 104 M79 rounds,” he said. “The night before I asked him what he was doing. He said he wasn’t going to be caught dead without ammo.”
Burgoon was a cut-up, Niederberger said. He was the class clown type, always messing around. His personality was evident in the photograph, depicting the two Marines holding a monkey.
As the Marine veteran finished talking about the operation, he received a surprise phone call. On the line from back home in California were son Chris and daughter-in-law Shannon.
More tears flowed.
“Chris, I can’t believe I’m standing here where C-4 was and talking to you,” Niederberger said. “This is crazy. This is beyond anything.”
Although it was not the first trip back to Vietnam for Niederberger, who left the Marine Corps as a sergeant after serving in the war in 1967 and 1968, he described the current trip as “special.”
When he first returned to the country in 1990, he said he did not visit what was once C-4 or other areas where he fought.
Visiting those locations Saturday, he said, was moving.
“When I came back in ‘90 I thought I was cured. But I wasn’t. Coming here. This was, right here, this spot I’m standing on. I can still visualize C-4 right here. This is really something else.”
Steven Berntson, Ed Niederberger and Joe Getherall — all former Marines who served in the Vietnam War — share war stories Feb. 25, 2018, standing just off Red Beach outside Da Nang, Vietnam. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
