Larry Hackett's Tribute to SP4 Raymond Ahern, Jr.
I remember Ray as someone I just clicked with. Every now and then you meet someone like that. He had an infectious smile and a warm way about him. We were both Irish Catholic kids from the Northeast and he was very easy to talk to. It was like being with someone from my neighborhood back home and after a few weeks I felt like I had known him for years.
We first met up north when we were working the Quang Tri area. In late October 1968 our division moved down into the area northwest of Saigon that borders Cambodia. It was a very different war than what we had seen in the Quang Tri area. We were no longer near villages and civilians. We were working in triple canopy jungle. We were running into large concentrations of North Vietnamese regulars who were well armed and liked to stay and fight.
One of the worst fire bases in our early days down south was LZ Rita. It was a very bad place from the first moment we stepped off the choppers. We had taken over from the 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One) on November 9th. They had been overrun the night before we got there. We stayed on Rita for several days to rebuild the bunkers and secure the area around the LZ. The bad guys were constantly hitting us with mortars and rockets and they were constantly probing our perimeter. We then left the LZ and went out into the jungle about ten kilometers and started to sweep in a very large circle around the LZ. We conducted operations out in the bush for about ten days and were then sent back to defend the perimeter on Rita.
Ray was killed in the middle of the night on November 26, 1968 on Landing Zone Rita. His bunker took a direct hit from a rocket and he was killed instantly. I remember having to move out the next morning and it didn't seem right. There was no time to grieve or think about Ray or what had just happened, just move out and watch out for the bad guys.
He was a bright star in a very dark period in my life. He made life in Vietnam a little more bearable for me and I hope I did the same for him.
From a friend, Larry Hackett, Range One
