NVA Jungle Boots — 324B Division, Quang Tri 1966

The boots still carry bloodstains. Small reddish-brown droplets remain scattered across the khaki canvas, dried since a North Vietnamese soldier was shot on a ridge above the Song Ngan Valley in August 1966. They were sold in 2006 by the Marine who brought them home.

The Marine preserved the story in a string of emails, along with his Combat History–Expeditions–Awards Record and the Western Union telegram his parents received when he was wounded.

He served with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, arriving in Vietnam in July 1966 and committed almost immediately to Operation Hastings, a joint Marine–ARVN offensive into the Demilitarized Zone meant to block the North Vietnamese 324B Division from massing in Quang Tri Province. On the high ground Marines called Mutter's Ridge, above the Song Ngan Valley, he took the boots off a wounded soldier. As he described it:

"We overran a nva (826rd reg.) base camp on mudders ridge. We took some pows, wounded some, killed some and the rest fled. I got the shoes off of a wounded gook [sic] that was shot in the thigh. We got lots of stuff (rice, papers, maps, weapons, and all kinds of supplies). Most of the captured stuff was sent to intellagence. I had just been in country about a month so I didn't know to hide what I found. That is the reason I just end up with shoes and a belt."

The "826th" regiment he recalled does not match the documented order of battle — the 324B Division fielded the 90th, 803rd, and 812th Regiments during Operation Hastings — though the ridge, the operation, and the division all align with the historical record.

Soil remains packed into the tread.

Over the following year, his Combat History–Expeditions–Awards Record shows a succession of major operations across northern I Corps. On 7 July 1967, near Quang Tri, he was struck by a hostile mortar round while serving as a machine gunner during Operation Buffalo, sustaining a blast concussion and partial hearing loss. A Western Union telegram sent to his mother two days later confirms the event:

"sustained a loss of hearing from a hostile mortar while engaged in action against hostile forces..."

He was hospitalized for about a week before returning to duty. His awards record lists a Purple Heart, approved that same month by the Commanding General of the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade.

Not everything he brought home survived the trip. Along with the boots, he had acquired a Walther P-38 pistol and an NVA officer's belt buckle, both confiscated during the unit's rotation through Okinawa.

"We weren't supposed to keep any semi automatic weapons," he explained.

The provenance trail runs in one direction: from a factory in the People's Republic of China, through the North Vietnamese supply system, to an unnamed soldier on Mutter's Ridge, to a Marine machine gunner during Operation Hastings, to a shoebox for forty years, to an eBay listing in 2006. We can trace the boots to the battlefield. The identity of the man who wore them there remains unknown.