The Shawn Ryan Show

Podbit · The Shawn Ryan Show

#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs During the Vietnam War

Explore episode Jun 29, 2026
History
Cowboy Refused His Ticket Home

#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs Du… · Jun 29, 2026 History

A Marine called Cowboy was so terrified he would shake audibly and urinate on himself during ambushes, making him a danger to everyone around him. The lieutenant gave him an official out. He refused to leave. Clark's gun team took him in, taught him Bible verses, and tried to steady his nerves. Then, in the Dodge City graveyard battle, a corpsman and Chan found no significant wound on Cowboy's body — he had died of fright-induced heart failure.

4 min

Where this was said

The Silver Star, the Graveyard Battle, and Cowboy's Death

At 2:08:00 · chapter starts 1:33:00

The Arizona Territory operation near An Hoa Combat Base culminates in the Dodge City graveyard battle — a name that proves appropriate. Alpha Company walks into a full NVA battalion dug into bunkers along a graveyard. Three .30-caliber machine guns open up simultaneously on eight to ten Marines caught in the open between grave mounds. Clark runs into the open, climbs a grave mound for elevation, and knocks out two gun positions before his boots are shot off his feet. His A-gunner from Indiana drags him back to the tree line. Through the night, the battle ebbs and flows through monsoon rains that nearly drown men in rising floodwater. A Marine named Cowboy — given every opportunity to go home due to paralyzing fear — refuses and later dies of what the corpsman believes was heart failure with no visible wound. Marine Pat McCreary, who first saw Clark doing one-arm push-ups at the Jacksonville induction center, is the thread that eventually unravels the lost Silver Star: his effort to get a Purple Heart license plate exposes that all of the unit's records were destroyed when a 122mm Chinese rocket hit the An Hoa record shack.

History
The Graveyard Battle and the Silver Star

#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs Du… · Jun 29, 2026 History

In the Dodge City graveyard battle, Clark ran into open ground during a battalion-strength NVA attack to knock out two enemy machine gun positions. His boots were shot off his feet. His A-gunner dragged him to cover. A kid named Sonny — shot multiple times and believed dead — was dragged in front of an NVA gun and nearly drowned in monsoon floodwater, yet survived. Clark's Silver Star for the action was never recorded because a 122mm rocket destroyed all military records.

6m 40s

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