Two weeks would have been outside the security bubble in 9th and 3rd Marines (the two line units I was in) for walking point or going on patrol. Our practice was that in the last 10 days of your tour, you did not have to go outside the wire for patrols, ambushes and for certain not on LPs. That of course depended on the circumstances at the time. If the unit was involved up to its eyeball's, you went no matter how short you were. I know guys who died under 10; one Sergeant Sibilly moving with the point element for the company on 7 September 1967.

As to walking point that was considered a pretty serious choice and it was
always assigned by the person in command (squad, platoon or company) based on his judgment of who was best for the job in that situation and terrain. We had guys who liked to walk point and if they were deemed the best at that, they generally did but to some extent it was a volunteer job. If you had done your share of walking point, and you just didn't feel right that
day you could decline and no one would question why.

Point and tail end charley assignments were often handled by the same men
with your best point on point and your second best point on the tail.  I walked tail end charley for some time before becoming a point and actively
disliked the tail slot more than point. In heavy brush or deep jungle you really had to pay attention on the tail or you would find yourself standing alone on the trail trying to figure out which way the column went; a most uncomfortable position to find yourself in. Generally speaking the first fire-team was the best fire-team in the squad (the good shooters) and thus the point would come out of that group but sometimes when we moved in platoon or company strength a point would be detached from another squad or platoon to walk point, sometimes just a single individual, sometimes with
his complete fire team. If I was on point there were people I wanted right behind me and people who I didn't want behind me.

I can remember some company operations around Con Thien in the fall of 1967 where we always had dogs, a Kit Carson and sometimes a scout-sniper team in our Company Point element all mixed with the best fire team we had in the lead platoon. I remember quite distinctly one of those (just west of Gao Linh) where being short I was not walking point. The column halted and word came for me to move to the point. When I got up our Platoon Sergeant was looking out across the scrub towards a tree line about 100 meters distant where a NVA flag was fluttering from some a tree limb, and he said, "Jim, I hear you wanted to get a NVA flag before you rotated."

I looked across that open expense, calculated the odds on that tree being under the sights of a sniper or bobby trapped and declined the point. The spotter for our sniper, the sniper and our Kit Carson went out and took it down. No bobby-trap, no shots fired, probably just the NVA having a little fun, ramping up the pucker factor. Losing the flag didn't bother me but the short-timer razzing I took sure did.
©2002 James C. Graves