Joby McAulay remembers March 22, 1967, very well.

In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, he and 107 of his brothers were the victims of a brutal attack.

Only Joby and about 30 of his comrades came out alive, many wounded, some critically.

McAulay, now 69, knew his fellow soldiers well in A-Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry of the 4th Infantry Division.

During their 11 months of training and 22 days on the USS Gordon on their way to Vietnam, the soldiers became brothers.

“I knew everybody. I knew their mothers’ names, I knew their brothers’ names,” McAulay said. “I knew I could count on them having my back.”

McAulay’s military background started before he was born, at Fort Bragg, N.C. His father was “career Army,” he said. His father served in France during World War II with the 82nd Airborne and served some time in Korea during peacetime. The family lived on six or seven military bases, some more than once, from 1942 until 1963.

After his dad’s retirement, the family settled in Sheffield, where McAulay graduated from high school in 1964.

“My initial goal was to enlist at 20,” he explained, “then retire at 40,” following in his father’s footsteps.

But in 1965, he was drafted and so reported to A-Company – combat infantry. The unit came together at Ft. Lewis, Wash., for the only year of the military’s “train and retain.”

First Sgt. David H. McNerney, who had already served two tours in Vietnam, was assigned to McAulay’s unit.

“I would follow him straight to the gates of Hell if I had to,” McAulay said in a film about the battle of March 22, 1967.

When they got their orders for Vietnam, McNerney decided to go with them.

McAulay’s unit saw their “first little skirmishes” when they were stationed at Tuy Hoa Air Base.

The unit did get an occasional break.

It was on just such a break, the unit was at liberty, when they loaded into a truck and went into “Sin City,” McAulay said, and everyone got “soused up.”

But they needed to return to base by dark.

They loaded back into the deuce-and-a-half cargo truck and headed back.

As they approached a one-lane bridge, they noticed the 101st Airborne – The Screaming Eagles – coming the other way.

“Well, someone called them the ‘Puking Buzzards’,” McAulay, said, laughing, “and we got in a huge fist fight. We were drunk, so we were stronger than they were.”

As funny as it seems in retrospect, the fight put the company in big trouble.

A few months into their stay at Tuy Hoa, the unit was told to pack up their military gear; they were having a mock air lift.

“We were told to leave our personal stuff behind,” McAulay said, a tiny Christmas tree his aunt had sent, his camera, little trinkets. “We never saw it again.”

The unit was moved to Pleiku, where they built and slept in squad-sized tents with plywood floors and plywood and canvas sides.

That was the last place they would see amenities.

From then on, the company marched and camped in the jungle in the Highlands out of Pleiku, near the Cambodian border, and they saw a lot of action.

McAulay noticed there were never any young men in any of the hamlets they went into. They were all at war or in hiding.

So, they assumed, “if they were over the age of 10,” he opined, “they were Viet Cong.”

“We got C rations every three days,” McAulay said, “more ammo, letters from home. We didn’t see a helicopter unless someone was shot or killed.”

McAulay was assigned as McNerney’s radio telephone operator (RTO) in the states and accompanied him all the time. In Vietnam, McAulay became the RTO for the company commander, Capt. Sands.

But, early in 1967, “the company commander got mad at me,” he said, and relieved McAulay as radio telephone operator, assigning him instead to machine gunner in the 4th Platoon. That disciplinary action would ultimately save his life.

On the morning of March 22, 1967, the unit was camped close to the Cambodian border. As they broke camp that morning, around 7:30 a.m., they came under fire from the enemy.

Then all hell broke loose.

There were incoming mortars, rockets, light and heavy machine gun fire surrounded them. The company commander and headquarters section were gone in seconds, a direct hit from a rocket. The platoon leaders were wounded soon after the melee began, and all but one radio was destroyed.

They nearly split the company and killed or wounded all of the officers. Although wounded, 1st Sgt. McNerney took command of the company, rallied them together and organized the unit’s defense, exposing himself to hostile fire to mark and clear a helicopter landing site and found the one radio that worked and started calling for support. He refused to be evacuated for an entire day until a new commander came.

McNerney’s exploits included killing a group of enemy soldiers in a surprise encounter at close range. He was injured by the blast from a grenade, but continued on, eliminating an enemy machine gun position, calling artillery and air strikes dangerously close to his position, sometimes using his own body to show the desired location for strikes, and climbing two trees to tie an identification panel to its highest branches. He crawled outside the defensive perimeter to gather explosives to knock out trees for a helicopter landing site.

“This guy was like Superman,” McAulay said. “He was wounded in the chest, but he pulled the perimeter tighter, to keep the dead and the wounded in the middle.”

McNerney “climbed two trees to mark for helicopters in the triple thick jumble canopy,” McAulay said.

McAulay lived through the battle.

“Being a machine gunner ended up saving my life,” McAulay said.

The unit was pulverized, and, although the enemy had fallen back there was no way to get McAulay’s unit – or what was left of them – out of the jungle.

“We slept with our dead that night,” he said.

He looks back with bitterness at the tactics of war.

“We were a number,” McAulay said. “We weren’t supposed to come home.”

After their brawl with the Screaming Eagles, they learned later, a high ranking official said, “The A Company will never see base camp again,” McAulay said.

The battle, and the Medal of Honor 1st Sgt. David H. McNerney earned that day, were the subject of a documentary made in 2008, “Honor In the Valley of Tears.” The film was made by film editor Eric Dow and John A. Ponsoll, son of Sam Ponsoll, also of Warren, who served alongside McAulay. The film premiered in Washington, D.C., and was selected for the DancesWithFilm festival the same year in Los Angeles. “It gives us another chance to expose more people to the story of these amazing men,” John Ponsoll said, who owe their lives and their ability to talk about their experiences that day to McNerney.

“Sgt. McNerney saved our lives,” McAulay said. “The ones of us that are left, we owe him our lives.”

After the battle, the wounded were sent to military hospitals. Some went home. Those who were not injured went back to fighting, but there were deep scars.

“My brothers got killed,” McAulay explained, “and I didn’t want to form any other relationships.”

“During the battles, you lose somebody, it’s like losing a piece of you,” McAulay said.

So when reinforcements arrived to take the place of the unit’s fallen soldiers, McAulay and others remaining were reluctant to form strong bonds with the “cherries.”

“It was our unit’s turn to walk the point,” he said, but he didn’t want to trust his safety to one of the new soldiers, so McAulay volunteered.

“I was walking along the edge of the trail,” he said, and he saw a Vietnamese go from side to side on the path ahead. The Vietnamese was setting a trap putting an American grenade he had found into a B3 (food) can (that hadn’t been crushed as it was supposed to) with a trip wire on the path.

“I crawled back to my RTO and asked the 1st Sergeant what to do,” McAulay said. “He said ‘you know what to do.’ The enemy was about 35 to 40 yards away … had no clue I was there … I had an M16 fully automatic … I dropped him.”

The Vietnamese McAulay shot was estimated to be about 13.

“When my sons turned 13, I had a heck of a time,” he said, shaking his head.

After “11 months and 27 days” of Vietnam and a bout with malaria, he said, the dream of becoming a career Army man like his father had vanished.

“There’s no way mentally I could have” re-upped. “It’s hell, in my opinion. I don’t know how men and women are doing multiple tours.”

McAulay served for 22 months, until September 1967. He was honorably discharged with a Vietnam Service Medal, a National Defense Service Medal, a Vietnam Campaign Medal and a Sharpshooter award.

When he returned to the U.S., landing at LAX, they had to walk across the tarmac to get to the airport. There were no enclosed entrances then.

As he walked by a crowd of people, a war protester spit on him.

The returning soldiers were loaded onto buses and moved to Fort Ord, Calif., where a staff sergeant stood on a small stage and asked if any of the soldiers had any claims to file against the U.S. government. If so, he said, they would be detained for 18 more hours.

All the problems of the past two years, opinions they had of being misused as soldiers, mental health issues, hygiene issues, dental issues, fell away as the soldiers yearned to go back to their homes.

“Not one hand was raised,” McAulay said.

When he returned to Sheffield, rumors had spread about the war and the difficult time soldiers were having adjusting to civilian life. It wasn’t until 1980 that the American Psychiatric Association added Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. About a third of Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD.

“My buddies wouldn’t go hunting with me,” McAulay said. “They thought I’d go dinky dow (dien cai dau, “goofy” in Vietnamese).

“Dad would hunt with me,” McAulay said. “He was a combat vet. He knew. So he and I would go. He became more like my brother.” They played softball and bowled for the same team.

McAulay had a relapse of malaria in 1968, “cold sweats, abdominal pain, no energy,” he explained, and it took weeks for him to be diagnosed here. McAulay said he finally got appropriate treatment at the Erie Veterans Hospital.

McAulay never went “dinky dow,” but he’s had some tough days.

“I try to block it out,” he said.

Every March 22 he tries to stay busy instead of getting drunk, trying not to relive the bloody day he lost his brothers.

“I used to take off and go out in the woods with a handgun and a six pack,” he said. “I’ve had countless sleepless and drunk nights.”

Now he takes classes and goes to PTSD clinics and encourages others who may suspect they have PTSD to do the same.

“We don’t talk about the war experience,” McAulay shared, “but it’s good to know you’re not alone.”

McAulay tried to express the unique sufferings of the combat veterans, but it’s difficult for him to share.

“If I have to explain it, you won’t understand,” he said.

He has had some health issues, many of which are supposed to be covered through the Veteran’s Administration health plan. But McAulay said, he, like many veterans, has had a difficult time receiving benefits.

He doesn’t understand “why Vietnam veterans have to fight the government” for services to which they are entitled.

“They knew what Agent Orange was doing,” McAulay said.

McAulay, who has a daughter, Kathy, from his first marriage, met his current wife, Pam, in 1975 and had three more children: Tim, Kristy and Rusty.

McAulay was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Warren County United Veterans Council in 2013.

McAulay started the local chapter of Veterans of the Vietnam War, Inc. (VVnW) in 2002 and spearheaded the drive to get “The Moving Wall” (a five-eights size replica of The Wall in D.C.) to come to Warren in 2003. He said in a town of 9,000, there were some 4,000 people attending the opening ceremony. McAulay said for the five days The Wall was here, “people came from all over and left pictures, bracelets, a bottle of a fallen comrade’s favorite beer on the grass in front of the panel with that particular friend or loved one’s name on it. “There were a lot of tears those five days in Warren,” McAuley said, some of them his.

McAulay and his wife, Pam, visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire, N.M., for Memorial Day 2015, a dream that had been on his bucket list for many years.

The memorial was established in 1968 by Victor and Jeanne Westphall to honor their son, Lt. David Westphall, who was killed in Vietnam in May 1968.

McAulay – who was wearing a cowboy hat with a 4th Division pin – looked around at those attending and spied a man wearing a Vietnam Veteran ball cap: pilot Samuel H. Rollason.

McAulay felt a touch of nostalgia. The 1st Air Cav had flown them supplies and taken away prisoners of war in Vietnam.

McAulay approached the man and shook his hand, giving his standard greeting when he meets a veterans.

“Welcome home.”

McAulay and the fellow veteran shared memories. Joby told one in particular about a 1st Cav pilot coming to pick up four Vietcong prisoners for interrogation from McAulay’s unit. The four Vietcong were loaded onto the chopper, and, as it lifted and pressed away, one of the prisoners jumped to the ground.

“He hit the ground at a dead run,” McAulay said, “but our point man got him. From then on that chopper had a cardboard sign in the front that said ‘THREE OUT OF FOUR VIETCONG PREFER TO FLY WITH ME’,” he said with a smile.

The chopper pilot listened to McAulay’s story with tears in his eyes and said, “That was my chopper.”

“For years, I’ve been trying to get to Angel Fire and couldn’t,” McAulay said, shaking his head. “The man upstairs wanted us to meet.”

McAulay and his wife travel now in a 40-foot motor home, pulling an 18-foot trailer that contains their motorcycles. They spend time with their four children and nine grandchildren.

No matter where they travel, when McAulay sees a fellow veteran – most of them wear a cap with their service time emblazoned across the front – McAulay approaches them and shakes their hand, saying, “Welcome home, brother. Welcome home.”