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This
story took place in Vietnam, but it's about any violent conflict. And it's
not about me, it's about the very real nightmares we can find ourselves
living if we don't reason things out for ourselves, and continue to let
movies, television, and the violent fantasies of others do our thinking
for us.
For the year I was there, my job mostly consisted of driving a truck and
slinging sandbags. No close friends died and I never killed anyone.
There is still a feeling of guilt for not having suffered "enough" even
though what I experienced puts me through almost overwhelming grief
sometimes for the people involved in what I saw. It's senseless, but
it's almost as if by having more pain I could somehow lessen the pain of
others carrying horrors that would make my memories seem like welcome
relief to them. There were some who went through much more, and some
who went through much less, but in the end what matters is that we try to
learn from all our experiences and then use them to benefit ourselves and
others.
At times I'm filled with anger and resentment for the stupidity and
gullibility of a major part of the human race. The vast ocean of
shallow, psychotically romantic hype fodder called humanity that doesn't
have the sense to see the reality of pain, grief, and horror of war and
death. Even those are all just words that don't begin to convey the
convoluted tangle of feelings involved. Then I remember that if I'd known
then what I know now, I'd never have gone to that miserable place myself.
But I didn't know. I couldn't have known what is so obvious to me
now until after the experience. I don't mean to imply that I think
the world could destroy all its weapons and then everything would be
paradise. Evil is a very real thing and sometimes must be fought.
I doubt for example that a loving note to Hitler would have changed the
fate of six million Jews. But "the young want to die nobly, the
wise, to live humbly". Evil takes many forms, and one of them is the
willingness of governments, religions, businesses, and individuals to
corrupt and steer youthful naiveté, exuberance, and strength toward
terrible destruction because of petty dedication to their own purposes, no
matter what the cost, as long as the cost doesn't seem to be directly
their own.
I'd only been in country for a few weeks when a couple of guys and I
went into the village of Duc Pho to get haircuts. We were excited
and sort of mesmerized by the fact that we were actually in a tropical
country, in a war, and all on our own. Sort of like going to
Disneyland for the first time and finding a sign inside warning "assassins
in the park, enter at your own risk." We walked into the town
orphanage which was a small, high walled schoolyard with a large
rambling building inside where the barber was located.
I sat down in a rickety chair, laid my rifle up against the wall next to
me, and the barber began cutting my hair. Suddenly he jumped aside
as another Vietnamese grabbed my rifle, jacked a round into the chamber,
put the muzzle inches from my nose and shouted "NOBODY MOVE!" My
friends could do nothing. As he glared at me over the top of the
sights, I clearly realized that my time on earth was over, that I was a
dead man. I remember being suddenly sick with sadness for myself,
and
thinking that it wasn't fair. It just really wasn't fair at all!
We looked at each other for what seemed forever, and then he smiled.
He said "Everything OK, no problem, nobody shoot!" Then he lowered
my rifle, handing it to me, and said sternly "You no do! You no
leave weapon alone, ever! No do ever, or you maybe die!" He
was in civilian clothes, but turned out to be an officer in the South
Vietnamese Army. It may come as no surprise that I always remembered
what he said, and especially the way he said it. For the first
time I realized that it was no
game, it was all too real. Nothing and nobody can save me if I get
careless. Whatever our age, childhood is over the day we lose that
sense of immortality, and it never comes back. It's odd how sure we
are that we're aware of everything, until we suddenly get shocked into the
reality of how little we actually perceive.
One night I was sitting in a bunker watching a battery of 105mm
Howitzers during a fire mission. They were about 100 yards away and
firing right over a group of huge boulders that had a bunker sitting on
top which was in a perfect spot to watch the perimeter. As they
fired again, an unexpected flash and boom split the night, and a billowing
mushroom of smoke and dust shot from the bunker on the rocks.
Somehow a round had been fired point blank into the bunker from one of the
cannons. We didn't know whether anyone was in the bunker or not
until a minute later when the most agonized, piercing, terrified scream
I'd ever heard cut through the dead silence that followed the explosion.
At least one
man, no doubt badly wounded, was buried in the collapsed bunker. For
a while there was horrifying silence, then another awful, long, anguished
scream. Then silence. Then another scream, then whimpering.
This went on for what seemed like a couple of hours, although I doubt it
was actually that long, with the sounds slowly growing weaker until they
either got him out, or he passed out, or died. We never knew which
it was.
We'd just crawled into our cots after another exhausting day of digging
holes and filling sandbags (we usually called them mudbags for good
reason) when a series of jarring explosions put us on our feet grabbing
for boots, rifles, ammo, and set us running from our tents to the bunkers.
I'd only been in country for a short while and other than a few incoming
mortar rounds, nothing much had happened in that time. As I ran out
of the tent more explosions went off, and then I saw something that still
sends chills up my spine. The bunker out on the perimeter in front
of me, full of guys in my company, was exploding with huge sprays of
sparkling fire jetting from the door and windows, and everyone was running
for cover in total confusion. We grouped up and formed a secondary
perimeter behind any cover we could find, but the attack was over as
quickly as it had begun and then the cleaning up began. Luckily I
didn't have to pull the dead and wounded out of the bunkers, but was in
one of them moments later to replace the guys they had hauled out. The
dirt floors of the bunkers had been drenched in blood and it created
patches of gooey mud with a chilling odor. The sandbags and wooden
bracing had been blown apart, and my fear was more that it would all
collapse and bury us than that the VC would attack again. But the
rest of the night while very scary, was uneventful.
We saw what had happened the next day. The VC had crawled across
rice paddies in front of us, crept in through concertina wire, trip
flares, and claymore mines, jacked apart some metal bars covering a
drainpipe, using the pipe to crawl under a dirt road, and crawled up and
down a weed filled ditch behind seven or eight bunkers full of wide awake
men on a moonlit night. They then simultaneously began throwing
three and four satchel charges into each bunker and as the charges
exploded made a quick and clean escape. But that wasn't the end of
it. After a couple of days in the high heat and humidity, the blood
saturated dirt began to rot. For the next couple of months while we
were in the area we had to sit in those damaged bunkers at night
surrounded by the overpowering stench of rot and death. Several
times as we were heading to the perimeter to pull guard duty we were told
that intelligence had been received that we should expect a massive
offensive with the possibility of being overrun by a "human wave"
attack. That didn’t happen or I wouldn’t be writing this. But
add up the horror of that smell with the fear of the attack and you have
nights guaranteed to last your nerves the rest of your life whether
anything happened or not.
I slammed the shift into a higher gear, bouncing and laughing with my
"shotgun" rider and flying down the road toward somewhere. It didn't
really matter where, we just hoped we could find some cold beer and a safe
place to sleep. As we barreled through villages we could tell how
the people there felt about things. If they smiled and waved they
were friendlies. If they frowned and threw rocks they were VC, or VC
sympathizers. Hopefully all we would get was a dent or two from
rocks. It could always be worse.
We usually drove in convoys. Long lines of trucks sometimes joined
by tanks or armored personnel carriers for protection. Every so
often a helicopter gunship would scream low overhead with a deafening roar
as it patrolled the roads, guarding the convoys and looking for a little
something to do. Like unleashing the unbelievable firepower they
carried in the form of rockets, grenade launchers, and most impressive to
me, miniguns, which were super machine guns with firing rates so high that
when they went off all you saw was unbroken red lines of tracers and all
you heard was a continuous burp so loud your ears would ring for quite
awhile if they were close enough. At the other end of all that was
hell on earth. Hauling ass down a road in a truck with an M16 at
your side and gunships and tanks around, or sitting in a bunker surrounded
by a considerable selection of deadly weapons could make you feel powerful
and invincible at times. That was a very welcome fantasy. Most
of the time I had the much more realistic and stressful awareness that I
was in a very dangerous place, and if it was my turn to get it, no
attitude or weapon in the world would save me. But the attitude was
also valuable. We had to try to convince ourselves that we were
dangerous too, and anyone with a gun really can be. Sometimes
feeling that way was the only way people stayed sane, but it's an
exhausting way to live.
The bunker was ready for the night. The machine gun, claymore
mines, grenade launcher, hand grenades, ammo and flares were all laid out
and ready to go. The four of us were sitting back in the relative
coolness of the early evening, watchful, but just talking and relaxing
after a long hard day. Our shifts of staying awake all through the
night on guard would start soon enough. This was the best time of
the day. I felt lazy and comfortable just talking with friends.
Then one of them got an idea. "Lets shoot a few flares into the
village. That'll wake 'em up!" I was always uncomfortable
around that sort of thing, but what the hell, we shot them at each other
now and then as a sort of sick joke. Why should the villagers be
exempt? The instigator cut off the little parachute attached to the flare
so that it would really fly, and smacked the cap to launch it toward the
houses a few hundred yards away. Much to our surprise, he actually
hit a house, and in no time at all quite a little fire was in progress on
the roof. A crowd of villagers quickly gathered, running and yelling
and trying to put out the fire. I felt kind of guilty, but couldn't
help but laugh a little as my buddy did a little victory dance and whooped
it up. I don't know when it all really started, but what had begun
as a little joke soon became something else.
We were inside a bunker which is a tiny building built of sandbags, with
its confinement able to amplify gunfire into hammering explosions inside
that could actually be felt as concussions in your body. What had
been a relaxing, friendly evening abruptly turned into a horrifying
nightmare as without warning the machine gun went off, quickly followed by
an M16 on full auto, and the hollow "thunk" of the grenade launcher, all
accompanied by bright flashes and unbelievable noise. While I had been
sitting by the back door, my buddies had begun a killing frenzy up front,
and as I looked up I saw a vision straight out of Hell. As I write
this it seems almost like a joke to try to describe those emotions and
perceptions with words. That's something that could never be done.
As I realized what I was seeing, I remember bringing up my rifle with a
raging elation, and a desire to join in and KILL THE DIRTY BASTARDS!
As quickly as the feeling came it disappeared, thank God, before I pulled
the trigger. And I have thanked God thousands of times since that
night. The rage was replaced with a terrified, paralyzing
fascination while tracers ripped into the crowd, grenades exploded around
them, and horrible shrieks, screams, and cries of agony from the wounded
and dying men, women, and oh my God, children bored into my brain and
scorched out gaping wounds which will never, ever, ever be gone from my
memory.
All of a sudden the firing stopped with a shocking silence. And
then even with gunfire deadened ears, the sounds of wounded and dying
human beings cut through the night air in a crystal clear, sickening wail.
I just stood there in a stupor unable to move or think a coherent thought
for what seemed like a long time. What happened the rest of that
night is gone from my memory. Thank you God.
The story was told of VC being shot at, and the casualties were blamed
on the village being too close to our perimeter bunkers. The story
worked just fine for the record. But we knew. And so did they.
The next day the village showed up in all its funerary finery. Led
by the elders, the people held a procession by the bunker that had, in
just a few sickening moments, destroyed so many people. So many
precious, irreplaceable lives and stories. They were dressed in
beautiful, richly colored silks that flowed around them in the breeze.
They carried many festive, brightly colored caskets on their shoulders.
Red, gold, blue, green, yellow. The whole thing was unreal in its
color, beauty, and dignity. The bright sunlight shone down on this
dream and made me wonder if it was all real.
And then I noticed how small some of the caskets were. They were
too small for a real person. Why was that? Oh! They
weren't too small! They were for the children! I remember
feeling rather clever that I'd figured it out. So very clever, until
my mind couldn't bullshit me any more. Until the whole reality hit
me. Then, even though I hadn't done anything, the knowledge of what
I'd seen, and of how close I'd come to being a monster out of my
nightmares kicked me into a place I wouldn't be able to leave for a long,
long time. Although not the only reason for the self destruction to
follow, when the walls finally did begin to crumble so many years later,
the process came close to killing me as it has so many others with the
self medication of alcohol and drugs. When I see scenes on
television of people in pain from war or anything else, it's not just
pictures for me.
The people in that village were not saints. Some that died may
have even been the enemy. But all of them had been living human
beings. And now they were dead and gone forever. Just like the
thousands of young, bright, hopeful Americans and others who made the one
way trip to their doom. All I know is that from that night on my
life was never the same. One of the lessons I learned then is that
we may feel that life is
precious, but we are all capable of terrible evil if the time is right.
And that until (God forbid) the time it happens, most of us are ignorant
of it, and would deny it to the grave. Which is probably just as
well. Knowledge like that can be a very heavy burden. Too
heavy for the
many who give mute testimony by their choice to be absent from this world.
I sat on a sandbag with a cooling monsoon breeze flowing by and the
fresh smell of growing things perfuming the air. Huge, white,
billowing rain clouds drifted overhead with wide patches of pure blue sky
standing out between them. The village looked like a tropical island
in the rice paddies, with little toy palm frond houses and palm trees
everywhere. It was so beautiful and alive I wanted to cry with
happiness. Villagers walked on the dikes between rice paddies so green
that emeralds look pale in comparison. They talked and laughed among
themselves and I found myself wanting to join them. What a wonderful
place to be, and a beautiful day to be alive. Then I got up, lifting
my rifle, turned around and headed back to the war.
As the truck dropped the six of us off alone on the side of the mountain
near Kontum, I couldn't help but wonder at the insanity that had put us
there. A new firebase would be built here and we had been
"volunteered" to start cutting it out of the jungle with axes and
machetes. Eventually the engineers were brought in with heavy
equipment to really do the job, as there was no way that the amount of
growth that needed to be cleared away could possibly be done by sixty, let
alone six men. As the years have gone by, many mysteries about the
happenings in Vietnam have cleared up for me, but why our lives were
risked out there remains a puzzle.
We decided to check out the trails close by to try to put a little
insurance on our safety while working. None of us were used to any
sort of recon patrol, so we were pretty nervous. It was a good thing
we were walking slowly, because a little way down a trail I suddenly felt
my boot snag a tripwire, and I froze, gritting my teeth, expecting to be
blown up by my blunder. Nothing happened. Afraid to even talk
or move, I quietly called to the guy in front of me to wait up. He
turned, puzzled, and stopped the others. I said "I'm hooked on a
trip wire. Try to find out what this damn thing is!" At that
point their eyes got wide, and they all began backing away from me down
the trail. When I realized what they were doing, I as carefully as
possible brought up my rifle and said "You better get back here and help
me quick!" I was too scared to be really angry, and doubt that I'd
have shot anybody, but thank God they didn't know that. Itchy sweat
was pouring down my whole body in that miserable, scorching
humidity, and my muscles were shaking and about to cramp up by the time
they finally found the ends of that wire. When a voice said "No
sweat, it's only a trip flare!" I almost collapsed, puked, and cried
all at once. But of course I only said something like "You assholes
better not punk out on me again like that!" or some such swaggering
bullshit. It was a very good lesson though. You never know
what people will really do until the pressure is on. And that
changes from day to day. It was that way for them, and it's that way
for me too. It seems that Vietnam veterans are all supposed to be
brave, dangerous, trained killers, primed and ready to show the world that
they're not to be messed with. I'm sure that some came back just
like that. But training in itself doesn't make you brave, dangerous,
or a killer. I, for one, went to Vietnam not feeling particularly
"brave", and I surely came home with many more fears than I left with.
And I learned that being able to kill someone doesn't necessarily have
anything to do with courage. If you take the goodness and love out
of courage, what remains is merely insanity. Insanity is nothing to
be proud of. I only wish more people knew that.
Garbage detail again. Damn. Oh well, better that than
burning shit. Burning shit was much worse. Our latrines were
outhouses with the bottom half of an oil drum used in place of a hole in
the ground. Disgust and disease prevention demanded that we pull the
drums out, pour diesel fuel into the mess inside, light it up and stand
there stirring it up occasionally to make sure it all burned away.
Lots of fun and fragrant too. Like I said, garbage beat shit anyday.
We would load up four or five large metal trash cans brimming with
rotting garbage and trash and heavy enough to need three men to
comfortably lift one high enough to slide into the bed of a truck.
Then we'd drive out of the firebase about a mile to the dump area where a
crew of Vietnamese would be kind enough to unload it for us and put the
empty cans back in the truck. Of course they did get paid.
Their pay was that they got to eat that slimy, stinking, rotting garbage,
swarming flies and all. And that they did, handful over skeletal
handful in a horrible, frantic, disgusting way. These people were
starving to death. We'd bring a little food along to help them, but
it didn't make much difference. There were just too many of them.
As I'd stand there watching all this with a sickened fascination I'd
wonder how they could live like that. They were the homeless in a
place where "homeless" was a deadly serious thing. I came to the
awareness that the reason I was in the truck with a full belly and a place
to sleep, and they were just feet away actually dying of hunger with no
place to go, had nothing to do with deserving anything. It was fate.
Or God's will. Or luck. Whatever you called it, it had little
to do with "fair". There are always those wanting something for
nothing, or feeling that the world owes them something. I'm not
speaking of them, and I certainly don't have all the answers. But
years later when I came close to taking our version of homelessness
as my only option to deal with a life I'd turned into a nightmare, I felt
those feelings of frustration with mankind's selfishness even more.
Anyone can end up there. But most of us have to end up there
ourselves, or come very close to it, in order to see that truth in our
hearts. Maybe someday we'll evolve far enough to feel enough
compassion to actually do something about the unnecessary suffering of a
large part of humanity without having to
suffer ourselves to do it. But that isn't how it is now. And
although I have much more faith in our future now than I once did, it just
isn't going to change anytime soon.
I pulled the truck up next to a bunker out on the perimeter. It
was an unusual vehicle. It was a 3/4 ton truck with armor plate
welded to the front of the bed rising above the cab. A machine gun
mount was placed in the middle allowing the gun to fire over the top of
the cab. I had been ordered to take the truck to the bunker line to
add the firepower of the machine gun to the already formidable line of
weapons facing the rice paddies and cane fields outside the wire. On
hindsight this wasn't a very good idea. While far from impregnable,
a bunker is a very hard structure to destroy and can be rebuilt quickly
and cheaply. A truck on the other hand is a relatively valuable,
easy to destroy, and
very tempting target.
I got out and hopped up into the bed to get things ready for the night.
Since I had to pull guard duty anyway, the thought of spending the night
in a nice, dry, relatively clean truck sounded much better than the usual
damp, dirty, rat infested bunker. I loaded a belt of ammunition and
settled back to begin another long, tense night.
The gun mount had a spotlight on both sides of the gun so you could see
what you were shooting at in the dark. This was undoubtedly designed
by someone who had never thought the situation through. I had no
intention of ever using them to aim, as doing so would be about the same
as drawing a bull's eye on your nose and shining a light on your face.
But the lights were good for surveillance. I would duck below the
armor plate, flip on the lights and look through a small hole drilled in
the plate while swinging the gun back and forth to illuminate the
landscape.
The night was very dark. I had just flipped on the lights and
started moving the gun, when right in front of me almost to the concertina
wire a VC sapper jumped up and started running. I was startled for a
second, but yanked the charging handle, swung the gun around on him, and
totally forgetting what an easy target I made, started shooting. As
the tracers caught up to him, he dove below one of the dikes of a paddy.
By this time someone had popped a hand flare, and the landscape was bathed
in the eerie Halloween glow of its flame. The only sound was the
hissing of the flare drifting down from far above on its little parachute.
Suddenly the man jumped up a short distance from where he had disappeared
and began zig-zagging away across the landscape. I started firing,
following him with tracers, but every time the rounds caught up to him he
would dive and disappear again. It was impossible to gauge the
location and direction of his next sprint. This went on for quite a
few minutes until he finally made it into the cover of a cane field and
was gone for good. If I'd hit him he never showed it. I yelled
out at the night "Motherfucker, you DESERVE to get away!" and really meant
it. I was laughing with the stress and adrenaline rush, but was
absolutely furious at myself for missing him. I was a pretty good
shot and I wanted that bastard DEAD! He had been only seconds away from
lobbing a satchel charge or two into my truck, and that could have very
easily ended in disaster for me. That, plus the sick and all too
common conviction men are subliminally taught from boyhood, that killing a
man would make me more of one, only added to the anger. Very quickly
those feelings were tempered with the awareness that I had just witnessed
the bravest thing I had ever seen. That guy had single-handedly
crept up to a perimeter of barbed wire, claymore mines and trip flares,
backed by bunkers filled with soldiers equipped with quite an array of
deadly weapons, and all for the purpose of destroying one lousy
truck. Or he had possibly not been alone, but had taken the heat on
himself to save his friends. Either way it was amazing. I
think we were all stunned by the display of courage and skill we had just
seen. It had been something totally outside my previous experience.
Then as I began to realize how close I had skirted death, the raw reality
of our situation set in once again. It was impossible for me to stay
aware of how dangerous Vietnam was on a continuous basis and still
maintain the ability to function. But every so often a reminder
would jolt me back into the paralyzing fear, and once again I'd just have
to hang on and wait until it slowly drifted away.
The anger that I'd felt on failing to kill that man, along with many
other terrible memories ate at me for years. But slowly as time
passed,
my mind began to heal, and I found my heart opening to a more loving,
kind, and spiritual way of life. The anger turned to acceptance, and
then one fine day to gratitude. I am so very glad I don't have the
death
of another human being on my conscience. He was an enemy soldier
fully
intending to kill me if he could, and if I had killed him I'm sure I
could accept it as just another part of my life and a necessary action at
the time. But on those nowadays rare nights when I wake up feeling
lost, alone, and afraid, with Vietnam all around me, the relief of not
having killed him helps me find my way back to my warm, safe bed a lot
sooner than those old feelings used to. Love and kindness are such
beautiful, healing things.
"Harris" was a friend of mine. He was a tall, lanky, soft spoken
black man with an easy smile. A gentle man with a kind disposition
and a
wry sense of humor. Sometimes we'd pull guard together and talk
quietly
in the eerie silence of the bunkers at night. Solving the troubles
of
mankind, or talking about what we were going to do when we got back to
"The World" helped ease the fear and tension of our situation and
also
helped keep us from falling asleep. Harris somehow transmitted
confidence to me just by being around. He was one of those people it
was hard
to imagine God allowing anything bad to happen to, and being around him
just felt somehow "safer".
He was in one of our bunkers that VC sappers blew up one night. He
was also one of the few wounded "lightly" enough to come back to the
company out of all the guys that had been in those bunkers. I never
saw
most of those guys again, but old Harris came walking back one day and I
was so very glad to see him. But something was wrong. He was
distant
and cold. It was like he didn't even know me. He was scary and
alien,
and from then on I kept my distance. It hurt, but he had been
through
an experience I hadn't, and looking at him I knew that it must have
been much stranger and more horrible than I could imagine.
Months later, a few of us had been drinking beer and celebrating our
soon to be homecoming. We were staying in a large, relatively safe
basecamp at Pleiku in a sandbagged shack my company used as a transit
barracks. We were processing out to go home! Home! We
couldn't believe it
(we had yet to experience the "Welcome Home" of the 1960's for Vietnam
Vets). The other guys had gone somewhere, and as I was sitting alone
reveling in the awesome feeling that it was almost over, who should walk
in but Harris! It was great to see him before I left, and I greeted
him with a smile and feeling of love in my heart. He looked at me with a funny smile, then came over and sat next to me
on the bunk. He stared at me for a minute and then said "I knooow
who
you are! I knooow about your kind!" in an eerie, wavering voice.
He
sounded so much like an actor in a scary movie I thought he was kidding
and waited for the punchline. But what happened next was so quick
and
surprising, I didn't realize what had occurred until it was over. I
suddenly found myself with a choking arm around my neck, and a knee in my
back with the pressure steadily increasing to the level of very serious
pain. Harris began to laugh. But the sound he made was like a
horrifying caricature of someone insane. It dawned on me then that
this was
no joke. He wasn't kidding. He was really, truly out of it,
and I
might be in terrible trouble. I still couldn't believe it.
Then he said
"I'm going to kill you now! I'm going to snap your spine! I
know who
you really are!" and that's when the terror kicked in. He began to slowly push in with his knee while choking me tighter, and the pain
became unbelievable. The shock of what was happening was almost
worse
than the pain. All of a sudden the pressure was released, and I
dropped to the floor. My buddies had returned, and seeing what was
happening
had crept up behind Harris and yanked him off of me. He didn't even
fight or say anything, just sat on the bunk and stared at me looking
totally vacant and emotionless. He was the most frightening person
I've
ever seen, then or since. I don't know what happened to him. I don't know what weird place
his
mind went after the attack that awful night. And I never will know.
It's just one of those things I've had to learn to accept. But
something I find much harder to accept is that Harris wasn't alone.
What
happened to his mind happened to many, many more than just him. Who
knows
how many? And who knows what kind of torturous horrors they've lived
with since, and may live with until the day they die? Those thoughts
I
sometimes find very hard to accept. But as with so many things, I'm
powerless over it all. I just try to be thankful to God for the life
he's
given me. Thankful that I wasn't in that bunker with him. It
was very
close.
Harris was a kind and loving man. I like to think he found his way
back. He was my friend, and I miss him.
Dust. It was everywhere and in everything. In our eyes,
mouths,
hair, clothes, food, and water. It was from the medevac helicopters.
As
the Tet offensive raged on, the choppers just kept coming in one right
after the other, many times all day long, bringing in the dead and
wounded from everywhere. Sometimes three or four helicopters would
be
waiting their turn to land so they could go back and tempt fate again to
go
get more. They were a constant reminder of what could happen to any
of
us at any time. There had always been medevacs coming in, but never
anything like this. It never stopped. Whether we were building
bunkers,
eating chow, or trying to catch a little sleep, the unending river of
pain, agony, and death kept right on coming. The wounded were
quickly
helped or carried off the choppers in their bloody bandages and shredded
fatigues, some quiet, some moaning, some screaming, most just curled up
and lost in an agony of pain and morphine. So many of them handicapped and disfigured for the rest of their lives. Then there was
the neverending train of bodybags. Bags and bags full of dead men,
sometimes only parts of dead men. Hauled off the choppers, dragged
out of
the way, and laid in a row at first, then stacked as room ran out. Tents with their sides rolled up with surgery tables running down
their centers were at the focus of all this. Medics were in constant
motion from chopper to table and back again as the worst cases that had a
chance, but probably wouldn't make it to a real hospital, were cut and
drained and patched and sewn in a kind of horrible, extremely bloody
ballet. This went on for days, and days, and days. Be all you
can be.
Numbing exhaustion. Aching back, arms, legs, and mind.
Suffocating
tropical heat draining every ounce of motivation. Eye stinging sweat
starting at my head, running down my body, and ending up in my
burning,
soggy boots making the heat rashes sting and burn. It's too humid
for
sweat to evaporate and cool like it should. How much longer can this
miserable day last? Hours later these thoughts must have rolled
through
my mind a hundred times. Digging holes, filling sandbags, stacking
them into bunker walls, digging, filling, stacking, digging, filling,
stacking. And the same tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
Flies... they swarmed through the air by the millions, their size
halfway between a housefly and a gnat, their high pitched, infuriating
bzzzzzz fraying everyone’s nerves and tempers to the edge as they crawled
all
over our exposed skin, into our eyes, noses, and ears, and tried to get
between our tightly closed lips. Our arms got so tired from swatting
we finally had to just let them crawl. We had been in Kontum for
weeks
now and the heat, humidity, dust and flies made us all feel somewhat
insane. But we did have lots of company there. I met them when
I first
arrived and began digging a trench for our fuel cans. We put the
cans
in the ground to protect us from a self-made napalm attack that would
have resulted from the cans being hit by one of the incoming mortar
rounds that peppered the area every so often at night. The idea was
that
if hit, the blast and fireball would blow up, not sideways into people
and materials. Fortunately they were never hit so we didn’t have to find out how well the theory stood up to reality. Anyway, as I
began digging, the sickly sweet and familiar stench of death wafted up
from the hole. The shovel struck some roots which were somehow
covered
in cloth. As I tried to cut through the stubborn obstructions, I
suddenly saw hair, and became aware that what I thought were roots were
actually bones and clothing. The hole I’d dug was a grave. I
began
digging around the edges trying to find a clear area, but soon realized I
was
standing in the middle of a mass grave which had resulted from the
carnage of a battle fought during the Tet Offensive a few months earlier.
I got out and tried again nearby with the same result. I finally
found
an unoccupied patch and finished the now grisly job.It turned out that the whole area was a site of several mass graves,
exactly how many we never knew. The bodies tended to rise to the
surface in the monsoon rains, and we were made aware of their presence
again
and again. A dog chewing on a rotted hand, a thighbone strung on the
mess tent sign by a prankster attempting to make light of it and
preserve his sanity, a skull unearthed and grinning on the trail to the
perimeter, and of course the flies… always the flies… the ceaselessly
swarming flies of a corrupted graveyard.
Nights on the bunkers when I was pulling my shift as the only one
awake, was a surreal, lonely, and sometimes terrifying experience.
When
there was a break in the clouds and enough of a moon to see, the
vegetation would become sinister, seemingly in motion, with strange sounds
drifting through the dank, humid darkness. Along with the ever
present
fear of a real attack would come the eerie feeling that if I were to turn
around, my frightened gaze would be met by the leering visage of a
rotting skull and skeletal body clothed in the tattered fatigues of one of
the residents upon whose grounds we were trespassing. It was strange
times. That kind of environment breeds disease, and I began feeling weak and
sick one day. A concerned friend said I actually looked yellow and
mentioned jaundice, so I went to see the medics and collapsed onto a cot
in the sweltering heat of the hospital tent. I was in and out of it
for
about a week, losing quite a few pounds in the process. One night
the
survivors of a very bad ambush were helicoptered in and I was laid on
the dirt floor to make room for the wounded. I remember drifting in
and
out of an agonizing world of screaming and crying men and shouts of
rushing medics, while the roar of the choppers and shuddering of the tent
in the dusty wind from the blades created a memory of being locked into
a never-ending nightmare that didn’t even seem real the next day. But
it was. I was very glad when I began feeling better and could
finally
leave that place. One day we heard a burst of automatic fire coming from inside the
perimeter. We found out that a newly arrived replacement had fired a
burst
from an M16 into his foot. He was flown back out before any of us
had
even met him. Maybe he was the smartest of us all.
His chiseled features and steely gaze were matched by his powerful
physique. His eyes appeared to miss nothing as they traversed the
terrain. The impression conveyed was one of immense strength and
competence.
He was a Westpoint graduate, a Captain in the United States Army, and
he also happened to be an idiot. A very dangerous idiot.He had been my company commander and in Vietnam for a very short time.
At present my company was moving from the outskirts of a town named
Kontum, located on a plateau in the Central Highlands, to a new firebase
on the side of the mountains about eight miles away. Most of the
move
had been accomplished, but some assorted sheet metal and other items of
possible use to the VC was still laying around and had to be moved up
the mountain to our new area. Several of us had been chosen to drive
our trucks back to the old area and do the job. There was quite a bit of junk to load, and by late afternoon it was
obvious to us that we would have to finish the job the next day if we
were to make it back to the firebase with some daylight to spare.
This
was very important because Charlie owned the night, and to be on the road
after dark was an open invitation to be ambushed and killed.For some reason the Captain had chosen to oversee this job in person,
and I mentioned to him that it was getting late, and we'd better be
heading out soon. The infantry had dug in to secure the area, and
there
was no need to worry about the items that would be left. He told me
it
was none of my concern, and to get back to work. As the sun dropped
lower, I figured he planned on staying the night and started constructing
a ring of old sandbags to bed down in for the evening. He noticed
this, and came over saying "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" I said "I'm building my bed for the night." He replied "Where did
you
get the idea we were staying the night? As soon as these trucks are
loaded, we're heading back up the mountain!" I couldn't believe it.
He
was serious! I tried to appeal to his sense of efficiency by
suggesting that if I stayed until morning I could police the area and have
some
good light to make sure we'd gotten everything. He told me to shut up and get my ass in gear if I didn't want to end up in LBJ for
refusing an order (LBJ stood for Long Binh Jail, a prison near Saigon
where your time toward the mandatory year in Vietnam was suspended until
your sentence was completed. This threat was fine motivation).
That was
when I realized what he was up to. He was out to live up to his
fantasy of what a brave soldier did in war, and in his own mind he was
going
to be the epitome of that soldier. He'd be damned if he was going to
let a few little slanty eyed gooks scare him. And what better way to
show it than to drive alone through the dangerous night with no more
protection than a tough expression, his superior intellect, and a 45
automatic. Now this was what it was all about for a real soldier!
He wasn't
a racist, he felt that he was immensely superior to everyone. I
can't
describe the chill that went through me at the realization of this
insanity. He was enjoying my obvious fear, and so chose me to join him in his juvenile and irresponsible folly in order to savor it all
the more. I'm sure that in his twisted mind, my fear proved his
bravery.
He made sure that the other trucks were loaded and left with just
enough time to spare to make it back before dark while holding me back to
watch me watching the sun go down. As the sun dropped below the horizon he got into his jeep and said
"Follow me!" in a strong and unwavering voice of command. We pulled
out
toward the road very slowly, and continued at probably 15 mph toward the
town. I wondered what he was up to, but figured he'd speed it up
once
we got onto the road so we could get back to the relative safety of the
firebase as soon as possible. It didn't happen. By now we'd
reached
the center of the pitch black town, and he was still driving at the same
speed. Several bursts of automatic rifle fire suddenly erupted a
short
distance away to my left, and that was the end of this bullshit for me.
I sped up and got right on his ass trying to get him to move faster.
He wouldn't. Okee doke, I figured. Better to face his wrath
later than
to continue to tempt fate now. I ran him off the side of the road,
hit
the throttle, and began one of the most nerve wracking rides of my
life. I drove like a bat out of hell with my lights off when the road was relatively straight, but had to use them now and then to
see when it got curvy in places. With all the racket that poor truck
was making, I don't know how much good my blackout would have done if
someone had actually been waiting around to waste any moron stupid enough
to be out at night, but it gave me a small sense of security anyway.
As I drove, the road and vegetation formed a surreal nightmare of
flowing, creeping shadows, and every one of them seemed to make my hair
stand
on end. There was a Green Beret firebase between me and home, and I was
hoping they might let me stay the night and save me the drive into the
mountains until daylight. The base was constructed in a circle, and
the road went in one side of it and out the other. During the day,
the
gates were guarded, but open. Now they were closed tight and I was
met
by chain link fence, concertina wire, claymore mines, and bunkers
bristling with barrels and full of Montagnard (the mountain people of Vietnam) troops. A Montagnard soldier appeared and began waving me
off and yelling at me in what I suppose was his language for "Get the
fuck out of here you stupid GI!". I began yelling back that I
couldn't
turn around, and needed to be let through the gates to get back to my
base. A green beret sergeant walked up and yelled at me to get the
hell
out of there, he couldn't let me through. I said "Fine, lock me up
for
the night if you want to, just let me in until morning and I'll be out
of your hair". After a few minutes of haggling, he said "Let the
sonovabitch through, but make it quick!". I pulled through the base
and
continued on my way. Finally I reached my firebase but still had to drive several hundred
feet by our perimeter bunkers full of what I was hoping weren't trigger
happy buddies. I reached the way in, and the wire was pulled aside
for
me to get inside. I was greeted by "What in the hell is wrong with
you? You got a death wish or something?". I headed to my tent,
downed
about three warm beers, smoked a joint, and waited for my doom. After about a half hour, a guy came in looking wide eyed and scared.
He said "Flynn, the Captain wants to see you right now, and he looks
ready to kill you! You'd better get over there quick!". I
headed to the
command tent figuring that I'd be leaving in the morning for LBJ. I
was scared, but so enraged at what he had done to me that I really didn't
care. I ducked through the flap and entered his lair. He was sitting behind his desk talking to the first sergeant, and made
a point of ignoring me for a minute or two. Then he slowly turned a
seething gaze on me and just stared awhile, absolutely furious, but also
trying to put the fear of God into me. It was somewhat successful,
but
I'm sure my anger was at least equal to his, so it came far from
achieving the desired effect. He began a tirade about cowardice,
insubordination, patriotism, and anything else that came to mind that
lasted long
enough to make me nauseous (I suppose the warm beer and weed didn't
help). He then grabbed my rifle, inspected it, said it was filthy,
and
told me to get my ass out of his sight, clean it spotlessly, and be back
in front of him damn quick. I cleaned my rifle and returned, having
downed another beer or two in the process. He grabbed the rifle
again,
didn't even really look at it, and told me it was still filthy and to
clean it again. This process went on for four or five times until I had become so enraged with what had happened to me, and fed up with
the childish tantrum he was throwing, that when he told me to go clean
it again I said "No sir, it's clean." His eyebrows rose in an
incredulous face, and he said "WHAT DID YOU SAY, MISTER???". I
repeated "No
sir." He then began blasting me with threats ranging from bodily
harm to
jail, and finally wound down, telling me again to go clean my rifle.
I
said "No sir." and he just sat there looking amazed. After a moment
he
said "Are you DRUNK?". I said "Yes sir, I imagine I am." He
then said
"Get out of my sight!", and that was the last I ever heard of what had
happened. Sometimes in quiet moments I think of what happened that night.
And
then visions of all the dead, wounded, and mutilated bodies of the
casualties of every war ever fought drift through my head. Visions
of human
beings and the unique mosaics that made up their lives. All of the
precious and lost memories of good times, loved ones, and dreams of the
future that existed inside every individual who was ever destroyed by
war. I think of how much of that destruction was unnecessarily
caused by
people like the Captain. People guided by childish, self centered
egos, wanting to be some kind of hero to themselves and the world, almost
always at the expense of others. And when I think of that, I feel
very
sad.
"Ouch, damn it!" I thought, as the truck hit another deep pothole.
Years of removing VC mines and filling the holes of the ones that worked
had made the dirt roads bumpy beyond belief. My back and arms are
killing me and the choking dust has caked around the goggles on my face
and
feels gritty and pasty in my mouth. I can't take one more bounce
(but
of course I'll take that and more because there's no way out). The
roar and rattle and banging of my truck has long since numbed my ears to
the outlandish racket around me. Driving long enough puts me into a
kind of nightmarish trance. Common sense tells me to keep an eye on
my
surroundings and watch for patches of dirt which could be mines, but it's
getting harder to do anything but hang on to the wheel and keep the
damn truck on the road. The sides of the road are usually steep dirt
walls dropping off into rice paddies and cane fields, so losing it for a
second or two can spell real disaster, especially when the roads are slick with mud or a convoy coming the other way forces us over to
the edge of the dropoff. Pulling over doesn't exist, and you don't
"stop" in the middle of a fast moving convoy with trucks in front and rear
and potential ambushes always possible. My God, how many more months
will I be here? Will it ever end? I guess I'd better watch
what I wish
for.
"LET'S MOVE 'EM OUT!" was loudly relayed down the long line of trucks
and tanks ready to begin the convoy from our base at LZ Baldy to
firebase Ross, a little south of Da Nang. It was during the Tet
offensive
in February 1968. The Tet offensive was a very bad time for everyone
in
Vietnam. The communist forces launched the biggest offensive of the
war and the whole country fell into total chaos for about a month.
The
effect on my unit was mainly mortar and rocket attacks many times a
night, very hazardous convoy duty to supply a tiny firebase nearby, and
the
most ominous event to us, the halting of mail delivery for several
weeks. The lack of mail in itself was a hardship, but for
circumstances to
be bad enough to halt something with as high a priority as mail, we
knew that something horribly bad had to be happening everywhere. I'm
certain that the folks back in "The World", as we called home, had a much
better picture of the situation through the news than we who were actually there did. In movies and books, soldiers always seem to
have a handle on the situation. In real life, I remember not knowing
what
was happening from day to day, and waking up totally disoriented in
pitch blackness to the screaming of "INCOMING!" while trying to figure out
where I was and where to go as I grabbed for my rifle and bandoleers of
ammo. Many times we slept with our boots on for several days, as to
keep trying to find them and put them on every time a mortar attack came
in was just too time consuming and exhausting. I got to the point
where I'd just roll off my cot and huddle in the sandbagged corner of my
tent rather than run across an open area with mortar rounds exploding
here and there to find "safety" in a bunker. That didn't seem so
safe to
me. Not to mention the terrible feeling of claustrophobia I felt
when
packed into a tiny sandbagged space in pitch darkness with a bunch of
guys between me and the door who would pack in tighter and tighter each time the VC would walk the rounds in close. Anyway, as the
convoy moved out, the tension increased, and once again I'd find myself
thinking of how long it would be before I'd see home again if I ever did
at all. The fifteen mile or so round trip to Ross took from early morning to
late afternoon. Out front of the convoy was a jeep, and in front of
the
jeep were guys on foot with sharp eyes and metal detectors. By the
time we got to Ross they would have blown quite a few mines in place, and
filled part of the bed of a truck with mines that they'd dug up. The
landscape we drove through looked like the moon in places with the
hundreds of huge bomb craters saturating the area. Gunships
constantly flew
low and fast over us, startling, but reassuring us with their roaring
presence. As my truck was mostly filled with high explosive mortar
ammunition, grenades, and rifle and machine gun ammo, I knew that if I hit
a mine, there was a good chance it wouldn't hurt. Nothing would ever
hurt again. It was actually kind of comforting in a weird way.Once they found a mine out front of a little house next to the road.
Why anyone would be living in that nightmare place I couldn't imagine,
but there they were, right next to my truck, a family of several women
and children with one old man in their midst. A few of our guys were
questioning them about the mine, and apparently they didn't like what
they heard. They knocked the old man down and began beating him with
rifle butts and kicking him while the women and children screamed and
screamed with fear and anger, wanting to stop them but knowing they
couldn't. It was very vicious and thorough, and he looked dead or
close to it
by the time they finally stopped. Then they lit the house on fire
and
walked away. As we moved out I looked back in the mirror. The
family
was just huddled by the old man's body and crying as they watched their
home go up in flames. All that was left on our return trip was a
little blackened and charred area with nobody there at all.
I walked up and sat down beside him like I'd known him for years.
I
felt sure he wouldn't mind. We looked at each other for a while and
then sort of struck up a conversation. The reason I'd singled him
out
was because he scared me. For the past few days whenever I had to go
down to the bunker line at night, passing by him was a bit unnerving.
Maybe if we got to know each other a little better the fear would go away.
I hoped so, because I'd always been afraid of people like him even
though the fear seemed unfounded. Getting over those feelings would
be
well worth the effort. There were too many of his kind around to let
my
fear and prejudice rule me. As we spent a little time together, I began to feel empathy for him.
I knew that before my tour in Vietnam was over we might have a lot more
in common than we did now. But I hoped not. His life was a
story like
my own. He'd known happiness and sadness, love and anger, fear and
strength. He'd held a girl's hand at night and watched the moon and
stars
reflecting off the water, thinking of how beautiful life was going to
be from now on. Felt all the things we all feel. He'd marveled
at a
beautiful sunset, and laughed at a silly joke. We were from
different
countries, but he'd felt alot like me in many ways. As I sat there, his appearance began to be a bit of a burden. The
wispy hair, and whiteness of his face. The hollows where his eyes
had
been, and bits of leather still stuck to the bone. The time he'd
spent in
a muddy mass grave before one of my buddies tripped over his slightly
protruding skull and unearthed his rotted face hadn't done much for him.
Still, I was glad I'd taken the time to have an imaginary conversation
with him. He wasn't so scary any more. He was a person now.
Just
another guy like me who wanted to live his life the best he could.
That
was over for him now, but not for me. It made me want to do a little
better. Be a little nicer, maybe smile a little more. After
all, things
could always be worse.
YOU were in Vietnam? I didn't know you'd been to Vietnam.
You've
never mentioned it before. I guess it just never came up before.
It was pretty bad over there, huh?
It wasn't good, but it could have been a whole lot worse.
Were you at the front doing the actual fighting?
There really was no "front". I mostly drove a truck and filled
sandbags.
Oh, so you weren't in actual combat. That's good. The guys who
were
really in combat came back pretty screwed up. That kind of stuff can
really screw up your mind. You're lucky you got to drive a truck.
I've
got a friend who was up at the DMZ most of the time. He's really
messed up over all that shit. All of his friends got killed while he
was
there. He was the only one left out of all the guys he went over
there
with. He still gets pretty bad dreams about it, his buddies dying in
his arms and all, but he sure wasted a bunch of gooks to make up for it.
Made 'em pay for it real good. Those gooks were really mean, cruel
fuckers. You had to watch out for those sneaky bastards.
They'd cut some
guy's dicks off and stick them in their mouths while they were still
alive. I've seen alot of books and movies about it, and stuff like
that
happened all the time.
Yeah, a lot of bad things came out of the war. There was some pretty
good exaggeration about some of that stuff though. A lot of
cruelty
and horrible things definitely went on on both sides, but some of the
stories you hear weren't very typical of everyday reality. And
sometimes,
exaggerated or not, that's all you do hear because of a vet's
overwhelming desire to get things off his chest combined with the
knowledge that
so many people don't really want to hear what's important to him.
They
just want to feed their fantasies. It's a hard realization when you
find that the painful baring of your soul is really just cheap
entertainment. One of the reasons people don't talk about it much is
because
unless you babble stuff full of blood and guts, nobody seems to listen.
The important things, the things that tear you apart and really matter
to you, just aren't very interesting to most people. It's too
uncomfortable for them. As they say, the first casualty of war is
truth. And the truth fades as the "boring" things are left out.
Oh, I know some guys bullshit, but this guy I know doesn't lie. He
really had it rough there. I didn't mean your friend was a liar, I just meant that it's a good
idea to have an open mind, but take everything with a grain of salt.
And
to try to listen to the underlying messages; that war isn't romance,
glamour, and excitement, with music in the background and tough guys
saying tough and humorous things at just the right time. That love and
compassion for others is the true and final solution to every one of our
problems. The sad fact is that unless you've been there yourself,
it's
sort of hard to imagine what "tough" can be. If a story isn't pure,
distilled carnage, it sometimes doesn't make much of an impact on people
who haven't had a similar experience, and who have been conditioned all
their lives by books, television, and movies pushing different versions
of "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out".
I know what you mean. Did you see Platoon? Man, that showed
some of
the really gory action that happened to the guys over there! Most
Nam
movies are crap, but that one showed what it was really like. I've
read
a lot of stories about it, and Platoon really showed some truth. A
lot
of stuff you see is like the old John Wayne hero junk. John Wayne
was
a really good actor, but his movies were made a long time ago.
Nowadays movies show a lot more real stuff. The good ones do,
anyway. Well, I'm just glad to be home. And I'm glad your friend made it
home
too. Mostly I'm glad the war is pretty well over for most folks. What? Oh yeah. Me too. Be glad you weren't in combat.
You were
lucky. Alot of guys like my friend are still real screwed up!
Well, take
it easy.
Yeah, you too.
This was written quite awhile ago. Since then I have found that
most
of the time, the pain of Vietnam is, if not gone, at least tolerable.
Life today is good. A great part of that is due to a profound
spiritual change, but a considerable amount can be attributed to the
writing of
the above. I don't know how it works, but putting things down on
paper
has proven to be an amazingly therapeutic activity for me. If you,
like many of us, have memories that seem to eat away at all the good
things in your life and keep you from enjoying the blessings that you may
not even know you have, try writing about them. Then maybe you too
will
be able to finally seize your life back from the demons of the past and
strive to walk in awareness of the grace of God. |