Bloods

by Wallace Terry

  Anyway, the commendation read how I crawled 100 yards to attack three enemy scouts and killed them single-handedly. I joke about it, ’cause if I knew they was up there, I wouldn’t have went up there by myself. Naw, everybody was going, and I’d be in the rear, ’cause I didn’t walk point.

  When I got the second Bronze Star, it was almost similar. I took some guys out on a listening post. At that time, Charlie would throw rocks at listening posts to find out where your location is and make you open up. He would find your claymore mines, turn them around to face you, for you to blow your own self away. I told the men, “If y’all hear something, y’all wake me up.”

  It was getting close to day, and this guy say he heard somethin’. I said to myself I know what it was. It was a water buffalo. That’s what’s messing with the trip wires. But I decided to have some fun, play with the captain. I told them to radio back we got activity, they coming toward us. And I just said, “Shit, I’ma have me a mad minute.”

  I saw the buffalo. And I opened up the M-60. I sprayed the area, threw a couple of grenades, and I got a couple of NVAs. I didn’t know they were there either.

  Davis wasn’t scared even when he was hit. He would just go on encouragin’ you.

  I remember we was up in Chu Lai, going on an assault in this hot LZ. You got 30 choppers, and the first chopper got hit. It don’t turn around ’cause the other choppers waitin’ for you. We was in the first chopper. When he got to treetop level, the chopper gunner tell you hit it. If you not out, he’ll throw you out. We was jumping out, and Davis got shot in the tail. He never paid it any mind. He was bleeding bad. No question. He was hard.

  Another guy named Taylor got hit at the same time. Taylor cried like a baby. This black guy. Davis told him, “You cryin’ ’cause you gettin’ ready to die. You dying, and you know you dying. You might as well come on and take some of these gooks with us.”

  Taylor said, “I’m not gonna die.”

  He said, “Why you sittin’ there crying if you not gon’ die? You cryin’ cause you a big faggot, and you gettin’ ready to die.”

  And he put the spunk back in Taylor. Davis would intimidate you into not dying.

  So Taylor got to fightin’ until the medevac carried both of them back. Matter of fact, all of us went back. I got hit in the head. Five steps off the chopper. Trying to be cool, I had took my helmet off, put my soft cap on. It knocked me down. I saw this blood. It was burning. I said, “I’ll be damned.”

  The weird thing, after we always have a little jive assault, these majors and these idiots in the back would say they want a body count. Go back out there and find the bodies. After we found the body count, then we had to bury them. Geneva Convention says we have to bury ’em. And I said, “What the hell y’all talkin’ ’bout the Geneva Convention? We’re not in a war.”

  I remember February 20. Twentieth of February. We went to this village outside Duc Pho. Search and destroy. It was suppose to have been VC sympathizers. They sent fliers to the people telling them to get out. Anybody else there, you have to consider them as a VC.

  It was a little straw-hut village. Had a little church at the end with this big Buddha. We didn’t see anybody in the village. But I heard movement in the rear of this hut. I just opened up the machine gun. You ain’t wanna open the door, and then you get blown away. Or maybe they booby-trapped.

  Anyway, this little girl screamed. I went inside the door. I’d done already shot her, and she was on top of the old man. She was trying to shield the old man. He looked like he could have been about eighty years old. She was about seven. Both of them was dead. I killed an old man and a little girl in the hut by accident.

  I started feeling funny. I wanted to explain to someone. But everybody was there, justifying my actions, saying, “It ain’t your fault. They had no business there.” But I just—I ain’t wanna hear it. I wanted to go home then.

  It bothers me now. But so many things happened after that, you really couldn’t lay on one thing. You had to keep going.

  The flame throwers came in, and we burnt the hamlet. Burnt up everything. They had a lot of rice. We opened the bags, just throw it all over the street. Look for tunnels. Killing animals. Killing all the livestock. Guys would carry chemicals that they would put in the well. Poison the water so they couldn’t use it. So they wouldn’t come back to use it, right? And it was trifling.

  They killed some more people there. Maybe 12 or 14 more. Old people and little kids that wouldn’t leave. I guess their grandparents. See, people that were old in Vietnam couldn’t leave their village. It was like a ritual. They figured that this’ll pass. We’ll come and move on.

  Sometimes we went in a village, and we found a lot of weapons stashed, little tunnels. On the twentieth of February we found nothing.

  You know, it was a little boy used to hang around the base camp. Around Hill 54. Wasn’t no more than about eight years old. Spoke good English, a little French. Very sharp. His mother and father got killed by mortar attack on his village. I thought about that little girl. And I wanted to adopt him. A bunch of us wanted to. And we went out to the field, and then came back and he was gone.

  We went in town looking for him, and we see these ARVNs pull up. We thought they was chasing Viet Congs. So the lieutenant and these two sergeants opened fire on these three guys running. Find out they weren’t Viet Cong. They were draft dodgers. ARVNs would come to the city and snatch you if you eighteen, sixteen, fifteen, or however old you are. Put you in uniform. So a lots of mothers would hide their sons from the ARVNs. These guys looked like they wasn’t no more than about fifteen. They killed all three of them. And Davis went up to the lieutenant and said, “Man, you fucked up again. Y’all can’t do nothin’ right.”

  We never found that boy.

  Davis, this little guy. He was a private ’cause he kept gettin’ court-martialed. But he was the leader with the LURPs. We was best friends, but I felt a little threatened. ’Cause he would always argue about who killed the last Viet Cong. “You got the last one, this one—these two are mine. I’ma jump ’em.” Sometimes he would carry me.

  Our main function was to try to see can we find any type of enemy element. They gave us a position, a area, and tell us to go out there and do the recon. We alone—these six black guys—roamin’ miles from the base camp. We find them. We radio helicopter pick us up, take us to the rear. We go and bring the battalion out and wipe ’em out. You don’t fire your weapon. That’s the worse thing you do if you a LURP. Because if it’s a large unit and it’s just six of y’all, you fire your weapon and you by yourself. You try to kill ’em without firing your weapon. This is what they taught us in Nha Trang. Different ways of killing a person without using your weapon. Use your weapon, it give you away.

  I wasn’t suppose to carry a M-60 as a LURP. But I told them the hell with that. I’m carrying the firepower. Davis carried a shotgun. We would lay back, and then we’ll jump one or two. Bust them upside the head, take their weapons.

  Davis would do little crazy things. If they had gold in their mouth, he’d knock the gold out ’cause he saved gold. He saved a little collection of gold teeth. Maybe 50 or 60 in a little box. And he went and had about 100 pictures made of himself. And he used to leave one in the field. Where he got the gook.

  One day we saw two gooks no more than 50 yards away. They was rolling cigarettes. Eating. Davis said, “They mine. Y’all just stay here and watch.” He sneaked up on ’em real fast, and in one swing he had them. Hit one with the bayonet, hit the other one with the machete.

  Wherever he would see a gook, he would go after ’em. He was good.

  The second time I got wounded was with the LURPs. We got trapped. Near Duc Pho.

  We saw a couple of Viet Congs. We dropped our packs, and chased them. The terrain was so thick there that we lost them. It was jungle. It was the wait-a-minute vines that grab you, tangles you as you move in the jungle. Start gettin’ kind of dark, so we go on back to where we had dropped our packs.


  And that’s where they were.

  All of a sudden, something said boop. I said I hope this is a rock. It didn’t go off. Then three or four more hit. They were poppin’ grenades. About ten. One knocked me down. Then I just sprayed the area, and Davis start hittin’ with the shotgun. We called for the medevac, and they picked me up. We didn’t see if we killed anybody. Only three grenades exploded. The good thing about the Viet Congs was that a lot of their equipment didn’t go off.

  I told them to give me a local anesthesia: “I want to watch everything you do on my legs.” I don’t want them to amputate it. Gung ho shit. But I was okay, and they got the frags out.

  Once the NVA shot down a small observation plane, and we were looking for it. We saw these scouts for the NVA. One was a captain. The other was a sergeant. They were sharp. In the blue uniforms. They had the belt with the red star. They were bouncing across the rice fields, and we hidin’. They was walking through there, so we snatched them. Me and Davis.

  We radio in, right? They sent the helicopter to pick us up, bring ’em back. Intelligence was shocked. The gooks wasn’t in pajamas. They had on uniforms. They were equipped. Intelligence interrogated them, and they got the whole battalion to go out and look for the plane.

  In the helicopter one of the gooks spitted in this lieutenant’s face.

  When we found the plane, it had been stripped. Nothin’ but a shell. The pilot was gone.

  We told intelligence the prisoners was ours. So finally, they gave them to the company and left.

  I was still messing around in the plane when I heard these shots go off. The NVA captain tried to run, and he was shot. Shot about 20 times. They killed him.

  So one of our officers looked at the NVA sergeant and just said, “You can have him.”

  So at that time they had this game called Guts. Guts was where they gave the prisoner to a company and everybody would get in line and do something to him.

  We had a lot of new guys in the company that had never seen a dead NVA. And the officer was telling them to get in line. If they didn’t do anything, he wanted them to go past and look at him anyway.

  That’s how you do this game Guts.

  So they took the NVA’s clothes off and tied him to a tree. Everybody in the unit got in line. At least 200 guys.

  The first guy took a bayonet and plucked his eye out. Put the bayonet at the corner of the eye and popped it. And I was amazed how large your eyeball was.

  Then he sliced his ear off. And he hit him in the mouth with his .45. Loosened the teeth, pulled them out.

  Then they sliced his tongue. They cut him all over. And we put that insect repellent all over him. It would just irritate his body, and his skin would turn white.

  Then he finally passed out.

  Some guys be laughing and playing around. But a lotta guys, maybe 30, would get sick, just vomit and nauseated and passed out.

  The officer be yelling, “That could be your best friend on that tree. That could be you. You ever get captured, this could be you.”

  I don’t know when he died. But most of the time he was alive. He was hollering and cursing. They put water on him and shaking him and bringin’ him back. Finally they tortured him to death. Then we had to bury him. Bury both him and the lieutenant.

  A couple of days later we found three guys from the 101st that was hung up on a tree, that had been tortured. Hands was tied. Feet was tied. Blood was everywhere. All you saw was a big, bloody body. Just butchered up. That’s how they left GIs for us to see.

  They didn’t have name patch. All we knew was two was white, one black. And the airborne patch. We had to bury ’em.

  Before the Tet Offensive, all the fighting was in the jungles. We might search and destroy some hamlet. But Tet Offensive, the snipers went in the cities. And we wasn’t used to that street fighting.

  We was in Tuy Hoa. And funny thing. Louis got in one of these little bunkers that the French had left on the street, like a pillbox. He was hiding. And we said, “Come on. We got to move out.”

  Louis said, “Hell, no. I ain’t moving out. I’m safe. Nobody know where I’m at.”

  And we kept on saying, “Man, we gon’ leave you here if you don’t come on and move out.”

  And we start moving out.

  And Louis said, “What the hell. Y’all can’t do nothing without me anyway.” And laughed.

  Soon as he got out of his crouch behind the pillbox and got up, that’s when he got hit. Got shot in the chest, in the head. A sniper. And we had to leave him. We had to leave him right there.

  They gave us some half-ass story that they sent him home. They sent boxes home. A lot of times we couldn’t get a helicopter in, the terrain was terrible. So we had to bury ’em. By the time the maggots ate them up, what they gon’ get out the ground? If they find them.

  The night after Louis got killed, Taylor just broke down. I mean just boohoo and cry. Crying is kind of contagious. When one guy start crying, before you know it, you got a whole platoon of guys just sobbing.

  And we all knew Louis was suppose to go home in a week.

  But Taylor was just messed up. He would keep saying he couldn’t take it no more.

  He was always singing old hymns. I had him carrying 200 pounds of ammo once, and when I got to the hill to set up for the night, I said, “Taylor, where’s my ammo?” He said, “Man, you know that song about loose my shackles and set me free? I had to get free about a mile down the road. I got rid of that stuff in that stream. Them chains of slavery.”

  This other time we were going through the wood, and this branch hit Taylor across the nose. He passed out, and would not move. Lieutenant told Taylor if he don’t get up, I’ll shoot you. He said, “You might as well shoot me, ’cause I feel like I’m already dead. I am not moving till I see the Red Cross helicopter come.” So they carried Taylor in. The next thing I know, they told me Taylor got caught off limits in the city.

  Ferguson was with him. See, they used to do things like getting a tooth pulled. You never tell them you had a toothache and fill it. Say pull it. That’s two days in the rear. The doctor told Ferguson there wasn’t no cavity. Ferguson said, “I don’t care. It hurts. I want it out.”

  So Ferguson and Taylor suppose to be sick. But Taylor said he fell in love with one of them little dinks, and him and Ferguson was in the hootch with mama san. They fell asleep at night. And that’s when the NVA come out, take over the cities. Taylor said a platoon of them was coming down the street. Taylor said, “I was laying there beside my baby. Then I think I couldn’t pass for a gook. So I am ready to run at all times. My eyes was like flashlights. I didn’t even blink. We stayed at the window all night.”

  When the sun came up, they took off. They couldn’t get back in time. Top sergeant met them at the gate and said, “If y’all well enough to fuck, y’all well enough to fight.” They got some suspended rank for being AWOL and was sent back to the field.

  Then one night, Taylor was sitting on a hill trying to convince us that he saw the Statue of Liberty. He had been smoking, and there was a tree way out. He kept saying, “Sir Ford. Sir Ford. Ain’t that the bitch?” I said, “What?” He said, “The world moves, right?” I said, “Right.” He said, “Well, we getting closer to New York, ’cause I can see the bitch. Goddamn, that’s the bitch, man.”

  They had to come give him tranquilizers.

  Before I went home, the company commanders in Bravo and Echo got killed. And rumor said their own men did it. Those companies were pressed because the captains do everything by the book. And the book didn’t work for Vietnam. They had this West Point thing about you dug a foxhole at night. Put sandbags around it. You couldn’t expect a man to cut through that jungle all day, then dig a hole, fill up the sandbags, then in the morning time dump the sandbags out, fill your foxhole back up, and then cut down another mountain. Guys said the hell with some foxhole. And every time you get in a fire fight, you looking for somebody to cover your back, and he looking around to see where t
he captain is ’cause he gon’ fire a couple rounds at him. See, the thing about Vietnam, your own men could shoot you and no one could tell, because we always left weapons around and the Viet Congs could get them.

  The war never got worse than this time in April. The whole battalion was out in the jungles. We got attacked. We got hit bad. This was a NVA unit. This wasn’t no Viet Cong. They were soldiers.

  They would come on waves. The back unit didn’t even have weapons. They would pick up the weapons from the units that sacrified themselves and keep on coming. It made it look like we had shot this person and he fell and then kept on runnin’ instead of somebody comin’ behind him. It played a mental thing on you.

  That’s when we start hollering, “We gon’ burn this jungle down. Get Puff out here, and get the mortars and flame throwers.” Puff helped. It’s a bad warship. It comes in with them rockets and them guns. Puff the Magic Dragon lets you know it’s there.

  But I was scared of Puff. He wounded about six of our guys. I ain’t wanna see Puff. I was scared of Puff.

  Then we called in for mortar. And the mortar squad hit about six or seven of us. Rounds dropped too short. Miscalculated or whatever.

  Then I saw a guy that just came in country. A little white boy named Irving, came from Kansas City. Real nice fella; used to talk how the cattle comes down the street in Kansas City. He got shot in the head. And I went over and grabbed him. The bullet went through his eye. Real small hole. But I put my hands behind his head, and the whole back of his head came off in my hands. I just froze.

  I was scared to drop it. Scared to move. I was just sittin’ there. And this is where Davis helped.

  Davis screamed, “Nigger, stop half-steppin’. We gotta move.”

  Then the lieutenant start yelling about hold your position, hold your position. Davis said, “The hell with some position. Move back. Move back.”