Bloods

by Wallace Terry

  I got involved in a black study group, and I started reading black history. The racial situation intensified. Then the rioting and fighting broke out all over. They were putting more blacks in jail for the most simple thing. So we tried to get black lawyers from stateside to come over to help us. When I was in the field, they had no room for racism at all. Maybe someone would first come in with it, but after a while, he knew that you were working together as a unit and he needed each man. And besides, common sense would tell you if someone has 200 targets to shoot at, you stand a better chance of living than if he would have 50.

  In Germany this first sergeant always hassled me because I had small holes burned in my fatigues from welding. I told the company commander the sergeant was prejudiced, that I might be young but I am a man. The CO told the sergeant to requisition me three more fatigues, and I bought three more with my own money. I would change uniforms twice a day so the sergeant wouldn’t hassle me. I didn’t take no shortcut. I had the cleanest room in the whole company. The CO usually used my room as a showcase. He was so proud he gave me a bit of furniture. He knew I couldn’t stop being a man for a second. You can’t go outside the regulations and get anything accomplished. So with a small radius of brothers, we talked to black GIs all over Germany so they would not get fucked up and end up in Mannheim stockade.

  I got out in December 1972. The longest day I lived was the day I got out. When I got home, I figured I would lay around a couple of months. I was drinking beer, wine, any kind of alcoholic beverage. That time, too, I started messin’ around with some THC. But I really didn’t mess around with it for that long, because it makes you feel unsure of yourself. I decided to marry this young lady I was going with for seven years. I wanted to show her I really loved her. That’s when the effects of Vietnam really had their toll on me.

  I started having flashbacks. When I would lay down and dream at night, my mind would play tricks on me. I still had my jungle boots and fatigues. And when it would rain real hard, I would put them on and go wherever I wanted to go. I would be ducking around in the bushes, crawling around just like you do in actual combat. And I would do silly stuff like breaking out the street lamps, and they put me in jail a couple of times for being disorderly.

  But I did a really strange thing. I had this little .22. Something prompted me to turn it into the police department. It was a good thing, too. Because I got real mad at my wife one day. I put on my fatigues, and put this ice pick at my side. When I couldn’t find her, I just totally demolished the house. People called the police, but they couldn’t find me. I just lightly eased out of the house and went across the street, where there were some high bushes. It was dark and stuff, and I moved just like I learned in Vietnam. I thought I could keep running forever. But after 30 minutes, I cooled off and got out of the bushes and went back over the house. The neighbors said they didn’t know what was wrong with me. The police didn’t take me to jail but to the hospital, where they put me in the psychiatric ward for four days. And the psychiatrist told me I loved my wife too much. Nothing about Vietnam.

  I decided to go live with my mother, because I didn’t want to hear my wife nag. I worked at welding for a while, but I kept getting a lot of burns. So I tried construction work, but it got real bad because the housing business went down. So this VA counselor told me to try to enter school, and I started going to Broward Community College to get computers one day like I wanted back before ’Nam.

  But the real thing that happened to me was the Lord touched my vision. I found out that I was just not existing. Now I done fell into the real life that I am living. I’m living 24 hours a day, no matter how rough the situation. Within my body I maintain peace and tranquillity. I see I have all I need. I can cope with anything. I lost my fear of death, because I have really accepted life. Although I live in a merchandise society, I don’t try to keep up with it. I don’t even watch TV unless it is a live sports event or something happening right then. When you watch someone pretend to live life, you wasting your time. And I see many people back here stateside killing as many people as they were killing in Vietnam. Vietnam really gave me a respect for human life. I value people. People make me happy now. And I don’t feel inferior anymore. When I was six or seven, I used to wonder why I was born black; I should have been born white. See, I found out from reading about my past before slavery—my ancestors built the pyramids that still stand today. They omitted the small things like the Caesars of Rome studied in a university in Africa before they became Caesars. I learned that as a black man the only problem I had was that I wasn’t exposed to things. I feel equal to everyone, and I walk humbly among men. I’m studying to be a computer programmer, but that doesn’t make me better than a garbage man.

  Most of the nightmares are gone. Except one.

  I still think about this North Vietnamese soldier. We took two hours to kill him. This was a brave dude. I’ll never forget him. It took a whole platoon to kill him.

  He was held up in a tunnel. He knew he had no possible chance of winning whatsoever. And he wasn’t really expecting no help. But this was the bravest dude I had ever seen. And I respect this dude.

  The “rabbits,” they were so crazy they didn’t understand nothing, see. We had interpreters to rap to him to give up. If he give up, they would rehabilitate him and shit like that. And he would fight for the regular South Vietnamese army. They rapped and rapped to him. And we started shooting and throwing frags and Willie Peter rounds—white phosphorous grenades that burn through metal and shit.

  But the only way we got him was this crazy rabbit jumped down in the hole and beat him to the punch. With a shotgun right through his neck. So when they pulled him out, he was hit badder than an ol’ boy. He had a hunk of meat out of his leg, big as that. He had shrapnel all over his body. He had a hole in his side. But he wouldn’t give up. Because he really believed in something. This man was willing to die for what he believed in. That was the first time I ran into contact with a real man. I will never forget him.

  When I was in Vietnam, it was not important to me where I died. Now it is very important to me. I made a promise in ’Nam that I would never risk my life or limb to protect anybody else’s property. I will protect my own. So this country is not going to tell me to go out again to stop the spread of Communism. In Germany we were buying beef for the GIs that came from Communist countries. They telling us to fight the spread of Communism, but they be helping the Communist economy. I don’t walk around blind anymore. If another war breaks out and they want me to go, I’d rather die. I’ll fight anyone here in America. But if they come and get me to send to some other country, I’m going to have my gun ready for them.

  HM2

  Luther C. Benton III

  Portsmouth, Virginia

  Hospital Corpsman

  Military Provincial Hospital Assistance

  Program Team N-2

  U.S. Navy

  Hoi An

  May 1967–May 1968

  Being the only son in my family, I did not have to accept the orders to Vietnam. I accepted the orders because I wanted to see what the war was all about. And I thought that if we were there, then it must be right. We have to stop Communism before it gets to America. I was just like all the other dummies.

  But it was in Vietnam that I first heard the voice of God. I didn’t know anything about the Bible. I knew it existed. I believed. I was baptized as a child. But I didn’t have the belief and faith when I went to Vietnam that I have today.

  And there was this one night in particular where God definitely saved my life. And for a reason, too.

  I was a sailor’s sailor. I always did my duty and then some. Perfect military bearing. Immaculate all the time. On this one ship I worked in the pharmacy, and I was probably the cleanest person around. When we picked up the Gemini 10 space capsule, someone said, “We need to have a medical person open the door.” They came and got me. So I opened the door with all the cameras flashing, TV and everything. And then I had to escort th
em to sick bay, where the doctors would examine them. Another time I was picked for the surgical team that had been activated to go right out there on the beach at the Bay of Pigs. But there was never an invasion even though everything was in motion for it to happen. And one night, a friend of mine who was a helicopter pilot crashed in the water trying to land on the ship. He was, maybe, 50 feet out. It was nothing wrong with the helicopter. They were all strapped in and couldn’t get out. So I jumped off the flight deck, swam over to the helicopter, and I unbuckled two people. The first guy I unbuckled, unbuckled the other two. They sent a little boat out, and then we all climbed in and came back. The helicopter had sank in the ocean. They gave me a bottle of Scotch and told me that I was makin’ Navy history, ’cause whiskey was not allowed on the ship. And they told me those four guys would’ve been lost if I hadn’t jumped in after them.

  The orders I got for Vietnam was to the Military Provincial Hospital Assistance Program Team in Hoi An. Before we went there though, we had to go through special training at Andrews Air Force Base. ’Bout two months of Vietnamese language training, Vietnamese custom and history. We flew into Saigon on a commercial flight in May of ’67. I was to work in this provincial hospital for a year. Even though they were saying that the mission was to upgrade the medical standards of the South Vietnamese, I didn’t realize at the time that this hospital was an information-gathering arm of the CIA. We were not supposed to treat any military people at all. Only treat civilians. But we did. We were treating the Viet Cong.

  In our team there were twelve enlisted men and three officers. All Navy. We got in a civilian doctor, a doctor from Turkey, and three nurses from West Germany. There were three Marines permanently assigned for security. And we had this one Marine sergeant who lived in a shed big enough to put a cot in. He was an intelligence officer, working for the CIA. And there was this one CIA guy who would come around. He lived some distance away in this house with Chinese mercenary guards around it.

  The first thing I did at this provincial hospital was set up a X-ray unit with Andy Garrett. He was from St. Louis and was the only other black guy there.

  Then they took me out of that and made me the medical supply adviser for Quang Nam Province. I issued the Vietnamese medical supplies. I just kept a record of what came in and where it was located. Help them set up a system, just like a warehouse.

  A village chief would come in, and he would say to the Vietnamese representative—my counterpart—what he wants. He was not a doctor. He was just the individual who was the head man in that little village. He’d give ’em a list of what he wants. We’d pack it, and he would put it in his cart, and he’d go down the road.

  There was no limits established to what they got except those established by the Vietnamese counterpart. They would order all kinds of medical supplies that they liked. Alka Seltzers and aspirins. Even had citrus-flavored Alka Seltzer. I remember I never seen none of them before.

  There were all kinds of drugs. Amphetamines. Morphine. Penicillin. Dextrose and saline solution for IV equipment. Anything you could think of, they had it. All the things that you would get for a aid station for individuals who might be injured in war.

  I ordered ambulances from America.

  I ordered the air conditioners, because they said order ’em. They ain’t have no electric power in those villages, but they had air conditioners.

  Then they send over rice. I thought it was ridiculous. But after I looked at the countryside and saw that they had napalms on the rice paddies, then I understood why they needed to have rice, ’cause they couldn’t grow none.

  One day, they said, “Where can we get a pig at?”

  Somebody said, “Well, maybe the medical supply adviser can get us a pig.”

  This USAID man said, “Get a catalog.” This would have lists of things in the USAID-sponsored programs. But I found out you just write on an order form you want a pig. Two weeks later, we’d get pigs. They came from America.

  These were big pigs. The Vietnamese pigs only get about maybe a foot and a half high. These two things almost look like ponies. And they didn’t last a week. They were s’posed to breed them. They ate ’em. They say it’s too big to feed. The American pigs ate more food than five or six Vietnamese families, and they were just not gonna feed ’em. So they ate ’em.

  It was not my job to find out what they did with any of the stuff. My job was to order what they wanted and get it to ’em.

  I lived right next to the hospital. I had built a bunker outside. And right next to it we had a bar and a barbecue pit. At the bar we sold whiskey. We had four slot machines and a jukebox. We would cook steaks, and troops came by and they would have beer. So we had Jim Beam whiskey or whatever they wanted. There were two Vietnamese barmaids and one gentleman that cleaned.

  The carbine that they gave me in Saigon before we went to Hoi An didn’t have a firing pin in it. They said, “It doesn’t make any difference. You’re going to a pacified area anyway. You don’t need a weapon.”

  In Hoi An there were Viet Cong throughout the area. Everywhere, really. There was always explosions goin’ on. There was always planes flyin’ through droppin’ bombs. There was always howitzers goin’ off, kaboom, kaboom, all the time. There was always somethin’ 24 hours a day.

  So I had a .38 Smith & Wesson Phantom with a shoulder holster I wore all the time under my clothes not to attract attention. I wore civilian clothes. I bought this .38 from a GI. You could buy anything in Vietnam.

  I had a M-4 grease gun, which fires a copper-jacketed .45 round. I had maybe a couple thousand rounds. I had ’em all in clips stashed in certain places in case I needed ’em. I got this gun for a bottle of booze. From this guy goin’ through on a tank, because that’s normally the weapon the people who rode the tanks had.

  Three days earlier we had acquired a .30-caliber machine gun in a trade. We mounted it on top of one of the buildings. I felt it would seem to be a nice piece of equipment to acquire seeing that the individuals who run the area were just doctors and hospital corpsmen. And after being around hospital people for a while, those Marines walking the perimeter were very lackadaisical.

  I didn’t have a really good friend over there, because I didn’t want to. I did not want to have anyone that I got so close to that I would care too much if they become injured or killed.

  But the first thing I do when I go into an area that I’m not familiar with is get familiar with the people. I spent a great deal of time discussing the problems of Vietnam with the Vietnamese people, what they felt and what they thought about the Americans and their involvement. I learned right away the war was not the right thing to do from the people’s point of view.

  I asked a group of young men, “Why aren’t y’all fighting for the liberty of your country? Are you crazy?” They rode around on the Suzukis and Hondas all the time.

  They said, “You crazy? Our soldiers not trained good enough to fight Viet Cong or NVA.”

  They said, “Why should we do it anyway if the Americans are gonna do it? If the Marines are gonna come? We really idiotic to do that. And it won’t make any difference anyway.”

  They would tell me that when you don’t have anything at all but your life and rice, and the rice the government takes or the Viet Cong takes, it doesn’t make any difference which one wins. The country is not gonna change either way no matter who wins. You’re gon’ have to pay them rice anyway. So the thing to do is let the Viet Cong fight the government.

  They said, “We sit and watch and see you win. Whoever win is the one we go with. The Americans are the ones that are crazy, ’cause they not gain anything. They lose their lives and their money here.”

  So that’s what the people felt.

  One fascinating thing about the people was that the most reliable information that I ever got was from kids. You had to stay on guard because people would walk up to you with bombs strapped to ’em and just blow up. I didn’t wanna be around nothin’ like that. But for some reason these kids
knew what was goin’ on.

  There was a couple of kids that I was associated with. A little boy and a little girl. They were orphans. They’d come around, and I’d give ’em soap and food. I’d take ’em downtown in a jeep and buy ’em a pair of shoes. I would fuss at ’em to find out if they went to school.

  One time I had been in the jeep by myself. Just drivin’. And I received a couple of gunshots in the vehicle, one through the windshield. But when I drove around with the kids, I never had any problems.

  I had been there maybe two months when I went in the marketplace. I was wearing black pajamas. I was real thin then, 116 pounds. And though I was 6 feet, I could be mistaken for them, especially in the dark.

  They had a lot of Chinese in the area that were shop owners. And the money people were the Chinese. They were sellin’ fish, vegetables, all kinds of stuff.

  There were some soldiers walkin’ around and some policemen. For some reason I just didn’t get into crowds. Well, this guy just walked into this crowd, and he just pulled the string and the thing blew up. And when he blew up, there were other little things on him that flew away that later blew us. Really six different explosions. It was just a mass of mess out there. Blood and guts all over.

  I did not travel by land on no convoys either. Little kids come up next to you with little bombs attached to themselves and pull the strings then, too. I traveled from village to village by Air America or helicopter.

  There was this one area going down to the river that the kids would not even wave at ya’. The adults would look at you, turn their nose, and walk right away. I knew that this was not a very good place. But the Army would send their younger people down there to practice firing every so often. One Sunday, a whole deuce and a half full of soldiers went down to the river to fire. No mines weep. Nothin’. Dumb. While they were goin’ down there, they hit a mine in the road the Viet Cong planted. It was a whole truck load of GIs. Maybe 15, 20 people. And blew it all up. The biggest piece of anything was the chest of this one black soldier and the tailgate of the truck.