Bloods

by Wallace Terry

  I moves back for Bobby and said, “Bobby, go up and grab hold of Streeter. Hold Streeter’s leg and let him pull you through the hedgerow. Then we can get down behind the dike.”

  Then they shot Martinez.

  So I pushed Bobby up towards Streeter, and Streeter shakes Bobby off. Wouldn’t let him grab his leg. Wouldn’t help Bobby, right. So I pushed Bobby on up through the hedgerow and went back for Martinez. I was just a pushin’ him. But at the time I had an M-72 LAW, which is like an antitank weapon. Very light. You shoot it one time, you discard it. The firing pin is like a cord loop that you just pull out. This cord loop got caught onto one of the bushes. I couldn’t raise up because of the machine guns. I feared if I pressed on it, I would blow me and Martinez up. So I had to like squirm out of my web gear and leave that thing hanging.

  I finally gets Martinez down behind the dikes, and Streeter is already down there. But he wasn’t firing his weapon.

  I said, “Return fire, Streeter!”

  He said, “I can’t fire my weapon. I can’t fire my weapon. I can’t shoot.”

  He said, “I’m scared, Kirk. I can’t do it. I can’t fight.”

  He was crying down behind the dikes.

  Then the squad leader kept telling Streeter to return fire. And he would not fire. So the squad leader said, “Streeter, I’m gon’ kill you if you don’t fire your weapon.”

  I said, “No, Lloyd. If you kill him, I’m gon’ shoot you. So you gonna have to kill the both of us.”

  I said, “The man is gone. Let him be.”

  Then I turned to Streeter.

  “We in big trouble, man. Bobby’s hurt. Martinez’s hurt. Dan just got it. It ain’t nothin’ but three of us left in this squad. We need to return some fire.”

  Then this brother in Whiskey squad hollered out his weapon was jammed. Streeter told him, “Here. Take mine.”

  I said, “No, Streeter. If you don’t do a damn thing, don’t give up your weapon. I promise you. You’re going with the first medevac that we can get in here.”

  The gunships came in and raked the whole area. Then the medevacs. And they came through a hell of a fire. And we got all the wounded on. Eight of them seriously wounded. A lost eye. A chest shot open. And Streeter. It took a toll on our squad.

  We did not seize control of that village until about noon. We found six VC bodies.

  Streeter never came back to the field again. He went back to Pleiku to be a supply sergeant and went from E-4 to E-6. Based on him bein’ a real top soldier and what have you in the field, it really did something to me. It said any person can go at any moment.

  At the time I initially came over to Vietnam they did not have 106 recoilless rifles where I was at. When I was getting short, like three months short, they began to bring them in to secure perimeters. And that was my MOS. So they brought a brother named Sutton from Orlando, Florida, and me into LZ Baldy. We were securing the command post for the entire battalion.

  It was the time of Tet. And the VC were making major onslaught.

  Me and Sutton were laying around up on the CP, just relaxing, smoking herb, talking, and what have you. Then we heard incoming rounds.

  Sutton said, “Kirk, that was incoming rounds.”

  I said, “No, man. That’s something outgoing.”

  Another came in. “Shhhhh, boom!”

  Johnson said, “That’s incoming.”

  I said, “I think you’re right. We better get to the guns.”

  So we grabbed our steel pots, our weapons, and ran to the jeep where the gun was mounted. And this mortar round hit this big 10-foot rock where the jeep was parked. We had to move from bunker to bunker, because the VC was walking the mortars, from side to side, back and forth, making sure they covered the whole perimeter. They knew where our mortar tubes were, where the command post was. They just had us zeroed in. Oh, yes.

  We finally pulled the jeep into position and started returning fire. Sutton spotted the flash of their mortar tubes. I was locking and loading. We must have fired 28 rounds that night. We almost burned the barrel off that thing. And it was no one else returning fire in the whole camp but us. They was about 700 of them taking cover in the bunkers.

  Reports came in that our rounds was hitting 100 yards away from the mortar tubes. That’s very close at nighttime. We was hitting on the money.

  That morning me and Sutton rode down in our jeep to the base of the perimeter and saw all that destruction the mortars had done. Well, we was cheered. The men just raved for us and jumped up in the air. ’Cause they knew the only thing they could hear from our perimeter was that 106 with that back blast. Blast from the front. Boom boom from the back.

  Sutton got the Bronze Star for being the person who’s firing the 106. I got the Army Commendation Medal with V for valor.

  We was heroes, but I didn’t feel like it for long. You would see the racialism in the base-camp area. Like rednecks flying rebel flags from their jeeps. I would feel insulated, intimated. The brothers they was calling quote unquote troublemakers, they would send to the fields. A lot of brothers who had supply clerk or cook MOS when they came over ended up in the field. And when the brothers who was shot came out of the field, most of them got the jobs burning shit in these 50-gallon drums. Most of the white dudes got jobs as supply clerks or in the mess hall.

  So we began to talk to each other, close our ranks, and be more organized amongst ourselfs to deal with some of this stuff. The ones like me from the field would tell the brothers in base camp, “Look, man, you know how to use grenades. If you run into any problems, throw a grenade in their hootch.”

  When I came home, I really got upset about the way my peers would relate to me. They called me a crazy nigger for going to the war. And I was still dealing with Vietnam in my head.

  Well, they sent me to Fort Carson in Colorado to do the six months I had left. I really didn’t want to give no more of myself to the Army. So I played crazy.

  I told people I ain’t know what rank I was. I told them I was busted in Vietnam. I didn’t wear no emblems. I was a buck private. I don’t know where the papers at.

  They made me cut my bush. What I did, I did not get another size hat. So my hat was falling all over my eyes.

  Then I convinced the doctor that my feet was bad. I had jungle rot. I couldn’t run, couldn’t stand for a long time. I couldn’t wear boots. All I could do was wear these Ho Chi Minh sandals I had.

  And I would fall out in formation in my sandals, my big hat, and my shades.

  I rode them right to the point they was about ready to kick me out of the military.

  Then on my twenty-first birthday they said they was going to the Democratic convention. Our unit was going to Chicago to be the riot squadron. I told them I’m not going there holding no weapon in front of my brothers and sisters. The captain said, “Kirkland, you going to Chicago if I have to carry you myself.” But I went to the doctor and told him I had a relapse of malaria. He said he couldn’t really tell me anything. I would have to stay in the hospital for the weekend. He thought he was getting me. I said, “That’s fine.”

  I was successful playing crazy. I got an honorable discharge.

  Because I was a veteran with medals and an honorable discharge, Washington city had a job offer for me. The police force or the post office. The police force had too much military connected to it. My whole thing was to get the military out of my system. I chose the post office. Basically I was sitting on a stool sorting mail. Stuffing mail, sorting mail, do it faster. The supervisors were like first sergeants. Six months later I resigned. I just got tired of it.

  I was also enrolled in a computer-operations school. They fulfilled out none of their promises. It was a $2,200 rip-off of the VA money I got for school. They folded at the graduation of my class.

  Well, I was getting more of a revolutionary, militant attitude. It had begun when I started talking with friends before leaving ’Nam about being a part of the struggle of black people. About contributing in the w
orld since Vietnam was doing nothin’ for black people. They killed Dr. King just before I came home. I felt used.

  So some associates and me set up a place called the Africa Hut near 14th and U Streets, where the riots almost went downtown to the White House when Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was a cultural place, where people could buy wine and talk political talk.

  And then I thought back to when I was in the post office that there was regular monies going from the post office to the Treasury Department to be burned. Old money, they told me. I couldn’t understand that money’s going to be burnt when people is in need.

  I had never did a criminal thing before. But I began to plan how we could commandeer and hijack the mail truck. Set up an ambush.

  I still had some friends in the post office that I socialized with. And around October the information started coming to me.

  My friend said, “Look. I got a guard who wants to do something.”

  So I said, “Okay. You go ahead and set it up. I don’t want to see the guard. You talk to the guard.”

  I found out this truck left out of the main post office between three and four in the morning. The first stop was the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which is right behind the First Police Precinct, the largest precinct in D.C. The truck would pull in like an alley way into a loading dock area. They would pull up and unload mailbags, then they would move off and head for the Treasury Department. The driver of the truck would not be carrying a pistol, just the guard.

  I needed two men. I had this real close friend of mines who was a veteran, too. I’ll call him Smith. And through some of my associates at the Hut I met Robert Johnson.

  I told them, in setting up the ambush we would stalk the truck and lay everybody in the proper place. We would use composure, coolness, just like when you set up claymore mines or set up booby traps at night. Everybody would be perfectly still, like when the NVA was right on top of us.

  We layed on the ambush for December 23, 1969.

  On the twenty-first and twenty-second we followed the truck and layed out our positions.

  We decided that the best place to do it was right there at the Home Loan Bank Board, although it was right by the precinct. We said so what, if we do it right. We thought we would draw the least amount of attention there. It was isolated, like off the main street. Very little traffic. The loading-dock area had definite yellow lines the truck moved into. And that time of the morning was perfectly clear.

  On the twenty-third my friend in the post office said the guard is going to back out of it. I said we were still going to do it whether the guard is with us or not. We’re not backing out of this one after all he told us. And then Smith’s wife had a baby, and he couldn’t make it. So we needed a substitute. So we got this brother named Calvin Jones I didn’t know too good.

  That night we painted our faces white so they couldn’t focus on who you are. I had a postal uniform on ’cause I would drive the truck. Me and Johnson had pistols—.32s. Jones had a single-shot shotgun.

  I knew that if I walk up to the guard at four in the morning, he’s not going to think that I am suppose to be there. So I said how am I going to get to him before he sees me. So I decided to lay right down on the parking lines where his side of the truck would be with a drop cloth over me. It was visible. They would see it. So they wouldn’t run over it.

  Now what happened before the truck came in was a police officer pulled up and walked directly in front of me. I was under the cloth. I had a little peek hole. I said to myself I hope he does not pull this cloth off of me, because the only thing he would see is a flash. I was committed to shoot him. He walked on to the precinct.

  Johnson was on the driver’s side, lying behind a parking curb, about thirty feet away from the truck. His thing was to move and take care of the driver as soon as he saw me apprehend the guard. Jones was up on the dock beind a loading skid that was leaning against a wall. When I bring the guard around, all he would have to do is come right out and push him into the back of the truck so I could take over the wheel.

  Once I made my move, Johnson was right there almost simultaneously. The guard did not know where I came from. It was like I popped up out of thin air.

  After I gave the guard to Jones, I drove the truck back down to the post office and parked it on the post office lot about a block and a half away. It was just daybreak. Light was just comin’ in.

  In the back of the truck, Jones and Johnson was telling the guard and driver that they were not here to harm them. “You can relax. We just want this money.”

  They asked the guard for the bag going to the Treasury Department. He pointed to the bag, and they grabbed it. Inside was $320,000.

  Then Johnson said, “Look. We are going to leave you in the midst of nowhere. You’re tied up here. There is no use in hollering for help, because nobody is going to hear you.” I think Jones and Johnson made them so comfortable, they did not know they was back at the post office.

  I parked the truck, and we all got into our vehicle.

  We went to my mother’s. Nobody was home. So we went straight into the kitchen to divide up the money.

  I’m twenty-two at the time, and I didn’t have a great sense of what you’re supposed to do once you got the money. We burned a lot of $1,000 bills in the oven broiler because they was old and worn. We said it ain’t no use carrying this around. It’s easy to spot. The $50 bills were brand new, razor-sharp, uncreased, like even untouched money right off the press. That surprised us, too.

  We divided up the money with the instructions that folks lay dead for about three months and not do any spending. But we didn’t do that. We didn’t do that at all.

  The next day we read in the Washington Post that we missed the bag with the million dollars. But it was the largest mail robbery in the history of the District of Columbia. And I was glad we gots what we did.

  Each of us put up $10,000 to buy a whole lot of food, a whole lot of clothes, a whole lot of toys for the people who lived around the Hut. It was one big Christmas party giveaway on up to New Year’s. Children would come in with their parents and pick up some clothes and toys. We even had it laid out in sizes. And we bought medical supplies for a black culture center.

  Then we come to find out, Jones he was giving away $100 bills up and down 14th Street. When we went to try to locate him to get him to stop doing it, we found out he had left town.

  Jones was the first one to get caught. He had deposited money in various banks, $20,000 in New Mexico, $20,000 in Texas, X amount in Las Vegas, another amount in L.A. The FBI tracked him because the amounts were so big. They arrested him in Berkeley. And Jones told them everything, even about folks that were not even involved in the crime.

  Now they had my name and the name of the brother who was cleaning up the money at this business association. The office was right in the building with the stoop I had sat on when I was twelve and seen myself go to war and go to jail.

  I was about ready to go on my circuit around the country to visit all my war buddies I had made a commitment to. Let them know I had did my thing. Give them some money if they needed it. “Here I am y’all.”

  I’m really lookin’ forward to this when the brother at the association calls me over at my mother’s.

  “Hey, Kirk. Could you bring me a little money?”

  I said, “Damn, man. I’m getting ready to leave town. I don’t actually have access to any of it.”

  He said, “I really need it bad.”

  He beseeched me. He begged me.

  I told him I would bring it over. So I drove over. I had the money wrapped up in a Muhammad Speaks newspaper. But I left it on the seat of the car, and I walked into the association through the door which had the stoop.

  I said, “Is everything okay?”

  He said, “Yeah. Where’s the money?”

  “It’s in the car.”

  “Go get it, man. I need it really bad.”

  He was looking kind of weird, but I didn’t really
pick it up.

  So I go get the money and come back.

  I said, “Are you sure everything all right? You seem to be upset.”

  He said, “Yeah, I am. But some terrible things been happening to me, that’s why I need the money. Where is it?”

  So I opened the newspaper. And just as I handed the money to him, the FBI man came from under the desk with a pistol and held it to my head.

  He said, “You’re under arrest. Please don’t move.”

  Then in through a door to the office came another agent.

  It was January 16, 1970. They locked me up on $500,000 bail. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t raise it.

  When I went before the judge, I was saying that we took the money because the community was in need. There are people out here hungry, I said. He said that was irrelevant to the crime. He was wounded in World War II. And I don’t think he liked me being a veteran doing what I did.

  I got sentenced to the maximum ten years on the federal statute of robbery of a mail custodian without putting his life in jeopardy. And I got ten to thirty years under the District of Columbia statute for armed robbery.

  Johnson got the same sentence. Jones got three to nine years.

  The inmates at Lorton Reformatory in Virginia, they welcomed me with open arms. They were amazed we tried this thing for the community. It was like “power to the people.” Heroes, basically.

  At first, I got off into a lot of self-study and self-development. Spiritual, mental, and physical. I used to be the first one out on the track and last one in. I was running about 50 miles a week, really. I got into studying ancient Africa and was fascinated with the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. I learned of the oneness of the universe and the single creator which Akhenaton propogated from the throne of Egypt before the time of Moses. And I took the ancient Egyptian name Ari Sesu Merretazon, which is now my legal name. It means “guardian servant chosen to do the will of the Creator.”

  Then I got into my brothers. Each evening I was organizing. We had set up ALERTS. It would stand for Association Library Educational Research Team for Survival. The concept was that you give us the information, and we will get the education. The prison authorities tried to keep us from publishing an independent inmate paper, but we won a consent decree to publish. Then I organized a residential religious council for those with religious faith to stop the conflict between the orthodox Muslims and the Black Muslims, the Baptists, and the Black Jews, and whatnot. We became the cooks, servers, busboys, and line monitors in the mess hall. And that stopped all the chaos at dinnertime over people fighting for food and eating on dirty tables.