I was looked upon by the men like some type of adviser-counselor. They would come to me to have me write letters to their wives. Or help them with legal problems if I could understand them.
But more and more I started talking to Vietnam veterans. The VA wasn’t coming down to the prisons, and they had problems with upgrading discharges, getting benefits, and counseling. We realized that we just had to do it ourselves. So I set up the first veterans affairs office inside a prison. We had our own office space, regular office hours, filing system, typewriters, and people just donated enough equipment for us to do the job. And the VA acknowledged us in the prison.
We called it Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organization, and I wrote a self-help manual on how to set one up inside a prison. I testified before Senator Alan Cranston. It was the first time ever that Congress heard testimony relating to incarcerated veterans. The administrator for programs at Lorton accompanied me to Chicago to participate in veterans’ forums. And I visited the White House with other veterans to meet President Carter.
We got over 500,000 Vietnam era veterans in prison, jail, on parole, probation, or awaiting sentence. Most because of drug problems caused by the war. Or they ain’t able to cope when society don’t care about them. Over half of them are black veterans. So we keep trying to spread the organization. I’m helping to start a veterans office at Grater Ford Prison near my home in Philadelphia. There are more than 100 across the country today.
Back in January of 1975, I got the ruling from the appeals court saying that the judge errored in sentencing us under both those statutes. It had to be one or the other. So I contacted a lawyer at Antioch Law School to help me put together a petition for reduction of sentence. Besides learning about my good behavior in prison and all my work with veterans, the judge could see a physical change. The turban I wore. The African dress. And he knew about the support systems I had with veterans’ organizations outside and how I would keep helping veterans. He said he would give me the benefit of the doubt, and he reduced the minimum sentence under the D.C. statute to six years. That made me eligible for parole that day.
One week later I went before the parole board at nine o’clock in the morning. By noon I was in Washington, D.C. Free.
It was August 25, 1975. I had served five and one half years.
The vision I had seen sitting on that stoop when I was twelve had said the number five.
I have taught a law course at Antioch on the urban mission of developing lawyers who want to represent the poor. I’ve counseled Vietnam veterans at the Vet Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. At the West Philadelphia Corporation, I am helping neighborhood people reduce their energy cost so they will have money left over for economic development. Maybe to invest in a recreation center or even a business.
I am married, and we have a beautiful baby girl.
Johnson is still in prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Jones is probably out. The government said it only recovered $60,000 of the money. I told the authorities I gave what I had left to a friend, but he ripped it off when I was in prison. To prove I still have no knowledge of where existing money from that crime may be and that I did not receive no money after I came out of prison, I went on the television show Lie Detector. And the result was no. I don’t want involvement with that type of experience anymore. The money to me was like blood money. I can make money in legitimate ways.
I still think of Vietnam. I come to realize really that the purpose of the war was something more than any of the men who were fighting realized at the time. It was like a power play. And the people in charge kept getting overcommitted, overextended, and just didn’t know how to pull out. No matter how patriotic we was fighting it, we was like cannon fodder. And I will always be thinkin’ that way until the government shows me how we benefited from it.
In Vietnam and in Lorton I was with men at their darkest hour. We listened to Aretha Franklin together in both places. And we cried together, and longed for the World together.
War is prison, too.
About a year ago I saw Streeter on a D.C. transit bus. He was having problems. He would express that he could not find a job. He had lost his wife. He was talking very slow and very deliberate. His speech had slowed down. His whole demeanor had slowed down.
I think that what happened to him in Vietnam was the damagingest thing I seen happen to one person.
I did not know how he felt about me seeing him again back in the World.
I did not know what to say to him.
First Lieutenant
Archie “Joe” Biggers
Colorado City, Texas
Platoon Leader
9th Regiment
U.S. Marine Corps
Vandergrift Combat Base
March 1968–April 1969
The first one I killed really got to me. I guess it was his size. Big guy. Big, broad chest. Stocky legs. He was so big I thought he was Chinese. I still think he was Chinese.
We were on this trail near the Ashau Valley. I saw him and hit the ground and came up swinging like Starsky and Hutch. I shot him with a .45, and I got him pretty good.
He had an AK-47. He was still holding it. He kicked. He kicked a lot. When you get shot, that stuff you see on Hoot Gibson doesn’t work. When you’re hit, you’re hit. You kick. You feel that stuff burning through your flesh. I know how it feels. I’ve been hit three times.
That’s what really got to me—he was so big. I didn’t expect that.
They were hard core, too. The enemy would do anything to win. You had to respect that. They believed in a cause. They had the support of the people. That’s the key that we Americans don’t understand yet. We can’t do anything in the military ourselves unless we have the support of the people.
Sometimes we would find the enemy tied to trees. They knew they were going to die. I remember one guy tied up with rope and bamboo. We didn’t even see him until he shouted at us and started firing. I don’t know whether we killed him or some artillery got him.
One time they had a squad of sappers that hit us. It was like suicide. They ran at us so high on marijuana they didn’t know what they were doing. You could smell the marijuana on their clothes. Some of the stuff they did was so crazy that they had to be high on something. In the first place, you don’t run through concertina wire like that. Nobody in his right mind does. You get too many cuts. Any time you got a cut over there, it was going to turn to gangrene if it didn’t get treated. And they knew we had the place covered.
Another time this guy tried to get our attention. I figured he wanted to give up, because otherwise, I figured he undoubtedly wanted to die. We thought he had started to chu hoi. And we prepared for him to come in. But before he threw his weapon down, he started firing and we had to shoot him.
And, you know, they would walk through our minefields, blow up, and never even bat their heads. Weird shit.
But I really thought they stunk.
Like the time we were heli-lifted from Vandergrift and had to come down in Dong Ha. There was this kid, maybe two or three years old. He hadn’t learned to walk too well yet, but he was running down the street. And a Marine walked over to talk to the kid, touched him, and they both blew up. They didn’t move. It was not as if they stepped on something. The kid had to have the explosive around him. It was a known tactic that they wrapped stuff around kids. That Marine was part of the security force around Dong Ha, a lance corporal. He was trying to be friendly.
I think it stinks. If those guys were low enough to use kids to bait Americans or anybody to this kind of violent end, well, I think they should be eliminated. And they would have been if we had fought the war in such a manner that we could have won the war. I mean total all-out war. Not nuclear war. We could have done it with land forces. I would have invaded Hanoi so many times, they would have thought we were walking on water.
The people in Washington setting policy didn’t know what transpired over there. They were listening to certain people who didn’t really know w
hat we were dealing with. That’s why we had all those stupid restrictions. Don’t fight across this side of the DMZ, don’t fire at women unless they fire at you, don’t fire across this area unless you smile first or unless somebody shoots at you. If they attack you and run across this area, you could not go back over there and take them out. If only we could have fought it in a way that we had been taught to fight.
But personally speaking, to me, we made a dent, even though the South did fall. Maybe we did not stop the Communist takeover, but at least I know that I did something to say hey, you bastards, you shouldn’t do that. And personally I feel good about it. People like Jane Fonda won’t buy that, because they went over there and actually spent time with the people that were killing Americans. That’s why I feel that I shouldn’t spend $4 to see her at the box office. She’s a sexy girl and all that other kind of stuff, but she’s not the kind of girl that I’d like to admire. She was a psychological setdown, and she definitely should not have been allowed to go to Hanoi.
I learned a lot about people in my platoon. I learned you have to take a person for what he feels, then try to mold the individual into the person you would like to be with. Now my platoon had a lot of Southerners, as well as some Midwesterners. Southerners at the first sign of a black officer being in charge of them were somewhat reluctant. But then, when they found that you know what’s going on and you’re trying to keep them alive, then they tried to be the best damn soldiers you’ve got. Some of the black soldiers were the worse I had because they felt that they had to jive on me. They wanted to let me know, Hey, man. Take care of me, buddy. You know I’m your buddy. That’s bull.
As long as a black troop knows he’s going to take a few knocks like everybody else, he can go as far as anybody in the Corps. Our biggest problem as a race is a tendency to say that the only reason something didn’t go the way it was programmed to go is because we are black. It may be that you tipped on somebody’s toes. We as blacks have gotten to the place now where we want to depend on somebody else doing something for us. And when we don’t measure up to what the expectations are—the first thing we want to holler is racial discrimination. My philosophy is, if you can’t do the job—move.
Let’s face it. We are part of America. Even though there have been some injustices made, there is no reason for us not to be a part of the American system. I don’t feel that because my grandfather or grandmother was a slave that I should not lift arms up to support those things that are stated in the Constitution of the United States. Before I went to Vietnam, I saw the “burn, baby, burn” thing because of Martin Luther King. Why should they burn up Washington, D.C., for something that happened in Memphis? They didn’t hurt the white man that was doing business down there on 7th Street. They hurt the black man. They should have let their voices be known that there was injustice. That’s the American way.
I still dream about Vietnam.
In one dream, everybody has nine lives. I’ve walked in front of machine guns that didn’t go off. When they pulled the trigger, the trigger jammed. I’ve seen situations where I got shot at, and the round curved and hit the corner. I’d see that if I had not made that one step, I would not be here. I think about the time where a rocket-propelled grenade hit me in the back, and it didn’t go off. We were in a clear area and got hit by an enemy force. The RPG hit me. Didn’t go off. Didn’t explode. We kept walking, and five of us got hit. I got frags in the lower back and right part of the buttocks. I didn’t want to go back to the hospital ship, so I just created the impression that I could handle it. But the stuff wouldn’t stop bleeding, and they had to pull the frags out. There was this doctor at Quang Tri, Dr. Mitchell, who was from Boston, a super guy. He painted a smile on my rear end. He cut a straight wound into a curve with stitches across so it looks as if I’m smiling. When I drop my trousers, there’s a big smile.
I dream about how the kids in my platoon would come to talk to you and say things about their families. Their families would be upset when they heard I was black. But then some guy would give me a picture of his sister. He would say, “She’s white, but you’d still like her. Look her up when you get back to the States.” And there would be the ones who did not get a letter that day. Or never got a letter their whole tour. In those cases, I would turn around and write them letters and send them back to Vandergrift.
And you dream about those that you lost. You wonder if there was something you could have done to save them. I only lost two kids. Really.
Cripes was a white guy. I think he was from St. Louis. He was a radio operator. You could tell him. “Tell the battalion commander that everything is doing fine.” He would say, “Hey, Big Six. Everything is A-okay. We are ready, Freddie.” You know, he had to add something to whatever you said. Otherwise, he was a very quiet guy. But one big problem he had was that he wanted to get into everything. He was trying to prove something to himself. If he saw somebody move, he was going to follow him. No matter what you could do to tell him not to fire, he’d fire. One night, after we got out to Fire Support Base Erskine, we got hit. It was about eleven. Cripes got shot. We don’t know if he got hit by our fire or their fire. I just know he crawled out there. He must have seen something. Cripes just had a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Lance Corporal Oliver was a black kid from Memphis. He carried an automatic rifle. He had been with us maybe three months. He was a very scary kid. He was trying to prove a lot of things to himself and to his family, too. So he was always volunteering to be point. It was very difficult to appoint someone as a point man. A lot of times when you had a feeling you were going to be hit, you asked for volunteers. Oliver always volunteered.
We were on Operation Dewey Canyon. In February of 1969. We had been told the NVA was in there that night. One platoon had went out and got hit. And we got the message to go in next. I got the whole platoon together and said, “Listen. I’m going to walk point for you.” My troops said, “No, sir, you don’t need to walk. We will arrange for someone to walk point.” So the next day the whole platoon got together and said, “Who wants to walk point today?” Oliver stuck up his hand. I said, “I’ll be the second man.”
Now we had this dog to sniff out VC. Normally he would walk the point with the dog handler. His handler, Corporal Rome from Baltimore, swore Hobo could smell the Vietnamese a mile away. If he smelled one, his hair went straight. You knew something was out there.
One time, when we were walking a trail near Con Thien, this guy was in this tree. At first we thought he was one of the local indigenous personnel, like the ARVN. He turned out to be something else. He had his pajamas on and his army trousers. He wasn’t firing. He was just sitting there. Hobo just ran up in that tree, reached back, and tore off his uniform. He was armed with an AK-47. Hobo took that away from him, threw him up in the air, and grabbed him by the neck and started dragging him. We learned a lot from that guy. You put a dog on a guy, and he’ll tell you anything you want to know.
Another time at Vandergrift, Hobo started barking in the officers’ hootch. We had sandbags between us. And Hobo just barked and barked at the bags. Nobody could figure out what was wrong. Finally I told Hobo to shut up, and I walked over to the sandbags. There was this viper, and I took a shotgun and blew its head off.
We used to dress Hobo up with a straw hat on his head and shades on. All of us had shades. And we used to take pictures of Hobo. And sit him on the chopper. And he’d be in the back of the chopper with his shades on and his hat, and he would smile at us.
We got to the place where we could feed him, and put our hands in his mouth. We would give him Gravy Train or Gainsburgers. If we ran out on patrol, we would give him our C-rations. He really liked beef with spice sauce.
Hobo was so gullible and so lovable that when you had a problem, you ended up talking to him. You could say, “Hobo, what the hell am I doing here?” Or, “Hey, man. We didn’t find nothin’ today. We walked three miles and couldn’t find nothin’. What the hell are you
doing walking this way?” And he’d look at you and smile, you know, in his own little manner. And he’d let you know that he should really be here to understand all this shit we’re putting down. Or he would do things like growl to let you know he really didn’t approve of all this bullshit you’re talking. It’s hard to explain. But after eight months, Hobo was like one of the guys.
Hobo signaled the ambush, but nobody paid any attention. We walked into the ambush. A machine gun hit them. Oliver got shot dead three times in the head, three times in the chest, and six times in the leg. Rome got hit in the leg. Hobo got shot in the side, but even though he was hit, he got on top of Rome. The only person that Hobo allowed to go over there and touch Rome was me.
It never got better. It seemed like every day somebody got hurt. Sometimes I would walk point. Everybody was carrying the wounded. We had 15 wounded in my platoon alone. And the water was gone.
Then on the twelfth day, while we were following this trail through the jungle, the point man came running back. He was all heated up. He said, “I think we got a tank up there.” I told him, “I don’t have time for no games.” The enemy had no tanks in the South.
Then the trail started converging into a really well-camouflaged road, about 12 feet wide and better made than anything I had ever seen in Vietnam. Then I saw the muzzle of this gun. It was as big as anything we had. And all hell broke open. It was like the sun was screaming.
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