Bloods

by Wallace Terry

  I don’t think you can call Vietnam a success story for the young blacks who served there. A few stayed in service and did very well. But those who experienced the racism in a war we lost wear a scar.

  Vietnam left a scar on them that won’t go away. The black soldier paid a special price.

  Today I am a group vice-president of Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, responsible for five corporate departments handling marketing and business development, including the computer services, information systems, and strategic planning. I’m also a captain in the Naval Reserve.

  And you know, until now, I hadn’t thought about Vietnam for five years.

  Specialist 4

  Robert E. Holcomb

  New York City

  Armorer

  4th Infantry Division

  Pleiku and An Khe

  February 1970–October 1970

  101st Airborne Division

  U.S. Army

  Camp Eagle

  October 1970–December 1970

  The FBI was on a rampage looking for me. Around the Fourth of July 1969. So I called the FBI, and I told them I was out on the Long Island Expressway. And they came and picked me up and put me in manacles again. Then they took me to Whitehall Street, where everybody in New York City gets inducted.

  One of the agents said, “Holcomb, this time we’re gonna make sure you take the oath so in case this time you leave, you’ll be a problem for the Army and not us. We don’t wanna be bothered with you anymore.”

  They took me inside to say the oath, and I refused. So they took me outside.

  The other agent said, “Listen, Bob, if you don’t say the oath, we’re gonna lock you up forever. You just won’t be seen around anymore.”

  So I said, “All right.” And we went back inside.

  I raised my hands and said the oath.

  I was sworn into the Army in manacles.

  Then the agents took the manacles off, and they left.

  It was really a strange scene. Because there were a lot of very young Spanish guys who were very proud to be getting inducted into the Marine Corps while this was going on with me. They were excited about becoming Marines and getting to wear that uniform. They couldn’t understand me. They thought I was a degenerate or something. But they didn’t say anything. They just stayed as far away from me as they could.

  I had evaded the draft for more than a year, but my antiwar views were shaped long before, while I was a student at Tennessee State University.

  After two semesters at Indiana University, I transferred to Tennessee State in Nashville to get farther away from home. I was rebelling from the middle-class values and way of life my parents, both schoolteachers, were grooming me in. I think my first protest came in a march for civil rights that Martin Luther King had organized back home in Gary when I was a junior in high school. I had printed a huge sign to carry in the march. From the time I could hold a pencil, I was always drawing something. The sign said, “Nunc Es Tempes.” “Now is the time.”

  Tennessee State was a hotbed of social and political unrest in the mid-sixties. Black awareness was on the rise. People like Nikki Giovanni, Kathleen Cleaver, and Rap Brown would be on campus and join our marches. We staged sit-ins at the governor’s office and mansion, protesting poor living conditions for black people in the state, some of whom lacked food, decent shelter, and even real toilet facilities. We got into Che Guevara’s theories on guerilla warfare, read Mao’s little red book, and the revolutionary writings of Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

  We thought the government was gonna begin to be more and more oppressive, especially to black and other minority people. So some of us even took our philosophy to the point that we felt we should arm ourselves and develop skills so that we could survive in the hillsides. We were essentially carrying the student movement into a revolutionary mold.

  We wanted the war in Vietnam to cease and desist. We felt that it was an attack on minority people, minority people were being used to fight each other. Some of us would give safe haven to soldiers who went AWOL from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, because they did not want to go to Vietnam. They would hope to stay around the college campus scene until things just blew away. But they wouldn’t blow away. You had to do something about it; otherwise, they’d be following you for the rest of your life.

  I was arrested for violations of curfew after a riot. And for that and other infractions of school policies aimed at stopping protests, I was expelled. As tensions between the police and the black community continued to rise, I decided to leave Nashville. I just had the feeling that I was under surveillance and one day I’d be walking down the street and someone would roll down his window and I would be shot. The revolution I left behind petered out like it did everywhere else. Free love came into the picture. Drugs came into the picture. There was always police repression. And there was Vietnam.

  I decided to move to New York to continue my art study. Soon afterwards, I got a draft letter. At that point, I decided that I was gonna resist, because I didn’t believe in the war. I had read tons of books about the war, including literature from Cuba and from China and from Hanoi itself, material that had filtered here through Canada and other sources. Wars are only fought over property, really. And the war in Vietnam was basically about economics. As I saw it, we were after a foothold in a small country in the Orient with rubber plantations, rice, timber, and possibly oil. And the people. A cheap source of labor, like you have in Hong Kong and Taiwan, making designer jeans and the insides of TV sets. That’s what I understood the war to be about—a war that was not really for the many but for the few. I didn’t have any problems fighting for capitalism, but I was not interested in fighting for a war in which I would not enjoy the rewards.

  I considered the conscientious objector status, but I couldn’t do that because I was not a religious fanatic. I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to leave the country. I was not interested in being locked into Canada. I was not interested in Cuba, because it had a very pure form of socialism and didn’t permit the kinds of freedoms that I was accustomed to here. I did not consider myself an African. I was concerned with the better distribution of wealth and authority at home. I never really left the idea of capitalism and the idea of democratic government. I would have gone to a European or African country.

  I went to the passport office in New York, and they told me that my application would be delayed because I didn’t have a draft status that would permit them to issue me a passport. I filled the application out anyway, and I left. A few weeks later, an uncle who lives elsewhere in New York called to tell me that agents had come to his apartment looking for me because they knew that I applied for a passport.

  I couldn’t work because I couldn’t file a social security number. I was basically hanging out, living with friends, and getting a little bit of money from my artwork or from house painting. My family did not support my ideas, so I really didn’t have any support from them. They wanted me to straighten up, perform as I was trained to, forget my ideas about changing the government, and go into the Army. After a while, I was at the point I was no longer in a viable position to do anything constructive with my life, so I decided to turn myself in.

  I was charged with draft evasion. The FBI offered me an option. I could work for them as a plant, an informant, or I could go to the service. For two weeks they kept me locked up in the Federal House of Detention hoping to sweat me into working for them. They wanted to plant me within various black or radical groups, like the Black Panthers, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. They said we could start off in New York, but there might be other cities involved. They would provide me with an apartment and with a subsistence allowance. For each person that I helped them capture on an outstanding warrant, they would pay me from $1,000 to $3,000. My questions to them were, Would I get concessions against the charge against me, how long would I have to do it, and would I be permitted to carry an a
rm to protect myself? They offered no promises of leniency or a time when I could get out. And no, I wouldn’t be permitted to carry any kind of weapon. I said no deal. I did not want to fulfill that kind of role, especially unarmed.

  Then I went before a federal district court judge and told him I’d prefer to go to war than go to jail or be an informant. He stamped my papers approved to go into the Army.

  When they took me to the induction center on Whitehall the first time, the agent said, “You’re not gonna go anywhere, are you?”

  I said, “No.”

  He took the manacles off me and left me in the hands of the Army. The Army treated me just as they did any other recruit. They didn’t know what my history was. I was free to roam around, so what I did was to roam around and roamed right out of the building.

  I got in contact with the lady I was living with, Felice Mosley. I told her I was going into the war, and she got cold feet about waiting for me. We resolved some issues. We broke up. And, after two weeks to rest and recuperate with a friend, I told the FBI to pick me up.

  After I finished basic training, they made me a security holdover for two months because they weren’t sure whether I’d be subversive to the government in a war situation. I had to go over to the G2 every week to prove to them that I’d be a loyal trooper and fight for the red, white, and blue. Finally, they said, “Fine. We’re gonna take you through a little more training in AIT school, and from there you’ll more than likely go to Vietnam.”

  But an odd thing happened before I left Fort Gordon, Georgia. I was training some troops on how to fight with a bayonet. One of them came running down a path to stick the dummy with his bayonet. It was a guy I was in college with who had his ear severely damaged when he was beaten by the Nashville police. I thought to myself they must be taking all of us who were involved in any sort of black political struggle and putting us into the Army as soon as they could so we wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

  I landed in Cam Ranh Bay in January 1970. It was just a big sand bowl. There was nothing there. It could have been a Long Island beach with some nondescript buildings. It could have been the beach in Mexico with some nondescript buildings. It could have been anywhere. The headquarters of the 4th Division in Pleiku seemed the same way. Little Army buildings. A desolate-looking area. Nothing that reflected the difference in the culture of Vietnam. After two days, I told my commanding officer to send me to the field immediately. I was bored. And I wanted to be somewhere where I could get involved more with the Vietnamese people, but not necessarily fighting against them.

  I started off repairing small arms. The 2nd of the 8th Mechanized was like a reaction unit for the division. We were mobile by track or helicopter. And we patrolled Highway 19 from Cambodia to Qui Nhon.

  During the Cambodian incursion, we went in about 2 miles deep to secure the roads for the 101st Airborne. In the sense that we uncovered an awful lot of munitions, I think that operation was a victory. But it also was a defeat because we pushed the VC more into Cambodia, involving them more with the Cambodian people. And that helped lead to the overthrow of the Cambodian government by the Khmer Rouge, who then destroyed 2 million of their own people.

  It was during those operations around the Cambodian border that I really thought I would get killed. It happened twice.

  We were on a regular search and destroy mission, breaking through this jungle trail with one tank and about ten tracks. Most of the people were on foot except the track chief and the driver. I’m the last person in the whole line of tracks. I was carrying an M-60 machine gun. I was walking.

  Then we made some contact. It wasn’t the sporadic pop, pop, pop you would hear when there are maybe just a small group of people fighting. Just an absolute wall of noise.

  I immediately turned backwards and began to spray the back to make sure that nothing is coming up from the back.

  When I turned around forward, everybody was gone. I presumed they had pulled off the trail. But I really didn’t know where they had gone to. Your adrenaline is pumping so hard it seems like your chest is gonna burst. I just had a terrible sinking feeling that—that I was just gonna be left there.

  I was the only one there.

  I got down as low as I could. Then I began to crawl across the tree stumps to the side of the trail. I crawled into some bushes, but I still didn’t see anyone. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I began to try to crawl towards where I thought there were some troops. Always there was the fear of getting killed by your own troops as you get closer and closer, because they don’t know who you are.

  Finally, I saw one of the tracks off the trail, and some people hiding beside it. I was scared to wave at ’em. I was scared to do anything.

  Then I heard somebody yell, “All clear.”

  So I yelled to a track driver, “Hey, Tex!”

  And everybody turned around with their weapons aimed in my direction.

  I said, “It’s Bob.”

  So they said, “Oh, hurry up.”

  I got up and started running. And everything was okay.

  This other time I had to guard this sergeant, a white guy, on our way to Cambodia. I don’t even know how they picked him up. He was busted for raping a Vietnamese woman. His thing was that he just felt that they were animals and didn’t deserve to be treated like people.

  I was told to give him a weapon in case we get into a fight. I only had one spare weapon, a defective M-79 grenade launcher. It didn’t have a safety catch on it, so you couldn’t load it unless you were ready to fire. I told him not to load it unless we made contact and he’s ready to fire. He loaded it anyway. He was sitting slightly behind me with the weapon lying across his lap, facing towards me.

  We went across a bump, and it went off, just an inch behind my back, and exploded in the woods somewhere.

  I turned the .50 around on him. It didn’t turn around as far as I wanted it. So I got up out of the track, pulled my M-16 and told him to get off the track. Just leave. He wouldn’t move, so I kicked him off.

  He went and asked this other track to let him on. They radioed me, “Papa Charlie, what’s happenin’? Why are you leaving this guy here?” I clicked my radio off and told my driver to drive on. I guess he got picked up.

  This sergeant wasn’t the first American I knew about messin’ with the people. In my third week in country, I was assigned a detail to take cases of milk that had spoiled out to the helicopter port at Fire Base Oasis. The port was beside this road where people on motorbikes go by. And these two GIs began throwing quarts of milk at the people on the bikes. Some of them would get hit and fall off the bikes and get injured.

  My first reaction was, Jesus Christ, like why are they doing that?

  My friend and I, supposedly in charge of the detail, went over and told them, “What the fuck’s a matter with you? You’re doing this today. Do you realize what’s gonna happen tonight? Fuck with the people in the daytime, and you can expect mortars at night.”

  That night, we got mortars.

  One time our commander decided to give this village a lesson. The villagers had lied and said that there weren’t any VC there, but the VC were there. They shot this one guy hiding in one of the bunkers. After he was killed or almost dead, the captain ordered him tied to a tank and dragged around the village. It was a psychological thing. Let the people know what can happen to them if they don’t inform on other VC.

  It was something I didn’t want to see. But there were a lot of soldiers in Vietnam who would run out with cameras to take pictures of dead enemy. Like here in the States, when people hear the siren, they run out to see who got hurt, who got shot, who’s arrested. That’s something I never did in Vietnam. I could never really relate to taking pictures and sending them back home. Saying this is a picture of a dead gook, or a dead dink. I couldn’t understand the psychology of that at all.

  I use to give away supplies, food, equipment to the people. And not to just anybody. We’d have to have some sort of relationship. Either they are g
iving me some intelligence information or they have befriended me. I’d give them those big cans of beans, peaches, carrots, poncho liners, blankets, boots, socks, T-shirts. But no weapons.

  Or I might just buy something I didn’t need or want to be friendly, to gain trust.

  I remember a woman asking the people on the track in front of me if they wanted to buy a little bottle of eucalyptus oil. They didn’t want to buy any. She came by my track, and I told her I would buy some. Then I asked her what was happening around this area.

  She was looking kind of nervous. “Well, they been some VC come by here.”

  I said, “Really?”

  “Yesterday. I no know if they still here.”

  I did loan a Vietnamese a weapon once. He was my scout. He had been an ARVN once. And while assigned to me, he was not supposed to have a gun. But we had gone down into VC Valley in an area by the Song Ba River. And we got in some sniper fire the first day. He was just kind of hiding. I was looking out for him, so he didn’t get shot. But I said to myself, “Gee, this is real bad, man. In the middle of a goddamn war, he’s the only one without a piece.” I had a .45 that I never used really. I always had my M-16.

  I told him, “Listen, I’m gonna give you a .45, but you can’t strap it on. You gotta put it down in your pants somewhere, ’cause you’re not s’posed to have it.”

  He’s the only one I gave a weapon to, only because he was a scout. I wasn’t afraid of him turning on us. He was loyal to us. And from then on he was like an ally that you wouldn’t believe.

  He pointed out to me about not firing right away when there is contact. Don’t fire. Don’t do anything. If you fire, they see where your fire is coming from and they can always fire back. Even though I’ve seen that kind of thing in movies, you don’t think about it in the war.

  Another thing he would do. Whenever we approached an area he was concerned about, he would always pull my coat, say, “Wait a minute, Bob.” Then he would go up first to check it out. Which was unusual for ARVN troops.