Bloods

by Wallace Terry

  One particular day we went out of LZ Oasis and captured three prisoners. We on the helicopter coming back, and we radio headquarters we got three bodies. They said, “We only want one.” You had to determine which one of these guys you gonna keep and which ones you don’t. We tied one by the foot to this rappeling rope, and he’s danglin’ on the rope. We even dragged him through the trees. He wasn’t gonna say anything. The other two wasn’t either. So we tied one more the same way, then the other one got to talkin’. We just cut the rope and let the others go. You have to eliminate the others. This was a war-type situation. These two soliders might go kill two of your soldiers if you turn them loose.

  I guess my team got rid of about eight guys out of the chopper one way or another, but I only remember pushing two out myself.

  One night we were out in the field on maneuvers, and we seen some lights. We were investigating the lights, and we found out it was a Vietn’ese girl going from one location to another. We caught her and did what they call gang-rape her. She submitted freely because she felt if she had submitted freely that she wouldn’t have got killed. We couldn’t do anything else but kill her because we couldn’t jeopardize the mission. It was either kill her or be killed yourself the next day. If you let her go, then she’s gonna warn someone that you in the area, and then your cover is blown, your mission is blown. Nothin’ comes before this mission. Nothin’. You could kill thousand folks, but you still had to complete your mission. The mission is your ultimate goal, and if you failed in that mission, then you failed as a soldier. And we were told there would be no prisoners. So we eliminated her. Cut her throat so you wouldn’t be heard. So the enemy wouldn’t know that you was in the area.

  This other time we were in a ambush site. This young lady came past. She spotted us. It was too late. We had to keep her quiet. We ran after her. We captured her. We gagged her.

  We thought, Why kill a woman and you had no play in a couple weeks? We didn’t tie her up, because you can’t seduce a woman too well when she tied up. So we held her down. They didn’t wear what we call underclothes. So there wasn’t nothing when you tear off her pajama pants. She was totally nude ’cept for the top part of her body. But you wasn’t after the top part of the body anyway. We found out she was pregnant. Then we raped her.

  We still had five days to be out there without any radio contact. So we wouldn’t let her go. We didn’t want the enemy to know that we were there. She had to die. But I don’t think we murdered her out of malice. I think we murdered her because we didn’t want to be captured.

  After a while, it really bothered me. I started saying to myself, What would I do if someone would do something like this to my child? To my mother? I would kill ’im. Or I would say, Why in the hell did I take this? Why in the hell did I do that? Because I basically became a animal. Not to say that I was involved in both incidents, but I had turned my back, which made me just as guilty as everybody else. ’Cause I was in charge. I was in charge of a group of animals, and I had to be the biggest animal there. I allowed things to happen. I had learned not to care. And I didn’t care.

  When I seen women put to torture as having Coca-Cola bottles run up into their womb, I did nothing. When I heard this other team raped a woman and then rammed a M-16 in her vagina and pulled the trigger, I said nothing. And when I seen this GI stomp on this fetus after this pregnant woman got killed in a ambush, I did nothin’. What could I do? I was some gross animal.

  One time we went to a village to watch for VC, and this young lady spotted us out in the field. We signaled her not to run, but I guess she didn’t understand. We ran behind her to try to snatch her and keep her from notifying other people we were in the area. By the time she got into the center of the village, everybody start to runnin’ out. Automatically in a combat-like situation you feel that your life is threatened, so you open fire on anything and everything that moves. It was like instantaneous. You couldn’t stop it. That’s how you’re trained. We killed everything that moved. Dogs. Chickens. Approximately 20 some people, mostly women and children. No young men at all. Couple old men. We checked the huts, the bodies. Two was wounded, and we killed them. We was told not to leave anybody alive that would be able to tell.

  I remember how we was told to set an ambush up for anything that walked down this trail, because it was being used as a supply route. And the people was givin’ the NVA regulars food and fresh water. We saw Montagnards. They was all dead except these two kids that run away. I found them hidin’ in the woods, ’cause this little girl, about three years old, started cryin’. Her brother was about five, and he was wounded in the stomach.

  This little fella reminded me of myself when I was small. ’Bout the same complexion. Big head full of curly hair. I just could not kill him. So I brought him and his sister back.

  I grabbed the little boy, and I put him against my body. He bled all over me. From the time I left from the helicopter pad to the first-aid station, everybody was talkin’ ’bout, “Kill the little motherfucker.”

  I said, “Naw, you ain’t gon’ kill this one. He gon’ live.”

  They took me directly to this officer, and he told me I will not bring another Vietn’ese living body into that unit unless I am specifically told to bring prisoners. If it happened again, I would be court-martialed.

  With 89 days left in country, I came out of the field.

  At the time you are in the field you don’t feel anything about what you are doin’. It’s the time you have to yourself that you sit back and you sort and ponder.

  What I now felt was emptiness.

  Here I am. I’m still eighteen years old, a young man with basically everything in his life to look forward to over here in a foreign country with people who have everything that I think I should have. They have the right to fight. I’ve learned in this country that you don’t have the right to gather forces and fight back the so-called oppressor. You have the right to complain. They had the right. They fought for what they thought was right.

  I started to recapture some of my old values. I was a passionate young man before I came into the Army. I believed that you respect other peoples’ lives just as much as I respect my own. I got to thinkin’ that I done killed around 40 people personally and maybe some others I haven’t seen in the fire fights. I was really thinkin’ that there are people who won’t ever see their children, their grandchildren.

  I started seeing the atrocities that we caused each other as human beings. I came to the realization that I was committing crimes against humanity and myself. That I really didn’t believe in these things I was doin’. I changed.

  I stopped wearing the ears and fingers.

  I fell in love with a Vietn’ese girl, and I wanted to bring her back with me.

  I met her in a geisha house. Most of the girls in there were orphans or prostitutes. Her mother was the mama san. She owned the place. I think her father was French. She was a very lovely and attractive young lady. She was cleaning up the place.

  I had no physical relationship with her at all. The relationship we had was strictly intellectual. We just talked, had dinner. She would teach me some of the language and teach me about the customs and the food. I fell in love with her. And I tried to buy her for $1,000.

  But her mother said, “No go.”

  Mai Ling, that was her name, was only sixteen and she had to go to school.

  Now I was looking beyond the physical appearance of the Vietn’ese and lookin’ at the people themselves. They were very pleasant, very outgoing, very beautiful people. I started disliking myself for what America, the war, and bein’ in the Army had caused me to become.

  But I was still a animal.

  One day my best friend, Frank Koharry, a white guy from Detroit, brought this axe over to me.

  He said, “Hey, man. I want you to have this axe.”

  “Okay. What the hell you want me to do with it?”

  He say, “I want you to hit somebody with it.”

  And I hit ’im. H
it ’im right there in his arm.

  He just looked and said, “Nigger, you crazy.”

  He went to the aid station, and they bandaged his ass up. ’Bout 32 stitches in his arm.

  But we stayed best friends. He would cover for me if I had got in any type of trouble. We was very close.

  I took the axe out on one more ambush. And when I heard the VC come down the trail, I jumped out the woods and chopped a fellow’s head off with it.

  I was still a spec four, and I wanted a battlefield promotion to E-6, a high-ranking NCO. But the captain was telling me I had to take a test.

  I said, “How the hell I’m a take a test if I’m out here fightin’ and killin’ people everyday?”

  I was runnin’ a LURP team. A Ranger unit. I’m takin’ first lieutenants and captains to the field. I got shrapnel wounds. Me and my team was dropped in North Vietnam where American ground troops ain’t s’posed to be. We hiding all the time. We become the Viet Cong. Because they got the tanks, the trucks, the airplanes now. We observing their troops, supply movements. Making drawings of their emblems if we don’t know who they are. We never get discovered in North Vietnam. The whole time I was in the field, North and South, I never had anyone lose their life on my team. Never. I was good. That is the only test I need to take. I wanted the rank.

  But this captain said no.

  So we had what they call penlight flare. You had them big bullfrogs over there with the big warts. I took one of those penlight flares and stuck it up the frog’s anus, went in the captain’s office, and fired it at him.

  I had a little farm, with some chickens and a cow. And a Puerto Rican buddy of mine, lived in New Jersey, was going home.

  I told him, “Man, when you get ready to leave, I’m gon’ kill these chickens, gon’ kill this cow. We gon’ have the biggest barbecue these people ever seen.”

  It comes to the day when it’s time for him to go home. I goes out, gatherin’ up the chickens. We gon’ cut the chickens’ heads off and have barbecue chicken.

  So this same captain came up to me. He stared at me. I had this chicken in my hand.

  He said, “Don’t cut that chicken up.”

  He wants it saved for the eggs, I guess.

  “You cut that chicken’s head off, I’m a have you court-martialed.”

  I bent over, and I bit the chicken head off and spit it in his face. And he throwed up.

  My discipline was something to talk about. But a lot of people felt in the unit that I was the best Ranger in the company. When we went to the field, we were soldiers. When we got out of the field, we was crazy. And we was crazy together.

  So they sent me back before the promotion board, and this black sergeant happened to be a part of it. I had more respect from the people in the unit than he did. He wouldn’t go near the field. Shit. Anything with the word F he wouldn’t fuck with. He was a certified ass. He did his best to keep me from gettin’ promoted, but they gave me E-5 anyway.

  Well, I happened to be downtown in the whorehouse, when they called formation. I went back all drunk. They had just dismissed the formation, when me and a buddy drove up in a jeep. They called the formation again. The sergeant called me, gave me my orders for E-5, and I went back in the ranks. He called us back to attention, called me back out, and took it from me. We had this personal thing.

  So on his birthday, which was three days later, he was havin’ all the officers in his barracks. They was partyin’. Music was playin’. Me and some friends of mine got a M-79 grenade launcher, got behind some sandbags, and we M-79ed his birthday party.

  A couple of people got hurt. The sergeant didn’t get touched. They thought it was incomin’. They had the whole goddamn place on alert. Everybody runnin’ around tryin’ to get their weapons. And we just went and got drunk.

  I think the captain and the sergeant was afraid of me.

  I left Vietnam the end of ’69. I flew from An Khe to Cam Ranh Bay, still in my jungle fatigues. I hadn’t bathed in six months. I had a full-grown beard. My hair was so matted against my head I couldn’t pull my fingers through it. I smelled like a cockroach on Christmas. Like Mount Rushmore in the springtime. I was funky. I was really funky.

  Then they put me in this big fabulous airplane. I’m sittin’ there with filth all over me. From my head to my toe. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

  We landed in California when it was dark. We were taken to some barracks. We took a shower, and they gave us some new clothes and a steak dinner. Then I got on another plane.

  The same day I left Vietnam, I was standin’ back on the corner in Baltimore. Back in the States. A animal. And nobody could deal with me.

  I went home. I banged on the door. About four o’clock in the morning. I’m hollerin’, screamin’ in the middle of the street.

  “Wake up, you motherfuckers. Get out of there. I’m home. Shit.”

  There wasn’t nobody there.

  I went and found my grandparents, and they told me my parents had moved a month before and where to find them.

  When I got there, my mother wouldn’t even open the door. She didn’t even recognize me.

  I started rappin’ to her, tellin’ her I was her son. And she finally let me in.

  It took her a long time to adjust to who I had changed to be. She had heard so much negative rumors about Vietnam vets bein’ crazy. She was afraid of me.

  Before I got out the service, the My Lai stuff came out in the papers. Some of who had been in similar incidents in combat units felt that we were next. We were afraid that we were gonna be the next ones that was gonna be court-martialed or called upon to testify against someone or against themselves. A lot of us wiped out whole villages. We didn’t put ’em in a ditch per se, but when you dead, you dead. If you kill 30 people and somebody else kills 29, and they happen to be in a ditch and the other 30 happen to be on top, whose guilty of the biggest atrocity? So all of us were scared. I was scared for a long time.

  I got out January ’71. Honorable discharge. Five Bronze Stars for valor.

  I couldn’t deal with goin’ to school, because I wasn’t motivated. The only friends I made were militant types, because they were the only ones could relate to what I was tryin’ to say. I took all the money I saved up and bought weapons. Fifteen-hundred dollars’ worth. Rifles, guns. I joined the Black Panthers group basically because it was a warlike group. With the Panthers we started givin’ out free milk and other community help things. But I was thinkin’ we needed a revolution. A physical revolution. And I was thinkin’ about Vietnam. All the time.

  I could never have a permanent-type relationship with a lady. It was always sporadic-type relationships. They couldn’t understand what I was goin’ through when the flashbacks started. Tryin’ to talk to them, they wouldn’t wanna hear it. Didn’t want to hear no gross war stories. Hear about dead people. I just couldn’t translate my feelings to a lady.

  I couldn’t discuss the war with my father even though he had two tours in Vietnam and was stationed in the Mekong Delta when I was there. He was a staff sergeant. A lifer. Truck driver. Jeep driver or somethin’. In a support unit with the 9th Division. I couldn’t come to terms with him being in a noncombat unit. He died three years ago. He was forty-five. He had a disease he caught from the service called alcoholism. He died of alcoholism. And we never talked about Vietnam.

  But my moms, she brought me back ’cause she loved me. And I think because I loved her. She kept reminding me what type of person I was before I left. Of the dreams I had promised her before I left. To help her buy a home and make sure that we was secure in life.

  And she made me see the faces again. See Vietnam. See the incidents. She made me really get ashamed of myself for doin’ the things I had done. You think no crime is a crime durin’ war, ’specially when you get away with it. And when she made me look back at it, it just didn’t seem it was possible for me to be able to do those things to other people, because I value life. That’s what moms and grandmoms taught me as a ch
ild.

  I’ve had a lotta different, short-lived jobs since I been back. I’ve been into drug counseling in Baltimore City Hospital. Worked in the children’s clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In welfare rights as a community organizer. Always human service work.

  I don’t have a job now. But I would take any human service job, especially where I could show the black kids and the black people that we ought to stop looking toward the stars and start looking toward each other. That our greatest horizons is in our children. And if we don’t bring our children up to believe in themselves, then we’ll never have anything to believe in.

  But they turn their backs on a lot of us Vietnam vet’rans. They say the only way to success is through education. I wanna go back to school and get my B.A., but I can’t afford to. I gotta get out there and get a job. Ain’t no jobs out there. So what I’m gon’ do now? Only thing else I know how to do is pick up a gun. Then I’m stupid. I’m being stupid again. I’m not going forward. I’m going backwards. And can’t go any further backwards. I done been so damn far back, I’m listenin’ to the echoes in the tunnel.

  One day I’m down on Oliver and Milton Avenue. Go in this grocery store. In my neighborhood.

  This Vietn’ese owns the store.

  He say, “I know you?”

  I say, “You know me from where?”

  “You Vietnam?”

  “Yeah, I was in Vietnam.”

  “When you Vietnam.”

  “ ’68, ’69.”

  “Yeah, me know you. An Khe. You be An Khe?”

  “Yeah, I was in An Khe.”

  “Yeah, me know you. You Montagnard Man.”

  Ain’t that some shit?

  I’m buyin’ groceries from him.

  I ain’t been in the store since. I’m still pissed off.

  He’s got a business, good home, drivin’ cars. And I’m still strugglin’.

  I’m not angry ’cause he Vietn’ese. I don’t have anything against the Vietn’ese. Nothin’. Not a damn thing. I’m angry with America. When the Vietn’ese first came here, they were talkin’ ’bout the new niggers. But they don’t treat them like niggers. They treat them like people. If they had gave me some money to start my life over again, I’d been in a hell of a better situation than I am right now. We went to war to serve the country in what we thought was its best interest. Then America puts them above us. It’s a crime. It’s a crime against us.