Atrocities by the Viet Cong were horrendous. Any local resident that in any way was viewed as a potential threat to the Communist cause was tortured and eliminated. They started with the teachers, doctors, any ‘intellectuals’, the religious, and anyone that they didn’t like or trust for whatever reason. I saw the results, and heard many more first-hand and credible stories of their tortures and crimes — they were unbelievable and too gruesome to repeat in other than the most generic terms. Disembowelment of live men and women, torturing and killing children in front of their parents, torture of victims by the most terrible means that can be imagined — these were the tools of the communist cadre leaders and propaganda experts to convince anyone they suspected of needing indoctrination and education that theirs was the correct path.
I can honestly say that the units I was with did not commit offenses such as killing of civilians, deliberately damaging property or livestock, or other behavior that would violate laws or treaties. There were some questionable incidents in which what might have been a civilian was shot because they were running away after shots were fired or otherwise brought attention to themselves in a manner that made them look guilty. On one occasion we burned a village after many attacks against us originated from that village and where we found hidden rifles and supplies for the VC. Were some innocent civilians impacted? Unfortunately, yes. And that bothered most us — but such is war. It’s asking a very lot of a nineteen year old who had seen the ugliness of war and who knew that the persons killing and maiming his friends were the same ones he saw on the trails and in the fields to make a split-second decision about whether that person should live or die when caught up in a sudden life or death situation.
I have absolutely no patience with know-it-all civilians who condemn the behavior of military personnel that are suddenly thrust into terrifying or grossly unnatural situations. Of course, civilized behavior and adherence to treaties is paramount and violators must be brought to justice in the military’s justice system. Their deeds must be judged in the military world, not the neat and tidy civilian world of niceties. But don’t for an instant think that other persons would not commit a similar offense in the right circumstance. Each and every one of us has our breaking point. Rather than condemn those who experienced un-human circumstances that took them past their breaking point, pray that you personally are never in a situation so terrible that you too would break and commit what had heretofore been an unthinkable act on your part.
0 Souvenirs of War Charlie Company-l/27 1 There was no way to identify the local guerillas. Without question we walked by or even talked to Viet Cong or their accomplices almost every day but had no way of knowing it. We knew that the guerillas who were planting the mines or working as snipers were all around us, and that they could have been an old woman or a child of ten or twelve. It was much too easy to learn to distrust and even almost hate everyone because you could trust no one. In fact, staying alive depended on development of this deep distrust. Naiveté would get you killed real fast. This daily reality of not being able to identify the enemy, and of his taking great advantage of this fact, was very difficult to live with. This was not a neat and clean war with traditional front lines — it was a war where every subterfuge, deceit and trick was used as a weapon against us. There absolutely was no such thing as the front line, or secure areas behind the front lines where one could relax.
It was impossible for a placard-carrying peace protester to understand the strain that the troops fighting in Vietnam were under, and why decent young men sometimes snapped and did things they would never have dreamed of doing in their worst nightmare prior to being sent to Vietnam. And the word “sent” is key. Nobody wanted to be there just for the hell of it. We were there because the American government, on behalf of the American people, sent us there.
Often it was the women who were the snipers and who laid the mines and booby traps. They attracted less attention than did an 18 — 50 year old male. In fact one day when a group of us was guarding a bridge we were watching a woman near the river on a dike that we utilized frequently. She was acting out of place, bent over where there was no reason to be. She was doing something with her hands. We all thought at the same time that she was in fact burying a mine. Seconds later as we were watching she just blew up. The mine she was planting inadvertently exploded.
The U.S. Army was starting to have serious morale problems even as early as mid-1968. There was a breakdown in respect for the chain of command, and tensions along racial lines were also becoming a problem. In the USMC it seemed that the extent of those problems wasn’t nearly as pervasive. There was certainly the usual great amount of complaining, but none of the incidents in which units refused to go out on patrols, disobeying orders, or criminal behavior. The discipline of the Marines in the field was evident. There was some drug use but it was still the exception and not routine. I also saw no evidence of racial disharmony in the 27th or 9th Marine Regiments. It’s ironic, but the closer to danger that a unit was the tighter the bonds between the men. Blacks and Hispanics were not over-represented in units that I was assigned to. Their numbers seemed roughly proportionate to the overall population, and we all got along well together.
The more time spent in the rear, where boredom could quickly become a serious problem, the more likely problems such as drug use or the breakdown of discipline would occur. We spent very little time in rear base areas and thus boredom was almost never an issue. Drugs were widely available and hawked by kids and adults in practically any village we went through. Units I was in learned from hard experience that there was no such thing as a safe area or a leisurely walk in the woods. We knew that danger always lurked nearby and that we could come under fire at any time or place. This need for constant vigilance, I believe, kept many of the Marines I served with away from drugs. You just never knew what was around the corner but we did know that to stay alive we’d better stay straight and alert.
The first phrase of Vietnamese that one learned incountry was dung lai, which meant stop or halt. It was shouted frequently when someone looked or acted suspiciously and we wanted to search them. If they ran it was up to us to ascertain in about a half-second whether they were a guerilla or a frightened civilian. On some occasions we had a small number of South Vietnamese troops with us to act as interpreters, but very often we had no such help. The second phrase we picked up was probably di di mau. This meant a couple of things depending on its use. Often it was used to tell someone to go away, get out of here, as when a local was pestering you to buy a hot bottle of ‘soda’. But it could also mean to hurry up — often it was used to convey both meanings, as in ‘hurry up and get the hell out of here!’ But probably the most commonly used word was the French word beaucoup. It was mispronounced as buku, and was heard constantly and in every context that could be imagined.
The USMC was taking heavy casualties and had to actually draft some men because enlistments were falling short of their needs. At one point in our platoon there were two Marines who had been drafted, and they hated the Corps. They spoke often about how they hated the training, the heightened discipline and strict chain-of-command practices, and the gung-ho attitude of many Marines. They were bitter about being in the Corps, and they let everyone know it. Their bad attitude and lack of personal discipline were possibly contributing factors in the fact that both were killed in action after less than a month in country.
There were many instances in which a new replacement was killed or seriously wounded their first week in country. Similarly, there were many instances in which someone who had served their 13 months, or nearly so, was killed or seriously wounded with just a few days left in country. The latter was especially tragic, and we all feared it.
It may sound overly melodramatic, but after a couple months in country I knew without the slightest doubt that I wasn’t going to make it back. As more time passed, and more mental and physical stresses mounted, I got very angry at God for letting me suffer. If He knew I was going to
die, why didn’t He just get it over with, I thought, and not allow it to happen after 12 or
Souvenirs of War Charlie Company-l/27 5 13 months in-country. In frustration I’m afraid I wasn’t very reverent. There were just too many point blank ambushes where several people around me were hit, but I wasn’t even though I was at point; or times when I missed a mine that someone else stepped on; or when a sniper hit the person right in front or right behind me, but not me. I knew that sooner or later my luck was going to run out.
It wasn’t until I did get back home that I was able to understand how incredibly fortunate I in fact had been. I was able to live the rest of my life, with all my body parts, unlike the 58,000 that died and the many tens of thousands that were maimed physically or emotionally. I’ve long since made my apologies and expressed my great appreciation for life to The Big Guy.
But I’ve also often wondered, why me? Why did I live when so many others died? They had as much right to live as I did; after all, I’m nobody special. I’ve wondered if there is something in particular that I’m supposed to be doing as the result of being given the gift of life. Was there a quid pro quo attached in being allowed to live? If so, what was or is expected of me in return for my safe return? What can a person do or give that can possibly equate to having been given life itself?
With the passage of time a lot of events in Vietnam seem to run all together without a distinct timeline to separate them. I recall some events very vividly but don’t remember if they happened in April or August, or where we were exactly. There were just a lot of “routine” things that happened. After a while you didn’t think about them the same way a civilian back in The World would react to them. These things just happened, and they happened regularly. For instance there was a routine day when we were walking single file across a deep swamp area, with water up to our chest. As I happened to be looking at him, the head of the man in front of me just exploded, followed a second later by the sound of the shot. There was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide — we just slowly finished wading across as a few more bullets hit the water around us. We of course dragged the dead man with us. Something that in normal life would have made the front page and sparked a major police investigation was just another normal event in war that didn’t warrant any special action. The rest of us just silently thanked the gods of fate that it was him and not us.
I don’t know if it was ever proven, but we suspected a serious problem with someone sabotaging our grenades. I assume it happened in the rear, where many local Vietnamese worked at U.S. bases, doing a variety of jobs. They weren’t all friends. Grenades have a fuse that lasts about 5 seconds after the spoon flies. This is obviously so that it explodes several seconds and some distance after it’s thrown. We had some instances in which the grenade had been apparently taken apart and ‘shortfused’, as we called it. When thrown, it would explode almost immediately, killing or seriously maiming the person who threw it and of course anyone near him. I recall one Marine from Los Angeles who was throwing a grenade into a cave prior to us going in to search it. As soon as it left his hand it exploded. This was right in front of several of us but because he was in the mouth of the cave the shrapnel didn’t hit any others of us that were nearby. It happened on several other occasions that I heard of also.
We had to go into a lot of bunkers, tunnels or caves. This was dangerous and frightening work and we always threw grenades in first, though the tunnels and bunkers were designed so that an explosion near the entrance wouldn’t hurt someone hiding further back in. The extent of the tunnel complexes throughout South Vietnam was incredible. They were large enough to house very significant numbers of troops and supplies, and in fact entire hospitals.
The NVA and VC were supplied by Russia and China. The term “Chi-Com” was used often and referred to Chinese Communist weapons, especially grenades and RPGs.
The U.S. military had a practice of lobbing artillery shells in a somewhat indiscriminate manner that was called H&I fire (harassment and interdiction). Based on some ‘intelligence’ or belief that the enemy may be moving through a particular area at night artillery rounds would be dropped in the vicinity in hopes that they would kill, slow down, or at least interfere in some way with the actions and movements of the enemy. I have no idea (nor does anyone, I suspect) how effective this practice was. This was another manifestation of the ‘free fire zone’ approach. Any civilian that tried to survive in free fire zones was in for a very tough time!
In late August there was an incident that still gives me the shivers. We were at a remote location where we had previously built some bunkers and sandbagged foxholes. These far-forward outposts were called Platoon Patrol Bases (PPBs in the inevitable military alphabet soup jargon). We had been there for several days, going on local patrols, when a typhoon hit. This was a hurricane that lasted a full day and night. The wind and rain were just incredible and we had no place to go for cover. We stood in the rain for about 24 hours, trying to hold on to something to not get blown away. We couldn’t stand in the bunkers we had dug because they were completely filled with water. It’s hard to describe how miserable we were. That wasn’t the worst part, however. The second night the storm subsided quite a bit, though it was very windy and stormy.
Each and every time we ever stopped for more than a few minutes we always sent LPs — 2 or 3-man listening posts — out about 100 yards in front of the lines. The job of the LP was to detect enemy movement nearby. We all did it, and it was very dangerous and nerve wracking. Sometimes we had columns of VC or NVA walk 2 or 3 feet away from us. On occasion someone in the LP would make a noise or otherwise be discovered. On the second night of the storm this happened. The 2-man LP members were captured and in the wind we could hear them screaming as they were being tortured. We of course ran right out there to find them. When we did they were dead and we discovered that Charlie or the NVA had carved illegible letters in their chests.
Far and away the greatest fear of the grunt wasn’t being killed or maimed — it was being captured. The enemy did not take prisoners. There is a reason that almost all of the prisoners released in 1973 were officers and pilots — captured infantrymen seldom survived. They were tortured and then killed. Pilots shot down in North Vietnam had some political value, and due to radio contact and other planes in the area it was usually known whether a pilot ejected alive. The government in the North cared enough about world opinion that they didn’t want to be caught indiscriminately killing captured pilots (though they certainly showed no qualms about torturing them daily, and killing any that tried to escape). The VC and NVA in South Vietnam had no such concerns.
Great care was taken to avoid capture. For one thing, your rifle virtually never left your hand. Other than 4 days in Hawaii on R&R, my rifle was either actually in my hand, strapped on my back, or within inches of my arm 24 hours a day for every day of 13 straight months. You slept with your arm on or around it, walked with it in your hand or on your back, and at all other times it was always within reach. In fact to this day I can still remember my rifle’s serial number (691674). When in thick cover great care was taken by everyone to make sure nobody got separated. No one ever wandered off looking at something or just to take a walk.
Again, it may sound melodramatic but every Grunt I knew kept an M-16 round strapped on their helmet for ultimate personal use if about to be taken prisoner after having expended all their ammunition. I have no doubt but that some were utilized for that purpose.
On my helmet I had written the words “You haven’t really lived until you have nearly died”. Youthful bravado, yes, but the fact is near death experiences gives a person a perspective about life that most don’t have.
There were close bonds between most of us. It was very clear that we weren’t there for God and Country — we were there for each other. We were all that we had. We knew that back home most people weren’t giving us a passing thought as they lived their comfortable lives. We were all aware that the war wasn’t a cause that had
unified the nation and strengthened its resolve the way World War II had. There was no rationing or scrap metal drives to help the war effort. There were no war bond rallies to help fund the war. No, in this war people demanded both butter and bullets, and by God if they couldn’t have both they would choose butter and the soldiers could fend for themselves.
We knew that in fact more than a few were hoping that the North Vietnamese would prevail and give the ignorant masses of the South the benefits of Ho Chi Minh’s glorious revolution. We didn’t look for nor did we receive hope, support or encouragement from the
100 Souvenirs of War Charlie Company-l/27 101 home front. We knew we were in this on our own and that we were involved in a political and social event that would change our country forever — and most of us feared that the change would not be for the better.
The NVA and VC left a lot of propaganda leaflets around with pictures of anti-war demonstrations on
them, and messages that our fellow citizens thought of us as nothing more than baby killers. They had some pamphlets aimed directly at the black soldiers, showing pictures from the civil rights struggles, and one showing a dead black soldier lying in swamp water with the caption that blacks should leave Vietnam and go home alive to fight the racists in America.
Souvenirs of War Page 7
