by James Estep
“You’re preaching to the choir, Coop.”
“But we didn’t lock our commander in chief in the woodshed,” he continued, an anguished look about him. “And if the message he sent to Uncle Ho was the wrong one, the message he sent to snuffie was a hell of a lot worse. I mean what’s snuffie supposed to think when his supreme commander, the president of these United States, says, ‘Hey, guys, I’m calling it quits. Ain’t gonna be no victory, ‘cause we’re getting out soon as I can find a way to do it without winning. In the meantime, I’d like you to just keep on fighting and dying same as if I weren’t saying any of this, okay?” Well, Jim, you cannot expect an American field army, any field army, for that matter, to fight very well or very long on guidance like that. Mark my words: the Army’s gonna tear itself apart in Vietnam.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “Sergeant Sullivan said it’d turn itself inside out if something like this happened. And, Coop, he predicted it would happen, right after Tet!”
“Well, the Bull was right,” Cooper said. “Hey, by the way, you hear that Naple got hit?”
“Yeah, but don’t know much about it. What happened?”
“Not sure myself. Heard the U.S. Navy put a salvo of rockets in Charlie Company’s NDP not long after you caught your dust off. You know our Navy. Probably mistook your company for a Viet Cong submarine lurking about a mile or so inland. Understandable mistake.
Anyway, Naple got hit bad, but last I heard he still had all his limbs and all his senses and was on the mend. Uh … remember that black point man of his, Wester? Think the two of ‘em, Naple and Wester, pulled you out of the paddy north of Hue.”
I nodded, fearing the worst.
“He got hit bad a short time later, think it was up in the A Shau. Head wound, heard he lost his eyesight.”
“Fuck,” I said, suddenly wishing I could be the one to lock our commander in chief in a woodshed.
“Yeah, the blind ones are the worst,” Coop commented.
In May of 1969, a year and two months after being felled in that putrid rice paddy, I departed Walter Reed. As the taxi wound its way through Silver Springs, I suddenly realized I’d been mistaken in my initial assessment of duty at the hospital. It had not been “just another tour.” It had been a tour of unpleasant excesses. Too much pain, trauma, tears, blood, and drugs. Too many saddened mothers and fathers, uncomprehending children, shocked—and in some cases adulterous wives, and plainly disinterested but duty-bound relatives. And too many crippled warriors who would have to go through life wondering if their sacrifice had been in vain.
However, if not an uplifting experience, it had in many ways been a positive one. I had seen my fellow patients, the pit crew, daily display a bravery, a heart-rending courage, that one only occasionally sees on the battlefield. And I had witnessed a hospital staff routinely demonstrate a compassion and dedication that would have put Florence Nightingale to shame.
Nearly three years after limping out of Walter Reed’s front portals, on the eve of my fourth and final tour in the Nam, I received an invitation from the hospital’s staff asking that I attend the formal closing of the snake pit. The war, for all practical purposes, was over, and there was no longer a need for the pit.
I did not attend. I wish I had.
25. Fort Benning, Georgia: Spring 1970
I spent the next couple of years doing what many other Indochina returnees were doing—recuperating from wounds, ending marriages, and pondering what in the hell had happened to the world we once knew. These were harsh years—harsh on those of us who remained in uniform and just as harsh, perhaps more so, on those who returned to America’s civilian community. Collectively, we searched in vain for something meaningful to hang onto. However, contrary to what most of our fellow countrymen now believe, we were not looking for some mythical meaning to the war we had fought or wishfully seeking a grateful nation’s thanks for having done so. We knew the meaning of the war, if not the reason for it. We were searching instead for some purpose in the society we had served, a society that seemed to be casting asunder what many of us thought of as rock-solid, eternally enduring values.
Unable to find what we sought, our malaise often turned to bitterness, and many of us distanced ourselves from an American populace that somehow seemed foreign to us. Of course, our society had not changed—we had. The war had put us in touch with those values others merely speak of. That is the way of war and is perhaps one of its few positive consequences.
Soon after reentering the military’s mainstream, I discovered that our Army, as an institution, was beginning to exhibit many of the same symptoms of apathy and purposelessness that its Vietnam returnees were experiencing as individuals. In 1970, the military’s outlook on the war was undergoing a dramatic change. “Can do, sir!” was rapidly becoming “don’t make waves, sir.”
Not surprisingly, the sentiments of those soldiers preparing to go to war and of those training them to do so had also changed. An atmosphere of inertia and indifference, a “wait-and-see” attitude, had begun to settle over much of the Army’s rank and file. There was little talk of kicking Charlie’s ass. Younger soldiers talked instead of surviving their tour, while older ones spoke of resignation and early retirement before their next tour. Both looked in vain for some direction from above.
For whatever reasons, the Army was in trouble. As the Bull had predicted while sitting atop his mermite two years before, the Army was indeed “turning itself inside out.”
26. Auburn University: Spring 1972
I don’t quite know how it happened. I never intended to return to Vietnam. Still, in the spring of 1972, while finishing up my bachelor’s work at Auburn and after having spent a brief tour as a battalion S-3 at Fort Benning and undergoing its officer’s advanced course, I found myself on the phone with Infantry Branch, once again requesting duty in the Nam.
“Well, Jim, I quite candidly don’t advise that,” the assignments officer, a major whom I had never seen or talked to before, said in response to my request. “I mean, frankly speaking, we no longer look upon duty in Vietnam as career enhancing, especially repeat tours. And this would be your fourth.”
“Major,” I replied, “I quite candidly don’t give a tinker’s damn about career enhancement at the moment. At the moment, I want to go to Vietnam.”
“Well, Major, if that’s what you really want, I’ll get the orders working this very morning. We still honor voluntary requests for Southeast Asia, and if you insist on so callously ignoring my advice, it’ll just save me from sending some reluctant major back involuntarily on a second tour. Okay?”
Okay. Once more into the breach.
When I made that call, North Vietnam was once again wreaking havoc on its southern neighbor. This time it was the Eastertide offensive, and although I could do little to change the battle’s course, it seemed only fitting that I again heed the trumpet’s call or so I told myself at the time.
Later I concluded that the call was not nearly so noble. In reality, I had simply suffered a mild recurrence of “yellow fever” and wanted to go back because the Nam, if not the most stable, was the most comfortable environment for me. I had spent most of my previous ten years in Vietnam, training or training others to go to Vietnam, or recuperating from having been in Vietnam. And we all feel most comfortable in that world with which we are most familiar. Moreover, it seemed to me that inasmuch as combat was a rarity in a thirty-year career, one ought to spend as much of his time in it as opportunity afforded.
However, as I was soon to discover, this thesis simply no longer applied to duty in the Nam. In the summer of 1972, American combat forces were no longer in the fray.
27. Saigon, Vietnam: July 1972
As the Eastertide offensive faded into but another footnote on Indochina’s long and troubled history, I arrived, again via World Airways, at Tan Son Nhut, the same airfield upon which I had landed ten years earlier when first setting foot on Vietnam’s soil.
We have come full circle, I though
t to myself as we deplaned. In ‘62 we were all advisors, of one sort or another, and we all landed at Tan Son Nhut. Now, ten years later, we’re again all advisors, of one sort or another, entering the country at Tan Son Nhut. Cam Ranh must be a ghost town.
Although the war was over for most Americans serving in Vietnam, there were some advisors who were still very much in the thick of it, none more so than those attached to Vietnam’s only airborne division. By a fortuitous stroke of fate, coupled with some politicking and a bit of deviousness on my part, that’s where I was going! Or so I thought.
“I’d like to see the general!” I snapped, glaring at the lieutenant colonel, one of the general’s minions, as he sat behind his desk with a surprised look on his face.
“Whoa there, Major! What’s the problem? Hell, you just got here. Got a plum of an assignment, too.”
“The assignment is the problem, sir.”
All had gone well and according to plan the first two days after my arrival. AAG’s (Army Advisory Group’s) personnel section had confirmed my assignment to the airborne division’s advisory team and, after in-processing me, had sent me on down to the team’s rear detachment in Saigon. There, after meeting the team’s RDC, a captain, I was in-processed a bit further, drew my weapon and field gear, and was told to report to Tan Son Nhut at 0800 hours the following morning. I was to catch a flight north and join the team on the outskirts of Quang Tri.
At 0745 hours the next day I stood on the airfield’s flight line, rucksack at my feet and CAR-15 in hand. That was as close as I ever got to hearing a round fired in anger on my fourth and final tour in the Nam.
At that point a captain from AAG’s personnel section arrived and informed me that the group had a new commander, who had a new assignment philosophy, and that I was being sent to the National NCO Academy in Nha Trang. He had my orders in hand.
Well, we’ll just have to go and get this misunderstanding straightened out, I said to myself, catching a ride with the captain to AAG’s headquarters compound.
By the time I got there, after listening to the captain’s discourse on his new commander’s assignment philosophy, I was steaming. It was very much like reliving my encounter with Lieutenant Colonel Know five years before, but this time there was no Colonel Lich to turn to. I was on my way to Nha Trang.
28. Nha Trang, Vietnam
The National NCO Academy sat astride Highway One on the South China Sea’s coast. Earlier in the war, the academy’s primary task had been to school ARVN’s noncommissioned officer corps; however, at this juncture it was mainly involved in producing new lieutenants for an army that had been bled white in Giap’s Eastertide offensive.
Housed in a small oceanside villa, the U.S. advisory team consisted of four people—a colonel in command, myself, a captain, and one NCO. Our job was to advise and assist the academy’s commandant. In these waning days of America’s involvement in Indochina, that’s what we did—taught second lieutenants to fight a war that had become exclusively theirs.
Most of these young officers—those who survived would go on to become first lieutenants. Few, however, would be promoted to the rank of captain, because when that rank was due there would no longer be an army of the republic—nor would there be a republic.
By early October, rumors of war’s end ran rampant. On the twenty-sixth, rumor seemingly became fact when presidential advisor Henry Kissinger announced that “peace is at hand.” But Doctor Kissinger’s pronouncement was a bit premature. In Paris, North Vietnamese negotiators continued to quibble over the smallest of points at the peace talks.
The U.S. Air Force was finally, mercifully, unleashed on a strategic, no-holds-barred aerial offensive against North Vietnam. Referred to as Linebacker 11, or the Christmas bombings, it was a bombing campaign that the Air Force had pleaded for—and we who fought in the paddies had hoped for—since the war’s beginning.
And it worked. Just eleven days later our enemy called it quits.
We who remained found it ironic, and tragically sad, that what had eluded our negotiators throughout five fruitless years of “peace talks” while our fellow soldiers were dying—was finally brought about by an eleven-day bombing campaign, a campaign our country could have conducted with impunity at any point in the war.
With the signing of the Paris Accords, the United States had sixty days to get the remaining twenty-three thousand of us out of Vietnam.
In mid-February we closed the door on the team’s villa for the last time, bid farewell to the academy’s commandant and his staff, and hitched a ride on an ARVN Huey to Long Van. From there we’d catch a C-130 and fly south to Saigon and points beyond.
While waiting at Long Van for our C-130, I suddenly experienced an intense feeling of des ja vu.
This is where it all started, at least for me. I first landed here ten years ago, nearly to the day! Across the strip there, the vacant and plainly deteriorating frame structures of the Fifth Special Forces Group’s headquarters still stand … appears the Viets are using what’s left of them for firewood. Can it be eight years since we processed through those buildings, heading for all our misadventures in a place called ARO? What had it all been about? A decade of my life, the best one, has passed, and I suddenly can’t seem to find purpose.
To hell with it! Like we used to say in the Cav, it ain’t no big thing.
Just get on the plane and go home.
29. Saigon, Vietnam: March 1973
On the eve of my departure from Saigon, I left one of the Army’s contract hotels on the outskirts of Tan Son Nhut’s main entrance and walked a bit.
I passed the villa in which—behind which—we youngsters of the seventy-six trombones” had spent our first night in the Nam so many years before. The massive cypress trees straddling its walled entrance had changed little; however, the villa looked much older, much smaller, and was in obvious need of paint.
Strolling on down the street, I stopped in one of the many bars that now dotted the area around the air base’s main gate and bought a Saigon tea for a completely disinterested young lady—a lady who knew the terms of the Accords—those that applied to her—far better than I did. All U.S. military personnel must be out of Vietnam by midnight on the twenty-ninth of March, an hour and date that were quickly approaching.
Our era had ended. We were no longer the saviors of her country or the providers of her welfare.
The following morning, thirty or so of us were bused to Tan Son Nhut for the last time. Out-processing was quick and efficient, and, after a shorter-than-usual wait, our flight’s departure was announced. This time, many civilian passengers were boarding with us.
Walking across the airport’s tarmac, I noted a North Vietnamese officer standing next to our aircraft, pencil in one hand and what I presumed to be the flight manifest in the other. He wore the all–toofamiliar khaki uniform and pitched helmet, red star affixed thereto.
He was the enemy!
Who’s responsible for this, goddamn it? Who has permitted our enemy to inflict this final insult upon us? This bastard was fair game; he was “good hunting” a very short time ago. Now he’s allowed to solemnly, condescendingly check off our names as we…
Upon reaching the aircraft, I stopped and stared defiantly at my foe, momentarily holding up the boarding passengers behind me. He gazed back at me, an arrogant, triumphant look in his eyes.
I would like to kill you, I thought. If I had a weapon, I would.
Then it would all end right. There would just be the two of us, and you’d die, and I’d place a Cav patch on your chest and leave this country. Fulfilled.
I boarded the plane.
After we were airborne, I spent a few brief minutes gazing out the window, watching Vietnam quickly slip away below me. In no time paddies gave way to the South China Sea’s cobalt blue waters. Turning back in my seat, I was suddenly aware of a striking difference between this flight and the three that had preceded it. Always before, even while lying in a stretcher aboard my C-141 medev
ac, I had had a gut feeling I’d be back. I had no such feeling this time. I felt nothing at all.
What was it all about? Where is the meaning, the purpose in all of it?
Ten, nearly eleven years of my…
“Can I get you something to drink?” an attractive flight attendant asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“Well … how about a virgin Mary, with just a touch of vodka in it, please.”
She smiled, mixed the drink, handed it to me, and continued to work her way down the aisle.
What were the good and bad about it, the worth and waste of it all?
Hell, I don’t know, probably a little of—no, a lot of—both. Too deep for me; let someone else sort it all out in the future. I’m too tired to think about it right now. Yeah, eleven years’ tired. But it had been exciting! Good or bad, right or wrong, it had been exciting! Life is always better at the edge. Finishing my drink, I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and let my thoughts drift.
“Comanche Six, this is Arizona Three inbound in zero five with four, plus two, plus two. There’s good hunting in the high country today.”
Glossary
AK-47 - The enemy’s standard automatic weapon (of Soviet or Chi nese origin—7.62 mm). AO Area of operations. APC Armored personnel carrier.
ARA - Aerial rocket artillery (rocket-laden Cobra helicopters). Arclight B-52 bombing strike.
ARVN - Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Blue Max 20th Aerial Rocket Artillery Squadron.
BMNT - Before morning nautical twilight.
That time of day when the sun is twelve degrees below the horizon, allowing enough light for small units to move unhindered. C&C ship (bird) Command and control helicopter. A communications-laden HU-ID helicopter used by commanders and their S-3 operations officers to control ground operations. C&D Coffee and doughnuts. An austere breakfast of coffee, usually doughnuts, and at times other entrees such as oranges, apples, hard boiled or powdered eggs, and toast. Cami stick Facial camouflages.
