Once I Was A Soldier

[exlrrp]

Once upon a time there was a war and I was in it. Looking at the old wrinkled black and
white photos, and then at the State Of The Art equipment they use nowadays, it seems about as far
away and antiquated as the Civil War but then it was just as State Of The Art and Cutting Edge
as could be, just like Billy Yank and Johnny Reb and their muzzle loaders.
Out of necessity I put the war away for quite a while but recent developments in my life
have caused me to stroll down Memory Lane again, pull the dusty old memories out, give ?em a
few whacks to kickstart ?em and try and figure it all out again. The reason for this being my
actually volunteering for a 2d tour of Vietnam, 35 years after my first. Yes, I am actually paying
money to go back and see it again. The barbarian comes once again, this time armed only with a
Gold Visa.
Many of my friends and family are asking me why the hell I?m doing it. ?James,? they
ask, ?Why the hell are you doing it?? Thats a really good question and I want to give it a really
good answer and in order to give it a really good answer, I have to explain why I went there the
first time. This is not that easy: the reasons were hazy even then.The answer is long and complex
and keeps changing, just like my life itself. This view may change in a few years as they have
many times before--anything you get right now will be a snapshot of my current state of mind
about it. I have looked at this many different ways--as a historian and as a good ol boy spinning a
few yarns, as the victim and the perpetrator, as the volunteer and the refugee, as someone who
charged and someone who retreated, someone who walked point and someone who sat in a hole,
someone who protested and someone who took the war to the enemy and shoved it down his
throat and finally, some one who thought it all sucked mightily and just wanted to go home and
forget all about it. And they were all myself and once again all these different people are sitting
here trying to figure the whole thing out again, still trying to tell ourself the true story. There?s a
lot of true stories tho some of em are contradictory, especially the feelings part. I?ll do the best I
can but I?m sure not making any promises, just like giving first aid on sucking chest wounds.
Sometimes when I put my reminiscences on paper or at least virtual paper, I?m at a loss as
to where to start--if I start too far back I?m sure to hear grumbling from the people who?ve heard
it all before and want me to get to the good part with the shootings and stabbings. ?James,? they?ll
say, ?We?ve heard it all before, now get to the good part with the shootings and stabbings!?
Whereas people who are reading my writing for the first time now may be saying: ?What?s with
this Army stuff? What?s with this Airborne stuff? What?s with this Vietnam stuff? What?s with
this LRRP stuff?? And so forth. So if those of you who are overly familiar with the leadup to my
story will skip down to the paragraph that starts: ?And so then I got to Vietnam.....? you can
pagemark there and go out and get a cold one while I bring the rest up to speed. See you in a little
while.
Why DID I go the first time?? No easy answer for that one but I?ll try to start as close to
the beginning as I can
I was a 17 year old boy who got caught up in the martial spirit. This was not all that easy
to do because I was born and raised in and around Berkeley, CA, not the town most known for
military enthusiasm and support of government. I was right on the cusp of generations, between
ducktail Elvis Presley and longhaired Rolling Stones. Patriotism and the military?s vogue was
waning but I was in on the last of it--my country, right or wrong. You may sneer at our national
symbols but not around me still if you know whats good for you--I think I OWN them or at least
a piece of them and I?m still willing to fight for them just out of orneriness if nothing else.
All generations rebel against their parents to some extent but the Baby Boomers pushed the
envelope considerably. Joining the Army was the way I rebelled against mine. It wasn?t the only
mistake I made either,not by a a long shot, but definitely one of the most monumental and
memorable. I joined the Army in a childish attempt to be free and independent and get some
respect--yes, thinking about this can still send me into guffaws even now. Ah, the illusions of
youth, we?re lucky to survive them.
I joined the paratroops against my parents wishes --the Airborne Infantry as its called in
the Army. They wanted me to join the Navy or the Air Force where I would be safer but my dad
had been an infantry officer in WWII and I wanted to top him. One of the most inspiring films in
my life was ?The Longest Day? and the part I liked best was the parachutes--I wanted to do that.
Those WWII paratroopers are still my heroes--those were some mighty men and I wanted to be
like them, be one of them.
Like all teenagers, I was absolutely right about everything. Its been interesting to have had
a son this age and go through it all from the parental side. Teenage years are a time for illusions
and then disillusions and the first day in the Army was Day #1 for some serious disillusions for
me. I came face to face with it right then, no doubt. I saw immediately that I had made some
major misreads on my personality. They were based on a lot of duplicitous propaganda but still:
There It Was--a phrase I was to become more familiar with later.
Let me make it plain right here that I am NOT a military style person at all-- I am, in fact,
a hippie and proud of it. Peace! Love! Groovy!! I don?t think in straight lines, don?t like
spending my life sleeping with 30 other guys and don?t value shiny boots above common sense. I
wear my hat crooked sometimes, scuffed shoes also, don?t always shave. I only salute what I like
and admire--not what I have to. I don?t like being told what to do unnecessarily in an unpleasant
way and I?m not all that stoked on having to tell people what to do either. I hate when someone
plants his ugly face in mine and screams at me, especially when I think he is full of boloney or
maybe something smellier, and I?ve spent the rest of my life making sure not to put myself in
situations where I can?t walk away from something like that. Or consider other options. I think the
color Olive Drab looks just like the name implies: Drab and sucks majorly as the primary
decorating scheme. I don?t like to eat anything that looks like it?s called chow or rations and I
didn?t like their Wake Up Call technique which consisted of beating on the bars of your bunk
with a sawed off pool cue at the most unGodly hours (This when youre fortunate enough to be
sleeping in a bed.) There?s more I didn?t like about it, too--actually quite a long list-- but I want to
get on with this.
I saw right away that it was an enormous power trip run by the Control Freaks From Hell
and that they?d suckered me into signing up for 3 years of it. Too bad, so sad, but, as I say: There
It Was. In Basic, basically, they browbeat you into becoming their type of guy--either you accept
the game as they play it or they wash you out--this could be draconian. Either you be all you can
be The Army Way or not at all. There was no such foolishness about The Army Of One in those
days,oh no, it was The Army Of Them against You and they made no bones about it.
Far from being an individual, I was just a place holder, a spear carrier in the back row.
This was because I?m a short man who?s name starts with ?W? which is very consequential in the
Army--it means that you?re always the last in everything. The tall Aaron?s, Bakers and Carter?s
lead the parade, short Worths, Youngs and Zabitoskys eat the dust. Don?t like it? Sin Loy
GI!![Too bad, so sad] theyre just letting you be all you can be the way they like it done.
I love a physical challenge and I?m a pretty scrappy person to start with so I just ate a lot
of this up. I got my mind right enough to get through it and Advanced Infantry Training also,
which was more of the same but with more lethal weapons. There was always a portion of my
mind I kept to myself though: --this is the human part, the one that had the BS Meter in it.
I had enlisted for Airborne Infantry, if you remember, and they start the Airborne Training
harassment in AIT, trying to wash you out. We had extra inspections, extra duty, extra pushups.
My AIT company commander officer was a 5 Jump Johnny, and he just loved to rub it in. You
could wuss out at this point with comparatively little stigma; about half did but I never thought
about it--to pooty out in Jump School was a lot worse for you. All those extra inspections,
harassment and marching was a pain in the ass, but I STILL wanted to jump from a plane.
Jump school was the worst so far--killer harassment, killer physical training. Even so I can
say I never reached my limit although I was right up against it at times. I could have taken more,
although I would have been the last to say it at the time because they would have given me more
with a smile. I finally got to jump and I felt terrific about it--that put me in the upper 5% right
there. Not that they let you rest on your laurels more than about an hour and a half, but still, you
can always tell a paratrooper by the swagger. Going start to finish on this process is definitely
something to be proud of.
And then I got to wear the Jump Wings and the paratrooper cap with the glider patch. I
still have mine, the only part of the uniform I have left. I can say I served with the best, my
heroes. Airborne!!!Fight With What You Have Untill Relieved!! [Option B is not a good choice]
After jump school they sent me to Panama because I was still only 17. I was not a happy
camper about this--I wanted to go to Vietnam, not play around and I was afraid that [chuckle] the
war would be over before I got there [chuckle again]. However this turned out to be one of those
fortunate serendipitous things that turned out OK.
For one thing I got to get 8 months experience training in the Panama jungle with an
Airborne Infantry unit (A Company/3d Batt/508th PIR) This was incredibly good luck on my part
because everybody else I knew later in Vietnam had only trained in the US--like Fort Lewis WA,
Ft Dix NJ, Ft Carson CO or, as in my case, Ft Ord CA [See any warning flags here about why we
might have had trouble winning the war?]. Panama was the closest thing to Vietnam. Another
thing is that they ran my whole platoon through an abbreviated version of the Jungle School so
that we could serve as ?Assistant Instructors? setting up equipment, playing aggressors and
finding lost trainees on the Escape And Evasion course. I doubt if many infantrymen in Vietnam
were as well trained for the jungle as I was when they got there--it was like a home country hunt.
Did I say I was a Boy Scout also?.
When I turned 18 (12/2/66) I volunteered for Vietnam because I wanted to SEE it. I
thought I was pretty tough, not without some little reason, and I wanted to fight in the war--to go
up against the best, just like thoseWWII role models had done. They had been through The
Experience and I wanted to go through it , too.
They gave me a 6 week leave before Vietnam in March and April 1967, a good portion of
which I spent dropping acid in Berkeley and Haight Ashbury. I may have missed The Summer Of
Love but I was there at The Spring Of Love. I told people I had short hair from being in jail. You
would have thought that here was where I might have fallen off into permanent protestorhood--
perhaps deserted-- but, although people broached the idea, I have to say I never really thought
about it. The politics I didn?t know or care much about at all. I just wanted to see The War. You
couldn?t have kept me back, although I was starting to suspect it might not be all I was hoping it
would.
That?s the short answer to why I went: I was a tough, scrappy kid, chock full of patriotic
propaganda and I wanted to SEE it.
And so I did.

?AND SO THEN I GOT TO VIETNAM........? [?Kay all you longtime readers, are you
back from the fridge now??]
?Bet This Isn?t What I Was Hoping For, Either? They should put that on my tombstone.
One week after I arrived in country, processed through Cam Ranh Bay and went through
?Preliminary Training and Acclimatization? I was sitting in my very first combat foxhole,
clutching an M16 to my chest and trying to figure out what was happening. I mean, here I am, so
now what? When?s the first human wave due in, anyway?
I was one of the first replacements for a 101st Airborne platoon that had taken a heavy hit.
Almost the whole platoon was gone--out of the reconstituted platoon, there was perhaps 6 people
of the old platoon, the rest, totalling 20 or so in all, were ?cherries?, mostly pfc?s like myself but
with some higher ranks. The official size for a platoon , I might point out, is forty four: 4 squads
of 10 and the leaders and RTOs.. 28 was the biggest I ever saw that platoon and I think 9 the
fewest when there were so few that it was combined with another platoon .
Joining a platoon that has just been almost wiped out because they were dumb enough to
walk right into an enemy bunker complex was certainly thought provoking but not all that much
a confidence builder. Having only one leader there with any real combat experience, and him not
much, was also not all that much a confidence builder either. After a few days I could see that I
had it as well pegged as about any there and, due to my jungle training in Panama, a whole lot
better than some.
One of those was my first squad leader, who?d been sent over mid tour from a mech unit.
This meant they had dumped a loser on someone else--you don?t send away your valuable guys.
Besides being as dumb as a gunny sack full of hammers, he was also racist. I don?t like racists all
that much to start with but what made this very unpleasant was that he was black and I?m, well,
white, sort of, although its more like a blotchy pinkish beige--what the Crayola people used to
call ?flesh? untill they got a clue. I later volunteered to carry the radio, a riskier job than rifleman,
to get away from this squad leader. My friend Clint volunteered for Tiger Force, the 1st Batt/327
Recon unit to get away, he wound up the platoon sgt there. Another friend of mine volunteered to
carry the machine gun to get away from the guy. Every white guy I knew in that squad
volunteered for something more dangerous to get away from him. He sent the white boys on
every dirty, dangerous patrol he could while he and his black buddies laughed--we realized after a
while that it was because he was too chicken to do most of these things himself. I later had the
opportunity to tell him what I thought of him, just before I left that unit, when I clocked his best
friend who also had a big mouth and threatened to kill me--those are some of my favorite
memories of the war to this day.
I spent day #2 in combat walking point on a combat patrol teaching myself how to do it
OJT. Its basically just picking up your rifle and moving out, trying to look up, down, all around
and over both shoulders all at once and hoping God woke up on your side this morning. A real
Zen experience, one tries to maintain at least the 786% awareness factor. This is definitely one of
those times when you?d rather be lucky than smart. I actually got fairly good at this, or at least
succesful enough to say I did a bunch of it and survived.
Here?s one of the most disillusioning things about war in the infantry--its mostly boring as
hell and real exhausting and then when something awful happens you wish it was boring again.
Unlike the movies, there?s no musical sound track either, other than what you provide. Its the most
uncomfortable, terrifying thing one could ever do and these aren?t the only bad parts, either
I would be hard put to say that in my full year in the war as a paratrooper, infantryman and
lrrp, that I was in over 50 firefights and that?s counting the times the action was on the other side
of the perimeter--that would be my highest possible estimate, the low would be about 40. About a
dozen in the lrrps and the rest in the infantry. Depends on what you call a firefight-- I?m calling
them firefights when I was actually shooting at the enemy and/or they were shooting at me or
close to me, not times I could hear firing nearby but it was happening to someone else. After this
many firefights with barely a scratch, I attribute my survival to a good deal of luck and fast
movement and can truthfully say I?m happy just to be alive. God?s Will be done and if it works
for me so much the better.
So about 40 or 50 firefights and I was mortared and shelled about that many times also--
sometimes this happened on the same day as the firefights. I was in ?actual combat? therefore for
about, say 60 to 80 days, usually this would only be a small part of the day although there were
long days and nights together sometimes.. What I?m getting at here is that the rest of the time
was excruciatingly boring: Humping [marching,] cleaning weapons, digging holes, patrolling,
humping, guard duty, ambush, cleaning weapons, opening c-rations, humping, guard duty,
humping, cleaning weapons, reading c-ration cans, humping, rereading letters from home,
cleaning weapons, sleeping, humping, staring at bushes and cleaning weapons. I may have left out
a few things but I didn?t say humping and cleaning weapons enough.
I spent most of my days with the 101st doing sweeps and short patrols, poking through
endless rice paddies, godforsaken terrain and obscure villes and hamlets and some mighty boring
endless rice paddies, godforsaken terrain and obscure villes and hamlets they were, too. If you?ve
seen 2 or 3 villes in Vietnam, you?ve pretty much seen them all, not counting Montagnards, which
I met later, of which there is at least 47 kinds. One thing they almost all had in common is the
people sure looked surly at us--again not counting Montagnards who hated everybody else but
liked us because we paid them.
The only thing that added real interest to the situation is that you never knew when
Charlie was going to shoot something at you and that was not, unfortunately, a good thing. Tends
to make you, well, jumpy you might say. Most days nobody shot at us. Usually when they did,
just a few of them would go up against us, maybe a single sniper. This would take some
considerable testicular fortitude on their part, I thought, to go up against the 101st Airborne
outnumbered,even though we were understrength, seeing as who we were and what we carried
and had for backup. I was impressed--I was a whole lot less impressed with the South Vietnamese
Army, the ARVNs, who I didn?t trust as far as I could see them and I had reason. I thought we
were supporting the wrong side at least in terms of cojones: you could tell Charlie had The
Cause--the Fire-- and the original thinkers; our Vietnamese were just getting paid, like us.
Sometimes we got them after considerable shooting but more often we didn?t. (?they must
have drug away all the bodies.?) Sometimes we were less than enthusiastic about chasing after
them--this could lead to ambushes, mines or booby traps. There was no talk by us about body
counts or ?confirmed kills,? these are ?wannabe? terms. The higher command could make up any
story they wanted to about it as far as we were concerned and they frequently did. If pressed to
give numbers we almost always erred in our favor.: [?Oh yeah, there were hundreds of ?em.?] We
were just trying to get along in the Army.
I finally figured out my WWII paratrooper role models were like this, too. Things that
once seemed very important don?t seem quite so important anymore. We went back to thinking
that if we were doing our job, then we could think and say anything we wanted, just like
Americans do. As we said then:?What are they gonna do? Put us in the infantry and send us to
Vietnam?? One thing for sure: there were no higher ranks out there to show us how its done, no
matter what you may read elsewhere.
Most of this was squad or platoon size, rarely company sized. I was in only one Larger-
Than-Company-Sized battle in 5.5 months with the 101st Airborne. The 101st calls this a
Regimental battle but there probably wasn?t more than a few dozen of them. (The 101st said our
battalion killed 1200 enemy on that operation but they must have counted each body from all 4
sides and dead dogs and water buffalo also.) Hey!! I?m here to tell you, though, a few dozen can
look like a whole lot when there?s more of them than you in the picture--take my word for this! I
remember at the time someone shouting out: ?There?s a MILLION of them!? and tho I might have
to question his numerical accuracy, I was right there with him in spirit: sure looked like a whole
lot of the suckers to me, too. A mighty uncomfortable time to be conceiving oneself as An Army
Of One it was, I was wishing I was An Army Of Lots More. Fortunately for me most of them
(but not all!) were on the other side of the perimeter.
I stayed in A Co/1st Battalion/327th Airborne infantry/101st Airborne for almost 6 months,
and I slept on the ground every single night, none excepted, in every weather but snow( this was
monsoon season!) Not even on our ?days off? which were few and far between, almost all spent
on some firebase, eating out of ?Mermite? thermos cans instead of c-rations. I spent many of these
nights soaking wet and shivering and I was intermittently awake on watch almost all these nights
and entirely awake through many of them.The only barracks I saw during this time were someone
else?s. Its the longest I ever spent without sleeping in a bed and it had a good deal to do with my
decision to join the LRRPs as did a desire for a hot shower. Even then, ?bed? meant rolled up in a
poncho liner on a canvas cot with no mattress.
The 101st treated its men mighty hard but I think most infantry units treated their grunts
hard. You?re a better soldier when youre hungry, disgruntled and out of sorts from a poor nights
sleep or at least the leaders thought so because they kept us that way--makes you edgy and
combative.The 101st was a real meat grinder--a tremendous turnover although more of these were
due to diseases like pneumonia, malaria and dysentery than wounds or death. By the time I had
been there 5 months, I was one of the longest guys in the platoon. In 5 1/2 months on the line, 3
of them as an RTO, I carried the radio for 5 different platoon leaders: 2 sgts and 3 lieutenants,
only one of which was wounded. (See any other red flags as to why we may not have won?)
At this remove its hard to say how this affected me without dealing in cliches because
words just can?t do justice to the experience. I think I got as jaded and fatalisticly hardcore as you
can be . I was real sure I was not going to survive a year without something awful happening to
me--it seemed like few did. And I saw myself as having really gotten screwed and I mean
bigtime. This wasn?t what I had been lead to believe it was like at all. I?m sure every combat
soldier in history has thought that.
You can keep up the level of necessary paranoia only so long. After a while you start to
think: well, Wot th Hell, if its gonna happen it happens, I just sure hope it?s quick Your life will
seem cheap to you and so will everybody else?s. This happens about at the 3d month; you know
now that whatever happens you will be a victim of circumstances.. At this point you are at the
most effective infantrywise, youve accepted your death, now its just a job. They have you doing
all these death defying things like jumping out of choppers and attacking into small arms fire like
it was all in a days work, which it pretty much was. One crosses a definite line here; one thinks:
?Nothing will sure ever be the same after this!? and one will be right. The deterioration of this
starts about the 10th month when you think:? My God, there?s a chance I?m gonna walk outta
here? From then until you leave, its Cover Your Ass Till You Drop and there is no patriotism or
national feeling about it--just ?Oh God, just let me get outta here in one piece! This will be the
bottom line, you will know all you ever wanted to know about war and then some and now youre
wondering why you bothered.Youre different now, way different and you will never be the same
again.
Its hard for me to talk about actual infantry combat but not why youre probably thinking
[?Oh God The man still can?t face the brutal ravages of war!?] Its hard to talk about it outside of
people who know it because people think you?re bragging about awful stuff and maybe you are
and maybe you?re just telling the story. I mean they trained us with guns and knives and
handgrenades and stuff and we ran around shouting ?KILL!! KILL!! KILL!! and other fun stuff
like:
?I wanna be an Airborne Ranger
I wanna live a life of danger!!?
(Been there, done that, got the t-shirt)
They wanted us to kill people, no error. I?d suspected it before but I knew it for sure when
they gave me the first rifle in Basic and taught me how to shoot it at a human figure target. All the
training afterwards did nothing but confirm it. It was a hard concept not to grasp: I knew what to
do when I saw the enemy and it was not wrestle him to the ground and take him into custody.
They called us infantry: what do people expect? Life Saving? There was some of that for sure but
if all we could do was talk about saving lives, grunts wouldn?t have much to talk about--on the
other hand.....
Grunts are the kind of people that brag and chortle over this stuff because thats what we
did, that was Our Thing, its what they paid us to do. It was, to use the contemporary phrase:
Being All We Could Be. (Warning! Some cynicism still may creep in here occasionally).
Everybody likes to talk about their job and when that job involves a good deal of risk it may come
out a little like bragging.Ever hear cops and firemen talk? As a grunt, I got shot at more by
heavier weapons in any given month than most cops get shot at in their careers. And I was just an
ordinary grunt, the average little guy with the rifle.
Actual offensive combat in infantry situations was mostly running short bursts while other
people were firing, then fire while they?re running. Did I say people are shooting at you? This
gives you a LOT of motivation to move and you thank God for all that running you did in
training. The person you?re running and firing at either stays there or moves, mostly moves. This
gives you a chance to fire at him in the open and you want to take that chance for sure if you want
to do a good job--this does not necessarily mean you?re going to rise high in the Army, though.. If
he stays, then you must go in and ?render him ineffective? using the tools you have in your hand.
In the end (or also in the middle and beginning sometimes) there will be dead and wounded
people, perhaps on all sides. If dead and wounded people lying around means youre doing your
job, youre an infantryman.. And there, as they say, it is, or more accurately, they are. And you
are.
Basically how I got through combat in the infantry is just not to think about it untill it
happened and then run on automatic and hope for the best. Its intensely shocking and frightening,
certainly THE most extremely shocking and frightening thing I ever went through. I was scared a
good deal of the time and most of the time I was reacting to danger on auto; this is where all that
training really pays off, especially the endurance stuff. . I could be desperately creative though,
thinking outside the box which is mandatory--for me at the start anyway, a lot of it was looking at
the weapon in my hand and thinking:?Gee, I wonder what this sucker?s gonna do?? and giving it a
shot. It seemed like OJT to me all the time, it seemed like I was always fumbling; but you build
up a self confidence about it after a while, based on dumb youth and belief in your lucky star. One
thinks oneself invincible at this age although one does start to build up doubts.
I think everybody who ever had a hankering for this kind of activity wonders:?How
would I be in this? Would my fear overcome me?? Well, I can?t speak for others, but what I
learned about myself is sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn?t. In all honesty I have to say
that at times I ran scared in panic, at least in short bursts, every which way, including away from
and towards the enemy. You would have too or you?d be dead, although maybe more heroic if
that would make you feel more warm and fuzzy about it all. Some days I moved around freely
and some days I hugged the ground and decided to let higher paid people than me save the day. I
don?t claim to have been really brave-- I only claim to have been really there. I saw very few
people doing any better and some of them not near as good.
I learned the best you can do is try and put up a good average and hope your luck holds
out. Peer group is the biggest anchor of one?s personality here, the truth is: I would have rather
died than not perform adequately in these circumstances with these people. . Another thing I
learned about myself: you can always count on me to shoot back when I?m shot at and also take
the first shot when appropriate. This is not political at all, its all personal-- it REALLY angers me
when someone shoots at me and I will take steps to deal with it right away. I don?t care what kind
of good reason they think they have, that is SO not going to work for me. It gets real personal real
quick [?Why you SOB! You can?t do that to ME!!] and it is that anger that got me through it--I
only thought about getting to that person and changing his ways. Perhaps this is what I went to
Vietnam to learn about myself, or one of the main things anyway.
Killing someone is really a very difficult thing to do once youre confronted with
it, perhaps THE most difficult thing to do, physically and psychologically, and having done it
enough to have gotten used to it--to have seen it and gone through it several or more times-- does
give one a certain cachet, that definite ?Don?t Mean Nothin?? attitude. When you do it to earn the
monthly envelope, it means youre a grunt--getting paid less than minimum wage also--and after a
very short while you want to drop it all and go home because it really don?t, as they say, mean
nothing.
This was another unreal part of the experience for me--after a firefight, I?d sometimes feel
like: Is THAT all there is? This is it? I?m not sure what I was expecting but it sure wasn?t what I
was seeing. Maybe I was expecting scenes from next week?s show and the credits rolling up.
I grew up on Bonanza and Gunsmoke and Combat! Violence is as American as apple pie
and people getting shot and dying was a familiar,acceptable, All American concept. It?s just that it
looks and smells a whole lot nastier than what they show on TV. Anybody who?s had to sit in one
place for a while looking at a 2 day old body with half its head blown away will know what I
mean right away--others never really will. That they dress it up to look a whole lot different for
movies and TV was one of my biggest disillusions as a young man. I mean: this all looked so
good on TV!.I realized ?The Sands Of Iwo Jima? didn?t really look like the sands of Iwo Jima at
all and I really wanted to kick John Waynes ass for being a waaaay phony.
Here?s what I learned about real death in real combat: There is no meaning in Death other
than it means there?s dead people scattered around. And after it?s all over, the chances are real
good you?ll wind up sleeping in the remains and then on to liberate the next portion of Vietnam a
day or so later, leaving this one for the next person who comes along. This is the stuff that makes
you cynical over time and not too much time either.
I realized very shortly that I had volunteered, time and time again, for the worst job in the
world and that all this death and destruction was meaningless, as would be mine when it
happened. It would not help the world a bit; it wouldn?t improve the world one bit. This is not
necessarily good for a young boys self esteem and a young boy in this position might well wind
up thinking ?Well THIS really sucks!? Ask me how I know this
I came face to face with my biggest misread of my own personality only after looking at
some real horror up close: I was an empathizer trapped in the body of an assassin-- and here I
wanted to be a tough guy so bad, too And there I was: tiptoeing down the darkest passages of
your worst nightmare. I had finally made it to where I really wanted to be, doing what I really
wanted to be doing and it really sucked. And now that I knew that, I was too far in to consider
other options; I had to keep doing it for the rest of the year.
The real nightmare comes in the repetition--that after confronting all this in yourself--and
mastering it, sort of, you are not allowed to go home but have to repeat it again and again until
you are heartily sick of whatever notion drove you on to confront it. You will intend to keep the
lid on THAT one forever! Ask me how I know that one too.
This is the ultimate of baaaaad--this is as baaaaaaad as one ever wants to be, one finds
when there that one did not actually want to be this baaaaad at all. You have stepped over a
definite line here, youve violated the most basic bad in society and I hope you have your reasons
ready and sensible in your own mind at least, in case it all may seem very pointless later.
Unfortunately when this Ah Hah! moment came, I was way too far into it to get out any other way
but straight ahead. I saw that the road back home was not through Hanoi but in the hands of Father
Time and Dame Fortune.
I came out of the combat experience thinking: Geez, after this I?ll never be afraid of
anything again in my life and there I was wrong again but not very.

I think people ask me why I?m going back to Vietnam in surprise because they
think I might be ashamed about what the I did and theUS did. I?m sure not ashamed of what I did,
in fact I?m proud of what I did, although I certainly do have mixed feelings about the US?s role in
Vietnam?s wars--it was not the best time in our nation?s history. If it may sound like I may be a
little overly proud of myself just bear in mind I had to be proud of myself for doing this for a long
time when nobody else was.
When you put on a soldier?s uniform, you take a soldier?s chance. I was a soldier and I
went there to fight enemy soldiers and thats what I did. I went where they told me to go and did
what they told me to do but they did not tell me to do Crimes Against Humanity and I did none
nor did I see them done or even hear any serious talk about them having been done at the time I
was there. They could not pay me enough money or threaten me enough to condone them or to
say nothing about them later and thats what I have to say about that. I learned that about myself in
the war also, which is a good thing to know for sure about yourself..
I did see things that I thought were extremely brutal, for instance the treatment of
prisoners by some individuals, but over long study of military history, I find these things common
to all wars, brutal actions in a hard time done by crazy people under stress who happen to be
holding lethal weapons. Its just a brutal situation all around and I felt victimized by circumstances
myself more than a few times--in truth: fairly continuously. That is in no way to excuse any
brutality but, based on my own experience and a lot of study, I do not believe the notion that US
troops in Vietnam were any more brutal or murderous than in any other war. It took me many
years of study to satisfy myself with that answer but it is the truth as I know it and experienced it.
There was a lot to be said about my infantry platoon, good and bad--who was in it and
how it was run but when the news of My Lai came out, I just could not believe the truth about it
based on my experience in that 101st platoon, until I saw the pictures. It just would not have
happened in that platoon which is a good enough thing to say about any platoon and when I was
with it we were operating in the same provinces Calley was. I have no reason to think it was other
than a typical platoon in the 101st or really any other unit. I don?t have much good to say about
our leaders but I will give them that--it was not their intention to hurt civilians, nor ours and only
witless propaganda says it was, in my humble opinion.
American soldiers have a higher standard than most other soldiers because of who we are
and what we believe and Vietnam vets are no exception. Think not? Can anybody name the
second biggest atrocity in Vietnam?

[long pause here]

I didn?t think so. If not, then I don?t think thats a bad record at all seeing as how well
reported a war it was and how well its been dissected and rehashed over 3 decades by everybody
from Stanley Karnow to Oprah Winfrey. Sure, awful things happened but not in any large
noticeable numbers and there were positively droves of media swarming the country, most of
them antiwar.The US is a violent country and if you give enough Americans enough guns, sooner
or later some of them will go postal, perhaps in unison if theyre led by a psycho like Calley.
I never saw a civilian targeted or killed intentionally, although thats certainly from my
extremely worm?s eyes view of the thing. We knew the difference between right and wrong and
tried to do the right thing in the most horrible off the wall circumstances you could imagine.
Sometimes ALL the choices were bad. I did see a lot of kindnesses towards civilians and I know
for sure that the American troops I was around would hold fire, at their own expense, to aid
civilians. I personally didn?t feel anything but sorry for most Vietnamese, it looked REAL hard on
them. But it was REAL hard on me too so the perspective was a lot more jaded than you?d expect
from the average American boy. It was hard to feel sorry for them sometimes if I was currently
feeling sorry for myself at the time, I will say that. I was there on their side to fight the bad guys
and I seemed to be fighting it harder than most of them were.
I saw American soldiers die and get wounded also so there was plenty of feeling sorry to
go around--its especially shocking when it happens to someone you know but bad enough for
anyone. But after over a year in the Army, I knew enough to tighten up and not show
emotions--this is another time when all that tight discipline pays off--everything?s falling apart all
around you but at least youre keeping it together by blowing off your feelings entirely.
One of the hardest parts was figuring out who the enemy was and what to shoot at. (A
good rule of thumb: shoot at whoever?s shooting at you) There often was no clear guidance here
and you have to err in your favor and I mean right away! My dad fought in a war where the
enemy was clearly recognizable and his tactics were similar--basically unit engagement--
concentration of force at effective locations. Not so in our war most of the time. In our war, with a
few exceptions, it was mostly a few individuals at a time fighting a few more individuals. This
was one of the enemies most effective tactics, defeating us in detail..Our power lay in our
concentration of forces and firepower--their?s lay in their ability to keep it diffused.
This is the way the Ant beat the Elephant which is the phrase they use to describe the way
they won our part of their war. Their leaders thought waaay further out of the box than ours did
and were not overly hampered with the arrogant racism our leaders had. Our leaders thought we
would have no trouble showing those dumb little gooks how it was done but having studied the
matter at quite some length, I see now that their military and political leaders would have beat
ours in a good game of Gotcher Nose. Oh look!--your shoes untied!! DOH!! Thank God it wasn?t
an even fight technologywise, or they might have won bigtime.

After almost 6 months in the 101st, you may understand my reason for joining the Long
Range Reconnaissance Patrol: ANY place was better than this and I was feeling like my days
were numbered there and it was a low number.. I saw the story of ?The LRRPS? once on The
History Channel a while ago. It was (I am not making this up!) on ?Suicide Missions? on ?Blood
and Guts Sunday Night.? (No, I am NOT making it up!) It is but to guffaw. They absolutely did
not tell me it was a suicide mission or I wouldn?t have done it, take that to el banco, nor did I ever
see it as a ?suicide mission.?. I hate to shoot that rumor down but the truth is I just did not believe
in bringing democracy to the South Vietnamese enough to where I?d consider committing suicide
for it. (This was highly classified at the time--only now can the true story be told, due to the
Freedom Of Information Act-thanks, liberals! ) I mean why would you tell somebody he?s going
on a suicide mission, anyway, just to spoil his day? Still it?s entertaining to think I volunteered
for a ?Suicide Mission.? and I?m still around. We thought of them as Homicide Missions.
Ive heard that in other units after a major action they?d send out the recruiters so you?d
re-up for a rear position but in the 101st they?d send out the recruiters for a ?suicide mission?(?)
What can I say? It looked like the best choice at the time--this was right after the ?Regimental?
battle-- and so it turned out to be. The main factors of my choice were a desire to get a hot
shower, clean dry clothes and a night?s sleep. I didn?t feel bad about leaving my platoon because I
was real sure they could get along without me and anyway it was for something harder. Lrrps
were the paratrooper?s paratrooper, they had a reputation as the most hardcore and it was a well
earned reputation. But I?ll spell it out even further: I was looking out for #1 because nobody else
would but my Mom and she wasn?t there.
They had my name on a list as possible recruit but when the lrrp recruiting captain came
around with it, I didn?t know I had a choice--not that it would have made a difference. He came to
the muddy hole where I was sitting eating a cold can of breakfast after spending weeks in the rain
and said: ?They got your name on a list here to join the lrrps.? I looked at him all dry and .clean
and shiny and shaven and I said: ?Where do I sign??!!? I stood up and gave away everything I
had to my friends except my .45 which I stuck in my pocket. I got on a slick with the captain and
we flew to the rear. This same captain, by the way, was killed by a random (?) shot a few days
later flying in a slick thereby proving once again the old adage about one?s number unfortunately
being up when it?s up.
They formed my lrrp company out of half 6 month combat veterans like myself and half
cherries, all volunteers. The mixture of the old and new was so the new guys would work with the
old guys and gain the benefit of their experience. That way, too, all the trained people with
combat experience wouldn?t rotate home at the same time. They gave us all new equipment and
clothes including camouflaged fatigues.
?Cammo? has more or less become the semiofficial uniform for Vietnam Vets but actually
in the war it was not. All but the recon units wore regular OD fatigues, the recon units wore
whatever they wanted and could get in the field. They gave us cammoed Air Force fatigues but
what everybody bought right away was what was known as Tiger fatigues, the Vietnamese
version of cammo. (A good question to ask: Why did the Air Force have cammoed fatigues and
the average grunt didn?t??!!). Wearing Tigers had a meaning in that war that is not generally
known--it meant No Surrender EVER because it was not an official US Army uniform. If you
were unlucky enough to be captured wearing Tigers, it was a death sentence and it meant that
you knew every fight you got into was a fight to the death. And so it was: to the best of my
knowledge, no lrp, Marine Recon or SOG soldier ever survived capture.
I was in team 4-7, 7th Team, 4th platoon, E Co (Long Range Patrol)/ 20th Infantry
(Airborne) LRP, LRRP and Ranger are interchangeable names, only showing different eras in the
same units. These units had been called Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols previously but what
they had in mind for us was more than just reconnaissance. They later morphed the LRRP and
LRP units into the 75th Ranger regiment to centralize control. E Co/20th Inf was renamed C
Co/75th Ranger Regiment but this was long after I left Vietnam. I never think of myself as a
Ranger, only a lrrp. Still, I was a Founding Member(?) of Easy Co/20th for what it?s worth.
The Curse of The Letter W was still working: I was the last man in the last team in the last
platoon and I was short and had a name that started with W. This is a man who will be short
changed on everything, seeing as how at least approximately a third of everything good was
ripped off before it got far enough forward for me to see it. I did figure, though,that if they ever
said to Fight To The Last Man, at least I?d have a good loophole.One had to develop one?s own
techniques for keeping oneself supplied adequately to maintain the war effort. We had to buy our
own silenced weapons and ammo for them, for example and there got to be a fairly brisk
swapping and selling trade amongst ourselves and Special Forces and helicopter crews in
souvenirs lrrps would now and then pick up on the battlefield. .
They sent us to Recondo School in Nha Trang. It was the first time I?d been to a real
town in Vietnam or even by myself for a few hours. They put me in a tent and said ?Wait here
until we come back!? and I was like Yeah, Right! ! This could be days in the Army.
[Note to Myself: Hmmm, I still have this .45]
They said they wanted people with initiative in the lrrps and so I thought I?d just show a
little. I stuck the .45 in my pocket and strolled right out the gate past the jabbering Vietnamese
MPs [?Do I look like a VC, blankholes??] and skyed downtown sans authorization, if you will. If
you?re waiting for the Army to order you to go out and have a good time, you?ll be waiting a long
time is what I got to say about that. I figured the worst they would to me was just send me back
to the 101st.
Nha Trang is one of the main places I want to see again--to see what I saw before--What I
saw of it looked OK but I didn?t see much of it but the Recondo School and the inside of a few
bars. I?m sure I can find my way back to where the Recondo School was on the west side of
town, because the giant statue of the Buddha is still there, which we could see from the top of the
rappelling tower. I?m pretty sure Ive found, on the map of Nha Trang, the road that we did our
forced marches on (7 miles in under 70 minutes!!), its on the West Side and I remember the hill
layout real well. I?m going to be taking pictures to put on my lrrp company website
Rappelling is another one of those death defying things we learned to do in Recondo
School as all part of a days work. This is how they ?insert? you into heavily forested terrain when
they don?t have a landing zone. My team did this twice later. They start you out on a 40 foot
tower, then go to 120 feet out of a slick. Did I mention you?re carrying 60 lbs of full field gear?
Its extremely exhilarating to say the least, not to be attempted while hungover.
More every day death defiance: riding on a Maguire rig which is how they pull you out of
a heavily forested area. These are 3 long loops of nylon strap dangling down from a chopper.
They drop these down, you sit in the loops on the bottom, link arms with the other two and away
you go--more extreme exhilarating, especially if taking fire. My team did this only once on actual
patrol, although we practiced several times. It got ordinary after a while and looking back, that is
one of the most notable things about it : the ordinary extraordinariness of it all. Or should it be the
extraordinary ordinariness of it all? All my 19 year old friends back home were waking up in the
morning and going to school or work and I?m flying around Vietnam like The Human YoYo,
making the same $65/month combat pay every clerk-typist in Saigon was making. There?s no
justice in the world, I saw while young, except that which you make yourself, and it did not help
my outlook much to remind myself I volunteered for it all.
They taught us a lot more useful information such as the mathematics for setting up
commo wire field antennas most of which I forgot shortly after. I remembered the stuff that was
actually sure enough useful , such as Artillery and and Air direction. I got fairly good at this later,
too.
After 2 weeks in Recondo School the Graduation Exercise was: Your Very First LRRP
patrol. I had been patrolling for some time in the 101st and had done every patrol job many
times--point, slack, leader, RTO-- so it was hardly a new experience for me. It was just farther
out and longer than I was used to.. Lrrps are very mobile and travel fairly fast and light compared
to infantry, they run on a whole different game plan. Generally speaking in the infantry, you
stomp around untill you run into someone that wants to fight, then shoot it out, then either chase
them or camp out in the ruins kicking dirt over the more odiferous ones. The lrps on the other
hand dressed up like bushes and spied on and did the enemy as much damage as possible from
comcealment but then we got to go back in the rear afterwards.
Lrrps were not expected to stand up and fight;they were expected to call for extraction
when discovered which is a better way to fight a war in my book. I learned THIS was what was
missing after firefights Cold Brewskis. Lrrps NEVER tried to fight in any way ?fair, ? it was just
not a concept. We were supposed to skulk around and be sneaky, its why they gave us cammo
and green face paint. We ALWAYS tried to set up the situation entirely to our own benefit as
much as possible--we?d take as much time to plan and do it as we wanted. Once we were
compromised (discovered) we were supposed to?get hat? on out of there and you may rest
assured that this was the part at which we were the most assiduous. This could sometimes be a
while if you got caught up in some serious nation building at the grass roots level while waiting
for the extraction slick..On about a third of our patrols, though, we never fired a shot--they sent us
out to find out what was in certain areas and some of them were even too remote for the
Vietnamese to use. They were so remote that sometimes they had to send patrols to act as radio
relays because we were that far out of radio contact.
Our patrols usually ran 2 or 3 days, sometimes (but rarely) as much as 5. We usually had
5 or 6 men to a team but sometimes they combined teams for specific missions.
Because I?d carried the radio in the 101st, they asked me if I wanted to carry it on lrrp
patrol also. I said Heck no, I don?t want to carry that heavy SOB (25+lbs), I?d even rather walk
point all the time. And thats how I got to walk point all the time: didn?t like the other options,
although I wound up helping to call in Artillery and Air a good deal because of aptitude and prior
experience. Our beer drinking name for team 4-7 was The Doom Patrol after a popular comic
book and there I was: Point Man On The Doom Patrol, ?67-?68.
Calling in artillery and air support was where we did the enemy the most damage. Due to
some more outrageous good luck and the fortunes of war, I think my team did more damage and
interdiction to the enemy in 6 months than my 101st company did in the 6 months I was with
them. I?m just guessing here but I think its a good guess: even half as much is impressive for 6,
sometimes 5, guys. This was all due to good use of Artillery and air support, we never could have
done as much with small arms and would never have thought to try. We were just doing our jobs
and not too badly either if we did say so ourselves: the Army sure wasn?t overly effusive in their
thanks or the rest of the country neither. I sometimes like to think of this as the most
unappreciated Performance Art ever-- covering yourself with chocolate just ain?t IN it with this.
That was our job: heavily armed spies trying to do as much damage to the enemy as we
could. For me this was all in II Corps mostly along the Cambodian border, which was part of The
Ho Chi Minh Trail. That was why they dropped the ?Reconnaisance? out of the LRRP name and
made it LRP: we did more than recon like: Ambushing, including artillery and Air support,.
taking prisoners (my team: 1) setting mines and booby traps and picking off trailwatchers and the
odd strays.--That plus a lot of lrrps probably couldn?t spell reconnaissance. This was war about
as up close and personal as it ever gets. This meant sneaking up on the enemy and killing them,
sometimes just to let them know we?d been there if we were in that kind of mood. I mean it IS
what they paid us to do.( Bloodthirsty bragging or just telling the story? You decide and don?t tell
me what you decide)
These are still the incidents I wrestle with the most sometimes late at nights, way down
deep where I?m still real shallow. I run these tapes again and I?m still doing it with a sense of grim
satisfaction and a feeling of total unreality: Take THAT you Commie --- -- -------!! I guess that?ll
just teach YOU not to fight for a program of agrarian centralization [cynical snicker]. I don?t show
this side of my personality to many because it still looks just like murder. You can come up with
all the political justification you want but there it is: murder by the wayside. Its still very
frightening, too, sometimes I?m still afraid.
I was in fact just doing my job, its what they trained, equipped and paid me to do--what I
volunteered for. And I was REALLY into it--they didn?t make me do it, my friends and I did it
because we thought it was right and within that context I still think it was right. Thats the truth as I
remember it but the reality of it still revolves around dead bodies.Thats the duality of the
experience: the pride and the horror and perhaps the basic question about the duality should be:
How can you take pride in something so horrible?
To that I can only answer,: I guess you just had to be there, to be a part of it to understand.
I truly consider myself very fortunate in many ways but not least in that I got to see the best of my
generation in action up against its greatest challenge and sometimes, I must confess, a whole lot
closer than was entirely comfortable. This was where the action was for The Boomers, anything
else was minor league. I am very proud, intensely proud, of the people I served with-- a bunch of
young guys, teens and early 20s, teams of 5 or 6 mostly pfc?s and sp/4s, taking on the heaviest of
the enemies with nothing but small arms (and artillery and air support whenever it could get there)
Just having been there with these people is enough for me, I didn?t need medals (and the Army
thought so too). It took more than the average person to do it, no doubt--to even get there and
then do what the job required. I think these were about the best soldiers I ever saw--I don?t mean
the shiny shoe soldier either-- and as individuals go they were some highly unusual people--iIn
psychiatric terms: Bonkers. They were for sure about the gamest people I ever knew, they?d do
anything: teams in my platoon made night combat jumps (not me) and night water landings from
boats too (not me either--this is where it pays to be last on the list: all the bad ideas get tried out on
the A?s and B?s.). The inside joke was that not only were we The Poor Man?s Special Forces we
were The Poor Man?s SEALs too.
.
(?I was just a Victim Of Circumstances, as are we all?
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5)


On this trip, after leaving Nha Trang, we?re going up to Buon Ma Thuot. Every body I
knew said Ban Me Thuot and spelled it that way but Buon Ma Thuot is the way it is now. Who
would know how to spell and pronounce it better than the Vietnamese?
My team and platoon spent most of our time on patrols west of the Buon Ma Thuot/Pleiku
Highway and I mean a good deal west: all the way to the Cambodian border. It was marked on
our maps. I don?t think anybody from my company went into Cambodia while I was there but I
heard they did later, after they were renamed Rangers.
This is what is called the Central Highlands and an interesting place it is, too, as I?ve come
to learn. It was as different from the jungled coast land as could be. Its high plains, lots of open
grassy areas, forest rather than jungle, and cooler, being a few thousand feet higher in
places.There?s over 50 different kinds of ?ethnic? Vietnamese. These are what the French called
Montagnards and we called Yards. These would be the equivalent of Native Americans in the
United States and they?ve had similar treatment from all the Vietnamese governments including
this current one. We worked with Yard scouts a lot--there?s 3 on the E Co websites Wall.
Most of the heavy action was farther north along the laotian/Viet border and DMZ but the
Ho Chi Minh Trail continued well into our area for distribution of supplies farther south. This was
known to the Vietnamese as the Truong Son route for the Truong Son mountains it went through
and was actually comprised of 6 different land and 2 water routes (I learned this much later,
same for most of what I know about it) Our area was a transit point, Grand Central Station for
them. This was where the final big tank battle happened that ultimately won the war for the North
in 1975
This area was what became known as Indian Country and there wasn?t much at the time
(pre, during and post Tet, ?68) but the American 4th division and a couple of semiworthless
ARVN divisions to occupy well over 100 miles of remote and forested border. And of course 4th
Platoon, E Co/20th LRPs, the Poor Man?s Special Forces, The Only Law West Of The Srepok as
I remember someone saying.
I want to try and get up to Yak Don Park, west of BMT on the Cambodian border. I think
this is close to the place where they dropped my team almost right on top of what we figured to
be an NVA platoon base camp. I?ve written about this elsewhere in The Archives so I won?t go
into it now other than to say it was somewhat stressful and I was pretty much a Victim of
Circumstances . I only did what I could and only what I had to-- certainly nothing heroic about
that. This was definitely one of the times I wished I?d joined the Air Force like my parents wanted
and could see plainly that they were actually a lot smarter than I?d thought and had really only
had my best interests at heart. I won?t get back to this same place but I want to see this country
again. I remember flying back to base afterwards watching the sun rise on a warm morning, happy
just to be alive, and thinking: This is SOME kind of living!.
Buon Ma Thuot wasn?t much of a town when I was there and its been destroyed and
rebuilt a few times since so I?m not expecting to see much I recall. I remember the layout of the
town and remember I was in the only 3 story building I was in Vietnam there, a real nosebleed. I
won?t go into what I was doing there except to say I left there at greater than average speed when
the NVA started taking over the town one early morning to celebrate Tet. I?m fairly sure the
helicopter base I stayed at won?t be there although it may be the airfield there now. This is one of
the things I?ll look for as I looked for it barefoot that night--east of town on the Nha Trang road. I
stayed there some and also at The Compound downtown-- This was the only place in the Nam to
get a good Tunafish sandwich. The Compound was said to be where Teddy Roosevelt stayed
once when he was there slaughtering tigers. Now all the tigers have been slaughtered out and a lot
of the country slashed and burned for coffee fields but I knew lrrps who encountered tigers there
back then and not in the zoo either.
Driving up from BMT to Pleiku, I hope to take some side trips west out into the Plei?s:
Plei Me, PleJerang, etc. Plei Me was where my platoon trained together after Recondo school and
we trained by staging patrols into the Ia Drang Valley.We used to drive around all over here in
jeeps and trucks, including the whole route from BMT to Pleiku --They used us as convoy guards
if we were going that way.
The Ia Drang Valley is another place I?m looking forward to seeing again, this time not
sighting down a barrel. I hear you can take elephant rides in it--this would be the ultimate ?What
Goes Around Comes Around?experience for me. This was where the ?We Were Soldiers? battle
took place and we were real close to where it was but a couple of years later. It was pointed out
to me as being on the same map page, that was why they called it Death Valley--a cheery thought
to tell someone going on patrols there, no doubt, but its just the way they talked: matter of factly
gruesome, hardehar. When we were there, there was nobody there but solid enemy and we didn?t
have to look very far for Targets of Opprtunity to be sure. Not at all, our biggest worry was being
someone else?s ToO. Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you.
Not to sound overly prescient but this is when I knew for sure, finally and forever, that the
US had no chance to win the war--two years after a big battle and the enemy owns the land
exclusively, except for your humble servant and his pals. You don?t have to win all the battles
when the enemy goes away and leaves you his objective-- that 270 of his men died for.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail by and large WAS the whole war, although I sure didn?t
understand this at the time. The American aim was to defend South Vietnam and render the
Communists ineffective in the South. In order to do this they had to cut the lines of
communication and supply, or so we thought. This we never did, never came close to doing, I
think they didn?t understand the dimensions of the problem untill they got way into it later. For
starters, there was almost 1000 miles of border to defend, much of it inaccessibly remote, hilly
and forested. An Army the size of Ike?s would have had a hard time doing it.
The concept of cutting the lines of communication and supply to end the war in the South
was a mistake anyway because the main body of the NLF fighters in the south were supplied IN
the South BY the South much of it right off US boats, especially medical supplies which were
more or less given away. The NLF fighters supplied themselves almost exclusively at the
beginning from castoff ARVN weapons and equipment. We know now that the SVN government
and its Army were riddled with moles. A substantial war effort would have continued right along
if they had cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail completely. What the Trail did was allow them to build up
and stockpile supplies and troops to where all the bombing the US did had little avail. The amount
of supplies heading south only increased every year, sometimes more, sometimes less but an
increase every time. Ultimately they built up a substantial enough force, complete with
armor,sweeping out of the central Highlands around Buon Ma Thuot into the capital,.Saigon (now
known, coincidently, as Ho Chi Minh City)
Thats how they won the war at least that part of it.

I walked point on lrrp patrols on the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Ia Drang Valley during the
Vietnam war . Not being content to just read American History, I elected to make some of my
own although I sure didn?t know I was doing it at the time: This is semilegendary now, I?ve seen
whole books written about this and similar experiences. I guess if there?s anything I?d try to claim
15 minutes of fame for, above and beyond the call of dutywise, that would be it. It still counts
even though I was scared a good deal of the time-- all the time--and trying to look over both
shoulders at once even when I was hauling ass for the extraction chopper. It was a scary place
with a lot of ghosts and my memories of it are some of my more extreme. To walk in it again,
even to see it, would be, perhaps, like going back to Gettysburg was for the Civil War vets,
Normandy for WWII vets. The barbarian comes once again, armed only with a digital camera.
This was our place too, the Ia Drang Valley. They may have owned the Ho Chi Minh Trail but we
peed on it when we felt like it. We had subtle but effective ways of letting them know we?d been
there. (Your tax dollars hard at work and a super deal the public was getting, too!!)
I understand Pleiku has also been rebuilt in the Early Stalinist Mode so favored by the
conquering Commies untill they figured out that Vietnamese are just not generally the Stalinist
type--theyre too business oriented--and went do moi (their modernization plan). I spent a few days
and nights in Pleiku but mostly where we stayed was Camp Enari, the 4th Division?s base camp
that we shared with them. It was southwest of town out by Dragon Mountain on the road to
Cambodia. If I can we?ll get back out there to see whats left, perhaps even drive out to The Oasis
and perhaps take a picture for the E Company website.
The 4th Division had a lot of trouble with the lrrps, being a ?leg? (nonAirborne) division. 2
beerhalls were burned down by lrrps after ejection and I know at least one of the lrrps who did at
least one of them. Seems like a lot of our stuff--like temporary personal jeeps for instance-- had
4th division on it but we were supplied through the 4th Division (or on our own). I can remember
a few formations after the fact when some beatup looking 4th Div officer or NCO would come
through looking for the usual suspects, who, unfortunately were out on patrol and had been since
before whatever it was had happened had happened. The 4th division MPs would leave us alone
when they found out who we were which is why we liked to carry exotic weapons and wear
Tigers or mixtures of uniforms as much as possible. This, with sunglasses, was the ?spook?look.
People didn?t know who you were ( high spirited kids with automatic weapons trying to keep a
straight face) and would give you some considerable space. It can be some definite bad luck to
mess with people who have silenced weapons and explosives and use them sometimes. Very bad
luck. Ask me how I know this.
Lrrps had a reputation as, well, flamboyant--should I say peculiar?-- about things in
general and some of the more legendary lrrp stories are not about firefights but about things like
women and shootouts with MPs and telling ARVN generals what they thought of them fairly
candidly. Walking into a Special Forces Bar and talking about how faggoty a man looks in a
beret--that kind of thing.. It wasn?t like a heavily armed Animal House, exactly, but as close as we
could make it as often as it could be. What were they gonna do? Put us in the infantry and send
us to Vietnam? (Did I say that already? we used to say it a lot, it seemed kind of funny when you
thought about it.)
Well, they could put us in the Long Binh jail, the LBJ Ranch, which was the ultimate
threat to us. They never came close to it in Vietnam which speaks volumes about the Right To
Carry A Gun Laws. You never outgrow your need for ammo!
And then from Pleiku to Kon Tum. I was never here before but Tom was, the guy I?m
going with (with his wife and my girlfriend to get us out of jams) Its a fairly semi legendary place
also, some major battles were fought near here including Hill882 at Dak To and Hamburger Hill
up in the A Shau valley. I hear its prettier than Pleiku which isn?t saying much.
And then back through Pleiku and down through Mang Yang and Anh Khe Passes.
4th platoon, E Co/20th Inf LRP ran many patrols in the Mangyang and Anh Khe Pass
areas and I was on at least 5 or 6 here. We also worked as convoy guards sometimes when they
sent us from one place to another. As far as I know,this area was never ?pacified? throughout the
war or at least they were shooting trucks off the road all through the war. We ran into contact on
every patrol here, once they fired us up getting off the chopper.We would find their commo wire
strung out all over which meant they thought they owned the place, like the Ia Drang Valley. I
was arms length with the enemy here (he didn?t see me,) we got into some close combat here
and again it was not a good time to be thinking of oneself as the Army of One. Did I say he had a
whole lot of well armed friends? This was another time when I was regretting not listening to my
mom and dad and joining the Air Force but it turned out all right, sort of, for me and my friends
anyway.
I?ll be able to see some of this from the main road if I remember right or at least close to
it. I want to get a picture of me being driven down this road throwing SVN piastres and MPC out
the window. That will be the Vietnam version of The Big Victory Parade. I?ll be posting this one
on the E Co website also.
I?m going to at least drive through the streets of Anh Khe and see what I remember of it. I
spent days and nights here in town and many days at the 1st cav basi at Anh Khe. This is another
fortuitous place for me because I ran into a home boy of mine from El Cerrito CA--we?d enlisted
together. He was a night baker for a HHQ company that was just right up the hill from where we
stayed. He?d come in around 2200 and bake the pies and cakes and cookies and what not for the
next day, ending around 0400.
The guys I hung out with were known to smoke pot on occasion and I?ll allow from the
safety of all these years as how I might of smoked it with them but only in the rear, never on
patrol. It did help us through those stressful times and it was certainly more plentiful than cold
beer most of the time which was our first choice. Well, what could be more of a miltary
potsmoker?s dream--especially a grunt--than to have his best buddy from home be a baker???
This was the best food I got in the war. We?d come in from patrol and late that night we?d raid the
refrigerator--steaks, salads, fresh pies, milk--it was to die for in a manner of speaking. Plus all the
medicinal brownies we could eat. I think the base at Anh Khe is gone now but I?ll try to get as
close to it as possible. just for a peek. I?ll take pictures of whats left of The Green Line--the chain
of positions along the Pleiku road.
Don?t know if we?ll get to Bong Song, this was where we did OJT after Recondo School
with the semi legendary Bummer Bumgarner of the 1st Cav Lrrps. Ive seen his name in several
books. I actually saw this man chasing after a VC firing a .45 in each hand. He was one of the
ones who loved his job, no error, but he did not become my role model.
After Anh khe is QuiNhon. We patrolled out of here, from the helicopter base southwest
of town. I never got into QuiNhon proper, I don?t think. We patrolled in the hills south of town--I
should be able to see these, maybe rent a moped and putt around.
Heading North of QuiNhon we go through the Quang Ngai area where we operated: Duc
Pho, Quang Ngai, The Song Ve valley. This is rice paddy country but I don?t plan to spend any
time here. My lai is here and I don?t intend to see that, its nothing I want to see, its a shame on
America, no doubt. We were in this area a year before Calley and nothing like that ever happened.
We?re going farther up North to Hue and Danang, China Beach, the old DMZ. Some of
these places are more semi legendary and we want to see them. .We?ll be spending time in Ho Chi
Minh City, taking in the tunnels of Cu Chi. I don?t think we?ll get into what used to be called
North Vietnam because of tight time frame
I?m going back to Vietnam because I?m curious to see these places, some I?ve been to,
some Ive only heard of. Since I was there, I?ve made a life study out of the place and due to some
more outrageously fortuitous circumstances I?m now able to see it. Like most Veterans, Ive put
this away for years but now that I?m able to, I want to take the chance while it?s there.There?s no
other country I?m more curious about.
This is the main reason I?m going back: I want to see what I was doing and where I was
doing it without looking through the filters of war. Its not just about seeing the country, its about
looking at myself at that age, seeing if I can understand what was going on in that 19 year old?s
mind--what an adventure to tell the grandkids about! I want to put myself there and see what I
remember of my friends and my self. I want to firm up some old memories and discard others.
This is the most far out, outrageous I ever was. Being a paratrooper was the most amazing time in
my life, it is when I did the most impressive things in my life or at least I impressed myself the
most. There?s a lot in my life that I enjoyed doing more--its been a good life-- but there was
nothing I was INTO doing more for sure, nothing I put more of my heart, soul and spirit into. In
Zen terms, this is about as Into The Moment as you?ll ever get. It was my Cause, I guess, just
another Veteran of A Lost Cause. .
It is hard to talk about this stuff without seeming to brag, a lot of it it certainly seems
incredible now. I?ve certainly had mixed feelings about it over the years, a lot of which I kept to
myself-- a lot of which still can?t be put into words other than like this insufficent recounting.
There?s no doubt it had a terrific impact on me. This is the stuff they?re paying me to recover from
now.
I think that one of the things that Vietnam Vets fear most is that our sacrifice was in
vain; that it might have turned out all right in spite of our best efforts, some of which were heroic
and a terrific sacrifice. That would make us the Anti Heroes, which is actually not all that far off
of how I do happen look at myself anyway; so its OK with me, I?m at peace with that. I just
count my fingers and toes and feel happy just to be alive. It was a terrific experience and I feel
very fortunate to have survived it fairly intact. We?ll be there on May Day, getting down with the
Commies on their Cinco de Mayo. Good luck boys. it was a long dirty fight but you won. The
good news for you is it?s your country now--the bad news for you also is it?s your country now
and No Backs! Sometimes you get what you pray for.
That is what I really want to see--that it turned out all right, that the Vietnamese are better
off now than they were then.. Then the war will be over for me for sure--they will have won and I
will have won [Fingers: 10; Toes:10]. How could that not be good?
Does anybody know how to say in Vietnamese: ?Whoa there, little compadre, this time I
come as a friend??


James Worth


Re: SARS
I wasn?t too afraid to go the first time and I?m not too afraid to go this time either

[exlrrp]

I don't know why the spacing of the sentences came out this way,, there'e no indentation for the paragraphs-- it was not the way it was written

[ArtySgt]

Welcome back, missed you. You be careful when you get over there, all kinds of things to watch out for, but you know that better then most.

[MORTARDUDE]

Take care on your trip !

All the best,

Larry

[39mto39g]

"""I don't know why the spacing of the sentences came out this way"
Because you cut and past this from Microsoft word. There text format is different then this location.
Next time close your margins to about 5 inches.

Don't forget your SARS pill.

I have May 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 off. Guess where I'll be

Ron

[exlrrp]

Originally posted by 39mto39g """I don't know why the spacing of the sentences came out this way"
Because you cut and past this from Microsoft word. There text format is different then this location.
Next time close your margins to about 5 inches.

Don't forget your SARS pill.

I have May 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 off. Guess where I'll be

Ron

Ron Yer right but wrong--its Microsoft Works that blew the job. This computer I'm on only has Works and it really sucks. This will change soon.
Sorry I won't be there this time for the Crawdad fest but I'll be down there later this year and we'll get together then, you too Dave

Thanks Larry and Frank and you others I'll be thinking of all of you while I'm there, in a way, I'm doing this as much for you guys as myself

This is just the first part of a Work In progress, there'll be more--I have fantasies of writing a book about going back--tales of going there the first time have been done to death, IMHO.

James

[Arrow]

Use the WYSIWYG enhanced HTML engine?
Selecting yes will enable the new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) posting engine, which does not require the use of VBcode tags and has a typing interface similar to that of Microsoft Word.


Note: May be incompatible with some internet browsers

James if you go into your cp user options (found at the top ofthe forums page)you can select WYSIWYG. I use it and it is a lot easier to work in. It's easy to change font size just by highlighting text and then clicking on size on the tool bar. Same/same with just about any function. Just highlight textand choose bold, underline, color etc.

You can also go in and edit your post by deleting some of the spaces you see and that will give you a tighter format.

ps. Frisco called Saturday to ask about Griz and he says you all are good to go..

I know you will have a million laughs just don't forget your shoe phone in case you have to call for back up...

You all be safe k?

Arrow>>>>>>>