1. – lies
[back home,] I didn’t know what happened until one sunday
morning. I bought the new york times. and there were the Pentagon Papers. I
became violently ill. I actually threw up and got a blinding headache, rolling
around on the floor. containing communism was only 5 percent of it, generate
capital for corporations was 41 percent. I was pledging allegiance to Dow and
Monsanto. I was of total insignificance, except to be used. I didn’t want to be
part of this planet, this sickness.
the first thing
I’m sorry but I have to tell you the truth. one of the first
things you realize is when you get to nam was that you weren’t going to win
this war. after the first month, me and everybody else said, “I’m going to put
in my twelve months then get the fuck out.”
no secret
every once in a while a bunch of montagnard would get on a
plane with some guy in civilian clothes and disappear towards
all the way
on patrol we traveled stripped, no insignia, no ID, no american
anything. the idea is if any of the
every organ eaten up
I lost thirty pounds and had a fever of 103. they took out
my spleen, my gall bladder and my appendix. I blame it on being sprayed eight
or nine times with agent orange. nobody has seen this kind of disease before
with every organ eaten up. why should I bee the only one? the VA is fighting me
all the way.
I saw it with my own eyes
we had taken twenty two KIA. thirty five feet from my hooch
was the graves registration point. I lived with the men who worked there. I
watched those twenty two bodies come from the medics to the GR point. the
official report of american deaths was only eight. it’s horrible to think about
that. that’s just statistics, not even people. I got angry when I realized our
casualty reports in the Stars and Stripes (the serviceman’s newspaper) were
being falsified. in every case, I knew what the total was, but the numbers were
always reported as less. we falsified enemy casualties, why not our own? I don’t
believe for a moment that there were only 53,000 casualties. I don’t know how
it’s possible to disguise thousands of deaths. I saw it with my own eyes.
because of a joke
I was in john
a slight confusion
I went down to my draft board originally just for a physical.
[we had been cutting up and teasing the female officer when] these big marines
come in the door. they said, “all of ya’ll just passed the test. you will be
leaving in two days, or you can leave in thirty days if you
join the marine corp.” I was young and stupid, ignorant. we signed up for four
years, not thinking if I go with the army, I’ll be going for two. I didn’t get
the thirty days anyway.
only 11 percent would see combat
in boot camp we didn’t meet too many patriots. they were
schmucks like me, or guys the judge said, “you can go in the army or it’s two
years for grand theft auto.” to discourage us from going AWOL, all new draftees
were told that only 17 percent of us would actually be going to vietnam, and 11
percent would be combat troops. with only three exceptions, every single one of
us went to
there’ll be swimming pools
the army told us, “listen, it’s pretty civilized over there.
you’ll have swimming pools and snack bars and all like that. you won’t have to
run off the plane and form a defensive perimeter around the air base in saigon.”
that was after the TET offensive had broken out. people were being blown away
at… the base. when I came back from training my girl friend said, “they cut
your hair and took your brain too.”
they promised him an easy job
they promised him he would have an easy job, so he signed up
again. then they stuck him back with the grunts. his foot was gone and one of
his legs. his face was all black and he was screaming, “what about my
motorcycle, what about my motorcycle? I’m going home.” he died. just to get
even, we beat up a few people.
what the XXX is a
after boot camp they sent us to
these gooks are riding by on a lambretta, like a motor bike
but you sit people in the back. it was a baby san and a papa san, I guess, she
was maybe about fifteen or sixteen. “we’re going to screw your daughter.” I
think she was a virgin. we pulled her pants down and put and put a gun to her
head. guys are taking turns screwing her.
all the vietnamese carried this ID card. so we ripped up his ID card. “hey, we
got a VC here.” we shot him. we just started pumping rounds into him until the
guy just burst open. he didn’t have a face any more. baby san, she was crying,
so a guy just put a rifle to her head and pulled the trigger. we started
kicking and stomping them. everybody was laughing about it. the captain says, “who’s
going to get the ears?” we cut off one of her breasts. the next day we go
through a village harassing women and killing guys. we shot him even if there
was no VC there. if the people don’t treat you right when you walk through
their village, you give them hell. they won’t say nothing to you, but they’re a
little cold. as soon as we step outside the village, the captain radios in, “we’re
under heavy contact”, and those phantom jets come in and drop 500 pound bombs. we went on to the next one. we go back
to Long Bin. the colonel is there to congratulate us. “you are in for a
commendation.”
helicopter ride - SOP
when we had to interrogate some of the prisoners, we’d take
them about a thousand feet up in the helicopter. the first one wouldn’t talk. [intelligence]
would give you the thumb toward the door, and you’d push the guy out. the next,
if this guy would do all the talking, we’d kick him out the door anyway. even
the good gook, they throw him out anyway. nobody asks what happened to them.
to play with
one of the first little kids I took care of in
some smart guy
they used to clean the floors with kerosene to get the wax
off. we had a vietnamese girl on the ward. some smart guy flips a match [and] woosh,
she’s gone in a puff of smoke. when we got to her she was 100 percent 2nd and 3rd
degree burns, plus she had inhaled a lot of smoke. I went looking for the [doctor.]
he was in our library, about the size of a walk in closet, crying his eyes out.
"“what am i going to do? she’ll live six weeks and then die horribly."
his daughter
we’d stand them up against a wall, and put a gun to his head
and sa.y, “talk.” or they’d take a man’s wife or daughter and screw his
daughter in front of them.
an apple for a nurse
I had a patient who was supposed to be a north virtnamese
courier. he tried to kill me. the MPs
took him and came back a few hours later. one said, “come out here. I’ve
got something to show you.” they had peeled the guy like an apple.
double veteran
you take a group of men and put them in a place where there
are no round eyed women. you’ve got an M-16 and you go to one of the villages
and you take what you want. they’d come back a double veteran <raping a
woman and then killing her.>
something was wrong with you
I don’t understand why they talk about taking prisoners and
stuff. we didn’t go through that nonsense. we used to cut ears off. we had a
trophy. if a guy had a necklace of ears, he was a good killer. it was
encouraged to cut ears off, to cut the guy’s nose off, the cut the guy’s penis
off, a female you cut her breast off. the officers expected you to do it or
something was wrong with you. in fact I started to enjoy it. that was the whole
thing about
my experience and my class and my education.
“come on back, it’s bell telephone hour.” I was always
hiding behind my rank. basically I didn’t want to be bothered. I’d go in there
would be some poor old woman or some old guy, some kid even. wrap wires around
there pinkies and crank the field telephone, and give him a little taste of it.
like putting cans on cat tails. I didn’t know anything about psychology, [but] I’m
sure it had tremendous Impact on people. it sure didn’t win us any friends. the
misogyny is being denied women, and then having your contact with women in some
sort of subjugation position. my experience and my class and my education had
insulated me a little bit. now I was pitching in.
I was hot
we were up 100-125 feet in a tower. this fucking tower was
really hot. there was a woman bent over in the field, harvesting something. she
was obviously not an enemy agent. everybody started taking pot shots at this
woman. something came over me. I was pissed. I was hot. I shot at her and she
keeled over dead.
it would have been too easy
there was one guy that told me they were searching in this
huy and there was a really pretty young girl. he walked over and jammed his
hand down her pants and started taking her clothes off. the girl’s mother came
in and started raising all kind of hell. I don’t know what I would have done. I
don’t think I would have tried to stop it. these are the guys who get in a fire
fight with you. it would have been too easy to get blown away.
standard operating procedure
I was enjoying the feel. we didn’t have to salute nobody. we
dressed the way we wanted to dress. an officer knows that if he messed with you
in the field, in a fire fight you could shoot him in the head. that was
standard operating procedure in any infantry unit. anybody who tells you
different, he’s shitting you. if you mess with my partner, in the unwritten
code there, I had the right to blow your brains out. I had a sense of power, of
destruction. in the
we let the general land
we were out, really out. we used to be visited by a general
once a month. I would send my men out to shoot at his helicopter. one time we
heard UPI and CBS was going to be with him so we let him land. [we] sewed the
ears back on up side down.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune
any time anybody went to the rear, they brought back smoke.
[ortega got busted] and he turned in everybody’s name. they kept putting him in
different camps. wherever he went, guys wanted to beat the shit out of him. they
had to keep him under guard in the sergeant’s shack. he got bit by a rabid rat.
you’re not supposed to drink when you’re undergoing treatments. being the
chicano juicer he was, he really boozed it up. he went into a frenzy and they
had to tie him down. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. we got some gasoline,
and somebody hit the first sergeant over the head. somebody poured the gasoline
over him and I threw the match.
no business
since we were so far up north, ya’’ll could shoot any and
all people ya’ll found. they were enemy or they had no business being up there.
they grinned from ear to ear
we did a mission where we wiped out a whole twn. we herded
all the people together, maybe sixty seven people, we burned their homes to the
ground. the guy on the radio said, “waste everybody you got.” I was not going
to kill these people. I had a couple of guys who really enjoyed killing quite a
bit. they couldn’t wait. they grinned from ear to ear. they had them lie down,
then they wasted them, women, men, children. next week the newspapers said the
north vietnamese did it. with some of the things we were doing, I started to
get really bad feelings, not morality, just fucking bad feelings.
snake
they had this old crazy dude [in the village,] sort of a
town idiot. the VC hired him to come in and fuck with our lines one night and I
shot his ass. the people hated me after
that. all the mama sans would yell at me. I’d get a couple of them cornered up
against a hooch and I’d say, ”what did you say?” I used to love to fuck with
those assholes. we had this one guy who would go out and shoot people, then
yell, “snake!” we’d come across this old papa san dying in the hooch, with mama
san leaning over him. he pulls out his 45 and blows the fucker’s brains out,
then say, “I was just helping the fucker out.” then he turns and shoots this
mother and her baby. he steps outside and says, “snake.” what happens in the
field, stays in the field.
the CO said… / some other company
I got close to being court marshaled for killing some kids. headquarters
said there was a sniper in this village. we burned all the rice. it was dark
and I thought the kids had rifles. I beat up this old man [who] was giving me a
hard time. I was getting ready to shoot him when someone told me he was the
village chief. the whole squad had to write up a statement. the CO says, “they
had all better coincide.” so we all get together and make up the same story. we
had brought back a couple prisoners. the
CO said, “dead men tell no tales. next time, remember.” then some other company
attacks a church full of people, killed them and burned the church down. the CO
says, “they’ll forget about you now.”
ice cream run.
we were riding in a jeep and the driver said, “will anyone
bet me I won’t hit that old woman?” he just turned the wheel and broke her hip.
the officer decided to call a medivac. I’ve seen sanitation men handle garbage
more delicately. it seems we interrupted
their ice cream run. she was just another gook.
mow people down
the commander would tell us, “look, we haven’t had many
kills in a long time. so let’s go down to the village and shoot somebody and
drag the body back.” some of the guys would just go down to the village and mow
people down, including women and children. calley mowed down all those old
women and children.
eighteen and his picture book kept getting bigger and bigger
“hey, lieutenant, you want to see my pictures?” I knew from
the start that we would get around to the atrocity part. it happened every time.
if I was in a field unit and my best friend was peeled and has his penis cut
off and stuck in his mouth, I might do the same thing if I ran across a gook, [he
goes on] “we ran across some NVA.” there was a girl who was probably a nurse. someone
would have stuck a grenade up her rectum. then he’d get around to the fact that
he was the one that had done it. he’d put his stuff away and go down to the
latrine. I’d find him down there, lots of times with the needle still in his
arm. I remember one kid who was eighteen. his picture book kept getting bigger
and bigger.
a nice little piece
the first day on rat patrol, [with] a nice little piece of
fire power on [this] jeep, we get sniped at. we look and there’s a village. the
corporal said, “to hell with it, open up.” two other rat patrol jeeps heard and
they pulled up, shooting the hell out of this village. we got back and all hell
broke loose on us.
God
our gun ship was a UH-1C
God?
I loved to just sit in a ditch and watch people die, sitting
back with my hot chocolate. like the first time I seen a guys guts. you can
help yourself to a handful, wash them off, and keep them. there was something
about sticking my hand in warm blood that I used to love. the attitude you pick
up is, “oh shit, dime a dozen.” [this guy] was on vacation and he drowned. i’d
forgotten you still had to contend with god. that scared the shit out of me.
everything they had
I blew up a village one time, outside of which my squad got
ambushed. all the people were gone. we got in line and shot the shit out of the
livestock.
a bet
I made a bet with a friend of mine that I could sink a
sampan with a rock. the chopper pilot hovered overhead. I had a good eight or
ten pound rock. the boat sank, little guys cursing and swimming.
glass
I know that some of the whores would put glass up their
vagina and other ones were infected with a strain of syphilis that was virulent.
suddenly that’s exactly what we were
pilots came down from LZE English and they wanted nurses to
come over for a party. the guys put on a n incredible feed for us. I had to
make a pit stop, so I was looking for a place to go to the bathroom. I stumbled
into a room full of mattresses, wall to wall. I thought, “oh-oh, I gotta warn
the girls.” the guys were furious. I didn’t think we would make it out alive. the
Gis called the nurses rounded-eyed tail, and suddenly that’s exactly what we
were. this was the enemy camp. they refused to take us home.
no one controlled him
there was one guy in particular who was the archetypal
soldier of fortune. no one controlled him, and he had no control over himself. he
actually had a tremendous amount of charm, but beneath was a shark’s conscious
operating all the time.
national defense
when you don’t expect to get mercy, you’re reluctant to show
it. so you really breed hideous people over there, for
I had joined the muslims. “don’t worry,” he said, “once you
tell them you’re a muslim you won’t have to go overseas.” from there I went to
I had a large vocabulary – people didn’t like it
[in boot camp] somebody six-foot-two, 275 pounds, is your
new squad leader, no matter how dumb he is. I could speak standard english and
had a large vocabulary. that made me an outsider because people didn’t like it.
I had this antagonist all the time looking for an opportunity to get at me [to
start fistfights.]
a joker
the pilot, a real joker, said, “temperature outside is one
hundred and three degrees and ground fire is light to moderate.”
your turn.
they always made us be with the bodies. even if they stink
after two days, you wouldn’t even move them. you were always told, “you’ll get
your turn to die tomorrow.”
“kick,,,kick…kick...”
they had me moving bodies, VC and NVA. push this body here
out of the way. flip a body over. see people’s guts and heads half blown off. I
was throwing up all over the place. “what for?” I said. “your going to get used
to death before you get in a fire fight and get us all killed.” they’re
laughing and joking. next, I had to kick one body on the side of the head till
part of his brain started coming out of the other side. “you’re starting to
feel what it’s like to kill. the chant started, “kick,,,kick…kick,,,” I’m
saying to myself, these guyss are professionals, but they’re crazy.
of course
I have to admit I enjoyed killing. the less of them there
were, the better my chances of making it. of course, after a while that was
forgotten. there was a certain joy in killing. a guy is dead and just as he is
falling, the volume of outgoing fire can pick him up. we would have a contest
to see how long we could keep the bodies weaving.
dumb
the routine was bomb-numbing dumb.
worse than death
I would pray for a firefight, just so we could stop walking.
the easy part
killing is the easy part. seeing guys drop all around you of
heat stroke, not having food or water, sleeping only three hours a night for
weeks on end. that’s what war is.
everybody
his uniform was filthy, with grenades hanging off it, the
bandolier, the M-16 strapped to him. everybody i saw at the air base was in a
zombie type world.
ten seconds
you had ten seconds to get out of the plane and into the
bunker or you were gone,
they
there’s nothing like a confirmed kill. it’s thrilling,
beyond drugs. they make you crazy. you want more. everyone back at battalion
will look at you with envy. you know it’s going to be the same tomorrow as it
is today, only maybe worse.
more or less
this one lieutenant froze in battle one day, [later] he more
or less snapped out of it. they sent him back to base camp with extreme
exhaustion. [but now] he always wore his helmet. he had his little hut two or
three sand bags thick, on top too. he slept on the floor instead of the cot,
with his flak jacket on. we got rocketed, and a piece of shrapnel entered his
hooch somehow and struck his heart.
never
the kids come out of the ville. you tell them, “didi, didi
mao” – get away. they’d swear up and down at you. the war had been going on so
long that these kids never had a childhood.
at first
after I realized I couldn’t knock all the bugs off the
toilet paper I decided I didn’t need [it.] charlie would drop morters on them,
before they got their orders. I was told not to bring anything good because it
would just rot away. my first roommate was a red cross director. she was always
drinking and taking a drug [meant] for a cardiac condition.[it bothered me at
first.]
the change / three days
the change was individual. it was silence. it was reserve. we
went into the jungle determined to do what we were trained to do – which was to
kill. after about three days, we stopped asking for permission to fire. we
would shoot up our radio before we got back to camp.
I knew
I had a little puppy for a while in vietnam. for a period of
three days, I would take this little puppy and squeeze it until it would yelp. or
twist its little paw. I knew what I was doing. someone or something had to
suffer for all the pain I had inside me. I was so horrified I gave the puppy to
someone else.
I was a little pissed off
[on R+R in hong kong] the [women] were very expensive, where
in taipai you could have bought a girl for a week. i was a little pissed off. then
that same night in the fucking rain and mud with leeches and people trying to
kill me.
everyone
everyone there had pseudomonas, a bacteria that turns pus
green. I took the dressing off his arm and he didn’t have an arm, all there was
was bone. he’d lain in a water filled ditch for two days and the maggots are
probably what saved him. he was out of his mind with fever.
why?
up in Khe Sanh, a guy told us how to sleep. you have to tuck
your blanket all around you, even your face and feet. I said, “why?” he
replied, “the rats we have would eat any cat and give most dogs a hell of a way
to go.” [that night] something jumped on me and was walking. it felt huge. suddenly this guy is yelling at the top of
his lungs. flares are shooting up. he had a hunk of meat out of his face.
bad
if the world could only see me now. I am bad. if I could get
back to the states, somebody fuck with me, just somebody fuck with me. [but] when
they come to get you, I’m warbling like a kid going through puberty.
I wasn’t ready to move.
I’m used to the pogues (non-front line personnel) moving
because of us. all of a sudden we’re moving. I wasn’t ready to move, but my
buddies convinced me. I met the guy called “eighty-eight”, because of the
number of men he killed in one day. his unit came to the bar. a lot of them had
one long braid down one side, part of their head shaved, or mohawks. it wasn’t
even about saying, “we’re bad.” they didn’t even think anyone of anyone else
being around. they lay these ears down on the bar and the guy who had the most
ears that didn’t match had to buy the rounds the whole night. they were all on
their second or third tour. I felt kind of sorry for them. they got there and
found out their talent was killing, they liked it. when the war ended, what
were they going to do?
ice cream and mud
the choppers took off. in the door was a five gallon carton
of ice cream, it fell about fifty feet and we had mud and ice cream all over
the place. we just went crazy, scooping up handfuls off the ground, mud and all.
please don’t leave me
I never saw so many guys cry as I did while I was in vietnam.
one of the big fears the guys had was of dying alone. they did die, but their
buddies stayed with them. “don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.”
the people
real contempt on their faces
the kind of hot that texas is hot, that takes your breath
away as you step out of the airplane. “what the hell is the wire mesh for [on
the bus windows?] here we are at one of the largest military installations in
the world and we have to protect ourselves from little old men. out the window
little old men were looking at us with real contempt on their faces. I knew
something was wrong.
going on
you be in a fire fight and they’d go on about their business
– a woman and a son whipping water over a dyke, old women with 150 pounds of
brush across her back. some of these people were beautiful, aristocratic, more
civilized than you ever thought of being.
reasonable
the kids in the village would see us coming up the canal [and]
they’d jump in front of the boat begging for c-rations. I began to hate them
because I couldn’t stand the idea that we were coming into these peoples lives
and totally disrupting them. these people wouldn’t care if we were there or
viet cong or anybody else. all they wanted was to farm and be reasonable.
came home
I heard this scream, high in volume but like the stuff you
use to scream with had been disconnected. the gurgling went on for thirty or
forty seconds. the consequences of pulling the trigger came home to me.
one day
I didn’t really speak the language. I could understand a few
phrases though. one day during a fire fight, for the first time in my life, I
heard the cries of the vietnamese wounded, understood them. when someone gets
wounded, they call for their mothers, their wives, their girl friends. there I
was listening to the VC cry for the same things. that’s when the futility of
the war really dawned on me. I thought, “jesus christ, what a fucking waste
this whole war is.”
we took them and laid them on the ground. they call the
quarter master corps, who brought these green bags. they didn’t have no doctor
pronounce you dead. I believe a lot of guys died in those bags.
fly boys
a lot of helicopter pilots passed out and puked their guts
out, and then flew. I knew two nurses who went home hooked on heroin.
high heals and a tight skirt / everybody down low and run
there were only a few of the guys on the plane going for the
first time. I had to be dressed in my class A uniform – nylons, high heals and
a skirt. no way was I going to get up and walk down that whole aisle to go to
the bathroom. the pilot says, “there taking fire [at the field,] everybody down
low and run.” I’ve got high heals on and a tight skirt.
blind luck
you can’t believe how smart a man is. if you get one, it’s
blind luck. out of the whole time I was out there, we got one kill.
the way I know now
it was a test I wanted to pass, a manhood test. I did not
know then the way that I know now how safe my life had been.
then you see it happen
I was a young healthy man. i felt I could kick the world’s
ass. then you see it happen and it’s hard to come to grips with. you say, “I
don’t want to think about that,” but you’re so tired, you’re mind is weak.
could care less
what do you do if you’ve got 500,000 men? the army’s answer
is to collect all the human waste, soak it in fuel oil and set it on fire. from
the time you land, the army could care less about you, where you slept, your
food, your gear. they just put us in a big lump and said, “don’t go over there.”
the officer in charge was shouting, “you all ready to move out? where are your
rifles?” “we haven’t been given them yet.” “oh, son of a bitch, that’s right.” at
the division there was more of the same confusion. we were always supposed to
be here or there but but none of it was
what the guy in charge wanted us to be doing. all of us walked around trying to
be real macho, throwing knives into doors. two second lieutenants were playing
poker, got drunk, and secided to have a “gunsmoke” shootout in the middle of
the company street, and killed each other.I didn’t [want] to carry all that
shit on my back and walk around living like animals. “shoot, shoot” people
would tell me. “where are they?” “over there,” pointing in the general
direction of some trees. what the hell am I shooting at? the level of
incompetence really bothered me.
bravery
the entire gun team is behind a rock. “how come the god dam
gun team isn’t opening up?” aint nobody shooting.
in rained
it rained so hard, I started to choke. I bent over to create
an air pocket. in that moment it was filled with mosquitoes.
months
you got your hair filthy with dirt and grease and twigs. you
aint washed in months.
didn’t clean ourselves
my hands got lacerated by elephant grass cuts. we didn’t get
a chance to clean ourselves good and any cut would get infected. the first
thing I’d do in the morning is make a fist and squeeze the puss out of my hands.
I still got the scars. I started getting into it after three months, being a
grunt and hunting.
the only way I could carry my rifle
I had jungle rot so bad on my hands that that the only way I
could carry my rifle was to cradle it in the bend of my elbow. my hands were so
sore and burning, my feet too.
quick exchanges of information
there were hospitals on the base but they were out of sight.
he was really evil, he told me with a smirk, “we’re going to send you forward.”
there had been some quick exchanges of information, [then] someone just yelled,
“incoming” and I went to the nearest bunker. out of the silence and darkness
somebody said, “where’s the new guy?” that’s a lot, that someone even bothered.
who the hell was I?
that could be me
you hump all day long. a lot of guys couldn’t manage. it. I’d
see people who dropped out, out of it, lying by the side of the trail,
sweating, rucksack off. the normal procedure was to physically coerce the
stragglers, sometimes they would slap or kick them. it wasn’t strong physical
abuse, mostly calling names, [but] it was very ugly. I found it frightening
because I knew that I was a marginal case,
that could be me. they take away their weapons and leave them. before
dark they would come up. it doesn’t get any better.
why we doin this?
the first fire fight, the gun squad leader panicked. he didn’t
know if either one of his guns opened up. he don’t know where to set up his
guns at. the gunner was doing nothing but freezing. I yelled, “ammo, ammo.” there’s
no ammo coming to me. they’re shooting behind these little rocks. [later] I had
them breaking down and cleaning guns blindfolded. “why we doin this.” they
asked. we took this hill called razor back about three times. each time we lost men. there aint nothin on
the stupid ass hill. it’s out in the middle of bullshit.
OTJ / their jokes
“don’t the new guys get broken in or something?” “yea, OJT.”
“what’s OJT?” “on the job training.” I’m seeing guys lying around with rat
bites. they run us off the choppers. who the hell are these guys yelling at me?
they got no insignia. according to training I’d be an ammo humper for a while,
then assistant gunner, then full fledged machine gunner. when I got to my unit,
they said, “there’s your gun. put on your jungle boots because we’re going out.”
he’s looking at me and looking at me and screams, “where did you get that shit?”
the same time that he’s yelling at me, he’s pulling them off me like a crazy
man. “the lieutenant told me to put them on.” “these are from KIA, killed in
action. you’re not going to jinx our squad.” their jokes is about this kill and
that kill.
“but we just got here”
they told me I was going to join the second marine division.
luckily we didn’t get no incoming when we landed. so this is Da Nang. “well, if
it’s like this, I am over.” then they said, “you will be transported by plane
to Quang Tri..” they stuck some of us into trucks heading to Phu Bai. “that
aint so bad.” at the battalion they said I was going to Fox Trot. next morning
they carted us over to LZ Stud. then they told me I was going up to Khe Sanh. “you’re
leaving now.” “but we just got here.”
I’m twenty one, I can’t believe they gave me a platoon
they give me a forty-five nut they didn’t have any magazines
for it. they were young [but] something about their eyes made them absolutely
different. I’m twenty one. I can’t believe they’re giving me a platoon. I’d
forgotten everything, how to call in artillery. I went to bed because nobody
really wanted to talk to me much. “we’re being overrun.” I get hit and go down.
I just got there. this guy larry looks at me and says, “you’re all right,” and
runs, just left me there. everything is on fire, people are screaming. total
caos. you can see the helicopters way up in the sky. they threw me in the back
and I just sail out of ther. at the quonset hut all the floors slope toward the
middle to drains. it missed my spine. a lot of pilots were out there, with no
arms or legs, or if they did they were like burnt out twigs.
they wanted the excitement
“that’s an ambush area. even I know that. they show you in
the books. what the hell are you guys doing?” “just don’t worry about it,” they
said. they hadn’t had a fire fight for a while and they wanted the excitement.
information
it wasn’t a question of good information, it was a question
of getting out and kicking someone’s ass.
worst possible place / alexander the great / a little bit of
dirt
ammo dump, fuel supply, air strip, big guns. the location of
the hooch <barracks> was in one of the worst possible places. we were in
line for any shell that over or under shot. I knew that the perimeter was not
remotely safe. I looked at the guard bunkers and realized they weren’t even
positioned in support of each other, weren’t staggered so fields of fire would
cross. I’m sure alexender the great’s bowmen knew that. within our perimeter,
there was a little village, at least half were vc. there were tunnels in and
out. little did I know how easy it was to fuck up an M-16 with a little bit of
dirt.
an old c-ration box
everybody is trigger happy at night. everybody. the guy sees an old c-ration box. he pops
three rounds at it. another guy across the compound, he pops three rounds. all
of a sudden, the machine gunner, he decides, “I been sitting here two weeks and
not pulled the trigger,” so he pulls the trigger. then you get fire control
direction asking for illumination from the artillary battery. you got a full
scale fire fight and there ain’t nothin out there.
the way I cried as a child
at about midnight the entire perimeter just exploded. we
knew the difference between incoming and outgoing [and] there wasn’t a single
fucking round of incoming that whole night. somebody on the guard tower thought
he saw north vietnamese headed for the bunker. radio messages went out. a
sheridan tank went zipping around and FIRED INTO [THE BUNKER.] nine of twelve
died, heavy firing went on till five in the morning, shooting at nothing. we
also knew that it happened around 2:30 or 3:30 and [it was] five o’clock before
medical help even arrived. we were called into formation for a memorial service
, listening to this chaplin about how, “these people didn’t die in vain.” that
man would have been dead if we had been left alone. I haven’t gotten over [it] and
don’t expect to. not just because of the insane waste of it all, but because of
the way it was dealt with by authority. it’s the same as seeing people argue
about the shape of the peace table in paris. it’s the same as calling
annihilation, pacification. it’s the same as watergate. it’s the same as oil
company profits. it’s called business as usual. that’s the way I cried as a
child, I was crying because I was so angry.
didn’t check with a living soul
I didn’t really have a chance to be working with him, to
teach him how to stay alive. he didn’t learn how to to do what you told him
instantly. he was seventeen. it was like he was saying, “I’m alive, but what do
I do? I’m dying.” our mortars up on the hill said they saw movement but didn’t
check with a living soul. we had a patrol out. they fucked up brown and killed
the lieutenant and a couple of other guys. brown was trying to wave the
corpsmen off, but they flipped him over and he was booby trapped, killing him. they
had on gas masks, [and] the glass in the eyepieces [blew out, ] blinding them
instantly.
she brought
he came in with no arms and his legs were gone below the
knee. he had these huge gaping holes. he’s recovering from the anesthesia. there
were some other guys on the ward who knew him, and they were going nuts. if he
even looked like he was coming around, I blasted him. it took him two days to
die. it was a big thing to be a man in nam. he was going to do it up big, get
drunk and get himself a prostitute. she brought a satchel charge with her into
his armored carrier. she went home and it blew up.
aw, shit
one of the radiomen was a friend of mine and I went out with
him. the next thing you know we’re taking rounds. I called the rear trying to
get artillary. they say, “that’s friendlies.” I say, “hold the phone, and yell,
“yo, you speak american?” I hear, “aw, shit” from the other side. but then – they
don’t want to stop. you got both squads knowing that they’re shooting up
americans and they’re still firing at one another. they had two KIA, and maybe
four or five wounded. we had three guys wounded.
two generals
I sat there on the hill watching the south vietnamese airforce
sweeping the south vietnamese army, because two generals got mad at each other.
I don’t care about your men / sixty thousand dollars
the fucking colonel says, “we’re not going to take you out
any more. you have the worst record with tanks and I’m not wasting tanks. I don’t
care what happens to your men.” we went out and we got hit. those tankers stood
up on top of their tanks and watched us have it out. now this base camp was
never hit. [we faked a ground assault], then I took four people and we fired across
the base camp at the armored cavalry regiment. a few rounds clanking of the
metal of those tanks and everything started blowing. in two and a
we had shit to work with
we worked twelve hour shifts, seven days a week. I didn’t
even try to eat lunch. I would set my alarm for half an hour and sleep though
my lunch hour. you always slept through the alarm. if it was really getting to
us, the nurses would make believe they were corpsmen and the corpsmen would be
nurses. I’d clean latrines [because I just didn’t want to look at another
patient. the ward was divided into Gis and vietnamese. I hate to use the word
gooks, but that’s what it amounted to. I could see how the vietnamese weren’t
treated the same, even though they were civilians and they just got caught in
the crossfire. you really got to resent going on that side of the ward. the
richest nation in the world and we had shit to work with. we had suction at a
guys bedside with these crummy little bottles the size of coke bottle. if they
couldn’t breathe, in two minutes the bottle was full. there’s no place to empty
it, so you dump it on the floor. I didn’t want to decide who would get medicine
and who didn’t.
it was a crock
[hospital personnel] were told if we were overrun, we’d be
lifted out. that was a crock of shit. I found out later that they never had any
such evacuation plan.
phony reports
we were a mobile assault group, so we had helicopters at our
disposal. I would tell command, “we’re going on a long range reconnaissance. we
will be breaking squelch every two hours.” then we would go to Vung Tao or
Saigon. I’d have some whore blowing me and I’d lean over and hit the squelch
button a couple of times, then when we got back I’d file phony movement reports.
there was one girl there who was twelve who was great.
we got to be ready
we were in monsoon season. monsoon rains didn’t start, they
arrived. I was about to get something to eat when somebody told me I had to go
fly. I jumped in the helicopter behind lieutenant carver, a bullshit artist
bucking for command pilot. we sat there for half an hour. “there’s no way we’re
going to take off in that rain,” I said, “any idiot can see that.” “nope, we
got to be ready.” at that point lightening struck the helicopter behind us and
seven rockets went off. one rocket came straight forward and there was this
tremendous explosion. carver’s chest was torn away. tyler just just had one
side of his face wiped away. part of his arm was gone. not many of the guys in
the hospital wanted to talk to me. I got a purple heart out of the deal. I’ll
never know why.
you’re acting really
weird
it was christmass eve and the truce was supposed to start at
six o’clock. a ground unit in Delta was getting the living shit kicked out of
them. there’s another radio operator, who got his ass shot, begging for help,
that one word over and over, “help, help.” we had expended our ammunition and
were really low on fuel. I didn’t realize it but I had missed the cabin
communication switch. I dam near tore the control box down trying to get to
that one switch. the crew chief says, “you’re acting really weird.” “didn’t you
just hear? we left those guys to die, because of a truce nobody gives a rats
ass about.” I saw that things weren’t right.
shit, if my folks had to send their little poodle, they
would have cried more tears. but I’m supposed to go, because I’m a man.
now that you’re home
I went home straight to o’hare airport at chicago about
three in the morning. everybody got up and said hello and went back to sleep. at
8:30 when my father left for work, he woke me to say, “listen, now that you’re
home, when are you going to get a job?” I packed up and left and haven’t been
back since.
miss america
miss america came to the hospital. I was on my way to work
on the ward when she pulls up. we had a lot of patients then in really bad shape.
in walks miss america, she bumps and grinds over to a patient and says, all
breathy, “I bet you just never thought you’d see anything looking so pretty and
smelling so sweet.” he just turned his head away and started crying. we threw
the woman off the ward. word travels fast. at night as it got dark, we used to
show a movie. as we passed the movie crowd, everybody stands up and starts
clapping for us.
one step
I watched the astronauts landing on the moon. when I heard
that fucking-bullshit phrase ‘one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind,”
I thought, “come step with me, motherfucker.”
I don’t care where you’ve been
we had just come in off a fifteen mile search and destroy,
and we go in to sleep. we [had just] got a new first sergeant. he was an
artillery guy and didn’t want to come out in the field, but they were short of
first sergeants. I hear someone tapping. “these tools have rust on them. I want
[these] mortar holes drained. they bread mosquitoes.” I said, “you got to be
out of your mind, it rains three times a day.” he leaves and we went back to
sleep. he comes back in half an hour
later, he yells, “I don’t care where you’ve been, I want it done now!” he
leaves and we go back to sleep. this time he comes back with the platoon
sergeant, [who was looking for a promotion], who said, “do what [he] tells you.”
they leave, we go back to sleep. then he comes back with my lieutenant, not a
bad guy, just goofy, who says, “you better clean this up.” we say, “the sun is
still burning bright, wait till it cools down.” we take care of the rust, but
didn’t drain the holes. the sergeant comes back again, yells, “what about these
holes?” it took two hours to drain those freaking holes, there was fifteen of
them, two foot holes. you got to dig to the bottom and keep all the way down
the hill with it. when we went out on patrol, he hardly ever went with us. he
was no dam good. I’m out there with maybe seventy five pounds on my back. he
comes up with a rucksack that’s almost empty. you have to know how to walk in
the paddies, you might sink up to your neck. the sergeant falls in. he says, “help
me out of here” and everybody starts laughing.
cake
I [had] been out for three days. I had been back and I had a
note from the rear to report to Phu Bai for a big box my cousin had sent. I saw
that box and I thought, “cake, hey. I better take this back up in the bush and
turn some of my partners on to it.” I get ahold of it and thought, “this sucker’s
light.” I popped it open. them dudes in the rear had the audacity to open that
box, eat the entire cake, leave me a slice about half an inch thick. I picked
up my 45 and went after them. I went and kicked in the door to the office, but
nobody was there. I would have shot them. I’m out in the bush busting my behind.
they’re back here on theirs giving thyself extra R+R time. then they got the
nerve to ruin the only pleasure I got when my family sends me something. they
made sure to send me right back to the bush. I finally got ahold of one of the
guys. I broke his ankle for him. he tried running, but my friend tripped him. too
many guys could remember their letter from home saying, “how did you like the
package you got?”
same old
there were a lot of people I knew [who died] in vietnam, and
these people were doing their fucking christmass shopping.
you owe us
when I got discharged, they had the nerve to tell me I owed
them 600 dollars, that they overpaid me.
that was rehabilitation / people seemed to be
then on okinawa they took all our gear away and gave us new
fatigues, all too big. put us in some big old barracks and wouldn’t let us
leave, had us picking up cigarette butts for three months. that was “rehabilitation.”
at my brother’s house I slept on the floor. I wanted to be a cop, but they said
I was too small. people seemed to be messing with me all the time.
job interview
I’ve been in job interviews trying to get a lousy job and
somebody looks at me like I’ve got two heads. one moment I was a king, the next
I’m the dregs of society.
no special privileges
I had always heard that you got your old job back. they’d
say, “what do you want to do, put somebody out of work? they’ve got families.” they
told me I couldn’t have the seniority I’d built up until I was back a year. they
fired me at eleven months. at the power company the doctor looked me over for
tracks <drug needle marks>. I was on the waiting list at the telephone
company, federal jobs, ups, the post office, as a corrections officer. I wound
up taking a parking agent’s job. they said. “there’s no special privileges here
just because you were in vietnam.” I had just walked through the door and this
is what I get. I got a gypsy cab but the cops pulled my license. I was out on
the street running numbers, some smoke, some coke. I had to take care of my
family.
I don’t know what this is but I can’t hold my hand steady. if
you lucked out in vietnam, you got killed.
wife
my wife hears me screaming in the middle of the night.
afraid to sleep
we couldn’t sleep, even the patients. they wouldn’t talk. they
were afraid to. [they didn’t want] to face whatever each one of them had to
face when they closed their eyes.
a lot
a lot of guys committed suicide on the way to japan, or in
japan, or in the VA. they had drugs smuggled into the ward to kill themselves. the
spinal cord injuries, [explosions that] get your penis, your rectum. if he’s
not a quadriplegic, he’s got a colostomy.
when
I was seventeen when I started with the marines. I’m twenty
years old when I come into california.
when he woke up
that was the best christmass of my life, because I didn’t
have anything to give anybody. when the kid woke up and saw his little stocking
he knew he couldn’t open it, because he didn’t have any arms.
where are they?
seven out of ten casualties were traumatic amputees. who
will it be? it was mentally draining. I thought, “boy, there’s going to be a
lot of people walking around after this war with no feet,” but I still haven’t
seen any. where are they?
I was surprised
we were talking and I happen to look over my shoulder. there’s
another person in the room. I was really surprised, because I hadn’t heard
anyone come in. then I realized I was looking at a mirror and hadn’t recognized
my own reflection. now I had that look in my eyes.
where I felt at home
there was only one thing in my mind. get back to vietnam
where I felt at home. some guys they had to lock up because they wouldn’t
leave, I wanted to die there. all my friends had died there.
right before my eyes
there were a lot of guys who were really disturbed. on the
flight to japan I saw this guy laying on a stretcher with a blanket up to his
chin. he’s got a beard. I said, “how did you talk them into letting you grow a
beard?” the guy changed right before my eyes. he started raving. “they want to
shave my beard off. they keep giving me these shots. I don’t like them.” he got
louder and louder. under the blanket he was handcuffed, strapped down with
leather belts with padlocks. the guy is doing a good job trying to get out.
in actuality
I could see myself fighting, when in actuality [I’m] sitting
in the VA hospital. how can they bring me back to a world where I don’t know
what they’re talking about? I’m sitting in a classroom and my mind clicked and
I’m back in nam. I wanted to kill this man. they just threw us back into a
place that we were untrained to live in. it took me years.
eventually
I went almost eight years without any trouble. [then I lost
a patient.] by may I was unable to work, to get out of bed. I would forget to
buy food, could barely talk. eventually I did try to kill myself.
terribly shy
I would just drink until I was senseless. I was terribly shy
with women.
what’s wrong?
you don’t always fire in anger. that I turned my mind off to
it scared me later. you’re not supposed to be able to do that. what’s wrong
with me.
and never was again
I stayed angry almost all the time I was there and I brought
that anger back with me. I watched what happened to lawrence from brooklyn with
love beads and wire rimmed glasses. he was happy and naïve, everybody’s teddy
bear. he wasn’t into dope, he was [passed that], was just very mellowed out. he
was the guy changing the half dozen records at the club, tended bar, being
cooperative and helpful and funny. we had a heavy ground attack. dawn came, gun
smoke in the air, strange smells and fading fire, a few grenades popping off
still. they were coming out of the vagueness, blackened, dirty, crazy. lawrence
came first. his eyes were what I saw first. what I saw was horror. the guy who
came back that morning was not the guy who went out, and he never was again. he
didn’t talk much for over a week. his eyes were masked, dull, seemed to sit
deeper in his skull.
to this day
sometimes at night you’d just be drifting off and all of a
sudden they’d fire artillery. the back muscles are so spasmodic that they
actually lift you up. your heart would be going, and you’d get pissed. the
noise drove you crazy. to this day, I hear loud noises and I get pissed. I want
to hit something.
crouched down behind the seat
the deer hunter was the first vietnam movie I have seen. I’m
serious, I came apart. I crouched down behind the seat and crawled up the aisle.
I didn’t know that it was a movie any more. I used to be a cop. in a shoot out,
it was a fire fight for me. people said, “man, you’re brutal. what’s wrong?” I
arrested people and I was beating them up.
my turn
when it was my turn, I got sick a week before. dysentery,
and I lost fifteen pounds. I was getting more and more anxious. I couldn’t eat.
I couldn’t even swallow. I had a hard time breathing. at the time I didn’t
think it was connected to going home. my dad had this toaster that was touchy. you
had to drop the english muffin in just right. I’d slam them in. I was bullshit.
I was never like that before. I went to the super market. in nam you get in the
habit of watching everybody all the time. I couldn’t stay because I couldn’t
keep an eye on everybody. when you’re not around traffic, you lose the ability
to judge traffic. I’d either wait until there was no cars or just run like hell.
the phone booth triggered it all
I stepped into a phone booth a few blocks away. [when I
dialed] the phone started dialing itself. I tried again and got some garbled
recording. the phone started spitting [coins] back at me. I see aford van
across the street with the side door cracked open just a bit. I was convinced I
was on Candid Camera. I ripped the receiver off the phone and started beating
the machine. pried the dial off. I started breaking the glass with different
parts of my body. I realized then it was me. I was all fucked up. I freaked
out, totally paranoid. the thing with the phone booth triggered it all.
YO-YO
I thought, “they don’t send asshole kids like me, they must
send grown up guys.” they always called us men, marines or troopers. but during
my first fire fight I was giggling. “man, did you see his head fly off?” nobody
in the unit was over twenty one. ambush was fun. it’s supposed to be
professional, but it’s not. I loved flying helicopters. [you could] touch
clouds. I had this yo-yo. I’d take it out and start doing walk-the-dog. we had
one officer who just leaped up in the middle of a fire fight and said, “it’s
just kids and they’re all fucking dying. just kids, just kids.” they had to
take him away.
to the point of fright
helicopters were coming in and [someone] yells, “anyone who
has R+R coming, jump on. then we went to to hong kong. I hadn’t seen civilized
life in seven months. I was totally shocked to the point of fright.
more and more
because he was in the process of having a nervous breakdown,
he was dressing himself like he was getting ready for inspection. we didn’t
realize it at first, but john couldn’t bear to look at the patient. just by
looking at him you could tell he was in another world. he just sat there at the
desk [after we took over the patient.] he’d lost a lot of patients. all his
friends were surgeons, they don’t recognize mental illness because you can’t
see it. they knew he wasn’t eating, staying in his room, more and more
reclusive. he was taken out of the there a little after that and sent home.
an alternative that I hadn’t considered
“I’m sending you to saigon for your last three months. you
are nuts.” he took all the charges against me and ripped them up. I wanted to
stay and get back at all the VC for all my friends. but I suddenly had a chance
to stay alive, an alternative that I hadn’t considered.
my chance to be alone was gone
the captain appeared and said, “can I speak to you? there
isn’t any real way for me to say this. your mother died today.” I was going to
have to take care of two teenagers. at twenty six. my chance to be alone was
gone. if [these guys] were going to miss me nearly as much as I was going to
miss them, I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t sleep. I looked at the
flares. on the flight home, I sat next to a chaplin. he was a real asshole. he’d
been in saigon or somewhere, and spent half the flight talking about parties he’s
been to. I stood on the same hillside where I had said goodbye to my mother.
this ambulance driver was crazy enough
I don’t know how we got into it. we started looking at the
album and I flipped out, started throwing shit everywhere. I beat my wife over
the head with a full quart bottle of beer. they called the cops. they had their
weapons out but didn’t shoot. I had a handful of butcher knives in each hand. this
ambulance driver was crazy enough to come in there. I said, “shit, I’ll go with
you.”
what have I done?
a big chopper came and dropped us on the flight deck of the
new orleans. we looked back at the land where we spent a year. you were real
glad you were you, but people you had hung around with were gone, gone forever.
[at home] it felt so good to [just] look in their faces. after three or four
days I was climbing the walls. in the old neighborhood nothing had changed,
civilian life is bullshit. you see politicians lying to you, you want to throw
up. when we were out there I thought, “if I ever get back, I’ll tear the place
apart, it’ll be my oyster, nothing will stop me.” here it is going on twelve
years later and what have i done?
functional but / bad things
I cried from 8:30 until 5:00. I was crying for everything. there
was no solace anywhere. rebecca, who I [later] married, said when I came back I
was dead from the neck down. functional, but dead. knowing I was living in a
berserk culture. I don’t care if we both have M-16s and were on the front, or
if we both have checkbooks in our hands and it’s back home. the world is so
filled with assholes. I get so angry when I realize that people are doing bad
things with awareness.
lots of sick crews out there
basically I enjoyed vietnam. when I came back, I was doing
stick ups. it wasn’t the money. there’s lots of sick crews out there, shot gun
teams doing this stuff, marines like me. we’d set up a drug deal in which there
were no drugs, we play cops and take the money. I’m sure in the south they’re
still american. I would love to see a foreign
army come to this country and blow some people away just to straighten
them out.
you fuckers
like going kicking pregnant women in the stomach and blowing
babies away when mama san is rocking them to sleep. you fuckers want me to kill
somebody, I’ll kill somebody.