The Hippie Lieutenant

Vietnam “War” Memoir

Authored by Anthony St. John

Calenzano, Italy
anthony.st.john1944@gmail.com

Until war continues to be thought of as something bad,

it will always exercise some fascination.
When it will be considered something vulgar,
it will cease to be popular.

Oscar WIlde
 INTRODUCTION

Upon the termination of the Second World War, when Western Europe,
on its knees, was set back perhaps irreparably and the ludicrous “Cold
War” was about to take the initiative, the United States' intelligence
services were unruly, in disarray. For more than a decade they had
concentrated unrelentingly on winning the until then most tragic of wars.
Most intelligence agents were paunchy university grads draped in military
uniforms which did not become them—they, most of whom, did not know
how to load a weapon. A panic of sorts ensued.
With the territorial acquisitions strong-handedly accrued through treaties
and political and economic transactions with defeated World War II
belligerents, the US suddenly realized that the role of “leader of the world”
had been uncannily foisted upon it. It had title to more vacant worldwide
lots than God's favorite real estate agents slaving away for Vatican, Inc.
Everyone in Washington was perplexed. A jurisdictional “inventory,” with a
planetary view, had to be effectuated post haste. Just what the United
States had “inherited” had to be accounted for and documented. Data had
to be accumulated. Agents had to be dispersed overseas. A viable
intelligence agency had to be constituted. The image of the Don
Juan/Giovanni spy with superhuman characteristics was made into a myth
to cover up the ineptitude of the fedgling organization.
History did very well in those days not because the Central Intelligence
Agency was so intelligent, but more because the CIA did not know what
was really going on, and so it was more prone to see events progress
naturally without its butting in in order to distort certain realities. In effect,
the CIA was pulling together particulars to eventually reason out into a
generalized mindset. The fact-gathering was diligently performed but not
yet electronically chronicled. For decades, dossiers, documenting the
United States' topographic possessions, were piled high, and when data-
collecting became more sophisticated at the dawn of the electronic age,
information was obtained still more assiduously and cataloged more
perspicaciously for easier access.
The Korean War temporarily hampered their efforts. To cope with this
ever-expanding quantity of material, not only were CIA personnel
augmented, other governmental agencies also began to establish their own
secret service frameworks within themselves. Unfortunately, in doing so,
2
intelligence agencies became competitors among themselves, and this gave
rise to a rush to be the one who could infuence more in government the
outcome of decisions made at higher levels, and after reap the rewards of
the sure as shooting benefts that would be bestowed upon those coming
out smelling like a rose. Whereas before there had been a paucity of intel
information available to government leaders, now there was a glut of facts
and fgures that was so enormous, it proved to be diffcult to analyze,
interpret and make do with this vast aggregation of content. Regardless, the
American intelligence revolution had been initiated. From a state of not
knowing, the intelligence community had been switched to one of knowing
—knowing even too much. It had lost its open-mindedness, its objectivity.
During this process, most dissatisfedly, a feeling of superiority manifested
itself in an overbearing manner, and presumptuous claims were wont to be
held by the often sullied 000s. (Who are we going to assassinate today?) At
worst, many of them had become self-righteous war criminals, 24-karat
hypocrites, doing the Devil's Work for their Almighty Gods. The Central
Intelligence Agency is now a bureaucracy of only being in the know at the
just right time and the right place. It is imbued with a religious-like fervor
to be in the right. Naturally, much of this passion derives from its silly
mythical, Hollywoodish legend; still, the sense of competitiveness imbued
in the spirit of the Americans' CAN DO! mentality gives them the feeling
the world is waiting for them to take it over. Notwithstanding, the Central
Intelligence Agency has become the Central Stupidity Agency!
Is there one CIA agent who has read Lao Tzu (there are English editions of
his work) and who has advised at least one United States' government
functionary with these tidbits of Lao Tzu's advice: “The use of force usually
leads to an 'eye for an eye' vendetta; a good general achieves his purpose
and stops; a good general does not seek to dominate the world; he does not
brag about what he has done; having achieved his purpose he is not proud
of what he has done; he achieves his purpose as an unavoidable step; he
does not aim to dominate; he knows that fne weapons are instruments of
evil.” (Listen to what Harry S Truman [1884-1972], thirty-third president of
the United States [1945-1953] thought about United States' generals: “I
didn't fre General Douglas MacArthur because he was a dumb son of a
bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it were,
half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”) There are thousands of
individuals working at the Pentagon. Must we believe that not one of them
has read Lao Tzu or Sun Tzu? Oh, these poor pathetic Americans always
3
getting it backwards at frst!
Foolishness is not the best word to describe only the United States'
intelligence community. (Once Americans were more often more foolish
than they were cruel, still, as Winston Churchill said, they fnally come
round to getting it right. But this time?) The “hot potato” has to be passed
up on higher to include the Defense Department and the Pentagon, both of
which had gone bonkers and were decidedly overwhelmed by the
immensity of the task that had been imposed upon the baby nation—not
yet then two-hundred years old! Their enthusiasm—charged by the untold
number of possibilities their “leader of the world” status had emboldened
them with—pushed them so far to where today there are hundreds upon
hundreds of United States' military bases strewn all over the world. (My
dear reader, is there a bully on your block, too? Do you squeeze
mayonnaise or ketchup on your fries, luv?)
To complicate matters, to overstimulate the exuberance of these fake Julius
Caesars, these borderline megalomaniacs, Henry “The Carper-bomber”
Kissinger, Donald Trump; these subliminal (serendipitous?) Adolf Hitlers...
World War I's General Pershing, World War II's General Eisenhower,
General Schwarzkopf, Rumsfeld—all German Americans who make up the
largest ethnic grouping in the United States—still!...even Donald Trump
vaunts Germanism in his French-fried blood, although he tells his Jewish
clients he is of Swedish ancestry—not to offend them!...these “Might is
Right” tough guys, these “Once you've got them by the b***s, their hearts
and minds will follow” hardliners, were presented with a totally new
military injunction: the amalgamation of the military world with the
business world—or what President Dwight D Eisenhower had warned
would one day imperil the very stability of the United States defning this
lunacy as the “military-industrial complex.”
To bring this “marriage” of militarism and commercial enterprise to the
altar, a high priest had to be found. Robert McNamara (1916-2009) was
thought to be the perfect choice. Had he not graduated from Harvard
University in 1939? Had he not served as an intelligence offcer during
World War II? Had he not revolutionized the management of the Ford
Motor Company later to become its frst president not to have been a Ford
family member? Had he not always been seen with a copy of the Harvard
Business Review under his arm? This “Whiz Kid” was what the business
community and the editors of the HBR needed to revamp the military
services so that they would conform to “Mac's” notions of systems analysis
4
in public policy, fow analysis pages, and cost reductions that would result
from the consolidation of Army intelligence and logistical functioning. He
defned those metrics famously referred to as “body counts.” He wanted
body counts, and all Vietnam Infantry commanders would punctuate their
pep talks with a call for “body counts.” (One lieutenant-colonel Infantry
battalion commander: “For every gook body you bring Husky, there are
two quart bottles of Segram's 7 whisky waiting for you in Bravo Charlie
[base camp], grunts!”) JFK thought him good enough to be his Secretary of
Defense and so did LBJ. Mac served his nation from 1961-1967 and—in the
midst of the Vietnam “War”—he resigned to become president of the
World Bank. RHIP! Rank has it privileges! Part of the Cult of the American
Privileged Class?
This wedlock did not go as smoothly as Mac would have wanted. Do they
ever? One of his biggest diffculties was the higher-ranked commissioned
and non-commissioned offcers most of whom were veterans of World War
II and the Korean War. These individuals were referred to as “brown shoe”
soldiers, and they possessed very little enthusiasm for Mac's revolutionary
Milton Friedmanish, Chicago Boys' ideas. They had fought on different
terrains and had different ideas about how military tactics should be
conducted and what the ends of these war games should bring forth. Mac
wanted offcers to be a sort of Renaissance public fgure. Offcers were
expected to be able to fll different command slots thus showing a fexibility
that would result in cost reduction and that magic word, “effciency.” The
“brown shoes” thought this was daft, and that soldiering must be soldiering
and not the practice of flling out forms and being continuously analyzed to
improve that dreadful “effciency” word that they all had come to hear over
and over again from Mac.
Naturally, this confictual relationship was refected in the way maneuvers
were conducted in Vietnam—often with disastrous consequences. My own
experience proves the point. I had participated in the Reserve Offcers's
Training Corps (ROTC) in an upstate New York Roman Catholic (“Praise
the Lord and pass the ammunition”) university, specializing in feld
artillery. I studied military science, geopolitical strategies and the rudiments
of feld artillery fve hours a week for four years. The day before, in June
1966, I received my bachelor's degree in philosophy, I was commissioned a
second lieutenant in the US Army with a two-year active duty obligation. In
September 1966, I was assigned to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where for three
months, I attended the Offcer Basic Course, at the United States Army
5
Artillery & Missile School where the emphasis was on feld artillery
application. Thanks to Mac, my frst Army assignment was as an instructor
in a rocket and missile training battalion where I served until I was ordered
to Vietnam (August 1967-August 1968) and where I would then be
designated a forward observer (1193) in the feld artillery! I was shocked
when the Fourth Infantry Division's Artillery commander (Colonel
Anderson) ordered me to the feld. I had been, all the while, thinking there
were nuclear weapons in Vietnam and an offcer with rocket and missile
competency was required. “Lieutenant, yours is not to question why, yours
is but to do and maybe die!” While I was being helicoptered to the infantry
company I was to support with cannon fre, I refected on that basic and
very important skill forward observers must possess when adjusting artillery
fre: the ability to judge distances so that accurate fring adjustments can be
effected. I had to know what 50 or 100 or 150 or 200 or 250 or 300 meters
“looked like” to make my corrections accurate enough so as not to kill any
of my fellows. I was very much concerned—terribly anxious. Would I get
back that essential skill, that knack? How would I be able to “practice?”
My dear reader, I take you now to comprehend my own military
indoctrination, and how it helped me to survive the Vietnam “war.”

August 2019

* * *

6
 Chapter One

THE KILLER INSTINCT

John Wayne imbued in me the killer instinct. There is no question about it

in my mind.Watching his movies on the “Early Show,” “The Million Dollar
Movie,” and “The Late Show” inoculated my disposition with the diseased
germ of ducking bullets, tossing handgrenades, running for cover, hitting
the dirt, smelling for the enemy, anticipating the attack with all fve senses
keyed to war's main event and, fnally, offering the toast to celebrate not so
much the victory of battle, but to fete the end of the tension and danger
which accompanies it.

When I was ten years old I practiced war in Keansburg, New Jersey. My
cousins and our friends played at war during summer vacation. It was our
favorite pastime next to stick ball playing on the macadamized roadway in
front of my aunt and uncle's gray shingled summer bungalow. We fought in
the “jungles” of neighboring lots, we took hills of sand piled high by the
wind, we mowed the “enemy” down and assigned his sudden fate with a
“You're dead!” scream, and when the battle was over, we slugged down
gulps of water from our Army-Navy store issued aluminum canteens. We
“played war.” And war is Hell. It was in Keansburg as it was hell in the
Solomons and Iowa Jima and Paris and Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor. And it
remained Hell for me in Pleiku and Dak To and Duc Pho and Kontum and
the Ia Drang Valley.

I had performed in a war-like manner for many years of my life before I

would have my own real war to fght in. And when it came, I was prepared
emotionally. I was ready. Years of psychic simulation had put me into
topnotch form. It would take the United States Army to add the necessary
accruements of materiel which would mold me into a fghting, ft, combat-
ready soldier.

But I soon found out that I wasn't as ready as I had thought I was. Four
years of philosophy and literature in an upstate New York men's Roman
Catholic university had cast a shadow of doubt over my Keansburg
maneuvers. Oh, it wasn't enough to keep me from the war. But it was
suffcient to keep me from becoming a murderer and plenty to make me
wince at a possible career in the military. My sword was double-edged when
7
I was assigned to Vietnam. I had the killer instinct in me, but it was tamed
with a remarkable degree of reasonableness, which would keep me in good
stead throughout a gruelling year's tour in Vietnam—so perfunctorily
referred to as “Nam.” For more than most men I met and worked and
fought with in Vietnam, I could say, and say today, that I had a good dose
of character and a tough, inquisitive mind that would keep me from blindly
accepting, unethical, indecent, irregular, insane, unjust, stupid, useless
suggestions and/or orders. If Westmoreland himself would have told me to
shoot infants, women, and the elderly, I would have told him to go “f**k”
himself.

I took the somber step in the fall of 1962 as I was skimming through
university orientation bewildered by campus life and the multitude of
opportunities it would offer me during four years of study and preparation.
A middle-class Brooklyn-Queens, New York background had prepped me
to expect wonders from college. I steadied my mind and tuned it to let not
one detail slip pass me. Before I picked at what I thought was the ripe fruit
of Academia, I felt I owed it to myself to consider all the alternatives in an
unimpassioned manner. I was riding high on enthusiasm as I romped
around the grass with my classmates playing touch football outside our
dormitories in the beautiful western New York State autumn—less than a
hundred miles from the Canadian-New York border. On the second day of
orientation, I propelled myself into a liberal arts program, and on the third,
I laid the foundation for a two-year Army commitment that would suck me
into the Vietnam confict as a Artillery forward observer: MOS (Military
Occupation Specialty): 1193.

Actually it was simple. There was a mixture of dilapidated Quonset huts

and small framed, wooden buildings to one side of the campus. The
Reserve Offcer Training Corps. ROTC—often referred to as ROTSEE.
Artillery. One each. Army. Me. The Roman Catholic church and the
Pentagon had bargained classrooms and dormitories for artillery training
and offcer recruitment. Our placement schedule brought us to a
classroom/motor pool/ auditorium/cannon washroom/assembly area, and I
sat, along with my more skeptical classmates, cramped between the ledges
of portable bleaches which normally jut out from the walls of sweatbox
basketball gyms. At 09:00 sharp, a slight, balding colonel strutted to the
podium on the reverberations of one shrilling “ATTENTION!” The audible
command was delivered by a high-ranking non-com offcer. It was frm,
8
controlled, loud, clear, and deliberate. A “manual” effort. I was impressed.
Sergeants curtsied, captains stood their grounds, rank had imposed itself.

The staff was introduced. The colonel began his abbreviated spiel. He
ended it with these words: “Gentlemen, when you graduate you will more
than likely incur a three-year military obligation. Whether you serve as a
private for three years, or an offcer for two years, is entirely up to you.
Good luck with your decision! Thank you.” he walked off confdent of
flling his quota. He had me by the nose. That little p***k! Of the 300
hundred classmates graduating with me in June 1966, 35 put on brown
second lieutenant bars on the day they received their university degrees,
some cast their fates to Offcer Candidate School, others went their ways
escaping military service, and some were churned into enlisted men.

I felt confdent I had selected the best course of study, and even thought a
bit that the military might offer me a worthwhile career. At any rate, should
I not adjust to military life, I was solaced by the thought that my two-year
Army hitch was the shortest of any other military service. As for justifying
myself intellectually, there were the thoughts of Willian H Whyte, Jr in The
Organization Man: “There has been personal unrest—the suspense over the
prospect of military service assures this, but it rarely gets resolved into the
thought-out protest. Come spring and students may start whacking each
other over the head or roughing up the townies and thereby cause a rush of
concern over the wild younger generation. But there is no real revolution in
them, and the next day they likely as not will be found with their feet frmly
on the ground in the recruiters' cubicles.” I felt smug, snug, and safe at the
time with that b******t.” And Proust put the icing on the war machine cake
for me: “...the peacefulness of a life where one's occupations are more
strictly regulated and one's imagination less trammeled than in any other,
where pleasure is more constantly present because we have not time in
rushing about looking for it to run away from it....” There was no way, in
the month of August 1967, that a blossoming social movement which
spawned fower children throughout the DisUnited States, was going to
keep me from going to South Vietnam: I had accepted freely the Asian
assignment, I was gratifed that there was not enough data accumulated for
me to revert my will and assume a conscientious objector status, and thanks
to John Wayne, I wanted to put my “killer instinct” to the romantic test. I
was afraid. For sure. Obviously somewhat stupid. But I had to take a bite at
war. It had never dawned on me that time that romanticism in war was an
9
obsolete advantage. The atomic bomb had made any fght, battle, contact,
encounter, engagement, or war a futile endeavor. One cannot feel
achievement of mastery or success in a struggle against odds or diffculties
when the outcome one contributes to is mediocre. And any military victory
when compared to the totally devastating effect of that mushroom-shaped
cloud, is of no consequence whatsoever. (In Vietnam, almost everyone
opted, with their fngers crossed, that the use of atomic weapons on North
Vietnam insurgents would become a reality so everyone could go home. I
was astonished to hear high-ranking feld offcers saying “get it over with!
Drop the Bomb!!!”) This was one fact of modern military philosophy that
was understood better inVietnam by the illiterate private frst class from the
green hills of Tennessee than it was comprehended by the most
sophisticated general graduated from the Army's Staff College and the war
closets of the nation's war-planning executive offcers in the Pentagon. I
was to bump into General Abrams one day in a Saigon PX as he bent over
to pick up a tube of Crest toothpaste. I excused myself. In the confusion I
was tempted to blurt out to him, this star-flled military potentate: “General
Abrams, the grunts have no quarrel to be in this war. They believe it can be
ended with one atomic bomb. They want to know why we should be here
fghting for some reason they know not what!”

After graduation from university and a “relaxing” summer riding my bicycle

and playing hours of handball in the New York City parks near my home in
Woodhaven, Queens, I was ready for Fort Sill, Oklahoma and my two years
of active service. Fort Sill is the home of the Artillery, and if Artillery lends
dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl, Fort Sill and Lawton,
the adjacent military town, lent boredom and beer and whisky drinking to
what would differently be an even duller place to live. Tornado, rocky
terrain, and rattlesnake country. I wore my uniform proudly into Lawton
and Fort Sill. I was an offcer in the United States Army and everyone
under second lieutenant would salute me here on out. My heart swelled
when a ffty-year-old lifer sergeant-major—with a look of disgust directed at
my second “looey bars”—put one on me as I passed him in the street. I was
thrilled. The tingles and throbs abated quickly. Offcer Basic Course was to
bust my swelled head and bring me down to Earth as it did to others in my
class. Eight hours a day of artillery theory with a couple of hours of
homework, kept all of us with our heads in our books and tactical planning
sheets. There were classes on Saturday mornings. Trips to the fring range
to practice artillery fre adjustments, and adaption to army life and rules.
10
I was fnally awarded a diploma testifying to the fact that I had graduated
from the United States Army Artillery & Missile School. In a short time, I
came to this realization: I would, in all likelihood, be assigned for one year
to either South Korea or Vietnam. After Offcer Basic Course, I was
assigned to a rocket and missile training battalion (Little John, Honest John
rockets, Pershing and Sergeant missiles). I was, offcially, a “redleg.”

Being in Oklahoma, away from New York, played on my mind causing me

to see frequently the sordid sides of army life. A drunken major tried to
break down the door of my BOQ (Bachelor Offcer Quarters) one early
Sunday morning demanding that I tell him I was the lieutenant “shacking
up” with his wife while he was stationed in Vietnam; I served a twitching,
fanatic captain who made his unit spot-paint army vehicles with a fashlight
at three o'clock in the morning; as junior offcer in the battalion, I was
purposely stuck with duty offcer responsibilities on New Year's Eve when
my fancée visited me from New York; I was by design given a low effciency
report so my next evaluation “would refect a marked improvement” thus
guaranteeing me “admiration and respect throughout my Army career;”
and, I twice received the “Wayward Missile” for pulling silly “battalion
blunders.” The days in Oklahoma went by slowly, but they went by.
Camaraderie in the United States Army, as I knew it in 1967 and 1968, had
degenerated to an alcoholic state of spitefulness, hate, fear, and general
disheartenment. It was diffcult to fnd men who were understanding and
amiable. But worse was the fact that everyone was sure of himself! The
Army was for me a cross-section of the United States. And the atmosphere
my fellows produced was one of unrelenting self-assurance in their
approach to what was unknown to them. Inquisitiveness was not their forte.

The buildup in Vietnam of American troops was never ending in 1967. The
Offcer Candidate School (OCS) was programmed to supply the manpower
West Point and the ROTC did not. To become a candidate, the OCS
aspirant had frst to go through the enlisted ranks and there make
application to the 90-day-wonder school. A battery of skills and mental
acuity tests were administered to choose personnel the Army thought
qualifed. There were many who wanted to fll OCS classrooms, and the
Army was more than willing to have a crop of forward observers to serve in
Vietnam. There were bright pupils available. The alienation of American
youth during the 1960s had reached epidemic stages, and the college
dropout, young and adventuresome, could fnd a way to assume a new
11
justifed identity by joining the Army and becoming an offcer. Wearing an
offcer's uniform added prestige, and offcer pay, thanks to Congressman
Mendel Rivers, was congruent with civilian salary scales. As a consequence,
parking lots, outside the OCS campus, were flled with the very popular
Chevrolet Camaro with rows and rows of the same model car lined up as far
as the eye could see. Hoards of young men were accessible and willing to
join the country's armed forces out of sheer boredom and because the
services—too much for them to comprehend—offered an immediate
antidote to the empty lives they had been living for so long.

The Offcer Candidate School was a hurried process, and while there was a
strong emphasis on academics, there also was an even stronger stress given
to spit and polish and conformity. ROTC types were generally somewhat
more sloppy in their appearances. More laid back types. Spit-shined boots,
spit-shined foors, bald haircuts, and other “gung-ho” practices were
standard operating procedure in the hurry-up, mini-West Point lieutenant
factory.

OCS candidates received more than they bargained for in their search for
identity. The system encouraged the “breakdown” of the individual. It was
the Army's view that if a candidate could be brought down into the pits of
his own being, he would do the same to others of lower rank once he was
an offcer. The psychic abuse of an individual, and in many instances his
emotional crackup, was called “discipline” by the Army. Discipline,
naturally, the backbone of a large organization of men armed and trained
for war. Army discipline was perverted. The OCS candidate had to be
stripped of his character and free will so that when he was assigned to lead
men in the felds of Vietnam, he could do so in a robot-like fashion that
discouraged understanding and open-mindedness when dealing with
human beings and the rights of starving peasants. As a result of his
psychological manipulation, the OCS offcer was typically intolerant. More
so than the ROTC offcer or the West Pointer. For this, he was less
respected and often hated by his subordinates. He had been one himself.
Once an offcer, he sought getting even with the Army by operating
according to its “book,” treating his men like inferiors, and by relishing in
the spirit of the bully which the Army had infused into the thought
processes of the brainwashed gnome who was now an offcer. And this
unthinking individual was often the cause of tragedies—even atrocities—
which caused the Army to be not only embarrassed, but caused it to lie
12
to an unsuspecting, though questioning, American public. The offcer
corps of the United States Army was as confused as the American people
concerning the role of the United States' government in Southeast Asia.
Offcers commanded very little respect in the eyes of their enlisted men
who, by and large, were not as “dumb,” and “incapable” as higher-ranking
offcers thought them to be. But there was a plethora of low-IQ soldiers. On
1 October 1966, Robert McNamara lowered mental standards out of
desperation to induct additional troops for the Vietnam fasco. 354,000
soldiers with low-IQs were called to serve. McNamara's Folly authored by
Hamilton Gregory.

There was a social war of nerves between offcers and enlisted men in
Vietnam, and its consequences came full circle at the end of the economic
boom which Vietnam had been created for (the Kennedy Slide of
1962/Flash Crash of 1962), when the intolerable lack of respect for the
offcer corps degenerated to “fragging”—a peculiar pastime of enlisted men
who murdered unpopular offcers and non-commissioned offcers. Offcers
had been forced to negotiate with their men to get them to go on missions
assigned to their respective units. The U S Army might have appeared to be
the world'd most dynamic fghting unit during Vietnam, but in fact it was
an ethically perverted, totally ineffective fghting force. One that could not
accomplish its mission, one that had defeated itself through its own
mismanagement, and one that was frustrated by a much lesser force of
guerillas who had made a fool out of the world's thought-to-be most
superiorly organized army.

Chapter Two

TOUCHDOWN VIETNAM

Processing for overseas duty was at Oakland Army Terminal near San
Francisco. Discipline came in handy because most of us who were passing
through were emotionally dazed, and being lead “vigorously” through
three days of anxiety-ridden expectation, helped us to come in one
“emotional piece” to the dreaded assignment for our overseas fight. We all
were downcast and our stomachs were taut. We realized the hated day had
arrived. We speculated about what assignment—feld or base camp warrior
13
slot—would be doled out to us. We calculated the odds for and against our
returning home again. Comparisons were made between being killed in
Vietnam or killed on an American highway. The New York Times wrote that
14% of soldiers in Vietnam had served on the battlefeld. The other 86%
were stationed in base camps (Bravo Charlies) where they did not even
carry a weapon.

We started to collect the jargonistic, cant words which go with the society
of young men dressed in olive drab clothes all of whom had been shoveled
into an airplane to go to fght a war 13,000 miles from their homes. These
words were exceedingly punctuated with the word f**k. Somber faces were
met with a quasi-decency. Homeboy typists and supply clerks fltered
offcers effciently through the overseas' deportment points. Married men
twisted their wedding bands. The colonels, eagles, and generals, stars, were
the only ranks to escape the heavy haul of duffel bags stuffed with jungle
fatigues, feld jackets, jungle boots, mosquito netting, socks, towels,
underwear, and a host of other materiel all dyed, characteristically, green,
OD, olive drab. Evenings were spent whiling the hours away playing cards
and watching movies at the base theater. Occasionally, a Vietnam returnee
would pass through the area and the inevitable question was asked:
“How was it?”
The inevitable answer:
“It sucked.”
Adjacent to our quarters was the dock area of the Oakland Army Terminal
with its huge storage facilities and railroad tracked passageways. Rows of
supplies were piled high. Machinery, jeeps, tanks, gigantic spools of barbed
wire, army trucks, and CONEXes (containers) that had been invented
during the Korean War, were now redesigned for transport back and forth
to Vietnam. Cargo ships were tied up for loading operations. Large crates,
on wooden pallets, were hoisted high into the air and lowered smoothly
into the hulls of ships. The area signaled the industrial might of the United
States. The closely guarded zone was dull, drab, and formidable looking.
Much the same as my mood and the moods of my companions. I had pity
for the higher-ranking offcers. Most of them seemed to be family men who
had to endure a year away from their wives and children. Even the Special
Forces, Green Beret, Airborne, Infantry, Jump Master, brass on their
second or third tours, brass-polished, spit-shined, balded-bean nut cases
ready to go into action, shared my sympathy. We all wished we were not
going.
14
Our tempers sunk lower on departure day. Some wives with kids stood
crying at hurricane fences waiting to take a last glimpse at their husbands as
the buses moved out to Travis Air Force Base. Breakfast and lunch had
been slow reaching bottom. The tension in the bus was widespread. Silence
pervaded. Thoughts rambled. There was only one way to take it: suck it in
and accept it. Accept the thought that sixty per cent of your countrymen
and women are against what you are doing. Accept separation from family
and friends. Accept the prospect of a violent injury or death. Accept
uneasiness, some hostility, fear of the unknown, and a grueling 18-hour
Boeing 707 jet fight under the multi-colored skies of the Pacifc with one
fuel stop in Guam and another in Manila.

At Travis Air Force Base there were, uncannily, numerous commercial

aircraft strewn along airport infelds ready to transport GIs to Vietnam.
Money-makers. The planes were set apart from military fghters and
bombers and cargo aircraft by color and company decalcomania. As if there
was a difference! It was Pan Am's luck not to be at Travis. It had the
lucrative R&R (Rest & Recuperation) routes throughout the Pacifc area.
We entered the belly of our “Big Bird” that stood sucking up fuel and
supply on the air base's apron. The trans-Pacifc haul was imminent. Ours
was a Continental Airlines jet with the ad agency slogan—The Bird with the
Golden Tail—plastered on napkins, plastic cups, THIS SEAT OCCUPIED,
SORRY signs, and airsickness “doggie bags.” It would not have surprised
me if that brief, striking phrase had been printed on the panties of the
company's, straitlaced, stewardesses.

Offcers went in frst. We clutched our boarding passes. We were ready.

MACV. Military Airlift Command. Stewardesses affected smiles. They made
a genuine effort to break the ice, but we all knew they would be home in a
matter of days. It was easy for them to be spirited. The ladies went about
their chores effciently and rapidly. They were bringing the boys “over
there,” and they wanted to get the whole stinking affair over with fast.

There is always a joker in the crowd, and ours had its own. A second tour
infantry captain suddenly unraveled a travel poster and taped it to the
aircraft's cabin door: VISIT VIETNAM THIS VACATION: FLY FAR FAR
FAR EASTERN AIRWAYS. No one appreciated his brand of humor except
his drunken associates who responded joyously to his attempt at making
the situation normal. The captain asked one of the stewardesses to pose
15
with him, in an embrace, for a picture in front of the poster. Captain Clown
was on his way to “Nam,” linguistics' trite word for Vietnam. A way of
accepting a hackneyed theme, yet showing no respect for its real meaning.
A stereotype for those who wanted to accept, in one way or another, the
reality of the somberness called Vietnam. Given a sobriquet, Vietnam was
made barely adequate in the eyes of the unassuming and accepting.

At the Guam fuel stopover, I had the occasion to speak with an Army
chaplain. But not an ordinary chaplain. The captain said he was a Trappist
monk on leave from his prayer hours! He had bothered his superiors to
permit him to escape from the monastery on a leave of absence. Was
Vietnam to be as strange as this priest? He was Airborne and gung-ho, too.
Wanted to help the men in Vietnam by offering his priestly services to
bring spiritual solace to the green uniformed masses. He was not interested
in the morality of the war—just intent on spreading the faith among his
fock. Monastery life a drag? The man was confused. In addition to being
decked out in the green of combat readiness, he saw a need for the hippies!
The hippies, he explained, went against the mainstream. Incredible. An
Airborne hippie Trappist monk! Still extraordinarily, as we landed between
two large lots, on each side of us, we could see countless parked B-52s, in
neat rows, and the Roman Catholic chaplain began to fan crosses over them
as fast as he could!

Three in-fight meals later, we landed at Ton Son Nhut airfeld in Saigon in
a spiraling motion. Low-fying approach patterns were prohibited in order
to prevent small arms attacks on landing planes. Touchdown Vietnam! The
“war” had begun for me.

Vietnam was hot and muggy on 27 August 1967. The 18-hour jet ride had
left all of us cramped and tired, and our arrival was greeted by armed
airport Army personnel steeped in an eerie, cautious atmosphere. We
passed through a make-shift customs, loaded buses, and journeyed over
muddied dirt roads through smelly, garbage-strewn Saigon streets on our
way to the frst of processing stations. The ride was taken in an air-
conditioned Japanese bus with the Armed Forces Radio station, Vietnam
blaring home-born messages and pop songs. Wire mesh protected the bus's
windows from the unexpected toss of enemy handgrenades. On the
outskirts of the city, we exchanged American currency for Military Payment
Certifcates, then picked up our baggage and went to our billets to wait
16
for further processing and division assignment. The atmosphere was
depressing, and near our barb-wired, sandbagged quarters could be seen
run-down Vietnamese shanties made of crushed Budweiser beer cans and
junk wood. I wanted to go back home immediately! Already, I was
discouraged. I kept asking myself “Why am I here?” I could not come up
with an answer. None of the timeworn expressions I had learned in the
States from my U S Army indoctrinations, to explain the phenomena of
Vietnam, seemed to ft. My frst day in Vietnam and I felt like a fraidy-cat.

I was particularly interested in getting to know the customs and

personalities of the Vietnamese people who had been hired to keep our
lodgings and clothing clean, and during the next few days, I sought them
out and tried to communicate as best I could. My frst impression was that
they—as everything else in Vietnam was—were dirty. The women wore
black silk slacks and white or faded pastel-colored blouses. The men wore a
conglomeration of the GI uniform. I suspected that had there been as many
women Army soldiers in Vietnam, the Vietnamese women would be
wearing as much olive drab as their men did. Q.E.D.: If there were as many
Chinese communists in Vietnam, would there be as many Vietnamese in
Chinese communist uniforms? A simple but important observation. Were
the Vietnamese obliged to thrive off anyone who offered themselves to be
thrived off as they were now thriving off the United States? Was there
enough “thriving off” of the Americans to make the Vietnamese sick and
tired of thriving? Did the thriving make us sick of the Vietnamese?
Whatever it was, there was a cool impassioned resignation. We didn't
accept the Vietnamese and they didn't accept us. I discovered this in two or
three days “interviewing” maids and dishwashers with smiles and “number
one is good; number ten is bad” communicative signals. I learned the
Vietnamese had no choice but to accept whatever was pushed their way by
the world powers interested in shoving them around. We had been told in
ROTC classes that we were to help the Vietnamese people fght
communism by allowing them to maintain their own autonomy, their own
customs, and traditions. We were to learn, from them, a new way of life
which would broaden our horizons and make us men of not only the
Western world, but also that of the Oriental world. I could not fnd any
initiative on anyone's part, but my own, to understand the Vietnamese
culture. Where were the exquisite French-Vietnamese cuisine promised to
us in the United States? Off limits. Where were the Vietnamese language
classes? Off limits. Where was the freedom we were supposed to be
17
helping them fght for? Where was the respect for the Vietnamese people
we were reckoned to render? Where was the struggle against the
“commies?” No, the Americans did not come to help. They had come to
take over. And they were in control—for now. Military control. Not only
had they failed to convince the Vietnamese people of their good intentions,
they had not even persuaded their own people to share in their efforts.

These small-framed Asiatic people, struggling to keep alive on rice and

other Oriental mush dishes, were at the mercy of the United States Armed
Forces. They were looking—as they had been looking throughout their
nation's history—for something better to eat than dog and monkey, and the
Americans were going to give it to them in exchange for slave services.
They gave the Vietnamese a dollar a day to clean dishes, to spit shine boots,
to make beds, to clean howitzers, to fll sandbags, to wash mud-caked
trucks, and “to spread their Oriental c***s to see if the crack down there
was as slanted as their eyes.” A renaissance in slavery had taken hold in
Vietnam, and the b******t was beaucoup, GI! Dirt, muggy weather, the
Army, personal grumblings all over the compound. What a letdown. I was
prepared for the worst, and I found it in this bogus business called “the
Vietnam 'War.'” I wished I were a damn hippie smoking banana peels in
Haight-Asbury!

Things got worse wherever I went. I had to contend with my mind to make
it bear down on this bleakness that was to last another 355 days more. I was
assigned, at last, to the Fourth Infantry Division at Pleiku in the mosquito-
infested Central Highlands. The famous “Fighting Fourth,” the “Cloverleaf
Division,” the “Snowfake Division,” (And what a fake!) The Central
Highlands meant malaria and assignment on the Cambodian-Laotian
borders—of this I was certain. Rumors abounded about the division's
fghting ability. Whether or not it was a good division to serve in was
subject to a host of varying opinions. No matter, before I even served with
it, I was asked to join its offcers' association ($10.00) so that I might—hold
on!—be sent its monthly newsletter-magazine—which I never received—
when I returned to the United States. It was assumed I would want to know
what was happening with the Fourth once I left the Army. Maybe to keep
track of its battles and wars? What pure, unadulterated gall had this man's
army. I begrudgingly coughed up the ten spot and walked out into Camp
Enari's monsoon-seasoned, traffc-bogged muddied streets. The mud and
crud were dumbfounding. It was amazing to see dirtied trucks, uniforms,
18
boots, rifes, helmets, and barracks. There were caked mud chippings from
jungle boots on every foor. None of the razzle-dazzle of the bases in the
States or the quarters of the generals and colonels in charge of the Fourth
Division. Men walked around talking about heavy contacts in the
mountains, and they spoke of acquaintances or comrades shot up and
recuperating in division medical centers.

There was a “sin city” on the outskirts of the division's encampment, but it
was OFF LIMITS to offcers. The ladies were government inspected—
checked regularly by army doctors. Yet rumors persisted that there were
hundreds of VD cases in our division's AO (Area of Operation). The
division's head (colonel) chaplain, a Roman Catholic Irish-American priest,
predicated to the troops that visiting “sin city” was against God's wishes.
From what I had seen so far, the Vietnamese peasants, converted to
prostitution, were not especially happy at their work. The French-
Vietnamese prostitutes from Saigon—often shipped to Pleiku in Red Cross
uniforms—were the favorites of the general's staff members. Nevertheless,
it should be noted that venereal disease was a problem for the U S Army
because strains of it did not respond to antibiotic medicines, and soldiers
who had contracted the disease, were prohibited from returning home for
fear of allowing the stock, that had not responded to medicines, to enter
the United States' population.

Before our assignments to the feld, incoming division personnel were

provided with an in-country orientation to help us adjust. Classes were
eight hours a day, and the podium, vu-graph, and lesson plans took on the
same format as they had in the service schools we had attended in the
States. There were ffty-minute blocks of instruction with ten-minute
smoke breaks in between. Papers to sign; forms to fll out. A never-ending
fow of papers. Name, rank, serial number, social security number, next of
kin, home of record, unit, date of entry, date of rotation, estimated time of
separation (ETA), blood type, selective service number, date of birth,
religion, date of commission, marital status, branch, military occupation
specialty, pay grade, place of birth, terminal date of reserve, education,
training completed, leave days accrued, leave days paid, insurance in force,
allotments, decorations, medals, badges, citations, campaign ribbons
awarded or authorized, and any further remarks? Yes: “Go f**k yourself!”
How many men and women did the Army need to collect, type, fle, deliver,
protect, and s**t can this mass of information? I had to sign an affdavit
19
prohibiting the notifcation of my next of kin should I be “slightly
wounded.” Finance offered the choice of having my pay receipted for
future payment or presented on the spot in the boonies. Chaplains wanted
to know my religion. The Red Cross wanted to know my home address. I
began looking forward to going into the combat zone. I felt there was not
an ounce of privacy left to me. I was totally totalitarianized. I was an entity
of green cloth and paper conformity. My neighbor's underwear was the
same color as mine: green. Our minds were indoctrinated by the same
massive propaganda machine. We were recorded for history on U S Army
forms. We were not to be bended, folded, or spindled. We looked good on
paper—we were neatly typed.

Next, we were instructed to read the Geneva Convention's agreements

stipulating the correct way to treat the enemy, prisoners, and enemy
civilians. It was meant to make the Army look good in the eyes of the
unassuming. We had to follow a code of war morality and be fair to the
other side—the other side we had been taught to tear apart and kill as
much as we could. No dirty playing. No shenanigans. No below-the-belt
jabs to the enemy. We were to act as gentlemen do in war, and we were to
be spiffy examples of the modern fghting man: democratic, well-moralized,
well-kept, well-fed, well-shaved, well-built, well s**t! CYA. What an a*s-
covering, pansy organization this U S Army. We were told to sign and
testify that we had understood what we had read—plus put the date we
signed it!

Following these, more mimeographed sheets were presented to us to sign.

The sheets dealt with the customs of indigenous people we might meet in
the mountains of the Central Highlands, the Montagnards. We were
informed, for example, that they might place rock formations on the trails
that led to the entrances of their villages. One rock upon another signifed
one thing; another rock formation still another. A death in the village; a
sickness; a birth, et cetera. We were to treat these tribesmen and women
with respect, and we were encouraged to communicate with them as much
as possible. Again, we were told to sign and testify that we had understood
what we had read—plus the date we signed it. Would I ever get to the feld?
They frst had to let me stop flling out forms! I had been trained to use my
trigger fnger—not to get writer's cramp!

It was only a matter of days before I would be in the boonies. I was fed up
20
with the orientations and processing, and I remembered never seeing John
Wayne fll out one form during his careers in the Navy and Marines. It
seemed cruel to me to have to wait to go into battle. I wanted to get it over
with. I was nervous, agitated. I knew that that was not good—but I was very
anxious. I wanted to get out of the safety of the base camp, get to what I was
trained to do, get to encounter the enemy and size him up. Why did they
have to keep me waiting? Those s**ts. Mental images of death ping-ponged
across my mind. How would I be killed, wounded? Would I feel a bullet
going through my brain before it killed me? If I stepped on a mine, would I
be killed by fying shell fragmentation or would the concussion do me in?
Would an artillery or mortar round or a 122mm Chinese rocket blow up in
front of me and pulverize my being? Would a bamboo pit viper strike me in
a fog which would keep me from being rescued by a medivac helicopter?
Would a cobra strike me in my hootch during the night? Would the
helicopter I was traveling in crash and blow me to bits? Would I fall off the
side of a mountain with a forty-pound ruck sack on my back and break my
neck? Would I take a “Million Dollar Wound” in the calf of my leg and be
sent to Tokyo to recuperate never having to return to Vietnam again?
Would one of my own men murder me in the fray of a contact because he
did not like my New York accent? Would a 108-degree malaria fever burn
me out? Would I become a coward and shoot my own leg to get out of the
feld? Would an Army truck run me over and kill me? Would I eat
Vietnamese food with glass splinters in it? Would an elderly Vietnamese
woman throw a handgrenade at me after she invited me into her home for
dinner? Would the plane, bringing me home, crash into the Pacifc?

The tension was unbearable, and to adjust to the feld, where my job would
probably be, was primary in my mind. No matter what, I was going to spend
the year fghting to get back home alive. I would check out every nook and
cranny for the enemy. He might get to me for being cleverer than I, but my
own carelessness was not going to do me in. Come on you generals,
colonels, majors, and captains, give me my damn assignment! Get me out of
this rear echelon s**t! Now! My rife is zeroed. My bandoliers are flled with
5.6mm balled ammo magazines, and every ffth round is a tracer bullet. My
canteens are flled with potable water. My rucksack is jammed with C-
rations. My jungle boots are steel-plated in the soles. My underwear is
green...I'm ready. Let's go! Move out!

The Divarty (Division Artillery) commander interviewed all newly assigned

21
offcers, and after his formal evaluation, it was customary to receive one's
unit assignment. I sat anxiously in front of the full-bird colonel who it was
rumored was on the beegee, brigadier general, (BG) promotion list. He was
a sincere individual and had been in the Army for who knew how long. He
seemed to possess a high level of sophistication about the profession he
had dedicated his life to. Even though he was capable and well-respected in
the division, he did not possess that juice of personal ambition which high-
ranking generals squeeze so judiciously throughout their Army careers.

He reminded me of the battalion commander I had served under at Fort

Sill—another “brown shoe” type who had taken a personal interest in my
army career protecting me from exuberant captains and majors. I lived on
the same street as the colonel, and had developed a friendly relationship
with his wife and children. If any man could have talked me into an army
career, it would have been him. I had told him I wanted to work in
intelligence, and he said to get in touch with him when I returned from
Vietnam. He and I shared a great deal of pessimism about the Army we had
grown to disfavor and disapprove of—with caution. In fact, he warned me
that a career in the United States Army might prove more frustrating than
rewarding. The colonel forewarned me: he believed the U S Army was
turning for the worse into a Renaissance man's managerial paradise where
management's philosophy vied to create a “well-rounded” offcer. An Army
offcer was expected to do it all: participate in feld duty, teach ROTC, work
at staff level, go to service schools, study for an undergraduate or post-
graduate university degree, participate in community affairs, and have as
many experiences as possible recorded on his service record. This notion
was advantageous in some respects. But the Army offcer had become so
fanned out in his activities that when he went to the feld, he had forgotten
how to read a map! It was incredible to watch one-hundred-twenty men
laughing at their company commander because he could not reach the
position assigned to him for the day by the battalion's operations offcer (S-
3) who, very often, had to helicopter to the feld to lead captains by the nose
to their objectives. Men went to Vietnam to hold commands they had little
or no experience for.

My own preparation for artillery advising at the company, battalion, and

brigade levels was what I had received in a Little John, Honest John,
Pershing, and Sergeant unit: little. Artillery and rockets and missiles mix
not. I went into the boonies in Vietnam with a gnawing fear in my gut. I
22
kept wondering what was about to happen to me. I tried to stop, control,
my thinking, about what I must had forgotten regarding the feld artillery
procedures I had been instructed with in Offcer Basic Course. The new
“Army” was resented by the old “brown shoe” offcers and non-
commissioned offcers who dreamt of the old days and wanted to see more
soldiering and less bureaucracy. They were usually impotent to effectuate
any changes because their careers and promotion opportunities were on
the line, and demanded that they conform to the novel ways of the so-called
modern army. It did the enlisted man no good to see his frst sergeant
suffering under the weight of an enormous Army weighted down with
forms to fll out.

The colonel, a mild-mannered West Pointer, who spoke intelligently and

articulately about our area of operation (AO) that, at the time, was
experiencing enemy infltration from the north, down through the Ho Chi
Minh Trail into South Vietnam in the general vicinity of the Cambodian
and Laotian borders, shook my hand, wished me luck, and introduced me
to a staff captain who led me to his offce to give me my orders. There were
no surprises. I was given an FO (forward observer) slot. The Old Man's
briefng had been succinct and no-nonsense-like. He had made me feel I
had a place in his command, even when I reminded him that I had had
served in a rocket and missile training battalion at Fort Sill—hoping to luck
out, at the last minute, without having to go to the feld. He looked at me as
if to say “lieutenant, yours is not to question why, yours is but to do and
maybe die.” My assignment was signed, sealed, and delivered. I was to
advise an infantry company about feld artillery and its support. When the
King of Battle was called for, I had to be ready to usher it in. The captain
interpolated an “It's not so bad.” I sucked it in, signed more papers, and
was taken in a jeep to my new battery's supply room to pick up what
additional gear I needed for the feld.

At Bravo Battery's supply room, I was given a shovel (entrenching tool), a

poncho, a poncho liner, an air mattress, ammo pouches, a bayonet
(remember them?), extra fatigues, and two frst aid pouches—“a bullet that
goes in might come out,” ruck sack, rife, bandolier with seven ammunition
magazines, helmet and camoufage cover with band, four canteens, shaving
kit, toothbrush, toothpaste, cigarettes, soap, jungle boots, extra socks,
insect repellent, and a towel. I picked up some writing paper.
23
Another lieutenant, an experienced FO who had returned recently from
hospital convalescence for a serious bullet graze he took on his skull, was to
orientate me further in the wood and oil smelling supply room. His main
concern was his Purple Heart and Silver Star recommendation that were
on their way down through division distribution.
“Those f*****s” in division better get their asses moving,
I want my Purple Heart and SS!”
I asked what an SS was.
“Silver Star, stupid!”
I was anxious to learn my new job, and the least bit interested in the OCS
lieutenant's awards and decoration profle.
I asked about ammo supply to the batteries.
“You'll have to fnd out for yourself, greenhorn.”
I suggested he could do better than that, and he gave me a sick sort of
encouragement:
“Don't worry, greenhorn.
The rain is your biggest pain in the a*s.
Don't lose any sleep over an enemy attack.
Just bring “pee” in for yourself and your men.
If your number is up, there is nothing you can do about it.”
As the replay of a San Fran/LA baseball game resounded over the Armed
Forces Television station, I grabbed an extra handful of heating tabs for
cooking C-rations, then plopped myself into the back seat of a jeep, and
was transported to the chopper pad for my frst Huey helicopter ride and
delivery to the battlefeld.

Chapter Three

IN THE BOONIES

September 1967

There was one further briefng to suffer. I met my artillery battalion

commander in a Tactical Operations Center (TOC) located within our unit's
area of operation. It was at the fre base that served as the battalion's
command post, and it was here that I could see six 105mm howitzers stilled
yet poised for fring if called upon. They would back my company up in
case of necessity. I entered the lieutenant-colonel's tiny offce in the sand-
24
bagged construction, whipped a snappy “reporting” salute on him, and took
a feld chair when he signaled me to sit down. The colonel immediately
thrust a pile of papers at me tossing them across his feld table onto my lap.
“Read them, lieutenant!”
I was taken back by his abruptness. I started reading a series of reports on
“friendly kills” (annotated SECRET) concerning the colonel's AO. The
count was substantial and it included GIs.
“Lieutenant, my a*s is on the line over these reports,
and by God I better not have to write one out again
over your g****m mistakes,”
he drawled in a Southern succession of
regularly recurring stresses and tones.
(F**k you, colonel! I said to myself.) I was impressed with the seriousness of
the charges made against the artillery offcers who had charge of the fre
direction center (FDC) where the mistakes in numerical and rudiment
computer computations had caused friendly deaths. I wondered how much
confusion existed in these calculating rooms during a fre mission. I could
not reassure the colonel that I was not going to commit errors, nor did I
intend giving him a response. I understood his smug mentality. I held my
ground without saying a word. Might he have been a bit embarrassed? I was
dismissed. As I left the TOC, he had some more to say:
“Lieutenant, I'm up for full-bird.
I don't want any lieutenant screwing up my career.
Do we understand each other?
I will personally throw the g****m book
at your f*****g face if one of these reports
with your name on it passes my desk.
Report to your unit.
Yes, sir.”
I walked out of his offce with a depressed, angry outlook. I was convinced I
was serving with a group of scoundrels, and not with men dedicated to the
protection of their country, and I had not been even a month in-country.
Here was a man whose career and promotion possibilities were more
important than the mission he had been assigned to accomplish. There was
a man trying to wiggle his way into a base camp slot. There was a man
trying to get a third R&R from his friend in the Adjutant General's offce.
There was a man smuggling a .45 caliber pistol home through the mails—
piece by piece. There was another sending an AK-47 to a National Guard
armory for pick-up when he returned to the States. There was a man
25
demanding enemy kills so he could satisfy division's body count request.
There was a man offering a bottle of whisky to any grunt who would get
him a body. There was a man who said nothing when 40% of his unit's
artillery rounds landed without exploding (duds) during a contact. There
was a man who took off in his command & control (C&C) helicopter and
immediately ordered his pilot to climb to 3,000 feet to be out of small arms'
range. These were men? No, they were a disgusting group of people out for
their own good. I did not want to believe what I was experiencing.
Everyone was afraid and uninterested in anything but himself. That spark
of leadership which I thought would inspire and lead me was missing. I
assessed the situation. There was clearly a deep void. The enlisted men
would sense it the more. They had more time to understand what was going
on. They had not much interest in promotion or the U S Army. Most just
wanted to get out of the Army and be home leading their normal lives. Our
involvement in Vietnam was actually the source of everyone's spiritlessness.
There was nothing to believe in—to fght for. To risk one's life in this
discombobulation was not admirable and could never be brave. The offcer
corps, corrupt and listless, could not lead because there was nothing to lead
to. Everyone knew that Vietnam was a waste of manpower and materiel,
and Wall Street and America's elite ruling class fnancially benefted at the
expense of the Vietnam soldier. No one could stand up to the truth and
speak his mind freely. Such an action would be met posthaste with derision
and disapproval for not playing the Army game as one was expected to. I
would have liked, at that time, to resign my commission but I knew I would
be automatically inducted into the U S Army as a private, forced to serve
another three years and surely in Vietnam. To resign would have been the
most admirable choice to make; but, who would believe that their sacred,
tradition-bound United States Army was a corrupt p******e? I had some
university friends who probably would have agreed with me, but they were
conscientious objectors or individuals who had fed to Canada or had
obtained medical exemptions. I had no way out. I had to go through with it.
I never felt so alone in my entire life.

During my year tour in Vietnam, I suffered through fve 122mm Chinese

communist rocket attacks, ten mortar attacks, and fve or six “contacts” with
the enemy that were inconsequential. The contacts were light—“cold” as
they said then. Two of the 122mm rocket blasts came close to home, and
three or four of the mortar blows were near target. The rocket attacks were
of concern because the 122mm round could penetrate sandbagged blast
26
walls and bunkers used as shelters, and were capable of getting through a
six-tiered piled-high sandbags. Mortar attacks, once cover was taken, were
not as devastating as the rockets. The mortars usually exploded on impact,
and would be strong enough to rip through the dirt and sand fortifcations
that had been constructed to protect us against them which plopped in on
high trajectories.

Traveling with the company commander in the center of the unit kept me
safe from minor skirmishes with the enemy, and provided the necessary
split-second timing I needed to make radio contact with the FDC,
determine my location—with the help of my recon sergeant—by grid
coordinates, assess the size of the attacking force with the grunt CO, and
decide the best type of explosive needed for the situation which was
dependent upon terrain, jungle canopy height, vicinity of friendlies, and a
host of other variables. It was a considerable responsibility. One had the
awesome job of protecting himself and his men from those errors which
could maim and kill—not to even yet mention the enemy.

Combat life was generally casual and uneventful. It was unusual, then, to
encounter an attack within two hours of being dropped into the battlefeld
for the very frst time...within hours after being warned by one's battalion
commander to protect his Army career. But before I detail the attack, I wish
to tell what happened when the helicopter, that had taken me to the feld,
dropped me off into my new unit's perimeter area. As I started walking
towards the infantry company commander's command post (CP), I came
across a shirtless grunt digging a foxhole, his dog tags bouncing on his
chest their tinkling silenced by the black rubber band that framed them. He
yelled out to me:
“Lieutenant, out here in the boonies
we're on a frst name basis.
What's yours?”
I smiled at him and kept walking to the CP. I had no idea of what I should
have said to him.

After I met the company commander (CO), I sat around with the other
offcers, the platoon leaders and the company executive offcer. Some of
them talked with Southern accents. All of us were sitting around, in groups
of twenties and thirties, waiting to know whether or not we would be
Hueyed out in waves of three helicopters, or whether we would break camp
27
for the night. I had time enough to relax a bit for the frst time in days. I
had fnally reached my battlefeld destination. At frst sight, the battlefeld
was not as omnipotent as I had given it credit, and the men I was to serve
with were quickly dispelling some of the fears I had taken with me from
Fort Sill to the Central Highlands of Vietnam. They appeared to be a
spirited group, and as far as I could tell were OCS types. They bitched and
bitched and bitched about the Army; yet, I had to admit that there existed a
sense of cohesiveness in the unit that had been recently shipped from
Hawaii.

My company commander, from Louisiana, was a child. When I met him, he

was munching on hot peppers which he told me had been sent to him by
his “sleazy cunt” girlfriend in Alabama. He told me we were going to get
along real fne. He blurted to me that he had nothing against the Yankees
from the north of the United States! He hoped he could offer me a
thousand “gooks” to kill—he being high on the “war.”

The attack, my very frst, was announced by a split-second “swish, swish”

and the explosion of two high explosive (HE; Hotel Echo) rounds
approximately one hundred meters from any of our unit members. Four
men began screaming from wounds inficted by fying debris and shell
fragmentation. Panic took hold of the group. Our CO added to the
confusion. He shrieked with terror.
“Get me artillery!!!
Platoon leaders spread your men out.
Shit, we're being hit!”
I was with another FO with whom I was to understudy for three days
before taking over myself. He had left his radio-telephone operator (RTO)
and reconnaissance sergeant some twenty-fve meters from our location,
and we were both running to get to the horn (radio) to get our battery up
and ready for a fre mission. Randy kept a cool head as he shoved his way
through groups of infantrymen running around in disarray. Some were
starting to dig foxholes out of sheer desperation. Others were lying on the
ground shooting M-16s and M-60s at the smoke puffs of the two explosions.
One man, who had discarded his rife ten meters from his position, was on
the ground—in the prenatal position, saying his rosary.
“Keep cool, greenhorn, and pay attention to me,”
Randy mouthed loudly.
I watched. Randy's manner was professional. He quickly plotted our
28
location and had a fre mission on stand-by for the CO. Randy was laughing
through the confusion. I was bewildered and asked him what was so funny.
“They're friendly rounds, greenhorn.
155mm United States Army regulation artillery rounds.
Come on, Randy, you're pulling my leg!
No. There's a 155mm battery working near here,
and I ought to know a 155mm blast when I hear one.”
While I thought of my colonel's promotion opportunities and the fre
direction offcer's court-martial, our company commander was screaming
bloody murder at his platoon leaders, who had had no luck in organizing
their faint-hearted men.
“Randy, where the fuck's my artillery?!
Whenever you want it, captain—we're ready.
Just give me the word.”
I asked Randy why he didn't tell the captain that they were 155mm rounds.
“Because he won't believe me. He wants a fght.”
The CO had contacted his higher who had contacted his higher for jet
fghter and helicopter gunship support. It appeared as if the enemy was
sieging our position. The whole company was shooting into the woods with
automatic rifes, M-60 machine guns, and grenade launchers. Brush fres
were burning all around us. Yet no sign, still, of the enemy!
“Give me pee, Randy!
NOW,!!!
the CO screeched.
In it came.
Volleys of 105mm howitzer HE rounds exploded and puffed up around our
perimeter. At the same time, two helicopter gunships “worked” the area
over with rocket attacks and M-60 machine gun fre. The jets didn't come,
but a single-engined Hobo, a retired World War II fghter plane, dropped
napalm into the surrounding jungle and set trees and clumps of bushes
afre. The noise was deafening. Our company commander was besides
himself.
“That'a boy Randy, baby! Keep that pee coming.
Where the f**k are those Phantom jets?
G*****m that f*****g Air Force.
Get those F*****g fy-boys off their f*****g a***s!
More pee, Randy!”
Randy kept pushing the volleys out and away from the unit with each new
call he made. He pegged the volleys one hundred meters farther each time,
29
and with a smile, told me the “enemy” was on the run. The “fun” and
games began to subside, and with the noise and confusion diminished, the
CO screamed for a meeting of platoon and artillery offcers and NCOs at his
command post. The captain was crazed.
“Did you see that shit, you all?
Wow!!!
Randy, g*****m it boy, god m***********g d**n it,
you're the best f*****g pee bringer in this g****m f*****g army!
D**m you, you little f****r. A great job.
What a bunch of pee those gunships gave us!
Did you see those rockets slam those trees down, boys?
Holy s**t!”
Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“What a fantastic job you all did.
D**n it, I'm proud as s**t!
The f*****g enlisted men were scared s******s.
Couldn't get their lazy a***s to do nothing, as usual.
What a bunch of candy a***s.
I'm going to chew their f*****g a***s out later.
Those n*****s aren't worth a s**t when the action starts.
Platoon leaders, get some men out there and see if you can
get us some bodies.
I want bodies for my main man Husky!”
The battle was over. The woods were on fre. Peace had come to Bravo
company once again. Randy and I stood looking at each other with grim
expressions. He told me his friend was fre direction offcer with the 155mm
battery. He would have four wounded GIs to answer for. I asked what
would happen.
“The grunts aren't seriously wounded from what I can determine.
I don't think they will court-martial him.
Had the grunts been wasted, he would be in serious trouble.
This s**t goes on all the time.
No one knows how to read a map, the maps are often inaccurate,
and the FDC personnel are ill-trained.
It's a problem we have in all in-country divisions.
You'll have your turn at it when your feld artillery duty ends in six months.
I wish you luck!”
The combat assault was, for me, worse than getting attacked by 122mm
Chinese communist rockets or the United States Army. The CA was
30
generally made by Huey helicopters, and its function was to place a unit of
troops (usually an infantry company) into a suspect enemy location—as
quickly as possible. Helicopters inserted troops in waves of three; about
seven or eight grunts in each fight until all one-hundred twenty-fve grunts
and offcers had been delivered to the area. Larger waves were not SOP
(standard Operating Procedure) because if a landing was “hot,” the Army
didn't want to risk losing more helicopters than were necessary.
Nevertheless, the landing zones (LZs) were commonly too small to allow
numerous helicopter drops. The LZ was prepped with artillery and
helicopter gunship support, as a precautionary measure. It was SOP
throughout the Fourth Division to have the forward observer accompany
the frst wave. The FO had the responsibility to report the landing, its “hot”
or “cold” status, and prepare artillery support if enemy contact was made
during a “hot” combat assault. The experience was frightening—almost
terrorizing. The helicopters normally would not touch ground because
thickets of brush, bramble, and small trees impeded their landings. So, a
jump off a chopper skid—from three to four feet—was necessary. Once on
the ground and clear of the chopper's rotating blades, I, and my RTO and
recon sergeant, would make a dash to the nearest tree line to seek cover.
The tree line could be a couple of hundred meters from the LZ. I would
pull my RTO by the coiled radio wire of his hand mike (horn), and with
rife in one hand, horn in another, run as fast I could, hoping that no
enemy soldier had a bead on my head during my trek to protection. All the
CAs I participated in were “cold.” All exercises in futility. The enemy was
clever. Why should he wait to fght one-hundred twenty-fve men on the
attack screaming and bellowing with artillery and helicopter gunships
whacking away at all the trees in sight? The enemy, rather, chose a more
opportune time. He was a hit here and there campaigner. Inconsistent. No
one could predict his actions. He mostly worked at night which,
statistically, was the time of most of the serious engagements I was involved
in or had heard about. His night fghting was renown. Still, this did not
take away the apprehension that accompanied preparation for daytime
combat assaults or routine patrolling. There was no way one could know
with certainty that the enemy would evacuate his position under the threat
of a combat assault, and the relief one felt once he plopped down behind a
tree after hustling over meters of broken ground with a forty-pound
rucksack on his back expecting a bullet to rip into his body, was the
removal of something unbearably oppressive and distressing. With
hindsight, I realize the combat assaults I suffered through were exercises in
31
Stateside war maneuver practices. They were assignments given to
battalions by higher-ups in order to prove that United States soldiers were
involved in action even though the enemy was smart enough not to fght on
the Army's own daytime, prime time, television timetable. Naturally, war
correspondents played an important part in relaying the “war” back home,
and this added to the false impression given to the American people. We
searched and searched and searched for the enemy and, with few
exceptions, he failed to show up to fght our well-equipped, automatic
weaponized, gunship protected, artillery shielded units. Could one blame
the enemy? He used the best tactics to suck in the Americans. Higher up
kept sending its men on wild goose chases. Had higher not created a need
for combat assaults, among other types of maneuvers, there would have
been nothing for us to do in the Vietnam jungles. I kept asking myself,
“Where is the Vietnam “War,” where is the Vietnam “War?” The enemy
made us look like fools—and we were. They took advantage of, over and
over, higher's propensity to overreact. When there were two of the enemy
to chase down, they got away despite artillery, helicopter gunship, Hobo
napalm, Phantom jets, and even B-52 strikes that the Army was free to
spend and waste at will. One-hundred and twenty men walking through the
“twigs” with transistor radios and portable record players blasting at high
volume, were not going to risk their lives for a pursuit of two or three
“gooks.” The attitude was to let arty and the Air Force handle it by
dropping all the bombs they wanted to. The enemy “appreciated” this, and
responded accordingly.

When I realized this lackadaisical attitude pervaded every unit I was

transferred to in Vietnam, I came down emotionally and relaxed more in
the feld. Weeks went by without contact with the enemy. The daily jaunts
through the jungle—up one mountain today, down it tomorrow—were
invigorating and healthy. My AO comprised mostly dense jungle terrain
and beautiful, incomparable sights. The mountains had to be climbed.
Even in monsoon downpours. It was an exceptional exertion. Adjusting to
this strain with a 40-pound rucksack on one's back, in the beginning, was
torturous. When I adapted to the mountain climbing, my body and mind
enjoyed a profound sense of well-being. We slept deeply. We rose at about
seven-thirty in the morning to a cold drizzle of rain, but by mid-morning
the hot sun would have dried us out. Up the mountain. Once we reached
topside, we set up our perimeter for the night, sat around talking, reading,
listening to music, or writing letters which kept us tied to our loved ones
32
and friends. If we had beer dropped in on us, it was common to see GIs
high on “suds” mixed with Darvon or Librium conned from their unit's
medic who had been provided with bottles of medication to ease the
physical and psychic strains of the men. Even the Army was popping pills.
There was marijuana, but not for me. An offcer was considered to be an
informer. There were nine to ten hours of deep sleep each night. We
moaned and groaned about our C-rations, but delighted in cooking
“delicacies” such as Campbell soups and canned ravioli sent to us in “care”
packages from home. As much as the men I served with were incompetent
as fghting soldiers, a fact which concerned me constantly—not that I was a
model soldier!—we did, in the feld, develop a warm and gracious
camaraderie at times—acquaintances which, as one major put it so bluntly
to me, “would infuence negatively my chances for promotion because any
affliation by an offcer with enlisted personnel is a negative offcer trait,” I
grinned and bore it scratching off the days I had left in Vietnam and the
Army.

Offcers and NCOs were generally called by their frst names in the feld,
and we all shared in exchanging tales about our girlfriends and plans for
the future when we fnally returned to the United States on “Big Bird.” The
spirit of the men could be genuine and sincere in the feld where we were
usually left alone and away from the candy-a***d” base camp warriors. The
average enlisted man was interested in doing his job—an impossible one—
as best he could. Had we been trained properly, had we had properly
trained leaders, had we had a cause to fght for, we would have indeed been
a superior fghting specimen. But this was too much to ask of the U S
Army. The reason to fght, the soldier's raison d'être, was nonexistent. We
made up reasons for being in Vietnam. Being screwed by the Army was
number one. The days left in the biggest screw of his life were recorded on
his helmet's camoufaged cover, in his notebook, on the letters he sent
home, on latrine walls, or on mess hall tables. “DAYS TO GO.” The
perennial topic of discussion. Not the desire to win, not the desire to defeat
the enemy, not the desire to be victorious. The frst, and the last, thirty days
of service in Vietnam, were considered the most dangerous. The frst thirty
days were perilous because the greenhorn was naive and in a learning
process. The last thirty days were breakneck because, being so near to
returning home, the soldier became carefree and careless. The American
GI knew well that war had become obsolete. A vulgar brawl. Yet he knew
his leaders would continue to make it the principal reason for boosting
33
the economy of the industrial super powers who had joined together to
impose their self-constituted “order” on the world they had intentions of
regulating for mankind's good—without sending their own offspring to join
us in that effort. War, that thing of the past, made the fghting man in
Vietnam become so far alienated from his sense of purposefulness that he
foundered confused and frustrated with not only his military and political
leaders, but with his own being. The psychic strings were being torn at
viciously, and when these men returned to the United States...

Statistically, about 15% of soldiers in Vietnam were actually sent to the

battlefeld, feld duty. The rest who served in Vietnam held logistical
support positions while the others “humped it” in the feld. And not all of
the 15% actually experienced downright combat. There were very few large
scale battles in Vietnam than in previous American conficts because the
enemy conducted himself on a hit and miss, guerilla timetable. Better said,
the enemy went against the grain of fghting, as they were expected to, by
World War II and Korean War U S Army veterans. The North Vietnamese
Army (NVA) did fght “unit” style like the Americans, and it had some
artillery power, no air power, when it went into combat. GIs saw more
action with the Vietcong. Contacts with the Vietcong were stinger attacks
meant to disrupt an infantry company, harass it, injure some of it, and
fnally, run away from it in a mocking fashion. The 85%, in the meantime,
sat safe and secure in fortifed base camps that were “little cities.”

The base camp warrior enjoyed a relative serenity in his Bravo Charlie into
which mortar and rocket rounds were occasionally lobbed by the enemy—
affectionately referred to by the nicknaming Americans, as “Charlie”—to
keep the nervous ones honest. It was the base camp warrior who braved
what was beyond his shielded, barbed-wired headquarters to snap photos
of enemy dead after a contact, or chance a visit to the neighboring Air
Force PX down a road infltrated with starving kids scrounging for chop
chop. It was in base camp that big paychecks found their way to PX
counters where an all-gold Bulova automatic cost $129.00, a carton of
cigarettes $1.20, a mohair and silk suit $55.00, and where one could have a
discounted new car delivered to the port of his choice. Money fowed freely
in Vietnam as it was supposed to do. The frst $500.00 of each paycheck
was tax free.

Credit has to be given to the Pentagon for organizing this mammoth

34
logistical event. It supported and sustained hundreds of thousands of
military personnel, it kowtowed to the wishes of industry and Wall Street,
and fattened the stock portfolios of those holding shares in military
sustained companies.

Field duty had some merits, and the one most commonly enjoyed was the
lack of Army “spit and polish and chicken s**t” one had to endure in Bravo
Charlie. Spit-shined boots, tailored fatigues, and spiffy personal
decorations were not requirements for feld duty where men took pleasure
in escaping from KP and latrine duties. In the feld, my lieutenant's bars
did not exist. There were no drunken brawls in the feld, and the men got
on each other's nerves less than in base camp where fghts, knifngs, and
shootings were common releases from tension—from the tension of being
ordered to the feld! The situation had become so problematic in the
Fourth Division base camp, Major General Peers ordered all weapons
locked up to keep men from killing themselves or the Vietnamese workers
who were employed for $1.00 a day in the division compound. There was
an extra luster to feld duty: the constant sight of the beautiful Vietnamese
countryside, which, particularly, in the Central Highlands, was magnifcent
with its green splendor and checkered rice paddies. This added a bucolic
favor to the areas if land had not been pockmarked by B-52 carpet
bombings or heavy artillery poundings. The Ia Drang valley was particularly
beauteous. The view included smoking villages, varying thicknesses of
jungle bush, bamboo thickets, rice paddies, and the historical sense of a
land that was once known as Indo China. The site was marred by the
recollections that here heavy casualties had been suffered in one of
Vietnam's largest contacts.

Because there was considerable time for thought and refection while
waiting for assignments or transportation by slick (Huey helicopter without
rocket armament used mainly for taxi services) or even during every hour
ten-minute smoke breaks while humping it in the feld, it was very easy to
let loneliness take grip of one's mental outlook. Melancholy could hit a
soldier hard. One's girl, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, and relatives
projected themselves vividly across the soldier's mind tormenting his
consciousness with sadness and forlornness. Solitariness was another battle
one had to wage. Listening to music, reading, or letter writing helped, but
one had to expend much of his energy fghting that bitter feeling which
gnawed away at an individual's soul as he fought for his life 13,000 miles
35
from home. There was no consolation. It was a fact of life one had to accept
without complaint because within everyone's being there was the sense that
the most dismaying things in life, if survived with some degree of
respectability and dignity, made an individual more heroic at least in his
own eyes.

Another exercise in Army futility was the search and destroy mission. This
was, as a rule, a sweep through a village or suspect enemy location hell-
bent on making a mess of everything in sight. Civilians were often as not
warned of the impending plunder. If no offcial announcement had been
given, artillery, gunship, and jet prep of the area usually chased everyone
out of their homes in a mad dash as they scurried to fnd shelter from the
often very angry US troops. Then, the infantry company, spread out in a
line formation or other such military arrangement, walked through the area
screaming and shooting at everything in sight. On occasion, something
pertinent to suspected enemy activity was found: a rife, a cache of enemy
provisions, communist literature, or even a dead body that didn't make it
out of the prep. Then the souvenir hunt. Once satisfed, the catch made,
revenge for being in the Army and Vietnam might be taken. The area was
destroyed most of the time by M-16 and M-60 practice frings. This action
was executed to prevent the enemy from returning to the location to reuse
his living quarters which, according to the Army, were opposition hiding
places. The villagers were forced to relocate, and the Army, naturally, had
places where they wanted the villagers to restart their recently shattered
lives. The search and destroy mission was a pathetic venture. It showed to
what debased level the Army had degenerated to, and how they had used
the American soldier to perform, in a ritualistic manner, perverse actions
against innocent people—children, women, and the elderly.

The GI had been reduced to a childish bully seeking satisfaction by

breaking his toys. He was bewildered by his own actions which had
dispossessed him of his character and virtue. He had sensed that perhaps
he had had a favorable juncture of circumstances, but the pathways to even
good sense—what was right, what was wrong—had been closed shut and
had forced the GI to relinquish what might have been, according to him,
the correct course to follow. There was simply nothing, no one, for the GI
to look for for proper guidance. As a consequence, his actions often had
become pathetically foolish. There was an emptiness in his gestures. He
had become an international criminal without even realizing it. A rapist of
36
nations. Would that he could have been termed merely an imperialist. That
he be, at least, forgiven. Processed by law? To rob and despoil in a search
and destroy mission—which very rarely had any adversary resistance
threatening the GIs—was a brutal event that terrorized women, children
and the elderly. It was full-fedged brutality, was normally totally useless,
was pure cowardliness. To destroy a village or a hamlet on the occasion of
fnding a weapon or a handgrenade, was malicious mischief. To kill under
such circumstances, was murder. The infantry company's soldiers, turned
gangsters, were given the green light to vent their frustrations and
hostilities on innocent people destroying their meagre possessions. The
Vietnamese had no manner to protect, protest, or fght against the havoc
and violent intrusions reaped upon them by the Americans—and the
“communists,” wherever they were. The Vietnamese family was victimized
by communist insurgents by night, democratic ones by day. There was no
way that family units could know who was going to accuse who of what.
Trying to raise and feed a family was an excuse accepted by neither of the
sides as the communist and democratic forces policed lonely villages and
hamlets vying with one and other, at the expense of the innocent, for
regional supremacy. The suffering of the Vietnamese people might be
tantamount to the horrors that had been inficted on combatants and non-
combatants during the world wars. The innocent Vietnamese people were
the victims of rape and pillages that remain with them even to this day.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have been born with physical and
emotional deformities caused by the Agent Orange (dioxin) sprayings of
their territories.

Everything to do with the Army in Vietnam was done under the blanket of
caution and discretion. A morbid hypocrisy had bitten the consciences of
the U S Army. This attitude was pervasive in the offcer corps, and it was
called CYA (Cover Your A*s). The rapes and murders and destroyed homes
were reported on Army forms for sure—but secretly. They, too often, were
disguised in battle reports and accident reports. The public relations-
minded Army did not want to see its image tarnished by the realities of its
despicable proceedings, warmongerings. When a tragedy was too blatant
for the Army to cover up, the American $$$ came to the forefront to quell
the disturbed superegos of the higher ups using the guise of the solatium
payment—economic recompense for Army goof-ups. Many offcers, in
paying offerings of ruefulness, as a solatium offcer, had to visit villages and
pay respects to Vietnamese families that had been involved in killings by
37
troops or their bombings and shootings, and injuries and deaths caused by
their harassment and interdiction (H&I) bombings fred during the night.
“missplots” and errors by our razzle-dazzle artillery computers and the fre
direction offcers (FDC), were common.

The Vietnamese received minute monetary compensation, but they took

anything that was offered to them, and with tears of remorse and bitterness
in their eyes, they met with U S Army “social workers” in the middle of
their villages for still another grim reminder of their lost loved ones.
Offcers generally resented solatium duty. It bore too much on their
consciences—when they had any. On one solatium visit with a captain to a
village to make payment, he, after turning over money to family members,
began a sales pitch for Army supplies he had stolen from his unit's supply
room. There was no respect for the Vietnamese people. It made no
difference that they were human beings and nationalists of a sovereign
nation. When the Army went to offer solatium payment to an injured family,
the effort was effectuated without compassion or one ounce of regret. The
Vietnamese villager sensed very well the lack of sincerity on the part of the
US government, and he or she was prudent not to trust the warlords who
were occupying their country touting that they were there to defend the
world from the spread of communism—a tall order for the Vietnamese
peasants to consent to. The U S Army, and its accomplices in the Pentagon,
did little to help the Vietnamese family to feed itself, because more was
done to plunder and sack their homeland to effect a quasi-superiority over
non-relenting guerilla forces who were courageous and serenely indifferent
to the marauders' bullying tactics.

October 1967

The “most sophisticated” army in the world ( ! ), was also the most well-
equipped in Vietnam. Business is business. Materiel, if not stolen or sent
home or sold on the black market, reached units in the feld for use against
the enemy—or, at least, to give the impression the goodies were being used
for combat maneuvers. There was excessive waste, and because there rarely
was any effective control of supply usage, materiel was easily abandoned or
stolen before it could be discarded. The GI, somewhat prone to waste,
thought that tanks and howitzers and rifes were growing on supply trees in
the United States. He had no consideration for what did not belong to him,
and he gave no attention, at all, to the Army's half-hearted, spurious
38
cracks at regulating its resources. Why should he care about the Army's
logistical dilemmas? Remember, it had been the Army that had given him
the biggest (royal) screw of his life.

One night, an acquaintance of mine from Fort Sill and his company
commander had thought they had identifed an enemy location, and in
their haste to “wipe the gooks out, to zero them,” the two offcers liberally
took from the Army's storehouse of supply and ordnance all the while
joking about how they were going to “screw” the American taxpayer!
Through their binoculars, they surveyed unidentifed shining lights they
thought to be enemy fashlights not far from the infantry unit's night
location. Actually, the enemy was not that dumb, but the Fort Sill
spendthrift was. Initially, 105mm howitzers, were called to destroy the
“lights.” No luck. The lights keep shining. Eight-inch howitzers, the most
accurate artillery piece in the world at the time, were joined by 175mm
howitzers, helicopter gunships, and Air Force Phantom jets. “Blow them
out!” “Blow them out!” “Blow them out!” When the freworks terminated,
one GI on a scouting patrol, was found blown to bits. And another had
been seriously wounded. Both were casualties of shell fragmentation. 2089
rounds of artillery ammunition had been expended in trying to “put the
lights out,” yet they still continued to glow in the night after the continuous
bevy of each battery's rounds of frepower. The “King of Battle” had had a
kingsize, royal workout that night, and the cost of used-up ammo, dear
taxpayer, was set at $300,000.00. The “lights” were never extinguished, but
the forward observer was. When, in the morning, a reconnaissance patrol—
sent out to investigate the damage “to the enemy”—came chuckling back, it
was to inform waiting brass in the battalion command post that dead
carrion on trees glowing in the night was the source of the illumination.
Word spread fast about the ammunition expenditure, and no one believed
that the Field Force Commander, himself, would fnd out about the waste.
The relief of command—a threat often heard but seldom acted upon—came
swiftly to the artillery unit's commanding offcer. The waste of 2089 rounds
of ammo on trees was even too much for the supply crazy Army to bear. A**
chewing-outs of the division commander and a host of full- and light-bird
colonels in division and battalion staff slots were the enlisted men's
euphoria for days on end as the story was rehashed and exaggerated
throughout South Vietnam. The new commanding offcer's reaction was
brilliantly no nonsense: “Spare ammunition until the 2089 rounds are made
up in inventory!” What incredible management ability had the offcer
39
corps of the United States Army! $300,000 down the howitzer tube. If
$300,000 could be shot up so uncomplicatedly, $5,000 or $10,000 or
$25,000 had to be small change in this enemy ghost war and supply
expenditure extravaganza. As long as the factories in the United States were
pumping out the goods, as long as stock dividends on Wall Street were on
the rise, as long as the myth of the enemy threat was perpetuated, there
were bullets and bombs galore. A veritable supply sergeant's paradise was
this supply-wielding, supply-spending U S Army in Vietnam. You name it,
we got it. Whatever was needed to chase the ghost of the enemy, was there
at the battalion commander's beck and call. A gigantic arsenal of weapons
and ammunition, supply and materiel. A PX of death articles. A shopping
list of killing supplies. The latest in army fashions. The best quality death
machines. Get them at your local supply room, and enjoy yourself playing
with the world's most sophisticated line of olive drab killing merchandise.

Stand-down at the fre base was a welcomed two or three or four or fve day
respite from patrolling in the boonies. Generally, there were four infantry
companies assigned to an infantry battalion, and while three humped it in
the combat areas, the fourth, on a rotation basis, guarded the mini Bravo
Charlie in the jungle, rested, showered in streams, received immunization
injections, cleaned rusty rifes, and caught up on letter writing. Playboys
were always in sight—if the Roman Catholic chaplain had not confscated
them. The month's centerfold was tacked to walls all over Vietnam. The
American Red Cross delivered books and magazines and Seven Positions for
Intercourse Never Used Before in mail bags sent to us in the feld via
helicopter slicks. A clean pair of fatigues! The old ones worn and torn after
seven, maybe ten days, use. Salt stains, from salt tablets, whitened the
armpits and backs of the used uniforms that were then burned. Our once
OD green fatigues stank from sweat and were dirtied and almost black.
Fresh socks! What a joy! No underwear was worn in the feld because the
hem, soaked with sweat, would cut into our crouches and cause unending
irritation. At stand-down we cleaned the crud off our dog tags. There was a
shave with hot water and shaving suds. Cold beer. Hot chow. Salad. Fresh,
but green, tomatoes. Stews. Plastic plates and knives and forks. Melted ice
cream. A new supply of books. Someone just received a box of cigars from
home! Cutting of our fngernails. Hair trims. Sleep. Like new again. No
mountains to climb for some days. The relief from that grind enough to
make the whole company dizzy with delight. We drifted into fre base
where it was safe, and watched Alpha company head out for the boonies.
40
Faces taut, resigned. We were ready for R&R and intoxication even if it
meant weapons maintenance, admin paper work (there it was—wherever
you went!), and guard duty. No pack to carry for three or four days. No rife
to hold with the callous thumb on the safety latch. No bullets, no
handgrenades, no webbed belt loaded with Army junk. No infantile captain
getting lost in the woods. No calls from S-3 to move out in the middle of
the night. No adjusting of artillery defensive concentrations (DEFCONS) to
worry about killing your own men. No contacts. No humping through
jungle thickets. No bamboo vipers. No pythons. No cobras. No water buff.
No rice paddies. No villages. No Montagnards. No jungle smells. No rivers
to ford. No muddied mountain sides to slip up and down on. No popping of
sulphur smelling smoke grenades for helicopter insertions. No sore feet. No
sore ankles. No sore back. No rucksack straps biting into the shoulders. No
Kool-Aid granules to slip into canteens to kill treated or stagnant water
tastes. No iodine tablets in drinking water. No helmet digging into one's
forehead. No profuse sweating. No meal, Combat, (can) individual, spiced
beef sauce, plus B-3 unit, (can) beef, (can) B-3 with chocolate drink mix,
three cookies, and a can of jam; (can) white bread; accessory pack with
three cigarettes, salt, coffee, powdered cream, sugar, plastic spoon,
matches, toilet (“s**t”)paper, and gum. No defecating in a hole behind a
tree. No urinating on trees. No sleeping with wet boots on. No foxholes to
dig. No hootch to erect. No air mattress to blow up. No fres to make to
keep warm in the mornings. No C-4 to burn for cooking. No brushing teeth
with salt when sundry packs—sold on the black market—did not make it to
the feld. No shaving with a dry razor. No ring worm. No chance for more
jungle rot. No sex!

The world's most well-equipped Army, and no sex! Just dreams of what
one would do in Bangkok if he ever got there. Where is the sex packed
niftily and serial-numbered and olive drab and uniform and well-protected
like the colonel's tactical operations center? Ladies with olive drab bras and
panties taking olive drab birth control pills. Good clean, green sex.
Government Issue. Sex from the research and development drawing boards
of the Pentagon. Combat effective sex. Investigated sex. I was immunized
against smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, malaria, typhoid, tetanus, typhus,
polio, fu, Hong Kong fu, Plague I, Plague II, I take anti-malaria tablets
daily, I've been tuberculin and Shick sensitivized. Where are the anti-
venereal shots? Where is that chow line of naked women? Why does it have
to be two Red Cross girls with coffee and doughnuts for every 5,000 GIs?
41
Why does it have to be one big-bosomed, chunky thighed Raquel Welch
for a whole division? Why does it have to be one sexy-voiced Chris Noel—
making men homesick over the Armed Forces Radio airwaves—for the
whole MACV? Why does it have to be a good-looking nurse only when
you're wounded? Why did one of the twenty or so American women I laid
eyes on in Vietnam during my year's tour have to be prune-faced Martha
Ray reliving her World War II fantasies of entertaining the boys “over
there?” Why did a bare-breasted Ceylanese band member have to juggle
her boobs in my face in front of fve-hundred sex hungry grunts fresh out
of the twigs? Sex was a no-no in Vietnam. No-noed to keep America's
fghting men chaste and pure for his beloved country. The penis was
faccid. The testes were blue. My M-16 was stiff, straight. The bullet was
erect. The mortar tube was poised. The 175mm howitzer was ramrod. The
recoilless rife was frm. The eight-inch howitzer was bulging.

One afternoon, I was defecating in a hole I had dug with my entrenching

tool at the bottom of a hill. I thought I had chosen a place out of everyone's
sight. I had fnished wiping myself, and as I started to pull up my pants, a
roar of applause greeted the end of my “soldier's deposit.” On high, there
were two Red Cross girls giggling with twenty or so grunts, and I had to
feign a spirit of humorist discontent as I mounted the hill towards the
group. No coffee or doughnuts for my show. No sign of affection for me.
No! Grunts in the feld were dirty and smelly. Colonels and generals were
clean and Old Spice fresh. They had beds with clean sheets on them. I
spoke with a woman gynecologist from Bangkok once, and she told me that
premature ejaculation was a very common problem with GI studs visiting
the brothels on R&R jaunts to Thailand. Her patients, many of them $15.00
a night prostitutes, complained bitterly that many of the soldiers who had
come to them from the twigs to the boudoir, expended their rounds as soon
as they were drawn and ready for fring. It was frustrating and embarrassing
for not only the men, but for the women who had to offer motherly
consolation, and then sit back and wait during the tense moments for
another fre mission to be worked up in the libido section of the FDC.
Sometimes, it took hours for the GI to recuperate from his impotency.
Once self-restraint was regained, the girls said the GIs were ready for
action, naturally charged with alcohol, which very often went on for two or
three days. Then guilt set in. The girls had to play psychiatrist and reassure
the soldiers that they had no reason to feel ashamed of cheating on their
wives and girlfriends after their much enjoyed sexual binges.
42
The Bangkok prostitutes were sociological phenomenas according to the
doctor. Mistress, wife, mother, girlfriend, lover, friend, and analyst all
rolled into one. And where was the Army? The Army was working up
combat assaults, search and destroy missions, long range reconnaissance
patrol sallies, task force strikes, and a host of other maneuvers. But no sex
assaults. No waves of Chinook helicopters flled with beautiful olive drab
women sex personnel ready to service one hundred and twenty-fve studs
returning from the battle zone. No government issue sex soldiers for the
fghting man to go along with the materiel munifcence of the world's
leading industrial power provider. No. We had to drool at our mouths over
women with enormous breasts and legs and thighs embossed on the
centerfold of a men's magazine. Congressman Mendell Rivers came across
with the bucks to make war, waste taxpayers' money, but he didn't supply
beautiful women for his fghting men. There were sex workers missing in
the Army's Table of Organization.

I witnessed three, perhaps four, suicides in Vietnam. I am sure there were

many, many more. I heard of others in other units. A certain pattern
surrounded the deaths I witnessed, and when I had pieced together similar
signs and symptoms which manifested themselves prior to the acts of
suicide, I assigned the abnormality a psycho-socio appellation which, while
not National Mental Health Association stalwart, was nevertheless ftting:
the “You A*****e Syndrome.” I have no scientifc, laboratory
experimentation to corroborate my theory, but I can't put out of my mind
the number of typical cases that I came across in Vietnam.

They say suicides often drop hints about their giving it up before they pop
their brains out or resort to another deathly means. When a character often
predicted his death, I observed his actions to see what would happen.
Bang-O! Dead-O! Killed in Action! KIA. They would announce it quite
casually.
“I'm not going to make my DEROS.
I'm not going to make it home to my wife.
Charlie's going to get me.
There's a letter in my helmet telling you
what to do with my things.
How do I change the benefciary on my insurance policy?”
The cause of death was, naturally, recorded as a War Department KIA with
the posthumous Bronze or Silver Star following quickly behind to show
43
mommy and daddy that while sonny gave up the ghost in Vietnam it was
accomplished during ground operations against hostile forces in the
Republic of Vietnam during the period...and, on top of it all, he did it
heroically so that the United States of America and all who shall see these,
presents greetings which Stanley R Resor has rubber stamped as an award
for meritorious achievement.

These suicide heroes usually went about their business with a unique,
muted rendition of the persecution complex, and if one was not quick to
jump in on the problem, once it had been detected, by giving them a quick
psychic kick in their a**s, the boys were wont to do themselves in
eventually. These “I won't make it home” boys did not give elaborate
warnings. They were trying to be heroes in the manner they had been
taught by John Wayne and others of his ilk. They made persistent efforts to
hold in their feelings. Most did not, could not, ever pay attention to their
psychic cries for help because they were well repressed. It was easy for
them to go about their death wish enterprise. If one knew, or sensed, his
own companions, his own army, were more dangerous to him than the
enemy, it was a cinch to go about getting killed. Ridiculously easy. One
could make it look as if the enemy was the cause of the suicide.

My recon sergeant did himself in after we tried to talk him out of it for
weeks. Ed was a complete jerk—he wanted for so long to make a career of
the Army even when his Vietnam experience was fnished. (Can you believe
an enlisted man being so stupid? Incredible!) Suddenly he gave up on
everything. He told me he wouldn't make it home. I couldn't argue with
him. He was too thick.
“Lieutenant, I want to ride point.
Ed, shut your f*****g mouth.
You know you are supposed to stay with me and Paul (RTO).
If we get hit, I need you on that f*****g map,
and I need Paul on the f*****g radio.
What good are you to us and the unit if you are out front
at point helping the grunts clear the way?
No!
That's an order!
“F**k you, lieutenant, I'm going out anyway.
You know damn well we ain't going to get hit out here
in nowhere's land.
44
 Oh, come on, lieutenant, let Ed ride point man.
Let him get shot.
We want a new recon sergeant anyway.
Let the a*****e go.
No.
Ed, why are you looking to get your ass knocked off
when you don't have to?
It's not your job.
Lieutenant, I'm not going to make it out of this g****m country
and you know it.
Please let me go.
I want to get where the action is.
I'm here to fght, not to look at grid coordinates for you.
Ed, if I could get you a shrink, I'd do it.
If I could court-martial you, I'd do that, too.
I'm saying don't go.
And I mean it.
Don't f**k with me.
Do you understand you dumb bastard?
No! No! No!
See you later, lieutenant.
Ed, if you get killed I'll write to your parents and tell them you killed
yourself.
DO NOT GO!
I'm an orphan, lieutenant.
I should kill you myself and save the enemy the trouble.
You little f*****g chicken s**t.
Then I wouldn't get my Silver Star.
Go get shot you moron.
Lieutenant, it doesn't matter.
I won't make DEROS.”
And he didn't. Shot in his forehead three bullets across. Dead-O. KIA.
Posthumous Bronze Star recipient.

The “You A*****e Syndrome” warning was not repeated too frequently and
even if it had been recognized, it was interpreted as a resignation to some
morbid fact—that in reality the victim might very well not make it back. He
was in a battle zone and death was no uncommon experience. I think I
knew about forty individuals who were killed, and with some of them I had
45
had close, but not deeply personal, relationships. Most deaths in Vietnam
were remotely connected with the enemy but closely related to
carelessness, lack of discipline, and boredom waiting for that fght one had
been expecting—trying to avoid—since basic training. If one was able to
size up this troublesome existence, pay attention to keep one's person safe
from his own troops, and keep one eye open during sleep, the chances of
coming out in one piece, generally speaking, were on the side of the
minimally intelligent. There were many of us who got wise to this fast, and
we played the game accordingly. However, too many Eds were around not
to give us a perfect record. And how would the Army have looked if it
didn't have dead GI counts to give to Walter Cronkite on Thursday
mornings? The Army was having enough of a diffcult time trying to collect
enemy bodies! Suicide notes often possess a rejection theme. And I cannot
think of anyone more rejected than the average GI who prepared to fght a
war, was trained fanatically to do so, but then found out he was in a
coward's paradise. When it fnally struck home that Vietnam was not the
home of the brave, many individuals could not accept this comedown and
they sank low into serious depressions which were often camoufaged in
boredom, anxiety, depression, restlessness, and outright defance against
their companions, their enemy, their countrymen, and themselves. Many
took the suicide path. They were frequently pathologically remorseful and
were not against hurting themselves not so much to want to die, but more
not to live any more. Suicides went undetected and were explained away in
accident reports or kills in action. They were the extreme forms of the
persecution complex which often nibbled persistently at the psyches of the
grunts in the boonies.

For the most part, however, units possessed a peculiar collective self about
being in the feld. They used this mental imaginativeness to vent, as best as
possible, their gripes and frustrations that so ponderously bewildered and
disheartened them. There was so much for the Vietnam soldier to cope
with at once. First, he realized that a considerable portion of his fellow
countrymen and women was against his presence in Vietnam. That,
naturally, hurt bitterly. Hippies and college students, the focal points of the
protest movements, were generally held up to scorn and ridicule by many
individuals who themselves had failed to adjust to the American society,
and who might have themselves dropped out of college alienated by its
impersonality and ephemeral atmosphere. The Army's propaganda
machine, Stars and Stripes, played up this psychic pang by generally
46
ignoring the problem and stressing the news from home which put the
Army in a positive light and ridiculed any opposition, in a subtle manner,
that hurled against its presence in Vietnam. But, sometime during his in-
country tour, the GI fnally came to reckon with the facts, subconsciously
and consciously, that those hippies and fellow countrymen and college
students were absolutely right about Vietnam: the time had come when all
thought that it had become wiser to make love and not war. It was wrong to
be in Vietnam. And stupid. Wronger for the men in the Vietnam boonies.
The resentment built up within us, and it often turned from an attack upon
the hippies and protestors to an attack upon the self. As a social being, the
GI sought solace from his companions. He relied on them uncommonly. He
pried for psychic relief which, when not provided, often resulted in dire
consequences for himself and others. Camaraderie went amuck—especially
in the feld. A Southern bigot turned civil rights leader because
Washington Carver Jones—very often an individual whose black skin
populated a rather large percentage of an infantry company's roster and
who, in the United States, took a great deal of “s**t” from his White
brothers—might very well have been the one to save that Baptist in the fray
of a fre fght. Nicknames, very often highbrowed, were aplenty and were
distributed with affection as the men joined together to form a social unit
that was not appreciated by the Army, the citizens of the United States, the
enemy, and usually themselves. So they fantasized the situation away. The
Hippie Lieutenant, Atonement, Crusader, Death Defer, Peace, Security
Clad, Pee Bringer, The Jolly Green Giant, Big Cock...the names offered
respect and individuality to the grunt seeking to authenticate himself.
These nicknames were frequently derogatory. No doubt. An occasional
disparaging epithet was assigned the clown or dud. But even them, more
often than not, eventually found a way of being accepted into the unit's
defant reveries that sought to dispel, at once, the rejection it had been
jolted with from home, from the Army, from Vietnam, and then, rationalize
its own lieu after it had come face to face with the obvious bunkum. Each
unit took on its own identity—often perverted, violent. Members were so
ashamed of themselves, they often could not face each other when they
returned home after Vietnam and were reminded of the price that they had
paid to conform to the goings on in Vietnam.

But as high as high might be, while they humped in the jungles together, by
God! By “Can do Company B” there was not a g****n better group of men
in the world. Men who would do anything for you. They were called
47
“buddies.” Blacks from Detroit, and their “buddies” from Macon, Georgia!
Buddies. “Come see me after the war, Washington, and I'll give you a job in
my father's all-white insurance company.” Buddies. “When we get out of
Nam, Hellfre, I want us to get together every year in Hoboken and get
smashed. G*****n, man, I couldn't have gone through this war without you,
you little f****r, you!” Buddies. “They will never understand what we went
through together in this company. How can we explain it to them when we
get back home?” Buddies. “When we get out of this man's army, Pee
Bringer, let's start a business together. D**n you, buddy boy.” Buddies.
“Don't you worry, Gook Eliminator, I'm right behind your a*s when the
s**t hits the fan, and I'll cover your s**t right down the line.” Buddies.
“Army Terror, when we get back in the world, I want to fx you up with my
ex-chick, buddy. What a piece of a*s she is! I'm sorry I gave her up myself.
She's all yours, pal. My good buddy.” Buddies? Desperate men. And it
worked. The “buddy system” was a fantasized fraternity—insincere as it was
in every way. Yet it was capable of expelling hatred, prejudice, fruitless
bitching, and a host of other problems that could have made life in the feld
even very much more diffcult for many individuals. It served a purpose and
carried many men through a trying time in a nerve-wracking place. There
was really no choice. These people had to justify themselves somehow, and
if they weren't going to get praise and accolades from the Army or their
fellow country men and women, they would give it to themselves even if the
false pretenses were as much a simulation as the Army's counterfeit reasons
for being in Vietnam in the frst place. Catch-22 mental health was better
than none at all.

October 1967

My twenty-third birthday came to me in the feld on stand down not far

from the Cambodian border, and the day was overcast with misty rain
spraying itself all around. There was to be no sun today. Not even the two
or three hours that dried us out and made the day bearable. And to make it
even more dismal, early in the morning we received word that one of our
choppers, by accident, had shot on an infantry platoon—confusing it for
enemy troops—wounding three grunts. In the distance the clock-clocking
of the medivac helicopter signaled the impending arrival of the most
seriously wounded of the three grunts...a man who came in writhing with
pain on an OD canvas stretcher, shot in the back. He looked pale. He was
rushed to the medic's tent where they worked on him to no avail. Then he
48
was brought dead out wrapped in a poncho. The pilot and co-pilot were
ordered to report to the battalion commander's CP, and a conference went
on in there for well over thirty minutes. When it was over, word spread that
the pilots had read their maps incorrectly—nothing new about that!--and
wound up in the wrong area of operations where they mistook friendly
troops for free game. While this tragedy was being rehashed and rehashed,
Protestant religious services were being conducted by a chaplain. To add to
the melancholy of a depressing birthday, the Protestants were singing, off-
key, “Rock of Ages” in a rain which had reached the downpour stage. An
eerie day. One of the most emotionally tormenting. Everything—the events
of the day, the weather, the ecclesiastical backdrop—had conspired to make
my birthday a very sad occasion. The division's commanding general
arrived to discuss the accidental shooting with Husky, the infantry battalion
commander. Husky was threatened with relief from command if such an
incident befell his unit again. He already had two accidental foot wounds to
his credit in our company alone. Poor Husky, he worried that if his men
didn't stop shooting themselves, he would never make BG (brigadier
general). I wondered if the Army had a way of awarding Purple Hearts to
victims of accidental foot shootings.

I've Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

Medivac with blood-blotched pack,

From the sky in frenzied dive.
Heads upped high with thoughts aside,
Tried green stretcher for last ride.
“Rock of Ages” lades the air,
Greeny soldiers steeped in prayer.
Surgeons in tent stern and fast,
Joust with Death to let Life last.
Burnt green pants ripped off then thrown,
Steel pail brimmed with red-stained gown.
Spurts of blood dart at bright light,
Blood-soaked gauzes once quite white.
Pale face now fxed without life,
Dog tag snatched and sent to wife.
Plastic gray bag zipped and weighed,
Homeward jet: soon...slow...parade.
Doctors, nurses light up butts,
49
 There's some rest in Quonset huts.
Red guck hosed off chopper's foor,
Snapping blades twirl round for more.

To my hootch the shout to march:

“Up and at it! F-O-R-W-A-R-D, ARCH!”
Resigned to live, not to die,
I'm shrewd and spry through each eye.
In my head the dead man's face,
Exhorts me not to act in haste.
Not with friends, I look about,
Noting some on Nature's Lot.
In the dim of Mors and storms,
There's a store of Earthly forms.
Wet tree leaves tint morning mist,
Verdant grass fonds in my fst.
Nature lures me 'long its way,
My sunshine on a cloudy day.

1 October 1995

Awards and Decorations' bestowing couldn't have been more absurd than
it was in Vietnam. I was once called from the feld to assist the division's
assistant adjutant general, and with this captain's help, I was assigned to
write up award recommendations for members of our unit who had been
approved for medals as a result of their achieving valor in “combat” actions.
It was up to my section to determine what medal should be awarded, then
write the appropriate endorsement. (The captain told me that I was thought
to be one of the few offcers who knew how to write!) I had had respect for
the Bronze Star, Silver Star, Distinguished Service Medal, and the Medal of
Honor before I went to Vietnam. But a bitter revelation hit me once I began
writing A&Ds—as they were affectionately called in Adjutant General
circles—for the assistant AG. First, everyone—especially offcers—were
given an award or decoration of one sort or another from the Army's
colorful plethora of ribbons and badges. An offcer was just about
guaranteed, at least, a Bronze Star just for keeping himself alive for one
year in Vietnam. Bronze Stars were issued automatically. As I wrote A&Ds
up, I noticed that very few ft the requirements set forth in the A&D
regulation books. Silver Stars were given for Bronze Stars, Bronze Stars
50
for Army Commendation Medals. A joke. Medics seemed to have it the best.
They got Silver Stars for doing their jobs. I became disgusted with my
rubber stamp functioning, and went to the captain to speak with him about
the “ethical” dilemma the Army had thrust me into inadvertently.

“Lieutenant, you write what I tell you to write.

Don't you worry about what is right or wrong in A&D awarding.”
“But, captain, most of the awards we are giving
are being endorsed in direct contradiction to the regulations.”
“Look, lieutenant, you just give me fancy words and good narrative.
Let me handle the rest.
That's the job I want you to perform.
Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
I turned to walk out of his offce.
“Lieutenant...”
“Sir?”
“We have to give them something to return home with, don't we?”

Naturally, it did not take long for me to be reassigned to feld duty. I just
didn't have the right attitude!

Medals of Honor were for higher to write up. Perhaps there honor had a
place, but I doubted it. To add to the medal debauchery, captains in from
feld duty were always running in to ask how many “stars” their units had
accumulated to date. There seemed to be a competitive spirit about medals
issued to a unit. A kind of book of records. Who had received the most.
Arguments went on and on between the adjutant and the unit leaders about
the types of awards issued for differing engagements. “B” company was the
A&D leader at the time with “C” company coming on strong. “A” and “D”
companies were apparently the more wishy-washy. The boys always got
something to take home so they could be regarded as military heroes.

When I was ready to leave Vietnam, I contemplated that I was a hero

deserving of the Medal of Honor for putting up with the Army so long, so
diligently. Throughout my tour in Vietnam, I shunned “combat” wherever I
went except when it was shown on the Armed Forces Television station, It
was a bit surrealistic to watch the television series “Combat” in the Fourth
Division's Bravo Charlie! I did the assignments I was ordered to obey, but
51
my heart was never in what I was obligated to do. Nobody else's was. I
made almost no effort for the U S Army. If the Army wanted it done in
three hours, I found a way to stretch it to six. If the Army ordered bodies
from me, I swore I would not kill a soul unless that poor soul wanted to kill
me. If the Army said jump to, I walked when it wasn't looking. If the Army
said to waste a thousand rounds, I suggested fve hundred trying to reverse
its opinion. I cheated when throwing the dice; and, so many of my
confreres, if they had half a brain in their heads, did the same. If the Army
had known my point of view—if they had even been smart enough to
comprehend it—I would have been court-martialed. For me to be awarded
the Bronze Star would have been a paradox. And not being immune to
paradox, a month before I left country, the United States Army apologized
to me for not yet having my Bronze Star ready—then it asked me to write
up my own Bronze Star! I went along with their madness:

“I almost forgot, lieutenant, I'm sorry.”

“Sir, I am ready to go back to the world in less than thirty days.
It would be nice to show my uncles and friends a medal or two.”
I played the game to the hilt.
“Lieutenant, I've been bogged down with paperwork for weeks.
I meant to get to A&Ds sooner, but it's been one report to write after
another.”
“I understand paperwork, major, I served as an assistant adjutant once
myself.”
“Then perhaps you can help help me, lieutenant.
Give yourself a Bronze Star.
Write it up as you like,
and I will pass it up to higher.”
“I'd be happy to, major.”
I couldn't believe it! I was to write up my own Bronze Star.
“Grab the manuals. There's a typewriter over there at that desk.”

I spent two hours writing up what a hero I had been in Vietnam. I was
tempted to go back and ask for a Silver Star. I know I would have gotten it.
But I felt my disrespect had gone far enough. When the paperwork was
submitted, I sat back and waited for its approval. It was disapproved!

“Lieutenant, I thought you knew how to write up A&Ds?

Your “star” was disapproved.”
52
 “Sir?”
“Lieutenant, you didn't put enough blood and guts into it.
The major wouldn't accept it.
I've got to write the damn thing all over again for you.
I'm sure you, having been a forward observer,
had numerous enemy kills to your credit.
I'll give the major enough blood and guts to get your “star” passed.
Young man, you were too modest.”

I walked out laughing to myself. The stupid Army. I felt sorry for it. Never
one to disappoint me. For the whole year I was in Vietnam, it never failed
to be an inept, corrupt organization, and I was full of joy and satisfaction
for not only had I screwed the Army for an entire year by thwarting its
attempt to use me to raise depravity to a new level, I could not think, as
hard as I tried, of one enemy soldier or one American GI that I had killed—
even by accident! I got out without murdering, and I had been awarded a
medal, the nation's ffth highest, for numerous enemy kills. I couldn't have
been happier. I felt ecstatic. My medal recommendation had been rejected
for not having enough blood and guts in it, and my adjutant had further
fctionalized my own narration! I couldn't have asked for a greater moment.
Every suspicion I had about the Army, was now confrmed as a reality.
Every doubt I had concerning my own opinion about the Army, its very
integrity, was now reordered in a new surge of disgust. I knew the truth
about the Army and its corruption of Vietnam. And to my credit, my
impressions were the same as they were two days after I had touched down
into Vietnam, and then tried to begin to understand the Vietnamese people
by studying them and looking for their point of view and not their
colonialists. Vietnam was a disgusting, corrupt, feckless United States'
government mess. The US forces occupying the country shamed their
country and, most of all, themselves. For $150,000,000,000 the military and
American industrial warlords took the American people to the moral
cleaners disillusioning millions of American youth and millions more who
hitherto could be counted on to provide friendship and support for the
United States. FTA. F**k the Army! Whether the excuse was to fght
communism, or search for petroleum in the South China Sea, the pretense
to be in Vietnam was a catastrophic, though proftable, misjudgment which
even now the people of the United States have been unable to reckon with
or accept if only for the sake of soothing their psyches, and much less for
the sake of facing the bitter truth.
53
 Days to go...

365
My oh my

Minus one
One day won

Cross it off
Scrape it off

Mark it off
Scratch it off

364
Still more war

363
Pity me

362
Bam bamboo

Waiting to
Hoping to

Say adieu
Home! Skidoo!

Only thought:
Soon I'm short

That there man

He's so glad

Ten to go
(In a row)

54
 Beth's his end
Letters penned

Minus ten
Gentlemen

I'm soon free!

Flee! Glee! Me!

No more “Nam”
Soon some calm

Minus nine
I feel fne

Minus six
Soon Fort Dix

Minus three
Enemy

A K spray
KIA

20 August 1996

The Huey helicopter is a phenomena in design and usefulness. In Vietnam,

its travel autonomy was not especially notable, but that did not diminish
our dependence on it and its valuableness in supporting us in battle or
rushing our wounded to the nearest medivac station. In fact, many lives
were saved during the Vietnam police action because frst aid was available
mostly within ffteen minutes in any part of the country. During World War
II, soldiers often had to wait days before reaching an aid station.

The deployment of the Huey in Vietnam permitted the armed forces of

America to have a transportation workhorse that was markedly suitable for
different types of transport requirements while at the same time serving as
an extremely durable craft. The machine was diffcult to maintain, but those
who contrived to create it, were successful in designing a magnifcent
55
piece of engineering hardware. The Huey's design is aerodynamic—sleek,
aesthetically pleasing to the eye, yet it is not to be commended for its use as
a murder weapon by GIs slaughtering people from it. The “clock-clocking”
of its horizontal blades through the wind took on different pitches as the
aircraft's pilot altered ascent or descent. The sound was familiar to the GI
wherever he went in Vietnam. The vehicle could serve as a supply ship
delivering water cans, thermal food containers, mail, books, ammunition,
clothing, or tubs of beer cans saturated with chunks of ice. The C&C ship,
the command and control Huey in which a battalion commander or a
brigade commander directed his units on the ground from a safe,
panoramic vantage point, carried the Army's battle brains. The “slick,” a
Huey without rocket pods socketed by a brace to both sides of the ship,
served as the taxi in Vietnam. The gunship suffced as an attack vehicle
used to prep LZs for a CA, used to chase Vietcong down in the jungles,
used to bring “s**t” and “pee” on the enemy. The medivac or “dustoff”
Huey, patched with a huge red cross on a white background, rushed
wounded or dying men to feld hospitals' chopper pads where, after
delivery of patients, crew members went to a hose rack to wash blood out
the sides of the helicopters. The Huey's crew consisted of four members. A
pilot, co-pilot, and two door gunners. All earned hazardous duty fight pay.
The pilots were generally warrant offcers, and the door gunners manned
two M-60 machine guns, another Pentagon researched and developed war
artifact whose steel barrel had to be interchanged regularly with a spare to
avoid overheating. Each crew member wore a type of football helmet in
which sophisticated radio equipment for internal and external
communication was housed. The Huey probably cost in the neighborhood
of half a million dollars, including graft and corruption payments. It was
often said that the Army helicopter pilots were brash characters—
hotrodders of the Vietnam airways. And unlike their less daring, career-
orientated compatriots in the Marines, the Army pilots, men who were
looking for experience and hours logged in the air so that they might land
lucrative civilian pilot jobs after “Nam,” tended to be both more reckless
and more venturesome behind the eggbeater wheel. The warrant offcers
were young men—feisty, free-wielding. Good and bad. Bad when SOPs
called for a top load of seven men to a slick, but the Huey fyboys took on
eight or nine and sometimes ten passengers. Good when the hotrodders
were quick to challenge a midnight, enemy infested AO to pull out a
wounded soldier. A fulgent searchlight on the belly of the ship would lead
the way for the pilots and afford an extraordinary target for the enemy
56
to shoot at with small arms fre. The “clock-clocking” of the rotary blades
offered relief to the GI when he was leaving the feld for BC duty, anxiety
when he was to be extracted and set in another location during a combat
assault, and total joy when he was lifted out of his unit to make his DEROS
and head for “the world” on his last Huey taxi ride. They slipped in, they
slipped out. Purple smoke canisters puffng up into the sky to lead pilots
into a safe landing. Dust and debris blowing all around on touchdown and
then takeoff. A grunt acting as guide bringing the Huey onto his landing
spot. Ducking under the rotating blades to enter then exit the ship. The
takeoff into the skies where the immense views of the countryside offered
an unobstructed perspective of a gorgeous region that impressed the
sightseer with the enormous material presence of the United States Army
in the little, ingenuous country called Vietnam.

25 October 1967

Humping in the feld inevitably lead to an artillery fre mission when

contact was made, or invented, with the opposition or enemy animals such
as water buffalo or tigers. It was automatic for the company to “hit the dirt,”
attempt to survey the extent of the contact in the awkward confusion, and
depending on his ground force operations' skills and map reading ability,
see the company commander frst notify his higher of the attack, and then
go about his business organizing the proper reaction while his company
went helter-skelter with panic. The company commander and the forward
observer joined in an exchange of sharp, loud cries each trying to come up
with an accurate location of the company's position, and when agreement
was fnally reached, the two radioed that position to their battalion and
battery headquarters where, cannons, gunships, and jets were immediately
put on stand-by in anticipation of the size of the “onslaught.” There was
not much waiting for the artillery batteries because smoke rounds, a safety
precaution (did you every get hit on the head with an artillery smoke
round?), were usually sent at once, one, to verify the unit's location and,
two, inform the attackers that the King of Battle was forthcoming. It went
like this:

“24 fre mission over.

24 send your mission over.
Grid 4728 6321, direction (azimuth) 2400
Suspect enemy activity over.
57
 We repeat. Grid 4728 6321, direction 2400 over.
Affrmative over.
Smoke round at my command over.
24, working it up for you. Give us three to four minutes over.
I roger that over.”

The men in the FDC went about their calculations, checked to see if we
were operating in a “no fre” zone, had the calculations rechecked by
another FDC offcer, and then sent the data to the guns where Fort Sill
“cannoncockers” loaded the tubes with kingsize bullets.

“24, we are ready. At your command over.

Send my smoke over.
On the way, wait.”

Swish, swish. The rounds whistled through the air over the unit's head and
crashed into a clump of trees and underbrush sounding off a loud crack. It
was a relief to the forward observer to know his location had been accurate.
A comfort also to know the smoke round did not land in the middle of the
company.

“ You can switch to Hotel Echo (HE, high explosive) over.

24, ready for Hotel Echo over.
At my command over.
Roger me over.
We roger you, 24.”

The shouting with the CO resumed as men ran around in a panic. Their
indiscriminate shooting dimmed communication with the FDC. There was
no way to tell the extent of the enemy force because the small arms fre of
the one-hundred-twenty-man company overwhelmed any sound coming
from the enemy. It was, therefore, inevitable that the CO would ask for
“precaution pee” to pop into the woods in case there might be some enemy
“out there.”

“Give us pee, 24!

This is 24. Send my Hotel Echo over.
Hotel Echo on the way wait over.”

58
The HE exploded at the point where the smoke round was still puffng up
smoke. Two rounds would usually accompany the frst volley. Then
adjustments were made.

“My Charlie Oscar wants to add 200 (meters) on that spot over.
24, we roger you.
Adding 200 over.”

The rounds were pushed out two hundred meters. Point men for the
company—accustomed to being pinned down up front—screamed back, by
relay, what they were seeing from their front locations. The CO and FO, in
the middle of the customary fle position, waited to hear what was going on
up front.

“Captain, whatever it was is gone.

We're safe.
24, end of mission.
Back to sleep.
Thanks for the assist.
We roger you 24.
24, over and out.”

The helicopter gunships would be arriving about this time, and not to
prove an embarrassment to anyone, the CO would generally ask them to
“rake over” the suspect enemy location and take a “peek see” for enemy
types. Rockets swished and exploded into trees, gunship M-60s cut away at
bushes. The CO offered his thanks to the gunships via radio, and they
reciprocated with the habitual “better luck next time.” The “attack” was
over and the company “picked them up and moved them out” continuing
along a trail or machete-hacked path cut out by the point men who often
carried shotguns in violation of the Geneva Convention. The enemy
lurched farther up the trail where he was sure to contrive another “attack”
on the power-packed infantry company it had grown used to mocking while
its one-hundred twenty men traipsed through the boonies laughing,
talking, and listening to transistor radios and portable record players. It was
Boy Scout hiking time once again, and the absurdity of it all helped some to
understand that the walks through the bug-infested jungles of Vietnam
were no more diffcult nor dangerous than that hike across the George
Washington Bridge into New Jersey from New York to Camp Alpine.
59
 The Forward Observer
Foxtrot Oscar
FO

I bring the cannon's roar to score,

To kill, to shock, to slash, to gore.
The woods' green trees in smithereens,
And fsh in streams scream out it seems.
Craters mar the wild's lush, huge foor;
Faunae scat to hide from still more.
Flowers droop and stoop at swishes;
Rounds pound ground upon my wishes.
Little birds fap fast to shelter;
Snakes and bugs helter-skelter.
Pit vipers wiggle from the scene,
And temper the glow of their sheen.
Brazen oxen stamp their hooves;
Spiders scurry to their grooves.
Tigers! Tigers! All burning bright,
Running from sight from out of fright.
Cobras sway their death brattle,
In vain against the King of Battle.
Pythons writhe then glide in water;
Safe from Arty's salvos of slaughter.
Leeches creep fast to deep crannies,
Puckers puckered in blasphemies.
Wild boar heaves fast to steep land;
Far off from the artilleryman.
Chimps and imps scatter on high vines,
Warned by the din of my shells' chimes.
Bushes bear the blasts of fragments,
Shrapnel pocks without discernment.
Mission ended; wood upended;
Recon teams report the wounded.
I bring the cannon's roar to score,
To kill, to shock,to slash, to gore.

26 September 1997

60
Humping through the woods and jungle with the infantry provided such a
great deal of free time and exercise, I thought I would never have to take
another vacation in my entire life. The exercise was always invigorating; the
free time boring at frst. To while away the hours in the late afternoons and
nights, the ten-minute smoke breaks each hour during humping, and the
time spent in peace and quiet from the moment we made camp for the
night, to the occasion for sleep, I began to read in earnest picking up
novels, histories, political tracts, philosophy and whatever else caught my
interest in the pile of paperbacks and hardcovers which often enough were
inserted by helicopter onto our mountain-high locations. The books,
hundreds of them at times, were delivered in huge nylon sacks, and were
the compliments of the American Red Cross. I think I was the only one
who went to the book pile for books and not newspapers from home or skin
magazines. Sports papers and letters and packages from family members
generally absorbed the men's short-lived reading education. Books kept my
mind from atrophying, and their almost constant availability in Vietnam—
another indication of how out of touch the Army was with its own people:
who reads?—pleased my book wormishness to no end. There had been so
many hundreds of topics I wanted to explore since graduating from the
university, and the Vietnam tour provided me with the time and means to
broaden my horizons. I read and I read and I read. And my reading, rather
than being programmed like it was during those liberal arts training camp
days, was eclectic and enjoyable. The opportunity to read flled a void
which might have been otherwise satisfed by nonproductive b******t
sessions or alcoholism. And the keen sense of self-satisfaction, lifted my
spirits enormously: for here I was, in the jungle, supposedly in a war, but I
was making the best of it by doing something which would beneft my mind
for the rest of its life. With all the c**p I had to put up with with the Army,
it was a joy to know the time had not been wasted because I could not fnd
anything to do with an enormous amount of free time. I packed my
rucksack with Aristotle, Henry James Breasted, Oscar Wilde, Camus,
Sartre, Nabokov...whomever of note I could lay my hands on. I grabbed
what interested me. No matter what. It just had to be well respected in
some manner, shape, or form. A blurb of a review from some critical
quarterly, a Nobel prize winner, a book that had been for a while on the
bestsellers' list, a famous author, a topic I knew nothing about but wanted
to learn...I was reading three or four books a week. Quality substance. My
university professors would have been proud. Plopped up against a tree
with my rucksack still on my back, my helmet tossed to the ground, my
61
trusty—often rusty—M-16 on my lap or at my side. Waiting for a C-130
fight to Pleiku, I read in the air terminal's ready room. I read in
helicopters, in bunkers during mortar attacks, in mess halls, in
hospitals...wherever it was convenient for me, wherever there was a wait. I
had to suffer the insults and joshing of my illiterate and anti-intellectual
comrades who viewed reading—except porn—as a “weird” activity. Who
read in Vietnam? Just me? Everyone wanted to look at pictures. Mostly
naked or semi-naked women. My mind clicked when it read and it learned.
It could have been in a permanent vacuum state. It could have slipped into
a lasting state of intellectual trivia or fantasy about what it would be like
once it returned to “the world.” And what would be done that day back?
When the world was supposed to reopen with ruffes and fourishes? A
decent meal, a Cuban cigar, a hot shower, a WELCOME HOME FROM
THE WAR party? (Why the hell did they send me in the frst place?) The
dreams were all the same. The gossip so repetitious, it was disgusting to
listen to it. The minds of the men were as sterile as the Army had wanted
them to be. I knew I could not waste away in that mind poisoning for one
whole year. I would become as dumb as any other Army lifer after a while.
Books kept me company because I could not fnd any other intellectual—
even friendly—companionship in the Army in Vietnam. I read and I read
and I read. I learned of Egyptian cultural traits that are with us today. Hegel
gave me ideas concerning historical progress and recession. Henry Miller
posited in my being ideas about America's industrial society. Norman
Mailer talked about another war. A re-read of Plato and Aristotle gave me a
review of the basics of thinking. The truths I garnered from books belong
to another world, not to the one I was in in Vietnam. Not in the world of
deceit and trickery that was America's reason for being in South East Asia.
Not in the fear and hopelessness of Vietnam. Vietnam, a thing to me. A bad
thing.

There were at least three times when I was almost killed by my own men in
Vietnam, and they will always remain set with me. When I think back to
those incidents, I am reminded that during my stay in Vietnam, I was more
afraid of my own men than I was afraid of the enemy I was supposed to be
fghting. Such a burden to bear is certainly a morale buster.

The frst time I was defecating off to the side of a chopper pad. I was far
away enough, I thought, to be safe in the event a chopper had to land on
that spot. I had assumed the squatting position and was hidden in a clump
62
of bushes. The squatting position, they told me, is the best way to defecate
because it is natural to the body's contour, and most people in the world—
most people in the world have no access to toilet facilities—use this
position. I had dug my hole with my entrenching tool, I had toilet paper at
the ready in my fatigue's pocket, I had privacy, and I was in the middle of
the process. Off in the distance, two Hueys, revving up for take-offs, sat
imposingly on a crudely cut out LZ—the plural of which was “lizzies!”
There was $1,000,000 worth of military hardware stuck up against the
beautiful green of the jungle. An obscenity. As the blades picked up speed
and whined about centrifugally, they caused a minor windstorm. The rush
of the air currents tossed debris, dirt, and small twigs my way, and I knew it
was time to clean myself and get out because when the choppers would lift
off the LZ, the outward, then downward spiraling motion of the lower air
would intensify and who could know what other objects might come fying
my way. I was hustling to get out of there when the choppers, in unison,
started foating upwards. The torque of the blades caused the front of the
Hueys to dip when the pilot was ready to drive forward. The helicopters
were heading my way, but I wasn't concerned particularly because the
pilots—who couldn't see me—had plenty of room to clear the tops of the
bushes I was making my way out of. Unbeknownst to one of the pilots, who
was on a direct course heading for my position, a nylon net flled with
mortar rounds, which had been birthed on the LZ, had hooked itself on to
one of the choppers landing pods and was about to be lifted into the air for
a free ride. The weight of the net apparently was not noticed by the pilot
who didn't even realize he was in trouble until he was a few feet off the
ground—when the net, containing explosives, set his chopper's
stabilization off. To avoid crashing between the time he needed to correct
the balance and put the chopper back on even keel so he could re-land, the
pilot took evasive action by applying additional thrust to his Huey. He
skidded off in my direction, clumped over bushes, and started to right his
ship. In one swift motion I had to dive off to the side, all the while semi-
naked, and hit the dirt to get away from the swaying net of mortar rounds
that had come as close as two feet from the ground. Had the net caught on
to a bush, it might have had enough pull on the chopper to bring it down in
a crash with an explosion that would have wasted the crew and one semi-
nude lieutenant.

On another occasion, I was reading in my hootch waiting for some

engineers to “blow” away the fortifcations of a fre base our battalion
63
was evacuating. The engineers always yelled “Fire in the hole!” their
equivalent of the golfers's “Four!” when they were ready to detonate an
explosion, but usually the warning went unheeded because the explosions
were very often not heavily charged enough to cause concern to people
hanging around the area. Perhaps it was the confusion and noise and
uneasiness in the air that caused me to leave my hootch and take a peek at
the goings-on around me—I cannot say—but I did get up in time and as I
did the “Fire in the hole!” monition barked out to greet me. I instinctively
moved towards an empty foxhole which I had helped dig the previous day,
and when I caught the gush of an explosion in the corner of my eye, I dived
into the hole headfrst, turned my body upwards, and saw pieces of debris,
including my hootch, go fying over my head in the direction of a group of
GIs who were sitting around enjoying a b******t session. When the
explosion cleared, the fve men were lying on the ground screaming with
minor injuries one of which was a serious leg wound.

The attempt, or what I believed was one, at killing me came one day as I
was humping in the boonies talking with our unit's medic. He was short—
two months to go to DEROS—and was naturally in a good frame of mind.
He thought he was going to be sent to BC in a few days to “slide out” the
rest of the days he had to go in Vietnam. About fve meters behind us, an
arrogant bastard of an infantryman with whom I previously had had
“words” with, was humping with the safety of his grenade launcher off. He
had not had to use his M-79 for days, so there was no excuse for the
weapon to be off safety. No excuse. This guy had never taken a liking to me,
and often taunted me about my New York accent while his was from some
southern US city—perhaps in Alabama or Georgia. The M-79 grenade
launcher shot a round—a fst-thick projectile—which had the capacity to
kill anyone around it for fve meters if it blew. Before it could explode, it
had to travel a specifc distance in order to release its trigger mechanism.
This was a safety feature of the weapon. The rifing of the round through
the bore popped the round out of it, but it could not explode before it
travelled, I think, about ten meters. The medic and I heard the round pop
out of the launcher, and we went sideways hitting the dirt, waiting to see if
we would be blown to bits. The medic was slower than I on hitting the dirt,
and before he hit it, he took the round on his right calf. The projectile
hadn't blown. We were safe. The medic's calf bulged to more than twice its
normal size with a huge hematoma, and as they prepared to medivac him, I
went, with rage in me, to talk with the dumb bastard grunt.
64
 “You m***********g, c*********g, bastard!
He backed off. I had my rife pointed at his head.
“I'm going to kill you, you m**********r!
Do you always keep your grenade launcher off safety?
He couldn't answer me. He was as scared s******s as I was out of my mind
with furor. Before I could get another word out, my company commander
grabbed me from behind in a bear hug and dragged me out.
“Cool it, lieutenant!
Captain, court-martial that m**********r!
Now!
It's SOP to keep M-79s on safety.
Court-martial him! Court-martial him!
Relax, lieutenant.
Cool it.
We'll talk about it when you calm down.
Captain, you won't court-martial him because you are
an a********g lifer.
Lieutenant, get hold of yourself. That's an order.
You're the one who'll be court-martialed
if I hear another word from you.”
I responded to that threat and started to cool down. I wasn't going to be
court-martialed for a grunt. It had been the frst time, the only time, I had
lost my cools with the men. It had been a gush of emotion I just could not
have contained. It had to fow. I was holding too much in in Vietnam, and I
felt no regret about expressing my rage over a careless incident that might
have killed me. When I returned to my FO party, my RTO and recon
sergeant offered their sympathies to me when I apologized to them for my
outburst. I was embarrassed, but my brief ft of insanity had relieved an
incredible amount of tension.

I remember from high school that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's

administration was known as the “alphabet” administration because the
President had incorporated so many new programs that they had to be
abbreviated and acronymized so people could remember the programs.
Vietnam had its abbreviations, too, and they relied much on the Army's
alphabet: A-Alpha, B-Bravo, C-Charlie, D-Delta, E-Echo, F-Foxtrot, G-
Golf, H-Hotel, I-India, J-Juliet, K-Kilo, L-Lima, M-Mike, N-November, O-
Oscar, P-Poppa, Q-Quebec, R-Romeo, S-Sierra, T-Tango, U-Uniform, V-
Victor, W-Whisky, X-Ex-Ray, Y-Yankee, Z-Zulu; Lima Zulu-Landing Zone,
65
Charlie Alpha-Combat Assault, Poppa Charlie-Personnel Carrier, Foxtrot
Oscar-Forward Observer, Alpha Oscar-Area of Operations, Echo Mike-
Enlisted Man, ad infnitum.... The jargon of the soldier was reduced to a few
thousand words, I guess, and it provided a unique combination of linguistic
passwords which pointed out the special circumstances the military man
was involved in in being in Vietnam. Army talk was brief, concise, and
cataloged.

Apart from all the unique, often terrorizing, situations I came across while
in Vietnam, I think I would have to say that my reduction to a state of
“animality” was perhaps the one that lingers the most in my mind still today
(26 June MMXIX) as I write this paragraph.

When I was at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, I copied the mores of the Army
lieutenant, and imposed myself to conform to them. At Sill, we spit-shined
boots, uniforms were starched, the visors on our offcer caps were spit-
shined, and our gig lines were aligned at the seam of the uniform, shirt,
belt buckle, and uniform trouser fy-seam—just as I did that this morning
here in Calenzano, Italy! Wearing a uniform makes the man—to a great
extent. One of my girlfriends in 1967, told me I looked horrible in a
uniform; and, I believed her. In the real Army it was important to be well-
shaved, of course, and personal appearance was a vital asset if one wished
to be promoted.

I always had been attentive to what I wore. Whether it was a jacket, tie, or
shirt, I always selected them with the idea of matching them accurately.
Shoes and hats also had to conform. But, in civilian life there was the
choice for one to make when dressing; however, in the Army all dressed
with the same clothes in order to achieve a worldwide appearance.

In Vietnam, all this razzle-dazzle escaped notice. It must be remembered

that in Vietnam 14-15% of the soldiers actually went to the battlefeld where
our dress code was obviously lackadaisical—and for good reason. In Bravo
Charlie, there was some resemblance of Army discipline as it was Stateside,
and this depended, naturally, on the commanding offcer's interpretation of
grooming—whether or not it was for him something of prime concern.

But in the feld, a codifcation of what one was to wear was open to a debate
that would not last long. Men felt they were being called to endure. So, they
66
were not going to be told—unless by a high-ranking Army offcer—what to
wear in the jungle where no one could see them except the birds and the
bees. As a consequence, we went unshaven; we became so dirty and smelly
with caked crud on us, it was as if we were Bowery bums; we couldn't take
showers for at least ten days or maybe two weeks; our once green fatigues
had turned to a black-grey color; the armpits of our fatigues had turned
white from the salt tablets we had taken in the 40°C jungle temperatures;
our feet were white and mushy from days of sleeping without taking off our
boots; when we could change our socks and uniforms for pairs of dry ones,
the old socks and fatigues stunk to high heaven and we threw them into a
fre to demolish them; many of us had impetigo or ring worm or blisters or
hives or eczema or dermatitis or warts or nobody knew what. When I was in
a helicopter waiting to be lifted off, I almost threw up because of the putrid
stench of the two men I was sitting between, and I could hardly wait for the
helicopter to fy so air could fow through the two open side doors; every
day we defecated in a hole we each had to dig for ourselves; like dogs, we
urinated on trees; we often had to wash our teeth with salt because our
Crest toothpaste was being sold on the black market; and, through all of
this discomfort, I found a dignity that belonged only to the savage. My
environment was Nature—Nature with all its splendor and venture. I had
no deodorant to make me smell dandy. No hair tonics. No skin creams. The
insect repellent we were given was as strong as lye. We splashed our
fatigues just above our boots with it to keep leeches from climbing up into
our scrotums. We were locked into Nature. Co-habitants with snakes, pit
vipers, tigers, water buffalo, mosquitos, cobras, kraits, pythons, poisonous
spiders, leeches, nighttime animal jungle blabber, lovely plants and bushes,
trees of all assortments, wild fowers, streams and brooks, jungle aromas,
ferns, stunning foliage, lustrous sunrises and sunsets...no New York taxis,
buses, subways, crowds, no pizzas, no hamburgers, no french fries, no
whisky, no church, and worst of all...NO ICE CREAM! FTA...FTA...FTA.

The experience of living in a jungle without the comforts of the modern

world of the cosmopolitan city of New York, where I grew up as a youth,
marked me for life. When I arrived, fnally, in New York after a grueling
year in the Army in Vietnam, I was generally relieved and ecstatic. I had not
been injured, nor did I lose my mind; and, if I could be called “crazy,” I was
crazy before I went to Vietnam! Vietnam had given me one of the most
precious gifts I ever have received: my love for life! It had been almost
taken away from me, yet I struggled to keep it—and did! I walked around
67
the streets of Manhattan happy as could be, and I could feel the tension
that had accompanied me for a year slowly begin to melt. I wondered how
long it would take for the callous on my right thumb to disappear. It had
been used to switch on and off the safety of my M-16 for a whole year. I had
won my war against the United States of America, and I could have cared
less that many of its citizens cared less about me. I was out of danger! I was
whole and wholesome!

After two months subsequent to my arrival in Vietnam and my emotional

“settling in,” which had been an intense affrmation of myself as an
antagonist against the war, I experienced an unusually high degree of
remorse which at frst I admitted to myself, reluctantly, was not wholesome.
This self-reproach which one usually feels for wrongdoing, accompanies,
generally—according to the analysts of the mind—incorrect thinking. So I
was at a loss to understand my contrite sensations when I knew
intellectually my reasoning for being against the war was rational and
ethically sound. It could not have been otherwise. There was a great deal of
pressure on me. I was participating in the war; still, on the sly, I was against
it. A double bind torment for which I have never forgiven the United States
government and its warmongering people. My emotions went on stubbornly
for about three months, and their intensity was as variable as the many
psychic machinations I conjured to eliminate their persistence. My feelings
did not in any way impede my job effectiveness, as much as I had thought I
had been left on my own. I went through a mental house cleaning for weeks
trying to diminish the guilt by means of my own self-psychoanalytic
initiatives. I had concluded that my opposition to my presence in Vietnam
as a military functionary was at the core of my stress. For all my
individualistic forays into the mentality of a corrupt society bartering its
wares to fght an enemy less equipped than it was, I had to admit to my own
dependence on that vitiated army in times of my own needs, in times of
danger. My compunction was collective in its pathology. For a time I
idolized myself to ease the stress of this crushing occurrence. I made myself
a mini symbol of the American anti-Vietnam movement. I scribed The
Hippie Lieutenant on my helmet camoufage cover until I was ordered to
remove it. I took on this burden—this self-immolation—to keep my mind
straight in another way. If I had not gone through this ritualistic exercise, if
I had not demonstrated my own surge of commonality as a war opponent, I
would have not been able to last through the year untouched by the Army's
vileness and corruption. Loneliness was the price I had to pay. I am happy
68
to say that I few over the Army's cuckoo nest! I was going through the
motions of being a soldier, participating physically, but rejecting mentally
and emotionally. It was too much to take on without guilty backlashes
punching away at my mind. I never came to understand or “analyze” my
guilt feelings while I was in Vietnam. The experience was terribly powerful
and horribly emotional. It is an event in my life which I will never forget, an
event which, I hope, will never befall my mind—or the minds of others—
ever again.

We Gotta Get Outta This Place

If it's the last thing we ever do...

We've got to get out of this place.
We've got to get out,
No doubt,
Out of this place,
We've got to get out.

Away from the counting of days all day,

Away from the pining for Kay so gay.
Away from the long nights lonely and lorn,
Away from a rival furled tight with his scorn.
We've got to get out of this place.

Far from the dilly and dally of green,

Far from the CO so pushy, so mean.
Far from the capsules and needles you're fed,
Far from the yearnings to snuggle in bed.
We've got to get out of this place.

Off to where shell swishes are not to fear,

Off to where grenades are not what you hear.
Off to where there are not boots to lace tight,
Off to where there are not snakes in the night.
We've got to get out of this place.

Not near the red ooze on the chopper's foor,

Not near the bloodied gauze and the woundeds' roar.

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 Not near the stench of a body's burnt fesh,
Not near the gore of a soldier's slow death.
We've got to get out of this place.

We've got to get out,

No doubt,
Out of this place,
We've got to get out.

21 February 1997

S Ø R E N K I E R K E G A A R D (!813-1855)

While I was in Vietnam, I continued to be, nominally, a Christian. Roman

Catholic, precisely because I had been previously brainwashed into being
so. My Roman Catholic family was an almost fanatical one—of the Irish
Catholic ilk. My mother had insisted that I take along with me to Vietnam a
wooden rosary that she said had been blessed by the Pope himself. So, it
was easy for me to be attracted to Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish
philosopher who many consider to be the frst existentialist philosopher
Many other existentialists were themselves atheists as I would become later
in my life. Kierkegaard's views on guilt impressed me enormously. Man
chooses himself, affrms himself. By asserting himself, man becomes
responsible for himself, then becomes guilty because he has chosen. To
exist one must be guilty. I had thought of the possibility of playing the
game according to the Army's book of regulations. I imagined myself as a
model offcer: conforming, enthusiastic about the “war,” career-minded. I
imagined myself supporting the Vietnam “War” effort. I imagined myself
adjusted in this mode of thinking. I could have puked. F**k the Army! I
was not going to accept what I did not believe in. I would only accept my
antagonism against the Army and the protraction of its presence in
Southeast Asia. (Such is the idealism of a young twenty-three-year-old
trying to survive in Vietnam, trying to grow up in such an oppressive
atmosphere in which one is brought to the brink of desperation because
that ambiance has stolen the joy of one's youth, and now threatens to take
away the happiness of young adulthood. F**k the Army! FTA. FTA. FTA.)
With such an immature attitude, I had to adjust the role I was playing in
Vietnam. I was a member of the United States armed forces in appearance
70
only. I was a member of the anti-Vietnam “War” effort in spirit—an
underground entity. I had to hide my opposition to avoid court-martial and
ostracism, and I had to do it in a clever way which would keep my mind
strong and stable. A sense of humor would help. It had always been a
valuable psychic tool for me, and I made use of it gratuitously in Vietnam.
It was easy to fnd things to ridicule, to mock. Remember, I was in the
Army. My natural audience was the enlisted man. We thought the same.
F**k the Army. We identifed with each other more easily once the offcer
facade was broken through by the men. The enlisted man took Vietnam in
stride more than the offcer did. Offcers sought occasion to upset, to
shock, to attack, to bolt forward. They were the activists. The enlisted men
were the pacifsts. The enlisted man had no money to accrue, to rob, little
rank to gain, s**t details to accomplish. He was a drone—had no sting,
gathered no honey. His was to do or die, not to question why. He had time
to philosophize as he waited on long chow lines, belabored the scrubbing
down of a 105mm howitzer, stalled his way through the twigs trying to
avoid the enemy whenever he could. The enlisted man was a rebellious
sort. His rebellion was directed at the Army—not the enemy! He knew he
was at the mercy of the Army and its conglomeration of managerial
incompetents who cared nothing about a soldier's personal or emotional
make-up. The offcer or the non-commissioned offcer were the ones to
send him on his way to Death. When he was told to act he did so with a
show of conformity which satisfed convention, but deep inside he was
contemptuous. When such a character found an offcer who shared his own
views about the Army and Vietnam, and an offcer who even had a sense of
humor, he was overwhelmed with the occasion to learn that someone in
authority was sympathetic to his cause. Two things were bound to happen:
First, there was an overreaction of glee and goodwill. Then, the enlisted
man brought attention to himself and the sympathizing offcer. Majors and
colonels, catching this social intercourse, sped their merry ways to the
offcer to chide him and give a career orientation course downgrading the
closeness of one's relationships, with enlisted men as if they possessed the
bubonic plague or some contagious disease which might eat away at their
promotion possibilities—subtle threats. I became wise to this paranoia and
quickly cultivated personal relationships with those enlisted individuals
who were mature enough to handle an offcer-enlisted man friendship
without losing it. I did it in the underground. I sought alliances with my
friends in the enlisted men's hideouts: supply rooms, mess halls, ammo
dumps, and other select locations where we would not risk observation by
71
high-ranking offcers. In the feld, social relationships were generally freer
than in Bravo Charlie, and it was more comfortable to cultivate a ridiculing,
anti-Army stance, sometimes with a sense of humor, without heading into
trouble with the higher brass. These social relationships were, nevertheless,
frivolous and generally not very thoughtful. No one wore rank in the feld,
and for all an enlisted man knew, unless I was attached to his unit, I was
just another grunt suffering the same pains he was. The enlisted men who
knew me could not believe they were talking with an offcer who thought
Vietnam was as much a screw to me as they thought it had been to them
and the Vietnamese people. It was easy to be a chronic complainer, a son-
of-a-bitch. And whenever I could muster the strength to use my sense of
humor, I took on the son-of-a-bitch role to keep everyone at bay. “When I
walk into the Valley of Death, I see no evil, and I hear no evil because I am
the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.” Many of us had this short “ditty”
engraved on our Zippo lighters.

This son-of-a-bitch attitude, accomplished two things: It toughened us

mentally making us defant when we had to be. And we had to be. We
created, with it, a protection for ourselves. A thick crust of rhetoric
shielded us from outside attacks on our emotional fragility. Of course, it
was small talk. BS. We needed a “role” to fall back on in those most
diffcult moments. We needed a part to play which was familiar, constant,
and uplifting. Being nice guys was not going to bring the same results. We
all were, in part, not nice guys but bitter, resentful young men.

The tough guy role had another effect. It gave us that verve when we
needed it. With it, we punched back. The tougher we went about our
business, the more the s**t rolled off us. We became immune to causes
which in other circumstances, would have caused us worry and doubt. We
gritted our teeth, chomped on our cigars, acted tough and punky. We
smoldered with defance and the ravenousness to get the f**k out of
Vietnam and the Army in one piece—physically and mentally. We were not
going to do anything for the Army which we might regret in our later lives
after the facts about Vietnam were exposed to the world and the citizens of
the United States who, all of them, conspired indirectly in the tragedy of
the Vietnam “War.” There were not going to be nightmares and cold sweats
in the middle of the night for us to live with forever. John Wayne, that
cinematographic superstar, that epitome of World War II base camp
“warriorism,” that big lard ass phony, was right about one thing: Suck it in,
72
motherf****r, and don't let it get to you. We were going to get out of
Vietnam in one piece. We were going to get out without psychic scars that
would cripple us emotionally for the rest of our lives. We were not going to
die for the New York Stock Exchange. If they refused to give us a just,
reasonable explanation for fghting in Vietnam, they—those p****s—would
have to go it without us. There was no way we were going to get as f*****g
stupid as they expected us to be. No way!

F R A N Z K A F K A (1883-1924)

Kafka's The Trial set me into an attack of anguish! That bastard! I was
suffering with feelings of having committed a breach of some sort of
conduct and a feeling of culpability for offenses—unreal offenses—weighed
heavily on my mind. I had all to do with myself now when I came to the
realization that I could lose the promise of my possibilities with or without
the stalwart, imitative demeanor of one John Wayne. Here I was in an
appreciable state of guilt, in a emotionally weak state of mind, trying to
justify myself as I opposed the United States Army and the American
people. All I had was hippies and student window breakers to back me up.
All of a sudden, I realized I was on trial like Josef K! A weakling pitted
against a monstrous system. I had been placed into a bizarre, surrealistic
predicament—victim of bureaucratic, militaristic powers. I knew I was
outside—on the outermost fringe. It was not a comfortable place to be. But
in my quest for that that I believed to be right, good, truthful, I knew two
things were happening to me: my future, as much as I thought I could
control it, might not be entirely in the works as I would like it to be, and
the sacrifce of myself on behalf of what was intellectually and ethically
correct, might be a way for me to participate in my own demise. That was
depressing to dwell on. It scared the hell out of me. In my worst moments,
it made me back down, withdraw into myself, avoid expressing myself. I
could justify any good effort, I could vindicate any heroic action, I could
uphold any fght for a belief. Now I realized I could try to fend to avoid
participation in my own destruction—but might be overcome by some
other element known to me, to which I was also dependent upon! It was in
this awkward position, this state of mental anguish, that I remained in
Vietnam for the rest of my year's obligation. I walked on the fence in
danger of falling to any side, at any moment. I was anxious and determined
to fght with all my might for a cause I must nurture, but I had to remain
cautious and clever enough to pull out when it became necessary. What
73
else is there for one to do with his or her life but to struggle for their beliefs
in an irrational, cruel world protecting themselves against that world with
all their strength? As much as I might take jabs at the Army, I knew how
and when to back off in my corner for refuge. In Vietnam, my life's
sanctuary was my intelligence and my dependence on the Army to do what
was consistently erroneous and regularly awkward. I preserved my sanity by
fghting against the Army's infrangible mentality that would prefer to stuff
my brain with large quantities of rationalizations and untruths. I had
chosen, in my own fashion, to be free, and I had accepted responsibility for
my actions. I was as free as I could be.

Sometimes, my guilt was manageable. Guilt had sucked me way under for
so long. From time to time, I could transform my feelings of being on a
guilt trip to the American people and, once this had been accomplished, I
enjoyed an impression of relief and comfort. I made everyone in the United
States share my blameworthiness. If I were going to feel guilty, so were
they. I imagined men and women stockholders with sons in Vietnam, and
workers in ammo factories who could not keep artillery rounds from
becoming duds for the enemy to use to blow up GIs. I envisaged Americans
drinking and taking pills to relax. I ideated them complaining about
television reports concerning GI wounded and dead as if the accounts were
offending their sensibilities when in reality they could not stomach the
horror of what was being brought to them in living color. I could see them
starting companies with the blood money that was foating around in the
country from the expenditures made in Vietnam. I conceptualized them
cursing and hating those who opposed the American presence in Vietnam
—their frustrations so intense. I conjured up the images of old men in the
American Legion supporting the Vietnam effort—believing that war was
natural and good—and thinking Vietnam was the place to halt the spread of
the communism they thought one day would consume their lives. I pictured
the oil company executives readying exploration crews to search the South
Chine Sea for petroleum deposits. I fantasized all the confusion about
Vietnam. I depicted their guilt in my mind. I perceived that their guilt had
to be more intense than my own. How could my self-reproach be more
imposing than theirs. I found out later it was not.

BLOOD AND GUTS

Not only did the Army not provide us with government inspected sex,
74
knowledge about what communism actual was, and solid preparation for
what a combat soldier needed to survive in battle, another of the Army's
glaring faults was its neglect in not providing us with feigned and/or real
battle wounds and examples of death scenes—so as to predispose our
minds to that ultimate terror of battle. Prior to being shipped to Vietnam, I
had never witnessed a serious “blood and guts” physical phenomenon. The
closest I had come to it was those bang 'em up car accidents I had
witnessed on the New York State Thruway, and even then, the “blood and
guts” were minimal—bodies had already been covered with white sheets—
and tolerable even for my own weak stomach. One expected blood letting
in combat. Why the Army did not provide simulations, at least, was a
question that perplexed me many months before I had been assigned to
Vietnam.

I must admit, that I do remember signing in—you sign-in for everything in

the a*s-covering Army—for a mandatory public safety flm just before my
Thanksgiving leave from Fort Sill in 1966. The flm short, about ffteen
bloody minutes, was a series of gory accidents that started out as minor
bumper busters, and then oozingly progressed to rolling heads and bloody
pools being hosed down by Oklahoma State Highway patrolmen. Cars were
crushed, bent, and shattered—totaled. People were broken, botched. The
movie was disgustingly obscene, and I was tempted to walk back to my
battery area instead of accepting a lift by auto from a friend. For a while,
discussion revolved around the effectiveness of the flm—its purpose being,
naturally, to slow the fow of highway deaths during the holiday season by
graphically showing the consequences of carelessness and, of course, that
perpetual highway nemesis—drunkenness. The flm's prophylactic message
is not persuasive. Driving home for Thanksgiving is a good act in itself.
More accidents are bound to occur during vacation time simply because
there are more cars and people on the roads. That is not a reason not to be
cautious. It is a reason to be extra cagey, and the way to instill carefulness is
to appeal to reason and not to the individual's basic instincts. Holiday
traffc deaths are a cause for further safety education. The type of training is
what is important. Likewise, instruction for combat is required. Here, too,
proper education is important. John Wayne had convinced me that combat
business was bad business. I should be ready for it. And I was actually
dumb enough to believe, before I entered the Army, that the Army would
prepare me for combat. Bad business. Nasty business. I was looking for a
fght, and a fght was that which I should know about. Since the Army did
75
not prepare me physically for Vietnam—the shape my body would be in
when I went to Vietnam was solely my own responsibility—I couldn't
expect it to prepare me emotionally. The Army was so inept at everything it
did. (I actually feel, every once in a while, a romantic-like, nostalgic feeling
for the Army. It verges on sentimentality. Could so large an organization be
so f*****g stupid so much of the time?) Proper training was what I needed
and it was not what I was going to get from the United States Army.

Since my mind was unsettled about the “blood & guts” issue, I had, before
I went to Vietnam, to explore other avenues to educate myself. My sister, a
nurse, provided what was I suppose the best advice. The only proposal I
could hap upon. All nurses go through emergency room (ER) training, and
it is in the ER that nurses are, usually, given their initiation into the terrors
of body mutilation and rampaging disease. Any ER is a hopped-up place
smelling of disinfectant, wreaking of anguish, and barking impolite triage as
nurses and doctors, in a rush, go about making their tasks professional and
just to all those victims who are suddenly at their mercy. (Never argue with
an ER nurse!) I asked my sister what it was like, for the frst time, to witness
a battered skull or a shredded leg or a bullet hole or a gushing fesh wound.
Not nice, of course. But not as bad as might be expected. The body's built-
in defense mechanisms are rather resilient. I wanted no more psychology.
What really happens? Nausea? Tremor? Fear? Does one vomit in
retaliation? One is faced head-on with almighty Death. How does one cope
with constant exposure to “blood & guts,” Life and Death? My sister said
that doctors and nurses in the ER often laugh and joke through the
mending of a broken skull or other type of injury. There is, sometimes, no
way to accept horror but with an insane normality. Each person, having his
or her own defense, will react in their personal way. I had the scoop
straight from the nurse's mouth and it was that, one, it's not so bad as you
might think and, two, the perennial: “You get used to it” Whoopee! I'll get
used to it! The U S Army could have helped me get used to it with slides,
montages, vu-graphs, movies, simulations, pictures, blocks of instruction,
skits, articles, hospital visits, lectures, presentations, training courses...you
name what else could have been taken from the arsenal of mass media
educational s**t the Army possessed and had deposited. But the Army
wouldn't do it. Why? It thought chopped-off heads rolling around the
highway were good visual aids before vacation. But bullet holes from World
War II battles were ineffectual. FTA! The Army knew damn well that if it
had shown what really went on during World War II and the Korean
76
War, the reaction of the recruits would be to not want to go to Vietnam!
Logical, no? Who would be fool enough to hump it for Uncle Sam after
seeing all the hideousness of the Second World War's battles?

My frst encounter with “blood & guts” came at night with a fashlight. We
were bedded down in our night position. We expected action during the
night because intelligence reports—usually erroneous—claimed that enemy
activity to our west was imminent. We prepared ourselves as was our habit.
Foxholes were even dug—for a change. It was quite surprising, then, that
we took a few mortar rounds. About four or fve at frst. They were very
imprecise and that was a good sign because the enemy, probably, was
hitting us and then running away. “Charlie” knew he had to leave
immediately because artillery and helicopter gunships would be zeroing on
him—his position having been given away from the fashes of his mortar
tubes. After his quick punches, “Charlie” either moved to another location
or went home for the night.

Well, Jerry, our gung-ho, Fort Benning, Georgia, Home of the Infantry—
correction, HOME OF THE FIGHTING INFANTRY—Offcer Candidate
Schooled second platoon leader wanted to jump out of his foxhole and take
along anyone who would be stupid enough to follow him, and chase down
those slant-eyed “gook” bastards who had woken him up in the middle of
the night, and let's go kick their m***********g a***s from here to
Hanoi...those s******s who think they can fuck with Bravo Company of the
Seventh of the Four Hundredth Eighty-three, when we are bedded down
for the night, and the c*********s mortar rounds didn't hit even one of
us! ...their accuracy so s****y and captain I'll get their a***s for you you bet
I will, and we'll have a body count for Husky and a party in Bravo Charlie
for the entire battalion when we get back to Pleiku...give me my helmet,
sergeant. I'll be back in an hour with dead m***********g gooks so help me!
Jerry jumped out of his foxhole as any kid in Keansberg would have, and he
was chided and encouraged at the same time. Our company commander,
not wanting to be a spoilsport when he knew he should have been, frowned
but didn't say a word. He didn't want to risk being unpopular with the
grunts who thought Jerry was in his Geneva Convention rights to go kick
a*s for the company. And, the captain needed his men to help him read his
map. He was not going to offend their sensibilities.

Jerry piled on out with extra handgrenades, his trusty M-16 that he
77
hoped would not jam on him, a fash gun to signal choppers in case his a*s
got in heavy trouble, and two bandoliers of 5.6mm balled ammo magazines.
Jerry liked war. He was a well-equipped weapons' storehouse. He had not
charged ten meters when a mortar plopped in front of him and decked him
fast and hard. Jerry clutched that manly place that marks the juncture of
the lower abdomen and thigh. Both of his testicles had been sliced off by a
shell fragment, and Jerry was screaming out of his mind.
“Mommy! Mommy!
I can't fuck my mommy!
Where's my mommy?
My God!
Help me!
Get me my mommy!”
He knew his gonads were gone. His penis was slashed and oozing forth
blood. Screams for a medic flled the air. Jerry was really bad. He would be
dead in less than an hour. I had jumped and dived over to him with a
fashlight, without a red flter and, in my panic, screamed for a “goddam
f*****g medic—where the hell are you specialist fourth class Maguire?”
Maguire leaped into our position like a football safety diving for a full-back
on an open-end run. He arrived seconds after I got to Jerry. We laid low
expecting another mortar round to explode next to us. Maguire went
through his rucksack and prepped a morphine shot at the same time asking
me to shine my fashlight on the wound at the same time sizing up Jerry's
condition at the same time calling for a medivac at the same time throwing
his helmet to the ground at the same time telling a declining Jerry to stop
talking so f*****g badly about his dear mother at the same time telling Jerry
he could have lost his eyes, at the same time telling me again to hold the
f****g fashlight, goddam it, lieutenant, a little f*****g higher. Maguire was
good. Professional. He went about his business profciently as I knelt
scared and shaking—stealing fast glimpses at Jerry's castration and mortal
wound. I cursed the Army. FTA! I held Jerry's hand. I listened anxiously
for the clock-clocking of the medivac. Jerry was fnally unconscious. He was
ashen. We covered him and waited. Blood steamed out from under the
poncho liner. Maguire lit a butt. Without him I don't think I would have
been able to help Jerry. On my own I might have shook spasmodically with
fear, incapable of doing anything. This, my frst initiation to blood, guts,
and war gore. This s**t...what I would get used to. And I did. My sister's
prediction was word-perfect. I got “used to it.” But every time I did, I
conjured up all the contempt I could wreak on the Army. FTA! FTA! FTA!
78
I fueled my hatred for it for making me come to Vietnam. And when I came
across “blood & guts,” there was always someone to help me help another. I
always tried, whenever I could, to help another help someone. Our
comrades were never alone in their most horrible moments, and a rush to
medical attention, anywhere in Vietnam, was never more than twenty or
thirty minutes. Watching men die is one of the greatest hells in war.
Watching innocent civilians die is a greater hell. But the greatest hell is
watching your own countrymen die for something they didn't believe in.
The GI lies motionless, his dog tag impaled on his mouth's upper bridge by
that little notch on the side. He is now innocent. A child. His life has been
given up for nothing. He knew his efforts were a waste all the while, but he
had not the will, the courage, to fght against his own slaying by his own
people.

I thought of Death often in Vietnam, but did not let it get to me like the
struggle I had had with guilt. I was reading and reading and reading to keep
my mind on other matters. Also, I had a lot to do with the chores assigned
to me. These left me with less time to dwell on my own feelings. Death was
a subject on everyone's mind, but little discussion of it was heard because it
was believed to foster bad luck, was not pleasant to talk about, and besides
it was purposeless to do so. Avoiding the subject is, perhaps, the best way
to deal with Death provided one can come to grips with the idea from the
very outset. To witness it on a regular basis, does not permit such a luxury.
Thoughts on Death, Life's antithesis, provided me with a sound reaction as
I staggered—very often emotionally fragile—through the Vietnam
experience. Instead of dragging me down into the pits of despair and
disheartenment, thought of Death gave me a surge to live, an intense
feeling for the experience of Life. Perhaps the reason for this was that there
existed a sense of urgency to preserve one's life in a situation that
threatened it more than it was normally menaced. I aimed to conserve my
life at all costs while I was in Vietnam. I sought cunning ways to avoid
danger and the passage to places or events which involved risk. A jeep ride
was safer than a reckless lift in a Huey. A clean rife was better than a rusty
one. Dry socks healthier than wet ones. Nausea-inducing anti-malaria
tablets better than a cooked brain. The preservation instinct was
exaggerated for me in Vietnam. My life took on a new, invigorating meaning
because, for once in my life, I actually felt that it was in the process of being
taken away from me—and would be taken away—if I was not cautious.
Should I face the thought of Death as much as I could or avoid any thought
79
about it? What was it that I feared most about Death? For a long time I felt
I was cheating myself for not facing Death and all that I could do with it. I
did not want to see mutilated, dead bodies, and at frst I avoided them.
(Once an Echo Mike asked me if I would like to have an ice cream that he
said was in the back of his reefer—refrigerated truck. When he opened the
back door, it was flled with dead American soldiers.) Finally, I became
“used to it,” and I saw no reason to believe that Death had anything to do
with me. I soul searched through myself and instead of analyzing my own
feelings of Death, I canvassed the feelings of others. What the analysis did
was to raise further questions. It wasn't really the pain and gore about
Jerry's demise that frst terrorized me. It was Jerry's passage from Life into
a permanent void. I assumed there was some sort of nullity after Death
because I could not accept the idea of immortality. I really wished I could
have. If we were immortal, this life would be easier to live because there
would be promise of something better in the future. The grunts I knew did
not think of Life in terms of the hereafter, and if they did, their convictions
about it were usually church-going spurious and improbable. The thought
of nothingness after thoroughness was the most frightening of thoughts.
What would happen when the heart stopped beating? What feeling would
come to the body? I had never even fainted in my life. Dead bodies lying on
the ground reminded me of the terminal point of life, and facing it as
frequently as one does in combat, did not so much to allay the fears of
Death than to reinforce the desires to live. I fantasized about that jet
touching down at Fort Lewis, Washington for my DEROS as any other
man did. It was a pleasant way to while away the time. I knew this worst of
experiences, war, had to offer me a signifcant contrast to Life, and in doing
so, would strengthen my verve to live more passionately and gainfully
because I would have undergone the opposite of Living. There was the
universal belief that if one got out of Vietnam alive, there would be a
second chance waiting to be taken hold of with glee and appreciation. That
was enough to keep me pushing forward. But the passage into oblivion was
what I feared the most. To go to sleep forever was a terrifying thought. And
its increased potential put a strain on our minds. The passage was no doubt
different for each and every individual, and some would pass more easily
than others. The jerking to a halt of the brain and heart was probably a
welcome relief, to at least, the tired mind and body. Rest at last. I
remembered what a famous analyst of the mind, Fromm or Ellis, had said
about Life: we come to this world against our will, and we must live our life
knowing it will be taken away from us at a moment we do not choose it to
80
be taken away. Here I was in a situation where there were others trying to
take my life away from me. I was angered. To beat out the Stealer of Life
before it leveled his blow on me was my aim.

Freud's belief in an unconscious death wish puzzled me. Was I, after all,
seeking death? Was I caving in fghting against a desire to die with an
almost violent will to live? Was a war a noble chance to live out one's death
wish? And get a medal for it! Is this what the romanticism of war is about?
Standing up to life and daring it to end you. Is it Life we fear more, or
Death? Does a boxer, a bullfghter, a race car driver, a bar brawler, a bank
robber, an Evil Knievel, stare Life in the face to dare its end, then continue
on with Life in a gush of reasons to keep on going on with it? It is Life that
causes us so much woe, not Death. Death is nothingness. The fear of Death
is the fear of Life. The survival of Life recharges our batteries, stimulates us
to continue on further. We have asked for an end to Life, and the end, not
granted, compels us to ready ourselves to return to defy it once more. This
continuing reenactment is our lot in Life. We fght, we win, we are set
back, we loose. We go forward, we go back. Our fate is little determined by
ourselves; and, we are at the mercy of all that we cannot control but attempt
to do so even thinking we might be capable of doing so. What do most do
to avoid this dreary thought? They envelop themselves in a protective shield
and ignore the thought of Death as much as possible.

It was so diffcult for the American people to face the realities of Vietnam.
Their consciousnesses had been so used to repressing the notion of Death
that when it graphically appeared to them over the mass media, they were
shocked not so much by what Vietnam was doing to their sons and
daughters, but by what the idea of Death was doing to them. It would have
not have made any difference to the American public if Jerry's castrated
testicles had been shown to them, because when the event would have been
delivered full force, by the strength of color video tape clips and their audio
complements, the citizens of the United States still would have rapidly
recoiled at the sight of so vivid a presentation of Death. For years before
the Vietnam debacle, the American people had been hypnotized and
bushwhacked by television and newsreels and other mass media control
processes, they had no reason to believe their government might have been
lying to them. Death, perhaps an on-going process in one's psyche and
something that cannot be denied, had been denied its existence to
Americans—for their own beneft, to keep them continually exuberant.
81
 There was the thought that a buffer zone existed meant to spare Americans
from any form of hideousness—Death. Americans had to be happy. They
were making so many others unhappy. Doris Day movies, hamburger
commercials, Walter Cronkite censorship, psychiatry, Hollywood
mausoleums with piped-in music for the dead, alcoholism, Valiumism,
Hollywoodism, and so many other superfcialities had come to control the
minds of the American people, had helped the populace to avoid facing
reality so that they could think of themselves as being the best of all
possibilities—with a license to kill those who questioned their discomfted
sense of supremacy. How could such brainwashed intellects be prepared to
accept the psychic assaults of the Vietnam immorality as it was dosed out
gradually by the media during the lengthly protraction of the Vietnam
engagement? Confronting the actuality of the death of other individuals was
too nerve-wracking for the American people to attain because they had not
been indoctrinated to front the themes of their own deaths—they had to be
convinced that they were perennially blissful. The slow extraction from
Vietnam was in tandem with America's laggard confrontation with its own
terrorizing thoughts of the Death they had been instructed to defect. The
superfciality of American life, and its materialistic emphasis that had taken
precedence over any ethical or spiritual value, refected off the television
screens of millions upon millions of Americans. America's corruption had
met the limit, and as an historic, symbolic turning point in the
developmental process of the American political and economic system,
Vietnam pointed to the beginning of the decline of the American
leadership role throughout the world, it stretched the economic versatility
of the United States to its breaking point, and it indicated what is very
possibly the kickoff of the eventual end of the world's most technically
advanced nation—or as one Soviet poet put it, “The United States is like a
comet; brilliant at frst, but fast to burn out.”

No wonder the returning Vietnam veteran was not welcomed back to his
country as a hero by those who had sent him on his way to Vietnam for
their own vainglory and economic lucre. His country was immersed within
a spirit of moral cowardice. The GI was a reminder to America of its
genuine perversity. The Vietnam veteran cued the American public of that
which they had sublimated with aplomb: Death—that which American are
best at shrouding.

82
 H U S K Y

Every class has its clown, but unfortunately our infantry battalion's
merrymaker had to be our battalion commander, an ambitious, ignorant,
crude oaf whose principal passion, beyond seeking higher rank from his
Washington connection, was to feed his obsession for respectability with
immaturity and a unique lack of refnement that underscored his obvious
inability to lead an infantry battalion with any degree of professionalism.
Husky was unqualifed. He was continually being chewed out by our
division commander, he screwed up on maneuvers at every turn, and his
battalion had the worst effciency record in the division. Here was a slow-
witted boob who, in order to win the admiration of his men, showed
excessive affection and fondness is a manner that cultivated disrespect
more than it fostered esteem. Husky mixed with his men to show them
what a good guy he was, and while it seemed unusual but agreeable to have
the “old man” come down to the level of the grunt and make him feel his
battalion commander was in on his activities, the men eventually took
Husky for the lummox he really was. They would have preferred that he
run the battalion properly instead of conducting the popularity contest he
was engaged in.

Husky would fy to a company's location in the middle of the jungle and

hand out cold beers to one-hundred and twenty grunts who were shriveled
with heat. Nice. Or he might fy in with a supply ship loaded with hot chow
and participate in the serving. Noble. He swore he was working on getting a
bunch of whores to service his battalion, but he was making no promises.
BS. Husky perked our spirits, no doubt. It was nice to know that those who
you thought were idiots, were in fact idiots. Whenever he could, Husky got
in not only with those of illustrious rank, he even went to the common folk
in the Army's hierarchy of distinction. He was pleasant to the mind and
senses, but deep inside the lout there was a vicious streak of malevolence
and vagary which Husky leveled—at those who suffered his scorn—in the
most subtle fashion. Husky's personality was Army brat. In fact, he was the
son of a famous Second World War general. That explains a lot. With this
cross to bear, poor Husky stumbled, ineptly, through his Army career. Our
infantry battalion commander, at once capable of pleasing manners, at once
surefooted at being a threatening force, was trying, unsuccessfully, to outdo
his daddy's World War II achievements. And since he was failing to
accomplish that feat in the Fourth
83
Division's area of operations—a region he had begged his father to have
him assigned to because he thought there the Ho Chi Minh Trail would
ooze out oodles of body fodder for him—he had no choice but to take out
his frustrations on others in his unit. His offcers, particularly. It was a bitch
to work under the pile driver—so the staff rumors went. Fun being nice guy
to the grunts, a bitch being a bastard to his offcers especially at the staff
level.

Husky wanted action and bodies, and when he didn't get them, the s**t hit
the fan. More often than not, he made an a*s of himself trying to fght
battles which were not there, he wasted ammunition, and he endangered
lives needlessly. Husky was out to show his padre and compensate for an
Army brat's life that had obviously left him, as it did many others, insecure
in an unstable family environment which so often was sacrifced to duty in
far-off places, and boredom in stateside soldier camps which were uniform
throughout the country, world—the best places for a child to be molded
into an awkward life.

Husky went about his vindictiveness with a recklessly determined

viciousness. If there were no maneuvers to keep his men occupied, he
created battalion idiot work. Urinals were redug and reset in uniformity
with an aiming circle, inside out sandbags were emptied and reflled again,
a n d Playboy centerfolds were confscated in moral raids to please the
division's Roman Catholic chaplains. But while Husky created the
unpopular orders, they came down to the grunts via the battalion's
executive offcer and his staff henchmen who preserved, cynically, Husky's
good guy image. Husky was strictly creep. He leaned heavily on his father's
reputation, and knew he could often get his way—see the Army brat stamp
his feet—even with his commanding general as long as the mail service to
home was operable. It was with political clout that Husky maneuvered to
the high-level promotion lobbying scene. Husky's dad offered him security
and his protection carried Husky through a number of snafus which would
have doomed a lesser mortal, probably more capable, to a regimen of
promotion passovers which would have eventually necessitated the
individual's resignation. Husky's life was soft. His career was more or less
mapped out for him. He could afford some screw-ups without suffering any
serious consequences, and with this surety, he went about his business with
a certain amount of abandonment. Out to kill “gooks,” Husky had no
consideration for the Geneva Convention, had no respect for the civilian
84
populace, had no regard for the consciences of his own men who were
duty-bound to obey the whims of their wise guy battalion commander. His
object, to foster his own respectability and promotion possibilities in a daily
competition with the warfare successes of his father, did not leave thought
for ethical considerations much less common sense. Few of Husky's staff
offcers, who might have dissuaded him from carrying out his most sordid
blunders, and should have had the gumption to speak up with their
objections, entertained any endearing respect for Husky. They played ball
as all “good” soldier boys do, and they didn't rock the Army boat as all
promotion-minded high-ranking offcers are wont to do.

Husky had three real rip-roaring blunders while I served under him. They
were all attributed to him directly, and who knows how many others had
been perpetrated by his staff which was interested in keeping the “old man”
happily out of their hair by playing up to him and subscribing to his idiotic
—often criminal—caprices.

The frst disaster was the wanton destruction of a Vietnamese village where
enemy soldiers were thought to be hiding. Fifteen women and children
were killed in the artillery prep which announced the Army's impending
pillage of the village. Husky didn't warn the community as he was supposed
to have done, but he swore up and down that he had told his executive
offcer who lied that he had told a company commander who lied that he
had told a lieutenant who lied that he had told a sergeant, so on and so
forth. Husky was preserved again for that ultimate desk job in the Pentagon
with stars bearing down on his shoulders as he would bask in the reverie of
thoughts about retirement, a nice job with a Defense Department contract
company, and Happy Hour at Washington's most “in” O (Offcers') club.
He even had the gall to visit the scene of his crime and moan an under the
breath “Don't let this s**t ever happen again” admonition to his executive
offcer while both of them stood watching the beginning of burials and
tried to ignore the piercing shrills of the Vietnamese provincial people who
were anguishing over their dead. Husky's mentality was that solatium
payments would wash away his sins.

It is diffcult to kill thirty GIs with one shot, but Husky helped do it. This
bungling numskull had been briefed on the time of an F-100 Super Sabre
air strike, but he was too anxious to wait before letting his men advance to
the top of the hill that was in the process of being pulverized. The Air
85
Force said the 750-pound bomb exploded on target, on time, and Husky
said the 750-pound bomb exploded on his men. The inquiry board,
naturally, said neither was at fault, both should have taken into account the
disarray which accompanies coordinated air-ground tactical maneuvers,
and really what was the purpose of letting Walter Cronkite spill this dirty
laundry into the antibiotic washbasins of America's puritanical all-
powerful-all minds? That was a close one for Husky, and even he cooled it
for a long while trying to let things pass slowly into oblivion—time being
the healer of all wounds.

Husky's other blunder almost did him in in another way—a political way. A
United States's senator, who possessed no fond affection for Husky's father
and Husky's family, took no liking to the swimming pool our slick battalion
commander was building in Bravo Charlie for his unit with stolen supplies
from neighboring Navy and Air Force supply depots. The senator quickly
asked for a cost accounting of the project, and he received tongue-twisted
mumblings from a befuddled, panicky Husky. Since Peck's bad boy had
kept himself in good stead with his commanding general for the past two
weeks, a new record for Husky—the division was was waiting for his next
trick—the general, lucky for Husky, was psychically inclined to come to the
aid of his child colonel with a “Senator, the funds were accumulated in a
special interest, centralized fnance collection deposit with the express
purpose of supporting efforts which relate to morale building projects for
the American soldier who comes to us fatigued from the war effort and is,
sir, entitled to due respect and consideration.” It worked. The senator was
conned. The general looked with promise at a beaming Husky for a piece of
his Washington connection. Husky, breathed a sigh of “You're damn
straight on that score, general,” relief, and once again our battalion's
highest-ranking clown, apparently a cat with more than nine lives, chalked
up another close call in his continuing series of unremitting boners.

Husky

Georgia drawl
Chilled highball

Light-bird weight
Filled with hate

86
 In his bag
Rebel fag

Jingo's cross
Red hot sauce

Forty fve
Glued to side

Spit-shined boots
Sharp salutes

Gung-ho strut
“Move your butt!”

Chumps cigar
Army czar

Wants to move
Up a groove

Where's the fun?

Washington

In the feld
Lusts to wield

Body count
To surmount

Whisky bribes
For the guys

Right-wing cants
Fascist chants

87
 Demagogue
Crazed on grog

Wants more kills

So he shrills

Soldiers squirm
At each turn

Luck hard up
Minds mixed up

Grunts on hunt
Fare the brunt

Husky's joy's
To kill joy

6 August 1996

* * *

9 November 1967

My diary says that on 9 November 1967 I was sitting at the edge of a foxhole
sloshing with my boots the rain water which had fallen during the night—
boots (green-canvassed at their sides; with steel-plated soles) I had not
taken off for three days…the Cambodian border was at my back…I was
reading A Discourse on Political Economy by Jean-Jacques Rousseau…I was
smoking an Antonio y Cleopatra Grenadier cigar…I was waiting for a wave of
Huey choppers to come in and “extract” me and my infantry company—to
which I had been assigned as an artillery forward observer—from one
miserable hill, then to another… “My Girl” by The Temptations foated in
the late morning’s breezes.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant!! Lieutenant!!!’’

I looked up and there stood an eighteen-year-old grunt from Tennessee

screaming at me—his eyes flled with frustration and anger. In his hands he
88
held a copy of Stars and Stripes—the soldier’s daily newspaper headline he
had thrust in my face and which explained to me the motive for his
excitement:
JACKIE KENNEDY VISITS CAMBODIA.
“Lieutenant, how could she do that? How could she go on vacation there
while we are fghting here? How could she be so inconsiderate?”

I tried to calm him down and succeeded somewhat. I just kept repeating
myself to make him understand how we had been put into a diffcult
situation, and the best that we could do was to put up with it until our year
was up. Surely, there were not enough words to ease his torment, but the
fact that I had listened appeared to alleviate a bit his baffement. The
approaching choppers clock-clocked their presence in the distance. We
had to get ready to go. In the air I pondered the matter over and over and
over.

I thought back to a little concise statement I once had seen carved on my

university dorm’s bathroom door: WE DO TO BE—Camus; WE BE TO
DO—Sartre; DO BE DO BE DO—Sinatra! I at once felt I had to do
something; I felt I had to choose to be free; and, I felt I could not let this
predicament go unchallenged, could not let it escape the scrutiny of those
who had sent us to war. I wanted this dilemma to be disentangled.

I wrote a letter to the President of the United States, Lyndon Baines

Johnson, protesting the circumstances. Further, I asked him if I could
resign my commission in the middle of a war. I took the letter to my
Division Artillery Commander, a full-bird colonel on the general’s
promotion list, and asked him for his advice. He looked at me sternly, then
commented succinctly:
“Lieutenant, if you want to make the Army your career, don’t send it.”
He walked away. Promotion, promotion, promotion! That was the
obsession on most offcers’ minds in Vietnam. I walked to the unit’s mail
drop.

I received a letter from the Under Secretary of State for Asian Affairs,
Dixon Donnelly, instructing me to pay heed to the Southeast Treaty
Organisation (SEATO), and listen to the suggestions of my superiors. (I
would not do otherwise!) A few weeks passed before I was removed from
the feld (combat zone).
89
A supply sergeant in base camp told me I was a “P.I.,” Political Infuence,
and would not be sent to the feld again for fear that I might “subvert” the
thinking of the troops! He told me I would be assigned to those slots
reserved for “dummy” lieutenants, and the record of those assignments
would guarantee the end of my Army career. Why was I so lucky?

At this time, the events leading to the battle of Dak To were fermenting.
My former unit was involved in the initial contacts of what would come to
be the biggest battle of the “war.” My company lost thirteen and numerous
wounded were reported. The unit was effectively deactivated. Individuals
sent in my place were killed. What I had originally conceived to be a
diffcult—but necessary—decision made on my part, turned out also to be a
tragedy for others. Wherever I went after, to whatever unit I was attached
to, I did my best, did what I was expected to do, did what all soldiers did in
Vietnam: SCRATCHED OFF THE DAYS. I was called a coward. I was
called a hippie. I was called Lieutenant Fuzz. “Sticks and stones will break
your bones….”

For many years afterwards, I mused on what Jacqueline Kennedy might

have answered me if I had come to inform her about that absurd chain of
events edifying neither for her nor for me.

Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.

Shame on You, Jacqueline Kennedy!

Angkor Vat?
And for what?

Need a lull?
Life's too dull?

Off you go
Asian trove

Temple site
Jet set rite

90
 S. S. shield
Masses yield

Limousines
Skin care creams

GUCCI shoes
Special foods

Bouffant hairs
Flash bulbs' glares

Don't disturb
Not a word

Peekaboo!
Powerful

In his hole
GI sole

Bored to death
Thoughts of Beth

Counts his days

Even prays

Scans a ridge
Checks a bridge

Takes a swig
Breaks a twig

Stars and Stripes

Holy Mikes!

Jackie O's
In calicos
91
 Not far off
On a jaunt

I'll be damned
Punch sandbag

Why for me...

MISERY?

10 August 1995

* * *

27 November 1967

On this date, in the same month Jackie Kennedy visited Cambodia, a group
of about ffteen grunts (infantry soldiers on break from the feld) accosted
me in the Fourth Infantry Division's Bravo Charlie, Camp Enari, and again
a copy of Stars and Stripes was poked in my face:

McNAMARA QUITS

The subtitles indicated that Mac was quitting his post to become the
president of the World Bank! The troops were naturally furious, and one of
them requested, logically, if he, too, could resign and return home to his
farm. I let the grunts offoad on me their rage, and when two captains who
were walking by in the area volunteered to come to my assistance, I waved
them off suggesting I could handle the fracas by myself. The harangue
continued. Finally, when there was a pregnant pause, I butted in with my
own retort that I, a frst lieutenant, twenty-three years old, with a
philosophy degree, thought would bring some sense into the furore they
had created. These were uneducated 19-year-olds, some of whom had
joined the Army because they could not fnd a job, others were high school
dropouts, and others were Afro-Americans who had been given the choice
by a judge: “Nigger, where do you want to go, prison or Vietnam?”
Sprinkling cool patience upon the fames of their fury, was not an
alternative I possessed at that moment. I had to fght their verbal fre with
my own frepower of words. And I had to use the vocabulary they were
most familiar with. I sucked it in, raised my voice: “Are you done, you
92
mother-fuckers? Are you done breaking my balls? Are you done shitting on
me? Do you assholes really think I enjoy being here? That I would not
wanna be home, too? Do you think it's a joy for me, your company
commander, and your platoon leaders for us to be in this shithole? We're
fucked. We're screwed. No one gives a rat's fuck about you or me. Or any of
us. Even our own families are home watching us on TV with cold beers in
each of their hands. We are here. If they cared about us, they wouldn't
have sent us here in the frst place, assholes! That is a fact we cannot deny.
We can do one and only one thing. We must keep together. We have to
watch out for ourselves because no one else gives a shit about us. We have
to show we are fucking smarter than they are. We are not going to be
pissed on. Get it? No one is going to shit on us. They fucked us and we are
going to fuck them! We are soldiers and we will do what soldiers do. What
we were trained to do. Keep your fuckin' rifes clean. Keep your ammo dry.
Take your anti-malaria pills. March fve meters apart from one and other.
No talking while marching. No singing. No music. Silence. Let each and
every one of you let your buddies know that you are there to help them and
support them. And stop your fucking crybabying, please! And when this
goddam fucking war is over, call me in New York, and we all can go to
Washington, look up that son-of-a-bitch McNamara, and kick his ass all
over Washington! Let's hear it loud and clear. FTA. Fuck the Army! Fuck
the Army!! Fuck the Army!!! D-I-S-M-I-S-S-E-D!” (I could just see my next
effciency report!)

In 1968, some of these same grunts would read in Stars and Stripes that
Martin Luther King had been assassinated on 4 April 1968, and then Robert
F Kennedy on 6 June 1968. (Listen to what one Infantry sergeant from the
State of Georgia informed me: “Lieutenant, tonight we are having a cocktail
party at 18:00 to celebrate the death of that nigger Martin Luther King. Are
you coming, Yankee?”)

Shame of you, Robert McNamara

When at FORD
You were Lord

Iron fst
Pink slip list

93
 Harvard wiles
Blacklist fles

Back stabbings
Stock paddings

Pick-up blues
Union dues

Board meetings
Sales' cheatings

Dirty air?
We don't care

Faulty parts
FORD's got heart

Business frst
Earth be cursed

Board your FORD

Wed the horde

Washington?
That's where's fun

Pentagon
Detroit's gone

Defense chief
Huger fef

Stricter rules
Bigger fools

Swank war rooms

Spending booms
94
 Missions planned
Feelings banned

Pins in map
GIs zapped

Latest poop
Congress duped

Sick of it
What's with it?

I don't ft
So? I quit!

21 September 1997

BOB HOPE & RAQUEL WELCH

It was nice to see Raquel Welch slithering up there on stage turning on the
whole Fourth Division—I don't want to sound unappreciative. It is no small
gesture for a young immature, aspiring actress and her entourage of
entertainers to come halfway around the world to socialize with thousands
of sex-starved and homesick boys who were suffering through all sorts of
physical and mental discomftures, even if the motion is, at worst, a super
ego trip that will yield an increase in publicity profts which the journey
reaps for the group of entertainers. It was heartwarming to see “Hi, honey,
I'm OK” and “I love you, mom and dad” signs raised high for cameras to
record for later that year presentations. The spark even Les Brown's band
ignited in the musical hearts of a generation of children raised on Elvis
Presley and The Beatles, is a touching nostalgic scene.

But raw meat is raw meat. Cameras are fashing, booze bottles are being
passed around, pot sucked into lungs, and necks are stretched to see the
day's main attraction, Raquel Welch's body, and the day's sentimental
favorite, Bob Hope. Raquel says it all, folks: Wouldn't you rather be any
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place in this world other than in Vietnam? Wouldn't you like to be
snuggling up to my gigantic, frm breasts and stuck between my velvety,
lanky legs?

Bob says what the generals and corporate executives want him to say: No
matter what, gang, war is hell; but we have to do our best. Hang in there
and fght for might and right against those bastard commies. The fourth
Division, which wouldn't know a commie from a pothead in Les Brown's
band, oohs and aahs for Raquel's body. Now! Bob! Now!. Enough of your
stupid f*****g jokes. When “the body” is introduced to the olive drab
throng, a thunderous ovation erupts that must have been heard all the way
to Hanoi.

Raquel is cutie-pie nice and shakes it around for the division which, oddly
enough, has been trucked, helicoptered, and planed in from all parts of the
division's area of operation—skeleton crews being left to fght with the
enemy all by themselves. An attack on the Bob Hope Show audience would
surely wing an atom bomb the enemy's way. Well, Raquel gets sexy,
suggestive, and the boys hoot and howl it up. She cools it when she senses
an imminent gang-bang of division strength, and slides into home plate,
safe, with a Doris Day moral homily on sexuality and the importance of
saving “it” for “your girl back home.” No slut image for Raquel Welch. Like
any psychologist telling a group of teenagers it's OK to masturbate (Just go
to it!), or like any priest laying it on the line hard that while the devil is out
to corrupt our minds with impure thoughts, the Virgin Mary is “out there”
to help us—just grab those beads; just grab those impure thoughts—Raquel
stands in front of 15,000 and more frothing-at-the-mouth, sex starved GIs,
sets them ablaze, and then tells them to go home and take a cold shower.
The Army's government-issue cock teaser. (Sex is good, Raquel!)

We cannot blame Raquel. She didn't know any better. There were others to
pick on, however. Take one Bob Hope. Let's give Hope total beneft of the
doubt. He is in Vietnam to entertain the troops, a good cause in itself, one
that we cannot argue against. But Hope's presence has a political postscript
annotated to it all the time. And it is here where we must take issue with
him. If his bag is to entertain the boys, why doesn't he stick to it? Why the
heavy-handedness in his monologues for all those against the war? Why the
cutting remarks against the hippies, student activists, and war protesters?
Why the close contact with high Army brass? Hope took himself off
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the entertainment trail too many times during his on-stage performance in
Pleiku that December day in 1967, and by doing so, lost the respect of
many people in his audience. If one read between the Bob Hope
monologue lines which were placed in front of him on huge cue cards—
Vietnam cities and commanding generals' names inserted to make sure Bob
didn't forget where he was (Oh! There's no business like show business!
And show business is Bob's business!)—one could detect an unusual
bitterness in Hope's patriotic sinews. He was out to avenge those anti-
Vietnam dissidents, and as much as he tried to contain his hatred with
“healthy” suppression through the telling of his occasional jokes, there was
no way Hope could keep down his rancor.

It was unfair to have this sharp but resentful man, who had bargained his
way to the Vietnam “frontlines” with the excuse of entertaining the boys,
spieling out a message which was clearly meant to support and propagate
the Vietnam effort. (If only John Wayne, Bob Hope, and their ilk had had
the chance to suffer though a basic training like the rest of us mortals!
America, it is time to face the bitter truth: John Wayne and Bob Hope are
draft dodgers!) Where was Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Woody Allen, the
Beatles, and other popular entertainers? Even entertainment had to be
Army issue. And those whose ideas were different from the Army's, those
whose versions of joy bringing and relaxation differed from the
propagandistic word of the Department of Defense, were prohibited from
expressing themselves to the troops in Vietnam.

Bob Hope, the Draft Dodger

Bob Hope ain't no dope;

Spiels out heaps of hope.
Buys bonds stacked so pat;
Hoards his chicken fat.
Tells jokes to the boys;
Eyes on business ploys.
Flies on safest route;
Far from where they shoot.
Tours with luscious girls;
Sweeps by as do royals.
With his frozen smile;
He's sent miles and miles.
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 At home Mom's heart throbs;
Bob's made globs from sobs.

On stage bosoms bob;

Right by there's old Bob.
Smart quips shake the crowd;
Bob smirks as if proud.
R Welch beats her meat;
Les Brown meets his beat.
HI FOLKS! Held on high;
Moms home mope and cry.
Big fat brass in front row;
Where's gone our foe?
Green sea of GIs;
Raquel's pulled all eyes.
Bob fakes support role;
While she takes calls' roll.
Raw meat for caged souls;
Bob's met all his goals.

CRASH! BOOM! The show's switched;

From nitwits to bomb hits.
Bob's off and in-fight;
Away with all his might.

7 December 1995

T O B E C O N T I N U E D...

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 24 May 2019 rewrite of this MS began
Korean Tiger division Vietnamese nurses fares
rolled-up ashes of dead husband on women's heads
 24 May 2019 rewrite of this MS began
ice-cream in reefer
Korean Tiger division Vietnamese nurses fares
rolled-up ashes of dead husband on women's heads