Vietnam War Stories

Going into the field on wheels or tracks was generally safer and a lot less tiring than going on foot. Armored personnel carriers, (APC's) and tanks gave us grunts a lot more protection and firepower. Although nobody in their right mind would ever ride inside an APC. Even the tanks were vulnerable to mines and anti-tank weapons. Moreover, when a tank broke down in the field, the rule of thumb was to move a safe distance away from it, since enemy mortar men were quick to zero in on such a prize.

Our captain commanded a tank squadron before he was transferred to the First Battalion. He said his tankers were supporting an infantry unit on a sweep one day when they got into a firefight with some North Vietnamese regulars who had come down the Ho Chi Min trail into South Vietnam. This was their first combat action and after firing at the tank with their AK-47 rifles to no effect, some of the NVA surrendered. Upon close inspection of the American tank they became furious, and one of them kicked the big tread of a tank in anger and disgust. It seems they had been told the American tanks were made of plywood and could be easily defeated.

Helicopters in the Nam really were lifesavers. What a glorious bird! To say there were a lot of helicopters in Vietnam would be like saying there are a lot of taxicabs in New York City. Helicopters seemed to be everywhere and do everything in the Nam. The helicopter was the workhorse and the War-Horse. It took men into combat and brought them out again. It provided firepower. It brought supplies and food. Helicopters carried the wounded to hospitals and brought out the dead.

The availability of helicopters for evacuation of the wounded meant that most casualties were only minutes away from a well-equipped field hospital off the coast. Of course, sometimes it took a lot longer. On days of heavy fighting, you could scream for a dust-off until you were blue in the face, but a chopper could only be in one place at one time. Many times the enemy had a lot to say about the speed and success of a dust-off mission.

I had a good friend blasted by an RPG round on a search and destroy mission in the A Shau Valley. I mean, I've seen blood and gore before, but when it's someone you've spent a lot of time with, day in and day out, and he's lying on his back missing an arm and a leg, with a bone protruding out the top of his body, you want to help him any way you can.

I offered to help the medic but he impatiently waved me away. I watched intently as the medic worked on my friend, but all I could do was hold the plasma bottle. I tried to assure Daniel that he was going to be okay, but I think we both knew how grim the situation really was. My fatigues were soaked with his blood.

Suddenly his eyes open and roll in their sunken sockets. In an instant they seem to focus on me. Our eyes meet. Oh God!! I wanted to run and hide and be sick, but I couldn't move. Frozen in fear, I stared back into his glassy eyes. He betrayed no emotion, no pain, and no real awareness of his condition. The shock and the morphine were keeping him very quiet and still.

I steeled myself against feeling sorrow or compassion for my friend, who was the same age as me. Like the rest of the grunts, I knew I had to stifle my emotions or I would lose control. Losing control is something that must never happen in combat . Inside me I wanted to cry, but managed to keep it in check.

Finally, I knelt down at Daniels side and forced a weak smile. He shifted his eyes from mine and, raised his bloody body a little. He looked down and over at where his arm and leg should have been. I looked too. At the same time I wished in my heart that my brave friend would die. I am not proud of myself. He looked like he should have been dead. "So why isn't he dead?" I asked myself. He laid his head back down and our eyes met again. I nodded to him. I saw no response, but he knew! He had to know!

He looked away from me, his unblinking eyes staring at the CH-46's ceiling. The visual connection broken, I stood and carefully moved backwards a little, away from his penetrating gaze. I was careful not to yank the intravenous needle from his shoulder. I tried not to stare, but felt myself repeatedly drawn back to my shattered friend. I felt useless. Hopelessness and anger invaded my thoughts. I suddenly hated this war.

As my friend lay there, on the verge of dying, I thought, "for what?" I wanted the fight to end quickly so this medic chopper could leave and things could return to normal. Soon they disappeared from my sight, but to this day they linger in my consciousness. The only thing I could do was pray for my friend. I fell to my knees and prayed like I had never prayed before. I asked God to please be with my friend, keep him safe and to please let my friend live! "Amen" "Amen" and "Amen"...

It was about three days before I heard a word about Daniel's condition. I finally asked the company commander if he had heard anything. He said at last report, Daniel was in stable condition. Thank God! Thank God! Thank you God for answering my prayer! I left Vietnam a couple months later and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. I had been there about three weeks when I received a phone call from Daniel. We talked for hours and I asked him to be the best man at my wedding. He agreed, so now you know the rest of the story....

Another month gone, another thirty days marked off the old calendar. That leaves me with just 245 days to go. Not even close! Not yet!! Nevertheless, I was getting there one day at a time and trying to stay positive.

Our company was on a three-day stand down to re-supply and reload, in preparation for our next trip into the bush. We've heard rumors that we are going back into the A Shau Valley. However, this time it would be by air. Air Mobile, with the 101st. Airborne Div. Our company commander verified it that same morning.

Fully loaded UH-1 Huey helicopters would fly us in and drop us off. We were calling this operation "No Man's Land". The ninth NVA regiment was somewhere in the A Shau Valley, hiding amid boulders and thick brush in some of the roughest terrain known to man. We had been charged with the task of rooting them out. It was going to get hotter than any of us could have ever imagined.

I was in the third chopper, in a daisy chain of five each, about thirty seconds behind the other. I sat on my flight jacket surrounded by ten members of my platoon. All with M-16 bandoleers, strapped across both shoulders, locked, and loaded, ready for Charlie. Each man hoping this day would not be his last.

I've been on a couple of air assaults and I always tried to get a door seat, so I could feel the wind blowing in my face. Not that I was real brave or anything, if there was an ambush, I just wanted to be the first one off.

The NVA usually waited for a couple of choppers to land and deposit men on the ground before springing their attack. The first chopper dipped into the clearing that was to be our landing zone and the second chopper disappeared into a hole in the jungle. As we slowed to make our descent, a huge fireball erupted just ahead of us.

The pilot cursed and pulled pitch we flew through the top of the fireball. I was conscious mostly of the smell of burnt flesh and hair and the sudden drying out of my damp clothes. Then we were jinking left and right at low altitude as we struggled to get clear of the area. What happened in the next few minutes, seemed to go on for an entire lifetime.

We went around in a big circle with the others choppers close behind. The pilots were yelling back and forth that there were eight grunts down there from the first chopper and an unknown number from the second. They immediately decided upon the best way to get back to the landing zone so we could help save the guys already on the ground. I just wanted off that chopper!

I figured we all had a better chance on the ground. I leapt out with the rest of my platoon. The chopper was 4 or 5 feet up and I hit the ground running, as it was about ten yards to the comparative cover of the tree lines. It felt like the length of a football field. The bandoleers and other ammo seemed to weigh a ton. I don't know why I wasn't hit by enemy fire. I could hear the bullets as they flew past my head and around my feet. So close!! So close!!

The ninth NVA regiment got there first and were dug in like Alabama ticks on a hound dog. However, we had one thing they did not, firepower! The choppers were equipped with rockets and machines guns and the Air Force fighter jets were capable of leveling a mountain. That is exactly what they did.

The operation lasted five days with casualties on both sides, but the ninth NVA regiment was pounded into submission. Only about 150 survived and most of them were taken prisoner.

Since men first made war, soldiers have been standing guard while other armies marched or slept. In Vietnam, guard duty meant inspecting Vietnamese workers, who cleaned the barracks, as they came onto the base in the morning.
It meant making sure sappers didn't sneak on the runway at Quang Tri and sabotage a 4-million-dollar Air Force jet fighter in the dark of night.
It meant hearing movement outside friendly lines, near the DMZ and being deafened a minute later by the blast of claymore mines, exploding in the perimeter wire.
Often, guard duty meant squatting in a hole in the ground half the night, in the middle of nowhere, staring into the darkness, hearing all sorts of sounds, and watching the shadows.
You learn firsthand what night is really like at 3:00 A.M. If you happened to be on guard duty in Quang Tri, the only thing you would hear is the far away droning of electrical generators and the occasional dog dark.
Once in a while, a two-wheeled cart, drawn by water buffalo, comes creaking by, loaded with pineapples or vegetables for the next day's market. During guard duty at the base, the sights and sounds of the night make for a slow, noisy light show, as if to keep the troops awake.
Soldiers are driven out in trucks, to bunkers made of sandbags and red dirt, with broken cots inside. Three-man teams from each bunker eat chow at dusk and test fire their weapons before dark.
You eat and sit, and sit, and sit, then the cannons start. About two hundred feet away are 105mm and 155mm Howitzer cannons. Their job is to shell enemy troops many miles away. You hear some guy give a short yell of "fire in the hole!", then a second of silence before "BAM-BOOM-BAM-BOOM!"
The sound shakes the ground rattling your teeth and the cot you are in. You try to sleep, but you don't really sleep. You might get about an hour of sleep if you are lucky.
This goes on all night long. Then someone fires off a flare because he thinks he sees some movement and you hear the whine of choppers slipping past with their landing lights blinking red.
You also have really big rats to contend with. One of my buddies was bitten by a rat one night and had to have rabies shot in his belly. Wherever there are rats, there are also snakes and Vietnam is home to some of the deadliest snakes in the world.
One night, I noticed this airplane kept circling, low to the ground and I couldn't figure out what it was doing. Then I saw a steady line of red tracers light up the sky. I knew then it was "Puff the Magic Dragon", working out.
Seconds later, a dull sawing sound, like the buzz of a dentist's drill, floated through the night sky. "Puff" fires about 6,000 rounds a minute. It chops up everything like mincemeat. I've seen places where Puff left his calling card. Unbelievable! It looked like a freshly plowed field, ready for planting.
When the infantryman wasn't on guard duty or busy with one of the countless other tasks given him, he was probably out on patrol, across swamps, through jungles, up valleys, over mountains, looking for enemy troops, setting ambushes, avoiding mines, and trying to stay alive.
The brass called this a "search and destroy mission", "reconnaissance sweep", or "clearing action". We soldiers called it "humping the boonies".
We called ourselves "grunts", the ones who did all the dangerous, dirty work for the Army. I did a lot of humping while stationed in the northern part of Vietnam, called I Corps, southwest of Quang Tri and in the A Shau Valley in 1969.
The patrols would last for four or five days and we had to carry with us anything and everything needed to stay alive. Patrolling seemed like a never-ending routine.

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