A Dangerous Road Trip Toward the last of
September, 1967 I was offered a temporary truck driving job by a buddy
of mine who also happened to be the battalion motor pool Sargent and I
took the job. My squad leader, Sargent Bartee, wasn’t too happy about
that decision and tried to talk me into staying with the squad but by
that point my mind was made up. I was just not a happy camper anymore.
For one, my dependable compass man, Bill Milliron, was still State side
taking care of family problems and had gotten into a bad car accident,
which disabled him from returning to the unit for most of the rest of my
tour. That meant I had to shoot compass readings and count paces as well
as keep a sharp eye out for danger all by myself. It was a heck of a lot
less distracting when I only had to count paces and watch for the enemy,
while true blue Bill was there to shoot a correct compass azimuth every
single time. Now, with Bill gone, that had all changed. With this
change, that little nagging sensation deep down somewhere inside kept
reminding me of the guys who were no longer breathing, because they did
not pay attention to small changes. Bill, Bowman and I made an excellent
team and losing Bill was no small change. Walker was still there and
Bowman was there but no Bill to keep me pointed in the right direction.
I had also had enough of sleeping in the rain and eating C-rations.
Although Walker, Bowman and myself enjoyed each other's company, there
is not a whole lot of bonding to be done, setting around in the rain
most of the time, covered up in a poncho, not to stay dry, but to keep
the mosquitoes from carrying you off. And here's another thing. The only
C-ration food I could stomach at this point was the canned peaches and
apricots and a fellow cannot live on that for long. The second factor that compelled me to leave my squad was my situation with the weapon I was now forced to carry, as platoon sniper. The Army’s sniper program, at that time, which I had volunteered for, was a real half-baked idea. It left me feeling “naked and afraid”. The sniper program planners had taken my M-14 away from me and given me an old M-16 mounted with a four power scope. I would never have volunteered had I known this was going to happen. Back in the first part of June, during my training, it was impossible to get this piece of junk to hold a 3 round, 6 inch grouping, at fifty yards. Worse yet, the scope stayed fogged up in the humidity. My M-14 had been my security blanket through thick and thin. I knew a little about guns because I had been handling guns since my seventh birthday. The small caliber M-16 was and it's decentants still are inferior to the large bore M 14 in most combat scenarios. Here’s why. The M-16 is too inaccurate for long range shooting across open expanses like rice patties and the bullet is too light to penetrate thick jungle undergrowth when the enemy is close in, like the M-14 bullet will do. Sure, supply sergeants could ship more of these lighter rounds to the field, per truck, or helicopter, but that weight savings was somewhat negated by the increased weight of the numbers of dead and wounded American soldiers having to be transported back, who’s fates could be attributed to the M 16’s failed performance. The first M-16 weapon I was given to go into combat with would not shoot, period. Fortunately I was able to trade it for an M-14 with a guy who was rotating back to the States. There is account after account of these weapons jamming in a fire fight, by the soldiers who used them. Outside an urban combat environment or Special Forces usage, the M-16 and its decendants is nothing more than a cruel hoax, played on our combat soldiers by arm chair tacticians who have only been shot at in their dreams, or worse yet, some politician who was and maybe still is getting his campaign funding greased by the arms company that makes the M-16 and its recent look a likes. Now, let me get back to my
story. My time in Vietnam was getting short and it had been none stop,
one operation after another, from the first few days of this long year
until now. As one of the oldest men in the squad in time served in
Country, I had performed at a very high level in the field. I had been
the GPS for the entire battalion and successfully navigated several
battalion sized night movements to link up with other units, where one
could literally not see his own hand, if he waved it in front of his
face, because it was so dark. I had helped come up with a plan which had
saved the lives of my entire squad one night, while on ambush patrol
near the enemy infested Cambodian border. By listening to the Holy
Spirit, I had located the regimental size base camp of those enemy
troops responsible for ambushing the 1/16th and the 2/28th
at the battle of XOM BO II on June 17th 1967. The resulting
air strike, called in by Cavazos, wiped them out. However, I now was
feeling a sense of hopelessness that I had never felt before. I felt
forsaken and very alone on all sides. Looking back, I cannot remember a
single guy in B Company, including myself, ever receiving one compliment
for anything we did right, but I did receive an article 15 for missing a
head count formation while attending sniper training classes, although
Bartee had told me beforehand that I was excused from all formations and
details during the training. Needless to say, this was just a final
stitch in a long line of disappointing behavior patterns I had
experienced with Sargent Bartee. The drugs, the drinking and just the
all-around lack of leadership ability in Bartee showed up at every turn.
He, represented The United States Army to me. I really wanted to respect
him, yet I got nothing back but an empty suite. In the rear, he favored
those in the squad who drank and smoked pot with him. I did neither, so
I would catch what I thought was more than my share of rear details
while we were in from the field. Yet, while in the field, myself,
Milliron and Bowman pretty much ran the show. I believe this situation
helped create in my young mind a real fear of all military leadership. I
can honestly say I feared my leaders much more than I ever feared the
enemy. In my immature mind, except for Cavazos, leadership in the
officers' corps above the rank of captain also seemed to be rotten
throughout. Whether true or not, that was a belief, that I had excepted
as fact. However, it was also a belief that Cavazos, himself, had largely
helped verified to be true, by simply being the competent commander that
he was, compared to the commander I had before him. His successful command decisions dramatically contrasted the
incompetent leadership of his peers and superior officers for anyone
with half a half brain to see. Shelton, in his book, "The Beast Was Out
There", also confirms what I am saying here, although I don't believe
that was Shelton's original intent in writing the book. I may not have had the makings of a good
combat leader, myself, but time has proven to me that I knew one when I
saw him and I have never thought otherwise of Cavazos. However, there
was a lot of rotten wood on that leadership bridge between me and him
and as I followed his leading, it took all the survival awareness I
could muster to avoid falling through those rotten planks to an untimely
death. So, looking back now, and rereading the remarks I have just
written, it’s fairly easy to see why I knew I needed to make a change.
Yet, I never doubted the righteousness of our cause, just the poorly led
prosecution of that cause. Another overriding factor
that weighed on my decision to leave my squad was not consciously
recognized by me until years later, but it was definitely the number one
influence for every decision I would make in my life for the next twenty
years. It is true that I found myself stressed out by the combat
situations I found myself in. Oh sure, it would be easy for my natural
mind to blame the stress I was experiencing on battle fatigue, but it wasn’t
battle fatigue or in today's terms, PTSD. If anything, it was the very opposite. In my
case, my fallen nature had come to terms with being surrounded by death and near death
experiences and I had even bought into the idea of my own death as a
quick ending, which would allow me to escape my miserable wretched world
view with some dignity. I had no guilt ridden thoughts about the killing
of enemy soldiers who supported Communism, because I believed the
Communist ideology was a depraved ideology, wicked beyond all
imagination, making our cause a very just one. I still believe that, to
this very day. No, my problematic bad attitude did not stem from being
on the front lines in Vietnam or my perceived bad leadership which I
served under. The root cause of my problem stemmed more from
growing up under the parenting of very dysfunctional parents and even
more from completely disassociating myself from
God’s influence in my life. That was much more debilitating than anything the battle field could have
ever thrown at me. I was one big ball of unexploded distain and hatred,
just waiting for a trigger point to set me off in view of all those
around me. Simply put, I was not in my right mind and I had not been in
my right mind, since I had turned my back on God, at the age of
thirteen. In the words of a Satanist I had met in basic training, by the
name of Oliver B. Shank, “I would become an excellent combat soldier,
but I would always have problems with personal relationships for the
rest of my life” and at the time my squad was practically my entire
world of personal relationships. More and more, I hated being around
them. I started volunteering for Observation Post (OP) night after night just to get away
from them. Oliver’s curse was coming true and it would not be rebuked in
my life until 1993. Lying thoughts in one's mind can be shaped and then reshaped, creating false self-talk
narratives of the mind to imprison us for our entire
lives. Many people go through life trading one lying belief for another
and for years I was one of those people. However, Christ said, "You shall know the
truth and the truth shall set you free". He then went on to say, "God's
word is truth". It was not until I was able to allow God's word to wash
my sin diseased mind clean, that I was able to make sense of anything in
life, not just the Vietnam War. I repeat, a sin diseased mind can go on forever
trading one lie for another but a mind that has been set free through
the washing of the word is free indeed and is actually able to see and
follow the path of truth in any situation, thus dwelling in the freedom
that only comes through a relation with Christ.
Combat, by its very nature, is a huge compression chamber of life's
circumstances coming at an individual in a shortened period of time
compared to other environments. Negative circumstances are
experienced by the human mind on a unimaginable scale compared to that
experienced in a civilized world like America. The human mind was not
designed by God to deal with this type of hellish environment. Only
God's truth can protect it from breaking down completely under the
stress of repeated combat as experienced by all those who have fought in
any war, not just Vietnam. God is the only one who can successfully bring a soldier
home in his right mind. Yes, no doubt, I was
terribly affected by bad leadership but I was also just as terribly
affected by my own reactions to that leadership. No doubt, in this
instance, this job change would
allow me to completely side step my stagnated relationship with my
authority figures in B Company but not my problematic attitude. Now, fifty years later,
with God's help, I can see a lot more
clearly. I can look back and say with much more accuracy, that, at the time,
leadership did see me as just a number, if they saw be at all; Nothing more
than an ego centric kid who only thought of himself, mainly because that
is exactly what I was. I was an ego centric kid, who only thought of himself. I was infected with
the same disease of the mind that so many other youths become infected
with. It’s called “The Blame Game” where every negative consequence in
life is always blamed on someone else, usually an authority figure,
while firmly believing that I was justified in what ever I chose to do
or should I say not do. Simply put, I was listening to lying
self-talk that told me just what I wanted to hear whether it was true or
not. Self-destructive thinking like this and bad leadership
to boot was a double edged sword which sooner or later was destined to
get the better of me, not just in combat but in everyday life itself. The Communist
enemy was just a catalyst that could speed up the process. With this frame of
mind I had absolutely no
aptitude what-so-ever to step into a leadership role of any kind. I
volunteered no help, for the new guys, as they rotated into the squad.
Believe it or not, I didn’t even bother to learn their names. In Wayne’s
World, as it had become, it took less than two minutes for me to place a
fellow platoon member under the irrelevant column on my personal check
list, and come to think of it now, only Milliron, Bowman and Walker ever
made it to the relevant side of the page. Bartee certainly did not.
After not stepping up for me during the article 15 incident, I possessed
nothing but contempt for him. Winstead and Sargent Chestnut would have
definitely been on my relative list, but they didn’t count, since they
were in another platoon. There was a West Pointer who came through
during the Junction City Campaign, who showed definite possibilities
from afar, but he didn’t stay long enough to give me the two minute face
time required for my summary judgment to take effect. As I look back, it
is really easy to see that this petty self-inflicted attitude pretty
much doomed me to the pay grade of a private for the rest of my tour. Oh sure, factors like the
individual rotation order, after one year in country, had a negative
effect too. It meant that the older guys in my squad left me, one by
one, which tended to lower morale for not just me, but every soldier in
the unit, because we continually lost experienced people whom we had
just built a combat relationship with. At the time I decided to leave my
squad, if I wasn’t the oldest guy in my platoon, I am sure I was in the
top 2 or 3 and still in the personally degrading position of having to
perform menial tasks, which even those just one pay grade higher (Spec
4) didn’t have to perform. My field performance said I should, by now,
have been at least a Buck Sargent but my interpersonal skills said that
I should stay a private. I was an adolescent 190 lbs., which years of
lifting weights had built into solid muscle, molded into a six foot wiry
frame. Yet, my mind was awash with faulty reasoning. It constantly told
me that I wouldn’t be bullied by strips and bars forever. Unfortunately
for me, I
was becoming unable to distinguish between bullying and the tuff demands
made on my tactical leadership, by the extremely lacking oversight of strategic planning, at the higher levels of command, including the
president himself. Officers and NCO’s at a tactical level were all
required to work within those half-baked and sometimes out right crazy
parameters set by the higher-ups, in the chain of command. The only
person I ever knew who could make that “walk-on-water” move, required to
successfully operate consistently under this nutty combat command
structure was Cavazos. As for “little ole me”, more and more I took
pride in the fact that I was not a lifer. I definitely looked upon every
NCO I knew in the unit as a looser, except for Sargent Gerry Chestnut of
D Company. I don’t know anyone who was around him for more than a week
who would have regarded him as anything less than the resurrected John
Wayne character of Sargent Stryker. Like Stryker, he paid the ultimate
price for that honored position. Deep within, I knew I could never be,
nor did I ever want to be a Gerry Chestnut. No sir! No charging out into
the field of fire, alone, as I had seen him do time and time again and
definitely no falling on hand grenades for me, which, just to be clear,
I never saw him do either. So now, I hope I have
given the reader a fairly decent description of my mindset with the
gigantic chip resting on my shoulder, as I moved into my new job.
The job was unbelievably simple. I was given a small ¾ ton truck with fold down bench seats in the back so it could transport around eight people or a squad sized group of soldiers with all their gear. However, my job was not to transport fighting men. My primary function was to transport the mess hall equipment from place to place as needed. Once a day when the battalion was in the field I would take hot food and the utensils necessary to serve that food from the mess hall to a landing trip where it would then be loaded on a chopper and flown to the boys in the field, along with a couple cooks to serve it. This was my primary function now and it took less than an hour a day of my time. No more sleeping in soggy fox holes for me for the rest of my life. I slept where the cooks slept and the cooks were always provided with elongated screened-in tin roof huts, which Brown & Root and Lady Byrd Johnson made a fortune building, for the military. If a hut was not available, we were at least provided a heavy canvas World War II era tent, which was just as good. Fold up canvas cots were also part of the décor along with electric lighting. To use the vernacular, I thought I had just arrived in “Hog Heaven”. Never again for the remainder of my tour did I have to eat meals from tin cans carried in my spare socks, which were tied to my rucksack. The mess hall was always well supplied with “Good Ole” down home makings from the normal grocery list of meals that Americans enjoyed back home. Ham, steaks, pork chops, frozen fruit, potatoes, green beans, corn, spaghetti, mac and cheese and all the garnishments that came with these food stuffs were at my fingertips. Many times, at the end of the day, several of the cooks and I would prepare our own gourmet dinner and top it off with some strawberry short cake and ice cream. While
settling in to my new life style, I do not remember thinking about my
old squad leader, Sargent Bartee, much at all. As a matter of fact I
don't ever remember seeing him again. As Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank"
says, "He was dead to me" and I most certainly never ever considered him
a friend in the first place. As the years have pasted, I have come to realize how really self-absorbed I
was back then. Now, fifty years later, I would get on a plane and fly
anywhere to see him but I am sure he has long since succumb to his own
self destructive thinking. In the rear, I was friendly, but I
was never a friend to anyone. I did visit with some of the people in my unit during their
rare breaks from combat missions, but they didn’t get that many
opportunities to take breaks from the field anymore after I left them.
Elevated diversionary activity by the enemy, which was a prelude to the Tet offensive, was requiring
them to spend more and more time humping the boonies.
As I settled in to my new
support job now, there was just too much “distance of the mind” between
that of a former grunt like me, who had experienced combat conditions on
a regular basis, versus the conditions experienced by support troops, to
develop a buddy relationship with anyone in the rear and a buddy, in my
mind, was a lot lower on the relationship rung than a friend, so that
should give the reader some indication of just how closed off I was
emotionally. That’s not to say that I did
not appreciate support troops. I really looked up to them in many ways.
I was self-centered but I was not stupid. Anyone with half a brain could
see that without the tireless efforts of these guys and gals, grunts
like me would not have survived ten minutes in the jungle. For, example,
when my truck engine gave out one time, a mechanic showed up out of the
blue and had it towed close to a tent where he was staying. It was
getting late, so he told me to sleep in his cot while he put a new
engine in my truck. When I woke up the next morning my truck had a new
engine and so did an APC, which was setting beside my truck. The
mechanic was caked in red clay mud from the top of his head to the tips
of his toes because he had been repairing these two vehicles by himself,
all night long, in the pouring rain, laying in the mud most of the time
while I was warm and cozy, fast asleep in his bed. I have never
forgotten that moment in time nor that mechanic. During this time period, I
remember our unit operating mostly along Thunder Road (Highway 13),
North of Di An, around Lai Khe and as far North as areas around Quin Loi.
I now know that during this period the North Vietnam leaders were
amassing men and materials in hidden strongholds all over the
countryside to within just a short distance of Saigon in preparation for
the Tet Offensive. Di An was located very near Saigon. Enemy base camps
were strewn all along Thunder Road and were resupplied by trails
branching off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, itself, running from the North
along the border of South Vietnam and Cambodia. The Viet Cong largely
exerted control over villages at night and melted into the populace
during the day giving us Americans a false sense of security all the way
around, right down to the lowly little truck drivers like me. It was not unusual for
some supply Sergeant to approach me to help him with an errand he needed
to run to pick up something in another town somewhere and off we would
go. Actually, I found this new sense of freedom to be quite
exhilarating. When traveling through the countryside, dodging lambrettas
and clumps of pedestrians along the way, I felt as though I was in
control and I had no one eye balling my every movement. On the contrary,
the person I was helping out was always very appreciative and congenial.
I would pass American soldiers, tanks and other supply trucks along the
way and sometimes I would get a glimpse of the Koreans who were called
Rock Soldiers. They were some bad Dudes. Everyone, including the enemy
respected their fighting abilities. All this gave me what I now realize
was a sense of false security. If I had known how many enemy combatants
were all around little “Ole” me as I drove blissfully through the
countryside, I am sure I would have immediately begged to be returned to
my old unit as soon as possible. I read on the internet, Joe Boland of C
Company's account about him driving a truck to pick up some supplies one
day. As he was driving along, out of the blue a group of maybe 20 or 30
men dressed in black pajamas crossed the road in front of him, all
carrying AK 47’s, following single file. He waved to them and they waved
back and kept going. The Arvin’s wore green and did not carry AK’s. So,
there is a 99.9% chance that this was an enemy patrol crossing the road
in front of his truck. He believed that it was an enemy patrol and I too believe it was.
I believe not only because of what Joe has recanted, but also because of
what I was about to experience, myself, in a very dramatic way, a little
later in this story.
The ugly truth about the average American in Vietnam was that we were
much more naïve about what was happening around us than the average
Vietnamese. This was the first insurgency war that the United States
had fought. These Insurgents were quite comfortable operating around
Americans. If Boland had encountered an enemy patrol, there is no doubt
in my mind that they knew quite well that there
was very little threat from an American supply truck passing up and down
their roads during the day unless it was accompanied by combat troops.
Shortly after
settling into my new found utopia, I met Tex the donut man. Rumors
were that Tex had been assigned to a combat squad but he had freaked out
early on, so, the “powers that be” found a place for him with the cooks,
making donuts. His sole job was to make donuts for the battalion 7 days
a week, I guess, until he finished his tour in Vietnam. I can’t remember
his real name but since he was from Texas, everyone called him Tex. Now,
I loved donuts so I started getting up at 3:00 am in the morning to help
Tex make donuts so I could get those hot delicious treats just as they
came out of the frying oil. Yum, yum! Man, they were good. However, it
didn’t take very long for me to realize that Tex was a bully. He was
about 5 foot, 9 inches tall, with a great physic to match his height and
he weighed about 170 lbs. His favorite trick was to slip up behind one
of the cooks and get him in a headlock. He would hold them there, crying
for mercy, for what seemed like the longest time. It was very
embarrassing and demeaning to his victims, who included all the cooks
except Tiny, who weighed almost 300 lbs. It didn’t take Tex very long to
turn his bullying behavior on me. As I remember, most of the time it
happened when no one was around to see the scuffle in the wee hours of
the morning while I helped him cook donuts. Now I was 6 ft. 1 in. and
weighted 190 lbs. and for the last 9 months had carried a 90 lb.
rucksack through the jungle with ease. I carried it with ease because
much of my spare time since I was fifteen was consumed with lifting
weights, swimming and hiking. I could have put Tex down the very first
time he attacked me, but my mama didn’t raise any fools. I would like to
remind the reader that there were no Dunkin Donuts in Vietnam and once
my only source of fresh hot donuts was gone, there would be no
replacement for it. If I put Tex down, I was smart enough to know that
his ego couldn’t take it. He would never let me help him cook donuts
again or at least this is what I thought. So, I appeased him, thinking
he would soon get the bullying out of his system. When he got me into a
headlock, I would jokingly demean myself, declaring how strong he was
and how he should let a weakling like me go. I did it with such a
comical demeanor, that there could be no sane reason under heaven why he
would continue this childish behavior, but I was discovering that Tex
wasn't all that sane. Not only did he
continue, but he started attacking me and the others more frequently. He was most
definitely beginning to see himself as the king of his domain and it was
becoming very apparent that nothing short of force was going to stop
this juvenile “Lord of the Flies”. Sometime around
mid-October, the support troops which I now was a part of, found
themselves in Quan Loi, pitching the mess hall tent in the rubber trees
just off the air strip. Red mud was everywhere and everyone had been
wearing the same fatigues for weeks. The showers made out of the hollow
shells of bombs had not been filled with shower water in who knows when.
Even if there had been water for showers, we would have had to put the
same dirty clothes back on because there were no re-supplies of clean
jungle fatigues. Now, one day, soon after my old battalion returned from
the field, for a few days rest, some old members of my squad came
running up to me and my truck near the mess hall tent. “Hey Wade”, one
of them hollowed. “The showers are full of water and there are clean
fatigues for everybody”. Now I knew what everybody meant. It meant that
if you wanted to get the right size fatigues before they run out, you
better get to the showers ASAP. People started piling into the back of
my truck without fanfare. We all knew we could make the trip to the
showers which were located off the other end of the air strip a lot
faster doing 40 miles an hour then the mob coming behind could do on
foot. Off I went. When we got to the showers, everyone jumped out and
started stripping. Some, even stripped on the way to save time. I cannot
tell the reader how good it felt to have the red dirt of Quan Loi washed
off my body and to then experience the heavenly feel of clean fatigues
rubbing against my body. Thinking back on this experience, it now makes
me think of a cartoon I saw one time of three dog’s drinking out of a
toilet bowl. One of the dog’s was looking at the others and saying,
“Gee, it just doesn’t get any better than this”. Years later, I can see
myself driving back to the mess hall tent in the same frame of mind that
dog in the cartoon was in. As I brought the truck to a stop, people started jumping out and forming a little conversation group with one of the cooks named Terry Andrews, who was a friend of many of the grunts including me. Terry was catching up on some of his buddies' latest exploits. The cooks loved to hear our war stories and we loved to tell them. I headed toward a couple of my old squad members, being careful to skirt a watery area that was in my path when “Wham”, my legs suddenly came in contact with another person’s outstretched leg, and at the same time, as I stumbled to catch my balance, I was pulled around, on one shoulder, by the hand of that same person, causing me to fall on my side into the pool of water that I had been trying to walk around. As I looked up, I saw Tex standing over me with a goofy smile on his face while at least twenty or thirty people looked on. I stood up and then looked him straight in the face. As we starred at each other for an instant, a demonic smile started to form on my own face and at the same time the goofy smile faded from his. In its place, he tried to put on a stern face of intimidation. I could feel my soggy wet fatigues clinging to almost the entire lower part of my right side and it made the angry demonic smile on my face glow even more. This caused Tex to back up a couple steps, as he continued to face me. I had not shown “good Ole Tex” this side of me ever before, and I am sure it was a little disconcerting for him. As I stood there, dripping wet, I very calmly and deliberately started speaking to him in a tone, which I am also sure he had never heard coming from my lips. It was a tone devoid of all emotion, with an air of certainty about it. It was not unlike that of a judge, explaining his decision to a guilty defendant, concerning the upcoming punishment he was preparing to mete out. However, in this case, it was not going to be anything that good “Ole Lord of the Flies", Tex, could have ever anticipated. I had done such a believable con job on him, when he had gotten me into all those head locks, while nobody was looking on, at three in the morning that Tex. truly believed he was super man when it come to the ability to dish out torment to me. However, now he had crossed the line and people were watching. An example had to be made of dear "ole" Tex, donuts or no donuts. I had had this guy’s
number from the beginning. The only thing that had saved his little
fantasy was his position in life as Donut Man. Looking around, I pointed
to another mud puddle much muddier, than the one, where we were
standing. “Tex, do you see that mud puddle over there?”, I said, as I
nodded my head toward it. “That’s where you are going to go, Tex.” Now,
to defuse my firm proclamation, in front of all his peers, before he got
himself into a humiliating situation, poor “Ole” Tex was forced to reach
down inside of himself for the courage he knew he didn’t have. Words
started stammering from his mouth, as he clinched his fists in somewhat
of a boxer’s stanch. “I’m serious, Wade”. “I’m not playing around here”.
“I can box”, he said”, as he waved his clinched fists. Quick as a cat, I moved toward him and
simply scooped him up like a sack of feed, my right arm between his legs
and the left one around his neck. How embarrassing it must have been for
Tex, as I carried him kicking and screaming helplessly toward his new
destination in life. When I had positioned him over the sticky red clay
mud, which had about the same consistency as chocolate pudding, I
lowered him down as gently as a mother would, her baby into his bath
water, making sure he was submerged enough for the gooey stuff to flow
up over his chest. I don’t remember how much of this mess I got on
myself while giving Tex his new dose of reality and I also don’t
remember speaking or hearing from Tex again. I do remember that my stock
with the other cooks went up quite a bit after that incident, though.
They let me raid the food supplies at will and now they even cooked for
me, instead of letting me do it myself during after hours after the mess
hall had closed. However, I never again had fresh hot donuts straight
from the pan. As for my former squad members, who had been looking on at the
shenanigans, I am sure that they thought no more or less of me for
putting Tex in his place. Our wartime opinions of each other, which had already been
formed under the intense heat of combat, could never be reshaped one way
or the other by an incident as trivial as this. I had already, many times over, gained their respect
under conditions I hope none of my children and Grandchildren ever have
to experience. The red faced complaining
guy that had been with me during our dangerous times on the Ho Chi Minh
Trail had been looking on also at the dethroning of Tex. He was the one,
whom Colonel Cavazos had lined out while digging a fox hole. Little did
I or he know at the time, that he was fixing to become my human guardian
angel. I really wish I could remember his name but it is gone forever;
Well, maybe not forever. This meeting of the minds
with Tex must have occurred toward the middle of October, and my unit
had come in from the field, after making contact with the enemy in an
ambush, in what I now believe was the battle of Da Yeu. In this enemy
ambush, my old Company
Commander, Captain Watts Caudill had lead my B Company
out of a most dangerous situation, while being directed by Battalion
Commander Cavazos. Watts saved a lot of lives that day by swiftly
prosecuting his tactical instructions while under very heavy enemy fire.
Anyone who has ever been in a similar situation will know that this was
no small feat. Years later, in a phone conversation with then retired
four star general, Dick Cavazos, Dick ask me who my Company Commander
had been during this time. When I said Watts Caudill, The General simply
replied, " You had a good Commander. He did everything I ask him to do".
Anyone who knew Dick, knows that this was high praise coming from The
General's lips. Most officers who have served under him, I am sure,
would agree that they would rather here those words spoken by him than
the pinning of another medal on their chest. The B Company First Sargent was Korean Veteran
Pink Dillard. He was fairly new in the unit and some of my old squad
members were quick to point out to me that he had headed for the rear as
soon as the shooting started. His quick retreat didn’t leave a very good
impression on some of the oldest members of my old squad. They seemed to
think he was a little yellow around the edges so that is the seed they
planted in my impressionable mind. Now, years later, I realize this
opinion was very wrong. Pink was a Korean combat veteran. He was no
novice. A combat First Sargent’s primary duty is to use his experience
to help stabilize a combat situation and that usually does not include
allowing himself to be caught in a position to be the first man killed.
Anyway, First Sargent Dillard, approached me near the mess hall tent,
one evening just after supper and curtly commanded me to round up the
women helpers in the mess hall and take them home, adding that he did
not want them staying overnight in camp. Then he turned and just walked
away. His order hit me like a ton of bricks. There was only about an
hour of daylight left. I knew that all patrols and road guards were
returning to their posts inside the perimeter for the night. The road I
would have to travel, to complete this errand, would now be a no man’s
land, where the enemy could and did roam at will. I felt as though I had
just been thrown to the wolves and for good reason. Enemy regimental
size units surrounded Quan Loi, which, itself, was located just a few
miles from the Cambodian border. On July 11, 1967, the enemy had
launched a fairly large raid on Quan Loi, itself. I had been on numerous
patrols around Quan Loi before I accepted the truck driving job, so I
had seen with my own eyes the enormous amount of evidence of enemy
activity that surrounded Quan Loi. Enemy patrols practically roamed at
will through the rubber trees and jungle surrounding Quan Loi air strip. There were three girls
that needed a ride home. The first lived just out the perimeter of Quan
Loi. There would be no problem or
much danger in dropping her off. The second lived just a mile or so down
the road from there, but the third girl lived in the town of An Loc
which was about seven and a half miles from Quan Loi. This would mean
that I would be driving into a large town which was known to harbor lots
of enemy activity. Every American soldier, who had been in country as
long as I had, knew the Americans ruled by day and the Viet Cong ruled
by night in towns like An Loc. It’s been fifty years now since this incident occurred and for the life of me, I cannot remember how I was able to get more fire power to go with me on this very dangerous mission, but I did. For years, as I replayed this day in my mind, I just assumed that members of my old platoon just stepped up to the plate voluntarily. However, now, in thinking back, I realize that each one of them were manning perimeter positions around Quan Loi, while taking a break from field operations. That’s just what a 1/18th Infantryman did when he was in the rear unless we were at our home base at Di An. That meant that they would have had to have gotten permission from their platoon leader to go on this road trip with me. They couldn’t just leave by their own volition. In looking back, more than likely, First Sargent Pink Dillard had said something to my old platoon leader about getting volunteers from my old platoon to join me. However it happened, it happened, and five soldiers from my old platoon went with me. Not only did they go with me but they were very willing to go, which is why I have thought, until now, that they did so by their own initiative. In reality, as I said before, that could not have happened. I will repeat one last time, that there is no way those men could have gone with me and we could have taken all that hardware to boot, without the knowing approval of Pink Dillard. Years later, having come to understand this fact, I am starting to feel the love again. It’s one thing for a combat leader to send his men into harm’s way. That is a very necessary reality of war. It is quite another thing for a leader to send those under him on a suicide mission unless they volunteer and I certainly didn't volunteer for this trip. For years, I have labored under the false perception that First Sargent Dillard callously sent me on a suicide mission when, in fact, he simply sent me on a dangerous trip but also armed me to the teeth. One of the soldiers, who joined me, was the red faced guy. His wife had
left him and he had developed a really bad “devil may care” disposition,
which he wore on his sleeve. It was just the kind of attitude that was
suited for a road trip like this. I remember him grabbing a 12 gauge
shotgun from somewhere and a bandolier of number five buck shot, which
was not worth a darn in the jungle, but it was perfect for a run like
this. Now, that I think about it, I also believe one of the other men
brought an M-60 machine gun. Someone also had a M79 thump gun. I
remember that for sure. Everyone carried their M-16’s, including me,
although a lot of good it would have done me, since I was driving. After the girls loaded on
the truck, off we went, through the gate and down a little bank to a
little village area not a half mile outside the air strip. I don’t think
it was even a village, just some scattered huts on each side of the
road. As we approached, one of the Vietnamese girls started hollering to
be let off. She hollered even louder when she realized we were not
slowing down. This was her stop. The fear I sensed in her cries was just
more incentive for me to punch the gas pedal to the floor and keep
rolling. Several of the guys riding in the back tried to explain to her
that she would be making the trip all the way over and back before she
would be allowed to get off at her stop. We had made the decision before
hand to use the girls as an extra insurance policy against the enemy
starting a fire fight with a lone vehicle, which had absolutely no
military significance at all. She continued to protest vehemently for a
minute or two and then everything got real quiet in the back of the
truck. My red faced companion who
was riding shotgun now pulled a cigar out of his fatigue pocket and lite
it. It was quite a scene, watching him take his first puffs on it as he
turned to me and grinned real big. He was definitely feeling suicidal
over the loss of his family back home and the wild eyed expression on
his grinning face, looking like something out of a Steven King movie,
was clear evidence of that fact. He took his first couple of puffs on
the cigar with one hand, and clutched the barrel of the shotgun,
securing it across his lap with the other. I don’t remember exactly what
I was thinking at that very moment but whatever it was, it definitely
had something to do with a feeling of complete and utter helplessness. I
have never felt before or since as helpless as I felt at that very
moment in time. Yet on I went, driving through the rubber trees and
squeezing everything the “ole” truck had, out of it, while listening to
the gears whine, as the “ole” horseless wagon topped out at a little
over fifty miles per hour. It seemed a lot faster on this narrow red
clay road with rubber trees wheezing by on each side of us. We were completely alone on the road now and about three miles from Quan Loi and about the same from our destination of An Loc. I saw no one walking, no bicycles, no 3 wheeled lambrettas, no buses, no human presence whatsoever. It was eerie. Seeing no one on this road was almost always a bad sign. I knew any enemy patrol would be able to hear my lone truck coming a mile away, which would be plenty of time to set up an ambush. To say that I or anyone on the truck was fearful, though, would be a misnomer. We were all “Ole” guys to combat which means that each one of us had many times over been pushed beyond the limits of fear to a place in our minds that is hard to understand but is felt by everyone who has gone through and survived repeated exposure to combat. It’s a place that allows a hardened combat soldier to do his duty, while shutting down all normal thought processes in the brain of home, family, allegiances and friendships and yes even the mind numbing fear of living or dying. My eyes scanned the last three miles, first to the left into the trees and then to the right just as I had scanned the first leg of the journey. Continual scanning of my surroundings was just something that had been ingrained in me, first as a boy, riding the back roads of the Shenandoah Valley, looking for deer and then as a point man for almost nine months of my one year tour of duty. As we entered the outskirts of An Loc, the road from Quan Loi snaked to the right and down a slight incline, before it opened up into a large market square. Vendors were selling food stuff from all types of vegetable stands mingled with other structures loaded down with local merchandise. To the left there was a wide island running down the center of the road. To the right were mostly single story huts with corrugated tin roofs. I am sure they doubled as permanent residences as well as store fronts for their occupants. The high pitched whining of the truck gears took on a lower tone as I slowed and down shifted into a lower gear, coming down the incline, and entering the market square area. True to the Cavazos Dogface radio call sign, the men in the back caught a “something doesn’t smell right” scent and came to full alert, with weapons at the ready. I did not need eyes in the back of my head to know that they sensed danger. I also tensed up.
Now, my red faced
companion started traversing his shotgun back and forth from the guy
with the AK to the guys with the carbines and at the same time he
shouted over and over, “Come on! Come on, just make a move! And I’ll let
you have it”! I remember thinking, “What-ever else happens, there is no
doubt that this guy with the AK is “fixin” to find out in a very
personal way what number five
buck shot can do to the human body”. At this point, in sight of hundreds
of onlookers, there could be no doubt that there would be no prisoner of
war candidates riding in this vehicle. Fortunately
my red faced companion took it just far enough without winking, like Doc
Holiday did in the movie, Tombstone”. His actions pushed these enemy
road blockers just far enough to make them freeze in their tracks,
without causing them to react. A girl jumped down from
the back of the truck and in less than a second, someone in the back
yelled, “Let’s go!”, but I had already started rolling and cutting the
wheels to the left to make one of the sharpest U turns I have ever made
since. As I straightened out heading in the opposite direction several
more armed black pajamas jumped back out of the way to my right. I am
sure that my boys in the back made them think twice about doing anything
else, which would most definitely have ruined their evening
dinner plans. I then gunned the truck for everything it was worth. Kids were
now running toward us, throwing rocks and sticks and anything else they
could get their hands on, as we passed them. It was a way of showing off
to their Viet Cong buddies. During the day, when we Americans occupied
the town, these same kids were as friendly as could be. I couldn’t help
but think, as I topped the hill, and headed out into rubber tree country
again, “What duplicitous little b…..ds they were. We left the outskirts of
town without a shot being fired, but it was definitely what some used to
call a Mexican stand-off. As tensions subsided and the girls who were
still on the truck started chatting again, I started pondering what had
just happened, or rather what had not happened. I have not stopped
pondering that non-event fifty years later. South Vietnamese soldiers
(ARVN) did not wear black pajamas so these guys had to be Viet Cong. Until this day, I can
never forget the sickening way I felt for the four seconds or so that I
was setting still, surrounded on all sides by scores of Viet Cong
in black pajamas. I remember looking at my hands at the ten o’clock and
two o’clock positions on the stirring wheel and thinking this is the way
I am going to die, without any chance what-so-ever of getting even one return
shot off. Obviously, these were Cong who had come in from the boonies to
take a little break and do some shopping and obviously they had timed
their shopping hours to coincide with the American withdrawal of daytime
security on the roads and in An Loc, itself. For one, they had no idea
we were coming so there was no time to prepare an ambush. Number two, if
a fire fight had ensued, many children and ordinary citizens would have
gotten hit, including the remaining girls on the truck. The collateral
damage would have been enormous, for Viet Cong who probably had family
members living in An Loc. Of course, my experience exposes a
much bigger question. Why did the American strategic planners not see
the necessity to provide 24 hour security for towns like An Loc to
prevent the enemy from infiltrating and terrorizing the general
populace, thus making way for their own shadow governments to rule these
towns throughout the country, under threat of death, forcing many of
their citizens into serving the logistic needs of the Viet Cong. That
same blaring mistake was repeated again when the American military
removed Saddam from power in Iraq. An insurgency war cannot be won
unless 24 hour security is provided throughout a country.
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