It’s been a long time since I was in the Army. I was drafted in 1968 and I served 22 months in all, with the last 12 being in Vietnam. I was a combat infantryman in a mortar platoon. I always had some shame after Vietnam. I was always ashamed that I didn’t see the war for what it was right away. Others make the excuses for me and I’ve heard them all. “You were a young boy” or “You did what your country asked of you”. Yes, I was young, very young. I was in the Army before I was 19. I got out, after being in the war, before I was 21. And I did go and serve when I was asked to via the draft. But the truth be told, as a young boy, I believed that if I was drafted and I didn’t report, I’d get caught and go to jail. It would be breaking the law and they wouldn’t let anyone get away with that. I knew there were those that were going to Canada to escape the draft. There were also those in college. My brother went into the Marine Corps in 1963 when he was 17. Dad signed a waiver so he could join while so young. He had to graduate high school first. It wasn’t long after he was in the Marines that his girlfriend joined him at Camp Pendleton, California. They got married immediately and they had a child. I can’t attest to this being his plan so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. In 1963 it was just “advisors” being sent over there anyway. Or it might be me not wanting to give my brother credit for avoiding the war.Once in Vietnam, I realized that it was a crock of bullshit and that I wasn’t defending freedom for anyone. It was dog eat dog, just like it is in any place in the USA. If you had a hungry family, you had to get food. If the North Vietnamese Communists had the food, you were a Communist. If the South Vietnamese had the food, you were a Nationalist. Some went both ways and were Communists by the light of the moon, and Nationalists by light of day.

One of the things the Army did to prepare a soldier for a one year stint in Nam was to have specialized training for the mission. You were taught what we called the North Vietnamese Army, the NVA- they were gooks and slope heads; they were commies. They were our enemy and we would want to kill every one of them we saw. We were told of the monsoon season, the rainy period that showed some sort of precipitation every day for five months, May through September. We were taught the importance to keep dry, and we were taught about booby traps. Booby traps were planted by the guerrilla forces of the North Vietnamese. These were life ending killing traps that you couldn’t see, and if you wandered into one while roaming the countryside, you were probably going to die or at least lose a limb. At no time were we told anything about the culture of the people we were fighting for or against nor their beliefs, their sacred places or customs of respect. And how were we, as these young kids, able to distinguish the North Vietnamese from the South Vietnamese. They were all Southeast Asian people. They had similar features that we weren’t used to seeing. With all due respect and in retrospect, they all looked alike to us and they were the gooks and slope heads and the enemy.

When it was a realization that I was there and I had a year to serve before I got to go home, I knew that to survive I had to take certain actions. You learned real quick what to do and not do, what orders to obey and which ones were for lip service, how to dress and protect yourself from the elements, and how to protect the man next to you- your brother in arms- so he could go home when his time came to get “back to the world”. We adopted attitudes of resentment towards our leaders for making us be in this God forsaken place fighting their God forsaken war. The attitude was one of defiance whenever we could get away with it. The military had rules about how we were to dress, and that we had to have clean shaven faces. They demanded that we have clean uniforms and blouse our pant legs above our boots. We were to wear shirts. Our rifles were to be clean and oiled. We defied these rules whenever we could. Our motto was this phrase: “What can they do to us, send us to Vietnam?”

The ambush patrol was the worst for me, I think. There were no front lines and each night, we would cluster up in a wagon train-esque type circle affair. Every morning had us starting from scratch to find security beyond the circle that we stayed in the night before. If there was a mission to go out from this circular perimeter during the night to set up and watch for any NVA or Guerrilla units that might be passing through the area, it was called an ambush patrol. These patrols were almost every night. If you were put on an ambush patrol, you knew you weren’t going to get any sleep that night and that if the so called enemy was encountered, you would be in combat. This is not what you see on TV. Military combat is quite the experience. I can explain what is happening, but I can’t explain the feeling. To this day I can not explain the feeling. Please don’t ask me to. You walk through pitch black of night. There are no streetlights. You are in a jungle. It is cloudy and usually raining. The bugs are ferocious. the mosquitoes thick as the air. One time I had a scorpion crawl up my arm and sting me. I grabbed it to maintain silence instead the instinctual slapping. I squeezed it in my fingers and felt the gelatinous ooze, my arm ached for days. Then, the noise is heard. What is it? What did I hear or someone else hear? Is it them? Will they walk right by us? Will we have to open fire, confront and kill them? Will they see us first and open fire on our position? Whenever and however the bullets start firing is of no concern once the action begins. The adrenaline rushes through everyone’s body and we either live or die. We kill people. we watch people be killed.

It is not natural to do either. And it dawns on some of us that this is a useless attempt at trying to get the desired result. Win the war. What is winning? What does it mean to win a war. To not die? If I lived through a night of terror like that, did I win? Or am I a perpetual loser? I’m sure I shared no analytical thoughts like these as I was there, but my mind and sense told me that something was wrong and that what I was doing was futile to freedom. I wasn’t free, and no matter how many times I experienced the death and destruction, there would be someone that wouldn’t be free. To get up at that moment and decide that I didn’t want to do this wasn’t an option. On an ambush patrol or while in a fire fight you didn’t have a choice. To desert and go AWOL or say you were a conscientious objector meant the possibility of 20 years in Fort Leavenworth Kansas Federal Penitentiary. No, I didn’t have the courage to go to prison. I stayed and did my duty. I did their bidding and served my one year sentence then got out of the military. I think I remember that I did some good for my brothers at my side. I was there to take the bullet if it was to be so. They were doing the same for me.

Not every soldier in any war thinks the same about it. There are some deployed to Iraq right now that believe that their service is to help create this great Nation of Democracy and free the Iraqi people so they can vote and have financial opportunity. I don’t know what they are seeing. I didn’t see this at all. And I didn’t do anything about it. I stayed and allowed time to pass and when it was over I got out and stuck my head into a bag of pot or a jug of wine for 20 years so I didn’t have to speak about it, discuss it or remember it. I was fighting the shame of not knowing that it was futile way back then when I was young. I was ashamed of not realizing that war was not the answer.

I still struggle with it now. I accept the inevitability of loneliness as I struggle to be understood. And I read about the soldiers of today that have had the realization that war is still not the answer. A few of them have the courage in the 21st Century that I did not in 1969. One such soldier is Mark Wilkerson. He is a member of IVAW, Iraqi Veterans Against the War. He served there and when they wanted to send him back, he said he wouldn’t go back. His details are different than mine, but the premise is the same. But he is a hero. He had the courage. Read his story Here. It is far more exciting and courageous than mine.

Peace to All.

tags: vietnam vets against the war, iraq vets against the war