Anchor Struck

I’m not kidding.  I want to finish this arc about my time in Vietnam with the

Marines and get back to lighter matters.  If you’ll bear with me one more post,

you’ll understand why I find life so precious today.  But it’s gonna be ugly.

I’m writing this partly for catharsis, partly to challenge government policies of

minimalizing the soul-crushing, grinding carnage of war.  I strongly believe it’s

a citizen’s utmost responsibility to bear witness to the actions that his or her

leaders claim are necessary to protect the state.  As a battle-weary friend told

me near the DMZ, “war is the ultimate insanity”.

For six months I saw a parade of butchery on the USS Princeton and at Delta Med

triage in Dong Ha.  This is just a sampling: a corpse whose scrotum was swollen

ten times its normal size from internal bleeding; another whose guts were a swirl-

ing mass of maggots; a 3-year-old child, trampled by water buffalo and burned by

napalm, who looked at me, smiled and died; a bag containing three feet and one

name tag; a corpsman pulling off the remainder of a guy’s leg when he tried to take

his boot off; a body so badly mangled we had to send him back as a BTB (believed to

be); a dozen corpses falling with a crunch from a chopper because the pilot didn’t

have time to land.

These are the images that still haunt me.  These are the images I see when some

cowardly pundit or politician talks blithely about committing troops as if they’re

commodities — tokens in a game of real-life Risk.

You can’t look at 50 pounds of ground meat that had just been a 200-pound person

and not be changed forever.  There’s no way to fully prepare for the onslaught to

your senses.  The smell of a rotting human corpse is beyond description to me yet.

Besides flat out killing the natives, we were mean to them as well.  There was a tiny

cemetery close to one of the Delta Med buildings.  One of our truckers backed into

its short wall and knocked down a section.  Others took that as an opportunity to

dump debris in it.

The day before my 22nd birthday, I was in-country and found out that a college

friend wasn’t far away in the boonies.  The only way I could get to him was to ride

shotgun on a truck convoy.  As we passed  through the hamlets and villages, I saw

that children were standing by the side of the road.  Marines on other trucks were

throwing cans of food from their field rations at the kids.  They weren’t tossing

them, they were flinging them as hard as they could.  The kids were so hungry

that they were willing to get hit.

The truck I was on had a small refrigeration unit on it.  When I found my friend  a

few hours later, I had two reasonably cold beers — a rare treat that far out.  We drank

them, then went to chow.  We couldn’t stand near each other in line because a group

of guys out in the open would likely draw fire.  I have no idea why the V.C. didn’t

just shoot at the mess hall.

While we were standing in line, a plane flew over a hilltop and sprayed something

on it.  “What is that stuff?”, I asked my friend.  “I don’t know,” he said, “but it kills

everything.”  That stuff was Agent Orange, a herbicide that contained dioxin.  Its

impact is felt in Vietnam and U.S. troops to this day.

My friend and I talked late, then bunked down in his tent.  Bulldozers had dug deep

trenches for the tents to reduce injuries from rockets and mortar fire.  In the wee

hours, Charlie celebrated my birthday with just such munitions.

My friend shook me.  “Wake up and get your gear on, man, we’re getting hit!”, he

yelled as shrapnel ripped through the tent.  I did just that.  Then, because I was so

terrified, I laid back down and went to sleep.  That was the scariest night of my life.

In the morning, everyone else carried on as usual.  Harassment fire like that was

common.  After breakfast I said goodbye to my friend and thanked him for such a

memorable time.

I caught a ride back to the Dong Ha base with a mail jeep.  The day before I had been

part of a miles-long convoy with hundreds of rifles.   Even so, we had stopped often

to return sniper fire.  Now I was returning with just three other guys.  Fortunately

we did it in half the time.

What I’ve just described were major contributors to my PTSD.  I’ll write about that

another time, maybe on a warm sunny day.  Please don’t ever forget that there are

troops in the U.S. and Canada today that have had similar experiences and might

face similar problems.  They need your understanding.  They’ll need time to sort

it out.

I don’t resent what happened to me.  But I regret that my PTSD deeply damaged my

capacity to love.  And that’s the most important thing I could ever share with you.