There were about forty of us, on bleachers, in a miniature jungle and out of the jungle, Sergeant Burdock appeared suddenly, like something wild. He walked up in front of us and said, "Alright Motherfuckers, Listen Up!"He was there to teach us about hand to hand combat, and eventually got around to it, telling us how an entrenching tool could open a man's skull like a gourd; how a heel stomp could crush a skull or rupture a kidney or even stop a heart; how a hooked finger could pluck out an eyeball easily; but first he taught us something about Vietnam.

He put his hands on his hips and eyed every one of us. "Now you dumbfucks are in the one-oh-first and that means you're going north. The little men on the other side are not as chickenshit as you, and they'll be coming some night, with a satchel or a knife or their fingernails. We got artillery and jets and gunships and tanks, all kinds of shit to keep them away from you babies, but they ain't gonna send an announcement when they come. You're gonna maybe hear a sound and look up and see something in the dark, and he's gonna be on you, killing you, and you're gonna die right there." Then he went through all the ways to kill a man and all the ways to get the advantage when he was killing you, right down to literally biting his balls off. He lectured us and threatened us and did everything he could to make us know that this was no game and nothing like anything we had heard. Then, suddenly, he turned and disappeared into the jungle.

For along time I thought he was crazy - before I knew the contradictions of commitment and survival. But insanity is a hell of a lot easier to explain.

I had been "in country" only about a month and we were out on a recon at the north end of the A-Shau valley when we came upon a pair of NVA (North Viet Army) taking a crap. We had this Kit Carson scout with us, a VC that had switched sides; a tough little prick. He went to work on the two NVA, had them both trembling, but couldn't find out anything. So, in a little while, my lieutenant, a dildo if there ever was one, told me to take one of them for a walk in the jungle. I wasn't sure of what I was being told to do, so I looked at my squad leader, Roundman, and he just stood there like he didn't know my name. The whole platoon was "looking" at me. So, I picked one and took him out into the bush.

Put my knife in him, just over his right kidney. He made this short gasping sound and dropped to the ground. I had to put my foot on him and pull with both hands to get my knife out. Then I went back to the platoon. When I got there, the other one started talking, told us about a weapons warehouse area just north of our firebase.

He was just a kid; a hardcore NVA, but just a kid. Am I sorry? No. I'd do it again. But he was still just a dumbfuck kid.

We had just completed a sweep and were on a path in the LZ (landing zone) where we were to be extracted by Airmobile helicopters, when we began taking fire from two sides of the tree line surrounding the LZ. Small arms, two machinegun emplacements and 40mm mortar rounds were concentrating fire into the clearing. Half the platoon was in the open, firing from several bomb craters with 20-30 feet of open field between them and the trees. It was only a matter of time before the mortars would start nailing the craters.

Joe Bradley was with five other guys in the crater next to mine so I yelled to him that we would draw fire so that he could spot the VC pinning us down. My M-16 was equipped with an M-203 grenade launcher, so first I fired the grenade in the general direction of the machinegun, just to get their attention and then followed it over the edge of the crater with one full clip, fired in 3-5 round bursts. It DEFINITELY got a response and Joe yelled the location to our R.T.O.(radioman).

A COBRA attack gunship, coming to support the extraction, rose up over the tree line, fired several rockets and raked the VC position with mini-gun fire. We pulled Willie out of the hole (he took some shrapnel in his legs from the first mortar rounds) and ran for the trees. We made the tree line and Joe's bunch made it as far as our just exited crater before the VC recovered and resumed firing.

The chopper had silenced one of the VC gun positions and my squad had spotted the other m-gun pos, so, I yelled to Joe to be ready to run when we pinned them down with the rest of the platoon. When we opened on the m-gun, several guys jumped out of the crater and ran for the trees with rounds chasing them across the ground. They got to us and said that two guys were wounded and Joe had stayed to help them. Knowing he couldn't carry both of them, and inspite of my better judgement, I decided to go help. The guys around me opened up on the tree line again. I jumped up and started to run for the crater when a mortar round landed, seemingly, right in front of me and I was knocked over backwards. The last thing I remember was seeing Joe, with this, oddly calm, look on his face, with both guys under his arms, trying to pull them out of the crater. Later, on the medi-vac chopper, I learned that Joe had been hit in the back with three rounds, and was dead. I had just been knocked out and had a couple of scratches. Joe received a Bronze Star... posthumously.

I still think of Joe a lot. I have been over the incident more than a thousand times in my mind and I still can't think of any way I could have saved him. I don't exactly blame myself, but it's a sort of regret that won't go away.

There should have been a point at which the meaning was clear, but the fact is that I had no idea what that meaning was, nor what it said about me, or my buddies, or the war.

They held me at the 18th Surgical Hospital overnight thinking I had ruptured an eardrum. No such luck! It was near noon when they brought in the boy. Small and thin, he shuffled happily along in hospital slippers, looking around in wide-eyed interest at everything in our "room". At the end of his right arm was a thick ball of gauze and sticking out around it were the tips of his fingers. The orderly said that he was "up" on morphine right then but that he would come down in a bit and wouldn't be too happy. The child appeared to be about ten. He said hello and after I responded he told me what had happened, in pigeon English and pantomime. He had been playing with a .50 cal bullet, using the six inch shell as a hammer when it went off. I wondered if it was a .50cal American or a .51cal North Viet but then I saw his bright onyx eyes and knew it didn't matter. The kid was only a kid, happy and cute, a breakable Asian doll who would soon be in a lot of pain.

The boy held up his injured hand and counted in Vietnamese, one, two,three, four, five. I replied in English and we went over it several times, making a game of it. Then the drug began to wear off; the smile became delayed, then disappeared. Finally, the boy rolled up into a tight ball away from me and began to cry. The sound grew to a pitiful wail. A nurse came with a syringe and a few minutes later, the child was asleep.

The most important thing a person must learn is how to survive on your own. It takes two things to stay alive. The first is being READY. The other is being WILLING to do whatever it takes.

Right after the patrol where Joe Bradley bought it, I was assigned temporary duty as a door gunner on one of Charlie Company's choppers. We were delivering a load of ammo and rations to a tiny clearing near Firebase Eagle. The LZ was just an old ring of foxholes, reinforced with sandbags. As we came in to land, I spotted a large, loose bale of old sandbags, (which would get sucked up into the props). A man on the ground must have seen them also, because he
stepped over to the stack, stooped and lifted it.

The explosion was instantaneous; a tall column of red dirt shot from the ground and through its center tumbled pieces of the man. We landed beside the group of screaming men. The man was on his back, wide-eyed and conscious; silent. His helmet was gone. The bags had protected his body and face but, his hands and his legs, from just below his buttocks, were gone. A blond kid soaked in bright blood knelt in the dirt next to him, with both of his hands shoved into the fountains of bloody stumps, crying towards the sky like the day he was born. We emptied the cargo and four men lifted the man into the Huey."Kitchen", the other door gunner straddled him and grabbed the stumps while I squeezed his arms which were just gushing. The blond kid jumped aboard to help Kitchen, trying to clamp the slippery arteries with his fingers, screaming helplessly all the while.

The 18th Surgical Hospital was only three minutes away, but that was just too far for a man with no hands and no legs. When the body was lifted out to a stretcher, blood was lumped on the floor and we were covered with it. The soldier who had stayed with his friend knelt down in a tight ball on the helio pad until the medics came back and helped him into the building.

We landed back at Camp Evans. The blades had completely stopped before anybody moved. Kitchen was doubled over behind his gun, making moaning sounds like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. Everyone else was silent. All of a sudden, Kitchen jumped out of the chopper and fell face down in the creek, thrashing around and yelling. Our pilot, Dooley unbuckled and climbed into the cargo bay, slipped and fell in the blood, then jumped out and stood next to Kitchen, who had stopped yelling but was still sitting in the water, staring out into space. Silently, we all washed ourselves off and using our t-shirts, began cleaning the ship.

It's not having survived 'Nam that haunts me, it's everything I left behind. It was waking each morning covered with a layer of old sweat and scum and grit as thick as a poncho; lips swollen from mosquito bites, and black ants down my back; it was sleeping four hours that ended like a collision and spending the rest of the night waiting to murder someone in an ambush or taking turns at watch or listening to friendly artillery shells overhead and wondering if one was going to fall short; it was getting "hit", with the whole world an explosion and being in the middle of it and later when I was sitting in a hole full of empty shells and empty clips and half my grenades gone, wondering what I'd done during those few seconds or minutes, and what had happened; it was zipping part of yesterday into every bag with some dead somebody; it was waiting for a chopper to come and take the useless thing away; it was humping through the jungle and waiting each second for the earth to explode; it was slimy red clay and wait-a-minute vines and almost never seeing the sky; it was being dead without the relief. There is the image of climbing out of a foxhole and just walking away from the others, leaving the ghosts of my friends to make out as well as they could on their own; it was no longer knowing how much being alive was worth, but blindly moving along, hoping a day would come when I would know what I was doing, what I had done and why.

A person who was so disposed might note those occasions when we threw ourselves fullbore into the face of the enemies guns and conclude that we were truly heroic people. Another, less charitable, might cite those times when knees turned to jelly and guts to ice and conclude that we were cowards masquerading as soldiers. Similarly, one might feel that we were all true patriots, battling bravely against impossible odds. Another might conclude that we were nothing but a rancid bunch of bloodthirsty animals, who got exactly what we deserved.

For myself, I feel the effort was worthwhile. I am not sorry I did it, nor would I hesitate to do it again. And in some respects, I am not entirely displeased with the outcome of the war. It is difficult to imagine two human institutions which DESERVE each other more than the Vietnamese and Communism.

I have given a lot of thought to my experience in the Republic of Vietnam and what it means. The best explanation I've been able to come up with is from the writings of Carlos Castenada. I believe now that I was happy in Vietnam, not, as I supposed, because I was in combat, but because I was unknowingly practicing the warrior disciplines in Castenada's books. I was using death as an advisor, because that is what was going on. I had lost self-importance in the face of the gigantic events around me. I accepted the responsibility for my own actions because I was the only one in charge.

In Castenada's books, the old Indian sorcerer Don Juan, says that it is not so difficult to let the spirit of man flow free and clear, but only a warrior can sustain it. THAT is the challenge of my life, to sustain the warrior spirit, right here in the day to day world.

I'm on my way to Sydney, Australia for R & R, (rest & relaxation). Sydney only showed me how far Vietnam was from the rest of earth; how deeply immersed in the war I had become.

The city was pleasant and unreal. I wandered around like a person on drugs. I can still see myself, at the hotel, standing in front of the mirror in a rented blue suit, a rented shirt and rented shoes; I was going out on the town my first night there. I checked myself in the mirror and everything looked fine until I saw my eyes. Then I undressed and threw the clothes in a pile and sat naked on the bed and drank whiskey straight from the bottle until I was blind.

I slept late the next day, and when I went out I wore shorts and a t-shirt, unconcerned that I was white as a mushroom. I saw girls and frightened them with my eyes. I walked up to Kings Cross. I watched the surfers and got sunburned, then, bought a black opal pendant for fifty bucks, with no idea who to give it to.

The next day I almost met a girl. She offered to share her cab and by accident, we got out at the same stop. I looked back as she crossed a wide lawn and saw that she had been watching me. But I was afraid that I would scare her with my strangeness, so I went down and took pictures of boats in the harbor, still full of the way she smelled.

The next morning I waited where I was sure she would see me, but turned in such a way that she could ignore me if she chose. But she walked right up and began talking like we were old friends. I was really embarrassed but she kept asking questions until I gradually was able to speak. Her name was Celia and she had shoulder length brown hair. Her skin was softer than anything I could remember and the tone of her voice affected me like a deep sigh. We spent the night, the next day and one more night together. We ate dinner in some place that looked like a dungeon and we walked along the bay and saw the moon. We lay on the beach and watched the clouds float and rainbows over the harbor. Then it was time for it to be over, for her to go back to school, for me to go back to the war. We made love that morning the last time, then I gave her the opal, and we vanished from each others lives.

Lt. Colonel Wilbur Blackburn was the MACV (Military Assistance Command - Vietnam) advisor to the 1st Arvn's (South Vietnamese Army) at Dong Ha. In the first glance I had of him it was obvious there was something different about him. He was friendly. I'd never heard of a friendly colonel.

Blackburn was tall, lean and greyhaired; in his mid fifties. The man reminded me of the way Australian officers are portrayed in the movies; bright, cheerful, enthusiastic and apparently unaware they are in the business of death.

The Colonel gave us the mission briefing. We were to take a couple of Arvns with us and drop leaflets on an area 2 x 2 kilometers. The leaflets were part of the propaganda campaign, PSY-OPS (psychological operations). These were specifically aimed at a couple of Montagyard villages, "winning the hearts and minds...". When we were positioned at a thousand feet, Dooley motioned for the Arvns to begin. There were 15 boxes with 10,000 leaflets in each, seemingly enough to cover most of South Vietnam. But these were Arvns. Mindlessly, they ripped open several boxes and began heaving double handfuls towards the door. Everyone shouted as paper went all over the cabin, covering the instruments and windshield.

When we landed in Dong Ha, we stepped out of the chopper and shook like dogs, leaflets inside our shirts, pants, helmets, everywhere. The pilots were buried in the cockpit. Col. Blackburn showed up and immediately began to laugh. The closer he got the more he laughed until finally he lost his balance and sat down on a stump beside the pad. I opened Dooley's door and about a bushel of paper fell out. He climbed down and stared. The machine guns, the stabilizers and the air-intakes were all wrapped, bits of paper stuck everywhere. We were LUCKY to have made it back. (Can you see that; shot down by our own propaganda !) Later, we found out that the "Yards" that we had dropped the leaflets on, spoke a different dialect than what was printed. All we did was supply them with toilet paper for six months. Oh well...

Mortar rounds were pounding across the camp. A mad scramble of bodies pushed for the door carrying me in a blind, unreasoning panic; naked, without a weapon. Red explosions were flashing among the hooches. The black opening of the bunker was just in front of me, and there was just enough time.

All at once, the night air moved - took form into a sapper (enemy infiltrator, usually carrying explosives; suicide taking out as many as he\she could), an armed and seasoned soldier, pumped and going about his work; every detail clear - the eyes, the jaw, the hands on the cold AK. Then the corded muscles moved, the barrel came around and I looked straight down the tiny hole. It was all right and all wrong; nothing unclear. The night exploded in a blast of fire.

"You want some coffee?"
"What?"
"Coffee. You want some?" Baker said waking me up from my nod before chow.
We went out front and sat on the sandbags. I carried my rifle and ignored Baker's look as I chambered a round and studied the bunker door, wanting very much to fire a clip down into the black hole. This was the first time I had died in a dream, but a certain quality made me understand that it would not be the last.

"You get zapped?"
"Right out there."
Baker was quiet a moment, then said, "Mine got me in my bunk about three weeks ago. I heard a sound and when I raised up, a gook was in the hall. He swung his AK around slow and easy and just blew my shit away. I'm one dead son-of-a-bitch, and there's nothing to do about it."

Col. Blackburns ARVN'S were above Cam Lo again. In a long afternoon engagement, followed by a pre-dawn ambush, the South Vietnamese had all but destroyed an enemy battalion.

It was good to see the Colonel again. His energy and humor always put me in a good mood. I had grown fond of the unconventional commander and, despite the difference in rank, considered him a friend.

Our first three sorties were simple ferrying of captured weapons. I smiled knowing each weapon was one more dead slope. When the final load was deposited at Dong Ha, a smiling Colonel Blackburn in a steel pot and flak vest came over and jumped into the chopper and said that they had captured a ONE-FORTY (140mm rocket). When I asked what he was going to do with it, he cheerfully replied, "Shoot the son-of-a-bitch back at them !" I stared at the Colonel for a moment considering the possibilities of firing an Enemy rocket into North Vietnam. It was a tremendous idea!

The rocket was a finless tube of rusty steel, thick and ugly. The Colonel told us to lift off and hold to the south and wait for his call, then leaped out. He immediately began rattling at the ARVN'S as he unrolled a length of wire from a detonator. In less than two minutes the rocket was in position and ready. Then, there was a bright spark and the rocket climbed swiftly into the sky. After a thousand feet, the rocket vanished with speed. Everyone watched for the impact but we never saw it.

Blackburn was smiling at me, walking comfortably through the grass when his face twitched and a burst of red erupted from his vest. His motion continued but without moving his feet and he went over face down, his arms loose at his sides. "Oh no, God, please no."

Dooley jerked the ship off the ground, sliding over and across the Colonel and the ARVN kneeling beside him. I sprayed the hills with rounds. Most of the ARVN'S went to their knees and began peppering the hillsides. The Colonel's face was gray and slack and old. Blood was in his mouth and on one cheek. The ARVN looked at me, his eyes full of pain. Kitchen was yelling about mortars, hammering away with his machine gun. We loaded Colonel Blackburn into the ship on his back with the ARVN squatted beside his dead friend, cushioning his head with one hand. The Huey rose and flew away.

Word came down from Division saying that the entire battalion was to be involved in a "special mission" under the command of a general. Television crews from three national networks were to be on hand. Details were slow in coming but when they finally did, our helicopter crews just looked at one another, shook our heads and made sad little smiles. Nothing surprised us anymore.

The mission was to be filmed. A battalion of G.I.'s was waiting beside the oiled airstrip at LZ SALLY. The great swarm of birds landed by groups in formation, took on their loads of living cargo and headed northwest. Meanwhile, a fifteen minute artillery barrage was preparing four broad landing zones (LZ's), in the empty hills east of Mia Loc. As the artillery ended, eight rocket heavy COBRAS swooped down and attacked the smoldering fields. Then, eight more COBRAS came, bearing flechette rockets this time, each loaded with BEEHIVE rounds to insure no living thing remained. (BEEHIVE rnds- 1000 steel nails with tinfoil feathers; when they arrive at target an explosive fans them out over a 25sq yd area "nailing" everything to the ground; very nasty; very effective). Then the Huey formations came down and quickly deposited some five hundred combat troops. When it was done, the general extended his personal congratulations to each of the unit commanders, smiling with appropriate reserve, nodding his august head. This portion of the day was not filmed; the journalists had long ago been whisked away. In fact, they completely missed seeing the battalion helicopters circle to pick up the battalion of soldiers from the ruined hills; they also missed it when those same aircraft returned those same men to LZ SALLY a short time later. The newsmen had no way of knowing that what they had witnessed was not real.

They did, however, get some EXCELLENT FOOTAGE OF THE WAR IN VIETNAM.

Bullets were screaming past, plowing through sand all around, plunking into the burning hulk of our Huey. Kitchen was dead and we were down in the DMZ (demilitarized zone - separating North and South Vietnam), with only one of the M-60 machine guns, one rifle, one grenade launcher and what little ammunition we could grab before the ship was covered with flames. Dooley was frantically trying to dig a foxhole while Caccini (pronounced Ka-che-ne) worked the machine gun, firing short bursts, conserving ammo. I fumbled with the grenade launcher, finally getting it loaded and fired. The round went high, completely missing. A sudden burst of fire pinned us all to the ground and Caccini twisted to his side and fired the machine gun blindly at a rush of men. Three fell and as the others withdrew, Dooley caught two in the back with his rifle. Caccini finished off the ones on the ground. There was a lull and I looked up at the circling COBRAS, but they never turned and dived and they never fired their rockets. Suddenly, there was a flurry of fire, from the right and left, then more from the center. Beyond the low lumps of sand, the NVA were crawling from the other bunkers, spreading out and setting up a cross fire. Caccini yelled that he was almost out of ammo. I remembered the emergency radio, pulled it out and screamed into it, "Fire, Goddamn you, Fire!" Then the COBRAS turned and left; I picked up the rifle and emptied a clip at the lead bird. I couldn't have missed but the gunships flew away.

" 'ey, G.I., you gotee cigalette fo' me?" an Asian voice called, "one cigalette? I likee Veenston."
"Fuck you, you slant-eyed cocksucker!" I yelled and when I rolled over to fire, remembered my weapon was empty. Caccini hammered out the last of the machine gun ammo, then an NVA stick grenade plunked into the sand between us and exploded.

I wake up in a pool of sweat. The dream was recurring every night since the rain had stopped.

Orders from Higher. Sitting in front of us as we entered the operations bunker was a single sheet of paper. It was a new directive from Colonel Calvert, stating that effective immediately, any contact with the enemy would be on a strictly "return-fire" basis throughout the AO(area of operations). "Specifically," it said, " this includes armed and uniformed NVA troops. DO NOT FIRE UNLESS FIRED UPON." In other words, when we get shot down, we can return fire right up to the point we slam into the ground and explode. RIGHT.

Regulations were made in offices; Rules were made in the jungle, and in the jungle there were only two; SURVIVE and TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER. Nobody but an idiot ever let the other man shoot first.

A few days later, Dooley, Kitchen and I took the next logical step. We were flying RECON out of AN KHE with a COBRA gunship above us and a chase Huey above him in case we went down. Our job was to find the enemy. The best way to do that was for us to fly at tree top level and draw fire. Then, return fire, mark the spot with a smoke or Willie Peter grenade(white phosphorous), and get out of the way of the COBRA's rockets and mini-guns.

We were flying fast and low along either side of the Song Ba river. Along the east side of the river lay a flat plain with short grass and clover. Though numerous paths weaved across it, it was too open to expect to find anything.

Dooley and I saw the men at the same instant; we passed less than ten feet over them laying in the grass. "We've got gooks in the grass," said Dooley into the radio. He banked right, climbed and made a tight circle back. We'd be taking fire any time now. The gunship acknowledged and was ready; on line. The eight men were NVA in khakis and pith helmets, camouflaged with fresh bamboo cuttings. Each had an AK and a small khaki rucksack. I asked Dooley if he wanted me to waste them. He looked at me like I shouldn't have waited to ask, then told me to hold my fire. He called the COBRA and told them to be ready with "the nails"(beehive round). Dooley turned the ship sideways, about twenty feet off the ground, slowed, leveled the chopper and yelled for me to "Do it!" Then, immediately yelled, "Taking Fire!" into the radio. By then, it was true. Three of the men never fired a shot, but the others spun around, five guns blazing back at me; then four. The ship shuttered with several hits. Two rounds zipped past me and exited through Dooley's windshield; one hit the door frame next to my shoulder. Then, we were away and peeling right and the flechettes were screaming down, spreading out high above the ground with their peculiar "double pop and crackling hiss." The remaining men on the ground were instantly dead; drilled through with a thousand steel darts; nailed to the ground.

There were vague rumblings back at Operations that afternoon, but nobody could argue with the bullet holes in our ship. Captain Dunning seemed to "know" what happened but...

When I think about the supposed mistakes made in "judgment calls", I remember the time Dooley, Kitchen and I caught these three Montagyards in the open - one bent old man, a fat old woman and a plump younger woman. The women were wrapped to the waist in lengths of brown-black material that fell below their knees. The younger woman clutched a large clay jar between her breasts. The old man held a large walking stick and on his back was a deep basket covered with thick cloth. When they realized they were spotted, the three moved slowly into a burned field where they squatted down with their eyes turned towards the ground. We let them go. Captain Dunning radioed for us to hold them until a slick could pick them up, but Dooley told him they got away. Later, we found their camp. There were pigs and chickens everywhere. Laundry on the line, fish traps in the river; domestic as hell and not a bunker in sight. Then Dooley got a sudden "bad" feeling, so we fired the hooches and held off to the west and in about two minutes, the place exploded like an ammunition dump. So much for right all the time.

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