The Vietnam Reader (50 page)

Hue-Phu Bai
29 June 68

Mom,

Today I received your letter in reply to my extension, letter. You replied as I knew you would—always the mother who tries to put her son’s wishes before her own, even when she is not sure it is best for his welfare. It made me sad. I want so much to make you proud. I want so much to make you happy. At the same time I have my life to lead with my own dreams, goals, and outlook. And I know all these things cannot be compatible—particularly over the short run.

But understand that I love my family more than anyone or anything in the world. March 1969 is not so very far away. I have been in Vietnam more than 11 months. I have only eight more months in the country. My chances of coming away unhurt improve every month because I know so much more than I did as a beginner. I know much better when to take a chance and when not to. Please trust my judgment. Try to understand that you raised a son who likes the excitement and challenge he finds here, and these qualities will see him through the opportunities he will face in the 1970s.

Know that I dream of that day when I return home to you and Dad, and hold you in my arms again. Sometimes I get lonely. Sometimes I want nothing more than to sit down at the dinner table, see before me roast beef, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, bow my head for the blessing, and look up and see my mother—pretty and smiling—searching for any way she can [to] make her son more comfortable. Know that it is hard to turn your back on these things.

It is not easy to say I opt for six more months of heat, sand, and shooting. I know there will [be] the nights that I suffer the loss of another friend. And nothing can make a man feel so alien or alone as [a] walk by the seashore as he tries to adjust to the loss of another friend in this godforsaken country. But that is part of the draw, the attraction, the challenge. Here there is a job to be done. There are moral decisions made almost every day. My experience is invaluable. This job requires a man of conscience. The group of men that do this job
must
have a leader with a conscience. In the last three weeks we killed more than 1,500 men on a single operation. That reflects a lot of responsibility. I am needed here, Mom. Not that I am essential or indispensable. But my degree of proficiency is now undisputed as the best in 1st Marine Division. The young men coming in need the leadership of an older hand. I am that hand. I relish the opportunity.

I am sorry I have hurt you. But if I thought I was needed at home more than here, I would come home. Things are going well at home. So where do I belong? This is an unusual time in our nation’s history. The unrest around the world is paralleled only a handful of times in history. Young men are asking questions—hard questions. Much of the focus of the entire world is on Vietnam. The incompetency and the wrongs committed in Vietnam are staggering. But through it all I see a little light. Some men choose to fight on the streets. Some choose to fight in the universities. Some choose to fight in the parliaments. My choice is between two options—fight in Vietnam or shut up. I choose Vietnam. If I am to contribute, it must be Vietnam. And when I get home, you too will see that little light.

Your son,
Rod

Capt. Rodney R. Chastant, from Mobile, Alabama, served with Marine Air Group 13, 1st Marine Air Wing, based at Da Nang. Although his 13-month tour in Vietnam was up in September 1968, he extended for an additional six months. He was killed on 22 October 1968. He was 25 years old.

October 20, 1966

Dear Aunt Fannie,

This morning, my platoon and I were finishing up a three-day patrol. Struggling over steep hills covered with hedgerows, trees, and generally impenetrable jungle, one of my men turned to me and pointed a hand, filled with cuts and scratches, at a rather distinguished-looking plant with soft red flowers waving gaily in the downpour (which had been going on ever since the patrol began) and said, “That is the first plant I have seen today which didn’t have thorns on it.” I immediately thought of you.

The plant, and the hill upon which it grew, was also representative of Vietnam. It is a country of thorns and cuts, of guns and marauding, of little hope and of great failure. Yet in the midst of it all, a beautiful thought, gesture, and even person can arise among it waving bravely at the death that pours down upon it. Some day this hill will be burned by napalm, and the red flower will crackle up and die among the thorns. So what was the use of it living and being a beauty among the beasts, if it must, in the end, die because of them, and with them? This is a question which is answered by Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose.” You are what you are what you are. Whether you believe in God, fate, or the crumbling cookie, elements are so mixed in a being that make them what he is, his salvation from the thorns around him lies in the fact that he existed at all, in his very own personality. There once was a time when the Jewish idea of heaven and hell was the thoughts and opinions people had of you after you died. But what if the plant was on an isolated hill and was never seen by anyone? That is like the question of whether the falling tree makes a sound in the forest primeval when no one is there to hear it. It makes a sound, and the plant was beautiful and the thought was kind, and the person was humane, and distinguished and brave, not merely because other people recognized it as such, but because it is, and it is, and it is.

The flower will always live in the memory of a tired, wet Marine, and has thus achieved a sort of immortality. But even if we had never gone on that hill, it would still be a distinguished, soft, red, thornless flower growing among the cutting, scratching plants, and that in itself is its own reward.

Love,
Sandy

On 11 November 1966, less than three weeks after he wrote this letter to his great-aunt Mrs. Louis Adoue, Marine 2Lt. Marion Lee Kempner, from Galveston, Texas, was killed by a mine explosion near Tien Phu. After he disarmed one mine, another was tripped by one of his men. Although wounded by shrapnel, Lt. Kempner ordered the corpsman to take care of the other wounded man first. He died aboard a medevac en route to the hospital. He was 24 years old.

Everything We Had
A
L
S
ANTOLI
1981

Robert Santos
Rifle Platoon Leader
101st Airborne Division
Hue
November 1967-November 1968

MY MEN

I was drafted in March 1966. It wasn’t my intention to go into combat, but to go to Officer Candidate School, and quit a month before OCS ended. It wouldn’t be held against me and I’d have less than a year left. But the way it worked out, a friend did that ahead of me and he went to ’Nam, anyway. So I decided that based on what I had seen and my own feelings about myself, I should complete OCS.

I went over to ’Nam with two other guys as part of an advance party for the 101st Airborne, mainly to handle logistics and to make sure all the equipment was there. The rumors were that advance parties were being wiped out. When my company got there, they were under the impression that I had already died, which was a really weird feeling, to meet the company commander, who I didn’t get along with, and the first words out of his mouth are “I thought you were dead.” My response was “Too bad, huh?”

The 101st were mostly West Point officers. I was the first guy to
come there from OCS, and was not well received. They had a camaraderie. Most of the lieutenants out of West Point graduated from the same class. They graduated through Airborne school, Ranger school, and all came there as a unit.

We were part of the Hue liberation force in the Tet offensive. The North Vietnamese Army had taken the city. So the Marine Corps, the South Vietnamese, the 101st and the 1st Cavalry went in from different angles to liberate the city.

I was twenty-one. But I was young in terms of commanding men in combat. I didn’t know anything. I was the kind of lieutenant that they’d say, “Oh, shit, here’s another green lieutenant.” That’s what I was. You don’t know what to do, your mind races over the training you’ve taken in how to deal with these kinds of situations. I was naïve and really took what they said at face value.

We operated for maybe two weeks with only minor contact. I was working the whole time, spreading the platoon out, doing it right. I was lead platoon on our way into Hue. We came past the paddies, the trees, came around the green. I looked up and saw an NVA flag flying over the next open space. I couldn’t believe it. I just … I guess I just freaked. I got on the horn right away and called the CO. I was stuttering and stammering: “I see it. I see the flag! I … My God, they’re finally there.”

All I knew at that point was “My God! I’m scared shitless. Holy shit. This is the real thing.” I never expected to see a flag. I expected to get shot at. But they were so brazen. They were there. Dug in. The CO said, “Move out.” I’ve heard that before: “Follow me.” But I was in the bottom of the infantry. He didn’t say “Follow me,” he said “Move out.” I said, “Now I know what ‘Follow me’ means—Lieutenant says ‘Follow me’.” And that’s what we did.

The strange thing about war, there’s always humor. Prior to that, when I was walking around I was your typical “asshole lieutenant.” Everyplace I walked something got caught. You know, guys could walk right through a bush. My helmet would fall off, my pack would get snagged. And although no one ever told me, I had a reputation as the wait-a-minute-lieutenant. “Hold up, hold up, the lieutenant’s caught.” Here you’re trying to lead men in combat and be a tough
guy. Most of the guys were bigger than me. I weighed like 130 pounds. And really, always getting snagged was embarrassing.

I remember walking through the rice paddies that opened up and the small stream and the green on both sides. We were walking down the right side, near the trail, and there was another company on my left flank. All of a sudden all hell opened up. You have to understand, I’ve never been a Boy Scout, I’ve never been a Cub Scout. The closest I came to that was going to my sister’s Campfire Girl meetings. I grew up in New York City and Long Island. Watched a lot of movies and read a lot of books. I never fired a weapon. I never got into fights with my buddies. My RTO was from East Wenatchee, Washington. Grew up a hunter. They opened up fire and Wes started going down. You make a connection real quick that someone’s been shot and someone’s getting hurt.

The first thing I did was yell, “Follow me,” and I turned to the right for cover. There was a bamboo thicket. I couldn’t walk through a jungle, an open field, without tripping. Somehow I made a hole through those bushes that everyone in the platoon could go through side by side. Got on the other side—my hat was on my head, my rifle was in my hands, I’d lost nothing. There were guys from another platoon that didn’t know what they were doing. Everyone was running around crazy.

I said, “Come with me. Follow me.” And I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew I was supposed to go toward the enemy. I was trained not to stand still. Don’t stand in the killing zone. Don’t get shot. Move. So I moved, and as I ran forward I heard these noises. Kind of like
ping, ping
—no idea what that noise was. I finally jumped down behind this mound of dirt that turned out to be a grave, which I didn’t know at that time. So I jumped behind this mound of dirt with my RTO and we’re all kind of hid behind this stuff. I said, “Just climb up, tell them we’re in place and we’re hooked up with the left flank and the enemy is in front of us.” And I started playing the game. I got up and I ran around yelling “Move this machine gun over here” and “Do this over there.” I mean, all this noise is going past me. I still didn’t know what this noise was.
Ping.
Just a little weird, something new. I finally got back after running around, sat down next to the RTO, and
he said, “What the fuck you doing?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Don’t you know what’s going on?” I said, “Yeah, goddamnit. I know what’s going on. Who do you think I am?” He says, “Don’t you know what that noise is?” I said no. He said, “That’s the bullets going over your head.” I never knew it. I mean, if I’d known it I probably would’ve just buried myself and hid. But I didn’t know it. I just didn’t know it.

The NVA were in the thicket. There was a stream between us and them, and they were dug in on the opposite side. And they nailed us. They had us pinned down all over the place. Everything that day was done by the book. Just incredible. I don’t know how I survived that day, because lieutenants had a very short life expectancy and the reason is because they’re jerks and they run out and do stupid stuff by the book. That day we took our first casualties in our platoon. Sergeant Berringer, I think his name was, next to me got shot in the arm. And I remember the training again. Here you were a medic. Look for the bullet’s exit. So I found the exit and patched him up with his bandage. Then I realized that there’s also an entrance. So I took my bandage out. This is a mistake. You’re not supposed to take out your bandage and patch someone else up. But I had to do it. I turned around and called the medic, but he was all freaked out. The bullet that went through Berringer’s arm killed the guy next to him. It was a very traumatic day for all of us.