What it is Like to Go to War (32 page)

7.
Chinese communist grenade, the same design as the Russian and German World War II “potato masher,” a round canister filled with high explosive and steel ball bearings on top of a wooden stick.

8.
Radio interview, April 1, 1993.

9.
The primary attack aircraft used by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War.

10.
“Snake” is short for snake-eye bombs, bombs with pop-out tail fins that slowed their descent to enable more accurate delivery and the escape of the faster-moving jet in tight conditions like this. “Nape” is napalm, jellied gasoline, a horrific incendiary substance invented during World War II that sticks to its targets, such as human flesh, and is used in flamethrowers and bombs. The name derives from
na
phthene and
palm
itate, the primary jellifying ingredients.

11.
It’s not just for daring the fire that I call these chopper pilots brave. In peacetime a pilot would be considered totally crazy to fly in those mountains, with their tricky winds and clouds obscuring the instant death called hillsides. Marine Air Group 29 (MAG-29) flew out of Quang Tri.

12.
The demilitarized zone that separated North Vietnam from South Vietnam.

13.
Lieutenant; the platoon commander.

14.
Originally published in 1922.

15.
Krishna is the eighth avatar (or incarnation) of Vishnu, the preserver, part of the Hindu trinity along with Brahma, the creator, and Shiva, the destroyer. Kali, the mother goddess in her destructive form, is Shiva’s wife. Krishna, as preserver and protector, represents that which maintains the world, including order. This is an important aspect of Krishna, an aspect which used to belong to our very early Western war gods but which we lost.

16.
I am paraphrasing or quoting directly from the
Mahabharata
, Udyoga Parva, trans. Kamala Subramaniam, 1988.

17.
Matthew 8:22

18.
Matthew 12:30.

19.
Donald Sandner, “The Split Shadow and the Father-Son Relationship,” in
Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation
, ed. Mahdi, Foster, and Little, 1987.

20.
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Ecce Homo
, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, 1979.

21.
Richard Ellmann,
The Identity of Yeats
, 1964.

22.
Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard
, 1999.

23.
Literally, “warrior way,” the code of the Japanese samurai.

24.
William Butler Yeats, from “Lapis Lazuli.”

25.
The M-14 was the standard NATO rifle in use before the adoption of the M-16. It was much heavier than the M-16, with a heavier bullet, so it had greater range and accuracy, neither of which was needed in jungle warfare but both of which were greatly desired in open space. At that time the M-16 was also considered unreliable. It had improved, but only after needless deaths. A small act of tiredness during the design phase? A small favor granted to a defense contractor? A small bureaucratic slip about powder composition? Small things, magnified terribly by war.

26.
Light Anti-Armor Weapons, handheld antitank missiles like little bazookas.

27.
Poem translated by John Lucas, in Christine Fell, trans. and ed.,
Egil’s Saga
, 1975.

28.
Combine this with the completely sufficient reason that it also means I’ll have a better chance of surviving than you will and you’ve got overwhelming pressure to always increase weapons technology. If stopping war is a goal, attacking weapons development is a losing strategy.

29.
If not controlled blood obscures what the surgeon needs to see as well as weakens the patient.

30.
I’ve watched my own position change. I initially supported both wars to eliminate weapons of mass destruction under the control of a sadist in Iraq and al-Qaeda’s base and its leader in Afghanistan. When one mission turned out to be based on a false assumption and the other mission failed, I’d have brought the troops home. From the very start, however, I abhorred the “war as Olympic Games” coverage by the media and the self-righteous attitude of the administration.

31.
Supply bases replenish matériel. Hospitals replenish soldiers. Allowing the unhindered resupply of both increases the deaths and casualties on our side. Directly attacking wounded soldiers (e.g., indiscriminately bombing a hospital) is immoral but it is not immoral to take away hospitals through infantry action directed against troops who are guarding them. Once a hospital is taken, unevacuated patients should be cared for.

32.
New Fucking Guy.

33.
A fire mission occurs when an observer sees a target, radios back to the artillery battery the exact map coordinates, and adjusts the first few shells onto the target. He then gives the order to “fire for effect,” meaning lob as many shells into the target as one thinks necessary to destroy it.

34.
Alphabetic system used by the ancient Irish.

35.
North Vietnamese soldier. I apologize for the use of this word, but that’s where I was when I was in Vietnam.

36.
A large knife carried by Marines.

37.
Just days before I reported for duty at Mobilization Planning, the colonel I was supposed to work for had a heart attack. I was the only one around who knew FORTRAN and PERT networks (Program Evaluation Review Technique), so I temporarily replaced him until I was discharged.

38.
I later learned to call it being “numb,” the first sign of PTSD.

39.
The same hill I described in
chapter 2
.

40.
Executive officer, the second in command in an infantry company. In most tactical situations the commanding officer (CO) and the XO are separated physically to ensure that both won’t be killed at the same time.

41.
Canadians in the Marines were not unusual. I’ve often wondered how Canadian veterans have handled their return to a nation that already projects so much of its own darker side onto the United States.

42.
One of our guys retorted, “Who the fuck
needs
to be accurate with an M-60 machine gun?”

43.
Unannounced machine-gun fire would have made the whole hill come unglued. Etiquette and common sense demanded announcing any intentional fire where no attack was under way.

44.
“Walking point” means taking the lead position at the front of the unit. This is probably the most frightening of all patrolling experiences, particularly in dense jungle where you can’t see more than two or three feet into the foliage. The point man is responsible for detecting any danger and is the one most likely to be sacrificed should that danger not be detected in time. I was excused from this role because I was an officer, but the few times I took it on just to prove something I was a nervous wreck and frightened out of my mind.

45.
Long-range rations. Freeze-dried food that was not only light but a very welcome departure from the heavy cans of C-rations we usually ate. Long-rats were very new then and were supposed to be used only by special groups such as reconnaissance teams.

46.
Intravenous fluid, plasma that ran by gravity from a bottle down a plastic tube and through a needle into a vein on the arm or leg. Loss of blood causes shock, which is a principal cause of combat deaths.

47.
He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross and four men wear silver bracelets engraved with his name because he saved their lives..

48.
Semper fidelis, “always faithful,” is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps. When originally coined it probably meant always faithful to the call of the nation. It still does, but it has taken on an additional, more personal meaning for Marines: always faithful to one another, in a variety of contexts ranging from risking your life for a fellow Marine in battle to getting a fellow Marine a date. In my darkest moments in Vietnam I never doubted that my fellow Marines would risk killing themselves trying to help me and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t do the same for them.

49.
I never saw the NVA run. At most I saw them hurry from their positions to reach their main units, but their units always withdrew in good order and very dangerously to any pursuers. They were a disciplined and effective fighting force.

50.
Combined Action Group. Marines who could operate very independently were chosen to work in small groups that were assigned to villages too far from main cities to be covered by more conventional forces. They usually operated in combination with local Vietnamese militia units.

51.
Trained as elite shock troops, with a specific history of acting that way, and with logistical support designed for short tough fights, the Marines were misused in Vietnam. The generals in the first Gulf war, almost all of them veterans of Vietnam, used the Marines correctly: first, as a quick reaction force to help defend Saudi Arabia; then, as an offensive threat to the beaches behind Iraqi lines; and, finally, as shock troops to drive through the heavy Iraqi fortifications near the coast.

52.
We consider this to be fanatical. If an American did this we would consider it heroic.

53.
Most Japanese Americans fought in Europe with the justly famous Nisei Division, although some acted as interpreters in the Pacific.

54.
I’ll always remember a Chinese businessman in Malaysia being astounded when I told him I had volunteered for the Marines and fought in Vietnam. He said, “We Chinese see our sons as fine steel, not nails to be thrown away.”

55.
Dead and wounded.

56.
It’s no different from grade inflation or putting all excellents on fitness reports for average work. If others are doing it, why would you ruin some student’s chance for Yale or a guy’s career just to be a one-person crusade for rigor and honesty?

57.
After an epic defense and one week after Westmoreland left Vietnam the Marines abandoned it with Creighton Abrams’s full blessings. The decision to make a stand at Khe Sanh is still controversial.

58.
I was well aware that I had received this assignment when the Corps was desperately short of infantry officers. I felt grateful then and still do.

59.
United States Marine Corps Reserve. In the Marines in those days there was a very clear distinction between those who elected to make the Corps their career by “going regular” and those who didn’t. Those who hadn’t gone regular, by signing a formal agreement with the Corps, were designated USMCR.

60.
Meg and I had a poignant reunion and emotional reconciliation some three decades later. She told her story and I told mine. We both sadly accepted that we were dumb kids in love who hurt each other. I am blessed to have her as a friend.

61.
I think the smugness and ease with which this line of defense was dismissed had less to do with fairness than with the self-righteous morality of people on the winning side. Japanese and German military people committed terrible crimes and deserved punishment. However, the large number of death penalties handed out to so many should have been tempered with some recognition of the awful choice of disobeying an order in a frightening dictatorship as opposed to the relative ease of disobeying an order in a democracy with rule of law.

62.
The primary reason you don’t make sound judgments in combat is that you too often are exhausted and numbed. There is little that can be done about this except training under extreme duress to learn how to function at such times—one very strong reason why I deplore ignorant attempts by civilians and noncombat veterans to make boot camp more “humane.” There is nothing humane about dead kids because someone cracked under pressure.

63.
People have this idea that you just touch a match to an ammo dump and it goes off. Actually, very little powder is exposed. It’s all encased in metal. Shells, bullets, and rockets all take a lot of explosives to get cooking. Once they do,
then
you have the popular image of an ammo dump going off, which is, indeed, spectacular.

64.
Charles M. Province,
The Unknown Patton
, 1984.

65.
Inazo Nitobe,
Bushido: The Soul of Japan
, 1969.

66.
Platoon Leaders Class, a U.S. Marines officer candidate school.

67.
The final line of departure, the preplanned line on the ground that is the last stop before committing everything to the assault and the control point for managing artillery, naval gunfire, and air support just prior to the assault.

68.
Controlling an assault—and the word
control
is used loosely—treads a fine line between not having any gaps, which weakens the attack, and not bunching up, which makes it too easy for the defense to kill you.

69.
The Purple Heart is a medal given for wounds received in combat. The Combat Action Ribbon is awarded to people who have experienced combat, although this is a tougher one to judge on the surface. A person could be at an air base, where one rocket hit the base half a mile from the person, and still be awarded a CAR the same as an infantryman who spent months fighting in the jungle.