Two Children in Combat:
There was a young boy who had become very efficient at this
grim business of killing, but he had given up his childhood a long time before I met him. His tiny body led me to
believe that he was still a child, but when I looked into his eyes before a combat operation, he seemed more in control
of his emotions than the toughest man in his village, tougher than the Vietnamese officers and soldiers at
Trung Lap, tougher than the men in my advisory team, far tougher than I was capable of being amid the obscene destruction
around us.
In combat, he always moved decisively, aimed his weapon
as accurately and deliberately as if he had been shooting at paper targets at a gun range. He did far more than
his share during our constant effort to keep the enemy soldiers out our large three part village of probably several
thousand (ten thousand, as I recall). When I left Trung Lap, he was still very much alive.
There was another child soldier in Trung Lap, at least three
years older than the first. He was a kind-hearted and decent soul, and he was instinctively drawn to my medic's health
program for the village. Since there was no doctor, nor anyone with medical training, my medic volunteered to do
the work of a country doctor, if one had been available.
Sergeant Stone donated all of his spare hours and
minutes examining the sick, cutting and sewing where necessary, furnishing a high level of prenatal and natal care for the
women, and issuing antibiotics to those who were suffering from nasty infections which had refused to heal without their almost
miraculous help.
He became so grateful for the help which the older boy offered,
that his respect and affection for him continued to grow. Somewhere during that time, he regarded him more and
more as the son he and his wife would one day have, They decided to adopt the boy into their family, and
that is what they did. Not only that, they leaned on friends, relatives, and church groups to help him get a scholarship
and an almost certain admission to a medical school.
Still, the boy remained in the village, and continued
to participate in the patrols of the village defense force. One morning, as we opened the gate of our base for the
day, came the crushing news: The boy had been killed in a Vietcong ambush.
My medic seemed to be allright. After all, he
had not only seen a lot of death among our soldiers, but also among some very close friends during his long career.
I did not realize then, that he was in much worse shape than I thought. He started drinking more, and changing from
a borderline social drinker into a hardcore alcoholic. Still, he continued to serve us well, accompanying us on all of
our missions - the inevitable lot of his profession in a combat zone.
A month after the boy's death, my boss decided that
we had stayed at Trung Lap too long, and moved us to a "safer" area, a small "Popular Forces" compound, a mere three
hundred yards from the outside perimeter of the giant 25th U.S. Infantry Division at Cu Chi.
Our reputation at Trung Lap seemed to have preceded
us to our new assignment. After all, the distance between the two locations was relatively small. So, in our honor,
our Vietcong friends prepared a suitable welcome.
During our first night at the new location, after and during
a heavy rain, they hit us with all of the resources in the immediate proximity. Shortly after 10PM, the night was
suddenly filled with green enemy tracer rounds, and more than fifteen rocket-propelled grenades arched gracefully over
the sandbags that topped our defenses. Steel helmet on, I crouched ouside our bunker to report the situation.
Suddenly, so suddenly that he caught me completely off-guard, "Doc" Stone streaked past me, tears welling up in
his eyes, heading for the rampart facing the village. While I was still talking, my Executive Officer was
hot on his heels. When Sergeant Stone reached the sandbags, he exposed the complete upper part of his body,
everything above his belt-buckle, while firing wildly in the general direction of the enemy. Instinctively, I dropped
the microphone and headed after him, but my XO had already grabbed him by the back of his jungle fatigues, and Doc
was now firing straight into the air, until he had the presence of mind to take his finger off the trigger. By that
time, I had made it to the scene, and I witnessed my sergeant not only crying, but sobbing uncontrollably - the first
time I had ever seen him lose control of his emotions. Back in the light of the bunker, we examined "Doc" for wounds.
A bullet had grazed his arm, about halfway between his hand and elbow, but other than that, he had escaped unscathed.
Next morning, I had a long talk with him, asking that he
never repeat his Kamikazi performance. The truth is, although we had become very close after sharing our many hazardous
adventures, I needed his expertise very badly, and there was a lot of selfishness in my concern. He refused my offer
to write him up for a "Purple Heart" decoration. A wound is a wound, and he was a very brave man indeed.
He said that he bad been continually lying to his wife, telling her he was in a very safe location. A decoration for
a combat wound would expose these lies, and she would start to worry even more about his mission in Vietnam.
Immediately after our talk, I noticed that the children in
the Popular Force compound had picked up the unexploded RPG warheads, and were rolling them down an eight inch wide board,
which they had propped at a 45 degree angle against a prone fifty-five gallon drum. The ground was still soft from the heavy
rains of the preceding night - no wonder the shells had not gone off.
The RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) is really an antitank
weapon, and is not very effective against groups of enemy soldiers. The pointed tip is merely a windshield, and underneath
it the warhead is really and inverted "v", which fits like a plunger against the brittle armor of a tank. When the explosion
takes place, this cone concentrates the entire blast against a tiny point in the armor. Inside the tank, the hard, brittle
metal of the armor flakes into hundreds of tiny projectiles, which bounce around the encloses space to kill the crew.
The RPG is not nearly as effective against a soft target, unless it hits that target with extreme precision.
While I sought out a Vietnamese NCO, I found that the round
was even softer than I had anticipated, and as I walked, my boots became quickly covered with mud. When he reached
for one of these RPG rounds and flipped them high into the air, I automatically dived for cover, to the laughter of this idiotic
Vietnamese. A few minutes later I found the Vietnamese commander, and strongly urged that he gather all of these mortar rounds
into a freshly dug pit, and destroy them safely
Three months later, I was back in the United States,
and several months after that, after I had submitted my request for release from active duty, I prepared to leave the army.
Two weeks before I departed, I had to make a trip to the commissary, another name for the base grocery store.
Life, for those who learn to appreciate them, is full of
miracles, and I was just about to experience a very great one: When I saw him, "Doc" Stone was browsing the lettuce area in
the produce section.
He was finally retiring, leaving the army which had been
the most demanding part of his family for all of his adult life. As a medic, I would have expected him to
go to Fort Sam Houston to be discharged. I don't recall why he was at Fort Hood, I was just very happy
to see him one more time.
We met in a local bar that night, and I had to threatened
him with severe bodily harm, if he tried one more time to pay for the many rounds.
My team had been fine when he left them, and it seemed that
the war had been winding down, and things had become a lot calmer in Vietnam
Children Die in Mine Explosion:
The word had spread throughout the rumor mills of Trung Lap,
that my team and I had killed several young children. Since I had no memory of that event, I suspected that someone
had been lieing about the alleged event.
I was confident that my medic would be able to find out the
truth of the matter, from the charming young lady who assisted him during sick call. The elderly man had a serious crush
on her, and I could easily understand why.
She was a pretty little thing, perhaps 20 or younger, with
a sharp mind to go with that pretty body, and a demure and refreshingly up-beat personality. Perhaps that is why I took
quite a few photos of her and my medic, working the never-ending village patient list, or perhaps it was just that I was impressed
with the professionalism by this superb medical team. I'm sure it must have been the latter, since I was into professionalism
at the time, and all reflections of a woman's outward beauty were strictly secondary.
If you believe that, there is some swamp land I have for
sale, but you have to act fast - I've already had several serious offers on it.
The bottom line on my so-called atrocity was that several
children did indeed die, near the road from the village into the "Iron Triangle" of the Viet Cong. They were killed
while planting mines in that road, apparently situated to kill me and my team, during our patrols into the "Triangle", because
they were just too immature to handle the dangerous devices with the proper amount of caution and respect.
Mines were by far the most serious danger in that
area. The Vietcong planted them every night, and every morning an American Army engineer unit swept the wide dirt road
from the paved highway to Saigon to Trung Lap and beyond. Although they began at daybreak, they usually were unable
to complete their difficult task until 10 or 11 in the morning. Their metal detectors sounded the alarm every few
feet, mostly over odorous heaps of water buffalo dung. When they probed these piles, they invariably found
nails and small pieces of metal embedded in that smelly mess. Of course, they could never hope to clear the road entirely,
since that would have taken all day, and at night the mine layers would return.
One day, when I returned from my delivery of caged
rats to the 25th Infantry Division base at Cu Chi, I found small pieces of an American Army five ton truck near that road,
and the heavy engine in the rice paddies, thirty feet from the road. That must have been one heck of an explosion, and
I am certain that at least two, probably more, Americans died then. Perhaps I even drove over the mine, but my
jeep was not heavy enough to set it off. The Vietcong used very unsophisticated triggering devices, and it
may have malfunctioned, or perhaps needed a bit more weight on top to make it work.
You may be wondering why I was transporting rats to Cu Chi
every week. To the best of my knowledge, they actually had enough rats right there, on the base, and in the village
adjacent to it, just a few yards away.
It was all very scientific: I had been given a
small fund, and twenty or thirty live traps by MACV. The villagers volunteered to place the traps near their houses
and in the rice fields around the village. Usually, they cooked and ate the rice-fed rats, and gave me the ones from
the village. Actually, these were the only ones I wanted.
I delivered this interesting cargo to a military MD in the
"Tropic Lightning" base camp. One of the rats was thrown to the doctor's pet python, while the other were gassed.
Then, one of his assistants would comb their fur to get all of the fleas, and these were shipped to Saigon to keep an
eye on any Beubonic Plague problems which might be developing in Vietnam.
After a few of these trips, and impressed with the amount
of damage caused by the mines in the area, I began to drink a sixpack of American beer before beginning my journey.
Should I become one of the victims of these mines, I wanted to feel as little as possible.
Invitation to a Suicide Dance
It had been an unusually rough week in Trung Lap. The
twenty - man village defense force had asked for help one night, about two hours after darkness had enveloped the area.
My medic, one of my sergeants, and I put on our comouflage makeup, and smoothed it intoour faces with insect repellant.
Then we hastily squirted the oily, smelly liquid over our jungle fatigues, mostly over our upper body. Very few
things can distract you more easily, when you need to direct all your senses to keep you alive, than a few mosquitos
buzzing around your face and neck.
Then, out through the main gate, the only path into the village,
where my predecessor had been gunned down only three weeks ago. The village defence people met us at the gate, and we
began our uneasy patrol through the village toward the rubber plantation on its southern edge.
At that point, we began drawing light AK-47 fire from the
plantation, but the bright green tracers (ours were red) showed that the enemy had not yet figured out our exact location.
When I reported the situation, headquarters encouraged us to follow the enemy into the rubber trees. I was unenthusiastic,
but I had a great deal of respect for my boss, and I realized that the order may have come from him, but had its origin one
or two headquarters above his level.
Like many things from the lofty peaks of higher headquarters,
it made no sense: First, we had no clear idea of the total size or exact location of the enemy force. Second, we did
not know the size of the force. Third, since we could not pinpoint our own location, any suport, from artillery or gunships
was out of the question. The defender always holds the advantage, but at night, that advantage is much greater. We
succeeded in many battles, because we could always count on the outstanding support from American artillery and air power.
We could not effectively use that advantage in this situation.
In addition to the four of us from our team - after
all, we could easily be replaced, we we would lose the few men willing to defend their own village. Once the latter
were lost, there would be no replacements for them.
The whole thing was a very bad idea, and I doubted that we
would get out of this adventure unscathed, but I had my orders. Almost instinctively, after assessing the dismal
situation, I issued the standard "five paragraph" field order.
Situation: An estimated ten to thirty Vietcong are located
inside the rubber plantation, within two hundred yards of our current location. Their threat to us is solely from small-arms
fire, since the density of the trees makes use of mortars impossible, and even the use of rocket propelled grenades is hazardous
to the troops firing them. Mission: I designated that we would be attacking the enemy by moving in two teams.
Execution: Half of the village defense force, with one
of my sergeant - specialist, as well as my medic would form the right flank. My interpreter and the other non-commissioned
officer would come with me, and the other half of the defense force, in beginning the attack. We would try to spread
out sufficiently that we could see the man to either side, and maintain as straight a line as possible. After running
ahead for at least twenty yards, we would get at the ground and fire our weapons to protect the other fire-team moving up
on our right flank.
After ensuring that everyone who spoke english understood
our radio call sign, I prepared myself emotionally to execute the orders from higher headquarters, with the sickening
realization that the orders were ill-conceived and might result in the unnecessary death of most of my team, as well as the
elimination of the village defense force as a fighting unit.
Why did I agree to go, despite my judgment that this mission
would turn out so very badly? I don't really know. Mostly, because that is what you do in the armed forces. We
were all trained to follow orders and were somehow assured that our entire army would disintegrate, if all of us did not follow the
orders from higher headquarters.
I had always followed orders, and if a captain decides to
pick and choose his missions, the Army would soon descend into chaos. Yet, in this case, I should have been ready to
disobey those orders. There was nothing at all to be accomplished by this futile attack, and a great deal to lose.
I hegan to realize then, that disobeying orders would have taken a lot more courage than I had, and I was about to sacrifice
the lives of so many good men needlessly.
Fortunately, the village defense force refused to go in with
us - they apparently had a lot more sense than my boss, a lot more courage than I was apparently capable of. The
orders were cancelled, and I requested and got two helicopter gunships from the 25th Infantry Division. Using the green enemy
tracers as a reference point, I helped them to adjust their fire for maximum effect.
Over and over again, they made one run after another across
the plantation. At first, the enemy, to my knowledge, did not fire a single round at the choppers, knowing that
the only result would be the complete devastation of their fighting force. Not only did the helicopter crews make liberal
use of their machine guns, but they also worked the target over with rockets for several minutes. It seemed clear to
me that most of those who had been shooting us would now be suffering from serious wounds.
We had always been discouraged from using more than
light weapons in the rubber plantations, since the rubber trees were an important economic asset to the Vietnamese economy,
but our helicopter pilots seldom paid any attention to that request. When lives are on the line, the thought of future
economic problems are inconsequential.
Then, a request from the chopper pilots: "I'd like to bring
the rockets a bit closer to the village - some of those green tracers came only a few meters from the southwestern area of
your village." It sounded as though the enemy had withdrawn toward that section of the village, where I knew that the sympathies
for our enemy ran much stronger. None of our men in the local defence force came from that area.
Had I approved, the choppers would now have to hit women
and children to work their target, and that seemed to be wrong. Adults often make poor value judgments, and, by any
stretch of the imagination, children were even less capable of making well-considered judgments.
"Sorry, I can't ok that: A few of those rockets may end up
in the houses, and I can't take that chance. I do want to thank you for a great job. Looks as though our friends
in the village will sleep better tonight than they have for a long time."
At that point, we made our way cautiously back to our
base, falling asleep almost instantly within our own personal bunkers, although it was as hot and humid inside
as usual.
The duty sergeant who did our hourly communications checks
had to shake, at first gently, then with more insistence. Seems that it was morning, and I had overslept: "Our
'6', (meaning my boss), wants you to meet a visitor at the landing strip, sir! He'll be here in fifteen minutes".
I had only been asleep for three hours, so I was not really
up for the occasion. Besides, my face was still covered with green camouflage grease, I had't shaved for a day, and I
smelled of sweat and insect repellant. As I walked to the landing strip, there was a chopper already coming
in, and it landed a minute before I could get very close to it.
Out stepped a skinny white-haired one star general from the
25th Infantry Division. Even from several feet away, I could tell that he looked pissed, as he tiptoed his way toward
me on the grass and weed-covered runway, gingerly avoiding the cow patties.
Only a week earlier, a powerful Chinnok cargo chopper had
landed there. A big American operation in the heart of the Iron Triangle had just been completed, and the smaller
helicopters had brought the American dead to our location, stacking them neatly, almost like cordwood, at the eastern edge
of the runway, near the inner defensive wire of our base.
I had taken a walk to that sad pile of lifeless humanity,
partly driven my mobid curiosity, and partly to try to understand the tragic toll for our mistaken involvement in a war that
we apparently could not win.
I had looked at the frozen faces of these men, but were they
really men at all? I had always been told that I looked young, but I had celebrated my 26th birthday at a firebase of
the 1/10 Cavalry in November. But these - they seemed to be much younger, perhaps 18 or so, and I thought: "Why?" Certainly,
they had the courage of men, but did they really understand why they would have to make this ultimate sacrifice?
Somewhere in the United States, a mother, a father, and a
high school sweetheart, were looking at their picture, thinking of them, praying for them, planning a future with
them in mind, a future that no longer existed. Soon they would receive a visit from a man in uniform, and from the tragic
deaths of these forty- eight men, perhaps as many as forty-eight hundred lives transformed, for in this tapestry we fashion
during our lives, we affect the lives of so many others.
Certainly, they had the courage of men, but they looked so
very young. But for the grace of God, I would have joined them last night.
As I drew closer to the general, I noticed that
his boots were spit-shined to a mirror finish, and I could't help but look down, to see if I could actually see my face in
them. His jungle uniform had been heavily starched, and, still a four feet away, the powerful scent of
his after-shave lotion already surrounded me.
He began to speak, even before I could manage a salute:
"I gave you two of my air assets last night, and you restricted them from completing their mission!" "Well,
sir...:" He interrupted me, and continued to raise his voice, until he reached the screaming level: "When I give you air assets,
I expect you to use them".
At this point, his face seemed to have turned a bright purple.
He had come closer now, no less than twelve inches away, perhaps closer, and the veins in his neck stood our
clearly from his skin. I suspected that he would just as soon have shot me right then and there, if he could have justified
it before the American witnesses, and had he not been afraid of staining his spit-shined boots and perhaps even his heavily
starched fatigues with my blood:
"Sir, perhaps you are not aware of the fact that the local village
defense force refused to follow my team into the rubber plantation." "What the #@& do you think you are
here for? It's your job to motivate them!"
I made things a lot worse with the comments: "Sir, as
an advisor, my boss is the District Advisor, and I am not in your chain of command. Please take any problems
you have with my decision up with him."
This was true, but probably very bad timing on my part.
In retrospect, however, I am proud that I had the courage to say that - perhaps I still felt guilty about my lack of moral
courage during the preceding night, when I should have tried harder to explain the situation to my very outstanding boss
at District headquarters.
With that, he turned on his heels and returned to his helicopter.
As the blades churned up the inevitable dust, I reflected that this man was not characteristic of the other generals
I had known in my four year career, nor of most senior officers. As Intelligence Operations Officer of the Fourth U.S.
Armored Division in Germany, I had worked closely with two generals. The behaviour of this man was a despicable exception,
and not the rule.
Two days after this incident, I had to report to my boss,
the District Advisor. As always, our meeting was friendly and cordial, and he fully supported my decision to refuse
our helicopters permission to fire their rockets so close to the edge of my village.
However, I noticed that he had claimed fifteen enemy
killed in action during that event, while I had reported only five. He seemed to be embarrassed when I asked
about that: "I thought you might have missed some." If I had worked for anyone else, I would said something like: "Whatever",
but I really respected this man, and wanted to give him as much information as I had about the enemy casualties.
I explained to him how I determined my count. When
my team and I entered the rubber plantation during the early morning hours after the incident, we were unable to
find even a single enemy body.
Wherever the rockets had impacted, small tree limbs
- the side that had been attached to the tree was never larger than one inch - littered the ground. My first
priority was to look for any signs that someone had been killed in that area, such as blood, body parts, etc.
We did find a dozen or so "prone" shelters, approximately
three by five and a half feet, and about a foot deep, hastily dug into the sandy soil. A few were partially filled in, most
were not. We uncovered these slowly and carefully with our entrenching tools, and found a few skin and bone fragments, in
one of them a piece of a person's skull. Since there were a few female fighters with the Vietcong, the fragments could
have been either from a man or a woman.
Where I found a spot that looked as though a half gallon
of blood had been poured on the ground, I counted one enemy killed, on the assumption that the Vietcong soldier could not
have survived the loss of so much blood. Where I found fragments of a skull, I assumed that an enemy had been killed,
since a rocket fragment had obviously pierced his skull and penetrated his brain. Whereever I found small amounts of blood,
or small pieces of skin or bone, I counted this as evidence the our enemy had been wounded.
We took our time, spending at least four hours on this
grisly project, including a walk through the entire rubber plantation, not just the impacted area. In each find, my men and
I shared our opinion, and there was absolutely no disagreement.
After I had made my report to my very good boss at District,
I took my leave and drove to Bao Trai, the capital of Hau Nghia Province, to which my boss reported. In the Central Highlands,
north of Kontum, we had received a 12"x12"x18" box every week or two with various team supplies. These included
shaving cream, razor blades, several cartons of cigarettes, cheap cigars, sewing kits, etc. In Trung Lap, I had received none,
and my boss at District did't know why.
When I arrived at Province headquarters, another surprise:
My enemy KIA report of 5, changed by District to 15, had been once again tripled, and was now at 45. I mused, that
if we had enough headquarters levels between me and MACV in Saigon, we could easily be up to over a thousand.
There was a very clear pattern emerging here: Just
as the enemy KIA reports were falsified, so were the kill ratios. With rare exceptions, all of our ratios in Vietnam
were ten to one, and they were solely arrived at by multiplying our own tragic losses by ten. Whenever you
see a "documentary" film about Vietnam, you will most certainly see that ten to one ratio dragged out, and there is not a
shred of truth in any of it.
