War Zone C Republic of South Vietnam
.....………We stayed out 22 days my first mission. After walking off of a tiny landing zone in a remote jungle, splitting up so as not to give away our ultimate direction of travel, the company linked up at a rendezvous point kilometers away. Hooking up in the deep bush was touchy since this was the only time that you didn't shoot first and talk later when running into someone "out there". Friendly forces exchanged fire more times than we would like to admit on these occasions. When we slept, it was on the ground, as flat as possible, never taking off boots or covering up. We never talked, we whispered, and used hand signals to communicate. A whole language of breaking squelch on the radio developed, negating the need for any verbal noise. We wore no underwear or socks in that fecund, hot, wet hell; they quickly stank and rotted as we were always wet. Our skin fell off in soggy green pieces from jungle rot. Groins were especially susceptible to this condition and I remember men lying in the sun when possible with their trousers off, legs spread to its’ warmth and dry heat. Soldiers relieved themselves on the spot, feeling vulnerable to the darkness around them, never letting go of their weapons; a couple of images for those who would gender integrate the military to ponder. Groups of 10 or 40 very young men, boys, moving silently through the jungle, single file, 5 meters apart, with 70 lbs on their backs for 10 hours a day. Young killers from Omaha, Montgomery, St. Louis and New York, on edge with atavistic instincts awakened from some primeval time, adherents to a ritual painfully learned and bequeathed by those that had walked before them. The war was 8 years old at this point. Our families would not have believed it, and Hollywood has never come close, not once, to getting it right. (There is no combat footage and almost no still photography of the Vietnam war that accurately depicts how it was fought on the ground, in the jungles, at night, at point blank range in exchanges so violent, savage and quick that each encounter was often over in minutes, seconds even. Photographers were seldom allowed in these settings, and if they were, the events’ ferocity prevented any kind of adequate recording. How do you film the mind numbing, strobe light flash blast of a claymore that a trip wire sets off when it is least expected and the mad minute of small arms fire that ensues? The scenes that TV has shown of soldiers lined up firing their weapons, or sitting behind a wall exchanging shots with an unseen enemy are either staged or in such low intensity contact that they don‘t come close to showing what soldiers were faced with). Always wary of the dark jungle around us, we were also very much aware of the 18 year olds behind us who had nervous fingers on the triggers of their chambered automatic rifles. Accidents and friendly fire accounted for at least one- third of the American deaths in Vietnam. Some would put that figure higher. Much higher. I was an artillery forward observer with an air cavalry infantry company in the First Cavalry. My RTO, born in 1954, was 17 years old......