click to translate

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Yusef Komunyakaa

George Dickerson

Peter Kane Dufault

Bruce Weigl

Edmond Rostand

Gill Scott-Heron

Larry Heinemann

Alan Farrell

Bao Ninh

David Bianchini

George Carlin

Sapper

Bio

Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam War Veterans 

Clinton Dugald MacDougall was born 14 Sept 1839 in Kintrye, Scotland. He enlisted on 16 September 1861 at Auburn, NY as a Captain. In 1861 he joined A Co. NY 75th Infantry.

The following year,upon joining the Field & Staff NY 111th Infantry he was promoted to Lt Colonel and promoted to full colonel in1863. Col. MacDougall commanded a regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg until he was wounded on 3 July 1863.

He was mustered out on 4 June 1865 at Alexandria, VA with the rank of Brig. General. He died in in Paris,France on 24 May 1914.

Sources: New York State Military Museum and Wikipedia

Francis Channing Barlow, “The Boy General” was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1834. He studied law at Harvard University,graduated first in his class,and was practicing law when the Civil War broke out in 1861.

In April 1861 he enlisted as a private in the 12th Regiment, New York State Militia, leaving behind his new bride, Arabella Wharton Griffith Barlow,after one day of marriage. Commissioned a first lieutenant in his first month of service by November he was a lieutenant colonel. In 1862 he was promoted to colonel.

At the Battle of Antietam,Barlow’s troops, in the thick of the combat,captured nearly 300 prisoners. He was wounded by an artillery shell in the face and by grapeshot in the groin. In his official report Brig. Gen.John C. Caldwell said of Barlow:

“Whatever praise is due to the most distinguished bravery, the utmost coolness and quickness of perception, the greatest promptitude and skill in handling troops under fire, is justly due to him. It is but simple justice to say that he has proved himself fully equal to every emergency, and I have no doubt that he would discharge the duties of a much higher command with honor to himself and benefit to the country.”

Two days after the battle,Barlow was promoted to Brigadier General. In July 1863,at the Battle of Gettysburg, he was severely wounded. An apocryphal account states Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon arranged a truce so that Barlow’s wife Arabella could tend to her husbands wounds. More likely, as the Confederates retreated from Gettysburg Barlow was recovered by Federal forces. He was hospitalized for a lengthy period,returning to duty in1864.

Barlow commanded troops at the Battle of the Wilderness, and at Spotsylvania Court House,where hand-to-hand fighting ensued for 21 hours,the longest hand-to-hand combat in the entire war.

In 1865 Barlow commanded troops at the Battle of Sayler’s Creek. He was appointed Major General of volunteers in May but the promotion was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate until February 23,1866,after Barlow had resigned from the army.

After the war Barlow held a variety of high political posts. As the New York State Attorney General he prosecuted the Boss Tweed ring,before he returned to his private law practice.

A founder of the American Bar Association,he was active in Republican politics and investigated the 1876 Hayes-Tilden presidential election,for irregularities.

Barlow was one of the few men who entered the Civil War as an enlisted man and earned the rank of general. He died of  a kidney disease in New York City on January 11,1896.

Source: Wikipedia

I met Seth in Luang Prabang, Laos. With three other backpackers we planned a trip up the Mekong but Seth got food poisoning. While he recuperated in Vientiane, Peter and Renata, the charismatic Swiss man Pascal and I made our way upriver on hired fantail boats. Sailing six to eight hours a day, we marveled at the sight of half submerged water buffalo, pristine jungle, the occasional village. By noon we dozed to the engines dull roar.

We had our fortunes told in the Cave of the Buddha. Reaching Phongsali, near China, we met young Lao men playing pool with broom sticks on billiard tables parked along dirt roads. In the nearby village, the handsome wary children, over-coming their fear of strangers, ‘farang’ they called us, joined our game of catch, laughing hysterically when I did the Ali shuffle, the ball hovering high in the air, then caught behind my back. An hour later the laughing children followed us as we left the village, their worried parents in hot pursuit.

Once, after a bird hunter met on a rocky path told us there were no villages for miles, we hitched a ride in a truck headed to an Army base where a Lao officer greeted us in fluent German. Having inspecting our passports he pointed to a kitchen that had nothing to eat but Morning Glory soup. The boiled inedible vines arrived an hour later, the cook captivated by a satellite dish broadcast of World Federation Wrestling.

click to translate

The Fortune makes reference to Chanok, an incarnation of Buddha associated with faith and perseverance, and to Makala, a heavenly angel who rescued him.

The Fortune reads as follows:

This third sheet indicates a comparison to when Chanok

Was swimming in high seas and Makala descended to rescue him

And took Him to a hugh city of Meetala

To enjoy his fortune no further hardship and peace received.

Your luck is abundant and plentiful may you practice perseverance

In the near future your fortune will become reality

Inquire about future children it will surely be a beautiful girl



Translated by Ann Rithmyxay
Laotian American Society

Back on the water, after four hours we stopped at a village famous for its fermented wine. I was stunned by the sight of a boy on the riverbank, his T shirt sporting a large eyeball, beneath it the words ‘Nantucket Rectilinear.’

On the tenth day, Pascal and I flew from a dirt air strip in Phongsali back to Vientiane. The French Army bi-plane, powered by a colossal engine that spun a large wood propeller, had no seats. A Lao family sat on the floor. Soon after the plane took off they vomited into plastic bags handed out by the pilots. I sat by the exit door, a round hatch kept shut by a single sliding bolt. We flew low, the jungle quite visible beneath us, much like a helicopter combat assault. After landing I bid farewell to Pascal and found Seth in Vientiane.

Aboard the second class section of the packed train we found a place to sit; the wood slat seats grew steadily hard on the back. The Vietnamese passengers, friendly and curious, inquired multiple times, “How-old-you-are? What-your-name? Where-you- from?” To stop the pestering I borrowed a trick from Pascal. The Buddhist prayer gesture instantly cut the Vietnamese short.

By late afternoon we rolled into Lao Cai’s Soviet style train station. Outside the drab cement block building,Seth hailed two boys roaring past on chrome trimmed Kawasaki’s. We pantomimed;they signaled ‘Sure,get on.’ Gripping the seat straps,off we sped,the North Vietnamese taking the turns low and fast. In Hanoi we’d heard the Lao Cai police would extend visas for five dollars. In a small office we paid up; our visas were duly extended. Back at the station we caught the Dollar Bus to Sapa. The higher we went, the colder it got. The bus in the photo had just broken down, a not uncommon sight in Vietnam.

There were no other backpackers on the dirt trail as Seth and I returned to Sapa after one of many day long hikes. Nearing town,we passed a young girl harvesting rice on the side of a steep hill. Seeing us,she stopped her backbreaking work,held her scythe aloft,in a loud clear voice declared,“Two dollah!” We nodded ‘no thanks’ and continued walking.

Such was Sapa in ‘95. These days the town is over run with tourists,internet cafes,trinket shops,pricey hotels. Daily, hordes of gringos line up for walking tours where once few backpackers were to be seen. For their part, the H’mong have learned English and the art of the deal. One hopes they will not lose their way.

]]> http://medicinthegreentime.com/hmong-woman-sapa-1995/feed/ 0 http://medicinthegreentime.com/levy-old-woman-and-children-in-corn-field/ http://medicinthegreentime.com/levy-old-woman-and-children-in-corn-field/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 09:45:29 +0000 admin http://medicinthegreentime.com/?p=521 We spotted this man and his children on a hill overlooking Sapa’s famed terraced paddies. Scampering up a muddy slope we joined them. The father smiled as he continued to play his sad lovely tunes which hovered in the air then drifted away on the mountain breeze.

In a nearby corn field I bargained and bought colorful hand made sashes from an old woman who may have been the family matriarch. The tattoo on my arm reads “First Cavalry Vietnam Cambodia 1970.” It was drawn free hand at Tony’s Tattoo Parlor in Union Beach, NJ in 1972. In New York City in 1998 Dr. Vicky Levine removed it by Q-Switched Ruby laser.

Dr. Vicki Levine

Medical Specialty:
Dermatology

Medical Interests:
Laser Surgery, Chemical Peel, Sclerotherapy,
Mohs Micrographic Surgery, Cosmetic Dermatology
Dermatologic Surgery

Languages Spoken:
French

When the rain stopped and the sun came out we hiked the muddy trail back to the Auberge Hotel in Sapa. Famished and filthy,we showered,changed clothes,ate an excellent meal downstairs. In ’95 the Auberge was a modest guest house catering to backpackers; a spartan room,mildew no charge,cost four dollars a night. Times have changed.

I’m sitting in the cockpit of a MIG 21. After Seth snaps the photo a young American enters the museum. While the two of them talk I wander away.

In a dark corner on the far side of the museum I spot a stack of M16s. Kneeling,I pick one up,wipe off years of dust,sit down cross-legged,cradle the weapon,go back in time. How long before Seth arrives I don’t recall. He listens patiently while I jabber:

“You see this button? You push it to split the rifle in half. Push here to release the ammo clip. This thing is the retractor rod.  Pull it backward,let it fly,you’re locked and loaded.”

I turned the rifle sideways,exposing the belly of the barrel.

“Here, in the grill,you keep a tooth brush to clean the breach. Only problem,they melt in fire fights. Now watch this.”

I push open the stock latch. Out slides a metal cleaning rod,a plastic bottle of lubricant.

“That’s LSA. You squirt it on cotton patches to clean the bore. You do that once a week.”

I keep chattering. Then twice, from far off, someone calls my name. “Put the gun down,” he says. “You need to put it down.”

Childlike,I look up at Seth,place the weapon on the cement floor and sob for quite some time.

After a week in Ha Long Bay,holed up with a German coupled who constantly yahooed and bacchanaled,when the small wood boat pulled to port Seth and I located a five dollar guest house. Setting our packs down,after a brief nap we went outside to wash our clothes in plastic buckets. There is an art to soaping the cloth, wringing it,twisting the fabric tight,working the twist forward,squeezing the last drops of water out.

As the sun set we hung our wash on nylon cord bought in a crowded market in Phnom Penh, twenty cents a foot. After a good meal and a short walk we called it a night. The next morning,after a breakfast of fresh fruit,creamy yoghurt and French baguettes,we paid up,grabbed our gear,headed for the tunnel that lead to a beach.

For fifty cents,a young boy wearing a white shirt,thin gray trousers and flip flops lead us through the war time shelter. We stooped low,followed his every step,the smooth walls fragrant with time,cool to the touch. A hundred meters later we stepped onto a gleaming white beach.

I spread my towel out and lay down. Seth waded into the sea. “Come on out,” he yelled.

I did not hesitate and walked straight into the ocean. The cold water rose above my ankles,knees,hips,then finally ringed my neck. “It’s great,” I said, waving to Seth.“It’s great!” Then dread overwhelmed me.

A money belt is a portable safe,a nylon vault for credit cards,visas,hard cash, travelers checks,a passport. The seasoned traveler wears it securely hidden inside his pant waist at all times. I’m wearing mine beneath my swim trunks. The salty ocean nips my chin.

Frantic,I swim to shore, leaving Seth to wonder what is wrong. Kneeling behind a sand dune,fearing the worst,I unzip the black nylon sleeve, gingerly remove its contents. A few ink stamps in the passport are smudged. The paper currency is slightly moist; the travelers checks are soaking wet. To panic would make things worse.

I fan the passport pages,set the booklet upright on the hot sand. Six inches apart,placing pebbles at their center,I lay out five rows of checks and currency. A soft sea breeze makes them flit like dragon flies. In no time the sun and sand work their magic. Row by row I gather up the crisp currency and checks,return them to the pouch,slide the dry passport behind them, cinch the belt around my waist, zipper it,tuck it beneath my bathing suit,then wave to Seth. “C’mon back out,” he yells, gaily splashing water with both hands. But I prefer to stay ashore.

Friend, were you a Marine caught in the dread house to house combat? Were your buddies killed or wounded by the Viet Cong or NVA? Did you witness the frightful civilian losses? Were you ordered to attack the ancient Citadel after the enemy defiantly hoisted their blue and red flag with its five pointed star?

At war’s end Hue slowly turned into a kind of poor man’s resort. Around the restored Citadel, once the capitol of kings, Vietnamese and gringo’s lounged on blankets or picnic chairs. Children played badminton. Reluctantly, I rode on until struck by the sight of an American tank, several APCs and 155s parked on a wide cement square. Instantly, I hopped off the bicycle, walked to the captured weaponry, and ran my fingers over the Howitzer’s tapering steel barrel, pressed my palms to the tanks rusting armor. As if it were yesterday I knelt before the Armored Personnel Carrier, the better to read the painted over graffiti etched inside. “Twenty and a wake up! Fuck the Army! GI Numba One!” My heart pounded as I waited for the tank and artillery to open fire. Waited for young Americans to come charging out.

Each morning outside the Capital Hotel, a cement block building located in Phnom Penh,a sizeable group of young eager Cambodian’s wait to ferry backpackers on their Honda Cubs.

I always choose Elephant Man. Burliest of the lot,he speaks English,charges fifty cents a ride. I hop on his feisty scooter,put my arms around his waist.

“Where to?” he asks.       

Ministry of Information.”

“Why you need?” he asks as we dart through traffic.

Years ago the Khymer Rouge had killed his family.

“Hey,why you need?”

I tell him a small bribe obtains a Media Pass.

“To stay longer at Angkor Wat.”

“Oh…OK…” says Elephant Man, pulling up to an office once used by the French. I hop off the Cub.“See you tomorrow.” Elephant Man disappears in a roar of blue smoke.

The MOI clerk,a gaunt man whose angular skull inhabits his broad Khymer face,whose threadbare white shirt hangs from his body like a wind blown leaf, whose thinning hair reveals traces of something near fatal,says,in purposeful voice,“Passport.” I offer the document,a 2×2 ID photo,a counterfeit resume. He inspects each item with deliberate care. “One hour,” he says, pocketing money. We shake hands. “One hour,s’il vous plaît.”

To pass the time and avoid the sweltering sun I walk the narrow side streets. The faded stucco walled buildings,formerly bright red or solid blue,recall sections of Paris. I enter a half dozen dry good stores,peek into classrooms where students practice Khmer script. Inside a former French post office,the lone chandelier long past its glory,I buy stamps,aerograms,a phone card made in Australia. When I return to  the office even the clerk is sweating.

“It is here,”he says,extending the coveted pass.

I take it, give him another few dollars.

“Merci,monsieur. Merci beaucoup.”

He bows slightly,his raised palms pressed together,his lips gather to shape a smile. A survivor’s smile. Then he is gone.

“You lucked out,” I said. “How so?” he asked. I told him war can make you crazy.

One sweltering afternoon at Angkor Wat we played frisbee in a large dry field. As we tossed the red plastic disk to each other Carl smoked a fat joint bought at a local market. Even with the scorching heat we had fun.

“Nice catch,buddy.”

Thank you,much.”

And so it went,back and forth,the two of us sweating and laughing until a ragged group of armed men emerged from the jungle.Carl,stoned,paid them no mind but I dropped the frisbee and nearly fainted from fright.

Later he asked,”What was that about?”

I told him but he did not understand.

Early one morning I strung up my old GI hammock in the jungle behind the temple. The guards found me. I was reading a book.

“Why are you here?” they asked.

“I’m reading a book.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“I just want to be alone.”

They gathered around me. “May we see your passport?”

They checked the document,shook their heads and departed. A few minutes later the book slipped from my hands as fell asleep.

One afternoon I asked a Japanese girl,I don’t recall her name,to share a motorcycle ride to Mea’s village. We bringfood and music;we dance with Mea,his mother and sister. That evening,the girl and I visit a temple overlooking the jungle. I put my arm around her,she slips it away. A frightened guard points to the darkening sky. “Must go! Must go!” he warns.

As we hurried down a hundred stone steps our driver,sheltering under a lean-to,wheeled out his motorbike,kick started the engine.The girl sat behind him;I sat behind her,hugging her waist tight. When the driver sped off the rain hits us like bullets. Somehow he cleared the washed out streets and brought us back to Siem Reap.

In our sopping clothes,the girl whose fiancé had left her,heart ache the cause for her travels,gives me a long hug.

“Thank you for wonderful time,”she whispered. “This my best.”

Later, I wrote to her, and she wrote back, then I never heard from her again.

The Bonus Army was the name given to the demonstration of 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered and camped in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932.

Many of the veterans had been unemployed since the Great Depression of 1928. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each service certificate bore a face value equal to the veterans’ promised payment plus compound interest. The foremost demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.

On July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanding an infantry and a cavalry regiment, supported by six tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue.  A cavalry charge was ordered and the infantry, with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas (a vomiting agent), entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled to their largest camp and President Hoover ordered the assault stopped. However Gen. MacArthur, feeling the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government, ignored the President and ordered a new attack. Fifty-five veterans were injured and 135 arrested.

The Bonus Army incident proved disastrous for Hoover’s chances at re-election; he lost the 1932 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

My old Alice pack. A SOG friend notes they were phased out years ago. Beneath the forty-five pistol,a LRRP meal. Just add water, close,heat with C4. Voila! The two pocketed canvas Claymore bag held bandages and morphine syrettes. To the right of the upright smoke grenade,a baseball grenade. ‘Frags’ we called them. Killing radius five yards. The paperback book is by Robert Gover, celebrated author of One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding. The sequel, JC saves, is highly recommended.

Brother Al was a militant Black Power vs the White Man’s War angry son-of-a-bitch. Well and good and maybe true–but what do you think about a man who noisily drags the machine gun ammo,stuffed in a claymore bag,while on patrol?I hated that angry no good prick,but I’ll tell you this:the first dead American I saw was black. After an ambush,fourth platoon carried the corpse to a cold muddy fire base. He was wrapped in a poncho. We passed the body hand-over-hand,like a fire brigade bucket,only dead weight is hard to handle, it’s not stiff. The steam rose from his jungle fatigues,a hard rain was falling,his eyes were not blinking. We lay him down in the back of a truck. It was the saddest sight I’d ever seen.

First Row left to right: Shake ‘N Bake,a ninety-day-wonder. Gary William’s,before his  ear drum got blown out by the M60. Jim Lamb on machine gun. Back in the world he had seventy women under his belt. Melhop,squad leader. Second row left to right:Mike Derrig;waiting for a medivac he tossed me a bag of dope.“Can’t get caught with this in the rear,” he said. Ray Williams,white cross in the helmet band,kicked a hand lume after a Mad Minute;the flare ignited,struck his face,ricocheted skyward then hissed and burned as it floated down. Lawrence Knowles,aka Knuckles,should have made Spec 4 but Six put in orders for“Knuckles,”which the company clerks tossed out. Roop the Troop,at twenty-one the oldest in the squad.“No medivac for you,”I said to Joe Dorio,a teen age New York tough. He’d taken Chicom shrap in the face but third platoon was down to nine men. “Sorry,Joe,can’t send you back,” I said. “Fuck you, Doc,”he replied. Head medic Roye Abbott sent him back to Quan Loi.

Inside the perimeter were Howitzer and mortar crews, their bunkers,a mess tent,a heavily fortified communications bunker and tactical operations center (TOC),a well equipped aid station,a jury- rigged shower,an outhouse,officers bunkers,an ammo supply depot. The perimeter was formed by a wall of bulldozed earth, a ‘berm’ we called it,dotted with bunkers every fifty meters. Past the perimeter,ringed with barbed wire,lay no-man’s-land, mined and boob trapped with barrels filled with jellied gasoline. ‘Foo gas’ we called it. Beyond lay a free fire zone with no rules of engagement. Every few weeks grunts pulled perimeter guard on Quan Loi or remote firebases. We slept in or near the bunkers, then boarded choppers,went back to the work of jungle patrols.

We spent weeks in the bush,then choppered back to LZ Compton to pull guard. In dry season Compton was deathly hot,desert dry. But the monsoon rains made it muddy, cold and miserable,though safer than living in the jungle. At least until rocket or mortar attacks like the one that killed and wounded several men. “Dead man! Dead man!” someone yelled from inside a bunker. Some say Papa San, a Kit Carson Scout,called in the rounds.

Kit Carson’s were NVA or VC who had surrendered and swore to  work with the Americans.They knew the lay of the land, the jungles secret ciphers, walked point hard and fast and saved lives. Some were better than others. Dwee was good. Jim Dumb was rotten. And Papa San, seen here to the right of squad leader Larry Hunter, Papa San worked for both sides,though we didn’t find out until too late.

The floor is clean,it must be dry season. Who’s sitting in the chair? It’s not the doctor someone tried to frag. It’s not Dave Berkshire,the 91Charlie medic chased and Chicomed by a sapper on LZ Ranch in Cambodia when it was over run. It’s not beloved Lt. Dennis Noble. One night,after a furious mortar/rocket barrage Dennis lay dead, his glasses knocked off,his body intact. I found his daughter in 2001. She was six months old when her father died. He was twenty-four. Her mom never remarried. Daughter and I traded emails, then spoke by phone.“What did he look like? What kind of music did he listen to? What kind of voice did he have? What kind of man was he? How did he die?” She’s married with two kids. The three of them bear a striking resemblance to a man unknown.

Soldiers of the 209th Regiment,7th Division, North Vietnam – Attention!

 TO THE COMMUNIST SOLDIERS OF REGIMENT 209,DIVISION 7

On the 27th of December, 80 of your comrades in Regiment 141 had to sacrifice in a horrible death. Your 209th Regiment had suffered a complete defeat during the Fall campaign.

Until now the ARVN and Allied troops have continued to pursue in order to destroy your regiment. Therefore,it would be certain that it would be your turn to be sacrificed pitifully and needlessly.

You should save yourself by rallying to the government side or allow yourself to be captured as a POW of the RVN in order to escape death.

————–

COMMUNIST SOLDIERS: ATTENTION !!

 The Army of the Republic of Vietnam and Allied Force are carrying out the campaign of deforestation. During this,gigantic earth-movers have uncovered and leveled many of your rice storages and secret tunnels.

       Many of your comrades,forced to cross deforested areas,have become targets of artillery fires and armed helicopters of the ARVN and Allied Force.

10-1088-69

You will have no place to hide !!!

—————-

WHAT WILL YOU CHOOSE IN THE NEW YEAR?
PEACE,HAPPINESS OR DEATH?

The Year of the Dog is returning to the Viet people! Everybody is happy to gather the family together to greet the new spring. How many Tet have you been away from home, do you know? Who forces you to make such a sacrifice ?

Surely it cannot be the people of South Vietnam because at this moment they are joyously greeting the Spring amidst their united and peaceful family.

HAPPY NEW SPRING

You have to bear the sacrifice, to be away from home, away from your loved ones because of the crazy ambition of the North Vietnamese Communist leaders who want to also put the Southern part of Vietnam under the slavery of the International Communists.

The coming of Spring brings new hope to us all, including you. The prospect for Peace has appeared in the horizon, and this Year of the Dog has to bring about a good future for our people,if you make an early choice.

On the occasion of the new Spring, you should lean towards Peace,and resolutely choose a path that is bright and full of meanings.

The path of Chieu Hoi (Rallying to the National Cause) of the RVN will certainly help you realize this choice.

We sincerely wish you success.                                                             4-85-69

————————

 HAPPY NEW SPRING

DON’T MAKE A MISSTEP AND NOT WALKING SIDE BY SIDE WITH YOUR LOVED ONE.

POEM:

This spring will be the third that is cold and lonely

My longing for you burns my heart every minute

Tet has everything-flowers,incense,firecrackers, lights and cakes

But without you I feel alone and shameful.

SOUTHERN OPERA MELODY (VONG CO):

This letter I send you with many prayers, I hope that you would immediately leave the path of blindness, not to harm our country… I believe that you are not one who betrays his love, or fails to fulfill his filial duty… My darling,do you know how much father longs to see you, how much mother cries days and nights because of you. I by myself cannot take care of our fields and gardens,partly because of our young children, every step is a difficult effort, our life is falling increasingly into debt, and our family has to suffer setbacks and declines. 4-83-69

——————

“CHIEU HOI”  (Rallying to the Government’s Cause)
WILL BRING YOU
A LIFE OF
FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS
4-23-69

Happy New Year

Dear troops on the communist ranks:

The Spring in the Year of the Dog returns for all the Vietnamese,in the North as well as the South. Every family are prepared to greet the Spring in a feisty atmosphere according our people’s ancient customs. How about you? There is a saying that “A child with a father is like a house with a roof.” Regardless of how merry the Tet celebration is,without the presence of the father,the family’s happiness is incomplete. The family bond of the Vietnamese cannot be easily overcome/disregarded/overlooked.

With Tet’s festivities,please take your time to really think and ask yourself how many springs you have been away from home! Does your sacrifice have any meaning,is it worthwhile? How many lonesome springs have your wife, your children,and your parents had to suffer! Once your patriotism has been abused by the communists,the only reasonable thing left for you to do is to return to the true Nation,People, and Family,so that you can have again the opportunity to fulfill the duty of a son,a father and a husband.

——————-

Left side:  I have returned to the righteous cause
 (Junior) colonel Tran van dac
Right side: I have returned to the righteous cause
Lieutenant Colonel Huynh Cu
Bottom:  CHIEU HOI (rally to the government side)
IS THE PATH OF LIFE/SURVIVAL

               DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF SACRIFICED NEEDLESSLY

In the directive no.1/4 dated April 2 1968 sent to units of “the People’s Liberation Armed Force,”the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) has ordered commanders to engage in large battles to support the negotiation in Paris even at the cost of heavy casualties. For that reason,you have seen in the past days the pitiless death of many of your comrades.

Can you and your comrades triumph in enslaving South Vietnam?  Certainly not. Because you are not on the side of the righteous cause, your real strength is too weak to be compared to the ARVN and Allied Troops, and esp. the bureaucratic commandism and pie-in-the-sky approach of the party leadership and government in the North has led you to many failures.

You are being used as sacrificial lambs by the Worker party leadership to serve the interests of the Party. Think,dear friends!  Many of your high-leveled leaders have rallied to the side of the South Vietnamese people. Why do you wait any longer instead of following their examples?  2675

———————–

 TO OUR FRIENDS THE NORTH VIETNAMESE REGULAR TROOPS

Before the exceptional maturity of the ARVN and the strength of the anticommunist resistance of all of the Free South Vietnamese,you have no hope for any victory on the battlefields. For that reason,all the sacrifices at this time will only be personal loss to you and your family.

You can choose the path of surrender and will enjoy a peaceful life in specially set-up camp,be treated decently with lodging,food,and medicine… The Republic government of South Vietnam pledges to welcome you according to our humanitarian policy.

Below are pictures of those who surrendered in camps in Pleiku. They are listening …

The above picture is a group of surrendering North Vietnamese regulars playing in the RVN’s camp.

… to the recorder playing back their own voices. Their happy and pleasant attitude demonstrates a part of the fine and humane treatment in the RVN’s camps.

You should no longer prolong your own suffering which only leads to a meaningless death. Whenever there is an opportunity or even in the middle of  fighting, drop your weapon and give up. You will be treated with decency. When peace returns,you will have the chance to come back to your home village if you wish.  3501

———————-

POW’S HEALTH ARE CARED FOR

When captured in South Vietnam, most communist soldiers suffer sickness. Although caught as POW,they are very fortunate because their health are well taken care of. You will be given the same treatment.

IF CAPTURED,YOU SHOULD FEEL AT EASE BECAUSE YOU WILL BE TREATED HUMANELY AS THIS POW.

POW’s HEALTH ARE CARED FOR

When it is said that North Vietnamese troops will be mistreated and killed if taken prisoner, the cadres have lied to you. Many communist troops have been captured by the ARVN and Allied Force but they are still alive. Furthermore,when the POWs fall ill,they are well cared for.

______________

Translated by Nguyen Ba Chung,William Joiner Center,U Mass Boston
Leaflets courtesy of Jim Hackbarth,Alpha 1/7 Cav 69-71

_______________

The leaflets below were made by the National Liberation Front and meant to demoralize American troops. The first was found in Pinkville, associated with the My Lai massacre. The second was found in Duc Pho. Courtesy of Tony Swindell, 31st PID, 11th Light Infantry Brigade,1968-69.

—–

silverspartan@gmail.com

On his return to the United States Ridenhour sent letters to numerous congressmen and government officials, spurring a probe that led to several indictments against and convictions of those involved, most notably William Calley. He died in 1998. 

Mr. Ron Ridenhour
1416 East Thomas Road #104
Phoenix, Arizona

March 29, 1969
Gentlemen:

It was late in April,1968 that I first heard of “Pinkville” and what allegedly happened there.  I received that first report with some skepticism,but in the following months I was to hear similar stories from such a wide variety of people that it became impossible for me to disbelieve that something rather dark and bloody did indeed occur sometime in March,1968 in a village called “Pinkville” in the Republic of Viet Nam.

The circumstances that led to my having access to the reports I’m about to relate need explanation. I was inducted in March,1967 into the U. S. Army. After receiving various training I was assigned to the 70th Infantry Detachment (LRP), 11th Light Infantry Brigade at Schofield Barracks,Hawaii,in early October, 1967. That unit, the 70th Infantry Detachennt (LRP), was disbanded a week before the llth Brigade shipped out for Viet Nam on the 5th of December, 1967. All of the man from whom I later heard reports of the “Pinkville” incident were reassigned to “C” Company, lst Battalion, 20th Infantry, llth Light Infantry Brigade.  I was reassigned to the aviation section of Headquarters Headquarters Company llth LIB. After we had been in Viet Nam for 3 to 4 months many of the men from the 70th Inf. Det. (LRP) began to transfer into the same unit, “E” Company,51st Infantry (LRP).

In late April, 1968 I was awaiting orders for a transfer from HHC, llth Brigade to Company “E,” 51st Inf, (LRP),when I happened to run into Pfc “Butch” Gruver, whom I had known in Hawaii.  Gruver told me he had been assigned to “C” Company lst of the 20th until April lst when he transferred to the unit that I was headed for. During the course of our conversation he told me the first of many reports I was to hear of “Pinkville.”

“Charlie” Company 1/20 had been assigned to Task Force Barker in late February,1968 to help conduct “search and destroy” operations on the Batangan Peninsula,Barker’s area of operation. The  task force was operating out of L. F. Dottie, located five or six miles north of Quang Nhai city on Viet Namese National Highway 1. Gruver said that Charlie Company had sustained casualties; primarily from mines and booby traps, almost everyday from the first day they arrived on the peninsula.  One village area was particulary troublesome and seemed to be infested with booby traps and enemy soldiers. It was located about six miles northeast of Quang Nh,ai city at approximate coordinates B.S. 728795. It was a notorious area and the men of Task Force Barker had a special name for it: they called it “Pinkville.” One morning in the latter part of March,Task Force Barker moved out from its firebase headed for “Pinkville.” Its mission: destroy the trouble spot and all of its inhabitants.

When “Butch” told me this I didn’t quite believe that what he was telling me was true, but he assured me that it was and went on to describe what had happened. The other two companies that made up the task force cordoned off the village so that “Charlie” Company could move through to destroy the structures and kill the inhabitants. Any villagers who ran from Charlie Company were stopped by the encircling companies. I asked “Butch” several times if all the people were killed. He said that he thought they were men, women and children. He recalled seeing a small boy, about three or four years old, standing by the trail with a gunshot wound in one arm. The boy was clutching his wounded arm with his other hand, while blood trickled between his fingers. He was staring around himself in shock and disbelief at what he saw. “He just stood there with big eyes staring around like he didn’t understand; he didn’t believe wh.at was happening. Then the captain’s RTO (radio operator) put a burst of 16 (M-16 rifle) fire into him.” It was so bad, Gruver said, that one of the men in his squad shot himself in the foot in order to be medivaced out of the area so that he would not have to participate in the slaughter.  Although he had not seen it, Gruver had been told by people he considered trustworthy that one of the company’s officers, 2nd Lieutenant Kally (this spelling may be incorrect) had rounded up several groups of villagers (each group consisting of a minimum of 20 persons of both sexes and all ages). According to the story, Kally then machine-gunned each group. Gruver estimated that the population of the village had been 300 to 400 people and that very few, if any, escaped.

After hearing this account I couldn’t quite accept it. Somehow I just couldn’t believe that not only had so many young American men participated in such an act of barbarism,but that their officers had ordered it. There were other men in the unit I was soon to be assigned to,”E” Company, 51st Infantry (LRP), who had been in Charlie Company at the time that Gruver alleged the incident at “Pinkville” had occurred. I became determined to ask them about “Pinkville” so that I might compare, their accounts with Pfc Gruver’s.

When I arrived at “Echo” Company, 51st Infantry (LRP) the first men I looked for were Pfcs Michael Terry, and William Doherty.  Both were veterans of “Charlie” Company, 1/20 and “Pinkville.” Instead of contradicting “Butch” Gruver’s story they corroborated it, adding some tasty tidbits of information of their own. Terry and-Doherty had been in the same, squad and their platoon was the third platoon of “C” Company to pass through. the village. Most of the people they Came to were already dead. Those that weren’t were sought out and shot. The platoon left nothing alive neither livestock nor people. Around noon the two soldiers’ squad stopped to eat. “Billy and I started to get out our chow” Terry said, “but close to us was a bunch of Vietnamese in a heap, and some of them were moaning. Cally (2nd Lt. Cally) had been through before us and all of them had been shot, but many weren’t dead. It was obvious that they weren’t going to get any medical attention so Billy and I got up and went over to where they were. I guess we sort of finished them off.” Terry went on to say that he and Doherty then returned to where their packs were and ate lunch. He estimated the size oif the village to be 200 to 300 people. Doherty thought that the population of “Pinkville had been 400 people.

If Terry, Doherty and Gruver could be believed, then not only had “Charlie” Company received orders to slaughter all the inhabitants of the village, but those orders had come from the commanding officer of Task Force Barker, or possibly even higher in the chain of command.  Pfc Terry stated that when Captain Medina (Charlie Company’s commanding officer Captain Ernest Medina) issued the order for the destruction of “Pinkville” he had been hesitant, as if it were something he didn’t want to do but had to.  Others I spoke to concurred with Terry on this.

It was June before I spoke to anyone who had something of significance to add to what I had alreadybeen told of the “Pinkville” incident. It was the end of June, 1968 when I ran into Sargent Larry La Croix at the USO in Chu Lai. La Croix had been in 2nd Lt. Cally’s platoon on the day Task Force Barker swept through “Pinkville.” What he told me verified the stories of the others, but he also had something new to add.  He had been a witness to Kally’s gunning down at least three separate groups of villagers. “It was terrible. They were slaughtering villagers like so many sheep.” Cally’s men were dragging people out of bunkers and hootches and putting them together in a group. The people in the group were men, women and children of all ages.  As soon as he felt that the group was big enough, Cally ordered a M-60 (machine gun) set up and the people killed. La Croix said that he bore witness to this procedure at least three times.    The three groups were of different sizes, one of about twenty people, one of about thirty people and one of about 40 people.  When the first group was put together Kally ordered Pfc. Torres to man the machine-gun and open fire on the villagers that had been grouped together. This Torres did, but before everyone in the group was sown he ceased fire and refused to fire again.  After ordering Torres to recommence firing several times, Lieutenant Kally took over the M-60 and finished shooting the remaining villagers in that first group himself.  Sargent La Croix told me that Kally didn’t bother to order anyone to take the machine-gun when the other two groups of villagers were formed.  He simply manned it himself and shot down all villagers in both groups.

This account of Sargent La Croix’s confirmed the rumors that Gruver, Terry and Doherty had previously told me about Lieutenant Kally.  It also convinced me that there was a very substantial amount of truth to the stories that all of these men had told. If I needed more convincing, I was about to receive it.

It was in the middle of November,1968 just a few weeks before I was to return to the United States for separation from the army that I talked to Pfc Michael Bernhardt.  Bernhardt had served his entire year in Viet Nam in “Charlie” Company 1/20 and he too was about to go home.  “Bernie” substantiated the tales told by the other men I had talked to in vivid, bloody detail and added this.  “Bernie” had absolutely refused to take part in the massacre of the villagers of “Pinkville” that morning and he thought that it was rather strange that the officers of the company had not made an issue of it. But that evening “Medina (Captain Ernest Medina) came up to me (“Bernie”) and told me not to do anything stupid like write my congressman” about what had happened that day.  Bernhardt assured Captain Medina that he had no such thing in mind.  He had nine months left in Viet Nam and felt that it was dangerous enough just fighting the acknowledged enemy.

Exactly what did, in fact, occur in the village of “Pinkville” in March,1968 I do not know for certain, but I am convinced that it was something very black indeed. I remain irrevocably persuaded that if you and I do truly believe in the principles, of justice and the equality of every man, however humble, before the law, that form the very backbone that this country is founded on, then we must press forward a widespread and public investigation of this matter with all our combined efforts.  I think that it was Winston Churchill who, once said “A country without a conscience is a country without a soul, and a country without a soul is a country that cannot survive.” I feel that I must take some positive action on this matter.  I hope that you will launch an investigation immediately and keep me informed of your progress.  If you cannot, then I don’t know what other course of action to take.

I have considered sending this to newspapers, magazines and broadcasting companies, but I somehow feel that investigation and action by the Congress of the United States is the appropriate procedure, and as a conscientious citizen I have no desire to further besmirch the image of the American serviceman in the eyes of the world. I feel that this action, while probably it would promote attention, would not bring about the constructive actions that the direct actions of the Congress of the United States would.

Sincerely,

/s/ Ron Ridenhour

“On my very first day in the field, our old platoon Sergeant, Gary Johnson, got killed. I was a ‘shake and bake,’ a ninety-day woneder just out of Fort Benning, Gerogia. They picked me up off the LZ pretty late in the evening and wanted to make it back to a safe place away from the LZ.  Johnson took me over to introduce me to the platoon I was going to be in. He gave me my ammo, my C rations. He said, “We’re going to go back out there. We’re going to take a main trail. Don’t ever take a trail, but right now we have to get there quickly.

So we went down the trail. I was walking in the middle with Patch, the gentelman who later got killed on LZ Ranch in Cambodia. I heard a ping. I couldn’t figure out what it was but everyone else was on the ground. I looked down the trail and saw these two little people with a great big gun, a .51 caliber. They were running down the trail. Gary had been walking point and I looked to where he was lying.

I walked up to Gary who was on his stomach. I rolled him over and my hand went all the way through his chest. The .51 caliber bullet went through his chest and took almost his entire back out. I put one of his dog tags in the body bag with him when the medevac arrived and I kept the other. As a matter of fact, just last year (2008) I gave Sgt. Johnson’s dog tags to his brother. I carried Johnson’s dog tags since April 1970 right after I came in-country. That was my first field day.”

Excerpted from Vietnam Veterans: Inconvenient Stories, by Jeffrey Wolin. Umbridge Editions 2006.

The telegram was delivered in person by a Western Union messenger around 10:00 pm on Friday, April 24, 1970. My mother answered the door and accepted it. She could see the words,DONT PHONE,DONT PHONE,through the window portion of the envelope.  She was terror stricken. Unable to open it she took it to my Dad who read it. My Dad called our family doctor,who said the wound to the popliteal artery was the worst part of my injuries. He told my Dad that if I survived the loss of blood,I would probably have the leg amputated. At that time micro surgery was in its infancy. Luckily for me the technique was available in Viet Nam and my surgeon,Carl Thomas, was trained in its use.

Jeff Motyka

7 Jan 80

I’m led to a prison. A black man ahead of me kisses the jailer’s hand. I walk past, then turn around and do the same. The gesture is followed by submissive talk in hopes he will be lenient. I escape.

7 July 80

In a large empty house my brother and I are dressed like soldiers. Hunting each other down I spot him first and shoot my M-16, walking the bullets up to his body. Instead of wounds they make only small BB patterns. There is little noise or impact. When he falls I rush to his aid. I feel sorry for him, and for what I have done.

Chanting sounds rise from a cave. The shadows of animals run past its walls. Next, I’m flying through rock, then lava like water, then clear water. I see a length of rope and grab it. My head clears the water and I emerge from a beautiful lake. Still clinging to the rope, I am one tenth my normal size. I’ve been hoisted up by a child, a girl perhaps seven years old, who wants to save me.

8 May 81

Richard and I lie prone in a shallow lake. He has an explosive charge but nothing to ignite the fuse. I say “Keep your voice down.” I say, “Find matches. Something’s not right. The water’s not deep enough. We are charged from our right flank. A dozen men with fixed bayonets move towards us; they appear Asian. At the last moment I see they are American.

I have been the object of a joke. Richard and I howl with laughter. We sing a popular song. Our harmony and rhythm are good.

13 September 81

I’m in a foxhole. VC sappers crawl past on my left. They have mortar tubes and begin shelling a friendly position in front of me. I will move slowly, spring up and kill them. I shoot one. The other manages to slip away. He speaks quickly into a small radio as if sensing he will die. We grapple; he stabs me several times, then I kill him. The entire countryside goes up in flames. I don’t know if what I’ve done is good or bad.

I’m near the ocean. To survive the fire I jump in the water. I swim, trying to beat the land which also races ahead. A demon chases me. Though submerged, it too is burning. From behind friendly forces shoot and kill the demon. Immediately all flames go out. I am welcomed back. I am greeted by friendly voices.

27 April 99

I’m in a snowy field. There’s chaos and confusion. Everything is blurred by thick, swirling snow. Refugees wear heavy clothing. I’m trying to find the Americans. I recognize a woman.  She’s calm. I go to her. Panicked I say, “Where are the Americans?” She points and says, “By the woman and child.”

I run in the direction she’s pointed toward but there is no one. The same woman re-appears. She sits at a table. She gives me three letters addressed to me that contain official documents. The letters have been opened and searched. I go back to the snowy field. A man and a woman lumber toward me. The man comes close and points a stick-like object at me. He shoots. I fall and feel blood filling my chest. I am unafraid. I feel my life depart.

28 June 99

I’m with a group of people in danger. A light-skinned black woman repeats over and over, “If ever I go. If ever I go.” She is unaware that she is dying. I take her in my arms to divert her attention.  I imagine a man from behind will execute her. At the last moment I will say, “Never mind. Shoot us both.”

19 January 2000

I’m at Pine Grove sleep away camp preparing for combat. Low flying jets fire rockets. We cheer as the missiles hit their mark, then we move out. We are juvenile soldiers all less than fifteen. In a large field several grunts explode a device which releases thick, toxic fog. At detonation I feel cardboard shrapnel penetrate my back, a minor injury.

We move to our starting point. I’m walking on a wide, uphill trail that leads from the lake to the bunk houses; I’m weary from the weight of my pack. I walk next to an out-of-shape youngster. He huffs and puffs. In one hand he carries a silver-plated toy luger.

24 December 2000  

The terrain is rocky and arid. Mortar shells drop close by. A man near me resembles someone I know. A direct hit kills him. There is no blood or battle wound. His body turns rigid. A second man dies the same way. No one moves. I run for cover.

I’m a guest renting a room in a residential area filled with many large wood houses. I am skateboarding down a narrow sidewalk, propelling the board by clenching my toes and pushing down hard. The people are friendly. A block away a tree catches fire. A fierce wind blows the flames out of control. The sky turns white from  heat. The house where I am staying  may catch fire. No one panics. I rush inside to recover my pack but I’m lost and can’t tell which room is mine. I look about. My things are missing. I find them in a large room with no back wall. On the way out I watch an attractive woman undress. Outside everyone is calm. I meet a young veterinarian. His dog, burned on its back and aware of its wounds remains feisty. Humorously I say to the doctor, “So, you have casualties.” He is optimistic.

4 February 2001

I am with a large black woman who resembles the poet Melinda T. We’re sitting in the office of Dr Anders. She listens while I speak about war. Suddenly a low howl escapes me. The black woman says, “I know what that is.” I begin weeping.

17  Feb  2001

On a cancer ward all of the patients are men. One complains that his nose is too large. Another declares without his doctor he would have died but has lived an extra two years. The ward is home-like. The doctors are friendly. Each has his own cure; some succeed, others do not. My doctor is female. She is dedicated and loving.

A staff member and I reach a doctor’s office at the same time. I push the door open. It’s immediately slammed shut, catching my finger. The staff member knocks and is let in. I leave, aware that protocol must be obeyed.

I become frustrated and rebel. For punishment I’m sent to a large forest to gather pine needles in long neat rows. After several hours on my hands and knees, I try to escape. Using a dog, my doctor captures me. I quit the ward.  In her presence I get dressed. My doctor tries to discourage me, but I’m angry and sad. On the wall hangs a photograph of a male doctor at war.  His pants are torn and dirty. His knees are wounded, and he’s running for help. “What does he know?” I say. “I was the medic. They all came to me.” I begin weeping.

12 July 2001

I’m in a large room at ground level. Its green walls and floors are made of smoothed out earth. Large square windows without glass overlook a forbidding no-man’s-land. The NVA begin shooting. I return fire. They’re everywhere. Several reach in. I push them off and continue shooting. They are everywhere but I am not afraid. I keep fighting. There is no escape.

25 July 2001

I’m brought back to Vietnam; the platoon tells me I look good. I’m wearing my old jungle fatigues and steel helmet. I have no gear, no leech straps. I want to tell them ordinary people think I’m strange dressed like this, but I stay silent.

With Corson and Alex Johnson I walk to the water point. We pass through a small town, then into forest where  I become lost. I walk to a highway then pass through a circle of college students. I anticipate unkind remarks, but the students are friendly.

At a busy traffic intersection  a college professor smiles. “Where’s the water?” I ask. He tells me. I find a dark, turbulent river. This can’t be the water point, though I know it is. Frustrated I sleep under a moon lit canopy of thick brush.

I wake up under a large plastic tarp.Crawling forward I accidentally wake Steve M. I say, “It’s me, Doc.” He throws me a pair of bowling shoes that are too small. A man I’ve never seen  glares at  me with contempt. He throws me a pair that fit. Then everyone  leaves. I look out from beneath the tarp. Someone inside a nearby house appears in silhouette, then vanishes. I anticipate an ambush. I imagine being shot in the head. I imagine how Steve M will comfort me. It’s raining. I have no water, ammo, no weapon.

14 September 2001

I’m with my old platoon in Cambodia on LZ Ranch. We’re pressed up against the berm. An attack is coming. My M-16 is broken. There’s no trigger or clip. A sergeant offers me his weapon, but I refuse, saying he’s the better solider.

I help to invent a catapult that hurls a half dozen grenades at a time. The device, however, is faulty. Ed uses it to initiate the attack.

The scene changes. We’re in a village. An old VC hides in a hut hoping to escape. I throw him down and sit on him. He’s taken prisoner but will not speak. I devise a way to torture him.We dig a hole, bury him up to his neck, then place a clear plastic cover over his head. We urinate on him, but the VC is stubborn and will not speak. He accepts that he will die.

There’s shooting and we rush for cover. I find a Viet Cong who resembles Richard B, my best friend. He tries to steal American weapons from a display but grabs an umbrella instead. I tell him to give up. When he refuses, we fight. Each time I stab his belly he says, “Kill me.” I feel terrible, as if I knew this man. When he weakens I take him in my arms and call for help. His stomach leaks on me. I’m crying. “Oh God….Oh God,” I say. American soldiers arrive. They look perplexed, awed. We march to the hospital.

 1 July 2002

I’m in Europe with my old platoon: young, full haired, smiling. They welcome me, then complain. It’s a bad area. One out of six will die of  prostate cancer. It’s in the water that spills over large brick buildings.

A young soldier shows me a gem bought from a villager. He regards its beauty and power; I can tell it’s fake. The villager, who is middle aged and wears a business suit, leaves his house. He walks toward me. I throw the gem in his face.

“What are you doing?” I say. “This is uranium.” Aloof and calm, he curls his hand around my neck then releases it. We return to his house. There is the long flight home. I begin planning my escape.

9 July 2002

I’m on a combat assault with my platoon. Only a few men ride in the chopper. Most stand on the slicks. We carry full combat gear: pack, weapon, helmet, ammo. We fly toward the Ivy Hill Apartments. From high up I see buildings which appear like photographs. We land on a roof top. I see my brother. Next, I see a terrible sight. I walk toward it. The intact body of an American soldier glows like fireplace embers. His internal organs have hardened to stone and are clearly visible. I shout to my brother, “How did this happen?” He says he doesn’t know. I’m standing over the corpse. I know my brother is lying.

My war nightmares have tapered off but this dream occurred in 2013.

I’m in the jungle, a prisoner of the NVA. I kill one by kicking him into a bunker then shooting him with his pistol.  I trap another in a glass column full of water and watch him drown.  I grab the pistol of the first NVA just as an officer comes by. He has the same gun. I check my ammo. I’m out.  It’s in his eyes what’s next. I’m very aware there’s a way to escape. I run and survive without being shot.

In dry season, even the half buried bunkers offer little escape from the sweltering heat. Jim and I sit atop our culvert hooch. A single layer of sandbags saddles the smooth curved steel. Front and rear,mortar crates packed with dirt will protect us from incoming shells.

At night,we lie on gray air mattresses placed outside our oven-like hut. We wrap ourselves in poncho liners,pull them over our heads so the rats crawl over us while we sleep.

In seven days we’ll fly back to the jungle but for now, in the heat and dusty squalor,we shower beneath fifty-five gallon oil drums rigged with spigots, relieve ourselves in jerry-rigged crappers,spin cans of beer on blocks of ice,eat three hot meals a day,speak in normal tone,clean and oil our weapons,play poker at night in candle lit bunkers:the clink of bullets is the sound of our money. From dusk to dawn we pull guard.

In the bush,nearly every grunt smokes weed or opium or strong Thai sticks. But I’m new, ignorant, instead hand out malaria pills,antibiotics, analgesics,fungal ointments,take care of men’s cuts and scratches. When a grunt is shot or wounded with shrap I stab him with morphine to ease his pain.

On Compton I ask Jim to walk with me to the aid station.

How long has it been? Two months? Three? Donatal, Gelusil, Probanthine do nothing to stop the coiling spasms that inside my gut.

The battalion surgeon,a tall handsome miserable man, a captain by rank, sweats and drinks in equal measure. “You do drugs?” he asks.

“No,sir.” I say.

“Don’t lie to me, son.”He wipes his sweaty brow,stares at the colorful love beads encircling my neck.

The captain is sober today. Tomorrow, rousted from bed at dawn, he will expertly vaccinate a rat bitten man. But the day after,stumbling, unable to treat the dragged in casualties, someone will try to frag his ass. Frag him can’t walk,can’t help the wounded.

“I don’t do drugs, sir. No sir. No drugs.”

The surgeon taps out twenty blue pills from a small brown bottle.

“This is Valium,boy. It’ll calm you down. But don’t get high on this shit, you understand?”

“Yes sir. Thank you,sir. I understand.”

I’m nineteen, a virgin.What does he mean,get high?

Walking back to the hootch I pop two pills, minutes later stumble and fall.

“You feeling good,”says Jim Lamb.“Feeling good, right Doc?”

As if in a dream I throw the tablets onto the ground,crawl into the kiln of our bunker,sleep nine hours straight; wake up covered in Vietnam.

Nothing helps the snake in my gut. Not cheap wine, not good weed, not good hard liquor. All through monsoon my gut snake continues to flex and coil. Then the order comes down to invade Cambodia. Every man expects to die. But nothing happens when the helicopters swoop low and we jump out and for one impossible week every blade of grass, every layer of canopy, every mote of sun light is impossibly beautiful. Until the night that we are over run.

The next morning we boarded a crowded ferry made of sheet metal welded to 55 gallon barrels,the flimsy craft powered by a jury-rigged diesel engine.Thirty minutes later,after disembarking,Japro patted the bike’s seat,I hopped on,clenched my legs tight, turned my baseball cap backwards,tied a red bandana over my mouth, and gripped his belt with both hands. Dust and dirt kicked up behind us as we sped past villager’s who waved and laughed.

“Let’s go to the French rubber plantation,”I shouted over the hot dry wind and the engines roar.

Japro leaned backward.The words,“Khmer Rouge,”shot past me.

“No,”I said,“That’s not true. C’mon,I’ll pay extra.” The thought of danger was magnetic.

After twenty minutes Japro slowed down,then pulled to the side of the road.

“OK…OK…we are here,”he said.

Before us,in every direction,tall slender rubber trees stood in endless silent rows. The morning sun light trickled through ten thousand branches and delicate green leaves. We gaped in awe, then dismounted.

Japro pushed the bike like a baby carriage along the muddy trail that lead into the rubber tree plantation. All around us,thousands of latex pearls dripped slowly down winding paths carefully etched in the trees’ soft bark. Near the base of each tree small plastic cups collected the raw latex. In war time they were porcelain.

After a time we came across two Cambodian boys who clung precariously to an old Chinese bicycle. Japro spoke softly to them in Khmer.The boys set the bike down,came close,shyly pointed at my white skin,then giggled as they touched the strange brown hair. Vietnamese children had once done the same.

“What wrong?”asked Japro.  

“Nothing,”I said.”Let’s go.”

Further on,a sleepy guard in a torn blue uniform dozed against a spiraling tree. Curled in his lap,a wood stocked AK47, its spear-like bayonet tucked beneath the pitted barrel.

Alerted by our steps,the guard startled awake.There were no Khmer Rouge in the area,he said. He only shot thieves.

We joined him on the forest floor. The air was still and stiflingly hot. No one spoke. In the distance I heard a jingling sound which came closer and closer.  Moments later a small wooden cart pulled by a black Cambodian horse in a belled harness came into view. A bright-eyed little girl in colorful rags gripped both reins in one hand. The horse trotted past;it seemed to be  happy.

The guard pointed east. He spoke in Khmer.

“They go to factory,”said Japro. Playfully, the guard aimed at the girl with his rifle.

Bidding him goodbye,walking the same path,we followed the tiny hoof prints,the thin lines of the wagon wheels,the receding sound of the jingling bells.

Twenty minutes later,salted by sweat,splattered with mud,I caught sight of a one story cinder block building.

“Let’s go in,” I said.

“Maybe not good,” said Japro.

But I paid him no mind.

Inside the noisy building I inhaled swirling chemical fumes,kept clear of snapping conveyor belts,chopping gears,snarling engines. The toiling workers,dressed in blue cotton uniforms, completely ignored us.

Processed latex has the speckled look of kapok,the feel of spongy granite:it is hard and thick and unforgiving. I tried cutting a chunk from a heavy square block stacked in a corner.

After gouging and prodding with all my strength I ripped off a chunk the size of an ear.

“You keep?”asked Japro.

He looked puzzled, as if he were thinking “What a strange souvenir.”

“Yes,” I said,contemplating the rubbery ball.

But in war time men called such severed things…trophies.

The mail is stuffed in a red nylon sack tied shut with thick cotton rope. The Lieutenant unties the bag,reaches in,dutifully hands out letters that bear name,rank,serial number,unit,APO.

Abbott stares into space.“She’s leaving me,”he whispers. Baker,ordered home on emergency leave,yells,“Fuckin A! I’m getting out!”

Ernie tears opens a parcel sent by his dad. He reads aloud the titles on the Red Cross cassette: “Side One:Trains Entering Station. Side Two:Trains Departing Station. Always love my choo-choo’s,”says this man unfit for combat.

Jim receives an Easter basket filled with fake grass and yellow marzipan eggs.

“Nothing for you,Doc,”says the Lieutenant.

What remains in the red sack are donated paperbacks and magazines:Time,Reader’s Digest,Popular Mechanics. I grab a book by Jan Yoors,who has lived with gypsies. Check my watch. In an hour we’ll move out,march through jungle,at dusk set up a perimeter. I write to the maker of salt tablets. I’ve written many such letters;it helps pass the time.

Dear Sir or Madam, Did the artist Gervasio Gallardo draw the cover for Peter S. Beagles’ latest book? It’s very beautiful. I intend to read the story when circumstances permit.Your reply is most appreciated.

Dear Sir or Madam,I would like to know what is meant by “process cheese.”This term appears on the list  of ingredients of your fine dairy product,which I enjoy immensely when not otherwise engaged.

There is time for a letter home.

Dear Folks,Today we killed five. They walked into our booby trap. They scream a lot. Then they are dead. The lieutenant says I’m doing good. The others do the killing. I’m the medic. So far I’ve patched up six guys. We’re lucky. Been killing more than they kill us. Nobody understands how they don’t bleed much. Can’t figure it out. Gonna send something taken off a dead man. Keep it in a safe place. More when it happens.Love.

After an hours march we stop,stake the trips and claymores,dig foxholes. Soon the skin mags circulate.I’m sitting next to the captain. We call him six.

“Sir, isn’t she beautiful?”

I tear the centerfold from its stapled spine.

“I mean isn’t she fuckin gorgeous?”

The kneeling buxom brunette has smooth sexy thighs;she has perfect pouting lips. As she leans forward her full American breasts spill from the page.

“Whatever you say, Doc.”

Six grabs the handset from the RTO,calls in grid coordinates,our casualties,our body count. Stares at his topo map.

“Whatever you say.”

It’s my fourth month in country. Letters and parcels,books and magazines, all help take our minds off the clockwork of killing time or being killed.

There are not enough machetes for each man to clear a patch of jungle,stomp ants and insects,then hunker down ‘till guard. Men write home for the long blades,for Marine K-bars,pistols,liquor,the damndest things. Those who have lost hope do not write at all.

I tear a page from Popular Mechanics. Beneath the photo the ad screams: ARMY SURPLUS KNIFE AND GENUINE LEATHER SCABBARD $4.95 + SHIPPING AND HANDLING. SUPPLIES LIMITED. THIS OFFER WILL NOT BE REPEATED. But of course it is. Every month. Like clockwork. I clip the coupon.

Dear Mom and Dad,Today the Captain gave each medic a Bronze Star. He says we are good soldiers.He says this war will not last long. I need a favor. Pay these people.They’ll send me the knife. I’ll pay you back.Love.

I should have known better. She had her first breakdown in ’65;soon afterward he had electric shock treatment. But I need them. Need their help.

It’s been three weeks. Why haven’t you answered my letter? Here’s another coupon. Just send the fuckin knife.Your son,the medic.   

When we are not hunting or being hunted I learn to Increase My Word Power, solve Brain Teasers,memorize Quotable Quotes,join the Rosicrucians, receive the cover art of The Last Unicorn. “Yes, Gervasio Gallardo was the artist,” writes a Bantam Books editor. A week later a company in New York sends a typed note which solves the riddle of process cheese. There is a letter from home.

Everyone here is fine. The weather is wonderful. Uncle William says hello. Your father and I thought about the knife. We don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s very sharp and you might hurt yourself. Write soon. X X X X X  Mom & Dad.

Later I’ll take a hand forged machete from a dead woman,strap it to my ruck, use it wisely. Years later,when I sleep with a loaded pistol under my pillow my college roommates think I’m crazy. In New York’s Chinatown I buy a meat cleaver; for six years keep it near my bed. If there is noise at night I grab the handle,rise up,prowl soft footed,eager to strike. And later still,in Guatemala I buy a peasants’ machete,carry it through Mexico,spirit it through Customs,tuck it half way beneath my New England mattress. But for now I go quietly berserk.

Eight months later Uncle William sits with us at the dinner table. We have finished the meal,I have told the story and Uncle roars with such laughter tears streak his face. “Why that’s the stupidest war story of all time,”he says. But Mother and Father are puzzled. “Why is he laughing?” they wonder. “What’s so funny?” Uncle William wipes his mouth,swallows hard,then explains the tale I do not often tell.

“Doc,good thing you called.I’m having a rough night.The way you talk gets me back on track.You’ll always be my medic.”

“Any time,Michael.”

We agreed I’d visit in August.

Mike works second shift;his stepson,Jerry,tall and lanky at seventeen,met me at Metro airport.On the freeway we stopped at a Big Boys. Jerry ordered spicy buffalo wings.I had salad; Beth,Jerry’s sweetheart declined to eat but spoke of music,work and Disneyland.

“We’re going there on our honeymoon,”said Jerry.

“There ain’t much here,”said Beth.

She meant Monroe,Michigan.

“We could buy a house and live in Florida.”

“Damn right,”said Jerry.

At Mikes’ place,a two storey barn red A frame,I met his wife Kathy,a cheerful woman, and Cody,their feisty black mut.Jerry and Beth said,“Good meeting ya,Doc”and off they went. Kath and I chatted in the living room Kathy until Mike returned from An Arbor.

“Doc,I just don’t know why Michael won’t speak to me like he does you. It makes me angry and he knows it,when I ask about that war.‘You wouldn’t understand, woman,’he says,then walks away.” Kathy nodded her head as she spoke.“Sometimes,Doc,when Michael hollers like that,I’ll holler back at him. Next thing you know we’re fighting.Can you figure that out? Cause I sure can’t. And I read all kinds of books on that Vietnam.”

I settled back in the blue Lay-Z-Boy recliner.“Mike feels safe with me but he doesn’t want you to see him cry,or see his real his anger.A lot of combat vets are like that–they hide rage and push down sorrow.Think of it this way,Kathy:Mike’s not regular people.Vietnam changed him.He needs you,it’s just hard for him to show it.”

Kathy brightened up.“You know, I never seen it that way,Doc. That’s so helpful to hear. But how can I love Michael and not hurt him?”

“Let’s do stuff together,see how that works.”

“Sounds great,”said Kathy.“And you know,Michael’s so pleased you come to visit.”

After Mike got home the three of us sat in his one car garage.”My bunker,”he calls it.I set my war photo album on a work bench.

“Damn,that’s Carrot Top,”said Mike,admiring our lieutenant.“And this guy,” he said,jabbing the image,“Cocksucker found me smoking weed, said put it out,I turned my back on him.Ten and a wake up.Next thing you know I’m back in the bush.Cocksucker!But Six turned things right.”

I stared at the image of the handsome black soldier sitting on cement steps at Head Quarters in Phuc Vinh.He wore polished boots,a clean uniform.His hair and mustache were neatly groomed.The look on his face said,‘I earned this.Don’t fuck with me,soldier.’

“Michael,that’s First Sergeant James. Maybe he thought thought,‘This white boy is messing with me.’ ”

Kathy said,“Six is what you called your captain. Short means you ain’t got much time left in country,wake up means the day you go home.”

“You got that right,girl.Damn,where’d you learn that?”asked Mike,chagrined.Before Kathy replied,Mike said,“You could be right,Doc. Turning the pages. from time to time,even with Kathy present,Mike choked up.

“That’s Jim Lamb,and Jim Dumb the Kit Carson Scout!”he said,wiping away a tear.“And Injun Joe.Cherokee.Couldn’t read or write.”He turned the page, furrowed his brow.“That’s Ernie the FNG.His dad sent him train sound cassettes he played in the jungle. You remember that, Doc?”

In a fire fight Ernie shot the man in front of him.Blood spurted from the small wound caused by the tumbling bullet. The X rays were not pleasant.

Kathy said,“FNG means a fucking new guy,right Michael?”She pursed her lips.“Sorry for cussing.”

Mike grinned.“Yep,that’s a new guy, alright.”

I said,“Tell her about the French water tower outside Compton.”

Mike leaned forward,exited to tell the tale.“We used to leave this firebase and take the thumper,a crate of ammo,and blast that son-of-bitch.You nailed it a few times,Doc.Then Compton got hit and LT got pissed cause we’d shot all the 79 rounds!”

Kathy said,“A firebase was a big camp in the jungle. The thumper…” She closed her eyes,patted her forehead, “Was the M79 grenade launcher.The LT was you’re platoon leader. You called him Carrot Top‘cause he had red hair.”

“Roger that,”we said.

Mike recalled LZ Ranch.

“We was in Cambodia.Got fuckin’ gooks inside the wire.Six says,‘Son,let’s go.” Damn if we didn’t go outside the berm. I seen one crawling thru the concertina and greased her good!Six got three of the bastards.He loved that shit.”

I said,“Ten of them got inside the base.They blew two gun pits with satchel charges. When it was over twenty-five guys were wounded,five were KIA. Snoopy dropped basketball lumes. Arty shot illegal bee hive rounds directly into the wood line.”

“Next morning,”said Mike,“I seen you helping the wounded after we tossed the dead dinks in craters.You and the other medics.Christ, they had our number that time.”

Kathy,too shocked to speak,kept silent.

“Michael,why don’t you hold on to the flicks for a while?”

“Thanks,Doc.Thank you much.”

I pointed to the Chieu Hoi leaflets before he put the album away.

Mike put his arm around Kathy.“These here,tossed out of choppers,was propaganda.They say stuff like,‘You surrender,we’ll give you a shave and haircut,feed you,treat you good.’Sheeit!”

Kathy squinted at the Vietnamese calligraphy.“They got a pretty language,” she said.

I wondered if Mikes’ friend Mr. Ling would translate it.

“I’ll give him a jingle, Doc.Kathy, remind me to call him.”

We talked ’till 3am then called it a night.The next afternoon, after we drove to a flea market, a thrift store,a shopping mall,I understood why Jerry and Beth liked Florida.

Kathy said,“Michael,they got the Sears in New York.Let’s show Doc something different.”

“Ain’t she something?”said Mike.

At Holson’s Farm Supply Depot Kathy pointed to the refrigerated veterinarian antibiotics. “Tell Doc about Old Bill.”

Mike saddened for a moment,then told the tale. “Old Bill was sick awhile but he couldn’t afford no doctor. Came here instead.It’s all the same,you know,just bigger sizes,syringes,too.Old Bill,he’d take them drugs home,shoot his self up, better in no time.”Mike pretended to inject himself.“Kathy, how long that boy live for he died?Couple months,huh?

“Sheriff found him,”she muttered.

“Yeah,but Old Bill didn’t need no doctor. Sheeit!Not Old Bill.”

We browsed the horse supplies.

“Doc,this here is real good shampoo,”said Kathy.She held up a yellow plastic bottle adorned with the red silhouette of a galloping horse,the wind flapping its tail and forelock.“Makes your hair clean and silky.Department stores got it but you can buy some here if you like.”

I read the ingredients and bought a horse shoe instead.Outside,parked in a lot we browsed new and used farm equipment,then called it a day.

Monroe is a well-kept friendly town;there are few fences,much open land; everyone knows everyone else,and everyone has guns.For Christmas Kathy bought Mike an AR15 assault rifle.

“Ain’t she a beauty?”he said,proudly opening the black plastic case on the kitchen table after a dinner of steaks and fries Kathy cooked on the backyard propane grill.

“He’s a real good shot,”she said,rinsing and drying the dishes.

“Really?”I hadn’t touched a weapon since the war.

Early the next day Mike and I drove out to the woods,a.25 automatic pistol tucked in the glove compartment,the AR15 and a.22 caliber rifle stowed under the front seat.

“Built me a plinking range,” said Mike as we pulled off the road and walked into the woods.Mike tossed me a small plastic bottle.“Bug juice.Keep the skeeter’s away.”

With the AR15 I tried to hit hit bottle caps but after ten misses from fifty yards I peeled off a burst on semi.In the trembling seconds of rattling bullets and smokey cordite I relived the first Chicom grenade blowing up the machine gun.The second landed between Dorio,Timmy Day,Mike and Shake‘n Bake.They scurried, threw themselves on me;the blast lifted us up,threw us down,Mike getting it worst. Before the head medic arrived,before the gun ships rolled in,before155s opened up,someone sprayed the wood line with his M16. What a rush,what a motherfuckin rush.

Mike shoved a full clip into the pistol.“Here you go,Doc.”

In Monroe they call a.25 automatic a Belly Buster.In New York they’re Saturday Night Specials.I emptied the clip into a nearby dead tree.

“You can do better,Doc.I know you can!”

Poking around for a target,Mike said the pistol had no serial numbers.  Monroe being a small town the police told Mike to get rid of it,but of course he didn’t and they knew he wouldn’t,since guns are guns,numbered or not.

We fired thirty rounds into the sky,then drove to a marshy field a few miles west of the Fermi nuclear power plant.Thirty years ago it had nearly melted down.

“Gotta be quick,”said Mike. We hoped to kill ground hogs;the week before he’d shot six in two hours.As the sun rose and burned off the morning dew,I asked Mike about his PTSD.

“Twice a month I see a doctor at the Detroit VA.He got me on meds for the nightmares and jitters.Says I’m making progress.Got me a thirty per cent disability rating,too.” He paused,gave me a wink.”Don’t tell Kathy but I take the Belly Buster when I see him.Never did like that town.” He licked his finger,held it up.“She’s blowing north,”he said.

Where the anger came from I do not know.“Fuck the wind,Mike.Three Bronze Stars,two Purple Hearts,you got nightmares,startle reflex,flashbacks, depression,stay to yourself and VA’s giving you thirty fucking percent for PTSD?”

Mike had done his time,seen his share.

“Request an increase,Michael.Get fifty percent.Maybe a hundred,I don’t know. But you need a therapist,too,not just a pill pusher.You talk,you go deep,you see things you forgot,you cry,man;you get angry,you let it out. That’s how it works,Michael. You handle it by letting it out.”

Mike tested the air again.“I’ll think about it,Doc. I surely will.”

After trekking two miles not seeing fresh dug holes or new tracks,I plucked a small camera from my coat pocket.Kneeling,I drew stick figures in the dirt:a man with a rifle in the foreground, two nuclear smoke stacks on the horizon.
“Here you go,”I said,handing Mike the camera.“It’s the perfect holiday card.The caption will say,‘Merry Christmas, Motherfuckers. Merry Fucking Christmas.’ ”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

He took the picture.

The next day me,Mike and Kathy visited Mr. Ling in An Arbor. A balding chubby man, formerly a doctor in Hanoi,he’d escaped by boat in‘76.

“Long time ago,”he said,recalling how the Saigon government tortured his grandfather. “They broke his arms,legs,teeth. He tell his daughters not to worry. Then he jump in lake,drown.”

Mr. Ling said in the re-education camps for American sympathizers some prisoners starved to death.He said pirates attacked his boat,stealing everyone’s money.“Soon no food,no water,some people kill self.”While recounting the terrors,he occasionally laughed with unnerving glee.

About six o’clock we said good bye.“Hungry, Doc?”asked Kathy.

“Starving.”

We drove to a Red Lobster.

Mike said Mr. Ling usually didn’t talk so much.

“But he sure was interesting,wasn’t he,Doc?”

“I guess so,Kathy, but I thought he cried when he laughed.”

Mike jabbed his fork into a bright dead fish.In the noisy restaurant we ate in silence.

The following day Mike and I went to a sportsman’s club and met Tim and Mickey,Mike’s hunting pals.They’d brought shotguns,black powder rifles,an SKS,two 9mm pistols,a .357 magnum. Mike had the .22 caliber rifle and the AR-15.I saw blood everywhere.

“This here is Doc,”said Mike.“He was my medic in Vietnam.”

Mickey handed me the SKS.I aimed the enemy rifle and fired.Measuring a bull’s eye,Tim said,“Good shooting, Doc.” Mickey shot a tight group with the 9mm,covering it with a dime.

An hour later, on the drive with Mike and Kathy back to Metro I wondered: was it the war flicks,or watching Platoon twice,or the guns we carried,or Kathy’s cooking,or Mr. Lings’ ordeals? I don’t know,but I do know this:At the flight gate we cried,hugged,then off I went back to New York.

In my mail box was a letter from the widow of Bill Williams. I’d written her a note after Bill was shot. Every man in third platoon had signed it. A month later I received her frenzied reply:‘How did it happen?Did he suffer? What were his last moments? His last words?’Overwhelmed,I buried the letter in my pack and tried to forget it. Just before visiting Mike I’d found her and written the truth.Time stood still as I read her letter,and wept,as she had,then put it away.

Twenty-five years later it’s the same image I hallucinate in the rain forest in Sumatra while walking with Mr. Mohammed. For three days we trek hard through dense scrub,exotic spiraling trees,curtains of wait-a-minutes,the sunlight illuminating the triple canopy.

“Look,”says Mr. Muhammad, pointing.

Twenty meters away, the dirt floor of the rocky lair still holds the animals scent.

“Maybe tiger,” he says,before melting into the jungle to carve spears from branches.

I bend forward,palms to my knees,resting the way grunts did when taking five. Looking up,a young soldier not ten meters away stares at me. A sudden dread and deep sorrow bridge the gap between us. Seconds later my mirror self shimmers and disappears.

“For you,” says Mr. Muhammad,handing me the fresh cut spear. Like him,sweat drips from my face;he cannot tell I’ve been weeping. Gripping the lances tightly we move out.

At a bend in the trail, high above, Mr.Muhammad spies a female orangutan,the helpless baby hugging her back. Reaching our camp site we pass the old woman who lives with chickens in her primitive hut.

“She is crazy,” says my guide. “Her spirit is lost.”

Later,at Mr. Mohammed’s house,after his wife falls to the floor,her eyes roll back,her feet and arms kick and flail,he burns incense,talks to her,mixes herbs which make her well.

Later still,after truck rides, military checkpoints,market place fruit bats trussed to sticks,a rat eaten hole in my pack,visits to the American embassy,visits to ancient temples,modern villas,broad daylight cockfights,there is the blessed horseback ride on the lonely wind blown sands of Parangtritis.

And later still,after sitting in decrepit chairs in high domed thatched huts in Yogyakarta’s sprawling bird market, after telling the pock faced Javanese masseuse who forced her knuckles deep into my back,“No, it’s not good. No bagus!”after the wretched lifeless strip malls of industrial Surabaya,I have my fortune read by a friends sister in a six hundred year old house in Beaujolais, France.“You are my suicide man,”she said,handing me the Tarot cards.

Much later,after declining cocaine in London from a doctor met on the Killing Beach in Zipolite,Mexico, after sipping much red wine at Lake Geneva, I tried hard to look calm but knew I did not fool Pascal or his girlfriend or find sweet oblivion.

Much later,after staying with an ex-cop,ex-drug dealer in energetic post war rebuilt curiosity filled Amsterdam,courtesy of the brother of the Tarot card reader. After visiting Rembrandt’s house,Ann Frank’s house,in the red light district paying thirty guilders to a Colombian whore,“Hold me, please hold me,”I begged her,after we did not have sex. At last, after hiding out in a cramped Dutch youth hostel where I did not know who or when or where I was: a short flight home where I arrived one day before my DEROS twenty-six years after the event and moved sixteen times from ‘96 to 2002 until finally settling down.

DEROS:  Date estimated return overseas

“Pour this on me,” I say to Gary, after putting the camera down.

The cool water sluices over my oily hair,my sweat soaked fatigues,flows into my aid bag, the bandages already wet. Clipped to my pistol belt,next to the forty-five,a baseball grenade. “Frags,” we call them. Killing radius five yards.

That’s Lloyd Edge,aka ‘Butch’ up front, red haired Steve York behind him,the machine gun braced sideways on the back of his neck. Gary,a Southern boy,stands mid-stream.

Once during an ambush, point man Timmy Day shouted, “Doc, throw me a fucking grenade!” I toss it, he caught it, pushed the safety off,pulled the pin,let the curved metal handle called “the spoon,” spring free,he counts three seconds,lobs the round smooth bomb into the woods. After the loud fiery BANG they had to be dead but not a minute later the NVA hurl a Chicom grenade that crumples the M60, twists the barrel in half. As dust and dirt filter down a  second Chicom flies from the wood line, falls between Timmy, Rudy, Wilson and Bieck,who throw themselves on me. Boom! And they are screaming.

Twenty-five years later Wilson says the medivac flew them Quan Loi.“Took incoming soon as we touched down.Fucking remfs ran off,left us wounded right there in the open.”

He says after the shelling stopped the lieutenant came out with plates of fried chicken,cans of Coke.

“Man,” says Wilson, “I wolfed them suckers down.”

Standing up,he undid and dropped his pants.“

“Doc,” he says, “I seen a dime-sized hole right through my pecker. I seen right to my combat boots. Damn! But them doctors in Quan Loi fixed my John Henry real good. Everything works just fine.”

“Doc,where’s the fucking new RTO?” yells short wiry Timmy Day. “Where is that motherfucker?” Without the new  radio man Timmy can’t reach the lieutenant, who can’t call in gunships or artillery. Without the new radio man the LT is blind.

On patrol,Timmy walks first into the silent green jungle. He knows that every step might be his last. Behind him,a string of grunts, the machine gun team, the lieutenant, RTO, the medic, more riflemen.

Derrig, wearing a vest filled with fist-sized 40mm shellscarries the single shot grenade launcher.

“Gimme that,”says Timmy.

He grabs the weapon, stands it on end, angles the barrel to lob its shells high into the air, to drop like mortars.

While the other men shoot wildly, the lieutenant, thirty meters away, stands, deliberately aims his M16, fires off the tumbling rounds. One by one the enemy drop,the lifeless bodies trapped in thickets of dead bamboo.

Five grunts circle and kick the corpses: in the belly, the face, the balls. Crazy Frank lifts one corpse by its bushy black hair, lets it fall with a thud, stabs the torso to make it bleed. “Nice shooting,sir,” he says, quickly stowing his knife.

The missing RTO, a tall husky man,steps out from behind a large tree.

“Christ, what you got there?” he asks, wandering toward us. “Christ almighty, what you got?”

But no one is fooled. Not least of all Timmy Day.

“You fuckin pussy,” he shouts. “You fuckin coward. I oughta waste you,man. I oughta waste your fucking ass.”

He punches the RTO in the mouth. Pounds his fists on the big mans chest. Throttles him. Throws handfuls of dirt into the frightened mans face.

“You fucking coward. Fucking coward.”

We surround the new man. He does not move.

Suddenly, in the distance there is the steady thuup thuup of whirling rotor blades but the Lieutenant continues to pilfer the dead. “Birds inbound,” he finally yells. “Saddle up!”

He turns to the RTO. “That best not happen again, you understand. Now get out there and pop fucking smoke.”

The radio man runs to the field and tosses a green canister that hisses,sputters, then billows thick clouds of yellow smoke. When the birds land we scramble aboard, then trembling choppers lift us away.

Inside the Huey the RTO wipes the dirt from his face. “Red Baron…Red Baron,”he shouts into the radio hand set, “We have four confirmed kills.I say again…”

The lieutenant holds up one of the documents plucked from the dead, nods to the new man.

“What is it, sir?” he asks.

“Gook intel. I think we killed a fucking…” 

A burst of rifle fire rakes the chopper. Timmy throws himself on the lieutenant.The pilot banks hard,skims the tree tops until the danger has passed.

“You queer, GI?”asks the lieutenant, pushing the point off him. Even the door gunners laugh. Only the RTO  is silent.

When the bird lands we jump out, dust ourselves off, trudge to the bunkers. But the new RTO hangs back. Palms to his face, we can hear him weeping. Is it for Compton’s promise of fresh uniforms, hot food, cold showers, relative saftey? He sobs like a child hoping all is forgiven. Sobs for quite some time.

“What’s wrong?” he asks,looking up. “Take it easy.Calm down.”

Between sobs I tell him I’m hearing voices,can’t think straight,can’t take it much more.

“I’ll be no good if we get hit. I’ll be no good.”

“Take it easy, man.  You’ll be alright.” He says the Captain says we’re heading back to Quan Loi.

“I’ll send you to the shrinks, OK? You’ll be alright.”

“Thanks.Thank you,much.” I say,then wander off.

At the beating sound of a half dozen Huey’s racing over the hot horizon every man grabs his pack and moves out.

The RTO pops yellow smoke. As the choppers come close the men cover their ears,then jostle aboard the trembling Huey’s,which speed us away from the burning jungle. For twenty minutes our stinking clothes flap in the onrush of cool dry air.

The instant we land, the Captain shouts, “Load up on ammo,water, C-rations…let’s go…load up…”

He points to ammo crates,C-ration boxes, the large black rubber barrels, “blivits” we call them. We stuff our packs with food and ammo, line up to fill our canteens.

Meanwhile,the door gunners check their M-60s, oil and swivel the mounts,wipe the ammo belts clean.Nervous pilots help with refueling.

“Saddle up!” the Captain yells. “Let’s go! Saddle up!”

Freighted with three days supplies,four platoons lurch and heave themselves into a dozen choppers lined up on the tarmac.

“What’s going on?” asks Timmy Day.  Someone says,”Cambodia.”

We’re overcome with dread. Cambodia. The enemy’s backyard. It’s the first we’ve heard of it.

One by one the birds lift, gain altitude, single file snake across the tropical sky.

Soon shark mouthed Cobra gun ships circle us, the excited pilots clearly visible. As the Huey’s descend the Cobra’s peel away, power dive,fire their whooshing white tailed rockets,roaring mini guns,chain-linked forty mike-mike grenades. Artillery crews launch silver shells that soar through the clear sky, crash into distant wood lines; fountains of dirt shoot up from the craters. As the jungle draws near,the door gunners rake the wood line with continuous bursts of fire. We jump from the skids,run forward, throw ourselves down. No one expects to live.

But the hard core NVA have abandoned this base camp ringed by mud and timber bunkers. Timmy points to the carved mock Huey’s that hang from trees. On the ground, a mute trio of bamboo machine guns blast their targets. There is even a school for sapper’s: multiple rows of coiled vines teach the secrets of crawling undetected through American barb wire. Nothing points to a hurried retreat.

For nearly two months we’ll slug and spar with the NVA: Leon will be shot in the hand at dawn. Blue-eyed Steve York will suddenly spurt rivers of red. Nervous grunts will mistakenly kill a K9 Scout dog. Kit Carson’s will taunt and execute ambush survivors.  LZ Ranch will be overrrun.TAfterward,we’ll toss the enemy dead into bomb craters,salt them with lime. Medivacs will haul our losses away.

But for now,veiled in soft greenish light,bathed in TNTs sickly scent,embraced by the warmth of fresh thirty yard craters,before enemy rockets shriek and BANG, before swift dropping mortars spew white hot steel,before AKs and M16s crackle and duel,before the writhing casualties dance in endless pain, before the still warm dead lay trapped in black body bags:for now we are safe.

After a time we pass C-ration cigarettes to our Kit Carson Scout. His name is Diem Diem but we call him Jim Dumb. Seventeen,thin,wiry,dark-complected,on patrol Jim walks third in line. An NVA defector,retrained to work with American’s he is sent to us. Kit Karson’s can spot the tell tale for signs of ambush,booby trap,bunker complex.

“Beau coup NVA, ”says Jim,pointing to week old foot prints.

His skills are pitiful but we trust and like this harmless young man.

D’wee was better. Short,tense,muscular, his raised clenched fist meant imminent danger. But D’wee is dead. Now there is Jim,who likes American food and cigarettes and laughs at jokes he cannot understand.

“Here,”I say,tossing him what he craves. Jim slips the five butt cigarette packet into a clear plastic bag filled with Newport Menthol’s,Winston Filter Tips, No Filter Camels,Lucky Strikes,a half dozen Army matchbooks. He crimps the bag shut,plucks the cigarette lodged behind his left ear,strikes a match,inhales.

“Tanks, Duck,” he says. He means Doc. How can you not like this harmless young man? I take out my camera and shoot him.

“Now me, Duck,” he says.

“Sure.”

I hand him my camera and pantomime “Finger. Look. Press.”

“OK. OK Duck,” he says. “Now I take you pikta.”

“Shoot him!” jokes the lieutenant.

Suddenly, behind us, there is a loud hissing noise, then a dazzling light. Jim Dumb snaps the picture then slams himself down. Every man does the same. Seconds later the claymores explode. Fifty meters west second platoon’s automatic ambush has detonated. As the trip flare burns out the lieutenant leaps up.

“Move out,”he says.“ C’mon, move out.”

The ten of us run,sway,crouch through the jungle,do not feel the razor-like cuts from the bamboo,the sharp thorns of wait-a-minute vines. We ignore the leeches that drop from trees and run and run until we see it.

Three NVA, their legs sheared off by the blast,howl in agony. From ten meters excited GIs take pot shots while someone quietly weeps.

When the killing is done the men scavenge the corpses for souvenirs then pile the bodies together. Insects,drawn by the scent,swarm to feast. Jim Dumb booby traps the hideous pile with a short-fused grenade. A trick he has learned from the RTO.

The lieutenant checks his topo map.

“Call in a body count. Say we killed nine” he tells the radio man.

“Roger that,sir.”

“Alright then. Let’s clear out.”

We strap on our gear,check our weapons,march past the cruel heap. The eyes of the dead do not blink. Their mouths  are frozen mid-scream. Their rictus limbs are fixed at spectacular angles.Ten minutes later Jim’s grenade explodes.

“NVA,”he says,dragging a finger across his neck.

We march two hours,lay down our packs,form a perimeter,dig fox holes,stake the trips and claymores,break out the C-rations and C4. Another day,another automatic ambush. Time to eat before it’s time for guard.

Unlike the spartan furnishings on the PTSD wing, Room 57 has an assortment of potted plants, an elegant coffee table strew with brochures and magazines; sunlight  slants through wide clean windows.There are no smug clerks, no jangling phones. We sit on a large red leather couch. After a time a short young man wearing blue scrubs breaks the silence.         

“Who would like to go first?” he asks.

In his gravelly voice,Jay R says,“Whichever you like,son.”

“Follow me,sir,” the young man replies.

Jay R stands,throws me a salute.Then he is gone.

I’ve forgotten my reading glasses; no matter. I’m not interested in Your GI Housing Benefits,Serviceman’s Group Life Insurance,Get Tested for Hepatitis C. As the warm sun kisses the back of my neck,I doze off.

A tall thin doctor completes his lecture on startle reflex,sudden anger, thoughts of killing people,thoughts of suicide,nightmares,flashbacks, drinking,depression,crying spells,feelings of loss,feelings of grief,feeling no feelings. “That’s PTSD” he says. “Hey, why don’t you tell me something I don’t know,” I say, “And what’s that got to do with my heart?”

At the turn of a latch I startle awake.

“You been sleeping,buddy?” asks JR.

“Not a chance,” I say. ” How’d it go?”

“No biggie. Over and done with ‘fore you know it.”

“Your turn, ”says blue scrubs. We exit the waiting room, walk to a door marked Sally Ingram,Tech III. “Have a seat,” he says. “She’ll be right with you.”

A sturdy exam table covered by a sheet of thin white paper sits in the center of the soft lit room. Next to it,resting on a stainless steel table,a white plastic box with black controls and colorful meters. Atop the EKG machine, a coiled pile of orange tentacles,each tipped by a black rubber disk. A woman deliberately coughs before entering.

“Good morning,” says Sally Ingram. Her voice is warm, pleasant.

“Good morning,” I say.

Middle-aged,of medium height and build,Ms. Ingram’s straight brown hair frames her pleasing face. Her red pant suit is topped by a blue cardigan sweater which accentuates her not immodest bosom. She is comfortable, confident, at home in this room.

“Please take off your shirt, shoes and socks and lie back,”she says,patting the table. A hint of perfume fills the air.

I begin to shake. After eight months backpacking Asia,Indonesia,Europe,after good times,sad times,lost times, flashbacks,nightmares,crying spells, thunderous rage,lighting rod sorrow, here,in a cozy room,alone with a lovely woman, I shake  uncontrollably.

“Are you cold,sir?”

“Yes,a little.”

But it’s more than cold,more than desire.

“Oh, now don’t you worry.  This won’t hurt and we’ll be done soon.” Her voice is soft and tender and reassuring. When Ms. Ingram reaches for the orange tentacles her blue sweater tightens around her ample curves.

There is a rhythm in the way she applies the clear sticky goo,presses the icy coins to my legs,my arms,across my chest. The playful manner to her touch says, “Of course this is sensual,erotic. Oh dear,how could it not be?  But this is my job, I do it well,so please don’t misbehave. We’re adults,right? I’ll do my job. You’ll do yours? Of course you will.”

As she bobs and weaves, pressing here, pushing there, making soft circles with her finger tips to spread the gel,I don’t fight the fantasies. Yes,I  want to undress you, Ms Sally Ingram, pull you close, inhale your women’s scent, feel the press and push of our moistening bodies.Yes,dear Sally, I want to shiver and cum one hundred times before entering you with the length of my dreams. It will be lovely, won’t it?  Not like the doctor said.

Afterward, I will mimic the wounded mens lost or stoic or brightened eyes, their outstretched arms, their stuttering tongues. I will imitate hunting or being hunted by human beings. In my best medic voice I will sing bombs and Arc Light’s bitter sweet song. Without fear of shaking I will pantomime the trembling earth. Nimbly demonstrate smoke rising from thirty yard craters. Kneeling, hands locked behind my neck, I will admit to pastures of blossoming wounds that populate ten thousand fields of friendly fire ever wet and ever scarlet. I will speak these things with all my heart.

“Stay still, dear.That’s better.”

I’m laid out like a beached whale on a remote foreign shore; the flexible orange tubes stick to my skin like blood fat leeches. Encased by them, I’m trapped, a willing prisoner of memory and medicine.

Ms. Ingram presses a black button on the white machine. A chorus of mechanical clicks and chugging fills the air. Moments later a wide paper ribbon spools itself into her loving hands. She folds the robot calligraphy into a dozen pleats, tucks the long page into the VA envelope, reseals it.

“All done. You can get dressed now. Nice meeting you,” says Ms. Ingram.

“Nice meeting you, too.”

On the way back to the ward Jay R unwinds the red string, carefully unfolds the graph paper. Across the page a thin black line traces a landscape of gentle hills and modest valleys.

“Still warm. Still ticking,” he says. “What you got,son? What you got?”

I undo the twine, fan out the paper.

“Well look at that!” says JR.

A troupe of spiky peaks and troughs skitter past.

A sly grin creases JR’s face. “She was good looking,” he says. “Oh, yes she was.”

“Doc, don’t leave us,” they say, “Don’t leave the platoon.”

We’ve been through so much. Weeks on end of jungle patrols, ambush or rocket and mortar attacks. A base over run. Or waiting and waiting, tension rising, nothing at all. In monsoon we’ve slept in mud and rain. In dry season slogged through our thirst. But always taken care of each other. I love these men. I always will.

Skinny Bob asks, “You’re not really leaving, are you Doc?”

I clamp my jaw tight,crush the tears in my throat.  In two months Skinny Bob,badly wounded,will die.

“Where you going on R&R?” asks Big Ken, who will die the same day.

“Japan.”

“Then what you gonna do?” asks someone else.

“Got a rear job in Phuc Vinh.”

“We’ll miss you, man.  We’ll miss you.”

After handshakes and back slaps and averted eyes,it’s over. I’m out of the bush.

In Saigon,boarding a plane in civilian clothes,I feel naked without my rifle, pistol,frags,bug juice,canteens,C-rations,ass wipe. Naked.

I sit next to Spec 4 Samuel Chun, an upbeat college educated Japanese American. He works in an office typing up reports. Not once during the six hour flight does he use foul language.

From Tokyo we find our way to the Star Hotel.

“Good pussy and good dope,” said a medic in first platoon. “You’ll have a great time.”

Sam is agreeable,or so it seems.

Past the well kept garden,past the white marble Buddha there are endless hallways with rooms but all are empty. Same and I are the last Americans to visit this war time bordello. The owner, a plump old Mama san, feigns delight.

“Welcome. Welcome,” she says, wiggling her hands.

Papa san, a short gaunt man with a permanent limp,fought the Allies in World War II. “Ma-chine-gun,” he says, between bursts of smiles.

Mama san leads us to a ghost town of tables and chairs.

“Sit… sit,” she says, pointing to a large black couch facing a deserted bar. She nods politely, exits through a colorful curtain of glass beads. The ten thousand little spheres make a rattling noise as she passes through them.

Sam drums his finger tips on his knee. I look about. In this safe well lit air conditioned room there is no one on point. No one on guard. There is no one breaking squelch twice, whispering, “My sitreps are negative.” No one saying, “Take five,”or “Saddle up.” There is no radio man shouting into the black plastic handset, “I say again! I say again!” No lieutenant yelling, “Goddamit it, lay down suppressing fire!” No mortar crews firing harassment rounds. There are no squirming casualties screaming, “Medic!!!…medic!!!!”

The beads rattle; Mama san shuffles in,a rum and Coke in each hand.

“You pay later,” she says.

The moment we reach for the icy drinks two young women in short skirts enter the room and sit between us.

Sam turns to me. “May I borrow your camera?” he asks. “I want to see Tokyo.”

The whore seated next to him  makes a hurtful face. “GI, you no like?” she says.

Sam presses his lips in apology, takes the camera, waves good bye.

*   *   *

Her name is Yukio. We sit on the hard square bed in a small square room, surrounded by the simple decor of soap, towel, sink. She is slender, with an ivory face framed by short black hair. She has high cheek bones, red painted lips, crowded white teeth. Her flimsy blouse contains inviting curves. Her enchanting legs make me hard. I have killed and cared for men but now I don’t know what to do.

“Can you help me?” I ask her. “Vietnam, you understand?” I pantomime holding my rifle. “Bang! Bang! You understand?”

My whore nods without mercy.

After money, after undressing, after she pulls me inside her and rotates her slim ivory hips,she grinds my virginity to a rice paper pulp.

“Me good fuck,” she says, yawning. Me good fuck.”

The next day I take taxis driven by white gloved drivers, play Pachinko and pinball machines, get lost on the subway, escape from a horde of giggling school girls. In a vast teeming mall an army of products scream, “Buy me…buy me.”

Another night,another woman. I can’t wait to go back to Vietnam.

On the return flight Sam shows me the photos he’s taken: immaculate green parks;ancient stone temples; glass skyscrapers; a museum dedicated to the making of silk.

“Glad you had a good time,” I say.

When Sam asks how things went I lie with all my heart.

The lieutenant in Phuc Vinh  welcomes me to my new home. “Back here you will salute officers. You will get hair cuts. You will polish your boots.”

Is he out of his fucking mind? I can’t do that. I just can’t. An angry month later I request to be sent to LZ Green.

“Fine with me, soldier,” says the lieutenant. No love lost between us.

Each morning on the remote base I drag barrels of shit out from beneath mortar box shitters, pour in diesel fuel, toss in trip flares,over the hours stir the burning sludge to a fine white ash. By dusk I pull the near empties back, exchange them for new one’s brimming with shit.

Each day, the gun crews whisper, “How the fuck can he do that?”

Who cares what they think. During monsoon burning shit keeps you warm. Keeps you safe. I’ve got three weeks to go in Vietnam. Twenty-one and a wake up; you understand?

Someone yells, “Fire Mission!” The Howitzer crews aim and adjust their cannons,swiftly lift,push,ram the heavy shells home,insert powder bags,slap the hammers at the back of the breech. The cannons roar,the shells arc through the clear sky,then far away crash and explode.

The First Sergeant is a tall lanky man who has made the Army his career. “Lifers,” we call them. Some have seen combat. Some have not.

“Bravo company just got ambushed,” he says. “They lost a medic. You go out three days. Just three. I’ll bring you back.”

Is he out of his mind? This is not my company. This is not my platoon. These are not my men. Fuck Bravo company. Fuck them all. The days of my life are notched on a cardboard square kept inside a waterproof wallet. Eight months in the bush. Half my platoon wounded or wasted. Twenty-five and a wake up, you understand?

“No way, Sarge. No fucking way.”

A captain gives a direct order.

I gather my gear, walk to the chopper pad, watch the morning mist rise off the tarmac. There are four new medics in Phuc Vinh. Why isn’t the lieutenant sending one to Bravo? Why are they sending me? Twenty-one and a wake up. Is he out of his fucking mind? I’m locked and loaded and melting down.

When the chopper swoops in to land the door gunner yells, “Get on! Get on!” but I stand still, shake my head, give him thumbs down. They lift off. Ten minutes later a second bird arrives. “You going to Phuc Vinh?” The gunner signals thumbs up. I hop aboard.

After the short flight I trudge to battalion head quarters. From thirty meters I spot the new lieutenant. With a life of its own my M16 aims at his chest.

Walking toward him someone is yelling, “Are you sending me out, motherfucker? I said, ‘Are you sending me out?’ ”

Dumbstruck,the officer slowly raises his hands over his head. “I made mistake,” he says, body trembling.” I’ll send someone else.”

I lower my weapon,push the safety on,walk past the no good rat fuck remf son-of-a-bitch,find an empty bunk,throw down my gear,and weep.

“Open!” he cries,“I must have my radio. Open! Open it! ”Bang. Bang. Bang.

In our love play we do not hear his desperate shouts,his thudding fists. After a time we tremble and shake,lose ourselves in a tangle of dreams.

Work: Early each morning a dozen volunteers douse the kerosene heaters in their tumble down shacks,dress,wash up,trudge to the eating hall to dine on toast,cereal,fruit juice and cheese.

At precisely 5:30 am we board the tractor pulled trolley, which takes us to far away fields.

From 6am to 2pm we work beneath the harsh sun. In the peanut fields row upon row of flat leafy clusters hug the earth. We form two lines five yards apart; walking forward slowly, each volunteer thrusts the curved pitchfork under a dry clump,lifts, twirls,flips it over moist side up. At noon,when the kibbutznik in charge shouts, “Break time!” our tools clatter to the earth. Gathering in a semi-circle,we flick dirt off our arms, wipe dust from our eyes,eat crackers,slug back precious water. Then return to work.

In the orange groves, wearing burlap sacks and canvass belts that loop our shoulders we climb wood ladders braced against stubborn trees,pull,twist,pluck the ripe fruit, drop it into the sack,reach for another. When the fifty pound sack is full one must descend the ladder and awkwardly trudge to a large wood box,upend the bag,carefully empty out the harvest. The work is boring. Tedious. Backbreaking. But no one talks. Sometimes we pelt each other with oranges,pelt the wood pallet, waste hundreds of dollars of the pulpy fruit. Or peel the skin to suck and chew the luscious pulp.

The thick skinned avocados are snipped with long wood stemmed shears. It’s a tiresome task but the sheltering groves are a welcome respite from the glaring sun.

Monthly,the cow sheds need cleaning. Armed with shovels and brooms we scrape,sweep, scrub and hose the cement sheds down,shrug off the stench. When no one is looking,the affable Sammy the Argentine charges up the side of a white painted wall,somersaults in mid-air,lands on his feet. “You try,” he says,with a confident grin. But I don’t try and thankfully he does not ask the reason.

Worst are the ten thousand chickens inside the long low lit hut the size of an airplane hanger. At 2am,ten volunteers don thick canvass gloves and cheap cotton masks. Chicken Woman demonstrates: walk slowly amongst the sleepy birds;bend slowly forward, quickly scoop two in the right hand, two in the left. Now walk to a narrow doorway where kibbutzniks will grab and shove the squawking birds into plastic cages they stack on trucks.

“You make like that,” she says, flicking at feathers that cling to her face. And it’s true: she looks like a chicken.

As the hours pass,as the flock thins out,when panicked birds claw and bite I punch their heads with my canvass fists. Instantly they droop dead. The volunteers grumble amongst themselves but I hear them.

“In the orange groves he threw too hard. Now this. Why does he do that? Someone should make him stop.”

Michael from Switzerland yells,“Please! Treat the animals with care!”

Has it been that long? Six months ago Michael introduced me to Karla. He’d seen me watching her. But what does he know of war nightmares and crying for no reason? Or the startle reflex where sudden sounds cause me to suddenly turn to the left or right. Or the sorrow that haunts my every step,or the fear and rage not far beneath it? Still,except for stocky muscular Bella, who wants petite and long haired Karla back,we volunteers get along well.

At the dining hall,having washed up,volunteers and kibbutznicks lunch on fresh caught fish, bowls of salad,trays of vegetables,loaves of fresh bread,platters of homemade cake.

Afterward,in bathing suits,the volunteers march a half mile down a dry dirt road to a long narrow pebbled beach.

I spread a large blue towel onto the glistening sand.

“Come closer, Karla.”

“Like this?”

“Yes,Karla. Like that.”

I wrap myself around her. Who cares what the others think.

“Hold me,Karla. Just hold me.”

She never questions my behavior. We are a happy pair.

One night in our cubicle room Karla plucks a rock from beneath the pillow.

“Your dog is dead!” she cries,then leaps from the bed and bolts from the room and runs away into the pitch black night. I chase after her, grab her arm seconds before a speeding truck turns the bend on the blacktop road that leads to Netanya. In the morning Karla is taken away.

“To a hospital,” says the kibbutz nurse,a middle aged woman with black hair and black eyes and lipstick much too red. “Don’t worry. They will take good care of her until she goes home.”

Twice a week there is the long miserable bus ride to a desolate town where the same armed guard asks the dismal question,“My I see your passport, please?”

Automatically I flash the blue booklet. On cue he points to the decrepit cinder block building surrounded by a ten foot high chain link fence. The windows are barred with thick steel grates.

“Thank you. Good afternoon,” he says,handing the document back.

There is the eternal waiting for hurried footsteps,the swift metallic song of the iron key inserted into the ancient padlock,the lazy creak of the heavy door as it slowly opens then thunders shut.

“Shalom,”says the orderly, a pleasant bearded man dressed in white who ushers me through a damp hallway which opens onto a tiny brick plaza lit by a single bulb.

Like clockwork,a crowd of women rush forward to fervently pat their butterfly hands on the top of my head. Karla,heavily drugged,leans against a far wall,barely able to speak.

“Of course she is medicated. Haven’t you read ‘I Never Promised You a Rose Garden?’ asks the kibbutz nurse. “Why do you go there?”

“Because I love her.”

A month later,the medication reduced,we are permitted to walk the hospital grounds.

“Soon I go home,”says Karla, smiling for the first time in weeks.

Back on the ward,the orderly leads us through a corridor to a series of small private rooms. He unlocks a metal door,signals twenty minutes by flashing his fingers,then locks the door behind us.

Instantly, we doff our shoes and throw ourselves onto the lumpy bed. Three women,peering at us through the doors round window,make obscene gestures. At the sight of my fist they scatter like crows.

“Karla,will you marry me? I’ll come to Switzerland.”

She closes her eyes. It’s so quiet in this room. So dreadfully quiet. Like the secret seconds before a well sprung ambush. Or the dying hush that follows it. Red. Everywhere red.

“Yes! I’ll marry you!”

The war is seven years past but the flight to Zurich is marred by thoughts of jungle and ambush and monsoon patrols. Why now? Why? Karla is waiting. My dear,dear Karla. Even the secret blue pills taken each day to quiet me do not help. Not two,not three, not four of them. There is nothing to do but hunker down,wait until it passes. I’ve done that many times.

After Customs in Zurich,after the immaculate Dolderban’s graceful chugging ascent,after I exit the car,lost in the peace of Zurichberg,a policeman points the way.

“Danke.”

“Bitte,”he says,touching the tip of his cap.

And I’m off.

A curtain of ivy hugs the red brick walls of the elegant three storey psychiatric center.

“Guten morgen,”says Frau Essler,a plump fastidious woman who directs me upstairs to the office of Dr. Schmidt,a handsome man seated behind a large black desk.

“So,you are here to visit Karla?” he asks.

“Yes,but…”

Dr. Schmidt jots down notes on a pad. From time to time he asks questions.

When I’ve finished talking,finished weeping,he asks, “Perhaps you too should like to stay for a while?”

I accept. He confiscates the Valium.

Frau Essler leads the way to a cozy carpeted room with brass lamps,a private phone,a sizable bed draped by a thick down blanket. She opens the bathroom door. The deep square porcelain tub has gleaming brass fixtures;the floor is polished marble.

“It is good,yes?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful.”

That evening I’m given a drug which makes me whole. Five days later I’m allowed to meet Karla. She is lucid,bright,cheerful.

After the long embrace Karla says, “You have no need to explain.”

But what of the dream of the dog, the running away,the time spent on the grim locked ward? Why is she now in Klinic am Zurichberg? Or does it matter? Karla is better,I love her and it’s safe here. We’re together and safe.

At breakfast,lunch and supper we sit side by side in the cozy white walled dining room where Klinic staff and patients eat meals prepared by a chef wearing apron and toque. The long tables are set with linen,glassware,antique silver. We patients have napkin holders that bear our names. The mood is carefree and festive though if Martin the Dutch schizophrenic jumps up to spin in circles,a staff member will gently sit him down.

Here,there is no locked ward,there is no armed guard,no need to over medicate.Each passing day Karla seems more herself.

“We shall get married, yes?”

“Of course,my love. We’ll get married soon.”

Across from us sits Alex,son of the president of Arrow Shirts. A tall gaunt man, a permanent slap pressed to his angular face,he is keen to talk about anything.

“Politics.Sports.International affairs. Whatever you wish I shall gladly discuss.”

Alex says Karla and I make a splendid pair.

“You really are,you know. Splendid.”

I’m prompted to lend Alex a gift bestowed by the Argentine who jumped a somersault in the cow shed.

“You American’s are funny people,”Sammy had said.

There is still dust on the pages from the peanut fields.

“Good story,”said Alex,the following day,“have you got any more?”

That evening I met Joshua,a studious curly-headed man from Spain.

“We’ll begin therapy tomorrow. One hour,three times a week,” he said,answering my question.

Karla gently taps my shoulder and points to Frau Hannah,who works in the atelier on the third floor. She is slim and fashionable and wears a red ribbon in her fiery pulled back hair.

“Do you like to paint?”she asks.

We’re interrupted by Robby,the burly Israeli vet given to flexing his muscles and punching his palm with his hammer like fists.

“Thank you,Chef,for this wonderful meal!” he shouts at the top of his lungs.

Everyone claps as the chef waves to us from the kitchen. After the food arrives,after Robby offers a second boisterous thanks,after the clatter of silverware,we begin to eat.

Between bites Frau Hannah says, “I can make an appointment for Thursday if that’s alright.”

“Yes,thanks.”

I’ve done many things but never painted before. How can that help?

In Joshua’s sun lit office,a comfortable forest of hundreds of books and potted plants,we sit and talk. After a time Joshua says dreams are the voice of the unconscious.

“Every morning,before you forget, write them down.”

I dream of ordinary events. “Small dreams” the Jungian’s call them. Necessary to reach the archetypal.

Two days later I read to Joshua the first entry.

“Cowboys and Indians are fighting a desperate battle. One cowboy has six arrows in his back. When the dream ends the credits roll.The main actor is Redman. All the cowboys are named Redman.”

Joshua asks,“Any thoughts about that?”

I look out the window. A light snow is falling on the roof tops, on the people of Zurichberg.

“In Vietnam I knew a red-haired man who was shot six times. We called him Red. He died.”

After the tumbling tears,after the deep deep sobs,after Joshua says,“There’s really nothing for me to say,” the session ends.

I lasted two months:Psychotherapy. Art therapy. Locked door liaisons with Karla in my carpeted room the Klinic staff politely ignored. Then the money ran out and Karla relapsed and we broke up.

“You are a bad man,” she said. “A very bad man.”

It was 1977,the beginning of a very long affair.

“This is my wife,” he says,after the long embrace. His face is nearly unchanged.

In blue jeans and red wool sweater Ruth is a slender woman with long brown hair, large loving eyes and a magnificent smile. When she steps forward I surrender into the arc of her arms. What is it about her? What is that? She’s a hundred times more beautiful than the women of my youth. And I have known a hundred women and known so little love.

“Come in,come in,” I manage to say.

The three of us sit in my living room. Ruth and Jim on the love seat. Me on the sofa. We begin the ritual of small talk. ‘How was your trip? How was the traffic? Great weather. Nice place you got here,Doc.”

After a time we drive to town,walk the cobble stone main street with its quaint gas lamps and antique benches, peer in the windows of rustic shops. We drive to the larger than life fisherman’s statue where Ruth reads the names of men lost at sea. Under the cloudless sky,our backs to the  waves,Jim takes photographs.

“Closer,”he says. Ruth leans close.“Like this?”She curls her arm around my waist. “Yes,sweetie,like that.”

After the shot we are still smiling.There are women in this world who can make any man feel at ease.

“Where to?”asks Jim.

At the ship yard,where the scent of diesel and creosote hang heavy as night,each boat,held aloft on a web of stilts,appears like a fish out of water. Here and there,men with blow torches blister rotted paint off weathered hulls;captains and deck hands mend torn plastic nets.

Thirty minutes later Jim says,“I’m getting hungry,Doc.”

“Me too,”says Ruth.

We drive to the noisy pier side restaurant where the food is good,the view is better,the talk is happy.Or so it seems.Something is present and somewhere we know it but now is not the time to name it.

“On me,”I say,paying the tab.

“Thanks,Doc.”

“Most welcome.”

We leave,walk to the car,drive to the beach,walk the shore line. Sand pipers scurry between retreating waves.

Behind us the grass tipped dunes shelter thin young men who lie in wait. They are everywhere and nowhere.

“Getting cold,” I say. “Let’s go back to my place.”

Jim fans out his war flicks on the kitchen table. Holding the square portraits in the palm of my hand,I recall every name, every area of operation,every casualty and KIA. Jim is quiet so I continue speaking.

“Check this out,Jimbo.” The old name comes out of nowhere. “Check this out.”

Jim’s eyes zig zag across the page of Carl Lee’s Bronze Star citation. When he sets the page down we recall the night LZ Ranch was over run. Ruth joins in as we tell it.

“Every time he looks at the war photos you sent,he cries, too.”

Jim turns away.He looks angry.He looks upset.

“Hey,Jimbo. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,Doc.No problem.”He mimics a smile.

Without thinking I name the wounded and dead.

Jim begins to pace.            

“What’s wrong,buddy?”

“Nothing.No problem,Doc.”

What I say next just spills out. “Mike lives in Michigan. He’s married,got a house. Can’t sleep except in the living room. Has to see what’s going on outside. Keeps a pistol under the pillow. One by the VCR. He knows that’s fucked up.”I look at Ruth. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s OK,Doc.Jim has guns,and he talks that way,too!”

“One in the car.Three in the house. Permit to carry. Got to protect yourself at all times. But that has nothing to do with Vietnam,Doc.” He quickens his pace.

I feel bad. Jim’s upset,it’s my fault,and he knows it. I know she does. What can I do to make things right? I could tell them about Goreki’s luminous,mournful Symphony Number Three,tell how at first hearing it all my sorrow and grief came bubbling up,flooded the room,filled  the room until a loving sleep washed it away. I want to tell him but…

“You might like this.”I fiddle with the CD player.“It’s called Gymnopedie.”

“What’s that mean?” asks Jim.

I say I don’t know. No one does. But it’s beautiful and strange and uplifting.

As the dreamlike melody has its calming effect Jim settles himself into Ruth’s loving arms.

*   *   *

Waking,Ruth says,“We ought to get going, honey. It’s a four hour drive.”

They gather their things,put on their coats. In the door way,after a long hug,Jim whispers,“I love you,Doc.”

“I love you,Jimbo.”

Ruth smiles.Then they are gone.

Our Kit Karson’s, Jim Dumb and Papa san,make multiple quick cuts to the base of  bamboo stalks,cleaving it just right. While they continue to cut,we dig and dig,sweat soaking our uniforms as we fill the blue green plastic bags with soft moist dirt. We’ve never done this before. It doesn’t make any sense. None at all. But anything is better than jungle patrol.

Carrot Top oversees the construction.

“Lay this pole here. Lay that one there. More sand bags. More,” he says.

Soon we’re grimy with dust and sweat but the pitiful,tumbledown bunker is completed.

“Good work,” says the lieutenant.

We chow down on C-rations. Later, a cloverleaf patrol finds nothing. Settling in for the night,we stake the trips and claymores,read books,write letters,wait for guard.

In these moments of the jungles sweet organic scent,the twirling fall of bamboo leaves,the sudden pools of sparkling sunlight, it’s as if there is no war.

Now is the the time before LZ Compton is hit by rockets and mortars secretly called in by Papa san. Now is the time before the new man Johnny B is riddled by friendly fire. Now is the time before the time of replacements, and third platoon falls apart.

Dusk. One by one we draw match sticks for guard. Two shifts per man. Two hours each.

In the morning we destroy the useless bunker. “Move out,” says the lieutenant. As the column advances all of us,short timers,old timers,lifers and FNGs,brace ourselves for the sight of foot prints on well used trails,or the sudden pop-pop of AK47s,or the lush booom of 155 Howitzer cannons,or the aerial shriek of incoming shells. Afterward,the sound of medivacs whisking the wounded away. If we’re lucky we’ll find the comfort of shade or clear cool streams. Or spot the enemy before they spot us. Every three days choppers will bring us water and rations, ammo and mail. On those days we’ll shun the murderless twang of Stars and Stripes, instead speak our own  lingo of “got you solid, or “don’t mean nothing,” or “gonna kick ass and take names,” or “roger that,” or “beau coup dinky dow,” or “chieu hoi, motherfucker.” Weeks later the choppers will fly us away.

After a time you learn the rhythm of this war: we walk into them. They walk into us. We walk into each other. And after the rockets or mortars or firefight, the business of flies on the mouths of the dead. Or nothing happens. Nothing at all. Just the tension of waiting for it. Still, until the day we leave this tumbledown war this is our world that will never truly leave us.

The door gunners request permission to fire. Seconds later their machine guns nip at dashing hooves,snap at fleeting hind quarters,dig into desperate flanks. The pilots maneuver to prolong the spectacle.

The wounded deer slows to a trot,staggers,then topples,forelegs still kicking. The new men rush from the choppers,at close range empty full clips into the warm carcass. Red rills from a hundred small holes leak down the curved hide,soak into the barren earth.

A gleeful door gunner flips up his helmet visor, wildly waves his hands. “Cease fire! Cease fire!” he shouts. “Gonna haul this back to the Colonel!”

He drags a heavy rope from the chopper,tightens a noose around the animal’s neck,knots the end to a sturdy hook beneath the craft.

Settling into his gunners seat he flips his helmet visor down,signals thumbs up to the pilots, who prepare to lift off.

“Y’all take care,”he yells.

The trembling chopper rises slowly. The dead thing must weigh a thousand pounds. Two hundred feet up,the long pink tongue of the swaying corpse hangs like a lewd ribbon against the tropic sky. As the Huey gains attitude the FNGs point and cheer.

“Nice shooting,”says one.

“Kill or be killed,”says another.

A soldier with eight diamonds inked on his helmet,one for each month in combat,checks his ammo.“Fucking new guys,”he mutters. “Ain’t even bullshitting.”

Timmy Day, who walks first in line, taps his helmet for luck. “Time to kick ass and take names,” he says,walking past a new lieutenant.

“Hey soldier,you forget to salute an officer?”

But Timmy Day does not look back.

“Hey..” the lieutenant shouts,”Yeah, you…”

When several old timer’s surround him, tell him the deal, the new officer shuts up. He shuts the fuck up.

Then we move out.

In 1995, when reading my paperback copy, I would fall into a trance,feel as if I were floating above my bed. What was happening I did not know. Several months later, traveling in Southeast Asia I invented reasons to not locate Bao Ninh.

In New York I purchased the book in hardback;at the sight of Ninh’s dusk jacket photo I saw those we hunted; who hunted us.That night I dreamt my platoon was trapped,out of ammo, trying to escape.

In the Fall of that year I wrote to Bao Ninh. Two months later his letter arrived:

On the occasion of Christmas and the New year,I am very glad to send you our warmest regard from Vietnam.I wish you and your family a new year full of happiness.I hope we will soon meet each other in Hanoi.

Summer 1998: I’m sitting in a packed auditorium at the start of a writer’s workshop. Ten meters to my right, five Vietnamese writers wait to be introduced to the audience. Their remarks concluded,single file they head to the exit at the rear of the room. Instantly I jump up,push past a gauntlet of crossed or outstretched legs.“Excuse me…excuse me…” I say, following my target, the one in line.

“Bao Ninh!” I stammer as he nears the door. He turns round.The puzzled look on his face asks, “Who has called me? Which of the American’s knows me?” From five meters we lock eyes.

“Moc Leby! Moc Leby he shouts, after I tell him my name.

We rush to each other. I open my arms to Ninh. He pulls me close,claps my back once, twice,three times,as if I were a brother,a long lost friend. I’m overcome by deep feelings and sob uncontrollably. Ninh takes my hand,leads me away. Still sobbing,I blurt out, “No…no…I’m all right.”

A tall graceful woman draws near. Lady Borton provided medical aid to both sides during the war. A noted translator and writer,she has accompanied the Vietnamese delegation from Hanoi. Through her,Ninh and I speak excitedly. Then Ninh says he has to go.  We can meet tomorrow.

“Yes…thank you…yes,” I say.

That night, an old recurring dream: the invisible spirit grabs my feet,yanks them straight up.  I can’t move and scream and struggle,then wake,overcome with dread. But this time I fight back. Defeat the demon. Waking, I feel calm,confident,free.

That afternoon,beneath a cluster of shade trees I sat cross-legged opposite Ninh. A muscular wiry man in his late forties,perhaps 5′ 6″ tall,he sports a tousled head of jet black hair. A wispy Fu Manchu mustache adorns his upper lip.We talk for three hours through a second interpreter. My questions were academic: What was did he do in the war? Could he talk about NVA tactics? What did his platoon talk about when not in combat? What were his feelings about the Communist party? Finally,“Is there anything I’ve overlooked? Is there anything you want to add?”

“Yes,”says Ninh,leaning forward,eyes narrowing. “The NVA were not robots. We were human beings. That is what you must tell people. We were human beings.”

I feel foolish,recalling too late that Ninh had spent six years in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Out of five hundred,ten had survived.

We stand up,dusted ourselves off,shake hands,head back to campus. Along the way,as Ninh stops to smoke a cigarette,I delve into my wallet for the small photo of my platoon I’ve carried for thirty years.

On the back of it I write,“To Bao Ninh,these good men meant as much to me as yours did to you.” He holds the photo, contemplates the young Americans with their steel helmets,sun bleached uniforms, hand grenades and M16s. Looking up, his face inscrutable, he asks,”How many dead?” “Ti ti,” I answer. “Beau coup blood.”

Ninh tucks the photo into his shirt pocket. I check my watch. It’s past noon. We head to the student caféteria.

On the last day of the workshop Ninh stands center stage at Harvard’s resplendent Yen Ching library. Somewhat nervously,he bows to the sizable audience,holds his book close to his face,then starts to read. The soft lilt of his voice is tender,modest,lyrical. Ten minutes later Ninh bows to modest applause,then steps from the stage.

A handsome vigorous man and heavy combat vet,Larry Heinemann steps up to read Ninh’s work in English.Clearing his throat,adjusting his shirt collar,in his signature booming voice Heinemann fills the hall with the sights and sounds of the battle in the Forest of Screaming Souls. The terror of the bombardment wiping out an entire NVA unit,so astoundingly dramatized, transfixed the audience. When he snaps the book shut Heinemann motions to Ninh,who now receives thunderous applause.

That night five Vietnam vets and the five Vietnamese,all former NVA,meet at a well known Boston bar. Among the Americans: Andy,a heavy combat Marine;Larry Heinemann,author of Paco’s Story and Close Quarters;Allan Farrell,a professor of languages and Special Forces colonel stationed in Laos;tall lanky Chris,an Army sergeant wounded his first month in country. The Vietnamese,each an established poet or writer,had spent years in combat. After two rounds of beer our grim mood gives way to easy banter.

I sit close to Ninh.Throughout the night he sit erect,sips shots of whiskey,chain smokes cigarettes,hardly speaks. After a time someone asks him which side had the better automatic rifle. Ninh says the AK47 was superior. Submerged,rain soaked, caked by dust or clotted with mud it never failed to fire. But,he says,the M16s small tumbling bullets caused terrible internal wounds which caused great suffering and many losses. Someone else asks,”What was your saddest memory?” Ninh,gazing into the curling blue cigarette smoke,through Mr.Mau says,”Finding and burying our dead.” At that moment his face went blank and we all went silent.

Toward 1AM, as the high-spirited group continued to drink and jabber, I pantomime to Ninh. He nods agreement.

“Would you?” I ask Chris,offering him my camera. He’d been shot in the neck. An ugly scar works its way from his jaw to his collar bone.“Sure, Doc,” he says.

Ninh and I put our arms around each other. I can barely manage to hold back my tears. As Chris urges, “Smile, Doc. C’mon, smile,” I clamp my jaw shut. After he snaps the photo I take his and Chris chokes up too. Whatever Ninh felt he did not reveal it.

“Be right back,” I say,heading to the Men’s,but once out of sight l walk to a liquor store. “I’ll take that bottle,and that one,and that one,”I say to the clerk.“Can you wrap them, please?” Larry had mentioned Ninh liked Jack Daniels.

No one notices my stealthy return. During a lull at the table I carefully set out  the gift-wrapped bottles. “Way to go!” says Heinemann. “Yo,” he says, thumping the table, “Make a speech. Thank the NVA for being here. Thank them for reading their poems. For telling their stories. Tell them the war has been over for quite some time and we are honored and happy to be their friends.”

His words rang true but in years past we soldiers,we veterans,we American’s and North Vietnamese, would have shot each other on sight and thought nothing of it. Some things you don’t forget.

I hand the fourth bottle to Mr. Mau.The elder of the group,he’d fought the French and the American’s. Everyone claps and smiles at his eloquent remarks.

Then it’s Ninh’s turn. He seems genuinely surprised. “Open,” I say. As he gently peels the wrapping away,as the familiar long necked bottle,the black and white label slowly emerge, Ninh’s eye brows rise in disbelief.

“Jack Daniels!” he shouts, and jumps from his chair. Clapping my back three times, “Jack Daniels! Jack Daniels!” he continues to shout.

Earlier that day Larry had mentioned the new Vietnamese government had few resources to treat PTSD. Drinking was acceptable and Ninh liked the slow burn that for a time would mute his sorrow.

It’s been twelve years since that extraordinary coincidence,that turning point. To this day I don’t fully understand the meaning of my sobs;some say it was an outpouring of grief for my men, and for the men and women we murdered. I don’t know. But I do know this: Over the years I’ve encountered many Vietnam vets who hate all Vietnamese. I  believe with all my heart that such men can’t accept that in war and beyond it,we are all human beings.

Saddled between the tall peaks of the Cuchumatanes,the town had two paved roads and three cars;flea-bitten dogs sunned themselves on the cobblestone streets. There were no phones,no banks,no televisions. Indoor plumbing was scarce.

Hole in the wall tiendas—store fronts made artful by sun and rain—sold snacks,bread,soda,candles,and purified water in clear plastic bags.Quetzelteca,said to keep the indigenous drunk and thereby quiet,cost twenty cents per pint.

In Todos Santos,the proud indigenous men wear straw hats,hand-loomed red and white striped trousers and white shirts with large embroidered collars. The strong but obedient women wear the customary ankle-length dark skirt and colorful hand-woven vests called wipiels. At the time,most lived in dirt-floored,sparsely furnished adobe huts heated by wood burning stoves.

In the ’80s,during the worst of Guatemala’s Civil War,the village was massacred twice.Converting the church into a prison,the Army cut off peasants’ ears,set feet to fire,slaughtered mules,burnt crops,smashed tools,raped women.Such things occurred throughout Guatemala for quite some time.

“Vida es triste,”say the peasants of Todos Santos.Life is sad.Most gringos no nothing of the arduous farm work,the bone chilling nights,the daily search for fire wood,the sun-beaten crosses in the small field two hundred meters past the town market,a monument to the town’s tormented dead.

I lived two trails above town in a half-constructed cement house being built by thin,industrious Desiderio and his plump wife Clementina. The first floor was a dusty jumble of tools,electrical wires,and broken concrete blocks,but the cast cement stairwell led to my perfectly square room with a box spring bed and a naked light bulb that hung precariously from the ceiling by exposed red wires. On the south wall,an arched window overlooked a valley of emerald cornfields and steep mountains dotted with scrub and pine. At dawn,as excited roosters crowed,as waking women re-lit ashen fires,a wispy white fog descended from the mountains into the valley. My rent was ten dollars a month.

Wayne,a gringo who occupied the room next door,slept in a Mexican hammock. Muscular and friendly,a frequent visitor who spoke impeccable Spanish,Wayne earned the townspeople’s trust.

Each morning,after a cold shower,after washing our clothes in the chipped cement sink by the chicken coop,after ringing out the wet cloth the Maya way,firmly twisting the water out inch by inch,hanging the laundry on a line atop the windswept roof,we walked the trail to Tres Olgitas,a dollar-a-night fire-trap of unheated rooms;the exquisite meals cooked by three young women always cheap and delicious.

Sometimes without Wayne,I hiked the long steep mountain paths.Trekked them for hours. What compelled these wanderings I did not know.

“Where are you going?”asked the wheat-skinned villagers in their slow melodic Spanish.Their first language,M’am,so sharp and different with its frequent glottal stops.

“For a walk,”I answered,beginning the long ascent.

Each day they ask,“Why,mister? Why do you walk?”

“For the exercise,”I say.

Dumbfounded,they smile.Only fools work without compelling reason.

Another war—one with a prickly tangle of jungle and vines,its stifling green curtain of infinite heat,a war with sudden shots and crimson dirt, that war with its walking dead and ancestral spirits—dogged my every step,but I did not know it.

Once,when trucks from far-off cities and towns arrived with bales of used clothing, when distant villagers came to sell house wares,farms tools,meat from hanging carcasses,aromatic spices in wicker baskets or burlap sacks,an array of fresh vegetables,I wept.

It happened like this: Tugging on my jeans,buttoning my red cotton shirt,lacing up my leather boots;somewhere in town a man or boy struck a match to a string of firecrackers,heralding Market Day. But this time I heard the crackle of AK-47s and M-16s,felt the heated downdraft of overhead choppers,shook and sobbed until the flashback in a town twice massacred,in a country that had seen decades of devils,vanished.

Like a good lieutenant,Wayne does not get lost.When the sun fails to burn away the impenetrable white mist,when there is no telling North or South,he marches forward, twirling a hand made Kendo stick,as if chopping the clouds in half.

Past the easy main trail,past the ladder-like gauntlet of switchbacks that force us to crawl or constrict or stretch our bodies,we climb to eleven thousand feet. On a grassy spot we slip off our packs sat and gulp purified water. After a time,two peasant boys dressed in colorful rags drew near. They are curious. Hesitant.Friendly.I reach into my shirt pocket.

“Here,I give this to you,”I say.

The youngest boy lights the cigar,puffs on it,coughs and giggles,somehow sets the grass on fire. The four of us stomp out the crackling flames.

“Adios,”we say,then hoist on our packs and trek the last thousand meters to the home of Juan Pablo Lorenz.

We’ve never asked Juan Pablo why he lives at the mountaintop.Why he has chosen this lonely life.The Altiplano,unlike the fertile valley is a landscape of desolate but spectacular outcroppings and skeletal trees,which stand out against the clear sky, the receding ranks of the pastel Cuchumatanes. Here,at twelve thousand feet,the thin air imparts a supernatural feel to all that is seen or heard. A crow’s wings claps like thunder. The bark of a dog is a frightful event.

“Bienvenidos,”says Juan Pablo,shooing away the excited pet.“Pasen adelante… pasen…”

Few people visit here,but nearly all villagers own dogs to ward off thieves.Stepping forward,we crouch to enter the low doorway of the large hut built from timber planks stood on end. Juan Pablo,perhaps in his twenties,is a thin,happy man with a broad handsome face;a half moon smile reveals his large white teeth;his thick black hair pokes out from a traditional straw woven hat. His wife,Elizabeta,carries their frightened infant son on her back.The infants clothes are stitched with ancient Maya patterns.“Mmm… mmm…”she hums to her child. But still it whimpers.

In the center of the dirt floor,James,Juan Pablo and I sit around a three stone fire place. Behind us,in the dim light that peeks through the cracks between the upright boards,a kitten prowls through shards of broken pottery,dried chicken bones,wood shavings,newspapers,cardboard boxes. Here,an hour’s hard walk from town,nothing is thrown out. Juan Pablo leans forward,turns his head sideways,and gently blows on the embers until the smoldering branches burst into flame.The wood planks reflect our shivering shadows.

The rising smoke exits through a small blackened hole in the roof. The fire slowly draws the chill from us. I reach into my pack and offer our gifts:bread,hard-baked cooking chocolate,a pound of unshelled peanuts.”Cacaguates!” says Elizabeta. Four tins of milk,a thick felt blanket.

“Gracias,says Juan Pablo,but then asks,“Por qué?”

It is true: Why do I climb so hard each day? Why do I feel this man will not survive without my efforts? Why is that? Why?

Elizabeta begins the ritual of making tortillas. She has already ground the corn in the traditional way,whetted it into a thick white paste. In the warm hut,as her body shifts to the patter of her moistened palms,which quietly slap and press the dough into patties,the anxious child is lulled to sleep.One by one Elizabeta sets the bread disks onto a circular pan she has placed over the fire.One by one she turns the tortillas over with her finger tips. In these moments of tapping palms,the padded step of the playful cat,the burning wood sliding into itself,in this land of Maya dressed in brilliant patterns,of clandestine graves and unbridled beauty,James is puzzled by the tears that wet my face but wisely keeps silent. And if he did ask I could not tell him.

After a time we decide to go.

“Adios” we say to Juan Pablo Lorenz,to Elizebeta,to the sleeping child,the slumbering kitten,the vigilant dog.

The return trek down the step trails goes well.Like the Maya we stand straight, tilt our bodies back, taking short hurried steps as we trot downhill. On the main wide trail we run in curves to control our momentum. Otherwise we might trip or fall or tumble off the mountain. The descent takes half the time it took to reach Juan Pablo.

I say good bye to James. “See you tomorrow,”he says. Then he is off for a communal meal at Tres Olgitas.

There are no customers yet at Comedor Katy,a restaurant of two cement rooms furnished with simple pine tables and chairs;there are no menus,there is no music. An indigenous girl takes my order. It is always the same: a large bowl of vegetable soup,a plate of rice and chicken.

“Sopa de verduras,”she always asks.“Y pollo?”

“Si,y pollo.”

The girl leaves.In the dirt yard out back there is the sound of flapping wings, scampering feet,desperate squawks and final cackles. A cut to the neck and the bird is dead.

Waiting for the meal to cook,I see a small boy peering through the half open blue door;I wave to him. Barefoot,he wears torn dirty clothes,a hat with a hole in it,his dusty face a mixture of hope and fear. He stares at me.I know this child;he has often approached then run away whenever I’ve descended the mountain. I make a welcoming gesture. The boy hesitates,then dashes in and sits in the chair opposite me.

“What would you like,amigo?”

“Naranja,”he says,pointing to a tall empty bottle on a nearby table.

I call to a young woman in the kitchen lording over large steaming kettles atop a wood burning stove.“Señorita!”

She steps out from behind a plastic curtain,her face and hands moist and pink.

“Uno,por mi amigo,”I say,pointing.

The girl nods;disappears,moment later sets a full bottle on the table. The boy, perhaps eight years old,squirms with delight. I turn and twist and pry the metal cap off. He grasps the bottle with both hands,lifts it to his mouth,and guzzles the thick sugary orange drink. Nothing I can do will change his fate but for now he is happy.

Tacked to the far wall is a colorful poster of gringo Jesus,his arms extended,palms turned upward,as if to embrace this suffering world. His parted shirt reveals a split open chest; beams of light radiate from his sacred heart. As the excited boy drinks the sugary water,as sweet King Jesus extends his sacred smile,as the clink of silverware is not the ping of bullets,the girl sets the bowl of simmering vegetables,the plate of meat and rice,on the wooden table.The rising aromatic steam fills the room. The boy stares at the feast. There is much hunger in proud Todos Santos.

“Pollo,por mi amigo!”I shout.

Suddenly a middle-aged woman steps from behind the curtain,with all her might hurls her sandal at a skeletal dog,drawn by the scent of food. She yells at the gaunt creature. Her glottal curses filling the air.

My legs and body tremble.I clamp my jaw shut.The boy looks at me strange.

“Que pasa, señor?”he asks.“Tiene fria? Por qué se agita? Por qué?”

What’s happening,little friend? No,it’s not the cold mountain air or shivery chills but the sight and sound of the flying sandal,the painful yip of the frightened dog,the innocence your gentle voice that propels me back to another time, to think unthinkable things.

‘Chicoms’ we called them,were primitive but effective at killing or maiming GIs. After the snap of its chemical fuse,caused by pulling a bit of string,a Chicom grenade landed just short but twisted the machine gun barrel as if it were clay. Timmy hurled one of our baseball grenades,round powerful nasty little things. At the loud fiery BOOM! they had to be dead. But there came a second snap,and not fast enough we five soldiers scampered and crawled before the muffled BANG! And we lay screaming.

But what can I say to you,my friend,that your family or neighbors have not seen or heard or do not wish to talk about? What could I say,and how could I say it and what difference would it make to you in this green world?

The dog yelps and scampers off.The angry woman picks up her shoe.The boy upends the bottle and drains it dry.

“Gracias, amigo,”he says,smacking his rust colored lips.“Gracias.”Then he is gone.

That night—after walking the small trails to Desidero’s house,trudging up the cement stair case,after turning off the naked light bulb and laying down in the box spring bed in my square room overlooking the fertile valley,cloaked by darkness,sheltered beneath a thick felt blanket,before sleep overtook me—my tears fell like rain.

Twelve months later,three on a remote fire base burning human waste,it was time to head home.

At Bien Hoi Airport I met other GIs leaving Vietnam; some had combat ribbons,the‘thousand yard’ stare. Unlike the young men who flirted with stewardesses,fell asleep,suddenly woke in Vietnam,the return flight was somber. But the moment we landed at Oakland Air Force Base everyone cheered.I bought a plane ticket to Jersey,sat next to a good looking stewardess. She winked and giggled but I could not flirt.

“This is my son,” the old man would say to friends and strangers. “He was in the Army. In Vietnam. He was a medic.”

But my old man,my brother,my friends never asked about what we did in war. They never asked about that.

One month later,in the dead of winter,I reported to Fort Devens.

“Sorry,”I said to First Sergeant Balmer, an intensely vigorous man. “I don’t pull guard duty.”

“You what?” he asked,stupefied.

“Nothing personal,Sarge. I just can’t do it.”

A year at war can change a man. And stateside Army discipline can enrage him.

“You got thirty minutes,” the First Sergeant scowled as he stormed out the barrack.  “You best have your shit together!” He really said that,”Best have your shit together.”

I packed an AWOL bag,put on jeans,sneakers,a sweatshirt, my army field jacket,lay back in my bunk.

“What the…Where the hell do you think you’re going?” asked the First Sergeant as I got up.

“AWOL,Sarge. I don’t pull guard duty. Remember?”

He glowered at me,his face reddening. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t do that!”

“I’m going to Boston,First Sergeant. See you in three days.”

I walked out the barrack,caught a bus,two hours later had a ten dollar hotel room,went to a porn theater,jerked off,ate good,slept good,explored the town. The trip back to Devens was uneventful.

“Greetings,”I said as the company clerk peered up from his typewriter.

“Greetings yourself,” he said.“Balmer gave you an Article 15.”

But non judicial punishment meant nothing to this GI. For the next six months I refused guard duty,KP,haircuts,did not salute officers. Deliberately failed a driving test.

“Stop sign! Stop sign! Step on the brakes!” a young lieutenant wailed.

I stepped on the gas.

“Green means go! GO,you moron!”

I stepped on the brakes.

Over time I racked up five Article 15s and a Summary Court Martial. Captain John Carlen assigned me to Sgt. Kaye, an ornery muscular man who’d done three tours in Vietnam,won three Silver Stars. His job now was to make me miserable.

“Get back to work or I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich,” barked Sergeant Kaye one fine summer day.

Calmly,I strode past the big man,left the sweltering warehouse,walked to the middle of a small field,sat down cross legged and began singing “The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind.”

Sgt. Kaye called First Sergeant Balmer, who called Captain Carlen,who called Major Odell.

“Now what?” asked the Captain,who swept both hands through his thinning hair.

“Sir,I don’t eat knuckle sandwiches,”I said.

Captain Carlen sank his face into his palms.

Major Odell,a stocky middle-aged Texan,leaned over me. “Son,”he said,”Let’s you and me talk…get to the bottom of this. You talk…you talk…I swear to God I’ll listen. Every word…every goddamn word you say.”

“Sir, Private Levy reporting, Sir.” I nearly stood and saluted. “I can’t follow orders,Sir. I just can’t. I just want out of the Army.”

Major Odell did not like to argue.

“Now listen,Private. I’m in charge here. Got that? And my Heavenly Father made good soldiers on Earth like you to obey my orders. My orders! If you can’t do that…if you can’t…” The Major shook his head,raised one hand skyward,”I will have no choice…no choice whatsoever,but to court martial your fucking ass!”

He really said that. “…your fucking ass!”

Thank you,Jesus,for the Common Sense Book Store,a GI coffee house located in a small town where an English professor taught off duty soldiers the art of writing  anti-war poetry. In time,we formed Radio Free Devens (broadcast by WAAF in Worsester, MA),spoke to reporters,one night shook hands with Dan Ellsburg on Eye Witness News.

“Was that your ugly face I saw on TV?” asked Staff Sergeant Judson,a bull-necked barrel-chested black man who’d fought his way up the Army’s lily white ranks. Framed certificates and awards blanketed the wall behind his desk.

I nodded sheepishly. “Yes,Staff Sergeant.”

He looked at me with the kindness of one who has survived cruelty and will never bestow it.

“You’re a crazy one,Levy. But some day someone’s gonna write a book about you. Make you famous. I mean that. Now get out of my office!”

Restricted to base by Captain Carlen,I filed for Conscientious Objector status. Denied,I wrote my to congressman: “Dear Sir, Help! I need to get out of the Army!” When he did not reply I began the long trek up the Fort Devens chain-of-command. Two months later I reached the top.

“Sir,Private Levy reporting to see General Irwin,”I said to a trim clean cut lieutenant seated behind an immaculate gray desk.

By now my hair was shoulder length;my garrison cap kept slipping off my head.

Lieutenant Shaw reluctantly called the General. After a brief exchange he slammed down the phone. “The General can’t see you today,”he snarled.

“But,sir,I have an appointment, sir. I’m Private Levy. I’m here to get out of the Army.”

Lieutenant Shaw stood up,pounded the desk with his fist.“I don’t think you get it,bud. The General will not see you. Now get the fuck out!”

He really said that.“Now get the fuck out!”

Three weeks later an officer approached me as I stood in the morning chow line.

“Sign here,” he said,pointing to a large X beneath a dozen paragraphs. “We’ll give you a Bad Conduct Discharge.You’ll be out in a week! Isn’t that what you want?”

A Bad Conduct Discharge,a BCD in Army parlance,is a very bad thing to possess. It identifies the bearer as a person without honor,as someone incapable of serving his country. It disqualifies the owner from most federal and state benefits. It sends a  bad signal to potential employers. It condemns one to a life of civilian hell.

“No thank you,sir. I’ll take my chances at the Special court-martial.”

The officer was stunned. I was hungry. Breakfast never tasted so good.

A month later a tall one-eyed colonel threw me out of JAG.

“Sir,you can’t do that. Major Odell has me up on charges for a Special court-martial. I’m here to see my Army lawyer.”

A much decorated W.W.II vet, Colonel Raymond Ritter wore a jaunty black patch over his right eye. “You’re a fucking disgrace to the Army!” he said, and grabbed my shoulders and hustled me out. He really said that,“A fucking disgrace.”

Undeterred,I walked a mile to the IG’s office. A swarthy heavy set man,he leaned back in his large oak chair,propped both legs on his desk.

“What can I do for you,soldier?” asked Inspector General Schmidt.

“Sir,Colonel Ritter just threw me out of JAG.”

I told him my story while standing at attention in my dress uniform,an Army baseball cap decorated with an officer’s rank and gold trim atop my head.

The IG looked me over,lit a cigar,took a long thoughtful drag.“I’ll look into it,” he said, exhaling a noxious plume.

I believed him. “Thank you, Sir. Thank you!”

At company Head Quarters Captain Carlen screamed, “The IG just chewed my ass out! Did you complain about Colonel Ritter? Did you do that?”

“Sir,you don’t understand. I’m Private Levy. I have a right to legal counsel.”

This time the captain let loose his anger.

“Get the fuck out of my sight!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.“You hear me! Get the fuck out!”

My Book Store friends had contacted Ed Randall,a noted civilian lawyer. Ed agreed to take my case. Hearing that,I went AWOL to Jersey. One night the phone rang. My old man picked it up. “It’s for you,” he said.

“Hello…”

“Doc,it’s Ed. Why’d you leave?”

“It’s my birthday,Ed. I’m twenty-one.”

“Look,Army brass want to give you a Dishonorable Discharge and three months hard labor. I pulled some strings. Plead guilty,you’ll get a General Discharge,do five days in jail.”

I looked at my dog. My dog looked at me.

“I don’t know, Ed. What do you think?”

“If I were you,Doc,I’d take it.”

“OK. See you soon.”

We met in an empty JAG office. Looking around,I noticed two stacks of paper on a long metal table. One consisted of copies of my case. The other concerned a General court martial, the highest court under the Military Code of Justice. I read the top page. The accused man was charged with statutory rape. The accused was Sergeant Kaye.

After two hours in a small courtroom five officers pronounced the sentence Ed had predicted. Before two imposing MPs lead me away,the court secretary,a pretty brunette,slipped me a tab of Speed.

In the stockade barbershop,one of the MPs said, “Boy,you gonna co-operate or we gonna hold you down?”

I had no choice. The two of them weighed half a ton. “I’ll co-operate.”

My baseball cap was knocked off my head. The prison barber cut my hair to the bone. A photographer snapped my picture with a Polaroid camera. When he wasn’t looking I pocketed the photo. I gave the Speed to a combat vet who’d slugged an officer,knocking him out.

Five days later I was freed from jail. In the rush to justice Ed forgot to mention I’d lose all rank,a months pay. Nearly broke,I packed my Army duffel bag,said good-bye to Devens,started hitching to Boston. About noon a red Chevy convertible pulled up. A familiar face leaned out the driver side window.

“Need a lift?” asked the court secretary.

The next morning,after one last fondle and a fond farewell,I began the long trip home.

Among the Viet Minh:Tran Minh Chau,Head of the Administrative Office of Tan Trao, prior to 1945. Nguyen Chinh,who worked with Tran Minh Chau. Nguyen Kim Hung, commander of the Viet Minh/OSS team that worked together in 1945. And Trieu Duc Quang and Tran Trong Trung, who served under Nguyen Kim Hung.

For the next hour the aging veterans related some of their war experiences to an audience of perhaps one hundred people. Memorable was Frank Tan’s recalling that Ho entrusted to him a letter conveying his dream of America support for Vietnamese independence. But no one ‘important’ would read it. “People said,‘Frank, forget it. Nothing can or will happen.’ Now,perhaps,I would have given the letter to the newspapers,but then I was not up to the task.” Tan nodded and said plaintively. “I have been suffering for fifty years with this.”

Few Americans know that Ho Chi Minh worked for the US government. During World War II the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, operated in southern China and Southeast Asia. After the Japanese invaded the French colony then known as Indochina OSS operatives collected reports from French agents living under loose Japanese rule. After the Japanese took complete control in 1945 they arrested all French citizens, including all OSS contacts.

Around this time a group of Viet Minh (forerunner of the Viet Cong) emerged from the jungle escorting a downed US flyer to safety. The group was led by Ho Chi Minh who for many years had sought Vietnamese independence. Previously,French agents had informed the OSS that Ho was a communist. However the US administration felt the Japanese might move from northern Vietnam into southern China and instructed the OSS to ignore Ho’s leanings. He was too valuable an asset against the Japanese, and his goals dovetailed with the official US strategy:defeat Japan and support, at least in words,Vietnamese independence.

Thereafter the OSS referred to Ho as Agent 19 (code name Lucius) and began training the Viet Minh in combat,providing weapons,explosives,radios, food and money. In return,Ho and the Viet Minh provided the OSS with weather information (there were no satellites),harassed Japanese troops, rescued shot down American flyers and provided intelligence about the Japanese.

At wars end the OSS-Viet Minh alliance faded even though America expressed sympathy for Vietnamese self-rule,in stark contrast to the British and French aim of re-establishing French authority in Indochina. Ho proclaimed complete independence after the Viet Minh led “August Revolution” but no country recognized his provisional government. Ho petitioned Truman and the Department of State for support but his letters went unanswered and unacknowledged. Some historians feel the OSS-Viet Minh alliance was a lost opportunity. Actual participants imply that if Washington had listened to Ho  Americas long war in Vietnam could have been avoided.

In 1950 Truman sent the Military Assistance Advisory Group  to Vietnam to supervise the use of $10 million worth of military equipment to support the French against the Viet Minh. However the French military was resistant to MAAG oversight. Four years later, lead by Nguyen Vo Giap, the Viet Minh defeated the French in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The 1954 Geneva Accords proclaimed Vietnam would become an independent nation with an elected government for Vietnam. Until the proposed 1956 elections the country was split at the 17th parallel into the North and the South,with Ho and the Viet Minh agreeing to go North. During this time President Eisenhower sent increased MAAG funding and military advisors to the Diem government  to ensure a noncommunist South Vietnam. The Kennedy administration famously escalated US military aid and advisors (i.e. Special Forces and CIA personnel) to the South, setting in motion America’s long war in South East Asia.

Sometimes called America’s first Vietnam War casualty,Peter Dewey was born in 1916 in Chicago.The son of a Congressman,educated in Switzerland and at Yale,he saw action in World War II; through family connections he joined the OSS shortly thereafter. His arrival in Saigon in August 1945–to arrange for the repatriation and evacuation of U.S. POWs who had been held by the Japanese–angered the French and British,who warned Dewey against his sympathies to Ho and the Viet Minh. In the complex alliances and political turmoil of the day,tensions were further heightened by the Potsdam Conference,which divided Vietnam in half in order to disarm the Japanese; the violent August uprising announced by Ho; and provocations by the British and French, which put the Viet Minh on alert. Dewey communicated his displeasure to Washington about the British treatment of the Vietnamese. During the final week of September 1945 the British pressured the OSS to recall Dewey back to Washington.

There are various accounts regarding how Dewey died. This much is certain: Dewey and Major Herbert Bluechel drove to Ton Son Nhut airport in Saigon that morning but Dewey’s flight was delayed. Deciding to drive to a nearby OSS villa Dewey shouted in French as they neared a Viet Minh checkpoint. Because the British had forbidden Dewey to fly the American flag on his jeep,he was likely mistaken for a member of the hated Corps Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient. When the jeep came under fire Dewey was shot in the head and killed. Bluechel managed to escape to the OSS villa,where a fire fight with the Viet Minh raged for three hours. A rescue party of British Gurkhas arrived after the Viet Minh had retreated,taking Dewey’s body and jeep with them.

Rumors swirled as to who had killed Dewey. The Americans blamed the British Special Operations Executive;the British blamed the Japanese (who had entered a truce on August 26th, a day after Japan’s formal surrender); the French blamed the Viet Minh. Ho Chi Minh sent condolence letters to Dewey’s parents and to President Truman, and ordered a search for Dewey’s body, which was never found. Some scholars believe Ho was insincere and had long manipulated the OSS. Having photos of their agents stand at his side,or posing with US weapons, demonstrated his international stature among the Vietnamese. And failing to see Ho as a Soviet-trained communist ideologue may have led to his emergence as a national leader and ultimately, as an enemy of the United States.

Among those attending the Asia Society meeting was Nancy Dewey Hoppin, the daughter of Peter Dewey, killed when she was an infant. When the floor was finally opened to questions she demanded to know how her father had died. A hush swept over the elegant room. Those on stage were awkwardly silent. Finally,a modest answer was trotted out. But the full truth lay elsewhere.

In 2005 in Saigon, still searching for answers to the fate of her father,Dewey Hoppin spoke with Tran Van Giau,an historian, former secretary of the Viet Nam Communist Party and chairman of the South Viet Nam Resistance Committee. Citing a September 1945 report he received as commander of Viet Minh in South Vietnam,Giau said Viet Minh guerrillas,after attempting to retake Ton Son Nhut airport from the French,retreated to Saigon,set up a check point and fatally machine gunned the misidentified Dewey. After killing him,they stole the jeep and tossed Dewey’s body into a river. Having confirmed that the officer killed was not French,but a member of the OSS, Giau then offered his condolences to the Colonel’s daughter.

Sadly,Dewey’s name does not appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Department of Defense has ruled the American war in Vietnam began on November 1, 1955,after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Instead, Dewey is listed on the Tablets of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery. In France,a metal plaque inside Bayeux Cathedral bears his name and decorations. The epitaph reads,“Pray for him.”

In Dewey’s last OSS report,written the day before he died,he had concluded: “Cochinchina is burning,the French and British are finished here,and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia.”

Here is how it happened:

In one great flash BAANG the mines explode. The enemy shriek like animals,they howl so bad we cover our ears.

The survivors run past firing volleys to draw us out. When they are gone the wounded wail and groan until they are dead.

In the morning we recon the automatic ambush. A half dozen bodies lie bunched in a heap. A few meters on a man locked in rigor mortis sits on a tree stump,his death face intact. All are riddled or ripped apart by the Claymore’s whizzing steel pellets.

The lieutenant walks forward. “Chieu hoi!” he shouts. But the old man will not surrender and lifts his AK and the lieutenant wastes him BRRRAAPP. Then everyone opens up. When the shooting stops,when the smoke clears,when the gun team does not reload, the old man is headless but the girl next to him appears to wake from a dream.

“Doc,get up here!” shouts the lieutenant.

Flat on her back,she lifts her arm,  reaches desperately for my canteen. Everyone wonders: Will he do it? Waste water on a fucking dink? Never see that government issued one quart canteen again. Contaminated. Poisoned. Untouchable.

The girl opens her parched lips. Instead of words she makes a strange coughing guttural sound. What to do? What? A silent voice says,”Just give her the goddamn water.Just give it.”

“How is she,Doc?”

Both legs are broken. From the mines or machine gun,it’s hard to tell. There’s nothing for splints except rotted bamboo. She  groans. More water. More. Everyone looks as she glugs it down,falls back to sleep.

Snap.Someone pops yellow smoke. Purple.

“Medivac inbound in zero ten,”says the RTO.

When the bird arrives they kick out a litter. We strap her in,they hoist her up. Then they are gone.

There is time to scavenge for souvenirs. Watches,belt buckles,money, these are the things we crave from the dead. Intimate diaries, pocket photos of wives,lovers or sons and daughters have no value. The enemy is an unfeeling bug to be stomped out. They are not human beings.

“Saddle up,”says the lieutenant.

Ten minutes later he stops,opens his mouth wide,pulls back his upper lip. The left canine incisor is cracked. A make shift paste will do.

“Doc,you gonna put me in for a Purple Heart?” he asks.

“No way, sir. You didn’t get hit. You didn’t get shot. It’s just skull fragments from the dink you killed. No fucking way.”

Later we learn the girl lived. That  hundreds of soldiers had stampeded past.

Decades later I have tears for my lieutenant,for the injured girl,the headless man,for all this wars dead and wounded. For the human folly of it all. Folly and sorrow.

“Tomorrow,” he says,”The moment she picks up a scent I’ll let her loose.”

That’s good to know. We’ve never worked with K-9s before.

At first light second platoon saddles up,slips out the perimeter. The excited dog pulls at its long leather leash. Soon the platoon disappears into the lush triple canopy. The rest of company lounges about,waits for the clover leaf patrol to return.

Not ten minutes later we hear the crackle of M16s,the staccato popping of AK47s,a chorus of shrieks and howls.

The platoon returns with a blindfolded POW. Shot in both arms she groans in pain. The Kit Karson’s threaten her but she will not talk.

“Hard core to the max,” we say.

Crazy Frank kicks her twice in the face. In the belly. She drops like a sack and moans pitifully. But elsewhere things are not right.

“Got five confirmed kills,” says a new man trudging in.

“Better make that six,” says an old timer.

Now we see why. The K-9 handler, head lowered, is spattered with blood. Behind him,two GIs carry the lifeless animal,trussed by its legs to a bamboo pole.

“Goddamn…” someone whispers. “Goddamn.”

A sergeant approaches the grieving handler.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “The pointman heard something. He fired. Then everyone opened up.”

But the grieving man cannot be consoled.

On the chopper back to base he sits silent near the dead thing,strokes its head,stares at the bullet flecked fur,the still pink tongue dangling from the slack-jawed mouth.

The cool wind turns his bloodied uniform stiff.

After we land,unlike the prisoner,who is not human,we dig a hole for the dog,lay it to rest.

“Fire mission!” yells the man who heads the mortar team.

See how the fin tailed shells are quickly passed,how each man readies himself as the mortar, dropped into the stout tube,loudly shoots skyward after igniting a powder charge. A grid has been plotted but no actual targets are singled out. It’s called H & E: Harassment and Interdiction fire. The falling rounds explode with a muffled CRUUMP, the whizzing shrapnel meant to maim or kill NVA or VC. But no one knows if the sky arcing shells have struck animals or civilians or enemy troops. It is all a game of fatal chance. Blood trails and body counts– frankly no one cares. It’s hot and dusty–we are tired and bored.

After three days the order is given to burn the ammo crates,slice discarded radio telephone batteries,puncture unused C-ration cans,wait for the order to move out.

“Saddle up,” says the lieutenant.

We hoist our packs. Check our weapons, water and ammo.

“Alright,move out.”

Hungry and thirsty,we march until dusk.Then foxholes are dug,trips and claymores staked, we clear patches of ground,cook C-rations,wait to pull two shifts of two hour guard. At dawn we’ll slink out on clover patrols,set up an ambush,later take everything down,cautiously depart.

For nearly a week we’ve not walked into them,or them into us,been rocketed or mortared and so on and such;blood everywhere,theirs and ours, blood and bones and blood. Maybe tomorrow it will happen. Or the next day. Or the next.

When the bus lurched to a grinding halt in An Loc’s neatly tiled center I grabbed my gear and jumped off. Immediately a crowd gathered about me–a thin, weary tourist. A gaunt,soft-spoken man who later became my guide led me to the tumbldown Binh Long Hotel.

“Here OK,”said Thanh. “Other place expensive.”

Cramped and stuffy,my two dollar a night room had a single hard mattress,torn mosquito netting,and a solitary wood hatched window. At night the heat was unbearable. Mornings, the Binh Long’s communal bathroom was packed with noisy transient Asian men. The Chinese style squat latrines were not pleasant.

The following day Thanh and I rode his battered Honda Cub to Quan Loi. I knew I would find American sand bag bunkers,artillery canons,culvert hooches,the rubber trees which had brought us merciful shade when I first saw combat so many years ago. After a breezy twenty minutes,Thanh pulled over and parked the scooter.

“Why are we stopping?” I asked. My heart dropped when Thanh said, “This is Quan Loi.”

In fact, the huge American base is gone now,flat as a field,the once smooth tarmac airstrip all but crumpled away. The rest of Quan Loi was covered by bush and scrub and its unforgettable red dirt.

The heat was unbearable. I poked around,plucked an AK47 cartridge,rusted and brittle,from the sun baked soil. I took photographs: The remains of the strip,the land where the base once stood;a group of peasants planting corn. The ghosts of their dead filled their faces.

A sad,weather-beaten man wearing a tattered American army shirt who spoke English said he was fifty-five years old;he appeared seventy. He said during the war he had worked with the First Cavalry Division. I asked him if he could locate LZ Compton.

“Yes,” he replied, pointing North,then pulled out his pockets,which were empty and flat,like elephant ears. “With Americans I had money and food. I had house. Now I am nothing.”

I turned aside so he would not see my face,then pressed fifty thousand dong,two weeks salary,into his hand. A few minutes later I asked a colorfully dressed woman where she lived. After Than translated she raised her thin weary arm, pointed due east, and spoke a few words in the beautiful sing song lilt of her language. Thanh said the village was two miles away.  I looked about.  All the peasants,young and old,wore sandals ground down beyond repair.

As we walked the area Thanh said at war’s end scavengers and resettled peasants stripped the base clean. Sought after scrap metal was carted away; artillery canons were stolen;homes were built from American timber. For years unexploded ordnance posed a constant danger;only recently has it been cleaned up. Still,he said,beneath the soil Vietnam is littered with old mortar and artillery shells,rotting  40 mm grenades, high explosive five-hundred pound bombs,and Agent Orange. To this day all take their toll on the Vietnamese people.

It was hot,the noon sun beat straight down. Thanh said he wanted to show me Lake Xosim. I said goodbye to the peasants,to Quan Loi,and hopped on his scooter.

“I think you will like,” he said.

The Cub raced forward over the  American blacktop. In minutes the hot rushing air dried our sweaty clothes.

The sleepy little village surrounding the lake lay untouched by time. Small neat houses with terra cotta roofs encircled the clear and tranquil waters. Low brambled coffee plants edged the lake perimeter. Exquisite open air pagodas with graceful walkways served as landing docks. I watched a fisherman grip and sway and cast his expanding net.

Two hundred meters out,at the lake’s center,a skeletal bamboo platform stood eerily silent. Thanh pantomimed drinking whiskey. “No one swim here now,” he said. “After holiday,many people drown.”  He explained how their spirits haunted the water.

“I want to show you something else,” he said.

We walked a short ways through partially cleared jungle. The remains of an old French fort, built completely of stone,rose up heavy and hypnotic. The laughter of children playing badminton echoed off the moss-covered stones. Thanh looked at me,but I could not speak.

That evening I met Ba,manager at the Binh Long hotel. Short,trim,and pleasant,like Thanh,he too had worked for the Americans. After the war, he said, the NVA  had rounded them up,sent them to re-education camps. When I asked what that meant he would not tell me.

Instead, he changed the subject. “What is the English for big machines that push earth?” he asked.

I closed my eyes a moment,scanning a distant landscape. “Bulldozers?”

Ba nodded grimly. “We put bodies in big holes after fighting.”

In a soft weary voice he described the ferocious battle that took place in An Loc in 1972. I listened intently. I’d never heard of it before. Ba said thousands of North Vietnamese troops,tanks and artillery, fought a pitched battle against the American backed ARVN. He said American B 52 strikes and attack helicopters pounded the NVA,killed them like animals,but they just kept coming. Than said after seven months of chaos and carnage tens of thousands on both sides had been killed or maimed,the town literally pulverized.

“An Loc still wounded,” he said. “Blood everywhere. Blood you cannot see.”

Late at night on the third day I had unexpected visitors.

“Wake up! Wake up!” said Ba,repeatedly pounding on the wood door. “The police are here. They wish to speak with you.”

“I’m sleeping,” I said. “Tell them ‘go away.’ Tell them I’ll talk tomorrow.”

My travels had taught me not to be intimidated by the authorities. Still,what could they want? On the first day,I handed a copy of my passport (never once giving the real item at any guest house) to the hotel clerk. However,few foreigners visited An Loc,and she had put it aside. Informed of my presence the police tracked me down.

“You come out. You please talk with them,” Ba demanded.

Given the urgent tone in his voice,I quickly dressed and unlocked the door. In the narrow hallway,two thin officers,identical in green caps and green uniforms,pressed a litany of questions.

“Where is your passport? How long you stay? Have you drugs? Have you camera? Where are you travel to An Loc?”

Vietnam remains a secretive culture. Ba,standing erect, dutifully translated. After ten minutes I agreed to visit police headquarters.

In the dawns sweet cool air Thanh and I drove past thick,impenetrable jungle,past infinite rows of stately rubber trees,at last arriving at a squat one-story building on the town’s outskirts. Inside a damp,musty,ill-lit room,several American carbines hugged a mildewed wall. Their battered wood stocks once embracing gleaming gun metal,were dull and pitted. A policeman pointed to a school child’s chair. For nearly an hour I filled out tissue-thin forms in triplicate.

That afternoon,riding a borrowed bike I returned to the haunting rows of symmetrical rubber,strung my GI hammock between two slender trees and slept while mosquitoes hummed and bit. Waking at dusk,covered with itching welts,I rode back to town and chatted with Thanh and his family.

Toward 9 p.m. his lovely wife and young daughter said good night. Into the wee hours, as a light rain tapped on the roof, Thanh and I talked of war and its aftermath. Sometimes we spoke in silence.

The following day, by a sad stroke of luck,I stumbled upon the town hospital. Ba had said that during the battle the ARVN used it as fighting position. He’d said the NVA,holed up in the Police Station,shelled the hospital with rockets and heavy artillery.  I walked the hospital grounds,stared in awe at split-open buildings,the walls pocked by bullets and skittering shrapnel. I drew diagrams,inspected dark,abandoned med/surg wards. There were no medical supplies.

A wary female doctor who spoke excellent English said she tried her best to treat her patients. She glanced at a pale unconscious woman on a rusting American gurney.

“Attempted suicide,”she said,”by poison.” Which might have been true.

At night,I heard enormous trucks rumble through town from ten till dawn. Ba said these were timber convoys hauling illegal wood from Cambodia. Each trailer lugged fifty immense logs held fast by heavy link chains. Hurried red numbers were chalked over the stiff raw trunks; they could have been bodies.

Four days later I stood outside the Binh Long Hotel,waiting to leave An Loc. When the bus arrived,Thanh and I embraced. Much was said in those tender moments. I’ve written him several times and received replies,though money I sent went missing.

“First Loc Ninh then Bo Dop,” I said,waving farewell.

It grew dark. A light rain began to fall. But as the bus pulled out I knew I could face what lay ahead.