A collection of photo illustrated war and post war vignettes, short stories, war nightmares, war poetry and travel writing by a Vietnam combat medic. Site includes war related videos and documents. There is some harsh language.
The Kid: A Day in Hell I Will Never Forget, by Jack Parente
One morning, a week after we bulldozed the ancient graveyard, fifty or so angry peasants in ceremonial garb, carrying prayer offerings, walked the two miles from the village of Song Be and showed up at LZ Button’s main gate. They’d heard the rumors and demanded to see the graves of their loved ones.
With two PFC’s I was on bunker duty near the gate. Between us we had our M16s and a machine gun. Bunkers either side of the gate had 50 cals, four or five guys, and an MP. As the crowd gathered, very quickly, officers from Charlie Company showed up, telling everyone “Stand by and stay ready, ” and yelling “Don’t shoot, keep all weapons on safe.” Ten minutes later grunts who’d been off duty manned bunkers near me. At my bunker a crew from 1st/21st Arty set up a 90mm recoilless rifle and loaded it with beehive.
A couple of senior officers – I have no idea who they were – set out to meet the villagers, hoping to calm them down. As they walked through a zig-zag concertina corridor, I thought, “These guys are crazy.” The passage led to the crossfire point in front of the gate—right between the 50 cals, where the villagers assembled. After speaking to the crowd for 20 minutes a second group of officers joined them. For quite a while they nodded, gestured, waved their arms. When the fed up villagers replied with angry yells the officers retreated back to the base.
By noon, under the fierce sun, the crowd had turned into an angry mob. Shouting abuse, they pressed against the gate. It was a terrifying sight. I knew that some GI’s regretted destroying the graves. But had to wonder how many villagers were Viet Cong? The answer was obvious. To us they were all VC.
As the minutes ticked past grunts grew anxious. People lose their minds in a mob. Someone in the crowd fired pistol shots in the air. LZ Buttons switched to full alert. When some dipshit shouted “lock and load” a hundred M16 bolts snapped into place. With our voodoo bone necklaces around our necks, we stood ready and willing to open fire. Platoon sergeants yelled “Stand by!” but it was probably the CS gas that stopped a massacre. Certainly not our officers.
People cannot stand firm against CS, and the angry mob broke up the instant MPs lobbed a half-a-dozen grey canisters into the crowd. Choking, screaming, vomiting, the men, women and children stumbled blindly in all directions in their trampling rush to escape the gas. Some ran deep into the maze of tangle foot and concertina wire which surrounded the main gate. Impaled on the cruel steel, several of them were bleeding to death. Held fast by the stabbing barbs, powerless to free themselves, the jagged steel dug deeper each time they moved.
Seeing this cruelty we put down our weapons and, still wearing our gas masks, with wire cutters, one by one we freed the villagers trapped in the wire. In a frenzy, two grunts worked to free one little girl badly entangled. She had feinted from the agonizing CS, from loss of blood, but suddenly awakened, began to scream. I will never forget the sight of her thin, bleeding arms outstretched on the glinting wire, suspended mid-air like Christ on the cross, unable to fall, as her grandmother shrieked and wailed, somehow reaching to grasp her granddaughters hand.
The grunts worked feverishly, cutting away the razor sharp coils, trying their best not to injure the child, but her thrashing only made things worse. She had lost so much blood it was clear she was dying. To keep her alive, a medic inserted an IV into her limp arm. Seconds later, as the last barbed strand was cut, the child slumped to the ground.
Before the medic could lift her away the grandmother viciously ripped out the IV, tore off the medic’s gas mask, violently clawed his eyes. Spitting and howling like a banshee, she grabbed the girl by her dangling arm and dragged her off, all the while screaming into the faces of the three men to keep back from the half-conscious, whimpering child… to leave her alone.
“KILL YOU!” she shrieked. “KILL YOU! KILL YOU!” Stunned by her fury the men stepped back as the outraged grandmother pulled the lifeless girl through the dirt, dragging her by one arm, bouncing her over the rutted ground, leaving a trail of blood in the powdery dust, getting as far from the Americans as fast as possible, all the while screaming “KILL YOU!” Our local interpreters, armed with bullhorns, called out to the villagers, “You go way!” You no come bak! You come, you numbah ten Vee Cee!” And again, in their dialect, the same reckless words.
The villagers never returned, but not long afterward the VC took their revenge. A man would sneak within 20 yards of our bunkers, dig a hole, place in it a 32 gallon oil drum with one end cut out, insert a stick of dynamite or other charge, a couple of rolled up blankets on top of that, a satchel charge over the blankets, jump into a foxhole he’d dug, and detonate the improvised bomb. When it worked, the primitive monster left a 12 foot crater five feet deep. The shock wave was so powerful it ruptured blood vessels, blew out eardrums, knocked men out. It even exploded shaving cream cans inside bunkers, turning the walls milky white. No matter what we did to stop the attacks, two or three times a week they struck. We called it the Song Be Express. All we could do was fight back.
Because of what happened that morning on LZ Buttons, for the next year I was mostly sympathetic to civilians, though after a time, emotionally, spiritually, morally, I began to erode, gradually not caring about much except my buddies. Still, I hadn’t given up on making it home. For a short time after Buttons I believed that my life would normal after this bad dream called Vietnam. A few months later the battle of Hill 54 blew that hope to pieces. I became an infantry zombie. Combat equaled killing, equaled staying alive. It was just plain work, and I was good at it. I’ve spent a lifetime picking up the pieces.
___________________
Jack Parente served with Echo Recon 1-7 First Cavalry Division in ’69-’70.
Top photo: Buddhist monks and women pull at a barbed-wire barricade in front of Saigon’s Giac Minh Pagoda to halt a demonstration July 17, 1963. Police wielding clubs injured at least 50 people during the protest, one of many during this period by Buddhists opposed to the Diem regime. Photo / Horst Faas
The Kid: A Day in Hell I Will Never Forget, by Jack Parente
One morning, a week after we bulldozed the ancient graveyard, fifty or so angry peasants in ceremonial garb, carrying prayer offerings, walked the two miles from the village of Song Be and showed up at LZ Button’s main gate. They’d heard the rumors and demanded to see the graves of their loved ones.
A couple of senior officers – I have no idea who they were – set out to meet the villagers, hoping to calm them down. As they walked through a zig-zag concertina corridor, I thought, “These guys are crazy.” The passage led to the crossfire point in front of the gate—right between the 50 cals, where the villagers assembled. After speaking to the crowd for 20 minutes a second group of officers joined them. For quite a while they nodded, gestured, waved their arms. When the fed up villagers replied with angry yells the officers retreated back to the base.
By noon, under the fierce sun, the crowd had turned into an angry mob. Shouting abuse, they pressed against the gate. It was a terrifying sight. I knew
that some GI’s regretted destroying the graves. But had to wonder how many villagers were Viet Cong? The answer was obvious. To us they were all VC.
As the minutes ticked past grunts grew anxious. People lose their minds in a mob. Someone in the crowd fired pistol shots in the air. LZ Buttons switched to full alert. When some dipshit shouted “lock and load” a hundred M16 bolts snapped into place. With our voodoo bone necklaces around our necks, we stood ready and willing to open fire. Platoon sergeants yelled “Stand by!” but it was probably the CS gas that stopped a massacre. Certainly not our officers.
People cannot stand firm against CS, and the angry mob broke up the instant MPs lobbed a half-a-dozen grey canisters into the crowd. Choking, screaming, vomiting, the men, women and children stumbled blindly in all directions in their trampling rush to escape the gas. Some ran deep into the maze of tangle foot and concertina wire which surrounded the main gate. Impaled on the cruel steel, several of them were bleeding to death. Held fast by the stabbing barbs, powerless to free themselves, the jagged steel dug deeper each time they moved.
Seeing this cruelty we put down our weapons and, still wearing our gas masks, with wire cutters, one by one we freed the villagers trapped in the wire. In a frenzy, two grunts worked to free one little girl badly entangled. She had feinted from the agonizing CS, from loss of blood, but suddenly awakened, began to scream. I will never forget the sight of her thin, bleeding arms outstretched on the glinting wire, suspended mid-air like Christ on the cross, unable to fall, as her grandmother shrieked and wailed, somehow reaching to grasp her granddaughters hand.
The grunts worked feverishly, cutting away the razor sharp coils, trying their best not to injure the child, but her thrashing only made things worse. She had lost so much
blood it was clear she was dying. To keep her alive, a medic inserted an IV into her limp arm. Seconds later, as the last barbed strand was cut, the child slumped to the ground.
Before the medic could lift her away the grandmother viciously ripped out the IV, tore off the medic’s gas mask, violently clawed his eyes. Spitting and howling like a banshee, she grabbed the girl by her dangling arm and dragged her off, all the while screaming into the faces of the three men to keep back from the half-conscious, whimpering child… to leave her alone.
“KILL YOU!” she shrieked. “KILL YOU! KILL YOU!” Stunned by her fury the men stepped back as the outraged grandmother pulled the lifeless girl through the dirt, dragging her by one arm, bouncing her over the rutted ground, leaving a trail of blood in the powdery dust, getting as far from the Americans as fast as possible, all the while screaming “KILL YOU!” Our local interpreters, armed with bullhorns, called out to the villagers, “You go way!” You no come bak! You come, you numbah ten Vee Cee!” And again, in their dialect, the same reckless words.
The villagers never returned, but not long afterward the VC took their revenge. A man would sneak within 20 yards of our bunkers, dig a hole, place in it a 32 gallon oil drum with one end cut out, insert a stick of dynamite or other charge, a couple of rolled up blankets on top of that, a satchel charge over the blankets, jump into a foxhole he’d dug, and detonate the improvised bomb. When it worked, the primitive monster left a 12 foot crater five feet deep. The shock wave was so powerful it ruptured blood vessels, blew out eardrums, knocked men out. It even exploded shaving cream cans inside bunkers, turning the walls milky white. No matter what we did to stop the attacks, two or three times a week they struck. We called it the Song Be Express. All we could do was fight back.
Because of what happened that morning on LZ Buttons, for the next
year I was mostly sympathetic to civilians, though after a time, emotionally, spiritually, morally, I began to erode, gradually not caring about much except my buddies. Still, I hadn’t given up on making it home. For a short time after Buttons I believed that my life would normal after this bad dream called Vietnam. A few months later the battle of Hill 54 blew that hope to pieces. I became an infantry zombie. Combat equaled killing, equaled staying alive. It was just plain work, and I was good at it. I’ve spent a lifetime picking up the pieces.
___________________
Jack Parente served with Echo Recon 1-7 First Cavalry Division in ’69-’70.
See more of Jack Parente’s writing here.
Top photo: Buddhist monks and women pull at a barbed-wire barricade in front of Saigon’s Giac Minh Pagoda to halt a demonstration July 17, 1963. Police wielding clubs injured at least 50 people during the protest, one of many during this period by Buddhists opposed to the Diem regime. Photo / Horst Faas
LZ Buttons – during the war
LZ Buttons – today