Chapter Four
Sharing Pain, Suffering,
and Shame
Convoy Road, Route 540
June 18, 1967, 1400 Hours
As we were about to leave, two other Marines jumped into the back of the truck. One of the Marines was carrying a loaded M16 rifle. He was short and a "boot" like us; I could tell by the clean cotton utilities he was wearing and his clean leather boots. The other Marine was a corporal and an old-timer carrying an M14 rifle. He was wearing the new type of jungle boots and the new type of lightweight utilities but they were already frayed. The Marine was tall and skinny, his light-colored skin covered by a dark tan. We were hot in our heavy cotton utilities. The old salt looked cool and fresh in his. We sat with our backs up against the cab to avoid the dust; he sat near the tail end where he could watch where we were going, his rifle draped across his lap.
I sat silently studying and staring at him. He seemed like someone that had seen a lot of action. His movements were slow with purpose. His face pockmarked with scabs and reddish spots from small cuts and insect bites. I looked at his wrinkled face, his cut and bruised hands and long fingers. I wondered what a story his torn, dirty, and worn-out fatigues could tell.
His eyes were the most fascinating part about him. They were distant as if he was seeing something we couldn't see. He was fully alert and aware of our surroundings, and I felt a sense of protection with his presence on board. His expressionless round eyes revealed much, but seemed to hide a lot more as they constantly skimmed the roadway ahead. Like a vigilant hawk, he barely moved his head, expertly scanning the terrain ahead. His eyes constantly shifted, checking out far tree lines and nearby hedgerows as well as the numerous clusters of thick bushes that grew alongside the roadway.
There were times when the old salt seemed lost in time and space when he focused on a certain spot along the road up ahead, and it seemed as if those seconds brought back memories of similar settings and enemy encounters. It was then that a blank, distant stare surfaced. It was as if he was viewing images in the back of his mind. For those split seconds, the Marine was gone into memories of his past and he wasn't with us; he wasn't there in the truck. Then almost immediately, he was back, his light blue eyes once again focused on the terrain before us. Then his eyes would begin again their shifting sequence, scanning and reconnoitering, seeking, and searching the terrain ahead. To him, it was the habit of survival, experience, and war. To me, he was an experienced Marine that had seen combat and survived. I was fascinated by him and sat there watching, studying his movements. Then suddenly, his head shifted. His eyes opened wide, but his hands never moved toward his weapon’s trigger guard.
I knew something was up; he was looking up and toward his left, toward my right rear, taking in and analyzing images from something that was happening up ahead in the air above us. I turned slowly to my right to see what he was looking at. The other Marines, unaware of his interest, were lost in their own secret thoughts.
Eighty feet in the air, a hundred feet away, a fierce air battle was being waged between two birds. The larger of the two, a skinny black bird, had something in its beak and the smaller white bird was attacking, squealing, screaming, and pecking away at the larger bird's head. As the smaller bird dive-bombed, the larger black bird turned, twisted, and tried to maneuver out of its way.
As the truck passed by the commotion, another long, white-tailed smaller bird joined in the attack. The skinny black bird dropped its prey, and the small featherless plump baby bird plummeted to its death. The attacking white birds continued their assault, relentlessly pursuing the larger black bird as it frantically tried to get away.
I caught the eyes of the old-timer just then. He knew that I had also witnessed the aerial conflict; and in his eyes, for the first time, I caught a glimpse of the afterimages that were embedded deep within him, images from his heart and mind. I saw what others never see, the pain and suffering associated with the struggles of life that dwells within a fighting man’s soul, and I felt a sense of acknowledgment flowing between us.
For a split second I was there, sharing his pain, suffering, guilt, and shame. I shared with him the battles he had witnessed as well as the strength he had found to endure. I learned more about war in that microsecond of life than in all my training. I had heard about war, but now I was beginning to understand the battles I would have to face.
The route to 3/7 headquarters was
a dusty one. We were traveling south, away from the DMZ and the city of
A short time later, we crossed a
narrow wooden bridge sandwiched in between two large dirt mounts. On both sides
of the bridge were sandbagged security posts manned by Marines. A small hand
painted sign read;
Scattered rice paddies emerged on
both sides of the road followed by a series of canals that broke away from a
distant river flowing from the foot of the mountains. The water channels
crisscrossed the flat terrain numerous times and emptied into dark, rich, green
rice paddy fields.[ii]
The rice fields, fed by numerous streams, were overflowing with water; some were flooded. Individual green rice plants stood tall, firm, and healthy. It was the first time I had seen rice plants so close, and I was fascinated by how perfectly balanced each plant appeared. Each plant had five or six stems protruding from a common stalk. The plants were aligned straight, running parallel to the rice paddy dirt dikes that separated each field. They looked like thousands of miniature green soldiers, all standing perfectly still in perfect aligned formation.
Vietnamese farmers and some children were using narrow-raised, hard-pressed dirt dikes to walk around the rice fields. The dikes rose one to two feet above the flooded fields. Some dikes had agricultural channels running alongside them where dirty brown water flowed feeding other fields.
Rice paddies, Dikes and Agricultural channel
Near a large canal, two young Vietnamese children—a tall girl and a skinny boy with torn, dirty, and baggy trousers—were busy drawing water out of the canal and emptying it into an agricultural channel. They stood facing each other, one lower than the other with their feet spread wide apart. In between them, they were swinging a large wooden bucket that had four ropes attached to it. Two of the end pieces of the rope were tied to the bottom and two to the top of the bucket.
They slung the bucket in between them back and forth effortlessly. With each forward step and backward swing, they dropped the bucket into a ditch full of running muddy water. The momentum carried it deep into the canal’s water, and as the two stepped backward, they pulled on the ends of the ropes and the bucket rose rapidly and shot across between them. They stepped forward and maneuvered the attached ropes in such a way that the bucket overturned and dropped its water load into the agricultural ditch, and then they slung it back for another load. From a distance, it looked as if they were playing with a large rubber slingshot. One, two, step forward, three, four, step back, and the rocking human water pump watered the rice fields. I wondered if they were actually going to eat the rice being fed by the dirty brown water they were withdrawing from the ditch.
We passed a series of squalid small villages that lined both sides of the road. Off in the distance, a dozen or more straw-covered huts were partially hidden in distant tree lines. Clusters of trees met other tree lines with scattered small clearings in between, followed by jungle areas filled with thick underbrush; the terrain seemed to be flowing out from the sides of the mountain like giant plump fingers reaching toward the roadway we were traveling.
Dark green rice paddy fields lay like soft velvet pieces of clothing within the raised dikes; each field varied in size, color, and shape. Each field was evenly dressed with rice plants perfectly planted in place. The villages, tree lines, jungle, and colorful rice paddy fields—all of it seemed connected to the huge mountain range by sight, design, or purpose. It seemed as if a master gardener had designed the scenic terrain we were passing through. All of it was beautiful and picturesque like the scenes one would read about in fairy-tale books. The country was beautiful.
As we passed the hamlets closer to the road, black-pajama-clad villagers wearing cone-shaped hats walked slowly and listlessly beside the road. They were mostly wrinkled old men and women. Some carried on their shoulders perfectly balanced long bamboo poles with large straw baskets on each end. The baskets barely moved as the villagers made their way alongside the roadway.
Some villagers sat like ducks only a few feet from the road. They sat silently squatting, chewing, and spitting out dark red betel nut juice from black-stained teeth.
As the six-by passed, it bathed the villagers with dust, dirt, and filth, spewing chunks of dry, caked mud toward where they sat. They never bothered to move or cover their faces. They seemed indifferent to us and to the world, to time, and to their future. This was their little corner of the world, and it was their way of life. Sitting and spitting was important now and that was what they were doing; nothing else mattered. Not one of them bothered to look our way as we passed.
There were no American advertisements or signs of commercialism posted along the roadway, just walking or squatting villagers indifferent to the world, showing no signs of emotions.
We passed a number of small South
Vietnamese military guard posts that looked more like British phone booths
without doors than sentry positions. Some posts were nothing more than a small
gate with a wooden overhanging cover at the side of the roadway near the
entrance to a village. The booths were mostly manned by ARVN (Army of the
CAC/CAP units near villages were
heavily fortified with sandbagged bunkers and barbed wire at the entrance and
around an identifiable perimeter. Unlike the villagers, the armed Marines
wearing soft covers and no flak jackets looked up and waved or just gave the
mail truck a quick once-over glance as we passed.[v]
The Marines in the back of the truck, the truck driver, and the Marine corporal riding shotgun were armed; yet Perez and I hadn’t been issued weapons. Perhaps where we were going wasn’t going to be such a dangerous place after all.
We turned left off the main road and traveled east where we came to another but larger wooden bridge also manned by Marines.[vi] Once we crossed the bridge we made a slight right turn and began to climb a long, narrow hill. It was the home and headquarters of the Third Battalion, Seventh Marines.
The road before us was freshly
oiled; a suffocating sulfuric odor hung in the air, stinging my nostrils and
making my eyes water. The hill was ablaze in activity. Men, trucks, jeeps,
tanks, ontos, and amtracks[vii] were moving about. Two mules were
racing each other alongside a dirt road on the outskirts of the compound.[viii]
A sentry on guard duty nodded at us as we drove through the front gate. The old-timer in the back of the truck reached down, took a can of soda from one of the cases, and yelled out, “Hey, Terry! Goody!” The sentry turned to look at the Marine who’d called out his name as the Marine threw him the can of Coke. The sentry, carrying his M16 slung over his left shoulder, took a quick step forward to try and catch the flying soda can with his right hand but missed. When he stepped forward, he had to reach up with his left hand to grab hold of his rifle swinging down over his left shoulder. Both his rifle and the can of soda struck the ground at the same time. The warm can of soda popped open, squirting its sticky caramel-colored brown spray all over the Marine and his weapon.
“Damn you, Moses!” he yelled back at the old-timer on top of the truck. The Marine flipped him off, and the sentry quickly picked up the can of soda and sucked at the foam oozing from the top of the can.
As we entered the main compound, the road ran through the center of the hill. At the top, clearly silhouetted against the skyline, were several wooden canvas covered barracks. Marines in various states of military uniform were standing around talking in front of the barracks or walking from one place to another. Very few of them were wearing steel pots or flak jackets. Some Marines carrying eating utensils were walking in loose formation toward what appeared to be the mess hall located on the south side of the hill. A helipad was located on the north side next to what appeared to be a large concrete communications bunker.
The truck passed by battalion
headquarters and the company barracks of Mike,
We disembarked and sat down on
wooden steps that led into the battalion’s supply barrack. The barrack, like
others around it, was built four feet off the ground. A Marine walked up, and
Perez and I moved aside to let him by.
As he entered the building, a tight spring snapped the screen door shut.
In a flash of remembrance, the sound brought back vivid memories of a small
neighborhood grocery store in
The last time I visited the store was when my grandmother died on my tenth birthday. The store was actually a house near where my grandparents lived. On the store’s screen door hung a large round red and white aluminum Coca-Cola sign. A small cowbell was attached to the door. When you walked in, the door snapped shut and the bell would ring so the proprietor would know someone had entered.
Large glass containers filled
with soft, colorful Mexican candies lined the top of the counter. A magazine
rack nearby always held the latest copy of
Our corporal escort came out, and we followed him around the corner to another row of wooden barracks. The third one down the aisle was unoccupied. One side of the barracks had its thick green-colored canvas covering rolled up. Torn, thick nylon mesh was stretched from the lower wooden plywood section to the top of the hard back’s frame. This allowed fresh air and daylight into the otherwise hot and dark barrack.
As we entered, I noticed the discolored, cream-colored canvas bunks looked like they were all leftovers from World War II. Many of them had dirt or dry-caked mud on one end or the other. I looked around to see what choices I had and saw a newer green-colored cot farther back, but the wooden stick that held the canvas secured to the end was broken and sticking out so the canvas was resting on the wooden floor. Otherwise, the bunk bed looked new, but just a small flaw had rendered it useless. None of the other cots were any better.
I walked all the way back and
chose one with a darker green color to it. The cot had been swept clean. I wanted to be as far away as possible from
the barrack’s front entrance, the noise, and lights. Sleeping at the
When Perez walked in, he chose the first cot nearest the front door and promptly sat down. A red puff of dust billowed up from the canvas bed, bathing him in a cloud of dry filth. He had been sweating from the hot, humid air and the fine powder was drawn to him like a magnet. He got up and beat the canvas, trying to get the loose dirt and caked mud out. Soon the front of the barracks was covered with a dark red cloud of dust.
In front of the barracks, a trench line zigzagged around the battalion’s perimeter. In front of that trench line farther down the hill were sandbagged bunkers and another smaller intermittent trench line. Farther down the hill’s slope, barbed wire and coils of concertina wire were intermittently stretched so that the wire was crisscrossed to form a wired barrier. Numerous strands of wire were laid out for about one hundred feet down the slope, offering some security from enemy attack.
Nearby was an old French-fortified cement tower. The round bunker was thirty feet high and twenty feet in diameter. Long, skinny vertical slants were cut into its sidewalls with horizontal shooting slants on top. On the roof of the building, Marines had erected an open sandbagged bunker. Sentries were standing watch on top of the tower and in some of the bunkers below. I felt powerless. I had been in country going on four days and still had not been issued a weapon; still, when darkness fell, I was more interested in getting a quiet night’s sleep than I was in obtaining a weapon.
French-fortified cement tower
When darkness came, the humid hot air lingered heavily in the back of the barrack. Sleeping was going to be impossible, so I went outside and lifted the rear canvas to let in fresh air. When I returned, I found that with the fresh air came the light and the noise and small flying insects that somehow found a way inside through holes in the nylon screen.
In the barrack next to ours, Marines were sitting around wooden table playing cards. Among them were the old-timer and the man he called Goody. Loud music blared from a radio nearby. I went back outside and dropped the canvas cover back down. Inside, darkness and silence returned as did the hot, humid air and another flood of loud, buzzing, flying insects. I took off my heavy cloth utility jacket, covered my head with it, and fell into a deep sleep.
A Machine Gunner’s MOS
Third Battalion, Seventh
Marines Headquarters
June 19, 1967, 0600 Hours
Early the next morning, I was awakened by a Marine corporal who was assigned to supply (H&S).[x]
“Barela, Barela!” I sat up.
“Barela?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Your MOS 0331?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered and regretted having used the word “sir” as soon as I’d said it. I had used the word automatically out of respect rather than military rank recognition.
“Sir, my tenth general order is ‘to salute all officers, and all colors and standards not cased.’” During recruit training, we memorized all eleven general orders. We learned to recite them in our sleep, to say them on command, and were taught to take them seriously. Respect for officers and those of higher rank had been drilled into us during recruit training and the first word uttered out of our mouths was always “sir.” Once we graduated from basic training, corporals and sergeants were no longer called sir, but officers were and officers were always saluted.[xi]
Second Lieutenant Quartz at ITR
was fresh out of
The corporal who had awakened me was the same Marine I had seen in the back of the truck the day before. Realizing I had called him sir, the corporal with a slight downward grin on the right side of his lips said, “Moses, my name is Moses. Go get some chow then report to the supply barracks. We have some machine guns that need cleaning.” I acknowledged his request, and then Perez and I went to India Company’s office to pick up the mess kits then headed toward the mess hall, falling in line with other Marines headed that way.[xii]
On the left side of the small
roadway was a gully filled with damaged amtracks, ontos, six-bys, tanks, jeeps,
and other military transport vehicles and artillery equipment. It was piled
together in a huge scrap heap. It was an
armored junkyard, an island full of victims of the enemy’s land mines and
mortar shells.[xiii]
Chow consisted of watery powdered eggs, mush, burned bacon, toast, and a cold glass of powdered milk. This time the meal was cooked by military personnel; Vietnamese civilians were not allowed to work in the mess hall. While I saw South Vietnamese soldiers walking around the perimeter, none of them were eating in the mess hall, and they seemed to stay in their own section on the other side of the hill.
In line at the mess hall, I saw the same Marine I had seen on sentry duty when we entered the compound the day before. He came over to where I was sitting.
“You a machine gunner?” he asked. I nodded yes. The Marine reached out to shake my hand. “Terry Goodman,” he said. “But everyone calls me Goody. You might be First Platoon’s machine gunner replacement,” he said. Goody was a tall, thin, blond-haired Marine full of information. I told him after chow I was supposed to clean nine M60s and he laughed. “Didn’t know there were that many in the whole battalion,” he said. “Corporal Moses at supplies was with First Platoon; he’ll take care of you if you ever need extra gun parts.”
After eating, we cleared our mess trays by scraping the remains into a large garbage can. The mess trays with the utensils hooked together were then dipped into a garbage can filled with boiling hot, soapy water. They were then dipped into two other cans until you pulled them out clean. Oil-burning stovepipes attached to the cans kept the water hot.
Walking back, I could see a
column of Marines coming up from the bottom of the hill through a break in the
perimeter wire. As the Marines zigzagged their way up the hill, I noticed they
were all wearing the new lightweight jungle fatigues. Small green sweat towels
hung around their necks. They wore flak jackets and cartridge belts that held
grenades, ammo pouches, and at least two canteens. All were carrying the M16
rifle that was new to the Marine Corps. I hadn’t been trained nor had I fired
or qualified with the M16 rifle.[xiv] Marines going on R&R called the weapon
little Mattie Mattel’s because of their black plastic stock that made them look
more like toy rifles that belong in a toy store than real weapons for combat. A
plus for the weapon was that the ammo was of a smaller caliber so Marines could
carry more bullets. I had already heard the M16 was often malfunctioning in
combat. It had faulty extractors or extractor springs, and there had been some
problem with the quality of the ammunition. The rifle’s magazine was designed
to hold twenty rounds, but if fully loaded, the spring quickly became weak in
the moist tropical climate of
The squad of ten Marines looked like a professional hunting party. They were loaded for war; this time it was not a squad out on a training exercise in the foothills of Camp Pendleton—this time they had gone out on patrol looking for a real enemy. “The deadliest thing in the world,” Sergeant Nelson had told us, “is a Marine and his weapon.” And the Marines in the column looked it.
Among the column of Marines
entering the perimeter was Borgman from the same machine-gun training class I
had attended at
Darrel Borgman was tall and thin.
His dark blue eyes contrasted sharply with his light skin color and pockmarked,
avocado-shaped pink face. He was glowing
bright red from the heat of the early morning sun. Borgman was the type of Marine that would get
into dangerous situations but somehow always managed to slide by without
getting seriously hurt. He was carrying an M16, two grenades were attached to
the right side of his flak jacket, and another one was hooked by its safety
lever to his flax jacket’s left breast pocket. He wore no undershirt beneath
his flak jacket. Two ammo pouches and a canteen were hooked to his cartridge
belt. His trouser legs were rolled up high above new jungle boots; he was not
wearing boot bands.[xv]
The column stopped in front of battalion headquarters and the squad leader went inside to give his report. The patrol was made up of Marines from various companies assigned to 3/7. All were Marines in transit; most were waiting to rejoin their companies who were out on a major military operation.
I approached Borgman who seemed to be in a trance, his thoughts far away. It wasn’t until I stood right in front of him that he recognized me.
“Hey, Cookie,” he said. “When did you get here?” We shook hands hurriedly. His hand was warm and wet. Perspiration was flowing steadily from his brow down the side of his face. He took the thick green towel draped around his neck and wiped the sweat off his forehead, flushed face, and neck. The beads of perspiration reappeared as soon as they were wiped away.
“Yesterday,” I answered.
“
“I’ve been assigned to India Company, but no platoon,” I said. “They haven’t given me a weapon yet.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be assigned to weapons platoon then attached to First, Second, or Third Platoon. It’s not the way we were told it would be. Things are done differently here. We’re assigned to a company and then attached to a platoon so we’re really not in a weapons platoon, except on paper.[xvi] They’ll give you a weapon as soon as you’re assigned to a platoon. One good thing about you not having a weapon is that you don’t stand watch or go on patrol until you are issued one.”
“How do you like the M16?” I asked.
“I don’t know; the day after I got here they gave me the M16 then sent me out on patrol. The corporal in charge of that patrol showed me how to lock ’n’ load, take the safety off and change magazines. But I haven’t fired it yet. We were supposed to fam fire (practice shooting) the weapon, but no one knows when or where.”[xvii]