The Vietnam Reader (51 page)

I had told that guy’s squad leader that morning, “Tell him to stay behind with the gear and the chopper will bring him forward later.” But he wanted to go out. To this day I still think you can tell ahead of time when someone’s going to die. Whether they know it or not, I’m convinced that I can tell. It’s not something deliberate. Kind of a blankness comes over their face. It’s not like they’re already dead. It’s like a distance and a softness to their features.

But he died and it was a really bad day. We found out how heavy a dead guy can be. The biggest guy in our platoon couldn’t pick him up and carry him. So I picked him up, took about three steps, and I couldn’t go much farther. But by that time the big guy realized that he could pick him up—It was just mental. We were freaked. And eventually we got out of that mess.

From that first time we made contact we proceeded to keep sweeping toward the city. The way the 101st operated, we sometimes moved as a battalion, but generally the company split off and we did that whole anvil/hammer bit. So although you were working in the battalion operation, you were functioning as a company and sometimes as small a unit as a platoon.

I think it’s funny how you can rationalize everything while you’re there. Everything is justifiable in terms of survival, which is unfortunate. I can criticize people today, like at law school when I went there, for being so competitive, so survival-oriented. They were called “gunners,” would do things just to make sure they got a better grade. Seems to me today’s perception of how unimportant that all is … Whereas you go back there and you’re justifying killing someone. I’m not sure which one’s worse—whether it’s unimportant or the means by which you compete. It’s really crazy. But we would chase them every day, they’d shoot at us and we’d shoot at them, never making contact. And then every day, almost like clockwork, in the late afternoon they’d stop and make a stand and we’d fight. Went on for months, literally for months. Even after the city was retaken, they still operated in the area.

We overran a base camp on the way into Hue. We called it a base camp, but it probably wasn’t but a staging area—there were packs just like ours lined up on the ground. It’s a really freaky thing to think you’re chasing someone and then to suddenly show up and there they are taking a break for exercise or going inside a barracks for a class—I don’t know what they did. But psychologically it really shook us because shit, they’re just as disciplined and efficient as we are. They’re so confident they can just walk away and leave their stuff like it was a field exercise, training. Maybe it was. Maybe that’s what I was to them. But this time we were using live fire. We opened up their packs and they had sets of civilian clothes, military clothes, personal effects. I really wondered if they were at war, except to know that we fought with them every day.

North Vietnamese, that’s all I fought. I went into Hue and saw the civilian bodies lined up. I know I didn’t kill them. Americans don’t shoot people from a distance and then line the bodies up. So when
you walk in and find them lined up there on their stomachs with their hands tied behind their backs, you know it was the NVA who did that. I know no Americans did that because we were the first ones to enter that portion of the village. They killed the water buffalo, everything.

It was civil war and we were in there and they were killing us as we killed them. I mean, the poor victims who had relatives in the North and relatives in the South … The only equivalent I can imagine was I was sent to the Detroit riots with the 101st before I went to ’Nam. Coming back, my biggest fear was going to Fort Dix, because even though I wanted to be close to home, I didn’t want to be stuck on riot duty. I said, “I’ll be damned if I come all the way back here from Vietnam to go on riot duty and have someone throw a bottle or a brick and split my head open.” What’s your reaction going to be? Pull that trigger? Shoot my own countrymen?

Patriotism is just loyalty to friends, people, families … I didn’t even know those guys in Vietnam until I got there, and it wouldn’t have mattered if you came to my platoon tomorrow—if we got hit, I would go out and try to save your ass just as I would’ve done for anyone else I’d been with for a month, two months, three months. Instant bonding.

One thing I did find out after I went to Hue and came back, which I didn’t know at the time because of the cultural gap, was the significance of the pine trees in the middle of the jungle. Every time someone died that was relatively famous, they’d plant a pine tree in his honor so his spirit would live on. I had a teacher who was Vietnamese when I went to school after getting out of the service. His father was a poet laureate of Hue who had a tree planted for him. I never had the heart to tell the teacher, who was a friend, that I used to sling a poncho on those trees. I mean, I thought it was a great place to sleep because the pine needles were nice and it was always clean. I didn’t make the connection that there was something special about the area. We used the needles to help start our fires. Dig little holes in the hedges around it—dig in. Sacrilege. In some sense his father’s spirit gave me shelter, which is kind of ironic.

It was really a break for us to go to rice hovels because we hadn’t
cooked for so many months. A little boy came out and wanted some C-rations. When they want C-rations, you know they’re hurting, the food’s just terrible. He was going to share his dinner with us and he brought out some fish. The hottest damn thing I ever had. I can still to this day remember them being fuming hot. We shared our food and we asked him where he lived. He pointed to this house in the clearing. He said he was there with his sister, and we said, “Well, why doesn’t your sister come out and join us for dinner?” And he said, “She can’t. The VC will see her with us, they’ll kill her.” We said, “What about you? They’ll see you.” He said it didn’t matter because they know he’s getting food.

So it’s just like everything else: you leave and they’re back, and people have to live with that. They have to deal with the fact that we’re going to be gone and leave them behind. But what struck me that day was I was looking at that kid—and I didn’t know how old he was, but he had to be under ten—was that all his life he knew war. And then when we’re gone he’s going to know that Americans may have come through and raped his sister. The VC may have raped his sister because she allowed the Americans to do this. And if the Americans had conceivably seen her with the VC, they would’ve … the whole thing was just … it was certainly a statement. It was a tragedy and it was so horrifying. I tried to think of what I would be like if this took place in my hometown. This may have been a turning point in my life, at least in the terms of the war.

When we operated around Hue we didn’t stay in the populated areas. We were in the mountains and in the dry season and wet season in different places. I remember having to cross a river at night to set up a blocking force for what we called a major invasion the next day in what we termed VC-controlled territory. The VC controlled one side of the river and the ARVNs controlled the other side. We always operated with the South Vietnamese, we figured there must be VC sympathizers there. And the ARVNs we worked with refused to cross the river. Now, that told me two things: either they were waiting for us to get shot at or they were telling me, “Look, this isn’t worth it. They don’t bother us and we don’t bother them.” And that was a great
way of living. Survival, right? But we were forced to cross that damn river.

I had to send my platoon across. To say I was pissed and confused would not be adequate. But we did it and it happened all the time. Whenever you went on an ambush with the ARVN they made so much noise that no one would ever walk through your ambush site. So it was safe. You never got hit, but then again, you never carried out your mission either, which was not clear to the American soldiers. And what became confusing was the ARVNs didn’t want to fight for their country. Why should we? If you want us to go out and defend ourselves, don’t stick us with those guys, because they’re going to run away. They’re not going to fight.

There were a couple of units, the South Vietnamese marines, the rangers and the paratroopers, who would stand and fight for the most part, but working with regular ARVNs or the Popular Forces or police—that was a liability.

Also, whenever you worked with them you were subject to S-5 [U.S. military intelligence] coming down and asking how you’re doing. They were trying to win the hearts and minds of the people, which I could never fully understand because I didn’t think there was anything to win. I thought we should just leave. There was confusion from a military standpoint and, of course, from a psychological standpoint.

I remember going on an operation and being attached to the 1st Cavalry. We had full security for a mine-sweep team down the road. Well, out there was a command-detonation mine team. As the truck went over the bridge, that mine team detonated the mine. My men were in the truck. I watched the VC run into a village, and after taking care of what we had to take care of, we went after them.

There was nobody in the village, only an old couple, and there’s all this VC literature. It made no sense, absolutely no sense to me. Why this village was there, why this old couple was there, why they were killing … I mean I know it made sense, but I just couldn’t put it together. I did the whole thing I learned in training. You go to the fire and scrape off the top ash to see if there were hot coals underneath.
Everything was warm. The pots were warm, warm embers underneath. And my men were obviously upset. One of our men had died and a couple others were wounded, engineers as well. They just went right up in the air and that was it.

When the explosion went off. An object was moving through the air towards us. I’m thinking clear. How long will it take? Not very long, I thought. But it was like a long time coming and it was high in the air and this dark object was moving and I was watching it. I was transfixed by it. It was almost hypnotic. Here were two seasoned combat veterans standing there in a crouch watching something come through the air at us. I thought calmly, “It’s gonna hit me.” We watched it and we watched it and we watched it. It came closer and closer and closer. And at some point I suspect we both realized that it wasn’t a bomb, it wasn’t … it was part of a body. And we stood there, he and I, about three feet apart. It landed between us. It was a boot with the leg in it sheered at the top of the boot. It landed fucking upright and it was like a goddamn movie.

But we didn’t shoot at the village. I had seen these two guys running and then when we got to the village and found the old couple I knew it was obviously utilized by the enemy. I was trying to deal with my men and find out what I could do. So I decided to—from purely military standpoint—try to close my men psychologically. We would burn down the hootches except the old couple’s, who remained for one reason or another—we left their property alone. We just burned down, denied the enemy that kind of shelter, although they could build them again; they were just grass and weeds. In the process of burning down the village a major from the 1st Cav came by. I never wore rank in the field and he was looking for it. He says, “Who’s in charge here?” I said, “I am.” He said, “Who are you?” And I told him I was Lieutenant Santos. He says, “Were you doing this here?” I said, “Yeah. We were looking for the men that detonated the mine. They ran into this village. We came in and looked for them. This is a VC village and …”

It’s not so much that we missed them as the frustration of having been blown up from a distance and the old people standing there
saying, “No VC here, no VC.” And everything around them says someone just left. What do you do? My responsibility would be, I think, somewhat complex. I had to uphold the traditions of military America, all that crap. I had to worry about my men. And I felt that responsibility goes down rather than up. I owed no allegiance to America. I owed no allegiance to the S-5 or the 1st Cav and all of that crap. I had to make sure that these thirty guys—which were never really thirty; eighteen or twenty-two—had to keep their head in line. And the men burning down a few grass huts which would kill no one and hurt no one but deny the enemy shelter in the rain, which they had no problem finding, was worth it.

That was very confusing. We thought we did what we had to do and they would understand that. But apparently we upset the winning of the hearts and the minds of the people. I told them, “What are you talking about, hearts and minds? Look what they just did to us. I mean, I should risk my men every day so you can come in and tell me that these people believe in America?”

These S-5 guys were from base camp. They operated out of planes, dropping those propaganda leaflets. Those leaflets mean nothing to you when you pick one up next to a dead American. They operated in a vacuum. They operated more in a vacuum than I did. I went there with some ideals. These guys were just stupid.

I ended up going there … it sounds corny, but this is what I felt when I went into the service: that if I didn’t go, someone else would have to go in my place. I couldn’t possibly be responsible knowing that someone else may have died because I didn’t want to go. It was a question of having enough confidence or being sure enough of my convictions that it would be the right thing and my job would be to permit someone else not to go. So I went.

At the nitty-gritty it was only survival. It was only to come home and see your friends, your family, not to shame them, not to hurt them. Come back to America. And it wasn’t like, “America the great, the land of the beautiful.” I mean, I didn’t grow up in an area like Pennsylvania—it’s beautiful out there—but I came back to Long Island and New York City. Traffic, people, noise. I just wanted to come
home. And I think that the one thing that people lost track most of was their families. I mean, you realized that you die … My philosophy is, and I used ato tell people this, they’d come to my platoon and I’d say it was the best platoon in the battalion. Probably the best battalion in the brigade, the best brigade in the division and all that bullshit.