Vietnam-A Foot Soldier's Perspective 1968-1969
1st Platoon Charlie Company 5th 60th 9th Division 1969
Thank you for visiting this website. You may be visiting this site as a family member of a veteran, a Vietnam veteran or as member of the public. I appreciate your interest in reading these stories. These stories take the third person point of view, thus the title “A Vietnam Soldiers Perspective”.
The American Vietnam War lasted from 1955 to 1975. Over the years, more information of the Vietnam war has become available, and the general public has been able to learn more about this war. Perhaps one watershed moment for this information was the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. The Memorial Wall was a catalyst that increased the public awareness of that war. The Wall and other high-profile books and movies made a difference among Vietnam veterans and their willingness to talk about that war.
The public has come to appreciate the contributions made by veterans of the Vietnam war. I hope these stories of my Vietnam experience will sharpen and heighten your appreciation for the contributions made by 2.7 million veterans who served in Vietnam and the 58,467 who served in Vietnam and made the ultimate sacrifice. I welcome your contributions of content and your response to these stories.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Norm Te Slaa
The American Vietnam War lasted from 1955 to 1975. Over the years, more information of the Vietnam war has become available, and the general public has been able to learn more about this war. Perhaps one watershed moment for this information was the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. The Memorial Wall was a catalyst that increased the public awareness of that war. The Wall and other high-profile books and movies made a difference among Vietnam veterans and their willingness to talk about that war.
The public has come to appreciate the contributions made by veterans of the Vietnam war. I hope these stories of my Vietnam experience will sharpen and heighten your appreciation for the contributions made by 2.7 million veterans who served in Vietnam and the 58,467 who served in Vietnam and made the ultimate sacrifice. I welcome your contributions of content and your response to these stories.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Norm Te Slaa
Story Index:
Prologue to Vietnam
1. Road to Nowhere
Prologue to Vietnam
It has now been fifty-six years since I last set foot on the soil of South Vietnam in 1969. In the intervening years, few people beyond my family and personal friends, knew I was a Vietnam veteran. That was intentional. For the most part, any recollections of Vietnam were locked away in my mind until the mid-1990s. Why should I choose to resurrect long-passed events of such a personally challenging time?
One reason for the silence was the negative impact being a Vietnam veteran might have on my business clients. Some of my acquaintances that did not serve disagreed with the men who answered the call to serve in Vietnam. Also, I never felt confident to talk with others about Vietnam, thinking they would not care to hear about it or even understand the profundity of my experience. Those years during and after Vietnam, public sentiment towards the war in Vietnam and Vietnam veterans was largely negative. Why talk about something so divisive and likely antagonistic? In the back of my thoughts was the question; What I would find in my own recollections the I did not want to revisit?
So, I kept relatively silent about the subject until about 1997. It was at that time that I was invited to attend a reunion of veterans of the 5th 60th Infantry of the 9th Army Division. I did attend that reunion and from there, my recollections began to slowly return, and I began to set aside some of my reservations talking and thinking about Vietnam.
The divisions and wounds created by the Vietnam war are receding from American thought. But it is never too late to slow the erosion of collective memory before public and veteran recollections are washed away in the tides of time.
It is my hope that this small group of readers might be reminded of, and give honor to, those 57,468 souls who sacrificed their lives to the cause in Vietnam. Our country is now experiencing the passing of five-hundred-thirty Vietnam veterans every day. Some of the surviving veterans among us continue to live with permanent physical and mental disabilities.
I want my friends and family to read about a personal perspective about that slice in time of American life. I’d like my generation and subsequent generations to know something about this soldier’s experience in Vietnam.
I know I’m a latecomer to writing about Vietnam. There are many other veteran stories more significant than mine. Some of my veteran friends wrote books and memoirs years ago. My veteran memories are not as soul-piercing as other veterans.
But now is the right time for me to write about my Vietnam experiences. I now have more personal time to pause, reflect and write about that experience. My perspective has expanded while my recollection has receded.
Thank you for reading these stories and vignettes. These stories are not in chronological order.
I welcome your questions and responses.
Thank you,
Norm Te Slaa
One reason for the silence was the negative impact being a Vietnam veteran might have on my business clients. Some of my acquaintances that did not serve disagreed with the men who answered the call to serve in Vietnam. Also, I never felt confident to talk with others about Vietnam, thinking they would not care to hear about it or even understand the profundity of my experience. Those years during and after Vietnam, public sentiment towards the war in Vietnam and Vietnam veterans was largely negative. Why talk about something so divisive and likely antagonistic? In the back of my thoughts was the question; What I would find in my own recollections the I did not want to revisit?
So, I kept relatively silent about the subject until about 1997. It was at that time that I was invited to attend a reunion of veterans of the 5th 60th Infantry of the 9th Army Division. I did attend that reunion and from there, my recollections began to slowly return, and I began to set aside some of my reservations talking and thinking about Vietnam.
The divisions and wounds created by the Vietnam war are receding from American thought. But it is never too late to slow the erosion of collective memory before public and veteran recollections are washed away in the tides of time.
It is my hope that this small group of readers might be reminded of, and give honor to, those 57,468 souls who sacrificed their lives to the cause in Vietnam. Our country is now experiencing the passing of five-hundred-thirty Vietnam veterans every day. Some of the surviving veterans among us continue to live with permanent physical and mental disabilities.
I want my friends and family to read about a personal perspective about that slice in time of American life. I’d like my generation and subsequent generations to know something about this soldier’s experience in Vietnam.
I know I’m a latecomer to writing about Vietnam. There are many other veteran stories more significant than mine. Some of my veteran friends wrote books and memoirs years ago. My veteran memories are not as soul-piercing as other veterans.
But now is the right time for me to write about my Vietnam experiences. I now have more personal time to pause, reflect and write about that experience. My perspective has expanded while my recollection has receded.
Thank you for reading these stories and vignettes. These stories are not in chronological order.
I welcome your questions and responses.
Thank you,
Norm Te Slaa
Map of Southeast Asia during Vietnam War
9th Infantry Division Area of Operations with Rach Kien
Area of Operations map taken from "Vignettes from Vietnam; Heard. Understood. Acknowledged!" by Ron McCants
1. Road to Nowhere
It had been a long day of processing out of the US Army holding company in Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. New in-country recruits had become somewhat accustomed to the ten or so days of pulling perimeter guard duty. Guarding the perimeter was the most frequent assignment for those soldiers processing into Vietnam while waiting for their duty assignments. Walking back and forth between the guard towers, perimeter guards had created a well-worn path on the inside of the perimeter fence over many days and months.
The perimeter fence surrounded the massive Bien Hoa base. The fence itself was made of miles of eight-foot-tall chain-link fence. Stacked atop it was quadruple coils of shiny razor wire. Between the stretches of steel fencing and razor wire, at spacings of three hundred feet, stood twenty-foot-tall guard towers with 360-degree views of the area.
Outside the perimeter fence and razor wire, concealed among the brush, weeds, and small bushes, were dozens of Claymore mines, each with a trip wire leading back to the inside of the perimeter fence.[1] Claymores were arch-shaped, with hundreds of steel pellets backed up by a row of C4 that, when triggered, tore anything within fifty feet into small pieces. They were intended to obliterate enemy sappers.[2]
Sappers were enemy combatants who regularly tried to penetrate the perimeter by throwing satchels of explosive charges over the fence in an attempt to breach it.
Sappers would get close enough to the firebase perimeter enabling them to blast holes in the perimeter fence or attack nearby equipment and buildings. Perimeter guards learned soon enough that the Claymore mines were deadly, effective defensive weapons against the sappers, and animals that might wander into the range of the Claymore.
Another frequent but safer job than perimeter guard duty for new recruits awaiting field assignments was the “shit burning” detail. Under the latrines were steel barrels that had been cut in half. Those on shit-burning detail pulled those out, doused the human waste with diesel fuel, and set them on fire. The recruits had to stir the waste as the fuel burned down and keep adding more fuel until the waste was reduced to ashes.
All new arrivals had assignments inside the heavily guarded perimeter fence. During their in-processing time, they lived in barracks, ate hot mess hall food, had time off, and lived within the relative protection of the perimeter fence.
Finally, after several days, the new arrivals received their combat unit assignments. By now, these soldiers’ suspicions of being sent to a combat unit were being confirmed. Although they did not know where they were being assigned, they knew they would be replacing soldiers whose DEROS[3] date had arrived or were leaving the country because they had been hospitalized, injured, or killed.
The final day-long “hurry up and wait” was coming to an end and loading onto the trucks was about to begin. These newly minted American GI replacements were issued M-16 rifles with live ammunition.
Suddenly the sergeant’s gruff commanding voice would cut through the silence: “Load up!” The soldiers quickly snapped to attention, confirming their simmering anxiety.
The sergeant’s abrasive voice demanded obedience. It was a voice with the same crassness the soldiers had heard from their drill sergeants during their sixteen weeks of basic and advanced infantry training. Once again, those threats from the drill sergeants echoed in their thoughts: Listen up, you meatheads! If you don’t do what I tell you, you’re gonna’ die in Vietnam! At the time, they smirked at such a thought. Such a preposterous warning was for the other guy, but not for me!
Quietly and quickly, they mounted the Deuce-and-a-Half,[4] taking places next to other soldiers they had never met. Five or six soldiers sat facing inward on wooden benches along each side of the open-air truck. Another three soldiers sat with their backs to the cab and rode backward. None of them knew anything about this ride to nowhere. They were about to find out!
There was a quiet, simmering apprehension among the soldiers, most of them barely out of—or still in—their teen years. They all looked the same in their clean, bloused fatigues and polished jungle boots. These new, in-country soldiers looked like blank copies of each other. Their expressionless faces gave no indication of what they were thinking or any reading of their personalities. None of them knew anything about the others and perhaps didn’t even care. They were enclosed in a world unto themselves. They were breathing, yet they were people without personalities. There was no backslapping, no bravado. Only an occasional comment or quip of attempted humor broke the silence momentarily. Their faces remained stoic and their bodies rigid.
Only months earlier, some of these boys had walked across the school gymnasium stage to accept their high school diplomas. There were a few that seemed to be in their early to mid-twenties. They could have just completed their college bachelor’s or master’s degrees. There were others seemingly old enough to have been pulled from their jobs when their draft number came up.
The edgy GI truck driver had fussed about the truck’s road worthiness. He nervously walked around the large truck, kicking the tires, checking the lights, and pushing here and there on the mirrors and latches of the truck, barely noticing the soldiers in the truck bed. He seemed to have no expectations that the new grunts would have any value in providing security, even with live ammunition in their rifle magazines. Instead, riding shotgun for the driver and the recruits was a seasoned E6 sergeant equipped in full combat gear, including helmet, flak jacket, and bandoliers of M16 ammunition slung over his shoulder. In his arms and holding with both hands in the ready position was an M-16 rifle in safety position. An M-40 cannon lay on the seat between him and the driver.
It was a trip this truck-driving duet had taken many times before. They knew their sole mission well. It was to get on the road on time and see that their human replacement cargo would get to their destination safely and without the distraction of an enemy encounter along the way.
The driver started the noisy, growling engine and scratched the olive-drab diesel truck into low gear. Clouds of black smoke belched out of its two large front exhaust pipes, covering the soldiers with billows of diesel exhaust. The truck lurched forward and on to the paved street of Bien Hoa. It seemed obvious to the grunts[5] riding in the truck bed that the driver was in a hurry.
The truck driver knew something that the grunts did not know—but they now began to sense his urgency. The trip needed to be completed by sundown. He knew the ride would be bumpy and fast. Ruts and curves in the road be dammed! Time was evaporating!
It was only a matter of minutes before the truck passed through the perimeter gate, and then the gate of Bien Hoa closed behind them. Now they were on the outside of the base perimeter. They had spent several days looking at this perimeter fence from the inside, within its relative security. It was the first time since landing in Vietnam that they held no defensive positions between them and the enemy.
They passed the fifteen-foot-high square guard towers where multiple M-60 machine guns menacingly pointed out into no-man’s land. The stacks of razor-sharp concertino wire caught flashes of the reflected setting sunlight as the base faded into the distance. Fading from their sight were the guard towers, the well-worn paths on the inside of the perimeter fence they had patrolled for many days and nights, and the six-inch high, convex Claymore mines. A dream-like surrealism took hold as the Vietnamese countryside enveloped them.
Instinctively, there was a sense that the enemy could be—and probably was—anywhere and everywhere around them. They were in the territory of the Vietcong and the NVA.[6] The clumsy truck and its truckload of soldiers were lost in a cloud of dust as they sped toward the setting sun.
The narrow road wound through the Vietnam countryside, measuring only fifteen or twenty feet at its widest. The horizon in all directions was only broken by patches of nipa palm trees,[7] rice paddies, and a few hooches.[8]
They were on their way to an unknown place, a place with no name, a road to nowhere!
The miles piled up as they passed hundreds of small hooches, some with rusty tin roofs and others with roofs and sides of thatched, dried nipa palm leaves. As they raced past the hooches, they could catch fleeting glances of lamps and cooking fires through their open doorways.
The rice paddies on either side of the road were empty of anything that might resemble American farming equipment. Occasionally they would pass a local, aging farmer guiding a single- or a double-yoked water buffalo toward home, which would be surrounded by small flocks of chickens and geese looking for food and security near its open door.
The road was busy with local villagers walking or riding their mopeds stacked high with boxes and bags, traveling home from markets in nearby villages. The Vietnamese walking on the side of the road were mostly women. They wore white silk-like surplices over black, flimsy trousers. Stretched over their shoulders were four-inch-wide and six-foot-long yokes without any cut-outs for their necks. The bamboo yokes extended a couple of feet beyond their shoulders. The yokes seemed alive, dancing as they flexed and up and down in tempo with their carriers’ fast, short, measured steps. Even without the heavy weight of the near-empty sacks, the pliable shoulder yokes moved up and down in a subdivided rhythm.
Sometimes a soldier would make a comment, yelling over the noise of the truck, about the smell of the countryside or a derisive comment about one of the locals on the road. It was an effort to break the tension, but it only served as a distraction to mask the soldier’s own fears.
Otherwise, a stoney silence settled among the soldiers. No one wanted to expose the fear written on their faces by talking. Their silence belied the anxiety they were all feeling. Perhaps it was their unbelief of finding themselves in such a foreign, other-worldly, dangerous landscape. Perhaps they were thinking that their drill sergeant’s warnings might contain some element of truth for them after all. Maybe it was simply that no one wanted to talk over the noisy diesel engine.
In the waning daylight the soldiers could see countless squares and rectangular-patterned rice paddies and interspersed among them were clumps of nipa palm groves.
The troops’ attention now returned to the fast-moving truck, dodging ruts and potholes, pedestrians, mopeds and bicycles. The driver seemed acutely aware of how many more minutes it would take to reach the firebase before dark. He repeatedly glanced at the setting sun. His nervous, calculated glances confirmed to him that darkness was minutes, not hours away. He wanted to avoid a night encounter with the enemy at all costs.
The hurrying driver’s mission was to get his cargo of newly minted soldier replacements to their destination without an enemy encounter, so he seemed not to notice the busy pedestrians traveling along the narrow road. For most of the trip, the road was not wide enough for two trucks to meet. When two vehicles did meet, one would have to find a place to slow down or stop and pull to the side of the road to let the other pass. There was no large local truck traffic on the road, only mopeds, some stacked high with boxes, as well as fast-stepping pedestrians and bike riders.
The truck driver had obviously driven this road many times before. He was quick to swerve out of the way of potholes and oncoming traffic, only slowing down or speeding up as the road and congestion allowed. But there were other reasons, less obvious to his human cargo, why this driver seemed like a crazy man.
Anyone on any road in the South Vietnamese delta in the dark was an open invitation to serious trouble. The driver was keenly aware of the approaching darkness, as it exponentially increased the likelihood of becoming a “sitting duck” for an enemy mortar or a Viet Cong ambush. Any slowing or stopping of any vehicle on any public Vietnamese road at night would be an easy target for an enemy, especially a truck carrying a load of American troops. Nobody wanted to be on any public Vietnamese road after the setting of the sun.
The truck driver flattened the accelerator to an even faster speed, dodging potholes and avoiding the scurrying locals returning from the market to their dirt-floor, thatched homes. In the early morning of that day, they had walked in the opposite direction, anxious to get their produce of vegetables and grains, live ducks and chickens to the market.
The traffic on the road seemed to increase, but now the truck was moving with the pedestrian flow. These locals were heading home from their day at the markets. The grunts guessed they were coming close to a small village. With the setting sun, it was becoming obvious to them that this road to nowhere might soon deposit them somewhere on a countryside surrounded by rice paddies, hooches, and nipa palm trees.
Soon the sun escaped over the horizon. The waning light caught the grunts’ attention. Apprehension heightened. The shadows and outlines of nipa groves and hooches were quickly losing their definition. Soon it would be totally dark.
The driver pressed the clumsy truck to an even faster pace. His almost reckless driving validated the soldiers’ awareness that total darkness was only minutes away. Their attention sharpened. Nobody spoke. Would they make it to their base soon?
Suddenly, with shock and surprise, the soldiers heard two muffled explosions, followed seconds later by two poofs of sound two hundred feet in the air above them. The sky exploded with light. All eyes were now on the white-light flares, illuminating a large area around them and reflecting off the silvery, shiny razor-wire perimeter of a nearby firebase, much like the sunlight that had reflected off the razor wire of the Bien Hoa base two hours earlier. They were coming to a firebase.[9]
The nearby firebase mortar platoon had fired off two precautionary flares, lighting up the area like daylight. Pulsating surges of light cast long shadows that seemed to dance in the darkness as the flares lost altitude and drifted to the earth. The mortars left trails of white smoke on their downward trajectory. Within minutes, the area surrounding the Deuce-and-a-Half and the firebase was again cloaked in near darkness.
Cautiously, short conversations started among the troops. They realized they had made it safely to a firebase next to a small village. Their spirits lightened. Relief spread across their faces. Their two-hour jostling, bruising journey was finally coming to an end.
The truck began to slow. Perhaps this ride on a road to nowhere was ending somewhere! The driver let up again on the accelerator and began a left turn into the hooch-like firebase. The soldiers in the truck were now standing, attempting to understand what was happening. On the left was a guard tower, standing like a twelve-foot ghostly centurion in the shadowed darkness. The lower four or five feet of the tower was stacked with sandbags that supported a wooden structure with a metal roof. Machine-gun muzzles poked out in three directions from the lookout.
The sweep of the truck’s headlights illuminated a hooch to the right front. It was a thatched home that seemingly at one time belonged to the village but had been commandeered by the army as part of the firebase. The headlights then exposed an abandoned rice paddy that neglect had reverted into a swamp. Rows of raised wooden planks over the swamp led to a doorless outhouse hanging over the swamp.
On the left and immediately next to the guard tower was an orderly room with a sign in the front. On the opposite side of the road was a twelve-foot-high and thirty-foot-long structure, stacked high with dirt-filled ammunition boxes. Covering this bunker was a metal corrugated roof.
The engine purred as the truck moved slowly down the single road through the firebase. The truck and its grunts passed Bravo Company on the right and Alpha Company on the left. It stopped midway down the road in front of a sign declaring, Headquarters, 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division. Next to the headquarters company was a tiny chapel and across from it was a mess hall and a small open area with a stage to one side. It seemed so out of place to have a stage in such a remote place—and for what reason, they wondered.
There was no welcome sign. Still, relief spread across the riders’ faces. Relief from being jostled around by the big Deuce-and-a-Half truck, and relief that they were now in a more secure place than they had been for the last two hours.
The driver turned off the engine, leaving a ringing in the soldiers’ ears. For a moment the grunts stood in stoney silence on the bed of the truck. This was it! Nowhere was here! Slowly they began to jump from the high bed of the Deuce-and-a-Half. The soft thuds of their combat boots hitting the ground created small puffs of dust that evaporated into the darkness.
The sound of their boots hitting the ground seemed to stomp them into reality. No more wishful thinking. No more hoping for some good fortune of being assigned as a chaplain’s assistant, a supply clerk, a cook, or any one of seven or eight jobs at any Vietnam firebase needing to support a single grunt. No, they were going to be grunts. This was to be their home, their fate, their basecamp for the next 365 days—if they could survive that long.
Now the pieces of the puzzle were coming together in murky comprehension. The smatterings of talk during their infantry training came alive and coursed through their thoughts. They were about to experience what they had been told about grunt life in the boonies of Vietnam.
For the next year their lives would be C-rations, P-38s, guard towers, search-and-destroy missions, heat, bugs, rats, rice paddies, mud, bloodsuckers, cold showers, burning shit, gunships, hueys, monsoons, fire fights, fatigue, anger, blood, crass humor, carrying sixty pounds of gear, cursing, newbies, short-timers, praying, pacifications, M-16s, sweat, ambushes, chains of command, staying alive, and dreaming of freedom birds.[10]
Now, the real countdown for their days in Vietnam would begin—if they would be gifted with all of them.
The drill sergeant’s cautionary tale continued to live as an echo chamber in their heads: Listen up, you meatheads! If you don’t do what I tell you, you’re gonna die in Vietnam!
Contributors:
Cathy Te Slaa, proofreader
Josephine Moore, editor
Footnotes:
[1] Claymore mines were curved, forward-facing mines filled with steel ball bearings packed in front of a C4 explosive charge, which was detonated by a wire from a position to the rear of the mine.
[2] Sappers were Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Army combatants who carried explosive satchels with the intent to blast holes in the perimeter and thereby gain access to the fire base or kill the perimeter guard.
[3] DEROS. Date Employee Return from Overseas
[4] Deuce-and-a-Half was the workhorse of the American supply chain in Vietnam. These large, ten-wheeled trucks carried troops and supplies whenever there were roads and acceptable levels of safety.
[5] “Grunt” is a somewhat derogatory term, used to describe a foot soldier.
[6] The NVA was the North Vietnamese Army.
[7] Nipa palm trees could be bush like or grow to twenty-foot-high trees, the leaves having a fern-like appearance.
[8] Dwellings covered with nipa palm leaves or corrugated steel roofs, many with no visible front door or windows.
[9] A firebase was the center of operations for a battalion of soldiers. A battalion in Vietnam was typically 800 to 1000 soldiers.
[10] A reference to the airplane that would take them back to America.
The perimeter fence surrounded the massive Bien Hoa base. The fence itself was made of miles of eight-foot-tall chain-link fence. Stacked atop it was quadruple coils of shiny razor wire. Between the stretches of steel fencing and razor wire, at spacings of three hundred feet, stood twenty-foot-tall guard towers with 360-degree views of the area.
Outside the perimeter fence and razor wire, concealed among the brush, weeds, and small bushes, were dozens of Claymore mines, each with a trip wire leading back to the inside of the perimeter fence.[1] Claymores were arch-shaped, with hundreds of steel pellets backed up by a row of C4 that, when triggered, tore anything within fifty feet into small pieces. They were intended to obliterate enemy sappers.[2]
Sappers were enemy combatants who regularly tried to penetrate the perimeter by throwing satchels of explosive charges over the fence in an attempt to breach it.
Sappers would get close enough to the firebase perimeter enabling them to blast holes in the perimeter fence or attack nearby equipment and buildings. Perimeter guards learned soon enough that the Claymore mines were deadly, effective defensive weapons against the sappers, and animals that might wander into the range of the Claymore.
Another frequent but safer job than perimeter guard duty for new recruits awaiting field assignments was the “shit burning” detail. Under the latrines were steel barrels that had been cut in half. Those on shit-burning detail pulled those out, doused the human waste with diesel fuel, and set them on fire. The recruits had to stir the waste as the fuel burned down and keep adding more fuel until the waste was reduced to ashes.
All new arrivals had assignments inside the heavily guarded perimeter fence. During their in-processing time, they lived in barracks, ate hot mess hall food, had time off, and lived within the relative protection of the perimeter fence.
Finally, after several days, the new arrivals received their combat unit assignments. By now, these soldiers’ suspicions of being sent to a combat unit were being confirmed. Although they did not know where they were being assigned, they knew they would be replacing soldiers whose DEROS[3] date had arrived or were leaving the country because they had been hospitalized, injured, or killed.
The final day-long “hurry up and wait” was coming to an end and loading onto the trucks was about to begin. These newly minted American GI replacements were issued M-16 rifles with live ammunition.
Suddenly the sergeant’s gruff commanding voice would cut through the silence: “Load up!” The soldiers quickly snapped to attention, confirming their simmering anxiety.
The sergeant’s abrasive voice demanded obedience. It was a voice with the same crassness the soldiers had heard from their drill sergeants during their sixteen weeks of basic and advanced infantry training. Once again, those threats from the drill sergeants echoed in their thoughts: Listen up, you meatheads! If you don’t do what I tell you, you’re gonna’ die in Vietnam! At the time, they smirked at such a thought. Such a preposterous warning was for the other guy, but not for me!
Quietly and quickly, they mounted the Deuce-and-a-Half,[4] taking places next to other soldiers they had never met. Five or six soldiers sat facing inward on wooden benches along each side of the open-air truck. Another three soldiers sat with their backs to the cab and rode backward. None of them knew anything about this ride to nowhere. They were about to find out!
There was a quiet, simmering apprehension among the soldiers, most of them barely out of—or still in—their teen years. They all looked the same in their clean, bloused fatigues and polished jungle boots. These new, in-country soldiers looked like blank copies of each other. Their expressionless faces gave no indication of what they were thinking or any reading of their personalities. None of them knew anything about the others and perhaps didn’t even care. They were enclosed in a world unto themselves. They were breathing, yet they were people without personalities. There was no backslapping, no bravado. Only an occasional comment or quip of attempted humor broke the silence momentarily. Their faces remained stoic and their bodies rigid.
Only months earlier, some of these boys had walked across the school gymnasium stage to accept their high school diplomas. There were a few that seemed to be in their early to mid-twenties. They could have just completed their college bachelor’s or master’s degrees. There were others seemingly old enough to have been pulled from their jobs when their draft number came up.
The edgy GI truck driver had fussed about the truck’s road worthiness. He nervously walked around the large truck, kicking the tires, checking the lights, and pushing here and there on the mirrors and latches of the truck, barely noticing the soldiers in the truck bed. He seemed to have no expectations that the new grunts would have any value in providing security, even with live ammunition in their rifle magazines. Instead, riding shotgun for the driver and the recruits was a seasoned E6 sergeant equipped in full combat gear, including helmet, flak jacket, and bandoliers of M16 ammunition slung over his shoulder. In his arms and holding with both hands in the ready position was an M-16 rifle in safety position. An M-40 cannon lay on the seat between him and the driver.
It was a trip this truck-driving duet had taken many times before. They knew their sole mission well. It was to get on the road on time and see that their human replacement cargo would get to their destination safely and without the distraction of an enemy encounter along the way.
The driver started the noisy, growling engine and scratched the olive-drab diesel truck into low gear. Clouds of black smoke belched out of its two large front exhaust pipes, covering the soldiers with billows of diesel exhaust. The truck lurched forward and on to the paved street of Bien Hoa. It seemed obvious to the grunts[5] riding in the truck bed that the driver was in a hurry.
The truck driver knew something that the grunts did not know—but they now began to sense his urgency. The trip needed to be completed by sundown. He knew the ride would be bumpy and fast. Ruts and curves in the road be dammed! Time was evaporating!
It was only a matter of minutes before the truck passed through the perimeter gate, and then the gate of Bien Hoa closed behind them. Now they were on the outside of the base perimeter. They had spent several days looking at this perimeter fence from the inside, within its relative security. It was the first time since landing in Vietnam that they held no defensive positions between them and the enemy.
They passed the fifteen-foot-high square guard towers where multiple M-60 machine guns menacingly pointed out into no-man’s land. The stacks of razor-sharp concertino wire caught flashes of the reflected setting sunlight as the base faded into the distance. Fading from their sight were the guard towers, the well-worn paths on the inside of the perimeter fence they had patrolled for many days and nights, and the six-inch high, convex Claymore mines. A dream-like surrealism took hold as the Vietnamese countryside enveloped them.
Instinctively, there was a sense that the enemy could be—and probably was—anywhere and everywhere around them. They were in the territory of the Vietcong and the NVA.[6] The clumsy truck and its truckload of soldiers were lost in a cloud of dust as they sped toward the setting sun.
The narrow road wound through the Vietnam countryside, measuring only fifteen or twenty feet at its widest. The horizon in all directions was only broken by patches of nipa palm trees,[7] rice paddies, and a few hooches.[8]
They were on their way to an unknown place, a place with no name, a road to nowhere!
The miles piled up as they passed hundreds of small hooches, some with rusty tin roofs and others with roofs and sides of thatched, dried nipa palm leaves. As they raced past the hooches, they could catch fleeting glances of lamps and cooking fires through their open doorways.
The rice paddies on either side of the road were empty of anything that might resemble American farming equipment. Occasionally they would pass a local, aging farmer guiding a single- or a double-yoked water buffalo toward home, which would be surrounded by small flocks of chickens and geese looking for food and security near its open door.
The road was busy with local villagers walking or riding their mopeds stacked high with boxes and bags, traveling home from markets in nearby villages. The Vietnamese walking on the side of the road were mostly women. They wore white silk-like surplices over black, flimsy trousers. Stretched over their shoulders were four-inch-wide and six-foot-long yokes without any cut-outs for their necks. The bamboo yokes extended a couple of feet beyond their shoulders. The yokes seemed alive, dancing as they flexed and up and down in tempo with their carriers’ fast, short, measured steps. Even without the heavy weight of the near-empty sacks, the pliable shoulder yokes moved up and down in a subdivided rhythm.
Sometimes a soldier would make a comment, yelling over the noise of the truck, about the smell of the countryside or a derisive comment about one of the locals on the road. It was an effort to break the tension, but it only served as a distraction to mask the soldier’s own fears.
Otherwise, a stoney silence settled among the soldiers. No one wanted to expose the fear written on their faces by talking. Their silence belied the anxiety they were all feeling. Perhaps it was their unbelief of finding themselves in such a foreign, other-worldly, dangerous landscape. Perhaps they were thinking that their drill sergeant’s warnings might contain some element of truth for them after all. Maybe it was simply that no one wanted to talk over the noisy diesel engine.
In the waning daylight the soldiers could see countless squares and rectangular-patterned rice paddies and interspersed among them were clumps of nipa palm groves.
The troops’ attention now returned to the fast-moving truck, dodging ruts and potholes, pedestrians, mopeds and bicycles. The driver seemed acutely aware of how many more minutes it would take to reach the firebase before dark. He repeatedly glanced at the setting sun. His nervous, calculated glances confirmed to him that darkness was minutes, not hours away. He wanted to avoid a night encounter with the enemy at all costs.
The hurrying driver’s mission was to get his cargo of newly minted soldier replacements to their destination without an enemy encounter, so he seemed not to notice the busy pedestrians traveling along the narrow road. For most of the trip, the road was not wide enough for two trucks to meet. When two vehicles did meet, one would have to find a place to slow down or stop and pull to the side of the road to let the other pass. There was no large local truck traffic on the road, only mopeds, some stacked high with boxes, as well as fast-stepping pedestrians and bike riders.
The truck driver had obviously driven this road many times before. He was quick to swerve out of the way of potholes and oncoming traffic, only slowing down or speeding up as the road and congestion allowed. But there were other reasons, less obvious to his human cargo, why this driver seemed like a crazy man.
Anyone on any road in the South Vietnamese delta in the dark was an open invitation to serious trouble. The driver was keenly aware of the approaching darkness, as it exponentially increased the likelihood of becoming a “sitting duck” for an enemy mortar or a Viet Cong ambush. Any slowing or stopping of any vehicle on any public Vietnamese road at night would be an easy target for an enemy, especially a truck carrying a load of American troops. Nobody wanted to be on any public Vietnamese road after the setting of the sun.
The truck driver flattened the accelerator to an even faster speed, dodging potholes and avoiding the scurrying locals returning from the market to their dirt-floor, thatched homes. In the early morning of that day, they had walked in the opposite direction, anxious to get their produce of vegetables and grains, live ducks and chickens to the market.
The traffic on the road seemed to increase, but now the truck was moving with the pedestrian flow. These locals were heading home from their day at the markets. The grunts guessed they were coming close to a small village. With the setting sun, it was becoming obvious to them that this road to nowhere might soon deposit them somewhere on a countryside surrounded by rice paddies, hooches, and nipa palm trees.
Soon the sun escaped over the horizon. The waning light caught the grunts’ attention. Apprehension heightened. The shadows and outlines of nipa groves and hooches were quickly losing their definition. Soon it would be totally dark.
The driver pressed the clumsy truck to an even faster pace. His almost reckless driving validated the soldiers’ awareness that total darkness was only minutes away. Their attention sharpened. Nobody spoke. Would they make it to their base soon?
Suddenly, with shock and surprise, the soldiers heard two muffled explosions, followed seconds later by two poofs of sound two hundred feet in the air above them. The sky exploded with light. All eyes were now on the white-light flares, illuminating a large area around them and reflecting off the silvery, shiny razor-wire perimeter of a nearby firebase, much like the sunlight that had reflected off the razor wire of the Bien Hoa base two hours earlier. They were coming to a firebase.[9]
The nearby firebase mortar platoon had fired off two precautionary flares, lighting up the area like daylight. Pulsating surges of light cast long shadows that seemed to dance in the darkness as the flares lost altitude and drifted to the earth. The mortars left trails of white smoke on their downward trajectory. Within minutes, the area surrounding the Deuce-and-a-Half and the firebase was again cloaked in near darkness.
Cautiously, short conversations started among the troops. They realized they had made it safely to a firebase next to a small village. Their spirits lightened. Relief spread across their faces. Their two-hour jostling, bruising journey was finally coming to an end.
The truck began to slow. Perhaps this ride on a road to nowhere was ending somewhere! The driver let up again on the accelerator and began a left turn into the hooch-like firebase. The soldiers in the truck were now standing, attempting to understand what was happening. On the left was a guard tower, standing like a twelve-foot ghostly centurion in the shadowed darkness. The lower four or five feet of the tower was stacked with sandbags that supported a wooden structure with a metal roof. Machine-gun muzzles poked out in three directions from the lookout.
The sweep of the truck’s headlights illuminated a hooch to the right front. It was a thatched home that seemingly at one time belonged to the village but had been commandeered by the army as part of the firebase. The headlights then exposed an abandoned rice paddy that neglect had reverted into a swamp. Rows of raised wooden planks over the swamp led to a doorless outhouse hanging over the swamp.
On the left and immediately next to the guard tower was an orderly room with a sign in the front. On the opposite side of the road was a twelve-foot-high and thirty-foot-long structure, stacked high with dirt-filled ammunition boxes. Covering this bunker was a metal corrugated roof.
The engine purred as the truck moved slowly down the single road through the firebase. The truck and its grunts passed Bravo Company on the right and Alpha Company on the left. It stopped midway down the road in front of a sign declaring, Headquarters, 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division. Next to the headquarters company was a tiny chapel and across from it was a mess hall and a small open area with a stage to one side. It seemed so out of place to have a stage in such a remote place—and for what reason, they wondered.
There was no welcome sign. Still, relief spread across the riders’ faces. Relief from being jostled around by the big Deuce-and-a-Half truck, and relief that they were now in a more secure place than they had been for the last two hours.
The driver turned off the engine, leaving a ringing in the soldiers’ ears. For a moment the grunts stood in stoney silence on the bed of the truck. This was it! Nowhere was here! Slowly they began to jump from the high bed of the Deuce-and-a-Half. The soft thuds of their combat boots hitting the ground created small puffs of dust that evaporated into the darkness.
The sound of their boots hitting the ground seemed to stomp them into reality. No more wishful thinking. No more hoping for some good fortune of being assigned as a chaplain’s assistant, a supply clerk, a cook, or any one of seven or eight jobs at any Vietnam firebase needing to support a single grunt. No, they were going to be grunts. This was to be their home, their fate, their basecamp for the next 365 days—if they could survive that long.
Now the pieces of the puzzle were coming together in murky comprehension. The smatterings of talk during their infantry training came alive and coursed through their thoughts. They were about to experience what they had been told about grunt life in the boonies of Vietnam.
For the next year their lives would be C-rations, P-38s, guard towers, search-and-destroy missions, heat, bugs, rats, rice paddies, mud, bloodsuckers, cold showers, burning shit, gunships, hueys, monsoons, fire fights, fatigue, anger, blood, crass humor, carrying sixty pounds of gear, cursing, newbies, short-timers, praying, pacifications, M-16s, sweat, ambushes, chains of command, staying alive, and dreaming of freedom birds.[10]
Now, the real countdown for their days in Vietnam would begin—if they would be gifted with all of them.
The drill sergeant’s cautionary tale continued to live as an echo chamber in their heads: Listen up, you meatheads! If you don’t do what I tell you, you’re gonna die in Vietnam!
Contributors:
Cathy Te Slaa, proofreader
Josephine Moore, editor
Footnotes:
[1] Claymore mines were curved, forward-facing mines filled with steel ball bearings packed in front of a C4 explosive charge, which was detonated by a wire from a position to the rear of the mine.
[2] Sappers were Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Army combatants who carried explosive satchels with the intent to blast holes in the perimeter and thereby gain access to the fire base or kill the perimeter guard.
[3] DEROS. Date Employee Return from Overseas
[4] Deuce-and-a-Half was the workhorse of the American supply chain in Vietnam. These large, ten-wheeled trucks carried troops and supplies whenever there were roads and acceptable levels of safety.
[5] “Grunt” is a somewhat derogatory term, used to describe a foot soldier.
[6] The NVA was the North Vietnamese Army.
[7] Nipa palm trees could be bush like or grow to twenty-foot-high trees, the leaves having a fern-like appearance.
[8] Dwellings covered with nipa palm leaves or corrugated steel roofs, many with no visible front door or windows.
[9] A firebase was the center of operations for a battalion of soldiers. A battalion in Vietnam was typically 800 to 1000 soldiers.
[10] A reference to the airplane that would take them back to America.