The Soldiers' Story - Vietnam In Their Own Words

The Soldiers' StoryVietnam in Their Own WordsBy Ron SteinmanTV BooksCopyright © 1999 Ron Steinman. All rights reserved.ISBN: 1-57500-102-0Chapter OneClinton PoleyAssistant Machine Gunner2nd Platoon, Charlie Company1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry1st Air Cavalry Division(Airmobile) Clinton Poley and his platoonare aboard a flight of assault helicoptersin pursuit of what everyonethinks are the retreating NorthVietnamese troops. In a classicaltactic, the choppers set down inLanding Zone X-Ray. To their surprise,Poley and his men land in the middle of the North Vietnameseregulars, who turn and fight their pursuers. The 7thCavalry soldiers quickly discover they are in a dangerous and veryhot landing zone. During the heavy fighting, Poley suffers seriouswounds on 70 percent of his body. We landed in grass about five feet tall. We didn't know where therest of our guys were. They sent one guy over from our company tolead us to the rest of the company, and I remember he was complainingbecause he had a hole in the top of his canteen where a bullethad gone through and his water had all leaked away, and he waswearing the canteen on his hip when it happened. We had a guy thatwas only there six days, our first replacement. He was our ammobearer for the machine gunner. He never made it to our position,and he got killed. We hadn't a whole lot of combat so you were kind of lulled intothinking that maybe you'd get this tour in, nothing big would happen.There was a lot of ways to die. We had two guys got killed in a helicoptercrash, and one drowned, and one of our guys got shot by one ofour men out on the perimeter. They showed us where the rest of the guys were from our platoonand spaced us out and had us start digging a foxhole, but you could hearthe bullets cracking around you. The area that I was in, we never firedour rifles that afternoon, that is, me and the machine gunner. The next morning when they really hit my company, it was just gettingbarely daylight. They sent a patrol of our guys to look for infiltratorsor something. They were only out there for a few minutes, and oneguy came running back and he said, "They're coming. They're coming."And somebody over a foxhole away said, "Who's coming?" Youknow, like who would you think? We couldn't even see the foxholes.We couldn't even see the rest of our guys. We all opened up firing, andthe machine gunner was pretty much prone, and I was on my knees ina foxhole. I had hooked hundred-round belts of ammunition togetherfor him, and he was firing them up pretty fast. So I really didn't get touse my rifle much. Well, in doing that, then that's when I first gotwounded in the neck. All of a sudden something hit me in the back ofthe head and, real hard, knocked my head forward so that my steel helmetfell off in the foxhole, and I quick turned around because I thoughtthere was a guy had snuck up behind me and hit me with the butt ofhis rifle. Wasn't nobody there. So then I took my hand and felt, and my finger was all bloody, andit felt like it went in a round hole. I was still conscious so I took mybandage thing and put it over there and went back to help. We onlyhad one grenade each going in there. And pretty soon I heard a NorthVietnamese speaking or Vietnamese speaking, and I was going up onmy knees to try and see above the grass, you know, real quick, and thendown and off to our right a little bit was four NVA. I could see the pithhelmets, and I don't think they seen me. The front guy was kind ofturning around like, barking out instructions, and they were spread outabout three yards apart. On top of this ant hill that was supposed to be where the platoonleader and everybody was, there was this NVA looking right down onus. And I threw the only grenade that I had, and it went just where Iwanted it to, right over his head. I don't know if it was the same guy orone that looked like him popped right back up after it went off. But hepicked up one of his grenades and threw it right back at us. It was likethese broomstick, Chinese grenades. It landed about eighteen inchesfrom my shoulder. I could see the fuse smoking. And I thought, youknow maybe the guy counted too fast, that he was nervous, and I couldquick throw it away before it blew up in our faces, and I was going toreach for it and the machine gunner said, "Get down." And for somereason I did. When that thing went off, there's a lot of dust and smokeand neither one of us got any shrapnel. The machine gun had also been jamming, giving problems, and thewhole bottom of the foxhole was full of spent casings. And when thatdust and smoke kicked up, neither one of us said anything. We justupped at once and got out of there, and I got a ways from the foxhole,and that's when I got hit in the chest. It felt like a cow kicked me. Justthat little bullet. You can't believe the impact of it. And it twisted meso sideways that I tripped up over my own legs and fell down. The treeswere nothing you could hide behind. So I got back up and went a fewmore steps, and that's when I got hit in the hip. I came to part of a mortarplatoon, and then the platoon leader had two guys take me to thebattalion command post. I was laying there not knowing what, what the wound to my leg hereamounted to. I was already thinking, well, if they had to take that leg,could I still farm? And we have an old tractor that had a hand clutch, soI was thinking, that, possibly with a tractor like that I could get aroundokay and get the work done. So it was kind of funny. Kind of selfishthought, I guess, laying there, thinking that. The strange part that I don'tunderstand is, you'd think a day like that would be the longest day inyour life, and every time I think through, it's like I can't figure out howthe day went that fast. It just seemed like you know, ten o'clock in themorning, we was going to leave for that place, and the next thing it wasgetting dark. After being wounded I was kind of numb or something andit wasn't terribly painful for me ... probably mostly the one in the hip. In the morning they just threw us in the helicopter. I carried my ownIV bottle, while four guys carried me. They put me and the other guyson a stretcher. I remember one strange feeling was they just took an awfullysharp scissors or something and started right down there at theboot strings and cut everything all the way up. And they started givingme a transfusion. And it was already cool in the morning there, and Isuppose the blood was cold and I was pretty much shivering on the trip. In the hospital they was giving me shots, you know, for pain everyfour hours. After about three hours, they would come to take your temperatureand wake you up, and then you had to wait another hour toget another pain shot. When they were going to operate on me, theytook me right in. And then the electricity went off, and so they had towait until they could get their generator started. I was so lucky. I wasone of the last ones to go in there, and the next morning I was evacuatedalready. I didn't have to pick up body parts, you know. When the one hit me in the head, I thought I'd seen a mentalpicture, when my head was down there, of me laying in the casket withthe green uniform on, and the funny thing was I had the cap on in thecasket, which you wouldn't have. I just knew that I was going homeand I guess it's kind of like the two extremes. You're feeling as happyas you ever felt because you survived, but you're feeling as bad as youever felt because you're never going to see these guys again. I didn'tget to help to pick up any bodies. I didn't get to help anybody. I becamesomebody that had to be helped. When I was laying there at theant hill waiting to be evacuated, that's when the napalm just missedit, and I felt a blast of heat from that, and a kid come running aroundthere screaming. It had apparently hit him, and his whole face was justlike an ugly Halloween mask. I may hear a beautiful song or a bird, or see some beautiful scenery,and I think of all the guys who aren't here to enjoy such things. Theynever owned a microwave oven. Never owned a calculator, nor seen aman walk on the moon. It's not so much what we went through as it isknowing what the other guys went through. They died dirty. No bathor shower in two months. They died cold or hot. Hungry and exhausted.Some died trying to keep their intestines inside their bodies.They died thinking that their loved ones would never know how theydied. They died among ants, scorpions, and snakes. They hadn't laid ona mattress or soft bed for two or three months. They died after twomonths of not hearing American music. They died without havinganything cold to drink in over two months. The whole two months I was there, I had one shower. When wereally had it good in base camp, we got to sleep in our pup tents,which leaked, which had ants in them. One night I just about laid myhead on a scorpion. So it was pretty primitive when we was there. Nobunkers. No buildings. Couldn't have a light at night to write a letter,when we did have time.Jack SmithPrivate First ClassCharlie Company2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry1st Air Cavalry Division(Airmobile) I flunked out of college and then Iwas thrown out of the house. I thoughtI needed a two-year vacation from thereal world. My draft board told me thatbefore I could work my way back tocollege, I would be drafted. So why notvolunteer for the army? I thought that was a good idea. I was a bit lost,like a lot of kids my age. I was nineteen years old. I wasn't ready for collegelife yet, and I needed a little adventure in my life. I needed to getaway for a while and grow up. A lot of kids find themselves in that position.And in 1964, joining the army seemed like a pretty good idea.The war hadn't heated up yet. People didn't associate joining the armywith going to Vietnam and fighting. There really wasn't much fightingin Vietnam. It wasn't a hot issue. This was at a time when everybody,basically, joined the army. It was a common thing to do. People gotdrafted. It was a place where a lot of young men went to grow up beforereally going into life, going back to college and so forth. I signed up for the Special Forces because I had a romantic notionabout the army and war and that sort of thing. I wanted to have an adventurefor a few years. Through various twists and turns, and the militarybureaucracy, I ended up in the infantry. We spent most of our timecleaning our rifles, going on war maneuvers, war games, getting into trouble,very boring barracks duty. Then all of a sudden, one day we were toldthat all the short-timers were going to be let out of the army. People whohad longer time to serve would be merged with an experimental unitcalled the 11th Air Assault. We knew that they were experimenting withhelicopters. We were given M-16s. We were given helicopter training.Then one day in July we listened to Lyndon Johnson give a speech whenhe announced that he was sending us, the 1st Cavalry Division over toVietnam and that he was, in effect, declaring war on North Vietnamwithout really declaring war on North Vietnam. That's when it hit usthat we were going into combat. You've got to understand, we were eighteen,nineteen, twenty years old. Very young. There hadn't been any Vietnamcoverage on television. There hadn't been a war since Korea. Noneof us had a clue what war was about, even among the non-commissionedofficers, the sergeants in my company. Only two or three of them had anycombat experience. None of the officers did. We were green, green,green—which is one of the reasons why we got into trouble. We came over on a troop ship. The night before we hit land, wepassed through the Seventh Fleet at about four in the morning. Wewere all standing on deck with all our combat gear on ready for a combatassault on the beaches of Qui Nhon. We saw all around us theshapes of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers. And as the dawn broken,we saw wave after wave of aircraft taking off, going over our headsand going inland. In the darkness that still hovered over the hills thatwe could see in front of us, we saw bomb bursts. We heard the thud ofbombs and artillery shells. Then we saw waves and waves of helicoptersflying over our heads from the aircraft carriers, carrying morebombs and rockets. Then, in the dawn, we saw the beach in front of usand we said, "My God ... this is war." We landed on a beach, in full gear, into the surf, jumping off theships. And we found a bunch of half-naked children, sucking theirthumbs, dragging their dolls in the sand and looking at us. We were puton board helicopters or trucks and we were taken down Route 19 intothe Central Highlands to An Khe, our base camp. We began with machetesand bayonets and pocket knives to carve out a base camp, choppingdown all the shrubbery. Once, just before Ia Drang, we went out on an operation. We wereherded into two-and-a-half-ton trucks. As we were driving along theroad, here came a convoy of trucks going in the opposite direction.They were carrying boxes of body bags. Crates of body bags. Ibrought this to the attention of a couple of guys standing next to meand we stared at the trucks passing by. We were going out, and thebody bags were coming in, and they were for us. Nobody said a word.We all just stood in the back of the truck, rattling down the road,staring at the body bags. That was a really chill feeling. That's whatcombat is all about. We had been walking through the jungle, looking for VC whowere never there. Not finding anything. For two months. A couple ofoperations where we turned up a couple of booby traps and a pig anda few things like that. That's all. No real fighting. We had fewercombat-seasoned NCOs. We had more goof-offs as privates. Weweren't as well-trained—that we were sort of a parade ground outfit,a bit of a sham. That was the real feeling the men had of the battalion.I don't know how really justified it was, but that was the feelingwe had. I think we were prepared as any unit's going to get preparedfor combat. Nothing prepares you for combat. The best way to preparea company for combat is to line the company up against a walland fire a machine gun at them for about ten seconds. And tell thesurvivors, "You're now combat-trained." That's not pleasant, butthat's what combat's like. We walked in and we got into Landing Zone X-Ray on the third dayof the battle there. It was just about over. We were goggle eyes at whatwe saw. I had never seen men as filthy as that. They didn't seem to bewearing clothing. Their clothing was so covered with dirt, they lookedlike they were part of the dirt because they had been living in the dirt,living in foxholes for three days. They all had these thousand-eye starethat people talk about. The stare of someone who is nineteen years oldbut going on fifty, who has seen combat and been killing people andseen his friends killed under continuous bombardment, artillery andnapalm, day in, day out. Stacks of dead bodies, stacks of wounded,equipment around the landing zone. And the one thing that sticks inmy mind, there were bullets whizzing over the landing zone, humminglike bees. The only person standing was this colonel. He was standingin the middle of the landing zone directing traffic like a cop. We werecrouched down. It was Hal Moore. That was the first guy I saw in thelanding zone. Made a very vivid impression on me. I didn't know enough to be scared. The thing about a bullet is, youcan't see them. All you can do is hear them. And until you connect thesound of a bullet with someone dying, you don't have enough sense toduck. That's actually what kills most people in the early stages of combat.They hear a shot, they stick their head up, and they get killed.Even though there were some minor attacks that day and probes, wereally thought it was a bit of a game. Until you've actually shot somebodyor been shot yourself, it doesn't really sink in. It was beginning tosink in. When I heard those bullets coming at me, I knew this was realcombat. I knew those bullets could kill me. I kept my head down. Isaid, "Oh, my God. This is real." When the company commander saidwe were supposed to sit for the night, I dug a foxhole as deep as I could.The ground was as hard as gravel, so you could only dig it about sixinches to a foot. Just kept my head down and hoped for the best. The next day we walked to Landing Zone Albany for what wethought was extraction, being lifted out by helicopter. We were out fora Sunday stroll in the woods. We were strolling along, and we were a littleapprehensive because we knew there had been this huge battle. We'dseen the bodies. Leaving the landing zone, you walk on bodies a hundredfeet outside the dry creek bed and the foxholes. We knew therewere a lot of enemy units around and some of us were a little apprehensiveabout walking in such a casual fashion. But we did, and a numberof us remarked out it. "Shouldn't we have guards out?" And, "There areprobably bad guys around here. I hope we don't get ambushed. I hopethey (meaning our commanding officers) know what they are doing." Inretrospect, knowing what I know now, our walk was a big mistake. A couple of hours maybe to Landing Zone Albany, we were in anarea where the brush was denser elephant grass, chest-high, waist-high,razor grass. In scrub jungle, trees here and there, all around us.Not dense forest but very light forest. You could see the sky. The headof the column broke into the landing zone. A battalion of green troopsstumbling around in the jungle the day after the biggest battle of thewar against an entire North Vietnamese division, right next to themain infiltration route for them in their territory without any artilleryor air cover, is just nuts. Without spraying the trees, recon by fire,without having guards out on the side. It's crazy. I don't know why wewere walking through the jungle. I don't know why we were walkingthat way. It was clearly a mistake. We were green. It wasn't just theprivates who were green. Everybody was green. Our captains weregreen. Our lieutenants were green. Our battalion commanders weregreen. The whole division was green. And they showed it. We walkedright into a big time ambush. The troops arrived at Landing Zone Albany and waited whiletheir officers interrogated two captured North Vietnamese soldiers. We just dropped down on our packs on the ground and opened ourshirts and lit cigarettes and drank water. And we waited. And wewaited. We had no leaders. No more than fifty yards away from an entireNorth Vietnamese battalion were setting up their ambush quietlybehind ant hills. They were tying themselves up in trees while we weresitting there smoking. Our company commanders were having a conferenceup at the front. Suddenly the North Vietnamese ambush the unprotected, unsuspectingtroops. I was in a half crouch saying what is this firing that's going on allaround me. I turned to the lieutenant next to me—enlisted men alwaysmake fun of officers in the barracks but when it comes to combat youalways look to the officer for guidance because enlisted men becomeparalyzed. They fire the guns but they have to be told what to do. Thefirst two platoons of my company just fell down like you take a scytheand cut grass. No noise. Just the rattle of machine guns. These guyswere twenty feet away, popping up behind ant hills, spraying us. Dozensand dozens of men with machine guns and submachine guns suddenlypopped out of the ground and started spraying us. We were running towardthem and I fell on the grass and began to bandage my friends up.The only time I fired my rifle, I was so confused. In combat time stops.You have no idea what you're doing. I looked up in the grass and I sawright in front of my face and right above our heads the muzzle of a machinegun firing through the elephant grass. The firing was so loud Ihadn't noticed it. I took my rifle, put it on full automatic, and stuck itthrough the elephant grass to where I thought the gunner's head wouldbe, and squeezed the trigger and put a magazine into this guy's head andblew his head off. After the battle I was told that right by there was aguy with no head. Probably a nineteen-year-old draftee from the HanoiHaiphong triangle. A city kid. Probably somebody just like me. I musthave been about the only man in the first two platoons who wasn'tdead or wounded in the first five minutes. It was the luck of the draw. There was an older guy who had been in World War II, in Korea.He was dying from a chest wound, lying on his back and I was comfortinghim and bandaging him up. I heard North Vietnamese coming.I pretended to lie dead. They swept into our clearing on the crouch, asquad of them, maybe five or six guys. They had several light machineguns with them. They saw us. They jumped down right on top of usand used us as sandbags as they set up their machine guns and theystarted to fire their machine guns. I had a guy lying on top of me. Weall played dead. I was covered with so much blood, my friend's blood,that I looked wounded or dead. I just lay still. And I willed myself tostop breathing and not to move. But I could not control myself fromshaking. I was so frightened I couldn't stop it. The only thing thatsaved me was the fact that the guy lying on top of me was shakingeven more than I was. Combat is terrifying so he didn't notice that Iwas shaking, too, and that I was alive. The hot shell casings weregoing down inside my shirt and burning me. My friends were firinggrenades at these guys. I was on the verge of going insane from fear. Isaid to myself, if I stand up and say, "Guys, don't shoot," the NorthVietnamese will kill me. If I lie here, my guys will hit me. No soonerhad I thought that, than I felt these huge explosions all around me,and a barrage of rifle grenades landed right in our clearing. One killedthe sergeant whose shoulder I was sitting on. And the other grenadelanded on top of the guy on top of me and blew him to bits andwounded me on my left side. I was the only person left alive in thatlittle clearing among the Vietnamese and Americans. I bandaged myself,crawled through the grass to where the mortar platoon had been.By then they were just a pile of very badly wounded men. That's whereI stayed the rest of the afternoon and night. Later they started to mortar us. A mortar went off behind me, almostbetween my legs and got me in the right leg. I actually severed a veinand I had to put a tourniquet on my right leg. It was dusk. I was in ahaze of pain and shock but I was alive. I remember pinching myself andsaying, "I am alive." The men around me were just groaning. Moaning,semi-conscious. I was sort of semi-conscious. I was saying to myself,"My God, I'm alive." To celebrate that, I wanted a cigarette. I pulledout a cigarette and both ends were bloody so I tore them off. I said,"You know, they'll see the smoke and kill me." I said, "I don't give adamn. I want a cigarette," so I lit the damn thing and I sat there andtook two or three drags and it felt heavenly. I can't explain why onedoes crazy things. I was very lucky. I heard the Skyraiders coming over the trees and I said, "Oh God,don't drop bombs or napalm on us, please. We're too mixed up, theNorth Vietnamese and Americans. You'll kill Americans." I saw stuff,big stuff coming down through the trees and I went, "Oh, no." Then infront of me there were a whole bunch of explosions and then there wasa blast of heat like you open an oven door and the grass on top of mecurled over from the heat. I heard people screaming and I heard themhollering in English, not just Vietnamese. Some of it got some Americansand it was right next to my position. That's really frightening. Napalmis really, really scary. It's a very effective weapon, though. They were going through the elephant grass in the afternoon and atnight killing the wounded. You would hear them walking through thegrass talking Vietnamese. Then you would hear a lot of loud talkingand then you would hear a GI's voice, "No, no. Don't shoot me." Thenyou would hear bang, bang, bang. They were going around killing thewounded systematically. The wounded mortar platoon leader calls artillery in on their position,eventually causing the North Vietnamese troops to retreat. That's what kept us all alive. Otherwise we all would have beenkilled. I think I passed out for a while. When I woke up it was gettingto be daylight. The ground was littered with smashed equipment.Everything had been ripped and torn by bullets. The elephant grasswas pressed down, squashed, cut down by bullets and fragments. Thegrass and ground were literally covered with blood. Everywhere youput your hand was sticky with blood and the place smelled of gunpowder,blood, and urine. There were North Vietnamese snipers hangingout of the trees, dead on ropes. They'd tied themselves up. In frontof me was a dead man staring up at the sky. He had dirt on his eyeballs,and one of his legs was gone. There were body parts lying allaround me. The dead were stacked on top of each other, sometimeswith their hands around each other's throats. It looked like the devil'sbutcher shop. I've never seen anything like that in my life, and I hopeI never, never ever do again. When they came to get us out, our guys were walking toward usand I had a radio by then. I heard this burst of fire and I said, "Don'tshoot, don't shoot." They said over the radio, "We're killing NorthVietnamese wounded." And I said, "Don't kill the wounded, please.Don't kill the wounded." I didn't want any more killing. They said,"No, they did it to us. They hurt us. We're going to hurt them back."So the people who came to rescue me as they walked through thewoods were killing the North Vietnamese wounded. That was in theheat of battle, I would maintain. I would maintain that what theNorth Vietnamese did to us was systematic. But at the time it didn'tseem like much of a distinction. I was angry at anybody who had anything to do with that battle.All my friends died there. I was even angry at the state of beinghuman that the weakness of the flesh would succumb to shrapnel andbullets. I said, "How weak and flimsy we are that we all get killed likethat." I became very cynical. Not only angry. But I became misanthropic.One day I woke up a few years later and I saw life as it reallyis. Life is pretty good. The world is a pretty good, warm place. Peoplemake mistakes. It happens in other wars. There's nothing I can doabout it. Bearing grudges about it doesn't do anybody any good. Itstruck me that what was remarkable about that experience was notthe feebleness of the human beings involved but the magnificentstrength that in spite of bullets and shrapnel and things like that,human beings can endure and do endure. No matter what people go into war thinking they're fighting for, ultimatelywhen you get into combat you fight for completely differentreasons. You fight in order to protect your buddies. That's why youform intense relationships in an atmosphere of death and self-preservation.When you're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old,you've really emotionally separated yourself from your parents. Youhaven't yet acquired adult friends, an adult job, an adult milieu inwhich you move. You are betwixt and between. And so the friendshipsthat you form, especially in combat, in the army, are very, very intense.That was the toughest thing I had to deal with after the war.These men, I really loved them, and they all got killed. Time heals.But I still remember them. I still go back to the Wall and I say a prayerfor them every one in a while. I still mourn them. We all found it very hard to accept the pain and suffering that wewent through when we ended up losing the war. What, then, in God'sname, was the point of what we'd been doing in that landing zone? Whatin God's name was the point of the suffering that we went through? Itwas for nothing. If we didn't win the war, and if maybe we shouldn't havebeen there, then how do you justify the suffering, the loss of friends. Youcan't. And that's what makes it tough for Vietnam veterans.Earnie Savage2nd Platoon, Bravo Company1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry1st Air Cavalry Division(Airmobile} Earnie Savage was the fourth manto take command of his platoon in theIa Drang Valley battle after he and hismen landed at LZ X-Ray under heavyenemy fire. In the fierce combat, Savageand his platoon become separatedfrom the main body of Bravo Company.They are the "Lost Platoon." From the firepower coming down the hill, from the north, stuffthat was going on, that was a good-sized unit we were in contact with.We knew that. There was a lot of things going all around us. Therewas the grenades going off. There was mortars going off. Dust everywhere.Hard to see or get any perception of what was going on aroundwhere we are, let alone thirty, forty meters out to the front. There's alot of noise going on. It's not as if we're strolling down the street.There are people getting shot at all around you. So I took the thirdsquad and flanked around to the right and hit the advancing enemycolumn. They're trying to maneuver on the squad. They didn't seemy squad. They flanked around the bottom side of the hill, and itwasn't that easy to see. The brush was fairly high. And we hit themon the flank and started firing on them before they realized we werethere, and we cut those guys down. I looked around and moved a few guys to strengthen up what Ithought was the weak points. I begin to fire just like everybody elsedid. What was going through my mind was probably kill as many ofthem as I could at the time. We were fighting for our lives. That's basicallywhat was going through everybody's mind. I know I don't think there was anyone up on that hill that can saythey don't know they killed someone, because they were there. Theywere right in your