Silent Night - Part Two

30 January 1970: Another gray day. A Chinook helicopter (also known as a “flying boxcar” or “shit-hook”) ferried our Company to Ðai Lôc and the other Company to Stinson. Even though “C” Company had been there for about a week, little defensive construction had taken place. Perhaps they’d been too busy shooting chickens.

We were all on edge. Tet was not far off now. Given the likelihood of an attack by the VC or NVA around that time, we felt pressure to get bunkers built and wire strung.

We set to work almost immediately. The Company was placed around the perimeter of the village, except for one section on the north side. This area was defended by local forces.

Aside from the ARVN, there were two other types of military units operating in the countryside: Regional Forces (RF) and Popular Forces (PF). We joined the acronyms (RF/PF) and referred to them collectively as “Rough Puffs”. The name tells you what we thought of their usefulness as a military force.

The RF/PF’s guarding part of the perimeter at Ðai Lôc were fairly typical. They often acted like they were on a group outing. Laughing and cooking, eating and sleeping – they seemed less a military unit, than a group of Boy Scouts, earning Merit Badges in woodcraft and camping. At night, they built huge fires and sat close, warming themselves, smoking cigarettes and chatting.

We, of course, were hunkered down in the darkness. If we wanted a cigarette, it was lit in a foxhole and cupped in your hands while smoking. The red glow of a cigarette is visible from quite a distance at night. The RF/PF’s did not share our concerns.

When we were assigned positions on the perimeter, I drew a new guy as my “roommate”. Charles Cue had only been in-country about two weeks and had just joined us on LZ Stinson. We set to work digging a hole for a bunker in which we could both sleep and fight. The work was slow and difficult. The earth had joined the Viet Cong in fighting us. We stopped digging when the excavation was 20 or 24 inches deep and somewhat larger than a queen-sized bed. The width was governed by some building material we’d salvaged: railroad ties.

Earlier that day, a small group of us had gone over to the old French railroad line, about ¾ of a kilometer away (a little less than half a mile). The rails had long since been scavenged, but the ties were still mostly in place. Since wood, even saturated in creosote, would not last long in the tropics, the ties were made of heavy gauge steel. The ends flared out, giving them a bit of a dog bone shape. We pulled several of them out of the ground, taking turns digging and keeping guard.

Hauling them back across the fields was the next challenge. Once we got them lifted up, they could be carried by two men. Getting them up, though, took several of us. Sweat filled our eyes, ran down our backs, soaked our olive drab tee shirts. Taking turns carrying these beasts, we were very exposed. It’s a wonder we weren’t shot. We weren’t though. Not then, anyway.

Returning finally to the Company, we dragged and heaved, and eventually got six or seven of the steel ties set across the narrow dimension of our hole. Because of their shape, there were gaps between them, which Cue and I filled with green bamboo poles. On top of this, we placed two or three layers of sandbags. The whole thing presented a very low profile, which was part of the point, of course. It was just high enough inside to sit up (with a helmet on). The hole extended towards the wire a couple of feet beyond the roof, and the rear was covered with a rain poncho. Two hard days of work, but we felt safer. In so far as you could feel safe out in the countryside, exposed to probable attack and potential death.

Late in the day, the Platoon Sergeant had come around and assigned guard shifts. Every other bunker would be on guard from dark until around midnight, after which the other bunkers would take over. We drew the first shift.

There was no moon. Neither was there rain nor wind, which was a blessing. The night was very still and the watch passed quietly.

1 February 1970: We went to sleep a little after midnight, insulated from the ground by Army-issue air mattresses. As was my habit, my feet were facing the perimeter when I went to sleep, and my helmet and weapon were always in exactly the same place. In that way, I could put my hands on them without having to think about it, and I’d already be facing outward.

Around 1 a.m. the moonless night was split apart. We awoke to explosions, flames, gunfire all around. Someone fired an RPG[1] into the village house right behind our bunker, and it burned madly. Shadows passed over the front of the bunker, Cue was in shock, and I could hear the sound of mortars firing from a tree line several hundred meters in front of us. They were not our mortars.

VC or NVA sappers[2] had cut the wire between our bunker and the one to the north of us. They entered the perimeter and ran about firing weapons and throwing satchel charges[3]. Noise and confusion filled the night. Death was reaching out for us.

I told Cue to watch at the back of the bunker and shoot anyone who wasn’t a GI, while I did the same at the front. There was no one to shoot at, though – at least, no one we could see. There were some concussion grenades in the bunker. I tossed two or three of them out the front in various directions.

On my stomach, I slid forward on the air mattress with my weapon, trying to fire a few rounds off. I was using an M-79 Grenade Launcher, not an ideal weapon in close conditions. Near the front opening, I raised my head a bit to see better. As I did so, I was aware of something landing on the ground eight or nine feet in front of me.

In the same instant that I saw it, without really seeing it, the hand grenade exploded. Disintegrating metal was blown into my face and neck. Recoiling from the shock of the wound and the force of the explosion, I slid backwards on the air mattress, legs angled up. Blood ran down over my face and shirt from several small wounds. The red bandanna around my neck became redder.

As I moved back in unconscious, physical reaction, a tremendous explosion slammed the roof of our bunker. It was deafening – jarring – terrifying. The force pushed me into the ground and held me there. For a brief moment, I thought my legs had been blown off. A satchel charge or mortar round had hit directly on top of us!

If Angels there be, they floated above us that night. Two chances to die, seconds apart, and we were spared. Others were not so fortunate.

Another minute or two – it could have been three or it could have been an hour - and I heard jets coming in from Chu Lai. A sweet sound, when you’re being battered by gunfire.

Our Platoon Sergeant came around, checking the bunkers. Cue came through physically unharmed. I was bleeding from lacerations to my face. The Sergeant thought I looked ok, and moved on to the next bunker. The Company medic came along shortly after that, making the rounds, assessing casualties. He looked at my face and told me I was going be dusted off[4] - sent back to the 27th Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai. I left my weapon with Cue and stumbled around the perimeter, walking towards the sound of a heavy motor, quickly idling.

As I came near, the helicopter was washed by the light of burning houses and flares. It hovered a foot or so above the ground. The scene was surreal – bizarre. I jumped in just before the medevac chopper took off, and was sitting in the doorway as we floated up. Rifle shots cut the air near the chopper. One of the Viet Cong was hiding on the side of the hill, in the center of the village. He stayed there into the early morning, hiding in the brush, carefully firing off a shot from time to time, until he was killed.

We rose up, disappearing into the darkness, headed for Chu Lai.

Ðai Lôc was a burning ember in the wide night of Viet Nam.

[1] Rocket-Propelled Grenade: a deadly weapon used by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
[2] Experts in the use of explosives
[3] An explosive charge the shape and size of a satchel
[4] Dusted off: taken by helicopter to an Army hospital

Away from the internet

Sorry about the long pause here. We were away for three weeks ... in Viet Nam and Lao. An amazing experience. My head is filled - reeling - with memories, observations, emotions. Several postings here will come from the trip, no doubt. Meanwhile (as someone just reminded me), "Silent Night - Part Two" never got put up here (due to the ever-increasing activity leading up to our departure).

In any case, "Part Two" follows this post.

Thanks for reading!

Music and War

I thought I'd put in a little note about the titles of blog posts having to do with my time in Viet Nam forty years ago. If you are a person of a certain age, the names may ring a bell. For others (persons of an uncertain age?), herewith a brief guide to the titles so far:

• "Momma Told Me Don't Come": I miswrote this. It's actually "Momma Told Me (Not To Come)". The song was very popular among soldiers in Viet Nam at the time I was there, for the obvious reason. The song was recorded by Three Dog Night and released on an album in March, 1970. It was written by Randy Newman.
• "Find the Cost of Freedom": Nothing miswritten here. This song was originally released on the two-record album, "Four Way Street", by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, in 1971. This classic LP included the songs "Suite Judy Blue Eyes", "Teach Your Children", "(Four Dead in) Ohio", "Southern Man" and "Chicago", among others. Part of the lyrics: "Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground / Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down / Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground / Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down".

Others will follow. I'll add a notes of explanation as I go along.

Thanks for reading.

"Momma told me don't come ... "

14 October 1969:

Sai Gon was hot and quiet. The air was tense - jarring voices and dank smells pushed and jabbed. I walked into the night, not wanting to think about what would come next.

It was very late and we were tired from flying so long. The rest of the night passed in fitful sleep, troubled by unclear dreams.

The next day, weak sun pushed through the clouds filling the Viet Nam sky. It quickly became hot. We were sent to an empty building, where we were sorted and divided, and assigned to various units. I was being sent to the Americal Division[1] in I (Eye) Corps, the northern-most section of South Viet Nam. We spent the rest of that day filling sand bags, and other vital military tasks.

The following morning found me and a couple of dozen others on a C-130, flying 600 miles north to Chu Lai, Americal Division headquarters. The big prop-driven plane dropped down quickly through the low clouds and landed on an airbase surrounded by ragged buildings, fuel storage tanks, and sand. To the east, as we cut through the clouds, the South China Sea glittered. It was a clean, open counterpoint to Chu Lai.

For the next two weeks, we were at the "Americal Combat Center", where we were given additional training in fighting a war amidst rice paddies, water buffalo and Vietnamese peasants. I was lucky. As a newly-minted Sergeant, I received two weeks of training (and reprieve). Lower ranking enlisted men were only there for one week before being sent out to a combat unit.

Innocent faces look out from fading photographs.
How soon, how radically, our lives would change.

Halloween, 1969:

No trick-or-treating, no party. Four or five of us were sent to join “B” Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Infantry[2], part of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade. The Company was out in the field, but they were returning the next day for stand down[3]. Halloween wasn’t much fun that year.

We were trucked over to the 1/52nd stand down area, where we waited for the Company to arrive. The day was cloudy and threatening rain. Monsoon season had arrived. In the late morning a couple of deuce-and-a-half trucks[4] pulled in.

Men spilled out. Loud, dirty, laughing, unwinding as they laughed, they lined up at a nearby shack to turn in their weapons. The first thing done when a Company came in for stand down was to lock up all the guns.

Looking at these wild, filthy men, I thought, “My god, these are the people I’m going to live with for the next year!” And, “Am I going to become like them?” How little I knew.

We tried to talk to these guys, introduce ourselves, but mostly they were interested in showers and cold beer. There was certainly little interest in spending valuable time talking with some newly-arrived “shake-and-bake” sergeant like me. They went off to take a shower and we were lead away to meet with the Company commander.

The next three days were an immersion course in the realities of the war (as opposed to things we’d been told back in the States, or the Combat Center, for that matter). It was also a quick lesson in the social structure, rules and mores of an infantry company.

One thing was pretty clear: we, just arrived, brand new fatigues, shiny boots, wide-eyed wonder, we were pretty much useless. “And figure it out quickly, without getting somebody killed.” Yeah.

The rain began in earnest as stand down ended. We were sent to guard a village that was part of the so-called “Pacified Village” program. The goal was to protect the Vietnamese peasants from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army by up-rooting them from their hamlets and villages, and collecting them in one place. American and South Vietnamese forces built bunkers and strung concertina wire, turning a cobbled-together village into a fortified point. The people were given some building materials (mostly corrugated steel panels for roofing), but otherwise were left pretty much to their own devices.

The village was the ages-old foundation of life in Viet Nam. Sixty years ago, 85% of the country’s population lived in the countryside. Twenty years later, many people had moved into the cities, primarily because of the wars afflicting Viet Nam, but the country was still overwhelmingly rural. Pacification, as it was also known, was very unpopular with the Vietnamese people. As a result, it probably drove a number of people to support the Viet Cong who might not have otherwise.

The village we were sent to protect was Ðai Lôc, in Quảng Ngãi Province. Vietnamese villages were spread out, generally consisting of several hamlets. If you looked at a map, you would see Ðai Lôc (1), Ðai Lôc (2), Ðai Lôc (3); each of them three or four kilometers apart. The families living in these hamlets had been gathered up and moved to a new location, not far from Ðai Lôc (3), that was thought (by the United States Army) to be more defensible. The “new” Ðai Lôc was twenty-five kilometers south of Chu Lai and six or seven kilometers west of the highway, QL-1.

Highway One, as we knew it, was the only paved road in our part of the province. It was also the umbilical cord that tied Sai Gon to Quảng Tri Province and the DMZ[5]. We didn’t drive to Ðai Lôc, of course. Helicopters picked us up in Chu Lai and dropped us just outside the village perimeter.

Low clouds muffled a landscape marked by leaden sheets of water. It was a sad-looking place, this improvised village. There were 80 or 90 houses, straggling around a small hill. Bamboo structures with thatched or corrugated steel roofs were set about in no apparent order. On the south slope of the hill were two structures, one larger than the other. They were built of bricks, covered in chipped white stucco, and looked like they had occupied that hill for a long time. The larger building appeared to be a pagoda or shrine. A tiled roof, turned up at the corners, was in two tiers. The smaller structure was a short distance away. It had an alcove, perhaps to leave offerings or burning incense. No one ever came to burn incense, though.

The village had been established only a month or so before we arrived. Not much had been done in the way of bunkers, wire and other defensive construction, so that was our first task. Corrugated steel culvert halves and a lot of empty sand bags were provided for the purpose.

Chickens and small children ran all around while we filled sand bags and strung wire. The smallest kids were barely clothed. All of them wanted to help, or at least beg something off us. Gum, cigarettes - almost anything had appeal. Some of these kids could just as easily steal C-Rations … or something more dangerous, like a hand grenade.

The village well was included in our perimeter, of course, and all the strung out houses. The villagers were busy, too, building enclosures for their animals (especially the water buffalo, who didn’t seem to like Americans very much), and preparing their homes for the rains. As I soon discovered, each family was also digging a bunker in the earth beneath their homes. They kept what valuables they had there. The families also slept there every night, seeking a little protection from potential danger.

We stayed in Ðai Lôc three and a half weeks. The days passed slowly. Rain fell ever more heavily as the days went by, filling the rice paddies, seeping into everything. In lower places, only a few dikes between fields were above water. We patrolled the surrounding area, but saw little of the VC we knew were nearby. They fired on us at night a couple of times. On patrols, we found tunnels and some booby traps, which we blew up.

We played with the village children, and gathered closely beneath shelters with their parents, trying to stay dry and warm. One evening a family in the village invited me to have dinner with them. The meal was mostly rice. On top of the rice were tiny fish that had been caught in weirs placed between rice paddies. They were crunchy, and very salty.

Toward the end of November we were moved to the Battalion firebase, LZ Stinson[6], while another Company took over defense of Ðai Lôc. The 1/52nd was responsible for a section of Quảng Ngãi Province bounded by two large rivers, 14 or 15 kilometers apart. Sông Trà Bong was on the north and Sông Trà Khúc on the south. Both flowed east into the South China Sea. An abandoned railroad line, four or five kilometers west of Highway One, was the eastern boundary. Eighteen kilometers or so west of the rail line lay mountains, some of which rose over 800 meters above the paddies and fields where we spent most of our time. Here we lived our lives, and tried to stay alive.

[1] Also known as the 23rd Infantry Division.
[2] B-1/52nd
[3] Stand Down was a three-day break from being in the field, and fighting the war. Our unit’s stand down area was alongside the beach, in Chu Lai.
[4] Two-and-a-half-ton trucks.
[5] Demilitarized Zone: the boundary between South Viet Nam and North Viet Nam.
[6] LZ: Landing Zone. This term was applied to a great many places that were not just landing places, but semi-permanent military bases. “Firebase” was interchangeable with LZ, meaning, as the name suggests, a place from which to fire (weapons, especially artillery).

The First Step

In about six weeks my life-partner and I will set forth on a trip to South-East Asia. We will be going to Lao and Viet Nam. This will be her first time in that part of the world. For me, to Viet Nam at least, it will be a return trip, after an absence of forty years.

The first time I traveled to Viet Nam was in October, 1969. We had just flown for what seemed like days across the Pacific, from Ft. Lewis, Washington, to Guam, to Viet Nam. The atmosphere on the flight was subdued, interrupted by occasional outbursts of bravado.

It was night when we arrived in Sai Gon. Hot dampness rose from the tarmac and enveloped us as the door opened and we stepped out into an unwelcome world. Some of us would leave again in 365 days. Others would leave sooner, though not in the seats.

My arrival in Viet Nam marked the beginning of my second year in the Army. 1968 had been a year of almost incomprehensible upheaval, in America and in Viet Nam. In January, the North Vietnamese Army, aided by Viet Cong guerrilla forces, launched a massive military offensive all across South Viet Nam. Many, many people died. Some cities, particularly the former imperial capital of Hue, suffered tremendous damage. The offensive was beaten back. However, as many have noted over the years, it was a political victory for North Viet Nam. Scenes of war played endlessly on television, putting the lie to military and government claims of success in Viet Nam.

This sort of visual connection with war had never happened before. Anyone with a television could see film of Americans slogging across flooded rice paddies, cutting their way through tangled jungle - fighting and dying. Previously, views of war had consisted mostly of black and white, still photographs, which froze the moment while creating some distance between the viewer and the action depicted. Television erased that distance in the late 1960’s.

In March, 1968, Lyndon Johnson went on national television to state that he would not seek, nor would he accept, his party’s nomination for a second presidential term. This set in motion an unanticipated political rush among other Democrats who believed they could lead the country through difficult times. And the times became more difficult.

As American efforts in Viet Nam unraveled, the civil rights movement at home gained momentum. On April 4th, the most prominent leader of that movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. American cities were devoured by rage and flames, as many Black Americans responded viscerally to Dr. King’s violent death. At my college in northern Texas, black students – with whom we had little contact - drifted across the campus in angry knots.

Two months later, in Los Angeles, Robert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic Primary for the presidency. He was shot dead that evening, just after his victory celebration, and new violence rose up.

The summer of 1968 came to a close in Chicago, as the Democratic Party met for their national convention. It stands (and I hope it continues to stand for a very long time) as the most contentious, divisive and bloodiest of American political conventions. As the whole world watched, Chicago cops beat anti-war protesters senseless while the Democratic Party imploded inside the convention hall. No one could be blamed for wondering if America was falling apart. I did.

The American dreams we had been taught growing up in the years after World War Two – freedom, justice, equality – were jaundiced and shattered. Cynical real politik collided with idealism. We really did believe those dreams! But, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, with the birth of a civil rights movement in the South and growing involvement in a far-off war, for obscure reasons (domino theory?), many people realized that our dreams, our self-image as Americans, were no longer accurate - and perhaps never had been. And people reacted to this realization in many different ways.

Within this tattered skein I was experiencing rising depression and sinking college grades. My life seemed without purpose or direction. And there was another layer to it. I was also idealistic and patriotic (and still am…in altered form). Despite all that had happened in the preceding nine or ten months, I felt Viet Nam was my generation’s war, just as my parents’ generation had to fight World War Two. Who was I, then - white child of privilege and college opportunity - to avoid this war when so many others had little or no choice in the matter?

That October, I left college and joined the United States Army. I was 21, and I wanted to change my life. In this, I was wildly successful – though in ways I could not foresee that Autumn. The first immediate success was in getting me out of Dallas. I was shipped off to Ft. Bliss, Texas, outside El Paso. An ill-named place, Ft. Bliss. There I had a number of first-time experiences: integration; regimentation; pre-dawn runs; verbal abuse; pneumonia.

The pneumonia was a result of the Drill Sergeants’ insistence on leaving windows open and the air conditioning system running, even though it was 35 – 40 degrees outside. By the 5th week of Basic Training I was very sick. By the 6th week, I was hospitalized. Mildly criminal behavior, of the “that which does not kill you makes you strong” school. No charges were filed, of course, but it did keep me from participating in the “final exam” of Basic Training: an obstacle course with a bit of live fire over your head to make sure you got the point.

No big surprise, I was graduated from Basic Training anyway. It ended just before Christmas, 1968. I went home with completely red eyes from all the coughing I had been doing. The red eyes and my new uniform gave me a rather forbidding appearance. Photographs from that Christmas show me wearing dark sunglasses, regardless of the time of day or night. In one photo, taken Christmas Day at my aunt and uncle’s farm, I am in uniform (with the dark sunglasses) and wearing a black armband. I told everyone it was in memory of those who had already died in the war.

Such a new soldier and already disenchanted.

After Christmas I reported to Ft. Ord, California, near Monterey. During the following eight weeks, I was filled with the distilled wisdom of an Army fighting an anti-guerrilla war in South-East Asia, amidst a culture almost completely unlike ours (save their humanity, which, far from being discussed, was simply denigrated).

We fired a lot of different weapons, marched through woods and over sand dunes, got filthy, wet and cold, ate mediocre food, and generally became at least a little familiar with how we would be living during our year in Viet Nam. Except for death, amputation, or emotional distress. Those things were not discussed.

Yet, they are among those things that people have a sense of, a kind of understanding without really knowing. The kind of things people don’t like to talk about very much. People are especially loath to talk about them when they are caught in an inescapable situation, confronting the almost daily possibility of death.

Emotional distress was probably the least understood of these. But that’s a story for another time.

Towards the end of my infantry training, in March, 1969, I had the opportunity to apply for Non-Commissioned Officer School (NCOS). I had no particular leadership aspirations. However, going through the NCOS program would delay my going to Viet Nam by several months.

Amidst the general social disarray, Richard Nixon had been elected President the previous November. So-called “Vietnamization” (turning the mess over to our South Vietnamese allies) was accelerated and Nixon had actually begun to withdraw some military units from South Viet Nam.

I leapt at the chance and was accepted. Nixon had a “secret plan” to end the war, and everyone hoped he would bring it to an early end.

What followed were several months at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and Ft. Polk, Louisiana. It was all really just an expanded version of infantry training, with some leadership classes added in. “Follow Me” was their motto. Not that anyone really wanted to follow anyone else to Viet Nam in 1969.

Nixon’s secret plan remained a secret and the last American troops did not leave Viet Nam until March, 1973. Instead, for me and a few thousand others, the war was just beginning. And, on the night of October 14th, 1969, in the dark heat of Sai Gon, it did begin.


October, 1969: An opinion poll indicates 71 percent of Americans approve of President Nixon’s Viet Nam policy.

October 15, 1969: The “Moratorium” peace demonstration is held in Washington and several U.S. cities. Demonstration organizers had received praises from North Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, who stated in a letter to them "...may your fall offensive succeed splendidly," marking the first time Hanoi publicly acknowledged the American anti-war movement. Dong's comments infuriate American conservatives including Vice President Spiro Agnew who lambastes the protesters as Communist "dupes" composed of "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

Over the next few weeks I will write of my experiences in Viet Nam forty years ago, as well as other topics that interest me. In March and April I will be writing about my turas through Viet Nam and Lao.


Thanks for reading.