Current events

This is my 40 year anniversary for Nam. I have a friend who has his deck log from the Destroyer he was on while
at Yankee Station, it is his fortieth also. He relates picking up pilots who fall short of the carriers. He tells
of PT boats full of dead and wounded and sorties of five inch guns pounding away on North Viet Nam.

It still so vivid and clear for him, and the deck log assures him it actually happened.

So much of Nam for me is dream like. So much of it is open to conjecture and second guessing.
There is a web site for Fox company 2/7 and it contains the after action reports for 1967. I was only in the field
for 8/9 days in 1967, then I was hit by a grenade and sent home. Some of the incidents I remember as I was stage
center, others I'm only guessing.

There was an incident of two guys in the company who drown in a stream around Christmas of 1966. Their bodies
were recovered after New Years. We had stood down for xmas and new years on cease fires but did not come out
of the field. I remember going out to recover the bodies and hearing that they had been hung under a bridge with
their dicks stuffed in their mouths. I remember the conversation, where it took place but I do not remember
seeing the bodies, I was on the other side of the village. But I do remember a bridge, and I can imagine two
bodies suspended beneath it.

This came back, hard, on the news of two guys captured in Iraq. (Bodies have been recovered 6/20/06). Up
until this morning I thought they were Marines, not that it matters in the big scheme, just another way
to identify with them. I wonder how you get captured? I can't see not fighting to the death, but I don't know
what happened. So I'm not making a judgment on these two who have paid for any and all fuck ups with
their lives. I'm trying to put myself in their shoes.

The closest times I came to being cut off always happened when I was on point. When hit, we'd drop to the deck
and I would cover straight down the path we were walking on. My attention was down that path and to each side.
Now, the entire squad/platoon/company might just turn and double time back down the trail toward the sound of gunfire.
If the guy behind me doesn't make some physical contact I might miss the order to head back as all kinds of
shit might be happening, lots of noise and mayhem.

I was out front and on the deck during one such ambush and turned around to see the last guy, the guy behind me in the column,
turning the corner heading away from me. Now there is a fear that grabs you by the guts at times like this. A deep physical fear.
I was up and running like hell, spinning in circles from the VC in front of me, while trying to catch up to the fucking assholes
who had left me. Literally spinning in circles while in an all out dash. Right then an unlucky dog came across the path. I emptied
my entire magazine into it. It lifted off the ground and seemed to vibrate in mid air while hunks of it went hurling away.
I couldn't reload fast enough, though it was only a dog.

That fear, that hollow knot in the gut, would have let me kill anyone in my way. It would have been, not easy, but easily facilitated,
to fight to the death. I wonder if those guys had that knot in the gut. I wonder what state of mind I'd have to be in to drop my weapon,
knowing I would be killed later, anyways.


This was almost 40 years ago and it still get my guts in a knot.