I was givin' my M16 a pretty good work out and still had quite a few rounds left, when I heard a phone ringing in the bunker next to me. A guy from the bunker yelled at me, telling me to stay there because Top, or the sergeant in command, was coming out right away to see who was doing all the shooting. Well that was my sign to De-De, or to 'get out of there' in Vietnamese, hopefully to a safe location. The barrel of my M16 was white hot and I'm sure I burned some cloth when I slid it under my cot in the tent we were sleeping in. The safe location for me, regardless of the fact that my lieutenant was going to back me up, was under the table, next to the beer cooler in the Tiki club. This was where guys were eating steaks and throwing horse shoes. While kneeling there, hiding, I could here Top, yelling from a jeep, "Where is sergeant Truman?" Before sunup we were walking out of the perimeter quietly for another long search and destroy mission, leaving Top behind....
The war itself was like any war, a bloody disaster. No war is anything positive in my book. They say the Vietnam war was different and in many ways it was. The government tried calling it a conflict, but in view of the amount of troops and fire power on both sides, I don't think there's any way possible it could be defined as a conflict, especially when considering the amount of casualties it produced on both sides. Although we were never given permission to shoot unless someone shot at us first, objectively speaking, it was a war. There's no nice way, or politically correct way to do it, or say it. The primary activity was watching your buddies get killed and shooting at people on a regular basis. The overall traumatic experience produced long lasting negative effects on individuals. The Vietnam war is well known for its large number of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases. The essence of war remains the same. It's two sides killing each other, going completely against every natural law in the universe, especially God's law.
It's amazing how simple things become so important during a war. After being away from home for a long time, pictures of friends and relatives were the only visible connection we had to life "back in the world". One day while spending a day or two at the perimeter (LZ center), which was on a mile high mountain in the Central highlands, I was drying out some pictures of my girl friend and family. They had gotten wet and I had them all spread out in the sun on top of a bunker. For some reason a chopper had come and landed close to my bunker, blowing my pictures all over the place. I ran around frantically in about a forty yard circle trying to find them all. The world back home was like a far away dream. Each day in combat dragged on at a snails pace. From the time the sun came up until it went down seemed like eternity, especially during days of intense fighting. The endless miles of difficult terrain we had to cover on foot, in search of the enemy, is something that others back in the world would never be able to comprehend...
Our food was usually C-rations. They tasted rather dull unless you had an onion, or a bottle of hot sauce. Occasionally, when we went on long missions, we would carry LRRP rations which I think, were a little more tasty. They were lighter and easier to carry. LRRP stands for, "Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol". Six man teams of the army's special forces carried them because they couldn't get resupplied as often as we could. They were dehydrated and all you had to do was add water (hot water) if you had the time to heat some up.
We had no pillows in combat, of course. Carrying a pillow all day long in a ruck sack for a few scattered hours of sleep would obviously have given the enemy something to laugh about. I had my mother send me a sweat shirt. I cut the sleeves off, took one of them and filled it with grass each night to lay my head on. I took the rest of the sweat shirt and put a boot print on the back of it, along with the time period that I served in Vietnam. My platoon sergeant barked at me, "Take it off and put your olive drab field jacket back on." I guess he thought I was being rebellious or something?
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