We did as we were ordered... They must have been hiding in underground holes, or tunnels. This time after finding no VC for the third time, we decided to torch the whole village. Women and babies were standing around in disbelief, crying, moaning and groaning while flames lit up the sky. To this day I can't stand to hear the sound of babies crying. Even after this, VC fired on us on our way out...
These kinds of situations happened more frequently as time went on. More and more of our men were getting killed. It was only a matter of time before it would be my turn to get wounded or killed. Needless to say, I learned to be extremely attentive and to lay low whenever it was possible. However, laying low was impossible when the sole purpose of a lot of our missions was to intentionally become sitting ducks for the enemy. This was usually what we were ordered to do when we couldn't find the enemy any other way. There were a lot of times when a company of us were ordered to walk down through the middle of a barren valley with the intended purpose of drawing fire from the enemy. I complained loudly about it along with others to our captain, but the orders were coming from higher up and there was nothing we could do about it short of getting court marshaled. I was so on edge during these times that I was always the first one to hit the ground when they shot at us. The guys around me always thought I was hit...
After making it through three months or so of hunting down the viet cong, the effects of physical exhaustion and mental torment was beginning to show on us. You used to be able to get a smile from those of us who'd been together for the past year which seemed like eternity. But now their faces looked thin. Most of the men had lost weight and their smile was gone. You could see the loss of close friends in their faces, and worst of all, a loss of hope. "The world" back home seemed to keep getting farther away. Whose turn was it gonna be next to get mortared, shot, booby trapped, or even worse, shot accidentally by one of our own people?
Our machine gunner was an extremely pleasant and likable guy. Back at Schofield once, when I was pulling CQ (Company Quarters), manning the office all night long on a Friday night, a car load of people drove up saying they were having a party at his house. He lived on base with his wife and a couple of kids at the time. They asked me if there was any kind of food in the mess hall they could have for their party. I had the keys to the mess hall, and being the patriotic American that I am I said, "Let me go see what there is." I noticed several large rolls of steaks in the coolers and gave them probably fifteen pounds of steaks, some chips, some bread and they were ecstatic! Those were the good times back at Schofield, when we were all alive and didn't have to worry about getting ambushed, or blown to pieces... After carrying the M60 machine gun in Vietnam for a month or so, he was gone.
He was shot in the stomach by one of our own men. One day when we were frantically charging across some wet rice paddies, trying to reach a location where there was supposed to be a large number of VC, he had reached a rice paddy dike that he couldn't climb over. Some of these dikes were at least three feet high. He was carrying a lot of weight. The machine gun itself was heavy, but he also had several bandoleers of machine gun ammo draped around him in addition to his full ruck sack, which among other things, contained several days worth of C-Rations. Another man next to him thought he would help him by handing him the end of his M16 to pull him up over the large dike. Unfortunately, the guy helping him had his finger on the trigger, causing his gun to go off, shooting our machine gunner in the stomach. He laid there on a make shift stretcher, smoking a cigarette, seconds before dying. Every one loved him and it hurt us deeply to see him go.
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