Frozen In Fear

Going into the field on wheels or tracks was generally safer and a lot less tiring than going on foot. Armored personnel carriers (APCs) and tanks gave us grunts a lot more protection and fire power. Although nobody in their right mind would ever ride inside an APC. Even the tanks were vulnerable to mines and antitank weapons and when a tank broke down in the field, the rule of thumb was to move a safe distance away from it, since enemy mortar men were quick to zero in on such a prize. 

  Our captain commanded a tank squadron before he was transferred to the 1st Battalion. Said his tankers were supporting an infantry unit on a sweep one day, when they got into a firefight with some North Vietnamese regulars, who had come down the Ho Chi Minh trail, into South Vietnam. This was their first combat action and after firing at the tank with their AK-47 rifles to no effect, some of the NVA surrendered.

 Upon close inspection of the American tank they became furious, and one of them kicked the big tread of a tank in anger and disgust. They had been told the American tanks were made of plywood and could be easily defeated. 

  (Choppers) The helicopters in the Nam was really a life saver. What a glorious bird! To say there were a lot of helicopters in Vietnam, is like saying there are a lot of yellow taxis in New York City. It simply understates the case. Helicopters seemed to be everywhere and do everything in the Nam. 

The helicopter was the workhorse and the War-Horse. It took men into combat and brought them out again. It provided firepower, it brought supplies and food. The helicopter carried the wounded to hospitals, brought out the dead, The availability of the helicopters for evacuation of the wounded, meant that most casualties were only minutes away from a well-equipped field hospital, off the coast. Of course, sometimes it took a lot longer. 

On days of heavy fighting, you could scream for a dust-off until you were blue in the face, but a chopper could only be in one place at one time. And there were times when the enemy had a lot to say about the speed and success of a dust-off mission. I had a good friend blasted by a RPG round on a search and destroy mission in the A Shaw valley.

 I mean, I've seen blood and gore before, but when it's someone you've spent a lot of time with, like day in and day out, and he's lying on his back, with an arm and leg missing, and a bone protruding out the top of his body, you want to help him any way you can.

 I offer to help the medic, but he impatiently waves me away. I watch intently as the medic works on my friend. All I could do was hold the plasma bottle. I try to assure Daniel that hes going to be alright, but I think we both know how grim the situation really is. My fatigues are soaked with his blood. Suddenly, his eyes open and roll in their sunken sockets. In an instant, they seem to focus on me. Our eyes meet. Oh God!! I want to run and hide and be sick, but I cannot move. 

Frozen in fear by my friends glaze, I stared back into his glassy eyes. He betrays no emotion, no pain, no real awareness of his condition. The shock and the morphine is keeping him so quiet and still. I steel myself against feeling sorrow or compassion for my friend, who is the same age as myself. Like the rest of the grunts, I know I must stifle my emotions or I may lose control. And losing control is something that must never happen in combat. Inside me, I want to cry, but I suppress the feeling. Finally, I kneel down at Daniels side and force a weak smile. 

He shifts his eyes from mine and, raising his bloody body a little, he looks down and over at where his arm and leg used to be. I look too. At the same time I wish in my heart that my brave friend would die. I am not proud of myself. He looks too mutilated and shattered. He should be dead. So why isn't he dead? I ask myself. He lays his head back down and our eyes meet again. I nod to him. I see no response, but he knows! He has to know! He looks away from me, his unblinking eyes staring at the CH-46's ceiling. 

The visual connection broken, I stand and carefully move backwards a little, away from his penetrating gaze. I am careful not to yank the intravenous needle from his shoulder. I try not to stare, but again and again I am drawn back to my shattered friend. I feel utterly useless. Hopelessness and anger pervade my thoughts. I am terribly uncomfortable. I suddenly hate this war. At this very moment my friend lies on the verge of dying. And for what? He's facing the ultimate reality of war; I want the fight to end quickly so this medic chopper will leave and things will return to normal. 

 Soon they disappear from my sight, but to this day, they linger in my consciousness. The only thing I can do now is pray for my friend, I fall to my knees and pray like I've never prayed before. I ask God to please be with my friend and keep him safe and to please let my friend live! "amen" "amen" and "amen".... 

 It was about three days before I heard a word about Daniel and his condition. I finally asked the company commander if he had heard anything about Daniel. He said the last report he received was that he was in stable condition. Thank God! thank God! Thank you, God, for answering my prayer.

 I left Vietnam a couple months later. I was stationed at Fort Hood Texas. I was there about three weeks when I received a phone call, from guess who.?. Daniel! We talked for hours and I asked him if he would be my best man at my wedding. He said "sure". So now you know the rest of the story....

David Billingsley 

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One Vietnam Veteran's Story

I went to Vietnam because my country sent me there. I did the job I was sent there to do. I saw many of my friends killed in the Nam. Every time I went on a night ambush, which was about every other night, someone would get shot up and a lot of them died of their wounds. And I'll tell you straight up, when you see a fellow grunt get shot or blasted by an [RPG] rifle propelled grenade, day in and day out, it does something to your mind. It's like a permanent photo in your head, to be carried with you from that moment on until you die. You don't forget about the blood, the sweat, the screams, the tears, the pure horror you feel, seeing your buddies die right next to you and there's nothing you can do. Those scenes will live with me forever.

 

 After the war, I dealt with depression on my own. I sought help from the VA in 1975, and finally gave up about ten years later. I got tired of driving from Gadsden, to the Birmingham Veterans Administration for an appointment when nobody showed up to see me. I finally got where I no longer cared about anything. 

I have never told this to anyone until now. I have an emotional disorder that I have trouble controlling, no matter how hard I try. I have nightmares about the war in Vietnam. I am always being chased by the NVA and VC. I wake up with my shirt wet from nightmares. I have even woke up sitting on a big rock in the woods behind my house, just waiting for the NVA to show up so I could shoot and kill them. 

 

I have been married several times. My first three wives couldn't handle me crawling up the hall with my rifle in my arms, and sitting in the bay window with my rifle, waiting on the Vietcong to show up. I don't blame them, but they did marry me for better or worse. I guess I got to be too much for them to bear.

 

I go through stages of acute depression, flashbacks, obsession with death, dying and the war etc. I know that is messed up, but I just can't help it. The emotion is there and I can't do anything about it. I don't celebrate the fourth of July, because I can't stand the fireworks going off.

 

It's so sad that all the brave soldiers young, old, black, red and white were killed or wounded in Vietnam. And for what? Nothing, absolutely nothing. 

 

I know for a fact I was exposed to agent orange, because several times a chopper would come overhead and spray that shit over the jungle and our LT. Told us to cover our mouth and nose with something. I know I have PTSD because of my Vietnam experience and the same government that sent me over there, wouldn't help me one damn bit. It took forty years to convince them that I had PTSD. I do know one thing and that is I've always tried to live a normal life, despite the depression and the stress and all the nightmares. 

 

Although I may look healthy, I feel sick inside, sick from all those years of battling depression. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for sympathy, just a little understanding. It has taken hard work on my part and a strong faith in God, just to survive this long. The things that have helped me the most, is my kids and grand kids and my fifth wife, Deb. Thank God she understands what I'm going through. 

David Billingsley

Why? Why? Me?

That was the most frequently asked question. “Why?”. It wasn’t the geopolitical stuff you would hear elsewhere, but rather why ME? Why B Co, why A Co, why the 1/61, why 2 squad, why 1st squad, WHY ME??? 

We were there because we were told to be there, but for what reason? Why? Was there a down to earth reason for the day to day operations of each of the units? Forget all the well used lines like, Moms apple pie. Stop them here or they will be in San Francisco next. Your friends and neighbors have selected you…  It is amazing what comes up after a major fire fight and some of the grunts were asking Why before we even got out of the A Shaw valley. What was our mission, our job? Good question, at least for the time period of 1969 and 1970, perhaps other years too.

 I'll explain the best way I can. First, the big picture, what caused all the work that everybody was told to do. Simply put, the Big reason, was to allow a relatively new country to develop a democratic form of government that would provide its people with, what we consider basic human rights. To do this, meant financial support, organizational support and military support, to protect the developing country from its neighbors.

 Everything and I do mean everything the US and its allies did during the war, was supposed to be necessary to satisfy this purpose. From the 9 to 5 staffers in Saigon, to the advisers in the Delta, to the Snake Eaters, who knows where, everything was directed at the goal of allowing the development of a proper government That included the 1st of the 5th and TF 1/61, but the question remained, why me? Why was I at A4? What was the reason for climbing 162 again? What did Phantom Lake have to do with any of this? 

To answer this, requires a review of the land around AO Orange. Directly to the north, was North Vietnam, the principal adversary of the South Vietnam government. To the east, the South China sea. To the southeast, the rice patties and farmers that grew most of the food in the area. To the south, was Cam Lo and the Cam Lo resettlement village, with over 1000 people that had moved away from the DMZ, and to the west, the bad lands and Laos. 

North Vietnamese troops just across the DMZ and around the Laotian border, needed rice to eat and young men to use as guerrilla fighters. The men could be kidnapped from the villages and the rice could be stolen from the farmers. TF 1/61 was where it was for the simple reason that a small force of mobile combat troops could form a shield that would prevent the NVA from getting into the settlement areas and stealing both men and rice. 

The shield linked with an army of the Republic of Vietnam at Alpha 4 in the east and arched around to link up with other units of the 5th BDE near Camp Carroll in the south west. Because there were many more of them than there were of us, we could not sit in numerous strong points and wait for them to attack. By constantly moving, hill 162 today, Phantom lake tomorrow and Rocket Ridge the next day, the NVA had no way to plan a move without the chance of meeting TF 1/61 units with our awesome firepower. And when they did meet it was always the NVA that got the worst of it. 

Sure the TF did other things. Guard the Navy Base at Qua Viet with a platoon. During the bad weather season, go pick up Tinker Bell and his driver when their airplanes crash, protect the RRG and arty folks at A4 and C2, but the prime reason, the real answer to “Why?”, was to provide a part of the protective wall around the populated areas in northern I Corps. And we did a pretty damn good job of it too. 

How do you know we did a good job? Well, there were a couple of ways to tell if we were stopping the NVA in their attempts to get to the built up areas. One sure fire indicator was the price of rice in the open markets. When the priced stayed low, then it was safe to say that the farmers were getting it all to market. When the price went up, then it was a good guess that something had happened to the supply. And that something most likely was a raid by NVA soldiers. I only saw one price “spike” the whole time we were in AO Orange and that matched a report from the Recon Platoon saying they had found tracks of a large group of NVA crossing our area.

 Another indicator was the evidence of your eyeballs. If you were lucky enough to have had a chance to visit Dong Ha or Quang Tri City or even Cam Lo, you saw people in stores and bright colors and heard laughter and music. Hard to believe that people with little to eat and with kidnappers in their midst would live like that. The ones I saw seemed to know they were safe and, in their eyes, life was good. 

David Billingsley

NO MAN'S LAND

Another month gone, another thirty days marked off the old calendar. That leaves me with just 245 days to go. Not even close! yet!! but I'm getting there one day at a time and trying to stay positive.

At least our company is on a three day stand down to re-supply and to reload, getting ready for the next trip into the bush. There are some rumors going around that we are going back into the valley. That's the A Shaw Valley. But this time it would be by air. Air Mobile, with the 101st. Airborne Div. Our company commander verified it that same morning. One hundred and fifty UH-1 Huie helicopters, fully loaded. Their job was to fly us in and drop us off. Us being the 5th Infantry Div. They were calling this operation no man's land.

 Somewhere in the A Shaw Valley, was the 9th VC regiment. Dug in and hiding among the boulder and thick brush in some of the roughest terrain known to man. And we the men of the 5th div., were the ones chosen for the job. It was going to get hotter than any of us could have ever imagined.

I was in the third chopper, in a daisy chain of five each, about thirty seconds behind the other. I sit on my flight jacket surrounded by ten members of my platoon. All with m-16 bandoleers, strapped across both shoulders, locked and loaded, ready for Charlie, but we all had a vague hope that an enemy slug, coming up through the soft aluminum belly of the chopper, wouldn't make us a gelding.

I've been on a couple of air assaults and I always tried to get a door seat, so I could feel the wind blowing in my face and I liked the low thumping sound of the chopper blades. The view was just beautiful and the ride was great, but as you know, all good things must come to an end...

Also, if there was an ambush, I wanted to be the first one off. Not that I was real brave or anything, I just needed a head start, because I was slower than most guys, with an 80 pound ruck sack and ammo, and an m-16 rifle. The Viet Cong usually waited for a couple of choppers to land and deposit men on the ground before they sprung their attack. The first chopper dipped into the clearing that was to be our landing zone and the second chopper disappeared into a hole in the jungle. As we slowed to make our descent, a huge fireball erupted just ahead of us. The pilot cursed and pulled pitch, we flew through the top of the fireball. 

I was conscious mostly of the smell of burnt flesh and hair and the sudden drying out of my damp clothes. Then we were jinking left and right at low altitude as we struggled to get clear of the area. What happened in the space of the next few minutes, seemed to go on for an entire lifetime. We went around in a big circle with the others choppers close behind. The pilots were yelling back and forth that there were eight grunts down there from the first chopper and an unknown number from the second. They decided then and there the best way to get back to the landing zone so we could help save the guys already on the ground. I just wanted off that chopper! I figured we all had a better chance on the ground. 

I leapt out with the rest of my platoon. The chopper was 4 or 5 feet up and I hit the ground running, as it was about ten yards to the comparative cover of the tree line. It felt like the length of a football field. The bandoleers and other ammo seemed to weigh a ton. I don't know why I wasn't hit by enemy fire. I could hear the bullets as they flew past my head and around my feet. So close!! So close!!

The 9th VC regiment got there first and were dug in like an Alabama tick on a hound dog. We had one thing they didn't have- "Fire Power ". The choppers were equipped with rockets and machines guns. We also had the Air Force fighter jets that could level a mountain and that's just what they did.

The operation lasted five days with casualties on both sides, but the 9th VC regiment was pounded into submission. Only about 150 survived and were taken prisoner. 

David Billingsley

Disorder

You know, I hate the fourth of July because the fireworks make me jump for cover. It's so sad that all those brave soldiers, young, old, black and white, were killed and wounded in Viet Nam. For what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I know that I was exposed to agent orange, but not as bad as some of my buddies. I'm aware that I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of my experience in "The Nam". I also know that the very same government who sent me over there does not care one bit about me. It's been 37 years and I have never received a dime from the government. I called their stress hotline one time and told the guy that I was going to kill myself. The bastard actually hung up on me. That is a true story, I swear. Ask my 4th wife. I've always tried to live a normal life in spite of the stress and depression I was going through. I don't talk about what is wrong with me because most people either don't believe me or they just don't care. I may look healthy, but I'm a sick man. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for sympathy. A little understanding is all I want or need. It's taken a lot of hard work on my part and a strong faith in God and myself, but I know I will make it. What helps me the most is my kids and grandkids and my 5th (and final) wife, little Deb. Thank God she loves me and understands what I'm going through.  

David Billingsley