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 rough sax 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 lines. 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.

THE END

By: DAVID BILLINGSLEY

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 there 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 mortarmen were quick to zero in on such a prize.
Our captain commanded a tank squadron before he was transfered 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 was a lot of helicopters in Vietnam is like saying there are a lot of yellow taxies 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 someone you've spent a lot of time with.Like day in and day out, and he's lying on his back with a 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 he was going to be alright, but I think we both knew how grim the situation really was. My fatigues was 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 turn to normal.
Soon they disappear from my sight. But to this day they linger in my consciousness. The only thing I can do how is pray for my friend, I fell to my knees and prayed like I've never prayed before. And 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 ask the company commander if he has 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 ask him if he would be my best man at my wedding, he said, sure so now you know the rest of the story....
true story by David Billingsley...
Red Devil Bridge.)

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.

DWB

ULTIMATE OBSCENITY of WAR!

The kind of war a soldier experienced depended on where in nam he fought it. An Army rifleman's thirteen month tour among the densely settled hamlets around PHU BaI bore few resemblances to that of a reconnaissance scout's twelve month tour in the sparsely populated central highlands around PLEIKU.
The kind of war a soldier experienced also depended on what he did in it. A slightly built Army combat engineer, with a flashlight in one hand and a .45 caliber pistol in the other, as he crawled into an enemy bunker complex to install explosives, had a very different view of the war than did the infantry soldier hiking through dense jungle, fighting for his life in close mortal combat on a daily basis. No matter what your MOS, you had job to do and the infantry soldier did it well.

WE GOT THE JOB DONE!!....HOORAH!!

DEATH?...What do you know about DEATH?

Well, let me tell you what I know....

DEATH is the ULTIMATE OBSCENITY of WAR!

Most American soldiers who fought in Vietnam were of an age when men believe that death to be a long way off. Vietnam quickly taught us otherwise. The average age of the combat soldier was 19, not 26 as in WWII.
The inevitability of death was forced upon each and every man who fought in the Nam, to be carried with them from that time on. Of course, we all had seen death in our lives, but it had been death from illness, old age or accident, the kinds of death to which young men feel they are IMMUNE. There was NO such feeling in the Nam. In fact, it sometimes seemed that SURVIVAL was just a matter of CHANCE.

DWB