Rules of War

After the battle you wipe away the mud and the blood, took out your dead and wounded. Then the emotions come out and you began to think about the next time. Because combat is the dark and brutal heart of war where soldiers come face to face on the killing grounds. Combat is the maker of heroes and cowards and all colors of characters in between, it has been called mans ultimate experience. It certainly has been an experience that I will never forget. Combat is noisy, confusing, and very scary. If a man says that he's not scared in a combat situation, he's either a fool or a lier. Combat in Vietnam seems to hold an extra measure of fear and confusion because it was so often fought at close quarters in dense vegetation with a frequently invisible enemy. Much has been written about the big battles of the Vietnam war, like the 1968 tet battle of Saigon and Hue, and the siege of Kae-Sanh and the fight for hamburger hill, but those were exceptional in Vietnam. Day to day war was fought by small groups of soldiers in small places, nameless battlegrounds where the fight was very close, intense and deadly. In the military there is a rule to live by especially in a war zone: Never stand when you can sit, Never sit when you can lie down, Never stay awake if you can sleep because you never know when your next chance will come. And the first rule of combat is: "KEEP YOUR ASS DOWN", stay low and get whatever you can between yourself and the guys who are shooting at you. When the enemy rounds are coming in, there no such thing as too much cover. I recall when we came under small arms fire, the lieutenant and I took cover behind some wooden crates, Lt. muttered to me, "you realize of course, that if these crates were filled with corn flakes we would be in a world of trouble, "I replied," At least they're not filled with live explosives! "LT.said "You do have a good point there." Going out into the field in Vietnam could mean a number of things, none of them easy or pleasant. The field was where the war was, where CHARLIE was, and we, the soldiers of the RED DEVIL BRIGADE, went out to find him and fight him. Depending on what kind of outfit you were in, the way to go into the field might be by air, on a boat, in a wheeled or tracked vehicles. We were infantry mechanized, sometimes we road on top of the APC.(armored personnel carriers), but that was a little dangerous, so we used our own two feet to get the job done. We, the grunts, called it humping the boonies. Hauling a heavy combat load through rice fields, across rivers, up steep hills and mountains, through jungles and elephant grass, in mud, sand, or dust, under a cruel sun or in a monsoon rain. Sometimes it was a walk in the sun, a Sunday drive, but no one called it that until the unit was back at base camp, because at any point, any number of bad things could happen. At every step were the myriad dangers of Vietnam, ambush, boobytraps, landmines, snipers. Many combat infantry soldiers like myself were sent into the field on their first day in Vietnam and rarely left it until they went home. We spent virtually our entire tour humping the boonies or setting up night ambushes and could count on our fingers the numbers of nights we slept on something as luxurious as a folding cot. The army brass called us the ultimate weapon. "INFANTRYMAN" The one who does the dirty work of war. The uniforms and the weapons have changed, but the job of the foot soldier has changed hardly at all. We are the ones who have to muck it out with the enemy at close range, the ones who ultimately conquer and hold or lose the real estate. In Vietnam, the foot soldiers picked up a new nickname, (GRUNTS) whether in the field with a squad or a platoon or even a battalion, the combat soldier could feel very much alone in the thick jungle and tall grasses. One of the loneliest and spookiest jobs in the army was walking point in Vietnam. It was a tough job but we are the Infantry, the Grunts, The life line of the army. The job of the infantry is to move forward, to attack, whether it means crossing an open field, inching up a battlescarred hill, or penetrating the thick jungles where visibility was only a yard or two.
CARRY ON!!!!
DWB