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American Native Press Archives and Sequoyah Research Center |
Vietnam Powwow: The Vietnam War as Remembered by Native American Veterans [a machine-readable transcription] |
By Robert Sanderson, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
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Figure 1. "Relief Map of Vietnam - Courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin." |
Without a doubt, this project would not exist had my friend and colleague, Dr. Steve Anderson, not conceived of "the idea." In the fall of 1993, Steve approached me with an idea about editing a collection of narratives about the Vietnam War that focused specifically on Native Americans. Since that time the project has undergone several transformations; however, I will always be indebted to Steve and I'm grateful for his participation.
Writing, any writing, is in my opinion a courageous undertaking. To be sure, I would lack such a virtue had not Ms. Jeannie Moss not mentored me, edited much of my work, and encouraged me in developing an "ease" with the creative process. But more importantly, she evoked from within me the "courage" to write. Thank you, Jeannie.
Of course, none of this material would exist without the sacrifices, charity, and gifts of those individual American Indians from various tribes who offered their stories. It is to these men and women, and the tribes they represent, that I want to pay homage and in this way honor their contributions to the United States and their own sovereign nations. Welalin.
I would be remiss if I did acknowledge the efforts and fine work of others at UALR, particularly, my students. Monee L. Reed and Laura Tharp were two Independent Study students that conducted interviews of two Indians who provided narratives that appear in the collection. They were also involved in the formatting, editing, and organizing of the narratives along with Stuart Hoahwah, Scott Hodnett, Aprille Nersessian-Robertson, Amanda Shea Hubanks, John Hubanks, Shawn Shaw, and Allison Redding, who also wrote several biographical introductions to specific narratives. Also, I must mention my department's former Administrative Assistant, Ms. Prudence Martin, who transcribed much of the work from their initial field notes into a readable form. Prudence was quick with the keys of the keyboard, and "rescued" me from the painful process of administering a "hunt-n-peck" typing style that just about drove her insane. Thank you, Prudence, rescue me anytime.
Thank you to Carolyn Thompson for her significant work in encoding all these documents as well as lifting and optimizing tracks for the MP3s. Carolyn took Word documents and transformed them into web page features. She also researched the Text Encoding Initiative standards and brought the texts into compliance so that they are available world wide and through a variety of sources.
Finally, I am grateful to a few whose acceptance of me and support of my efforts, helped make this a successful project; namely Drs. Daniel F. Littlefield and James W. Parins, my friends and colleagues; and, of course, my wife Sonja and my son Ian, who have endeavored to persevere in all my treks.
The following is a collection of narratives written or spoken by Native American veterans about the Vietnam War. Currently, no such collection is available, a surprising absence in that Native Americans were perhaps the most widely represented group in the armed services during the time of the Vietnam War. According to the 1980 U.S. Census, 82,000 American Indians served in the military during the Vietnam era. Many, undoubtedly, found themselves in Vietnam. Yet, no major study to date has identified Native American veterans as a distinct socioeconomic group in that war. In fact, only recently has any significant attention been given to the social, economic, and cultural needs of Native Americans in general. It is time that Vietnam War era American Indian vets and their families be provided a forum for expressing their views and reflections on America's longest war. Hence, the purpose of this collection is to present in their own voices the experience of Native Americans during the Vietnam War era.
As we turn again and again to assess the meaning of Vietnam and its role in recent history, we find that the official view of the war, the one that could provide the big picture, is a strikingly limited one. It is limited because the experience in the field was not consistent with the accounts put together at the headquarters planning level. It is now commonly accepted that our quantitative accounts of the war body counts, weapons captured, villages `stabilized,' and refugees `resettled' can be highly misleading. Often the figures were outright misstatements. Often, our leaders were telling us what they hoped was the case, what should have been, or what could have been. In short, the war that we were told was happening was often not the real war at all.
No wonder, then, that in the pursuit of the meaning of Vietnam, some researchers have gone the opposite direction from the official view. We now know that what individual soldiers saw, felt, and later reported has great value, despite the obvious limitations. As participants in any activity, we are radically limited in what we observe, and our later report is certain to be a kind of distortion. But this kind of individualized distortion could hardly be more distorted than the official view. And we now accept the premise that a collection of individualized views when taken together could correct a distortion, could clarify a picture.
What has become a standard in the field of Vietnam research are the unofficial histories, often in the form of collections of narratives volumes such as Bloods, Grunts, A Piece of My Heart, Nam, and In the Combat Zone. In these collections, several groups have now had the opportunity to present their experiences in Vietnam: Blacks, nurses, pilots, Special Forces, and so on. Our knowledge of the Vietnam War is richer, wiser, more complete, and more accurate because of these accounts. With them we are closer to understanding the events.
In the effort of chronicle the record of the man, or woman, in the field, one group has been totally overlooked—the Native American.
Among the annals and fables of the Vietnam War are many references to `Indian Country,' a term given by American troops to describe the territory held by their enemy, the Viet Cong. As a term, Indian Country conjures images of the unfamiliar terrain inhabited by blood thirsty, heathen savages of American western folklore. Reminiscent are the war-whooping raiders of the Great Plains tribes, circling the covered wagons and the charge of the U.S. Cavalry. Ironically, however, in Vietnam there were no Indian war parties, no attacks on covered wagons, and when the U.S. Cavalry charged into battle, it had the enlisted support of Native Americans whose ancestors were the targets of former U.S. policies in another series of conflicts known as the Indian Wars. Gone were the old myths about the revival of a Pre-Columbia Native America. Gone, too, were the old myths about vanquished Indians being left to vanish on Federal Indian Reservations. A new portrait of Native Americans began to emerge during the Vietnam era. This new American Indian was more independent, autonomous and possessed a greater awareness of his place in American history and modem society. And, for many, the Vietnam War presented this emergent Native American with new opportunities.
After years of bearing the yoke of dependency, created in part by the misguided policies of a seemingly indifferent government, Native Americans began to arise as a more visible and active minority of the American population. It was during this time, when Native Americans were facing the problems of adjusting to contemporary life, that the Vietnam War was increasing its momentum. For many Native Americans, the Vietnam War presented a way out of the cycle of poverty experienced on government reservations. For others, it was a way of demonstrating patriotic pride, and following the warrior's path through active military service. Regardless of the reasons, approximately 82,000 Native Americans served in the military during the Vietnam War era.
The voices of these Native Americans have scarcely been heard. At a time when the chronicles of the Vietnam War have captured the reflections, thoughts and sentiments of many other groups and individuals, the voices Native Americans have remained relatively silent. If they remain silent, if their stories go untold, we risk once again having an incomplete and distorted history. We would be settling for a history with similar distortions to the previous histories that failed to account for the voices of other Native Americans who were instrumental in the cultural, political, and social development of the land we call America.
Steve Gano had just received his AA degree in junior college when he enlisted for three years of service in the United States military, expressing an interest in piloting helicopters. After aircraft maintenance school in Fort Eustace, Virginia, Gano became first-sergeant of his unit in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He fought in the Tet Offensive of 1968 before he had spent more than two weeks in service in Vietnam. Upon his return to the United States, he visited his parents before finishing his thirteen months of service as an instructor in Fort Steward, Virginia. He served in the Army Air Corps, 134th Assault Helicopter Unit (1967-1971) and later in the Montana National Guard (1980-1990). He established his own business in Big Ark, Montana, but was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder soon after he signed on with the National Guard in aviation. Gano spent a great deal of time in intensive therapy for his condition and currently works, through his church programs and other organizations, with Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD.
By Steve Gano
Click here to listen to Steve Gano's narrative in MP3 format (55.3 MB)
I had no idea what we were heading for.
I was fresh out of high school in 1964, and the Vietnam war hadn't really progressed very far at that time. I was young, energetic, and anxious to get on with my life, so college at that time seemed to be the place to go. I spent two years in junior college, studying to be a commercial artist, with no idea what might be ahead for me. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam had other ideas, and they began to come into effect for me. A lot of my buddies were being drafted. That draft at that time was on the honor roll system. Get on the honor roll at college and keep your grades up, and you were pretty much exempt. I didn't have anything to worry about at that period. My grades were up, and I was doing well in college.
As I finished my last year of junior college and received my AA degree, I got to thinking more and more about serving my country because I was at that time young and patriotic. The Vietnam War was starting to build, and my main thought was to get into the war as fast as I could and get into the action so that I could save the U.S. from the communists. So I went down to my draft board and enlisted for a three-year hitch in the military, knowing that if I enlisted I would have my choice on what I wanted to do in the Vietnam War. My choice at that period was to fly helicopters. Helicopters seemed to be a good way to get in the war and to see the country and do things that I wanted to do. I was off and on my way.
My first duty station of course was basic training, at Fort Lewis, Washington. I was in the accelerated training program because they were trying to get us through the program and on our way to Vietnam. On weekends, my drill sergeant would take me out to the airfield to go through the helicopters, since he knew that's what I was interested in, but I didn't have a chance to ride in one at that time. After a six-week basic training course that should have lasted eight weeks I was sent to Fort Eustace, Virginia, where I went through aircraft maintenance school. I also learned how to fly, which crew chiefs in Vietnam were asked to do.
From there I was sent to Fort Bragg, NC, where we built our unit. Being the very first one to arrive, I was first-sergeant of the unit. As the men started to come in we started to put our unit together. When there were fifteen crew chiefs in the unit, we went up to Fort Hood, Texas, where we picked up brand-spanking-new Huey helicopters and flew them back down to Fort Bragg, where we trained with them. At this point in time, our training period was accelerated, and we put things together to go to Vietnam—weaponry, tents, anything we might need to build a camp over there. I distinctly remember scouring the countryside for refrigerators, ice-boxes, things we thought we might need over there to make us comfortable.
You've got to remember at this point we were still young and naive and extremely excited and gung-ho. After our time at Fort Bragg, the crew chiefs were sent up to Oakland, California, where we were put on a merchant marine aircraft carrier with all of our aircraft. It was a 21-day ride to Vietnam by way of this carrier. (The rest of the unit went to Vietnam by troop ship.) On the way over we listened to music and pretty much had free run of the entire ship, doing everything a teenager of that time could do. The excitement, the thrilling feeling of going to Vietnam was overwhelming. We just couldn't wait to get into the battle.
On the way over we rigged our aircraft with gun mounts. We built them up and basically got them ready for combat. We completely gutted the aircraft inside and out, took off the doors, did anything we could to lighten the load of the aircraft until we had just the basic flying machine with lots of weaponry. We made them into what Huey helicopters were supposed to be, the workhorse of Vietnam.
At this point in time we were getting closer to our destination, which was Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam, where a lot of your troop ships brought U.S. soldiers into the country. I can remember coming into Cam Ranh Bay. It was at night and we could see rockets and mortar flares off into the distance. The whole sky was lit up. Suddenly, our excitement turned to apprehension. We were anxious to get on the shore, but now didn't really know quite what to expect. We had no previous training or preparation for going to Vietnam. We were on our own.
The next morning we put all the blades on the helicopters and got them ready, then that afternoon we flew them to shore. Next, we got them ready to fly up to our camp on a piece of land called Phu Hep, half way up the provinces of South Vietnam. At this point in time, our commanding officer (who came in by troop ship) came over to the unit pad where I was stationed. He told me to take the aircraft and crew to a little outpost up in the northern province called Ban Me Thuot.
Well, it was getting close to Christmas time about then, and this was my first mission, mind you. I had no idea what to expect, because we weren't going to be with our main unit at all. We were on our own, attached to a ground unit up there. Before leaving we got the lettering put on the helicopter—at this time we were called the 134th Assault Helicopter Unit. We flew up to Ban Me Thuot, which took several hours from Cam Ranh Bay. It was just a little outpost dug into the hillside there. There were a few guys around to welcome us, and they were saying, ‘Hey, we have a helicopter now. This is great, you know. We can do our flying and see what we are supposed to see.’
Our main purpose at this little outpost was to fly the commanding officer around the surrounding area so he could look for enemy movement. Well, on the second day after we'd flown up there, we did pick up the commanding officer, and we proceeded to fly around the area looking for enemy movement that afternoon. Nothing out of the extraordinary seemed to be happening at that time, so we came back and landed. Well, it being Christmas Eve, some kids from the little town right next to Ban Me Thuot there came in and put on a Christmas play for us, which I thought was pretty impressive.
Hey, this was great, being fresh out of school and fresh into Vietnam. The smell of the palm trees, the beautiful countryside, and the people; it was exhilarating. I loved it. Of course, I hadn't seen any action, and I didn't know what to expect yet. So after the play was over, we proceeded to bed down, and I can remember dozing off and thinking, this isn't bad. Here I am in a strange country, the Republic of Vietnam, and I'm supposed to be in combat. It's relaxing. I don't know what to expect, but I'm at peace at this time.
All of a sudden I was awakened by the most hellish sound I'd ever heard in my life. It was mortar fire, cannon fire, and rockets. We were basically being overrun. It was the Tet Offensive of 1968, and the bunkmate who was sleeping below reached up and grabbed me and threw me down on the floor. He told me to grab a weapon, look out after him, hold off fire, and follow him. So I grabbed a weapon and took out after him and ran to the far edge of the compound and jumped into a bunker. There were people running all over the place, and screaming, and dead bodies lying all over the ground. The dead bodies, I realized, were Americans. They were not the enemy. I got into this bunker with this guy, and he started firing out into the dark. I looked out, and I couldn't see anything, but he said, ‘Just start shooting. Just start shooting.’
I had the M-60 that I took off the aircraft with my door-gunner. He was in the bunker next to me over on the other side and was basically doing the same thing I was. We were bewildered and didn't know what to do. Well, finally the flares started, and we saw bodies running back and forth out there, and we started firing out into the dark. I could see them dropping, but whether I was shooting them or somebody else I had no idea. I do remember my pucker power was being very well used at that point, and if I didn't get hemorrhoids out of that event, I guess I never will. But anyway, we kept firing into the dark until things finally started to quiet down.
Now I'm sitting there in the bunker with this bunk mate and my door-gunner came over, and there are two other guys sitting in there with me. We hear a noise. It's real still and quiet at this time, and we hear a noise over on the other side of these sandbags. I look over, and here's a Viet Cong dressed in his black pajamas and carrying a carbine, crawling through the barbed wire, just taking his own sweet time about it, lifting the barbed wire up, placing it behind him, and so forth.‘Hey, there's a Viet Cong crawling through the barbed wire there,’ I told one of the guys there. He said, ‘Kill him.’ I said, ‘Man, I haven't shot anybody.’ He said, ‘You're going to learn. You're not going to be one of the team until you kill him.’
So I had bought a sawed-off shotgun on the black market. I lifted it up—I remember pointing it over the top of the bunker—and literally blew the VC's head off. I looked at him for a minute, not believing what I'd done. I was kind of numb with the experience, but I couldn't explain the feeling at that time. They started patting me on the back and congratulating me, and saying, ‘You're one of us now, you're one of the guys.’ The first thing they did was put a gold stud in my belt. The air crew were all carrying snub nose .38s with a shoulder holster. (We had bought them on the black market down in Cam Ranh Bay.) They said, ‘Now for every confirmed kill you have you put a stud in that belt. That's going to the mark of your success over here in the Republic of Vietnam.’
That was the first person I killed in Vietnam. The next morning we flew right into a combat mission and started hauling bodies out off this hillside as fast as they were falling. A lot of them were Americans; a lot of them were the enemy. I couldn't tell, when they were putting them on board, whether they were alive or dead. They were stacking them in there like cord wood. I was just completely overwhelmed at the amount of death, and I didn't understand how I was supposed to be reacting. I basically went into state of shock. There were so many bodies on board we could hardly take the aircraft up, but once we got the aircraft airborne, I was able to get into where the bodies were and start sorting through them. I tried to sort out the ones that were dead and ones that were still alive and do what I could medically to save the ones that were alive. I remember this one American—he wasn't very old, he was a young guy—had a pretty large hole in his back, which I suspect came from a mine or something. I was able to put my fist in the middle of a poncho and shove it into the hole in his back and twist it . That was the only thing that stopped him from bleeding to death. I then realized that my main purpose for being in Vietnam was going to be to save lives, not to kill Viet Cong or NVA. At that point in time, things started to change.
By the time we got to the field hospital there was so much blood in the helicopter I couldn't tell if it was my own—if I was wounded or what. The only way I was able to tell was by taking off my clothes. The wash from the rotor blades would pick the blood up off the bodies and sling it back on me. I had it in my mouth, on my hands, and my flight gloves were so sticky with blood that they would actually stick to the gun mounts. That was about my second week in country. I got a real rude and fast awakening to Vietnam.
I then was sent on another mission out of Ban Me Thuot farther up north on the other side of a little area called Anh Ke. The First Air Cavalry was stationed there and we flew support for them. The door-gunner was a guy I had trained stateside with. I remember him very well. His name was Gary Lamb. We became extremely close friends, closer than brothers could possibly be. He was married and had a little baby, and he and his wife would invite me over to the house for dinner. The last thing his wife told me before we left Fort Bragg was to take care of Gary and make sure he came back safely. Me being single at that time, I assured her very much that I would. When we were on this flight at Anh Ke we were flying low-level support for convoys. We'd fly level along the road in front of the convoys trying to look for any kind of enemy movement on the side of the road. We were flying this one morning especially early and happened to spot some gooks running up the hillside off to the right of us. We swung the aircraft around and made another loop back to come over the top of them and got caught in a crossfire. One of the pilots was shot, my door-gunner was shot, and we nose-dived into the ground. We didn't do that much damage on the aircraft because we were low and going at a fairly slow rate of speed, but it was enough to shake us up.
Hey, this was the first time we'd been shot down. What a rude awakening, you know? Anyway, we hit the ground, and the first thing I did was to grab a machine gun off the mounts and set up a perimeter around the aircraft. I ran around the other side of the aircraft to get Gary and found him dead, shot through the neck. I was stunned, but we were also under attack. I knew if I didn't do something, we'd be overrun at that point and either killed or taken hostage.
The pilots were okay. One had a bullet wound in his arm, and I was able to wrap a bandage around that. They set up a perimeter in the front of the aircraft, and we managed to hold the enemy back long enough for the convoy to get up to where we were. Fortunately, that drove the enemy off. I was able to repair it on-site—it was mostly wiring and one fuel line that was shot out—and we flew it out. I would have loved to see the expression on the enemy's face.
Being the section leader over in Vietnam and in charge of all my crew chiefs, it was my duty to write Gary's wife. It was probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I literally prayed to God at that time, asking, you know, why, why is this happening? I don't understand this, you know. He was my best friend. I just can't understand it. The pain never did go away.
We flew back in that night. The fuel crews came out and patched up the holes and so forth. The next day, I flew the exact same mission with a new door-gunner. My door-gunners I picked from infantry, who had a waiting list of guys wanting the job. The infantry I would give my life for. They were super, excellent people, and if it wasn't for them, the other two times I was shot down I wouldn't be able to talk about this here and now. So I respect them completely and wholly.
We had another mission the next morning and flew over into a valley called Pleiku, which was under rocket attack at that time. I can remember seeing a lot of bodies on the ground and as we set down, there was an aircraft flying beside us in the tall elephant grass. As it was setting down, it blew up, so we pulled out immediately. We didn't know what had happened, if it was a rocket, or a mortar, or just what. But we pulled up and landed in a field to one side. The troops there started running over and throwing the wounded on board while we were still under fire. We went in because we knew it was our duty to save them, and we just didn't think twice about it. There were so many of them that it was just overwhelming. And I can remember the wounded they were hauling up to the aircraft, some of them minus legs and arms and some of them dying and screaming. I was holding them in my hands, and they were dying and begging me to help them. There was so little I could do, since I also had to man my machine guns and keep the enemy away from the aircraft. When the pilot got shot in the wrist, I had to take over one of the controls. It was all so overwhelming that I dropped down beside the aircraft on my hands and knees and put my head down in the dust and said, ‘Lord, I can't take this, I don't understand it, please stop it.’ And it was worse than it ever was. I remember that day was the day I stopped praying. I just said, ‘If I'm to die in Vietnam, I will die in Vietnam.’
If it's my time, it's my time—that thought gave me a different attitude about the war. You might say I came to enjoy it, to look forward to it. I became the gung-ho John Wayne type, just like everybody else over there. There was so much death, so much killing on an everyday basis that you just had to accept what was going to happen—it you get it, you get it. That made it a little bit easier to get through the war.
I think the sky pilots must have had a terrible time in Vietnam trying to counsel people—sky pilot was the slang name that we gave to a chaplain in Vietnam. They weren't able to hold church services, so they really couldn't do the duties that they were sent to Vietnam to do. I think a lot of them came up with the same kind of attitudes that we did. I basically rejected God at that point, so I was able to slide right though the war with no problem at all. Then it got to a point where we got things turned around, and we were actually looking forward to the killing. Not for the joy of it, but because it was exhilarating to be able to get out there and start firing away and taking out aggressions against people. We were losing a lot of our own people, some of them my close friends, friends I trained with in the states. I became so numb to it I couldn't cry for them anymore. I just couldn't do it. I had one gentleman in my unit who we called Mother. During our training back in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he was always the first one up in the morning who would bang on the garbage can lids and wake all of us up and make sure we got dressed. He was just a super likable fellow. We were flying a mission up out of Dak To, which is up in a northern province in Vietnam, where we'd pick up Montagnard villagers. We'd pick up the chief and fly him around the area and he'd tell an infantry officer and us where the enemy would be walking through the area that day. We would fly him around for two or three hours, then land and shut down the aircraft.
I remember one occasion I was walking around the village and meeting the villagers and, you know, smoking the peace pipe with them—the things you do with the villagers over there. Drinking their liquor just about knocked you on the butt. I was kind of walking around the village just checking things out and trading C-rations for pipes made out of copper and roots and so forth, and spent the rest of the afternoon there and got back in the aircraft and left. The next morning I assigned another crew to go out and fly the same mission, but that night they didn't come back. We couldn't go back in the village that evening, so we waited until daylight, and I remember looking down and seeing that the aircraft was sitting on the ground burned to a crisp. There were three bodies lying beside it on the ground, face down. We called the infantry, who set up a perimeter around the village and went in and checked out the huts. Then we were able to land. The doorgunner was in the burned helicopter. He evidently tried to run back to the aircraft when an enemy patrol surprised them in the village. He managed to get in behind the machine gun before they shot and killed him, then set fire to the aircraft. They evidently were going to take the two pilots and the crew chief, Mother, prisoner because their hands were tied behind their backs. They were lying on the ground face down, each with a bullet hole in the back of the head.
The guilt I felt at that point just about tore me up. I loved the doggoned guy like my own brother, yet I was the one who sent him on the mission. It also scared me because I was in there the day before. We put a stop to that type of mission fairly fast.
But time continued to go on in Vietnam, and we would fly various other missions. We flew a lot of river patrols, where we'd fly low along the river after 6 pm—the curfew on the river in Vietnam. Normally, any boats on the river after 6 pm were free fire because it was normally the enemy, hauling weapons down to South Vietnam. So we used to really try for those missions, so we could get out there and do a little bit of killing. At that point, we were looking forward to it. You know, to be able to shoot somebody was just, oh, the ultimate—the exhilarating part of the war.
I spent a lot of time after that in various camps, flying support for different groups. We did a lot of body runs. We took a lot of teams out, sometimes under fire. We took more risks than I can believe. The war was so accelerated, and in such a small piece of land that we were in combat action daily. There was never a day, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, the entire year I was there (that I can recall) that we weren't in some kind of combat. It just became normal practice. It was just something you looked forward to, something we knew was going to happen.
We got so complacent that we went from wearing O.D. green t-shirts to white t-shirts. We quit the breast armor—became the gung-ho John Wayne types. I became close friends with a new door-gunner I got—Peewee, a little shrimp of a guy. He was excellent on the M-60's, and I became fairly close to him when we were flying a mission called Cyclops. We would fly level up and down these canyons firing door guns out to the side of the aircraft. A Vietnamese fixed-wing aircraft would fly behind with loudspeakers telling the enemy to give up, telling them they didn't have to be hunted down this way, didn't have to be shot at, and so forth. Give up and come back to us, they said. I remember flying down this one long, deep canyon when I was flying copilot. One of the pilots was back on the guns. We happened to fly out into an opening, right into an enemy patrol of NVA. Unfortunately, we were still in the canyon, and by the time we were able to pull out they put enough fire into the aircraft to sink us. We had one first sergeant on board from one of the First Cav units who got his leg taken off right at the kneecap, and he fell over on the floor of the aircraft. Since we didn't have seats on the aircraft, he had been sitting on his helmet so he wouldn't be shot in the butt. Peewee got shot in the chest and was killed instantly. The pilot who was flying in the crew chief slot took a round that went inside his helmet, around his helmet, then out the back-side into the firewall behind him, where it lodged against the transmission.
We went down too far from where the enemy patrol was, but to our luck there was also an eight-man LRRP team out there. LRRPs or 'Lurps’ were the long-range reconnaissance patrols that would go out to just scout and see what they could stir up, what kind of trouble they could find, and so forth. So these lurps were out there, and they just happened to see us come down and were able to get to us almost by the time we hit the ground, though the enemy was right behind us. We were able to set the aircraft down in the lower part of the brush without much damage. They got up behind the aircraft and were about, oh, I'd say a hundred yards away from us, and starting to fire. But the lurp patrol had enough fire weaponry to keep them pinned down, and we were able to call in Puff, which was a C-130 that was fitted with machine guns and mini guns. It could fly over and literally cover every square foot of an area the size of a football field with firepower. Puff happened to be flying around our vicinity and was able to devastate the enemy right at that point. There was so much excitement I didn't have a chance to see what was going on outside the aircraft. I got out and was shaking so bad I couldn't stand up. I walked around to see what Peewee was doing, but Peewee was dead. I came unglued, but I couldn't cry. The sad feelings were there, but I couldn't get the emotions out.
After we took the aircraft out—it was swung out with a crane—we took it back to a little base not far from Pleiku. It was an area called Happy Valley, just like out of Anh Ke. We did the repairs on it that we needed and took a mission the very next day. We were flying to a hospital in Nha Trang and areas up and down the coastline, hauling a lot of American bodies. Things that went on in Vietnam seem unbelievable, even to this day. I went through more uniforms messed up with the blood of my buddies and never once was wounded myself. I was in a door-gunner position one day when we were just flying over the jungles, and I was leaning over the aircraft looking out. My back got sore from leaning over, so I sat up and saw just kind of a flash before my eyes, and could feel little flakes of metal on my cheek. I brushed then with my flight glove and saw it was metal, little flakes of metal, and I looked up and there was a bullet hole in the ceiling. If I hadn't sat up when I did the bullet would have gone right through my neck. I just kind of lay back and said, ‘My God, I just about bought the farm.’ And that was the end of it.
We used to take a lot of chances over there, some unbelievable chances, but I could say they were all for a purpose. Like, the infantry was great. I worshipped the ground they walked on. We were their lifeline and vice-versa. I thought nothing of going into a town like Nha Trang and stocking up on ten, twelve cases of Coke or pop and magazines then flying them back out into the field on a supply run the next morning. You know, you just didn't think about it. It was a pretty hellish war. It went on like that, you know, day after day after day, and I just became absolute crazy with the feelings that were going on over there. At that time I was trying so hard to keep my sanity by saying, ‘I'm over here; I'm fighting for my country, the United States of America; I'm fighting against Communism.’ When Jane Fonda was up in North Vietnam protesting, calling us jerks and baby killers and everything for being there in the first place, she was fighting us, I felt. It was hard for us to understand what was going on up there. Many a time we'd uncover underground hospitals that the enemy had built, and there would be cases and cases of blood plasma and medicine donated to North Vietnam by Berkeley College [sic] in the United States, donations right direct to the enemy. Berkeley College was protesting war in Vietnam at that time, and seeing stuff like that mixed in our emotions. Yet we knew we were there, and we were there to stay and were serving a purpose.
We had some fun times in Vietnam also. I can recall times when we went water skiing behind the aircraft and other crazy things, you know, like flying low-level across a compound, trying to pick up a tent peg with the skids of an aircraft. Things like that—anything to keep some sanity. It was really a different kind of situation to be in, and coming fresh out of school and going right into an environment like that was the absolute ultimate. I reached a point where I couldn't wear enough weaponry. I had pistols strapped on; I had machineguns, and I had ammo strapped over my back. Believe it or not, I would actually use a majority of it up in a mission. I was fortunate enough never to have to go into hand-to-hand combat with the gooks on the ground.
We were fighting two different factions in Vietnam. We were fighting the NVA, which was your North Vietnamese Army, trained Communist soldiers out of North Vietnam. They were bigger, and had better weapons, and were better prepared than the Viet Cong, who were your Southern enemy. They were your storekeepers and your shop clerks by day, and then at night they'd turn around and try to kill you. So basically, we were fighting two different factions of people over there, which were both pretty unruly fighters. If we weren't fighting during the day, we were being mortared during the night, which was a devastating, scary sound—to be sound asleep and all of a sudden hear mortars exploding all around. You're wide-awake and numb at the same time, but you know what to do. Boy, you dive for the floor; you dive for the bunkers; you get out of there, you get out of there, you get out of there fast, you low-crawl in the sand. Well, anyway, the Vietnam war went on like that, devastation day after day and so forth.
Finally, I had about a month to go. I was one of the so-called short-timers and I still couldn't see the end at that point. I knew I was headed back, but I still couldn't see the end. Things went along fine until the last week came. Then I got scared. Boy, I was a short-timer, and it was my time to get out of Vietnam. I wanted out bad; I wanted out desperately; I couldn't get out fast enough. It came time for me to leave the following morning; we took my aircraft. We were flying to a mission down south to Cam Ranh Bay where I was going to board the aircraft. Mind you, by now we'd lost over half our unit in Vietnam, so at this point we were made up of a lot of scattered aircraft and a lot of scattered people. As we were flying down to Cam Ranh Bay, we were flying along an area just out of Nha Trang called Miami Beach. It was kind of a nickname given to a stretch of beach that was used as a play area for the Koreans who were fighting for us. As we were flying along the beach, we happened to see a firefight going on. Being the only aircraft in the area, we set her down and got what Koreans we could on board. We took a few rounds in the aircraft and at the same time we were being mortared and hit with every kind of firepower you can think of. It was pretty frightening and spooky just at that point. We managed to pull out of there and take a few rounds in the aircraft, plus some smoke damage. And there was blood. I remember one Korean's leg was completely shot off, and I was trying to hold the tourniquet on and fire the machinegun with the other hand. The tourniquet would slip off and blood would squirt all over my fatigues, but at that point you just don't care about it. But anyway, we landed at a hospital just before we got to Cam Ranh Bay, and took the Koreans to their hospital, then flew on to Cam Ranh. I grabbed my bags and jumped off the aircraft and said goodbye to the crew, and the pilot and I ran to the terminal where we were to board the big silver bird back to the United States.
Well, we sat there in the terminal. I remember my face was covered with smoke, and my hands had blood on them. We didn't have time to change clothes, so we boarded the plane in our fatigues, still smelling of phosphorous and every other kind of combat smell you can think of. I still had bloodstains on my fatigues. Twenty-four hours later, I was home in the United States of America, and another twenty-four hours later, (right fresh out of combat) there were my folks, thrilled to see me back. The war had stopped; the war had ended for me right at that point. I walked into the house at home, and mom broke down and threw her arms around me. Dad gave me a big hug. Mom said ‘Thank God you're home. The war's over. I don't want to hear a word about it.’
Dad was the same way. I was to shut the war out at that point. I sat there eating dinner in fatigues that I came out of Vietnam with forty-eight hours ago with blood on them and the smell of phosphorous and smoke. It was a hard adjustment to make, but at that point I started pushing the war behind me. Nobody wanted to talk about it. I still had thirteen months to serve when I got out of Vietnam, so I was sent back to Fort Stewart, Georgia, where I was an instructor for thirteen months, which was devastating, because nobody would listen to me. I was trying to train them the way it was done in Vietnam and prepare them for it, and they'd just laugh at me. It was really a frustrating period in my life. I couldn't wait to get out of the service, and I wasn't about to be sent back to Vietnam again. The war at that time was supposed to be behind me. I was supposed to forget the war completely.
I went on to college and finished, but the protesting was still going on, even as the war was starting to wind down in '70 and '71. I didn't really dare pipe up and say, ‘Hey, I fought over there,’ and all this and that. The protesting was pretty violent, and there were a lot of radicals. Anyway, I finished college, and I got married. I was still on a super-fantastic adrenalin high, so high that it was like being on drugs. It was unbelievable, and I couldn't come down off it. I became a workaholic. I had two, three jobs that I would be doing at one time, and everything I did was a type A behavior pattern where I couldn't do it fast enough or long enough. This went on for quite a few years, and I worked for corporations that would transfer me a lot. About every four years they'd send me in a different territory where I would build up a whole new area. I was good at it and I was fast, because I had a tremendous amount of energy. I was a natural for it.
As time went on over the years, I started missing the war. My last transfer was up to the state of Montana, where I resided in Big Ark. That's been about eight years now, from the date I'm giving this account [1991]. I started a new business in Big Ark, and since I was super full of energy it became a big success. It was my own business; I was my own boss, and I worked the business and the territory myself, but it wasn't enough, so I started another business, and I started another one. I had three businesses going and all were doing fantastic. But I was still missing something in my life. The war was trying to creep back in, and I was trying to push it back and bury it. So I finally wound up joining the National Guard. Well, I went into supply at the Kalispell unit and worked as a supply sergeant for a couple of years. I still wasn't getting what I wanted to get out of it, so I transferred over to aviation in Helena, Montana, and became a crew chief, and soon after that, a section leader. I was doing the same exact duties that I did in Vietnam. I was flying. I was in charge over the section and the men; we were flying Hueys, and we were doing assault missions training. I was with the unit a couple of years over there, and realized that something was happening, but I couldn't understand what it was for sure. I can remember between Saturday and Sunday drills I would be laying there in my bunk after a night flight, thinking about the flights the next day and who I'd schedule on them. I'd say, ‘Well, I'll send Andy over on the Billings run tomorrow.’ Then I'd say, ‘No, no, maybe I'd better not. He's married and has got a family and they got to go across the mountains and stuff like that.’ What was really happening was that the war was coming back, I was bringing it back, and I was bringing it back fast, but I didn't realize it then. Well, this went on for about two years, and I noticed after each drill I was more and more uncomfortable. I would have stomach pains and stuff like that, which I attributed to typical military food and so forth. Well, one drill, here about two years ago, we were flying a night flight, and it was up in the Montana mountains between Missoula and Helena. It was at night; it was freezing cold out, and it was cold and dark inside the aircraft. I was doing the map work with the map light, trying to lay out our plot and stuff like that, when all of a sudden I started sweating—I mean sweat was just pouring off me. I started shaking, just really violently shaking, and my stomach knotted up in a tremendous pain. I told the pilot to get me down on the ground right now, right here, that I was sick and didn't know what was happening. I didn't know if I had food poisoning or what. So we landed, right up there in the middle of nowhere. I got out of the aircraft and walked around a while, and felt a little bit better and got back in and felt kind of rotten the next day, which was Sunday, and finished out the drill weekend and went home. I didn't think anymore about it.
The following week I had to put in an extra drill, so I was starting back over to Helena, and I was in my vehicle driving into Helena and just passing Fort Harrison, and all of a sudden I started sweating again, and started shaking, just tremendously and violently shaking. So I went right out to the VA hospital. I walked into the hospital, and I was white as a ghost, and one of the doctors there in the hospital took a look at me and said, ‘What in the world are you scared of; what are you afraid of?’ And I said, ‘I'm not afraid of anything.’ And he said, ‘You are. You're petrified of something.’ And we sat down and got to talking, and went back over my flying and Vietnam and everything, and he told me I had posttraumatic delayed stress syndrome, had every symptom of it. I said, ‘Nah, I heard about it, but I got no mental problem of that type. I got a physical problem.’ He told me to forget drill at this point and just go home and relax and see how I felt. So I went out to the field and told them what was happening and that I wasn't feeling too hot and that I wanted to go home.
As I was driving back home, the pain in my stomach started knotting up. At home I started getting very nervous and anxious. All of a sudden I couldn't eat, and I couldn't sleep, and I started having nightmares and flashbacks. I was having them before, ever since I came out of Vietnam. Some were violent—sometimes I would jump up on the bed and dive head first on the floor, thinking I was in mortar attack. Several times I've wound up with my arm in a sling from diving under furniture. They were continuous, but they weren't real bad.
Now all of a sudden I was having tremendous flashbacks. I mean they were severe. And it wasn't just happening at night; it was happening during the day, and on a daily basis, too. I went down to my family doctor and told him there was something physically wrong with me, that my stomach ached, that I couldn't sleep, that I couldn't eat, and that I was miserable. So he took me in the hospital, checked me in, and ran every conceivable test he could think of. He told me he was sorry, but he couldn't find anything physically wrong with me, other than the symptoms. The nervousness and the not being able to eat, he could solve with drugs. He gave me a pill that gave me back my appetite, so we went the pill route, but meanwhile I was getting tremendously worse. I had a fear anxiety all of a sudden, and I couldn't be left alone. I couldn't work, and my businesses were going down the tubes. I couldn't leave the house; I was afraid to go anywhere, and I was afraid to have my wife leave to go to work. I would hang on to her and ask her to please not leave.
I really, seriously, thought I was going nuts. It was bad. My boys were afraid, and so forth. Finally, my medical doctor told me he could help me. He understood what I was going through, the posttraumatic delayed stress syndrome, but he wasn't an expert in that field, so he suggested that I contact the VA hospital. I did talk to the VA hospital, and they set me up with a doctor down in Missoula. When I talked to him, he told me the program we were going to go on, and how we were going to treat the problem, and so forth. I had posttraumatic delayed stress syndrome, plain and simple. For some veterans, it shows up later down the road. I had gotten it early in the game because I forced the issue with my flying—I actually brought it back myself.
It was best explained to me that when you first go into combat so young, it's a shock to the system. And the war is so severe and so violent, compared to what we are normally used to, that we are kind of numb and in shock and stay that way. Then we come out of the war. It's forgotten; we come out of a wartime environment and twenty-four, forty-eight hours later we're home, back in the safe world and we've forgotten the war and we've buried it. But as we get older and mature, it starts to surface; we start to understand what really happened to us over there. It starts coming back to us; we start reliving the whole thing. The emotions and feelings we buried are trying to get back out, and it's a very serious problem. The doctor down in Missoula flat told me that a lot of vets were committing suicide over this thing, and that doctors really don't know what to do to help them. A lot of doctors were going the drug route, using drugs to calm patients down and so forth. But that doctor didn't know that that was the sure way to do it. It was still a kind of pioneering field. So he had me go into the hospital at St. Pat's down there for a couple of weeks of evaluation and counseling. It was unfortunate because it was over the holidays, the 4th of July, and all the doctors went on vacation. I sat there for a week and watched TV. I felt great. I relaxed and calmed down. But when they took me out of the hospital, I was miserable again, absolutely miserable.
I got back home, and I became even worse. I got to the point where I just couldn't eat, and I went way down in weight. I was seriously, honestly looking towards death. I wasn't suicidal, but I could see myself dying because I was so far out of it. I just didn't know how to handle what was happening to me, or anything else. I could see my business going down the tubes, my life and my family. My wife, of course, was upset. She didn't know how to handle it, or what it was all about. My kids were the same way. So I finally called the VA hospital over in Seattle and asked what they could do about it. They said they bring these cases in for sixty days, drug them, calm them down, and then let them out again. I told them that that wasn't good enough. So I got word of a hospital, a brand-spanking new one, up in Kalispell, called Glacier View. They were a California-based operation, and were primarily there for alcoholics, to cure alcoholism. I called the hospital up there and told them what my situation was. The doctor told me they were starting to take, on a short-term basis, patients who are having emotional problems. He told me he wanted to talk to me, so I went up to Kalispell to see him. He was from California and had handled cases of my type down there. He said he'd take me in for the three weeks to see what they could do. So I checked into the hospital. Mind you, in the meantime, I was in pretty miserable shape; in fact, I thought dead was the way I was going to end up, just starving myself, or whatever.
He checked me in, and the first thing he did was take away every pill I had. I had sedatives, pills to calm my stomach before I ate so I could eat, pills for the diarrhea that came with anxiety, and pills for appetite. He threw every one of them away. I told him he was going to kill me—that I had to have those pills.
He told me we were going to do it his way—that I was going to do it without pills. He got two of the therapists up there, two young ladies, who were excellent in their field. We started grief therapy. For two hours a day, every day, they would take me into a room and set me down, and we would just start in. They had me relive the war completely, every detail, everything I could pull out of it. We would go until I would literally break down and just bawl. I called it emotional vomiting. My emotions were starting to come back. The pain in my stomach started to relieve, and I could get to where I could start eating again. As the first couple of weeks went along, I started feeling good. The third week I started looking forward to the sessions. They had me low crawling in the hallways and everything. The nightmares started to disappear and the flashbacks were slowly starting to go away. I was really starting to feel good. By the third week we figured we were pretty much through this part of it, and the rest of it could be done on an outpatient basis with a local psychiatrist. So I checked out of the hospital.
First thing I knew, I was miserable. I had an anxiety that was overwhelming. I had a hundred and some-odd emotions that all of a sudden surfaced. I didn't know what to do with them, how to place them or how to deal with them. So they checked me back in for another week and used the whole time on anxiety control. It was fantastic, the techniques I learned. I started checking out books on stress and stress control, and diet, and anxiety, and it got to where I was really proficient with it. When I got out of the hospital again, I immediately went back to my job, going around to see my customers. I never at any time tried to hide the fact that I was going through this posttraumatic delayed stress syndrome. In fact, my customers, a lot of them, came up to the hospital to see me. They'd heard about the problem, but never seen anybody who had experienced it. A lot of them said they had been in Vietnam, too. So really I had a tremendous amount of support from my customers. All this time I was in the hospital and out of work. My main corporation in Boise kept paychecks coming, so I was never without a paycheck. So that was kind of a load off my mind, too.
I was really starting to gain a lot of headway with the anxiety control and got back to work and back to my customers and was able to talk to them. I was progressively getting better, and as time goes on I'm getting a lot better. The traumatic stress syndrome is very, very deadly. It can really destroy families. My wife and my children took the counseling with me. They understood what was going on. My wife explained to me what hell it had been to live with me for the seventeen years. I never realized she had felt that way; I thought that I was perfect, that there wasn't a thing wrong with me. Now we've become much closer. I've been able to get my feelings out and express them to her. I went to the pastor of my church, who was a new pastor and had just taken over. When all this was happening with me, I was all torn up and couldn't find any inner peace. I was still overwhelmed and figured the only inner peace I could get would have to come from within God and myself. So I went to my pastor, and asked him how to pray and to receive God again. He didn't know what to tell me. He had no idea, not because he lacked knowledge, but because he didn't understand what I was going through. So I kind of threw him.
Well, I in turn picked up the Bible and started reading Psalms, and I'd read them over and over again, about the pain and the suffering. And I read Job. I was able to identify with Job one hundred percent. That worked out perfectly, because Job was basically acting the same way I was. I started finding inner peace. I now am more involved in my church, working with vets. Having gone through this, and gone through it so violently, I can work with them and understand what they're going through. Hopefully, I can be a great help to them. It's probably going to be another year or two before I'm completely out of the woods on this, but at least I'm learning to live with it and understand it. I'm hoping the public will become more aware of it. We figure that five percent of the United States' population of Vietnam vets resides here in the state of Montana. The figures for 1988 by the vet organizations figure that 60,000 vets will probably commit suicide this year. So it is a very serious problem and needs to be confronted head-on. So I'm praying and I'm hoping that more and more vets will come forth and seek the help that they need, and that with everybody's help and understanding we can come to help these people out.
| All alone and insecure, finding a place with, |
| Those who are there. |
| Trapped in a strange country's land, guess what, |
| It is your enemy's own homeland. |
| Using every skill you possibly can, because, |
| The life of yourself and friends is in your hands. |
| It's time to judge if you can, if the foe in your sights, |
| Lives or dies by your hands. |
| Young hearts away from home, |
| Taken up to die alone, |
| One old soul within a few, |
| Enclosed in dark away from view, |
| Bloodshot eyes with tears now dry, |
| Seeking help as their vision dies, |
| Terror and fright to them no game, |
| Since the first day of bloodshed, |
| Since the first day they came, |
| Gunfire burst from everywhere, |
| You tried to hide, but someone knew, knew you were there |
| You had been in too much pain and could not move, |
| Then it was over and you are through, |
| Crimson red shows on your chest, |
| It is a mark and also your new crest, |
| The silent cries of echoes past, voices sounding out of flasks, |
| Stand with pride and honor true, |
| For those who died and stood with you. |
| IT IS THE FINAL RESTING PLACE IN WHICH THIS SOLDIER DIED. |
John Luke Flyinghorse, born in McIntosh, SD, is a member of the Hunkpapa Lakota tribe. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, continuing a tradition of military service among the males in his family; his father served in the U.S. Army, and Flyinghorse received great support from his entire family concerning his decision to enlist. His experience in Vietnam was with Golf Company in the area of the Thu Bon Mountains and the Ashau Valley in Vietnam, and with Communications Platoon, H & S Company. Though he expresses his pride in having served his nation in the Vietnam War, Flyinghorse also believes that ‘America has lost sight of what made her strong and united,’ and speaks out against further American Indian involvement with the U.S. Armed Services' current activities.
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Figure 2. "John Luke Flyinghorse, Sr. - Marine Boot Camp Photo" |
By John Luke Flyinghorse, Sr.
There was nothing to talk or think about. It was a given that all males in our family would join the armed services when their time came…so my dad, uncles and my grandfather's started preparing us for war when we were very young…all of us.
A lot of our activities started taking place late at night, especially when it was storming out and the moon was hidden. This included riding horses in electrical storms, when their ears would spark blue, and you could see the blue light dance between their ears. We were also taught to ride horses across swollen rivers, when the ice breaks up and the river is flowing bank to bank when the big icebergs flow past you real fast…we were taught not to show fear or panic because that would spook the horse and we would both drown. As I think back, I am thankful that we had these kinds of teachers…because holding our emotions in check is a leadership trait…
My friends were also my cousins. We had already buried some of my uncles in the family cemetery, and we honored them yearly because they were veterans, so it wasn't like we would just go and die and that would be the end. We knew if something did happen, we would be taken care of…forever.
My grandfathers told us that the white man has a myth about us—that we can see in the dark, hear movement miles away simply by putting our ears to the ground, and with our `acute' sense of smell, we can actually smell out the enemy. Of course, most of these myths are just that…but we prepared anyway. We did go hunting cottontails in the dark…and we were taken high up into the hills while someone was down below making sounds and noises, and we would identify them; our stealth was constantly being tested.
In my hometown of McIntosh, SD, all the Indians went to war; not very many of the white boys went, only the very poorest of the poor; but we all stood together as one in honoring all those leaving and returning. One of my cousins had just returned from Vietnam, and he told us younger boys about it. In the telling he didn't show any emotion or elaborate, he just told what he did and what he saw, so when my cousin George and I were old enough, we quit school and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, for four years each. Since our returning cousin was a Marine, we already knew what would happen to us; it was the brutality of boot camp that was challenging. When our cousin was telling us of his boot camp experience, we all thought he was making up these wild stories, but he wasn't.
My dad's and my grandfather's generations were all US Army; my generation was all U.S. Marines. My father took this especially hard because he always wanted us to join the 101st [U.S. Army Airborne Division] like he did. One of my grandfathers told me that since he knew I was going into combat, he knew I would be safe with the Marines; he just told us to do what we were told and taught, and we would be home safe before we knew it. As for the community, a few days before we were to leave, we were invited to the city bar where even the sheriff bought us beer, even though we weren't old enough to drink legally. This surprised us, but I think my uncles and other relatives had a lot to do with this.
Daily, the drill instructors separated all of us by race, so we weren't the only ones segregated…I think this instilled in us the fact that even though we all came from different backgrounds, we were all there for a common cause. Of course, at first we didn't see this, but as time went on we could see how this was working for the benefit of the Corps; we learned to depend on one another without thinking about it. Through hard work I became a squad leader, and upon graduation I was promoted to PFC, a privilege provided to only eight out of a platoon of 180 men.
Upon learning that I was going to Vietnam, there was a big sigh of relief—a final knowing. This only left the question of when. Vietnam is possibly the most beautiful country in the world…and I was here and I couldn't believe it…like a huge manicured garden. Before I had left for Vietnam, one of my relatives sent me a letter they tore out of the local newspaper. It was a letter written by Kenny Jamerson, who was critically wounded in Vietnam, and he died because of his wounds. But before he died, he had a nurse write this letter home to his parents; they had it printed. I cried when I read that letter, because he wrote of the beauty and the people living here, and that he wasn't afraid to die, nor did he blame them for taking his life.
I was with Golf Company 2/7, 1st Marine Division. We were a bush company working out in I Corps, which included that area from LZ Baldy up to the DMZ. This area also included the Thu Bon Mountains and the Ashau Valley, what we commonly called ‘Death Valley’ because of all the losses our forces suffered here. I was sent out on more ambush and listening posts than most of the others, and I was eventually made the Company Commander's radio operator. I served in a grunt unit. My only concern was for the safety of my men. When not on patrol or cleaning gear, I was playing guitar and singing songs; it was our way of coping.
My experience in Vietnam guaranteed [others] the right to spit in my face and throw bags of human excrement at me later on the 14th street bridge in Washington DC..
Now I wear my colors with pride; it's my way of letting everyone know that I did serve and I am still proud to have served. I would do it again.
American Indians always looked each other up…no matter what tribe we were from. That was the only mystique…why? I have no idea, but we had a bond. Its like this: I wouldn't rather put my life in anyone's else's hands than another American Indian, let alone someone else's life; so who better? No matter where we came from, we always walked point, or carried the radio, or were the Company Commander's operator…always.
I feel both honored and humbled at having that opportunity to go to Vietnam; so many vets have said that they wished they could have gone. You won't know why unless you've been there, and I know you have, so you know what I mean. I speak out against sending more American Indians to the Armed Services to go to any war the US is now engaged in, because the reasons have all been changed now. America has lost sight of what made her strong and united.
I landed at LZ Baldy, I Corps, RVN on December 7th, 1969 at 7:00 p.m. My first service was with Communications Platoon, H & S Company, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division as a radio operator. I had arrived a Lance Corporal; we were operators for the `hill,' and later on we were sent out on Listening Posts (LP's) and daylight patrols around the hill.
Christmas in Vietnam: I was out in the bush when Christmas rolled around, and I had gotten a package from my grandmother. It was `papa'—a form of jerky made from mule deer meat, cut into thin slices and dried from drying racks and seasoned lightly. This I shared with `my' men; we shared everything from home. Usually it was just a taste of home, but it meant the world to us, especially to those who didn't get any mail or gifts from their families. I do remember the peas and mashed potatoes washed out of my mess kit because of the falling rain…
My first encounter with death: one night I had the third shift on radio watch. I would physically go from post to post along the perimeter, checking on our radio operators and others, making sure they were all right and their gear was working. I preferred this rather than the meaningless radio calls that others usually did to do their checking on their watch. But we called the LP's and other patrols we sent out at night.
When one of my LP's didn't answer, I waited until daylight; then four of us went out to check on the LP, which was only out about 200 meters from the perimeter, between us and the village.
When we reached their position, we found four stripped bodies; they had cut everyone's throat and taken everything they carried. There was no sign of a struggle, and one guy even had a smile. I knew they had been smoking dope, and they had probably all been asleep as well, and I was angry. I also knew that only two or three people had done this, but three would be enough people to carry away all their gear. We called for a medivac and our Lt. came out with the chopper; he was carrying an AK rifle. When he saw the bodies he cursed then he cried, then he said, ‘Stitch them up chief; they aren't going home like this.’
Field duty—working from the hill, we were rotated out on operations with the different bush companies of 2/7; I served with two bush companies, and after having gone out with them, I requested duty with Golf Company as one of their radio operators.
One of my father's younger brother's was a squad leader with Hotel 2/7, and I didn't want to endanger him, so I had requested duty with Golf Company. No sooner had I arrived then I was made the Captain's radio operator, filling a Sergeant's billet, and I was put in charge of the radio operators who were with the company; the man I had replaced had rotated back to the `world.'
When I was with the Captain, I set up the command post, and I carried a PRC-77 and a PRC-25 attached to each other through a connecting cable; the 77 was a cipher unit. But when I was on patrol, I carried the 25. We were severely undermanned, and our Captain was really a 2nd Lt., just like I was really a L/Cpl., but I was called `Sergeant,' or just plain `Chief'; I didn't mind this because I was the Communications Chief. Unlike all the movies, I was the only one who could call in artillery support or air support, besides the Captain, and I helped him write letters back to families of those we lost in combat.
We went to Laos and Cambodia and walked around a lot in the I Corps area; dates, times and places have no meaning to me, unlike my brothers and my two cousins who were also there at that time, and could keep track of all the places they had been and all the places they had seen action. I don't have that recall…and I don't know why, nor do I care.
Some things I do recall vividly…but they are perhaps best forgotten as well. Like the time we were on water patrol, we had all the men's canteens and we were searching for water. I was the second man back from point with my radio; I kept the point man in view, and when we had entered a slight clearing in the heavy jungle, this man in black pajamas jumped up from the trail we were on and started running away, tugging at his pajama bottoms. He didn't carry any arms with him as he made his escape. The point man stitched him up the back, and I saw this man go tumbling, then I heard him open up again; this time it was a woman who was lying in the trail with her pajama bottoms still down. It was apparent they had been having sex and we had surprised them, but we had our orders. Anyone wearing black pajamas or anyone who ran from us, carrying arms or not, we had orders to engage.
New Year's Day 1970…New Year's eve we were atop a mountain overlooking LZ Rider. There was an artillery battery up there already with a support grunt unit; I had just come back from setting up a relay station and had settled in for the night, when a frightening thought occurred to me. I called my Captain and we discussed this, and he in turn called the CO on LZ Rider, down below us, about three clicks away (3,000 meters), and he assured me that everything would be fine, so I left a wakeup call to wake me just before midnight; then I went to sleep. At exactly midnight, down below on LZ Rider, everyone who carried a weapon opened up, firing into the night sky. Pop-up flares and fireworks were set off celebrating the New Year, but within seconds of everyone expending their rounds, we could see the green and red tracers being traded down below, and huge explosions erupting with sporadic white tracers feebly coming back in defeated response from the defenders. The radios went wild, calls for ‘fire-danger close’ and ‘danger-close’ went out for artillery and air support…and all we could do was watch from above, and curse them, cry. The next morning we came into the base camp…
