“Students throughout the world cut classes as part of an anti-war strike organized by the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.”

—The Vietnam War Day by Day

22

Clock Winding Down

April–August 1968

“Ahhh!”

I settled into my very own soft bed at the Seminary with considerable ease. Even though I hated becoming a “staff rat,” clean sheets and showers made the transition easier. I remembered all too well the night the general offensive began—would never forget it. I slept soundly and settled into my new job as an assistant G-3 operations officer. The G-3 advisor and several senior officers worked at the ARVN 7th Division tactical operations center seven days a week. Duty officers were rotated with one day on and two days off. The “day on” was twenty-four hours long plus time to orient replacements, which extended the “day on” to twenty-seven hours. The schedule required me to reset my internal clock, especially my sleeping habits, but it was manageable.

Duty officers prepared orders and maps for the next day’s operations, kept in constant contact with field advisors, and coordinated with other units in the area, like the U.S. 9th Infantry Division and the U.S. Air Force.

I was working late one evening in the operations center when I noticed a stranger—the dirtiest American I had ever seen. His smell actually caught my attention first. I couldn’t determine what clothes he wore, but he had long sandy hair and wore Ho Chi Minh sandals made from rubber tires. He was armed to the teeth; I had never seen one person carry so many weapons.

He was examining our situation map, and that propelled me to investigate. His appearance was so bizarre that what he said sounded completely credible.

I approached him warily. “Excuse me. May I help you?”

“I want to know about your operations,” he informed me.

“I don’t think you have a right to that information,” I replied.

“I think I do.”

“I’m Lieutenant Taylor, and I’m in charge here. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get in here in the first place?”

“I just walked in. No one had the balls to stop me!”

“Well, I have the balls to throw you out unless you give me some straight answers.” By now I was backed up by security and I felt my authority.

“Okay, look.” He relented. “I did just walk in, but I didn’t think you’d let me in if I asked permission. So here I am, and I still need to know about operations.”

“Who are you?” I insisted. “Do you have any identification?”

“Can we talk privately?” he asked.

I waved security back. “Okay.”

“Look … I’m the advisor for the PRU. Do you know them?”

I knew the PRU was the Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Unit, and I knew they worked with the CIA on special, highly classified projects. “Yes,” I said.

“Have you heard of Phoenix?” he asked.

“Yes.” I had heard of the Phoenix program, and I knew it involved assassination of Viet Cong cadre and spies hiding in villages, but I knew very little beyond that. I may have been curious but I didn’t need to know.

“Okay. I’m a navy SEAL on special missions. I can’t carry an ID. I’ll be in some sensitive places. I just need to ensure I don’t run into any friendly troops. It might be dangerous for both of us.”

I eyed his load of armaments. He was a legally sanctioned assassin, but certainly no James Bond.

“Okay. I believe you.” I did believe him but I didn’t envy him. “Tell me the general locations you’re interested in, and I’ll tell you what we’re doing there.”

We had reached an understanding: I helped him with information, and he left as he entered. His odor lingered for a while. We heard gunfire in a village on the river later than night.

Occasionally we were on the receiving end of VC rockets or mortars. Usually little damage was done, but one night a sniper set up target practice directly across a canal from the mess hall in the Seminary. He fired a single round directly into the lens of our movie projector during the evening movie. As spectators slowly got up off the floor, someone started clapping. The movies were pretty bad, indeed, so maybe it was not a VC sniper after all but just one of our guys trying to spare us more movie torture.

At the beginning, settling into a new routine, the new job and new surroundings were exciting. By May the sparkle had worn off, and I was anxious to return to the battalion. The highlight of May was a visit to the ARVN 7th Division headquarters by Air Marshal and Vietnamese Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky. In honor of his visit, the division arranged an elaborate display to showcase weapons and ammunition captured during the Double Y operations. Speeches, a parade, refreshments, awards, and copious brown-nosing were integral to the festivities. It added up to a genuine spectacle.

Bobby Hurst brought Master Sergeant Mendenhall, Sergeant First Class Rich, Captain Tao, and Captain Xuan along to see the sights. It was great to see them again, but I was uncomfortable: They were still on the front line while I was holding out in the rear. I missed the old unit more than ever. Staff assignments cannot replace being in a brotherhood of warriors in a struggle with the enemy and fighting for survival and victory. I missed the thrill of the contest and the experiences, but most of all the comradeship. Nevertheless, at the same time, and at a deeper level, I despaired at a war that I thought was going nowhere.

In the space of seven days, the tides of history and the caprice of fate shook the U.S. with two mighty convulsions. First, Lyndon Johnson announced a bombing pause over most of North Vietnam, then said: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Finally, was the bullet ending the life of Martin Luther King.

Late in May the division deployed a task force for an operation in Go Cong Province. I eagerly accompanied it to support operations from the forward CP, a great way to get out of My Tho for a while. We moved into a spacious villa and established a headquarters there. Operations lasted nine days. Battles needed to be commanded and controlled, but from a staff perspective it didn’t compare with being on the cutting edge with real soldiers. I was more ready than ever to go back to the field, or go quietly home.

June crept up on me. An extra R&R space to Japan was available, so I used a week of ordinary leave to go—anything to break the crushing monotony. I appreciated Tokyo, though it would never compare with Hong Kong. In Japan, I visited friends from North Georgia College who were stationed at the U.S. headquarters at Camp Zama. Tommy and Glenda related a sad story of another classmate, Joe, who had visited them. He had told them he was going after the Medal of Honor, and now he was dead, killed in action. I thought the glittering Ginza would help me forget about Joe, but it didn’t work.

As soon as I returned to My Tho, I was summoned into the G-3’s office. The shift officer directed me to formally report to Major Coker, the G-3 advisor. I immediately detected that everyone but me knew what was going on.

I marched into his office; the click of my boots on the marble floor reminded me of a condemned man walking to a firing squad. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Lieutenant Taylor reporting as ordered!” I reported, with a hand salute.

I was not given permission to be at ease, so I stood uncomfortably at attention. From the corner of my eye, I saw the division advisor, a full colonel, standing in the background. His presence didn’t reassure me about the benevolence of this inquisition.

“Lieutenant Taylor, I am very disturbed by the report I have just seen. What do you have to say for yourself?”

My mind jumped into overdrive as I strained to comprehend.

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what report you’re talking about.”

“Well, Lieutenant, just think about it for a minute. What have you been up to while you were away?”

Obviously I had enjoyed myself in Japan but certainly had done nothing illegal. And even if I had, he couldn’t possibly know about it anyway. Furthermore, even if I had—and he did know about it—I certainly was not about to confess. So I stood silently, my thoughts scrambled.

“Lieutenant, why did you come into my office like this?”

That question confused me further. He seemed determined to nail me for some infraction but was changing the subject. I knew my face was pale while my hands trembled at my side. But I remained rigidly at attention.

“What do you mean, sir?” I inquired. I knew I had shaved. Maybe I needed a haircut, but it was not long overdue. My boots were shined, and my uniform was presentable. Immaculate uniforms never were a high priority in Vietnam, anyway.

“Taylor, you’re out of uniform! Don’t come into my office that way again,” said the G-3. He reached for my collar and used a pocketknife to remove my cloth first lieutenant’s bar.

An officer read an order, and the major pinned the silver “railroad tracks” of an army captain on my collar.

“Congratulations, Captain! We had you going for a minute, didn’t we?”

“You sure did,” I smiled through clenched teeth as I shook hands with the officers present, including the ARVN 7th Division commander. Apparently they had entered from the rear to enjoy the fun.

As I walked out of the palatial office, I was relieved that I was not in trouble, but being teased annoyed me. I pretended to be happy about the promotion but I was seething inside. It might be amusing to “staff rats,” but I had no time for it in my army.

In July, I received orders to attend Ranger training before an assignment with the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. I was delighted with the orders; they were exactly what I’d requested. But I faced the ordeal of getting back into shape: the physical demands of Ranger training were different from survival in Vietnam. Adding to my difficulty was a class starting in September. I would be a “winter Ranger,” and Vietnam’s weather couldn’t prepare me for that. I cut back on beer and potatoes, did push-ups and sit-ups while sunning myself on the roof of the Seminary, and occasionally drove to Binh Duc to run at the training center. Running was especially difficult in the heat and humidity, and ARVN soldiers thought I had lost my mind. Maybe I had.

While I prepared myself for the future, the war would not simply fade away. Time was still punctuated by foolish accidents that underscored our mortality. After visiting a friend, a captain, from advisor training at Fort Bragg I went to Binh Duc to run. When I returned, I was met with the news that he had been returning to his base in a jeep over a dangerous highway. While his noncommissioned officer was driving, the captain jacked a round into the chamber of his .45-caliber pistol. Intending to test the safety, he instead fired a round through his own hand into the chest of his sergeant. The sergeant died instantly, and my friend almost died in the resulting jeep wreck.

In another incident, we came under fire at the Seminary and the mortar crew prepared to return fire. It had rained all day, filling the mortar tube with water. When the mortar round was dropped into the tube for firing, it slid to the bottom, but the water in the tube allowed the round to be propelled only to the mouth of the tube, where it hung and protruded. A crew member caught the round in both hands before it could tip into the mortar pit. Cradling the live round in his arms, he sprinted through the hallway of the Seminary shouting, “Mortar, mortar, mortar!” until he reached the canal in back. He tossed the round into the canal, but it didn’t explode. I had always been more afraid of Americans inside the Seminary than I had been of Viet Cong on the outside—for good reason.

Such was the life of staff rats, holed up waiting for something to happen to dramatically affect their lives. I wanted to be on the offensive, not just to react to events. But it wasn’t that way any more. My closing days in Vietnam were stitched together by small but memorable incidents, like patches on a worn pair of jeans.

One patch occurred on a bright Sunday afternoon, when I had gone to the club to watch television. The bar was closed, but the club was quiet and relaxing. The TV sat against the back wall, opposite the bar. I was slumped in an easy chair watching “I Dream of Jeannie” on AFN television, when the wall was literally ripped apart by machine gun fire tearing through paneling in front of me. Bullets hammered into the bar behind me, shattering bottles of liquor and breaking a large glass mirror. It was all over by the time I hit the floor.

I got up off the floor and turned off the television. I wondered how it had survived the attack. I noticed that bullets had ripped through the walls on both sides of it and the chair where I was sitting but had punctured neither the television set nor me. I was grateful but puzzled. The club manager entered to survey the damage and take inventory. I asked for a drink, but he told me the bar would open later than usual.

The manager walked out on a side porch to an outside storage room. I heard him exclaim, “Oh shit!” I followed him out.

I smelled it before I saw it. Foamy, golden liquid flowed from the storeroom onto the floor, dripping onto the ground.

“Beer,” I identified it instantly. “Saved by Bud!”

A tall stack of Budweiser cases was full of bullet holes, and beer flowed from the storeroom. I was overjoyed: Budweiser had actually saved my life! I never forgot my debt to that beer. I knew another hand was at work, too, someone watching over me, time and again.

My last operation in the field was as liaison officer to the U.S. 9th Division MRF in a combined operation on the Mekong River. After one night on the USS Benewah, I stayed for five days with “Hammering Hank” Emerson and the force on the river, but I had little to do. I was actually bored in combat. My tour of Vietnam had begun with rude awakenings and nightmares and ended with lazy dreams of home. Home! Where and what was home? I contemplated home, and wondered what it would be like going back. I was not sure I wanted to leave Vietnam—but of course I would.

It was finally time to go. The day I had awaited for so long was just another hot and humid day in Vietnam. I flew to Can Tho for out-processing. Most of the day was required to out-process everything I had in-processed previously, and I remained there overnight. No planes were flying the next day, so I rode in a jeep all the way to Saigon. We reached the long steel-girder bridge at Ben Luc, which was broken in the center, half-resting in the river. We crossed the river slowly on a floating bridge maintained by army engineers. When we were across I thought about burning bridges behind me. It was a quiet trip with a silent courier driving, but I didn’t feel like talking anyway. During the solitude I reflected on the year I had just spent.

As we drove into Saigon in the open jeep, crossing the Y-Bridge, I marveled at many of the places I had followed so closely through the reporting on AFN during the Tet offensive. I was touring a historic battlefield but I was part of that saga. It was unlike any other war I had studied—strange indeed.

I stayed two days at Camp Alpha waiting for a flight. My khaki uniform seemed larger than it was a year before: I had worn no ribbons when I arrived, but wore two rows and a Combat Infantry Badge upon departure. As I thought about the long flight ahead, I missed Peggy. I had forgotten her for a time, but now memories of her flooded back. Somehow I knew she would be on my flight—she had to be, to complete the circle. I wanted to look into her eyes and tell her she was wrong about me. I had survived: I made it safely back despite the odds. Maybe we could begin a real relationship. Peggy would cry again, and ask me to forgive her for not meeting me in the terminal in the Philippines. I would take her into my arms and kiss her, and tell her it was all right. We would fly off together into the setting sun.

Only in my dreams!

I was back where I had started a year ago. Or was I? Peggy was not on the flight. I looked and waited for her to appear each time the crew changed, but she was never there. I peered around corners, stood and watched every flight crew member I saw, and even asked a flight attendant if she knew her. I never saw Peggy again but I will never forget her, either. Somehow I knew I could never return to where I had started my long journey; it was impossible to go back. I had lost my innocence in Vietnam, and what did I have in return? Medals? My life? Shattered illusions? Only experiences, images, and occasional visits from comrades left in the rice fields in the Mekong Delta. Returning prodigals, phantoms of the past, appear unexpectedly and ask the unanswered question: “Why?”

U.S. sources contend that the present quiet may merely be the calm before the storm. Arms discoveries show that the Viet Cong now control more territory around Saigon than ever before. And they point to the blowing up of the Ben Luc Bridge, connecting Saigon with the Mekong Delta, an act they believe may have been carried out to prevent the South Vietnamese capital from being reinforced during an attack.