CUE: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, THE KINGSTON TRIO
I had been in the 12th Evac Hospital a number of days when members of C Company began to drop by to see how I was doing. Captain Meilstrup and a couple of the others from the command group showed up one morning. When I asked them what they were doing in Cu Chi, I got some answer about having to give a report. I didn't really pay much attention to it, but when members of the 2nd Platoon showed up later in the day, I realized they were not there to give any report. When I asked what was going on, there was a shuffling of feet and some looks back and forth, and then they told me.
C Company had taken a pretty bad pasting during the attack on May 12. It was short on combat-ready tracks and men as well. In its wisdom, the army had finally decided to give C Company the stand down that was so long overdue. I was not there for the festivities. I was an inmate of the air conditioning and clean sheets at the hospital in Cu Chi. This fact may have saved my life.
Stand down is usually a time of complete carefree rest and recreation for those who are charged with taking the battle to the enemy. There were infantry stand-down areas in each of the major base camps. Some of the stand-down areas even had above-ground swimming pools to give the line troops a little relief from the ever-present heat. Beer and soft drinks were readily available in trailers filled with ice to keep them cool, along with hot barbecue and hamburgers, which seemed to be cooking all the time. Movies were shown after dark, and sometimes there were even performances by traveling musical groups from the USO. The whole affair was conceived to be a short departure from the strain and constant exposure to danger that was the life of those who lived beyond the base-camp wire. What is intended is not always what happens.
Stand down finally came to the battle-weary troops of C Company, 1st of the 5th. It was a chance to let down and feel what life was like inside the wire, without ambush patrols or night guard, which broke up the hours of darkness and cut sleep into fragments of about three hours a night. It was a welcome time for the company, which had been out for such a long time. Stand-down areas are reserved to a company alone. No one else is admitted there. At least, that is the way it is supposed to be.
On the evening of May 16, 1970, the company was climbing up into a set of wooden bleachers to watch a show put on by a rock ’n’ roll band from the USO. A group of men from one of the rear-echelon units in Tay Ninh entered the stand-down reserve and began to help themselves to beer and barbecue that was set out for the infantry troops. Captain Meilstrup walked over and informed the intruders that they would have to leave. When they refused, he gave them a choice of leaving voluntarily, having the MPs take them away, or being removed by an irritated combat company. The answer they gave was profane and disrespectful, and it caused the whole company to come out of the stands and bodily throw the intruders off the stand-down area. I have often wondered what kind of logic would cause men to provoke an entire combat-hardened company to rage in such a way.
The men of C Company climbed back up into the bleachers to await the show, completely ignorant of the fact that one of the ejected rear-echelon troopers had gone back to his barracks, picked up an M-16 rifle, and returned to the stand-down area. There he opened fire on the unarmed men seated in those bleachers. The attack was sudden and deliberate and resulted in the death of Joe Raber and Gary White and the wounding of ten others.
When I heard this, lying in a hospital bed in Cu Chi, I was stunned. I still am to this very day. It was completely unthinkable that an American soldier, much less one who lived safe behind the wire and had never seen a day of combat, had done this. It was so completely irrational that I had a hard time getting my mind to wrap around it.
I think what hit me hardest was the fact that Raber had been sent back to the rear area to be the mail clerk for the company. He was out of the fighting. He was just waiting for his time to go home, and he was shot in the head by a man who was angry because he had been ousted from beer and barbecue, where he did not belong in the first place.
I realize now how lucky I had been. I was knocked around a bit by an explosion and dusted off the day before the big attack on May 12, and I was lounging in a clean hospital bed on the evening of May 16, when Raber and White and ten others were shot by a rear-echelon idiot. I have often pondered my good fortune in missing these two incidents. There seems to be no reason to it. It was just a matter of the draw, as it has been in all wars. It was not my time.
One of the odd circumstances of modern warfare added to the bizarre scenario of this stand-down shooting. The company, which used every imaginable type of weapon on a daily basis, was completely unarmed. When an infantry company entered a base camp, it was to disarm and check all its weapons at the company arms room. The logic seems to have been that combat troops were a bit trigger-happy and might shoot up the place if they were left in possession of their weapons. The reverse was true for the troops who lived inside the wire and stacked C-ration cases for a living. These garrison troops each had a weapon, which they kept in their barracks and could get to any time they desired. This piece of awkward thinking set up the shooting on May 16. Not even the maddest of rear-echelon troopers would have shot into a fully armed and battle-hardened combat company, for fear of what would come back his way. It was this odd circumstance that led to the murder of two and the wounding of ten unarmed and helpless infantry soldiers.
The shooter was convicted and sent to prison—but he served only six years. He walks the streets a free man today. We all know his name and where he lives, yet no hand has been raised against him. If I were that man, I would sleep in terror every night, knowing that there are still over a hundred men out there, somewhere, who have killed men for a living and feel that there is still justice to be had.