I didn’t buy any grass before I left for Da Nang. I had lost touch with my boy Phat and, besides, guys who knew told me the military police searched you when you got on the plane at Chu Lai. They were having a problem with GIs taking dope on R ’n’ R. Officials in Hong Kong and Singapore and those places were bitching. When I got to Da Nang I had to look around for something.
I met a Puerto Rican named Martinez who was going to Singapore too. We walked around Da Nang three hours and found nothing.
We were about to give up when I saw this kid standing by a fence at the airport. He said, “Hey, soul. Me same-same you. I got some marijuana. Buy from me.”
The kid was black; black as I am, and had real curly hair. The question went through my head, “Where’d this kid get his color?” He was about twelve. I walked over and rubbed his face and felt his hair.
“You really a soul, huh?” Now I could tell he was Vietnamese but he sure didn’t look it.
He said, “You go boom-boom? I can get you a short-time girl for three dollars.”
I laughed and said, “Man, you could really get over back in the world, you really could.”
He pulled out a couple of dollars and said, “Hey, do me a favor. When you go to PX buy me a disc.”
“You gonna have me a hundred Js when I come back?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
When I returned from the post exchange he sold me ten bags. We smoked a few that night but I was set on saving the rest for R ’n’ R. We left for Singapore the next day.
I had played a lot of poker before going out on operations in November. I was in a stud game and drew four sevens back to back; walked away with nearly eighteen hundred dollars. I got some guys in the company to each get me a hundred-dollar money order; the amount of your paycheck was the max you could legally send home by money orders. Then I mailed my wife one thousand dollars.
She wrote me, “Where did you get all this money?”
I wrote back, “Woman, take it and put it in the bank. Don’t ask questions.”
Next letter: “You’re gambling, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m gambling heavy.”
“I thought you were supposed to be fighting a war. You’re going to lose your money.”
“You don’t know. The first month over here I lost my entire paycheck. Now let me tell you something—I just won two grand.”
“Well, why did you only send me a thousand?”
I played some quick in-and-out in the boonies and soon dropped all but three hundred dollars. About two weeks before I was to go on R ’n’ R we were on S ’n’ D and had stopped in a ville for three hours. Four grunts got up a stud game and they were on me to make it a fifth. I jumped in and lost two hundred fifty just like that. I said, “Lawd, have mercy!” I had fifty left. The company commander gave the ten minute warning to move out.
My first four cards were two queens and two kings. The pot was nice and big. I said, “What’s the limit since this is our last hand? I’m good for a hundred.” I pulled a hundred out of the pot to draw light. I’ll be damned if the four guys didn’t go along with me. I said, “Watch out. I got a boat. Cowboys over ladies.” Nobody believed me. The last card was dealt. I sweated the card without looking, moving it back and forth across my fingers. I felt a king. Hot damn! I said, “I’m in for another hundred.” Three people called me. I left that pot with a thousand bucks. I sent five to my wife and took the other five with me to Singapore to buy clothes.
I met this girl in a bar my first night in Singapore. She was a pretty decent girl. I paid for the first drink. And then for the first night. But after that I didn’t have to pay. Four nights and five days. Got over like a bandit.
I said, “Tomorrow I go to the hotel tailor shop and buy some clothes. Take back to America with me.”
She said, “No, if you buy in hotel you pay very much money.”
I said, “Okay, you take me somewhere to buy and then I take you sight-seeing.”
She took me to a shop where I got five three-piece suits for about fifty bucks each. She didn’t want to go sight-seeing. She had two kids and her husband had divorced her. We went to her house.
She said, “See, I make sure nobody take you money.”
I said, “Yeah, and now you want to go back to America with me, huh?”
She said, “No, my home here. I stay here.”
I said, “Well, what can I do for you?”
“You fight in war. You come to Singapore to have good time. I give you good time. I think you good man. If you no good man I tell you quick and you pay me much money.”
On the last day we were to have a good-by party by the hotel’s peanut-shaped pool. I picked up my new suits. That evening I wore a double-breasted gray sharkskin with matching gray suede shoes and had on a pearl tie pin that cost me thirty-six dollars. It was boss. I mean, really tucked down. I got there early and stood by the pool with my sunglasses on, high as a Georgia pine. My broad arrived. Like I say, she was decent. She never wanted me to buy her a thing, asked for nothing. We had a whole chicken that night. Chicken is my favorite food.
When I got back from R ’n’ R, the company had moved to a fire support base. Some new replacements had come in while I was gone. I began to break them in. Several guys were really sharp.
Ten of us got high one day and we walked in single file through the artillery section. It was very overcast. We had on our sunglasses. Some officers were standing near a gun. As we passed a major said, “Don’t you men know how to salute?”
We came to a halt, each man bumping against the one in front.
A guy said, “Sir, Steel Gimlet told us we didn’t have to salute in the boonies.”
We marched off.
One of the officers shook his head and said, “Something is wrong.”
Another replied, “Yes, but what?”
Everything went well till one day in March when the company was sent again deep into the bush around Happy Valley. We set up on a hill. Two platoons went on S ’n’ D at the base of the hill, one to the left, one to the right. Another line platoon and the weapons platoon stayed on the hill in reserve with the company commander. Before lunch a platoon radioed that it had walked into a thirty-man ambush. It was in heavy contact. The platoon leader had been shot in the stomach.
We picked up the binoculars and saw nothing but little moving trees in the valley. It was much more than a thirty-man ambush. The company commander told the two platoons to merge. Then he ordered the reserve line platoon to saddle up. He told us to remain on the hill as a security and fire-support element. He led the line platoon down the hill. All this happened so quickly that no one thought about asking him to leave us a radio. Since we were usually with the command post and were so understrength, we depended on his radio men. The weapons platoon sergeant spread us around the hilltop with our rifles. We left the mortars in the center of the hill. We could see the company moving below and see the location from where enemy fire was coming.
A few guys took out their Instamatics and photographed the jets and choppers working out. I decided to write a letter to my wife. Artillery shells were whishing over our heads and down below we could hear the heavy firing. But we weren’t really sweating it too much. We were sort of spectators. A couple of guys were listening to music on our transistor radio. I was trying to think of something to write my wife when I saw a Viet Cong running below through the rice paddies. He took fire from the company and switched directions. I saw where he took cover. I told the platoon sergeant and asked if he didn’t think we should drop some rounds out there. He agreed. We fired three shells. The first round fell short. We didn’t see or hear the other two because of noise from the air strikes.
Three minutes later we heard a whistle. Boom! It hit at the bottom of the hill directly below us. Then Boom! BOOM! They were walking them in.
I said, “Hey, Sarge, we’re coming under a mortar attack. Let’s get off the hill.”
He said no. We weren’t dug in and the hilltop was barren with no place to take cover.
A few guys started scrambling down the side. The mortars were falling right on top of us now. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Shrapnel was flying every place.
Davis and Calloway shouted, “Let’s get off the hill!”
This time the platoon sergeant agreed. He said, “I’ll get the other guys and meet you at the bottom.”
I took my rifle and ammo and flew. I mean I practically jumped off that hill. My steel pot came off and I left it hanging in the air. When we got to the bottom there were three of us. We had to decide what to do. I said, “If we try to link up with the company from the rear anything can happen. We don’t have a radio to let them we’re coming and the guys are sure to be trigger happy with all these gooks in the area.”
We hadn’t decided what to do when a spotter plane flew over and fired a smoke rocket near where we were. He didn’t see us. He was calling in jets to work over that sector. We started moving fast across the rice paddies. As we got across the paddy a jet rolled in and dropped a bomb on almost the exact spot where we’d been holding our talk. Whew!
Maybe we could make it back to the fire-support base. If not, one thing was for sure. We had to get out of the area. It was crawling with North Vietnamese troops. I outranked Calloway and Davis so I said, “I’ll walk point.” We started out. We moved a few meters and the North Vietnamese opened up.
Davis. We ran smack into an ambush. It was a machine gun. All I saw were bushes in front of me shaking and rounds spitting out at my head. The three of us hit the grit. I was in the middle because I was one of the new guys in the platoon and McMillan and Calloway were trying to protect me. Calloway was on his next to last month in Viet Nam.
McMillan. I thought we were completely surrounded. To break through we’d have to get together and concentrate our fire.
I yelled, “Calloway, move up to where we are!”
Davis and I began to lay down a base of fire. Calloway was a short-timer and in a complete panic. Instead of low crawling to our position he jumped up and started to run. He took a hit through the upper right thigh.
He said, “I’m hit!”
I said, “Hold tight and stay down.” I yelled for Davis to rescue Calloway while I covered.
Davis. Jesus Christ, was I scared! I broke out in a sweat. It took me twenty minutes to crawl back. McMillan and the NVA machine gunner were battling it out. Bullets cut the air overhead. I told Calloway to lie flat. I grabbed his hands and pulled him over my back. He used his unwounded leg to help us move. As I pushed off my left ankle cracked.
It was evident by then that it was only a small ambush, maybe several guys with a machine gun. A hootch was to the left at the edge of the paddies. We slowly worked our way to it. We bandaged Calloway, tried to stanch the bleeding as best we could, and then moved into a small bunker beside the house. I put my fatigue shirt over Calloway to keep him warm. He was in shock. The house belonged to a middle-aged Vietnamese woman. She was calm and ignored the battle going on around her. She was cooking as we arrived. Later she brought us some bowls of rice.
McMillan. From the hootch we saw a Vietnamese who was part of the ambush team. He was prone and had his back to us. We could have blown him away, but decided not to run the risk of calling attention to our position. We would wait till nightfall and try to get away.
Davis. Shortly before dusk we could hear them moving up. I sat in the bunker doorway with my feet cocked up, the M-16 cradled in my arms. I was smoking a Salem. I wasn’t afraid anymore. If I was going to die, I would sure as hell take a few of them with me.
McMillan. Someone arrived and started jabbering at mama-san. She led him away for fifteen minutes. The same guy returned. He wasn’t satisfied. He argued with her. I think she was trying to protect us. He started looking around.
Davis. I looked up. I was face to face with a man in black pajamas. I opened up with a quick nineteen rounds. He tumbled back out of sight. After our capture I saw the same man again. He was very upset. He told us bullets had cut through his hair. I denied it was I who shot at him. I told him the American must have got away.
McMillan. We crawled deeper into the bunker behind some large earthen rice jars. We were out of ammo. The Vietnamese began tossing in grenades. There was little fragmentation, it was mostly gas grenades. I covered my face with my T-shirt. The gas made me drowsy and stung my eyes.
Davis. They threw in four gas grenades and McMillan said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
I said, “No we don’t. If we move out they’ll kill us for sure. Let’s play dead.”
I was covered with blood from Calloway’s wound. I put my T-shirt over my face and sprawled out. Several Vietnamese entered with a lantern. One of them jerked off my dog tags and removed my watch and rings. He felt my pulse, then put his ear to my nose. I held my breath. He couldn’t understand. He tried to feel for a heart beat. He looked me over for wounds. Finally he stood and clucked, “Tsk-tsk-tsk.”
McMillan was pulled out of the bunker, then me. I lay unmoving. It was black dark and rain had begun to fall. I was cold. Every mosquito in Happy Valley had received word that a fresh supply of O-Positive was to be had. I said, “Aw, shit, I may as well get up ’cause they’re not gonna leave without me.”
I started to rise. Thirty Vietnamese around me leaped back crying “Uhhh!” as if the dead had begun to walk. I toppled over. My ankle had a bad sprain, it was swollen, and the pain was fierce.
A mix of uniformed North Vietnamese and guerrillas in black pajamas had captured us. They carried an assortment of weapons. McMillan stood smoking a cigarette. Calloway was in a hammock. Someone handed me a smoke.
I asked with gestures if they were going to kill us.
He said, “No, no, no.” I didn’t know at this time that Ho Chi Minh had recently put out an order to capture all Americans possible for leverage during peace negotiations.
They ordered me to start walking. Artillery shells began falling around us. My ankle was killing me. Two guys on either side dragged me across the paddy. The artillery rounds fell closer.
I said, “Let’s get down,” and made gestures to indicate the danger.
They replied, “No, no,” and we continued to walk through the artillery fire till we reached a village.
McMillan. There they took our boots. A medic gave Davis a shot of novocain for his ankle. Calloway was given a shot of morphine. They brought us tea and some meat left over from Tet. Calloway was too sick to eat. Then we moved out. I walked; Calloway and Davis were carried in hammocks.
Davis. They tried to make me walk. I told them I couldn’t. An officer ordered two privates to carry me. The two soldiers were highly pissed off and dropped me every chance they got. There must have been 1,500 North Vietnamese in the area. Some of them were still fighting. Our immediate group consisted of a hundred soldiers. Late that night we stopped. McMillan was tied to a tree. Calloway and I were put into an underground bunker. Calloway was still bleeding. The medic hadn’t been able to stop it. He was restless all night.
Next morning Calloway gasped, “Tom, you’ve got to pull me out and give me artificial respiration. I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”
I couldn’t move my left leg the pain was so intense. I tried to drag Calloway out and call for the guards.
One of them at the doorway snarled, “Sit! Sit!”
I said, “You sonofabitch! The man is dying!” He pointed his bayonet at me and tried to push me back.
I managed to get Calloway to the entrance. A green mucus was running from his nose and mouth. Another VC saw what was happening. He helped me get him to a table outside.
Calloway mumbled, “Can’t breathe,” and made convulsive sounds like a man with dry heaves. A VC rushed up with a bottle of plasma. It was too late.
We passed the day in the hills and returned to the valley that night. The entire area had been bombed and strafed—leveled. In the hills we were interrogated by Frenchy. He wore black pajamas and had a small brown handbaglike satchel across his shoulders. It was the kind of document-carrying case that usually indicated a VC or NVA official. He had keen features marred by a knife scar on his left cheek. He questioned me, and said, “You must tell me the truth or I will punish you.” I told him I was a recently arrived Pfc., so what did I know? He showed me maps of the area, said 43 per cent of my company had been wiped out the day before, and generally answered every question he asked.
McMillan. Frenchy called me for a separate interrogation. “Do not lie to me,” he said. He unholstered his 9-mm pistol and laid it on the table. He asked some questions. I told him my name but the rest of the stuff I made up or changed around.
He jumped up, drew back his hand, and said, “If you lie I will slap you.”
This shook me up. I said, “Are you going to kill me?”
He said, “No, but we will punish you if you lie.”
He asked more questions. I think he discovered I knew less than he did. He took out a map and showed me various unit locations, told me we called our battalion commander Steel Gimlet, and gave me details about the aviation units that supported us.
I said, “Why did you ask me?”
He said, “To see if you lied.” He told me that if I made progress I might go home soon. I began to wonder what I had to do to get released as soon as possible. Just what did progress mean?
Davis. A buck-toothed girl about seventeen years old was assigned to guard us. I asked her for a cigarette. She screamed, “Sit down!”
A number of female soldiers were in the area. Some were armed and others were humpers carrying oil, ammo, and food to the front. They shouldered U.S. AID burlap bags with straps sewn on them. Big banana leaves were spread on their backs to keep sweat from soaking through the food bags. Black pajamas were rolled up thigh length, their long hair tied high with white kerchiefs.
Villagers from Happy Valley gathered around us. They laughed and pointed and said, “Meey, meey, meey” [American].* Some were just curious, some wanted to feel the hair on our arms, but others came up and pinched us.
One kicked me on my sprained ankle and said, “Do may,”* which I later learned was a favorite Vietnamese expression that meant motherfucker.
McMillan. We marched westward that night with the soldiers. Our column was strung out for two miles. The trail was marked with banana-tree bark. Here and there at intersections was a piece a foot long, an inch or two wide, sharpened at one end like an arrow, pointing in the direction we were supposed to take. We passed through villages I had visited before on S ’n’ D. The kids then had said, “Okay, okay, chop-chop.” And I had given them cans of Cs, candy, or chewing gum. Now the same kids were spitting on Davis and me.
We reached a base camp. An officer took my belongings and looked through them. “All military papers in wallet we must keep,” he said. “Now you have your choice of wallet or watch.”
I said, “I’ll take my watch then.”
He said, “No, cannot give you watch. Maybe you signal plane. We give wallet.” The watch was put in a bag along with my military papers and taken to the next camp.
The camp commander came with a translator to talk to me. He said, “I like your watch very well. You sell.”
I said nothing.
He said, “You sell or I take.” It was a Seiko worth maybe twelve bucks. He gave me two thousand p. Their officers had this thing about saving face. He wasn’t worried about what we thought, but what the other officers might think about his taking my watch.
The translator said, “Maybe when you get to your permanent camp you can buy milk and candy.” He described the POW camp. He said we would have a big shop with many machines to work on, and ended, “I think if you make progress, maybe in one-two-three months you go home.”
From his description I knew we were headed straight for Hanoi.
Davis. One night a guy in black pajamas asked us to come inside a hootch. It was lit by a small candle. Tea arrived. We sat down. Suddenly the man jumped up and shouted, “We don’t murder, we don’t maim!” Then he told us with a fanatical gleam in his eyes that the Front had killed ten thousand Americans the previous month, shot down six thousand planes, and destroyed two thousand armored carriers.
It was propaganda, of course. But the important thing was that the Vietnamese themselves believed it. The effect of their other propaganda, based on true facts about the war and our involvement in it, was to be lowered by their exaggerated battlefield claims. They lied so much that we never knew when to believe them. And we didn’t want to believe anyway.
McMillan. I’m sure the Vietnamese had seen black people, but they’d never seen black people like us. They came to touch our faces and rub our hair. Some of them were really astonished. Some made fun of us. And then we met some who sympathized because they had heard so much about racial discrimination in the States. Like on the trail we met one guy who gave us candy; and the guards let me buy some fresh fish with the money I’d received for my watch.
We reached a camp containing sixteen ARVN prisoners. We stayed here three weeks. Almost every day the VC called us for interrogation or gave us a political lecture.
They said, “We do not invade your country. Why do you come to bomb ours?”
We told them we didn’t know. Really I hadn’t thought about it till this time.
Davis and I talked about the Code of Conduct all the time, what would happen if we did this, if we did that. I could see nothing we did to violate the code. But the Code of Conduct—it’s really hard to abide by once you’re under pressure. What’s more important? Your life or the possibility of a court-martial when you get back? I never had the feeling I would rather die than disclose information.
Watkins. Daly and I stayed at an interim camp till the first of March. Then we were taken to a prison camp that held six ARVN prisoners. On the way we were stopped in a village. A photographer took pictures of different guerrillas “capturing” us. A political indoctrinator at the camp gave us what he called a brief history of the Vietnamese people’s struggle. He told us how the war started, how the Vietnamese had earlier fought off the Chinese, Japanese, and French.
The VC read from prepared lesson plans. They sometimes made us read the material and “analyze” it. They told us we were fighting for Lyndon Johnson to make him richer. We agreed with them. They were pleased and told us we were making progress.
Then one day they said Americans lived in fine houses but were dirty and filthy. Daly got into an argument with them about that. I thought the guard was going to shoot us.
Daly. They were interested in details of our earlier lives. The political officer asked, “Is everyone equal in the United States? Do all Americans live like you?” Then, “If you do not have true freedom in your country how can you come ten thousand miles to give someone else freedom?” There was no answer.
Actually I had had personal confrontations with overt racism only several times in my life. The first occurred when my brothers were transferred to an elementary school in Queens. White people marched around the school with signs saying, “Go home, Niggers, Go home.” I was eleven.
Then during training in Louisiana I went with three white buddies to a bar in the small town near Fort Polk. A bartender leaned across the counter and said, “I’m sorry but we don’t serve knee-grows in heah.” He said it softly like he didn’t want anyone else to hear. I just stood there because I didn’t think I’d heard it myself. Meanwhile my friends had been served.
In several minutes another bartender came up. “We don’t serve niggers in heah,” he said loudly.
My friends said, “We’re sorry. If we had known we would have never come here.” They didn’t pay for their drinks. As we left one said, “When we get ready to leave this shitty, two-bit town we’re gonna bust it up.”
I was raised to believe that regardless of color people are the same. There are bad black folks and bad white folks. The way the Vietnamese compared our situation, though, there was no argument we could really put up. I can’t say how it was in the South, but Watkins gave the Vietnamese the impression that black people were treated horribly. I didn’t agree with this. I’m not saying America is perfect—it’s not—but you don’t tell an outsider who has never been there all the bad things about your country.
It seemed that many prisoners tried to tell the Vietnamese everything terrible about America. For instance, at the permanent camp we had some guards who learned to speak a little English. One of them asked me about sex. I told him I was a virgin. He called me a liar. He said all Americans had sex by the time they were sixteen. I asked him how he knew. He said the other prisoners told him.
As for Watkins, I think he was being honest about his situation. It sounded as though he’d had a rough go in South Carolina. But from the very first he didn’t offer the Vietnamese any resistance. And he didn’t want me to say anything to upset them. Every time I spoke, he’d say, “Be quiet. They’ll hear what you’re saying.” Rather than talk and have him tell me to be quiet, I just didn’t say anything. It was a boring two months with him.
We were resting up before walking to the permanent camp. I had a minor wound in my right shoulder. I’d caught jungle rot before I was captured. A lot of soldiers were using bad feet as an excuse to get out of the field and the officers stopped sending them back till the pain was unbearable. A medic looked at my feet a couple of times and said, “Not bad enough.” After I was captured the condition grew worse. My feet cracked and bled.
Watkins. The last of March we were moved to a village, where we waited till we were joined by three newly captured American marines. The marines were escorted by eight guards. One of the guards was a Caucasian. I thought at first he was a Russian. He carried an AK and wore rolled-up black pajamas. He had three Chicom grenades on a North Vietnamese belt, wore a bush hat and Ho Chi Minh sandals.
He asked us in fluent English how we were doing. We said okay. He didn’t seem very friendly and neither were we. The group of us moved out. Daly and I were kept separate from the marines and not allowed to talk to them. The white VC led us down the trail. That night we stopped at a montagnard hootch. The Caucasian slung his sleeping hammock. He woke up later that night with an attack of malaria and sat shivering feverishly in the hammock. Finally he got up and came to sit by the fire with Daly and me. We ignored him.
Next day we arrived at the permanent camp. The camp commander and his translator came out to greet us. He embraced the Caucasian warmly, and they walked up the hill arm in arm while the translator, Mr. Hom, gave us a briefing.