43.Vietnam

March 15, 1968

Dear Carlene,

I can’t believe I am sitting here calmly writing you a letter. These last three or four days have been the worst days since we got here. First, I just want to say that I got your letter, and I don’t even know how to start to talk about what you told me. If you had told me all this stuff when I was back in Sweet Valley, I know for sure that I couldn’t have handled it, but the guy who lived back there was a different person than the one who is writing you right now. The first thing I want to tell you is that it is not your fault.None of it. You were thirteen years old, for Pete’s sake. There was no way you could have meant to kill your father, although it sounds like he needed killing, and that SOB Walter should have taken care of it the right way and treated it like the suicide it was instead of saddling you with that guilt all these years. It wasn’t even your fault for getting pregnant, although I sure don’t think much of that preacher. He took advantage of you when you were in a bad place, and I don’t think he should be preaching to other people. I can’t believe what you had to go through all by yourself, honey, and I wish there was some way I could change it, but I can’t.

I have learned one thing over here, and that is there are times when a person will sometimes do things he wouldn’t think about doing in his wildest dreams under normal circumstances, but it doesn’t mean he is not a good person down under it all. I guess the same holds true for you or anybody else who has their back against the wall.

The U.S. Army has proved that you can take anybody and turn him into a killer. They brought us over here to kill dinks. That’s our job. And once you kill one, it is easier to kill the next one, then the next one, until finally it doesn’t mean anything at all, like swatting flies. It’s like things you would be sent to the pen for back in the States are commonplace occurrences every day here. I don’t think any eighteen-year-old over here left the United States with the idea of, “Oh, boy. I’m going to become a rapist and killer,” but somehow, when you get out in the jungle, somebody flicks a switch and turns off the old you and a new you takes over. Torture and rape have become everyday facts. Some of the guys have gotten to like it too much, and some of us who don’t—me, for example—don’t have the guts to stop them.

For instance, not too many of the guys know I’m still a virgin—yes, it’s true, believe it or not, I still am. But my buddy Tripp Barlow knows, and ever since he found out, he has been bound and determined to get me to lose it one way or the other, and in the process, a few of the other guys have found out. They have made it their project. There are always a lot of girls around who will take on ten or twenty guys for a couple of bucks each, but you know me—if I wouldn’t make love to you, I’m not about to go down that slippery slope, so to speak.

In spite of the easy women, a few of the guys in this company, not all, are known for just raping any woman they feel like, and nobody much says anything. They think of it more or less like going to the toilet. A few days ago, they had one in a hootch and there must have been a dozen guys lined up waiting to go in. I was trying to ignore the whole thing when one of them came over and said, “Golden, we decided it’s time you lost your cherry. This is a prime piece of meat, and clean. Never been touched. You can have the honor of being the first.”

I said thanks but no thanks, and after most of the guys took their turn, they all came over and dragged me to the hut and shoved me in. They thought it was a big joke. The hut was dark and this little girl—she couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen—was lying on the bed with her legs spread open, half out of it. She looked at me with terror in her eyes, and I tried to tell her that I wasn’t going to do anything, but she started to shake and take on. I got some water and tried to wash her off, but she curled up in a little ball and I couldn’t touch her. I looked back outside and there were a whole gang of more guys from another company waiting to get their turn. I tried to tell her to climb out the window and run for it, but if you have had thirteen guys and you were a virgin, you can’t exactly run too well.

I picked her up—she hardly weighed anything—and went outside myself, then, and tried to talk some sense into the men, but they took her away from me and put her back in the hootch.

Carlene, as much as I hate to tell you, I walked away. I left her with them, because I wasn’t ready to shoot my own friends, and I wasn’t ready to fight them all. You never know what a man with a weapon will do, and it doesn’t pay to tick some of these guys off. It’s too easy to get hit by friendly fire out in the bush. It’s so common, there’s even a name for it—fragging.

I think all of us are beginning to go a little nuts. In the last few weeks, we have taken a lot of losses by booby traps. We wandered into a field of them yesterday, and every single one of us managed to get right in the middle of it before anyone tripped a wire. Then all of a sudden, there was an explosion and then another one and another one. Captain yelled for us to freeze, but people were running around trying to help each other and in the process setting off more and more of them. One guy got split from top to bottom, intestines hanging out and all, but miraculously was still alive, and when the medics went to put him on a poncho to move him, they set him down on top of another mine and blew the poor guy into a thousand bits. Parts of him rained down and landed all over us. We looked like we’d been hosed down with blood. There was a big gob of liver or something on my boot that I kicked off.

Guys were crying and screaming, crawling around on the ground and going to pieces. Captain had to slap a couple of them who were in hysterics. He had a job getting all of us out of there, I can tell you. We had thirty-two either killed or wounded, out of about ninety of us. When you see your buddies blown to bits, legs blown off, blinded, right in front of you, there is no way you are ever the same again.

We were all practically in the Twilight Zone when we went back through the village. The people just squatted and watched us with sulled-up eyes. They knew exactly what we had marched into. They didn’t warn us, because they had probably laid the traps themselves.

This wasn’t the first time this has happened. The 48^th is still around this area. Not long ago, we encountered a lot of fire from some villages north of here, called My Lai 4 and My Lai 6—there’s a bunch of little hamlets that make up what we call Pinkville, I may have told you that—and we had one man killed and fifteen injured. By the time we got reinforcements and went in, the enemy had just melted away down their tunnels or mixed in with the civilians. We never know how many of them there are, or where they are. You can’t imagine what it is like to fight a phantom army, to see your friends dying one by one, getting their guts ripped out, and be helpless to do anything about it.

Another horrible thing happened, too. I hate to even tell you this one, but it will show you what we are up against. One of our guys was captured by the VC, and we didn’t even know it. All night long we heard screams from seven klicks away. We thought the VC had amplifiers and were playing a tape to make us crazy, but they weren’t. They had skinned him alive, taking their sweet time, then soaked him in saltwater and tore off his . . . I can’t even say it in a letter without getting sick at my stomach. They’re not human, Carlene. They are worse than animals, because animals at least only kill to survive. But I guess that makes us worse than animals, too.

We had a memorial service this afternoon for our dead buddies, which was pretty tough, I can tell you. Tonight, we had a pep talk from the new colonel, and tomorrow, we are going to clean out that nest once and for all. We’re going to be dropped into My Lai 4, which we think is the 48th’s stronghold. We have known for a long time that the villages were basically sympathetic to the VC, but there was never any concrete proof. This time, though, our intelligence said they are definitely there, two hundred or more strong.

By seven in the morning, all of the civilians leave the village and go to the market, so whoever is left behind is bound to be Viet Cong. But this is one trip to the market that will be different for them. When they get back, they’re in for a big surprise: We are going to level that VC pus pocket and turn it into a parking lot. We’ll see where the Cong get their support from then. Our orders are to neutralize the area. That means not to leave one thing the enemy could use, not one hootch or chicken or duck or cow or rice cache. There are some expert tunnel rats coming in to join us, too, so if those suckers try to get away down the tunnels, they’ll know what to do.

It is going to be our first big battle, and I don’t have to tell you I am scared. If you don’t hear from me again, Carlene, let these be my last words to you: I love you, and if I make it out of here alive and back home, we will be together and try to make some kind of a life together, I promise you. You have been through your own war, too, I can see it now, and you are a braver soldier than I am. Take care of that boy. I pray that I can be a daddy to him after all.

All my love forever,

Jerry