Norman Smith,
Marine Sergeant, 1964–1967

An eighteen-year-old high school dropout from Philadelphia, Norman Smith was so impressed by a TV documentary about the Marines that he immediately signed up. But as soon as he got to boot camp, he was sent to Vietnam, a country he had never even heard of. He served two tours and is among one of the ninety percent of Vietnam veterans who say they are proud to have served their country. Now a hardware store employee, Smith says his war experience made him a better person.

I think about Vietnam quite a bit. That kind of experience stays with you. I’m patriotic, which comes from being a Marine. I think this is the greatest country on earth. The Marine Corps sent me to such shitholes of the world that I have gained quite a bit of respect and admiration for this country. In Vietnam they had open ditches for sewers and ladies with thick pants would squat, pull up one leg of their pants, and urinate, right out in the middle of the street, in the gutter. I’m sure they live better than that now, with all the money we threw over there.

I served in Da Nang and lost a couple of friends in my first tour. One was a cat, Jordan, from New York—he was a brother—and the other was a white boy named Bugs.

We were on patrol as a company,* we’re talking about seventy men. We stopped for a break and took our helmets off. Afterward we stood up and were about to cross a river near a rice paddy field and continue our patrol when…well, some kind of mine went off.

I was further back and the word traveled back that some guys were down. Then the names traveled back—Jordan and Bugs were hit. I rushed to where they were down and when I got there Jordan was dead and they are working on Bugs, but he eventually died. Bugs had a big gash on his head; a piece of shrapnel went into his forehead. Jordan had shrapnel wounds on his upper torso; it looked like rice and I really don’t know whether it was rice or shriveled flesh, but it looked like rice. Those was our platoon’s first casualties.

I cleared Jordan’s rifle, took all his bullets, and kept his hat. I had his stuff in a plastic bag, with his funeral card, and that was going to be my keepsake. I would still have it, had I not lost my bag on my way to Vietnam the second time.

On our first patrol, after Jordan and Bugs were killed, we were sweeping though a rice paddy in this village and we took rifle fire. So everybody got down and we tried to figure out where the rifle fire was coming from. These guys were in a hole that went down, back under the hill, and into a horseshoe. On top of the hole was a wooden frame and a plot of dirt that sat right down on it. You could pass it a hundred times in a day and never know it was there, but some dizzy stuck his head up out of the ground while we were sweeping the area; he thought we would pass but instead he looked straight into one of our faces. Then he dropped back down in the hole, and now we knew where they were.

First thing we did was told our interpreter to tell them to come out. They didn’t come out. Somebody popped a smoke grenade in the hole. A smoke grenade will burn fifteen or twenty minutes. We didn’t know the configuration of the hole they were in. We threw the smoke grenade in because if there was a back entrance to this tunnel, we would see the smoke come out and know which was the back and front entrance. So we don’t see any yellow smoke coming out anywhere, but we hear these guys in the hole gagging and choking. So again they call the interpreter over to try and talk these guys out of the hole, and they still are not coming out, and then one of them tried to throw a grenade out, but it fell back in the hole. The blast knocked the commanding officer down.

Next thing, a guy stuck his head out of the hole, gasping for breath, and then he dies. Now we still hear someone choking; the interpreter again tries to tell them to come out, but they are not coming out. The lieutenant stuck his arm down there in the hole with a .45 in his hand, big bullets, and he unloads two magazines, ten to fourteen rounds. But there are still some of them back there gasping for breath and they still wouldn’t come out, so we blew the hole and that killed everybody.

Then we got down and started digging. So I’m in the hole digging and the shovel hits something. I wonder what it is. I brush the dirt away and then I realize it’s a dead body and we pull him up, but by the time they got him up he was naked. They were all naked—the dirt pulled off their shorts, which was all they were wearing. There were about six men in the hole.

It was the first time we were out since Jordan and Bugs were killed, and we were after blood now. We burned the village, took one of their water buffaloes, and tied it to a stake in the middle of the courtyard. It had its little one there and we took potshots at the buffalo until it died. There were families—very few men, no one our age, just old men, young children, and women. All the guys of fighting age were gone or maybe they were in another hole that we didn’t uncover. If that guy hadn’t stuck his head up, he might have killed some of us. If he gave us five more minutes, we would have crossed their position and our backs would have been to them.

We were angry. We deprived them of whatever they had. We took their rice and everything we thought was of value to them. We took and destroyed it. These guys were the only ones we killed. There was no massacre. These guys were combatants, and they paid the ultimate price for it.

We isolated the villagers. They were taken to one area and someone watched them. We went to each hooch looking for weapons, seeing what we could find, and then we destroyed the place. I can’t say I’m proud of it, but we didn’t initiate it, they did, so we felt justified, I guess.

After I came home the first time, I drove across country with two white Marines and stopped in New Mexico for breakfast. We went to a place where the three of us hadn’t been before, and the waitress came up to us and asked to speak to one of the other guys. They have this conversation and the next thing, we’re leaving. The waitress told my friend that she didn’t want to serve me. Being the Marines that they are, after all we had gone through, they weren’t going to eat there. I was shocked—I hadn’t been back in the country twenty-four hours.

When I came home, I got married, took my wife to Parris Island* and then I got orders to go back to Vietnam: The Marine Corps is getting their ass kicked over there now and I’m experienced in infantry and they need ground troops.

If you are an E-4 corporal or above and are reassigned overseas, but have less than a year in your enlistment and have no intention of reenlisting, you can ask to be reassigned stateside and not go overseas. I had less than a year to do, but Washington wasn’t even listening to that. I went home and I saw my congressman from north Philadelphia, who told me to go to Washington, but I didn’t know anybody there. So I go see another congressman and he said he’d do what he could. But nothing happened. I can remember sitting in Philadelphia Airport waiting for the plane to pull out, and I cried. I didn’t know if I would make it back. I just didn’t think so. There was no question about not going. I wasn’t going to go to Canada. I was Marine, a good Marine, a dedicated Marine, so even when they sent me back the second time, there was never a thought in my mind about not going

I went back to Da Nang, which is where I was before. I was stationed in a security platoon that protected where the officers lived. It was a stroke of luck: The whole country was dangerous, but I wasn’t in actual fighting every day.

Then the word came down that anyone on a second involuntary tour couldn’t go back to the States, but they could ask to be reassigned anywhere in the Pacific. I had a good time when I was in the Philippines, so I wanted to go back to the Philippines, and I put in new orders. But when the orders came back, I was told to go out to the front in Vietnam, where the Marines were getting their ass kicked every day. Here I am waiting to leave the country and they are sending me to the 5th Marines on the front line. My bubble busted.

So I jumped on the helicopter and they sent me out there. A regular Marine squad is fourteen men and they had squads out there that were down to five. They were searching the rear areas for anyone with infantry experience.

I get there and check in with the commanding officer. He looks at my records and says, “You are on your second involuntary tour.” I say, “Yes, sir. I was waiting for orders to leave the country, but when the orders came, they sent me out here.”

And he said, “Oh, I can’t use you.”

I say, “Can I go back?”

He said, “Do you want to wait for the helicopter or do you want to walk?”

I said, “Okay, I’ll wait for the helicopter.”

But then he said they only get one helicopter in a day. So I had to spend the night here, and don’t you know they got attacked that night. I had to jump out of the barrack, put my flak jacket on, and I’m praying in a foxhole waiting for this helicopter to get me out of here. I survived that one. Shit was dropping all over the place. Oh, man, they were shooting mortars in. All you could do was get in the corner of a foxhole.

The helicopter came the next morning and I went back to where I was before. I then got orders to go back to Okinawa, which is an island off the coast of Japan and a regular base.

If it weren’t for the war, I would have made a career out of the Marine Corps. I was dedicated and I liked it, but the war scared me out. When it was time to go, I got out. I lived through war, and it’s an experience that you never forget. I’m a better person for it because I’ve been there. I value my life and everyone else’s more. After you live through an experience like that, you don’t want to deal with anything petty. If I don’t like you, it’s not because of your skin color, it’s because you have done something to me personally. I’m not for pettiness. I see the world differently. These little so-and-so’s running round the street and shooting each other don’t really understand what life is about. I’m not sorry that I went—it added something to my character. But you can’t tell that to the mothers of the fifty-eight thousand who were lost.