Authors: Wallace Terry
I first arrived in Chu Lai in July 1969. After a week of orientation, I was assigned to the Americal Division, Alpha Company, 1st of the 96th. My company commander was a very good company commander, because he knew his profession and kept us out of a whole lot of crucial incidents. But the second lieutenant—the platoon leader—he was dumb, because he would volunteer us for all kinds of shit details to get brownie points. We would walk point two or three times a week for the whole company. He was literally the word “stupid,” because he couldn’t read a map. And he would say, “You don’t tell me what to do, because they sent me to officers’ training school.” When we got one or two sniper fire, he would stop right there and call in artillery to saturate the whole area before you could take another step.
One time we had to check out an area. It was during the monsoon season. It rained 15 days and 15 nights continuously. We stayed wet 15 days. We started catching cramps and charley horses. And guys’ feet got messed up. Well, they were trying to get supplies into us. But it was raining so hard, the chopper couldn’t get in. After five days, we ran out of supplies. We were so hungry and tired we avoided all contact. We knew where the North Vietnamese were, but we knew that if we got into it, they would probably have wiped a big portion of the company out. We were really dropped there to find the North Vietnamese, and here we was hiding from them. Running because we were hungry. We were so far up in the hills that the place was so thick you didn’t have to pull guard at night. You’d have to take a machete to cut even 100 meters. It could take two hours, that’s how thick the shit was. We starved for four days. That was the first time I was ever introduced to hunger.
Then we found some kind of path road down into a little village. And we came to a house that had chickens and stuff there. I think the people abandoned it when they saw us coming. I was the machine gunner, so I had to stay where I was and watch the open area while the guys searched the house. They were city guys who didn’t know about utilizing the forest or what they were running into. So they started throwing the rice on the ground. They didn’t have the experience that I had. When I was younger, I used to go out for miles of distance into the woods and run the snakes. I told my friend Joe to pick up the rice and get the chickens. So Joe got the stuff. I told them not to worry, so I skinned a chicken. I got a whole mess of heat tabs, and put the chicken in my canteen cup and boiled it for a long time. When I thought the chicken was half done, I put in the rice. And a little salt. It was about the only food we had until the bird came in two days after that. Those guys were totally ignorant. They kept calling rice gook food. That’s why they threw it on the ground. I told Joe food is food.
It was a good thing that I didn’t run in the house. Because I saw something about an eighth of a mile away. It looked like a little scarecrow out there in the rice paddy. It was sort of like a little sign. I looked at it real hard. I stretched my eye to make sure it wasn’t nobody. Then I seen another little dark object, and it was moving. So I opened my fire immediately. I think the Viet Cong was trying to get around behind us so he could ambush us. I just happened to recognize him. I cut off maybe 50 rounds, and the CO hollered, “Hold up there, Charles. Don’t just burn the gun up.” The rest of the company told me I really got him, so that was the only person that I really was told I actually killed.
My feet was all scriggled up. My skin was raw and coming off. I still carry an infection on my feet right now that I have to visit the VA hospital on a regular basis to take treatment for.
Then I started to take drugs to stop the pain in my feet.
When one of our men was killed the next day, it didn’t make a whole lot of difference, because I just felt good that it wasn’t me. But it gave me a thrill like you take a
drink of alcohol or smoke a cigarette to see a Viet Cong laying dead. It was giving me a good feeling. It stimulated my senses. I thought about it, and I really started to love seeing someone dead. And I started doing more drugs. Now I’m afraid that if someone catches me the wrong way, I would do them really bodily harm. It won’t be no fight to prove who the best man is, or to prove manhood. Because of ’Nam, I cannot fight, because if I fight now, I’ll fight for life. Someone is gonna die immediately.
But it hurt me bad when they got Joe. Joe was an all right guy from Georgia. I don’t know his last name. He talked with that “ol’ dude” accent. If you were to see him the first time, you would just say that’s a redneck, ridge-runnin’ cracker. But he was the nicest guy in the world. We used to pitch our tents together. I would give him food. He would share his water. And food and water was more valuable then than paper money. And when we had an opportunity to stand down, he would get sort of drunk and go around the brothers and say, “Hi there, brother man.” The brothers would automatically take offense, but I always told them Joe was all right. His accent was just personal.
I remember one night I put my little transistor radio on my pack. We listened to music with the earphones, and he talked about his wife and kids back home on the farm in Georgia. He said he would be glad to see his wife.
The next day he was walking point. I was walking the third man behind him when he hit a booby trap. I think it was a 104 round. It blew him up in the air about 8 feet. He came down, and about an inch of flesh was holding his leg to his body. He rested on his buttocks, and his arms were behind him. He was moaning and crying in agony and pain and stuff. What really got to his mind is when he rose himself up and saw his leg blown completely off except that inch. He said, “Oh, no, not my legs.” I really distinctly remember the look on his face. Then he sort of went into semiconsciousness. He died on the way to the hospital. I had to walk up the trail to guard for the medevac to pick him up. And I remember praying to the Lord to let me see some VC—anybody—jump out on that trail.
After six months, it was approaching Christmas, and
we went back through the jungles to the rear area for a stand-down. That was when I made up in my mind that I wasn’t going back to the field. The officers were dumb, but besides that, before I went to Vietnam, I had three dreams that showed me places in Vietnam. When we were in this one area, it was just like in the first dream. I felt like I had been there before, but I didn’t place much value on it. But when I seen the second place, it dawned on me this was the place in the second dream. I said that in my dream, there’s suppose to be a foxhole approximately 15 feet to the left and a little tin can sittin’ on it. At the LZ I was in at the time, I walked straight to the place where the foxhole was suppose to be. And there it was. And the can, too. The third dream said that I was going to be crossing a rice paddy, and I was going to get shot in my chest with a sucking wound that I would never recover from. And one of my buddies was holding me in his arms, saying I would be all right until the medevac came in. But it seemed like I never made it out of there. So I wrote my mother and told her that it was time to leave the field, or I would never make it out alive. The first and second dreams came true. It was a sign from the Heavenly Father for me to do something, or the third dream would come true. A Christian never walks into any danger, dumb and blind. Never.
I had three alternatives. One was I could go back to the field. The second was I could go to jail. The third was I could take more time in military service. I chose the third. I enlisted for three years to get out of the field and get trained for welding.
I left the ’Nam the end of July 1970. I had learned my job welding at Lai Khe. Then they transferred me from Fort Dixon to Frankfurt. Germany was good for my readjustment, because I really didn’t care nothing about law and all those things. I really didn’t have no respect for life. Like I had the power in ’Nam to issue out life or death sentences. If I just wanted to be a real nasty person, then I probably could have just ripped off South Vietnamese civilians for practice. In Germany I learned black people can live together in harmony and that we had to band together in order to make it back to the United States without going to jail.
I got involved in a black study group, and I started reading black history. The racial situation intensified. Then the rioting and fighting broke out all over. They were putting more blacks in jail for the most simple thing. So we tried to get black lawyers from stateside to come over to help us. When I was in the field, they had no room for racism at all. Maybe someone would first come in with it, but after a while, he knew that you were working together as a unit and he needed each man. And besides, common sense would tell you if someone has 200 targets to shoot at, you stand a better chance of living than if he would have 50.
In Germany this first sergeant always hassled me because I had small holes burned in my fatigues from welding. I told the company commander the sergeant was prejudiced, that I might be young but I am a man. The CO told the sergeant to requisition me three more fatigues, and I bought three more with my own money. I would change uniforms twice a day so the sergeant wouldn’t hassle me. I didn’t take no shortcut. I had the cleanest room in the whole company. The CO usually used my room as a showcase. He was so proud he gave me a bit of furniture. He knew I couldn’t stop being a man for a second. You can’t go outside the regulations and get anything accomplished. So with a small radius of brothers, we talked to black GIs all over Germany so they would not get fucked up and end up in Mannheim stockade.
I got out in December 1972. The longest day I lived was the day I got out. When I got home, I figured I would lay around a couple of months. I was drinking beer, wine, any kind of alcoholic beverage. That time, too, I started messin’ around with some THC. But I really didn’t mess around with it for that long, because it makes you feel unsure of yourself. I decided to marry this young lady I was going with for seven years. I wanted to show her I really loved her. That’s when the effects of Vietnam really had their toll on me.
I started having flashbacks. When I would lay down and dream at night, my mind would play tricks on me. I still had my jungle boots and fatigues. And when it would rain real hard, I would put them on and go wherever I wanted to go. I would be ducking around in the bushes,
crawling around just like you do in actual combat. And I would do silly stuff like breaking out the street lamps, and they put me in jail a couple of times for being disorderly.
But I did a really strange thing. I had this little .22. Something prompted me to turn it into the police department. It was a good thing, too. Because I got real mad at my wife one day. I put on my fatigues, and put this ice pick at my side. When I couldn’t find her, I just totally demolished the house. People called the police, but they couldn’t find me. I just lightly eased out of the house and went across the street, where there were some high bushes. It was dark and stuff, and I moved just like I learned in Vietnam. I thought I could keep running forever. But after 30 minutes, I cooled off and got out of the bushes and went back over the house. The neighbors said they didn’t know what was wrong with me. The police didn’t take me to jail but to the hospital, where they put me in the psychiatric ward for four days. And the psychiatrist told me I loved my wife too much. Nothing about Vietnam.
I decided to go live with my mother, because I didn’t want to hear my wife nag. I worked at welding for a while, but I kept getting a lot of burns. So I tried construction work, but it got real bad because the housing business went down. So this VA counselor told me to try to enter school, and I started going to Broward Community College to get computers one day like I wanted back before ’Nam.
But the real thing that happened to me was the Lord touched my vision. I found out that I was just not existing. Now I done fell into the real life that I am living. I’m living 24 hours a day, no matter how rough the situation. Within my body I maintain peace and tranquillity. I see I have all I need. I can cope with anything. I lost my fear of death, because I have really accepted life. Although I live in a merchandise society, I don’t try to keep up with it. I don’t even watch TV unless it is a live sports event or something happening right then. When you watch someone pretend to live life, you wasting your time. And I see many people back here stateside killing as many people as they were killing in Vietnam. Vietnam really gave me a respect for human life. I value people. People
make me happy now. And I don’t feel inferior anymore. When I was six or seven, I used to wonder why I was born black; I should have been born white. See, I found out from reading about my past before slavery—my ancestors built the pyramids that still stand today. They omitted the small things like the Caesars of Rome studied in a university in Africa before they became Caesars. I learned that as a black man the only problem I had was that I wasn’t exposed to things. I feel equal to everyone, and I walk humbly among men. I’m studying to be a computer programmer, but that doesn’t make me better than a garbage man.
Most of the nightmares are gone. Except one.
I still think about this North Vietnamese soldier. We took two hours to kill him. This was a brave dude. I’ll never forget him. It took a whole platoon to kill him.
He was held up in a tunnel. He knew he had no possible chance of winning whatsoever. And he wasn’t really expecting no help. But this was the bravest dude I had ever seen. And I respect this dude.
The “rabbits,” they were so crazy they didn’t understand nothing, see. We had interpreters to rap to him to give up. If he give up, they would rehabilitate him and shit like that. And he would fight for the regular South Vietnamese army. They rapped and rapped to him. And we started shooting and throwing frags and Willie Peter rounds—white phosphorous grenades that burn through metal and shit.
But the only way we got him was this crazy rabbit jumped down in the hole and beat him to the punch. With a shotgun right through his neck. So when they pulled him out, he was hit badder than an ol’ boy. He had a hunk of meat out of his leg, big as that. He had shrapnel all over his body. He had a hole in his side. But he wouldn’t give up. Because he really believed in something. This man was willing to die for what he believed in. That was the first time I ran into contact with a real man. I will never forget him.