Bloods (7 page)

When I stepped off the plane in Tan Son Nhut, that heat that was coming from the ground hit me in the face. And the odor from the climate was so strong. It hit me. I said, Goddamn, where am I? What is this?

While we was walking off the plane, guys were coming toward the plane. And guys said, “Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Happy Easter. I’ll write your mom.” They kept going. In other words, you gon’ have Easter here,
gonna have a birthday here, and you gonna have Christmas here. And good luck.

It was in June 1967. My MOS was mortarman, but they made me be a rifleman first and sent me to Company C, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. We was operating in Chu Lai, but we was a floatin’ battalion.

It was really weird how the old guys would ask you what you want to carry. It wasn’t a thing where you get assigned an M-14, M-16. If you want to carry an M-16, they say how many rounds of ammo do you want to carry? If you want to carry 2,000, we got it for you. How many grenades do you want? It was really something. We were so in the spirit that we hurt ourself. Guys would want to look like John Wayne. The dudes would just get in the country and say, “I want a .45. I want eight grenades. I want a bandolier. I want a thousand rounds ammo. I want ten clips. I want the works, right?” We never knew what the weight of this ammo is gon’ be.

A lot of times guys be walkin’ them hills, choppin’ through them mountains, and the grenades start gettin’ heavy. And you start throwin’ your grenades under bushes and takin’ your bandoliers off. It wasn’t ever questioned. We got back in the rear, and it wasn’t questioned if you felt like goin’ to get the same thing again next time.

Once I threw away about 200 rounds of ammo. They designated me to carry ammo for the M-60 machine gun. We was going through a stream above Chu Lai. I’m carrying my C rations, my air mattress, poncho, five quarts of water, everything that you own. The ammo was just too heavy. I threw away the ammo going through the river. I said it got lost. The terrain was so terrible, so thick, nobody could question that you lost it.

I come from a very religious family. So I’m carrying my sister’s Bible, too. All my letters that I saved. And a little bottle of olive oil that my pastor gave me. Blessed olive oil. But I found it was a lot of guys in basic with me that were atheist. When we got to Vietnam there were no atheist. There was not one atheist in my unit. When we got hit, everybody hollered, “Oh, God, please help, please.” And everybody want to wear a cross. Put a cross on their helmet. Something to psych you up.

Black guys would wear sunglasses, too. We would put
on sunglasses walking in the jungle. Think about it, now. It was ridiculous. But we want to show how bad we are. How we’re not scared. We be saying, “The Communists haven’t made a bullet that can kill me.” We had this attitude that I don’t give a damn. That made us more aggressive, more ruthless, more careless. And a little more luckier than the person that was scared.

I guess that’s why I volunteered for the LURPs and they brought me into Nha Trang. And it was six other black fellas to go to this school at the 5th Special Forces. And we would always be together in the field. Sometimes it would be Captain Park, this Korean, with us. Most of the time it was us, five or six black dudes making our own war, doing our thing alone.

There was Larry Hill from New York. Garland from Baltimore. Holmes from Georgia. Louis Ford from New Orleans. Moon from Detroit, too. They called him Sir Drawers, ’cause he wouldn’t wear underwear. Said it gave him a rash. And this guy from Baton Rouge named Albert Davis. He was only 5 feet 9. Only 120 pounds. He was a terrific soldier. A lot of guts, a lot of heart. He was Sir Davis. I was Sir Ford. Like Knights of the Round Table. We be immortal. No one can kill us.

I didn’t believe Nha Trang was still part of Vietnam, because they had barracks, hot water, had mess halls with three hot meals and air conditioning. Nha Trang was like a beach, a resort. They was ridin’ around on paved streets. They be playing football and basketball. Nobody walked around with weapons. They were white. And that’s what really freaked me out. All these white guys in the rear.

They told us we had to take our weapons to the armory and lock ’em up. We said naw. So they decided to let us keep our weapons till we went to this show.

It was a big club. Looked like 80 or 90 guys. Almost everybody is white. They had girls dancing and groups singin’. They reacted like we was some kind of animals, like we these guys from the boonies. They a little off. I don’t know if I was paranoid or what. But they stare at you when you first come in. All of us got drunk and carryin’ on. I didn’t get drunk, ’cause I didn’t drink. And we started firin’ the weapons at the ceiling. Telling everybody to get out. “Y’all not in the war.” We was frustrated
because all these whites were in the back having a big show. And they were clerks. Next thing I know, about a hundred MPs all around the club. Well, they took our weapons. That was all.

The next day Davis got in trouble ’cause he wouldn’t salute this little second lieutenant. See, we weren’t allowed to salute anybody in the field. Officers didn’t want you to. A sniper might blow his head off. The captain wanted to be average. He say, “I’m just like you, brother.” When we got in the rear, it was hard for us to adjust to salutin’ automatically.

When we got to be LURPs, we operated from Hill 54. Then they’d bring us in for like three days. They’d give you steak, all the beer you could drink. They know it’s your last time. Some of us not coming back. We’d eat half the steaks, throw ’em away, have a ball. Go into town, and tear the town up.

Davis couldn’t make no rank ’cause he got court-martialed for somethin’ we do in town. We stole a jeep. Went to town. Tuy Hoa was off limits. Davis turned the jeep over comin’ around one of them curves. But Davis was a born leader. He went back to the unit and got some more fools to get another jeep to push this jeep up. But he got court-martialed for stealin’ the jeep. And for having United States currency.

Davis would take American money into town. Somebody send him $50, he get 3 to 1. Black market. First chance we go to town, he go get some cash. ’Cause he stayed high all the time. Smokin’ marijuana, hashish. At mama san’s house.

And some guys used to play this game. They would smoke this opium. They’d put a plastic bag over their head. Smoke all this smoke. See how long you could hold it. Lot of guys would pass out.

In the field most of the guys stayed high. Lot of them couldn’t face it. In a sense, if you was high, it seemed like a game you was in. You didn’t take it serious. It stopped a lot of nervous breakdown.

See, the thing about the field that was so bad was this. If I’m working on the job with you stateside and you’re my friend, if you get killed, there’s a compassion. My boss say, “Well, you better take a couple of days off. Get
yourself together.” But in the field, we can be the best of friends and you get blown away. They put a poncho around you and send you back. They tell ’em to keep moving.

We had a medic that give us a shot of morphine anytime you want one. I’m not talkin’ about for wounded. I’m talkin’ about when you want to just get high. So you can face it.

In the rear sometimes we get a grenade, dump the gunpowder out, break the firing pin. Then you’ll go inside one of them little bourgeois clubs. Or go in the barracks where the supply guys are, sitting around playing bid whist and doing nothing. We act real crazy. Yell out, “Kill all y’all motherfuckers.” Pull the pin and throw the grenade. And everybody would haul ass and get out. It would make a little pop sound. And we would laugh. You didn’t see anybody jumpin’ on them grenades.

One time in the field, though, I saw a white boy jump on a grenade. But I believe he was pushed. It ain’t kill him. He lost both his legs.

The racial incidents didn’t happen in the field. Just when we went to the back. It wasn’t so much that they were against us. It was just that we felt that we were being taken advantage of, ’cause it seemed like more blacks in the field than in the rear.

In the rear we saw a bunch of rebel flags. They didn’t mean nothing by the rebel flag. It was just saying we for the South. It didn’t mean that they hated blacks. But after you in the field, you took the flags very personally.

One time we saw these flags in Nha Trang on the MP barracks. They was playing hillbilly music. Had their shoes off dancing. Had nice, pretty bunks. Mosquito nets over top the bunks. And had the nerve to have this camouflaged covers. Air conditioning. Cement floors. We just came out the jungles. We dirty, we smelly, hadn’t shaved. We just went off. Said, “Y’all the real enemy. We stayin’ here.” We turned the bunks over, started tearing up the stereo. They just ran out. Next morning, they shipped us back up.

In the field, we had the utmost respect for each other, because when a fire fight is going on and everybody is facing north, you don’t want to see nobody looking around
south. If you was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, you didn’t tell nobody.

Take them guys from West Virginia, Kentucky. First time they ever seen blacks was when they went in the service. One of them told me that the only thing he hate about the service was he had to leave his sheep. He said he used to never wear boots or shoes. He tell us how he cut a stump, put the sheep across the stump, and he would rape the sheep. Those guys were dumb, strong, but with no problems about us blacks. Matter of fact, the whites catered to the blacks in the infantry in the field.

Captain one time asked Davis what kind of car he gonna have when he get back in the States. Davis told him, “I’m not gonna get a car, sir. I’m gonna get me a Exxon station and give gas away to the brothers. Let them finish burnin’ down what they leave.” It wasn’t funny if he said it in the stateside. But all of ’em bust out laughing.

We used to bathe in the stream. Shave and everything. Captain was telling Davis he had some Ivory soap. Davis said, “I don’t take baths. Water rusts iron and put knots on the alligator’s back.” Creole talk. Everybody laugh. They know he don’t bathe, but he was a terrific soldier. Small fella. He had one of the Napoleon complexes. Always had to prove something. He wasn’t scared. He had more heart than anybody. They respected him, and they knew if you need fire cover or need help, he right there.

Right after Tet, the mail chopper got shot down. We moved to Tam Ky. We didn’t have any mail in about three weeks. Then this lady by the name of Hanoi Helen come on the radio. She had a letter belong to Sir Drawers. From the chopper that was shot down. She read the letter from his wife about how she miss him. But that didn’t unsettle the brothers as much as when she got on the air after Martin Luther King died, and they was rioting back home. She was saying, “Soul brothers, go home. Whitey raping your mothers and your daughters, burning down your homes. What you over here for? This is not your war. The war is a trick of the Capitalist empire to get rid of the blacks.” I really thought—I really started believing it, because it was too many blacks than there should be in infantry.

And take the Montagnards, the brothers considered them brothers because they were dark. They had some of the prettiest ladies, pretty complexion, long hair, and they didn’t wear no tops. Breasts would be exposed. And the Montagnard be walking with his water buffalo, his family, his crossbow. You waved at them, kept on walking. The people in Saigon didn’t have anything to do with Montagnards. It was almost like white people in the States didn’t have anything to do with blacks in the ghetto. So we would compare them with us.

I remember when we was stealing bananas in Pleiku and here come a bunch of Montagnards. Some white guys were talking about them: “Now I’d like to bang one of them.” I remember Davis said, “Yeah. But you get that thought out your mind, ’cause I’ll blow your brains out just for thinking it.”

In the field, I wasn’t about to do nothing crazy. Not like Davis. I got two Bronze Stars for valor by accident. It wasn’t intentional.

The first time, it was really weird. We hadn’t had any activity for about three weeks. Not even a sniper round. We was sitting at the bottom of this hill, sitting around joking. Some guys smoking, eating C-rations, talking about their homes. I saw this little animal run into this bush about 50 yards away. I told everybody, “Quiet. I saw a gook.” Everybody grabbed their weapons, got quiet.

Well, I knew it wasn’t no dink. I had the machine gun. I was just gon’ play with the guys. I’ma get this little fox, little weasel, whatever, and bring him back down the hill. So I gets up to where I saw him runnin’ in this real thick terrain. So I opened up with this M-60. About 20 rounds. Goddamn if three dinks ain’t jump up. They was hiding in the terrain. I’m shooting at them on the joke, right? When they jumped up, I fell all the way back down the hill ’cause they scared me half to death. Then the rest of us moved on up. The dinks had about 100 rounds of ammo, ’bout 12 grenades. I had killed all three of them.

Anyway, the commendation read how I crawled 100 yards to attack three enemy scouts and killed them single-handedly. I joke about it, ’cause if I knew they was up there, I wouldn’t have went up there by myself. Naw,
everybody was going, and I’d be in the rear, ’cause I didn’t walk point.

When I got the second Bronze Star, it was almost similar. I took some guys out on a listening post. At that time, Charlie would throw rocks at listening posts to find out where your location is and make you open up. He would find your claymore mines, turn them around to face you, for you to blow your own self away. I told the men, “If y’all hear something, y’all wake me up.”

It was getting close to day, and this guy say he heard somethin’. I said to myself I know what it was. It was a water buffalo. That’s what’s messing with the trip wires. But I decided to have some fun, play with the captain. I told them to radio back we got activity, they coming toward us. And I just said, “Shit, I’ma have me a mad minute.”

I saw the buffalo. And I opened up the M-60. I sprayed the area, threw a couple of grenades, and I got a couple of NVAs. I didn’t know they were there either.

Davis wasn’t scared even when he was hit. He would just go on encouragin’ you.