To honor our veterans on this Veteran’s Day 2020, we are grateful to have a firsthand glimpse of what serving in a war zone is really like via Randall O’Brien, our resident veteran.
Happy Veteran’s Day to all of the praiseworthy men and women who serve in our armed forces.
Life or Death in Vietnam
by
J. Randall O’Brien
After a year of army training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Polk, again, I step off the plane March 4, 1971, onto Vietnamese soil. We land in Bien Hoa, then bus seven miles to Long Binh, America’s largest military installation in Vietnam. We grunts are given a one-week last chance crash course in combat and survival tactics, then move out to our assigned units.
101st Airborne Division troops await my arrival in Quang Tri Province below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which encompasses the South and North Vietnamese borders. Within my first week with my new unit, I view 50 or so black body bags containing KIA American soldiers being loaded on a plane for their journey home, take sniper fire while pulling guard duty at night, and receive a Dear John letter from my girlfriend back home. Yes, war really is hell.
Our company relocates to “the boonies.” One blazing hot day, with temperatures high enough to melt our crayons, we are sitting around our day defensive perimeter under open skies, shirts off like we are on the beach. Some of the guys are writing letters home, or re-reading old ones. Others are snoozing, or tanning—God-only-knows why. A few men are cleaning their weapons. Two or three, here and there, are huddled smoking and talking about girls back home.
I look up and spot an unsuspecting Viet Cong fighter in black pajama-like dress, pointed straw hat, sandals, and AK-47, leisurely strolling our way. Our eyes collide! He freezes! Panics! Turns and sprints back in the direction from which he has come.
“Henson! Henson! Pieface! Grab your radio! Let’s go!”
Private Pieface Henson and I pursue the enemy.
“Radio Lt. Rumcik! Tell him we’ve got contact. In pursuit. Will communicate!”
Through the jungle we pursue the Viet Cong. Ten, fifteen minutes into the chase, we crest and descend a small hill to find ourselves staring at wide-open acres of rice paddies in lowlands leading to a distant village. Stooped men, women, and children work hoeing rice. They freeze, looking up frightened into the rifle barrels of two threatening American dogfaces. We count 19 of them. The men dressed exactly as the Viet Cong fighter may be his comrades. The armed enemy may be among them, incognito, AK-47 lying beneath the water. Don’t know.
“What are we going to do?” Pieface asks nervously.
“HANDS UP!” I scream, motioning! “IN THE AIR! HIGH UP!”
Hoes drop. Arms rise high. Faces drip fear.
“Hand me the phone.” “Red Baron 5, Come in. Come in, Red Baron, 5! Red Top, here. Come in, over!”
“Red Baron 5, here. Come in, Red Top. Over.”
“Got 19 Vietnamese captured. Chopping rice. Can’t tell, friend or foe. Village across the way. Do you read? Over.”
“Copy, Red Top, loud and clear. Your call. Take no prisoners. Do you read? Read back. Over.”
“Roger. My call. Take no prisoners. Wilco. Over.”
“Copy, Red Top. Out.”
Now what? The call is mine. Our platoon can’t transport 19 prisoners with us through the jungles. We can’t let them go; they may be Viet Cong guerillas by night, or the Viet Cong soldier may be one of them. With our camp position known, the VC could attack us tonight, or mortar us, perhaps killing some, many, most, or all of us. On the other hand, if we kill the 19, many or all of them may be mere civilians. What do we do? Their lives or ours?
We kill them all.
Just kidding.
This is what we do.
“Pieface, when I give the signal, start firing. We’re gonna fire over their heads, in front of ‘em, anywhere but at ‘em, you understand? Don’t you dare shoot a single one of ‘em, or I’ll have you court martialed, you hear me?”
“I hear ya.”
“We’re gonna scare ‘em outta their minds; get ‘em outta here. When I count to three, go crazy! Start screaming, firing. You ready?”
“Ready.”
“One, two, three, GO!”
“RAT-A-TAT-TAT! RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT! RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT, POP-POP=POP, POP-POP-POP-POP, POP-POP-POP-POP! DiDi MAO! DIDI MAO! (Get out of here!) RAT-A-TAT-TAT, RAT-A-TAT-TAT, POP-POP-POP!”
The petrified Vietnamese sprint through the rice paddies to the distant village—men, women, and children, who often serve as fighters, too, never stopping, nor looking back, until they reach their grass huts, a horizon away.
We return to our defensive perimeter, report to the Lieutenant, and move our camp for the night. Everyone lives.
At least for one more night.
Dr. J. Randall O’Brien is the President Emeritus of Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee. Previously the executive vice president, provost, professor of religion and visiting law professor at Baylor University, the McComb, Mississippi native is a graduate of Yale Divinity School, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Mississippi College. He has also held appointments as a Research Scholar at Yale, and Fellow at Oxford.
Other Porchscene articles by Dr. O’Brien include:
http://porchscene.com/2017/10/17/a-bronze-star-for-brenda/
http://porchscene.com/2017/09/26/dark-rains-gonna-fall/
http://porchscene.com/2017/08/22/3rd-civil-war/
Photo courtesy Dr. J. Randall O’Brien
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Excellent first-hand account. Thank you for your service. I was there, too.