Danny C Hall
“You never forget the sound of a AK47 rifle. As a young Marine in Vietnam the first time I heard that sound a young hero died and soon a mother cried. Boys became men or died. Fear turned to courage, you were there to fight for your country, but you would die fighting for your brother standing next to you. That was your new world. For Marines 13 months was your tour. Some headed home after 1 day in country, in body bags with a flag draped across them. For some 12 months and 10 days of hell ended with death. Twenty days left and they would have been home.
“The heat, 110 degrees in the high humid land, with booby traps on jungle trails and snipers hidden in spider holes ready to pop up and fire, and snakes and wild tigers, and fearless VC that roamed the land, and rats that would pull your hair out or bite you, as big as cats.
“The AK-47 was the rifle of choice for the enemy, it's Russian made and indestructible, water, mud, dirt, nothing hurts these rifles. They will fire under water. Our weapons were of the highest technology, costing 50 times as much as the AK-47. We had the M-16 American made rifle, very high quality plastic and steal, that if wet or dirty would jam mostly when your life depended on it.
“When it rained it would rain for 50, 60 days, day and night, called the monsoon season. Your clothes were wet, your feet were wet, your spirit was wet. For weeks at a time you walked all day searching for the enemy. When you lay down in mud to close your eyes for rest, is when the enemy liked to fight. They evened the odds in the dark.
“We had the helicopters and planes in the day time, they had the dark of night and stealth waiting for tired soldiers. I've seen drug bags attached to enemy soldiers with IVs who never felt a bullet tear through their body and kept coming at you until you blew their head off. Blood spattered across your filthy, wet clothes, explosion all around, bullets flying in all directions in a fire fight, at night you would see the tracer rounds light up the dark, like shooting stars the bullets flew, and grenades full of shrapnel, like bees made of hot steel seeking to penetrate your body.
“The watery rice paddys you lay in, or the streams and bogs you crossed, were full of leaches sucking your blood and you never knew until you pulled down your pants or pulled up your shirt and saw the slimy blood suckers attached all over you. Mosquitoes bit you day and night full of malaria. I had it twice, spent a total of 40 days combined on hospital ships feeling like death warmed over, but safe and dry for a while.
“If you were in the bush your food was in a cardboard box called C-rations. There was no buffet to choose, everybody got the same thing most of the time. Sometimes your food had been packaged and canned back in World War Two, or Korean War.
“You weren't always in the bush looking for death, once or twice a month you would come into a base for a week or so, get baths, hot chow and new clothes, and "hope". Write a letter home, receive a package and letters from home, sleep on cots not mud or dirt, listen to rock music, go to chapel and pray, drink cold beer, laugh and talk about home and wives or girlfriends, Mama, Dad and family, football. The next week that old buddy, your brother in arms' lifeless body would be draped across your shoulders as you loaded him aboard a Medivac helicopter.
“Your job had a lot to do with what your life expectancy was. If you carried a M60 machine gun in the bush, life expectancy was 5 minutes, radio man 1 day, point man one hundred yards, door gunner on a Huey helicopter 5 minutes, officer second lieutenant 7 seconds in a fire fight, ground pounding grunt rifleman 30 minutes tops. Not much hope of ever seeing home again.
“Now you see why these kids who played high school football last year, had their first real girlfriend last year, still lived with mom and dad, some never had a intimate relationship with a female, some still had pimples on their baby faces, came home and brought Vietnam with them. The boy, if he made it home, was never the same. Many fought the war at night in dreams. PTSD was not known or was not recognized for 25 to 30 years until after the war in Vietnam. They said it's all in your head boys, until they recognize the suicide rate was 10 times the veteran average, did the VA decide ‘hey something's wrong.’
“Not everyone that went to Vietnam was a rifleman or grunt. Some drove trucks, cooked, did construction, mechanic, every day jobs on the bases, the only action they saw was an occasional mortar attack, or guard duty and shot at by snipers. Do I fault them? Heck no, they served their country in war. Did I feel like a hero when I returned? Hell no, I felt like I never left for 35 years of PTSD. You can't look at a person and tell what hell is in his or her head.
“How and why did I make it home, and why me and not so many of my brothers? (God had a plan ) I was no faster, no smarter, no better, no luckier, nope. God had a plan and that's my witness friends. I've said before the heroes of war are the dead left behind. Very few make it home and many of the Vietnam Vets that survived broug”hot back the orange death with them only to die later, a slow painful death from agent orange, that orange striped killer in 55 gallon drums spraoyed all over us and the jungle. And then be treated like street scum by our own people when we came home. And even worse by our own Government Heath care system called the VA hospital.
“Well thanks, America. I'm glad those kids that sacrificed their life can't see what they died for today.”
This narrative was submitted by Danny C Hall, a member of the U.S. Marine Corps who served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.