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Copyright reserved. No part(s) of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form by any means without the written permission of the author. VIETNAM NOTES continued We usually drove in convoys. Long lines of trucks sometimes joined by tanks or armored-personnel carriers for protection. Every so often a helicopter gunship would scream low overhead, with a deafening roar, as it patrolled the roads, guarding the convoys and looking for a little something to do. Like unleashing the unbelievable firepower they carried, in the form of rockets, grenade launchers, and most impressive to me, miniguns. These were super machine-guns with firing rates so high that when they went off all you saw was unbroken red lines of tracers, and all you heard was a continuous burp, so loud your ears would ring for quite awhile, if they were close enough. At the other end of all that was "hell on earth", hauling ass down a road, in a truck with an M16 at your side and gunships and tanks around. Or sitting in a bunker, surrounded by a considerable selection of deadly weapons which could make you feel powerful and invincible at times. That was a very welcome fantasy. Most of the time I had the much more realistic and stressful awareness that I was in a very dangerous place, and if it was my turn to get it, no attitude or weapon in the world would save me. The attitude was also valuable, as we had to try to convince ourselves that we were dangerous too, and anyone with a gun really can be. Sometimes feeling that way was the only way people stayed sane, but it's an exhausting way to live. **** The bunker was ready for the night. The machine gun, claymore mines, grenade launcher, hand grenades, ammo and flares were all laid out and ready to go. The four of us were sitting back in the relative coolness of the early evening, watchful, but just talking and relaxing after a long hard day. Our shifts of staying awake all through the night, on guard, would start soon enough. This was the best time of the day. I felt lazy and comfortable just talking with friends. Then one of them got an idea. "Let's shoot a few flares into the village. That'll wake 'em up!" was always uncomfortable around that sort of thing, but what the hell, we shot them at each other now and then as a sort of sick joke. Why should the villagers be exempt? The instigator cut off the little parachute attached to the flare so that it would really fly, and smacked the cap to launch it toward the houses a few hundred yards away. Much to our surprise, he actually hit a house, and in no time at all quite a little fire was in progress, on the roof. A crowd of villagers quickly gathered, running and yelling and trying to put out the fire. I felt kind of guilty, but couldn't help but laugh a little, as my buddy did a little victory dance and whooped it up. I don't know when it all really started, but what had begun as a little joke soon became something else. We were inside a bunker, which is a tiny building built of sandbags, with it's confinement able to amplify gunfire into hammering explosions inside that could actually be felt as concussions in your body. What had been a relaxing, friendly evening abruptly turned into a horrifying nightmare as without warning the machine gun went off, quickly followed by an M16 on full auto, and the hollow "thunk" of the grenade launcher, all accompanied by bright flashes and unbelievable noise. While I had been sitting by the back door, my buddies had begun a killing frenzy up front, and as I looked up I saw a vision straight out of Hell. As I write this it seems almost like a joke to try to describe those emotions and perceptions with words. That's something that could never be done. As I realized what I was seeing, I remember bringing up my rifle with a raging elation, and a desire to join in and KILL THE DIRTY BASTARDS! As quickly as the feeling came, it disappeared, thank God, before I pulled the trigger. I have thanked God thousands of times since that night. The rage was replaced with a terrified, paralyzing fascination while tracers ripped into the crowd, grenades exploded around them, and horrible shrieks, screams, and cries of agony from the wounded and dying men, women, and children bored into my brain. They scorched out gaping wounds, which will never, ever, ever be gone from my memory. All of a sudden the firing stopped with a shocking silence and then, even with gunfire-deafened ears, the sounds of wounded and dying human-beings cut through the night air, in a crystal clear, sickening wail. I just stood there in a stupor, unable to move or think a coherent thought, for what seemed like a long time. What happened for the rest of that night is gone from my memory. Thank you God! The story was told of VC being shot at, and the casualties were blamed on the village being too close to our perimeter bunkers. The story worked just fine for the record but we knew and so did they! The next day, the village showed up in all its funerary finery. Led by the elders, the people held a procession by the bunker that had, in just a few sickening moments, destroyed so many people; so many precious, irreplaceable lives and stories. They were dressed in beautiful, richly-colored silks that flowed around them in the breeze. They carried many festive, brightly-colored caskets on their shoulders. Red, gold, blue, green, yellow, the whole thing was unreal in it's color, beauty, and dignity. The bright sunlight shone down on this dream and made me wonder if it was all real. Then I noticed how small some of the caskets were. They were too small for a real person. Why was that? Oh! They weren't too small! They were for the children! I remember feeling rather clever that I'd figured it out. So very clever, until my mind couldn't bullshit me any more, until the whole reality hit me. Then, even though I hadn't done anything, the knowledge of what I'd seen, and of how close I'd come to being a monster out of my nightmares, kicked me into a place I wouldn't be able to leave for a long, long time. Although not the only reason for the self-destruction to follow, when the walls finally did begin to crumble, so many years later, the process came close to killing me as it has so many others with the self-medication of alcohol and drugs. When I see scenes on television of people in pain from war, or anything else, it's not just pictures for me. The people in that village were not saints. Some that died may have even been the enemy, but all of them had been living human beings. Now they were dead and gone forever; just like the thousands of young, bright, hopeful Americans and others, who made the one way trip to their doom. All I know is that from that night on my life was never the same. One of the lessons I learned then, is that we may feel that life is precious, but we are all capable of terrible evil if the time is right and that until (God forbid!) it happens, most of us are ignorant of it, and would deny it to the grave. This is probably just as well as knowledge like that can be a very heavy burden. Too heavy for the many who give mute testimony, by their choice, to be absent from this world.
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Robert Flynn can be contacted at: netcatalog2@aol.com |