DEATH
 
Breathe your hot breath on my neck
You demon, Death
I care not.
 
Your presence is no more than a reminder
Of the meager price that all men must pay
For living.
 
Be not kind, it would be a waste
Of your fine talents.
You are but a penny in a rich man's coffer.
 
And let me tell you one thing, Friend,
Though you strike at the spirit
You will never smite my soul.
 
Come closer you bastard.
Every man is your father,
Yet none will name you.
 
You have cost me, Death.
Good men and friends
Belong to you now.
 
But come closer Death
come next to me
and watch me kill
 

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MISSING SOMETHING
 
 
Dear Mrs. and Mr. Smith,
 
It is with the sincerest regret that I write this letter. Your son was a valuable member of our team..........
 
I left Marcia last week.
She just didn't seem to understand
That there's more to life
Than just wading through
The misery of living it.
 
I'm going back to 'Nam.
It's something that I know,
Or at least I understand it better
Than Marcia.
Why, God, do You make it harder to love than to kill?
 
Last week my point man stepped on a booby trap
And lost his foot.
He didn't even know it was missing
Until he got to the hospital.
I wonder if I'm missing something that I don't know about.
 
Dear Marcia,
 
It is with the sincerest regret that we write this letter. Your husband was a valuable member of our team.........
 

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CROPS
 
We'd wait until autumn brought the crisp chill of winter
Before we harvested the potatos.
It was good to feel the loose loam
As we gathered our summer's labors.
Gunny sack full with the weight of future suppers,
My brother and I would wrest them into the root cellar
And smile, because it was good
To sweat honestly.
Later we would sit stocking footed by the fire
And read the future by its flames.
It's autumn again
But hot this time
With the promise of rain.
The crop is different now,
And the harvest more difficult.
It's still good to sweat honestly,
But the smile is gone.
 
Trav, written sometime in late 1970 or early 1971
 
 
 

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  FROM: World War ll To Vietnam
 
My father was my friend. He passed on in April 1990. He served in the 10th Mountain Division in Italy in World War II. There was no generation gap between us. I have often compared my service in Vietnam to his service in Italy. Interestingly, we both had the same infantry assigments and earned the same awards. I take comfort in occasionally reading the things he wrote. Here is one of them. In a way, it is a timeless eulogy for all those who have fallen in war. Trav

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COMMUNICATION
 
Torrie Ieussi, April, 1945
 
Who can know
The lonliness of men
About to enter into battle.
 
They are lonely
As the stars are lonely
Recognizing comrades
Across the light years of space
But unable
To communicate
That which is
Within the heart.
 
How can you know --
You
Who have not seen
Death rear up
Among the springtime blossoms
To shatter men
With steel.
 
We
Who cannot speak
Sprawl upon the April grass
Warmed by the springtime sun.
Peaceful flies
Buzzing
Over broken helmets.
 
We who cannot speak
Cry out
With twisted bodies
Upon the April grass.
 

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FROM: Friendly Commander to Enemy Commander
 
I wrote this little piece back in the fall of 1970 while in the rain forested mountains of Thua Thien.

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I'm really sorry that you're the enemy.
It's very sad we have to fight and kill each other.
 
Do you love your soldiers as much as I love mine?
I think you do. Your men fight well and die bravely.
 
Our countries can both claim victory,
But we are both losers, you and I.
We hate ourselves too much.
I used to think I hated you,
But that's not so anymore.
I just hate me, and what I've become.
I killed two of your men yesterday.
They were careless.
We'll get careless too, someday
And Death will finally win -- the only victor.
 

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  We ain't gonna win .. what I learned from the troops ..
On July 30, 1970, First Sergeant John Ross and I reviewed what could only be described as the "new Alpha Company." Just nine veterans of Ripcord were fit for field duty, and 30 new guys, "cherries," peopled the ranks.

"I wonder who's more nervous, Top," I said to John Ross, "me, for all the new men we have, or them for knowing what the company has just been through?"

We chuckled at the thought, then Ross turned serious, "Just stay tight," he told me. "You and your old-timers have your work cut out for you."

And that's how we went back into combat: A 39-man company, with squad-sized platoons and a command post of seven. By mid-August our strength would grow to close to 100 men, from returning wounded and new replacements, and I later added a squad-sized 4th Platoon to perform reconnaissance missions for the company.

Although the NVA didn't challenge us in any great strength, there was still plenty of action. Efforts by the Viet Cong to supply NVA forces deep in the jungle from the fertile lowlands continued, and interdicting rice-carrying parties remained an important mission. Too, the regular North Vietnamese often sent platoons and companies, to work in smaller groups, to disrupt our activity, provide security for rice-carriers, and maintain or build bunker facilities for unspecified future operations; and the ubiquitous trail watcher remained a fixture.

I groomed my new charges carefully, and employed the company aggressively. No one in the battalion worked harder to ensure a combat edge, so necessary to survival--to winning every little engagement against our foe. But if I desired pay-back for the hurt of Ripcord, it came only piecemeal, a little bit at a time.

Obsessed with the dual and seemingly contradictory missions of taking care of my men and killing the enemy, I planned operations that were designed to cause maximum confusion and disruption to the North Vietnamese. We disdained typical "ridge running" tactics, forewent regular resupply (we carried extra rations--rice, like our foe--and extra munitions) and pursued the enemy on "hunting trips," in valleys and along streams. The easy, less secure way was rejected, the tougher the hump, the less likely the enemy would be aware of our presence. Ruse and deception became the rule.

The war, my war, became increasingly personal. As long as I could command Alpha Company, every hour of every day would be spent trying to kill and damage the bad guys. "We were still winning," I thought, "Vietnamization could work."

The thought that America might lose the war did not exist for me, but the corollary thought, that America did not want to win the war, was made graphically clear one day in September.

It was resupply day. We were securing a perimeter by an LZ deep in the jungle on some nameless ridge. Four of my men approached, all hardened Ripcord jungle fighters. They were short-timers, tours almost over, they would leave with the log bird, due momentarily. They had come to pay their respects, and say "good bye."

"Currahee, sir," they said quietly, "Currahee, Charlie Oscar."

"Currahee, men," I said back.

There was a moment of awkward silence, of downward-looking at jungle-booted feet, then the self-appointed spokesman for the group, Sergeant Buster Harrison spoke. "It's been good having you for a captain, Charlie Oscar," Harrison said, "We're real proud to have been with you and Alpha."

The obligatory comport out of the way, Harrison continued, "Sir," he said formally, his voice determined, "if we thought we were going to win this mutherfucker, we'd stay."

He paused, gathered his words, and said, "If you told us we were going to combat assault into Hanoi tomorrow, we'd volunteer to be on the first bird in the lift."

He paused again and looked me square in the eyes ("We really mean this, captain," he was telling me, "This is from our hearts.") Then, he finished: "We ain't gonna' win, so we're goin' home."

And when the resupply chopper came, they got on it and left.

"These are the American boys," I thought, "who would have won this war for their country and for the South Vietnamese allies they so valiantly supported. Savvy, battle-hardened troops, whose tour was over and who were now going home to friends and family, these men would have stayed, and fought and died if America had told them they were going to win, and had let them do it."

The man who carried a machine gun with 3d Platoon, who had helped avenge Doc Draper's death, said it all: "If we thought we were going to win ... we'd stay."

These are the kind of men America sent to Vietnam, indeed, has sent to all its wars. Men like those of Alpha Company, 2d Battalion, 506th Infantry, were men who embodied America's spirit of freedom, who embraced the soldier's precept of self-sacrifice, who left Vietnam's bloody killing fields unbowed and unbroken, who would have stayed in order to win.

General Sid Berry wrote to me years later that "it is unworthy of a country to send soldiers to a war they may not win." He's right.

 

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It Don't Mean Nothin', It Don't Mean a Thing

We all cope in some way, then and now. Trav

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