"WAITING TO PHONE HOME" by MSG Henrietta Snowden
When I Went to Vietnam
By Guy Jones
When I went to Vietnam in 1968 I was a scared kid but when I came home I was a man who would have to live with the nightmares of 12 months of duty in the Valley of Death, we call Nam. Yes I was scared, for around every bush, every wall or around every corner I could see in my minds eye death waiting for me. This was also the very first time in my life that anyone took a shot at me and this feeling would not go away for a very long time to come. I remember the bus ride to the holding camp and listening to small arms fire in the bush not to far away from us. Wondering when I would be going to my unit, where it was and would I live long enough to return home. Would I ever see my family again or would they receive a letter stating I had died. I remember the first time I heard the sound of incoming mail as it blasted the ground around me. I still can see the blast of the rockets hitting the buildings around my camp. I can still remember how it felt to be shot at by friendly fire. How those quad-fifty’s blasted away at our bunkers as I was on guard duty. I also remember the night I almost died in “69”, we where being shelled very heavy as I ran out of my room heading to the far end of the building I had just step out on to the 2nd floor landing when a round went off in my face. The sky lit up into a fiery ball of fire, which seem at that time to engulf me. I remember thinking that I must be in hell with some much fire around me. After some time the ball of fire was gone and I was still standing on the landing unhurt and alive. When I final got down to the bunker I did not enter but stood outside and began to laugh out loud for I was still alive.
Yes, I could picture death coming for me from the gun of a VC waiting to kill another GI who came to fight for the Government of South Vietnam, their hated enemy. Or to die at the hands of some child or babysan who believed all Americans where evil and must die. This daily fear would eat at all GI’s mind who caused them to always look behind their backs as they walked down a street or to the mess hall, or through the jungle bush. So of us still do this to this day when we walk down a street or are in a crowd we are always watching for that fear never leaves your mind.
It was hard not being able to shoot back when someone was shooting artillery, mortar rounds or missiles at you and you don’t know where they are coming from. Or you are under orders not to return enemy fire if shoot at. How many boys died because of this stupid order is not know and never will be.
A boy just doesn’t understand these things or cannot adjust to knowing anyone may want to kill you from the little child smiling up at you; the girl who does your wash; the man who cuts your hair or the women you pay to have sex with you. This just isn’t done in America is all they can think of. But these boys forget this is not America it is Vietnam a land in where the people do not believe in the thing we Americans believe in.
Their way of life is not ours; life doesn’t mean the same thing to them as it does to us. Life is cheap in this land for this is a land where a man can sell his child into slavery, in order to buy some food for himself. This is a land where little boys pimp for their mothers and sisters. This is a land where a man only makes 250 dollars a year farming his land.
Nam will make a boy grow up fast or he will die either in body or spirit. For the spirit can die just as easy as the body. For the mind must accept what is going on around it if it doesn’t then his spirit dies also.
My mind did die in some ways but my body did not. It is hard to live with a dead spirit for a part of my mind died back there in Vietnam watching all those bodies being thrown aboard the grave trucks that summer day. The bodies of so many young boys who never had the chance to grow up and live their dreams to the fullest. So many boys who will never feel the touch of a love one again, the smile of their wives or the joy of a child as it runs to him yelling daddy.
I now live with the dreams that flood my mind as I sleep at night or as I sit with my family. Dreams of a war so long ago and so far away but it is still being fought in my mind but as time goes bye it is not as often or as long. But the love of my wife is all that holds me together in both body and spirit. Yes, the right person can help you recover from the dreams when she holds you dear to her heart. She embraces you hoping that by holding you she can help you forget these dreams, to live in the present not the past.
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