The Mine

First, actually as an addendum, let me try to describe this as an observer might remember:

Another APC hits a mine. One GI, the medic, is rocketed straight up but manages to tightly grip the 12 foot antenna just at the top snapping him upsidedown. He falls back and lands on the track, butt first, knocking him unconscious, then falls into the hole made by the mine. Lying in the hole, still unconscious, yet somehow still clutching the antenna, he awakens to four onlookers who watch the antenna snap back to it’s original position when he turns it loose. Seemingly unhurt, he dusts himself off and returns to his own track, Sgt. Shehan’s Sheridan.

Well, now I'm having problems with my spine and may be unable to work soon. Anyone of you guys who remember this, please email me. I was the medic for G troop and a close friend with Paul Marion Dailey, the medic who was killed May, 1st, the first day of the Cambodian incursion. This incident occurred in February or March, 1970.

The following is the same incident from my viewpoint:

The time was about 13:00 hours, the place was Highway 13 near the Cambodian Border. It was one of those hot, squinty days that makes one want to just keep closing his eyes until sleep overcomes. G Troop was pulling security for rome plows, bulldozers, whose job it was to cut strips of jungle out for easier visibility for the aerial photography that took place at night. Since the abortion of the Agent Orange program this was what we were left with.

   Being new I was closely observing the guys who had been there a while. They took chances, routinely jumping off the tracks for short periods of time figuring the odds were against jumping directly on an anti-tank mine.

   A rome plow had hit a mine about 70 meters from the road where I was. I grabbed my aid bag and ran towards it. The only problem was that I was running across a mine field. After reaching the bulldozer and making the determination that the driver was alright, I began the walk back. An APC had been in hot pursuit of me to tell me we don’t run across mine fields. When they found me I jumped aboard and had a seat on the folded back drivers hatch, grabbed the antenna to steady the ride, then looked down at my right foot hanging slightly off the side of the vehicle. I remembered in my little school that was a no-no. A foot could be taken off with the blast of an anti-tank mine if it were off the side. So I moved it... one... two... BOOM! 

   Time was frozen. I was up-side-down, in a funnel of turbulent dirt just over twelve feet above the APC, that had moments before stopped to, quite literally, give me a lift. Looking down, I saw that I was the only one who had been blown off the vehicle, which meant that the mine had been directly underneath my sitting position. The other riders on the back of the APC remained in their positions while I, with my hand resting on the antenna, was shot up like a rocket from the force of the blast. The force fared through the vehicle, to my behind, which was resting on the driver’s hatch lid, a favorite place to sit when riding on an armored personnel carrier. When the mine blew and I lifted off, I felt the antenna sliding through my hand and instinctively clamped, just in time, with one inch to spare. The force of the blast on my body was apparently equal to the force of my grip, which kept me from being launched into orbit, but also pulled my spine to the side in a bittersweet, mighty jerk from hell. I fell back down on the open driver’s hatch, exactly as I was heretofore seated, butt first, and passed out.

   When I awoke, 20 seconds later, I was told, I was in the hole the anti-tank mine had made. I opened my eyes and saw four G.I.s peering down at me with looks of wonder and amazement, for I looked dead yet had a death-grip on that blessed antenna. I let go, slowly, and watched the taut bend in the antenna in a snap retake it’s intended shape. My return to kilter was somewhat less snappy, although I did—after feeling for my feet to insure their presence—get up, shake it off, and hitch another ride to my original track, a Sheridan. Everyone assured me I would be alright after a couple of days of body soreness.

   They were right about the soreness, however, wrong about being alright. About seven years after the blast, I started having episodes of back pain which would incapacitate me for about three days, to the point of being unable to get out of bed. Upon visiting the V.A. hospital and having the benefits coordinator literally laugh in my face, I gave up on V.A. You see, I was the Medic and we didn’t carry with us the form on which one would put the name as “injured with a tendency for delayed symtoms.” If you walked off, good for you; if you had trouble later, prove it.

   Now, it’s 38 years later and I've had neck surgery which fused three vertebrae together, seriously decreasing my range of motion, and I can’t even prove the incident happened. The only two people in that troop whose names I remember are dead and very old. I was with the llth Armored Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Squadron, G troop, 1970. Sgt. George Shehan was the platoon leader and I was medic on his Sheridan tank. Soon after this incident, I was transferred to H-Co. and lost contact with the guys in G-troop. I can't remember anyone's name.

 If anyone saw this please email me.

The Baby-Blue Scooter of Snoul, Cambodia

A snapshot of the battle at Snoul. That could be me on the back deck of the closest tank.

By Larry Doyle

My soldiers haven't been looting. They have strict instructions not to. We of course destroy or evacuate any war material–anything that's obviously identifiable as war material–or associated with the NVA. As far as civilian property is concerned, our instructions to them, and what we've been doing is just leaving it in place, hoping the civilians will come back in and recover it.

COL. GAIL BROOKSHIRE, June 1970

In 1970, the llth Armored Cavalry roared into Snoul, Cambodia under heavy fire from the communists who were using the village as an R & R center. There were bars, whorehouses and a school; there were two-storied buildings. All we had seen were grass huts and bunkers. After the initial volley of fire we called in two F-4s which ran the rats out and we went in. There was some minor looting and a nice scooter was taken by my platoon which was reported in the US. A couple weeks later we were ordered to return it and place it in the exact same spot. Orders from Washington. That's not what happened, I'm proud to say.

  It was sexy. A brand new, baby-blue motor scooter parked as pretty as you please with kick-stand down outside a building that was partially destroyed from the air strike minutes before. Like a virgin. It probably belonged to one of the North Vietnamese Army Regulars (N.V.A.) I saw running over each other in their haste to vacate the town.

I’d guess seventeen soldiers—in spurts of two, three, and four, literally running over the top of each other, dropping AK-47s and scrambling out of town directly in the line of fire of my tank—escaped death that day only because the tank commander was busy strategizing with an officer beside him, ignoring me as I shouted and shook him trying to get him to just pull the string that would surely kill at least three maybe ten. The gun tube was facing dead center down the middle of the road as they clawed and pawed their way over one another to a trail leading down a steep valley to my right. Just then the T.C. turned and said, “what is it?”

   “You just missed about 17 N.V.A. right in front of your main gun,” I shouted back. 

By then he had missed his chance for a confirmed kill and the 17 got away. One of them left his scooter, remarkably unscathed.

We had made a mad road-march to Snoul, Cambodia. Snoul was east, northeast of Phenom Penh, the capital, and northwest of Loc Ninh, Vietnam and was known to military intelligence as a Rest & Recuperation center for the NVA. Although small, it had a couple of two story buildings, bars I believe. After a long road-march, H-Company and HHQ were in the process of setting up a fire-base about 100 yards away from the city as G and F-Troops went on patrols inside Snoul and across the airstrip to the rubber plantation respectively. I guess the vacationers objected to a squad of armored personnel carriers cruising through their R&R center, because they promptly fired upon F-troop as they tried to enter the town and G-troop as they entered the rubber trees. For us the result was stray AK rounds skirting across the dirt coming from the town to our left causing the now dismounted Cav. troops to take cover on the right side of the tank. Immediately, G-troop took fire from directly in front of us with the same effect. Suddenly we were in a crossfire and there was no place to hide. The only perceivable threat to us was bullets scooting across the ground coming from two sides prompting us to mount up, again, just before the order was given to do just that.

We hadn’t been on the ground for a minute before we were back on these iron, noise-makers again. A curious feeling of security came over me as I took my seat on the back-deck rack again, dawned my steel pot again, and watched the diesel engines begin spewing smoke, once again.

When fired upon by the occupants, young, healthy (fast as jack rabbits) males, we simply called in an air strike and waited a couple of minutes for the jets to show and the bombing during which time the above frenzied evacuation of N.V.A. took place. That left the door open for us to enter without opposition, guns a blazin’, to survey the devastation, and add to it a little.

And devastation there was. A two-storied bar, from which we looted some cases of orange soda, had been destroyed; some burned out cars were seen; and some houses were expunged from the air strike. We were pretty sure no one was left in there, but “better safe than sorry” was more than a wise, old saying there, so we didn’t take any chances. In the name of safety we began shooting through windows, doorways, hell, walls. It was great. We used all the fun weapons, the M-79, 45 cal. burp-gun (which seldom worked), pistols, and the bulldozing power of a tank. But there in the ruination was this cute little, baby-blue, motor scooter shining like a diamond in the rough; standing upright like an item on The Price is Right.

The avarice in every one’s hearts over this pretty scooter was not unapparent. It was as if we had our vision setting adjusted from black and white to the color mode. Every one looked at that sexy scooter, then at our weathered, lovable, but gruff Platoon Sargent, Homer King.

He said, “Get it, they’ll just run RPGs back to Vietnam with the damn thing,” falling under, "war material."

There was but one draw back: With all the media attention the invasion begat, we were asked to accommodate a long-haired reporter who was not friendly to G.I.s. He was on his moral, white horse and presumed the Blackhorse immoral. We could have just run over it, but we needed a moral boost. We always needed a moral boost.

So, another tanker dismounted and hoisted this pristine machine on the back deck of his tank, strapped her down, and we continued on our merry path of what we did best: breaking things and shooting-up buildings. In all this mayhem I was impressed by the fact that no one shot the chickens or dogs which were running around. That the school was passed over needed no direct order but it was given. Managed chaos. This place was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the NVA, and when they fired on 11th ACR they invited the wrath of God and got it, by God.

So we kept the scooter which had the key in it. We were also given two cars by the rich Frenchman, who had been unable to capitalize on his rubber plantations around Snoul since the communists had moved in. One of these cars had a key, the other required hot wiring by one troop who claimed knowledge in such things but only managed to set it on fire. The one flaming vehicle provided a perfect backdrop for the troops tearing up and down the airstrip adjacent to Snoul in the other, which was now full of G.I.s both inside and out smoking joints, pretending to be cruising the streets back in the states. The Frenchman gave us permission to destroy these cars as a form of stress release. Honest.

It was in this FSB by the grass air-strip at Snoul where the memorial service for my friend, Paul Dailey, was held. I didn’t attend. I struggle with that now, though at the time it was an easy decision to make, one of bitterness and blame. I sat on the tank, fiddling with shit, watching and listening as the chaplain gave a fine eulogy which didn’t touch on the soul of Paul, the essence of the boy. He was eighteen; it was stupid.

The scooter accompanied us to the next base camp where one of our Chu Hoi defectors, whom no one trusted, got it and supposedly took it to Saigon to see his girl friend. Were this the case, his trust was diminished. Were it not the case, his trust was diminished. He took it somewhere. Although I knew a couple of Chu Hois whom I liked, this one was suspect. He wore expensive clothes even in the bush and when he disappeared with my scooter, that did it. He was gone more than a week then returned at about the same time we got orders all the way from the pentagon to return the scooter to the exact same spot we had gotten it. The Pentagon? What the hell was this about?

Our long-haired reporter friend had seen us steal the thing and had written about it in the states prompting a long yank on the chain-of-command. Return it to Snoul a week after wrecking the place? That would be injurious to our health. We tried to refuse but this came down from too far up. The whims of the long-haired cry-babies were undermining the safety of American troops, a trend of which we were just beginning to see traces of.

So, later that afternoon, we loaded the slightly less virginal machine back on the back deck for the trip back to Snoul, I'm guessing ten klicks. With our indignation increasing the closer we got to Snoul, it reached the pinnacle as we motored through a small village of grass huts where we were met on the side of the road by young, healthy males again, dressed in slacks and white shirts. They came out of the huts, arms around young, very young, pretty teenage girls—who were not dressed as well, either in style or amount of fabric—giving us the peace sign. These were probably the same jack rabbits who earlier were pushing each other down to avoid our air strike. This was a perfect ambush site, with plenty of civilians to impede our will to launch enough fire power for an adequate defense. We were already angry. Now we were getting provoked and getting scared, not a desirable blend of emotions for a platoon of tankers. Lined up on the side of the road as if watching a parade, these soldiers in civilian dress were mocking us at close range, about a half a gun-tube length to be precise.

Our gruff, tank commander had had enough. While motoring at a good pace, Sgt. King, using all of his raw faculty, traversed the turret towards one of the young, peace-sign-flashing studs such that the gun tube was pointed in his face about a meter away as we passed. So well did Sgt. King traverse at the same speed we were traveling, that the business end of the tube stayed in his the face of the soldier as the tank moved along down the road; it was a remarkable feat. His smile faded. Again we witnessed the jack rabbit mode of retreat. These guys were faster than their young trifles, fleeing into the jungle behind the huts.

As we rode past the vill, we were laughing hysterically at these murdering butchers running away like children. We were on top of the world, except for one thing: we still had to take that damn scooter back to the middle of Snoul, about a kilometer away, now, and this time with only one platoon and no air support. We were being punished by the liberal media and a non-supportive charge. But the consequences of this punishment could have more impact than a simple spanking of your kids, which I’m sure that reporter was opposed to, as well.

By the time we reached the air strip with Snoul on the other side, Sgt. Homer King’s ire was absolute. We stopped the column smack dab in the middle of the grass air strip where he made an executive decision in the interest of safety of his troops.

“Throw it off right in the middle of the air strip,” he commanded.

That ignited me and Tom Park, our driver. I untied the lashing that held the scooter on the back deck and kicked it off with fury. Tom dismounted came aft to line the thing up under his right track, then backed up one track right on top of the scooter and did the shimmy, twisting the steering wheel left to right, left to right, left to right. After Tom drove off, each of the other tanks followed suit, driving one track on the once pristine scooter, then doing the twist. Fifty-two tons of steel was no match for a Japanese-made motor scooter, especially in 1970 when the "Made in Japan" label was literally a joke. Looking back at the wreckage lying crumpled like a, well, a scooter crushed by a column of tanks, my emotions in a blender, I was jubilant, frightened, and pumped full of adrenalin; shaking with an M-16 hoisted upward and smiling as the shadows drew long I thought to my self, "What a metamorphosis I've been through!"

We avoided the village and took another route home. When we got there Sgt. King callously walked up to the Company Commander, saluted maliciously and announced, “Mission Accomplished.”

The Pink Photo Album of Michael Bazel

 The Pink Photo Album

In the stillness, of the midnight,
 Precious Memories flood my soul.
     J.B.F. WRIGHT

It was at Burkett’s Arm, the new firebase named for a sergeant’s blown-off appendage, where the word came to me that G-troop, my old unit, had been hit hard and where the wounded would be brought for the services of the field aid-station. This was unusual. Bringing wounded to a field aid station instead of flying on to a real, Army hospital prompted some questions: why not take the just slightly longer, route to a more equipped facility ? Who is hurt? Will I know any of these guys?

Chances were I wouldn't, I figured. My best buddy from G-troop was Paul Dailey, who was in the states escorting his cousin’s body home, and my old track was only one of several in three platoons of tracked vehicles. It had been a couple of months since I had been transferred to H-Company, an ostensibly safer assignment with more fire power. We protected HQ and had the squadron doctor, but never received an med-evac from a fire fight. I sat on the berm waiting for the arrival of the chopper with the wounded and reminisced about my month-plus with G-troop.

My first day in the field with G-troop was pretty much uneventful, other than the fact that they were mine sweeping Highway 13 and had hit 13 mines. Not superstitious by nature I was nonetheless taken aback. I arrived by deuce-and-a-half about dark in Tay Ninh province, War Zone III, not the safest part of the jungle. I sensed the anxiety of some who had been there before who didn’t offer any comforting stories.

I was the new medic. The last one had blown his finger off playing with a blasting cap while on stand-down. That tidbit wasn’t comforting either. As the sun went down I was escorted to all the tracks by one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, a medic, Paul. The last track we went to was the one to which I was assigned. They let me pull guard duty first so I could get some rest after my long road-march out—as though they didn’t need it more after a long mine sweep day.

During the guard duty one of the gunners, Mike Bazel from Chicago, pulled out a pink photo album—anyone who was there remembers these things from the PX—and began showing me pictures of his family, wife and kids; telling me the story of his life complete with hopes, dreams, everything, I mean every damn thing. He wanted to be a Chicago police officer when he got out. We hit it off real well; he was homesick and I was scared sick. It made for a good blend like two-part epoxy. We bonded. The other gunner was a tall lanky guy whom I’ll call Red. Red was somewhat goofy both in pose and vernacular often making me laugh simply by his mannerisms or his curious humor. He was the accustomed sounding board for Mike’s incessant stories of home, a chore accepted out of true sentiment for his true friend, but a chore nonetheless, and one that was repeated nightly, by rote, effectively. Red teased me about suffering through the incessant chatter spawned by that pink album, but it was something he had done more than me, and would do against for now, I was the newby and Red, needing a respite, tasked me with the daily, sunset job.
After several firefights and some intense bonding with these comrades I was transferred to H-Company at HHQ, just another mobile, night defensive perimeter in the jungle but due to its job of protecting the higher ups, enjoyed more protection. While with H-Company I only saw the G-Troop boys in passing in the jungle or on Hwy 13, nothing more than a dirt road very near the Cambodian border. That border made the area of operation a dangerous one in that the NVA, uniformed, North Vietnamese Army troops, were provided an inherent advantage in their assaults and ambushes in that they had a safe space to run…

After my transfer to H-Company, my old G-Troop track became the command track for that Platoon. The tank commander had been replaced by a newby, 2nd Lieutenant who wore one of those black Calvary, cowboy hats with his shiny, Lieutenant Bar on the front like Robert Duvall wore in Apocalypse Now, a practice frowned upon by us due to the literal signal it could send a sniper with an RPG. It was considered dangerous, if not stupid, to identify yourself as an officer that way. The new 2nd Looie also insisted on both antennae up instead of one tied down, a tactic used to disguise the track as being the command track. But the most egregious of the guy’s look-at-me-the-brave-man’s tactics was that he sat in a lawn chair... with his reflective cowboy hat and communication headgear. This display was intended to be one of courage, a kind of “I dare you” statement, and, I suppose the NVA saw it that way. The medic that replaced me on that track told me the day I met him, that he wasn’t seeing enough action on a med-evac chopper so he volunteered for G-troop. Though I didn’t ask for it, it was time for me to leave. G-troop was too much for me.

       My gut tightened as the sound of the med-evac chopper carrying the wounded grew louder. It landed outside the berm about forty meters and one lone GI got off. It was Red. He looked confused. In his hand, was something... pink. It was Mike’s fucking photo album. I was numb, frozen. I stood there for a moment with my mouth open framing the scene that was being created in front of me. I remember thinking, “it’s like a goddamned movie.” 
     He looked stunned, helpless, as he stood by the helicopter with a chopper personnel standing beside him in a guarded pose as if expecting the patient to fall. I ran out to meet him and escorted him into the base camp and to the aid station, nothing more than a bunker. We sat him down in a chair as he still clutched the album. He had requested to bring the photo album to me and the chopper personnel obliged out of sheer pity. Now, he couldn’t talk and though he had no wounds he was covered in blood. Without completing a sentence, he was able to tell me with tears and gestures and a few scattered words that everyone else on our old track was dead. He relayed he’d tried mouth to mouth resuscitation on Mike but the head was anatomically disjoined so as to render that impossible, my words, not his. He did manage to convey that he wanted me to send the album to Mike’s family. I explained that I didn’t have the contact information, he did, and that he should do it. He was a mess but starting to become more cogent.
Red had been made driver in the time since I had left. This protected him from the Claymore mines which the NVA had stolen from an automatic ambush, site set up by friendly troops. The enemy then placed them in a tree and detonating them manually with a “clacker,” a triggering device. After six other tracks had passed the ambush site, the cowboy hatted, com gear, dawned, Lieutenant, with dual antennae erect, reclining in his lawn chair, followed.
In the jungle, close enough to identify the Lieutenant's track were two or more sets of watchful eyes, not believing how easy it was. With anxious fingers holding the clacker, they waited for the precise moment, to press the clacker.

Mike sat behind the M60 machine gun on one side probably daydreaming about his wife and kids, and the medic on the other side manned the other 60. No one stayed below in an armored personnel carrier for fear of RPGs, which would explode inside the vehicle causing lethal destruction. You took your chances with small arms fire and Claymore mines atop deck. The only time the NVA used claymores is when they found one that hadn't been hidden well enough. It was a real concern but it didn't happen as often as RPG attacks. With one clack, worlds changed. Everyone on top was killed; Red, who was down below in the driver’s seat was uninjured, physically.

They made Red a cook in Quan Loi, for he never quite recovered during the time I was there. He went home before me and I wish him well. The medic saw his action; the 2nd Lieutenant never knew what him. Paul returned to Vietnam—although it wasn’t required after escorting his cousin’s body home—and began talking of fate and destiny, which, according to him was predetermined against his leaving alive. He was killed on the first day of the Cambodian incursion, just days after the previous incident leaving an arcane diary in which he predicted his death on several pages. Mike simply died, leaving a very pretty wife and two very young children alone in Chicago with nothing but old pictures of themselves shrouded in a red-dirt stained, photo album as a paltry legacy perhaps. But I would say to them: The love pasted into that pink, photo album by a homesick father who missed his babies and lusted for his loving wife is too immense to be measured.

The whereabouts of that precious thing was not known to me when I left Vietnam. I trust it is known to his loved ones. For unseen Angels guard that treasury, sleeping until somewhere, in the stillness of midnight, someone pulls it from its place of rest and spreads its sacred pages, waking sympathetic Angels from Their Watch as precious memories and undying love flood the soul.

Lesson Learned

There it was. The cry MEDIC rang through the battle with a heart-stopping peal secreting a surge of adrenaline that could raise the dead. The noise from the battle didn't dampen the shrill cry at all; the way the cry of your child finds you from the midst of a crowded playground. It was like being shocked, in the literal sense. My legs convulsed with a violent twitch almost incapacitating me.

I was twenty, and for years I had mulled this scenario wondering how I would react when faced with it. Would I act appropriately or freeze-up as I had heard others had done? Sheer fear-of-fear catapulted me off the tank towards my first casualty. Not only were lives at stake, but my performance was under uncommon scrutiny. I was the new medic for G-troop, but I was also a Conscientious Objector, a medic without a weapon, or track record. I had to concentrate; I had to relax; I had to act. Although they never beat me either, the boys in the 11th ACR, up to their jungle rot in jungle, viewed me with a little more scrutiny and pragmatism than did that Louisiana training base a half a world away. There was more at risk and they questioned my proposed role as medic without a weapon. He would be riding on the back of a tank without a weapon? What about covering our backs when the turrets traverse? No one wanted me on their tracks, so I was stuck with the platoon leader and his disgruntled crew. No one knew how I was going to act under fire, least of all me. Although I had no intention of firing a weapon, I was cognizant enough to remain aboveboard knowing that when it comes to him-or-me scenarios in life, the "I"s have it most of the time.

This, my first combat experience was probably two or three weeks into my tour. G-troop, which encompassed armored personnel carriers with one Sheridan tank per platoon, was pulling security for bulldozers as they cleared strips of jungle facilitating night time picture taking to detect enemy troop movement. As the enemy would cross said strips they were being photographed by strobe flashes from night time reconnaissance planes. This practice had replaced the spraying of Agent Orange which had been banned by then.

I was seated on the rear of a Sheridan with my cool Byrds-type wire-rimmed sunglasses I had just purchased days before from a peddler near An Loc, and without an M-16, except the three on which I was sitting belonging to the driver, loader, and TC (tank commander). Although physically uncomfortable, sitting on three M-16s when you were not issued one was emotionally comforting no matter the strength of one's resolve.

When the RPG hit the bulldozer, despite my combat virginity, I knew exactly what it was. RPGs were the most feared weapon to the CAV., and the most distinguishable with its two explosions in one. BA-BOOM. The first blast would produce enormous heat which would burn a small hole in the 3-inch steel wall of a tank. The core of the rocket would pass through this hole exploding (the second blast) inside the tank. Although deadly, they had one fortunate flaw: they were very sensitive. Leaves were known to trigger that first blast causing the second to be deflected rendering it ineffective. What the North Vietnamese Army Regulars had been doing with the roam plows in this particular region was hitting them, waiting on the medic, then hitting again. I called it the old hit-and-run-and-hit routine.

The call for the medic came as quickly as the rocket. I was so scared I shook like a dog passing peach pits. The shaking seemed to localize to my left leg allowing me to perform though I probably looked like Elvis on stage. It seemed somewhat a compromise: I give my leg, I get the ability to function with the rest of my body. I recall experiencing an almost visible presence of my mother, who was 13,000 miles away in Arkansas, as soon as the fighting began. It was as though her face was as big as the half the sky, staring down at me but somehow oblivious. In an instant regression to my childhood I screamed-in my mind-to her: Mama, they're trying to kill me. She should reach down and pluck me up, away from these strangers, these mean men. This apparition of Mother augmented my fear. Had I not been so engaged, I could have dwelled on this to the point of freezing, I'm sure.

I grabbed my aid bag and ran towards the front of the vehicle and jumped off just a meter away from my first casualty, the South-Vietnamese (ARVN) driver of the bulldozer. I hadn't seen him when I jumped off the tank and almost landed on him. He was lying 20 meters behind the plow which had been hit by the rocket. I guess he had tried to run back to us for protection and ran out of steam (read, blood)-probably when he saw his left arm dangling by only a two inch strip of skin. I dropped to my knees by his side; eerily, Mom is muddling my thoughts. The noise is incredible. With all the tracks firing everything they've got, one incredible blast after another, I'm surprised I could hear the blood soaked GI who appeared from out of nowhere and told me, There's a GI hurt up here. "GI" was accentuated implying that I should leave the ARVN to run forward to treat the GI.

Suddenly, the political dichotomy of the war was thrust upon me in the form of a life and death decision: Do I abandon the Vietnamese to treat one of my own, or do I treat each man equally, treating the nearest one first? The typical ARVN soldier, in general, was noted for a certain degree of apathy, justifiable by many standards, bordering on, or perhaps misinterpreted as, cowardice. I, of course, hadn't had time to formulate a judgement about an entire country of people. Curiously enough, the emotion I felt was anger directed at the messenger who would have me leave a wounded man of another race, solely for that reason, to run forward in order to treat his buddy. I completed tying the tourniquet-really the only thing I could do, except administer a morphine surette which could drop the blood pressure fatally-telling the Vietnamese he would be OK. He raised his head and his left arm to assess the damage and saw only about five inches of his arm raise from his shoulder, the rest lay on the ground beside him. He closed his eyes and laid his head back down on the ground with a look of woe as if to say, this is it. I assured him again,You're going to be OK.

I'm sure he sensed my inexperience if not my sincerity. He seemed only to have the arm wound which wasn't bleeding. So he was only going to lose his arm, not his life. After receiving that blessed assurance he-lying in a pool of his own blood and effectively one-armed now-watched his medic run off to help one of his own. My scorn runs to the hopelessness of the situation. I hated to leave that man when he needed me the most, but there were other things to do. We were still being fired on by small arms fire.

The downed GI was up ahead by the plow. He was a mess. I think he had been standing beside the thing when it got hit, catching the shrapnel. But it looked like small arms fire too. Two toes and two fingers were dangling like the driver's arm; holes in him every where, probably twenty holes that could have been small arms wounds. Just as I realized "I'm in the same location this guy when he got it," they fired the second time.

BA-BOOM! They missed but not by far. The old hit-and-run-and-hit routine. It was so close I felt it in my chest. Everyone knew what it was, I as well. I turned around for... instructions, or maybe assurance that they heard it too. I don't know. I remember seeing a guy named Clary, from South Carolina waving me to get down.

And down I got. And everyone responded, giving me close cover. So close I could hear the 50 caliber rounds flying not much over my head such that I just laid my head down in the bloody dirt and began opening IV bottles and tubing. The side of my face pressed firmly, so firmly, in the bloody dirt. I became the earth. The boy's blood pressure was so low, or perhaps mine was so high, that I couldn't start an IV. I would hold the bottle up to try to get the solution to flow and pull it back down when the bullets would whiz by, fearing one would take my arm or fingers as seemed to be the wound du jour. I was having a bad time. I threw my cool, Byrds wire-rimmed sunglasses into the jungle signifying a newly acquired weariness for all things cool.

I didn't know what to do. I was applying bandages to wounds that weren't bleeding, when from, quite literally, out of the sky an angel of mercy appeared. I turned and there was a Colonel, a Chaplain in starched greens who had crawled forward to my position from an evacuation helicopter, saying, let's just get him out of here. That sounded great to me. Why didn't I think of that? Well there was no place to go really until he showed up. The Colonel had brought his own evacuation helicopter-easy for him to say.

We loaded the guy on to a stretcher and began carrying him to the chopper. My arm was so tired from holding up IV bottles and pulling them down again that I thought I couldn't make it to the damn thing. Then I fell in a hole, knee-deep, somehow managing not to spill the patient. Keeping one arm up I was able to hold up my side of the litter until someone could come over and relieve me.

The battle still raging, I returned to my tank and sat on my three M-16s and looked around at everyone else, all the hard-nosed, tough guys, who had been there long enough for their teeth to have changed colors, fighting for their lives. They were just as scared as me. The blasts were so loud they hurt and they coming from every where. All we could do was fire everything at once. I realized that Mother was not coming to take me home; that I was no better than these guys who had just saved my life by covering me, not because they liked me, but because they were American, and that I too was; and that these three M-16s could very well save lives if I could keep the barrels hot and subsequently, the heads of the enemy down.

So I grabbed an M-16 and laid down a heavy volley of fire, just like everyone else, just like Daddy had told me I would the first time I got shot at. My goal was not living in peace with my convictions anymore nor was it simply living. It was being an American again. Something these guys were; something worth dying to preserve.

As we motored away from that spot in the jungle, I watched a Cobra helicopter gunship straff the area and I remember thinking, It's going to be a long year. I had almost jumped on my first casualty, I had failed to start an IV, I'd bandaged wounds that weren't bleeding, and I'd almost dropped a patient when I fell in a hole. And that night back at the perimeter the guys told me I had done good. Jesus, I thought, they're easy to please.

I guess they realized better than I that a quick med-evac was more important than any first-aid I could administer, and that a medic who will cover your back could preclude the need for his services. Lesson learned.

The ARVN died four days later in a hospital. The GI lived and went home minus a toe and a finger, and some minor shrapnel wounds.