VIETNAM: ONE SOLDIER'S EXPERIENCE

I served with the 82nd Airborne, combat infantry, in Vietnam, from June 22, 1968 until July 2, 1969. There have been many perceptions about Vietnam, and the Vietnam Veteran but to date I have not come across anything that explains the Vietnam Experience.

Although it has been over twenty years since my return, I find more and more people asking me about Vietnam. It is difficult to discuss Vietnam with people who have not been there and it is something that I have avoided as much as possible. The usual questions that most people ask are: Did you see combat? Were you wounded? Did you ever kill anyone?

I was slightly wounded but never put in for a purple heart and I did kill, but by answering these questions you do not explain your combat experience. The only people who can identify with a combat veteran is another combat veteran, regardless of the war in which they fought. The only people who can really understand the Vietnam Combat Soldier is another Vietnam Combat Soldier. It makes no difference whether the person was wounded or if they ever killed anyone, if they were with a combat unit they can relate to the experience.

If this premise is true, that only one who experienced combat can understand combat, why am I writing this book? It’s like having a toothache. If you ever had a serious toothache, you know the pain that you experienced. If you talk to someone who had one they can immediately relate to your situation but if you talk to someone who has never had a toothache they cannot really understand what you are going through. If someone wrote a detailed account of what it is like to have a toothache the non-tooth combatant will be better able to understand the situation, but without experiencing it they will never fully understand the pain. Like a woman who gives birth, as a man, I will never understand the pain or the joy that a women experiences. Through books, documentaries, and personal experience with childbearing women, I can come closer in my understanding of the experience but I will never really know what it is like to have a baby.

Through this book I hope to be able to take a person who is interested in the Vietnam experience and give them a fuller understanding of war, the Vietnam War and its affects on the Vietnam Veteran.

The 82nd Airborne was sent to Vietnam to help combat the Tet Offensive of 1968. The whole 82nd was not sent just one brigade. The 82nd was usually attached to units that needed our help at the time. In the course of my tour of duty, one year and ten days, we spent time working with Marines, Special Forces, the 101st Airborne, the 1st Calvary, the 9th Infantry, the 25^th Infantry, the Vietnamese Regular Army and probably other units that do not come to mind at this time. We worked with some for as little as one operation and others for months at a time. The significance of working with so many different units is that you get to see a multi-faceted Vietnam.

The military broke Vietnam down into segments. There were four different areas of operations, II Core III Core, IV Core, and I Core. The reasoning for mentioning this is that the geography, and therefore the war itself, was vastly different, depending upon the area that you were in. I Core (Eye Corp) was at the northern end of South Vietnam. It started at the D.M.Z. and went south. In this area you basically had Marine and Airborne units. If you talk to someone from these units their experience will vary greatly from someone who spent their tour of duty in IV Core or the Mekong Delta area.

I spent my first four months in I Core. The geography there was mountainous. There was very thick foliage in places. You had what was called double or triple canopies, that is, trees that grow and overlap with each other where you could not see the sky.They did not cover the whole area but were prevalent in many parts of I Core. This type of geography made it difficult to coordinate activities, supply could be a problem, at times you had to blast away trees in order to clear an L.Z. (Landing Zone for helicopters) Sometimes there was no place for an L.Z., food would run short, ammunition would run low, wounded would have to be carried in makeshift stretchers until they could be evacuated besides all this, you fought a different type of war up north. The main enemy that you encounter was the N.V.A. (North Vietnamese Army). These were disciplined, trained soldiers that worked as a regular army unit. When you engaged the enemy you fought a conventional type of war.