Bloods (14 page)

Anything blacks got from the Vietnamese, they would pay for. You hardly didn’t find a black cursing a Vietnamese. And a black would try to learn some of the words. And try to learn a few of their customs so they wouldn’t hurt them. For instance, when you meet a Vietnamese, you’re not suppose to reach out and shake his hands. You are suppose to clasp your hands together and put them in front of you and bow. And another thing, you are not suppose to talk to a girl. If you want to, you talk to her mother first. And you can’t hold her hand in public. If you see two Vietnamese men holding hands in public, that’s considered friendship. That was their custom. But Americans had a different idea. And you keep your hands off a kid’s head. And when you sit down, you never cross
your legs. And if you do, never have the bottoms of your soles pointed towards the person. People could have taken time to learn just a few customs, not all of them. It wouldn’t have hurt. I was very self-conscious around them. I watched myself.

If nobody talked to them first, a Vietnamese would warm right up to a black person even if he had never seen one. I remember I was in the 94th Evac hospital in Long Binh, and this Montagnard girl, about thirteen, had been shot. Her jaw was broken. She didn’t speak. She started crying. The first person she grabbed was me. She wouldn’t let anybody feed her but me. I sat with her all night holding her hand. Believe me, it surprised me. I took care of her for four days.

In 1968 I got married to a Vietnamese. Her name is Tran Thi Saly, and her father was an ARVN soldier. It was a Vietnamese ceremony, but I guess it didn’t count. So I wanted to go to Saigon and do the paper work at the American Embassy for an American ceremony so she could come home with me. The officers kept asking me why did I want to get married. A few blacks, but mostly whites, felt that the Vietnamese weren’t equal to us. So they made it real difficult to marry one. I guess, too, the Army didn’t want us marrying them and bringing them back and forgetting about them. So the paper work took a long time. And they knew that if you were in a combat unit, you didn’t have time to go to Saigon and wait in line from here to there forever. When the paper work did get approved, it was too late. I was shipped home.

A few months after I got back home, our baby was born. A son. I was supposed to be there and give the Vietnamese officials my ID card. And they would have gave him my name. But I wasn’t there, and Saly couldn’t give my name. So she called him Tran Ban Hung. Tran is her family name.

I would write and send her money. Then, after a while, I didn’t hear from her anymore.

It took me to January of 1971 to get shipped back. They took me to a transportation outfit at Long Binh. I said I had to find my wife and baby. They told me I could do what I want to. So I went out to Cu Chi and talked to the people. Saly had been put out by her family, because
they thought I had skipped out on her. I thought I would come back quick. I found out that she had gone to Vung Tau. And I said I would find her.

Then this was an accident. I just got to Vung Tau when I met a little girl I had met a long time ago. So I pulled out Saly’s picture. The girl said, “Oh, I know her.” She said, “I’ll go get her.” So she got her. I hugged her and all that. She was working at a hotel. She had the baby with her all the time until he died of pneumonia, just a few weeks before I got back. So I gave her some money and told her to go home. So she came back to Cu Chi, and her parents were happy to see her. She was accepted. I bought her the best things, clothing, TV, furniture. She wanted to learn to type, so I got her a typewriter

I started the paperwork, to get her out again, but it got stalled. And I had to leave in a rush because my brother got sick.

The next year I couldn’t get shipped back, because the last Americans were leaving. So I got myself shipped to South Korea so I could take leave to go see her. And just when I got thirty days’ leave, I shattered my leg playing touch football. The leave was cancelled, and I was sent home for treatment.

I was still sending her money and still hearing from her. By now our second son was born, Tran Noc Tuan. Then, in 1974, when the Communists took over, our communications got cut off completely. I haven’t heard from her since. I didn’t want to send a letter over there because she could end up getting hurt. The last thing they were telling me was that girls her age were being indoctrinated into Communism. And I’m told that they mistreat or maybe killed a lot of kids that, you know, were black. I just hope the baby was able to pass for Cambodian. Then she won’t have a problem.

I’m married now to a girl I met in Korea. I explained the situation to her. I told her if I could ever get the little boy out, I was going to adopt the baby. And I told her if Saly could come out, I would help her. She said it was all right. We have a daughter of our own now. Her name is Goldie. That’s my mother’s name.

I had no idea that maybe South Vietnam would fall. I had worked there for such a long time. When we went
over, we took over the war. They got in the back of us and did the police action, and we did the fighting. And then, all of a sudden, everybody decided that we were coming out of there. How are you going to take soldiers working behind you and put them on the front lines with new, modern equipment and no advisers at all? The ARVN were good. They had been fighting for 50 years. They lived with war. It was nothing for them. But I didn’t feel they could hold it alone. If they had had some hope, somebody to push them along, I think they would have held.

I know we hurt a lot of people over there. But we done good, you know. Look what they got out of it. They got, oh, my gosh, everything. Roads, factories, machinery. They got everything. They never really had advanced this far, you know.

I’d go back the first chance I got. I would go right now, regardless of the situation, because I feel like I belong there. I would like to work as a missionary. Back in the same areas where I worked before. I know right now it is impossible, but I will always be hoping. I liked to work with the Vietnamese people. That can’t change.

I guess I’m lucky, when you think about it. I was there more than four years. And half of the 15 guys in my language class were killed there, and the rest got shot.

I took a little shrapnel in my face. My company was sweeping out this area around Bolo Woods. They didn’t have a Vietnamese interpreter, so they flew me out with the colonel. Bolo Woods is where the VC was. They controlled the whole area. We took one hit in the chopper on the colonel’s side. Then we took another hit. I had my rifle. I was unbuckled. I was used to jumping out of the chopper. As it was coming down, maybe 10 feet off the ground, I jumped. It took another hit just then. I took it in the face. I didn’t know I had some in my eyes until about a week later. My eyes started swelling and pus started coming out. I don’t know whether they got all the pieces out. Even today, when it gets hot, water just runs from my eyes.

I did contract some type of skin disease, too. I don’t know what it is. My skin just peels off. The doctor says
the oil just drained out of my skin. But since I left Vietnam, I get up in the morning and the skin is all around. Everywhere. Just my face. All over my face. I can just get up and pull it off like scales. I got a shoe box full of medication. But my face keeps falling off.

Thank God I’ve tapered off the drinking. I didn’t realize it, but I was drinking two quarts of Old Grand-Dad 100 proof everyday in Vietnam. I was buying liquor by the gallon. You drank it, and you just sweat it out. You needed it to keep going, I guess. You got tired, real tired. You saw so much happening. You would do some good, rebuild something. And then you went back tomorrow, and it was torn down, or somebody was hurt or got killed. And nobody thought our program was the greatest. So I was constantly battling people. And I knew that the Vietnamese would be friends by the day, but at night you could find enemies.

Wherever I’m stationed now, I get assigned to drug programs. I have to keep my head together. So I don’t drink.

It’s funny how nobody has said anything to me about Vietnam. My relatives, my friends, nobody has asked me anything, or said they were glad I’m back or proud that I served.

Sometimes I get angry when I see guys I grew up with just hanging around doing nothing, drinking wine, and talking about how they beat this person up or jumped this old lady for her pocketbook. I say to myself I spent all this time over there so my friends could have a better life. I think about my friends that died that shouldn’t have. And there these guys are ready to gang up on a brother or a sister for a few dollars. It makes me angry.

And it’s funny, too, when people are trying to beat me getting on the bus. Pushing and shoving to get on the bus. I have had old women shove me and push me. I guess I learned in Vietnam, I guess, nobody can slip behind me. Nobody. I don’t want you to sit behind me. I watch you, and I keep thinking that you might do something to me. So many people I see walking around downtown look like they want to do you harm. I’m always ready to take care of myself. But I can’t go out and relax in an atmosphere
like that. I keep reverting back to Vietnam, when I had to watch all the time. I stayed over there so long if a rocket would fire 10 miles away, I’d be up and out of there and out of reach when the rocket hit because I could hear 10 miles away. I’ve conditioned myself. I see stuff that other people don’t see, so I’m always looking for something. I’m always on guard.

I never told anyone this. Not even my wife.

When I was twelve years old something very strange happened to me, which has always been with me, even today.

It was 1960. I hadn’t never heard the word Vietnam.

It was about eight-thirty in the morning. It was warm for that time of day. It felt like it was about 70 degrees. Something made me want to get out of the house. So I walks down to the poolroom. Of course, it was closed. So I just sits on this two-step-type stoop in front of the building next door.

All this is clear as day right now. It was the most vivid day of my life.

I was sitting there, and it seemed like I had this great vision. I saw two things. I saw myself on this wall, just clear as day. I mean just clear. I saw myself in a war. Then I saw myself in prison for five years. The number was right there. Five years.

It shook me up, but I didn’t tell anybody.

I was basically a C-type student in high school. I guess I didn’t care much about anything except pool. By the time I was sixteen, I had won a lot of championships at the Boy’s Club. But the real competition was at the poolroom.

They only allowed me in the poolroom ’cause I could play so good. A lot of the older brothers used to bet on me. Basically nine-ball, and a little straight pool. One time I made about $300 in one of those type of six-hour sessions. I beat the owner of the poolroom. And then they started calling me the Kid.

My parents came from South Carolina to Washington. My father was a chef in the restaurant at George Washington University, and my mother worked in basically the same type of thing in the cafeteria at the Department of Transportation. They didn’t have much money, because they was 11 of us children.

I got drafted on November 22, 1966. I had been working for a book distributor and as a stock boy in some stores coming out of high school. A lot of dudes were trying to do things to get deferments. One of my brothers put some kind of liquid in his eye and said he had an eye problem at the physical. He never went.

I didn’t try anything. I knew when I got drafted I was going to Vietnam, no matter what I did. I knew because of the vision I had when I was twelve.

As soon as I hit boot camp in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, they tried to change your total personality. Transform you out of that civilian mentality to a military mind.

Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call everybody gooks, dinks.

Then they told us when you go over in Vietnam, you gonna be face to face with Charlie, the Viet Cong. They were like animals, or something other than human. They ain’t have no regard for life. They’d blow up little babies just to kill one GI. They wouldn’t allow you to talk about them as if they were people. They told us they’re not to be treated with any type of mercy or apprehension. That’s what they engraved into you. That killer instinct. Just go away and do destruction.

Even the chaplains would turn the thing around in the Ten Commandments. They’d say, “Thou shall not murder,” instead of “Thou shall not kill.” Basically, you had a right to kill, to take and seize territory, or to protect lives of each other. Our conscience was not to bother us once we engaged in that kind of killing. As long as we didn’t murder, it was like the chaplain would give you his blessings. But you knew all of that was murder anyway.

On May 15, 1967, I came into Vietnam as a replacement in the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Division. The Cacti Green. It was the task-force brigade that went anywhere there was trouble. The division was down in Cu Chi, but we operated all over II Corps and Eye Corps.