Bloods (15 page)

At the time I basically had a gung ho attitude about being a soldier. But could I get in the best situation and not get hurt was a legitimate concern of mine. So I checked out that the line companies—ones making all the heavy contact—are the ones who are getting overran. I thought maybe I should avoid that and volunteer for one of these long-range recon patrols. It was a smaller group, and I had an opportunity to share my ideas and help make some decisions. With a line company, you’re really just a pin on the map for sure.

The recon unit was basically to search out the enemy and call in air strikes or a larger military force to engage the enemy. Most of our activities was at night. We was hide by day, and out by night.

The politics of the war just had not set in when I got there. They told us not to fire unless fired upon. But once we enter into a village, we literally did anything that we wanted to do. There was no rules at all. I began to see a lot of the politics.

When I had just got into my squad, Tango squad, I said, “Anybody here from D.C.?”

There was one brother, Richard Streeter, from D.C., who I used to go with his wife in high school. I mean they weren’t married when I was in high school.

Then this white brother said, “Say, hey. I’m from D.C.”

I said, “Okay. Just soon as I set up we’ll get together.”

He began to set up, too. He went down to the water hole to fill up his canteen. On his way back, he stepped on a 500-pound bomb that was laid in a tank track.

You don’t walk in no tank tracks, because that’s where the bombs are usually. Charlie would use the rationale that most tanks would follow their tracks, and they would booby-trap tank tracks.

We didn’t see that white brother anymore. All we saw was a big crater, maybe 6 feet deep. And some remains. You know, guts and stuff. And the dirt had just enveloped the stuff. It looked like batter on fish and batter on chicken pieces. His body looked like that.

That freaked me out, but I wasn’t scared yet.

It was those times when information was gotten to us that we were in a bad spot and there’s no way you can get out—those were the times that was the most fearful times. Times when I began to understand what fear was all about. It’s just that anticipation of something happening as opposed to being in the heat of the battle. In the heat of the battle I don’t think people think about getting hurt. In the fire fight, the thought of getting hurt never dawned upon me. You think about doing a blow to the person you’re fighting.

The most fearful moment was when we got choppered into the wrong area, right on the perimeter of an NVA camp. It was a pretty huge complex. And there was only about 22 of us. You could smell the food and even feel the heat coming up out of the ground where they was cooking right under us. We could hear them, the muffled sounds. We felt their presence. We was ordered not to make a move in no direction. Everything was 100 percent alert. We just couldn’t get out till the morning. They said no way in the world they’d come in there with a chopper at night. Everybody felt the pressure. Everybody felt the stress. Only 22 men. We was gonna get overran. That’s the fear of any recon platoon.

The choppers came in bright and early.

Another time we heard there was a NVA batallion coming our way. And our directions was not to move, just hold up and wait till morning again. It was near LZ Montezuma. One of our LURP teams had got wiped out, five of them. We was out there to find they bodies. During the monsoon season. And it was raining sheets and sheets of rain. You couldn’t even see the next person past up
from you. And we was in the rice paddies in the lowlands, and the water just rose and rose. Next thing I know I was sleeping in water up to my chest. Weapons were basically submerged in water. Nothing happened, but the fear, the fear, man.

I remember night movement in that monsoon. I’m trying to grab hold of the man in front of me, trying to find him, ’cause you have to do that in the monsoon at night. I just fell. I fell into a well about 8 feet deep. My heart just fell. It hit rock bottom. And I couldn’t signal anyone real loud. All I could say was “Hey,” in a little breath-type thing. And when the lightning came on, the E-6, my platoon sergeant, he spotted me. And he pulled me right out with my weapon.

The other thing we mainly did was search and destroy mission. On a search and destroy mission you just clear the village and burn the hootches because the village is suspected of a Viet Cong stronghold or Viet Cong sympathizers. We did not have the capacity as a platoon to take them and hold them. We just cleared them, because we wanted them secure.

If we were doing this combat assault of the village, the CP would set up in the center of the village. The CP would have the platoon leader, the medics, and the air observers. The squads would pass the CP, and we would throw off our big heavy gear and keep our weapons. Then the squads would set up a perimeter around the command post. So the lieutenant really didn’t have any idea what was going on in the rest of the village itself.

One time, in a village near Danang, we was making a perimeter. We passed these two black guys raping this woman at the door of the hootch. She was down on her back on this porchlike thing. Nothing more than a little mud slab. They had stripped off her top. She was struggling. They was from another squad. And the protocol of the folks in my squad was just keep moving, not to interfere, everything was all right.

Most of the time we just rounded the women and children up, and they were literally ran out of the village. Then we start putting fire in the holes, throwing grenades inside the hootches, inside of little bunkers, down the
wells. Hoping that we could ferret out a couple of VC. Then we burn the village. That was like a standard operation procedure when we went into a village.

My platoon did that to 50 to 75 villages. Like being in Vietnam, there are little villages all over the place.

If we use the figure 50 villages, we found suspects in 12 of them. Maybe 30 suspects in all of them. We very rarely found a real VC.

When a squad caught a suspect, they would put a rope around they neck, kick them in the butt, and knock them out with they fist. Anything short of killing them, ’specially when the lieutenant was aware of the fact that we found someone. Really, it was the squad leader, the E-5, who makes a lot of the decisions about the lives, because most often we were operating about 2 kilometers away from the lieutenant. We would call the CP and say we ran across a dink or two. If it looks like he has no weapons, we would decide to move on. Never telling that we kicked him, knocked him out, or searched him down for drugs.

One time, the VC we found in the village we was going to take back, because we found him with a .50-caliber machine gun—an antiaircraft-type gun—and a lot of ammo. We felt that this man knows something.

This brother and the squad leader, a white dude, for some reason they felt they could interrogate this man. This man wasn’t speaking any English. They did not speak any Vietnamese. I could not understand that at all. But they hollerin’, “Where you come from? How many you?” And they callin’ him everything. Dink. Good. Motherfucker. He couldn’t say anything. He was scared.

The next thing I knew, the man was out of the helicopter.

I turned around and I asked the folks what happened to him.

They told me he jumped out.

I said, “Naw, man. The man ain’t jumped out.”

The brother said, “Yes, he did. He one of those tough VC.”

I didn’t believe it. The brother was lying to me, really.

I turned around, and the man was gone. I didn’t actually see him pushed, but he was gone. It took a long
time for me to believe it. I just kept looking where he sat at. And I couldn’t deal with it.

There was two white guys I will never forget. This very young lieutenant, straight out of West Point. He had been out in the field a week and already was doin’ things that could get you killed. And Studs Armstrong, this gung ho squad leader. He was the first person that I run into that I now know as a mercenary-type soldier in Vietnam.

One time we were chasing a VC, and the VC run into this hole. The lieutenant wanted one of our men to crawl into the hole after him. In fact, he was telling this little brother, Bobby Williams from Philadelphia, because Bobby was the smallest one.

That was ridiculous. Because those tunnels may look like to be a little hole but may end up to be a total complex. Many times the holes are dug in off the entrance. VC go in and crawl into this little slot. If a man crawled in behind them, he were subject to get his head blown off.

I said, “Bobby, don’t go in there. You crazy?”

So I said let’s throw some fire in the hole as opposed to sending one of our men in that hole. Do that, and we’ll pull Bobby out by his ankles and he won’t have a head.

Bobby did not go in. And we put fire in the hole. And the VC did not come out.

Studs Armstrong. I’ll never forget him. It was the first time I was introduced to what Philadelphia is all about. He always used to talk about South Philly this. South Philly that. I’m livin’ in Philadelphia now, and I see how racist it is.

Armstrong was ruthless, man, really ruthless. If there was an ambush to be set, he wanted his squad to be the ones to lead the ambush. At the time I was in his squad, it was because his men had got injured and we had to balance off the squad. I dreaded being there, because he was always going to volunteer me for something, and me and him would have to get into some type of altercation.

Armstrong had reenlisted three time to stay in Vietnam.

One night we set up near Quang Tri, and two VC walked down the trail right upon us. We didn’t bury them. We just left them out there in full display with a little card on
them showing the cactus. The name of our unit.

Armstrong immediately started cutting ears off and put them in his rucksack. Then he cut one man’s neck off, and stuck the whole head inside.

It got so funky the lieutenant told Armstrong to get rid of it.

Armstrong said, “Listen. I do what I want. This is my war.”

Like he ran his own show. Three tours in Vietnam. He wasn’t going to let any young lieutenant tell him what to do.

The lieutenant had to threaten him with court-martial to make him give up that head, but Armstrong kept his ears. Those was his souvenirs.

I didn’t lose a close, close friend towards being killed in Vietnam. But I lost a very close friend in terms of his mental functioning.

His name was Richard Streeter. Like I said, I knew his wife in high school. I had known him then, too. We used to play football on opposite teams. He used to play for the Stonewalls, and I used to play for the Romans. We were like rivalry.

Streeter was in Vietnam about, I think, sixty days before I got there. He received me in the squad. He was a very gung ho individual. Very gung ho. He used to lead fire fights, lead ambushes. That was one of the most impacting things on me. Studs was ruthless. Streeter was brave. Until that particular night at 2
A.M
.

We saw two Viet Cong running across the rice paddy through our starlight scopes. So the lieutenant calls in illumination. The VC runs into this village, so the lieutenant tells Whiskey squad to chase them.

They ran right in behind them and got ambushed. The first three men got hit with grenades.

So then the lieutenant hollered Tango squad move in. We dashed into the village and got ambushed, too. We were trapped. They had machine gun fire on us, and we didn’t know where it was coming from. All we could feel was it hitting up around us. And they were shooting M-79 grenade launchers at us they got off Whiskey squad. We could tell that they were our weapons, because we
know the sound of them. Poop. And then the blast. We could not raise our heads.

Bobby was behind me. A Spanish brother named Martinez was behind Bobby. Streeter, our fire team leader, was in front. Lloyd, the squad leader, and two white dudes was on the side.

Then Bobby screamed, “I got hit.” He was shot in the butt.

I moves back for Bobby and said, “Bobby, go up and grab hold of Streeter. Hold Streeter’s leg and let him pull you through the hedgerow. Then we can get down behind the dike.”

Then they shot Martinez.

So I pushed Bobby up towards Streeter, and Streeter shakes Bobby off. Wouldn’t let him grab his leg. Wouldn’t help Bobby, right. So I pushed Bobby on up through the hedgerow and went back for Martinez. I was just a pushin’ him. But at the time I had an M-72 LAW, which is like an antitank weapon. Very light. You shoot it one time, you discard it. The firing pin is like a cord loop that you just pull out. This cord loop got caught onto one of the bushes. I couldn’t raise up because of the machine guns. I feared if I pressed on it, I would blow me and Martinez up. So I had to like squirm out of my web gear and leave that thing hanging.

I finally gets Martinez down behind the dikes, and Streeter is already down there. But he wasn’t firing his weapon.

I said, “Return fire, Streeter!”

He said, “I can’t fire my weapon. I can’t fire my weapon. I can’t shoot.”

He said, “I’m scared, Kirk. I can’t do it. I can’t fight.”

He was crying down behind the dikes.

Then the squad leader kept telling Streeter to return fire. And he would not fire. So the squad leader said, “Streeter, I’m gon’ kill you if you don’t fire your weapon.”

I said, “No, Lloyd. If you kill him, I’m gon’ shoot you. So you gonna have to kill the both of us.”

I said, “The man is gone. Let him be.”

Then I turned to Streeter.

“We in big trouble, man. Bobby’s hurt. Martinez’s hurt.
Dan just got it. It ain’t nothin’ but three of us left in this squad. We need to return some fire.”

Then this brother in Whiskey squad hollered out his weapon was jammed. Streeter told him, “Here. Take mine.”

I said, “No, Streeter. If you don’t do a damn thing, don’t give up your weapon. I promise you. You’re going with the first medevac that we can get in here.”

The gunships came in and raked the whole area. Then the medevacs. And they came through a hell of a fire. And we got all the wounded on. Eight of them seriously wounded. A lost eye. A chest shot open. And Streeter. It took a toll on our squad.