Bloods (2 page)

In the years since the collapse of the Saigon government to the victorious Communist forces, I have believed that America owed the black veterans of the war a special debt. There were no flags waving or drums beating upon the return of any Vietnam veterans, who were blamed by the right in our society for losing the war, and by the left for being the killers of the innocent. But what can be said about the dysfunction of Vietnam veterans in general can be doubled in its impact upon most blacks; they hoped to come home to more than they had before; they came home to less. Black unemployment among black veterans is more than double the rate for white veterans. The doors to the Great Society had been shut.

Among the 20 men who portray their war and postwar experiences in this book, I sought a representative cross-section of the black combat force. Enlisted men, non-commissioned officers, and commissioned officers. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Those with urban backgrounds, and those from rural areas. Those for whom the war had a devastating impact, and those for whom the war basically was an opportunity to advance in a career dedicated to protecting American interests. All of them had won a badge of courage in combat, whether on a patrol boat or in a POW camp, on a night ambush or in the skies above North Vietnam, as medics and platoon leaders, as fighters pilots and grunts.

These stories are not to be found in the expanding body of Vietnam literature; they deservedly belong in the forefront because of the unique experience of the black Vietnam veteran. He fought at a time when his sisters and brothers were fighting and dying at home for equal rights and greater opportunities, for a color-blind nation promised to him in the Constitution he swore to defend. He fought at a time when some of his leaders chastised him for waging war against a people of color, and when his
Communist foe appealed to him to take up arms instead against the forces of racism in America. The loyalty of the black Vietnam War veteran stood a greater test on the battleground than did the loyalty of any other American soldier in Vietnam; his patriotism begs a special salute at home.

Above all, his experience requires the special notice of history, as it judges and continues to judge the Vietnam saga. In any black soldier of Vietnam can be found the darkness that is at the heart of all wars. What the black veteran illuminates in these pages of his own humanity as well as racial perception will help complete the missing pages of the American experience, and add to the pages of universal understanding of man’s most terrible occupation.

When my youngest child, David, was still a baby, I learned about the death of the youngest American soldier who would die in combat in Vietnam. I was visiting Hoi An. The soldier was a sixteen-year-old black Marine from a poor and broken family in Brooklyn. He had lied about his age to join the Marines and thereby earn money to help support his mother. I vowed then that one day I would see between the covers of a book the story of the sacrifice of such young black men and others in the rice paddies of Vietnam—10,000 miles from the heartbreak of American poverty and discrimination and injustice. This is that book.

And now, as I write these words, that youngest child of mine is himself sixteen.

—Wallace Terry      
Washington, D.C.
 January 1, 1984   

I’m in the Amtrac with Morley Safer, right? The whole thing is getting ready to go down. At Cam Ne. The whole bit that all America will see on the
CBS Evening News
, right? Marines burning down some huts. Brought to you by Morley Safer. Your man on the scene. August 5, 1965.

When we were getting ready for Cam Ne, the helicopters flew in first and told them to get out of the village ’cause the Marines are looking for VC. If you’re left there, you’re considered VC.

They told us if you receive one round from the village, you level it. So we was coming into the village, crossing over the hedges. It’s like a little ditch, then you go through these bushes and jump across, and start kickin’ ass, right?

Not only did we receive one round, three Marines got wounded right off. Not only that, but one of the Marines was our favorite Marine, Sergeant Bradford. This brother that everybody loved got shot in the groin. So you know how we felt.

The first thing happened to me, I looked out and here’s a bamboo snake. That little short snake, the one that bites you and you’re through bookin’. What do you do when a bamboo snake comin’ at you? You drop your rifle with one hand, and shoot his head off. You don’t think you can do this, but you do it. So I’m so rough with this snake, everybody thinks, well, Edwards is shootin’ his ass off today.

So then this old man runs by. This other sergeant says, “Get him, Edwards.” But I missed the old man. Now I just shot the head off a snake. You dig what I’m sayin’? Damn near with one hand. M-14. But all of a sudden, I missed this old man. ’Cause I really couldn’t shoot him.

So Brooks—he’s got the grenade launcher—fired. Caught my man as he was comin’ through the door. But what happened was it was a room full of children. Like a schoolroom. And he was runnin’ back to warn the kids that the Marines were coming. And that’s who got hurt. All those little kids and people.

Everybody wanted to see what had happened, ’cause it was so fucked up. But the officers wouldn’t let us go up there and look at what shit they were in. I never got the count, but a lot of people got screwed up. I was telling Morley Safer and his crew what was happening, but they thought I was trippin’, this Marine acting crazy, just talking shit. ’Cause they didn’t want to know what was going on.

So I’m going on through the village. Like the way you go in, you sweep, right? You fire at the top of the hut in case somebody’s hangin’ in the rafters. And if they hit the ground, you immediately fire along the ground, waist high, to catch them on the run. That’s the way I had it worked out, or the way the Marines taught me. That’s the process.

All of a sudden, this Vietnamese came runnin’ after me, telling me not to shoot: “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” See, we didn’t go in the village and look. We would just shoot first. Like you didn’t go into a room to see who was in there first. You fired and go in. So in case there was somebody there, you want to kill them first. And we was just gonna run in, shoot through the walls. ’Cause it was nothin’ to shoot through the walls of a bamboo hut.
You could actually set them on fire if you had tracers. That used to be a fun thing to do. Set hootches on fire with tracers.

So he ran out in front of me. I mean he’s runnin’ into my line of fire. I almost killed him. But I’m thinking, what the hell is wrong? So then we went into the hut, and it was all these women and children huddled together. I was gettin’ ready to wipe them off the planet. In this one hut. I tell you, man, my knees got weak. I dropped down, and that’s when I cried. First time I cried in the ’Nam. I realized what I would have done. I almost killed all them people. That was the first time I had actually had the experience of weak knees.

Safer didn’t tell them to burn the huts down with they lighters. He just photographed it. He could have got a picture of me burning a hut, too. It was just the way they did it. When you say level a village, you don’t use torches. It’s not like in the 1800s. You use a Zippo. Now you would use a Bic. That’s just the way we did it. You went in there with your Zippos. Everybody. That’s why people bought Zippos. Everybody had a Zippo. It was for burnin’ shit down.

I was a Hollywood Marine. I went to San Diego, but it was worse in Parris Island. Like you’ve heard the horror stories of Parris Island—people be marchin’ into the swamps. So you were happy to be in San Diego. Of course, you’re in a lot of sand, but it was always warm.

At San Diego, they had this way of driving you into this base. It’s all dark. Back roads. All of a sudden you come to this little adobe-looking place. All of a sudden, the lights are on, and all you see are these guys with these Smokey the Bear hats and big hands on their hips. The light is behind them, shining through at you. You all happy to be with the Marines. And they say, “Better knock that shit off, boy. I don’t want to hear a goddamn word out of your mouth.” And everybody starts cursing and yelling and screaming at you.

My initial instinct was to laugh. But then they get right up in your face. That’s when I started getting scared. When you’re 117 pounds, 150 look like a monster. He would just come screaming down your back, “What the hell are you looking at, shit turd?” I remembered the tim
e
where you cursed, but you didn’t let anybody adult hear it. You were usually doing it just to be funny or trying to be bold. But these people were actually serious about cursing your ass out.

Then here it is. Six o’clock in the morning. People come in bangin’ on trash cans, hittin’ my bed with night sticks. That’s when you get really scared, ’cause you realize I’m not at home anymore. It doesn’t look like you’re in the Marine Corps either. It looks like you’re in jail. It’s like you woke up in a prison camp somewhere in the South. And the whole process was not to allow you to be yourself.

I grew up in a family that was fair. I was brought up on the Robin Hood ethic, and John Wayne came to save people. So I could not understand that if these guys were supposed to be the good guys, why were they treating each other like this?

I grew up in Plaquemines Parish. My folks were poor, but I was never hungry. My stepfather worked with steel on buildings. My mother worked wherever she could. In the fields, pickin’ beans. In the factories, the shrimp factories, oyster factories. And she was a housekeeper.

I was the first person in my family to finish high school. This was 1963. I knew I couldn’t go to college because my folks couldn’t afford it. I only weighed 117 pounds, and nobody’s gonna hire me to work for them. So the only thing left to do was go into the service. I didn’t want to go into the Army, ’cause everybody went into the Army. Plus the Army didn’t seem like it did anything. The Navy I did not like ’cause of the uniforms. The Air Force, too. But the Marines was bad. The Marine Corps built men. Plus just before I went in, they had all these John Wayne movies on every night. Plus the Marines went to the Orient.

Everybody laughed at me. Little, skinny boy can’t work in the field going in the Marine Corps. So I passed the test. My mother, she signed for me ’cause I was seventeen.

There was only two black guys in my platoon in boot camp. So I hung with the Mexicans, too, because in them days we never hang with white people. You didn’t have white friends. White people was the aliens to me. This is
’63. You don’t have integration really in the South. You expected them to treat you bad. But somehow in the Marine Corps you hoping all that’s gonna change. Of course, I found out this was not true, because the Marine Corps was the last service to integrate. And I had an Indian for a platoon commander who hated Indians. He used to call Indians blanket ass. And then we had a Southerner from Arkansas that liked to call you chocolate bunny and Brillo head. That kind of shit.

I went to jail in boot camp. What happened was I was afraid to jump this ditch on the obstacle course. Every time I would hit my shin. So a white lieutenant called me a nigger. And, of course, I jumped the ditch farther than I’d ever jumped before. Now I can’t run. My leg is really messed up. I’m hoppin’. So it’s pretty clear I can’t do this. So I tell the drill instructor, “Man, I can’t fucking go on.” He said, “You said what?” I said it again. He said, “Get out.” I said, “Fuck you.” This to a drill instructor in 1963. I mean you just don’t say that. I did seven days for disrespect. When I got out of the brig, they put me in a recon. The toughest unit.

We trained in guerrilla warfare for two years at Camp Pendleton. When I first got there, they was doing Cuban stuff. Cuba was the aggressor. It was easy to do Cuba because you had a lot of Mexicans. You could always let them be Castro. We even had Cuban targets. Targets you shoot at. So then they changed the silhouettes to Vietnamese. Everything to Vietnam. Getting people ready for the little gooks. And, of course, if there were any Hawaiians and Asian-Americans in the unit, they played the roles of aggressors in the war games.

Then we are going over to Okinawa, thinking we’re going on a regular cruise. But the rumors are that we’re probably going to the ’Nam. In Okinawa we was trained as raiders. Serious, intense jungle-warfare training. I’m gonna tell you, it was some good training. The best thing about the Marine Corps, I can say for me, is that they teach you personal endurance, how much of it you can stand.

The only thing they told us about the Viet Cong was they were gooks. They were to be killed. Nobody sits around and gives you their historical and cultural
background. They’re the enemy. Kill, kill, kill. That’s what we got in practice. Kill, kill, kill. I remember a survey they did in the mess hall where we had to say how we felt about the war. The thing was, get out of Vietnam or fight. What we were hearing was Vietnamese was killing Americans. I felt that if people were killing Americans, we should fight them. As a black person, there wasn’t no problem fightin’ the enemy. I knew Americans were prejudiced, were racist and all that, but, basically, I believed in America ’cause I was an American.