Bloods (35 page)

And every once in a while, we’d run into a iguana. And it would scare somebody ’cause it would be so unique and ugly-looking. And the meeting would be so sudden.

I made it a policy not to follow trails and paths. That way you avoid ambushes and punji sticks. And none of my men got hurt from that. I just didn’t allow them to take the easy way. And it’s very difficult to keep 30 men who’re tired or bored or frustrated or scared from making mistakes. But the bigger mistake would be to let them get away with something most of the time and then have it come back to hurt or kill them one time when they did not expect it. The lesser price was to take the more difficult route, the one that is least likely to be ambushed or booby-trapped.

Whenever we would go into villages, as the film documents, we would set up our medics to treat the children and the people. We would tend to scars, wounds, whatever. Give them aspirin and soap. We’d give the kids gum, cookies, C-rations. If we wanted to eat off the land, we would buy a chicken or buy a pig. And the film noted that this was probably the first army in the history of the world that did not take what it wanted.

I lost only one man during the first tour. Just one man in my platoon.

Oddly enough, it was not from enemy fire. It was friendly fire.

I guess it was in October. We were in a fairly heavily
populated area in the An Lo Valley. On the coast in III Corps. We were conducting night operations to keep the Viet Cong from moving around among the population. It was around four-thirty in the morning. One patrol came back in earlier than they were supposed to to my platoon headquarters. They should’ve come in after daylight. So one of my men on the perimeter threw a grenade out at the noise, thinking it was enemy movement. I don’t know whether they were trying to come in or whether they were lost. The grenade landed among them, wounded three not too seriously, but was close enough to Shannon that it killed him.

Shannon had been in country about eight months, longer than me. He was a rather quiet white guy from California. A rifleman. Did his job all the time. A good soldier.

I did write a letter to his folks, telling them he did an exceptionally good job. I did not describe the circumstances under which he was killed, because we were directed not to put those kinds of details in letters whatever the case may be.

When the film was about to be released for viewing on American television, there was some concern among CBS officials about his family’s reaction to his body being shown after the incident. My wife wound up calling his family. She explained what would be seen in the documentary and asked if they had any objections. They didn’t.

The film describes the grenade as an enemy grenade. Which is not the real circumstances.

Speaking of phone calls, I had to make a different kind when I got home. Reese, my radio operator, had gotten his girl friend pregnant in North Carolina before coming to Vietnam. She had the baby while he was there. In the film he is shown with a couple of young Vietnamese ladies in a club during R & R in Saigon. He wanted me to call his girl friend and convince her that this was done purely for the film. Being from North Carolina, how would that look for him to be seen with those women on national television?

I made the call. And she thanked me. She said she was a little embarrassed, but it was not that big a thing.

I returned to Vietnam in June 1970. I’m a company commander now. A captain. And I went directly into
Cambodia, about 15 miles over the border, trying to locate enemy food and weapon caches. We’re dealing with the NVA now.

We set up the first night, and the first thing I did in the morning was send out a patrol just to make sure that nobody set up the ambushes. The patrol, five of them, got hit instantly within 50 yards of the perimeter. Only two of them made it back. I didn’t know what the status was of the other three.

I put a platoon together to go out and try to find them. And they really drew heavy fire, B-40s and AKs. Then I sent another platoon. This went on for two days. That was very unusual for them to stand and fight. What we didn’t know was that we were on the edge of a major supply cache. And they were fighting to defend it.

Meanwhile, I was calling in artillery. We couldn’t get much air support because we’re too far away from our bases in Vietnam. We couldn’t get more troops in because the jungle was so thick. Supplies had to be kicked out of helicopters from treetop height. That’s how tight it was. We as a company were operating independently.

On the third day we finally ran them off. It must have been a company of NVAs, And we found our three individuals. All three were dead. I’d rather that not have happened. But I would have rather it have been the patrol that got hit than moving the whole company and get 15 or 20 people ambushed.

My medics went out to put the bodies in body bags. But they couldn’t do it. The bodies had begun to decay, and the maggots got to them. It was just too emotional and stomach-wrenching for the medics. They broke down. They were throwin’ up. So I had to go out and personally put the decomposed bodies in the bags myself. It was a responsibility that I could not pass on to anybody else. I was the commander.

We found 10 tons of food supply—corn, rice, and so forth. And about 50 tons of Soviet weapons and ammunition. It was the largest cache ever captured by the Cav.

Michael Davidson, the Second Field Force commander, flew out to congratulate us. He had known me at West Point. He had been the commandant at the time I was a cadet.

There was a great amount of criticism about us going into Cambodia. But from that time in June until I gave up the company in November, we didn’t receive another single shot. We’d wiped out all their supplies and demoralized them so greatly that they were not ready to fight. As we ran our patrols, we would find they were trailing us so they could eat our garbage, the stuff we’d throw away.

As a company commander, I did not have any feel for the political and international ramifications of going into Laos, going into Cambodia. But as a guy who had to live or die by how well the enemy was equipped or fought, there was no doubt in my mind that the correlation was very great between us going into Cambodia and then not taking any more heat from the enemy.

I had a great deal of respect for the Viet Cong. They were trained and familiar with the jungle. They relied on stealth, on ambush, on their personal skills and wile, as opposed to firepower. They knew it did not pay for them to stand and fight us, so they wouldn’t. They’d come back and fight another day. We knew that we could not afford to get careless with them, because you pay the price. But they were not superhumans. And they did not scare us.

The NVA were more like us in being oriented to organization, numbers, and to some degree firepower, although they didn’t have as much as we did. But they were as motivated as we were. They didn’t pay the same attention to detail, to preparing for battle, to digging in. They were there doing the basics, doing a job.

During that second tour, I could see that drugs were making an impact on American forces, but in the field the men would tend to police themselves and not let drugs endanger the unit. What was very clear to me was an awareness among our men that the support for the war was declining in the United States. The gung ho attitude that made our soldiers so effective in 1966, ’67, was replaced by the will to survive. They became more security conscious. They would take more defensive measures so they wouldn’t get hurt. They were more scared. They wanted to get back home.

I spent my last months in the base camp at An Khe,
an aide to the commanding general. Being featured in
The Anderson Platoon
had obviously helped my career.

Being in the rear meant clean showers, shaving every day, and air conditioning. It meant eating in the executive dining room. And since the general called his wife every Sunday night, I could call mine, too.

One night, Lola Falana came through for a show. She was invited to a special reception, and I got to dance with her. When I called my wife on Sunday night, I said, “Guess who I danced with? Lola Falana.” And my wife said, “I thought you were in combat.”

Career officers and enlisted men like me did not go back to a hostile environment in America. We went back to bases where we were assimilated and congratulated and decorated for our performance in the conduct of the war.

The others were rejected, because the nation experienced a defeat. The nation heard stories of atrocities, of drugs. Everyone who was in Vietnam was suspect. And that generalization is unfair to apply to all the people who were there. In two tours I just did not experience any atrocities. Sure, you shot to kill. But personally I did not experience cutting off ears from dead bodies or torturing captured prisoners.

Long before Saigon fell, it was clear to me the United States was not willing to win the war. So the only alternative is to lose the war.

When Saigon did fall, the only feeling I had was, you might expect that considering how things deteriorated. There was no remorse, no feeling of life wasted.

I was at peace with myself about my behavior and my contribution to the process. I went over there and I did what I had to do. I didn’t volunteer for it, but I bought into it when I signed up for the Army.

Personally it was career-enhancing. A career Army officer who has not been to war during the war is dead, careerwise. I had done that. I received decorations. Two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, eleven Air Medals. And
The Anderson Platoon
brought me a level of notoriety and recognition. I was in a very good position for promotion and future responsibilities. But in 1978 I decided
I did not want to cool my heels for the next eight to ten years to become a general. I was not prepared to wait. I resigned my commission, worked a year as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and joined General Motors as a plant manager.

The Anderson Platoon
won both an Oscar and an Emmy.

As time passes, my memory of Vietnam revolves around the film. I have a print, and I look at it from time to time. And the broadness and scope of my two-year experience narrows down to 60 minutes.

I never been away from home when I joined the Army. I never been on a train before I went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, for basic training. I never was in a plane before they took me to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. That was AIT. Seems like we would have gone somewhere for a few months or so. But we went straight from there to Vietnam. Three months after I got in.

Flying over all that water, I was scared to death. I thought we would never get there, and I didn’t know whether I was coming back.

When we landed in Cam Ranh Bay, it was like I had never seen anything like it before. Just open land. A lot of sand. Grass. Water. I was in a strange land.

I was scared to death.

We came up poor on the South Side of Chicago.

I don’t even remember my childhood. I don’t even remember a birthday cake. I don’t remember a birthday
party. I don’t remember my father takin’ me to places like parks and to the movies.

The only thing I remember is my grandmother always put up a tree every Christmas, and she always gave us something.

My mother left my father when I was three. I remember that they used to argue all the time. They got married too young, I think. They was seventeen. They didn’t finish high school, and there wasn’t no money. I didn’t know where my father was. I knew my mother was working, and she lived somewhere else. My grandmother raised me.

My grandmother took care of her kids and her kids’ kids. They were livin’ on and off with her and my grandfather, about 15 of us brothers, sisters, and cousins altogether. There was always five of us in my bedroom.

My grandmother always told us to try to go to school, and we all graduated from high school. But I wasn’t too interested in school, because I never had anything to wear. I only had one pair of shoes at a time. Tennis shoes. We always had a coat. But no nice clothes, like a suit or a tie. They couldn’t afford to buy me them. So I didn’t go to the dances and benefits at school. I was too ashamed. I was a timid person.

I sometimes think the way I came up and didn’t be no dope addict is a surprise, because I had to learn so much from the streets. But one thing my grandparents instilled into me was staying away from the wrong crowd. When I found out they was the wrong crowd, smokin’ dope or messin’ with people, I would just go off to myself. I was a loner.

Before I went into the service I worked at the post office in Skokie as a sub for about a year. I decided to enlist ’cause it didn’t seem like I was gettin’ anywhere. And I felt it was gon’ make me sort of like grown up. I didn’t have anybody to sort of rear me into becomin’ a man. And I thought the GI benefits would help me go to college since I didn’t have no money for college.