Bloods (36 page)

When my mother realized I was gettin’ ready to go away into the service, she gave me a birthday party. It was my first birthday. I was nineteen years old.

All we did the first days in Pleiku was fill sandbags.
Then they taught me about the switchboard. But I spent most of my time on the 105 howitzers. There were six guys around it. Each guy has a different job. One guy tilts the artillery. One guy might be on the telephone runnin’ from one gun to another. My job was either cleanin’ it or help loadin’ it.

It seems like at first they was always shellin’ us, and we would run to the bunkers. I use to wonder sometimes why we would run to them. The way they were built, if a shell would hit it direct, it wouldn’t do no good anyway. It was only made with a whole lot of sandbags on top. It ain’t nothin’ like a house. Maybe it was just to keep you from gettin’ some scrap metal if the round hit near it.

One night we was goin’ to sleep. I was just wearin’ them green things they give you, like shorts. I thought I heard things comin’ in. I jumped up, got my rifle, and put my belt on. I was runnin’ out the back way, tryin’ to get to the bunker. The sergeant told me to go back to sleep, because it wasn’t what I thought it was. Everybody laughed ’cause I had all these guns and just my shorts.

When I went on guard duty, you hear noises. You shoot, because it be so dark out there. But I didn’t never see anybody. All I know, I was scared.

Before I went to Vietnam I was told they were helpin’ the people from Communism, so they could try to be a free country. The Communism didn’t let the people control their own rights. But it looked like we were fightin’ ’em altogether. You didn’t know who was who. One Vietnamese look like he be on your side, and then at night he might be VC.

When I see the Vietnamese comin’ in to clean the barracks, they didn’t say nothin’ to me. I didn’t say nothin’ to them. I didn’t know who was who. I didn’t trust ’em.

Sometimes we had to drive trucks from one place to another. Guys’ll stop on the road, and the Vietnamese be sellin’ beer or something. I never did stop. I was too scared.

One time I was goin’ to pick some sandbags up to bring ’em back to my base. I was drivin’ a five-ton, and I had two flats on one side. The other three trucks that was with me, they had just left me 2 miles down the road all by myself. I didn’t stop, but I was goin’ so slow. And I
didn’t have a shotgun at the time. Charlie could’ve just picked me off. Now that scared me.

When there was nothin’ to do, I stayed in the barracks and read the
Jet
, or just wrote letters.

It took me six or seven months to walk down to Pleiku village. I was too scared at first. You might just get shot just walkin’ around.

My friend and I went to this little place that made trick pictures, like you holdin’ yourself in your hand. They had warned us before we left not to be active over there with the women sexually in case you catch something. I was too scared anyway, because I didn’t know who the women was.

In November ’68 I had about a month left. When I think about it now, I should’ve been gone since I was out there 14 months already. They were tellin’ me to go to the field. I told ’em I didn’t wanna go.

They told me they didn’t have any sergeants out there, and they needed one to drive out this amtrac. They said you gotta go ’cause you the only one.

It was dangerous out there, and I didn’t know what might happen. I didn’t know where I was goin’. I never been out there. And it was almost time for me to go home.

I had a shotgunner, but it wasn’t like no company or battalion goin’ together.

We spent the first night in the field in some tents. Got up that next morning. We had a long way to go. Up to Kontum.

We was way out in the boonies like, and they kept saying we was almost there. They said they was hookin’ me up with somebody else. Somebody I don’t even know. I didn’t even get a chance to see ’em.

It wasn’t no main road. It was like a old dirt trail.

There was a minesweeper in front of us. Then a couple of tanks. We was fourth in line, the last vehicle.

We hit this mine. Got blew up. Blew the track straight up in the air.

I thought it was all over.

When that thing blew up, I never heard nothin’ like that before in my life. That was the loudest sound I ever heard in my life.

It blew us right out of the track.

When I came down, the track fell on my leg.

We didn’t have the cover on it you put over the top if it rains. If that would’ve been on, we would’ve got trapped in there.

I don’t know whether the shotgunner got killed or not. He was on the other side with his machine gun.

I was just burnin’ up. I was burnin’ everywhere.

It ain’t no gas stations in the field. You run out of gas, you just run out of gas. It no tellin’ when somebody might come by and bring you some. So we had these gas cans with us. They must’ve exploded, too.

Fire was runnin’ all up my fatigues.

Somethin’ just kept tellin’ me, Pull your leg out. Pull your leg out. My left leg. I was steady diggin’ and steady tryin’ to get it out, and I finally got it out. I just nearly tore my right hand off.

I was never taught to roll over when you on fire, and I start runnin’. And that’s what I did wrong.

It felt like I was in hell.

I just was screamin’ and screamin’.

So the guy that was in the tank in front of me told me to lie down, and he put it out with the stuff they carry.

So they had me sittin’ on the side of the road waitin’ for the helicopter. It must have took 20 minutes. They gave me something. Maybe morphine, and I sort of passed out.

I had third-degree burns everywhere. The skin was just hangin’ off my left arm. My right arm was burned completely to the bone. My face was all burnt up. It was white.

I remember in the hospital in Japan I kept tellin’ ’em I was cold. I couldn’t get covered up, because I was burnt all up. They kept puttin’ some white stuff all over my body. And they kept puttin’ me in a tub and takin’ the dead skin off.

In the hospitals back here they took skin grafts off my leg and put ’em on top on my head, on my forehead, and on my arm.

I caught gangrene in my right hand, and they took the thumb off. The hand just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Finally my doctor told me that he had to take it off, because gangrene was gettin’ ready to go all through my body. Well, I didn’t want to die. So they cut it off.

They had to take veins out of my legs, too. I have a little limp now. I figure it’s just poor circulation.

They wanted to do some plastic surgery on my ear to make it look like the other one. I didn’t go back. I was just tired of hospitals. I don’t know how many operations they did on me. They said I had some thin’ they call severe trauma.

Two Christmases had gone by me in the hospital.

That doctor say if I wasn’t a young man, I wouldn’t have made it.

I got my discharge papers May 6, 1969.

I came home and stayed with my mother.

I didn’t come home the way I went. I went a tall, slim, healthy fella. You could look at me now and tell something had happened. I was either born like that, or I was in the war. I’m scarred all over. It ain’t no way you can hide it.

After six months, I started goin’ to school at Northwestern Business College. Using the GI benefits. I got a associate arts degree in accounting, and they sent me all over lookin’ for a job.

I tried maybe 40 places in two years. But I never did get hired.

They would say I didn’t have experience. Or they would make excuses like, “You think not having that hand would interfere with your doing this kind of work?” I thought, How would that interfere sittin’ there at a desk? Or they would tell me they would let me know, but nobody never did call me back.

I got discouraged. I guess I just gave up, because I kept gettin’ turned down. Nobody never really wanted to give me a break. I was black. A amputee. And it was an unpopular war. Maybe they didn’t like the idea nobody from Vietnam workin’ in they profession.

That was in 1975. I stopped lookin’ for a job. I’ve been livin’ on disability and Social Security.

I stay home most of the time. Just readin’. I’ll walk my daughter sometimes. But as far as goin’ out to plays or out to dinner, I don’t do that. I wouldn’t know how you s’posed to carry yourself. Like in a nice restaurant,
I couldn’t cut my own meat. And I’m gonna be stared at anyway.

In 1981 Social Security stopped sending me checks. So I have been havin’ trouble with this house note. And somebody stole my car. The Social Security wrote me this, “We realize that your condition prevents you from doing any of your past jobs as a foot soldier, but does not prevent you from doing … various unskilled, light one-armed jobs.” But it was Social Security that told me I was disabled and could have the money when I was discharged.

This lady, she said, “What do you expect, Mr. Daniels? To receive Social Security for the rest of your life?”

I started to tell her, “Yeah. My hand is gonna be missin’ for the rest of my life.” But I didn’t say anything. Maybe Social Security thinks I’ve lived too long.

It’s funny. When I see the Vietnamese who came over here, I just wonder how they start so fast. Get businesses and stuff. Somebody helpin’ ’em. But the ones that fought for they country, been livin’ here all along, we get treated like dirt.

I know you gotta help yourself, but you can’t do everything. I can’t hire me.

Sometimes I feel I’m worth more to my wife and daughter if I wasn’t around because I got the insurance. Like you don’t get your insurance until you die, right? Sometimes that what I think. Sometimes.

When I was nineteen, I know I didn’t know too much about what’s goin’ on. Except you s’posed to fight for your country. And you come home. But where is my country when I come home?

And now I read where the people in Vietnam still havin’ the same problems they had before the United States went over there. I read they say they wasn’t no war. Well, what the hell they sent us over there for? I read the Americans lost. It was nothin’. Nothin’.

But I wish I—I would’ve—I would’ve came back the way, you know, I went.

I might have realized which way my life would’ve went.

All I did was lost part of my body. And that’s the end of me.

I went to Vietnam as a basic naïve young man of eighteen. Before I reached my nineteenth birthday, I was a animal. When I went home three months later, even my mother was scared of me.

It began on my fourteenth day in country. The first time I was ever in a combat situation at all. We was in VC Valley, south of Pleiku.

I was a cherry boy. Most cherry boys went on point in the LURP team. I adapted so well to bein’ a point man that that became my permanent position after this first mission.

We was in very thick elephant grass. We had sat down for a ten-minute break. And we heard the Vietn’ese talking, coming through the elephant grass. So we all sat ready for bein’ attacked.

I heard this individual walking. He came through the elephant grass, and I let loose on my M-16 and hit him directly in his face. Sixteen rounds. The whole clip. And
his face disappeared. From the chin up. Nothing left. And his body stood there for ’proximately somewhere around ten, fifteen seconds. And it shivers. And it scared me beyond anyone’s imagination.

Then it was chaos from then on. Shooting all over. We had a approximate body count of five VC. Then we broke camp and head for safer ground.

After thinkin’ about that guy with no face, I broke into a cold sweat. I knew it could’ve been me that was in his place instead of me in my place. But it changed me. Back home I had to defend myself in the streets, with my fist, with bottles, or whatever. But you don’t go around shooting people. As physical as I had been as a teenager, there were never life-threatening situations. I had never experienced anything quite as horrible as seeing a human being with his face blown apart. I cried. I cried because I killed somebody.

You had to fight to survive where I grew up. Lower east Baltimore. What they call the Bottom. I lived basically three blocks from the waterfront. It was very difficult for us to go from one neighborhood to another without trying to prove your manhood.

It was a mixed-up neighborhood of Puerto Ricans, Indians, Italians, and blacks. Being that I’m light-skinned, curly hair, I wasn’t readily accepted in the black community. I was more accepted by Puerto Ricans and some rednecks. They didn’t ask what my race classification was. I went with them to white movies, white restaurants, and so forth. But after I got older, I came to the realization that I was what I am and came to deal with my black peers.

I played defensive end, made all-city at Dunbar High School when we won the city championship and was one of the best football teams in the region. I was ranked fourth or fifth in the state as a heavyweight wrestler. So I was lookin’ for this scholarship to college. It didn’t come through, and I didn’t have the academics to go otherwise. So I went into the Army primary as a lifer, because I felt I could escape from my environment and get ahead in life.