Bloods (6 page)

When they got back in the jeep, they start tellin’ me what was happenin’. They had told me that they had confirmed three KIA. And the brother asked the dude what was wrong with him, why did he fuck a dead woman. And he said he just wanted to get his rocks off. And that was the end of it.

Today I’m constantly thinking about the war. I walk down streets different. I look at places where individuals could hide. Maybe assault me or rob me or just harass me. I hear things that other people can’t hear. My wife, she had a habit at one time of buying cheap watches and leaving them on top of the dresser. I could hear it ticking, so she would put it in a drawer. I could still hear it ticking. And I dream of helicopters coming over my house, comin’ to pick me up to take me to a fire fight. And when we get to the fire fight, they were dropping napalm on our own men. And I have to shoot our own soldiers to put them out of their misery. After my discharge, I lived off my unemployment until it ran out, which was about 18 months. Then I decided to go back to school. I went two years, and then I got involved in veterans affairs. I was
noticing that in my city, which is 95 percent black, that there were a lot of black combat veterans coming back not able to find any employment because of bad discharges, or killing theirselves or dopin’ up. We started the Wasted Men Project at the university, and I have been counseling at veterans centers ever since.

In 1982 I transferred to the Vet Center in Tucson because I wanted to do some research on the Buffalo Soldiers. In ’Nam I didn’t know they were part of the original 9th Cav. These are black boys who had just received their freedom from the United States government, and they had to go to the West and suppress the freedom from another race of people who were the Indians. I think they won 13 or 14 Congressional Medals of Honor. But they were really policing other people, just like we were in Vietnam.

When my son, Ronnie, turned sixteen, I had him sit down and watch all thirteen hours of this film documentary about the Vietnam War so he could have an understanding of what war really was about. He had asked had I did any killing. I told him, “Yes. I had to do it. I had to do it to keep myself alive.”

I wouldn’t want him to go and fight an unpopular war like I did. I wouldn’t want him to go down to El Salvador. And if that means that I would have to pick up me and my family baggage and move somewhere out of the country, then I would do that.

America should have won the war. But they wouldn’t free us to fight. With all the American GIs that were in Vietnam, they could have put us all shoulder to shoulder and had us march from Saigon all the way up to the DMZ. Just make a sweep. We had enough GIs, enough equipment to do that.

When I came to Washington to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I looked through the book and there were about 15 guys from my hometown who were killed. And six of them I knew.

But I looked up the memorial for James Plummer first.

Plummer was a black guy from Cincinnati. We were the same age. Twenty. We were at Camp Alpha together. That’s where they assign you when you first come to ’Nam. I was in C Company, a line company. He was a
truck driver, so he was in Headquarters Company, where they had all the heavy equipment.

I liked Plummer’s style. He was just so easygoing. We’d sit down and just rap. Rap about music, the girls, what was happening in the world. Get high. Plummer was a John Coltrane fan. And I’m bein’ a Miles Davis fan, we just automatically fell in with each other.

He was my best friend.

One day we were at the airfield at the LZ. Plummer was out of the truck, over by the ammo dump. And the ammo dump received a mortar round. It blew him up.

It freaked me out. I mean that here I saw him, and five minutes later he’s instantaneously dead.

Me and two other guys ran and grabbed what we could. We pulled on the jungle fatigues, which was full of blood. It looked like maybe a dog after it crossed the street and got hit by a truck. His head was gone, both his legs from about the knee down were both gone. One arm was gone. The other was a stump left. We finally got his trunk together. The rest of it we really couldn’t find, ’cause that one mortar round, it started the ammo dump to steady exploding. It constantly blew up for about an hour.

What we found was probably sent back to the States. They probably had a closed-casket funeral.

I kind of cried. I was sayin’ to myself that this was such a waste because we weren’t really doin’ anything at the time. And him just being such a nice fella, why did he have to go this way? Go in pieces?

Everybody knew that me and him was tight, so a couple of guys took me up over to a bunker and we rapped about him all night. ’Cause we were out in the bush, I really couldn’t get no booze. But when I did get back, I bought me a half gallon of gin, and I knocked it off. And that didn’t make me feel any better.

When I got back, I called his mother. His mother knew me from him writing to her. I told her I was close by when he did get killed. I just told her a ammo dump blew up. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have no idea what that was.

Every year I send her a Christmas card. I just sign my name.

When I saw Plummer on the memorial, I kind of cried again.

I guess deep down in my head now I can’t really believe in God like I did because I can’t really see why God would let something like this happen. Specially like to my friend Plummer. Why He would take such a good individual away from here.

Before I went to Vietnam, I was very active in the church, because of my mother’s influence. She sent me a Bible, and I carried it in my pocket everywhere I went. When I couldn’t find any
Playboys
or something like that, I would read it. Matter of fact, I read it from cover to cover, starting from Genesis.

I guess I got kind of really unreligious because of my Vietnam experience. Oh, I went to church once in my uniform to please my mother. But I haven’t been back since except for a funeral. I’ve talked to chaplains, talked to preachers about Vietnam. And no one could give me a satisfactory explanation of what happened overseas.

But each year since I’ve been back I have read the Bible from cover to cover. I keep looking for the explanation.

I can’t find it. I can’t find it.

I should have felt happy I was goin’ home when I got on that plane in Cam Ranh Bay to leave. But I didn’t exactly. I felt—I felt—I felt very insecure ’cause I didn’t have a weapon. I had one of them long knives, like a big hacksaw knife. I had that. And had my cane. And I had a couple of grenades in my bag. They took them from me when I got to Washington, right? And I felt insecure. I just felt real bad.

You know, my parents never had a weapon in the house. Rifle, shotgun, pistol, nothing. Never had one. Never seen my father with one. And I needed a weapon. ’Cause of that insecurity. I never got over it.

It was Saturday evening when we landed. Nineteen sixty-eight. I caught a cab from Dulles and went straight to my church. The Way of the Cross Church. It’s a Pentacostal holiest church. I really wasn’t active in the church before I went overseas. But a lot of people from the church wrote me, saying things like “I’m praying for you.” There
was a couple of peoples around there. They had a choir rehearsal. And they said they were glad to see me. But I went to the altar and stayed there from seven o’clock to about eleven-thirty. I just wanted to be by myself and pray. At the altar.

I was glad to be home. Just to be stateside. I was thankful that I made it. But I felt bad because I had to leave some friends over there. I left Davis there. I couldn’t say a prayer for people that was already gone. But I said a prayer for them guys to come back home safely. For Davis. Yeah, for Davis.

The first nights I came home I couldn’t sleep. My room was the back room of my parents’ house. I couldn’t sleep in the bed, so I had to get on the floor. I woke up in the middle of the night, and looking out my back window, all you see is trees. So I see all these trees, and I’m thinkin’ I’m still in Vietnam. And I can’t find my weapon. And I can’t find Davis. I can’t find nobody. And I guess I scared my mother and father half to death ’cause I got to hollering, “Come on, where are you? Where are you? Davis. Davis. SIR DAVIS.” I thought I had got captured or something.

The first thing I did Monday was went to the store and bought me a .38. And bought me a .22.

It was right after the Fourth of July, and kids were still throwing firecrackers. I couldn’t deal with it. Hear the noise, I hit the ground. I was down on 7th and F, downtown. I had this little .22. A kid threw firecrackers, and I was trying to duck. And some guys laughed at me, right? So I fired the pistol back at them and watched them duck. I said, “It’s not funny now, is it?” I didn’t go out of my way to mess with nobody, but I demanded respect.

One day, me and my mother and my wife were coming home from church, up Illinois Avenue. I made a left turn, and four white guys in a car cut in front of me and blew the horn. They had been drinking. They gave me the finger. And, man, I forgot all about my mother and wife was in the car. I took off after them. I had the .22 and was firing out the window at them. I just forgot where—and Vietnam does that to you—you forget where you are. It was open season. I’m shooting out the window. My mother said, “Oh, my God. Please, please help him.”

Got home and it was, “You need help. You need help.” But I was like that. I just couldn’t adjust to it. Couldn’t adjust to coming back home, and people think you dirty ’cause you went to Vietnam.

The Army sent me to Walter Reed Hospital for therapy. For two weeks. It was for guys who had been involved in a lot of combat. They said that I was hyper. And they pumped me up with a whole bunch of tranquilizers.

I’ll never forget this goddamn officer. I’m looking at him. He’s got a Good Conduct ribbon on. He’s a major. He’s reading my jacket, and he’s looking with his glasses at me. I’m just sitting there. So he says, “Ford, you were very lucky. I see you got these commendations. You were very lucky to come back.” So I told him, “No, I’m not lucky. You’re lucky. You didn’t go. You sitting there with a Good Conduct Medal on your chest and haven’t been outside the States. You volunteered for service. You should have went. I didn’t volunteer for Vietnam. They made me go.”

There was 12 guys in the therapy session up there at Walter Reed. It was six white, and it was six black. I was the only combat person up there in the class. These guys were having flashbacks and had no combat experience. I can relate to it now, but at that point I couldn’t understand. I said, “What y’all talking ’bout? You was in artillery. At the base camp. You fired guns from five miles away and talking ’bout flashbacks?” Other guys was truck drivers or supply. Nobody done hand-to-hand combat. I said, “You bring me somebody in here with a CIB. We can sit down and talk. But I can’t talk to none of y’all ’cause y’all wasn’t there.”

You know, they decorated me in Vietnam. Two Bronze Stars. The whiteys did. I was wounded three times. The officers, the generals, and whoever came out to the hospital to see you. They respected you and pat you on the back. They said, “You brave. And you courageous. You America’s finest. America’s best.” Back in the States the same officers that pat me on the back wouldn’t even speak to me. They wanted that salute, that attention, ’til they holler at ease. I didn’t get the respect that I thought I was gonna get.

I had six months to go. So now they trying to figure
out where they can put me for six months. They said my time was too short to qualify for school. Then up pop my medical record. The one they couldn’t find when they sent me to ’Nam. The one say I shouldn’t even be runnin’, my knees so bad. They tell me I can’t learn no skill. Drive no jeep. ’Cause of my knees. So they put me in charge of the poolroom at Fort Meade.

They lost my medical records when they wanted to. Now they got ’em back when they wanted to. They just wanted another black in the field. Uncle Sam, he didn’t give me no justice. You had a job to do, you did it, you home. Back where you started. They didn’t even ask me to reenlist.

I graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1966 and was working for the Food and Drug Administration as a lab technician when I was drafted. My father was administrator of a halfway house for Lorton, and my mother was on the Board of Elections in D.C. I was nineteen, and they took me to Fort Bragg. Airborne.

We were really earmarked for Vietnam. Even the drill sergeant and the first sergeant in basic told us that we was going to Vietnam. From basic we went straight to jungle warfare AIT in South Carolina. Before I went to Vietnam, three medical doctors at Fort Dix examined my knees. They trained us so hard in Fort Bragg the cartilages were roughed up. The doctors signed the medical record. It was a permanent profile. Said they would find something in the rear for you. A little desk job, clerk, or medic aid. But they didn’t. I was sent straight to the infantry.

I really thought Vietnam was really a civil war between that country, and we had no business in there. But it seems that by the Russians getting involved and supplying so many weapons to the North Vietnamese that the United States should send troops in.