Bloods (9 page)

They had to come give him tranquilizers.

Before I went home, the company commanders in Bravo and Echo got killed. And rumor said their own men did it. Those companies were pressed because the captains do everything by the book. And the book didn’t work for Vietnam. They had this West Point thing about you dug a foxhole at night. Put sandbags around it. You couldn’t expect a man to cut through that jungle all day, then dig a hole, fill up the sandbags, then in the morning time dump the sandbags out, fill your foxhole back up, and then cut down another mountain. Guys said the hell with some foxhole. And every time you get in a fire fight, you looking for somebody to cover your back, and he looking around to see where the captain is ’cause he gon’ fire a couple rounds at him. See, the thing about Vietnam, your own men could shoot you and no one could tell, because we always left weapons around and the Viet Congs could get them.

The war never got worse than this time in April. The whole battalion was out in the jungles. We got attacked. We got hit bad. This was a NVA unit. This wasn’t no Viet Cong. They were soldiers.

They would come on waves. The back unit didn’t even have weapons. They would pick up the weapons from the units that sacrified themselves and keep on coming. It made it look like we had shot this person and he fell and
then kept on runnin’ instead of somebody comin’ behind him. It played a mental thing on you.

That’s when we start hollering, “We gon’ burn this jungle down. Get Puff out here, and get the mortars and flame throwers.” Puff helped. It’s a bad warship. It comes in with them rockets and them guns. Puff the Magic Dragon lets you know it’s there.

But I was scared of Puff. He wounded about six of our guys. I ain’t wanna see Puff. I was scared of Puff.

Then we called in for mortar. And the mortar squad hit about six or seven of us. Rounds dropped too short. Miscalculated or whatever.

Then I saw a guy that just came in country. A little white boy named Irving, came from Kansas City. Real nice fella; used to talk how the cattle comes down the street in Kansas City. He got shot in the head. And I went over and grabbed him. The bullet went through his eye. Real small hole. But I put my hands behind his head, and the whole back of his head came off in my hands. I just froze.

I was scared to drop it. Scared to move. I was just sittin’ there. And this is where Davis helped.

Davis screamed, “Nigger, stop half-steppin’. We gotta move.”

Then the lieutenant start yelling about hold your position, hold your position. Davis said, “The hell with some position. Move back. Move back.”

We were getting hit terribly.

Davis knew it. And Davis was a private. A private.

Davis saved us.

When I got out of the service, I went back to Food and Drug, the lab technician thing. But I was carrying this pistol all the time, so people come up and say, “Why don’t you go in the police department?”

I joined in December ’69. And because I was a LURP and had these medals, they figured I wasn’t scared of anything. So they asked me to work undercover in narcotics. I did it for 19 months. Around 7th and T, 9th and U, all in the area. The worst in D.C. I would try to buy drugs on a small scale, like $25. Heroin and cocaine. Then I gradually go up to where I could buy a spoon, $100. Then I could buy a ounce for a $1,000. I got robbed three
times, hit in the head with a gun once. But my investigation was so successful that they didn’t lock anybody up until it was all over.

I threw a great big party at the Diplomat Motel. I had 34 arrest warrants. I invited all the guys that I bought dope from. About 20 of them showed up. All dressed up, and everybody had Cadillacs and Mercedes. We had agents everywhere outside. Then I told them, “I am not a dope pusher like y’all scums.” They laughed. I said, “Y’all scums of the earth selling dope to your own. Take the dope up in Georgetown if you want to do something with it. Heroin. Cocaine. Get rid of it.” All of them laughed and laughed. And I said, “When I call your name, just raise your hand, ’cause you’ll be under arrest for selling these heroins.” And they laughed. And I call their names, and they raise their hand. Then these uniforms came in, and it wasn’t funny anymore.

But they put out a $25,000 contract on me.

I was in Judge Sirica’s court when they brought in the big dealer, Yellow Thompson. He had got a lot of confidence in me. Called me son all the time. He took me to New York and Vegas and showed me his connections in the Mafia and introduced me to some stars. He waved at me, and I waved back. Then they introduced everybody to the jury to make sure nobody in the jury knew any of the government witnesses. When they call on Special Agent Richard Ford, I stood up. And Thompson looked at me and started crying. He had a heart attack right there. I went to see him in the hospital though. I told him, “You cheap son-of-a-bitch. What’s this twenty-five-thousand-dollar contract? But first of all, I don’t have nothin’ personal against you. I can’t stand heroin dealers. I got children, and a family. I was on my job, and you wasn’t on yours. If you was, you wouldn’t have sold a newcomer that heroin.” We got along terrific after that. But I had to go see this numbers man, White Top. And he and the man behind him took me down to 9th Street in this Lincoln to this club. Everybody sayin’, “There go Rick, that no-good police.” But White Top and this dude bought me a drink. They didn’t drink nothing. Just said, “This is my son. Whatever he did, it’s over with. This is my son.” They
let me go, because I was not touching the numbers, just the drugs.

I got the gold medal from the police department, and they sent me and my wife to Greece. I got the American Legion Award, too, ’cause I was a Vietnam veteran doing all this good police work. But I left the department, because they wanted me to testify against policemen taking bribes. I said if you want me in internal affairs, make me a sergeant. They said if you want to stay in narcotics, we’ll get you in the federal bureau.

I was a federal agent until this thing went down in Jersey. We was working police corruption. This lieutenant was stealing dope out the property office and selling it back on the street. But somethin’ told me the investigation just wasn’t right. We had a snitch telling us about the lieutenant. But he had all the answers. He knew everything. He knows too much. I think he’s playing both ends against the middle. So one night, my partner and me are walking down this street going to meet the lieutenant to buy these heroins. This scout car comes driving down on us, hits us both, and the lieutenant jumps out and shoots me in the head. He knows that even if he didn’t sell no dope, we gon’ nab him. I didn’t have no gun, but I reach like I do from instinct. And the lieutenant took off. He went to jail, and the prisoners tried to rape him, kill him.

I retired on disability, because the wound gives me headaches. I do a little private security work now for lawyers, and I try to keep in touch with Davis and the other guys.

Davis tried to get a job with the New Orleans police, but they said he was too short. When it comes to weapons, Sir Davis is terrific. But he’s been in trouble. A drug thing, two assaults. He writes me sometimes. Tells me his light bulb is out. They trained us for one thing. To kill. Where is he gonna get a job? The Mafia don’t like blacks.

Hill went home first. Said send him all our grenades. He was on his way to Oakland to join the Panthers. Never heard nothin’ about him again.

Fowler got shot through the chest with a BAR. But he got home. He stays in trouble. He’s serving 15–45 in
Lewisburg for armed robbery.

Holmes got to computer school. He’s doing okay in San Diego. I don’t know what happened to Ferguson and Taylor.

Sir Drawers came over to see me for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He is still out of work. We marched together. When we got to the memorial, I grabbed his hand. Like brothers do. It was all swollen up.

We looked for one name on the memorial. Louis. We found it, and I called his mother. I told her it was nice, and she said she might be able to see it one day.

But I think the memorial is a hole in the ground. It makes me think they ashamed of what we did. You can’t see it from the street. A plane flying over it can’t see nothing but a hole in the ground.

And it really hurt me to see Westmoreland at the memorial, ’cause he said that we had no intentions of winning the war. What the hell was we over there for then? And the tactical thing was we fought it different from any way we was ever trained to fight in the States. They tell you about flanks, platoons, advance this. It wasn’t none of that. It was just jungle warfare. You jumped up and ran where you could run.

We went to church on the Sunday after the memorial thing. I was doing pretty good about Vietnam the last five years, ’cause I was active a whole lot. If I ever sit down and really think about it, it’s a different story.

My sister’s husband was with me. He got shrapnel in his eye. His vision is messed up. There were 2,000 people in the church. And the pastor gave us space to talk, ’cause we were the only two that went to Vietnam. My brother-in-law is a correction officer at the jail. So we’ve always been kind of aggressive. Ain’t scared that much. But we got up there to talk, and we couldn’t do nothing but cry. My wife cried. My children cried. The whole church just cried.

I thought about Louis and all the people that didn’t come back. Then people that wasn’t even there tell us the war was worthless. That a man lost his life following orders. It was worthless, they be saying.

I really feel used. I feel manipulated. I feel violated.

This dude, Lieutenant Calley, really didn’t do nothing, man. I know, because I use to be in the field. He didn’t do that on his own to My Lai. He was told to do that. We killed a whole lot of innocent gooks by mistake, because they were not suppose to be there. The GIs would take them out of their home. But dig this, the people’s religion is very strong. They can’t leave where they live. So I see why they would come back. I didn’t kill any civilians personally. But what I know now, maybe I shot a few. When the stuff happened, it happened so fast, most people got killed in the first 15 or 20 seconds. That’s how fast a fire fight happened.

The war in Vietnam didn’t do nothing but get a whole lot of guys fucked up for some money. There may have been a chance of having a base close to Red China. But actually it was fought for money. And the people in the world didn’t want it to stop. That marching to stop the
war was a whole lot of bullshit. Because, dig this, I seen this with my own eyes, because my MOS was humping the boonies. We found caches that the North Vietnamese got, full of sardines from Maine and even medical supplies from the U.S.

I wish the people in Washington could have walked through a hospital and seen the guys all fucked up. Seventeen-, eighteen-year-olds got casts from head to toes. This old, damn general might walk in and give them a damn Purple Heart. What in the hell do you do with a damn Purple Heart? Dudes got legs shot off and shit, got half their face gone and shit. Anything that you can mention that would make you throw up, that you can possibly dream of, happened.

Can you imagine walking around policing up someone’s body? Picking them up and putting them in a plastic bag? Maybe you find his arm here, his leg over there. Maybe you have to dig up somebody’s grave. Maybe he been there for a couple of days, and it will start stinking and shit. You dig graves. You open graves. You are an animal. You be out there so long until you begin to like to kill. You know, I even started doing that. I walked over a body of a North Vietnamese, and said, “That’s one motherfucker I don’t have to worry about.” It made me feel good to see him laying there dead. It made me feel good to see a human life laying down there dead.

I was twenty when I went to ’Nam. My people was from South Carolina. We was migrants. We picked string beans in New York. Strawberries in Florida. When my older brothers started to work in the canneries in Florida, we moved to Pompano Beach. My father, he only went to the fourth grade, but I finished high school. I wanted to go into the field of automation and computers at the time. I had saved some money, and my mother had saved some money. I only needed $27 to take this course in a junior college. I asked my brothers and sisters to loan me $27, and they wouldn’t do it. So I got a construction job helping carpenters. Then I had a feeling they were going to draft me, because only one of my brothers had been in the Army. They drafted me 29 days before my twentieth birthday. My boy was born when I was in basic training. I don’t think she wanted to get pregnant. I just think that
we just got carried away. I married her when I got out in ’72.

I really didn’t have an opinion of the war at first. I was praying that the war would bypass me. I chose not to evade the draft but to conform to it. I figured it was better to spend two years in the service than five years in prison. And I figured that for nineteen years I had enjoyed a whole lot of fruits of this society. I knew that you don’t get anything free in this world.