On-going Projects 2

2. Sequel to the book, Inconvenient Stories

Two years ago I was one of fifty American Vietnam veterans interviewed in an excellent book called, Inconvenient Stories, by Jeff Wolin. When I first got my copy I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. Finally there was a book that accurately portrayed what it had been like. One thing was missing though-- there was nothing about our opponents. I emailed Jeff and told him I thought the Vietnamese soldiers should have their say as well.

He agreed, and six months later we found ourselves braving the anarchic motorcycle traffic of Hanoi. For two straight weeks, day after day we spoke with veterans and heard the most incredible, heart wrenching stories. I hardly know where to begin. Everyone we spoke with had lost friends and relatives. Everyone contracted malaria. Practically everyone was wounded, usually numerous times.

A man I met by chance, the owner of a little business where I bought a few pieces of furniture, lived through a B-52 bombing raid in the jungle. Sitting quietly together in his store, I could only dimly imagine the horror and total chaos he described. As the bombs fell from the sky, trees all around him were suddenly uprooted and flying everywhere. He had no idea where he was. Everyone with him that day was killed. He was the only survivor.
We met a couple who married during the war. She had been a nurse in a hospital just across the border in Laos. He had been a patient. He was involved in transporting supplies across the border, so after his recovery they were able to see each other from time to time. I asked her to describe the wedding. She said it took place in a cave attended by about 100 comrades. Some brought flowers from the jungle and they all sang songs together. I asked her if she remembered the lyrics. “Yes”, she said. “Our favorite was about keeping Highway 9 open to defeat the imperialists.”

I met a musician who wrote a composition about a bombing raid he survived in a shallow tunnel with 42 men (40 died). One wall of his apartment was lined with speakers made from beer kegs cut in half with sound equipment inserted. The piece went on for ten minutes and consisted of pounding, crashing, tortured piano discordance, with a woman’s voice screaming, imploring and weeping in the background. I’ve never heard anything so disturbing.

He was wounded three times. Once from a machine gun mounted on a helicopter. Normally the NVA kept under cover of the jungle, but he was crossing a river one day and a chopper caught him totally exposed on a sandbar. The pilot and the door gunner were toying with him-– firing just behind him, then just in front of him. He was hit once. Figuring he was as good as dead, he turned around, faced the helicopter, and defiantly waved to them. The pilot waved back, then abruptly wheeled off to the side and, a moment later, was gone.

In my book I describe the defenses surrounding a base-- how impenetrable they seemed. I met the member of a sapper team who described to me how they breached them. “First”, he explained, “we were masters of camouflage. At nightfall, we removed all our clothes and coated ourselves and our rifles and satchel charges totally with mud. Lying on my belly, ten feet from you in broad daylight, you wouldn’t have seen me."

"We came crawling through in a delta formation”, he continued. “Anyone killed or wounded was dragged back out by one of the team, but the rest of us just kept moving forward. Usually the barbed wire obstacles had already been cut through by your own bullets, but the lead man still had to carefully look for flares and disable them without setting them off as he came through. If the wire wasn’t severed we’d put sticks beneath them, raise them a bit and crawl beneath them.”

They told their stories simply and without rancor. They treated me as just another old soldier who had been fortunate enough to make it through. I don’t normally drink alcohol these days, but there is a time for everything.