BODIES AND BATTLES: WHAT COMBAT IN VIETNAM FELT LIKE

Many ask what it was like in combat in Vietnam. I’ll tell you this: the body and the senses became sharper than anything else. I felt like a suit, a vessel, trudging through the rain, the mud, the smoke, the fire, barely hanging on to my edge, knowing I was one step from breaking.

The body broke down under it all. Day after day, we waded through the water, thick with mud, leeches attaching, insects feasting on us. There was no escape. Not one day went by without feeling that slow rot setting in.

The injuries to my neck, my shoulder, my leg — they never leave me. The pain still comes, sharp, familiar. My skin flares up in rashes, and there is a constant need for ointment and medicine.

You learn quickly in Vietnam: everything’s trying to kill you. The enemy, sure, but that’s only one part of it. You feared the incoming artillery, the air strikes, where the ground was the target. The coordinates we called in for support made us targets, too. The intelligence? Outdated by the time we got it.

There were times when I wondered about the lives we took. I never thought I’d regret it, but the moments came more than once. “Look what they made us do,” one of the men said, standing over the bodies of children mistaken for the enemy. The war kept coming, and nothing ever changed. Each day…