HELL ON EARTH: ONE YEAR SURVIVING VIETNAM’S BATTLEFIELDS

Of all the choices we made on the battlefields of Vietnam, the hardest one was finding the courage to make them count. Every decision became laced with a hidden danger, some unseen trap waiting to snap shut. You couldn’t see it initially, not in the confusion or the noise. But it was always there, crouching for the right moment to make you wish you’d never moved at all.

I learned that nothing and no one was there to help us. Everything and everyone had intentions to kill us — even if we did nothing. My buddy Montrose just sat drinking coffee in the mess tent, and he had no idea his time was up. A rocket came in — one that usually passed over the base and disappeared into nothing — but that day, it found him. That was how it went. If it wasn’t an enemy bullet or mortar, it was our artillery, expanding their coordinates so they’d hit us, too. Or the Air Force, sending bombs and rockets that didn’t care about the map. And the diseases. Agent Orange. It was all part of it, each piece worse than the last.

The Vietnam War, you see, became Uncle Sam’s Loony Tune vacation that didn’t send us to some exotic place for a break. It was no more than a twisted kind of game, a “survivor” show played out in hell. We couldn’t have imagined how stupid and horrible it was. Not then.