SURVIVAL, SUFFERING, AND LAUGHTER: LESSONS FROM VIETNAM COMBAT

The jungle was thick, and the enemy emplacements were everywhere. It made continuing the mission impossible. I returned to base, talked to logistics, and then to General Brothers. We went over it all. In the end, we decided to come at it from another direction. Brothers ordered a defoliant drop and an artillery barrage before we’d move in.

Here’s the thing. We saw it as the UH-1 flew low over the jungle, heading toward the mountains — a clearing, like a wound in the earth. The trees were gone, the land was dead. We looked down and wondered how it happened.

If I hadn’t thought it before, I felt it then: Nothing was ever what I’d think it would be in Vietnam. Not what I planned, not what I expected. And then, it hit me — if the land could change that quickly, what would it do to us?

I didn’t know about Agent Orange. I didn’t realize that toxic spray would turn the land into that or that we’d move through the residue. I didn’t know then. But I would learn many things before the end.

It went on like that. Every day, something new. Some strange things, some threats, some way the world tried to kill us. But I didn’t have time to think about it. We just survived. We treated the cuts, the bites, the burns, the rashes. We set the dislocated shoulders, bandaged the…