THE LIE OF VIETNAM: COMBAT AND CONSEQUENCES

After Montrose died, the thought came that fear and grief were tied together. They were like rivers in spring. You couldn’t slow them down, nor could you damn them up. But we had to channel them, somehow, on the battlefields of Vietnam. There was no time for hesitation, no time to think. You just moved. You just reacted. You had to because if you didn’t, the enemy would come down on you and take you out, just like that.

We stayed alive in those firefights, battles, and moments with nothing but chaos, using everything we had — our skill, endurance, wits, and firepower. We made it, most of us, but not all. The odds were never in our favor. And there were times, actual times when we ran low on ammo, or the word came that reinforcements wouldn’t make it in time. Those were the challenging moments. Those were the times that would stick in your throat.

The men who commanded us in those moments — those who had seen combat and knew what it meant to be in the thick of it — saved thousands. But still, 58,000 of us died. More than 150,000 came back wounded. You say those numbers, you say them a thousand times, and they still don’t make sense. They don’t add up. I’ll never make peace with them. I’ll never understand why those responsible thought they could keep a war going, a war built on a lie. The lie we could stop communism in Southeast Asia.