and you know you dying. You might as well come on and take some of these gooks with us.”
Taylor said, “I’m not gonna die.”
He said, “Why you sittin’ there crying if you not gon’ die? You cryin’ cause you a big faggot, and you gettin’ ready to die.”
And he put the spunk back in Taylor. Davis would intimidate you into not dying.
So Taylor got to fightin’ until the medevac carried bothof them back. Matter of fact, all of us went back. I got hit in the head. Five steps off the chopper. Trying to be cool, I had took my helmet off, put my soft cap on. It knocked me down. I saw this blood. It was burning. I said, “I’ll be damned.”
The weird thing, after we always have a little jive assault, these majors and these idiots in the back would say they want a body count. Go back out there and find the bodies. After we found the body count, then we had to bury them. Geneva Convention says we have to bury ’em. And I said, “What the hell y’all talkin’ ’bout the Geneva Convention? We’re not in a war.”
I remember February 20. Twentieth of February. We went to this village outside Duc Pho. Search and destroy. It was suppose to have been VC sympathizers. They sent fliers to the people telling them to get out. Anybody else there, you have to consider them as a VC.
It was a little straw-hut village. Had a little church at the end with this big Buddha. We didn’t see anybody in the village. But I heard movement in the rear of this hut. I just opened up the machine gun. You ain’t wanna open the door, and then you get blown away. Or maybe they booby-trapped.
Anyway, this little girl screamed. I went inside the door. I’d done already shot her, and she was on top of the old man. She was trying to shield the old man. He looked like he could have been about eighty years old. She was about seven. Both of them was dead. I killed an old man and a little girl in the hut by accident.
I started feeling funny. I wanted to explain to someone. But everybody was there, justifying my actions, saying, “It ain’t your fault. They had no business there.” But I just—I ain’t wanna hear it. I wanted to go home then.
It bothers me now. But so many things happened after that, you really couldn’t lay on one thing. You had to keep going.
The flame throwers came in, and we burnt the hamlet. Burnt up everything. They had a lot of rice. We opened the bags, just throw it all over the street. Look for tunnels. Killing animals. Killing all the livestock. Guys would carry chemicals that they would put in the well. Poison thewater so they couldn’t use it. So they wouldn’t come back to use it, right? And it was trifling.
They killed some more people there. Maybe 12 or 14 more. Old people and little kids that wouldn’t leave. I guess their grandparents. See, people that were old in Vietnam couldn’t leave their village. It was like a ritual. They figured that this’ll pass. We’ll come and move on.
Sometimes we went in a village, and we found a lot of weapons stashed, little tunnels. On the twentieth of February we found nothing.
You know, it was a little boy used to hang around the base camp. Around Hill 54. Wasn’t no more than about eight years old. Spoke good English, a little French. Very sharp. His mother and father got killed by mortar attack on his village. I thought about that little girl. And I wanted to adopt him. A bunch of us wanted to. And we went out to the field, and then came back and he was gone.
We went in town looking for him, and we see these ARVNs pull up. We thought they was chasing Viet Congs. So the lieutenant and these two sergeants opened fire on these three guys running. Find out they weren’t Viet Cong. They were draft dodgers. ARVNs would come to the city and snatch you if you eighteen, sixteen, fifteen, or however old you are. Put you in uniform. So a lots of mothers would hide their sons from the ARVNs. These guys looked like they wasn’t no more than about fifteen. They
Taylor said, “I’m not gonna die.”
He said, “Why you sittin’ there crying if you not gon’ die? You cryin’ cause you a big faggot, and you gettin’ ready to die.”
And he put the spunk back in Taylor. Davis would intimidate you into not dying.
So Taylor got to fightin’ until the medevac carried bothof them back. Matter of fact, all of us went back. I got hit in the head. Five steps off the chopper. Trying to be cool, I had took my helmet off, put my soft cap on. It knocked me down. I saw this blood. It was burning. I said, “I’ll be damned.”
The weird thing, after we always have a little jive assault, these majors and these idiots in the back would say they want a body count. Go back out there and find the bodies. After we found the body count, then we had to bury them. Geneva Convention says we have to bury ’em. And I said, “What the hell y’all talkin’ ’bout the Geneva Convention? We’re not in a war.”
I remember February 20. Twentieth of February. We went to this village outside Duc Pho. Search and destroy. It was suppose to have been VC sympathizers. They sent fliers to the people telling them to get out. Anybody else there, you have to consider them as a VC.
It was a little straw-hut village. Had a little church at the end with this big Buddha. We didn’t see anybody in the village. But I heard movement in the rear of this hut. I just opened up the machine gun. You ain’t wanna open the door, and then you get blown away. Or maybe they booby-trapped.
Anyway, this little girl screamed. I went inside the door. I’d done already shot her, and she was on top of the old man. She was trying to shield the old man. He looked like he could have been about eighty years old. She was about seven. Both of them was dead. I killed an old man and a little girl in the hut by accident.
I started feeling funny. I wanted to explain to someone. But everybody was there, justifying my actions, saying, “It ain’t your fault. They had no business there.” But I just—I ain’t wanna hear it. I wanted to go home then.
It bothers me now. But so many things happened after that, you really couldn’t lay on one thing. You had to keep going.
The flame throwers came in, and we burnt the hamlet. Burnt up everything. They had a lot of rice. We opened the bags, just throw it all over the street. Look for tunnels. Killing animals. Killing all the livestock. Guys would carry chemicals that they would put in the well. Poison thewater so they couldn’t use it. So they wouldn’t come back to use it, right? And it was trifling.
They killed some more people there. Maybe 12 or 14 more. Old people and little kids that wouldn’t leave. I guess their grandparents. See, people that were old in Vietnam couldn’t leave their village. It was like a ritual. They figured that this’ll pass. We’ll come and move on.
Sometimes we went in a village, and we found a lot of weapons stashed, little tunnels. On the twentieth of February we found nothing.
You know, it was a little boy used to hang around the base camp. Around Hill 54. Wasn’t no more than about eight years old. Spoke good English, a little French. Very sharp. His mother and father got killed by mortar attack on his village. I thought about that little girl. And I wanted to adopt him. A bunch of us wanted to. And we went out to the field, and then came back and he was gone.
We went in town looking for him, and we see these ARVNs pull up. We thought they was chasing Viet Congs. So the lieutenant and these two sergeants opened fire on these three guys running. Find out they weren’t Viet Cong. They were draft dodgers. ARVNs would come to the city and snatch you if you eighteen, sixteen, fifteen, or however old you are. Put you in uniform. So a lots of mothers would hide their sons from the ARVNs. These guys looked like they wasn’t no more than about fifteen. They
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