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Authors: Richard Paul Evans
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demanded it.
Just as oppressive as the humidity was the country’s smell. The jungle is thick and wet, a massive, living compost that fills the air with heat and the stench of decay.
We were immediately taken to bunkers to sleep. That night we came under mortar and rocket fire, and most of us newbies stayed up expecting an attack until one of the MPs asked us why we weren’t sleeping. When we told him he laughed. He said this was just the Vietcong welcoming us to Nam.
Early the next morning we were rushed out onto a large, fenced-in field to be given our assignments. An officer with a bullhorn addressed us with a greeting I’ll never forget.
He said, “Welcome to Vietnam. This will likely be the most interesting year of your life. Some of you will go home. Some of you won’t. Try to be one of those who goes home.”
Then he walked around shouting out our assignments. The parceling took about an hour. I didn’t have to wait long before he shouted, “Christoffersen, First Cavalry.”
The 1st Cavalry was an air-mobile unit, meaning we were flown into combat by helicopters. As we walked to our assignments, we passed soldiers going home. They were on the other side of a chain-link fence, and most of them were pretty ragged looking. One of the soldiers came up next to the fence and waved us over. “Hey, newbies.”
Me and two others walked up to him.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d kill myself right now.”
The first month in the jungle is the most critical for survival, because you don’t know what you don’t know. I was there to take over for a platoon leader who had just three weeks left. I had to learn fast. I was fortunate to have a new best friend, a Chinese-Cambodian man named Tac Fuhn. He was what the army called a Kit Carson Scout, but he was really just a mercenary and was paid for every VC we killed. I asked him why he worked for us instead of the North Vietnamese. He replied, “The Americans pay more.” Every day I was glad he was on our side.
My first firefight came after two weeks in the bush. We walked into a clearing and saw four VC in their black pajama-like uniforms. Both sides were equally surprised, and we both fired. I shot off about thirty rounds. I told Fuhn that I thought I got one of them. He laughed and said, “Only if he was hanging from the top of the tree.”
I had wondered if, when the time came, I would be able to shoot another man. I discovered that, when someone’s shooting at you, it’s pretty easy to shoot back. I was fortunate that my first encounter with the enemy was just a few VC and not an ambush with a dug-in army.
Pasted in the book was a picture of my father I had never seen before. He was fifteen years younger in thepicture than I was now. This was not an image of the staid accountant I knew. My father was an action figure.
I spent the next ten months in the bush. We became soldiers. Tough. Confident. Skilled. We learned to remain calm under fire. My biggest fear wasn’t death, it was being captured or, worse, losing one of my men. I have heard that new mothers have dreams about losing their babies. Sometimes I had dreams about losing one of my men. There’s a bonding that takes place that only someone under such duress can understand.
Everyone had a nickname: Val, Slim, Abe, Sparky, Willy-boy, Wailin’ Wagers, Forkey, and Flash. My men just called me L.T. or Lieutenant, though after a few months some took to calling me Lucky, since I never got hit in battle.
In some ways, I knew my men better than their own mothers knew them; when a man faces mortality, you see who he really is. I learned that, in the face of death, these men I commanded would come through for me. I lovedthem, and I discovered that I worried about them more than I worried about myself. I’m proud to say that I only lost one of them, though by the end of my deployment, most of them had been wounded.
The Vietnamese were deadly opponents, and every firefight reminded us of that. The
Just as oppressive as the humidity was the country’s smell. The jungle is thick and wet, a massive, living compost that fills the air with heat and the stench of decay.
We were immediately taken to bunkers to sleep. That night we came under mortar and rocket fire, and most of us newbies stayed up expecting an attack until one of the MPs asked us why we weren’t sleeping. When we told him he laughed. He said this was just the Vietcong welcoming us to Nam.
Early the next morning we were rushed out onto a large, fenced-in field to be given our assignments. An officer with a bullhorn addressed us with a greeting I’ll never forget.
He said, “Welcome to Vietnam. This will likely be the most interesting year of your life. Some of you will go home. Some of you won’t. Try to be one of those who goes home.”
Then he walked around shouting out our assignments. The parceling took about an hour. I didn’t have to wait long before he shouted, “Christoffersen, First Cavalry.”
The 1st Cavalry was an air-mobile unit, meaning we were flown into combat by helicopters. As we walked to our assignments, we passed soldiers going home. They were on the other side of a chain-link fence, and most of them were pretty ragged looking. One of the soldiers came up next to the fence and waved us over. “Hey, newbies.”
Me and two others walked up to him.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d kill myself right now.”
The first month in the jungle is the most critical for survival, because you don’t know what you don’t know. I was there to take over for a platoon leader who had just three weeks left. I had to learn fast. I was fortunate to have a new best friend, a Chinese-Cambodian man named Tac Fuhn. He was what the army called a Kit Carson Scout, but he was really just a mercenary and was paid for every VC we killed. I asked him why he worked for us instead of the North Vietnamese. He replied, “The Americans pay more.” Every day I was glad he was on our side.
My first firefight came after two weeks in the bush. We walked into a clearing and saw four VC in their black pajama-like uniforms. Both sides were equally surprised, and we both fired. I shot off about thirty rounds. I told Fuhn that I thought I got one of them. He laughed and said, “Only if he was hanging from the top of the tree.”
I had wondered if, when the time came, I would be able to shoot another man. I discovered that, when someone’s shooting at you, it’s pretty easy to shoot back. I was fortunate that my first encounter with the enemy was just a few VC and not an ambush with a dug-in army.
Pasted in the book was a picture of my father I had never seen before. He was fifteen years younger in thepicture than I was now. This was not an image of the staid accountant I knew. My father was an action figure.
I spent the next ten months in the bush. We became soldiers. Tough. Confident. Skilled. We learned to remain calm under fire. My biggest fear wasn’t death, it was being captured or, worse, losing one of my men. I have heard that new mothers have dreams about losing their babies. Sometimes I had dreams about losing one of my men. There’s a bonding that takes place that only someone under such duress can understand.
Everyone had a nickname: Val, Slim, Abe, Sparky, Willy-boy, Wailin’ Wagers, Forkey, and Flash. My men just called me L.T. or Lieutenant, though after a few months some took to calling me Lucky, since I never got hit in battle.
In some ways, I knew my men better than their own mothers knew them; when a man faces mortality, you see who he really is. I learned that, in the face of death, these men I commanded would come through for me. I lovedthem, and I discovered that I worried about them more than I worried about myself. I’m proud to say that I only lost one of them, though by the end of my deployment, most of them had been wounded.
The Vietnamese were deadly opponents, and every firefight reminded us of that. The
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