I felt sorry for the peasants of Vietnam when I got there and saw how they lived and what little was left of their country and families after at least nine years of their country being used as a battlefield. The country was quite decimated.

The middle-aged Vietnamese men were either dead or serving in the military, it was sad because there were no normal families left, only old and young people made up the families.

The peasants in the area often knew what areas might have land mines planted by the VC (our enemy, the Viet Cong).

The peasants couldn’t tell us because if the VC found out by way of sympathizers, the peasants would then get their arms cut off with tourniquets put near the shoulder to slow the death, and they might also be tied in barb wire to make moving them or aiding them difficult. Some peasants had to worry about both sides to survive and couldn’t tell us where the land mines were.

This made many U.S. soldiers angry, especially as U.S. soldiers stepping on mines would lose their legs, or fellow soldiers and friends would lose their legs. Some U.S. soldiers would hate the local peasants for not telling us where it was safe or dangerous to walk. Sometimes U.S. soldiers would put a noose or leash around the neck of a peasant and force the peasant to lead a safe way, therefore creating a bit more safety but not for the peasants.

I could understand both sides of the issue and it depressed me a lot. My mental state was pushed. We had so many rockets and mortars shot at our base that we didn’t expect to live. Bullets used to miss me by inches when I walked guard duty. I became fearless or more likely suicidal because I started volunteering for many patrols, usually occurring about 4 o’clock in the morning, after our base would get a lot of incoming (rockets and mortars). It would still be dark, often pitch black and we would go out walking thru trails and rice paddies that I didn’t know at all, we were trying to find those that were responsible for setting up the rockets and mortars, they would usually move them every hour and hide them if we patrolling for them. When gunshots would start happening it would be difficult to tell what was going on. Trying to figure out enemy fire or where to go or shoot was really a guess in the heat of battle and darkness.

The enemy was the North Vietnamese and they looked the same as the South Vietnamese peasants we were supposed to be helping. So here if you can imagine me at age 20 at 4 in the morning, in darkness checking whoever I found out in the countryside to see if they were working against us in some way like planting mines or shooting rockets and mortars at our base or at the U.S. Air Force that had a base near our Marine base.

I and my fellow Marines could not speak their language so there was really no way we could tell for sure when we came upon someone whether or not they were enemy or not. We would check their ID but we really had no idea what the ID was supposed to look like, we certainly couldn’t read their language.

All we could do is use our judgment, if they were acting suspicious, if they took off running we would shoot them. Sometimes we would get shot. Sometimes they would fool us, and we would let them go, then they go somewhere and plant more mines, do sniper shooting at us, or whatever, they had killed 40 or 50 thousand of my fellow troops by the time I got there. One friend of mine named Ray caught shrapnel around Danang and he was pulled out in one month. Another guy I know caught two bullets in his stomach after just 3 months in the area. They are both physically okay now but like myself (I was there 4 months) have PTSD signs.

It is rough sleeping and thinking after being in a close up war where people were shot on suspicious reasons and now in the U.S. when people do things that hurt us we are supposed to let it slide. It is also always in my mind all the civilians that get crippled and destroyed during a war, the sounds of bombing with its sudden destruction is scary and sad beyond belief. Winning a war is nothing to be happy about, and sadly losing wars is bad too.