I believe that confusion is a major component of hell. If that is so, then I entered a portal to hell when I left Di An for the first time, as a rifleman in a combat unit in the First Infantry Division. It was a couple days after the arm wrestling match with Charlie Bell, when my entire unit moved out on foot to patrol in force just north of Di An. Boy oh boy, did I ever so quickly become immersed in that hellish confusion in a very personal way. I had already witnessed from afar the incompetence in the command structure but now I was about to experience that incompetence first hand. What I am about to tell the reader completely blew my mind. You see, during that week of refresher training, I had discovered that my M-16 was worthless. It would only shoot one round and jam every time after shooting that one round. To make matters worse, the first several inches of the barrel was clogged with the residue of tracer rounds which had been fired in the rifle by past users. That left a restriction in the end of the barrel which would strip the jacket off the bullet, causing that one round to fragment into tiny pieces as it left the end of the barrel. I immediately brought this to the attention of my nameless squad leader. He did absolutely nothing to see that I got a functioning rifle. I was forced to leave Di An with this useless weapon and carry that weapon into a combat zone for several days before I was able to trade weapons with a soldier who was going home. Fortunately, that weapon was a trusty M-14.

     During the Christmas Holiday of 1966 we were camped out north of Di An. We were being used as a security force to protect Saigon. Other units in the First Infantry Division were gearing up for a large push into the Iron Triangle. Our three hundred pound plus head cook for the battalion was nicknamed “Tiny”. He prepared a delicious Christmas meal. It was flown out to us in the field and Tiny came along to oversee the serving of that meal. He was not expected to do that. There was also a meal to be served in the mess hall at Di An. He could have stayed there and let his subordinates serve the meal in the field. "Tiny" always went way beyond what anyone expected of him. Actually, I was so new that I did not know what was expected of myself, much less a cook. 

     After the New Year, my on the job training began in earnest. The entire battalion began making sweeps, on foot, while accompanied by a large contingent of South Vietnamese Government troops (ARVINS). These sweeps took us through small villages, rice patties, patches of thick bamboo, forested jungle, and across large muddy leech ridden streams. Charlie Bell and I played follow the leader. Time wise, this consumed the month of December and also the first part of January. Things really did not seem all that bad. Actually, I was beginning to think that being in a combat unit might not be as bad as I had imagined. Compliant and friendly civilians surrounded us everywhere we went. We traveled on foot through one small village after another. Doll faced children would often intermingle amongst us looking for handouts. Some would have items to sell, like cold cokes, sunglasses, and cigarette lighters. I am sure they also sold “pot” to those who wanted it. I had no idea what marijuana was at this time. Not only did I not know that there was such a drug as marijuana, but I had also never smoked a cigarette or drank a single bottle of beer in my entire life. It was not that I had moral issues with these habits. I just thought that they were extremely destructive to the only human body that I would ever have. I needed that body to be in top condition, especially in a war zone. I had seen too many beer guzzlers not much older than myself sporting beer bellies. That was very disgusting to the narcissistic side of me!    

    However, narcissism was the least of my problems. I could have lived a long time as a narcissist. I could have lived long enough for the Holy Spirit to possibly deliver me from this debilitating trait. However, the evil controlling my life had delivered me up to forces which had now turned me into a walking dead man and my president had been conned into doing his part to see that through. Lyndon Johnson was one of the greatest Washington deal makers to ever come down the pike, but it would take more than a Washington deal to solve this problem which he had inherited from Kennedy. Johnson wanted to do the right thing in Vietnam. However, there have been many who wanted to do the right thing and yet failed to do it. There are forces controlling this world which no human, within themselves, can overcome. Without the wisdom of God to guide us, not a single person, who has ever lived, can successfully stand against the evil which seeks to consume all of humanity.

    On January 8th, 1967, Operation Cedar Falls was set in motion, but my unit was not part of the main thrust. We were further south, and we were used as a blocking force, to protect Saigon. A place called the Iron Triangle is where the main part of the operation would take place. I had no idea that the Army had launched such a large operation until years later. At the time, I did not know the name of this operation. We had just gotten a new battalion commander, but I did not know his name either. He did not bother to introduce himself to the men he was getting ready to send into harm’s way. Of course, this is just a minor example of the breakdown in command communications with us grunts. I could continue talking about those types of breakdowns until the cows come home.

     During this time, quite frankly, it seemed like Charlie Bell, and I lived in our own little world. We were not asked to do anything out of the ordinary, like carrying ammo for the machine gunner, walk point, or heaven forbid, carry a radio. There was a man assigned to carry a grenade launcher, and a radio operator (RTO) already assigned. There was also a designated man to walk point, and he liked his job. As I said, Charlie Bell and I just coasted. It almost seemed as though we were invisible to the others around us. Thinking back fifty years later, this period in my tour was more like friends going on a guided hiking trip. Before settling in at night, I remember experimenting with making cups of hot chocolate from C-rations. I added packages of powdered creamer to the powdered coco. That gave it a richer flavor. Then I heated it up in my tin canteen over a little ball of C-4 explosive. C-4 explosive was similar in texture to play dough. It was easy to roll into a golf ball sized ball, which could then be lit with a match. It would never explode. Instead, it would just burn very evenly. I could boil a canteen cup full of water in just a couple minutes.   

    For me, the cold was the worst part of this period. I was shivering all night, lying on the ground, under my plastic poncho, while Charlie Bell slept like a baby under his nice warm poncho liner. It was the dry season, so we never got wet. However, nights were still extremely uncomfortable for me. Daytime temperatures reached at least the high nineties. At night they would drop into the mid-seventies or lower. That made the nights feel really cold. The coveted camouflaged nylon poncho liners would provide all the warmth needed but I could not get one. Supplies of them were running low at this time. I remember shivering all night long, night after night. However, it was really nothing to complain about, especially when comparing this minor hardship to what other Americans had been forced to endure in other wars. I hesitate to mention it except to give the reader a sense of how smoothly things were going for me personally, although the larger organization was poorly run. If this was the worst complaint I had, then looking back, things had to be going fairly smooth. Finally, I did find a temporary solution for facing the cold nights. I covered up with newspapers. For the life of me, I cannot remember where I found these newspapers, but they worked.

    Earl Denton was the name of our battalion commander. He did not require us to dig fox holes. That helped further the illusion of just being on a big camping trip. Also, I don’t remember going on ambush patrols, except once. That is not to say that this was like just one big training exercise. One night the Viet Cong booby trapped exit routes around our night defensive position. Shortly after moving out the next day some people up front were gravely wounded. There was another incident where a sniper killed one of our guys in the lead platoon. Naturally, it was a sobering experience.

    Another time in December, while on a break at Di An, my B Company was trucked to a pier on the Saigon River and loaded onto Navy patrol boats. Those boats took us down the Saigon River into the Rang Sat Swamp. It was over four hundred square miles of mangrove trees and marshes located between Saigon and the South China Sea. We set up a nighttime river ambush on enemy boat traffic using the river. In the middle of the night, we made contact with the enemy, but the contact was on the far side away from the section of river that my squad was covering. Although I could hear and see outgoing and incoming tracer rounds flying all around us, no target presented itself for my squad to engage. This action only lasted about ten minutes and then all was eerily quiet for the rest of the night. Again, this close encounter with the enemy, without experiencing any casualties, gave me a feeling that everything was going to be okay in the coming year.

    That feeling did start to change somewhat the next morning as we assembled and were waiting to board the Navy boats to take us home. Some of the members of my unit who had initiated the engagement the night before started talking. They said that they had shot up several enemy sampans coming down the river and had been successful in sinking them. As I was listening to these guys talk about the details of this fresh kill, a very strange and a very disturbing feeling came over me, which I had never felt before in my entire life. Although I did not realize it until years later, this feeling was coming from that part of my soul which was sensitive to the influence of the Holy Spirit. It was a strange feeling that I really didn’t think that I could experience. It was actually the Holy Spirit’s grief that I was feeling. He was grieving over the physical deaths of those poor enemy souls who probably went to hell. I know this feeling of grief did not come from me because I was actually disappointed that I had not been in the right location to kill somebody. How weird is that? It had to be the Holy Spirit’s grief and not mine that I was sensing. I had received the anointing of the Holy Spirit when I was eleven years old. I had also grieved over the death of the American soldier, who days earlier was killed by that sniper, but that grief, though sorrowfully felt, was not disturbingly unusual. I could tell the difference. It was a natural grief which originated from my human soul. It had nothing to do with being able to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit. However, this grief I felt for my enemy was coming from God’s viewpoint. God takes no pleasure in sending any human soul to hell. I now realize that the Holy Spirit of God grieves over every single soul that goes to hell.

     Here is another very profound truth for the taking. God’s Holy Spirit places His calling on every human being who has ever lived. He beckons everyone on the face of the earth, who has the wherewithal to choose, to believe in Christ, as Lord of all. Although our choice to believe may only happen at a very deep subconscious level, nevertheless, if heeded, that will trigger a new spiritual birth. This, in turn, ushers us into the eternal life provided by Christ. Even a self-avowed Atheist receives this call from God, so there is no excuse for ignoring it. The reader can be assured that at some point in their life each one of those lost souls, killed in all wars, on all sides, has received that calling. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life”. The Bible goes on to say in 2 Peter 3:9 that God is not slack concerning this promise as some would consider slackness but is very patient toward us. He is not willing that anyone should perish, but that all should repent (of their unbelief) and believe in Christ.

    In January, my unit continually went out on short battalion sweeps. We were a foot covering an area just north of Di An. I don’t remember firing a single shot. This absence of contact continued to reinforce my sense of false security. I see now why armies draft teenagers. They really do live in the moment. On the 8th of January my unit was taking a day off before moving out on foot again the next day. The largest operation of the war to date, Operation Cedar Falls, was about to begin, but I didn’t know that. We were treated like mushrooms. We were kept in the dark and fed a lot of bull crap. On those rare days in the rear, some of the guys in my squad went to the enlisted man’s club on base. Some went to the PX, some just spent time writing letters and playing cards around our company’s sleeping area. As I have said before, our living area was several rows of rectangular shaped World War II era Army tents. I cannot remember exactly how I crossed paths with the motor pool sergeant, but he was to become a very important connection. He had grown up as an army brat. Many of my classmates at Kecoughtan high school were army brats. I was just naturally drawn to them. Most of them were high achievers and I liked smart people. This young motor pool sergeant seemed to fit the mold and thus reminded me of a little piece of my home turf. I found out later that he was the son of an Army Colonel. My family had some friends who were high ranking officers because we lived near several military bases. One day while my unit was taking time off at Di An, I wound up driving this motor pool sergeant and about three or four other guys around the outside perimeter of Di An. It was huge. After circling Di An, for the second time, things got pretty boring. I slowed to a stop when we approached the main gate for the second time. What were we going to do next? There was still plenty of daylight left. Someone suggested driving to the nearest town. I had been through there on patrols, so that sounded like a good idea. Everybody was drinking beer, except me, and definitely feeling the buzz. That made the idea of driving to town sound even better. I was not drinking, and I thought it was a good idea too. The town was located about two miles from Di An. When I had been through there on foot, everyone seemed friendly. I had no security concerns about our little road trip today. The very likable and highly inebriated motor pool Sergeant quickly put his blessing on the idea and away we went.

    During the day, all kinds of army vehicles were coming and going on that road, to town, as well as hundreds of civilian vehicles. Just as I was shifting into second gear, one of the guys sitting in the back yelled at me. “Hey, those girls at the bus stop are hollowing at us”. When I looked in the side mirror I could see three Vietnamese teenagers, who were waiting at the bus stop, which we had just drove past. They were waving their arms for us to come back. They were also saying something, but I couldn’t understand them. I stopped the truck and started backing up. I angled it out of traffic and parked close to the bus stop waiting area. Buses ferried hundreds of Vietnamese workers to and from our base. I was now close enough to the girls to hear what one of them was saying. She spoke good English. “Hey G.I., don’t go down that road. Beaucoup VC”. In English, The Vietnamese slang word, beaucoup, means a large number. She was telling us that there were a large number of Viet Cong located down the road somewhere. With a very anxious expression on her face, she repeated herself several times. I looked at the motor pool sergeant. He was sitting to my right. He looked back at me while shaking his head. No words were exchanged. I did a U-turn. Everyone on that truck kept silent. That silence seemed to say that being bored was far better than dying. Instead of going to town, we rode around the compound one more time before it was time for chow. My entire unit moved out the next day, on foot, walking north. My new buddy, the motor pool Sgt., went back to his duties and nothing more was mentioned to anyone about what that girl had said to us. We grunts were not encouraged to pass on information which may have been good intelligence. What a pity. Encouraging us to do that could have saved lives. Before we split up, the motor pool sergeant ask me if I would like to have a job driving one of his trucks. Of course, I said yes, but that job would be a long time coming.

    The next day was "dark of the moon", January 9th, 1967, and would become the deadliest day of the entire Vietnam War for the 1/18th Infantry Battalion. I say again, If only a concerted effort had been made to encourage grunts like me to pass on information. Seven people were killed in our headquarters mechanized recon patrol on this day. As they had probably done in past patrols, they drove past a school in that same town that those girls had warned us not to visit. The ambushers were waiting inside the school. They opened up on our recon patrol with I.E.D.s, machine guns and RPGs. The patrol didn't stand a chance. We were warned the day before at that bus stop about this, so it’s obvious that the word was out, amongst civilians at least that far in advance. Had Westmoreland seen to it that a national police force was created to not only provide twenty four hour security to towns like this, but also to be our eyes and ears, this attack would not have occurred. Petraeus did that years later in Iraq and proved what I am saying here to be true. An ambush like this needed to be planned well in advance. Those plans could not be hidden from the civilian population. They always knew in advance. The missing ingredient to be able to thwart such attacks was a massive well-trained police. Those forces needed to be stationed in towns throughout Vietnam. Instead, Westmoreland tried to turn the Vietnamese Army into clones of our own military. Vietnam was not an industrialized nation. That wasn't going to work. It was folly from the very beginning. If local youth had been drafted into a national police force, and then trained,  stationed, and given the resources to protect their own hometowns, they would have become a strong deterrent. These young men and also women would have then had skin in the game, protecting their own families. However, my research indicated the importance of doing this never crossed Westmoreland's mind.

    As this disconcerting news came to us, we were combing through seemingly peaceful settlements amid vast rice fields of peaceful workers and water buffaloes south of the Iron Triangle. The main operation was taking place within the Iron Triangle itself, which was north of us. I do not remember a single shot being fired in my direction after running large patrols for days. However, recently I discovered casualty reports which tell a different story. They say that we had to be making contact regularly, because people were dying, and they weren't dying of old age. My battalion of about 300 men was suffering casualties from hit and run attacks almost every other day or so. It's funny how my young mind pushed these events aside. That probably happened because those thoughts had nothing to do with me directly. On patrol after patrol, a few shots would be heard. The contact would usually be at the front of the patrol, out of sight of the rest of us. Our line of march would halt. People would light up cigarettes. Maybe there was an explosion or maybe two or three. We would continue standing around waiting to be told what to do next. Maybe a burst of machine gun fire could be heard. After a little bit, a med-evac (dust-off) would fly over and land out of sight. Then we would continue on our way. I might not know that someone died that day, until over fifty years later, when I was able to get my hands on the killed in action (KIA) reports.

    One day I remember my battalion approaching a small river, flowing through vast rice fields. Through the vegetation lining the banks of this river we could see a few roof tops of huts. It was a small village on the other side of that stream. Most of this village was hidden from our sight by the foliage on the riverbank. We did not cross the stream. Instead, we settled into three-man positions on this side of the stream opposite the village. My position just happened to be where there was a break in the vegetation. From this vantage point, I could see across the stream and into the village itself. It looked like this was a main crossing for workers living in the village and working in the rice fields behind us. Charlie Bell, I, and another guy sat on the ground about 10 meters or so from the edge of the riverbank. As I have already mentioned, our battalion commander, Lt. Colonel Denton, did not require us to dig in. I don’t remember our squad leader communicating with us very much at all. He disappeared further upstream for the entire night. We seemed to be sitting on that riverbank in a world all to ourselves. I also don't remember being able to see our other positions to my right, or to my left. Perhaps that was because they had chosen to hide in the scattered vegetation along the riverbank. We chose to be out in the open because we wanted to be able to see into the village. It seemed like a logical thing to do. I took first watch, while Charlie Bell and the other guy went to sleep. I remember sitting on the ground staring aimlessly down the twenty-five-foot embankment and across seventy feet or so of fast flowing waist deep water. The sound of that flowing water was relaxing. A number of kids and three or four older young men played in the water. After dark, I could see a few lights in the village. By this time, however, no one was in the river itself.

     Earlier in the day, as we crossed those rice fields behind us, there were government soldiers (ARVINS) traveling with us. The plan was for us to surround the village and seal it off, while they entered the village themselves and interrogated the villagers. I have no idea where they camped for the night.  However, I do know that they did not enter the village until the next morning. If they had, what was about to happen would never have happened.

     During Earl Denton's entire time in command, we dug only shallow prone positions, the length of one’s body and no more than a foot deep. A good grunt only did what he was told to do. This time we were not told to dig prone positions either. However, that turned out to be very fortuitous, indeed.  As a new guy, I listened and obeyed anyone who had more time or more stripes than me. It took a little time for me to realize that doing this was not always a good idea.

    As I sit there peering toward the river, day turned to night. At some point, I slowly raised my gaze from the tree line toward what had become a beautiful night sky. While gazing at that night sky, something very unexpected happened. The magnificent view of the star-studded heavens above seemed to reach into my soul and draw out a very pleasant feeling. That good feeling began to erase some of those contentious thoughts which had been growing like weeds in the past few days. The unspoken but deep dread of what would more than likely happen to me began to dissipate. In that brief moment, the peace of God rolled over my troubled mind like a tsunami. As I continued gazing at the stars, I found myself dreaming of someday seeing this same dazzling display again from the backyard of my Grandfather's farmhouse in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. It was a haunting hope arising as if from the grave and was the first time that I actually thought about the possibility of surviving my current predicament. I say again, it was a very pleasant and welcome sensation.

    However, there was another dreamer afoot. While I was gazing at the stars and dreaming, he, too, was dreaming. In the next few minutes, it would be Satan’s dreams which would come true and not mine. Hell, and death were on their way and there was no human being on earth who could stop him. In less than one hour I would be dead. Charlie Bell would also be dead. The other man with us would die too. Many times, this is the way that death came in Vietnam. It came so unexpectedly and so very quickly and not in the middle of a battle, where one expected to die at any moment. Instead, death often came in the midst of quiet and calm. Those devils who had oppressed me for so long would have to find others to torment. I was well on my way to my long sleep. After that, I would most certainly arise to behold the face of my Savior, Jesus Christ, because my soul was secure. I had confessed Christ as Lord of all, at an early age and become a new creature, to be given a new name. However, my earthly legacy would be greatly diminished. There was only one thing on earth which could save my legacy now and that was the small still voice of the Holy Spirit.

    “Stop looking at the stars and move your bed”, that small still voice whispered. With that, my soul was suddenly aroused out of the comfortable dreamlike state which had settled over it. “Move your bedding behind that clump of bushes at the edge of the riverbank”, the voice went on to say. Okay, I thought to myself. Then I immediately groped in the dark to find Charlie Bell. Charlie Bell was laying on his back with his head resting on his ruck sack. I reached down and felt around for his shoulder. As I pressed down softly on that shoulder, he awoke. I had awakened him this way many times before. It was not a shock to him. He opened his eyes and rubbed his face with both hands but made very little movement after that. Instead, he waited quietly for me to speak. “I feel a little uneasy for some reason, Charlie, about being in the open like this. Let’s move our position over toward those bushes”, As I finished whispering this, he reach down and unclipped his red lens flashlight from his ruck sack. He shined it first in my face and then on the spot where my finger was pointing. I was pointing to a thick clump of bushes only about ten yards away and very close to the riverbank. Charlie then shook his head in agreement and put his flashlight away. Without saying a word, the other half-awakened guy followed us. It took less than a minute for the three of us to quietly move all our gear to this new location. We were now completely hidden from anyone who might be looking across at us, from the village side of the river. Of course, in the complete darkness, no one would have been able to see us move into the new position.

    After settling in for the rest of the night, I took my turn getting some sleep. That’s when it happened. Since I was asleep, I did not hear the enemy mortars being fired from across the river. Mortars made a distinctive thumping sound as they were fired from their tubes. Although I did not hear that, I was greatly startled from a deep sleep, when the shells, themselves, landed very close to us. However, we really didn't know what had just happened until the next morning. You see, a combat soldier was assigned a position to hold at all costs until told otherwise. We were not free to leave that position unless given orders to do so. This could be the beginning of a ground attack. We didn't know and we were not going to expose ourselves running around trying to investigate explosions in the middle of the night. We simply had to stay put and defend our current position. Interestingly enough, had we been given orders to dig in when we first arrived on that riverbank, we would not have moved even the ten yards or so behind better concealment. We would not have wanted to dig in a second time. It is also important to note that those prone shelters had no overhead cover and offered very little protection from mortars.

    Just after dawn broke the next morning, my squad leader and platoon leader came over to our position and stood beside me and Charlie Bell. We all stood there staring down at what looked like two little blackened depressions in the ground. They were the imprints of mortar shell blasts. They had struck the hard ground on the exact spot where we had been sleeping before moving to that new location. Had the Holy Spirit not told me to move, the three of us would have been blown apart by those mortar rounds.

    As I have mentioned, we were working with a large ARVIN (South Vietnamese Army) force which went into the villages, themselves, and did the actual interrogations of the villagers. My unit’s only job was to simply seal off the village. It was seemingly an easy job. Compared to what the 1/18th would be doing in the coming months this operation was mere child’s play. However, in January we sustained the highest number of people killed of any other month of the war. We lost almost as many people in January as were lost the entire rest of the year.

     The morning seemed to pass quickly but we were still holding our positions on the riverbank where we were mortared. We were hanging around much longer than usual. Everyone was getting a little restless because we should have been well on our way, by now. However, today was different. Most of the time, when delays happened we grunts were never given a reason for those delays. Unlike those other times, however, I would learn in a most surprisingly horrific way the reason for today's delay. I remember sitting down and leaning back against some small saplings, using my ruck sack as a cushion. From here, I could still see across the river. I was expecting the word to come down to saddle up at any minute. The cold breakfast of C-rations had long since been eaten and was now churning away in my gut. My M-14 was laying across my lap. As I sat there, ARVIN soldiers appeared on the other side of the river. They stopped at the riverbank and peered across, at us. Then it happened. The high-ranking ARVIN officer amongst them caught my eye. Three of four of his men off in the distance were marching two young Viet Cong dressed in black toward the officer who stood near the river's edge. The prisoners' hands were tied behind their back. They were made to kneel down beside him, facing toward us. He then walked behind them and drew his pistol. His pistol made two sharp cracks as he shot both in the back of the head. It was obvious that he had wanted to do this in plain sight of me, Charlie Bell, and that other guy. He wanted us to see it. It was his twisted way of showing off. Of course, I had never expected to see something like this in my wildest dreams. I am also sure that the rest of my platoon members never expected to see anything quite like this. The mood amongst us, far from being a cheerful one, became very somber. Every American, who saw that was too stunned to talk about it. I am sure word got back to Lt. Col. Denton, and I am just as sure that he made a report of it to his superiors. Though not a very good tactician, Earl Denton was a very moral man and would never have approved of such actions. Furthermore, he had no authority over the ARVIN forces. We were there to advise and not to control. Yet, more control over the South Vietnamese government is exactly what was needed. That control should have been a requirement by us, before providing the massive amount of aid which we provided for the South. Instead, our leaders covertly supported a coup in the early sixties. Here is a truth for the taking. Only righteous nations survive the long-haul and a righteous nation does not need to sneak in the back door. A righteous nation is forthright in dealing with other nations. Hiding tactics from the enemy is one thing, but we should never hide our strategic goal, which should always be to bring freedom, just laws, and inalienable rights to all who live on the planet. After all, this is God's ordained purpose for America.

     It was many years later before I realized the reason for that ARVIN officer shooting those prisoners in plain sight of me and my buddies. They were the guys responsible for dropping those mortar rounds on the exact spot that we had vacated just a couple hours before. They had probably been watching us when we chose that spot to spend the night. They were then able to guess the exact location, possibly from looking at an artillery map. I was so naive at the time, that I didn't put two and two together. However, if I had, that still would not have justified that NVA officer's actions in my mind.

    A dirty wave of disgust, immediately followed by an angry antagonistic feeling flooded my brain and it was directed single-mindedly toward the ARVIN (South Vietnamese Army) officer, who had committed what I considered to be the most disgusting and vile act that I had ever witnessed in my entire life. I had never once seen any of my childhood movie heroes shoot anyone down in cold blood. The movie industry would have to wait a few years before degenerating to that point. Now, within seconds after this horrible act took place the ARVIN officer waded the river and came up on my side of the riverbank, still clutching his handgun in his hand. I instinctively braced to defend myself, keeping my eyes fastened intently on his eyes while clutching my own weapon in the ready position with the safety off as he kept coming closer and closer. “Is this man crazy? Is he going to shoot me too? Maybe he is going to shoot one of my buddies?" These were the kind of thoughts running through my mind. I continued keeping a close watch on him as he walked past and went out of sight. His eyes seemed to have a demonic look about them. A few minutes later my entire unit saddled up and moved on, leaving the village behind forever. If those two murdered Viet Cong had relatives in that village, then this ARVN officer had just done his part to make absolutely sure that they became not only the South's enemies, but also forever America's enemies too.

    The next few days are imprinted into my mind as a collage of disjointed events so here are a few snippets describing these events as well as a little window into my mindset at the time. Charlie Bell left to take a job driving a supply truck. A dark-skinned new guy from a big city in Ohio named Walker and several others showed up as replacements for the old guys who were leaving. A new squad leader named Sgt. Rook replaced the old nameless one, who never talked to me except to grunt out orders. During the nights we could see and hear gunships streaming red tracers toward the earth. They were to the north of our location and several miles away. Other platoons in my B Company would have their members return from ambush patrols with mind-rending stories of firefights during the night. You see, during daylight hours we came in contact with hundreds of civilians all around, but after dark there was a curfew on all civilians in the area. Anyone seen outside their villages and on the roads after dark would be shot by our ambush patrols on sight. My squad took our turn going on night ambush patrols outside various small villages in the area, but we encountered nothing. Other squads in our company would go out and do the same thing and would get into shootouts with the VC almost every time they went on patrol.

    This new guy, Walker, immediately took the place of the thump gunner (grenade launcher) in my squad who was helicoptered out to catch a plane home. I could have had that job but there was just something about having only a one-shot weapon which gave me pause. Never mind that it shot an exploding grenade, which could blow a guy’s head off or even kill several guys at once. I thought about it but that didn't seem to matter. It was still a single shot weapon which took a lot of time to load. I could just imagine myself getting drilled, while I was reloading. Maybe not the first time, maybe not the second time, but it would happen. No sir, that wasn’t for me. Walker was welcome to his M-79 grenade launcher, and I would keep my trusty M-14. I was a dead eye shot with this weapon, and I had proved that fact in basic training. I strongly felt that this was the right weapon for me. In my naïve mind, I was also confident that there was not any armed target which could come within a hundred yards of my line of sight who would stand a chance. That M-14 never failed to fire even after being submerged in swamp mud and water. The heavier bullet was also better able to penetrate thick jungle foliage to take out an enemy before he could get at me. I loved my M-14. It was the perfect weapon for the jungles of Vietnam.

    Our new squad leader, sergeant Rook, was a lifer. This simply meant he was making the Army his career. However, that term was used in a very demeaning way by grunts like me. It was a way of hitting back. Lifers usually never let up on letting us know that we grunts were at the bottom of the rung on the latter. So, we needed a way to hit back. Calling them lifers was a way to do that and not get in trouble. I, among many others, was born of the Spirit of God and some of us were anointed by the Holy Spirit, so in absolute terms, we would never be on that bottom rung. At this point in my life, however, I was residing very close to those spiritual hog pens, but I still owned a place in the palace. However, Sergeant Rook's tone of voice never changed. It always said that he would always be on top, and I would always be on the bottom. I had put up with that tone of voice from my father but behind my father's sharp tone was an innately intelligent mind which could teach me a practical thing or two. Rook had nothing to offer behind his sharp tone. He was a clanging bell with no substance. All that bell ever said was, "I am the boss, and you are not". “Well, here's the deal, lifer”, I thought to myself, “Don’t bark orders at me if you don't have anything to say”. If he had only asked in a nice way, I would have tried to jump over the moon for the guy, but he just didn't know how to be nice. Here is an example of what I am trying to say. One time he told us to stop knocking coconuts off trees because they could be booby trapped. Now there had never been an incidence of a booby-trapped coconut. Vietnamese kids knocked them off trees all the time. If the Cong had booby trapped coconut trees a lot of kids would have been killed and that would have been bad for business. However, we were running short of water at this time and coconut juice was a wonderful source of rehydration for famished men. Yeah, Sergeant Rook really knew how to get under my skin but believe it or not Sgt. Rook’s persecuting ways did have one good side effect. For the first time since I had become a part of this motley crew, I felt like I had at least one thing in common with every other member of my squad. We all hated Sergeant Rook.

     Like I said, this guy never let up. He continually rode the entire squad which was made up now of mostly new guys. Some were newer than me, like pretty boy Walker, a guy I soon learned, was so fastidious about keeping clean that he would be primping in the middle of a muddy rice field. As I faced this new influx of people in the squad, I did what I had always done and what I would continue to do for many years to come. I withdrew as much as I could, given the circumstances. I tried to stay as far away from Rook as possible. If he was in the front of a lineup somewhere, I would try to be the last man in the back of that line and vice versa. I had no idea what a negative impact this type of behavior had on my awareness of my surroundings. For example, since the radio man (RTO) was always beside the squad leader, who was Sergeant Rook, I would remove myself as far away as possible. That meant I was unable to hear radio communications. Those radio communications were really the best source of firsthand information for what was happening around us. Since I withdrew to the back of the line as often as possible, I was naturally missing out on a lot. As I have said before, during the month of January we lost almost as many men as we would for the entire rest of the year. Yet, to my withdrawn mind, I thought things were rather peaceful. I even believed that things would get better if Sgt. Rook would go away.

    At least Sergeant Rook didn’t ignore me like his predecessor had done. Actually, the truth was this. Had Sergeant Rook been miraculously transformed into the most competent leader who ever walked the face of the earth, it would not have been enough to put my mind at ease. I was too insecure and too much a loner for that to happen. My attitude was simply an unworkable one. It did not fit the attitude requirement for any job in my squad. No job, that is, except one. My inability to fit in was always going to cause problems in my life, until I allowed the Holy Spirit to transform me.

     Having said that, let me now say that sergeant Rook had his problems too. However, his problems could have been corrected, had senior leadership, itself, known a little more about what it takes to motivates others to do better. For starters, I knew then that it was not a good idea for leadership to condone the availability of drugs, alcohol, and prostitutes. However, here is what I did not know. Thanks to that same Holy Spirit, and also thanks to a book I read, written by a Vietnam veteran, Lt. General Lawson Magruder, I do know it now. Leadership 101 says a leader should be quick to correct small problems in a subordinate's behavior, so that problem does not escalate in future actions of the individual and then spread to others. Mindless punishment, however, should never become a leader's front-line method for making these corrections. Neither should browbeating be used to cower a subordinate. Browbeating is deadly. It should be looked upon as a cancer in leadership. It is very destructive, not only to the individual, but the entire organization. Later, I would learn that subordinates in the First Infantry Division were browbeaten all the time, throughout the ranks. It was used incessantly by senior leadership in front of the troops.

     Instead of being berated, a subordinate should be made aware of what he or she is doing wrong and then shown/reminded of the correct action or actions to take. Next, there should be follow-up and acknowledgements given to that subordinate for replace wrong actions with right ones. Leadership 101 is a process and during this process a leader should not only be open to, but also ask, for honest feedback from subordinates during the correction process. I realize now that poor Sergeant Rook was one of those rare souls who had the desire and the heart to become not just a good leader but a great leader. However, he had been abandoned by those who led him. He was battling alone without the tools he needed to win the battle, and yet he was battling. Little did we grunts know that he was left to emulate the only training he had ever been given, which was basic training. However, those training skills were designed to tear down a civilian so that soldier could be born. We were already soldiers. We needed to be led by effective leadership and Sergeant Rook desperately wanted to do that, but he had not been shown how. How sad.

     After America's humiliating defeat in Vietnam, and also after many thousands of Sergeant Rooks had been left to wither on the vine, a young Captain Lawson Magruder and others like him would build a new Rangers Force. It would be built on the principles of leadership, which I have only touched on here. Lawson would go on to become a driving force at the center of that change in leadership. His leadership style would spread from the Rangers to a newly created Delta Force. Over time, it would permeate throughout the entire U.S. Army Corps. That Army became a far different Army than the one I knew in Vietnam. With people like Magruder at the helm, continuing to clone others like themselves, that army would serve American interests magnificently in the changing world of the 1980s and 1990s and on into the turn of the century.