Chapter 4: A Portal to Hell final022825

     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 of 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 and 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 firsthand. 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 were clogged with the residue of tracer rounds that 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 300-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 paddies, 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 drunk 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 that 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 that 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 that 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 that seeks to consume all of humanity.

     On January 8, 1967, President Johnson was following his own godless path in Washington while I was following my own godless path which had led me to Vietnam. Operation Cedar Falls was also in that godless path which I had chosen at age thirteen. 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 nor did I know its name. 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. 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 weren’t asked to do anything out of the ordinary, like carrying ammo for the machine gunner, walking point, or—heaven forbid—carrying a radio. There was already a man assigned to carry a grenade launcher, and a radio operator (RTO) was already designated. There was also a designated man to walk point, and he actually liked his job.

     As I said, Charlie Bell and I simply coasted, almost invisible to the others around us. Thinking back fifty years later, this period in my tour felt more like two friends on a guided hiking trip. Before settling in at night, I remember experimenting with making cups of hot chocolate from C-rations. I added packets of powdered creamer to the cocoa to give it a richer flavor, then heated it up in my tin canteen over a small ball of C-4 explosive. C-4 was similar in texture to Play-Doh. It could be rolled into a golf ball-sized lump and lit with a match. It wouldn’t explode—instead, it burned evenly. I could boil a canteen cup full of water in just a couple of minutes. Yes indeed, these first outings were not all that different than camping in the George Washington National Forest back home.  

     For me, the cold was the worst part of this period. I shivered all night, lying on the ground under my plastic poncho, while Charlie Bell slept like a baby under his warm poncho liner. It was the dry season, so we never got wet, but the nights were still brutally uncomfortable for me. Daytime temperatures reached the high nineties, but at night, they dropped into the mid-seventies or lower, making the air feel freezing cold by comparison. The coveted camouflaged nylon poncho liners provided all the warmth needed, but I couldn’t get one. Supplies were running low at the time. Night after night, I remember shivering in the open air, trying to get even a few hours of sleep. But in comparison to what other Americans had endured in previous wars, it felt like a minor hardship. I hesitate to even mention it, except to give the reader a sense of how smoothly things were going for me personally—despite the larger dysfunction in the organization around me. If the worst thing I had to complain about was the cold, then looking back, things must have been going fairly well. Eventually, I found a temporary solution: newspapers. I still can’t recall exactly where I found them but stuffing them under my poncho provided enough insulation to keep me warm at night.

     Our battalion commander, Earl Denton, didn’t require us to dig foxholes. Quite frankly, at first, our outings seemed to be nothing more than glorified camping and hiking trips. However, a few things did happen, to wake me up to the fact that it wasn’t going to be all fun and games for my entire tour. One night, the Viet Cong booby-trapped the exit routes around our night defensive position. The next morning, as we moved out, some of the men up front were gravely wounded. Another time, a sniper killed one of our guys in the lead platoon. Charlie Bell and I heard the med-evac helicopter land, and we saw the limp body of the soldier as he was carried past us to the waiting chopper. That was a very sobering sight. Shortly after that, while on break at Di An, my B Company was trucked to a pier on the Saigon River. There we boarded Navy patrol boats. They took us down the river into the Rung Sat Swamp, over 400 square miles of mangrove trees and marshland between Saigon and the South China Sea. We set up a nighttime river ambush, waiting for enemy boats to pass. Sometime in the middle of the night, we made contact with the enemy. However, the firefight happened on the far side of the river, away from the sector my squad was covering. Although I could hear and see the tracer rounds flying through the night, no target presented itself for us to engage. The exchange lasted about ten minutes before everything went eerily quiet again. This close encounter with the enemy gave me a heightened sense of concern which had not been there before. It definitely dissolved any illusions I had of being on one giant camping trip.

     Early the next morning those Navy boats showed up to take us back to those same docks, where we loaded on trucks for the ride back to Di An. Some of the men who had engaged the enemy the night before started talking, as we were riding home. They said they had shot up several enemy sampans and successfully sunk them. As I listened to the details of their fresh kill, a strange and deeply unsettling feeling washed over me—one that I had never experienced before in my entire life. At the time, I couldn’t name it, but years later, I realized it had come from the part of my soul that was still sensitive to the influence of the Holy Spirit. It was grief—but not my own. It wasn’t the same feeling of sadness I had experienced when our own soldier was killed by a sniper days earlier. That had been a human grief—a sorrow that came from my own soul, from a place of natural loss. This was something different. It felt like the grief of God Himself. God grieves for every lost soul. At that moment, the Spirit of God was grieving over the physical deaths of those poor enemy soldiers, because He knew where their souls had gone. It was His grief which I was feeling, and it caught me by surprise. I didn’t understand it. I certainly didn’t expect to grieve for the enemy. In fact, I was actually disappointed that I hadn’t been in the right place to kill somebody. How different were these two emotions inhabiting the same mind? That was how far I had strayed. And yet, the Holy Spirit was still with me. Even though I had turned my back on God, He had not turned His back on me. At the time, I didn’t understand it. But looking back, I know now that God takes no pleasure in sending a single soul to hell. Even in the middle of war, even while I was blinded by my own hatred and numbness, He was trying to reach me. I just wasn’t listening, but I was sensing His grief over those lost enemy souls killed during the night.

     A few days later, we left Di An on foot and marched until we crossed a large expanse of rice fields. We halted at a small river flowing through those vast fields. There were South Vietnamese Government troops (ARVINS) traveling with us. The plan was to surround the village and seal it off until the next morning. Those government troops would then search through the village while we guarded it’s perimeter to prevent any VC from escaping. Through the vegetation lining the banks of this river, we could see a few rooftops of huts. A small village sat on the other side of the stream, mostly hidden from view by the dense foliage along the riverbank. We did not cross the stream. Instead, we settled into three-man positions on our side of the river, opposite the village. Our position allowed us to see across the river crossing and just a little ways into the village. The river was not very deep and perhaps only twenty meters wide. Our position seemed to be a great vantage point. The rest of my battalion spread out on both sides of our location in positions which were very widely scattered along the river bank. It appeared that we had the best spot because it was adjacent to the main river crossing for workers going to and from the vast rice fields behind us. Charlie Bell, another soldier, and I sat on the ground about ten meters or so from the riverbank. As I have already mentioned, our battalion commander, Lt. Colonel Denton, did not require us to dig in and I don’t recall our squad leader giving us much instruction. He disappeared further upstream for the entire night. With all the battalion positions so spread out, we seemed to be all alone.

     I took the 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 the seventy feet or so of fast-flowing, waist-deep water. The sound of the moving river was almost soothing. A few kids and three or four older young men had been playing in the water earlier in the day. After dark, I could see a few dim lights glowing in the village, but no one was in the river now. Little did I realize at the time how fortuitous it was that we were not required to dig a fox hole.

     As I sat there peering across the river, day turned to night. At some point, I slowly lifted my gaze from the tree line toward the star-studded sky above. What I saw, unexpectedly stirred something deep inside me. The magnificent view of the star studded heavens seemed to reach into my soul, drawing out a feeling of peace I hadn’t known in a long time. For a fleeting moment, the deep dread that had been festering in my mind began to dissipate. The weight of the past few days, the unspoken but ever-present fear of what was coming, seemed to roll off my shoulders like a heavy cloak being lifted away. As I continued gazing at the stars, a thought surfaced—one that had not yet dared to cross my mind since arriving in Vietnam. What if I actually made it home? For the first time, I envisioned myself once again standing in the backyard of my grandfather’s farmhouse in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, looking up at this same dazzling display of stars. It was a haunting hope, fragile and fleeting, but real. It was the first time I had allowed myself to consider the possibility of survival.

     But I was not the only dreamer that night. While I was gazing at the stars, allowing hope to creep into my thoughts, someone else had been dreaming too. And in the next few minutes, it would be his dream that came true, not mine. The pale horse of death was on his way and no man would be able to stop it. In less than an hour, I would be dead. Charlie Bell would be dead. The other man with us would die too. Death in Vietnam often came suddenly and without warning—not in the middle of a chaotic battle where one might expect it, but in moments of quiet, in the eerie stillness of the moment. The demons that had tormented me for so long would have to find someone else to haunt because I was well on my way to my long sleep. After that, I would rise to behold the face of my Savior, Jesus Christ. My soul was secure. I had confessed Christ as Lord at an early age. I had been made into a new creation, and my name was already written in the Book of Life. But my earthly legacy would be lost. There was only one thing that could save me now—the small, still voice of the Holy Spirit. "Stop looking at the stars and move your bed," the small, still voice whispered. Suddenly, my soul was jolted out of the comfortable, dreamlike state that had settled over me. "Move your bedding behind that clump of bushes at the edge of the riverbank," the voice continued.

     I hesitated for only a moment, then immediately groped in the dark to find Charlie Bell. He was lying on his back with his head resting on his rucksack. I reached down, felt around for his shoulder, and pressed down softly. He awoke, rubbing his face with both hands but making little movement beyond that. Instead, he simply waited 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," I whispered. Without hesitation, he reached down and unclipped his red-lens flashlight from his rucksack. He shined it’s light first in my face and then on the spot where I was pointing—a thick clump of bushes about ten yards away, right at the edge of the riverbank. Charlie nodded in agreement and put the flashlight away. Without a word, the other half-awakened guy followed us. It took less than a minute for the three of us to quietly move our gear to this new location. Now, we were completely concealed from anyone who might be watching from the village side of the river. In the pitch-black darkness, no one could have seen us move.

     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 didn’t hear the enemy mortars being fired from across the river. Mortars make a distinctive thump as they are launched from their tubes, but I had missed that sound. However, I did not miss the moment when the shells landed—exploding close enough to spew shrapnel everywhere. Fortunately, we were no hit. I jolted awake, startled from a deep sleep, but we still had no idea what had just happened. In combat, a soldier is assigned a position to hold at all costs unless ordered otherwise. We weren’t free to move, not even to investigate what had just exploded near us. For all we knew, this could be the beginning of a full-scale ground assault. If so, running around in the dark would be a death sentence. Our orders were simple: stay put and defend your position. Interestingly, had we been given the standard order to dig in upon arrival, we would have never moved behind the bushes. We would have stayed in the open because we would not have gone to the trouble of digging in again. At dawn, my squad leader and platoon leader walked over to our position, standing beside me and Charlie Bell. We all stared at the ground in stunned silence. Two small, blackened depressions marked the exact spots where we had been sleeping just hours earlier—imprints left by the mortar blasts. Had the Holy Spirit not whispered for me to move, the three of us would have been blown apart.

     We were still holding our positions on the riverbank later that morning, waiting much longer than usual before moving out. The delay felt strange. Normally, we would have already been on our way. Everyone was restless, but no explanation was given. Unlike other times, however, I would soon learn—in a most horrific way—the reason for today's delay. I remember sitting down, leaning against some saplings, using my rucksack as a cushion. From my position, I could still see across the river. Any minute now, I expected the order to saddle up. The cold C-rations I had eaten earlier were already churning in my gut, and my M-14 lay across my lap. Then I saw them. A group of ARVN soldiers (South Vietnamese Army) appeared on the far side of the river. They stopped at the riverbank and peered across at us. Then, in the distance, I noticed four of their men marching two young Viet Cong prisoners toward the river. The captives’ hands were tied behind their backs. A high-ranking ARVN officer stood near the river’s edge, watching. The prisoners were forced to kneel beside him, facing toward us. I locked eyes with the officer as he walked behind them and drew his pistol. Two sharp cracks pierced the morning air. Both prisoners collapsed forward, executed with bullets to the back of their heads. The officer had made sure we saw it.

     I had never expected to witness something like this. I looked around at my fellow grunts. No one spoke. The silence was deafening. Every man who saw it was too stunned to say a word. The mood became heavy and dark. I’m sure word got back to Lt. Col. Denton. And I’m just as sure he reported it to his superiors. Denton was not a strong tactician, but he was a moral man. He would never have approved of something like this. But the reality was—we had no authority over the ARVN forces. We were there to advise, not to control. And yet… more control was exactly what was needed. Our leaders had poured untold resources into supporting the South Vietnamese government, but at no point had they set firm conditions for moral governance. Instead, our government had covertly supported a coup in the early sixties, which added to the chaos. Here is a truth for the Taking: Only righteous nations survive the long haul. A righteous nation does not sneak in through the back door. It is forthright in its dealings. Yes, military deception is necessary in combat, but our strategic policies must be righteous. That assures us that clear, non-negotiable goals will be established. Long term, those goals will always bring more freedom, justice, and inalienable rights to all the affected parties. But in the sixties, we were beginning to lose our way.

     It was many years later before I realized the reason that ARVN officer had executed those prisoners in plain sight of me and my buddies. They were probably responsible for firing the mortar rounds that had landed exactly where we had been sleeping before moving our position. They had likely been watching us when we chose that spot for the night and targeted us with their mortars before the sun went down. At the time, I was too naive to put two and two together. The ARVN officer’s actions may have been justified but I don’t believe so. I remember feeling appalled by his actions. Growing up, I had never once seen any of my childhood movie heroes shoot a man in cold blood. But now, as we stood watching, we witnessed a real-life summary execution before our very eyes. Seconds after he shot these two prisoners, the ARVN officer waded through the river and came up on our side of the riverbank, still gripping his handgun. Now, I instinctively viewed him as a threat and braced myself to defend myself. Our eyed locked, as I clutched my own weapon in a ready position, safety off, until he passed by me. "Is this man crazy? Is he going to shoot me too? Maybe he’s going to shoot one of my buddies." These were the thoughts racing through my mind. I kept my eyes trained on him, ready for whatever might come next. But he just walked past us without a word and disappeared from sight. I still remember the demonic look in his eyes. A few minutes later, my entire unit saddled up and moved on, leaving the village behind forever. If those two executed Viet Cong had family members in that village, then that ARVN officer had just done his part to ensure that they became not just lifelong enemies of the South, but of America as well.

     The next few days are imprinted in my mind as a collage of disjointed events—flashes of memory that don’t seem to follow a linear timeline. Here are a few snippets from those days, along with a window into my mindset at the time: Charlie Bell left to take a job driving a supply truck. A new guy named Walker, dark-skinned and city-raised from Ohio, showed up as a replacement, along with several others who were filling the shoes of those heading home. Our old, nameless squad leader—the one who barely spoke to me except to grunt out orders—was replaced by Sergeant Rook. At night, we could see and hear gunships unloading streams of red tracers into the darkness several miles away. Some of the guys in B Company would return from ambush patrols with stories of brutal firefights in the night. The contrast was staggering—during the day, we were surrounded by civilians going about their lives. But after sundown, there was a strict curfew. Anyone seen outside their village at night was considered the enemy. Ambush patrols were ordered to shoot on sight. My squad took its turn going on night ambushes outside various villages, but we encountered nothing. Other squads would take their turn and almost always get in a firefight.

     Walker immediately took over as the new "thump gunner," carrying the M-79 grenade launcher. The guy who previously carried it was helicoptered out to catch a plane home. I could have taken that job myself, but something about carrying a one-shot weapon made me pause. Sure, the M-79 fired an explosive grenade that could take out an enemy in a single shot—or even kill multiple men at once. But in my mind, I still had to reload after every shot. I couldn’t shake the thought of getting drilled while taking my eyes off the battle field to reload. Sooner or later, I’d be reloading in the middle of a firefight, and that would be the end of me, or at least that’s the thought which went through my head. No sir. Walker was welcome to his grenade launcher. I was sticking with my trusty M-14. I had been a deadeye shot with that weapon in basic training, and I had complete confidence in it. I truly believed that as long as my rifle was in my hands, no enemy soldier within a hundred yards stood a chance. That M-14 never failed me—not even when it was submerged in swamp mud or drenched in water. Unlike the M-16s that were constantly jamming, my M-14 fired every time. Its heavier bullet could cut through thick jungle foliage and hit an enemy before he could get to me. I loved that rifle. It was the perfect weapon for the jungles of Vietnam.

     Sergeant Rook, our new squad leader, was a "lifer." That meant he was making a career out of the Army. We grunts used the word "lifer" as a derogatory description to describe those who had voluntarily joined the Army. We especially incorporated it into all our conversations for those sergeants who had served more than two years. I suppose it was our way of jabbing back, to help mitigate those feelings of shame associated with our lowly positions at the bottom of the pack. At least that’s the way I felt. On the other hand, most “lifers” had no problem letting us know that we were at the bottom of that pack. Sergeant Rook was definitely one of those kind. Everything about him screamed: “I will always be on top. You will always be on the bottom”. I had dealt with a similar attitude coming from my father. However, my father's sharp criticisms came from real life’s experiences which would produce good outcomes if followed. It soon became apparent that Sergeant Rook didn’t know any more than we knew about our current situation. He was like a clanging bell, always ringing the same note. It said, "I’ll do the talking and you do the listening”. Well, here's the deal, “lifer”. It’s okay to bark orders but at least give us an opportunity to give our input on what could very well be life and death decisions. If Sergeant Rook had realized that one simple fact, there was not a man in my squad who would not have tried to jump over the moon for him. But he didn't know because he had never been taught.

     One day, while on patrol, Rook barked at us to stop knocking coconuts off trees because "they could be booby-trapped." Booby-trapped coconuts? Really? Vietnamese kids knocked them down all the time. VC patrols regularly passed this way too. They also picked them. Sergeant Rook’s rationale was not logical. Yet he never allowed us to give feedback so that was the end of it. He could have still said “no” but at least he would have allowed us to give him feedback. Allowing a subordinate to express themselves is very important. Good leaders learn more about that subordinate by allowing them to give feedback. What leader shouldn’t strive to learn more about their people? They are the ones who make the entire endeavor possible. We were running very low on our fresh water supply during this time during my tour. Coconut trees were everywhere, and the juice was one of the best sources of hydration. But no. Rook had spoken.

     Oh well, there was one unexpected benefit to Rook’s leadership style. For the first time since joining this squad, I finally had something in common with my fellow grunts. We all hated Sergeant Rook. In hindsight, Sergeant Rook was not an evil man. He was simply a soldier who had never been taught how to lead. He had the desire—but no one had shown him how. He had been abandoned by those above him, left to emulate the only leadership template he knew. That template was the harsh, tear-you-down kind taught to him as a drill instructor. But we weren’t new recruits. We were already soldiers. We didn’t need to be broken down. We needed to be led. Had Rook been trained under a leader like Lt. General Lawson Magruder—one of the men who helped transform the Army after Vietnam—he could have become a truly great leader. Instead, he had been left to wither on the vine and as a consequence, so had we.

     At the time, I had no idea how deadly the month of January had been for my unit. I thought things had been relatively peaceful. But years later, after reviewing Killed in Action reports, I discovered the truth: We lost more men in January than we did in any other month of the entire war. And I had been walking through it—completely blind to just how much danger enveloped me.