Repost: The Kid That Became A Guy Part IV: Vietnam

[Well, I decided to add the stuff I chickened out on before... So if I disappear, you'll know why!]

My first impression of Vietnam was: Why the fuck would anybody want to live here? Before I got a hundred feet across the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut, I was soaked. The air was so thick you could feel it. I got billeted for the night and the next morning got airlifted to the base at My Tho. At first things were pretty basic, we stopped and searched boats in the river. They were mostly little more than big canoes or dugouts and I'd stand with the .50's and keep watch while the guys on the PBR searched for weapons. Sometimes we'd take some fire from the shore when we were patrolling and I'd jump on the .50's and light up the jungle. It was pretty much the same every day.

About three months into my tour something happened. I got called back to Saigon and some government guys wanted to talk to me. They start out with the whole patriot thing...you want to save American lives right? Your country needs you. They said they had this special program they wanted someone like me for. I had scored high in marksmanship. This was before they had the scout/sniper school so they wanted guys with high marks for shooting, plus I had been through the BUDs school. They also told me they knew my Social Security number was a phoney and they could send me home, or to prison. But they didn't want to do that, they wanted to give me an opportunity to serve my country. I figured it out much later- if something happened to me, there was nobody to come looking, or put up a fuss about me being missing. I was a perfect patsy.

They said that to do the stuff they wanted, I couldn't be in the service. My military records would be destroyed but I'd still get paid in cash. I don't mind telling you, this shit was getting weird. The head government guy looked like some kind of geek or something. He had those old time glasses with the see-through frames and weird eyes. He was one scary looking motherfucker, just the way he looked at you. I could have kicked his ass easy, but there was something in those eyes that turned my blood to ice. The other guys looked like military types or jocks or something like that- they had crewcuts and short sleeved white shirts with ties. One looked like a football player, he was big. I figured he was the muscle. The other guy just sat there and didn't say a word, he just wrote stuff down.

The guy with the glasses was nice, pleasant, like he wanted to be friends. He smiled and talked nice, but there was something really creepy about him. I only saw him one other time, at a restaurant where we met and I started to like him better. The big guy was supposed to be the guy I would deal with and get paid from. Then they brought a Vietnamese guy in named Hue Pham. He was a Lt. in the Army of Vietnam and he was going to be my partner. He knew the country and naturally the language, being from there, so he was my guide and spotter.

Hue Pham spoke pretty good English, he had been to college for a while in America and came back to fight the Commies. His family had been killed he said, they were from up North some place. So we took off on a chopper for Pleiku. There was a base there so Americans didn't look so out of place. I wore tiger stripes like the South Vietnam Army but no insignias or anything like that. The soldiers looked kinda funny at me but didn't ask too many questions because I was supposed to be some kind of "spook." Mostly they just left us alone, it was me and Hue Pham. I had an M-14 set up with a B&L 10x scope. Hue Pham carried an AK. Up to this point I had never really shot anybody that I knew of. I had sprayed the jungle with the .50's but I don't know if I ever hit anybody or not.

My job in Vietnam was to find people and shoot them from far away. Actually, Hue Pham found them and I shot them. Now here's where it gets a little weird: The Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn't a super-highway that ran from Hanoi to Saigon- it was a series of trails that ran through Laos and Cambodia and back into South Vietnam at different points along the border. The only way the North could get supplies to the Viet Cong in the South was with the consent of Laotian and Cambodian politicians... provincial governors, mayors, tribal chiefs, etc.. The State Dept would send in emissaries to negotiate (probably buy off) these guys who would take the money and keep doing the same thing. Then they would send me and Hue in and I'd "neutralize" them. Because we weren't at war with Laos and Cambodia, who were supposedly neutral, it wouldn't look too good to have American soldiers whacking these civilian guys- so they sent me. Fuck it, the money was good and they were enemies of the Vietnamese and us too, I guess. The first time I looked through that scope and saw a man, I thought it might bother me or something, but I just squeezed off a round and watched through the scope as he went down. I don't know why but I just kept looking and Hue Pham had to grab me by the back of my shirt to pull me up and run to the extract point. I once saw something in a movie or TV or somewhere where they asked a sniper what he felt when he shot somebody. "A little recoil," he said. That was about it. Well, that's about all I can say about that except I could have stayed home and made a lot more money for doing the same thing. Well, there it is... The guy with the glasses in case you couldn't guess was Bill Colby.

Next: Haight Ashbury and my life as a hippie: