by Barry Fixler
Pop. Pop. The shooting continued. Pop. Pop.
I was the only one jumping. No one else seemed to give a rat’s ass about some old villager trying to kill us.
Finally, the rounds started coming too close to us, and the sergeant yelled out, “Who the fuck has a shotgun?!”
“I got one, Sarge,” someone said.
“Shut that fucker up!”
This guy with the shotgun, he was a seasoned Marine. He walked straight toward the tree line where the bullets were coming from, and he screamed at the bushes.
“Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Then he emptied the shotgun: Ba-boom! Ba-boom!
I just sucked in all of it. I was so green.
“Holy shit!”
No more shooting came from the trees as he sauntered back, dangling the shotgun at his side.
“I shut him up.”
13
Practical Lessons
in Discipline
The harsh training from boot camp had very practical applications in Vietnam, and the quicker that we learned, the better the chances were that we would live to see home.
Late fall in the United States is monsoon season in Vietnam. My tour began during monsoon season. We might see a couple of days of beautiful weather, and then a week straight of rain. It was a hardship. The Corps issued us these clumsy ponchos that we wore when rain fell, but the rest of the time we just used them as makeshift stretchers to carry dead or wounded men.
I wasn’t seasoned yet. Everything was still new to me, and I was learning the ropes about everything. Boot camp is all about instilling procedure and discipline, and a number of times while I was learning how to be a Marine, I would ask myself, “Why all this harsh, harsh training of discipline, discipline, discipline?”
Stay still. Do not move, even if it hurts. Control yourself.
All through boot camp, we had to hold out our rifles and remain motionless for long periods of time. We were ordered to do fifty pushups and then another ten pushups and ten more pushups, and then stand in a frozen position.
Control yourself. Discipline, discipline, discipline.
I always wondered why, and I never put two and two together until the night of my first ambush.
It was early evening, and we were positioned along a trail that the Viet Cong used to ferry ammunition, food given to them by villagers and other supplies. Our location was great; we had a perfect line of fire.
Almost all of us wore our ponchos to fend off the heavy rain that patted the jungle leaves, making a static noise similar to the sound of television tuned to a station that was no longer broadcasting. Our ears tuned that out, and otherwise, everything was as quiet as could be.
We could see the Viet Cong fighters—gooks, we called them—making their way up the trail, and we were poised to make that night their last one.
But one of us made the slightest move to better position himself, and his poncho revealed us. It was the tiniest sound, just a faint rubbing, but it was enough, and the gook on point opened fire before we did.
We had an M60 set up, and the two Marines manning it ripped the enemy’s point man to shreds, but he had given the other bad guys enough warning that they turned tail fast and disappeared back into the jungle, knowing that there was no way that we would chase them at night. We held our position until sunrise, when we confirmed that we had one kill, though we all agreed that it could have and should have been at least five.
We were bummed. It was such a small sound, just a faint little rub against a poncho, but their ears were so tuned in to the surroundings that it might as well have been a foghorn.
That was when I realized the reasoning behind all of that boot camp training about self-control.
Discipline, discipline, discipline. No exceptions, no excuses. Our lives depended on it. We learned a lot of practical lessons in our first few months as combat Marines, and if we were lucky, we lived to apply them.
I was still new and in the Phu Bai area, and my platoon was out in the field on patrol and had taken up a defensive position for the night.
Another group of Marines got into a firefight with the Viet Cong and radioed word to us that the gooks were running, and in our direction, so we tensed and waited for the bad guys.
We heard a noise coming toward us, and the Marine who was closest to it was so anxious that he stood up and just heaved a grenade in the direction of the sound. Then he stood there, I guess waiting to see gooks explode. It didn’t register with him that you can only throw a grenade so far, maybe thirty or forty feet.
The grenade exploded, and the only person he saw get hit was himself. The blast peppered him with shrapnel, not enough to kill him, but enough to teach him a lesson. The gooks ran, and I made a mental note to myself not to do anything like that. At least I didn’t learn that one the hard way.
14
Whatever It Takes
Ambushes usually ran from 6:00 at night to 6:00 in the morning. We stayed aware of each other, but we were quiet. We paired off, and each Marine took turns doing two hours of watch while his partner slept, and then they switched off.
During one of my early ambushes, we humped maybe 18 hours, and then only slept in shifts. My squad leader, Ike, relieved me and I tried to sleep, but I was new and too excited. I was maybe four to six feet from him, and I started to study him. His head would jerk every few seconds as he fought against exhaustion. He held two grenades, and I could tell that he was sort of nodding off.
“What is he doing?” I couldn’t figure it out, so I crawled up next to him.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“I have two live grenades here, and if I fucking fall asleep, we all die,” he said. “That’s the only fucking way I can stay awake.”
Pull the pin from a grenade, and it’s live. As long as you hold the spoon in, it won’t go off, but if you let that spoon pop, you have about four seconds before the grenade explodes. If you release that spoon, you’d better fucking throw that grenade or run because it has a kill radius of fifteen yards.
In combat, it’s easy. Pull the pin, release the spoon and throw the grenade. But if you want to be cute, you can pull the pin and hold the spoon down indefinitely. Just don’t release the spoon.
So what Ike did was pull the two pins, nice and easy, and hold the grenades with the spoons down. He just decided, “If I nod out, we’re all dead.”
That’s what kept him awake, knowing that he had the responsibility.
“Oh fuck!” I thought. “He’s my boss. I’m in a jam! He’s nodding and I’m only a few feet from him. If he explodes, I’m dead too!”
But I was a new guy. I had no clout.
I just waited for Tom to drop a grenade so that I could jump out of the way. Obviously, he didn’t blow us up, but he rattled me good.
Six months later, I could’ve said, “You’re out of your fucking mind! You’re fucked up! Kill yourself! I don’t give a shit! You’re not going to kill me!”
But I was new. I couldn’t say anything.
“Oh fuck,” I thought. “Now I can’t fall asleep.”
I had my own trick for staying alert, and to me, it beat holding live grenades.
I would go through each individual in my family and think about how they might react to my death.
“What if I die tonight? How would my family react if tonight is the night that I die?”
I would start with my father, and then my mother, and then my sister. After that, I moved on to my extended family. I had seven uncles: my mother’s three older brothers and my father’s four brothers. All of them had known me since I was a baby, and I would consider their different personalities in thinking about how they might react.
“Uncle Eddie. He was a pretty good uncle. What would he say if he heard, ‘Barry’s dead. Barry was killed in Vietnam’? Would he be distraught, or would he say, ‘Barry was a great kid and I love him, but he was a man and he died for his country, doing what he wanted to do’?”
Or would it be, �
��Oh my God, this is my brother-in-law’s kid,” and “How could this happen to my nephew?”
I would move down the line to all of my cousins, and then my neighbors, and even on to my classmates in high school. I did this all very deliberately, and I never made it through the whole list in one or even two nights.
I would play out the drama in my head, and it was almost like watching TV, and the hours on watch just flew by. That trick kept me awake, alert and alive.
“How would they react if tonight is the night that I die?”
15
Bad Acronyms and
Dirty Details
Each day was a learning experience, and learning to relay messages was essential.
We moved cautiously out in the field on patrol, each Marine about eight to ten feet apart. That way, if somebody stepped on a booby trap, only one guy would get blown up instead of two or three. It also was good in case we were ambushed. If four or five guys were very close together, a machine gun could mow them all down.
In order to communicate with each other, we had to “pass the word,” meaning relay messages quietly from man to man.
The first time I got information passed up through me, I didn’t know what a KIA or a WIA was. KIA is Killed In Action and WIA is Wounded In Action.
The first time that I heard those terms, a guy behind me told me to pass up to a Second Lieutenant Jones that Squad 3 had two KIAs and two WIAs. What I told the next guy was, “Tell Second Lieutenant Jones that Squad 3 has two KBPs and two WWAs.”
The word got passed on all screwed up, and when it reached the lieutenant, he was probably thinking, “What the fuck?”
I’d never heard those terms before. But those were things that you learned in the field, just like you learned that sometimes, it’s just more prudent to keep your mouth shut.
Our platoon was held up on one patrol, which was bad. You couldn’t stall in enemy territory.
A sergeant passed up the message, “What’s the delay?”
What came back was, “Corpsman is afraid to go over the bridge.”
A corpsman is a Navy medic assigned to a Marine infantry platoon.
The bridge was made out of bamboo, and only one man could walk it at a time. It was like an old rope bridge you expect to see in an Indiana Jones film.
You could not freeze at a bridge during a patrol. If it was there, you had to cross it. But the corpsman got there and looked down and froze.
When word got back to the sergeant, he lost his composure and took off after the corpsman.
“What the fuck! Corpsman doesn’t want to cross the bridge?!”
The sergeant was going to kick his ass and the corpsman knew it because he could hear the cursing, so he zoomed across the bridge.
* * *
We were humping in the field, a platoon operation, thirty or forty guys, and it was hot and we each lugged forty to sixty pounds of war gear. We were in staggered formation, no talking. There could be ambushes during the day, but it was rare. Most of the firefights happened at night.
We had been humping for hours in the heat when my squad leader, Ike, stopped us for a break, and I needed to piss.
“Alright guys, take five, drink your canteen and stay in place!”
That meant that when we stopped, we stayed in formation and faced outboard to watch for the enemy. We were on their turf. We could have a drink but take nothing for granted.
Everyone had to stay put but the squad leader. He could move. He was the man. I wasn’t the man. I was just a peon, an Indian. I couldn’t move. He was squad leader; he had clout. He could walk wherever he wanted, bullshit with another squad leader, bullshit with the sergeant, whatever.
Ike went to either talk strategy or flat out bullshit with another corporal or other squad leaders.
“Fuck, man, I gotta piss,” I thought. “What a great time.”
Everything looked clear, so I just edged away from my spot, still looking at it the whole time, making sure no one saw that I was out of formation.
I was pissing, not looking where I was pissing, looking at where I should be standing, pissing, eye balling around me to make sure no one saw, pissing.
I didn’t want to hear: “What the fuck are you doing over there?! You belong over here!”
So I pissed and hurried back to my spot. Nobody saw me. Perfect.
The break ended and Ike came back from bullshitting and strategizing with the other squad leaders. He walked over and picked up his helmet. We couldn’t take off our helmets. Squad leaders could. It was a pecking order thing.
Ike reached down for his helmet and went ape shit, fucking berserk!
“Who the fuck pissed in my helmet?!” he screamed. “WHO THE FUCK PISSED IN MY HELMET?!!”
Ike’s helmet had landed upside down like a bowl when he dropped it, and I didn’t see where it came to a rest. It was sitting there like a bowl, and I didn’t pay attention to where I was pissing. I watched everyone else and the spot where I was supposed to be standing, and I pissed right in his helmet. I practically filled it up.
Nobody saw me, and I knew no one had seen me because I was watching them the whole time, and those guys would have given me up in a heartbeat.
They’d have said, “Fuck, he did it! He fucking pissed in it!”
Ike kept yanking the helmet up and slamming it down, screaming the whole time.
“WHO THE FUCK PISSED IN MY HELMET?!!!!!!! WHO THE FUCK PISSED IN MY HELMET?!!!!!!!”
I didn’t say a word, not a fucking word. I just stood there. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t watching and I pissed in the squad leader’s helmet. Ike is still alive today and I see him for reunions. To this day, I still haven’t told him that I pissed in his helmet.
He’d say, “You’re the fucking one?!! After all these years?!!, You’re the fucker that pissed in my helmet?!!!!!”
* * *
Green Marines, or “boots” as we called them, were easy to spot by the cleanliness of their uniforms. The more time we spent in combat, the dirtier and saltier and more crusted our uniforms became.
Out in the jungle, we wore the same clothes day in and day out, and I never wore socks or underwear because of the humidity and heat. They would literally rot away. We carried between forty and sixty pounds of gear each and sweated so much that our uniforms became crusted from dirt and the salt from our sweat. We felt like mules and smelled worse.
Maybe three or four times during my entire thirteen-month tour, we got lucky enough to take hot showers at a combat base. Out in the field, when we got the chance, we made a perimeter around a stream, did a 360 and faced outboard. Guys took off everything and jumped in a few at a time. We did it real quick. Nobody wanted to get attacked with their pants down.
Nothing was easy in the field. After humping all day long, we found places to sleep and dig in. We carried E-tools, which in military lingo were entrenching tools, or basically, collapsible folding shovels. Occasionally, we would come across another small Marine outpost that already was dug in, but that was like a gift and didn’t happen often.
Dig in, set the ambush and then hump out the next morning. It was pretty much the same routine day after day.
Sometimes we would run out of water on a patrol. One time I was totally out of water, and it was a scorching hot day and we were humping hard and fast. I became so thirsty that it felt like my tongue was swelling.
Desperation was setting in, but we were in enemy territory and there was no way to stop. The outside temperature was probably well over one hundred degrees. But it wasn’t like I could raise my hand and ask for a water break. And I’m sure all the other guys were out of water, too, or running low.
As we passed parallel to a rice paddy I decided to sink my canteen into the thick, leech-filled water. I did it quickly so no one would notice. I just bent down and sank the canteen into the mud and used my index finger to keep the leeches out.
I was able to get about a quarter of a canteen of that filthy rice paddy water and I gulped it down
. About twenty minutes later— BOOM! —fireworks detonated in my stomach.
I had the worst cramps. I couldn’t tell the squad leader that I had cramps, so I had only one option. I blew liquid out of my ass and marched on, coping best as I could with the pain in my stomach while the diarrhea ran down my legs and into my boots.
I had the enemy to worry about; I had to watch my flanks, and I couldn’t moan or groan or go down. It wasn’t funny. I had the worst cramps, and I couldn’t stop the diarrhea. It felt like a knife ripping through my guts.
Finally, an hour or two later, we had to look to dig in for the night. We were still in enemy territory and open to attack. I was digging and my pants were soaking wet, and my ass and my legs were soaked.
“Fuck this,” I decided.
I took off my pants and threw them in the dirt, and the dirt absorbed the liquid shit, so I flipped the pants over and it absorbed the other side. I had my top clothing on, but no pants.
I wasn’t embarrassed. It was all guys. Had I been with a female, I would’ve thought twice about doing that, but my pants were fucked up with shit of the worst smell, and it wasn’t even the smell that bothered me most. They were just soaking wet.
We were in combat mode—no talking—so no one could goof on me. The only ones talking were probably the squad leaders, discussing strategy.
It wasn’t like back in the States, where you could joke around. It was wartime in enemy territory. Not one person even made a comment, and I wasn’t embarrassed. I could have cared less. My pants were dry in half an hour.
16
Standards of Living
Whether you went to war or not, if you graduated boot camp and you love the Marine Corps, you’re a great Marine; we’re all on the same level. A Marine who earned the Medal of Honor and a Marine who just graduated boot camp merit the same respect: they are both Marines.
But most of the guys I served with were poor, and they were quick to notice the differences in our backgrounds.