by Barry Fixler
I had my back against the wall of a bunker. Two knuckleheads that were off duty for two hours were relaxing near me, and one had a revolver, an unmarked Smith & Wesson .38. He was telling the other Marine how his father was a cop and had sent the pistol to him in a care package.
He wore the revolver in a shoulder holster that stuck out from under his flak jacket, and the new staff sergeant had seen it a few days earlier.
This staff sergeant was the highest-ranking enlisted man in our company, and it was one of the toughest units in Vietnam. But he was new, and I was one of the most seasoned Marines by then.
“Fixler, I just came in. I know you’ve been shooting your way through all the battles and I respect it. You’re one of my squad leaders. I respect you, but tell that fucking shit bird to fucking shit-can his revolver. Fuck! If he wants to carry more grenades, let him carry more grenades! If he wants to carry two M16s, let him carry two M16s! But no civilian weapons! That revolver is not military issue. Shit-can it! I’m telling you, man, get rid of it!”
The staff sergeant was a lifer. He had been in the Marine Corps for fifteen years, and he was strictly by the book. The revolver wasn’t government issue, so as far as he was concerned, it was illegal. It had to go.
But the sergeant was not a combat-seasoned Marine. I remember he was kind of a slacker. I had overheard him talking with another sergeant, and the topic of conversation made me lose all respect for him.
The rest of us, the 26th Marines, we were seasoned and there were no slackers. We’d done the Siege of Khe Sanh and earned a major reputation for kicking ass. We had won one of the worst battles in Vietnam, and everybody respected that.
Walking away from the staff sergeant, I told myself, “Fuck man, I’m not saying anything. That Marine with the revolver would laugh at me. It’s a weapon, and we’re all here to kill. Screw it.”
So I was in the bunker relaxing and the two knucklehead Marines were eating C-rations and talking about the revolver.
The next thing I knew, they started playing with the illegal handgun. One guy took the gun and emptied the rounds, then put one round back in and starting spinning the chamber, screwing around like a game Russian roulette. My eyes were still closed, but I listened to the knuckleheads. They were eighteen, nineteen years old, my age. We were all just knuckleheaded teenagers.
One guy—his name was Simpson—started baiting the other Marine with the pistol.
“You don’t have the fucking balls to play Russian roulette. You don’t have the fucking balls!”
“Fuck you,” the Marine with the gun said. “I got fucking balls!”
“Oh yeah? Prove it. Pull the trigger!”
I just listened as they went back and forth.
“You don’t have the fucking balls!”
“I got the fucking balls!”
“Fuck it,” I thought. “They won’t have the balls to do anything.”
The Marine with the pistol spun the chamber and then snapped it in and pressed the gun to Simpson’s neck. But Simpson wouldn’t let up.
“C’mon, man! You don’t have the fucking balls! Pull the trigger!”
“Fuck you! I do have the balls!”
“No you fucking don’t!”
Simpson, he had everything to lose, nothing to gain.
“Let’s see some fucking balls, man!” Simpson taunted him. “You ain’t got ’em!”
BOOM!
“What the fuck?!” My eyes shot open.
Simpson had baited the Marine holding the pistol to his neck into pulling the trigger, and now Simpson’s neck was gone, blown right out. I was lucky the bullet hadn’t passed through and hit me. Blood was everywhere.
I didn’t think they would actually do it. It was just talk. I should have said, “Fuck you, you’re both jerkoffs! I got yelled at by the staff sergeant to make you get rid of that fucking revolver. Shit-can it, or hide it.”
That’s what I should have said. Part of me must have wanted to see if he had the balls.
BOOM and Simpson with no neck: That was my answer.
The bunker was tiny and it was a mess. Simpson’s neck was all over it. His blood turned the dirt into sick mud.
I yelled, “Corpsman up!”
Then I grabbed Simpson by the legs. Someone joined me, and we dragged Simpson out of the bunker.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
A corpsman was right there and I left him with Simpson and returned to the bunker and tore into the PFC who shot him.
“Fucking goddammit, man! You fucking killed the guy! You fucking killed him!”
I ripped the gun from his hands. I was so pissed. I walked away from my area, and for the next two hours I wandered around venting, replaying the whole thing in my head. How could I lose a guy like that? How could someone survive Khe Sanh and get killed like that?
I decided I wasn’t going to make it official that one Marine killed another Marine. I wasn’t going to report it. I would catch hell for not taking the revolver from them. I had disobeyed a direct order by not making him throw out the revolver. It would go down however it went down, but I wasn’t going to be the one to report it. The staff sergeant was waiting for me when I returned to my area.
“I fucking told you! I got fifteen years in this Marine Corps and I’m not going down! If I roll, you’re fucking rolling with me!”
He was pissed. He even grabbed me by the collar. But by that point in my tour I was the man and nobody, not even a staff sergeant could intimidate me.
“I’m career, you stupid fucker!” the sergeant screamed. “If I roll, you’re rolling with me!”
I was shook up about Simpson. The staff sergeant didn’t bother me, though. My mentality was that he was the new guy, and we were getting killed every fucking day, fighting a new battle every fucking day. This wasn’t Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton; this was war and we saw death almost every day.
So I didn’t flip, really, and nothing happened. No one asked questions. Nothing happened. As far as I was concerned the PFC, the staff sergeant, Simpson and I were the only ones who knew, and we had a tacit agreement not to report the incident. The PFC and the sergeant weren’t talking and Simpson was dead.
Later that day, we saddled up and moved on, never to return to that outpost. When you’re used to seeing people get killed on a regular basis, you put it behind you quickly, and we did.
The chaos of combat, the daily grind and the stress of war buried the incident under more pressing matters. It was as if it never happened.
Well, not entirely. Not for me. I never forgot. Simpson got blown away, and I could have stopped it. I always felt responsible. Twenty-five years later, my wife and I were invited to a reunion in Washington, D.C. General Carl Mundy, who had been in Khe Sanh, wanted to honor my regiment, the 26th Marines, for its action at Khe Sanh.
It was nice to be acknowledged by the Corps, a great honor. The Marine Corps provided the transportation and food and paid for entertainment. They put on a whole ceremony with the “8th and I” silent drill team from Marine Barracks Washington, the oldest active post in the Marine Corps. It was a great honor.
I ended up mingling, running into guys I hadn’t seen in twenty-five years, remembering some, acting like I remembered others. A Navy commander approached me.
“Barry Fixler?”
“Hey. How you doing?” I didn’t recognize him.
“I’m your corpsman. I’m the doc.” I still didn’t really recognize his face, just maybe. The years had changed all of us, some more than others. That’s why I don’t really like the reunions.
He said he operated on so-and-so at such-and-such battle—so many firefights—and some of it sounded vaguely familiar. I wasn’t sure.
He said the Navy had put him through college after the war, and he had just finished his twenty-five years as an officer. He was ready to retire. I still wasn’t remembering him.
“I remember you and Simpson,” he said, “the Russian roulette. You were his squad leader.”
/> “How the hell do you know about the Russian roulette?”
“I was there,” he said.
“No way that you were there! How do you know the story? No one knows the story!”
In my brain, there were only three people that really witnessed it, and I was the only one still alive. Simpson was dead, and the PFC who shot him got killed in combat a month later. The staff sergeant hadn’t seen it and didn’t report it. Other than me, no one alive really knew about it, or so I thought.
“I helped you drag him out. I’m the corpsman.”
I hadn’t really paid attention to the corpsman then, I had been so mad. We had just dragged Simpson out, and then I wandered off in a rage. I was so pissed, so fucking pissed.
“He’s alive.”
“What?” I asked.
“Simpson’s alive.”
“Impossible! His neck was wide open! I saw him die!”
“He wasn’t dead. We medivaced him in two minutes. We got him to an aid station. He’s alive.”
I was stunned. For twenty-five years I had been carrying Simpson’s death around with me. Not that I couldn’t sleep at night, but I never forgot. I had dragged his body out of that bloody bunker. Most of his neck was gone. I was sure of that.
“He couldn’t walk or talk, probably still can’t, but he’s alive,” the Navy officer said. “I followed him through. He spent three years in a VA hospital in Virginia. He wound up living in Virginia Beach.”
Simpson actually ended up relearning to walk. He received one of those voice boxes that he used to talk. He was on disability and was always going to be part of the VA system, but he survived and could function.
I asked the Navy officer how to get in touch with Simpson; something compelled me. The ex-corpsman gave me Simpson’s contact information.
It was about four on a Sunday afternoon when I called him, and Simpson’s wife answered the phone.
“Who’s calling, please?”
“This may sound odd or strange, but I’m his squad leader from Vietnam.”
“Oh! You are? Honey, it’s your squad leader, Barry Fixler, on the phone.” She announced me like they had been expecting my call.
Simpson got on and we exchanged greetings.
“I gotta tell you that for twenty-five years, I thought you were dead,” I said to him. “The corpsman just told me you’re alive and gave me your number. What happened?”
He talked for a little bit about how he had recovered and moved on, but he sounded disconnected, distant. I asked him why he hadn’t gone to the Khe Sanh reunion.
“I just didn’t feel like it.”
His answer was flat, emotionless.
“Are you pissed at me? You were in my squad when you got shot and I was your squad leader. Are you carrying a grudge on me?”
“No, I’m not pissed at you,” Simpson said. “I don’t carry a grudge.”
“You know what? I’m glad you’re alive. It’s really great. I carried your death for twenty-five years and I do consider myself partially responsible. But you were eighteen. I was nineteen. I was only your squad leader because I had more time in Vietnam. But it was still my responsibility. I could’ve stopped you guys and I didn’t, but I would like to see you and meet you at the next reunion.”
He didn’t seem very receptive. I knew that we would have no relationship.
We exchanged cordial goodbyes, and that was the last time we spoke.
COMING HOME
31
Nothing Easy,
No Parades
Mid-August 1968 was my time to rotate out of Vietnam and back to the States. In mid-July, Echo Company was ordered to a Navy ship to train for a special combat landing technique.
I only had thirty days left to do in country, so I was excluded because it would’ve been pointless to train me for a mission that I wouldn’t be there for.
I didn’t know it then, but I got lucky. That special Echo Company mission took place three weeks after I rotated back to the States, and about half of the Marines in my old squad were killed. The incident is known as LZ Margo.
Instead of the training, I was sent to another unit, Third Battalion, Third Marines, Headquarters and Supply Company 33, and I received major respect when I reported.
“Hey, brother, you’ve been in the shit for a long time.”
My new company, H&S 3/3, went out on missions like everyone else and took casualties like all other Marine companies, but they intentionally kept me behind the lines because I was a short-timer.
As it turned out, my biggest danger was the food.
I had been in combat for so long eating nothing but C-rations that they were all my stomach would accept. The steady diet of hot chow at the base made me sick. I had already missed one flight date back to the States over reporting technicalities, and I would’ve missed another one, but the guys did a very cool favor for me. Very cool. I had a terrible fever, sick as could be, and if I had gone to the infirmary, I would have missed the next flight date.
The base wasn’t immune to the war; we caught NVA artillery fire all of the time. I really was afraid that, after all of the shit that I had been through, I would get killed on an infirmary cot.
I was delirious with a fever and I couldn’t even stand, but the guys respected me as a Marine and for what I’d been through, and they hid me on a cot in a hooch where superiors couldn’t see me. They would sneak me in to get shot up with whatever medicines might help me and didn’t report any of it.
We had to make formation for two roll calls a day, and I was just too sick. But whenever my name was called—“Corporal. Barry Fixler!” —one of the guys would yell, “Here!”
I got away with it. They got away with it.
Things were dicey to the very end, though. My flight date was August 22, 1968, and the night before, we took very heavy artillery fire.
Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Same old Vietnam.
Then we got word that it was our own artillery, friendly fire. Our guys were targeting an area just outside our lines where a firefight was happening, but their rounds were coming up short.
“Fucking great,” I thought. “I shouldn’t even still be in Vietnam, and now I gotta get fucking killed by friendly fire. What a fucked-up way to die.”
Oddly enough, I don’t remember leaving Vietnam the next day. I don’t remember saying goodbyes or getting on the plane, or the flight from Vietnam to Okinawa.
Maybe a part of me didn’t really want to leave. I knew that I would miss the combat, the excitement, the danger. I would never again experience the intensity of combat, or so I thought.
* * *
The plane flew us from Vietnam to Okinawa, which was where they had told us as green Marines a little more than one year earlier that our odds of getting out of Vietnam alive and intact were only about one in three. If we weren’t one of the lucky ones, we were dead or severely wounded.
All I had leaving Vietnam was my green fighting uniform because the NVA had blown up our main supply. I had lived in it for many months, and it was really salty. Saltier meant cruddier, and cruddy showed that you had a lot of time in the bush, so that was a badge of honor. I’d been through the shit. If your uniform was all nice and starched, you were a child.
I was on the flight from Okinawa to the States with maybe one hundred other Marines when a captain stood up in front of us. I was feeling about ten feet tall. I had survived everything that they threw at me, and I was whole, physically and mentally.
“I know you Marines are feeling great about yourselves,” the captain said, “but all of you are coming home from your first tour. This was my second, and I can tell you right now that back home, nobody cares what you did in Vietnam. Nobody cares that you just fought a war, that you risked your life. Nobody cares. The only people that care are your mother, your father, your sister and your brother. That’s it.”
No parades, no pats on the back. The public was not going to run over and say, “Yay! You’re back from Vietnam!”
&
nbsp; That disappointed me probably more than it surprised me, and I was apprehensive about what home would be like.
* * *
As the next few years unfolded, Vietnam wasn’t a popular topic, and I never really talked about it. The only ones I would really talk about it with were other Marines. We’d laugh and talk about experiences to which people who weren’t there just can’t relate.
It was almost too far-fetched to try to explain Vietnam to somebody who didn’t experience it. Even talking with an Army guy who had been there wasn’t right. It had to be another Marine.
It was probably twenty to twenty-five years down the road that things opened up a little bit and people would ask me about Vietnam. Not that it bothered me. I was very busy with living in the present: working, going to school, having a family, improving and enjoying my life. I was very ambitious, very busy.
But it’s important to talk about combat experiences. To the guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan today, I say—be proud. Be proud that you killed the bad guys. I understand feeling bad about colleagues who died, but the guys who were killed and maimed would want you to go on with your life in a very positive mode. I believe that the guys that I was with, if they could talk from the dead, they’d say: “Don’t even dwell on me, man. I’m dead. You made it out. Enjoy life.”
Me, I enjoyed the Marine Corps. I loved the discipline, the camaraderie.
Even after I finished my military commitment I volunteered again in the active reserves.
* * *
I was rare for a reservist, having already survived combat. Maybe only 20 percent of reservists were combat veterans, and we were given respect from active duty Marines that non-combat reservists weren’t.
Every summer we had to spend time in specialized training…desert training, amphibious training and so on. For amphibious training, we were sent to Little Creek, Virginia, and integrated with regular forces.