by Barry Fixler
I enjoyed being with the fellas. I enjoyed the adventure. I could get up in a heartbeat at 4:30 in the morning and put on a field pack and just go. I fed off of it.
At Little Creek, we were ordered to perform a staged beach landing for a slew of civilian visitors, VIPs and dignitaries. We weren’t on a beach, but on dry land, a demonstration area as big as several football fields. The crowd sat in bleachers facing the fields, and the officers spoke with their backs facing us.
They had us put on all of our war gear and pack into these landing craft that were left over from World War II. Each craft held about 160 troops, and we were supposed to charge out of them toward the crowd at the command of the colonel presiding over the demonstration, and we were told to be organized, enthused and intense.
We all thought it was bullshit, a dog-and-pony show that made no sense. The landing craft were old wooden pieces of crap that had been made permanent parts of the training grounds. We were supposed to charge out of the landing craft, stay organized, run and drop to a prone position with rifles shouldered, look menacing and impress the crowd. But our attitudes about the whole deal weren’t good. They were poor. It was just stupid to us.
“This is bullshit,” we thought, “dumb to do this for civilians. We know how to do this. There’s nothing in it for us.”
The officers could tell.
“Look, Marines, don’t embarrass us,” they said. “Don’t just la-de-da walk off the beach and run a little bit and fall down. Look like Marines! Be motivated! Be Marines!”
But we just looked at each other thinking, “What the fuck? We gotta show off to these civilians?” We were pretty half-assed as we packed ourselves into the landing craft. I was in the craft that was supposed to empty first.
He was supposed to give the hand signal, and our mission was to charge and look organized. My craft was supposed to empty first, and the Marines in the other craft were to follow our lead.
What we didn’t realize was that those old wooden landing craft had been sitting in that field forever, since WWII, and there were huge swarms of hornets nesting in the back. Fucking hornets. The back of our craft was filled with them, a big swarm from a huge nest that they’d probably been building for twenty years.
We’d packed ourselves in backwards, so that we were facing the ramp that would open for us to storm out, and when the guys in back finally were pushed up against the hornets’ nests, the bugs got mad. There must have been thousands of them, and they attacked us full fury before the officer ever gave the hand signal to charge.
The officer was still on the podium explaining to the civilians and dignitaries packing the bleachers what was about to happen.
“On my command, you will see a full battalion of gung-ho Marines…”
But that was as far as he got. The hornets were stinging us like mad, and we just blew out of the craft screaming, waving our arms in the air and running like fucking madmen.
It worked out perfect. The officer thought that he’d accidentally given the signal early, and that we were the most motivated Marines in the history of that demonstration.
The guys in the other craft had been bitching just as much as we had about how stupid the whole thing was, but they saw us storm out and thought, “Whoa, look at this! They’re taking it serious! They’re gonna make us look bad!”
So they ran and screamed like madmen, too. The officers probably thought that they hadn’t seen Marines so intense and motivated since Iwo Jima. They had no way of knowing about the hornets.
32
Stresses from War
Some people can put war behind them and get on with their lives. I’m one of those who could. Others never get over it. We have a term for them: “vetted out.” Smiley Jones served with me in Echo Company. Smiley was all vetted out.
My squad leader, Tom “Ike” Eichler, organized a parade for Vietnam veterans on June 13, 1986, in Chicago. He became a Chicago police officer and a big organizer of veterans.
A year before, on May 7, 1985, New York City had held a parade for Vietnam veterans. I was psyched up that day, and I ran into Smiley again.
“Man, they’re acknowledging us for the first time.” I was so proud, happy and excited that I decided to blow off work. “Fuck it, man! This is my day! They are honoring not just me but all the Viet vets!”
The parade started on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge. I was so psyched that I got up early and started walking to the bus terminal to get into the city. I needed to get one bus into Manhattan, then another one to Brooklyn.
It was 6:30 in the morning, and I didn’t have to be there until 8:00 or 9:00, but I was anxious and wanted to be a part of everything.
Normally I would take a bus into the city, but I was so excited when I reached the bus stop that I just stuck my hand out to hitch a ride.
Sure enough, a guy stopped at the light and offered me a lift.
“I’m a Viet vet and they’re having a parade for us,” I said. He took me exactly where I needed to go. Thousands of Vietnam veterans were already at the staging area, and the media was all over the place. It was a big deal.
Everyone was getting organized. Army Airborne people were looking for others who were Army Airborne. Then they’d try to find their units. So it was Cavalry looking for Cavalry, Marines First Division looking for First Division, Fifth Division for Fifth Division, and so on. People held up signs saying which units they were with.
Finally, I saw Khe Sanh veterans. That was me! There were several of us, and I hoped I would see someone from my company. Sure enough, I saw Smiley, Echo Company. We hooked right up. “I did this; I did that,” just shooting the shit and catching up.
Now, Smiley is a great guy, but he was all vetted out. He was heavy set, muscular and wore combat gear. His front teeth were missing.… He was just vetted out.
“What the fuck’s with you?” I asked him. “No front teeth?”
“Oh, I get in fights all the time,” he told me. “Last Friday night, I got slugged with a pool stick.” Another time, he was working pumping gas and said something to a customer and the guy bashed him in the mouth with a tire iron.
“I decided I’m not putting my teeth on anymore.”
“That’s good, Smiley,” I said. “I agree with you.” ’Cause he got in all these jams, right?
We marched together. We went over the bridge and down Wall Street and office workers threw confetti from the buildings. It was the first time that our country had thanked us for fighting in Vietnam. Smiley and I bonded again, and we kept in touch.
The Chicago parade was on June 13, 1986. A few weeks prior, my old squad leader Ike called me. He was planning a get-together with Khe Sanh veterans at his house the night before the parade and wanted me to come. I invited Smiley. I had money and he didn’t, so I offered to pay. I was excited and I wanted him to be there. Smiley kept thanking me.
We left New York on a Friday, and Smiley met me at my office in the Empire State Building. It was a normal, conservative office where everyone wore business clothes.
I was just working as usual when one of my secretaries ran in with a panicked look on her face.
“There’s a madman out there and he says he knows you!”
I looked out and saw Smiley. He wore combat fatigues with combat boots, a floppy hat and no front teeth. I could almost picture camouflage paint on his face.
The women in the office couldn’t believe that I in my business suits could have a friend like Smiley.
“He’s fine, absolutely fine,” I assured them, but they seemed skeptical.
Our flight was on People Express Airlines, that no-frills, low-budget carrier that Continental bought out in 1987. We arrived a little late and ended up with seats on the second-to-last row.
I sat by the isle and Smiley sat next to me, and this poor kid, who was maybe twenty years old, was stuck by the window. I looked like a businessman. Smiley looked like he’d just walked out of the jungle with no teeth.
We hadn’t been
in the air long and I was half-dozing when Smiley pulled out this big fucking pipe. It looked like one of those old fetish Indian peace pipes, a long, old pipe with leather tassels and feathers and everything, and he started packing it with marijuana.
You could smoke cigarettes in the backs of planes in those days, but this was different. I just watched him, too stunned to do anything. He packed the pipe with pot and lit it.
“I don’t fucking believe what’s happening here,” I thought.
In Smiley’s mind, he was a Vietnam veteran and sort of above the law.
“Oh fuck!” I thought. “There’s no way that I’m going to jail with this guy. There’s fucking no way.”
I didn’t say to him, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I just told myself, “You know what? He’s a big boy and whatever goes down is going down.”
I got up and walked to the front of the plane where they had the magazine racks. Smiley was about 6-foot-2, 270 pounds, and that kid was still pinned between him and the window when Smiley fired up the pipe. All the poor kid could do was slump as low into his seat as he could and pretend he was asleep.
A cloud of pot smoke rose from the back of the plane, and the more Smiley puffed, the more smoke drifted toward the front. The cabin reeked of marijuana.
As the cloud of pot smoke grew and drifted further up the plane, I could see the passengers sniffing around, as if they were thinking, “What the fuck is that?!” Then they would turn their heads around and see Smiley, this big fucking madman wearing combat gear and no teeth and smoking away on this big peace pipe stuffed with weed.
The stewardesses wouldn’t even walk back there. They looked at him, and, holy shit, he didn’t look normal. They were afraid he’d chop off their heads.
I stayed up front for a good half hour until Smiley finished getting stoned. I imagine all the people around him were pretty high, too. The plane was a big stink bomb, but everyone was too scared by Smiley’s appearance to do anything.
I was pretty sure that cops were going to storm the plane when we landed in Chicago, and I was ready to tell anyone who would listen that I had nothing to do with him.
But it didn’t happen. We all tiptoed off the plane, but the only cop waiting at the airport for us was Tom. He and a few other Vietnam vets were there to greet us and give us a ride.
“You won’t believe this,” I told Tom. “The whole way over here, this guy was smoking pot. You’re a cop, man! He didn’t get arrested?! They didn’t call in the federal agents?”
“Naw, nothing,” Tom said.
“Holy fucking shit! Jesus Christ almighty!”
We all broke down laughing. How the hell could someone smoke pot in a public airplane in front of everybody and get away with it?
Smiley couldn’t have cared less. He was at a stage in his life where he thought, “Done this, done that. So they fucking put me jail? I’ve been to jail. You know what? I have nothing more to give and nothing to lose.”
That was his attitude.
* * *
I don’t believe in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I saw combat, saw people die horrible deaths, and I made it through, counted myself lucky and came home and went on with my life. But I know other veterans have had far different experiences, and my position isn’t politically correct.
In 2007, Rockland County was looking for combat veterans to counsel veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so they reached out to me, probably because I’m well known locally for supporting our troops.
“This is a great idea,” I thought. “I’ll go for it. Maybe I can help them.”
I spent the whole summer taking classes. I closed my store early every Monday for months. I figured it was worth it to help other vets. I was in for an awakening.
The counselors teaching the classes were all women in their fifties and sixties, and they were very sympathetic.
Their training was in domestic situations, spousal abuse, and things like that. Speaking to fresh combat veterans was new for them, and I disagreed with everything they said.
Everything was too soft, too simple and too easy. I went ahead with it, but by the end of the classes, we all knew that I was not a guy they wanted as a counselor. They didn’t assign me any veterans when the course was over. Zero. They knew my attitude was sort of tough.
The instructors would say things like, “Don’t cross your arms; you’re showing bad posture. If you show bad posture, you’re showing something that’s negative. They think that you’re the counselor and you’re supposed to make them feel good, and if you make them feel bad, they could go home and kill themselves because of a bad counseling session they had with you.”
They figured I was the right guy to push them over the edge, so that was the end of that.
In March of 2008, the woman who runs the local program put together a lecture and book signing by Dr. Edward Tick, who wrote Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
About one hundred people showed up at the New City Library, men and women veterans from the Iraq war all the way back to World War II. It was about fifty/fifty men to women, not all veterans.
Some were sons, daughters, parents—people who had some connection with veterans—and a lot of the people in the audience were civilians with no military connection.
I went. I know how I feel about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I wanted to hear what the other side had to say. I said to myself, “Barry, just keep it low key and listen. Just sit there and be quiet.”
Tick started talking about how the ancient Greeks and Romans acted toward their warriors when they returned home from battles. He didn’t say “veterans;” he said “warriors,” and he carried the point through the centuries to the American Indians. The warriors would fight to protect the tribe, and the tribe would give them the highest respect and special treatment because they had defended the village.
He was only ten, fifteen minutes into a two-hour lecture, and he started describing one of his patients who had fought in the Siege of Khe Sanh. He described how traumatized the Marine was, how his hill was overrun, how he had to kill or be killed, how his life was torn apart, how he lost his soul right then and there.
It was obvious to me that Dr. Tick was describing the night of February 5, 1968—the night we were overrun on Hill 861-A.
Tick was quoting his patient, speaking for the Marine now: “I lost my soul! My life is gone! Everything is gone! I can’t continue! I can’t fight! I can’t do anything!”
People sat with their mouths open in awe, listening to Tick talk about this so-called warrior who lost it all, lost his soul, everything, died, spiritually died at that point, and I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“Barry…” I warned myself, even as I watched my hand rise. This was a lecture. He wasn’t expecting questions, but I caught his eye from the rear and he acknowledged me.
I stood and introduced myself.
“I was at Khe Sanh. I have credibility, a Unit Citation from President Lyndon B. Johnson. And I was on that hill, at that exact place, at that exact moment. If what that Marine said to you about losing his soul and losing his life, losing everything, if he had said that to me then or now, I would say to him, ‘You are a coward!’”
Then I sat again. The room was silent. Tick lectures for a living—he’s a professional—but he struggled to regain his composure.
“I see your point,” he mumbled. “I see your point.”
But I threw him off. What were the odds? Only a few hundred men actually were at Khe Sanh and on that particular hill on that particular night, and here one was in New City, New York, messing up his lecture, and there was no way he could challenge me.
All the veterans—guys from Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and World War II—watched me as I sat. So did three cadets from West Point. I found out later that they were on assignment, researching Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some of the other veterans spoke, and their experiences were different from
mine. They came back from Vietnam and were spit on by anti-war protestors, treated horribly, and they were affected.
I didn’t get any parades, but nothing negative, either. I went on with life, and I was very proud of my service.
Parents, family, close friends––they were the only ones who really cared about the veterans. The country usually cares about veterans in passing, but America was turned around during Vietnam. People were negative about the war.
I kept my peace and let the other veterans speak for the rest of the lecture, until one of the West Point cadets stood and asked Tick, “What can we do to stop this PTSD?”
I blew it then. She asked Tick the question, but I popped up.
“That’s easy. Are you guys trained to get used to seeing bodies scattered all over the place? Well, when we kill a bad guy in Iraq, when we blow their skulls apart, we should freeze that body and send it to West Point and scatter it around so you can smell the blood and the horror and get used to fighting that way. If you’re used to fighting with blood and dead Iraqis all over the place, it will be nothing. That’s what needs to be done. Period.”
Everyone was quiet again. I glanced at the three West Pointers. Their eyes were wide, mouths still, like “Whoa!” I got that look from some of the others in the crowd, too.
But after the lecture was over, the lady who coordinated the event came up to me.
“Barry, you nut! You crazy nut! You’re a lunatic! Barry, you’re a lunatic!”
But she said it laughing, and she hugged and kissed me.
“I’m not in trouble?”
“Come to my office, but don’t talk crazy like that,” she said. Dr. Tick was going to be there, selling and signing his book.
We milled around outside her office and a few people came up and told me they’d liked what I had said.
The way that she said “crazy,” I didn’t take it personally. Just like during the lecture, when Tick said someone who didn’t come back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder had to be a psychopath or a sociopath, a nut. I don’t remember which word he used. He wasn’t talking directly to me, and I didn’t take it personally.