by Tim White
Ulee woke nearly every evening with a nightmare. He would turn over the body of a Viet Cong that he had shot and see the face of Ahn or Dawa and sometimes even myself or one of his younger brothers. One night, under the stars, he and Luau were talking when Luau started to cry.
“I can’t handle this anymore. I think we are fighting for the right causes—yet I am not sure any nation can solve another nation’s problem. I don’t think we should be here. But I won’t go home and leave you here; you need me to save your skinny ass. Who is going to take care of your pup if something happens to you?”
“I know what you are talking about brother,” Ulee said. “I feel the same way. The American people don’t want us over here, and the Vietnamese don’t really want us here. But there will surely be a massacre when some politician decides to leave. Think of all these people who have bought into the protection of the United States. I think we as a Christian nation have a duty to help defeat bullies, but hopefully we learn from Vietnam that we cannot build a nation against the will of their people. The people of that nation are the only ones that find their freedom. I pray that it does not take us a century to learn this lesson. I am growing more evil every year. I don’t know how many people I have killed and I’m starting to not feel anything. I have so many things screwed up with the woman I love. I left her without my name, so she is not even a citizen of any country and she has been through hell. She is the most virtuous woman in all the world.”
Luau tried to minister to him, but nothing seemed to help. Cerberus crawled onto Ulee’s lap with him, and he fell back asleep thinking he was home.
Ulee finally wrote me a letter apologizing for not writing and telling me that this war was a lot harder than anything that he ever dreamed of. He felt like he was losing his faith and his sanity. He told me about the orphanage, the kids, Dawa and Ahn, Plato and Aristotle, Luau, and Cerberus. And then he told me that he could not keep writing or he would die. He had to be present in country to survive—he had to think that he was already dead or he would surely die.
I didn’t understand—I still don’t. But I felt like I was losing my faith and my sanity when I read his letter. I despised Ahn and had nightmares of Ulee being with her. Maybe it was best if we both moved on with our lives. At the same time, I had come so close to being deported back to Honduras, which would be certain death for me. I was rounded up working on the Trumans’ farm, along with hundreds of illegal immigrants. The Trumans were forced to pay a million-dollar fine. And they paid it to protest how working immigrants were treated. It meant they made nothing as a family that year and were years behind now in staying flush on their farm. They hired a lawyer who advised me to marry an American citizen.
“No, I would never marry for citizenship.”
“Honey, it is the world’s oldest profession,” the lawyer said.
I lit into him. “Don’t tell me about prostitution. I was a child slave, and it is not the world’s oldest profession; murder is—just read about Cain and Abel. That is a saying spoken by desensitized men who don’t want to think that children are tortured into selling their bodies and they are not selling their bodies; someone else is, who is very evil.”
The lawyer looked ashamed. “I am sorry Penelope. I have three daughters. I will never say that again.”
He represented me in immigration court, and I was given a leave (a green card) for being an excellent student. I was now on foreign student status. I had worked hard to earn this. It came because I refused to sink into the dark abyss of thinking I was a victim. My faith in Jesus Christ and my friendship with my church gave me a whole community fighting to give me a chance to be proactive and not just reactive to all the hell in my life. I prayed for every marginalized person in the world to have the same kind of support.
Chapter Six
Ulee’s Stand
I CRIED AS I completed that night’s story. Legend telling was real for our people. It was a heritage laid open so our family could find our soul, our identity. The whole family could not wait for the next legend-telling time.
Ulee knew it, and I knew it, but I pretended not to know it. It was only a matter of time until Ulee would meet his death in some heroic way. Everyone who goes into the hell of war is a hero. But the real heroes are those that do not come back because their sacrifice has saved the lives of those who can come home and receive the medals and honors. The survivors only accept these rewards because they do not want to demean the sacrifice of the heroes who gave their lives so that they could make it home. Those in war have come to grips with the fact that they are going to die. This allows them the freedom to do the foolish acts that make war so dangerous. Ulee was a hero and there was no other way for him. That is the irony of this myth and my desire to have a hero who would save me. I knew that sometime, some place, he would die a horrible violent death. Do you know what it is like to love someone like that? Many have, but I loved a hero that I needed to come home—I still needed to be rescued, to feel safe in his arms.
In January 1970, the four CAGs (combined action groups) were formed as part of the plan to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese and to protect villages from Viet Cong influence. A combined action group consisted of a total of forty-two Marine officers and about 2,000 enlisted men, with two naval officers and hospital corpsmen.
Ulee and Luau joined a Marine fire squad that was patrolling to protect Montagnard villages. The Montagnard were mountain people who had always felt mistreated by the Vietnamese; they were fierce US allies, and as combatants, they are some of the best in the world. Ulee was promoted to sergeant and led the fire team. The fire team was made up of Luau as corporal; Paco, the short, stocky Mexican who was always making wise cracks from East LA and who had been through basic with them; Donel, a tall African-American who was always cracking them all up from Compton, California; and Red, a redheaded African-American who was tougher than nails and never said much to anyone except Donel.
Red had a temper that everyone feared, even Ulee. Red carried a Thompson machine gun with a twenty round box clip. Red wasn’t afraid of anyone; if he couldn’t take you in a fight, he would get you later. Donel carried the M-79 grenade launcher, and he also carried an M-16. Sammy was an African-American from Portland, Oregon. His parents were schoolteachers, and he had strong middle-class values and a Baptist faith. He was the radio operator, and he had the intelligence and mechanical aptitude to make his fire squad believe they had the best radio operator in the Corp. Bull was from Arizona; he was a big construction worker who was the first one to man the M-60 machine gun, and he was assisted by Benjamin, a Jewish boy who wanted to be a rabbi from San Francisco. Benjamin carried an M-16 over his back, which is incredibly light. But his primary function in a firefight was to assist Bull on the M-60. All of these guys had been through basic together, even though they had split up over the months. Now they were the fire team trained to be in specialized operations. They worked along with four Montagnard. These South Vietnamese were all old enough to be their fathers, and Ulee’s well-trained team had a hard time keeping up with them. The Montagnard had everything to teach about the jungle and the Viet Cong.
They spent so much time together they all became like a family. They would go on ambush, they would search and destroy, and they stayed in the villages they were assigned to protect. All of them were learning Vietnamese, and all of them except Ulee took wives from the villages. They became not only protective of the Montagnard villages, but they became a little more Vietnamese as the Montagnard became a little more American. The squad learned the Vietnam custom of leaving a little food on their plates so that their hosts did not think they were still hungry. It was as if the Combined Action Group was a civilization caught between two ways of life.
It was during this time that two boys were sent to fight for the Vietnamese—Plato and Aristotle. They had enlisted with the Montagnard, not even official ARVIN forces. Ulee tore into them, scolding them for their stupid actions.
“We are just the same ag
e as your great grandfather Jackson Sundown when he helped his tribe under Chief Joseph,” Plato said.
Ulee had told many stories to the orphanage, and his family history was a big part of it. Ulee insisted that they stay in one of the villages on guard duty. He assigned his dog Cerberus to stay with the boys and guard them. Cerberus obeyed with joy—this dog loved these boys. Ulee loved the people they were protecting and fighting alongside. They reminded him of his ancestors. They revered the land and lived in collaboration as a tribe. The bloodshed now seemed more purposeful than ever, and Ulee felt less shame.
Ulee went on a little scout trip by himself and spotted a North Vietnamese regiment moving in.
All the Marines defending the village knew they were going to die. The issue for them was that they were not going to let their trusted allies be abandoned and overrun. At night, Ulee was able to take out five men a night with his bow from about forty yards away from each target. Ulee was out there for a week when he ran into a lost ranger recon squad. They were surrounded at night—Ulee took out seven NVA to clear a path for retreat.
Ulee snuck up on the group and made the sound of the meadowlark hoping that someone would remember it from the States.
He heard a reply and snuck in, and they asked who won the World Series this year. He didn’t know; he said, “I play football.”
They let him in, and he met a Lakota Sioux, named Ralph Timid Fox. He was the point man for the Army Ranger squad that had recognized his birdcall. Immediately, the two Natives were best friends. Natives are often from mixed blood, and Ulee probably had some Lakota in him as Ralph had some Comanche in him. They were really often related in some way. There was such a joyful reunion because every one of this eleven-man recon team was from Kennewick, Washington. They had all attended the other high school in Kennewick called Kamiakin. It was named after Chief Kamiakin, the great chief of the Yakima tribe. They were all Ulee’s age and had grown up together. After their senior year in high school, they had lost the first four games of the season in football, and then the coaches tried to rebuild for the future. They ended up losing every game that season, going 0-10. That was the ultimate humiliation in Eastern Washington. This was football country. The starting senior eleven football players decided to join the Army as long as they could serve together and go and kick butt in Vietnam. The more they read about Ulee, the more persuaded they were that this was the right course of action. Their head coach tried to talk them out of it. Several of them had the talent to play Division I football, and others were excellent scholars. All of them were good kids.
While this was their first year in country, they heard that Ulee was in trouble in a last stand at a Montagnard village. They decided to get lost and join him at this Alamo. These were all big strong men who knew how to shoot and to fight. The center, Jack Groan, was the biggest and strongest man on the team. He was a 4.0 student, but came from an Army family and always addressed everyone as “sir.” He was also a state champion in wrestling. Everyone on the team stood over six feet tall, with three of them over six-five. The fullback they called “Mack Truck” was a leader in the community and planned on becoming a police officer. The halfback, Slick, was from a rich family. He had his black belt in Taekwondo and was also a state champion wrestler. The reunion was full of quiet tears and silent joy. These big farm boys had brought with them some toys: two 50-caliber machine guns and two mortars. They were loaded down like mules carrying all the ammo.
They began to sneak out when it became clear that they would be discovered. Ulee moved off about 300 yards and at sunrise, he began to fire from his camouflaged position with his Remington 700. He quickly took out four NVA who never knew what hit them. He took a new position, this took him about fifteen minutes while the Rangers crawled at breakneck speed toward the village wire. Timid Fox sounded the meadowlark, and Ulee’s men knew it was a friendly. Four more NVA met their end by Ulee’s sniper fire. The VC began to move in on him. Ulee let four grenades fly, one right after another as if he were throwing touchdown passes. He pulled out his shotgun and ran—bullets snapped at his feet and near his head. He dove to the grass and fired five shots of double-aught buckshot from his Ithaca shotgun. Each shot carried the equivalent of fifteen 9-millimeter shots. It was enough to have those within fifty yards duck their heads.
Ulee ran. An NVA sniper stood and drew a bead on him, only to be knocked down by Luau’s BAR. Then there was covering fire from multiple machine guns and M-16s as first the Rangers made it to the wire and turned to watch Ulee set a record for the 100-yard dash. He knew right where all the booby traps were and had never ran so fast. He accelerated the entire way—jumping over the barbed wire like a high hurdle before catching his leg and doing a belly flop on the village side of the wire. Montagnard were there to help him up and get him to the trenches.
The NVA had learned a lot about how to fight the Americans. Their mortar rounds were more accurate than ours, and it became impossible to get helicopters in or out. They would crush the village quickly because they were afraid of American air power. US air power cleared an escape path for some of the Montagnard families. Ulee scouted their way out and then returned, intending to die with his men and the men of the village.
The NVA doubled their forces, sending in another regiment and bringing in Viet Cong from distance to overrun this village. The enemy drove back the snipers and the rescuing platoon, and our boys suffered heavy losses. It was bloody business. Both sides inflicted death and casualties on each other. A reinforced armored Marine regiment was sent up Highway One to bring relief. It would be at least two days before they could get there—two days too long.
Ulee gathered together all the children and had the Kamiakin Ranger team lead them out to safety. He provided cover for them as a sniper in the jungles. The LT was there, but master sergeant Luau was really in command when Ulee was gone. The LT agreed with most of the decisions that Luau made and knew that this Marine had the experience.
“I will be back,” Ulee told them.
It was two in the morning when Ulee slipped out of the camp armed only with his bow. The courageous Kamiakin Ranger team led the children through the jungle. Ulee insisted that Plato and Aristotle join them and they both carried M-16s to help with the escaped. Forty-seven kids and women crawled for over a mile. The Kennewick Rangers led the way, taking out the enemy in the starless night. Finally, they came into the group and the Ranger sergeant said, “Now we run.” They ran three miles. They were being followed by Viet Cong, but a long-range Marine scout squad met them and drove back the VC. The kids were safe.
That night Ulee sat under the stars with several of his Ranger friends from Kennewick Washington having a smoke after all the drama. Ulee told them that they deserved a medal for saving all those children.
“It feels good to do something that really counts,” Mack Truck replied. “Sometimes I wonder why we are over here. I know Communism is a threat but it seems like we want freedom for the Vietnamese people more than they do. They might be happy living under a communist state and just maybe it might become a democracy someday.”
They all laughed. “Ya, and someday the Soviet Union is going to break up into separate nations and then throw out communism and become a democracy,” another Marine said.
“There is going to be slaughter when this country falls, and these peasants are not that far from looking like my family,” Luau said.
“We don’t fight for politics we fight for the man next to us,” Mack Truck said.
Luau laughed. “That is all well and good; I hear a lot of white men say that. Don’t get me wrong it is true and I appreciate it. But have you ever thought if the man next to you would just go home then we wouldn’t all be sweating our butts off and we could go home and get some good home cooking.” Everyone laughed.
“We Natives fight for America and what it might be. We have a long way to go, racism, fair play in the economy, and education. But some day there is going to be a black president,” Ulee said, “an
d a Latino President, and an Indian president, maybe even a Samoan president, a woman president or a Vietnamese-American president . . . and they’ll have as much trouble as a white president.” Everyone laughed.
“If we stick to our Judeo-Christian moral underpinning, I think God will bless America and we will get better,” Ulee added. And part of those Christian values is to respect others who are not like us. That to me is what gives America the chance to be great.
“I used to go to your dad’s church and he was always so encouraging and positive,” a Marine named Slick said, “But it’s hard to be positive. We are surrounded and outnumbered, and we all know we are going to die a painful death soon.”
“We’re not going to die,” Ulee said. “We are going to win.”
“Besides Heaven awaiting Christians, what else is good news about our situation?” Slick said. There was a long silence.
“The good news is we are alive right now,” Ulee said. “We are sitting under these stars having a Kennewick party. We are laughing and we saved a bunch of kids. We are going to try and say no to a big bully and give him a bloody nose. The good news is we are alive today. Tomorrow, who knows? Everybody is going to die sometime.”
A big Polish guy who played left tackle at Kamiakin changed the subject. He asked if Ulee would perform a marriage for him with one of the women from the village.
“I’m not a chaplain or pastor,” Ulee said.
“Your dad and granddad are—that’s close enough for me,” the Marine said. “I know you were a staunch Christian before you killed that guy in Pasco.”
“Who are you going to marry anyway?” Ulee asked. This muscular friend, who looked like he could have played professional football, was from a salt of the earth farming family. His name was Antonio and was drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels.