Page 126 - Stand Down Vietnam

I got wounded three times, twice was light, but the
third time was the mother of all wounds. I got blown
up really bad. Anyway, I went through that and went to
Okinawa for medical care before being returned to the
United States.

While I was in Vietnam, I got to know the Vietnamese
people. I had nothing against them. You get friendly

with the people. I had no bad feelings because after
all, we were fighting on their land.

We went into villages that no one had been in before;
the idea was to run the Viet Cong out of the village
and then hold it. Until Westmoreland got there, then
we ran off and left it; the Viet Cong came right back.
That policy was terrible because we ended up fighting
the same battle all the time.

I was in some major engagements, Operation Hastings,
Operation Prairie. During one fight we lost eighty-
five people in fifteen minutes. Only nineteen of us
out of a company were walking when it was over. All
because a Captain (Company Commander) wouldn’t listen.
But, that’s beside the point.

I had been on an all-night recon; I knew what was over
there. He didn’t play me as infantry and didn’t
listen. He cried the whole time we were in the fight;

he never gave one single order. There were as many of
us wanting to kill him as there was trying to kill the
Viet Cong.

It was a frontal assault and I don’t know that we could
have made it through the night. Later on, I read a
newspaper article that said we only suffered light
casualties; eighty percent is not light. When I read
that, I wanted to shoot the Captain, I lived with a
passion to shoot that Captain; he didn’t know poop!