“But, in all honesty,” Tainer quickly returned, “after I got back to civilian life it wasn’t so important anymore. In the Marines we were close out of a need for the moment,” Tainer confessed.
“Can you tell me what it was like, what Billy was like to serve with?” Manny asked.
“Yes, I probably could, but first you should understand why we did what we did. There are many misconceptions about Vietnam. The truth was never an issue that was explored in any depth. There have always been two great questions: one, why we got involved in the first place, and two, why couldn’t we win?” Mark sat, waiting for a response from Manny.
“I don’t know? It’s kind of why I’m here,” Manny said, filling in the gap. “I knew so little about it, but I was warned to stay out of it by the very guy I’m trying to find out about.”
“Palmer told you to stay out of it huh? What exactly did he tell you?”
“That it was a bunch of shit, a load of crap, and that I didn’t have what it would take to stay alive. Of course, he told everyone that. He said we would make terrible soldiers because thirteen months was no way to run a war. If you got sent over there, all you had to do was make the thirteen months and then you could go home. As soon as you get there, you started counting the days. The only motivation is to survive, not seek out and destroy the enemy.”
“Yes, it’s a hell of a penalty when the other side is following different rules. They stay until the job is done, or they die. Were you offended by Billy telling you all this?” Mark returned.
“At the time, I guess a little. Some of the other guys were pissed off, but looking back, they probably wanted to hear that. I can remember them showing body bags on TV. Christ that’s all you saw night after night, the same old shit. I know, I didn’t want to go after seeing that a few times. All Billy really ever told me about the war; was that it was his first, definitive reality check when he was looking at body bags that were his friends. He realized he was going in one direction and they were going in another.”
“Know anybody that was killed?” Mark asked
“Yeah, a couple of guys from the next town over bought it.”
“What did you think of that?”
“It scared the shit out of me.”
“And you saw it continually, on TV?”
“Every night.”
“Yeah, the media was definitely out of control. The first mission Billy and I got was riding shotgun for this French Journalist. Man was she ugly. She would run right up front when the shit hit the fan, trying to get the Pulitzer Picture. She’d stick her camera right in the faces of the wounded. A real heartless bitch. She finally got shot in the ass on the fourth day. The media was there to line their own nests, but it wasn’t the reason we ‘apparently’ lost,” Mark said seriously, sitting forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the edge of the desk.
“The main reasons we ‘apparently’ lost that battle,” he continued, “was one, we were compromised in the field. Every operation, every move we made was relayed to our allies, the South Vietnamese. The war was supposed to be a joint cooperation with the ARVIN, the South Vietnamese Army and they were full of Viet Cong. Second, politics, and the likes of you helped loose the war Manny. You and the politicians because any democracy will have trouble defeating any enemy that does not directly threaten the home front. Unless the enemy is marching down main street there will be some politician or political advocate that will be looking for an issue to rally support, to either get votes or to shirk responsibility.”
“Why does that include me?” Manny asked, curious.
“Because; Billy warned you that it was not in your best interest, so you didn’t support the effort!” Tainer criticized. “And the other side realized that if they just held out, eventually that lack of support would turn in their favor. You know Manny, a bunch of hayseeds with a half-baked, personal agenda can cancel out any worthwhile endeavor.”
“There was nothing worthwhile about Vietnam,” Manny declared.
“Oh really,” Tainer said, annoyed. “Any Communists running around, pointing missiles in our direction these days?”
“Well, yeah, China—” Manny started to list the countries, but Tainer cut him off.
“All headed toward capitalistic societies,” Tainer said. “They want to be like us because we broke the Soviet Union by standing up to their military expansion. Vietnam is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world because we gave them the taste of freedom and prosperity. We may have lost the battle, but we did win the war.”
“There should be a better way than stomping on people to get their attention,” Manny commented.
“Not so far, not in our barbaric world,” Tainer said.
“You said we were compromised in the field, and no one did anything about it?” Manny asked.
“It was so despicable the government still won’t talk about it, let alone admit anything, and they knew the whole time. They had this program, something thought up, by I can’t imagine who, called Cheiu Hoi, Open Arms. We paid any Viet Cong eighty-five dollars a month to come on over to our side. At that time their national average income was about two hundred and fifty dollars a year. Well, come over they did, but the powers that be didn’t exactly screen those guys. They came over all right, but all we got were VC agents. Of course when it became evident that the whole thing was a failure, nobody wanted to admit the mistake, so the easiest thing to do was deny there was anything wrong.”
“Come on Tainer, how could they be so stupid?”
“You want to hear stupid? A society that still had one foot in the stone age was able to completely humiliate the most advanced technological society to date, and get paid while doing it. That’s beyond stupid, it’s ludicrous, but fact. Too much money was flowing and no one was willing to stand up and say enough, let’s fix it. In a capitalistic society anyone that rocks the boat when things are humming will meet a stone wall.”
“So, even though we were being sold out, it continued because no one wanted to take the blame, or stop the money,” Manny commented.
“Yup, when we were there in 66, our sniper teams controlled an area between Con Tien and the Rock Pile, an area in northwest Vietnam. We acted with impunity in that area. The teams controlled an area 30 miles long and 20 miles deep, right up to the river to North Vietnam and the Laotian border. Just on the other side of the boarder was the Ho Chi Min trail. Boy, that was something up there, once you got into stalking the prey, the hunting and the kill, it’s hard to back away. I don’t know if I could to this day if I was presented with the opportunity.”
“Anyway, Marine Force Recon operated beyond us, right into Laos and North Vietnam. They used to come back pissed off as hell. They would find troop concentrations, camps, truck parks, all kinds of NVA convoys and supply depots, then they would call in air strikes and sit and watch the target empty before the strike would take place. It would take sometimes two days until the strike would occur and by then the bombs would find nothing but empty jungle to wreak. We had a policy of working with our allies and by god, the powers that be, regardless of the outcome stuck to their policy.”
“Didn’t anyone figure out what was going on?”
“Of course everyone knew what was happening, but squawking about it didn’t do any good. Shit, the guys that saw it happening were told that how the war was run was none of their business. They were putting their lives on the line and being betrayed by their own commanders and everybody knew it.”
“My god, I never realized it was that bad, that our government could be so inept?”
“Manny, you’re a business man, what makes a business fail?”
“You run out of money.”
“And if the money never stops flowing?”
“I guess you don’t need to be too bright, if that’s the case.”
“It’s the first rule of politics, money talks. That’s how we ended up in Vietnam, in the first place. Vietnam had a long history of being invaded and repelling tho
se that transgressed on her turf. The big question was why did the U.S. attempt to conqueror an enemy with such a stellar record? Well, it’s simple, the U.S. never thought about winning any war there. They had just bought fifty-five hundred Huey helicopters from Bell, located in Texas, LBJ’s home turf by the way. The U.S. military needed a combat situation to test the new fast attack principle made possible by the introduction of the Huey. The Huey was light, powerful, and easy to manufacture, and there was plenty of money to run the test.
“The military was blinded by the desire to modernize and forgot the main reason they should have been there, to win what they started. By the time they had gotten the data they needed to understand the principle of helicopter warfare, they were caught in a situation they needed to get out of, but couldn’t.”
“I guess that’s what Billy was trying to tell us when he got back,” Manny said. “He hated the war, called it criminal. He got so angry about the things being said about the soldiers being screw-ups. He put all the blame on the politicians, but he never explained it like you just did. Many people used that against him, said that he was defending the problem, defending baby killers, that sort of thing. I can remember him saying, let me see if I can remember this right. He told me that quote, ‘Politics is a system devised by those that can’t, to reap the benefits earned by those that can.’
“Bingo!” Tainer laughed. “You’ll never find a politician that knows the meaning of ‘oops’.”
“That was Palmer all right,” Mark continued. “He was a smart dude. He had a feel for the war, knew what was going on. Everyone in our outfit looked up to him, and everyone wanted to go into the field with Billy. He had a reputation for finding the action and living to tell about it.
“He never said much about it after he was back,” Manny commented.
“What did you expect him to say?”
“I don’t know, but not telling any stories led people to think that he wasn’t really in combat, that he was over there fucking off, or something.”
“Oh Manny, I don’t know if you ever figured it out or not, but guys that spend to much energy telling pussy or war stories are generally full of shit.”
“Yeah, I figured that out, ‘eventually’. I kind of figured Billy had been in the thick of it, and I think most other people suspected it too, but there’s always the ones that can’t tally anything. Billy had gotten wounded and there was a rumor that he had lost his arm or hand, but when he came back home he was all in one piece, so the rumors started flying. He wouldn’t say anything, so no one got the truth.”
“I’m curious about something you said?” Manny continued. “You said you guys controlled this area. How can that be? I’d always heard that the countryside belonged to the VC.”
“Oh bullshit! The Viet Cong and NVA planned everything in detail, from an ambush to an attack. If you hit them unexpectedly they didn’t know what to do, and besides, they were afraid of the jungle. The whole population of that country, North and South, lived next to the jungle, but they only went in fifty feet to relieve themselves and then right back out to the trail, village, or paddy. As children they never played in the jungle, out back in the woods, like we did. We never saw any villagers in there, not like the American soldier. Shit, as kids we all played in the woods, hunting and fishing, exploring, cowboys and indians, even playing soldier for Christ sakes. And how many of us got our first piece of ass out in the woods. It’s good prep, believe me.”
“Wasn’t the jungle different? I mean nastier than back home?”
“Where you from, Minnesota, didn’t you say?”
“Yeah, Red Pine Minnesota.”
“Any woods around?”
“Oh, hell yeah, mostly woods, some very thick stuff too. You can get really lost if you aren’t careful. Hunters get lost all the time, some of them die walking around in circles. You could get eaten to death by the mosquitoes.”
“Spend any time in there?”
“Hell yes, did a lot of hunting. And, yeah, got laid too.”
“Get any good figuring out how to find your way around?” Tainer asked.
“Oh yeah! Not as good as Billy though, everyone kind of followed his lead.”
“That was Billy’s forte, map reading,” Tainer explained. “He had this skill of always knowing exactly where he was and where to go, at all times. When we got to going out with the line companies, the officers relied on him almost exclusively. I remember one time a platoon commander was arguing with his CO about our position. This Lt. was certain we were in this particular village and Billy disagreed. The CO went with Billy and sure enough he was right. They were calling in artillery and you didn’t want to be in the wrong spot when it hit.
“I remember that, Billy was real savvy about the woods.” Manny said, shaking his head in agreement.
“Same as Vietnam. Like I said, the enemy had no experience in that shit, so it gave us a big advantage.”
“Yeah, still, wasn’t the jungle a lot more dangerous? We didn’t have poison snakes in our neck off the woods.”
Tainer laughed. “Hell, I grew up in Magnolia, Arkansas, woods just as bad as any jungle, swamps, bogs, quick sand, water moccasins, rattlesnakes, you name it. Most of that shit is nothing more than an uncomfortable annoyance if you know what you’re doing. You know what Billy liked about the Vietnam Jungle, as opposed to Minnesota?” Tainer asked, waiting for Manny to answer.
Manny just shrugged.
“You brought it up, mosquitoes,” Tainer continued. “He said that the bugs were nothing compared to back home. The jungle is a lot quieter to move around in too, not as much dry material, everything is damp and soft. We could slither through that shit without making a sound. We’d sometimes see how close we could get to the little buggers, just for the hell of it. Slip right up to them and then back out. We even snatched a kid one night. Some damn kid soldier, about twelve, went out in the woods to take a dump and walked right up to us. He dropped his pants about a foot from me and I just reached out and grabbed him, one hand over his mouth and that was it. Poor kid had walked for three months from the North, up around Hanoi. He had an AK47, three magazines, and a sock of rice. The poor bastard was convinced we were going to eat him, anyway that’s what he was told.”
“I sure hated to turn him over to the ARVIN bastards, knowing what they’d do to him, but that was the policy. They’d torture the hell out of their own people, just to make it look good. Make us think that they really hated the Viet Cong, when they were Cong themselves. Crazy shit huh?” Tainer said shaking his head in disgust.
“I remember one time after we moved down South,” Tainer continued, “we were based southwest of Da Nang. The base camp was surrounded by villages and rice paddies and we couldn’t operate like we did in the North, so we went out with the companies. That was a fuckin mess. A hundred idiots walking down the trails and across the paddies in full view, yelling, cursing. Now, that scared the shit out of me. Anyway, sometimes some asshole company commander would try and mess with us, try to make us walk point, stand watches, some stupid shit that we didn’t like, so we’d grab a villager and call in a chopper.”
“We were in charge of prisoners, captured gear, so forth and were supposed to escort any prisoners to the ARVIN compound in Da Nang. We grabbed a couple of villagers one day, a man and a woman, after some stupid shit and figured we’d spend a couple days in Da Nang, see some movies, drink a little beer, whatever. Anyway, an ARVIN chopper picks us up with these two villagers and we’re up there at five thousand feet, and this ARVIN Major is interrogating these villagers. Trying anyway, I mean shit all we’ve got is a couple rice farmers, grabbed out of a fuckin paddy while they’re working away. So this Major is getting nothing but “toy comb beick, ‘I don’t know’, and he gets pissed, and grabs the woman, and throws her out of the chopper. I couldn’t believe it! I thought Billy was going to kill this son-of-a-bitch. Billy had his hands around the Major’s neck, holding him about a foot off the chopper floor, choking the shit ou
t of him, the little bastard’s legs kicking away. I had to pop Billy in the back of the head with my rifle butt, to get him to stop.”
“Jesus, what happened then?”
“Not much, the Major was sitting on the floor gagging, his sidekick pointing out the door screaming, ‘VC, VC.’ They weren’t about to mess with Billy because he had this nasty look on his face. I was worried that Billy was going to shoot somebody, really. I’m sure they were thinking the same thing. When the chopper landed, they were in a real big hurry to get rid of us.”
“Yeah, I remember Billy getting mad,” Manny added. “It was rare, but when he did, watch out. I remember playing hockey. Billy was tough, that was one place you didn’t want to mess with him. One time I hit him with a high stick and he warned me. I did it again, I hit him in the nose, and I was sure sorry I didn’t take him serious. He zeroed in on me for the rest of the game and made my life miserable. I ended up crawling into a snow bank and laying there for half an hour after the game was over.”
“So you guys took the war serious, huh?” Manny continued. “I’ll bet you two were good?”
“Oh yeah, shit we’d catch those buggers, sometime as many as a hundred, pop off a couple shots, then move and they never came after us. Like I told you, they didn’t know what to do because we surprised them. I remember Billy and I followed a couple squads of NVA, North Vietnamese Army, porters for three days, picking them off, slowly but surely, and they never tried to come and get us. The only reason we backed off was they moved into an area of rice paddies, and we lost our cover.”
“I can almost visualize that, I remember Billy was a good shot,” Manny said.
“Actually, Billy didn’t like to shoot that much,” Tainer commented, “after he nailed an old lady with a chair. One day we saw two people in black pajamas diddy bopping down a trail across a paddy about 500 meters away. One of them had something sticking up from a pack on their back. Looked like a rifle from that distance. Turned out to be a chair that had been taken apart. Not a good scene. Anyway, after that Billy tended to run the show instead, spotter, decision maker, etc. He was very astute and cautious. After the chair thing, he was especially careful to make sure that we were taking shots at the proper people.”