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From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw movement coming from the tree line. My island dream vanished instantly. I squinted and strained to focus above the shadows, but nothing moved. My heart continued to race, but it wasn’t a romantic rhythm this time; rather, it was pure adrenaline, fueled by the thought of a possible firefight.
Our ambush killer team lay low, well camouflaged behind a small rice paddy dike trail, with a small river to our backside. We were, in fact, between a two-foot wide and two-foot high dirt trail with a slow-moving river’s edge about twenty feet behind us. It was a great vantage point, because no one could sneak up from behind without us hearing them. I’ll keep my flak jacket collar snug around my neck in case some f*ck-face tries to cut my throat. I’ll only need a split second to react, I told myself, trying to be brave.
We were well positioned on the side of the trail, with excellent cover and concealment. From there, we could easily see over 100 yards of open rice paddies toward the tree line. I had patrolled the area several times during the day, so I was familiar with the terrain, though it was now as dark and eerie as hell itself. I instinctively refreshed my surroundings in my head. Since my eyes were compromised in all that blackness, I had to trust my other senses: the raw, outdoorsy, damp, foreign smells; the sounds of the river; the feel of the ground and mud beneath my boots; and any glimpse I could catch of the trees and the tree line formations.
Intelligence reports we’d heard in camp earlier had indicated that the Vietcong randomly used the area at night to transition large quantities of supplies and arms between the villages.
Another routine night ambush? I’m getting tired of this sh*t. I’ve lost count of the days. Are there 20, 30, or 100 days before I get out of the bush, if I don’t get my *ss wasted first? God, I miss home—the beach, my friends, the girls…
Day by day, I counted down on my short-time calendar. I’d been in the country eight months already and had earned my salty short-timer attitude. Others in my unit weren’t so lucky; several had gone earlier, albeit not in the way they wanted. No one wanted to be carried out of ‘Nam on a stretcher, dead or injured or hovering precariously somewhere between the two.
A tour of duty in ‘Nam lasted a year, and there was no way to cut that short, save being killed or wounded severely enough to be put onboard a silver bird and flown back to the States. I had no plans to make an early exit on one of those liberty birds. At nineteen, I hadn’t even lived yet, so I had good reason to stay alive and in one piece. Heck, I’m a survivor. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it outta here, and I refuse to leave a single piece of myself behind to rot in this godforsaken hell.
The dead silence played tricks on my mind. Sounds traveled farther at night, it seemed, and in the distance, just beyond the frogs, muffled gunfire and explosions were our nightly symphony. Am I asleep with my eyes open? Awake in my dream? How the hell am I supposed to tell the difference? Where…and when the hell am I? I pinched myself for a reality check. When it hurt, I was a bit relieved to be awake.
It was cooler than the day but still muggy, and a tiny bead of sweat rolled down my forehead, stinging my eyes as I strained to pierce the darkness. The nights were hostile in Vietnam, nothing at all like the romantic ones I’d spent on my beloved island with a beautiful girl in my arms. I couldn’t believe the moon that hung over Vietnam was the same silvery orb that had bathed Lorraine and me in soft white light so many, many nights ago. I’d grown far too familiar with the precursors to death; for me, the darkness that used to stir feelings of warmth in my body and soul was only now an ingredient in a cauldron of evil, a prescription for doom.
The first silent hour seemed shorter than I imagined it could. I turned my wristwatch around and noticed it was a little past one in the morning. My eyes felt as if sand had crept up under the lids, and my tears tried in futility to wash them out. My body was exhausted, and my legs felt numb and stiff. I could hear each heartbeat in my ears as I strained to listen for anything unusual.
“Snakebite 2, sit rep”
Tessssssht…
I paused, then depressed the radio handset talk button twice.
Tessssssht, tessssssht…
“Snakebite 2 all secure, sir.”
Why South Vietnam
Vietnam was a country divided by the demilitarized zone, (DMZ). North Vietnam was occupied by the communists, and its southern neighbor was desperately trying to become a democratic, independent country of its own. While ‘Nam is situated in Southeast Asia, it boasts the same tropical climate of my Hawaiian homeland. I noticed that the landscape looked similar, but instead of sugarcane and pineapple fields, there were acres upon acres of rice paddies. Also, the villages were far more primitive, and many lived in grass huts, as opposed to the plantation-style homes I was used to in Hawaii.
The war in South Vietnam had lingered on for many years, and the French supported the South Vietnamese regime. After several years of miserable, failed attempts to stop the infiltration of the North Vietnamese, the exhausted French finally gave up the fight and left the country.
At that point, in the early 1960s, the United States stepped in and virtually took France’s place in the conflict. At Kauai High, our teachers schooled us on the prospective dangers of the communist regime and their sinister plans to conquer countries in Southeast Asia and progressively move toward world domination.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, among a bevy of other evidence, was used as evidence to convince us all that the evil Russians were trying to dominate the world. Apparently, they’d attempted to set nuclear missiles in Cuba, too close for comfort at a mere ninety miles south of the United States Florida coast. If those missile bases had been successfully established, we might be living in a very different world today. History recounts that President Kennedy’s Pacific blockade to prevent Russia from shipping missiles to Cuba was a pivotal point in stopping an all-out war between the communist Soviet Union and the United States. It was a victory for the U.S., a show of military power and our commitment to stop the Siberian military from creating a foul presence in our Western Hemisphere.
I was only a teenager then, but I recall my dad and the rest of the family gathering around our portable radio in the living room, glued to the minute-by-minute news reports about an impending war if the Russians tried to force the missile shipments to Cuba. We were personally worried, because my older brother, Vic, had enlisted in the Army and was already mobilized to ship out to wherever they were needed. My mom and dad sat on the wicker loveseat in our living room. Dad listened intently to the broadcasters, hanging on every word as he held Mom’s hand. Mom just stared at my father, gauging his expressions for guidance as to whether or not she should worry and occasionally wiping away a fear-spawned tear with her dainty, white handkerchief. My father was a very patriotic man who believed in the American way and was forever grateful for General MacArthur’s returned rescue of the Philippines during WW II.
The United States defeated the expansion of the Japanese aggressors in World War II during the 1940s. After that, the United States and South Korea halted the expansion of the communist North Koreans in the 1950s, so the next perceived logical step was to stop the spread of communist aggressors who supported the North Vietnamese government. Our government propaganda had many convinced that we were in South Vietnam to stop the spread of communism, which was slowly moving south, into the neighboring countries. This was unacceptable in the eyes of our government, so as the military, its executive arm, we were tasked with stopping the spread of evil in South Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia.
All that propaganda convinced me that we had to continue fighting the good fight against communism; if we did not, our efforts against the Japanese in World War II and the 1950s Korean War—all those lives lost—would be in vain. That was a viable enough reason for me and many young, unsuspecting, innocent men to rally around Uncle Sam and potentially sign our lives away to don those uniforms, carry those weapons, and fight in a far-off co
untry called South Vietnam.
We were young and easily influenced. The average age for a soldier shipped off to ‘Nam was nineteen, young men fresh out of high school. It was especially appealing to high school dropouts who were looking for a paycheck and a quick way out of the dull, little towns where they’d grown up. Once we got there, none of us could really grasp why we were halfway around the world, risking our lives to protect one foreign culture from killing another that was so very similar to them in the first place. Truthfully, I’d venture to say that some of those young Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Army soldiers felt as duped and manipulated as I did, thrown into a game we weren’t really ready to play.
I was a just local boy from Koloa, Kauai. Like many young men of my time, I’d been thoroughly convinced that it was my patriotic duty to prevent the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia. The ideology and propaganda was hammered into my head throughout my years at Koloa Elementary and Kauai High School on a remote island in the Hawaiian Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We’d even been asked to hide under our desks in air raid drills, as if that would have done us any good in the event of such an attack. Trenches had been dug in the back of the school so we could jump into them for protection in the event of an atomic bomb explosion.
Nevertheless, with all the constant talk of war and unrest in the world, I left high school in the mid-1960s and traveled around the United States mainland as a hippie. Shortly thereafter, I found myself transformed into a United States Marine. Over twenty years later, I retired from the Marine Corps, unfortunately as a disabled war veteran.
Psychologically, my high school years and my adventures thereafter did not prepare me well to convert from a peace-loving, fun-loving, nomadic and carefree hippie to a regimented, serious, kill-or-be-killed U.S. Marine. The contrast was a stark one, an extreme all its own. The differences were night and day. As a hippie traveling around the U.S. mainland, I was adamantly opposed to war. As a Marine, I was easily convinced that it was acceptable and necessary to fight a war in a foreign country thousands of miles from home. Fortunately, the physical challenges of my chores, difficult part-time jobs, high school track and field, kajukenbo martial arts, and active hobbies like swimming and hiking helped me to develop the stamina and endurance I needed to survive as both a hippie and Marine.
When I signed up to serve Uncle Sam, it wasn’t my first choice to be in a combat zone as in South Vietnam. I had hoped to be stationed stateside, on a Hawaiian U.S. Marines base. Hank, my brother, had already been sent to ‘Nam. Thus, based on military policy, I had no reason to worry about being ordered to a combat zone unless I voluntarily signed a waiver. I was sent to serve in a Guantanamo, Cuba detachment at Camp Lejuene, North Carolina, but I hated everything about the East Coast. Thus, in the fall of 1968, I voluntarily signed the necessary transfer documents that would send me to Camp Pendleton in southern California.
There, I spent several weeks enduring jungle warfare training before my assignment to South Vietnam, but the simulated jungle training in California was a joke. For one thing, the outdoor training was conducted in drier, colder temperatures than we would encounter in a tropical environment such as in South Vietnam. The trainers did the best they could with the resources they had, but while the place represented the general terrain, the reality of maneuvering through the real thing would be drastically different. The simulated villages were built just like a Hollywood set, complete with bamboo and grass huts, bamboo cages, vegetable gardens, and animal corrals. We were shown how to slaughter chickens and rabbits, and rice and vegetables were also on the menu. The grand finale of the training involved day- and nighttime skirmishes, choreographed warfare between red (representing the bad guys, the Vietcong) and blue (the good ol’ boys from the U.S. of A.). The simulated two-day battle involved the taking of prisoners, as well as attempted escapes. Except for the nonlethal shooting and explosions, the battle reminded me of our boyhood war games at home in Kauai. I’d grown up on an island, and I already knew how to slaughter farm animals and cook rice and vegetables, particularly outdoors. Really, it was like camping back home, except that the Hawaiian temperatures were much warmer than the near-freezing nights in California, and we had much more fun at the end of the day.
“Hey, Pineapple, I heard they eat jungle snakes in ‘Nam. Do you guys eat snakes in Hawaii?” asked a trainee from New York City.
“Heck no. We don’t even have snakes in Hawaii. We do eat eels though. We get them while we’re spear-fishing on night dives. They can be up to six feet long, and they look a lot like snakes.” I described the somewhat grotesque process of preparing and cooking slabs of eel meat over an open beach fire, and I took some delight in the cringe on the city boy’s face. “Tastes just like Kentucky Fried Chicken!” I finally said, and the men around the campfire burst into laughter while we finished up our C-rations dinner.
A few weeks later, my unit boarded chartered civilian aircrafts at Norton Air Force Base in California. From there, we were flown to Hawaii, Okinawa, Japan, and finally to Da Nang Air Force Base in the Republic of South Vietnam. We were put through so many hurry-up-and-wait scenarios, assembled and marched quickly to staging areas like a herd of mindless cattle, only to wait for hours to move on. The trip to South Vietnam took nearly a week.
Naïve as I was, the Vietnam War wasn’t the foremost concern in my young mind at the time. I was overcome with the anticipation of new experiences and adventures in a country on the other side of the world. Moreover, I felt proud to be a Marine and was eager to serve our Corps, leaders, country, and family. I felt like an ambassador, a star member of my Tabalno family on a quest to represent the small island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Many of my comrades had never visited Hawaii, and more than half couldn’t determine its location in relation to the U.S. mainland. Then again, 50 percent of us didn’t even know where South Vietnam was, at least not until all the classes and briefings during our jungle warfare training in California, when they pummeled us with maps and expected us to have at least some idea of the geography.