Reflections of a war experience

Submitted January 28, 2014

©C. David Kramer, Lititz., PA

I’m a former U.S. Marine and a Vietnam War combat veteran.

I have the ribbons and medals and a DD-214 to prove it. I even have a souvenir pair of genuine Ho Chi Minh rubber tire-tread sandals. Not as good as an AK-47 or a VC battle flag, but not a bad war relic either.

The VA says I suffer from Agent Orange exposure. I doubt it, but that’s what they say.

I survived a lot of VC and NVA Chi-Com rockets, mortars and small arms ground attacks; an ammo dump detonation, and a napalm conflagration that lasted a week; the historic Tet Offensive and a 235-lb. Staff Sergeant who swore on Dan Daly’s sacred memory to kick my ass.

I had trench mouth, trench foot and a case of dysentery so severe I could’ve bent over, squeezed and filled a horizontal Coke bottle from 3 meters without even touching the rim.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: I got nailed by a Charlie sniper round that blew the heel smack off my right jungle boot. Thankfully, no Purple Heart. To this day I remain indebted to a poor shot who apparently didn’t grasp the finer points of elevation.

Notwithstanding such an impressive warrior résumé, I’ve never liked telling tales about what daddy did in the war. And I don’t much like hearing war stories, either.

There are a few reasons for this.

Here’s the first: I have precious little time for braggers. Most war stories are, to be generous, at least implicitly boastful. In the overall, it’s my view that a dude who feels compelled to crow about virtually any kind of personal exploit (war, sex, business, sex, golf, sex, etc.) should chat with someone who cares. Like his dog. Or a shrink. Or himself and then a shrink.

Next: Far too many war stories—and I’m wearing my nice hat, now —are rather overstated. The majority should start with, “Once upon a time…” Most are so embellished and embroidered you’d think they were mouthed by a Congressman.

Third: There’s so little challenge in telling them. And without some rigor where’s the fun? It’s truly effortless to B.S. your 4-F neighbor, a Facebook friend or a beer-drinking VFW social member perched on the edge of his barstool whilst hanging breathlessly on your every blood curdling revelation. You have to take care, though, to know both your audience and those within earshot. Any combat-hardened vet nearby can pinpoint a little fib or a giant whopper quicker than a boot camp shower. Such untruths rarely lead to pleasantries.

But the final – and arguably the most important and telling reason I head for the head when “This ain’t no s_ _ t, but when I was in ‘Nam (or Iraq or Afghanistan or, hell, at Bull Run),” comes tumbling out from between some vet’s lips like he was confessing to Dr. Phil – is this: Within the genre, my war stories are rather run-of-the-mill.

I never charged a machine gun nest, parachuted behind enemy lines, or dropped into a hot LZ hangin’ out of a Huey firing a 30-cal machine gun on Medevac missions (although I did volunteer once for the latter. What was I thinking?).

Like nearly everyone else, I wasn’t interested in heroics. I just wanted to survive and come home.

And besides, for more than 40 years, nobody wanted to hear my yarns anyway.

Within a month, I went from in-country combat to college freshman on a full-ride “McNamara Scholarship,” the name cynics like me stuck on GI Bill education bennies in honor of the then-Secretary of Defense. From academia I leaped straight into the corporate world.

The first two companies that tolerated me were Fortune 500 corporations. You have to look really hard to find any former enlisted Vietnam-era jarheads residing along corporate America’s Mahogany Row. For a long time I thought perhaps that was because high-powered exec-types were smart enough to have gotten out of having to go to Vietnam.

Time has not dramatically diminished the plausibility of that theory…

I can count on one hand the number of Vietnam-era combat veterans I ever worked alongside in 30 years of plying my profession from coast to coast. The subject of, “Were you in Vietnam?” rarely came up in polite conversation among colleagues. And when it occasionally did, any response by me was met with some variation of, “Oh, how nice,” followed by a downward cast of the eyes, shadowed instantly by a fearsome facial expression that was actually much more articulate:

“OMG, RIGHT NOW this a-hole’s going to have a flash-back and stab me repeatedly with a Punji stake while simultaneously toking a joint and strangling me with his dog tags.”

Now where in the world would, for example, a peer group of rather clever college educated, pin-striped desk troopers have gotten an idea like that? Well, other than from most of their draft-dodging professors, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, ABC/CBS/NBC News and countless other media, here’s an inkling: Look to the Left Coast.

It’s there amongst the Lamborghinis and palms of Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Hills that a keen observer will, even today, find the graying unrepentant remnants (and philosophical offspring) of an authentic anti-American clique. A cabal of elitist Hollywood liberal writers, producers and actors that aided and abetted the defaming of an entire generation of American patriots.

A cohort that remains guilty of a near-criminal act of character assassination that lingers in the national conscience half-a-century later.

Are you paying attention, Ms. Fonda?

Notable cinematic trash like “Full Metal Jacket,” “Platoon,” “The Boys in Company C,” “Born on the 4th of July,” ad nausea have since the 1970s helped shape American public opinion, and in many respects its 21st Century leaders and resulting foreign policies. If John Wayne hadn’t died naturally in 1979 (from either cancer or embarrassment for his industry; no one is certain) he’d probably have eventually hanged himself.

For decades, this nation’s news and entertainment media did its level best to dishonor the more than 58,000 American men and women who lost their lives in Vietnam, as well as an untold number who are MIA and will never be fully accounted. They defiled countless surviving Vietnam warriors who to this day bear the physical and emotional scars of warfare, many of whom will go to their graves battling the recurrent demons of combat.

But with no disrespect to the memories of those who sacrificed their lives or continue struggling, the overwhelming number of returning Vietnam War veterans – despite the media-generated image – are not plagued by PTSD, have never been addicted to illegal drugs, love their wives, cherish their children and give generously to their favorite charities.

As B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley detail in their excellent 1998 hardcover expose, “Stolen Valor — How the Vietnam Generation was Robbed of its Heroes and History,” we’re explicably normal.

We’re Mark next door, the insurance sales guy who still hasn’t returned the power drill he borrowed from you six years ago. We’re Carol, the RN at the local medical center who just retired and you never knew comforted the sick, wounded and dying aboard the U.S.S. Repose hospital ship off Chu Lai. We’re Bill who retired from IBM after 35 years of international service. We’re your co-workers, marching steadily toward the autumns of our lives, who quietly and proudly did our patriotic duty, shut up and went on about our lives.

The tarnished reputation too many Vietnam War veterans have endured all their adult lives is a national disgrace.

But the image of the American Warrior of all eras has improved considerably in the last 15 years. Patriotism is making a comeback.

Seems to me things began moving in the right direction with NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw’s 1998 discovery that his Constitutional right to spin the truth to fit liberal ideology was won for him by, among others, “The Greatest Generation.” Three years later on September 11, 2001, all of America was more graphically and tragically reminded that some clichés are eternally true: Freedom is not free.

As George Orwell taught, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” In the post-911 world, America is gaining renewed respect for, and placing a higher value on, these rough men – and rough women – be they active duty or veteran military.

It was in 2004 while at a restaurant waiting for a table with my family that a young man noticed the U.S. Marine Corps ring I was wearing. He ordered two drinks and gave me one. He raised his glass and thanked me for my service. That was the first time anyone ever did that. At the time I was unable to adequately express my appreciation for his thoughtfulness. I always find it hard to speak with tears streaming down my face.

Anyway, it’s going on 50 years since I hopped a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 at Da Nang air base with about 150 other dirty, smelly and grateful Marines, hung a hard right over the South China Sea, headed east and rotated my skinny 20-year-old behind out of WESTPAC (that’s Western Pacific to you civilians; Vietnam and Cambodia to the rest of us) and back to The World. Like the nasty memory of a bad blind date in high school, over time most of the grimy details of my war experiences have mercifully drifted away.

In fact I can barely recall that dark moonless night in February ’68 – the third of the Tet Offensive. We’d already been battling for a straight 48 hours without rest. Then incoming rockets died down; mortaring took a pause. Ground fire became sporadic. That usually signaled an imminent ground attack. I was leading a fire team stuck on an LP (Listening Post) somewhere beyond our perimeter. It was quiet.

Too quiet. A small gaggle of chopper gunships flew over and dropped parachute flares to illuminate Injun country. Suddenly we heard movement.

After no sleep and constant assault, nerves were taut. I whispered an order to a PFC, “Challenge.” He looked at me with an “Are you f-ing kidding me???” expression. I countered with a low growl, “Now.”

“Halt, who goes there?” he haltingly hailed.

Ten tired, pissed-off Marines were locked and loaded with safeties off when from out in the bush came a reply…a response that has haunted my soul and echoed at the edge of my conscience all these many decades later…a brash retort carrying a distinctly Brooklyn accent:

“AW, GO F_ _K YOURSELF.”

And that ain’t no s_ _t.