The Washington Times seems to be becoming more of a real newspaper recently, with more than one view expressed on its opinion page. I am not sure why that is--does anyone know? Anyway, this is a really good anti-war column by an American soldier who fought in Vietnam:
Outside View: Same old Song
By Morgan Strong
Outside View Commentator
Brick, NJ, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- It feels as though I am in a nightmare that never ends. The nightmare is about Vietnam, but it's also about Iraq and Afghanistan. I seem to be in a time warp, and over and over, every day and night I see not Iraq, but Vietnam. I see the same kids dying the same way all over again. I see the distance between the reality of the war and the American people. I hear the same lies. I see the same callous disregard for the troops in the midst of the battles. It is not a nightmare I experience, it is terribly real.
In Vietnam, the Marine grunt lived a life of constant depravation. We had shoddy equipment, little food, no shelter and unrelenting demands. We carried a poncho and a half blanket. We slept on the ground, carried a little food, hoped we could find water and only every few months did we get the chance to shower.
I once was assigned by a newspaper to interview James Webb, then the Undersecretary of the Navy. Webb had been a Marine in Vietnam. We joked about the uniform -- jungle utilities -- we wore in the field. We were issued one pair. After several months, the thin material of the uniform became saturated with your own sweat, oils, and a variety of other excretions. It was if you had soaked the uniform in oil. The joke was, since we were never given a change of clothing, or laundered them; we just got an oil change. It was funny then when we sat in Webb's comfortable office, but it really was not very funny at the time.
The uniform was the least of the problems. I carried a pack that had been first issued to other Marines in the World War II. Sort of a tradition I suppose. The pack was old and frayed and only minimally useful. We carried M-16s but had only two magazines to hold the ammunition because there were no more to issue to the grunts. That meant that in a firefight you had to reload the magazines from little cardboard boxes of ammunition we carried in the World War II packs.
The cardboard boxes would deteriorate in the clammy jungle and the rounds would be loose in the bottom of the pack. So you had to take the pack off, fumble around for the rounds in the bottom, and try to load the magazine under fire. That is not an ideal situation when someone is trying to kill you. That someone trying to kill me was a North Vietnamese soldier, or Viet Cong guerilla, who had better equipment than I did.
In our distant outposts far from the headquarters, where they lived with hot meals and showers and clean clothes, we lived a most primitive existence. We were always under the threat of imminent demise. We had only rudimentary shelter. We were always close to complete exhaustion, and relied largely on just hope and a little luck, to get the hell out of there someday.
We got our water from streams, or little concrete cisterns the Vietnamese villagers kept outside their straw and grass hooch's. There were always worms in the water, and a variety of other insects floating around. It was water however.
Once during the monsoon season when we were very, very, far out in the field, we ran out of food. Helicopters were not flying in that inclement weather so they sent a tank to re-supply us. The tank forgot the food, and delivered ammunition instead. A little cross communication mix-up. We sat in foxholes with water up to our knees in a constant downpour of unimaginable ferocity, the little cardboard boxes of ammunition falling apart in the rain, and waited for an attack or starvation.
We had no communication with the outside world. We did not know about the protests against the war, we did not know how many people we were losing, we did not know of the Tet offensive until we became caught up in it. We knew only that day by day we wanted to live to the next.
We had no body armor; we had no armor of any sort. We had a steel helmet that we wore in the oppressive heat, which raised the body temperature to triple digits. We had boots that fell apart in the humidity so that there was not much left but the laces. We had tears and holes in our filthy jungle utilities and we stank, I am quite sure, very badly. However, we had to remain clean-shaven with a proper haircut.
That was a very long time ago, but it was for most of us who were there, those who did the terrible work of the grunt, it is still now. It is an experience impossible to shake however hard we try. I learned of the lies the government told of our circumstances and our glorious success, only after I returned from combat to a hospital in the States. That is when I finally understood fully the hopeless futility of our lives, as cheap as they were, in Vietnam. We were not heroes by any measure we were fools.
Now I see it happening all over again. The lies from Rumsfeld, the lies from Bush, the lies from Powell, the lies from all of them.
Many of the troops in Iraq have no body armor. The troops have no armor for their vehicles. Rumsfeld signed letters of condolence with an autopen. Bush tells us repeatedly of our success. He says our mission is accomplished. Can it be? How can it be? How can it happen again? Why doesn't someone tell the truth?
I feel like screaming, but I am too far out in the jungle for anybody to notice. I dream and I despair.
(Morgan Strong is a journalist, and served in Vietnam as a Marine grunt from 1966-68.)
(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
washingtontimes.com |
