"We were running security on a road in a free-fire zone. In Vietnam you had a friendly zone and you had a free-fire zone. Anything that crossed into the free-fire zone was fair game. Any gook - woman, man, boy, girl - it was game to you. Anybody who came along with a cart or just walking and we would go through their stuff.
We was in the field twenty days or so. Up in the depots in the rear they got steaks. We didn't get steaks. We ate mainly C-rations, lousy C-rations and dry things that came out of cans. These gooks are riding by in a Lambretta, which is like a motorbike except you sit people in the back. We say, 'Hey, let's stop these gooks.' So we came out of the bush and we pulled them over to the side.
'What you got there? Hey, you VC? What do you got?' It was a baby-san and a papa-san. I guess she was a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen. The papa-san was forty, a mature man.
They had a can of pears! American pears in a big green can marked with a big U.S. on it in large print. We say, 'Isn't this some shit? Here we are in the field, we don't know what pears is. They got pears! And we don't have pears.' I'll never forget the guys faces in the unit from the GIs up to the captain. We are shit in the field, and the guys in the rear have given these gooks pears, man.
Right away a guy took a bayonet and he opened up the pears. We're fighting, literally fighting, to eat pears. Food! It wasn't fresh, but it was something other than the shit they put together chemically and pressed into a can. It was like the man brought me steak and potatoes and I was back in my mother's house eating Sunday dinner.
Most of the guys didn't get any pears. I got a few pears and I got to drink the juice in the can. So we turned around and we said, 'Hey, ain't this something? These gooks is riding around with pears. How did you get pears?'
'GI give them to me.' He worked in a mess hall back in the rear somewhere.
'The GIs gave you pears? Oh, yeah? For that, we're going to screw your daughter.' So we went running, taking the daughter. She was crying. I think she was a virgin. We pulled her pants down and put a gun to her head.
Guys are taking turns screwing her. It was like an animal pack. 'Hey, he's taking too long to screw her.' Nobody was turning their back or nothing. We just stood on line and we screwed her.
I was taking her body by force. Guys were standing over her with rifles, while I was screwing her. She says, 'Why are you doing this to me? Why?' Some of the gooks could talk very good. 'Hey, you're black, why are you doing this to me?'
We turned back to the father and we said, 'So you got pears. GIs are nice enough to give them to you.' All the Vietnamese carried this ID card. Big old plastic ID card with a picture on it that says that they are okay in the Republic of Vietnam. So we ripped up the ID card. 'Hey, we got a VC here, fellas. A VC stealing government stuff, huh? So you must be an infiltrator' We shot him.
As I said we was in that free-fire zone. We just started pumping rounds into him until the guy just bursts open. He didn't have a face anymore.
Baby-san, she was crying. So a guy just put a rifle to her head and pulled the trigger just to put her out of the picture. Then we start pumping her with rounds. After we got finished shooting her, we start kicking them and stomping them. That's what the hatred, the frustration was. After we raped her, took her cherry from her, after we shot her in the head, you understand what I'm saying, we literally start stomping her body.
And everybody was laughing about it. It's like seeing the lions around a just-killed zebra. You see them in these animal pictures, Wild Kingdom or something. The whole pride comes around and they start feasting on the body. We kicked the face in, kicked in the ribs and everything else.
Then we start cutting the ears off. We cut her nose off. The captain says, 'Who's going to get the ears? Who's going to get the nose? So-and-so's turn to get the ears.' A good friend of mine - a white guy from California - he flipped out in the Nam. The dude would fall down and cry, fall down and beg somebody to let him have the ears. Captain says, 'Well, let so-and-so get the ears this time. You had the last kill. Let him get it this time.' So we let this guy get the ears. We cut off one of her breasts and one guy got the breast. But the trophy was the ears. I had got a finger from the papa-san. That was about it, what I got from the incident. We let the bodies stay there mutilated.
The next day we're doing some search and destroy. We went through a couple of villages we had to sweep. It comes over the air, 'There's VC in the villagePhu Hip, so many klicks up. Go take a look.'
We go through the village like harassing the women, shooting the guys. Now this is a guy you just don't like the way he looked. His eyes were slanty and you just didn't like it. We shot him even though there was no VC there.
If the people don't treat you right when you walk through that village you can give them hell. they give you that snotty look. They won't say nothing to you, but they're a little cold. We expected them to run out and welcome us like that WW II type of thing. 'Hey, GI. Yay, you the Americans.' But they were a little standoffish.
As soon as we step outside the village, the captain radios in, 'We're under heavy contact.' Then right away, those Phantom jets come in and drop those 500-pound bombs. The village is leveled down and we go on to the next one. That's our Search and Destroy. If there wasn't an enemy out there, we made it be the enemy.
The slicks come and move us out, take us back into Long Binh. The colonel is there to congratulate us, 'You in for a commendation, trooper. You had nine killed in that campaign, so you in for a commendation.'
I had nine killed. I think I killed more than that. But like I say, we going into the village, somebody I don't like, you understand, I shoot them down. But they had written up that it was combat, heavy contact. That thee ws no American losses, but there was heavy losses by the enemy."
NAM: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Soldiers Who Fought There
by, Mark Baker (paperback, pp. 190-193). |
