As time pushes forward, those who were soldiers once, and the rest of us really, are left with our own evolving memory - a not always reliable recall of even our most impactful experiences. What's left is recollection shaped and reshaped by time, and living, by our friends, brothers and sisters, and fellow soldiers. A work in progress, always.
When I first got back from Vietnam, I wanted to be so proud of my time and it wasn't there because of the way America thought that us Vietnam veterans fought a wrong war, or it wasn't the right war. But nevertheless, I lost comrades, brothers-in-arm. They didn't get to come home and all I wanted was some acknowledgement.
- Mel
We were let down by our congressional people. And at the Paris Peace Talks, we really had the upper hand. And then Congress just turned their backs on the whole situation and let it just slip out of our fingers. So that was a wrong approach because the North Vietnamese were ready to meet all of our demands. And I don't know why the congressional leaders at the time … just let it go. The Paris Peace talks went down the drain. So sure, it's a bitter pill to swallow. regardless of who you are, you know, I’m not a war monger by any means, but we've got to treat our adversaries as they should be treated. Defeat. It wasn’t that way.
- Tom M
I’m no hero. Others were. Not me.
- Bob
Our first night we arrived in country, we were just kind of laying around wondering what we're gonna do the next day. There's a time of processing in, getting all your stuff together so you can go to work. We was laying there in the dorm that night, and then we hear this base siren goes off, and it was making this sound and telling us we were under attack. And we didn't know what to do. We were brand new there. Somebody ran into the building, turned the lights out, and said “hit the deck. Hit the deck!”. I knew what that meant. So we all hit the floor, and we was in the dark for about an hour, hour and a half, that first night.
And finally the lights came back on and everybody's wondering what happened. Nobody knew what happened. And so that right there did something to me. That was my introduction to war right there. And so the next day we find out that there were nine Viet Cong trying to get over the perimeter fence, and they were all shot and killed, and they left them hanging on the fence. That was my introduction to Vietnam. It scared the daylights out of me.
- Bill F
One thing I was always afraid of is that I would have to hurt somebody. And you got the choice when they're coming on you … to either not want to die, or if you want to live, you have to take the offensive. And the first one bothered me more than anything because you were you pushed to the brink. And when you finally come out, it's like you get a … it's a feeling that you can't believe. It's, it's a power feeling, but it's also a guilt feeling. And you have to live with it. And it's hard living with it. We tried to say, well, our buddy's killed, so I'm gonna revenge him. But if you're taught, if you believe in God, that's not your position. So how do you vindicate yourself for doing that? You were trained to do it. You were trained to kill people, and then you have to live with that the rest of your life.
- Glaise
In 2000, I went back again. We met with some NVA vets … we had a healing circle. One NVA looked at me and says, ‘I shoot you, you shoot me. I shoot you, you shoot me. We are now brothers’, meaning they had no animosity. They were doing what they were told to do. We were doing what we were told to do. It was a different time.
- Bob G
For some fucked up reason. We got in a firefight and there was a go dead hammered by a fucking M 60 machine gun. It wasn't hardly much there, but he ordered us to drag that fucker back to put it on this pile outside the village so the villagers could get under control or whatever. That just escalated a whole nother thing. But I got so fucking pissed off. I pulled on his arm and the fucking arm came off, and that's my nightmare from that fucking sergeant pulling just for his body count. He wanted to be up there. He wanted to maybe make a stripe, I don't know. But it pissed a lot of people off. So especially me, I've never had that ever happen to me.
- Robert R
I don't think my thoughts on that war have altered much from then till now. I viewed it as a horrific waste, both of money and lives. A total waste. We didn't accomplish a goddamn thing, you know? We just killed a bunch of people and got a bunch of ours killed is the way I see it. Accomplished nothing.
- Perry
Because we had 80% casualties in our battalion, Cunningham was the only one with three months in country, so he was the only one qualified to go on R&R. So the lieutenant said to me, uh, Cunningham's schedule for R&R on such and such date, pass it on to him. So I did. And Bruce said to me, um, he heard all the stories about guys coming back from R&R. They all had hooked up with a local girl. And he said to me, he was Amish from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and had never kissed a girl before other than his mother. And so I said to him, well, do you have a camera back in your sea bag? He said, well, yeah. I said, take it with you and just take pictures. You don't have to hook up with a girl. In the meantime, I go on R&R. While I was gone, I come back and I find out Cunningham had got shot and killed. And, so he had never kissed a girl in his life other than his mother.
- Steve J
We all got mail and usually moms from home would send you a food package typically with, you know, a letter. And, uh, my mom sent me a food package with burritos in it. All the way to Vietnam. With sour cream and salsa. I don’t think my mom had any idea …
- Gus
I still got a bitter taste about stuff .. everywhere people say, well, thank you for your service. Where the hell were you at when I came home?
- Pete
Here we are young women in these blue dresses that are like iron. I mean, they wear amazingly well. And I don't know, we were so young and so naive, it was like, well, why would anybody shoot a young girl in a blue dress? You know, that didn't make sense. Now I realize that sounds idiotic today, but I don't think it ever crossed my mind. I mean, obviously if you were somewhere and there was incoming, fire come coming in, you went into the bunker and you stayed down. But it just really did not cross my mind that I could be killed.
- Doris
I had a good friend in our company that just got a letter from his wife and he had a new baby … so he was going home in the next two days. We had a little party for him that night out in the boonies. A chopper was coming in the next day with supplies, and we kept saying, “you get on that chopper and get outta here!” He says “nope. I got a tour. I'm gonna finish my last day.” Well, about two in the afternoon, he got hit with an RPG, and I mean, it blew him almost in half. And it just, we were destroyed, we were just sick from it.
- Jerry
I was walking point and come around the corner and there stood a guy with an AK-47. He looked at me and I looked at him and I pulled the trigger and I hit him. And the look on his face, I’ll never forget it. The look on his face is ‘What am I doing here?’ And I turned around and thought to myself ‘What am I doing here? Why are we doing this?’
- Ande
People had no eyeballs, nose gone…. walking through the village and seeing that was scary. Tense scenario … in the morning you could smell the tear gas and shit. And you had bodies, bodies laying down like sticks, with all these holes all over them. I saw a face gone. Nightmares when I come home. I was just there a week. That's when I figured out, I guess they’re trying to kill us. What am I doing here?
- Antonio
I joined after high school. I just wanted to get away from home. Get away from my dad.
- Shane
I never told anybody I was going in. I knew in ‘67 that I was going to Vietnam, that I was gonna join the flight program. But I didn't tell anybody, you know. It wasn't a conscientious decision, but it was also, I didn't have anything else. It was the only road open to me.
- Bob H
I used to have nightmares. Usually it was a ground attack. Either I couldn't find my weapon, or I find my weapon, but I didn't have any ammunition.
- Dan