GORDON DUFF: VETS AND BIKES: REMEMBERING THE YEARS

HOW DID WE GET SO DAMNED OLD?

THE ROAD FROM VIETNAM

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

40 years ago, I was in Vietnam, or at least I could see it.  I was on a ship with a Marine Special Landing Team, waiting to “hit the beach” like in the old movies.  Food was poor on troop ships and conditions crowded but the Navy was always good company.  That counts for something.  I remember talking to a Navy chief down on the welldeck of the USS Cleveland:

“I’m glad they take the guns and ammunition from you Jarhead assholes when you come onboard, otherwise you’d either blow the place up or sell the boat, lock stock ‘n barrel to the commies.”

I looked up at him.  It was obvious that he stayed on the other end of the ship.  “Funny you mentioned that, come on down and look around.”  I led him up to the emergency surgical facility where we had an entire platoon bunked in an area the size of, well, think of something small.  People, Marines if you will, were sleeping on floors, playing music or stacked like sardines on the racks, beds, an abuse of that term, that most of us wouldn’t fit in.

He looked around.  Hand grenades and claymore mines were everywhere, as were mortars, machine guns, bazooka’s  (yes, the WW2 variety) and countless M-16E1’s, the early defective version, the newer defective version going to the ARVNs and others.  The smell would have knocked you down too but for the diesel stench that permeated everything.

He turned white as a sheet.  I am pretty sure I just gave someone PTSD.

Marines lost nearly as many men in Vietnam as they did in WW2.  We would be off amphibious operation status and sent inland to await replacements.  Amphibious operations caused a serious need for replacements.

These were the people who would always be my family, the survivors to be lifelong friends.  Survivors.  Not a large group.  A few read and send back emails.  I try to get out to California every few years and visit.  I have another good friend in Pennsylvania.  We invite each other to visit but it never happens.  I think we are afraid to see how much we have changed.

Eddie Garcia always reminds me of the night our OPs  (observation posts) were attacked at Firebase 6 Shooter in I Corps.  This was the only night I had spent in a tent, first time I had my boots off.  6 Shooter was a small fire support base in Elephant Valley (it had a dozen names) made up of 3 tents, an underground “Fuhrer Bunker” for the officer and several howitzers.  It had a “3 holer,” and a chow hall but food came from a pile of C-Ration pallets left out in the sun and rain.

Our OP’s were on two small hills.  Fireteams set up there to watch the night ambushes head back in, always popping a green flare or to provide support when the base below was attacked.  About 2AM, we heard the explosions and firing.  The firing was not m-16.

Sgt. Al Munoz showed up at the door in shorts with an weapon and a bandolier of magazines.  He had taken time to tie a scarf around his forehead, “banzai style.”  He was like that.  I had stuck on the first pair of boots I could find.  It was obvious they weren’t mine.  Bill Spadola had 9’s and I was an 11.  I was glad to be able to return them.

I grabbed my 16, ammo and a PRC-25 radio that was in a demo (demolition) bag and followed Munoz into the wire.  We had 22 rows of triple concertina barbed wire around the tiny base but kept an escape route you could weave your way thru.  I followed Munoz at a full run up the first hill.

RPGs had hit the small bunker and all three men were wounded and burned, two seriously.  These were people I knew well and 2 were friends.  We picked up automatic weapon fire from about 20 feet away and watched a few tracers go over our heads.  “They” loved their tracers.

Munoz fired back.  I think I screamed at them and waved my arms.  The radio was banging back and forth and it seemed like the thing to do at the time.  In less than a minute the corpsman, Doc Graves, arrived and I called in the medevacs.  Our 60mm mortar crews started putting up illumination rounds and the area took on a surreal glow.

We were an odd group by today’s standards.  Nearly half of us were college grads or dropouts.  We were a motley, multi-cultural group with Native Americans, Afro Americans, Hispanic Americans and all those popular names that divide us so nicely now.  Then we were all Marines.

Over a first 13 month tour I would watch people rotate home or be medivaced out.  One of my good friends, Bill Eckard, was the only one to come back after being wounded.  He picked up a round that grazed his skull.  He came back but went away again, this time much more serious, multiple amputations.  Bill didn’t make it.  I miss him.

For many of us, these are the faces we see when we pass the phone.  We can’t call them, can’t talk about our kids, our divorces or bitch about the VA.  They will always be 19,20 or 22, skinny, dirty and always smiling.

Memorial Day is coming up again.  Newspapers will talk about honoring the dead.  We will have parades.  Motorcyclists are preparing for Rolling Thunder and Run for the Wall, heading into DC in what used to be an expression of solidarity for POW support with strong anti-war overtones.  Now it is social, with few Vietnam veterans in any condition to ride across the country.  Sometimes I think we lost our way a bit, forgetting who we were and what we believed.

I will be riding on Memorial Day.  I dragged my 650cc antique out of the garage yesterday and did the kickstart thing.  The ride will be out along the Maumee River.  I’d have Jim Hanke with me but I just measured it out, 2000 miles to his place.  Maybe this summer.  Eddie Harris is out in California.  When I was out for his wedding, he still fit into his dress blues.

Things weren’t supposed to be like they are.  None of us in Vietnam believed we were defending America.  We joked about it constantly.  “Let them loose in Detroit and leave word that VC taste like chicken…and the war will be over in 2 days.”  It was a war with t-shirts for body armour, no helmets, no helicopters, just boots and guns and the ground to sleep on.  Why do all of us miss it so?

I had a beautiful country to blow up, kids to play with and nobody to answer to, no tests to take, no papers to turn in, no rent to pay.  We had no idea how we were being hardened by the death around us or poisoned by Agent Orange in our water and everything around us.

I never expected so few of us would make it home and that so many of those would get sick and die.  The nightmares so many came to suffer were unimaginable then.  We all felt we would live forever or maybe we just gave up caring.

Some of us have done well, some very well, so far anyway.  Life has a way of taking anything we think we own.  We are only renters here on number 3.

Summer is coming again in the frozen north.  I am going to try to make the calls, get the guys together.  We have done it a few times, but somehow fewer people have the time, the money or the will to get together.  PTSD isn’t a game for many.  I have friends, who, even after years of medication, get worse each year.  Why do we lie so much about what we do to our soldiers?

There is always the motorcycle.  I can be 20 again in a world where everything is yet to come, filled with promise.  Vietnam was meant to be the last stupid war, the last war fought for profit, for phony politics, fought by poor kids and some crazy idiot Marines, a senseless adventure.

We who fought that war, the old and the dead, those whose memory and honor survives, could never understand the strutting flag wavers who talk of God and sacrifice.  We weren’t idiots.  We didn’t need to invent ideology or bloat our egos with childishness.

We fought for years against a pack of maniacs who thought killing us or dying themselves would make them free.  All the VC earned was prison camps at the hands of their own friends and a hell of alot less freedom than they thought.  Welcome to that world.

Real soldiers aren’t soldiers at all.  They are people placed in harms way who work to be as human as possible in an inhuman world.  Uniforms are meant to steal humanity and replace it with obedience and the ability to be inhuman, inhuman, not really a person at all, if told.

Flags can be symbols of real honor and sacrifice or backdrops meant to turn a cheering throng into a mindless mob.  We have seen all of this too well.  Hundreds of thousands of American’s died in the last century, died in places around the world, because of flags and political theories.

Vietnam was not America at its best.  Most of us, however, were the best Americans we could be when we were there.  We were an enemy to an enemy in a war filled with hate and brutality.  We kept our honor by keeping our humanity.

This is the America we live for and work to keep for our children.  Many of us died for that America.  Anything that makes it less that way dishonors the dead.  Remember this on Memorial Day when you see the flags and hear the talk, so often talked by those who “do the talk but don’t do the walk.”

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

• Gordon’s Archives:  2008-2015
• Gordon’s Archives:  2016-2022