Downs - The Killing zone : my life in the Vietnam war

I want to thank all of my friends who have listened for so long to my war stories. A deeply felt appreciation is extended to: Virginia Kenney, typist extraordinary, who patiently translated my handwriting into typed pages; Sheila Dunne, who typed on short notice; and Virginia Shively, who cheerfully transformed Dictaphone ramblings into coherent sentences.

A note of recognition to those unpaid critics who read the manuscript and gave me valuable comments: David and Susan Walls, Ray and Emma Smith, Kathleen Leone, Melissa Allen, Alan Bow, and John and Mary Spangler. You all had opinions and did not keep them to yourselves.

Thanks to Leona Schecter and Ed Barber for taking a chance on an unknown, and Joel Swerdlow for offering invaluable advice, not all of which I have taken.

To my wife, Mary Boston Downs, a special thanks; you always knew I could do it.

In the fall of 1968, as I stopped at a traffic light on my walk to class across the campus of the University of Denver, a man stepped up to me and said, Hi.

Without waiting for my reply to his greeting, he pointed to the hook sticking out of my left sleeve. Get that in Vietnam?

I said, Yeah, up near Tam Ky in I Corps.

Serves you right.

As the man walked away, I stood rooted, too confused with hurt, shame, and anger to react.

Ten years have passed. The hurt, shame, and anger still flood over me with the memory. But of one thing I am certainnone of the men I knew who served in Vietnam deserved to die or to be maimed, either physically or mentally.

I think it is necessary now to give another view of Vietnam, that of the day-to-day life of an infantryman on the ground.

I have always been asked what I thought about Vietnam, but never what it was like to fight in Vietnam.

This is the way it was for us, the platoon of Delta One-six.

8 September 1967

At 2330 hours the Continental Big Bird with the Golden Tail DC-8 dropped through the night sky into the landing pattern over the black landscape of Vietnam. Twenty-three hours earlier 165 of us had been crammed aboard the commercial jet at the airport near San Francisco.

I looked around the cabin at the officers and enlisted men who had come from all over the United States to catch this flight from San Francisco.

How would they return? How would I return?

I had graduated six months earlier from the U.S. Armys OCS program at Fort Benning, Georgia, and now I was soon to be leading men into combat. I was twenty-three years old and I had been trained to lead. Physically, I thought I was ready. Mentally, I was as confident of myself as any young officer could be, but underneath my confidence were the ever-present questions, worry, and curiosity about war and my role in it.

I was eagerly looking forward to finding answers. I would not have long to wait.

I was surprised at the number of lights below. I had always thought that a war zone would be blacked out, yet the jewels of lights spread haphazardly through the dark. I expected tracers to rip the night as the enemy tried to shoot us down, but the landing at Tan Son Nhut was uneventful.

We exited the aircraft in a long khaki line to stand apprehensively under a series of large open-sided tents with tables lined up under them. The oppressive heat and humidity was filled with the smells of dust, machinery, and rotting vegetation.

Everything was lit up. I wondered when the mortars would start dropping in. How could the enemy miss a target as tempting as that plane and all of these men?

The plane was being refueled for takeoff. Opposite our naive line stood another line of soldiers, waiting to go home. The soldiers hooted disparaging remarks at us.

Its a lick, motherfucker!

Youll be sorrryyy!

New cannon fodder!

You guys short yet? Only 365 days to go? Shiiiit!

We had no comeback to those veterans. After all, hadnt they just completed a tour of war duty? We suffered our ignominy in silence.

We were checked through rapidly. As we were directed to the buses that would take us to the disbursement center, I looked back. Spotlights shone on the airplane that had brought us here. Pretty stewardesses in pert uniforms smiled and chatted with the boarding soldiers. The crew was inspecting the underside of the plane in a preflight check.

I turned around to stare into the blackness in front of me. What was there?

We walked to the convoy of buses sitting in the darkness with their motors running. The windows were fogged from the air conditioning which the drivers had turned up full blast. As we got close, one driver opened his door, releasing a blast of cool air and the sounds of the country and western music his radio was getting on the armed forces station. Man! I wasnt expecting this cushy treatment. This wasnt anything like a war zone.

After a short ride through some checkpoints (this was more like it), we were unloaded and told to hit the sack. Barrack-like tents, with wood sides halfway up and canvas for the rest of the wall and roof, were our first homes. After our twenty-three-hour flight, we plopped down to sleep on the cots lined up along both walls.

There was a crowd around the bulletin board the next morning. Men were laughing or bitching as they discovered their new units. I pushed through the crowd to look for my name and found it with 4th Division next to it.

Fourth Division! Hey! Anybody ever heard of the Fourth Division? Where is it operating? I never heard of it.

A grizzled career sergeant was standing next to me.

Thats a good outfit, lieutenant. Theyre stationed out at Pleiku, up in the Central Highlands.

I never read about them anywhere in the papers back home. Are they doing much fighting up there? I dont want an outfit thats not in action.

The sergeant turned to look at me. Theyre spread out in I Corps and II Corps in the Central Highlands, like I said. Not everybody doing the fighting is in the newspapers. Youll never ever see a reporter up there. Its too rough for them. He looked at my youth. Youll get a belly full of fighting up there, son, if thats what you want.

Thanks, sergeant, I mumbled as I pushed to the back of the crowd to return to my tent.

I didnt care whether I seemed anxious or not. I was waiting beside the road with my duffle bag and flight bag long before transportation arrived to take us to the airport.

A C-130 leapfrogged north from one airfield to another on its journey to Pleiku. The procedure was the same each time we took off and landed. We sat in rows on the bare floor of the airplane. Long canvas straps hooked from one side of the plane to the other supposedly acted as a buffer against bumps and jolts. Actually, the straps were worthless for protection but the colorfully dressed crew chief always made certain they were fastened each time new passengers walked up the tail for loading.