History of a Psycho

I probably should not put this on here, but I cannot think of a real reason not to. These are memories of Viet Nam; an old soldier, the last one of his group.

Even as a kid, I was a soldier, it was all I ever wanted to be.
Its been 34 years since I left. Every day it is still a part of me. I still cant figure out how I am here and so many didn’t make it. That has always bothered me. The dreams are not so bad now, but they are still with me. When it is still and hot I can still smell it. I remember when I got off the plane there the first time. It smelled so bad. Rotted vegetation, shit, and blood. And it was so hot heat waves shimmered in the air and everything looked like a mirage.
I remember laying in the sand on a poncho my first night there. It was too hot to sleep inside.. I wondered what that was going across the sky as I looked at the stars. Soon to find out it was a rocket aimed at us that overshot. Crawling fast as I could for a bunker to hide in. Not even issued a weapon yet.
My first view of the dead. A medivac chopper landed there and they wanted us to help them unload. But there was not anyone alive in there. Just South Vietnamese soldiers in pieces. The blood poured off the deck of the chopper on us.
Not sure how I got picked for LRRPS. I was not a school trained ranger or special forces. They were running out of warm bodies though.  Your choice of extra weapons was wide open.  Trouble was that you had to carry all your gear yourself.
I loved the highlands. Much better than the jungles. It was closer to charley and the Chinese though. And the Monteyards were strange but decent. Just wanting to be left alone. Left alone from charley and from us really.
Sounds of bullets plinking into a chopper as you sit there praying that they miss. You don’t have anywhere to go, wanting off that chopper bad enough to jump. Then after you are dropped into a hot LZ, wondering why you ever got off the damn chopper in the first place and cant wait to hear them coming back for you.
There were semis hauling products up and down hwy 1, the name on the side of most of them said Sea Land Corp. We heard they were owned by Ladybird Johnson. After that, we started shooting at them too. Just because.
A real pretty country, except for the war. I remember how green it was. I never could figure out what kind of birds those were that swarmed the rice paddies. They were large and snow white…really pretty. They left quick when the shooting started.
On LRRPS, they would send us out for 1 to 5 days. Mostly, we would do recon and make maps and try to find the enemy without getting found. We were not supposed to start a fight, but most of the time that was not a choice. I found that I enjoyed the dark and I was good at what I did.
Weird things: We killed a lizard one day. It was as big as a Komodo dragon and smelled really bad. But an m16 took care of it. I have a picture somewhere of it. At night, when it was really dark and you were trying to sleep, lots of times an orangutan would wake you up. They sounded like a woman screaming a long ways off. At 2 in the morning, they were really scary sounding. Most of the time they left us alone. Sometimes they got too curious. I still don’t know if it was right or wrong, but when I think too hard on it, I don’t think we should have been there at all.
Sometimes we worked with the ROCK soldiers. They were from Korea and they were tough as nails. They used to call me muongzingie( I have no idea how to spell it, I just remember how it sounded). It meant monkey man. At the time I was covered in body hair and they did not have any.
It seemed like we never ran out of rice or roast water buffalo. For about 15 years afterwards, I would not eat rice or roast beef.
I turned 21 there. We had a party, got drunk, really drunk. I drank a bottle of ron rico rum. I woke up the next morning propped up against an outhouse. They said that I had fired flares and incendiaries into the village that night, but for some reason no one got hurt. They took my m16 and grenade launcher away from me. Good thing they did. At the time, it seemed normal and not a big deal. Years later though, it sounds like a shitty thing to do.
Back then, we kept our weapons with us all the time. We kept ammo all the time. When we went to bed, our weapons were with us. Talking to guys now days, I hear that they only get there weapons if the commander thinks they need them. Then they have to go get them issued and then go get ammo. They have to account for each missing round of ammo also.
Sounds weird to me.
The trips on recon soon wore you down. You were scared all the time, and jumpy, and would fire at the slightest provocation. But we just wanted to come home to the world.
When I went over there, I was real gung ho. I believed the crap about mom, apple pie, and fighting for our freedom. It did not take long to learn that was not quite true. Very soon, the only reason we had was to watch out for each other and try to get home, and to hell with the politicians, corporations, and governments. We didn’t give a shit about that.
Now, many years later, I am the poster boy for PTSD. That is what the doctor said anyway. They did come up with a drug that keeps most of the nightmares away. I can even go in walmart without getting all crazy. Don't laugh, that is a serious problem.
Oh well, crap happens. I hope you other soldiers adjust better.