The O'connor Story
by Dave Barth, written October 21, 1990
Preface
This is a true story based on conversations with a coworker about his life as a Green Beret in Vietnam. The names have been changed. He wrote a "Continuation,"
which I added to the end of this story. Most likely, for war veterans, stories of this type are not unique. I feel privileged that he took me into his confidence
to tell me his very personal nightmare.
My name is David O'Connor. I am a successful data processing manager, but my life has made many unusual twists during my 40 years.
I was born into a very poor family in Louisiana. Meals consisted mainly of two items: rice and red beans. Meat was rare on our table - we just couldn't afford it.
Real milk was a luxury we didn't have money to buy. Mother bought canned condensed milk, mixed it with water and coffee, and we ladled it from a large pot in
the refrigerator.
Until I came along, no one in my family ever got past the sixth grade. Poverty was so difficult where we lived that as soon as a boy or girl became a teenager, it
was time to leave school and go to work to help put food on the table.
I was lucky. I did graduate from high school, but some members of the family looked down on me for shirking my responsibilities and staying in school. There
were teachers who helped convince my mother that I should stay in school.
Once, when I shouldn't have been listening, one of them told my mother that I had an IQ over 150 and that a score that high made me a genius. I don't think I'm
any different from anyone else. Except that I can remember almost everything I read or hear. But can't everyone?
Even though we were dirt poor, we did have a healthy respect and love for our country. When the country began drafting boys for the Vietnam War, I didn't even
know where Vietnam was. I only knew that freedom was important enough to fight for, and I knew I would go and fight for our Great Country.
I joined the Army around 1965. I took a lot of tests, and for some reason the Army people were impressed with me. I told them I wanted to become a Green Beret,
and I was accepted.
I went through a year of training to become one, and I made some very close friends. I will never forget them. Sometimes I want to cry when I lay in bed before
going to sleep, thinking about them and the times we had.
One buddy in particular was great with women. It seemed like girls would be drawn to him like he was a magnet to them. It made me mad. I knew I was good-looking,
too, but I guess he had a silver tongue, and the girls all liked to talk with him. And he got more than his share of them to sleep with, too. But when I got over my
shyness, I made up for lost time.
I was selected over many other candidates to learn medical work. I took many classes, took care of animals (even shot a dog and kept it alive), and I easily
passed all the tests. It was interesting for me. I got good enough that if I had the proper equipment and a sterile environment in which to work, I could remove
a person's appendix or gall bladder. My work wouldn't be as pretty as a regular surgeon's, but I could do the job well enough to keep the patient alive.
Some doctor once told me that my training was worth two years in medical school. People have told me that I could become a doctor. But I couldn't because no
one in my family ever got past the sixth grade.
Some of the other training was aimed at weeding out the weak guys. I vividly remember the spider pit. It was actually a network of underground tunnels similar to
those used by the V.C. We were told (misinformed) that we would enter the tunnel at one of the trap doors and if we could find any of the other trap doors, we would
be let out. We all thought this would be a fun game and that we would show our sergeant that we were really on top of things by being able to get through this tunnel
maze fast.
The hard part was that we had to go in at night, so there would be no light leaks around the trap doors to give them away. We figured we could team up and feel every
inch of the tunnels until we found a trap door and then get all our buddies over to it and get out.
The REAL reason for the spider pit was to see how we handled panic and depression and fear. Some of the guys went crazy for a while down there. The way it really
worked was that when some poor guy found one of the other trap doors, a sergeant would open it just long enough to cram a smoke bomb down it and slam it shut.
The poor guy in the tunnel would feel betrayed by his own army. It was horrible to be in the tunnel with guys who were going through such torturous
emotions.
I played it cool, which is my nature. During the six hours we spent in the spider pit, I learned quickly to stay away from the trap doors. The smoke in the tunnels
was pretty bad after a while, and a lot of the guys were coughing and having a hard time breathing.
After a couple of hours the stench in the pit got pretty bad because you just couldn't holler "Time Out," and climb out to go to the john. You just had to defecate
and piss right there in the tunnel where everyone, including you, were crawling. Quite a few guys just gave up trying to be hygienic about it and just pooped and
pissed in their pants. It was quite an experience.
They were also messing their bodies up by wasting energy. Several times some guy behind me in the tunnels (which were barely big enough to crawl through),
would panic and begin screaming and clawing his way as fast as he could through the tunnel. I would lay down as flat as I could and just let the guy crawl over me.
In his state of mind, he probably never noticed I was there.
The Army was really just giving us some advanced training that showed us what it was like in the "real world" of fighting in Vietnam. It wasn't pretty, and it was
often cruel.
There were opportunities all along the year-long training to drop out. The attrition rate was incredible. Probably only 2 or 3 percent of the guys who started Special
Forces training made it through. I did because I believed in myself.
We had to learn to jump from planes. In fact, unlike the regular air-borne troops who jump with static lines, we were taught to jump from high altitude and "fly"
several miles before opening our chutes. This training was just in case we had to drop into a country that the plane couldn't fly over. We could do a night jump
on one side of the border and "fly" across it. Enemy radar, which could detect the plane, couldn't detect us.
The highest altitude I jumped from was 37,500 feet. Boy, was it cold up there. Of course we had protective gear, but we still felt it. At those altitudes, we had to be
on oxygen all the time.
We had all the high-tech equipment. For example, the regular airborne troops, like the 82nd Airborne, used single-canopy chutes. We used double-canopy chutes
that were much more maneuverable. I understand that the ram-air square-shaped chutes are now being used.
When training was over, we were in pretty good shape. We thought we were good fighting men, but it took being there and having to survive to really make us mean
mothers.
Our group consisted of eleven men. Two were officers, a commanding officer and his executive officer. The rest of us nine were enlisted men. We were the doers.
The butt-kickers.
Our operation was highly classified. We were dropped off ten or twenty miles from the village we were to go to because the V.C. were not to know that this sector
had any Americans in it. After the high body counts we piled up in and around the sector, they had to believe that something was going on, but we were so mean
and so good at eliminating the enemy, that they must have been reluctant to really try to put us out of business because so many of them that went into that area
never came back.
All of us on the team were decorated. I was twice decorated. Some of our team got medals posthumously. During the eleven months in the jungle, half of the
team was killed.
I enjoyed military tactics. Realize that there are different kinds of tactics. As for jungle warfare, that was my area of interest, especially because it kept us alive and
because it raised hell with the V.C.
We took care of the villagers by treating their medical ills, and they reciprocated by feeding us. There was no way we could have hauled in enough food to keep
us going. We had to rely on them. And we protected them. We were glad they were on our side, but we always worried about V.C. spies among them who might
turn us in and suddenly we would have a V.C. army coming down our throats to wipe us out.
To meet that threat, we didn't stay in the village. We kept our camp secret, and we moved it often. One of the best camps we had was built in a swamp where the
water was one or two feet deep for hundreds of yards in every direction. We could hear anyone coming a long time before he could detect us. It was camouflaged,
and it was hard to spot even when your were within 50 feet.
We scrounged some wood planks and used vines to suspend them over the water so that we could keep dry. One of our greatest enemies was the moisture. Foot
rot was a common malady with regular foot soldiers, but with my help, our team kept dry and healthy feet.
You might wonder if we used a password among ourselves to know who was who at night, for example. Like, "Who won the 1956 World Series?" Hell, I couldn't
have answered a question like that. In fact, the V.C. probably could have answered questions like that better than we could have.
Since we were such a small, closely knit group, we just learned to know each other by our senses. We could tell who was who by listening to the way they walked,
the way they smelled, etc. In fact, our sense of smell was greatly enhanced. We got so that we could smell food or feces from 100 yards if the wind was blowing right.
That might sound like a joke, but it was one of the things that saved our lives many times.
Since we were a clandestine operation, the CIA was interested in our methods and successes. They were always eager to get information (intelligence, they called it),
and they sent a guy out to our team on an intelligence-gathering mission. We took him pretty much where ever he wanted to go, but he was certainly no soldier, and
we quickly developed a great disdain for those supposedly "hot-shots" who should have stayed in a safe place.
Our mission was really one thing. Develop as high a body count as we could. We did. Our team's efforts were brought to the attention of the President more than
once, and we got Presidential Unit Citations for good work. We were professional soldiers, and we were good. We were the best. We kicked butt.
Ambushes were another of my specialties. A couple of us on the team would gather some volunteers from the village to help us knock off some V.C. We got
volunteers because the V.C. robbed and raped the villages. We befriended them, so it was like which draws the most flies? Vinegar or honey? We helped the
villagers and they helped us. If fact, we couldn't have completed our mission without them.
Anyway, we would go out with some volunteers that we armed. We would find a clearing that the V.C.'s road ran through, and we would set claymore mines up on
one side, bury the wires under the road over to our side where I would have the detonation plungers set up. We would wait for a convoy that was predicted by our
secret contacts, and when it came along, I would set off the claymores. The soldiers would jump out of the trucks and we would open fire and wipe them out.
Actually, we needed to kill all of them to save the secret of our being there. Our hope was that the V.C. would come up on this trashed-out convoy and figure
it was a real mystery who had gotten to it. That was our mission. To build a body count and make the lives of the V.C. a real hell.
I was not the best rifle man in our group. But I was the best with a knife. We had to be very good with a knife because when we made contact with a small enemy
force, and it didn't know we were there, we could pretty much kill them one-by-one, silently and quickly. It was just the way the war had to be fought. If we didn't
do it to them, they would do it to us.
Like I said, we were mean, but the French were mean, and it was the French that made the V.C. mean. Dirty tricks were the game. For example, the V.C. would
pick out a soldier and shoot him in the leg, a painful injury. The soldier would scream in pain until some poor stupid jerk would try to run over and give him morphine
or drag him to safety, and you know what? That guy would be wounded, too, and now you had two screaming G.I.s out there. We didn't play those shit games that
way. We would track down the sniper like a wounded deer and cut his throat.
We were good because we were a select few who could get through all the tough training. This was war, and we fought it like it was all we could do. We fought it
to the max. Each of us were fighting machines. We were killing machines. That is what the Army wanted: killing machines. And that's what they got. And we were
the best. Yes, the V.C. hurt us and the villagers, but we hurt them, too, and that's what it was all about over there.
A few of the team and some village volunteers quietly crept into a neighboring village one day (we always quietly crept so that we would have the advantage of surprise).
There were a lot of bodies about. It was plain that the V.C. had come through with their particular brand of motivation for the poor villagers. I spotted a villager who looked
like the chief, suspended over a sharpened bamboo stick poked up his ass. A water bucket with a small hole in it held the chief up, and as the water slowly drained
out, he was lowered onto the spike. He had passed out from pain, and another guy and I quietly crept up to get a close look at him to see if he was alive. Suddenly,
he regained consciousness, and screamed in our faces. The other guy and I pulled the triggers of our guns for a short burst, just from reflex, and that brought everyone
else in to find out what the hell was going on. The chief lived, but it showed us how nasty the V.C. could be. We had to be nastier to survive and beat
them.
One ambush was a disaster. We were equipped in manpower and equipment to nail a five or six truck convoy that intelligence said was coming along. To my surprise,
ten troop trucks were in the convoy, and I realized that if we tried to stop them, our small force would be wiped out. So I didn't detonate the claymores which was the
signal to the villagers to open fire. I wanted the convoy to pass us by. Unfortunately, one of the volunteers got trigger-happy and fired a round.
The convoy stopped and I knew were in acute danger. I quickly detonated all the claymores and we all began running through the forest as fast as we could. The V.C.
were right on our tail. They wanted to wipe us out, once and for all.
I ran so hard for so long that several times I puked as I ran. There wasn't time to bend down and be neat. Anyone who slowed down was dead, and most of our ambush
party was killed that night. But the worst was to come. My best buddy (the one all the girls liked when we were in training) and I were running in front of what few
villagers had survived the massacre. We were running in total darkness, scraping past trees, and just generally trying to go faster through the forest than the V.C.
behind us, when we suddenly ran into a V.C. scouting party encampment. It must have been a small group, but we began shooting them. I remember that the bright
flashes from my AK47 blinded me, and all I could do was shoot at the ground where ever I could see a blanket.
Then I ran out of ammo, and I squatted down near a tree and drew my automatic. Just then a loud bark of a large-bore automatic weapon in front of me silhouetted my
buddy, and he was hit bad. Parts of him were being flung from his body. My training made me act without even thinking. The bastard V.C. had to be silenced, period.
I remember vividly bullets from my pistol shooting through my buddy into the V.C. target.
Did I kill my buddy? Did my mind trick me into thinking that he was already dead or did my bullets hit him before the V.C.'s? If anyone ever suggested that I killed
him, I'd want to kill that person. I would have given my life to save my buddy. His life was very precious to me, and I wish things had turned out differently. A lot of
hours I've spent reliving, dreaming, rethinking that horrible moment. Why couldn't I have been the one between his gun and the V.C.?
[Note: The following narrative is a Post Script to the story. It was written by the soldier, who wishes to remain anonymous.]
It has been 20 years since that time in the tropics, and I still have the dream...the dream of shooting through my buddy to eliminate an enemy.
The dream is just like the mission that went sour except that when the few of us finally get to the LZ [landing zone] where the choppers arrive to pick us up, I look
into a mirror that is in the chopper, and I see my face: my eyes are blackened and sunken, and my face is pale white. My face has the appearance of being dead.
The vision is too much for me to bear, and I start to cry . . . I wake up with tears coming from my eyes.
I have met in group sessions with others who have had bad experiences in "Nam," and we have talked, cried, and yelled together. But nothing will ever remove the
visions, feelings, and sounds of Vietnam from my memories.
I write this story now after so many years because something has changed in my dream, and I think there is some significant meaning to it.
I no longer dream of the one mission where Musgrave buys the farm. I now dream of being in a very large tin warehouse building. In this structure, there is a set-up
of every major mission that my team ever went on. I am leading a young, inexperienced team through these events, and I am making all the wrong decisions.
Everyone on this young team is being killed by Victor Charlie [Viet Cong soldiers]. Most of our major missions went OK 20 years ago. But in this dream, I am
responsible for everyone dying. We start at one end of the building and proceed through the course, only it is for real. There are observers that I can not recognize
except that they are military. The missions are exactly like those of 20 years ago, except that I am losing everyone due to my bad decisions. We finally reach the
other end of the building with only a few men left. I climb out of the water and mud to see all of the men from my old team that were killed in Nam on some of these
missions 20 years ago. There is something definitely different about these guys in that they do not recognize me at all (after all we had been through together).
They are also wearing totally different uniforms with blue berets, different ribbons, different unit insignias and patches. I suddenly get this horrible feeling of not
belonging anymore to these guys. The feeling goes so deep that it wakes me up. I then spend the remainder of the night trying to get back to sleep. The next day
I feel a total sense of missing something big and a total sense of not belonging to anything or anyone. I feel a complete sense of emptiness and loss.
I feel that I must belong to these guys again. I feel that something very terrible will happen if I do not join up with them again.
BUT THE ONLY WAY I CAN BELONG AGAIN IS TO BE.......DEAD..