A Vietnam Veteran’s Travelogue
Vietnam was a country of extremes
There was no middle ground
A land of overwhelming natural beauty
A place of disgustingly brutal images
Home to an ancient culture
A burial ground to our youth
New combatants joining in a war decades old
Pitting veterans against the untried
Summers there were unbearable
Blazing down, the merciless sun was unforgiving
Baking your brain under your pot
Burning eyes as they try to see
Dust seeks out every pore
Cakes the skin and makes it raw
Sweat pours till there is no more
All dried out and you’re in trouble son
Humidity heavy and thick
Laboring to breathe
Your body quickly weakens
And your mind dulls and soon stops to function
Days so bright you believe you’ll go blind
Watching for something to move
Nights so black you are blind
While movements go unseen
Monsoons would bring a wintry chill
Wet winds freeze your very soul
Driving rain soaking everything you own
Skin turns to mush, cracks and bleeds
Mud covered from head to toe,
Mud, mud, mud, it’s everywhere
Boots sucked in deep
Planting us as we march
A few days of this cold watery hell
Body and mind are soon worn out
Exhausted, exposed, you think you might actually die
For the elements always win
Fast swollen rivers in deep green valleys
Which somehow must be crossed
Along with the countless, muck bottomed rice paddies
Floating with human waste
Low rolling hills
And high, sharp rocked mountains
All artfully tunneled through
Painfully taken then given back
Tall sharp grass cuts as you pass
Thick heavy jungles
Which won’t let you through
Waist deep putrid swamps that stink
Beautiful, white sandy beaches
Meet a shimmering emerald South China Sea
With its cool fresh ocean breeze
But even here it is not safe to linger
Pitch black nights with skies that matched
A million stars twinkle and shine
This was the most dangerous time
For ‘Charlie’ roamed at will his dark domain
Mosquitoes and flies bite and infect
Cockroaches, centipedes and big ugly bugs you can’t even name
Giant, fearless, flea ridden rats
Take the food right out of your hand
Think, slimy leaches
Thirst for your blood,
Snakes too numerous to count
And we laid down among them
Ailments ranged from common colds
To every tropical disease infamous in this clime
Malaria, yellow fever, and more
Jungle rot was epidemic
Dysentery struck at every man
Heat stroke, dehydration, pneumonia
They ruled as kings
Along with a festering gangrene in even the smallest of wounds
To the amorous adventurers in our lot
The curse of mankind and war was not wanting
For there could be found the varying, painful assortment
Of every venereal infection known to man
Small grass hut villages with farmers and families,
But are they friend or ‘VC’?
Larger cities, Saigon, Danang, and Cam Rahn Bay
Hue, forever honored for the men who fought there
Small, old, worn looking women working the rice paddies
Teeth stained from chewing betel nut
Younger, painted up others who sold themselves
“Two dollas for numbah one boom boom”
Children hawking warm Cokes to you
Joking all day with “Numbah One GI”
Those same kids setting ‘booby traps’ all night
For you, “Numbah Ten GI”
Into this world we all are thrown
Most of us coming one at a time
Alone with our thoughts, if ‘lucky’ we leave the same way
‘Wasted’ its home in a flag covered box
We come from the streets of big cities and towns
And from rural country sides
Most have enlisted, others were drafted
Some educated, some not so much
We’re poor, or middle class, none are rich
No politician’s sons will be found here
We’re eager and young and oh so naive
To tell you the truth, we haven’t a clue
We’re white or we’re black, yellow, red or brown
But once in the bush we’re all green
Skin color does not matter out here
Just the man who is on your team
A six foot-four, two hundred pound Marine
Standing next to the four foot-nine, eighty pound ARVN
The ARVNs want to do what the South Koreans once did
To just sit back and watch the ‘Tigers’ fight
Homesick Americans longing for their return to ‘The World’
Americanized civilians dreaming of going there too
The war turned the women into whores, the men think they’re cowboys
And the children are all beggars and thieves
Plenty to eat in the mess halls and cities
Going hungry on C-rats out in the bush
The Brass, diplomats and businessmen dine on fancy feasts
While kids dodge bulldozers in the garbage dumps for scraps
Going for days with little or no sleep
Other days when sleep is all you do
Countless boring hours when absolutely nothing happens
Interrupted by the seconds of terrifying, electric violence
Patrols and Ops, ambushes,
Each hairier than the last
OPs, LPs, Sniper teams and Recon
Alone in the middle of nowhere
Battalion sized Ops
A company on search and destroy
That lone brave ‘tunnel rat’
Going where no man wants to go
Killing the enemy unseen with arty and aircraft
One shot, one kill at 800 meters
A .45 round point blank in the face
Choking, stabbing and beating the man within reach
Step on a booby trap, tripping a wire
From nowhere a sniper strikes home
Cut down by a burst of an AK-47
The blast of a fragment grenade
To tread on a land mine, or incoming mortars
The deadly RPGs, a sleek 105 round
And lest we forget our own ‘friendly fire’
My God, there are so many ways to die
A young Marine savagely, quickly and forever shot dead
A gray haired old man blasted in two
An infant drowned in brown rushing waters
Pulled limp and broken from the river by his heartbroken family
Vietnam was a war of attrition
And we soon learned there were worse things than dying
Arms and legs went missing
Bodies disfigured without death
The ‘NVA’ and ‘VC’ seldom stood and fought
But when they did it was costly for both sides
Booby traps and mines were their methods of choice
Or a quick ambush than to fade away
Frustrated with little or no one to fight
No one to retaliate against, no retributions to serve
An enemy that blended well into the populace
And our friends and comrades still gone
No front lines, no rhyme or reason
To get ‘hit’ anytime, anywhere
Even our brave doctors and nurses
Were killed in what was known as the ‘rear’
Compassionate, heartfelt acts of kindness
Corpsmen tend to and apply their aid
Men risking their lives for others
Completely giving up of themselves
One day you bring food and medicine to a village
The Docs treat all who are ill
While Marines search and peacefully leave
A month later we burn that same village to the ground
Long tedious ambushes with no results
Quick, scary, exhilarating firefights
At times we charged or held our ground
Other times it was prudent to book
Slick silver jets scream overhead
Streaking above the hard working choppers
Below the farmer with his water buffalo
Working rice paddies the same as the last thousand years
‘Med-a-Vacs’ risking it all
Swooping down like angels to take out our wounded
If not for these selfless heroes
‘The Wall’ would be twice as long
Gunships and ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’
Jet fighters from all the services
Screaming in to add their support
My God what a comforting but deadly sight
The far off rumble of arty applying his trade
Muffled mortars a little bit closer
Unseen buzzing of B52s and soon
An entire distant ridgeline suddenly explodes
All those different types of explosions,
Large and small, arty, the mortars, 105s
Claymores, grenades, the M-79
All deafening both incoming and ours
M-60s, full auto 16s and AKs
That sharp snap as a round goes by
From the air the rockets, bombs and napalm
Thirty years later our ears still ring
That terrible rush of an incoming round
When you can’t get deep enough into the ground
You pray to God with all your might
Then you start to deal
Earth shaking explosions that shatter your mind
Trembling, terrified and utterly helpless
You wait for the next deadly shell
“God if you will just get me through this I’ll never….”
Days without end
The nights even longer
When the weeks seem like months
Thirteen months equaled a lifetime in hell
Arriving ‘in country’ there was confidence, even arrogance
We knew nothing of real horror, killing, dying or war
As participant and witness for long trying months
In time we knew only doubt and despair
Once young men, with youthful fantasies
Here dreams and beliefs had no chance to fade over time
Instead they vanished in the hairsplitting seconds
Of violent death and a horrible, mind shattering reality
Just in our teens or early twenties
We had just started on our own way
Within a few short months
We knew our course had been run
For we once dreamed of many exciting tomorrows
But war takes those dreams away
Now full of dread and impending doom
We knew no tomorrows, for there was only today
By the end of our stay we were no longer young men
We had become older than we are now
No more the brave crusading warriors
Blood had washed those illusions away
Like a cop on a twenty year beat
Who has seen man’s inhumanity for too long
We shared his hardness and loss of faith
And we had attained it in less than a year
Disillusioned and weary we board our ‘Freedom Bird”
For a short brief time we almost feel young again
But as we reflect our delirium fades as we realize
In the end we were just the survivors
Once home we find only more dissatisfaction and hate
Alone with our nightmares
Without our trusted comrades
We soon learn there is still more of the war yet to come
Unlike other veterans who had fought before
We are not perceived as patriots
Although we had served and honored our ‘duty’
There was no ‘Welcome Home’
Instead we are the ‘baby killers’ and ‘drug addicts’
A bunch of ‘murderous, sadistic lunatics’
To most of our countrymen
We were not heroes but pawns in a corrupt policy
Spat on and cursed, but worst of all, ignored
Our Nation turned their backs to us
Reviled and despised, no one wants to hear
The war and its warriors were to be erased
Trying to go on with our lives
We soon find just how very different we are
Friendships we have had since childhood
Now with little in common they sour and end
Depressed, nervous, and confused
We separate and withdraw
With a deep terrifying anger
That seems to come from out of nowhere
This anger has festered and grown
Both ‘in country’ and now at home
Hidden deep in our hearts
Now it violently erupts with little or no cause
Broken marriages, and relationships
Some turn to drugs and alcohol
Moving from job to job
Or some ‘trouble’ with the law
Within our own bodies
And those of our children
We learned the effects of ‘Agent Orange’
And the anger grows
Lives cut short from the hideous wounds
Both mental and physical
Pain that has lasted for year after year
There seems no end to the agony
Flashbacks, and sweat filled nightmares
Some beast called PTSD
Withdrawn and depressed men ‘bunker down’
Others tortured beyond all endurance have chosen suicide
This war did not end when we ‘made it home’
It did not end with the fall of Saigon
For this cruel war is still being fought everyday
In the hearts and minds of us all
We Vets from this war are now aging
And while our families soundly sleep
We stand guard in our imaginations
Watching ghostly perimeters over the rusted barbed wire
Searching the shadows for movement
Waiting for the ‘shit to hit the fan’
Watching for an enemy that only lives in our minds
An enemy that is still too real
We will remember our lost friends
We remember our lost innocence and youth
We remember our lost dreams
We will remember our duty and honor
The Vietnam War will continue
Until our last warrior ages and slips away
And joins his brave sleeping Brothers
In a peace we could not find
Michael Tank
USMC
Scout/Snipers
’69-‘72
01/27/03
"Copyright 2003. Michael E. Tank All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted,
or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."