Before It Is Too Late!

South Vietnam, 1967

The air was musty and the vegetation was thick as the platoon of 75 men walked a trail close to the border of Laos. It wasn’t raining on this day but it was rainy season so the bugs were minimal, but it didn’t stop the sweat from building in every orifice and cranny of the bodies of the men as they got closer to their ambush location. 

Dwayne, nicknamed Butch, was a young twenty-year-old machine gunner, serving his second tour in Vietnam. He had tried to complete his military obligation back in the States after his first tour, but both the stigma of soldiers at home coupled with the formal military standard of living were items that he could not accept. So, he figured he would complete one more year in the bush and then go home for good. He was even contemplating the possibility of a military career.

Of the force of 75 men, most were South Vietnamese soldiers, but there was a contingent of twenty Americans working with them. Earlier in the day they had received a report that a small force of Vietcong were walking a trail from Laos into the Southern region of Vietnam. Their mission was to meet them and kill them in force once they crossed the border. 

After a few more clicks (kilometers) of walking, they got to their location and the men set up their fighting positions for the ambush. Dwayne found a good spot behind a fallen tree overlooking the trail, good overhead cover, too; he was on the forward edge of the team spanning an ambush site 50 meters long. It would be his job to start taking out the bad guys once the team on the other end of the ambush site started shooting the leading elements of the enemy force. He would be one of the first to see the enemy and would have to patiently wait, holding back his shooting finger, until the shooting started 50 meters away. 

He had been through this before but this was his first time this close to the border of Laos. As he lay there, waiting for the Vietcong to enter the site, he contemplated his future. “A military career or baseball? Which is the right one for me?”  No answers came, but either one excited him. After a few agonizing hours, the first signs of the enemy appeared through the thick leaves of the jungle. They were walking silently and in pairs but it appeared that they were not aware that they were about to meet a force ready to take every single one them out.  

Dwayne thinks to himself, “Thank God it is not raining, or this would be more miserable than it already is. Daylight, too, makes this even easier.”  His adrenaline was pumping and he could hear himself breathing as he prepared to fire but had to restrain himself from firing early. He would aim his M60 machine gun at each bad guy he saw but he would not start shooting until the first round went down range. Ten minutes after the first of the enemy passed about 10 yards in front of him, the rounds started flying. 

Dwayne had 2000 rounds of ammo between him and his battle buddy, spanning several 100 round belts packed in canisters that his buddy would assist with loading as necessary. The tactic of the machine gunner at the time was take out as much of the bush and vegetation as possible to clear the line of fire – just keep shooting in the direction of the enemy; do not conserve ammo. On occasion, a round would hit a bad guy, but for the first few minutes, he was shooting in the general area. He could see some of the bad guys fall after he got them in the shoulder, the neck, or the abdomen; he always aimed for the middle of the man when he saw one. Coupled with a few carefully placed claymore mines, the battle was heavy. Bullets flying, screams, death yells as men on both sides were pumping themselves up. 

Laying in a prone position, Dwayne would not move but the Vietcong were trying to approach him from all directions in front of him. As they were firing, he felt two hot searing stripes cross his back, like someone had taken a hot piece of rod iron and laid it straight across his back. He knew that he had just been hit – twice from what he could tell – but he ignored the pain and kept shooting. After 15 minutes, the firing was reduced to a minimum … and then a minute or so after that, it stopped. The ringing in his ears was immense. He had shot up a little more than half of his ammo. He could hear the agonized whimpers of men 5 feet in front of him and 10 feet to his left; they had been shot and were making it known that they were out of the fight.  

And then, all hell broke loose.

Dwayne started taking fire from his rear. He could also hear the sounds of battle 60 meters in front of him as his friends on the other side of the ambush zone started taking fire as well. Dwayne shifted his position to shoot behind him and to his “new” left. This is when he realized that his battle buddy was missing the top of his fore head, having taken a solid round above his right eye.  He loaded another belt and started shooting at anything he thought he saw. 

Thunk! A round takes out his right foot (at least that is how it felt); this added to the searing pain across his back. He had no time to think about this as he was now fighting for his life. He continues to shoot when he feels his right elbow give way – “What the h***?” He had taken another round and his right arm was useless, but he kept firing while leaning on his left side. His weight, now pressing and pulling against his left arm, was pulling his machine gun off target. He could feel the heat of more rounds crossing his back but when he took a bullet in his left wrist, he could do no more; the pain was too much. He gave up, rolled over onto his back and waited for it all to end. He could hear the yelling and closing sounds of battle as the Vietcong got closer to him and the positions of his other team members. After a few more minutes, all he could hear was one shot here and another shot there. His team was gone; they had been annihilated.

As he lay there, starting to dream about the two career options that he would never see, he watched as the Vietcong walked around bayoneting every man they found. Some men would scream “No” as the large knife penetrated their chest to take out their heart. Dwayne watched all of this unfold around him as he waited for his own death. He was in pain and no longer cared. He was not afraid; he just wanted it to end and he swore to himself that he would not beg or scream.

At some point, a young Vietnamese kid walked up to him. They both stared at each other, eye to eye, as Dwayne waited for the bayonet that was pointed at him to enter his stomach or chest. It felt like minutes, but likely 30 seconds. The young soldier kept his eye on Dwayne as he reached down and grabbed the rucksack that was lying next to him. And then, he turned and walked away. “What? Why? Huh?” These thoughts permeated Dwayne’s thoughts just before he passed out. He could not figure out what just happened.

An hour or so later, a team of friendlies walked into the ambush site looking for survivors. They would find Dwayne semi-conscious due to loss of blood, but he was alive. Dwayne would later learn that the small force they had intelligence on was a lead scout recon team for a significantly larger Vietcong battalion two clicks behind them – the American intelligence team had messed up bad. The Americans and South Vietnamese had been outnumbered over 5 to 1 and didn’t even know it.  

Ten men survived that day, including Dwayne, but that battle would live with him for the rest of his life. He was never the same afterwards. My father lived the remainder of his life as if he had died that day in 1967, just a few months short of his twenty-first birthday. As far as he was concerned, there may be a heaven, but he was in hell. This became his life’s philosophy and it came at a price in our relationship. 

To be honest, I don’t know if those were truly the thoughts of my father before or after this battle, nor can I say completely that this is how the battle went down. But this is the way I imagine it and what his thoughts might have been before and after the battle, the thoughts of a twenty year old soldier who had just witnessed 80% of his friends die a violent death. The battle scene I described was pulled together via three or four different discussions about the war with my father. He rarely talked about it with me, my mother, or anyone else in our family; I was well into my thirties before he shared most of the details with me. He did share his dreams of baseball with me when I was a teenager and he later shared with me that he had contemplated a full-time military career – but he also watched both of these dreams die that day in 1967.  

My father’s injuries would be a burden. Whatever sports career he thought he had was over. While his back would simply retain the scars, his foot injury would never allow him to run and his right elbow and left wrist would never fully heal (his wrist was always deformed).  I can recall several conversations where my father would share that, as far as he was concerned, he died that day in Vietnam.  I also recall him saying that he considered the world we live in to be hell. Every day since he received his injuries was a day of pain for my father – physical and emotional – and I don’t believe he ever fully recovered. It would not be until much later in my adult life that I would learn this to be his truth as far as he knew it.  

      More harmful than his physical injuries, this battle tore apart his soul. Within just a few years, he would stop communicating with his brothers-in-arms that survived with him that day in Vietnam – something that I still do not understand. When he got home, he buried his grief, his guilt, and his hate into a new career and a drive to succeed. The war may have taken his dream from him but he would not let his injuries or his handicap stop him from succeeding. This feels eerily familiar with my own experience at the end of Desert Storm, though I was never physically injured. 

      My dad finally accepted Jesus two weeks before he died but he never really got to know our Father. This is happening more and more with men today: our warrior spirits are declining as masculinity is torn from the very fabric of the masculine spirit that God created. My desire and my prayer are that men stop waiting until they are on their deathbed to receive Christ. You may not get the opportunity to know the timeline of your death like my dad did.