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Recollections

By Barry Romo

"HE WAS DEAD AND I WAS GOING HOME"

I had spent approximately ten months in the field, first in the Northern section of I Corps in Vietnam with the 196th Infantry Brigade. Now that Brigade was incorporated into the Americal Division with the 11th Infantry Brigade newly arrived from Hawaii. Things were very different in this unit: casualties were extremely heavy, not from shooting combat but from mines. In the almost two months I spent with them, we had suffered almost 40% casualties with only one man shot; the rest were bouncing betties, foot poppers and a few anti-tank mines. It produced a strange psychology where shooting combat was almost a relief. Firing your weapon and being shot at seemed more personal and safer, somehow, than mines. The constant pressure of the mines combined with the push for a body count produced things like the My Lai massacre—the pressure created a kind of psychosis I had not seen in much more difficult combat situations.

On this morning I was coming down the hill toward our company position after an all-night ambush. Across a ridge line I could see another squad of my platoon weaving its way back also. Suddenly there was smoke combined with and explosion. My platoon Sgt was hit, blown off the ground by a bouncing Betty. There was plenty of screaming as a medic tried to patch him up. "My balls—do I have my balls!" In a short time the Sgt was on a Medevac chopper; we continued toward the perimeter Casualties never gave speeches or were hit clean like in the movies; it was always noise and real blood-red, followed by silence.

Once we'd got inside the perimeter the Company Commander told me the Battalion chopper was coming in and to gather my things and report to it. I was beside myself with joy—only 45 days left and now I was being taken out of the field. I grabbed my stuff and headed for the smoke that signaled the incoming chopper. When I got it, the Battalion Commander held up a paper for me to read: "YOUR NEPHEW ROBERT WAS KILLED ALONG THE DMZ; YOU HAVE BEEN REQUESTED AS BODY ESCORT; WILL YOU GO?"

Nothing was said as I climbed on the chopper. I was only a month older than Bob; we had both been in the 196th together—and now he was dead and I was going home. I had been raised more as a brother than as an uncle—and he was dead and I was going home. In less than 12 hours I was at Cam Ranh Bay sitting inside a large transport waiting to fly home. In between I had flown to Chu Lai to Division HQ and found a Staff Sgt from my old unit. He told me that Bob had been shot in the neck along the DMZ and that no one could get to him because of intense fire. He had drowned in his own blood. He had tried to help a friend who had been shot and was hit himself, so he as getting a medal along with the coffin. The Sgt said I was getting one too for a previous action while I was wit the unit. So my nephew and I would be going home together both with medals on our uniforms. Only no one could see Bob's—he had spent too much time in the jungle and his casket would not be opened.

Bob really didn't have much luck. While others were getting deferments, he was drafted. While Congressmen's sons were getting 4-F's for braces on their teeth, Bob was drafted as part of "Project 100,000." He didn't want to go but Secretary of Defense McNamara had come up with a plan to draft 100,000 men a year physically or mentally unable to pass the tests—and that left the sons of the rich free to take over daddy's business.

It took me only 24 hours to get back to the USA—the world.

Everything happened so quickly that I had not even been able to wash. The only cloths I had were some rumpled khakis I had worn on R&R six months before. Bob was left on base and I took a taxi to find a hotel, only there were no vacancies: sign after sign said "Welcome," but when I asked at the lobbies the clerk always said, "No Vacancy."

I spent more time in the taxi than I had spent clearing Vietnam. Finally I found a place with color TV, double bed, bath and shower. I had gone from an ambush patrol to a color TV in less than 24 hours, arriving with Vietnamese mud and my nephew's body. I made it out alive but the "world" had somehow changed and now Vietnam seemed much more real.

Barry Romo
VVAW National Office