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Recollections: "You Thought You Were So Civilized"

By Pat Finnegan

This story happened in Binh Dinh Province while I was an Assistant Gunner of the 1st Squad gun team, 3rd platoon, 1/503rd Airborne Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade.

We usually worked in platoon-size, but for some reason were in company-size—maybe were a blocking force of the sweeping force; I don't remember, if I ever knew. We always humped our food, so ti could have been 3 or 4 days of "C's" plus the rest of it. For me, it was 15-20 magazines for the '16, 150-200 loose rounds for the gun, 3-4 frags, 2 smokes, 2 trip-flares, maybe a pop-up flare, of a Claymore, poncho and liner, and personal gear. I figure it weighted 70-80 pounds with the food.

They told us we were humping about 7 klicks to this village where the gunships had chased or trapped an NVA battalion. So we put our rucks on and headed out. Somewhere along the way, after a couple of hours, we were coming out of the foothills and heading toward the villages near the ocean—maybe it was a little better than halfway.

They stopped us and told us to chow. So we chow and we're still sitting there. Then one of them asked for a smoke to bring in a ship; I volunteered mine figuring it was one less thing to hump. I went out to this cleaning and popped the smoke—it might have been purple. While this is happening the platoon RTO yells over that it's the Battalion Sergeant Major with some ice cream. I take a closer look and can just about make out the bald-headed prick sitting there with the 5 gallson of ice cream between his legs. Rumor had it that this was how he got his Air Medals. Since we were on an operation he would count this run as a combat assault or log the time, whichever got him the medal quicker. I don't remember if it was 15 or 25 combat assaults we needed to get the medal; I do remember that a lot of grunts never go them no matter how many combat assaults they had. The ice cream must have been beaucoup cold: the Sgt Maj's balls were so froze up that you couldn't get him more than 20 feet away from that ship for a million dollars. We killed the ice cream quick—must have been 110 people on that 5 gallons. We got our shit back on and headed for the big battle that was held up for St Maj's ice-cream medal.

We break out of the bush into the first fields of paddies and can see the gunships tearing the village up miles away. We start running, or whatever you call it with all that garbage on your back, across the dikes, then across the road. Now the village is to our left set back about 4 paddies, with 4 more paddies to its right so that the paddies formed a backward "L" around the village. Anyway, to our right, not more than 33 yards, is a fair-sized ARVN camp with permanent guns, wire—the whole show.

We all start to wonder what the story is. The lifers put the whole company on line behind the paddy dikes between the ARVN camp and the village, facing the village. What they want us to do is charge the village across the 4 fields of paddies. Now I say to myself, "they got to be kidding" and I'm starting to think I ain't going to do this. If my counterpart in the NVA battalion and one other gun team is set up fairly well, all they have to do is wait until we are in the middle of the 2nd or 3rd paddy and then open up. They would take out at least 15 with the first burst and if they got a good angle, another 20 before we could get to the cover of the dike.

You could tell from the way we were slow getting on line that most everyone was thinking the same. Doc and I looked at each other conspiratorially, but then in mute testimony to the hold they had on us, we got on line like all the other fools, and when they said, " Move out," we moved out fully expecting to be opened up on within the next minute. Eleven years later I sit stunned at the things they had us do.

It was a dud. There wasn't anything in that village. Word came back that the first platoon ran into a little as we filed through the village. Now I can imagine the lead platoon was told that the rear of the line ran into something.

Anyway, the heart of the story is something that happened going into the village and was one of the many incidents that changed my view of the war. As we were going through, a little in front of us there was a woman yelling and screaming at us as we passed by. The Army spent all its time teaching me how to kill the Vietnamese rather than talk to them, so I don't know what she was saying. It didn't matter; anyone could tell it wasn't "viva American" or "Viva El Liberator."

And I started thinking to myself, "What the fuck is she yelling at me for? I come 10,000 miles, march in the rain, mud, monsoon, tropical sun, through mountains, rivers, hip-deep rice paddy slime, tripping over vines, falling off dikes, being bitten to death by uncounted species of bugs carrying unknown sicknesses, got diarrhea, always tired, fucked with by the lifers, living on crap packed 15 years ago that I wouldn't give a dog I hated, getting shot at, ambushed, bobby-trapped, hand-grenaded, friends getting fucked up to save her sorry fucking ass and she's going to stand there and spit and cuss at me!"

Then a voice in the back of my head started to talk, softly then because there was still a lot of misguided patriotism in the way making it hard for any sensible thoughts to linger for long. Still, something back there was saying, "Hey, man, this woman don't care about how noble you are for coming all this way and being here to save her from her neighbor; all she knows is that you or someone just like you set her house on fire. You may call it a hootch and laugh because it ain't got a door, but it's her house and you just torched it for whatever noble reasons. That is why this woman is cursing you and all your ancestors, because you, not her evil neighbor zipped her home and destroyed all the tings valuable in her life. As far as the lack of a door goes, she is so far ahead of you you'll probably never know. She has a society where she doesn't need a door, forget about a lock ( since where are you going to put a lock if you ain't got a door). That's right, asshole! You though you were so civilized, going to do so much for these poor ignorant savages. Maybe in a thousand years if your society lasts last long, you'll have evolved to where you can live without the fear that causes people to put locks on their doors and then, after another thousand years you'll get to where you can take the door off. Think about that for awhile, fool!"

I did think about it and a few weeks later told them I wasn't doing it anymore. I didn't care what they did, but I wasn't going out there to burn people's houses down to save them from communism—it didn't make any sense!

Pat Finnegan
Waterford, NY