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Individually Wrapped M-16's

By Ramsey Davis

My first day after arriving in Quang Tri, Vietnam, I was handed a government-issued M-16 assault rifle encrusted with mud, rust, and blood stains. I was given half a day to prepare my weapon for combat. Months later, within the DMZ along the North Vietnamese border, our company stumbled on a North Vietnamese battalion entrenched in a mountainside. After a day and night of air strikes and artillery fire, we ventured into the ravine where the headquarters were located. The NVA had removed most of their dead soldiers, leaving blood trails in the soil, but in their haste, a cache of supplies remained. Among them was a case containing dozens of factory-packed, spanking new, individually wrapped M-16's.

Years later, as I sit at our dining room table, manufactured in Vietnam, I wonder to this day what corruption enabled a transgression of this magnitude. Just one example, among many I experienced, of what an unconscionable, criminal, and total waste of resources and human lives this war represented.

Ramsey Davis served H CO 2/4, 3rd Marine Div, 10/68?12/68 DMZ and 1st CAG, III MAF 12/68?10/69 Chu Lai. He was the Albany contact for VVAW. He is a retired special education teacher living in Rhode Island.