A grisly grim grind of a war

A post-Vietnam Marine’s perspective of being an American boy with the Vietnam War as a backdrop

By W. Thomas Smith Jr.

THE VIETNAM WAR – a hard, grisly, grim grind of a war – ended exactly 50-years-ago this month. I was too young of course to have served during the war. I turned 16-years-old the very day Saigon fell to the Communists on April 30, 1975, the same year draft-registration ended (the draft itself had ended 22 months earlier). But I clearly remember conversations years earlier with several of my buddies and we all believed – many of us feared – we would one day have to fight the dreaded NVA and Viet Cong. We had all heard of “draft dodgers” fleeing to Canada: We would NEVER DO THAT. So we accepted that we would one day likely have to go to Vietnam.

Growing up. my friends and I loved war movies and TV shows like ‘The Rat Patrol.’ We played “army” around the neighborhood. All our dads and uncles were military veterans – particularly here in the deep South – and we had older male cousins, at least I did, who had been drafted for military service. The Vietnam War was usually the lead story on the nightly TV news broadcasts and the war was headlining the front pages of all the daily papers.

None of this escaped any of us, so we actually thought and talked quite a bit about Vietnam: For me this began in earnest at around the age of 10, actually younger. I even remember discussing it when I was about eight-years-old and asking my dad if I would one day go to Vietnam. I was both afraid and excited, and Dad reassured me that if and when the time came, I would do what I was supposed to do, but “That’s too far off for you to even think about right now,” he would say.

The last conversation I remember about all of this was when I was 14-years-old and sitting on the steps outside of the gym at A.C. Flora High School in Columbia and discussing Vietnam with several of my buddies.

A few guys said they would definitely “split” for Canada before being drafted. I remember feeling ashamed of – and disappointed in – them. What would their parents think? What about their siblings and extended family? What about all the girls in high school we knew? What would they think?

Yes, I had legitimate fears too. I was only a kid. But being scared was far better than the abject shame of cowardice and betraying one’s country.

I clearly remember proudly proclaiming on those very steps at A.C. Flora, “I will always fight for my country,” and I meant every word, privately hiding my uneasiness all the same. And I will forever be proud of that 14-year-old Tom and his schoolyard stand on the issue, even though I said it with a bit of point-of-no-return trepidation.

Naturally some of the older boys declared their opposition to the war and the so-called politics behind it, but I knew they didn’t fully grasp the politics of any of it, because I certainly didn’t. I believed I knew the secret primal reasoning behind their opposition: THEY WERE SIMPLY AFRAID TO FIGHT. Period.

That to me was shameful. After all, it was the famous U.S. Naval hero and pirate-fighting Commodore Stephen Decatur who said: “My country right or wrong. In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, but my country right or wrong.” …or something to that effect.

Years earlier in elementary school, probably the 3rd grade (around 1967 or 1968, which was during the height of the fighting) several of us boys were talking about Vietnam and how we would one day – or so we believed – have to fight. A girl named Tonya overheard us and with a giggle [literally mocking us] said: “I’m sure glad I’m not a boy.” Everybody laughed, and it was at that very moment I felt an intense sense of pride in being a boy with my innate future responsibility as a man. I’ll never forget that feeling.

Of course not every draft-aged male received the proverbial tap-on-the-shoulder during the Vietnam War. Not every man who had his number called, actually served. Even fewer actually fought. There were indeed legitimate reasons for not serving, and I frankly know many of those boys and men who were of age then but who today are “the bravest of the brave” – proven in later combat actions around the world as soldiers and military contractors, as Christian missionaries in many of the world’s most dangerous destinations, in law enforcement (and make no mistake, modern law enforcement is sometimes combat action) – and for myriad other reasons like being enrolled in college ROTC or the service academies yet the war ended before they had a chance to actually enter the military, train, and deploy.

The late great Pat Conroy once wrote: “No Southern man is complete without a tenure under military rule.”

And he once honestly and regretfully told me during an interview for the FLORIDA TIMES-UNION: “I knew what I was supposed to do, and I didn’t do it.”

“What were you supposed to do?” I asked.

“I was supposed to lead a Marine rifle company in Vietnam,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

A few years after end of the Vietnam War, I became a U.S. Marine and I quickly discovered that many of my staff NCOs and officers had fought in Vietnam. A handful of the much older Marine leaders had even fought in Korea.

I personally developed a deep longing for war, specifically direct-action combat, as twisted as that sounds, but war was (is) the raison d’être for Marines, especially Marine Infantry, which I was. Years later, my wish came true when I experienced war on an intimate level as a war correspondent and a military analyst embedded with U.S. Marine Infantry, U.S. Army cavalry, British contract security forces (former special operators), Croatian Army forces, and Israeli paratroopers. War on the ground is not at all a pleasant experience, but yes, it can be exhilarating, wholly enlightening, and always unforgettable. But we’ll save all that for another story.

Acclaimed actor, director, and decorated Captain of Marines Dale Dye described his own combat experiences [during the Vietnam War] as “enlightening and invaluable.”

Getting back to my boyhood with Vietnam raging in the far-distant background but always ever-present: I previously mentioned talking with Dad about Vietnam when I was about eight-years-old (that would’ve been 1967) and his reassuring words about me one day being a man and doing the right thing, but that I was too young to consider such things at my age then.

Two years earlier when I was about six (that would’ve been 1965), I remember watching and listening to CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite on our black-and-white TV set as he shared with American viewers the plight of U.S. forces who were “fighting Communist guerillas.”

Yes, I literally thought they were fighting “gorillas” trained to handle weapons. Now THAT was terrifying.

 

– W. Thomas Smith Jr. is a formerly deployed U.S. Marine infantry leader and a New York Times bestselling editor. Visit him online at http://uswriter.com.