Comrades

Every war has its own lexicon. Notice, if you will, the term “collateral damage,” used during the bombing of Iraq or Serbia. It means something else got blown to hell. During the Vietnam slaughter, “secondary explosions” meant something else went up whether, military or civilian, and so it goes with different eras, different wars. This country has probably fought more wars in the past hundred years than any nation in history during a comparable period. We’ve been in Cuba, Nicaragua several times, Santa Domingo, and sent an army under “Black Jack” Pershing into Mexico. American troops fought Bolsheviks on Russian soil after the armistice in World War 1, check it out. Then there was Grenada, Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia, Somalia, Korea, World War II, Desert Storm and the quasi war in Afghanistan, anon. That comes to about a war every decade or so.

Anyway, every war has its own vocabulary and it is, amongst the ground troops themselves, very earthy and to the point. In Vietnam, combat was “shit,” heavy combat, “deep shit” and really heavy fighting, “a shit sandwich.” We we’re about a hundred miles North of Saigon and the fighting for one battalion was a shit sandwich indeed. When we got there a company commander was telling the battalion adjutant not to send them any more ammo because the Viet Cong were laying in accurate mortar fire on any “bird” which ventured into the combat zone not a thousand yards from battalion headquarters. The battalion colonel neither needed nor wanted an NBC TV crew recording the bloodshed for posterity.

I borrowed a pair of field glasses and could actually see the mortar fire around a dense jungle area in which our side was taking heavy punishment. I heard the company commander also request another radio since the batteries on the one he was using were losing power and the set itself was malfunctioning. The major looked around and a young, five foot six inch, red-headed corporal came forward and said he would take the radio in on the next bird.

It was a Hobson’s choice for the colonel: send in a bird and his company got whacked, don’t send one and lose contact with his troops. He didn’t have reinforcements at hand and had called for help.. He looked at the corporal and told him to get moving.

We saw the helicopter take off and land minutes later and the mortars sought it out. Through the glasses I could see the red-haired, freckled-face corporal enveloped in shrapnel as a round exploded within six feet of him. The captain wouldn’t get his radio after all.

Huong Nghia, my cameraman and mentor, looked at me and I spoke to the Colonel telling him we wanted to cover the courageous fight his troops were putting up. He looked at me and told me in a few pithy words that it was suicide and he wouldn’t permit it. Nghia looked at me and said, “Mr. Tom, you no go, but I can go with the “Filmo,” the sturdy, hand wound, 16 millimeter camera we used for silent shooting.

It was one of those moments when we read each other very well. The fighting was the stuff New York drooled over, men being hit, bombs bursting, screaming, all the terrible scenes that made for powerful TV. I knew that this would be very powerful stuff indeed, but I told Nghia “No,” I wasn’t going to risk his life if I couldn’t share the danger with him. He persisted and I refused again as the colonel looked at me with something approaching disgust. I think he considered us carrion feeders.

There was still the problem of the radio and its delivery. A young, black soldier, comrade to the “grunt” who had just been killed, volunteered to take one in. He was incredibly brave. The colonel hesitated for a second, then nodded. The young soldier strapped on a radio and followed his dead partner into the killing field. He had about four minutes of life left, then he too was slaughtered as he ran from the chopper. It was a charnel house.

The battle lasted another hour and we filmed what we could of a helicopter assault on the Viet Cong positions They brought the wounded and the dead back and one of the first bodies was that of the young, freckled-face, red-haired corporal. He had been hacked to pieces by shrapnel. Within a minute his young, handsome, dark skinned partner was unloaded and the poncho slipped from his face and he seemed in total repose. Then the poncho slid further and we realized he didn’t have a stomach.

They laid them side by side and we all looked and nobody said a word.

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