THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY DURING THE VIETNAM WAR
THE GOOD: The empathy for another man’s suffering defines the experience. Larry Burrow’s famous wartime Pulitzer prize winning battlefield photo, “Reaching Out” in 1966 illustrated the compassion for one’s comrade. The backstory is compelling and I recently wrote a blog on this touching story.
Other positive aspects of the Vietnam war were featured in two of my other blogs: Dustoffs and Bird Dogs. If you missed them, I encourage you to read them.
In my recently published historical narrative, RECALL, I try to capture the essence of compassion, empathy, and courage in a chapter that I will excerpt a few paragraphs from so you may have some idea what a wartime situation is like.
The Scene: This scene takes place at Tan Son Nhut airbase, north of Saigon. A surprise VC mortar attack wounds a pilot and a flight surgeon runs to his aid disregarding his own safety. He’s seriously injured in the midst of the attack.
“My God! The doc’s hit!” exclaimed Colonel Mason.
He and others ran out to rescue the two injured men, ignoring the danger of incoming mortars. They pulled Roe and the wounded pilot into the bunker just in time, as a fifth mortar exploded nearby on the tarmac.
Colonel Mason couldn’t get Roe to respond. The flight surgeon lay unconscious, flat out on the revetment floor, bleeding from a big gash on his forehead and scalp. Fresh blood oozed through his hair already caked with matted, coagulated blood. The colonel compressed the wound firmly with a towel, took off his shirt and put it under Roe’s head for support. Sweat streamed down his brow, stinging his eyes. He could feel his heart about to leap out of his chest. He was a flyer, not a medic. He couldn’t bear the thought of his good pal dying. Though not a religious man, he muttered a prayer for Roe’s survival, proving the adage there are no atheists in a foxhole.
“Someone call an ambulance, a medic!” He ducked as a rocket explosion shook the bunker with its concussion. His stress mounted. “Don’t want to lose these two guys. We need help.”
Several of the air crews carried small pocket flashlights that barely illuminated the interior while several others searched their flight bags for a field phone to call for help.
Similar poignant wartime scenes like this played out in bunkers, rice paddies, and jungle patrols daily all over Vietnam. No matter how often you witness trauma, the drama still stuns you. Nothing can prepare you to face life or death in real- time circumstances. It hardens you to the stark reality of war. You don’t take time to consider dying, you exist as if in abstract, detached, in the moment, as if looking in on the scene disjoined from your participation. Like an out of body experience, you wonder if this really could be happening, and find it strange your concern is focused on the wounded in your presence, not your own mortality. Time slows down, nothing else matters but the present. Empathy for another man’s suffering defines the experience.
That was the nature of a true warrior. The measure of a man facing adversity. That human characteristic distinguished most of the fighting men and women in Vietnam enmeshed in an incomprehensible war. Strong bonds form in wartime, making it difficult to compartmentalize episodes like this. A life- threatening experience is not something easily boxed away in the attic never to be revisited. The memory will come back to haunt you. Men will risk their lives to rescue another in peril. Wounded have priority, no one is ever left behind. Even those who perished in battle are retrieved at personal hazard, without regard to the risk.
The fighting men lived by that eternal American mantra: There are no noble wars, only noble warriors who care about their fellow man, their comrades.
This excerpt is a capsule of the goodness in mankind – The bond of comrades in arms. To risk one’s life for another is the supreme sacrifice. There’s a word and medal for that- “Bravery”.
THE BAD: In 1972 the South Vietnamese Airforce mistakenly dropped napalm on a village. Nick Ut captured the photo of a nine- year old running naked from the fire. She’d shed her burning clothes. “The Napalm Girl” won Ut a Pulitzer.
Again, the backstory is important. Please read it. Collateral damage has bad consequences. However, there was some positive news in the outcome. Ut and American soldiers got her cared for at an American field hospital and she recovered from her severe burns. While she still has severe scarring, she was able to go on and live a positive life that has inspired countless people.
THE UGLY: Collateral damage is often confused with atrocity. The difference is a matter of intent. Only two Vietnam war atrocities were prosecuted. The most infamous, the “My Lai Massacre” occurred during the TET offensive in 1968. I’ve read the accounts. They are available on Google.
I still find them so repulsive fifty years later that I will not reproduce them here. The horror, the nasty, heartless killing defines ugly and the ultimate crime of war- the inhumane killing of defend less civilians.
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