the two months i was there by William Flanders (love letters to the dead txt) 📖

I tried to will myself over bored because I was thinking about the war and the shaking boat brought back the bombs and the fire fights back to life. So I was trying to jump in the water for cover I wanted to get off the boat but at the same time I do not know how to swim at all so I could not jump I had to face my fear and jump or I had to stay up on bored and keep thinking about the war but both ways I will be in pain …
This is why I am scared of the water because when I was a little kid about 7-8 years old my friends were dunking me in the deep end of the pool so now I only go in the water where I can see the bottom before I go into the water if I can’t see the bottom then I think I will drown in the water it was a bad prank that left me scared for life.
There is a lot of fire fight in Vietnam and I had like three friends that died that I can remember and I had this one dudes arm get blown off and it landed right beside me I didn’t know it until the bombs stop dropping when all of it stop all you heard was a screaming grown man just screaming and you could hear people calling for the medics there was these two men they were brothers and they were fighting side by side one of them started screaming medic medic hurry medic I need a medic and by the time the medic got there it was too late and when the medic said that the brother rolled up in a ball started crying for his mom and said he wanted to go home.
All of that was on the first night I was there get ready to read a little bit more because I am going to tell you about the whole 2 months I was there before I got out with an injury. Ok after the first day I was their and all that happened we pushed on. We got ambushed in the corn fields and were got ambushed crossing the creeks. The worst way to get ambushed if they are on high ground and we can’t get to the injured and no choppers can land. Usually we had to call in an air strike to get out of their or we had to wait it out.
At night was even worse because we did not see the enemy the only way we found out they were there if we heard them talking and we heard them walking or if they saw us and started shooting. We were sleeping well some of us were sleeping we would take turns watching for them in the jungle. At night it was cold it smelled like old nasty feet because of all of the rotting corpses. Hearing the wolves howl at night eating the dead, rotting corpses made me sick. I wanted to throw up, but I could not because that is a sign of weakness. Other then the nasty smell and the wolves the night was calm. The platoon leader said “we are going to base camp in the morning”. I was relieved. I was waiting for the hot shower and I wanted to get out the hot zone.
At base I took a hot shower, which was on the east side of the camp. It was so hot my skin turned bright red. The steam was rolling out the shower. After my hot shower I got a hot meal. I had some kind of meat I don’t know what it was. It looked like chicken, cow, and pig put together. The food was on a cold metal plate. I did not care because I was so hungry. I went to my cot. The cot was not soft, but it was better than being on a hard, muddy ground. I had me a long nice nap; the nap was awesome. I actually slept without wondering “am I going to wake up if I go to bed”?
I have been at camp for 1 month and 10 days. I was getting use to the camp, but then the platoon leader said we were moving out. I said “out were we moving to”. He said “we are going in to reinforce some platoons”. Ok so now im going back in to the smelly jungle that smells like feet. We started heading towards the fire fights. Platoon leader “LOAD YOUR WEAPONS MEN”. We loaded our weapons and we past threw the first ambush and then the second and then the third.
It is the fourth ambush that we had trouble at because they had a lot more men then us. They had like 30 to 50 more men. They had some bombs and my platoon got hit by some, and my platoon started screaming for the medics. One of my best friends got hit I wanted to stay with him and help him out. My duty was to push on through the hot zone. I had to help out the other men that were stuck or they will end up like him or worse.
We finally reached the men bout half of the men are injured. We had to sit there and wait for bout an hour for the choppers. While we were waiting we were getting contact on the east and north side of us. They are trying to move in and take us down. They had some bombs to they started to drop. I was like is this happening again I took a radio and called in an air strike they said that the could not do it.
So he called for the attack choppers, they said eliminate some targets and then they could bring in the attack choppers. So I told the men that and we started killing them like flies. The attack choppers came in and eliminated all of the targets. You could see all of the dead men’s insides. We had to camp there for tonight, I did not like that ideal at all.
The wolves were howling all night and eating the dead corpse. We got ambushed in the middle of the night. I looked behind me and they were screaming for a medic for me. I got hit, it was pretty bad. I had like a big chunk taken from my leg and from my back it was so bad I did not feel it they said I was in shock. They called for a chopper and took me to the medic center at base which was in the middle of the camp.
I was in the medic center for the rest of the time I was in Vietnam. That is what I think of every time some one tells a story or like the boat rocking back and forth. I will always have those bad images in my head for the rest of my life.

TO BE CONTINUED......

Publication Date: 10-01-2011

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