False Glory
Dear Nat and Kaye,
I really appreciate your help on the clothes for the orphanage. It’s really sad and heartwarming at the same time to see these kids who have known nothing but war since birth.
The young Americans don’t know how well off they are. You really have to see a place like Vietnam to appreciate the luxury of living in the U.S.
The American way of life is completely incomprehensible to the Vietnamese which is one reason I’m not sure they could ever live under a government system such as ours. They are happy people but need guidance and direction, if nothing else, I hope this war provides that.
The kids at the orphanage are really no different from American children. They sing, play games, get fresh, and ask for candy and all the other things associated with kids. Every Sunday a truckload of food and men go to the orphanage and distribute these items they need to the children. The orphanage is run by Vietnamese nuns and also houses adults who are mentally retarded. I admire the sisters so much. I can’t imagine what hard work they must do to take care of all their charges.
Captain Wayne Burton,
From a letter to neighbors at home who collected clothes and other items at their church for the My Tho orphanage. March 7, 1969
Streams covered with streaks of all colors on top of brown sludge bordered both shoulders of the narrow, dirt road from Dong Tam to My Tho City in the Mekong Delta. The barely moving water served multiple purposes. The inhabitants of the straw houses built up and over the streams drew their drinking water from, washed their clothes in and sometimes defecated in the turbid water accounting for the repulsive odor, especially when the wind blew in your direction. We had departed the 9th Infantry Division basecamp in Dong Tam (Vietnamese for “brotherhood”) bound for the orphanage we had adopted in My Tho City both on the banks of the Mekong River flowing from Laos on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east. Dong Tam was built on the slimy mud the Army Corps. of Engineers dredged from the river, a huge oval, a half mile in diameter, with machine gun bunkers every thirty yards or so constructed on the built up perimeter called “the berm.” Rows of razor wire unwound in front of the bunkers with concave, light green face plates of claymore mines peeking above the ground in overlapping rows in front of that, their operating wires trailing back towards the bunkers attached to detonators in the sweaty hands of nervous, eighteen year-old draftees. Each claymore contained C-4 explosive behind serrated layers of metal that shattered into small pieces on detonation, shredding human flesh in ways you don’t want to see. If wire and claymores failed to stop a frontal assault or “probe” as it was known, as sector commander, I could call in Cobra gunships with nose-mounted Gatling guns whose fire was so intense a red line extended from the chopper nose to the ground obliterating anything in its deadly path.
We had stopped on a hot Sunday afternoon in April, 1969 for three skinny urchins with their hands out and the pinched look of extreme hunger on their faces standing in front of a pagoda-like school of white stucco trimmed in bright red. The mine sweepers had been out earlier to clear the roads of the Chinese-made explosives the Viet Cong buried every night and we dug up every morning. An unofficial truce generally held on Sundays between us and the Viet Cong. They needed to tend their crops and other domestic activities. They also shopped with the money they and their spouses earned cleaning our hooches and other chores on our base during the week. We sadly had to clean our own following a late April attack in which knee mortars landed on our ammo dump, no doubt measured by hooch girls walking off the distance from an aiming point. The blast killed twenty-two Americans and wounded about a hundred more. The powerful concussion knocked me on my kiester about a half mile from the massive crater caused by the detonation of the 500 pound bombs we stored there. Following the blast, a voice screamed in my field phone, “Gas!” We frantically searched for our protective masks as I yelled back, “The VC don’t have gas.” The exasperated voice rasped back, “It’s not theirs; it’s ours.”
We warily pulled the jeep to a stop and three boys ran up to us. We were well aware that the VC occasionally strapped satchel charges to women and kids converting them to suicide bombers. But the skinny brown chests showing through the button-less black shirts caused us to relax. Two of the ill-clad boys, wearing US Army issued floppy jungle hats, occupied the two men with me in my open jeep made deadlier by a 50 caliber machine gun mounted in the back. Clark, a newly arrived Pfc. from Iowa who barely needed to shave, cast a scared look my way which melted when I smiled back. The other soldier, Fontanato, a Boston native like me who always needed a shave, who had been in country for almost ten months and recently promoted to Specialist 5, smirked at Clark with the look of a parent bemusing a child.
We also knew that many Vietnamese kids participated in the black market of stolen and reused American equipment. They were as likely to pitch stolen watches as accept candy. I noticed all three were wearing flip-flops made with soles cut from tires stolen from American vehicles. That plus a thriving jewelry market had developed with ear rings and other items sculpted from brass purloined from couplers in our communications lines. Two of the boys were diminutive but due to their diet, so are most Vietnamese, causing age estimations to be problematic. I noticed the third boy, a little taller at about 4’ 6”, angling toward the back of the vehicle eyeing my recently acquired Yashika camera I had carelessly slung over the barrel of the .50 cal. The prized device had consumed $200, almost all my net pay after sending my wife’s allotment home. Risking our lives to kill for our flag paid less than that made by a good mechanic. Also, the film in the camera contained undeveloped images I treasured from my previous trip to the orphanage, a facility subsisting on the food and clothing we provided. The C-rations we carried fed their bodies but nourished our souls even more. No doubt the camera made a tempting target as the shiny black leather case and strap showed no wear and tear, and still had that fresh leather smell when I had slung it over my shoulder leaving my hooch earlier, my battered, fully-loaded M-16 hanging from my other one.
With hands faster than a blackjack dealer, the kid snagged the strap and took off with the camera towards the school. It would net him a bundle in the back room of one of the hundreds of small shops in My Tho. Since my bellowed warning failed to stop his sprint away, I hoped the lethal, loud click of the bolt driving home a round in my large .45 I had drawn from its holster would do the trick. Flashing through my head was the thought that shooting him dead, would not only get my camera back but also get me points for an enemy kill. Under Operation Speedy Express, all Vietnamese were considered killable enemies until proven otherwise.
Days before during a command staff briefing, our Commanding General, Julian J. Ewell, blew up at the cowering staff officers sitting behind him when the weekly killing scorecard contained on an acetate slide was projected on the screen. We met in the air conditioned, well-fortified underground bunker where Ewell spent most of his time during the week before flying to Hawaii every other weekend to be with his wife. The 9th Infantry body count of dead enemy had fallen behind that of the 101st Airborne and Big Red One. He suggested we count the arms and legs separately next time the division obliterated a suspected enemy village and killed its inhabitants. The report of the child’s death would add to the body count total for next week and please “The Butcher of the Delta,” a nickname given him inside the military for his fixation on this dubious metric. No doubt the estimated 5,000 – 7,000 non-combatant men, women and children killed during Operation Speedy Express would have agreed with that nickname had they not perished in what one investigator termed “a My Lai a month.”
As I stood transfixed, aware my armpits were soaking as much from tension as the infernal heat, my louder, violent self debated my wimpy soft side. I aimed as trained, at the head for a kill shot, the butt of the pistol firmly planted in my extended left hand, my right hand slowly squeezing the trigger while my eye aligned the front and back sites with the unkempt, dirt-clotted hair on the back of the thief’s head. That voice of reason, perhaps conscience grew louder. Something snapped in my head and a voice asked forcefully, “What the Hell are you doing? It’s only a camera.”
I glanced up at the large clock at the end of the field ticking off the last minutes off my college football career that chilly October day in the fall of 1965 four years earlier. The score on the board next to the clock did not matter. Several pads protecting my right arm did not protect me from the severe pain in my right arm badly injured four games ago. My misaimed forearm shiver had caught the facemask of the brute charging me rupturing veins and capillaries above my right elbow turning my arm into a giant purple sausage. But I was playing for the undermanned Bowdoin team thinking the pain was worth the glory. My coach had switched me to right end from the left side so I could hit with my left arm while the right hung limply at my side sending shards of pain through me when it was moved at all. The stands that had never been full were emptying quickly, as the half-drunks headed to the fraternity houses, bored with our sacrifices on the gridiron. The glory of old was a thing of the past it seemed. In high school and earlier at Bowdoin I had tasted the nectar of athletic success, the misty eyed adoration of our fans for winning the state championship against all odds addicting me to acclaim. Much like heroin addicts getting their first fix, I wanted more. But my football career was fading fast and would end in 12:22. I needed a new drug.
The thrill of being saluted and called “sir” as the commander-for-the-day of the ROTC battalion during drill three days prior had provided a welcome rush, not like a horse hit, but enough to give me a pleasant sensation. Hope raised its blemished head.