University of Virginia Library

Deadly End Of American Innocence

By VERNON WILSON

—Ed.)

Here in Northern Military
Region I, where the incessant
rains will last through
February, elements of the
101st Airborne division
everyday cut their way through
the triple-canopy jungle and
maneuver up and down the
cratered hills that cover this
area like a profusion of sores.
Although no one hears much
about it any more, there is still
a war going on in Vietnam.

Despite their so-called
defensive posture, American
infantrymen continue to patrol
the jungles and rice paddies of
this land. Lonely and afraid,
the few thousand young
Americans who remain in the
highlands of South Vietnam's
northernmost sector spend
their time fighting the cold, the
wet and the bogs. Unable to
control their lives in even the
simplest way, they rail against
the safe men who sent them
here. The bitter remnants of
the United States Army in
Vietnam know full well that
they are the victims of a few
men's misplaced pride, pawns
in a game that was lost before
it ever began.

In my unit, we spend about
half our days in the field; going
on a mission in the hills always
starts at the base with the
helicopters swooping down to
suck us up into their armored
bellies for the short ride into
the jungle. On a stone grey day
not half a month ago we once
again climbed into the
choppers and they carried us
off. From the sky, the string of
dark green peaks below had an
undulating, safe look, like slow
waves on the sea. Even the
peculiar brown scars left by the
bombs Indochina now knows
so well seemed quite natural
and in place, no stranger than
the billboards along an
American highway.

False View

Yet as we disembarked
from the helicopters, we all
knew once again that there is
something false about the view
from above. As always, the
speed and height of the
choppers had masked the
steepness of the hills and the
thickness of the jungle.

In those hills where the
leeches wait patiently to
burrow into human flesh, the
rain began and there was
nothing we could do except
curse silently and get wet. For
the rest of the day it continued
filtering down through the
trees and bamboo thickets
before finally soaking us to the
skin.

We moved slowly, not so
much to mute the sounds of
our footsteps, but rather to
avoid being toppled over by
the wet vines that clung to the
ground like snakes. Each step
became a special undertaking, a
carefully planned assault on all
those natural forces that
worked against us. It was up
again, down again, fall, sprawl,
climb, crawl the whole of our
day. But that night when we
pitched our soggy tents, we
had moved perhaps two
kilometers (1.2 miles) from the
place the helicopters had
deposited us that morning.

Guard Duty

Three or four hours later, I
slid out into the mud to begin
my nightly seventy-five
minutes of guard duty. The
soldier I had come to relieve,
instead of moving back to the
hollow, wet darkness of his
tent, stayed where he was.
There is something about pain
that wants comfort and this
man, a sallow, unsure
Californian had decided to talk
with me. As he spoke about his
mother and his girlfriend and
his school and all his happier
memories, the sadness in his
eyes seemed to melt smoothly
away.

But when suddenly he
remembered where he was, felt
the rain and cold, slapped at
the insects circling his head, he
once again sensed the full
weight of his oppression. The
futility, confusion, and
bitterness of the war poured
out of him.

Why, he demanded? Why
me? What for? Who's
responsible? It was the same
plaintive song that we all sing
in Vietnam. For, quite literally,
almost no one here believes in
the war anymore, or
understands what we are doing
here or why we first came. The
only thing my friend felt sure
about was that the men who
sent us here will never feel the
Vietnamese rain or fight the
jungle bogs.

Real Meaning

For the unhappy few left in
the Asian mud, the real
meaning of Vietnam goes
beyond even this
understanding of their
exploitation. It is something
more fundamental and more
personal than that. That night,
as I looked across the circle of
tents that held my friends like
tombs, I remembered the story
one of them had told me, a
young tousle-haired blond guy
from the Oklahoma dust bowl.

He was on a patrol no
different from this one, he
said, when as if by accident
they ran into ten or twelve
guerrillas. Instantly the guns
began their obscene coughing,
hissing, and spitting. He found
himself suddenly alone,
confronted by two other
human beings, "the enemy." In
a magic second-he didn't
know why-all the fear and
loathing that Americans are
conditioned to feel towards
Asians began to crack and split,
to rush away.

Pulled Trigger

Yet where his feelings left
off, instinct and training made
one last stand and he pulled
the trigger of his weapon. As
they both slumped over,
horribly mutilated, the young
man who had killed them
wept, and he wept again when
he told me the story.

He wept because not just
those killings, but Vietnam had
banished forever the ease of his
understandings. And there on
that rain soaked night, as I
gazed at the other young
Americans sleeping all around
me, I realized why so few of
them could laugh or smile or
glory in the beginning of a new
day.

For there is a special truth
in Vietnam as horrible as the
last death everyone wants to
avoid. It is the final end of
American innocence and it
comes to a soldier, alone, with
tears.