Reading the American Past: Printed Page 284

DOCUMENT 29–4

An American Soldier in Vietnam

Hundreds of thousands of Americans served in uniform in Vietnam. Their experiences varied enormously, depending on when and where they served and what they were assigned to do. Arthur E. Woodley Jr., who served as a special forces ranger in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, recalled in an interview more than a decade later how the war changed him. Woodley's interview, excerpted here, reveals experiences confronted by many young Americans in combat in Vietnam.

Arthur E. Woodley Jr.

Oral History of a Special Forces Ranger, ca. 1980

I went to Vietnam as a basic naïve young man of eighteen. Before I reached my nineteenth birthday, I was a animal. ...

It began on my fourteenth day in country. The first time I was ever in a combat situation at all. ...

I was a cherry boy. Most cherry boys went on point. ... I adapted so well to bein' a point man that that became my permanent position after this first mission.

We was in very thick elephant grass. We had sat down for a ten-minute break. And we heard the Vietn'ese talking, coming through the elephant grass. So we all sat ready for bein' attacked.

I heard this individual walking. He came through the elephant grass, and I let loose on my M-16 and hit him directly in his face. Sixteen rounds. The whole clip. And his face disappeared. From the chin up. Nothing left. And his body stood there for 'proximately somewhere around ten, fifteen seconds. And it shivers. And it scared me beyond anyone's imagination.

Then it was chaos from then on. Shooting all over. We had a approximate body count of five VC. Then we broke camp and head for safer ground.

After thinkin' about that guy with no face, I broke into a cold sweat. I knew it could've been me that was in his place instead of me in my place. But it changed me. Back home I had to defend myself in the streets, with my fist, with bottles, or whatever. But you don't go around shooting people. As physical as I had been as a teenager, there were never life-threatening situations. I had never experienced anything quite as horrible as seeing a human being with his face blown apart. I cried. I cried because I killed somebody.

You had to fight to survive where I grew up. Lower east Baltimore. ... It was very difficult for us to go from one neighborhood to another without trying to prove your manhood.

It was a mixed-up neighborhood of Puerto Ricans, Indians, Italians, and blacks. Being that I'm light-skinned, curly hair, I wasn't readily accepted in the black community. I was more accepted by Puerto Ricans and some rednecks. They didn't ask what my race classification was. I went with them to white movies, white restaurants, and so forth. But after I got older, I came to the realization that I was what I am and came to deal with my black peers. ...

Being from a hard-core neighborhood, I decided I was gonna volunteer for the toughest combat training they had. I went to jump school, Ranger school, and Special Forces training. I figured I was just what my country needed. A black patriot who could do any physical job they could come up with. Six feet, one hundred and ninety pounds, and healthy. ...

We got to Cam Ranh in November 1968. And I got the biggest surprise of my life. There was water surfing. There was big cars being driven. There was women with fashionable clothes and men with suits on. It was not like being in a war zone. I said, Hey, what's this? Better than being home.

When I got there, my basic job was combat infantryman, paratrooper, 5th Special Forces Group. ... We were like a unit of misfits who were sort of throwed together and made into a strike combat unit. We would go out and capture prisoners, destroy a certain village, or kill a certain party because it was necessary for the war effort.

I didn't ask no questions about the war. I thought communism was spreading, and as an American citizen, it was my part to do as much as I could to defeat the Communist from coming here. Whatever America states is correct was the tradition that I was brought up in. And I, through the only way I could possibly make it out of the ghetto, was to be the best soldier I possibly could. ...

Then came the second week of February of '69.

This was like three days after we had a helicopter go down in some very heavy foliage where they couldn't find no survivors from the air. ... We were directed to find the wreckage, report back. They see if we can find any enemy movement and find any prisoners. ...

The helicopter, it was stripped. All the weaponry was gone. There was no bodies. It looked like the helicopter had been shot out of the air. It had numerous bullet holes in it. ...

We recon this area, and we came across this fella, a white guy, who was staked to the ground. His arms and legs tied down to stakes. And he had a leather band around his neck that's staked in the ground so he couldn't move his head to the left or right.

He had numerous scars on his face where he might have been beaten and mutilated. And he had been peeled from his upper part of chest to down to his waist. Skinned. Like they slit your skin with a knife. And they take a pair of pliers or a instrument similar, and they just peel the skin off your body and expose it to the elements. ...

The man was within a couple of hours of dying on his own.

And we didn't know what to do, because we couldn't move him. There was no means. We had no stretcher. There was only six of us. And we went out with the basic idea that it was no survivors. We was even afraid to unstake him from the stakes, because the maggots and flies were eating at the exposed flesh so much. ...

It was a heavy shock on all of us to find that guy staked out still alive. ...

And he start to cryin', beggin' to die.

He said, “I can't go back like this. I can't live like this. I'm dying. You can't leave me here like this dying.”

It was a situation where it had to be remove him from his bondage or remove him from his suffering. Movin' him from this bondage was unfeasible. It would have put him in more pain than he had ever endured. There wasn't even no use talkin' 'bout tryin' and takin' him back, because there was nothing left of him. It was that or kill the brother, and I use the term “brother” because in a war circumstance, we all brothers.

The man pleaded not only to myself but to other members of my team to end his suffering. He made the plea for about half an hour, because we couldn't decide what to do. ...

It took me somewhere close to 20 minutes to get my mind together. Not because I was squeamish about killing someone, because I had at that time numerous body counts. Killing someone wasn't the issue. It was killing another American citizen, another GI.

I tried my best not to.

I tried to find a thousand and one reasons why I shouldn't do this. ...

I put myself in his situation. In his place. I had to be as strong as he was, because he was askin' me to kill him, to wipe out his life. He had to be a hell of a man to do that. I don't think I would be a hell of a man enough to be able to do that. I said to myself, I couldn't show him my weakness, because he was showin' me his strength.

The only thing that I could see that had to be done is that the man's sufferin' had to be ended.

I put my M-16 next to his head. Next to his temple.

I said, “You sure you want me to do this?”

He said, “Man, kill me. Thank you.”

I stopped thinking. I just pulled the trigger. I cancelled his suffering.

When the team came back, we talked nothing about it.

We buried him. We buried him. Very deep.

Then I cried. ...

Now it begins to seem like on every mission we come across dead American bodies, black and white. I'm seeing atrocities that's been done on them. Markings have been cut on them. Some has been castrated, with their penises sewed up in their mouth with bamboo.

I couldn't isolate myself from all this. I had gotten to the conclusion today or tomorrow I'll be dead. So it wasn't anything I couldn't do or wouldn't do. ...

... [T]he Vietn'ese, they called me Montagnard, because I would dress like a Montagnard. I wouldn't wear conventional camouflage fatigues in the field. I wore a dark-green loincloth, a dark-green bandana to blend in with the foliage, and a little camouflage paint on my face. And Ho Chi Minh sandals. And my grenades and ammunition. That's the way I went to the field.

I dressed like that specifically as the point man, because if the enemy saw anyone first, they saw myself. They would just figure I was just another jungle guy that was walking around in the woods. And I would catch 'em off guard.

When we first started going into the fields, I would not wear a finger, ear, or mutilate another person's body. Until I had the misfortune to come upon those American soldiers who were castrated. Then it got to be a game between the Communists and ourselves to see how many fingers and ears that we could capture from each other. After a kill we would cut his finger or ear off as a trophy, stuff our unit patch in his mouth, and let him die.

I collected about 14 ears and fingers. With them strung on a piece of leather around my neck, I would go downtown, and you would get free drugs, free booze, free pussy because they wouldn't wanna bother with you 'cause this man's a killer. It symbolized that I'm a killer. And it was, so to speak, a symbol of combat-type manhood. ...

Some days when we came back on a POW snatch we played this game called Vietn'ese Roulette on the helicopter. We wouldn't be told how many to capture. Maybe they only wanted one. But we would get two or three to find out which one is gonna talk. You would pull the trigger on one. Throw the body out. Or you throw one without shooting 'im. You place fear into the other Vietn'ese mind. This is you. This is next if you don't talk. ...

I guess my team got rid of about eight guys out of the chopper one way or another, but I only remember pushing two out myself. ...

With 89 days left in country, I came out of the field.

At the time you are in the field you don't feel anything about what you are doin'. It's the time that you have to yourself that you sit back and you sort and ponder.

What I now felt was emptiness.

Here I am. I'm still eighteen years old, a young man with basically everything in his life to look forward to over here in a foreign country with people who have everything that I think I should have. They have the right to fight. I've learned in this country that you don't have the right to gather forces and fight back the so-called oppressor. You have the right to complain. They had the right. They fought for what they thought was right.

I started to recapture some of my old values. I was a passionate young man before I came into the Army. I believed that you respect other people's lives just as much as I respect my own. I got to thinkin' that I done killed around 40 people personally and maybe some others I haven't seen in the fire fights. I was really thinkin' that there are people who won't ever see their children, their grandchildren.

I started seeing the atrocities that we caused each other as human beings. I came to the realization that I was committing crimes against humanity and myself. That I really didn't believe in these things I was doin'. I changed.

I stopped wearing the ears and fingers. ...

I left Vietnam the end of '69. ...

The same day I left Vietnam, I was standin' back on the corner in Baltimore. Back in the States. A animal. And nobody could deal with me.

I got out January '71. Honorable discharge. Five Bronze Stars for valor. ...

I couldn't deal with goin' to school, because I wasn't motivated. The only friends I made were militant types, because they were the only ones could relate to what I was tryin' to say. I took all the money I saved up and bought weapons. Fifteen hundred dollars' worth. Rifles, guns. I joined the Black Panthers group basically because it was a warlike group. With the Panthers we started givin' out free milk and other community help things. But I was thinkin' we needed a revolution. A physical revolution. And I was thinkin' about Vietnam. All the time. ...

I don't have a job now. But I would take any human service job, especially where I could show the black kids and the black people that we ought to stop looking toward the stars and start looking toward each other. That our greatest horizons is in our children. And if we don't bring our children up to believe in themselves, then we'll never have anything to believe in.

But they turn their backs on a lot of us Vietnam vet'rans. They say the only way to success is through education. I wanna go back in school and get my B.A., but I can't afford to. I gotta get out there and get a job. Ain't no jobs out there. So what I'm gon' do now? Only thing else I know how to do is pick up a gun. Then I'm stupid. I'm being stupid again. I'm not going forward. I'm going backwards. And can't go any further backwards. I done been so damn far back, I'm listenin' to the echoes in the tunnel.

One day I'm down on Oliver and Milton Avenue. Go in this grocery store. In my neighborhood.

This Vietn'ese owns the store.

He say, “I know you?”

I say, “You know me from where?”

“You Vietnam?”

“Yeah, I was in Vietnam.”

“When you Vietnam.”

“ '68, '69.”

“Yeah, me know you An Khe. You be An Khe?”

“Yeah, I was in An Khe.”

“Yeah, me know you. You Montagnard Man.”

Ain't that some shit?

I'm buyin' groceries from him.

I ain't been in the store since. I'm still pissed off.

He's got a business, good home, drivin' cars. And I'm still strugglin'.

29–4. Specialist 4: Arthur E. “Gene” Woodley Jr. (aka Cyclops and Montagnard), from Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans by Wallace Terry, copyright © 1984 by Wallace Terry. Used by permission of Random House LLC. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House LLC for permission.

Questions for Reading and Discussion