 | | I'm No Hero
August 11, 2010 |
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 “Thanks for serving to preserve our way of
life,” said Mrs. Horseley, the director of the Veteran's Day
program at Malad Elementary, as she guided me toward a row of
chairs in the auditorium. “Heroes sit here!” she said, smiling
sweetly.
I just looked at the row of chairs, some occupied by old men,
veterans, sitting stalwart and tall in their seats, with a proud
look still burning in their eyes. I turned and with a tear in my
eye said, “I don't mean to sound insincere, but where do I sit...
because I'm no hero. No, not a bit. I simply went where my
country asked me to go. I went because I'd been raised in a
God-fearing family who believed in brotherhood and freedom with
all their hearts. I was raised to believe with every fiber of
being; God truly inspired our leaders, guiding their every
decision. So how could I not answer my countries call for
help... without question or pause? Wouldn't anybody?
I didn't do anything special to set me apart, or merit special
consideration when I answered the call. I just went where my country
told me to go, that's all!”
“Sure, it wasn't long before I found myself in the breach of a fiery
hell... but men of honor have no choice. Soon... too soon, I was marching
into a jungle, armed and dangerous. There, my first day in the Le Hong
Fong forest, everything stopped for the most horrible split second in my
life. Three shots ripped the sweet and sour saturated air of the
aromatic oriental night. My head filled with tangled cobwebs as I hugged
the dirt at the bottom of my foxhole, listening to the sucking sound
bullets make, hot lead fingers of fate whistling just over my head
dispatched on a mission to kill by strangers I hadn't even met. Sickened
with quiet horror, I knew one bullet could determine with a touch
whether someone lived or died tonight.
I felt more alone, helpless and abandoned, than I'd ever felt in my
life. I could do nothing as a million thoughts swarmed in me like angry
bees, listening intently for the sound of men coming to kill me, men
preoccupied with my dying, men who had dedicated every fiber of being to
the precept of reuniting me with the dust from which I came. I trembled
uncontrollably as the agents of death rode the perfumed jungle breezes
overhead, deadly assassins probing the decaying overgrowth, probing the
darkness, hovering maddeningly in the toxic vapor, slashing and nipping
leaves, pocking earthen bulwarks of my foxhole.
This was the life into which I'd been dropped, and I felt like I was
going mad! Muscles along my jaw stood out like taut cords, my teeth
clenched, locking tightly, with every nerve and sinew strained to
breaking. I must have looked like an idiot... a scared out of his wits,
green behind the ears, tenderfoot newbie, idiot. I struggled to keep the
nauseous sensation aching in me at bay, but my head hurt as if pierced
with a thousand knives. My legs cramped and burned from prolonged
crouching in the hole. My heart pounded in wild staccato rhythms. I
hyperventilated in short, throbbing gasps as I peered into the night,
convinced despite all logic, that each breath would most certainly be my
last.
“Welcome to the Vietnam Hilton,” someone alongside me in the dark hole
whispered caustically. I nodded at the shadowy figure crowded beside
half a dozen others crammed into the depths of the fighting hole. My
mouth was sticky-dry with cottonmouth, thick spittle swelling in me like
a white mucous glue. Streams of sweat burned my eyes, flowing down my
forehead in dirty rivulets from oven-like heat of my steel pot, blurring
my vision, disorienting me with stinging, salty, wetness. Sweat tickled
my ears. My mind played wicked tricks on me.
I seriously questioned if I had been hit, wondering if it was sweat or
blood oozing down my clammy neck. I was obsessed with the thought. I
felt sudden urgings to run my fingers through my hair to see if it was
red and matted with sticky blood. But I dared not move....sure even the
slightest movement would attract the attention of dusky marauders of the
night who lay in wait out there just waiting for me to move, just
waiting for the chance to slit my throat. So hot, tired, dirty, consumed
with a terror that got worse and worse, I remained stagnating still.
What bugged me most was my complete impotence, the inability to do
anything at all about what was inevitably going to happen in this war. I
could only wait for what was to be... to be! Life or death was decided
here with little more fanfare than the rolling of the dice. I felt so
very vulnerable and exposed... more scared than I had ever before been in
my life, knowing someone was out there in the dark night waiting to kill
me.
Brrooom!!! Suddenly an abruptly ruthless sound cracked the perfumed
jungle with the clarity of a thunderclap, by far the most frightening
sound I'd ever heard. The horrid sound split the fragile night air with
a savage thrust, echoing and reverberating in tremulous volume that
blended high-pitched tenors and sonorous basses in terrible harmony in
resounding cacophony shaking the ground, jarring it. The shock stunned
me for a chillingly frightening second, in a way that provided sure
proof that the end was very, very near.
“Satchel charge, drop and cover,” someone yelled. I buried myself into
the deepest cranny of the foxhole, unashamedly covering my ears,
pummeled by the pandemonium into submissive meekness, as for one awful
moment, night turned to grotesque day. Soldiers around me were
instantaneously bathed in strobe-like light, still-life caricatures
clustered in a frightened heap in the bottom of the hole.
Someone in the dark void prayed desperately, rapidly, spitting out the
words as though firing a machine gun, as though each word might be his
last. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou
among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” The man
repeated his supplication unashamed, over and over in utter despair,
sometimes whispering as if talking to angels, sometimes almost shouting,
competing with the loud sounds as the night erupted around us.
“Jesus Christ, Nigel... you want to live forever or something?” A voice
grumbled profanely in the dark.
Another spray of automatic weapons fire hit the ground around our
foxhole, and buzzed into the trees behind us. “I think I'm hit,” I
mumbled, shaking and cursing to myself, on the very verge of tears. I
had felt the bullets bore into me. I'd felt them! “God... is it like this
every time?” I asked no one in particular. I checked for blood and felt
for bullet holes in my fatigues... but nothing. An unsurpassed thrill
rushed through me that this time death did not find me!
Larry Oertel saw it all. “Yeah, pretty much every time. Happened to me
my first night too. Imagination and fear get to you. The bullets might
miss by a mile, but you feel them. They might not have got you this
time... but the night's young,” Oertel whispered. “They'll try again.”
A medic appeared out of the night, but just as he was about to drop into
the hole next door to help a screaming soldier, a couple of deadly
reckoned rounds tore into his face and chest. I could see him as he
rolled back, groaned a couple of times... then died! I was sure he was
dead. Most of the left side of his face was gone. I couldn't take my
eyes off of him. I'd seen antiseptic death in funeral homes before, but
nothing prepared me for this. I smelled the horror of death caustically
pungent in my nostrils that night, smelled his blood and guts, saw his
grotesque, wild-eyed, frozen stare, saw the pink essence of his being
ripped open before me.
The firing subsided to a few sporadic rounds, an occasional explosion,
and yelling... lots of yelling! I strained to see through waves of
elephant grass into the thick jungle, avoiding sight of the dead body we
couldn't do anything about until daylight. Now as before, I could only
curse the dark that hid my enemies in a gloomy shadow of night, a night
that had become my enemy too. This was the first of many nights on
combat patrol in Vietnam... days and nights that melted into a mass
horribly the same... nights I thought would never end... and sure enough, it
hasn't. I still think of them... dream of them... and again I'm there
reliving them... smelling their pungent odor!
So I'm no hero! I would rather not have had to go, if there was another
way I don't know. Sure, I've got a purple heart for the time I bled...
something of a miracle, because people who saw me then thought I'd soon
be dead. My captain called the Purple Heart “A move-too-slow award.”
Well it near cut life's silver cord. But I survived! I just slugged it
out with Charlie toe-to-toe. Though the Vietnam War's now blowing in the
wind, heart and soul still rend. For I know that history repeats itself.
Vietnam was only one in a series of “Wars-to-end-all-wars.” So though I
crossed the devil's deadly path, I still feel Charlie's demonic wrath,
deep in my soldier's wearied mind, forever honoring buddies left behind.
Now I dream of rogue bullets that death's questions ask, killing their
favorite task...
I see in dreams where through fetid jungle they tore, doing their
killing chore, so quick, so clean, as through my heart again and again
they careen. Memories suck me in from future cast, forever taking lives,
yet not the last...
So I'm no hero... as you can plainly see. When the roll was called to
stand for their country, I stood... that's all!
Heroes are men endowed with great courage, who with great strength sway
bloody fields of carnage. Heroes are men of bold exploits favored by
God, bearing noble purpose born of native sod. But I... I did nothing
witty or wise. I'm just one of the countless little guys, doing his duty
against war's bestial ogre cunning, fighting, hoping, searching,
fearing, humping... surviving! I marched with thousands of
brothers-in-arms alongside, through valley's shadow where patriotic
spirits guide. For Uncle Sam seeds of war I did sow in patriotic
heritage planted long, long ago. I faced warlord Ho Chi Minh's fiery
breath, going deep and deeper into bowels of his shadowed death. Mine
was a warrior's soul arising above cannon's roar, like on eagles wing,
bearing naive and gung-ho this boy next door, above a soil enriched with
soldiers seeping blood, nourishing the soil of sweet-and-sour earth,
getting down and dirty in Nam's blood and mud.
I was just a link in the chain, sent by duty's refrain, our world's
freedom to proclaim. They say war measures the depth of a hero...
allotting a young boy's ruin mid thundered guns aglow, acts of killing
like cancer in the brain, where are born new senses war does indelibly
ingrain. As combat infantrymen for the longest year fates defy, virulent
beasts rage inside till the day I too die. But I'm no hero! Not at all
like Rambo.
To this day I live with war etched into my lifetime, always watching for
movements out of rhyme, ever listening for sounds that don't belong,
always with feeling abounding something's wrong. I still roam triple
canopied jungles where I lost the boy, in eye-high elephant grasses
where I lost much of life's joy.
Vietnam was a duty you could not with honor refuse. Respect for goodly
values I will always choose. There was no choice but to do it, or self
esteem lose. For there comes a time when you have to pay your dues, to
beloved honor uphold, to keep this the land of the free and the bold,
for country, for neighbors, for family, for God... for self! | |
About
Author...
In 1966-67, Gary Jacobson served with B Co
2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam as a combat
infantryman and is the recipient of the Purple
Heart.
Gary, who resides in Idaho writes stories he
hopes are never forgotten, perhaps compelled by
a Vietnamese legend that says, “All poets are
full of silver threads that rise inside them as
the moon grows large.” So Gary says he
writes because “It is that these silver
threads are words poking at me – I must let them
out. I must! I write for my brothers who cannot
bear to talk of what they've seen and to educate
those who haven't the foggiest idea about the
effect that the horrors of war have on
boys-next-door.”
Visit Gary Jacobson's site for more information
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