Vietnam: A Hell Of A Place

1

4/3/68

My name is Benhe (pronounced as Benny) Douglas I was young at the time, only 18, when I was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War. A couple buddies of mine also got drafted Xander and Hawk. We were all in the same platoon, 9th Infantry. There were around 5 squads in my platoon. We all got shipped out on the same plane. When we got there there was a chopper with a medical sign on the side, a medevac, landing. A building for new arrivals, and some tents. Once we got flown out to our camp, I was assigned medic and a corporal rank. Xander got the M60 machine gun, or the pig as everyone else calls it.and Hawk was a standard infantry. I quickly acquired the nickname, Flame, because I liked to burn things,  Xander got Big Boy, because he was a little overweight, and Hawk kept Hawk because he had really good eyes. Most of the guys there were 19 to 23 and well built. Some guys were black, I hadn't heard of a black guy in the military. Some guys looked like shit and had most likely been in country long. I saw a guy waving over to me, I walked over to him. He said he was my CPT, I was just glad my captain wasn't a damn hippie though, those guys are the worst. I got shipped out to Khe Sahn, along with X and Hawk, and another new guy, Terrence, but we called him Slim, because he was really skinny. Once we got there we got assigned our bunks. I decided to take a walk and take some pictures. While I was on my walk, I saw some black thing laying on the ground, so I decided to investigate. Once I got over there, I realised they were body bags, at least 25. There was one last one about to be zipped up, but before it was, I walked over to it, a young boy, my age, looked like he hadn't been in country long, I wondered how long it would take me to get killed out here. A guy told me there was a town just up the road, and that there was some "fun" up there. I told him I had a girl back home and that I would rather not cheat on her with some ugly commie (communist) whore. Our CPT came in and told us there would be briefing for our next mission in an hour or so. We saluted him when he walked out and told us to put our hands down, the snipers love to pick off an officer and that we should refer to him as Gut. After he walked out I looked at Hawk and he just shrugged, he knew what I was thinking too, why the hell is he named gut. We found out later it's because he always follows his gut feeling. When we went to the briefing we found out we would be doing a large scale assault on a company of VC. On our way out I was thinking, *sarcastically*  Yay, our first mission and I could die more easily than getting thrown in a damn car compactor.