Writing from an American GI’s point of view:
As a young GI, I was drafted out of the US to fight against “the bloody Vietcong” oppresses of the Vietnamese people. It did not take me long to realise that in Vietnam, those who were not against us were rare. Even children were quite capable of blowing us up with grenades. This was total war, and required total dedication. It was drummed into us that even peaceful-looking villages were often the hideouts of the Vietcong Guerrillas. Could we tell the difference? No we could not. So blast one – blast them all.
This may sound cruel but at that time, it was practical. A good squirt of napalm over a village made of grass and straw at 5 a.m. in the morning would ensure that the sleepers fried while they slept, and those who escaped could be machine-gunned as they ran. We even went on many “search and destroy” missions, and I would often be one of the soldiers who killed the most Vietnamese. It was seen as very heroic to kill as many Vietnamese as we could.
If there was to be any doubt about the strength of the Vietcong in villages, helicopter gun-ships could be used along with bazookas and air-bursting shells, which could carry the heads off half a dozen individuals while they ran. No, war is not pleasant, and looking back, I can only imagine how those people might view us, but war is war, and a bullet knows no friend or enemy. It was either them or us, and quite frankly, at this stage in my history, I preferred it to be them. Yet, thinking about it now, I just wish that the war never happened, and as time passed, I began to hate fighting in it. I was tired of killing, of raping, and destroying the lives of innocent people, in most cases. I feel very guilty for everything that I had done during that war, and I regret it very much.
One of the most haunting parts of the war was the My Lai massacre. The quiet is what seemed most unsettling to me. The villages of central Vietnam known collectively as My Lai have been stamped by history as places of horrific acts of war. More than 500 Vietnamese people, most of whom were women and children, were slaughtered here by our people, on March 16th 1968. We ordered them out of their homes, lined them up in ditches, and shot them. I still cannot forget how guilt rushed through me at that moment. I hated it, every bit of it. Yet, it was our duty. We also tossed hand grenades into their bunkers and torched their thatched huts.
Sometimes even now, I wonder what was the point of even going to fight in Vietnam and of what business the war was to America. I must admit that we thought we would win at the beginning, but it did not take us long to realise that we were in fact losing, both in lives and money. It was the worst experience of my life.
Writing from a Vietnamese villager’s point of view:
I lived in a village near Da-Nang. It was a happy village, and even when the war broke out, we felt safe in our jungle at home. My father and two sisters along with my mother, lived in our three-bedroom bamboo house, along with our few animals. It was a tranquil life, until the arrival of two great monsters, the Vietcong by night, and the Americans by day. The Vietcong demanded food and animals, as well as complete loyalty to the Communist cause. Certain villages even hid weapons for the Vietcong and supplied information about American troop movements. This was our downfall.
One morning, at 4 a.m., I awoke to the sounds of gunfire and screaming. I looked around to find my house was in flames. As I ran through the burning house, I saw my headless mother on the floor. One of my sisters was left dead, after being raped on the floor, and my father was fried to a cinder. My younger sister was nowhere to be seen. I was screaming, bleeding, dying from the inside, yet I knew I had to remain as quiet as I could, so that I would be able to escape successfully, without any American GI hearing me. As I made my way through a hole in the wall, I saw American soldiers using flame-throwers on the entire village, and the sound of mortar shells, which completed the work of destruction, could be heard. Those villagers who had been lucky to escape the fires ran into a ring of steel bayonets and were then speared be American soldiers. Seeing no escape, I hid under a dead animal until our American “liberators” departed. I still cannot forget the panic and terrible shock that ran through my body, and the sight of my very family lying before me on the floor, destroyed. This has left me traumatised for the rest of my life.
I had learnt later on that my younger sister was awoken by the Americans much earlier than the rest of us, and therefore had managed to escape. The two of us were all that we had left for one another.
I remember many other experiences of threat, but one of the biggest ones was the time when my younger sister was killed.
When the sun rose one morning, we hear artillery shelling, and there were helicopters flying in the sky. We could hear the sound of gunfire getting nearer and nearer. I realized the Americans were coming at us, because I could hear English being spoken, and peered out the bunker to see the rucksacks of American GIs. Some of the villagers ran outside, including my younger sister, and they were all gunned down. I could almost feel my 12-year-old sister’s pain. Her face burns immortal in my mind until this very day, and I will never forget what had happened that morning. We all yelled out to the Americans: “No V.C.! No V.C.!”, although I felt it was somehow too late, because my sister had already been killed, but the merciless creatures kept moving closer to us. I then saw a grenade tossed inside and crawled toward the back of the bunker. When it exploded, I was knocked unconscious and the shelter collapsed around me. Until now, I do not know how I was rescued, but I feel very lucky to be alive today.
The Vietnam War is the something which mentally affected me tremendously. Every time I think of it, or of my family who were killed in it, or were raped in front of my eyes, I get a terrible shock, and it haunts me right from the start. I want to forget, to runaway, but it follows me like my shadow. I hate it.
