I came upon Chis Wise's blog quite by chance. and I've been reading with awe, his printed words, as he recalls his encounters during the American War in Vietnam
An excerpt..
" What was most memorable about the day was the heat, the steam room
oppressiveness of the air. The straps of my rucksack began to chafe
almost as soon as I put it on. Itching flared in my crotch within
minutes. I wrapped an olive drab bandanna around my neck to soak up some
of the sweat and before the day was done I would ring it out a dozen
times.
Soon we were past the tea plantation and moving into the hills. We
walked through a mixed kind of cover. In some places the grass reached
up past our knees and the few trees that stood had black burn marks on
their trunks. That meant that at some point the Montagnards had cleared
the area with fire and had perhaps grown manioc and other food. Now the
grass was back and soon the jungle would return.
We went under the canopy and the air was even more still. When we waded
through a stream that hadn’t been on our maps I rinsed out the bandanna
and tied it back around my neck. For a moment it felt so cool that a
shiver ran down my spine. We broke out of the jungle at the base of a
hill that was oddly clear of trees and brush. The point man, the
binh-si, was
well ahead of us, about halfway up the hill, his squad spread out
behind him. The point man stopped, seeing something not quite right in
front of him. Then he fell. He was so far away that it seemed to take
minutes for the sound of the rifle shot to reach the command group. And
then that was mixed with the small clatter of noise coming down the hill
and up the hill.
The ruff-puffs went to ground. That was the wrong thing to do, but
ill-trained soldiers will not do what seems so insanely
counter-intuitive as run up a hill into fire. Nothing I could do,
nothing my sergeant could do, would get them up and moving forward.
After a few moments cajoling the
đại-úy, I got on my radio and began bringing in artillery on the hillside.
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| All Image - Jean Wethmar - taken in Saigon at the War Memorial Museum |
About Chris Wise
I was in the US Army for a bit more than 25 years (1965-90) and
considered myself an Infantryman for all of that time. I started
thinking about "dirt" in a serious fashion in the 70's, but started
putting things on paper much later. Eventually I had a collection of
stories and little essays that, taken together, are a sort of memoir and
a meditation on the infantry. The stories are mostly true.
Blood
“What profit to kill men?”
“Very little — as I know; but if evil men are not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.”
Rudyard Kipling, Kim
Grace
A
Cretan once said to me, “When you appear before the heavenly gates and
they fail to open, do not take hold of the knocker to knock. Unhitch the
musket from your shoulder and fire.” “Do you actually believe God will be frightened into opening the gates?” “No, lad, He won’t be frightened. But He’ll open them because He’ll realize you are returning from battle.”
Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco
