As war continues in Afghanistan, with the almost certainty that more and more ground troops will join in the fight against the terrorists, our countrymen will be subjected to conditions that some may have never faced before, and that some have experienced and know all too well.
By Ken Gale/Special to The Malibu Times
Note: Recently I was asked to contrast fighting in the Vietnam War, where I was a television correspondent for two-and a-half years in the late 1960s, with the kind of fighting ground troops may see in Afghanistan. I couldn’t because I don’t know what they might confront in Afghanistan. But I do know something about the fear and uncertainty they will face. Here’s that story.
Sgt. Simpson fired one shot and then his M16 jammed. Luckily, his shot hit the mark. When my camera crew and I jogged up the trail we found Simpson and a couple of other soldiers standing over the body of a Viet Cong trail guard, blood bubbling out of a small, clean hole in his chest. His AK-47 lay a few feet away. No other enemy in sight.
It was the first blooding by a fresh company from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which had arrived in the country only weeks before. It was on its first search-and-destroy mission. The company commander pulled out a deck of cards. They were all aces of spades. He gave one to Simpson to place on the dead Viet Cong’s chest. It was to spook other Viet Cong, the company commander told me, and also to build bravado in his troops.
Having been in Vietnam as a television news correspondent for more than a year at that time, I knew better than to go out with green troops. The last time I’d done it I was green myself. It was a Marine beach assault into a boggy, riparian jungle. Blocked by a swift-running stream, the company commander grew increasingly anxious as we fell behind flanking units on our advance inland. Battalion command was pressuring him to catch up. A scout came back and said he couldn’t find a place to cross. In utter frustration, the captain turned to me and said, “What do you think we should do?”
I don’t remember what I answered, but as I told friends later, what I should have said was, “Call me a helicopter and get me the hell outta here.”
A seasoned sergeant cocked a quick eyebrow at me then proceeded to find a place to cross, and we slogged on to our rendezvous in what turned out to be just another long walk in the sun without any enemy contact. It happened a lot. You breathed easy, but you didn’t have a story.
Simpson’s story was an exception. It got much worse the next day.
The night of Simpson’s kill, we bunked down under a tall canopy of trees. The commanding officer of this company of greenies, an imposing West Point captain, left me with no apprehension at all.
He did keep me awake for much of the night by calling artillery in close to our position. You could hear the rounds hurling in from perhaps a mile away brushing the treetops above us just before they crunched down on any enemy that might be lurking on our perimeter.
It may have kept the Viet Cong from attacking that night, but they were not far up the trail, waiting for us the next morning. Normally, I stayed close to the commander during a battle, to keep informed and also because it was usually a more protected position. But for some reason I dropped to the ground some yards away from the command post this time.
As a noncombatant, my way of juicing up the adrenalin to calm the butterflies in my stomach was to chatter into my tape recorder, describing whatever I saw.
What I didn’t see was the artillery round, one of our own, that struck a tree top and fell onto the command post with a deafening BAM, killing the company commander and several around him. I was not hurt.
Sgt. Simpson lost a leg.
As with most skirmishes in Vietnam, this one was short, probably about 20 minutes. Most of our casualties were self-inflicted.
Now, as our untested young soldiers take up position outside Afghanistan, I wish them many long walks in the sun or the snow to give them seasoning before they dobattle. they must. For me, thinking of them, the butterflies have returned.