I was a LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) but I quit being in the war when I drew max smoke down on an orphanage. I didn't mean to do it. I loved the kids in the orphanages-they were the only cool thing about the war. And I smoked them. So I quit being in the Army. From then on, I was just there. I figured if I could save as many lives as possible by not telling anybody where anybody was, I would do that. And all the people that were teamed with me agreed.
So we quit turning in accurate reports and I switched to bird-shot in my shot gun. Not too long after that we found this Ville. The Ville didn't like us to start with but when we went in there and shucked off all our military shit, and put our weapons down, and started figuring out what was happening with the Ville, and started helping the people with their rice paddies, everything was cool. It became our Ville, our home away from home.
When we'd get sent on a mission some place, we'd go to our Ville instead. We'd walk into the Ville and ask the man if there was any activity around there and he'd always smile and say "No." There was a hell of a lot of young men in that Ville so we figured he might not be telling the truth but we didn't care. And those young men didn't care because they knew that we'd quit. It was our truce. And we'd talk to this guy that wore steel-rim glasses. Looking back on it now, I really think the man was some sort of political officer for the area. He'd say "Well, where are you supposed to be today?" We'd say something like "We're supposed to be doing a second check because fly-overs have reported such and such." We'd show him where we were supposed to be on the map. He'd point to the map and say "Well, there's nothing here," or "there's tracks there, but they're old" and that's what we would report back when we debriefed. It saved us having to go there to find out. Of course, sometimes we had to travel a hell of a long ways to get to our Ville, and maybe a long ways to get out to where we got picked up. But it was worth it. For us, the war was over.
We'd usually spend a couple days at a time in the Ville. One time we spent 2 weeks there. We would borrow their bicycles and ride to some place and radio in, then ride back. You know, bicycles were outlawed in the jungle-they were used by the people to transport munitions and supplies, so it was bad news for Vietnamese out in the bush to get caught with a bicycle. Those bicycles were hard on the body but we used them because we could travel fast on those trails. We never had any trouble traveling in the area. We'd go out 15 or 20 Clicks and radio in and say, "We're on the trail of somebody and we're being cool-don't send any smoke in because we can't really tell you where we are." Then we'd head back to the Ville and go back to our card game. We lost a lot at Poker there. I never could understand the signals they gave each other, but the way we saw it, this was another way to give them a lot of stuff without making them beg for it.
One time we ripped off a Briggs & Stratton pump and brought it as a birthday present for the Head Man. We put it in one of those big ammo boxes. When we piled off the chopper, the pilot said "What's in there?" We told him "Rounds and plastic explosives-we're preparing for some shit." Then we had to cut across creeks and all kinds of terrain to haul that thing into the Ville. Another time we gave a Briggs and Stratton to a man in the Ville who worked every day pumping water for the rice paddies. One time he showed up and his leg had been blown off and he couldn't work any more. We brought him a pump to help make up for his leg.
The Ville meant a lot to us. I was in Nam but I wasn't in the shit. I gave the little kids donkey rides. I had a rice paddy that I had done the walls of. It was good, it was no war.
One time the chopper dropped us off and we naturally headed over to the Ville. We were walking along and up ahead we could see smoke. We started running. We ran and ran-ran through bamboo, ran through everything. Oh, Jesus, we ran and we get up to the damn Ville and there's all these Marines and they're herding people into god-damned helicopters, and there weren't many people left. We looked around and there were bodies everywhere being drug into lines and shit. And there's this Marine Capt. standing up there looking so goddamned self-satisfied and happy with himself. We said "What's going on here?" He replied "We just wiped out this Commie village." "This was our Ville!" He said "Bullshit, this is a Commie village-they own this valley." He went back to lining the dead up for photographs. There among the bodies was the Briggs and Stratton pump we had brought to the Ville.
The Marines didn't stop with wasting the people, they killed all the animals and burned the Ville. About the only thing else they could have done is salt the ground. Generations of people had lived there and those Marines ended it all in one day and we couldn't do shit about it.