Killing Men in Combat
Interviewer: How did you feel about killing men in combat? But I look up and there across the river is this guy, North Vietnamese uniform – with some tables, sitting in sort of like a lunch area I guess. And he’s sitting there on a table with his leg up, just sort of watching the firefight. So, by that time I had the M14 I think, so I managed to ruin his day. [That was] my second. [I have] twelve that I’m sure of – but eighteen would probably be a more accurate figure but those twelve I was actually able to go up to them and take their equipment and get documents off of them and that kind of thing. [The first one] was on a night patrol – we were uh – it was the village in the area I was telling you about where they were going into the mountains and hiding and coming down to visit their gals. Well we ran into a couple of their people; it was a brief firefight. And one of their guys was crawling and I had the M14. So I shot him with it; and he was prone and he just came up off the ground about a foot. WHAM…and after that he didn’t move. And later when we went out to search for documents, I took his feet and tried to roll him over and everything from his waist down turned and everything else stayed put. I had literally cut him in half. That was the first man I ever shot. It’s interesting, I’d say that no one who’s ever killed anyone in combat that I met – at that time wasn’t happy about it and [they] wanted to do it again. It’s after the fighting is over; that’s when you think “well gee that poor guy” or “ya know what’s it all about” or the people we lost because a lot of the time during the fight you don’t really know who’s missing until it’s over. The only person that I ever had any personal – felt bad about – let me put it that way. We were on a LRRP mission and we were doing what was called a walk off and that is we’d come into this area where GIs had a camp. They [the GIs] left but we stayed behind. The NVA and VC were always short on supplies so a standard tactic for them was to come in and check out any area the GIs had been in because they could get extra rations or sometimes even ammunition and stuff that had been left. Well we were behind this little blind of trees and this fellow started walking right towards us. And he was picking up things and then he looked up and looked right at us and then he sort of goes [shakes his head] nah. And then he did it again – he got a little closer and [shakes his head] nah. And then the third time he saw us there and we were all trained right on him and he realized what was going to happen, and that he really did see something and that he knew he was going to die. And you saw this expression come over his face [makes a horrified face]. And I’ve always felt bad about that because his last moments on earth were just filled with terror and I’d rather he not died like that, you know dying in just stark terror. If he had been shooting back and forth and he had just caught a bullet – that would have been one thing. But I know he was horrified. I could see the look on his face. And…I was really sad about that.