Brandon's Project

"How do you tell a true war story?" This question came up often in our study of Vietnam and the war that existed between our nations. I believe that I have found the answer, or at least part of it. The answer that I have found is, of course, open to interpretation. But I think that the best way to go about getting what you want out of the question lies in asking a combatant.

Having said that, you must realize that you can't tell a true war story unless you've gone through it and lived to tell about it. The only true war story is from one who has seen combat. You can never retell a story with the same emotion or complexity of inner angst as one who is in front of you pouring out everything. Paper and words can't capture the "1000 yard stare" that everyone that I talked to seemed to have in retelling, and thus reliving, their experiences. A comma or a set of periods (…) can't show the look on someone's face when they pause and are deep in thought.

There were an endless number of ways that I could have gone about the task of writing this paper. Before going to work, I decided to set some parameters. I would talk to veterans that I knew in the local area, and I would get their perspective in four main areas and tie them into what we saw, read, or learned from the class. Three things I wanted: their perspective before, during, and after their tours in Vietnam. The fourth thing that I wanted was their feeling now, nearly twenty-five years since the end of the war.

I conducted two interviews with some old Marines over a few beers at a Friday's restaurant. I thought the setting was right for an informal talk about war experiences. What I heard, however, seemed to suggest that I should have held it somewhere else, somewhere that would record for posterity, in an honorable fashion, what it was that was relayed to me. I can't tell you the true war stories because I did not live them.

But I will try.

Gary Gaines is a Cincinnati native who grew up in Colerain and attended Colerain High School. He was a natural athlete who excelled in almost anything he did. He participated in track, baseball, and football. The all-American kid.

His ideas of the war were the same ideas that his parents before him had about the Second World War. It was every man's duty to answer when his country called him to arms. The manliness of John Wayne exemplified these traits. It is ironic, however, that John Wayne never served one day in uniform.

Gary, politically speaking, was what was often referred to as a "hawk." He believed that we were right to be in Vietnam and that we should help out the Vietnamese int heir fight against the ideals of communism that were so abhorrent to the American mindset.

In 1971, Gary went to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina. He found the experience to be somewhat easy due to his physical prowess. Originally slated for electronics school, Gary decided in the middle of boot camp to see how far his physical attributes would carry him. He chose the Infantry instead. And not just the Infantry, but the best of the Infantry in the Corps -- Marine Reconaissance.

After boot camp, he went to a three week course on being a Sniper, and then in May of 1971, he headed over to Vietnam for his tour of duty. He would spend from May of 1971 until June of 1972 in Vietnam near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in central Vietnam.

While in Vietnam, Gary noticed some things that weren't quite right. He saw that they were doing things that didn't make any sense to him. There was a futility in their actions, the orders that were given, and the way that the war was being fought in general. "After a while, I just felt expendable," he recalled.

One of the things that bothered him was the fact that many of the maps that they were using were too old to be of any use. He remembered that once, a scheduled six hour patrol turned into a six day event! The intelligence gathered from other units usually ended up being wrong as well. A "small band" of Viet Cong sometimes was in reality close to a Regiment in size, and vice versa.

An example of the futility of their actions was the fact that in the thirteen months that he was there, Hill 881, in their area of operations, had to be retaken three times, only to be left again. "It seemed that we never really controlled the ground," he remembered. When asked to illustrate this, Gary pointed out that after the last Bob Hope performance in Vietnam, his unit found some Viet Cong tunnels not one hundred yards away. Apparently, Charlie had seen the show too! The American military didn't control anything in reality, and in his min,; there were few Vietnamese who could be trusted.

Aside from the bad maps and bad intelligence, there were the orders that were given that didn't sit well with him. Some he just didn't like but followed anyway. There was one, however, that he simply refused to follow. What I am about to tell you, as in the case of My Lai, "never happened."

South of Hill 881, Gary's unit had just torched a village. It was another order that he saw as being futile. There were no gains to be made by doing it, h ebelieved: "Torching a village just recruited more VC." It added to the expendable feeling that had been mounting in him for some time. Why make more enemies to fight when all that would do is increase a Marines' chance of dying?

Sometime later, after returning to the firebase, which was commanded by an Army Captain [X], villagers started to arrive at the camp. It was a standing order by that time not to allow civilians into a military firebase. There had been too many terrorist-type suicide attacks, and the servicemen had to be careful. The whole situation seemed to typify the war. They had been ordered to burn the village not more than twenty-four hours ago and then had to turn away the old men and women who had nowhere else to go. "We were just shooting ourselves in the foot."

The civilians continued to hang around looking for food or shelter. Through an interpreter, they were told to move on past the base. The thought that crossed through Gary's mind was, "Move on where? We just burned their village." After awhile with civilians hanging around, Captain [X], ("I'll never forget that name as long as I live") ordered all M60 Machine Guns to open up a warning salvo over the heads of the civilians to get them to go away. For the first time in his life, Gary refused an order from a commissioned officer.

"I remember him calling over the radio, yelling at me to get the Marines in the 'fight' but my Marines and I all knew better. I told them not to open up, and they listened to me." By the end of the "fight," there were around twenty villagers dead. Nothing was ever said of Gary's unwillingness to fire and the act never got any attention.

This of course is reminiscent of the My Lai incident where an entire village was wiped out, supposedly by a rampaging lieutenant and his out of control platoon. Gary has his own thoughts on that saying,"There's no way that My Lai was done just by a lieutenant and one platoon. A lieutenant does nothing without higher headquarters either knowing about it or ordering it." I am a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I can say that this statement is generally true. Our officers are given much latitude on the battlefield, and on occasion, for a short time, are sometimes not heard from for a while due to communication breakdown or combat. However, a lieutenant is never in combat without higher headquarters knowing about it in advance and ordering them into it or shortly afterward receiving word about it. "Someone higher up in the chain knew about that one, I'm certain."

Gary's last three months in Vietnam were long, and by the time he left the "Jewel of Southeast Asia," he was more than ready to return home. He was uncertain as to what it was he would find. He had seen the protests of 1969 before going to boot camp. Was it still that way? He didn't know. He found out when his boat arrived in San Francisco.

The schedule for arriving Vietnam vets was posted well in advance in San Francisco so that family members could meet their service member at the dock for a warm welcome. Because the schedule of arrivals was public knowledge, many anti-war protesters at the time could also use the information to try to send their message.

Gary remembered getting off the boat with some members of his unit still in their combat fatigues and rifles in hand. As soon as the ramp set down on the dock, angry protesters jeered them with familiar chants of the day. "What the hell is this?" he thought.

Some of the protesters took to putting flowers in the barrels of the rifles that the Marines were carrying. Unfortunately for them, one Marine still had ammunition left from the trip. He expelled the flower from his barrel in an un-PC way. With Kent State still fresh in their minds, the protesters scattered.

Declining an offer by the Corps to attend Officer Candidates School (OCS), Gary chose to end his time in the Marine Corps and attend college. Almost upon arrival at college, he began to grow his hair long and disavow any participation in the war or the Marine Corps. It was a long time before he felt comfortable talking about his experiences during the war.

A long time has passed. "What do you think about the war as a whole now that so much time has gone by?" I asked. He answered that he feels that the Vietnamese people really didn't care which side won. "You never knew who to trust."

As far as his homecoming, he had this to say: "Twenty years later, during the Gulf War, when the 'thank you's' were finally coming out, I felt like saying 'shove it, too late for that now.' I know there are a lot of guys that feel the same way." There is still a lot of bitterness with him about the war, the way it was conducted, and the way he was treated when he returned home.

Gary thinks about going back to Vietnam at some point in the future to make peace with his demons. There is not a day that goes by where something doesn't trigger a memory. Ultimately, though, he says that in order to get by in life, you must not dwell on the past. Many guys feel the same way.

Thomas Parrish, like Gary, grew up with the ideal that when your country called, you answered. He really had no idea what Vietnam was and could probably not have pointed to it on a map if you had asked him. But he, like Gary, was enthralled by the idea of the Marine Corps and relished the challenge that it represented.

Tom attended boot camp in San Diego, California. Unlike Gary, however, Tom was not a natural athlete and had a difficult time making the grade. But he managed to slug his way through the experience, and after boot camp, he earned the 0311 designation for basic infantryman. After infantry training, the Marine Corps sent him to a two-week school on the culture and religion of Vietnam, knowledge he would need for his first real assignment. Tom entered Vietnam on May 1, 1969, and would leave on August 10 of that same year.

He was assigned to a platoon in the Combined Action Program (CAP). The unit designation at one time was Combined Action Command (CAC) but CAC in Vietnamese means "penis," so the name was changed to CAP, or later CAG (Combined Action Group) so as not to offend the Vietnamese.

The main missions of CAP were mainly to help out with the security and medical needs of the villages they were in. This was the "Hearts and Minds" portion of the American action in Vietnam. Things went well for a few weeks, and then Tom, like Gary, started to notice that there were things that didn't quite make sense.

For instance, he noticed that his unit was only one of a great number that actually stayed in the villages every day, all day. Other units would be in their assigned villages during the day and then head back to base camp at night. This left the village to fend for itself against the Viet Cong. All, if any, progress made to win the hearts and minds of the villagers during the day was undone at night. "The rules seemed to be set against us," he said. "I remember one time that before we went out on patrol, the captain told us that if we came under fire to call back on the radio and ask permission to return fire. It was generally decided within the patrol that that would be one order we would not follow."

There was also the fact that in order for anyone to receive an award for bravery, the act had to be witnessed by an officer. The only problem was that officers never went out on patrol with the men. So even if there was a Marine who performed exceptionally well under combat conditions, there often was not any way for him to receive accolades for his performance. Orders on patrols came from Non-commissioned Officers (NCOs). This, needless to say, did not increase the morale of a unit that saw the war effort falling apart around them.

Overall, however, he liked the job that he was doin, and he did see it as important. He spent most of his time with the orphans of the village and got to know the people very well. "93% of U.S. personnel knew the lay of the land in the tactical sense after about three months. But only about 7% knew the people even after a year of being in the country."

A common theme in these two stories was the fact that the ground that they walked on wasn't really under their control. Tom also has an example of this common theme that reoccurs in many Vietnam veterans' tales. His unit was watching "The Green Berets," starring John Wayne, when an enemy unit no more than one thousand yards away mortared them.

The next part of Tom's retelling of his experiences took me by complete surprise. "Yeah," he said almost nonchalantly, taking a drink of his beer, "the reason that my tour lasted only three months was because I got shot in the head."

"Uh…what?" I asked, almost sure that I didn't hear what I thought I just heard. It was at this point that he told me of the most amazing event that I have ever heard about.

On the night of 10 July 1969, Tom's squad had their turn at perimeter duty. This usually entailed setting up LP/OP's (Listening Posts/ Observation Posts) and sitting the entire night in the jungle. The squad acted as the "feelers" for the rest of the unit based in the village that night. If anything approached that wasn't supposed to, the squad would know about it first and alert the rest of the unit, who would come to their aid if need be.

The villagers told the Marines that there was something in the works for them this night. Intel from friendly villagers, in Tom's case, usually proved to be reliable. There was also the fact that no one was out on the road that night. Everyone was expecting something.

The patrol set out at 8:00 pm and was supposed to end at 1:00 am, but they received word over the radio to stay out until 5:00 am. After the squad moved into the jungle a good distance, Tom's squad leader ordered him to set up the Claymore mines they had brought. Claymore mines are explosives that can be set up to explode in a certain direction. They are small and fairly easy to set up. It is also possible to link more than one together on the same fuse, so that you can increase the width of your "area of influence". This practice is what they call "daisy chaining" the mines, and it was in this fashion that Tom set them up that night.

After setting up the Claymores out in front of the squad, Tom returned to his position with the squad. No sooner had he settled into position, than he had "heard something strange." He tapped the shoulder of the man next to him and pointed in the direction of the enemy. There were about "eight to ten" North Vietnamese Army regulars less than twenty yards away.

Tom took one of the grenades from his belt and pulled the pin but held the "spoon"; this enabled him to hold onto it without letting it go off until he threw it. He also held on to the "hellbox," the device that would trigger the Claymores. The man next to him held the M79. The M79 was basically a one-shot-at-a-time grenade launcher that could fire a multitude of munitions. Tom couldn't recall what it had in it at the time. Knowing weapons the way I do, I would guess that the one they carried that night held either a high explosive round or a buck shot round designed for close quarters battle.

As soon as he heard the M79 go off, Tom squeezed the "hellbox" to set off the Claymores. He then rolled over to his left, threw his grenade, and started firing his M16 rifle, the standard issue weapon of the U.S. military at the time. At that point, "it seemed like the whole NVA was throwing everything they had at us, B40 rockets, Rocket Propelled Grenades, chi coms, satchel charges, small arms, and machine guns. There were explosions all around us like the grand finale of the fire works."

At this time, Tom noticed that most of the rounds were coming from the west side of their position. There was a larger unit moving with the NVA they had fired on initially. Things did not look good. Tom looked down to grab another grenade. It was at this time that he said he felt like he'd been hit with a rock. All went blank.

"When I came to, this weird feeling went through my body like I was slowly leaving. It started at the top of my head and went down my body. Soon I couldn't see, move, or feel anything and said, 'Oh my God, I'm dead.'"

But just as quickly as it left him, the feeling and the ability to move and see returned to him. He was still in a firefight and there were other Marines who needed his help. He threw the grenade he had been holding and went back to firing his rifle. He found that he was sweating a lot now, too much. "This isn't sweat, it's coming down too fast," he thought. He reached up to his head and found a hole right on top, where the brain separates into two halves. He put his middle finger into the hole to see how deep it went and found that his entire finger fit!

"I got upset that they got me, and I realized that I was not going to have too much longer, and I wasn't going to just lie there and wait to die." Tom got up, moved forward, and started firing again. Later estimates were that his one man, on-the-edge-of-death assault killed seven to eight enemy soldiers.

A grenade landed just behind him and flipped him over, sending shrapnel into his legs. Undeterred, he got up and still kept moving! It was at this point that he was shot in the right leg. Finally, he went down. Paralysis set in on his right side. With his left hand and foot, he moved behind a tree for a measure of protection with rounds still whizzing through the air toward him. He didn't look down, fearing that they had blown his leg off.

A friend named Mike Pickering somehow found him in the night and hauled him to relative safety with rounds still falling around them. Using the radio, Mike called back to the captain asking for some kind of artillery support, but the captain refused, saying that they were too close to the village for that kind of high volume explosive.

After being dragged through a rice paddy by his friend, Tom sat down on a log and tried not to pass out. Mike called on the radio for a helicopter this time and was once again refused. The pilot said that their Landing Zone (LZ) was too hot, meaning that he couldn't risk getting shot down because there was still too much fire in the vicinity. Mike screamed a few choice words and informed the pilot that they had a man down. The pilot came back on the radio and said that he would run into the LZ but would not land. They would have only about five seconds to get Tom onto the "bird."

The helicopter came within a few feet of the ground, and Tom was thrown aboard. The crew chief (the guy in charge of cargo on any aircraft) looked at Tom's wound with a flashlight when they were in the air. "Oh my God…" were the last words Tom Parrish heard before passing out.

Knowing what I know about the ballistics of certain weapons, namely the AK-47 that was, and still is, the preferred weapon in many militaries around the world, I would have to say that there is no way that Tom should be up and walking around right now. The 7.62 millimeter round that is fired by the AK-47 is designed to go straight through an enemy. It's not supposed to stop only a few inches in. Call it divine intervention, call it blind luck, call it whatever you want. Tom Parrish should be dead. Unbelievably, his story is not over. What followed is akin to what happened to Ron Kovic, the author of Born on the Fourth of July.

The helicopter took him to the USS Sanctuary, a Navy hospital ship. Unconscious when he arrived, the medical officer mistook him for dead after seeing his wounds. Tom was placed in with the dead bodies and lay there for a long time. An alert junior corpsman saw that Tom started to move and was not dead after all. He convinced the medical officer that he should be taken care of and that he should be operated on to remove the shrapnel from his body and head. Much to the chagrin and doubt of the medical officer, Tom was taken to the operating table. To the amazement of the medical staff aboard the ship, Tom was up and walking in thirty days. He was not able to talk, see, hear, or move around very well but it was obvious that he would survive. He left the USS Sanctuary and was taken to Great Lakes Navy Hospital to complete his recovery. It is at this point that I noticed that the care for veterans described by Ron Kovic was almost the same for that for Tom Parrish.

At Great Lakes Naval Hospital, the "favorite thing" that the doctors would do to the patients was to drug them. Tom said that one time he was drugged so much that he threw a tantrum so fierce that it took sixteen members of the hospital staff to take him to the psych ward. "I don't remember a damned thing. The way the story was told to me was that it looked like a cartoon bar brawl with the cloud of dust in the middle, and every so often someone would come flying out," he recalled. This event, oddly enough, was witnessed by the same corpsman who saved his life aboard the USS Sanctuary. It seems that his trip to Great Lakes Hospital happened soon after he convinced the medical officer to operate on Tom aboard the ship. His helicopter was shot down. He was sent to Great Lakes to recover. He and Tom became fast friends and still are today. Small world.

The doctor in charge of Tom at Great Lakes should have been brought up on charges. Tom had been overdosed on medication. "They said that it was enough to kill three men but my records were 'lost.' I think that the doctor burned them or something like that to keep from being indicted."

As much as I hated the whining tirade of Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July, I do have to admit that at least on one point, he does pose a legitimate question. What kind of a country sends it's "best and brightest" off to fight and then, when they return home, possibly broken for life, does not take care of them properly? Unlike Ron Kovic, however, Tom is not a whiner. He has moved on and has forgiven the injuries of his past.

In 1989, he went back to Vietnam, to the old village that he guarded until the night he was shot. Showing me pictures, he explained that almost nothing had changed. I could see that he had taken some of his old pictures with him and tried to take new ones from the exact same angle to show that there was almost no difference between the village in 1969 and the village in 1989. Indeed, very little had changed.

One of these pictures he showed to a woman in the village. It was a picture of him in 1969 with a little girl sitting in a chair beside him. He thought he was just showing it to someone just to show that he was a veteran of the war. But it turned out that the woman he showed the picture to was that little girl. Small world.

Today, Tom still stutters a little when he talks, but it's not really noticeable unless you are looking for it. He says that the hole in his head (yes it's still there, covered over by only skin and hair) is great fun for him and his grandkids. He's able to sound "hollow" without opening his mouth (he tapped out the Marines hymn for me on his head), and is the only person that he knows who can balance a bowling ball on top of his head.

He lives on 100% disability from the government, but he's thinking about giving it up to join the corps again! There is a program that will be implemented in December of 2003 to bring back veterans to serve in various behind-the-scenes functions for recruiting, reserve operations, and any other non-stressful jobs that can be done. I wish him well.

I hope that I've done well in relaying the war stories of my fellow Marines. Again, I wasn't there, and my mediocre writing could never display the depth of feeling that I heard in their voices. They tried to hide some of it with macho one liners, and I rather expected that. But looking deeper and listening to them re-tell their stories, I believe that I came away with a lot more that I thought I would.

Being an Infantry Marine, I know that one day I might have to go into combat. What I heard from these two old Jarheads showed me a little of what I will need to do to cope with it, if I survive. I, like Tom and Gary, must not dwell on the past. Learn from it, definitely, but don't dwell on it. I even have to forgive if I can. But I hope that I won't have to.

Tom Parrish 1969 with M60 Machine Gun, grenades, etc.

Tom Parrish with orphans from the village

Tom Parrish standing by the little girl in the chair

The "little girl in the chair" today.

Works Cited

Gaines, Gary. Interview. Cincinnati, Ohio. 10 March 2003

Parrish, Thomas. Interview. Cincinnati, Ohio. 10 March 2003

Kovic, Ron. Born on the Fourth of July . Simon and Shuster, 1976

The Green Berets . Co directed by John Wayne. Starring John Wayne. 1968