THE SOLDIER TRUE STORY
THIS IS JUST A MONTH IN MY LIFE THAT I GAVE FOR YOU, YET YOU HAVE GIVEN ME NOTHING BUT SHIT IN RETURN, WHY IS THAT MAYBE YOU SHOULD READ ABOUT TRANSGENDERS AND YOU WILL FIND THAT I HAVE NO CHOICE ABOUT THE WAY I AM.
THE
SOLDIER
TRUE STORY
BY
A
VET.
VIET NAM
1968-1969
THE SOLDIER
TO BE A MARINE
IS TO DO OR DIE
Those are the words
They taught us to live and die by
You heard them from the time you woke up till you went to bed
IF YOU WENT TO BED
THIS IS A REAL STORY OF A BOY THAT WENT TO WAR
TO FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM
NOW SET ME FREE TO BE WHAT
I WANT TO BE
INTRODUCTION
HERE I AM 62 YEARS OLD NOW AND STILL WALK THROUGH TIME INTO THE PAST THAT I LIVED LONG AGO. I AM NOT PROUD OF WHAT I HAD TO DO THERE JUST FOR FREEDOM, WHEN I CAME HOME FROM VIETNAM I WAS CALLED A BABY KILLER AND HAD BRICKS THROWN AT ME WHEN I WAS IN UNIFORM. I AM NOT SURE WHAT WE WERE FIGHTING FOR, BUT I STILL DO NOT HAVE MY FREEDOM, BECAUSE YOU HAVE JUDGED ME WHEN YOU DID NOT KNOW ME. AFTER YOU HAVE READ THIS THEN YOU JUDGE ME!
SOUTHERN ACTS PRESENT'S
"THE MISFORTUNES"
WRITTEN BY BOBBIE JEAN CHIASSON
COPYRIGHTS © 2013 SOUTHERN ACTS
CHAPTER ONE
Out for a Daily walk
I’ll walk with you along the trials and through the rice paddies and the jungles of South Vietnam. It was a year that myself and so many others cannot and will never forget, and it doesn’t matter how hard we try to or want to, we cannot forget those times. There are some things that just do not go away.
We were all just a bunch of kids that had some training for a few months, now we were killers looking for the enemy.
Little did we know that the real enemy would be us?
You may wonder why I say this.
It is because we were the ones that were wrong for being there in the first place, they did not want our help because of the way they were, they did not care about their own much less us, we were the enemy there.
These people had lived like this all their lives and nothing there would ever change. It has been that way long before we got there.
They choose to live like rats and fight for everything there was. They were doing it with the French and they were doing it with someone else before that, so it is and will be the only thing they know how to do. We were there just because some rich needed to be richer. And the country need a boost in the job market and it needed people to die to make room.
You may not like this.
There were times when death was all we saw.
That is what wars are for…
People need to die to make room to bring in new life, that is a fact, and it will always have to be. Sorry, but can you just imagine what it would be like to see 45/50 soldiers, either wounded or killed in less than 45 minutes of your life, I have been there.
There are things here that are hurting me to tell, because, I have to remember these things as well as tell them. Sometimes, I find myself lost in deep thought of those times in my old life, and wonder why I needed to make this change. Maybe I felt the need to bury the man that walked through those
Jungles and had to kill for a living.
When I first got to the Nam, I was put with the 26th Marine Div. It was real bad there because we were right at the DMZ and the enemy came at night in full force. There were times when you did not get any sleep, and there were times when you could not leave the hill.
The enemy (Charlie/North Vietnamese)
Had tunnels dug all over the place; you never knew where he would come up from in the ground. At night you could see them coming across the valley carrying the rice they had got from the people to feed the soldiers. It was our job to stop them from getting through.
Some of these guys, had been there for a long while and some of them, I think, had been there way too long.
They did some things that I will not even try to tell you. I am sure they made their Mothers proud when they sent them the ear of a human being to wear around their neck, like a necklace.
I know that I had just got there and there where things that I needed to learn, but what I saw, was not what I wanted to learn. I had only been in country for 3 months when the company got orders to pull out of the Nam, there was a reason they got those orders. There was a price on the head of every man in that company for war crimes against the Vietnamese soldiers. Their leaders put a price of 126 dollars of their money on our heads, which was a year’s pay for their soldiers.
When they pulled out, there were about 30 of us that did not get to go back home with them, we had to stay there. For a while there was no where to send us, we just found us a little village and moved in. We guarded them and they helped us with food and water.
After living around the village for a while we finally got put with another unit, that is when I was put with the 1st. Marines Div.
NOW I WAS THE FIRST OF THE FIRST MARINES
CHAPTER TWO
Morning comes early
Every day we count the time down. There were what we called the short timers; they are getting close to going home. When you get down to the last 20 days hopefully they will not send you back out to the bush. Everyone makes their own little calendar with the days marked on them and they mark each one off as they get closer to the last one.
We get up and hit the road or trail, as you would call it, it can lead us into a whole world of shit. There was a time when we were on Charlie Ridge and walking through the jungles as I did not like to follow trails.
Because of the booby traps,
I would make my own trail sometimes cutting through thick jungle grass as tall as we were. It could take an hour just to move 100 feet, but if the trails were not safe, we had no choose.
Anyway, I came to an old dried up river bed, and had to cross it.
That would prove to be more fun than you could imagine.
There was an old log that had fallen across the rocks, so I thought I would use the log to cross, but as I got to the middle of it......there was gun fire, and I was in the middle of it all, because they were just shooting at me.
I than had no choice but to jump off the log and down into the rocks. When I looked back there was no one there, the others guys had made it back to the side of the river bank and found cover. I was left out there all alone, oh yeah, and the shit really got good when I tried to fire my rifle and found out that the gas cider plug had fallen out and the only way I could change the bullets was to cock the rifle one at a time. So now I am being shot at and pinned down, with no help from the rest of the men.
I just said go for it and started running up those rocks and toward the enemy.
Uphill now… I had no choice anymore, so I started yelling out and going crazy up that hill.
I'll bet those Vietnamese soldiers thought I was nuts.When I got to the top there was a bunker there and the guys that were in it had gone, but they left the machine gun sitting there.
When I looked over the top of the hill I almost shit, because all I could see were roof tops that looked like a village and it was pretty big. The enemy had dug out the side of the mountain and had caves everywhere in it. Then they built these roofs out of bamboo to hide the big holes in the side of the mountain so that the spotter planes could not spot them.
The other side of Charlie Ridge was in Cambodia
For the next three days we just stayed there and made sure the enemy did not come back. It turned out to be what looked like a resting place for them to get food and supplies, but most of all much needed medical help. We checked out everything there was, I found a lot of T&T about 200 pounds worth and two cans of sardines, so I thought, they were two cans that were now bombs that I had been carrying around crawling through those tunnels. They claim that over 30,000 Vietnamese soldiers could stay there at one time. I got a chance to go in some tunnels and I found old rifles, like a M1 carbine from World War Two. And some Russian rifles as well. I had five all together.
After three days of rest
It was time to get back to work.
We had 12 miles down the mountain to travel.
It was time to blow up the top of this mountain and close it off to everything, man or beast, we had plans for it. They had sent us some barrels with some of the worst chemicals you could have imagined. This stuff was so bad that it would kill anything in a 10 mile radius around where it was set off, and nothing, I mean nothing would grow there for 10 years, plants or animals. We had to set these off by hand now, there was no high-tech junk back then, this meant that someone had to stay there and set them off.
Guess who just had to raise his hand? Another chance to die is the way I saw it.
Two others and I choose to do this, so we let all the rest get down the hill before we set the bombs off.
This was the beginning of the end.
Now all we had to do was run like hell was on our tail…
We only had 12 miles down the side of the mountain to go, so we got down about 1 mile then set everything off, now it was time to go, running our asses off, down we went.
After about three miles we knew that it was too late for us, there was no way that we would not have to breath in some of the gas, we just kept running as fast and hard as we could. There were times when I didn’t think I was running any more just falling and rolling down the hill. It had rained some the night before so there were places where it was too wet to stand, so we just kind of sat and slipped down the wet spots. I guess we had gotten far enough ahead of the worst part and managed to keep ahead of it.
I’m still alive, maybe screwed up, but alive.
(Not funny)
We had made it down to the bottom of the hill and we were still alive and kicking, the doc, checked us out and said it was ok for us to just keep going, if we had any problems, let him know, you don’t want to know what kind of problems he told us to watch out for.
Vietnam was a lovely place at one time, war can and does change all that, Think of what it would look like here if we had a war.
Where would the beauty
Go?
You do not see your own beauty till you see what is not, War can change things like people and countries, it is bad, but we do not stop, why is that, I am 62 now and still do not understand why we must kill each other.
CHAPTER THREE
Out for another walk again today,
Come and join me as I take you down the trails of War in Vietnam. It is early morning and everyone has tried to get some much needed rest. Today we start a long walk through the valley and it will not be a good one.
Little did we know just how bad it would be?
Though I walk through the valley of death
I will fear no evil
For I am the meanest MF in the valley!!!!
Today I will take you through this valley with myself and the whole company. We were to be the lead squad to move in and start this long walk. As I said earlier, I was the point man, and I did not like to follow anyone, this is just me I guest, some of us were born to be followers, and some born to be leaders.
I Am a leader and have been a leader all my life, I felt, that I just needed to be in front,
I thought that if someone just had to die, then I would put myself first. Maybe I did go there to die, it is what I believed would be the best thing for me. I had already talked with my mother about some of the feelings I was having and she said I needed to become a priest and give my life to God, I did think about it for about two minutes.
Not for me, I love God and trust in him, I do believe that he has protected me throughout all these years, but I think he had other plans for me. I have helped a lot of people in my life and I have given way more then I have received, yet I don’t regret a minute of my life, just don’t like some of it.
We were called “Grunts” it was because we were the ground troops.
We lived in the blood and guts of others before us.
Ok, here we go. There was our radio man, who was married and only had 21 days left in country and they would not send him back to the rear on a chopper, so that meant that he would have to hump-it with the rest of us through the valley, there was but one problem for him.
The radio man would have to use what is called a whip antenna on the radio, because of all the tall grass. It was called elephant grass because it was so tall.
We had to think of something, so here I go again, putting my hand up, not wanting to miss that shot at dying again, I guess I would never learn. I had been training some kid, (yeah, listen to me, I am 18 now guys) to take my place on point, so I thought that I might could let him do the thing.
I put another soldier I thought was ok with him to help him out, and then I took the radio on my back and let the radio man go.
Now I was the target for the snipers.
With that antenna on the radio, it was like a big sign. Here I am, shoot me, lol, off we go into the tall grass, you could not get over 10 feet away from someone because you would not be able to see them anymore. We were doing pretty good I thought and it looked like everything would be ok, the kid up in front was doing well. I was walking behind the squad leader and was not even thinking much about what was going on up there.
When I realized that he had stopped in front of me. Now, I didn't think much of all this and maybe I should have, it would have made a big difference in our lives, both of our lives. He was down on one knee when I got to him, tying a boot, so I stopped and leaned forward to pull that damn radio up on my back,
That thing was heavy and you needed to keep it tight up on your back.
So now, there he was on the ground and I was about three or four feet behind him,
Pulling my radio up when the whip came down and at that point and time there was this loud nothing!
The first thing I knew was that I was about 20 or more feet from where I had been. I was lying in a hole full of bad water, water that had been there for a long time, full of all kinds of shit. Laying there I felt something warm running down my neck and I put my hand there to see what I could feel. When I looked at my hand it was covered with blood, MY BLOOD, and I just thought it might be my throat that was cut open, all I knew at that time was to hold my hand there as tight as I could till help came. The first one that got to me was the boy that I was carrying the radio for. He just stepped right in there trying to do what he could for me.
He yelled for a corpsman
(Military doc.)
When the first one got to me, I told him that I did not know where the squad leader was, please go find him, I think he got the worst of it, I was not sure of anything at that point and time, I just knew it was the right thing for me to say, I knew that I was still alive, him I didn't know about. So the corpsman went on, then the next one got to me and when he looked at me he f**king froze up, I mean froze like he couldn't do or say anything, just stood there mouth wide open, in shock. So now here I am really starting to bleed real bad and I think I was in some kind of shock or just screwed up. I could feel the warm blood, and the thought of my throat being cut open wasn’t that great.
The boy or maybe I should say the young man (the radio man) stayed with me, trying his damnedest to stop the bleeding, but he could not.
He put 21 bandages around my head, hoping that he could help me, that’s what was in his heart, I could see it in his eyes that he was hurt, and wanted only to be there for me at this point. He would not leave me.
Finally some of the others came to help. They carried me up to the top of that hole I was in and laid me down up there. I think someone gave me a shot of something, or I was feeling the weakness of losing so much blood, not sure what was happening to me, yet I was still there with the living. I was sitting up as I tried to look around and I saw them carrying the squad leader now.
They were carrying him and then, they hit another mine. These were what we called box mines that were buried in the ground. They were little boxes that had all, and anything that they could find to put in them like nails, glass, and more, even human shit, yes shit, just to make it worst. Well when they hit that one there were about three more men hurt.
I was just sitting there when one of the men landed in my lap. Like wow, there I was now looking at his leg and wondering why I couldn’t tell his foot from his boot, they were one, just so messed up, I just tried to get the boot off. He was a friend of mine and when we got home I was going to meet his folks in Texas.
That never happened, I did write to his parents and tell them what happen and let them know that I would have loved to have meet them, under better conditions, but not then. Anyway all I knew was someone garbed me and told me that I was in no shape to help anyone, just to lay there. I could hear the choppers coming now, and then I was being put on one of them. My friend the radio man was there again with me, my head was on his lap, and when we got to the hospital and the corpsman came on the chopper to get us off, they thought that he was bleeding all around his belly,
He told them,
It was my blood
So they took me into the ER, I was not sure what was going on, yet I could still hear. It was kind of weird that I could not see, yet hear. It was like being out of my body and looking down into the crowd of people, looking over “my body”. I thought I might be dead, or close to it.
Like I said, I was just laying there when the nurse started taking off the bandages and she said,
Where is his ear???
A Doctor stopped her and I could hear him getting on her ass about talking like that, he said sometimes the patients could still hear, so they didn’t say anything that would cause someone to go into shock.
Well anyway,
Like yes hello,
Where was my ear?
It had been ripped almost off and was just hanging there.
The blood was pumping out of my ear drum every time my heart would beat; I lost over 4 pints of blood. They had me in there for half a day trying to put me back in one piece. You see the metal from the box mine had cut my ear almost off and had cut into my chin and face leaving holes that had to be graphed. The Doc. told me then that if I lived to be 50, the inside of my body would be like a 70 or 80 year old person.
Well I have been there for some time now. Trust me.
Anyway, it was 4 days before they would allow me look at myself in a mirror, they did not want me to go into shock not being able to see my face, it was all bandaged up and stayed that way for 4 or 5 days, then they started to slowly take it off and show me.
Yes I was afraid of what I would see, all I had going for me was my looks, and did not want to lose that.
I guess I was lucky, because it didn’t look as bad as I thought it might. It was rough and there was a lot of cleaning to do now. There was this nurse that came in every day and worked with me to get it back all cleaned up and helped me to get out all the little pieces of strap metal that was still in there. I was in intensive care for 11 days. I was the lucky one here, my squad leader had lose an eye and both legs and his right arm, but they have taken good care of him and he walks like you.
I was shipped to a hospital to recover and wait orders to go home.
For the next month or so, I was just moved around till I was sent home to try and start my life over. I did get the Purple Heart for being wounded in action.
I had to have 173 stitches in the left side of my face and had to have skin graphed to my chin as well
Yes I really was the lucky one. I could have come home looking like the monster I had become.
Death is the price so many had to pay for your freedom to do, to live, to say what you want to, think about who those people were that gave their lives for you. They were people just like me, with a dream and a need. When we went to war, we did not judge you or care what you wanted to do with your life, we just went and fought for your rights to exist.
So the next time you see someone like me or anyone, think about just what we had to do to get where we are.
I stand proud of all the men and women that have given their lives for freedom.
STAND
WITH
ME
PLEASE!
I AM EX MARINE CORP SGT. B. J. CHIASSON
AND
I SALUTE YOU SOLDIER.
CHAPTER FOUR
101st Airborne
When I left the hospital on Monkey Mountain, I was sent down to a place called Nha Trang in South Vietnam, the Deep South. What was going to happen now was all because the Army thought that I was in the Army, but I was not, I was a Marine that had been sent there because there was no more room at the Navy evacuate for me. That is when I got lost from the paper work and lost everything. I had to go where they told me to, and I was told that I would be going home, just had to wait for a ride. I was transported by cargo plane; it took three different planes to get me there from the middle of the Nam where I was wounded.
But now I am in Army Country. So I was a lost soldier. I did not belong there and I knew it, but I was just following orders and when you are a soldier, it does not matter what uniform the officer is wearing, you best respect that officer, and I was a soldier. I learned that is was not for me to question, it was for me to obey those orders.
When I landed I was taken to this place where there was nothing but sheds build out of plywood and tin, the bunks were lined up back to back, there was not any room to sit between them because the sheds were full of wounded men laying in those bunks, yes wounded soldiers that were screaming from the pain that they have encounter from battle.
These men had lost body parts, like legs and arms. Some, I am sure did not ever leave that damn hell hole that they were in, it was so sickening to see this, so like what the hell was going on here why were the soldiers being treated like this? What and who was in charge here. What I saw was not in any way called for, this was not right. How could one human being treat another human being like that, these men were on the front lines fighting for what was right in the eyes of this country that we live in, they were fighting and dying for your freedom yet they suffered more then you can ever image in your lifetime.
There were no words to describe what I was feeling at that moment in my life I was so angry, so full of just wanting to know why is this even happened here?
I was there and I could not leave. I had to try to sleep there, but I wanted more to try to understand why this was? These men were soldiers, that were door gunners and crew chiefs and pilots that had been shoot down over the jungles in Vietnam. These men were there when I needed them to be there for me, they were my saviors and many others like myself, we counted on them to be there when we called out. It was their duty as soldiers to protect us, but who in the hell was protecting them now.
They had given the ultimate sacrifice that one human being could give to another, their lives.
What more could a soldier do?
To die in battle is an honor, but to suffer like they had to was wrong and I must tell the world of what I saw. At night I would go down to the movie place and see what was going on, well what I found was not what I needed to see, the soldiers that could walk because they were the ones that were just trying to get out, so they used any excuse to get out, They were stealing the meds from the wounded and selling them at the movie house. That is why the wounded were screaming, because they had no meds left to take.
Here I am 18 years old and I have to live with this, knowing that there is nothing that I could have done to make it better for them, I was angry and could not do anything to help them, why was that?
I do not and will never understand what would turn a man into what I saw there, it was money, money for the drugs, it did not matter that their brothers were lying in those bunks suffering and dying every damn minute. There was no way I could rest there. I asked about seeing a Doctor, I wanted out, I did not care if I had to go back out in the bush, I just wanted out of there. The Doc only came there once a week, so what does that tell you. Those men just laid there in their blood and all that screaming, I will never forget those faces.
They were my brothers in battle they were Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division,
I Statue You Soldiers.
A moment of silence for those that did not come Home...
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FACES
Stepping away from this as we move on, I still had to travel back to my outfit. It took me three days as I hitched north by cargo planes. When I got back to the hill where my outfit was they would not let me in the gate, because I was wearing an army uniform, it was all I had; they cut mine off at the hospital. When they finally let me in, I was sent to the infirmary to be checked out, I guess it was a good thing because the wounds that I had received were infected and I was put in bed again.
I was up and getting back on my feet now and things were ok for the most part, but I still was not going home. I was there for a few days, then I was sent out to Hill 55 and all I had to do was nothing, because my time was coming to an end there they just let me stay there instead of sending me home.
I had some time to think about going home now, not sure if I even wanted to go home, because I was home now, I was in the hell that we had created.
I am not sure why I had this feeling as I would sit out on one the tanks in the evening and look over toward the Mountains, it was beautiful there sometimes when you stopped looking at all the bodies and blood all over everything you touched.
There was never a day that I can remember that I did not see someone’s blood. Be it the enemies’ or my own brothers’ in battle. That is what wars do; they created bodies, dead bodies. Do you know why they created body bags? To put dead soldiers in them to ship home in cargo containers, like meat, the only difference was that they did not hang them up; they just piled them up in those same containers that are now shipping your junk that you buy from the same enemy that we were fighting then. You have no idea what kind of enemy we faced there. They were cruel and unjust, yet we were worst I do believe. I was given the time to just sit there and try to understand what had happened here.
I was afraid to come home, because I knew what was going on here, you see we were soldiers doing what soldiers do, we play war games. We killed people just like you.
Every day you sit and enjoy your life, your family and job. You take summers off, you live in a free world where anything is possible if you know how to get what you want out of life, you are free today, just because there were men, soldiers that were there at the front lines to protect you and yours, they were the brave, they were the heroes.
It is hard to stand up and say that I am proud of a nation that treated their young men the way they did here.
Is it in myself to forgive myself for what I have done, when will I get to fine some kind of peace in my head.
When will I stop hearing those screams in the night, how will I ever stop seeing those faces of the 101. Time was passing slowly now for me, because I think that I was in some kind of shock because I had become a killer what kind of life could I have at home. Everything that I knew had turn to shit, I had to return to a world that did not want me here, and to you I am no better than that enemy back then.
When will I be free?
There were some men that I had met over there and we had spend a lot of time together, I can remember one of them more so, because I was asked to do something I had never done before.
During the time I was in the hospital and traveling all over the Nam, they were killed by the enemy. I did not have a chance to say goodbye. I was not there; I could not watch their backs. I can still see his face, he was a man from the mountains of Wyoming, and we called him the mountain man. He was short, but firm. He was like a mountain himself, rough and tough, never gave a shit about nothing, he was free in his heart, he was my friend and I did not get to say goodbye.
Now I had to follow orders because I was a soldier.
I had to do something I could have easily walked the hell away from.
It took me a day to drive there by Jeep, I was not sure where I was going but I knew what my duty was. I was getting really to step into a world that I had never seen this close. I was to see death at first hand, right up close in my face. I can feel the pressure building in my heart as I write these words and feel where I will have to go to bring this to you; I have to see his face again just like that day when I was asked by my country to do
Something for a brother, a soldier that I had stood in battle with, whom I had trusted with my life.
A man that I had shared a time in history, a human being that gave the only thing that he had to give to you, he gave his life for your freedom.
Where does it say that freedom come for free? Someone has to pay the piper.
And death wants its share too. I had seen many faces of the dead, but what I was about to see, I did not know could be. When I arrived to my destiny I could feel my heart racing, I was now standing behind one of those damn containers full of body bags... I could not breathe; I knew what was inside those doors. But I did not expect this.
… I am sorry, I am sitting here listen to amazing grace as I write, and it brings peace to my heart and makes this a whole lot more enduring...
The doors were open now; I could see the bodies piled up one on top of another. The Men, The Soldiers, the bodies of sons and fathers and brothers were piled up like meat being shipped to market. They were not laid out with flags on them; they were not cleaned and dressed in new uniforms to be sent home to the Mothers and the fathers and the brothers and sisters and to their children, no they were not treated with any kind of respect.
They were nothing but bodies to these people they did not care how they were sent home. It was not their job to care because they were too damn busy making money of the shipping and handling of the bodies.
When the corpsman found the bag he was looking for he called me over there.
I had been given the duty of having to identify my friends body for them to tag him to be shipped home to mountains of Wyoming, I can see him sitting up on top of the highest Mountain there, watching over the land that he had died to protect from any and all enemies of the flag of the Untied States of America. He had given his best. As I look upon his face, I see where the bullet had hit him.
I was looking into his eyes; I could feel the hurt, the anger, the madness of what I was looking at. My friend, my brother, A Soldier, A Man, A young boy at the age of 18 had died for what? You’re Freedom!
Do you think that your life is worth his to me, it is not, he was my brother in battle he protected me when I was asleep, he protect me when I had to weep, because he was a young man that had to do what he thought was right he stood up to fight, to fight for your right to live free in a country that did not even want us back here, because we had become the killers that they trained us to become, we were now their enemy.
The Men, the soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War did not get the return home parade, they did not get a hero’s welcome, they did not get one thanks from anyone.
What we got was hatred and judgment against us for war crimes against the same enemy that cut the throws of every other man at night in a base camp.
We are talking about an enemy that would send a child with a bomb to give to you just to blow your ass up; he did not care about the child’s life, the same enemy that would shoot their own people for rice, the same enemy that killed thousands of soldiers that were fighting for their rights to live here in America free from all the Tears of war. Wars kill people just like you.
I am sorry that I am angry because now I am looking into the face of death, when I came up for air, all I wanted to do at that point in time was kick someone’s ass for this.
They did not clean his face, the blood was still there, he was being shipped home like that, there was no respect for their bodies.
They did not come home with flags draping over them like you see on TV. They were shipped like meat going to the market, these men were your brothers, these men where your fathers, these men were your sons, these men were your husbands, these men were soldiers that died for the right for you, to stand here today and say,
“I am an American.”
THOSE ARE THE HEROES; THEY WERE YOUR KNIGHTS IN SHINING ARMOR. THEY WERE THE MEN OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA.
THEY WERE MY BROTHERS IN BATTLE.
They are Soldiers.
I have had this story buried in my head since I was 18 years old, I am now 63 sitting in my rocking chair telling my tales of time passed, yet I can remember them as they were yesterday. The faces and places I will never forget, it was only part of a lifetime that only took a year out of my life.
yet I can never forget my fight, Today I still fight for my freedom, My freedom to choose my way of life, I am now a Transgender person that lives with the memory of what I did as a man.
I am in no way proud of what I had to do for you.
Don’t get me wrong and make the mistake and think that I was not proud to be a Soldier, what I was not proud of is what I had to do to become a man. Today I still fight for my freedom and for the freedom of many like myself. Yes, we are different, but when I was fighting for your freedom I was still the same as I am now.
Too all the families that lost a love one over there, I salute them for you because I can I am an Ex-Marine Sgt. Today my life is in some kind of transformation. I am growing old and something inside me wants to sit in my rocking chair and tell my stories of times gone by.
I am not sure why this is what I feel? One day maybe I will know why I stood upon a hill in Vietnam to light up the night, to show my human side of myself to the enemy, because I needed to be the target to save a four man killer team that had been spotted and was being fired on, until I stood on top of that hill and let my light shine over them to protect them.
I challenged a 50 caliber machine gun and drew fire to myself to give them a chance to get out of range.
As the bullets passed my head I could hear what they said.
I could see the dust at my feet.
My heart did not skip a beat.
I did not fear no evil. What I felt was a light that was shining on me.
I was in his hands
So that I may write today! What I write truly comes from my heart.
Thank You.
SOUTHERN ACTS PRESENTS
"THE MISFORTUNES"
WRITTEN BY BOBBIE JEAN CHIASSON
COPYRIGHTS © 2013 SOUTHERN ACTS
You can buy this book and others that I have written here.
http://astore.amazon.com/intellectual_creations-20/search?node=2&keywords=Bobbie+Jean+Chiasson&x=14&y=8&preview=
THIS IS JUST A MONTH IN MY LIFE THAT I GAVE FOR YOU, YET YOU HAVE GIVEN ME NOTHING BUT SHIT IN RETURN, WHY IS THAT MAYBE YOU SHOULD READ ABOUT TRANSGENDERS AND YOU WILL FIND THAT I HAVE NO CHOICE ABOUT THE WAY I AM.
THE
SOLDIER
TRUE STORY
BY
A
VET.
VIET NAM
1968-1969
THE SOLDIER
TO BE A MARINE
IS TO DO OR DIE
Those are the words
They taught us to live and die by
You heard them from the time you woke up till you went to bed
IF YOU WENT TO BED
THIS IS A REAL STORY OF A BOY THAT WENT TO WAR
TO FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM
NOW SET ME FREE TO BE WHAT
I WANT TO BE
INTRODUCTION
HERE I AM 62 YEARS OLD NOW AND STILL WALK THROUGH TIME INTO THE PAST THAT I LIVED LONG AGO. I AM NOT PROUD OF WHAT I HAD TO DO THERE JUST FOR FREEDOM, WHEN I CAME HOME FROM VIETNAM I WAS CALLED A BABY KILLER AND HAD BRICKS THROWN AT ME WHEN I WAS IN UNIFORM. I AM NOT SURE WHAT WE WERE FIGHTING FOR, BUT I STILL DO NOT HAVE MY FREEDOM, BECAUSE YOU HAVE JUDGED ME WHEN YOU DID NOT KNOW ME. AFTER YOU HAVE READ THIS THEN YOU JUDGE ME!
SOUTHERN ACTS PRESENT'S
"THE MISFORTUNES"
WRITTEN BY BOBBIE JEAN CHIASSON
COPYRIGHTS © 2013 SOUTHERN ACTS
CHAPTER ONE
Out for a Daily walk
I’ll walk with you along the trials and through the rice paddies and the jungles of South Vietnam. It was a year that myself and so many others cannot and will never forget, and it doesn’t matter how hard we try to or want to, we cannot forget those times. There are some things that just do not go away.
We were all just a bunch of kids that had some training for a few months, now we were killers looking for the enemy.
Little did we know that the real enemy would be us?
You may wonder why I say this.
It is because we were the ones that were wrong for being there in the first place, they did not want our help because of the way they were, they did not care about their own much less us, we were the enemy there.
These people had lived like this all their lives and nothing there would ever change. It has been that way long before we got there.
They choose to live like rats and fight for everything there was. They were doing it with the French and they were doing it with someone else before that, so it is and will be the only thing they know how to do. We were there just because some rich needed to be richer. And the country need a boost in the job market and it needed people to die to make room.
You may not like this.
There were times when death was all we saw.
That is what wars are for…
People need to die to make room to bring in new life, that is a fact, and it will always have to be. Sorry, but can you just imagine what it would be like to see 45/50 soldiers, either wounded or killed in less than 45 minutes of your life, I have been there.
There are things here that are hurting me to tell, because, I have to remember these things as well as tell them. Sometimes, I find myself lost in deep thought of those times in my old life, and wonder why I needed to make this change. Maybe I felt the need to bury the man that walked through those
Jungles and had to kill for a living.
When I first got to the Nam, I was put with the 26th Marine Div. It was real bad there because we were right at the DMZ and the enemy came at night in full force. There were times when you did not get any sleep, and there were times when you could not leave the hill.
The enemy (Charlie/North Vietnamese)
Had tunnels dug all over the place; you never knew where he would come up from in the ground. At night you could see them coming across the valley carrying the rice they had got from the people to feed the soldiers. It was our job to stop them from getting through.
Some of these guys, had been there for a long while and some of them, I think, had been there way too long.
They did some things that I will not even try to tell you. I am sure they made their Mothers proud when they sent them the ear of a human being to wear around their neck, like a necklace.
I know that I had just got there and there where things that I needed to learn, but what I saw, was not what I wanted to learn. I had only been in country for 3 months when the company got orders to pull out of the Nam, there was a reason they got those orders. There was a price on the head of every man in that company for war crimes against the Vietnamese soldiers. Their leaders put a price of 126 dollars of their money on our heads, which was a year’s pay for their soldiers.
When they pulled out, there were about 30 of us that did not get to go back home with them, we had to stay there. For a while there was no where to send us, we just found us a little village and moved in. We guarded them and they helped us with food and water.
After living around the village for a while we finally got put with another unit, that is when I was put with the 1st. Marines Div.
NOW I WAS THE FIRST OF THE FIRST MARINES
CHAPTER TWO
Morning comes early
Every day we count the time down. There were what we called the short timers; they are getting close to going home. When you get down to the last 20 days hopefully they will not send you back out to the bush. Everyone makes their own little calendar with the days marked on them and they mark each one off as they get closer to the last one.
We get up and hit the road or trail, as you would call it, it can lead us into a whole world of shit. There was a time when we were on Charlie Ridge and walking through the jungles as I did not like to follow trails.
Because of the booby traps,
I would make my own trail sometimes cutting through thick jungle grass as tall as we were. It could take an hour just to move 100 feet, but if the trails were not safe, we had no choose.
Anyway, I came to an old dried up river bed, and had to cross it.
That would prove to be more fun than you could imagine.
There was an old log that had fallen across the rocks, so I thought I would use the log to cross, but as I got to the middle of it......there was gun fire, and I was in the middle of it all, because they were just shooting at me.
I than had no choice but to jump off the log and down into the rocks. When I looked back there was no one there, the others guys had made it back to the side of the river bank and found cover. I was left out there all alone, oh yeah, and the shit really got good when I tried to fire my rifle and found out that the gas cider plug had fallen out and the only way I could change the bullets was to cock the rifle one at a time. So now I am being shot at and pinned down, with no help from the rest of the men.
I just said go for it and started running up those rocks and toward the enemy.
Uphill now… I had no choice anymore, so I started yelling out and going crazy up that hill.
I'll bet those Vietnamese soldiers thought I was nuts.When I got to the top there was a bunker there and the guys that were in it had gone, but they left the machine gun sitting there.
When I looked over the top of the hill I almost shit, because all I could see were roof tops that looked like a village and it was pretty big. The enemy had dug out the side of the mountain and had caves everywhere in it. Then they built these roofs out of bamboo to hide the big holes in the side of the mountain so that the spotter planes could not spot them.
The other side of Charlie Ridge was in Cambodia
For the next three days we just stayed there and made sure the enemy did not come back. It turned out to be what looked like a resting place for them to get food and supplies, but most of all much needed medical help. We checked out everything there was, I found a lot of T&T about 200 pounds worth and two cans of sardines, so I thought, they were two cans that were now bombs that I had been carrying around crawling through those tunnels. They claim that over 30,000 Vietnamese soldiers could stay there at one time. I got a chance to go in some tunnels and I found old rifles, like a M1 carbine from World War Two. And some Russian rifles as well. I had five all together.
After three days of rest
It was time to get back to work.
We had 12 miles down the mountain to travel.
It was time to blow up the top of this mountain and close it off to everything, man or beast, we had plans for it. They had sent us some barrels with some of the worst chemicals you could have imagined. This stuff was so bad that it would kill anything in a 10 mile radius around where it was set off, and nothing, I mean nothing would grow there for 10 years, plants or animals. We had to set these off by hand now, there was no high-tech junk back then, this meant that someone had to stay there and set them off.
Guess who just had to raise his hand? Another chance to die is the way I saw it.
Two others and I choose to do this, so we let all the rest get down the hill before we set the bombs off.
This was the beginning of the end.
Now all we had to do was run like hell was on our tail…
We only had 12 miles down the side of the mountain to go, so we got down about 1 mile then set everything off, now it was time to go, running our asses off, down we went.
After about three miles we knew that it was too late for us, there was no way that we would not have to breath in some of the gas, we just kept running as fast and hard as we could. There were times when I didn’t think I was running any more just falling and rolling down the hill. It had rained some the night before so there were places where it was too wet to stand, so we just kind of sat and slipped down the wet spots. I guess we had gotten far enough ahead of the worst part and managed to keep ahead of it.
I’m still alive, maybe screwed up, but alive.
(Not funny)
We had made it down to the bottom of the hill and we were still alive and kicking, the doc, checked us out and said it was ok for us to just keep going, if we had any problems, let him know, you don’t want to know what kind of problems he told us to watch out for.
Vietnam was a lovely place at one time, war can and does change all that, Think of what it would look like here if we had a war.
Where would the beauty
Go?
You do not see your own beauty till you see what is not, War can change things like people and countries, it is bad, but we do not stop, why is that, I am 62 now and still do not understand why we must kill each other.
CHAPTER THREE
Out for another walk again today,
Come and join me as I take you down the trails of War in Vietnam. It is early morning and everyone has tried to get some much needed rest. Today we start a long walk through the valley and it will not be a good one.
Little did we know just how bad it would be?
Though I walk through the valley of death
I will fear no evil
For I am the meanest MF in the valley!!!!
Today I will take you through this valley with myself and the whole company. We were to be the lead squad to move in and start this long walk. As I said earlier, I was the point man, and I did not like to follow anyone, this is just me I guest, some of us were born to be followers, and some born to be leaders.
I Am a leader and have been a leader all my life, I felt, that I just needed to be in front,
I thought that if someone just had to die, then I would put myself first. Maybe I did go there to die, it is what I believed would be the best thing for me. I had already talked with my mother about some of the feelings I was having and she said I needed to become a priest and give my life to God, I did think about it for about two minutes.
Not for me, I love God and trust in him, I do believe that he has protected me throughout all these years, but I think he had other plans for me. I have helped a lot of people in my life and I have given way more then I have received, yet I don’t regret a minute of my life, just don’t like some of it.
We were called “Grunts” it was because we were the ground troops.
We lived in the blood and guts of others before us.
Ok, here we go. There was our radio man, who was married and only had 21 days left in country and they would not send him back to the rear on a chopper, so that meant that he would have to hump-it with the rest of us through the valley, there was but one problem for him.
The radio man would have to use what is called a whip antenna on the radio, because of all the tall grass. It was called elephant grass because it was so tall.
We had to think of something, so here I go again, putting my hand up, not wanting to miss that shot at dying again, I guess I would never learn. I had been training some kid, (yeah, listen to me, I am 18 now guys) to take my place on point, so I thought that I might could let him do the thing.
I put another soldier I thought was ok with him to help him out, and then I took the radio on my back and let the radio man go.
Now I was the target for the snipers.
With that antenna on the radio, it was like a big sign. Here I am, shoot me, lol, off we go into the tall grass, you could not get over 10 feet away from someone because you would not be able to see them anymore. We were doing pretty good I thought and it looked like everything would be ok, the kid up in front was doing well. I was walking behind the squad leader and was not even thinking much about what was going on up there.
When I realized that he had stopped in front of me. Now, I didn't think much of all this and maybe I should have, it would have made a big difference in our lives, both of our lives. He was down on one knee when I got to him, tying a boot, so I stopped and leaned forward to pull that damn radio up on my back,
That thing was heavy and you needed to keep it tight up on your back.
So now, there he was on the ground and I was about three or four feet behind him,
Pulling my radio up when the whip came down and at that point and time there was this loud nothing!
The first thing I knew was that I was about 20 or more feet from where I had been. I was lying in a hole full of bad water, water that had been there for a long time, full of all kinds of shit. Laying there I felt something warm running down my neck and I put my hand there to see what I could feel. When I looked at my hand it was covered with blood, MY BLOOD, and I just thought it might be my throat that was cut open, all I knew at that time was to hold my hand there as tight as I could till help came. The first one that got to me was the boy that I was carrying the radio for. He just stepped right in there trying to do what he could for me.
He yelled for a corpsman
(Military doc.)
When the first one got to me, I told him that I did not know where the squad leader was, please go find him, I think he got the worst of it, I was not sure of anything at that point and time, I just knew it was the right thing for me to say, I knew that I was still alive, him I didn't know about. So the corpsman went on, then the next one got to me and when he looked at me he f**king froze up, I mean froze like he couldn't do or say anything, just stood there mouth wide open, in shock. So now here I am really starting to bleed real bad and I think I was in some kind of shock or just screwed up. I could feel the warm blood, and the thought of my throat being cut open wasn’t that great.
The boy or maybe I should say the young man (the radio man) stayed with me, trying his damnedest to stop the bleeding, but he could not.
He put 21 bandages around my head, hoping that he could help me, that’s what was in his heart, I could see it in his eyes that he was hurt, and wanted only to be there for me at this point. He would not leave me.
Finally some of the others came to help. They carried me up to the top of that hole I was in and laid me down up there. I think someone gave me a shot of something, or I was feeling the weakness of losing so much blood, not sure what was happening to me, yet I was still there with the living. I was sitting up as I tried to look around and I saw them carrying the squad leader now.
They were carrying him and then, they hit another mine. These were what we called box mines that were buried in the ground. They were little boxes that had all, and anything that they could find to put in them like nails, glass, and more, even human shit, yes shit, just to make it worst. Well when they hit that one there were about three more men hurt.
I was just sitting there when one of the men landed in my lap. Like wow, there I was now looking at his leg and wondering why I couldn’t tell his foot from his boot, they were one, just so messed up, I just tried to get the boot off. He was a friend of mine and when we got home I was going to meet his folks in Texas.
That never happened, I did write to his parents and tell them what happen and let them know that I would have loved to have meet them, under better conditions, but not then. Anyway all I knew was someone garbed me and told me that I was in no shape to help anyone, just to lay there. I could hear the choppers coming now, and then I was being put on one of them. My friend the radio man was there again with me, my head was on his lap, and when we got to the hospital and the corpsman came on the chopper to get us off, they thought that he was bleeding all around his belly,
He told them,
It was my blood
So they took me into the ER, I was not sure what was going on, yet I could still hear. It was kind of weird that I could not see, yet hear. It was like being out of my body and looking down into the crowd of people, looking over “my body”. I thought I might be dead, or close to it.
Like I said, I was just laying there when the nurse started taking off the bandages and she said,
Where is his ear???
A Doctor stopped her and I could hear him getting on her ass about talking like that, he said sometimes the patients could still hear, so they didn’t say anything that would cause someone to go into shock.
Well anyway,
Like yes hello,
Where was my ear?
It had been ripped almost off and was just hanging there.
The blood was pumping out of my ear drum every time my heart would beat; I lost over 4 pints of blood. They had me in there for half a day trying to put me back in one piece. You see the metal from the box mine had cut my ear almost off and had cut into my chin and face leaving holes that had to be graphed. The Doc. told me then that if I lived to be 50, the inside of my body would be like a 70 or 80 year old person.
Well I have been there for some time now. Trust me.
Anyway, it was 4 days before they would allow me look at myself in a mirror, they did not want me to go into shock not being able to see my face, it was all bandaged up and stayed that way for 4 or 5 days, then they started to slowly take it off and show me.
Yes I was afraid of what I would see, all I had going for me was my looks, and did not want to lose that.
I guess I was lucky, because it didn’t look as bad as I thought it might. It was rough and there was a lot of cleaning to do now. There was this nurse that came in every day and worked with me to get it back all cleaned up and helped me to get out all the little pieces of strap metal that was still in there. I was in intensive care for 11 days. I was the lucky one here, my squad leader had lose an eye and both legs and his right arm, but they have taken good care of him and he walks like you.
I was shipped to a hospital to recover and wait orders to go home.
For the next month or so, I was just moved around till I was sent home to try and start my life over. I did get the Purple Heart for being wounded in action.
I had to have 173 stitches in the left side of my face and had to have skin graphed to my chin as well
Yes I really was the lucky one. I could have come home looking like the monster I had become.
Death is the price so many had to pay for your freedom to do, to live, to say what you want to, think about who those people were that gave their lives for you. They were people just like me, with a dream and a need. When we went to war, we did not judge you or care what you wanted to do with your life, we just went and fought for your rights to exist.
So the next time you see someone like me or anyone, think about just what we had to do to get where we are.
I stand proud of all the men and women that have given their lives for freedom.
STAND
WITH
ME
PLEASE!
I AM EX MARINE CORP SGT. B. J. CHIASSON
AND
I SALUTE YOU SOLDIER.
CHAPTER FOUR
101st Airborne
When I left the hospital on Monkey Mountain, I was sent down to a place called Nha Trang in South Vietnam, the Deep South. What was going to happen now was all because the Army thought that I was in the Army, but I was not, I was a Marine that had been sent there because there was no more room at the Navy evacuate for me. That is when I got lost from the paper work and lost everything. I had to go where they told me to, and I was told that I would be going home, just had to wait for a ride. I was transported by cargo plane; it took three different planes to get me there from the middle of the Nam where I was wounded.
But now I am in Army Country. So I was a lost soldier. I did not belong there and I knew it, but I was just following orders and when you are a soldier, it does not matter what uniform the officer is wearing, you best respect that officer, and I was a soldier. I learned that is was not for me to question, it was for me to obey those orders.
When I landed I was taken to this place where there was nothing but sheds build out of plywood and tin, the bunks were lined up back to back, there was not any room to sit between them because the sheds were full of wounded men laying in those bunks, yes wounded soldiers that were screaming from the pain that they have encounter from battle.
These men had lost body parts, like legs and arms. Some, I am sure did not ever leave that damn hell hole that they were in, it was so sickening to see this, so like what the hell was going on here why were the soldiers being treated like this? What and who was in charge here. What I saw was not in any way called for, this was not right. How could one human being treat another human being like that, these men were on the front lines fighting for what was right in the eyes of this country that we live in, they were fighting and dying for your freedom yet they suffered more then you can ever image in your lifetime.
There were no words to describe what I was feeling at that moment in my life I was so angry, so full of just wanting to know why is this even happened here?
I was there and I could not leave. I had to try to sleep there, but I wanted more to try to understand why this was? These men were soldiers, that were door gunners and crew chiefs and pilots that had been shoot down over the jungles in Vietnam. These men were there when I needed them to be there for me, they were my saviors and many others like myself, we counted on them to be there when we called out. It was their duty as soldiers to protect us, but who in the hell was protecting them now.
They had given the ultimate sacrifice that one human being could give to another, their lives.
What more could a soldier do?
To die in battle is an honor, but to suffer like they had to was wrong and I must tell the world of what I saw. At night I would go down to the movie place and see what was going on, well what I found was not what I needed to see, the soldiers that could walk because they were the ones that were just trying to get out, so they used any excuse to get out, They were stealing the meds from the wounded and selling them at the movie house. That is why the wounded were screaming, because they had no meds left to take.
Here I am 18 years old and I have to live with this, knowing that there is nothing that I could have done to make it better for them, I was angry and could not do anything to help them, why was that?
I do not and will never understand what would turn a man into what I saw there, it was money, money for the drugs, it did not matter that their brothers were lying in those bunks suffering and dying every damn minute. There was no way I could rest there. I asked about seeing a Doctor, I wanted out, I did not care if I had to go back out in the bush, I just wanted out of there. The Doc only came there once a week, so what does that tell you. Those men just laid there in their blood and all that screaming, I will never forget those faces.
They were my brothers in battle they were Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division,
I Statue You Soldiers.
A moment of silence for those that did not come Home...
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FACES
Stepping away from this as we move on, I still had to travel back to my outfit. It took me three days as I hitched north by cargo planes. When I got back to the hill where my outfit was they would not let me in the gate, because I was wearing an army uniform, it was all I had; they cut mine off at the hospital. When they finally let me in, I was sent to the infirmary to be checked out, I guess it was a good thing because the wounds that I had received were infected and I was put in bed again.
I was up and getting back on my feet now and things were ok for the most part, but I still was not going home. I was there for a few days, then I was sent out to Hill 55 and all I had to do was nothing, because my time was coming to an end there they just let me stay there instead of sending me home.
I had some time to think about going home now, not sure if I even wanted to go home, because I was home now, I was in the hell that we had created.
I am not sure why I had this feeling as I would sit out on one the tanks in the evening and look over toward the Mountains, it was beautiful there sometimes when you stopped looking at all the bodies and blood all over everything you touched.
There was never a day that I can remember that I did not see someone’s blood. Be it the enemies’ or my own brothers’ in battle. That is what wars do; they created bodies, dead bodies. Do you know why they created body bags? To put dead soldiers in them to ship home in cargo containers, like meat, the only difference was that they did not hang them up; they just piled them up in those same containers that are now shipping your junk that you buy from the same enemy that we were fighting then. You have no idea what kind of enemy we faced there. They were cruel and unjust, yet we were worst I do believe. I was given the time to just sit there and try to understand what had happened here.
I was afraid to come home, because I knew what was going on here, you see we were soldiers doing what soldiers do, we play war games. We killed people just like you.
Every day you sit and enjoy your life, your family and job. You take summers off, you live in a free world where anything is possible if you know how to get what you want out of life, you are free today, just because there were men, soldiers that were there at the front lines to protect you and yours, they were the brave, they were the heroes.
It is hard to stand up and say that I am proud of a nation that treated their young men the way they did here.
Is it in myself to forgive myself for what I have done, when will I get to fine some kind of peace in my head.
When will I stop hearing those screams in the night, how will I ever stop seeing those faces of the 101. Time was passing slowly now for me, because I think that I was in some kind of shock because I had become a killer what kind of life could I have at home. Everything that I knew had turn to shit, I had to return to a world that did not want me here, and to you I am no better than that enemy back then.
When will I be free?
There were some men that I had met over there and we had spend a lot of time together, I can remember one of them more so, because I was asked to do something I had never done before.
During the time I was in the hospital and traveling all over the Nam, they were killed by the enemy. I did not have a chance to say goodbye. I was not there; I could not watch their backs. I can still see his face, he was a man from the mountains of Wyoming, and we called him the mountain man. He was short, but firm. He was like a mountain himself, rough and tough, never gave a shit about nothing, he was free in his heart, he was my friend and I did not get to say goodbye.
Now I had to follow orders because I was a soldier.
I had to do something I could have easily walked the hell away from.
It took me a day to drive there by Jeep, I was not sure where I was going but I knew what my duty was. I was getting really to step into a world that I had never seen this close. I was to see death at first hand, right up close in my face. I can feel the pressure building in my heart as I write these words and feel where I will have to go to bring this to you; I have to see his face again just like that day when I was asked by my country to do
Something for a brother, a soldier that I had stood in battle with, whom I had trusted with my life.
A man that I had shared a time in history, a human being that gave the only thing that he had to give to you, he gave his life for your freedom.
Where does it say that freedom come for free? Someone has to pay the piper.
And death wants its share too. I had seen many faces of the dead, but what I was about to see, I did not know could be. When I arrived to my destiny I could feel my heart racing, I was now standing behind one of those damn containers full of body bags... I could not breathe; I knew what was inside those doors. But I did not expect this.
… I am sorry, I am sitting here listen to amazing grace as I write, and it brings peace to my heart and makes this a whole lot more enduring...
The doors were open now; I could see the bodies piled up one on top of another. The Men, The Soldiers, the bodies of sons and fathers and brothers were piled up like meat being shipped to market. They were not laid out with flags on them; they were not cleaned and dressed in new uniforms to be sent home to the Mothers and the fathers and the brothers and sisters and to their children, no they were not treated with any kind of respect.
They were nothing but bodies to these people they did not care how they were sent home. It was not their job to care because they were too damn busy making money of the shipping and handling of the bodies.
When the corpsman found the bag he was looking for he called me over there.
I had been given the duty of having to identify my friends body for them to tag him to be shipped home to mountains of Wyoming, I can see him sitting up on top of the highest Mountain there, watching over the land that he had died to protect from any and all enemies of the flag of the Untied States of America. He had given his best. As I look upon his face, I see where the bullet had hit him.
I was looking into his eyes; I could feel the hurt, the anger, the madness of what I was looking at. My friend, my brother, A Soldier, A Man, A young boy at the age of 18 had died for what? You’re Freedom!
Do you think that your life is worth his to me, it is not, he was my brother in battle he protected me when I was asleep, he protect me when I had to weep, because he was a young man that had to do what he thought was right he stood up to fight, to fight for your right to live free in a country that did not even want us back here, because we had become the killers that they trained us to become, we were now their enemy.
The Men, the soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War did not get the return home parade, they did not get a hero’s welcome, they did not get one thanks from anyone.
What we got was hatred and judgment against us for war crimes against the same enemy that cut the throws of every other man at night in a base camp.
We are talking about an enemy that would send a child with a bomb to give to you just to blow your ass up; he did not care about the child’s life, the same enemy that would shoot their own people for rice, the same enemy that killed thousands of soldiers that were fighting for their rights to live here in America free from all the Tears of war. Wars kill people just like you.
I am sorry that I am angry because now I am looking into the face of death, when I came up for air, all I wanted to do at that point in time was kick someone’s ass for this.
They did not clean his face, the blood was still there, he was being shipped home like that, there was no respect for their bodies.
They did not come home with flags draping over them like you see on TV. They were shipped like meat going to the market, these men were your brothers, these men where your fathers, these men were your sons, these men were your husbands, these men were soldiers that died for the right for you, to stand here today and say,
“I am an American.”
THOSE ARE THE HEROES; THEY WERE YOUR KNIGHTS IN SHINING ARMOR. THEY WERE THE MEN OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA.
THEY WERE MY BROTHERS IN BATTLE.
They are Soldiers.
I have had this story buried in my head since I was 18 years old, I am now 63 sitting in my rocking chair telling my tales of time passed, yet I can remember them as they were yesterday. The faces and places I will never forget, it was only part of a lifetime that only took a year out of my life.
yet I can never forget my fight, Today I still fight for my freedom, My freedom to choose my way of life, I am now a Transgender person that lives with the memory of what I did as a man.
I am in no way proud of what I had to do for you.
Don’t get me wrong and make the mistake and think that I was not proud to be a Soldier, what I was not proud of is what I had to do to become a man. Today I still fight for my freedom and for the freedom of many like myself. Yes, we are different, but when I was fighting for your freedom I was still the same as I am now.
Too all the families that lost a love one over there, I salute them for you because I can I am an Ex-Marine Sgt. Today my life is in some kind of transformation. I am growing old and something inside me wants to sit in my rocking chair and tell my stories of times gone by.
I am not sure why this is what I feel? One day maybe I will know why I stood upon a hill in Vietnam to light up the night, to show my human side of myself to the enemy, because I needed to be the target to save a four man killer team that had been spotted and was being fired on, until I stood on top of that hill and let my light shine over them to protect them.
I challenged a 50 caliber machine gun and drew fire to myself to give them a chance to get out of range.
As the bullets passed my head I could hear what they said.
I could see the dust at my feet.
My heart did not skip a beat.
I did not fear no evil. What I felt was a light that was shining on me.
I was in his hands
So that I may write today! What I write truly comes from my heart.
Thank You.
SOUTHERN ACTS PRESENTS
"THE MISFORTUNES"
WRITTEN BY BOBBIE JEAN CHIASSON
COPYRIGHTS © 2013 SOUTHERN ACTS
You can buy this book and others that I have written here.
http://astore.amazon.com/intellectual_creations-20/search?node=2&keywords=Bobbie+Jean+Chiasson&x=14&y=8&preview=
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