| General Non-Fiction posted September 21, 2021 |
  |
In a nut shell.
Eighteen
by Yardier
2011 Iraq.
I was 18 when I left my home in California and headed to South Vietnam as a gunboat operator for the United States Army. Yes, the U.S. Army has boats, ships, and all sorts of other amphibious watercraft. It was 1969 and I had just finished Riverine Warfare training at the U.S. Naval Inshore Operations Training Center conducted by Special Boat Unit 11 on Mare Island across from Vallejo California. I turned down an O.C.S. appointment to 2nd. Lieutenant to learn how to operate a fast attack vessel conducting Riverine Warfare. Those few of us Army sailors, who volunteered for temporary re-assignment to the U.S. Navy learned how to kill the enemy in the tributaries of South Vietnam and subsequently stay alive. In the off hours we listened to the musical transition from the Everly Brothers to Bob Dylan and other voices of insight/protest/ and harmony. We were just across the bay from San Francisco and Fillmore West. Imagine the weekend rock venues we frequented. As I write this from Iraq near the Iran border, Bob Dylan is performing in Ho Chi Minh City at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology produced by Saigon Sound Systems. Who would have figured?
I spent nineteen months in Vietnam assigned to the 458th TC ‘Seatigers’ attached to the 18th MP Brigade and celebrated my 19th and 20th birthdays as a coxswain on a 31ft PBR, a fiberglass fast attack vessel patrolling the rivers just south of Saigon in the upper Mekong Delta.
It was a time of social unrest back home…. Cultural differences were being defined and personal freedom was celebrated. This phenomenon carried over to the jungles and rice paddies of South Vietnam as more and more draftees arrived carrying not only their duffle bags filled with G.I. issue but with minds a little more open to the growing brother/sisterhood of ‘oneness’ than what the ‘Lifers’ in the Army would have liked. Cassette tapes of Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin and other sixties groups found their way into bunkers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and patrol boats. Played over and over on bulky black plastic tape players, these anthems provided a harmonious backdrop to the guttural noise of the US combat beast doing what it does best with America’s youth.
I liked it there. I thought I was doing something good for the South Vietnamese people and, I found a certain freedom patrolling the rivers that provided me a close but at arm’s length view of the US Military. I was in the Army but not….
South Viet Nam is a beautiful country and at the time was so untouched by industrialization that except for the deteriorating remains of French colonialism and the ever-present wounds of war, the land and people seemed to be in another time zone on a forgotten island. By western standards they appeared impoverished; electricity and modern plumbing were rare in the country villages and yet, there was synchronization of functions within those villages that did not seem at all to be desperate.
It was peaceful in a mysterious way.
Forty years later, I was fifty-eight years old when I, once again, left my home in California to head to a war zone. I had raised a family and wanted a little adventure, not to mention the extra money, so I headed off to the Middle East as a Private Security Contractor. Presently, I am in Iraq managing a Sierra Leone Guard Force tasked with providing security for a small US Army Combat Outpost while staring at the Iran border four clicks away. I have less than two months left on my contract and then I will return home. By the time I leave, I will have been in the Middle East for two and half years; I celebrated my fifty-ninth and sixtieth birthday here in the Sand Box.
Besides the obvious geopolitical differences between the two war zones, the notable difference was in my own understanding and preparation. In 1965 my High School Social Studies instructor tried to present the issues of the growing conflict in Southeast Asia in a manner that would break through our thick skulls with the following wakeup call; “Before this war is over some of you boys in this room are going to find yourself over there and not all of you are going to make it back….” Now, I don’t know how his statement affected others because no one ever talked about it, but I remember clearly thinking it didn’t make any sense; how could I ever end up in that green finger of a country on the roll-up world map in front of the chalk board? Even later when I got off the jet at Ben Hoa in 1969 to report to the 90th Replacement station, I still didn’t know much more about the war politically than what my astute teacher tried to impart. Yes, I was a young and eager trained war fighter and understood the basics, at least in theory, but I was basically clueless as to why the US government was there. I went forward from the 90th to my first assignment on the river’s edge at Cat Lai fully believing I was there to fight communists and that the only good gook was a dead gook.
By 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, I had finished a law enforcement career as a SWAT sniper for the Kern County Sheriff's S.W.A.T. team. During that tenure I had experienced every call-out imaginable. And, on every one of those call outs I wore tactical fatigues with the 458th P.B.R. triangular patch on my left breast pocket. I had cut those patches off my 'Nam fatigues upon making the S.W.A.T. team and with permission of the S.W.A.T. commander I was able to wear an ‘altered’ tactical uniform. From the Song Dong Nai, Song Saigon, Nha Be, Cat Lai, Cogido, Binh Ninh in the Mekong to Kern County and 'crack houses', meth labs, escaped convicts, hostage situations, shoot outs, suicides, and homicides, the 458th P.B.R. patch covered my heart and greeted those who had drawn a line in the sand. It read, 'Ever Vigilant'.
Having worked my way up the ladder from the mean streets of Bakersfield and Kern County through the political mine fields of upper management, County Supervisors, City Council persons and Community Oriented Policing committees, I came to realize it was time to retire. I had been schooled the hard way and ultimately rewarded with a broader understanding of human nature
Attorneys liked me.
I ended up freelancing as an Investigator for different attorneys in Bakersfield making fair but boring money reconstructing Personal Injury claims or ‘Slip N Falls’ when I began to hear Intel about hired guns in the Middle East making $700 a day. It sounded like mercenary work to me, but I soon found out the clandestine nature of mercenary work of the 70’s had become a legitimate big corporate business venture in the millennium. A wide array of insightful security pioneers started up companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Aegis, Armour Group and a slew of lesser known ‘providers. It was called contracting.
My first exposure to contracting was in South Vietnam while patrolling the Song Dong Nai. An American company was hired to build steel protection around the supports of the Song Dong Nai bridge. Those steel structures were intended to pre-detonate floating mines away from the actual support columns – thus keeping Highway One open. During the short time those workers were there I came to know most of them were prior military Sea Bees or Army Corp of Engineers. They were making an unheard of $30,000.00 a year! Man, what a twenty-year-old could do with that kind of money…. Alas, I did not possess building skills and at that time no one was offering work for a gunboat operator.
By the mid 70’s mercenary work was in high gear on the African continent, South America and some parts of the Far East. I’m not sure how it happened but my friend, a tank commander in Nam and myself received job offers from Rhodesia’s Anti-Terrorist Police Unit; P.A.T.U. The letter started out with: Dear Military Technician. It described how personal weapons and ammo could be brought into Rhodesia. The contract was for six months at $4,000.00 month with a $10,000.00 bonus at the end of the six months. A great sum of money to be sure but I was now married with a child and that $10,000.00 bonus looked more and more like a burial fee. Never mind that I didn’t have a clue about what I would be doing as a Military Technician in Rhodesia and that most likely whatever it was, would at some point become illegal. Having once spent an ugly day in the Saigon jail I had no desire to spend years in the bottomless pit of some third world piss-hole whose entire sovereign history had been one of perpetual dictatorship/coup/dictatorship/coup….
War is a dangerous business whether going to or standing down while developing rule of law. There is a lot of patriotism and support for our military. Some support what the military is doing, some support what the military is…. Some politicians and media members understand the sacrifice and commitment of each service member while others less than sincere try to sell a bill of goods as if a foreign enemy has launched a beach landing on our shores.
It is a balancing act between reality and perception. When you receive hand printed crayon posters and letters of gratitude from elementary school children thanking you for protecting America but none from Iraqi children, it causes one to pause.
Do I have an answer? An answer to what?
Is this the question? Why do wars exist and why is it honorable to face the foe and kill them, or to die trying?
I don’t have an answer. I’ve done my duty. I wish I could have done more. Not for the Iraqi people but for those warriors who have preceded me home in a casket.
Story of the Month contest entry
2011 Iraq.
I was 18 when I left my home in California and headed to South Vietnam as a gunboat operator for the United States Army. Yes, the U.S. Army has boats, ships, and all sorts of other amphibious watercraft. It was 1969 and I had just finished Riverine Warfare training at the U.S. Naval Inshore Operations Training Center conducted by Special Boat Unit 11 on Mare Island across from Vallejo California. I turned down an O.C.S. appointment to 2nd. Lieutenant to learn how to operate a fast attack vessel conducting Riverine Warfare. Those few of us Army sailors, who volunteered for temporary re-assignment to the U.S. Navy learned how to kill the enemy in the tributaries of South Vietnam and subsequently stay alive. In the off hours we listened to the musical transition from the Everly Brothers to Bob Dylan and other voices of insight/protest/ and harmony. We were just across the bay from San Francisco and Fillmore West. Imagine the weekend rock venues we frequented. As I write this from Iraq near the Iran border, Bob Dylan is performing in Ho Chi Minh City at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology produced by Saigon Sound Systems. Who would have figured?
I spent nineteen months in Vietnam assigned to the 458th TC ‘Seatigers’ attached to the 18th MP Brigade and celebrated my 19th and 20th birthdays as a coxswain on a 31ft PBR, a fiberglass fast attack vessel patrolling the rivers just south of Saigon in the upper Mekong Delta.
It was a time of social unrest back home…. Cultural differences were being defined and personal freedom was celebrated. This phenomenon carried over to the jungles and rice paddies of South Vietnam as more and more draftees arrived carrying not only their duffle bags filled with G.I. issue but with minds a little more open to the growing brother/sisterhood of ‘oneness’ than what the ‘Lifers’ in the Army would have liked. Cassette tapes of Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin and other sixties groups found their way into bunkers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and patrol boats. Played over and over on bulky black plastic tape players, these anthems provided a harmonious backdrop to the guttural noise of the US combat beast doing what it does best with America’s youth.
I liked it there. I thought I was doing something good for the South Vietnamese people and, I found a certain freedom patrolling the rivers that provided me a close but at arm’s length view of the US Military. I was in the Army but not….
South Viet Nam is a beautiful country and at the time was so untouched by industrialization that except for the deteriorating remains of French colonialism and the ever-present wounds of war, the land and people seemed to be in another time zone on a forgotten island. By western standards they appeared impoverished; electricity and modern plumbing were rare in the country villages and yet, there was synchronization of functions within those villages that did not seem at all to be desperate.
It was peaceful in a mysterious way.
Forty years later, I was fifty-eight years old when I, once again, left my home in California to head to a war zone. I had raised a family and wanted a little adventure, not to mention the extra money, so I headed off to the Middle East as a Private Security Contractor. Presently, I am in Iraq managing a Sierra Leone Guard Force tasked with providing security for a small US Army Combat Outpost while staring at the Iran border four clicks away. I have less than two months left on my contract and then I will return home. By the time I leave, I will have been in the Middle East for two and half years; I celebrated my fifty-ninth and sixtieth birthday here in the Sand Box.
Besides the obvious geopolitical differences between the two war zones, the notable difference was in my own understanding and preparation. In 1965 my High School Social Studies instructor tried to present the issues of the growing conflict in Southeast Asia in a manner that would break through our thick skulls with the following wakeup call; “Before this war is over some of you boys in this room are going to find yourself over there and not all of you are going to make it back….” Now, I don’t know how his statement affected others because no one ever talked about it, but I remember clearly thinking it didn’t make any sense; how could I ever end up in that green finger of a country on the roll-up world map in front of the chalk board? Even later when I got off the jet at Ben Hoa in 1969 to report to the 90th Replacement station, I still didn’t know much more about the war politically than what my astute teacher tried to impart. Yes, I was a young and eager trained war fighter and understood the basics, at least in theory, but I was basically clueless as to why the US government was there. I went forward from the 90th to my first assignment on the river’s edge at Cat Lai fully believing I was there to fight communists and that the only good gook was a dead gook.
By 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, I had finished a law enforcement career as a SWAT sniper for the Kern County Sheriff's S.W.A.T. team. During that tenure I had experienced every call-out imaginable. And, on every one of those call outs I wore tactical fatigues with the 458th P.B.R. triangular patch on my left breast pocket. I had cut those patches off my 'Nam fatigues upon making the S.W.A.T. team and with permission of the S.W.A.T. commander I was able to wear an ‘altered’ tactical uniform. From the Song Dong Nai, Song Saigon, Nha Be, Cat Lai, Cogido, Binh Ninh in the Mekong to Kern County and 'crack houses', meth labs, escaped convicts, hostage situations, shoot outs, suicides, and homicides, the 458th P.B.R. patch covered my heart and greeted those who had drawn a line in the sand. It read, 'Ever Vigilant'.
Having worked my way up the ladder from the mean streets of Bakersfield and Kern County through the political mine fields of upper management, County Supervisors, City Council persons and Community Oriented Policing committees, I came to realize it was time to retire. I had been schooled the hard way and ultimately rewarded with a broader understanding of human nature
Attorneys liked me.
I ended up freelancing as an Investigator for different attorneys in Bakersfield making fair but boring money reconstructing Personal Injury claims or ‘Slip N Falls’ when I began to hear Intel about hired guns in the Middle East making $700 a day. It sounded like mercenary work to me, but I soon found out the clandestine nature of mercenary work of the 70’s had become a legitimate big corporate business venture in the millennium. A wide array of insightful security pioneers started up companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Aegis, Armour Group and a slew of lesser known ‘providers. It was called contracting.
My first exposure to contracting was in South Vietnam while patrolling the Song Dong Nai. An American company was hired to build steel protection around the supports of the Song Dong Nai bridge. Those steel structures were intended to pre-detonate floating mines away from the actual support columns – thus keeping Highway One open. During the short time those workers were there I came to know most of them were prior military Sea Bees or Army Corp of Engineers. They were making an unheard of $30,000.00 a year! Man, what a twenty-year-old could do with that kind of money…. Alas, I did not possess building skills and at that time no one was offering work for a gunboat operator.
By the mid 70’s mercenary work was in high gear on the African continent, South America and some parts of the Far East. I’m not sure how it happened but my friend, a tank commander in Nam and myself received job offers from Rhodesia’s Anti-Terrorist Police Unit; P.A.T.U. The letter started out with: Dear Military Technician. It described how personal weapons and ammo could be brought into Rhodesia. The contract was for six months at $4,000.00 month with a $10,000.00 bonus at the end of the six months. A great sum of money to be sure but I was now married with a child and that $10,000.00 bonus looked more and more like a burial fee. Never mind that I didn’t have a clue about what I would be doing as a Military Technician in Rhodesia and that most likely whatever it was, would at some point become illegal. Having once spent an ugly day in the Saigon jail I had no desire to spend years in the bottomless pit of some third world piss-hole whose entire sovereign history had been one of perpetual dictatorship/coup/dictatorship/coup….
I was 18 when I left my home in California and headed to South Vietnam as a gunboat operator for the United States Army. Yes, the U.S. Army has boats, ships, and all sorts of other amphibious watercraft. It was 1969 and I had just finished Riverine Warfare training at the U.S. Naval Inshore Operations Training Center conducted by Special Boat Unit 11 on Mare Island across from Vallejo California. I turned down an O.C.S. appointment to 2nd. Lieutenant to learn how to operate a fast attack vessel conducting Riverine Warfare. Those few of us Army sailors, who volunteered for temporary re-assignment to the U.S. Navy learned how to kill the enemy in the tributaries of South Vietnam and subsequently stay alive. In the off hours we listened to the musical transition from the Everly Brothers to Bob Dylan and other voices of insight/protest/ and harmony. We were just across the bay from San Francisco and Fillmore West. Imagine the weekend rock venues we frequented. As I write this from Iraq near the Iran border, Bob Dylan is performing in Ho Chi Minh City at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology produced by Saigon Sound Systems. Who would have figured?
I spent nineteen months in Vietnam assigned to the 458th TC ‘Seatigers’ attached to the 18th MP Brigade and celebrated my 19th and 20th birthdays as a coxswain on a 31ft PBR, a fiberglass fast attack vessel patrolling the rivers just south of Saigon in the upper Mekong Delta.
It was a time of social unrest back home…. Cultural differences were being defined and personal freedom was celebrated. This phenomenon carried over to the jungles and rice paddies of South Vietnam as more and more draftees arrived carrying not only their duffle bags filled with G.I. issue but with minds a little more open to the growing brother/sisterhood of ‘oneness’ than what the ‘Lifers’ in the Army would have liked. Cassette tapes of Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin and other sixties groups found their way into bunkers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and patrol boats. Played over and over on bulky black plastic tape players, these anthems provided a harmonious backdrop to the guttural noise of the US combat beast doing what it does best with America’s youth.
I liked it there. I thought I was doing something good for the South Vietnamese people and, I found a certain freedom patrolling the rivers that provided me a close but at arm’s length view of the US Military. I was in the Army but not….
South Viet Nam is a beautiful country and at the time was so untouched by industrialization that except for the deteriorating remains of French colonialism and the ever-present wounds of war, the land and people seemed to be in another time zone on a forgotten island. By western standards they appeared impoverished; electricity and modern plumbing were rare in the country villages and yet, there was synchronization of functions within those villages that did not seem at all to be desperate.
It was peaceful in a mysterious way.
Forty years later, I was fifty-eight years old when I, once again, left my home in California to head to a war zone. I had raised a family and wanted a little adventure, not to mention the extra money, so I headed off to the Middle East as a Private Security Contractor. Presently, I am in Iraq managing a Sierra Leone Guard Force tasked with providing security for a small US Army Combat Outpost while staring at the Iran border four clicks away. I have less than two months left on my contract and then I will return home. By the time I leave, I will have been in the Middle East for two and half years; I celebrated my fifty-ninth and sixtieth birthday here in the Sand Box.
Besides the obvious geopolitical differences between the two war zones, the notable difference was in my own understanding and preparation. In 1965 my High School Social Studies instructor tried to present the issues of the growing conflict in Southeast Asia in a manner that would break through our thick skulls with the following wakeup call; “Before this war is over some of you boys in this room are going to find yourself over there and not all of you are going to make it back….” Now, I don’t know how his statement affected others because no one ever talked about it, but I remember clearly thinking it didn’t make any sense; how could I ever end up in that green finger of a country on the roll-up world map in front of the chalk board? Even later when I got off the jet at Ben Hoa in 1969 to report to the 90th Replacement station, I still didn’t know much more about the war politically than what my astute teacher tried to impart. Yes, I was a young and eager trained war fighter and understood the basics, at least in theory, but I was basically clueless as to why the US government was there. I went forward from the 90th to my first assignment on the river’s edge at Cat Lai fully believing I was there to fight communists and that the only good gook was a dead gook.
By 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, I had finished a law enforcement career as a SWAT sniper for the Kern County Sheriff's S.W.A.T. team. During that tenure I had experienced every call-out imaginable. And, on every one of those call outs I wore tactical fatigues with the 458th P.B.R. triangular patch on my left breast pocket. I had cut those patches off my 'Nam fatigues upon making the S.W.A.T. team and with permission of the S.W.A.T. commander I was able to wear an ‘altered’ tactical uniform. From the Song Dong Nai, Song Saigon, Nha Be, Cat Lai, Cogido, Binh Ninh in the Mekong to Kern County and 'crack houses', meth labs, escaped convicts, hostage situations, shoot outs, suicides, and homicides, the 458th P.B.R. patch covered my heart and greeted those who had drawn a line in the sand. It read, 'Ever Vigilant'.
Having worked my way up the ladder from the mean streets of Bakersfield and Kern County through the political mine fields of upper management, County Supervisors, City Council persons and Community Oriented Policing committees, I came to realize it was time to retire. I had been schooled the hard way and ultimately rewarded with a broader understanding of human nature
Attorneys liked me.
I ended up freelancing as an Investigator for different attorneys in Bakersfield making fair but boring money reconstructing Personal Injury claims or ‘Slip N Falls’ when I began to hear Intel about hired guns in the Middle East making $700 a day. It sounded like mercenary work to me, but I soon found out the clandestine nature of mercenary work of the 70’s had become a legitimate big corporate business venture in the millennium. A wide array of insightful security pioneers started up companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Aegis, Armour Group and a slew of lesser known ‘providers. It was called contracting.
My first exposure to contracting was in South Vietnam while patrolling the Song Dong Nai. An American company was hired to build steel protection around the supports of the Song Dong Nai bridge. Those steel structures were intended to pre-detonate floating mines away from the actual support columns – thus keeping Highway One open. During the short time those workers were there I came to know most of them were prior military Sea Bees or Army Corp of Engineers. They were making an unheard of $30,000.00 a year! Man, what a twenty-year-old could do with that kind of money…. Alas, I did not possess building skills and at that time no one was offering work for a gunboat operator.
By the mid 70’s mercenary work was in high gear on the African continent, South America and some parts of the Far East. I’m not sure how it happened but my friend, a tank commander in Nam and myself received job offers from Rhodesia’s Anti-Terrorist Police Unit; P.A.T.U. The letter started out with: Dear Military Technician. It described how personal weapons and ammo could be brought into Rhodesia. The contract was for six months at $4,000.00 month with a $10,000.00 bonus at the end of the six months. A great sum of money to be sure but I was now married with a child and that $10,000.00 bonus looked more and more like a burial fee. Never mind that I didn’t have a clue about what I would be doing as a Military Technician in Rhodesia and that most likely whatever it was, would at some point become illegal. Having once spent an ugly day in the Saigon jail I had no desire to spend years in the bottomless pit of some third world piss-hole whose entire sovereign history had been one of perpetual dictatorship/coup/dictatorship/coup….
War is a dangerous business whether going to or standing down while developing rule of law. There is a lot of patriotism and support for our military. Some support what the military is doing, some support what the military is…. Some politicians and media members understand the sacrifice and commitment of each service member while others less than sincere try to sell a bill of goods as if a foreign enemy has launched a beach landing on our shores.
It is a balancing act between reality and perception. When you receive hand printed crayon posters and letters of gratitude from elementary school children thanking you for protecting America but none from Iraqi children, it causes one to pause.
Do I have an answer? An answer to what?
Is this the question? Why do wars exist and why is it honorable to face the foe and kill them, or to die trying?
I don’t have an answer. I’ve done my duty. I wish I could have done more. Not for the Iraqi people but for those warriors who have preceded me home in a casket.
Approximately two weeks after I left C.O.P. Shocker, Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah fired I.R.A.M. rockets destroying C.O.P. Shocker.
The attack resulted in the deaths of the garrison commander Cpt.VanCamp and Cpt.Nielson and Sgt.Tenny. Many other soldiers were also wounded.
With these life experiences, I'm now opening the mental drawers to share the copious notes I have kept. I've come to realize, I can't erase them, but I can share them.
Luctor Et Emergo
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. The attack resulted in the deaths of the garrison commander Cpt.VanCamp and Cpt.Nielson and Sgt.Tenny. Many other soldiers were also wounded.
With these life experiences, I'm now opening the mental drawers to share the copious notes I have kept. I've come to realize, I can't erase them, but I can share them.
Luctor Et Emergo
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