While the Soviets girded the North with equipment, weaponry, and MiGs, China provided supplies and a supply route to help the Vietcong fight their war. The enemy was everywhere and everyone. Men, woman, and children bypassed the North and South Vietnam borders, acquiring their arms and ammunition via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So, to disrupt their supply chain, Cambodia and Laos became targets. This wasn’t news. If you asked anyone, they would tell you, “There ain’t no war in Laos.”
It’s called a secret war, but most POWs in Laos fell from the sky. Pilots did not want to fly over Laos, another communist country with the weapons to down most planes. If you flew over Laos, you could count on being shot down. This was one fear.
Another fear was the possibility of hitting friendlies. Sometimes, the only way to slow down the enemy was to drop bombs ahead of the ground support. I’ve been on hundreds of missions from dropping bombs to dropping supplies to give our ground support a chance at survival. My last mission was one I would like back, a second chance at a different outcome.
Being captured does as much to your mind as crippling injuries do to your body. Time crawls here and hope is non-existent. For some, pride is enough to make a man wake up every day just as a “fuck you” to the enemy trying to break him. If I survive this shit, the men I fought alongside and a true account of what happened won’t die with me. I’ll keep their memories alive and let the American people know what they sacrificed.
*****
The North was still having success in the air in 1965. They grounded more planes than the US could keep in the skies. Fighter jets had to accompany the flights spreading the herbicides to buy them a little time, but both had to maneuver being shot.
There were four of us on that morning's mission. Leonard Marks and William Brown were spraying herbicides from a C-123, covering the crops, the jungle, and the soldiers who fought in it. You would think these chemicals could do some damage to the human body, the way it burned up the vegetation, but the men on the ground had little concern about the mist as it covered them. They were trying to avoid the bullets zipping past them and the explosions all around them. Myself and Jack Robinson convoyed the mission in a Phantom II fighter jet.
Enemy MiGs outnumbered us. The C-123 took a direct hit and both Lenny and Willy ejected. We lost a wing on the fighter jet to a ground missile and ejected as well. None of us were in good shape and only one escaped capture, but I can’t say what became of him after that. That man was Jack Robinson.
*****
In the chaos of war, some welcomed the sweet smell of chemicals over the smell of death and gun powder. Silence was not welcome amid heavy artillery. It often meant the worst you have seen was nothing compared to that which is to come. Silence was the last thing I heard before I lost my freedom.
I had about enough time to lift my head and see where the other men landed before they were upon me. I couldn’t even stand when I first realized I survived the crash and something inside of me died when I saw the group of armed teens. I say teens, but the oldest was maybe 18 and there were several that couldn’t have been over the age of 11. The war hardened them, prepared them to kill and I wished for death.
Lenny laid unconscious until a couple of members from the guerrilla warfare kicked him awake. Two men stood him up, like they were taking him prisoner. Lenny cooperated, but the apparent authority of the group shot him in the back of the head. They executed him on the spot, showed us it was just that easy.
I’m not sure how far Willy could have gone without a concussion. Not that he didn’t try to clear out. Covered in burns, Willy stumbled a little as he released himself from his parachute. Disoriented, he got to his feet about the same time he saw them coming. He didn’t take more than a few steps before a bullet ripped through his calf.
The Vietcong took the two of us prisoner, forced us through a jungle set up to make an amputee out of anyone that took a wrong step. It didn’t matter that we needed medical attention. When we arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, they threw us in different cells. There were no beds in the cold, dark cells, and sleeping on concrete just makes the cold colder while it stiffens your entire body. The conditions were dehumanizing, but we learned early on, anything was better than solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement was a special kind of torture. Take your darkest fears and multiply those fears by a thousand and you still won’t grasp what this does to a prisoner of war. The guards strap you down so tight the blood flow is cut off from your limbs. That was not the worst of it, but anything worse is too much for the mind to remember.
Jack Robinson, the one that escaped, Lord knows what happened to him. Our planes went down in a war zone. Even if he evaded the Vietcong, he was a man with many enemies. It’s possible he lost his life to friendly fire or he may have avoided one POW camp, just to land in another.
The VC were relentless and as willing to die as kamikaze pilots in World War II. Our soldiers on the ground would kill a few hundred communists, only to have another thousand appear before them. Comrades going in, none of them knowing who would make it out. Side by side, they fired at the enemy, many times among their own fallen who laid dead or were on their way out.
The attacks came out of nowhere. It was a blur, and they all looked the same, like thin, green, faceless beings that could squeeze through tight spots. Americans fired at the mass amounts of green men running towards them, but more VC fighters were coming out of the ground. Maybe they had no defining characteristics because there were enough substances available to help soldiers endure, or maybe it was because no matter how many the Americans killed, more appeared.
The US government needed their soldiers alert, so they supplied all the speed and heroin a man could survive. Drugs were readily available to develop the soldier and after so many WWI and WWII veterans returned from war with PTSD, a good dose of a numbing agent couldn’t hurt.
A man in their state could not tell if the dark figures they saw were the commies or just figments of their imagination. They could not even tell if these figures were friendlies, if they were there at all. They crossed leech filled marshes without a thought of the bloodsucking worms. Silence was too much when the enemy was lurking somewhere underground. The VC worked at exhausting the Americans by releasing upon them men who were ok with dying. Sometimes the enemy came at them with knives rather than ammo. It was the amount of guerilla rather than the weapon they carried that gave the VC a chance. A surprise attack could include crossfire so low, men lying flat were not low enough to avoid the bullets.
The guerrillas were easier to spot with the foliage cleared out during the day, but at night, it was pitch black. Nothing but darkness, and the only sound was a constant bratatat, bratatat, from machine guns. Men hid in the trenches or immense holes formed from bombs dropped by the B-52’s. Bodies were often already lining the holes, but they were not fresh. Those men who fought here at a previous time were the reason the soldiers returned. Closing the eyes of their comrades, as they collected their fallen.
During battle, a man’s focus was not on the chemicals being sprayed in the area or whether they could do more damage to their life, if they survive, than the enemy in an ambush. His immediate focus is survival. Soldiers in the jungles looked to put a hole through any man, woman, or child that came out of the ground. Child. I know that sounds horrible, but the armed children would kill a man if their life was not taken first.
*****
This hell was the most miserable place to pass the days. Early in my time here, I was worried it was the guards who could bring the worst pain. I don’t think they could touch the pain I’m in today. My bones ache from the inside out.
Maybe it stemmed from the living conditions or my circumstances. There came a time I was vomiting from the time I awoke until I passed out from the pain for a few hours here and there. The guards could no longer force labor out of me, because the fatigue stopped me from standing for more than a few minutes at a time.
My back ached from the day they captured me. I always thought I just didn’t heal right from my injuries, but this all seems like more than just an injury. I cannot remember the last time I left this cell. My life ending this way, at this place, fucking kills me.
*****
POW’s laid another to rest. This shallow grave contained the remains of Joseph Collins. He survived the crash and years in captivity, but succumb to an illness most were not diagnosed with until they returned from war. No doctor diagnosed Joseph with the disease that killed him. The other 20 mounds that surround him have their own story. Each one buried by their comrades.
*****
Jack Robinson landed without a gun or ammunition, somewhere along the North Vietnam and Laos border. His only weapons were his bare hands when he left the wreckage behind him. Jack did not make it far from the crash site before he turned to see Lenny get shot in the back of the head. Then he saw Willy and Joseph get captured. He had no communication with his command, but knew it was safer to go south than west. He didn’t want to end up in Laos.
Jack left behind the emergency radio beacon, counting on his personal radio for rescue. He attached some foliage to his helmet for camouflage, but there wasn’t much forest left in the area he landed. He figured some caves a little way up to be the best hiding place for the evening.
The guerrilla warfare that shot them down kept tabs on the plane for any rescue efforts. They would find their fourth and maybe get a couple more. The military made a couple of attempts to locate the pilots, but the search and rescue had to cease when they could only locate the crash sites and not the pilots.
Jack evaded capture for about 6 days before the Pathet Lao captured and imprisoned him in a Laos prison camp for over 6 years. In the end, he escaped with 4 others. Jack alone made it to friendly forces around February of 73. Two of the men fell so ill they could not keep up. The other was with Jack most of the way, but was shot and killed on the last day before Jack’s rescue.
All the time he spent imprisoned by the commies in the black pajamas and he made it out just in time for the flight home. He was not on the list of prisoners being released. They had declared him MIA for years. Most of the prisoners in Laos were not part of the negotiations. A secret war with secret prison camps.
*****
Planes sprayed their load within minutes and would turn back, leaving behind a fog, as it settled over the war zone. The mist didn’t burn the skin, and the musty scent covered the unpleasant smell associated with war. The effects of the lethal fog on the human body were not immediate, but permanent. Ironic, with all that the chemicals exposed, they had a lot of hidden residuals. Soldiers were not burned alive or suffocating from the herbicides. It attacked their bodies at a gradual pace. The men in the field began getting rashes. Mostly, the attack was a silent one unless a soldier made it home where he would learn he had cancer.
Anti-war propaganda suggested the herbicides were to blame for many various health issues. The herbicides cleared out the foliage that hid the NVA and damaged the North Vietnamese crops. A group of scientists arrived in Vietnam about a decade into the military using herbicides to observe the consequences. The US government emptied the drums before they assessed the damage they contained.
The scientists discovered deformities among the consequences of exposure to the herbicides. Deformities developed in living things that lived through the exposure, but not all that were exposed survived it. They watched the animals they ran tests on suffer extreme distress before they became so short on breath, they struggled to exist. After releasing their findings, the government discontinued the use of herbicides.
A corrupt, but anti-communist, rose to power in the south. The prime minister was assassinated about three weeks prior to JFK. Both were selling the idea that herbicides only destroy the foliage. The Americans and South Vietnamese governments spent a lot of time and money enforcing this idea. US soldiers believed it to be true enough they used the emptied drums to store food and water. Looking back, it may be the greatest war crime ever committed. Decades later, the effects of the substance still cannot be undone. Their assassinations probably had nothing to do with the herbicides. Some things will never be uncovered.
It’s called a secret war, but most POWs in Laos fell from the sky. Pilots did not want to fly over Laos, another communist country with the weapons to down most planes. If you flew over Laos, you could count on being shot down. This was one fear.
Another fear was the possibility of hitting friendlies. Sometimes, the only way to slow down the enemy was to drop bombs ahead of the ground support. I’ve been on hundreds of missions from dropping bombs to dropping supplies to give our ground support a chance at survival. My last mission was one I would like back, a second chance at a different outcome.
Being captured does as much to your mind as crippling injuries do to your body. Time crawls here and hope is non-existent. For some, pride is enough to make a man wake up every day just as a “fuck you” to the enemy trying to break him. If I survive this shit, the men I fought alongside and a true account of what happened won’t die with me. I’ll keep their memories alive and let the American people know what they sacrificed.
*****
The North was still having success in the air in 1965. They grounded more planes than the US could keep in the skies. Fighter jets had to accompany the flights spreading the herbicides to buy them a little time, but both had to maneuver being shot.
There were four of us on that morning's mission. Leonard Marks and William Brown were spraying herbicides from a C-123, covering the crops, the jungle, and the soldiers who fought in it. You would think these chemicals could do some damage to the human body, the way it burned up the vegetation, but the men on the ground had little concern about the mist as it covered them. They were trying to avoid the bullets zipping past them and the explosions all around them. Myself and Jack Robinson convoyed the mission in a Phantom II fighter jet.
Enemy MiGs outnumbered us. The C-123 took a direct hit and both Lenny and Willy ejected. We lost a wing on the fighter jet to a ground missile and ejected as well. None of us were in good shape and only one escaped capture, but I can’t say what became of him after that. That man was Jack Robinson.
*****
In the chaos of war, some welcomed the sweet smell of chemicals over the smell of death and gun powder. Silence was not welcome amid heavy artillery. It often meant the worst you have seen was nothing compared to that which is to come. Silence was the last thing I heard before I lost my freedom.
I had about enough time to lift my head and see where the other men landed before they were upon me. I couldn’t even stand when I first realized I survived the crash and something inside of me died when I saw the group of armed teens. I say teens, but the oldest was maybe 18 and there were several that couldn’t have been over the age of 11. The war hardened them, prepared them to kill and I wished for death.
Lenny laid unconscious until a couple of members from the guerrilla warfare kicked him awake. Two men stood him up, like they were taking him prisoner. Lenny cooperated, but the apparent authority of the group shot him in the back of the head. They executed him on the spot, showed us it was just that easy.
I’m not sure how far Willy could have gone without a concussion. Not that he didn’t try to clear out. Covered in burns, Willy stumbled a little as he released himself from his parachute. Disoriented, he got to his feet about the same time he saw them coming. He didn’t take more than a few steps before a bullet ripped through his calf.
The Vietcong took the two of us prisoner, forced us through a jungle set up to make an amputee out of anyone that took a wrong step. It didn’t matter that we needed medical attention. When we arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, they threw us in different cells. There were no beds in the cold, dark cells, and sleeping on concrete just makes the cold colder while it stiffens your entire body. The conditions were dehumanizing, but we learned early on, anything was better than solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement was a special kind of torture. Take your darkest fears and multiply those fears by a thousand and you still won’t grasp what this does to a prisoner of war. The guards strap you down so tight the blood flow is cut off from your limbs. That was not the worst of it, but anything worse is too much for the mind to remember.
Jack Robinson, the one that escaped, Lord knows what happened to him. Our planes went down in a war zone. Even if he evaded the Vietcong, he was a man with many enemies. It’s possible he lost his life to friendly fire or he may have avoided one POW camp, just to land in another.
The VC were relentless and as willing to die as kamikaze pilots in World War II. Our soldiers on the ground would kill a few hundred communists, only to have another thousand appear before them. Comrades going in, none of them knowing who would make it out. Side by side, they fired at the enemy, many times among their own fallen who laid dead or were on their way out.
The attacks came out of nowhere. It was a blur, and they all looked the same, like thin, green, faceless beings that could squeeze through tight spots. Americans fired at the mass amounts of green men running towards them, but more VC fighters were coming out of the ground. Maybe they had no defining characteristics because there were enough substances available to help soldiers endure, or maybe it was because no matter how many the Americans killed, more appeared.
The US government needed their soldiers alert, so they supplied all the speed and heroin a man could survive. Drugs were readily available to develop the soldier and after so many WWI and WWII veterans returned from war with PTSD, a good dose of a numbing agent couldn’t hurt.
A man in their state could not tell if the dark figures they saw were the commies or just figments of their imagination. They could not even tell if these figures were friendlies, if they were there at all. They crossed leech filled marshes without a thought of the bloodsucking worms. Silence was too much when the enemy was lurking somewhere underground. The VC worked at exhausting the Americans by releasing upon them men who were ok with dying. Sometimes the enemy came at them with knives rather than ammo. It was the amount of guerilla rather than the weapon they carried that gave the VC a chance. A surprise attack could include crossfire so low, men lying flat were not low enough to avoid the bullets.
The guerrillas were easier to spot with the foliage cleared out during the day, but at night, it was pitch black. Nothing but darkness, and the only sound was a constant bratatat, bratatat, from machine guns. Men hid in the trenches or immense holes formed from bombs dropped by the B-52’s. Bodies were often already lining the holes, but they were not fresh. Those men who fought here at a previous time were the reason the soldiers returned. Closing the eyes of their comrades, as they collected their fallen.
During battle, a man’s focus was not on the chemicals being sprayed in the area or whether they could do more damage to their life, if they survive, than the enemy in an ambush. His immediate focus is survival. Soldiers in the jungles looked to put a hole through any man, woman, or child that came out of the ground. Child. I know that sounds horrible, but the armed children would kill a man if their life was not taken first.
*****
This hell was the most miserable place to pass the days. Early in my time here, I was worried it was the guards who could bring the worst pain. I don’t think they could touch the pain I’m in today. My bones ache from the inside out.
Maybe it stemmed from the living conditions or my circumstances. There came a time I was vomiting from the time I awoke until I passed out from the pain for a few hours here and there. The guards could no longer force labor out of me, because the fatigue stopped me from standing for more than a few minutes at a time.
My back ached from the day they captured me. I always thought I just didn’t heal right from my injuries, but this all seems like more than just an injury. I cannot remember the last time I left this cell. My life ending this way, at this place, fucking kills me.
*****
POW’s laid another to rest. This shallow grave contained the remains of Joseph Collins. He survived the crash and years in captivity, but succumb to an illness most were not diagnosed with until they returned from war. No doctor diagnosed Joseph with the disease that killed him. The other 20 mounds that surround him have their own story. Each one buried by their comrades.
*****
Jack Robinson landed without a gun or ammunition, somewhere along the North Vietnam and Laos border. His only weapons were his bare hands when he left the wreckage behind him. Jack did not make it far from the crash site before he turned to see Lenny get shot in the back of the head. Then he saw Willy and Joseph get captured. He had no communication with his command, but knew it was safer to go south than west. He didn’t want to end up in Laos.
Jack left behind the emergency radio beacon, counting on his personal radio for rescue. He attached some foliage to his helmet for camouflage, but there wasn’t much forest left in the area he landed. He figured some caves a little way up to be the best hiding place for the evening.
The guerrilla warfare that shot them down kept tabs on the plane for any rescue efforts. They would find their fourth and maybe get a couple more. The military made a couple of attempts to locate the pilots, but the search and rescue had to cease when they could only locate the crash sites and not the pilots.
Jack evaded capture for about 6 days before the Pathet Lao captured and imprisoned him in a Laos prison camp for over 6 years. In the end, he escaped with 4 others. Jack alone made it to friendly forces around February of 73. Two of the men fell so ill they could not keep up. The other was with Jack most of the way, but was shot and killed on the last day before Jack’s rescue.
All the time he spent imprisoned by the commies in the black pajamas and he made it out just in time for the flight home. He was not on the list of prisoners being released. They had declared him MIA for years. Most of the prisoners in Laos were not part of the negotiations. A secret war with secret prison camps.
*****
Planes sprayed their load within minutes and would turn back, leaving behind a fog, as it settled over the war zone. The mist didn’t burn the skin, and the musty scent covered the unpleasant smell associated with war. The effects of the lethal fog on the human body were not immediate, but permanent. Ironic, with all that the chemicals exposed, they had a lot of hidden residuals. Soldiers were not burned alive or suffocating from the herbicides. It attacked their bodies at a gradual pace. The men in the field began getting rashes. Mostly, the attack was a silent one unless a soldier made it home where he would learn he had cancer.
Anti-war propaganda suggested the herbicides were to blame for many various health issues. The herbicides cleared out the foliage that hid the NVA and damaged the North Vietnamese crops. A group of scientists arrived in Vietnam about a decade into the military using herbicides to observe the consequences. The US government emptied the drums before they assessed the damage they contained.
The scientists discovered deformities among the consequences of exposure to the herbicides. Deformities developed in living things that lived through the exposure, but not all that were exposed survived it. They watched the animals they ran tests on suffer extreme distress before they became so short on breath, they struggled to exist. After releasing their findings, the government discontinued the use of herbicides.
A corrupt, but anti-communist, rose to power in the south. The prime minister was assassinated about three weeks prior to JFK. Both were selling the idea that herbicides only destroy the foliage. The Americans and South Vietnamese governments spent a lot of time and money enforcing this idea. US soldiers believed it to be true enough they used the emptied drums to store food and water. Looking back, it may be the greatest war crime ever committed. Decades later, the effects of the substance still cannot be undone. Their assassinations probably had nothing to do with the herbicides. Some things will never be uncovered.