The Way It Started
Except for a
twenty-minute gap in time, a blank spot, a dark hole in his mind, 65-year-old Anthony
Reza remembered mostly everything else about that first day, his recollection
jogged by military reports, award citations, and newspaper articles, a concoction of reality and fantasy blurred through time. 1966 had been early in the war. At 21,
Anthony was older than a lot of the other guys leaping from lines of choppers
and joining an entire battalion invading one of Pleiku’s larger valleys. Word
trickled down from the top describing the four-day operation as more of a
training exercise than a combat mission, a show of force to put the fear of God
into the communists. Intel reported sparse enemy activity in the area. Low clouds
moved in as the battalion’s four companies spread out into different sectors. Throughout
the afternoon, the enemy harassed the Americans with short bursts of small arms
fire. The infantrymen returned the fire, or as one sergeant, a Korean War vet,
called it, “Tit for tat.” Near dusk, all firing stopped, and an eerie silence swooped
through the valley. Three members from Anthony’s squad spotted two Vietnamese in
dark clothing, standing in the open approximately fifty yards away. Without
hesitation, or permission, the Americans, whooping and yipping, ran after the
darkly clad figures. After a half-hour passed, and the men hadn’t returned, Anthony’s
platoon leader asked for volunteers to bring them back. Anthony remembered his
dad’s advice, “Mi’jo, don’t volunteer for nothing.” One thing he hated was cleaning up after other people's stupid decisions, but he was loyal and obedient. His squad leaders said,
“It’s my guys, we’ll go.” The squad leader, a twenty-two-year-old buck sergeant
raised on a farm in the Ohio River Valley, slipped off his heavy rucksack,
slung two bandoliers of ammunition over his shoulders, and picked up his M-16. Like
the rest of the recently arrived battalion, he had little experience under fire.
Anthony and the other men in his squad followed his lead. Carrying nothing but
ammunition and their weapons, they scampered off behind their squad leader staying
close to the bushes until they reached the opening where the men had vanished. They
heard voices and moved deeper into the brush. “Yo, it’s us,” the squad leader
called. “We’re coming up from behind you’se guys.” The renegade soldiers appeared
giddy as they began firing wildly into the jungle, like kids playing war, one
hollering, “Ya ba da ba do.” The squad leader ordered, “God damn it, cease fire
and shut up!” At that moment, behind them, they heard the valley erupt in automatic
weapons fire and explosions, grenades, mortars, and artillery, a real battle. The
squad leader called, angrily, “Leave it. We gotta get back.” When they turned
to make their exit, weapons popped all around them, taking out Jerry Lugo, a
Puerto Rican kid from New York. Anthony rushed to his friend’s side, touching
Jerry’s blood-soaked fatigue shirt. He said, almost pleading, “Jerry, Jerry,
man, can you hear me?” Not a sound. Anthony put his ear to Jerry’s lips, not a
wisp of air. He remembered Red’s dead body, the first and only dead American
he’d seen. From some secret place in the past, as vividly as he saw Jerry’s
lifeless body, he heard Jerry voice, inviting him to his home in the Bronx, once
they made it home, after all this mess, to meet his sister. Anthony, tears
clouding his eyes, made the sign of the cross over the kid’s forehead. The
squad leader called, “Hold your positions.” He pointed for the men to spread
out and form a perimeter, covering their rear and sides. The battle in the
valley raged into the night, but the firing inside their perimeter stopped.
Someone asked, “Ya think they’ll send someone out to get us?” The sergeant
snapped, “Asshole, Horowitz, you got us into this mess. You hear what’s going
on back there, don’t ya?” Before long, night fell, the jungle turned black, no
moon, and the entire valley fell silent. They waited. The squad leader said, “Fix
bayonets, and nobody sleep.” One asked, “What about Jerry?” Anthony answered, “Jerry’s
gone.” Sometime after midnight, muzzle flashes ignited the darkness, screams
filled the air, and everything went black. When Anthony regained consciousness
at first light, he heard voices, a short distance away, Vietnamese, making a commotion,
like struggling to drag away dead bodies. Instinctively, and without making a
sound, he turned over onto his stomach, holding his breath to keep from crying
out in pain. He lay still, pressing himself to the earth, his face down, the
top of his head nudged under the thigh of a dead soldier. He heard a single
shot then another, and a voice, in English, pleading, Sorenson’s voice, one
more shot and silence. The sound of footsteps neared. Anthony felt a hard
object at the back of his neck. Time stopped. He prayed, something fast, about
God saving him. He saw his mother’s face and fought the urge to stand and
surrender. He heard a click, a misfire, Vietnamese voices, frantic, more
voices, American voices, coming from all directions. A motorized vehicle crashed
through the brush, M-16s and M-60 machine guns, the air reeking of gasoline, sulfur,
and dirt. When it quieted, an American voice said, “Shit! Everybody’s dead.” Anthony
rolled over and sat up, slowly, his side on fire, three dead V.C. at his feet, his
bayonet and rifle sticking out of one. A medic rushed to him, “Easy, man, easy.”
The medic hit him with shots of morphine and penicillin then quickly patched up the slice of meat hanging from his side. With the help of two soldiers, Anthony stood and slowly walked back to
the company area. They loaded him onto a Medivac. Body bags littered the ground. Choppers darted in and out, others hovering like dragonflies. Later, Anthony heard the following two
days had been worse. The low clouds meant no air support. When it was finished,
the battalion had been decimated. The media reported it an American victory and moderate casualties. A month later, while recuperating at the Pleiku
Field Hospital, Anthony listened to a colonel read a citation describing how Private
Reza, disregarding his own safety, had gallantly engaged the enemy, killing….
The officer’s voice drifted away. The colonel pinned a silver star to Anthony’s
hospital gown and handed him a new set of stipes, shook his hand, and said, “That’s
the stuff of heroes, corporal.” After the officer departed, a pimply-faced soldier
in the bed next to Anthony said, “A real hero, Hoss. Never met one.” Anthony
said, “You still haven’t. I’m no hero.” The kid said, “Man, you snuffed three
of them with your bayonet. I heard the colonel.” Anthony said, “I don’t
remember, none of it, nothing.” When his wound had healed sufficiently, a
priest visited him. Anthony didn’t have much to say. He took communion. Before
leaving, the priest said, “Corporal Reza, the immensity of your experience, the
loss of your friends, hasn’t resonated, and who knows if it ever will. God
bless you.” A week before Anthony’s discharge from the hospital, a captain from
battalion visited and offered him a choice: return home, take a thirty-day
leave, and complete the remaining thirteen months of service at Fort Gordon,
Georgia, or stay in Vietnam, finish his eight-month tour, and receive an
immediate discharge. Anthony rolled the dice and took the eight months and home.
Luckily, except for a few skirmishes, he made it through the rest of his tour without
any major mishaps, and just like the priest had said, it took a while for any
of it to resonate.
