NEWSLETTER

Patrick McAleavey enlisted in the US Army in August 1966, when he was 18. He served until August 1969. His unit (part of the Army’s 9th Division) took part in the fighting in and around Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968. He was wounded on Valentine’s Day 1968 during a battle with a North Vietnamese unit just outside of Saigon. We asked him to watch some Vietnam movies and tell us which ones got it right.

PLATOON

When Charlie Sheen joins the platoon he is treated like the FNG (fucking new guy), and he complains in a letter to his grandmother that no one tells him anything. I found this so different from what I encountered. When I first joined my unit (Company C, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Division) I was warmly welcomed. Everybody made sure that I understood how we operated and how to react to different situations. This was not kindness, it was survival. The best way for all of us to get home alive was for everyone to understand his job.

Throughout the movie there is tension between Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger. In one scene, Berenger executes a Vietnamese villager while some of his soldiers rape a young Vietnamese girl. Atrocities like those happened in Vietnam, yes, but it certainly was not business as usual. There is also a scene showing all the soldiers smoking pot. Drug use was not rampant in 1967-68, especially among combat troops. I wonder if Oliver Stone, himself a Vietnam veteran, really believes “normal” soldiers accepted this behavior.

What I recall about a typical day in Vietnam was the boredom and the exhaustion. I was 19 then and in excellent shape. I could go for weeks at a time with little to no sleep. I could travel miles through the worst terrain imaginable with a 60-pound backpack. But eventually, the lack of sleep and exposure to the elements catch up to you.

I hated insects. I would expend all this energy swatting at them. At some point I learned to accept their company. Most days I was too tired to care. On such days moving a mile or two was considered good progress. You reach a state of fatigue, both physical and mental, where you do not care about life or death because they are the same.

The real danger is complacency. You start to accept this boredom as your daily routine and you don’t see the real danger. And then one day you stumble into the enemy. That is how it usually happens. It’s nothing calculated. It’s the convergence of two groups. It’s two groups wandering the jungle, each looking to destroy the other.


WE WERE SOLDIERS
This movie is accurate in its representation of what an American soldier looked like at that time, and the battle scenes are well done. The actor who stood out for me most was Sam Elliott, who played the senior non-commissioned officer. NCOs really ran the army. Many were veterans of the Korean War, and a few had been in World War II. These were the guys who would, hopefully, get you through your 12-month tour.

Toward the end of my tour, my platoon got a new sergeant, Staff Sergeant Johnson. He told me about being cut off from his company during a retreat in the Korean War. He and one of his platoon mates were trying to find their way back to friendly lines in the dark. They encountered a North Korean soldier who had been separated from his unit, and they took him prisoner. Johnson knew right away that it was a mistake taking the prisoner, because the first chance the prisoner had, he would give them away. Johnson also realized he couldn’t shoot the prisoner, as that would give away their position. So he got behind the prisoner and strangled him with his bare hands.

I was stunned. Despite his craggy appearance, Johnson had a very gentle manner. I looked at his hands, and I remember thinking a man’s throat could easily be crushed by them.


FULL METAL JACKET
The cast is great. I’m not sure Lee Ermey, the drill instructor, was acting. I think he was channeling his own experiences. Drill instructors have a god-awful job. How do you prepare a young man to face death? How do you yell at him, knowing that soon he may be dead?

The scenes where Ermey is yelling at the recruits are hysterical. It was always funny when our instructors were yelling at someone, especially someone else.

In the movie, Joker experiences the Tet Offensive of 1968. I was in the Saigon area for Tet. It was surreal. Out on patrol, I turned a corner and found myself facing several Viet Cong. I was dead. Then the lead Vietnamese smiled at me and asked me for a cigarette. The rest of his crew joined him chattering hellos and laughing.

It turns out these were local militia fighting house to house. They had killed a few VC, dumped their M1 carbines, and were now ready for some serious craziness. We traded cigarettes for some doodads they had, made our good-byes, and counted our blessings.


APOCALYPSE NOW
It’s a good movie but it really has nothing to do with Vietnam, because the circumstances they are under are so ridiculous. Several times they encounter individual US units where there’s absolutely no command and control. That’s ridiculous. Someone was always in charge. The closest I came to being out of touch with the person in charge was this time we landed in a rice paddy, and we didn’t have a radio for some reason.

I needed to get over to our platoon leader to let him know I had some guys wounded, one guy dead, and we needed to get a helicopter in there. The only way to do it was to get up and run to his position. He was probably about 25, maybe 30, 40 yards from me. Now, that’s exposing yourself to fire—you’re going to get shot at. So I got over to him, never really even thinking about that, and I said, “Sir, we’ve got to get a helicopter and get these guys out.” So he took my report, said we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. I said OK and was going back to my guys, and I saw a line of machine-gun fire coming at me. It was one of those things where you see the ground being churned up in front of you. I fell down, and it went over me, and I remember kneeling back up and laughing and getting up and running again. You know, because they’d missed me. I thought it was funny that they had missed me.

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