Book Excerpts - Setting the Scene-45-PapaBearVietnam.com

Papa Bear^®

A True Saga of Vietnam Heroism

Nine Hundred and Thirty-Seven Days and Nights

Behind Enemy Lines in North Vietnam

Excerpts --- Setting the Scene

Author's Note: A few excerpts from the book are included on this page to give readers a sense of the difficulty that Papa Bear was facing.

This Is No Place to Get Emotional:

The North Vietnam Jungle is no place to get emotional. You get emotional here and you’re dead meat. I’ve seen it personally twice and I’ve heard stories from the other guys.

You get to caring about anybody but yourself, and you loose your focus. It’s not that you don’t watch out for the other guys. You do. That’s important for every one’s survival. What you don’t do is get attached to anybody. You just can’t.

You get attached to somebody; two minutes from now, he could set off a booby trap and the next thing you know you’re wiping his guts off you face. Or you could wake up from a rest period and find him missing. Then two days later find him nailed to a tree, skinned alive and crying for you to shoot him - to put him out of his misery. That’s crazy making. You just can’t get hooked on anybody here.

The first time I witnessed this was when it happen to Jeff Benson. Jeff was only 19 and prior to Vietnam, he'd never been more than a few hundred miles away from the family farm in Iowa. Physically, he was tough. He was rugged; a crack shot; and a hell of a good fighter. But he got emotionally attached to Sergeant (Willy) Williamson. Jeff was a good Marine until Willy tripped a booby trap and got his left leg blown off. Jeff was following too close to Willy, so when Willy tripped the mine, Jeff not only saw it, he got Willy’s blood splattered all over him. There was no way to save Willy, so I shot him in the head to put him out of his misery.

Between the blown off leg and my giving Willy his get-out-of-hell ticket, Jeff cracked. And when he cracked, the kid that leaked out out of the cracks didn’t stand a snow balls chance in hell of surviving. He started looking at the sky and talking to himself. He lost the focus on where he was. He stopped caring whether or not he lived, and he started taking risks that he shouldn’t. Two days later, he tripped a booby trap. By the time I got to him, he was already dead. He had about a half dozen sharpened wooden spike sticking into him. The only thing I could do was pick up the radio he had been carrying and get out of there as fast as I could.

Back Home Again

What those who protested the Vietnam War did was force the rest of us was that it pushed us into looking more closely at what we were doing. What those of us in the military did was certainly no worse than what others had done in the name of this or that causes or under some flag's emotional hook. It's just that this time we couldn't hide behind patriotism or glory. Blood and guts were strewn to thoroughly over everyone that the realities of war simply could no longer be denied.

The message that the protesters were delivering to us was that very number in the body count was someone's son or daughter. Every body in that body count was someone's loved one. Every body in that body count was someone’s "baby." Strange how protective we are of human beings when they are only babies. And then after 18 years of nurturing we send them out to kill someone else’s sons and daughters as though we were doing some wonderful service.

Nobody likes war. Well, at least most humans don’t like war.

When I arrived back in the 48, I let no one know I had ever been in Vietnam. A large portion of the public hated us and called us baby killers. John Wane was still some kind of hero when he portrayed other trained killers that were given medals and honored for valor in the face of the enemy.

When I arrived home, I'd had three years of complete isolation from the regular world. I was completely unaware that the public had been so thoroughly brainwashed by bullshit and media hype that they didn’t recognize "reality" simply because someone dressed it in a clown suite.

Getting Revenge Is Like Eating Dog Shit.

Here's a short story that Robert told me while we were dictating the book. I asked him to include it, because its discloses a normally hidden truth and the message in it fit me perfectly.

That son-of-a-bitch, Jake, let his dog shit on my lawn, again.

As I recall, you and Jake have been at each other for some time now.

The bastard deserves to have his ass kicked.

He probably feels the same way about you. Do you like being angry?

Hell no! But it’s better to be pissed off than to be pissed on.

Are you sure of that?

Yes I am!

Seems to me, that when you get into a pissing contest, getting pissed on is what pisses you off.

What do you mean?

Tell me what happened when Jake emptied his dog on your lawn?

I threw the dog shit on his porch.

Did that end it?

Hell no!

Why not?

Cause the son-of-a-bitch let his dog dig up my flower garden.

When you threw shit on his porch, you pissed on Jake. Did that piss him off?

Of course.

What did you expect him to do?

I don’t know.

Did you expect him to just go away?

Well, no.

You don’t know, or you didn’t think about it, or you were so pissed that, in the moment, it didn’t matter?

I was real pissed.

On or off?

Uh . . .

Were you pissed on, or pissed off?

Uh . . . Both, I guess.

When Jake and his dog were tearing up your flowers, was he pissing on you because he was pissed on, or because he was pissed off?

OK. I got it.

A moment ago you told me that it's better to be pissed off than to be pissed on. Is that really true?

I guess they go together.

Ya, like stink and shit.

Are there any alternatives to pissing contests?

Ummm . . . Let me say this another way. Would you rather be right or be happy?

Notes and References

^**msc1 **msc1 "Donald Duck" is the code name of my radio contact.

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