Monday, December 7

Because today was Sunday, I went to church with my family. After saying my usual prayer for the men who died in the war, I saw the preacher stand. We had a different preacher this time. I think Father John has an illness or something and he did not want to take the chance of getting any of us sick. Father Ray resembled a man who I had seen earlier in my life. I tried to place where I had seen him before, but I could not remember until he began to talk. His voice brought me back to the Vietnam jungle and I forgot that I was in church. As far as I was concerned, I was fighting for my life as the Vietcong continued to bomb our camp. There was a preacher throughout all of this mess that kept me sane. While we fought, he gave out Communion and gave short sermons to inspire us. Without him, I would not have made it. He gave the soldiers a reminder that there was something more than our lives on Earth. For once, we knew what we were fighting for.

It was that same battle that I saw men buried alive. We had bunkers that we dug into the sand and the dirt. They protected us from the mortars, (well, they were better than nothing, I guess. They really didn’t do much-- unless one counts an increase in morale. Looking back, I guess they did the same thing that the preacher did for us). We thought the bunkers were perfectly stable… until the rain hit. We had non-stop rain for a whole month. I guess it was monsoon season in Vietnam because it’s not like America where it rains basically once every week. There, they could go months without rain and then one day, WOOSH, it would be the Johnstown Flood all over again and we would get 10 to 15 inches of rain per day. Soaking wet men are not always the most agreeable. Anyway, so there was a ton of rain and we were soaking wet. Well, the bunkers got wet too and sand is not very supportive when it is wet so they collapsed. With men inside! I heard men scream as they were buried under 10 feet of dirt and sand and rocks.

We tried as hard as we could to get them out and we only lost about one or two men in the end. When I say lost in this case, I mean life-wise. After such a traumatic event, there was never any way to repair the mentality of the men. I believe being buried alive is one of the top fears of an American (after public speaking of course). I did not want to leave my buddies because I was afraid I would lose them too. An experience like that bonds men better than anything. The men fighting were not just my best friends, they were my brothers.

While dirt rained down on the men in the bunkers, in the battlefield, bombs and mortars were being hailed upon us by the Vietcong. They were relentless. Not to mention, we were wet! Have I expressed how uncomfortably wet we were? I think my clothes alone gained an extra 10 pounds because of the water.

Adapted from the story of Ray Stubbe in Stubbe, Ray. “The Seige of Khe Sanh.” The Soldiers’ Story. Ed. Ron Steinman. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002. 93-99. Book.