A Graveyard Called Two Bits: How to Succeed at War without Really Dying by Smith Brad L

Author:Smith, Brad L. [Smith, Brad L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Wordsmith Shop
Published: 2014-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27: Coping

In the midst of my fears, my daily doubts, my minute-to-minute mind games, I finally came to a personal realization: I’d rather die trying to do my job, than live the rest of my life knowing I was a coward. That simple creed helped me through. Once I owned it, once I made its premise my credo, fear no longer owned me.

Two Bits: Our home for the duration.

Photo courtesy of Matthew Brennan, author of BROKEN HELMET

“Cool” in Vietnam was not caring or, at least, pretending you didn’t care. The hard-core guys all wore masks to that effect. I think it was a holdover from high school.

I was never considered cool in school. I wasn’t a brain, either. I climbed rope in gymnastics, so my upper body and arms were strong for my weight, but I wasn’t a jock; more like a joke.

I liked to make people laugh. My mom was the same way and my dad had a deadpan sense of humor. For me, growing up, it was a defensive mechanism. If you kept the football players laughing, they were less likely to be beating you up.

I clowned around a lot in Nam, between firefights. As a Medic, it helped inspire confidence. Only someone certifiably insane—with papers to prove it—would be a Medic. So acting a little off—or a lot—was a plus.

One time, I conducted a mock interview. I held out the handle of my bayonet as a microphone and asked, “And what do you think about how this war is being run, Soldier?” A longshoreman would have blushed at the language that followed.

Another time, I was standing under a tree next to a dead VC whose leg had been blown completely off. Rowdy, now a sergeant, brought two of his “new meat” recruits over to show them what a dead man looked like. The VC’s limb was lying next to the body. The recruits looked like someone had just run over their puppy. The moment begged for a tour guide:

“Listen up, Troops,” I said. “Here we have the latest design innovation in Viet Cong. Notice that this particular model comes complete with detachable limbs, ideal for the close quarters of tunnel life.”

My favorite prank, however, involved a smoke grenade. On occasion, we would “pop a smoke” to signal our position to the choppers overhead. Just to have something to occupy my hands one day, I picked up the pin lying on the ground from one of those grenades.

As I fiddled with it walking down the trail, I recognized that it was exactly the same type of pin attached to a green ring that was used on our hand grenades. Interesting.

An hour later, we stopped for a time while the guys on point checked something out up ahead. That’s when I spotted Matt some 20 feet away across a small clearing. Now Matt amounted to a heavily-armed hallway monitor. He always carried at least four fragmentation grenades on his belt.

I nonchalantly walked up to him, careful to keep the grenade pin hidden in one hand.

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