Beating Plowshares into Swords: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War by F.C. Schaefer

Author:F.C. Schaefer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: F.C. Schaefer
Published: 2014-12-09T05:00:00+00:00

Travis Smith: In late March, Sgt. O'Mara broke his leg diving into a ditch for cover during a mortar attack and was evacuated, got himself a Purple Heart and a ticket home, but along with the already departed Sgt. Stone, we were left without the two NCO’s who had kept us alive through every fight right from the first day we arrived in country. The instant the helicopter with O'Mara on board left, Captain Elston bumped me up to Sergeant on the spot; it was what they called a battlefield promotion. He soon had me running Bravo Company. Sad to say that a lot of guys whom I had come over with were gone by then, either KIA or wounded, but there was no end of fresh faced recruits to take their place and suddenly it was my responsibility to keep them alive. I counted at least ten of them under the age of 18 in my platoon alone; all of them lied about their age to get in. First thing I had to do was tell them that most of the shit they learned in Basic was worthless out there. The old adage is true: anything worth knowing can’t be taught. I made Spivik a Corporal; the Captain went along with anything I recommended. The kid deserved it, he’d been a big screw up like all of us were when we’d first got to Nam, but he’d worked his ass off and always came through when things got tough.

As Sergeant, it was my job to keep the unit functioning under the most adverse conditions; basically to do the impossible every day. The weather was just as bad an enemy as the NVA, along with the extremes in temperature, the Monsoon season started shortly after we arrived in Laos and we were wet all the time. Those rains that came out of nowhere every day were the worst, there was no way to keep dry and everybody was scared of jungle rot. The air would get so humid and close that we’d have difficulty breathing at times. Then there were the rats the size of small dogs and the insects with the magnitude of foot stools that were our constant companions. Bathing, shaving, or brushing your teeth on a regular basis became a thing of the past; we must have smelt as bad as we looked. When all we could see was jungle and distant mountains in every direction, there is no way that I can overstate the terrible sense of isolation we felt all the time. On top of all that, there were thousands of NVA regulars out in the undergrowth trying their best to kill every one of us, every single day.

They never gave up, no matter times they were bombed, strafed or napalmed, and were constantly changing their tactics. For days the North Vietnamese would come in and hit us just before dawn, inflict as many causalities as they could and then quickly fade away before the

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