TJ's War in the Central Highlands

I just learned a dear friend died back in Cleveland. TJ's heart, trashed by several massive attacks, finally gave out. His funereal was tonight.

TJ served in Vietnam with the 4th Infantry Division. In 1967 and '68, he fought North Vietnamese in the Central Highlands, moving through jungle so thick that daylight barely dented the gloom. I'd interviewed TJ for a book I was writing on the war. Here's an excerpt from his story. God bless and keep him.


* * * *

Life was a series of brutal routines.
Starting at 5:00 AM every day, TJ and the soldiers of Bravo Company hoisted eighty-pound packs and humped through the jungle for fifteen hours. These broiling, exhausting treks wound through virgin forest. Often Bravo passed beneath dank, triple-canopy jungle, trees squashed so thickly together that a flashless photo would be underexposed.
Had he ever been student council president? A star gymnast? In love with a girl at Ohio State? TJ sloughed off his old life slogging through a fantastic landscape. The Vietnamese Central Highlands were as alien to North Royalton, Ohio as alien could be. Fantastic bugs fell from trees as TJ moved through clouds of coin-sized mosquitoes, awash in malaria. Elephant grass towered over him with razor-sharp blades that sliced open skin, leaving wounds that quickly infected in the tropical air. Once TJ saw a cobra rise out of the elephant grass. As it flared its hood, he hurried off.
Occasionally, he stumbled onto scenes of quiet beauty. TJ was up near the point man one afternoon when Bravo Company entered a clearing. Tall rock formations surrounded a glittering waterfall, plunging past orchids and vines into a small pool. It looked so peaceful. Disneyesque. A moment later, TJ was joined by 19 and 20-year olds, staggering out of the forest, gasping for breath from heat and exhaustion. Wonder had been leeched out of them. They wanted only to rest.
At night, Bravo Company set up a perimeter, cut down trees and made a landing zone for helicopters to evacuate wounded. Ambushes and listening posts crept out into the lightless forest to detect any enemy heading toward the position. Once TJ and two men crouched in terror, stalked by a tiger that circled their listening post, breathing out a thick, raspy “haaaaaaahhh.” They were forbidden to fire rifles because it would reveal their position. (TJ was prepared to riddle the beast and take his chances later with authority.)
Most nights he slept four hours. Sometimes less.
Bravo Company walked in rags, uniforms rotting for wont of resupply. Over time, TJ, who’d once thought of running for congress, lost faith in a government that had seemed to have forgotten him.
And slowly, the war shifted gears.
At first, there was sniper fire, rounds making a high-pitched zeeeeeee as they passed overhead. Then several North Vietnamese would ambush Bravo Company, then dozens. TJ saw men killed and wounded, learning not all wounds were visible. TJ’s platoon medic had once survived a massacre. After his unit had been overrun, the man played dead while the NVA executed his wounded friends. The experience bent the medic in strange ways. A huge man, he would scour the jungle, picking up turtles on the march and stuffing them in his rucksack. At night, TJ and the others watched as the medic sat alone with a bayonet, stabbing turtles.
Once the enemy probed Bravo Company. A wounded North Vietnamese soldier cried out all night. In the morning TJ and several men brought in the NVA. The enemy soldier was wounded in the head, brain exposed. Prisoners were rare, highly valued for intelligence. The Bravo Company commander ordered the turtle-killing medic to treat the prisoner.
“I ain’t helping that gook.”
“I’m giving you a direct order.”
With a shrug, the big man crossed to his medical bag, took out a bottle of iodine, and poured it directly into the prisoner’s brain. The NVA leaped into the air, flopped in disturbing ways like a mad swordfish, then collapsed dead. The medic stared at the Captain.
“Sir, I did what I could.”