What It Was Like Fighting in The Vietnam War [5:03-10:04]

lined by dense jungle foliage that you couldn't see through. So every 50 yards could be another ambush. Every 50 yards after that could be another ambush. Was it likely that that next 50 yards you were going to shot at, probably not? But you had to be ready. If you weren't ready, that's probably when they were there. So the guys in Charlie Company, when they were on operations, could never switch it off. Had to be switched on the whole time. The adrenaline had to be running any moment that you let you guard down could be the moment that killed you. That first part they were on their very first operation. And one of the sergeants went around. One of the sergeants that had trained them, they were very fearful of this guy. He's the one that's made him done push-ups before, and all that during training. The one that yelled at him was smack them on the head during training. These guys had just dug foxholes. They just probably marched 20 miles through all the heat. And at night they're supposed to maintain sleeping discipline. Only 50% of the soldiers are supposed to be asleep at any one time. And of course the sergeant sneaks out. He goes from one fox all to another. And the first fox only finds everybody to sleep, so he wakes them up. And the lieutenant is following him. The lieutenant is also out there. There's a guy named Lieutenant Black. The soldier's all loved him. He had once been a soldier himself. Lieutenant Black follows up the sergeant. And he comes to that first foxhole and now everybody's awake. Good the sergeant did his job. But he also kind of noticed there were tents. Second foxhole, everybody was awake. Everything was good, but everybody was still a little tense. Third foxhole, he finds out while there were tents, the sergeant had taken the pin out of a grenade and handed it to the soldiers. But if you fall asleep, the grenade is going to go off and you're all dead. So they all stayed very well awake that first night in Vietnam. So this slow, steady nature of the war really took a toll on them. As much or even more than the days when the war got really bad. At least when the war got really bad, there was somebody to loose your anger upon right over there. And maybe if you got lucky you could kill a few of them. That was actually something I learned about the war, too, as a non-combat enough, never been to war. One of the questions I always want to know, what's the feel like to kill somebody? And the answer I got was pretty surprising, in general, while the action was going on, the guys in Charlie Company were almost uniformly excited when this happened. Because that guy was just trying to kill you. And you put him down. It was his mama going to have to mourn that night, not yours. It took until maybe the next day for them to kind of understand that they'd just dealt death to another human. When the adrenaline is on, I've heard two or three of them tell me, I've never felt so more alive than when death was nearby. It turns you on. It keys you up every sense. Every action you take is meaningful. It's the next day when everything turns down that you begin to have to wrestle with the decisions you made the day before. So it was a cat and mouse war. The enemy could be there, probably wasn't. If he was there and you were in the wrong place, your life was worth it. And so for them, it was a draining war. I like to call it the drumbeat of war. When a company went over as 160 young men, 25 of those young men died while they were in Vietnam and 105 of them were wounded. And as part of the process of writing this book, I wanted to come to know the young man who didn't return from Vietnam, all 25 of them. And on almost every occasion, I was able to do that by, again, by interviewing family members, brothers, brothers, cousins, nephews and nieces. And one of the most exciting parts about writing the book was bringing these young men back to life. I used that as an example, Bill Geier. Young man from Chicago moved out to the suburbs before he was drafted, big Cubs fan. So to tell his life, I got to research with my favorite team, to got to research with the Cubs we're doing. I got to research about the Bears, his favorite team, and also the Black Hawks. So I got to kind of integrate myself into what it meant to be a Chicago kid in 1965. So it was so fun to rebuild his life. All of his friends loved him so much. He was 19, but he looked 13. He was a tiny kid, cherub faced, always a smile on his face. And he was so happy when he got chosen to be a medic. Not a soldier that meant, well, he was a soldier, of course, but not a combat soldier.