Advisory Team 51 - 21st Vietnamese Infantry Division
Shrapnel Never Kills
I'd finally arrived at Advisory Team 51 of the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam which supported the 21st Vietnamese Army Infantry Division. It was a small team of some eighty Americans supporting a few thousand Vietnamese troops. We surmised there to be a number of Viet Cong embedded into our advisory team. I was a Sergeant of the Guard with our small Advisory Team compound at Bac Lieu in the Mekong Delta some 140 miles south of Saigon. Our area of operations stretched to the southernmost tip of Vietnam. The enemy was relentless in their attacks, and we sustained a number of rocket, mortar and ground attacks during my tour there. I vividly recall a whole section of the village razed by small arms and gunship fire. The streets were heavily littered with shell casings and buildings with whole sections of exterior walls shot out by the gunships in pursuit of the enemy. Come morning, several homes and buildings were still smoldering in the damaged sections of the village.
I was still getting used to my new job as Sergeant of the Guard. It was probably around 0200. As always, it happened well past midnight. Incoming fire and ground attacks almost always happened after midnight and usually between 0200 and 0400 hours. In the midst of a torrent of mortars and an evident ground attack, someone in my bunker yelled out to me, "Ojeda!!!! Koda is out there! You need to get him in here!" Meanwhile, guards at our southeast bunker were receiving small arms fire. I was busy on my field phone still hastily trying to account for my guards then looked out to see Koda walking nonchalantly towards the southeast corner. No flak vest. No steel pot. No fear. Raising his M2 Carbine over his head screaming, "What the hell are you men doing in there? Get the hell out here, godammit. Let's go get those mudderfuckers! Don't sweat the shrapnel, gentlemen! Shrapnel never killed anyone! It just stings a bit!" Koda seemed so convincing, it was almost believable.
I screamed out to Koda to get in the bunker. From some thirty feet away, Koda stopped, turned to me, froze for a few seconds. He then continued his tirade and once more started walking towards the southeast corner in the direction of the fight. I had just accounted for all my guards when someone in a nearby bunker pulled Koda into their bunker, but that was short-lived. Koda reached the southeast bunker safely.
The mortar barrage continued for some ten more minutes. Flares lit up the sky but failed to reveal the enemy. Still, fire was coming from outside the perimeter wire. This went on for a few more minutes. I kept thinking back to Advisory Team 99 and how Puff the Magic Dragon1 became our savior on more than one occasion. Here, there was no Puff available. We were pretty much on our own. With guards flanked along the southeast corner and firing a massive volume of machine gun and small arms fire, the attack ended suddenly. After some thirty more minutes, we got the "all clear" signal. I then went to check on Koda who was heavily intoxicated and still wanted to go after "those sonovabitches".
Koda was a fellow Sergeant of the Guard. Koda was short and stocky and showed no fear, no interest in anything at all, no emotion in anything outside his guard duties. It was as if he was being driven by adrenalin and became drunkenly incapacitated once the battle was over. I walked him to his hooch. When morning came, I looked for Koda at breakfast. He seemed perfectly normal and was on his second glass of tomato juice with Tabasco sauce. "Ojeda, this is some good shit! Especially when you've had too much to drink and your head about to explode. It's some powerful shit."
I asked Koda if he remembered what he did during the attack. "Not you, too! Yeah, I know I was pretty fucked up. Some asshole already sat here and told me that. I'm not gonna sit here and hear it from you, too." Pointing to scars on his neck and arms, Koda said, "Shrapnel is some pretty bad shit. Don't let anyone tell you different."
I once asked him about his surname. He replied, "Hell, I don't know. I just know it means 'badass Bear' or some shit like that, so don't fuck with me!" Koda's guards took good care of him. When he was missing during the initial attack, one of his guards took initiative accounting for and deploying their guards then pulled Koda to the safety of his bunker during the attack.
I made time to reflect on the events of that night before. The situation had been even more intense than the attacks with Advisory Team 99 since Puff the Magic Dragon1 was not available to us here. I do not recall being overwhelmingly fearful that night and attributed that to the fact that I was so busy trying to account for and deploy my guards that I did not have time to think of the hellish situation. Thinking back with the knowledge that we maintained order and discipline and made it through that night without any casualties revealed to me a reality that was to guide me in future attacks. Fear begets fear. That reality and a good dose of alcohol is how Koda stayed so calm during that and future attacks. If you can disable the fear mechanism, the mind is more capable of responding properly to ground attacks and incoming fire. Controlled drinking, opium and pot were mechanisms that helped stabilize the mind and prepare it to suppress that fear factor. That reality became my guiding force. Only seldom did I overdo my newly-discovered mechanisms for coping, and I am thankful that we did not have any attacks to deal with on the occasions in which I might have overindulged.
