The entire perimeter encircling Camp Eagle was lined with a barbed wire fence some four feet high. On both sides of the fence were coiled rolls of barbed wire and a third roll on top making it something of a pyramid. Our sector of the perimeter sloped downward into a slight valley then rose again about eighty meters from the valley. Vietnamese who probably owned that land would try to grow crops on the far slope facing our perimeter. Every few days we would see some eight Vietnamese men and women planting, harvesting and watering their crops from clay pots they carried on a bamboo bar strapped across their shoulders. The bamboo bar gave it a sort of up and down swinging motion across their shoulders as they moved the heavy pots of water towards the planting area.
We were always suspicious of them since several of them often appeared to be gazing all along our sector for long periods while the others of the group worked the crops. It seems that shortly after some of those long gazing bouts, our perimeter would be attacked. As in a cat-and-mouse game, we would pick a day when the workers would not show up then go outside the wire and douse their whole planted area with gasoline and set fire to the entire crop area. This was a survival tactic and necessary because their crops would often be high enough to hide them during night attacks. We were, in effect, destroying their ability to hide, so I felt it justified. This did not deter the Vietnamese farmers one bit. They would come and survey their planted area some of which was not totally burned off. They would start cleaning the area of burned debris. The following day, they would come back with containers of water and start reseeding their crops once more.
Looking back many years later, I still feel a sense of regret in burning and destroying what could have been their livelihood. It’s quite plausible to believe they did not consider us as their enemy in battle but as their enemy destroying their only means of production.
Convoying out of Camp Eagle, we would see several Vietnamese both men and women carrying double reed baskets on their bamboo poles strapped across their shoulders headed for market where they would sell their crops. These might have been the same farmers whose crops we regularly burned. A feeling of guilt haunts me adding yet another level of regret for the radical and unwarranted measures we would often take in the interest of safety and survival. The guilt lingers in the background of my mind.
Camp Eagle was littered with graves randomly positioned probably according to property of landowners at their time of death. These graves inside the 101st Airborne perimeter were controlled strictly by 101st Airborne soldiers. There were some three graves located in our unit’s sector of the perimeter, so we in essence “owned” them. One in particular made an appealing defensive position. I adopted this grave and used it exclusively during my guard duty and during attacks when we would rush to our assigned sector of the perimeter.
My grave had an oval shaped mortar wall encircling it with an opening about two feet in width facing our perimeter. It was a typical Catholic grave found throughout Vietnam. The oval wall around it was about two and a half feet high at its lowest point and gradually rose to some four feet high where the head of the deceased would be. My grave appeared to have been Catholic since it was capped with a smallish mortar cross at the peak of the wall with lettering and dates barely visible. I thought nothing of lying down in my grave during attacks while returning enemy fire. It never entered my mind that I might be disturbing someone’s body in death. It was a perfect defensive position, and I took ownership.
The ground around Camp Eagle was rocky, so it was quite difficult to dig holes in that ground. I’m quite certain my grave was probably not more than two or three feet deep, so there could have been no more than some three feet of dirt between me and the dead body under me. Mentally, I never gave much thought to the body underneath me; however, many years later my adopted grave comes back to haunt me. It keeps popping up in my mind randomly. For many years I ignored it or quickly busied my mind with thoughts of other memories. In the past four or five years, all these undesired memories have begun crowding my mind resulting in a condition which the Veterans Administration therapists labeled “Delayed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”, a damning condition which can cripple the mind if not otherwise treated. The Veterans Administration Healthcare System has an unending supply of medication for every ailment whether real or perceived. This helps to cope.
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