And That's the Way It Was... By Dawn's Early Light

By Trent C. Young

I have known for many years that this story must be told. It is an accounting of the facts as I remember them some thirty years later. It is not too difficult to remember though, for I have had these memories dictate my life and have for many of those years, yielded to the person and character I had become because of those events. This is the story of a covert operation in the Republic of South Vietnam after the war officially ended. A covert mission, which I was told, was one of both principle and one of great honor and... a mission with secrets I would take to the grave...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257184651

Book preview

consequences…."

Chapter 1

The Final Chapter….

It was a very hot and humid day in downtown Saigon. The air was ripe with the buzz of the flies and the odor of rotting meat. This section of Saigon was obviously the home of the extremely poor. The ones so poor they would spend their lives scurrying through the alleyways and piles of garbage looking for that next meal in the form of a scrawny rat or other vermin.

Those too old or those that had lost limbs during the war would be squatting in typical fashion on the corners of the city begging for any coin. The stench of human excrement and urine, from the constant use of the streets as toilets, invaded the nostrils.

The city was still sleepy in that early morning of June 1973. Just the occasional racing of a motor scooter along the dank and dirty streets could be heard along with the sounds of gunshots and whistling mortars in the distance. It sounded sometimes as if the war had never really ended. I was feeling a bit drained from the booze and prostitutes from the night before as I walked down the dirty street. Damn dogs everywhere. I thought these people were supposed to be eating these nasty little flea infested mutts. I looked down, saw the dog crap on my boots from the night before, and cursed. Six days in this God forsaken place. I wondered how many more days until I could finish this mission. They tell us there are supposed to be about twelve hundred of these guys over here. This damn sure is not the Saigon I remembered from 1972.

My bloodshot and aching eyes were searching for that sight that has become so familiar in the past six days. My head pounded and I cursed as I strained against the harsh morning light. I could see him walking from the little shack that was covered in camouflage green paint left over from the war, a roof made of tin, and the sidewalk made from old cans pounded into the rich earth. Neat little flowers growing along the edges of the old shack added some life to this somewhat dreary little corner of the world.

He was a young man, maybe twenty-three years old. His deep black skin, made darker by the Southeast Asian sun, glistened with early morning sweat. His muscles rippled under the edges of his shirt sleeves. It was obvious that for the past three years he has been doing some very hard physical work. His childlike innocence was evident in the careless saunter he had in such a recently war torn city. He was whistling a tune that did not seem to be familiar, I watched silently as he waved goodbye over his shoulder at a young woman and her child as he started down the street. I could see a small gold wedding band on his left ring finger.

The woman with the child, was barely in her twenties, yet had the haggard look of one much older. The war had obviously affected her greatly. Her dress was that of the old villagers on the outskirts of Saigon. A simple material of old black parachute silk held together by the buttons of worn out United States military uniforms. It was evident the child was not his own, as the mixture of Anglo French and Vietnamese in the young light skinned boy was obvious. The young boy wore the short pants and a white cotton shirt that were so common in the area. Like his mother, his feet were bare.

I quietly walked down the street, being careful to keep myself in the shadows so I would not be seen. I cursed as I stepped in more dog shit. My temper was rising as the young AWOL soldier walked past me. I thought of some poor son-of-a-bitch back home in the world thinking this boy was either missing in action or a prisoner of war. I was angry because he was making me do this bullshit. Halt, I yelled. Halt, I am Sgt. Young, Department of the Air Force Special Operations. I thought of yet another young soldier that would not return home to his family in quite the way they would want. For an instant, I felt the rush of adrenaline coursing through my body and my nerve endings tingle with knowing anticipation. Halt, I yelled again but this time not as loud for I had already decided the fate of this encounter. I am Sgt. Young, Department of the Air Force Special Operations, halt or I’ll execute you where you stand. A small knowing smile creased my lips as I felt the raw heat of the hot Saigon wind and the violent intensity of the quickly rising sun. The smell of death was in the air as I gently squeezed the trigger of my AR-15. The round struck him high in the forehead. I marveled, as I had so many times before, at the intense impact and amount of blood and gray matter that was contained in such a small area as the human head. The wind blew a tiny spray of blood back towards my face and the coppery taste of blood was now becoming rather familiar nectar to my lips. I wondered if the taste of blood from a black man did indeed taste the same as a white man.

I walked over to the body still doing its little chicken dance. His feet were kicking a rapid tattoo. I looked down and I saw that the young soldier was still alive. He was panting so hard, trying to keep life within himself. Poor bastard didn’t know he couldn’t think without a brain. I thought it was kind of like that bumblebee that can’t fly but does it anyway because he didn’t know he couldn’t do it. With half of his head gone, he could still generate tears as he looked up at me wondering what he had done wrong. His black skin, wet with the mixture of blood and sweat, was already beginning to be covered by flies. There is going to be a grand feast for the flies this morning if I don’t hurry, I thought to myself.

As I glanced to the side, I could see the young boy with tears in his eyes. The empty stare of contempt and hatred directed at me. Behind him, his mother was holding his young shoulders trying to give him her strength. I saw her whisper the words, my husband. As I looked at the young soldier dying, I reached down, opened his blood covered gauze shirt, and saw the dog tags issued by the military still wrapped in tape to keep them from jingling while in the bush. The pride of ownership of those tags was so obvious, for he kept them clean and well maintained. Guess he wanted to keep a little bit of home with him in this strange country. His little chicken dance ended, his eyes filmed over and I assumed he died as I tore those dog tags from his neck. I took the dog tags from the chain, placed them in a little leather pouch along with the others, and as I flung the chain in the weeds on the side of the road, the little boy in his shorts and white shirt scurried over like a little rat to pick it up. I read the dog tags of my encounter number thirty-seven, Wilson, Marvin Lee, E-3, B positive, Regular Army.

As I stood there and waited for the jeep to pick up the body, I whispered quietly to myself, How in the hell did I get here…

Chapter 2

An Age of Innocence….

It was early April 1971 in Bowie, Maryland. It is a small but growing city in a quickly expanding megalopolis filled with a myriad of frame homes, large stately maple trees, acres of grass, an infinite amount of kids filling the playgrounds, and the ever-expanding McDonald’s Hamburger restaurants. All the shopping malls were still the open-air type and the new Hardee’s Hamburgers was the place to hang out.

Saturday nights were always spent on Route 450, and after filling up with gas at Don Golden’s Shell, all the muscle cars would go screaming up the hill to prove the power of their motors, showing how much rubber they could burn from the rear tires. All the younger kids with their newly issued drivers licenses would sit leaning against those newly imported cheap little box-like cars called Toyota or Honda, the cars they borrowed from their parents. They would watch in awe, looking forward to the added excitement of the cops showing up and chasing the hot rods. Every Saturday night those guys ran their hot rods and GTO’s, and I still believe the cops never caught any of them.

It was still an age of innocence. Where among the worst we had ever done was maybe have a beer or two, but never really got drunk. Drugs, to us, were the type still contained in aspirin bottles. It was a big deal when one girl got pregnant and had to go on vacation to the special, having a baby place. I happily remember the older guys talking about girls that really did it and really, honestly and truly, got all the way naked.

We lived in a predominately white neighborhood where everyone felt insulated from the outside world. Even though Martin Luther King had become influential in the rest of the world, or so we heard, we were still a divided and segregated city. We even had one of them niggers drive down our street one day. My daddy called the cops, and they beat the hell out of that nigger and hauled him away.

The city, trying to be upper middle class, revolved itself around the Bowie Country Club and the rivalry among the neighbors for having the best looking yard. The neighbors greeted each other with a smile in the morning and would tell the gossip about each other at night. Evenings at home were quiet affairs filled with books or the little black and white television. You knew who was drinking or beating the hell out of their wives, for in this new kind of neighborhood, the houses had been built with paper-thin walls and were so close together you could hear everything.

President Kennedy had been killed just a mere seven years earlier. The train, carrying the President’s body, having stopped in the old town of Bowie, with the President’s wife Jackie and his brother Bobby standing on the back of the caboose waving and thanking the crowd for coming to show their respect, was still fresh in the minds of everyone. It was one of those historical moments. One of those moments that made our city famous even if they did stop in the nigger part of town and we were forced to breathe the same air they did if we wanted to see the coffin of the President draped with the American flag.

Just three years prior to this warm April day, Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Being for the most part a white neighborhood, it was inconsequential to us. For neither the life nor the death of Dr. King had any affect on our constricted and methodical little lives. All of us considered ours an important little city and had considered our niggers well trained and behaved. Besides, we were special. We were situated right in-between Baltimore and Washington D.C. and we had Walter Cronkite coming into our homes, via that little black and white television, giving us the story of the Vietnam War and telling us, That’s the way it is…

The Vietnam War was an important part of our lives at that time. We had all seen, or knew older classmates that had gone off to the war. None of us had really heard about any of those boys from our fair little city being killed or that special kind of wound called maimed. We did hear about one kid’s father who was a prisoner of war however. The kid always called his daddy a hero and said that he was a real POW.

However, we sure watched that Vietnam war on television. Each night we would sit down to dinner and Walter Cronkite would appear on the news and tell us what was happening in this land in Southeast Asia called Vietnam. Mr. Cronkite brought the war into our living rooms in all its glory. If you were lucky enough to know someone with a color television, you got a real special view. I remember dad would tell us to hush up, that this war was important and it would change the way each of us would live our lives. What a great and mighty war it was and it was so exciting to watch. We were able to see the big guns and explosions in what Walter Cronkite called living color. We got to see helicopters buzzing around, flying across the jungles and rice paddies with its powerful guns shooting streaks of fire.

It gave us a chance to pretend. To imagine in our own minds what it would be like to be a true hero. Sometimes it looked scary when they showed all those big planes coming back and Walter Cronkite saying they were filled with bodies of the guys that got killed over there. All the guys I went to school with, and especially me, wanted to go to Vietnam and be a hero. We wanted to fight, to show that we were patriotic, and defend everybody from communism. What we thought we really wanted to do, in our own secret little minds, was to go kill us a gook.

However, here in Bowie, most everyone felt safe and insulated from the rest of the world. Living so close to Washington D.C. and Baltimore made us feel that our special little city was immune from all the violence. The weather was really just starting to warm up. The trees were starting to show their early foliage and the crocuses were in full bloom. Besides, they were talking about love and the peace movement that started in San Francisco. We even saw a bunch of guys in school with real long hair. Vietnam really was on the other side of the world….

Chapter 3

Almost Eighteen and Freedom….

I was going to be eighteen in just about two months. Unfortunately, I looked so much younger. Did I say young? In reality, I was lucky if I passed for twelve and on a really good day, someone might think I was fourteen. Just standing over five feet tall and straining to pass a hundred pounds, did little to placate my desire to appear to be a man. Being very introverted and insecure about my height and never having once touched or used a razor, I considered myself a social pariah. Thank god, I had at least entered puberty. I had yet to have my first date and the only girl I ever kissed was back in the third grade when a girl showed me where her father had touched her and then she wanted me to kiss her. At eighteen I didn’t know how to kiss, so I know I did it wrong back in the third grade. In general, I really hated life. Trying to grow up and be like everybody else appeared to be impossible.

I had been working since I was thirteen. My first job was over in the town of Glen Burnie where my mother was banging some jerk while my dad was at work. I remember the jerk’s name was Gene and he owned the biggest nursery in the state, or so he claimed. I guess Gene felt guilty about banging my mother, so he offered me a job. However, it also could have been that he was scared I would tell my daddy about where my mother was spending so much of her time. I guess I know now why she had to pick some place twenty-five miles away. She wouldn’t be caught by my dad or become the gossip of our little city.

Consequently, on my first day of work I started to hitchhike the twenty-five miles to get there. I had walked about six or seven miles down the freeway when an old truck driver in his big shiny rig pulled to the side of the road and picked me up. He was a strange, unshaven, ragged-toothed, old codger. The stink of body odor, cigarettes, and bad breath filled the air. It was as if this old man had been caged in that truck and never got out. He gave a nasty little toothless smile and asked where I was going. Instantly, I was on guard and very apprehensive about telling him where I had to go. I just told him I had to go down the road apiece. He gunned the engine of that big rig and pulled onto the freeway again.

I marveled as I watched him work the clutch and shift through so many gears. I could feel the noise and vibration deep in my chest. The old truck driver made small talk and then looked over at me and asked if I liked girls. Sure I do, I cautiously said. He gave me a look that set me instantly on guard as he asked me if I ever had any pussy or if I knew what a real man’s cock looked like. I looked down, his right hand was reaching over toward me as I yelled that he had just gone past the road where I had to get off. He kept looking at me saying I could go a little further down the road with him. He then asked if I wanted to stay and drive around the country with him. I knew instinctively that things were headed in a bad direction. I slammed my foot against the gearshift lever, bent it, and knocked the truck out of gear. The old codger tried to slug me as I quickly ducked. He was trying desperately to stop that big rig and bring it back under control. As the truck rumbled to a stop, I opened the big door, jumped out, and ran into an old cornfield.

I was scared to death. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would pop out of my chest. I looked at the cars whizzing by and prayed that one would stop. I could see that nasty old codger through the window waving his arms around and screaming to himself or maybe screaming at the flies buzzing around his filthy body. Soon I could hear the grinding of the gears as he pulled back onto the road. I watched the cloud of dust emanate from the back of his rig as he drove down the road. As I walked back to the freeway, I realized it was the first time in my life I was glad my daddy constantly beat the hell out of me. The old codger in the truck was an easy dodge compared to my daddy.

I finally made it to that damn nursery and I figured I had walked about fifteen miles just that one way. When I arrived, there was only about a half hour of work left before they closed the nursery for the day. I knew I was never going to come back to work there and I was confident I wasn’t about to get a paycheck so I walked over to register, popped it open, and lifted out a fist full of twenties. I reasoned that if he was banging my mother and making my life more difficult, he owed it to me. I ended up walking the full twenty-five miles back home and I swore as I walked, I would never go that far from home again. Damn truck driver had a way of screwing up a guy’s self-confidence.

However, I soon remembered that sticking around home was at times, even a worse ordeal because my dad being a violent alcoholic, made life very difficult. My dad was a very proud lifer in the Army. He was the kind that would volunteer to go anywhere or do anything for his country. When he was home, most of his waking hours were spent either at the local bar or out in the gardens of our home tending to the plants. It was an escape for him, anything to escape from the view or constant haranguing or bitching of my mother. It was a strange, lonely, and empty feeling not to have my dad at home. Yet I knew when he came home there would be hell to pay and beatings to receive, for some perceived transgression by my mother of what I had supposedly done during the day. Many days were spent in my room waiting for dad to come home so my mother could tell him what I had done thus inspiring a beating. I knew my mother derived a sick pleasure out of the beating I received. You could see the thinlipped smile on her face as the skin was being torn from my flesh. I did realize in later years that if he was beating me, he wasn’t beating my mother, which I really believe she instigated out of her perversity for violent behavior.

A week or so after the nursery incident, Don Golden gave me my first real job pumping gas. What a fabulous job it was. Gas was twenty-six cents a gallon, girls wore really short skirts, and I loved to wash the windows of those cars. I felt that at thirteen, I had the world in my pocket and that being paid a buck and a half an hour, I had really become a part of the world. Only problem was, I still looked like I was eight or nine years old. The girls thought I was awfully damn cute as a little brother. The older women in their twenties felt sorry for me and gave me great shows by spreading their legs a little while wearing those mini skirts, as I washed the front windshields of their cars. I lived for the moments of seeing those white panties. One time, I even saw some real hair peeking from beneath one of those skirts. I knew I had now escaped into another world in which I felt safer. However, I was always dragged back into reality.

On occasion, I would see my dad driving past the gas station looking at me. He would never stop, yet he would always just watch as he drove by. Over the coming months, my confidence started to grow and I felt safe enough to experiment with various aspects of what I considered the adult world. The ultimate thrill was trying to get away with smoking. After weeks of coughing and hacking, I was able to enjoy my first cigarette. It soon became a habit that made me feel older and a part of the rest of the world. Those twenty-five cent a pack cigarettes were a small price to pay to look like a man.

I really got adventurous one day and stole a leather motorcycle jacket from the local Pebbel’s department store. What a fine jacket it was, just like the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without a Cause. I was learning to become a little more independent and unlike physically, mentally and emotionally, I was growing. Getting what would today be called, street smarts.

Then, as always, I would be jerked from my fantasy world back into reality. I was leaning against a gas pump in my leather jacket, jeans, and smoking a cigarette when I heard the squeal of tires. I turned just in time to see my dad barreling down in his old dodge, aimed right at me. I jumped out of the way and he crashed the car through the gas pumps, missing me by inches. He jumped out of the car, slammed me upside the head and asked me what the hell kind of hoodlum I was for wearing a leather jacket. Guess he never did see me smoking the cigarette. Gas was spewing everywhere, along with the blood out of my torn open lips. Don Golden, feeling sorry for me and trying real hard to be like a dad, told my dad that he wouldn’t have to pay for the damage if I would be allowed to keep my job and on the condition that my dad never comes on the property again.

I continued to work at Don Golden’s for three more years where in my formative years, Don and Shorty became my mentors of sorts. They did their best to help me survive and grow and they taught me that a good con could always get you money if you really needed it. They tried to educate me on the ways of the street, yet I remember that when it came down to it, I was always looking to dad for real growth and guidance. Sure, there was high school, but that was a completely different story….

Chapter 4

High School graduation… What? No graduation?

God, I really hated high school. Bowie Senior High was where my brothers had attended high school before me and had set the standard. Thankfully, it was not much of a standard. I spent the first eleven years of my formal education trying to figure out who or what I was. Having to wear glasses and feeling that I looked like the proverbial dork, did nothing to help in my education process. Trying my best to avoid that dork look, I did not wear my glasses and consequently I could not see the blackboard, let alone the teacher. Therefore, my days were filled with imagination and lots of boredom inspired sleep.

Homework was inconsequential because I didn’t know I had any, for I couldn’t see the blackboard without my glasses. To this day, I could say that I really received no formal education. Consequently, when it came to graduation time, I faced a real dilemma. I had to have the credits to graduate and there were certain classes that were mandatory. I felt like I pretty much was able to cheat on my tests in most of my classes to receive, at the very least, a minimal passing grade. I took Algebra for three solid years and the most I accomplished was that I could spell Algebra. Spanish language class was a further joke. Four years of Spanish language class and I knew only one decent cuss word. More importantly, I learned that the Spanish language textbook would hold approximately seventy-five spring peeper frogs smashed between its pages without leaking out the side of the book.

English was my only saving grace, for I loved to read. Reading was my only escape from real life. Books were a place where I could take my mind and go on any adventure or travel any journey. I found that through books I could be anybody or do anything. In addition, it helped that my English teacher, Ms. Bass, wore an extremely short skirt and loved to sit at the front edge of her desk. I had the occasion to notice that she preferred little pink panties and that she shaved all the way up her very long legs. I can assure you that I had never slept in any of her classes and that appearing to be intelligent was very important to me. I actually believe I learned something in her class. I had my first real crush on an older woman. Thinking back, I remember thinking how incredible she looked even though she was quite ancient as she was getting close to thirty years old.

As the month of June and graduation day approached, I found myself in quite a quandary. One teacher was not falling for my stories and worse yet, it was impossible to get away with cheating on tests in her class. She was what one would consider a sweet and aged little old lady in her late sixties. She was of the way of thinking that one would have to earn a passing grade to graduate from her class. Failure to do so would lead to repeating her class the following year. Something drastic and out of the ordinary would have to be accomplished to bring about graduation day for me.

Earlier in the year, I had gone down to the military recruiters to find a way to escape from Bowie. As far as I knew, the only way to really escape and find out who I was or what I could be would be to start an