Sittin’ on a Headstone

By Sly T'ly Bendt

Sittin on a Headstone is the story of my eighteen months in Vietnam and how I went from eighteen years young to twenty years old in a combat zone. Everyone has read of the combat, the blood and guts of men and women at war, but few people have read of the day-to-day living of the soldiers. The fear, the excitement, and the boring days too all take a toll when it comes time to go home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984543035

Sly T'ly Bendt

Born in Rhode Island on Veterans Day, November 11, 1947. My father was a veteran of WWII and was marching in the Veterans Day Parade while my mother was busy pushing me out into the a post war world. A crowded apartment and another child on the way forced my parents to leave Rhode Island in search of a place that could accommodate a growing French Catholic family. There were four of us little guys, two boys and two girls. I was the second child, the second son. The fifth child turned out to be another son and helped fill the new apartment in the village, 20 miles north of Rhode Island. Maybe it was the red brick of the two story, two family duplex that helped swell the growth of the family to nine kids. Bunk beds helped keep the house spaciously manageable. At 18, it was registration at my local draft board. It was government orders and I concurred. The Army held my future as they sent me to Viet Nam after teaching me how to maintain their fleet of helicopters. Dedication to my country, flag, mom and apple pie replaced the wrench in my hands with a M-60 machine gun while seated in the right door of a UH-1, Huey gunship. Fate made the turn that changed my life forever. Injuries from combat action in Nam left me fighting for respect at a time when the public was spitting on the soldiers coming home. There was no Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, so I had to fight to get a job to feed my growing family. I got lucky with the US Postal Service and was able to retire after 33 years. My wife and I reared three lovely daughters and were able to hold things together for only 16 years, but the girls faired well over the years. They have all graduated college with two obtaining Masters Degrees and one, the proud owner of an Irish Pub. My second wife and I have had the opportunity to travel and see this grand and marvelous country of ours. My hobbies are writing and singing. I write whenever a wisp of an idea passes through my head, be it a poem or a story, short or long. I have been singing all my life and have participated in barbershop singing for almost 24 years. I also sing in my church. I volunteer at a local veterans outpost helping vets coming home from recent tours overseas with problems assimilating back into society. My story ideas can vary from film noir to simple fantasy. My poetry can be similar but can often meld its way into music. I have fun being creative.

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Copyright © 2018 by Sly T’ly Bendt.

ISBN:           Softcover                   978-1-9845-4300-4

                     eBook                         978-1-9845-4303-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/25/2018

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Basic Training

Tank

Ten Day Break

Advanced Infantry Training

To the War

Bored to Fear

An Oriental Introduction

A Brief Interruption

US Army Training Center, again

The Hell of War

The Fate of the Brave

The Medicine of Healing

Foreword

What does the hell of war do to a man? How does he or she come home to tell a story everyone wants to hear, but he can’t tell it? How do you tell people what it smells like, what it feels like, inside? So far down inside you can’t get away from it. What does war sound like … a Hollywood movie? A word read in a book? Try listening to a deaf man, or a mute, or a mime. You had to have been there to know, to see, to feel, to taste the hell of war, to understand the fear of sittin’ on a headstone.

This story goes there and returns home again to find that what you thought you left behind, followed you home. All the sensations of combat, of war, don’t go away when a wound heals. In trying to convey in this story regular ‘life’ on base with the 25th Aviation Battalion, I was not forgiven the horrors on the other side of the wire. My fears were reminded every day in each mortar attack. Every story one soldier pass on to another was not magnified so much as it was intensified, made more real, and you believed them. I believed them because I saw some of which they spoke about. I squeezed the trigger and felt the recoil of the M-60 machine gun in my arms. I saw the bullets leave the barrel in tracers of red and strike their targets.

I saw the enemy’s tracers in green and white coming up at me. I heard the whiz as they passed my head and heard the tink-tink-tink as they struck the metal somewhere inside the ship. On base, I was safe behind the relative safety of three rows of razor wire, and claymore mines, grenades in hand, and fifty foot towers with men and 50 caliber machine guns at the ready. The ten thousand other men; cooks, clerks, and crap burners, standing by with their M-16’s are always ready to leave their posts and join in the fight, only because they had to. It was their lives on the line.

Light ’ems up, take 10, expect five and get two … 2 minutes for that cigarette you’ve been waiting for or that drink of water, warm or otherwise. Warm was usual when you drank from a canteen. The Viet Nam heat wouldn’t allow it any other way. The cold water was too far away, in the mess hall, and you can leave your post to retrieve any. You want to pee? Right where you’re standing is best. The latrine is not nearby and you can’t leave your post.

Who said war is hell? It doesn’t matter because they were right. It’s all a matter of keeping your balance while you’re sitting on a headstone.

Sly T’ly Bendt

November 1965: I turned 18, the age Uncle Sam said I had to register for the draft. So I registered at my local draft board. There were plans to enlist after high school, but nowhere did that include allowing the government to pick my number out of a hat and automatically send me off to war. In 1965 that could happen very easily. It happened to some of my friends in ’64 and will probably happen, again in 1966, before graduation. Sitting down with mom and dad to discuss my options after graduation that June, serving in the military didn’t turn out to be a bad option. Collectively, and with some influence of dad’s long standing commitment with the National Guard, I chose the Unites States Army.

Mom drove me to the recruiting station that cold mid-November morning. We climbed an old ball and claw staircase to the second floor of an old red brick building. The heavy wooden door was half frosted glass and half wood panel. A recruiting poster of Uncle Sam, pointing his finger at you, saying, I Want You, covered a portion of the glass. The aged, dark oak color of the door complimented the fainted dirty yellow on the hallway walls. I opened the door for my mother as we walked into a bright, modern looking office with a shiny polished oak desk, waxed tiled floors, padded guest seats, and florescent lighting. There were recruiting posters all over the walls, insignias and crests of different military units, and a man of pure inspiration, cut to the finest form, wearing a freshly pressed sergeant’s uniform with golden chevrons, three up and three down, on his sleeve. Imposing. Impressive. I sat down and asked what my options were for enlistment into the US Army. He went into a well scripted dissertation of everything the Army had to offer me. I answered his endless list of questions directly.

Yes, I know there’s a war on, No, I have no plans for college, can’t afford it anyway.

His questions, my answers, my questions, his answers, I didn’t think I was prepared enough to go to college anyway. My courses in high school were trade related, electrical. The requisite math, English, and history only compounded the layers of electrical study materials I needed to be able to stick my finger into a wall socket to tell you if the ‘juice’ was on or off. College didn’t enter my mind when I started high school in 1962 and graduating high school didn’t change my mind by the time I left in 1966. Besides, the family had no money to send me to college, and with no job prospects, the military was all I had left. Sam, my older brother, had left a few months ahead of me, not in the National Guard but in the regular Army. There was a tradition to uphold and I sure as hell wasn’t going to put an end to it now. I told the recruiter what I knew of Dad’s service time and mom lent more information.

During WWII dad was an aircraft mechanic in England, working on the bombers and I wanted to do likewise. Aviation, airplanes in general, got into my blood watching the war movies on TV and looking for that big A on the tail rudders of the bombers. Dad said that was his unit in England. I wanted that, to fly and be a part of something big and work on planes like those big bombers.

I listened, the recruiter explained, and I stared at the dotted line on the ‘official’ enlistment form he shoved in front of me. I thought of what kind of story I might tell my grandchildren, when I grow old… I was helicopter mechanic, not the big winged giants your grandfather worked on. I read a bit of this and that and saw pictures of this type and that type of helicopter so I guessed it wasn’t going to be a bad field after all. It took a second trip to the recruiter’s office before I made up my mind about accepting his recommendation. I asked about how they were going to train me for a job in the Army and after I got out.

The field of Army Aviation is growing all the time, son. You’ll be ahead of the pack when you get out. You’ll see. It’s a good field, a damn good field. Your aptitude tests show you are qualified to handle the job. It doesn’t make sense to pass it up.

The recruiter almost sounded desperate for me to sign those papers. Was he going to lose the commission on a sale if I didn’t? In the end it came down to the recruiter being right. I could see the upside of Army Aviation. After all, I did have the confidence, mechanically and electrically. I had no fears there, so I made up my mind, That’s what I want, Aviation Mechanics.

I signed the papers, but never heard a word of the pledge I was making…the ‘raise your right hand’ and affirmation to protect and defend the United States of America, the flag, mom, and apple pie. Rows of soldiers passed through my mind with faces from my family heritage telling me not to let our family tradition go by.

I thought a lot about what I did, signing up. That decision was going to effect the rest of my life but I knew dad would be proud. His only concern was the war in Viet Nam and what that might do to me. Once the handshake was made across the sergeant’s desk, I had the rest of the semester not to think of my enlistment. Graduation was coming in six months and I had to be ready, but as soon as my principal handed me my diploma the clock started counting down, ten days. That’s all I had after graduation, ten days.

I had mixed reactions from family and friends about my enlistment. Some were proud, others said,

Are you crazy. They’re gonna send you to Viet Nam.

Those that understood wished me a hearty good luck. Joan, the young lady I escorted to the prom, tried to hide her sadness but came to understand. She gave me a good luck kiss and told me she would like to write. I said,

Sure. I will be watching for your letters.

When my ten days were up and it was time to leave, the good-byes were hard. This would be my first time away for an extended period. My younger siblings weren’t sure what I was doing, where I was going, will I be back. Mom and dad knew. They just sent their first born son off a couple of months ago. Now he is in Germany, good and safe. They held fears this time.

It’s only Basic Training, Ma. I’ll be fine.

See you in eight weeks. they said.

Mom drove me to the recruiting station and listened as the sergeant gave her the same, old bullshit line, He’ll be fine, Mam. The Army will take good care of him. We’ll make a man of him.

I chuckled to myself as I reached to give my mother a kiss on the cheek and a deep and loving hug. I told her I loved her and said good by. The recruiter’s nondescript, faded blue, ‘65 Plymouth station wagon was adorned with only the US Army logo on the door and government license plates. I sat behind the driver on a patched and worn, blue fabric bench seat, waving good bye to Mom. We were headed for the Naval Air Station at Rovers Point, where we would board a bus, filled with other newly enlisted young men and make the long ride to the Army Training Center in N.J.,