War Paint: From the Bishop Indian Reservation to Vietnam

By Robert E. Mallory

This is my story as an American Indian leaving the reservation, enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1967 and going to war in Vietnam as so many other American Indians did. The Indians came from all the nations. We enlisted to become warriors like so many of our ancestors. As a young Indian boy who had never left the reservation before. I saw many similarities to my home, in this strange and beautiful country in the trees, the creeks, and the rivers. These are my recollections of the firefights I participated in and the day-to-day life we infantrymen endured. It was said that Company C also known as Charlie Company, was given the name Bandido when a commander was flying over a group of soldiers as they waited in a landing zone to be picked up. Looking down at the men he said, "Those men look like Bandidos." And from that time on they became, Bandido Charlie. Today Bandido Charlie still rides with the 1st Infantry Division, not as an infantry company, but as an armored company. The story of Firebase Cudgel is one of many battles and firefights that the 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 9th Infantry Division were participants in during their combat time in Vietnam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645316879

Book preview

Chapter 1

My life started on the Bishop Indian Reservation when the stars were twinkling in the cold, clear winter night sky during the moon time, when the wind shakes the leaves from the trees. The yipping of coyotes singing to the man in the moon from the fields and willows along the creek. That cold October night, my mother gave life to me in a two-room house on the Bishop Paiute reservation, where I drew my first breaths as a beautiful, beautiful Paiute baby boy. In my older years seeing and experiencing life and different cultures, I thank God every day for giving me my life to live as an American Indian. But then again God knew me before I was born.

My mother, Francis Salazar, and I lived with her mother, Nellie Salazar. My grandmother Nellie was married to my grandpa, a half breed-Indian, half Indian and Mexican man named Ed Salazar from Onyx, California. After the death of my stepfather in an auto accident, our mother started to be absent a lot, coming home for a month then gone for a week or two months. Thank God for grandmothers. Gram raised my brothers, sister, and I from infants to young adults. My sister, brothers, and I called her Gram or Gramma. We did not know her by any other name. it was Gramma that provided us kids with a safe and stable home. She also took in her younger brother Lester’s children; he had four boys. Gram took them in and raised them for a year because Lester and his wife could not take care of them due to their drinking. Then her older brother Tom had two boys that lived with us for several years. Tom’s wife did not want to put up with two growing boys.

My gram was small in stature, strict, with a strong right arm of discipline and a sharp tongue of correction; you got the wrath of her anger in English and Paiute. But she loved us all because she fed us, protected us, taught us right and wrong, drilled into us how important education was in order to survive and live in the white man’s world and told of the Great Spirit, God, and the teachings of his son Jesus. We were like little coyote pups stumbling around not knowing anything. Gramma was like our mother coyote teaching us by example and with nips, bites, and growls.

The only memory that I have of my grandfather is of me standing in the road at his house in Onyx, California, near Lake Isabella, and seeing four cowboys on horses with dust flying up behind them as they came down the tree-lined dirt road at a run, then my mother scooping me up and carrying me to safety.

My grandfather Ned Salazar had two daughters, Delzela Medina and my mother, Francis. My mother was a pretty woman and loved to sing. As a child I remember her singing Indian songs and country western. Patsy Cline and Hank Williams were her favorite. My mother’s sister, Delzela Medina, lived at Fort Independence, about forty-five miles south of Bishop, and I didn’t know her well, only that she was my mother’s half sister. Later when I was in high school, I saw her and spoke to her in passing just four of five times.

My father and mother were not married, and when I was growing up, my father was not a part of my life. I saw him a few times as I was growing up. To me he was just another man that I saw once in a while. My uncles on my mother’s side of the family never spoke about him. My father did not speak to me when he saw me on the reservation. We spoke only one time after I returned home from Vietnam on leave. I saw him in the Rainbow Bar after I just got off the Greyhound bus form Los Angeles. I was stopping for a drink and hopefully to get a ride home to my gram’s. I had on my uniform decked out with my combat patches, 1st Infantry patch on the right shoulder, 9th Infantry patch on the left shoulder, Combat Infantry badge over the Bronze Star with V device for valor, Purple Heart and other medals on my left chest. The Presidential Unit Citation, Meritorious Unit Citation, and the Vietnam Gold Cross of Gallantry I wore on my right chest. I wore the French Foragers braid on the left shoulder and the infantry blue braid on the right. Yeah! I was young and proud of what I accomplished. I still am.

I bellied up to the bar, and four other Indian guys who were also home on leave from the Nam bought me a beer. Sitting at the bar, some of us were jumpy with the thousand-yard stare. My dad was sitting several barstools away with his cousins that worked for Department of Los Angeles Water and Power. With encouragement from his cousins, he staggered over to where I was sitting bullshitting with the other combat vets, lying as usual.

As an infant I have only one memory of my paternal grandmother and grandfather. The memory is of being held by my grandmother, feeling her softness and warmth, the smell of cooking clinging to her clothes. Seeing the red bandanna with designs on it that she wore wrapped around her head in the style of Indian women during that time. I remember looking at my grandfather and him smiling at me; he had on a light brown denim jacket with the collar pulled up, a red scarf around his neck and his light grey cowboy hat, as he was driving the pickup truck down the unpaved reservation road. I remember looking out of the truck’s window. The fields, all four or six acres in size of other family’s land assignments, had the grass cut short and were empty of livestock. The trees with their bare limbs were moving in the wind; the tall grasses along the fences and irrigation ditches that lined the assignments were brown in color and swayed in the wind gusts. I remember the colors of winter, so vivid and clear. That is the only memory I have of my grandparents on my dad’s side of the family.

My great-grandmother Nettie Jones, I called her Moo-ah. In my language, Moo-ah means grandmother. I knew her very well because I saw her regularly when I was a child. I was so small that walking the trail through the alfalfa in the summer made it so that all I could see was the sky above and the trail ahead and behind me, like walking a trail through elephant grass. My dog Mac, an Irish terrier, always pulled point. I would get to the barbed wire fence and crawl under the bottom wire. During the summer, if the irrigation was running, I would stop and play near the small water-filled irrigation ditch, then my sidekick Mac and I would turn around and trudge our way back home. Sometimes during the winter when I was all bundled up like the kid in The Christmas Story movie, I would get hooked up on the barbed wire fence and rip my clothes, getting it loose. The fields during the winter were just stubble, but the grasses along the fence lines where tall and different shades of brown. It was so cold that my nose would run, and if the wind was blowing, it would make my eyes water. When I did make it to my Moo-ah’s house, I would climb up the two steps and bang on the front door and yell, Moo-ah! It’s me! Mac would be beside me wagging his tail, sniffing at the door. I always thought that I was traveling alone to my Moo-ah’s house, but my mother or grandmother were always watching over me from a distance, very sneaky. My Moo-ah would open the door and I would stumble in. Mac would walk in and look at me with an expression, What’s your problem? He was a good dog. Moo-ah would pat Mac on the head, then we would visit. If she was doing something at the kitchen table, she would get several books and place them on a chair so that I could sit at the table like a big fella. I always sat on the dictionary, it being the thickest book. But now that I think back on it, she was probably hoping I could gain knowledge by osmosis. I would spend some nights with her, sleeping close to her, feeling her softness and warmth, feeling safe and cozy even on the coldest nights.

It was such a special time when I spent the night with her. I still think about and cherish the memories. I would hear the Indian stories of a long time ago. All of the stories related to stories of the Bible, about God, the devil, and angels. The Indian version was the same as in the Bible as we know it today. The only difference was animals, giants, spirits, and natural events were used to tell the stories from the Bible. God was always invisible. He was like the wind; you could not see him, but you could feel his power. The devil was always lurking around, trying to get people to turn against God. Some stories stated that Jesus was with the Paiutes teaching them the way of life. When I see the branches on the trees toss about and the grass move in waves and feel the wind against my face, I know that God is here at the spot I am standing. Cool! Hearing the crackle of the wood burning in the stove as I fell asleep, staying over at night during the summertime was great also. In the morning after I washed my face and hands, she would pour me coffee, of course just enough to make the milk look brown with a lot of sugar. We would eat breakfast and would have pine nut mush or have potatoes, eggs, bacon, and biscuits with butter, or pancakes with lots of thick syrup. Yum-oh!

Moo-ah had a large ranch with many cattle and horses in Round Valley. Their ranch was several miles in size and located at the base of a big teepee-shaped mountain that is named Mount Tom, which is part of the eastern edge of the great Sierra Nevada Mountain range. We Indians call Mount Tom Oh-wan-e. The name had no meaning. I guess it is like hi-ho, just something to say. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power sent people up here to the Owens Valley from Los Angeles to buy up all the land from the ranchers for the water rights. My great-grandma Nettie Jones sold her land and the ranch. After selling the property to Los Angeles, they lived in an Indian camp for one or two years. The Bishop Paiute Shoshone Reservation, as it is named, was opened for occupation. My great-grandmother and her sons and daughters applied for and received allotments for assignments of land on the reservation consisting of one, two, or three acres.

The Bishop Paiute/Shoshone reservation was opened three years before I was born. The reservation had two creeks running through it with irrigation lines for each land assignment. At that time, all families were raising crops, livestock, and poultry for personal use and sales. A mixture of willow trees, cotton wood trees, elm trees, and sage brush lined the creeks. Occasional mountain lions and bears traveled through the reservation.

Before the reservation was inhabited by the Bishop Paiute tribe, the government installed the infrastructure on the reservation. They built two types of houses. Brick houses with one, two, or three bedrooms had electricity and indoor plumbing, kitchen with sink, cabinets, countertop, wood-burning stove, and water heater. The bathroom consisted of a bathtub, sink, and flush toilet.

Then there were small houses built for single persons. That was the type of house my Moo-ah had. The house consisted of two rooms, one of which had the kitchen with running water in the sink, countertop, cabinets, a wood-burning stove used for cooking, water heater, and a medium-sized kitchen table. The large living room also doubled as a bedroom and had a small closet. For some reason known only to the government, the plans drawn up for the two-room houses all had an outhouse and not an inside flush toilet. The outhouses had a concrete floor, commode, a slanted roof, and was red wood shingled. The drawback was in the winter when you had to go thirty yards in the freezing cold and the outhouse was unheated. When I was a child and visited my great-grandmother and stayed overnight in the winter, I remember those quick, scary trips. Sometimes my dog Mac would accompany me and I would feel less scared.

At times eagles and chicken hawks tried to get the chickens during the day when they ran free. Coyotes hunted day and night and tried to get a meal from the chicken house and the tame rabbits from their cage. All you have to do to scare the wild animals away is step out on the porch and holler. It was a different story with Rez dogs. The dogs were not wild; they were well fed. Killing livestock and fowl not to eat but just because of bloodlust.

I remember one winter day my mom and Gram were talking in the kitchen. All of a sudden Mom hurried to the bedroom. When she came out of the room, she was loading the .30-30 Winchester lever action. Gram and I followed her outside; we stood on the back porch and watched her. She was dressed in her yellow flowered robe, moccasins, and her hair was blowing in the cold north wind as she ran through about two feet of snow. The dog was about two hundred yards away running as fast as it could through the snow. My mom flopped down in the snow, sighted in, and shot at the dog. The dog flipped over and got up and ran even faster. Mom fired two fast shots. One hit behind the dog, the second hit in front. Then the dog disappeared in the willows. The same dog came back another day to try to kill our chickens. But he was very leery when he came around this time.

Generally, the only interaction the Indians had at that time with the white people were when we worked for them or went to their stores and did business. The first white man I saw in my baby years was when a white man came to the house. I was playing on the floor with my toys when there was knocking on the front door. My mom opened the door and spoke to the giant that stood there covered in red hair. I could see the giant’s teeth through the hair that covered its face when it snarled at mom. I jumped up and ran to my mom and grabbed her around the leg and held on for dear life, and I started to cry because I thought it was going to eat us. Yep! Pretty scary.

The story of redheaded cannibals is a true story I heard many times as a child when stories were told around the stove on a freezing cold winter night. About a different race of people that interacted with the Northern Paiutes. My grandmother would say if I saw them out in the mountains when I was hunting, I had better stay away from them because they would kill and eat me. Chief Sara Winnemucca and her tribe, who are Northern Paiutes, fought with them on the tribe’s land in Nevada and killed them all when the redheaded people retreated to a cave. Years later some white men found the cave and mined the bat guano, destroying bones and artifacts in the cave.

I remember my first day at kindergarten. That morning, my mother got me cleaned up and dressed. I thought that we were going to visit family. I remember getting out of the car on my own like a big boy. We went to a small building on the elementary school grounds. My mother opened the red door, and we went inside. There were other children there, all white kids. A pretty white woman came and leaned down to talk to me. The first thing I thought was that she smelled like wildflowers. She had big grey eyes like a horse. My mother told me to go play with the other kids. I had never seen white kids close up before, and I thought that they were sick. I went back to my mother and started to cry. After a while I went to the toy box and got a toy. When I looked up for my mother, she was gone. Instead of crying, I got distracted by the graham crackers and milk the teacher was passing out. So began my first day of school.

Kids my age were lucky that we did not have to attend government Indian schools. The US government thought these schools would make us good Indians, a redskin white man. In 1928 Indians could not attend school with the white kids. Instead as mentioned, they were shipped off to Indian schools. There at the schools, they were not allowed to speak their language. If the children could not speak English, they were forced to learn. Imagine if you were of kindergarten age and were forced off to school, leaving your mother crying and your father angry enough to kill. Some kids escaped, living off the land as they made their way home. Then if they made it home, the truant officers would show up and take them back. A lot of the people that were sent away to Indian schools as children or had their children taken away hated the white man for the rest of their lives. There was much abuse there at the schools as the teachers tried to change Indian children into redskin white kids. The Indians that were forced to attend these schools were not held in high esteem and sometimes not welcomed home with open arms, like the Vietnam vets, by the Indians that managed to remain free from attending the schools.

Because the ones that attended the schools were very young and forced to speak English only, most could not speak their language and forgot many of their Indian ways and culture. Emma Piper, a student from the small reservation on the outskirts of Big Pine, California, which is fifteen miles south of Bishop, was unable to attend public school because she was an Indian. But bless her heart she wanted to attend the public school, so her family scraped up enough money together to hire lawyers. These lawyers took her case all the way to the Supreme Court and won the case. This decision allowed all Indian children to finally attend public schools in America. I attended public schools in Bishop and learned a little. Yep! Being an Indian can get rough. Grammar school I don’t remember anything spectacular happening. Same way with high school. Most Indian kids did not hang around the white kids. When the school bell rang, we were headed to the reservation and home. My two cousins Rick Dewey and his brother Don Debella were gifted athletes.

In high school Rick was being scouted by major league teams, and his brother Don was offered full scholarships to top colleges. Then in later years there was Billy Turner. He went on from the golden gloves to the Olympic trials. If he had beaten his opponent in his last match, he would have boxed against Sugar Ray Leonard. Then if he had beaten Sugar Ray, he would have fought in the Olympics.

I have fleeting memories of things that happened when I was an infant. I remember being in the womb, floating in a warm, safe place, then the chill of a brightly lighted room as someone held me upside down by my ankles then slapping me on my behind. It startled me so much that I took a deep breath and let out a howl, like a coyote pup. I remember the softness of my mother’s breast as I suckled and again the warmth, love, and safeness I felt. Sometimes I think, did I really remember that far back or did I dream of this?

I remember a time before I could speak either English or Indian. It was nighttime during the winter when I was in the bedroom playing and I could hear the radio next to