‘Platoon’ Looses Torrent of Tortured Memories for Vietnam Veteran

I spent the winter of 1987 outside the United States, and being a Vietnam veteran read and heard a lot about the movie “Platoon.” People asked me about the film, heightening my curiosity. Upon my return I went to see it.

When the movie was over and the credits had ended, I watched the scratched frames with 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then the screen went black.

With a friend, I walked to her car without speaking. I was glad she was driving. In the garage, as the car began to move, I tripped over the past, and a slide show started.

Parris Island, S.C., Marine Corps Recruit Depot, 1965. The pounding of recruit cadence in the dark led to the smell of a morning mess hall before sunrise. It was summer, and when the sun came up the sky caught fire. The island’s heat drew sweat and mixed it with rifle oil, linseed oil, canvas and web gear, and from that came the smell of pride. You heard pride squeezed off on the rifle range, you heard it sound off on the physical training fields and drilling on the parade deck loud and clear, “One, two, three, four, we love the Marine Corps.” There was a war waiting and the war was hungry.

My friend stopped at a light and looked at me.

“Good movie,” I said.

She said nothing but drove with a concentration that said she heard and didn’t know what to say. The slides continued.

Camp Lejeune, N.C., the early fall. The company, in a column of twos, snaked along a sandy road in the rain. Under the roof of a three-sided shed we sat on benches and listened to a lecture on land mines.

“The smoking lamp is lit,” grunted the instructor, and we lit up, hoping the smoke would dry us out. After the lecture we went out in the drizzle and using bayonets probed the mud for mines.

On leave, too young to drink in a bar, I stood in my parent’s living room and drank a beer. Warm and dry, I watched the rain. My hair was short, my back straight, and I listened to Ramsey Lewis’ “The In Crowd” and knew I didn’t belong to it.

Then it was on to Camp Pendleton, Okinawa, then Da Nang and a ride in the back of a jeep to my unit. Helmet, flak jacket, rifle and I bounced along a dirt road. We raced daylight into Indian country to a red, dirt hill surrounded by barbed wire, sandbagged bunkers and rice paddies.

After a few blocks, my friend said, without looking at me, “Did it bring back a lot of memories?”

“Some,” I said.

We drove in silence, and I remembered the hill.

On my second night, we got hit and sprinted for the trench line, rockets and mortars landing, the howitzers returning fire.

A couple nights later we got hit again and with the explosions came screams of pain and the call, “Corpsman, corpsman!”

We carried our wounded up the hill to battalion surgery. There was blood on my shirt--not mine--and my hands shook as I lit a cigarette.

I looked out the window and knew it was San Diego, 1987. I thought about “Platoon,” the trip wire that set off the memories. I noted a few discrepancies in the film. We didn’t wear ponchos when we went out at night, the rain and any illumination making them glisten. You didn’t smoke on the hunt because the smell would probably carry farther than almost any noise you might make.

But so what? It was the best movie I’ve seen about the war. “Platoon” showed Vietnam as hot, loud, terrifying and lonely. It was a good portrayal of a godless experience.

At times I wanted to stand and scream at the screen to curse or encourage. Other times I found myself hunched down in my seat, hushed in ambush or prayer. The movie came up between my legs and grabbed me.

More memories and slides.

The bush, a squad patrol. Late morning, a bright sun, no clouds and no breeze. Out in the open on a paddy dike the sun thumped me between shoulders soaked with sweat. We were watchful and nervous, like squirrels in cat country, though we were supposed to be the cats.

Hostile fire buzzed and cracked overhead. We fired back, long bursts, short bursts, catching only a glimpse, if anything, of the enemy. Not looking at all, we’d stick our rifles up, fire, bring them down, reload and fire again. Enemy rounds kicked up the ground and chewed trees and bushes like an unseen lawn mower. My heart hammered, my nerves screamed, all unheard in the crescendo.

Rifle jammed, barrel hot, cleared the jam, fired two rounds and nothing. Out of ammo, stupid! Reloaded and continued to fire. Tracers set the dry grass on fire, and then came the smoke. The enemy broke off action. Sky high, charged with that hyped, jazzed, raw throat electricity, we hurled epithets over the edge of excitement--and terror.

A cool breeze came through the car window and I became aware of my feet pressed against the floor like trying to jam on double brakes.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

I thought and didn’t want to say. I looked at a tree-covered hillside.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” I began and stopped.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said and touched my knee.

“Sometimes I want to go back.”

“To the movie?”

“To Vietnam.”

“And see what it’s like now?”

“No, to the war, to the way it was.”

She looked at me.

“Most of the time I don’t. I hated it there, but sometimes, like now, I want to go back, put my gear on and be there.”

“Do you know why you feel like that?” she asked.

“No,” I answered.

I didn’t want to remember anymore, but the slides continued.

The bush, at night and we waited in ambush. Silent, tired, bug-eaten, tense and scared, we lay in a cane field and chewed raw sugar and waited. And waited.

She drove, and I thought about things I couldn’t think about. We stopped in front of where I lived.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why don’t you take it easy for a couple days?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

I went up to my place, closed the door and poured a glass of whiskey. Standing at a window, I looked down at an empty alley and saw myself sitting at the edge of a hole and eating out of a can during a fire mission.

The big guns hammered the air, and the buck and stink went WHAM, BAM, WHAM, KABLAM. Smoke and dust filled the air. The ground shook, the hot day got hotter, and the tents billowed and sucked like old mouths with no teeth.

I poured another drink and remembered a friend, Ron Kovic. We were in the same area during the war but didn’t meet until 10 years later.

Ron wrote a book about the war, “Born on the Fourth of July. It was good and did well. Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay, but the film was never made.

Ron and I lived in Venice, Calif. I was tending bar and Ron was writing in a wheelchair. We used to take strolls along Oceanfront Walk. Sometimes I’d push Ron, but usually he wheeled himself. We talked a lot, often about the war, and had more questions than answers.

Sometimes I’d bring a football and throw to Ron in the wheelchair. His arms and chest were powerful, his heart strong. His spinal cord had been severed by an enemy round.

Ron is a good writer. Men admire him; women love him. He is a rascal, and his sad eyes will burn a hole in you.

I took a drink and thought. Why Ron in a chair and me on my feet? Why all those names on the wall in Washington and mine in a phone book? I had more questions than answers.

I saw us working up a sweat with the football. Ron was on the grass in front of the Sidewalk Cafe. I arced the ball high in his direction and he wheeled like crazy. Naked from the waist up, the palm trees and ocean behind him, he reached out and snagged the ball.

I gave him a thumbs up and he held the ball over his head like he’d scored a touchdown. I grinned as I ran towards him, his arm cocked to throw. I yelled at him and he threw it.

I finished my drink and put the bottle away. It was growing dark and I was tired. I knew I’d go back to see “Platoon,” but not for a while.