Platoon’s Lone Survivor Would Do It All Over Again

When Trinh Phi Binh shows up with a van full of schoolbooks to deliver, grinning like Mister Rogers, you expect war stories of a gentle nature. But he was a trail driver.

“I got through many more bombings than I can count, day and night “ Binh said, still grinning as he pointed out his various wounds.

“But the stuff had to move, and we moved it.”

Binh and thousands like him drove the Ho Chi Minh Trail, recruits in their teens and 20s, each shuttling the same truck back and forth on a single short stretch.

It worked better that way.

“Sometimes we made only 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) a day,” he said.

“You had to know every hole in the road, every quirk of your truck and the guys who shared the dangers.”

He was the only survivor of his 17-man platoon--and only just.

Binh’s father had already collected the $10 in death benefits when he learned that his son was still alive.

But Binh did not see his father again.

In another foul-up at the war’s end, the army messaged Binh that his wife died. Since he had no wife, he did not rush home. After nine years, he could wait.

Weeks later, he discovered that the death was his father’s, and he had missed the funeral.

At first, the B-52s scared Binh. Then he figured out the American bombers punched a clock. If they came at 9 a.m. and noon, say, drivers could roll until the last minute and then jump in a ditch.

Worse were the AC-130 gunships, the time-delay bombs or the magnetic mines that leaped at passing metal.

“I threw away four or five trucks,” he said. “Besides the bombing, we were forever slipping off the trail in the rain and mud.”

Now 45, Binh said he would do it all again tomorrow.

Asked if he got malaria, he laughed.

“Of course,” he said. “Often we had high fevers, but we kept on driving. At that age, you’re not afraid of anything.”