Beating Plowshares Into Swords: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War Read Online Free Page A

to report us, “The next time you yellow bellies are ordered to get on your feet, you move your asses, don’t matter who’s shooting at you!” was all he said and we readily agreed. The Sergeant cut us some slack and never mentioned the incident again, and we swore never to eat dirt like that again. That was my first time under fire.
    I did get the chance to redeem myself on that stretch of road a month later when I was helping escort another convoy up to Pleiku during one of the endless battles that went on around there. Because there was a fire fight up ahead and another mob of “refugees” were passing by, we were ordered to pull over and wait. The hours drifted by and the shadows started to get long. We had learned that one of trucks about a half click down the road was loaded up with about a million cases of Blue Ribbon, so Sgt. Stone, from Alpha Company, and I decided to liberate a case or two, since we were risking our asses to deliver it, we felt we deserved something for our trouble. We had to walk down one empty tract of road and came right up on a three man VC sapper team, about 25 feet away in the process of planting a mine. Amazingly we saw them before they saw us, Stone gave me a couple of quick hand singles: he would take out all three of them, while I provided cover. He got two of them with clean quick shots to the head, but his third shot just missed the last Charlie, who in a split second was racing for the bush. Without thinking, I dropped to one knee and took aim and put a round through the back of his leg. It was an unspoken rule out in the boonies that unless ordered otherwise, we took no prisoners, so Stone walked over and prepared to finish the VC off. We were interrupted at that moment by a jeep carrying a camera crew from NBC News, who stopped and got the whole scene on film. They saved that VC bastard’s life, because while we were being filmed and interviewed a Captain from Special Operations came by and claimed him. Patch him up and interrogate him--big waste of time--but it gave the spooks something to do. The Sergeant and I got to look like big heroes on the Huntly-Brinkly show, thanks to that news crew. That was the first time I saw somebody killed up close, I won’t say that it didn’t bother me, but by then I had been in Nam long enough to have seen a lot of bad things. The real sad part of it was the fact that Stone and I never did get any of that beer.
    So much was going on, we hardly had time to keep up with what was happening with the rest of the war--our world revolved around the endless patrols on Highway 19--much less with what was happening back in the USA, but the news that all college deferments had been suspended for one year was greeted with a lot of approval. All of the guys I was serving with were in the same boat as me, enlisted or drafted right out of high school, so when the shooting started there was a lot of resentment at those privileged kids on campuses, who were given a free pass to go to school on their Daddy’s money where they partied and chased tail. “More than enough Charlie to go around, we’ll sure to save plenty for the frat boys.” I remember somebody saying.
    James Rice
    Torrance, California
    Supply Officer
    Headquarters, III Corps
    I was going to the University of Southern California and working on my Masters in Business Administration when Selective Service revoked draft deferments for all first year college students, so I got caught in the squeeze. Most of the guys I went to USC with were in a real panic, we had taken our deferred status for granted, but what the Gods of War in Washington D.C. give, they can also take away. My friends and I thought it would have been much more fair to have called up the Reserves and the National Guard units, after all they had the training and experience, but they also had jobs and families that would be pissed off if they were forced leave and go get their asses shot off in the jungles of Southeast Asia, plus