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A Bomb, An SKS, And The Viet Cong Flag

This VC Flag made on rice paper. I've had it since 1967.

In Vietnam we had the Phantom Jet for close air support. While on operations, the jets would drop bombs in front of us, especially, if we were about to enter a Viet Cong village or enemy soldiers were in the open. Close air support was often an understatement. The pilots had to be good to keep from killing us along with the enemy.

The Phantom would scream over, tilt up and drop a 500 pound bomb that looked like a wobbling cigar. A black smoke cloud would rise, and then the shock wave, a living thing, would ripple outward. You could see it coming, like an ocean wave, right before you heard the heart rate altering blast. Then shrapnel would patter down on your head, often mixed with minute fragments of anything else the bomb destroyed, including people. It was the only time I ever felt sorry for the enemy; humans should never be exposed to such destructive power. That's how I got the paper VC flag in the picture.
An enemy soldier ran out of a straw hootch just as the bomb landed on him: talk about bad timing. In the great mystery of war, he was blasted meat chunks all over the trees, but his SKS rifle survived with just a crack in the stock and a piece of tattered pocket contained the VC flag. I put the flag in my pack, but an officer took the rifle from me, after saying I would get it back once we left the field. I never saw him or the rifle again. How the enemy soldier completely disintegrated and this paper flag survived is something I've never figured out or could even begin to explain. But it is one of the few artifacts I managed to bring home.
(This small segment was also published in Military Magazine a few years ago.)

Comments

  1. Anonymous7:13 PM

    shit dennis all the crap we went through DAM loosing a couple of good guys that still haunts me and I will never forget moving bodies of the road so we could go through . the choppers bringing in the body bags WTF PCS LCpl Sutherland

    ReplyDelete

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