What was your most memorable combat mission during the Vietnam War?

I have reposted this answer from another answer I gave a few years ago. I had reached the end of my journal last year. I repost a few stories of mine now and then. Hope that’s okay.

“When you stop eating those fuckin’ ham and Lima beans bro,” said Indie.

The brain protects you and locks the bad stuff into a closet which sometimes slowly opens and lets the bad stuff out some years into the future. It bothers you worse then and jumps out at you like a spectre in future nightmares.

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Funny what war and combat does to you when you are assaulted with it day after day. It doesn’t take long to become immune to seeing death. The first time out, you stand there looking at bodies and you can’t get over that only half an hour before they were living and breathing. After about three or four combat runs, I was numb to it. It numbs you. It does. It numbs your mind, and your soul. Because if it didn’t, you wouldn’t last. You just wouldn’t last, man.

‘Last ride boys. You’re out of it,’ I thought. I shifted to hi and heard Maverick say, “Take us home Dutch, swing her over to nine o’clock.”

“Just got here,” said the Lieutenant, “FNGs, no one even knew them. Kids. That one got hit by an RPG. Hit him from the side at the upper thighs and took out his lower legs. Bled out in no time. RPG was maybe fired at your tank,” he said looking at me.

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I shifted to low, checked the gauges, and stepped on the gas. Old Deadeye was on the move again. As usual, I glanced at the photos I had taped onto areas of the controls in front and to the left of me.

The bodies? The dead bodies? What was I thinking about them? I was thinking that I was glad it wasn’t me being zipped up in those body bags. I was also glad I didn’t know them. Is that bad?

I thought of their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and on and on, the domino effect. All the lives these guys had touched. Now they were ripped from all these people and existed no more.

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“The other one,” the LT went on, “ hit in the throat and center chest. Went down in seconds. No one teach him to hit the dirt when the first shots rang out? Who’s training these guys? Fucking guy stood there looking around.”

Taken from the chicken scratches in the journal I kept.

11E Armor Crewman 11th. ACR

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I didn’t like the LT calling a recently killed GI a ‘fucking guy.’ I watched as they carefully laid the body with no legs in the body bag. I looked at his face.

A Lieutenant stood beside me looking down at them. Then a grunt came by. He was calmly chewing on a chocolate bar as he stopped to look on with us.

Indie, our black loader from South Bend, who looked like Richard Pryor, laughed and said, “Yep, you boys breathe nice and deep. Now that’s what a Hoosier breeze smells like. Mmmm, mmmm.”

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“Anything for a guy who lives in a tin coffin,” he smiled.

“Always the new guys,” Maverick said. “Ok, let’s move out.”

“Nah, couple of new guys,” I said through the com.

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We watched as two soldiers dropped body bags beside the poncho covering the fresh corpses. Suddenly, they whisked the ponchos off the bodies and there they were.

1/ th. ACR tankers. Young kids just out of high school manning killing machines. What’s wrong with this world?

I stood in the rain. I was standing under a stinking triple canopy jungle in Vietnam. Stunk like rotten cabbage and decay. Hot and so humid that your chest hurt to breathe. Combat was over, finally. I dismounted my tank to check the tracks for tree branches and pieces of wood that sometimes wedged between the road wheels and sprockets. There was a lot of wood in jungle.

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The legless body had belonged to a young soldier, blonde, who had probably just started shaving. Looked like he could be in grade ten. The other had a light beard growth, dark hair and looked Italian. Maybe from Lower Manhattan, New York. Just a guess. You do a lot of guessing in the Army.

“Nope, smells like a South Bend, Indiana breeze,” said Reb.l smiling.

“Quit eating those fuckin’ beans and wienies,” Reb said.

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Then the other body was placed in the middle of the bag. He had the same waxy look, not natural, not like he was sleeping, but dead. Two guys nobody got to know. The old timers didn’t want to know them. They figured FNGs would be dead soon, why get to know them? Why make friends with someone who’d be dead soon? War was a funny thing. Many guys died without knowing anyone. Not really that funny.

We all reeked, were full of sweat, our fatigues were greasy, blackened with tank dirt, grease and oil, and stiff with salt, like wearing new, thick farmer jeans and they smelt of, well, just smelled, and terrible at that. Tankers get used to stink. We live in it.

I turned from the bodies and walked up to the tank. I mounted up, took my tin pot off, hung the strap on the hatch post and put on my Bone Dome (CVC helmet).

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.

“Hey Dutch! You check the tracks? I don’t want any branches binding them up,” called Maverick our TC from his cupola. We all had nicknames. Maverick loved the western TV show Maverick. I was called Dutch because of my last name, though it is actually an old English name.

I was staring down at two US soldier’s bodies covered with ponchos. The ponchos did not cover everything. Sticking out of one was a pair of jungle boots, with the toes oddly pointing toward each other. Looked uncomfortable. The other soldier had no boots sticking out. In fact, there was no suggestion of legs under the poncho. Just the shape of an upper torso.

I gave him the thumbs up. I took one more look at the bodies then shoved the last bit of bar into my mouth. “Thanks man,” I said to the grunt who gave me the bar and he waved.

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Who said dead people look natural, like they are sleeping? This guy looked like he was made of wax. White face, one eye half open, the other closed, mouth open wide. They zipped the bag over his face and wavy blonde hair.

Well, they were dead. Wooden, waxy looking dead guys. What a fucking job packing the dead into body bags. I couldn’t do that job.

Later in my life, I didn’t talk about the war much except maybe the humor in war. Started writing it on Quora. I received a comment from a reader who said, ‘write about it all, the good and the bad. People should know what went on.’ So slowly, I started writing about it. You know? The more I wrote, the lighter I felt. A great weight seemed to have lifted off of me. My bad dreams lessened. I feel now that it’s good therapy for me. If all combat soldiers kept it inside them, no one would know anything about the was you fought. They should know.

I’ve a dismissive avoidant partner who said that he’s overwhelmed by our relationship and that he wants to break up, how do I get him back?

“Possibly, anyway it missed,” I said, taking another chomp of the bar. “Pretty low shot,” I said, “Maybe aiming for the tracks but usually they aim for the turret.”

I listened to more of Indie and Reb’s bantering. I smiled and shook my head. I took a firm hold of the butterfly (steering wheel) and we rumbled away, our pack screaming. A tank is very loud inside even when it’s not shooting. A 750 HP twin turbo diesel makes a lot of noise. We were in for a long drive, but we were alive. Hey, that rhymes.

He offered me a bar. I took it, peeled the paper back and bit into the tropical bar which didn’t melt in the heat nor did it have much taste. Who tests these things? Do they think we would like them? We didn’t. LT Kerns told us that if they tasted good we’d just gobble them down. They were emergency bars.

Has anyone had a romance scammer start messaging them on Quora? How do you know if the person is scamming you? What do you do?

I laughed as I checked the speedometer. We needed humor. It’s what got us through all the shit.

**NOT TO BE COPIED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. SHARING IS OKAY. I’VE HAD TOO MANY OF MY ANSWERS STOLEN. RJ Holland. **

ALLONS

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My beautiful mom and smiling dad, my two older sisters, and my girl who I taped between the hi bean indicator and the main engine fuel shut off. Good space there. Easy to look at right away. She was having a hard time. As a Canadian, I didn’t have to be here but I chose to be, like 30,000 other Canadians helping our neighbour out. I watched as they heaved the body bags into the rear deck of a nearby ACAV to the front of me.

The Michelin. Vietnam. We were OPCON to 1/4 CAV. C Troop.

“You fart again, Reb?” Maverick asked our Tennessee gunner. Farts we noticed right away.

“Anyone we know?” Maverick asked.

There is no glory in war and I wanted to show that. No glory at all.