OLD SOLDIERS

Whenever somebody asks me when I was in Viet Nam and I tell them, the usual reaction is, "Was there anything going on then? It must have been so peaceful!" Well, it wasn't peaceful for everybody, or peaceful all the time. We hauled a lot of tough little Vietnamese Rangers into tough little LZs, and I always wondered how their missions went.

Some of the guys were clearly tough as nails, and I think they were all pretty much Montagnards from the Rhade, Bru, and other tribes. This man was one of those. We picked him and his squad up at Tuy Hoa, back when Tuy Hoa was a big open field and not much more. He had two frag grenades on his web gear, the spoons secured in a professional manner with rubber bands. His Browning Automatic Rifle, the legendary BAR, is a big, heavy, weapon for any beefy American soldier, but this little warrior was about five-feet tall and weighed maybe 100 pounds. Even so, he handled the weapon easily, like any old professional soldier, and you can see in the photograph that it is clean and tidy, ready to go to work just like the man who carries it. These Rangers didn't giggle, weren't nervous, and reminded me of American Rangers in their professionalism.

When we put him and his squad into the LZ, they unassed the bird quickly and gracefully. The last I saw of them was as they ran throgh the paddies to their assembly area as our pilots pulled pitch and the anemic H-21 struggled to get airborne and out of the way for the next aircraft. For the other Americans and me, the war would last for the length of a tour, then we went home to something resembling peace. This soldier was already home and had no prospect of finding peace in his future. I think he knew that he was a fugitive from the law of averages and sooner or later a bullet would catch up with him. My connection with this Ranger lasted perhaps twenty minutes while we made our run into the landing zone; we had no conversation, no dialog, no intertaction at all, except when I opened my Rolli and made this exposure while he sat by my gun and waited. That day was nearly half a century ago now, and yet I can still see how hard-core this soldier was, and every time I see the photograph I wonder how long he survived before being consumed by battle.