THE GOOD SOLDIER
50 minute Transcript
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL
Show: 1329
Airdate: November 6, 2009
01:00.18.01 EDWARD WOOD: To be a soldier was a very important thing in a young man’s life. And to be not just a soldier, but to be a damn good soldier and to be in combat. That’s where you belong, and that’s the southerner in me, in time of war. That’s where you belong.
01:00.44.01 WILL WILLIAMS: I had left Mississippi probably during my junior year because of the anger I had during growing up. I needed to get out of Mississippi or I probably would have been lynched. I came up to Ben Harbor, Michigan, to work on the harvest. And that work I couldn’t do. I couldn’t make money at it. So I came back. And while I was in Jackson, I went to the induction center there and signed up.
01:01.20.05 PERRY PARKS: This is a cotton mill area. There were five textile mills here. And I went around for about two months. And was looking for a job. And finally, one of the old neighbourhood greats who had been around for years, said, “Perry, I can get you a job in the cotton mill.” I went straight to the Army recruiter.
01:01.52.20 JIMMY MASSEY: I grew up in a trailer park. I grew up in a little small town called Pearland ,Texas. It’s near Galveston. I remember sitting on the couch and watching the first Gulf War.
01:02.35.01 GEORGE BUSH SR: Two hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait.
01:02.10.03 JIMMY MASSEY: And watching it on the television and then seeing how quick that it went and the hoop-la afterwards…
01:02:20. 11 GEN. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: This is sand from the liberated beaches of Kuwait.
01:02:23. 29 JIMMY MASSEY: I felt great to be an American. I had felt that we had lost the ghosts of Vietnam. I remember sitting there on the couch that night and thinking to myself, you know, you ought to go into, you ought to go into the military.
01:02:47. 05 WILL WILLIAMS: We got married on the 30th of December 1965 and I left on January 3rd of 1966 going to Vietnam. So, it’s like I spent my honeymoon in Vietnam, alone. We went from Vung Tau to Ben Wah. We were there for what they called orientation period, you know, to get used to the climate and to actually get used to the sounds of war.
01:03:40.26 PERRY PARKS: The first couple of weeks I was terrified every night. And after my first briefing, I went back to my bed and I just could not sleep. All I could think of was that they’re going to be shooting at me tomorrow and of course the next day nothing happened. And then somewhere after about three or four weeks, we had an operation where they had 30 helicopters. I was circling waiting on my turn to go into this L.Z. or landing zone to put the combat assault in. And I heard the radio open and the pilot with one of the red flight said, “This is Red Lead, we’re taking fire.” And all I could hear in the background was ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. And I would try to relax and I would try to forget about it, and it would just come right back - this paralyzing kind of fear of knowing that I’d have to stop and be shot at. And the helicopter pilot-- you have both hands full. So your gut instinct is to try to hide, but there’s no place to hide. You’re looking through a clear plexiglass window at the surrounding woodline and you see little flashes, and you know that people are shooting. You just hope they don’t hit you. From that point on I think I realized that it is possible to die over here.
01:05.04.10 EDWARD WOOD: We were a bunch of 30 guys in a two and a half ton truck put in as replacements -- no real training -- and we couldn’t find the division. We finally found it and the first thing they said to us was when we got there, I remember that, “Why did you take so long?” There was no welcome. Being a replacement, which is the most God-awful curse you can have on a human being. You go into combat-- you don’t know anybody. They don’t care about you. And they were scared to death you were going to do something stupid-- lift your head at the wrong time, fire at the wrong time-- anything to attract fire that would get them killed.
01:09.35.11 JIMMY MASSEY: By January of 2003, I found myself sitting in the Kuwaiti desert waiting to invade Iraq. I told myself, you know, hey we’re here to fight a war. This is it, you know, this is show time. This is what 11 years of training, you know, has accumulated to. My main goal was making sure that my men came home alive. Hell, I didn’t even care about-- I hate to say it-- but I didn’t really care about anybody that was outside of my platoon. Once we crossed into Iraq we would roll into these towns like a bunch of cowboys shooting the place up. We went into the Rashid. It was an actual military compound, it’s a huge military compound. We pulled in-- there was an Abrams tank that was parked at one of the entrances. I started asking what was going on because there were some demonstrators down the road. And I asked him if any of them had any weapons and he said, “No.” And I asked, “Well, do you think that they’re going to, you know, stage a coup against us, or anything like that?” And he said, “No, they’re just down there sitting, chanting, yelling.” I go behind my Humvee, and tear open an MRE, and all of a sudden I hear a gun shot. I step out from behind my Humvee and as soon as I step out from behind my Humvee, my Marines are discharging their weapons at the demonstrators. So I unsling my weapon and I put the stock up, the butt of the rifle stock up at my shoulder and I start firing. And I’m hitting, I’m hitting the demonstrators, I know I am. Oh ‘course I’m aiming at the head, I’m aiming center mass. I don’t know who called ceasefire. All I know it was just kind of simultaneously we all just stopped firing. The lieutenant, he comes up to me and he goes, “What the hell happened?” I said, “I don’t know. You tell me, sir, you’re the lieutenant.” I said, “I do know that I heard a gun shot that went over our heads.” And I said, “Did you hear it?” He said, “Yeah, I heard it.” I said, “Well who opened fire?” “I don’t know.” We went and did the reconnaissance and as we were driving by, as we were driving by the bodies, I’m looking down at the ground and I’m not seeing any, any weapons. They were wearing traditional jellabas and ‘course they were soaked in red, with blood. And I thought to myself for a split second, I said, you know, these people didn’t have any weapons. We just shot at a bunch of unarmed protestors. And then that little voice in your head goes off and it says, “Well, that’s war. That’s what happens in war.” I just-- I’ll be honest with you, I chalked it up. I really did. I chalked it up. I said, you know, how did we know?
01:14.06.14 WILL WILLIAMS: Soon after we arrived in Cu Chi we didn’t know that we had built a base camp above these complex of tunnels. So we would lose people almost daily by sniper fire or, at times, mortar fire. I felt that we had everything going against us. Whether it was just the Viet Cong or the creatures of nature itself, the snakes, the spiders. I don’t know-- it was a different smell.
01:14.48.01 MALE VOICE: Get down low!
01:14.51.01 WILL WILLIAMS: Especially if you were in battle. I know I’ve heard many people say you can’t smell blood. But to me, that’s a lie. You can smell it. I remember early on I think it was in April of ‘66. We were out in Hobo Woods and there was people in a rice field that-- we didn’t know what they were. They had on the black pajamas and the straw hats. And we had learned then in that short period that we were there that everything in black pajamas was the enemy. So we opened fire on ‘em. We were able to go and physically look at them and they had no weapons. And they looked to be teenaged children, young, very young. So you have that doubt in your mind when reality hit you, you know… What did I kill? Did I kill an innocent kid or was it a Cong? It’s a question that’s never answered.
01:16.21.24 SINGER: How many more days can you hold out? How much longer can you wait, she asked…
01:16.43.02 PERRY PARKS: That experience of being fired at while I had to stop was unnerving, so I, I asked to be transferred to the armed helicopter platoon because they never stop. They shoot rockets and machine guns. I don’t think I really thought about what their job was, but at some point you come upon a situation where you see people that you have to shoot at. And you have a machine gun-- we called it hosing ‘em down because it looks like a constant stream. Seeing people move. And seeing women and children go into a house and being told that this is an enemy location, you have to aim at this building. And you have to fire either rockets or machine guns. And if you’re far enough away it’s still not quite like shooting people. But I think it presents a problem for most people-- if you think about taking a gun and shooting someone, most people can’t do it. A soldier has to be trained to do it. So, initially it was pretty tough. I tried to not see, or to hope that it didn’t hit anybody. You only saw the building explode, you didn’t see the people.
01:18.28.14 EDWARD WOOD: The day I got hit, the weather was exactly like this. It was cold, it was foggy, it was damp, it was September in northern France. We left Verdun that morning. We were to cross the Moselle; you were on one side of the river and you were being destroyed by artillery shells coming the other way. I was digging a hole in the dirt because we knew we were going to be attacked by artillery and I had my shovel in my hand and then suddenly I was flying through the air, a huge sledgehammer had hit me and thrown me way into the air and I didn’t know if I was coming back to the ground. I went up and up and up and then suddenly I fell back… I put my hand up and felt the piece of something in my head and then I looked at my hands and they were just scarlet with blood. I looked at my back, at my butt and my butt was– you could see the white fat and this huge hole in my butt. I remember I was lying there and the medic came over and he started to fix me up and he was leaning over me and I watched the tip of his nose disappear. A piece of shrapnel cut off the tip of his nose. And then the blood from his nose merged with my nose. And the next thing I knew I was in a stretcher. I still couldn’t talk yet because I was still paralyzed on my right side. And then I had the operation on my head. And what I still remember, I grit my teeth, is he-- I didn’t have any anesthesia-- and they drilled with a drill to start taking all this stuff out. And I can still remember it felt like I had put my head on a railroad track and the train had run over it. What I remember is being treated with enormous tenderness and compassion.
01:21.05.26 WILL WILLIAMS: Some time in May of ’66, maybe early June, my company was sent out. We were like guinea pigs where we were to be hit and the other companies would converge in, wiping the enemy out. It was a bright night, you could see long distances by the moon. We had been out for quite a while on this patrol and hadn’t seen anything, so we relaxed. All at once some Viet Cong stepped out of the bushes, and it startled them to see us there-- it startled me. And he was firing and I didn’t have-- my weapon was behind the dike, I had pulled my web gear off. So I managed to get hand grenades off my belt. Tossed a couple of grenades. And that was it for that guy. Then we could see, as far as we could see there were Viet Cong that was coming up to our perimeter. We called in for indirect fire and couldn’t get it. We called in for permission to return. We couldn’t get it because my company was getting overrun. So our commander told us just to try and find a place and spend the night there. We took DeMarchi, he was the only one that was killed, and went in a bomb crater and we sat there all night. Eventually the mechanized unit came in and we loaded DeMarchi on it. His brains actually fell out in our hands when we were moving him. I still can picture him and remember it sitting in that crater all night with him. I can remember that his head sounded hollow. But it was easy to go back and kill more. That’s part of what drove me, was revenge.
01:24.08.14 MALE VOICE: Over there!
01:24.12.18 SINGER: Gunfire in the street Where we used to meet Echoes that are beat And the bass goes “bomb” Right over my head Step over the dead Remember what you said You know a part about life Is just a waking dream Well I know what you mean But that ain't how it seems right here, right now
01:24.46.12 JIMMY MASSEY: Some people love to hunt. They love to hunt animals-- deer, moose, elk, bear, whatever, whatever suits their fancy. But I can honestly tell you that there is no other feeling in the world that comes close to hunting another human being. That’s what you’re trained to do. The drawback to it is the fact that you want to do it again because you enjoy it. It’s almost kind of like a drug; you became addicted to it. But after a while, like with any addiction, you know as soon as you fire, and you get that first burst of enjoyment it only lasts for so long, and the high comes to a low. After it wears off, it felt to me like everything was just muddy and dark waters. It was like I was swimming in a big-- what we referred to in the Marine Corps as a [no audio] pool. And you find yourself looking forward to the next mission, or combat role.
01:26.03.26 SINGER: I am trying to see I am trying to believe This is not where I should be I am trying to believe
01:26.25.29 WILL WILLIAMS: You get a rush. It’s like a rush. I don’t know why you do it, but the first kill is-- seemed hard, you think about it, especially if you have to kill at close quarters. It happened, where I killed with a knife. My hate was building up for these people. And I wanted to kill. I felt good at the time when I did it. It bothered me if I didn’t get a chance to kill someone. It went beyond answering the call of duty. It had turned into something else. The hate that I had had growing up in the south I think had expanded because of what was happening in Vietnam, because of losing people. I feel I had become an animal. I could kill with no remorse.
01:28.00.27 JIMMY MASSEY: I literally saw young men turn into psychopathic killers, but the great thing about the Marine Corps is the training process that the young men and women go through, gives them all the ability to kill at least one time, to put that warrior ethos in effect. And then once you have done it, then it’s on you.
01:28.36.23 PERRY PARKS: So many things happen in a war that put you at odds with your sense of right and wrong. I’ve seen things that would be described as war crimes: the sergeant who had the ring of ears, who-- it’s not a secret. I mean he’s walking around with a big wire ring with human ears, punched through the lobe and they’re all hanging on the ring. These are people he has cut off their ears to try to get information. Shooting civilians? You don’t really call it-- it’s not like you’re shooting a civilian. It’s like collateral damage.
01:29.58.15 JIMMY MASSEY: There was one particular incident that still disturbs me today. I wish I could take that day back. I’d give anything. We went into an area near the Baghdad stadium. This Kia came into our area and actually stopped about 75 meters in front of my vehicle. That tells you how far the vehicle came into our perimeter. And, we just, we lit it up. We had three of the victims in the red Kia that they were expiring rapidly. We pulled them out of the car and we started doing first aid and I called the corpsman. The corpsman came and got the three bodies and took them back to the battalion surgeon. The corpsman came back and dumped the bodies on the side of the road. I went over to the corpsman and asked him, I said “What are you all doing? How come you are bringing them back? You need to get them out of here. You need to get them to an area where they can see a surgeon.” The corpsman said, “There’s nothing we can do for ‘em.” “So, so, what are you are going to leave the bodies on the side of the road?” They said. “Yeah, what do you want us to do, Staff Sergeant?” I said, “I want you to [no audio] patch ‘em up.” So they dumped them on the side of the road. And the guy’s brother, he come running over to him. And he’s just sitting there holding him, while they roll around on the asphalt, on a highway, rolling around in pain. They didn’t even give him any morphine. And the guy’s brother, he kept running around. He had his hands in his, in his face. And he was just crying and sobbing saying, “Why did you kill my brother? We didn’t do anything to you. We’re not terrorists.” And I remember, I just wanted to close my ears. I didn’t want to hear it. I just sat there and each time that he said it, it was like it was being permanently being burned into my brain. And, I lost it. That was the last night that I ever gotten a good night’s sleep. The night before that happened.
01:33.20.01 MALE VOICE: Get your hands up!
01:33.29.20 JIMMY MASSEY: The next morning, the lieutenant he walked up to me and said, “Staff Sergeant, are you all right? You seem a little distressed, a little agitated.” I said, “No Sir,” I said, “I’m not all right.” I said “I’m pretty pissed off at what we’re, what we’re doing over here.” And he said, “Well give me your interpretation of what we’re doing over here or what we are trying to accomplish over here.” And I just looked at him and said, “Well, I honestly feel that we’re committing genocide.” And he didn’t like my answer and he stormed off towards the CO’s vehicle. I knew at that point that my career was done. I had crossed the line and I knew I had to watch my back and grow eyes. So after that night I pretty much slept with my 9mm underneath my poncho liner within easy reach. Man the dark days. Whew.
01:34.56.28 WILL WILLIAMS : When I first came back from Vietnam in 1966, I saw protestors out speaking.
01:35.04.28 MALE VOICE: You have killed the grandmothers, you have killed every…
01:35.06.21 WILL WILLIAMS: I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t believe it. To get away from it, I put in a 10-49 to go back to Vietnam because I was what-- the term we used, “wired up.” And I don’t think it would have taken much for me to take one of the protestors out. I felt had I stayed here I would have ended up killing some people and I could do it legally in Vietnam so I put in a 10-49 to go back. I think I was looking at justification of doing what I was doing, of killing. It was only during my second tour when I began to realize that something was wrong. When I came back to the states, I went to Washington DC, to the White House, where I talked to some of the aids of Nixon just saying that I would not go back to Vietnam.
01:36.11.10 JIMMY MASSEY: When I arrived back stateside I was ordered to report into the mental health clinic at Twentynine Palms. The psychologist looked at me and she said, “Well, I don’t deal with Conscientious Objectors.” And, I just about lost it. For them to label me as a Conscientious Objector, that’s the ultimate slap in the face. You’re calling me a Conscientious Objector? I just killed 30 plus individuals for you and you’re calling me a Conscientious Objector? No. I stood up and I said, “Ma’am, if you want to label me as a Conscientious Objector for not wanting to kill innocent civilians then I’ll see you in court.” I went down and I hired an attorney, a man by the name of Mr. Gary Meyers. Mr. Meyers was a representative during the My Lai trials. And Mr. Meyers and the Marine Corps came to a very discreet mutual understanding. I was honorably discharged December 31st of 2003, and here I am.
01:37.44.21 PERRY PARKS: When I came back I think that sense of long term planning was gone. I went through a divorce. Some things I did recklessly, probably in the back of my mind I would not have minded dying.
01:37.59.14 SINGER: Almost cut my hair…
01:38.04.13 PERRY PARKS: I went through a period when….PCP, cocaine, marijuana, and amphetamines-- a long period of severe drug abuse. I had finally gotten to the point where I had no more money. I had no more car. I had long since moved out of my house and could not go back home. Exactly where do you go from here? And it was when the National Guard needed someone with my experience in teaching people how to fly the armed helicopters, the Cobras. And I was asked to come in and help train some of those folks. And the money was, you know, 15, 20 thousand dollars a year for part-time work, and it carried a retirement with it. Even though I had had a change of heart about wars, I needed the money.
01:39.21.10 JIMMY MASSEY: You first come home and you immediately forget about everything. You go to McDonald’s and you go to all your favorite restaurants and you do all your favorite things and you’re having a great time, and you know… And then all of sudden you wake up one day and you’re like-- wait a minute. I’m not having a good time any more. I’m starting to think about this, and I’m starting to think about that, because all the newness has worn off. You’re home. I’m alive. I got my arms, I got my legs, I’m alive. But then the mind, the mind starts catching up with everything else. I found myself going through my gear, prepping like I’m getting ready to go to combat. I mean I even look for suicide bombers, you know, anything out of the ordinary. Once you’ve reached that level of your senses being that heightened, it’s hard to turn it off. It’s like being a caged tiger.
01:40.34.19 SINGER: On cloud number one we have a band a band that’s tuning up to play a song a song. It’s called Hallelujah!
01:40.40.04 EDWARD WOOD: I got back in December of ’44. There was nobody you could talk to, you know, there was nobody who had been in combat around. I can remember still seeing that glow, that red glow on the tip of the Chrysler building and, my God, I was home, and I wasn’t dead. One day you’re killing somebody or they are trying to kill you and the next day you’re sitting in a bar in New York City. It’s crazy. You see, I looked so normal. Nobody knows that your hand doesn’t work. Nobody knows that you’ve got a headache because you’ve got a hole in your head. Can’t see it. When I wrote home that I was wounded-- I had been in France from the middle of August ‘til I was hit-- Dad said to the newspaper reporter who interviewed him, “He was only there for a few days.” That was to me, the “only,” was at that time -- not now -- was a real rejection of who I was as a man. He didn’t last, he didn’t make it, he got hit. And I think I didn’t even understand it then, but that started a decline in our relationship which spiraled downward and downward and downward. And so you don’t talk about it after a while. You sit on it. And, see I was lucky. Why didn’t I blow somebody up? Guys do that, or why-- for me, why didn’t I do this? I once tried. I got on a stool. I remember I was living in the Y in New York City totally alone. Got on a stool, put my bathrobe sash around. Hung it, stood on a chair, and why I got down was because of my friends I had made after the war who had been through the same thing I had. I felt if I did that to myself I would betray the bond we had.
01:43.38.01 WILL WILLIAMS: Cu Chi, Vietnam, February 14, 1966 by AP. They called it Hell’s Half Acre because of the American blood that had been spilled there. Tunnel-dwelling Viet Cong snipers have done most of the damage. Today was no exception. When the Second Battalion, the 27th Infantry, the famed Wolfhounds, moved out to attack, the snipers opened up from such perfectly camouflaged positions that most of the A Company went the whole day without seeing one of the enemy. A sergeant was hit in the shoulder and leg. As he rolled over, a third shot ripped through his back. A medic broke from cover and rushed to his side. As he dropped to his knees and to begin giving aide, a bullet smashed into his stomach. Both the sergeant and the medic died. An artillery barrage was laid down to screen a squad going after the wounded. A specialist fourth wounded in the hip crossed the deadly 50 yards with other volunteers. He was hit again. This was Newman.
01:45.06.01 FILMMAKER: You were there.
01:45.07.15 WILL WILLIAMS: Yes. It is hard, it brings back too many memories
01:45.19.00 MAN: Sound off with your first name and middle initial: Cho, Christmas, Church--
01:45.23.17 WILL WILLIAMS: When they were building up to go into Iraq, I start thinking about my grandsons. They were of age where if they had to draft they would be drafted. So I started thinking of what I could do to protect them, to keep them from going.
01:45.41.23 WOMAN: Thank you very much for coming.
01:45.45.12 WILL WILLIAMS: I joined the military for the same reasons that the young people join now because it is the poor people or the people on the lower end of the economic scale are the ones that fight these wars. Even though Robert McNamara came out years later and said Vietnam was a mistake, it did not take the pain from me, nor did it take the guilt that I carry for killing people. When I went to Vietnam I was a hardcore troop and I believed what I was doing there was the right thing. And I was a good soldier. But now I’m a soldier on the other side and I think I’m just as good.
01:46.45.02 JIMMY MASSEY: I sold my soul a long time ago. I’m just here trying to recover it.
01:46.51.01 DRIVER: You don’t have the right to protest the government in that uniform.
01:46.53.25 JIMMY MASSEY: It ain’t a uniform, it ain’t a uniform. People ask me “Well aren’t you afraid to go to prison? I mean you’re saying you’re a war criminal.” Brother, I’m already in prison.
01:47.05.23 TIM PLUTA: This is Veterans for Peace Chapter 099 Western North Carolina hoping that this moment registers in everyone’s mind that this is one of the total costs of war.
01:47.39.22 EDWARD WOOD: Siegfried Sassoon who was a great war poet of World War I, wrote a line: war was a fiend who stopped our clocks though we met him grim and gay. And I know people who got their clocks stopped so bad that they never got beyond it-- drugs, booze, women, suicide, whatever you want to call it. And that happened to me. And, I think my clock was stopped for close to 40 years before I got over that. I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I had been wounded. I was ashamed that I hadn’t been a hero. I never understood that my problems with my parents, my problems with my wife, my ex-wife, were buried in the fact that I had gotten blown up. I never understood it, repressed it totally. And then, I began to go to a coffee shop and I would hear the big bands of 1945 and I would weep like a baby in public. I had no idea that what I was doing-- I could weep right now-- was going back and trying to find that little boy of nineteen and what happened to him. The fall of ’84 I was driven to go back, to fly to Luxembourg, to spend the night there, to rent a car and find the place where I was wounded on September 7th, 1944. And then suddenly I found the bridge that we had crossed that had been blown when I had been shot. I discovered to the hour and the moment where I had been wounded forty years before. And I cannot explain it, but that discovery began my healing. My generation really repressed what the war was about. We didn’t want to talk about it. We weren’t allowed to talk about it. And then slowly in the 1980’s and 1990’s, this whole thing of the “Greatest Generation” occurred. And it was wonderful, you know, the Greatest Generation. What a nice thing to call us. And we forgot what we had done. We forgot that we had been animals for a while. War is about one thing only. It is about killing. You either learn to kill somebody else or you get killed or wounded yourself. And that’s why I’ve come to so loathe the idea of war.
01:50.27.08 WILL WILLIAMS: I think that’s all the purple ones. Vietnam is something that is constant with me. I think of it every day. I still have the flashbacks from it, the memories. Still go to counseling for it. And, it’s not worth it, but what I did do was manage to find some good in that war. I think Vietnam made me a better person, it made me love people more. It made me understand that we are all one, one people throughout this earth.
01:51.11.29 PERRY PARKS: There’s a certain amount of guilt I think you learn to live with, you compartmentalize it, you make, you rationalize, you make all the excuses. I really don’t have to make excuses, even though there are things I wish I had not done, but there’s no way to change those things.
01:51.33.26 SINGER: Glory, glory, Hallelujah The sun is shining, shining down
01:51.58.07 PERRY PARKS: When you come to the point that you realize or you recognize that war is not the way to settle a disagreement, then I’m kind of like the poster: You can have your war, but I ain’t coming.
01:52.15.00 SINGER: All those simple thoughts all those peaceful dreams
Share the space with a hard worked, hard worked day
01:53.56.10 VETERANS: Veterans against the war! We know what we’re marching for! We know what we’re marching for!