Bloods Read Free Page A

you hoping all that’s gonna change. Of course, I found out this was not true, because the Marine Corps was the last service to integrate. And I had an Indian for a platoon commander who hated Indians. He used to call Indians blanket ass. And then we had a Southerner from Arkansas that liked to call you chocolate bunny and Brillo head. That kind of shit.
    I went to jail in boot camp. What happened was I was afraid to jump this ditch on the obstacle course. Every time I would hit my shin. So a white lieutenant called me a nigger. And, of course, I jumped the ditch farther than I’d ever jumped before. Now I can’t run. My leg is really messed up. I’m hoppin’. So it’s pretty clear I can’t do this. So I tell the drill instructor, “Man, I can’t fucking go on.” He said, “You said what?” I said it again. He said, “Get out.” I said, “Fuck you.” This to a drill instructor in 1963. I mean you just don’t say that. I did seven days for disrespect. When I got out of the brig, they put me in a recon. The toughest unit.
    We trained in guerrilla warfare for two years at Camp Pendleton. When I first got there, they was doing Cuban stuff. Cuba was the aggressor. It was easy to do Cuba because you had a lot of Mexicans. You could always let them be Castro. We even had Cuban targets. Targets you shoot at. So then they changed the silhouettes to Vietnamese. Everything to Vietnam. Getting people ready for the little gooks. And, of course, if there were any Hawaiians and Asian-Americans in the unit, they played the roles of aggressors in the war games.
    Then we are going over to Okinawa, thinking we’re going on a regular cruise. But the rumors are that we’re probably going to the ’Nam. In Okinawa we was trained as raiders. Serious, intense jungle-warfare training. I’m gonna tell you, it was some good training. The best thing about the Marine Corps, I can say for me, is that they teach you personal endurance, how much of it you can stand.
    The only thing they told us about the Viet Cong was they were gooks. They were to be killed. Nobody sits around and gives you their historical and culturalbackground. They’re the enemy. Kill, kill, kill. That’s what we got in practice. Kill, kill, kill. I remember a survey they did in the mess hall where we had to say how we felt about the war. The thing was, get out of Vietnam or fight. What we were hearing was Vietnamese was killing Americans. I felt that if people were killing Americans, we should fight them. As a black person, there wasn’t no problem fightin’ the enemy. I knew Americans were prejudiced, were racist and all that, but, basically, I believed in America ’cause I was an American.
    I went over with the original 1st Battalion 9th Marines. When we got there, it was nothing like you expect a war to be. We had seen a little footage of the war on TV. But we was on the ship dreaming about landing on this beach like they did in World War II. Then we pulled into this area like a harbor almost and just walked off the ship.
    And the first Vietnamese that spoke to me was a little kid up to my knee. He said, “You give me cigarette. You give me cigarette.” That really freaked me out. This little bitty kid smokin’ cigarettes. That is my first memory of Vietnam. I thought little kids smokin’ was the most horrible thing that you could do. So the first Vietnamese words I learned was
Toi khong hut thuoc lo
. “I don’t smoke cigarettes.” And
Thuoc la co hai cho suc khoe
. “Cigarettes are bad for your health.”
    Remember, we were in the beginning of the war. We wasn’t dealing with the regular army from the North. We was still fightin’ the Viet Cong. The NVA was moving in, but they really hadn’t made their super move yet. So we were basically runnin’ patrols out of Danang. We were basically with the same orders that the Marines went into Lebanon with. I mean we couldn’t even put rounds in the chambers at first.
    It was weird. The first person