The Vietnam War

War.

A word as vilified as it is loved.

Hollywood has done a wonderful job glorifying it; they make dirt, grime and trauma look sexy and desirable. But is it? What would it feel like to be in a war?

Wars have come and gone, yet the memories of some still echo today. One in particular has always intrigued me.

It gave 19 years and 180 days of hell to those who were involved.

The Vietnam War.

The number of deaths still vary, but the number is definitely over three million.

A war that, despite it's name, involved a lot more countries than Vietnam. South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia, USA and China just to name a few.

A war so terrible approximately 125, 000 Americans crossed the border into Canada to avoid being drafted into the army.

Of all the troops who took part, 61% of them were under 21.

It single-handedly managed to inspire a host of anti-war songs, student protests and of course, the (in)famous Hippie movement.

Imagine this:

You have been shipped off to Vietnam to fight as part of an infantry regiment. First of all, you don't want the Chinook to ever land because that means "you're there"! Then, you find out the Chinook doesn't land. Instead, it hovers while you jump out carrying all your gear. So now, on top of the reality that you are officially in Vietnam, you are now also terrified of losing your head to one of those wicked rotor blades.

Then after experiencing the culture shock and incredible humidity and heat wave that easily rivals an overheated sauna, you find yourself moving onto the base they have assigned you.

As an infantryman (or 'ground-pounder'), you are on foot, trekking through the jungle. Every three steps forward, you have to stop to hack through the jungle foliage with a machete for fifteen minutes, and then you go three steps forward, and start slashing your way through for yet another fifteen minutes. While this vicious cycle continues, you are getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and a number of annoying insects you had not even known existed. If those prospects are not entertaining enough, you have to look out for snipers and tripwires. Consider it a case of waging your own personal war against jungle growth, playing host to any number of bothersome bugs, watching where you put your feet and looking up and about for any movement that might advertise the unavoidable entrance of a bullet with your name all over it.

Clean water is in short supply, and it's as valuable as gold in the camp. You're just so thirsty all the time. On the bright side, it's the monsoon season; you can just catch the rain in your hand and drink it. Your food rations are in a word, disgusting. Everything is in cans - even cookies and cake! Heating your food with a canned fuel tab is too much trouble, so you just eat it stone cold. There is simply nothing more revolting than waking up in a foxhole and shoving a can of cold scrambled eggs down your throat. Once a week, you get candy bars - which have have become synonymous with the word 'heaven'.

Maybe it's time for you to start feeling thankful you're not a Tunnel Rat. Slightly unhinged, their job is to crawl down the Viet Cong (or Charley Cong, as they are so affectionately named) tunnels. Unfortunately for these guys, those tunnels are all booby-trapped and riddled with explosives. On top of getting rid of the booby-traps and defusing said explosives, they also have to kill any Charley Cong hidden down there. Unbelievable? Well, the tunnels are, too.

Then, guess what?! As if your life just couldn't get any worse, you've been called to walk on point. Walking on point basically means you're right in front of the platoon, so you're now the one carving a way through the jungle for the rest of the guys. Remember that aforementioned bit about the tripwires, snipers and booby-traps? Well, add in mines, and that's what going on for you right now. If that isn't bad enough, the dog-tags are not going to stay on your neck; they are now tied to your boots. When your Lieutenant sees the bewildered expression on your face, he says this to you: "When you walk point, you wear your dog-tags down there. 'Cause if you step on a mine, trust me when I say your boots are going to be all that's left, and we need to know who you are so we can send the bits and pieces of you home to your mama."

The Vietnam War was more guerrilla warfare than actual out-front fighting, so now you're living out your misery doing reconnaissance patrols, bunking down for the night in foxholes and keeping to a timetable of two hours sleep, then two hours on guard duty. The problem is, you're surrounded by elephant grass, which is taller than you, and you're flipping onto your stomach and pointing your gun at any and every little sound in there. In other words, sleep is impossible; exhaustion mounts.

You hate the elephant grass. It's so tall, any number of Charley Cong can be hiding out in there, creeping up slowly to you, and it cuts and scratches you to no end when you walk through it.

While you were out on patrol a few days later, a persistent sniper follows for about three hours, subjecting you to four shots that thankfully miss. Thanking God that the sniper's a crappy shot, your slack man (the guy behind the one on point) gets tired of the unwanted attention and gets you to fire a few rounds to draw the irritating sniper out. Once the sniper's position is locked, your slack-man lobs a grenade over; that brings an end to the bullets whizzing past you.

When you're done with your reconnaissance patrol, a chopper comes by to pick you up. When you fly, you and your platoon mates take turns sitting on the open sides of the helicopter with your feet out. There are about five guys on each side, four platoon mates and one door-gunner. The next thing you know, one of the choppers next to yours is hit by a rocket and it goes down like a stone. The very next thing you see after the initial shock is the giant fireball exploding from the ground. No one goes back for survivors; you know there won't be any.

As it turns out, one of your platoon mates was on the chopper that went down. His parents are going to get that terrible telegram and they are going to suffer the added agony of his body not being recovered. This is the first friend you've lost and you're surprised to find that it's affecting you more than you originally thought; you have seen tons of bodies, so many that the sight of them does not even disturb you one bit anymore. You have gone into battle zones and recovered the dead and dying so many times it's practically routine. You don't even notice the blood and lost limbs in the medical tent any longer. You have loaded more body bags into choppers than you care to remember, but no one from your platoon had died before him. He's the first, and it's hard. Your platoon mates have practically become family.

A new man is sent in to replace the one you've lost. As it happens, he's the only survivor of his former platoon who was annihilated after a grand total of seven days in 'Nam. Apparently, the majority of his Unit had been massacred on their first day.

Anyway, the platoon tracker has managed to pick up a trail from the Viet Cong, and you've tracked them all the way to a deserted area. The Lieutenant signals you and a few of the others to take a look around while the remainder of the platoon holds back. There are signs of recent occupancy, so you're going slow on point - dog-tags tied to your boots - leading a Tunnel Rat and one of your platoon mates when a hand grabs your ass and the business side of a knife is being held to your throat. That would be the slightly demented Tunnel Rat who's asking you to keep your lips sealed while he defuses the tripwire you're currently toeing completely by accident. You don't know what you're more terrified of - the explosive going off or just standing there, being lovely target practice for the snipers.

The entire ordeal takes about an hour. The entire time you stand there, seemingly encased in your frozen little shell, your Lieutenant standing right next to you, making you look straight into his eyes and name all the countries surrounding Vietnam in alphabetical order, backwards and forwards. He then has you recite all the European states, and do a couple of mental equations. He makes you concentrate so hard, you completely forget that if you move a muscle, you would be blown to your Maker in more than a few pieces. Later you realise the Lieutenant had done it at a complete risk to his own life.

Once the Tunnel Rat has everything defused, he finds the hidden entrance to their underground tunnels. He just goes down there as if it was a run-of-the-mill job and flushes them out, leading to an intense firefight.

After the battle, the Lieutenant calls a dust-off for the platoon to gather the dead and treat the wounded before the med-evac chopper comes to clear them out.

When a helicopter comes in to pick you up, you often have to use explosives to blow a landing zone in the jungle for them, so they can get down low enough for everyone to get in and load the dead and wounded. Of course, causing that much damage and noise alert the Charley Cong to your whereabouts. So the choppers come in hot and fast with the door-gunner spraying the ground and surrounding area to take out any hidden Charley who might have a rocket aimed at them. They come in nose first, bump their skids down - and it's all go. You run with your back to the enemy, trying to make it to the chopper to grab hold of the door-gunner's hand so he can pull you in before the bullet with your name stamped all over it hits you in the back. To you, to it's the scariest thing in the world. You can't tell what is happening behind you; the only way for you to know if you're going to die or not is by watching the expression on the door-gunner's face. It's chaos; the chopper blades are spinning at full speed the entire time, you are deafened by the noise and blinded by the dirt that's getting thrown up. The door-gunner is gesticulating at you frantically - you have to keep your head low so the rotor blades don't send it flying, but you have to keep your eyes raised so you can see where you're going. And all this while, you're lugging your gear, weapon and injured platoon buddy. You're finally in the chopper, and you're now praying like crazy that everybody gets a move on and gets in fast so you can take off again and get out of there.

You know that door-gunners and pilots don't last long out here, but they are some of the bravest men you know. They are capable of airlifting an entire platoon including the dead and wounded in a scant few minutes.

The only thing worse than being airlifted is when you're only loading the body-bags and stretchers. You have done it before - the entire routine while helping to carry a stretcher and remembering to keep the I.V. bag high enough to keep it flowing, but not so high that your arm meets the rotor blades for the first and last time. To you, body bags are easier to load because you just grab them, drag them and load them on the chopper. To your war-torn mind, nothing is going to hurt them anymore anyway. Then the door-gunner gives you a smile and a thumbs-up before they take off again, and you hope that the next time your unit calls a dust-off, it's not you in that body bag being pushed or thrown onto the cold, hard floor of a helicopter.

Time on the frontlines has now jaded you. Losing friends is now a way of life. You can start a mission with five friends and return with two. Firefights are part of everyday life. Everyday, you watch more and more friends fall. The bodies on the battlefield may or may not be recovered, based on circumstances. Each body lying bloodied and broken on the ground is that of a son, father, brother, comrade, friend. Guilt starts to weigh on your mind; why are you still alive when so many are dead? Why are you killing, pillaging and destroying?

Life has become nothing short of a nightmare.

A few days later, you find yourself in yet another firefight. But this time, it's different. Your platoon was ambushed and you have all ready dragged back five bodies, including the body of your Lieutenant. You're about to go back for more when you hear a whistling sound and a searing pain starts up your legs.

Everything goes black.

A few days later, you wake up in the medical tent, minus both legs. You've lost them to a shell that landed not too far from you and a few of your friends.

"The few of you are lucky," the Doctor says, "not many survive an ambush."

You would be sent back home to recover, a war veteran. To be celebrated, remembered and honoured.

For your heroic efforts of bringing back the dead and dying on the battlefield, you have been awarded a Purple Heart and a Silver Star Medal.

But what are those compared to the loss of your your family, friends, innocence and body on the battlefield?

Nothing.

Nothing is worse than war.