 Marshall
Cultural Atlas
This collection of student work is from
Frank Keim's classes. He has wanted to share these works for others
to use as an example of Culturally-based curriculum and documentation. These
documents have been OCR-scanned. These are available
for educational use only.
Special Feature from the
Tundra Drums
in memory of Veterans Day
Vietnam vet recalls the 'crazy
wars'
By Frank Keim
"Seems like the Army finally
remembered me after 26 years!"
Richard Oney smiled at me as he said
this. He'd just finished telling me the story of his 10-month stint
in Vietnam during the war back in 1969-1970. He wasn't complaining -
but he was not happy, either - that only this past September he had
been sent the seven service metals and badges he had earned during
those difficult years.
Richard was born and raised in
Marshall, a small village on the Yukon just upriver from St. Marys.
When he joined the army he was only 19 and full of lofty ideals. He
really believed that by serving in Vietnam he would be fighting for
freedom and defending the U.S. Constitution against its
enemies.
It didn't take long in Vietnam before
his lofty ideals were dashed. Richard is proud of being an American
and having served in the U.S. Army, but of the Vietnam War he said, "We had no
business being there. The Vietnamese people didn't want us there. We shouldn't
have been over there."
During his first six months in the
country he was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division. He was what
they called a "straight leg" or "grunt,' the kind of soldier who was
always on the front line doing patrol duty. He worked under the worst
of all possible conditions, including constant exposure to the hot
tropical sun, insects, leeches, diarrhea, jungle rot, Agent Orange,
the constant threat of booby traps and land mines and, of course, the
horrors of battle.
He remembers one time about two
months after he was in Vietnam when his company was helicoptered into
a point not far from a place called Ku Chi near the Cambodian border.
They were to provide back-up support for the withdrawal of another
company that had been ambushed by the North Vietnamese Regular Army
and was under heavy fire. Their mission was "successful," with
minimal casualties to his own company. But the other company suffered
heavy losses. That was where he first saw the blood and gore of a
battleground and the death and terrible wounds inflicted by enemy
land mines and mortar fire.
It was also where he saw the first
dead enemy soldiers of the NVRA. He remembers seeing their twisted
bodies as he moved cautiously through the tall tropical grasses. He
had been ordered to shoot at anything that moved and he was so
scared, he said, he could feel his hair standing on end, even under
his helmet.
He and his platoon were also assigned
to set ambushes for the Viet Cong and NVRA. When they did this he
served as assistant machine-gunner, which meant he had to stay close
to the man with the M-60 and help him when needed.
Richard remembers another operation,
also near Ku Chi, when they were ordered to set an ambush for the
enemy along one of their trails. They had landed in choppers with
enough food and water to last them for 12 days. They put a bait of
food rations out for any unsuspecting Vietcong and then cut all the
grass around the bait so they would be able to see their enemy. They
meanwhile hid behind a pile of sandbags they had placed in the
surrounding tall grass and waited.
He said they waited for six days in
the unbearable heat of the tropical sun, made even worse because they
couldn't stand up and had to crawl everywhere so they wouldn't alert
the enemy. Finally, on the sixth day they saw a small group of
Vietcong checking out their food cache. The response was instant. All
hell broke loose, he said, with M- 1 6s, M-60s and grenades going off
all around him. He was firing his M-16 like everyone else, and when
the shooting was all over with there wasn't a blade of grass standing
anywhere in sight Then four Cobra helicopters suddenly swooshed in
overhead and blasted the area some more with their rockets and
.50-caliber machine guns. When the smoke cleared and they were
finally able to check the results of their ambush, they found the
remains of five dead Vietcong who, according to documents they
carried, were serving as messengers for the NVRA.
Richard went on to say that after
stripping the dead enemy soldiers and taking their rifles, many of
our own men mutilated their bodies and pried out their gold teeth. He
did not participate in this because of his Yup' ik belief that dead
bodies must be respected, no matter who they are. If you don't give
due respect, the dead person's spirit could follow you and haunt you
for the rest of your life. He is convinced this is the reason why so
many of those same American soldiers committed suicide or went crazy
after they got home to the states.
This was the first firefight where
Richard saw dead bodies that were so torn up you could barely
recognize them, with body parts like fingers and toes blown off and
scattered all over the ground, and brains and intestines hanging out
everywhere. He can still smell the nauseating odor of all those dead
and decaying things, even after 26 years. It was much worse for him
then, he said, because of the tropical heat and because they had been
ordered to remain in the area until the next day. After that he
couldn't eat for six days, and even then his hunger came back only
gradually.
He remembers the fear he felt then
too, especially after everyone opened fire. He said he was so scared
he could think only that he would be shot in the forehead and die,
even with his helmet on. And then, as always, there was the cold
prickling sensation of his hair standing straight out on his back
like the hackles of a dog.
To this day he gets flashbacks of the
encounter, mixed with so many others he had while he was in Vietnam.
And many of the old feelings of shame and guilt associated with
killing people return. So do the nightmares, which his wife won't
interrupt anymore, for fear of the violent reactions he's had in the
past.
After six months in the south,
Richard was transferred up north to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) near
Quang Tri, where he served his last four months with the 101st
Airborne Division. He said he and his platoon were welcomed there
during their first day by a heavy barrage of enemy mortar fire from
the other side of the DMZ! No casualties to his platoon, but the high
stress never let up.
He started drinking and raising hell,
he says, to try to get the stress out of his system, to no avail. So
he tried smoking marijuana, which helped but didn't cure anything. He
never got into cocaine or heroine but many of his friends did and
became addicts. But he became more and more violent as time went by -
probably, he figures, as a form of personal rebellion against this "crazy war." Sometimes he tried carving like he had back in the
village to alleviate the stress. But he could never concentrate long
enough for it to do any good. Everything made his heart start racing,
even little Vietnamese kids who he said might have an active bomb
strapped to their bodies, the better to kill and maim you with. In
the end nothing worked. The anxiety was always there, the
uncontrollable pumping of the heart, followed by the guilt and a wave
of black depression. And so it went back and forth, seemingly
forever. And then there was the "jungle rot" on his right leg which
had started down in Ku Chi. But at least that was only physical and
could eventually be treated with medicine when he finally got back to
"the world" which they called home. As it turned out, that was to be
sooner rather than later - two months sooner, in fact. After four
months in Quang Tri, Richard's "jungle rot" was diagnosed as too
serious for him to remain in Vietnam, and he was shipped back to "the
world" 10 months after he landed in Cam Ranh Bay.
But the war didn't suddenly end for
him when he returned to the States. He continued to have flashbacks
and bouts of anxiety and depression and violent drinking sprees,
where the upshot would predictably be a night or two in jail and a
long string of assault and battery misdemeanors. He married and
divorced in New Mexico, then came back to his hometown, Marshall, and
quickly left again because he felt like such a misfit. He said most
everyone treated him like an alien because he'd fought in that "crazy
war," so he picked up stakes again and split. Although he's been back
in Marshall for a long time and has a family here, he still feels
he's treated like he fought in the "wrong war." And personally, he
feels it was the wrong war for everyone. "We had no business being
there," he repeated. "I was not defending anybody's
freedom."
But Richard is very happy now that
the U.S. Army and the Veterans' Administration finally have
remembered him. Recently he brought his medals to Marshall's high
school and showed them to the students in a class, where they quizzed
him with questions about the Vietnam War and about a psychological
condition he calls post-traumatic stress disorder.
In reference to this disorder,
Richard hopes other Alaska Native Vietnam vets like himself will take
advantage of the new pension the Veterans' Administration now offers
to compensate them in part for their suffering since that "crazy
war."
Frank Keim lives in
Marshall.
Editorial Page
Max's
Message from the Best
Little School on the Yukon
Feature News
What's Happenin' at
School?
November
1997 Calendar
Elders
Page
|
Taking the Wrong
Trail
|
Alexander Isaac
|
Dedications
Dear
Tat
Mystery
People
Did
You Know That…
Fun
Page
Look
To The Stars
Your Personal Horoscope
??Guess
Who!!
Special
Feature from the Tundra Drums
in memory of Veterans Day
|
Vietnam vet recalls the
'crazy wars'
|
Frank Keim
|
Message
Page (in
pdf)
End
Notes
Christmastime Tales
Stories real and imaginary about Christmas, Slavik, and the New Year
Winter, 1996 |
Christmastime Tales II
Stories about Christmas, Slavik, and the New Year
Winter, 1998 |
Christmastime Tales III
Stories about Christmas, Slavik, and the New Year
Winter, 2000 |
| Summer Time Tails 1992 |
Summertime Tails II 1993 |
Summertime Tails III |
| Summertime Tails IV Fall, 1995 |
Summertime Tails V Fall, 1996 |
Summertime Tails VI Fall, 1997 |
| Summertime Tails VII Fall, 1999 |
Signs of the Times November 1996 |
Creative Stories From Creative Imaginations |
| Mustang Mind Manglers - Stories of the Far Out,
the Frightening and the Fantastic 1993 |
Yupik Gourmet - A Book of
Recipes |
|
| M&M Monthly |
|
|
| Happy Moose Hunting! September Edition 1997 |
Happy Easter! March/April 1998 |
Merry Christmas December Edition 1997 |
| Happy Valentine’s
Day! February Edition
1998 |
Happy Easter! March/April Edition 2000 |
Happy Thanksgiving Nov. Edition, 1997 |
| Happy Halloween October 1997 Edition |
Edible and Useful Plants of Scammon
Bay |
Edible Plants of Hooper Bay 1981 |
| The Flowers of Scammon Bay Alaska |
Poems of Hooper Bay |
Scammon Bay (Upward Bound Students) |
| Family Trees and the Buzzy Lord |
It takes a Village - A guide for parents May 1997 |
People in Our Community |
| Buildings and Personalities of
Marshall |
Marshall Village PROFILE |
Qigeckalleq Pellullermeng ‘A
Glimpse of the Past’ |
| Raven’s
Stories Spring 1995 |
Bird Stories from Scammon Bay |
The Sea Around Us |
| Ellamyua - The Great Weather - Stories about the
Weather Spring 1996 |
Moose Fire - Stories and Poems about Moose November,
1998 |
Bears Bees and Bald Eagles Winter 1992-1993 |
| Fish Fire and Water - Stories about fish, global warming
and the future November, 1997 |
Wolf Fire - Stories and Poems about Wolves |
Bear Fire - Stories and Poems about Bears Spring,
1992 |
|
