Hearts and Minds Page #2

to communism, uh,

I've been fighting communism

since 1951, actually.

I was looked at, you know, the American

fighting man, as being, uh, you know,

like a warrior of sorts,

you know, due to my background,

the way my mother brought me up.

She always spoke of the warrior

societies of our tribe...

and of the different tribes around

us and how that these men...

always had to work to gain the

respect of the people around them...

and how they had to live, uh,

more or less a life dictated to them...

by the society that they belonged

to, and it was extremely hard.

I-I looked around and from listening to

my uncles and a lot of my relations...

they had been in the Marine Corps...

and they always told me that...

the Marine Corps was the hardest service

to cope with physically and mentally.

And I naturally wanted to be

the best at that time,

and I looked at the Marine Corps

as being the elite of the elite,

the warrior society

in the United States.

Now it might sound

clich-ish to say that,

"My country, may it always be right,

but right or wrong, my country."

But that's how I felt back in '67.

And during my senior year,

I said I've got an

obligation to serve.

I've got to fulfill it.

There's no reason physically

why I would be exempted,

and therefore, I'm gonna enlist.

- What you got there?

- Picture.

Picture? How much picture?

- Three thousand?

- I go beaucoup hungry. I sell 3,000.

- You go here, too much money.

- I buy watch for 1,500.

No, you sell to me?

You lie. You lie, you die.

- You give massage? What else you give?

- Yes.

Huh?

- I buy you one beer, okay?

- You-You buy me one beer?

No, no. No money.

Go home, mama-san.

Please, go home, mama-san.

No. Go home, mama-san.

No. Go home, mama-san.

Okay? No. Go home, mama-san.

- You will like.

- No. No.

Huh?

- How much?

- One thousand.

You? Ah, it's too much. Beaucoup.

Yeah, for sure. No, no good.

We thought of ourselves, I think,

as trying to defeat communists.

Defeat... Accepting a view of, uh...

the Walt Rostow kind of view...

of covert aggression of some kind.

The kind of view that enabled you

to think of the conflict...

in, really, World War II terms.

That was an unquestioned

assumption.

It had an idealistic flavor to it,

but it was the underpinning of

an imperial policy, basically.

I shared the assumption, very easily, and

felt it as an idealistic one really.

We were doing something for them.

I recall that I was in the

New York area at the time,

and I stopped by to see General MacArthur,

who I had known for several years.

Uh, when he greeted me, he made,

uh, quite a prophetic statement.

He said, "Westmoreland,

I-I see you have a new job."

He said, "I hope you appreciate

that this new assignment...

is filled with opportunities,

but fraught with hazards."

And indeed, uh,

this was a prophetic statement.

It can be described

much like, uh...

a-a-a singer doing an aria...

that's totally into what he's doing,

you know, totally feeling it.

He knows the aria,

and he's experiencing the aria.

And he knows his limits, and he knows

whether he's doing it and doing it well.

Flying an aircraft

can be a great deal like that.

What's a race driver feel like?

Why does a guy want to drive

in the Indianapolis 500?

I guess, perhaps,

the risk of dying,

being killed is part of it

that makes it thrilling.

I can tell when the aircraft feels

right, when it's about to stall.

I can tell when I cant

pull another fraction of a pound...

or the airplane will stall,

flip out and spin on me.

I would follow a pathway on something

like a TV screen in front of me...

that would direct me

right, left or center...

follow the steering, keep the

steering symbol, uh, centered.

I'd see a little attack light

when we'd stepped into attack.

I could pull the "commit" switch on

my stick, and the computer took over.

A computer figured out the ballistics,

the airspeed, the slant range...

and dropped the bombs when we

got to the appropriate point,

in whichever kind of attack

we'd selected,

whether it was flying straight and

level or tossing our bombs out.

So it was very much of

a technical expertise thing.

I was a good pilot, you know.

I had, uh, uh,

I had a lot of pride

in my ability to fly.

You're up there

doing something that, uh,

mankind has only dreamed of; the flying,

especially at night, in an aircraft.

The A-6 is one of the few that can

really do it the way we did it.

Um, a World War II aviator would not

even dream of doing the things we did.

It's definitely

the ultimate in aviation.

Almost everybody

has blown off firecrackers.

The thrill you get when you

see something explode as a child,

or even as an adult almost.

You put something in the can and

watch the can blow up in the air.

And the excitement,

the sense of excitement,

especially if you're getting

shot at, is just incredible.

You get there, have a real

good mission, hit your target,

find out later your target

was totally destroyed,

that it wasn't one of these misses

or almost, you got it.

And come back and make a night carrier

landing recovery. Uh, that's fantastic.

To say it's thrilling,

yes, it's deeply satisfying.

The planes again.

Are they American or Vietnamese?

I don't know

whose they are. Just airplanes.

What was this here?

I used to raise pigs

here, right there.

Where was the kitchen?

The kitchen was here.

They built it with bricks.

This was the floor.

And this was for the heat.

What's that?

That is the bomb crater.

The bombs dropped there

and destroyed everything I had.

An older sister died,

and I've another older sister left.

Yes, there were just the three of us.

But then one died.

And I'm supposed to live

in a house over there.

But now it's just a heap of rubble.

How old was your sister?

Seventy-eight.

What did she die of?

Bombs. Bombs were dropped

here the other day,

and they killed her.

I'm so unhappy.

My sister died

and I've got no home left.

I've moved in with my sister here.

I've been wounded.

I can't do anything for a living now.

I'm old and weak.

I've got nothing to sell.

Nothing to do.

Mm.

You really just don't have

time for personal thoughts...

when you're up there flying around

at 500, 600 miles an hours.

You might call it an electronic war

in a certain way.

I didn't have time to think

about anything else.

If you wanted to later, you might.

But it was all business.

It's, um, just strictly

professionalism.

We had a job to do and we did it.

Never could see the people.

You never could see...

Occasionally you saw the houses when

you were bombing around a village...

or bombing in a village.

Uh, you never heard the explosion.

You never saw any blood or any screams.

It was very clean.

You're doing a job.

You're an expert at what you do.

I was a technician.

Everything just

collapsed under the bombs.

Everything just caved in.

It's like a bird and its nest.

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