On the battlefield of the Vietnam War, the head and face of a Vietcong soldier who was shot and killed by American troops around October 1966 were covered with bright vermilion splashes of blood. American soldiers immediately immobilized his arms and took away his Chinese-made light automatic rifle. The American soldiers grabbed the fiercely fighting Vietcong soldier by the neck and pulled him up. The Vietcong soldier was oozing blood from his head. He was gasping for breath and soon fainted, and shortly thereafter he died. The American soldiers kicked him out into the ditch.
Crossing the rice paddy area, the American tank troops entered the thin forest that stretched across the dunes and communicated with the troops and helicopters by radio. Reconnaissance from bombers firing from the air showed the area where the National Liberation Front (NLF) was hiding to be quite nearby. The thin Vietnamese forest consisted of cedar and hardwood camellias. The American soldiers were already quite deep into the central area of the battle. The sound of gunfire was faint and overpowered by the roar of tanks.
Almost simultaneously, the ricochets of automatic weapons bullets could be heard coming from the tanks. They bounced off the tanks like rubber balls. An American soldier fell out of the tank as the Vietcong attacked. The Vietcong opened fire on the trees. The American soldiers fired frantically with their machine guns, and the heated shell casings scattered around the area. Immediately after being sniped from the trees, they could not carelessly look out. The day before, a tank had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing an American soldier who had stayed inside the tank. From time to time, I stood up and peered at the Vietcong. Continuously firing their machine guns, the tank troops reached the farmland spread out in the thin forest. There were three isolated farmhouses there. A housewife, a Vietnamese woman, passed by and stared ruthlessly at the tanks. There was a miserable single-family shack. Amidst the chaos of American and Viet Cong soldiers, the battlefield was a scene of extraordinary misery: five tanks dispersing, numerous colored smoke shells falling on the area where they had shelled the Viet Cong. The tanks opened machine gun fire on their targets. The gunner's seat was on the outside of the tank, protected by thick steel plates. Inside the tank was the scorching heat of sun-baked irons, and we sweated profusely in the steam bath. The tank stopped on the ground to fire at the armed Vietcong. The American soldiers jumped off the tank. Two Vietcong were tumbled up and down in the ditch between the farm and the sidewalk about five meters in front of us. They were still alive and tumbled over on their stomachs. One Vietcong wobbled and stood up unsteadily as an American soldier approached and pointed an automatic weapon at them.
The black American soldier helped the other badly wounded Vietcong soldier and gave him medical attention. He was the only black man in the tank. He cradled the wounded Vietcong survivor in his arms and returned him to the tank. After roughly wiping off the blood, I tried to help him into the tank. But the PIO, a policeman, refused and ordered him to place the wounded body on the edge of the tank. The black soldier did as he was ordered. The edge was only about 60 centimeters wide and was covered with sandbags. The Vietcong soldier lay on his side, blood continuing to flow from his head. His face was pale and his eyes were vacant. He was an innocent boy of 15 or 16 years old. Command reported that a more powerful Vietcong unit had been spotted nearby. The tank unit ran through the sugar cane fields with a badly wounded boy soldier lying on the edge. A black American soldier held the Vietnamese boy's arm, took his pulse, pulled a bandage from a first aid kit, and said, "He's still alive! I said. Bleeding began to drip onto the tank, and as I sat right under the boys, blood immediately splattered on my hat and arms.
