THE REST OF THE STORY

I love war stories. I mean, literal war stories. Those of us who are Vietnam vets especially love them, mainly because nobody ever wanted to listen to them. In fact, in one military assignment, Korea, since the vast majority of us were Vietnam vets, we had a little game we played. Anytime, there was a gathering, someone would invariably try to pass along a war story, "when I was in Vietnam...." they were stopped immediately and reminded of the rules: once a week, we had a special Vietnam vets party and each person got to tell three war stories. Funny, "yes," but real. And, as I've read and told my own war stories, there is kind of something that happens to them. They grow, they change, they get bigger. Here's an example: When I was in Vietnam, I remembered this guy, can't remember his name. But, OI do remember some unusual circumstances surrounding him. His claim to fame was that the killed the 5000 VC/NVA soldier for our battalion. He was something like a PFC and was immediately promoted to Staff Sergeant. Quite a fascinating story as I remember it. One of our Infantry Companies, A company, I, think, had swept through a village and cleared it. The soldier goes into a hut and sees some straw fall from the roof. He empties his M16 into the straw. Kills all five of the VC hiding there. So...

Now, the following is the real story.



Many have asked me how I came about the nickname of MadMonk. Well, as Paul Harvey would put it, “and here’s the rest of the story”.

The story actually begins back in 1967 at Ft. Campbell, KY. We were undergoing some rather intensive training in preparation of joining our 1st Brigade in the war in Vietnam. My unit was E Company-Recon, 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Airborne, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.

Well...one day during this rather intensive training I mentioned (which was quite near the time we were to be deployed to Vietnam) it sort of came to me that, even as short as it was, my having very blond, almost platinum colored hair in a combat situation was most definitely not an ideal condition. So I lathered up my head and shaved it completely bald.

This didn’t seem to sit very well with my leadership at the time and I caught a bit of hell for it, however, it made perfect sense to me as it seemed that the best way to survive in any firefight was not to present any well defined target. I mean, if I were to somehow lose my headgear during a firefight what better target than this bright white globe popping up from cover to shoot at you? Right?

Now...after deployment to Vietnam I maintained this “close haircut” look for some time and during one of our very early missions somewhere in a dense jungle type area (damned if I know where) we ran across this old, old abandoned Buddhist pagoda where I happened to find this very old and very large (2" to 2 ½" diameter) bronze coin with a square hole in the center of it. I thought it to be a real unique find and I was so enamored with it that although it was badly tarnished I managed to scare up some leather thong and craft the coin into a necklace which I wore from then on.

Okay...So jumping ahead in the story, there this grunt in one of the line companies (A Co. 1/501 I believe). He was a rather plain looking fellow with glasses that hailed from somewhere in Michigan and he went by the nickname “The Hippie”. He had a peace symbol drawn on his helmet cover and a large pewter peace symbol necklace around his neck. Don't let this fool you as this guy was a hellion and I was convinced that he was at times quite insane. He was awarded a number of medals including the Silver Star and was promoted quite rapidly to the rank of Staff Sgt. E-6.

In our capacity as a Recon Platoon we were called on quite often to assist various line companies which frequently included the unit he was with and as I became more familiar with this crazy bastard he began calling me “The Monk” due to my shaved head and my old coin necklace.

As our tenure in beautiful Southeast Asia progressed and his reputation compounded I began calling him “The Mad Hippie” due to the role he played in a number of rather controversial incidences. Not long thereafter he reciprocated by calling me “The Mad Monk” and the nickname has stuck ever since. So now you know “the rest of the story” except I intentionally left out the particular incidences that instigated each of us to call the other “Mad”. I prefer to keep that little bit of the story unpublished, okay?

I will, however, tell one side light to the story that I can’t really say surely happened or not. I heard a report that the grunt mentioned earlier, after returning home to Michigan I guess really couldn't handle the transition from one minute being a “hero” to the next minute being a “mother-raper and baby-killer” so one day he lost it and pulled a combat assault on the neighborhood gas station/convenience store which only succeeded in his earning some time in the “cuckoo’s nest”. A truly sad epilog on the story of an average American boy that was radically changed by the Vietnam War.

“MadMonk”

E Co.-Recon, 1st/501st Inf.
Vietnam, class of 67/68

Here is another account by the best soldier I've ever known.

I remember being is training with the same soldier mentioned above, stateside back in Fort Campbell, KY. I believe it was sniper school. If I were to describe him, I would say that he had very fair skin, and he wore black rim glasses, he looks very much like a church goer, if I were to pick a religion I would say that he may have been a Jehovah Witness but I have any proof to that statement I would like to add, if I were to pick an bird that looks like him, I would say an owl. Anyway, as the 2nd Brigade deployed to South Viet Nam, and as time goes on, several months in country, there was a continuing enemy body count by Brigade, and this soldier gets credit for the 5,000 kill--he was immediately promoted to the rank, Staff Sergeant E-6, and he was granted a weeks stay in the Battalion Commander’s bunker, drinks were on the house as were his meals. Now for the rest of the story……..

This soldier is walking through a Village, he enter a hooch, notices some straw was falling from the rafters, he puts his M-16 on full auto, and shoot blindly into the ceiling area then a body drops down, the kid was still alive, this guy was one of the few infantrymen who walks around with his bayonet attached to his M-16, slowly Michael inserts his bayonet into the suspected VC stomach and he was screaming with agony, just then a helicopter lands with his sister and a officer from the local Popular Force (I believe that’s what you called them, it could have been a ARVN officer). The sister runs into her hooch, just in time to watch her brother die. She turns around and says that her brother wanted to surrender as a Choi-hoy (sp?) that was a program where a VC can forfeit his rights in being commie and become an agent for the American forces. I would put this time frame towards the end of our Tour of Duty, maybe Oct. or Nov. of 1968. Shortly thereafter I rotated stateside, and one afternoon while watching a local TV talk show, I saw this soldier, along with Lt. Calley of My-Lye fame. On the show I heard the soldier that killed the 5000 enemy soldier in our Unit saying that he low crawled up to a local gas station with a rifle and while in the prone position held it up. CSM WC, Vietnam Class of 67/68