Vietnam, no regrets
Subtitle: one soldier's "tour duty"
By: J. Richard Watkins.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Aventine Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: San Diego
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
Subjects: Watkins, J. Richard, -- 1946-; Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Personal narratives, American.
Genres: Personal narratives, American.
First sentence: It was a cold and foggy Northern california evening, and I was waiting to board my flight to South  Vietnam.
Description: Written by Bernie Weisz/Historian  February 27, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florida e mail:Bernwei1@aol.com                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               I have studied the Vietnam War in high school, and more intensively in college, but what I learned in academia as opposed to the multiple memoirs of the actual participants are 2 different accounts altogether. J. Richard Watkins shoots from the hips in this catharsis, with this memoir being penned 25 years after the fact. Official accounts of the ground war, our relationship with our allies, the South Vietnamese, the conduct of the way the North Vietnamese fought us, and especially the version of the 1970 Cambodian Incursion do not jive with what Watkins saw threw his 22 year old eyes and related on the pages of "Vietnam: No Regrets". 

When the reader finishes the last page of this amazing memoir, using Watkins observations, he or she will realize that all U.S. battles with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were "anti-climatic." Watkins wrote throughout "No Regrets" that there were no big battles when expected, especially in Cambodia. The majority of U.S. aggression was motivated by retaliation for a grunt's wounding by enemy sniping, primitive booby traps or ambushes. Our foe was a sneaky, elusive enemy who disappeared under the multiple underground caves the Communists built to avoid confrontation. Watkins writes of exciting small unit actions and ambushes in the sweltering jungle. The reason Watkins wrote about "one big need for revenge" was because of the way the N.V.A fought us. "Charlie" as the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were called, only showed himself in force when he thought the situation was favorable. After Watkins' unit, the U.S. 27 nth Infantry Division also known as the "Wolfhounds" took casualties, they undertook an avenging battle of setting up deadly ambushes in the sweltering, insect infested jungles of Vietnam. 

Mr. Watkins recalled the painful task of "The Wolfhounds" vengefully pursuing the elusive enemy and attempting to ferret them out of their secretive redoubts, who for the most part frustratingly evaded capture and withdrew over and over. They disappeared in hidden, underground sanctuaries, or even more frustratingly, mingled with the local people and were bypassed by the Wolfhounds, who in turn were attacked by them from the rear at night. Watkins also wrote of a special, elite unit that pursued this insidious enemy, known as the "Tunnel Rats", who with great tenacity and braveness pursued this subterranean foe. The stories I read in Watkins' "No Regrets" made it easy for me to understand how a "My Lai Massacre" incident could occur, and even more lingering, how a Veteran could leave Vietnam with torturous P.T.S.D., based on the incidents Watkins described in this book. 

Mr. Watkins does not talk much about his early life in "No Regrets". This memoir starts with the author's surprise at finding out that instead of being flown from Northern California to Vietnam via a military plane, he was transported with 160 other soldiers he had never met before aboard a United Airlines 707 Jetliner. Watkins' observations of landing in Vietnam, after a 14 hour journey that included stops in Hawaii and Guam, are noteworthy. Watkins wrote: "On our final approach for landing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, we came in very low and very slow. From the windows of the plane we could see all the shell holes around the airport;they looked like craters on the moon, except they were a very bright green wet surface. Flying in, we could also see the small shacks that the local people called home, alongside the gun emplacements of our troops. GI's waved to us or gave us the finger as our plane flew over their positions." Watkins' last impressions as he left this "war chariot" were as follows: "As the back door of the plane opened and the outside air permeated the interior of the plane, we immediately felt the heat and humidity and the smell of Vietnam. As I looked at the sober faces of the men aboard our flight just in from the States and then looked at the stewardesses saying goodbye to us, I know that these girls might be the last American girl I ever saw. Some of the guys they were saying goodbye to would never board a flight again-alive, that is". 

No history book will ever tell you the following, e.g. as new "cannon fodder" disembarked from the jet liner, the GI's that survived their 365 day tour boarded the very same plane. Watkins immediately noticed a look that all these veterans had, which other memoirs described as the "1000 yard stare". In that regard, Watkins wrote when he looked at the soldiers boarding the "freedom bird" to go back to "the world" in the following manner: "They looked older then we did, even though you knew they weren't. They had that shallow-eyed look, the look you get when you work for days and days without enough sleep. That faraway look, that nothing seems to matter look. They had a blank stare that was to become all too familiar to me in the coming months. I was glad for them, nevertheless. These guys had beaten the odds, they had served their country, and now they were going home to their families and loved ones, and I for one was very happy for them." 

J. R. Watkins did not get drafted. He wanted a test of manhood, and got it: a combat assignment. On November 20, 1969, Watkins was sent to join the 27nth division, 1/27 Wolfhounds at Cu Chi, Vietnam. Attracted to their motto, "No fear on Earth", Watkins wrote: " This test of manhood, which I felt I had to go through in order to prove myself to myself-as well as to my brothers, friends and relatives who had gone off to war before me-had truly begun after all. My feelings at the time was that if I didn't go to Vietnam I would never truly know if I had the right stuff or if I could hack it in combat". His description of Vietnam was classic: "Vietnam was such a strange and foreign place. Some words that come to mind are lush, tropical and very green, as do hot and humid. The air contained a red clay dust that you could never seem to wash off, no matter how hard you tried. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but that's what Vietnam was, on many levels a contradiction. I think this fact alone was responsible for many deaths; if you were not on your highest alert at all times the land itself would find a way to take your life". Also not in any history book is Watkins' impressions of our allies, the South Vietnamese: "The people were so much smaller then we were, and, not to be mean, not very good looking either. What struck me the most, were all the young teenage boys we saw along the way. I thought, "If we are here to help these people fight for their freedom from their enemy, and we had come 12,000 miles to do so, then why aren't these guys in uniform fighting for their own country?" 

Initially assigned to "Firebase Chamberlain" near the Cambodian border, Watkins wrote how he was shunned as the new guy ("F.N.G."). To that, he wrote: "One of the unwritten rules of the war in Vietnam was "Don't get too close to the new guys, as the odds were very good over there that if you were going to get killed it would happen in the first 30 days or so". Watkins job was to be an "R.T.O' (radio telephone operator). He was given the man's rucksack and radio of whom he was replacing. When he noticed that his equipment was caked and matted with dried blood, he wrote remembering this: "That was the reason I was here: the last guy that carried this stuff had been wounded and flown out the day before. Soldiers carrying radios were always the enemy's first target, because they were the ones who had communications link with the outside, and it was best to eliminate them right from the beginning of any firefight". 

The reader wonders if Watkins was intentionally pointing out why the U.S. war effort failed, or rather being sarcastic in his recollections in this memoir. Nevertheless, Watkins leaves no doubt in the reader's mind of the futility of the American war effort not to be found in any college textbook. On one of his early "S & D" (search and destroy) reconnaissance missions, he wrote of tipping off the enemy, ruining the element of any chance of surprise, simply because of loud troop movement. Watkins asserted: "We moved slowly through the thick underbrush and high grass trying hard not to make too much noise, but with all the gear we were carrying (80 lbs. of equipment, multiple canteens of water and an M-16 assault rifle) that was pretty much impossible". 

Mr. Watkins describes various ambushes, battles, carnage, and acts of bravery and humility throughout his tour in this book. However, he summed up his frustration , despite accusations after the war of inflated "body counts" of the enemy as follows: "As we continued our search for the enemy it was beginning to feel like a dance: they would go one way, and we would follow; we would go another, and they would follow. We felt they were close, real close. The fact that they didn't want to expose themselves was frustrating. We were dancing, dancing with the enemy, as a moth will dance with a flame, taking care not to get too close. And so would the enemy dance with us throughout my tour. We knew that unless they had us outnumbered by 4 to 1 they would be crazy to engage us, because with our artillery and helicopter support only a call away, they would be annihilated if they did. It is estimated that the kill ratio was 30 to 1 in our favor during any engagement with the enemy during the Vietnam War". In regards to "body counts" Watkins wrote that it was a way for a captain to look good for his superiors, and troops would be rewarded with extra "R & R" time, or less time in the field. It was a lot more appealing, both safer and more comfortable for a grunt to sleep at a "Fire Support Base" instead of on the jungle floor. Watkins recalled: " A large body count meant something to everyone. Even so, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way that someone had to die for someone else to look good. I was new in-country and it would take a while for that feeling to leave my head-but leave it it would. The body count was all-important for many reasons, not the least of which was that there would be less of the enemy to contend with. Less of the enemy? That was a joke; they would just keep on coming, no matter what the body count was." The educated reader of this book will compare this statement of Mr. Watkins with General William C. Westmoreland's theory of "enemy attrition" and scoff. Ultimately, Mr. Watkins was correct. Just ask the survivors of the siege at "Khe Sanh", the battles at fire bases "Ripcord, Lang Vei and Mary Ann" who endured enemy "human wave" attacks. 

Moreover, Mr. Watkins wrote about the resiliency of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. In terms of eating in the field C rations and not leaving leftovers, Watkins mused: "For the year I was in country I think I lived on fruit cocktail and hot chocolate and pound cake for my entire tour. Whatever was left over would be destroyed. Everything came in cans, and we didn't want to leave anything for the enemy to use against us. The enemy would pack those cans with explosives and use them as booby traps against us. It was just a shame that all this food had to go to waste. The little kids we would see in the villages we would go through during the day looked so thin and malnourished that they could have used that food. But this was war, and we were under orders." As I have already mentioned, many American ambushes of the enemy were motivated by a soldier being wounded by a sniper or maiming booby trap. Watkins wrote: "When a fellow soldier went down, it would hurt-and hurt a lot. It would be something that you would never completely forget. Just when you thought the memory was fading into the past it would come and visit you during the night, more vivid than ever, and would never completely release it's ugly grasp on you". J. R. Watkins was referring to "P.S.T.D. that even today still affects untold Vietnam Veteran "walking wounded". 

There is a very poignant part in this memoir. Consequently, after a member in Watkins' unit was wounded, Watkins and other members of the Wolfhounds "Alpha Unit" went out to do a little "payback" of their own. A traumatizing, unforgettable incident occurred. Watkins recalled: "The VC were springing ambushes on us every chance they got, either by shooting us outright or by setting up booby traps that were designed to maim us or worse. All we were trying to do was beat them at their own game, and whatever worked was fine with us. This wasn't Kansas, Toto-this was the real deal, and we were going to stay alive for 365 days and go home and try to forget all about the things we had done in order to survive". Watkins group set up an ambush, and unbeknownst to them, a little girl and her grandparents mistakenly wandered into this free fire "kill zone". It was over quick. Watkins shamefully recalled: "We hadn't ambushed the enemy at all. What we had done was cut to pieces 2 old farmers and a little girl". J. R. Watkins and his fellow soldiers were severely traumatized by their wanton murder of innocents. 

A mini "My Lai" had occurred. How did Watkins rationalize this? He sadly wrote in an attempt to justify and make sense of what happened: " We said to ourselves that it just wasn't our fault; after all, we didn't ask to be over here. South Vietnam had asked us to be here to help them fight communism. Furthermore, we just wanted to survive ourselves and get the hell out of here in one piece. And go home to our girlfriends, wives, children, and loved ones to our cars and beer, not necessarily in that order. These were the things we missed the most, and these were the things we were fighting for-not the South Vietnamese government, but our way of life. we didn't want to be here anyway, the results of that ambush was not our fault. How were we to know who was walking down that trail in the darkness anyway? Those farmers should have known better than to be out that time of night. Didn't they know that after dark that in a "Free Fire zone" we would shoot anything that moved? It was plain wasn't our fault and that was all there was to it, period!" 

There is much to this memoir then I could possibly cover in this review. J. R. Watkins related the pain he experienced when his girlfriend, who promised to wait until he returned from Vietnam to marry him, sent 
him a "Dear John" breakup letter. This callously announced that she had married another man,  painfully crushing Watkins. It also interestingly served as a motivation for him to come home alive, survive the war, and confront this woman. This ultimately happened. Watkins also related the difficulty he had adjusting to the climate and insects in Vietnam, the salt pills, the leeches, the constant wetness of the "monsoon season", and his addiction to the enticing action and excitement of "combat adrenaline". Watkins reviewed the weapons of this war, the fear and awesome devastation of  "B-52" air strikes, and the inferno of pain, destruction and fire that napalm caused (Watkins said this was invented by the "devil himself") He also recalled with chilling details his near brush with capture, being thrown from a helicopter from 15 feet up in the middle of a field swarming with the N.V.A. However, I would like to end this review with a quote from Mr. Watkins, whose theme was an undercurrent throughout the book that I named this review as such. 

Mr. Watkins, who I believe spoke for the majority of current Vietnam Veterans, lamented about the Vietnam War in retrospect as follows: "we would always be looking for "payback"-the more, the better. The feelings of the men that actually fought the "Vietnam War" was that the more of the enemy we could kill, the less of them there would be to kill. I know that thinking sounds kind of weird now, but at the time it made complete sense to us." The concluding comment of this review should put things in perspective. Mr. Watkins asserted about his experiences as a "Wolfhound", the 60,000 names of the dead on "The Wall" in the nation's capital and the way the conflict ended as follows: "As I look back on it now, my feelings aren't any different today than they were then. It wasn't worth it one bit, I thought it had stunk then and I still do today. But once the fighting began and the adrenaline started to flow and the willingness to kill and the desire to live kicked in, all bets were off. We took our chances for our country in one way or another and prayed for the best. As my time in-country dragged on and I became more hardened and experienced, I would tune out the possibility that I too could be wounded or killed. After a while one doesn't really believe he will be making it home anyway. We tried to survive day to day and not worry about what tomorrow may bring-tomorrow was out of our control and was going to take care of itself on way or another. We were all at fate's mercy and there wasn't much we could do about it. For in Vietnam, tomorrow was promised to no one". J. Richard Watkins' "Vietnam: No Regrets" is an essential read and an important, intelligently written memoir that will bring nuances and innuendo about this tragic slice of American history to life in a rare, unforgettable and vibrant way!
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