Bury Me With Soldiers
Subtitle: One Grunt's Honest Story About Vietnam
Publisher: 1st Books Library
Published: April 7, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 184
ISBN-13: 9781403395245
Subjects: American history: Vietnam War; Asian history: Vietnam War; War & defence operations; Personal Memoirs; History: World; History; Biography / Autobiography; USA; Vietnam; Military; Military - Vietnam War; Biography & Autobiography / Military; Biography & Autobiography-Personal Memoirs; History-Military - Vietnam War; General
Description: Bernie Weisz's Review of C. Wayne Standiford's "Bury Me With Solders"                                             C. Wayne Standiford's memoir, originally released as "Crucible 0311" misses nothing about the Viet Nam War, i.e. the attitude of the grunts, the anti-war movement, and the King assassination. It's a serious, comprehensive history lesson of what really went on in Vietnam, with facts that most history books will rarely touch! Standiford initially served in "Lima Company", 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, in Dong Ha, I Corps, in the northernmost part of South Vietnam, by the DMZ. He eventually transferred out to a reconnaissance unit, with bases at Quang Tri, Phu Bai and Khe Sanh. He conducted 27 reconnaissance missions deep into enemy V.C. and N.V.A. territory. Although Standford's unit was lightly armed, their functions were to gather intelligence, locate, capture and destroy weapons, caches of rice, ammunition, documents, and attempt prisoner snatches for interrogation. Standiford gives highlights of his most memorable missions, vividly describing dangerous insertions and extractions that resulted in his unit being credited with 606 confirmed killed.  However, there is much more to this memoir then simple military tactics, missions, shooting and death. Standiford ironically sets the tone right in the beginning of this story, when he mentions that he was having coffee with his younger brother 15 years after the war was over, and with absolutely no warning, his brother said: "I never did thank you for going to Vietnam. I want to thank you now". I am not going to be a plot-spoiler and reveal the details of Standifords missions. You'll just have to find this book. What I am going to write about, is some iota the author mentions that is rarely seen in other biographies and memoirs of this war. 

Standiford volunteered for the Marine Corps in 1966 right after graduating high school and deciding that he didn't want to go to college. Vietnam was a hot issue in the early 1960's. Standiford prefaced his story with a quote from L.B.J., which turned out to be anything from the truth: "We are not about to send American boys nine or 10,000 miles away from home, to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves".  Standiford angrily asserted that: "L.B.J. did not want to overthrow the government of North Vietnam. This basic philosophy, I believe, caused the war to drag on and cause the loss of many lives." Standiford was very confused. He saw conflicting bumber stickers of "America:Love it or Leave it", "Hell No, We Won't Go", and "Make Love, Not War". 

Standiford's anger is vented throughout the book. He mentions that when he watched in 1975 the news of panic stricken Vietnamese fleeing the Communist North's final invasion, with images of U.S. choppers being pushed off the decks of carriers to make room for fleeing citizens, he went into his bedroom to cry.  Standiford lamented: "Honest to God, I tried to cry, but all I could do was produce some mist in my eyes. My pump did a half stroke, but the well would not flush the soul. I could not believe we had lost the war". To that effect, he continues elsewhere in the book his bitterness of unfinished business. Standiford asserts: "It was the only protracted war that saw this country flounder pitifully. With that failure, the fabric of this nation was immutably altered. The innocent blood flowing through our teenage veins would never be the same. We had gone to stem the tide of communism to fight an honorable fight. As the war protracted, our music died. The honor of this nation suffered a near fatal blow. Gone forever was our youth. For those of us who went, the Vietnam War will go with us to our graves. It will go as a task not completed." 
Standiford voices his opinion on other aspects of this war rarely discussed elsewhere. In terms of the media's portrayal of the Vietnam Vet in their productions of the 3 post Vietnam War movies, e.g. "Apocalypse Now", "Platoon" and "The Deer Hunter", Standiford angrily dismisses all these as showing the Vietnam Vet as a demented, "wigged out" killer.   He angrily fires back: "What I saw was an entirely different war. In the 2 units I served with there, there was no dishonor. We never burned a village or mistreated a prisoner. Drugs were taboo, men fought to survive and to help their friends to survive. Time after time honor and self-sacrifice saved the day". He illustrates this in 2 paradigms. One of Standiford's recon teams ran into a large NVA force. They called for an emergency extraction. If the choppers didn't arrive immediately, all team members would be surrounded and killed. 

An Army Huey, with a "new pilot" (F.N.G.) dropped in to do the extraction of the trapped and surrounded Recon team, amongst heavy enemy fire. The door gunner cranked out heavy lead flying from his M-60 machine gun at the enemy. All team members dived in to the chopper, except the radioman, who following normal procedures, was always the last to climb aboard. The pilot lifted the chopper off without him inside. Seeing that the chopper was lifting off without him, the radioman dove for the skids of the Huey, holding a death grip on them as the bird climbed out of the hot zone. Team members yelled at the chopper pilot to set back down to let the radioman in, which was ignored. As the Huey continued it's ascent, a rope was dropped to the radioman, but between the G forces, the prop wash and air currents, the rope was kept out of his reach. The radioman lost his grip, tumbled to his death, and his body was later found impaled in the trees. He died alone as the chopper continued back to base without him. Team members almost killed the pilot after it landed. 

Standiford tells of a similar incident with this team a week later where a different Huey pilot tried to take off on an extraction from a hot landing zone without all team members on board. 1500 feet over Vietnam: A marine helicopter pilot's diary This time, team members put a .45 pistol to the head of the pilot, and no vertical movement of the chopper allowed until all team members were on board. Towards the end of his tour, Standiford had multiple missions in the "A-Shau Valley", one of the most hotly contested areas of the Vietnam War.  No matter how many of the enemy's forces were killed, it seemed it made no impact on a conclusive U.S. victory. Standiford remarks: "It appeared no matter how many missions we went on, no matter how many NVA our little bands spotted or killed, we still paid a heavy price for snooping around in Charlie country. The war seemed to drag on with no thrusts to end the carnage." 

Another interesting point you will find in this memoir is the impact Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination on April 14, 1968 had on the effect of troop morale. Coming just two months after the "Tet Offense" debacle, Standiford wrote: "It was never said in the open, but I believe every white man in the states, and maybe even here, was held responsible for Dr. King's death".  When Standiford finally D.E.R.O.S'ed back to the U.S. (his tour ended, returning back to the States) he wrote: "The mind dug a hole and pulled the lid over all the senses concerning Vietnam. I talked to no one about Vietnam, and no one talked to me. It never really happened." This is common in other memoirs, particularly where upon returning, a Vet would immediately shed his uniform to try to blend in without attracting attention. Chickenhawk I am leaving out many other stories of this tremendous memoir, but I will relate one last tale that Standiford leaves the reader with. In 1995, his son, Cody announced to Standiford that he joined the Navy to become a "S.E.A.L." Standiford immediately talked him out of it, with his son settling for a less than honorable discharge. Feeling that Clinton would neither be willing to send his own sons or daughters to battle, nor willing to spend his own blood, Standiford did not want his children in the nation's military with Clinton at the helm. Standiford defended his position by explaining his anger at Clinton for "wiggling out" of the draft, Clinton's defense of his drug use, claiming that when smoking marijuana, he supposedly "did not inhale", Clinton's employment by the "World Peace Organization, and the issue of Clinton's infidelity towards his wife with his indiscretion with Monica Lowenski. Standiford's final comment, when voicing his opinion as to why Vietnam Vets have such a high incidence of suicide, is as follows: " It is this veteran's belief that these incidents were probably a direct result of these men coming home to a nation that held no esteem, or gratitude, for their offering". 

"Bury Me With Soldiers" is an exceptionally powerful Vietnam memoir, teaching the reader and student of this conflict nuances rarely expressed elsewhere. This memoir needs to be redistributed, placed in all high school and college American History curriculum's, inculcating without either the warping of time nor Hollywood's version of what really happened in the Vietnam War.  BernWei1@aol.com  10/15/09
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