We killed so many innocent people!

[pinboy3niner]

96. I knew only one Joe Rufty

We were together on a hill out in the jungle on Christmas Day, 1969.

I remember being at a party in Westwood, CA after the war and hearing the sound of a Laugh Box, and discovering tears pouring down my face and being so shocked and scared because I didn't know why.

It was only when I snuck into the bathroom to wash my face that it came back. Joe, on Christmas day on a jungle hill out toward the A Shau, getting a Christmas present from home with chocolate chip cookies, a bottle of whiskey...and a Laugh Box. Sitting around playing poker in a poncho hooch on that Christmas day, and every once in a while somebody hitting the button on the Laugh Box and all of us cracking up.

And, a month later, Joe going down with a sucking chest wound from machine gun fire and my men volunteering unanimously to rappel from choppers into the firefight to try to save Joe. They wouldn't let us do it because we'd lose too many that way, and it wouldn't have helped, anyway. Joe died either on the jungle penetrator as they winched him up to the Medevac chopper or on the floor of the chopper. I'll never forget those good, good men who were willing to lay their lives on the line against very steep odds to try to save a wounded officer..

Joe was just one guy, one loss. How many other Joes died in all of the wars on all of the sides?

I can't forget the words of a former North Vietnamese Army soldier in his book about having to search, after the war, for the remains of his fallen comrades. He wrote about searching in "the "screaming jungle" ...