Read an Excerpt
Private First Class
Reginald “Malik” Edwards
Phoenix, Louisiana
Rifleman
9th Regiment
U.S. Marine Corps
Danang
June 1965–March 1966
I’m in the Amtrac with Morley Safer, right? The whole thing is getting ready to go down. At Cam Ne. The whole bit that all America will see on the CBS Evening News, right? Marines burning down some huts. Brought to you by Morley Safer. Your man on the scene. August 5, 1965.
When we were getting ready for Cam Ne, the helicopters flew in first and told them to get out of the village ’cause the Marines are looking for VC. If you’re left there, you’re considered VC.
They told us if you receive one round from the village, you level it. So we was coming into the village, crossing over the hedges. It’s like a little ditch, then you go through these bushes and jump across, and start kickin’ ass, right?
Not only did we receive one round, three Marines got wounded right off. Not only that, but one of the Marines was our favorite Marine, Sergeant Bradford. This brother that everybody loved got shot in the groin. So you know how we felt.
The first thing happened to me, I looked out and here’s a bamboo snake. That little short snake, the one that bites you and you’re through bookin’. What do you do when a bamboo snake comin’ at you? You drop your rifle with one hand, and shoot his head off. You don’t think you can do this, but you do it. So I’m so rough with this snake, everybody thinks, well, Edwards is shootin’ his ass off today.
So then this old man runs by. This other sergeant says, “Get him, Edwards.” But I missed the old man. Now I just shot the head off a snake. You dig what I’m sayin’? Damn near with one hand. M-14. But all of a sudden, I missed this old man. ’Cause I really couldn’t shoot him.
So Brooks—he’s got the grenade launcher—fired. Caught my man as he was comin’ through the door. But what happened was it was a room full of children. Like a schoolroom. And he was runnin’ back to warn the kids that the Marines were coming. And that’s who got hurt. All those little kids and people.
Everybody wanted to see what had happened, ’cause it was so fucked up. But the officers wouldn’t let us go up there and look at what shit they were in. I never got the count, but a lot of people got screwed up. I was telling Morley Safer and his crew what was happening, but they thought I was trippin’, this Marine acting crazy, just talking shit. ’Cause they didn’t want to know what was going on.
So I’m going on through the village. Like the way you go in, you sweep, right? You fire at the top of the hut in case somebody’s hangin’ in the rafters. And if they hit the ground, you immediately fire along the ground, waist high, to catch them on the run. That’s the way I had it worked out, or the way the Marines taught me. That’s the process.
All of a sudden, this Vietnamese came runnin’ after me, telling me not to shoot: “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” See, we didn’t go in the village and look. We would just shoot first. Like you didn’t go into a room to see who was in there first. You fired and go in. So in case there was somebody there, you want to kill them first. And we was just gonna run in, shoot through the walls. ’Cause it was nothin’ to shoot through the walls of a bamboo hut. You could actually set them on fire if you had tracers. That used to be a fun thing to do. Set hootches on fire with tracers.
So he ran out in front of me. I mean he’s runnin’ into my line of fire. I almost killed him. But I’m thinking, what the hell is wrong? So then we went into the hut, and it was all these women and children huddled together. I was gettin’ ready to wipe them off the planet. In this one hut. I tell you, man, my knees got weak. I dropped down, and that’s when I cried. First time I cried in the ’Nam. I realized what I would have done. I almost killed all them people. That was the first time I had actually had the experience of weak knees.
Safer didn’t tell them to burn the huts down with they lighters. He just photographed it. He could have got a picture of me burning a hut, too. It was just the way they did it. When you say level a village, you don’t use torches. It’s not like in the 1800s. You use a Zippo. Now you would use a Bic. That’s just the way we did it. You went in there with your Zippos. Everybody. That’s why people bought Zippos. Everybody had a Zippo. It was for burnin’ shit down.
I was a Hollywood Marine. I went to San Diego, but it was worse in Parris Island. Like you’ve heard the horror stories of Parris Island—people be marchin’ into the swamps. So you were happy to be in San Diego. Of course, you’re in a lot of sand, but it was always warm.
At San Diego, they had this way of driving you into this base. It’s all dark. Back roads. All of a sudden you come to this little adobe-looking place. All of a sudden, the lights are on, and all you see are these guys with these Smokey the Bear hats and big hands on their hips. The light is behind them, shining through at you. You all happy to be with the Marines. And they say, “Better knock that shit off, boy. I don’t want to hear a goddamn word out of your mouth.” And everybody starts cursing and yelling and screaming at you.
My initial instinct was to laugh. But then they get right up in your face. That’s when I started getting scared. When you’re 117 pounds, 150 look like a monster. He would just come screaming down your back, “What the hell are you looking at, shit turd?” I remembered the time where you cursed, but you didn’t let anybody adult hear it. You were usually doing it just to be funny or trying to be bold. But these people were actually serious about cursing your ass out.
Then here it is. Six o’clock in the morning. People come in bangin’ on trash cans, hittin’ my bed with night sticks. That’s when you get really scared, ’cause you realize I’m not at home anymore. It doesn’t look like you’re in the Marine Corps either. It looks like you’re in jail. It’s like you woke up in a prison camp somewhere in the South. And the whole process was not to allow you to be yourself.
I grew up in a family that was fair. I was brought up on the Robin Hood ethic, and John Wayne came to save people. So I could not understand that if these guys were supposed to be the good guys, why were they treating each other like this?
I grew up in Plaquemines Parish. My folks were poor, but I was never hungry. My stepfather worked with steel on buildings. My mother worked wherever she could. In the fields, pickin’ beans. In the factories, the shrimp factories, oyster factories. And she was a housekeeper.
I was the first person in my family to finish high school. This was 1963. I knew I couldn’t go to college because my folks couldn’t afford it. I only weighed 117 pounds, and nobody’s gonna hire me to work for them. So the only thing left to do was go into the service. I didn’t want to go into the Army, ’cause everybody went into the Army. Plus the Army didn’t seem like it did anything. The Navy I did not like ’cause of the uniforms. The Air Force, too. But the Marines was bad. The Marine Corps built men. Plus just before I went in, they had all these John Wayne movies on every night. Plus the Marines went to the Orient.
Everybody laughed at me. Little, skinny boy can’t work in the field going in the Marine Corps. So I passed the test. My mother, she signed for me ’cause I was seventeen.
There was only two black guys in my platoon in boot camp. So I hung with the Mexicans, too, because in them days we never hang with white people. You didn’t have white friends. White people was the aliens to me. This is ’63. You don’t have integration really in the South. You expected them to treat you bad. But somehow in the Marine Corps you hoping all that’s gonna change. Of course, I found out this was not true, because the Marine Corps was the last service to integrate. And I had an Indian for a platoon commander who hated Indians. He used to call Indians blanket ass. And then we had a Southerner from Arkansas that liked to call you chocolate bunny and Brillo head. That kind of shit.
