Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Charles Sabatier, 1982 [Part 1 of 2]

Interviewer: Ok, just match... all that good stuff. Sabatier: Okay. Interviewer: Um. Tell us... tell me a little bit briefly about your background, and your home, and ah how you came to be drafted. Sabatier: Um, I grew up in South Texas. In Galveston, which as island right off the coast of Texas, about fifty miles south of Houston. Ah, I went through parochial schools, ah, I guess I came what you might call a ah middle class, maybe a lower middle class ah family. I grew up in an area that was ah for the most part completely um ah segregated. I went through high school – I think I was the last year that graduated from public high school in Galveston that was an all white high school, so I never had the opportunity to meet or talk or become friendly with uh other races. Sabatier: Ah, so I was pretty naive about that, among other things, about life. I ah grew up, I think about pretty average, in a nice town, you know, a nice area ah I grew up ah and graduated from high school as probably most young people do, without many ideas about what they're going to do because they've never really done anything... I went off to college my first year because I managed to pass the test somehow, ah that was in 1965, and ah which I guess Vietnam was ah getting larger and larger to get more space from the newspapers all the while, and about 90% of the people in America were buying the ah rhetoric that was being thrown at them about ah Communism and ah the uh domino theory and things like that and we were more than willing I guess to get involved in something like that.

Sabatier: Ah, I personally wasn't, but I had no – I hadn't formed any opinions about it one way or another. I was just interested in going to school and ah socializing like most people my age... ah, I went to ah college and ah because I hadn't given it much thought I guess I ah didn't do really well. I passed but barely. I knew that what I was involved in – business – ah was not something that I wanted to make ah my life ah so what I ended up doing was dropping out of school, at a bad time. I was shortly drafted thereafter in May of '66. Ah pretty naive ah, you know, twenty-year-old kid really, hardly a man and ah with a pretty ah narrow view of what the world was really like. I think I was totally ah emotionally ah unprepared, you know, for the next two years for sure. But I probably grew more in the next two years than I've grown since then.

Interviewer: Take. Stop for a second.

Interviewer: So, tell me again, what was your attitude to the war when you – what was your attitude when you were drafted? Sabatier: My attitude um I guess was that I was I was just naive and ignorant about the war. Um, I had read a lot in the papers about people um that were draft resisters, people opposing the war, um my own people that I was around in Texas didn't really have much of an opinion about it, either pro or con. I think if I took a straw vote in my family, they probably would have been pro war at that time. Ah, just because it was our country and ah the old patriotism thing, and my dad had been in the service in WWII, and I guess it was that thing that was expected of you that I came to learn more about and ah, you know, I think that I just wish that I had been more – a little smarter – that I had learned to question and and ah ask, you know, more questions and gone to talk to more people to get some advice about it. Sabatier: Um, I think that the people around me knew any didn't know any more about it than I did the politics, the things that were going on, and so I, you know, I I voluntarily was drafted – I didn't try to oppose anything because I didn't know really what it was all about. Ah, I hadn't formed opinions or convictions enough in my own mind to oppose something to the extent that I was willing to go to prison.

Sabatier: Ah, it was only after I'd been drafted I think that I formed those kinds of convictions that, you know, this was ah if you want to call it a bad war, if any wars could be considered good, which I don't think, ah, this was not a very good one. I you know, I had to question the cause and I'd come to learn as soon as I got to be a part of it I don't think that it's unusual for Americans ah for instance, we all know that people are starving to death right now half way around the world but not many of us are going out and doing anything about it. Interviewer: Charlie, let's go to um to Vietnam.

Sabatier: Okay. Interviewer: You've just arrived in ah in Vietnam... Interviewer: Can we cut here? Interviewer: Cut. Interviewer: The train is coming. Interviewer: We were told the other day... you told me your great feeling about arriving at the airport and then getting on the bus, and the wire mesh, the civilian flight and ah... Sabatier: Yeah, I... Interviewer: Tell me that again, will you? Sabatier: Yeah... you know, on the plane on the way to Vietnam, when I first spotted Vietnam... when I first spotted the country from the plane is when I first really started to understand that there's really a war going on here, you know. I mean I could tell by looking at the country side that there were bomb craters – artillery craters everywhere, I mean it wasn't as if you saw a nice beautiful forest and then you went on in and you saw a battlefield then – the whole country was covered with bomb craters. Sabatier: As soon as the plane landed and we got off the plane we got on to these buses um, a typical bus except they looked like prison buses, army green prison buses with wire mesh over the windows and I asked why, you know, this, you know, why this kind of bus. I thought we were in friendly country here, you know? And they told me that it was to stop people from running up and throwing grenades into the bus... and I thought, oh my God, you mean people are gonna try to kill me? Wait a minute, you know, I never really thought about dying before and that all of a sudden just to think that somebody might throw a grenade in your window.

Sabatier: I mean, I figure, hey, I’ve never hurt anybody in my life – I never even picked a fight and all of a sudden somebody's gonna waste me? You know, all of a sudden it was real and ah so I, you know, I I just started thinking that just seeing the country, landing there, that happening to me, all of a sudden started making things real and started making me understand you know, my life is in danger here. And then I think I started growing up. I'd grown twenty years without ah thinking of anything serious I guess about life other than what's going down on the weekend. And all of a sudden I knew I might not even live to be twenty one or twenty two. It was quite a traumatic experience for me. Things got more traumatic as they progressed along, but that kind of that kind of set me back a little bit. Interviewer: Tell me now you’ve been a you were in ah ah Chu Lai…

Sabatier: Cu Chi, eventually Cu Chi. Interviewer: And then you were sent up to ah... when you arrived at Cu Chi and you arrived there and there were these guys sitting at a table Sabatier: Yeah. Interviewer: And tell me about that story [incomprehensible] they are Sabatier: Yeah. Interviewer: Tell me that story and… Sabatier: I'd finally after about ten days of waiting to be stationed somewhere was um shipped out to a place called Cu Chi which was the largest infantry base in Vietnam, it was the 25th infantry division. Cu Chi I guess, was about forty miles from Saigon um north a little towards the Cambodian border, I believe. Sabatier: I arrived there and um I think there were like 25,000 GIs stationed at the Cu Chi 25th Infantry division. We were probably the second largest city in Vietnam, you know, other than Saigon, and um I got there and this truck dropped me off, this [incomprehensible] dropped me off in front of this company that I was stationed at and ah I went in and ah there was this guy sitting behind the desk and he took me to this hooch where I was supposed to bunk and so I stored my gear under this bunk and ah I said look ah where can I get something to eat and he said the mess is right over here, so he pointed it to me and so I went in there and I was wondering where everybody was at because the whole hooch was empty – there was no gear in there and ah and I'm talking ah maybe twenty, thirty bunks were there, not bunks but cots. Sabatier: And ah so I went out of there and I went into the ah mess hail and I went in one end of the mess hall – it was like a long barracks type thing and I went in one end of it and they had like a typical line where you'd get trays and go through and there were a few people sitting at a table way at the other end and so as soon as I got my food I went over and joined them and asked them if they'd mind if I joined them and they said no, fine, sit down. They weren't real friendly and ah they weren't even talking to each other much less me. I thought it was a strange kind of feeling ah, you know I didn't know, maybe in my mind I thought I'd get this big welcome you know, like... and people would start showing me around and stuff, but ah... it was ah...

Interviewer: Hold it right there, before you go on we just ran out of film. Interviewer: We’re gonna reload. We’ll take… Interviewer: Okay?

Interviewer: Yeah start. Interviewer: So, finish up that story from you sitting down at this table... Sabatier: I went to join these people, there were about six guys sitting there and I asked them where everybody was at ah they just looked at me as if I wasn't there. And I said, look are you guys with the 4th and 23rd, I thought maybe there was another unit or something and they’re not totally friendly towards me because I'm an outsider or something, you know. But maybe I'm in the wrong place here. I was hoping you know, maybe I'd better go look around. Sabatier: Find some more friendlier folks. Well, they said we are we're with the 4th and 23rd. And ah I said, well, you know, where's everybody at, and again and the guy says we are everybody and I said what are you talking about – what do you mean, I thought – he's everybody here but you know, maybe everybody's at mass or something you know, but he said they'd been hit really bad, you know, the last few weeks and this was the company and I said where I come from, you know, the company is over 200, not a half a dozen, you know, as a joke, and they didn't think that was very funny... Sabatier: And ah later I understood why, but ah, as it turned out they were the company and I was one of the new recruits being sent in to replace the people that were no longer there, and so ah I got to talking to the people after a while and they started telling me what was happening and ah I learned that ah, you know, not many people that are in the infantry ah get out of Vietnam without a purple heart or without being dead and to make that a little bit more clearer, I was in a line when I first got there, and even before I got to the company we were being processed with our paperwork – there was a line of about fifty people.

Sabatier: A guy came to me and pulled me out of the line and he said is your name Sabatier and I said yeah and he says come with me so I went with him and I forget the guy's name now but he was somebody I'd gone to high school with that was like a year under me in high school. I wasn't really buddies with him but we recognized each other and he's typing – he took me because he was in that processing unit that was typing papers and he's typing with his two fingers, you know, index fingers, and I says, boy how do I get a job like this, I can type forty words a minute, and says you got to get three purple hearts to get a job like this, and I says, the qualifications to be a typist is three purple hearts and he says yeah and I said forget it – I don't want to be qualified for this and he said you will, you will, I says, no I don't think so and he said you will or you won't be out of here alive, and I said we'll see, and I knew then that, you know, things were pretty bad. Sabatier: The look in his eye when he was telling me, he says, like he felt real sad for me, you know, that he knew what was going on and I didn't and ah just like anybody that was fresh, new on the block that didn't understand what was going on, so I left there, and I never saw him again and ah I think he got back – he did get back to the States 'cause I saw him in a bar like ten years later. So, I went on over to the ah, you know, after the processing, and that's where I met these six guys and started learning the ropes...

Interviewer: Tell me, um, tell me a little bit about what day-to-day life was like with your unit, tell me what it felt like and what you did and what you were feeling and thinking at the time... Sabatier: We ah well, right from the beginning, ah, when we got enough people in we went out in the field for the first time. Ah, first we had to go through a um a jungle training thing and that was interesting because... Interviewer: I'm sorry you were right on the [incomprehensible], maybe we should start that again.

Interviewer: Start it again. Sabatier: I had gone through Fort Polk, Louisiana for basic training and then to Fort Ord, California for advanced infantry training and I’d been in Germany for like eight months and I had never seen a real live M-16 and all of a sudden I was in Vietnam and I'm using M-16s and I had to ask somebody there how to break down this M-16 and clean it. I mean, and then I first... you know it made me think well what kind of training have I been getting here, you know. Sabatier: I'm not really prepared for this and I don't mind being put in a situation that might endanger myself if the cause is right, but I'd like to know that I've gone through all these weeks and months of training without ever being – handling the weapon that I'm going to be using – to me it was ridiculous. So, at first I had a sense that I was under-trained to begin with and that ah somebody had made some mistakes somewhere, logistically speaking, okay? And so I started wondering then about my leadership. I think It's things like that that happen to people that that will damage morale. Um, that was just one major mistake that happened before I got there. Sabatier: As soon as I got there, things just... it was almost like there were just a bunch of guys that got together and gone camping one afternoon that had never camped in their lives, this is what the whole thing was like. It was almost like the Keystone Cops – it was amazing the incompetency of the people. It seemed like we had too many people who were our leaders just for the sake of their seniority in the Army. And they had like IQs of a peanut, personalities of parking meters, telling us what to do. And they themselves had never been in a war zone or or in combat. We'd go out in I think... I probably saw a half a dozen dead Americans before I ever shot at North Vietnamese or Viet Cong, strictly from our own mistakes.

Sabatier: Um, people walking along behind somebody with their trigger guard undone and tripping and shooting somebody in the back accidentally ah people ah ah blowing themselves up trying to put up a claymore mine, ah oh ah our own company opening up on a squad that had tripped a trip flare outside the perimeter and killing our own people, ah, I mean those kinds of things were not really uncommon. I mean, once a month somebody would die by sheer accident. Um, so naturally I ah you know, I became very um I guess very much like those people um, you trusted yourself only – you weren't likely to trust many other people because you know your life was on the line here. Sabatier: Um, you always had in the back of your mind that the guy behind you, is he going to shoot you in the back if you go by and a branch of a tree swing back, is he going to shoot you, I mean those things happened all the time, they weren't unusual. So, I don't know, it just didn't seem like I saw it in the movies where everybody was together, you know, we just didn't have that. We had like twenty year-old uh uh twenty year-old uh platoon officers who had gone to officer's candidate school for ten months and got shipped to Vietnam and were in charge of a platoon of men in combat – twenty years old! I mean they were so scared when they got there, the first time they got into fire they're supposed to lead us into combat?

Sabatier: I mean, naturally, you know, the grunts that we called ourselves, you know, the soldiers that were doing the fighting, we... it was hard to respect our leaders – it wasn't as if you went in there and you were twenty and your sergeant was an old timer or, you know, that was thirty-five and had been around, you know, in Korea and what have you. Our leaders had never had any experience themselves and were getting like ten months of the same kind of training I got and I never even handled an M-16 and they were telling us to go up a path and we'd been there months and knew better than do something like that? Or they were telling us to go down or walk down a road or walk down a path instead of a jungle beside it? You know, and naturally we would refuse to do that. Sabatier: I mean, by that time when you know, you know, by this stage in your life that you're not going to put your life on the line for somebody just because they gave you an order to do it. I mean, if it doesn't make sense, you tell them that and ah I don't, you know, the rumor has it that ah Americans have shot Americans because they might have a buffoon leading them and getting them killed. And a fire fight, I don't know how common or uncommon it was but ah, rumors had it that they would shoot somebody like that and if you were dangerous to us, you know, we're not going to die for nothing. We're not gonna, you know, be court-martialed by some fool, either. So…I I personally never did anything like that but I have heard of it being done. And anything I, anybody I think you talk to who'd seen any combat in Vietnam started to appreciate life, especially their own I think and weren't about to just throw it away for somebody.

Interviewer: Tell me about your activities day-to-day, what did you do?

Sabatier: Ah, well, we were in the field most of the time, we were probably in the field like thirty days at a time. We'd come back for maybe one or two days to Cu Chi to clean up. When we were in the field, um, all we did was continuous continuously go on what we called "search and destroy" missions or ah we would ah protect these roam plows, these big like bulldozers that would cut down the trees um and the rubber plantations. I ended up getting shot in a place called the Hobo Woods, and we were in and out of there a lot. Sabatier: That actually was uh I think was a Michelin rubber plantation that the French had um created when they were there. What we were doing a lot – about half the time – we would pull security on our armored personnel carriers. These were these things that looked like a tank but they're much lighter about thirteen tons rather than 50 and we had a 50 caliber on top rather than the big gun that they have. Um, we would um we'd simply go around in circles with these plows... Interviewer: Hold it, before you get into that that thing.

Interviewer: Keep the thought... Sabatier: Okay. Interviewer: Ok, I want you to tell me again... finish the thought about Sabatier: The roam plows. Interviewer: What you would do, what you were doing, going to check search and destroy... Tell me a little about briefly about your contact with the Vietnamese that you did run into out there, not the armed contact but the villagers... Sabatier: All right. Um, yeah, um. Generally when we were doing, like I was saying we'd do one of two things, we'd do the search and destroy missions ah I guess if reconnaissance planes had detected some type of movement in the area we would be doing search and destroy. Otherwise we were simply destroying. (Chuckle). We destroyed ah plantations and jungle area that were supposedly sanctuaries for the Viet Cong. Of course they were um. What we would actually do is a large roam plow would be ah sitting in one spot and about fifty yards next to it, another roam plow would be and they would have this great big, huge ah chain hooked from one plow to the other plow and they would go around in these large circles with this chain and the chain would very effectively simply mow down the rubber plantation. Sabatier: The plant rubber trees were about six inches, eight inches in diameter and we would pull security around the edge of these plows because the people driving these plows of course were unarmed and exposed. Um, so we would either do that or... as we'd do that... villages of course were pretty close to the rubber plantations and we would get a lot of contact with the Vietnamese civilians. The first thing I noticed about that was of course there were no young men anywhere. It was always elderly women and men and younger women and ah just small boys.

Sabatier: If ah we ran into any boys like ah twelve to fifteen ah they were scrutinized very carefully um and treated very badly I think for the most part. They were never damaged bodily or anything, but ah it wasn't uncommon for them to be shoved around very much as if they were if we suspected them of being VC. Ah, we would take and search them, it was nothing for us... ah we never knocked on anybody's door, okay? Um, if you saw pictures of WWII and the Gestapo in Germany just walking into people's houses, and you know, it's a funny thing about most of the movies you see, they generally beat on the door, you know? Sabatier: But we didn't do that, we just walk right in, um. We might walk into people's their houses, actually what they were ah dried mud walls about three or four feet high and then bamboo the rest of the way up and bamboo thatched kind of roofs. We'd walk right in ah we'd catch people just sleeping on the ah hard ah mud built up about three feet – they had like the size of a queen sized bed, you know, might be the size of a hooch, but we'd walk in these people's houses when they'd be sound asleep in bed.

Sabatier: Um, generally though, when the people knew we were in the area coming into their village, they would duck down into um these little holes that they would dig because they knew that if there ever was a fire fight there they always had these holes, every hooch had a hole that uh they’d jump in, the size that the family could fit down in and we would go into the village, into the hooch and ah tell the people to come out of the holes. If the people didn't come out of the holes within like ten seconds, we'd throw a grenade down the hole. Um, the people um were actually very nice. It wasn't very often that you'd get somebody like that that would refuse to come out of the hole. Sabatier: Because they would ordinarily come right out of the hole if there was no firing going on, they knew you know that you were just searching. Ah, the people we'd find ah people along the roads, in the villages... The kids were just beautiful. I guess typical of any ah country at war. Kids making friends. Ah, it was really interesting. The kids, so many of them could speak English. The Americans had been there so long. These kids, you're talking about kids five, six, seven years old, we'd been there that long, I guess, and ah their older brothers and sisters could speak French and these kids could speak English – you know, very good English, too – and ah nice kids, they'd come up and sell you coats and things like that. Trying to make a buck off the GI. Some of the GIs were... everybody was different.

Sabatier: Most of us I think were pretty friendly, I think Americans are generally friendly, especially GIs for some reason, very uh giving. Ah, some of them are a little hard core people, very harsh, and they treated the people pretty badly, ah. For instance, our new... a person we called Mad Dog in my squad. He loved to get a kick out of seeing these people degraded. Ah, what he would do is if it was muddy like during – they had monsoon season – if it was monsoon season and it was muddy, we'd go through a village, he would throw, a can of C-rations off the track just into a big pile of mud just to see the kids, you know, fight each other over this can of C rations. I never appreciated that kind of humor, and that just degraded and dehumanized people. But he seemed to get a kick out of it, but ah. Sabatier: So we'd see a lot of the people and talk to the kids, very nice people, ah, outside in the perimeters when we'd set up a perimeter near a village there were always the prostitutes you know that would come out and that was normal activity. The prostitutes would come and hang in the bushes ah like twenty feet beyond the three rolls of concertina wire that we would put up around the perimeter and lines would begin to form, you know, around the... it was just amazing. The little kids six or seven, would come out of the bushes in front of the concertina wire and hold up the hand and give you the sign.

Sabatier: And of course that was the international symbol and everybody would recognize what that meant, and ah so lines would begin to develop. So they were making money. I've seen people get away with giving Monopoly money to these people. It was just amazing that ah that they were almost ah so far out of tune with America and what was going on, people would actually, at the end of month when people had a little money left, they would lose it gambling at poker or they'd send it home by that time... they would trade um, C-rations to the prostitutes, ah they would trade ah toothpaste and ah I've seen prostitutes that ah were given a bar of soap and thought it was a candy bar and tried to eat it and ah just I don’t know, ah dehumanizing, again. Interviewer: Tell me about the time once when you parked your tracks ever the hole – tell me about that. I know that's a difficult experience, but tell me about that.

Sabatier: We came into an area, ah it was a company, I think it was a battalion size ah operation and we came into the open area, an area that was ah hardly any trees around, and we set up a perimeter and it was ah probably a mile from the village. We set up this perimeter and we had been there ten days, eleven days and the night of the eleventh day, ah some Viet Cong were trying to sneak out of our perimeter. What had happened was that we had set this perimeter up right on top of this group of Viet Cong who were digging tunnels in the area and they only had one – the entrance dug and some of the tunnel – they didn't have another way out and so they were trapped inside of our perimeter. Sabatier: Ah, they were poorly armed, and so they thought they would try to wait us out, just hide in the tunnel. Apparently they ran out of water, I don't think they ever had food. Um. They were getting – the only reason they had water was because they had women with them that were bringing water I guess back and forth from the village as they were working on the tunnels. And um what happened was about three o'clock on the morning on the eleventh day, they tried to sneak out of the perimeter, and ah there was a tank next to my track on the perimeter, and I had just got off of guard duty and was going to lay down — this tanker starts shooting with its .45 and starts yelling, hey infantry, there's gooks in the perimeter, another dehumanizing term, it's easier to kill a gook than kill somebody by a name and ah, he yelled for us.

Sabatier: I grabbed a couple of guys from my squad and ran over and ah we we ran up to this guy and he says they there's a bunch of them. They ran all around. I shot one and he's in the bomb crater. So we ran to the bomb crater, shined the light in the bomb crater and ah this ah guy was there, he was butt naked and ah he had ah two bullet holes in his throat and he was breathing very heavily when he breathed, blood would be pumped right out of his throat and (sounds) and it would like bubble up. We laid there, and the guy the tanker was pretty new, he said go get a medic and ah no medic was going to touch this guy because this guy was laying there with these two old rusty grenades – one in each hand – they looked like um Korean type grenades, not the new vintage. So I said look, if there's more in the perimeter, let's spread out around this bomb crater and secure this area here, and you know you get on the radio and call and tell everybody. So he informed the CO and ah we spread out...

Interviewer: We just ran out…

Interviewer: Yeah? Interviewer: Go ahead. Sabatier: So the tanker hollers there's ah VC in the perimeter. Well we run over there and discover that there is ah, he's shot one that's in the bomb crater. We look in the bomb crater with this tunnel light that we have and we see this ah a VC and it's laying there, butt naked, and he's got two grenades in his hand and he's been shot in the throat twice and he's having a hard time breathing. Um, he asked for a medic and we told him to forget it – no medic is going to go down there with this guy with grenades but he calls the medic anyway. Sabatier: So I told him to, you know, call the CO and let him know what's going on here, how many he suspects around the perimeter and that we're going to check it out. That's really in order to tell everybody to get their head down. So I told everybody to spread out you know, extend themselves about three feet apart and we'll sweep around this bomb crater. Just to secure the immediate area. We did that and I realized I had the tunnel light in my hand and I I, you know, it went through my brain, you know, why don't you hold the light, but I wasn't ready to do that so I held the light way out to my side as far as I could, I was very fortunate I think that it was a real dark night. Sabatier: Really cloudy and you couldn't see the moon. So I took about two steps and this women jumps up in front of me and I couldn't see her at all but I could tell she was right in front of me about waist high and jumps up and screams something, about two or three words, scared the living hell outta me and I just ah instinctively I had my M-16 under my arm and I just pulled the trigger and just kept my hand on the trigger and just blew this gal away.

Sabatier: I jumped down, everybody jumps down and she must of hit the ground and flopped back and when I hit the ground she just flopping back on me I thought she was attacking me and I was like trying to grab her... and ah... it was ah it was ah twenty rounds had just gone into her and when she flops on me I had like blood and flesh all over me and you know, it's one of those things you just dream about for years and you just never shake. Um, of course she was dead. We ended up searching her body. Sabatier: All we found was ah a wallet that had a picture and a rusty razorblade for some reason. But the picture was her and these two kids and this guy. We went ahead and checked out the area and ended up killing like eight of these eleven people that were trying to sneak out of the perimeter and ah ended up that only two of them were armed, but ah instead of just throwing their hands up and surrendering they would try to run and it's nighttime and it’s dark and the movement you shoot. You know, you can't take any chances. ‘Cus their scaring us.

Sabatier: It's almost like ET today, you know, they're scaring us as much as we're scaring them. So, when dawn finally got there we had a dozer dig a deep hole in front of the perimeter and we went around collecting the bodies and threw them on the back door of this army personnel carrier that had been lowered, we stacked the bodies up and threw them in this hole and buried them in front of the perimeter. Ah, it just so happened that one of the people that were still alive happened to be her husband who was in picture. Sabatier: I was called into the CO's tent and asked about the operation and I saw these three VC sitting there with these sandbags sitting over their heads and they took this one guy and took the sandbag off of his head and they were talking to him and the interpreter was asking me questions about whether there was a women there I said yes, they said what happened, I explained, and when I told them that I shot the woman, he interpreted that to the guy and when he heard that I shot the women, well I didn't know that she was her husband, well he tried to attack me and they beat the hell out of him. You know, knocked him down and started beating him up and stuff and then they told me later that that was his wife and I don't know what happened to the kids, I don’t know where they’re at.

Sabatier: Sick, you know. He started throwing himself around, roll around in the dirt and screaming and they're beating him up and something's not right here. So, you know I left there feeling pretty bad, naturally. Then I got kidded about it, too. You know, about being a woman killer and stuff like that, you know. Everybody thought that was funny, I guess. I never thought it was very fun. And ah, but that was ah was probably... you know, I had killed a few people before there but ah I never quite killed a woman, much less an unarmed woman and all she was doing was bringing them water, for Christ's sake. But you get embroiled and you find yourself in an uncompromising positions and before you know what's going on and there's not much you can do sometimes, except learn your lesson. Interviewer: Say again, I didn't know that he was her husband, you said I didn’t know that she was her husband. just say for me that sentence.

Sabatier: I didn't know that he was her husband... Interviewer: Tell me now about the ambush and get into it and the part where Tex the guy’s calling for you. Sabatier: Okay. The morning that ah, you know, ah it was kind of interesting ah the night before we went out on this mission that I got shot we were sitting around and I only had four guys left on my squad, we had 68 men in the company at the time, and normally we would have been out of the field with that many men because normally you have 200 at least, but it was during the Tet Offensive, the Tet had just started... Interviewer: Don’t mention the Tet Offensive. Let’s start that again. Don’t mention the… Sabatier: The morning that I went out, I'm sorry.

Sabatier: Do you want me to explain what was happening about the... Sabatier: This one particular mission, it was our job once again to pull security for these plows there was a small hill and every time we went around one particular side of this hill, cutting down these rubber trees, we would get a few rounds of sniper fire from across the swamp. Ah, the swamp was about as wide as a football field and very long. Ah, it didn't bother us every time we got around the hill we just ducked down the APCs small arms fire didn't penetrate so one morning – that happened like two days in a row and the third morning my company's job was get up extra early that morning and we were going to go around this swamp area, flush these what we thought were just a few VC snipers out of this wooded area on the other side of the swamp. Sabatier: The plan was we had three tanks sitting up on the hill and one company was going to get on line and flush these snipers out into the swamp and the tanks would take care of anybody that came out into the swamp. Didn't work out like that. We had 68 people. We mounted up on our APCs and we had tank support. We went around and got to this area about eleven o'clock on the other side of these trees. We called in because when we got there it was obvious there were a whole lot of people there, the signs were just everywhere. There was fresh dirt with leaves covering fresh dirt, it was obvious that they were dug in pretty well, there were footprints everywhere.

Sabatier: We could smell the VC so we knew that there were a lot of them. It was obviously a trap and they were drawing us in and we were smart enough to know that. So we sat there and as we ate lunch we called in an air strike. They would come in and they'd drop these 250-pound bombs and all this napalm all in this wooded area for like half an hour. And they bomb and ended up bombing our area about the size of a football field close to the swamp. Well, we got on line after lunch and moved in. Sabatier: Our APCs were right in line with each other and we're moving in. And as soon as we get in ah they open up on us with a crossfire, they had ah .51 caliber machine guns which are very heavy – 51 caliber the ammo's about that long and about that round and it would chop you to pieces, and it would go right straight through an army personnel carrier. So, obviously when we found out we were in this crossfire, we started jumping into the bomb craters and into the um the artillery holes that were there. It was quite an event.

Sabatier: A lot of napalm was still burning and smoking um there was a lot of firing going on, um people were getting destroyed jumping into these bomb craters. And ah the bomb craters and ah artillery craters that had been there before – the old craters had been booby trapped and when the guys would jump in, they were jumping on grenades that were going off and things like that. We... the most of the people we lost were lost probably right as they jumped into these booby trapped holes. Sabatier: You didn't have much of a choice. You either jumped into a hole or the crossfire was going to nail you. So, I ended up getting off my armored personnel carrier and ah jumping into this particular bomb crater ah a fresh one that had just been made and ah the bomb crater... the water level there was probably two feet – if you dig down two feet you'd hit water. The bomb craters had blown out most of the water and you had like a little water in the bottom. There were three of us in this bomb crater, and ah we had these choppers coming and shooting these rockets at everybody. Lots of firing going on, a lot of noise.

Sabatier: We lost communications, our armored personnel carriers were being hit with RPGs. Those are rocket-propelled grenades like a bazooka. If you could think of that type of weapon. We were in the bomb crater and this one guy stuck his head up to take a shot at somebody and got a bullet right there in the face, he rolls down the bomb crater and lands in the water and is floating there and this particular firefight was probably the worst one, you know, that I had ever been in and it was gonna look like it was gonna take a long time. We knew we were in for a hard day. Luckily, one of the people that was in there had drug a case of grenades with him. Interviewer: Hold it there…

Interviewer: Okay. Sabatier: So, I'm laying there in this bomb crater with this other friend of my who's in my squad and ah I realize that ah we're going up against, you know, North Vietnamese regulars here. These are not VC. VC do not have .51 caliber machine guns and ah it seemed like every day approaching this day we've been getting – you know, for the last two weeks we'd been in a lot of firefights and they were really prepared for us here. I realized that it was going to be a long day – probably the worst firefight that I'd ever been in already. Sabatier: I haven't even engaged the enemy hardly. And ah, so I told this guy next to me, I said, don't stick your head up here. You know, if you want to fire just keep them off of us, stick your hands up over the edge and you know pull off two or three rounds. We've got to conserve our ammo here. And ah don't bar – you know, just keep shooting just to keep them off of us. So, luckily we had this case of grenades that have been drug over so every couple of minutes we'd throw one of these grenades. We we knew the trench lines were probably about twenty yards ahead of us and we were in this open area that had been bombed out and ah we're exposed.

Sabatier: We're in a bad position. The only thing that we could hope for was that we still had communications and that they could call these air strikes back in here, give 'em their positions, get some gunships in here and shoot some rockets in here to give us some cover to get the hell out of here. Um, about that time um I hear this guy calling me and my nickname was Tex... everybody seemed to have a nickname and that was mine. I hear this guy outside... Interviewer: Excuse me. I’m sorry…

Interviewer: Sorry for the interruptions, go ahead. Sabatier: So about this time I hear somebody calling me. My nickname was Tex... Interviewer: Would you start again please? Sabatier: Yeah. About this time I hear somebody calling me, Tex, that was my nickname. Ah, I thought I was hearing things 'cause I could barely hear so I waited and I heard it again, Tex. So, you know, I wasn't going to stick my head up to see who the hell was calling Tex, and ah the third time I heard it somebody was saying, Tex, help me Tex. And so my friend says, don't be a fool, you know, don't go out there, you're gonna get killed and I probably think that he was more scared of me leaving him there alone than me getting hurt. Sabatier: But I didn't go out for like ten minutes and I kept hearing this friend of mine hollering Tex, help me, so finally I don't know what happened, I didn't really even think it over or anything I just instinctively jumped up out of this bomb crater and ran over to help this guy. Just as I got to him, I was putting one knee down on the ground and I was just reaching for him and I felt this thud in my back and I thought my other friend had run out too and had tripped or something when I stopped and had accidentally kneed me in the back, it was like, you know, somebody punched you right in the back as hard as they could. Sabatier: Well, it knocked the breath out of me and I took this deep breath. When I took the breath this blood just came flying right out of my throat as if I had a faucet in my mouth and ah you know I ended up falling, you know, my chest hits the ground I'm laying on my M-16 and I realize that I've been shot, it's not him kneeing me in the back. And so I took another breath and ah the same thing happened, and I'm having a hard time breathing and I realize that a bullet had hit me and penetrated my lung and I tried to roll over and I couldn't roll over, I was paralyzed and I didn't that at the time 'cause the bullet severed my spinal cord, too, on its way to the lung, so, I was pretty scared and I learned that just within a few seconds if I just barely breathed that I could barely suck air I get a little blood but I could get enough air in order to stay alive.

Sabatier: So my problem would be bleeding to death at least not choking to death so if I could like stay alive long enough maybe somebody would drag me out of there. Well, I took a look at my friend I was laying right there next to him and ah I I opened his fatigues where he'd been shot, he'd apparently go a full burst of a Russian AK-47 across the lower part of his stomach and his groin area and I opened it up and I saw ah just what looked like a bowl of blood to me. His genitals had been ah just shot right off, I guess. And ah, it looked just like a small potato salad bowl of blood sitting there, just sitting there. Sabatier: And ah I looked at him and ah he said, “I'm gonna die aren't I?” and I said, “yeah, you're gonna die.” And uh he died like a minute later. And ah, so then I started worrying about myself. I knew that if I tried to move to get back to the bomb crater I'd just get shot again. Um, it was it was just unbelievable the firepower that was going on there. Um, when I say this it almost sounds like we were isolated and it was lonely or something but it was like a tremendous amount of noise and rockets and people screaming and hollering and a lot of... you know, just amazing, like the movies.

Sabatier: So, I lay there and I figure, well, I'll just pull myself up to him so I can get right next to him as much as I can. My arms had been um paralyzed too but at least the feeling. I could move them but I couldn’t feel them they were numb like they were asleep and they were finally coming back so I could so I thought maybe my legs were numb too and they'd come around but they didn't. But just the sheer shock. When the bullet had hit me it felt like a great big spring inside of me had busted, you know, and ah as if somebody had but an electric wire to me and just shocked me and I had all this numbness throughout my whole body like I was asleep and I was just waking up again. Sabatier: So I crawled up to him and he... I don't know how many times he had been shot, people were still trying to shoot me and they were hitting him and every time his body would just thud and ah so I just laid there and it was just ironic how he ended up saving my life by being dead when I could do nothing for him when I was alive. I laid there for quite a while. I couldn't bandage my wound, it was behind me. Ah so I just tried to be still and ah the next thing I knew the sun was getting beyond the trees and ah as that happened I began to get worried because I knew if it got dark these people would be coming out of that trench line trying to ah to make sure that everybody's dead who's just laying around.

Sabatier: So I was hoping, you know, that somebody would be able to drag me back. What happened was the unit called the straight laid infantry unit called the Wolfhounds ah came in ah on an eagle flight and they probably had ten choppers and would jump off and they came in and gave us some support. Ah the planes were finally coming in with the gunships just blowing these rockets in these trench lines. I guess it gave them enough cover. Sabatier: The next thing I knew I had been rolled over on to this poncho, which was rain gear, and I was being dragged back. The guy dragging me back ended up getting shot... he was dead. I thought oh crap, you know. About this time I was laying there I was in so much pain ah I was praying literally I was praying to die. I couldn't stand it, I just couldn't stand it. And ah I figured I'm gonna die anyway. I don't want them coming up and sticking me in the throat with this bayonet. So the next thing I knew that was probably like thirty seconds, a couple more guys had seen him pulling me back and they ran out there and pulled me back.

Sabatier: When they pulled me back, they looked at me and I guess they thought I must be dead. They pulled me and they threw me – they had obviously had been collecting all the bodies around and they were stacking them up on each other. You can't have much respect for a bunch of dead – you try to get them out of there. They throwed me –literally just threw me, I was in pain enough, but ah they threw me on this pile of guys waiting to be thrown on choppers to get out of there, and they were sending the wounded back first on these gunships who running out of ammo they would come down and get out, it was just amazing, you know, the heroics that were going on. Sabatier: These choppers would come down and expose themselves after they'd run out of ammunition just to get the wounded out when they went back to reload. They were getting blown out of the sky with RPGs. Ah so I can move my hands, my fingers and I moved my hands and my fingers and they grabbed me. Some guy noticed that and grabbed me and the next thing I know I was being thrown just like a piece of meat on the floor of this chopper and ah I was laying there and the gunner was looking at me and asked me if I could breath and I, you know, just kind of nodded, you know, yeah, barely. I was laying on the floor of that chopper and the chopper took off.

Sabatier: And I could see outside the door, they're of course open, just all these guys just laying there that I had been sitting there on the stack. I ended up getting to this hospital in Cu Chi I was operated on. But before, when the chopper landed I was on this gurney being rolled into like a MASH unit and they were cutting my fatigues off of me and my boots off of me and as I got in the door they threw my fatigues and my boots in this corner of this big room and it was just packed full of guys on gurneys they must have been just fighting all over the country, which later I learned that they were because of the Tet. Sabatier: Ah. I saw ah guys with ah tourniquets on their arms that their arms had been blown away sitting there talking to other people smoking cigarette, you know just... I laid there on the gurney and I looked in around me and ah I had to wait to be operated on, there were people ahead of me. And ah, they only had so many doctors. I looked in the corner and ah they were throwing all these fatigues in the corner and I noticed there was this guy running around with a hose. They had a cement floor and they had two drains in the floor and he was like hosing down the floor all the time and the stack of fatigues that was almost up to the ceiling. Fatigues, boots...

Interviewer: Excuse me… Interviewer: Okay. Sabatier: So I was rolled in on this gurney. Interviewer: Okay, go ahead.

Sabatier: And I'm laying there. They'd thrown this sheet over me and I said... Interviewer: I spoke over you, sorry. Sabatier: Okay. I'm rolled in on this gurney, ah, they threw this sheet over me and I start looking around and I realize I'm in line to be operated on. Um, the first thing I notice is this guy with a hose who's walking around hosing down the cement floor. There's apparently two drains, in the floor, one on each end of the floor. And ah I notice in the corner there was a stack of the fatigues that they had been throwing in the corner as people had come in, they would cut the fatigues and stuff off like they did me and the thing was almost stacked to the ceiling, they had ah helmets, and fatigue shirts and pants and boots and what have you. Sabatier: Ammo, all kinds of stuff. And there was like a steady stream of blood from the fatigues to the drain on the floor. People were just bleeding off their gurneys and stuff. It was like a meat house, you know. Sick. And I was laying there thinking all kinds of things flying through your mind. Ah, I thought of my mother, I thought of my girlfriend. I thought of crazy things like why isn't the TV camera here, you know, why don't they show this? You know, maybe if they show this, to the people, show them the blood and the guts and show them, you know, the moans and the groans of the people. Sabatier: Show them somebody that’s got their own arm blown off instead of showing it while it's bandaged. You know, show 'em that stuff. Maybe it would make people sick, you know. Maybe it would make parents sick and they wouldn't want to invest their son for something like that. They wouldn't be so willing to be so ultra patriotic. You know, to go half way around the world to stop something we let exist ninety miles away. I just I just start thinking about all these crazy things and I think right then I started really questioning things that I hadn't even thought of before.

Sabatier: On the table I remember thinking there was a priest that came up to me and started giving my last rites. And I thought the nerve of this guy. I haven't seen a priest since I've been here and the one priest that was in the Cu Chi area wouldn't come out to the field, there was always some rabbi that came out, but the word was the priest didn't want to come out because he thought he might get killed. So, all of a sudden here's this priest here giving me last rites and I never could understand that. I was sort of thinking, what have you been doing here? Sabatier: He's in the army, he's sitting there standing there with this army uniform on, this priest who's supposed to believe in the Ten Commandments and one is thou shalt not kill, how can he support the machine whose whole purpose is to kill people. I mean I was really thinking all this stuff in my head, like I went back I flashed back to my training and ah I remember the yelling and screaming things like they would yell, “What's the spirit of the bayonet?” and you would have to scream back, “To kill.” That's the spirit of the bayonet.

Sabatier: And I'm thinking my whole job is to kill. I'm a trained killer. That's all I know how to do. I'm an 11B40. Light weapons infantry. I'm just a trained killer. And it's that all of a sudden I thought like, how'd I get here? I never wanted to be a trained killer. I didn't want to kill anybody. I didn't know the first thing about... I started thinking, you know, for the first time. What the hell is Communism? I couldn't define it, and I'm laying here and gonna die for killing a bunch of people because they happen to be Communist. I didn't know and I bet you none of the people in that room knew the difference between Communism, Socialism or Capitalism and here's this priest that's sworn an oath, you know, that believes in thou shalt not kill, that's taking part in this machine that's doing nothing except killing people and destroying people's lives. I couldn't understand it. Sabatier: And the same was true on the other side. Half the Viet Cong were Catholics. I mean it’s just, and North Vietnamese – Catholic is a dominant religion. They had their priests too, I could never could understand it. It was it was you what could answer – they don't have an answer. Either you believe thou shalt not kill, there's no such thing as thou shalt not kill except for this or but for that. There's no such thing like that. So what are they doing there? You know, supporting they ought to be out there in the street you know, I've come this far. Those people are the people that should be spearheading anti war movement.

Sabatier: Not the anti Vietnam war movement, but anti war movement period. You know, we get ourselves, it was later I think, I started understanding you know and trying to understand what it is that makes humans do things like that, and part of it are things that got me there. People don't question, people aren't aware. Your factionalize yourself. You know, you're proud to be a Texan – there’s, people are proud to be Texans. I mean, they were proud to be Southerners and they killed Northerners. We're proud to be Americans and we killed Germans, right, in WWII and we're proud to be Americans and we killed anybody that's not an American. Sabatier: We identify, we factionalize ourselves and we identify ourselves with a group of people and we'll kill anybody that doesn't believe what we believe. You know, the world has not yet begun to think on universal terms. As we're all human beings on this planet irregardless of color, race, religion, we'll fight, we'll kill. We'll kill over religion, we'll kill over race, we'll kill over something called Communism and most of the people listening to this could try to define Communism right now don't know the first damned thing about it.

Sabatier: They never read any communist manifestos, they don't know Engels, they don't know Marx, they don't know their philosophy, but damn if they wont go sign up for the draft and find themselves in the same situation I did laying on some funky table in some stupid blood bath in Vietnam to stop something they don't know the first thing about. I kind of ramble on. But I would – I mean I thought of things like that and I was disgusted with myself – I was sick. You know, I never was afraid to die. Sabatier: You know, I still believe there are things worth fighting and dying for. There are things worth protecting, but you know, know what it is that you're protecting. Know what it is, understand it, and make sure you know, in your mind that this is something you're willing to die for. Not something called communism. Not something called our Manifest Destiny was to wipe out the Indians. We died for that. I mean Americans died for that. Indians died for that. Something – stupid slogan – and we died for the domino theory. You know, some one always develops these stupid slogans and we will throw our sons in there and get them wiped out. Sabatier: I mean, just the idea of us having to go halfway around the world to fight what most people call a fifth rate country. I don't like to call it that, it's just another country, but to go halfway around the world to stop something called the domino theory to kill a bunch of communists who we let thrive 90 miles away just doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't make any sense. But I guess Cuba doesn't have the oil reserve that close like Vietnam does. You know, I learned later when I got into political science that if you don't understand the reason or something, look at the economic issue and you'll find it. If you look at every war you'll find it there.