Free Bloods by Wallace Terry Page A

gone.
    We told intelligence the prisoners was ours. So finally, they gave them to the company and left.
    I was still messing around in the plane when I heard these shots go off. The NVA captain tried to run, and he was shot. Shot about 20 times. They killed him.
    So one of our officers looked at the NVA sergeant and just said, “You can have him.”
    So at that time they had this game called Guts. Guts was where they gave the prisoner to a company and everybody would get in line and do something to him.
    We had a lot of new guys in the company that had never seen a dead NVA. And the officer was telling them to get in line. If they didn’t do anything, he wanted them to go past and look at him anyway.
    That’s how you do this game Guts.
    So they took the NVA’s clothes off and tied him to a tree. Everybody in the unit got in line. At least 200 guys.
    The first guy took a bayonet and plucked his eye out. Put the bayonet at the corner of the eye and popped it. And I was amazed how large your eyeball was.
    Then he sliced his ear off. And he hit him in the mouth with his .45. Loosened the teeth, pulled them out.
    Then they sliced his tongue. They cut him all over. And we put that insect repellent all over him. It would just irritate his body, and his skin would turn white.
    Then he finally passed out.
    Some guys be laughing and playing around. But a lotta guys, maybe 30, would get sick, just vomit and nauseated and passed out.
    The officer be yelling, “That could be your best friend on that tree. That could be you. You ever get captured, this could be you.”
    I don’t know when he died. But most of the time he was alive. He was hollering and cursing. They put water on him and shaking him and bringin’ him back. Finally they tortured him to death. Then we had to bury him. Bury both him and the lieutenant.
    A couple of days later we found three guys from the 101st that was hung up on a tree, that had been tortured. Hands was tied. Feet was tied. Blood was everywhere. All you saw was a big, bloody body. Just butchered up. That’s how they left GIs for us to see.
    They didn’t have name patch. All we knew was two was white, one black. And the airborne patch. We had to bury ’em.
    Before the Tet Offensive, all the fighting was in the jungles. We might search and destroy some hamlet. But Tet Offensive, the snipers went in the cities. And we wasn’t used to that street fighting.
    We was in Tuy Hoa. And funny thing. Louis got in one of these little bunkers that the French had left on the street, like a pillbox. He was hiding. And we said, “Come on. We got to move out.”
    Louis said, “Hell, no. I ain’t moving out. I’m safe. Nobody know where I’m at.”
    And we kept on saying, “Man, we gon’ leave you here if you don’t come on and move out.”
    And we start moving out.
    And Louis said, “What the hell. Y’all can’t do nothing without me anyway.” And laughed.
    Soon as he got out of his crouch behind the pillbox and got up, that’s when he got hit. Got shot in the chest,in the head. A sniper. And we had to leave him. We had to leave him right there.
    They gave us some half-ass story that they sent him home. They sent boxes home. A lot of times we couldn’t get a helicopter in, the terrain was terrible. So we had to bury ’em. By the time the maggots ate them up, what they gon’ get out the ground? If they find them.
    The night after Louis got killed, Taylor just broke down. I mean just boohoo and cry. Crying is kind of contagious. When one guy start crying, before you know it, you got a whole platoon of guys just sobbing.
    And we all knew Louis was suppose to go home in a week.
    But Taylor was just messed up. He would keep saying he couldn’t take it no more.
    He was always singing old hymns. I had him carrying 200 pounds of ammo once, and when I got to the hill to set up for the night, I said, “Taylor, where’s my ammo?” He said, “Man, you know that song about loose my shackles and set me free? I