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Chapter 10
Beauty and the Beast
Viet Nam was a beautiful Country. It was stark in it’s contrasts. The flat lands, the rice paddies, the shoreline villages contrasted with the rapidly rising high country, the dense jungle growth and the high jungle canopy—the steep mountain terrain. The greens were very green and the blue water was very blue. I could see myself enjoying living there—- The simple, ageless villages and hamlets were picturesque—the Vietnamese people were hearty, simple, hard working, family oriented folks who were simply trying to get along the best they could. Many did not understand what the war was all about—why Americans were tramping thru their villages, ransacking their humble shacks and destroying their rice harvests and frightening the children. Marines from the first platoon, Echo Company, 2nd. Bn., 7th. Marines carried out our missions to destroy any ‘VC friendly resources’ including ‘storage centers’ for rice and weapons concealed in certain village shacks. Our Marines had to enter the ‘homes’ of innocent looking women and children and search for enemy caches—this bothered our Marines who felt they were intruding on the innocent lives of vulnerable people—we did not take our missions lightly. There were those who were critical of the United States’ involvement in the Viet Nam conflict—our Marines didn’t fully understand why we were there other than that’s where our Country and our Marine Corps wanted us to go. Our mission was to help the
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