Inside the Wire: An Alternative View of the Vietnam War

Inside the Wire

An Alternative View of the Vietnam War

By Tom Allemeier

Copyright 2014 Tom Allemeier

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Introduction

We know the Vietnam War as a time of great sacrifice made by young men who were sent off to fight an unpopular war on the other side of the world. There were battles large and small where many men lost their lives or suffered horrific injuries in extremely difficult conditions. Many personal accounts and history books have been written, movies have been made and they are at once fascinating, horrifying and heartbreaking. This is how we’ve come to know the war. However, though these events were significant and the accounts largely truthful, almost universal focus on them has led to somewhat of an historical distortion of the realities of the Vietnam War. The fact is, for the vast majority of the American soldiers in Vietnam, their experiences were very different. They fought no battles large or small, there were no heroes among them, they had no victories or defeats and most of them never even fired a shot.

They shared common roots, those who ended up inside the wire and outside. They’d grown up with the threat of being drafted and sent off to war hanging over their heads like a dark cloud and there was the very real possibility that their short lives would soon come to an early end. They had no influence, no family connections, no strings they could pull. They were, for the most part, the Unfortunate Sons characterised in the 1969 song by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It was not until shortly after they landed in Vietnam that they were divided up into the fortunate and unfortunate ones.

The unfortunate ones out in the bush had a term for the fortunate ones back in the relative safety of the base camps; REMFs (Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers).

There are probably just about as many definitions of REMF as people who use the term. At one extreme, the definition would be anyone in the rear sitting in a position of authority who, through lack of knowledge, compassion or diligence would expose those on the front lines to increased danger and fatalities. On the other extreme it would be just about anyone in a war zone who had a cushier job than you. As a baseline definition, I would say a REMF is a soldier in a war zone who has been assigned to a relatively safe duty station and is not exposed to hostile fire, at least on a regular or frequent basis. In short; those soldiers who worked in support of the troops on the front lines. Under this definition, I was a REMF.

The United States military presence in Vietnam was concentrated in and around over thirty base camps of varying sizes. Front line soldiers often rotated into those bases for short periods of time and then out again to front line positions for longer periods of time, while REMFs called those bases home. In a sense you could think of those base camps as small cities, places that required nearly all of the services of typical cities. There were drivers, mechanics, doctors, vendors, typists, repairmen, cooks, lawyers and accountants. The list could go on and on. Sure there was an enemy to fight but supply lines also needed to be maintained, equipment maintained and repaired, and soldiers needed to be stitched up, fed, clothed and housed.

REMFs, by most accounts and depending on your personal definition, made up about 75% of the American troops stationed in Vietnam during the War. Yet their stories are rarely told and there are good reasons for this.

Most soldiers who have returned from a war zone, whether they spent their tour inside the wire or outside, seldom speak of their experiences and when they do it’s often only among themselves. There are those, true heroes, who lived through experiences so horrific and incomprehensible that no one outside of those experiences could possibly understand or even remotely relate to them. And there are those whose experiences were so humdrum and mundane that it would be, in contrast, an embarrassment to even speak of them.

I’m often skeptical when I hear someone go on and on about their heroic adventures in Vietnam as many of these tales turn out to be either highly exaggerated or completely untrue. There are of course soldiers who have written about their experiences in well-known battles such as Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill or the Ia Drang Valley. These stories are written humbly with a focus on the heroics of others rather than themselves and are written as a tribute to those who lost their lives in those battles.

Like most people my age I know almost nothing of my father’s experiences in WWII. I know that he was in the Navy, and from a few old photographs I can surmise that he was stationed on a ship probably somewhere in the Southeast Pacific. He never talked about the war and whenever anyone asked him about it he’d quickly change the subject or sometimes jokingly remark on his duties in the war with a favorite phrase; If it moves salute it; if it doesn’t move paint it. Although my father said it with a smile on his face, I believe he actually thought of it as an accurate summary of his service during WWII. I can only guess, but I believe my father was also a REMF.

WWII was a momentous time in America’s history and my father played a part in it. I was curious to know what part he’d played no matter how small or insignificant it was. He was a young man when he went off to war. It must have been a time of wonder, discovery, adventure and fear of the unknown. I wanted to know how his experiences had shaped him as a man, a husband and a father.

But wars become defined in history by their major battles, their stories of heroism, suffering, sacrifice and loss. And even though REMFs made up the vast majority of troops in both wars, I believe they felt that telling their stories would be not only embarrassing for them, but possibly seen by others as shameful or even disrespectful to those who had given so much more.

About ten years after I returned from Vietnam my father passed away and I realized that no one would ever know his story. It was my father’s death that prompted me to write down all that I could remember of my own experiences in Vietnam. I wrote it mostly for myself, thinking that someday I’d be getting old and may want to reflect on that very different and unusual period of my life. And I suppose I wrote it for a son or daughter who may one day in the future have the same sort of curiosity that I had about my own father. The Vietnam War was also a momentous time in America’s history and, although the part that I played was very small and insignificant, I saw no reason to carry my story to the grave as my father had done. I suppose I thought of the notes I was writing as a kind of time capsule and when I was finished I put them in a green paper binder, packed it in a storage chest and completely forgot about it for the next 30 years.

Eighteen years ago I returned to Vietnam as a tourist and was finally able to experience all of the things I’d been isolated from during my tour of duty during the Vietnam War. I fell in love with the people, their culture, the sights, the smells and the food. When I returned to the States I could think of nothing but going back and within a couple of months I was back in Vietnam working as an English teacher. And I’ve been here ever since.

Then a few years ago my sister was planning a visit to Vietnam and asked me what we could do with that old storage chest of mine that she’d been lugging around from house to house for all those years. It had become obvious I wouldn’t be returning to the States anytime in the near future, if ever. So she made an inventory of the contents of the chest and we went through it item by item deciding what could be thrown away, what could be given away and what she could bring to me here in Vietnam.

We decided we could give away the handmade jewelry my grandfather had left me as well as my father’s camping hatchet, and there were a few old pictures she could bring to me. Then she asked me about an old green folder with a bunch of handwritten notes in it. I remembered it immediately and was at once shocked, amused and embarrassed. I was shocked because I’d completely forgotten about it all those years, amused to think that I’d once undertaken such a folly and embarrassed to think that my sister, or anyone else, might have read it. I told her it was nothing, just something stupid I’d written a long time ago and that she could just throw it away.

What I would miss more than any of the contents, I thought, was the chest itself. When I was preparing to leave Vietnam in 1972 I learned that I’d be able to send home some personal effects in a U.S. Army footlocker, by ship and free of charge, and the footlocker would be mine to keep. I didn’t really have anything of value to send home but I really wanted the footlocker. It seemed like an excellent souvenir of my time in the Army; a going away present, sort of a gold watch. And I’d kept it all those years, often giving it a prominent position in my living room, carrying it from house to house, painting it different colors, covering it with contact paper and even at one time had the top upholstered so it would serve as a piece of furniture. So I tried to impress upon my sister the sentimental value of the thing and asked her to try to find someone who would take it rather than just throw it away.

When my sister arrived in Vietnam she handed me a box with some old photos, an old high school yearbook and the green folder. When I asked her why she’d bothered to bring the green folder she said that there were over a hundred pages of handwritten notes there and that she couldn’t bring herself to throw away something I’d obviously put so much time and effort into. Besides, it was easy to carry. It was also easy to store, so I put it on my bookshelf and forgot about it again for the next three years.

Then about a month ago I was looking for an old book and came across the green folder again. I had some time to kill so I thought I’d look through it and if it was really as silly as I thought I’d just go ahead and throw it away. But as I began reading I thought I just might want to hang on to it, at least for myself, and since I can type fairly well I’d just type it up as I read.

As I read and typed it brought back a lot of memories. I made an effort to refrain from elaborating on any of the details, knowing that memories can change over time, and typed it pretty much word-for-word as I had originally written it. It was still, I figured, a strictly personal thing and there was no need for elaboration. When I’d finished I went back through and arranged some of the anecdotes in a more chronological order and re-wrote some parts that were basically just notes.

Then it dawned on me; I’d never married and had no sons or daughters. My nieces and nephews had grown up while I’d been out of the country. It seemed there was no one who would have the slightest curiosity about what part I had played in the Vietnam War. But then again, maybe there was.

The history of the Vietnam War has been written. But it seems to me it’s been written more or less in the same way a jigsaw puzzle is put together; from the outside in. The reasons for the war, the major events of the war and the consequences of the war have been more or less completed, and they make up the outside edges and the corners of the puzzle. There is, however, a large hole in the center, and there are many missing pieces. The hole is not significant in terms of events, but I believe it is significant in terms of numbers, of experiences; the experiences of the majority of the US troops who served in the war, the REMFs.

So I made one more trip through what I’d written, this time changing the names of the other soldiers mentioned there. The reason for this will become obvious.

There are those who may consider this report embarrassing. The events in this report took place over forty years ago in the early 70s at a time when I was 19 and 20 years old. I am now 63 and quite frankly beyond embarrassment. Some may say I was an embarrassment to the United States Army and to that I must plead guilty as charged. However, in my defense I must say that I was forced into the Army; it wasn’t voluntary. I did, however, see my service as a required duty to my country, however right or wrong the mission may have been, and although I may not have been an exemplary soldier I performed my duties as ordered, trivial as they were.

And there are those who would say REMFs were little more than deadwood back in the rear. To this I would say that although REMFs had no major victories, had no heroic icons and suffered few losses their mission was to work in support of troops in the field and so performed a necessary and valuable service.

What follows is an account of my experiences from shortly before I was drafted until shortly after I was discharged. It was written over thirty years ago, not long after I returned from Vietnam. I would never attempt to recount those events today; over 40 years have passed and my memories have become faded and warped by time. When I originally wrote it, it was mostly for myself so there was no attempt to fictionalize or enhance the details. I offer it for those who, like me, are curious about their brother’s, father’s or grandfather’s experiences during the war, to my fellow REMFs who may want to reminisce a bit on that part of their past, and to those who spent the war outside the wire, those well-respected Unfortunate Ones of the Unfortunate Sons who could possibly use one more well-deserved and soul-cleansing rant against the REMFs.

Chapter One - Coming of Age in an Age of Uncertainty

I was drafted into the United States Army in March 1970, about nine months after I graduated from high school. I knew I was going to be drafted. In fact, I’d known all through high school. There were a few guys among my classmates who were making plans to go to college, and were hoping to get a college deferment from serving, but for the vast majority of us college wasn’t in the cards. There were a few college preparatory classes in my school but they were populated mostly by girls. My high school focused on preparing boys to work in factories, considered a very good job at the time, and much of our time was spent in shop class learning to work with wood and metal and to operate machines. We were villagers, farmers, Mennonites and, as in my case, just regular suburbanites. Our fathers had served in WWII, come home, found jobs, gotten married and bought or built houses in the suburbs. Soon it would be our turn. I made no plans for college while I was in high school. My father’s philosophy was for me to get through the service and then let the government pay for college through the GI Bill, if that was what I wanted, and if I survived the Vietnam War. What he wanted more though was for me to go to work for Ford Motor Company, like him, as soon as I graduated from high school and then after I was drafted my seniority would continue to build in the company while I was in the service. I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted because what I wanted didn’t really seem to enter into the equation. There was no reason for me to even be concerned with the question. Planning for the future was like solving a riddle and had about as much purpose. By the time I graduated from high school I’d already resolved myself to the fact that I’d have no control over my life until I returned from the Vietnam War. That, and the very real fact that I might not return from the war focused my thoughts solely on the present.

My future was completely in the hands of a very