Agent Orange

Really, why are we there? The domino theory: Vietnam falls to the communists, then Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and then India. Do they really believe that shit? Don’t these morons know that communism is just capitalism for a few?

Oh well, once I volunteered to fly helicopters and then gunships I asked for everything I got. So, I’m not complaining as my job was basically to protect American troops and an occasional Korean, (ROK), Aussie, and the South Vietnamese army; the last being a dreaded mission. Numerous times the South Vietnamese army would shoot at us. Some of them were Vietcong at night the “Cong” as we called them were South Vietnam’s indigenous people; mostly farmers with poor, or any, military training.

Our war planners would determine certain areas off limits as they believed the cong were growing rice for the North Vietnamese soldiers. We had two solutions for this problem: first, we would kill anyone in these areas. Second, we would spray the area with Agent Orange. This was a super killer for all vegetation. Roundup on steroids. Incidentally, we were told years later that it was extremely carcinogenic. We were given a gas mask to wear while spraying but didn’t use them. It blocked some of our peripheral vision, too hot and the sweat burned our eyes and the spray would cover the face plate of the mask and you couldn’t see. Other than that it was a great idea by some REMF, (rear echelon mother fucker). This was someone who had never been out in the war zone and was clueless. They had us throw out leaflets telling everyone we were going to spray. This also told them we would be flying over them low and slow which makes us good targets

Another mission was to throw out leaflets to surrender. This is just more toilet paper.