Memoir (Military)
Date Published: January 22, 2022 (Hardcover coming March 2022)
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Jim Gibson was flying to the other side of the world, barreling toward what he feared could be the end of his life. In 1968, five hundred American soldiers were dying every week in Vietnam. Outfitted in brand new, scratchy, combat jungle fatigues and boots, the twenty-year-old Army Private and trained Combat Medic found himself on a plane to a place he had never been, to fight a war he didn’t believe in. Young men like him were being drafted against their will every day, called into a war that made no sense to them. Vietnam, they thought, was a war orchestrated by relics; old white men and corrupt politicians willing to expend countless lives for personal gain. Still, it was no use to resist. There was nowhere to go, and the FBI made sure there was no place to hide.
December 1, 1968
I WAS ON this huge airliner flying into what I
thought could be the end of my life.
By “huge airliner,” I mean a Stretch DC8, one
of the biggest flight vehicles in the world. I was among about 225 other young
soldiers flying west over the Pacific Ocean, headed for Vietnam on this
military-chartered jet aircraft. Our country was losing sometimes five hundred
soldiers a week at that point. I was twenty years old, an Army Private E-1, a
trained Combat Medic, dressed in brand new, scratchy, combat jungle fatigues,
wearing a pair of brand new, uncomfortable combat jungle boots. Most of us kids
were scared to death. Some were sniffling and crying as we started our descent
into Vietnam. I wasn’t afraid as I sat there in my seat and read The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ.
After a while, the sound system came on and
the pilot told us we were soon to land. He told us to prepare ourselves as the
aircraft would have to make a steep, radical dive as it approached the runway
and that he would then have to, in a similar manner, bring the plane’s nose up
just before landing. This to avoid being hit by enemy fire. The officer of the
flight then came on and told us we were to get off the plane rapidly once we
landed, then quickly make our way to a nearby concrete bunker. We were told to
wait there for further instructions.
The officer had given us his orderly
instructions but as soon as the plane landed and the doors opened, other voices
commanded us: “Get out! Get out! Get out! Move! Move! Move! Get your asses off this plane! Now!”
There was a lot of pushing and shoving. The
line of soldiers shuffled forward, and I moved with the rest until I was there
at the doorway where we were practically being thrown off the plane. As I began
moving out of the air-conditioned plane and down the ramp, I was hit with what
seemed to me a blast furnace of humid air. Once on the ground, I was also
greeted with an awful, nauseating smell. Somebody said it was the scent of
burning shit. Oil barrels, cut in half, filled with soldiers’ shit soaked in
diesel fuel and lit on fire.
The jet’s engines roared as the pilot began
moving the plane down the runway to make room for the next transport coming
right up behind him. I followed others to a bunker, then sat on my duffle bag
in the heat. Men were running around yelling. Loud booming noises came from
different directions off in the distance. It was getting dark.
There was a continuous loud sound of something
like whomp you could feel coming from all directions.
You could feel it in your bones. Helicopter blades thudded in the distance. It
was then that an intense fear consumed me as I realized the absolutely insane
madness that I had descended into.
This was Vietnam.
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