As I held him in my hands, his warm dark blood squirting out of the deep bullet hole on his chest. He was taking his last breath and I remember him saying “leave me I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.” I will never forget that day.

It was August 5, 1965 during the war in Vietnam. We had been fighting for only a day and it seemed like everyone was dropping like flies. We were in Vietnam when everything was for the worst. The Vietnamese were in the trees, in holes underground, in cabins, in the bushes. The Vietnamese tactics took us by surprise every step of the war.

Then again I haven’t been myself since my wife died. When I was out fighting, in my mind I felt like I was fighting to get back to my wife. Before the war had started I never would have thought that life could be so brutal. I was always around the happiest of people. I wasn’t the fighter type of guy. The government had just said one day that they were going to enlist any man who could pass the physical. One day the army came into our little town and started to grab the men saying it’s for a good cause, and they took us to these little camps where doctors and nurses were taking a look at all the men. I passed the physical and was off to basic training.
The general would give everybody a lot of crap about how weak we were and “we can’t win a war with laziness.” It wasn’t all that bad I guess. I met my friend Carlos in basic training. He was muscular looking with a square jaw, 15 inch biceps, had brown eyes, thick eye brows, and he had a little attitude problem. Most of the men didn’t like him because he was brown and had an accent.

One day in lunch I decided to sit with Carlos and we talked about whether he chose to enlist in the army or if he was forced to join. Carlos had pride and saw the United States as the land of opportunity and was glad to give up his life for such “land of opportunity.” If you ask me there wasn’t much opportunity for men like Carlos at the time, there was conflict of race. We also talked about what we were going to do after the military. I wanted to go back to my wife. Carlos on the other hand, wasn’t much of a family man he wanted to start a business or as he called it “the Mexican home.” I and Carlos became good friends.

We were in the same platoon. When we got deployed to Vietnam we didn’t expect what came next. A chopper had dropped us off on an open field. I was afraid that the chopper was going to get blown up because it was out in the open. We touched the grass at 1500 hours and we had moved out to the tree line to set up a perimeter. So far so good I thought to myself, but then out of nowhere a sniper had shot our commander. He died instantly. Bullets suddenly starting flying everywhere and the scary part were that I didn’t know where they were coming from.

One man yelled out to the platoon “into the forest!” I and Carlos had each other’s back as we had got separated from the platoon during the surprise attack. I heard footsteps so I told Carlos to get down behind some bushes. I peeked through the bushes. Suddenly there were more Vietnamese, a lot more, I and Carlos weren’t going out without a fight. He rose up out of the bushes and we both started to spray without aiming.

The Vietnamese were everywhere. I had to reload so I took cover behind a tree right next to the bush, it was hard to reload because I was scared and my heart was beating so fast. I heard a thump on the dried leaves and for a moment the world was silent, then suddenly a big boom broke the silence. We were surrounded, and in my mind I thought where going to get captured as hostages and who knew what they were going to do to us. I saw Carlos throw a grenade and he bent down to reload, the whole time I noticed that he was still in cover behind the bush. I don’t know why he would still be behind the bush, and then I noticed he was shot on the right side of his chest and blood was squirting out.

Carlos must have not noticed it because the speed of adrenaline helps the wounded to not feel a thing. I pointed it out to him and told him he was shot; as soon as he looked down to see blood he fell to the floor crashing on the dirt and leaves. I ran over to him and covered the bullet hole trying my best to stop the bleeding but he whispered to me “leave me; I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.” I didn’t want to leave my friend there, I thought of him as my brother, but if I didn’t leave he was going to be the one to put a bullet through my head to avoid being captured, and I could tell he didn’t have much time left.

I got up and ran in the opposite direction of the Vietnamese. I never looked back. Last thing I remember was there was a loud boom and I fell to the ground, woke up the next day, or could have been a couple of hours, to see that some soldiers were taking me to a chopper. A medical chopper was going to fly me back home. I arrived at a hospital and later found out that the grenade had blown up my leg, it’s the only memory I have of my brother who stayed behind to save my life.