Most of the Viet Nam Black Lions began their tour as a very young man, one who was usually drafted. He then was given 12 to 16 weeks of hard training. After his training he was able to spend 30 days at home on leave.

After his leave he was sent half way around the world to Viet Nam. He was to fight bravely in a very unpopular war. While he was making his trip to Viet Nam, he couldn't help but wonder if he would make the return trip home alive or in a body bag.

He quickly became a man, a true Black Lion, the kind of man that would do things just to survive. He would go for days on end with little sleep. He would be pinned down many times under fire. He would learn to endure the scorching heat of the tropic jungle. And feel the cruelty of the monsoon season. He would lay in the jungle while the mosquitoes would try to eat him alive. To get some relief, he will cover his body with his poncho until he cannot stand the heat. When the heat becomes unbearable, he will then remove the poncho and the give the mosquitoes another field day. In the daytime on search and destroy (search for the enemy and destroy anything that would help them to operate) the ants would do the same thing, only more painful. He learned to sleep while still paying attention to the noises around him. That is, when he would get a chance to sleep. He would try to make a gourmet meal out of a can. To make matters worse he would learn to kill before he was allowed to vote!

The Black Lion soldier would travel on foot though the jungle while the little men in the black clothing ("VC" or "Charlie" - local guerillas) would take pot shots at him. While watching for Charley or the North Vietnamese soldiers ("NVA" - regular army, well trained, dedicated, with years of combat experience under their belt). All the while, the Black Lion had to keep his eyes open for all kinds of booby traps, not to mention the little green snakes. Some days he would get a break from the booby traps by walking through the swamps. In the swamps, if he looked down, he might see a snake swim by. If he made it through the patrol safely, he headed back to the NDP (Night Defense Position). He would start digging a fox hole after already putting a full day in. He knew in his heart that his life was threatened 24 hours a day.

This job didn't even come close to bringing him minimum wages. If this soldier was lucky and there was still some daylight left, he would take off his boots and check on the condition of his feet. They would look like they have been dead for years. A little powder and hopefully a dry pair of socks, he would be ready to pull guard duty, listening post, or ambush patrol. If it was the monsoon season, he would get wet just before dark and shiver through the night. Usually guard duty ran 1 hour on guard and 2 hours off all night long. If you pulled listening post or ambush patrol, it meant staying awake all night. No matter what he did during the night, he would be up at day break to start another day. Providing Charley let him sleep, he may have gotten a couple of hours of rest.

Another day, another patrol. Maybe today he will run into leeches and have them attached to his body under his clothes, even in the hair on his head. Maybe he would get into a couple of good ole fire fights. Maybe he might have to pick body parts up of a friend who stepped on a land mine.

Around noon on the search and destroy patrol, he will try to grab a few bites of food out of a can while on the move.

The Viet Cong said "The Black Lions" would move like lightning, sometimes at night and eat out of cans.

On a lucky day, the soldier might find a weapons or food cache, or even a tunnel complex. He would go down into the tunnel and check it out. He would have a great chance of finding booby traps, snakes or Charley hiding with a rifle or claymore mine.

Back to the NDP. He might be lucky today and find that he can use the same fox hole he dug last night. The time he will save will give him a chance to write home and tell his family not to worry about him, knowing in his heart, they should be worrying about him.

It is dark again. Tonight it is his turn to be on ambush patrol. He has to try to keep awake after his day of walking through the jungle. To make it harder is the silence of the night and having to stare into the pitch darkness. When he comes off of the ambush patrol in the morning, he has to leave for another day of search and destroy patrol, and it might be his turn to walk point. If so, he better be able to stay extremely alert.

Today is his lucky day, he will walk about an hour and then be able to lay down in the rice patties or behind an ant hill and "relax" because he is now pinned down under VC fire. By this time it is nearly noon. It looks and feels like the rice paddy water is about to boil. Still, its not too tough for a Black Lion Soldier. He has handled it before, and he knows he will again.

Another new day and an another new experience. He learns the smell of a dead VC laying the sun bloated. This will be a smell he will remember the rest of his life.

He has to get so tough that when a friend is wounded or killed, he will show little or no emotion (at the time). But he will have to deal with it the rest of his life.

Today is a good day. He gets to go back to the company compound in Lai Khe. This is a safe area for him. It only gets mortar attacks on rare occassions. After days in the field he gets to shower and shave in cold water, but he is glad to be able to get clean. He also gets to put on clean clothing and even a hair cut. After the luxuries of his clean up, he gets to pick up the clothes he just took off with two fingers and his head turned because he could not stand how bad they smelled.

This was just a brief and basic description of a Combat Black Lion.

Below is a list of individual things a Black Lion has done. Some have been mentioned but some have not.
1. He was drafted at a young age.
2. He was trained to kill.
3. He was sent half way around the world with a good chance it would be a one way trip.
4. He was old enough to kill but not old enough to vote.
5. He would lie in the dark jungle all night.
6. He would walk through swamps for days on end.
7. He would endure the scorching heat and humidity of the tropic climate.
8. He would live in the jungle during the monsoon season.
9. He would have leeches attached to his body and sucking his blood.
10. He would have ants constantly biting him.
11. He would have a never-ending supply of mosquitoes to take turns biting him, then the ants would take over.
12. After a day of search and destroy, he would already have done two days of work but he still would have to dig and half of the night to do guard duty. Yes, he DID do more by 9 a.m. than most people do all day.
13. He would receive sniper fire at him at any time Charley chose.
14. He would experience lots of fire fights.
15. He would see friends die around him.
16. He would pick up a fellow soldier's body after he stepped on a land mine.
17. Dear John letters seem to find their way to him, even in the middle of the jungle.
18. He would know that back home he was being called a baby killer.
19. He would smell a bloated dead VC body lying in the heat. It would be a smell he would never forget in a lifetime. He would do what he could to bury it when it was safe to do so.
20. He would learn to put his feelings way back so if one of his fellow soldiers were killed or wounded, it would not bother him until later in life.
21. He would experience going back to his base camp, after days in the jungle, getting a hair cut, a shave, a shower and clean clothing. He would have to turn his head while picking up the clothes he had just worn because of the terrible smell.
22. He would remember the countless foxholes he had to dig.
23. He would fill numerous sandbags.
24. He would go through the jungle and when a VC base camp was found, He would be able to smell their dried fish.
25. He would have to learn how to cross a swift stream with his backpack on.
26. He would have to carry a lot of weight out to the field.
27. He would have the fear of being wounded in the rainy season and the dust-off chopper (ambulance helicopter) not being able to get in the jungle to get him out.
28. He would see the kind of life the Vietnamese people had to live.
29. He would remember trying to land on an air strip while the plane is under fire.
30. He would live with the thoughts that he could be captured.
31. He knew that any given time his outfit could be overrun by the VC.
32. He would learn the sound of sniper fire.
33. He would attend a funeral service for a comrade and watch them put the bayonet of the rifle in the ground and his helmet on the stock and then his boots were placed on the ground by the weapon.
34. He knew when he wrote home to tell his family not to worry, that they really should be worrying.
35. He would get a chance to shower, and the barrel holding the water would be filled with cold creek water.
36. He was always aware that any minute he could be killed.
37. He would have to shave his thick heavy beard with cold water using his helmet as his basin.
38. He knew he had to get past the idea that one bullet might have his name on it and realizing the ones that had "To Whom It May Concern" did not care whose name was on it.
39. He knew he had a 24 hour a day job that wasn't paying anywhere close to minimum wages, even if he had only been working eight hours a day.
40. He would have to take point though elephant grass and jungle vine, and his body would end up full of thorns and bloody cuts.
41. He knew when he was point man that the odds were against him surviving.
42. He would have to learn to sleep with one eye open and discern sounds even if both eyes were closed.
43. He would learn to pull guard at night when it took everything he had to stay awake.
44. He would be on ambush patrol, always aware that this could be the last one.
45. In coming helicopters - He would be able to distinguish the difference between chow, dust off or troop transportation choppers.
46. He would have to go through a village not knowing which villager may be the enemy.
47. He would learn to enjoy food in cans.
48. He would learn to check out the tunnels.
49. He would always be checking for booby traps and trip wires.
50. He would take his shoes off after going through the swamps and see nothing but wrinkly skin.
51. He would land from a chopper into a hot LZ.
52. He would have men's lives resting on his decisions and still not old enough to vote.
53. He would see the children living in poverty.
54. He would have the fear of being captured or ending up as a MIA.
55. He would get hit by fire at night only to jump into a foxhole filled with water.
56. He would learn that digging a foxhole would be like digging through a paved road and after he got through the surface he would get to the water and mud that would just keep filling the holes as fast as he dug.
57. He would see VC tied in trees shooting at him.

Any person might be able to handle a couple of these things. However the Black Lion combat vet dealt with all of the above, and much more.

After all of this, he would return home to the states being hated by the people who helped send him there to do what he did not want to do in the first place! He would spend a year in Viet Nam and then when home, his state-side unit would be called on to go to the capital of his country to help with the riots protesting what he had just risked his life for. Again, he would be attacked by debris that was thrown at him by American people.

This is just some of the things I have experienced. Some of the things you can see on the surface. But you can't see the inward scars that a combat vet must wear for a lifetime. However,

He knows he did his duty, and he served his country when his country asked him to.

Most of the above fits any tropic/jungle combat vet. After going through all of the above, my heart still admires anyone who has been in any combat situation, including our Gulf War Vets and future vets of future wars. It makes a different person out of them. I still think we had it easier than people who fought in cold climate of Korea, or the World War II and WWI vets that were there "for the duration" or the Civil War vets where brother fought against brother. Or the Revolutionary War and Valley Forge where the concern about the cold and the frost bite on their feet kept them from thinking about how hungry they were.

A child asked me awhile back, "Who won the Viet Nam war?" My answer was, "No one wins a war. There is always too much suffering on both sides."

May God's grace be with all vets, past, present and future,
~ A fellow Black Lion