Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories: Mike Allen

"You were scared, but you couldn't feel scared because it would overtake you."

"We were fighting to get our own selves back home. We had to protect each other to get back."

Mike Allen

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TRANSCRIPT:

**These oral histories and transcripts may contain language that can be considered profane, racially insensitive or otherwise offensive. The language has been retained to give an accurate historical record of their remarks.**

I was 20-years-old. I was drafted. The Vietnamese called - when they did - they called me the Little Kid. They said, "No, you're that Little Kid. You don't belong here." You know, my government says I do, so.

But the jungles, they were hot. They were muggy with the humidity. You see rain every day. We got rained on every day and we slept in it. We slept in the mud, so we were always wet. As far as clean clothes, I wore my first set for roughly 80 days; 80 days. I only had like four or five changes of clean clothes while I was there.

I carried a hundred pounds. I didn't weigh much more than a hundred pounds; weighed about a hundred twenty, so I carried a hundred pounds. You didn't want to run short in case you hit the shit. I carried a claymore mine, trip flares, three to four smokes, six hand grenades, roughly two thousand rounds of M60 ammo. I carried nine quarts of water and c-rations, and a poncho and C4 for blowing LZs and det cord. So you had to have all that stuff on you, plus my M16 and three bandoliers of M16 ammo, seven magazines to a bandolier.

It was a proud, you know. The company was a proud company and the unit was a proud unit, you know. We were a swing battalion. Wherever the shit was hitting the fan, we had to get to an LZ and get picked up and flown into the hot spot. But it wasn't dull. It was a hell of a camping trip, but very serious, you know.

You know, you kind of looked forward to getting picked up and getting out of the jungle in the helicopter because you knew you were pretty safe. You were secure up there as long as you didn't fall out. But still you were being moved to another area where there was trouble, you know, another shit hole. I have an Air Medal and that's for 25 CAs into an unsecured LZ. I survived long enough to get the Air Medal.

You were scared, but you couldn't feel scared because it would overtake you. You know what I mean? You know they're watching you and you just try to keep your distance between each person. And this way they're not going to get greedy. The gooks always kind of liked to seem like they wanted to get greedy. So they wanted to wait for somebody to bunch up and then if they were going to mess with you then they'd come at you.

I was just another person in the squad up in the mountains in a platoon in the company doing what we did, which was to protect each other. We were fighting because we were thrown in there, and we were fighting to get our own selves back home. We had to protect each other to get back.

I think about it all the time. You know, I got those photographs just to make sure it's not a dream, you know, and it actually took place. It's there. You know, you remember your buddies. You remember what you know, what they did, even though you're not in contact with them all. You know the good times that you had, even the shitty times that you had, you know, over there. But it's a true brother-friendship. Its a bond that don't, you know, ever break.