In Country
Larry Holguin, Infantryman
Third Marine Division
Tour of Duty: June 1968 to September 1969
At first you're scared, but after awhile the susto (fear) seems to go away. You will find that your fright will make you do things that you don't think you can do. Once you get past that, everything else just becomes a reflex. It's more of not thinking and just doing it. The longer you go into your tour, the sharper you get.
There were a few times we had to make our trail backwards. One morning I woke up, and the guy we had on watch wasn't really looking out. He didn't see all these heads popping up all of a sudden. All we did was grab what we could and try to fight. There were too many heads (NVA) on one side, so we started backing up. As the unit started running back, my M-60 happened to be among the last people on the line. I fired a few rounds to slow the NVA down. I remember feeling a concussion, and I didn't really feel anything hit; but I kept running. I jumped over a log and caught up with some of my guys. The first thing I did was reach for my ass because I thought that's where it hit me. What happened was that the concussion blew a hole through my pants, and I got hit with small shrapnel. I didn't want to look at first because I thought my cheeks were gone. There was a little blood there but nothing to keep me from doing what I had to do.
I know it had to be one of our guy's grenades that hit me, but that's the way things happen out there. When I came home, I put on my civilian briefs and a little piece of shrapnel came off. I never reported it because I didn't want my mom to get a telegram from the Marines. That would have scared and worried her too much. So I never reported the wound.
I talked to the Man (God) a lot. My belief at that time was very strong. A lot of it was because of the situation. I had this thing about never feeling alone. You may think you're a million miles away, you're all by yourself, and nobody knows you're there. For some reason there's always a man there who knows what you're doing. You get so scared, and you have no place to turn. So you always think about the Man as your last hope. You've got prayers going out, "Oh please, I want to go home; please get me by this." But you're always thinking about it. I think everybody did. You get so scared that you got to hang onto something.
I thought about my mom a lot -- my parents, which helped me out a lot. I didn't want my mom to suffer as far as my not coming back. The way I thought about it was, if I was going to come back, I would come back whole. If I wasn't, I wouldn't come home. When I first went overseas, the only thing I wanted to do was make my mom and dad proud of me. But as things went along, it seemed to fade away. It didn't become as important. What became more important was being able to get home safely.
When you're over there (Vietnam), it's a high in itself. You figure that nobody can touch you and that nobody could even hurt you. It's just a phase of emotions that you go through, everybody goes through; and you can't change them because they're there. The only thing is to forget about them and hope the ideas don't ever come back because you're surprised at what a human body can do to another without even thinking about it. But only with the right reasons or the right surroundings can you do this. You just can't do it because you want to do it. You'd be a basket case. You'd be in trouble. Civilization and culture are made so you aren't supposed to go around blowing people up. It's like getting mad and wanting to kill the person right away. And that's what we did in Vietnam.
Next: Coming Home
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