WHY I FOUGHT IN VIETNAM… AND WHY I’D DO IT AGAIN
Editor’s Note: Dr. Dennis E. Hensley earned six combat medals, including the Bronze Star, for service as a noncommissioned officer in the U. S. Army in Vietnam. Currently, he is a director of the professional writing program at Taylor University.
I have only seen my father cry twice. One time was at his mother’s funeral. The other was on the day I left for Vietnam.
Dad accepted both situations with resolute understanding. This was the way life was. Old people died. Good men fought against evil. Neither was a preferable circumstance, but both were necessary if the world was to continue with balance. You could cry about it, but you couldn’t run from it.
He hadn’t. At his mother’s funeral, despite the wrenching personal agony he felt, he personally saw to it that every detail was attended to with dignity, loving tribute, and in a manner my grandmother would have found tasteful. Dad was fifty-one at the time.
When he was seventeen, he had stepped forward to join the Navy, to fight against the enemy. It was 1944. He was told he was too young; that he would need his father’s signature on a release form. His father cried that day. But he signed the form. There was no avoiding it. He understood his son. This was the way of good men. They always came forward when needed to fight against evil. Fathers had no right to restrain them. His hadn’t.
Twenty-one years later, mine hadn’t either.
It was January 2, 1971. I was a PFC at home on leave after seven months of duty at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The family Christmas back in Michigan had been wonderful. But today was my mother’s birthday and I was catching a plane to California en route to my new duty station in Long Binh, South Vietnam.
As I rechecked my orders, I wasn’t even sure I was pronouncing the name of my new duty station correctly. I had studied Spanish in college, not Vietnamese. Perhaps that now seemed like a poor choice. But at least it had been my choice. Like joining the Army. I hadn’t been drafted. That hadn’t been necessary. Good men always came forward to fight against evil. It was the way.
As a PFC, my military code was 71M20, “Chaplain’s Assistant.” The position had come to me almost by process of elimination: I could type; I had a college degree; I was a trained musician; and I was not a conscientious objector. Those factors made me eligible for a 71M20 slot. What probably clinched it, however, was my psychological profile interview. I don’t think the poor psychologist knew where else to assign me.
“These are general questions which we ask all new soldiers,” he explained to me. “It’s my job to find out something about you—your personality—and then to suggest some job assignments with which you would be compatible.”
I nodded.
“Tell me, Private Hensley, how much social drinking do you do?”
“Abstainer since birth,” I replied.
He stared at me for a moment, as though he had never heard that expression before. He pondered it, but then wrote down teetotaler.
“Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Use profanity?”
“No.”
“Like to gamble?”
“No.”
He paused a minute, scratched his cheek, and glanced down a list of military job categories. It was obvious I wasn’t going to be material for motor pool or drill sergeant schools.
“Have you ever considered Officer Candidate School?”
“Forget it,” I said. I then remembered I was no longer a civilian. “I mean, no thank you, sir.”
“Are you bitter about being in the Army?”
“I can’t tell…,” I said honestly.
He wrinkled his forehead questioningly.
“…I’ve only been in four days.”
That made him frown.
“It’s been fine so far though,” I added, trying to appease him.
“Tell me this,” he said, putting his pen aside and leaning back in his chair. “How do you feel about war, about people killing other people?”
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” I asked. “How I feel about war, or how I feel about people killing other people?”
“You don’t equate the two?”
“Do you?”
“I’ll ask the questions, please.”
Again, I nodded. “Right.”
I took a moment to collect my thoughts.
“I’m a linguist by training,” I said at last. “I study and analyze words. It’s my job to plumb the real depth of a word’s meaning before I use it. When you ask how I feel about people killing people, I have to ask you to clarify yourself. I have completely different views and opinions on such things as murder, assassination and execution. Which do you want to hear first?”
The psychologist reached over and turned off a tape recorder.
“Look,” he said, “these are only supposed to be fifteen minute interviews. Just tell me if you have any qualms about fighting the Communists in South Vietnam.”
“No,” I said. “That’s why I enlisted.”
Why was it that the obvious seemed so hard to comprehend, I wondered?
“All right then,” he said, rubbing his hands, “I’m going to suggest that you agree to serve in the Chaplaincy Corps as a chaplain’s assistant. By the way, how good are you with a rifle?”
“Sir?” I said, somewhat confused by the contrast of the question.
“Are you a good shot or not?” he repeated.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I grew up in a suburb,” I said almost apologetically. “I’ve never fired a rifle, except for a .22 at Boy Scout camp once.”
The doctor weighed that mentally.
“Then a word of advice, soldier,” he said. “Pay close attention to what those D.I.s teach you during the next six weeks. Very, very close attention.”
At the end of basic training, I was given orders to remain at Fort Knox for OJT (on the job training) at Triangle Chapel. I reported to Chaplain (Major) Merrill O. Challman on August 1, 1970. He waved off my salute, motioned for me to stand at ease, and looked me over.
“How good are you with a rifle?” he asked, first thing.
Déjà vu, I thought. Here we go again.
I said, “Marksman, sir.”
“Not Expert?” he pressed.
“No, sir. But I only missed it by two points.”
He smiled at that. “Well, that’s impressive. You’ve had a lot of experience with rifles then?”
I shook my head. “No, sir. Not until six weeks ago. But that worked to my advantage. I had no bad habits to break. I just did exactly what the drill sergeants said to do. I learned by the book. And the book was right.”
“Good,” he said. “All right, here’s a rundown of your duties around here.”
I scanned a typed piece of paper which contained a list of such chores as cleaning the altar silver, waxing the floor, answering the phone, typing correspondence, and setting up counseling appointments.
“And I want you to spend two hours each week on the target range,” he said. “After you finally qualify, as an Expert with the M-16 rifle, I want you to move on to the M-50 grenade launcher and M-60 machine gun.”
I looked puzzled. These seemed odd requests from a “man of the cloth.” I ventured, “In all due respect, sir, why do I need to become a weapons expert just to be the chapel’s janitor and receptionist?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” he said. “Trust me. It’s important.”
It was important. In fact, it was a matter of life and death…or shall I say lives and deaths—my own and the chaplains.
Like medics, chaplains were “excused from” having to (read that forbidden to) bear arms even in combat situations. However, they did have one direct source of protection, besides prayer: the chaplain’s assistant. Wherever the chaplain went throughout a war zone, his assistant went with him, usually with an M-16 rifle in hand and a crisscrossed set of ammunition bandoliers draped over his chest.
In effect, the same fellow who had been a receptionist and janitor while serving stateside quickly became a bodyguard when he arrived in Vietnam. If he was a good bodyguard, the chaplain he was assigned to would make it through the war. If he was an extremely good bodyguard, the assistant would make it through the war, too. And that was why Chaplain Challman saw to it that I became an extremely good bodyguard.
While at Fort Knox with Chaplain Challman, I was part of the Armor Corps. When my orders for Vietnam came through, I was reassigned to the Military Police. Chaplain Challman gave me some simple advice on the day we parted company. “Pray for protection of God,” he said, “but never forget the wickedness of man.”
My father said something similar to that when he hugged me on that last day. His eyes were red and a tear was rolling down one cheek. “Keep your Bible and your rifle in ready reach at all times,” he cautioned.
I promised I would. And then he let me go.
The flights to Vietnam were long. I had the chance slowly and carefully to replay the memory tapes of my life in an effort to discover how it was that now at age twenty-one, of my own choosing, I was en route to a country I had never visited, yet planned to defend against an invader with my life.
From Michigan to California I pondered the problem. From California to Hawaii I eliminated the obvious answers and simplistic explanations. Much later, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Vietnam, I found my solutions, I ultimately decided that it all came down to my fourth grade Sunday school teacher, Joe Jenkins, Jr., and a 1966 trip I had made to East Germany. An odd combination of factors perhaps, but then what in life isn’t?
When I was nine, I had had perfect attendance for a year in Sunday school. My teacher, Mr. Jenkins, had given me a New Testament as a reward. He had admonished me to put it in my hip pocket and carry it with me every day wherever I went. One never knew, he told me, where God would direct, and it could very well be that there would be many chances to witness to people if I would just keep that New Testament handy.
I was young and I took his words literally. I began to carry that New Testament in all my clothing—in my school trousers, in my summer baseball uniform, and in my Sunday school dress slacks. Years passed and I maintained the practice, more out of habit than conscious effort. We moved from Detroit to Bay City, and the New Testament also moved (on my person). It was always with me.
Just as Mr. Jenkins had predicted, chances to witness did arise—sometimes at school, sometimes at summer camp, sometimes at college.
Though not consciously knowing it, I had become a missionary while in fourth grade. A dozen years later, that same small black-covered New Testament was still in my hip pocket as I flew, now dressed in an Army uniform, toward Vietnam. From now on I would not only be witnessing to my own people, but also to others of new races and nationalities. I felt prepared, even “called” if you will.
But there was more to my motivation. I also came to realize that I was as much an anti-Communist in my own way as my father had been an anti-Nazi during his war. Only now I knew why. And suddenly I understood a lot more about my father.
You see, in 1966 after graduating from high school, I had spent the summer touring Europe on my own. While there, I was taken on a ten-day trip through East Germany by a German friend. We saw loading areas where Jews had been put on trains to be taken to concentration camps.
It upset me. That never should have been tolerated, I thought. Where had the good men been then? Why hadn’t more come forward? Where had the Davids been, unafraid of the giants, the Moses’, unafraid of the oppressors, the Peters, ready to pull a sword from the hip at any sign of wrongdoing? My father had been a good man…a good Christian man. He, obviously, had said, “This must stop. Now! It’s barbaric. I am my brother’s keeper. This I cannot condone.” And then he had stepped forward. I was proud of that.
It wasn’t that good men lusted for war, I realized. They craved peace. But to obtain peace, good men often had to serve as peacemakers. Nobody liked that role. But, like Gideon, they accepted it with equal feelings of awe and bafflement, amazed to think they could make a difference.
But I really didn’t worry about making a difference in Vietnam. I just accepted the assignment, the same way I accepted that little black New Testament. God would provide the opportunities. All I knew was that concentration camps, torture, war and oppression were now being used by godless Communists that same way that they had been used by the godless Nazis. And it was time once again for good men to come forward.
According to the Army records, I did make a difference during my year in Vietnam. Perhaps. I flew in helicopters and protected chaplains who were going to and from the distant fire base camps. It was rough at times and they gave me the Bronze Star and two Vietnamese service medals for being an extremely good bodyguard. Actually, the motivation for all that came quite natural to me at the time. I just wanted to stay alive. But I accepted the medals and wrote home to my father about it. He understood perfectly. A good man did what he had to do.
And I did eight months duty working in a stockade, helping to organize prisoner choirs, writing letters home for prisoners, and just being there to talk to prisoners. It was sorrowful at times. They gave me the Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Ribbon, and Good Conduct medal for that and promoted me to Specialist Fifth Class. I accepted it all, but began to cross the days off on my calendar. It was a long war and even a man who strives to do good grows weary with time.
During that year in Vietnam I witnessed to many Americans, many Vietnamese. I also physically resisted the Communist takeover. I did what I could, which most of the time didn’t seem adequate enough.
But after I was sent home in 1972, I sat in front of my television set and viewed newsreels of the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. I saw innocent people killed in cold blood. I saw farmers driven off their land and cast adrift in leaky ships. I watched these helpless “boat people “sink and drown because they were forbidden to return to their own shores.
And I said, “We were right to have helped those people. I was right to have helped those people. But why did we stop? They still needed us. Why did we stop helping?”
And the unspoken answer became obvious: because good men quit coming forward to fight against evil.
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