In our first video on the worst jobs of the Vietnam War, we discussed four dangerous and
terrifying examples, but there were plenty more less than desirable jobs one could be
assigned in that bloody conflict, and in this video, we're going to leap into the
sticky jungles of Southeast Asia once more and check out an additional five.
Continuing from where we left off, another dangerous helicopter job of the Vietnam War
was that held by door gunners. As the title suggests, door gunners perched without cover
in the open doorways on a chopper's side with a swivel or bungee-mounted machine gun, shooting
hot lead at enemies and providing covering fire for friendlies. During the war, it was common to
say that "the door gunner on a Huey gunship had a life-span of 5 minutes." While an exaggeration,
this statement gives us some sort of an indication of just how dangerous a job it was.
In the words of veteran Ed Shelton, "[It] was one of the worst jobs over there, so needless to say
there wasn’t too many people that wanted to be a door gunner. As a result, all the mechanic slots
was filled and people were transferred to being a door gunner whether they was qualified or not."
Veteran John Hulbert, at just 18 years of age, was knocked back from the infantry
several times before his sergeant said to him, "If you want to get your ass shot off so bad,
go see they aviation guys — they need door gunners." Hulbert soon joined a Huey crew,
and he described the experience later in life: "A lot of times, our job was go out and draw fire,
so we would fly over areas until they would fire at us. We were looking for
the big stuff, like the 51-caliber guns and anti-aircraft. Once we found them,
guys were on the radios and they’d have jets in there pretty quick."
Like the Bell UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" chopper, the M60 machine gun was an iconic weapon of
the Vietnam War. While this belt-fed 7.62 mm murderer was a devastating tool in the United
States Army's arsenal, it wasn't so easy on the arms and back, and it was prone to the wear,
tear, and jamming, which were only exacerbated by Nam's tropical environment. Worse than that,
however, were the hog-like grunts the gun made when fired. These were in fact what
earned the M60 a place in this video. Like flamethrower operators — which we
covered in our first video on the worst jobs of World War II — M60 gunners were
juicy battlefield targets made unmistakable by their weapon's porky battle cry. For this,
and the fact that M60s wreaked so much havoc, they were hated and prioritised by the enemy.
When veteran Tony Vargas was issued an M60, the armorer said to him,
"You have seven seconds to live." Vargas later found out just what the armorer meant:
"What he was trying to tell me is the average life span of the machine gunner [...] was seven
seconds from the moment you pulled the trigger. There were three individuals that the Viet Cong
would shoot for. [...] The officer, the radio man, and the M60 machine gunner. [...] They
would know where the M60 was because of the rounds and the rapid fire [...]. They
would spot you right away. So [...] you would shoot, and then you would have to move [...]."
As Kiwi machine gunner Alan Sherris put it, "Who bloody gave me the bloody M60 to carry?"
While door and M60 gunners may have had a shit time during the Vietnam War, some unfortunate
souls we're quite literally in the shit. We're referring here to the burning of human waste,
which was undertaken primarily at fire support bases and often, in the words of veteran Chris
Woelk,"[by] some poor GI who was out of favour with someone in power." Basically,
the men assigned to this task would first need to carry a sawn-off fifty-five gallon drum brimming
with excrement away from a makeshift latrine to a place considered safe for burning. They
would then pour diesel or gasoline upon it, light a length toiler paper, and drop it in,
hoping the concoction would catch fire. Most men had diarrhoea most days, and the job was
made even more hellish by the elements — rain slowed the burn, and wind sent the faecal smoke
back in their faces. Some burns took hours, and they couldn't just be set on fire and abandoned;
they had to be stirred. Honestly, this is a job best envisioned with quotes.
Veteran John Podlaski said it one way: "[...] Once you pour in the diesel fuel
and light a match, only two other tasks were required for the remainder of the day:
Having to stir the mixture every fifteen minutes or so with a large stick,
and then doing your best to avoid the billowing and shifting thick,
black smoke [...] Hands down, burning shit left a permanent brown stain on my memory."
Veteran David A. Willson was a little less vulgar with his words: "It wasn't easy to get the mess to
ignite. The hard part was getting the piss burnt off the top of the shit. We soldiers were supposed
to shit and piss separately but boys will be boys. [...] The barrels were always filled to their very
brims. Slosh, slosh, slosh. The piss kept slopping over the edges and splashing our leather and
canvas jungle boots. [...] We stirred and stirred and kept pouring gasoline in to keep our obscene
stew cooking. After a few hours, only a few crisp giblets of shit remained stuck in the bottom of
the barrel. We chipped them loose with our pipes, flipped the honey bucket over and banged on the
bottom hearing the shit shards rattle loose onto the brick-like soil. A job well done."
While not quite as disgusting as burning shit, filling sand bags was a mind-numbing,
back-breaking job only exacerbated by the climate and rock and soil types
of Southeast Asia, specifically the clayey red topsoil called laterite.
Veteran David A. Willson described it as such: "There were huge bails of [...] burlap bags which
we had to break loose and fill with short handled entrenching tools. A few hours of
this work and I was light-headed, [...] hating Vietnam [...]. Once filled, the bags weighed
sixty to seventy pounds ... When the laterite was dry, it was like chipping concrete ... When wet,
it was like shoveling the heaviest, stickiest clay you ever saw. [...] We filled bags until
our spines felt like they were on fire and our arms felt stretched out so our knuckles
would drag in the dirt. [...] We didn't even have a radio to listen to. It was forbidden."
Veteran Chris Woelk hated the work too, but he knew its worth: "How many of those suckers did
I fill during my Vietnam vacation? Too damn many to count – literally tens of thousands!
But sandbags are a soldier’s friend, and they protected us, so I bear no grudges."
While there's humour to be found in the examples of burning shit and filling sandbags,
fighting for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) or the Viet Cong (VC) was no laughing matter.
To clarify, the NVA and the VC were the communist Vietnamese, against whom South
Vietnam and its allies were fighting. While many Vietnamese wanted to fight for the NVA and VC,
some were forced to, and, forced or not, their work conditions weren't always ideal.
We'll be going into this in greater detail in our upcoming video on Kit Carson Scouts, but overall,
many soldiers fighting for the NVA and VC worked in poor and dangerous conditions with limited food
and medical supplies. Vietnamese veterans reported being worked to exhaustion under the thumbs of
harsh and incompetent officers. They also report feelings of disillusionment when the lies they
were being fed by their superiors, such as false promises of imminent victory, were revealed as
just that. To top this off, they were paid meagre sum, if at all, and the degree to which they were
trained and equipped varied greatly. And all this ignores the fact that many were *forced*
into these conditions. Some were literally torn from their homes and threatened with the deaths
of their entire family if they tried to fight it. Many of these men weren't able to return to their
families for years, and others *never* returned, killed by their own officers or by the terrible
weapons of South Vietnam's western allies — the choppers, the napalm, the Agent Orange.
Nguyen Dau was forcibly recruited for the VC in November 1965, and he made the following report:
"Many died of hunger and exhaustion. I saw six soldiers die from disease,
wounds or the heavy work." Phat Chot, another VC soldier who, like Nguyen Dau,
defected and joined the Kit Carson Scouts said, "[...] It was difficult to make a living,
and I continually lived in fear of being killed or having my family killed."
Out of these five jobs and the four we covered in the first video,
I'd have to say being a tunnel rat would still be the most terrifying, but without a doubt,
fighting for the NVA or VC under the threat of your own and your entire family's death must have
been the absolute worst job of the Vietnam War — that or burning your comrades' shit.
But which do *you* think was the worst? Can you think of any
terrible we haven't covered? Please share your thoughts in the comments.