Memoirs Part 16

While stationed at Bien Hoa, I got more involved in volunteering. Mainly, I would visit orphanages. The one we usually visited was run by the Catholic Church. Upon arriving at the orphanage, we would secure our M-16 rifles in a room away from the kids. One day I wanted to see the church nearby. It was about 200 meters on the other side of a rice paddy. As we were leaving the orphanage compound, a sister told up to bring our weapons with us. I was thinking, “We’re just going to the church within sight of the compound” but decided that it is better safe than sorry.

As we walked around the rice paddy, we waved to some workers putting a roof on a house. When we got to the front door of the church, I decided to walk around the outside to look at it. We walked down the right side and then across the back. When we turned the corner to walk back to the front, we saw two young men sitting there taking a break. They had Russian or Chinese-made rifles laying on the ground next to them. I was carrying my M-16 strapped over my right shoulder with the barrel facing down. I put my hand over the handle and pushed the button from safe to armed. I was slightly in front and my friend asked me what to do. I had to think fast but told him to be cool. I am sure the two “kids” were VC – no uniforms and foreign made weapons. They looked to be 15 years old or so. Of course, we had the upper hand at first, but I decided to give them a slight bow of respect. They stood and bowed back and slowly backed into the jungle with their weapons pointed down, as ours were. We then proceeded back to the orphanage without entering the church. Much later while thinking about this, I realized how dumb I was. As soon as they got into the jungle, they could see us, but we couldn’t see them. If they really wanted to kill us, it would have been easy. I am guessing that their job was to watch what the Americans were doing in that area and to not cause any trouble.