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By Al Zdon
During the war with Iraq, the American press and the American people seemed shocked by the numbers of U.S. troops killed by friendly fire.
"I'm amazed that people don't
realize how many are killed and wounded in any war by friendly fire," Clark Dyrud said. "The number is very high and it always has been."
Dyrud should know. He faced the enemy for a year in Vietnam,
often as night patrol point man or as a lead armored personnel carrier squad leader. But his only wound came when an American 105mm shell exploded 10 yards from where he was standing.
Clark Kenmer
Dyrud grew up on a farm near Thief River Falls. His early education was at a one-room schoolhouse. The farm work was long and hard. "You know you can never wash that smell of manure out completely."
After graduating from Thief River Falls High School in 1964, he received a scholarship and attended the University of Minnesota.
He survived his first year, but after returning to the University in the fall of 1965, he dropped out. "I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't want to be in school.
"In 1965, the war
in Vietnam was just cranking up. There was no anti-war movement at that time. I wanted to see what war was like. I wanted to see what was going on there."
Dyrud volunteered for the draft at Warren.
"The Selective Service person just said, 'Sign quick before you change your mind.'"
He left for Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training on Jan. 21, 1966, and after a few days of Army life he
decided that he wanted to be helicopter pilot. He was put through a battery of tests and physicals, and his application was forwarded on to the 5th Army.
In the meantime, he was sent to Ft. Riley,
Kan., where he awaited the word on his application. The only Army training school there was for truck drivers, and Dyrud was assigned.
Time went by. The 5th Army approved his application to be a pilot
and sent it on to the Pentagon. "One day I was walking guard duty when it came to me that I'd already been in the army 12 or 13 months and that I had less than a year to go. If I went to flight school,
it would have been a five-year commitment. It was like I came to my senses. I canceled my application for helicopter pilot and filled out a 1049 form requesting duty in Vietnam."
The Army was
obliging, and after a long leave at home, Dyrud got his wish. He was sent out of the Oakland Army Terminal and Travis Air Force Base to Ton Son Nhut Airbase in South Vietnam. "It was like a 24-hour
flight, we had to stop to refuel twice. I spent the whole time on a seat facing backwards looking at a pallet loaded with our duffel bags. They served us Swanson TV Dinners."
He arrived on April 1,
1967. Dyrud was sent to a truck battalion in the 25th Division at Cu Chi but after standing a few "truck and boots" inspections, he decided this wasn't why he had come to Vietnam. "I did a walking tour
of the base, and I stumbled across a mechanized infantry unit in the corner of the base. I had driven Caterpillars on the farm, and so I was pretty sure I could drive an APC (armored personnel carrier)."
Inside the company's HQ, Dyrud told the first sergeant that he wanted to transfer in as a driver. "He looked at me just like that Selective Service lady had looked at me. He just stared."
The
sergeant did sign the paperwork, though, and Dyrud was soon a member of Company A, 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment (Mechanized). His first job was to actually drive the APCs or "tracks," large
box-like, treaded armored vehicles used for protecting troops on the move.
"Most of the guys would ride on top if possible. There were a couple of problems with riding inside."
The first
problem was a Russian-made recoilless rifle that was used by the Viet Cong to fire what were called RPGs at the tracks. "The armored piercing shell would usually go in one side of the APC and go out the
other side. While it was going through, though, it would really mess up what was inside. I always rode with my legs up. If you dangled a leg down in there, you might lose it."
A second danger was
hitting a mine. "Often when the APC hits a mine it will burst the eardrums of anybody inside."
Dyrud recalled one instance where he and other soldier had been on night patrol and were dead tired when
the APC left for a new assignment the next day. Both soldiers were asleep inside the vehicle.
"When it hit the mine, it only caught the edge of it and so most of the blast went up the side of the APC
instead of under it. The other guy and I were fine, but some of the guys riding on top had their ear drums burst."
As Dyrud stayed with the outfit, he became the machine gunner and then a squad
leader.
"When people would ask how I became a squad leader so fast, I tell them it was because of my outstanding leadership abilities, my coolness under fire, and because of the fact that other guys
got bumped off."
At one point, he became the senior sergeant in the unit, and he was awarded the privilege of driving the lead "track" on any mission. "I always liked to go first. It was kind of a
macho thing I guess."
At one point, Dyrud's track was heading through a rice paddy when an RPG round shot past. "I saw the burst from the tree line and I saw the shell hit just over us. Usually what
we do is to turn and head right for where it came from while opening fire with everything we've got. But we were at the end of the day, and so we just headed off at full speed. The driver was really
clipping along, but he had to slow down so we could go over a berm. Just as we slowed, the RPG landed right in front of us, right where we would have been if we hadn't slowed down. The VC had timed us
out. We got out of there lickety split."
As the APC headed out of the paddy at full tilt, it took a corner and one of the guys took a header from the top. "I remember this guy catching up to us. He
was covered in mud from head to foot. He didn't think it was very funny."
One of Dyrud's goals was to walk point in a night ambush. The maneuver was done frequently when the APCs were gathered into a
circle for the night. A group of 12 soldiers were sent out about 1,500 to 3,000 meters to set up an ambush for any enemy that might be around. They took with them a machine gun. "They would send us to
what they thought was a logical point where the enemy might come stumbling along. But the whole time I was there, I never heard of a night ambush patrol that actually ambushed anybody. The enemy usually
knew where we were."
The point man had to read the compass and take the squad through the pitch dark to the assigned ambush point without losing his way. If the men set up at the wrong point, they
were liable to be shelled by their own artillery.
Dyrud had no qualms about being in front. "The most afraid I was in Vietnam was in the hospital. I always felt the safest when I was in the field. At
least there you had a sense of efficacy, you've got weapons and you can use them. You can go hunting. You can be proactive."
On his first try at being point man, Dyrud, however, did get that sinking
feeling. "It was during the monsoons, and it was gushing rain, so, of course, it was pitch black. They cut a gap in the concertina wire to let us through. I had the compass and I was intent on staying on
course when all of a sudden I realized there was no ground beneath my feet anymore."
Dyrud had stepped into a farmer's well, and the only thing that saved him was an automatic reflex of throwing his
arms out. His comrades helped him from the well.
The well was a learning experience. "After that, I would go into a different state of being when I was on point. It was like my feet had antennas. I
could see better in the dark. All my senses became stronger. And I lost all track of time."
In order to keep its bearings, the patrol had to follow a straight line no matter what kind of terrain it
encountered. And when it got to its position (one of the squad's men counted the paces), the soldiers never knew what it would be like.
"One night we set up on a nest of squirming bugs of some sort.
We had repellent with us, but these things were very large. Another time, we set up in the middle of a rice paddy that the farmer's had just prepared for planting. It was just like back on the farm,
except that on the farm I don't ever remember actually sleeping on the manure pile."
"Another time we had to sleep in standing water. You end up with dishpan bodies, you know, where you're white and
wrinkly all over. And talk about cold. Oh, that's so cold."
The jungle fatigues provided some protection against the mosquitoes and other pests. "I used to sleep with my helmet on, using the liner as
kind of a pillow. Then I'd wrap a towel around my head, leaving enough room to breath. Then I'd put my hands in my pockets. You'd be so exhausted, the moment you laid down you'd be zonked out."
Being
tired and exhausted were part of the routine. "We were always short of men, and so you never got enough sleep. You were always doing guard duty or were up at night for some reason, and it would go on for
weeks."
"Wars are mainly days and weeks of boredom and exhaustion followed by moments of sheer terror. You never enjoy your rest. There's just not enough troops to do what has to be done. You never
get a good night's sleep."
Dyrud laughed about the colorful language used by the soldiers and service people in general. "There's a reason for that. In any given unit, people come together from all
walks of life. Some are college grads and some are borderline. Some are from the city and some are from the farm. They're all different. The first thing the army does is cut off your hair and put you in
the same clothes so that everybody looks alike. It's the same with the communication. It sinks to some kind of common denominator.
"A lot of what people say has to do with the tone of the voice. You
can call somebody a blankety-blank, and that's the highest praise. Or you say it in another tone of voice, and those are fighting words.
"A camaraderie develops. Nobody fights a war for country or
flag or anything like that. Once you get there, you're fighting for survival. You quickly learn to depend on the other guys because their number one goal is to stay alive also. You have that unified
goal, and these people can help you achieve that goal."
In the end, Dyrud said, the combat experience leads to "total acceptance of people." He acknowledges that as the war wore on, and morale
slipped, there were racial incidents and other signs of deterioration.
"But when we were there, it was different. We still thought we were going to win. We had pride in the Army, pride in our outfit."
There were a couple of things, however, Dyrud said he wasn't proud of during his 10 months overseas. One was when his unit was ordered to exhume Vietnamese graves. "They wanted to know who was in it,
whether it was a soldier, and how they died. So there we were digging, and I was the lucky one whose shovel broke through to where the body was. This incredible stench came out. We all looked at each
other, and somebody said, 'This is B.S.' We covered it back up and told them that the body was not recognizable. It was all because the government had this incessant need to report body counts. In the
future when we found a grave, we never dug it up."
A second regrettable experience came when his squad was ordered to go into an area along the Saigon River where there were several small dwellings.
With the roar of the APCs, it was not surprising that the dwellings were empty when the Americans arrived.
"An order came down from somewhere that we were to destroy the contents of the homes. Well,
these people had so little. Finally I brought my boot down on a coffee table and broke it in half. One of the guys knocked a picture of the wall and the third guy backhanded some stuff off a table. We
all kind of looked at each other and shook our heads. This had nothing to do with war. We didn't obey that order. But I did break that coffee table, and I'm ashamed of that."
The APCs would head out
either on search and destroy missions or to guard the plows that would knock down large portions of the jungle. "That really didn't work very well because the jungle would come so quickly, and then it
was really impenetrable."
One day while out on a mission, Dyrud only had four men on his track. They flew out a hot meal of chicken and mashed potatoes.
"I wolfed down my share and then I grabbed a
handful of trip flares to put in the concertina wire we had set up around us. I didn't even bother to put on my helmet or flak jacket, I just headed on out there."
The next thing Dyrud knew, a pillar
appeared about 10 meters away. "It was black and gray and orange and green and it had some purple in it. It was about three or four feet wide and taller than I was. I picked up my leg as if to run from
it, but I just went up in the air." A 105 American howitzer shell, not quite on target, had exploded.
"They say you never hear the one that gets you. I was flying through the air in slow motion, at
least it seemed that way to me, when I heard the ka-boom of the shell exploding. I was flying just like you see those guys in the war movies, and finally I came face down in some brush.
"I felt like I
was sweating and I ran my hand over my face and I looked at it and it was all covered with blood. I had this vague sense of being wounded, but as I laid on the ground, I just sort of drifted. It was the
most peaceful feeling I've ever had in my life before or since. It was just this intense feeling of well being. The thought of dying was not frightening."
Dyrud said his first thought was, "Now I can
get out of the mud. And then I thought, now I can get some rest. After that I thought of death, but that didn't seem real. I could hear people calling my name and I tried to yell but nothing came out."
He had been hit by at least four pieces of shrapnel. Two in the upper leg and one in the head were not serious wounds, although the head wound bled profusely. The fourth piece had blown a hole in his
gut and had lodged somewhere in his abdomen. He couldn't yell because his diaphragm was paralyzed.
One of his comrades finally found him. "A look of horror came over his face. His eyes got as big as
dinner plates. He couldn't even yell." The soldier was too shocked by the amount of blood the head wound was producing.
A medic arrived and rolled Dyrud over. "That was the first time I felt any pain,
and then it was intense. When you're gut shot, all you want to do is curl up, and all they want you to do is lie flat on the stretcher. Every breathe is an agony."
It was something of a miracle that
Dyrud was even in one piece. "The killing radius of a 105 is 35 meters. I was 10 meters away. The only thing I can figure out is that it was monsoon season and the ground was very soft. I think that's
what might have happened. The ground took up much of the explosion."
They put him in a helicopter and evacuated him to a hospital. "I was really having trouble breathing, but when they put me into the
helo, my head was sticking out a little bit. I could turn my head into the jet stream and force air down into me, and then turn my head the other way. When I needed my next breath, I'd turn into the jet
stream again."
At the hospital, Dyrud heard the doctors talking about how he had probably lost his spleen. An anaesthesiologist was trying to insert a tube down his nose, but every time he tried,
Dyrud would gag and prevent it from going down. Finally the man said, "If I don't get this down, you're going to die," and he gave one large push on the tube. This time, the gag reflex caused Dyrud to
throw up. The tube was finally inserted, though, and Dyrud was knocked out for the surgery.
Three days later he woke up in intensive care. It was only then that the doctors told him of the mystery
operation he had undergone. As standard procedure for shrapnel wounds to the gut, all of Dyrud's insides had been taken out and meticulously examined to see where the shrapnel had ripped or torn any
membranes. Then they are all put back in. "Probably not in the same way they were originally. It was very painful for a few days."
The doctors also told him that they were mystified because they could
not find the piece of shrapnel. As it turned out, the shrapnel had been lodged in Dyrud's lunch that day. When Dyrud had thrown up, he had also brought up the shrapnel. The fact that it had lodged in the
contents of his stomach had probably saved him from additional injury to interior parts.
"I've been partial to chicken and mashed potatoes every since then."
Dyrud was in intensive care for two
weeks, an experience he will never forget. Shortly after he got there, the man in the next bed died. Not long after that, a group of wounded soldiers were brought in. "There was such a high rate of
infection in Vietnam that the wounds were packed but left open for five days to make sure there wasn't any infection. And so I got to watch them change the dressings with all the ooze and legs twitching.
One guy was blind and had lost both arms. It's scenes like that that stay in your mind."
Eventually he was moved to another hospital at Vung Tau. One day he returned from being away from his ward and
found his Purple Heart certificate and medal laying on his bed. "That was all the ceremony I got."
He recuperated at his base camp for another month before rejoining his outfit in September of 1967.
"It was too soon. I had fixed up my chair with padding, but the bouncing of the track was too much. I was doubled over in pain and the medic sent me back on the next helicopter. As I left I could look
down and see another guy sitting in my place. I found out later that the track hit a mine and he broke his back."
Dyrud was sent to a leadership school and when he finished first in his class, he
received an automatic promotion to sergeant.
As Dyrud's year came to an end, he began to see some major changes occur in troops sent there to fight the war against communism. "When I got there,
nobody smoked dope. By the time I left, half the people there were smoking dope."
Another change was in the aggressiveness of the enemy. "It was almost eerie how quiet it got toward the end of the
year. Nobody knew why. We found out later, of course, that they were getting ready for the Tet Offensive."
The casualty rates at the end of 1967 were much lower. "The only thing we did that was really
dangerous was called 'road running.' We'd run the tracks up and down the roads at high speed at night to make sure the roads weren't being mined by the enemy."
With three weeks left in his tour, Dyrud
was called into the headquarters office at Cu Chi to do "charge of quarters" work. His duty was to man the office at night. He also was called over on occasion to identify the bodies of men in his
company that had been killed in action.
And then there was the Bob Hope incident. The famous entertainer was coming to Cu Chi to do a show, and Dyrud's unit was called into base just before Christmas
for a five-day layover, an amount of time away from the action that was unheard of in those days. After only one day of R&R, though, the men, along with nearly all the other combat forces in the
division, were sent out to reinforce the perimeter around the camp during Hope's visit.
"They always said that Bob Hope was there for the fighting man, but at Cu Chi the fighting men were all out in
the perimeter. I could have gone to the show, but I boycotted it."
Finally, on Jan. 10, 1968, Dyrud got on a plane headed back to the U.S. With the help of the international dateline, Dyrud also
arrived in California on Jan. 10 and he was mustered out that day. By the next morning he was back in Thief River Falls.
"I thought I'd hang around and draw unemployment for a while, but I was too
wired up for that. Three days later I took a job as a bread delivery guy."
That started a long odyssey for Dyrud that included time in San Francisco, a cruise on a halibut fishing boat in Alaska, two
years in Europe, working on a Norwegian freighter, and time in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Back in Thief River Falls, he took a job and was later laid off from the Arctic Cat company. He took a job as
the county veterans service officer, half time. He worked there for three years, and he did a stint working in the psychiatric unit at the local hospital. Later, he took a job as a claims representative
at the Fargo federal office. In 1985, he became supervisor of the Claims Division of the Department of Veterans Affairs at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, a position he still holds.
Through the years, he has helped hundreds of veterans with claims, many who had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. "I had PTSD before it was invented," Dyrud said. "That description only came around in the
late 70s, but so many veterans had it through the years."
Dyrud notes that he did little to address his own situation until recent years. "It's just like the plumber who never fixes his own leaky
faucets."
Through his years of working with veterans, he has found that one way for combat veterans to deal with PTSD is for them to talk about their experiences. "It's just not a good idea to let it
fester because later in life it will start burbling up. For some veterans, the more it burbles, the more they clamp down.
"Once they start dealing with it, they get a tremendous sense of relief. And
then the healing process can begin."
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