April 21st, 1967: All I want is for this to be over.

All I want right now is to go home and see my wife and kids. All I want is for the North Vietnamese to give up and end this fight. But unfortunately, all I can do is follow the orders I am given and continue dropping these bombs. As a member of the United States Army I never thought Id see as much tragedy as I do over here in Vietnam. For the past ten or more years it has been battle after battle, death after death, victory after victory, or defeat after defeat. My call of duty came to me in March of 1965 when I received a call to my home in Louisiana regarding my drafting to fight in the U.S. Air Force. Initially I was nervous because I automatically knew what I was about to be thrown into: Operation Rolling Thunder. My stomach turned. I knew my probability of returning home to my family was relatively slim, but I had no other choice. I knew a fair amount about this operation already, as the media was documenting almost every detail of the war thus far. President Lyndon B. Johnson had basically initiated this battle after he expanded U.S. air operations against North Vietnam in August 1964 following reported attacks on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin and approved limited bombing raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in hopes of disrupting the flow of men and supplies from the North to Viet Cong allies. After going through the necessary training to be deployed to South Vietnam, I learned of the goals of Operation Rolling Thunder. They were as follows: to boost the morale of the Saigon regime in the Republic of Vietnam; to persuade the North Vietnamese to end its support for the communist; to destroy North Vietnams transportation systems, industrial bases, and air defenses; and to terminate the movement of soldiers and war materials into South Vietnam. President Johnson believed that by doing so it would put pressure on North Vietnams Communist leaders to reduce their capability to pursue war against the United States. The first few months were bearable as my main duty was to help strategically plant targets of places where to drop the bombs. In the beginning, we were restricted to only bombing the southern parts of North Vietnam, but as time went on the U.S. leaders allowed us to begin attacks in the North in hopes of increasing the pressure on the Communist government: it didnt. As I was nearing the completion of my first year in the war American planes began attacking military and industrial targets through North Vietnam. It was a dog eat dog world. The only places that were off limits for us men to bomb were Hanoi, Haiphong, and a 10-mile zone along the border of China. Although North Vietnam didnt have that strong of an air force, their defense against our bombing raids were more effective than we had anticipated. With aid from China and the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese were able to construct a complex air-defense system. They used surface-to-air missiles and radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery to shoot down hundreds of American planes. It was because to this that I was assigned to go into the villages in North Vietnam and carry out attacks on their soldiers who were camouflaged among the civilians. Fighting on land was a lot more terrifying than fighting in the air. The North Vietnamese had built networks of bombproof tunnels and shelters and dispatched crews at night to rebuild the roads, bridges, communications, and other vital facilities that we had ruined with the bombings. To them this ensured their safety, but to me it meant terror. There was one bombing I recall specifically that haunts me to this day. It was May of 1968. I asleep was at my base camp with the other soldiers when I was suddenly awakened

by a bright light and a strong shake in the ground. There had been a bomb dropped only a few miles North of us. I remember immediately hearing the screams and cries from many of the North Vietnamese people. The men and I decided to go help out the civilians and get treatment to those seriously wounded or injured. Upon arriving to the small village there wasnt much left except for dead bodies, huts aflame, and people screaming out in agony. I spent my time assisting a mother and her five children. I gathered them up, tried to get as much information from her regarding her family, and took them to a nearby hospital. The mother was sobbing saying she had lost one of her children in the bombing. Her kids were distraught too, complaining that it was hard to see, that it was hard to hear, that their heads hurt, and the youngest one was bleeding from his nose, mouth and ears. The mother, preoccupied with the loss of her child, was covered in napalm residue from the bomb, completely oblivious to the injuries she had sustained. The image of them riding with me to the hospital is something that has been stuck in my head ever since. On October 31st, 1968, shortly after my experience with the North Vietnamese family, President Johnson halted Operation Rolling Thunder. He hoped to pursue a negotiated settlement with the Communists. It was after this, that I was able to return home. To this day, I still have flashbacks of that fateful night in North Vietnam. I often have dreams of the car ride to the hospital with the mother and her children where the mother is pleading to me to help me find her lost child. My wife is frequently woken up in the middle of the night to me thrashing about in my sleep as I am having these dreams, and she always tries to reassure me that there was nothing that I could do even though I feel as if there was something I could have done. Operation Rolling Thunder impacted my life greatly, but to others it tragically ruined theirs.