Personal Narrative: The Vietnam War

The Vietnam war contain different conflicts other than violence. A second enemy in this war was disease. Throughout the war our platoon encountered multiple scourges, about one group every couple of miles. Normally we would put on bug repellent but unfortunately we used the last of it on our mission to Than Khe. Before we headed back toward headquarters, we spent the night just outside of the village. That night we honored Ted Lavender and how much we missed him only a few hours after his death. Most of the platoon were balling their eyes out, but what do you expect, we were just a bunch of teenagers who didn’t know the first thing about war. The next morning, we started to quickly head back to headquarters through the fog that surrounded our path home. The next few

We continued to travel to various villages, searching to destroy elaborate tunnel complexes around Chu Lai. Luckily I never drew for tunnel duty. One of our last search and destroy missions in Chu Lai was a follow up on the village Than Khe, what a coincidence. Many of our platoon members feared this village after what happened to Ted. On the way to the village our platoon leader Jimmy Cross seemed to be acting unusual, he wasn’t as sharp as he normally was. Maybe he was scared of ending up like Ted, but I quickly eliminated that possibility after what he told me. He looked at me with the pale face of death and asked if it was colder than usual. He also told me that he was also having chills and a constant gruesome headache. With a temperature of a scorching 90 degrees Fahrenheit, including the almost 100 percent humidity due to the dense fog in the air. There was a clear discomfort within Jimmy. He seemed to become very tired very quickly and he occasionally stopped to vomit on the sides of the trail. He looked dead and he could barely move due to his constant fatigue. He